Ch.14How to Save

“…That’s all we’re asking for.”

“I see. So to summarize… despite not settling in this forest, you want us to leave all the mushrooms and berries for you, and not interfere no matter what you do?”

“…”

“And if anything happens, we have to deal with it all.”

“…”

The administrator politely rejected Titania’s proposal.

Setting aside the fact that he didn’t have such authority, her claim was childish, showing a lack of understanding of human ecology.

To be honest. Mushrooms? Berries? Those things, we could live without them.

No matter how small a nation Amurtat might be, they had orchards, and most people didn’t eat mushrooms anyway.

But the issue was the methodology.

Of course, elves had their own laws and common sense, but wasn’t that true for humans as well?

No matter how much they claimed to be offering “consideration,” stating it so bluntly without any diplomatic packaging was, charitably speaking, pure, and uncharitably speaking, foolish.

“To cut to the chase, we cannot accept this.”

“I see…”

“We lost dozens of soldiers claiming this forest, exterminated monsters and beasts to clear the paths, and cut down 130 bandits who were infesting this forest. And now suddenly you come demanding a share of the forest with talk of ‘consideration’ and ‘concessions’… it’s absurd.”

“…”

Titania’s eyes filled with concern.

Originally, such negotiations weren’t the scout captain’s duty, but the negotiation expert was no longer in this world.

“Titania, it sounds like you’re short on food for winter. Winter is a difficult season for humans too. Do you know how humans survive winter?”

“…Not really.”

“Usually, like elves, we get through winter with what we’ve gathered, but when supplies are short, we engage in something called ‘trade.’ Have you heard of it?”

Nod, nod.

Titania nodded her head.

As intelligent beings, elves also assigned value to objects, and exchanging items of value was the concept of trade.

Setting aside such obvious facts, there were occasional human peddlers who came to trade in their homeland of Blumen Elfium.

The earrings she wore were bought from humans, so trade itself wasn’t an unfamiliar concept to elves.

“We sell what we have in excess to buy what we lack… We have something we lack and wish to fulfill. If you can help with that, we can provide food for you to survive the winter.”

“What do you lack?”

“Just a moment…”

Franz rose from his seat, took a piece of parchment from the bookshelf, and unfolded it.

“Can you read human letters?”

“No.”

“Hmm…”

Franz tapped his chin a few times, then handed her ink and a quill.

“Can you write in elvish what I dictate?”

“That much I can do…”

“Good. Then what’s drawn here. This is called ‘bean.'”

“B…e…a…n…”

*

It was mid-April, when the weather had completely cleared, that the elves accepted the proposal.

It took over two weeks for Titania, the scout captain, to serve as a messenger between Blumen Elfium and Amurtat Castle, and another two weeks to establish a trading post at the foot of the mountains where elves and human merchants could freely come and go.

But there was progress—they succeeded in securing the seeds they had originally targeted.

The elves, being familiar with the forest, could move quickly from place to place, and in the process, they found human settlements that had been destroyed but matched the descriptions, securing the seeds.

As long as the fields hadn’t been completely overturned, there was a possibility that the crops, even if they had become wild flowers, had survived.

I had secretly thought they might have ambushed passing caravans to obtain seeds, so I was surprised by their relatively peaceful approach.

With this, Amurtat secured the seeds necessary for the four-field crop rotation system, and from now on, they could produce crops without fallow land.

Of course, Amurtat wasn’t the only one to benefit.

The elves of Blumen Elfium also gained a regular and safe way to trade through the trading post, so if they lacked anything in the future, they could simply purchase it at the trading post for a fair price.

Considering Elfium’s poor production capacity, one might wonder what they would trade, but elves were a race highly skilled in handicrafts.

Due to their hunting nature, when the weather wasn’t suitable for hunting or when they had gathered all they could, they had nothing to do but crafts. The ornaments and fabrics made by elves were luxury items traded at very high prices among humans.

Of course, the elven population was much smaller compared to humans, so they couldn’t produce enough to satisfy human demand, but that was actually good for me.

Why? Because when production can’t keep up with demand, prices rise.

“Select the 12 most productive farmlands and use them to multiply the seeds.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Four for beans, four for rye grass, and four for turnips.”

“I will convey this well to the subordinates.”

For reference, just because the four-field rotation goes beans-rye grass-wheat-turnips doesn’t mean you eat only beans for one year and only graze on rye grass the next.

I initially set it up uniformly and ended up with lots of beans being grown while flour supplies ran empty before I realized that farmers could decide what to plant first.

For example, the Kim family’s field might grow wheat first, while the Kang family’s field might grow beans first.

In fact, since fertilization methods (using human and animal excrement to make compost) were widely spread among this world’s farmers, there wasn’t such a need to obsess over soil recovery, but the key point of the four-field system was the increased production from having no fallow land, so using it alongside fertilization methods could yield even better results.

*

It hadn’t been long since people began continuously traveling to Amurtat, but the size of Amurtat, which kept accepting them, continued to grow.

The noise of materials falling from the sky and instantly creating leveled ground had already become part of daily life, and workers with construction tools always loitered on the streets.

Thirty caravan leaders were staking their livelihoods on continuously sending people to Amurtat, and I, boasting over 1000 hours of gameplay, provided appropriate jobs for all of them.

Currently, 60% of jobs were in agriculture and livestock, 20% in manufacturing, and 10% in the service sector. The remaining 10% were in the public sector, occupied by soldiers and civil servants.

And now, with continuous expansion, residential areas and industrial complexes were growing, creating more jobs than the population growth could fill.

This is another common mistake for beginners—focusing obsessively on increasing production and recklessly expanding production facilities, only to find there’s not enough manpower to run them, leading to a situation where workers have to be shuffled around.

However, Amurtat now had a continuous supply of manpower, enabling rapid expansion without any bottlenecks.

Thanks to this, I was getting nosebleeds several times a day from establishing hospitals and public bathhouses to prevent epidemics, issuing decrees prohibiting bathing outdoors and dumping waste, and installing water and sewage pipes in all directions. But it was clearly better to get a few nosebleeds a day than to see a thriving nation wiped out by an epidemic.

“Ugh… I never knew it would drain my mental energy this much…”

The game tooltips mentioned that there were side effects to a monarch exercising the power of the earth’s core, but experiencing the side effects firsthand was no joke.

I even nearly cracked my head again after twisting my ankle while going down stairs.

“Haah… I’m tired…”

After a hard day’s work, it literally feels like all the vitality is drained from my body.

I don’t remember, but I wonder if my former self also had my energy completely drained and ended up with a cracked skull while going hunting?

“Is anyone there?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“I’m hungry, bring me some light refreshments. It’s almost bedtime, so something simple would be good.”

“I’ll prepare it right away.”

But it’s fine. I have minions who can handle most tasks for me. If I die, this country ends too, so what can we do?

The refreshments were quickly prepared, and after replenishing my depleted sugar levels through chewing, I fell into a deep sleep.

It wasn’t summer yet.