Chapter 24: Provocation

Three days have passed since I started digging potatoes. It is almost the end of October now.

“I’m going out at noon today.”

“What? Is that so? Don’t be too late.”

“Yeah, I’ll be home before dusk.”

I have finished digging all the potatoes and have a lot of potatoes in the garden. I’m going to sort the potatoes into small and large, and deliver 60% of the potatoes, excluding the seed potatoes, to the village mayor. During the harvesting season, the garden is quite overwhelmed.

As for the collection of taxes, people in wagons come regularly several times a year at a certain time. The next one will come in early December, so I can sort through them until then.

I have more potato sorting to do in the morning. I’m becoming a farmer.

Gelda also told me about the work to be done after the potatoes were sorted. I have to remove the stems and roots that are still growing in the field. If I don’t, they will be in the way when I plant new ones next spring. Then there was the work of checking the narrow canals to see if they were buried and making sure they were of uniform depth. I will manage the irrigation canals that border the fields assigned to Rodan.

(I’ll work on this one in between. But still, the cards are finally ready.)

Three days have passed since Rodan woke up from his injury.

3 days ago

-11 F-rank Beast

-2 F-rank Insect

-2 F-rank Bird

-15 F-rank Grass

Current

-16 F-rank Beast

-3 G-rank Insect

-2 F-rank Insect

-2 F-rank Bird

-7 F-rank Grass

 (I’ve finished adjusting the cards and Strengthening has reached level 2.)

I reduced the number of Grass cards and increased the number of F-rank Beast cards so that I could gain strength and work in the field more easily. And now that I had finished organizing the cards, I continued to spend mana to raise Strengthening to level 2. I have also got a general idea of the effects of Strengthening Level 2.

Strengthening Level 2

Consumes 10 mana.

The effect is to increase two statuses of the target by 20.

(This confirms that skills other than Create do not change the amount of mana required after level up. Synthesis is fixed at 5, Strengthening at 10.)

And with the Strengthening level going from 1 to 2, the summon’s status increase went from +10 to +20. All the cards in my hand have already been enhanced by Strengthening Level 2.

In the future, I plan to raise Strengthening to level 3 first, and then gain skill experience evenly until the three skills Create, Synthesis, and Strengthening reach level 4.

Lunch was served in the middle of the morning’s potato selection. Rodan still hasn’t been able to come out of his bedroom, but he’s slowly getting better. Maybe the tree I made out of F-rank Grass on the side of my parents’ bedroom is helping his recovery.

After lunch, I went out into the garden again. Rodan and Teresia were home now, so Mash was quiet and not lonely.

I picked a good-sized basket among the several baskets of various sizes that were in front of the tree. I threw ten stones into the basket. All of the stones were the size of baseballs that had been thrown repeatedly and had lost their corners. I also tied a wooden sword on my waist.

I took the basket and went outside. I walked along the dirt road to the fallow field Gelda had told me about before.

When I reached the fallow field, it was overgrown with weeds taller than me. The weeds had not been tended to in any way, and had grown so long that they were dry and dead. I walked inside and each of my steps made a crunch sound.

I put the basket aside and started entering the taller than me weed forest.

(First, I need to find out what this fallow land looks like.)

The size of this fallow field is obscured by the weeds that have grown taller than I am. I waded back and forth to get a rough idea of its size.

(This should be the center.)

I found the approximate center of the fallow field. Then I started stepping on the weeds from the center. I stepped on it more and more. The dry weeds were trampled and the crunching sound could be heard as I worked silently.

A circular space about 10 meters in diameter, like the crop circles that were popular in the past, formed.

(Well, something like this.)

I walked out of the 10-meter circle to a grassy area outside, randomly took some rocks out of a basket, and placed them on the ground. Then I grasped my wooden sword.

(Pyonta)

G-rank Insect Pyonta was summoned to the center of a crop circle-like space. It is a frog about the size of a bullfrog.

“All right. Use Provocation.”

“Gekko gekko.”

Pyonta flashed red, blue, yellow, and jumped. I was stifled in the weeds, watching.

Ten minutes elapsed.

(Hmm, this isn’t going as well as I thought.)

I was holding my wooden sword when I looked up to the sky. There, birds of all sizes were flying sparsely in the sky.

(There are birds flying in the sky, though. Either there aren’t enough birds, or Provocation doesn’t work that far.)

Winter is coming. We desperately need firewood for winter. So far, Rodan has sold the meat of the Great Boar every year to buy firewood to keep us warm through the winter. I also have a little brother at home. Of course, I am only six years old and not that strong against the cold.

Every time Rodan caught one, he would get 10 kilograms of meat, and he caught 10 of them. And about half of it would be consumed for firewood. We had to buy firewood in the village.

However, Rodan was unable to go boar hunting this winter. He only had enough meat of one kill despite being seriously injured, and a small amount of food that the village mayor had left as a sympathy gift. He also received gifts from his fellow serfs who had been hunting the boars with him. But compared to the 100 kilograms of meat from the Great Boar other years, it doesn’t seem like we can buy enough firewood this winter.

In order to protect the new life in Theresia’s belly and his family, Allen was trying to catch a bird.

(Well, aside from a magical beast like the Albaheron, even a crane like bird would have an edible portion of two kilograms, and I am hoping to catch fifty of them.)

There are also some magical beasts in the sky, like Albaheron, who are crossing to the north. However, I have no intention of catching them. I was aiming for large crane-like birds that also fly in this season. I decided to provoke them using Pyonta and lure them to this trap.

An hour passed by as I laid low with such thoughts.

(One of them doesn’t work, huh? Guess it was a good thing I made three cards just in case.)

I summoned a second Pyonta. The second Pyonta started bouncing around in the same place using Provocation.

Another hour passed by.

(Damn – even two are not enough. Or maybe they are flying too high in the sky and out of range. I don’t even know the range of the Provocation in the first place.

Kahn

　Kahn

　Kahn

   The three o’clock bell was ringing.

(It’s already 3:00. I told Kurena I couldn’t play with her today. I haven’t seen her for days.)

I haven’t played knight with Kurena since Rodan was seriously injured. I refused to do so because I have to take care of the house. Kurena looked lonely for a moment, but then replied that she understood. For the past two days, Kurena had not come to my house.

(Okay, let’s add one more to make it three. This is all I’ve got.)

“Gekko gekko.”

“Gekko gekko.”

“Gekko gekko.”

Three Pyontas were jumping apart in a round space created in a fallow field. They become red, blue and yellow alternately.

I was ready with my wooden sword at any time, but there was no change at all.

(It’s too early to give up. Maybe I’ll increase the number of Pyonta and try again tomorrow.)

That’s when it happened.

There was an object that swooped down from the sky. It appeared right in front of Allen, who was about to give up and let his guard down. A large claw-like foot attacked one of the insects. It turned into a glowing bubble and disappeared.

“Gaaaaaaaah!”

As it landed in the center of the round space, it spread its four-meter wings menacingly and let out a loud cry.

Albaheron had descended from the sky.