Aren’t those numbers a little absurd? I did see you pulling them in left and right, but...something doesn’t feel right about landing that many in a single day.
Nay... My mindset is the problem. Those are the numbers I should be aiming for! Very well, I’ll plant as much as I can to trigger a produce frenzy in kind!
It is good that you found new farmland when space was getting tight. Perhaps there are similar field expansions on the other safe floors!
We need to test this, but there may be some crops you can only cultivate within the dungeon. Take Dungeon Carrots, for instance—I thought they only dropped from monsters, but maybe not! There may be more dungeon crops out there.
I am excited about the Magic Onions too.
Now, let me contest your fish with today’s harvest! I managed to nab three hundred edamame pods! What’s more, some were even “Highest-Grade”! As I was harvesting them, I obtained a few “Gold Bean” seeds! A mutation, surely! Unfortunately, they are few in number.
On another note, if we leave a few edamame plants, we will have soybeans, right? We should be able to collect some by tomorrow.
“Hmm... Island lord. Do you have a moment?”
Emoji called out to me over the exchange diary she was writing in.
“What’s up?”
“Do you know how to grow rice? I had some white rice on hand when I was summoned here, but my supply is running low.”
Yeah, rice.
As one of the party’s cooks, I’d bought a decent amount from the NPCs, so even cut off from the outside world, I had enough supply to last a while.
“The Pekkles started selling rice when we were around mid-development on Cal Mira.”
We’d been staving off our hunger with fish up to that point. Once the Pekkles started selling grain, food stopped being that much of an issue.
“Do you think the Bunownies will sell it to me?” Emoji asked.
Given the half-baked state of the Prado Desert’s development, it seemed unlikely.
“It’ll be tough to secure a staple without rice or wheat,” Therese chimed in. “I’ve been thinking about it too.”
I nodded. “Here, where farming’s encouraged, they might not sell them at all. We’ll have soybeans once the edamame mature, but...”
“We can probably make tofu,” Therese agreed. “Maybe even okara while we’re at it—I’ll be able to add quite a bit to our repertoire.”
Therese and I both had the Culinary Art skill, so we’d be able to expand the menu by a decent amount the moment we got soybeans. Tofu usually needed bittern or some other coagulant, but in this game, it could be made through a minigame.
“I’d love to make some homemade natto too,” said Therese. “All the more reason to restock on rice.”
“White rice comes from milling brown rice, right? Do we...even have brown rice?”
“I picked some up from an NPC. Can we use it?”
Therese handed over a small sack of brown rice, which I passed to Emoji. She was the one who’d raised her Farming Skill.
“It seems it can be planted.”
“I guess there’s nothing wrong with planting it, then... Rice is a spring crop, after all.”
“Do you know the method? It’s different from an ordinary field, right?”
Emoji was looking to me for guidance, but in Dimension Wave...I wasn’t sure how far my knowledge would get us.
“One nice thing is that rice won’t have the same continuous cropping hazard problem that’s been holding you back...”
Rice was so fussy that even my sisters gave up on it in that game.
“Is it impossible?”
“Well, you have to watch the temperature and water level, and you’ll need to be even more mindful of pests, see? I don’t know if a beginner like you can handle it just yet... Plus, you’ll need a paddy field, not a dry field.”
During our dungeon camp, I’d kept an eye out for pests and warned Emoji whenever I spotted them. She’d used some of the pesticide Cray gave us, and that was why our harvests had been going well thus far.
“There’s a lesser-known method called upland rice,” I explained. “But it suffers from those rotation problems, and the rice’ll take longer to mature.”
“Hmm? Rice isn’t only growable in paddies?”
“That’s news to me! You’re so knowledgeable, Kizzy. Why don’t you become a farmer?”
Therese hit me with the same question that sis had asked me before we left.
“I said it before, but we’re not a farming family and I’m not interested.”
“Rice is the heart of agriculture, right?” Emoji suddenly spoke up. “I want to do it in a real paddy.”
“Got it... Can we turn any of the crystal cavern’s fields into a paddy?”
I couldn’t bring myself to deny Emoji’s drive to tackle it precisely because it was challenging. Not when I was out there gunning for a lord I’d yet to see the slightest hint of.
“To put it simply, rice... Well, in Japan, we call the plant itself ine; rice is the product of the ine plant. It’s a wetland plant that thrives in marshy, water-soaked soil. Even though upland rice exists...”
I surveyed the farmland of the crystal cavern. I noticed on a slight terrace...a small flowing brook that fed into the lake and a patch of soil right beside it. It was almost like it had been made for us. The ridges were nice and neat.
Usually, we’d have to prep the place with fertilizers and such, but our supplies were limited. It would be best to keep it nice and simple.
“That looks like a good spot. Emoji, use the hoe to dig there and there. They’ll be the drains to turn the field into a paddy.”
“Aye aye!”
Emoji began digging as I’d instructed, allowing water to flood in and transform the dry field. Meanwhile, I set some stones along the brook as a temporary measure to direct the flow.
“The first step to growing ine is germinating the brown rice grain... We can skip that step here and jump straight to the saplings.”
I’d already had Emoji check to see which of the grains were high enough quality to be used. Even though I had the knowledge, Emoji could see things I simply couldn’t with her solid investment in farming skills.
“Now, we plant them at regular intervals. You must’ve seen a rice paddy before, right? That’s what we’re going for—I’ll help out too.”
“Aye aye!”
Hold the saplings like this, then press them into the mud... Yeah, just like that. You’ve got it.
“Oh... It’s actually impressive that this is all coming from game knowledge, island lord.”
Well, that game got me a little interested in farming, so I went and asked an actual farmer... They gave me a practical lesson, and I just remembered a bit of it.
“Ah, that looks kinda fun! Let me in!”
I continued my lecture as Emoji and Therese happily pushed the saplings into the mud.
“Hmm-hmm... Hmmm,” Emoji hummed as they worked, the tune clear and crisp even as just a hum.
It reminded me of how she sang by the campfire the other night, standing in front of the fields, swinging her hoe around like a mic. It was one of those popular songs I’d definitely heard playing when I was out shopping.
Now then, we hadn’t secured a terribly large area for the paddy field, so the job was done soon enough.
“All done! I didn’t think it would be that simple!”
“Well, it’s way harder in real life—this is the sort of simplification you’d only find in a game. There are quite a few things we need to keep an eye out for from here on out, though.”
“What, specifically?”
“Well, disease and insects go without saying. We’ll have to keep watch and get rid of them as they come. Birds can do a number on a rice field too...”
Did they really have to have all of that represented down here in the caverns, though? Bugs did appear as a sort of negative status effect on the crops, while birds could be driven away in a very gamelike manner by installing scarecrows.
“And we need to watch the water depth—keep the water high enough to protect the ine plants from the chill while they develop. Not that the Crystal Lake ever seems to change temperature.”
Temperature was more important than anything, and the brook we were leveraging seemed to run a bit warmer than the lake’s main body. It really did feel like it had been designed specifically for rice.
“There’s even an old saying: ‘Half of rice farming is watching the water.’ That’s how important it is.”
“Wow! What a hassle,” said Therese. “It’s so fussy, I can’t see how you’d do any of this if you didn’t love your work. If it were me, I’d be more than happy just buying the rice they have on sale.”
Honestly, me too, I concluded. Why would I come all the way out into Dimension Wave just to do some farmwork? It was way too complicated as far as I was concerned. Then again, fishing was the same, and maybe it was best to leave it to whoever wanted to do it.
Even if you didn’t get this deep into the nitty-gritty, you could probably still grow something decent. The system gave enough of a buff to ensure you’d at least be able to grow something.
“I see.” Emoji nodded.
“Make sure to use those pesticide potions well. If you spot any bugs, report and exterminate... Do that, and even if your skill levels aren’t that great, I reckon you’ll probably get a decent harvest.”
Rice was notoriously prone to insect pests. Pests that could be even scarier than continuous cropping hazards and disease. A farmer once told me that spotting planthoppers filled him with a loathing deeper than if he’d come face-to-face with his parents’ killer.
This was what repellents were for, and surely a potion would do the job in game.
And so, I continued explaining the basics of rice cultivation to Emoji.
“How exciting,” she exclaimed.
Checking the temperature and moisture became the bulk of her work as she diligently went around checking the fields. I passed the time fishing, while Therese wandered the cavern regularly, stopping by every excavation site she was aware of.
It...kinda seems like the walls are slowly changing shape wherever she mines. Don’t tell me diligent digging actually alters the terrain permanently?