After that, I wound up meeting a whole new cast of characters and got involved in all kinds of crazy things full of twists and turns, huge strides forward, and lots of stumbling in the dark. Finally, after a few days, I managed to bring some semblance of stability back to my life. It felt like forever.
The last few days especially felt like they’d never end, mainly thanks to our resident Champ and the work it took to clean up the royal mess she’d made. The one good thing was, in just one night, the enormous gash left in the meadow after our battle healed as if nothing had happened. The problem, though, was the method behind its astonishing recovery.
Like moths to a flame, swarms of intellectually curious adventurers, scholars, amateur eccentrics, and Jumichlan mages flocked to the scene of what people now called the Remlian Meadow Miracle, tripping over one another to be the first at the site. Soon, the meadow turned into a hot new tourist spot complete with hordes of visitors who trampled over the fields, threatening the residents who lived underneath, hidden from sight.
Desperate for a diversion, I caused a distraction on the meadow on the opposite side of the kingdom and led the newcomers over like cows to the pasture. While they were preoccupied, I had Lana and Freyja sign official affidavits testifying to what had really happened. These documents wrote off the so-called miracle as nothing more than a naturally occurring phenomenon and squashed any further interest in the event. Freyja agreed to leave the Dark Lord out of this, as it’d only cause the citizens unnecessary anguish to learn such a sinister presence lurked in their own backyards. In total, I forged over thirty testimonials based on my version of events, leveraging the sheer volume of “evidence” to drown out the theories some of the mages had developed, which came very close to the truth. Shove enough lies down people’s throats, and most will stop giving a shit about what the “real” truth is.
I feel like this is all I do every waking moment.
Speaking of, things worked out really well for Freyja and Lazalisa—too well. Ever since the tea leaves handpicked by our in-house Champion hit the shelves, “the Champion’s Tea” immediately became the best-selling product in the Zavah Night Owl Trade Group’s history. Seizing what looked like a golden opportunity, I put Freyja to work selling our pasta to stores. We moved through the approval process seamlessly and repackaged our Ghost-Ship Pasta as Champion’s Pasta. It flew off the shelves just as quickly. We did leave some aside for ourselves, but the rest soon turned into money in our pockets.
That’s when the Zavah chairman and our former Champion of Light got cocky, plastering the Champion’s Stamp of Approval on anything they could get their hands on. They started with cups, plates, knives, spoons, forks, and other everyday items but eventually expanded to functionally useless things like tapestries and key chains (this one had Machina’s influence written all over it). By the end, they’d branded the stamp on chamber pots, brooms and mops, and even the items rotting away in the warehouse dead-stock graveyards. I thought it was a stupid idea, but somehow those items still found buyers.
I tried to warn our entrepreneurs that they were being too ambitious, but my pleas fell on deaf ears. The two built new warehouses and began to fill out a catalog of high-end furniture until—it suddenly all came crashing down. In the span of a single day, all Champion merchandise instantly disappeared from the Remlian markets. Spurious rumors spread to the farthest reaches of town, but none came close to the embarrassingly mundane truth. A disapproving letter of complaint from Freyja’s family reached King Remlia, who immediately commanded the trade group to voluntarily recall all the goods. When Freyja, who was terrified of her family’s wrath, and the chairman, who had a ton of unmarketable items in storage, had come crying to me over their dilemmas, I gave them a warm smile and a swift kick in the ass.
Then finally—finally—I was able to start planting our home garden.
“Wrath, first, you’re gonna need to pluck every single weed you see. Once that’s done, dig a little hole, sprinkle some seashells inside, and add some fallen-leaf compost on top, then mix it all together until it’s somewhat soft and airy. Then plant a seed or two and move about four of your fists over to plant another. We’ve got tons of space, so go crazy.”
“Boh!” the fifty-centimeter-tall tree golem grunted in reply, then got to work carefully weeding the garden as I’d instructed. This was the Dark Lord’s thank-you gift to me. She’d taken the remains of the giant I’d thought had been reduced to nothing but ash, revived him, and refashioned him into a miniature version. Tiny Wrath did whatever I commanded and had a good year of life left in him. For the moment, I’d put him on garden and security duty. Kind of ironic that it was the demonic sovereign who’d created a new life out of the destruction left by a human.
I’d also gone to Shuna for more details on Lord Ukhazol, asking, “Hey, Shuna, just out of curiosity, when Lord Ukhazol takes his hat off, does he—?”
“Yeah, he’s totally bald. He used to shave it in his previous life, or at least, that’s what he told me. I took a look once, but it was the weirdest hairstyle I’d ever seen.”
That probably answered the mystery of why a wooden katana hung from Wrath’s hip. I’d thought we could only get to the Other Dimension by portals, but was that true? Were there other ways here? Or maybe, did the portals randomly transport people and drop them into this world? If Lord Ukhazol didn’t wear a topknot man-bun due to his personal style, this meant the modern world had at least some contact with the Other Dimension before 1946.
Maybe there was only a one-way road in? If that’s true, then……then what? Did the technology here somehow influence the advancement of our own back in the modern world? For example, maybe, it led to a technological breakthrough that could not otherwise exist…… But what, though?
That was as far as my plebeian mind could go. No use wasting brainpower on something I can’t grasp. Let’s put this on the back burner. There’s no better time to get to work and get your hands dirty.
I hadn’t done any gardening since elementary school, but it was kind of fun. Eating, cooking, gardening—every step of the chain was unique, but they all required trial and error to master. For example, Lana could cast a spell on our plants to make them grow faster, but the process removed all the nutrients from the soil and would quickly overcultivate the land. That said, we did rely on this method at first since I wanted to start by crossbreeding our plants, hybridizing one strain with another over and over until we created the best version. Once we got to that point, I planned to let nature take its course so they could grow at their own pace. I figured it shouldn’t be that hard with Lord Ukhazhol’s green thumb blessing the process. Plus, Machina had the knowledge, and if we messed up the soil and needed to recalibrate it, Wrath could handle the labor without much trouble.
Yeah, this is definitely doable. Can’t wait to see how it goes. I wanna start with cherry tomatoes, eggplants, and cucumbers, then try my hand at garlic, chili peppers, shiso, green onions, oh, and maybe even radishes. We could grow some parsley and herbs to go with pasta dishes. We might as well try edamame, too. It’s not all gonna go as planned the first time around, but the possibilities are endless.
Wait, I feel like I’m forgetting something fundamental. Am I just imagining it? Yeah, must be.
“Hmm?”
I heard a horse clopping along, then looked to see a black stallion bearing an adventurer over the meadow. It was a familiar face. Raven-haired with scraggly stubble, the man had a patch over his left eye and was clad in well-worn adventurer’s gear. In his late thirties to midforties, the gruff rider bore a striking resemblance to Toshiro Mifune, the famous Japanese actor. In my opinion, out of all the people I’d met in the Other Dimension, he took the Most Likely to Wear a Kimono and Katana Best Award.
What does he want? The Heuress girls and Lanceil are still sleeping. He better not wake them up.
“Good morning,” I greeted him.
“Aye, morning. Souya, what have you been doing with yourself lately?” asked the one and only father of adventurers, Medîm.
“Lately? I’ve been busy cleaning up after other people’s crap and hooking some friends up with a few gigs. Today I’m going to get our garden started.”
“Right. I’ve seen adventurers like you who get their first taste of success fall into a similar trap all too often. I’ve got only one thing to say to you. Souya……get your ass back in that damn dungeon! End of story!”
Pops turned his horse around and galloped back the way he’d come. In case it wasn’t obvious, he looked absolutely livid. It’d been a while since I had someone older hound me so furiously. For a while, I let the wind blow me. Wrath kept on plugging along, busily prepping the garden. Now that the thing I’d forgotten had come rushing back to me, I lost all train of thought.
“Mr. Souya, may Yukikaze and I make a suggestion as well?”
“Uh, sure.”
With Yukikaze perched on her head, Machina rolled over the grass toward me.
“Please go explore the dungeon.”
“Explore the dungeon, you must.”
“………Fine.”
Here I go again.