Chapter 45: The Undergrowth and The Medicinal Herbs

「Well then, do your best. 」

「Yes. 」

I informed Mercia and Catherine of my plans for the future, gave them money and left Photoren.

There were 3 main basic policies.

First, the Maple Catherine Magic Tool Store was going to be part of the Maple Company.

When I asked Mercia, she said that Catherine’s skill was good. It seemed that she was one of the best skills in Photoren. Therefore, it would be a waste to let her work as a shopkeeper.

Next, even if I was not there, I decided to keep it to a small amount even with profits or deficits, and for that reason, even if I had enough money for the time being, I decided not to expand the scale too much at the beginning.

I wanted to hire 5 or 6 people at most. If the company became stable and profitable, only then I would expand the scale.

Of course, I knew other stores were also seriously competing to earn money. After all, it was not easy to beat other stores that already had a foundation.

That’s when I came in. I could sell products that were much cheaper than in other stores, and if people bought them, I could make a whole lot of money, so this was a big advantage.

Of course, selling something I bought for cheap did not mean that the profit margins of other products would increase, but as long as a store selling them existed, I could reduce the fixed cost.

Besides, if I processed the things that I brought to Maple Company in order to sell, it would be advantageous there as well.

For example, when making dried meat, it was usually: an adventurer → Guild → dried meat processor → grocery store. Moreover, it was cut out twice before lining up at the grocery store, whereas in my case it was: an adventurer → Decibator Food shop → I = Company.

In addition, the price at Decibator was about one-tenth that of Photoren, so there was no reason why it would not be advantageous.

By the way, they did not eat fresh meat from Decibator, but they used dried meat. It seemed to be safe because it removed what seemed to be poisonous.

Although the meat from Photoren was not as good as that of Decibator, people said that, it could have the same symptoms as that of Decibator. Therefore, they made the meat into dried meat as well as a precaution.

Meat carrying strange symptoms seemed to deteriorate extremely slowly before they removed the poison. It meant that it could be easily identified from the safe meats.

Even so, it seemed that if the environment were not prepared to make dried meat, the fresh meat would rot before they removed the poison.

The meat of the monsters obtained in Decibator had a rather good quality, and many of them were in a relatively high-class category there. However, it was difficult to carry such meat because it was not worth to make a dangerous travel to Decibator and process them there.

But since it was easy for me to carry food, it felt like a pile of treasure.

However, if I increased the scale immediately, I could diminish the benefits.

I should decide whether to increase it little by little while watching the situation.

Finally, the industry.

For the time being, I should use food and, in some cases, monster materials.

Of course, I could sell meat after processing it into dried meat, but I needed equipment and personnel for it to happen.

This was, of course, the purpose to maximize my advantage.

You would not know what kind of company I had if I ran a furniture store to sell monster materials and meat from Decibator.

Therefore, having a grocery store was essential. Grocery stores could even process the food I brought and took to/from Decibator.

Not to mention the monster materials. People said that they sold these type of materials to surrounding blacksmiths and armor stores rather than retailers.

There was no need for processing equipment, so there was no particular cost.

If I brought it, I would just sell it. I did not have to worry about it.

Well, for the time being, I decided to go with this plan.

I handed over 40 million to Mercia. It was up to her to secure personnel and equipment.

Even if I gave some ideas about basic policies, I did not have a say in actual management.

I was an amateur after all. I did not want to cause any trouble.

I decided to buy about 10kg of bread when I went back to Decibator.

Bread was light but bulky, so it was not quite available at Decibator.

Regardless of the stockpile, if I took it to Decibator to exchange it for a monster material, it should be better. I had nothing to lose.

On the way back, I flew in the sky almost at the speed of sound, but now, I kept it a little below the speed of sound.

It was amusing to see the scenery being blowing away physically, but it felt bad for my ears.

It was not good for the environment either.

I arrived at Decibator without any problems.

It was already evening. But I wanted to finish the errands from Photoren since tomorrow would be a busy day.

I stopped by the grocery store to hear about the progress of collecting monsters.

「How is the monster collection going? 」

「I’ve gathered quite a lot. I wonder if it’s about 1 million Tael at Photoren.」

Was it a lot?

I tried to calculate it.

The amount of dried meat was about 3333 kg by a simple calculation, and that amount of meat alone was quite large.

One cow weighed 600 kg, so it weighed more than five cows.

「Is it food-based or is it monster material-based? 」

「Most of it is food. The rest are materials. They’re profitable if you bring back the parts that can be used as weapons, such as a material for armor equipment. Usually, nothing remains since we try to make use of everything. 」

It was not a big deal.

「Where is it? 」

「It’s piled up there. The inedible monsters are not damaged. 」

The store clerk pointed to the outside of the store.

When I looked at it, I saw that the monsters were many…Actually, they were not that many, but they looked like many because of the high pile.

「Is it around 100,000 in total because it is one tenth of the Photoren price? 」

「Yes. I still have the Giant Spider Crab too. 」

「I see. By the way, I bought about 10 kg of bread from Photoren. Do you want to buy it? 」

That was why I bought it.

I had set meals for myself already. I did not want to eat bread that was not necessarily good.

「How about 1 kilogram for 3000 Tael? 10 kg will mold before I sell them out. 」

Mold, huh? I’ve never seen it before.

Maybe it was because of the item box since it was too convenient.

Well, there was a possibility that penicillin* could be available in this world, so maybe I should look for the right direction to avoid mold.

I did not know if recovery magic could replace antibiotics.

「Yes, fine. 」

「Great. 」

I handed over the bread, stored the monsters in the item box, and left the store.

I had nothing to do, so I went back to the inn. I had a meal and went to bed. It was a healthy life.

I thought it was too healthy, but fighting and logging awaited me tomorrow anyway.

I did not bother myself to do it on nights when visibility was poor. I still heavily relied on my eyes to search for enemies.

—

The next day. I woke up at the usual time.

I did not know the exact time, but I felt that my sense of time was rather accurate.

They said logging would start at noon. Therefore, I decided to look around for now.

For the time being, I observed the sky from a relatively high altitude.

It was important to get the big picture.

The long and narrow land was divided into forests and grasslands on the border of Decibator.

Some parts were like ski resorts and there were no trees, but that was the area that I cut.

After that, I thought about going closer to the ground in order to observe it better, but when I got down to the ground, I was already surrounded by monsters.

2 in front of me, 1 in the back, 2 on both sides.

These monsters looked like Gargon but reddish, though they were one size larger than Gargon.

…Weighing less than 500 kg, they looked good as raw materials for dried meat.

I held the magic sword. Because I wanted to make them into meat, it was better to cut them with a sharp sword rather than crushing them with magic.

When I took a step toward the monsters in front of me, the monsters behind me rushed in.

I turned around and cut them with the sword.

When I turned around again, I felt a monster approaching from behind with the advanced radar.

Were they trying to kill me with some sort of strategy?

What a good teamwork for monsters.

…But it was meaningless against me.

When I sliced the monsters in front of me, I made one rotation with the same momentum and sliced the other three with the same thrust.

They tried to avoid my attack to strike at my sideways, but they could not penetrate the magical armor.

I cut the rest of the monsters with the magic sword and finished the fight.

No matter how great their teamwork was, they could not hurt a tank opponent with an empty fist.

I stored them in the item box while they were still fresh and continued with the reconnaissance.

The trees were around 3 meters apart, and I felt that there were quite a lot of trees compared to Japanese forests.

However, the visibility was not that bad because the undergrowth was quite short.

The undergrowth was… Zunana grass.

I had not noticed it until now, but the amount of Zunana grass was insane.

Even when I tried to appraise it, every grass was still Zunana grass.

Moreover, immature ones did not exist here.

Scary.

Did this happen to be a colony of Zunana grass? However, the undergrowth was low in other places as well, so it was not strange to think that Zunana grass covered all of this area.

This could be extremely profitable.

Let’s say I could trim 30 Tael each, about 3 per second.

It would be 324000 Tael in an hour.

How extraordinary. Fighting monsters would not be even worthy.

Considering the time and effort to carry them to Photoren for processing, it may not be worth more.

The monsters weighed more than 2,500 kg, and I did not know how much I could reduce the kg if I made them into dried meat. All that process would take more time than collecting Zunana grass.

It took 1 hour to collect this herb.

Yes, extraordinary.

However, that was the case when the number was about 3 per second.

It would take less than a second to trim three Zunana grasses with a lawn mower.

In fact, I could cut the Zunana grass all at once just by cutting the ground at the same time as I cut a tree.

The question was how to collect it.

When it came to collecting things that were not too heavy, it was best to use air like a vacuum cleaner, but I did not use wind magic that seemed to be a proper wind magic yet.

I tried it for the time being.

An image of cutting the root of Zunana grass with the magic sword and pulling it with magic.

Oh, I pulled them well.

However, it did not feel like the wind, it felt like they were being pulled with a thread.

Was the speed about 30 km / h? All right.

When I looked at the stats, the types of magic skills did not increase, which means that this action would affect the ones that I already had.

When I cut the surrounding Zunana grass properly and pulled them out, I found that this magic pulled an object on a straight line.

I noticed that the Zunana grass behind the trees were not being pulled, so it was unlikely that I could pull them out through a wall.

I could not see the MP consumption because the MP recovery was too fast, but pulling herbs was not the same as shooting a spear with the surplus of magical power.

MP consumption was about 2.5 per second. A level of magical power that I could use comfortably while flying at about 40 km / h.

Speaking of which, the magic sword must be eating away my MP, but I did not feel that the MP had decreased that much.

The magic sword seemed to use magical power regardless of the owner’s will, right? I did not know much about the magic sword, except that it was a dangerous sword.

Maybe I had to do more magic research.

By the way, it was strange that I did not see other monsters except the ones I saw when I first arrived here.

It was almost noon, so I decided to go logging.

I was about to become a hurricane lumberjack.

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*An antibiotic or group of antibiotics produced naturally by certain blue molds, now usually prepared synthetically. Penicillin was discovered in 1928 and during the Second World War became the first antibiotic to be used by doctors.

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