By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 15 - Chapter 1

Chapter 9, Episode 10: The Way of the Forest, Part 1

A few hours had passed since I had entered the vast Sea of Trees. There had been no hiccups to speak of, and I could already see the first of the base camps set up by adventurers in the distance. It was an easy structure to spot, standing in a clearing free of towering trees and dense underbrush. Fortified with walls as solid as concrete—perhaps built by several mages—the base was rather imposing. A gateway no larger than the double doors of a main street retailer served as its only visible entrance. A few adventurers were scattered around the base, apparently maintaining the clearing between the wall and the woods.

“This should be close enough...” I muttered. Now that I was traveling alone, there was one thing I had to do to mitigate the effect of my curse before engaging in any social interactions. Simply switching the magic I cast around me from Hide to Holy Space would be well worth the effort.

Normally, Despell—another Light spell—would be called upon for breaking curses, but the curse currently afflicting me couldn’t be broken by mortal magic. Because the curse only affected others through me, I’d been instructed to cast spells that would block out, or at least dampen, the curse’s effect, rather than spells intended to break the curse outright.

As I approached without the veil of Hide, the adventurers immediately took notice and began talking among themselves.

One of them whirled in my direction in surprise. “Oh, it’s just a kid. A kid?!”

“Look at him,” another chimed in.

“What’s a little kid doing here?”

“Do you think he walked all this way alone?”

“Are you sure he’s not a dwarf, or elf, or just a really short dude?”

“Even if he was, it doesn’t explain why he’s in the woods alone.”

“It better not be some monster in disguise.”

It was hard to tell if the curse’s effect was dampened at all. While the adventurers were not openly hostile, they watched me warily without approaching—far from a warm welcome. Just as I’d decided to all but ignore them and knock on the base doors, a pack of raptors shot out of the woods behind me.

“Raptors!” cried an adventurer.

“They’re in a pack again! Watch out!”

“Dammit! I’m getting tired of these lizards!”

“I’m getting tired of this whole forest!”

“Enough yapping! Ready your weapons!”

The panic in their voices certainly didn’t inspire any confidence, so I decided to take care of the raptors myself using Dark magic. Marking every raptor charging our way, I cast my spell with the mental image of shooting them an intimidating glare.

The raptors all screeched and turned on their heels, some of them tripping over from their own momentum before taking up the rear of the fleeing pack. After the practice I’d had on my way here, I was able to comfortably cast the spell without an incantation.

“They ran off,” an adventurer noted.

“Did that kid do it?”

“Who else could it have been?” One who acted much calmer than the others—their leader, I presumed—acknowledged me with a quick look before ushering his team back to their stations. “The monsters are gone. Let’s get back to work.”

I considered speaking to him, but he’d shown me no further interest, and I didn’t have any good reason to approach him beyond being polite. I passed the adventurers by so as to not disrupt their work.

When I was a few steps away from the doors, one of them swung in to reveal a stolid guard holding it open for me. “Haven’t seen you before. Get in.”

I slipped through the opening that was just wide enough for me to do so, and the guard swiftly closed it behind me. Clearly, they were just as wary of monsters inside the base as they were out in the clearing. As soon as I made it into the base’s interior—an expansive, undivided room—furnished with a lavishly large heatwood table topped with food and drink, I felt the eyes of the many adventurers beginning to assess me. It was as if I’d stumbled into a bustling barroom rather than a secure checkpoint.

“Take a seat in the corner over there,” instructed the guard who’d opened the door. “All newcomers need to show their ID and answer a few questions. I know it’s an inconvenience, but that’s how we do things here.”

“No problem.” I obeyed and walked to the chair he indicated. When in Rome... 

Another guard with matching armor sat next to the chair, waving me over. He held a wooden tankard—filled with some sort of alcohol, judging by the color of his cheeks. “Come sit here.”

“Hello.”

“Like he said, I just need to ask you a few questions. Make yourself comfortable. We’ll send you on your way after we talk for a bit.” The guard smirked, catching my gaze lingering on his tankard. “Don’t ask what I’m drinking, though. I’m off the clock.”

He’s working off the clock? “I’m sorry to sour your time off,” I offered.

“It’s no big deal. This is the gatehouse, bar, and holding room for us guards all rolled into one. Guards and adventurers all hang out here, whether we’re on the clock or not. So someone off duty handles interviews like this that are—sorry to say it—just going through the motions. We rarely see new faces around here anyway.” He gestured to the room. “Are you hungry? I’m not going to buy you anything, but we got all sorts of meat and drink if you have the coin. You can also buy new wares or have your own fixed... You can get your hands on just about anything here.”

Taking his word as to how the guards handled their work here, I scanned the room again. Even though we were in the middle of the perilous Sea of Trees, food was plentiful. In fact, their meals looked a little heartier than the average bar or restaurant in Gimul.

“Not what you were expecting?” the guard asked.

“No. I thought supplies, food or otherwise, would be harder to come by.”

“That’ll be the case the deeper you go into the forest. This, on the other hand, is a trading post. We’re the closest settlement to the outside world, so the Merchant’s Guild and Dragoon Guild regularly come in to trade for the forest’s loot. We’re flush with food and drink, even if they’re marked up to cover the cost of hauling them in here. But that won’t be a problem for you, will it, kid?” With a smirk, he chugged from his tankard, making himself look less and less like an official guard of said trading post.

“What makes you say so, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Something about your attitude and the way you carry yourself. But your biggest tell is how clean your clothes are,” he answered.

This town was still a considerable walk from the edge of the forest, rife with rain and dangerous monsters. According to my interviewer, most adventurers arrived here completely filthy no matter how well they had prepared for the trek.

“You’ve barely got a splash on you, other than a little dirt and monster blood,” the guard continued, “which makes me think that you’re not only capable enough to fight off monsters, but you’ve avoided them altogether for the most part. Without running or hiding, you pretty much just walked all the way down here. Did I hit the mark?”

“Bull’s-eye.”

“You stick around this place as long as I have, you pick up a thing or two.” He cast a look across the room to a few laughing adventurers who lifted their tankards. This felt more like a warm welcome, so I lifted a hand in return. “Mud and blood are usually unavoidable when you explore the woods, and you can always count on something jumping out at you that you didn’t prep for. Anyone who’s been here a while has learned that the hard way. So, when someone makes it this far looking as clean as you do, we notice them. And we welcome them. On the other hand, those guys outside—you must have passed them on the way in—they won’t make it much farther. They’ve gotten this far, so they’re not helpless, but they’re not adapting well to the Sea of Trees.” He explained that the newcomers had barely made it to this first checkpoint. Too afraid to turn back on their own, they were now trying to tag along with the traders who frequently visited the base. The problem was that the traders couldn’t afford to give up precious space on their caravan for free when everything they could purchase from the Sea of Trees offered a great return on their investment. This conundrum left the failed explorers felling and weeding the clearing outside—under the supervision of a veteran explorer of the forest—to earn enough money to buy safe passage out of the woods.

“Keeping up the clearing is something that has to be done anyway, and there are plenty of rotating rookies to take on the job, but it’s far from lucrative. Even though their daily wage could feed a family of four for a week outside the forest, it’ll net them little more than pocket change here. Like I said, everything costs a premium. If you can handle yourself in the woods, I recommend going foraging. You’ll find bushes of rare herbs pretty close by. Plants that are commonplace here can fetch a small fortune from an herbalist. Other than that, heatwood seeds make for easy souvenirs, even if they won’t make you rich. Seeds are pretty easy to find on the ground, and if all else fails, you can always find some in the guts of most monsters you kill,” the guard rattled on, alcohol loosening his tongue enough to offer me unsolicited advice.

Would taking heatwood seeds out of the forest really be such a good idea? I couldn’t help but wonder.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I was told that heatwood was invasive,” I said.

I knew that there were no restrictions against taking heatwood seeds out of the Sea of Trees. In fact, there weren’t any restrictions regarding the forest that I could find, even after paying the Adventurer’s Guild good money for information on every aspect of this place. I only knew that, back on Earth, harvesting and relocating invasive species was sometimes illegal.

“That’s almost true,” he said. “They only grow like mad in the forest and just outside of it. Apparently, heatwood needs a warm climate full of magical energy to grow. They won’t even sprout if they stray too far. Even if they do sprout, they won’t grow tall, and they’re not like treants that attack you if you get too close. Heatwood is just a tree that happens to be a little harder, but far from impossible, to chop down. Especially where monsters don’t attack as often as the raptors do in our woods.”

Every plant needs a specific environment to grow in, I realized. The spread of heatwood seems uncontrollable in the Sea of Trees, where the environment is perfectly suited for their growth, and monsters indirectly protect them from being cut down. Maybe they’re not considered a threat outside of the forest? 

“That’s how higher-ups of the guilds and the government see it,” he answered. “For the past ten years, they’ve been able to keep the Sea of Trees contained just by cutting down the heatwood saplings that pop up around the perimeter. They have no problem keeping the expansion in check as long as they don’t try to deforest an established part of the woods. Not only are there no laws against taking heatwood seeds out, but I’ve met a few merchants who came into the woods at a noble’s request just to gather as many of them as they could.”

Some nobles, whether passionate arborists or collectors intent on getting their hands on a variety of rare specimens, were willing to invest a great deal of money into a heatwood nursery. That much wasn’t too surprising, since heatwood could only be found in the Sea of Trees. The guard had never heard of a noble who’d turned a profit with such a venture, though. They either cut their losses and abandoned the project or were keeping their nursery alive at a great burden to their coffers. Magical medicine required to facilitate heatwood growth accounted for the bulk of that expense, so I would probably be able to keep a nursery going if I wanted to. After opening the trash plant, I had an oversupply of scavenger-slime fertilizer, anyway. So much so that using it on my farms and giving it to my slimes hadn’t put a dent in my stock. The oversupply wasn’t an immediate concern, though, as I’d been stashing the excess in the abandoned mines.

If there are no laws against it, growing heatwood trees could be a great use for all that fertilizer. I’ll have to be careful not to let them spread out of control, of course. 

“Long story short, don’t overthink it. Rake in all the cash while you can.” The guard seemed to remember his task. He set down his tankard and took up a small notebook that had been left open on the table. “Well, let’s get that interview over with. Show me your guild card. And for formality’s sake, I’ll ask you why you came here.”

I doubted that they had any reason to record my answers outside of that little notebook, and I had no reason to hide my intentions even if they did. “Here’s my guild card,” I offered, “and my final destination is Korumi village.”

“All right, Ryoma Takebayashi. You’re headed for Korumi village.” The guard paused. “Where is that, exactly? I’m betting it’s a village that got swallowed up by the forest, but I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s located—”

Just as I was about to describe its location, someone said from behind me, “Korumi village? That’s a place I haven’t heard of in a long time.”

I turned to find an old man holding three tankards in each hand.