Chapter 8— Cultivation

"Oh, those are pretty solid sandals. Yes, they look nice, but we usually don't pick them up."

　That said, the peddler hands me a coin.

　When I received it, I was stunned.

　This is because the pile of sandals I made with great care were bought with a few coins.

　Of course, the coins I received weren't likely to be worth a lot, such as gold or silver coins, but only bronze coins with little chipped edges.

　I can get as many stalks of Hatsuka as I need for the material for sandals, but with this little amount of money, I may never be able to buy weapons.

　But that doesn't mean that the peddlers are crazy.

　It's just that the unit price of sandals is too low.

　Therefore, I need to research products that can be bought at a better price by peddlers.

　Is it because my age is about 5 now?

　It was said by some people that it would be great to make this amount of sandals that year, but I just listened to them while trying to get the information.

　* * *

"Yeah ... I wonder if I'll try it like this."

　A few days after finishing the interaction with the peddler.

　I was working behind the house.

　I'm not sure if it can be done, but I'm trying to experiment with an alternative source of income for sandals.

　The information obtained by detaining a troublesome peddler for a long time and talking to him is likely to be possible.

　It was mushroom cultivation.

　There is magical power in this world, and magic exists.

　And, I didn't know until now, but there was also a magic recovery medicine that could recover reduced magic power in a short time.

　However, there are not many magic recovery medicines on the market.

　That's because the raw materials are the cause.

　The most important thing to make a magic recovery medicine was a magic mushroom.

　To do this, a person has no choice but to collect what grows in the forest, but the collection time is limited.

　I made a magic recovery medicine using what I got at that time, but it seems that the amount is not enough at all.

　You aren't old enough to enter the forest as a kid, so why not try it when you grow up a little? That topic came out towards the end of the villagers' words.

　But that's a business opportunity for me.

　That's because I noticed it when I was shown the real magic mushroom I had by chance.

　This is "shiitake". (TLN: No, not "Shit take" , but a food.)

　When I saw the magic mushroom, the memory of my previous life flashed back.

　In fact, I had experience growing shiitake mushrooms.

　It is simple cultivation using something like a household cultivation kit, not a full-scale one.

　However, if this magical mushroom grows in the same way as shiitake mushrooms, there is a good chance.

　I decided to start an experiment for that.

　* * *

　Basically, mushrooms are fungi, not plants.

　Bacteria multiply on the tree and grow using the tree itself as its own nutrient.

　Therefore, it is possible to cultivate artificially if a situation is created in which bacteria are likely to increase.

　First of all, I procured a kind of wooden log that can house magic mushrooms from a lumberjack in the village.

　I thought about cutting it myself, but it's difficult to cut a tree and bring it home.

　Furthermore, it cannot be used for cultivation unless it is dried for several months.

　In that respect, there was a log in a dried state as a material to be stored if I went to a lumberjack.

　I chose the one that looked good and brought back a few.

　There is a reason to dry the logs.

　The wood is dry from the outside, and the inside is still moist.

　If only the outside of the tree is dry and the inside is moist, the growth of bacteria is poor.

　Therefore, appropriate drying is required.

　However, on the contrary, it seems that it is not good if it is too dry.

　To the last, moderate dampness is also required.

　Therefore, I keep it in the shade behind the house.

　The rest is to embed this fungus into the log and wait for the fungus to grow inside the tree.

　However, there is no doubt that it will probably fail if it is done as it is.

　Therefore, we will add a method that was never available in my previous life.

　It's a method of pouring my magical power into the log with bacteria embedded in it.

　Mushroom fungi are just parasitizing on trees and growing.

　And since it is a magical mushroom, it must need a large amount of magical power which it will use as a form of nutrients, so does it mean that it is robbing the tree of magical power?

　If so, I could give that tree magical power instead.

　It was an experiment after making a hypothesis with such thoughts.

　I will see if the magical mushrooms can grow by injecting magical power into several logs.

　In my life, I wake up in the morning and take care of the fields until the sun goes down, and when the sun does go down, I put magical power into the logs, and at night I continue to make sandals under the supervision of my mother. 

　Then, after a while, I found that three magic mushrooms appeared in only one of the several logs.