Chapter 39— Nuisance Wildlife
I will develop the forest.
In the end, my main jobs were to uproot trees, level the land, expand the land that can be used by me, and hatch the Valkyries from the newly delivered Familiar eggs.
I decided to leave all the management of the trees to Maddock-san and the other lumberjacks.
To be honest, I can't handle everything, and he knows much more about trees than I do.
I cut off the branches from the fallen trees, cut the trees into an appropriate length, and store them as logs.
In addition, I decided to prepare raw wood that can be used for cultivating magic mushrooms.
All I had to do was use [Magic Injection] so that the magical mushrooms could be cultivated, which was pretty easy since some of the lumberjacks helped me.
By the way, some of Maddock's acquaintances had excellent woodworking skills.
I decided to hire them as well some time later.
The building I built was a brick-only structure, and I needed doors, shelves, desks, and chairs to have furniture in it.
There is also a field for growing hatsuka in the cultivated land.
I left it to Baito-nii.
Surprisingly, my brother who is just a few years older than me, and although he shouldn't have grown up yet, is quite good at leading others.
He fell in love with the hornless Valkyrie I gave him when I hired him.
And he wanted to ride around on its back like I did when I first rode on Valkyrie.
However, that activity requires considerable skill and physical strength.
In order to secure the practice time for that, Baito-nii himself gathered people to help with the work.
There are quite a few people who find that working in the village is not enough to gain the right amount of money, especially for children who have lost their parents in the war and are in need.
He was calling out to these people to help with the farming work in the fields.
Baito-nii himself has no money.
When I wondered how he was hiring people, it seemed that my niisan was giving some of the harvested crops.
In my case, when it comes to hiring people, I tend to think that I have to prepare cash, but for the poor, something that could be used for bartering was enough.
Seeing that my older brother is willing to help me work, it may be related to his personality.
In that way, my life gradually began to revolve around the settlements. (TLN: Technically the fields, but it was made that way.)
* * *
"Is the field ruined? Baito-nii, do you know who is the culprit?"
"Oh, I found footprints. It wasn't done by humans. It was wild boars that destroyed the fields."
"Maddock-san also confirmed the footprints, right?"
"Well, he’s sure. And, sadly, I've found multiple footprints."
"Is it that bad?"
"That's right. The footprints were a mixture of two adult wild boars and some children."
"Children ... maybe they learned the taste and will keep coming back?"
"Probably. It could be a nuisance."
"What a carefree thing you're saying. It's troublesome enough. Some people are scared of the wild boars and refuse to work."
It happened the year I was eight years old.
One day, when I got home, my brother and Maddock were waiting for me to return so as to be able to tell me something.
The content was the beast-caused damage in the field.
A destroyed field is a difficult event.
Certainly, I think that the damage of wild boars was in the news even in my previous life.
Wild boars are pretty smart creatures.
There are cases where a trap is set up with electricity along the fields to prevent the wild boars from encroaching upon the food grown there.
If the creature touches it, something like a wire that runs electricity will be activated around the field.
If it touches the wire while trying to invade the field, a wild boar will get an electric shock and run away.
However, the trap soon became ineffective.
Because the wild boar learned.
It hurts when I touch the wire, but I want to eat the vegetables in the field in front of me.
Thinking that way, the wild boar pushed in logs with his own body, pulled down the trap with the wire, and began to invade the field. (TLN: Basically, the boar just used a log to pull down the electrical wires so that it would not be touched by them when going through…. Basically an electric fence was taken down.)
In the end, I heard that there was no definitive capture that happened, and that the wild boar and the trap continued playing cat and mouse, with the boar being the mouse and the trap being the cat.
Even in this world, the damage of wild boars will occur.
However, it seems that there haven't been many recently but will most probably happen more often if left alone.
The reason is straightforward.
This is because the forest was full of food that the wild boars could eat.
The omnivorous wild boars grow quickly in a huge field called a forest and rarely come to the fields, where wheat is often planted, in search of food.
But why is the field vandalism by wild boars increasing in my settlement now?
Maybe it's because I'm pioneering.
Some trees are thinned out like protected forests, but the forests are left behind, but there are many places where all the trees are defeated and cultivated.
Moreover, because the land is leveled by magic, the abundant ecosystem like the former forest is disappearing.
Perhaps the food situation has deteriorated, or the wild boars' territory has been lost due to the a competition with other animals for food, since the places where there are no trees or have been completely cultivated may not have enough food for the creatures in the forest.
The problem lies in the characteristics of wild boars.
I don't know this exactly, but what the villagers say is that wild boars will love what they often eat in their childhood for the rest of their lives.
Moreover, that liking is passed down from parent to child.
Hatsuka, which is the food for the Valkyries, is planted in my field.
It means that there is a possibility that it will continue to be targeted even if the generation of the boars changes.
This is very bad.
In this way, I was forced to deal with the wild boars.
