...Well, this is troubling. I thought there’d be an obvious answer, but…

          In Harold’s notebook was a list of the various topics of knowledge he had gained from Kishino. Over the past few days, they had been trying to write out all the uses they thought the various categories of knowledge could have in advancing the technology of the world as fast as possible. This was for the sake of picking the few that were easiest and/or the most ‘profitable’, and rolling with it. Some of them were easy to cross out since magic had substitutes for their use, or they weren’t as urgent to develop, but others weren’t as simple.

          All these things… won’t they change the world way too much!? The plan was to not alter the plot as much as possible, and not get killed in the ‘ending’, did Kishino forget about such an important detail…?

          Aside from that, Harold wasn’t sure how much of things like environmental or biological knowledge held up when factoring magic into the equation, for example. Kishino’s memory of microbiology and various systems could absolutely provide a good basis to start various experiments, but it could just as easily create biases that would taint future knowledge, since life and cells should work very differently with magic involved. The most he could do for certain was to create a microscope and confirm cell theory, become the Charles Darwin of this world by introducing the idea of evolution and natural selection, and various other broad things.

          Kishino had already written most of these as his own notes, but Harold had his own unique viewpoint to give, so he was usually tasked with thinking of the stuff Kishino ignored. Though, Kishino was older, and really smart, so the amount Harold could do was frustratingly low. Still, Harold was the one of them most in tune with the common sense of the world, so he felt he would do just as a good job at thinking up how revolutionary some things would be. Kishino only looked smarter because he wrote things first, is all. Just then, he had another idea. It was somewhat on the crossed-out list, but… technically it was included in what they were doing.

           Flipping to a new page in the notebook, he wrote down two new topics that even Kishino didn’t write; Compounding and Farming. Harold smiled smugly to himself as he wrote a note in very light pencil asking Kishino -Brilliant, aren’t I?, before turning to the loose page tucked in the back of the journal, held in place by a custom paper book-cover. That was where Harold had drawn a realistic picture of Kishino’s mother and father, protected by wax paper.

          You should be able to recall the specifics more easily since you were the one who spent so much time staring at the computer like a loser...

          ……Long black hair and narrow black eyes. A short and wide, huggable frame that boasted large muscles under the guise of fat, with a wool sweater and an anime shirt. Next to his mother, his father’s effeminine face complemented with his short, neat brown hair, and he beheld a tall, somewhat lanky figure in a similar anime shirt. His dad was more often wearing a business undershirt, but Kishino knew he wouldn’t want to be remembered that way. 

          Kishino let out a soft laugh at the image of the couple couldn’t be any more different from each other. Handing the reins over to Kishino was made much less difficult because of the picture, but he couldn’t help but stare at the drawing for a while after the transition. Tears welled in his eyes unbidden, and Kishino let himself feel some remorse for his absent parents. This morning, before the bargaining, he couldn’t even finish the drawing without bawling his eyes out, and had to ask Harold to do it for him using his memories. This time, he didn’t want to prevent himself from having a breakdown. Did his parents know he was missing? Was he even missing at all? Maybe his memories were only copied from the real Kishino, since he definitely didn’t remember dying or even falling asleep. Even with Harold’s memories, Kishino couldn’t shake the constant feeling that he was lost and scared and alone. If he couldn’t go back home, would Kishino ever truly feel like he belonged to this world?

         Kishino felt an almost painful lump in his throat as he tried valiantly to sniffle his snot back in. Would his parents be proud of him, if he tried his best? He always talked about wanting to save the world, but here he was running away to a different one, even if it wasn’t really his choice. He studied hard to get the best grades so they wouldn’t be worried, and made sure to cook the best meals he could for his dad when he got home from work. They watched anime together, and even played Brave Hearts together several times to bond, and he loved them so, so much...

          Kishino turned the page before he could waste any more time. Taking a minute to calm himself down, he finally looked to the message he remembered Harold writing. Kishino chuckled as he patted his own head. Since getting Kishino’s memories, Harold had become much more of a lovable, big-headed brat rather than a King of Trash. After erasing the light pencil writing, to ensure no one could possibly figure out Kishino’s existence even if they read and decoded the notebook which was written in a broken, hard-to-read combination of kanji, hiragana, and only occasional katakana, the three writing systems of Japanese, and filled with numerous shorthand and slang that didn’t exist in the country's common language, Kishino replied to Harold.

          “Sorry, I took a while. Oh? Was that not ‘translated’? I appreciate your efforts, mother. (I love you, mom!)”

         Kishino sighed. There were few times where his words matched up with his intentions, and he could never be sure whether it was because the translator didn’t work, or if it was just luck. Only when he was talking with Hayden and Jessica did he ever remember the translator changing to become more polite.

         Now, Compounding and Farming. Kishino had sanctioned game knowledge away into later priorities, but he supposed Harold was right; it is a science in this world. Kishino absolutely had something great to share with the farming district, but it would need a lot of testing. For compounding, Kishino was skeptical how the simple crafting recipes that only required ingredients in a menu fitted into a real setting, but it was absolutely worth heavy consideration. For now, rather than listing all the recipes, which would take hours, he wrote down which ones he felt would be most useful to the world; a lot of them were already discovered or had equivalents of their products already made. Others he wasn’t sure about, and could only guess, but there were a good portion of the ‘recipes’ that he was almost certain were not discovered in any way…including a certain medicine. As he got to work with two ideas he felt he could work on right away, there was a knock on the door.

           “Pardon me!... oh? What’re you up to? “

          Showing his face from the opened door, without even waiting for a reply from knocking, was the accomplice who helped in rescuing Clara, Zen – the coachman of the horse-drawn cart. Somehow, as of late, even though there was no real work for the man, it appeared as though he wanted to be involved with whatever Harold was doing. No matter how harsh his speech was, other than laughing dryly, it was as though it didn’t phase him at all.

          Zen was nineteen years old, a messy-haired youth in the same generation as Kishino. Among the men who were working in the mansion, his age was the closest to Harold, and in Kishino’s mind, he was an existence that he felt he could relax and unwind with.

         To Harold, he was somewhat like a dog, or rather, it could be said that Zen’s personality was good at making people let down their guard. He tilted his head when he saw Kishino’s studious behavior. Even though he was thought to be studious, he was only searching through the record of various plants in the encyclopedia.

           “It is unrelated to you. Quickly, close the door.”

           “Oh? It somewhat smells like a secret to me.”

           Closing the door behind him, as expected, Zen spouted out some dog-like remarks and peeked over his shoulder. As for his attitude, it could be said that it was disrespectful at best. Listed in his ‘practical notebook’, were the names of ten different species. For some reason, there were some specimens among them whose growth and resilience earned them reputations as notorious weeds.

           “Moon Shrooms and Lodolions, and also Pink Devils………Are you going to make the gardners cry?”

           “Do you want me to cut out your eyes and, including the leaves, smother the pollen into your eye sockets?(Should I make you cry with them?)”

           “No thanks!”

           “………”

           If it isn’t just Kishino being translated, we might never have a relaxed conversation- while being depressed by that thought, and surprised he took control without noticing, his hand kept sketching the images. As Zen stated, all of these were fast-growing weeds or food-plants. Especially the Pink Devils, a vine which grew so fast and with so little nutrition that it was categorized as a weed despite its edibility. Adding onto that, it was easily in the top three of the most notorious weeds in the Stokes territory, and also a popular item among the poor and homeless, which further contributed to the spread.

          “Even so, you’re not just looking at them for no reason, are you?”

          Without being cowed by Harold’s threats, Zen asked with a look filled with interest. Whether he boasted a heart made of steel or tough nerves, either way, he was resilient. While admiring Zen, who seemed to have the endurance level of a sandbag, Harold ripped the list out of the notebook and passive-aggressively held it out to him before pointing to a glass bottle.

           “That is for you. I will grow them in water that is mixed with this, and compare them to ones grown normally.”

          The thing Harold’s finger pointed to, which was familiar to all fans of Brave Hearts, was a semi-transparent bluish bottle. The thing which was surprisingly useless past the start of the game, was an item which increased the stamina recovery rate by one and a half times normal. It’s name was “Vigor Potion”.

          “You’ll use a Vigor Potion on weeds...?”

          He had never heard of a technique like that to grow anything, since the vigor portion was made somewhat recently and with humans in mind. But, he hadn’t heard of anyone trying and failing, and the concept itself didn’t seem far fetched. Zen’s eyes showed shock at Harold’s thinking that wasn’t bound by any common sense, but for Harold, it was practically cheating since he already had an idea of the results.

           In the system of Brave Hearts, “Compounding” existed. By mixing many different ingredients, items were created, but for some of the ingredients, if one didn’t cultivate them on their own, they wouldn’t be able to get their hand on them.

Furthermore, even if one nurtured ingredients according to the manual, since the probability of cultivating the wanted ingredients was sometimes frustratingly low, the players vigorously plowed the fields with the hopes of getting lucky.

          Eventually, the fact that the harvest rate goes up when the simple Vigor Potion or the upper ranked Ether is used, became known. Naturally, the players started scattering recovery items on the fields like farmers who just discovered fertilizer and pesticides. Of course, Kishino was also one of those players. Naturally, he would need to do rigorous testing to find the right ratio of potion and water to raise the weeds in reality, and also test if it worked on various pests, and of course, crops. If it worked as effectively as he thought, Harold held hope, but also genuinely feared for the future of the world.  

          To test whether that could be applied even here, Kishino ordered Zen to fetch pots, soil for the plants and fungi, the seeds, roots, or mycelium of various undergrowth, and also a supply of Vigor Potion approaching its expiration date, which was sleeping in the warehouse of the Stokes house. 

          “Rodger!”

               Zen bowed with a quick snap. It somehow looked so carefree that Harold might have flicked his forehead if he didn’t rise back up so soon. 

         “The matters of where you obtained it or under whose orders you are moving–“

         “Is a secret, isn’t it? I understand, Harold-sama!”        

          Zen answered like that with a full-faced smile. For him, his assessment of the boy known as Harold had completely changed due to the previously executed plan.

          Until now, he had only thought of him as an extremely conceited, self-centered, dumb brat who occasionally said smart things, but it seemed as though he was only pretending to be like that with some sort of aim. Harold’s true nature was rather the exact opposite of that. Though, he wasn’t sure if he completely forgave him for burning Clara-san, among other incidents. He’d seen her scars clearly, after all.

          Still, he racked his brains for people with a lower social status than his, and had the emotional maturity and wisdom to look past his parents’ ideologies that he was raised into believing. Zen believed he should nurture that side of Harold, rather than judging the ten year old for his past mistakes.

          After coming to know him, Zen could only see Haorld’s foul-mouthed nature as nothing but hypocrisy, or even a way to push others away. In a sense, it could be said that the only way Harold could seem to be childish was by that way of speaking. Even as he rudely entered the room and flapped his mouth about this and that, other than spouting out abusive words, he didn’t seem to be genuinely displeased.

         Considering Harold’s age and upbringing, he should absolutely be aware about things like the difference in social status. It would have been fine if the other party was a person who had a close relationship from childhood, but the first time Zen talked with him was just the other day. If he were being honest, his behavior until now was almost a way for Zen to test the waters with Harold, to see how he’d react. And even when a ‘low-blooded’ person like Zen showed disrespectful behavior, it was as though he didn’t mind it as much as he said he did, judging by how he wasn’t immediately kicked out of the room or punished in any way. For Zen, he decided such a Harold Stokes was highly remarkable, and even likeable despite his potty-mouth.

           It was clear that the diligent kid was trying to do something with that vigor potion. Surely, it was something that he, who had little education, could never even hope to think of. Zen was happy to help in whatever form it might be.