Magic Caster of Destroy

Magic illumination was brighter than the sun. She knew this, but Enri’s suggestion was based purely on the logic that “since the sun’s out, isn’t it wasteful to use mana for a magical light”? In addition, she wanted to change the current mood in the room. There hadn’t been any reason for that and she didn’t particularly mind when he refused. However, sitting next to her, Nfirea seemed to be having some kind of strange reaction, with his ears being bright red and all.

Is it really depleting so much of his mana? But I heard light-creating magic wasn’t that tiring… didhe use some other spell before coming here? Come to think of it, he doesn’t smell of herbs. In fact,he smells kind of… nice.

“W-what’s wrong, Enri?”

Nfirea’s words came out in a panicked squeak as Enri pressed her nose close to him.

“Mm? Ah, no, nothing, I just thought I smelled something nice…”

“Y-you did? Well, that’s good to hear. That must be the cologne I made.”

“Really… why don’t you try selling it in town next time? I’m sure it’ll fetch a good price.”

“No, that… this… isn’t meant for…”

“Hm-mm… well, forget it. Anyway, there should be enough hay in this hut. Shall we move on?”

“Mm, yeah. Then, before we move on, let me check on something first. It’s cold outside, after all.”

“…Well, this place isn’t that warm either… ah, forget it.”

“That… about that. I wanted to discuss something with you.”

Nfirea, who was sitting beside her, seemed a little tense.

What was going on with him?

As Enri bathed the side of his face in a suspicious stare, Nfirea took out a handful of papers.

They were covered in tiny letters. Although Enri could recognize several words, there were more words there which she did not know than she did in her brief glimpse.

“The first thing is how to feed the remaining goblins from Agu’s tribe and the ogres.”

“Eh? Aren’t we fine as we are? They helped with the harvest in the autumn, and we managed to buy the ogres’ food from the city.”

“Mmm, and the herbs sold for a good price, so we can say we’ve got ample food reserves. It should be enough to deal with his winter. Even if we add a few extras, our food stocks should still hold out.

But if the numbers keep increasing, life’s going to be quite harsh. Maybe we should acquire our food by other means.”

There were 14 people in Agu’s tribe now. They were not born, but instead, they managed to escape from the territory of the Giant of the West and the Serpent of the East.

“Mmmm. Although I don’t see a problem, we should probably buy more food from E-Rantel.

However, I was planning to save some money to commission some metal tools for the ogres.”

“If we could make some farming tools for the ogres, the spring seeding should go a lot faster. …But the problem is that if we order tools for the ogres, they’ll be big enough that no human could use them, and that’ll raise a lot of questions.”

“And if word about the ogres gets out, it’ll cause a lot of problems, right?”

When the tax collectors came in autumn, Jugem and the others had to hide in order to escape being noticed. Incidentally, it was due to their efforts that the grain harvest was so bountiful.

Since Carne Village had been attacked by Imperial knights, they only needed to pay a nominal tribute, which was a stroke of luck for them. In addition, they were excused from the draft for several years.

Most of that was a form of apology for not protecting Carne Village properly, but it looked like they felt genuine guilt about that as well. There were some questions about the mighty wall surrounding the village, but they deflected questions by saying “it was the work of that magic caster”. If they could do that, surely they could explain the ogres away as well, right? At least, that was what Enri thought, but Nfirea shook his head.

“There’s no doubt about that. If it goes bad, the Kingdom might even send a punitive force out.”

“That’s too much!”

“You say that, but the truth is that ogres usually eat people. The only reason why they can live with us in this village is because of Jugem-san, who’s stronger than us. Don’t forget that.”

“I haven’t…”

“Another thing is that we have far too few people in this village. We need to think about how to get more residents. If the newcomers arrived with the spring planting season, that would be great.”

“That’s a big if. And, like you said, what happens if they see the goblin-sans and ogre-sans and run off? What then?”

That doubtful question came from Enri. As she spoke, something strange seemed to be happening with Nfirea. Something like… his mind wasn’t fully there or something like that.

“Eh? Ah, no, nothing’s wrong!”

There was no way that could be true. Was he feeling restless? After all, her lover had a bad habit of dropping everything to obsess about his potions.