Wild Gourmet: Chapter 8

He did a quick mental inventory of what he stood to learn from the townsfolk and decided the gardener would come first. Brand had been thinking about ingredients since before he fell asleep, and just how many of them he’d need if he was going to be figuring out dishes to fit whatever unexpected sources of meat the system decided to throw at him.

He didn’t have time to grow those ingredients himself, even if the system was going to reward him for it. That meant making sure his relationship with the gardener was good, and that he had a good handle on just what he could and couldn’t expect from him. The garden was on the far side of what remained of town, which in practice meant a walk of about four minutes spent weaving his way through piles of rubble and ash. He got to it, setting off at a brisk pace and making a beeline for the property Moira had shown him that morning.

He saw the low stone wall first, then the rows beyond it as he closed the distance. Brand stopped at the edge and took a good, long closeup look at the growing for the first time. He could have sworn the plants were taller than they had been the day before when Moira had pointed them out from a distance. Greener, really, than he would have expected. Whatever the gardener’s class was doing for them, it was doing it well.

More interesting to Brand was a newly planted row set apart from the rest. He recognized the jagged leaves of the peasant’s cress, and the wild onions growing between them. There weren’t many. He hadn’t brought back that many plants to begin with, and he guessed not all of the roots had survived the trip intact. At least some of them were alive, though, and looking much healthier than the shocked, half-dead plants he had handed over.

Brand leaned on the stone wall and studied the rows, doing rough mental math. If even half of what was planted took properly, and if the gardener’s class could push them along at anything like the rate Brand thought he’d observed, he’d have a small but real supply of both the plants he had brought back within the week. Coupled with the much larger crop of plants around Brand’s contributions, it seemed like plenty to feed the town.

“It’s not as good as it looks.” The gardener had apparently seen him from inside the house. “This town is going to grow fast, and we’ll have to be ready for it. Morning, Brand.”

“Morning, Remm. You really think we are going to grow that fast?”

“Two more people this morning. More of this country is ruined than you’d think. Between the remnants of the military and all the folks who are looking for a place to be, it won’t take long before they outpace what I can do.”

“What then?”

“Then we plan. I can buff other people’s gardens to a degree. If enough people are growing, that will help.”

“Ah.” Brand tried to imagine what it would take to cultivate a big garden fo his own. It was more time than he wanted to commit. “I didn’t really plan on having to do that, but if I have to, I have to.”

“Not you. You get a pass.”

“Yeah? I mean, I’ll take it, but why?”

The man pointed towards the base of his house, where two nearly empty burlap sacks sat.

“That’s what we call monster meal. Ground bones, feathers, hide, what have you. It’s an assortment of everything the system thinks living things should have, and it’s what makes it possible for someone like me to grow crops as fast as I do.”

“I figured you had skills that made that happen.”

“I do, but they can’t work with nothing. If I didn’t fertilize, the soil would get stripped down to nothing before the second harvest. Ditto any other gardens I help with. Your time is much better spent bringing back monster materials, even if you don’t need to hunt that much personally.”

“Suits me.” It really did. It was beginning to seem that between the town’s lone crafter, this gardener, and any leather-making class that eventually showed up, he’d have a use for every bit of monster he could haul back to town. “Too bad I can only carry so many defeated monsters at once.”

“Oh, there’s solutions for that.” The man waved him off. “I have my morning work to do, but find me before you go hunting next time. I might have a solution.”

Brand left the garden wall behind and turned his attention to his next order of business. Shou had said he’d be working through the night, which meant he was either still at it or had finished and collapsed somewhere. Either way, Brand wanted to see what had come of his crane claws. If worse came to worse, he figured he could wake the young man up.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The problem was that he didn’t know exactly where Shou lived. Moira had pointed out a few of the occupied buildings on their walk, but Brand hadn’t been paying close enough attention to match names to structures, and most of what she had pointed at looked the same from a distance. That left him wandering the wreckage toward the handful of buildings that still had walls standing high enough to qualify as shelter, then checking them one by one.

The first one he checked had no door except a few nailed-together planks of wood leaned into the cavity where a proper portal had once sat. He knocked, got no reply, and nudged it aside to find a single room with a bedroll and a pack shoved into a corner. It was a room someone was using, but apparently only for sleep. His business wasn’t here.

The second building was similarly empty, if more so. This was a building that was ready for a new occupant but had no signs of it yet, if a few mouse droppings were ignored as signs of less sophisticated occupancy. He left that building and scanned the area with a bit more mindfulness, looking for any signs that could speed his search.