Chapter 32
Magical beasts invaded the surface.
Then all we have to do is strike back at the magical beasts.
But when famine invades, you end up striking at the allies and comrades you fought alongside.
There is nothing more miserable than being unable to eat.
Title: Come See the Field I Nurtured with All My Love!
(Meme of a field cracked wide open by drought)
If you've seen it, get lost.
- A field where the spirits are alive and breathing ㄷㄷ
- How can it crack like that?
ㄴ It’s dug out in a perfect circle right in the middle.
ㄴ For real, did God jab the field with a straight punch or something?
ㄴ Lmao, fuck.
- Author) The soil is just garbage.
ㄴ Blaming the soil because you couldn't grow anything.
ㄴ Where did you cultivate this field?
ㄴ Author) Fron.
ㄴ That's a fucking freezing place.
ㄴ What the hell did you expect to grow well there?
ㄴ Author) Fuck, then where am I supposed to do it?
After the existing land developed cracks, everyone cultivated fields in new areas.
But there was always a reason those places had never been farmland before.
- Ah, this is boring. I'm logging off first, cya.
ㄴ Hey, don't log off.
ㄴ The gallery will die if you leave.
Most people failed to cultivate their farmland and ended up tasting the bitterness of despair.
The soil was lacking nutrients.
There were only two options left.
1. Fight random-spawning magical-beast plants while running two production lines for magical-beast plant meat and crops
2. Dump all your stats into magical beasts and hunting, then go down a doomed-build path on hardcore difficulty
Title: Yeah lol, I’m not doing what you want~
(Meme of a clown spreading both arms and grinning brightly)
I can just kill myself and be done with it~
- Please, just stop rage-quitting...
- Stop making Big Decisions!
- Do you know what the opposite of suicide is?
It's choosing life, lol. So you should steel yourself and live too, right?
ㄴ What the fuck kind of ridiculous nonsense is this?
ㄴ This is practically mocking them while shoving them off a cliff.
ㄴ Author) You fucking bastard, lol.
ㄴ Oh, lol, you got triggered and successfully survived.
ㄴ So that was the point, lol.
“Ah, so that's three things including this.”
The situation remained bleak.
On top of that, when famine broke out, people finally started reaching for things that couldn't even be eaten.
- You can peel trees, boil the inner bark, and eat it, yeah.
- How to Eat Grass Roots.jpg
- Mud is surprisingly edible in its own way.
To prevent this from getting worse, I set the market's minimum price and released the cheapest products.
A meal of ramen that came out to about 300 won per serving was the representative item, and as for drinking water...
“This one isn't negotiable?”
No matter how cheap I made it, there was a limit.
Then I could just pour tap water into the market.
- It's water!
- The Head Mod has gone insane!
- No, the price of water is insane. Why is it this cheap?
- Damn, it's the Head Mod again... I have no choice but to worship them...
In the otherworld, magic wasn't such a rare field of study.
Since they could boil tap water with fire magic and drink it, this alone was enough to solve the immediate problem.
- Head Mod☆) Just make sure you boil it before drinking.
- Head Mod☆) Otherwise you'll get an upset stomach, yeah;
Of course, things like microbes and such were neither known nor understood here.
But everyone knew from long experience that boiling things before eating or drinking them made you less likely to get sick.
“Obviously.”
So I only left a post telling them to boil it before drinking.
ㄴ Are you actually an angel?
ㄴ Wow... just wow.
ㄴ Head Mod trait) They give us crystal-clear water for free and still worry that we'll get an upset stomach.
- Head Mod, before you came, I was a gallery user who had no water and regularly drank rainwater and stagnant water, but I turned out fine.
ㄴ I've even drunk muddy water, lol.
ㄴ For real, I drank water like a dog while being chased by magical beasts, and water this clean is basically holy water, yeah.
- I told you, the Head Mod is just fucking kind.
ㄴ A bastard who knows nothing but gallery users...
ㄴ Thanks to the Head Mod, I found the strength to get revenge on a magical-beast bastard.
ㄴ For real, I could even die in the Head Mod's place.
At first I thought they were joking, but their feelings toward me were gradually growing deeper.
At this rate, were they really going to create some bizarre religion?
“Even so, that would be taking things too far.”
I put those useless thoughts aside and went looking for the knight gallery user I'd saved before.
The knight had once served Adrian, and was now leading Adrian's revolutionary army.
The knight was still trustworthy.
The fact that the knight had painstakingly earned a knighthood, thrown it away, and joined the commoners' side to help them was proof enough.
“He's a good kid.”
Title: Knight Gallery User, Come Here
Author: Head Mod☆
(Meme of sacks piled up like a mountain)
- Lloyd) What is this?
- Head Mod☆) This?
Now that the immediate problem had been solved, it was time to teach him how to catch fish.
- Head Mod☆) Everything.
All the answers were right here.
The absurdly overpowered magic known as the Haber process, which multiplied Earth's shitty game's population limit several times over.
One of its products was nitrogen fertilizer.
- Lloyd) Oh, fuck, this is fertilizer.
ㄴ Lloyd) I fucking love you!!
- What?
- Fertilizer...?
- Fuck, give me one too!
Even the other gallery users listening to the conversation began reacting intensely.
It wasn't hard to understand why.
The soil in the old days had a cooldown, so it couldn't be worked continuously like modern soil.
- Lloyd) I'll accept it with immense gratitude...
- Lloyd) But what's this nitrogen stuff?
ㄴ For real, fertilizer is fertilizer, but nitrogen is new to me.
ㄴ Isn't fertilizer just shit and stuff?
Then a question came in.
- Head Mod☆) Ah, that?
- Head Mod☆) There is something called nitrogen in the air, and it exists in a triple-bonded state. To use it, you have to break that bond with tremendous force and turn it into an ammonia compound, which is called nitrogen fixation. Only after it changes like this can it finally...
I didn't want to simply tell them to use it without explanation, so I tried to explain it in my own way.
- Lloyd) ???
- Ammoni...a? Nitrogen fixation?
ㄴ I don't know what it is, but the name sounds cool, yeah.
ㄴ Sounds like the name of some high-level magic spell.
- Do the mages understand this?
ㄴ Ngh... It's humiliating, but I have no idea...
ㄴ They called them an archmage, and I guess they were serious... I couldn't understand even a single word...
ㄴ What kind of high-circle magic is it if no one knows it...?
“You universal magic theorists...”
They had misunderstood me in a completely different direction.
If I could really use some insanely awesome magic like that, wouldn't I have been playing a game like Protecting Chastity in the Rabbit Hole?
Even sleeping every day wasn't exactly relaxing when one little mistake could immediately change the genre.
But explaining that they were wrong sounded like too much trouble.
I chose to explain it through a reasonable compromise.
- Head Mod☆) Well, let's just call it that, yeah...
ㄴ Isn't it a skill you made?
ㄴ Head Mod☆) A man named Fritz Haber made it.
ㄴ Ohhh! Then what kind of magic did that archmage develop?
ㄴ Head Mod☆) Making bread from air.
ㄴ What?
ㄴ Holy shit.
- Then!!! What on earth is your relationship with that archmage—or rather, transcendent being—Head Mod!!!
“Um.”
Fritz Haber's research raised Earth's population limit, which had been stuck at two billion, to eight billion.
So, in a sense, I could also be called a result of Fritz Haber's research.
- Head Mod☆) A result.
After telling the truth, I left the post.
“Then I have to wait about a month now...”
Using fertilizer didn't instantly make the soil better with a little poof.
There was only one thing for me to do while I waited.
“Should I gallery-post?”
I began spending all day on the gallery while lying on a bed made of straw.
Of course, that was what I did every day anyway.
*
Featured Post) Nitrogen Magic Before-and-After.jpg
(Meme of dry, dusty soil)
(Meme of rich brown soil that looks alive and breathing)
Magic used: Nitrogen Magic
Cast time: One month (other actions possible)
Effect: Transforms dying land into the most fertile soil
I've hardly ever seen soil this fertile in my life.
It really feels so good here that I could be happy just standing around;
For real, even if you just scatter seeds carelessly, they look like they'd grow on their own.
- Wow, I'd believe this was just a different picture.
- I'm a farmer, and I'm so happy I could go insane.
ㄴ For real, I even find myself wondering whether I dare touch it, lol. I'm so fucking happy!!!!!
- Sigh, look at these gallery users falling for it completely lol.
ㄴ Lol, would that really work?
ㄴ For real, the mana cost alone probably killed several high-ranking mages, lol.
ㄴ Lloyd) It doesn't use mana, though?
ㄴ Does that make any sense? Even if it's the Head Mod...
ㄴ I have a screenshot proving I spread it myself.
ㄴ (Meme of someone spreading fertilizer by hand)
ㄴ Fuck, how did you do that?
ㄴ I'm sorry.
ㄴ So the Head Mod really was a beautiful young female archmage.
For a month, the market was filled with low-priced items.
Most people relied on the market to get through the food shortage, and surprisingly, my income was pretty decent too.
“Would corporations have sold low-priced products for no reason?”
Even the gallery users who had been pinching every Mana Dumpling and crying over their shortage bought them all happily.
Thanks to that, my profits didn't decrease from before—in fact, they were slightly higher.
- So how do you use it?
ㄴ Lloyd) 1. Spread it. 2. Occasionally mix it into the soil. Done.
ㄴ That... no, could it actually be that simple?
ㄴ Lol, what the hell was that sudden turn?
ㄴ The Head Mod has shown us so many impossible things that I can't help wondering... what if?
The fact that it was so easy to use helped too.
What was medieval fertilizer like?
Human feces and animal manure were used primarily.
Even those were often in short supply.
Thanks to that, parasite infection was practically a passive skill in the Middle Ages.
- Why doesn't this smell at all? What is this?
- It looks like little granules, so it's easy to spread, and it's not dirty either...
- Damn, I've seen it again, and now I have to worship.
The people involved in agriculture, who made up the majority, underwent the biggest change.
Their initial reactions of half-belief transformed into those of insane cult fanatics, making it impossible not to take an interest.
Among them, one race showed the most intense reaction after seeing the change in the soil.
- What's that?
- Holy crap; ㅇㅅㅇ;; It's totally amazing.
- It's really king-awesome, what is this??
ㄴ Here you all go again. Just eat your food.
They were the elves whose World Tree was dying.
Full-HP Elf: Head Mod, what is this!!! / Unread
Hea... Head Mod!! / Unread
ㅎㄴ32ㄷㄱㅇ / Unread
11 / Unread
1 / Unread
(Full-HP Elf has sent a gift! Check it out!) / Read
You bastard / Read
Head Mod☆: Lol, sry;
And before long, a message came from the Blue Mod.
Full-HP Elf: (Meme of the World Tree withering)
Full-HP Elf: (Meme of pests clinging to the World Tree)
Full-HP Elf: Please help. If the World Tree dies, all the elves will die!
Full-HP Elf: If we only had that fertilizer, we could save the World Tree!
Full-HP Elf: I'll do anything, please!!@!
“This isn't something fertilizer can solve.”
I took my eyes off the gallery and looked toward the corner of the cage.
There, the F-Killa was facing me in a proud pose.
Insecticide for bugs, so what about crops?
“Pesticides have the answer...”
The answer was right there.
- Ah, lol, I want to kill these bug bastards.
- Now that the soil is fertile, the bugs are causing a fucking commotion...
- It's fine. Bugs are protein too.
Right then, pests began appearing one by one on the crops transplanted into the fields newly enriched by the fertilizer.
“Now?”
It was perfect timing.
I went into the shop and began searching through the insecticide and pesticide categories.