Treehouse

Full-scale dried-fish and smoked-salmon production has begun in Santanka Village.

The smoked salmon they produce is being sold to merchants and nobles as a luxury product, and they have even received orders from outside Astrantia.

But even though the smoked salmon is preserved by smoking, it only keeps for about five days.

Because of that, exporting it anywhere beyond the neighboring city of Dalia is basically impossible.

It would be a different story if there were a merchant with an Item Box, but apparently no one has come forward so far.

Even so, some people are secretly reselling it, so it seems someone with an Item Box is involved.

Marlowe Trading Company handles the exports to Dalia, of course.

Primula also seems to be corresponding with Marlowe-san by letter through the Commerce Guild.

I see. So the guild can be used for things like that too. You can exchange letters even without having an address.

I also supply goods to Santanka, where the smoked-salmon production began.

Those goods are tweezers needed to remove the bones when preparing the fish.

The tweezers cost 1,000 yen each on Shangri-La, but I'm selling them at the special friends-and-family price of one silver coin (50,000 yen).

These tweezers are indispensable for giving smoked salmon a better texture.

However, when selling the same product to nobles, I charge two silver coins (100,000 yen) each. Even so, all the noblewomen eagerly snatched them up.

They were absolutely necessary for keeping themselves well groomed.

Apparently, orders have come not only from Astrantia and Dalia, but also from nobles in distant territories.

They must want the product badly if they're even sending messengers all that way to purchase it.

Well, I've left the business to the professional, Primula. What should I do?

Since I went to the trouble of buying an aerial work platform, I wish I could find some way to put it to use...

"High places, high places—trees... How about a treehouse?"

When I was a kid, we'd bring boards together and build secret bases in trees, but this time I'd make something much more substantial. That's the plan!

"It's settled."

The aerial work platform should make building the treehouse much easier.

I immediately bought an e-book about treehouses on Shangri-La and conducted extensive research.

But all the treehouses shown as examples were absurdly advanced... There was no way I could build anything like those.

When people imagine a treehouse, they usually picture a thick trunk running through the middle of the house—but building one like that would be quite difficult.

For one thing, there weren't any trees that huge nearby. There were some deep in the forest, but it would be inconvenient if the treehouse wasn't close to home.

While looking at pictures of treehouses, I considered what I might actually be able to build.

I would use standing trees as pillars, build a platform, and put a small cabin on it. A kit from the same manufacturer as the house we all lived in was available for 500,000 yen.

It was a six-tatami single-room design, but that would be plenty for a treehouse. I could cut a hole in the corner of the floor and use a ladder to climb up... That seemed pretty good.

I could build an ordinary staircase, but I wanted to give it more of a secret-base feel.

The cabin would be placed afterward, so I could store it in my Item Box, but the platform would be fixed in place.

When we eventually left, I'd have to abandon it, but there was nothing I could do about that—I had to prioritize a man's romantic ideals.

First, I decided to buy the cabin kit and assemble it. I'd assembled kits many times before, so I was used to the work.

Once the cabin was complete, I would measure it and build a platform for it in the tree.

Then, once the platform was finished, I could place the cabin on it. Normally, I'd need a huge crane, but I had my Item Box.

Finally, I could take the cabin out of my Item Box onto the platform. Easy and effortless—if that wasn't cheating, I didn't know what was.

Still, it felt as though I was letting everyone else work while I played... No, building a house wasn't playing, so it was fine... Probably.

Besides, the rhodonite I'd mined from the cliff alone had earned enough money to keep us fed for quite a while.

Still, if I'd been married in my original world and said I wanted to build a treehouse in the hills behind our house, my wife would probably have been completely opposed.

Fortunately, the women around me were tolerant of the things men wanted to do. I was grateful for that.

"Click."

Just like when I bought the first house, boards and windows came rattling down from the air.

The last time I bought one, some windows broke, but everything seemed to be fine this time.

It had a triangular roof with a door at the front, a square six-tatami room, and a small deck by the entrance—that was what the finished cabin would look like.

"Are you building another house, nya?"

"Yeah. This time, I thought I'd build it in a tree."

"Nya! That sounds great, nya. Beastfolk villages sometimes have houses built in trees, nya."

"Really? I'd like to see one of those."

Beastfolk seemed to like high places. According to her, tribal leaders and the like usually lived in treehouses.

Myaree and Anemone helped me assemble the cabin.

This was the fourth one I'd built in total, and I had an aerial work platform this time too—it was a breeze. Since it was much smaller than the first house, it was finished in about four days.

Things really did go faster when I had strong beastfolk helping me.

If the beastfolk had helped me when I built the house in the forest, I probably could have finished it in about half a month.

"Boss, are you going to put this house in a tree?"

After we'd finished eating, I continued working on the finishing touches with the lights on. Nyamena came over with a cup of alcohol in one hand.

"Yeah. It's coming along pretty well, isn't it?"

"Still, Boss, there isn't anything you can't do, is there?"

"Well, everyone's helping me, and I have summoned beasts too."

"Those things really are hard workers."

"I heard beastfolk build houses in trees too."

"Yeah, that's true, but when you think of people who live in trees, you'd probably say elves."

Hmm, so she'd met elves before—they really did exist. How interesting.

"Have you met elves?"

"Yeah, a few times in the forest. They're stuck-up and unpleasant."

According to Nyamena, elves had their own language, and it was difficult to communicate with them. She also said they were extremely isolationist.

When I asked what they looked like, they sounded exactly like the elves from fantasy stories.

They had long ears, wore blue or green clothes with style, and used bows and arrows and spirit magic... They were ageless, and every one of them was handsome or beautiful.

They rarely came out of the forest, so you almost never saw them in cities either.

I see.

------◇◇◇------

Primula's shop was sailing along smoothly. There weren't any problems at all. I decided to continue working on the treehouse.

I would use the nearby trees as pillars to support the cabin, and eventually the platform itself would become a terrace.

The cabin was 4.5 meters by 3 meters. I wanted the terrace to be one meter wide, so the platform would be 6.5 meters by 5 meters, at a height of five meters above the ground.

If the trees happened to stand in a perfect rectangle, I could use them as they were, but things rarely worked out that neatly.

I searched the nearby forest and found a place where I could use three trees. For the remaining pillar, I would stand a log upright and use it as a support.

I would use a log just under ten meters long that I had in my Item Box. I'd cut it down in the forest where we'd lived before.

The quality and size of the trees in the forest where we'd lived before seemed better.

Shangri-La didn't sell long beams, so I was using lumber cut down around here for everything.

Freshly cut lumber was, of course, still green wood. I couldn't use it as it was, so I had to strip off the bark and dry it.

Myaree and I had been stripping the bark from the wood, but it was so difficult that I searched Shangri-La for something more useful.

I found a machine that stripped bark from lumber using a chainsaw attachment, so I bought it immediately.

"Whoa! This thing is fast!"

The bark came off the logs with a ripping sound. Functionally, it was probably similar to an electric planer.

It was so convenient that I bought another chainsaw and left the attachment permanently installed on it.

"Amazing, nya! Is that a magic tool too, nya?"

"Something like that."

Then I asked Anemone to handle the final step.

"All right, Anemone. Take care of the wood piled up here."

"Got it! Mmm—Dry!"

As she chanted the spell, thick white steam began pouring from the wood, which warped and shrank with a series of cracking sounds.

What came in handy here was the Dry spell Anemone had recently learned. It removed moisture from the target and dried it.

Of course, it could dry laundry too, and it could even dry fish and meat. It was incredibly useful.

The old woman at the tool shop had said Anemone should be able to use household magic too, and she had mastered it with astonishing ease.

She really did possess an incredible talent for magic.

First, I carefully surveyed the area and marked the positions. The building site was beside the fields, about thirty meters into the forest from its entrance.

I dug holes there for the log pillars with the Yu○bo, then used Ko○tsu-san to lift and stand the logs, which I'd coated with preservative.

Now that I had both the Yu○bo and Ko○tsu-san, all sorts of work went much more smoothly.

Then I used the Yu○bo to fill the holes back in, completing the pillars. There was no way I could have done this by hand.

While lifting the logs with the heavy machinery, I ran thinner logs horizontally between them and secured everything with braces and through-bolts.

Apparently, it was possible to build a treehouse without damaging the living trees at all, but I couldn't manage that.

The treehouses built by beastfolk and elves probably had structures like that.

Once the four sides were complete, I arranged logs in a four-square grid inside them and laid boards across the top.

Natural logs were crooked and uneven, so laying the boards level was difficult.

I shaved down the logs with the attachment I'd used for stripping the bark, and adjusted their positions with square lumber I'd bought from Shangri-La to keep the floor level.

Finally, after a great deal of work, a flat platform appeared five meters above the ground amid the dappled sunlight.

"Hmm... It's like a miniature version of Kiyomizu-dera's famous stage..."

All that remained was to put the cabin on it and finish everything up.

Would it be strong enough? I wouldn't know until I tried putting the cabin on it.

I was building a treehouse as an extension of the games I used to play as a kid. The platform for it now stood five meters above the ground.

I thought it had turned out pretty well. However, Shangri-La didn't sell extra-long beams, so I had used trees from the forest for almost everything.

That was where Anemone's new Dry spell came in handy. It was household magic, but it was extremely useful.

It looked like it would be useful in everyday life too.

"Nyaa!"

Myaree clung to the large tree serving as a pillar, grabbed the log being used as a crossbeam, and smoothly leaped onto the platform.

"It's pretty spacious, nya!"

"The cabin will be sitting there, after all."

Bell appeared from somewhere, followed Myaree, and climbed the tree using its claws. Then it thoroughly inspected the new territory we'd created in the treetops.

"Mya!"

On the platform, Myaree performed a series of backflips and finished with an aerial somersault. It was just like watching a gymnast. It would win an Olympic gold medal for sure.

"Myaree! Can you do a twist?"

I called out to Myaree, who was striking a pose on the platform.

"A twist, nya?"

I twisted my palm to demonstrate, and she performed the same twist in midair.

"Whoa, you can do it?"

"Of course, Boss. That's a basic move for getting behind an enemy."

Nyamena was standing beside me before I knew it. I see—she jumped over an enemy's head to get behind them.

Today was apparently a day off for Primula's shop. Iris, the branch manager, had come over and was sorting the accounts with Primula.

It didn't seem like much of a day off, but they would finish in two or three hours, after which they could relax.

The kitchen we'd rented in the city for cooking preparations was also being cleaned.

"Did Iris leave?"

"Yeah. I carried her on my back to the main road and saw her off."

Nyamena seemed restless, as though she wanted to climb onto the platform too.

"She could have stayed for lunch..."

"Apparently, if she doesn't eat with her family on her occasional days off, her father gets angry."

In that case, he really shouldn't be telling her to hurry up and get married.

"Where's Anemone?"

"Miss Anemone is at home reading a book."

We brought an aluminum stepladder out of my Item Box and climbed onto the platform.

Looking down, it was quite high. It felt a lot like standing on the peak of a one-story house's roof.

For now, the platform was nothing but boards. It would be dangerous to leave it like this, since someone could fall over the edge. We'd need to install a railing.

"Still, Boss..."

"What is it?"

"Wouldn't it have been easier to build a platform out of iron pipes like the ones by the cliff, then put the house on top of that?"

"Sure, but iron wouldn't fit in the forest. If we're building a house in a tree, we have to make it out of wood."

"Is that how it works?"

For now, I'd try putting the cabin on it... I warned Myaree and Nyamena to be careful and had Bell move away from the edge too.

"All right, I'm going to put the cabin on top of this, so be careful. If it starts to collapse or becomes dangerous, run away."

"Nya!" "It'll be fine, right?"

Well, the beastfolk and Bell would probably be fine. I was the one in the most danger... Still, if it collapsed, it would probably give way around the middle.

Even if it collapsed, I thought the four sides of the platform would remain.

"All right, cabin summon!"

I took the cabin I'd already finished assembling out of my Item Box. The wood creaked when I first set it down, but nothing seemed wrong.

The cabin wasn't secured either—it was merely sitting there—but it was heavy enough that it didn't seem likely to move.

The trees in the forest would block the wind, so it shouldn't be blown around either.

And if it did prove dangerous, I could put the cabin back in my Item Box and reinforce the platform.

"Nyaa!"

Myaree and Bell leaped through the cabin's front door and began inspecting the inside.

"This house doesn't have any beams, nya."

That's right. It had a simple structure, with a roof resting like a lid on walls made of stacked boards.

"Boss, is this where we go in and out?"

"No. I was thinking of cutting a hole in the corner beside the entrance and making it so we can come and go from below."

"Wouldn't it be more convenient to attach stairs?"

"I know that would be more convenient, but I thought it would feel more like living in a tree—a treehouse, you know?"

"Well, if that's what you want, Boss."

Nyamena seemed to think the rational option was better. Well, I could understand that.

But this was my hobby, and I wasn't going to compromise.

After reinforcing the cabin's floor and the platform, I cut a square hole in the corner. A space large enough for one person to pass through would be plenty.

If we had large luggage, we could just put it in my Item Box.

Then I installed ladders for climbing through the hole. A single long ladder seemed frightening, so I made it in two sections.

It consisted of a first ladder, a short landing, a second ladder, and then the hole.

If only beastfolk were using it, any arrangement would have been fine, but Anemone and Primula would be using it too.

I had to make it possible for them to climb up while preserving the feeling of a secret base.

Finally, I attached a cover to the entrance I'd cut in the floor.

"Hmm, this should work."

For now, I bought beds from Shangri-La and arranged them inside the room. The beds alone filled it completely.

We could put tables and other things on the terrace, so I wanted the room to contain nothing but beds. In fact, it was almost like turning the entire room into one giant bed.

I lay down on one of the beds. There was only one window in the wall, along with the glass in the door, so the room was somewhat dark.

I hung a lamp from the ceiling too.

"Yahoo! The bed is so soft!"

Nyamena jumped onto the bed I'd brought out.

"Huh? Where's Myaree?"

Bell seemed to have gone somewhere too; I couldn't see the cat anywhere.

"Dunno. Boss, is this finished?"

"No, it'd be dangerous without some kind of railing around it."

Fortunately, Shangri-La sold hardware for easily building and securing railings.

I decided to use that.

"Boss..."

As I lay on the bed planning my next project, Nyamena called to me in a honeyed voice.

"What is it?"

When I turned toward her, a round rear end was right in front of my face. Nyamena was sitting on the bed in a catlike loaf, beckoning me with her tail.

"Nyamena, weren't you uninterested in me?"

"Of course not. What beastfolk woman would dislike a strong man? You're so strong, Boss, so I can't understand why you don't make me yours."

"I'm not letting you live here for that kind of reason. You're Primula's guard, remember?"

"Do you hate me, Boss?"

"It's not like that."

I massaged the base of her writhing tail where it rose from her thrust-out rear.

"Nnh! Nyao! Nyaaaow!"

But the instant Nyamena began letting out sweet breaths, a black shape crawled up through the hatch leading to the ground and knocked me over.

"Hissss!"

The one pinning me down with incredible strength was Myaree. She bared her white fangs and bit into the base of my neck.

"Owowowowow! Wait, Myaree! You're really biting me! I'm going to die!"

But perhaps my screams had carried outside, because a black whirlwind raced up the wall from the hatch to the ceiling and took up position behind Myaree.

"Hissssssss!"

It was Bell, the forest cat, displaying fangs longer and sharper than Myaree's. Naturally, if Bell bit Myaree in that state, it wouldn't end well.

Forget wounds or a severed carotid artery—Myaree would probably die instantly from having her neck broken.

With the forest cat behind her, Myaree lowered her tail and pulled away from my neck.

On top of my stomach, where Myaree had been, Bell sat in a cat loaf with a proud expression.

"Thanks, Bell. You saved me, but you're incredibly heavy..."

When I stroked Bell around the neck, it purred and looked blissfully content.

Beside us, Myaree and Nyamena were sitting formally on their knees.

Nyamena wore an expression that said, "I don't know anything," while Myaree whipped her tail back and forth, looking thoroughly displeased.

But we weren't going to get anywhere like this, so I had the two of them talk it out.

Beastfolk society had a strict hierarchy, with rigid superior-subordinate relationships. For that reason too, it seemed better to settle things clearly.

"What are you doing?"

Anemone poked her head through the hatch. Apparently, no one had returned for so long that she'd come to see what was happening.

Thank goodness she hadn't witnessed that ridiculous confrontation.

Later, after the two of them talked it over, we decided that their abilities were evenly matched. Myaree had the speed, while Nyamena had the power.

However, because Myaree had been with me longer, she would receive the larger share. Apparently, the split between them would be six to four.

I had no idea what the six-four referred to.

I took a mirror out of my Item Box and looked at myself. The holes made by the fangs seemed to be toward the back of my neck.

It felt slippery when I touched it, so apparently I was bleeding. I took out disinfectant and applied it to the wounds on my neck, then put on some petroleum jelly to stop the bleeding.

Finally, I covered them with a One-Touch○ pad. When I sat up, it seemed no blood had gotten on the sheets.

Well, if Myaree had really meant to hurt me, she'd have bitten closer to my carotid artery...

After that, I installed railings on all four sides of the terrace, completing the treehouse in the forest.

A small cabin sat snugly on a terrace built in the treetops amid the dappled sunlight.

One of my childhood dreams had come true—in another world, no less. The fact that it was actually real, not a joke, made me laugh.

I stood there grinning as I looked up at the completed treehouse.