Approximately two years had passed since the King visited Kukuri Village, and spring had arrived.
The change that came during those two years was that Border Count Haust had established a military garrison near Kukuri Village, bringing soldiers and medics along with it.
At first, the villagers welcomed them. However, since the majority of the soldiers were rough, overbearing types who adopted arrogant and high-handed attitudes, it wasn't long before the villagers and soldiers found themselves at odds.
One of the reasons for this was the establishment of a restricted zone within the forest.
The restricted area included locations close to the village where high-quality medicinal herbs grew abundantly and that were comparatively safe, so there was plenty of opposition. But the soldiers' commanding officer, dispatched from outside, had unilaterally made the decision without any regard for the villagers' opinions.
To make matters worse, some of the soldiers began secretly gathering herbs and selling them off to traders who came and went from the garrison, pocketing the proceeds as extra spending money.
Because of this, a clear rift had formed between the villagers and the soldiers.
This was a village populated by many former adventurers who were far more experienced in dealing with Monsters than any of the soldiers, so it was only natural that they were unhappy about the soldiers reducing their sources of income and dwindling their medicinal stockpiles.
"Mom, I got a ton of herbs!"
Lately, I had been putting a lot of effort into herb gathering.
The reason was that the soldiers had depleted the village's medicine reserves.
So we divided up the work: I used Flight to reach distant gathering spots in short time, Mom and Grandpa handled the compounding, and Dad went hunting.
Occasionally I would help Mom with the compounding while she taught me, so I picked up a fairly solid knowledge of medicinal preparations along the way.
"Good work. That must have been a lot to carry back, right?"
Mom asked, but thanks to my Appraisal and Detection abilities, it really hadn't been that difficult at all.
I gave a vague answer, and Mom, not particularly bothered by it, accepted the herbs and went back to work.
When Dad returned home, I stopped compounding and started preparing dinner.
It was during one of these ordinary days that Mom fell ill.
Fortunately, we had a stockpile of medicine, so her condition stabilized, but she lacked the energy to recover and had to stay resting day after day.
Thinking that yams would be a nourishing, easy-to-digest food, I decided to head out of the village to dig some up.
However, the moment I left the village, I ran into a pair of unpleasant-looking soldiers.
"Hey, kid, hold up a second."
"You've been stockpiling quite a few herbs, haven't you? Hand 'em over."
These soldiers started hassling a twelve-year-old (in appearance, at least). Finding it a bother, I tried to ignore them and walk past, but one of them grabbed me by the shoulder.
"Don't ignore me, you little brat—guah!"
I seized the hand resting on my shoulder and twisted it downward, slamming him into the ground and knocking him unconscious.
"What do you think you're doing, you little—!"
The other soldier flew into a rage and lunged at me, but I showed no mercy.
"Secret Technique: Son-Killer!"
I unleashed a forbidden strike.
Leaving the soldier writhing in agony as he crumpled to the ground, I took to the air with Flight and headed to my destination.
Honestly, it felt like I'd gone a bit overboard, but I had no goodwill toward the soldiers either, so I chalked it up to self-defense.
Upon finding yams at my destination, I got right to work.
First, I used Earth Magic to turn the soil around the yams into sand.
Next, being careful not to break them, I dug them out one by one.
Finally, I washed them with Water Magic, singed off the root hairs with Fire Magic, and stowed them in my Magic Bag.
That was it.
In about two hours, I had collected five yams, each roughly a meter long.
In my previous life, digging up just one of them could take over two hours. Magic was truly convenient.
The yams of this world had a stickiness somewhere between nagaimo and jinenjo, making them a nourishing and easy-to-digest food, though they weren't very popular in urban areas.
The common way to eat them was either sliced into rounds and grilled, or cut into small pieces and used in soup.
In my household, we grated them and drizzled the seasoned paste over rice (which, while not the local staple, was cultivated here), or thinned it out with dashi and drank it like a soup.
Naturally, this was my idea.
This world had no tradition of putting things on rice, but by now the practice had quietly spread through Kukuri Village.
Incidentally, most of the rice here was indica-like, so steaming it was less common than making rice porridge.
While I was at it, I also hunted some rabbits and Mal birds, drained their blood, and packed them into my Bag.
When I returned to the village, soldiers accosted me at the entrance again, but I knocked them out with the 'Stun' effect of my Lightning Magic.
Self-defense — nothing to be done about it.
At night, I had Shiromaru, who had grown to a full two meters in length, so any sneak attack would be spotted immediately.
For dinner, I cooked a rabbit soup with grated yam, and rice porridge thinned with dashi.
Dad, Mom, Grandpa, and I — the four of us gathered around the dinner table. The village had changed, but for my family it was trivial. Surrounded by the same smiles as always, we went on living our happy days, and I believed that happiness would continue now and forevermore.
That was one month before disaster struck.
This is a brief passage serving as a scene transition for the story.
Next, I plan to insert a narrative that bridges Chapters 14 and 15.