Chapter 2: At Last, I’ve Reached the Frontier

They must have struggled greatly to carve a path through the Tainted Forest.

The road leading into the Silva Frontier Territory was barely wide enough for two carriages to pass, and it meandered deeper into the forest.

“The miasma is thick. There are lots of monsters. It looks difficult for people to live here… At last, I’ve reached the frontier. How exciting.”

Secretly growing more enthusiastic, I stored the winter supplies in my subspace and proceeded down the road on foot.

Wonderful.

The very air was truly murky.

There were no villages in this frontier territory, only a single city named Dasilva. The miasma was so dense that the number and strength of the monsters couldn’t be compared with other regions. They couldn’t create villages, nor could they properly maintain the roads. The city’s outer walls had been built sturdily to withstand the recurring monster disasters, and the environment was remarkably harsh for human habitation.

Excellent, excellent.

This was exactly the sort of place where I wanted to carve out a base and live slowly.

With miasma this dense, monster attacks were hardly unusual. The reason I could walk leisurely in these conditions was that I possessed a Purification Lantern—a lantern-shaped magic tool that warded off miasma. Under ordinary circumstances, the correct choice would be to raise a carriage’s speed and race through.

As I thought that, Garnet, who walked beside me, murmured—

“I imagined that monsters would attack us without pause on the frontier.”

Garnet had tied her young-leaf-green hair into a bun and was looking around curiously, her thick glasses bobbing.

Yes, yes. The frontier was rather interesting.

A pendant set with a large green garnet glittered at her throat.

“Th-this is actually my first time visiting the frontier… Simply walking along, I’ve already seen a considerable number of alchemical materials that are difficult to obtain in the cities. May I return to gather them later?”

“Hmm. I can’t quite give you permission for that.”

There were certainly many rare plants and animals, including magical herbs and magical trees. For an alchemist, this was a dreamlike environment. I’d been excited this entire time too, so I understood how she felt.

But dangerous things were even more numerous. When it came to the monsters especially, she shouldn’t assume they were the same as the ones we’d encountered before.

For instance, that was an easily understood threat.

“Look over there. Can you see those objects resembling white balls of thread hanging from the tall trees?”

“Yes. Are they fruit?”

“No. Those are cat-spider food stores. Each ball holds a goblin, human, or something similar, preserved alive. Cat spiders have a habit of hanging captured food beneath their nests so they can eat it whenever they like.”

Incidentally, I’d been caught once myself.

This was my first time on the frontier itself, but when you left the cities, you could find scattered pools of miasma. I’d secretly visited them many times to collect materials and test magic tools.

Well, with my subspace magic, escaping a ball of thread had been easy. Without a special ability like that, I would’ve become cat-spider nourishment by now.

“Judging from what I can see, even the shallower part of the forest holds many dangerous monsters. Besides, the Silva Frontier Territory’s main industry is kobold-fur products. Individual kobolds aren’t especially strong, but they’re mobile… If enough live here to support an entire industry, I think they’re troublesome. Orcs possess great brute strength too, which makes them quietly annoying.”

“I-I see. So one requires both the knowledge and strength to handle monsters.”

“Exactly. I’ve never seen a book systematically collecting knowledge related to monsters, so I’ve been compiling what I know into reference materials.”

One day, I wanted to create something like an illustrated encyclopedia of monsters.

I thought spending my spare time during my slow life assembling something like that might be fun.

“There are various interesting magical trees and herbs too. Look over there… You can see kobolds and orcs tangled in vines, with only the meat inside them sucked away, can’t you? The fruit of that flesh-sucking grape is often used for wine, but its ecology is rather dangerous.”

There were other troublesome creatures too. Clay Slimes turned the soil into hard clay and interfered with agriculture. Bog Slimes produced wastewater from miasma and transformed their surroundings into swamps. Skeletons yielded nothing but bones when defeated, and even those bones were made from ordinary stone, rendering them useless as biological materials.

“—So there are all sorts of troublesome things. I can’t particularly recommend that you walk around alone when your combat ability is unreliable, Garnet. I’ll escort you whenever you come to gather materials, but either way, I don’t think we’ll be able to move around much until we understand the situation in the frontier territory.”

“Y-yes. I understand.”

“Once things settle down, let’s come gather materials together. We can take our time over an entire day.”

Incidentally, there was only one reason Garnet had come with me: maintaining her alchemy workshop.

If she moved too far away, the mana I supplied to the workshop’s magic tool would be interrupted, causing the subspace to collapse.

Ah. That was right.

We’d made various improvements to her mobile alchemy workshop since its initial construction. The exterior had once been nothing more than a simple cube-shaped wooden box, but a magical-steel spell circuit now protected it with a thin magical barrier, giving it the appearance of a proper magic tool. We’d also gradually updated the legs growing from its underside so that it could walk more easily over rough roads.

At the moment, however, it was stored inside Garnet’s space-expansion pouch.

As I continued speaking with Garnet, a black shadow emerged from the Tainted Forest.

A great scythe, like one used for farmwork, rested on its shoulder.

Obsidian Kiko.

The girl known by that name returned to us wearing a black cloak—a magic tool I’d made—and scattering her Special-grade mana.

“Crow. Give me candy.”

“Yes. Open wide.”

“Aah… Mm. The best.”

To replenish the magical elements her body lacked, I’d continued providing Kiko with magical-element candies. That was precisely why she’d come with me. She would be in trouble if her supply of candies stopped.

That made sense.

Well, she’d been training her Meditation skill lately, so she probably wasn’t suffering from hunger as intense as before.

“I gathered flesh-sucking grapes.”

“Ah, the ingredients for magical-element candies. I’ve secured a large quantity of maple sugar too, so I’ll mass-produce more candies during my free time. Can you take them out now?”

When I opened the entrance to my subspace, Kiko opened the front of her cloak and shook it vigorously. Large quantities of flesh-sucking grapes poured into my subspace one after another.

Yes, yes.

Her shadow magic had become rather convenient.

Apparently, she’d used my subspace magic as a reference to create a derivative spell called Shadow Storage. Its capacity still wasn’t particularly large, but she could now create a storage space in the shadows inside her cloak.

It looked remarkably convenient.

“…That’s everything. Is it enough to make candy?”

“More than enough. You gathered a lot.”

“Mm. If you want flesh-sucking grapes, feeding them unappetizing meat from goblins and similar creatures is the quickest method. Another piece of survival wisdom.”

Oh, I see.

That might be a good method.

Each flesh-sucking grape was approximately the size of a melon. Harvesting them was simple too. Once the fruit grew full and heavy, it naturally fell to the ground, so there was no need to pluck it from the magical tree.

That said, if you approached carelessly, vines would reach out and capture you. They would suck away only your flesh and turn you into fruit.

“Kiko, are you perhaps fairly accustomed to frontier regions?”

“Yes. A frontier territory lay near the village where I was born and raised. It was a different place from this one. I was always hungry, so gathering food in forests and wastelands was an ordinary part of life.”

I see. Even while chronically deficient in magical elements, she’d managed to grow this much because she’d secured food for herself that way.

“Now then… We’re approaching the checkpoint. Could the two of you wait inside my subspace as planned?”

Garnet and Kiko entered Home.

Transporting the supplies was important, but our highest priority was learning what was happening on the frontier, so we’d devised a plan in advance.

Incidentally, Penne was accompanying Resina on the Winter Tour. Penne had been helping Resina arrange her hair and change her clothes all along, so nothing had particularly changed. A long procession of Resina Guard members had gone with them too, so I believed things would proceed smoothly on their side.

Holding a Purification Lantern in one hand, I approached the imposing checkpoint, which resembled a stone fortress.