Volume 2 - CH 26

The remaining skills to go over were cooking technique, tailoring technique, and construction technique.

“Oh right, here’s a word of advice. If you grow crops a lot in the same spot then the earth will grow fatigued.”

“The earth… can get tired?”

“Yeah. Plants suck nutrients from the dirt in order to grow. That will fatigue that dirt, causing plants grown in it to lose their flavor.”

“…I see.”

“So make sure to use land working technique there.” I looked at the goblin.

“Eh? Why?” The goblin tilted its head, so I gave explained why.

“Land working technique also has the power to restore the earth. That means you need to plow once with land working technique after each harvest. Do you follow?”

“I get it!” …Now I can leave the goblins and werewolves to produce food entirely on their own.

“Alrighty then, next up is cooking technique… so we’ll be using some wheat I’d grown a little bit before to make some bread.”

“B, bred?” The werewolf who had cooking technique tilted their head.

“Try focusing on cooking technique. Did some writing appear in front of you?”

“Y, yeah!”

“I’d like you to try making bread with that. Here’s some wheat for that.” I passed some wheat and fruit extract I’d kept in the storehouse to the werewolf. The werewolf nodded their head before activating their skill. Then some bread appeared in the werewolf’s hand. It was mixed with momon, so it gave off the faint fragrance of momons.

The werewolf looked to be feeling very moved as it held the bread, but soon noticed that the bread was quite hot, so the moved their hands to hold it in such a way that it wouldn’t burn them.

“You can give it a taste.” I used the remaining wheat and fruit to make a lot more bread and passed out enough for everyone to have a bite.

“D, delicious!?”

“W, what is this!?”

“So this is bread.” I took a bite as well. Yup, it was pretty good. Of course it was quite inferior to the stuff I’d spent all that time making before, but it was satisfactory.

“B, bread!”

“C, can we eat this every day!?” The werewolves’ and goblins’ eyes were sparkling. …I expected them to be bigger fans of meat, but they were unexpectedly hooked.

“That depends on your effort there. There’s a chance that convenient skills like this might pop up in your future evolutions as well. It would be tough only having a single one of you with cooking technique, as well as with land working technique. Work hard from now on everyone.” As I told them this, everyone returned deep nods to me.

…Looks like their tastebuds really moved them. All that’s left is tailoring technique and construction technique. The goblin and werewolf who held those were looking at me with anticipation in their eyes.

“Tailoring technique in…” I explained how they should use tailoring technique, and then construction technique. The goblins didn’t seem to be very interested in tailoring technique. No one really cared much about their clothing after all.

But I did hear happy voices from a few of the female werewolves.

“…Unexpectedly, do you guys want to dress all fancy?”

“Wha, Crest. We are girls after all.”

“Right~” …they said. Some of them were interested in it. Finally was construction technique. I had them make a building with some prepared lumber.

“…Whoa! I can build something like this!”

“Yeah. You can even build a base when you’re far away. It’s pretty nifty.” Of course preparing the materials is quite the chore. …It was the skill that helped me the most. For example, when I was building the fence to protect the village, I had to adjust its position by myself.

That was quite the pain. That would change it I could split the work between the two of us. Although the others didn’t really get that, I was pretty happy.

“…Really though, Crest is really amazing!”

“Seriously! I’m so glad I can follow him!”

“As expected of our boss!”

…No, I’m telling you your leader is either Livia or Orphe. I buried those thoughts. Now was not the time.

Eventually I’ll move to working behind the scenes. Then I’ll live my life comfortably in the safe village.

I gave a sidewards glance to the monsters before checking my status once again. …As I thought, it went up again. Before I started evolving everyone my stats were around 310.

Of course I had my strengths and weaknesses as well, so it varied a little. My current status had shot up to strength 370, stamina 345, dexterity 328, agility 354, and magic 412.

The power of summoner seemed to tie the rise in my own stats to my increase in companions. …Essentially it’ll go up as I get more. The more evolutions I do, the higher my own status becomes.

Being able to raise my status so easily is nothing but a boon.

“Alright, let’s leave dinner for tonight to the girl who learned cooking technique. When you have cooking technique, it even improves your normal cooking as well.” I glanced to the werewolf. Everyone excitedly started getting the place ready for dinner. …I also helped teach the werewolf how to cook as we made a hot pot together.

We finished adding all the meat and veggies. A hot pot is the easiest thing to make for feeding so many people. Cooking technique properly taught us the proper amount to seasoning and such to add. …Well, it was the proper amount for a human like myself in any case. The goblins and werewolves didn’t seem to have any complaints though, so I guess our tastes were close enough.

The finished pot was served to the goblins and werewolves.

“Ohh, that’s some good stuff!”

“I guess cooking technique might be related to why the food always seems much better than usual when Crest makes it…”

“It’s amazing how Crest can do anything…”

As everyone was chowing down on their food, Livia got back.

“I’m sorry I was late.”

“…No, I don’t really mind.”

“H, how is it? I went on quite the monster hunting trip so… do you think I can evolve now?” She looked towards me expectantly.

…I looked at her to check but, “Not yet it seems.”

“…Is that right.” She hung her head in disappointment. When Orphe came back later, he also wasn’t ready to evolve causing his ears to droop.