Having finished his meal with Daisy, Rei headed toward the Treant Forest with Set.
Just as Daisy had promised, Set had been properly served food while Rei and Daisy were eating. When Rei stepped out of the restaurant, he found Set in an excellent mood.
...The restaurant staff seemed to be in high spirits as well, perhaps pleased to see Set happily devouring the food.
Though Rei had no way of knowing this, the cheerful man was in fact known within the restaurant as a notoriously strict figure—someone whose smile almost no one had ever witnessed. Because of that, several members of the staff were thrown into confusion upon seeing him smiling so happily.
"Grrrrrl."
Riding atop Set's back as it ran with happy cries, Rei smiled in satisfaction at Set's mood and stroked its back.
(I dumped the whole thing on Lord Daskar, but that shouldn't be a problem, right? ...Then again, Lord Daskar has been looking quite busy lately.)
Even without all this, he was already overseeing the massive undertaking of Gilm's Expansion Construction.
On top of that, Green People, Lizardmen, and even an entire building—the Birth Tower—had teleported in from another world. For Daskar, it must have been a relentless schedule with no time to rest.
That said, the matter of Zaza wasn't something Rei could just answer for on his own, so leaving it to Daskar was the only sensible choice.
(If there's some kind of medicine that reduces fatigue, I should probably bring some to Lord Daskar. ...No idea whether something like that exists, though.)
As he mulled this over atop Set's back, the Treant Forest came into view.
Upon arriving, Rei immediately sought out the Woodcutters. However, since it was currently midday, they were on their lunch break.
The shortage of building materials had fueled great enthusiasm for felling trees, but even so, it seemed they still needed to properly rest during the day.
"Hey, Rei. You here to gather more wood? There's quite a pile, so take all you can carry."
One of the Woodcutters called this out between bites of his bento.
They were certainly motivated, but they clearly understood that endlessly felling trees without eating would only hurt efficiency in the long run. Every Woodcutter here had accumulated a certain level of experience. That was precisely why they didn't make the kind of mistakes newcomers fell into.
"Got it. How are things looking?"
"We've cut down more than usual. We're doing proper preprocessing too, and everything that needs doing during the felling is taken care of, so don't worry about it."
The other Woodcutters raised their voices in agreement.
To them, it was simply a matter of doing what needed to be done—properly setting the felling direction, following the right procedures, and so on.
...Rei, on the other hand, was felling trees with a single flash of Death Scythe, so he didn't pay much attention to those fine details.
Even the task of trimming branches from felled logs involved its own set of tricks and techniques. Normally, that work fell to the Fleeing Adventurers, but even they had learned the tricks of the trade from the Woodcutters.
Rei had delegated it to Lizardmen and other adventurers, with the result that this part had ended up rather rough. Even so, since the Alchemists performed magical processing on the wood, it hadn't become a major issue.
If ordinary Carpenters were using the wood instead of magical processing, complaints would have been inevitable. In that sense, Rei had gotten lucky—though the simple shortage of building materials also played its part.
"Got it. I'll go ahead and store the wood, then. Keep up the good work felling this afternoon. ...But if any Green People or Lizardmen show up, you can come let us know."
The Woodcutters and Fleeing Adventurers had been told not to carelessly approach the Birth Tower. However, if Green People or Lizardmen appeared, Zozo—who could communicate—was stationed at the tower. In such cases, going to call for him was permitted.
Of course, approaching out of mere curiosity with no real business there would carry no guarantee of safety.
"Yeah, I know. More importantly, once lunch break is over, come gather the wood again right away, so be ready."
Rei raised a hand in acknowledgment, stored the fallen logs into his Misty Ring, and mounted Set once more, heading toward the Birth Tower.
Just like that morning, the Lizardmen initially showed caution at the approaching figure of Set, but once they recognized Rei and Set, they lowered their weapons.
"●●●"
"Yeah, good work. Let me through."
As always, Rei couldn't understand the Lizardmen's words, but judging by their demeanor, he could tell they were giving him the go-ahead.
To the Lizardmen, Rei—the man whom Zozo followed and who was on friendly terms with Gaga—was a figure to be respected, and absolutely not one to pick a fight with.
Well, if they were sparring for training purposes, that was another matter entirely. In fact, they would welcome the opportunity.
Passing through the Lizardmen and heading toward the Birth Tower, Rei noticed the number of guards gradually increasing.
What caught his eye among them were several Carriages.
Why Carriages? Rei wondered for a moment before recalling that they were transporting daily necessities, food chief among them.
(Come to think of it, I did hear about that. ...This is the first time I've actually seen the supplies being delivered, though.)
Satisfied with this realization, Rei dismounted from Set's back and approached the Carriages. Set seemed curious about them as well, following along beside Rei.
Naturally, the people unloading cargo from the Carriage beds noticed Rei and Set right away.
The sight of Gilm's residents and Lizardmen working together to unload the supplies gave Rei the impression that the two sides were capable of cooperating. At the very least, from what he was seeing right now, humans, Beastmen, Dwarves, and Lizardmen were all working side by side.
...The reason no Elves were present was simply that Elves who left their own forests were inherently rare, making them an unusual sight in human settlements. Even so, Gilm, situated on the Frontier, tended to draw more Elves than most places due to its particular circumstances.
"Oh, Rei. You went to Gilm, right? Anything interesting happen?"
A Bovine Beastman unloading barrels of water posed the question.
"I'm not sure if I'd call it interesting, but there was something intriguing."
The business with Daisy was definitely intriguing. A member of the King's Faction had reached out to make contact.
People from the King's Faction had approached Rei before—Maruka, for one—but right now, with the Red Cloth, Cobolt, and giant Eyeball incidents still looming, the relationship between Daskar and the King's Faction was far from good.
For them to reach out under these circumstances meant the King's Faction was undoubtedly quite concerned about the situation in Gilm.
Above all, Daisy's superior wasn't a King's Faction Noble, but a member of the Royal Family.
That was only something Daisy had said with no hard evidence to back it up. Even so, Rei couldn't imagine her lying in that situation—and if it had been a lie, it was certain she wouldn't have gotten away with it.
"Huh, what kind of thing?"
"Unfortunately, it's not something I can talk about casually. The food I ate there was delicious, though."
"Man, I'm jealous."
Even while chatting, the Bovine Beastman kept unloading one item after another from the Carriage bed. He was clearly used to the work, his movements free of wasted effort—though talking to Rei could itself be called a waste.
"This job pays pretty well, doesn't it? You should be able to treat yourself to a few luxuries."
The work of transporting supplies to the Birth Tower wasn't particularly demanding in itself. Unloading the cargo was somewhat tedious, but that was essentially all there was to it. Unlike monster subjugation requests, there was no life-or-death combat involved.
The reason the pay was high was that he was being hired as someone who could keep his mouth shut. That came with generous compensation, but it also meant that carelessly leaking information would result in commensurate punishment—even if he was just talking at a tavern in Gilm.
So when Rei asked whether the pay was enough to afford some luxuries, the Bovine Beastman shook his head.
"Nah, the money I earn gets taken by the wife."
"Ah... I see. You're married, huh."
Having every last coin of his wages seized by his wife was certainly tough in more ways than one.
(So it's basically an allowance system, I guess. ...No idea how much he actually gets, though.)
Curious as he was about the amount, Rei decided it was better not to ask and shifted the topic.
"Are the supplies you bring mostly food?"
"Hm? Oh, yeah. And water, like this."
"If you could, it'd be helpful to bring some books too. So they can learn the language. Especially the Lizardman Children—if they pick up our words from the start, it'll be useful in all sorts of ways. We don't know how long they'll be staying here, so being able to speak the language would be good for them, right?"
Rei had almost said "in this world," but managed to catch himself and rephrased it.
Besides, it was true that children picked things up more quickly, so in that sense, having the Lizardman Children learn to understand letters and speech would undoubtedly be beneficial in the long run.
(Well, if they end up going back to their own world right away, it'd be meaningless... no, it wouldn't be entirely meaningless, would it?)
It was a fully formed language, yet one that few people knew. A language like that could serve as an extremely convenient cipher.
Whether the concept of ciphers even existed in Zozo and Gaga's world was something Rei couldn't say for certain. But considering that the Gran Dragonia Empire was a nation roughly the same scale as the Kingdom of Mireana, having such a concept wouldn't be strange—rather, it was practically a given.
If so, the words and letters of this world could become a highly important cipher.
Of course, even if used as a cipher, it wasn't a language that existed for the purpose of concealing things. It was simply a system optimized for the people of this world to use normally. Given that, if someone recognized it as a cipher, decoding it probably wouldn't be all that difficult.
"Books, huh... I get it, but... how am I supposed to get books?"
The Bovine Beastman muttered with a troubled expression.
In this world, books were extremely expensive. For someone living an ordinary life in a town, there was essentially no situation that would require one. People of a certain level of wealth sometimes collected them, but that was about it.
In any case, for a Bovine Beastman who handed over every coin he earned to his wife, there was simply no room in the budget for books. Perhaps if he really pushed himself he might somehow scrape together the funds, but he clearly had no intention of going that far.
Nor did Rei have any intention of telling the man to buy books out of his own pocket.
"If you mention it to Lord Daskar, I think he'll probably arrange it. Lord Daskar would surely welcome the Lizardmen learning letters and speech, too."
Even as he said it, Rei thought to himself that he had once again dumped a problem on Lord Daskar. But when he considered who stood to gain the most from this arrangement, it was undeniably Daskar.
Besides, unlike the Daisy matter, this simply involved selecting and sending books—so Rei figured it wouldn't be all that much trouble for Daskar personally.
"Hmm, got it. I don't know if it'll get approved, but I'll ask when I get back to Gilm. I can't meet Lord Daskar directly, though, so it'll probably be one of his subordinates. That okay?"
"Yeah, that should be plenty."
Daskar's subordinates were, by and large, all capable people. There might be some who acted partly in their own interests, but even so, none would commit misconduct egregious enough to draw Daskar's attention. Simply being one of Daskar's subordinates already came with high compensation. They would absolutely want to avoid doing anything to incur his wrath and lose their current position.
...That said, human desire knew no bounds. There were a few who couldn't exercise that restraint and ended up going from Daskar's subordinates to criminals, but they were few in number.
In any case, Rei judged that the matter of the books would be fine if left in the hands of Daskar's subordinates for now.