kscans

Chapter 41 - The High Forest. Yuri Goes to the Mountain to Cut Wood

"No matter how I think about it... I guess I have no choice but to go into the forest..."

Yuri stood with his arms crossed, groaning in reluctance. What was he worrying about? The acquisition of lumber.

With each passing day, the chill of the night grew more severe, and the need to seriously prepare firewood had arisen. Until now, he had been making do with weeds and miscellaneous trees from within the village, especially those that grew in his fields, but that was gradually becoming insufficient. As for light at night, Yuri could use the dark magic [Noctovision], so he didn't need much. A simple animal fat candle with a thin blade of grass as a wick was perfectly adequate. However, the same could not be said for other fuels. Take cooking, for example. He had tried cooking with fire magic, but controlling the intensity of the flame was more difficult than he had imagined. Blasting something with high heat all at once and maintaining an appropriate level of heat for a long period of time were problems of completely different dimensions. Incidentally, the latter was much more difficult.

Securing firewood in preparation for winter was a matter of life and death, but besides that,

"I don't just need it for fuel, I also need wood as a material for construction and crafting..."

Yuri made most things with earth magic, but it was difficult to provide for everything with earth magic. With the issue of fuel as well, acquiring lumber had become a pressing issue... but aside from the danger of venturing into the forest, which was likely full of monsters, there were two major problems.

The first was the problem of what to cut the trees with. This was an abandoned village where even daily necessities were scarce. There were no civilized tools such as axes.

"...Well... even in the distant past when there were no metal tools, humans cut down trees with stone tools... I'm sure I'll manage somehow..."

In some cases, he could even use magic. He wasn't sure what kind of magic was suitable for cutting trees, but he had a feeling that if he increased the output of the wind magic [Wind Cutter], he might be able to manage. He could also painstakingly cut it down with a "Magic Stone Tool" created with earth magic. Compared to an iron tool, it would lack weight, but he would just have to make up for that with his boosted strength.

The problem was the second one.

"Even if I cut it down now... green wood doesn't burn well... I wonder how long it will take to dry..."

He had dehydrated scraps of food before, but when it came to drying a whole log, he felt the difficulty would jump by an order of magnitude. If he forcibly dried it quickly, the wood would likely crack and warp. It would probably become difficult to use as lumber. On the other hand, if he left it to dry naturally, who knew how long it would take. It was a failure on Yuri's part for not arranging for the lumber sooner, you could say...

"But... I couldn't get close to the forest until I had improved my self-defense capabilities..."

Yes. Because of those circumstances, there had been a delay in acquiring the lumber. In a sense, this was unavoidable.

"It would be great if there were some dead trees..."


The situation took a turn the next day.

As he was muttering to himself while feeding the little birds as usual, the birds, who had been listening, shared some valuable information.

`Deadwood? There is.`

`Yeah, lots in the forest.`

`Really!?`

Although half-doubting, Yuri ventured a little deeper into the forest, following the birds' instructions, and what he saw was...

"Oh... it's true. ...There are quite a few of them... dead trees."

The birds' words were not a lie. There were indeed dead trees scattered here and there. Many of them were nicely withered, and he felt he could probably cut them down even with [Wind Cutter]... in terms of hardness, that is.

"But... why are only the big trees dead?"

Every last one of the dead trees was a large tree, and although they were hard, it looked like it would take a terribly long time to cut them down.