# Chapter 76
As Arden turned his head, a man was walking toward them from the direction of the house. Judging by his shiny work pants and the towel wrapped around his neck, he appeared to be the farmer of this field.
“I was sent by Irace.”
Arden quickly explained, worried he might be mistaken for a thief. The farmer, who had been eyeing Rite and Arden with half-closed eyes, tilted his head and approached.
“Irace? Who are you people to come all the way here…”
“I’m Eden. I work in engineering. I was told there’s a problem with the soil, so I came to take a look.”
“An engineer? She said she knew an engineer, and she really called one.”
Only then did the suspicious look fade from the farmer’s face. Strictly speaking, Arden wasn’t an engineer, but he kept quiet. Rite stood up and positioned himself next to Arden as he asked the farmer.
“Have you already harvested everything that’s edible?”
“Of course not. This is what I’ve managed to keep alive.”
“This?”
“Since the soil lacks nutrients, I thinned out the crops. That’s why they’ve grown this much at least. The old man living down there insisted on trying to save everything, and his cabbages ended up… about this big.”
The farmer showed his clenched fist and laughed dejectedly. Rite also frowned as he listened to the farmer’s words. Arden brought out the questions he had prepared in advance.
“Is it correct that there’s nothing wrong with the seeds or anything else?”
“With all the harvest looking like this, I can’t guarantee the seeds are good either. There weren’t any major problems until a few years ago, but suddenly everything started to wither…”
“Was there anything wrong back then?”
“It was the same.”
The farmer pointed at the empty field with his chin.
“Were there no other problems at that time?”
“I’ve been learning farming since I took my first steps. I can assure you there were no other issues.”
“Do you have any suspicions…”
The farmer weakly shook his head at Arden’s words.
“We’ve done everything possible. Water, of course, and we’ve tried chemicals too. We’ve even cultivated unused land to create new fields.”
“…”
“At this point… I have to conclude the land is completely dead.”
The farmer’s face hardened as he took in the vast field with his eyes. His shoulders slumped.
It was strange. Not only was this sudden change surprising, but such changes weren’t limited to Menden. Winterishe where rain fell instead of snow, the Winter Forest that had thawed and become bare, and Moran where an epidemic had spread. Everything was ominous.
The country was in unprecedented turmoil.
“When do you harvest?”
“Soon, I should. I need to… but I’m postponing it as much as possible, hoping they’ll grow a bit more.”
Regret was thick in the farmer’s voice.
“Do you know where in Menden the soil condition is the worst?”
“It’s probably all similar. Up there, if you go up to where the windmill is, you can see the entire village at once.”
The farmer pointed to the windmill on the hill. Arden gave a slight nod and headed toward the hill.
“I hope your problem gets solved.”
“Thank you.”
The farmer smiled faintly as Rite patted his shoulder while speaking. Rite followed Arden after offering this small comfort.
Standing in front of the windmill and looking down at Menden, Arden’s sense of helplessness doubled.
How on earth am I going to fix all this land?
As if reading Arden’s mind, Rite spoke up.
“Even a magician would struggle with something of this scale.”
“…Indeed.”
The view of Menden was completely different from what they had seen near the station. It wasn’t a small village. Arden now fully realized that Menden was larger than Winterishe in terms of land area. The farmer had said it could be seen at a glance, but even from this hill, not everything was visible. Looking at the vast fields stretching far into the distance, regret washed over Arden.
“I didn’t ask for 7,000 Bram for nothing.”
“What are you going to do, Arden?”
A non-existent calculator flashed in Arden’s mind. Accommodation costs, food expenses, and the time spent here. He calculated everything into numbers and considered each item meticulously.
“You saw the food prices earlier.”
“They were extremely expensive.”
“Even if we fail, we need to collect at least that much before leaving. We’ll still be at a loss since we’ll have to stay here for a few days.”
“How? We can’t just demand money without reason.”
“Even if we fail, it should be a partial failure, not a complete one. We need to show some progress, even if not a perfect solution.”
Even if Rite knew healing magic, there wasn’t enough time to purify each piece of land individually. Arden had thought about planting Aether in the soil as a last resort, but such vast fields weren’t in his calculations.
“I’ll use Aether. If fertilizer and water haven’t worked, that’s the only solution I can think of.”
“…”
“But all I brought was a portable Aether collector. It takes a long time and isn’t very durable, so there are limitations. It’s difficult to extract enough Aether to plant in all these fields one by one. It would take too much time.”
“Then?”
As Arden explained to Rite, he eliminated possibilities one by one. Like when he first brought Rite home, he could dissolve Aether in water and sprinkle it on the land. That would cover more area with relatively less Aether, but it would still take too long. Arden didn’t plan to stay here for more than four days.
He had intended to work intensely for just a day or two and then leave.
Arden tried to recall. Was there a machine that could explosively multiply a small amount and release it over a wide area?
“…Fireworks.”
“What did you say, Arden?”
He had seen it at the palace. The fireworks machine that engineers had created to decorate the Founding Day celebrations. Arden hadn’t made it himself, but he remembered watching it from the window with a colleague while working late in the laboratory.
‘Is that the fireworks machine?’
‘What’s that?’
‘The thing Charlotte always complained about. Such extravagance, he said.’
‘He complained about having to make such things… but he worked hard on it.’
‘Everyone put in a lot of effort.’
Arden remembered Eden, the owner of the name he was now using as an alias, looking at the fireworks through the window with a pitiful expression. Outside was entirely festive, but the engineers watching the fireworks looked as if they were at a funeral.
‘What we want to do and what we must do are always different.’
Eden had said that while the fireworks reflected in his eyes. At that time, not just the engineers at the palace, but also the knights, maids, and chefs—none of them were at ease. They just endured, silently doing their jobs.
“Fireworks. You know? If we follow the machine they used then, I think we might be able to manage somehow.”
“Fireworks?”
Rite asked, squinting one eye. Having only encountered fireworks in text, Rite didn’t seem to immediately visualize them.
“It’s when you combine gunpowder and sparklers and shoot them high up. Fireworks burst like embroidering the sky. It’s a temporary phenomenon, but the cost and effort involved are considerable.”
“Have you done it before?”
“No. But I’ve seen it. A colleague I worked with received orders to create very spectacular fireworks and struggled. At that time, someone suggested amplifying small sparklers to make them larger, and I think something similar might work.”
A sketch began to rapidly form in Arden’s mind.
“I don’t have a concrete plan yet, but… we shoot concentrated Aether upward. The Aether affects particles in the atmosphere, drawing in water vapor to create clouds containing large amounts of Aether. Then we shoot a mixture of water and Aether at those clouds again, causing the cloud particles to clump together and fall as raindrops, efficiently sprinkling Aether on the land. If we use the amplification device used in the sparkler machine, we can also solve the Aether problem.”
Rite listened to Arden’s explanation with intense focus, not missing a single word, like someone taking a listening test. He visualized Arden’s explanation as text in his mind and quickly reviewed it.
“So… you’re going to make Aether rain?”
“I’m not making rain myself, but artificially gathering water vapor to induce rain.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“It’s completely different.”
Despite growing up under an engineer, Rite found science difficult. Wasn’t making rain fall from the sky more like magic than creating a unicorn shape by compacting snow and magical energy? Rite looked at Arden with undisguised puzzlement.
“There are quite a few problems, but the two biggest are: First, can Aether affect the soil? Second, can we successfully create artificial rain that’s only theoretical?”
“We should check the first one first.”
Arden nodded. If this method failed, there was no other option. Arden felt a heavy sense of responsibility.
“When people in Winterishe nonsensically claimed that Arden made it rain, I just thought it was absurd.”
“…”
“This time, you might actually make it rain.”
Arden’s tense expression softened slightly at Rite’s joke. The corners of his mouth were turned up ever so slightly.
