I Gave It a Try
I told Bale that it seemed this volleyball-sized fruit had been the cause.
“This fruit?”
“Looks like this is what they wanted to eat.”
I asked him to start cracking two or three of these fruits every morning and leave them near the Dodorin fruit. For today, we decided to stay at the mansion in the new town.
We’d come again tomorrow to check how things looked.
Back at the mansion, I had some time, so I decided to research the volleyball-sized fruit.
I took out the slate and pressed the library button.
Searching “plants, large fruit” found nothing.
Searching “large fruit” returned thirteen books.
They were about crops like pumpkin and cabe (cabbage).
If it were pumpkin or cabe, there should’ve been far more hits.
Maybe because I searched only for “large fruit.”
Searching “Cocotte favorite” returned six hits.
All of them only described the Dodorin fruit.
Most plants in the Great Forest remain unexplained.
The library search wasn’t going to cut it.
The next day, we arrived at Varshe’s fort but didn’t go inside—we headed straight to water the volleyball-sized fruit trees and the Dodorin trees outside.
Five Cocotte were already there, eating Dodorin fruit and the volleyball-sized fruit.
One of them was even laying an egg.
“There are a lot of white things scattered around the Dodorin trees. Are those eggs?”
“Looks like it. Hard to tell without getting closer, but the likelihood is high.”
“I hope these are the kind that hatch…”
We knew eggs laid by females paired with a male would hatch, but we couldn’t distinguish them by appearance.
So raising eggs in an incubator from females paired with males was the most reliable way.
The chicks were already growing well, so it was about time to start hatching new eggs.
If the scattered eggs could be used, we wouldn’t have to transport eggs from elsewhere, so I wanted a way to differentiate fertilized from unfertilized.
Once the Cocotte finished eating, they returned to the Great Forest.
Getting closer to the Dodorin tree, all the white lumps were eggs.
We divided up the work and gathered them.
There were eighteen in total.
Wasn’t there a simple way to check whether they were unfertilized or fertilized?
I remembered something about using light.
I tried holding one up to the sunlight and saw thin vein-like lines inside.
“Everyone, lend me the eggs.”
I held up each egg to the sunlight one by one and separated them into eggs with visible thin veins and eggs without.
We sorted them while letting everyone confirm the differences.
Georges held a fertilized egg and an unfertilized egg in each hand, raising both to the sunlight.
“I didn’t expect the difference to be this obvious.”
We went into the fort and had Bale check the eggs under sunlight as well.
“From now on, whenever we find eggs, we’ll check them and put the fertilized ones in the incubator.”
If this method worked, increasing the number of incubators would make poultry farming realistic.
All we could do now was wait for results.
When I asked Bale how things were after we left yesterday, he said no Cocotte rammed the wall.
So it really had been the volleyball-sized fruit they wanted.
We couldn’t smell anything, but the Cocotte must sense something.
“There weren’t any Cocotte in this part of the Great Forest before, right?”
“Right, only Koblin.”
“They might be coming from deeper in, past the Koblin den.”
“Meyer, would they really come this far from so deep inside?”
“That’s true…”
“I can go check.”
“You will, Atre?”
“Yeah, I’ll find out quickly.”
He said he’d go for the exercise anyway, so I told him to be careful and sent him off.
What to do until Atre got back?
“If we planted a lot of the large fruit trees, won’t the Dodorin fruit become insufficient?”
Thanks to Georges’ comment, we decided to plant more Dodorin outside the fort.
Branches grow faster than fruit, so Meyer cut branches using wind mana, and we planted the small branches and watered them with “Grow big—” and my water mana.
Lately, I’d been relying on the Plant Goddess’ blessing a lot.
I was grateful, but still…
Ah—right, I should try one more thing, even if it fails.
We returned inside the fort. I went to the volleyball-sized fruit, took out the slate, and held it over the fruit. The display showed “Searching.”
“I guess it’s worth trying things.”
The slate had identified the hot spring’s effects before, and I suddenly wondered if it could identify this too.
“Did you learn something?”
“Not yet, but it showed a searching screen.”
“Young Master Reinhardt, your slate really is strange.”
“If I can use it, I should.”
Georges shook his head.
The slate displayed “Cocots Fruit.”
Reading further: Cocotte like to eat it, but it only grows where chicks are raised.
Meaning it’s a plant that needs warm environments.
This place was relatively warm thanks to the hot spring.
So the growing conditions were suitable.
My blessing probably helped too, but the location had been correct from the start.
I was glad to finally know its name.
What do you think about this chapter?
