Having Enough to Eat and Knowing the Dungeon*3
Somehow, like this, I pulled starch from plant roots, then reconstructed it together with proteins found in wheat and trace minerals I managed to source from other plants…
… and then.
“… It’s done! Bread!”
At last.
At last, I had succeeded in producing bread with a somewhat decent cost-performance ratio!
“Well… compared to making bread out of stone, this is way more efficient.”
As for cost-performance, yeah, I think it’s not bad.
If it’s just changing the form of granite into blocks or slabs, then the mana consumption is much lower, but… as expected, making bread from root starch is fairly draining on my mana.
Still, it’s way better than when I tried to make bread from stone. I guess this’ll do for now.
Anyway, I tried a taste test. Well, it wasn’t particularly delicious, but it wasn’t bad either—just about edible. Thank you, bread. For the time being, my life is saved.
“But… I also want protein, minerals, vitamins, and fats…”
Right.
Man does not live by bread alone. A well-balanced intake of the five major nutrients—that’s common sense.
“Well, luckily, everything is included in a BLT sandwich.”
And wonderfully enough, the BLT sandwich I brought into this world! The bacon is skimpy, but the lettuce and tomato aren’t skimped on that much.
Once I decompose and absorb this, naturally, I’ll also be able to reconstruct bacon, lettuce, and tomato from now on!
… Well, bacon might be tough. If I’m going to make bacon from plants, I’d need soybeans at the very least…
But hey, I’ve gotta make it work somehow, or I won’t be able to stay healthy. Especially since my body is that of an elementary schooler right now—I’m at the age when I need to eat a lot.
Now then. Aside from bacon, there’s another problem.
“I can’t exactly strip all the nearby plants bare… I absolutely need to avoid depleting resources.”
Yes. Mana can be gained by decomposing and absorbing resources. But if there are no resources to decompose, I can’t get mana either.
Which means this food supply method can’t last forever…
As I was thinking about what to do, I found myself staring at the tomato part of the BLT sandwich—and then it hit me.
“… Tomatoes have seeds in them, don’t they…”
If we’re talking about self-sufficiency…
Wouldn’t cultivating them be possible?
So I immediately extracted the seeds from the T portion of the BLT sandwich.
Yes! This vegetable called a tomato! It’s included fresh, and what’s more, with its seeds intact—an extremely advantageous state!
I’d heard that tomato seeds sprout pretty easily even if you just plant them straight, so maybe this could work. Well, it costs nothing to try.
First, I decomposed and absorbed the tomato seeds. The reason? Insurance. Since tomato seeds could possibly be reconstructed from other plant seeds, I wanted a “blueprint” in case all my tomato seeds failed.
But immediately, a problem arose.
“The information… the information is overwhelming…!”
It was so much that it made me clutch my head. Just thirty tomato seeds, yet they contained an absurd amount of information.
… Well, I know the reason.
“Tomatoes sold on the market are mostly F1 hybrids, aren’t they…”
Yeah. Each tomato seed has its own unique genetic information. No wonder it’s so much.
Most of the tomatoes sold in Japan are F1 hybrids. Meaning: “a variety whose improved traits aren’t inherited by the next generation—it lasts only one generation.”
Thanks to breeding improvements, we now have tomatoes that are disease-resistant, large, long-lasting, nutritious, and delicious all at once. But if you grow tomatoes from those seeds, the second generation won’t retain the benefits of all that effort.
In other words, the second-generation tomatoes will be genetically varied, maybe less tasty, maybe more disease-prone.
… The seeds I just took from the BLT sandwich’s T will surely grow into *some* kind of tomato if planted. But if I’m going to the trouble, I want tomatoes that grow quickly, taste good, are nutritious, long-lasting, and disease-resistant.
“… I’ll just do some genetic modification.”
So, when reconstructing the tomato seeds, I decided to fiddle with that part.
“I’m exhausted! Exhausted! Aaaaahhh!”
And one hour later, I was finally freed from the extremely detailed task.
Recombining genes inside tomato seeds—I had no idea what I was doing! Of course I didn’t!
And they’re tiny, so fiddly… focusing on them made my head hurt, my shoulders stiff, and I feel like I used up quite a bit of mana… I’m spent! Absolutely spent! Aaaaaahhh!
“Nope, I need a nap…”
In this state, I didn’t want to move on to the next task, so I decided to sleep for a bit. An elementary schooler’s body just isn’t built for long stretches of concentration.
Which brings us to—before farming, I need a house. Shelter.
I’d managed clothing and food, at least in provisional form. Time to sort out housing.
First, I decided that this high-ceilinged chamber at the dungeon’s deepest point—where rays of light poured in through cracks far above—would be my living space.
But building right in the middle felt way too exposed, so I set up a house by the wall, along the edge.
Building material: stone. I reconstructed stone blocks and stacked them for walls, then laid stone slabs for the roof—done, more or less. But since I had plant material too, I made the floor wooden planks. The door was also wood—if I made a stone single-hinged door, I’d worry about the hinge strength…
Since it was originally a cave, I didn’t have to worry about rain or wind, but I still made windows for ventilation. The view outside was just more cave, so it wasn’t exactly picturesque. Figures.
… And with the house built, I made some furniture.
“A desk, a chair, and a bed at least…”
Making them was easy. As long as it wasn’t machinery, simple objects could be made easily even without decomposing them first.
So, I made a desk, a chair, and a bed frame from wood, then reconstructed a plant-fiber mattress. That gave me a fluffy bed. It’d probably wear out quickly unless I aired it out sometimes, but it’ll do for now.
“It’s not that cold, but it feels weird without covers… this should do.”
On top of the mattress, I laid plant-fiber cloth as a sheet, then reconstructed a cotton blanket. Now I could sandwich myself between fluffiness and fluffiness. Perfect.
“Good night!”
… Farming and planting the tomato seeds could wait. For now, I decided to take a nap.
After all, in this elementary schooler’s body… I get sleepy so fast. I really want my original, all-nighter-proof body back. Seriously…
What do you think about this chapter?
