A Huge Farm
One week had passed since I told Count Meigis how to grow belladonnas. I visited a forest on the outskirts of the Count’s domain.
「Well, this turned out to be huge.」I said as I looked at the high walls.
The walls were built to hide the whole process of creating the healing medicine. The place was called Meigis’ Healing Medicine Factory. The growing and creation of the potion would be done beyond these walls.
「It’d have to be this huge so we can effectively weaken Georgis’ power.」the Count said.
「How many healing medicines does the Cardinal produce a year?」
「About a thousand…」
「With a place this huge, we can produce ten times that.」
It was Count Meigis who decided to make a factory this huge. I heard he was going to build a factory surrounded by walls to keep the operation secret, but I wasn’t expecting it to be this enormous.
The walls ran as far as the eye could see. The surface area was probably ten times more than the one I used for experimenting and that was already quite big.
If fifty percent of the space was used for growing belladonnas, five thousand plants can be harvested every three days which will then produce a hundred potions. In a year, that’s approximately 12,000.
「How much of the place are you going to use? You’re going to leave some space, right?」
「No. We’re using every inch. Half of it for growing belladonnas, thirty percent for the sun beans, and the remaining twenty percent will be for manufacturing.」
So he’s going to use the whole space.
We could indeed weaken Cardinal Georgis’ power effectively if we produced more. But doing so poses a problem.
Large production would require lots of monsters for fertilizers, and we would need plenty of people both for harvesting and production. More people means more chances of the operation being leaked. Rounding up a huge number of trustworthy people is not an easy feat.
「Can we keep it secret if it’s this big?」I asked.
「It’s all right. I can gather trustworthy people, no problem.」
「You’re going to employ slaves or something?」
Slavery still exists in this world. Just because they’re slaves doesn’t mean they can be trusted easily.
「No. I’m going to ask the help of those with inferior job classes. They swore loyalty to me, you see. I’m going to pick from among them those I can really trust.」
I see. Meigis’ efforts are bearing fruit.
In this world, those with inferior job classes were treated unfavorably. Ranking up for them is difficult, and even those with non-combatant classes are discriminated. There are times when credit gets stolen from them as well.
But Count Meigis treated them well. As such, many of them live in his domain and they’re grateful to him.
I’m sure they’ll gladly accept the job if Meigis asked them. With proper pay, of course. They won’t have anywhere else to go if they’re kicked out of this place so there shouldn’t be any leaks about the operation.
「All right. But there’s actually one more problem.」I said.
「What is it?」
「So we’re going to feed monsters to the sun beans then use the unique magic power to grow belladonnas. It’s not only belladonnas that love that power, actually.」
「Love magic power… you mean monsters will show up?」
「Yeah. The number of monsters in the area will increase when growing belladonnas.」
The unique magic produced from growing belladonnas attract monsters. What’s more, the magic gets carried in the wind and travels far, drawing monsters even from afar.
「How strong would the monsters be?」
「Just ordinary ones. It depends on the topography, but there should be around three times more of them than usual.」
The bigger the plantation, the greater the ability to attract monsters. I’ve heard that some people would take advantage of this and create a huge belladonna plantation to draw rare Boss monsters. They have rare drops so they’re perfect if one’s looking for some rare items.
But this method was barely used since the chances of strong monsters showing up was extremely low. In the case of Meigis’ plantation, there’s only more or less one percent.
「If they grow in numbers, we can just call for adventurers to help. I’ll issue a request at the Adventurers Guild and give out a high reward.」
「Okay. We’ll be fine if a Boss monster doesn’t show up.」
「Belladonna plantations attract Boss monsters as well?」
Meigis looked a bit worried. He then looked down, pondering perhaps whether to decrease the size of the plantation.
「Yes. Though the chances of that are quite low, there’s still the possibility that monsters as strong as a King Ogre will show up. There’s only about one percent chance of that happening, though.」
「So in the worst case, only monsters as strong as a King Ogre will show up?」
「Yeah. I haven’t heard of stronger monsters actually appearing.」
Meigis lifted his head as soon as heard that, his face bright.
「In that case, we’ll be fine. We have a powerful sorcerer who could kill an Emperor Ogre in town right now.」he said, looking into my eyes.
He’ll leave it to me if one such monster shows up.