Chapter 146 – I Want A Water Wheel~

After our series of adventures in the Ancient forest successfully ended, we finally returned to our pack settlement and I was able to sleep comfortably in my lair after a long while. However, I was awakened the next day by a shrill noise outside.

I got up as I rubbed my sleepy eyes and poked my head out of my lair to see what was going on, only to find out that the noise came from the rooster that was crowing cheerfully in its straw-lined enclosure.

“…Vaoru guoruaan.” (…Why’s it making such a fuss in the morning?)

I always thought it was a normal thing for chickens to crow in the morning, but for some reason, my Kobold instincts are telling me it’s an act of intimidation.

If you’re wondering why then it’s because the pair of hens are quiet… During my days as a mercenary, we came to exterminate vermin in a town where livestock and poultry farming were the main sources of livelihood, and one of the ranchers there told me that the chickens followed a certain order of crowing in the morning.

(Well, I guess there’s a pecking order within these guys too.)

I guess a hierarchy is automatic for animals and other creatures that live in groups.

Yesterday, a three and a four-year-old male began dueling in the village square for pack ranking, and the warrior-type Elves such as Selica and Lenaide looked on with interest while Listy, Asta, and Mira were frowning the whole time.

It was currently the breeding season, so the eligible males in the pack were going wild.

By the way, the three-year-old male won, but the opponent he kicked away hit Buster who was eating venison while watching the match. The guy was stunned as the meat fell and he was met with Buster’s sharp gaze that his tail curled up in terror. Needless to say, it wasn’t looking good for him to show such behavior in front of the females in the pack.

“Uaauoo…” (Well that’s unfortunate…)

Anyway, we needed to expand the settlement in preparation for the baby rush in early spring which will come after the hibernation period following the mating season. It doesn’t mean there won’t be any sacrifices at all, but our pack members’ fatality rates had gone down ever since we took over. But even before that, the settlement was already crowded and was in dire need of more space to accommodate the members of the pack.

(We can’t just expand outside the forest, but if we’re going to do so, then the most ideal place would be in the southeastern part…)

After scratching my head, I put on the mithril mask and headed to the central square where the Elves set up their tents and checked in on them.

“… Good morning, Archer!”

Some Kobolds seem to have just woken up and were milling about in the village square. Meanwhile, Selica took out a large kettle and set it over the fire to boil water, wrapped some loose herbs in a make-shift tea bag, and added it into the kettle.

“Waoon, gauru kuuwoau.” [Good morning. Is that morning herb tea?]

“… Want some?”

I sleepily nodded in response to the Black Elf girl’s question and sat on the other side of the campfire just as the Bronze Elf Apothecary and the Black Smith crawled out of the tent, lured in by the scent of the brewing tea.

“Fumyu, that peppermint scent… It has the effect of clearing one’s head, you know.”

“But it smells quite different from the mint tea you make for me, don’t you think?”

“Hnn, give me a minute, Asta♪”

Mira went back to the tent as she said this, and carefully retrieved her apothecary’s bag which is used to store small amounts of herbs without waking up Listy and the others who were still sleeping.

“Let’s add this rosemary into the tea!”

Mira quickly packed some dried herbs into a medicine pouch and added it to the kettle, along with some more water to accommodate the growing number of people gathering around the fire.

“Kuofau~, garuu woruau♪” (That smells nice~, let’s add this too♪)

Like Mira, Ax was similarly drawn in by the smell of the tea and sat in front of the fire. He then proceeded to open the lid of the bottle he was carrying and threw in 4 heaping spoonfuls of honey into the mixture.

“Guoruguaau kuarufau…” (I don’t really like my tea sweet…)

“U~, kurua~Uu.” (Eh~, but it tastes so good.)

But just as he was about to add more honey, Selica grabbed the sweet-toothed Kobold’s hand and shook her head. Ax’s ears drooped as he pouted.

(Any more and it would’ve been too sweet for my taste…)

While praising Selica from the bottom of my heart, I accepted the freshly made mint tea with honey and enjoyed the quiet morning with my packmate and the three other Elves of color while we huddled around the campfire.

“Woruu aua, kuaworun wouruoon?” [By the way, Asta, what do you think of the thing I showed you yesterday?]

“Ah, well I do admire how Smith has worked hard at it, but his woodwork is not that precise… and I think it will break down soon. Aside from the hatchet and the spear plane he made himself, he would also need this kind of saw for woodworking.”

The thing we were talking about was the waterwheel I asked Smith to make before we left for the Ancient forest.

The pack settlement is located in higher ground than the Steele River so the damage we receive during heavy rains is greatly reduced, but it would be difficult to create irrigation waterways from the river to the fields.

Well, the autumn-sown wheat we bought from the Werecats only require minimal watering, and the residents in our neighboring villages, Lucua and Viel village, can grow them without creating aqueducts to their fields, so it suffices to say that we don’t necessarily need to draw water from the river because natural farming is possible in our area.

(But still… I’m thinking of having other crops grown in our fields, and then there’s also the issue of efficiency.)

As a former native of Athos, a desert land that has many areas that experience low rainfall, I understood the effectiveness of using the irrigation farming system. With this method, a stable supply of water can increase the crop yield per field unit area.

And for this purpose, we would need a water wheel that has numerous buckets attached to its outer rim.

Powered by the flow of the river, the water drawn by the buckets is elevated by the rotating motion of the wheel and is poured into the water reservoir to create an elevation difference. From there, it would be easy to deliver water to the settlement and improve land conditions.

In terms of structure, the waterwheel was just a wheel with buckets attached to it so I asked the dexterous Smith and his group of floppy-eared Kobolds to create one that looked just like the waterwheel at the mill in Viel village, but…

Although it may seem like a simple wooden structure, apparently creating one wasn’t as straightforward as I thought it was.