Chapter 37 – Hunting Up a Hole Lot of Trouble in a Trap-ical Paradise

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I woke up at dawn, yawning and stretching my arms over my head as I took a deep breath of the cool morning air. I slowly sat up, rubbing my eyes with my hands. Although it was still dark, the sound of birdsong from outside told me that the birds were already up and that it was time for me to start a new day at the farm. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and put on a set of plain robes before heading outside to the outer courtyard where the day’s first meal was waiting for me.

Deming was quite a frugal chef, and I was pleased to see that breakfast consisted of fried rice that was made using yesterday’s leftover rice, vegetables, and chicken. I also ate a small bowl of vegetable dumpling soup and for dessert there was plenty of fresh fruit.

As usual, we set aside the seeds for possible later use and the kitchen showed me the seeds they had saved for me yesterday, but, alas, the System seemed very picky and would only accept a tiny fraction of the seeds we got from the fruit, vegetables, and berries we foraged.

This wasn’t really a problem for me since I had over two billion of each type of seed in my inventory, but I had been thinking of selling these for other people to use. I had already asked if Shuye could find a buyer for my seeds, and he had told me that growing spiritual plants was difficult, but not impossible. The failure rate was high. Nonetheless, there should be people who were willing to give it a try. I got the distinct impression that the seeds would be treated as rare treasures. My Farm Guide would be selling the seeds along with the summer harvest.

After I finished eating, I headed outside with my apprentices in tow, only to be met with a curious sight. Everyone was standing around the beehive, and Haoran, one of Deming’s assistants, was kneeling in front of it and touching his forehead to the ground repeatedly.

“What’s going on?” I asked Fengying.

“He says there’s a god inside of it,” said Fengying.

“What?!” yelled Lari, his eyes wide with shock.

“When we went outside to get the usual three sacks of rice from the machine, he saw bees coming out of their hive carrying a glass jar full of honey,” said Fengying.

Uh-oh. The bees had done the same thing twice before when I was alone on the farm. This was exactly the way that it worked in Adventure Incarnate, so I hadn’t thought anything of it, but obviously this was not normal in this world.

“These are very special honeybees,” was all I said before I fled to the second field with Lari, Kharli, and Mo. Let Fengying take care of it. Supervising the staff is what I paid her for, after all.

The four of us tacitly agreed not to discuss the bees. The kids had their own little bit of the System, hence they were quite used to strange, magical phenomena.

One week after they had been planted, the corn and wheat had sprouted and grown fresh, tender green seedlings. Each of them seemed to glow with an inner light. We watered the crops and pulled up a few errant weeds. By the time we finished and walked back to the field near the house, the staff were no longer at the beehive. Fengying must’ve done her work and herded them back to work.

At the vegetable field, the plants seem to have grown more compared to the corn and wheat. I think it might’ve been because the soil there was better.

“What’s next for today, teacher?” asked Kharli.

“I wanted to ask you guys about that. How much energy do you have left?”

“About half.” The others echoed her.

“Mmm. Okay, that means we can train your other skills. Fishing, cooking, foraging, or hunting, what would you prefer to do?” I asked them.

“Hunting!” said Lari immediately.

I gave the others an inquiring look, but they just shrugged.

“All right, if that’s what you want. We’ll run out of meat sooner or later. It would be good to add to our stock,” I said.

Lari let out a whoop. “Hunting! I’m gonna be a hunter!”

I wondered if a hunter had a higher status than a farmer in this world. We went back to the house to get the packed lunches I had asked Deming to prepare, then headed north to the forest.

“Let’s go get us some delicious meat,” I said.

When I activated the System map, I checked it for the nearest hunting spot, which turned out to be the one for Weenusk Diggers. I vaguely remembered that they were some sort of magical groundhogs.

[Weenusk Digger:

A burrowing rodent. The Weenusk Digger has reddish brown fur and short but powerful legs. It is not aggressive and will escape predators by tunneling through the ground at a rapid pace.

Their meat is dark and gamey, with a strong flavor similar to venison.]

It took us an hour and a half to get to the Digger hunting grounds, which was nothing more than a small, unremarkable clearing covered in green grass and colorful wildflowers. I would never have known that there were diggers living here if the System’s map hadn’t revealed it.

“Can you see any holes in the ground?” I asked my apprentices.

They scattered in different directions, carefully searching the ground for suspicious openings.

“There’s one here!” said Lari.

“Okay, okay, don’t shout. You don’t want to scare away the animals.” I gestured for them to join me. “This place is where the diggers live. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to see their burrows. Now, we as hunters will set traps here. Check your System tool belt. There should be some wooden traps and bait there. Get three of each.”

We all took out the aforementioned items.

I had done plenty of hunting in Adventure Incarnate, therefore I knew what to do, though I’d never done it in real life. Fortunately, the traps seemed easy to use. I demonstrated how to put the bait inside and how to set up the trap, which looked something like a mousetrap cage, but bigger.

“Look, open the cage door like this and put the bait here.” I showed them how to do it, then I used a long twig to reach inside the cage to touch the bait. The cage door slammed shut and there was a loud crackling sound as powerful jolts of electricity danced inside the cage.

My apprentices seemed delighted by the magical trap’s display of power, while I felt somewhat ambiguous about it. On the one hand, I loved to eat meat, but on the other hand, I had always bought meat at the supermarket. The thought of collecting the corpses of dead animals made me shudder, but I didn’t want to be a hypocrite, so I would have to bear it.

I directed them to place traps a suitable distance from one another, and I put mine in the middle of the hunting grounds.

“That’s it for now,” I said. “We’ll come back at the end of the day to check if the traps caught anything.”

“We’re not going to wait here?” asked Lari.

“That would be a waste of time. We’re going foraging,” I said.

Lari groaned.

“I like foraging,” said Mo.

“Me, too,” I said. “Shall we go our own way or walk together?”

We decided to go in different directions. Only one person could forage each spot, which meant that separating was the most efficient way to do it.

“Look at the System clock to check the time. We’ll meet back here at five p.m. See you later,” I said. “Remember to eat your lunch when you get hungry.”

“Yes, teacher,” they chorused in agreement.

Mr. Bear was my only companion during the day as I roamed around the forest looking for edible plants and useful herblaw ingredients. I found quite a lot of loquats, lychees, and papayas as well as elf leaf, fireroot, and bittergrass.

I must have already foraged a lot of the mushrooms because I couldn’t gather more from the spots that I saw. That was the problem with visiting the same places in the forest. Tomorrow, if we decided to hunt diggers again, we would have to do something else instead of foraging.

When we met up again at the end of the day, we found that one of my traps had been sprung. I felt terribly queasy when I saw the glassy-eyed Digger inside mine, so I placed it in my inventory as quickly as I could. It was a lot bigger than I thought it would be, with a length of over two hand spans from nose to tail, and it had thick, glossy fur.

Three of Lari’s traps had been successful, while Kharli was able to retrieve one Digger. Mo’s traps had all failed.

“Tough luck,” I said to Mo. “Shall we try again tomorrow?”

She nodded, and the others also indicated their agreement.

“We can set the traps overnight, and come back for them tomorrow,” I said.

“All right! More meat!” Lari immediately took out three more traps from his inventory and ran over to a corner of the clearing.

He must think that that spot was the best one for hunting.

We all set up our traps as best as we could. I reckoned that one digger had enough meat for one person’s meal, which meant that we would have to hunt more in order for us to provide enough for the entire household. Of course, it was our first time to hunt, and we would undoubtedly be able to hunt bigger, better game later on.

Before we left, I asked them to show me what they had foraged.

As the System owner and their teacher, I could view and use my apprentices’ inventories, but I preferred to let them show me what they had gotten. Kharli had a haul that was as big as mine, while Lari only had a handful of berries to show for his efforts. Mo’s foraged items, on the other hand, were twice as many as mine.

“How did you get so many?” asked Lari.

“I don’t know. They were just there,” said Mo.

“Good job, everyone. Let’s go back home,” I said.