Welcome to Hell! - Chapter 289: Sand Fish’s Food and the Approaching Crisis

“Hmm…”

“What’s the matter, Lorentz?”

It was the day after what was supposed to be a relaxing outing for the children turned into a battle with a giant sand fish. After our usual group training, I approached the sand sea to begin another day of building blocks to protect our farmland. As I looked out over the sand expanse, I spotted Lorentz with his arms crossed and deep in thought.

Yesterday, when we brought back the giant sand fish, he was as excited as the children. He had asked me all sorts of questions about its behavior before death, the structure of its organs and skeleton during dissection, and even described in detail the taste of the fish when we ate it.

During this, Lorentz had named the giant creature “Flying Sand Fish”. This name was inspired by its ability to eject sand from its gills to propel itself through the air. However, when he told us this name, Marcellus and Decius had indescribable expressions on their faces. It seems there are fish called flying fish near the empire, but their shape and manner of flight are completely different.

Remembering how thrilled he was, I couldn’t understand why he seemed so troubled now. Could he have developed some new concerns? I decided to ask him.

“Oh, it’s you, Sir Antares. Something’s been on my mind.”

“Something on your mind?”

“The sand sea is home to a large number of sand fish. Most of them are carnivorous fish, but… they should not be the only ones!”

I understood what Lorentz was getting at. Carnivorous fish generally eat fish smaller than themselves. It was likely that these smaller fish were also carnivorous, but if you trace it back further, what does the smallest fish eat? That seemed to be Lorentz’s concern.

When I had fought the giant sand fish, if I recall correctly, the scales that had shattered and scattered across the sandy sea seemed to attract other sand fish. In a place where food was scarce, they must seize every opportunity to eat.

However, this probably wasn’t the answer Lorentz was looking for. I didn’t have an answer to his question, and all I could do was puzzle over it with him.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Hey, aren’t you going to say hello?”

“…Ayye”

“Tigar, and Sharl with Reese, huh? Actually…”

It was Tigar who approached us. By his side was Sharl who was holding Reese in her arms. It seemed Tigar had been strolling around with his beloved wife and daughter before starting his job of transporting blocks.

In a way, it was convenient. They might have some insights that Lorentz and I lacked. We explained to them the issue we had been pondering together.

“Sand fish’s food, huh? Now that you mention it, I wonder what they eat.”

“When I prepared sand fish for cooking, it seemed like their stomachs contained nothing but the remains of smaller sand fish.”

Unfortunately, none of them had a clue. Tigar who had as little interaction with sand fish as I did had no idea, and even Sharl who I thought was wise enough to have some insight was at a loss.

However, I couldn’t help but notice that Reese had been staring at me intently for a while. Unlike Lawqum who was fearless, Reese was shy and usually turned her face away from anyone who wasn’t her parents or friends close to her age. Sharl also noticed her daughter’s unusual behavior and tilted her head in confusion.

“What’s wrong, Reese? Are you curious about the boss?”

“…If you make eyes at my daughter, I’ll knock you out—ouch!?”

“That’s ridiculous, you doting idiot.”

“That’s right. He’s not looking at her.”

Tigar glared at me with a fierce expression when Reese started staring at me before he screamed in pain after Sharl stepped on his big toe. I was shocked at what an idiot parent he was, and Lorenz struggled to hold back his laughter at the sight of the couple’s good relationship.

When Sharl gently asked several times, Reese hesitantly reached out to me. However, her gaze seemed to be directed more above my face than at it. I tried to put my head close to Sharl while ignoring Tigar who was holding his leg and glaring at me.

“Is this okay?”

“Ah… um…”

“Oh? What’s this, excuse me…”

Though Reese turned her face away, Sharl seemed to have discovered something. She extended her hand to my head and plucked something that had apparently been caught in my hair.

What lay in the palm of her hand was a small oval grain, smaller than the nail on her little finger. It looked like a large grain of sand, but it seemed different. Upon closer inspection, the surface was peeling away, revealing something milky white inside. What could it be?

“Lorenz, what do you think?”

“Excuse me then… Is this rice?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a grain eaten in a very limited area on the western coast of the western continent. Those from the central and eastern regions would rarely see it. I myself have seen it only a handful of times.”

According to Lorenz, the oval grain Sharl had plucked from her palm was a type of grain. Even he, a wealthy merchant, had seen it only a few times, making it quite a rarity. It was indeed impressive that he knew about such a grain.

Incidentally, the two times he had seen it were when his grandfather, who loved to travel, had ordered it and when he had been asked by a gourmet noble. Apparently, he had eaten it when his grandfather had ordered it, but unfortunately, it had been so long ago that he couldn’t remember the taste.

“That… was it rice? It’s rare, isn’t it? Why would it be on the boss’s head?”

“I have no idea. I’ve neither seen nor heard of it before.”

“Could this be the answer, then? The story about what the small sand fish eat?”

Sharl’s remark was so sudden that we couldn’t understand it immediately and looked at each other with puzzled expressions. To us three clueless men, Sharl explained her thoughts while holding Reese.

“Yesterday, the boss dove into the sand sea, right? It must have gotten stuck to him then.”

“So, you mean to say that the grains of sand in the sand sea are mixed with rice… Is that even possible?”

If Sharl’s guess was correct, it would mean that grains of rice were mixed with the sands of the sand sea. Yet, everywhere one looked in the sand sea, it was just endless sand without a single sign of vegetation. It was hard to believe that grains could be mixed in there.

But the fact that a grain of rice had been found in my hair was also true. If someone had deliberately spread it, it meant that they had scattered rice grains that were cultivated only on the western coast of the continent across the sand sea. This scenario seemed even more unlikely.

“Hold on a moment! If that’s true, there is a high possibility that rice is growing naturally! Could we then use the sand sea to cultivate rice!?”

Unlike my skeptical self, Lorenz looked intently at the grain of rice in his palm and exclaimed loudly. His hands trembled slightly, indicating how astonished he was by the presence of the grain of rice.

As uneducated as we might be, Tigar and I could understand what Lorenz was getting at. Rice is a grain, meaning it could serve as food. We were currently starting to cultivate potatoes in the gravel desert area, but if we could do the same in the sand sea, we wouldn’t have to worry about food anymore.

“If we could cultivate it, it would solve our food security issues in a flash. But…”

“What’s the matter?”

“None of the children from farming families come from the western part of the continent. No one knows how to grow rice.”

“Ah…”

The fatal problem was that no one knew how to grow rice. For now, should we replicate the environment of the sand sea? Perhaps digging into the ground and filling it with sand from the sand sea would work? Hmm, it was all so vague.

However, a significant clue emerged today when the fishing boats returned. It turned out that a plant, that could be the origin of rice, had gotten caught in the nets used for fishing.

“What a strange appearance it has.”

“It doesn’t have roots, does it?”

Just like Lappy who was eating grilled sand fish next to me, pointed out, this rice plant had no roots. The leaves were razor-thin, long, tough, and perfectly straight. There were no roots where there should have been roots, and instead, ears of wheat with a different shape were growing at the bottom.

When touched a little harder, the rice grains would fall off easily. Lorenz speculated that the rice grains spread further as they traveled across the sand sea, carried by the sand currents.

“So, what do you think we should do?”

“There’s not much we can do. I don’t know any plants without roots. We just have to throw it into the sand and see what happens.”

It was Nana who answered my question with a troubled look on her face. Apparently, she was a farmer’s daughter but she seemed to have no idea how to grow this rice. The methods she came up with were not much different from the ones we came up with. It was only natural since she didn’t have the knowledge.

Once the decision was made, we acted immediately. Outside the walls surrounding our base, I manipulated the terrain of the gravel desert to create a sand pit by drawing sand from the sand sea. Nana scattered rice grains into it with an indescribable expression on her face. Perhaps she was unsure if this was the right method, but her effort to spread the grains evenly was commendable.

“I wonder if this is okay…”

“If it’s not, we’ll just change the method. Though, I don’t think we’ll be staying here much longer.”

“Ah, can I have a word? About that, it looks like we might be staying longer after all.”

It was Marcellus who was riding on Shuu’s back who said this to me while I was trying to cheer up the anxious Nana. Decius was also there and both of them were frowning and looking troubled. What could have happened?

“We’ve been surveying every day, both day and night, right? We always had a handle on our position, but…”

“A large sandstorm has formed along our course, and unfortunately, we lost sight of it. It seems the sandstorm is approaching us now. We must take measures.”

Decius bluntly conveyed what Marcellus was hesitant about. I was confident that I understood the gravity of the situation, so I nodded my head.