"So what do you think about that?" I asked Ema and Claude after explaining Lief's idea.
"I think that is a wonderful idea," said Ema.
I expected that Ema will agree with me. "What about you, Claude?"
"What is the end goal of the plan?" asked Claude.
"Of course, it is to get food for horned rabbits. But one other thing that I wanted to do is to establish a place to train people to become a fighter. They will then become guards for their own village."
"Is that not wasting resources?" asked Claude. He then continues, "Training an amateur to become a knight needs a good amount of money."
"I don't need a knight, I only need a fighter that can guard the village."
"What about the payment from the villages? Will all village pay with fodder?" said Claude
"That… I think we need to ask what the villages can pay. Lothpine for example, I want iron ore from that place. For other villages, we will think about that later." I explained to Claude. "Also, I want to test it with only a village first. Hardersfield will become the test bed."
"Well, if we try to test it with a village at first… It should be okay. But, is that really the end goal? Only to train villagers how to fight to guard the village?"
I don't understand what Claude means with the end goal. I tried to explain it once again, "Well, yes… I wanted to get the hay for the rabbit food. Well, there is also one other thing that I wanted to achieve. That is to reduce the death rate of villagers. If we are able to achieve that, there will be more economic activities in the region. With more economic activities, we might attract more merchants from other regions to come here. Of course, there is still a problem with connectivity to other places. But we will think more about that later.
"Not only attracting merchant, but I also hoped that with the increase of economic activities, maybe some product special to this place will be invented. That means, we will be able to make an income by selling that product to other regions in the kingdom."
Claude scratched his head, "Well, let's go with that for now…"
I still don't understand what Claude is trying to convey.
Well, it is alright, I will order Lief to send a message to his village later. The message will be asking the villager how many people want to take the training and asking about what thing they want to pay with.
* * *
After convincing Claude and Ema of the new plan, I am now walking with Ema toward the cold storage in this house. My plan to ask about this to Ema has been delayed because I need to visit many villages in Northwellen. Yesterday is the last village that I visited, so I have finished all the visits.
"Here we are, this is the cold storage room." Ema opened the door to the room. I see that there are three big shelves full of raw meat.
"It is smaller than what I thought…" I said. "This is smaller than what we have on the capital right?"
"Hm? This room is actually larger than what we have in the capital. Well, it is smaller if compared to the one at Lockway house, but that one is the exception. This room is bigger than average storage cold room in other noble houses."
"Really? I always thought that the cold room in the Lockway mansion is the average size."
I looked below the shelves and sees that there are many huge blocks of ice. It has a size of around 2 meters per block of ice.
"What is with this ice?"
"That is… If I am not wrong, this is a hybrid cold room. There is a magic circle that makes the room keep its coldness. They also put the ice here when winter comes and it can keep the room cold even until summer. This makes the consumption of mana to be lower than a normal cold room."
"Hee… I didn't know there is something like that here. Oh right, I just remember because you said about mana consumption, but where did we get the mana stone from?"
Mana stone is an important part that is used in the magic circle. It is a stone that can be found everywhere in the soil. But it is found mostly alongside coal in the mine. If a coal resource is found, the chance there will be a mana stone resource in that place is high.
"We don't use mana stone here. Look at this, we use mana from the wood for this room." Ema showed me the mana intake place. It is filled with wood to the brim. "The used wood will automatically be moved to this container below this. It will then be used to store miasma produced by the magic process."
"There is a way to use the mana stored in the wood?"
Compared to the mana stone, a block of wood has much lower mana in its body. So to draw mana from things like a wood branch is harder than to draw from a mana stone. Even I, someone that is not knowledgeable about magic, know about that.
"Yup, I was also surprised when I first see this place. This room might be built by some great magician in the past," said Ema.
"And then, what did the miasma-filled wood is used?" I asked Ema.
"It is grounded and mixed with the fertilizer to be used on the farm."
I know that most plant uses miasma and produce mana when they are growing. I have heard about using manure from livestock to fertilize the farm. Manures that have a high amount of miasma can make the plant grow faster.
"Well, let's not talk about the magic. We will never understand it. Then, how much meat can be stored here?" I looked around the small room once again and estimated the amount of meat that can be stored.
"If we use the horned rabbit as a base, we can put more than 300? I am not really sure…"
Hearing Ema's answer I now understand that this room is big.