Chapter 142: Fish Food

After hauling back a huge shopping list and kidnapping several fae experts in farming, crafting and sewing, Rino teleported back to the town and groaned at the huge zap of mana it took from his reserves. There would be no out of town travelling for a while again.

The female brownie, gnome from Aiden's team and farming fairy, arrived at Rino's barren town and was given a grand tour by Mutt. Rino excused himself to return to his secret study. He had some quests to complete, and Rino wasn't looking forward to them. Husbandry was a difficult phase and took a lot of time. If it took Rino almost two months to set Noir Province up, he expected to linger in this new area for at least three times as long because animals needed time to fatten for slaughter. He expected many chain quests and was not looking forward to them.

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Daily Quest #16

Objective: Collect Animals

0/3 Unique animal couples

Time Limit: 10 Days

Tutorial here.

Reward:  Increased Animal Affinity

Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefully completed.

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Ah, so this was it. The unique reward from the last quest was used for this. He should have seen this coming. Thankfully, it wasn't a difficult quest. Ten days to find three unique animal couples with no specification of the creatures made the quest a lot easier. Unlike the king toad hunting quest, Rino knew a few creatures in mind he wanted to raise to kill them for materials.

Hunting hawks all the time wasn't viable. Rino must have birds of some kind for feathers and eggs. Not to mention, birds tasted delicious when roasted. He had no idea if there were wild turkeys in this world, but Rino hoped to find huge flightless birds to raise in captivity.

The second animal Rino wanted to raise should produce milk because he missed his dairy products, especially butter. It wasn't a necessity, but it would be nice to eat cheese again.

More importantly, he should find an animal capable of producing good leather for his tannery to work with. Premium products were not only a sign of status in civilisation. It was also a lifestyle upgrade that benefited civilians. Leather was more durable even if Rino had no idea if the undead needed this luxury. However, the idea of finally having leather bags compared to clay vats and woven wooden baskets thrilled him. It made transporting certain materials such as paper easier.

The last on his list but not a priority was akin to an ecology dumpster in the living caves. Back in his world, many farmers raised pigs to turn crop waste into food for free meat to slaughter. Pigs ate anything and were easy to fatten. Their fats were made into cheap soap and, honesty made good oil always in demand.

Rino had his idea of farm animals, but the only problem was finding animals that weren't completely hostile in this strange new world. He definitely did not want to capture any of his domesticated livestock from the Woods of No Return.

He thought about the skiving archer and smirked inwardly. Maybe he did not have to do this himself. Why get down and dirty when he could push the job to another more suited individual?

Summoning Mutt to act as his messenger, Rino sent the sabre tooth wolf on a journey to run back to Noir Province to oversee his new task. They had ten days to find three pairs of unique animals to bring back to the animal pen. Rino would modify the pen later, and hopefully, the farming fairy would find a way to grow the hemp trees, water bell flowers and potatoes in his town.

For now, there was one more pending task on his quest list.

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Side Quest #18

Objective: Craft fish trap

Reward: Intermediate Trapping Skill

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Trapping was a redundant skill to Rino, but he knew if the quest wasn't completed, the fussy gods might be unhappy. Personally, fishing should be done with a pole and not with traps or nets. Rino had no idea why the gods wanted to create something to destroy a man's romance with nature.

In any case, Rino looked through the tutorial quickly and discovered that fish traps were useful against ferocious fishes who snuck away with his baits. Wanting revenge for his empty haul a few days earlier with the potato bait, Rino decided to head back to his town to complete this side quest.

The farming fairy who followed Rino was tending to the soil when the lich appeared behind her. The fairy lost control of her magic with a scream, and the potato sprouts shrank back into the soil shyly.

Rino apologised, feeling bad for scaring people constantly with his unannounced arrival. However, he wasn't truly sorry for his fashionable travelling methods. Getting to business right away, Rino asked if the soil in this valley was suitable for growing crops and planting hemp trees. He needed wood to weave that fish trap and could do with some speedrunning.

The farming fairy nodded nervously and explained that the soil was a little too rich in minerals. While it usually entailed a good harvest, the natural growth process was slow in the beginning.

"I was adjusting the soil acidity level using water magic and inspiring the potato seeds' growth using nature magic," the fairy explained.

Rino patted her with one finger and told her to take a break while he took over. He needed a few more potatoes in the farms of his new town to feed his future animals. However, before he fed any animals, he had to make some fish food to tempt the evasive carps he wanted to catch.

The farming fairy left Rino with the spuds and tended to the hemp trees, adjusting the soil acidity so that the plants would grow a little faster. The trees were half wilting from too much nutrients and too little water, not that Rino knew. He just wanted wood to weave his fish trap, and the treated cypress planks would not work.

The fish trap design was simple. The woven wooden fish trap would float automatically, so Rino would use that to his advantage of keeping it near the water's surface. If he needed it to sink lower into the water, he could always add rocks as weight and tie the trap to some wooden stakes to hold it in place facing the opposite flow of the water. The idea of the trap was to tempt passing fishes swimming downstream with yummy salted potato. It was a one entrance type of design with the exit blocked by a smaller woven cone funnel to invite fishes but prevent them from leaving the trap.

Rino studied the fish trap basket design. It appeared rather straightforward and could be woven out of reeds. Honestly, the magician wondered if the primitive fish trap basket would work against carnivorous carps if the river fishes here turned out to be anything like the ones he saw in the Woods of No Return. Nothing would stop those fishes from eating their way out of his wooden basket trap.

Shrugging, Rino decided to ignore the efficiency of this simple trap. It wasn't his fault that the gods designing his quests did not have foresight. If they wanted a fish trap, he would craft one. It was better if the trap didn't work so that Rino had reasons to go back to his pole and hooks.

Finding some bendy twigs from the hemp trees that refused to grow straight, Rino used them as the fish trap's outline. There were plenty of reeds by the river, and Rino gathered some to help tie the sticks together, forming the basic skeletal structure of the main body. Then, with the help of shadow tendrils, Rino wove the reeds into the structure fine enough to keep the fishes in but with sufficient gaps for the water to flow inside. 

Once the main trap's body took shape, he tested the buoyancy and added a few small rocks to keep it down in the river. After Rino was satisfied with the depth it submerged, he tossed it to one side. He started working on the inner conical basket to invite fish in and deter them from leaving, thanks to the hinge mechanism that would pull the wooden spikes together once a fish enters the basket. The spikes were not made to stab fishes who tried to leave. However, they acted like reedy trapdoors.

Testing the reedy trapdoor with his hand, Rino thanked his horoscope stars that he was all bones and no flesh. Really, he should have known that the reverse trap door mechanism was going to catch his wrist bone when he tried to remove his hand from the darned thing. It was working a little too well, but exactly the way it was intended.

Satisfied that the trap was functional despite the overly simple design, Rino studied the last part of his trap crafting tutorial. It really couldn't be simpler as Rino tied the two pieces together with reed and loaded it with salty potato bait before dumping the thing into a river.

Ping!

Rino smirked. With his side quest completed and the main quest delegated to the slacking hunter, he claimed his useless reward and headed back to the vault study.