(If the river water has that zombie-like taste, it probably means the body fluids from those rotting monsters are flowing in from upstream. I can handle it, but of course it would upset a human’s stomach.)
Taking advantage of having no one watching, I extended the vines of my clothes into the water, caught a fish, pulled it back, and let it brush against my leg under my clothes — eating while thinking it over. Noel had mentioned poisonous fish were increasing, and it seems that’s true. Poisonous fish don’t taste particularly good, so I can tell the difference, and by my estimation more than half the fish have become toxic. The bad water is affecting the fish too. And moreover, these fish aren’t ordinary fish — they’re a monster variety that appears to have evolved to withstand the toxicity of this water. …Well, even toxic, they’re monsters and give more energy than regular fish, so they’re fine for my purposes.
(Hmm, but this is a real problem. Noel getting sick was probably from washing his food in this river… is that what happened to the villagers too? If so, treating the sickness won’t fix anything unless I address the root cause.)
I looked upstream. The zombie monsters had been multiplying enormously up on the mountain, and wiping them all out would be impossible. My voice doesn’t work on them, so I’d have to fight each one individually — that’s simply not feasible.
(But at this rate, ordinary animals — humans included — won’t be able to survive anywhere near this mountain. From what Daon said, that area has an ecosystem forming right now with no telling how it’ll develop…)
From the fragments of information I’d picked up in the conversation between those two as they built my backstory: the mountain had been saturated with magical energy far too dense to inhabit because of the dead dragon, becoming miasma that harmed all living things. Over five hundred years that had dissipated, and now it had become a land where monsters thrive wildly, eating each other and evolving in new directions — a dangerous place. That’s what humans apparently call a “monster wasteland.”
(I’m so glad I got out before the powerful monsters completely overran it… the mountain ended up with a whole zombie-dominated ecosystem because of all that new evolution. At first it was mostly goblins and things like that, but partway through even the goblins were only the zombie kind.)
I found myself thinking back on those days with feeling. I dislike goblins — they’d yank me out of the ground and startle me. After I took human form they at least stopped pulling me up, but there was one time I had just my head sticking out of the soil and a zombie goblin came and gnawed on my stem. Of course I shrieked in shock, but screaming doesn’t work on zombies. They don’t even taste good, so I had no interest in absorbing them either — I tried squeezing them with my hair-vines and spitting dissolving fluid on them, but then they kept swarming in droves, and eventually I found it faster to tear them apart than dissolve them, so I started ripping them to pieces with vines and slicing them up with sharp-leafed plants —
(Ugh, I just dredged up something unpleasant. I never want to live like that again… anyway, the mountain being zombie-ridden, it’s no wonder the water is contaminated. I need to purify it.)
Plants that can purify contaminated water do of course exist. I sat at the riverbank, grew plants through Diversification around me, and instructed them to spread upstream. Growth has its limits, and I can keep producing more by spending my magical energy, but using too much will leave me hungry.
Since the watermill is upstream from the village, I made this the center point and extended the plants both toward the village and up toward the mountain, stopping once the village area was covered. …I think it used up most of what I’d taken in from the fish.
(Doing it all at once is impossible… I’ll keep extending it gradually over time. The zombies were gone by the time I was partway down the mountain, so up to around there… oh right. Up to about where that human was collapsed, that should be far enough.)
The first human I saved after taking human form. I wonder how that knight is doing now. After he woke up I’d deliberately moved away from the river for a while to avoid running into him, so I don’t know if he passed through before or after. Whether he made it home safely or died — I’d prefer he be alive, but he doesn’t seem to be from this village, and I’m unlikely to cross paths with him again, so there’s no way to check.
(But people do go up to around that area, which means it’s worth purifying the water that far. It’ll help animals without poison resistance too…)
Next I want to check how the village uses water. And tomorrow I’ll need to distribute more recovery medicine to anyone who’s fallen ill again.
(There’s a well in the village too. Groundwater takes years to filter through, so the well water might be fine — but I should grow some of these plants there as well, just to be safe.)
Along the waterway I’ve grown a plant with many small white flowers. I found this one on the back of a zombie monster.
It had been growing on them like cordyceps — parasitic, spreading across their bodies. By the time the zombie’s whole body was covered in flowers, its remains would crumble back into soil, and the flowers would take root in that spot. That’s what this plant does. Since my Status Display skill gives me information on anything I’ve absorbed, I know it in detail.
I’d absorbed this flower thinking it would work as an attack against zombies — and it does only parasitize zombies, so it’s completely safe for humans. …The zombies’ end is rather grisly, but no danger reaches people.
(This world really does have some frightening plants… but from the human side, they’re good plants.)
It gladly absorbs putrid water, waste, and toxins, converting them into rich fertilizer. Its name is “Puribloom” — straightforward as names go, but apparently it’s considered an extremely useful plant. It only grows naturally in areas with an abundance of magical energy, however, so it’s rarely found where people live, and specimens brought back from the wild apparently don’t spread further due to insufficient magical energy to sustain them.
My plan is to grow Puribloom in the well first, and then in the latrines and cesspits to help with fertilizer production. If I get the plants established to a reasonable size, they should be able to sustain themselves on the organic matter and grow from there.
(Since I can grow plants freely, I have as much as I need — and this is how I can help the villagers!)
Having thought of the cause of the sickness and a solution for it, I headed home in good spirits. …Being this useful a witch, surely the villagers will go on accepting me for a long time to come.
I used my vines to climb up to the ceiling hammock and lay back. …The sensation of being suspended is genuinely strange. I’m a creature that belongs underground, not one that should be hanging in midair. And then, floating there, I remembered the image of a root vegetable hanging to dry in my old world.
(Is this what a drying daikon feels like…?)