Genius Mage in a Cultivation World

Chapter 198 - Food Problem

The day passed without any major events shaking the camp out of its peace. The projects progressed all with a surprising rate of growth. What used to take weeks of time for a few people was something that a huge group could achieve between meals. 

Yet, at the very end of the day, when all the workers and cultivators either went to rest or to have their evening watch, Layn and his direct friends only started the most important part of the day. 

"The first meeting of the council starts now," Yelna muttered under her nose, sitting with her knees curled all the way up to her chin. 

Even though the work progressed quickly, there were many important matters and businesses that had to be dealt with as an absolute priority, stopping the workers from creating a place suitable for the council. As such, they ended up in the same place as before, being the camp's kitchen. 

And with both Yelna and Irea joining the group, it was now really crammed. 

"Let's start with the essentials, then," Irea said, standing up from Layn's knees. "In terms of food reserves... We don't have any food reserves," she said before releasing a deep sigh. "Combining up everything that you guys brought and what we managed to save up, we can last for three days," she added before lowering her head. "And that's already with strict rations,"  she muttered.

"Do you have any idea how to solve this problem?" Markus asked before moving his eyes to his own wife. "Yelna? Can the fields yield anything so quickly?" he asked. 

"Three days..." Yelna muttered, rubbing her chin. "If we last three days, some of the older crops should be ready," she said in a low voice. Yelna squinted her eyes as she thought about everything she learned during the day, calculating the chances and probabilities. "But that won't change much. The crops can only help us last one more week," she said before shaking her voice. 

'I knew this would be a problem, but since I didn't expect them to arrive so suddenly, I failed to prepare for it,' Layn thought, blaming himself for the situation. "How about delegating a huge group to fishing and fishing alone?" Layn asked, trying to find out a solution to the situation. 

"In a sense, that could buy us a few more days..." Irea replied before hesitating for a moment. "But I don't think it will be easy to force all those hardened sons of bitches to just go and fish for the entire day," she added, revealing the reason behind her stress. 

"Leave it to me," Al said, proving that while he wasn't all that active during the meeting, he didn't ignore what was said at all. "We are not in a situation where we can bother with what we want and what we don't want to do. I will put those mercenaries in line," he said before lowering his head back under cover of a cap someone gave him during the day. 

"Still, that gives us half a month, maybe a month if everything goes well," Irea summed the situation up. "Even if we could somehow make our crops bear fruit faster than usual, it still wouldn't be enough to feed everyone here," Irea said before going back to her seat. 

As she plummeted down, she hid her face in her hands for a moment before lowering her guard and looking up at the faces of people gathered in the building. "In this situation, I believe we need to procure food either from our neighboring and friendly Overlord or from Slavians," she said, putting the harsh truth out for everyone to see. 

"I'm worried that asking for food from the overlord might be risky," Layn muttered. He wasn't happy to go against his girlfriend during the council, but that was the very idea behind this council in the first place. To clash the ideas and reasonings in order to find the best course of action that benefited everyone the most. "I think they already need to kill their own to get the stones. While this might be okay for them because of how profitable that trade is for both sides, I don't think they will easily agree to sell our the corpses," Layn explained his way of thinking without holding back at all. 

"And that leaves us with the Slavians," Markus muttered, raising his eyes at the archmage. "I hope you are not trying to make it so that we would rely on them more than necessary," he said, casting a small shadow of doubt over Layn's intentions. 

"That's not the case at all," Layn shook his head. 'But still, to think that this shot would come from Markus,' the archmage thought, puzzled by the unexpected development. 'While I knew someone would ask this question, for it to be him...' Layn hesitated for a moment before dropping the topic. 'Well, someone was bound to ask about this, so maybe it's better Markus did it,' Layn concluded before raising his eyes at his friend. "Right now, we don't know the intentions of the faction that Sitra claims to be friendly to us. While dealing with them is an option we need to take into account, I would love to have some more power backing our words before that," Layn said, presenting his stance on the matter. 

"Speaking of the power, are you happy with the forge?" Markus suddenly changed the topic, proving that he asked the previous question just to get it out of the way. "If what you said is true, we should be able to just overwhelm the complaints of the monsters with the number of coins we could throw at them," he proposed, putting forward a plausible idea.

"I don't think we should spread those coins so easily," Layn protested. "They are only as valuable as we make them be. What's more, they can work as the plugs to the deep magic of the world," Layn added, revealing the true value behind all the coins he was doing. Then, as if to prove his words, he pulled out a bunch of the stone coins before distributing them amongst the people in the room. 

"So that's the case," Markus muttered silently, rubbing his finger against the blank face of the coin. "Yeah, you are right about it, then. We can't spread them too carelessly," he agreed before passing the coin on the table. 

While this item on its own had an immense value in the current world, there was no personal greed in the room. Everyone knew that those coins, ultimately, were the shared wealth of everyone at the camp. As such, there was no incentive behind attempting to claim them for themselves, especially with how there was no place where one could go to spend those coins!

"Well, that also brings us to another matter," Layn said, putting one more coin on the table. He then started to play with it, allowing the atmosphere to tense up a bit in anticipation of what he was about to say. "I believe the current moment is the high time for us to divide the power in this place.. We might be friends and allies, but without a concrete frame of cooperation and obligations, we will end up clashing with each other over the least important things."