・Prologue Summoned to Another World as a Farmer
My name is Hirayama Tatsuya, twenty-nine years old. Your average almost-thirty guy grinding away at a black company.
And… apparently I’ve gotten caught up in one of those “transported to another world” deals.
I’d gone mountain climbing on my day off — it’s a hobby. On the way home, walking through town, a magic circle suddenly lit up under my feet, and by the time I knew what was happening—
“Ohh, you have come at last, legendary heroes!”
Cue the stock line. I found myself standing in a throne room, right in front of a king.
Fluffy long-piled red carpet, luxurious furnishings crammed into every corner, armored soldiers lined up along the walls.
And when I looked around — there was a group of rough-looking guys and girls with brown and blond hair, wearing their blazers all sloppy, like a high school delinquent crew.
Well, I guess they got dragged here same as me.
“Where is this place?” the gap-toothed blond who seemed to be the delinquents’ leader asked the king.
“This is the Kingdom of Iris — and I am its king. In truth, this world stands upon the brink of ruin.”
According to the king, once every hundred years this world gets hit by a flood of monsters.
Every time it happens, kingdoms and towns get trampled, and everything near the “gate” takes catastrophic damage.
The flooding monsters are apparently extremely powerful.
This world’s knight orders and adventurer guilds can’t remotely keep up, so the standard countermeasure is this thing called a hero summoning.
Heroes brought over from Earth possess all kinds of ultra-powerful skills, and they display absolutely ridiculous strength. So he says.
“These are skill plates. Upon them are written the skills you currently possess.”
The king handed out silvery-white plates, about five centimeters by ten.
One for me, five for the delinquent boys and girls — six total.
“WHOA! I dunno what this means but mine says Hero’s Lightning Strike or somethin’!”
The gap-toothed blond leader-type shouted happily.
“Hm. So you are… the legendary hero, it seems. A cheat skill that imbues your every attack with the power of the thunder god — the hero’s power.”
“Mine says Sage’s Enlightenment!”
That was the guy with long brown hair.
“A skill that lets you wield every attack and healing spell up to intermediate tier from the very start. With training, you shall master every spell in existence… nay, even original ultimate-class magic.”
“Mine says Saint’s Gospel!”
“And mine says War God’s Fist!”
Anyway, everyone was calling out one seriously cheat-smelling skill after another.
So, my skill plate says… oi oi, seriously?
“Yo, backpack old guy? What’s YOUR skill plate say?”
Old guy… what is with this gap-toothed blond. I’m a solid ten years older than you, punk.
And with that, everyone’s eyes gathered on me.
“Ah. My skill is — it says Crop Cultivation.”
The entire room froze.
”…Huh? Could you say that one more time?”
“My skill is Crop Cultivation. It also says Farm Tool Handling and stuff.”
”…Huh?”
The room stayed frozen.
Look, don’t give me that reaction. Farming skills are all that’s written here, okay?
The rest of my skills are all garbled, like [壹、縺包ヲ羅ィ縺縺縺ェ皀筌].
And then, after a long freeze—
“Pfffhaha… HAHAHAHAHAHA! Oi oi, this old guy got summoned to another world to FIGHT and his class is FARMER! That’s WILD! I’m dying here!”
“Hyaha… uwahahahaha! Oi oi, for real!? Not a hero summoning, a FARMER summoning? What a punchline!”
“I literally can’t! A battle farmer… hahaha!”
The delinquents pointed at me and laughed like I was a sideshow.
Truly, terrible manners and terrible brains, the whole lot.
That is not how you treat an older stranger you just met.
At which point the king cleared his throat with a cough.
“Now then. You shall all proceed to the imperial capital. There you will train, and prepare for the great monster uprising born of the dimensional rift.”
—The following night.
We were camping in a great forest.
The imperial capital was supposedly a day and a half’s walk straight through it.
We’d been given a magic compass, and the deal was simple: walk the way it points.
Oh, and this forest? Turns out it’s technically a type of dungeon. A nest of super-powerful monsters.
Apparently they call it the Forest of No Return. Lovely.
The only reason we could stroll through it now was that a renowned cleric cast a monster ward on us before we left the kingdom.
By his word: for forty-eight hours, so long as we didn’t provoke anything, no monster would come near us.
Also — the hero party seems to really, truly despise me and my farming-only skill set, to the point that nobody will speak a word to me.
Nothing for it. I bedded down in my sleeping bag a little ways off from where they were camped… and fell asleep.
☆★☆★☆★
“Looks like the old guy’s asleep.”
The gap-toothed boy said it while watching Tatsuya’s sleeping form.
“So what’s the plan, Miyamoto? The prep money was a hundred gold coins per person, right?”
The blond miniskirt girl shrugged, exasperated.
“Yeah. Why the hell should we split the money fairly with a useless old man? Besides — once training’s done, we’ve gotta go find the hero’s equipment.”
“Right. Anyone who crossed over can equip it, they said.”
“It’s supposed to be insanely high-spec gear. Survival rate in battle shoots way up. And if we find it… we’d have to share some of it fairly with the old guy too, wouldn’t we?”
The blond miniskirt girl glanced toward the sleeping Tatsuya and dropped her voice to a whisper.
”…Isn’t the old guy just… dead weight? They said plenty of past summonees died, right?”
“Yeah,” the gap-toothed blond nodded.
“This ain’t a game. Life and death are real here. And we’re friends, so obviously we share everything fair and square. But the old guy’s not one of us.”
“Plus he’s a farmer. Useless.”
Good — the gap-toothed blond nodded.
“Everyone — we’re leaving while the old guy’s asleep.”
And there, a girl with shoulder-length black hair murmured.
“No, but… that’s…”
“Huh? What’s your problem, Mayu?”
“This place is a nest of super-high-level monsters, and the ward only lasts forty-eight hours, right? There’s only one compass, too. Even if the monsters don’t get him… he’s guaranteed to wander around until he drops dead…”
The gap-toothed blond made a dumbfounded face. “Haah?”
“So what, we bring the old guy along? We donate OUR supplies to him? Lower OUR survival rate for his sake? That’s not funny even as a joke.”
“No, I mean, you’re right, but…”
“Right? Even I’d feel gross straight-up killing him just for being dead weight. So… we leave him. That’s all.”
“That’s… no different from killing him.”
“Look, that old guy’s a farmer, not a hero. He’s a different species from us. Human garbage.”
The black-haired girl thought about something, then turned her eyes toward Tatsuya’s sleeping bag.
”…I’m sorry… mister.”
The gap-toothed blond nodded, satisfied.
“Alright — pack up all the water and food, and we move. Not like anything we’d leave would do the old guy any good anyway.”
☆★☆★☆★
The next morning.
I woke with the sunrise — and was struck speechless.
“Those little… they actually did it.”
The high schoolers’ campsite was cleared out. The water, the food, the money the king had prepared for us… every last bit of it, gone.