“A giant carrot tower…”
I kept growing carrots on Sonya’s instructions, and things have gotten out of hand.
There is currently a light-truck’s worth of carrots piled at the corner of the field.
“Ufufu~ it’s SPECTACULAR~!”
Silky hair whipping around, Sonya bounced and bounced.
Her palm-top rabbit attendants bounced right along with her, ecstatic.
“We did it~!”
“The carrot tower of our dreams~♪”
“Do we dive into the tower~?”
“We do~♪”
The palm-top rabbits hurled themselves at the tower and rolled around on its slopes wearing expressions of pure rapture.
“Still — home consumption alone is never going to make a dent in this.”
As I stood there calculating, Sonya’s glare locked onto me.
“Absolutely NOT~!”
“‘Not’ what, exactly?”
“You’re planning… to SELL the carrots!”
Correct.
And exactly as forecast: immediate objection.
“Oi oi. Better than letting them rot, no?”
Sonya’s eyes went teary and she shook her head hard, side to side.
“But but BUT~. There’ll be fewer carrots~!”
Thing is, per Ouroboros, these carrots sell for outrageous money.
And since the offering box is a certified rip-off system, I want steady income that doesn’t lean on the rabbits.
The “worth their weight in gold dust” line from before was apparently intimidation-flavored exaggeration — but “very expensive” is apparently entirely true.
“I’ll use the proceeds to make you a stew absolutely LOADED with carrots. Call it an investment and sign off, yeah?”
White stew and carrots — a legendary pairing.
Honestly, carrots pair beautifully with anything in the curry-adjacent visual family.
“Ho? And what is this ‘white stew’?”
There’s the bite.
Eyes gone sparkly, peering up at me.
“White stew. Goes INCREDIBLY well with carrots.”
“Does it go with carrots as well as CURRY does~?”
“Guaranteed carrot-compatible. No question.”
And there — the sparkle in her eyes has upgraded to full heart-marks.
Tail wagging, too. This creature is genuinely too endearing.
—This is the species with the murder-epithet “Gluttons of Massacre,” I remind you…
Anyway. That aside.
“Solid curry roux is expensive. Swallow your tears and let me liquidate some carrots, please.”
Sonya deliberated a while, then gave a small nod.
“Only the SURPLUS, okay~? The part we eat can absolutely never be sold, okay~?”
Approval secured, I went back to the cabin and spoke to Ouroboros.
“Use your Demon Lord… I mean, your Cornelia connections to sell carrots into the demon realm. You said they’d fetch a high price there, right?”
“As you command, Master.”
Ouroboros bowed crisply.
That maid uniform has really settled onto her, I have to say.
“I shall depart for Lady Cornelia’s manor… this evening, then.”
“Yeah, do that.”
Maria will cover the housework while she’s away.
Since Ouroboros arrived, Maria’s been left with little to do and has been helping in the fields — but housework was originally her whole department anyway.
Sonya, as ever, does nothing.
—If pressed, I’d say her queenly duty is… procreation.
Actually, in that department she works EXTREMELY hard, huh? Especially in berserker-rabbit mode, when she becomes physically uncontainable.
“However, Master?”
“Hm? What is it?”
“As Lady Cornelia and you are sworn allies, her introduction will surely come free of charge — but the merchant houses and the demon realm’s customs duties are another matter entirely.”
“Meaning?”
“Trade with the human realm is bound in layer upon layer of restrictions, and at the border checkpoints, functionaries of every relevant office keep very sharp eyes, so…”
“Mm-hm.”
“Please brace yourself to lose more than half to middlemen along the way.”
“That’s a rip-off with extra steps. Fine — we’ll eat it this once, but going forward, maybe we wholesale to a human town instead?”
And right then, the door burst open with a BANG.
“YO! I heard EVERYTHING!”
The Kansai dialect belonged, of course, to fox-eared Arisa.