Soon enough, it was once more the rainy season. This was Iris's third one in the beastworld and she wasn't certain she could see her life any other way now. There had been too much craziness to worry about ever since she had transmigrated to this world to worry about missing home before. However, she wasn't sure she could even consider the modern world as her home anymore. Now her home was among her mates and her cubs where she was surrounded by friends and the faces of those who depended upon and looked up to her.
Last year things had been much easier than the year before. However, things were shaping up to be an even better year. There were no longer any homes that needed to be built, no wild beastmen to worry about, and there was more than enough time to take care of the most recent quest her system had issued her. Her mates no longer had to overwork themselves and they could happily pursue their own hobbies and relax together at home.
Several applications for new businesses had already been submitted by the citizens of Blue Spring City. Among them, Iris was happy to see, was one for a business selling wooden flowers and other beautiful knick-knacks. The males had further refined the idea they had started with, using Iris's advice, and the female in the family had, finally, stepped forward to sign off on the idea and make the business official. This made Iris feel happy beyond words as her people were not only paving their own paths forward, but they were taking care to ensure they were as successful as they could be.
Iris didn't actually mind how cautious some of them were or how long it took for those outside of her direct friend group to start businesses. In fact, she had to turn down a few people who submitted applications for their own businesses already. Things like wanting to start a restaurant without having a menu in mind or just selling crops from private farmland without any special products were not ideal for a long-term successful business. However, she hardly wanted to diminish their enthusiasm, so she simply gave them a list of things to figure out before returning to her so that they could re-discuss the issue.
Most of her citizens took it well and a few even seemed relieved. They saw how successful Holly and others were, so they wanted a piece of that success as well. However, it was difficult to know what one needed for a successful business when they had never run their own shop before. Knowing that learning to read, write, do basic math, come up with a full menu, have staff in mind, etc. was necessary for a restaurant did cause some people to lose their enthusiasm due to it being too much work, but others treated it as a checklist that they hoped to accomplish within the year.
Meanwhile, grocery store enthusiasts were encouraged to try developing specialty products without having a shop in mind. They could always sell those items to Fawn, the local restaurants, and the Golden Tradesmen. If they ended up having an entire line of related items, then it was more likely that a proper shop front would be needed, but it certainly wasn't where one wanted to start. It would just end up being an unnecessary cost that would cut into their potential profits, which was hardly ideal.
On that note, more people were interested in renting private farmland this year as well as purchasing specialty seeds. Luckily for Basil and Birk, there was still enough space for them to continue their project, but there certainly weren't as many empty plots this year. Apparently, many of the families had figured out that the bushes and trees needed very minimal work to take care of. An occasional watering and weeding was more than enough to ensure they would grow well and then they'd have fruit for most of the year. The trees could even be chopped down before the cold season and turned into bark flour and firewood, making them a great investment.
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Since nearly every male in the city had worked as a farmer or orchard worker by this point, Iris certainly couldn't argue with their logic and was more than happy to encourage their enthusiasm. In fact, due to how much their population had been growing in recent years, she felt like this was a good thing. More food meant that the crops produced on the one hundred acres she hired workers for would go much further. Really, if anything, she almost felt like it would be necessary to increase the farmland in a few more years to support their growing population.
Beastmen seldom birthed a single cub or hatchling. Pregnancies almost always resulted in entire groups being born at once, causing their population to remain steady, even despite death being a constantly looming threat in this world. Of course, their city was quite fortunate as they had reduced their casualties by quite a bit. Ensuring they had abundant food, sturdy defenses, and several health professionals, meant that more cubs were being born each year than they sustained losses.
When they had first moved to the location that would become Blue Springs City, there wasn't a single cub to be found among their group. Miscarriages and difficulties with pregnancy had been a common concern in their city, just as it was everywhere. Soon enough, Iris's fox cubs were born and they had been a symbol of hope to all in the city who had seen them. It had been a painful sight for many of the females in the city who had spent several years hoping for cubs of their own.
By a stroke of luck, many females found themselves pregnant by the time the first rainy season in their city arrived. More than half of those pregnancies had come to full term and most resulted in successful deliveries. From there, the phenomenon had only continued, even resulting in Iris's friend, Holly, having her own set of wolf cubs. As most of the females in their city had been half-orcs who struggled with becoming pregnant in the first place, much less having abysmal luck in said pregnancies coming to term, they could only feel like they had been truly blessed since moving to their new home.
While Iris had no way of knowing it, much of this was attributed to her. Everyone could see just how hard she had been working on their behalf. The fact that it was clear she had the ear of the Beast Deity only reinforced this idea for them. When it came time to defend their city from threats, the males were all willing to lie down their lives to not only protect their families, but also to protect the land they were now proud to call home.
With the Owl Tribe joining their city, they now had several complete females among them. After the initial social adjustments that had to be made, everyone got along quite well. Everyone remembered what it was like for half-orcs before they moved to Blue Springs City, but no one felt like that was how they had to live anymore. Of course, the complete females had even more success with giving birth than the half-orc females had, which caused the city's population to swell even more.
None of these numbers had been accounted for by Iris, though, as she only tended to count the number of adults in their city. Of course, most people tended to keep their young cubs at home unless they were going out as a family. So, there was no way that Iris could keep track of such a thing anyhow. She could only observe things whenever she went out with her own family or friends. This was likely to lead to some confusion in the near future, but that was a story for another time...