Spellheart 9: Chapter 29 (Patreon)

The air buzzed with anticipation as I surveyed the massive array of wooden boxes sprawled out before me. Each was ornately carved and filled with the components needed to create our Sacred Grove. I’d never assembled anything this large or complex before, even during my old life on Earth.

I’d always believed I had more patience with technology than most. Turning junk machines back into viable products had been my job, after all, and that took steady hands, creative thinking, and a willingness to pour over lengthy manuals. The trouble was, I didn’t see a manual anywhere.

But I was undaunted. I wasn’t the man I had been back then. My mind was quicker, as were my hands.

Opening all these boxes would have been an all-day event as an ordinary human. But now, as a cultivator of tremendous power, I stuffed all the boxes into my Dimensional Storage to be hauled back to Castle Mac. Or at least, that’s what I tried to do. A few of them wouldn’t go in.

That was odd, so I cracked the corner open to see what was inside that wasn’t allowed in my Dimensional Storage. A pair of green eyes sat in the box, staring back at me.

I jumped back in fright and let out a little scream of surprise, and an elf poked her head out of the hole.

“Are you our new master?” the elf asked nervously. She looked me up and down, paying attention to my lack of Satyr horns.

I cleared my throat and got a hold of myself. “Well... uh... how about you call me your new employer instead?”

“Yes, sir.” The elf continued to eye me suspiciously.

Like the first box, the others that wouldn’t fit in my Dimensional Storage also contained elves. They were stacked atop one another like firewood. A few were upside down, tangled in the arms and legs of their peers. All were female, though their cultivation levels ranged from mage acolyte to true mage. I suspected the bulk of my workforce included with my Sacred Grove kit would come in the form of heartwielders at the zeal accumulation level. But they were probably sent to me as wisps or eggs, so the boxes that contained them fit in my Dimensional Storage just fine.

Eventually, I called for aid. The Satyr King must have gone cheap on me because he hadn’t even bothered to dress the elves that came with the kit. I had to dip into the Hearthwood Clan’s reserves. Fortunately, I had plenty of spare outfits. After all, we were preparing for an influx of new family members, and elven sizes didn’t vary too much.

Elves were never fat unless they used special alchemical potions or cultivation techniques to become so. They ranged in height, but not nearly as much as humans. Though they could put on extra muscle if they wanted, the changes weren’t drastic unless they picked up a form of body cultivation.

That meant the clothes I had in reserve for my future family members would work fine on these elves here. In short, I had no trouble dressing everyone, for which my new Sacred Grove tenders were grateful.

Truthfully, I felt a bit guilty about using them as laborers. I didn’t like it. It was one thing to keep a sexy and beautiful elf woman as your kinky submissive thrall. That was a good bit of nighttime fun in my book, so long as she enjoyed it too. But forcing them to tend to my garden without pay felt too cruel.

Still, I didn’t have anyone else with experience tending to Sacred Groves, so there wasn’t much I could do for the time being. I’d just have to hit them with a surprise payday at the end of the week and the option to quit once they’d trained up a few willing replacements. I would want to swap out my workers eventually since I didn’t trust the ones the Satyr King sent me.

Eventually, and with the help of some of my family and harem, we got all the boxes settled in the courtyard of Castle Mac for unpacking. I figured I’d lay out everything we needed, along with all the workers I’d gotten, and then decide where to put the Sacred Grove based on the space needed.

“Alright,” I said, rolling up my sleeves and taking a deep breath. “Let’s get started.”

I pried open the first box, unsurprised to find hundreds of tiny wisps dancing inside. Their ethereal forms glowed with an otherworldly light, though most were far smaller than healthy elven wisps should be.

Still, they seemed eager to manifest, so I gave them all the materials. The crate they were in had a few zeal crystals, but not nearly enough for the number of wisps. While I wasn’t willing to open up my own incubator for these strange elves, I didn’t want to end up with a batch of malnourished workers. So, I sprinkled a few zeal crystals within the box while I continued opening boxes.

I came across more boxes, these with wisps of a more familiar fist-size. I gave those the same treatment, though I was careful to only use pure zeal crystals both times. The grade was higher than strictly necessary, but some of the elven workers of a higher level helpfully noted that these up-and-coming elves had been steeped in the knowledge they would need to tend a Sacred Grove.

I wanted them to manifest with that particular skill set, not whatever they skimmed from the ambient mana. Though I had enough wealth to spare that I was perfectly comfortable with them picking up abilities beyond what I required. From the look of the boxes, the Satyrs gave the elves only what was necessary and little else. I didn’t want ignorant slaves, so I could be much more generous.

The rest of the boxes were filled with dirt and seeds of various dimensions. One in particular seemed loaded with dung.

“I believe this is Kun Peng Dung,” I said as I examined the teeming goopy black mass.

“How can you tell with just a glance?” Comela asked curiously. She’d been quick to volunteer to help. Unfortunately, she’d assumed I was looking for fighters rather than manual laborers, so she’d dressed more for war and less for setting up a magical farm.

“Experience,” I replied. “I’ll tell you someday.”

When all the boxes were open, sorted, properly labeled, and placed back in my Dimensional Storage, I had the wisp boxes placed somewhere safe and left for the northern regions of the Hearthwood. Based on what my new employees were saying, that was the only place with enough room for a wizard-level Sacred Grove, which was all the further this kit would take me.

The location settled, and my family and I spent the rest of the day clearing land and setting up shelters for my new employees. They were quick to help, especially when they learned I was building homes for them to live in while they worked the Sacred Grove.

While basic, I made sure the structures were sturdy and could be expanded with all sorts of accouterments, given time.

“Are we really going to live here?” asked the elf who’d popped out of the first box I’d opened. She sounded shocked.

I shook my head. “It’s only temporary. Once you earn some money for rent, you can move into an apartment in the city. But for now, you have this for free. I think that--“

“It’s amazing! Look! I’m going to be able to sleep under a roof! I haven’t had a roof since before my Clan was destroyed by the Satyr’s invasion...” The surprised elf wiped away tears from the corners of her eyes.

“Er... well...” I ran my hand through my hair, feeling a little awkward now. “You’re welcome, I guess. But there’s plenty more where this came from.”

Originally, I was just going to build a few large bunkhouses, but now I felt a little bad these elves had been mistreated in their former lives, so instead, I built a housing complex large enough for each of them to have their own private room.

It wasn’t too much trouble, considering my earth magic allowed me to raise a chunk of stone from the ground with little more than a wave.

Besides, outside of the Primordial World, True Mage was a rank with some status. At the very least, an elf of such rank would have a private room. Usually, Mage Acolytes as well. I had been thinking with those standards in mind, not realizing that these elves had expected to live naked in the woods without pay.

I hadn’t counted the number of heartwielder wisps since the small size of some of them was still throwing me off. Still, I built bunk houses large enough that they wouldn’t have to group together into batches of more than four at a time. By the time I was done, their living spaces were more luxurious than earlier settlers of the Hearthwood tribe had enjoyed. They’d be nicer than the dorm I’d lived in for college once we added plumbing and lighting.

By the time I was done, I’d worked a full day. The new True Mages and Mage Acolytes settled in and started pacing off the breadth and width of the Sacred Grove and were already laying out the seeds to be planted in each spot. They seemed to have the assembly of the Sacred Grove well in hand. They were remarkably professional at the job too.

“Do I need to do anything?” I asked.

The green-eyed elf whose box I’d first opened shook her head. “No, we’re fully trained to take it from here. You’ve done more than any Satyr would have already. On behalf of everyone here, I thank you for your generosity and promise we’ll take good care of your new Sacred Grove!”

“Thank you for your hard work so far, then...” I ran my hand through my hair. “Say... what was your name?”

“I was formerly called Nature Elf 102, sir,” the green-eyed elf said.

“Do you have a real name?” I frowned at the dehumanizing name.

“Well... before my clan was destroyed, I was called Aelina. The Satyrs prefer we not use names when talking with them, though. After all, we’re just another expendable resource as far as Sacred Groves goes. We’re bound to it as tightly as the plants placed upon it are...”

I tightened my lips. “Well, I won’t be expending your lives for a little magic like the Satyrs do. You have my word on that. Sleep well, Aelina.”

I went home to a long night of dual cultivation with my wonderful woman, though truthfully, the session lasted several days. I got a little carried away testing new theories and techniques I picked up working on the Cult of the Unblinking Eye’s dual cultivation technique.

I incrementally tested my latest ideas individually, revising where I’d been wrong and improving upon what worked best. By the time I was done, I had a new list of theories and refinements to make for my new Hearthwood Clan dual cultivation technique.

The days and nights that blurred by were filled with much moaning, squirming, and begging. There was nothing quite like dual cultivation. It was rewarding in a way that sitting in the Cultivation Chamber meditating on my thoughts never could be. I suppose traveling the land as a conquering warlord was a close second, but only because a conqueror warlord had plenty of women.

After all, what does a man conqueror for if not to have beautiful women waiting on his arm? Or, in my case, on their knees. Having them begging to do such wonderful and exciting things to them was terribly exhilarating.

Alas, as the night of dual cultivation ended, and I had to break to start the day, the begging and pleading turned less intimate. My companions weren’t quite of the same scientific mind that I was, so they weren’t as eager to participate in my experiments for incremental improvements of our Dual Cultivation Technique. With sore, wobbly legs and unable to stand up properly, they stumbled to their feet one after another.

“Alright, I guess we’ll break here for today,” I chuckled as I handed them their homework. The latest version of my improved Dual Cultivation technique.

“But I just finished memorizing the previous technique!” Eltiana said as I handed her and all my other women a revised edition.

“Don’t worry. Page thirteen through page eighty-seven is almost identical. You should only skim them. The rest, however, has been completely rewritten.”

“But... we all have to memorize a different version?” Assyrus asked, staring at the bundle of papers in her hands in fright.

“All of you except my adorable little control subject. She gets to keep using the old version. But I won’t tell you who wound up with the control manual...”

I gave their sexy elven heads a pat each, despite the pouts on their lips. Then I headed back to the showers to clean up and check back in on my Sacred Grove. Behind me, I could hear my harem wrestling one another to find the original manual to avoid today’s homework.