Ch.9 Agricultural Science: Age 12 (Patreon)

A barony is a territory that a king grants to high-ranking nobles. Far from being an empty plot of land, the territory has farms, towns, and often cities on it that the baron must manage.

Despite being the lowest rank of the governing nobility, barons had to govern the territory, collect taxes, resolve disputes, maintain law and order, and contribute knights for warfare. In short, a baron was like a king in their region but a middle manager in the greater power scheme.

However, one might as well be a king in a world without the internet, where travel takes days, weeks, or months. That's why aristocrats are notorious for exploiting their people without the kingdom's knowledge.

King Redfield naturally wouldn't let the suspected demon lord run amok in his own territory, especially if I turned out to be human and pursued commerce instead of marrying his daughter. Therefore, he compromised by giving me land with a large river—with a catch.

"This is rude," Thea grumbled, resting her chin in her palm as she looked out at the scenery from atop a sky whale, an avian creature resembling a humpback whale but with massive reptilian wings and pudgy little feet that could scuttle on the ground. "You'd think he wanted us to grow irony here."

While it was the end of winter, when everything was dead, that wasn't the problem with the area.

We were in the center of Nightshade Forest, a gnarled hellscape with charcoal-barked trees, dark canopies, vicious monsters, labyrinth-like trails, and poisonous everything. The barony itself had a large river for basic subsistence but otherwise had no greenery because crops weren't growing.

"Relax, Thea," I sighed, reading a book on Elderthorn in Skylandish. "We have a barony."

"This isn't a barony—it's a prison," Thea puffed out her cheeks. "We can't even say that the grass is greener on the other side because we have no grass!"

I pinched her cute little cheeks and gave her a smile. "Come on," I said. "We're out of the sight of normal social procedures. So come over here and enjoy the peace."

Thea's eyes lit up when I patted the chair beside me, and she flew over to me, cuddling and rubbing her kitty ears on my cheek.

"While it's touching that you have such a close master-servant relationship, you should be careful not to get too attached," Lyssa rolled her eyes, looking out the window of our train-like box with a melancholy expression. "You can't forget that you're a suitor for a princess, and a noble on top of that. You won't be together forever."

"The hell we won't," I replied, rubbing Thea's ears to lift her spirits again. "I plan to become so strong before I'm fifteen that King Redfield will have to accept Thea if he wants me to marry his daughter."

"I can never tell if you're joking," Lyssa sighed. "And by that, I mean that I don't want to know if you're serious. So forget I said anything."

"Whatever helps you sleep at night," I smiled, playing with Thea's ears and making her giggle.

I was dead serious. Thea was my lifelong servant, and her presence was non-negotiable—for life. I'd honestly wage war for her.

The skywhale touched down on my new estate, leading to a cataclysmic cracking as the flaking ground exploded under the weight. When we jumped down, we saw that the ground was like clay rooftop shingles, spiderwebbed with cracks for twenty miles in each direction.

"Why is this ground rock hard when there's a river running through it?" Lyssa asked, steam billowing from her lips as she watched an icy river passing through the barren desert.

I chuckled with a truly murderous smile. "That's a sign that there's no soil here," I explained. "We're standing on clay."

Soil is made from composted plants, sand, clay, and silt, which collectively help feed nutrients to plants, allow nitrogen to reach roots, and create pathways for water to move through.

Within the soil is clay, made from kaolinite, a mineral useful for ceramics, paper, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. In small quantities, it helps retain water to prevent runoff and allows plants to absorb water. It also possesses negative charges that attract positively charged nutrients, such as potassium, calcium, and magnesium.

For ideal gardening and farming soil, a 10-20% clay composition provides good drainage to prevent root rot, great aeration for letting plants breathe, and effective water and nutrient retention. Yep, clay is pretty amazing.

Unless you’re standing on ground that is 100% clay. In that case, growing things is literally fucking impossible.

“That river is just a clay pot,” I replied. “Water isn’t moving through it.”

“Then how are we supposed to grow things?” Thea huffed, looking around.

“The kingdom doesn’t want us to grow anything—that’s the message,” I answered. “They’re afraid I'd become too strong if they gave me land with enough outlets. It’s a nice compliment for a twelve-year-old. It’s kinda cute.”

Thea giggled at my smug expression, but my assistant wasn’t so pleased.

“Can you even make soap without flowers or grass to feed cattle?” Lyssa asked.

“Hmmm?” I hummed, giving her a twisted grin. “I said they don’t want us to grow anything. Not that it’s against the rules to do so. So we'll be fine.”

Thea’s eyes sparkled when she saw my confidence. “How bad are they gonna regret it?”

“Oh, they’ll rue the day,” I grinned, accepting a large hug from the cat… teen? ‘Cat teen’ didn’t sound right, so I’ll stick with cat girl until she’s a woman in my eyes. After all, she became a legal adult at fifteen, but it will be three more years until I see her as one.

"They better!" Thea declared. "You deserve the Elysian Gardens after what you did for the kingdom but ended up with house arrest instead. Well, let's make this land so fertile that we can build an army off it and—!"

I rubbed Thea's ears, making her purr and calm down. Thea was so cute when she was murderous.

"Keep your voice down," I instructed. "We're taking a tour of my estate soon."

***

My estate—if you could call it that—looked like Salvador Dali had drawn a surrealistic cube on a desert, gave it a rock brick texture, and then angrily scratched it out. Only instead of a cube, it was a stone building; instead of a desert, it was a barony; and instead of being scratched, it was gashed by the claws of massive beasts.

The place looked like it had undergone multiple "heroic last stand" scenarios.

Surrounding us were fifteen-foot stone walls that were crumbling, if not completely broken, all within the desert-like environment with a river, adding to the surrealism.

My eyebrow twitched as I looked at it. 'Couldn't he have at least hired workers to build something fake while I was busy?' I thought.

The inside was worse. The entire first floor was a reception hall with bloodstained and torn-up furniture, and the living quarters consisted of five rooms on the second floor and a basement. But who would stay in Elderthorn? It was a joke.

"Okay, no," I said from the doorway.

SNAP!

With a flick of my wrist and a silent chant, I snapped my fingers, igniting every bit of furniture in the place while also testing the heat resistance of the building.

After the blue flames consumed everything, I extinguished the fire with magic and used wind magic to clear out the smoke. Finally, I cooled the room down with a spell, creating a pleasant breeze. I walked onto the clear stone floor, pulled out a throne chair from my spatial bag, and placed a smaller chair beside it.

Once Lyssa, thoroughly shocked alongside my guard detail, I sat down, crossed my ankle over my leg, and patted the smaller chair for Thea. She scampered up excitedly and sat down, donning an equally nasty mug while staring out the door.

After a few seconds, I turned to her. "Do you like the chair?"

Her twisted frown lit up like fireworks, and she gave me a beaming smile. "It's the best!"

"Do you want to keep it?" I asked.

Thea pointed at herself with wide eyes and then looked at Lyssa, the guards, and me. "Ummm... yes?"

"Great," I said, standing up. "Now, we need to create a place worth sitting in. So let's get started."

***

I spent the first week setting up the sleeping quarters for the guard detail, arranging the reception hall, and acquiring furniture from back home through griffon service. I had a deal with the king that allowed me to communicate with Silverbrook and the manor without intercepting my carrier, so they sent me what I needed every week through a three-day flight.

It might seem strange, but as a noble, impressing guests was crucial for gaining power, wealth, and agreements. It was the most important thing for someone like me to do.

After the first week, the royal detail that had accompanied my arrival ensured that we were "comfortable" and checked the "integrity" of my reception hall before they left.

As soon as they departed, Thea's new chair emerged from storage, and we immediately made ourselves comfortable on the cracked earth.

The next day, Thea and I woke up early and started stretching in the cold.

"Where are you two going?" Lyssa asked, a sense of foreboding filling her heart

"We're going hunting," I replied, continuing with my stretches.

"Hunting?!" she exclaimed. "You're surrounded by the Nightshade Forest! Everything out there is deadly! Did you not see the claw marks?"

"Oh, I saw them," I replied. "They made me really hungry. Just consuming one of those creatures would probably extend your lifespan by a decade or more. This place is a soul mana factory."

Most nobles achieved immortality and prevention of sickness by consuming magical creatures that had ingested soul mana meat. It was the primary means of obtaining soul mana for non-soul harvesters, both for humans and animals.

Soul mana accumulated as it transferred from beast to beast through consumption, and different classifications of beasts and monsters played a role in its growth. Once a beast accumulated enough soul mana, it would grow in size and become a "guardian." The next stage was becoming an "ancient," and finally, it would enter hibernation and become a "celestial," or a colossus.

I was only allowed to kill and harvest regular beasts during my training, but never guardians. However, this forest seemed to be a treasure trove!

"Why are you grinning?" Lyssa gulped. "It's really dangerous—"

"Bye!" I laughed like a little kid as Thea, and I sprinted away at thirty miles an hour.

"Your training is progressing splendidly!" I said to Thea as we ran.

"It's because we train every day!" Thea beamed as the forest came into view. "It's all thanks to you, master!"

I swooped from behind her, lifted her, placed her on my shoulders, and continued running as she initially freaked out. "I'm ‘master’ back home. However, here, in your forests, you're a princess!"

Her eyes sparkled like stars as she laughed, loving life on our way to the forest.

This was what I had envisioned when I came to Solstice.

Could this be emotion? The kind hidden beneath layers of trust issues and resentment? I suppose it's possible, as Thea was the only person who hadn't wronged me.

"All right, try to form a contract with one of the birds," I instructed. "They're going to be tough, so show them who's boss with your contract."

Thea closed her eyes and channeled spirit mana from the forest, releasing all the emotions present in the surroundings. She formed a contract with a bird.

A contract was an agreement between a beast tamer and an animal. In exchange for temporary help, the beast tamer gave the animal concentrated spirit mana. It was an instinctual exchange between the two parties, involving consciousness for higher-level beings unless a beast tamer refined enough spirit mana to create an intricate contract that interacted with the beast's mind, thus forcing it to comply.

Thea didn’t enjoy forcing contracts on beings. However, as the gnarled black trees came into view, she briefly nodded and closed her eyes. “I found one. Establishing a contract now….”

CRAaaaaCK!

"Ummmm... Thea?" I asked, witnessing the forest come alive as thousands of birds took flight. "Are you doing this?"

---

Lyssa pulled out a chair and sat down with an unenthusiastic expression. Despite being in the freezing cold, a knight held an umbrella over her, shielding her from the sun. "You don't need to do that, Marcus," she said.

"Baron Everwood will have my head if I don't, My Lady," Marcus replied, causing her eyebrow to twitch.

Her personal female knight also froze with an expression that said, "Please don't look at me...". The other four guards around her were in the same boat. No one wanted to incur her wrath, but everyone feared Baron Ryker Everwood more. He paid them an absurd amount of gold to be guards, trained them, and provided them with resources, ensuring them a good life.

However, if they failed to protect Thea, Lyssa, Leon, Scarlett, and now his new hereditary little brother, they would face the most gruesome death imaginable. They didn't know this for a fact—but they knew it for a fact.

"That boy," Lyssa huffed, grabbing a cup of hot tea handed to her. "I wish he wouldn't go out... What the hell is that?!"

"An attack?!" Randy, her personal light brunette knight, asked when thousands of crows shot into the air following a loud cracking noise. "No, the birds aren't attacking... they're fleeing!"

Everyone froze in horror as a gigantic wyvern, the size of a pterodactyl, burst out of the forest.

"GYRAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

"The kids!" Lyssa screamed, leaping up from her chair and running, only to be stopped by the guards. Despite her struggling, she could only watch as the blue wyvern landed next to two small figures, a twelve-year-old, and a fifteen-year-old. "No!"

Her mind twisted as the beast settled on the ground, and the two figures climbed onto its back and flew away.

"You've got to be kidding me..." Lyssa chuckled, madness swirling in her eyes as she watched them soar into the distance.

---

"This is what I call fantasy!" I yelled over the rushing wind as the wyvern soared through the sky, offering us a breathtaking view of the Nightshade Forest, which appeared even more vibrant up close. "You're the best, Thea!"

Thea giggled and held onto my waist as I held on for dear life. "I didn't force a contract!" she started. "She wanted to meet us and see if we could help defeat a guardian."

"Interesting. Take us there!" I replied.

After closing her eyes, the cat girl communicated with the wyvern, and it grinned. "It wants you to lure a specific beast out. We can keep its soul mana; it just wants the beast dead."

"Perfect," I smiled.

We circled through the forest until we reached a large lake. On a mountain to the right, there was a cave entrance leading into darkness. We flew above it.

"It's a large snake that can shoot acid over long distances," Thea frowned. "It can even reach here."

"Then stay at a safe distance," I said, standing on the wyvern's back as it approached the mountain. "By the time it reaches you, it'll be too slow to shoot."

With those words, I jumped fifty feet up and landed before the massive cave opening extending deep into the mountain. "It has to be at least a mile in. Hmmmm... let's start with a barrier."

'Montes glaciei, ad meam vocem invidiae. Involvite mundum vitro et congelate usque ad tundram,' I thought. A massive wall of ice slowly rose, closing off the mouth of the cave, leaving only a small opening.

Then I walked into the forest, pulled out my omnipotent tool, and shredded a tree into shavings. After returning to the cave, I created a five-foot ice bowl. I placed all the wood scraps inside and used water magic to fill it up.

"I suppose I can add 'Created an apocalyptic swamp cooler' to my list of life's accomplishments," I smiled.

A swamp cooler is a fan that pushes air through water. The box contained cellulose, which makes up trees, and it was soaked in water like a sponge. The water evaporates as the air passes through it, rapidly cooling the surrounding environment.

Surprisingly, the process of evaporation is what makes things cold by stealing heat from the surroundings, thus decreasing the temperature. It’s the reason why alcohol feels cold on the skin, as it evaporates quickly at normal temperatures. This principle also forms the basis of refrigerators, which continuously evaporate water into a gas and condense it into a liquid again.

I planned to do something similar with my ice lake, using wind magic to spread a cold, moist environment far and wide. Snakes are cold-blooded creatures, and it was already cold outside. Therefore, the snake would be weakened in the cave. If it got colder, it could potentially die of hypothermia, which was what I was hoping for.

Once everything was ready, I invoked my wind magic. "Venti furiosi, per terram quatite ut turbo, vastate terram donec nihil supersit."

A powerful gust of wind rushed through the tunnel, carrying away the water molecules. This process instantly lowered the temperature inside the cave to near freezing.

Science.

The earth shook as a powerful force rammed into the wall from within, accompanied by a loud hiss. It wasn't just an ordinary hiss or a booming hiss. No, it was something otherworldly.

"I might not be able to handle this!" I exclaimed, quickly chanting my most powerful ice spell.

"Gelidus potentia, voco te Cocytus!

Frigus exsurdens, glacies adveniat!

Per mundum congelatum, tenebras incute!

Cocytus, gelidus dominator, mane!

Nivis et glaciei imperium, sub tua potestate!

Exsurgat tempestas, terra frigore conpleatur!

Cocytus, frigus et gelu, nobis impera!"

As I could hear the massive, sluggish creature of death barreling toward my position, I finally completed the chant and waved my hand. "Glacialis potentia, maneat in aeternum!"

The power of ice, endure for eternity. Those were the words I commanded in my mind as a bright white cyclone shot through the cave, instantly freezing all the water in the atmosphere.

CRAaaaCKkkKkkkKkkkK!

I felt nervous as the snake crashed into the ice repeatedly, causing it to freeze and break under its attacks. However, it gradually slowed down.

By the time it burst out of the cave, the massive obsidian snake, its head twenty feet in the air, had very little energy left.

[Obsidian Basilisk]

My inspect skill locked onto a dozen new materials on its exterior, but I didn't have time to figure out which ones were missing. I noticed a lot of new materials on the snake, so it wasn't clear whether the scales were included. Perhaps they were literally obsidian, or maybe they weren't.

If they were, I could slice through them if my sword touched them. However, that also meant that the snake bathed in magma at some point, turning it into a creature shrouded in volcanic glass. Yeah. No.

So when in doubt, do what everyone else does: run like hell!

Running low on mana and unwilling to risk my life if a technique didn't work, I sprinted into a clearing and shot a fireball into the sky.

The Obsidian Basilisk hissed and chased after me with ghostly speed, proving that I would have been in screwed if I hadn't slowed it down. Thankfully, as planned—

“GYRAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!”

A wyvern cut through the clearing with a piercing roar, swooping down and biting the snake's neck, tearing out a massive chunk.

BOOM!

The earth trembled as the beast lifelessly hit the ground.

"Master!" a cute voice screamed from above. I looked up and saw a cute cat girl crash-landing into me. "Oof!" I coughed as she nailed me in the chest, leaving me momentarily winded.

"I'm okay," I chuckled. "Tell the wyvern that we'll split the meat."

I summoned my tungsten carbide sword and jumped to the neck wound, touching the metal to the skin. 'This is going to look disgusting,' I thought. 'Collagen IV, laminins, nidogen/entactin, perlecan, and integrin. Separate.'

SPLURT!

In a gruesome display of organic chemistry, the snake's skin and scales began sliding off its flesh.

Every beast has different layers of skin. For snakes, there are scales, followed by the outer skin called the epidermis. The outer skin is separated from the inner skin by a layer called the basement membrane, which acts as the glue providing structural support between the two.

Once I removed that layer, the skin slid off, making an unpleasant sound.

'Keratin,' I thought, jumping off the beast and moving to the weakened skin. 'Separate upon contact with tungsten carbide.'

With those words, I maneuvered the sword between the scales, slicing as I walked. It was fortunate that snakeskin is the same throughout. Once I reached the area that my original chant didn't reach, I separated the basement layer again before continuing my casual stroll.

The wyvern watched in shock as I casually dismembered the basilisk. After all, if it were that easy to cut through the Ballisik, it would have killed it!

In less than half an hour, I had peeled the entire skin off and started cutting it into chunks, tossing them to the wyvern, who was loving life.

According to Thea, the wyvern's name was Zenith, and the Obsidian Basilisk's acid had burned her face, leaving a large acid marking. I thought it looked badass, but the wyvern was a lady, so we had different perspectives.

Since Zenith was a divine, guardian-class beast with sapience, Thea negotiated a mid-term contract called a goodwill pact. This pact made it impossible for Zenith to harm us as long as we didn't attack her or give her reasonable doubt that we would. Thus, she sat around with a smug grin, savoring her greatest enemy.

After cutting up the meat and storing it in tubs that I placed into multiple spatial bags, Zenith helped Thea and me roll up the basilisk's obsidian skin—which appeared to be quite valuable—with her snout.

Once we were finished, Zenith flew us back to our humble outpost, which was now swarming with two dozen guards screaming for their lives.

"Yo!" I grinned, jumping off the beast. "Meet Zenith. She's going to stay with us for a while. Now, who wants soul mana steaks that would usually cost 1,000 gold each?" After all, it was a guardian-class beast! The soul mana was off the charts!

My question and their nods triggered the moment everyone in Elderthorn began getting ridiculously strong.

As I suspected, it was a terrible idea for King Redfield to drop a suspected demon lord into a land with endless potential for gaining strength, even if the odds of surviving an assassination attempt were slim.

But that was our secret. Anyone who considered mentioning that I gave my servant a throne and called her a princess lost their enthusiasm when I brought home a large blue wyvern as a pet and started feeding everyone Obsidian Basilisk meat harvested from a guardian beast.

***

"We're off to hunt. We'll be back shortly to start work on the farm!" I informed Lyssa, who was busy salting and smoking the Obsidian Basilisk meat. While I had created an ice room to act as a refrigerator, preserving most of the meat outright was a far better solution to prevent it from spoiling.

Hunting had become a daily part of our lives since Zenith agreed to stay with us as long as we continued providing her with cooked meat. Considering the dangers of walking through Nightshade Forest and the risk of poison, it was a sweet deal.

So every morning, we woke up, hunted, and brought the kills back for processing.

The fat was separated for soap production, which would create ultra-luxurious soap. The meat was smoked to kill bacteria and then salted. The pelts became trade items that we tanned. And I dissolved the remaining scraps and bones, as my skill to dissolve non-living things leaked when I was around seven years old. Therefore, I frequently used it for non-living objects.

I separated the various types of nutrients into different piles because I would use them to make fertilizer. After all, dead plants and animals created compost, fueling future plants in the life cycle.

Thea and I trained on the barren, broken clay ground during the second week. We used earth magic techniques to break apart the solid clay and used wind magic to push it away from the river.

It was exhausting work, but we had created a massive swimming pool ten feet deep around our humble abode and the river by the first month. We used the clay to construct massive fortress walls over the twenty-square-mile patch of land, transforming the place into a fortress.

“Wheeeeeeeeew!” I whistled. “Now it’s finally time to create soil.”

“We’re going to… create soil?” Thea asked in confusion.

“Yeeeeeeeee~p,” I exclaimed. “And not just any soil, either. We’re going to make pre-fertilized sandy loam soil. It will have the perfect composition of silt, sand, clay, and nutrients to grow plants. You'll see."

The next day, we took flight with Zenith, overlooking Nightshade Forest. “We need something massive and meaty, even if it tastes terrible. We’re not going to eat it."

Zenith nodded and soared for about an hour to an area with rocky terrain where massive boars, the size of small semi-trucks, were feeding on oversized grass.

“Zenith says, ‘Be careful, they’re very fast and have extremely tough skin,’” Thea warned.

“It’ll be okay. Just get close enough for me to make one cut,” I grinned, noting that there weren't any non-Earthian elements.

‘Collagen, keratin, calcium, sulfur, hemoglobin, myoglobin, water, protein, iron, sodium, potassium, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, copper, manganese, selenium, vitamin B, vitamin D, carbohydrates, glycogen, glucose, cholesterol, cytokines, cerebrospinal fluid, astrocyte, oligodendrocytes, microglia,’ I recounted.

Zenith brought us close to a boar and then made a sharp turn, allowing me to make a small cut. ‘Separate.’

In a truly disturbing turn of events, the massive semi-truck-sized animal separated into dozens of piles of minerals and nutrients, causing Zenith to panic as she realized the horrifying nature of the creature on her back. However, the contract wasn't warning her of any danger, so she was safe. Still, she swallowed nervously, realizing she couldn't mess with me.

After collecting all the various nutrients into different sacks, I put them into my spatial bag. I kept filling more and more sacks until I had a hundred sacks of different nutrients.

“Zenith wants to know what you’re doing,” Thea said, speaking for the nervous wyvern.

“Plants need a certain amount of nutrients that come from decomposing animals,” I explained.

Phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, iron, manganese, zinc, copper, boron, molybdenum, and carbon.

“I’m speeding up decomposition by a century by simply collecting and mixing it,” I said.

“Wow!” Thea exclaimed, clapping her hands with sparkling eyes. “Isn’t that amazing, Zenith?”

“Gyrah,” Zenith grunted in nervous agreement.

“See, even she thinks so!” the cute cat girl beamed.

“You’re so delightful, Thea,” I smiled, patting her head with a loving gaze, ignoring the turbulence caused by Zenith's shuddering. “Don’t worry, Zenith. You'll appreciate this come tomorrow.”

“She asks what’s happening tomorrow,” Thea said.

“Real work,” I frowned.

***

The next day, we returned to the same location with more sacks and pitchforks, along with ten people on Zenith’s back.

“Okay, we're going to collect ten tons of this grass over the next month after hunting,” I smiled wryly. “Even with the guards working on the grass outside, it will be a pain."

Zenith's eyes glazed over as she understood why I said she would pray for my dissolving technique. It would take ages!

“Why can’t we just dissolve it?” Thea pouted, realizing how difficult it would be.

“While composting plants usually provides fertilizer, we don't need it for the nutrients," I replied. "Their texture and presence help break up the soil, allowing for drainage and preventing root rot caused by fungus that thrives in moisture. Therefore, it’s important that plants drink and that water drains, never leaving it wet too long.”

Several fungi cause root rot, including Rhizoctonia, Pythium, Fusarium, Phytophthora, Sclerotinia, Armillaria, and Verticillium. It's a major challenge for farmers as they need to constantly mix compost into the soil rather than relying on simple fertilizers.

“In short, the physical plants are necessary, not just their internal contents." I concluded.

Everyone smiled wryly.

“Well, the biggest challenge is baling," I said. “Ventum laminae, terram scindunt et thesauros suos renovant.”

Wind blades cut through the ten-foot tall stalks, shredding them and leaving behind hay-like straw on the ground. “That's why we brought pitchforks instead of scythes. So let’s get started."

***

We spent the next month cutting through massive amounts of straw variations and composting them. The composting was done on-site by simply allowing the sea of straw and food scraps to stew in the center of the clay lake while four unlucky guards had the job of mixing it daily to increase nitrogen circulation and bacteria growth.

Now that I had used my magic in secret, I sent for builders to come onsite and construct barracks for new workers, offering good food and great pay. In that way, we brought fifty good serfs to work on the land, and I paid for it personally. The composition continued to increase day by day.

Lastly, the time finally came a month later.

“Okay, people!” I yelled. “Your job will be to mix everything I throw into this pit. It’s going to be the most challenging month of our lives, but it will be worth it!"

After that note, I used my power to separate silt and sand from the forest and dumped them into the pit.

The ratio of sandy loam soil is approximately 50% sand, 30% silt, and 20% clay. I had everyone line them up in even piles of different colors before mixing them and adding bags of phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, iron, manganese, zinc, copper, boron, molybdenum, and carbon. In this way, we created new soil.

We had builders create clay walls to make new rivers with holes in the bottom to collect water. With nice, even rows, there would be irrigation. This would allow us to open a valve on the river and water all the crops evenly, and then shut it down. It was the laziest watering system in existence.

It wasn’t something people could usually do near a river, but our land was so barren and the process so absurd that we made it work.

Finally, after two months of back-breaking work, we now had twenty miles of normal soil.

Just think about how truly absurd it was. My barony was so barren it took two months and horrifying magic to create dirt. The most plentiful thing on Solstice besides saltwater.

“It’s finally ready! Let’s recruit blacksmiths, woodworkers, farmers, cooks, and all other trade workers to start building our barony!” I announced, triggering cheers of excitement from the guards.

It was almost springtime, and it was finally time to set up waterwheels, grow plentiful crops, and establish civilization.