The Strider meat salted in the barrel, the hide stretched on its frame, Jarine turned his mind from the harvest of flesh to the harvest of grain. The Academy's "show of force" was a gathering storm, but the kingdom's tithe ledger was a relentless, unchanging fact. It demanded wheat. Not the meager, glowing heads of his experimental Sun-Gilt Wheat, but bushels upon bushels of standard, hearty grain. It was the currency of civilization, the proof of a territory's true viability. Blackwood Vale, in the official record, was expected to fail this most basic of tests.
Jarine stood at the edge of his meadow. The plot he'd designated for the tithe wheat was larger than all his other cultivated areas combined—a full two acres of the least-rocky, most level ground he'd wrested from the valley. It was currently covered in a lush blanket of Rapid-Root Clover, which had spent the last month doing the vital, unseen work: fixing nitrogen, breaking up the subsoil with its dense roots, and hosting the Portable Mycelium network he'd painstakingly expanded. The clover was the green manure, the foundation. Now, it was time for the primary crop.
But this was not the gentle planting of a backyard garden. This was agriculture as declaration of war—against the soil, against the climate, against the very expectation of failure. He opened the System Shop, his Credit balance a healthier 310 after the Trial and careful management. He navigated past the magical oddities to a new subsection unlocked by his Academic Treatise knowledge: 'Applied Pedomancy' - Soil-Weaving Techniques.
His purchases were deliberate, each chosen to address a specific, brutal fact of the Vale:
· Seedstock: 'Iron-Dust Winter Wheat' (Tier 1) – 15 Credits/bushel. The description sold it: "A hardy, dwarven-developed strain. Tolerates poor, metallic soils. Short stalk minimizes wind damage. Yield: Moderate. Flavor: Uninspiring." It was perfect. He bought four bushels (60 Cr).
· Amendments: 'Mycorrhizal Boost – Granular' (Tier 1) – 25 Credits/sack. A potent, enchanted fertilizer teeming with symbiotic fungi spores designed to aggressively colonize wheat roots, vastly improving water and mineral uptake.
· Tool: 'Harrow of Gentle Earth' (Tier 1 – Rental, 7-day) – 40 Credits. Not a weapon, but a wide, flat, rune-inscribed wooden frame. When dragged over tilled soil, it used gentle earth-mana to perfectly level the seedbed and create an ideal, crumbly tilth. A luxury he couldn't afford to own, but for this crucial task, he could rent.
· Defense: 'Sentinel-Stake' (Tier 1) – 18 Credits each. He bought six. They were three-foot long, sharpened stakes of treated heartwood, inscribed with simple ward-runes. When planted in a field, they created a low-level, persistent "annoyance" field that deterred burrowing and small ground-foraging pests. They wouldn't stop a monster, but they would discourage voles, root maggots, and seedling-eating birds.
The following dawn, the real work began. First, he "turned under" the clover. Using a crude, wheelless plow he'd fashioned from a Null-Steel -tipped share (the strange metal was unbelievably tough) and pulled himself, he cut the dense mat of greenery, flipping it under the soil. It was back-breaking labor, the plow fighting him for every inch. The clover would decompose, adding its rich organic matter to the shale below.
For three days, he plowed. His world shrank to the burn in his shoulders, the jarring impact of the share on hidden rocks, and the scent of crushed clover and damp earth. At the end of each day, he'd channel mana into his aching muscles through the Life-Web, a trick he was slowly learning, feeling like a man watering his own roots.
On the fourth day, he used the rented Harrow of Gentle Earth. The difference was magical. Dragging the rune-etched frame over the rough, clumpy soil was like running a comb through tangled hair. The soil settled, clods broke apart into a fine, level bed, and a faint, wholesome smell of loam rose from the ground—a smell that had no business existing in Blackwood Vale. It looked like a real field.
Now, the planting. He didn't broadcast the seed by hand. Instead, he used a Seed-Drill Cone (Tier 0, 5 Credits), a simple funnel attached to a hollow reed. It allowed him to plant the seeds in neat, shallow furrows he made with a hoe, ensuring even spacing and depth. Row by row, step by measured step, he planted the Iron-Dust Wheat. He infused each handful of seeds with a whisper of intent through his Botanical Empathy: Grow strong. Grow deep. Hold this ground.
As he planted each section, he followed behind, scattering the granular Mycorrhizal Boost and then using a rake to lightly cover both seed and amendment. Finally, at the six corners of his two-acre plot, he pounded in the Sentinel-Stakes. As the last one was driven home, he felt their wards click into place—a faint, buzzing static at the edge of his perception, like the hum of insect wings. It would irritate the simplest pests into going elsewhere.
The final act was not watering, but warding. From his stock of monster parts, he took the powdered gallstones of a Burrow Grub and the crushed optic lens of an Ash-Feathered Vulture. He mixed them with water and Dew-Collector condensation to form a thin paste. With a brush made of Strider tail-hairs, he painted a single, continuous sigil in the dirt around the entire perimeter of the wheat field. It wasn't a powerful rune; it was a 'Glyph of Misplaced Appetite', a simple bit of sympathetic magic from the Arcanotech manuscript. It wouldn't harm any creature, but it would make the wheat within the circle taste, on a magical-sensory level, like bland dust and bitter ash to any herbivore with a hint of mana-sensitivity. It was a lie told to the senses of monsters.
He stood at the edge of his completed work as the second moon rose. Two acres of bare, neatly-ordered soil lay under the twilight, ringed by silent stakes and invisible whispers. It looked absurdly vulnerable. A single Gravel-Fur Warg could trample it to mud in minutes.
But Jarine felt the truth humming through the Life-Web. The field was not separate. The mycorrhizal fungi were already linking the wheat seeds to the established network in the soil, connecting them to the strength of the clover that had come before, and to the vigilant sentience of the Thornroots beyond the fence. The wheat was not an isolated crop; it was the newest organ in the body of his domain.
He had not planted a defensive formation. He had planted a fact.
Weeks passed. The first green haze appeared, then thickened into orderly rows of tough, bluish-green shoots. The Sentinel-Stakes did their work; no birds pecked at the seedlings, no grubs attacked the roots. The Glyph of Misplaced Appetite turned away a curious herd of Razorhoof Striders, who sniffed at the air, snorted in confusion, and moved on.
Jarine's daily routine now included walking the wheat. He'd feel for moisture in the soil, check for discoloration in the leaves, and use tiny bursts of targeted green mana to encourage tillering—the growth of extra shoots from the base of the plant, which meant more grain heads. He wasn't just growing wheat; he was coaxing it, negotiating with the strain to express its maximum potential in this hostile place.
One afternoon, Kaelen, the Academy scout, returned unexpectedly. She stood at the fence line, her usual stoic expression broken by pure disbelief. She stared at the two acres of thriving, orderly wheat, its heads just beginning to form, swaying in the valley's bitter wind. It was a splash of golden potential in a sea of gray despair.
"That's… not possible," she said, her voice flat with the effort to reconcile reality with doctrine.
"It's Iron-Dust strain," Jarine said, as if discussing the weather. "Does well in poor soil."
"It's not the strain," Kaelen murmured, her scout's eyes taking in the precise rows, the utter lack of pest damage, the way the field seemed unnaturally… peaceful. "It's the fact that it exists here at all. This is a blighted vale. The mana currents are wrong. The soil is dead."
"It was asleep," Jarine corrected gently, placing a hand on a wheat stalk. Through the Life-Web, he felt its steady, stubborn pulse. "Not dead. I just… reminded it what to do."
Kaelen looked from the wheat to his calm, dirt-stained face. The Farmer wasn't boasting. He was stating a simple fact, one that overturned centuries of agricultural and magical theory about cursed lands. He had planted wheat, yes. But what he was truly cultivating was something far more disruptive: proof.
Her report would no longer be about puzzling defenses. It would have to contain a single, irrefutable, and terrifying fact: Blackwood Vale is becoming fertile. And the man they had exiled to die was the cause. The "show of force" was no longer about a demonstration; it was an audit of a quiet, green revolution. And Jarine's wheat field was his first, unassailable argument.