Chương 9: Chapter 8 - Potential: Unusually High (Locked)

The crew had finally had enough work to do that they had to take a noticeable break from working on my land clearing. It was annoying, since there was still work to be done, but I supposed it was understandable, even if it did mean it could be a few weeks before I could actually make use of them again. Laying a road wasn't going to be simple just because Bram's Activation made the job possible. There was still prep work to do, and lots of it.

Even with all the upgrades a Royal Merchant cart could have, the ride to Danwood had been uncomfortably bumpy enough to make my tailbone hurt just thinking about it. The entire stretch would require extensive cleanup to ensure the road wasn't overgrown every other week, along with roots being ripped out and uneven terrain smoothed before a single bit of paving could begin. All of which sounded like incredibly backbreaking work that I had no intention of taking part in.

Then again, if it was between that and what Daniel had to do… no, actually, I'd still choose neither. As the Steward of Danwood, Daniel had to make a trip to Gold's Lodge and deal with both the local crown authority and the larger town's own Steward. You could build a road pretty much anywhere you owned the Planning Rights, which often extended far past the actual bounds of a claimed Settlement.

Legally connecting that road into another settlement's drawn boundaries, however, required cooperation between the two places, even when it was an upgrade instead of new construction. So Daniel had bureaucracy, Bram and the rest of the crew had manual labor, and I was left with some much-needed alone time with my new property. Sure, the area I was hoping to have finished to start with wasn't completely cleared yet, but Daniel had proven impressively capable of project management.

I'd mostly left him alone to command his crew while they worked and for the quality of tools they had, he may have been more efficient than at least sixty or seventy percent of the 'generals' I'd had the displeasure of working with. I had the nearest dozen acres or so to my cabin completely cleared of roots and–except on the edges of that area–most of the rocks and other debris had been cleared out too. That left me with more than enough space to start doing just a little bit of experimenting.

"Would be faster with a quick Trench spell…" I muttered, unable to stop myself from glaring at the tooltip that read [Level Four Alchemist] whenever it came to mind. I crossed my arms, looking at the fields. I was going to need to start getting them prepared to seed. I certainly could keep hiring Daniel's crew, though with my luck at this point that would just make Thomas or one of the others suddenly Activate as a Farmer.

I wouldn't begrudge any of them Activating as a Woodwright, Stonemason, or even a Hearthwarden, as long as it didn't affect me, though that last one only worked if they agreed to work for my tavern. But the last thing I needed was a second farm springing up here or for someone to think I needed a partner to run things. Besides, with the road going in, I had a feeling Daniel was going to get that trade route he'd been hoping for.

Unfortunately for me, that meant they were probably going to get increasingly busier and I had a feeling his crew was about to become far less available for my personal convenience.

"Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself," I sighed when a perfect solution rudely didn't appear in my mind. With a single thought, I pulled up my interface.

[Property Information] Owner: Corbin Sovereign Rights Holder: Dawnmere Crown Claim Name: Unregistered Current Use: Planned Farmland Existing Structures: Two Bedroom Cabin Developmental Potential: High Development Work Requirement: High [Geological Survey] Soil Quality: Poor Ambient Nutrient Potential: Unusually High (Locked) Rock Density: Middling Root Intrusion: High Water Access: Inconsistent Danger Level: High (Proximity to Grand Oak Forest) Things had been improving, but cleared land wasn't prepared land by any means.

Part of me really wanted to rush to planting, because the faster I had things growing, the faster I could make my ale… maybe I'd call it Corbin's Pale Ale… nah… for some reason the acronym CPA didn't sit well with me. The real problem with the land was that anything I grew in piss poor soil would taste just as bad. That was completely unacceptable. This world had far too much bad booze already, so I refused to contribute to that legacy. It had been a long time since I'd done it.

The last few centuries blurred together after I tried every method I could think of to come out on top of that inevitable clash, but I really had dabbled in brewing from time to time over the years, going back nearly to the beginning. The first time Escape Artist activated, after a brief week-long panic attack over suddenly finding myself thirty years younger, I'd secluded myself in an abandoned monastery. Things had gone so wrong and, much like I'd done this time, I'd decided to run away from it all.

I sequestered myself, took up brewing on a much smaller scale than I was aiming for this time, and managed three wonderfully peaceful months, even if those first attempts really did taste like piss. That place's soil prospects had no latent potential, so there'd been absolutely no part of my mind that wanted to go back that way…

Especially when I remembered that those peaceful months had been interrupted by a group of wanderers that suddenly decided I was their prophet after I accidentally pointed them to a spot on the mountain that they considered their 'promise land'… The thought oddly brought a small smile to my face. If I was going to do this, then I was going to do it right, and that meant two things. First, there would be absolutely nothing on or near any part of my property that could be mistaken for a monastery or holy place.

And second, I needed to raise the soil's quality as high as I possibly could before I dug out the modest stock of hops in my bag that would get things going. In hindsight, I probably should have gone with Dartigan to Hedgely first. With its proximity to the Crown's Farmland and propensity for merchants with rarer goods, they were bound to have everything I would have needed to really hit the ground running.

Though that would have meant Dartigan knowing I had even more gold than he already suspected, not to mention at least four more days trapped in his wagon. I pulled a thin hand shovel from my pack, glad that I didn't have to explain to anyone how I fit it in my pocket. None of the hamlet's population seemed stupid enough to believe the old 'it's collapsible' line.

"We need a test spot and some sacrifices…" I said, picking a spot on the flat land at the base of my cabin's hill. I pulled out a large wooden bucket and placed it on the ground before I got to work. With more effort than I cared to admit, I dug a meter-long trench, dropping the soil into the bucket as I went. There were more than a few tests I could–and absolutely would–run on it. The fact that the land actually had locked potential was useful but only if I could figure out why it was locked in the first place.

I pulled out the sacrifices, er… barley seeds, and dropped them along the trench before stopping to wipe my brow. The sun was nearly above my head and I could certainly feel the heat. That had to be the reason for the sweat, because if that small bit of work had left me winded then I was going to have to add exercise to my daily schedule. I shuddered at the thought. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

I absolutely did need to get some of the hop rhizomes I'd had lingering in my inventory for lifetimes into the ground so that they could start getting established. But I didn't want to waste them if something was just going to cause them to drop in quality. Sure, hop plants themselves were uncommon, which only mattered because otherwise the system would have erased the few dozen Excellent quality hop rhizomes I had when Escape Artist activated.

Once I had things figured out, I could get them going, take some cuttings, and expand from there. Though… I looked around the land for a moment and realized I was probably also going to need to get a bunch of trellises built before I really started to get too far along though. Farming wasn't just planting seeds and hoping for the best, not all the time, and for what I wanted, I was going to need a proper hop yard. Maybe I just needed to make a written list of all the projects this was going to need at this point…

I pushed the thought from my mind and decided to focus on what was right in front of me. I made a few markings, separating the trench into three distinct sections, then grabbed some of the collected soil and packed it over the middle third. Any good experiment had a control, be it unchanged soil or a port village naturally overrun with monsters. With that done, I pulled a second bucket from my inventory and dropped it by the first, then started to split the remaining soil.

I had some ideas that I was sure would have varying degrees of success. Actually, I had thousands of them–I didn't have as much gold as I'd accumulated for no reason after all. But most of them weren't relevant to this particular issue, so I'd have to set them aside for the time being. After taking a seat next to the buckets and pulling out some of my gear, I got to work.

Obviously fertilizer was a given, and with the Stoneboar having been left in my bag all this time—something that put him in an odd sort of stasis that worked on monsters but thankfully not humans—I was sure the beast would be ready to dump loads of the smelly substance. Between the smell and the fact that he was probably going to be rather ornery after being stored for so long, I decided to start with an alchemy-inspired idea first.

A moment later, I had a deep bowl, my pestle, and several herbs sitting in front of me. Without the rest of the proper reagents, I couldn't make a powerful Draught of Life. While it was generally used for bringing people back from the precipice of death, the potion didn't actually specify that its life-giving properties were only for humans.

A single Draught wouldn't be nearly enough to heal even a tenth of an acre though, and unless there were more Lion's Dawn close at hand, I couldn't count that as a solution by any means. But… that's not to say I couldn't experiment. I tore the petals and leaves from the flower, then meticulously pulled each thorn from the stem. The thorns went back into my inventory–no sense leaving the dangerous part lying around–while I crushed the stem in my hand.

I placed just a pinch of the shredded material into the bowl and set the rest in a small pile to the side, intending to use as little of it as I could. After that, I pulled a few Blue Life Tulips and Dewdrop Sproutlings from the small field I'd found just outside the northwestern side of my land, shredded them just as thoroughly, and tossed them into the same bowl.

Sure, they weren't technically on my property, but no one else was using them, so it seemed like a shame to leave one of the few larger patches of reagents I'd managed to find unharvested. The two reagents were common and useful enough… if you were a fresh adventurer with barely more health than a promptless commoner. Together with just a bit of water, the two could be combined into the most basic of Healing Potions. But with a bit of the more powerful Lion's Dawn…

well hopefully I could stretch the use of the flower. Or at the very least isolate just what was keeping the ambient nutrients locked away. I did have more than enough experience to have seen salted land, diverted nutrients, and all other manner of problems that ruined any type of growth prospects. It just meant having the patience to figure it out. Seriously, what had I been thinking? Being worried about how I was going to till the land when the land wasn't even close to ready.

I might've been used to a grander scale, but I liked to think I knew how to do things in the right order. I mixed things together with a steady hand, adding small bits of water from a skin I kept off to the side every so often until I had a thin, pale red liquid. The color was a good sign, even if I didn't know how a blue, golden-orange, and another blue flower combined to make it.

All healing draughts and potions inevitably ended up as some shade of red, with the potency increasing the lighter the color, and my attempt was nicely rewarded. [Experimental Mixture Created!] Diluted Life Solution (Lion's Dawn) Quality: High (Slightly Unstable) Effect: Restores life essence by 30%. Removes one Curse, Leech, or Disease instance. Instability: This mixture has a chance to inflict the Sleep or Spirit Drain effect upon use.

I'd been hoping for the secondary effects, since those were some of the easiest ways to render land untenable, and the instability wasn't the worst outcome since those effects were more detrimental to humans and animals than to plants. But, if I could get rid of those instabilities… Well, it might be better in the long run. I sprinkled a few more of the Lion's Dawn petals in, stirring slowly until the effect increased to fifty percent, when suddenly the restoration effect vanished and a new tooltip appeared.

[Warning: Excessive Life Essence has increased the instability of this mixture and changed its effects.] [Mixture Updated!] Diluted Life Solution (Lion's Dawn) -> Diluted Growth Solution Quality: Good (Very Unstable) Effect: Removes one Curse, Leech, or Disease instance. Randomly applies the Overgrowth condition, increasing aging and growth by 15%. My lips tugged downward at it.

While that was useful to have a recipe for once I actually had crops going, it meant nothing if the only thing I was speeding up was bad crops. Plus, the fact that I'd gotten something even more unstable and, honestly, a bit less effective than what I'd started with was just a bit annoying.

Sure, it was probably because I was too low leveled to stably make the level of experimental mixture I was attempting to make that was causing the issue, but that was really the system's fault for just not letting me reach level five yet. Sure, that wasn't the level that would make those outcomes go away, but just having access to the most basic spells that would be opened up to me initially would be fantastic for a myriad of reasons.

I deposited the new mixture into a vial and then placed it off to the side before starting from scratch, once again mixing until I had the same Diluted Life Solution. Since I didn't want to risk wasting any more of my supplies, I stopped there and dumped it into one of the buckets of soil. As I mixed it in, the soil shimmered.

[Property Information Updated] Property Soil Quality: Poor Update: You have improved the quality of one-third cubic meter of soil from Poor -> Average Ambient Nutrient Potential: Unusually High (Locked) Update: You have removed the locking effect from one-third cubic meter of soil. New information is now available. Available Nutrients: Growth Share, Feed Enhancement, Moisture Retention This made me smile.

While the soil's quality was still middling after being treated and the display didn't tell me which effect was locking the nutrients, I could now confirm that the land was either being cursed, leeched, or otherwise drained. I sincerely hoped it was one of the latter two. Breaking curses wasn't necessarily difficult, but there was always someone responsible for the curse and for some reason they normally weren't all that happy when you broke their hard work.

Though, I could at least respect the reason for being angry. I'd only used the Curse of Draining on Gregory once before and it was absolutely not worth the six years of planning it took to do it when Gwendoline broke it in less than six months. I mixed the soil just a bit longer before spreading it over another third of my prepared trench.

I was just about to turn to the last pile to decide what I was going to do with it, when the freshly placed dirt started to glow again, shining bright before pathetically fading as the light actively moved out across the ground, dissipating as it went. When I tried to identify the remaining effects of the solution I'd mixed into it, I was greeted with a message that said: [This soil has been unmodified.]"Huh… a leeching effect," I said, honestly surprised I'd gotten an answer so quickly.

"But what's–""Well look at you getting dirty," a voice called out, interrupting my muttered thought. My attention was drawn to Willow, walking down the slope from my cabin holding a basket in both hands.

"Wanna take a break to eat something? You look like you've been working so much you're basically drained."