In the morning, when the light in the island was getting brighter, Logan walked over to Storm. Although it didn’t show, he had a faint bloody smell to him and Logan walked to his head and pat his nose.
“Open up.” He said.
Storm stayed still for almost a minute before his jaws slowly opened some and Logan uncorked a bottle of healing drought and poured it through the crack of Storm’s teeth and then got three food and water pills and tossed them in.
As Storm had said, the amount of food needed as you go up only goes higher. If you don’t aim for quality you will have to satisfy it with quantity and this breeds a lot of the most common disasters from powerful monsters hunting huge numbers.
If the four of them had to survive off common unranked cattle meat, Storm alone would eat two full bulls alone while Logan would eat half.
It was proportionate considering their normal sizes but it would simply be too much. To survive, they had to prepare sufficient E rank or higher meat.
Logan checked the time it was a little past six. He thought of the supplies he obtained and knew he would need to increase the amount of food to make sure they had surplus for the kids and then procure farmable crop seeds from the farmers guild.
Farmers guild is a special organization that is similar to a branch of the adventurers guild. Their field however is the spread of agricultural knowledge, development of magic for helping the growth of crops, and reducing labor costs in this fashion, and the trade of agricultural produce.
This guild also contains a detailed record of every food item price in all nations they preside in making them extremely efficient in helping set up prices for import and export.
For instance, hunted monster meat in Eshen is presently replacing unranked cattle meat produced in other nations but depending on the rank, Eshen trades monster meat for cattle meat. With cattle being unranked, 1 kilo of F rank meat gets 10 kilo of unranked. The proportion increases by a factor of 5 over the previous rank each increased rank.
Of course, this is an outrageous price for common meat but Eshen is currently in an unstable food crysis that is barely managed by the archipelago farm lands it is possible that only in a few years when the large plantations in West Eshen is remade and in full swing will the food crisis end.
Logan sighed and walked to the door and left.
That said, he was instantly shocked as he stepped out because what met him was a massive gust of wind and water that almost took him off his feet.
“What the hell?!” He shouted and supported his weight against the nearest wall.
The storm was extremely massive and Arashi was actually excited because there was Lightning, Wind and Water mana all around.
“Oh right, the storm must have hit and still hasn’t subsided.” Logan cursed.
He coated his body in mana and blended wind mana.
The powerful wind that pushed against him suddenly diverted a good amount reducing the pressure on his body and he quickly ran out. He needed information so he quickly headed to the farmer’s guild.
The place was still opening when he entered huffing and wet.
He groaned at the door as he used magic to dry his clothing.
“Hello sir, do you need some assistance?” an employee asked.
“Oh, hello. I need some seeds.” Logan said.
“Please follow me.” She said.
He walked in and headed to the register and they began to process. Logan showed her the orb and pointed out the different fields.
“A 50 meter in diameter field… hmm. That shouldn’t require much, did you want various crops? Are there bugs or birds for fertilization?” She asked.
“No, the place is empty at the moment.” he said.
She nodded and began to search for some books. “Here is a small farming guide to successful small scale farming for self sufficient food production. If the land ever grows, you can improve the scale.” She said.
“How much?” he asked.
“No need, this is a book we hand out to most people wanting to start farming, there is a serious lack of people for this at the moment so we try to increase as many as possible to reduce the burden on the nation.” She said.
He understood and took the book. Then showed her the plot drawn by the architect and she showed him a good efficient way to divide the spaces to have at least three crops in each area.
In the end, he purchased apples, oranges and pear for trees, while getting potatoes, carrots and sugar beets for one field dedicated to root vegetables and tomatoes, peas and lettuce for the other field.
It is a tiny number but they cover sufficiently. The sugar beets in particular are good to process and get some sugar for themselves though it would be a pain to do considering the machinery. That said, it can give a small bit of extra money or be a sweet crop to eat on the side of normal meat and regular vegetables.
He purchased some bags with seeds and finished off the purchase process.
“Hey, do you know what is going on with the storm? Wasn’t it supposed to stop after yesterday?” he asked.
“Ah that, it was fully confirmed that the storm is the result of monsters. It seems a school of sea dragons and serpents are in a tied battle hunting and being hunted by migrating swarms of Storm and Thunder birds. We don’t know what started it but the serpents and storm birds were likely the first to start fighting and it eventually extended to their superior breeds and it ended up in the situation we are in. They are in a full blown war now and the storm is moving erratically along the coast of Mortis desert. It has been reported that several times the Sea Serpents and Sea Dragons came onto land before going back out to see when the birds went that way. This is unlikely to blow over in a few days. If it gets really bad, it might only worsen if A rank or even S rank Great Sea Dragons and Thunder Phoenix appear. That could blow the storm proportion out of control.” She said.
“Wow, and it is even reaching so far here.” Logan said.
“Well, at the very least all we are getting is the weakest of the storm no different from a typical coastal storm.” She said.
“Are the shops opened?” He asked.
“Most with roofs yes, most stands are closed for obvious reasons.” She said.
“Great.” Logan said and stored the seeds.
Coating his body in mana he left the guild and headed to the local butcher where he doubled up the meat he needed and went to the farmers market to purchase vegetables that were healthy for the children. The vegetables he put in his inventory to prevent spoilage. No matter if he was going to farm or not, it was limited.
He made sure to get a lot of condiments and seasonings that he previously did not have just on food items.
The huge space in the inventory was much more full so he began to fix up the space on the way to the space where the door was made previously.
On the way, he thought of something about the farmers guild and decided to go back.
“Oh, you're back, did you forget something?” the receptionist asked.
“Yeah, I remembered that the farmer’s guild also developed magic for agriculture. What kind of magic?” He asked.
“Oh, we work with earth and water merged magic mostly in the form of nature magic. Of course we have separate earth and water magic. For instance, water magic ‘blessed rain’ lets the caster summon a short rainfall. If done properly in groups of farmers, the rain can extend to most of the nearby farms. If it is a slightly cloudy day or looks like a dangerous storm, the spell can cause natural rain to fall while slightly weakening the lightning and danger that would otherwise come with the storm. It is a pretty basic spell.” She said.
“And earth?” he asked.
“Well, we developed basic spells that even unranked farmers with some basic mana training from F rank or unranked mana development techniques. We name the spells based on their process. Tilling can actually help till the land perfectly, fertilize is a spell we developed that has the earth swallow rotting substances and quickly degrade it and spread it along the field but our pride is the basic earth blessing. It spreads a magical blessing over the field. The spell is actually quite complex because it was designed to be extremely flexible.” she said.
“How so?” Logan said.
“Well, one example is blessing the earth to improve the seeds health and germination speed. It helps them sprout quickly at the slight cost of making the land a bit dryer since they grow so fast. Others settings are blessed vitality which helps activate any inactive seeds planted and properly grows them without having negative side effects. This is great for improving crop breeds as you gather seeds from the crops that would otherwise not be as good compared to commercially prepared seeds.” She said.
“So it is a method to manipulate the mana to affect the seeds. Is only 1 spell allowed at a time?” he asked.
“There are some precautions, for instance not using accelerated growth spells in sequence. This will injure the plants and destroy the soil producing double the losses. However, different types of spells work far better together.” she said.
“Are there only unranked versions?” he asked.
“No, we have F and even E rank but this is still a slightly new branch for us.” she said and sighed deeply before a scowl crossed her face, “It is all because those jackass priests from the Religion of the God of Harvest don’t want their monopoly over this type of blessing magic to be broken. If they honestly supported the farmers guild, the number of supporters would be immense.” She cursed at them.
“They have a full system?” Logan asked.
“Of course they do, their priests learn magic but the thing that draws people to religions is that their daily prayers allow them to slowly connect to their gods allowing them to learn his or her domain of magic. This is especially true for blessing. Their greatest priests, the popes, are said to be able to cast grand scale blessings if they use the holy artifacts.” she said.
“How grand?” Logan asked.
“It is said that the only reason the north of the continent didn’t remain barren is because of the entire church gathering and channelling power into the artifact that the pope used to cast a blessing.” she said.
What she refers to is by far the biggest tragedy in Nuntip history since the demon lord. The biggest monster wave happened and came from the north, it covered the entire north coast and commanded by a SS sea creature, the ocean dwelling creatures combined their immense power to try and cleanse the land of life. They succeeded in leaving the entire north and for thousands of kilometers in land a dead lifeless land. To make it worse, they cast poisons and other things after their leader was killed and the rest had to retreat.
To fix this, the harvest church had to actually move. They gathered every disciple, priest, paladin and disciples and gathered all their power to cast a blessing upon the entire north. This opened Urotrope to heaven and the god himself released the blessing that cleansed the poisons and breathed life once more. It left this entire land barren for years and this even included dungeons. This is why the north had many weak small nations. In fact, a large part of why the Union empire reached as far north as it did is because it was able to expand during that time. Helix had almost been reached in fact but barely escaped that fate. He wasn’t as powerful as he is now.
“I see… well can i get all three levels of blessing of earth, water and nature magic then. I have battle beasts who would definitely benefit from this type of magic.” He said.
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He truly felt that Jade would have the greatest benefit from learning different types of blessing magic. Healing was only one kind of blessing and buff spells was another. Blessings of the land was a different branch that was very interesting and Logan actually got an interesting idea hearing about the rain.
When he was done he finally returned.
The island was lit up without being disrupted by the storm outside. Logan pulled out meat and vegetables and skillfully made a stew for the children and the others.
“Is Storm okay?” one of the boys asked.
“Yeah, he is fine. I watched him through the night.” Logan said.
They were worried about him showing they were quite kind so he smiled at that.
At that moment there was a big movement and Storm stood up and roared as his body erupted with lightning. Although he had purple lightning over his body. Blue lightning snaked around and struck the ground and dispersed into the air while two arcs remained shooting between the back spikes and his horns.
He was extinguishing a lot of energy from his body that he could not absorb until he was empty.
The glow on his crystals was clear and weak. His body transformed and he walked over weakly.
“I have completed my task… master.” He said huffing.
“Did you assimilate the lightning?” Logan asked.
“Yes… but only four sparks. Each in a horn and one in each back spike.” He said as his horns began to release small blue sparks. “I will need from a few months to a few years to fully change my purple lightning into blue, it is just too potent. It is at least two levels greater than my natural lightning.” he said.
“I see, that is good. It is no different from the green lightning that you only fully assimilated when you had your first evolution.” Logan said.
He smiled weakly.
Logan handed him a bowl and he ate it calmly.
“You look really weak.” one of the boys said.
“He just released all his lightning almost. Originally Storm wasn’t a Drake. He grew up to become one thanks to a lot of hard work from both of us and some luck.” Logan said.
He told them about Storm’s origins and the effort they put in to reach this point that his bloodline could safely take him to C rank.
“Master, i think we need to go outside and produce a storm so that i can properly regain power.” Storm said.
“You don’t need to call up a storm, the storm that blocked our path is raging outside. We can leave the city and find a secluded spot to safely absorb it.” He said.
Storm nodded as he finished eating and transformed but shrunken.
He curled up to let Logan pick him up.
“I’ll go take Storm to eat properly. Jade, I got you some spell books that are quite useful.” Logan said and handed her the pile of books. “They have numbers on the side so I left them in proper order. The top ones are all unranked spells but they are useful for quick farming and shouldn’t be hard to learn.” Logan said and picked up Storm.
“Alright, I will take care of the kids until you get back.” She said.
Logan nodded and walked out.
The storm was no different and Storm looked greedily at it but he knew he couldn’t call the storm in the city. Logan ran to the gates where he had to show his identification.
“Why are you leaving at such a dangerous time?” the guards asked.
“My battle beast is a lightning based creature who eats lightning. It has been a while since he has been able to eat and it is already affecting his health so I am going outside of the city to let him properly feed.” Logan shouted over the wind.
They looked at Storm and he released a bit of sparks trying to show.
“Alright, please avoid causing damage to the surroundings, we don’t need something like a wildfire or something suddenly appearing during a storm like this.” the guard said.
Logan walked through and finding some protection, he checked the maps to locate some kind of clearing until he found a clear space away from high buildings.
He ran over and found an open grassland in the western area of the city clear of any fields and pastures.
He ran into the center and put Storm down. He uncurled and instantly reverted to his natural shape.
“Master…” He said.
“You can eat first.” he said.
Logan quickly cleared the scene.
It is believed that an E rank Crystalback lightning lizard had the capacity to eat lightning alone but in the end, it stores only 10% and pushes the rest into the ground but it could handle the impact alone. But that was not the same truth for a Lightning Drake.
Drakes were a step down from dragons. Dragons aren’t called the strongest mortal race for no reason.
Storm used his Storm call and instantly the storm around him stopped flowing and began to spin overhead. It was the first time as a Drake he called upon it and Logan, along with Arashi, could feel the influence his bloodline possessed. It was like a wave started overhead and lightning from the clouds began to rumble and gather.
BOOM!
The lightning slammed down on top of him. His entire body lit up but all his still exposed crystal lit up brightly as all the lightning was captured for a moment before yellow and purple lightning shone before getting under control.
The next bolt was stronger and the process followed the same path as the regrown spine spikes and those on his tail quickly started to grow until they matched the other.
The power of the strikes grew and when the 5th hit, the purple lightning stopped and this time green bolts formed but they were far more chaotic compared to the general thin bolts he had.
He noticed, however, that the bolt ran along his body before ending at the horns and spikes.
“His lightning is undergoing compression through different colors and forms.” Logan muttered as he realized.
Green lightning was Arashi’s unique lightning, it was higher in quality to Storm’s purple lightning originally but since then they have equaled out, they were both basic levels of compression and purity. His body now produced both in the same way that Arashi had both but conserved energy by releasing common lightning for Logan.
That said, the Blue Lightning, as Storm said, felt like it was a full two levels higher.
The presence of those four sparks caused his body to function differently. The purple lightning would normally be 90% of what he had but that didn’t matter now, he filled his body fully with that and now he was doing the same with green lightning.
Injuries he got during the assimilation was being attacked by the green lightning and healed until only the four gathering points radiated with intense lightning.
After five bolts, he was full and his body erupted with purple and green lightning that began to shock him intensely.
In that storm of energy the blue sparks appeared.
The lightning ran along his body until they hit the spikes and horns but instantly vanished while the blue lightning got a little more stable.
This went on for ten more bolts and Storm finally stopped.
He shook himself as he stopped drawing lightning to himself and as he stretched, his entire top layer of scales began to fall off making Logan’s jaw drop as he saw that under his hide, every scale was crystalized and they kept falling and regrowing.
Storm soon noticed as his scales finished growing and faint green sparks were shining as a layer of green began to hide the dragon.
Logan walked over in shock, “It’s like you’re becoming a crystal dragon.” He said.
“To some extent but mostly only scales and skeleton.” He said, feeling great.
“How is the blue lightning?” Logan asked.
“I have fed the sparks but I will require a lot of time. I have noticed that it is causing a lot of changes. It is possible that once i start training my mana, which affects my lightning as well, i will upgrade the compression of both because of the blue sparks.” Storm said.
“I honestly didn’t know lightning had so many colors.” Logan said.
Storm nodded in agreement but it was an amazing feeling nonetheless because he felt like his power would continue to rise.
“Now it is master’s turn.” Storm said.
Logan nodded and Storm shrank himself.
That said, Logan laughed and used wind manipulation to gather all the scales and spikes Storm just dropped and regrew and casually buried it under a small layer of earth before taking off his shoes and standing on it as he lifted Arashi.
She trembled happily under the rain and wind and a monstrous tornado collapsed onto Logan once filled with rain and wind with lightning from the storm call.
The more types of mana added at the same time, the more intense pressure he felt and it didn’t get any easier. Water was converted into mana as soon as it neared Arashi and she was lighting up in the storm like a golden beacon in a storm. Even ambient mana was drawn trying to satisfy the other unbalanced elements.
The three elements filled up more and more and lightning soon stopped coming down while the tornado only grew stronger and pulled more water to it.
He could feel the weight of the world on his shoulders until it finally ended.
He huffed his arms and could barely support her weight after holding it so long.
This feeding ability was a blessing and curse without a doubt but it did allow her to rapidly gather mana but he truly feared what it would be like each and every element. He didn’t think about it and didn’t want to think about it.
He tooks some healing pills and held onto Arashi as they returned to town. The guards looked at them strangely and marveled at Storm. It was more than obvious that they saw the constant thunder and storm falls and to them, it was clear that he was a high purity breed of storm creatures.
Storm monsters are those with lightning, wind and water affinity. Logan knew otherwise obviously.
The current storm was even a result of the wind and lightning affinity thunder birds fighting the water affinity sea dragons.
They returned to the island and found Jade treating the little girl while the boys were confused while reading the books.
“Ah, hey how do you read this!?” the boy holding one of the books asked.
“Did you learn to read or write?” Logan asked.
“Yeah but i can’t read these words.” he replied.
Logan took the book and read it, “Oh, this is in common Nuntip, no wonder. You all only know the Eshen language. That is going to be annoying, magic tomes are far more expensive outside of dungeons.” Logan complained. “Whatever, we will teach you the language, that will just add to the studies and it isn’t that hard.” Logan said.
He put the book back on the stack and checked on the girls. The process of removing the poison was going on and a lot of needles were stuck in the joint spaces of the bones over her body and Jade was just starting the healing process. It took much longer for the dark liquid to come out this time and it was far smellier like stale water.
Jade cast the spell three more times in a row to try and force it all out until the spells were exhausted.
“Well, that is the most I can do, your body will just have to clean anything left on it’s own but you will get stronger from now on.” She said and quickly wished the girl before petting her head.
She was smiling and asked for water again.
“Jade, did you learn any of the spells?” Logan asked.
“No.” She said.
He nodded and called them out after they finished dressing.
He looked through the books and gave her the book. “Learn this one.” Logan said.
“‘Blessing rain’?” She said. “You want to make it rain?” She asked.
“Yeah, we never added any weather changes, only mana here. For us to farm without wasting a lot of drinking water, this is vital. Also the soil is pretty hard so I want you and Storm to combine ‘Storm Call’ and ‘Blessing rain’ to fill and soften the soil a bit.” he said.
“Oh, that is true! The soil was really dry.” She said.
She took the book and began to read for a few minutes and closed it, “That is an easy spell to do.” She said.
“Good, we can do it now before we start field work.” Logan said.
“Alright, I will call a weak storm.” Storm said and transformed and raised his head.
The children felt a strange shift in the air instantly and looked up. It took a few moments but small white clouds began to form and slowly grow until they formed one cloud. The clouds were near the top of the orb and slowly expanded down until they started to hear a small rumble.
“That should be sufficient, the clouds cover a third of the orb’s top side.” Storm said.
“It is.” Jade said and closed his eyes and cupped her hand as she began to chant as if she was praying.
What was surprising is that her middle horn began to glow and her hair flowed as if there was wind before her palms started to release light and she raised them revealing a blue orb.
“Blessing Rain.” She said.
The orb rushed into the air and into the clouds. The dark clouds seemed to ripple as the spell spread out. The dark rumbling became quiet while the clouds began to spread out. They got lower but instead of dark they turned into grey rain clouds safe from lightning strikes.
After a bit, they began to feel rain drops.
The children instantly ran inside as it started to rain but Storm felt the frailty of the cloud and began to feed the clouds and Jade felt the danger of the storm returning so she accompanied him.
Logan walked in as he watched the rain start to fall.
He watched the ground. He nodded as soon as he saw it, it wasn’t an imagination, just like the mana, water was lacking meaning natural elements required for life were lacking.
That said, as the rain began to strengthen, he felt a slight foreboding feeling.
It was a light rumble from under them.
He instantly drew Arashi and walked outside and stabbed her into the ground. With what little earth magic he could use, the earth under the house became slightly loose from the foundation. His reaction saved them because the next moment, the entire island shook and from the altar at the center, the earth seemed to unfold as if tightly held together. The water loosened it up and it recoiled. The fencing was instantly split apart as the entire island seemed to let loose and it instantly stretched all around until it hit the barrier perfectly.
The house shook because of it but the bit of earth magic kept the foundation in place but it had been pushed a ways back but thankfully it didn’t fall on them.
The two casting the magic looked scared at the house and ran over but Logan was carefully hardening the earth around the house until it was safe as before.
“Master, are you alright?!” Jade asked.
“It’s fine, the island was in a compressed state it seems, water must have caused it to relax and suddenly expand.” Logan said.
“That was a big expansion though, it felt like a powerful earthquake.” Storm said.
“Yeah, the orb’s diameter is around 80 meters across meaning it increased by nearly 30 meters in every direction.” Logan said.
“There is also no longer a dangerous drop.” Jade complimented.
“Yeah… this place is really strange. I should have properly identified it and researched how to make it grow but what is done is done. We will eventually figure it out.” Logan said.
Going inside, the children were scared so he comforted them saying that it wasn’t bad, just a little problem that came with a good result.
After that he had to use magic to put the house in its original place again and with a sigh, they repurpose the fence on the edge to make the four quadrants again.
After that, they finally start farming and planting the tree sprouts first.