After the monster let out a guttural roar, it let go off of the rainbow sapling it was holding in its mouth.

Sadly though, I couldn’t stop the sapling from falling even if I wanted to, as I was too busy with ordering the others around, and grabbing a spear from one of the spearmen, and throwing my long bow and quiver to Jonathanne.

“Jonathanne! Take the other 3 archers and aim for the monster’s organs. If you can, the lungs and the heart. But hold fire if me or any of the other spearmen are close to it.” I ordered Jonathanne, and after getting a nod from her, I quickly ordered the remaining 6 spearmen to the sides of the monster, and sent the guy, whose spear I stole, to stay back with Jonathanne and the rest of the archers, as there wasn’t really a lot he could do without a spear, and I really doubted he knew how to fire a bow.

Then the next half an hour was... well, less bloody than I thought it would be.

Well, less bloody for us as for the next half an hour the monster just got poked by spearmen and shot by archers, and though each injury was small, there were a lot of us and the injuries we gave it added up.

And because of its injuries, the monster tried to run, but we still manage to fell it.

Then, after the beast had fallen down from our attacks, I simply went to its head and stabbed my spear through its skull, just to make sure it was dead.

Its hide and flesh were harder than any I had seen before, but it was only a single animal after all, and we were kinda cheating with having metal tools and projectile weapons.

“Hoooh...” I let out a sigh of relief after it was finally dead, and looked at its body and thought about how heavy it was...

“Jonathanne, I assume you’ve put away your hunt for the day before coming to help me?” I asked her, and as she nodded, I thought if I should leave the monster’s corpse here and just take its core, hide, and the sapling and return.

...

“No, that’s too much of a waste...” I muttered to myself.

Afterall, it had given me quite the scare, and I had left the village in disarray before I decided to pull it into the forest.

I was definitely getting my time’s worth from this thing.

Then I told Jonathanne to take half of her group and go back to village with today’s hunt and send some butchering equipment and people to here so we could cut the monster to pieces and carry it away.

And as she went away, the first thing I did was to cut the sapling’s roots, and give it to a Homunculi, so it didn’t touch the ground.

And, contrary to my belief, the sapling didn’t actually immediately destroy every plant in the surrounding forest!

Looking around I could see some trees and plants that had been warped and withered due to the sapling’s presence, but most of the forest was fine.

Then, without waiting for new people to come here, I started butchering the monster slowly but surely.

And the moment I found its mana stone, I was impressed by its size as, while normal mana stones weren’t that big, the one this monster had was nearly the same size as my closed fist.

Then as the reinforcements from the village arrived, we were able to complete butchering the monster, and return it in bits and pieces.

...Jessie would have a lot of cooking to do tomorrow.

Then the next, so in my 112th day in the new world, I just gave everyone their daily orders, checked up on everything that was going in and around the village, and just... started training after I was done with checking up with what was going on.

As we had constructed a bloomery, the smelters could make iron tools, and of course we first started our iron age by making a few spears and arrows.

But not many, as iron was way more valuable than copper right now.

Because we kinda needed it for... a lot of things from tools to nails.

After training for a few hours, I look at my system window and saw that I had gained 8 more max mana!

System Window:

Name: Damian Tier: 2

Mp: 20/108 MpR: 1

It was... not a lot. But hey! With daily training for the next few years, I’d slowly get more and more mana!

Now that I am done with my training though, I need to use the 2 research points I got from completing whispers from the dark.

Level 2 Researches

Aquaculture – Fish farming. - Costs 4 Research Points

Fruticulture – Agriculture but for trees and other fruit bearing stuff. So, basically Orchards. Do I need to explain more? - Costs 2 Research Points

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Armour Smithing – An information packet about how to make armour. – Costs 2 Research Points

Weapon Smithing – An information packet about how to make weapons, swords, halberds, spears, etc. – Costs 2 Research Points.

Gold and Silver Smithing – An information packet about how to make the shiny. You might want this for making coins. – Costs 1 Research Point

Animal Husbandry - An information packet about taming animals. - Costs 2 Research Points

Basic City Planning - An information packet about basic city planning. – Costs 4 Research Point

Church Construction – An information packet about how to construct churches for the goddess Rae. – Costs 1 Research Point

Masonry – An information packet about Masonry, and quarry construction. - Costs 1 Research Point

Basic Tanning – A basic information packet about how to tan hides into leather. - Costs 1 Research Point

Looking through the researches I could get, only Animal Husbandry, Basic City Planning, Church Construction, Masonry and Basic Tanning caught my attention.

But after a few moments of contemplation, I just clicked on Animal Husbandry.

Because, if I was planning on actually having an empire, I needed to communicate with other villages and cities in that empire... and also make sure everyone was fed, and the only way to do that was just transportation of goods honestly.

And as the information about animal husbandry flowed into my mind, I was kinda... underwhelmed.

There wasn’t really any way to domesticate an animal for sure, so I just had to capture them, and breed the ones that were more friendly and had genes that I liked.

So, it was actually going to take some time, and wouldn’t have any shortcuts like in the case of farming.

And for the rest of the day, I experimented with Opal and Azure berries, and a few of those Blood Fern’s too!

They weren’t very useful, but hey, I didn’t really have a lot of ideas.

And how did I experiment with them you ask? Well... by just turning them into salves and boiling the water away so I had a more concentrated paste of sorts.

And I can safely say that I probably did not have an herb that was useful at hand.

So, the next day, I went to the hill where I had found a magical herb that was camouflaged into the rocks, and cut a few small pieces off of it, and experimented with it.

And surprisingly, the earthen vine worked... a bit.

Because instead of the plant mutating a bit before withering, they instead just withered the moment they made contact with the vine!

But the pieces of the vine I had started repairing themselves and growing a bit larger with every plant that they caused to wither... absorbed the life force of?

Anyways, I don’t really get what the vine does in its raw form, but I now understand how it lives on the side of a hill.

It just absorbs the life force of every other plant around it!

Then I turned the parts of the vine I had at hand into a paste and used it on a plant and the plant didn’t wither!

Success!

Then, after I touched the sapling with the plant that had vine paste on it, the plant... didn’t wither immediately!

It just continued warp horribly until all the mana in the paste was used up, and then it withered all the same.

“...Okay, so I need some kind of... stabilizer, so the plants don’t become warped horribly and stay in a state where I want to use them.” I muttered to myself and continued experimenting with the few magical herbs I had and the new Earth Vine.

The next day, I recognised that I just... didn’t have enough magical herbs and took a total of 3 members from the hunting groups and made them tag along with me while I explored around the forest.

And I continued exploring with that group for the next few days, and in our 5th day of exploration, we finally found a new magical herb.

“...Is that a... rose?” I muttered, confused and surprised as I was looking at... just a rose. Like, a regular rose from earth, but it looked... wilted.

And it was emanating a lot of mana, so much mana that one could confuse the surrounding bloom of plants and flowers for magical herbs, even though they were not.

And the weird thing about this magical herb was... well, the bloom of plants around it.

Looking around a bit, I saw that even the grass around the Wilting Rose was taller than the other plants and grass outside the cloud of mana the rose emanated.

“...So, it makes other plants... grow?” I muttered, but I could not really understand why it would do so.

Afterall, wouldn’t using all your mana on yourself be better?

Carefully picking up the rose, I touched its flower and realised that it wasn’t a flower at all!

It was just a pod of sorts and after a bit of messing around with the plant, I was able to open the pod, and inside it I saw dozens of round black pellets, which I could only assume was its seeds.

“Hmm... so it wants animals to eat it, and spread its seeds, so it hastens the process by growing the plants near it and enticing animals to come? Weird but... I kinda understand.” I muttered and looked around for a few more hours and I was lucky to find another rose.

But this time, I unearthed it with all of its roots and all, so I could replant it near my hut.

I mean, I was going to replant these seeds I got, but I also wanted to experiment with the fully grown thing too!

Returning to the village, I immediately replanted the Wilting Rose next to my hut, and took out the other one, whose seeds I took and... it didn’t have any mana in it.

So, it was mostly useless.

Then I started another round of alchemical experiments, and, of course, focused on the seeds of the wilting rose, and the live specimen.

And after a few hours of testing, I was... stumped to say the least.

There just didn’t seem to be a way to stabilize the plants and stop them from wilting and warping uncontrollably.

And the seeds of the wilting rose made things worse because it would make the pastes it was in emanate their mana away! Leaving with me a plant paste that wasn’t useful to any degree whatsoever!

“...I swear, when I get an alchemist or two, I am never working on alchemy myself...” I muttered to myself.

...

Sighing, I went outside my hut to breath some fresh air and saw that it was already night, and I was probably the only one awake.

And as my gaze went up, and then down, I saw the live specimen I had brought.

But sadly, it was not doing anything other than giving mana to the nearby grass and making them grow faster, and it didn’t have any parts other than the pod and the seeds that were magical, so I couldn’t take bits and pieces from it and experiment on them.

Then, as I watched it emanate mana around it, and saw how far the grass had grown, a thought hit me.

What if it could heal plants?

Afterall, wasn’t the process of growing and healing just cells dividing? So, couldn’t it stop the crops I had from wilting, and allow them to last long enough?

...

Wanting to give it a try, I lowered the sapling’s hammock, and made sure that it wasn’t touching the ground in any way, shape, or form.

And as I did that, I took my last batch of grainy plants I had collected that day, and touched the sapling with them after making sure that they were in the mana cloud of the Wilting Rose, and as I watched the grains on the plants grow, and more and more of them appear, I was sure they would start warping in random ways soon.

But they didn’t.

And after a more seconds of the grainy plants just becoming better crops, I realized that the Wilting Rose would of course develop a way to stop plants from developing tumours, and thus killing themselves.

If it did not, there wouldn’t a bloom of plants near it that could entice herbivores to come near it and eat it as quickly as possible!

And as I watched the plants grow in wonder... they started warping and withering a few moments later.

“W-what?! But it was working so well just now!” I yelled out in disbelief, and when I looked back, I saw that the... Wilting Rose had wilted. For good.

“...I mean... makes sense that it’d use more mana to counteract the effects of the rainbow sapling but... haaaahhh... I’ll use Earth Vine paste the next time, so it doesn’t die...”