Licht first reasoned that he should try to find out as much about his future crop as possible. The Manacle Blossom was something he discovered while he had been in a semi-rushed state, so if there was something he missed about it, he didn’t want to discover it midway through the process of trying to farm them.
Luckily, or perhaps wisely, he hadn’t given his whole supply up for the sake of the injured elves. He still intended to use them, after all. Plus, he hadn’t been sure how effective they would be with regard to treating injuries.
He brought a bundle of them over before the main tree. Something that he had discovered a short time ago was that using certain skills required less AF the closer he used them to his main body.
[Psychometric Observation]
[Manacle Blossom (D+)]
“A blue flower that grows rarely in small concentrations around the mouths of damp caves. Mostly found in the forest lands to the east of the Kingdom of Pytheonia. Contains a minute amount of liquid ambient force. Cannot be cultivated artificially.”
“Wait a second…Hey!”
Licht thought something was odd from the description, and it turned out that the bundle he was currently holding was actually of a lower grade than what he had analyzed a few days ago.
“I remember those were rated at the C- Grade, but is it possible that they degraded in quality over time?”
Actually that made sense. Just because it didn’t exist on Earth and had magical qualities didn’t mean it wouldn’t spoil. If that was the case, then Licht was on a deadline.
“I don’t think flower seeds will spoil in such a short time frame unless they’re exposed to moisture…which is exactly what they’re exposed to right now, isn’t it?”
Although Licht had a moderate knowledge of farming from his past life, he hadn’t farmed flowers or ‘blossoms’ per se, and only knew the very basics. Exposure to moisture and improperly storing them were big mistakes, both of which…
As he looked at the moist ground and the pile of damp azure flowers that was clumped on top of it.
…He had made. Well shit. At least he hadn’t waited too long to get to this project, though what had he been doing for the past few days?!
Well, putting himself down would have no benefits to his productivity, so he dropped it. He first started with the classic row-by-row farming method. Plucking the luminescent yellow orbs from four of the flower faces, he planted them beneath a layer of dirt he had tilled with a root. The orbs had drawn the majority of his focus, since he figured they were either the seeds or the fruit of the plant, and both were viable to use in replanting the blossom. Fruit contained seeds and all that. Although the description of the plant had said that they couldn’t be ‘cultivated artificially’, he wanted to test to what extent was that phrase true.
“For all I know it could just mean that artificial farming of the blossom has been unsuccessful thus far, or that common methods are unable to do so. What I’m doing here probably can’t be replicated unless the farmer is a spectral with a growing spell or nature attunement.”
And how common would that be? Though reading the description of the Manacle Blossom, he realized just how much he had glazed over. Thanks to the explanations of a certain fungoid woman, he now knew what the Kingdom of Pytheonia was, but the first part of the plant’s description interested him as well.
“It says that they grow naturally around the mouths of damp caves. What’s so special about a damp cave?”
As Licht wondered this he experimented with the four blossom orbs buried below.
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Their azure flowers were cast aside for the moment. Though he held himself back from trying to absorb the AF that was possibly in them, as he didn’t know what he would need to farm the blossoms yet.
With two of the buried orbs, he decided to connect himself to them via his withe tendrils. For one of them, he would try using [Biogenical Growth] and releasing nutrients to stimulate the plant’s growth. It wouldn’t be cost-effective in the long term, as the growth skill was still outrageously costly even from a short distance, but he wanted to see if he could affect the plant at all. For the other one he directly connected to, he just fed it nutrients.
For the third, he didn’t connect directly. Instead opting to leave a loose withe tendril in the nearby dirt to passively saturate it with nutrients. This was in the case that connecting to the orb would actually prevent it from growing naturally. For the fourth and final orb, he just let it be. The years of science class that he did somewhat remember clued him in onto the importance of a control variable.
Now all he would have to do was to sit back and wait for the results!
“...And they’re all duds.”
Maybe this wouldn’t be easier than trapping forest critters for experience after all. Licht thought there had to be something he was missing. His mind wandered back to his earlier thoughts. Was there something special about the damp mouths of caves? Why had the system specified that it was there that they grew?
Licht searched his connected zone for a cave mouth. Briefly checking on the new spots he had connected to. Thanks to the boost in his wisdom stat, he had the ability to control a wide area, and would be expanding it passively at all times, if not a little slower than he would’ve accomplished if he focused on it.
He didn’t know about humans, but apparently a Woodland Ego could multitask pretty well.
After a few minutes, he found one. A small drop in elevation on the side of a hill, encircled on all sides by a rocky surface. By its entrance, a small patch of the iridescent blue blossoms grew.
“Hmm, so this is considered a damp cave?”
Licht looked at it from all angles, attempting to determine what it was that made it special enough for such a plant to grow. The rocks were normal, and from what he could see of the bottom of the cave, there was nothing in it that was particularly eye-catching. Though he wasn’t able to actually venture inside of the cave itself very far with his vision. The cave was shaped like a sinkhole into the side of the hill, and while Licht’s vision extended underground if he concentrated, it pretty much ended at the length of his roots. There wasn’t much but darkness to see down there, anyway.
There was also a huge sheet of moss covering the inner walls of the sinkhole cave, so Licht couldn’t determine if any special ores were present. He was strictly a tree man anyway, and didn’t feel like it was possible for him right now to share the senses of the moss. He could connect to pretty much all types of plants as he had found. Shared senses however, only came with tree-related plants.
“Wait, what if that’s the case?”
Licht suddenly had a thought. Moss was generally a plant found mostly around caves, just like the Manacle Blossom. What if the two shared more in common than he thought?
He searched his memories of plants. What was the key difference between normal plants and moss? He jogged his memories by pulling up a few strips of moss to use his analysis skill. The cost of it way out here was kind of stiff but whatever.
[Psychometric Observation]
[Dengera Moss (E)]
“A clump of common moss found growing along damp areas and cave walls throughout the Western Continent. Reproduces by releasing spores, and sticks to surfaces with its individual hair-like protuberances.”
Reading the description, Licht found it a lot more commonly-worded than some of the past ones had been. It seemed like this was really just run-of-the-mill moss. But that wasn’t what he cared about.
“It has no roots. That’s right isn’t it? Moss is different from most plants.”
That meant that the Manacle Blossom, which flourished in the same environment, wasn’t really a flower like he thought. He looked at the bottoms of the stalks, now eager to test his theory.
“That’s it! The blossom’s ‘stalks’ don’t plant into the ground and fan out into roots, but loop around to each other, making the whole bundle of blossoms essentially the same plant!”
The Manacle Blossom wasn’t a flower, like Licht had assumed from its description and appearance, but a type of flowering moss. This made things much different, and would change the way he approached growing them.
“First, I have to find somewhere I can store the ones I have properly. Then, I need to find an area for the spores to germinate. They need to be closer to my main body than this cave.”