Chapter 4

While clearing my new territory from the thorns and bushes, I start filling the now empty places with flowers, and repair the damaged tombs. while doing so, I find something like a secret entrance under one of the tombs, which one can open with pressing at one of the molded letters of the name ‘Valcius Grenada’. of course there is no skeleton in this tomb, it’s only the entrance to 3 secret chambers. While searching through the chambers, I find a interesting book.

Do you want to learn the skill ‘appraisal’ ? Yes No

A new skill ? of course I want to learn it.

Appraisal through observing, you are able to see the condition of the observed object/person much easier

Okay, seems to be something helpful, let’s test it on the flowers right now.

Getting outside, I start staring intensely at one poor little red flower.

Well seems the observing before an appraisal takes some time, because I’m concentrating on this red helast flowers for at least 20 minutes now…

But finally…

Red helast flower A little, about 5 centimeter high flower, its blossom has healing properties, must be processed by an alchemist

Okay, so I have to become an alchemist to work with these flowers, or I have to get one to work for  me. With that I might be able to control this deadly disease, let it flourish, but not destroy the city. In the case that the disease gets completely healed, I won’t get more mana.

But I also want some more of the townsfolk to become my servants, just because it’s cool to order people around. So it’s a no to kill the complete city…

Back down into the hidden rooms, to inspect what else there is.

I don’t know who has installed himself in these secret rooms, but he was a real history freak it seems. Sadly I have no time at the moment to go through these books, so I just remember them being here and leave, ahh wait, there is some kind of map, looks like it shows the country we are currently in, so the ’empire’. Honestly it looks like a really big country, at least two times bigger than afghanistan, which in my opinion is a big country. I don’t really know about the other countries on earth, the only map I have ever seen was of afghanistan...

I get a feeling that my servants are back, currently entering the churchyard and with them many corpses. So I leave the secret rooms, and close the entry which leads to them. Then I get back to my Core and await the arrival of my new mana.

“ my lord we are back, and have brought the corpses you wished for” Gerad kneels before me and shows me the carriage in front of the chapel.

“good job, unload them and get me new ones, but leave them at the gate to the churchyard !” Did you know, that commanding people is really fun ?

Gerad stands up and leaves the room, to give my order to my other servants who are waiting outside of the chapel.

After they had done their job, and left the churchyard to get new corpses, I begin absorbing the dead bodies and start expanding my territory, till there is no corpse left and my dungeon territory includes a few abandoned houses on the street from the churchyard to the town.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Maybe I should keep my servants in my territory, so let’s try and restore the houses…

Do you want to rebuild 3 destroyed houses ? Yes No

After choosing yes, my originally full mana pool drops to zero and I feel really tired (mentally of course), but after absorbing a few thorns and bushes, I can watch the 3 houses being rebuilt. Nice earthen walled shacks, with a chimney each and  a basement which you can enter from behind the house.

From outside the houses it’s still a minute walk or so to get to the real city, which is build from stone for the basement, wood in different processings and bricks for the housetop.

I can see humans doing their daily business on the streets, sadly they don’t seem to have a high security because I witness some crimes, robbery, a few dead people -why can’t they bring them to the churchyard?-

Somehow there is no rape and no grabbing, maybe because the woman living here have a higher status than the man, but that is not confirmed, only something I put together after seeing some workers bowing to women, while others ignore them while keeping their distance. What I was also able to see, is that They do not bow to all woman, but always keep their distance to all of  them…

Back to the 3 houses, they are empty, and with empty I mean really empty, like no carpet, no pillow, and the most shocking, no tea set. Do you know what that means to me a house without a tea set? Ahh, I forgot, the houses were just restored a few minutes ago, don’t annoy yourself because there is no tea set here…

After absorbing a few dead animals, who seem to be more at the outskirts of the town than in the land around it, I start equipping the houses with the needed things: pillows, carpets, tapestries and the most important a tea set for each house.

Then, I start making a garden behind the 3 houses, only a few plants, some trees and some tuberous plants. I make a new and mana costly system,that has 5 big stone tanks for water, which they get with the help of a few pipes from the churchyard sewer system.The tanks are set up, so the water enters the first and has to flow through all 5 tanks in order to flow into a little pond I roughly made.  In each tank there are water plants, to filter the water and with the fruits the plants bring you, you have a bit extra to eat and some leaves you can use for essential oils and relaxation purposes. Of course you get clean water at the end, so you can use it for cooking, washing or of course for the newly made fields.

This is a system we used in afghanistan, and is one of the beginning parts of permaculture, which is a system many of the families in our area used, to grow their own food.

The most important part is to combine the different characteristics of the plants and plant them so that each plant has the best conditions to grow. Permaculture is also a system where you don’t have big fields for the plants -of course we had our cannabis fields, but they were for the money of my little brothers education- because the more for example wheat there is an a field, the higher is the possibility that the crops get some kind of deadly disease, which happens whenever there is too much of something in an area.

I have witnessed this with many plants, whenever there is too much of an imbalance, suddenly locusts or other “bad” things happen to the fields. Because we didn’t have the money to buy extra toxins or whatever some guys spray over their plants, we lost much of our harvest, till a cousin of mine told us about permaculture.

Of course it was hard at the beginning because we didn’t know that much about the plants we were growing, but after some years and my and my father’s good observation, we were able to mostly optimize our system.

To get my servants to a healthy and strong body, both of which they clearly don’t have at the moment. I think having their own garden is a good first step. But I need to get more plants and trees, so that I have a bigger variety.

Some absorbed animals later, I placed some cooking utensils in the houses, and made a dry toilet for each house.

The idea behind the dry toilet is this, you don’t use water to sweep away your shit, instead you use sawdust and sprinkle it above your “business”, so it does not stink. Instead of dropping the toilet paper, which in afghanistan we almost never had had, you put it in an extra trash can, so you can dispose it later on.

The thing is that when you use paper to rub the remains off of your ass, drop it into the pit and put sawdust on top of it, the whole thing will stink and many bees,wasps and other things will come, and disturb you the next time while doing what needs to be done. -except for me in my current state of existence-

Then when the whole thing gets too filled up, you open a sidegate from outside and start digging the stuff out and store it in place somewhere outside. Then you can continue doing your happy business.

After a few years the poop, and whatever else you leave there becomes a good mold, that you can use for the fields, so a really good invention, isn’t it?

While making a place for fertilizer, my servants come back, bringing a new cart with dead bodies. Honestly guys, where do you get so many of them from ?

They see the restored houses and the field behind them and put the cart down, while observing everything. After a while of them gawking, I speak to them and without any interruption show them what I have done in their absence. Together with an explanation how to use the things I made, because it seems they never did drink tea -what kind of crazy people are they?-

everyone should know that tea is one of the best things of the world, but these guys didn’t even know how to make it…

After explaining the concept of the garden to them, they quickly understood, but every once in a while during my explanations, one of them will look at the houses, so I ask them what the problem is.

“my lord, we know that you are more intelligent than us, but might you have the mercy and explain to us stupid folks why there is a mud wall around these houses?” Gerad the spokesman of them said while dropping his head.

-Are they idiots?- Ahh, yes they said so themself…

“The building is like you have seen completely build from dirt, which is much cheaper than wood, and has a good isolation ability, so it won’t get too cold, or to hot inside.” I hope they didn’t hear my slightly annoyed tone…

They look really dumbfounded, and Gerad tries to find his words “ you see my lord, this is a kind of building they use in the south, but we are far too high in the north, you have to have at least two layers for the walls, or you have to dig into the ground and make your house there protected by the earth.”

Ohh, I see, I have wasted about 100 mana, and have to waste maybe another 100 to build them so one can live inside, suddenly I want to kill these guys....