Chapter 100: Infinite money glitch
With Alice’s help, Ethan quickly sorted the most promising seeds.
Even Evelyn, who wasn’t usually interested in such things, joined them.
It didn’t take long before they had filled the entire spiritual garden, planting many seed in the black soil that glistened like gold.
Alice walked to the center of the beds and stood motionless. Her eyes scanned the surrounding plots before drifting to Ethan, heavy with anxiety.
She was hesitant.
She had just learned that ability and wasn’t sure she could handle so many plants at once, especially ones that hadn’t even sprouted yet.
With a soft sigh, she closed her eyes and released her mana.
The energy coursed through each bed, seeping into the black soil and wrapping around the seeds. Just over five hundred of them.
When she opened her eyes again, they glowed an intense green. She raised her hands slightly above her head and channeled everything she had.
The black earth trembled. Tiny sprouts broke through the surface and grew without stopping.
A powerful magical energy flooded the room, not only from Alice but also from the hundreds of spiritual herbs now sprouting around her.
More than half were Lunar Spirit Green Grass, filling the air with thick medicinal energy.
But there were also ice, fire, and even wind herbs, which stirred gentle breezes across the entire garden.
Dozens of other varieties occupied the remaining space, each exuding its own distinct aura.
It didn’t take long before the once-empty spiritual garden was pulsing with life.
Herbs of different types, colors, and sizes radiated unique energies, engulfing everything around them.
After about ten minutes, with every herb reaching the peak of its maturity, Alice finally stopped channeling.
Her exhausted body nearly collapsed that very instant.
Fortunately, Ethan was there to catch her.
Her soft frame fell against his chest, the gentle swell of her breasts pressing warmly into him as he wrapped his arms around her slender waist.
She steadied herself against him, her chest rising and falling with heavy, tired breaths.
"You did well, love." Ethan flashed a bright smile and pressed a gentle kiss to her lips.
The golden-haired beauty nodded weakly, melting into his embrace as she glanced at the lush spiritual garden surrounding them.
Ethan followed her gaze and focused on a fiery red herb.
[Name: Vibrant Red Fire Spiritual Herb
Description: A rare type of spiritual herb, used in potions for physical strengthening and cold resistance. It is prized even by third-stage Awakened.
Rank: B]
That herb alone should be worth dozens of gold coins.
Even if only one in a hundred of those seeds turned out to be equivalent in rarity, the windfall would still be absurd. And that wasn’t even counting the fifty kilograms of spiritual herb seeds that would serve as the most important ingredient for the green fairy wine.
Wasn’t it wonderful?
Ethan now understood much better why the brown mages had been wiped out.
He had never heard of magic like this, and if it fell into the wrong hands, it could lead to a disaster.
Whatever the case, he had to keep Alice’s abilities a complete secret and pass off these herbs as mere luck.
With a wide smile, he let Alice rest and recover her mana while he and Evelyn began harvesting.
Honestly, once Alice reached a high enough level in mana manipulation, they wouldn’t even need to harvest by hand.
She could do it all with a single flick of her finger.
That was one of the wonders of being a mage, and one that, thanks to her talent and how efficient the spell was as training, wouldn’t take long to achieve.
Soon, the storage areas received the first batch of herbs, just in time for Alice to emerge ready for another round, glowing with energy.
When they finished at dusk, they were so tired they barely managed a single round of sex before collapsing into the sheets together.
And so went the next few weeks in Goldenveil.
Elena sketched a basic plan of the future neighborhoods and radial roads that would connect the city, along with circular roads to facilitate traffic flow between the many layers.
For now, it seemed like a small thing. The now six master builders in Goldenveil even found it a bit ridiculous.
But Ethan wouldn’t budge. They were to follow the plan to the letter.
He could, of course, let them build freely without any planning at all, since much of it was unnecessary for Goldenveil’s current size.
But he wasn’t just any noble in a village destined to remain insignificant for centuries.
He was a Golden Lord, and Goldenveil was destined to be a gigantic metropolis.
He wanted that metropolis built on a strong foundation so that, in the future, they would only need to improve it, not tear it down and start from scratch due to a lack of urban planning.
Following Elena’s layout for the houses and streets, twenty construction crews began work, each with five men and at least one second-stage Awakened.
It didn’t take long for Goldenveil to pulse with life.
Small but cozy wooden houses rose nonstop, and homeless families were quickly taken in.
Since merchant Ron’s shop would open soon, Ethan also started paying wages.
Twenty silver coins per month for construction workers. Just over two gold coins a year.
It seemed little, but for a commoner, even ten silver coins was more than enough to get through the month in remote villages where the cost of living was low.
The guard, already expanded back to fifty members and now including six second-stage Awakened besides Doran, also began receiving pay.
Thirty silver coins for a first-stage guard. Seventy for a second-stage. And for the captain, Doran, one gold coin.
It was still a low salary for an Awakened. If Doran reached the third stage, it wouldn’t be surprising for his earnings to reach dozens of gold coins.
In total, Goldenveil’s previously nonexistent operating costs rose to over thirty-six gold coins per month.
Ethan might have worried about that, but when he looked at the sheer volume of spiritual herbs he had harvested alongside Alice, he could only smile.
At first, they harvested ten times a day. About five thousand herbs.
However, as Alice advanced in mana manipulation and her reserves grew through constant training, the numbers climbed, surpassing twenty thousand a day.
Even after pulling over a hundred thousand seeds from those large sacks, the supply didn’t seem to shrink. They only stopped because the warehouses were full.
In total, they produced about two hundred and thirty thousand herbs.
Most were Lunar Spirit Green Grass, intended for green fairy wine production, and were handed over to old John so he could begin the next batch.
The rest, just over eighty thousand, were more than enough to make a fortune if sold to Ron, even though only a handful had an individual value exceeding a gold coin.
Ethan felt like he’d just stumbled upon an infinite money glitch.