Chapter 73: First Restoration
The whirlwind slowed.
It didn’t stop suddenly, instead it wound down the way it had wound up, the rotation easing, the mass of mixed soil and dust descending gradually back toward the ground, the material settling in layers as the movement stopped driving it upward.
The colored dust disappeared into the soil as it came down, absorbed rather than scattered, leaving no visible trace on the surface.
Then it was just a field again.
But not the same field.
Darion walked forward, Garren a step behind him. The ground under his boots felt different immediately, it had more substance to it, less like walking on compacted dust. He crouched and pressed his hand flat against the surface.
The soil was dark. Not magically transformed into something from a picture, but darker than the pale grey it had been an hour ago. He picked up a handful and it held together instead of crumbling. The moisture and structure were completely changed from the powder he had picked up on his first visit. It had weight and density. The smell was different too.
He looked at it in his palm, then at Garren.
Garren had crouched beside him and was pressing two fingers into the soil, working them slightly to feel the texture. He looked at what he was feeling, then at Darion. His face said more than he put into words.
They both stood and looked at Seren.
"Good work," Darion said.
"This section is ready to plant," she said. She wasn’t looking at them, still scanning the field with the focused face she’d had since they arrived. "Whatever goes in the ground here will grow faster than normal. Fuller too and more nutritious than crops grown in standard soil." She paused. "You’ll see the difference at harvest."
Darion looked at the transformed section, then at the rest of the farmland stretching beyond, the pale, dead ground the whirlwind hadn’t reached yet. The farmland was large. It had been the barony’s primary income source before the invasions, built to feed and sustain a Percvale that was considerably more functional than the current one. That scale hadn’t shrunk just because the barony had.
Faster growth, fuller crops and better yield. If the entire farmland came back under those conditions, the math of what Percvale could produce and sell changed dramatically. Harvest cycles that normally took months might compress. The volume coming out of the ground would exceed standard soil by enough to matter in trade.
"Let’s work on the rest then," Darion said, and looked up at the remaining ground ahead of them.
He heard the sound of her packing.
He turned. Seren had her containers back out and was wrapping them carefully, returning each one to its place in the pack with the same care she’d shown earlier.
"Uh? You’re not—" he started.
"I can’t," she said, not unkindly. "Not today."
"The ability drains something that isn’t physical in me," she said. "I’m not tired in my body. But the part of me that does this, it’s spent. It needs time to recover before I can do it again. One session per day. Sometimes less, depending on how much ground I cover and how damaged the soil is." She looked at the field they had just worked. "This section was badly damaged. It took more than healthier soil would have."
Darion nodded slowly.
He thought about his own restrictions. The domain rule and the reviving limitations. He couldn’t revive knights that weren’t his and the rank requirements that had stopped him when he tried to revive Edric Vorne’s grave.
Perhaps every ability in this world seemed to come with a constraint, something that prevented it from scaling infinitely. He couldn’t raise the dead freely without limit. She couldn’t restore soil without a daily limitation.
It made a strange kind of sense.
"How much ground can you cover in one session?" he asked.
"It depends on the condition. Today, roughly what you saw." She shouldered the pack. "Better soil takes less effort. This farmland is going to take time, weeks, possibly more, depending on what the rest of it looks like."
"That’s fine," Darion said. He meant it, even with Valdenmoor’s deadline sitting in the back of his mind. Weeks of daily sessions was a timeline he could work with. "Well...uh...Thank you," he added.
She looked at him briefly. "You don’t need to thank me since I’ll be getting paid."
"You are," he agreed. "Still."
She almost said something, decided against it, and walked back toward the horses.
They rode back in the same quiet they had ridden out in. The morning was properly established now, the light warmer than the grey of earlier. Darion rode and looked at the road, and the words appeared in front of his eyes without him asking for them.
[Achievement Unlocked — Distant Command in Combat: Your undead responded to your direction across distance during the fall of Gonnb.]
[Achievement Unlocked — Retribution Taken: The leader of Gonnb has been killed by your hand.]
[Achievement Unlocked — By Fire: Gonnb no longer stands. What you burned will not threaten Percvale again.]
[Achievement Unlocked — The Soilsinger: A rare specialist now works under your banner.]
[Achievement Unlocked — First Restoration: A section of your territory’s farmland has been returned to productivity.]
[Achievement Unlocked — A Message onthe Wall: The leader’s skull hangs where visitors will see it.]
[STATUS]
Name: Darion
Title: Baron of Percvale
Class: Necromancer
Rank: Acolyte
Territory: Percvale (Border Domain)
Territorial Resonance: Low (Starving-aligned — Improving)
[ATTRIBUTES]
Strength: 49 [+5]
Agility: 35 [+4]
Endurance: 42 [+2]
Vitality: 33 [+3]
Perception: 36 [+6]
Intelligence: 52 [+7]
Willpower: 42 [+5]
[Knight Undead Inventory: 30/30]
[Animal Undead Inventory: 10/10]
[Skills:
Death Perception
Distant Command]
He read through it on horseback, the screen visible only to him, the road continuing beneath the horse’s feet.
The territorial resonance caught his attention. Starving-aligned — Improving.
It had been death-aligned since he arrived, the system’s honest assessment of what Percvale was.
Then ’ Starving’ aligned and now the addition of a single word ( improving) was small. But it was accurate, and accuracy from the system was worth paying attention to.
The goats and cattle from Gonnb had changed the food equation. The restored section of farmland had changed the soil equation. The Soilsinger working on it daily would keep changing it.
His intelligence had jumped the most, fifty-two now, his highest stat. That tracked with the last few days. The planning, the adaptation, the loperation against Gonnb and the bat experiment. His brain had been working harder than his body.
He dismissed the screen and looked at the road ahead.
The farmland behind him was ready. Twenty-one goats and fourteen cattle were on the eastern fields under knight supervision, eating and breathing and doing their thing.
They would be worth considerably more in six months than they were today. The food stores from Gonnb were in the castle’s storage. Gonnb itself was ash.
Things were about to change.