Chapter 38: Three Sisters
Tara’s Tent
As Theo arrived at Tara’s tent, he saw Tara slumped face-down on the table, completely unmoving. Spread across the table was the newly drawn map showing the locations of all the relocated villages.
“You were looking for me?” Theo asked.
Tara slowly raised her head, revealing a face that looked completely drained.
“Theo… please help me,” Tara said with a tired voice. “Those chiefs just keep coming.”
“Sheesh, again?” Theo scratched his head. “What are they whining about this time?”
“Everything,” Tara answered instantly. “Why their village got put there, when they’ll get their own walls, why that village gets priority first instead of theirs. Everything!”
She grabbed the mug of milk liquor beside her and took a long gulp.
“Please,” Tara muttered after lowering the mug. “Summon someone to sort out this mess already.”
“I can’t,” Theo muttered as he opened his status window.
----------------------------------------
[ GENERAL INFORMATION ]
Name : Theo Poliznev
Title : Blackstone Vice-chief, Grassland Alliance Advisor
Class : Necromancer
Level : 2
EXP : 1471 / 2000
----------------------------------------
[ CORE STATS ]
HP : 110 / 110
MP : 85 / 85
Stamina : 54 / 60
----------------------------------------
[ CONTROLLED TERRITORY ]
Numbers : 9
Populations : 1351
Stability : Fractured Balance
----------------------------------------
“I still haven’t met the requirement yet,” Theo muttered while staring at the window. “We only got these new people a week ago anyway, so hopefully it won’t take too long.”
“A week?” Tara replied flatly. “It already feels like they’ve been bothering me for a month.”
She dropped her forehead back onto the table with a dull thud.
“Can’t you think of something to make everyone shut up?”
“Well, I was thinking about putting on another performance with Erika and David,” Theo sighed. “But these people barely know Erika, let alone adore her, and David’s still away with Greta looking for more demon hounds.”
“…Why don’t we ask Archie?” Tara muttered as she raise her head again. “Maybe he has some idea.”
Theo’s face immediately soured.
“Ugh… ever since that old man finally released me two weeks ago,” Theo muttered, “I’ve been doing my best to avoid him.”
Then he let out a long sigh.
“But you’re right… maybe he can help.”
---
Archimedes Tent
Tara stood outside a tent whose entire outer canvas had been covered with scribbled equations.
What used to be Theo’s tent had now completely turned into Archie’s personal workshop after Theo naturally refused to keep sleeping in the same tent as him and moved out. Not that Archie noticed—or cared—about that in the slightest.
“It’s not my fucking business!” Archie’s voice boomed from inside the tent.
A second later, Theo came rushing out of the entrance.
A measuring stick flew out right after him and smacked directly into his head.
“Ouch!” Theo cursed while grabbing his forehead.
“And don’t come back unless you bring me a new formula, you dimwits!” Archie shouted again from inside.
“I’m guessing that’s a no?” Tara muttered flatly.
“Yeah…” Theo sighed while rubbing his head. “He can’t help us. Or rather, he won’t.”
Then Theo paused for a moment.
“Maybe the druid?” he said. “Aren’t druids supposed to be famous for their wisdom?”
“Hm… I doubt someone who lives alone in a hermitage knows how to handle people,” Tara replied. “But we can try asking her. We also need to check how the seed planting is going anyway.”
---
Farmland
Not far from Blackstone Village, a large section of the grassland had already been cleared for the plantation project, and next to the farmland stood a small hut.
Inside were Theo, Tara, and Delilah.
“With patience and acceptance," Delilah said softly, both hands resting against her chest with a tender smile, "Every trouble clouding people’s hearts will eventually disappear on its own.”
The atmosphere around her somehow felt absurdly gentle, like the kind of dramatic wisdom scene that should have flower petals floating in the background.
“Nuh uh. Wrong kind of wisdom,” Theo replied flatly with his arms making an X sign.
“Told you,” Tara commented from beside him.
Neither of them looked impressed.
When Blackstone decided to begin farming, Theo and Tara naturally asked the only druid in the area to help manage the plantation. And apparently, that had been the correct decision.
Delilah’s knowledge of plants led her to suggest starting with beans, maize, and squash. Which, completely by accident, happened to match what Earth once called the Three Sisters, the ideal combination of crops for surviving on the grasslands of America.
But since this was a fantasy world with magic, of course they could cheat the process. Every seed being planted had first been imbued with Delilah’s nature magic, exactly like what she was doing right now while casually talking with Theo and Tara.
Delilah sat on a wooden stool, quietly humming to herself while the tip of her staff glowed with soft green light. The staff tapped repeatedly against a basket on the floor filled with corn seeds, the light flowing into them one by one.
Theo watched the process silently, wondering how fast the crops would grow compared to normal harvests.
“So anyway, how’s your stay here been?” Tara asked while glancing around the hut.
Despite its small size, the place was surprisingly comfortable. There was a charpoy bed near the wall, a small hearth, a wooden table, and several shelves lined with clay pots filled with different kinds of flowers.
Delilah’s new home.
“It felt a little strange at first to live somewhere without trees around me,” Delilah replied with a gentle smile. “But taking care of plants that I personally nurture and watching them grow healthy seems like it's going to be fun.”
Since it was too troublesome for Delilah to keep traveling back and forth every day between the plantation and the forest where she originally lived, Theo and Tara had decided to build her a hut near the farmland instead.
Sure, they could have simply let Delilah stay inside the village and avoided the trouble of building an entirely new hut. But it didn’t take a genius to predict what would happen if Delilah lived too close to everyone else.
Despite being a powerful druid, she was also an absurdly attractive airhead who treated “mating” as just another completely natural part of life and talked about it with zero shame.
A complete disaster for every marriage in Blackstone waiting to happen.
“And done,” Delilah said cheerfully as she pulled her staff away from the basket. “Time to bring these babies to their new home.”
She picked up the basket and headed toward the door. Theo and Tara followed behind her.
---
Outside, several Blackstone villagers could be seen building long rows of mounds across the prepared farmland.
The problem with farming on grasslands—whether on Earth or in a fantasy world—was that the soil was ridiculously hard to work with. Centuries of deep root mats, called sod, had packed the ground together so tightly that it felt almost like digging through iron mesh.
Which was exactly why mound farming became the solution.
Meanwhile, in the section where the mounds had already been finished, several villagers approached Delilah after noticing her coming out of the hut carrying the seed basket.
“Here you go,” Delilah said sweetly while handing them the basket. “Plant each seed around fifteen centimeters apart and about three centimeters deep.”
The villagers accepted the basket and headed toward the fields while Theo watched the exchange with slight disbelief.
“You use centimeters pretty casually for someone who only learned it yesterday,” Theo muttered. “Most people take weeks to get used to those measurements.”
“Yes, but it’s actually a very convenient system for communicating with others,” Delilah replied cheerfully. “I’ve already memorized and understand all the distance measurements you use. Oh, and the time measurements too. Seconds, minutes, hours…”
“Wha?” Theo stared at her. “You learned all that in a day? Just like Archie?”
Delilah simply smiled.
Theo and Tara exchanged a glance. For the first time, both of them started wondering whether this druid was actually an airhead… or secretly far wiser than she looked.
“Oh, speaking of which,” Delilah said, “I thought there would be more people helping with the plantation. Why haven’t I seen them these past few days?”
Theo and Delilah both turned toward Tara.
“Yeah… that’s also one of the complaints,” Tara said while scratching her head. “People keep asking why they should help with farming when the harvest is going to be distributed to every village anyway, including the ones that didn’t help.”
“Ugh, good lord…” Theo groaned while covering his face with one hand. “These people seriously have no sense of unity.”
Then he let out a long sigh.
“I really didn’t think making people work together would be this damn hard.”
---