More than twenty minutes later.
Richard returned by carriage to the gate outside the courtyard.
Standing outside, he carefully sensed the situation and found everything inside calm.
There really shouldn't be any trouble. Abel was probably being overly cautious... Richard thought as he pushed open the gate and entered the courtyard.
In the courtyard, Pandora was carrying a wooden bucket out of the room and walking toward the center. A bare wooden stick was planted in the ground there—it was the Staff Vine Richard had bought from Reiss.
Richard noticed that a large patch of ground around the Staff Vine was damp, indicating that it had already been watered quite a bit. Looking at the bucket full of water in Pandora's hands, he could not help asking, "Say, Pandora, don't tell me you've been watering this Staff Vine ever since I left?"
Hearing him, Pandora looked over and shook her head. "How could that be? I followed what the book said. First, I loosened the soil around the Staff Vine to give it a better growing environment, then I applied some fertilizer to give it enough nutrients.
"After that, I chanted a long spell whose purpose I didn't know. It said it could adjust its internal structure. Then I sang several songs to put both it and me in a good mood. Only then did I water it. So far, I've only watered it three buckets. This is just the fourth bucket—far from enough."
Richard: "..."
After a moment of silence, he asked, "How many buckets are you planning to use?"
"I'll water it with six buckets first and see how it goes," Pandora said. "If that isn't enough, I'll add another four buckets. Hmm, that's what the book said too."
It's over... This Staff Vine won't survive the day...