Plant Manipulation

"Is that really okay?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"This mill was just used to grind bones. Isn't it dirty to grind flour without washing it first?"

"It's fine. The flour will be eaten by the local nobles anyway."

Being the mill supervisor was a highly respectable position in the territory. It paid well and carried high status; when farmers saw him, they had to call him "sir."

So when the mill supervisor in Chestnut Village was dismissed on the spot by the Young Master and appointed as the compost yard's supply collector, his wife chased him all around the village with a pitchfork.

Inside the mill, Frederick scooped up a spoonful of bone meal with a wooden spoon and studied it for a long while. Then he went outside to the open-air stoves.

There were three stoves here, each with a huge pot big enough to stew Frederick in.

The villagers were putting collected bone fragments, river clam shells, and snail shells into the pot on the left, then adding plenty of wood ash and water to boil the bones.

The bones in the middle pot had already been boiling for a while. Someone skimmed off the rendered fat, then added more water to keep the pot from boiling dry.

The stove flues had been converted into drying beds like heated kangs. The bones, after having their fat removed, were laid out to dry. Once completely dry, they were gathered up and taken to the mill to be ground into powder.

The finer the bone meal, the more effectively it worked as fertilizer. After the first grinding, the bone meal was sifted through a water-powered sieve, and the coarser bone fragments were ground a second time.

Frederick watched for a while and thought that a stone mill wasn't very convenient for grinding bone meal. I'll unlock a ball mill later. I can line the wooden barrel with iron sheets to make it last longer. Instead of steel balls, large pebbles should do the trick.

He turned to the village chief beside him and asked, "Do we have enough bones?"

The village chief bent forward as he replied, "We have enough for now, but that may not last. We're planning to buy some from other territories."

Frederick gave a soft "Mm."

Farmers at present valued nitrogen fertilizers such as compost and green manure. They had some understanding of wood ash as a source of potassium, but didn't value it enough. As for phosphorus fertilizer, bones were simply tossed into the compost.

Now, after Professor Matthias of Weissenburg University had been inspired by Frederick, he had begun to focus on compound fertilizers, and phosphorus fertilizer had become more important.

The problem was that meat consumption per person was far too low. There simply weren't enough bones to make bone meal.

Blood meal faced the same problem.

In the pot on the right side of the stove, collected livestock blood was being boiled. Once it had coagulated, quicklime was added at a ratio of twenty kilograms per hundred kilograms of blood, while the mixture was stirred rapidly. When it turned dark brown, it was taken out to dry in the sun or in a heated bed, then ground into powder.

Before sowing wheat, the seeds could be moistened and mixed with blood meal at four percent of their weight, increasing the yield by ten or even twenty percent.

Bones could be collected as waste from other places, but the raw materials for blood meal were a problem.

Now that word had spread that Baron Weissen was buying up large amounts of blood, some big-sister-type heroine might show up tomorrow to grind a boss for experience. They'd better prepare plenty of Acid Slimes.

Then there were the problems of blood sausage being a common food among the villagers and blood meal being difficult to store for long.

The only way to solve the raw-material problem was to vigorously develop animal husbandry. Chemical fertilizer was out of the question for now; at most, they could make a little potassium nitrate.

Urea and gypsum were out of the question too. Those fertilizers were acidic, and the soil here was mostly acidic as well. Add them, and they might as well dip dumplings in them.

Frederick went to the fields prepared for autumn sowing. The farmers, young and old alike, were mixing compost, bone meal, wood ash, and Golden Fertilizer, then spreading the mixture evenly over the land.

Golden Fertilizer was the first product from his old home that Frederick had replicated in this world. It was actually zeolite.

The claim that Golden Fertilizer "doesn't leach or evaporate" was true. Because of its special structure, zeolite could absorb nutrients from the soil like a sponge, then release them when those nutrients became scarce in the surrounding soil, reducing fertilizer loss.

These fields had recently grown peas and other legumes. After harvesting the beans, the vines were plowed back into the soil and watered thoroughly to let them rot. Now, after applying the basal fertilizer, they would plow deeply once more, and then they could sow the seeds.

Frederick watched for a while, then found Plant Manipulator Professor Matthias and several of his students at the threshing ground beside the fields.

Compared with the fertilizing he'd just seen, this was truly revolutionary.

A series of narrow trenches had been dug into the packed earth of the threshing ground. A group of students carried buckets, pouring a deep-red, mud-like substance into them.

Frederick walked over to Matthias and asked curiously, "What kind of Magic Array is this?"

"A spell that stimulates seeds. It can make plants bear more fruit," Matthias replied.

Frederick's eyes lit up, and he hurriedly asked, "Does it work on all plants?"

"Of course." Matthias looked pleased with himself. "Quite a few of the plants I control use fruit as weapons. This is what I'm best at."

Frederick's eyes gleamed. I've struck gold.

Just then, one of the students said, "That's only because you're so bad at the entangling type, teacher, so you put all your effort into the fruit type."

Matthias glared at him. He held out his right hand, a black plant seed from who knew where pinched between his fingers, and said coldly, "Want to try out my terrible entangling magic?"

The student hunched his shoulders and immediately ran off.

Matthias saw Frederick staring intently at the seed in his hand. He smiled faintly, then let go, and the seed fell to the ground.

A dark-green glow connected the seed to his fingers. The moment the seed touched the ground, it began to grow rapidly, and in the blink of an eye, vines sprang up.

The vines glowed green and writhed and grew like tentacles. After a few breaths, they had formed a pavilion around the two of them, along with two chairs made of coiled vines and a table.

Frederick was stunned by the sight before him. His mouth hung wide open. When the green glow faded, he instinctively reached out to poke the vines, then looked up at the lush green leaves.

"Take a break." Matthias sat down smugly. "We might be able to enhance the first batch of wheat seeds this afternoon."

As soon as Frederick sat down, he asked, "This is... a real plant?"

"Of course," Matthias replied. "It's even alive, though it won't live long."

"Why?" Frederick asked in surprise.

"It's simple." Matthias shrugged. "Its roots have absorbed and used up all the water and nutrients in the surrounding soil. It'll starve and die of thirst before long."

Frederick immediately jumped out of the pavilion and saw that the ground all around it really was much drier than elsewhere.

He immediately called for the village chief to have people bring water over and soak the soil.

The village chief and villagers had been so stunned that Frederick had to go over and kick each of them before they reacted.

Matthias smiled at Frederick as he returned to the pavilion. "If it's pruned regularly and watered and fertilized, this pavilion can live for a long time."

Frederick didn't respond. He pinched his chin and began to think.