The next morning, after Kroya woke up, he felt that his mental power seemed to have increased a little. He had also slept very soundly.
Although his magic and mental power normally increased gradually, this time the improvement was noticeably greater.
A single night had given him at least three days' worth of his usual progress.
Puzzled, he scanned his room. His gaze lingered briefly on the essential oil lamp hanging from the ceiling before moving to the crescent-shaped fruit.
"If anything here is unusual, it's you. Could you be doing something?"
Kroya got up and examined the Crescent Moon Fruit over and over, but found nothing strange. Puzzled, he decided to stay up later tonight and see what happened.
To prevent anything from happening to it while he was away, he simply put it into the storage artifact the merfolk had given him and carried it with him.
Then he got dressed, tidied himself up, and left his room with his staff, heading down to the castle's ground floor.
Two girls dressed in white were already waiting by the stairs. When they saw him coming down, they immediately bowed respectfully.
"Lord Mage!"
"Would you like your meal now?"
They had clearly received training. Their manners and movements were no different from those of the maids trained by the Mage Association in the Royal Capital, except for a slight lack of practice.
Overall, though, they were acceptable. They did not look around or display any inappropriate intentions or behavior-quite a few maids in the Royal Capital had ambiguous relationships with mages.
Honestly, Kroya appreciated people who wanted to get ahead, but they first had to show their worth. If they had ability, he certainly did not mind providing some resources to cultivate them.
But ability was the prerequisite.
"I'll eat now," he said, then headed toward the dining room.
Soon, the maids brought out that day's breakfast.
To his surprise, it was milk, brown bread, and a grilled fish fillet.
The bread looked fluffy and gave off a sweet aroma tinged with milk, which surprised Kroya a little.
Today's bread seems pretty well baked.
Bread was the staple food of this world, and as the lord, he could naturally eat white bread. But honestly, the bread he had eaten lately had been rather dreadful, neither fluffy nor soft.
Compared to the bread from before his transmigration, it was worlds apart.
Still, that bread had been white. Why was today's black-no, slightly brown?
Puzzled, he picked it up and took a bite.
"Hmm?"
The bread turned out to be unexpectedly delicious. It was soft in his mouth and sweet, pairing perfectly with the lightly salted, mildly spicy grilled fish.
It was even better than bread made from refined white flour. Clearly, the difference lay in the ingredients.
He was quite satisfied with the meal.
Eating a staple like this really did feel more satisfying than eating seafood alone.
After finishing the bread and draining his milk, he took the napkin a maid offered and wiped his mouth. Quite pleased, he asked, "Did we change cooks today?"
The young maid hurriedly replied respectfully, "Lord Mage, today's bread was made with the Sea God Barley you brought."
Sea God Barley?
I've only been here a little over a month, even counting every day. It's already ripe? How did I not know?
"Go fetch Rob." Rather than question the young maid further, he decided to ask Rob directly.
"Yes." The young maid immediately turned and left.
Before long, Rob came over. After bowing, he said with a smile, "Lord Kroya, the Sea God Barley you brought has been growing very well. For some unknown reason, the first crop has already ripened.
"Yesterday, I used a few methods to dry it overnight. After testing it and finding nothing wrong, I had it baked into bread for you today."
"Dried it overnight... Don't tell me you used the low-level magic scrolls that fellow Sai Liu sells?"
"Yes. You deserve to enjoy the best." Rob bowed slightly.
The Drying Spell Scroll was a fairly common spell scroll. Since it was easy to make, plenty were in circulation.
It was hardly surprising that Sai Liu had some.
Kroya did not dwell on it. Instead, he asked in puzzlement,
"For some unknown reason?"
He frowned. "If I prepared a magic potion, it should ripen quickly, but I haven't intervened... Never mind. I'll take a look."
One look at Rob made it clear that he did not understand what had happened either.
Kroya might as well go and see for himself.
Rob thought so too. The barley had been discovered ripe yesterday, and only after checking that it was not poisonous or harmful had they hurriedly milled it into flour and made bread today.
This barley brought from the Royal Capital really was different from ordinary barley. The bread it produced was fluffy and soft, worlds apart from ordinary bread.
They had served it to Kroya for breakfast at the first opportunity.
He knew how badly Kroya had suffered from the island's unpalatable food lately.
Before leaving, Kroya also instructed him to have the three boys from last night come along. Rob was a little surprised to hear it, and could not help reflecting on their good fortune.
Having caught Kroya's attention, they might someday rise above the rest on Reef Island-provided, of course, that they continued to satisfy him.
And so,
The party of five made its way to the place where the Sea God Barley was planted, a silvery-white beach beside the sea.
Sunlight spilled over it, weaving silver-white and pale blue into a beautiful scene.
Reefs dotted the area, forming a fence-like barrier. At night, the rising tide brought seawater in; during the day, they held it back.
This ensured that the seawater within that area always remained at a steady level.
Growing in the seawater was lush barley, half a person's height, with a faint bluish tint.
Its heavy ears drooped, visibly plump. It hardly looked as though it had grown for only a month.
In theory, Sea God Barley cultivated by mages needed sixty days-half the time ordinary barley took to ripen.
Yet only a month had passed.
And it was already ripe?
Utterly puzzled, Kroya walked straight into the barley field, using both his magic and the Astral Body Inscription Technique to examine its condition.
He discovered that the barley had grown entirely naturally, without any signs of having been forced to ripen by magic. Its Astral Spirit Bodies were also very stable.
The only strange thing was the abundance of natural magic within it. Normally, an ordinary crop that did not even qualify as a magic plant should not contain so much natural magic.
There had to be a reason for this anomaly.
He had already examined both the sea and the land here and found no overflow of natural magic. That left only human intervention.
He returned to the shore and asked Rob, "Who usually tends this barley?"
Rob hurriedly replied, "I've already looked into it. Russell's and Ocross's families usually tend it. Apparently, they farmed for a viscount before coming to the island."
"Have them come here. Remember, I want every member of both families." Kroya brushed off his clothes and sat on a flat rock nearby, his expression impassive.
As the lord, his orders were naturally absolute.
Before long, eight frightened-looking farm servants were brought over. Only four were adults; the others included children of seven or eight and teenagers.
They scrambled to kneel and bow before Kroya, trembling violently as though they were about to be sent to the gallows.
They did not know why Kroya had summoned them, but the notion that mages were temperamental was deeply ingrained.
In their eyes, if Kroya, their mage lord, wanted to make trouble for them, he probably needed only to say a word to make their entire families disappear into the sea.
Kroya paid no attention to their expressions. He merely gathered magic in his eyes and narrowed them, examining everyone closely. Finally, his gaze settled on a little girl whose head was bowed, but whose hair was golden.
Her hair... was not an ordinary gold.
It was a gold that represented a bountiful harvest, like ears of rice and waves of wheat in autumn. He had heard of this particular gold at the Mage Association.
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