In fact, Mu En had another purpose in turning Beruto into one of the blessed: he wanted to try producing plants affected by the blessing, like yesterday's golden apple.
In the world of Elden Ring, there was a plant called Gold-Tinged Excrement that had been born precisely because of the blessing's favor.
But he had already tested it: these plants, which lacked self-awareness, could not receive blessings.
The golden apple's appearance seemed to have something to do with Nausicaä's blessing ritual.
Unfortunately, no new golden crops appeared after he blessed Beruto.
Although the food before them had grown several times larger, it had not fundamentally changed.
But as soon as Beruto heard Mu En's words, he objected:
"No, that's not right. Even if they grew better after being planted somewhere else, they couldn't possibly change this much. Something we don't know about must have happened!"
Mu En fell silent for a moment, seeming to have thought of something. He organized his words to make them easier for the two to understand before answering:
"Hmm... perhaps this was what your crops were supposed to look like?"
"What?" Neither of them understood what Mu En meant.
"Long ago, there was an old saying: 'A mandarin grown south of the Huai remains a mandarin, but grown north of the Huai, it becomes a trifoliate orange.' It means that the same seeds can grow into completely different things in different soils and environments."
"Perhaps you can't sense it, but the air you depend on to survive is actually filled with an invisible, intangible poison."
"Those seeds really were the same seeds as before. The only difference is that their growth was accelerated a hundredfold, a thousandfold. They completed their growth cycle before they had time to absorb the poison."
"Together with the abundant vitality provided by Erdtree's Favor, that allowed these plants to show what they were originally meant to look like."
Although the above conclusion was only a guess, Mu En thought it was reasonably plausible.
Before the apocalypse, this had been a world with extremely advanced technology.
The crops that could survive in harsh environments must also have been cultivated or modified to expend nutrients fighting the poison.
With the help of Erdtree's Favor, they had skipped the process of breathing day and night and accumulating poison, while also receiving abundant vitality. Only then had they shown their original, healthy appearance.
"I see. The air?"
Nausicaä seemed to have thought of something and silently noted this unprecedented discovery.
"This..."
After hearing Mu En's explanation, Beruto felt he had received more shocks today than he had in the past year.
The clean air they had all breathed in the past, kept free of miasma by the sea breeze, was actually poisonous too!
"All right. Now, I will grant you this incantation, which can heal and hasten growth."
Smiling, Mu En gave Beruto and Nausicaä the Elden Ring mark and the Erdtree's Favor incantation.
After receiving this power from the Erdtree, Beruto immediately took seeds from the grain sack he had guarded so carefully and instructed the foreman to plant them directly in the burned woodland.
Before long, an experimental field covering about half a mu was quickly cleared.
Then, copying what he had seen, he buried the seeds directly in the soil.
As the Erdtree's Elden Ring mark lit up, a faint golden light slowly seeped into the ground, and tender shoots gradually emerged.
Although he hastened the crops' growth much more slowly than the power displayed by the Erdtree,
Beruto still tirelessly used this miraculous power until the field was filled with crops. Only when he was drenched in sweat did he stop to rest.
Sure enough, the crops he had personally hastened to maturity also bore outrageously large produce, no different from what the Erdtree had brought forth.
Their yield and appearance far surpassed any harvest they had ever gathered from their so-called "fertile fields"!
Beruto's face was flushed with excitement.
The food problem had finally been solved, and the great weight in his heart had finally lifted.
As the farming elder, he had known about the threat of famine earlier than anyone.
Whenever night fell and all was quiet, Beruto would dream of the Valley of the Wind littered with the bodies of those who had starved.
And now, under the Erdtree's light, the dark cloud that had left him unable to breathe suddenly cleared.
What other farmer could grow nearly half a mu of food in just a few hours, as he had? And that was with him spending most of the time clearing the land, sowing, and harvesting.
Even compared with those vague and distant legends, it was in no way inferior.
However, although Erdtree's Favor possessed miraculous power, it was still subject to the laws of nature.
The observant Beruto soon discovered this problem.
"Your Highness, look here." He crouched down, scooped up a handful of soil from the newly harvested experimental field, and held it out for Nausicaä to see.
After just two rounds of accelerated growth, the soil, once soft and fertile, had become compacted and cracked, looking lifeless.
"This soil is as barren as if it hadn't been left fallow for years. If we keep sowing on this land, I'm afraid it will be difficult to grow any new crops, even with the incantation."
Hearing this, Nausicaä frowned slightly and immediately called a halt to the experiment. She quickly reported the situation to Mu En through their mental link.
She was worried that this farming method, which defied the laws of nature, might completely ruin the few fertile fields the valley had left.
Mu En, however, had anticipated this.
"Don't worry. This is all normal."
"My power only accelerates the crops' growth and replaces a small portion of the nutrients they need. The material that actually makes up the food still has to be drawn from the soil by the plants themselves."
"This is simply the result of the crops rapidly absorbing nutrients from the land. It can still be remedied through fertilizing and other methods."
Mu En's words put Beruto at ease for the time being.
He was more than familiar with such basic practices as leaving land fallow, rotating crops, and applying fertilizer.
He quickly made an estimate. As long as they properly scheduled the recovery periods, merely supplying enough food for the Valley of the Wind's current residents would not turn it into barren land.
"What a pity. If only we had chemical fertilizer."
Mu En quietly made a note of this problem.
If he wanted his territory to develop, simply having enough to eat certainly would not be enough.
In the future, whether they exported these oversized "blessed crops" as a specialty or provided food for believers who came to settle, they would need more grain.
When that time came, the problem of the incantation-based growth method rapidly draining the soil's fertility would come to light sooner or later.
This reminded Mu En of a miraculous substance from his previous life called "Golden Clods."
He remembered that, in the original story, Pejite, not far from the Valley of the Wind, was an industrial city with a large population.
Chemical fertilizer was itself one of the by-products of industrialization.
Besides that, the most powerful weapon in this world was buried beneath Pejite. He did not want that thing falling into Tolmekia's hands again in the future.
"Once this crisis is over, I'll have Nausicaä gather some information."