Chapter 61: Origin of Magic (1/2)

Noir stayed that night and left again that morning, making Rino miss him more. As the lich cleaned his house, he found a few short black strands of fur and kept those in a little pouch he asked the brownies to make for him. On the days he missed Noir, he would turn to the little patch of black fur he collected to play with it.

Just like that, four days passed with the farmers and fairies diligently tending to the field.

”My lord,” Fronzo knocked on his door one night. ”Please come out to take a look!”

Rino knew that the farmhand was a very diligent person who would not trouble him with small matters. The only other time Fronzo spoke out of line was when Rino interfered with farming work. Fronzo only looked for him when things out of his control happened, like finding a strange glowing rock while ploughing.

”What is it?” Rino asked and opened the door.

The skeleton was looking a little better with the clothes the brownie siblings made. Clothes really did make a man, and Fronzo looked less like a poor beggar and more like a decent farm manager.

Fronzo bowed and saluted clumsily. His imitation of high noble etiquette was still sloppy, but Rino overlooked it. Even if he was the king, he did not want to be bothered by these useless socialisations as long as everyone did their job to make his idle life dream come true.

”The potato seeds have grown tremendously overnight even though they were mere seedlings yesterday! I checked if any of the fairies did anything special, but they claimed to only use normal water magic to water them. The farming volunteers also collected the same mulch as usual. I rushed to inform my lord at once when I found out.”

Hearing that the potato seeds would normally take a few months to grow from seed, Rino was thrilled to hear that a change in his watering routine provided such a great result.

Over the last few days, Rino tested out several new theories to enchant water. He also did a little something in the underground reservoir. The fairies continued using water magic to water the potatoes, but Rino gave them runes to carry around while doing so. They no longer conjured water using magic.

His idling did not prove in vain, and the ich really had to thank the elusive cat for pointing him in the right direction.

It wasn't nutrients that helped the plants achieve miraculous growth. If there was a common formula for all living creatures, they needed life energy to sustain.

Each day after the first, the fairies were watering the fields with a different kind of water that Rino 'imbued' with mana. The first two attempts were a dud, and Rino had to find a different way to 'charge' the water with magic.

The first batch of water was simply forcing mana to mingle with the water he separated out for watering purposes. Needless to say, it ended in a failure because most of the charged mana in the water escaped to the environment.

The second batch of water was done slightly differently. Instead of forcing the water to accept mana, Rino tried to do what Noir did with his cape and 'enchanted' the water using layers of mana to wrap them around the water.