Chapter 243: Germination

Crack!

Walker lost focus and another seed shattered. He had taken a step back in his progress. All it had taken was a soft breeze to pull his mind from the tiny amount of mana he was trying to infuse in to the seed.

This was not as easy and Gil's mother had made it seem. She was already off helping out with the others planting their seeds. She had already prepared the seeds for them since they would not be able to add mana to them using a skill like she could. As annoying as this process was to learn Walker knew that she had left it this way to that he would learn a skill. 

Holding another new seed in his hands he started the process again. The small amount of mana began to wrap around the seed. Walker felt he was holding back a raging river by himself. Bit by bit the mana entered the small seed causing it to bulge ever so slightly. There were no cracks and no visible damage to it. Now the problem was cutting off the flow so that the mana would stay inside. The last time he had tried this the mana inside forced it's way out and shattered even more violently.

He knew that he was adding just too much mana but if he held back too much then there was no difference at all. This time Walker allowed some mana to slip out of the seed and flow in to the air around him. The seed still did not crack but instead started to glow a bit more than it had before. Walker refused to celebrate until he could feel the seed would not take or give any more mana at all. Coming to a balance he was able to stop the flow and was left with a small glowing seed just the same as Jane's.

Walker quickly released it afraid that if he held it any longer then it would somehow absorb more mana and burst. With the seed in the hole that had been made he covered it all up and gave the soil a pat. This was his win, after trying this for an two hours he had planted his first seed!

' The skill speed germination- 2 mana cost

Infused a seed with mana to speed the germination process. The seed will be able to better absorb natural mana and nutrients from the soil.'

Walker knew that this skill would be nothing special to anyone else but to him this could be very useful in both alchemy and forging. It was rare but for some kinds of weapons it was important to have plant based materials. For example Gil's arrows, if he used a fully metal arrow then it would be too heavy to travel far and be useless. There were also staffs that could channel certain elemental manas better than forged metal ones. If Walker could use these farmer skills to create his own materials he may be able to have a higher quality weapon at a lower level than others would. 

There was also huge profit in this since many of the more important buildings could only use these kind of rare materials. Some could not hold mana for runes or have proper strength to stand up to wear and tear. The best example of this was the forge, where all the materials of the building needed to be resistant to heat.

Getting in to the swing of things he used his newly acquired speed germination skill to infuse the other seeds and place them in to the ground. The seed that Jane had planted before had already started to sprout out of the ground. The small light green leaves were mixed with a red purple veins that seemed to pull more mana from the air and light as it grew. Walker wondered how much of this was the speed germination skill at work and how much of it was the plants natural growing rate.

"Oho, finally managed to get the hang of things there, and here I expected a greenhorn like you to spend all day on it." Jane had come up from helping Remey and Su who had planted half of their seeds. Surprisingly there were many more seeds sprouting in the strawberry row already. "Ah don't worry about them, those seeds grow faster even when left alone, I just gave them a bit of a boost. I'm not sure if you will learn this skill but I have a passive called green thumb." This was new to Walker and easily piqued his interest.

Seeing his curious look she knew that she had his full attention. This was what she had wanted, if she could get Walker motivated to keep gardening then she knew that he would eventually learn this passive skill as well. " The green thumb skill boosts the speed of growth for every plant you nurture, even just spending a few hours on them then you will wake up in the morning to a few inches of growth. I gained it after growing a hundred different plants. It was a reward for one of my main quests in my system." 

Walker thought that this sounded like a huge challenge at the moment, he was so spread out that he could not imagine having the time to grow over a hundred different plants. " Wait, I just need to nurture them for a few hours? Do you think I can do that while practicing other skills?" Walker could see the start of a good plan.

"That's going to be up to you" Jane smiled knowing that he had taken the bait and was going to start working on these new skills with some good focus. "Now get over here, you need to learn to infuse the water with more mana so that it's easier for the plants to drink up." He felt that she was throwing the hardest possible skills at him to learn, but if he did not give it his all then there was no point.

She had set up three barrels full of water from a pump in the corner of the yard. "This water is already natural, it comes from the pump which is drilled down in to a natural underground pond. That already had more nutrients than other waters, all we need to do is add some mana to get things working. You should get the hang of it easily." Walker was left again alone with just the barrels of water and a feeling that this was not as easy as she made it sound. Jane hadn't even shown him how it was done.

Walker did the only logical thing and placed his hand in to the first barrel of water, he let the mana from his body begin to flow into the water. The water rapidly started to suck the mana up like it was an unending void. This was the opposite of the seeds he had just been infusing with mana, the water wanted to take all of his mana and leave him with none. 

He could feel the water getting hotter, the top of it even seemed to steam a little. The level had definitely started to decrease, Walker glared at Gil's mother who was already fully focused on preparing things for the weeping willow tree. 

Walker stopped the flow of mana with difficulty and stepped back watching the water evaporate at a much faster pace. This was similar to the seed but instead of shattering the water would start to evaporate into the air. It would also take on the mana willingly instead of needing to have it pushed in to it. This meant that he needed the strength to keep the mana from rushing in and making the hard work to disappear. 

After the first barrel had stopped losing water top evaporation he saw that a whole quarter of it had taken his mana and disappeared. Now he needed to find out just how much mana the water could take without evaporating. Instead of placing his whole hand in the water he only placed one finger, this already slowed the amount of mana that could leave his body. Using the same method to hold back the flow of mana Walker slowly let out bit by bit. 

The water reacted much differently than it had before, it became much clearer. He could almost see the bottom wood grain of the barrel like it was empty, if it wasn't for his slight reflection on the surface he would say that there really was nothing in the barrel.

He stayed in this stance for what seemed to be years as the mana flowed out of him and in to the water a drop at a time. The water had finally started to give a magical glow like the seeds had. This was the moment for him to pull away. He already knew better than to rush this so he pulled his finger put slowly and stopped the mana as he did so. The result was water that was perfectly clear and half a bluish glow of mana. "Ha! Not going to evaporate this time!" Walkers' cries for victory drew everyone's attention.

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