Victory is a fleeting drug. The euphoria from our successful seed-gathering expedition faded quickly, replaced by the sober dawn of a new, more daunting reality. We possessed water and seeds, the fundamental components for life, but we were a people of stone and steel, not soil. Our hands knew the heft of a pickaxe and the hilt of a sword, not the gentle art of cultivation. The ten acres of barren plain we had marked for our farm might as well have been the surface of the moon.
The [Cultivate 10 Acres of Land] sub-quest loomed in my system interface, a silent, monumental challenge. This was where the abstract knowledge of agronomy would collide with the unyielding ignorance of my people.
I began not in the fields, but in the city square. I gathered everyone, from the youngest child to the oldest elder. This transformation had to be absolute, a cultural reprogramming.
"For your entire lives," I began, my voice echoing off the mud-brick walls, "you have thought of the earth as your enemy. It is the dust that chokes you, the hard rock that resists you, the barren expanse that starves you. Today, you must learn a new way. The earth is not your enemy. It is not your slave to be broken. It is your partner. You will learn to listen to it, to understand it, and to nurture it. In return, it will feed us."
I had them bring me a bucket of soil from the designated fields. I knelt in the dust, plunging my hands into it. I crumbled it, smelled it, felt its texture. The agronomy knowledge flooded my senses with information. Silty clay loam. High in potassium and phosphorus from the volcanic deposits. Deficient in nitrogen. Poor aeration.
"This soil is rich," I told them, holding up a clump of the dark earth. "It holds the ghosts of ancient forests. It has the strength to bear life. But it is sleeping. And it is hungry."
I explained the concept of soil composition in the simplest terms I could devise. I described it as a living thing that needed to breathe, to drink, and to eat, just like them. The men, who had spent weeks fighting the earth, stared at me as if I were a lunatic. They saw dirt. I saw a complex biome.
The first task was to plow. We had no oxen, no beasts of burden. We were the beasts of burden. I designed a simple, lightweight plow from timber and a sharpened stone tip, but it still required two men to pull while a third guided it from behind. It was brutal, soul-crushing work. The hard-packed earth resisted, the plow bucking and jarring in their hands. It was a battle of wills, man against land.
Borin, ever the pragmatist, organized the teams, his parade-ground bark turning men who were once soldiers and criminals into shambling, sweating farm animals. I walked the lines, correcting their technique, showing them how to use their weight, how to read the resistance of the soil, when to push and when to guide. I wasn't just their Lord; I was their chief ox, often taking a place in the harness myself, my muscles screaming in protest, the coarse rope digging into my shoulders. This act, more than any speech, earned me their respect. The boy-Lord was not above the muck and the misery. He bled and sweated alongside them.
As the first few acres were turned, revealing the darker, richer soil beneath the pale crust, a new problem emerged. The freshly plowed earth was immediately infested. Hordes of small, black beetles with iridescent carapaces swarmed out of the ground, drawn to the disturbed roots of the desert scrub we had uprooted.
Panic spread quickly. "A plague!" Kael shouted, his face ashen. "The earth spirits are angry! We have disturbed their slumber!"
The men dropped their plows, backing away from the swarming insects. The fragile morale we had built began to crumble in the face of this new, seemingly supernatural threat.
My system flashed a notification, calm and clinical amidst the rising panic.
[PEST INFESTATION DETECTED: Chalybeate-shelled Root Borer.][THREAT LEVEL: MODERATE. Will consume germinating seeds and young roots, resulting in up to 40% crop failure if left unchecked.][AGRONOMY 101 SOLUTION AVAILABLE: NATURAL PESTICIDE FORMULATION.]
I raised my hand for silence. "These are not spirits!" I called out, my voice cutting through their fear. "They are merely creatures, as hungry as we are. They are a pest, not a plague. And like any other challenge, there is a solution."
I gathered the women and children. Following the system's precise instructions, I had them collect two specific types of desert plants. One was a bitter, leafy herb with a pungent, unpleasant smell. The other was a tough, soap-like root. My agronomy packet identified the first as containing high concentrations of alkaloids toxic to insects, and the second as a source of saponins, a natural surfactant that would help the solution stick to the soil.
We crushed the leaves and roots, mixing them with water from the well in large clay pots. The resulting concoction was a foul-smelling, greenish-brown sludge.
"We will feed the soil," I announced, holding up a pot of the vile mixture. "And we will make it unpalatable for our unwanted guests."
The people watched, half-convinced I was practicing some bizarre form of witchcraft. But they had learned to trust my 'knowledge'. We systematically doused the plowed fields with the natural pesticide. The effect was almost immediate. The beetles, repulsed by the bitter alkaloids, retreated back into the deeper, untreated earth. Within a day, the fields were clear.
The successful quelling of the 'plague' was another powerful miracle in their eyes. I had met a terrifying, unknown threat with calm, rational, and effective action. My authority, my mystique, grew stronger. I was the man who could command the rock to break, the soil to be cleansed.
With the fields plowed and treated, the next step was to create the seedbeds. We built simple wooden rakes to break up the large clods of earth, aerating the soil. I taught them about creating furrows, shallow trenches that would hold the seeds and channel the water directly to them.
Finally, the day of planting arrived. I declared it a city-wide holiday, a holy day. The 'Day of First Seed'.
The entire population gathered at the edge of the now-prepared fields. The ten acres of dark, furrowed earth looked like a promise waiting to be fulfilled. The main irrigation canal was complete, a beautiful, stone-lined artery connecting our well to our future. The smaller ditches and sluice gates were ready.
I stood before them, holding a single burlap sack of our precious wild grain.
"Today, we do more than plant a seed," I said, my voice filled with a reverence I truly felt. "We plant our future. We plant our faith. Each of these kernels is a prayer to the earth, a promise of our labor in exchange for its bounty. We are no longer exiles waiting for death. We are farmers. We are creators. We are the people of Oakhaven."
I walked to the first furrow, my mother at my side. I handed her a small handful of seeds. Together, we knelt. She, the lowborn woman whose beauty had caught a king's eye, and I, the bastard son she had protected, were now the symbolic progenitors of a new civilization.
She placed the first seed in the ground. Then I placed one beside it.
It was the signal. The process began. In a long, silent, reverent line, each person, from Borin the warrior to the smallest child, came forward to receive a handful of seeds. They walked to the furrows and placed their seeds in the earth, covering them gently with soil. It was a deeply personal, deeply communal act. They were not just planting food; they were planting their own stake in this new world, their own piece of the future I had promised them.
When the last seed was planted, I walked to the main sluice gate at the head of the canal. Borin stood with me. With a shared nod, we heaved the heavy wooden gate open.
A collective gasp went through the crowd as the water from the reservoir, the water we had bled for, surged into the canal. It flowed down the stone-lined path, a silver serpent gliding through the dark earth. When it reached the fields, it branched off into the smaller ditches, flowing gently down the furrows, darkening the soil, embracing the seeds we had just planted.
The sight of the water flowing through the perfect grid of our own making, quenching the thirst of the soil that held our future, was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was the culmination of all our struggle, all our hope.
The sub-quest in my mind updated.
[SUB-QUEST 2: CULTIVATE 10 ACRES OF LAND - COMPLETE.]
We had done it. But as I stood there, watching the water soak into the ground, I knew this was the easiest part. The true test, the long, anxious wait to see if life would answer our call, had just begun.