The Slime Farmer

Shyleaf Herb was so named because of the peculiarity of it preferring darkness and the night to thrive. In the daytime, the leaves of the plant curl themselves into a ball, hiding. When night fell, the leaves uncurl to reveal pretty pale-green fronds.

To preserve the greatest of the herb"s beneficial properties, it needed to be harvested in darkness. If Defi ignored the warning, the too-bright light of the lamp would adversely affect the Shyleaf which was currently in a very delicate state.

Defi took several steps back, then turned and jogged to the house for covered baskets, feeling a little antic.i.p.ation.

He had slowed down the schedule for re-invigorating the sansu trees and delayed planting zaziphos to grow the Herbs. He could now find if cultivating Kern"s hybrid Herbs was worth it.

Should he feed the Herb to Turq, or one of the others?

As he returned to the western herb plot with the harvesting baskets, he recalled what else he knew about Shyleaf.

He had only researched the general data of the Herbs that Kern left behind before.

Shyleaf had leaves growing in a spiral pattern on the main stem. The leaves needed to be snapped carefully one by one at a particular place on the leaf petiole near where it connected to the main stem, starting from the outer leaves to the inner.

Defi left the lamp behind the loose pile of rocks marking the boundaries of the herb garden and the Liongra.s.s plot, trusting the tall densely-packed leaf blades of the golden gra.s.s to block the light that the rocks could not.

He placed the baskets beside him as he crouched at the head of the Shyleaf plot. He glanced up at the moon, its light dimmed by the shade of clouds.

Perfect harvesting conditions, but not so perfect for him. He would have preferred a brighter moon for this, as moonlight did not affect the Herb so harshly as other kinds of illumination.

Fortunately, harvesting Shyleaf was a simple process.

He reached for the first Shyleaf plant, going by feel until he felt the b.u.mp on the petiole of the first frond. With pressure exerted by his fingers, the frond snapped off. 

He placed it in the basket and reached for the next.

Shyleaf had four to six outer fronds and four inner fronds. The herb stood a fourth of a mar in height. When curled up in the daytime, the leaf ball was the size of a large fist.

The journal called "Simple Cookery" added a dimension to his knowledge. 

From the journal, he knew that Shyleaf was a spice, the dried fronds used in food meant to calm. The taste went well in soups and salads. Often, the fresh inner leaves were used to flavor oils. Shyleaf-flavored oil was particularly favored in the coastal areas for alleviating the strong odors in certain types of seafood like eight-fin mackerel and the mystic blue pearl jellyfish.

It was not particularly important to the harvesting process, but if the Herb wasn"t beneficial for his slimes then he could use it in other ways.

The inner leaves were where the most flavor and vitality of the plant concentrated. He placed them in a separate basket from the outer leaves.

The cooking journal said Shyleaf was a Grade 3 in the official rating system for mystic plants, which was separate from the rating system for mystic beasts. Defi"s Current-enhanced insight told him that the hybrid Shyleaf was only slightly above Savras gra.s.s in vitality.

Savras gra.s.s was Grade 1, the lowest rated mystic plant on the lowest rank by far.

The Liongra.s.s and the Naranj hybrid Herbs also contained vitality at about the same level as the hybrid Shyleaf. Their pure counterparts were rated Grade 2.

He could not sell the herbs. 

Despite them looking similar to the description in the books he read for research, their attributes were too far apart. Not to mention Savras sold for fifteen to seventeen klaud a kilogar. That was as much as the average Ascharonian commoner earned in a week. 

Liongra.s.s, which was predominantly sold as a tea to balance the humors of the body, averaged between ten and twelve crescents per kilogar. Grade-two herbs could fetch a price per kilogar up to twenty crescents, depending on availability and quality.

Shyleaf, one of the most common mystic spices in Ascharon, sold for around fifty crescents a kilogar. That was the monthly pay of a journeyman armorer in a good-sized atelier. Armorers and weapon-makers were elites among the smithing craft, in this time of war. The common craftsman would only earn so much in a year.

If Defi sold these herbs, too similar in looks to such expensive mystic plants, even if he lowered the prices to the level of savras, wouldn"t he be thrown in chains as a fraud?

It was too much trouble to explain that they were hybrids, and that it was not he who had created them. Similarly, he could not freely tell anyone where they came from. Kern"s reputation of having decimated the land around the Garge homestead was not something he wanted a.s.sociated with himself.

Defi paused in his harvest at a thought, then briefly laughed. Blackspice, which was not a mystic plant, whose only advantage was the enhancement of flavor, actually sold much costlier than a grade-three mystic plant.

If there was a way to make a blackspice hybrid with enhanced vitality, how dear would it be in Ascharon?

He had no chance to prove it, as his blackspice seedlings had been destroyed. 

A memory of a maliciously laughing river captain surfaced in his mind.

The leaf node under his fingers snapped wrongly. The frond wilted, curling into a brownish dead thing.

He took a deep breath, put the wilted leaf on the ground beside him.

He stretched.

The first time he had ever been so publically humiliated by a person not his father, it had been here in the land of Ascharon. He"d almost resigned himself to death when Sarel had fished him out of the Treachery.

He shook his head, forcing himself into the present.

His progress so far was good enough. Nearly a quarter of the five mar long, one mar wide plot was harvested. 

How much should he harvest? The baskets could take all the Shyleaf in the plot, but mystic plants had a high rate of deterioration when it came to their effective attributes.

He had no preservation container to keep them in. The preservation Emblems he knew were all short term minor designs, not strong enough to delay the deterioration. He only had a single one-year cask, and it was too small to take all the herbs.

Successfully working out the kinks in muscles strained in a single position for too long, he returned to harvesting. 

Tonight, he would only harvest half the plot and leave the rest to seed.

He felt that the Liongra.s.s and Naranj would also mature in the next few days.

Half the plot of Shyleaf was an estimated fifteen kilogar of fronds. It was enough for now.

An hour later, he was sitting cross-legged on the ground, the harvested baskets of Shyleaf fronds open to the light of the moon beside him.

His hands were on the ground, the Current flowing into the land under him.

The range of his healing had increased in the last month. He was now able to heal an added two mar around him. The western quarter of the homestead was easier to heal, as it had not been completely depleted of vitality.

He stood, brushed debris off his clothes.

Taking up the two baskets of Shyleaf, he walked toward the house. He fixed the shutters of the crystal lamp so that the light did not touch the baskets. The bluish white light shone forward and back, casting an odd shade to the shadows.

Defi noted that the lamp was dimmer than it had been earlier. It was nearing the time to change out the crystal.

He turned the lamp so the baskets hanging off his opposite shoulder would not inadvertently swing into the light.

He"d feed the Shyleaf to Turq, he decided, to see if the slime would split.

Most of Turq"s diet since the last splitting had been zaziphos. The scent of Shyleaf, which was all over his clothes at this point, was sharp and fresh. 

He looked forward to seeing what kind of slime would be gained from that.

At least, he was certain its extract would not be toxic.

If the slime was too strange, he"d try a ma.s.s summoning again.

He stopped at the central hall, pulled out two Emblems being used as bookmarks – two of his best attempts at minor preservation.

In the kitchen, he transferred the baskets of fronds into two barrels and stuck the Emblems on the covers, watching the glyph-papers dissolve as the Emblems took root.

In preservation Emblems, one of the glyphs was "containment". The efficacy of a preservation emblem differed depending on the s.p.a.ce enclosed within the active preservation area. A minor Emblem like the ones he just used was too weak for a quartel-size barrel.

But he decided to feed all the Shyleaf to Turq tomorrow morning so he only needed to store the herb for the night. 

He hefted the barrels down into the dark underground storage area, only hesitating a little before determinedly taking the steps downward.

He thought about the mid-grade preservation Emblem that Karles had.

To be able to preserve a moving platform and the theorized feeding/mixing tanks, that meant the design had multiple container nodes connected to each other with the ability to preserve technically separated containment areas.

 "Free for use in the Lowpool," he repeated in a low murmur, turning the words around in his head. 

If there was no fee for multiple installations ordered by the same client, he should have Karles make a storage building with that Emblem for general purposes. The multiple nodes of the design were perfect for a multi-room storehouse.

Hah, Defi mocked himself immediately after. Where would he get the money?

He"d been arrogant, thinking he would shortly have his vinegar-producing slime manufactory running smoothly once the warehouse was finished.

Now the warehouse was finis.h.i.+ng up, and he only had ten production slimes. Half of the extracts produced were even not guaranteed to sell. He only had the vinegar to rely on.

The price of ordinary vinegar was fifteen rond per litr.

When Defi was working as a grape harvester for Falie and Hames, his pay was thirty rond a day, which was standard day laborer wages outside a city if the Home-maker"s Journal was to be believed.

The article went on to say that average day labor wages were only enough to feed the laborer for one or two days on plain cooking.

Even with Sarel saying Jar"s vinegar was top quality, how much would it actually sell for?

He only had two and a half quartels of Jar"s concentrated vinegar at the moment, and most of it was not as intensely flavored as the sample sent to Bluzand.

That couldn"t be helped. Even selling all of the vinegar might not be enough to buy a single sable crab.

Defi put away thoughts of a preservation storehouse for now and washed up in the kitchen sink, scrubbing sweat and mud off his torso, arms and legs.

He changed into fresh clothes – the plain knee-length gown he used for sleeping and a thick longcoat he had acquired because Aire had recently been nagging Lergen on and on about readying enough wood and oil for winter. He slipped his feet into linen indoor slippers.

He sat down at the study table in the central hall, adjusted the shutters of the lamp to prevent the light from blinding him, and reached for a book on glyphs.

He still had to finish adjusting the parameters for a security Emblem network that would allow him to know if anyone crossed the boundaries into the homestead. Now that he knew the Current could be used to inscribe certain Emblems without glypher"s ink, he had a few ideas to try.

He started writing them down.

He"d try them out tomorrow afternoon.

Tonight, he needed to sleep early as tomorrow was a combat lesson day and Markar, Renne, Mureil, and Mureil"s friend Saston were meeting him at dawn.