Plantorsomething

Hi! Sorry for the wait. AP exams and Signature project are taking up my time this and next week, and I realized the chapters didn’t flow greatly, so I had to write this one by scratch today and yesterday. But, I do have a lot of pages stockpiled in advance, so it might be a little easier from now on? Assuming I won’t create yet another chapter from scratch again.

          The rest of the week passed by with a reduced amount of verbal abuse, but avoiding it completely was impossible. Ricky asked if he wanted to talk about it, but for almost no reason other than his own pride, Harold stubbornly refused to open up. The physical discomfort never ended or let up, but he took almost all of it without complaint; Carmen couldn’t tell if should be more concerned about the brat’s extreme growth, stubborn mouth, or almost inhuman tolerance. Harold was caked in sweat, mud, dirt and sand, and the crap-tasting food barely kept him standing on two feet as his muscles cried out in agony every day. All until finally, the mansion suddenly exploded into a flurry as if water was poured into an ant hill, and Harold was at last kicked out of the barracks.  

          Maids and servants scurried about the corridor, stopping only to spout brief words of instructions or reports before the anxiety forced their feet to move. Every corner of every room was dusted, the undersides of every piece of furniture were polished until they shined, the brick roads were wiped clean of dirt, and every grass blade on the lawn was cut to just the right height. Harold and Kishino washed up and finished the homework they had yet to complete in the barracks, and quickly handed it over to the tutors for them to grade it. The mansion staff had been notified that Hayden returned from his hunt. His expensive carriage and convoy of impressive soldiers had been rather obvious to the town populace, after all. 

           After three stressful days for the servants, upon which they had pushed their bodies so far that some of their muscles were actually as sore as Harold’s own, Hayden finally arrived at the front gates. Completely disregarding the rigid servants that opened the gates at the optimal speed, the tall and well-built man’s crimson eyes immediately singled out his loving son. Hayden broke out into a wide smile as he strode forward to embrace Harold in an open-armed, yet somehow dignified hug. He felt horrible every time he left his son behind for a hunt, especially when he was left with only filthy blood for company, but the hunts are just too dangerous. 

          “Harold! I missed you so much! I apologize for leaving you with this filth, but I promise, we can spend the week together if you’d like!”

          “I missed you as well, father. It really is troublesome being surrounded by these things, so can you show me your spoils in return?”

          “Of course I will! Come, let's head back inside first.”

          This was their usual routine after Hayden returned from his hunts; Harold never got enough of the amazing stories of his battles, which was one of the only reasons he could tolerate being left behind at the mansion. As they walked back to the mansion side by side, Hayden broke into a teasing grin as he noticed something strange about Harold.

          “By the way Harold, are you perhaps hiding some sort of surprise from me? Hm?”

          If it was Kishino, he might have caught his breath, but Harold only answered right away with complete confidence.

          “Whatever do you mean? I am not aware of anything I would need to hide from you, father.”

          “Hoho, well then, why don’t we have an early lunch then, since you obviously have nothing to hide.”

          He knew it. Carmen had trained Harold in various techniques to suppress his aura and hide his strength, but he wasn’t near skilled enough yet to make himself appear as if nothing had changed. His drastic growth would normally come to light when he ate, since he would need larger portions. He had plans to keep his real growth a secret so his training wouldn’t come to light, but the fact that his father mentioned early lunch implied that he knew Harold’s aura had grown to an unusual extent. 

          “Well, that would be boring, wouldn’t it? I’d rather we spent some time relaxing first, so we can catch up with each other.”

          “Hm, is that so? Yes, that sounds like a much better idea. Would you rather we take a walk around the training grounds before I show you my spoils?”
          “That would be a wonderful idea!”

          Harold and his father laughed together as they walked through the mansion, Hayden because of his son’s terrible skills at lying, and Harold to play along with him. Though, the talk couldn’t be said to be unenjoyable to Harold, even if he was hiding so much more from his father than he was used to. 

          Walking out to the training grounds for long ranged spells, which was not unlike a renaissance era gun range, Harold displayed to his father a new water-based spell that he learned from ‘leveling up’ as Kishino called it, and used it to show his father about half of the strength he gained from Hell Week. Needless to say, the training dummy was blasted off the flat lawn into the forest behind it. Harold could only gasp in surprise when Hayden abandoned all noble etiquette and burst out into a powerful laughing fit before swooping his son off his legs and showering him in a barrage of kisses.

          “That’s my son! MY SON! Ahaha! Harold, were you anxious about having to stay here all week?”

          “I wanted to be as strong as you, father!”

          The queued the second wave of kisses and laughter.

          “As strong as your old man here, eh? Well, you’ll have a long way to go before that, but son, between you and me… “

          Hayden shifted his grip so that Harold could look into his genuine, loving eyes.

         “... Your mother and I both know with absolute certainty that you will far surpass the both of us combined.”

          A cool breeze swept across the training area as servants looked on at the pair from afar with carefully hidden disdain, but there in his father’s strong arms, Harold couldn’t care less about what anyone else thought of them. Without condensation, smugness, or acting, Harold wore a genuine smile from ear to ear under the sheer force of his father’s pure, unconditional love. 

           I swear to you, father, I will tell both you and mother the full truth one day. When you're ready, I’ll be there to guide you out of your prejudice onto the right path. Then, when I finally reach the ending alive, and you’ve realized the error of your ways, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything.

          After letting him down, Harold’s father showed him all the monster drops and carcasses from magic beasts he had slayed. As he held up the horns of fearsome King Wood Bats and the fangs of Flame Vipers, he imagined the heroic tales his father told where he defeated every one of them single handedly.

          “-And when one of the filthy reptiles coiled and springed itself at one of the idiot low-blood soldiers that didn’t stay behind the lines, I took that as an opportunity to slice it in two! But then one of the Golden Apes landed on my back! And you know what I did? I wrestled it to the ground and popped it’s head off with a choke hold! Granted, the bastard scratched me up a bit, but the brain dead beast never stood a chance!”

           … The stories were only slightly muddled now that he knew they were filled with narcissism, but Harold was certain they were only exaggerated. Either way, it was a relaxing time that warmed his heart from the exhausting week. 

          After his father returned, everything went back to ‘normal’, bar Harold and Kishino’s sore body. They were able to write some of the more important things back at the barracks and got some useful information, but even so, Kishino couldn’t help but hold a bit of a grudge towards Carmen for taking up so much time, even if it was the most opportune moment to train.

          After all, his memory would only last so long; Kishino needed to use this month to write down as much knowledge as he could. After he sorted out the relative importance of the topics they thought of, he limited the amount of time spent remembering the details of the less important ones, and spent more time writing about the more important ones. During Hell Week, Zen and Norman took up the farming experiments based on what he told them of his plans, so he figured he could leave them to it. The soldiers in the barracks were told blackmail was involved to get Harold to train that hard and take all the abuse, and if they spilled the beans, their entire families would be killed. Plus, it was a fairly small section of the barracks, so only twenty four soldiers actually were ‘in on it’. Kishino could tell Clara’s burning had an effect of giving real weight to the half-lie that they’d be killed if they were found out.

           Kishino’s priority list now was as follows; write down science knowledge, plot knowledge, then game knowledge, and then map out the limits he would influence the world, and then voice training. As much as Kishino loved magic and shonen, he knew that Harold in the game had somehow become OP without training diligently, probably by level grinding or something, so he figured he could similarly wing it and not concentrate heavily on training so early on.

           -How in the world were you raised to be this unbearably boring? 

           -Pfft, don’t act like you don’t know exactly how I was raised.

           -Haaa… just don’t rope me into your paperwork. Voice training doesn’t sound horrible at least.

           Apparently Jake started doing his own experiments, and Zen helped him out when he could so Kishino felt like he didn’t have to waste time watching plants so long as he observed their progress every now and then and gave pointers. Most of the discoveries and inquiries made had centered around the fact that Vigor Potions were basically super-compressed breakfast meals enchanted with spells that enhance the rate that the body uses and absorbs nutrients. Which made sense, since they were pretty heavy for their size. Depending on what nutrients they could mix into the Vigor potion, they could invent potions with much less wastefulness, and more efficiency. So basically, the Vigor Potions acted as ultra fertilizers that also magically made the plants absorb the nutrients and grow incredibly quickly. 

          There were already multiple types of vigor potions on the market; the ones in the mansion were just more specialized for adult male soldiers. In fact, Vigor Potion was only just a catch-all term for a wide variety of potions that were made with the same general intention. With it being relatively new to the market, the economy was honestly in somewhat of a vigor potion boom. Also, the potions that were created without the growth spell so that they were an all-in-one meal did not taste as good as normal food and water, and it was too much energy to make it, so nobody wanted to drink defective vigor potions for breakfast if they could help it. Except for Kishino, who would soon be experimenting ways he could use it to hide his growth. Sneaking food up to his room every day would be cumbersome after all, except for magically dense jerkies and other cold foods.

          The only big problem was that… 

          -If so much fertilizer gets into the river, lakes and oceans will experience insane amounts of algal blooming. When the algae dies, the water becomes deprived of oxygen, and becomes a ‘dead zone’ in a process called cultural eutrophication. 

          -I’d rather we try to prevent something like the Gulf of Mexico if we could help it. Fisheries wouldn’t survive with a fertilizer as potent as this.

          And so, Kishino was currently going over the modern methods of organic farming written in his notebook. Creating vegetative buffers between rivers and crop land, preventing fertilizer use on steep slopes, cover crops, contour cropping, alley cropping, crop rotation, and terrace farming. Almost all of these require more manual labor than normal, but that just meant more jobs, right? Kishino honestly had no idea about the negative economic consequences of requiring more manual labor, but he remembered almost for certain that most types of organic farming had potential to be just as, or even more profitable as normal farming, and even reduced the amount of money spent off fertilizer. From what he remembered reading, farmers didn’t try to be sustainable because monocropping - continuous monoculture, that doesn’t involve even rotating crops, creates consistency where they can use the same machinery and seeds and pesticides every year. Plus, the initial cost to make the switch was too high for some, and it required more knowledge and manual labor to do.

          However, if Kishino introduced these things early on, it would be much better for the future of fertilizer pollution in general, despite some people wanting to stick with their original methods. But then, there was the problem of whether these techniques already existed or not. Kishino didn’t research the history of farming techniques, so what if all these things are already being done? He was almost certain that crop rotation was already being done somewhat early on in humanity’s history, but he was less certain about some others, and he wasn’t sure what ideas would be revolutionary or not. 

           -Ah, while I’m at it, rotational grazing grounds too. Overgrazing is pretty terrible.

           -I technically remember these things, but I don’t particularly understand them. Stop trying to talk about all this with me, It’s making my brain tired.

          -Our brain. Wait, how does that even work?

          -How should I know?

          -That’s true… 

          Currently, the topics Kishino knew the most about and felt had the most concern were environmental science, microbiology, and an assortment of miscellaneous topics. Sadly, he wasn’t the biggest chemistry or engineering nerd, even if those would be some of the best topics. However, as he ruminated on that Kishino realized that potentially, the fastest change he could make that would have an exponential effect later down the road were creating a microscope and maybe inventing commercial electricity. 

           Though, Kishino wasn’t actually completely sure how they worked. He knew that for a microscope, the earliest one made had two lenses in a tube or something like that, but anything more technical was blank. And for electricity, you needed two copper wheels spinning with a strong magnet in between them, and they had to spin correctly and constantly or else it wouldn’t work. And then batteries had something to do with acid and lead, and wires were just copper, or… gold? 

           “Haa… so much for changing the world. I can’t even remember how to make a printing press. Actually, wait, I kind of do, but only the old one that’s already made…”

           Good lord, Kishino, stop acting idiotic and admit that you’re smart already. Insulting yourself just makes you look even more prideful.

           Harold was more than a bit fed up with Kishino’s self-deprecation. The type of person who can remember something as boring as all that technical nonsense, was putting himself down for not remembering the mechanical details of every item overlooked by ordinary persons in his world. 

           What was worse was that from what Harold could tell of his memories, on some level Kishino did know he was brighter than average, and he just didn’t want to admit it because he didn’t want to seem cocky, so he convinced himself that he was just as good as regular people with thirty layers of excuses. Something like that reeked of a whole new league of bull crap to Harold. 

          But, Kishino just rolled his eyes. So what if he was smart; he was just lucky enough to be raised in a good environment. If anything, the current situation showed how much more he could’ve made use of his luck if he’d been even just a bit more curious and wiser about his time.

          “Seriously though, why can we suddenly communi…cate… telegraphs! Radio! Right, that was, um, tapping acid with a needle, right? And radio…”

          And such was how the usual sessions went. Ideas bouncing back and forth, long periods of silently writing, and Kishino whining about not knowing how motors worked before realizing he actually did know how they worked, at least in theory. There was no way to know how much information that was incorrect, but even if the theories or ideas were somewhat right, Kishino felt there was still considerable progress to be made. There were also certain things that would absolutely be better to wait until he could make them in anonymity…        

          Sometimes Kishino worried that people could overhear him talking to ‘himself’, but there was no reason to suspect any spies were in the mansion, and forcing himself to not talk was annoying. They even  sometimes strayed away from their projected ‘importance’ of topics, and spent a lot of time on the ‘less important’ ones, since ideas tended to come by so sporadically. Harold usually found this to be boring aside from a few interesting topics, so he generally stayed quiet. 

          As for why he needed voice training, if Kishino planned to take over the domain’s criminal underground, obviously he was going to need a secret identity. Luckily, from a phase back in middle school, he knew some reliable techniques and practices from the internet. Though, he could ask Norman about it too, if he didn’t oppose the idea like Kishino thought he would… Yeah, no, he’d probably get worried about Harold. He just couldn’t ever understand how many lives Kishino and Harold were nearly directly responsible for. Something like risking their own personal safety was just a matter of fact when so many lives rested on their shoulders; what was just a little more risk on top of that? Besides, it wasn’t like they’d be going unprepared. 

         -Do you even have the slightest clue how the underground works?

         -Nope, I just figured we’d start with smuggling since there’s really high taxes.

         -What kind of naive, simple-minded optimism is that!? Sigh… 

         And as for why he was going to take over the underground; why not? -But seriously, he needed a way to secretly conduct various projects away from his parents’ eyes, and with great risk comes great reward. Most of the time. Not that he thought he could do it so easily… If he could trust the game knowledge however, there might be a safer option coming up some time in the future. However, even if that was the case, there wasn’t a reason he couldn’t do both.     

         Harold also seemed to really like the idea of playing politician to get more power, so he was a bit excited at the prospect. The opportunity was this; every two years, there would be a commute of almost all the major viscounts of the country to the royal capital. As the Council discussed various things, and the domain lords gave accounts of what was happening in their respective domains, there would be huge opportunities for socializing and negotiating with other nobles. Harold wasn’t allowed to go this year, but when he was twelve, he could attend with his father and make some waves in secret. This year’s commute was already in place, and Harold’s mother left for the capital ahead of time, since she had friends there, and wanted extra time to socialize with them. Harold’s father would be joining her in a few days.

            Following a small lull in Kishino’s scribbling, as he began to ponder about politics, Harold unconsciously rose to the surface. If he wanted to make the most out of the commute, then he’d need to start making connections as soon as possible. Which, for someone of his age and status, meant attending a lot of birthday parties… the vast majority of which will be with blood puritans… 

           Oh well, he’d have to make do. And so, he asked Norman to fetch his politics homework so he could review it. Basically, in the Rosarian empire there were three powers: the king, the council, and the nobles. The council is run by thirty dukes, which don’t run exactly like most dukes from the european Renaissance period from what Kishino remembered. Each duke, to put it simply, was a representative of a group of two to five domains, though most only represented two or three. Viscounts and the like who actually controlled the domains, would go to their respective duke if they wanted to have their opinion reach the council. The king had the final say in everything, but if twenty seven out of thirty dukes voted for a veto, they could also overrule his word. 

          -I know this game was made in Japan, but since this is a real world, I wonder why the names translate so similarly to dukes and viscounts. 

          -Who knows? For all we know this world was created by a bored god that loved Brave Hearts, so all the influences from Earth were included. If you’re going to question that, you’ll just end up in an unanswerable spiral of questioning how the country’s language is somewhat similar to English, Spanish, and other languages.

          Continuing his review, mostly for Kishino, Viscounts could practically do what they wanted as long as they looked after their territory and collected taxes through the barons, and could even be promoted to a duke if their representing duke retired. But, if the duke wanted one of their viscounts to do something they would generally do it, since the duke was the one who would speak to the council for them, and they wanted to be on the dukes’ good side. The duke also had power to order the viscount to do something, or even demote or take away the viscount’s noble title if they didn’t like them. Of course, things like that could cause arguments and tension, since they’d be literally spending someone else’s money, and also removing titles was never voluntary in the first place, so they wouldn’t do such things on a whim; it usually only happened because of a new law, a particularly horrible noble, or because a large war was breaking out.

          Luckily, since Harold wanted to avoid making gargantuan waves such as changing or making laws for now, he didn’t have much to worry about the Stokes’ duke. The most he would ever be interacting with were the two territories directly adjacent to Stokes; house Londwol and house Ballack, who both answer to the same duke as Stokes. ‘House’ and ‘family’ were mostly interchangeable, though there was also a rising trend in the past years that ‘house’ was being used more often in polite or technical speech. 

           Because he felt he’d be interacting with the two families the most, Harold, began stockpiling information about them with Norman’s help. Kishino wanted to complain, but technically politics wasn’t on the crossed-out priorities since it had never crossed his mind, so Harold wasn’t prohibited from it. Also, Kishino was tired and Harold was bored. He first began with reviewing what he already knew; to sum up the economic situation, the Stokes house was practically a trading ground sandwiched between Londwol and Ballack.

          To say Ballack was infamous for its alcohol would be the understatement of the century- the viscount running the territory had literally been running the most famous bar chain in the domain until he began his career in nobility. The previous viscount had been unable to bear children, and the bar owner was discovered to be a bastard child of his father. Usually this would lead to never-before seen succession drama, but under some stroke of cosmic luck, the ex-viscount had loved the man’s wine, and readily supported the legitimacy to his noble blood. 

           It was a hilarious story even to the people even outside of Ballack, and it became a popular saying that Erwin Ballack, the new viscount, had won the country’s heart with his wine and beer. The man was somewhat of a local celebrity in that sense. The blood puritans Stokes and Londwol were not very pleased with the situation, but Erwin’s popularity was difficult to contend with, and riots broke out at even the suggestion of illegitimacy. 

         If it wasn’t already obvious, Harold was looking forward to conversing with Ballack’s family much more than Londwal. Though, he wouldn’t appreciate it at all if Erwin was a genuine alcoholic of course. Londwal was Puritan family that lived on the same mountain range as Stokes, cementing the three territories as prominent mining territories where stone and other materials were abundant.

          -It is best to imagine Londwal as if the Stokes territory were bigger but less prosperous and focused much less on trade. 

          -Right, right. So it’s King, Duke, then viscount, and we don’t like Ballack because he’s an alcoholic, or something?

          -No, idiot. We don’t like Ballack because we’re pure blood.

          -So… basically, we’re racist?

          -You!? No, it’s- Sigh… Sure. We are racist, Kishino. 

          Kishino loved teasing Harold like this. It was true that he never really cared for politics, but he could understand it more than he was letting on. Plus, it probably prevented Harold from feeling inferior because of how much Kishino was better at things than him. Without this, the only thing Harold had that Kishino didn’t would have been superior magic prowess. Though the kid tried to hide it, probably even from himself, Kishino could tell he was starting to feel pretty useless.

          Continuing with the review, Harold explained that Stokes was somewhat of a peculiar noble house, consisting only of Hayden, Jessica, and Harold. Concubines and bastard children were completely non-existent, mostly due to their extremist pure blood ideology. Even viscount Donovan Londwal had accidentally impregnated a couple of concubines, and bore three legitimate sons. Ballack, who was late to the political game, only had a son and a daughter with his wife, who stayed with him in his transition to nobility. Though she was officially a concubine, Erwin refused to marry anyone else, angering the puritans even further. 

          Now that Harold thought about it, it would probably be considerably difficult to maintain contact with Ballack if his parents were so stubborn about them. But luckily this proved to be incorrect, since when lunch came and Harold mentioned wanting to reap more benefits from Ballack’s alcohol and learn their wine making secrets to lower the importation from the low-blooded goods to their territory, his father almost immediately agreed. Apparently it was Harold himself who had refused to interact with Ballack's children when he was younger, even though Hayden and Jessica wanted to make more connections with the family. The thought made Harold embarrassed when he reflected on his previous behavior.

          Still, with this, Harold and Kishino could safely begin making plans for the future. They were only small plans that didn’t involve the various other connections of the Stokes family, but it was a start nonetheless. Besides, Kishino rearranged the priorities so that politics replaced voice training since father was leaving to commute to the capital within a week, so they had time to think.

Plantorsomething

Also I made up the country’s name since I literally can’t find it in the light novel or the wiki. If anyone can please tell me, I would love that lmao