We continue to run northwards until we approach a pair of fenced areas set a short ways west of the town proper. The nearer one has high wood walls, perhaps similar to the little fortress around the dungeon's entrance. The one further to the north has a more casual wood post fence, and I can already see tilled soil, a barn and farmhouse, and wilted crops. There is one patch near the southern border of the farmyard that has healthy looking flowers in it though. Frankly, it looks more like a large garden with how it is laid out rather than a proper farm. I slow down near the solid paneled fence. "Alright, what's this place then?"

"Nuu? Oh." Sergu approaches a gate midway through the wooden wall facing us. "It's just the graveyard. Nothin' too interesting." She knocks on the gate, then opens it without waiting for any response. Within the area is a wooden building at the center, and rows of stone grave markers in the nearer half. Given the space they occupy, I'd guess there are only a couple hundred graves here at most.

"Stone grave markers? . . . I suppose that works, in a poetic sort of sense? They come from stone and return to it when they die, or something." I start to walk past the gate towards the farm, then pause. "Hang on, who builds a farm near the graveyard?! That sounds like a good way to get haunted vegetables!"

"Pff! Ka ka ka! You're silly. What'do'you think the burial rituals are for? They're supposed to lay the souls to rest. Plus, I think I've heard something about the walls of a graveyard acting as a trap to catch wandering souls?" She leans through the gate to look around. "Not sure about that though."

"Huuuh~ Maybe I shouldn't step inside then. But, while you've got the gate open, I'd like to take a look around." The encounter with the Lost Plasm has me thinking I should keep my Spiritual Perception active most of the time anyway. If I had come across it while in my body, it could have taken a bite out of me without me knowing what was going on. I return to the boundary of the gate and activate the skill.

The view of the rather plain graveyard changes greatly. There are streams and flecks of spiritual energy floating all around in the area. Much of it is in a similar dull gray as the plasm, but there is the occasional spark of color. The most translucent and faded gray flecks are the only kind that slip past the walls. Additionally, the most colorful things are reasonably intact but vague looking souls of dwarfs, currently lying still in their graves. Though only around a dozen of them are still distinguishable. I focus on one to deep scan [Resting Soul: The soul of a Dwarf that has been laid to rest. Currently in the process of returning to the world]

I repeat the explanation to Sergu, then move into a bit of personal speculation. "Since they are 'returning to the world' does that mean there isn't an afterlife here? They just, break down into base spiritual energy and disperse? . . . Hang on. I can see this much with just Spiritual Perception level one? What will happen when I level it up a bit? Just more detail when looking at intact souls? Doesn't sound like that'd be all though." I look over to Sergu, who is looking around cluelessly. I pat her shoulder. "Well, maybe you can get Spiritual Perception too? Should be easy enough if you can learn the control skills first. Or, should that be the other way around?"

"Dunno. But now I wanna see what you can. Haa. Never mind that then, let's get going." She pulls the gate closed then runs to the farm. I follow along again. We arrive by the fence just in time to see a dwarf with yellow brown hair emerge from the barn carrying a bucket. He walks towards a well until he spots Sergu, who jumps the fence and runs towards him. "Lyyyyyyme! I need some more illum flowers!" I pause outside the fence to watch.

He grumbles a moment before speaking up. "Well, you're still the only one who buys them, and they're about the only thing that grows properly around here. So knock yourself out." Sergu changes direction to run to the patch of flowers I noticed before. Looking at them now, with Spiritual Perception still active, I see wisps of gray spiritual energy from the graveyard drifting towards them. The dwarf, Lyme I'm guessing from Sergu's excited yell, looks up at me. "Oh? Sergu brought company today? Well, come in stranger." I look at the fence and follow it over to the gate, still a ways away. "Ha, jus' jump over like she did."

I set my right hand on the upper bar of the fence, then vault over. I look around a bit as I walk towards the dwarf. Most of the plants around here look fairly normal, if a little sad. Though I don't recognize any of the specific produce. For instance, things that look like cornstalks, but with a solid couple feet to spare in every direction, and instead of ears of corn, they have segmented green things sort of similar to bananas. Which are all clustered around the base of the plant. Or vines on trellises with red potato-esque bulbs growing almost everywhere on the plants, with the exception of the bottom foot or so of the vine.

"Yeah, I know. Too small, or under ripe. Some of em aren't even flowering." He tugs at his beard, then carries the bucket to a well, and naturally, he starts drawing water. "My dads said you can't grow crops this close to a major forest, but I'm sure I'll figure it out." Once he finishes filling the bucket, he turns to hold his right hand out to me. "Lyme by the way."

"Ah? I'm Anima." I take hold of his hand and shake it. "Back to the topic of crops, I've had some thoughts on that myself." He lets go of my hand, and quirks an eyebrow. "That mention of the forest is a decent confirmation for an idea I had there. Hmm. Have you dug down deep enough to find those big worms?" He makes a bit of a disgusted face, but nods. Codex, deep scan Gluttonous Lumbricus. [Gluttonous Lumbricus: A Mutated worm that feeds in shallow soil and rests deeper down. Tends to hibernate for days after feeding] I nod. "Based on the information I got from one of my skills, they're called Gluttonous Lumbricus. To get to the point, I think they are the reason for the soil quality being low."

"They're right nasty bastards, and I'll never forget seeing a swarm of em strip a barrant to the bone in about ten minutes. Dunno what god thought it'd be a good idea to give worms teeth, but I've got some words for them." He shakes his head. "Well, why do you think that, and how do we deal with them? Can't just kill them all. Seriously, you could pick any spot, dig down, and find a dozen of them a few feet down."

"Normal worms eat dirt and decaying plants, that sort of thing. Naturally, the gluttonous ones eat more, and I suspect, drag most of the soil's nutrient content down deeper. As for fixing the problem, I've got three ideas. One, get Sergu to make pesticides that kill or discourage the worms, but don't harm the plants or people who would buy your produce. Shouldn't be too hard, though I don't know Alchemy myself to say for sure. Two, invest in plants with deeper reaching roots, and hope the worms don't decide to eat them? Trees seem fine, so switching to an orchard maybe. And my personal favorite idea. Improve the soil quality faster than the worms can drag it down." I count off on my fingers as I list the ideas. "Of course, doing all of them could yield the best results."

"I'm a farm man, not an orchard man. But I'll look into deep rooted crops. I've gotten some potions from her before, mostly as a type of fertilizer though. Couple of those did weird stuff." His gaze turns to a patch to the north with short shrubs bearing acorn like nuts. Where the soil itself is blue, for some reason. "It did, help. But it's a little hard to get over. . ." He clears his throat. "I can try to bear with that if it gets the job done. Normal fertilizers certainly haven't."

"If you're willing to put up with weird, I have a way that I might be able to help." He smiles, but his left eye twitches. "Right, so, what would you answer if I asked you what the heart of your farm is?" He furrows his eyebrows and stares at me. "Suppose that's too vague then. What do you feel is the most important thing or place here. Your water source, a favorite patch of soil maybe, the barn, your house, whatever feels right."

Lyme works his jaw a few seconds. Then shrugs. "If it's the heart, wouldn't that just be the point in the middle?" He ruffles the back of his hair and looks around. "No idea why you're asking something like that though."

"Nmm. Well, if that is what seems most meaningful to you, it should be good enough. But I'd like a more solid idea if something strikes you as a better one." I look over to Sergu, who is in the middle of the patch of flowers, looking through them one by one. "Think on it a while, if you'd like. Meanwhile, I think I'll take a look at those illum flowers with her, if you don't mind?" He looks troubled about being left to think about it, but waves me off and grabs the bucket to carry back to the barn.

I approach the patch and pause to take a closer look at the flowers, and the spiritual mist floating towards them. The flowers themselves are a little plain looking. Like tulips in shades of light brown? They have rather long flower stalks though, the bodies of the plants are mostly closer to the ground though. Leaving the flowers near head height for Sergu. The traces of spirit being drawn to the flowers seems to revolve around the buds and blossoms in differing amounts. My expectation was that the flowers were feeding on the leftovers bits of soul, but that doesn't seem to be happening.

I focus on a flower with a thick ring of spiritual energy revolving around it. "Hey, how about this one?" I point to it, and Sergu perks up and turns to look at it. After a moment she runs over to look closely. She stares a moment, then abruptly snips the stem about an inch under the flower and shoves it into a jar with a couple others. She starts to wander back into the flowers to look for more, then she stops.

"Hang on! How'd you find that so fast?" She rushes back out to look up at me excitedly. "I have to check each one individually, so it takes a little time to find the higher quality ones." Her wagging tail swishes her robe around.

"Well, they've got spiritual energy, or would that be spiritual matter? Since the energy is the freely usable portion? Uh, spirit stuff, gathered around them. I just looked at one with more than the others close to it." She freezes a moment, then grabs my hand to drag me into the flowers. Thus, I spend the next little bit helping her pick out the best blossoms.

Once the jar is full she leads the way back out of the flower patch. When she spots Lyme carrying a square hay bale of some sort, she runs over, and I follow to see if he has an answer yet. She has the self control to wait till he places the bale in a smaller fenced in area with some, goat-like creatures. The main difference being that their horns look kinda glassy. After that, she gets in his face holding up the jar. "We picked twenty of them! That's ten magic bronze coins, right?"

"Yeah. Eh, that's more than you usually buy though. Got some new potions in mind or something?" She grins, but doesn't provide an explanation. Instead, she digs through her bag, pulling out a smaller purse, then digging through that for eight gold tinged bronze coins, and twenty normal bronze coins. She hands them over, and he takes a moment to tally them up before nodding and dropping them in a pocket casually. After that he turns to face me. "I put some more thought into your question. And, I like that favorite patch thing."

He beckons, then walks in the direction of the blue soil patch. Though he ends up going past it to a spot with normal looking earth. This patch has some rather small, but relatively healthy looking plants in it. They look kinda like tomato plants, though there aren't any fruit on it currently. Just small, delicate yellow flowers. While I'm looking the space over, Sergu's wings perk up and she speaks. "Hey, isn't this spot?. . ." She looks over at Lyme pointedly.

"Yeah, it's where we tried your, third? Fertilizer potion. It slowed the plants growth, and made em stay pretty small even when they finished. It was, interesting watching them grow so slowly. But they're still doing better than most of the rest." He makes a sweeping gesture, indicating the farm as a whole. Then clears his throat. "Anyway, this is the spot I'd call 'The heart of my farm', as you asked. So, do what you gotta do. S'long as it won't damage the tregis plants."

"I can't guarantee that it won't, but I don't see why it would, given what I'm going for." Lyme frowns slightly, but then he nods. "Alright then. I'll give it a shot." Watching my step around the small plants, I walk into the patch, stopping in the middle. I take out a Soul fragment, dig a small hole, and plant it among the vegetation.

A moment later, the disturbed dirt pulls together into a small humanoid shape. Their build is similar to a dwarf a few inches high with a bit of a masculine appearance. His skin is brown, and he's wearing black overalls, though the color is more of a soil black rather than the solid black Sapph or Igni wear.

[Soil Sprite: A lesser spirit born from a soul planted in fertile earth. Improves the quality of any land it walks over.] After checking his status, I step aside for the others to see what I've done. "A tiny dwarf? How'd you make that? Ooh! There's a hole there, is he like a golem then?"

"How's a little guy like that supposed to help? I wouldn't mind an extra pair of hands around the farm, but he's kinda. . ." Lyme strokes his beard thoughtfully. "Wait, you were trying to revitalize the earth, so that's probably a magic sort of thing? Or, a special skill."

"Seems to be the latter. He has a skill called Soil Enhancement. Though he might need to level it up before it'll make a huge difference. You shouldn't have to do anything to take care of him. He's a sprite, similar to Sapph here, though she is a spirit. She doesn't seem to need much beyond company." I point up at Sapph, who decides that the Soil Sprite is more deserving of her attention right now. "If you can think of a name for him, knock yourself out. Nothing is really occurring to me. Oh, and he'll need to level up a bit to become more responsive. But it shouldn't be an issue."

"Uhuh. Well. He does make the little tregis plants look like trees by comparison, so it's kinda. Cute, I guess?" He looks to Sergu with that question, and she nods excitedly. "Anyway, I'm not rightly sure how to value a spirit farmhand. Like, do I pay him a daily wage, or pay you for making him, or what?"

"Ahh. Hadn't really thought of that. For now, just treat him as a guest, I guess? His skills shouldn't have much value at low levels anyway. From my end, I'll be thinking of it as an experiment to see what I can do." I walk back out of the patch and approach Sergu. "Aside from, all that, shouldn't we be moving on?"

"Oh! Right, sorry Lyme, I gotta go whip up some spirit stabilizer!" She turns to face the town and starts muttering about directions under her breath. Apparently thinking of the fastest route on foot.

"I'm not sure I'm comfortable not paying you when you're doing something for me." He grumbles slightly then makes a thoughtful expression. "I'll at least say I owe you a favor if it works well." He waves slightly to me, then speaks up for Sergu's benefit. "I'll see you two, er I guess I should say three, later."

"Mmm. I'd be interested in seeing any monstrous plants, if any of yours happen to mutate, and you can keep ahold of them safely. If you need an idea for a favor." I wave in return, then walk over next to Sergu. "See you later, farmer Lyme." He scoffs as Sergu starts running. I shrug, and dash after her.

We don't really talk as we run through the town, though Sergu does wave to several people as she runs past them. We end up in front of her house, instead of my workshop. "If you had to come back here to make it, what was all of that stuff you grabbed before we left?"

Sergu opens the door and invites me in with a hand wave. "Mostly stuff that some kinds of monsters don't like. Gotta make myself less of a target when I head outta town, right?" She snickers and leads the way through the main room. She opens a door at the back, the room behind it is smaller, but much more organized. It looks like a chemistry lab, a currently cleared central table, and tools like vials and burners, mortar and pestles, and various other things all placed carefully on the surrounding shelves. She places the jars filled with Erlulu's slime and the illum flowers on the table.

She steps back out, sets her bag down by the counter, and grabs a dried green mushroom, as well as a jar that seems to just have water in it. Then she places those on the counter as well, and takes down a mortar to put the mushroom and a splash of water in. After that she concentrates fire mana around the mushroom as it rehydrates. She keeps that up while grabbing a small knife and one of the illum flowers. She uses the knife to remove the petals from as close to the stem as she can. Once the petals are removed she puts the stem and remainder of the flower in a separate container. She minces the petals in a small flat dish, then retrieves the mushroom, releases her control on the fire mana, and squeezes the mushroom over the dish, causing a sort of slimy liquid to drip out.

She dumps the water the mushroom had been sitting in into a drain on the floor, then places the smashed mushroom back in the mortar along with a splash of Erlulu's slime. Then she grinds the mushroom and slime into a lightly glowing green paste. After that she whisks the minced petals and mushroom slime for several seconds before dumping that into the mortar with the paste. She uses a rubbery spatula to fold the two mixtures together until they are a uniform consistency. It looks similar to aloe vera gel, though less transparent. Then she gathers earth mana around the final mixture.

While soaking it in earth mana, she cleans up and puts away everything else. Though she pauses to look at the mortar full of gel every minute or so. A bit before she finishes that, she withdraws the earth mana. "I don't suppose you could summarize what all you just did there? Cause I'm clueless here."

"Oh? Forgot you were there for a bit. Sure, sure. I don't mind explaining." She grabs five vials and transfers most of the spirit stabilizer into them. There is a little dab left in the mortar after that though. "Hmm, but first, I want to try something, reaaaaally quick. Can I see your mana threads again?"

"Uhh, huh? . . You think it'll have an effect like that?" She shrugs and holds up the last bit with the spatula. "I suppose, it's worth trying out." I remove the top plate of my right forearm and hold it out to her. She smears it onto the fibers of muscle in my arm, and it feels kinda, cold? "Weird. Feels cool? But I don't really feel any temperature when working the forge, so that's. . . Anyway, I should focus on my spiritual body."

I turn my Spiritual Perception on myself. The darkness that makes up the bulk of my form seems to be rippling. And the multi-colored lights are shifting around. After a few seconds everything settles down. The green lights that were in my right arm have been distributed throughout my being at random, and are now slightly different tones or shades of green. "Definitely did, something? Not that I understand it."

She is staring pretty closely at my arm. "It looks like one of the effects I couldn't read triggered?" I look at her curiously, only slightly noting when the dab of spirit stabilizer seems to be absorbed into my mana thread system. "Right, I have the Alchemic Judgement skill, but it isn't high enough level to read all of the effects all the time. Spirit stabilizer has three effects, and I could only read the first one, 'Spirit Redistribution', which apparently causes the soul to fill in any gaps it has. Also, if I watch closely when a potion is used, I can tell which effects activate. It's pretty useful when studying synthesis." She straightens up and moves to wash up the mortar and spatula. "Lemme know if you figure out what it did~"

I take another close look at my arm. "Spirit redistribution sounds pretty similar to what I just saw. But I'm not sure right now. Maybe we can try again when I've improved my spiritual perception?" She picks up the vials and walks out of the workroom with a gesture for me to follow. I put the plate back on my arm and exit the room. She stashes four of the vials in a box under the counter, then retrieves her bag to put the last one in.

"Alright, now. I'll explain what I did while mixing the potion while we walk back to your place." Sergu makes a gesture like a thumbs up, but her index finger is also extended, and she winks. "I didn't forget!" I try to hold back a laugh, but don't even have a mouth to cover, so the noise comes through loud and clear. "Ahha! Gotcha."

She takes a moment to look smug about the perceived accomplishment of getting me to laugh, then walks out the front door. I huff musically, slump slightly, and follow her out. She is casually waiting just outside the door with her tail swishing. We start walking before she speaks up again. "So, to start I rehydrated a trush mushroom, which normally has the effect of 'Effect addition' which keeps things mixed with it from changing each other's effects. But it instead combines the effects if you use fire mana on it. Erlulu's slime, labeled as nudibalmua mucus 'Balances energy'. Aaand Illum flowers 'Draws spirit together' and 'Enhances growth', though I don't know what the latter does in people. Can't exactly test it on children, doesn't work on adults. I think."

She clears her throat. "So, I separated the trush, I could have just cut it in half, but I like squeezing it instead, cause the slime is easier to mix with the flower petals. Then when I mixed the two mixtures together it was labeled as a Spirit Potion which has two effects. 'Energizes Spirits' and a blank one. Haven't worked that out yet. Using Earth Mana on the spirit potion to change it to a spirit stabilizer changes 'Energizes Spirits' to 'Spirit Redistribution' and adds another hidden effect. Probably changes the first hidden effect somehow too?"

"I see, that's interesting. Especially that energizes spirits effect you glossed over. . ." Could basically be an SP recovery effect. I think through everything she just told me while we walk the rest of the way. Once we arrive before the house side entrance, Sergu stops and nudges me to get my attention. Crimson and their pair of dungeon delving allies are waiting by the door. Crimson is sitting on the doorstop, tapping their foot idly. "Ah I see, got a little caught up in my thoughts. But, that is pretty convenient."

I walk the rest of the way over, then wait for them to speak first, since they clearly need something. "I just reached level fourteen, and Rido said I won't be able to go back in the dungeon if I go over fifteen. So I was wondering if we should clear it." They stand back up and tug on their Assassin's Kit to adjust its fit.

"Not a bad idea. I wouldn't mind being able to go back in myself. But, first I'll need to talk to you about a few things. So, come on in with us, for now. Once we've got the other business out of the way, you should ask around the adventurers guild for other people looking to clear it. And, put forward the idea of having the dungeon produce more kinds of metal. Since the town has likely been treating it as a mine, that should be fine." With that I lead the way into the building.

Chaos_Sinner777

Alright, I'm thinking. One more chapter of research, that also leads into a time skip. Then a chapter covering what changed during the time skip, and finally, the introduction of the Teacher from the last poll.