Novel Bin Chapter 48 - Raking Treasures
The next time Rino summoned his farmhand, he had a splendid stone set of farming tools ready. The bone tools were a little too short for his long limbs, so Rino would give that to a worthy goblin when he found the most talented of his lot.
For now, he looked at his stone and wood rake. It wasn\'t easy making his first rake, considering how many \'teeth\' it had. The rake, Rino read from the previous tutorial, was a tool to help with weeding, even if he did not truly understand it. However, the lich knew that the teeth must be firm and not fall out in action. The wooden rake he tested failed the test miserably, and Rino decided that wooden stakes just weren\'t doing it. He needed something more solid and explored the possibility of tight-fitting a hole and stabbing it with stone spikes instead.
The idea worked, and while the backside of the rake looked slightly terrible, the front end worked well. The space between teeth was smaller than the failed wooden creation, and Rino tested it on some leaf piles in the forest. The rake cleared up the land nicely, and now, he found himself teaching the farming minions how to use a rake for when they were summoned.
"Any questions?" he asked.
Twenty volunteers shook their heads, and Rino passed this first stone rake to the farmhand. He also chose a goblin at random and tossed her a bone rake.
"The field needs to be weeded and ploughed. Once you have the weeds out of the way, toss them into the kiln. It will make good fuel. The other lot of you go to the forest to collect mulch in those baskets. Once the field is weeded and ploughed, you have to dig even rows for potato planting. The mulch goes into those mini trenches."
It was difficult for his summons to understand him and Rino had little patience. He might be the best magician and a great student, but he was a horrible teacher. Patience was a virtue he did not have. Hence, he ordered the two slaves with rakes to get working while barking instructions for the remaining volunteers to grab a basket each to follow him to the forest.
Nobody disobeyed, and Rino lined them up to whisk them to the heart of the forest with baskets.
It wasn\'t very difficult to find rotting leaves in this forest. Rino glared at his minions, who he thought were brainless in more than just the literal sense when they put dry leaves into the basket after explaining that he was looking for wet and decomposing ones. The dry leaves were no harm. However, it would take a longer time for them to decompose, and Rino did not have the luxury of time with the daily quest on his back. He needed the mulch to increase the soil acidity so the dainty potatoes can start to grow.
After smacking the skull of a dumb goblin off on accident with too much force, Rino came to realise something astonishing.
He ever wondered what would happen to his shadow summons if they were under attack. Would he have to visit the site of their corpse to resurrect them or tame their souls all over again? The accidental murder answered his questions as the lich watched how the goblin simply combusted in purple soul flames where his skull was. The skull was also on soul fire as its body bent down to reattach the disconnected part.
High-speed regeneration was an ability that Rino had. It never occurred to him that it was a skill all undead had. Watching a leg regrow was one thing. Watching someone else reattach their head was another. It was a terrifying but exhilarating experience that drained his mana.
Wait. Drain his mana?!
Rino checked his mana and quickly noticed that while the goblin reattached its head, it was using the summoner\'s mana to do it. No wonder that little grunt was able to use high-speed regeneration too! Shadows were an extension of the magician, and as its master, Rino was responsible for the regeneration.
Dammit!
With fewer shadows regenerating mana now that he had twenty summons, Rino had to be careful with how he used it. No more smacking off skulls. It was a waste of precious mana.
"Only wet and decomposing leaves, you hear me?" Rino growled menacingly to the volunteers, who quickly got to work.
Rino decided to stay and supervise for one round how these volunteers would fill their baskets and bring them back to the fields, piling the mulch in one corner so that the farmers could fill the ploughed trenches once they reached that stage.
Everything progressed as it should but at a slow rate. Rino checked the time. There would be a good number of hours before the sun rose, so he should make some decent progress ahead of time.
"Keep it up," he told the farming volunteers and returned to the hut. There was something he had to do if he wanted more hands on deck.
There were still over four hours until the repeatable quest reset itself, so Rino did not bother making the other stone tools. He already had all the pieces he needed, from tool heads to handles. The only thing left for him was to pummel the tool heads onto the handles and tie them tightly with some flax ropes.
"Master, we found something."
The report from his farmhand came while Rino was winding the thread spools. Curious, he teleported over, startling the poor goblin who dropped his bone rake.
"What did you find?"
Instead of replying, the farmhand simply showed what his stone rake hit.
Rino eyed the uncovered object closely and realised that the object was glowing and pulsing. The farmhand did not dare to move it or dig it up after his rake struck it once while weeding the untended field. More areas needed weeding, so Rino waved them off to continue raking other areas while he dealt with this new discovery.
Not many people knew what this was but Rino did. In his previous life, he spent a good amount of time collecting strange rocks like this from all over the land. This was not an ordinary rock or gem. It was something that fell from space. However, after many lab tests, Rino discovered that they were the key to a mana bomb in his previous world with their mysterious energy source that was unstable and highly reactive.
It took him many years of experimenting to create the right amplification device for these stones to blow up the world.
Now, he wondered if there was a different way to use these space mana stones. If anything, his immediate concern was not the annihilation of all species. It was the lack of mana to automate everything.
He looked at the trustworthy and sensible farmhand with satisfaction. As a summoner, naming a summon would consume a significant amount of his mana, but it would give his chosen minion more power. Instead of naming that powerful but annoying hunter, he would rather name this youth who died too early to understand the joys of life.