The next morning Linus was up early and ready for the day, heading down to the kitchen before breakfast to assist Laure. He didn’t notice any difference from his [Teach] skill but it was very new. Immediately after eating him, Laure and Theodore headed out to the fields. It was clear which areas he’d worked with yesterday but it was obvious he’d need to keep tending them daily to keep them healthy, let alone thriving.

  In a mirrored manner from yesterday, this time Theodore was pointing out which to prioritize from a medical perspective. Linus recognized some of them but there were plenty he didn’t, either regional variants, more mundane versions or most likely they had no recreational side effects that he’d previously focused on. It was several long, monotonous hours working all the way around, enriching, watering and growing all of Theodore’s top priorities and that was skipping the ones he’d identified with Laure yesterday.

  By the time they wrapped up it was lunch time. Looking over the fields they were less patchy than yesterday but not by much, with approximately 40% of them looking fairly healthy and the remainder looking as pathetic as when they’d arrived.

  “I’m not sure how sustainable this is. Even with skill increases I’ll have to spend my entire day here to cover the prioritized portions of the field, not even taking into account the time my garden will need or anything else I want to work on.”

  “There were several farmers dedicated to working these fields previously so I’m not surprised. Do we try to cut down even more on the plants we care about?” Asked Laure.

  “Maybe, I was thinking of alternating which half I work on each day. The plants from yesterday should be doing much better than they are. I’ll have to check on my garden later today to see how it is doing.”

  “Plants have never done great here, it’s part of the reason we don’t have any horses or livestock. Their feed would all have to be imported. Would it be worth trying to grow further from the wastes towards the forest?” Theodore chimed in. Linus looked at the scraggly bushes and stunted trees out past the fields before replying.

  “I think we’d need to travel too far for it to have any measurable impact, then we end up with the same transportation problem. Plus if I’m working with them on any regularity that’ll be a lot of travel time for me and any escort I bring, not to mention any harvest.” Both his companions agreed, leaving them stumped and setting the problem aside to go have lunch.

  After lunch Linus met up with Sasha and Laure by the smithy, incorporating his fire manipulation into the repairs Sasha was working on while trying to teach both of them. Unlike heating the pot this was a very dynamic process that Linus knew even less about than cooking. The time, temperature and placement of the heat changed depending on the type of item and the needed repair. And while he was pulling from the lit forge for the actual fire it was much hotter than the candles or campfires he was used to, making it harder to control. To make it even more challenging he had to maintain the higher temperatures outside of the hearth and apply them carefully to the metal being worked.

  As they worked through the pile of repairs Linus felt that Sasha was teaching him more than the other way around. He started to need to take breaks, drained from all of the skill usage between the morning and this afternoon, with the breaks coming closer and closer together before he finally called it for the day, a tremendous headache pounding behind his eyes.

  “Sorry if I pushed you too much. It was a lot easier to work with more directed and partially sustained heated pieces. I can’t wait until I can do it myself.” Said Sasha.

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  “No worries, I know better than to push myself to this point. I did it to myself.” Replied Linus. Sasha and Laure continued to discuss the training session while Linus quietly excused himself and made his way back to his bedroom. Mere minutes after he’d laid down he heard Archie entering his room.

  “Sorry to disturb you, but I was wondering if you’d like a soothing tea before bedtime” Archie softly whispered to him. Linus nodded without opening his eyes and was surprised to feel a mug in his hand a second later.

  “Thank you Archie, you always know what I need.” Linus said, smiling as he took a sip and felt the gentle warmth lessen his headache. As Archie left he pulled up his skill notifications, only realizing as he read them that he’d completely forgotten to check on his garden and hoping that plants there would still be salvageable tomorrow.

  Linus woke up bright, early and ravenous since he’d gone to bed before dinner time the night before. While his stomach growled at him for food his garden was foremost in his mind and on his priority list. He quickly used [Invigorate] while getting dressed before heading out the door. Minutes later he was at the garden, no he was at his garden.

  Walking around he found that whatever effect impacted the fields had also hit his plants, with the majority looking almost as sad as when they were unpacked, pre-transplantation. The only section that looked healthy was his first set of beds, filled with some of his edible and food related plants. After checking the entire garden he made the rounds again, treating them with the usual [Enrich], [Growth] and [Basic Water Manipulation], nursing three quarters of the plants back to health and leaving the last quarter looking vibrant.

  Garden fully tended to, if a day later than originally planned he made his way to the dining hall and managed to catch the tail end of breakfast where Laure and Sasha confirmed another afternoon before he headed out to the fields once more.

  This time he headed out to the fields alone, with Luke heading out for a patrol at the same time. Instead of continuing to switch between the two sets identified by Theodore and Laure he worked through half of the target plants by location, giving him two broad areas to rotate between instead. It was good practice to only target the chosen ones and exclude the ones they didn’t care about that were planted alongside them.

  It was an interesting exercise to extend the glowing lights of [Enrich] and [Growth] to cover the largest area as possible while applying them in controlled shapes. While his skills were focused on one set of plants he did take the time to occasionally study to the others. It was odd, they all seemed on death’s door but very few were actually dead, no more than he’d expect in a regular untended field. Whatever was affecting them was detrimental but not deadly. Leaning on [Plant Lore] gave him no clues either. Sighing and resigning himself to pondering the problem while working he continued working the fields until lunch time, heading back to eat and take a break before more training with the women.

  Once again they were in the kitchen, though this time working with a variety of pans which proved more challenging to keep track of and keep at the right temperature. He was embarrassed to say that both were much better at navigating the environment than himself and despite being the only one with a directly related manipulation skill was also the only one to burn himself. Several times. This time he felt the headache coming on and cut off practice before it became overwhelming, making himself a tea since he was already in the kitchen and grabbed a heaping serving of the sauteed vegetables and meat dish before heading back to his room. He wasn’t sure if it was the countryside or all this hard work making him early to bed and early to rise. Back home he’d have just been starting his night…