Chapter 240: Chapter 240: The Seeding
Chapter 240: The Seeding
Thirteen Miasma Clearing Towers hummed across the Northern plains.
They stood like massive, glowing sentinels of Star-Iron and pure emerald light. Behind them, the dead gray ash of the wasteland had vanished.
Smell of earth spread through the air.
Near the first tower, Lyra knelt in the dirt. She held a delicate glass gauge, which was used to measure the ambient mana density in the ground. The Alchemical team that worked under her had worked for long night shifts. They had been laying down the runic buffers that was required by the [Deep Root Cultivation Method].
Everyone was ordered not to plant a single seed until they received permission from Lyra.
The glowing silver liquid in the gauge rose. The threshold met as it crossed the thick red line etched into the glass.
"The threshold has been met," Lyra called out as she stood up wiping the dirt from her knees. "The soil is ready for plantation."
Master Engineer Dorn Halvers stood near the edge of the field. The bald, grease-stained foreman looked out over the massive expanse of arable land. He let out a long breath.
For the first time since the Vanguard had deployed him to the outer rings, Halvers was smiling. He was exhausted, his uniform was ruined, and he looked incredibly happy.
"Come on! Bring the drills up! It is time!" Halvers shouted, waving his clipboard.
The entire syndicate of Strike Team Zero was already in the dirt.
They were ten Level 100 combatants, and not one of them was holding a weapon. They were doing manual agricultural labor, applying their lethal disciplines in ways no Academy instructor had ever designed.
Reina Frost walked slowly down the edge of the western sector. She held her hands out, projecting a delicate, microscopic layer of cooling frost over the tilled rows.
She was perfectly regulating the soil temperature to prevent the newly turned dirt from drying out in the afternoon sun. She was doing the ceramic cup drill on a massive scale, and she had not shattered a single clod of earth.
Aegon marched down the adjacent row. He radiated a steady, slow pulse of contained heat. It warmed the frost-risk sectors.
Bram Stonehelm knelt in the center of the field. He did not brace for an impact. He was close with the Earth and could understand it better than anyone else.
He closed his eyes and felt the heavy mass of the bedrock deep below. He commanded the stubborn pockets of hardpan clay to loosen and break apart. Thus, saving time and manpower.
Nearby, Lucien walked along the irrigation lines. He held a perfectly condensed thread of blue lightning between his fingers. He ran the static wire through the water supply, which helped ionizing the fluid to stimulate the runic buffers in the soil.
And high above them, standing on the roof of a heavy Vanguard transport crawler, Natalie Tokks stood watch.
The Tempest Sniper held her bow. She had divided the horizon in a grid. It was used to watch the invisible pressure of the atmosphere. A good environment was necessary for agriculture.
Mr. and Mrs. Stonehelm also watched their son do the hard labor. They looked at the dirt. This was the dirt where their harvest will be standing on, which will be used to make their flour. The pride in their eyes could not be hidden.
---
"Riggers, move!" Halvers barked.
The heavy Vanguard seed drills rolled forward on thick iron treads.
Sella walked along the primary rig to check the seed hopper levels. Ordan and Petta steered the heavy machinery to ensure the furrows were cut to the exact depth, which the codex demanded.
The heavy iron teeth cut the soil. The treated winter wheat dropped into the dark furrows.
Draven stood near the command tent, watching the drills turn at the end of the field.
Lyra walked over to him. She held her glowing Elven Encyclopedia.
"The seeds are taking the ambient mana," Lyra reported, her voice steady. "The runic buffer is holding the frequency. The accelerated germination clock has officially started."
"Sixty days?" Draven said.
"Sixty days." Lyra confirmed.
The harvest was a certainty. Draven pulled a small leather notebook from his dark coat. He wrote the exact date down on the paper.
---
Far to the north, Bastion Six was breaking ground.
Three glowing Star-Iron towers now stood outside Gunther Stillbane’s walls. Lord Commander Helion had sent the engineering crews, the exact schematics, and the tower schedules without a single word of reproach for the missed grain shipments.
Gunther had not sent a message thanking him. The proud ruler of Bastion Six would not accept charity, and he would not offer hollow gratitude.
Instead, a heavy transport crawler arrived at Bastion Seven shortly after noon.
It was not carrying food. It was carrying eleven heavy wooden pallets stacked high with thick canvas sacks.
It was seed stock.
Gunther had bled his siege reserves dry. His city was starving. But he had refused to let his people eat the seed stock. Eating the seeds meant surviving the winter only to guarantee extinction the following year.
A handwritten Vanguard manifest was nailed to the lead pallet. Draven read the heavy, blunt handwriting.
Plant it in your soil. Put it under your towers. The yield comes back to my city.
It was a demand, not a gift. Gunther was sending his city’s future to Bastion Seven, trusting Draven to grow it, on the strict condition that the debt was paid in wheat.
Draven handed the manifest to Sella.
"Load the hoppers," Draven ordered. "We plant Bastion Six today."
SWOOSH.
A massive gust of wind kicked up the loose dirt near the command tent.
Astraxion descended from the sky. The neon-purple Void Dragon landed heavily on a wooden crate. He had spent the last two weeks living rough in the reclaimed wastelands. He had not gone back into the canopy since the World Tree matured.
The dragon tilted his horned head. He flared his nostrils, inhaling the rich scent of the tilled fields. He recognized the smell of living earth.
Draven walked over and scratched the dragon under the jaw.
"Welcome back," Draven murmured.
Draven looked south, toward the high walls of the city. He could see the towering, glowing green canopy of the World Tree rising above the Vanguard district.
He noticed the anomaly immediately.
The small, tightly closed green bud gestating the newborn spirit had changed. It had not grown larger. It had not bloomed into a flower.
It had moved.
Three days ago, the bud had rested safely between the thick lower branches. Now, it was nestled high near the very top of the canopy. It was physically migrating through the wood in a way no natural plant should ever move. It felt unexplainably wrong.
Draven narrowed his gray eyes, but he filed the observation away. He had a more pressing timeline to trigger.
The condition was met. The winter wheat was in the ground.
Draven turned and walked toward the edge of the staging area. Nyx Vespera was waiting in the shadows of a heavy supply crawler.
The [Phantom Queen] wore her sleek, void-steel combat armor. Her twin daggers rested securely at her hips. She carried no heavy packs. She required no Vanguard backup.
"The seed is down," Nyx noted quietly as Draven approached.
"It is," Draven confirmed. He pulled the flawless black communication crystal from his coat and handed it to her.
Nyx slipped the crystal into a secure pouch. She had already memorized Sogaar’s hand-drawn map of the underground service tracks leading out of Sector Four.
"Isolde Renwick will be waiting on the frequency," Draven instructed. His voice was cold, precise, and purely operational.
"You take the lower tracks out of the city. You bypass the neutral outposts. Once you reach Bastion One, you locate General Hadrian Kest. You observe his routines. You map his physical security detail. You mark the blind spots."
Draven stepped closer, his Level 100 presence establishing the finality of the orders.
"You do not engage Senator Vast," Draven commanded. "You do not attempt to assassinate the host. You sit in the dark, and you wait for my extraction signal. Understood?"
"Understood." Nyx replied flatly.
She took one step backward, melting seamlessly into the two-dimensional shadow of the crawler. She vanished without a sound.
---
A few yards away, Estella Everdawn stood holding a wooden crate of empty vials.
The Star Mage had watched the entire exchange.
It was the eleventh instance.
Estella did not focus on the black crystal. She focused on the words. She noticed the specific, clinical way Draven had delivered the operational brief.
Draven never told her how to handle her magic. He only gave her vague corrections or boundaries. But with Nyx, he had just issued a flawless, multi-phase military infiltration order. He knew exactly how to manage an espionage asset. He knew how to run a spy deep into a hostile Capital.
’He did not learn that in an Academy classroom,’ Estella thought. ’Why is it that he knows so much? And why have I never thought about that?’
She quietly picked up her crate and carried it back toward Lyra’s alchemical station.
---
The sun began to set over Bastion Seven.
Draven stood alone at the edge of the dark, tilled soil.
The heavy drills had stopped moving. The Vanguard laborers were packing their iron tools into the transports.
Draven looked out at the massive agricultural grid.
Thirteen glowing towers. Forty hectares of seeded earth. Sixty days on the biological clock.
He looked back toward the towering stone walls of the city.
And they had exactly seventeen days until there was nothing left to eat.
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