Fallen Mage Regressor

The wheelbarrow smelled like crap. Probably because it was full of crap.

Literally.

Mal had managed to secure an afternoon to start working on his garden. It was then that he remembered that he still had a wheelbarrow full of fresh manure that he'd never actually done anything with. He'd parked it behind the dormitory, and somehow, nobody had noticed or paid any attention to it. Probably because the dormitories were in such terrible condition that a wheelbarrow full of animal excrement was the least of their concerns.

Mal knew he had to get done with that before he could start work on his garden—otherwise he'd just keep putting it off forever.

"So first, I'm going to need a compost bin," he said. "After that, I'll have to mix in some greens—I'm pretty sure the manure counts as greens—and some browns. So that would be wood shavings, and small branches, and straw or hay."

Mal rubbed his chin. A cricket chirped somewhere off in the background.

"These are the depths I've sunk to," he muttered. "A former dark lord, starting a garden. You don't see that every day."

He shook his head and got to work. Compost bin time. Luckily, there was plenty of scrap wood due to the fact that the dormitories were in such terrible conditions. Random pieces of floorboard and wall were scattered all over the courtyard behind the dormitories. They'd recently gotten nails and tools because they were doing renovations, so Mal was covered there.

He brought all of these materials out and dragged scrap wood into a pile. Once he was done, he stared at it, then crossed his arms.

"Okay, now what?"

Mal had never really done carpentry before. The home remodeling thing was him more or less guessing based off of some books he'd read a couple of years ago. He sounded like he knew what he was doing, which was why the others had gone along with it. But carpentry?

"It's just making a box? How hard can it be?"

As it turns out, it was dreadfully hard. Mal soon realized that because the scrap wood was inconsistent and random, with some parts being rotten and damaged or scraped and scratched to the point of unusability, he'd have to file down the good ones to make them fit with other pieces. Mal brought his hands to his cheeks and groaned.

"I'm going to need a saw and a file for this, won't I?"

If Mal were a half-decent wizard, he could use a simple cut spell. Unfortunately, Mal was not a half-decent wizard. In fact, he was a horrendous wizard, and anything more complicated than push or pull would probably take a good ten minutes of concentration.

With no other choice, he'd managed to find a discarded saw in the middle of the garbage—he had no idea why somebody would throw out an entire saw, but it was fortunate for him—however, it was rusted and in awful condition.

He set up the wood and started sawing.

Please, he thought. Just cut apart. I really want to get this over with.

He made three clean strokes and the wood fell off.

He stared at the wood, then at the saw.

It had been a thick slab of wood. And that saw was in awful condition.

How?

I must be sleepier than I thought, he thought.

Within a few minutes, he had all the wood scraps he needed. He assembled the composting bin and dumped his manure into it. After that, he went around and picked up some small twigs and dumped them into the bin. He went back inside—passing by Philo, who gave him a confused look—and picked up some of his paper that he'd been using for notes.

"What are you doing with that?" Philo asked.

"I'm using it for compost."

"... okay?"

Mal did not elaborate any further and walked back outside. He dumped the paper into the composting bin, then grabbed a stick and started stirring. Once he was done, he set a cover over the top.

Thankfully, he'd been clever enough to leave gaps in between the wood to allow air to pass through without too much trouble.

With that done, it was time to get started on his garden.

He wasn't going to wait around for the compost to finish—that would take months. Instead, his plan was to harvest some of the usable dirt off the ground and use that as the basis for his plants. He figured if he picked well, the plants should survive even with suboptimal dirt.

The problem would be pottery.

Where exactly was he supposed to get pottery?

It wasn't like he could just go to a store in Exodi City and pick up some pots—

Oh wait, he totally could.

One brief shopping trip later, Mal had a small device for making soil cubes. He'd been about to buy pots when he'd been upsold by the merchant into buying the inane contraption. The seller had made the argument that for starter plants, Mal would have to uproot and transfer the plants into a larger garden eventually. It was easier, especially for starter seeds, to put them into a soil cube which could then be easily transferred into a garden bed or a pot, depending on Mal's long-term goals with that particular plant. The seller had also been kind enough to throw in a free bag of compost.

Given that Mal had spent an obscene amount on the machine, he should hope he'd get something else thrown in for free. He hoisted the dirt onto the ground, then brought the soil cube making machine into his dormitory. Philo was still studying, then looked up in confusion at Mal's activities. He shook his head and returned back to reading his book.

Mal then walked back and brought his compost into his room. Philo stared after him, eyes wide and shook his head.

Mal brought out a small bucket and poured a little bit of compost into it. He then used the bucket to transport it into the soil cube machine. He pressed the compost into a cube, and—

It all broke apart inside of the machine.

Dirt splattered all over his floorboard. He crossed his arms and furrowed his eyebrows together.

Oh yeah, he thought. Cassandra mentioned something about this. When she was giving that whole lecture, she said that cubing was great, but that I would have to mix together a soil mixture that had a little bit more structure in it than usual so that it would hold together. That, and some coarse sand in order to give the plants some air.

Mal pinched the bridge of his nose.

What was structure? It has to do with how the soil particles hang together while still allowing for pore space to let air and water hold and pass inside of the soil. So something like certain types of moss are really good for structure. They're springy, fibrous, and compressible. That combination allows for a really good mixture of all the characteristics that we're looking for. Meanwhile, something like sand, on its own, is terrible for structure, because it all drizzles out and will splatter all over the ground without something to hold it together.

Mal took his fingers away from his nose and noted that he'd slapped dust all over his face with that motion.

Okay, he thought. If I can't get a hold of moss... wait, could I?

No, probably not. The types of moss that Cassandra specified were already processed, dried out, ready to sustain new life. If I just took moss off any old rock, that stuff is still alive. I'm not sure it would work the way that I would hope for it. Still, something to keep in mind.

Mal reached into the bucket and gripped the compost in his hand.

Structure, he thought. I need structure. I can find sand anywhere, but where can I get structure?

He stepped outside, hand on his chin, and walked into the common room.

"Philo?" Mal asked. "Do you happen to know what materials would function as a good alternative to peat moss?"

Philo glanced over at him with a raised eyebrow. "That's a very bizarre question."

"Humor me."

Philo brought his clawed finger up to his cheek and scratched it.

"Obviously I'm no expert, but I do recall reading in a book something about rice hulls working as a good substitute."

"Rice hulls? What are those?"

"Well, rice actually has a sort of outer shell. In order for it to be edible, that outer shell needs to be removed. This shell is called the hull."

"I don't suppose somebody has a bucket of those lying around here?"

Philo raised an eyebrow. "You do realize that the greenhouse has several buckets of peat moss probably available for you to use if you merely ask permission?"

Mal opened his mouth, then shut it, then opened it again, then shut it again.

"That's a good idea," he said.

"Yeah. Also, are you starting a garden—?"

Rather than be forced to answer this question, Mal walked over to the front door and exited out.

Nobody had been there at the greenhouse, but Mal had found multiple bags of labeled peat moss, along with more compost, fertilizer, and a number of other materials that Mal didn't recognize except perhaps as mentioned in passing by Cassandra.

Figuring that he didn't want to be too greedy, he'd only taken one bag of the stuff.

He stepped back inside, and once again, Philo gave him a funny look before returning to his own work. He poured some of the peat into the bucket, then added some compost, then quickly ran outside and put in some sand.

He went back inside, then mixed all of the stuff together with his bare hands. Once he was done, he put the mixture into the soil cube making machine and crossed his fingers.

I hope this works, he thought.

He pulled on the lever and it compressed and cut the cube into shape. He pulled it out and it held together in his hand.

And now, he thought, I’m going to need to light it all on fire.

He stepped outside after making about a dozen more, then put them onto a wooden board. He walked over to Philo and placed the board down onto the floor.

Philo flipped through his textbook, mechanically lowered it, then looked down at the board of soil cubes.

“What are you doing?” Philo asked.

“Asking you to act as my personal oven.”

“What?”

“Microorganisms are normally good for this kind of stuff, but for young seedlings, it’s apparently more beneficial to keep the soil relatively sterile.”

Philo set his textbook onto the table and stood up. “Right, Philo understands.” He shook his head. “Actually, he doesn’t understand. He’s very confused about why you’ve suddenly grown a green thumb, but he’ll cooperate anyway.”

“Now that’s the kind of attitude I love to hear.”

After a near disaster when the board lit on fire and Mal realized that he was being incredibly stupid using that as a tray, he brought the cubes back inside of his room and set them under the light of his window.

He put his hands on his hips and felt the dirt rub into his cloak.

“Oh, I forgot about seeds,” he said.

Mal once again stole from the greenhouse for his first batch of plants. He didn’t want to try anything too exciting, given that this was his first attempt at anything related to gardening. He went with elder root for half of them, and a sprinkling of sleepleaf for about five of the others. For a few, he decided to steal a few airgrass seeds. He vaguely recalled it being mentioned in his herbalism textbook as a relatively easy plant to raise, with a surprising affinity.

Air.

Mal had been shocked to learn this.

The trick to raising them was making sure they had access to moving air, apparently. No problem, just open the window, right?

Once that was done, he sat down at his dorm table. His hands at this point were stained with dirt. He brushed it off on his cloak, then reached into his pocket.

His hands wrapped around cold steel.

He placed a dagger on his table.

Ideally, he would have done this with the benefit of a guide, but Hemp had stolen the only book that he’d seen that had the instructions he was looking for.

He reached into his other pocket and pulled out a bundle of nettleleaf. Each leaf was as thin as a needle, and Mal was certain that if he touched the tip, it would prick his finger and draw blood.

Fitting, given that it was one of the few plants in the world to give out blood-type mana.

Cassandra had been shockingly generous to give this to him—granted, Nettleleaf was more common than most other advanced types due to its anti-demon properties.

He pulled out his herbalism textbook and flipped through the pages.

As expected, it hadn’t changed since the last time he’d looked through it. Nothing more than a random mention of infusions.

But that was okay, Mal had his own tricks up his sleeve.

He drew a small ritual circle on his table using a piece of chalk. Runes were written into the slots and he placed the dagger and the nettleleaf on top of each other on top of the circle.

A pseudo-infusion.

It was a trick he’d picked up in his last life—a wizard who’d been desperate to make up for her horrendous core. She’d figured out a way to mimic the infusion of the witches, but she claimed that her way was ten times more effective.

Mal had taken a look at the products of her labor and dryly noted that her sword was about as useful as a paperweight.

The witchcraft style of infusion permanently affixed an item with magical properties. The wizardly style of infusion only did so temporarily. Pseudo-infusion was a sad compromise between both. Not nearly as much flexibility as the wizardly way, and only a quarter as much power as either of them.

In the long run, Mal would get a better solution. But for now, this would have to do the trick.

He placed his hands against the edges of the ritual circle and channeled mana into it.

Even without a core, he was still able to do this much. But each motion was an impossible task. It was like pushing a boulder directly up a cliff face.

Even so, Mal kept at it. An hour passed. Two. The nettleleaf changed from a dark red to a crusty gray.

When the leaves started to crack like dry soil, he decided that he’d probably gone far enough. He’d been able to see the transfer happen in real time. Red particles twisting and wrenching their way out of the leaves to go into the dagger. The motions had been forceful and violent, not the process he’d been expecting.

He slipped the dagger into the sheath hidden inside of his cloak, then stood up from the table.

He reached up and rubbed his eyes. It was turning bright again—not from the sun, but from the unaligned mana leaking back in. He grabbed the broom and channeled his mana into it.

Merely by flooding an object with mana, he was able to manipulate unaligned mana.

Would he be able to do that with other types of mana? Could he somehow contain rare types of mana using this technique?

He finished sweeping, then walked back over to his bed and laid his head down.

He had his contingency for if he ran into a demon.

But there was still one more problem he had to deal with.

The heroine.

Mal needed something, anything that could give him a fighting chance.

His chest ached. He brought his hand up to his stab wound.

There was no injury there, he was fully aware.

So why did it still sting?

He shut his eyes and tried to imagine how he might face down the heroine.

Every scenario he came up with, every idea—they all ended the same way.

With that sword stuck in his chest.

A knock at the door.

He startled and rolled out of bed, hitting his head against the floor.

“Mal?” Philo said through the door.

“What is it?”

“Mal, we need to talk.”

Mal frowned.

That tone… Philo seemed concerned. Ashamed, even.

What could be the problem?

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