My Farming Domain Is Broken

Carlos kept the Warden Chain floating over Derek Holt’s shoulder until Kaia finished tying the man’s hands.

Derek watched every black link carefully.

He had stopped talking after Carlos’s first punch which was good as Carlos did not trust himself to listen while the burned preserved bed was still smoking behind them.

Rowan was kneeling beside the third channel with Blue hovering close to his shoulder. The farmer had mud up to both elbows.

"Can it be fixed?" Carlos asked.

Rowan did not look up immediately. He pressed two fingers against the wet wall, then shook his head.

"Not with soil alone. The water has cut deeper than it looks. If we open the flow now, the whole side will fall."

Lydia came from the damaged junction with both Clayborn Masons behind her. One of them was missing a piece of its shoulder. Its other hand still held a repair tool.

"Twenty Glasswood lengths," she said. "I can make a permanent support if Rowan shows me where the roots cannot be covered."

Carlos looked at the transparent timber stacked beside the regulator. He had bought sixty lengths earlier that day. Losing twenty before it even reached Ironroot hurt.

Then he looked at the channel.

"Use it."

Lydia nodded and immediately got to work. Carlos turned back toward Derek.

"Who told you I would be gone?"

"Nobody," Derek answered too quickly.

The Warden Chain moved closer to his throat.

Kaia looked at Carlos. "My lord."

Carlos forced the chain to stop.

"Try again."

Derek swallowed. "We were near the northern road. We saw you leave the Glasswood camp. Your Bearkin is hard to miss. I thought the district would be weak while you were gone."

Carlos stared at him.

"You followed us for six hours just to cut a channel?"

"The map showed your name getting more contribution. The regulator rejected my Domain. I thought if your claim broke, the system would allow someone else to restore it."

"The system never said that."

"Well I did not know that then, did I?"

Carlos almost hit him again. It almost felt as if the guys was sure no one would do anything extreme to him which irked Carlos.

Instead, he looked toward the damaged bed. The old crops had survived three centuries. Derek had burned one because he was wrong about some information. Not that his explaination mattered anyway.

That was not a mistake Carlos could understand.

"You will repay every length of Glasswood and every resource used to repair this place," Carlos said. "Until then, you do not touch a weapon, a panel, or a wall."

Derek looked at the hostile damage claim hovering beside his name and said nothing.

Then he shrugged.

"Fine. The system says I pay. I pay when I can."

The answer was so careless that Carlos went still.

The burned bed was behind Derek. Cedric was bleeding a few steps away. One Clayborn Mason was missing part of its shoulder. Derek had brought eight troops onto land that did not belong to him, and he spoke as if the worst thing that happened was receiving a bill.

"Untie him," Carlos said.

Kaia looked at him. "My lord?"

"Untie his hands. Brann, hold him down. Kaia, keep his right arm stretched out."

Nobody moved for a second.

Cosmic stepped forward. "Carlos, bro."

"Do it."

Brann was the first to obey. He pushed Derek onto his knees and held both shoulders down with one heavy hand. Kaia undid the rope around Derek’s wrists, but her expression had changed.

"You do not need to do this," she said quietly.

Carlos looked at the axe hanging from Rhea’s Woodcutter troop.

"Give me that."

The worker hesitated before handing it over.

Derek finally understood.

"Wait! I will fucking pay! I said I will pay!"

"You think I am going to make you work for free and call just that punishment?" Carlos said. "Then the next Lord will think attacking my land is worth trying too."

Kaia held Derek’s arm out because Carlos had ordered it, but she did not look at him. Nessa had lowered her bow. Rowan stopped beside the channel. Even Cosmic said nothing now.

Only Brann’s grip remained firm.

"Actions have consequences," Carlos said.

The axe came down to Derek’s elbow and in a clean slash, the hand came off.

Derek screamed to the top of his lungs and many moved their gazes to the side, especialy the other lords. His hand fell into the mud beside him, and every tied attacker went silent.

Carlos pulled the High-grade Recovery Potion from his inventory right away and he slowly drizzled it over the severed wound.

White light covered Derek’s arm. Bone, muscle and skin formed again until a whole hand rested at the end of it.

Derek stared at his fingers shaking in the mud as if he could not understand how they were there. Carlos threw the empty bottle aside.

"You leave alive. You keep your hand. You keep your troops. But you remember this the next time you decide another Lord’s work is yours to destroy."

He handed the axe back to the Woodcutter. There was still blood on it.

"Tie him again. Tie every one of them."

The attackers were bound at the wrists and lined up beside Derek. Carlos made them walk until the broken aqueduct was behind them and the cultivation district could no longer be seen.

"Go," he told Derek. "If any of you return without permission, I will not use another potion. Hell, I will kill you right away. I don’t care."

Derek did not argue, his eyes were quivering while he held his miraculously come back hand. He walked away with his eight troops still tied behind their backs.

Cosmic stepped closer once Carlos walked away. He looked into Carlos’s eyes that were unwavering as a wall and smiled. He had taken a tough decision and was still okay.

"Wow, I didn’t know you knew that a high grade potion could heal every normal mortal wound." Cosmic spoke.

"I learned the hard way, all my burned skin became normal with the potion use." Carlos spoke which made Cosmic poke around how much he was burned to use a high grade potion.

"He could be lying about Mara," Cosmic said later with sigh.

"He could."

"But we have no proof. And I personally don’t think that girl has it in her to do something like this. But eh, first rule is to never underestimate ayone."

"I know."

Carlos opened a private message panel anyway.

--

[Mara Kells]- The attacker says he followed us from Glasswood. He claims nobody sent him. Do not send anyone toward the cultivation district, I don’t want to shed more blood.

--

Her answer came after a minute.

--

[Mara Kells]- I did not send him, I can swear that on my life. But I I will respect you and keep my people out of your district.

--

Carlos closed the panel. Her message changed nothing. It was too easy to write words from behind a wall.

The repair took most of the afternoon.

Rowan marked the roots with small stones. Lydia mixed the Glasswood splinters with the clay her Masons carried. Blue held the water flow back in a thick wavering curtain while Brann carried the heavy supports into place.

Carlos watched all of them work and understood why the old district had needed more than one caretaker. No one here could do it alone. It just needed too many specialists.

When Lydia finished the final support, Rowan checked the roots one last time.

"Open it slowly," he told Carlos.

Carlos pulled the regulator handle.

Water entered the repaired channel in a thin line. The Glasswood frame darkened but did not soften. Blue released the held water little by little until the flow became steady again.

--

[Auxiliary Channel Three: Emergency repair completed]

[Permanent support installed]

[Preserved beds receiving water]

--

Everyone let out a breath. Rhea sat down beside the saved beds without caring that her clothes were covered in mud. Tomas leaned against his shield. Cedric remained standing, but his face had gone pale from blood loss.

Mira had already sent two small medicine bundles through the portal. They were enough to clean cuts and stop the worst bleeding, but not enough to make anyone forget the attack.

Carlos watched Kaia hand one bundle to Tomas. The Shield Militia had held six attackers with a damaged shield because there had been nobody else between the channel and the enemy.

Cedric’s Axemen had stood in water until their legs shook. Even One had kept firing Water Shot until its body looked smaller.

The district had survived but it had not been strong enough in his and his strongest’s absence.

Carlos did not say that out loud. He knew everyone already knew it.

"You are still hurt"

"There is nothing to worry about, Carlos" Cedirc spoke with a light smile which still irked Carlos.

"I told you to run away..." Carlos repeated what he said before as he had guilt in his mind. If he had left atleast Kaia or Brann here, things would have been different.

Cedric only kept smiling and did not say anything this time.

Carlos wanted to feel this guilt longer but there was no time to waste on such mistakes. He decided to learn and not do it in the future, that’s it.

"You wanted responsibility," Carlos said. "So you have it now. Starting tomorrow, you manage repairs and work rotations here. Rowan decides what the crops need. Lydia decides what the walls need. But you will be the one who will make them work, you undestand?"

Cedric straightened despite the wound.

"Understood."

"But know, this is not acceptance of your request."

"I know."

The regional map opened before either of them could say more.

The western road was glowing gold now. The light had spread far enough that they could see it from the broken aqueduct.

--

[Aurelian Settlement Authority summons]

[Time remaining: 17 hours, 42 minutes]

--

Carlos looked from the repaired channel to the portal leading back to Ironroot. He had less than a day before the Settlement demanded an answer.

But Ironroot had not seen him since he left for Glasswood.

"I will go home first," Carlos said.

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