My Farming Domain Is Broken

Carlos did not touch the crack.

Just a second ago, he had thought there was some living creature under the channel wall. Then the movement happened again, and he saw the root clearly. But the strangeness of the situation didn’t leave.

He wanted to pull away the clay and see what kind of thing had been sleeping beneath the channel for hundreds of years.

But Rowan had that look on his face again, so Carlos kept his hands away.

"What is it?" he asked.

Rowan did not answer immediately. He leaned closer to the crack without putting his fingers inside it.

"I do not know its name," he said. "But I know what it is doing."

Carlos waited.

"It is holding the channel wall together from underneath. Look there."

Rowan pointed at the clay beside the broken stone. Carlos looked harder. Fine pale roots were pressed through the earth under the old wall. They were not thick enough to lift stone, but there were too many of them to be normal.

They spread along the channel like a net.

"It is alive because the old water reached it somehow," Rowan continued. "If we pull the clay away roughly, we could tear it. If we break it, I do not know if another one exists."

"So we do nothing?"

"No. The only choice is to do this slowly."

That was a Rowan answer. Carlos had learned that slowly did not mean safely. It meant that if they rushed, they would lose something they could not get back.

Kaia stood behind him, watching the ground with a hand near her sword even though there was nothing to fight.

"Can it harm anyone?" she asked.

Rowan blinked at her.

"It is a plant," he spoke with a frown as if she was stupid.

"... We have a plant that can hurt someone, Rowan."

"This one is not like that."

Kaia nodded and ended the conversation, the only one who could have a fruitful conversation without getting pissed off was Carlos and Mira.

Carlos almost laughed. Kaia’s face stayed completely serious.

Rowan reached into the old leather bag near his knee. He pulled out the Crop Ledger Carlos had given him before leaving the pocket dimension.

Carlos looked at it for a moment.

The book belonged with Rowan now. It felt strange seeing it out here instead of in his own inventory, but it was better that way. Carlos would only stare at the words and understand none of them.

Rowan had tied thin pieces of cloth between several pages. He opened it carefully.

"I found this after Cosmic sent the message," he said. "It was written beside a mark for Channel Five."

He turned the ledger so Carlos could see.

The old writing was faded and most of it meant nothing to Carlos. A simple drawing had been made beside the words, though. It showed a channel wall, water flowing through it and roots woven beneath the clay.

"It says this channel was not only built from stone," Rowan explained. "The roots were planted with it. They held loose earth, cleaned bad water before it reached the beds and kept moisture around the ground below."

Carlos looked at the drawing again.

"So it is part of the channel. Not just a crop to harvest?"

"Yes. A living part."

Just before Carlos could say he did not know what any of that meant, the system panel appeared before Carlos while he looked at the root line.

--

[Auxiliary Channel Five]

[Restoration state: incomplete]

[Buried cultivation support organism detected]

[Improper removal may result in permanent loss]

[Crop Keeper verification condition available]

[Restore water flow without damaging the organism]

--

Carlos read the panel and sighed. Did it only give this information when he got to know the gist of the situation?

"This just became another one of those quests where my authority here will increase if we fix it. Can you do it, Rowan?"

Rowan looked offended for half a second, then serious again.

"I can do it, but I need people who will listen carefully and do what I say."

Carlos looked back toward the district. Cedric was already moving closer, likely because he had seen the system panel light up. Rhea and Tomas followed behind him.

"You have them," Carlos said while pointing at them.

Rowan shook his head. "Those people are just like you, my lord. They don’t know the slightest about agriculture. I need my fellow farmers here for that," Rowan said.

"Hm... Boro and Elias are in Ironroot tending to our main crops, and then there are two more that I just summoned."

When Rowan heard that, he nodded. "That’s the issue, my lord. The crops in Ironroot are as important to us as this land, maybe more. We cannot let all the farmers come here."

Carlos heard that and nodded. It was the same concept Cosmic had spoken about too. He needed to prioritize.

"Please get me the 2 new farmers here, I can work better with them."

Carlos nodded, but Rowan was not done.

"And do not forget the Farmer Promotion Scroll you have kept in your inventory for so long," Rowan said. "When one of us reaches Level Five, we can become a Nature Druid. If you want this territory to keep growing, you should remember that your farmers can grow too."

Carlos looked at him for a moment. Rowan rarely brought up anything that was not directly about a field.

"None of you are Level Five yet," Carlos said.

"Not yet," Rowan answered. "But we will not reach it by staying the same forever."

Carlos opened the private message panel.

"Kaia, I want you to get the two new farmers here. We need them as fast as possible," Carlos commanded, and Kaia left right away.

Carlos watched Kaia disappear through the portal. Then he looked back at the crack beneath Channel Five.

The pale root moved again. This time, it did not pull deeper into the soil. It reached toward the dry gap where the water should have been.

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