Farming

When it comes to farming Angela is a complete rookie and she hadn't even done any gardening, why would she when she had someone to do it for her. The system would be her lifeline in this aspect. The detailed instructions that the system gave were short, concise and 100% accurate.

The first thing Angela did was to sort through all the plants in order to find what she wants. The soul fruit and blood wheat were no-brainers as they were rank 1 plants but the growing of spirit rice was complicated and needed a lot of water. Next Angela had a look at the unranked plants to see if there was any she needed. From this category Angela decides on two more plants: The honey dew stem and one of the edible plants called a jade berry bush; a plant with green berries that look poisonous but actually are quite tasty.

With these four plants selected Angela now has to divide the space she had. In theory one water source could supply for 8 spirit fruit trees, 10m² of blood wheat or 20m² of either of the unranked plants. Since this was only based on the production of the water source it is probably be more viable to half the plant:watersource ratio.

Angela quickly creates several large water containers, about 10m² with a thick wooden latch that blocks an outlet. Once they were placed they would be almost unmovable though and so Angela carefully plans out her plots.

She plans out two 10m² plots, each with their own water barrel; these would be used for the two unranked plants. She then plans out two more plots which are 5m² again with a barrel each, these would be for the rank 1 blood wheat which required twice as much water as a normal plant.

So far her plans would cost around 30 anima however they were very compact, taking only slightly more than 15m². Eventually she had plans to create a sprinkler system but she had no idea where to start in regards to that and so it would take a lot of time and testing.

When it came to the fruit trees things got a little more complicated. Unlike the other plants, trees couldn't be planted too close to each other as they would compete for light and nutrients, another point that had to be considered was the different soil mixture that was required: 80% dirt and 20% sand.

Since she couldn't plant the trees close together, Angela decides to not even try. Instead she would plant them around her territory as decoration; she was getting tired of looking at the plain dirt and wanted to create some scenery anyway. This would certainly be more work than planting them at about 5 ft intervals in a square but the good thing is that rank one plants grew far faster than normal plants and so it would only take about a week before they grew to maturity and would no longer need watered; an incredibly fast speed when compared to the crops on earth.

Initially she had wanted to ask Lenara to have her drones help water and harvest the plants but, with their claws and lack of opposable thumbs, they aren't exactly suitable for the job. Angela finishes plotting everything out and starts to work, first she places the water barrels and water sources for each plot. While she waits for the water to begin generating Angela goes to the first island to search for the seeds of the plants she wants to grow.

The jade berry bush had its seeds in the berries and so it was very easy to obtain dozens of them from each bush. The honeydew stem was a little more tricky on the other hand; their seeds were grown from inside the plant, eventually feeding on the parent stem to burst out into a new stem, often with a larger mass than the previous generation. This meant that each plant only had one or two seeds each and if she started from the first generation the resulting plants would be rather small.

Her solution to this is simple, she just directly digs up the entire plant and transports it to the plot.

This also helps with the reason she had chosen the plant in the first place. Sure the glue was helpful but the real reason Angela had chosen this plant rather than the many others was that It was a nitrogen fixing plant, something essential to develop a fertile landmass and in turn, an ecosystem.

Angela's plans did not stop at just cultivating plants, eventually she wants to have a full ecosystem, animals included. This was far into the future though and Angela has more short term goals for now.

After the Honeydew plants had been transplanted and the berry seeds collected Angela begins to work the soil for the unplanted plots. She doesn't have a tool for this in the menu and so creates a medium sized wooden rake and a small trowel.

The process for planting is simple, but tiring and repetitive. First the plot needs to be raked once over, then each seed is planted in a small hole dug up by the trowel and covered. After all the seeds are planted they need to be watered; Angela realises that she hasn't got anything to water the plants with so she makes a large bucket with a spout similar to a watering can but with larger holes.

With the plots set up all that is left are the Trees. Angela ponders for a while on how to create the soil before setting into action. She makes a large basin with a ribbed exterior like a large gear and an inner section that has blades like a blender. The basin can hold 5m³ of soil and Angela puts in 4m³ of dirt and 1m³ of sand. Next she makes a wheel that fits into the gear ribs and can be turned using a handle and pushing.

This way of mixing would require a lot more strength than Angela has so she needs to go and pay a visit to Lenara to ask for help, though the trees were not vital at the moment so she could do that when the tunnel was complete.

This is how Angela spends the rest of her time waiting for Lenara's drones to finish, watering her plants daily and reading the magika arcanus when that was finished. Time flies and the day soon comes that a Drone approaches her bearing news of the tunnel's completion.