Strawberries and Cucumbers

After Troy's visit, just like he promised, he deployed the teleporter machine that he would be using to traverse her sister's farm and his home back and forth. This way, if he wanted to visit Elaina, he didn't need to sail using the ships or using a boat. He can step into the teleporter and arrive on the farm.

As for Elaina, she is happy that Troy is full-on support for her agrees about her reasons, and is ready to give support on her pregnancy. Although he will not be consistent due to his job, Elaina is happy that at least, Troy is willing to help and keep her location a secret to everyone else.

With the matters done between her brother, Elaina returned to tending her crops. Thankfully, she can still move and crouch with ease. But soon enough, this will be a hard task while she is pregnant, so Elaina is taking advantage of it right now.

Last time, Elaina planted a few more vegetables from the seeds she bought from the market. Some of them are strawberries and some of them are cucumbers. Because each seed has a distinct shape and size and also with the help of the Almanac, Elaina can differentiate the seeds from one another.

"So strawberries and cucumbers will keep on bearing fruits as long as they are in season. Not only that but cucumbers grow best in spring and summer. Strawberries are good for spring as well and will last till early summer before they will wilt, making them a good choice for planting during the spring season until summer."

Elaina hadn't planted any strawberries and cucumbers before but if not for the Almanac, she wouldn't know much about them in the first place. Based on how many seeds she has, she can plant and grow 5 strawberries and 6 cucumber plants and they will grow next month to fruit-bearing plants or even faster once she puts the fertilizer.

"Since strawberries can be good on their own and as additional fruit pieces on some desserts, growing one on my little farm would be worth it, and if it grows a lot, perhaps I can even extract some of their seeds and plant them for more strawberries," Elaina smiled as she grabbed the seeds of the strawberries that she segregated from the other seeds and started creating plots for the seeds to be planted on.

"CAW CAW CAW!"

Elaina frowns as she gazes up on the branches of the nearby trees. There are a few crows perched and seem to be waiting for her to finish what she was doing. Those crows are clearly aiming for the seeds or perhaps even some of her plants that are starting to grow nicely. They were less before but now, it seems those little black birds are now aware of her farm and are now eyeing on her plants.

"It seems I really needed to make a scarecrow soon enough. I doubt they would just move away if I tried to shoo them away. They are persistent and I don't like it."

Elaina grabbed one rock and threw it as hard as she could on the branches causing the flock of crows to fly away in a hurry. Of course, Elaina knew they would return but they will be wary to come back for a while especially with her being there but she will have to make a scarecrow soon.

Once she is sure those crows are gone, Elaina starts to plant the seeds one by one on the farm plots. She made sure they were not that deep into the ground and that they were not that far from the surface, just enough for the seeds to sprout easily and grow. She also made sure to not make every plot not too close to one another. That way, if some plants get some diseases or they get some sort of pests, they can be isolated easily, stopping the spread of the infection or pests.

With the seeds already planted, Elaina then started to sprinkle the fertilizers on the top of the seeded plots before watering them.

"Ugh...I can feel it is getting harder for me to crouch for long even though my stomach has yet to start bulging, it is already hard for me. Looks like it won't be long before I will have to ask Julia to do the farming process while I give her instructions."

She slowly made her way to the nearby bench and sat down to relieve her feelings of tiredness for a bit. 

"Perhaps I should start automating the watering process? Maybe I can ask my brother to help me get some blueprints for sprinklers that can be powered with mana stones. It will be much easier for me to do it and it might also help give water to the plants in case it gets dry and will reduce my time to water the plants?"

While Elaina is thinking about improvements on the farm, the god starts to speak to her.

"[How about you buy the blueprints on the ledger? It is one of the stuff you can buy on the ledger. Although it wasn't free, it is considered one of the items optimal for you to buy. The materials are also easy to get as well, and your magician companion can even craft it once you show the blueprint to her.]"

"This is the first time I heard of this," Elaina frowned. She doesn't remember any blueprints for a sprinkler on the ledger.

"[Check again. We have that already present in the selections. It was also quite cheap as well so you won't go broke by buying it.]"

Elaina scratches her head. For once she can't help but think that who she is speaking to is not a god and is just some businessman who is desperate for her to buy stuff in his little store.

"[I know what you are thinking, Elaina but I will just ignore that, but I am not some shrewd businessman and I am not forcing you to buy, alright? I am just introducing the items to you so that you will have an easy time farming while you are pregnant. We can't just dump all the work on your roommate after all.]"

"I-I am sorry about that. But how is this different from the sprinklers that we know and use?" Elaina asked.

"[Well, this one does not need anything like a magic stone to power it up nor does it need to be near a water source. You make the device, plop it down on the ground hard enough to stop it from moving away, and are done, you have now received an automated sprinkler that you can adjust how much water it will release and how big it will cover. It even does its job every day and will stop if it rains.]"

"So in short, it is a better sprinkler than the usual one and will even adjust the schedule of watering the plants? That is something else...Alright...I am convinced."

Elaina stood up from the bench headed straight to the ledger inside the house and checked the blueprints. There are plenty of blueprints present that she can buy and just like what the god said, the sprinklers are indeed present among the purchasable blueprints and it seems she just forgot that it was present back when she checked the ledger before.

"But this blueprint is expensive..." Elaina sighed seeing the 1000 FP needed to buy the blueprint.

"[Obviously, it will be expensive. You can use it anytime you want and no one can replicate this at all unless they own the blueprint, making it unique to you alone so if you want to sell them for extra money, no one can even mimic them.]"

Elaina is getting convinced to buy it more but since she is short in funds, it seems the next purchase she needs soon will be allocated to buying this one.

...

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...

In the guild warehouse where all of the produce that the farmers put in their shipping bin, the Guild Master arrived after his attention was called by one of the workers. 

His arrival causes the workers to talk around and whisper to each other. After all, it only means that something is currently going to need the attention of the guild master himself.

"I am here now. What is the ruckus?" the guild master asked as he approached the worker who called for him to come to the warehouse.

"Sir. You needed to see this. You might get interested in this matter," the worker said before picking up a tray of dozen eggs bundled along with some vegetables."

"A tray of eggs? So, what is the problem? These eggs look fresh and normal to me."

"Yes, if you just look at the eggs as is, without comparing it to the normal eggs."

The worker then picked up another egg from the nearby tray took one egg from the tray the guild master was holding and put them together.

"The egg that I took from this new tray is from the egg supplier and our known animal vendor, Guy. These are the quality eggs that we keep receiving from him every week. This other egg that came from the tray you are holding came from the new farm that applied and has been giving us lately some great products ranging from vegetables, forageables, potions, and monster materials. This is the first time we received eggs from them and they sent out this batch of eggs with different quality, size, and distinct look from a regular egg."

The Guild Master looked at the two eggs and started to compare them together. Soon, he realized what was going on but because his expertise was limited, he decided that this should be examined by the people who know their stuff.

"Call the Endemic Life Researchers. We needed to discuss this matter with them and ask them about this. Because I am certain that this egg is not a chicken egg."