Chapter 25: Research

Chapter 25: Chapter 25: Research

After finishing his meal and saying goodbye to Barney and the crafting crew, Rowan made his way back across the stone walkways toward the research greenhouses. The afternoon sun beat down on the shimmering glass roofs, casting lattice patterns of light across the manicured grounds.

Entering Dome Gamma, the ambient hum of the mana pumps greeted him. A few other students were still hovering anxiously over their plots, muttering incantations, tweaking irrigation valves, or applying standard nutrient formulas to their soil.

Rowan walked calmly down the central walkway to Plot 36.

Approaching his station, he scanned his student pass against the glass console. With a quiet hiss of depressurization, the transparent enclosure unsealed and retracted upward, exposing his plot to the open dome air once more.

Rowan stepped close to the edge and looked down.

Where there had been only flat, dark loam three hours ago, vibrant green life had already broken through the surface.

The Golden Sweet Corn shoots had pushed up nearly two inches, their leaves thick, sturdy, and outlined in a faint, iridescent gold. Beside them, the Russet Potatoes were sending up robust emerald sprouts anchored firmly into the C-Grade matrix. The Sun-Dried Soybeans were already unfurling their secondary leaves, actively beginning their nitrogen-fixation process to keep the soil balance pristine.

Even the notoriously temperamental Himalayan Blue Poppy seeds had germinated without a single failure. Tiny, delicate azure-tinted stems peeked out from the dark earth, drinking in the conduit’s elemental flow with absolute stability.

Because of the Breath of Eden infused during planting, there were no signs of root burn, stunted growth, or mana instability—issues that usually plagued crops exposed to high-density conduit lines without gradual acclimation. The vitality infused into the seed coats had forced the crops to treat the dense C-Grade mana not as a threat, but as pure nourishment.

Rowan knelt by the border, placing two fingers lightly against the damp soil. He closed his eyes, sensing the network of vibrant, healthy roots stretching deep into the earth, expanding at nearly triple the speed of ordinary sprouts.

A quiet step sounded on the stone tile behind him. Rowan opened his eyes and stood up smoothly as Professor Vane approached, his wooden staff tapping lightly against the ground.

Vane paused at the edge of Plot 36, his sharp eyes sweeping across the lush green sprouts covering the plot. For a brief second, the master gardener’s eyebrows shot up in genuine surprise before his expression settled back into a composed, approving nod.

"Three hours, Vance," Professor Vane remarked softly, looking from the azure poppy stems back to Rowan. "Most students are still waiting for their seed coats to soften. You’ve achieved uniform germination across five distinct species on a C-Grade conduit line without a single sign of elemental shock."

"The soil moisture and conduit flow were remarkably cooperative, Professor," Rowan replied with an easy, modest smile.

"Cooperative soil is the mark of a master’s hands," Vane said, a faint smile touching his lips as he tapped his staff against the plot’s border stone. "Keep up this pace, and those hundred honor points won’t be staying in the department treasury for long."

***

Leaving Dome Gamma under Professor Vane’s watchful but impressed gaze, Rowan re-secured the transparent dome over Plot 36 and made his way toward the high-vaulted towers of the Sol-Aethel Grand Library.

The library was a massive obsidian-and-marble complex, its multi-tiered floors housing millions of scrolls, ancient codices, and mana-preserved texts. Soft, floating orb lights drifted through the aisles, illuminating students from every track huddled over long oak reading tables.

Rowan tapped his student credential pass against the entry barrier at the western wing, following the glowing signposts toward the Herbology & Botanical Section.

Navigating the tall wooden shelves, Rowan pulled down several thick, leather-bound texts: Principles of High-Tier Elemental Grafting, Mana-Gene Divergence in Crop Lineages, and Advanced Mutation Dynamics for Non-Combat Cultivators.

He carried the heavy stack to a quiet, secluded corner table tucked against a stained-glass window. Setting his tablet beside the books, he began flipping through the ancient pages, scanning the detailed diagrams of plant vascular systems and runic gene structures.

According to the texts, standard botanical cross-breeding required weeks of meticulous hand-pollination, precise chemical balance, and expensive catalytic fertilizers to induce even a five percent chance of beneficial mutation. Most growers struggled to force different elemental traits to merge without the host plant rejecting the second element and suffering cellular collapse.

That’s for ordinary cultivators, Rowan thought, leaning back against his chair as his eyes traced a complex diagram on mana-gene grafting. With my domain’s purity and the Breath of Eden, I don’t need artificial chemical catalysts. I can directly guide the cellular resonance during the germination phase.

He pulled out his notebook and charcoal pen, sketching out potential hybridization ideas for his dual crops:

1) Ignis-Sweet Corn: Grafting the thermal catalyst trait from his Ignis-Bloom Peppers into the Golden Sweet Corn to create a crop that naturally self-heats and yields high fire-elemental density for forge workers.

2) Azure Recovery Poppy: Merging the pure mana-purity traits of his Himalayan Blue Poppy with medicinal nightshades to create an ultra-rare, high-grade potion base capable of repairing damaged mana circuits.

As Rowan refined his blueprints, he tapped his pen against the wooden table, satisfied with the direction of his research. With these techniques mapped out, he was well-prepared not just to secure the top spot in Professor Vane’s assignment, but to push the limits of what his personal domain could produce. ℯℯ𝑙.

The sun was just beginning to dip lower in the sky, casting long, amber shadows across the streets as Rowan boarded the free public transit bus. With dinner service still two hours away, he used the quiet commute to decompress, watching the towering, runic spires of Sol-Aethel gradually give way to the familiar, modest residential blocks of his neighborhood.

Stepping off at his stop, Rowan walked the short distance to his house and let himself in through the side gate, following the rhythmic, soothing sound of water showering over dry earth.

In the backyard, bathed in the warm late-afternoon light, his mother was humming softly to herself as she guided a heavy watering can over their neat rows of vegetables.

Before Rowan’s awakening and subsequent recovery, this small garden had been his quiet sanctuary—and his sole physical burden. But now that his health was fully restored and his days were consumed by the academy’s rigorous agronomy track, his mother had proudly taken up the mantle of maintaining the household plot.

"Careful with the soil around the radishes, Mom," Rowan called out gently, leaning against the wooden fence with a warm smile. "They don’t need quite as much water in the evening."

His mother paused, turning around with a bright, immediate smile. She pushed a stray strand of hair from her forehead with the back of her gardening glove and set the watering can down on the grass.

"Look who decided to visit his old dirt patch," she teased, though her eyes softened with that lingering, quiet relief she always carried now when she looked at him—a mother’s silent gratitude for his complete recovery. She walked over, brushing a bit of topsoil from her apron before pulling him into a tight hug. "I’ll have you know my radishes are doing just fine, Mr. Academy Scholar. How was the first day in the research domes?"

"Better than expected," Rowan said, pulling back to look over the garden. The soil wasn’t C-Grade, and there were no automated mana conduits, but the vibrant, healthy greens proved how meticulously she had been tending to them. "I got assigned a high-tier plot, and Barney is already drafting up my custom tool set."

"That boy works as hard as he eats," she laughed, her eyes crinkling at the corners. She patted his cheek before turning back toward the vegetable beds. "Well, you have about two hours before I need to head inside and start prepping for the dinner service. Are you going to go rest your feet, or are you going to hover around here and critique my watering technique?"