The main canal, now a half-finished, stone-lined artery of hope, was a constant, looming reminder of our ultimate goal. We had the water, and we had the means to deliver it. But the second part of Borin's original, pragmatic objection still haunted us: we had no seeds. The "Acquire Viable Seeds" sub-quest on my system interface was a ticking clock.
The grain left by the last royal caravan had been stored in the driest corner of the Lord's Manor. It was a pathetic collection of five burlap sacks, barely enough to have fed the city for a week. Now, it represented our entire agricultural future. One evening, I brought Borin and Kael to inspect it.
To their eyes, it was just grain. Small, pale kernels of wheat. But to my system-enhanced agronomy senses, it was a disaster. I ran my hands through the kernels, feeling their lightness, their brittleness. I crushed one between my fingers; it crumbled into a dry, lifeless dust.
"This is useless," I stated, the words falling like stones in the quiet room.
"What do you mean?" Borin asked, his brow furrowed. "It is grain."
"It is dead grain," I corrected him. "It's old. Kiln-dried for longevity as flour, not for planting. Most of it is sterile. What little might sprout will be weak, sickly. The yield would be… catastrophic. We would waste our water, our land, and our labor, and we would starve." My agronomy knowledge was absolute on this point. Planting this would be an act of suicide.
A pall of gloom fell over the two elders. Our grand vision had just slammed into a wall. We had built a magnificent chariot with no horse to pull it.
"Then it is over," Kael murmured, the old despair resurfacing in his eyes. "We cannot make seeds from stone."
"No," I said, my mind already racing, scanning the system's topographical map, which was now permanently etched in my memory. "We do not need to make them. We need to find them."
I closed my eyes, accessing the agronomy knowledge and cross-referencing it with the detailed geological and hydrological data from the map. "Civilized crops are weak. They are pampered, bred for plumpness and flavor at the cost of resilience. But their ancestors… their wild ancestors still exist. They are tougher, hardier. They can survive in the harshest conditions. They don't produce as much, but they survive. And right now, survival is all that matters."
My mental map lit up. I saw the network of dried riverbeds that snaked through the foothills. Most were barren. But my system highlighted one, about a two-day journey to the northeast, in a high-altitude valley. The geological data showed a unique concentration of mineral-rich soil there, a remnant of an ancient volcanic deposit. The hydrological overlay showed that while the surface was dry, a small amount of moisture was trapped just below the ground, enough to sustain the hardiest of life.
"There," I said, opening my eyes. I grabbed a piece of charcoal and sketched the route on the floor. "A high valley, here. The soil is different. The conditions are harsh, but it is the perfect environment to find wild grains. Ancestral wheat and barley. They will be small, tough, and they will be our salvation."
Borin stared at the map, then at me. "You want to lead an expedition into the heart of the wasteland based on a… feeling about the soil?"
"It is not a feeling, Borin. It is a certainty," I replied, the conviction in my voice absolute. "The system… my studies… have shown me the way."
There was no argument. My track record spoke for itself. Two days later, a small expeditionary party assembled at the gates. It consisted of myself, Borin, and ten of our strongest, most reliable men. Kael was left in charge of the city, overseeing the foraging and the continued, slow work on the secondary ditches.
The journey was brutal, a stark reminder of the hostility of our world. We moved through a landscape of cracked earth and sun-bleached rock, the air shimmering with a heat that warped the vision. The knowledge I'd used to find tubers and grubs for Kael now served us, allowing us to supplement our meager rations. I pointed out hidden sources of water, small, brackish seeps that we could purify by boiling, saving the clean water in our skins for true emergencies. My men watched me with a quiet reverence. I was not just their Lord; I was their key to survival in this lethal environment.
The bond between myself and Borin solidified on that trek. We walked side-by-side, speaking little, but a deep, unspoken understanding passed between us. He was the brawn, the warrior, his single eye constantly scanning the horizon for threats. I was the brain, the savant, my mind constantly scanning the landscape for resources. We were two halves of a single, effective whole.
On the afternoon of the second day, we found the valley. It was just as the system had described it. A wide basin nestled between jagged, black peaks. The ground was a darker, richer color than the pale dust of Oakhaven. And there, growing in hardy, scattered clumps, was our prize.
It didn't look like much. It was a tall, weedy-looking grass, its seed heads small and thin compared to domesticated grain. To an untrained eye, it was just a weed. But I knew better. This was Triticum dicoccoides, the wild ancestor of emmer wheat, one of the first grains ever cultivated by mankind. It was a living fossil, a treasure trove of genetic resilience.
"This is it," I breathed, kneeling down and carefully plucking a seed head. "This is our future."
We spent the rest of the day harvesting. We worked with a meticulous care, gathering only the mature seed heads, leaving the rest of the plants to ensure a crop would grow here again next year. The system had given me knowledge, but it had also given me a profound sense of ecological responsibility. We were not pillagers; we were cultivators. We took what we needed, but we would be stewards of this land, not its conquerors.
As the sun began to set, we had filled a dozen large burlap sacks with the precious, wild grain. It was more than I could have hoped for.
As we made camp, a triumphant chime echoed in the privacy of my mind.
[SUB-QUEST 1: 'ACQUIRE VIABLE SEEDS' - COMPLETE.][ANALYSIS: SUPERIOR WILD GRAIN SECURED. GENETIC RESILIENCE: 87%. YIELD POTENTIAL: 34% (CAN BE IMPROVED VIA CULTIVATION).][REWARD: +50 MORALE TO EXPEDITIONARY PARTY. LEADERSHIP RATING INCREASED.]
A wave of warmth and satisfaction washed over the ten men with me. They didn't know why, but the fatigue of the day seemed to lift from their shoulders. They looked at the sacks of grain, then at me, and their faces shone with an exhausted but profound sense of victory. They had faced the wasteland and wrested a future from its clutches.
Our return to Oakhaven was a triumph. As we walked through the gates, the entire city poured out to greet us. When Borin and I held up the sacks of wild grain, a cheer went up that dwarfed the celebration for the well. The water had been a miracle that quenched their thirst; the seeds were a promise that would fill their children's bellies. It was the difference between a reprieve and a future.
That night, I stood with my mother on the roof of the manor, looking out at the city. The torches of a small, impromptu celebration flickered in the square. For the first time, Oakhaven looked less like a graveyard and more like a town.
"You have given them hope, Castian," Elara said, her voice filled with a quiet awe. "I never thought I would see it in this place."
"Hope is just the beginning," I replied, my gaze fixed on the dark, empty plains that awaited our seeds. "Now, the real work starts. Now, we go to war with the desert itself." The system was silent, its quest objectives clear. The seeds were secure. The next step was to create the battlefield where they would grow. The next chapter of Oakhaven's history would be written in soil, water, and the unyielding will of its strange, transmigrated king.