Jacob spent the next few hours shrouded in a seraphic calm, such it was the power of the words that Helena had bestowed upon him.

And this time too, Lady Luck was on his side!

“I’m done,” Jacob stared at the new root with a satisfied face. “Easy and fast to grow, it will germinate easily, it can absorb all the excess energy in the air and store it. If you let it grow for longer periods, it will grow stronger. We can even have different plots to grow for different lengths of time. It’s going to make our life much, much easier. This thing alone will provide food for tens of thousands even with the current Alchemical Garden!”

“That’s incredible,” the Vermillion Tyrant stated.

“Jaji-boy loves to play with plants,” even Epagogia mused from the side, the enmity temporarily forgotten.

“Now, I need to repeat the process for a few other ingredients. Hektor, since you are here, you’ll help me power a few other Formations like the one we just used.”

The Vermillion Tyrant nodded, even more curious than a kid. If a normal person would have been bored to death by now, the man was still looking at Jacob with sparkling eyes.

“So, you discovered a new field in Alchemy, a new path, that will revolutionize everything! HA! I knew it! I put my bet on the right horse!”

The Vermillion Tyrant slapped Jacob’s shoulder and the latter almost dropped its new root.

“What’s the name?” Epagogia asked.

“The name?” Hektor looked at Jacob.

“If you make a new useful Spiritual Herb, you name it. This one has black speckles, the same weird potato shape and the part of the juiciness of the Honey Marrow Flower. So, I’ll call it a Magic Potato.”

Hektor started laughing.

Jacob looked at him uncomprehending.

Epagogia smiled ruefully toward Hektor.

“Is that the real name you chose? Not the Black Speckled Marrow, or the Honey Knightly Fruit?” the Vermillion Tyrant was speechless.

“Uhm, I suppose I could have chosen a more bombastic name, but my memory is not that good. I barely remember one out of five Alchemical resources’ names. I still know what they do and how to use them, but these names have been getting out of hand. It’s time someone start making some sense.”

“It hurts me to say it, but I’ll vote for the Black Speckled Marrow,” Epagogia said while looking at the black dotted potatoes.

“Yeah,” the Vermillion Tyrant had to reconcile with the woman for a second to avoid Jacob’s terrible name.

“Wow, I brought you two together with a simple name, incredible! I didn’t know I was working with children! You two fucking—”

Jacob started raining out expletives like candies for the next minute, but then grudgingly accepted to change the name to Black Speckled Marrow.

Nerds, goddamn cringy nerds, I swear.

…

After planting the not-Magic-Potatoes, Jacob had to discuss the Cultivation Technique issue with Hektor.

“Listen, what we can do is either give overpowered Cultivation Techniques to anyone or not just restrict how you acquire them but also increase the duties of those you gave them to.”

“I’m listening,” Hektor said furrowing his brows.

“I like the second idea more. These people don’t know yet how to transfer those Cultivation Techniques, right?”

Hektor nodded.

“Well, then it’s better to simply give out many more orders to the ones with greater powers.”

“What if they refuse?” Hektor asked pensively.

“We make them. You didn’t really give them a choice. You donated a mighty power without thinking twice. What happens when there is a psychopath among those people and we are not there to save them? Who’s making sure right now that all the people you left behind are not being forced in some perteverted scheme by someone who casually had a higher cultivation, huh?”

“I did leave some of the most promising men to make sure…”

“To make sure that if they got strange ideas and you didn’t go back soon enough they would start maybe stealing, or worse, raping?”

“They know I would kill them for that!” the Vermillion Tyrant said vehemently.

“Oh yeah? Hektor, they have no idea who the Vermillion Tyrant is. They know a guy who rescued them and gave them insane powers without having to earn it. The people with the strongest Cultivation Techniques in St. Peter all fought Charybdes! What did most of the people you gave the Cultivation Technique to fight?”

Hektor looked regretful. He had acted in the best interest of humanity, but, as he had done in his past life, he had not considered how stupid humanity could be at times. He always assumed most people would just behave like he did – which is the reason he lost the war, as already mentioned.

“Well, we can’t really take them back,” Jacob stated, “so now that we made a mess, we have a force of, how many again? 60.000?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Hektor scratched his head. He knew one by one the thousands of warriors he had brought with him, but he couldn’t really remember how many civilians he had left behind. Even when distributing the Cultivation Technique, he had not done so personally. He had used some self-destructing parchment to avoid them falling in the wrong hands. It was true that Inscription Patterns were not his specialty, but that had been quite a simple trick.

“There are old people, kids and pregnant women among those people, Jacob,” the Vermillion Tyrant argued.

“And we will have to put all these people hard at work because you made a blunder. I leave to you to break the great news. You better pull some great speech because the people will tear you apart otherwise.”

And so, Jacob had just solved another problem by simply putting the ball back in the same court the problem had stemmed from.