Chapter 16

Settling In

The next day, Sai had begun to plant his garden with his earth magic he tilled the ground in thirty step rows. Where there was a tree, he moved it. He made several long rows and with his plants he began to plant them in rows according to their type. Between each row he planned wildflowers to attract pollinators.

It must be said that Sai didn't plant any seeds in this garden, rather he planned entire berry bushes and vines while making spears of stone for them to wrap around. For vegetables, he replaced them into the dirt the same way that he removed them. Sai had theorized that his family would need nearly one thousand bushels of greens over the year since his new bodies appetite already exceeded the appetite. With his body growing as quickly as it is and with his he would require lots of food in the coming months

Since Sai couldn't maintain a farm throughout the winter however, he needed to become stronger. If he were to reach the basic level, his earth magic could produce a strong and clear stone that would be able to work as the frame for a greenhouse. Currently though, he is only able to make rock, rock would not be a good material for what he needed though.

Until Sai reached the basic level however, he would have to make due with extreme over planting so that his family would have food in the winter. When Sai had finished planting it was already dark. He was covered in mud and grime, so he walked to the river and bathed then came home.

“Hi honey,” Lilith called when she heard the door shut. She was cooking some dinner inside.

“Oh, hi mom,”Sai said. It could be heard in his voice how tired he was. “What's for dinner tonight?”

“Rabbit stew,” Lilith said, Sai knew that she wasn't talkative while she cooked. Sai instead say down at a table he created a few days earlier. It could be said that thanks to Sai’s exceptional ability with elemental magic his parents and grandmother didn't have much to worry about these past few days. His mother cooked and trained in her fire magic as well as learning to train in the spear from Sai’s father. His father had devoted his time entirely to training himself, his mother and him, and hunting. It could be said that Lavits was the most affected by this escape.

After a handful of minutes, Sai had gotten so sleepy that he started to doze off at the table. A crash exploded throughout their small house jolting him awake. His mother had fallen over, the stew was making sloshing around on the floor.

Sai noticed that his head was foggy. He couldn't think straight, his eyes burned even. He looked around and realized exactly what happened even though his mind was still sluggish. Sai immediately opened the door and even dissolved some of the roof of his new home.

Lavits came running in at that time as well. “What happened?” He yelled his voice was panicked and his eyes showed the same fear that Sai had felt that day he died.

“Mom was cooking inside and there were no windows or stove vents,” Sai explained. Lavits understood immediately. There was a saying in the tribe, if you use fire in a cave you will be poisoned. Sai had even heard this from his mother when she was teaching him fire magic. Of course it wasn't a fact, but it did good enough to avoid people from getting carbon dioxide poisoning. After explaining, Sai used wind magic to push clean air into the house.

Sai decided that he would continue working on their house tomorrow so that they would eventually have a true home and so that they would also never have this issue again.

Though dinner was ruined, Lilith woke up late that night with a bad headache. Sai only knew enough healing magic to restore organs in one's torso, flesh and bone. For a brain injury such as too much carbon dioxide, Sai was useless.

Lavits however knew that you had to give that person a constant supply of clean air and just wait. During their waiting period Sai began to make a chimney in the house as well as a window. Though he couldn't make glass, Sai could make a big hole in a wall and use a flat piece of stone as a solid window, you only had to lift up the stone and put a stick under it in order for it to stay opened.

I wish I could use metal magic. If I could do this, our how would be great, I could make hinges and other things that would make life much easier, Sai thought. Maybe because he had thought that, or because of fate, or because of a whim of the god of Orzaworld, time had stopped.

“Ah, it had been a while Sai,” a Cheshire man said while Sai was transported into a field that resembled someone’s heaven, but not Sai’s. It instead reassembled a nightmare for Sai. “You don't need to speak, I am here to teach you something that you need.”

“What could that be,” Sai was hostile as ever, afraid that his parents would die with no real reason.

“Boy, you know I have reasons for everything. Now watch.” Sai watched as a silhouette began to move in a way that Sai had seen, chant in a way Sai already knew.

“This is earth magic. What are you showing me?” Sai asked.

“This is magic boy,” the wraith named Orza said without Sai realizing it was real words rather than in his head. “All magic is the same, you need to just absorb it. For example…” the being continued, then Sai felt a rush of iron strike his body. The being then said, “This is the only gift from me you have ever needed. The talent is your own, the understanding is your own. The expounding on the dao is my gift. With this single lesson, you will be a final product of world Orza.” The being disappeared before Sai could even say a word.

Sai had been given a great gift from Orza this time. He didn't know what to do with this gift, and he was also certain that he couldn't just pull steel out of the earth like he did earth magic. Orza did no explaining, he merely did earth magic and told Sai it was steel magic. Sai didn't know how to use it at all, he only knew how to absorb it.

After the second near death experience in just a few months, Sai had decided that there needed to be some way of helping his family. Some way of mahjong them completely safe. But alas, until his family had as much power as possible there was no way of making sure they were safe.

Sai went to bed that night absorbing steel energy and sleeping rather fitfully. Sai knew that there was nothing that he could do about it. That next morning he built a second room for his home. This room was much smaller than the first, so with his strength, making this room would only take a single day.

“Silent!” A high pitched call came from outside. It was Silent’s mother. Her call wasn't desperate, as a matter of fact, it seemed more jubilant than anything.

“Yes, I'm on my way,” Silent called out, heading towards the door. As he reached the door he saw his mother laboring away at the weeds that sprouted overnight in his garden.

“Can you figure out a way to fix this?” Lilith asked. Sai knew that she was training hard as well. If she was any bit weaker than the big chief come time for their battle then she would be able to be used against Lavits. In order to not become a burden later, she had to train hard now. As the saying goes in the tribe, ‘sharpen a knife before you use it or it will fail when you need it most’, this saying embodied Lilith’s mindset, but today, in order to help her son, she had spent the last two hours not training. She cut into the time that she should have been using sharpening her skills.

“I am thinking of a good way to do so, but I have yet to come up with something,” Sai said. He knew this was not the answer his mother had wanted, but it was the only one available. Sai had thought of using wind magic to make it hard for weeds to grow, but his wind would only reach a point of controlling direction well when he reached basic realm until he reached a high enough realm that he could control multiple wind currents in multiple directions and have the strength behind then and the dexterity with them to cut around other smaller and weaker plants, it wouldn't work.

Sai had also thought of burning them, but in the small area he tried that they grew back many times stronger. Sai had remembered that ancient warriors would burn all of the land of other oriole so they could use it after they conquered their opponent but they couldn't use it. In just a single day or two, Sai who had powerful attainment with earth magic could feel stronger weeds already growing back.

Sai had also thought of using rocks around each plant to cut off weeds before they started. This made them stronger too, and faster growing since even the roots were close to the sun. Sai was out of ideas and he didn't know how to make plastic or how to make mesh screens that people in his other life would have used.

Instead, Sai had just moved all of the weeds away using earth magic. He delved into the ground and cut off roots from growing, even seeds that he had never seen before we're cut off from the group. All the while, Lilith watched.

She saw how powerful that Sai was. She felt extremely proud and she knew that she made a good decision to teach him his first magic. She watched as weeds uprooted themselves and like a meal off of a picnic table, walked off on the back of small brown things. Of course Sai couldn't create an ant with his magic. In fact he could only create a ball or something semi-round. He couldn't even create a cube at the moment.

When the assortment of seeds, roots, and weeds reached a certain distance, Lilith had used a technique that burned until something no longer existed. It must be said that there are hundreds if not thousands of each dao of each element. For example, the dao of earth has nearly three thousand daos. While Sai had learned how to use fire from his mother, he had not learned how to use the dao of consuming flame, he has only learned the dao of combustion. The dao of combustion is a strong dao, and it has many uses with Sai’s imagination, but if there is a bad set of circumstances, it would simply be a small fire in the end rather than a strong explosion like he used against the mountain lion.

Sai was most powerful in earth because he had grasped a very powerful dao, moving earth, this makes him able to move things on the earth as well as move and compact earth to make it become harder. Sai like his father had also stepped foot into the dao of the gale, so anything his father was able to do with wind, he could do to a lesser extent.

Sai also had the ability to use thunder magic, but what he didn't know was that like wind, thunder was under a different subset of elements that the Little Chief had told him about. Lastly, Sai had yet to use his steel powers, so he did not know what the dao would be called that he had been set upon by Orza.

In a sense, Sai had started on his adventure of mastering five different daos. In a pessimistic sense however, Sai was only barely scratching the surface since he had only begun upon learning the five daos he has set his sights on, but there were over one hundred thousand daos in total.

In short, Sai relied on his mother to be able to remove the weeds thoroughly while Sai moved them aside. Sai and his mother did this for another hour, moving and removing the weeds in their quickly growing garden. Sai had noticed that the vegetation in Orzaworld grew extremely quickly.

Sai had taken note of this because most vegetation grew at least twenty percent faster than the vegetation on earth, in some cases it was nearly fifty percent faster. Sai it is likely because of the two moons, Sai thought. I'm fact, Sai was correct. With two moons, there was more water and it was a little brighter. This meant that plants could grow stronger and faster.

Sai had spent more of his day with his mother, his mother refused to spar with his however because she was afraid of guttering her baby. Instead, they came up with ideas for furniture. Sai first began by making his grandmother’s chair more durable. Then Sai had an idea.

“Would you like to go out hunting with me?”

“You know I hate hunting. You kill it and clean it and I will cook it. That's the deal son.” Sai’s mother Lilith replied.

“No, not hunting for animals, hunting for feathers.” Sai explained. He knew that it would be a long shot to find enough feathers to fill up a cushion for grandma, but Sai relished in the idea of spending time worth his mother.

“What are you on to?”Sai’s mother asked. She had never heard of needing to hunt for feathers. Such a thing was unnecessary in the tribe, so his mother was very confused.

“Trust me, it will be worth it.” Sai answered, trying to goad his mother into going out with him.

“What do I need,” Lilith have her consent, her exasperated tone showed that she felt coerced.

“Bring your spear just in case, it should be relatively safe, but we may run into something dangerous.” Sai was visibly excited. While feathers would be softer than the dirt chair he made, it would take a lot of time and work. Sai had actually hoped that he would find cotton or wheat while he was out. With those things, he could make a bed or make bread and pasta. Their lifestyle of not having carb based foods was one which Sai was not fond of.

When Lilith returned with her spear in her hand Sai grabbed his bag and they left for the woods.