Chapter 232 - Magic Raisin
This was the first time for these three esteemed guests to visit this place. As the group walked closer and closer to the base, the three guests were shocked.
Along the left and right side of the road, they saw vast farmland as far as their eyes could see.
Minute by minute, the more farm they passed by, the more surprised they were. They had at least seen hundreds of hectares of fields here. It wasn't that finding agricultural fields on the island of Bali was uncommon, it was just that almost all of the fields they had passed by were filled with hundreds of residents who were farming there. There were at least tens of people who were working in every hectare of that land.
Even the sultan, who was an experienced senior statesman, began to have his surprise shown on his face.
"Devita… we've already seen at least hundreds of hectares of field along the left and right side of the road.... How many hectares of land have you prepared for agriculture?"
"At the moment, it's already over a thousand hectares," Devita informed.
"!!!"
"1,150 hectares, to be more precise," added Cahya, giving them a more accurate number.
The three of them, the sultan, Regent Suryo, and President Rico each managed a city where residents were sheltering survivors. The president managed New Java, which was in the northern part of Central Java, and the sultan managed the southern part of the area of Yogyakarta. Meanwhile, the regent formed one of the new largest cities in Sumatra. Of course, they all had and were preparing agricultural land for the consumption needs of their people. However, they found that there were already a lot of things that had been and were still being prepared in Bali. At this moment, while Bali had already prepared this much, they had only prepared a hundred to two hundred hectares.
"Why would you need that much land for agriculture?" asked the president.
"Okay, we'll stop in front of here for a bit."
The convoy stopped in front of a large building that seemed to be a storage building. They entered the place and they found a warehouse storage used to dry foods. They could see dozens of people working there.
"What are they doing here?" the regent simply asked. However, before Devina or Cahya could answer him, a person brought a tray with several small green 'objects' on it.
"Are these… dried fruits?" the president's voice contained a hint of confusion and curiosity, as the 'objects' in front of them seemed to be dried fruits, but they somehow didn't.
"Yes, these are indeed dried fruits. Please have a taste," Devina offered the three guests.
These coin-sized dried fruits had a shiny green color. The three people immediately took them to try one each.
"Pretty sweet... not bad. What fruit is this?"
"These dried fruits are spirit fruits that have been processed..."
"!!!"
"Yes, you didn't hear wrong. Here, we call them magic raisins."
"Interesting... what's magical about these raisins?"
"Every single piece of this small raisin contains a very high amount of nutrients and energy, enough to fill the needs of an adult man for a whole day's worth of work."
"!!!... This one small piece...?"
"Correct. We've tested it by giving thousands of residents up to a piece per day, and they don't feel hungry at all."
President Rico took another raisin and observed it closely.
Devita continued to show the three esteemed guests around the process room and showed them the process of how these raisins were made from those green fruits.
The three people were again surprised to see how the spirit fruits that had collected in this place numbered in the hundreds. This was surprising to them because they all knew that each of those fruits was worth ten spirit stones. Those hundreds of fruits were worth hundreds of thousands of spirit stones, and yet, they were treating these fruits like ordinary fruits in this processing factory.
"Be at ease... follow me," Devita said to them.
This time, she took these three people out of the building through the backdoor. Now, in front of them was a vast agricultural field.
A middle-aged woman came over to them.
"Esteemed Sirs, allow me to introduce to you the woman who is most instrumental in this magic raisins project."
"Pleased to meet you all. My name is Jane.
"Esteemed Sirs, this field in front of you is a field of spiritual fruits. It has been more than a month since we began to plant spirit fruits here.
"Planting spirit fruits...!"
Even though they knew that the spirit fruits were a kind of fruit, none of them thought that this fruit could be planted and developed on Earth. At the moment, they didn't have enough spirit stones to try this out. And even if they did, they wouldn't know where to start.
"All the fruits in these fields are all spirit fruits!" exclaimed President Rico in surprise.
Jane, who was standing in front of them, suddenly raised her hand. Following her movement, one of the plant stalks in front of them moved and extended in front of President Rico.
[Accelerated Growth]
It was at this moment that the three of them realized that Jane was a great spirit enhancer. Jane was a spirit enhancer that Alex discovered at the beginning. She is a plant expert; a plant whisperer.
[Jane]
[Female - 46 years old]
[Earth Realm level 10 - Middle stage]
[Spirit Energy - Plant - Middle stage]
[Spirit Talent - A]
"Please have a look at it, Mr. President," asked Devita.
The president picked a fruit from the extended plant and observed it. This fruit was almost the same as the spirit fruits that could be found in the Doomsday Pillars.
The sultan was, of course, immensely interested in this.
"How is it? …How much...?"
"Esteemed Regent Suryo, Sultan Kartasurya, and President Rico, I'm sure that you've already seen the value of this farm by now. Be at ease, according to Alex's message, all information and methods regarding this will be shared. We will even send some of our experts to your respective cities to help with this process."
The three guests seemed to be very happy to hear this news.
"Really, Alex never ceases to give us nice surprises. Hahaha."
President Suryo suddenly thought of something, "Why didn't Alex tell me about this before? We could have prepared the same thing since the beginning of the arrival of the Doomsday Pillars."
"Alex wasn't sure about the right formula to make it. We needed dozens of days, and lots of spirit fruits were gone due to failure in the research. But with this harvest, we believe that the results are quite convincing and that we can share this technique with all of you."
Devita explained that initially, they had prepared a hundred thousand spirit stones to buy the first batch of harvest and another hundred thousand spirit stones in addition. Nearly half of the total spirit stones of the StarBase were spent on this project.
Each spirit fruit had an average of 10 seeds. A seed required a minimum area of 1 square meter of fertile soil and also had to be watered with the juice of the spirit fruit itself.
The fruit only took fifteen days to harvest. Due to that, after two current harvests of 20 hectares, the project had grown to a thousand hectares. Currently, there were around 80,000 residents of the island of Bali who worked on this project.
At the moment, even with Jane's help, the maximum yield success was only 70% and the fruit from this project had only 50% of the energy compared to the original spirit fruit. After various ideas and attempts, they finally divided each fruit into five pieces and dried them for easy portability and consumption.
"Bravo! Bravo!" Regent Suryo gave unrestrained applause.
"How many of these magic raisins have you produced at this time?" Asked the sultan.
"There are about a million pieces at the moment. But in five days, we'll harvest more than thirty million pieces of raisin."
"Amazing. This project can solve the food problem in this apocalypse."
"We found some obstacles, however. First, after the multiplication due to the planting, we found that the number of seeds from the fruits had decreased. We also found that the paddy land that was previously used became dry and arid after planting them twice. Because of that, we needed more spirit stones and workers to run this project sustainably."
The sultan made quick calculations in his head.
"Thirty million pieces for fifteen days. This amount is enough to feed two million people. This number is more than enough for the population of Bali."
"Actually, up until now, we haven't distributed this fruit en masse to the people here. At the moment, we're still depending on potatoes and mutated animal flesh."
"Then what are you doing with that one million pieces?"
"We've sent a million pieces as an order to the bases in Maluku and the Philippines. And they're still waiting for another ten million pieces in five days..."
All of a sudden, Regent Suryo laughed loudly. "Hahaha… Bravo, bravo... just when everyone was doing their best to survive, you guys have already started to run imports and exports."
These three men were experienced senior statesmen, so they immediately understood the meaning and purpose of their arrival. Alex wanted them to also encourage residents in their respective areas to do the same. At this moment, the most important problem in this world was the shortage of food. Dying on the battlefield was one thing, but dying of hunger was extremely miserable.
Devita interrupted again, "Actually, there are also other things that we would like to show you."
"There's more! Haha, I can't wait! Come on!"