Chapter 26: Second Harvest

Chapter 26: Chapter 26: Second Harvest

Rowan smiled, lightly patting his mother’s shoulder. "I’ll leave the crop watering to the expert. I’m going to head upstairs and review some lecture notes before dinner."

"Go on then," she replied, her face warming as she picked up her watering can. "I’ll call you when the food is ready."

Rowan headed inside, walked up the stairs to his bedroom, and pulled the door shut behind him. Turning the key in the lock, he engaged the deadbolt with a quiet click. He set his shoulder bag onto his desk, unzipping it to retrieve the extra seed pouches he had gathered from Dome Gamma: Golden Sweet Corn, Russet Potatoes, Sun-Dried Soybeans, Highland Coffee Beans, and the delicate Himalayan Blue Poppy.

Taking a slow, deep breath, Rowan closed his eyes and focused inward. The world around him faded away, replaced by the subtle, familiar pulse of spatial shift.

With a soft flicker of light, Rowan stood inside his personal domain.

The air here was pristine—crisp, hyper-dense with natural mana, and entirely untouched by external observation or camera eyes. Beneath his bare feet, the domain’s soil glowed with a rich, deep emerald vitality far surpassing even the C-Grade conduit matrix at the academy.

Rowan walked over to his primary cultivation bed, kneeling in the soft, mana-rich loam. He emptied the contents of the seed pouches into his palm, reviewing the hybrid blueprints he had sketched earlier at the library.

"Time to test the divergence," Rowan murmured softly.

He dug neat, deep furrows into the domain’s soil. Placing the Golden Sweet Corn seeds alongside a trace of his thermal-affinity elemental reserves, he carefully aligned their cell structures, merging the core traits to begin forming his Ignis-Sweet Corn hybrid. In the adjacent row, he nestled the delicate Himalayan Blue Poppy seeds into a bed infused with pure, concentrated mana purity, setting the foundation for the Azure Recovery Poppy.

Once all the duplicate seeds were nestled firmly into the earth, Rowan rested both hands flat against the soil.

He didn’t hold back as he had in the academy greenhouse. Drawing deeply upon the full force of his Breath of Eden, he released a vibrant wave of golden-green vitality straight into the earth. The entire domain hummed in resonance. The soil sparkled as tiny, translucent shoots burst forth from the ground almost instantly, stretching upward with incredible vigor under the domain’s accelerated time and unyielding purity.

Rowan stood up, dusting the soil from his hands as he watched the vibrant emerald and azure leaves unfurl before his eyes. Here, away from eyes and camera surveillance, his true botanical mastery could flourish without restraint.

Rowan walked past the newly sown hybrid rows toward the southern quarter of his domain, where the crops he had planted earlier had reached peak maturation under the domain’s accelerated time flow.

The air in this section was thick with a rich, fragrant aroma. Rows of pristine Ignis-Bloom Peppers hung from sturdy vines, their skin glowing with a deep crimson hue and faint ember-like light. Beside them, clustered stalks of Pure-Grade Wheat bowed under the weight of heavy, luminescent golden grains, while a bed of E-Grade Tomatoes bulged with brilliant, flawless red fruit.

Rowan knelt by the tomato bed first. Without needing tools, he lightly twisted each tomato at the stem. They detached effortlessly into his hands, firm and heavy, bursting with pure, concentrated vitality. He set them neatly into the wooden storage crates he kept lined against the domain’s edge.

Next, he moved to the wheat. Drawing a short harvesting blade from his belt, he swept smoothly through the golden stalks. As each bundle fell, the rich, warm scent of baked bread filled the crisp domain air. Finally, he carefully plucked the Ignis-Bloom Peppers, feeling the pleasant, steady warmth pulsing through their skin into his palms.

With every crop harvested, the domain’s pristine soil naturally re-absorbed the leftover root systems, recycling the organic matter and leaving the earth primed and nutrient-rich for the next planting cycle.

Rowan stacked the filled crates in his domain’s storage area, admiring the pristine yield. These pure-grade ingredients would serve as perfect personal stock for cooking, alchemy reagents, or future research. ℯℯ𝑙.

Wiping his hands on a cloth, Rowan took one last look around his domain before focusing his mind to exit back into his bedroom upstairs.

The harvest yielded a total of 680 Experience Points (EXP), broken down by crop quality and purity:

24x Ignis-Bloom Peppers (Grade-D Flame Reagent): 360 EXP (15 EXP per unit due to high elemental heat density)

15x Bundles of Pure-Grade Wheat (Grade-D Nutrient Core): 180 EXP (12 EXP per bundle for high-purity nutrient structure)

30x E-Grade Tomatoes (99.8% High-Vitality Strain): 120 EXP (4 EXP per unit for flawless basic produce)

Status Update

Harvest Gain: +680 EXP

Current Progress: 680 EXP added directly toward Rowan’s personal domain and awakener rank progression.

***

[ STATUS WINDOW ]

Name: Rowan Vance

Age: 15

Class: [Tier 1] Gardener of Eden (Transcendent)

Title: Blessed by Polaris

Affiliation: Imperial Suburbs (Civilian)

Level: 4 (80/1000 exp)

[ STAT POOLS ]

<anno data-annotation-id="0a38473a-e0f0-cccc-3881-a7c009830168" data-title="Mana Pool: 170 / 170 ">Mana Pool: 170 / 170 ¹</anno>

<anno data-annotation-id="ac133cdf-a167-866d-31c1-46b24e802c41" data-title="Stamina Pool: 130 / 130">Stamina Pool: 130 / 130¹</anno>

[ ATTRIBUTES ]

Vitality (VIT): 13

Strength (STR): 13

Agility (AGI): 13

Intelligence (INT): 17

Wisdom (WIS): 17

Unallocated Stat Points: 10

[ CLASS PERKS & PASSIVE TRAITS ]

[Passive Class Trait] Green Thumb (Grade I): Increases seed germination success rate by 15% and reduces minor environmental stress (moderate drought, slight soil acidity) on cultivated crops.

[Civilian Trait] Resilience: Slightly reduces fatigue accumulation during prolonged physical labor under poor conditions.

[Hidden Potential] Dormant Genius (Mind & Nature): Due to Legendary (L) growth affinity in Intelligence and Wisdom, skill learning speed for mental, ecological, and botanical concepts is exponentially heightened.

[Primordial Renovation]: Cleansed and rebuilt by cosmic life energy. All chronic infirmities are permanently cured.

[Breath of Eden - Lv. 2]: Passively accelerates growth, vitality, and evolutionary potential of surrounding life.

[Domain: The Virgin Soil]: Unlocks access to the Primordial Garden (10:1 Time Dilation).

[ EQUIPMENT & INVENTORY ]

Pouch of Heirloom Seeds: Empty

Standard Suburban Clothing

Identification & Awakening Registration Tag: Civilian Class

Sol-Aethel Academy Student Pass

***

Rowan focused his mind on the interface, assigning two points to each of his core attributes to ensure a balanced baseline foundation.

A warm, steady current coursed through his body as the stats updated, deepening his mana capacity and clearing his mind further.

[ STAT POOLS ]

Mana Pool: 190 / 190

Stamina Pool: 150 / 150

[ ATTRIBUTES ]

Vitality (VIT): 15 (+2)

Strength (STR): 15 (+2)

Agility (AGI): 15 (+2)

Intelligence (INT): 19 (+2)

Wisdom (WIS): 19 (+2)

Unallocated Stat Points: 0