Technomancer: Genesis Chapter 90: The Seeds of Bren

Hestia's stare lingered at Ezra. She had a mixture of emotions, she thought very highly of herself. In court, she was always cherished as a genius even among the Regeladeus house. She was esteemed highly because of her ability to learn fast, and her combat potential.

But as she looked at Ezra and compared her accomplishments to his own, they fell severely short in comparison. Ezra was a monster among monsters. Even his combat prowess was well known in the capital as he was closely monitored ever since his awakening. There was no one in the history of the empire that killed a knight accidentally on the day of his awakening no matter how powerful he was. But Ezra had killed three knight-ranked Arcanists in Anticourt. Some rumours even say that the Arcanist was Baron ranked or even Viscount ranked. She even overheard that some of the elders of her house consider him as a threat to the Regaledeus house but it wasn't a consensus among her family.

While she was learning, he was teaching. While she was given a stipend, he was making money for his domain. She wondered what sort of man he would be in the future. Fear and awe overwhelmed her for a moment and she shuddered inadvertently.

"Princess are you alright?" Ezra asked meekly.

"Oh, yes of course. I'm good," she replied as she snapped back to reality. "By the way where are we going after lunch?" Hestia replied.

"Well for the remaining part of the day I wanted to go out of the walls of Bren and let you see the what we have. Well if that won't bore you. " He smiled gently. He wanted to entertain Hestia and if she decided not to accept his planned itinerary, he could go to other places instead.

"Hmm, okay then, I trust that it will be interesting enough."

They departed from the inn from the business district. The place where they were going was Ezra's special farm. There were two parts to this farm. One part was the experimental part and the second part was a production part.

The whole purpose of the farm was to produce better varieties of plants and livestock so that they could yield more and mass produce them. He didn't quite like the staple grain that they were eating which was a hulled wheat for porridge. He quite missed the food on earth and tried to slowly modernize the whole food quality. Also, he was shocked at the colour of carrots when he first ate them since they were purple. Due to a quirk he started selectively modifying carrots and with each harvest, it became more orange in colour.

Despite knowing that too much fast food was bad for the body he was craving fried foods.

In Rex Imperia they had weird traditions for cooking food, for example, beef could only be boiled and not roasted, pork, on the other hand, was constantly roasted. Mostly food of the nobles consisted of pies and some variations.

Due to this, he befriended a cook in the inn where Hestia and he ate and suggested ways of cooking food. Overall, they were hits and the inn slowly became well known among the elite of Fulmen. He could not mass produce vegetable oil yet and most of their fried foods were dependent on Ezra's supply of the oil, their price slowly went up and the nobles kept on coming.

In the end, it became a hub for the elite and eating there was a sign of power. Ezra thought about it and laughed because the most expensive restaurant in Bren ended up selling fast food which was a product of the farm.

However selective breeding was a painful process for him. His skills in physics didn't translate to agriculture an animal husbandry at all and he could not see results immediately. The pet project became slow and arduous for him. Results from his painful four years of which Evered managed had poor results in his opinion due to his own lack of skill. His ideas with pollen gathering ended up almost killing a whole generation of plants. He was ashamed of this work though of course in this era it would be considered groundbreaking and it was a better alternative than to stick to the status quo and some of his work began to show promise.

Some of the money he spent was on this piece of land, he couldn't sell these products now and it would certainly be a good source of income in the future. Actually, when he was asked by Reitz to find a trade. He was considering selling some of his agricultural products but he was not satisfied with its output and it would take months to see a nice profit selling his newly genetically modified grains even with the typical magic enhanced growth rate.

When Ezra and party arrived, Hestia gasped at the sight. She never thought that a farm could be so beautiful. There different batches of flowers on one plot while grains of wheat and barley in another. The field was uniform and symmetrical and over the distance, there were different trees that were also uniformly planted. While There were some artificial hills on the far right. Ezra took care of the landscaping. It was quite a sight to behold.

Evered smiled proudly and puffed his chest, partly it was his work. Although Ezra was the one who measured the plots and gave directions on where and what to plant, it was Evered that oversaw and provided the manpower for the project. Evered's family also helped in creating the farm.

The past four years he had been taught by Ezra, what he called "Gene theory." Ezra was very patient when he taught him this. At first, it was a shocking revelation for him when Ezra told him that there were living things tinier than the eye could see. He thought it was just the imaginations of a child. But after their talk, Ezra showed all of them what he called a microscope. He was amazed at the squirming infentesmally small living beings.

After that Ezra explained that all living things had information that they could pass on through their offspring and through breeding they could actually change the outcome and get better-stocked plants and livestock. He was perplexed at first and thought that only animals had this property. He couldn't fathom that this actually extended to all living beings. Evered concluded that it was a revelation to Ezra from the Great Omnipotence.

"It's so beautiful here Ezra. I thought we were going to a farm, Ezra? This is a lovely garden" Hestia loved the lively colours that populated the earth. Pink, yellow, white and red swirled in the corner of her eyes. She wanted to run toward the flowers that were planted and enjoy them. In her mind, a farm was a dull place full of broken people toiling all their day to produce meagre amounts of grain.

"I'm glad you like it, princess." Ezra smiled. "But like I said this isn't a garden, it's a farm. This is where we make new varieties of plants."

"Come princess taste this." Ezra beckoned as a servant hurried with a silver platter.

Hestia looked at the plate it was full of fruits that she had not seen before, red oval-shaped fruits, an irregularly shaped yellow fruit and grapes that were big. She tasted the red fruit. It was heavenly as she subconsciously closed her eyes to taste fully the exploding flavour in her mouth. Its juicy lusciousness was so tender it seemed to melt into her tongue.

"That's a strawberry," Ezra told her. Strawberries weren't really found in the empire the fruits they ate consisted mostly of pears, blackberries, currants, apples and rosehips.

"This tastes so wonderful Ezra!" Hestia said as she tried with all the fibre of her being to act ladylike and stop herself from chugging down all the strawberries in the platter.

"Now try the yellow one."

Hestia was hesitant. She hadn't ever seen something like it before.

She tasted a very sweet pulp, a decadent heavy and yet tangy taste. It was even much better than the strawberries that she had. Her mouth quivered as she gave in and grabbed the fruit and ate as much as she could.

Ezra chuckled internally. While Hestia's Actrix Erela cleared her throat. "Ahem"

Hestia then straightened up and acted lady like once again.

"That's a mango, princes. It was hard breeding that to actually bear fruit in Rex imperia. Hopefully, in the next few years, it will be everywhere."

Hestia nodded as she munched on another food she picked out of the plate. "Ezra, you could trade this with the capital for a hefty sum you know? I'm very sure nobles would love to taste this heavenly produce. So how did you get these seeds?"

"It's quite complicated I'll tell you another time." Ezra beamed. "Anyway all of this was made with the help of my Knight Evered. " Ezra gestured toward him as Evered bowed.

"You are too kind my liege." Donning a huge smile on his face.

Hestia's heart quivered, she slowly understood that it was Ezra that brought about the best in his subordinates. She wondered how much Fulmen would prosper in the future with Ezra at the helm. It was not his strength that was alarming it was his influence and knowledge that was. She didn't understand at first when her father said that knowledge was power, but now she had a glimpse of what it would be.

"All of the plants here were bred with his help." Ezra continued.

"Wait what do you mean bred? Can you breed plants?"

"Hmm, It's a little complicated. But I do teach this in my classes. You're free to come during Helio if you want." Ezra smiled at a slightly confused Hestia.

"Sure I'd love to." She replied.

Chapter end