Monarch of Solitude: Daily Quest System

Noir stayed that night and left again that morning, making Rino miss him more. As the lich cleaned his house, he found a few short black strands of fur and kept those in a little pouch he asked the brownies to make for him. On the days he missed Noir, he would turn to the little patch of black fur he collected to play with it.

Just like that, four days passed with the farmers and fairies diligently tending to the field.

"My lord," Fronzo knocked on his door one night. "Please come out to take a look!"

Rino knew that the farmhand was a very diligent person who would not trouble him with small matters. The only other time Fronzo spoke out of line was when Rino interfered with farming work. Fronzo only looked for him when things out of his control happened, like finding a strange glowing rock while ploughing.

"What is it?" Rino asked and opened the door.

The skeleton was looking a little better with the clothes the brownie siblings made. Clothes really did make a man, and Fronzo looked less like a poor beggar and more like a decent farm manager.

Fronzo bowed and saluted clumsily. His imitation of high noble etiquette was still sloppy, but Rino overlooked it. Even if he was the king, he did not want to be bothered by these useless socialisations as long as everyone did their job to make his idle life dream come true.

"The potato seeds have grown tremendously overnight even though they were mere seedlings yesterday! I checked if any of the fairies did anything special, but they claimed to only use normal water magic to water them. The farming volunteers also collected the same mulch as usual. I rushed to inform my lord at once when I found out."

Hearing that the potato seeds would normally take a few months to grow from seed, Rino was thrilled to hear that a change in his watering routine provided such a great result.

Over the last few days, Rino tested out several new theories to enchant water. He also did a little something in the underground reservoir. The fairies continued using water magic to water the potatoes, but Rino gave them runes to carry around while doing so. They no longer conjured water using magic.

His idling did not prove in vain, and the ich really had to thank the elusive cat for pointing him in the right direction.

It wasn't nutrients that helped the plants achieve miraculous growth. If there was a common formula for all living creatures, they needed life energy to sustain.

Each day after the first, the fairies were watering the fields with a different kind of water that Rino 'imbued' with mana. The first two attempts were a dud, and Rino had to find a different way to 'charge' the water with magic.

The first batch of water was simply forcing mana to mingle with the water he separated out for watering purposes. Needless to say, it ended in a failure because most of the charged mana in the water escaped to the environment.

The second batch of water was done slightly differently. Instead of forcing the water to accept mana, Rino tried to do what Noir did with his cape and 'enchanted' the water using layers of mana to wrap them around the water.

Of course, that failed. Mana could not be galvanised. The layer that Rino formed simply became a barrier around the remaining water after the fairies used what they needed for the field.

That night, Rino did some very deep thinking. He could not understand the link between enchantment and the origin of magic. If magic was a life source, how would it interact with things that were dead? Technically, Rino was a dead body. Going by that logic, he should not be able to use magic or still remain alive.

That was all it took to give Rino the breakthrough moment he needed. The idea of living or dead did not come from the beating of the heart, the pumping of blood or the act of breathing. There was a difference between the living, the living dead and the undead.

Noir did not lie. The origin of magic did come from life. However, how life was determined had to be redefined before Rino found his answer. Instead of identifying life as something that lying creatures had, Rino looked deeper and finally understood that life magic was synonymous with souls.

The existence of the soul was the answer for life and mana.

Once he understood this, everything else fell into place. The air around the magic tree was charged with mana, not because the air conducted mana. More accurately, he should say that souls were attracted to the energy around the magic tree and over time, more souls gathered in the area, giving a more concentrated amount of 'mana' in the air.

However, as not all souls were powerful enough to materialise, they have to spend a long time together in the area, feeding on the mana of other living things with physical bodies. Physical bodies die over time because they continue to disperse mana into the surroundings like leaking tap. It was the natural process of life to maintain creation, a system probably designed by Gods.

Once Rino understood this, 'enchantment' was a lot easier. Similar to rune writing, 'enchantment' magic made use of a set of rules to deter certain elements like a barrier or divert 'mana' in the environment to behave differently.

Waterproof enchantment was merely cancelling water from making contact with the cape. The spell was easy to deconstruct, and Rino recast it by himself after understanding how to code the spell. He was right about it being a layer coating the object in his second experiment, but he missed out on the important concept behind how mana worked to make it really stick in the water when he applied it.

With a better understanding of magic's origin and the method of enchanting objects that could not retain mana, Rino tried it one more time.

The third time was the charm. Rino rewrote the new set of rules on the water holding area to continuously tempt souls to flock to the area using a constant stream of mana to hold these souls within the area. The water automatically became 'imbued' with mana and remained that way until the water was summoned by runes that the fairies carried to spread all across the potato field.

The souls that were living in the water were summoned along, and without a source to feed them with mana, they started losing that mana to the surroundings in the field. That mana was taken in by the potato seeds and grew exponentially after receiving the mana boost.

Rino followed Fronzo to the fields and saw many bushes. Although these shrubs were not at their full height, Rino had a feeling that by the end of the week, if he continued with his efforts, they could see a very huge harvest even without the aid of nature magic.

"Very good," he praised Fronzo. "Call the farming volunteers, gnomes, and gardening fairies. I want to hold a meeting in an hour."

Thrilled that the Monarch of Solitude was holding his first formal meeting, the fairies hurried to finish their watering duties to take a shower. They had to pretty themselves up before meeting with the king!