Chapter 86: Chapter 86: Verdia’s Agriculture Crisis

The journey from the emerald heights of Vaelith to the lower industrial-agricultural reaches of Elarwyn took nearly half a day, even with the carriage being pulled by the kingdom’s swiftest breed of Verdant Stags. Without the presence of Lunethra, who had remained behind in the capital to navigate the treacherous political waters with her sister, the atmosphere within the carriage was heavy and unnervingly quiet.

Dayat sat by the window, his moss-green denim jacket feeling like a shield against the shifting environment. Dola remained in her customary seat, her eyes fixed forward, perpetually alert for any anomaly in the Mana density. Kancil, meanwhile, had spent the first few hours vibrating with excitement, but the sheer monotony of endless green branches and rhythmic hoofbeats had eventually lulled him into a fitful sleep, his head bobbing against the polished wooden frame of the carriage.

However, the moment they crossed the invisible boundary into Elarwyn’s airspace, the very air changed. Kancil’s eyes snapped open, his nose twitching as if he had caught the scent of something burnt.

“Big Bro… why is the sky turning yellow?” Kancil asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he pressed his face against the windowpane.

Dayat leaned out of the carriage window, squinting against the breeze. Ahead of them, Elarwyn loomed—a metropolis that served as the second-largest heart of Verdia. It was a city of branches, but unlike the serene, vertical sprawl of Vaelith, Elarwyn was a sprawling, industrial machine of wood. Thousands of gargantuan wooden granaries and silos hung from the lower boughs like ripened fruit, suspended by massive, reinforced vines. The architecture remained quintessentially Elven—elegant, curving, and perfectly integrated with the bark—but the scale was far denser, more utilitarian.

But something was fundamentally wrong.

A thick, sickly pale-yellow haze clung to the lower sections of the city’s boughs. It wasn’t the refreshing morning mist of the highlands; it was The Spore-Fog. Dayat could smell it before they even reached the perimeter—a sharp, pungent odor of rotting fungi mingled with the acrid, metallic tang of oxidized Mana. It was the smell of a stagnant pond hidden in a dark basement.

“Master, the concentration of unstable organic particles in the air has increased by 150% compared to the baseline readings in Vaelith,” Dola reported softly. Her sapphire eyes flickered with rapid data streams. “These spores originate from a biological cycle failure. The flora in this sector is failing to complete its energy purification process, resulting in the expulsion of toxic byproducts.”

Dayat covered his nose with the back of his hand, his brow furrowed. “No wonder it reeks. This place is massive, but the air feels like it’s been trapped in a tomb for a century.”

The carriage came to a halt at Elarwyn’s primary arrival platform, a wide expanse surrounded by administrative buildings crafted from white teak. As Dayat stepped out, he didn’t receive the same sneers he had in the capital. In his new olive-green denim and crisp linen, he looked like an emissary of high status, or at least a specialist sent directly by the crown. However, as he scanned the crowd, he saw that the Elves here were different. Their skin lacked the pearlescent radiance of the Vaelith nobility; their faces were sallow, their eyes shadowed by a deep, lingering exhaustion.

Elarwyn’s economy, which relied almost entirely on the cultivation of Manaferum Sativa—the sacred Mana-cereal—was at a breaking point. Dayat watched a long line of citizens queuing in front of a logistics depot, their expressions clouded by anxiety. The skyrocketing food prices caused by successive crop failures were clearly tearing at the social fabric of this great city.

A male Elf stepped forward to greet them. He was dressed in immaculate robes of earth-brown silk, but the dark circles under his eyes told a story of sleepless nights and crushing responsibility.

“Hidayat Nur Mustafidl?” the man asked, his voice gravelly and worn.

“Just call me Dayat,” Dayat replied shortly, shaking the man’s hand. The Elf’s grip was firm but lacked the vitality Dayat had come to expect from the race.

“I am Caelmir, Governor of Elarwyn and High Custodian of the World Tree’s roots in this sector,” he said, skipping the pleasantries. He looked at Dayat with a skepticism that was barely veiled by his desperation. He clearly didn’t care about Dayat’s race or origins—he only cared about survival. “Queen Verene sent word that you are the ’solution’ she promised. Honestly, I don’t care if you’re a human, a spirit, or a ghost, as long as you have an answer as to why our trees have stopped giving life.”

“I just got here, Caelmir. I need to see the damage with my own eyes first,” Dayat said calmly, maintaining his composure.

Caelmir gave a weak, tired nod and gestured for them to follow him toward the Hanging Fields of Elarwyn. They crossed a massive root-bridge that spanned the outer edge of the city. There, the full extent of the tragedy became clear.

Acres upon acres of fields that should have been glowing with vibrant green life were now a desolate graveyard of gray and yellow. The Manaferum Sativa stalks, which were supposed to stand tall with luminous grains, were withered and bent. They were covered in a thick layer of ashen-gray dust, their leaves curling into brittle, dead husks.

The soil itself was the most alarming part. When Dayat knelt down and took a handful of the earth, it felt like coarse sand. It had no moisture-retention capability, no organic smell—it was dead, sterilized matter.

“In the past, a Mana-nutrition crisis would only occur once every century, and it was usually resolved within a single lunar cycle,” Caelmir said, staring at the dying fields with a look of absolute hopelessness. “But this time… six months have passed. We have used every purification spell in our arsenal. We have conducted high-tier Druidic rituals, sacrificed mountains of pure Mana-crystals to the roots, and chanted the songs of the ancestors until our throats bled. The result? Nothing. The World Tree in this sector continues to weaken, and for the first time in my life, I am blind to the reason why.”

Dayat looked at the massive tree that stood at the center of Elarwyn. It was smaller than Vaelith, but still a titan. Yet, its bark was unnervingly pale, and several of its secondary branches showed signs of necrosis—dark, oozing sores that leaked a thick, black ichor.

“You’re relying too much on magic to force these plants to grow,” Dayat murmured, rubbing the dead soil between his thumb and forefinger.

“Excuse me?” Caelmir’s brow arched in irritation. “Magic is the breath of Verdia. Without magic, these plants would have no soul, no Mana-nutrients. It is the very essence of our existence.”

“That’s the problem, Caelmir. Your plants need more than just ’energy’ to eat,” Dayat replied, standing up and brushing the dirt off his trousers. “They need a balanced ecosystem. If the soil is dead—if the microbiology is wiped out—then throwing more magic at it is like trying to feed a man with a broken stomach. Eventually, the magic itself becomes a toxin.”

Dola stood by Dayat’s side, her eyes glowing with a faint, pulsing blue light. She was conducting a wide-range scan of the soil’s mineral composition and Mana-residue, but she remained silent, adhering to Dayat’s instruction not to draw unnecessary attention.

Kancil stood behind them, his usual appetite gone. He had been hoping to find some exotic Elven snacks in the big city, but seeing the empty markets and the hollow-eyed citizens, his own stomach felt tight. “Big Bro… if a city this big is starving, shouldn’t we just manifest some food for them now? I feel bad looking at them,” Kancil whispered.

Dayat shook his head slowly. “We can’t, Cil. If we just give them food, it’s a band-aid. It won’t fix the economy, it won’t fix the tree, and it won’t stop the rot. We have to fix the source.”

Dayat turned back to Caelmir, who was watching him with a mixture of hope and deep-seated doubt. “Caelmir, I need permission to take samples from the worst-affected area. I need time to analyze the soil with Dola. No rituals, no chanting—just raw analysis.”

“Do as you wish,” Caelmir sighed, his shoulders sagging. “But remember, Human: every day you spend without a result is another Elven family that loses their home because their branch has started to rot. Time is not a resource we have in abundance.”

Caelmir left them at the edge of the fields, his silhouette looking small against the vast, dying backdrop as he walked back toward his office. Dayat took a deep breath, the Spore-Fog catching in the back of his throat. He looked at the yellow haze drifting through the air, realizing that the Elves’ arrogance toward nature had made them blind to the very foundations of biology he had learned in middle school back on Earth.

“Dola,” Dayat whispered. “Open the soil and microbial analysis database. I have a feeling there’s something fundamentally wrong with the soil structure. It’s not just a lack of Mana. It’s like something… deliberately turned it off.”

“Understood, Master. Initializing deep microscopic scanning and spectral mineral analysis,” Dola replied, her voice a clinical anchor in the middle of the dying forest.

Dayat stared at the darkening sky of Elarwyn, now obscured by the thick spore-clouds. In the middle of this fading majesty, he knew that his challenge was no longer about fighting monsters with bullets. He was fighting the death of the earth with the power of science. And in a world that only believed in magic, he was the only one who could see the truth.

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