AN: If you like what you are reading, you can help by giving my novel Rating.
As we walked up the mountain, Professor Sageira pointed out different natural treasures, be they roots, flowers, fruits, fungi, or anything in between. I have seen some of them and even used a few in an enchanting class, but I have never harvested any of them before, so when I reached out to pluck a particular flower, Professor Sageira slapped my hand away as I was about to pluck a stem.
"Don't just pluck it like that! Have they not taught you that in the academy?" she snapped at me.
"Nope, not part of the elective course I took," I stated plainly to her.
She just snorted in reply, "Then you better pay attention to what I am about to show you." she said as she knelt down in front of the white and gold flower that was growing at the base of a tree.
"Just plucking the flower like you were about to do would not have been an issue if you were going to use it within the hour before it starts degrading in quality, or if you had a dimensional storage that freezes time like I do. For everyone else, they are going to have to do it the proper way. Come here and get your hands dirty while I instruct you." she said.
"First, you are going to need to expose the roots without damaging them," she said as she started scratching at the dirt around the flower with an elongated nail. When she found a root, she stopped using her nail and gently brushed the dirt away with the soft part of her fingertips, alternating until one of the delicate roots was free. "I did one root, you do the rest."
Well, I could not shape-shift my fingernail to grow like hers, but as the upright tool-using primate that I am, I made my ancestors proud by creating my own tools. Using earth instinctive magic, dug my hand into the ground beside me and compacted the dirt into a pair of sharp chopsticks.
With chopstick skills that would make any asian proud, I started picking and scraping away the dirt, and when I found a root, I used the sharp point of the chopstick to pick under it and gently loosen the dirt's gold on it. In a matter of minutes, I had extracted all the roots from the ground and gently lifted the flower, root and all, in my hands.
"What now?" I asked.
"Now we make sure that whatever plant you just dug out of the ground survives the journey os wherever you are going." she said as she reached inside her dimensional storage and pulled out a cloth the size of a handkerchief.
"For any plant to survive, even magically evolved ones such as this, they need what all plants need, good soil and water," she said as she carefully packed the roots with loose soil and used some instinctive magic to wet the soil. But before she wrapped up the root and dirt ball in the handkerchief, she reached into her dimensional storage again and pulled out what I could only describe as a small splinter of mana crystal that was so small that I doubt that it could power anything.
"Technically speaking, water and dirt are enough for even evolved plants. But it is always good practice to have a mana source for the plant to subsist on. And for that, you do not need big mana crystals. That is why professional gatherers always carry around a pouch of mana crystal shavings. They are dirt cheap because they are too small to use in any enchanting work, and can be reused after you are done with the plant." she said as she put the mana crystal shaving on the handkerchief and wrapped it along with the ball of roots and dirt.
After seeing her loosely tie the handkerchief closed around the base of the flower's stem, she handed it to me to study. "How long can this last?" I asked.
"As long as you keep the spil moistened, around a month or two before you should change it with fresh soil." she replied. I then passed the flower back to her, and she tossed it in her dimensional storage.
***
As we continued up the mountain, I harvested more natural treasures. Most of them just needed the same method of extraction that Professor Sageira taught me, but there were some that needed a special method to harvest, some extra steps, or both.
But the further up the mountain we went, the more I saw the look on Professor Sageira's face change. When I asked her what was wrong, she said, "Have you not noticed how clean the ground is? Besides the fallen leaves, there is no deadfall, nothing bigger than twigs that hold leaves, no branches that hold the twigs. Someone has been collecting the deadfall."
At her words, my hand instinctively rested on the pomel of my sword. If I am catching what she is putting down, we are not alone on this mountain. Then a smile came to my face, "Seeing that someone was kind enough to gather all the deadfall for us, why don't we pay them a visit? I am sure they would be glad to share."
Professor Sageira just looked at me with a bit of surprise in her eyes, "Why are you talking like some thug all of a sudden?"
Shit, she is on to me. I could only look down, embarrassed, and admit, "I just always wanted to use that line."
She just snorted in amusement and led the search by jumping up the tree branch and leaping to another tree, and I followed a second later.