I had assumed that Unknown Seeds would take an extremely long time to grow, so it caught me completely off guard to see that it was already ready to be harvested.
“It sure is pretty though. It’s glowing.”
“Mmm.”
The light shining from the plant was illuminating us in its pale-blue glow. It sort of looked like a fern with small, round fruits at the end of its slender leaves. Those fruits were the source of the light. I wondered if these could be a new source of material to make fluorescent paint.
However, once I appraised it, paint was the last thing on my mind.
Name: Magic-Boosting Miracle Herb
Rarity: 6 / Quality: 1★
Effect: Ingredient.
It had, amazingly, a rarity of six—the same rank as a Spirit’s Fruit. And considering it was called a Magic-Boosting Miracle Herb, it obviously had to be useful in some way. I didn’t know how strong of an effect it would have, but I didn’t know anyone who wouldn’t want an item that provided something like a temporary boost to magic. Could I use it to make buffing items?
“This is awesome! Olto, can you grow this?”
“Mm.”
I assumed the plant would need enchanted fertilizer to grow, but judging by Olto’s smile and thumbs-up, apparently it had no problem growing in a regular field too. Think of all the experiments I could do if we could mass-produce these!
“I’ll leave this to you too, then.”
“Mm-mm!”
That was the last new plant Olto had to show me, so I tried once again to head back home to get some crafting work done. But then I remembered something.
“Oh yeah, I had another item with the name Miracle Herb.”
I had remembered the amber that I had obtained in the last event. I went to go check out the amber that I had put on display with the ammonite.
Name: Amber (Miracle Herb)
Rarity: 4 / Quality: 9★
Effect: Ingredient. Decorative.
I also had another amber that had a plant inside it, though it wasn’t a Miracle Herb.
Name: Amber (Plant)
Rarity: 4 / Quality: 6★
Effect: Ingredient. Decorative.
Was there a way I could extract the plant from the amber to obtain it as material? I only had one amber with a miracle herb, but I had several others that contained plants. I’d obtained them to use as decoration, but if there was a chance I could get more crops, then that changed things.
For now, maybe I could try extracting the regular plant from the amber. If that worked, then I could try doing the same thing to get the miracle herb.
“All right! I’ll try this out first before I make fertilizer.”
The problem was how to go about cutting into the amber. A graver? A chisel?
“Hm?”
“...?”
“Oh? Are you two done sumo wrestling?”
“Hm!”
“...!”
I had placed the amber on top of the kotatsu in the living room and was puzzling over what to do when Himka and Sakura came in. They both inspected the amber curiously.
“I’m trying to think if there’s a way to take the plants out from inside. Do you two know any way to do that?”
Among my monsters, Himka and Sakura were particularly handy. Plus, they knew a lot about carving and pounding things as experts in blacksmithing and woodworking, respectively. And wouldn’t you know, when I asked them if they knew how to extract the plants, they both nodded with clear confidence.
“Oh, you can?”
“Hm.”
“...”
It seemed like Himka and Sakura should be able to manage something with the amber. I decided to let them try taking out the regular plants from amber first, and then move on to the miracle herb. I brought them down to the workshop in the basement so that they could show me how it was done.
“All right, have at it.”
“Hm-hm!”
“...!”
They both got to work at once using very similar methods. Himka was using a chisel and hammer for metalworking while Sakura was using a woodworking chisel to chip away at the amber.
Specialized tools couldn’t be used for different tasks. The tools looked the same, but a blacksmithing chisel and a woodworking chisel were entirely different things. Despite that, both types of tools worked on the amber. As I recalled, amber was fossilized tree resin, right? So maybe it had the characteristics of both plant and stone.
Sakura finished cutting through the amber slightly faster than Himka, most likely thanks to her advanced Woodworking skill and her Green Thumb skill. Himka was only twenty seconds behind her, though, so he was plenty fast too.
“...♪”
“Hm!”
“Well done. Let’s see, Sakura extracted a Medicinal Herb, and Himka extracted a Paralyzing Plant.”
While they had been inside the amber, they had just looked like small fernlike plants, but once they were extracted, they looked completely different. Both had a low quality, so I wouldn’t say they were items I would want enough to break the amber for.
Although, the fact that there were different types of plants in each amber was interesting... The idea that there could be an amazing, rare plant embedded inside a chunk of amber made it feel a bit like a treasure hunt.
Why not cut through a few more, while leaving some alone for decoration? I wanted to practice doing it too, anyway.
“Sakura, now that you’ve shown me the ropes, I want to give it a try!”
“...♪”
Sakura clasped her hands in front of her chest as if she were saying “You can do it!”
I sat next to Himka, who was giving the amber another go, and placed a chisel to my own amber.
“I have a good feeling about this!”
“...♪”
“Hraaah!”
“...!”
Welp, I failed! It was a lot harder than it looked, and I had accidentally made a large crack in the amber that made it split apart and shatter. That would’ve been fine if I could just take the plant out from there, but the plant inside ended up breaking apart along with the amber.
“Maybe I’ll just let you two handle this.”
“...!”
“Hm!”
They seemed to find this kind of work fun, so thankfully they were happy to do it.
After thirty minutes of cutting amber, they had created a spread of all different types of plants.
“Look at all this!” I exclaimed.
“...♪”
“Hmm!”
There were plants of all types of rarities, from common medicinal herbs and poison hemlocks to the more uncommon miracle herbs.