Chapter 151 – Fattening Period of a Thorn Sprite Worm

The discovery of the fast-growing iron thorns were quite beneficial to Flower Town. It was being compared to a catalyst in a chemical reaction, like how an athlete benefits from a booster injection.

Even though it was necessary for the thorn tasks to be completed before a large-scale planting can commence, this did not stop Liszt from bringing back the iron thorns back to the castle and have his town officials together for dinner and a council meeting to discuss and study the thorns.

Blair announced, "If it can grow to two meters high, it can be used to build a house. This is much harder than the Chinese fir we use. A house built with this material can surely survive a storm."

"Blair, you forgot that wood is not only strong, but also waterproof,insect-proof and immune to decay. "

"I haven't completely thought about it, but you see, the wood is highly compact. This is quite similar to the rock wood being cut by the logging team. Such wood never grows worms," Blair countered by saying that the tree he was referring to was the Iron Tree, one which grows in between gaps of rocks.

Ironwood, wood from Iron Tree is highly precious, since a two-hundred year old Iron wood can easily be sold for fifty silver coins.

The logging team only cut down less than ten Iron Trees, of which only three were 200 years old, while the remaining seven were less than two hundred years of age.

Similar to Iron wood is Stone wood, both are extremely rare.

Gort thought of an idea, "We can sink it into the water, and if it sinks, then it's the same as a rock, if it doesn't sink, it's not good enough."

"Yes! Let's do that!"

A servant then brought a basin full of water. A trunk was removed from the tree and thrown into the basin, immediately, the trunk sunk into the basin bottom.

Blair proudly exclaimed, "See? I never lie! These fast-growing iron thorns are as good as ironwoods!"

Marcus, who has been silent through all this said, " The wood's texture is strong and the trunk is straight. It seems suitable to turn into a knight's shaft and arrow, much more suitable than a white birch. "

Usually, a knight's lance and arrow would be made from birch.

The barrel of an ordinary knight lance and the shaft of an arrow are made of birch.

The Birch City on Coral Island specializes in planting birch trees to produce birch wood needed for making weapons. The Tulip family also has a birch sprite.

"If this iron thorn is truly superior to birch, we can supply the Tulip Castle with it. Surely the Count will like better lances and arrows."

"This plant being fast-growing is a great advantage. An ironwood only grows a palm thickness after two hundred years. This iron thorn is just a seedling but is already the size of a wrist. "

"It seems that this is a thorn bush full of gold coins. "

"No, a tree of gold coins!"

"No one could have ever imagined that these most useless thorns would become a useful wood indeed."

Laughter filled the banquet halls which expressed expectations for the future of the fast-growing iron thorns.

Liszt and the other finished the meeting with raising the wine gla.s.s and said, "For the time being, let's not a.s.sume that this venture will bring a cash cow to our town. We have to give it full attention, study its properties properly and carefully a.s.sess its value. If it truly is a great financial gain for us, it must be cultivated in a larger scale, which I imagine can only be in Thorns Ridge."

The crowd raised a gla.s.s together and echoed loudly: “As you wish, my Lord.”

After dinner, Liszt being a little tipsy from the banquet went to stroll around the castle. He played with Tremblingwoods for a while then planned to head to his study to read. He had planned on trying to learn the Wind Language, which was the dialect of the Eagle Kingdom.

At present, Flower Town only has Old Grandet who is proficient in both the Snake and Wind Language, and therefore has been the head of management of the Flower Town Caravan. He already works as a translator, managing the 476 new serfs as well as teaching them language.

Truly, one greatly benefits from mastering a foreign language.

But since Old Grandet was busy with all his tasks, he cannot give a one-on-one teaching lesson with Liszt. Instead, the Old Grandet handedLiszt a notebook that he himself has used when he started learning the Snake Language.

His notebook contained the most common words and how to p.r.o.nounce them in Snake Language.

Liszt, at first glance, found it interesting but then later on realized that studying Snake Language was boring. After two days, he had lost patience learning the language.

He would instead go to the sprite worms' room and tease them. All nine sprite worms were packed in a huge box.

He realized that it was like raising silkworms, except that these batches of “silkworms” were colorful and exciting. He reached out and touched them one by one. The appearance of the sprite worms were smooth, and it felt very good to the touch. Some are lazy, motionless, while some are energetic and walking around, including the thorn sprites.

The off-white thorn sprite was not beautiful, but it was in fact the least common among the sprites.

Liszt wondered if the sprite worm was perhaps getting a little bigger.

"This… is… ", the alcohol was making his brain go slower and slower. He paused then suddenly jolted, "This sprite worm is bigger than the other sprites! It is a sign of evolution! "

Tulip Castle has more than a hundred sprites.

When Liszt was younger, he played with sprite worms, and even witnessed two of them break into sprites. Before a sprite worm breakthrough, there is a 'fattening' stage. This was unlike b.u.t.terflies, who become pupas before becoming their final forms.

In this 'fattening' stage, the sprite worm will slowly decay and age.

If one has bad luck, it will directly die and turn to gray.

If one is lucky, one day, the sprite will break the skin, break out, and fly.

“The fattening age is over!”

Liszt's drunkenness left his body and was now fully awake. Nervousness spread throughout his body mixed with feelings of surprise. The fattening of this sprite worm was surely a sign of evolution, but it could also be a sign of death. This sprite worm stage will last for a month or two. If it dies, then it means failure. There was no third option.

"I only have a month or two left, which means I may not finish the thorn sprite mission, I must help it! "

The fat thorn sprite was moving around the box. It looked up at Liszt, like it was expressing its feelings. Liszt also senses a restlessness in the sprite's mood, perhaps it was due to that fact that was ready and in the brink of evolution, which affects four variants of sprites.

There is no research done to correlate sprite worm mood to the growth of plants, but certainly it must have something to the sprite's mood.

At this time, the sprite was quite violent and constantly changing.

“How can I help it?”

“Feed it and fertilize the sprite worms everyday?”

“Expand the area of thorn bushes?”

“It feels like these are common means that help evolution, effective but not decisive… The probability of evolution is more about luck. “Adequate nutrition, to a large extent, can help breed the sprite worm, can give nourishment, but can not guarantee that the elf worm will breakthrough.

If one has to really think about it, the only thing that can really help the thorn sprite is the smoke mission.

“We have to finish the Thorn Worm Sprite project as soon as possible, but first of all, the current bottleneck qi task has to be finished. Tomorrow, I will personally supervise the construction of the workshop! “

The decision has been made.

Liszt dropped his nervousness and smiled at his sprites, especially the thorn worm sprites.

The fate-deciding moment had come: “Little guy, come on.”

As if it had sensed Liszt's encouragement,, the thorn worm sprite lifted half his body, its sesame eyes locked onto Liszt's with intense emotion.

This has definitely fueled the sprite with confidence.