The Mighty Dragons Are Dead-Chapter 848 - 0845: Coffee Beans and Cocoa Beans (Third Update, Alliance Hierarch Additional Update 9/150)
Chapter 848 -0845: Coffee Beans and Cocoa Beans (Third Update, Alliance Hierarch Additional Update 9/150)
Liszt hugged the Elf, while the Formless Dragon’s claws were still clutching the bound former Listener and fourteen resistant Ancient Mages.
Thus, he didn’t undergo spatial teleportation but merely roamed continuously at the edge of material boundaries. Whenever he needed to rest along the way, he meticulously observed each of the Elves one by one.
The sixteen Elf Bugs could not be distinguished when they had not spat out Cordyceps, temporarily unable to tell their species.
The Potato Great Elf didn’t need to be distinguished further. Of the eight remaining Minor Elves, he carefully examined the features on their heads and communicated with them mentally to determine their species. Among them, five Minor Elves still couldn’t be identified, but the species of the other three Minor Elves was basically confirmed.
The first was very easy to recognize, with a small Gourd perched atop its head, unmistakably a never-before-seen Gourd Minor Elf.
The second was also easy to identify because of a string of green and reddish small fruits atop its head – these belonged to the coffee trees, an important economic crop found in the forests of Flame Island. Coffee is a beverage greatly enjoyed by the Nobles, but the Duchy of Sapphire did not grow coffee trees, and they had to be imported from the continent.
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However, the forests of Flame Island were dotted with a large number of coffee trees, and harvesting their fruit – coffee beans – would become a significant industry.
This Coffee Minor Elf was of no small value.
The third Minor Elf took Liszt some effort; a sapling with huge buttress roots was perched on its head.
Buttress roots are prominent features of trees in some rain-drenched, sweltering forests. Many trees extend wing-like structures at the base of their trunks, resembling a series of plank walls, hence the name. Since several kinds of trees had buttress roots, Liszt stared at the Minor Elf’s head for quite a while.
Until he figured it out – it was a Quadwood Minor Elf.
Quadwood was a common canopy tree in the forest, part of the topmost layer of vegetation. Its towering canopy often reached the highest points of the forest, serving as a habitat for a multitude of birds and monkeys. However, apart from being used as lumber, the tree itself had no special value, and as lumber, it couldn’t compete with Ironwood and Stonewood in terms of quality.
But regardless, for Liszt, the existence of such a magical creature as an Elf in itself represented value, without any need to crave additional benefits.
“Angchi, Angchi!” exclaimed the Potato Great Spirit as it crawled out from its box, curiously examining Liszt – it had been keenly observing him all along the journey.
Reaching the level of a Great Elf, the power of the contract was no longer unilaterally oppressive, and the Great Elf had sufficient independent thought.
However, because Liszt had rescued it and due to a sense of familiarity, the Potato Great Elf had grown quite fond of Liszt. It just found it strange why it took to Liszt, who, upon closer look, didn’t seem much different from those terrifying Moon Slayers, just more attractive.
“I am Liszt Flame.”
“Angchi, Angchi…”
“Come on, repeat after me, Liszt.”
“Li… Szt?”
“That’s right, that’s how you say it, Liszt Flame.”
“Angchi, Angchi, Liszt… Flame…”
“Good, now you know my name. So, what’s your name? Oh, you’ve forgotten, you don’t have a name. I just so happen to have a perfect name for you. Seeing the potato on your head oddly makes me think of a bomb, so let’s call you Kuchi, the brave Bombardier from the ‘League of Legends’.”
A name was just a label, the Potato Great Elf didn’t yet understand the concept of a name, so it accepted its new name – Kuchi – in a daze.
“Angchi, Angchi, Kuchi?”
“Yes, Kuchi.”
“Hahaha, Angchi, Angchi, Kuchi!” The Potato Great Elf chuckled happily.
Liszt looked at it and began strategizing in his mind about how to cultivate potatoes and make them the staple food of the future settlers of the Flame Territory. The birth of a new food always requires a process of acceptance, but he figured the spread of potatoes would be swift. Even if the settlers of Flame Territory didn’t like them, they could be given to the serfs of the Moon Slayers.
The source of this c𝓸ntent is freewebnøvel.coɱ.
As long as the cultivation of potatoes is promoted on a large scale, the issue of food will no longer trouble Flame Island.
…
After returning to Flame Origin.
He handed over the Listener and the Ancient Mages to the Magic Guild for custody, “Subject them to a strict interrogation. These are the Moon Slayer Sacred Mountain’s Holy Tribe Listener and a group of loyal Ancient Mages. I want to figure out everything they know, especially what ‘Cassido’ and ‘Mosiros’ mean.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Also, organize a group of magicians responsible for species identification to come and help me identify the types of elves.”
The interrogation work would take time, but before dinner, Liszt had already learned the meanings of Cassido and Mosiros.
Cassido referred to “barbarians,” while Mosiros meant “the evil force that desecrates magic.” According to the Listener, who had several teeth extracted, barbarians once betrayed their ancestors and had desecrated the great magic with evil forces.
“How does it sound like barbarians are referring to knights?” Liszt felt it was indeed similar, as there were a large number of knights during the era of the Moon Empire.
Knights are probably a class of retainers of magicians, a type of guard.
For instance, the Moon Language of Mount Mulagao Ding means the knights who guard the moonlight, showing that the status of knights in the era of the Moon Empire was merely that of guards.
Perhaps to mages who worship Truth, knights who rely on physical strength could indeed be seen as barbarians.
And the barbaric knights did overthrow the Moon Empire, establishing the knight system that rules the world today, so labeling them as desecrating magic is not entirely unfounded.
However, it is also hard to say, as there were definitely not only magicians and knights in the ancient times, but also many Ancient Warriors and Ancient Magicians. Like Cloaked Bear-wearers, Vampires, Wizards, and bronze-muscled warriors, who knows whether the knights or other Ancient Warriors were the Cassido referred to in the Moon Language.
Perhaps Cassido was a generic term used by Ancient Mages for various warrior professions who rely on muscles, all of them barbarians; Mosiros could be a generic term for various caster professions, non-traditional magicians who might all be evil forces that desecrate magic.
All in all, Cassido and Mosiros can be roughly understood as “heretics.”
Having figured out the meanings, Liszt lost interest. He quickly joined the magicians in identifying the species of the elves.
The five Minor Elves’ species were respectively cocoa tree, Tortoise Shell Bamboo, trichosanthes, Scorpion-tailed Banana, and leafy flower. Among them, the fruit of the cocoa tree being cocoa beans, the main ingredient for making chocolate, made the Coco Minor Elf clearly an economically valuable Minor Elf of the economic crop type, much like the Coffee Minor Elf.
The other four Minor Elves had little value.
The sixteen Elf-worms were also each identified corresponding to the actual Cordyceps, which could be found in the forest.
Only two of the Elf-worms had economic value, one being the Breadfruit Elf-worm, which corresponded to the breadfruit tree whose fruit tasted like bread and could be eaten as food. The other was Amonth’s Fool Elf-worm, where Amonth’s Fool is a type of nut used in Magic Potions.
“Viscount Fox, halt the capture of the Moon Slayer serfs for now, I have a task for you. I want these elves and their corresponding plants found in the forest and transplanted here; each type of plant should form a garden sufficient for the growth of Cordyceps,” Liszt instructed.
Cordyceps cannot survive alone without a host plant, or they tend to wither and die.
Although most of the elves are deemed to have no economic value, this is only temporary. Should a variant of a Magic Potion variety be birthed from the corresponding plant one day, the value of the elves would immediately skyrocket.
“As you wish, Your Highness,” Fox accepted the order.
“Furthermore, the Potato Great Spirit Kuchi’s species is the potato, which can be used as a staple food. You must quickly establish a potato garden… The season is already autumn, but if we hurry, we can still plant a crop of potatoes before winter.” With the influence of Cordyceps, even winter cannot kill the plants in the garden.
They will simply cease to grow.
Planting potatoes now, under the influence of the potato Cordyceps, they should barely ripen by the time winter comes, and then we’ll know if these potatoes are truly high-yield and high-quality.
