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A molekin waddles up and down the rows of plants, marking her observations and muttering to herself.

"Let me see... fool's coal: unchanged..." she grumbles at the numbers, still not having any appreciable change in yield. She'd take a decrease at this point, just to prove the unruly plant can be properly domesticated, but so far, what pods don't explode only produce seeds with statistically irrelevant differences.

"Ochredill: yield up 5%." she smiles at that number, the ochredill being much more open to her experiments. Even with her life affinity allowing her to grow the herbs quickly, 5% is still very promising.

"Windgrass... dead." She does her best not to sigh at the row of dried and dead grass. She knew it was a longshot to grow them here, but she had still hoped one of them would be hardy enough to grow in the steady breeze by the sea of Fourdock, rather than the windswept cliffs they usually make their home.

"Bubblekelp... surviving, not thriving." She had expected the bubblekelp to die before the windgrass, but the local sea dungeon had some nodes near where the river feeds into the sea, making the water more brackish than usual, and leading to these samples surviving longer in the lower salinity she's been giving them. Honestly, they might be having troubles with the shallower troughs than the salinity. As successful an herbalist as she is, she doesn't have the money for deep trenches.

She continues her duties, her mind wandering as she notes down the successes, failures, and the outcomes that are still uncertain. After this group, she'll be having a lot of uncertainty to dig through, but she's hopeful a Change in her mindset will yield the results she saw in Lord Thedeim's Core.

When she was there for the unveiling, she wasn't expecting to be blessed with a vision! She was still a new recruit back then, a simple follower and not an initiate of the priesthood like she is now. And when she looked into the Blessed Core... she had no idea what she would see.

The people-shaped voids had marvels she still cannot comprehend, but her vision had been drawn to a few in a laboratory garden, examining plants. And though she couldn't understand their speech, nor read their writing, the idea of what they were doing couldn't be clearer to her.

They were manipulating the plants, without using any mana. Their patience must be legendary, or perhaps Lord Thedeim was showing that she wouldn't even need her affinity to accomplish the task. But she could identify what aspects of a plant would be passed on to the seed, identify the chances of it happening, identify what could be passed on, and how to encourage certain traits.

When she awoke, she knew she needed to prepare, so she's been letting her current crop grow at their own pace as she got ready. Ochredill will probably be her first project, thanks to how quickly the yield has been improving. It's such a useful base for potions that she'll never run out of people to sell it to, no matter how high the yield gets!

But higher yield will certainly require better fertilizer, stronger mana flow, and may attract more persistent pests. But it will be worth it, she can feel it! She smiles as she returns to the row of ochredill, this time noting down the small differences between plants and deciding what she should try to emphasize first.

More flowers would directly increase the yield, but there are other things to consider. If they simply have an abundance of flowers, pollination may become a problem. Should she aim for larger flowers instead? Perhaps try to encourage them to grow more densely? Maybe she should focus on the ones that get fewer bugs trying to eat them?

As she organizes the plants on paper, she wonders if she could actually do all three? She'll need to keep the bees and other pollinators away, but she'll need to do that anyway to ensure they are fertilized with the correct parents.

She smiles a reverent smile as she draws the squares she saw, noting down the traits of each plant. She didn't isolate them from the pollinators, so she can't know which plant was paired, but she can still get started on the work. She knows some may have more than one factor, but she hopes she'll see at least one that that is has a simple dominant/recessive pairing.

"Tilly!" She looks up as someone calls her name, and she sees one of the kobolds, Cardlin, waving at her from the other side of her fence. "How goes the herbalism?" he asks as she walks closer.

"Well enough? I'll be selling most of these and focusing on the ochredill," she explains.

"Ah, finally going to get started on what you saw in the vision?" he asks with an eager smile.

She nods. "I am! I still need to figure out the best way to isolate each plant, but I should have enough time before all of these are ready to harvest."

"Good! If you need anything, let me or the others know, ok? I've been talking to a few of the antkin, and they have a few ideas for your isolation things, if you have the time to chat with them?"

Tilly looks back over the field and nods, more to herself than to Cardlin. "Yeah, I do. I just finished inspecting them, so they'll be good to leave alone for now."

"Then let's go!" he exclaims, eager to help both her and the antkin. She smiles, letting him lead her away toward the dungeon and the shortcut to the college. The antkin are probably as eager to show their designs as she is to see what they've made. Together, they just might revolutionize something.