The Reluctant Sovereign of the Ash-Wastes

After fifteen years as a mildly competent Artifact Appraiser for the Vaeloric Guild of Arcane Studies, Arthur Pendelton did the only reasonable thing a man could do when his colleagues ignored his breakthrough insight into resonant botany. He quit. He cashed out his pension. He bought forty acres of the most dangerous, magically unstable, categorically unlivable wasteland on the continent, and he moved there to grow flowers. The Blighted Expanse is a place where rivers run backward, the sky is permanently bruised, and entire armies have marched in and come back as furniture. No kingdom claims it. No sane person enters it. It is, by every reasonable measure, the worst place on earth to start a garden. Arthur could not be happier. The problem—or rather, everyone else's problem—begins when his seeds actually grow. Not just grow. *Thrive*. Using nothing but a crude chalk-paint mixture, an old hammer, and an obsessive understanding of magical efficiency, Arthur accidentally constructs a passive mana-filtration array that turns his little plot of cursed wasteland into the most magically fertile soil on the planet. His tomato plants cure diseases. His rosebushes repel demons. His scarecrow gains sentience and manifests an army of ten thousand spectral knights to patrol the perimeter. Arthur does not notice any of this. He is busy optimizing his irrigation system. But the rest of the world notices. Updates: Whenever I feel like it. Genres: Progression Fantasy, Comedy, Slice of Life, Isekai-adjacent Tags: Overpowered Protagonist (accidental), Misunderstandings, Non-humanoid Companions, Political "Intrigue" (air quotes very much intended), Farming, Found Family (nobody asked for it), No Romance (Arthur is married to his notebook), Smart Protagonist (in one very specific, very narrow way), Dense Protagonist (in every other way)