"In the past, children were always underfed, and they often had to help the family with labor. For the whole family, even survival was a struggle, so there was simply no time for anything else."
"But now, we lack for nothing, and children no longer have to experience hardship so early."
"They can play freely, learn, and explore all sorts of interesting things to satisfy their natural curiosity, just like... just like..."
Taber thought for a long while but couldn't find the right words.
"Just like children," Garrett finished the sentence for him.
Taber was taken aback.
That's right.
Isn't this exactly what the ideal life of a normal child should be?
This is what a child should be born with... the life of a happy child.
"Just like children," he repeated.
Once the notebooks were graded and the rest of the work finished, the two began discussing other matters, recent developments, as well as issues in teaching methodology.
For example, the "level system" in the school.
Based on age and learning progress, the school currently divided students into three tiers: beginner, intermediate, and advanced.
The beginner classes focused mainly on fundamental and practical knowledge, such as arithmetic, literacy, and general awareness, while also beginning to cultivate good moral habits.
The intermediate level started to cover subjects such as law and more in-depth studies of language.
The advanced level was an extension of the intermediate one; at this stage, people could choose specific skills they were interested in for specialized training, preparing them to become professionals in various fields.
This was the preliminary plan, and it was currently being implemented in the Wayfort school.
As for future development and more details, such as the selection and compilation of textbooks, or the hiring of specialized subject teachers, these would have to progress alongside the growth of the school.
Everything would need time to be proven.
Once the short-term results of both the new school and the military camp had been reviewed, Garrett rushed to the agricultural planning area to plant the new crops.
Splash.
Bucket after bucket of water was poured into the freshly dug trenches, creating the environment needed for planting sugarcane.
This specialized sugarcane variety still retained its dependence on water, planting was only possible with water right next to it.
Thanks to Garrett's lightning-fast digging, the new sugarcane plantation was quickly established. The large batch of sugarcane brought back from the already-developed cane fields of Dale was planted along the water-filled trenches, ready to grow.
After planting, Garrett even thoughtfully covered the ditches to prevent anyone from accidentally falling in. And so, the residents had one more agricultural project to work on.
After sugarcane came grapes.
Growing grapes wasn't much different from other crops, except that, besides moist soil, they also required trellises to climb on.
The variety of crops in the agricultural zone continued to grow, and each of these two new crops would bring significant changes to the lands west of the Misty Mountains.
Sugar needed no further explanation, an extremely important sweetener. Its taste alone could raise the residents' quality of life by a whole level, not to mention its other uses.
And then there were grapes.
Beyond adding another food to daily life, grapes also meant that wine could finally be produced locally in Wayfort.
And raisins, too.
---
"Dorwinion..."
In the wine cellar, Garrett tasted the newly brewed wine, then sipped a glass of Dorwinion wine. Comparing the two, he found each had its own merits.
It had to be said, Dorwinion's wine industry, sustained for thousands of years, truly had substance. No wonder it was a realm famed across Middle-earth for its wine.
For him, winemaking was merely an interest brought about by his brewing system, but for Dorwinion, it was their lifeblood and the foundation of their prosperity.
One could only say, it made perfect sense that a land which had been conquering the palates of all Eldar with wine since the Elder Days could endure for so long.
Setting down his glass, he headed toward the southeastern side of Wayfort.
The very first smithy had been built here.
From the outside, it appeared to be nothing more than an ordinary forge, with a few furnaces and anvils. Its appearance was utterly unremarkable, especially when compared with the surrounding, more impressive buildings, it seemed downright plain.
Anyone looking at it would think it had long been abandoned.
But little would they guess that beneath this smithy lay an immense underground space, housing massive smelting furnaces and forging platforms, where rows of dwarven steel furnaces stood in silent readiness.
Next to the vast smelting chamber was an alchemy workshop and a raw materials cultivation area, capable of producing all manner of potions in bulk when needed.
However, this time he had come neither to brew potions nor to work metal.
He pulled out a pickaxe and dug deeper, opening up another huge underground space. There, he planted... cacti.
At first glance, cacti seemed useless, good for nothing more than being smelted into green dye for coloring, or kept in pots as decorative plants. But that was only under normal circumstances. Once standardized and given game-like properties, they could do much more.
For instance, they could serve as item destroyers.
Block-form cacti could destroy any "dropped items" thrown onto them, just like lava, unless the item had special properties.
They could indeed be used as disposal units, though the territory already had lava disposal sites, so cacti weren't needed for that role.
But for Garrett, and only for him, cacti had another special use: To create an XP farm.
This type of farm worked by exploiting the property of furnaces producing a small amount of experience when smelting items. The more items smelted, the more experience gained. And this experience would remain stored in the furnace until the smelted item was taken out.
In other words, as long as items kept going in to be smelted and the results were automatically removed, the experience would keep accumulating indefinitely.
When it was needed, one would simply stop the automatic output, take out the freshly smelted item, and receive all the accumulated experience at once.
To make this work, all that was needed was two hoppers, one to feed items in, one to remove the finished products. The experience would build up in the process.
A single setup might not be highly efficient, but its strength lay in automation, the more furnaces constructed, the greater the output.
Experience freedom would no longer be a dream. Once the farm was ready, the territory would achieve enchantment freedom, and everyone would have access to high-quality gear.
So the question was: what did this XP farm have to do with cacti?
This brought them to the special property of cacti:
Cacti had strict growth requirements, there could be no blocks adjacent to them, or they would instantly break into dropped items.
By exploiting this, placing an obstacle beside a cactus's upper growth point would cause the plant to break automatically upon growing, producing a dropped item.
With a simple water collection system below, this could become a fully automated cactus farm.
After laying down sand, planting the cacti, and placing the obstacles, Garrett felt an odd surge of satisfaction.
It hadn't been easy, truly, it hadn't been easy.
A cactus farm was one of the few automated setups that didn't require complex redstone machinery.
The only redstone component needed, a powered rail, could be replaced with a gear mechanism.
After all this time, he finally had something that could produce resources while he was away.
---
Today, the lord of Wayfort was still nowhere to be seen. But he hadn't left the territory.
Instead, the lord remained underground, building layer upon layer of cactus farms. When space ran out, he dug more. When materials ran short, he went back up to restock.
With the cactus supply for the XP farm secured, there was just one more issue: fuel.
That was easy to solve.
He went up to the wood storage area and built a charcoal-making station, then linked the charcoal storage chests to the farm's fuel hoppers deep underground using a series of hoppers.
The logs for charcoal production would be supplied by the townsfolk, making the whole process semi-automated.
From now on, every weapon in the territory would be enchanted with the lord's magic.
Every seasoned soldier would march forward carrying the lord's blessing.
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150 = +1 bonus chapter
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100+ Advance chapters!