Lord: I have built a witch's sanctuary.

Chapter 19 Planting 1 Olivia

"Huh?" Olivia's mouth dropped open, and she froze in the wind.

The wind and snow seemed to freeze for a moment.

Olivia stared blankly at Lorraine, wondering if her ears had been frostbitten.

"Bury me...bury me inside?"

She pointed to herself, then to the still-steaming magical farmland.

"right."

Lorraine nodded and took out a handful of seeds from her pocket.

"Your whole body should be in contact with the soil, letting the earth's essence permeate your pores."

Lorraine was spouting nonsense with a straight face—although that's what the secret manual actually says, it always sounded like he was fooling a fool when he said it.

"This is to connect you with the earth."

"Hurry, while the heat from Anna's bombardment is still there and the soil is still warm."

Olivia swallowed.

She looked at Lorraine's serious face and made sure he wasn't joking.

Since it's not life-threatening...

Then bury it!

As long as it can protect the wheat, she'd be willing to bury it in the ground, or even in a manure pit.

A few minutes later.

An extremely bizarre scene unfolded in a corner of the camp.

A woman's head is "grown" in the ground, with only the part above her neck showing.

A ring of green seeds was scattered around it.

Lorraine stood beside her, holding a watering can, and poured water around her head like she was watering a flower.

"How are you feeling?"

Lorraine asked.

Olivia closed her eyes, her face flushed.

shame.

That's so embarrassing.

Fortunately, Anna was preparing lunch and Victor was on patrol, otherwise she really wanted to smash her head against the ground and die.

But soon, the shame subsided.

A warm current flowed down the soil and enveloped her entire body.

The frostbitten skin began to itch, and the heartbeat gradually synchronized with the pulse of the earth.

"hot……"

Olivia muttered to herself.

"It feels so reassuring...like being back in my mother's arms..."

Lorraine looked at the tender green light that was gradually emerging above her head and nodded in satisfaction.

The ceremony began.

This kind of advancement does not require intense energy conflict, but rather a gradual and subtle assimilation.

This aligns well with the characteristics of "abundance".

"Is this the ceremony?"

Victor, who had been patrolling nearby, couldn't help but twitch at the corner of his mouth. He had lived half his life and seen all sorts of cruel sacrifices, but this was the first time he had ever seen a scene where people were treated like radishes.

"Close your eyes and feel the breath of the soil." Ignoring the old knight's shock, Lorraine guided him in a low voice, "Imagine your veins are tree roots, your breath is the wind, your magic... is the nourishment that sustains all things."

Olivia was a little awkward, but as time went by, a strange warmth began to flow into her pores from all directions.

That wasn't cold, dead soil, but something... alive.

She heard it.

Deep in the soil, there are faint chirping of insects, the flow of groundwater, and the faint heartbeats of seeds yearning to break free.

Gradually, her discomfort completely disappeared.

Her breathing began to become long and even, achieving a strange resonance with the ground beneath her feet.

A faint emerald green halo rose from the soil, enveloping her exposed head.

"It's done." Lorraine breathed a sigh of relief.

The Witch's Codex told him that this special witch advancement path allowed him to start at the second tier as soon as he awakened.

Although the process may seem like a joke, The Witch's Codex never disappoints.

As Olivia entered her awakened state, Lorraine stood up, dusted off her hands, and looked toward the edge of her territory.

Now that the people have been planted, the next step is to solve the housing problem.

The dilapidated wooden hut at the outpost was already too crowded, and after last night's fierce battle, it was drafty from all sides.

"Victor." Lorraine turned around.

"exist."

"Take those two carpenters and head to the Blackwood Forest in the west." Lorraine pointed into the distance. "We need timber, lots of timber. While the monsters are less active during the day, cut down enough trees for me. We need to build some decent houses."

"No problem, sir." Victor nodded and was about to call for his men when he heard Lorraine add another sentence.

"I'll stay here and build the city walls."

Victor stopped abruptly, turned around, and looked at Lorraine with disbelief:

"A city wall? My lord, you mean... to enclose this land?"

"It's not just this piece of land."

Lorraine pointed to the camp at his feet, and then to the newly planned field of several hundred square meters in the distance.

"I want to enclose all the fields within walls."

Victor frowned; as an old knight, he felt obligated to remind the young lord.

"My lord, please forgive my bluntness."

Victor said in a deep voice, "In the North, even in a large place like Frostwolf City, the fields are all outside the city walls. That's because the cost of building each meter of the city walls is frighteningly high."

"That's for protecting human lives and noble property, not for protecting wheat."

"Even if the lord's ability allows him to directly generate city walls using materials, eliminating the need for manual labor."

"But the publicly available recipe for the city wall requires 15 magic crystals per meter, which is extremely expensive. If we also need to enclose farmland, we absolutely cannot afford to consume that many magic crystals."

Victor's words are very realistic.

In this resource-scarce world, using expensive city walls to enclose cheap farmland is an absolutely unprofitable business from an economic perspective.

The usual practice is to rely on the range of the Witch's Tower to cover the farmland. If the monsters break through the range, they will abandon the farmland and retreat into the tower.

"Who says I can't afford it?" Lorraine smiled mysteriously. "Go chop down the tree, Victor. When you come back, you'll see the answer."

Victor stared at Lorraine for a few seconds, then finally shook his head.

"You are the lord, you have the final say."

Although he didn't believe it, after last night's battle, he had developed an instinctive obedience to Lorraine's orders.

Even if the command sounds like the ravings of a madman.

Watching Victor lead two carpenters, axes in hand, trudging through the dark woods, Lorraine withdrew her gaze.

At this moment, only he, Anna, and... Olivia, who was planted in the ground, remained in the territory.

"Young Master, is it really possible?" Anna looked at the empty snowfield with some worry. "If we want to build a wall to surround such a large area, even if I use up all my magic, I still won't be able to make that many bricks."

"No need for bricks, Anna."

Lorraine walked to the edge of the territory, where the foundation of the city wall he had planned would be located.

He opened "The Witch's Codex" again, his gaze fixed on the construction page for the "City Wall".

"This frozen soil is the best material."

Lorraine crouched down, pressing his palms onto the hard, iron-like frozen ground.

[Activate Lord Talent]

[Using the Magic Grimoire Optimized Recipe: City Wall]

【Consumable: 160 Magic Crystals】

[Materials: Frozen soil, Warcraft bone meal (battlefield remnants), trace metal elements]

[Consumes two magic crystals per meter]

[Construction Objective: Level 1 City Wall]

Driven by Lorraine's will, the 160 magic crystals instantly disintegrated in his hand, transforming into a vast and pure torrent of energy that flowed down his arm and into the earth.

"Boom!"

The ground began to shake.

It wasn't the devastating shaking of an earthquake, but a dull hum, as if something deep within the earth was awakening.

Anna covered her mouth in surprise.

In her view, the once flat edge of the snowfield, the hard frozen soil, began to wriggle and bulge like dough.

The moisture in the soil was instantly extracted and compressed, and the loose sand was rearranged under the pressure of magic, combining with the countless fragments of monster bones and blood left on the battlefield last night, resulting in a violent chemical reaction.

A gray-white wall "grows" from the ground at a speed visible to the naked eye.

One meter, two meters, three meters...

Unlike man-made brick walls, it doesn't have obvious gaps; instead, it's a perfectly natural whole.

The wall surface has a dense texture similar to bones, and you can vaguely see dark red patterns flowing within it—those are the magical circulation paths after the blood of magical beasts has been refined.

But this is not enough.

Lorraine looked at Olivia, whose head was the only part of her body visible in the distance.

At this moment, Olivia was completely in the zone. Several seeds around her had sprouted and were growing wildly at a speed that defied the laws of nature, turning into several thick vines.

"I borrow your power, Mother Earth."

Lorraine guided the city wall's path, deliberately directing its base to pass through the farmland area where Olivia lived.

Stimulated by the overflowing life magic of the "Fertile Earth Mother", countless black thorns sprouted from the originally bare city walls.

These thorns are not simply plants, but metallic roots that penetrate deep into the wall, reinforcing it like steel bars and forming a natural anti-climb net at the top, their spikes gleaming with a cold, eerie light.

Less than two hours.

A circular city wall, about five meters high and more than three meters thick, entirely gray-white and wrapped with black iron thorns, was fully formed.

It's like a giant iron barrel, tightly protecting this territory of over 200 square meters, along with the precious farmland and the Witch's Tower.

Lorraine stood up, dusted off her hands, her face was a little pale, but her eyes were full of fanaticism.

This is the power of "The Witch's Codex".

With just one-seventh of the magic crystals under normal circumstances, he could build a fortress out of thin air in this wasteland!

……

At dusk.

The cold wind howled, swirling snowflakes that lashed against my face, stinging like a knife.

Victor and the two carpenters, panting heavily, dragged the heavy logs back from the Blackwood Forest.

"Boss, do you think the lord is... a little hot-headed?" a carpenter muttered under his breath. "Building walls around the fields? Even if the three of us worked ourselves to death, we wouldn't be able to build a single wall before daybreak."

Victor wiped the ice from his face and sighed, "Enough talk, let's get to work. At worst, we can chop down more wood and build more barricades, that'll do..."

Before he could finish speaking, he suddenly froze on the spot.

The rope slipped from his hand, and the log, weighing several hundred pounds, crashed onto the snow with a "bang," kicking up a cloud of snow.

"Sir Knight? What's wrong?"

The two carpenters looked up in confusion, following Victor's gaze.

The next second, the axes in their hands also fell to the ground.

At the end of the snowstorm, in a place that was once a vast, empty snowfield when they left, a majestic, gray-white wall now stands tall.

Under the dim light, the wall exuded an indestructible and oppressive aura, and the black thorns entwined on its top resembled a ferocious dragon coiled around it.

Behind the city walls, the three Witch Towers still radiate a warm red light, as if they were the only beacons in this cold world.

"This...this is..." Victor opened his mouth wide, feeling his throat go dry.

He had seen the walls of Frostwolf City, a miracle built at the cost of countless manpower and resources, almost draining the entire city of Frostwolf.

Although the scene before us was far smaller in scale than Frostwolf City, the sense of security it provided, which even included farmland, struck a deeper chord in our souls.

"A miracle..." A carpenter knelt down in the snow with a thud. In the minds of the Northerners, only gods could do such a thing.

Victor took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the turmoil in his heart.

He recalled Lorraine's words, "You will see the answer."

Is this the answer?

Is this the source of that young baron's confidence?

"Pick it up!" Victor whirled around and yelled at the two stunned carpenters, "Pick up the wood! Don't embarrass the adults!"

Although he was shouting, there was an undisguised tremor and... ecstasy in his voice.

As an old knight, nothing could give him more peace of mind than seeing an impregnable fortress.

In this damned snowfield, this wall is my life.

As Victor and his group dragged the logs to the foot of the city wall, the massive city gate slowly rose with a thunderous roar.

Lorraine stood behind the door, her hands behind her back, looking at the three dumbfounded people.

"Did you bring the wood back?" Lorraine asked casually, as if she had just done something insignificant.

"I...I brought it back." Victor swallowed hard, looking up at the thorn-covered wall. "Sir, this wall..."

"This is just the beginning." Lorraine turned and walked inside.

"Now that we have the wall, let's build the cabin by tonight. I want everyone to know that in White Wolf Territory, as long as you're willing to work, you'll not only have meat to eat, but you'll also get a good night's sleep."

As Victor watched Lorraine's retreating figure, the doubt in his eyes vanished completely, replaced by an almost fanatical reverence.

He bent down and lifted the heavy logs again, but his steps were infinitely lighter than before.

Meanwhile, in the magical farmland on the edge of White Wolf Territory.

Olivia, the "Earth Mother" whose head was the only part of her body showing, was trying hard to turn her eyes and look at the magnificent city walls that rose up around her.

Although she couldn't move her body and her mouth was still full of dirt, she felt an unprecedented sense of security welling up inside her.

This move... seems like it's actually worth it?

"Um... Lorraine?" she tried calling out, "How much longer do I have to plant? I need to use the restroom..."

Lorraine stopped and looked back at the sprouting "human head bonsai," a wicked smile playing on her lips.

"Endure it. To become the bountiful Mother Earth is also part of the spiritual practice."