Chapter 106 – The Stubborn Hoes

Chapter 106 – The Stubborn Hoes

The hoes and watering cans had finished attuning, and when class began the following afternoon, Lady Amisha had them start tilling land with their hoes.

After briefly teaching them how to use the hoes to break ground, how to build up furrows, and how to dilute herbicide potion with water and spray it on the soil for weeding, Lady Amisha said:

“From now until next Monday, however much land you manage to cultivate is how much land you’ll have the right to use.

Until the start of your fourth year, the land you cultivate and everything it produces will belong to you.

As an advance notice—starting from your second year, the only ingredients you’ll be able to collect from the Ingredient Collection Station will be meat.

All other ingredients, you’ll have to grow yourselves! If you can’t manage it, don’t worry—you won’t starve. There’s still that vast Breadfruit Grove waiting for you!”

Just hearing the words “Breadfruit” was enough to make the young witches’ tongues pucker.

If in their second year, they had nothing to eat besides meat and could only gnaw on Breadfruit for nutrition, that would be absolutely miserable.

This wasn’t comfort—it was a threat!

They had all read a bit of 《A Few Things About Growing Vegetables: An Introduction to Plant Magic》. If they had to grow everything themselves, they couldn’t afford to skip vegetables, spices, grain crops, or oil crops.

The little plot of soil in the Dormitory courtyard was only enough for growing some vegetables and spices. They would need to cultivate more land for grain and oil crops.

Lady Amisha sat sidesaddle on her broomstick and floated up to about four or five meters above the ground.

The young witches didn’t dare take this lightly and immediately got to work.

They had no doubt whatsoever that if they failed to cultivate their land properly, next year the Ingredient Collection Station really wouldn’t give them so much as a single vegetable leaf or drop of oil!

The hoes were attuned, but controlling an attuned hoe with magical power was far from easy.

Just like controlling kitchen utensils with Culinary Magic or cleaning tools with Cleaning Spell, it all required gradual adaptation.

The moment the Headmistress said to start cultivating, they couldn’t even lift their own hoes with magical power.

In the end, they could only store the hoes in their Cards first, scatter in different directions to find spots they planned to cultivate, then take the hoes back out and attempt to control them while tilling.

The young witches weren’t even as tall as the large hoes. Since their control was clumsy at first and they couldn’t maintain much distance, there was a constant risk of being struck.

Whenever that happened, Amisha would crook a finger and use a Levitation Spell to gently nudge the hoe off course, sending it into the ground instead of onto the young witches’ heads.

Even the Sorceresses had no advantage when it came to controlling the large hoes.

Vasida and Sylph were equally tormented by their disobedient hoes.

They could never get the hoe to land where it was supposed to.

Even though Mo Lan had experience practicing the Cleaning Spell and controlling a large broom, the big hoe in front of her was no more obedient than anyone else’s.

Establishing a connection with an object through Magic Infusion and then controlling it with magical power or mana was an innate racial Talent of all witches.

In the terminology of human mages, it meant that a witch’s or Sorceress’s energy could gradually mold an object into her own “shape.”

This “shape” didn’t refer to physical form, but to degree of obedience.

All witches, regardless of their other magical talents, possessed this ability.

Since there was no variation in talent level, naturally no young witch could “mysteriously” get ahead of the others.

Whether it was kitchen utensils, cleaning tools, or farming implements, the only method was slow and steady bonding.

The longer the bonding period, the more obedient the object became. Some ordinary implements that had been used by a witch for years and years, steeped in magical power over time, could even develop a kind of sentience.

This was also why adult witches were always obsessed with saving money to build their own Witch’s Home.

Because only with a home could all those attuned pots and pans, tables and chairs, hoes and sickles, brooms and dustpans have a stable place to reside.

In the homes of other Races, these things were just useless junk.

But in a witch’s home, every single one of them was a weapon that could swarm an intruder, a servant that could automatically tend to its master.

This year’s batch of young witches had all sorts of tool Cards they could carry with them, which would make nurturing their tools much easier in the future.

Of course, all of that required a long time.

For now, the young witches were still getting headaches over their stubborn hoes.

The term “stubborn hoe” came from a frustrated Mo Lan:

“I honestly think the big hoe is harder to control than the big broom! It seems like it’s always trying to fight me! Like a stubborn bull—completely impossible to hold back!”

“Tell me about it!” Vasida, separated from her by a stretch of soil, had barely finished speaking when the hoe that had just been sitting perfectly still suddenly swung around and came straight for her forehead.

It was deflected by Lady Amisha’s magic and smashed into the ground nearby, snapping a patch of thistle grass clean in half.

“I think my hoe is especially interested in my forehead! Every single time, it goes right for my head! It’s bloodlust cannot be satiated!”

“Hoe, hoe, won’t you please be good? Stay steady, don’t move around! I want to clear more land so I can plant things!”

Sylph hugged her hoe, coaxing it in the gentlest voice.

Her hoe at least didn’t rebelliously lunge at her forehead, but it still swayed back and forth and bounced up and down, completely out of control.

“Sylph, this hoe has only been attuned for such a short time—it’s nowhere near developing sentience! Can it even understand what you’re saying?” Vasida shouted in bewilderment at Sylph in the neighboring field.

“What if it can!” Sylph replied.

By the end of class, not a single one of them had managed to hoe out even one square meter of land.

Lady Amisha left as soon as class ended, but the young witches couldn’t just stroll back carefree.

“We’re not going to still be unable to control these stubborn hoes by Monday and then have no land to grow vegetables from second year onward, are we?” Iris said, her face full of worry.

“At least we still have the Dormitory courtyard!” Alba said.

“The hoes won’t behave and Lady Amisha isn’t around, so tilling after class is risky. But Magic Infusion is safe—let’s spend our free time attuning the hoes more! The more we attune them, the more obedient they’ll gradually become,” Mo Lan said.

That was exactly how she had gotten her big broom under control.

Iris nodded. “These hoes are so big we can’t even carry them. Attuning on the road is out of the question—we’ll have to wait until we’re back at the Dormitory.”

“I can carry it, hehe!”

Vasida gave her mana a sharp tug and the hoe instantly behaved, sitting quietly on the ground. She grabbed it and hoisted it onto her shoulder. “Easy peasy!”

“Vasida, have you gotten even stronger?” Mo Lan asked in surprise.

“Yep!” Vasida said with a beaming smile as she attuned the big hoe. “I guess if you eat a lot, your body grows well!”

“This definitely has to do with your Sorceress Talent!” Mo Lan said. “A normal young witch who eats a lot would just feel stuffed, or even get fat. There’s no way she’d stay in shape while getting stronger!”