CH298

His final task, the last thing keeping him from the comforts of home, was admittedly small, the sort of thing he probably could have gotten away with ignoring, but if he didn’t do it now he had no clue how far in the future it would be before he could make the time to see the results in person.

Taking their cart through the elven gate, Thera and Ben drove out to the farm Ben had purchased just before the crafting contest had started, to be used as a way to gain faith for his god. Even though that was the main purpose though, he did genuinely want to see the results, to know if trying to give the obbles religion would actually do anything to improve the quality of wool or eggs they produced. Admittedly, he didn’t have the most hope for the prospect, but the odds weren’t zero and given what the world was on the edge of, any way to improve food production could be valuable for the years to come.

He hadn’t been able to announce their visit ahead of time given everything that was going on, but as he knocked on the door of the main house where the elf he technically employed stayed he was greeted with cheer and enthusiasm.

“Well isn’t this a pleasure mister Ben, I was actually just working on the report you’d asked me to make but if I’d known you were stopping by I would have tried to have some hospitality ready for you.”

“Ha, well I appreciate the thought and I’m sorry to show up unannounced like this. My last couple months ended up rather hectic so I wasn’t able to let you know I’d be coming, but with everything going on in the world right now if I didn’t show up today I don’t know when I’d have gotten the chance in the future.”

“It’s no trouble, no trouble at all. Come on to the fields with me, I’ll talk about what I’ve seen since then while I have you around.”

He led them around back where the fluffy little ovals were grazing and even if he wasn’t sure what it was, he immediately saw some sort of change when he looked at them.

“Are their coats glossier?” Thera asked as she eyed the closest one, thinking of how soft it looked.

“Good eye miss, they are indeed. Their coats are looking a bit nicer overall and they’re growing back a little faster too. On top of that, it looks like egg production increased by around five percent. You aren’t exactly raking in the sort of profit that could make up for how much you invested buying this place, but in general I’d say we’re seeing some reasonable improvement considering it’s only been a couple months.”

“Interesting,” Ben muttered as he stared at them. “It’s early enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some more improvement for a bit, though it will stop after a while eventually. Still, five percent is actually quite a large amount all things considered, especially with a large enough herd. Let’s say in theory if it gets up to a seven percent increase before leveling off, if we were getting a thousand eggs a week beforehand then we’d be ending with an extra seventy, with things only getting better for even bigger groups. Of course, different animals would have different improvements but this could actually be pretty big.”

If I could sell the mind-control necklaces used to make this possible I could probably make a killing but there’s way too many issues with that. All it takes is one idiot to put one on without thinking and a major crime has been committed, but at the same time this is actually too useful not to try and take advantage of. Not to mention the fact that I’d be able to snag Myriad a bunch of faith. Even if the quality is low, when we compare it against just how many farm animals there are in the world the results could be insane for him. Well, I guess I’d also have to limit it to animals that aren’t slaughtered for food, killing and eating something that gives my god faith would feel weird.

<It’s somewhat comforting to see you actually have a sense of right and wrong after how you’ve been acting these last few days.> Myriad spoke up in his head in response to his thoughts. <You’ve been pretty over the top.>

Look, I’m not going to deny that but I feel justified in all of it. Either way, what do you think? Could there be a way to make this work?

<This is honestly something I’d need to discuss with the other gods. It’s ethically questionable to say the least, but it can’t exactly be denied that it seems to be helping the animal and increasing their yield. We won’t have any issues until the first wave, but depending on how it goes there could be some food insecurities. I think we’d all rather see an increase to what can be farmed right now so I’ll discuss it with them later. Honestly, it could go either way, but even if they disagree now, they might change their minds if their people are starving.>

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Alright, in that case I’ll start preparing some more necklaces when I’m back at the shop. Now that I have divine enchanting I could definitely make the pendants to hold the enchantment significantly smaller, and since it’s just making cubes I could use my magic on it to practice. At worst they’re never used and I just recycle them all one day.

He walked around the fields, looking them over and not seeing anything significant. He did get the impression they were somewhere between happy and content which meant that the necklaces were doing their jobs, but given the simplicity of the creatures lifestyles that could have played a part as well.