CHAPTER 31: LUMORA TEA

Some of the sprouts were ready to be transferred, but Gara had been away for a few days and forgotten all about them.

Among the pots was a herb used to make tea, Lumora Tea.

Madha had brought it when he met the original owner. It was a gift from his uncle who had just returned from another county. He said the tea was native to a different province and couldn’t be found anywhere around here.

The original owner had fallen in love with Lumora Tea at first sip and immediately begged her mother to buy her some Lumora seeds to plant.

The village of Suruta and the surrounding areas were known for producing herbal plants, so if no one around here was growing Lumora, it meant the plant truly didn’t exist in all of Swagarloka.

It wasn’t until a month later that Madha brought Gara the Lumora seeds which purchased by his uncle from a merchant in another county.

Gara tried to recall the taste that had charmed the original owner so much. The tea was lightly sweet and refreshingly tangy, with a slightly sour aftertaste that paired perfectly with fish dishes to mask the fishy smell. It was similar to lemon, and if served with ice, it might even taste like soda.

He swallowed hard just imagining it. Cold soda that would hit the spot.

"I’ll make a fantasy-world version of soda!" Gara declared enthusiastically.

|Is it really that good?|

He flinched in surprise as the green panel popped up right in front of his face, nearly making him fall over.

"It’s amazing. But can’t you, I don’t know, talk instead of flashing panels in front of me? I almost tripped!"

"You sure are demanding!"

This time, it wasn’t a panel that appeared but a voice. A mechanical adult woman’s voice echoed in his head. Despite the robotic tone, he could hear the emotion behind it.

"Impressive," he muttered, genuinely surprised.

"Naturally," the voice replied with pride.

Gara chuckled softly. At least he wouldn’t feel too lonely spending the next nine months cooped up at home.

He carried the eight small pots out to the front yard. The original owner had only planted in eight of them as an experiment.

Madha had warned him not to be discouraged if the plants failed to grow. Lumora was said to be cultivated only by druids. It was a picky plant that apparently only thrived near them.

Not knowing he was half-druid, the original owner played it safe and used just eight pots. Now, in all eight, the seeds had sprouted.

First, Gara carefully thinned out the weaker sprouts in each pot, leaving only the tallest and healthiest one in place. He repeated the process for the other pots, making sure all eight sprouts were about the same height.

Then, he transplanted them into the soil beds he had prepared earlier.

Now came the important part: what kind of water to use for each sprout.

Gara grabbed a flat wooden board with the numbers 1 through 8 that he had carved earlier and placed it in front of the plants as a marker.

He took out a piece of paper and wrote:

L1 & L2: Watered by me with well water

L3 & L4: Watered by me with my water

L5 & L6: Watered by Mom with well water

L7 & L8: Watered by Mom with my water

He marked them all with an "L" for Lumora to make things easier to track.

This time, he wasn’t just testing whether Unlimited Water affected plant growth. He also wanted to see if Divine Fertility played a role.

Wina had told him that druids couldn’t accelerate plant growth unless they had a Talent specifically for it. So if the sprouts he watered—without using his own water—grew faster than the ones she handled, then it had to be the effect of Divine Fertility.

He began watering L1 to L4 first. The others—L5 to L8—would have to wait until his mom arrived.

Once Wina returned, Gara explained the experiment, though he left out any mention of Divine Fertility. He only told her he wanted to test Unlimited Water.

He still didn’t feel ready to tell her about having two Bloodlines. Maybe once he heard or met someone else who had two, then he’d be honest with her.

After hearing Gara’s explanation, she immediately cooperated. She was happy, too that Gara’s Talent might turn out to be this powerful.

The next day, Gara and Wina continued watering the plants every morning and evening, just as instructed. She knew exactly what she was doing, having planted Lumora many times back when she lived in Wasyah Forest.

From Wina, Gara learned that one week after sprouting, the tea leaves would begin to appear—one by one—over the course of the next two weeks, in a pale yellow hue. During that phase, the stem would grow to about 15–20 cm tall, people in this world called it 15-20 nails.

After that two-week period, the leaves should have reached their mature size. Any that were smaller had to be trimmed off to avoid draining nutrients from the others.

Next came another two weeks of waiting until the pale yellow leaves matured into a vibrant yellow, with stems reaching 30 nails in height. These vibrant yellow leaves were the ones that could be brewed into Lumora Tea.

Aside from watering the Lumora daily, Gara had also started his own experiment: developing a fantasy-world alternative to anesthetics.

At the moment, Gara only had access to Aconite –which Wina bought in town—and Thimvine, which Wina purchased from a villager who had found it while foraging in the mountains and hadn’t had the chance to sell it in town yet.

Of course, Gara had to time his experiments for when his mother was out in the field.

In the face of all the limitations of this era, what gave Gara confidence to proceed was the existence of Noxfloris, a plant that looked like a venus flytrap, about 20 nails tall with a single central trap up to 10 nails wide.

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