I Reincarnated into a Single-celled Organism! - Chapter 148

If the first reason I had decided to join the Capala family was so that Mara wouldn’t feel abandoned, then the second reason would be to gain access to the library. I still owed a lot of money and the best plan I had come up with was to make use of that storage room of dried up, ancient plants. They were all withered and useless, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t be brought back. With my talents at affecting things at a molecular level, it wouldn’t be impossible.

I had thought at first that perhaps I could extract the components of the pills and medicines the alchemists produced and replicate that. If the ingredients were already an expensive enterprise, then it was likely the medicines that had already been processed and specially made by professionals would net even more money. If I could modify some of my cells to replicate the chemicals of the pills and construct them molecularly, how would my pill clones be any different than what an alchemist was making?

Yet, after inquiring into it and asking some choice questions, I realized that this wasn’t a possible direction for me. Pill production required the use of mana, both as extracted by the plants as well as inserted during the creation of the pill. My mana level was far too low. It was only just enough that I could interact with things like storage rings. I had no practical way to use magic, let alone condense magical spells or produce magical items. For that, I would have to evolve at least once. My current mana level was that of a mortal and not even a strong one at that.

This was also why I couldn’t just replicate a living plant. From the moment they sprouted until their adulthood, they slowly absorbed mana from the world around them, similar to everything else. Like animals that became sage beasts, some plants evolved into magical plants, while others would remain normal for the rest of their life if there wasn’t a sufficient quantity of mana nearby. This evolution was also hard to predict, and so one couldn’t just take normal plants and inject them with mana and how to get the magical breed they wanted.

Instead, magical plants needed to breed new magical plants, often with very specific conditions necessary for them to come to being. I had managed to successfully produce a few dozen seeds from the ancient plants, but only a few of them sprouted and most of those plants died after a few days. Even my terrarium invention wasn’t able to keep them alive. The grandmaster’s plant book didn’t contain the information that I needed to keep the plants alive, so my only choice was to find someone who did.

If the opportunity to marry into the Capala family hadn’t presented itself, I might have still come up with some way to visit them. The Capala family grew all the medicinal herbs and plants that supplied the region around Stormberg, and so they naturally had the various techniques and knowledge necessary to grow plants. I had spent months feeling around in the dark, and I realized that instead of reinventing the wheel, it’d be better to just find what others already knew.

Thus, with Abigail’s permission and even insistence, I was sent to the library to read through the various books on cultivating plants. Maybe becoming an alchemist was out of the question, but I could at least make money through herbivory work. Abigail brought me personally to the library and even pointed out a few of the first books I shook look at.

“You’ll need this one… and this one… oh, and this one.” She grabbed book after book off the shelf and held them in my arms.

Soon, the pile was higher than my head, and I probably would have dropped them if I didn’t have the strength of a paragon. Carefully, I put them on the desk.

“Are you regretting things?” Penny asked smugly, as she watched me go through the pile of books. “It’s too late now. You better not embarrass Abigail after she’s giving you such a chance. The exams are done through the pharmacology academy, and our young mistress had to stack her reputation to get you in so quickly.”

“Pharmacology? Not alchemy?” I blinked.

“Alchemy is just a base-level rank. Once you master Alchemy, you can proceed to become a chemist. The highest level is a pharmacologist. Well, if you work with poison, you become a toxicologist. I wouldn’t even think of such a thing. Even Grandmaster Bai has failed to get a chemistry degree after all these years.”

“The grandmaster is a dropout?” I found that a tiny bit funny.

Penny’s face flashed with anger, but Abigail spoke up before she could say anything, putting another pile half the size of the first on my desk. “It doesn’t matter, you’re not becoming an alchemist. This is what you need to know to pass the exam. You’ll be a herbologist. The 2^nd level of herbology is called a botanist. You won’t need to reach that level though.”

“In that case, I’ll get to work,” I told her, trying to give her a look of reassurance.

She didn’t react. Instead, she turned to Penny. Penny looked back and then made a face.

“Uncle still wants to speak with you, cousin. He’s not pleased about this at all.”

Abigail put on a pleading look. “Can you please talk him down? We can meet for supper.”

“Hmm… I suppose.” She swiped back her hair. “You’re my precious cousin. I’ll try to alleviate Father’s anger, but I make no promises.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it.”

Penny nodded before turning and walking away. When she left the library, Abigail glanced over at me.

“Are you sure about this? I’ll admit, the herbologist elder we’re currently hiring is one of our most expensive remaining employees. His apprentice is one of our family, but he’s been apprenticing for ten years and can only barely run the shop. I wouldn’t even offer the exam if Mara hadn’t begged me. She has your trust.”

“I can handle it,” I reassured her. “I promise you.”

Her lips tightened slightly. “You can use the library until sundown. You can return when the sun is back up. You cannot be in the mansion at night…”

“I understand.”

“As for Mara…  I may allow her to come to your place one night a week, but not right now. Just no more meetings in my bedroom.”

I frowned slightly. “Why would I be in your bedroom? I’m sure we can meet during the day.”

Her face turned slightly red. “The day? You can’t! Ahem, I mean, she will be serving me all day. I can only afford to send her to you once a week.

A thought struck me and I nodded. “I probably could use a hand. However, once a week wouldn’t be enough. You can’t send me a servant all the time?”

“You want one of the servant girls?” She jumped. “What about Mara?”

“You already said she’s not available. Aren’t I officially your husband? I’d expect this much.”

“You…” Her expression turned strange. “Fine, I’ll find you a young serving girl. Do what you must!”

She spun around and walked out of the library like she was in a hurry. I began to speak, to tell her that the servant didn’t need to be young, but she was already gone. I shrugged and then after confirming there was no one else present, I touched the piles of books, sending them all into my Luminal Space. Once I had them stored away, I started using Transcription to record them. They all thought it’d take me years to process all of this information, but with skills like Parallel Processing and Transcription, it would only take me a week to know everything in this library.

Once I copied a few books into my mind, I put them back and then left the library. There was no point in remaining and Abigail said nothing about me not being allowed to check books out. Instead, I went back to work on clearing up and cleaning the house. As I dumped all the information in my mind, I started to get various ideas. Thus, I began clearing the forest in the back, behind my house where no one could easily spot it.

Once a few fields were clear, I started breaking up the soil. By the time the sun began to set, I already had transcribed all of the books that Abigail had given me and began to produce my fields. After all, book knowledge was just that, book knowledge. If I wanted to learn how to grow magical plants, then I’d need some practical experience too.

That’s how I’d spend the next week. I would copy every book in that library into my memory, and then I would start to grow experiment fields. Soon, my 50,000 kilojoule debt would be over and I could begin my work on the Tanner-family killers.