Chapter 286: Vinnie’s Cologne

Vinnie traded Kalli one point for the case of soap, which contained two dozen bars. Then, he opened the first one, and Kalli began to laugh.

The soap smelled exactly the same as his favourite cologne.

"Well, now this is a massive win. I was wondering where I could find a replacement for it, now that the world has ended. But lo and behold, the System stepped in and recognized that the smell of Bergamot and Datian mandarins is the smell of a real man."

There were other scents that Kalli could name in there. Some sort of musk, roses, cloves, and both Sandalwood and agarwood. But the bergamot and mandarins were the ones that really set it apart from generically "Masculine" scents.

And now, she was going to have to live with a whole group of men who smelled like it every day.

At least it was pleasant and not overpowering.

The storm rolled in the next afternoon, chasing workers back indoors, where sandbags had been prepared, filling the daily work hours for hundreds of residents.

The wind picked up to eighty kilometres an hour, the rain began sheeting down on Marimgar, but the eye of the storm was going to miss them, and the streets were not pooling with water.

The underground cisterns were filling, but not to the point of the overflow valves, and the standard drainage system was handily dealing with this level of rainfall.

Which meant that Vinnie and his men were all out on the lawn, lathered up with soap and singing in the rain, as Yara laughed at them and the older women who could see the spectacle cheered.

The storm rolled over the city, and somehow it brought a sense of normalcy with it.

It didn’t do anything it shouldn’t. It wasn’t at the extreme end of the spectrum. It was just a regular seasonal storm. For once, things were beginning to go the way that they expected.

Then, the ground began to split apart.

Kalli’s [Terraforming] was a passive skill, and it had been running for quite some time now.

The debris on top of the soil had been broken down from the bottom up, and as the rain fell on it, the volcanic ash plains began to simply crumble from what was nearly concrete to a light gravel, and then to nothing at all as greenery pushed up through it and seemed to pull it under.

The volcanic layer wasn’t gone, but it had been moved down below the soil layer and broken down to the point that there were plants growing.

{Coordinator, you need to come to the walls and see this. I don’t think that the cameras will do it justice.} The wall guard announced over the radio.

Now that she was actually looking at it on the screens, Kalli thought that he was right. She wasn’t sure that she could believe her eyes. What was happening was impossible, no matter how she tried to justify it.

Sure, she had a skill for that general effect, but it barely grew plants when she tried to use it directly.

And this, it wasn’t just improving things near the wall.

Everywhere that they looked, right to the horizon, plants were breaking through, and even in the fire ravaged forest, new sapling were sprouting. Mostly the insanely fast-growing balsa trees.

But that was something.

The flight suit brought her to the wall in seconds, and Kalli landed right over the main gate, where she had an excellent view of the south, where the forest was visibly returning, and the volcanic wastes around the city were beginning to return to life.

However, there was something else that she noticed.

The rain that had been so pure only minutes earlier was beginning to leave sooty black trails on the buildings as it rained down, though they had been scoured clean only days ago by another storm. So, the dirt was from this storm, not the buildings.

It must have passed over a volcanic eruption, or a major sandstorm of some sort, to pick up that much grit.

Only, it had formed far out at sea only a day ago.

So, the only answer that Kalli could think of had to be a small volcanic eruption, likely from the same volcanic range that had gone off not long ago.

That might be normal, though?

Kalli thought back to her actual school lessons, and realized that she didn’t actually know if volcanoes could have aftershocks the way that earthquakes did. Smaller eruptions after the main one.

It seemed possible, though.

There were ranges that were mildly active for centuries at a time, so a major eruption might not relieve all the pressure on a magma vent. Especially if the world was in as bad of shape as they had suspected, and with the recent solar storms messing with the planet’s balance.

One of the men on wall guard duty walked up to Kalli, and stopped to look out into the driving rain.

"Coordinator, good evening. Do you think this is another test?"

Kalli shook her head. "No, I think this is a natural effect of heating the water. We’re likely going to have a full rainy season if the next trial doesn’t interrupt it. Look at it this way, we’ll get to enjoy a bit of nostalgia."

The warrior chuckled. "As long as it didn’t pick up anything too nasty over the islands. I’m guessing that’s where this grit is from. There are new volcanic islands out off the coast. The wind will have whipped up the ash before the rain began."

That made sense too. And it meant that the problem would likely sort itself out soon, as only a portion of the storm would be contaminated, and it was rotating.

All that they had to do was wait for it to pass, and the following rains would clean everything up.

And leave them to figure out just what had happened that had turned a volcanic ash waste into a verdant prairie with a budding forest.

Not that they were complaining.