Chapter 287: Storms Will Pass

The storm passed smoothly over the city of Marimgar, and as predicted, the ash from the storm passing over the newly formed volcanic islands didn’t last.

Once it was past, the storm washed everything clean again, and the lands outside the walls continued to turn lush and fertile. It was the most insane thing that they had ever seen, crazier than even the day that they watched the city vanish.

But it was a good thing, so the residents of Marimgar all took it as a sign that the System was rewarding them for persevering through the hard times.

They had gathered as many surviving humans as they could, and their scouting patrols hadn’t found any more to attempt to rescue. So, they should be the strongest bastion of humanity in this part of the continent, or perhaps all of it.

They couldn’t say for sure, but the satellite feeds hadn’t shown them a lot of hope before they had gone offline.

Even now that the solar storm was truly over, they still couldn’t make contact with any of them, and their attempts to locate satellites with telescopes had proven to be a failure, due to weather. That left them with a bit of hope that some would come back online, but none of the heroes actually expected to get the satellite feeds back.

They were going to have to rely on the City of Marimgar as their base of communications now.

The new communications devices were more than sufficient for their purposes, but not all of the vehicles had them, and they were expensive enough that not every group had someone with one.

Radio did the job well enough if they were outside the walls, and everywhere inside the city had wireless network access.

Since the rain wasn’t damaging anything, and the city’s barrier was letting it smoothly through, the teams began to head out in the speeders to inspect the area. There were new trees, plants of many sorts, and an aggressive regrowth of the tubers.

Those plants really were durable.

They were avoiding sending the APC teams out for now, as they didn’t want to leave deep ruts in what was likely to be soft, rain soaked dirt. But they did get off the speeders and take some samples while they checked on the plants.

It all looked good, according to the radio reports.

Not "Normal", but that was a given, as they didn’t actually recognize some of the plants, and everything was growing at an accelerated rate.

The teams didn’t go far, only twenty kilometres out, but that was enough.

Around the five kilometre mark, the plant life began to fade, with only the occasional sprout punching up through the ground, but the hard packed volcanic ash was crumbling for three times that distance.

So, the growth effect was strongest closest to the city, but the repair effect was spreading much further.

They still had plenty of time left in this trial, and with so much new greenery, there was no doubt that they had completely crushed the requirements. All that they had to do was to protect what they had, and wait for the timer to end.

The fury of the storm rapidly faded as the core moved past them, and as the next morning came, only a few final hours of light rain remained before clear skies took over.

That caused a burst of growth among the new plants, and soon entire fields of crops were sprouting again, while the open grasslands returned to Marimgar’s outskirts. It was beautiful, and with so much new growth, they could honestly say that the region looked like a proper city again, and not just a fortress.

Sure, they did all their patrols in armour, and using hovercraft, but before noon, the Earth Mages were starting to build small farm shacks where teams could rest out of the sun during the day.

In a less volatile situation, that would be a collection of single room farm houses, a very "pioneer" sort of structure.

But today, they were just a good spot to rest and have lunch before returning to the safety of the city. Nobody would stay out overnight unless there was an excellent reason for it, or they decided to run a night patrol.

No monsters had been seen in the area since the solar storm, but they weren’t taking any chances.

Even Kalli was utterly shocked at the progress of the region the moment that the ash was eliminated. She had never expected that the plants of this world would fill in so fast, or in such biodiversity.

There were even new varieties of wildflowers that the botany minded members were going out to pick.

Flowering plants often had medicinal purposes, and they needed to test them for known medicinal compounds while they were flowering. If they waited, they risked missing them in their prime.

But that wasn’t the only thing that they were checking.

Every plant that they sampled was checked for toxicity, medicinal purposes, edibility, nutritional value, and magical energy levels. Because some of them were holding an impressive amount of energy, and might help with the heroes’ growth.

The plant catalogue alone was a huge undertaking, with hundreds of members of the lower city working on it.

The work wasn’t particularly difficult, and the computer did most of the analysis. But someone had to check it all, and run checks to cross-reference chemical interactions. They couldn’t risk the analysis overlooking something potentially fatal.

Or something tasty.

That was the priority for most of the scouts, though they didn’t speak of it openly. Everyone was looking for the next tuber plant, in the hope that they would get to name it, and make their plant a household name in the city.

How cool would it be if the city’s new most popular food was named after you?

That was the ultimate flex.

Kalli thought the same thing, but she was too busy to go out and pick flowers herself. Instead, she opened a forum on the app, for members of the scouting teams to suggest names for new plants, and for others to vote on the most popular names.

The finder of the plant wasn’t obligated to pick the name, but a little bit of social pressure, and some algorithm adjustment, was a sure way to end up with better names.