Chapter 134: Sinbound Employment – Beadu
Beadu was still chewing through the bread when Beorn finally answered her question.
"When a farmer harvests a Stearne crop."
He started to explain with a slow tone, "He doesn’t plant all the grain again next season. He keeps the best part of it. The strongest grain, the plants that handled drought better, the ones that produced more."
He folded his arms.
"Then he repeats the process every year. Over time, the plant changes."
Beadu looked toward the Stearne row she had boosted earlier. He could see her trying to connect the explanation to the part of the process she already understood.
She replied even more slowly than him, "So I push it that way. Like making it grow faster, except instead of faster, I push it toward being stronger."
She gestured vaguely with the bread.
"More... durable."
"Not quite," Beorn corrected. "But different."
She frowned at him.
The problem was that he wasn’t entirely certain how to explain the distinction. He understood the outcome he wanted, hardier crops, deeper roots, better resistance. But the actual link between her ability and those results remained unclear. Every time he tried to explain it directly, the logic fell apart halfway through.
After a pause, he continued carefully, "What matters isn’t how much power you put into the plant, but what kind of plant comes out afterward."
Beadu took another bite of bread.
"Okay," she nodded.
The tone made it obvious she did not understand.
Beorn moved toward the Nepe plot and crouched beside one of the plants. Part of the rounded root pushed above the soil, pale beneath the spread of green leaves overhead.
He needed a simpler way to explain it.
"Think about a branch."
He tried again. "A young branch can be bent while it’s growing. If you guide it early enough, the rest of it keeps growing in that direction afterward. Plants already contain different possible outcomes inside them. I am not asking you to invent something new."
He looked back at her.
"I am asking you to decide which becomes real."
Beadu followed him over to the plot. She still held the bread in one hand, but her attention had shifted completely to him. Beorn had already learned that this meant she was actually listening instead of waiting for him to stop talking.
"So the plant already knows what it could become," she blinked. "It just hasn’t decided yet."
"Close enough."
Her eyes moved across the nearby rows. Stearne. Nepe. Bēan.
Her expression went from confusion to recognition.
"I noticed something during the exercises. Some plants feel..."
She hesitated, searching for the right word.
"Fine? Like they’ll survive on their own."
She pointed toward another row.
"Others feel needy. Like if nobody keeps checking on them, they’ll die."
She looked at him seriously.
"Is that the plant’s personality?"
Beorn opened his mouth to dismiss the idea automatically. Then he stopped.
Scientifically, what she described made little sense within any biological theory he understood. But in practice, her interpretation matched the actual goal surprisingly well. If her power interacted directly with deeper traits inside the plant, then resilience and weakness might genuinely feel different to her.
She could be sensing those differences without understanding why.
He had an explanation for the principle.
He did not have a better explanation for the experience itself.
"It is not personality," he replied finally. "But I think you are sensing something real."
He wrote a note into the ledger as he spoke. "The plants that feel fine probably need less support from the environment around them. That is exactly what I need. A crop that survives poor conditions without high cost."
Beadu crouched beside the nearest Nepe plant and touched one of the leaves with two fingers.
"This one feels fine," she tilted her head.
"They should. That is why we can plant them."
"And you want to plant the needy ones too."
She held up a finger before he could interrupt.
"Or make these even more independent."
Her eyes narrowed in concentration.
"Like teaching a kid to work for food without help."
Beorn paused.
That was not the way he had intended to teach her. It was oversimplified and probably wrong in a dozen ways. But it also translated directly into something she could actually use.
More importantly, he had no proof his own explanation would work any better.
"Try it," he sighed.
Beadu focused on the Nepe plant again.
This time the shift in her concentration looked different from when she accelerated growth. Earlier, her power had spread outward quickly, almost forcefully.
Now it moved slower, almost like a gentle embrace.
Like she was nitpicking instead of flooding it.
Then the root changed color.
One moment it was pale white beneath the soil. Three seconds later it had become an intense blue-violet, rich enough that the surrounding dirt suddenly looked dull and grey by comparison.
The color was weird in a way that felt immediate and undeniable.
Simply impossible.
The leaves stayed green.
The plant itself remained completely intact.
But the root was now vividly blue.
Both of them stared at it.
"Did I kill it?" Beadu blinked.
Beorn crouched immediately beside the plant. He examined the surface carefully.
The coloration was even across the entire exposed root. The change appeared entirely cosmetic.
Which somehow made it worse.
"The color changed," he stated.
Beadu stared at him.
"Yes. I noticed that part. Is that bad?"
Beorn pulled out the ledger before answering. If he did not document this immediately, he would forget details later.
The quill moved steadily across the page.
Blue-violet root coloration. Sudden onset.
Then, after a brief hesitation, he wrote that the result exceeds current theoretical knowledge.
He looked back at her.
"What exactly did you do?"
Beadu shrugged.
"I told it to stop being lazy and act more self-reliant."
Beorn hesitated, then wrote that down too.
Then he straightened slowly.
"It’s a good start." he nodded.
Beadu looked between him and the impossible blue root with growing confidence. She had clearly reached the right outcome through reasoning that should not have worked.
Somehow, that bothered Beorn less than it should have.
He turned toward the surrounding plots.
"From now on, you will work with seeds." he said suddenly.
She looked at him.
"A mature plant has already settled into most of its structure."
He pointed toward the Nepe. "Seeds are different. If you change them before they start to grown, the entire plant is born from that adjustment."
He was already reorganizing the experiment in his head.
Specific seeds, individual treatment, long-term observation cycles.
"I’ll prepare groups of seeds for you."
He started to explain more excitedly. "You will nudge their characteristics one by one. Afterward, I plant them and track the result across multiple growth stages."
Beadu froze. She stared at him as if he was telling her a nonsensical joke.
"So my job," she continued very carefully, "is sitting with seeds."
"Exactly."
"One at a time."
"Correct."
"And talking them through a new personality."
"You are not adjusting the-"
She pointed silently toward the glowing blue root.
Beorn stopped talking.
The root remained extremely blue.
"Essentially, yes," he admitted.
Beadu stared at him for multiple long seconds. The expression on her face slowly shifted from confusion to realization.
Then to horror.
"My job," she gasped, "is exercises."
Beorn sighed.
