The silence inside Greenhouse Alpha was not empty; it was pressurized. It was the kind of silence that existed at the bottom of the ocean or inside a vacuum chamber—a heavy, expectant stillness that hummed with the latent energy of the soil.
Arthur stood at the threshold of the central plot, his boots crunching softly on the reinforced concrete walkway. Behind him, the climate control units pulsed with a low-frequency thrum, circulating air that had been scrubbed, ionized, and stripped of any identifiable thermal signature.
To the world outside the lead-lined walls, Arthur was a broken prince playing in the mud. To the Divine Intelligence Core residing in the folds of his consciousness, he was the architect of a new world order.
"Ciel," Arthur said, his voice cutting through the ozone-thick air. "Status of the secondary perimeter. Did my sister's drone leave any 'parting gifts'?"
regional hub. Analysis of the encrypted uplink suggests Kim Soha has categorized your activities as 'high-cost manuvering.' She has flagged the Haenam facility for monthly surveillance but has lowered the priority level. You have achieved a window of invisibility.>
"Sigh. That's the problem with high IQ geniuses. She loves me too much to see me failed so she spied on me with the drone. After all I have almost spent the $5 million father gave me."
He reached into the pocket of his tactical trousers and pulled out two small, unremarkable plastic pouches.
One contained the seeds of 'Roma' tomatoes—a variety known for its thick walls and low moisture content, ideal for paste.
The other held 'Black Diamond' watermelon seeds. These were the most common, genetically standard seeds he could find.
He didn't want specialty hybrids; he wanted the most basic biological templates so that the transformation wrought by the All-Purpose Farming Tool (AFT) would be undeniable.
"I know," Arthur replied, his ruby eyes reflecting the dim, artificial light of the greenhouse. "That's why we aren't selling fruit, Ciel. We're selling the end of the line. We're selling the finished product."
He knelt at the edge of the obsidian-black dirt. The soil didn't look like earth anymore; it looked like crushed velvet, shimmering with a faint, iridescent sheen.
With a thought, the AFT materialized in his hand. It wasn't the matte-black decoy he had shown the drone, but the true artifact—a tool of shifting, runic silver that felt warm to the touch, as if it possessed a circulatory system of its own.
"If I sell a tomato," Arthur mused, pressing the tip of the AFT into the dirt, "I sell a seed. I sell a DNA sequence. I sell a chance for a scientist in a lab to figure out how I did it. But if I sell ketchup? If I sell pasteurized, vacuum-sealed juice? I sell a mystery. I sell a product where the biology has been shattered and reconstituted into a brand."
He began to move. Using the AFT in 'Precision Sower' mode, he didn't just drop seeds into the ground; he placed them. As the tool touched the earth, the runes flared a deep, rhythmic amber. He felt the "soul" of the seeds—tiny, dormant sparks of life—suddenly engulfed by the roaring furnace of the obsidian soil's vitality.
As Arthur worked, his mind was already miles ahead of the planting process. He wasn't thinking about the harvest; he was thinking about the Japanese automated lines he had already begun to negotiate through a series of shell companies in Osaka.
He had no intention of hiring workers for now. Human beings were variables. They had eyes that saw too much, mouths that talked too much, and loyalties that could be bought by the Kim Group's bottomless coffers. His "fortress" required a different kind of inhabitant: cold, tireless, and blind.
The plan was a masterclass in industrial secrecy: The tomatoes would be harvested later by workers and fed directly into a high-pressure steam extraction unit.
Using Japanese-engineered vacuum evaporators, the tomatoes would be reduced to a thick, nutrient-dense paste at low temperatures to preserve the "Vitality" enzymes while destroying the cellular structure of the seeds.
A state-of-the-art bottling line, capable of processing 500 units per minute, would seal the ketchup and juice in opaque, UV-protected glass.
By the time the product left the Haenam peninsula, it would be a commodity, not a biological specimen. A bottle of "A-Rank Ketchup" would contain enough nutrients to replace a well known brand of products, yet to a lab, it would simply look like a high-quality extraction, oddly stable condiment.
"Ciel, initiate the order for the K-Series filling modules from Morisawa Robotics," Arthur commanded, his brow slick with sweat despite his 'Healthy Body' blessing.
The sheer amount of energy he was channeling through the AFT was staggering. "Use the remaining $300,000 as advance what I got from father. Have the shipping manifests labeled as 'Experimental Hydroponic Filtration Units' for the Haenam Research Project."
"They won't," Arthur countered, a feral glint in his eyes. "We aren't using the grid for the machines. By the time the fef."
Hours passed. Arthur had finished the third row of watermelons when the first of the tomatoes began to break the surface. It wasn't the slow, agonizing crawl of natural growth. It was a violent, rhythmic pulsing.
The sprouts were not green; they were a deep, vibrant emerald, nearly translucent, with veins that glowed with a faint gold light. They will climbed the support wires with predatory efficiency, spiraling upward as if they were trying to reach the vaulted ceiling.
"Look at them," Arthur whispered, standing back to wipe his brow. "They aren't just plants. They're bio-reactors."
"Then we move faster," Arthur said. He looked down at the AFT, which was now vibrating in his hand, echoing the heartbeat of the plants he had just created.
Arthur closed his eyes, listening to the frantic, beautiful sound of the plants breathing. The soil was black, the light was golden, and the future was being bottled, one pressurized valve at a time.
Arthur's genius lay in the depersonalization of the miracle. He knew that the world would marvel at his crops, and that will be his entry point in this messed up world of billionaires.
By transforming the "Vitality" of the AFT into mundane consumer goods—ketchup and juice—he was doing something far more dangerous than farming. He was integrating his power into the daily lives of the masses by giving them better goods at the same price.
The Ketchup would be the "hook." It would not be marketed as a luxury condiment, it will be sold as goods for people. But its true purpose was to introduce the "Vitality" minerals into the human gut biome on a global scale will make people discard other ketchup brands other than his.
The Watermelon Juice would be the "cure." A recovery drink so potent it would make other energy beverage giants tremble. And because it was "juice," it would bypass the rigorous clinical trials required for new drugs.
"The secret stays in the bottle," Arthur muttered, his voice a low promise to the dark earth. "And I hold the only key."