the.com/cultivation

means The careful, patient work of developing something — skill, land, character, or (in fiction) mystical power — through sustained effort rather than luck.

from From Latin cultivare, 'to till or tend,' built from cultus, the past participle of colere, 'to cultivate, inhabit, worship, care for.' The same root gives us 'culture' and 'colony' — all tied to the ancient image of working soil so it yields something. The word stayed literal (tending crops) for centuries before stretching into the figurative sense of tending a skill, a friendship, or a mind. Its use for fictional power-farming (as in cultivation novels) is a very modern graft onto that old agricultural trunk.