After eight massacres in thirty years, the locals labelled it the Darkwood farm—basically another name for a death trap. So for almost a decade before goblins ravaged the village, no one lived there.
The lack of neighbours was what I was hoping would encourage monsters to attack me. If that was what encouraged them to attack in the past, then the effect should now be stronger. The closest farms were outside the village and that was a good four miles away.
It also meant I was four miles from the nearest help.
I really hope I wasn’t making another big mistake.
Chapter Seven
MANUAL LABOUR
The eighty yards between the edge of my property and the forest couldn’t be farmed. It was a no man’s land, designed to discourage monsters from leaving The Wild Woods and approaching the village’s inhabitants, which the local farmers were happy for, but really annoyed me. For what I planned the closer the better. Sure there were extra dangers involved, but that was what I wanted, unlike the deceased previous residents. Of course, knowing about those risks, Brek initially refused to move the farmhouse to within a couple of fields’ length of the edge of the village’s zone of influence. We’d had several heated arguments over the farmhouse’s placement before I finally gave up and asked Jeric to have a word with him.
I mean, I knew where Brek’s argument was coming from. He knew the history of this farm as well as everyone else in the village and didn’t want to be part of building a death trap, but he was the village builder, and the mayor’s word was law. He’d grumbled through the entire process, and I’d caught him glaring at the old barn like it was somehow its fault for surviving at the very edge of the village when nothing else had.
The barn that received so many glares was part of the original Darkwood farm, predating all the death and tragedy. It was made from dark aged logs, which smelled like moss, though it was perfectly dry inside. The interior was large enough to fit the farmhouse three times over, and the farmhouse wasn’t small. It was the biggest farmhouse I could find among the nearby abandoned farms. It had five rooms, split between a kitchen, a sitting room, three bedrooms, and a hallway. I’d turned one of the bedrooms into a panic room and built an underground bunker beneath in case whatever I lured out of the forest was too tough to handle.
The farmhouse certainly wasn’t a palace, but it was bigger than any place I’d ever rented, though the lack of central heating and electric lights was noticeable. The fact that I couldn’t turn on a tap and get water, let alone hot water, also sucked. But beggars can’t be choosers, and that goes double for anyone who receives real estate for free.
With the barn and farmhouse set up and the traps in place, there was only one job left for me to do before I started baiting monsters. Unfortunately, it was the hard part.
“You can do this,” I whispered to myself. “You have to do this. You want to do this. It’s just farming. Boring, boring farming. But you have to do this. You’ve done everything else. You can no longer put this off. You’ve already found every excuse you could not to do this, including actually working. It’s time.”
The hard compact soil in front of my new farmhouse stared back at me, promising working it would not be easy or fun. It mocked me. Daring me to pick up my tools and try to tame it.
Stupid dirt.
“I honestly don’t see why this is so hard for you,” Salem said, scoffing at my suffering. “You spent an entire week happily digging that pit inside the barn without complaining once. You just need to mark out your field and turn over the soil. This is nothing compared to what you’ve been doing.”
I pulled my gaze from my immortal enemy and glared down at the familiar. “First of all, that wasn’t a pit. It was a hole. And secondly, in my world, it’s every man’s dream to one day dig a giant hole. It was a beautiful time and I already miss it.”
Salem shook his furry head in a very human gesture. “That is actually impressive. Your ability to procrastinate literally allows you to capitalize on any distracting avenue, no matter how small. Is this sort of impairment common in your world or is this curse something you have personally received?”
“Shut up.”
There was nothing I could say that wouldn’t make me sound like a child throwing a tantrum or let me win the argument. I was procrastinating. So I silently picked up the wooden peg and mallet and began hammering the peg into the ground. My arm rose and fell, striking the wooden peg perfectly.
The stupid ground resisted, mocking me with less and less progress after each strike.
My gaze inadvertently wandered to my right, to the farmhouse, and the rocking chair sitting out front. The veranda called to me with its siren song, whispering that there were books inside I still hadn’t read. All I had to do was put down my tools, walk a few yards, and we could be together enjoying ourselves. It was tantalizing me with its rocking chair and comfortable cushion, armrests where I could place a mug of ale.
No, I can’t. I have to do this. I have to.
Maybe having Brek face the front of the farmhouse towards the forest hadn’t been the best idea. Maybe I should have faced it away like the barn. Maybe then I wouldn’t be so tempted. But I wanted to be able to see the monsters coming from the forest and the front of the farmhouse had more shutter-covered openings I could gaze out from.
I shook my head, trying to clear away the distracting thoughts.
No, building the farmhouse facing the opposite direction wasn’t the answer. I just had to put my head down and work.
Stupid farming.
The peg finally went far enough in and I hooked the measuring string over the top and began pacing out the field using the string. I’d been both happy and a little annoyed to learn they used the metric system here, having received it from another incarnate. I was happy I already understood their measurements; I was annoyed it was the metric system. I was an American, damn it. It wouldn’t bother me so much if they also used the imperial system, but they used something called the crown system. Why couldn’t they measure things in feet and inches?
No, the crown system had to use things like fields. The name and distance of which came from the length of the side of the field I was currently making. It was roughly a hundred feet.
I finished hammering the corner pegs, muttering darkly to myself, while using the right-angle device I’d had to buy from those thieving merchants that came through the village to trade and began doing the cross-section to make sure I got my angles right.
This whole world was far too strict.
Like, a farm wasn’t considered a farm unless it had a farmhouse, barn, and a working field. Magic was obviously involved. Like, the well wouldn’t even fill with water and the root cellar wouldn’t stay cold unless you had those three things.
But there was more to it than that. You couldn’t just build any old house on a farm. You had to build a farmhouse—which was different from a townhouse. And your field had to be almost exactly square, or the magic that grew crops wouldn’t take effect, and the field wouldn’t become part of your farm.
I was sure that there was an underlying reason for all of it, but right now, I didn’t care. It was just stupid and annoying.
I spent the next few hours measuring out the edges, making sure it was all square, and then began cutting a straight line in the dirt, using the string as a guide. Any time I was even slightly off, Salem spoke up, criticizing my work.
It was hell.
A week trudged by. I finished turning over the field in the late afternoon of the seventh day. A prompt appeared.
Well done, you have successfully added a new field to your farm.
Unlike acquired skills that automatically gained experience, classes did not, so I held out my right hand after the prompt appeared and watched as a small green crystal, the size of a pea, coalesced on my palm. The process kind of tingled.
You have earned 1 farmer experience.
Would you like to absorb this experience?
Yes/No?
/> I selected Yes and grinned as another prompt appeared. It only took a single point of experience for anyone to gain their first level in their class. I could have bought the experience months ago, but the benefits of a single level were practically non-existent, so non-existent that Salem said beer was a better investment.
Well done, you have acquired enough class experience to increase your Farmer level.
Class: Farmer
Level: 1
Effects:
+1% to farming ability.
+1% to farming ability while on your farm.
Your Strength has increased by 1
Your Agility has increased by 1
You have 1 unassigned attribute points.
Would you like to assign it?
Yes/No.
I selected Yes.
I’d spent a lot of time, and I mean a lot of time, talking to Salem about attribute points and their function and effect. For the most part, they did what I thought they would.
Strength made you stronger and increased your damage with all weapons, except things like a crossbow which relied on stored energy.
Endurance made you fitter and increased your stamina but it also made you use less stamina when doing exercise or labour.
Dexterity improved your balance and made you less clumsy, but also increased accuracy with weapons and fine motor control, along with increasing your mental dexterity.
Agility made you faster while walking, working, and fighting, but it also made you a little more accurate when you worked or fought more slowly. Additionally, it increased your thinking speed.
Constitution increased your health, but it also increased your lifespan and decreased your chances of getting sick or how easily you were poisoned. There was also an increase in the rate you healed, but that didn’t become relevant until you had hundreds of points invested.
For the most part, all of these physical attributes were run-of-the-mill like most RPG games I’d played. The fact that dexterity didn’t increase ranged damage made sense to me. I’d watched enough English longbow videos on YouTube to know that an archer’s strength was the main driver behind the amount of force an arrow was fired with. So it had always made dexterity in games seem sort of like a bad joke.
The other three attributes were a little more interesting.
Intelligence increased your mana and improved your memory, but that improvement was less effective as you aged, in which case constitution and endurance actually improved your memory more at those stages. Its main effect, however, involved your ability to analyse people and objects. The higher your intelligence, the more information you could receive from the Academy of Law in the capital. And despite the improvement to memory, it didn’t actually make you smarter that only occurred as a combination of leveling all your attributes. But it did occur which was quite a surprise.
Of course, wisdom didn’t make you directly wiser, but it did make you more perceptive of the world around you. It helped you read people more accurately and improved your battle awareness. Over time, noticing all those little details did tend to make you wiser since you learned more of the decisions and actions that led to pleasant or unpleasant consequences.
Charisma was the oddest one. It behaved like the old Dungeons and Dragons charisma. It made you more charismatic and attractive while increasing your drive and willpower. And while it had absolutely no effect on combat power, it had numerous effects on social power. High charisma made those around you more likely to agree with you and help you. It turned you into the cool guy. The one everyone wanted to be around.
Learning that had made me hesitate at first. I didn’t like the idea of someone’s attributes manipulating me or mine possibly manipulating someone else. It sounded too much like mind control and love potions, but Salem informed me that it wasn’t that sort of manipulation.
It was far more straightforward.
Charisma was nothing but pure natural attraction and human stupidity. In his words, humans were easily led by anyone who was both attractive and well-spoken and increasing your charisma did no more than enhance these abilities. The attribute's actual benefits were supposedly negligible to a logic-driven individual or someone who was blindfolded.
So after learning all that and finding out I only received three attribute points a level, two of which I had no control over that would automatically be distributed to my strength and agility or endurance and constitution, depending on the level being even or odd, I’d come to one simple conclusion. I didn’t get enough attribute points. At just three a level, there was little chance for significant improvement. I couldn’t mix and match and share them around, like craftsmen classes which got five, and combat classes which received seven.
There was also the natural attribute factor to consider. Up until an attribute reached fifty, it was considered to be within the normal human range. If you were naturally fit and healthy, increasing your strength wouldn’t do anything until you were past fifty. If you were someone like The Mountain, that massive guy from Game of Thrones, then strength might not affect you until you were past a hundred. The reverse was also true. If you were a hundred-pound pipsqueak, you would probably start getting stronger after passing twenty strength. So, it all sort of depended on your natural talents.
Since I received so few attribute points, it came down to two options: wisdom or charisma. Gaining insight into people or gaining favour with them.
I would have considered intelligence, but Salem taught me about blessings. They were non-class-based attributes that clerics could bestow upon you. They increased your endurance, constitution, and intelligence depending on which ones you acquired, or if you looked at it another way, your stamina, health, and mana. But they weren’t cheap. Even the most common blessings cost two crowns each. Despite the expense being outside what most could afford, even the most impoverished farmer never put their free attributes in those three choices. That sort of thinking kind of reminded me of the people back home who would vote to protect the wealthy, not because they liked wealthy people, or thought they needed the money, but because they wanted to be them, and were brainwashed into thinking they would one day win the lottery and take advantage of those same breaks they were protecting. Winning the lottery was never going to happen. But it didn’t stop them from acting like it was true.
However, just because it wasn’t true for them, it didn’t mean it wasn’t true for me. I had a plan.
So I dropped the free attribute point into charisma.
At the end of the day, there was no point having high enough wisdom to understanding everyone around you if no one wanted to work with you. And with thirty or more levels worth of attributes points in charisma, it would begin to improve my chances of getting laid.
Hopefully, my plan for trapping monsters would work out because not only would it earn me levels, it would make me money, and with money, I’d be able to buy more attribute points through blessing.
As the prompt faded, another took its place.
Well done, your farm has activated. You have six days to plant a crop to maintain your farm’s active status or you will lose it.
I glanced at the dirt field I’d turned over. It looked different than it had a minute ago, more orderly and organised. It suddenly wasn’t just a mess of broken-up dirt. The clumps of grass and weeds were gone and I could see rocks that hadn’t been there. I mean, I’d read that random rocks would appear when I cut a new field. But seeing it in person was so unnatural that it threw me for a moment.
Eventually, however, I turned and headed for the barn where I kept my tools, scattering the chickens I’d bought a few weeks ago with my passing. There was enough daylight left that I could get started on planting the squash.
Why squash?
It was simple. Because of my level, I couldn’t grow anything better like tomatoes or strawberries. There were only a handful of crops you could grow without needing any levels or skill in the farmer class, and squash was the easiest. When I reached level five I
’d be able to grow a second field of squash. But even if I did plant the second field, my farm would still be haemorrhaging money.
God, I hated farming.
A paw struck my face, waking me.
“Arnold, get up,” Salem growled.
My eyes shot open, expecting the middle of the night and an attack. Sunlight streamed through the crack between the wooden shutters, blinding me. I flinched away from the light, turned over, and closed my eyes.
“It’s dawn, Salem. Why wake me up at dawn?”
“There is a ghost in the kitchen.”
That got my attention. Monsters didn’t attack during the day, but apparently, ghosts did. I threw the covers to the side and rolled off the bed, grabbing the spear and machete I kept beside it. “How dangerous is it and how do I kill it?”
My heart pounded at the prospect of gaining experience. The farm had been active for less than a day and my plan was already working. This was just too good.
Salem sighed. “You do not kill ghosts, you banish them, and they are not dangerous unless a necromancer is involved.”
I grinned. “How do I banish it, then, and how much experience does it give?”
Salem rolled his eyes. “You banish nothing. You need to go talk to Redcliff. Only a wizard or cleric can banish a ghost…and you will not gain any experience.”
My excitement died. “I won’t gain experience?” I put the spear and machete down where I had found them so they would be ready if I needed them and began to climb back into bed.
“What do you think you are doing?”
“I’m going back to sleep. You said it wasn’t dangerous, and if it’s not going to give me experience, then it can wait until later.”
I pulled the nice warm covers back over me and closed my eyes. Salem knew his stuff; if he said the ghost wasn’t dangerous, then it wasn’t dangerous, and I’d seen enough monsters since arriving and going mad in the forest that another one wasn’t going to pull me out of bed just so I could see what it looked like.
Oh Great! I was Reincarnated as a Farmer Page 9