Cal wasn’t ashamed to say that he spent more than a few minutes watching the golem lob dirt ball after dirt ball until the field was cleared.
It did more of the same when it moved to clean up the acre of surface layer he dug up in an attempt to modify his trance state.
Cal turned his attention away and hopped onto his meditation hill. There wasn’t much he could do when it felt like his body yearned to sleep for years.
I just need to recover my mana and avoid using it for an hour or two.
He looked around his field with a small smile. As long as he ignored the future uncertainties, he felt proud that he was turning a barren wasteland into a true farm.
Cal’s eye twitched when the tremendous crash nearby shook his meditation hill. It broke his untroubled mood.
The novelty of the golem lobbing rock is quickly wearing off. I wanted to get it to use tools anyway. It would be a dream come true if it could upgrade them.
He slowly looked away from the golem and attempted to block out the sound. However, it was nearly impossible with how loud it was. If it wasn’t for any unnecessary sounds blocked from entering the house, Tavia might have rushed out and tried to set the golem on fire.
Cal smirked as he imagined a furious Tavia waving her fist at a flaming yet undamaged golem staring back with a dumb expression.
He heard Nibbles climbing up the meditation hill from the back. She must have gotten tired of staring at the harvested Sunfire Grains.
“What do you think of that?” Cal asked after seeing that she was content to stare at the golem.
Nibbles sat down and shrugged her tiny shoulders.
He raised his eyebrow at her sitting position. Seeing a little rabbit/squirrel-looking creature sitting cross-legged was more amusing than it had any right to be.
She’s copying me.
“That golem is going to be my new helper—” Cal paused when he was interrupted by another loud crash. That sounded different.
He turned to see that the golem had started a new pile. The previous one it was lobbing balls to was already at the height of the old piles of rocks Cal had created.
This is another sign that it thinks outside my instructions. I’ll have to test how far it can go.
Nibbles let out a skeptical squeak at his claim. He was coming to understand her with more ease the longer they communicated. At least, he thought he did.
“Let’s not doubt it already,” Cal chided gently. “I just created the golem and it’s already helping me. Just think of the time—” He sucked in a deep breath when he saw the golem miss a lob for the first time.
Cal swiftly stood up and launched himself forward, repeating the jump when he landed on the ground to rocket above his house. He slammed his fist into the compacted ball of rock and shattered it into tiny pebbles before his momentum made him land just beyond the back of the house.
“Stop!” Cal yelled before he sucked in deep breaths like he had run around the Celestial Order’s territory several times over. He bent over and rested his hands on his knees as he kept his eye on the golem.
Thankfully, it had frozen in place at his command.
Alright, the golem isn’t perfect. It was about to make a hole in my house… and I'm more exhausted than I thought.
Cal would remember this the next time he chose to channel so much mana. It felt like his limbs were weighed down by boulders. Even moving his fingers was a chore.
“Forget it,” he muttered as he sat down with a heavy grunt. “I’ll rest here for a few minutes… or hours.”
Cal noticed a blur shooting toward the golem. Nibbles had a furious expression as she climbed up the golem, stood on its shoulder, and started to berate it in loud, rapid-fire squeaks. The golem slowly turned its face to her and simply stared.
He chuckled and lay on his back before closing his eyes, just for a few minutes.
Nibbles should be given the title of Overseer.
***
“Cal, wake up.”
He snapped his eyes open when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Tavia’s amused face was over him as she shook him gently.
Cal quickly took in the dark sky, and his eyes widened in shock. He yelped, “My crops!”
He shot up from the ground and rushed to check on his crops, his fear dropping rapidly when he saw they were fine. He checked on his pond and saw the water level had gone lower, but it still wasn’t at the point where it was dangerous.
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Cal checked the state of his body and saw everything looked normal. He didn’t feel fatigued, and his mana core was full. The unintended nap worked.
He cast [Rainfall].
He stared as the heavy rain fell onto the pond and heard Tavia walk up to stand beside him.
“So you make golems now,” she commented after a few seconds.
“Apparently,” Cal nodded, though he allowed himself to feel amusement at her confused tone.
“If the guild doesn’t help someone like you, they are full of idiots,” Tavia declared.
He shrugged, knowing her confidence in the competency of the guild was misplaced. The more he learned about the guild, the less sense it made with how they operated. He still didn’t understand why someone who was a [Farmer] was almost disregarded.
Of course, Cal wasn’t talking about himself, but the regular Initiates.
He couldn't understand why they would undermine themselves when so much fertile land was available in the territory. What was the point of suppressing farmers to the extent that they had to struggle just to survive?
Even he could see the issue of sabotaging the food supply by only growing low-quality crops because there were no high-ranked farmers.
“Your expression isn’t giving me confidence,” Tavia said dryly.
“It wasn’t meant to,” Cal’s response had the same tone. “You’ve been traveling around the guild’s territory. Does it inspire confidence in you?”
“I—” Tavia tilted her head but couldn’t come up with any examples. She set it aside. “You’re overfilling it.”
“I know.”
“It’s going to drown most of the soil in this part of the field if you keep going,” she stated as the water slowly spread.
“I don’t plan on going that far.” Cal felt his mana core depleting below the halfway mark. The additional water extended halfway over the channel that connected the pond to the hole that fed the tunnels. At that point, he cut off his mana and allowed the spell to disperse.
He would have liked to cover the hole, too, but the pond was strange. He didn’t want the water to depress the ground below the hole’s connection to the tunnels.
Nibbles refused to go too deep into the pond, so if the connection was blocked, opening it back up would require more unneeded work.
“So, I’m guessing you’ll be working late today?” Tavia asked casually.
Cal thought about what he had to do and could comfortably say he wouldn’t sleep much tonight. “I’ll be up very late.”
“Perfect, I have just the spell to help with that,” Tavia said with an impish smile.
Cal had been ready to go to work, but he couldn’t let her say that without expanding. “You—a mage specializing in the fire element—think you can help me? You do know I’m trying to farm, right?”
Tavia gained a fiery glint in her eyes. “So you think I don’t have enough control to stop my spell from burning everything to the ground?”
“That was not a challenge!” Cal cut off any ideas she might be getting.
“Fine,” Tavia huffed slightly in disappointment. “It won’t be close to your crops, so don’t worry about it.”
He gave her a distrustful look before letting it be. The only reason he was wary was the memory of her showing Seris a fire spell. Specifically, the look she had when casting the spell. He had labeled Tavia as a nearly unhinged pyromaniac from that point.
Cal took the plow out of the storage room and got to work on the new five-thousand-square-foot patch, which was almost ready for planting.
The plow was a problematic tool to upgrade. The initial tests he made with it, combined with the last two patches he had planted, barely gave him any task completions.
[Uncommon Plow: Good Quality] Upgrade: 166/800 Tasks
Each task was equivalent to plowing around ten square feet of soil, so the plow was the slowest of the bunch compared to the other tools.
Cal placed the blade of the plow in the mulch and pushed, slicing through the soil and tilling it in preparation for planting the Sunfire Grain seeds. He was near the end of the patch when the land flashed a bright yellow before quickly dimming to bearable levels.
He quickly looked up to see a ball of fire floating high above the field. He couldn’t feel any heat from it due to the distance, but it was burning brightly enough to act like a replacement sun in the night.
“What do you think, Cal!?” Tavia asked with a strained voice, though she had a smile from showing off her new spell.
“Impressive,” Cal praised with sincerity. The spell’s current use as a light had to only scratch the surface of what it was capable of.
“It’s—” Tavia was interrupted by Nibbles appearing before her, giving her several praising squeaks. “… What is she trying to say?”
“Obviously, she’s praising you,” Cal shook his head.
“Right… obviously,” Tavia gave him a strange look before smiling at Nibbles. “Thank you for the compliment, Nibbles.”
Nibbles preened before unceremoniously choosing to take that as permission to hop onto Tavia’s shoulder.
“Cal, look! She likes me!” Tavia exclaimed as she gently patted Nibbles on the head.
I think Nibbles likes every human.
“It looks like it,” Cal said, not sharing his suspicions but acting like it was an achievement. He continued his work and pushed the plow until he finished the entire patch.
The fireball that Tavia conjured was slowly dimming, but it was already impressive that she was able to keep it active for the entire thirty minutes or so that he was plowing the field. It finally disappeared when after he returned the plow to the storage room.
He was carrying the barrel of Sunfire Grain seeds and the rake when he saw Tavia sitting by herself as she recovered her mana. Nibbles had returned to the golem’s shoulder to lay on her back.
Cal chuckled at her new lazing spot as he started to plant the seeds. He used the same spacing as he did on the last two and raked the soil over the seeds to finish the job.
It was a slow process since he had to plant five thousand. Tavia was able to recast her spell several times by the time he had planted over half the seeds. Just as the fireball disappeared again, his interface appeared, and his rake changed in appearance.
As an Advanced-ranked tool, the rake had a faint, blue aura that pulsed occasionally. It was a subtle thing that didn’t make it stand out too much, but that was no longer the case.
The rake shimmered a bright gold every time he moved it slightly, making the tool's rank unmistakable.
Your equipment [Advanced Rake] has been upgraded to [Rare Rake].
Equipment upgrade has modified its trait.
Self-Repair—> Progressive Self-Repair.
[Progressive Self-Repair] - After 24 continuous hours without use, the rake will start to recover its quality in stages. For every additional 48 hours of continuous non-use, the rake's quality will improve by one stage.
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Complete stat sheet in author note (under spoiler tag)
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