The new couple still embracing after their ordeal, Mia was still showing a slightly confused expression as the question finished processing.
Knowing that he would have to repeat it, Brad, with a wicked grin on his face, once again asked the question. “Mia, who is Edgar?”
“Um… a friend….” Mia responded slowly, taking a short pause before continuing sheepishly. “This looks really bad after what just happened, huh?”
“Just a little, but I’m not really worried about it.” Brad laughed. “I am just glad that you made it home safe and that we got this whole thing sorted out quickly.” He finished with a quick hug before breaking their embrace.
With a quick search Brad was able to find the pack that Mia had brought back from town, left at the side of the road after one of the guards had set it there for them. Lifting it up, Brad was surprised by the weight, and gave it a heft onto his shoulder.
“So did you manage to get everything that you wanted?” Brad asked the still sheepish Mia.
Still not quite meeting Brad’s eyes, Mia was only able to give a meek response of, “Yes, I got the land upgrade set for the morning. We really surprised everyone at the store for how fast we are getting it.”
“Well, that is to be expected. Honestly if it was just me working with Rumble, I don’t think I would be this far along either. It’s been a huge advantage having you take care of a lot of the selling and sorting in addition to helping with the fields. It's given me way more time to clear fields, farm, and do the normal chores to survive. We more or less have an extra days worth of work between us multitasking what others would struggle with themselves.”
Nodding her head in agreement, Mia responded. “Agreed. If I had to cook, then I probably would have had to quit working much earlier in the day in order to still sort the produce for leveling my merchant class.”
“Yup, you probably are eating better food too! I remember the last time that you tried cooking.” Brad said teasingly, now having returned to Mia with the bag on his back.
Taking her hand, Brad started leading the way home with Mia looking jokingly offended with his quip at her expense.
“Well, you also would have had sore feet in the coming days.” Mia said stopping Brad and telling him to drop the bag once again now that she had remembered his gift.
“Whats going on? What do you need to get?”
“I got us a matching gift.” Mia said giving Brad a smile in return.
“A matching gift? What is it? Is it a matching set of plates?” Brad jokingly asked.
“No, Mr. Smarty-Pants, its a pair of boots!” Mia said, straightening her leg in order to model and showcase the new pair of boots that she was wearing.
“Cool! They kinda look like the boots that guards wear, but they will definitely do better in the mud than our current shoes do.” Brad said with enthusiasm, excited to wear his new boots.
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“They are actually the same type of boots that the guards wear… but that is not relevant to why I bought them. They have the trait of keeping your feet from getting sore during normal wear and tear! No more sore feet after a full day in the fields!” Mia explained enthusiastically. “In fact, the reason that they all get them is probably because of the trait, with the name coming from them all actually getting them.
Watching Mia dig his pair of boots out of the bag, Brad was getting more and more excited with every word describing his new boots. With already sore feet, from having stepped on more than a few rocks while working his field, he was more than ready to swap his already worn shoes in for the new pair.
With her having found the new boots in the bag and now presenting them to him, Brad was grinning like a little kid with a new toy. “Thanks Mia! I can’t wait to put them on.”
Taking his current shoes off, Brad quickly swapped to his new boots. Standing up and taking a tentative few steps, he quickly felt the comfort that they provided.
“So, what do you think of them?” Mia asked impatiently, hoping that her boyfriend liked the boots.
“I like them! They really need to be broken in, in order to feel right. But I can honestly already tell that they will be way more comfortable than my old pair!”
“Well, that is the plan. I am hoping that the boots can help boost our morale while putting in hard work with our newly upgraded fields. We are not quite to copper yet, but we should both be there within the week, especially with the added difficulty of the fields.”
“That is something that I wanted to ask you about, in order to clarify. What exactly is going to change with the upgrade?” Brad asked while shouldering the pack once more.
Taking her boyfriend’s proffered hand, Mia responded. “Quite a bit will change, but nothing majorly difficult at this point. Field fertility levels will now be variable. The minimum and maximum level will be relatively close, but it will now require maintenance in order to keep fertility levels up. It might sound bad, but with effort the maximum level is higher than we could have achieved prior to the upgrade.”
“So now we have to work daily in the fields?” Brad asked.
“Pretty much.”
“Nice! I like these free bonuses. It’s not like you give me any breaks as is, anyways.” Brad added, followed up by a teasing sticking out of his tongue.
Sticking out her own tongue Mia finished with a soft smile before laughing along. “Moving along though, we will also start to have monster nests starting to spawn in our lands. There should only be 2 or 3 total at any given time. The nests, themselves, spawn around 4 or 5 monsters per day at Copper, but once it hits a certain population they start rampaging. You can destroy the nests, but a new one will spawn to replace it within a few days. There are a few popular strategies to deal with nests. The first being to keep them trimmed back daily or every other day in order to keep them pacified. Another farming strategy for weaker combinations, like mine, would be investing into a strong fence or wall and hiring help if a nests spawns within the fenced area.”
Brad seeing where this was starting to go, quickly interjected. “But that isn’t our plan is it? Let me guess, we are going to farm the nests too?”
Smiling and happy to be on the same wavelength, Mia continued to explain the plan. “You bet, but with some min-maxing of our strategy. Monster tamers and Hunters employ a strategy of killing nests until they get certain types of monster nests to spawn. Hunters usually destroy nests until all nests on the farmland spawn meat bearing monsters, whereas Tamers usually do it until they have a variety of monsters to sell to the market for adventurers or anyone else needing them. For us, I plan on starting slow, but eventually I hope we can curate our nest selection to only include monsters with a high monetary loot drop average.”
“That makes sense, but we should definitely start a little slow. Well at least until we are sure that we can handle the added challenge.” Brad said.
“Absolutely, but like I said, Copper should not be that big of a leap in difficulty as long as we keep some variety in the nests. That being said, there is one additional new feature as of now… We can now grow copper ranked seeds! We can even upgrade our current seed stock through selective breeding.”
“That’s awesome! Do you think we can upgrade any of our current plant stock?” Brad asked excitedly.
“Possibly within 1 or 2 more cycles of growth. From now on, any Stone 8 or 9 harvest, we should replant and hope that they produce Copper tier seeds.”
“That’s easy enough.” Brad said, surprised at the simplicity of it.
“Ya, it is super simple compared to some of the other features to learn. Oh there are other added features, but nothing that you really need to know right now, just minor things like Abilities now having a higher maximum upgrade limit when affecting the fields. But that kind of thing is only really relevant when using Abilities like my ‘Enrich’ skill.”
“Wait, wait, wait…” Brad quickly interjected. “Your skill has a limit? It must be pretty high, because you use it everyday!”
“Not that kind of limit. My skill level is low enough that I will never hit the hard limit of our fields. The limit is mostly relevant to people whom hire higher level individuals in order to boost their fields. Its too keep Stone tier farmers from getting a Gold tier boost on their fields.”
“Would that really be a bad thing?” Brad asked, not quite seeing the full logic behind it.
“For the individual farmers… no it wouldn’t. But it would crash the market for lower level farmers trying to raise their skills. It would also create a monopoly controlled by a few higher level individuals.”
“Oh, that makes sense. I’m guessing that we should be happy for it then. Once you start offering your services to other farmers, we will be thankful for that limit protecting us.”
And so the conversation continued on their way home.