A new day dawned upon the realm and brought an incredible neck pain to Tanuki. Without a bed, he used the grass and a piece of wood as his cushion. Safe to say, it was less than comfortable. Further complications came from a dream he had about accidentally falling into the void, falling till the end of times. That was enough to ruin his day, but miraculously, something was there to save it.

When he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and as his bodily functions returned to normal, he noticed the most pleasant smell he had ever experienced. Surrounding him billowed a sea of crimson. Roses. In a circle surrounding him, and scattered throughout the field, roses bloomed and perfumed the air.

At first, he had trouble figuring out what happened, but then he remembered the Green Flora Token. When he cast it two days ago, he chose red flowers. What probably happened was another wheel of fortune played to randomly decide on a red flower for his realm. He got lucky and got one of the best that he could get.

As he stood up, he noticed that even where he slept, roses had grown. Though he wondered if he got lucky to evade their thorns by sleeping in just the right position or whether it was by rule that the spawning flowers avoided him. He did not know. Nonetheless, they were beautiful, and he felt a lot better about his choice.

Suddenly, a thought shot through his mind. He did not see Professor’s star.

“I forgot to watch the sky,” he panicked.

“There was nothing to be seen. It was an empty night,” Edgar’s voice came from behind.

He was sitting on some wood debris, fiddling with the grass-rope Tanuki made for the axe. To his right sat said weapon leaning against his thigh. It was in a lot better shape than yesterday.

“Looks like my talents don’t stop with working the field,” he said with pride as he handed over the weapon.

Tanuki observed it up close. Edgar even sharpened the blade. The whole handle was also made to have little indents for a better grasp. It all looked so clean that Tanuki was sure, this was the work of hours.

“How long did this take?”

“I don’t know. When I got up, it was still the middle of the night. Couldn’t sleep after what happened, that thing’s voice kept repeating in my head.” He pushed his forearms up the other’s sleeve and nodded towards the field. “I wouldn’t want to disturb the crops’ sleep, so I chose some other method to be useful.”

“Thank you for this,” said Tanuki, his voice still deeper than usual after the long sleep.

“Don’t thank me with words, go and cut the trees. I want to sleep in a house tonight.”

Edgar was strange when it came to conversations. Once all information was shared, he would not say goodbyes, but rather turn around and go do his work. He was not a man to stick around and chat about the weather, which would seem like a bad attribute when it came to small talk, but Tanuki appreciated his no-nonsense attitude.

Still, Tanuki was different, perhaps even a little socially awkward. By the time Edgar climbed the hill and turned around to take one last look before disappearing into the field, Tanuki was still standing in the same spot, waving goodbyes to a man who had his back turned for an entire minute. It made keeping that strong attitude a lot harder and ultimately rude if he did not wave back. So, he did, despite not wanting to.

Tanuki smiled over the interaction. It was his fill-in for coffee, giving him the willpower to walk into the forest and begin work.

Day four felt the longest, but it was ultimately the least eventful compared to all other days. Tanuki spent ten hours in the forest cutting down trees. The first few he got over in an hour, but the rest took much longer due to each draining his energy more and making his sore muscles feel worse than the last. Still, he got all the wood required for Edgar’s quest.

While working, he also made two discoveries. First was that he had a new tab in his inventory, [Quests], that summarized all the missions he previously accepted.

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The second discovery came in the form of materials. After cutting enough trees, he still questioned what the mission meant by twenty woods, and lacking better ideas, he began cleaning the tree of branches. Once only the trunk remained, a message appeared above it.

[ Take ‘Wood’ ]

It was not a question but a prompt that when touched made the trunk burst into a cloud of green that flew into his inventory. There, Tanuki was presented with wood filling up one of his inventory spaces. With every other he cut and put away, another slot was filled. Eventually, he had to put down his stored tokens by the crystal, because if he wanted to be efficient, he needed all the free space in his inventory.

After he collected five, he went over to the field and by dragging them out of his inventory, he placed them in a small pyramid shape. He was extra cautious not to put anything on the field grid, something that Edgar was quite pleased with.

By the time the sun set, he cut down the last of his trees and crawled his way to the farmer. He was sitting atop the pile when he arrived.

“Hmmm, you seem tired,” Edgar observed with some slight mocking in his voice.

“Why are you not working?” he retaliated.

“Cannot anymore. I removed all weeds, dug the holes, and even planted some of the seeds. But it doesn’t matter. Without water, they will die. Did you think about that?”

Tanuki placed the rest of the trees and collapsed to the ground.

“Maybe,” he answered, “I do have two tokens. They make things appear in this world. One creates animals, the other makes plant life. I was thinking about something that could make rain or water, but unless there are species in this world that I have yet to meet, our odds of fixing the water problem with these is pretty small.”

Edgar touched his chin and pondered.

“If you finish my quest, my ability to work the fields improves. I also gain an ability that I have yet to talk about.”

“That being?” asked Tanuki.

“You can pay me those tokens to spin the mechanism.”

Tanuki raised his head off the ground. This sounded interesting.

“What does it do?”

“It sells us new types of harvestable plants. Fruits, vegetables. Maybe even some rare things, like mushrooms and magically adept plants. I have never known how to activate the mechanism, but I feel an invisible force pull me towards that token.”

Tanuki remained silent for a second. He had no better idea for the flora token. In truth, he found them quite useless.

“I could get it from the Gaia Core,” he offered, but Edgar shook his head.

“Forget it. We need to solve the water problem first. Then we can return to that. Now, you have a mission to complete.”

Tanuki walked up to Edgar. A new prompt appeared before him.

[ Complete quest ? ]

He touched the window and the logs turned into a green cloud. It swirled around them like a tornado before passing through Edgar and taking the shape of a small rectangle-shaped hut.

Small windows manifested before Tanuki to help with positioning. He was allowed to drag around and rotate the particles to customize where the house should be. He asked Edgar and all he had to say was it should not touch the field. Thus, he placed it at the foot of the hill.

As he did, the particles flew apart and floated away, leaving a small wooden hut in their place. It was a slim building with two windows on each side, a step leading up to a door, a thatched roof and a small chimney decorating its top.

The interior was fully furnished. Ahead a small hearth lit up the room and burnt two iron skewers. To the right, a rickety bed pushed into the corner guarded a chest on the opposite side. There was a cabinet on the right and a table with four chairs pushed against the wall on the left. All of this was not much, but for a man and a boy who spent the last few days under an open night sky, this felt like heaven.

Edgar walked inside and placed his tools against the bed while Tanuki sat on one of the chairs. He let out a satisfied moan. It never felt so good to plant his ass on a proper sitting place.

Edgar observed the fireplace and noted, “Hmmm, this will do until we build a furnace. Did you get the rewards for completing the quest?”

Tanuki opened his inventory. Indeed, there were three loaves of bread, a waterskin filled to the brim, and an enchanted flora token. Tanuki stared at the waterskin. Finally, after days, he would not need to rely on gorging apples to stay hydrated.

His lips felt dry. He felt like crying. With shaky hands, he raised the waterskin to his mouth, when suddenly…

“Don’t,” Edgar stopped him.

Tanuki’s eyes melted away. He knew the farmer must have had a reason to say that, but he truly wanted to drink from the waterskin. Should he be denied to at least enjoy one droplet of it, he would die. No, he would kill himself rather than live another moment with a mouth as dry as the Sahara Desert.

But he did not go to such extremes when Edgar took it from his hands, he simply pouted and wished he was not too dehydrated to cry.

“I will use this to water the wheat until you do my next mission.”

“There is no way I’m cutting another tree,” he whined and threw his arms open.

“You won’t need to. As a matter of fact, you won’t be here to do so.”

He looked at Edgar with confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Hmmm. How should I explain? Since you’ve done as I asked and gathered those woods, God bestowed me with another quest. I hate to admit it, but I would not have understood his orders, had I not visited the crystal during the day. Yes, I stole some of your apples. But while I did that, I caught a glimpse of the things you’ve left there. One of them was a key. You will need that because, for this next quest, you will have to visit another realm.”