My eyes went to the field then. To the tens of thousands of gigantic potatoes sprouting from the ground. Waiting to be harvested.

"It's just... we went to so much trouble getting them to the point where they looked more or less normal and didn't bite people. Only to leave them up here..."

"We're not leaving them up here Cecil. There's a shortage of labor. We only have so many people in the town."

"Magic people, with actual, literal magic powers! I saw you filling three dozen trucks in less than ten minutes yesterday!"

"Yeah, and we ran out of trucks after that." Coach Russell said, his voice betraying something that might have been exhaustion in a lesser man.

"Casper teleported them out and he brought new ones in. But the workers on the other side are only normal human. People who are very much not in the know. They can only work so fast. That, and Casper and his folks can only teleport so many trucks filled to bursting with food until they're exhausted. [Space] is an excellent core, but one of its drawbacks is the massive amount of magic their skills consume. That, and there aren't that many people who have it in the first place."

I was going to say something else, but he held out a hand to stop me.

"Look, Cecil. I appreciate that you're taking this seriously. Really, I do. I don't like the fact that five percent of the world is experiencing food riots right now, but you have to understand that we can only do so much at this stage of the operation. Anyone else would be jumping for joy with these numbers, given how many people we're feeding."

"But the food's rotting in the ground!"

"Cecil, the potatoes are growing faster than we can harvest them. Same with the watermelons and the mangoes and the apples and the bananas. I'm starting to think you might be too good at this right now. We've managed to keep plenty of markets stocked that would have been out of stock otherwise and we've kept prices affordable enough that hyperinflation has been delayed. At least in this province. But we can't keep this pace up. There are simply too many things that need to be done all around the world in preparation for Breaking Day. Chief among them is training in the Dungeon."

"I thought you didn't want me training in the Dungeon anymore." I bit back.

"No. I would never say that. I said I didn't want you using that [Terraform] skill of yours until we figured out more about it, since the fourth was taking a long time to go back to the way it was. It still isn't completely back to normal, in case you were wondering. I still wanted you to keep training your other, more personal skills, but your uncle..."

I could practically feel the distaste in coach Russell's voice.

"Insisted that we focus on food production in order to get a decent process going and smooth out the issues we saw early on. I did protest, but Mr. Robertson agreed with him. Apparently he's been angling to use our newfound... uh..."

He made some heavy quotation marks with his fingers.

"The new and improved, 'Genetically modified produce' to leverage some lobbying power in the government. He's angling to keep prices down despite demand. To curry political favors. I think he aims to put his son James in some post or another."

I shook my head in astonishment.

"There is no way we've made enough food to have that kind of impact." I told him bluntly. "I may be young, but I'm not stupid."

'Or at least, not too stupid. I hope.'

I was starting to have doubts as to how much I was being manipulated these days. Wondering if I was really doing the right thing or if I was merely helping to prop up a conspiracy of wackos.

Coach Russell going on and on about political leverage certainly didn't help matters either.

Yet, every time I thought of leaving, I was reminded of how weak I still was. At least, compared to everyone around me. My mind kept coming back to the facts I still knew. To the reality that Carlyle Robertson, as powerful as he was, hadn't managed to save humanity the first time around.

'Meaning there will be monsters strong enough to give him a run for his money out there. Just out in the open for anyone to stumble into.'

The idea was disquieting, to say the least.

And it only became more pronounced in my brain when I thought about the things lurking in the depths of the Dungeon. On the floors where coach Russell trained himself.

'He hasn't reached the bottom.' I recalled with a slight shiver. 'None of them know what's down there. Not even Mr. Robertson. There could be a Lovecraftian horror napping down there for all we know. One that might make its way up to the surface sometime in the future.'

Mr. Robertson hadn't lived long enough to see it happen in the original timeline, but that didn't mean we wouldn't have to reckon with whatever was down there in the future. Sure, it might be a far-off prospect, but that didn't mean we were safe.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

That fact only made my stomach turn even more.

'The others are out of their minds.' I reasoned inwardly. 'Every stat point we get now at level 1 will be doubled at level 2 and tripled at level 3. Meaning gaining them now is exponentially more valuable than getting them later. Doing simple math, 1 times 2 is 2. Times 3 is 6. Times 4 at level 4 is 24. That means, by following basic multiplication, a single stat point turns into 120 stat points at level 5 and 720 at level 6. The training we do now at level 1 is the most valuable training we will ever do. So, any time wasted resting is the equivalent of hundreds of stat points wasted in the future. You'd have to be blind to not see it.'

I turned towards the field once more. Seeing the vast swathes of food and the progress I'd been making while also shoring up my weaknesses.

At that moment, I couldn't fell any sense of happiness or accomplishment anymore. Despite the glee I had felt moments prior.

All I felt, was that I was wasting time. That I was falling short. That there was still so much more work to be done here.

"I've seen documentaries on how much food is wasted after it comes to the shelves." I told coach Russell. "I figure we've stocked a few hundred supermarkets. If that."

"Try a couple thousand." He chuckled. "These babies are huge. And they take a long time to start rotting besides. We're actually lobbying to make the government lay off on food safety inspections because our little beauties have drawn so much suspicion. Some people online claim we're irradiating our crops or filling them to the gills with preservatives."

I turned to him in surprise.

"It hasn't even been a month!"

He shrugged.

"What can I say? People talk. Especially conspiracy theorists."

"They're not conspiracy theorists if they are right." I protested. "We are irradiating them. Only with magic instead of, whatever it is that they're thinking of."

He shrugged again. Theatrically bringing his shoulders up while smiling.

"Even a broken clock is right twice a day, I suppose."

I clicked my tongue and turned once more towards the trucks. Their loads sitting prettily in the afternoon sun.

"There is still no way this is enough to feed an entire province." I insisted. "We need to make more food."

"Not yet." He agreed. "But keep in mind that the decline in worldwide food production has only just started to have an effect. First world countries are feeling the sting, but it isn't a crisis over here. Our operation has also delayed the issue even further. Kicking the can down the road, as it were."

He paused to glance over the field.

"But this is just the beginning. Normal crops will fail more and more. Normal pastures will fall short. It's only a matter of time. To that end, this is a good use of our time. Think of it like a trial run for the real thing. We'll eventually be moving on to more accessible locations so Casper doesn't have to keep teleporting back and forth. The profits will allow us to hire more normal people and to then bring a fair deal of them into our little secret. That means more people with late-Stage cores helping out and levelling before Breaking Day. By that point, uninterrupted food production will be a political ace as well. We'll get just about anything we want past a fair few governments, provided we keep the masses fed."

Coach Russell said all of this with a straight face.

Apparently not picking up on how cynical and downright evil his words were.

"Of course, that whole endeavor relies on you keeping up or even improving this new skill of yours. We'll have to do some more experimenting on other kinds of unsuitable terrain. The kind of infertile land we can snag up for pennies out in the middle of nowhere."

He then slapped my back in a jovial manner. The strike taking air out of my lungs as I stumbled forward.

"But that's all in the future. For now, you need some time to rest. Why don't you head on back home? I'm sure your family would appreciate some more time with you."

'I wish.'

The thought came too quickly and I immediately felt bad about having summoned it in the first place.

In truth, things had not been well at home as of late.

Aunt Cheryl had been isolated from the rest of the town since we arrived and her getting a basic first stage core hadn't helped matters. Most people had the good manners to say good things in front of me, but I had still caught a few errant whispers here and there.

It would seem that there was a fairly large degree of prejudice against people with basic cores. So that her new so-called friends turned into vipers the moment she finally formed a core of her own.

She focused more and more on doting on Eva and I, but I could tell she was having a hard time.

As for uncle Uter, well...

He'd become less of himself as of late. More withdrawn.

It was hard to tell where his mind was at any one time.

Regardless, that didn't matter. Coach Russell was right.

So, I went back.

Running alongside him through kilometers upon kilometers of forest. The trees whooshing by as we darted through the foliage at a pace that would have put normal horses to shame.

In another life, I might have been wary of woodland creatures. Of the chances a wild bear or an angry moose might decide to pop out and charge at me. Now, I had no such concerns.

Firstly, because I was pretty sure I could outrun any normal animal with my eyes closed and my hands tied behind my back.

And secondly...

'Because I'm not sure a fight between a bear and me would end well. For the bear, I mean.'

Elsie had shown me and my friends a video of her in just that situation. Alongside her brand new rug.

Back then, I thought I could still make out an expression of abject terror plastered on the trophy's dead face. Then again, it might have simply been my imagination.

I allowed my mind to drift then.

My nose drawing in the smells and sights of the woods as the afternoon sun began to set on the horizon. The leaves shinning with a golden tint as day turned to night.

'The fields felt wonderful, but this is fine too, in its own way.'

I kept running and running and running. Over tangled roots and anthills and sticky stretches of mud. My feet somehow finding the perfect spots to land on without me having to think too much about it.

All while I drowned in an increasingly beautiful scenery, as the twilight deepened under the canopy and the shadows stretched out in all directions. The branches reverberating with the songs and cries of birds and the buzzing of countless insects.

It was as if the very air were alive, as more and more scents wafted up from ponds. Little frogs croaking and jumping to and from the waters we leapt over in our journey.

The whole of the biome coming together to penetrate my mind and the whole of my perceptions.

'It's like magic.' I mused with a soft smile.

Then I froze mid-step. As the truth of that statement hit me like a runaway bus.

'No. It isn't like magic. It IS magic.'

I turned my head upwards. Taking a deep, calming breath and tasting the ambient energy more carefully.

"Cecil? What's wrong?" Coach Russell asked. His figure approaching fast now that he had turned around to face me.

"The air." I told him. My face now flushed with the familiar power. "It's just like the one on the first floor."

I paused to search the canopy more closely. Taking note of how much bigger the birds now seemed. How intelligent and self-aware their stares were.

"It's filled with magic. Just like in the Dungeon."