"Look man. I said I was sorry. I don't know how many times you want me to say it. I'm sorry okay? I didn't mean for this to happen. You're my friend. I'd never willingly do this to you."

"THUCK HOO!" Ramji bellowed. Holding what was left of his teeth in one hand while giving me the finger with the other.

"GHALL GHILL HOO!!" He continued. Just as another corroded, blackened tooth fell down.

I turned towards my other friends for help.

Marco was busy stomping the living daylights out of the slime-o-morph. With little success.

Drew was busy holding her mouth closed with both hands.

At first, I thought it was because she was afraid the slime would pick her next. Then I realized it was because she was struggling to drown her hysterical bouts of laughter.

I healed Ramji easily enough and that seemed to calm him down some.

"Cecil! I swear! You can't do these kinds of things!" He paused to take a deep breath "Bro! Bro! I almost died!"

"I don't know man. Sounds like a skill issue." Drew snickered from the side.

"Not helping Drew." I called back.

"No no. She's got a point. It's pretty slow. He was careless." Marco butt in. "It's more or less on the level of monsters on the fourth in terms of speed. That's pretty slow for people like us on the verge of level 2. Nothing we haven't handled before."

He kept stomping with all the strength he could muster without actually using any skills. The ground beneath him cracking and splintering as his foot met the slime.

"The real impressive part is how durable this thing is. It's got some natural resistance to my attacks, since it's all squishy. That helps and I can feel its organs moving around inside of it when I hit it. So not only is it tough, but its moving around the important bits so I don't damage them. While re-directing my attack. The kinetic force I mean. See here? Notice how the surface moves a little when I hit it. It feels like I'm stomping on wet mud that moves right or left. Like I'm trying to pop a really thick, really flexible water balloon filled with honey or something."

He ended the demonstration by kicking it. Sending the slime-o-morph crashing against a nearby wall.

"Cecil's right. It's great practice. I actually want one now. Are you selling them?"

"It ate my teeth!" Ramji howled.

Drew snickered again.

"Aah. It just wanted to show you some love. You know? Give you a big hug. To your face."

"I am going to kill you all one of these days." Ramji declared. His finger wagging menacingly in the air.

"Not with those reaction speeds." Marco quipped from the side.

"Like I said. Skill issue."

"Okay enough." I came in from the side. "Ramji's right. I went a little overboard with the slime. I need to make something less dangerous to start."

"Why?" Marco asked. "Not like you're in any kind of hurry."

"I'm trying to get these people cores." I reminded him.

"Yeah, so? Breaking day is three years off. These people got time. Plenty of it in fact. That and I'm pretty sure they all came from literal concentration camps. They're not going to be in the best place. Mentally speaking."

"Yeah dude." Drew agreed. Finally taking a few deep breaths and dispelling the bouts of laughter. "Chill out for a few days. Let them eat and keep them working out. Might not seem like a good idea, but its not like there's much they can do with 1 in all their stats. That's a mistake coach Homer made and he had to carry you out with egg on his face. Coach Russell was ripping into him for weeks."

Ramji calmed down enough to nod.

"They're right. You did a lot better when you had 1.1 and 1.2 in your stats. That might not seem like much now, but I remember it making a big difference. Let them work upstairs while you make weaker monsters."

He stared at the slime with baleful eyes.

"Something that won't melt people's skulls open this time."

I followed his gaze.

"Okay? Any suggestions?"

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

I spent that first night ordering my drones to make the rooms wider and deeper. With even more levels hidden deep beneath the earth in what was turning out to be a beehive-like underground complex.

In order to keep them stable, I used more trees as supports. This time opting for Giant Sequoias instead of Oak trees. Figuring that they were already massive in nature and the ones that I mutated would be able to support a lot more weight than the trees I had in place.

Casper provided the seeds close to dusk and I did the rest. Sprinkling them about so that each new battle-chamber had one at the center, about seven floors down. That way, their weight would stabilize all the higher floors while not having any deeper floors to threaten.

This choice also allowed me to shape the topside portions so that their branches widened and erupted into massive circular growths. So large that they could act as makeshift huts for the people I was taking care of.

At first, I had imagined that it wouldn't be too effective. Merely a temporary solution to a long-term problem. Instead, I was able to widen the growths and the trunks of the trees to gargantuan proportions. Until each attached growth was as big as a three-bedroom townhouse back in the city, with the trunks themselves growing to the width of skyscrapers.

It would have been impressive, if I'd been trying to do it on purpose. As things actually stood, I had to send all my drones to the tunnels at night to frantically expand the actual tunnels and to create new passageways around the spreading roots.

Giant Sequoias, as it turned out, almost had a mind of their own. An instinctual need to grow taller and wider, regardless of how many times I yelled at the trees to stop.

So, the good people on the farm were not able to attack the living punching bags I'd fashioned out of potatoes. Not that night at least.

They slept in soft leafy cots spread around the floors of my makeshift homes. While I stayed below the surface. Digging and working my magic into new creatures with my friends.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

The second day was marked by Casper bringing in three more waves of drones from the Dunstonberry Dungeon. Each one having two to three hundred individuals.

"You'll start seeing a marked drop in them from now on." He warned. "The Dungeon back home seems to be recovering."

"That's fine." I told him truthfully. "These ones will be a big help, but I don't think I'll need many more of them for what I'm trying to do. This is all temporary after all."

Casper narrowed his eyes and swept his gaze over the fields. To all the vegetables and fruit-bearing trees stretching out towards the horizon.

"Right." He said. "Well, best of luck. Keep up the good work."

He turned to take away two more trucks and vanished with a rush of displaced air.

I turned away as well. Looking over the new infusion of labor.

"Right then. I have enough of you up here on the surface already. Make your way underground and expand the tunnels. Dig vertically as needed, but focus on horizontal expansion around the tree trunks and roots. Try to make each room bit enough to allow twenty people to move around comfortably within them. Don't worry about making the walls or floors smooth. The slimes can take care of that. Just keep digging and expanding the complex. Once you reach seven floors deep, start making new horizontal paths that branch out from each floor and chamber."

The drones got to work after that.

The rest of the day was spent just like the first. With everyone in the surface picking more and more produce out of the ground, eating what they could and throwing what they couldn't into more trucks for processing in whatever secondary location Mr. Robertson was using as a front.

They would take schedule breaks whenever I asked Shortround to spread the word and groups of six would take turns running laps around the increasingly wide perimeter of our operation. After their warm-up was over, they would pick up solid wooden poles I'd grown from tree branches and use them to beat the snot out of the potato dummies for 15 or so minutes at a time. After that, it was time for a half hour break while the next group started running and after that, it was back to working the fields alongside me.

Their training was completely physical, while mine consisted of several aspects. There was the obvious infusion of magic to the fields, the produce, the trees and all my existing creatures, but I was also picking up vegetables the second they finished popping out of the ground. Moreover, I started challenging myself to go faster and faster with each new truck or pallet I filled. Carrying heavier and heavier loads from the fields with each trip.

That helped my nerves to some degree. I didn't feel quite as bad about the operation when I could tell myself that I was working the hardest out of everyone here.

Ramji, Drew and Marco also didn't complain anymore, which was a nice touch. It felt good to work alongside them, even if we weren't talking much. It made me feel that sense of comradery again. While also giving me a point of reference for how fast I was improving.

Indeed, all was well and good that day. I started to get that feeling back. That sense of joy that came from being exposed to nature in all its glory.

In some ways, it was even more pronounced now than before. As if the giant trees and all their leaves were showering the fields with a gentle glow. A warm echo of love and appreciation.

I felt full. Happy.

Despite the magical exhaustion that would force me to focus entirely on the physical aspect of my training from time to time.

Though I did notice some small changes towards the latter parts of the day.

The people were moving about more quickly. Appearing less exhausted. Less scared of all the magic around them.

Their eyes had an odd, yet familiar focus. One that reminded me of my early days with coach Russell as we ran up and down those wooded hills. One that was missing in most other people I passed by in town.

'Wait, are they... fuller?'

That should have been obvious, given the metric tons of food they were consuming at all hours of the day with smiles on their faces, but that wasn't quite it. Their muscles looked like.. well... muscles. More or less like those of a normal everyday person. That wasn't strange in and of itself, yet I couldn't help but recall just how emaciated all of them bad been when they first arrived yesterday.

'They'd been skeletons back then and they're more or less back to the baseline I'm used to for people I see all the time. After just one day.'

I got a strange tingling sensation then. A little whisper in the back of my head that something wasn't right.

That whisper only got louder and louder the longer I worked beside them.

'I'm getting less looks now. They seem less scared out of their minds compared to before. Is that it? No. That's a part of it but it doesn't feel like the main thing that's wrong with this picture.'

That oddness bothered me for the rest of the second night as I continued my work in silence. With only the cold evening breeze and the stars for company.

Speaking of stars, they were beautiful that night. Shining down like diamonds and peeking out from the few open and exposed corners of the canopy above my head,

Said canopy had grown to the point where it overed several kilometers in all directions. So that anyone who passed by might mistake the scenery for a newly-grown forest, despite the overall lack of trees.

'There are only about a dozen or so and yet they were able to do this much. All thanks to me. Come to think of it, how do these few trees support all those massive branches and all those leaves? How do all these vegetables keep growing so fast at night?'

They'd been growing just fine in the shade, but this was different.

Despite me relishing the rays of silver starlight, anyone else, anyone normal, would have found themselves surrounded by impenetrable darkness on all sides.

'Maybe my magic makes it so that the plants don't need light? At least in the short term?'

It was as good an explanation as I was likely to get without rounds upon rounds of rigorous testing in some lab. I had a feeling that figuring out the intricacies of magic carrots wasn't high on Mr. Robertson's to-do list too.

So. I let it go and went about the business of using my magic on the local grasses and weeds strewn about the outskirts. Weaving together semi-solid backpacks bigger than I was and filling them to the brim. Before finding the loads too light and forcing the new creations to grow vertically, as well as horizontally in the shape of a spreading cone.

Two more layers made it heavy enough to start taking a toll on me again, while also adding the challenge of balancing all those kilograms of food.

Soon enough I ran out of trucks and pallets, which meant I had to grow more pallets. Which made me spend my magic. Which made me more tired, Which made carrying the loads more challenging.

It was like a game, and I became so engrossed in it that I didn't notice that my friends were missing until the first rays of sunshine started to peek out from between the leaves so many meters above the fields.

I turned towards the east to catch the rising sun. My skin almost vibrating with glee as the colors of the earth and sky changed with the coming dawn.

'They don't know what they're missing.' I thought with no small amount of satisfaction.

'I feel so alive right now. So fulfilled. More so than I ever did when I was a normal person. This, this is what I was born to do.'

Curiously, I could feel those same emotions coming from Shortround as she made her way out of one of the homegrown houses sprouting from the Giant Sequoias. Same with the dozens upon dozens of people coming out right next to her and those streaming from behind.

She gave me a small bow alongside the others and wordlessly started to pick up vegetables from the ground once more.

That was when the odd feeling returned. That nagging at the back of my head that kept insisting something was wrong with this picture.

I narrowed my eyes and tried to look for anything out of the ordinary.

'Huh? She looks, taller? Wait. They all do. They all look taller. And fuller. Their cheeks aren't sunk-in anymore. Is that normal?'

They had been eating entire cartloads of food so improvements to their health weren't out of the question. Sure it was strange that they had recovered as fast as they did, but that could be attributed to magic nonsense.

That nagging voice didn't leave me though.

'There's something seriously wrong here.' It kept whispering. 'There's something crucial missing from this equation. You're really stupid for not noticing.'

I tried to ignore them as best I could. Focusing on growing my new backpack every couple of hours.

My legs were burning by the time the sun climbed to its noon position above our heads. My arms and back straining with the continuous effort of moving under weights that would have turned a normal man into puree.

I was just about to stop for my first break of the day, when the realization suddenly struck me.

'I'm not thirsty.' I thought to myself. 'Not only that, there isn't any way to get water anywhere on the farm. It hasn't rained since we got here and the ground beneath us was dry as a bone when I started digging.'

"Hey Shortround, has Mr. Robertson or anyone else been handing out water?"

"No Master Conan." Shortround answered. "I thought we didn't need it. The food is magic and none of us have been thirsty. We haven't needed to..."

She paused. Blushing.

"Go, either. Not since eating the magic food."

I furrowed my eyes at that. Slight bouts of panic rising to the surface.

'Oh, I'm pretty sure that's bad. Food isn't supposed to cause constipation. How long can people go without going again? Whatever the limit is, I'm pretty sure they've passed it given how much they've been eating.'

Case in point, Shortround was working her way through an apple as big as her head as she stood there waiting for my response.

She finished it in five huge bites. Not breaking eye contact the whole while. Standing amidst other fruits and vegetables without a care in the world.