Midday awoke tired as ever. One thing that no amount of Devil Peppercorn could fix was his chronic lack of sleep. It was true that the insomnia he had once suffered from during his time as a villager had all but gone away by then—thanks to the extreme exhaustion inherent to the life of a slave—but he still had the issue of going to bed extremely late and waking up extremely early. No amount of his newfound diligence and grit that had been borne out of his finding of the ring could speed up how long it took to complete his daily quotas and so, to accomplish all the things he had over the past few days, it was only natural that he had to pay a price in the form of sleep.

Because of the surgery he had watched on the previous night, plus his endeavors in the garden, Midday reckoned he had gotten less than 5 hours of sleep that morning. The resulting exhaustion was palpable to him and anyone who might have seen him: with heavy bags under his eyes and a general sluggishness to each of his movements making it obvious. Maybe sleep is the next thing I ought to work on…

With a sigh, he forced himself to sit up.

“You were out awfully late last night,” said Gork as he combed through the knots in his hair. “I got worried and was planning to head out to the fields to make sure you were alright, but Romulo was acting really weird and assured me that you were fine.” Gork frowned. “Just what have you gotten yourself into? Ever since you lost that finger… Or, no, maybe it was when you had heat stroke the day before that… Ever since whatever it was, you’ve certainly changed… I feel like it wasn’t that long ago when pretty much everything you said was self-pitying bullshit… So what changed?”

“That’s a lot to unpack at 6 in the morning,” answered Midday, who normally would have been nervous by that point, but the exhaustion kept him from feeling much of anything. Even so, he obviously couldn’t tell Gork about the ring, and Romulo had asked him not to say anything about Netari either. As such, Midday felt that his hands were behind his back. He had to keep it vague. “I’m sure you, of all people, know how near-death experiences change people.”

“I do, but I can’t help but feel that this goes beyond that.” Gork shook his head. “And it’s not like this is your first near-death experience either. That was your second run-in with heat stroke, and all it did the first time was make you even more insufferable with the ‘death is a mercy for the weak’ stuff. Why was the result so different the second time?”

“This is too much conversation for 6 in the morning.”

“Whatever you say, Midday. I can tell that you’re hiding something, but I suppose you must have your reasons for doing so. I won’t pry any further.”

“I’m not hiding anything, but thanks for the sentiment.”

“Uh-huh.” Gork shrugged and then, with a deeper frown than before, continued brushing his hair. “On a lighter note, one of my patients gifted me some shampoo the other day. My hair is looking better than ever.”

“Shampoo?” Midday was glad to see that Gork was letting him off the hook with the previous topic so easily.

“Yeah. It’s a type of soap, I guess. You lather it into your hair and whatnot. Speaking of which, when was the last time you took a bath?”

“That’s a good question.”

“You really ought to do it every now and again. Staying clean helps ward off disease and all that.”

“It can go on the to-do list for things to do when I have more free time.” Midday rose up to his feet, his body still feeling heavy from the lack of sleep. He then reached up to the ceiling and grabbed Mister Potatoes. The beetle seemed to be doing fairly well, without any obvious signs of sickness, and Midday smiled upon seeing this. “But, for now, well, there are only so many hours in a day.”

“Fair enough. I imagine that Devil Peppercorn will start showing its first results over the next few days so who knows? You might find yourself finishing work in under 8 hours per day fairly soon—I think should be about the limit of what you can expect to accomplish with the ‘good health’ Devil Peppercorn provides.”

“And then I would have to level-up if I wanted to improve beyond that?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

Gork and Midday talked for a little while longer about the various things happening throughout the plantation, with a discussion of a supposed visit from a plantation higher-up that was scheduled to happen at some point within the near future at the forefront of the conversation. Gork believed that Jenjo would do something to commemorate the occasion, but he didn’t even begin to guess what that might be.

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Glauster came in with a pot full of water not long thereafter, and the three of them ate breakfast together—with Midday, as per usual, being pressured into eating his Devil Peppercorn-infested oatmeal. Everyone else left after eating while Midday suffered through an hour of hell and then, as soon as the taste left his mouth, Midday grabbed his scythe and left for the fields.

♦

Midday did not complete his quota that day.

He tried his hardest, straining himself to the point of exhaustion and then beyond even that but, between his recently acquired injuries and all the other factors holding him back, the area of the wheat field marked off for him to cut that day was simply too large for him to stand any chance of completing before sunset.

At first, he blamed it on luck: the people who came to the fields every night to designate everyone’s quotas were notoriously inconsistent with their work, with the size of any given quota oftentimes feeling completely arbitrary. They had given him an unusually large quota that day and, at first, Midday chalked his failure up to that fact alone.

But, as he laid there in the field, his back pressed flat against a prickly bed of wheat and his eyes gazing at the starry nighttime sky above, Midday decided that there was more to it than that—and that the real person to blame was none other than himself. He had been drunk off the ring’s power, he realized, and had failed to realize just how much he had been overworking himself ever since discovering it. Every single night, he went off and did something in a quest to improve his circumstances, disregarding an ever-growing need for rest in the process. But the exhaustion had finally caught up to him.

Strike one.

Time was the problem: Midday simply didn’t have enough of it. Every action—no matter so small—had a price. Doing one thing necessarily meant not doing something else, for time, by nature, was limited. Every hour he spent suffering after eating peppercorn-infused food was an hour that otherwise could have been spent sleeping or gardening or even just working in the field. Given that the taste from 1 bead of Devil Peppercorn lasted 1 hour and that he consumed 2 beads per day, simple math dictated that he spent 2 hours of precious time each day to peppercorn paralysis. Was the benefit obtained from the crop really worth that much time? He decided that the answer was no. It was impossible to justify that kind of time expenditure for something whose benefits were so slow to materialize.

But, of course, that was where Netari’s experimental surgery came into the equation. If successful, he would gain 2 hours every day to spend however he wished while still being able to enjoy the benefits of Devil Peppercorn. It was true that there was a great deal of risk involved, but Midday was more than ready to take risks by that point.

Midday stood up onto wobbly feet and surveyed the field as he started the long walk towards Netari’s territory. The fact that he had failed stung all that much more upon realizing that he had completed all but a sliver of his quota: twenty minutes more and he would have finished. It was too late now though, and chances were that the watchmen standing on the Neighborhood wall had already recorded the strike. He wanted to be angry, to rage at the cruelty of his circumstances, but all Midday could do as he walked away was let out a defeated sigh.

♦

Netari’s wolves greeted Midday with howls upon his arrival to their cul-de-sac. From there, they made quick work of surrounding him such that he didn’t dare move an inch. Even so, Midday found himself unafraid. He could tell at a glance that they were well-trained and that he was safe so long he didn’t act out of line.

After a few minutes of howling, Netari finally got the memo and popped out of the cabin Veolia had taken him into on the previous night. She was wearing pajamas by then, something Midday had never seen before, and was holding a coffee mug so gigantic that she had to hold it with both hands.

“Midday! What the hell is wrong with you, showing up this late?” She waved to the wolves and, with that, all of them went silent before sulking off into the darkness. “Do you not see the sign on my door? It says ‘CLOSED’, dumbass. For your sake, I hope you have a good reason for being here.”

“I’m here for the Tongue Jelly procedure.”

Netari stood silent for a moment before shrugging. “Fair enough. Alright then. Stand out here for a bit. I need a few minutes to get things ready.” Netari hurried off to the two-story cabin Midday assumed was the one she used as her house and exited a few minutes later wearing short-sleeved clothes. From there, she went into the medical cabin and came out carrying several vials of various drugs and medicines. “Follow me inside,” she said as she walked towards yet another cabin. This one was painted dark red and had neither windows nor even a chimney.

Midday followed her into the cabin and found that, as expected, this was the medical cabin: the place where she did most of her work throughout the day. There was a wide variety of medical equipment scattered throughout the room, most of which Midday recognized due to the time he’d spent with Gork, but there were a few additional, obviously more sophisticated instruments thrown into the mix as well—first and foremost among them was a complete set of surgical tools along the lines of various scalpels and scissors. The real star of the show, however, was a gigantic slab of smooth white marble at the center of the room. A layer of fabric-covered its surface, probably as a means of soaking up any blood that might be spilled during the procedure, and Midday was altogether amazed that she could afford to use such eccentric equipment.

“Alright. Lie yourself down on the slab. The sooner we get this done, the better.”