The door opened just a crack, and the room burst into hell. 

Lucius raised his foot and smashed it into the door, bursting it open and sending the person that was standing behind it flying into the wall, cracking it and knocking him unconscious. 

The other robber recovered and ran at Lucius with an ax, but Lucius could tell the wood was old. Pieces were chipping off just from the movement of someone running. 

Lucius jumped into action. He sidestepped the ax that came at him and slammed the hilt of the katana into the man's stomach, but it didn't do as much damage as Lucius' wanted. 

The robber raised the ax again, but Lucius acted first. In a blink of an eye, he yanked the katana out of his sheath and brought it on the ax's handle, which broke in two. Swiftly, the sword went right back into the sword. 

Then, Lucius repeatedly slammed his fist and the hilt of his sword into the man's stomach, and he couldn't endure the relentless pounding. Soon, his eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed on the floor. 

Taking ragged breaths, Lucius straightened up and looked around.  

"I think the threat is gone now," he called out. 

Kron and Ilane peeked around the door and came out, cautiously looking at the unconscious bodies. 

"That's amazing!" Kron burst. "How on earth did you do that?" 

Lucius shrugged and didn't respond. He walked over to the phone and dialed "911." 

"Yes, I would like to report a robbery," he said. 

After finishing the call, he got a rope out of the closet and tied up the robbers. 

"So that's why you always seemed busy!" Kron exclaimed. "You were learning how to do Kendo! And that explains why you are getting pretty buff." 

"It's not Kendo, and I've been doing other things than just using the sword." 

"Pish posh, you can't convince me. I now know your secret!" 

Now what are you, a detective? 

"Whatever." 

Soon, the police arrived and knocked on the door. Lucius opened it and faced three policemen. 

"There has been a break in here?" One of them asked. 

"Yes, sir," Lucius said. They stepped in and observed the tied up robbers. 

"Did you do this, kid?"  

"Yes, sir." 

"And these people are the ones that broke into your house?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"And why didn't you call us the instant you heard them enter your house instead of trying to handle the situation yourself?" 

"My friends and I were trapped in the room, and there wasn't an accessible phone nearby," Lucius said and pointed to an object fell next to the unconscious robber. It was Lucius' phone. 

"My parents don’t want me to have a phone, so... yeah. I don't have one," Kron said. His hands dug around in his pockets and came up empty. 

"My phone is out of battery. I brought my charger to my friend's house to charge it," Ilane said. She pulled out charger and a phone, and when she held the power button on the phone, it didn't turn on. 

Wow, okay. That worked, I guess, Lucius thought. What a coincidence. 

"Alright," the officer said and scribbled more things on a clipboard.  

The other officers walked over to the burglars and started to put them in handcuffs. They practically dragged them out the door and threw them into the back seat of the police car. 

"Now, what did you use to knock the burglars unconscious? It looked to be blunt," the officer asked again. 

Lucius showed him the katana. "I only took it out of its sheath to break the ax one of the robbers had. Other than that, I just hit them with the hilt of it." 

The other officers came back in. One of them looked impressed. 

"You beat two armed robbers with a toy sword? Impressive," he said. 

"It is not a toy sword," Lucius calmly said, but at that, he got a little annoyed. 

"Oh? Is it a genuine katana?" He said.  

"Yes, sir." 

He handed it back to Lucius. "Here, kid. Now, remember—don't go out and wave that sharp thing around. In here, it is fine, but you will get arrested in public. Understand me?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"Now, how did the burglars get in? Did you leave the door unlocked?" 

"No sir. I remember locking it after these two came in," Lucius gesturned to Kron and Ilane.  

The officer looked to one of the other police officers. "Check the door for a sign of a pick or a break." 

He walked over and inspected the lock. 

"There is a sign of a lock picker, sir." 

"Alright." The officer wrote some more things down. 

"We're done here. Let's go back. Kid, stay out of trouble." 

"Yes, sir." 

The officers filed out and the police car drove off, kicking up dust. 

"I'll call that a win, I guess," Kron said. 

"I'm not so sure," Lucius said, looking at the hole in the wall and the broken ax. "My mom is going to freak out." 

"We'll try to explain to her. She'll understand, I guess," Ilane said. 

"Maybe..." Lucius grabbed a broom and swept up the remains of the ax into the garbage. "I think it's best if we leave for today. The less time we stay here, the better. I reckon more police are going to come, so if we are out of their way, we should get out." 

"Good idea. Let's go to the market place," Kron said. 

They left the house, making sure to firmly lock the door and shut the blinds on the windows, and jumped on a bus. They arrived at the Market Square, a massive outdoor mall that contained over a hundred stores. 

"Ah, it has been a while since I've been here," Lucius said while looking around. "It's grown so much!" 

"Yeah. Let's go get something to eat!" Kron said. 

"Didn't you guys just eat?" 

"That was hours ago, Lucius. I have lava for stomach acid. You should know that," Kron grinned while opening a door to a noodle place. When the smell hit them, their stomachs rumbled. 

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Hypocrite," Kron said and sat down. "You have your debit card, right Lucius?" 

"Yeah," Lucius patted his wallet. "I'm pretty sure I have it, but you better not go overload. I don’t have an infinite supply of money, hope you know that." 

"Nah. You're treating us since you scared the shit out of me today." 

"...fine," Lucius sighed.  

"Great!" Kron said. He raised his hand, and a waiter came by. 

"Gimme a #2, a #7, #9, #18, and a large mango bubble tea," Kron said cheerily. 

"I'll just have the noodles of the house today, please," Ilane said. 

"I'll have a large strawberry fruit tea with tapioca pearls," Lucius sighed.  

"Alright, will that be all?" The waiter asked. 

"Can I also get a--" Kron started, but Lucius cut him off. 

"No, that will be fine," Lucius politely said. The waiter marched off. 

"Fatass," Lucius told Kron. 

Kron just grinned. 

Soon, the food came and the fragrance of five different dishes wafted into the air. Lucius, however, was content with his fruit tea.  

Hmm... this strawberry is pretty good. It would bring in a lot of money if I grew... Lucius didn't need to finish the thought. I doubt that strawberries exist in Zenos, but how am I going to get strawberries there? 

Then he remembered the backpack.  

I still need to test out to see if I can transport seeds. If I could, I bet that it will be a good product to sell, Lucius thought.  

"Before we leave, we need to stop by a garden shop. I need to buy some seeds," Lucius said. 

"What for?" Kron asked. 

Lucius facepalmed. "Yeah, I'm going to buy seeds to eat right out of the bag." 

"Really?" 

"No! Use your brain, Kron." 

"Oh," Kron nodded. "Going to plant a garden." 

Ilane and Lucius gave him a mini applause. "Congratulations, Kron." 

"Whatever." 

Kron wolfed down his entire meal, only stopping to get a drink of water to clear his throat. Ilane ate much slower and humane. Both Ilane and Lucius often stopped to eye Kron, but he was too busy to realize. 

After what seemed like forever, Kron finished and leaned back. 

"Whew. That was excellent," he finally said while patting his stomach, which had noticeably grown. 

"Finally," Lucius said. He got up and quickly paid, ordering another fruit tea while he was at it. 

Sipping his tea, the trio left the restaurant and headed to a plant nursery. 

Lucius breathed in the smell of freshly turned dirt, and he felt refreshed. He headed to the seed department and picked out many different types of seeds. Not just strawberries; Lucius picked out blueberries, raspberries blackberries,  elderberries, and watermelon. He paid and stuffed his pockets with the packets of seeds. 

Kron checked the time on the big clocks in the center of the square. It read 2:00 PM. 

"I think I need to go. Any longer and my mom is going to blow up on me," he said.  

"Same. I have violin lessons soon," Ilane said. 

"Are you going on the same bus?" Lucius asked. 

"Nope. My house is nearby. It's like a thirty-minute walk from here," Kron said. 

"I'm going on a different bus," Ilane said. 

"Well, I guess, see ya!" Lucius said and walked off. 

A little pleased with the silence, Lucius hopped onto the bus and got home. 

He stepped through the door and felt good. Nothing changed since he left. 

Lucius found his backpack and dropped in the seed packets. Then, he forced himself to wake up in the other world. 

----------------------------------------

He grabbed the seed packets from his backpack. Instead of the normal packaging, the packs were stripped of the outer coating of the packs. Now, they were just paper pouches with seeds inside. 

Then, Lucius went outside to find a suitable location to grow his plants. He didn't want anyone to steal them, so he wanted somewhere obscure. 

The problem was, there was nowhere obscure enough to hide his plants. The forest was risky because people could stumble upon them on accident, or the beasts lurking in the forest could eat his plants. 

So if he couldn't do it on the ground, he thought of two options: somewhere high, like another floor to his house, or underground. 

Then he eliminated one. Somewhere up high was just the same as putting it on the ground, but it would be harder to get. But Lucius wanted somewhere where it couldn't be seen at all. So Lucius felt like he needed to do it underground. 

Then, of course, there was another problem. Plants need oxygen, water, sunlight, and nutrients and minerals.  

He could remove minerals from the list, no problem. The dirt was sure to provide enough or more of what a plant needs. Oxygen was easy too. He just needed to make sure that the place underground had some sort of airflow. 

The last things on his list were water and sunlight. He didn't want to water a bunch of plants every day, as that would be a waste of time. Sunlight would be the hardest since it was underground. Artificial lights would work, but it wouldn't yield the same results. Lucius didn't have the technology to create the perfect light that would work for plants*. 

*(AN: For more info, look here: http://earthsky.org/human-world/artificial-light-plant-growth) 

So, Lucius took the next few hours thinking of solutions. 

He could run a water-flow down and automatically water the plants from Sorus Bay. The problem with that was that he couldn't effectively control the water-flow. If he just dug a hole in the ground that leads to Sorus Bay, the rushing water would erode the sides and eventually drown the plants.  

Pipes were another option for Lucius, but again, he needed to be extra careful. Even though the pipe was more controlled, it was still unreliable. 

Then Lucius remembered that it was not the real world; there were way more things to work with that would potentially help him. 

Too bad there's no such thing as a Water Crystal. If it did exist, it would solve this problem easily, Lucius thought. 

A tiny dam popped into Lucius' mind. It seemed like a good idea—dams controlled water effectively and he could control the output of water. 

Normally, making a mini dam wouldn't be a good idea in the real world, but then again, this wasn't the real world. He had more access to things he wouldn't have access to on Earth. 

So Lucius went in his workshop and drew up a plan.  

It would be quite small. Two by two feet would suffice; Lucius didn't have the skill to create many things that were bigger than that, and it would be a waste. A dam that big would be able to water the garden, and if Lucius made more than one, he could create a much larger underground garden. 

Then, Lucius ran into another problem.  

He had a bunch of metal that he could use, but he didn't know how he was going to go around making the dam. Making the light bulb was easy, but this was a whole new problem. 

First, Lucius created a very rough wood carving of what he wanted. This took a while, but he managed to do it. 

It was essentially a block of wood with a hollow inside with a mesh net on one side and a raisable gate on the other. Water would flow into the wood and anything big would get filtered out from the mesh. It would flow into the hollow block of wood and encounter the next side. 

It used the same concept Lucius used for the gate: the wood would slide down and when it the rope was drawn up, it would pull the gate up and block the water flow. He could anchor the rope and it should hold, blocking the water flow. 

Lucius could use wood, but it would wear down and break over time. Metal was the best option, and now that Lucius created a wood model, he could use that to create the metal product. 

He did the same thing that he did for the light bulb. He packed a ton of sand inside and outside the wood dam and poured the liquid metal on the pile. 

Fire burst up as the liquid metal vaporized the metal and took its place. The wet sand did its job perfectly as it stayed in the shape of the wood and didn't move at all. 

Lucius waited for at least half an hour to let the metal harden, then he plunged the entire thing in Sorus Bay to speed up the cooling. The sand dropped off and the only thing left was a dam structure. 

Pleased, Lucius added the mesh net that he got from the Royal Slimes and created some rope. 

He finished the rest of the structure in another hour. 

Then, Lucius had one more thing on his list: the digging. 

Oh god, Lucius groaned from just thinking about the digging. This is going to kill my back three times over. 

Then, again, he remembered that it was a fantasy world where he had a lot more access to more things. 

He fetched Luna and went inside the enclosed garden.  

"Can you dig a big room underneath this?" Lucius asked. 

"Sure. It won't take that long," Luna replied. 

With every swipe of her arms, a massive portion of the dirt was gouged out. When the dirt started to accumulate, Lucius had to get down and bring the dirt out. 

Just like what Luna predicted, it only took thirty minutes to finish. Lucius spent the next thirty minutes using the sap-mud mixture to cover up the sides to prevent it from caving in. 

Then, there was the sunlight. Lucius couldn't think of any way to get light to travel down, so he figured he would take the hit. He would use the artificial lights to grow the plants and hope for the best. 

Lucius then brought his metal dam out and stuck it in the wall that faced Sorus Bay, using the sap-mud mixture to stick it in. He also brought wood in and overlapped the dam and stuck them in the ground, keeping them firmly in. 

The n came another hard part: digging into Sorus Bay. But Lucius thought of an idea that helped. 

He got a Mana Crystal and let it absorb a Wind Crystal. Then, he attached it to the wood so it could spin, then stuck his last AE Crystal to the wood.  

When he spun the Mana Crystal, it would release the wind. Then, it would be absorbed by the AE Crystal and jetted out of the other end. He used this to basically create a wind drill. 

Then, for the last time, he ran into a problem. 

(AN: I'm really getting sick of typing, "he ran into a problem." Ugh.) 

He had no way to dig. On one end, there was Sorus Bay. And the other end had the dam that Lucius just stuck on, and it would be more than a pain to take it off. 

Another problem! Oh my god. How many of these am I going to do today?! Lucius wanted to scream out.  

So Lucius had to remove the dam from the wall and dig toward Sorus Bay. The drill worked better than what Lucius' expected, but it still took a while. And then, while Lucius dug the last inch of dirt, water started to come through. Lucius had to crawl back his fastest to get back before the water broke through. 

Then, Lucius had to quickly reattach the dam on, but he managed to do it. He raised the gate up a bit, so the water slowly trickled through and leaked onto the floor. 

Finally, Lucius thought. Now, for the fun part. 

He got the seeds and planted the strawberries. He wanted to test first. 

And after he finished, he instantly went back to sleep.