"I feel its time to expand the farm a little, what do you think?" said Li to Old Thane. The old man nodded slowly as he sat hunched over on a stool. The rickety stool seemed to small to support the old man's impressive frame, but it had held up for many years, and would now. 

"Lad, I thank you for asking me, but the farm is more yours than mine now." Old Thane chuckled. "Never would I have thought myself seeing my farm shifting hands before mine very own eyes, but it is a far more enjoyable feeling than I would have thought just a year ago."

"And I won't let that feeling go to waste. You won't regret letting me push this farm's limits." Li began speaking to the adventurers. "I'm not entirely sure about milestones to celebrate, but as things come pass, I'm sure those moments will come. For now, I'll just give you a basic rundown of what my plans are and you three can decide from there what's worth visiting for or not. Of course, you're always welcome to stop by whenever you feel like helping out."

Li pet the wyrm in his lap with one hand and pointed towards the field outside with the other.

"That field is just one acre." Li recalled details about the book of codified laws that Aine had in her collection. "The laws state that independent farmers get five acres, but I know Old Thane had his land reduced to one after failing to tend to his entire lot properly.

A good thing, too, because one acre gets taxed way less than five, and I'm sure that helped him get by before I got here. But now that I'm here, I fully intend to reclaim the other four acres, especially because nobody is really using it."

Triple Threat nodded understandingly.

"That's just step one. There are farmers living around the city and working the land, but in my observation, they sit on their asses and do nothing." Li shook his head. "Functionally speaking, the farms around the city are useless. They're here as emergency rations in the case that grain from Duvin or the capitol gets cutoff in a war, but there hasn't been a war in twenty years."

"That explains how rundown most of the farms have become," said Sylvie. "Certainly, there are a few around the city that run properly, but most I have observed seem to be empty farmhouses on overgrown fields."

"We used to think all of them were haunted!" said Jeanne as she shivered, remembering their shared childhood.

"Yeah, I saw them too. Those are what I call deadbeat farms," said Li. "Old Thane filled me in about them during one of our talks on the field. Made it obvious what he thinks of them too."

"They waste the land," said Old Thane as he sighed. "For they know not how precious it is to be able to grow life, to live from the earth without needing to risk life and limb every single day, every single moment, on the hunt."

"You give them a lot of credit, old man. They might not know anything about farming at all. Far as I can tell, they're legitimately empty. Owned by the sons of farmers who fought in the war like you but have since passed on.

Obviously, it appears that their sons would much rather be making money in the city than sitting on a piece of land for the rest of their lives."

"But why keep the farm?" said Jeanne. "Surely the land could be used for better purposes."

"Duchess's laws took out a lot of central power and gave more individual rights to the commonfolk. The crown can't just up and seize property without strong cause, and this leads naturally to people abusing the system." Li shrugged.

"Farmers are considered essential laborers and taxed specially, so owning and farming a plot of land means the only tax you have to pay is the one owed by your harvest. 

If a farmer can't pay their harvest tax like in the case of these guys because they let their fields rot, then they just pay a percentage of what their harvest should have been in coin, and let me tell you, when they downsize to one acre, that tax isn't much at all.

The rest of their income? The businesses or building or whatever it is they do in the city gets by untaxed."

"I understand," said Sylvie. "I know a farmer among the ranks of us adventurers who had his father's farm passed down to him, and always did wonder why he kept the land despite never using it. I can see now."

"Typical tax loophole abuse." Li said with a nonchalant voice. He had seen plenty of this in his past life where society was geared towards making more and more and more money. He had been part of it, too, having lawyer friends that advised him on how to give back as little as he could.

"In any case, I want a piece of all that unused land. I'm going to move to take it from them."

"And how will you go about that, if I may ask?" Sylvie cocked her head.

"I'll directly ask these guys for their land. If they say no, then I'll make them give me a good explanation why. If the explanation isn't good enough, well, I'll convince them somehow. Don't worry about that part."

Li fully intended to threaten these "farmers", and he believed himself completely in the right to take land that was never going to be used, but he did not want to have a debate on morality right now, so he kept it to himself.

In any case, he would consider physically harming these people an absolute last resort to keep attention to himself minimal. If a little reason could work, then great, if not, then a little intimidation would do just fine, in all likelihood. 

Sylvie gave Li a knowing look before shrugging and nodding. That part about her where she was quick to pick up on what he was thinking or wanted was something he could appreciate.

"Oh, I am certain they will see reason and listen to you," said Jeanne, and Li could only give her a somewhat pitying nod for her innocence.

He expected Azhar to quip something about how people were terrible and wouldn't listen to reason in his cynical manner, but the man was focused instead on the wyrm. 

"Something wrong with her?" asked Li.

Azhar shook his head. "Nah, that ain't it. Was just admirin' her. When I went back home, there weren't many dragonkin riders left among us. Too few of us and the kin were gettin' way wilder than usual.

But among the kin that I did see, there ain't none that got the look in her eyes. Regular kin – normal wyrms – they ain't got that spark in their eyes, ain't much goin' on between em' other than instinct."

Azhar raised a brow. "But her? She knows what's goin' round her." He tapped his head. "She thinks. Look at her, raisin' her head at me cause' she knows I'm talkin' bout her."

"Unsurprising, considering her mother," said Sylvie, almost bitterly as she remembered the hard-fought battle against the Lerneas. "You must take care to raise her right," she said to Li. 

"You don't have to worry about that," said Li with a curt nod, fully knowing he knew nothing about raising the wyrm, but trial and error mixed with a healthy dose of confidence was a powerful tool he could rely upon.

The wyrm peered around the room, at each of the faces that were not Li, with some suspicion, but no aggression as she could read from Li's body language that nobody was a threat. When her eyes set upon Li, she loosed a rumbling echo from her throat that almost sounded like a car engine starting as she closed her eyes and rested her head on Li's knee.

"That's a sound of contentment. Like purrin' for cats," explained Azhar.

"Az the dragon master has a nice ring to it, don't you think so?" said Jeanne. 

Azhar shrugged. "I ain't a master of nothin'."

"Don't put yourself down," said Li. "You have strengths. You should be proud of them."

Azhar looked at Li with widened eyes before nodding in understanding at Li's reminder. "We should get goin', you two," he said to Jeanne and Sylvie.

"Look, he's getting shy," teased Jeanne, and Azhar rolled his eyes and started to walk towards the door. 

"Unless you want me shootin' arrows at giant spiders myself, I suggest you follow," said Azhar.

=== 

Outside the cottage, Li stood by the door, talking to Sylvie about last minute details about ingredients while Old Thane was giving parting words to Jeanne and Azhar by the main road. 

"Let's see," said Sylvie as she looked up, her brain recalling stored details and memories. "For [Insectbane], we'll be giving you giant spider chitin, mothman dust, giant enemy crabworm venom, or was it giant spider venom and crabworm venom?"

"Spider chitin and worm venom is right," said Li. He looked down at Sylvie. Her hands were rubbing together while she bit her lip. "You seem nervous."

Sylvie glanced at Li before sighing. "Yes, I am. This whole venture is so risky. We are so unsuited to the creeping forests, and yet I insisted we go to minimize future risk against the Gigantopede. It almost feels that I have decided to put my family willingly in danger."

"If this is the decision you made, then you should stick with it."

Sylvie looked down. "Yes, I suppose so."

"You've got a good head about you," said Li. "You're careful, insightful, and good at risk-analysis. All of those are good traits for a party leader. I'm telling you to stick with your decision because you're probably right."

Sylvie perked up, a smile playing at her lips. Her expression brightened at the praise, and Li could see her confidence rising as he had intended it to with his words. "Truly?"

"I don't like repeating myself," said Li and smiled just a little. Her playstyle and, to a lesser extent, her ever curious personality, reminded him of his friend from the past //BEAST//, though her obsession was with steampunk rather than the east. "Try your best to not get yourself and the others killed. After all, you'd be losing out on your very first cultivation lesson."

That was the biggest motivation he could have given her, stoking her curiosity to the max, and when she left with Jeanne and Azhar to Riviera where a carriage would take them as far into the forests as it could, her step was firm and full of energy.