5th Spring, Year 1

My first sales showed up in my ledger this morning, just like Marie said they would.

Since I don't know how to make any sort of medicine out of the mushrooms I gathered, and since I sure as hell don't want to eat any more of them, I decided to sell the remaining seven large ones I collected after 'Roy' got through threatening me, along with all the small ones I gathered along the way. Which earned me a grand total of [insert drumroll here].

375 Zeni. 35 Zeni a piece for the big ones, and about 1 or 2 apiece for the remainder.

Big Money. No Whammies.

I probably shouldn't be complaining, money is money, and if I'm going to come close to that 50,000, every single penny is going to count. For now, I'm holding onto it until my first harvest goes through. I'm hoping to get a better idea of what each crop is going to be worth so that I can work up a plan, or a budget, or something.

I never thought I'd kill for Excel. But here we are.

In the meantime, I've decided I've got three main goals I need to work on.

1. Money, Money, Money (Moooooney!) - If I'm not planning on taking Lawton's deal, I need to earn about a million zeni by year's end just to pay down the debt. In reality, I’m going to need to earn probably around twice that much overall, since I need money to make money. The amount I’m going to have to spend on seeds alone to earn a million in profit is positively staggering whenever I think about it.

I’ve been trying not to think about it.

For now, I think the best task is to focus on the amount in front of me. Pay down this 50,000 and try and have about that much left over for next month when all is said and done.

2. Try and solve the mystery of Blue Hills - There has got to be a better name for this goal, but I'm stumped on it. I feel like there has to be someone here who knows something, but after that talk with Belle, how do I bring it up? Even ignoring the bizarro world physics of this town, there are so many things I don't know. The Lawtons come from outside of Blue Hills, but is that my world? Or somewhere else?

3. Make a decision - Sort of related to #1 and #2 I guess, but I need to decide sooner rather than later whether or not I'm leaving. I could probably leave tomorrow, rich if Lawton lets me use his plane rather than waiting for the train, but if I do so then everyone in Blue Hills loses their town. Technically I think I have until the end of the month, so long as I have the money to pay the first installment, but I really should make my mind up sooner rather than later.

Until I decide otherwise, I think my best course is to assume that I'm in for the long haul. I can change my mind and ditch this popsicle stand at the drop of a hat, but saving up money halfway through the month would be a hell of a lot harder than planning for it now.

Even the morality here is pretty video-gamey.

Alex

"My my, things have finally come together, have they?"

Alexander didn't even need to glance up to recognize the voice. Marie Mayer had become a consistent fixture on his property over the last five days, so much so that he'd have been more concerned if she hadn't come to check up on him, particularly given the way she'd been hovering over his growing crops like an expectant grandmother for the last two days.

"Certainly looks that way." He replied with a grunt of exertion as he yanked a potato plant up by the stem. Soil gave way beneath it, crumbling out in all directions as a number of golden potato tubers came into view, each torn off the stem one by one and tossed into a nearby open satchel where they promptly vanished from existence. "But you already knew that."

"I can still want to come and look." Marie shrugged, bemusement twinkling just behind her eyes. "Besides, your first harvest, this is an exciting step for you."

"Oh. Absolutely." Alexander laughed wryly. "See this? This is my excited face."

The same sort of magic that was at work elsewhere throughout Blue Hills was present in harvesting, but to Alexander's annoyance, it wasn't nearly so prominent. Hoeing, planting, watering, all of these required him to be perhaps 75% accurate in order for the blue light to take over and clean up his sloppy workmanship. When it came to harvesting, however, that number was closer to 90%. True, it returned the soil to its tilled condition and cleaned up the few straggling potatoes that had gone unnoticed or ungathered, but that still left the majority of the physical, tedious harvest to Alexander.

If it had been a real farm, with real aches and pains, he'd have thrown his hands up and walked off the job an hour ago. As it was, it took everything he could muster to put on a happy face for Marie as she came by, and even that one was unconvincing, to say the least.

"Hard work is its own reward," Marie said pleasantly, laughing as she added. "Though I've always been more a fan of the Zeni."

"Yeah. Gonna be honest, I'm with you on the last part." Alexander grumbled, yanking up another plant in a dirty, gloved hand as he smiled her way. Roughly two-thirds of the field had been cleared, and he was already longing to get an estimate. "Don't suppose you know how much all of this will be worth?"

Marie pondered the question for a moment. "Hard to say. A little over four hundred, I'd guess."

Alexander winced. The number was on par for what he'd expected, but hearing it out loud still felt a bit like a dagger to his heart. Yeah, this was his first time, so it was going to take longer, but the idea that he was going to make a fifty thousand Zeni in a little over three weeks through four or five hundred Zeni increments, seemed implausible at best.

His face was apparently easy to read.

"Don't count yourself out yet, Alexander," Marie said with a reassuring smile. "You're a beginner, starting with almost nothing. Give it some time, and you'll be earning Zeni hand over fist."

"Time is the one thing we don't really have, though." He pointed out, briefly shifting from his work to regard her directly.

"Three growing seasons, and the winter for other types of income. I think you'll do better than you realize Alexander." Marie drew closer to him, reaching out a hand to press it reassuringly to his forearm. "Believe me when I say, if I'm not scared, you certainly shouldn't be."

She had a point. Either Marie was exceptional at hiding her own dread at the possibility of her village being purchased out from under her, she really did believe in him, or she was deluded. Given the three choices, he was going to cling to her belief.

"Thanks." He said, rolling a smidge of the stiffness out of his shoulders. "I think I needed that."

"Absolutely, Alexander." She smiled. "But that isn't all I have that you need."

"Oh?"

Marie stepped away from the half-emptied plots of potatoes, moving to the elevated deck of his cabin before reaching into the purse at her side to produce a trio of large, rolled documents.

They looked like blueprints, and as Alexander grew closer, he realized that was exactly what they were.

"Blueprints?" He asked quizzically.

"Mhmm. I pulled them from the archives. Some of your Uncle's old designs." She smiled, unrolling each document in turn while pinning their corners to the ground with several fist-sized rocks collected from nearby. "Our filing system isn't exactly ideal, but I think there are more to be found there as well."

Alexander wasn't sure what he was supposed to make of the four documents. Their names were emblazoned in white at the top of each page, but both the topics and the drawings themselves were almost childishly simple. Scarecrow. Furnace. Essence Maker. Fishing Rod. Detailed technical drawings these were not.

"I... uh... thanks?" He stammered, totally unsure of how to react. Laughter probably wasn't right, given the amount of pride on Marie's face as she directed his attention to the three blueprints. Yet the blueprints themselves were so laughably vague that it seemed like the only rational response.

The first was a picture of a scarecrow, little more than a stick figure with a comically oversized pumpkin head and a few lines around the shoulder to indicate grass, or more likely, hay. Smaller writing in its corner confirmed the latter with the instructions: Three wood, One outfit, Two hay. Pumpkin optional.

The second continued the trend with a picture of a stone furnace, like something one might see out of some medieval display at their local museum. Next to it, in the same handwriting: Fifty stone. Coal Powered.

The third appeared a little more complicated, a large funnel that led down into a rectangular box with an opening on one side. The documentation beside it listed the device as an Essence Maker, one with slightly more in-depth requirements: Five Copper Bars, Twenty wood, Two glass.

The final of the four was the simplest of all, a depiction of a stick, a piece of string, with a grade school drawing of a fish hanging off the end of it. Unsurprisingly the instructions were hilariously vague: Four wood, One string.

Next to all three images was the same pattern, a five-by-five grid of squares, filled in with a different arrangement of letters that seemed to correspond to the materials listed nearby.

"I thought these might help you. Our fishing shop is only open for the summer when Reginald is in town, but this should be able to get you started at least. I've also brought you a bit of string and a crafting bench since I didn't think you had either."

"A crafting bench?" Alexander asked, eyebrow upraised.

If Marie heard his query, she said nothing. Instead, she busied herself with her purse once again, pulling a pair of zippers on either side of it until the mouth of the purse opened completely. From there she moved slightly to his side and tipped the thing on its end. At first, nothing, then, after a few seconds the purse bulged, the corner of an enormous wooden surface peeking out from the relatively small opening.

With some effort, Marie shook the bag back and forth, the mouth of her purse opening impossibly wide until at last a full, four-foot-tall, three-foot-wide square table dropped unceremoniously into the grass just to the side of Alexander's front deck.

"There we go! Sorry about that, I don't actually have a larger bag." Marie blushed.

"Uh... huh," Alexander said skeptically.

"Those are yours to keep, by the way." She said, gesturing to the blueprints. "You'll have to store them if you want to commit them to memory."

He eyed her, eyed the blueprints, then shrugged. Blue Hills made its own sort of sense, and as he'd discovered with the mushrooms, simply seeing something, or even knowing something, wasn't always enough.

Alexander collected the four blueprints and felt an odd tingle run through him the moment he touched them. It was like touching one of those plasma ball toys he'd seen a lot of as a child, a certain buzzing sensation that vibrated at just the top layer of his skin wherever it was in contact with the paper of the blueprint. Electric, but without pain or shocks.

"So have you ever used one of these..." Marie began to ask, her face spreading into a bemused smile at his countenance. "Right, assume you know nothing. Sorry."

"It's alright." He replied, tucking the last of the blueprints into the bag he'd retrieved from the middle of the field. "Though I think I can guess this one. Or, at least the basics."

The three-foot square table in front of him was visibly divided into a total of twenty-five equal squares by a series of crisscrossing, tic-tac-toe style lines. It was the same pattern that was on the bottom corner of each of the blueprints, albeit without the letter combinations unique to each page. "I put the materials in the spot indicated on the blueprint. Then I do...something, and I'm left with the final result."

"For the simplest form of crafting, which is where you'd be starting, yes. That is accurate." Marie confirmed.

"And when it isn't so simple?"

"We'll get to that after we get through the 'something.' Sort of skipped over that part," Marie smirked. "Once you have the materials in the right locations, you have to invest some of yourself into the construction, then picture it in your mind's eye."

"Yeah 'invest some of yourself,' because that doesn't sound like something a cult would tell me to do.."

"What was that?" Marie asked, her eyes narrowed.

"Nothing," Alexander said, looking away from her for fear she'd heard more of his murmured complaint than her question let on. "The furnace blueprint required fifty stone. It doesn't look like there is enough space on the table for that much."

"You just need a-" The older woman waved her right hand in a slow circle as she sought out the word, "Exemplar... sample! You just need a sample. If you have fifty stones, you just need to place enough to fill the spaces on the blueprint, and the rest will be pulled from your bag during creation."

"Well, that is handy," Alexander murmured, a quiet laugh falling from his lips.

"Something funny?" She inquired with further annoyance.

He swatted a hand at the air as if knocking away her complaints. "I'm not laughing at you, I promise. Just hit me how absurd my life has gotten." His words did little to soothe Marie's increasingly stern gaze, some of his own mirth evaporating as he struggled to clarify. "This would be literal magic where I come from, something out of fiction. I just thought it was funny how readily I am willing to accept something so fantastic as the norm."

"Mhmm," Marie replied skeptically. "In any case, this, along with the proper blueprints, should allow you to craft almost anything you can imagine needing for your farm. New tools, storage containers, decorations, you name it."

"And I can obtain blueprints..."

"You'll get some from me. All the ones your Uncle filed with city hall technically belong to you, so I'll deliver them as I find them. I know you haven't gone to talk to Victor about opening up the mine, but when you do, you can also ask him about additional Blueprints. He has a rather enormous collection, as I understand it."

"Can I construct things without blueprints?" Alexander queried.

"I don't see why not. You'd be sort of shooting in the dark unless you knew exactly what you wanted to make, but that is how we learn, I suppose." Marie smiled. "Did you have something in mind?"

Alexander shook his head. "Nothing specific. Just trying to get the rules of it all down in my head."

"Rules?" Marie asked with some consternation. Then, rather than press the issue, she moved on. "Each item you craft will take some of your energy for the day. The more complicated the item, the more energy it will take to craft."

"And the higher my crafting skill will need to be." Alexander finished, to Marie's surprise.

"That is correct." She scowled. "I thought you said you didn't know-"

"I don't. It is just that a lot of the things here in Blue Hills are somewhat similar to concepts back where I'm from."

Marie rolled her eyes. "Well, in any case, it is as you say. If you aren't experienced enough, you will fail, and you will still use the energy. Most blueprints should tell you their requirements. Anything you try and make on your own, however, you'll only know that you failed, not why you failed. So be careful."

"You said there was more to it? For more difficult crafting?"

"Yes." Marie smiled. "For more complicated crafting projects you will sometimes need special tools in addition to the materials for the item itself. Such tools won't be used up during the crafting, but you won't be successful without them." Her fingers brushed along the surface of the table as she added. "And then there is the chance of failure. Some projects are just too complicated to get right every time. Sometimes, even if you follow the instructions, you'll still have a chance of failure. The blueprint should list this with its minimum requirements, but as your skill improves, the possibility of your failure will also decrease."

"A lot to take in," he murmured.

"I'm giving you the short version." Marie giggled, a girlish sound from an older woman. "There are other aspects, such as tempering that we haven't even touched on. For now, let's just have you start with the basics." she produced a small spool of thread from her bag and put it in the middle column of the fourth row. "Do you have enough wood lying around or do you need me to-"

"Do I have wood?" Alexander scoffed. He'd spent a not inconsiderable part of the last five days clearing out a new swath of farmland, to be ready for an expansion once his first round of crops finished. Part of that had been chopping down tree after tree, a veritable one-man deforestation supported by whatever healthy wild snacks he could lay his hands on.

Alexander had wood. Hundreds upon hundreds of pieces of it.

He dug into the satchel at his side, producing one 2x4 after another, setting them upright on the table one after another, until the middle column of the workbench had a spool of thread, and four pieces of wood lined up in a neat row.

Sometimes it was hard to take Blue Hills seriously.

"So what do I do now?"

Marie tapped two corners of the table with her fingertips, drawing Alexander's attention to what appeared to be small grips on either side. "Grab onto it here, close your eyes and focus on the materials. Then, focus on what you want them to become."

"Sounds easy enough." He replied, shifting over slightly until he stood in front of the table. From there he took hold of it, drew a deep breath, pulled in one last look at his components, and tried not to laugh. Four blocks of wood and a spool of thread, yeah, if he were going to make a fishing rod, that was sure how he'd do it.

Alexander closed his eyes, cleared his mind, and focused. At first, his mind went to the blueprint, but that wasn't right. He was supposed to imagine the finished product, not a four-year-old's interpretation of what a fishing rod looked like. The problem was, he couldn't really imagine a fishing rod so easily. He'd seen them on TV, but apart from a couple’s mermaid and fisherman costume he'd seen once at a party, Alexander didn't think he'd ever actually seen a fishing rod. And that one had been metal.

Clear your mind. Just think of a fishing rod. A fishing rod. How hard can it be?

Harder than he thought. As seconds ticked by, he heard Marie next to him, clearing her throat. Clearly, this whole process wasn't supposed to take nearly this long.

The distraction only made it worse, and soon he could feel embarrassment and heat rising to his cheeks in equal measure. How hard was it to imagine a damn fishing rod? A stick, a string, maybe one of those little twirly things? What were those called? A reel? For all his internal mockery of his Uncle's drawing, Alexander now realized he probably couldn't have drawn a better picture if his life depended on it, and not just because he was artistically useless.

He focused back on that drawing, the image that had seemed so comical. It was of dubious accuracy, but it was easy for him to picture in his mind's eye. And as he pictured it, he felt that same feeling in his hands, that electric buzz that he'd felt while holding the blueprints. It was working.

Alexander focused on the image, moved his inner eye around every simple part of it, even the grade-school-esque fish he'd seen at the end of the line. The more he kept his mind on the blueprint, the more that sensation grew across his fingertips, along his hands, and up his arms. Soon the whole of him was awash in the sensation, then, all at once, it vanished as if the plug had been pulled on whatever device had been charging him.

"Well done, Alexander!" Marie cried.

His eyes opened to an unfamiliar sight. The components were gone, and in their place lay a simple, yet utilitarian fishing rod. It looked nothing like the image on the blueprint, nor the bastardized version he'd cobbled together in his mind's eye, but it was what he'd produced all the same.

"Wow." Was all he could say, at least for several moments. If not for the sensation that had filled him during the process, or all the other oddities he'd come across in the previous five days, he'd have accused Marie of having swapped out the materials in favor of a store-bought rod while his eyes were closed. "That was..."

"Well, it took you a little while, but I guess we all have to take a while to get used to new experiences." Marie smiled. "You should probably make at least one of each of the items I've given you the blueprints for since they'll all be useful in their own ways."

Alexander thought back to the blueprints. “A scarecrow makes sense, I haven’t seen any hungry birds, but I imagine they’ll be a pain if they get it in their heads that the farm is a buffet.” He glanced down at the other two blueprints before continuing. “What are the other two for?”

“The furnace can be used for smelting bits of ore that you find on your farm or elsewhere into more useful bars. If you’ll look, the Essence Maker actually requires several copper bars for you to construct.”

"Yeah, I noticed that," Alexander replied, glancing to the distant edge of his property where he had located the boarded-up mine shaft early on his fourth day. "I'm guessing the mines have the coal to fuel it?"

"You can also buy some from Victor." She nodded. "Though his prices can be a little exorbitant if you are buying in bulk."

“Fair enough. What about this... Essence Maker?”

"Most of the seeds that Belle is able to purchase are of rather low quality. If you want to succeed, you are better off trying to raise the level of your crops yourself, rather than relying on her to obtain high potency seeds."

"Ah. Because of course, I have to level up my crops." Alexander replied, deadpan.

“You’re familiar with the concept then?”

“The concept, yes.” He said, unsure as to whether he wanted to laugh or to cry at the silliness of it all. “How about you give me the tutorial, just in case.”

His use of the word tutorial seemed to push a particularly annoying button in Marie, but after a moment of scowling his way, she started in on her explanation. “Once you have your first Essence Maker, you’ll have the option of using it to remove usable essence from your crops, by feeding them into the machine rather than selling them.”

"Seed essence?" Alexander inquired with an upraised eyebrow.

"Well, it isn't exactly seeds. More of a compacted byproduct that the machine spits out."

"Oh, like composting."

It was Marie's turn to raise a fine brow. "Compositing?"

"You don't have..." Alexander started to ask, before thinking better of it. "So if I use this essence while planting, then the resulting seeds will produce plants better than the ones I planted in the first place?"

“If your crop has been properly raised, yes. The better you treat your crop, the better the resulting seeds. The right fertilizer, the right amount of water, careful planting, and so forth.” Marie dipped a hand into her bag and produced two potatoes of his potatoes. “Put these in your bag.” She said, waiting until he’d done so before she added. “Now open up your Status Book. You see the two potatoes?”

“I do.”

"Touch on the image, then flip the page."

Alexander did as she asked and was surprised to find that the two pages following his inventory were no longer blank. Instead, they showed pictures of two potatoes, images that were nearly identical save for the pixilated star that accompanied the top image. Below each was a small summary of the item.

Potato (Silver Star)

Level 1 – Spring Crop

Sale Price – 72 Zeni

Useful Recipes - Cryptictext

Potato (Bronze Star)

Level 1 – Spring Crop

Sale Price – 60 Zeni

Useful Recipies – Cryptictext

“What do you see?”

“I see the prices are completely wrong. I mean, I wish I made this much for a potato, but-”

“The prices are for a full plot worth of them Alex,” Marie replied in annoyance as if he’d made the most obvious mistake imaginable.

Alexander smiled despite the rebuke. This was information worth having then. Just the ability to know at a glance how much a packet worth of a crop would actually sell for would take a lot of the guesswork out of his budgeting. He was shocked he hadn't found that particular function of the book earlier.

"Both crops are level one." He said, at last, stating the obvious. "But one is a ‘Silver Star' crop."

Marie nodded. "A silver star item is better in every respect. If it is food, it will provide more energy when eaten, for example, and it will sell for a higher price." As if anticipating his next question, she added. "There are six-star levels of quality. Wood, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond. Silver and above each improve the base sale price of bronze by 20%, among other effects. Wood-rated crops, on the other hand, are so bad that they lose 50% of their value immediately.”

Still studying his status book, Alexander asked, “How do they impact the level of the crops?”

“Essence gain one level for each step their base plant was above silver quality.” She explained. “A gold gains one, platinum two, and so forth. Crops below silver instead lose one level for bronze, and three for wood.”

“So I can’t just build up my crop levels and then ignore them.” Alexander mused.

“Correct. Each level is worth roughly the same as a star worth of quality. The highest level of crops, Level ten, are worth 200% more than basic seeds of the same crop sold to you by Belle. Even accounting for losing one out of every three to the Essence Maker, you are still earning substantial profits.”

“Once I get them to that level.” Alexander rebutted as he ran some basic numbers in his head. “Until I get the crops to at least level three I’m losing money. And with only so many rotations available in a season… ugh. I’d kill for a spreadsheet right about now.”

“Your Uncle had similar complaints. He made it work, however, and I’m sure you will as well.” Marie smiled, patting him on the shoulder one final time as she began to collect herself. "Oh, and be sure to stop by Belle's place once you've got the maker all up and running. I'm sure she'll be delighted to see you.

Alexander eyed her warily. "And why do you think that?"

A small twinkle of mischief lit in Marie’s eyes, her mature features glowing with amusement.

“Who do you think is going to be selling you the fertilizer?”