Once he’d returned to the farm John immediately went to his field and checked the wheat. It was a beautiful golden color that seemed to indicate it was ready for harvesting. He grabbed one of the stalks and detached a wheatberry, then popped it into his mouth and carefully bit down. The kernel was hard, difficult to break, that meant they were ready.

Hopping over the fence John got to work. He harvested his wheat the same way he’d been pulling up grass. Loosening the roots with Move Earth, pulling it free, and then he bundled it up into sheafs. After he had ten sheafs, he bundled them all together with a piece of twine and tried to put the resulting mega-sheaf into his inventory. To his surprise it fit easily, taking up only one space. Grinning he got back to work. By the end of the day he’d cleared almost a sixth of the field, resulting in 70 of the mega-sheafs taking up four of his inventory spaces.

The next day he spent the morning working on clearing more of the field, managing to fit in almost another sixth, his vastly improved stats making the work go faster. With his current mana pool the real slowdown was actually having to stop pull up, and tie off the wheat. By noon (and his obligatory hour log out) he’d managed to secure another 70 mega-sheaves, clearing a third of his land and filling 7 inventory slots.

Logging back in John headed straight for town. He’d told Ellie he’d be coming to thresh his wheat today and he wanted to get that done before the storm hit. The walk was, as usual, uneventful, so John took the time to read up on other crops he might grow, including checking what types of fruit trees might be grown in this type of region.

Upon arriving in town he made his way straight to the general store, where he purchased one each of fire and air stones, and twenty burlap bags suitable for holding grain. Heading out of the store he walked over to Ellie’s stall, where he found her packing up.

“Hello hon,” she said to him with a smile. “Ready to thresh your wheat?”

“Yeah, sorry about arriving so early in the day, I didn’t think you’d need to close up for this,” he apologized.

“Oh it’s no trouble, I’m mostly out of stock anyway; one of the mages discovered that something called ‘fruit smoothies’ give a moderate buff to wisdom for a short time,” she explained as she popped the last empty basket into her inventory. “Come this way then, the thresher is in a shed here in town, it’s easiest on everyone that way.”

John followed as she lead him round back of some of the nearby buildings to a large shed. Throwing open the doors she revealed a large contraption made of metal and covered in dozens of runes, lines, and sigils.

“Here we are!” she exclaimed. “Raw stones go in these slots here, fire in this one, earth in that one, and finally air in this slot here. The thresher has two settings, the first will thresh the wheat, burn off the chaff, and bundle the straw into bales for you. The second setting will burn both chaff and straw, but it’ll put extra strain on the fire stone, so you may need a second. This lever here turns the machine on and off and your kernels will be output down there at that spout.”

“Alright,” John said as he took the first mega-sheaf out of his inventory and unbound it. He then popped the required stones into the required slots. “So, I want some of the bales, so let’s start with just burning the chaff,” he said as he set the dial to the correct setting. “And I just unbind the sheafs and then feed them in as it runs, right?”

“Right,” Ellie affirmed as John turned on the machine, unbound the first sheaf, and fed it in. “But you’re going to want to put something under that spout.”

John hurriedly took out one of the burlap bags and slid it under the spout just in time to catch the first bits of grain. “Thanks.”

“No problem hon, just be sure to turn it off and close it all up when you’re done,” she said, then she walked away.

Turning back to the machine, John started to feed it the sheafs in earnest. As the grain went in one end the machine clattered and clunked as a fine ash and compressed bales came out the other end. Quicker than he’d have thought possible he’d filled up the first bag, and then the second. In total he managed to get five bushels out of the grain he’d brought with him.

The straw had all been compressed down extensively, and he found himself the owner of 70 straw bales. They were large things, the kind you see displayed around fall. Picking the first one up he was surprised at how light it felt, and then he realized it wasn’t light, he was just strong. For the first time he found himself wondering where the cap on naturally growing statistics was. It had to cap off at some point or else anyone who worked in a labor-intensive job would have extraordinarily high physical stats, and any caster would find themselves with extremely high wisdom and intelligence.

Shrugging it off, John started putting the bales in his inventory and as the last one entered, he got a very welcome notification.

[Congratulations on increasing your level! 1 à 2]

[You have received 200 Leveling Points, please distribute them now]

With a grin John told it to bank all the leveling points and cleaned up the machined. Then he started on his way back to the farm, where he spent the last few hours of the day working on clearing the field, netting about 4 hours of work and another 35 mega-sheafs and another point in each strength, constitution, intelligence, and wisdom.

Logging in the next morning he got back to work, determined to save as much of the crop as he could. He’d started using Mana Drawing and Mana Imprinting while working yesterday morning (having realized there was no reason not to train the two while he worked since they no longer caused headaches) and that accounted for how he’d been managing about a sixth of the field per eight hours. It still wasn’t enough however, there was no way he’d be done in time for the storm… Unless he didn’t sleep tonight.

At first he wondered if it was worth the effort, however just an hour into his work he realized it definitely was.

[Farming has Ranked Up due to continued use. Novice à Apprentice]

[125 Leveling Points Banked]

Obviously this was increasing his farming skill, and given that this was his ‘craft’ as Grandma Loren had put it, he was probably getting xp as well. If he finished the whole crop he might just get another level, and that would be well worth the effort. With that in mind, he got back to work with a will.

Sixteen hours later saw almost five sixths of the crop harvested, and John now had so much wheat he was leaving it bundled in shocks (piles of sheaves), dotting the cleared earth. He had just logged off and then back on for the second time since he’d started, and was determined to finish off the field. But first he started moving all the wheat into the storage while there was still some fading twilight to see by. The storage room was unfortunately pitched black, making it difficult to see. However, he managed and by the time full darkness had set in he’d cleared his inventory and the land both of bundles of wheat.

As the moon rose (an unfortunately anemic crescent), John got back to work. Over the next few hours he finished off the field, shoving the last mega-sheaf into his inventory, an obtaining the desired message.

[Congratulations on increasing your level! 2 à 3]

[You have received 300 Leveling Points, please distribute them now]

Smiling wearily, John banked the points, broke down his tent, and moved his sleeping mat into the shelter, where he laid his avatar down to rest.

***

John slept a few hours extra the next morning. There was no pressing business on his farm, what with the storm rolling in, and it was unlikely him being up to greet it would do any good. So he didn’t log in until after ten, well after the time the storm was supposed hit.

Opening his eyes to see the dark interior of his storage space, they were almost immediately seared by a bright flash of light while his ears were, moments later, similarly assaulted by the boom of thunder. Sitting up John looked around. Finding the storage space much as he had left it, though it was difficult to see in the dim light filtering in from the doorway. He could hear the steady fall of rain in what must be a torrential downpour. Looking to the drain at the bottom of the stairs he could see a small stream of water pouring into it from above.

Standing from his pallet John walked carefully over to the straw bales and sat down on one of them. Now, he decided, would be a good time to work on the rest of his homework for Grandma Loren. He’d already increased Mana Drawing and Mana Imprinting to Apprentice rank, as well as created the Create Earth spell. All he had to do now was create Control Water.

Standing, he walked over to the doorway, and cast create water above the drain, using as little mana as possible. The result was a tiny stream of water that fell into the drain, mingling with the rain water. Looking closely at the weave of the spell as he cast, John copied it to the blueprint module, creating a 3d representation of the weave. Moving back to his straw bale, John cast Control Earth and copied its weave as well. He then compared the two new weaves with Create Earth.

It was immediately clear to him which portions of Create Earth and Control Earth had to do with Earth rather than Creation or Control. Which made it easy to isolate the weave for water. Snipping out the water weave and the control weave, John aligned them and projected the new spell weave over his upturned palm. He then once more began pushing mana against the new weave, concentrating intensely on forcing it to take shape.

He was forced to start over several times when the boom of thunder broke him out of concentration. However, he eventually forced the mana into place, and the spell clicked.

[Spell Gained: Control Water]

[Name: Control Water]

[Description: A simple spell used to move water.]

[Current Rank: Novice]

[Amount: Small]

[Mana Cost: 10/ second]

Settling back onto the bales of straw, John checked the time. It was a little past noon and he decided to log out and then back in to reset the logout timer. That done he pulled up his character sheet to see what he might work on.

[Name: John]

[Race: Basajaun]

[Level: 3]

[Mana: 340]

[MRegen: 17/minute]

[Leveling Points: 1,850]

[Attributes]

Strength: 27 Constitution: 27 Dexterity 10 Intelligence: 34 Wisdom: 34

[Skills]

Engineering – Novice Farming – Apprentice Inspect – Novice Light Armor – Novice Mana Drawing – Apprentice Mana Imprinting – Apprentice Mana Manipulation – Apprentice Mana Sight – Apprentice Measuring – Apprentice Meditation – Apprentice Swordplay – Novice

[Spells]

Create Earth – Novice Create Water – Novice Control Flame – Novice Control Water – Novice Evoke Flame – Novice Move Earth – Apprentice

[Racial Perks]

Disaster Prognosticator Megalith Mastery Plant Tender

Looking at the lists of skills and spells John decided there probably weren’t any that he could rank up today, there also weren’t many that would be easy to practice while huddled down here in the dark. That left mostly spells, and Mana Sight. John paused as he considered Mana Sight, and then he grimaced. Lately he’d only been using Mana Sight when he needed it, which was no doubt drastically slowing its growth, he should just be leaving it on at all times, and learn to live with seeing mana. Resolved to do so he activated the skill, and then decided he’d work on Evoke Flame.

For the next eight hours John sat there and held a flame, using only one mana per second he could create a small, flickering pinprick of fire. By practicing Mana Drawing at the same time (which proved to be only slightly harder than mana Imprinting) he was able to maintain the flame indefinitely. To stave off boredom he watched some movies via the web interface and realized it was the first time he’d relaxed (aside from the meditation) in a little over three weeks.

As night started to roll around the sounds of wind, rain, and thunder began to die out, leaving a quiet calm in their wake. John released his flame and cautiously made his way up the stairs. Poking his head above ground he could see the grasses of his plot had been blown flat, and the areas of bare earth were a muddy mire. Clearly the storm had put down more water than the ground could easily absorb. Shaking his head, he returned to the cellar, laid himself down, and logged out for the night.