When Winston logged onto Otherworld Saturday morning he had a game plan. Jason had managed to bring down a dozen trees and Winston planned to start on his farm’s external wall. He’d do that until he ran out of trees then start working on some of his side-projects.

If he was going to make the area into a real farm he’d need more than a single storage building and a few trees. First was more compost and fertilizer. That would be fairly easy with all the plants around, next was lime. The soil here was too acidic and he needed lime to fix that. Aside from soil problems he needed a well. The last would be a lot of hard work but Winston was pretty sure he could do it. With how much it rained here the water-table should be fairly high, at least he hoped so. Digging down far enough for a decent well would take days. There would be alot of surface contamination but it was a video game and he was using it for watering plants anyway. He could summon his own drinking water. Brewing might be a problem later when he started that back up, but that was at least a week or two down the road.

Once those were done he’d have decent starting point. Once he got some money coming in he’d be able to start working on things like furniture, more farm buildings, more farmland, Silos, maybe even an elevator or a mill eventually. Then he’d be able to start messing with brewing, and finding more suitable crops. Now that he wasn’t under the Sword’s thumb he could make things how he wanted them instead of just having to deal with what cards he was dealt.

Winston brought up his UI and sent Troll a quick message.

[Troll,

First load of goods should be ready by next Saturday. Guessing it’ll be around 80-100 bu of various fruits. I need lime though, so pile your cart full of it. That’s agricultural lime, not quicklime for mortar. That craps is way too causic. If you can’t find any just get raw limestone I can crush it here.

I’ll have everything in barrels and crates for you when you show up.

Win Mills]

Winston fed Bog some berries and drug out one of his new wheelbarrows. He’d need to get bog some more food soon. She was running low and he’d stopped farming grains for the moment. It wasn’t until Winston was loading up the logs that he realized how strong he really was now. He could move three logs at once with no problem. Trying to balance them over the wheelbarrow was a process but Winston didn’t have too far to truck them.

Winston wheeled his barrow over to the edge of his farm nearest the deeper jungle. Then he made a trench around a meter deep and ten long then stuffed logs into it. He lashed them together with all the rope he’d bought. Then dug another ten feet. It was long, hard, and sweaty work, but Winston ran out of logs before lunch time. He had a long way to go but it was a start.

He logged to get some lunch in the RL then came back online. When he got back on Jason was back at base, unloading his logcart.

“Hey man.” Winston said in greeting. “You know where the nearest NPC village is? You’ve been out here longer.”

“About three miles that way.” Jason said, pointing North-West. “There’s a small stream you’ll have to cross but it’s only a few feet wide. You can jump it, or wade across. Why? It’s a monster village anyway. Didn’t you burn down a city last time you messed with monster quests?”

“I didn’t burn down a city. The orcs burned down the city, at best I was just a facilitator. The germanic tribes didn’t blame the roman farmers for feeding the legions did they?” Winston said.

“It didn’t stop them from raping and killing them on raids, or when Rome fell.” Jason said deadpan. “Still, the orcs would be closer to the germanic tribes in that analogy.

“Ok, bad example.” Winston conceded.

“Still, I’ve got a quest, and this time there aren't any cities around to be sacked.” Winston said.

Jason still looked sceptical. “You want me to come with? Might be fun to party together for once.”

Winston shrugged. “Sure, if you wanna come. Now sure how things will go though.” Winston said. He called Bog and rounded up what little adventuring gear he had. Without any armor or weapons it mostly consisted of a water-skin and a bit of dried meat.

When he was done, the two set-off into the jungle. Winston had to move at a slow jog just to keep up with Jason’s longer steps. The three passed under the growing orange trees and out into the jungle. The trees thickened up and the canopy blocked out the sun. Soon Winston and Jason were stalking through dim light at a slow walking pace as they tried to move through all the thick vegetation..

A large monkey came sniffing around but Jason threw an axe at it and scared it off. The two crossed the small river but Winston waved them to a stop on the other side. An odd blue flower was poking up out of the bank on the opposite shore. It was low to the ground with large leaves but a ball of small bright blue berries on a central stem.

“What is it?” Jason asked.

“Not sure, a ginseng I think.” Winston said. He’d done a lot of research on various plants but ginseng was more in the herbalism department than stuff he dealt with.

“I thought you were a farmer not an alchemist in a Xianxia novel.” Jason laughed. Winston shrugged.

“That doesn’t mean it’s not valuable.” Winston said. “It’s probably good for quite a few different potions or even a magical reagent for druids or witches or something. It also doesn’t mean I couldn’t grow it.”

“But what if it’s been here for 2,000 years and gained sentience and bending down to pick it will result in an epic martial arts battle.” Jason asked.

“Then I’ll obviously subdue it with an epic saber technique that just reached perfection realm three chapters ago.” Winston said as he bent down and started to dig around the plant. The roots were the important part, at least in martial arts novels.

Winston dug down further, loosening everything up before he tugged the whole plant by the roots.

[You Have Learned A new Skill]

[Herbalism]

[Herbalism is the knowledge about identifying and harvesting wild plants. Skill increases with the study of various types of herbs or harvesting of wild plants.]

[Current Rank: Novice I]

Winston held up the herb to inspect it but his interface made a buzzing sound, like he’d answered a question wrong in a 80’s game show.

[Herbalism level too low to identify]

Winston heard a swack and dove to cover the herb with his body before Bog hit him from behind. “No, You’re not getting it, you mangy bird.” Winston scolded and he rose to his feet and swatted at Bog. She dodged easily but backed off. “Just because I’m running low on cloud berries doesn’t mean you get to eat whatever you want. I’ll have to have Troll pick some more up this week, but you’re not getting this.” Winston told his bird as he dusted himself off. He was going to have to find Bog a new treat soon. He couldn’t afford to keep feeding her cloudberries now that he couldn’t grow them.

Winston stuffed the herb into his pack and stood back up. “Onward!” Winston called as he pointed forwards. Jason sighed and the two headed off again, they reached the village a few minutes later. The village was a series of huts built around the bottoms of a few large trees. They seemed to be made mostly of sticks with leaves acting as the roof and walls.

It wasn’t much of a village. It only contained about six huts and a few lizard people milled around doing chores or looking imposing with their painted scales and long spears. The creatures were about as tall as Jason but less imposing. They were thinner and more lean. They had green scales on their back and white ones on the front of their bodies.

“What now?” Jason asked.

“Now I test my Diplomacy Skills.” Winston said as he popped open his interface and turned on his friend of monsters title.

Winston walked up to the closest lizard person and said in his best insurance salesmen voice. “Greetings…. Madam.” Winston decided after a sort pause. The lizard people were almost completely androgynous as far as Winston could tell. There were obviously no breasts on the females and in terms of size and coloring they seemed to be almost the same. A few of the lizard people did seem a touch more hourglass shaped than others, so Winston assumed those were the girls.

“I just moved into the area and was wondering if there was anything you fine folks needed? Food maybe? Coffee, grains, vegetables “ Winston asked hopefully.

The lizard-woman looked at Winston and her nictitating membranes flicked down over her large eyes. “Why would anyone need that? There is food all around us. I could walk twenty steps and any direction and find plenty of fruit to eat.” She said, a hint of disdain in her voice. Her english was good, or at least whatever translation process the game was running. Unlike a lot of the orcs she was perfectly understandable. Then again, it might have just been his title.

“What about any jungle creatures that need killing? Maybe a massive tiger, a fire ape, or maybe a well of ancient evil is bubbling up somewhere nearby and you need someone to cleanse it before it turns into a giant tentacle monster that rips out the sanity of anyone who sees it?” Jason said hopefully from beside Winston.

The lizard woman blinked at both of them then sighed. “You guys now how often people come here asking for jobs. All the time. At least twice a week. It got to the point where we started making things up. Asking people to bring us special plants that didn’t exist, or giving them jobs so ridiculous we thought no-one would do it. We offered one guy a silver coin to make 10,000 mud and straw bricks. 10,000!” She hissed, and it was a hiss. “Six days later he wheeled up a cart full of them. I’ve never seen anyone looking so smug. What the hell are we supposed to do with 10,000 mud bricks?” She asked, her voice rising.

Winston blinked at her. She did bring up a point. This was a training zone for a major guild. Players probably were asking them for quests all the time at least when they didn’t try to kill them all for a few coppers first. Winston wondered how the game allocated quests to various zones. Was there some sort of quest spawning queue based on the zone population. Either way it seemed this particular village was not in the mood for quest giving.

“Ok….” Winston said, trying to think on the fly as he ran his hand through his fur. “Let’s reverse the problem then. I’ll start with what I need and we’ll work backwards from there. I want to set-up a shrine to Runa, Goddess of agriculture and civilization, in your village. What would you need from me in order to facilitate such a trade?” Winston asked.

That seemed to stymy the lizard woman for a minute. “You want us to put up a shrine in our village?” The lizard woman asked slowly.

“Yep.”

“Fine…” She said with a toothy smile. “But that’s a pretty big ask and you’d have to give us something the entire village would agree on.” Had Winston been a more socially intelligent person the last comment would have set of a warning bell or two, but it didn’t.

“That’s only reasonable.” Winston replied.

“Good then, in exchange for your shrine you’ve got to take a problem off my hands.” She said, smiling a bit too widely, even for a lizard woman.

“What is it you do by the way? Adventurer? Merchant… You look like a merchant. Pudgey but with a bit of steel in your spine.” The lizard woman said. That made Winston laugh. Even after all his exercise his mole avatar was still quite pudgey. He was superhumanly strong and had enough stamina to run for miles but his avatar was still chunky.

“I’m actually a farmer, well and a priest. It’s sorta complicated.” Winston said.

“Kishia get out here!” The lizard woman yelled. A few seconds later a slightly smaller lizard-person with a sulky expression came out of one of the tents. Wiston pegged this one as a female as well, but the differences were even less noticeable than with the adults. He might be wrong. Kishia did sound more female than male though. Winston guessed this one was an adolescent, likely around his own age or a year or two younger.

“What……?” The lizard teenager whined. Then she saw Winston and Jason. “You’re not going to make me try to fight them are you? We tried that last time and I got knocked out in one punch.” The lizard person complained.

The lizard-woman sighed but snapped. “Stop making a scene. Kishia this man is your new master.”

“He’s what!?”

“I’m What!?”

Winston and the girl shouted at the same time. The lizard woman smiled wider.

“You wanted to know what you needed to do to help the village? Well you can take her off our hands. She won’t hunt, she can’t cook, she’s too weak to do manual labor, and refuses to weave or do other women’s chores. So you can deal with her. Kishia is your new apprentice.” The lizard woman said heartlessly.

“But aunty Jezza….” The girl whined.

“I don’t want to hear it. You’ve been moping around long enough.” The older woman said before turning back to Winston and Jason. “She’s smart but lazy, but she does seem to like animals it’s why she refuses to hunt them. Maybe you can get some work out of her.”

[Quest Update!]

[You’ve been given permission to build a Shine to Runa in Green Scale Village.]

[You Have Gained An Apprentice!]

Winston sighed at the messages. He knew enough about the game to know what an apprentice was. It was basically a way to encourage high-level players to help lower level players. Any player over level 10, could take on any player under level 10 as an apprentice. Then when the apprentice hit level 10, the apprenticeship would end and the higher level player would be rewarded based on how much effort he put into teaching and guiding the lower-level player. The rewards were pretty good if you got a high ranking, but he had no idea players could take NPC apprentices.

A human parent foisting a young female family-member off on a complete stranger would have been ridiculous, but lizards ate their young. Winston got the impression their family bonds weren’t nearly as strong. The girl wasn’t helping the village so she needed to go. It was a cold, if pragmatic approach.

“Alright, I’ll take her.” Winston said. He didn’t have much choice if he wanted to build a shrine. He wasn’t sure what he’d do with her yet, but there was always work on a farm.

The girl then started shouting at her aunt but the argument lasted only a few minutes before the girl was defeated and came along with Jason and Winston when they left.

“So what are you guys gonna make me do?” The girl asked as the three of them, and Bog walked back through the jungle. She sounded a bit nervous.

“I’m not gonna make you do anything. That would be stupid and you’d just run away anyway. I’m way too lazy to try and track you down. I’m not your family, or your tribe. So i’ll just ask. What do you want to learn?” Winston said to the girl as he crawled over a patch of thony flowers and ducked under a vine that looked a bit too much like a snake.

“Well, I donno. I never really thought about it much.” The lizard-girl said.

“Everyone wants to do something. It’s just a matter of finding something productive that you can also enjoy.” Jason said. “Your aunt said you were much of a fighter but that’s only one option. You could farm like Win over there. You could take up music, or pottery, or a hundred other things.” He continued. “People are always trying to force me to do stupid crap as well. I know how you feel.”

Jason would know all about that. The kid was honestly way too smart for high-school. Besides a few AP classes he just wasn’t getting much out of it and forcing him to sit around in class for eight hours a day not learning anything drove him crazy.

The lizard-girl, Kishia looked up at Jason’s hulking scaled form and her cheeks turned a darker green color. Winston had to stifle a belly laugh. He was going to tease Jason mercilessly at lunch tomorrow.

“Jezza said you liked animals. You could trying your hand a beast taming, or if that’s out you could trying raising animals. If you don’t like hunting raising animals for meat is likely out, but we could get you some goats or something to milk and take care of.” Winston said.

He’d never really planned on going into the livestock side of farming but it might be interesting. Buy a few dairy cows, start making some butter and cheese. His plate was too full to start any major projects like that, but if he had someone else doing to work it might be worth looking into.

The girl thought about it for a while as they walked along in silence before Winston UI chimed. Winston saw who it was an his eyebrows went up. Why was Silver Sword Therion messaging him. It was a voice chat instead of text and Winston opened the connection.

“So Win, I might have a job for you….”