The 30-minutes-before-sunrise bell brought Midday to his senses. Although he was groggy from the abrupt start to his day, he had been having a nightmare about Devil Peppercorn and thus was glad to be awake. Sitting up, he took stock of the room.

The Devil Peppercorn canister was still sitting aloof on the table, taunting him with its cruel promise of strength but only at a great cost. He stared at it for a few seconds, pondering the situation, until he shook his head and frowned: it had somehow managed to taste far worse than he had expected it to. Almost unimaginably so. Midday knew that it could become the gateway to a better life if he hunkered down and sprinkled some into every meal, but the thought of doing so filled him with a dread that seemed insurmountable. Just the sight of the canister alone made his body heavy and his knees weak.

Glauster was the first to get out of bed. He walked over to the fireplace, got it started, and left with a big pot of water which he would use to make the morning oatmeal they ate 9 days out of 10. Midday wondered if maybe Glauster could think of something to make the peppercorn more bearable, he did come from a culinary background after all—with his family having owned a bakery before a group of ‘adventurers’ came to their village and enslaved a bunch of people on behalf of the plantation. It seemed plausible that maybe Glauster could at the very least think of something, but Midday nonetheless still had his doubts.

Getting up, Midday started thinking about the ring. He knew he ought to get a Devil Peppercorn farm up and running as soon as possible, but the question in his mind was how to go about doing such a thing without arousing suspicion. The location he had chosen for his test the other day would not work for a long-term operation, for it was close to the slave encampment and, seeing as many slaves were known to forage in the woods for foods to supplement their lackluster diets, it would be prone to accidental discovery. Even so, he failed to think of any better alternatives: he would certainly get caught if he tried to set his farm up anywhere besides the forest but, if he went any deeper into the forest than he already was, the chances of running into dangerous wildlife would increase. Guess I’ll have to take my chances for now. He let out a big sigh.

“You do that a lot, don’t you?” Gork was sitting in bed, combing his hair. Cleanliness of any sort was a scarce commodity in Neighborhood 8, and the blonde doctor was one of the only people Midday knew who actually found the time to bathe on a regular basis. The main reason for this practice, he had been told, was that good hygiene helped with medical stuff—though Midday didn’t really see how.

“Do what?” Midday rolled out of bed and looked to his scythe. He had some time before breakfast to sharpen it if he wanted, but doing so would be mostly pointless. The blade would stay sharp for maybe a few hundred swings at the most and then go back to being the dull piece of junk it always was. Glauster was better at sharpening stuff by a great deal—he had formal training in the art of sharpening kitchen knives and therefore knew all the proper techniques—but Glauster wasn’t the kind of person to do other people’s chores out of the kindness of his heart. If Midday wanted him to sharpen his scythe, that service would come at a cost. He decided not to worry about keeping the blade sharp for the time being.

“That sighing thing. You do it whenever you get stressed.”

“Is that… not a normal thing to do?”

“Well, you do it more than most.” Gork shook his clothes free of bugs and got up. “It’s the peppercorn, isn’t it? That’s what you’re thinking about.”

“Something like that.”

“Hmm… Well, I’ll tell you what then: if you want to live, eat that peppercorn with every meal.”

“Yeah… And I understand that, but—”

“No buts,” Gork interrupted, “I don’t know how bad that soup last night really was, nor do I intend to get firsthand experience and find out, but I do know that your life depends on whether or not you eat those peppercorns. So eat them. That’s my advice.”

Midday frowned. Gork was right. He had already become so emaciated that each of his ribs were visible beneath his skin whenever he took off his shirt. A single glance was all it took for anyone to know that he was on straight path to death as things stood. The fact of the matter was that it simply wasn’t possible someone for like him—a level 5 individual who was weak even for his level—to live off the slave rations alone. Working in the fields was incredibly strenuous for Midday, and completing his daily quota took more energy out of him than the foods he usually ate—small portions of oats and lentils—could replenish. Glauster and Gork were skinny too, of course, but Glauster was level 8 and Gork was level 7. Their bodies were stronger by default, and as a result they needed less energy to complete the same feats. As such, they were more easily capable of living off the slave rations.

“I know, I know.” Midday looked down at his missing finger. With that most recent addition to his struggles, things truly were dire as could be. The choice to eat peppercorn with every meal should have made itself and yet Midday was still on the fence. He knew what the correct decision was, but making it was difficult. “But how the hell am I supposed to get myself to eat that stuff every day? It... was torture.”

“Willpower,” said Gork. “Plain discipline.”

“Well, yeah, but that’s what I’m lacking.” Midday wondered if maybe Romulo might have some advice on the matter but, as per usual, the giant had already left for the fields. Romulo, the bastion of physical might that he was, could usually complete his entire quota in just under 4 hours. He liked to leave early and get to his plot as soon as the sun rose—which marked the earliest possible time one could start working—so that he could be done before noon and spend the rest of the day either lounging about or grinding XP. He had neither time nor need for breakfast, preferring instead to eat the animals he hunted in the forest. It wouldn’t be until evening that Midday had any chance of seeing him again.

“Then get more of it, I guess.” Gork frowned. If Romulo, someone obsessed with physical might, couldn’t be bothered to eat Devil Peppercorn despite having easy access to it, there was essentially zero chance that Midday would be able to stick with it, not even if his life depended on it. “Or maybe come up with a workaround, I don’t know.”

“A workaround, huh?” Midday sighed. To him it seemed as though Devil Peppercorn, one of the mighty agricultural treasures of Elvanera Plantation, was too great a crop for mere ‘workarounds’ to have any effect. “What, like cutting off my tongue so that I don’t have to taste it?” Midday frowned. He obviously had no intention to do such a thing, but it seemed like anything less hardcore than that would accomplish nothing in the face of such a lofty obstacle.

“That could work.” Gork chuckled. “Though I would just put some hot coals on my tongue if I were you. It would burn off the tastebuds, but you would still get to keep the tongue.”

Midday flinched. “That’s a joke, right?”

“It would probably be for the best if it was.”

“R-right… Well, let me know if you think of something more, umm, doable, I guess.”

For a few moments there was silence. Both Midday and Gork were trying to come up with possible solutions to the problem. Gork came up with several possibilities, but most of them involved some amount of mutilation so he didn’t bother sharing them. Midday, on the other hand, turned his thoughts to one of the agricultural treasures: Millennium Truffles—an ingredient so legendary in its deliciousness that he thought just might be able to nullify the peppercorn. It was a shame that they would probably be even more difficult to obtain than Vigor Lentils though: seeing as they were a popular food among the various kings of the Kingmaker Plains—which was the region surrounding the lake in which Elvanera Island was located—even a single clove of the stuff was worth more than 5,000,000 Coin. That was several dozen lifetimes worth of money for most people, and it went without saying that the security surrounding the crop would be downright otherworldly as the result. There was also the fact that farming them, even with the power of the ring, would be damn near impossible; the ingredient got its name from the fact that it took a thousand years to grow (though he was certain that, like himself, the plantation had ways of accelerating the process). Midday slumped back and frowned, feeling the task ahead to be impossible.

“How about force feeding?” Gork broke the silence with a surprisingly mundane solution.

Midday tensed up. “...What?"

“I’m serious,” Midday looked at Gork and saw that his expression was stern. “If you don’t have the willpower necessary to eat Devil Peppercorn on a regular basis, leave it up to other people to force that discipline upon you.”

“Do… we really have to be approaching this that way?”

“Personally, I think it’s your best bet, but maybe you can think of something better.”

“But… force feeding? Really? Isn’t that something they use for torture?”

“I think I’ve seen it on the wheel a few times.”

“So…”

“But you know what they say: no pain, no gain,” Gork paused,” Plus, if you drop the dosage down to one bead, it won’t be as bad as before. And maybe you’ll start getting used to it after a while.”

“But I mean… come on, there’s got to be a better way…”

“Do tell.”

“Uh…” Midday strained himself to think of a better alternative, but nothing came to mind. Force feeding, awful as it might be, was actually a pretty solid idea when he thought about it: it took his greatest weakness out of the equation—that being himself. Moreover, it was simple and required no special preparations or sacrifices. “But…”

“You should just hurry up and agree. We would only have to get physical if you refused to eat your food. It would just be something to keep you on track."

“Well… We can try it, I guess…”

“That’s not good enough. We need to put this in writing.”

“What do you mean?”

“We should make a contract—a written statement between two parties that formally states the terms of an agreement.”

“W-why would we do that? I can’t even write, you know…”

“Simple. To prevent you from backing out. And to prevent you from blaming us for your suffering. You wouldn’t be able to fault us for putting you through hell if all we were doing was fulfilling our portion of an agreement,” Gork grinned. “I’ll start drafting it right away. Let’s have this squared away before breakfast.” He got up and left the cabin.

Midday swallowed, unsure of what to expect.