An alarm sounded, signalling Lian’s third day in the farm. It was 6am, but he felt fully refreshed and energetic. After instantly freshening up and playing a music track, he left towards the barn.

One of the sub-tasks for the week was to help with caring for the horses. As he only usually had one or two tasks per location per day, this would be quite easy.

Already having learned the basic set of knowledge through the system, besides the smell and discomfort, the rest would be simple. Grabbing some gloves, he walked to a room filled with horse stalls and began picking up large amount of brown waste along with pieces of hay.

Once the place was clean, he emptied then refilled the water troughs and fed the horses with grains and hay. As he was in the midst of trimming a horse’s hooves using a nipper and a rasp, Jimena walked into the room.

Jimena: “Diego, you’re here quite early! Didn’t you want to work in the chicken coop?”

Lian was still calmly trimming a hoof. There was no need to panic as he already had a shameless response in hand.

Lian: “Yeah, I slept early last night so I wanted to get a head start on the day…”

Lian: “The chicken coop was fun…but unfortunately Senor Pablo said that it’d be a good idea for me to get experience through more than just one aspect of treating livestock.”

Jimena: “Oh…I guess that’s fine then…”

Jimena: “Hmmm!? Your trimming technique is really good! In fact, it might even be slightly better than mine… It looks like you really do have some skill…”

Seeing that most of the other aspects of caring for the horses were dealt with, Jimena lead one of the horses out of the stall and walked towards a field in the front in order to allow it to get some exercise for the day.

Lian continued his trimming for a brief period of time until it was basically 8am. Walking out to the front of the barn, he noticed Jimena still walking her horse. She was making longing glances at Francisco who seemed to have just arrived. Lian walked towards Francisco whilst grinning.

Lian: “Hey Francisco! Did you just wake up? Buddy, it’s about time you came!”

Francisco chuckled helplessly while looking at Lian. This guy’s personality did a complete 360 from last night.

Francisco: “Yeah, I just woke up not too long ago…”

Lian: “Cool, cool… by the way do you happen to know that young lady over there?”

After hearing this, Francisco tried holding back a blush.

Francisco: “Ye…Yes I know who Jimena is. Why?”

This reaction was slightly outside of Lian’s expectations but he found it interesting nonetheless.

“Is this guy involved in a love triangle? Or maybe it’d be more appropriate to call it a love square?”

Ignoring Francisco’s question, Lian continued following him towards the storage facility where Isabel worked. The walk was awkward due to the silence on Lian’s part. However, Francisco didn’t care much as he already labelled the guy as a weirdo.

At the present time, Lian was relaxing to music while thinking of his work efficiency so far. Technically, he could have tried farming exp by learning multiple skill to low levels. In fact, to an extent, he’d still been doing that by learning numerous skills in his main body such as: cooking, music, and meditation.

However, the exp gained from training these tasks would be very inefficient towards all forms of his exp. This was especially noticeable after completing his tasks and seeing the large difference in growth. Besides, although his main body was being low-key, he was still training his other current skills along with learning new ones when needed.

Lian also noticed something unusual. From time-to-time he would unconsciously perform a skill that he didn’t have and not gain it. But, when he purposefully trained that skill with the goal of gaining it, he would eventually learn it.

After inquiring with the system, he found out that this was a permanent function to allow the user not to clutter their skills and be distracted. When wanting to learn a skill, 100% of the time as long as he knew how to train it and if it wasn’t locked due to a similar skill of a lower level not having been mastered, it would appear on his status window.

But, only occasionally would he unconsciously learn or gain a new skill without having the direct intention of attaining it. The only exceptions where the odds of learning a skill by subconsciously training it increased were if the skill was really rare and it would be hard for Lian to uncover it or directly learn it.

Eventually, Francisco and Lian arrived at the storage facility.

Francisco: “She should still be close to her brother’s loading truck at this time...”

Hearing this, Lian made a gesture with his hands indicating for Francisco to lead the way. They continued past a few loading spots until Lian spotted a slightly cute girl with dark hair and blue eyes sitting down in the passenger seat of one of the trucks with one leg outside of the door.

Francisco felt a nudge and saw Lian discreetly pointing to the girl.

Lian: “Is that her?”

Francisco: “Umm… yeah”

They planned to make up the story that Francisco was helping Lian with a job, and that they both “coincidentally” walked by. Francisco walked up to Isabel with Lian following right behind.

Francisco: “Hey Isabel!”

The girl turned around and looked back at Francisco. A slight trace of annoyance and uncomfortableness showed in her expression before she once again regained her normal self. Lian managed to catch this, but didn’t say anything.

Isabel: “Uhhh…hey Francisco…what are you doing here?”

Francisco: “I just happened to be helping a friend here for a bit so I just wanted to drop by to say hi!”

Turning over, Isabel looked at Lian. A flash of disdain appeared in her eyes as she once again put on a fake smile without bothering to ask about him.

Isabel: “Oh I see…anyways I’m going to be a bit busy for today but well I guess it was nice seeing you…”

She then shut the door and continued with whatever she was doing in the car. Lian looked at Francisco and saw that he was still love-struck and most likely caught up with her smile. This 20-something year old man was completely unaware of the subtle undertones of the conversation he just had with his “girlfriend”. This was mind boggling to Lian.

“Huh…?”

“What the fuck is wrong with this guy? Besides the fact that Isabel seems fake and acts like a spoiled brat, I’m seeing no real indication that they’re in any form of relationship…”

“Friends? Maybe…but even that’s a slight push…he’s probably deluded and thinks that he’s in some imaginary relationship…”

Waiting until they walked away, Lian finally spoke.

Lian: “…Are you sure that you’re dating her?”

Francisco: “Of course I am! Although I have no family, hers already set us up to be engaged soon!”

This changed the story for Lian. It seemed like this situation was more problematic than ever.

Lian: “Okay… and did she agree to it?”

Francisco: “Obviously! When we spoke in private, I offered to save up money for a ring and she seemed really excited!”

Lian shook his head internally and bid farewell to Francisco while promising not to bother him anymore.

“Fuck, this task is going to be a pain in the ass…”