I roused in the flush of morning to be greeted by a sight of Kiara in her undies, slumbering beside me on my bed of leaves. I reminisced about last night. It had been one of utter passion, the kind of which I had never experienced in my life before. I kissed Kiara lightly on the cheek, and then I got up. There was farm work to do.

I was considering whether to leave Kiara alone in the room, or if it would be better if I just woke her up, when Kiara sat bold upright with a suddenness that made my heart leap.

“Are you all right?” I asked her, guessing from her stupefied face that she had had a bad dream.

Kiara blinked at me.

“There is something in front of me!” she yelped. She moved her head left and right, her eyes widening so much I feared they would fly out of her face. “It’s inside my eyes! It moves when I move them!”

“Huh?” I said because Kiara was making little sense to me. “What does it look like?”

“It’s a white box with words written inside,” Kiara said. I realized what it was. I was quite amazed that the game world should accept Kiara as a part of itself so quickly. It had taken months before the game world gave me stats and stuff. Why should the game world give such special treatment to Kiara? Not that I was jealous of her. She was my girlfriend after all. Could it have anything to do with our intimacy last night?

I told Kiara to be calm and that it was in fact a good thing she was receiving the messages. She was assigned Evilun status like me. That confirmed my speculation that her quick acceptance into Dharti had to do with last night. I supposed the very act of lovemaking with an evilun made it clear to the game world which affinity Kiara belonged to.

However, Kiara got a message informing her that she would never be able to become supreme leader of any clan of Eviluns, which I suspected was because she had injured the small monster during her first visit. But she would receive spells and abilities and be able to level up.

Kiara grinned at me as she transformed into a Skhite. She looked pretty even as a green demon, retaining her original facial structure.

“Want to fuse with me?” I joked, as I cuddled with her.

Kiara rolled her eyes.

“That would be weird. We better stay in separate bodies.”

We went to the farm. The zombie was already there waiting for us, tapping his foot impatiently. The Skhites and the Hornies too had arrived. The zombie said the farm should first be watered properly before the seeds were put into the soil.

The monsters had to carry water in buckets to the farm from inside the village. Within an hour the watering was done, the wet soil now a darker colour. The zombie gave the green light for the next phase.

He took one of the walnut-sized seeds and demonstrated how to correctly put it into the earth for maximum probability of germination. Using just his hand he dug a small hole about a foot deep and buried the seed. Kiara and I then put the rest of the seeds into the soil in exactly the same fashion, maintaining a gap of one meter between each seed.

Around the time we finished, one of the hunting parties that had been out to collect evilese returned. They were soaked in blood and covered in bruises. Five Skites had gone and only four had come back. The fate of the missing one was easy to guess.

They were immediately taken inside the village for nursing. The party had also failed to fetch any evilese that day. I gazed at the farm with not a trace of doubt that I was doing the correct thing.

“There are all kinds of small animals that would be happy to dig out the seeds and eat them,” the zombie told me.

“I can assign some monsters to guard the farm,” I said to the Zombie.

“That would not be a bad idea,” he said with an approving nod. “But they would have to protect the farm day and night.”

“Then I can use two groups of guards,” I said. “One for the day shift and the other for the night.”

For an entire week the guards stood at the farm, watching over the seeds. The Skhites and the Hornies still regarded the farm as a waste of time and energy. The more people were engaged in the farm, the fewer hunting parties could go out. But as per calculations there was enough evilese in store to last a while.

Also, some of the monsters would be away working on my new home. They kept the location a secret from me. They wanted me to see it only post completion. From time to time they did consult me regarding the design. They were making a big palace for me apparently. Nora and Nadir too were in the group of builders.

It was ten days later that the first seedling appeared above the ground. All this time the Zombie stayed with us. In fact he was so concerned with the growth of the Evil Crops that he would stand guard with the monsters both day and night, as though he had no requirement for sleep.

The first seedling was the ugliest plant that I had ever seen. It seemed like it was infected with fungi, and it smelled foul. Its sight squeezed the juice out of my heart. After all the effort the result couldn’t have been more bleak.

“Has some disease got it?” I asked the Zombie.

The Zombie shook his head. There was a light in his veiny eyes that assured me I was mistaken.

“The plant is as healthy as it should be,” the zombie said to me, his bright smile twisting his dented cheekbone. “Yes, it gives off an odour that people like you classify as fetid. But what else do you expect from a plant that is called the Evil Crop? Wait for the rest to germinate. And then you’d not even want to come to the farm! Ha!”

The Zombie’s enthusiasm, which I was seeing for the first time on his malformed face, convinced me that everything was indeed fine and there was nothing to fret over. In fourteen days, twenty little plants were peeking out of the ground. Of course, the one that had sprouted first was already twice its initial height now.

The combined revolting smell however was unbearable. It was reminiscent of my paternal uncle’s foul breath. Daddy. That’s what Sam and I used to call him, even though he wasn’t our father. I would never forget his toothy grin. Poor chap, he didn’t marry for our sake. Funny, how you sometimes remembered loved ones for their quirks, sweeping aside all the sacrifices they made for you. Daddy chewed bettlenuts all day long. The culprit behind his bad breath. They probably also contributed to his cancer.

The monsters failed to stay near the farm for longer intervals of time. Some of them would even swoon because of the putrid stench and fall unconscious, while others would end up puking.

To deal with this complication, I permitted the guards to station themselves slightly away from the fenced patch to escape the odour, and appointed two additional groups so that any single group wouldn’t have to stay near the plants for long.

As the crops grew taller, the stench multiplied. After the first few days of germination, I stopped checking my stats altogether. It was depressing to do that anymore. The Skhites and the Hornies were losing faith in me at an accelerated rate. But the zombie had assured me that after the plants had matured enough, they would stop giving off the foul smell, and with a great deal of patience I waited.