The day started with no surprises. Cal had primed the field for the Sunfire Grain seeds, which he would spend the day planting. Seris and Orrin had fallen asleep as they watched the construction, and the builders worked throughout the night—which Cal couldn't understand how.

He would have thought they needed rest, but Miren's team had never been normal, so it wasn't hard for him to dismiss that from his mind. He went to the storage room to pick out a barrel of Sunfire Grain seeds when he saw an issue.

Cal had emptied the previous barrel, which meant the reward, [Blessing of the Time-Warped Seed], would need to be reapplied to a new barrel. The issue was that he had only one application left before the reward would disappear.

He wasn't sure if this was what he wanted to use it for. Sunfire Grains were useful in gathering wealth, and they had helped him to get much-needed funds, but harvests were no longer his only source of income.

Of course, selling advanced-rank tools to Overseer Marek wasn't the most reliable way to earn guildmarks, but it was a way. Besides that, auctions gave Cal another avenue if acquiring guildmarks became necessary. While he couldn't sell rare-ranked tools, anything below that tier wouldn't raise too many eyebrows.

It's better if I save the last application. What if Fintan's cousin can get me an extraordinary crop seed?

There were three barrels of Sunfire Grain seeds left, each with approximately twenty-five thousand seeds. He was going to plant every single one, something he would have never dreamed of, with only one pond irrigating the entire farm.

However, without [Blessing of the Time-Warped Seed] active, the crops would draw far less mana and water. He wouldn't need to account for the rapid draw required for the crops to be ready for harvest in a week, but instead it would be the natural time frame, which was seventy days.

Accounting for his skill [Green Thumb], it was closer to sixty days, but that didn't affect the draw on the pond to matter.

Cal looked away from the barrels and picked out his plow, which he hadn't used in the last harvest. Not that he preferred to dig out tiny holes to place the Sunfire Grain seeds, but the plow wasn't one of his run-of-the-mill tools that had [Self-Repair] as a trait.

He pulled it up on the interface.

[Advanced Plow: Good Quality] Upgrade: 421/4000 Tasks

- Residue Reclamation: The plow absorbs residual nutrients from previous crop remains and redistributes them evenly, enhancing soil fertility and resulting in a 10% better yield.

Cal had restricted himself from using the plow since the degradation couldn't be recovered. But Orrin's recent success with his forging techniques gave him some confidence that this wouldn't be the case for much longer.

Even if Oran wasn't close, I still would have used the plow. A ten percent better yield on a harvest this large means an extra eight guildmarks. Sacrificing an advanced-rank tool would be worth it. Not that it'll come to that.

Cal left the storage room and started his work. He ignored the curious eyes of several builders who were taking a breather. He sank the plow's blade into the soil and pulled.

I bought oxen just so I wouldn't have to do this again, but somehow, I still end up playing the part of a draft animal. Where are those oxen anyway? The pack leader and Nibbles shouldn't have taken this long to bring them back.

***

Cal's arms trembled as he came to a stop. He had plowed the entire field, and somehow the plow hadn't degraded into nothing. Though it had come close.

[Advanced Plow] has degraded to Trash Quality. Further use of the tool could cause it to break completely.

He dismissed the message and pulled up the details of the plow.

[Advanced Plow: Trash Quality] Upgrade: 3814/4000 Tasks

Cal had pushed none of his tools to this extent other than at the very beginning. It wasn't necessary for the interface to tell him the plow was of trash quality. It looked brittle, as if an uncaring nudge would shatter the blade.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

He lifted it out of the soil and carried it back to the storage room with care. This was now Orrin's to practice on. Hopefully, the kid knew how to restore the plow, and if he didn't, use it to get experience in working with advanced-ranked tools.

Cal set the plow aside and picked up a barrel of seeds. As he returned to the field, he saw the builders had made significant progress. They completed the roof—at least the sections meant to be—and he could hear noises from the interior. This truly might get finished by the end of the day.

The most amusing thing was Orrin and Seris stumbling their way into the house, looking for a proper bed after a night using dirt as their mattress.

His lips twitched as they passed him without being aware of his presence. He chuckled and continued on to the field and started planting the Sunfire Grain seeds.

The steady sound of the builders making progress on the smithy became soothing background noise as Cal dropped Sunfire Grain seeds into the soil, making sure they were all placed one foot from each other. By the time Cal emptied all three of the remaining Sunfire Grain seed barrels, it was well past midday.

Cal discovered a problem right after he was done. The only rake he possessed was the [Rare Rake] in his storage pouch. Even if he wanted to use a tool that wasn't connected to him, it wasn't possible since Orrin had never made him extra rakes, nor had Cal asked him to. It was one of his least-used tools, and he thought one was sufficient.

Cal would have been correct in a majority of situations, but when there were several people he couldn't trust close by, there was no way he would pull out a rake that gleamed with a golden shine. He might as well head to Lumina and yell in the public square that he possessed a [Rare Rake].

He scratched the back of his head in frustration before putting it aside. He couldn't wait until Miren's team left the farm, since it would take days. Once they finished building the smithy, he was sure they would start building the second storage room and adding extensions to his house because the materials were readily available.

Cal could just ask Orrin to make him another rake or buy one at a shop in town, but he didn't see the point in either of those options. Instead, he could just repurpose a tool he possessed for this task, specifically a shovel.

He tossed the empty barrels onto one of the debris hills and returned to the storage room. All the while he couldn't help but imagine turning those hills into compact bricks that would be useful for something rather than just marring his farm's atmosphere. Of course, he didn't count his meditation hill in this imagination. That would stay as a feature of his farm.

Cal selected several shovels to distribute the tasks, which would involve covering over seventy thousand seeds with soil. This was not a job that one shovel could complete. Not only would it disintegrate into rubble from the degradation, it would also upgrade to the rare-rank, something that couldn't happen with the builders close by.

He stored the spare shovels in his storage pouch and used the shovel's blade to cover the first seed by scraping the soil into the hole and patting it flat. He looked at the interface and saw it hadn't completed a task.

It'll be disappointing if this doesn't count as a task for the shovel… let me test it a few more times.

Cal repeated his action with a couple more seeds. He finally saw a movement on the interface; the task count went up by one.

So, covering three seeds equals one completed task. I'll need to spread the job across seven shovels to cover everything I planted to prevent upgrading a shovel to the rare-rank.

There was an issue. Even though he had enough shovels, not all of them connected to his interface. So that meant they were common-ranked tools. He suspected most would break by the end.

Cal got to work. If the common-ranked tools broke, then so be it. Replacing them would be easy.

***

Cal's arms burned as he finished up the last of the seeds that needed to be covered. His suspicion was right and all the common-ranked shovels had disintegrated hours ago, but he had two shovels connected to his interface that had enough tasks left in their requirements to finish covering up the seeds without having one upgrade to the rare-rank.

He pulled up shovels on the interface just to admire how close they were.

[Advanced Shovel: Trash Quality] Upgrade: 3999/4000 Tasks (Second alternate)

[Advanced Shovel: Trash Quality] Upgrade: 3999/4000 Tasks (Third alternate)

All of them had the self-repair trait. So, the degraded quality would be easily recoverable. He admired his own work. The only disappointed was no sign of progress with his Class. [Farmer] remained at the same level, causing the ever-present worry at the issue to rise every so little.

Cal's ears perked up at the sound of someone approaching.

"Apprentice Cal, we're ready to discuss the details of the additional buildings you want constructed. If you're free, we can start right now."

Cal turned and saw Torin giving him a strange look. He supposed watching an Apprentice toil away at mundane farm work was strange to anybody's sensibilities. Then again, it wasn't like the Celestial Order had other [Apprentice Farmers] they could compare him to. He wondered what they would say if they knew about Master Arhan.

"Give me a moment to put away my tools and I'll be right with you," Cal said, already heading to the storage room to return the shovels. He gave his farm a once-over as he walked, realizing that he needed a dedicated space where he could build structures without disrupting his field.

He could build around the smithy, but he felt it was better to give Orrin a wide berth as the kid experimented with his techniques. He didn't want an accident to bring down all the buildings if he built them too close. There was a reason Orrin's smithy in Mariner's Rest had an entire abandoned street around it.

I'll ask Miren for her opinion before discussing the buildings.

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