Rain was beating down on the rim of Winston’s hat as he looked down at his ginseng.

“You sure? You could leave them here for longer and they’d just get more valuable.” Kishia said from beside him as she examined them as well. She didn’t seem to mind the rain. Her scales just shed all of it but it always matted his fur for hours after a rain.

“Yeah, it’s time. We need to see what we ended up with and then replant.” Winston told her.

He’d let them grow nearly a month and he’d decided it was time to reap the harvest. He knelt in the dirt and prepared to grab one of the dark evil-looking ginsing’s but thought better of it. They’d been rather foreboding looking when they’d first mutated but now they radiated a sort of ominous darkness and Winston wasn’t sure what would happen if he touched them. Instead he got two short sticks and picked away the loose soil before carefully lifting the plant out, then brought it close to his face to inspect.

[Herbalism level too low to identify]

“You know what this is?” Winston asked his apprentice. He’d asked her before and she hadn’t known but her herbalism level should be higher now.

“It’s a Spiked Doom Ginseng. Evil things.” She said with disgust. As soon as she said it a box popped open in from of him.

[Spiked Doom Ginseng]

[Reagent]

[Uncommon, Superior]

[A mutated Tropical Ginseng. The positive karmic luck of this plant has been repeatedly sucked away. That has left it with only the negative luck. As the plant grew older and more robust this negative luck has only increased. Now the plant will bring nothing but ill fortune on those who consume it.]

He was about to stick it into his pack when Kishia spoke up again. “You shouldn’t put it in there.” Winston’s hand paused.

“Where am I supposed to put it then?” Winston said with an eye-roll.

“Stuffing normal crops and things inside a bag is fine, even the rest of these normal ginsings you’ve grown but you can’t treat medical reagents that way. They’ll lose potency.”

“That… Doesn’t sound right.” Winston said. He was pretty sure anything put in a bag stopped aging instantly. If it wasn’t aging how would it lose any potency. This wasn’t a Xianxia novel. He didn’t need a jade box.

“It’s true.” Kishia said stubbornly.

Winston pulled up his interface and started looking up information. What he found was mixed and mostly hear-say. The Chinese and Korean farmers were pretty adamant about it, at least for the higher grade stuff. The Russians seemed mostly ambiguous and the Americans and Europeans thought it was crap. Winston was pretty sure he was in the latter camp but then again, listening to NPCs was usually a good idea. He was willing to try anything once. How would he be able to tell though? It wasn’t like he could feel the medical efficacy of the plant, unless someone could. The game did have A LOT of skills and classes.

“What would you recommend?” Winston asked.

“Well, if you wanted to cut down another tree, fresh pear wood might word. Peach would be better but pear shouldn’t be terrible.” Kishia told him.

“That would be great, assuming I had the tools, the time, or the skill.” Winston grumbled. He shook his head. He wasn’t going to worry about it for now. Although he’d keep it in mind. Winston slowly worked his way through the black ginsengs, then quickly picked the normal ones and tossed them all into his pack. He’d saved the best for last.

He took his time with the final specimen, first picking off the berries on top, then slowly digging the plant out of the ground. Instead of forming a normal tube shaped root, this one was almost perfectly spherical, with small hairlike roots shooting off it. Winston carefully picked it out of the ground and held it up for his apprentice. The girl looked at his for a while, then nodded.

“A Golden-Fate Ginseng” She said finally.

[Golden Fate Ginseng]

[Reagent]

[Rare, Excellent]

[Mutated from a common Tropical Ginseng this was fed the blood, body, and core, of a Golden Frothing. It was nurtured by an experienced farmer and was left to mature before being harvested. It contains the Golden Frothlings karmic fate as well as that it has absorbed from the other ginseng plants around it.]

Light burst from Winston as his screen filled with popups.

[You Have Reached Level 18]

[You Vegetable Sub-Skill Has Increased]

[Current Rank: Beginner III]

[[Effect:Bonus Vegetable Crop Yield: 9.5%]

Bonus Vegetable Crop Quality: 31%]

[You Have Received A Class Quest]

[Return To Your Roots]

[In order to fully understand your class as you prepare for your advancement, you are tasked with returning to the Yawnshu homeland and retrieving one of the Yawnshu’s lost Sun-Crystals they used to illuminate their great underground groves. Travel to the Central Plains in the Western Empire and seek the ruins of your civilization.]

[Requirements: Find Sun-Crystal 0/1]

[Rewards: 50,000 xp, ability to select class specialization once player hits level 20]

Winston’s face changed from happiness to frustration as he read the messages. He’d been so excited for his class quest and the game had screwed him over. He was expecting some kind of production quest, something similar to when he’d helped out the orcs, but the game had given him a real quest. How was he supposed to complete a real quest? He’d only managed his last quest due to luck, help, and a low-level zone. The western Kingdom was nothing like this specially nurtured training zone. It was the wild-west. He’d have to fight stuff,explore old ruins, and do all the things real players with real combat classes did. Winston could think of few things he’d want to do less. It would take weeks and he wouldn’t be able to farm at all.

Still, he couldn’t be too mad. He’d leveled up again and he had just picked a rare rarity plant he’d grown himself. The thing had to be worth at least 1500, maybe two or three times that with a little luck. He placed it carefully in his pack. Winston stood and dusted off the knees of his overalls. He’d re-compost, re-lime, and then turn the soil here a few times. Then he’d leave it to set for half a day before replanting the ginseng. The farm never lacked for work to do.

******************************

“This all you have? Where’s your coffee and chocolate?.” Troll asked as he stood in his wagon. The height of the wagon made the halfling taller than Winston, if only by a little. The wagon was loaded down with a dozen barrels of various fruits.

“I’ve been saving them up. There’s no place to get rid of them around here for a decent price and I don’t feel like taking a 50% hit in profits just because I’m out in the boonies.” Winston told him. “I wanted to save up a lot, then send them on a boat or through a portal. I keep trying to get Trish to send my stuff through one of her guild shipments but someone else is in charge of their logistics and he apparently had it out for me.”

“Why are you still here then?”

“Where else am I going to go? Besides I just built this farm. Seems stupid to have gone though all the trouble of getting all this set up just to leave again.” Winston said. “It’s not that I don’t agree with you. It’s been damned annoying to get my crops out but there’s not much I can do about it without hiring a portal of my own.”

“Well, why don’t you do that? You’ve got the money for it don’t you” Troll asked as he looked down at Winston. “And help me with this crap. You’re the one that asked me to buy all of it.” He said as he waved to a few boxes in the back.

“I have the money for it and that’s part of the reason I’ve been saving up the chocolate. Need a lot of goods to make it worth it. So far I’ve got about 48 pounds of chocolate I’ve been stockpiling. And what is this crap?” Winston said as he got a whiff of what was in the box.

“Dragon Dung, as they’d say in Harry Potter. Fresh from a red-dragon lair. Cost me, or in this case, you a pretty penny.” Troll said smiling.

“How much?” Winston said as he lifted the first box down and picked up a second.

“About 1500 gold. That one is the body of a salamander.” He said nodding at the second box. “Only about level 20, but it was a lot cheaper. They had a balrog corpse from a raid, but I thought the demon blood might cause some fairly horrify mutations. They wanted five grand for it anyway.”

“You spent 1500 gold on literal shit?” Winston asked him in horror.

“You’re the one that told me to and I quote ‘Pick up any animal or plant parts that are fire attributed you think might be decent’, besides who else but a farmer would need dragon dung. I got you a decent deal. See how things come out first before you knock it. Then I got you this.” He added, as he whipped out a large red gem. “Core from a level 60 fire atronach, 2600 gold. I also got that seed you wanted. That was nearly 3000, but I suppose you can just make more if your going to start growing them.”

“Well, I did have enough money for a portal.” Winston muttered.

“Stop complaining, yes the money you’ve been making has been going down pretty steadily but you’ve still been making money..” Troll complained.

“Fine, and you stop complaining. I know I’m not your only customer.” Winston shot back. “If I can get you a portal from Wraith Harbor to the Eternal City will you take my stuff out there?”

“Depends what it pays.” Troll said with a shrug.

“Alright, The swords portal to the Eternal city pretty often and I can send you with them for free. I haven’t cashed in on that yet and it’s about time. I’ve basically decimated the market around here so it’ll be good to liven things up again. I’m getting tired of these nickel and dime deals. I’ll contact the Swords and see when their next portal is, and if I can hire one of their portal mages to pop one from Sword’s Basin to Wraith Harbor. Then you can hop through from this side and go with them from there to Chronopolis.

“I’ll round up everything I’ve got saved up and we’ll send it all over there and see how we do. I’ll have to decide how to sell it all but we should make money.” Winston said.

“You’re the boss.” Troll said with a shrug. “I just haul things.”

“Lemme go get the rest of it.” Winston muttered as he went back in the hut to dig out the good stuff.”

In the end he’d sent off Troll with 48 lbs of chocolate, 25 of coffee, and around 30 bushel each of Apples, Pears, and Oranges. He’d even thrown in all the ginseng to top it all off. It wasn’t as much as he’d hoped but he was glad to be rid of it all. Trish seemed awfully worried about things and that meant someone was likely going to come screw things up for him again soon.

Those were worries for tomorrow, today he needed to take on his next project. He wanted to grow that fire-tree. It would be a good challenge for him and should give him a decent skill boost if he pulled it off. He headed over to the newest area of his farm where he’d planted the mahogany trees. Thirty-six tiny saplings had already pushed up through the soil in six neat rows. Winston chose a spot a good fifty yards further out then knelt in the damn grass to get the boost to his soil-sense ability. He reached into his pack and pulled out the seed.

It looked a bit like a walnut but was a bright orange color and as he gripped it in his hand he felt the ground under him. The soil was too acidic but only slightly so it also wasn’t sandy enough. Those problems Winston could fix fairly easily. He still had sand left over from his oven project so he could just mix some in until he got it right. The larger problem was with the fire aura.

Winston had never tried to grow anything that required mana and the sensation was bizarre. He felt a sort of ghostly burning in the soil that was apparently supposed to represent the fire-mana that was missing. There was another sensation over-top of that one though, something soothing but different from mana. Faith maybe? Did the tree require fire-mana saturated ground and also faith saturated ground?

The fire sensation was much stronger but there was just a trickle of the faith. Thinking about it that wasn’t too surprising. If this was some-sort of an elven special holy-tree then it might need to grow in a sacred grove. Elves were always going around blessing the ground and trees. Winston didn’t have a sacred grove but he had the skills to fake it fairly well. He was a literal grovetender. He’d just have to slap down a few blessed rocks to give it the proper amount of faith or just lay down a blessing everyday and presto, one pseudo-sacred-grove.

Winston cast a miniature [Clear the Land] and started to dig a 4x4 hole. It took a while but his claws made the work go quickly. He carried over the manure next and stuck a finger in it. It was gross but necessary. His passive activated and his eyes went up. It was way too rich and the fire-mana was pretty weak. Winson would have to dilute it with lots of soil which would spread the fire-mana out even more. Still, there was something else about it, it felt something like a summer storm, but it wasn’t anything Winston recognized.

Nope, this wasn’t going to do it. He stood back up and started back towards the hut. He found Kishia back in the alchemy room she’d made and coughed lightly to get her attention. She scowled at him slightly and he smiled, before handing over her wages for the week. It was a decent pile of gold and her frown turned into a smile.

“Any way you can brush this into powder without blowing up my house?” Winston asked her as he held out the fire-core. The girl took it and let our a soft hiss. Winston supposed it was the lizard-person equivalent of a whistle.

“This must have cost a fortune, but grinding it up shouldn’t be too hard.” She said.

“Excellent. I need it to increase the density of fire mana in the soil for the tree Orinico wants me to grow.” Winston said.

“Is he coming back here?” She said, a bit too casually.

“Should be. He’ll be here to chop down all those trees I just planted, as well as the new one I’m working on today.” Winston told her with a grin.

It didn’t take long to grind the core and Winston went and knocked off a few head-sized chunks of stone off the massive rock formation while he waited. Then it was back to the whole. Winston started to mix the soil and dung, trying to get the composition right while adding in fire-core dust to keep up the fire-mana content. It was a long annoying process and Winston kept using his claws to mix and stir everything together. When he got it how he wanted he stood up and grabbed the four rocks. Then he cast his newest skill and dumped a hundred mana into each one.

The rocks started to glow slightly and a faint aura of rightness washed over Winston. He put the rocks around the plot in the four corners then tested the soil one last time. He nodded and poked a hole in the ground before planting the blazing orange seed.