Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

The dried stalks of our most recent harvest crackle under my feet as I walk through the field. I kneel and grab a handful of soil. It’s rich, loamy, and I can see the earth mana flowing through the small handful. There are a few other shades, some water mana, and some small specks, which I suspect to be small insects and other lifeforms.

Still good. This field should be good for one more planting before fall. It’ll have to be a short cycle crop, but I think the good weather will hold out until we need it to. Looking around, the stalks of the blood maize are drying out under the sun. It’s a neat sight. Just last week we cut through this whole field, a humongous area in total. This was one of our largest crops. Humongous stalks of corn almost as far as the eye could see.

A marvel, in retrospect, that we managed to cut down and harvest every single acre. It took us a whole week just to bring the load into town, and we hired out a few helpers. Our little farm was practically as busy as the village for a short while.

I stood back up and gaze at the large empty field. Taking a deep breath and admiring our hard work, a sense of calm comes over me. I’m truly glad that I have this new life, and I’m really content. My intense physical training has taken up less and less of my time lately, and farming has moved into its place. During the winters, I train all the harder, but we have expanded the farm in the last few seasons, and it required both of our work and skills to get it all done on time.

At the same time, less and less improvement can be seen each year that passes by. My physical stats are starting to hit a natural limit. I knew it was bound to happen. I’m 18 now, in this world. Not quite at the peak of my strength, but close. People tend to mature faster in this world, so it’s not surprising that my natural strength is having trouble increasing.

Nevertheless, I’m not worried. The inner me has become much calmer, and less prone to excitement these last few years. I’ve mellowed out, and once again stopped letting the scary things of this world bother me, like back when I first arrived and was able to let nothing get to me. Of course, life moved on and I started to get back to my old ways of worrying. I was so busy training and reporting every single detail and change that occurred, that I overlooked the small things in life.

Luckily, I managed to find my true calling in this world. At first, I merely enjoyed working on the farm with Gramps. It was nice to work up a sweat and end every day with satisfaction of my own hard work. I appreciated the isolation, where I could train and do whatever I wanted on our farm. I got the little socializing I required in every few weeks going into town.

It wasn’t until I stopped going to town for almost an entire year, out of fear of running into another mage that might be able to sense my mana, that I truly started to love being out here. I found inner peace once again. Through attempting to work through my accumulating anxiety, I put much more effort into working the farm.

Every swing of my scythe, and every hit of my plow, I threw away my worries and found that each new day was a little bit brighter. That could also have been because of distributing points to my senses attribute, but I’m going to believe in the power of happiness.

It’s amazing how you can believe you have a certain outlook on life, believe you are living it out in reality, only to find out later that you slowly had started drifting off that path a long time ago. The scariest part of life, in my opinion, is the lies we tell ourselves to keep things within the status quo. I came to this new life thankful, full of wonder at the potential of magic, and completely at peace with my decisions. Somehow, overtime, my old anxious and meticulous personality began to take the front seat, worrying and fretting over little details that don’t matter.

Thankfully, that’s no longer the case.

I slowly walk back towards the house, which I have fixed up over the years. It’s almost completely remodeled, in the modern Earth open concept style. The kitchen is much bigger and has multiple cooking dishes, and the shelves are fully stocked with all sort of ingredients and spices. It’s almost a necessity to have delicious food, with my Senses stat being what it is. I don’t think I could even eat slop soup any longer.

I could easily utilize Sprint, and be home in seconds, but I take the few minute walk back at a sedate walking pace. I like to look over the various mana patterns within the soil, check on the various crops, and kill a few pests along the way.

I’ve become quite good at finding and eliminating those pesky insects. I’ve learned to use Inject Mana to quickly kill them, as I brush my hand along the plants. All it takes is a moment for me to overpower their defenses and flood them with a tiny bit of my mana, but their little bodies can only hold a miniscule amount to begin with. Not to mention my ridiculously high-quality mana.

It’s still not the most mana or time efficient way, but throughout and entire season I eliminate a good portion of the pests. The truly beneficial part of my skillset is I can find the densest clumps of insects, and deal with them then. If we time things exactly right, I can find when they have mostly laid their eggs and go around much more efficiently that way.

Over the last two years, using my mana sense and steadily rising clarity, I can help us to plant fields in the most ideal manner, considering the patterns and density of mana to give us the best possible yields. Determining which areas of soil need more water is easy with my skills. I’ve found uses for almost all my skills.

As I make my way back into the house, I see Gramps sitting in his usual spot, smoking his pipe.

“I think we can get one more crop out of that field this season, Gramps. It might be tight, but with the right seed we’ll have enough time to harvest.”

“You sure? That’s cutting it pretty close.”

“Not 100%, but I think we should go for it. After all, with Magic-Farming (LV8), nothing is impossible.” I say with plenty of pride in my voice.

“You’re going to get such a big head it’ll explode sooner or later. I still can’t believe you got that skill. Never heard of that in my whole life.” He replies shaking his head.

“Well, not that many farmers have the skills I do, much less have talent for magic. I’m sure someone else has gotten this skill at some point.”

“I reckon. But you should still never let anyone know about that. You’ll be kidnapped in a heartbeat.”

“I know Gramps. I may be a moron most of the time, but I at least have that much sense.”

“I hope so. Your head has always been up in the clouds.”

“I’m going to head in to get started on dinner, any requests?”

“Yeah, stop putting those blasted peppers in my meals! I may have a lot of endurance, but my poor bowels can only take so many of your “jokes”. “

“Alright, alright! I may have overdone it the last time. Who told you to whack me in the back of the head with a shovel!”

“There was a mosquito.” He answers with a completely straight face.

“Ohhh. Yeah I’m sure about that.” I roll my eyes. Recently he has taken to testing me on my so called theories about the attributes, and how mine are superior to everyone else’s, because I only train mine to improve.

One of the tests he administered was whacking me in the back of the head after I had dug a hole for a new tree transplant. With his strength, of course I fell in headfirst, practically knocked myself out.

Getting out of that whole completely dirty and muddy, he was choking back the tears of laughter.

I got him back during dinner, after which he made an emergency run to the outhouse in the back. I made a new outhouse the next day.

“Alright, truce. I call truce! I’ll stop telling you about my research and you have to stop whacking me with every implement we own every chance you get!”

“Deal. I’m a simple man, son. I can’t take one more conversation about how INTERESTING this is, and how MARVELOUS that is. You know what’s marvelous, how about the inside of that---”

“Nope. Don’t want to think about that again. I get it!” I laughed. He didn’t really hate my theorizing, but I tended to go a little overboard, pestering him with question after question.

I walk inside and head towards the kitchen, leaving him sitting there smugly. Placing my hands on the smooth stone countertops that I fashioned myself, I take a deep breath.

“What to cook? Hmm.” I ponder what I should cook for tonight. Something hearty, and filling. It’s been a long season. I look around the counter and see some bread starting to get stale that I made the other day. It’s funny how quick bread goes stale without preservatives and plastic bags.

“I got it. Burgers. A good ol’ fashioned burger and fries night.”

Happy with my choice, I begin to prepare the ingredients. First some strips of something similar to beef, but from a local animal. We don’t have a meat grinder, so I’m forced to manually make something similar.

Using my slowly improving knife skills, and even knife arts now, I begin to thinly slice the strip of meat. Most people gain the skills for using a dagger. I gained the knife skill. I have always wondered what’s the difference, but not many people had an answer. In the end, I believe it came down to my own feelings towards the skill.

I use a knife as a tool. To shape wood, cut rope, cook with, and various other uses. Even when I was hunting, it was always only a tool to achieve the end result, rather than a weapon.

That should be the main difference. A dagger is a weapon, and a knife is a multipurpose tool.

I flourish the knife in various manners, working to improve my skills as much as possible while cooking. I may have calmed down and relaxed a bit, but my base personality remains the same. Plus, it’s really cool and I think it looks epic to cook and use fancy knife skills at the same time. Sometimes I pretend I’m on a cooking show.

Gramps just thinks I’m even crazier than he first thought. Maybe I can just blame the isolation.

Despite the haters, the knife is twirling in my hands. Switching grips is easy, and I can even juggle a few knives at once. The knife in my hands spins and slices, this meat doesn’t stand a chance.

After just a minute or so, the meat is neatly diced into small pieces, almost perfectly even in shape and size. Thank you Measurement.

Next, I sprinkle some seasoning on the meat and let it rest. Some salt, of course, as well as a few other local seasonings.

Next, a few vegetables. There are a few peppers I diced up in a similar manner to the meat, as well as what passes for an onion in this world. Diced neatly and gathered into a pile I dump them into the platter of meat.

Next, I head down to the cellar to grab some eggs from our icebox. When I get back upstairs, I crack it open and mix it in with the meat to help hold it together along the vegetables and other seasonings.

After mixing the meat up nicely, I make balls of even size at about a half pound each, once again thanks to Measurement, this is easy.

With the patties ready, I start on the root vegetable that’s quite like a potato. I can get fancy here, creating curly fries with just a plain ol’ knife. I probably have leveled my knife skills making these more than anything else. What is life without curly fries?

With all the ingredients ready, I light up the wooden stove. It’s a bit easier to cook on coals, but an open flame works nicely after a lot of practice and gives the burgers a great smoky flavor.

Placing the grill on top, I begin to wipe it down with some leftover animal fat that has congealed. As is melts, it drips into the flames and causes a few flare ups, and also making the kitchen smell like heaven.

Next to the grill, I place a big pot, and fill it with some oil we purchased in the village. I could use animal fat, but it doesn’t give the same crisp texture as this higher quality oil. I’m not sure exactly what kind of oil it is, as we import it from another area and I haven’t seen any of the crops it’s made from.

After a good few minutes, with me Meditating and in the meantime, the oil begins to bubble up and I know the grill must also be ready.

Taking one last Mana Breath and exhaling a tiny bit of my mana along with a few “impurities” as I call them, I get to work once again.

First, I place a few of the half pound meat balls I made earlier on the grill, then taking a metal spatula, I smash it down onto the patties, making sure to get deep grooves in the bottom of the patties from the grill. With that taken care of, I start throwing my curly fries into the pot, a little at a time to ensure minimal oil splashing.

Even with high stats, getting splashed with oil is not fun. Especially with my Senses attribute being as high as it is.

Now utilizing my Analyze skill alongside Measurement for temperature, I keep a steady eye on each of the burgers and the fries floating in the oil.

I flip the burgers first, using another smash of the spatula to put in grooves on that side as well, though they won’t be quite as defined as the first ones.

Next, a few of the fries begin to look done, according to my Analyze skill, and my Cooking skill giving me prods along the way. With a combination of Steady Hands and Precise Strike, I use a pair of metal chopsticks to snatch each fry as it reaches perfect doneness.

With each fry I take out, I add in another, and the cycle repeats.

After flipping the burger another two rounds, I quickly slice up thick pieces of some cheese. Thankfully, it’s yellow, so it just completes the picture perfectly. I place the slices on the tops of the patties, waiting for them to melt.

The fries are finally completely done, and I set them aside to continue draining the excess oil and cool down. Sprinkling plenty of salt on them, I then move back to watch the cheese melt. With Analyze and Cooking, it’s easy to tell when the inside of the thick piece is at just the perfect melting point.

After a few more seconds, they are all done, and I quickly snatch them off the grill and place them on a few pieces of bread we have. They aren’t hamburger buns, but they do the job. Thinking of a few more things, I run quickly down to the cellar and grab a jar of pickled vegetables and some pesto style spread I make often.

We don’t have mustard and ketchup here, so I’ve been forced to make do with whatever I can find.

Hurrying back up to the kitchen, I thinly slice the pickled vegetables, which don’t really resemble cucumbers that much, and place them onto the burgers. Spreading a bit of pesto on the upper bun before I compress it on top to the patty and the burger is complete. Adding a few fries to each plate, the meal is complete.

I carry one plate in each hand, and find Gramps still sitting in the same spot, relaxing as usual. I hand him one of the plates before plopping down opposite him on a porch swing I made a few years back.

“Another one of your ‘bergurs’?” He asks.

“Yeah, I call them ‘burgers’, but close enough!” I laugh and respond.

“Yeah, yeah. Same thing. It’s just food, doesn’t need any fancy name.” He says that, but he also looks down excitedly at his plate and quickly takes a bite of the juicy burger.

He attempts to stay quiet, but he still groans a bit in satisfaction. Can’t beat the classics.

I take a big bite into my burger as well, groaning even louder. This is the life.

Status:

LV: 60 Experience: 192,988/514,808

Health: 1700/1700 Stamina: 913/913 Mana: 720/720

Vitality: 170

Endurance: 48

Strength: 56

Dexterity: 54

Senses: 88

Mind: 106

Magic: 72

Clarity: 114

Free Points: 238

Tier 1 Skills: Meditation (LV86), Sprint (LV72), Drawing (LV72), Cleaning (LV65), Acrobatics (LV75), Farming (LV54), Wood Carving (LV56), Knife Skills (LV51), Stone Carving (LV50), Carpentry (LV45), Cooking (LV53), Trading (LV50), Climbing (LV50), Plowing (LV34), Scythe Skills (LV39), Butchering (LV46), Sewing (LV34), Knitting (LV39), Hunting (LV38)

Tier 2 Skills: Sense Mana (LV78), Mathematics (LV75), Writing (LV61), Measurement (LV75), Increase Price (LV48), Lower Price (LV45), Knife Arts (LV29), Transplant (LV27), Gourmet (LV25), Memorize (LV38), Anatomy (LV21), Steady Hands (LV18), Calligraphy (LV38), Dodge (LV28)

Tier 3 Skills: Expel Mana (LV76), Mana Manipulation (LV56), Analyze (LV40), Surveying (LV23), Mana Breathing (LV40), Contract (LV30), Precise Strike (LV27), Enhanced Strike (LV26), Soothing Voice (LV32), Recall Memory (LV7), Flash Step (LV10)

Tier 4 Skills: Mental Resistance (LV38), Inject Mana (LV40), Extract Mana (LV40), Magic Farming (LV8), Compress Mana (LV12)