As much as Midday would have liked to say that his diet from hell had already given him super strength and made his daily work all that much easier as a result, the truth was that he struggled to notice any difference at all. Between his still-painful missing finger and the fact that he had only gotten less than 6 hours of sleep on the night before (which was fairly typical for him those days), Midday struggled just as much as he usually did. 12 hours after beginning the work, he finished his quota—still disappointed in how slow his growth was shaping up to be. Midday almost, for just a split second, considered upping his peppercorn dosage to 2 or maybe even 3 beads per meal just to start seeing some gains sooner, but he was well aware of the fact that he had nowhere near the willpower necessary for such a thing. In fact, he trembled just thinking about the notion of having only 1 bead sprinkled into his dinner that night.

Getting up from the spot near the wheat where he had been resting since finishing his work, Midday started towards the slave encampment—or, rather, towards the place in the forest where he kept the ring. Judging from the sky, he reckoned he still had maybe an hour-and-a-half before sunset and so he figured the forest should be safe for the most part so long as he finished everything he planned to do before nightfall.

He decided to take a detour on the way back. Running into his cabinmates was one thing, but there were also several other people he was at the very least acquainted with—many of which he expected would gladly kill him in cold blood to get their hands on the ring. Even the more benevolent ones, he figured, would still at the very least spread rumors about seeing him acting odd. In short, getting seen by anyone who knew his name was to be avoided at all costs. With that in mind, he set off for the forest.

♦

Midday stood gazing upon the sunflower he had gifted with the blessing of incredible growth on the previous day. It was standing tall and yellow as late evening light fell through the shade of the oaken leaves above, absorbing all it could of what little light remained of the day.

It had taken him a while to get here. His detour had cost him maybe fifteen-or-so extra minutes of walking as he had decided it would be wise to never use the same entrance to the forest twice if he could help it. The fewer clues he left, the better. And with his life at risk, he had to do the best he could.

Now that he stood there pondering how exactly he would go about farming Devil Peppercorn, he came to the realization that he knew almost nothing about the plant as a crop. As an ingredient? Sure. That was what everyone talked about. But in the context of it as a crop cultivated for the purpose of agriculture, he knew almost nothing. Will it even grow here? Each Neighborhood had a different climate and general ecosystem optimized for the crop they specialized in growing. The growing conditions in Neighborhood 6 were definitely different as opposed to Neighborhood 8, but the extent of those differences was the important question that needed to be answered.

All he knew for certain was that Devil Peppercorn was a vine that grew on trees. Beyond that, all he could do was guess. And he had a lot of guessing to do: light levels, temperature, humidity, water requirements, and several other assorted needs came to mind immediately.

But before worrying about any of those things—most of which he no control over—he bent down and pulled the ring out of the soil:

“Effect Added. Elvanerean Ring: Accelerates growth of any plant the user points at by one year. Can be used 3 times per day.”

Still works! There were very few things that made him smile those days but having a magical ring on his finger was certainly one of them. He held it up close to his eye and laughed, giddy with excitement. Midday had been waiting for this all day, and he wasted no time in taking the Devil Peppercorn seed out of his pocket to begin his work. Excited as he was, speed was of the essence. The less time he spent in the forest, he figured, the lower his chances were of being discovered.

He found a nice-looking spot at the base of an especially big oak tree and dug out a small hole to plant the seed inside of. Once that was done, he simply dropped the Devil Peppercorn bead into it. Every bead of Devil Peppercorn—just like ordinary peppercorn—had a seed at the center and so he was fairly certain that he could just plant the bead as it was.

Once the freshly planted seed was covered up and ready to go, all that remained was for Midday to use the ring. His heart was racing, excited to see what would happen and nervous that maybe the ring’s power would be unable to penetrate through the 2 or 3 inches of soil under which the seed was buried.

He pointed his pinky at the spot where he had buried the seed and took a deep breath. This was the moment of truth: would a gigantic vine shoot out of the soil in a few seconds, or would the ground remain as it had been before? There was only one way to find out. As he held his finger up to the soil, butterflies in his stomach, Midday thought about what this meant to him.

This was his ticket. His opportunity to finally break free from a tortured life of stagnancy and decay. The Elvanerean Ring, he decided, was his sun: the thing that allowed him to grow and reach new heights when it otherwise would have been impossible to do so. He was only a tiny seed buried underground at that moment—desperate to sprout out and feel the warmth of the sun firsthand—but, in time, and with the light of the ring by his side, Midday saw himself maturing into a mighty tree just like the noble oak now he gazed upon so fondly.

It was a serene moment to finally be taking the first steps toward a better life and yet, somewhere in the back of his mind, there were other thoughts. Thoughts of how undeserving he was of such an amazing gift. Thoughts of the thousands upon thousands of slaves who had suffered just as much as him and would continue to do so while he greedily used the power of a ring he possessed for no good reason besides luck. But rather than feel as though he was obligated to help those less fortunate than himself, Midday merely became all that much more thankful that he had been the one to find the ring as opposed to someone else. He offered up a silent prayer of thanks addressed to nothing in particular.

The ring activated. A bright burst of green energy shot out of his fingertips toward the spot in the ground where the Devil Peppercorn seed was buried and, for a few seconds, he held his breath in anticipation of the outcome. If the power had worked through the few inches of soil that separated the seed from direct contact, it would only be a few more seconds before the first signs of life popped out from the cradle of dirt in which it had been born.

Sure enough, the first thin tendril of the green vine sprouted from the soil, wagging around helplessly in search of something to cling onto. Midday grinned wider than he had done in months upon seeing this, for this was like watching his future blood right before his very eyes.

A few seconds of growth later, the tendril was more than a foot long and had made contact with the broad trunk of the oak tree Midday had placed it next to so that it might grow around it, climbing ever higher on the tall tree as the seconds ticked away, accelerating its development with each passing moment. By the ten-second mark the vine had split itself into an elegant double helix which wrapped around the oak tree in an elegant pattern, crossing in on itself wherever the helixes met. At twenty seconds the vines had wrapped themselves around the tree trunk maybe ten times, now wrapped securely around it as the tendrils climbed ever higher up the tree with steadily thickening vines. Finally, at the thirty-second mark, the growth stopped. The Devil Peppercorn vines were still immature, having yet to bear any fruit, but they were tall and firmly rooted in place with the oldest tendrils having become almost as thick as his arm and covered in big leaves that dropped down more than a foot each. All said and done, the plant was about 5 feet tall around the oak tree and was differentiable from the nearby vines only by the elegant double helix pattern in which it climbed up the oak tree. In other words, impressive as it was, the plant still had a lot of growing to do. Midday reckoned that it would only start bearing fruit once its vines started wrapping themselves around branches.

“Time for round two then.” Wasting no time, he pointed his pinky at the plant—which was now quite easy to do seeing as the Devil Peppercorn vines were quite large and thus an easy target to aim at. As a rule, it seemed, the ring took 15 seconds to charge—during which process the inscriptions that covered its exterior glowed in an increasingly bright green. “Wonder how far it’ll get this time.”

After the 15-second charge-up, another burst of green energy shot out of his fingertip and landed dead on against the leaves of the plant. Midday watched in awe as the plant began to grow once again and this time, seeing as its roots were already in place, it grew much faster than before. By the time the 30 seconds of growth ended, the plant was a little more than 10 feet tall and far thicker than before—to the point where the bark on the lower portions of the oak tree was almost entirely hidden behind a wall of green.

Curious to see if there were any signs of peppercorn beads starting to form, Midday walked around the perimeter of the tree, surveying it carefully in search of the fruit. Upon finding nothing, he shrugged and, with a carefree smile on his face, pointed his finger at the vine once again. This is my last charge of the day. Let’s see some fruit!

A blast of green energy launched itself at the Devil Peppercorn plant fifteen seconds later and, with that, the growth resumed yet again. The double helix tendrils of the plant wrapped themselves neatly time and time again around the trunk, finally climbing up to the lowest branches of the oak tree and starting to wrap themselves around the gigantic branches which Midday hoped would be the home of his first Devil Peppercorn harvest. He watched the branches intently, not paying much attention to the now completely vine-covered trunk, in hopes of spotting the first beads forming.

But, as the 30 seconds of growth drew to a close, Midday realized that there was still no fruit to be seen. The sole product of today’s efforts was the creation of a young but not yet mature Devil Peppercorn plant—which was by no means a small feat. He had just witnessed 3 years of growth in the span of maybe 2 minutes, and there were probably very few other people alive who could claim to have seen anything so amazing. Even so, Midday was a tad disappointed. The fact that there was still no fruit seemed a tad anticlimactic, but there was nothing that could be done about it until the next day.

He was by no means surprised that there hadn’t been fruit. All 6 of the agricultural treasures grown at Elvanera Plantation were notorious for being incredibly slow to grow—with some of them requiring more than a decade to fully mature—and Devil Peppercorn was no exception. Midday expected to see the first beads forming by tomorrow though, and he was giddy with excitement as he buried the ring beside the sunflower he had kept it under on the previous day.

Midday was relieved to see that Devil Peppercorn could grow in the conditions of Neighborhood 8. He expected that perhaps there might be some complications stemming from it at some point, but he just shelved those concerns for the time being as he hurried to leave his garden as soon as he possibly could. His entire time in the garden that day had totaled less than 5 minutes—a fact he took pride in, for he believed the best way to avoid detection was to spend as little time there as he possibly could.

With a smile on his face, Midday left for the cabin.