Unorthodx Farming: Chapter 13 (Patreon)

This chapter will need so editing when I'm done with the books, so it's rougher than I like, but it's also a week before Christmas, and everyone thinks it's the perfect time to catch up, lol. Yesterday, I had 5 hours of video calls with friends, and today I had another 4 hours of interruptions. I can' t throw out any blame, because they all contacted me after their normal work day ended and I woke up in the early afternoon.Anyway, I hope you enjoy Arnold's shenagins. Chapter 13

A Test to Remember

Farentine had borrowed enough armour and gambeson for me to look like I was from a bomb disposal unit. She'd helped me put on the first two layers of gambeson before dressing me in a suit of adamantium plate armour, which weighed three times more than I did. By that point, I was too heavy to move my own body, so she'd dressed me in another three layers of gambeson before squeezing me into a second suit of adamantium plate armour that was made for someone who was seven feet six.

The only part of me that wasn't protected was my right arm, and her constant reassurance that testing my ability was perfectly safe was less reassuring with each repetition.  

Farentine checked my outer visor and adjusted my position on the stand that was holding me up, before checking the survival band wrapped around my forearm. She disappeared from my line of sight for a second, leaving me staring at the small hill I was supposed to shoot with my ability. We were sixty miles outside the Capitol, which was the closest place with geography to suit our needs.

Farentine was almost as concerned about the magic damage component of my ability as the piercing damage. She expected a massive explosion.

Farentine reappeared in front of me, holding a small hand crossbow. It looked like something you would use to hunt quail or rabbits. However, anything bigger might catch my body when launched backwards.

She held up the tiny crossbow, pointing to the trigger. "I've had the trigger enchanted so that when you squeeze, the survival band will sever your arm. However, the bolt won't fire until the trigger is pulled halfway down, so you need to squeeze as hard as you can. If you don't, your arm will be cut off for no reason."

"What if severing my arm before I finish squeezing the trigger stops me from triggering my ability?"

"Then we'll have learned a valuable lesson, and I'll have to figure out another way to safely test your ability."

Farentine pulled back the string, locking it into place, before setting a small bolt into the groove. She then reached up and closed my outer visor, clicking it into place, leaving me blind. A few seconds later, I felt her place the handle of the crossbow into my hand.

She spent nearly a minute adjusting the angle of my shot. There was a second hill half a mile behind me to absorb the impact of the hand crossbow, but if the angle wasn't right, the crossbow might miss its target. Farentine finally gave up and adjusted the scaffolding that kept me on my feet and my arm pointing in the right direction.

While I waited, I forced my lungs to suck in a breath. Adamantium was insanely heavy, and with so many layers, I could barely get any air in. Without my high endurance and constitution, I would have died from lack of oxygen half an hour ago.

I wasn't looking forward to meeting Torvac for lunch later today, but Farentine had promised it wouldn't take long.    

"Lock your wrist," Farentine instructed.

I wasn't looking forward to what happened next, but I locked my wrist.

She moved my finger to the trigger, and then her touch disappeared. "I'm moving back now." A small eternity later, she spoke again. "Activate your ability, but do not pull the trigger."

"One Shot." The inside of my helmet began to glow a deep red. It was like the fires of hell were calling to me. "Is that normal?"

"Perfectly normal! Now gently take your finger off the trigger!"

I released the trigger, but the hellfire glow remained.

"Drop the hand crossbow."

The moment it left my grip, the glow vanished.

Farentine came over and opened my second visor. "Good work. Did the cooldown on your ability trigger?"

I checked.

"No."

"Perfect. We've proven that being ready to take your shot isn't necessary, but maintaining contact with your crossbow is. We've also proven that it's not a stealth ability, because that aura surrounding you is impossible to hide. Let's move on to the next test."

She closed my outer visor again, and a few moments later, I felt her slip the hand crossbow into my grip. She placed my finger back onto the trigger and got to a safe distance.

"Activate your ability."

"One Shot."

The hellfire glow returned.

I began counting.

"Remain still until the glow fades," Farentine reminded me.

We'd gone over the tests she wanted to perform and why. The first test was to see if any secondary conditions might cause the ability to misfire or not work. This was very common with unique abilities because the system based its descriptions on the Academy of Law's understanding about abilities. This meant it didn't always tell you exactly what it could do or how it could do it. With such a powerful ability, Farentine expected there to be all sorts of information missing from the description.

Roughly thirty seconds after I activated my ability, the glow faded. Farentine waited another few minutes before telling me to drop the crossbow again.

She lifted my visor again. "I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the intensity of your aura never weakened before it faded. The bad news is that because it never weakens, you likely can't wait for the ability to weaken before using it. It's always going to fire at maximum strength."

This was her last test. Next up was pulling the trigger.

"You're sure this is safe."

"Completely. I've seen dozens of abilities that temporarily weaken champions, but I've never seen an ability kill them. The only reason I'm taking so many precautions is because you're a farmer."

She'd said the same thing yesterday.

"I mean, have you seen anything that would indicate this is safer than you thought it was?"

Farentine nodded. "The fact that the red aura from your ability surrounds you and not just your crossbow or the bolt is a positive sign. It suggests that the ability might take everything into account when it fires. Because of this, it may not actually convert all your stamina to piercing damage."

That was the positive news I'd been looking for, but then she ruined it.

"Don't quote me on that."

Looking far too relaxed to be in charge of my safety, she closed the outer visor again. The crossbow was placed in my hand, and then Farentine backed up to a safe distance and told me to activate my ability.

"One Shot."

The hellfire glow returned.

"Fire when ready."

I squeezed as hard as I could, like I'd been told to.

The hand of God struck me down for my hubris.

You have taken 16,482 bludgeoning damage.

***

Being at the centre of an explosion is never fun, but having some shouting at you the moment you've finished bouncing along the ground like a ragdoll makes it ten times worse.

"You imbecile!" Salem telepathically yelling into my head. "How could you screw up using a perfectly safe ability so badly that you nearly got yourself killed! Were you standing next to what you were aiming at?"

Salem and I had both promised never to use our telepathic abilities unless it was an emergency. Neither of us wanted the other one in our heads.

My only response was a groan.

My ears were ringing so badly that it felt like I shouldn't have been able to hear him. The amount of blood in my mouth also couldn't be healthy, and I was struggling to keep my eyes open. I felt cold, distant, and tired.

"Answer me, you moron!"

It took me a second to focus my mind. "Let me die in peace, Salem."

"No! Your stupidity just triggered the failsafe I put in place to save your life from your inevitable idiocracy. You've exposed your location to my enemy, which, thanks to your farm manor ring, points the demon lord directly towards exactly where I was taking a nap. Your nonsense had forced me to leave Blackwood."

Salem must have been really concerned about my survival if he was willing to throw in a movie title to keep me awake. I'd never admit it to him, but it helped.

Someone began tugging at my body from all sides, throwing me about. I didn't have the energy to do anything about it. My outer helmet went flying. A moment later, the other helmet disappeared and then the weight that had been smothering me for far too long lifted from my chest.

I tried to suck in a breath, but I didn't have the energy.

Armour and gambeson continued to disappear lightning quick. As the inner helmet disappeared, I realised I was floating above the ground beside Farentine. She was removing the pieces with ruthless efficiency, moving in a blur.

As the last layer of gambeson disappeared, I tried to lean forward to assess the damage. I couldn't move. I also noticed I couldn't feel anything below my neck. The exhaustion and pain coming from my head had been great for me to notice.

Discovering my neck was broken didn't cause me to panic.

I'd experienced what it felt like to have a broken neck while I was in the arena fighting beside Regent Katella, so I knew what it felt like. However, that had been a simulated broken neck, and this was a real one.

Considering how much bludgeoning damage I remember seeing in that notification, it wouldn't be a problem for long.

Farentine saw my eyes flutter as she began pinching closed what I could only assume were arteries. "I have no idea how you're alive, but don't you dare go to sleep."

She sounded honestly upset that I was injured.

I tried to focus my mind so I could talk to Salem. "How am I alive?"

"I altered my familiar's mark slightly so you could draw upon my health if yours was ever going to zero. The familiar mark is not supposed to be able to do this, so the system flags it as an anomaly, which is why the demon lord can now track you down."

A memory of Salem telling me that his enemies could kill me with a wave of their hand flashed through my mind. At the time, I thought it was just a turn of phrase, but he was being literal. His enemies really were that powerful.

"Is Blackwood safe?"

"The demon lord has gone to great lengths to hide its presence, so it's as safe as anywhere else, so long as I'm not there. However, it's now fully aware that you have my mark, so I need to remain by your side. Killing you is significantly easier than confronting me."

A prickling sensation spread across my body, and a little bit of energy returned. "I think my broken neck just healed. I'm either going to pass out or start screaming. You can find me sixty miles East of the Capitol. Look for the-"

I started screaming.

Farentine cast a spell, and the lights went out.

***

One moment I was floating in a field screaming, and the next I was staring at Farentine standing over me in the medical tent she told me we wouldn't need to use. Hunger tore its way through my belly into the back of my throat, but the agony I'd experienced only a moment before was gone. Farentine removed a bloody hand from my forehead and wiped it on her blouse. My blood fell from the fabric a second later, leaving it spotless, but by then she had conjured water from the air and forced it down my throat.

"Swallow it," she snapped.

That was an impolite request without buying me dinner.

 I choked on the water as I forced it down.

"You've lost a lot of blood even for a champion, and what's left of your stomach only managed to heal a moment ago. I need to increase your fluids and then get food into you, otherwise your mark will keep pulling what it needs to stabilise you from your body. I can't let that happen, because it's already drawn too deeply. You've lost muscle, and your bones are significantly weaker, too much more and it will kill you."

Farentine reached down beside her while I choked, and her hand came back holding a small glass jar. She undid the lid, conjured more water, added the white crystals, then forced the mixture down my throat. It tasted salty, so I assumed the white crystals were salt.

Farentine then blurred away, leaving the tent so fast she created a gust of wind. She was back within seconds, holding a picnic basket. Food came out of the picnic basket with magic, only to be shredded into mush by some spell. She added more water to the mush and then forced the mixture down my throat.

The next fifteen minutes of my life could only be described as patient abuse. Farentine wasn't a doctor. She certainly wasn't a healer. She was like a grandma who hadn't seen her grandchild in far too long, and every time they said they were full, she looked at them like they were breaking her heart, while handing them another cookie.

Throughout the ordeal, I noticed how serious my condition was. I was missing far more than just my right arm. Half of my shoulder and the top of my ribs were gone. The thin film of skin over where they had once sat suggested there wasn't much muscle under there either. Also, my left arm was much thinner than it had been this morning.

Farentine finally stopped stuffing food down my throat and leaned back, looking relieved.

"How long was I out?" I asked.

"Not long. Once your arteries stopped bleeding and you grew new skin, I moved you in here."

"What went wrong?"

"Nothing and at the same time everything. When you pulled the trigger, your arm was severed like it was supposed to. However, when that occurred, the red aura surrounding your body vanished. The damage mitigation properties of your ability were likely tied to that aura, so without it, there was no reduction in recoil. I'm not sure why, but the aura remained around your arm until it vaporised by the recoil."

I opened my mouth to ask a question, but she kept talking.

"I have no idea why there was so much piercing damage. That was over three times what I calculated. If I wasn't so overly cautious with your armour, there wouldn't be anything left of you. Even with it, I don't have a clue how you survived."

"I'm very lucky."

"No. I added your luck attribute to my calculations." Farentine rose to her feet. "Now that you're temporarily stabilised, I need to investigate what is left of the hill. I'll bring more food back when I return."

Farentine marched out of the tent.

I focused my mind, reaching out to Salem, because I needed answers. He'd said my ability was supposed to be perfectly safe.

"Salem."

"You're not dying. Whatever you want to ask can wait until I reach the Capitol."

"What do I tell Champion Farentine? She's assessing me and doesn't understand how I'm alive."

"I don't understand how you took a perfectly safe ability and nearly killed yourself with it."

I explained what we had done.

Somehow, Salem telepathically sent me the impression of him rolling his eyes. It wasn't a sound or an image, but I got the distinct feeling that he had rolled his eyes, even before he said anything.

"No one gets themselves in more trouble than a genius who thinks they know more than everyone else."

"So Farentine screwed up."

"Yes. In trying to protect you, she accidentally created one of the few situations where your champion ability could kill you. The red aura you described is there to track your health and attributes. It prevents the ability from killing you by only allowing a fixed amount of stamina to be converted to piercing damage based on what it senses. When your arm was cut off, it could no longer sense that it was able to harm your vital organs, so it converted all of our stamina to piercing damage."

"Our stamina?"

"When I gave you access to my health pool, I had to give you access to my stamina pool. You were drawing on more than three times as much stamina as her calculations assumed. Thankfully, she is overly protective of her champions. If you hadn't been protected by as many layers of armour as you described, you wouldn't have survived even with access to my health."

"How dangerous is my ability supposed to be?"

"When used correctly, the recoil might break a few bones, but it will never be lethal unless you use it against something that is far too close. There is no secondary effect that reduces the magic damage."

"So, in trying to be safe, she did everything wrong."

"She was likely concerned because you're a farmer. If you were a proper champion, she would have put you in regular armour and told you to shoot the hill with your crossbow. Everything would have been fine. Now stop bothering me. We can speak when I reach the Capitol."

Our agreement about not bothering each other telepathically was why I hadn't gone to him for answers. The other reason was that Salem refused to share things about the system unless he absolutely had to. He wouldn't have said a single word to point me in the right direction, except perhaps to say, " Stop whining and just use it."

And I would have taken that answer as him refusing to help, not as him saying it was safe. The only reason he was answering my questions about my ability so openly now was because I'd nearly killed myself trying to use it safely. And I likely would have done something more extreme and potentially lethal the next time we tested it.

My body didn't ache, but I was exhausted, so I lay on my back staring at the roof of the tent. Ten minutes later, my stomach rumbled, and Farentine walked in with more food.

Farentine sat on the stool beside the table where I lay. "I'm having you reassessed in thirty days."

Farentine had spent the past two days giving me a crash course in class progression while she created what she claimed was the ideal progression plan for me. When she said that my champion ability qualified me to help, I assumed she would select promotions and thresholds that only benefited it.

She didn't.

Once she had all the information she needed, she'd taken me to the Adventurer's Training Academy to run me through a series of tests they used to determine the strengths and weaknesses of young adventurers. Based on my attributes, marks, and titles, I was below average or average in everything except for reaction time, perception, and situational awareness.

After that was over, she'd made it very clear that I didn't have the natural talent to bridge the gap needed to become someone who could join them on a raid. She didn't look down on me for this, but she emphasised that it was pointless for me to try to make this my goal.

The sheer difficulty of gaining a champion's mark usually filtered out anyone who wasn't naturally gifted in combat. Even those who hadn't made the cut, like me, were all well above average when they took these tests in their youth. With my score, I'd never catch up.

After we got back from the training ground, there were more tests, like whether I had a natural aptitude for magic. I spent four hours in a dark room listening to her voice while trying to make a crystal glow, only to produce a few brief flickers of light. Those brief flickers signalled the end of my test, where I was informed that I took twice as long to cause those flickers as your average thirteen-year-old wizard.

Without the wizard class, I couldn't cast spells. However, my mark allowed me to move mana around my body the same way they could. The test told us whether I should take the wizard class independently or when I became an adventurer. The results told me to take it when I became an adventurer, as most thresholds for the wizard class required skill, and I wasn't naturally gifted.

With each test, she tweaked my progression plan until all that was left was to test my new ability, and we'd done that.

"Why am I being reassessed?"

"You run faster than your attributes should allow."

I frowned. "What?"

"I watched you run on our way to the testing ground this morning. You moved at the absolute limit of what you are capable of, even over open ground."

"That doesn't sound like grounds for reassessment."

Farentine shook her head. "Hunter's Gambit increases your movement speed by 100%. Your crown's mark increases movement speed by 40%. Then you have a host of items which also increase movement speed. The system allows you to move faster, but without higher agility and dexterity, you shouldn't be able to take full advantage of the additional speed. However, you did. And you did so over open ground with unsure footing. Which strongly suggests you have the natural ability to act at high speeds."

"Didn't your tests pick that up before?"

"Not to the degree I saw you display while running."

"You need better tests."

"My tests weren't designed for farmers, and no sane adventurer takes the Hunter's Gambit ability, so you're literally the first person I've met who has enough movement speed bonuses stacked to be able to see this effect in action."

When I'd told Talia that I wanted Hunter's Gambit, she'd tried to talk me out of it, because it was a build-breaker ability. However, at the time, I thought I needed to be able to outrun a giant, so I took it anyway, even though it halved how much stamina I got from endurance.

"Why are we waiting for my cooldown to be over?"

"I can't justify the time off otherwise."

I looked at my missing arm.

"Removing your arm for your safety was likely a mistake. It probably interfered with how your ability works. We need to run the test again while your arm is still attached."

If Salem hadn't told me that it was safe, I would have argued.

"Fine, but I think I deserve to know how much being able to run fast has changed my future options."

She'd wanted me to become a knight.

Farentine nodded. "Your previous tests indicated you lacked the talent for anything less than maximum defence. However, if you can be trained to move and fight quickly outside of running, which is highly likely based on what I witnessed, then we can do away with heavy armour and slow weapons and have you duel-wielding short swords, or potentially a spear, or daggers. However, you would have to be crazy to wield daggers."

"You make it sound like I've got more problems now?"

"More options mean more opportunities to screw up your progression plan. The most successful warriors and adventurers stick to a single weapon and master it. They dabble with other weapons to understand them, but never commit to more than the basics. Those who chop and change don't develop the skills they need to survive against large numbers of high-level monsters, and I don't want to see that happening to you."

"I won't be fighting large numbers of high-level monsters. I don't qualify, remember."

"Nothing is certain. Monster numbers in dungeons fluctuate, so you might run into a situation you never expected once you become an adventurer. Now that I've seen how powerful your ability is, I must make sure you survive that encounter and every other. You might never join us on a raid, but your ability is going to save a lot of people's lives and make you the most loved champion in Radian."