Unorthodox Farming 3: New Chapter 14 (Patreon)

Chapter 14

Farentine was left so confused by my magical aptitude test results that she called in an expert from the Wizard's Academy. The expert examined my results, asked me a few dozen questions, and then she informed Farentine that my inability to consciously manipulate mana stemmed from being an incarnate from a nonmagical world. There were only a handful of incarnate wizards who had come from nonmagical worlds, but all of them had taken significantly longer to learn how to consciously manipulate mana than everyone else, including the previous owners of their bodies, so my results were in line with what they had seen in the past.

She advised Farentine to ignore those test results and focus on the results that I had no control over. Those results were the only valid ones. However, they suggested I'd make an even worse wizard than I would be a warrior. I was below average in everything.

Because Farentine needed a second opinion and I took much longer than expected to perform the test, we finished after midnight. Farentine took me back to her place and let me crash on the couch in the sitting room.

I was asleep the moment my head hit the pillow, no abilities needed. I woke up a few hours after dawn, having slept eight hours, as Farentine opened the front door. It wasn't the sound that woke me, but the smell of the food she was carrying.

Farentine's townhouse was more Spartan than the apartments the Royal Builders were constructing in Blackwood.  It didn't have a kitchen. It didn't have a root cellar. It didn't even have any crockery. There were just books, armchairs, tables, a single large bed upstairs somewhere, a couch, those magical toilets that made life so much better, and a dozen cheap places to buy food within a few minutes' walk. I could live with all that, but I would have liked to be able to drink water from somewhere other than the tap above the bathtub.

I blinked away sleep as I oriented myself, following the scent of something that had to be pork. "Why didn't you wake me?"

Farentine placed a bowl on the coffee table in front of me and removed the porcelain lid, revealing the pork belly ramen. "Manipulating mana causes a form of mental fatigue that champions can't feel. It fades as our mana network grows stronger, but when we start out, it can cause quite severe emotional dysregulation if you don't get enough sleep."

Since raising my attributes, I'd become a morning person, so I was wide awake by the time she finished her explanation. I threw the blanket she'd given me over the back of the couch, and I sat up, wiping the drool from the corner of my mouth with my sleeve. "What's on today's agenda?"

"Today we talk."

"About what?"

"Your results. I'll get your paperwork while you eat."

Farentine left the room. I was almost done with my meal by the time she returned. I'd been wondering what was taking her so long, but then she walked in carrying a stack of loose paper that was two feet tall. She dumped the stack on the coffee table and pulled the nearest of her many armchairs over.

She had a lot of them, and they were all identical. Not sort of the same, but completely identical down to the same natural patterns on the leather. They were system-purchased items.

I stared at the massive pile of paper. "That's my results?"

Farentine nodded.

"It seems excessive."

"This is nothing. I've tested champions with stacks taller than I am. Also, most of this is your class guides."

That made more sense.

Farentine began sorting the stack into piles.

"You need paperclips," I said when I noticed she was double-checking that she had the right pages together.

Farentine frowned. "Paper what?"

I explained to her what a paperclip was.

Farentine didn't find them nearly as interesting as Fitz had, but she understood how useful they would be in a situation like this. "I'll take as many as you can give me."

"I'll leave them here if you're not back before I leave."

Farentine had mentioned that she only visited the Capitol a few times a year when she needed to do research, so it was unlikely we would run into each other anytime soon.

She finished sorting the paperwork while I finished breakfast. She didn't seem to be in a hurry, so I didn't rush. I put the lid back on the bowl when I was done and waited.

A few minutes later, Farentine looked up. "As I said yesterday, your results make you unfit to join us in champion raid dungeons. However, your champion ability suggests that you likely qualify to confront any powerful threat that approaches a city, town, or village."

"Likely."

After reading that description, it seemed inevitable.

"We still need to test it. If everything works the way I believe it should, I'll put your name forward for an auxiliary role."

For the first time, everything became real. This was no longer an abstract conversation, but one that would now dictate my life.

My body stiffened, and I took a slow, calming breath.  "Which means what?"

"Very little unless you have plans to move away from Blackwood. Do you plan to move away from Blackwood?"

This was not the response I was expecting, and I began to frown. "Not for the foreseeable future."

"In that case, you'll occasionally receive kingdom messages requesting aid. The message will name the threat and its location. You will respond with how much time it will take you to arrive with your farm manor ring. You can't fly, and Blackwood is about as far off the beaten track as you can get, so you'll likely never be able to arrive before the monster is defeated by someone else. This means you're unlikely to have to respond to any threat unless you're travelling. The only inconvenience you will face is that going forward, you will need to be aware of where the closest teleportation circle is to you at any given time, so spend a few days studying maps of Radian to learn the road network."

I could live with that, but I felt like I was getting off too lightly, considering what my ability could do.

My frown slowly deepened. "You don't seem bothered by my lack of commitment."

Farentine leaned back and crossed her legs. "People like to inflate what champions are capable of. They think we can be everywhere at once, but we can't. Living in Blackwood means Radian as a whole can't benefit from your ability right now. However, that will change as you grow stronger. And until then, you'll significantly increase the security of the villages and towns that are near Blackwood, so while it's not an ideal situation, the kingdom still benefits from your mark, enough for me to argue against forcing you to relocate."

She was speaking in the past tense, so her comment didn't make me angry. "You were going to force me to relocate."

"With an ability like yours, we normally would. However, I changed my mind the moment I saw the level of your Crown's Champion mark and that you had the Sage title. Our nighttime conversation and your little discovery at the temple yesterday suggest that leaving you to your own devices will likely be more beneficial for Radian in the long run."

My frown vanished, and my body relaxed. "You're not just pulling strings because of my pretty face?"

Farentine scoffed but smiled. "As tempting as it is to give in to your charms, the fact remains you're ability only allows you to intervene twelve times a year under ideal conditions. However, we don't live in an ideal world, and threats that require your ability occur only an average of eight times a year. And most years, they occur in clusters during breeding periods, which means, on average, you can only intervene three times each year. That usefulness has to be weighed against your other accomplishments, which are significantly more than I expected even after the king warned me that you were a special case."

"The king warned you about me."

"Yes, which is unusual, but far less unusual than an incarnate who can expand our understanding of the system enough to gain the Sage title, raise their Crown's mark as fast as you have, create an exploit, and generate enough farmer experience to reach level 100 in their first year. You're clearly capable enough that it is worth giving you time to see what you can do, and the king wanted me to make sure you had that time. Could something happen that would force you to relocate? Yes. Is it currently necessary? No."

"Why do I get the feeling you would go out of your way to be accommodating, even if the king hadn't said anything?"

Farentine smirked. "You noticed that, did you?"

I nodded.

"You're going to live for four, maybe five centuries, Arnold. You're at what I deem to be the most useless stage of your life. If I can be a little lenient now, so that Radian can gain the enthusiastic benefit of your assistance for those last three centuries, then I'm going to be as lenient as I can be."

"You think long term."

"When you're my age, you don't consider it long term."

Farentine had centuries of experience, so her words probably weren't bravado or exaggeration.

I began to smile. "So, my life carries on like normal then?"

Currently, normal meant worrying about having accidentally started a kingdom-ending war, but I wasn't free to share that information with her. Farentine hadn't brought it up, so I wasn't exactly sure how much she knew, and I was under strict instructions to keep a lid on it.

Farentine nodded. "There will be a few minor interruptions, but you can go back to your normal life once this assessment is over. Which means we should talk about your results." Farentine picked up the smallest stack of papers. "These are your test results. Read them. Memorise them. They're absolutely useless to you, but if you find a decent weapons instructor, they will ask you if you have them, so being able to reproduce them at will is helpful."

I took the papers. "Do you want me to read it now?"

Farentine nodded.

I spent fifteen minutes going through the pages. There was a lot of information, but since I didn't understand the terms, the importance of the numbers, or how they related to anything, I had no clue what I was looking at.

I put the read documents aside and looked up. "What's next?"

Farentine had finished organising the piles. "We'll start by discussing your future class selection as you walk the Paths to Power. The ritual at the temple yesterday uncovered that you already have the threshold qualifications to reach level 100 in four classes: merchant, gambler, trapsmith, and crossbowman. You also have enough banked experience in your farmer class to reach level 203, which explains why you were so hesitant to have your excess experience converted to cleric experience."

Leveling the farmer class was fairly straightforward. You needed 100 experience to reach level 2, 200 to reach level 3, and 300 to reach level 4. This continued until you were level 100. However, instead of costing 10,100 experience to reach level 101 from level 100, it costs you 1,010,000. It was a hundred-fold increase. That jump meant you needed nearly 300 whole experience crystals to reach level 200. After you did, there was another hundred-fold increase, which was why, despite all the monster waves and the experience from the giant, my legendary boon had only made me reach level 203.

I'd gotten a full cleric crystal and a partial second from the ritual, which had surprised both Farentine and the cleric performing the ritual. Clerics could use experience instead of gold for their rituals, so I'd never have to pay to resurrect one of my trap operators for as long as I lived, which was why I wasn't against the ritual.

"I had no problem with them converting my experience to cleric experience for the ritual," I clarified. "I had a problem with your vague assurance that they would let me walk out of there with it in my backpack."

The experience was currently sitting at the bottom of my bag, but it had taken Farentine forcefully prying it out of the old cleric's hands to get it there. Sadly, there was no market for cleric experience. The ritual I went through yesterday, and my farmer's boon made sure of that.

Farentine rolled her eyes. "You're the first champion whose ever wanted to walk out of the temple with their experience, so I wasn't sure how it would unfold."

"Considering how hard it was for you to get hold of it, I clearly made the right choice."

"Where getting off topic. You have the experience to reach level 203 in your farmer class, but you currently don't qualify for your fifth threshold. However, you qualify for your sixth. Do you have the means of qualifying for your fifth?"

Ranic had mentioned that the experience from killing the giant qualified me for the advanced form of my second farmer boon and would let me pass through my sixth threshold, so none of what she said surprised me. 

"I'm having 10,000 heritage seeds delivered to my farm in the next few months. Planting them qualifies me for my fifth threshold. The seventh is several centuries away from what I've been told."

"Good. You need to get through your fifth threshold as soon as possible. The seventh isn't an issue. However, your crossbowman skill is. You've banked more experience for it than you have for your merchant class, and you qualify for the first five thresholds. I want you to take it as your third Path to Power."

My smile faded. "I thought you said you wanted my primary warrior class to be my third Path to Power."

"I'm glad you were paying attention, but I said that before you gained your unique champion ability. That ability ensures you will have access to all the experience that you need to level your crossbowman class faster than others, which is why you would normally use your primary warrior class."

"Any problems with the thresholds?"

Farentine shook her head. "Merchant thresholds don't matter to champions, so I don't care how you pass through them. However, the ones you qualify for might affect your long-term business interests, so you should look into that with another scholar."

"If you can give me the names of the threshold boons, I can send them to my farmer class advisor now. We should hear back by the end of the day whether or not those threshold boons are suitable for me."

Farentine went through one of the stacks of papers and then handed me the sheet. I sent the names of the boons to Ranic using the messaging system my farm manor ring offered.

I looked up when I was done. "Are there any problems with my crossbowman thresholds?"

"No, of the four primary ways to pass through crossbowman thresholds, you only qualify for the damage-based ones. With your ability, those are the exact ones you want. I've selected the promotions that will extract the full potential of your ability."

"So, I'm going to deal high damage, but fire slower than other crossbowmen."

Farentine laughed. "Not if I have anything to say about it. You'll use becoming a champion to pass through your first threshold, and that will increase your crossbowman class bonuses by 50%. This will give you the ability to take full advantage of your movement speed bonuses. You're going to reload fast, shoot fast, and hit hard. You're going to need a weapon that can keep up with you."

"You want me to be a ranged fighter?"

Farentine shrugged. "I have no idea what sort of warrior you will eventually become. All I know is that you'll be lethal with a crossbow the day you take that class."

That was kind of cool.

"You mentioned that my crossbowman class is a higher level than my merchant class."

Farentine nodded. "It's your first hurdle. You could become a merchant today without any trouble, but if you took the crossbowman class straight after, you would immediately lose your chance of taking the fifth step on all of the Paths to Power except for your first path. Never forget, you have to level each class tier in order so you can gain the threshold bonuses."

"I could always refuse to go through the threshold."

"You can't. Your crossbowman class is going to offer you a boon that is crucial to your ability and the crossbowman class becoming as strong as it can be."

"What does it do?"

"Anytime you injure something with your crossbow, you will apply the same amount of damage again through a bleed effect. It doubles your damage with crossbows."

With a boon like that, it would be worth forsaking the Paths to Power to make sure you gained it. However, giving up one for the other wasn't necessary, as long as I made wise choices. I could see why she kept reminding me how important it was to take classes only when I was ready.

This wasn't a race.

This wasn't a marathon.

This was more like a cross-country road trip, where you wanted to visit all the sights, so you had to make sure you arrived and left each place on time so you could get the most out of the holiday.  

I moved on to my next question. "Which attribute will I invest in when I become a merchant?"

"Agility. Normally, I would recommend dexterity for a champion's second path if their third path was going to eventually out-level their second. Better motor control and hand-eye coordination usually don't make up for the ability to react faster. However, you tested so poorly in all the areas that dexterity effects that this is the best way for you to overcome your weaknesses."

"Doesn't that make strength a better choice for my third attribute?"

"It comes down to free attributes. Production classes offer three attributes. Crafting classes five. Warrior classes seven. Adventurer ten. And nobleman twelve. You can't double up on attributes from a higher-tier class being the same level, so you only receive the attribute difference between the classes when you level up a higher tier one. Crafting classes offer two free attributes, and if you've already leveled a production class, it treats the attributes you assigned to that class as the ones that would have been automatically assigned by the system for your crafting class. The attribute difference between these tiers then becomes free attributes. This continues through every class tier. So only the adventurer class offers you three attributes when you level."

This was a maths problem, but it wasn't adding up.

"How high can adventurers level?" I asked.

"You're wondering if your merchant or crossbowman class will eventually offer you more strength than your adventurer class."

I nodded.

"They can and they likely will. However, you aren't naturally talented at any form of combat. The build I'm proposing takes that into account. By the time you become an adventurer, you'll have become too nimble for any dungeon monster below level 50 to hit you, no matter how close they come to you. As your strength increases with your adventurer level, your speed will too, leaving you almost untouchable for your entire adventurer career. Add to this the effects of your crossbowman class, and you'll be able to act as a wagon for other adventurers."

Torvac had been a wagon, and he'd hated it, so it wasn't high on my priority list.

"I'll still be weaker in the end."

Farentine's body language and expression changed, losing any trace of the playfulness I'd become accustomed to. The woman before me suddenly looked like someone who could chew up Torvac and spit him out without breaking a sweat.

"Weaker and alive is better than delusions of power and an early grave, Arnold."

I involuntarily gulped, remembering exactly how dangerous the woman before me truly was. I'd managed to forget that because of all the banter. She wasn't someone to take likely and she wasn't a fool.

She was the world's second-best expert on champions, their successful class progression and the interaction between those classes alive today. I wasn't a unique case. I wasn't special. I just had a mark that qualified me for some of her time. The difference between her advice and the best expert's advice was probably going to come down to one or two abilities or promotions. That gave what she'd just said a lot of weight.

Hitting my own hand with a hammer dozens of times while I was building my barn traps also held a lot of weight. It relieved me of any delusions that I was the chosen one. I'd poured sweat, blood, and tears into getting where I was today, and none of it was easy. I'd been shown a thousand different ways that I wasn't exceptional and only a handful of ways that I was. Everyone had their strengths and weaknesses, and while something might be the optimal path to power on paper, if you couldn't bring that optimal theory into reality, it didn't mean a damn thing.

I'd been where she was. I'd made those calculations. However, my calculations were for pixels on a screen. Farentine worked with people. People who were one mistake away from a long dirt nap.

I met her gaze. Calling it steely would give steel too much credit. It was adamantine. It was inflexible, heavy, and so damn tough that I'd never even scratch it. She'd never budge on this. "If I weren't prone to a few delusions, I wouldn't be sitting here."

Her gaze tightened.

I cracked a smile. "But you're the expert."

 Her body language relaxed as she realised I'd got the message. She wasn't trying to intimidate me. She was trying to save my life.

I opened my interface and took the plunge, placing my faith in Farentine and the rest of my free attributes into charisma, cementing my first step on the Paths to Power.

+24 Charisma