Unorthodox Farming: Chapter 19 (Patreon)

Chapter 19

Unanswered Questions

Durg'un asked me not to share anything he'd divulged until Ririon founded his kingdom. The legalities of our conversation were shaky at best, so if the dwarven kings found out what Durg'un had shared before the plan was enacted, he would end up in serious trouble. The kind of trouble that meant a century of hard labour. Ririon would also end up in serious trouble. However, his trouble would amount to the dwarven kings stepping in to prevent his plan from moving forward. Since that plan might become the linchpin in preventing the dwarven kings from going to war with Radian in the near future, I was more than happy to keep my mouth shut.

After our conversation and verbal oaths, Durg'un took me upstairs to a window and pointed out the rooftop where the adventurer had set himself up with a crossbow. Durg'un had travel papers, so he could move freely within Radian while unarmed, but he couldn't intervene beyond showing me who wanted to kill me without risking Ririon's plan.

I agreed with his decision.

Durg'un waited until the adventurer left before slipping out the front door under an invisibility spell with a promise to guard me from the shadows. When Torvac turned up an hour later, I gave him the guy's description and asked him to come back earlier in the day from now on to see if my fears were warranted.

Two days later, Torvac beat my would-be assassin half to death and then literally dragged him through the streets to the palace, leaving a long bloody smear across the Capitol as a message for anyone else who wanted to try their luck at stealing my champion mark. Trying to murder me wasn't the man's first, second, or third brush with the law, but it was by far his most serious, so the king removed the man's head when his trial was concluded. By then, Torvac had tracked down a few old friends to watch my back.

His friends were willing to provide me with 24-hour protection in return for a less-than-modest fee, which was a little ridiculous, because Farentine's library had me in its grasp. During their first month on the job, the only time I needed them was when I opened my front door to collect my breakfast and dinner.

I could have used them to go anywhere in the Capitol, see any sights I wanted to, but I was on the cusp of understanding something important about experience distribution, something that would make everything that had happened in Blackwood when I killed the giant make sense.

The fact that defending my farm gave me more farmer experience than farming continued to bother me. And Farentine's library was hinting at the answers I'd been searching for, so I ignored everything else and read. And when I reached the end of what Farentine's collection could teach me without finding the answers I wanted, I went looking for it in the Academy of Law's central library.

The Academy of Law's central library held the largest public collection of academic works. A silver noble gave you access while the sun was up, but after two weeks of scraping through their shelves, I wasn't any closer to finding answers to my questions.

If anything, I was getting further away.

The difference between what I read in the academy's library and what Farentine had in her library was profound. She'd curated everything she'd kept while the academy seemed to have shelved anything their professors had written. It was like looking for answers on Reddit. Some of it was helpful, but most of it wasn't.

The school bell rang, signalling the start of lunch, but I didn't pay it any thought as I skimmed a book that did a very poor job of explaining why the system might need to separate professions into individual classes. The fact that dwarves didn't have classes showed that most of the author's claims were factually incorrect, but the book was written before my discovery that the human, dwarf, elf, and orc systems were subsystems of a larger system, so that couldn't be helped.

I was finally getting to something I could sink my teeth into when I heard Jeric's daughter Emily shout my name from the other end of the library. "Arnold!"

I turned, looking towards the entrance.

The library was a long, rectangular-shaped building with seven floors. The first five were open to the public, but the last two required certain clearance or payments. The walls of every floor were lined with bookshelves that went so high you needed ladders, and there were more standing bookshelves in between. Long tables ran down the middle of the building where you were welcome to study, and there was some sort of sound-dampening spell around them that made it hard for a voice to carry, unless you shouted.

Emily had a huge smile on her face as she stood in the doorway, waving at me and blocking someone behind her. Emily had allowed her hair to grow even longer since she'd left Blackwood, but she hadn't aged a day since I'd last seen her, despite nearly a year having gone by. With what I now knew about attributes, that was unlikely to change for decades unless she gained more levels. She'd be stuck with the face of a twenty-year-old until she was forty.

The poor thing.

The librarians at the front desk all turned to her as one and raised their fingers to their lips. "Shhhh."

Emily stepped aside, allowing the young woman behind her to enter, so I could see her face. Her name was Sasha, and she was a scholar. I recognised from yesterday's lunch rush.

I had a growing fan club of young men and women, ranging from younger than Emily to a decade older, who regularly came to watch me study. Sasha was new to the group, but she'd caught my eye.

Not because she was a cute blonde, but because, unlike most scholars, she was slim rather than scrawny, giving her a model-like physique rather than the half-starved scientist look that most of those with her class shared. There was some sort of class interaction going on with her that I didn't fully understand, which was why I'd given her more than a brief glance when she'd appeared yesterday.

Emily and Sasha turned and apologised to the librarian, but only Sasha had the decency to blush over Emily shouting in a library.

I smiled at Emily, waved back, and stood as she dashed over. My bodyguards didn't intercept her like everyone else, taking my queue of standing as permission to let her through.

Emily engulfed me in a hug, clearly happy to see me, before stepping back, reaching up and grabbing my cheeks. She pinched just a little too hard as she grinned. "My father said you looked different, but I didn't realise you looked younger than me."

I laughed as she continued to squeeze.

Sasha's eyes went wide at Emily's actions, and she blushed a deeper shade of red as she walked over.

I reached for my cheeks. "What brings you to the library?"

Emily reluctantly let go of my dimples and gave me a mischievous grin before looking around and leaning closer. "Apparently, there is a young gentleman around here who is absolutely gorgeous. My friend Sasha was here yesterday, drooling over him with some friends from her class and said I just had to come. I hope he is as cute as she claims." Sasha was now close enough to hear Emily's comment and was the brightest shade of red I'd ever seen on a person. Emily kept talking, completely unaware. "He's supposedly worth skipping lunch for. I hope she's right, because I'm starving."

I turned to Sasha, trying not to laugh. "Do you want to tell her or should I?"

Fifteen minutes later, Emily was still blushing and hitting my arm while we walked through the city with my escort. Admittedly, I was having a lot of fun at her expense, so the violence was to be expected.

We turned down the street I wanted. "Would you allow this absolutely gorgeous gentleman to make a suggestion for lunch, Lady Emily?"

Emily hit my arm again while her friend giggled. Sasha was a noble scholar, which was why her appearance was slightly different. She initially embarrassment once she discovered that Emily knew me had quickly passed. It helped that I was teasing Emily ruthlessly about how excited she was to check me out.

Sasha forced her lips together to control her laughter. "Lady Emily, perhaps we should do as the gorgeous gentleman says and allow him to pick where we dine."

Emily scowled at Sasha, giving her one of those whose side are you on looks.

The two of them had known each other since they were children. Sasha's mother was Isabelle's noble scholar, and Isabelle would take Emily to visit her whenever Emily needed time away from court. Sasha had always wanted to follow in her mother's footsteps and specialise as a noble scholar, so she jumped at the chance of making friends with a noble she could eventually work with. Sasha was three years older than Emily, but what had started as a friendship of convenience had become a true friendship.

Sasha gave Emily a playful grin.

Emily rolled her eyes, but nodded that I could pick the restaurant.

I pointed to the sign for Orlana's

Emily followed my finger and frowned. "Arnold, that's Orlana's. You need to make reservations a month in advance to eat there."

"Not when you're so gorgeous I leave your friends drooling." Sasha blushed, and Emily hit me again while I laughed. "Come on."

I led them to the restaurant and held the door open for them. No one would try anything in the restaurant. There were too many powerful people, but my bodyguards took their job seriously, so they followed me in.

Nita was waiting behind the podium, wearing a professional smile and a new uniform. She'd grown several inches taller and filled out with muscle since I had last seen her, so she no longer had the looked of a gangly teenager. She was more like a teen athlete. She was nearly as tall as I was.

I was surprised to see her here. "I thought you weren't allowed to work here anymore?"

Nita grinned. "Grandpa tried to give me an allowance because I didn't have a job, and Grandma told him that people in our family work for a living, so now I'm back here."

"How much did he try to give you?"

"Whatever a full swordsman experience crystal is worth."

Only a rich kid could say something so ridiculous with a straight face.

"Is he still doing dishes?"

Nita nodded.

That would explain why I hadn't seen him in days.

"Could you please prepare a private dining room for three today?"

Nita gave Emily and Sasha a calculating look that was going to end in some sort of rumour if I didn't make introductions. "Nita, this is Lady Emily. She's the noblewoman of Blackwood. The young woman beside her is Scholar Sasha, her class advisor. Ladies, this is Nita, granddaughter of Orlana and Adventurer Torvac."

Nita grinned at Emily. "Do you have any of Landlord Arnold's boardgames? Grandpa placed an order, but it still hasn't arrived. The wait is driving me crazy."

Emily laughed. "I've got an entire chest back in my room. I can bring them over and teach you how to play if you like."

Rina's teachings were clearly rubbing off on Emily. She'd seen an opportunity to acquaint herself with a powerful family and capitalised on it.

Nita nodded enthusiastically. "Do you have a copy of Risk?"

"I do. Have you played before?"

"Everyday until my sister ran off and joined the army, taking our set with her. It's so frustrating not being able to play it."

The door behind us opened, and the excitement vanished from Nita's face, replaced with calm professional detachment. "I'll stop by to discuss a time after your meal." She turned to me. "Your dining room will be ready by the time you arrive."

"Thank you." I turned and led Emily and Sasha to the stairs as the next customers took our place. "We're on the top floor."

Emily leaned over and whispered. "Are you sure about this? They say the prices are three times higher on the top floor. And it's expensive enough eating on the ground floor?"

"The prices are actually four times higher, but having a private room is the only way to guarantee I can eat here whenever I want."

Champions were VIPs, so we were never turned away, but unless we were recovering, we had to pay a premium for the privilege of eating here any time.

"You eat here regularly?"

"No. This will be my second time."

Nita was true to her word. When we arrived, her cousin Brunt was waiting outside a private dining room set for three. The young man was more interested in business than cooking, so he was only working at the restaurant until he became a level 100 swordsman. Then he intended to become a merchant.

The room he showed us was large enough to seat twenty and used a special type of expandable table that could be adjusted to fit however many were eating. Once we were seated, Brunt took our drink orders.

Sasha smiled at me across the table as I finished giving my order. "So how exactly do you know Emily?"

I grinned, because I'd been waiting for Sasha to ask. "We were secretly betrothed. Emily didn't like the idea, so I called it off."

Emily kicked me under the table. "We were not. I just thought we were."

"I'm a family friend," I clarified.

"Arnold is more than a family friend. He owns most of Blackwood, bears the Crown's Champion mark, the Wiseman title, the Sage of System Theory title, and is an incarnate. Did I miss anything important?"

I gave a lazy smile. "I may have upgraded the Sage of System Theory title to the Sage title, but that's hardly worth mentioning."

Emily rolled her eyes as her friend squealed with excitement.

My smile became a grin.

Emily looked at my grin and frowned. "You didn't?"

I nodded in reply.

"How?"

"I got bored and started studying."

"You're messing with me."

I sent her a copy of my logs.

Emily opened her interface, and her eyes went wide. "I qualify!"

Sasha jumped out of her seat and started dancing. It was an extremely uncoordinated dance, full of knees and elbows, but it expressed unrestrained joy, so I didn't deduct points for the lack of rhythm. Emily leapt out of her seat a few seconds later, and the two collided in a hug, then kept jumping up and down on the spot, squealing excitedly.

Something had clearly just happened, but I had no clue what. Jora, Oliver's oldest daughter, arrived with the drinks while they continued to celebrate, talking too fast and too high-pitched for me to keep up. Jora flashed me a smile that would get me kicked out if Orlana saw.

Freaking boyband dimples.

"Can I get you anything else, Champion Arnold?" Jora asked.

She wasn't asking about drinks.

I nodded. "A bottle of whatever you serve on special occasions and three glasses, please."

"What's the special occasion?"

"I have no idea. They're not speaking in full sentences."

Jora laughed like I'd said something hilarious and reluctantly left. I picked up my ale and waited for Emily and Sasha to calm down.

Jora returned with a bottle of peach memory wine before that happened. The moment she opened the bottle, the room filled with the smell of summer peaches. She poured three glasses while explaining the wine's effects. It enhanced any happy feelings you had, capturing the moment in your memory, even if you didn't have the intelligence for perfect recall.

The smell caught Emily and Sasha's attention, and they listened to the explanation.

I handed them each a glass, then clinked mine to theirs while Jora stood to the side, ready to refill as needed. "Glory for whatever this is."

Emily laughed as I took a sip.

Imagine a perfect peach picked at the exact moment it reached peak ripeness, on the sunniest, warmest day of the year, only to then have all of its flavour distilled into a single drop. Then imagine you had enough of those drops to fill a glass.

Childhood memories of an afternoon spent eating peaches under my grandma's peach trees beside my sister Sophie came to mind unbidden, bringing the joy from that moment with it. I sat there as the happy memory played on repeat, renewing it whenever it began to fade with another sip. I wasn't getting lost in my memories. I was appreciating one of the joyful afternoons of my life.

When my glass ran empty, I didn't reach for the bottle to refill it. I wasn't chasing a high. I wasn't overwhelmed with pleasure. I was just going for a walk down memory lane. And that memory could come and go as it pleased.

Several seconds passed, and then it occurred to me that Jora was supposed to refill my glass for me. With that thought, I began noticing my surrounding again.

Emily and Sasha had melted into their chairs while wearing lazy grins. Jora was lying on the floor staring at the ceiling with the same lazy grin. They looked like victims of an opium den.

Orlana was over by the door with her arms folded, shaking her head at her granddaughter. She turned to me as I looked at her. "Jora didn't give you the list of abilities and marks that are prohibited when consuming that beverage, did she?"

"No. It never came up." My voice came out lazily, without a hint of worry.

Orlana sighed. "Then we just lost our distribution licence."

It didn't sound like it was my fault, so I didn't apologise. "Will that be a problem?"

"It's an expensive novelty rather than a staple of my core business. However, it was a very profitable novelty whenever someone was willing to pay the hundred crowns to celebrate with a bottle."

I could see how that would be a…how much did she say I just spent? Why was I just hearing the price now?

The lazy, relaxed feeling vanished under a wave of reality.

All I wanted to do was buy Emily a nice lunch to say thank you for all the help she had given me, not pay her college tuition.

Orlana walked over to her granddaughter and scooped her up in her arms, unaware of my racing thoughts. Considering how much taller her granddaughter was, it looked ridiculous. "Your guests will recover soon, but for my customer's sake, please don't drink anymore. I doubt anyone will complain, but this has already thrown off our schedule.

I glanced at the two grinning women opposite me, then back at Orlana. "What caused this?"

"Your Mental Resistance mark partially blocked the memory-altering effects. Your Socialite ability then amplified those effects for everyone else. You're projecting a much stronger version of the effect that drink is supposed to give."

"How are you unaffected?"

"I have the same Metal Resistance mark that you do. Everyone in my family over the age of twenty-five has it. Jora was supposed to get hers last month, but she was still adapting to her new levels."

"That sounds extremely expensive."

I remembered how much mine had cost.

"It's an expense anyone who escapes Haspren is willing to pay. Not having to worry about your family being charmed into signing their life away with an oathbound contract helps us sleep at night."

That had gotten dark fast.

Orlana turned and carried her granddaughter away.

A few minutes later, Emily and Sasha came out of their daze. They weren't groggy or disorientate, just so relaxed that everything besides breathing took too much effort.

Sasha recovered first, running her hand through her hair, likely to focus on the world outside her head. "What was that?"

"It was an interaction between the drink, my Mental Resistance mark, and my Socialite ability."  

Sasha paused, looking confused. "How do you have the Socialite ability?"

"I went to a rather wild scholar's party a few years back."

Sasha's eyes widened, and then she raised an eyebrow and smirked. "That really must have been a wild scholar's party."

"It lasted for days."

Sasha looked briefly surprised, but then paused again and slowly nodded. "With those sorts of potions, it would have to be."

Emily finally came to and asked the same question. I gave the same answer about the interactions.

Emily nodded and pulled the bottle towards her. "No more celebrating for you."

I chuckled. "I still don't know what we're celebrating."

Sasha turned and smiled at Emily, clearly happy for her. "There is an epic noble boon that can be acquired at the second threshold if a noble controls a village that has produced a wiseman, champion, and sage in the past decade. If Emily gains it, it will increase the experience generated by everyone within Blackwood's borders by 1% for every level she has in her noble class. It will also increase the rate at which people acquire lore, tool, and weapon proficiencies by the same amount. Finally, it will increase the bonus attributes for her guard marks. It's far better than the boon she was aiming for, and it will continue to affect Blackwood even after it becomes a town or city."

My head snapped to Emily as I grinned. "Congratulations."

This was fantastic news.

Emily blushed. "I should be congratulating you. You're the reason I have access to this threshold."

I shook my head, not letting her pin this on me. "You believed in me when common sense said you shouldn't. I wouldn't be a champion without that faith. So, you played as much of a part in acquiring this threshold boon as I did."

Emily gave a small smile before nodding.

"Now drink up and enjoy it. That bottle is worth more than some farms."

Their shocked expressions matched how I felt inside.

Sasha leaned over to Emily and stage-whispered. "I understand not marrying for money, but wow."

I laughed.

Emily leaned over as Sasha pulled back. "Knowing Arnold, he didn't know how expensive it was when he ordered it."

I laughed harder as they both giggled.

Emily and Sasha sipped the wine with happy smiles on their faces, cementing this moment in their memories.

Emily eventually had enough of the happy moment and saluted me with her glass. "How did your champion assessment go? Are you in training? Is that why no one can tell me anything about what you've been up to?"

"No. Champion Farentine made it abundantly clear that I'm not qualified. However, she did offer to train me to do her job when she was assessing me."

Emily frowned. "She wants you to train champions?"

"No. She wants me to study classes and learn how to weave them together to produce the strongest champions and warriors. I've been staying at her townhouse so I can read the part of her library that anyone can. However, I ran out of things to read two weeks ago, which is how I ended up at the academy. There are some questions about the giant I killed that I need answered."

Sasha stared at me. "Are you saying Champion Scholar Farentine let you read her library?"

I nodded.

"And you thought you would find answers to a question her library couldn't answer in the public section of the academy library."

I sighed because I didn't like her tone. "I didn't know where else to go, but I'm guessing from your response that's not the place to look."

"That's not the place to look."

"Why not?"

"Whenever I try to leave an assignment to the last minute, my mother says things like you must have access to scholar Farentine's library if you're willing to take a risk like that."

"Arnold won't know what that means," Emily said.

"My mother's comment means I must have access to well-curated information. The kind that no one else has."

"That was exactly the impression I got from her library after going to the academy," I replied.

Sasha nodded. "If you can't find what you're looking for in her library, you'll need to look in other private libraries. Even the top floor of the academy's library won't help you." She turned to Emily. "Is it all right if I marry him?"

Emily laughed. "You just said you were impressed that I didn't marry him for his wealth."

Sasha chuckled with her. "I don't want to marry him for his wealth. I want to marry him because he has access to books I want to read. It's not the same thing."

Emily continued to laugh. "It's not that different either."

I stifled a groan while they laughed, not because of the marriage offer, but because I'd wasted two weeks on a wild goose chase. I'd been putting off other work to find answers. Answers I probably wouldn't get until I became a scholar if Sasha was correct.

That was years away.

Sasha stopped laughing when I groaned. "I know I'm not pretty, but you don't have to be that rude."

I stared at Sasha for a second, processing her comment and reaction, realising how it must have looked from her side of the table.

"You're very cute," I said. "Your joke about marriage wasn't why I'm upset. I'm upset about the fact that I wasted two weeks searching for answers in a place I can't find them."

Sasha blushed.

Emily scowled. "No hitting on my friends."

"He didn't hit me," Sasha said.

"It means flirting where he comes from."

"Oh."

Torvac opened the door and came in carrying three plates of Orlana's braised lamb. Unlike last time, there were vegetables and other sides.

I nodded as he walked over. "Torvac, this is Jeric's daughter Emily and her friend Scholar Sasha."

"Torvac not allowed socialise with Orlana's customers," he replied monotonously.

"She'll be visiting Little Nita with boardgames in the near future."

Torvac's lips twitched as he placed down the plates. "Torvac not allowed say Torvac look forward to this."