Unorthodox Farming: Chapter 23 (Patreon)

Chapter 23

A Different Perspective

A few days after Emily's party, Adoya sat beside me on the couch in Farentine's living room. She was holding her sides, unable to stop herself from laughing. She found my misunderstanding about scholar parties as funny as Emily did. I'd hoped to quickly clear up the misunderstand, but instead she'd been laughing for thirty minutes, reminding me of all the times I'd mentioned scholars' parties in her presence.

There were a lot of times.

Adoya wiped away tears that had been trapped by the deep creased around her eyes and then reached up and patted my shoulder with her tiny, wrinkled hand. Despite being a level 99 scholar, Adoya was only four foot seven, which was four inches taller than when I met her. The trapsmith class made trapsmiths unnaturally petite, meaning small enough to be diagnosed with dwarfism, while lacking any of the other changes that came with the condition. However, trapsmith scholars did not usually share this trait to this degree.

Adoya's petite frame was the result of an experiment her mentor, Daris, had run. He had wanted to test what would happen if someone gained their scholar class and then immediately specialise in trapsmiths. Adoya hadn't thought through the ramifications of specialising in an obscure class or what might happen to her because of the experiment, and had happily accepted the free experience on her thirteenth birthday.

Over the next year, she'd shrunk, losing an entire foot in height. However, her small size had given her unique insights into the lives of trapsmiths. Allowing her to understand them better than anyone else.

Adoya gave my shoulder one final pat as her body shook with mirth. "I'm sorry, I find this so funny. I honestly shouldn't be laughing this much. I physically can't stop. And I mean that literally. I think it has something to do with your incarnate title. This is a hilarious cultural miscommunication, so I think it's making it more interesting and funnier than it should be."

I leaned back and groaned. If she was right, I would have to go through this with everyone in Blackwood.

"The effect will eventually fade once it has run its course," she added.

Her words would have held more weight if she hadn't immediately started laughing again. Adoya pointed to the designs she'd brought with her, managing to get the words out for me to start looking through without her.

My trap barns tended to change with each new threat that appeared, so there was a lot to go over. The trap barns we'd built between the monster waves the giant summoned were grossly overengineered. Monsters and beasts that were never seen anywhere near a village, town, or city had appeared repeatedly, forcing us to continually upgrade them.

The final designs were going to be much simpler.

The way we dealt with monsters and beasts would be too.

Hunters would search the forest for targets. The trap operators would then bait the targets' hunting grounds. Monsters and beasts would be attracted by the bait, appearing alone or in small groups, rather than a tsunami of flesh that could wash a village away.

Sergeant Gurlad had been running tests for months, so we had a fair idea of what to expect when a giant wasn't involved. The operators had accidentally attracted the attention of stronger monsters on several occasions, but nothing like a Burtag. The new barns could kill one if they appeared, but that hadn't happened yet. The worst that had come out of a forest were a few adult komododiles and they hadn't been a problem.  

Sergeant Gurlad and his operators had proven my method worked anywhere and that our barns were safe. They had also proven how useful it was for generating experience.

We were ready to take my method wide.

I paused as I got to the final design for the pitfall traps. Quilly had been working exclusively on these ever since she'd had a mental breakdown and I'd kicked her out of Adoya's house of scholars. The mental breakdown had occurred because other trapsmiths had been improving on her designs, replacing her creations with theirs, gaining the experience she had been gaining before then.

Our relationship had never been the same after I kicked her out, but she had been hurting herself, and someone needed to make her stop. She was my retainer, which meant the responsibility fell to me.

Adoya saw me staring at the designs, and her laughter faded. That wasn't a good sign. I wanted Quilly's hard work to have paid off. I wanted these designs to be hers and hers alone. I wanted her to reap the rewards from having trusted me enough to leave her life behind and come to Blackwood. But I couldn't accept an inferior product. I couldn't risk people's lives for her success.

Adoya sighed. "Quilly finally opened up to me about her breakdown while you were gone."

It had taken a year, but that was much faster than I expected. Quilly had worse anger issues than I did. "Was she drunk?"

"Drunk enough not remember the conversation. But she was willing to let me in when she realised I already knew. Our following conversations helped her more than she will admit. I wish she would sit down and talk with Yaceb. That man understands anger better than any healer I've ever met."

I didn't know what to say. I couldn't manage my own feelings, let alone someone else's.

"Quilly loves you," Adoya said.

"Ah."

My brain couldn't compute.

"Not in a romantic way."

"Ah."

I was still stuck on the first statement.

"Is that all you have to say?"

I deflected with a joke. "It's hard for me to imagine her loving anything except killing monsters."

"Quilly doesn't love killing. She loves gaining experience."

"That's not exactly unique."

"Gaining experience puts her closer to her goal of having children."

"She wants children?"

That was a big surprise.

"As many as she can afford."

"She needs to work on her personality, then."

Adoya nodded. "Her gruff exterior is her way of keeping men away, so that she doesn't fall in love, because the thought of meeting a man, falling in love, and having children only to watch them struggle the way she struggled is too much for her to bear."

I stared at the designs, understanding Quilly more than I ever had before. Memories of our argument in Adoya's house of scholars came to mind. Quilly's anger, her looks of betrayal. Her unwillingness to backdown. She was like a mother protecting her children. I just hadn't seen it until Adoya pointed it out.

I sighed. "When I invited the other trapsmiths to Blackwood, I made it harder for her to have children, didn't I?"

Adoya nodded. "It's why she worked herself to the bone. Why she didn't take care of herself. Why she was so damn angry at you and the rest of the world."

"How's she doing now?"

Adoya chuckled. "She's waiting for you to return to Blackwood and making her the happiest woman in the world."

"Ah."

Adoya snorted. "Quilly wasn't keeping track of how much experience she was generating through your trap barns. She didn't want to know how close she was to being able to have the children she wanted, because she couldn't deal with those emotions and focus on her work. She never tallied the results until I accepted the designs you're holding as the ones we would use. And when she realised how much she had saved up, she got blackout drunk and shared her problems with me."

"How much does she have?"

Adoya smiled with pride. "Quilly is the first trapsmith in Radian's history to gather enough experience through her own efforts to reach level 100. She'd waiting for you to return to Blackwood, so she can absorb it, and pass through her last three thresholds."

I let out a long impress whistle.

That was no small feat.

"Why is she waiting for me?"

"Because you made this possible for her, and she's incapable of apologising like a normal adult. Waiting for you is her way of apologising."

That checked out.

I held up the designs. "So, this is all hers?"

"Down to the last nail."

I started looking through the designs.

Quilly had been working on them for years, and it showed. She'd made subtle changes which made installing the mithril nets faster, safer, and easier. She'd made not-so-subtle changes to the rotating trapdoors, making them harder to install but far more durable. She'd altered the designs of the spikes on the inner wall to make them easier and cheaper to construct.

In every way you could, she had made improvements. After spending so much time in my trap barns, I could see how the changes could be the difference between life and death. Each change had come from a failure. Each new design was there to replace an old weakness. Quilly's pitfalls had been tested tens of thousands of times, and she had learned from those tests.

Everything was thought out down to the last nail.

And I couldn't find fault, only sit back in awe of what she had created.

Adoya took the designs from my hands when I was done. "Do they meet with your approval?"

"Yes. We'll use these designs when we take the franchise-wide."

Adoya beamed with pride.

"Is this why you came to the Capitol? To give me a reason to go home sooner."

Adoya stared at me and then patted my knee. "That's the first time I've ever heard you refer to Blackwood as home. You should do it more often."

"I didn't mean it that way."

"Refusing to admit that Blackwood isn't just a place you live but somewhere that is familiar and comfortable, because you aren't willing to admit you've let your guard down, makes you sound like Quilly. But I'm not here to make you see the truth. I'm here because we need these plans approved so we can move forward with your franchise plan. And because I need to close down my office at the academy, sell my home here, and say my last goodbye to my oldest friends who will pass on before I can see them again, allowing me to make the most of the opportunities that life has presented me."

When I first offered Adoya a position as my retainer, she told me she would rather spend her last few years of life surrounded by friends and colleagues she respected than follow me to Blackwood. The only reason she had followed me was that the king had bestowed the Crown's Mark upon me.

I hadn't really thought about our first conversation since then. Adoya hadn't wanted to leave because she wanted to die with her friends. Friends she would now outlive by decades, perhaps centuries. She was going to walk through life without all the familiar faces she'd been accustomed to. She was going to experience what I had gone through.

I gave her a sad smile. "Take all the time you need."

Adoya returned my sad smile with her own and nodded.