"Did you prepare everything?" Eisen asked as he looked at the group standing in front of him before Bree ran up to him and nodded her head with a grin. "Yup! Everything's ready! We even hooked Cabarum up to the plow you made already!" She explained, and Eisen placed his hand on the top of her head with a smile.
"Thanks. That's all we need to get started. Komer, you paid the farmer we met before already, right?" Eisen asked as he began to lead Cabarum across a small section of the also relatively small field in front of him, leaving the rest to his three apprentices.
"Mhm, I did. Since we'll be done in a little while, it didn't take much convincing either. The farmer gave me some tips as well after I told him what we're doing. The only things that give experience for the Farming Skill are the things you actively do yourself, so, for example, plowing the field, planting seeds, or harvesting what was grown. That means we can have Caria speed-grow everything without worry." Komer explained, before Eisen turned over toward the small girl who was standing next to him, holding her hands up at him as a sign of wanting to be picked up, especially now that Eisen was so much taller than he was before.
With a grin, Eisen did what she wanted and picked her up, setting her down on his shoulder like he used to do when she was just a rank 0 or 1 monster.
And of course, seeing this, Melissa became slightly jealous and wanted to be picked up by Eisen as well, which the old man swiftly complied to by setting the Empress-Bee down on his other shoulder. "Alright now, everyone. While we're working here, could you do some other things? Sky, there are some blueprints that I hid in the hidden compartment in the center pillar opposite to the worktable in the carriage. They're pretty run-down, and I was told that they can be fixed by a scribe. Could you take a look at it? You are the only one here with the Scribing Skill, after all." Eisen asked, before the young Fey-Kin boy nodded his head.
"Sure, I'll at least try." He said, and next Eisen turned to Komer. "Could you go with him? If Sky manages to fix the blueprints, you should be able to see a full list of materials. And I need you to figure out what materials we have, which we need to procure, and how quickly we can get them. And especially how much of each material we can get."
"Will do." The player responded before doing a swift two-finger-salute, and then made his way to the carriage together with Sky.
"Kiron, could you go back to the mines? I'm having them store the elemental mana from some crystalized mana in batteries. If you could help them, that would be great, and then if you could carry the batteries over here that would be even better. They're awkward to carry simply because of their size, so in a bit, you can take Cabarum with you. The boys are finished, apparently." Eisen asked of the Half-Dragon, who swiftly nodded his head and took the Mechanical-Horse with him after detaching it from the plow.
"And at last, Bree. You just help us out a bit here, yeah?" Eisen asked the pink-haired girl standing next to him before she swiftly nodded her head up and down. "Of course! So first, I guess we need the seeds!"
Bree swiftly skipped over to her backpack and pulled out a large bag and handed it to Eisen with a smile. "Thank you. Now you three, plant them evenly in straight lines. It doesn't need to be perfect, so just drop an even amount along the way. Each of you take a fourth of the field to take care of." Eisen explained, not expecting of them to be perfect farmers in the slightest. He just wanted them to do enough to gain the farming skill, and it should be quite reasonable to expect that they would achieve it after going through the whole way, hoping that it would be the case for himself as well.
With a smile, Eisen then began to sow the wheat seeds in his part of the field. It took a while, but Eisen was accustomed to doing some gardening until recently, so it wasn't anything special. It was just at a slightly larger scale than usual.
A little bit later, Eisen, Koro, Parc, and Rouge managed to finish the beginning portion of the work, and Eisen turned his head to look at the Myconid sitting on his shoulder. "Could you please accelerate the growth? Oh, and please focus on making it as healthy as possible and increase the grain's size as much as possible. Take around… one or two hours." Eisen told her before the three apprentices looked at him surprised.
"Huh? In two hours the sun is nearly going to go down… If we have to hand-pick everything, we won't finish before it's dark." Rouge pointed out before Eisen began to laugh.
"Who said we're hand-picking? Get your smithing tools, we'll be making some scythes." The old man grinned as he summoned his staff and created four magic forges and looked at Bree, who swiftly took out all the materials they would need to produce them. "You can also make a sickle if you prefer that, though." Eisen chuckled as he activated his demonic transformation and immediately got to work, while his apprentices first tried catching their breaths before doing the same.
The three boys did end up making simple sickles, just because making a large scythe was almost impossible for them to make in such a short amount of time. Eisen himself quickly finished a large scythe and even enchanted it, though, while Koro, Rouge, and Parc just barely managed to finish the basic sickles, and not yet at that 'great' of quality, because it was such a rushed job, but Eisen let it be for once.
Today was the first day that they realized how hard the whole apprenticeship would be, and because it was their first day, Eisen didn't want to 'punish' them for making mistakes. And the sickles would still be enough to cut the wheat, so it wasn't like the items were completely useless.
But something else happened that Eisen was quite happy about, a particular skill of his ranked up.
[Crafting Space reached Level 100 in Rank 2, upgrading to Rank 3]
[You can now store a single item per crafting skill]
[Due to Ranking-up your Crafting Space Skill, you gained +1 STR and +1 END]
[You have gained a storage ability]
[Every type of storage ability is unique in the way it displays itself. The Crafting Space storage works by assigning an item to any kind of accessory while that accessory is being worn. Currently, you are wearing no accessories, so the ability is temporarily disabled]
Surprised, Eisen waved the notifications away, noting in his mind to create some simple accessories soon so that he could test this new ability out. For some reason, he hadn't take care of this within the game yet, although he did wear a good amount of accessories in real life, for example, the rings in his hair or just his earrings. So it would make sense for him to create a few new accessories like that in-game.
Either way, for now, Eisen couldn't test the ability out, so he just checked whether his Level-Up Quest updated by completing this condition, and seeing that it did, the old man happily moved on and unsummoned the forges while also deactivating his demonic transformation, before turning to the apprentices again.
"Now, all of you. Let's get to work, shall we?" Eisen said with a smile before the three boys swiftly nodded their heads as the four of them made their way back to the field, which was now entirely overgrown with 2-meter high wheat, which one could mostly compare to corn in its dimensions.
With a satisfied nod, Eisen picked Caria back up. "Good job! Now, this is going to give us a good amount of nice grains, huh?" He muttered before he looked over at his completely shocked apprentices, who were looking down at the sickles in their hands in regret.
"That's why I suggested Scythes. Makes cutting down big things like this a lot easier. Now then, all three of you get going." The old man grinned as he watched the boys walk into the fields, almost defeated. Luckily they started at the corners, so Eisen could just go directly to the center and work on his quarter by moving outward without needing to worry about accidentally decapitating one of the boys.
And with swift motions, Eisen now cut the ripened wheat down, finishing after only about ten or fifteen minutes, before slowly gathering the grain up, splitting the heads from the stems, and then placing them into a bag to take care of later. He also bound the stalks together, since he would surely find some use for them at some point.
And while he was doing that, he noticed a small little notification pop up in front of his eyes.
[Farming Skill Learned]
With a grin, Eisen smiled and sat down cross-legged next to Bree, with Caria and Melissa still on his shoulders, while the old man placed the Scythe away to the side. Hopefully, Farming also counted as a crafting skill, and if that were the case, he would be able to store the Scythe as well once he created the accessories.
And after another hour or so, the three apprentices finally finished, trying to catch their breath as they did. It made sense. After all, Eisen made them work for the whole day without any significant breaks. With a grin, Eisen then threw some bags to them and told them to cut everything up and sort it as well, before they would then get to go back to the carriage.
It was around this time that Kiron also finally came back with the two large Mana Battery packs on Cabarum's back. And after they placed those into the carriage as well, and Eisen spread a thick wooden board on top of those to create a makeshift bed so that the apprentices could at least properly sleep on their way back, the group sat down together in the slightly cramped carriage.
While they were having a quite rudimentary and simple Dinner, Sky's head perked up from the worktable with excitement. "Yes! Finally!" He yelled out, leaving the old man to look at him surprised.
"What? Did you manage to fix the blueprints?" Eisen asked, and the Fey-Kin boy turned around with a smug grin and handed Eisen the different sheets of paper.
"Yup! It took a while to figure out the proper method, but I managed to level my skill up quite a bit while I was doing it, so it's fine. Anyway, this is a fascinating blueprint… Where did you find this? These blueprints are for a Core Guardian, right?" Sky asked, remembering what was written on the paper before Bree jerked her head over toward her brother.
"A Core Guardian? What?!" She nearly yelled out, surprising everyone in the carriage, before Eisen nodded his head. "Yes, it's a Core Guardian. Is that so special?"
"Special? Special?! Well, of course, it's special! Barely any places have those because the method to make them was lost! Now only big cities have them near their Country Core, the upgraded version of a Town Core. There's a few acting as Dungeon Masters of huge, high-Rank dungeons as well… But if we have the blueprints, that would make a lot of things so much easier for when we get to the islands!" Bree yelled out before she continued to explain.
"Let's take a Town Core as an example. Usually, the only things you can do by interacting with it is to upgrade it, and the rest is handled automatically by placing buildings in its vicinity or something. But with Core Guardians, that becomes so much easier! They'll be able to create special constructs by somehow interacting with the core in a way that we can't, they can help with construction and planning a whole lot by letting you handle it simply through different status windows, and most importantly, they directly strengthen any bonuses that a town may get through different actions!" She explained before Eisen looked over toward Komer, who really understood game-speech pretty well, to confirm if that really was all that great. And once the young merchant nodded his head quietly, Eisen began to smile as well.
"Oh, that's pretty good then, huh? But if you find that interesting, you should think the other thing I found to be even more amazing." Eisen said with a grin as he stood up and grabbed the Dungeon Core from where he hid it before, showing it to the group that stared at it confused.