Chapter 114 Weeks pass
The following weeks…
More and more people kept arriving as the village expanded. Instead of expanding the village outward, other houses were created from a distance, as our original village wasn’t built with size in mind. Our houses would be torn down eventually, and the mansion, the first thing the builders built, was where we were expected to move to after it was done.
We waited, though, until they began to demolish the houses. We would stay in our old home outside the village walls as the nature was better and easier for the kids. I also didn’t want to walk miles to get to my farm, but apparently, I had it all wrong. Once the village was destroyed, it would be pulled back a mile or so, allowing us to live near where we were currently, but with plenty more area to make farmland.
It was crazy to see how fast the village changed. Every single day, there were new people, every day a new thing to look at, or a new house full of people looking to make a living here on the border. Another farmer arrived, sanctioned by the king, to make food for the rest of the city. My food was incredibly delicious, nutritious, and valuable, but it was terrible for feeding an ever-increasing population.
I watched, wide-eyed, as the farmer(Jeb) pulled out an entire bushel of carrots from the ground from a single plant. Sure, the carrots didn’t look appetizing compared to mine, but he could feed five to ten times the people I could with the same amount of land. Holding one of his carrots and one of mine, it was clear to see the difference.
Mine were huge, easily two or three times the size of a normal carrot, but not as crooked or bumpy; it was just a fat, almost perfectly smooth carrot. The taste wasn’t even comparable. His carrot was small, hard, and bitter. Mine was big, soft, and had a slight hint of sweetness, but a much stronger and more delicious carrot taste overall.
We both served a purpose, but the way he took care of his crops was what irked me. I knew he was going to care less for them on account of already having more fields than I to grow on, but his fields bothered my perfectionist side tremendously. All of his fields were overgrown with weeds; he barely watered them when they should have been watered, and it all made sense considering the little he actually worked.
We could see from one field to the end of what we grew, and my entire family worked on keeping everything going. Talking to him about it, it turned out that most of his skills were focused on keeping the crops alive, no matter how terrible the conditions they’re grown in, and from what he said, that was a good portion of the farmers. It was odd finding out how most farmers worked. Many started out as gung-ho as I was on leveling, but all of them eventually fell to apathy.
The way they leveled was quick at first, then it fell off dramatically once they reached over level fifty. It might take a normal farmer years to finally go from common to uncommon rank, without purchasing the skills above level fifty. I couldn’t imagine it. If my leveling speed slowed down the first year… I’d have most likely died to the bandits.
I looked back on everything now, and thought about what would have been the difference if I had gone the normal farmer route… The first thing would be, I likely wouldn’t have lived in this village to begin with. I’d have been placed near a city and began to grow under the protection of the city guard. It was much safer, but I would have had to let them know about my skills, and they would get to choose them for me.
It meant that I would have been focused on quantity(like every other farmer) over quality. The leveling speed would have increased for the lower ranks, but then gotten dramatically harder at the higher ranks. I still may not have even reached level one-hundred by now. I also wouldn’t have had all the wives I currently do; I might not have even been married to one.
I know for sure that if I were married, it would only be to one wife. Tems grew up in a tribe where the leader had multiple wives, so it pushed her thoughts in that direction, even to the point she was urging me to sleep with other women if the chance came up. The village I made my home would have been gone, if not because of the bandits, then they’d have been wiped out by the dungeon break.
The berserk dungeon would have cut its way through village after village, perhaps growing more and more dangerous until it was dealt with. Even now, over a month later, that dungeon would still be rampaging through the country, only now would there be a concentrated response to dealing with it. That’s how lucky we got. We should have been wiped out, over and over and over again… But we weren’t.
The city I would have been moved to, where I would have lived a much worse life, might have been wiped out by the berserk dungeon. The king would still be alive, most likely doing a much worse job than his son could have done dealing with the situation, and the entire world would have been that much worse off.
No specialty crops made, no bundles for people to buy, no golem planters, and no new alchemy herb, which was the biggest change. Even now, the potions had saved more lives than I could probably count. The ease and accessibility of alchemy would make adventurers safer in the beginning levels; a small mistake wouldn’t lead to immediate death, which would increase the number of mid and high-level alchemists and adventurers after a few years.
And that was only me. Tems would have most likely died or had to break into a house to get food, which would have put her in even more debt. Silk might have been carried away by the goblin king, or been far more severely injured by it, permanently leaving a mental and physical scar on her that she might never recover from. Cherry would have been stolen with her mother by the bandits, along with every other attractive female who lived in the village.
Leaf would have died, if not been crippled by the bandit leader. Even Marcus might not have been able to deal with that group that size without causing far more casualties or getting himself killed. Sarah would have been the least affected, living where she was without heading to my village to find me because I could help her rapidly level her class. Even still, she would certainly be at a much lower level than she was currently.
If everything worked out and some other form of luck saved the village. Olivia would still be working as a normal craftsman, slowly working her way to a higher level at a much more subdued pace. Delilah was the same, but both would have been taken by the bandits most likely, or killed by the lizardmen. Sophia would have survived the initial bandit assault, only to be assaulted and taken away from the village by their new party leader, where she’d spend the rest of her life having sex with men she didn’t like, let alone love.
Roka and Millicent would be dead. They’d have had it the worst out of all the women because they weren’t conventionally attractive. I found them sexy and liked how different they were, but there was a higher than likely chance they’d be played with, then killed on a whim. Mara would still be a dragon in her cave in the dungeon, not realizing she was the reason the dungeon went berserk. And Cynthia would still be waiting to get married off… Most likely to a fat nobleman who would starve her to keep her in the right proportions a noble lady should have.
It was terrifying to think of what-ifs, but that was somewhere in the middle of how bad things could have gone. Imagine, during all this, the three princes fighting as well because the third prince who died would have had his priorities set elsewhere, perhaps trying to take the first prince's wives hostage or some other such nonsense. He was such an idiot, I wouldn’t doubt him trying it.