Chapter 115 Months pass
The following months…
Cynthia was showing signs of pregnancy. At first, I just thought she was putting on weight from how much she was eating, but with how active she was, she was most likely burning most of it. Only after checking with Millicent and Roka did we know for sure that she was pregnant. So, that most likely meant the first few times we had sex got her knocked up.
The new town was almost built; now we just had to move, but I decided to keep our old home where it was, just for the memories… And perhaps to get away from my family when it was all too much, plus it was right, smack dab in the middle of the new open area where the farm plots would be. It was crazy thinking how I struggled clearing the land the entire first year of planting, and now the hill the town was built on was cleared and flattened, and the amount of land I could cultivate had gone up tenfold.
My wives, mainly Cherry and Cynthia, began leading the village turned town, Marcus became the sheriff officially, and I was left to do what I did best, making delicious crops and herbs. Going to the capital allowed me to purchase many more magified crops; almost every single type of crop I could currently grow was a rare magified version.
From corn that tasted like caramel, to carrots that puffed up when you cook them, I was now earning far more farming experience than I ever had in the past, but with the increase in magified crops came an equal amount of difficulty to growing them. Magified crops were of a lower quality generally; it meant that the more special the crop, the more likely it would be a lower rank, and only growing it perfectly gave me the chance to yield anything above common quality.
That was why my making the legendary magified strawberry the first year was so shocking; it shouldn’t have been possible, yet it happened. I still hadn’t gotten a legendary or even a normal crop since then, years after, and an entire rank up in the class and two ranks in the profession that increased the odds of it happening. Another huge change, was my newest skills tied to creating safezones and fixing dungeons.
Dungeon farmer meant that while fighting in a dungeon, I got the double stat boost that fighting on a farm would provide. Dungeon Link allowed me to start correcting the problems in the closest dungeons. While safe zones, dungeon manipulation, magic fountain, thriving ecosystem, and resource manager allowed for making highly lucrative safe zones along the border of the weak newbie dungeon.
Not even taking into account the safe zones, the dungeon was just safer as I began to make changes, which had the secondary effect of letting newbie adventurers level even faster than before. It would be months down the road, but the next skill I was looking to get was the landmark creation one. Working toward it with the fervor I had, I knew it would be extremely valuable in the future once we started expanding further into the dungeons to fix them.
At the moment, I could make two safe zones in the first dungeon and only a single one in the dungeons past it. Landmark creation would not only double that, but also provide an additional effect on top of everything else I could do with it. The leading causes of adventurer deaths were running out of supplies, being worn down from one fight after the next, and sheer exhaustion from not being able to eat or sleep safely in a dungeon. The safe zones fixed every one of those problems; while it didn’t fix the next(adventurers betraying each other), it would certainly cut down dramatically on adventurer casualties.
Talks had already begun of hiring me to add safe zones to other famous dungeons around the continent, but at the moment, I wanted to settle down into the new normal of ruling a city. Perhaps, in the upcoming years, I would have the time to do that, but the new king would have to pay a pretty penny, seeing as I was the only person who could make them.
We were too strong for the beginner dungeon now, but it was only a few hours' travel to enter the harder ones. It would still be years before the destroyed dungeons areas were taken over by the other dungeons. Before that happens, I needed to make sure none of them were corrupted as well as it would lead to cascading failures of nearby dungeons.
It seemed like most of the dungeons were in not only poorly optimized states, but very close to similar collapses to the previous berserk dungeon; all it would take was one final spark, a singular push for them to corrupt and rampage as well. The terrifying thing would be, if one did, there was a high probability the damage it dealt to the dungeons it passed through would also go over the threshold and corrupt as well. Instead of a single dungeon coming into the country, we’d be overwhelmed by dozens, if not hundreds, which even the best adventurer teams couldn’t fight against.
It was a world-ending threat, and for some reason, it came down to me to fix it before anything else bad happened. My wives made the plan going forward, and as long as they didn’t tell me we needed to do something, then I’d spend the entire day working on my farm, only helping with the kids when I took a break, as I wasn’t really needed to help.
I was only a small portion of our earnings now, as the village was big enough to need to pay taxes, and we got a portion of that, which made up the bulk of our income. Everyone with a job like Delilah or Olivia flourished; their businesses are now far more lucrative with the population boom we went through. Very few other blacksmiths or craftsmen worked as rival businesses, as many quit and decided to work for/with them instead to avoid paying taxes.
It was very much the case that the rich get richer, as we made far more money than when I was the only one bringing in large amounts. I felt peaceful. I could feel I had years of downtime before something big happened, and was happy for the peace… But I knew it wasn’t the end. Something was driving me to keep going, to keep getting stronger.
Focused and driven on getting strong, I needed to reach the second status recalibration. Deep down, my gut told me that going through the second recalibration was the difference between living and dying. Whatever instinct I had that drove me to get stronger, to keep growing at this unprecedented speed, was the same feeling I had before.
My luck was now tangibly leading me down the best path, and every path where I took it easy or moved away ended in disaster, so I had to keep going; I had to strive for being the best farmer in the entire world, because the alternative was the destruction of our country at the bare minimum, the possible end of humanity at the very worst. And now, I knew for sure that the people I thought were out to get me were indeed out to get me from the very start.