Chapter 27 Upgrades and planning

I walked into the blacksmith's shop as I heard her singing. “Oh whiskey, oh whiskey, you go down so smooth! I could drink you every day, and ain't it the truth! The worst part is the wait as I increase your proof! I’ll drink you down in one go and then act like a goof! Oh, hey Danial, what ye up to?” She sat smiling next to a large copper still that was bigger than herself.

She rocked back and forth, tapping her legs as she impatiently waited for the alcohol to condense down to become even stronger. The liquid slowly came out of the copper spout. She had already made four jars of the whiskey, and I could see another four buckets of mash she still needed to distill down to spirits. I knew my corn sold out more quickly than the other vegetables, and now I knew why.

“Ye be a great addition to thee town! Ye know what I hed to drink before ye moved here? Water!” She was so excited her dwarven accent seeped through. “Well, thank you for the compliment. I’d like to get some tools upgraded, and the price of making an oven with a large surface for cooking on. The happy smile faded off her face as she put her business mode on. “What do ye *ahem* you need?”

I explained what I wanted done, and the business part of her faded as she began to smile again at all the work I just gave her. The truth was, the village wasn’t that big. If someone wanted a piece of equipment made or to upgrade their gear, it would be few and far between. That’s why job-type classes tended to level much slower than combat classes. I was an outlier; it should have taken me years to gain the levels I did in months, but that’s because I constantly took risks, and they paid off so far.

Difficulty heavily determined how quickly your class and profession leveled. If you weren’t constantly pushing the limits of your class, then you wouldn’t level nearly as quickly as someone who overwhelmed themselves with work. Most farmers stuck with a single field, while I was already pushing six and branching off to animals already.

So when someone who sat unbusy as she waited for someone to order a weapon or piece of armor to be made finally gets a job, a job that was bigger than most of the work she’d get throughout the entire month, then she’s happy with that person who let her pull out some more levels from her class. She didn’t have the copper to finish more than three tools right now, so it would take longer to have the rest made.

I had her make and upgrade the sword, daggers, and hoe first. Silk was still using the equipment she got from being a guard, and Tems only had a single chipped and dented dagger she’d been using when her class gained bonuses for dual-wielding. Most dagger-wielding classes dual-wielded, and the cost to upgrade them was the same as a single other upgraded tool. It was just another oddity that everyone agreed was commonplace and didn’t think about.

Daggers were about twice the size of material I needed to make my hoe, but for some reason, I needed all five copper bars to upgrade, while she only needed five for both her daggers. I could only grumble at the expensive cost and thought that I still had two other tools I’d have to upgrade. The biggest thing was that I didn’t fish. I could, the farmer class did get experience tangentially from fishing, it’s just I wasn’t very skilled at it. It was something I couldn’t really worry about right now, as I was solely focused on growing my farm.

In the future, once I finally felt stable, I’d love to fish to level. That was very far in the future, though. I went to the carpenter next and got him to deliver a bed before it reached nighttime. It was more expensive than I’d have liked, but I didn’t have a bartering skill, so I had to deal with whatever I was charged unless I wanted to risk paying more.

The hardened glass panels needed to make the greenhouses had to be shipped from two towns over. It meant I’d have to special order it, which would cost most of the rest of my money. The remaining gold I got from the legendary jam I had made was spent buying the herb seeds. I underestimated how much a magified herb cost, as the cheapest type with barely any effect was four times as expensive as normal herb seeds.

I could make the fourth greenhouse shed, and I needed to think about what to grow inside while I waited to make enough to afford the magified herb. The final thing I did was purchase more trees to have shipped here. Peach, cherry, almond, and walnut. Cherry was named after her mother's favorite fruit. I had no plans to court the sexy elf, but growing something that would make the mayor’s wife happy seemed like a good idea.

After spending all the new money, I got back to work. It was now just waiting. It would take a week to get the new tools, which meant I had to use the lent hoe for now. Cherry picked a fairly terrible time to have me be busy the entire day, as we had begun planting again. We planted fairly often, but sometimes multiple crops would all fruit and be harvested at the same time, which meant they’d need to be replanted all at the same time.

The potatoes, radishes, carrots, cucumber, garlic, apples, and magified mushrooms were all harvested, and most needed to be replanted today. The chestnuts I planted in an attempt to grow more trees had sprouted and would need to be replanted soon. The birds I had living on the farm needed to be moved over a few dozen feet, and a fence needed to be put in as they were too close to the beehive, and the two were attacking each other. None of the ducks had died yet, but it was only a matter of time with how many bees they were eating.

Moving the beehive was an even worse idea as I’d have to move it even further away as I couldn’t move it closer because of the magified cows. Moving it closer to the forest was a possibility, but I also wanted it to provide protection for the other animals. Bears attacking cities wasn’t common, but neither was growing crops and raising animals this close to the forest.

I’d rather sacrifice the honey the bees made than lose most of my poultry. The magified bull might be enough to scare it away, but I didn’t want to take the risk, so that’s why they were closer to our house. I was halfway done with replanting when I heard a cat screech out in pain. A board leaning against the house had fallen down and crushed its tail.

It would recover eventually, but both Silk and Tems stopped working to take care of it and make sure it wasn’t hurt too badly. It meant I had to do the rest of the work myself. Just as I finished replanting, Cherry called out loudly. “Dinner’s ready!” The house was too small. The four of us piled into the single-room home as the small table was filled with different types of food.

As small as our home was now, I loved it. We rubbed against each other as we ate some of the best-tasting food I had ever tasted. It felt cozy, I knew that soon enough the house would expand again; I wanted to have at least another room added before winter, possibly two or three if I could afford it. Plans kept going through my mind as I thought about the future. I was worried for our children and wanted them to have a better childhood than I did.