Oh Great! I was Reincarnated as a Farmer

by Benjamin Kerei

  He turned the green crystal over in his fingers, staring at it for nearly three minutes, before handing it back. I put the crystal away and pulled out the one I’d received from killing the wolves. The great thing about looting corpses was you only needed access to one wolf corpse to gain the loot from all the others. The same applied to gaining experience when defending the farm though you could choose to loot them individually instead of as a group if you wanted to.

  I put the much larger crystal into his hand. “That is most of what I was supposed to have received from my last attempt.”

  Jeric stared at the apple-sized green crystal for a few more minutes before finally saying, “This is an incredible amount of experience. It’s worth more gold than most farmers make in a decade. How can you say you’ve failed?”

  “I was supposed to get that experience without breaking a sweat, but instead, I nearly died.”

  Jeric glanced at the arm and leg splints before moving on to all the other bandages. He let out a slow breath. “There are many who would say the risk was worth the reward.”

  I stare at him for several seconds, annoyed with his statement and with myself. When I first arrived in the village, I would have agreed with him. Now, I just shook my head tiredly. “Those people are fools. It’s only luck that I am here to have this conversation.”

  Jeric frowned. “So your method doesn’t work?”

  “I didn’t say that. This test might have been a profitable failure, but my method still requires more experimentation.”

  “And if it works, this is what I should expect you to achieve.”

  “That and more.”

  Jeric smiled and leaned back in his chair. “You are an interesting man, Arnold. But you are also hopelessly obvious.” Jeric took a deep breath and then outlined what he thought I was doing to gain experience. My jaw kept dropping lower and lower. He didn’t have all the details right, like my trapping system, but he wasn’t far off.

  For some reason, by the end, I wasn’t annoyed that he had figured it out. I was kind of impressed. “You haven’t got everything, but you are close. What gave it away?”

  “It wasn’t just one clue, though the crystal sort of filled in the blanks. A wolf attack is a serious danger. So when you handed me roughly the experience a farmer could expect to receive for defending his farm after killing a small pack and then said that you had been expecting it…well, that made the whole enterprise kind of obvious.”

  “How did you know farmers received experience for defending their farm?” I couldn’t hide my shock.

  “I’ve made it a point to study our class ever since our talk. I had a friend send me several books on the subject and baiting monsters came up as I read. There was even a reference to what you are attempting to do that is several centuries old.”

  My mouth dropped open. “I need to borrow that book,” I blurted out. “Also, what happened?”

  Jeric jaw tightened. “Everyone involved died. The farmer’s combat capabilities weren’t great enough to overcome anything but the most basic threats and monsters won’t appear if there are warriors close enough to help.”

  Well, that was because they hadn’t used traps. Taking a troll or large monster on face-to-face was pure suicide. Hell, taking on a pair of wolves without Salem was probably suicide.

  Then I had another thought. Jeric had said our class. As in, we were both farmers. “Jeric, why did you say our class?”

  “You know I have the farming class, right?”

  I frowned. “No, you’re a noble.”

  “Yes, and as a noble, I have access to three other classes of my choice, like an adventurer. I can choose one from the production classes, one from the craftsmen classes, and another from the combat classes. I thought you knew. I was touched by the fact that you trusted me with your experience, but now I’m guessing you were ignorant.”

  “You have three extra classes. Do you get the full benefits?”

  “Almost. Since I’m not technically a farmer, but a noble, I don’t have thresholds, which makes it easier to level and gain promotions, but it also means I can’t receive the threshold boons. I also don’t receive attributes when my sub-classes level.”

  “Okay, that’s kind of cool, but why the hell would you choose the farmer class?”

  Jeric raised an eyebrow at me like I couldn’t really ask a question that dumb. When he realised I was being honest, he continued. “I’m the lord of a farming village. It helps the people under me if I share their class. Now please, tell me you aren’t just luring random monsters to your farm to fight or I will end your experiment now. We are friends, Arnold, but I will not let you endanger the people under my care in such a foolish endeavour no matter how much you or I stand to personally gain from this.”

  For a second, I almost told him to fuck off. Who was he to tell me what I could and couldn’t do on my own land, but the impulse only lasted that long. Jeric had done everything he could to help me, bending all sorts of rules, even giving me the land for free. He was my friend and ally. He’d proven that time and time again.

  More than that, though, he actually cared for the villagers. He tried to do his best by them. He tried to do his best by me. He would only interfere if he had a good reason and just one look at my beaten and broken state meant I couldn’t say he didn’t have a good reason.

  “Here’s what I’m trying to do,” I said, and then I laid out everything for him, holding nothing back.

  It was the financially riskiest decision of my life. Jeric seemed like an honourable man, but there was too much money and experience involved for me to say he might not be tempted to take my method from me. And since my method wasn’t an exploit, letting others find out about it before I was ready would mean I had to compete with them economically. And I knew I couldn’t do that. I wasn’t rich or powerful. Not yet.

  Jeric listened, periodically asking questions. When I was done, he knew every secret about my method that didn’t involve Salem. That secret was even bigger than my trap method and I wasn’t willing to disclose it.

  The frown on Jeric’s face wasn’t a good sign.

  “What do you think?” I asked several minutes into the silence after I’d finished my explanation.

  “I think it is an insane risk…but if there is anywhere this method should be tested, it is right here in Blackwood where that risk is lowest. If you are correct and you can make this method work, all villages in the future will have a line of farms near dangerous areas with similar traps.”

  “So you aren’t going to stop me.”

  Jeric frown deepened. “Stop you? I’m trying to think of a way I can help you.”

  Your relationship with Jeric has improved from Friendly to Friend. As a Friend, Jeric can be relied upon to keep your secrets and help you when you are in trouble, but don’t go asking for something crazy, or he is likely to say no.

  Chapter Twelve

  SPRING CLEANING

  “How did you manage to close the barn doors?” Jeric asked as I limped down the dirt road outside my house.

  Sweat poured off me in the hot midday sun. It was a mixture of pain and personal expenditure that soaked my shirt, making it looked like I’d fallen in a pool. Walking all the way here was not my best idea. I’d been fine using the crutch around the village, but four miles was pushing it.

  “With a lot of pain and difficulty,” I barked.

  That was a lie. Salem shut them, but Jeric didn’t need to know that. The village and its inhabitants were much safer thinking Salem was just a cat.

  Jeric nodded as he looked around, taking in every detail. He pointed to the edge of my field. It could be seen through the gap between the farmhouse and barn. “You realise that putting a field that close to your barn causes issues, right?”

  I frowned. “What kind of issues?”

  “A loss in crop quality for starters, but then there might also be an increase in fertilizer requirements.”

  “Don’t care,” I said, losing interest. I
didn’t need to fertilize to grow squash.

  Jeric shrugged. “Okay, where did you want me to start? The sooner I get this done the sooner you can talk to Brek about the repairs and leave for Weldon.”

  Jeric had agreed with Salem’s suggestion for taking the project outside Blackwood. He’d gone a step further and suggested I use the opportunity to contact a farming scholar. Scholars were basically a living Wikipedia. They were half researcher and half teacher. If you wanted to know anything about your class, talking to a scholar who specialized in it was the place to start, but like people doing any job, some were better than others.

  There was apparently a very skilled one in Weldon. I hadn’t wanted to go that far as it was an extra three days of travel, but then Jeric mentioned I might be able to sell my special promotions to the scholar. Apparently, they also bought information and if you had information they didn’t have, it could be extremely valuable. Not get-me-to-a-new-class kind of valuable, but valuable enough that it was worth the extra travel.

  I was excited to see where this went, but clearing away my traps and cleaning up wasn’t going to be quick. We were looking at two or three days of work. “Let’s start with cleaning up the house. Go in through a window. Do not trust the trapdoors.”

  “I remember,” Jeric said, jogging towards the window beside the backdoor. The shutter was several yards behind me, still in the field from when the troll that was too big to fit through the backdoor used it as an exit.

  I made my slow miserable way off the road to the gravel path to the backdoor. Stone crunched under my feet awkwardly and I put more weight on the crutch. Yep, walking here was a terrible idea. Getting fat sucked, but the little bit of exercise I’d managed wasn’t worth this level of discomfort.

  The backdoor opened as I continued to grumble to myself.

  Jeric stood in the doorway, his eyes locked down as he pulled the lever. The trapdoor fell, slamming into the side of the pit, leaving a massive hole in the veranda. A boyish grin spread across Jeric’s face. “That was surprisingly fun.”

  I nodded.

  He wasn’t wrong.

  Jeric stepped away from the door and then returned, holding the board, and placed it across the gap. “I’ll meet you at the other window.” He headed deeper into the house.

  I carefully climbed the step to the veranda, bypassing the hole and board, and made my way around the side of the house to where the troll entered.

  Everything looked different in daylight.

  The shutters were gone, torn from the window frame. The room beyond had always been empty since it wasn’t my bedroom or the kitchen, and furnishing it had been an expense I wasn’t interested in paying for. So the only clutter Jeric needed to clear was the broken pieces of shutter, but despite so little debris —the sheer amount of blood made the room a ghastly sight.

  Jeric moved among the mess, making a pile out of the wreckage. He looked up at me and shook his head. “I see what you mean. No one is going to believe wolves did this.”

  “That’s why I need your help to clean it up,” I said, taking a seat on the window frame. The ache in my legs immediately lessened, bringing my pain down to a level that was only uncomfortable.

  “What do you want me to do about the blood?”

  “Scrub it.”

  “You don’t want me to leave some of the lower marks?”

  I shook my head. “Brek’s already kicking himself for moving the farmhouse here. I don’t want him walking in only to be reminded again. Also, that smell is already getting to me.”

  “It’s worse in here.”

  I grinned. “Which is why I’m sitting outside.”

  Jeric scowled without anger. “What happened to the comrades in arms speech you gave me when you asked me for help?”

  “It’s out here with me.”

  Jeric snorted. “You give any more thought to my offer?”

  “I have. I mean it’s tempting. Building an automated trap barn is my ultimate goal, but I’m not comfortable borrowing money from you to do it. Especially when I’m not sure if this whole enterprise is going to work.”

  “You should have more faith in yourself, Arnold. Your exploit is incredibly dangerous, but it clearly works.”

  “It’s the incredibly dangerous part I don’t have faith in. And it’s not my exploit. You need to stop calling it that.”

  “Whether or not you received another level for your Wiseman title doesn’t matter. Your creation is clearly an exploit.”

  “The whole point of creating this exploit was to receive the experience bonus from selling it and having others use it for me. No bonus, no selling off the method and retiring to live a life of pampered luxury.” I scratched the back of my neck. “On a completely different note, now that you’ve seen the damage, how much do you think Brek will charge me for the repairs?”

  Jeric looked around the room for several seconds. “He is rather annoyed with you, so he will haggle for all he’s worth. I expect he will want his maximum. It shouldn’t be more than 40 or 50 nobles unless you want him to fix the damage to the floors.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “There are gouges where the troll pulled itself down the hallway that will require you to change the floorboards. I’ll have to hit them with an axe to cover them up or throw a rug over them.”

  “I don’t have a rug.”

  Jeric grinned. “Axe it is then.”

  “I can buy a rug.”

  Jeric shook his head. “That could take days.”

  “You just want to cause property damage.”

  “What’s the problem with that? I find it therapeutic.”

  I shook my head and let him have his fun. I couldn’t do the work myself, so a little extra cost was acceptable if I could keep this secret.

  Jeric worked through the afternoon cleaning up the hallway, before going down into the pits at the front and back entrances to remove the spikes and fertilizer.

  Apparently, I’d been looting monsters wrong the whole time. The random assortment of parts I received wasn’t actually their loot. It was the minimum loot you could receive. Now that I had some levels in my farmer class, looting monsters gave me fertilizer. When I’d asked Salem why he hadn’t told me having other skills would give me more varieties of loot, he’d said I told him I wasn’t interested in loot, so he hadn’t bothered explaining how to get more.

  I’d be angry, but if I had the butcher skill, then Jeric would be dealing with piles of rotting meat and hide, along with everything else. There was certainly no way I would have been able to move the extra loot before hobbling to the village.

  Once the pits were cleared, Jeric climbed under the veranda and put several pins in place to stop the trapdoors from being able to drop. He then dismantled the lever systems, transferring the rope and pulley system to the space under my bed.

  It was late afternoon before he was finished making the house safe. He hadn’t even started on the barn or fields.

  “I should head back,” he said while brushing dirt off his trousers.

  “There are still a few more hours of sunlight left,” I said, surprised. I had to look up to give my reply. I’d been moving my rocking chair around the house to give him instructions.

  Jeric took a slow breath.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I’m trying to think of a delicate way to put this.”

  “Put what?”

  “Your farm has a reputation that I’m not comfortable associating with. If I come back to the village after dark or near dark, people might make uncomfortable assumptions about what I have been up to.”

  “I do not have a sex dungeon,” I shouted.

  Jeric laughed. “Well, sadly you know that and I know that, but the villagers have a different opinion.”

  I didn’t bother replying. Nothing I said would win this argument. So I decided not to argue. “What time do you think you will be back?”

  Jeric looked at me with a half held smile. “Arnold, let’s be honest.
Is there any scenario where I’m not done with my mayoral duties for the day and here before you wake up?”

  He did have a point. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

  Jeric nodded.

  Something unnatural touched my chest, startling me into consciousness. I felt the heat drain from me as a chilly breeze blew across my ear. I stiffened, sensing danger without being fully aware of the source. The cold draining sensation slid across my chest, siphoning more body heat.

  I lifted the blankets ever so slightly, fearful of disturbing whatever creature held me, and then opened my eyes to look under the covers. The glowing white hand of an apparition trailed its fingertips across my chest, making small playful circles.

  “Oh, you are awake, dear,” my ghost whispered in my ear, her voice mischievous. I knew that tone. I’d had girlfriends. That was a you’re-about-to-get-laid tone, except I really really did not want to get laid right now.

  I turned and looked over my shoulder to see my ghost lying on top of my bed, entirely naked, her body inches from my own. A playful smile sat on her face.

  Okay, it was time to get out of here.

  I tried to roll away. I managed half an inch before my skin pressed up against the hand on my chest, stopping my momentum. It was solid, like tree trunk solid. I pushed harder, giving a slight wheeze with my effort. I didn’t get anywhere.

  Since I couldn’t go through it, I figured I’d try going under it. I ducked under the blanket and tried to manoeuvre my way down the bed, but the arm encircling me tightened. Her naked body pressed against my back, pinning me in place. It didn’t feel like skin touching skin. It just felt cold, like lying against a body-sized piece of meat fresh from the fridge.

  I shuddered.

  The hand started going lower. “Let’s see who else is awake.”