“Good. The fifth objective is training my new helpers. Baiting monsters is dangerous. I’m not taking people in blind. Quilly and Adoya, this is also going to be part of your responsibility.”
“Easy,” Adoya said.
“The last objective is camouflage. We’ve got thousands of contractors working on this project and others. Once we start working, they might become suspicious, and we don’t have the luxury of waiting until after they’ve gone to start. Putting the giant aside, my barn trap idea is worth several fortunes and I don’t want to lose that if I don’t have to. Ranic, you’ve done a brilliant job of avoiding awkward questions as to why the reservoir is shaped the way it is. I need you to keep it up.”
Ranic chuckled, turned to me, and changed his expression, becoming incredibly bug-eyed. It was one step further than I had seen in the past. “I never thought being addled for a decade would come in handy, but whenever I make this face, everyone just assumes I’m nuts. The fact that you weren’t here made it work thus far, but I’m not sure how much it will help now you are back. To be honest, Jeric is more suited to fulfil this task going forward.”
Jeric frowned. “Perhaps if we emphasise that Arnold is incarnate and that the changes he wishes to make come from his understanding of farming from his world mixed with eccentricities. It’s plausible that it might be enough to stop them digging for further information.”
Isabelle shook her head. “If they ask Arnold a few questions, they will realise he knows nothing about farming. You are better off saying it’s a cultural difference.”
“I don’t care how we lie,” I said. “It just has to be believable. Can you three work together and come up with something?”
They nodded.
Emily raised her hand, waiting for an opening. “Why don’t any of your objectives have anything to do with what you will do when the giant shows up?”
“Because those objectives are only possible if we succeed with these.”
As I finished explaining what we planned to do and why we needed their help, awkward silence greeted me. Another day had passed. Brek, his eight carpenters, Ava, Quinn, and their two oldest children, Kiln, and the six farmers that Ranic had found all stared at me across the parlour table, lost for words.
In their defence, I had just told them what I had really been up to for the past year and what we planned to do next. It was perfectly normal for them to be lost for words.
The seconds ticked by.
I cleared my throat. “Somebody say something.”
I’d hired the services of a young oath binder for the next year and had him relocate to Blackwood, so they had all taken an oath of secrecy after I’d paid them each a month’s wages. Even if they all walked out the door infuriated, I wasn’t worried about them saying anything.
Brek’s frown deepened and he crossed his arms over his potbelly. He opened and closed his mouth several times, but words didn’t come out. Finally, he managed to speak. “So you didn’t have me build a sex dungeon?” The confusion was evident in his voice and posture.
Ava snorted. “Of course you built a sex dungeon. Arnold’s clearly into some really freaky dangerous shit.”
Her husband cleared his throat. “Dear, don’t swear in front of the children.”
She blushed. “Sorry, love. He’s clearly into some really freaky stuff. Better?”
“Much.”
I sighed. “It’s not a sex dungeon. It’s a safe room.”
“Most proper sex dungeons are,” Ava countered.
Her husband turned a slight shade of red.
I shook my head. “Does anyone have anything to say about what I just told you?”
“Well, I can see why you made us take the oath now,” Kiln said.
There was a murmur of agreement from the room.
“Are there any objections then?”
Kiln shrugged. “I know I don’t speak for the farmers, but us craftsmen are more than willing to help you set up your murder barns for triple the base rate for our work, as long as we’re actually out of here when the giant arrives.”
The other craftsmen nodded their agreement.
I turned to the farmers. “What about you?”
Lenlin stepped forward. “For 25% of the experience you’ve been talking about, a place as a retainer, and all the other benefits you’ve offered, I’m perfectly willing to become your man and take that risk.”
“Well, I’m not,” Roff said. “I like you, Arnold, but I’m not taking on a damn troll even if it gets me to 100. I’ll see myself out.”
Two other farmers murmured their agreement and followed him to the parlour door.
The two who stayed were Manson and Pel, a pair of 15-year-olds who had run away from home together. Their parents were all assholes who had taken all their experience from them. They were barely level two, but they’d been smitten with each other for as long as anyone could remember and did everything together, including barely surviving. They were desperate enough to try. They just nodded that they were in.
“Alright, in that case, I’ll get the rest of the team and you can all learn what this is going to involve together.”
The next afternoon, I was setting up the parlour for what would be our first day of lessons on constructing and running trap barns when Jeric walked in and sat down at the table. He pulled out a book, pen, and inkwell and then leaned back eyeing me patiently.
I ignored him for a few minutes finding other tasks to do, but eventually ran out of jobs. “Alright, what do you want?”
Jeric grinned. “You are down one farmer and it just so happens that I possess that class. So, I figured I should volunteer. And before you complain, I’ve talked it over with Adoya and she believes my status as a noble will not interfere now that my level has been capped.”
I opened my mouth to argue but stopped before the words came out and considered his offer. He was a level 18 noble. He had quite a few attribute points thanks to blessings and his class, and he was well educated. Compared to the other volunteers, his chance of survival was significantly better. Not only that, he was competent. Between him, Quilly, Adoya, and I, the others might survive. “Fine.”
Jeric cleared his throat. “Just to be clear, I want the same cut of the experience as the others.”
I raised an eyebrow, questioningly.
“Ranic said that there is a series of special promotions that gives farming knowledge. Gaining these promotions should significantly improve my understanding of farming and my effectiveness as an administrator when the farm grows.”
Okay, that made sense. “At least you don’t have to wait to get through your thresholds like the others?”
Jeric nodded. “Speaking of thresholds, Ranic is confident that he can teach the others how to produce a perfect crop within a few months.”
“Isn’t that extremely hard? I thought the failure rate was like, 90%, and that is for skilled farmers.”
“I said the same, but there is a method he’s read about that uses your new mark which should facilitate the process. I say should because he wants to use your new farmhands as test subjects and isn’t entirely certain how he will make it work. He has a longterm goal to create a system that lets him push a batch of farmers through their first threshold each month. He believes if he can perfect the system, your farm will become a training centre for farmers throughout the northern region which should help offset some of the costs of establishing it.”
I laughed, excited by a new potential source of revenue. “Do you get the feeling Ranic enjoys our arrangement a little bit too much?”
Jeric chuckled. “You are everything that old man has ever looked for. If you sent him away now, he’d stab you like a crazed, jilted lover.”
“You could have just said yes.”
Jeric’s smiled. “I could have.”
The parlour doors opened and Quilly walked into the room, followed by the farmhands.
Lenlin moved through the room curiously. He was a wide guy in his early twen
ties and was as much muscle as fat. He had broad shoulders and a short cut beard of black hair. It was clear that he didn’t spend much time indoors—or in manors—by the way he felt the need to touch everything.
Manson followed behind. His horse-shaped face took in every detail of the room around him. His body was all wire and little substance from poor diet, but his eyes didn’t have the glaze that Lenlin’s did. He was sharper than you would expect from someone his age and almost as tall as I now was.
Pel, his girlfriend, was about as different from Manson as anyone could get. She had a short stocky frame, thick limbs, and a big barrel chest. Neither she nor Manson was what you would call pretty. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder and when they shared a look, you could see their attraction to each other, even if you couldn’t understand it.
I pointed to the seats around the table and waited for them to take their places.
“Okay, before we start, I just want to make sure you all know how to read, write, and do basic mathematics. I have to make sure that if I put a set of instructions in front of you that you will all be able to follow them.”
Pel cleared her throat as the other two nodded their heads. “I was the top of our class.” She had a rough, husky voice, something you would only expect to hear in a heavy smoker, not a teenager.
“That’s respectable. From now on, you will be spending each morning developing your knowledge of traps and monsters under the supervision of Scholar Adoya, Nobleman Jeric, or myself. Quilly will instruct you in practical matters.” I’d used a similar training regime with my team back home, having everyone do theory first and then practical application afterward, except we started in the early afternoon not in the morning.
Jeric looked up sharply when I offered his assistance. “What?”
I grinned. “You said you wanted to help. Right now, this is what I need you to do.”
Jeric snorted. “You realise I’m also helping with the organisation of thousands of contract workers?”
“Fine. Get Salem to cover for you. He’s actually very good at teaching, but don’t tell him I said that.”
Lenlin scowled. “You want the talking cat to teach us?”
“He’s a familiar,” Manson said, “or weren’t you listening last night?”
Lenlin frowned. “Really?”
Alarm bells went off in my head. I had to address this little problem before it went any further. “Lenlin, you are now my retainer. I expect you to be competent and aware of your surroundings. That comment you just made shows you weren’t paying attention and is your first strike and you only get three before you are gone. And by gone, I mean you are out of the group involved in trapping monsters, so no extra experience. I want that to be the last time you don’t pay attention to anything said in this room.”
Lenlin made a face. “That’s going to be hard, boss. I get distracted easily.”
I looked the guy in the eye, holding his gaze, trying to get my point across. “Lenlin, you are going to be learning how to bait and trap monsters, when to trigger traps and when not to. You are going to be learning how to survive a confrontation with a troll. If you become distracted and forget how something works…you die. If you end up in a situation that we talk about and you don’t remember what to do…you die. The purpose of these classes is to stop you from dying. Because if you die, then you leave the village open to a monster attack.”
Lenlin frowned, confused. “Really?”
“Yes.”
Quilly stood up and ran her hand through her frizzy blonde hair. “Listen, you bumpkins. The traps you will be learning to use and be around daily are nothing like what you are used to. These aren’t snares or a leg trap. These are designed to kill ogres and trolls. They will turn a pack of wolves into chunks of furry flesh. If you accidentally trigger one or are caught by one, you will die. If you trigger one the wrong way, you might throw an ogre towards you instead of away. If you can’t pay attention during a crisis, something will sneak up on you and eat you. Do you understand?”
Everyone nodded their heads.
“Good; now today we are going to talk about some of what the automated barns will have in them when they are done and how they will be assembled. We’ve only got a couple of months to teach you how to safely put everything together and maintain them, so you all need to be paying attention.”
“Quit complaining,” Salem said. “It’s not like you have to cut a field. You’re only planting some squash.”
“I have a right to complain,” I said, putting the hoe down. “This makes no sense.”
We were on the west side of Blackwood at one of the farms I’d bought through the crown when they issued the abandonment order. We were away from the other houses on one of the few remaining properties that could be considered remote. I now technically owned the entire east and south sides of the village, so I could have cut my field anywhere, but this farm was the only one not in view of the tower guards and had no nearby neighbours, allowing Salem and I to talk.
“It makes complete sense,” Salem said, condescendingly. “You know you need to keep your farm active.”
I lost it, frustration bubbling over. “What part of planting out a single field of squash to maintain the active status of a farm with more than 14,000 fields makes sense to you? This one field is supposed to keep the vast majority of the village active. People were literally waiting for me to get back and plant this field before selling their properties so their wells won’t dry up. It’s absurd.”
Salem facepalmed before glaring at me. “It’s not the system's fault you haven’t passed through your first threshold. Of course it doesn’t make sense that 14,000 fields are about to be activated by planting a single field. This problem is unique to you. Usually, you would be an advanced farm manager, and dozens or hundreds of your farmhands would perform this action for you, but you skipped several vital steps in the process, so the absurdity of your current situation is your own creation. And those farmers waiting for you to return was them following a prudent and wise course of action.”
“I know that. I understand that. But sometimes this world is so absurd I can’t accept it. You don’t appreciate how hard this is for me.”
Salem shook his head. “Arnold, sometimes I think you are your own worst enemy. You spend so much time trying to fit this world into the context of your own that it would be simpler to disregard your previous life and learn everything about this one from scratch.”
“You are probably right,” I said slowly, shoulders slumping. “Starting over would be easier. But I didn’t hate my life before coming here. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t bad either. I miss it. And I can’t let it fade into obscurity. If I forget my past, no one is going to remember it for me. There is no one in this universe that has tasted my mom’s chicken pot pie or heard one of my dad’s lame jokes. I’m a linchpin holding together the history of my world and yours. So I’m sorry if viewing your world through mine causes me a little cognitive dissonance and irritability, but I’m not strong enough to live without my history.”
Salem solemnly bowed his head to me and then met my gaze. “That might have been a beautiful moment if I didn’t realise you were making most of it up to procrastinate your way out of farming.” He raised his paw and pointed to the ground next to me. “You missed a spot.”
Adoya, Quilly, Salem, and I sat around the parlour table staring at the schematics Quilly was designing. We had been at this for days, trying to figure out the best combination of death and destruction. Hamlin was becoming a little flustered over the parlour being used as a meeting place and lecture hall, but he was the only one. Jeric and his family understood the need for us constantly using their quiet room and didn’t seem to mind so long as we were all gone by dinner time.
“The trapdoor at the entrance needs to be larger,” Salem said. “Your central pivot point makes the trapdoor more useful, but it also makes it easier for a troll or ogre to try and catch a handhold as they fall.”
Quilly frowned. “It’s more than fucking large enough for one to fall through.”
“You are thinking too small,” I said, backing up Salem. “I’ve literally had three cyclopes walk into my barn at the same time. Salem’s right. With this design, they would be close enough to the edge to catch a handhold.”
“Try to think of the barn entrance like a city gate,” Adoya said. “The opening will look like a weak point and funnel the beasts to where you want them to go allowing you to control their approach.”
Quilly nodded, making a few light marks on the page with her pencil before making an additional note in her notebook. “What if I add a second and third trapdoor here and here? It would funnel them straight through a killing ground in the centre—here.”
“That would increase the construction cost,” Adoya said, “but it would make the other traps significantly more effective against large targets persistent enough to get past the first trapdoor.”
“How much more effective?” I asked.
The redesign of my automated barns was teaching me exactly how much of an amateur I was compared to the two women. I’d thought I was Rambo with everything I had thrown into my automated barn designs. They were showing me that Rambo was an amateur.
Quilly shrugged. “It depends on how they get past the first trapdoor.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if they physically see the first trapdoor before it activates, they might jump over it and notice the others on the sides. If that happens, they will walk down the middle and trigger the swinging axes. But if they don’t notice the trapdoor until something falls in, then they might think the middle of the barn is dangerous and try to use the sides getting caught by the second trapdoors.”
“Either way, we can almost guarantee a second kill,” Adoya said.
“Add them,” I said. “The experience from a second kill is worth significantly more than the cost of building them, and it provides another layer of defence for me and my people if we have to run through one of these to get away from something.”
Oh Great! I was Reincarnated as a Farmer Page 45
