Three days had passed since the night Johan got an earful from the head nurse. Today, the doctors gave him the green light to discharge. Thanks to the now advanced medical technology and healing skills, he made a full recovery.
“Good as new~!” He tapped his bare feet on the ground in a nimble dance, waving his hands out of the hospital gown.
As the media paid attention to this incident, the appearance of a special type of rift that only targeted the classless, plus Johan’s heroic actions spreading through the victims’ testimonies, the government paid more attention to his treatment.
After changing into a loose graphic t-shirt and black jeans, Johan stopped by the nurse station.
The other nurses nearby looked on in confusion, Nurse Kim chewed Johan out after his loud outburst at night that day. Now, the same nurse waved like she was saying goodbye to her son.
Getting along with people is easy. Johan walked out of the hospital and stretched under the afternoon sun.
“Just find out their interests and play into them; they’ll forget all about the bad first impression.” Granted, he had to pull out a rarity among tea, but Johan got it as a gift himself. So, it wasn’t out of his pocket.
I could’ve gotten some good money if I flipped it. Well, whatever. Johan nodded to himself and got on the subway.
Without a rush of office workers and school kids, the subway commute went by in peace. Even if rifts opened on the other side of the city, life continued as normal.
Salarymen still went to offices, kids still had school, government still functioned like usual. No matter how much Earth had changed in the past 50 years, humanity adapted as always.
Johan, too, had to go back to his routine, even if he got a class. With a sigh, he unlocked the glass door to the convenience store. With the phone’s flash, he went behind the counter and turned the lights on. The sign outside, Morgan’s Hunter Mart, lit up in bright blue.
On the 11th Parkview Street near sector A’s Chinatown, the store was a standalone building with two floors and one basement. The store on the first floor was manned by Johan alone as the store manager, the previous part-time worker having left to focus on studies. The second floor had storage and his living area. And the basement was the potion workshop.
Morgan owned several of these stores across the city. However, she didn’t know how to manage them.
Johan looked at two knocked-over shelves of emergency rations for rifts. His eyes went to the folded white paper on the counter, covered with a thin layer of dust. He opened the paper to face the neat handwriting in green ink.
A stray cat got in and knocked it over. Fix it, Store Manager. —Morgan.
“Why don’t you first tell me how the stray cat got inside a closed building?” The paper crumpled in his shaking hands.
After writing some reasonable words on the same paper with a pen, he stored it in the cash register. Donning his brown apron and mask, Johan started his classical music playlist and fixed the mess of the shelves, then moved on to dusting.
Two hours later, he ran a finger over the counter, not of speck of dust on it. Turning the music off, Johan switched the sign at the door to ‘Open’.
It’s not that I mind doing this job, but with the class I got, do I have a choice? At least my bank account isn’t empty. Since Morgan funded the entire operation and didn’t beat him up over being in black or red, he got a steady salary no matter the status of the books. She’d even give him bonuses if the store turned a profit.
“Looks like there aren’t many rifts opening today.” He yawned, closing the new magik herb encyclopaedia he had read for the nth time.
The rush of Hunters depended on the number of active low-level rifts. Since the target customers for Hunter marts were the low-ranked Hunters.
“Well, aren’t I a low-level Hunter now?” Johan shook his head. “I doubt they’d consider me a low-level hunter if I went for registration. Why is my class called Tower Farmer anyway?”
Even with a class, he had no combat skills, basically a decoration.
In the last three days, he had checked every nook and cranny of his skill descriptions. Reading them over and over again under the magnifying glass.
General Knowledge: A skill that helps fill in gaps in the user’s knowledge. (*Class-specific skill)
Translocation: Moves the user to the marked location. (*Class-specific skill)
Accelerate Growth: Increases the growth rate of the crops planted by the user. (*Class-specific skill)
Seed Sense: Increased understanding of the types of seeds. (*Class-specific skill)
Water Channeling: The user can form water in his hands by using Magik.
Basic Brewing: Makes brewing tasks easier and has a small chance of increasing quality.
“Even with the four class-specific skills, this is hopeless.” Johan sprawled on the counter.
As hopeless as the situation seemed, one skill in particular had caught his attention. He couldn’t stop thinking about it during his time in the hospital, but he couldn’t use it there.
“Translocation… how does this skill work exactly?” He muttered, curious about its use.
Without further thought, he tried activating it.
A warm energy rose from behind his belly button; it traveled up towards his mouth and finally the lump sat on his tongue. That was magik power.
“Translocation,” Johan said the skill’s name, and the magik gave the word power.
[Location has been selected.]
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
[Would you like to continue?]
“Yes.”
What happened next left him wide-eyed. The soft ticking of the clock behind him halted. The store walls, the very air around him stretched till they became long colourful lines. Dizziness hit his head as the stretched surroundings reformed before him.
In place of shelves were tall, green trees. The grey wall had turned into a rockface. And the tiled floor below became a bed of lush grass.
“Wait… this place is…” Fighting the vertigo, Johan gulped.
“Phantasia? Why am I here again?”
The branch he had planted had sprouted more leaves, all swaying in the gentle wind, greeting him. The dark aura and thick fog that had covered this place before had receded into the distance.
The dead bushes he found before had sprouted healthy leaves, and the blackened bark of the trees now had a brown sheen. Above all, he could see the sun beyond the blanket of leaves above his head. The warm rays fell through with the calm wind kissing his face.
It almost felt like a new place. Like, what he had seen during his trial was a dream. However, proof that it was the same place stood before him. The branch he had planted before stood tall. Almost taller than him now.
Why did Translocation bring me here? No matter how much he thought over it, this didn’t make sense.
Phantasia wasn’t a real place; it was a stage created by the system to see which class suited the awakened. But if he wasn’t in Phantasia, why and how did he get there for his class trial?
Or did his class create this place to mirror the test because it was a necessary part of his class?
Well, it is a unique class. So, it could be possible? He only had a few clues to go off of, but if his hunch was correct, the class Tower Farmer wasn’t as simple as it looked.
First the classless rift and now this. Johan felt like someone had cursed him, or blessed him? To experience two back-to-back first-time phenomena that could flip the Hunter society on its head.
Just then, a blue window flickered before his face. The system had given him a new quest.
[Quest 1.1: Start a Farm.]
Time limit: 1 hour
Reward: Class-exclusive Skill: Farmer’s storage
Farmer’s storage: The skill holder can store anything the Tower Farmer grows and collects from his farm. Weight Limit: 100 kgs, will increase with skill level.
Johan’s eyes almost popped out of his sockets. A storage skill with a 100 kg limit at level 1?
“A storage bag with that weight goes for about 100 million. But a person with such a skill…” He fell to the ground, his head hung low.
Johan could’ve had long lines of reputable Hunters begging him to go into rifts with them. They’d bring him cases of cash and expensive wines as tributes, not to mention the commission he’d get as they’d fight over just to book him for a day.
However, the reality hit hard.
“Why is there such a condition?!” He could only store things he had grown on his farm. If only he could collect anything in sight.
“I could’ve used it to drop meteors on magik beasts and laugh all cool. Why did this class have to take that away from me?!” Drying his tears, Johan stood up.
Now wasn’t the time to cry when he didn’t even have the skill. Since he had to start a farm, he needed tools. And above all, seeds.
“Translocation!” Johan shouted.
His vision blurred again, and he found himself in the convenience store. He looked at his shoes, now wet with dew from the green grass, his hand full of dirt he had picked to test things.
“It’s not a dream or illusion.” He smiled, rushing up the stairs near the bathroom.
Gardening tools from the building’s terrace, compost, some cardboard, and carrot seeds from the storage in the back. This time, he closed the front door of the store and used Translocation. Thankfully, the items were below the 20-kilo weight limit of the skill.
Back in the forest, Johan felt a sense of lethargy. It wasn’t too strong, but he felt sleepy. Placing the items on the ground, he opened his status and found the reason.
Magik Power: 5
Each use of translocation used 4 magik power, plus 1 if he carried something with him. One more and he’d run out. Johan closed the status and slapped his face to chase the sleep away.
He slipped the used, brown gloves on and picked up the dirt-stained shovel. His eyes looked for ground without grass. It didn’t take long; the bald ground was only a few meters away.
With a deep breath, Johan dug with his shovel. Surprised by the dark and crumbly soil, he touched the soil and looked at it with awe. This same soil had such a horrible look to it before; it had such an awful texture that Johan almost gave up hope on passing the trial. Now, it had transformed.
Even if he just sowed the seeds at that moment, Johan thought that the carrots would sprout; that’s how good the soil had become. But he still mixed the compost in; he didn’t want to half ass it and fail. After mixing, he brought his hands forward. Hovering them above a bucket.
“Water channeling.” He used the skill; it cost him two magik power.
A stream of clear, glimmering water sprouted from his palm and gathered in the plastic bucket. In only a minute, it filled half the bucket. Grinning at his fast progress, Johan poured water into a watering can and sprinkled it onto the aerated mixture of soil and compost.
With a gardening trowel three shallow trenches formed, each 1 foot apart and 5 feet long, in the now wet soil. He ripped the seed packet and sprinkled them into the trenches with a steady hand, then covered the seeds with some soil. Finally, he covered it with cardboard.
However, when he looked at the quest window, there was no reaction.
“Did I miss something?” Johan looked at the farm; although small, it should qualify as one.
Unless there is another condition?
What was a farm? It was a place where the farmer grew vegetables, fruits, and other crops.
But at what point does a piece of land become a farm?
Does it become a farm when a farmer buys the land? When it is tilled? Or when the farmer sows the seeds? Johan thought over the questions and soon a smile spread across his lips.
He removed the cardboard from the soil and gathered all his focus. Magik power gathered in his mouth, his bare hands on the wet soil.
“Growth Acceleration!” Johan’s words carried the magik power to the ground; this skill cost him 2 magik power for a single cast.
Even with blurred vision, he kept himself steady. Soon movement arrived, a tiny green stem broke out of the soil. The tiny life reached for the sunlight and spread its green wings, the leaves. These leaves gathered the sunlight, already packed with magik power from Johan’s skill and water. Along with the nutrients from the soil, the tiny white stem grew inches in a matter of seconds and turned into a vibrant green.
It usually took 7-10 days for carrot seeds to germinate, and about three months before one could harvest them. However, Johan pulled on the 10-inch cluster of stems and leaves growing out of the ground.
He held a bright orange carrot as long as his forearm, smothered in dirt. But it answered his question.
Name: Magik Carrot
Grade: D
Effects: It has absorbed a lot of Magik and transformed into a magik crop. Consuming will increase the sharpness of one’s vision by 10% and boost vitality by 5% for 10 minutes.
A piece of land becomes a farm when it grows a crop that can be sold for profit. Johan looked at the new blue screen flickering before him.
[Quest 1.1: Start a Farm. Completed.]
[Status]
Name: Johan Askr
Age: 25
Class: Tower Farmer
Skills: General Knowledge Lv. MAX, Translocation Lv. 1, Accelerate Growth Lv. 1, Seed Sense Lv. 1, Water Channeling Lv. 1, Basic Brewing Lv. 3, Farmer’s Storage Lv. 1.
Magik: 1
When the skill appeared on his status, Johan succumbed to the vertigo. He fell on his back, drenched in sweat. But his smile stretched ear-to-ear. He could see a way forward, maybe he had just taken the first step.
Just because he didn’t get the class he wanted didn’t mean he could sit on his ass his entire life and cry about it.
“I can use this… I can use this class.” Johan closed his eyes, feeling the warm sunlight blanketing him.
However, he had no idea that this small farm of his would change the Hunter society forever.
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