In the Agni clan’s warehouse, which was behind the Clan building. Adrian looked over the assembly of the potion-bottling machine with the clan’s technicians.

  As the technicians gave their thumbs up after checking the machine’s condition and functions a few more times, Adrian included it all in the report he wrote nearby.

  Watching them disassemble the machine and prep it for delivery, Adrian entered the clan building through the corridor that connected it with the warehouse. He had already placed two orders for new Potion bottling machines, one for the Agni clan and another for Johan.

  There was the magik-powered chainsaw matter, too, but that’ll take a little longer.

  Passing by hurried hunters on their way to scheduled raids and head-scratching office workers tussling with numbers and reports, Adrian entered the third Elevator in the middle of the lobby.

  As he fed his Hunter ID in the slot below floor number 97, the red metal doors closed. The floors passed by in a blink. A minute later, the door opened into the Clan master’s office.

  Adrian took his ID back and stepped on the crimson carpet. He had come to drop by the expense report and other details while Lucas was away for a business meeting.

  However, in the middle of expensive furniture and an absurd mix of Victorian and modern art, Lucas sat behind his wide oak desk, munching on some chips. Adrian could see the bright colors reflected in his pupils.

  “You came back.” He pressed Windows + D on the flashy keyboard and took out his earphones, acting like he was in the middle of very serious work.

  I still hear that bright BGM, you know? He was glad Lucas had gotten more relaxed lately, but watching anime in the middle of the day?

  As he stepped closer, Lucas’s face scrunched up when he noticed the crate of vegetables. Johan had given Adrian a second crate, which he dropped off at the affiliated hospital on his way here.

  If he had both, this guy might’ve had a stroke by now.

  “Why are you carrying that?” Lucas shielded himself behind the sweet and chilli chips bag like warding off Satan.

  Well, he only ate lettuce, and that too only in Korean barbeques.

  “I have some use for it.” Adrian placed the crate near the desk, much to Lucas’s disgust, and continued. “Why haven’t you gone to the meeting?”

  Lucas was to meet the Clan Master of the Dragon Sword Clan, Clariant Dawn.

  Dragon Sword Clan was the strongest clan of the four big clans and the oldest clan in the country, predating even the concept of Hunter clans.

  The original plan was to talk with the other two clans, the Vanguard Clan and Golden Night Clan, but their clan masters were out of the country. Participating in the year-end auction held in the Arabian Coalition. So, Lucas decided to get the Dragon Sword Clan on their side first.

  “Postponed, he asked for three days.” Lucas yawned.

  Did he do something? Clariant and Lucas didn’t mix well after all, even if their positions were the same.

  “I didn’t do anything, ok?” The fact that he got defensive made it all the more suspicious. Under his gaze, Lucas only flipped his bright phone screen with a scrunched-up nose. “Jeez, just take a look at this.”

  Adrian read the simple chat log.

  Lucas had asked for a meeting. Clariant agreed when he heard it was about the golden potions. But today, at 5 in the morning, he said the meeting had to be delayed. Lucas didn’t ask too much and said ok.

  That was all.

  “With a Clan Master this fickle, I really fear for the Dragon Sword Clan.” Lucas clicked his tongue a few times.

  Clariant valued time and keeping his promises; for him to cancel a meeting with another Clan master, it was either a problem inside the clan or with Clariant himself.

  Must be his stomach again. Adrian could only shake his head as Lucas continued to vent.

  Clariant’s class enhanced his five senses, making them 100 times sharper than the average S-Rankers.

  Hunters, on average, had senses far sharper than those of normal people. Like being able to tell what spices were used in a soup after trying a single drop, or hearing footsteps from across a few streets away.

  This became even stronger in S-Ranks; they could feel the eyes of others, hear someone’s words or identify their footsteps a few blocks over, see kilometres away without squinting, etc.

  However, it did come with downsides. Every gaze pricked the skin. A normal conversation sounded like the person had pressed a megaphone to their ear. Even Adrian, as an A-Ranker, had trouble sleeping sometimes.

  But the worst part about this was the sense of taste.

  If good taste got amplified, so did the bad ones. And Hunters had to consume shitty potions on the regular, especially if they were higher in rank.

  The best healing potion of Mage Tower, it was enough to make even Adrian consider hurling. It was even worse for Lucas; he had refused to use potions altogether, aside from emergencies.

  Now, if he took that bad experience and multiplied it by 100, that was the situation Clariant Dawn lived through on the regular, not just with his taste, but hearing, sight, and smell too.

  “He should really get his act together; the guy’s pushing forty. He almost has grandunc status now.” Lucas continued to eat the chips, with no sense of remorse. “Must suck to suck.”

  Clariant hadn’t told Lucas about it for this very reason.

  Adrian looked at him, and at the crate of carrots and cherry tomatoes by the desk.

  He placed ten carrots and twenty cherry tomatoes in a separate box and handed it to Lucas.

  “Take this with you when you go tomorrow,” Adrian added. “These are vegetables Johan gave me.”

  “Why am I just finding out?” Lucas looked between the vegetables and Adrian.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “If you had looked at the report I left there…” He pointed at the mountain of black files on the desk adjacent to Lucas, the ones very similar to the one in his hand, “…you would’ve known.”

  “…I’ll go store these in my room so I don’t forget about them.” Seeing him run away, Adrain could only shake his head.

  Dropping another file on the ever-increasing tower, Adrian left the clan building in his car. With the vegetable crate in the passenger seat, he rolled in front of the neighbourhood’s double iron gates.

  This area was right beside the new clan building, so it didn’t take long to reach here. The camera at the gates read his number plate as the gates slid into the towering white walls on their own. Driving carefully on the smooth street, he passed by many identical villas and eventually reached his own in the northern area.

  His bank account still wept whenever he saw this three-story villa with a garden and swimming pool, but he pulled himself together by watching the skyrocketing rates. Leaving his car in the driveway, he entered the house through the single, floor-to-ceiling, burgundy door.

  Seema napped on the living room sofa; her toys were scattered in front of a muted TV. He tiptoed his way to the kitchen and found his wife.

  Her curly brown hair swayed alongside her as she hummed while cooking dinner.

  “I thought you’d take much longer to return?” Rishika said as he placed the crate on the kitchen island.

  It was about 5 in the evening; Adrian would’ve arrived late if Lucas wasn’t in the office. Shaking his head, he looked back at his wife's chubby face, at least that’s how she described it these days.

  She used to be a lot slimmer, and her clothes were the latest trendy ones that youngsters wore. However, she only worn oversized gowns since her pregnancy.

  No matter how many times Adrian had said she shouldn’t be so conscious of the weight gain, it seemed that the gazes and passing comments of others had affected her.

  During the funeral of the old man and Selena, there was even an article about her talking about her glow down or something.

  I really should sue that reporter after all. Rishika had held him back, so he could only shake his head when she doubled down on extreme diets from the next day.

  “There are a lot this time, and every single one of them looks so fresh.” Her face radiated alongside the bright smile as she inspected the new cherry tomatoes.

  Truthfully, Rishika’s weight gain was a result of her class rather than a lack of restraint. Although a non-combatant, her class burned a dozen times more calories than normal hunters of her rank. To compensate, she had developed a habit of eating much more food; at one point, she ate even more than him. It was a fond memory.

  But since becoming a housewife, she hadn’t had the chance to use her class much, but her body had gotten used to the previous eating habits.

  When she suddenly dropped her daily calorie intake, her body started to store everything, thinking that food had become scarce. Dieting only made things worse for her as the hunger was unbearable, and her body doubled down on storing whatever little she ate while burning muscle for energy, and if she gave in, it would only result in more weight gain.

  She didn’t want it to affect Seema’s nutrition, so she started to eat properly even if it meant gaining weight. After Seema stopped drinking breast milk, they were stuck in a weird loop where she kept trying to lose the weight, only for the body to stop her, until he heard from Cara.

  “I am stuffed.” Rishika plopped down next to him on the couch after tucking Seema into the bedroom above, after they finished dinner.

  The hour hand had just crossed ten, she had been eating 5 cherry tomatoes each hour while jotting down the weight obsessively. According to her, the cherry tomatoes, although barely anything in calories, worked very well.

  It seemed that the magik in them turned into heat and targeted the fat, breaking that down gave her energy, and satiation seemed to be tricking her body.

  “Any news from the hospital?” She turned to him, all giddy for once.

  “This just came in.” He handed her the tablet pc in his hand. The Department head of Internal Medicine at the hospital seemed over the moon, too.

  Although they hadn’t run the tests on many people, Adrian had them focus on people with low fat percentages first. The result was rather straightforward and fast.

  “So, it doesn’t burn fat if the body’s fat percentage is 20%. Instead, it gives a boost in energy. This is fascinating.” She muttered, already lost in her own world, swiping through the 50-page-long report.

  The doctors were now studying which fat the vegetables targeted and seemed interested in this from a scientific angle as well. If they could understand more about the capabilities of these vegetables, they could help people suffering from diseases that cause abnormal weight gain.

  Still, to the average person, even five cherry tomatoes was too filling according to the report. The most they could eat was three without causing an imbalance in nutrients.

  15 g of fat gone every hour, although small, could snowball with time. Even more so when the vegetables themselves had half the calories of their normal counterparts.

  With a careful diet, moderate exercise, and these vegetables, weight loss would become easier and more attainable. That was if they could enter the market.

  The stores were already stocked with a dozen miracle medicines that claimed to help in losing weight and whatnot, bringing in magik vegetables would also cause a lot of pushback from the giants of this industry.

  Johan seemed more insistent on targeting the normal housewives in the rich areas that already had access and had tried dozens of such treatments. When Adrian told this to his wife, she broke into a cheerful giggle.

  “Seems he isn’t as na?ve as you think he is.” Shaking her head, she stood up, stretching her arms. “But if I approach them now, it wouldn’t work at all.”

  “But we already have enough data.” Adrian tilted his head.

  “The data means nothing, dear, in the women’s world, visual results carry more weight.” She winked at him, poking at her cheek. “When they see how much I change in three weeks, they’ll come crawling over to know the reason on their own.”

  “Till then, you can help and set up other things.”

  “I see.” Adrian only nodded. Even after being married for years, he had no idea how women functioned.

  Still, there was no need to worry; he was too happy to see his wife having enough energy for once. That’s all that mattered.

  I’ll properly thank him when we meet next. Adrian contacted the team watching the perimeter around the Morgan Hunter Mart.

  He hoped Johan, who made this all possible, could sleep without worries, too.

  ***

  Johan’s day had been rather simple aside from Morgan’s shenanigans, but something changed after midnight hit.

  After he cleaned up the mess left behind by his boss, Johan couldn’t sleep. So, he entered the Tower and started to go over all the recorded information he had about the things he had grown so far.

  The plan of climbing the rank ladder had worked well with potatoes, carrots, and cherry tomatoes. Although it did take him quite a lot of hard work and help from the adorable rabbits, now peeking over each of his shoulders, Johan wanted to see which item he should target next.

  He had to cross out the Golden Pear and Nefel’s Blessing. The sanctuary could barely fit one grown tree in it, and the drop rate wasn’t high considering that the trees only produced one fruit a day.

  So, depending on his luck, it could go from one day to a little under three years before he could get a rank D Golden Pear. Johan could only trust his luck, but he sort of didn’t want to.

  A person had limited luck; he hoped his would kick in when his life was in danger. Though the thought of that did send shivers down his spine.

  “Back to work, don’t let the bad thoughts distract you.” Slapping the negativeness out of his mind, much to the confusion of Eunally and Nunally, he looked at the dozen or so notebooks before him. Good thing he had created separate ones for each crop.

  He had already gotten a good stock of weight-loss vegetables for now. The two rabbits had gotten the farming cycle down. The golden pear saplings still needed some more time before he could plant them, and the Nefel’s blessing seeds would need a week to get ready.

  That made him look at the last two items on his farm, Sherry leaves and Ruby berries. He hadn’t planted Ruby berries himself, as they didn’t come into much use. Even when he pushed himself and needed the vitality potions, he had enough of them to use freely.

  Sherry leaves, however, were an item he had started to grow a lot of recently. Since a single plant could have as many as 50 on one plant in a single harvest. He had 20 of them under one Sanctuary.

  In every cycle, he should hit the drop rate.

  “Let’s get to grinding then.” Affected by Johan’s high morale, Eunally and Nunally cooed, jumping off his shoulders.

  It was time to start a new cycle to reach Rank C on the item that might be the most useful to him going forward.

  Whether one was a Combat Hunter or a Non-combatant Hunter, everyone relied on magik at the end of the day!

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