One Moo'r Plow

Harvest was upon us. And I was woefully unprepared. This I realized as I stood and stretched come morning, one hand rubbed across my eyes in a futile attempt to dispel sleep’s hold.

There was some innate sense that told me the crops were ready, before I even need look upon them. Something tied to the Class I possessed produced a vague..feeling deep within. Much as I appreciated such boons from this world’s system, I was not reliant on it’s input alone. Physical examination confirmed that yes, the fields were ripe to be reaped. And wether I liked it or not, now was the time.

Acres stretched before me, filled with oats and barley to be taken off and processed until it could be fed to the cows and in turn fuel their production of milk. Ishila being here to help had been my original plan for all this, but such designs did not hold up to the world’s weight as it moved around me.

Artyom rode atop Gol as the two made their way over to my disgruntled form.

Early as the time was, with dawn barely having broken above the horizon, there was work to do aplenty. One of the many tools I had commissioned from the blacksmith in Hullbretch was, to put it bluntly, a massive scythe. In human hands, it would have been ludicrously large. Overkill would have been an accurate descriptor.

Not in mine. In fact, it was a tad small, but a few test swings showed it would do. The felinid and Gol in tow, I lumbered over to the fields and instinctively groaned as I looked out over the fields. With the tools that I possessed, and unaided by Skills or Classes, the average human could reap roughy an acre on a good day.

I intended to do it all. Grasped by hilt and handle, the scythe traveled in it’s half-moon path, honed blade shearing through ripened stalks without resistance. I had no frame of reference to compare it to, but would have been willing to wager that the edge’s sharpness was the result of the blacksmith’s own system-fueled skill.

Iron whirled, oats fell and Artyom moved at a mad pace. I cut, then stopped for a moment to watch as he energetically bundled the falled oats together into stocks. With a grunt, he slid a stalk around the pile formed and tied it together. Quick and knowledgeable. But despite that, my tremendous form, strength and relentless rhythm soon left him in the proverbial dust.

Hard worker though he was, the felinid was only a single person, and slower than a human. It was not in my nature to leave another to work alone, I found. With a sizeable lead formed, I rested the scythe and turned back to help him catch up. My far larger fingers proved clumsy when I attempted to do the same bindings as him.

So the natural conclusion was that I would stack the stocks, and leave him to bind them. Gol lazed about at the field’s edge, perhaps thinking of yet another slow day in which he needn’t do anything. I had other plans. With a yawn, he followedmy whistle and beckon, trudging through the dirt and sniffing at freshly reaped stubble. A sack of thin ropes deposited nearby, I watched as Artyom tied several bundled stocks together, sizing up Gol’s bulk to adjust the difference.

“Ready for some exercise?” I posed the non-question while rubbing Gol’s forehead carapace. In truth, his readiness made little difference. The task would be done.

Without so much as a grunt of exertion, I lifted the bundled mass and dropped them upon Gol’s back. While I typically they would have just been left and propped up for a few days to dry, my need to get the soil growing something again meant that I didn’t have that time to wait for them.

With instructions to take them back to the house and lay them out in the sun, Artyom waved from atop Gol’s back and the duo lumbered off, stocks of oats hanging from either side. Though I sincerely doubted that he felt the burden at all, there was still some protest, although quickly quenched by Artyom’s iron paw.

With long, wide strokes, I cut my way around the field’s borders. It was with caution that I now approached the spots where my monster plants had been sown. There were a concerning amount of skeletons around the cohabitat of the biterpods and spore-puffers, most of which seemed like pests and other small rodents. But not all.

With a sigh, I watched the brownish waves of oats fall as my scythe passed beneath their crowns. Careful scoops brought the stacks of grain far away from the eager teeth that hid among the large vines. Up to my waist now, these plants had been well-fed, and hungered for more. I had no doubt that if Artyom tried to bundle up stocks in their presence, they would not hesitate at the free meal.

And yet, dangerous as they were, I intended to grow more.

A section of the ground closed before me, green fangs retracted back into the soil as the snake-like flytrap fled my presence. Always lurking within the same small area, I had come to realize it was somewhat of a coward. But that only meant I could place my hooves without the worry of stepping right into its mouth.

A cold chill raced up my form and my scythe halted mid-swing. Brown grain fell away to reveal the blade that rested against the squat, colorless tree that had been planted here, drained corpses of insects and rodents hanging from sickly branches. Dubbed the Hanging Tree, I still had little idea as to what use I could extract from it, and now, with it hidden amongst the crop, I had nearly mowed it down.

Slowly, carefully, I withdrew the blade and winced at the gash it has left in the supple, fleshy bark. It already looked fragile enough as was to the eye, like it might wither and die on command. Didn’t need me to speed along that process.

A trail of labour left in my wake, I continued to work my way around the field, snout wrinkled up as I approached the pepper-like acid plants. The sickly sweet smell barely covered up the burnt stench of flesh and carapaces anymore. Despite posing the highest danger, these were perhaps the easiest plants to work around, given that they only squirted upon touch.

With that in mind, I still directed Artyom to be especially careful. Would It be that I could follow my instructions, however..

The outside swathe cleared, I returned to help my tired felinid bundle and load stocks onto Gol’s broad back. Once his complaining ceased and a properly large load hung from either side, I waved him off with a grin and turned to cut across still standing oats to where my scythe rested.

Something round and jagged struck me, I realized. I was staggered back, hit with all the force of a speeding truck. My eyes widened and I looked down to see the detonated burstball slide down my skin, having physically struck me harder than anything I’d experienced before.

There was pain, for no surprise was truly complete in its absence. Writhing, dull agony accompanied by the knowledge that if Gol or Artyom had been in my place, they would resemble a stain across the field.

This has gone far enough. I stomped back towards the house, shoulder clutched in pain, yelling at Gol and Artyom to stay clear. Blinking in the faint hope that nothing was broken, I wrenched open the door to the old house, realized I had the wrong place and headed to the storage shed. Fat bags of spores were exactly what I was looking for.

One hand waved off the duo’s concerned looks, the other carried several bags of spores as I returned to the fields. The bomb-burst had detected me from outside what I knew its usual range to be, and was capable of inflicting harm on me. I did not think on what it could do to the others, nor had any particular want to.

Ironhide was called, the sensation of my skin becoming hard a faint thing as I stomped through the dirt. I stepped past where I had been struck moments earlier and another sphere slammed into my skin. This time, barely felt. Another exploded violently from its nest and grazed my skull. A blow that would have caved the head of another. Another came, and more followed. By the time I was close, the entire side of the metallic plant that faced me was bare, its fury expanded at me in futile impotency.

With a grunt, I dumped the entire bag onto the largest of the metallic spheres and stepped back, my own breath tightly held. It squirmed, and the attached metal sphere began to vibrate with alarming intensity. Only to fall short of the violent dreams of flight and still themselves as the powder took hold.

Another sack held upon, I twisted off those spheres that remained and dumped them in amongst even more powder. The sphere stripped bare, I contemplated its destruction. It was quite obviously worth something. There were those who would no doubt pay heavy coin for its capability to simply destroy. Yet was the profit worth the lives of one of those close to me?

I had initially thought that if I kept the quivering spheres stripped at a certain stage, it could be contained. But now, it showed that its range was expanding, and I had failed to notice up until a situation that would have killed another. Suppose Ishila had been here and taken the same shortcut as me? That would have been a brutal mockery, to survive the dungeon only to have her life cut short by a random plant.

Decision made, I reached down, grasped the metallic ball with both hands, and ripped it free. A mass of roots writhed beneath the surface, the dome above home to life beneath. A pang passed through me to destroy what I had cultivated for so long now, but my mind was set.

I moved from one to the next, stripping off the spontaneous burst-bombs and heaving their growth pod from the soil. Only when they had all been uprooted did I rest, and then only for a moment. Some things were just too dangerous to let live, and I was not a fool content to play too close to the fire and then wail why when it burned. Better to extinguish it early than suffer more grief.

Bags that bulged with drowsy occupants in hand, I returned to the house, told the duo that it was safe to continue harvesting and stowed the remnants of the burst-bombs away. A sore shoulder reminding me as to what had happened, I too returned to the scythe, far warier than I had been before.

Despiste, no perhaps in spite of my alert state, there occurred no other notable events throughout the day. With quick breaks were taken to eat, and a few more to rest and refuel with the knowledge that Artyom could not keep pace with my relentless nature. Both too soon and after far too long, evening’s end approached, and I could not keep pace any longer. If I had perhaps pushed, then yes, I could have cleared the entire field by myself in this single day, but Artyom was not some machine that could keep up forever, and Gol had begun to whine hours ago.

They, I sent off to eat and rest while my own work continued, only elsewhere. I had slept in the old house for the last time, I vowed. The exterior of my new lodge was completed, and now the inside beckoned to be attended. By lantern light, I commenced the great task of moving my goods and furniture from one to the other. A quite literal uphill struggle that at several points made me wonder why I had chosen to build it atop a hill.

Only once my bed, table, tools, weapons, coin, armor and experiment jars had been carried across did I decide it was enough for the night. The most important things settled, I too found rest beneath the tree that had come to be my evening retreat and let myself sup on what food Artyom had prepared.

A long day lay behind us, and tomorrow only promised more of the same.

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