Book 3: Chapter 22: Two Months Later...

    Two Months Later...

    Arthur awoke, groggy and disoriented. Something felt wrong. Why was he sitting slumped in this chair? And what was that awful smell?

    "Are you awake now?" Flossy asked.

    Arthur blinked, the world snapping back into focus. A smell as sharp as dragon urine made him recoil. As he did, he realized that the older woman was standing right in front of him, holding something under his nose. A small vial. Smelling salts?

    "What happened?" he muttered

    "You had a seizure," she replied matter-of-factly.

    What? Arthur felt for his internal healing card. Sure enough, he found it at work steadily drawing on his mana.

    Then, as if a switch had been flipped, his memory of the last few minutes returned. He remembered eating an off-colored peach that, surprisingly, didn''t taste too horrible. At least, until he had lost control of his limbs.

    "I had a bad reaction," he said, his voice gaining strength. He straightened up and looked around, rolling his shoulders. His muscles felt as if he had just finished an intense workout. "What went wrong? I thought you said you tested the peach for poison."

    Flossy was always meticulous about such things, and it was one of the reasons Arthur trusted her. Well, to a point.

    Flossy shrugged and turned back to scribble frantically in a notebook. "We did, but sometimes unexpected reactions happen." She cast him a dry look. "That is why we have testers."

    Arthur preferred when his job yielded resistances rather than seizures. The past couple of months had been quite fruitful in that regard. Especially last week, when a strange mix of salts and almond flakes had granted him a Resistance to drowning in salt water. He hadn''t tested it out yet, but...

    "You owe me double pay," he said, dryly.

    "Do I?" Flossy blinked eyes made extraordinarily large by glasses.

    "Yes, I want hazard pay. You hired me to quantify the results, not to act as a poison tester.”

    Arthur found it easier to be blunt with her. Otherwise, she tended to completely miss nuances in conversation.

    Flossy thought hard, then nodded. "Then yes, double pay today."

    This meant Arthur was leaving with two Rare card shards for today. Brixaby would be happy about that.

    He leaned back in the chair and let the healing card finish its work.

    Flossy''s crazy experiments never took up his whole day and left Arthur plenty of time to train. He left her laboratory cave a few minutes later, healed of any lingering effects from the seizure and wealthier by two Rare shards, and made his way down the twisting hallways.

    Bit by bit, he was figuring out the layout of the confusing Mesa Free Hive. The trick, it seemed, was to stop trying to make it make sense.

    Despite the fact his card had brought him pain for years, Taza loved being a farmer. He was happy to teach Arthur what he knew.

    Arthur had shot up to level 15 in Farming in less than a week, and had leveled several side skills such as Herb Identification to 11, as well as made headway into Trimming, Pruning, and Harvesting.

    He thought he might be on the verge of a farming class, soon.

    This was all useful, though not vital in the upcoming fight against the Mind Singer. That was the reason Arthur was here today.

    “Well,” Taza said with a roll of his eyes at Arthur’s antics. “Let’s get to work.”

    Right now, they were working on a new variety of corn that would hopefully provide a larger yield at about eighty percent of the time it took other types. It wasn''t the most exciting thing, but Arthur couldn’t complain if it kept people from starving.

    They worked down the rows: Arthur identifying and pulling weeds, which grew rapidly in dragon soil. They both worked quickly: Taza because of his experience, and Arthur because of his skills.

    After about an hour, Taza thanked Arthur and paid him a simple Common shard. It was very low pay for the week. But again, that wasn’t why he was here.

    "I''ll finish up here," Arthur said, pointing to the hoe and other tools. That was part of his job, too.

    Taza thanked him and left for one of his other projects. But before he did, he used a bit of his magic to make the plants grow overnight.

    New Counterfeit Spell obtained: Rapid Plant Growth

    Time remaining: 59 minutes, 59 seconds.

    Arthur hid his smile.

    Once Taza was out of sight, he walked across the length of the space to an orchard set in the back. Among peaches, cherry trees, and almonds stood a single apple tree. It was bigger than the rest, and if someone looked closely, they would see a purple sheen to the bark.

    Arthur looked over his shoulder to make sure Taza hadn''t come back. Then he concentrated on his newly copied ‘Rapid Plant Growth’ spell and used it on the tree.

    The apple tree seemed to sigh like it was relieved. The leaves turned toward Arthur. Then, right before his eyes, purple flowers bloomed all over – literally, up and down the trunk as well as the branches. This wasn''t how normal apple flowers bloomed, but this wasn''t a normal tree.

    As Arthur kept feeding it power, the flowers withered, seemed to collapse in on themselves, and were replaced by the green buds of growing apples. Those grew and deepened to a dark purple as they ripened. In less than a minute, right when Arthur was almost out of mana, he had a whole harvest of purple apples that blocked psychic powers.

    Arthur started picking these apples, putting them one by one in his Personal Space. He had barrels of them now. Each one was an arrow in the quiver of tricks he planned to use against the Mind Singer.

    After he finished that job, he cleaned up the last of the rows of corn like he promised Taza.

    Then, he made the long climb down. His next stop was to find Brixaby.

    With some luck, his little dragon would be done with his crafting job, too. It was payday for both of them, which meant more Rare shards. If they were really lucky, they’d have enough for a brand-new Rare card.