Domestication: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure (Battle Mage Farmer Book 1), page 11
Once he arrived at the top of the mountain, John dropped to the ground, allowing his flame mask to vanish. He had spent considerably more time with the grimm at the quarry than he had anticipated, but if he hurried, he was confident he would be able to make it back to the farm before the morning sun dawned. He was incredibly excited to examine the metal chest and the flower, but a long time in this world had tempered his expectations.
The endless wars had turned all records of magic and the mages who used it to dust, and if any fragments had survived, they would have survived in a place like this, untouched by the flames of destruction. Just imagining what could have survived in a complete mage’s tower was enough to set his brain on fire, but taking a deep breath to calm his racing heart, John pushed away the thoughts that sprang unbidden to his mind and focused on returning to the farm.
CHAPTER 14
The sun had just started sending its golden rays spilling over the top of the mountains and down into the valley like warm syrup when John made it back to the farm. Putting the metal box down on the porch, he carried the stone tub over to the barn, where he stopped and stared. He had completely forgotten to check how wide the barn doors were, and it was clear from even a cursory glance that the granite tub was at least a few inches too wide to fit. Letting out a sigh, he carried it around to the back of the barn and placed it against the wall.
Saying hi to the bull who was practically hanging over the fence to try and get to him because of the mana leaking from his body, John took a moment to center himself, pulling all the residual mana that surrounded him into his body. Walking back to the house, he knocked on the door.
“Hey, it’s John. You can open up.”
The sound of bolts told him someone was standing right inside the door. With a creak, it opened an inch and Ben’s eye appeared. Seeing that it was John standing on the porch, Ben threw it open, his dagger still clutched in his hand. Smiling down at the young man, John patted him on the head, ruffling his hair.
“Good job, Ben.”
Walking into the house, John saw that the table was set and Ellie was just carrying a pot of porridge over from the stove.
“Ben, come sit. Breakfast is ready.”
Hesitating for a moment, John watched as Ben and Ellie sat down at the table. The morning sun was shining in the window and the smell of freshly baked bread mixed with the sweet scent of porridge. Outside, the farm was coming to life with the sounds John had been slowly coming to recognize as the sounds of ordinary, everyday life. For someone who had been locked in a constant fight for his life since the day he had arrived, there was something unnatural about life on the farm, but John had been doing his best to fit in.
Hearing Ben’s complaining voice and Ellie’s teasing response, John was struck by the utter incongruity of the situation. Before him was a perfect representation of what life should be for a human. Safety, shelter, warm food, warm feelings, beauty and peace. It was all there. Everything he had been struggling to find in this rotten world, at the table before him. There was even a place set for him.
Yet there was something in him that hesitated. A small voice that resisted his efforts to take his seat at the table. The memories of the past ten years rushed through his mind, stronger this time, flooding him with incoherent scenes of war, of flame, of death. It was only with supreme effort that he stood amid the torrent of memories, keeping his mind clear. As the memories roared through him, the feeling of incongruity deepened.
Having used mana all night, he was once again struck by just how frail and fragile everything was. A single exhale of the mana he was holding in his lungs would incinerate the entire building, turning Ellie and Ben to nothing but charred skeletons buried in the ash of the farmhouse. As he blinked, his vision seemed to alternate between the two scenes. In one, everything was warm and comfortable, but the other was a raging inferno where everything but John was consumed by magical flames.
Clenching his teeth, John shook his head, ruthlessly suppressing the scene and forcing his mind to focus on reality. As the apocalypse grew closer, he found himself struggling more and more to find his place in the world, and situations like the one he had just experienced grew more and more frequent. Despite his desperate attempts to keep everything together, he knew well the destruction he brought to the world, causing him to constantly distance himself from others. Now, however, he seemed to have inadvertently crossed the line he had tried so hard to keep.
They don’t deserve to have their lives ruined. They have no idea what kind of monster I am. If they knew they would run to the end of the world to hide.
A monster that stalked the world in the skin of a human—that was how John felt. About to turn away and go outside, John was stopped when Ellie suddenly looked up, her eyes meeting his. Looking up at him from the table, Ellie’s eyes held exactly the opposite of all the thoughts and feelings piling up inside of him. Her eyes showing nothing but happiness and trust, Ellie flashed him a sunny smile as she picked up his bowl and the porridge ladle.
“Mr. Sutton? Can I get you a bowl?”
Everything seemed to freeze for a moment as John soaked in the perfect, peaceful moment, all his senses full of the wonderful vibrancy of life. The doubts that bit at his thoughts, the agonizing memories that dragged him down, the confusion that clouded his thoughts, the fear of rejection and the pain in his heart—it all melted away like fog retreating from the sun. As the moment dragged on, John felt the burning mana in his lungs melt away, leaving nothing but peace behind. Taking what felt like the first breath of his life, John felt a smile creep up onto his lips.
“Call me John. Yes, yes please.”
[-1 Doom Points.]
[The apocalypse retreats.]
Sitting down at the table, John stared blankly at the notification that had popped up in his vision. Seeing him staring directly at her, Ellie matched his stare. A slight blush rose on her cheeks as the staring match continued, but she bravely kept her eyes on John’s until he suddenly blinked, seeming to only then realize he had been looking at her. Coughing to hide his embarrassment, he turned and glanced at Ben, who was blowing furiously on his spoon.
“Did you have any trouble last night?”
“Huh? No, though we did hear some wolves. Just a few howls in the distance.”
“Wolves?” John looked at Ellie, who nodded seriously.
“Yes. We may want to consider taking the bull inside if they start getting closer.”
Instead of that, maybe I should feed it more mana.
Nodding along with Ellie’s suggestion, John kept his real thoughts to himself. After finishing breakfast, John thanked Ellie for the meal and carried his axe to the woods while Ben and Ellie started milking. Finding a tree that was about two feet in diameter, he squared up and drew his axe back. Just as he was about to send mana flooding into his body, he paused, the experiences of the last twelve hours running through his mind.
He had often experienced gaining a Doom Point after using mana, but this was the first time he had lost a Doom Point from something other than a quest reward. Slowly lowering the axe, he looked at his hand, flexing his fingers. Even without using mana, he was unbelievably strong thanks to the [Mana Reinforcement] skill he had been forced to level, so there was no reason he would use mana for such a mundane task beside habit.
Is it the habit of using mana that brings the apocalypse closer?
Frowning, John let out his breath and shrugged. He had been trying to figure out the rules to this terrible game for years and doubted he would suddenly see through them now. Lifting his axe, he loosened his shoulders and let the blade swing down, planting it firmly in the tree trunk. Even without mana reinforcement, the new axe quickly chopped through the wood, allowing him to fell the tree in a bit under half an hour.
Once it had crashed to the ground, he trimmed the branches and then dragged it out of the woods, only realizing how long the log actually was when he saw Ben staring at him open-mouthed from the barn door. Coughing, John walked over and patted the young man on the shoulder.
“Ahem, that’s why you have to drink your milk.”
After figuring out where he wanted the tank to be positioned, John cut two holes in the barn wall, one at the bottom corner of the tank where the spigot came out, and the other near the top of the wall where they would pour the milk in. Neither Ben or Ellie had realized there was a gigantic stone tank outside, and when they walked out to see it, they were so surprised, they looked like they could fit eggs in their mouths.
“Wha… where… how… how did that get there?” Ben asked, completely dumbfounded.
Keeping the grin off his face, John crouched down and looked Ben squarely in the eye like he was going to tell him a great secret.
“Magic.”
Listening intently to hear the secret, Ben rolled his eyes, his expression morphing into the very picture of exasperation.
“Oh come on. Next thing you’re going to tell me is that the grimm carried it here from the mountains and installed it themselves.”
“Do you think they could do that?” John asked, stroking his chin like he was thinking.
“No, they’re way too dumb. Maybe the spectres could, but they’re probably not strong enough. It has to weigh at least a few tons. Seriously, how did it get here? Did you hire the bandits to help you? Is that why you didn’t want us to come out? Wait, but you said you weren’t here.”
Patting the confused boy on the head again, John began sawing the large tree apart. Making planks, he built a small roof extending from the barn to keep the tank out of the rain and a set of stairs on the inside of the barn so that it would be easy to climb up to pour the milk in. Once everything else was ready, he cut five thick sections of the widest part of the trunk and leveled them out.
Looking around to make sure Ben wasn’t watching, John grabbed the stone tank and moved it to the side. Setting the five thick logs in place, he picked up the tank again and fit it into place. Stepping back, he looked at it carefully, checking to make sure everything fit as he had hoped. Realizing he had bumped one of the legs out of position, he took the tank down and reset the piece of the trunk back into place, pressing it down into the ground to match with the others. Putting the tank back on, he nodded to himself and brushed his hands together as he turned around and froze, seeing Ellie standing at the corner of the barn, staring at him wide-eyed.
“Haha, Ellie. Hey, how’s it going? This is our new tank. It’s a good bit bigger than the other one, so we shouldn’t have too much trouble storing the milk, you know?”
Even though it was obvious Ellie was brimming with questions from the way she looked back and forth between him and the gigantic stone tank, she only nodded.
“That looks really nice. Is it one piece of stone?”
“Hm? Oh, yeah. It’s all one piece. Come here, I’ll show you inside. There’s a spot for a spigot inside the barn. Before we use it, we’ll need to get one from Gerret’s shop, and I was thinking of getting a wire filter from him too that we can put at the top where we pour the milk in. This’ll make it easier if we’re making cheese because you can control the quantity exactly. I’m going to be working on training the bull for the next few days, but I thought I could make a cheese barn too. Ha, I might not know much about farming, but heavy lifting is something I can do.”
Taken aback, Ellie looked at John, unsure how to respond to his enthusiasm. She had never met someone who spoke so casually about things like building barns and starting businesses while not seeming to know which end of a hoe went into the ground. Not noticing her conflicted thoughts, John gestured for her to follow him to the plot of ground he had picked for the new cheese barn.
“If we put it here, you’ll have easy access from the barn, so moving milk will be easy, though I’d really like to build a cart on a guided rail for that. That way, you just have to put the milk into the containers and let gravity move it into the cheese barn. You can swap the full containers for empty ones and then it’ll be light enough to pull back up to the milking barn.”
Lost in his ideas for how to streamline the farm’s cheese production, John didn’t notice that Ben had come up and was standing nearby, a strange look on his face.
“Then, once you have the milk here, we’ll have metal tubs and a fire for cooking it here, and then a table here where we can keep the cheesecloth and pots. Once you flip each pot into the cheese cloth, we can pat it and press it here. Do you think cheese wheels are better? Or do we want bricks? I like bricks because they slice better, plus we can make them larger and cut them down for resale, but people seem to be more used to wheels. Anyway, we’ll build a rack for hanging and a shelf for aging.
“Do people eat aged cheese? I feel like aged cheese is great, but honestly, I don’t really remember. It’s been at least six years since I had any aged cheese. I don’t remember what it tastes like at all. Oh, and here we can set up a wrapping station for packaging when it’s done. We can let these tables do double duty as butter tables and even put a triple churner here. Have you ever seen those? We’ll need to get the pieces from Gerret’s shop. Hmm, I wonder if we should build a forge here. It seems like we’re going to need it quite a bit. Oh, I need nails too.”
Encouraged by Ellie, Ben spoke up hesitantly, interrupting John’s stream-of-conscious mumbling.
“Um, Mr. Sutton?”
“Huh? Oh, hey, Ben. What do you need?”
“Um, I think there’s something wrong with the bull.”
CHAPTER 15
Hurrying over to the pasture, John and Ellie saw what had caused Ben to be so nervous. The bull was lying on its back in the middle of the pasture, its front legs sticking up in the air and its head twisted to one side. Eyes narrowing, John jumped over the fence and walked over to the bull. As soon as he’d seen it lying down, he’d used mana to examine its body but hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. As he approached, the bull’s large eye blinked at him, and then, with some effort, it twisted its head to the side and let out a deep moo. Giving him what it obviously thought was a sorrowful look, the bull opened its mouth and let its tongue hang out to the side, clearly pretending to be suffering.
“It started to do this when I was walking by, Mr. Sutton. It was fine earlier, but then when I carried the harness over, it pretended to fall over and started sticking its tongue out. I… I think it’s playing at being sick?”
Neither Ellie nor her brother had ever seen anything like this, but John, having more experience with creatures that had ingested pure mana, had a better idea what was going on. Letting out a sigh, he gestured for the others to leave the pasture.
“I’ll deal with this. This stupid cow is messing around.”
As though offended at being called a cow, the bull let out another moo, this one tinged with some anger.
“I’m going to be working on plowing for the afternoon, but I’ll start the cheese shed once I’m done.”
“That’s fine, we have some work to do in the garden,” Ellie said, pulling Ben away. “Tell me if you need one of us to pull the lead.”
“Alright, thanks.”
Waiting until the siblings were far enough away that they wouldn’t notice what he was doing, John exuded a little bit of mana from his palm and reached out, holding it in front of the bull’s nose. Eyes snapping open, the bull tried to push its head up from the ground to lick John’s palm. Before its tongue could reach the treat, it felt a steel grip grab its horn, locking it in place. Leaning down, John stared at the bull, his eyes cold.
“Listen. I know you don’t understand language, but if you want to avoid getting turned into prime rib, you better understand this. If you want to eat, you work. If you want mana, you work extra hard. Now get up, get into that harness, and plow a straight line. Otherwise, we’re having steak tonight.”
Though he knew it was still too dumb to understand his words, the bull appeared to understand when John pointed at the harness and then offered his palm to it. As soon as he let go of its horn, the bull shot up and practically pranced over to the fence where the harness had been hung up. Lifting it from the fence with its horn, it galloped back to John and put it in his hands before standing in front of him expectantly. Holding the harness, John stared at the bull and then back down at the harness, only snapping out of his daze when the bull nudged him gently in the chest.
There is no way. It could not have gotten that smart from just a few fragments of mana. Plus, what is with the clear increase in its intelligence in just one day?
Unsure what to make of the bull, John shook his head and put the harness on, leading it out to the field. After connecting the plow behind it, John got two large sticks from the forest and a long length of twine from the barn. Sticking the two sticks into the ground, he ran the length of twine between them, creating a long guide. With his line set, he positioned himself a few feet over and pushed the plow into the ground.
Over by the house, he could see Ellie and Ben working in the garden, clearing out weeds and picking some of the ripe vegetables. Even as he watched, Ellie straightened up and shaded her eyes to look out at the field. Seeing him, she waved and got back to work.
“She’s a hard worker. We should get started as well. I don’t know why I’m talking to you, but if you understand, you need to pull the plow. If you do, I’ll give you some mana, alright?”
Staring at him dumbly, the bull let out a moo as if it understood his words, but when he flicked the reins, it just got confused and tried to turn around again, almost getting tangled up in the trace. With a sigh, John pulled it straight and thought for a moment.
The problem is that it knows I have the mana, but I’m behind it, so it’s constantly trying to turn around. I need a good way to attract it to the end of the line.
