“Despite how they look, a portion will still bear fruit without issue,” she explained.
Maybe the system’s a bit loose on deciding what crops will give yields and what won’t. Poor conditions just lower the probability.
Regardless, my impression of the fields was that they were a mess. It was like I was looking at the difference in what it meant to rear a field in a game and in real life. And not in a good way.
Come to think of it, there are diseases that don’t break out in real life outside of certain climates, locations, and circumstances, but they can happen in games without all of that.
I pulled up a cabbage to check... Wilted.
“Clubroot.”
Next, the tomatoes... I severed a withered stem... Oozing.
“Bacterial wilt.”
“You know your stuff,” said Emoji.
“This might be a stupid question, but...is farming actually considered main content in Dimension Wave? I’m feeling a huge gap from how they treat fishing.”
The farming system was so complex that I was beginning to grow anxious. The more I looked at it, the more fishing seemed like a sub content minigame. Honestly. Crop diseases? Soil pathogens? Why’d they have to put it all in? This was edging into actual farming sim territory.
“Is that how it is?” Emoji innocently asked back.
“Rather...why are all the fields wiped out? Low skill level?”
“I don’t quite know myself. I plant, they grow. But they all end up dying in the end. It was all going well at first, you know. No, let’s stick to the present.”
I was beginning to understand why my sister dragged me in... I was the guy who was most likely to know about farming.
That in itself wasn’t an issue, but...
“Seriously... I have to help out and hang with a guild that sees me as an enemy.”
I’d have to give up fishing for a while to clean up someone else’s mess.
“Relax,” said my sister. “We’re not demons or anything.”
“Aye.” Emoji nodded.
What’s that supposed to mean?
I mean, yeah, my sister does usually feel like a demon. Not that I can say that aloud.
“They are not here anymore,” said Emoji.
“Huh? Didn’t you say you summoned them?”
“They suddenly vanished one day.”
She went into the details.
As days passed in that tense, fractured atmosphere with farming creeping along...everyone tried to keep things together. But as the last Dimension Wave broke out, they were able to see the notice from the desert.
Emoji’s guildmates snapped again, railing at her for summoning them and dooming them to skip the event. She admitted that even her own spirit broke under their berating.
Before long, they were hurling abuse at one another day after day.
Even from a bare-bones outline of events, it sounded crushing.
“There was nothing I could do... This is a game where action means nothing when words fall on deaf ears. It’s better than having a bloodbath, I suppose. Since we can’t harm one another. But even so, it was starting to become unbearable.”
Was that...generosity on the system’s part?
Getting stabbed and beaten was still getting stabbed and beaten. It was only the system rendering the blows harmless.
She was pretty much saying they’d started swinging weapons at her.
She said her spirit gave out at that point, but maybe she had nerves of steel if she lasted that long in the first place.
“Then, the very next day, they were all gone. I should have been able to reach them through chat if they were in the settlement, but I can’t connect. It simply says, ‘Error. This fool is in an area without reception.’”
Yeah...I’d heard a similar canned message plenty of times myself.
Were they able to escape the desert somehow? It felt more like they were deemed unfit for the development. I didn’t know how the call was made, but maybe the devs or the system had a part.
“Right after that, my first Bunowny, the one in the Santa Hat, asked, ‘Is there anyone you want to see, bun?’ And not just once—he asked again and again. This time, I was careful in who I summoned.”
“And that led you to calling my sister...and me?”
“Exactly,” said Kanade. “And a few others too—you’ll recognize some of them. Bunowny was considerate enough to wait until the wave was over, and this time Lahal was choosy about who she brought. There were no fights this time.”
I guess this is a fail-safe in case the development fails. The problem players get released...and maybe that’s for the best. That’s a relief.
“But when we called for you, Santa Hat Bunowny reacted differently.”
“Hmm... How so?”
“He said, ‘If you meet that person, you might not be able to meet other people you want to meet, bun. Do you still want to meet them, bun?’”
By the sound of it, that was a warning that summoning me would reduce the total number of people she could call over. Maybe I had a higher “cost” than other people.
I was the island lord, after all...or maybe it was because of my Unique Skill.
“Sounds like calling me cost more than the other players. You sure you made the right choice?”
“Don’t worry about it. We took your skills into consideration.”
I guess manpower won’t be an issue if I can summon my Pekkles.
“Still, I’d have preferred it if you summoned Shouko with me.”
Otherwise, Shouko’s the type to get anxious...
After all, I’d be cut off from everyone else during a development event.
“There’s an order to these things,” Kanade insisted. “If we want to do it properly, it would be you first, then Tsumugi, and then Shouko, right?”
“Well, if we’re going off your friend list, yeah.”
“You never summoned me, by the way. Also, when we tried to summon your friends, it didn’t work. Bunowny just said, ‘You can’t meet this person, bun.’ Every name we tried failed, except yours.”
“Why’s that?”
“Our working theory’s that you can’t trigger the flag if you’ve already been summoned for a different cultivation event.”
Yeah...that tracks. Come to think of it, I was always the one summoning. I’ve never been summoned by anyone. And now I’m still summonable, even if I come at a higher cost.
Well, whatever. I think I have the gist of things now. Things should be safer with a fresh lineup and none of that strained atmosphere.
No. Wait. If that flag theory holds, then where did Alto go? I mean, I guess development events aren’t the only way to go missing. I’m sure that guy can manage no matter where he ends up.
“So anyway, do you know anyone else we can call up? Someone who’s never been summoned before.”
“Sis, what are you expecting from a loner like me?”
I wasn’t as bad as Yamikage, but come to think of it, I didn’t have many connections.
“Why are you like this? When even real farmers were wondering how you did it... Seriously, it’s a mystery how you always manage to excel in games like these.”
“Hey, I’m just as baffled as you are. It’s rare for me to do this well in a game that demands actual player skill.”
It was true. But coming from my sister—my unfortunate, homeless sister—it actually stung a bit.
“Anyway, just start farming. You’re the only one here who knows anything.”
“I only want fishing—ah...no! I hate vegetables! Farming is the devil’s work!”
“I should be the one getting sick of farming!” Emoji cried out.
I tried to make it clear I’d rather be fishing.
“What are you on about? You don’t actually hate it. You’re just fishing for a retort!”
She wasn’t wrong.
Fishing was my main, but I’d gone out hunting with my party plenty of times... If my farming prowess was in demand, then I wasn’t completely against it.
And really, farming was like my crab traps. I just had to set (plant) them—no need to hover over them constantly.
“Fishing for a retort...now, now, you don’t need to try so hard to be punny, Big Brave Pekkle.”
Ah, Emoji’s playing along. Teasing my sister instead of turning it on me.
Hmm...that’s the leader of a larger guild for you. I only meant to tease her a bit, but she snatched the joke right out from under me.
“Who are you calling Big Brave Pekkle?”
“Sis, don’t you mean ‘Cut it out, pen’?”
“You’re awfully in sync for two people who just met... Don’t go using me as your toy. Now enough chitchat—get to work! And you too, Lahal! Get Kizuna to teach you a thing or two!”
“Roger! I’ve been wanting to learn, so please teach me!”
“Once you’ve done your share, Kizuna, you can go and fish your heart out. You’ve got no rivals here anyway. Go see if you can fish up a lord or something.”
“Hooray!”
Well, if you put it like thaaat, I’ll at least drill the basics of farming into Emoji.
She seemed motivated enough, and since she ran a combat guild she was probably a fast learner. As an added bonus, since I didn’t have any fishing rivals, I could at least go for the lord of the oasis.
I already had a good grasp on how territory development worked, so it wouldn’t take that long either.
It wasn’t a bad offer, all things considered.
“I need to watch over our personnel carefully before calling more, otherwise I’ll be repeating the same mistake. It’s better to watch and wait for now.”
“Got it. Still, seeing nearly every crop pretty much wiped out is kind of impressive in its own way. First things first—we need to pin down the cause.”
I gave the fields a thorough inspection... It was kinda like I was dealing with some tech-illiterate person who’d fiddled with their PC until it broke, and I was left searching for what they’d messed up.
Emoji, despite her clear love for farming, didn’t seem to have any of the basic knowledge. Then again, that was pretty much the average person’s knowledge level when it came to farming in games.
Hmmm...still, how did the fields end up this bad? What happened?
It was like we were living in a post-disaster agricultural red zone, a complete mess wherever I looked. Powdery mildew, clubroot, bacterial wilt, stunted growth...not even the soybean fields were spared: Rhizoctonia root rot, black root rot.
Perhaps...these were just the game’s indicators of a general “disease” status and I only recognized the specific ailments because I knew too much.
“What’s with this settlement...a toxic wasteland set to max difficulty?”
“Is it that bad, Kizuna?”
“Bad doesn’t begin to describe it. The soybean fields alone... Honestly, it’d be faster to turn over the soil and burn the whole thing down. The place is riddled with infection.”
“Whoa...that’s intense.”
My sister clearly didn’t get it.