The following day, Hunters entered the Morgan Hunter Mart with mild impatience and a heavy dose of shock. The Hunter Terminal had them double-take if they had arrived at the correct place or not.

  Some of them left, wonder what’s up with that? Johan observed as Eugene handled the register.

  The boy had started to get comfortable in his position. He had communicated with the customers the day after Johan fell asleep and explained why the mart would stay closed for a while. That’s why the line today seemed extra long and potions sold out faster.

  And not only potions, some of the other items, like meal packs and other consumables, flew off the shelves. Happy about the increasing sales, Johan wondered if he should order in larger volumes than normal. The mart’s numbers looked good, so he decided to place the order and entered Phantasia after Eugene left.

  Truthfully, he wanted to stay there as much as he could. Merilyn had very understandingly not placed a camera in the potion workshop. Since it would be like prying into his secrets. So, he could still enter Phantasia from there without worry.

  This space felt much safer than the surveilled mart.

  Shaking his head, he brewed the potions for the next day and sat under the Golden pear tree’s shade after bottling them, enjoying his sweet and chilli chips. His mood had only soared since he woke up yesterday, and today appeared even better.

  “They are working hard.” Amused, he watched the rabbits.

  The rabbit duo had their duties divided. Eunally dug up the magik vegetables at blinding speed, and Nunally, the white blur gathered them all in the storage tent. It took 20 minutes at most.

  However, the two had started a new rotation pattern. After the harvest, Nunally dropped seeds in the dug-up soil and buried them with her paws. Eunally came to him with the watering can. And, after Johan filled it, he would go and water the field.

  Their movements were so fluid and consistent that Johan felt like they were more like farmers than him. Still, watching them run around felt rather satisfying.

  Usually, it took a day or two for the vegetables to grow if he didn’t use growth acceleration. But he wanted to give his precious helpers a gift.

  “Growth Acceleration.” Through continuous casting and potion chugging, Johan managed to complete the task in an hour.

  He smiled while holding back a rumbling stomach, but this worked out well. The way Eunally and Nunally jumped around in joy made the slight discomfort worth it.

  “You don’t have to put it in the tent.” He said as Eunally uprooted the first vine of sweet potatoes. A smile formed on his lips when their long ears twitched in confusion.

  The two never dug up and ate from the field. They only took what he gave, eating half, and storing the other half away. Johan could only guess that they came from beyond the fog that hung at the border. And he had seen how bad this place was before the fog retreated.

  They didn’t have to say, but Johan could understand that they weren’t eating their fill. It was like an invisible thread connected him to them. The tame skill didn’t have a function like this. He just knew it.

  “This is your first harvest, so it is yours.” They had already helped him a ton, so he wanted to return the favour too.

  The two rabbits looked at each other and jumped at him. Each sat on his shoulder and licked his face.

  “Uooo!” They cried, showing their happiness.

  Johan leaned against the tree and enjoyed the soft fur brushing against his face. The cool wind and warm sunlight made him feel better.

  Was he turning into a plant himself? He mused, stretching his arms. Well, humans do need sunlight, water, air, and food. So, in a way, didn’t they qualify as plants?

  What am I even thinking? He sighed. A clear head gave weird thoughts at times.

  Eunally and Nunally busily moved the grown vegetables to their borough. He worried if they could fit it all in there. As for the vegetable’s shelf life. Johan wasn’t so worried about that.

  He had kept a few vegetables from all the first batches in his tent, and so far, none showed any change. Even the cherry tomatoes seemed fine. There was no mention of shelf life in the system window, so he could only wait and see.

  If only the Golden Pear could be like that. Not that he gave them enough time to spoil. The moment he saw a ripe golden pear, it went to the brewing tent. Because of that, he had more basic healing potions than he knew what to do with. Well, it built a reserve for him at least.

  If only the storage skill allowed him to store potions. He wanted to argue that since he made the potions from the items he collected, they should count. But the system screen wasn’t one to enter debates. Heartless thing it was.

  The next best thing was to level up Farmer’s storage and hope it unlocked the feature he wanted.

  “The day when I can drop meteorites on people isn’t far, hehehe!” With the trademark villain laugh, Johan continued to take items in and out of his storage.

  Did it work? He had no idea at the start.

  Since there was no counter for skill uses, he could only try and hope for changes. However, he had a hunch while counting. Taking an item out and then putting it back in counted as one use.

  But the skill probably wouldn’t count it if he kept rotating the same item, since the storage skill didn’t use magik for each use. There should be some sort of cooldown for each item, or the skill would only count a unique item once.

  Johan thought the latter was much more probable. So, he decided to enter the storage tent full of previous harvests. If he had anything in abundance, it was these space eaters.

  “Let the grind begin!”

  It took him about four hours to go through the vegetables, a lot shorter than he expected. Guess this was the perk of having a skilled organizer.

  “Finally, level 5.” Johan planned to give Nunally some extra treats and walked out happy.

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  If he increased his farm’s land by 40% and focused for about three weeks, Johan felt like he could reach level 10 on Tower Farmer’s storage. With Eunally and Nunally actively farming, he could do it in two.

  But there was another thing he discovered while switching items out of his storage. The Night Bloom Flower bud he had stored previously had turned into a dark husk. It had the same coal-like feel to it as the original; above all seed sense proved his hypothesis.

  Name: Night Bloom Seed (Delta)

  Rank: —

  Information: A seed to grow the Night Bloom flower, a flower used for the Basic Detoxification potion. A flower that thrives in poisonous ecosystems.

  “Plant the seed, the flower blooms, take everything but the bud, and it becomes a seed again.” He compared the seed with the original he got from Merilyn.

  If he wasn’t sure before, he could now say with 100% certainty that this Night Bloom Flower was artificial. Mage Tower created this to brew Detoxification potions. No wonder no one else found it.

  But the real question was, how many times could he regrow this before it stopped? The answer was rather simple, too.

  “Another grind session, hurray!” His lips pressed into a hard line soon after the initial wave of joy washed away.

  Wasn’t he going too hard? He barely recovered and seemed set on the path of exhaustion again. But one had to work hard to make money. Money helped with exhaustion and made life easier. However, balance also mattered.

  “Hmm…” He stopped for a moment, his face turning petulant. After a not-so-long internal conflict, Johan beamed. “I’ll stop after a few times, hahaha!”

  Spoiler, he didn’t stop after a few times. In the sharp scent and stinging skin, Johan had forgotten to keep track of how many hours had passed.

  By the time Phantasia kicked him out, the sun was about to rise. He stood in the Mart’s potion workshop and counted the number of flower cores in his storage.

  Twenty…

  He grew twenty of those, and the seed showed no difference at all. He could now create twenty Detoxification potions. No, he had to; these ingredients were even more fragile and precious than Golden Pears. He had to, otherwise it’d be a loss. And he wouldn’t stand taking a loss.

  “I am beyond saving…” The taste of progress was too sweet, too addicting. Was this why numbers go up was so popular in the web novel scene?

  Indeed, progress was a terrifying thing.

  Before he knew it, Johan got hooked on the taste of it.

  ***

  By the time he climbed the stairs, Johan guessed the potion stock should be running low as the afternoon approached steadily. Eugene seemed to handle things very well. Most Hunters were only scary outside the mart; inside, they stayed rather civil, like it was a mutual agreement. That had turned even more true since the installation of the Hunter Terminal.

  Things have started to calm down.

  “I am telling you this is the real waiting line slip!”

  A sharp howl cut through Johan’s thoughts. He almost stumbled over his steps opening the door as a wave of magik passed inside the store. The dubious guy in question slammed his hand on the counter.

  That was gonna leave an imprint.

  “Can’t you see? This is real!” The man’s brown brow turned crooked as he leaned forward.

  Wow… Johan hadn’t seen such a perfect villainous behaviour since Haskins Jr. It had to be a skill to twist a human face that much, like how does one’s lip turn up like that much?

  “As I’ve told you, sir, this is not the real slip. I cannot give you an extra potion.” Eugene’s voice stayed calm. But Johan could see his arms shaking below the counter.

  The people behind the Hunter were already getting irritated. They might step in at any moment, but Johan stepped forward first. How could the manager watch his employee get harassed by a customer?

  They might tolerate customer harassment in other marts, but it won’t fly here!

  “Hello, sir, I am the manager here. May I have a look at that?” Johan slipped in, shielding Eugene from the long-necked aggressor. He passed along his phone to Eugene which had a small message.

  “Finally, the big man himself.” The Hunter, whom Johan named Asshole No.67, snickered. He waved the slip in front of him and continued. “This is the real one, right?”

  Although Johan couldn’t exactly see the numbers, he only nodded with his practiced smile.

  “That’s 100%...” He waited for Asshole No.67’s smirk to widen before ending. “…fake.”

  “What?” The asshole froze, long enough for Eugene to take the slip off him.

  Johan was glad he read the words on the phone he passed to him while cutting in.

  Asshole No.67 least expected that and looked at the bit of ripped paper between his thumb and forefinger. He looked about ready to explode when Johan looked up from the paper Eugene handed him.

  “We use a special ink to write down the numbers, you see.” He turned the slip to the Hunter, pointing at the blue ink.

  From the day he gave Eli Myers the special deal, he had seen a rise in people claiming they had waited outside in line with slips in hand. It was only a matter of time before people tried to take advantage of that system, so Johan made a silent move the very next day.

  “It’s something I created so we don’t get scammed by people like you.” Johan swiftly placed the paper inside the register, and Eugene locked it. It would take a C-Rank Hunter to break that open. “I am sure you know what CCTV does? I can call the police, and you end up getting booked, or you can admit your mistake, and we leave it at that?”

  “Fuck…” Asshole No.67 turned and ran away; he was rather fast at that.

  Good thing no one stopped him, or it would’ve been a mess.

  Well, most Hunters had bigger fish to fry than to help. Not everyone wanted to be the shining paragon of justice these days.

  Johan left the register to Eugene again and sent the CCTV footage to the police along with an email. They’d handle the rest.

  Regardless of the price tag, trying to steal a potion crossed the felony threshold. The best part was that Asshole No.67 would pay ten times the amount as a fine with a month or two ban on Hunter activities since the terminal recorded his ID.

  An hour later, Eugene turned the sign to closed and came back to the counter. Johan did his usual ritual of checking sales and humming when the kid bowed.

  “Sorry for making a fuss.” He seemed rather mistaken that the fault was with him. This was why being too good was a problem in today’s world. “But you are an amazing teacher, I didn’t even notice that you were using a special ink.”

  “I was?” Johan picked his nose.

  “Eh…” Eugene halted in place.

  “Eh? Ohhhh!” Johan’s fist hit his palm. He showed the trick he used to catch the scammer’s slip.

  “Ground Sherry leaves mixed in magik water?” Eugene tilted his head as Johan brushed the mixture on a sheet of white paper, making slips for the next day.

  It took but a moment before the paper dried, when Johan used his general knowledge skill on it, a window popped up.

  Name: Normal Paper with a bit of magik

  Rank: —

  Info: A normal paper brushed with a mixture of magik water and sherry leaves.

  It was more of a band-aid method than an actual one. It won’t be long before professional scammers figure it out. Asshole No.67 was, for lack of better words, a lv.1 Crook.

  Johan wondered if he should make a special ink before lv.100 bosses rolled around.

  But he had a bigger question in mind, watching the excited youth beside him.

  “How did you figure out this was a fake?” He pointed at the slip.

  “It was the angle of the 6 and the crooked 9, also the 0 was too wide compared to how you write it.” Eugene tracked the numbers as he continued. “Your handwriting is always consistent and elegant, so it was easy to spot it.”

  The kids back in the school days used to call him Hundred Armed Johan; he completed others’ assignments while replicating their handwriting so the teacher wouldn’t catch on. It was a side hustle for extra cash. That’s where he had sharpened his own handwriting to perfection.

  But the bigger surprise was Eugene.

  “You sure you want to be a Hunter? The Hunter Crime Bureau would welcome you with open arms.” He had sharp observation skills and was quick on the uptake, the perfect rookie, no matter the job.

  “I have no interest in that, I want to become a heroic person like you, teacher.” Eugene scratched his face with a bright smile.

  “Hehe, praise me more.” Johan couldn’t hide the rising mood.

  He had learned another lesson today.

  Praise was as addictive as progress, if not more.

  With a new realization, he entered Phantasia with two boxes. One was apple-flavoured hay stick, and the other was banana-flavoured.

  As he thought about which one the rabbits would like better, they rushed to him with full speed. They always did run up to him like that. But when he held them this time, they trembled in his hands. It wasn’t the shiver of excitement, but one full of fear.

  Seeing their beady eyes turn watery, he couldn’t help but gulp.

  “What happened?” His danger sense flared then, which already gave him a clue.

  And right on time, the system window blared in his face. Cold and mechanical as always.

  [Quest 1.3: Saviour]

  [Help the injured Guardian Beast, Cerebrious]

  [Reward: Class Exclusive skill, Tower Farmer’s Sanctuary]

  [Failure: ???]

  [Accept/Decline]

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