Nedoma stands still, glaring down at his pre- No. Nedoma brandishes his weapon – a unique spear whose tip splits into four distinctly sharp edges, taking on an appearance mimicking that of a hydra. With such a violent design, it's numerous heads allow it to pierce multiple dirt demons in one blow. The discoloration and scratches tracing alongside the shaft tell a rich legacy of doing exactly that. Just like his father had once used this to slay those creatures, so now does Nedoma. As he stands triumphantly above his prey, he cannot help but feel pity for these weak monsters as he thrusts downwards, finishing off a group of them in a single blow.

Wow, that almost makes this seem cool.

As he tries to come up with ways to make his monotonous work seem less boring, Nedoma once again jabs his garden fork into the ground. As the metal teeth bite into the dirt, he presses his foot onto the handle to drive it further in, and then follows up with anchoring the shaft backwards as he tears open the ground, exposing five of these alleged dirt demons; potatoes. He picks an exposed spud up, rubs a bit of the dirt off of it, and then tosses it towards his basket. As he does the same with the rest that popped out, he ends up with four potatoes landing in the basket, with one miss. The missed potato avoids the basket and proceeds to roll through the dirt, finding refuge among the rest of the potatoes that he failed to land.

Damn. Well, I'll just pick up them all up once I'm done with this row.

As he goes back to continue working on the remainder of potatoes within this row, Nedoma starts to think about whether or not the adventurers who had helped them earlier this season would have another spell to make this easier. A few months ago, a few adventurers were hired to help with preparing the fields for planting. They had used some spell called “Tremor”. It's a magic whose effect caused the ground to shake in a targeted area. After talking with them, Nedoma found out that Elementalists, the class which could utilize this particular magic, normally considered it a situational magic whose intended use would be to either try and knock down a monster or to possibly destabilize structures. However, in the farming village of Ayrith, it's use here was for a byproduct of the spell, which caused the soil to loosen up wherever it was used. This made tilling the soil much easier, allowing them to have the fields prepared much quicker this year. Which has resulted in this earlier harvest as well as allowing additional time for the planned second growing season of the year .

Of course, it would have been great if they had been able to help out in previous years. But adventurers can be quite expensive to hire based on the rank you are searching for. Since this is a farming village, there is simply not a lot of money available to go towards hiring adventurers, especially for a task which could be just done by the villagers themselves (although much slower). Whatever money they had would have to go towards either providing for their own families or purchasing farming equipment. However, due to the recent grumblings of the villagers about the taxes that weigh heavily over them, the local governance decided to try and soothe things over a bit by paying for a few adventurers to help them prepare for the first planting, as well as hiring a party of adventurers to guard the village until the end of the first harvest. The guards would likely provide the biggest benefit, as monsters coming out of the forest and attacking the village provide quite a large headache. Whether it be villagers dying or being kidnapped, crops being smashed or burned, or supplies being stolen, these were all the harsh realities of a farming village living close to the frontier. To prevent any of these things from happening keeps the villagers feeling safe and allows them to better focus their efforts on their respective roles.

Nedoma continues to think about what spells a farmer-elementalist would know.

There must be some spell that can help pull potatoes out of the ground. Like, “Harvest Potatos.” No, that sounds way to specific, maybe something like a“Ground Eruption” kind of spell? If there was a spell like that, I could get this work done much quicker. We'd be able to do three harvests in a year, maybe even four! I'd be the farmer this village has ever see-

Nedoma suddenly froze. His hand which had just been gripping a potato let go of it, allowing it to hit the ground with a soft thud. He slowly falls to his knees. His hands rise to his head, his face changing into an expression of pure bewilderment. It changes once more, settling in the form of panic. He is shaking his head left and right, as though he had fallen victim to some horrid curse, or perhaps entered some form of nightmare. To an onlooker, this might very well be the conclusion they arrived at right before they hear Nedoma scream,

“Why would I learn magic just to farm potatoes?!!”