The Map Manager

A strange land.

This was supposed to be a place I stayed only until the tutorial ended. Now it was the new home where I'd live out the rest of my life. A cold, cramped cabin, standing in for my old studio in Seoul—Han River view, one room, barely two hundred and eighty square feet.

"So what if I'm starting from scratch. Reality beats virtual reality."

Whether this was a game or the real thing was still an ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠open question. Whatever it turned out to be, if I treated it as reality until I cleared it, then it would be real. That was how it worked. And in its own way, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠thought occurred to me, it was cozy enough.

"What matters is that the cabin is an absolutely invincible space."

Monsters could come right up to it, but they never attacked the cabin itself. Farming World's whole identity was cozy farming at the core, even with hunting bolted on as side content. They might interrupt your work or steal crops to eat, but if they hit the cabin hard enough to make progress impossible, half the player base would have quit on the spot.

Whether that rule still held here, I'd have to see for myself.

Where do I even start?

I was putting a plan together when a new message appeared.

"Ah. Right. There was this, too."

You could usually summon a map management manager once the tutorial was cleared, but on the original map it had been optional. Take it or leave it. In my case, I hadn't summoned one in over five years.

Skip the tutorial and you couldn't summon the manager at all. Even if you did, they were basically a living tutorial extension, walking you through whatever commands you'd missed. Anyone who'd played for a while had no real reason to bother. At most, solo players called one up because they were bored and wanted someone to talk to, and even that hardly mattered in Farming World, where you could just hire NPCs.

"Summon Manager!"

I set ten years of experience aside. This wasn't a game. I was playing a new one. New life. New world. If I thought of it as a regression story—starting over with my memories intact—then the humble move was to milk everything there was to milk.

With the command came a resonant hum I hadn't heard in a long time.

A single fairy burst into the air.

"Hello, Master!"

"Oh. Hey."

Wings fluttering, a fairy about the size of my forearm greeted me like we were old friends.

The manager always flustered newbies at first sight. Master wasn't a title you got used to easily, especially coming from a fairy. Social convention being what it was, a race that small stirred a certain uneasy, almost taboo feeling. But anyone who'd played Farming World long enough to go stagnant knew better. These fairies weren't some young whatever. By the lore, they were fairies who had lived for hundreds of years.

"A Master of the Rift Dimension hasn't appeared in nearly fifty thousand years... Ah! I'm Ruru. I was born to assist the Master of this dimension and help manage it."

"Ruru?"

The name was different from the manager who usually showed up after the tutorial, but it was easy enough to remember.

"Ruru. What can you actually do?"

In the game, a manager's functions had never been much use to me. At best, the little thing explained the sub-systems you'd failed to pick up in the tutorial. Maybe it would be different here.

Ruru launched into it as if she'd been waiting for the chance to brag.

"I exist to help a Master visiting this dimension for the first time—how to organize it, how to cultivate it. I can assist your growth, and I can advise you on which way to develop the dimension. If you're curious about anything, or if you need something, just ask me anytime."

"I'm asking what you can do. Chopping wood, mining stone, clearing weeds—can you handle that much?"

"Of course! If you grow me, simple work like that is no problem at all!"

"And how do I grow you?"

"If you open the Fairy Growth tab through Master's Farming Points and Farm..."

"Useless."

"...Pardon?"

I'd let myself hope for a second. Of course.

Unlike Farming World, growing her here might actually make her good for something. But I was already short on points just trying to get stronger myself, and I had none to spare on some fairy. Better to hire a sturdy worker NPC later than grow a fairy to tidy the yard around the house.

"I can unsummon you, right?"

"Once I've already been summoned onto the map, unsummoning is only possible after Master dies! Then I wait in the dimensional rift until the next Master appears."

She said it with a bright, beaming smile, which made it a little horrifying. My face creased anyway.

"Food?"

"Please don't worry! I don't eat much."

"Ha..."

Food probably wouldn't be a serious problem, but still—another mouth, and a useless one. I really shouldn't have called her. For now, I'd treat her as if she weren't here. Park her somewhere, and maybe she'd be good for something.

First, the basics. Getting out took priority—the things I should have done as a matter of course, if I hadn't been busy just clearing the tutorial.

"Find a village. Find a mine. Find the sewers. Clear the yard."

The map was so vast that jobs I could have knocked out in a day might have to be planned by the week and handled one at a time. Even on an SS-rank map, the village had been far enough that I'd eventually just founded a new one somewhere convenient and relocated the NPCs.

The mine was the same story. To craft the next tier of tools, I had to find one somewhere nearby and farm the resources. Finding the sewers was about clearing out the Big Rats I'd seen in the tutorial, so they wouldn't get in the way of growing crops. Clearing the yard was much the same—except on a map this wide, I also had to decide where the yard even ended. Try to clear the entire yard as this enormous map had defined it from the start, and I might spend forever doing nothing but yard work. That five-kilometer radius business wasn't a joke. At SS-rank and above, map size defied imagination.

"Just as I'd expect from a properly qualified Master! You already know exactly what to do first!"

"Don't chatter at me."

Ruru had caught ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me muttering and chimed in with a bright little laugh. Brush her off as curtly as I liked, she didn't sulk for a second. She just said her piece.

"The village closest to the cabin is about two kilometers to the northwest!"

"...Huh?"

This useless little fairy.

Then again, maybe she wasn't so useless after all.

In games of the Farming World type, if there was one kind of information that mattered above the rest, it was information about the map.

The main hook was still the cozy dopamine of raising seasonal crops and making money, but lighting up a dark map, mining resources you'd never seen, and pushing into more dangerous ground mattered just as much. Fully revealing every map was nearly impossible, and not efficient besides. Even I had mained an SS-rank map for ten years and still had places I'd never uncovered. In a way, it was a feature built to stretch playtime.

Other RPGs and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠FPS games didn't have this problem. The thrill of combat, the dopamine of a fight, shifted every time, so years of repetition still paid out a different hit. In a genre like this, the dopamine of discovery and exploration earned through effort didn't last long. Mindless grinding and pathfinding on the way to a big reward just became a time sink. That was why items like a Map—anything that helped light up the dark—were bound to be absurdly valuable.

I'd been stuck with no idea where to go until the yard was cleared, wondering what to tackle first, and one line from Ruru wiped the whole problem clean.

"How do you know that?"

"Eh? Because I explored with the Previous Master!"

"That was fifty thousand years ago. How old are you?"

"Asking a lady her age is rude, you know. And time stands still in the dimensional rift, so I'm not nearly as young a fairy as you think, okaaay?"

"..."

Whether Ruru was fifty thousand or five thousand, it didn't matter to me.

"You know the other locations too?"

"The mine and the sewers Master mentioned? Those I know!"

"Holy shit."

Suddenly, Ruru looked cute.

"Kyaa!"

I grabbed her on the spot and rubbed my cheek against hers, heaping on the praise.

"So you were useful after all!"

On a map of unmeasurable size, knowing the direction and the spot still didn't make getting there easy. Two kilometers was two kilometers, and on foot that was a long way. Worse, the Secret Farming Map was completely undeveloped aside from a sliver of the cabin's front yard. I'd have to cut a path the whole way and deal with whatever monsters I met. Learning the location this easily ought to have left me with some regret—that was too easy—and it didn't. Not even a little.

I'm a results man. If the reward is good, I enjoy the dopamine that comes with it. I don't love working myself half to death in search of the kind of happiness that doesn't pay—the nobility of the process, the fun that's only fun because it was hard.

My expectations had ticked up a notch, so I asked, just in case.

"Then do you happen to know the main locations in the Level 1 Biome, too?"

"E-eh...? Hehe... The Previous Master never made it that far... and she was my first Master, too."

Figures.