Step Outside, and What Do You See? Weeds. Rocks. Trees.

This game was strange in one particular way. It had no system called a status window.

"Farming Window."

The first time I spoke the command, I'd cringed at the thought that they might as well have just called it a status window. These days I said it without a flicker of embarrassment.

In Farming World, a status window was a Farming Window. Players who found the old name more comfortable just said status window, and even after ten years of opening mine with Farming Window, I had to admit the other name sat easier in the mouth.

One look at the window hanging open in front of me, and awe and grief came out tangled together.

"Wow... fuck."

Grief, because even the window where I had once stamped level 999—max level—had been wiped out from under me. Awe, because I was starting on an SSS+ rank map with an SSS+ rank ability, and in this Farming World, where an all-F spread was the baseline, Magic—the one stat far harder to push to S than Strength, Endurance, or Agility—was opening not at F, not even at E, but at D.

The game was stingy enough that when it bothered to hand you anything at all, S- was usually the ceiling. S and D together meant the SSS+ melee weapon was a truly monstrous foundation.

"Melee weapons. Right call."

If I had picked summons or magic, Magic would probably have come out at S, and Strength, Endurance, and Agility might ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠have landed at D instead. A little regrettable, sure. Even so, it reminded me all over again that in the early game, nothing beat doing the work with your own body.

For one thing, that body had grown unbelievably light, and it had only been a moment.

When I first opened my eyes in this miserable hut, one of the worst parts had been losing every stat and feeling leaden from the backlash, my own limbs suddenly too heavy to trust. S wasn't the SS+ I had carried in my first Farming World, but it was enough that I felt something like myself again.

"Haa."

One glance at my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Farms and my level, and another sigh was inevitable. Even so, the wooden sword sang when I cut the air with it, a clean, lively sound.

And there was a skill I had never once seen in ten years of play.

"Holy shit."

In this game, a passive was genuinely hard to come by. Own one, and you walked around wearing the effect of an active skill whether you cast anything or not. Try to buy one with Farms, Farming World's currency, and you paid more than three times the price of an active—and an SSS+ rank passive was not sold at all.

Naturally, this was the first SSS+ passive I had ever laid eyes on. Options that shocking left me no choice but to swear.

"Ten times the attack power? What the hell."

Strictly speaking it became 1,100 percent, so eleven times. Absurd damage from the opening minute, and Strength at S on top of it. I ought to be able to harvest resources up through D-rank without breaking a sweat.

Then there was the durability. Hunt for any length of time and you ended up forging weapon after weapon just to keep going, a quiet little headache this option looked ready to cure. Melee arms didn't burn a resource with every shot the way a bow burned arrows, but they cost more to make, and if you handled them wrong, that damned realism corroded them and snapped them in no time.

And the last line was the most outrageous of all.

You become able to handle every melee weapon at a master's level.

Honestly, I had never seen an option like that in Farming World. As a rule, the game loved numbers. Clean numbers. Numbers you could read without arguing about them. For all its bitching about realism and freedom, everything in this game was displayed as a figure: the tilling of a field, the price of a seed, how many days a crop needed, what percent the nutrients sat at, how much water was being supplied. A monster's health as a percentage. How many percent a vital strike had shaved off. Which status ailments were hanging on it.

And then an option this vague, one that couldn't help inviting a subjective reading. You couldn't even tell whether it was good.

Of course it wouldn't be trash. In this game, rank was law, and rank was god. SSS+ rank was simply divine. Master would mean something well past anything I was picturing.

I wasn't particularly worried. So long as the game's system was correcting me, then at least inside Farming World I really would become a master of melee weapons, exactly as the words said.

"Other skills... there aren't any."

If there was anything to regret—and yes, this was a well-fed man's complaint—it was that they had tossed me exactly one lonely passive. You learned abilities and climbed ranks so you could hunt with a click instead of grinding like a dog. Magic was the classic example. Better a Fireball from a safe distance and a supper of roasted wolf than a mud-pit brawl where you bared your teeth, bit and tore, and one clean hit snapped bone. For efficiency and for the romance of it both, the click was the ideal hunt.

Melee weapons weren't denied that romance. As I'd said of Telekinesis Flying Swords, melee had plenty of skills that looked good and were worth a single click. SSS+ rank, I had thought. Surely they'd throw in at least one of those.

"A shame, but... well."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Something was better than nothing. Click-skills could be learned later, once I had Farms to spend. An SSS+ rank passive I couldn't have bought anywhere was enough to be satisfied with.

Then I opened the door and stepped outside.

"Whoa."

Grass stood higher than my head. Rocks lay strewn in every direction. The trees were so thick that five people linking arms still couldn't have wrapped around a trunk. Looking at all of it, I understood.

"Fuck. So this is what SSS+ rank means."

I had thought Farming World had turned over a new leaf and handed me this map so I could enjoy the game on easy mode. That would have been the decent thing. Honestly, a map given to you in the same breath as they stole the one you had spent ten years building—I had assumed the difficulty would be high, but so would the rarity of the resources, and that they were telling me to make a fresh start here, at least.

That wasn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it.

"You bastards. So this is what you meant by choose carefully?"

One SSS+ rank ability had never been a privilege or a gift. The difficulty was so high you couldn't even begin without it, so they had handed it over just to scrape together a scrap of balance. And no wonder. The tall weeds, the trees, the rocks in front of my eyes were basic resources that F-rank stats and wooden gear couldn't mine or fell in the first place.

The view that opened when you first started Farming World was right, as far as that went: weeds, trees, and stones crowding thick around the house. Newbies complained about the mess. Veterans loved it. These were basic resources, and the lusher they grew, the less you had to range far afield to gather anything in the early game. They were the most fundamental F-rank materials, the base that went into every craft.

Push on a little farther to farm E-rank resources, and stone became boulder, tree became thick trunk, weed became tough weed. What surrounded my house was the tier above even that. D-rank basic resources.

"If this hadn't been melee weapons, I'd have been looking at a reset."

If you had to name this game's greatest strength and its greatest flaw in a single word, it came out as realism. And freedom.

That damned realism and freedom meant fucked-up situations cropped up constantly. The flip side was that things impossible in other games of this genre could still be finessed with a little flexibility, and gathering resources was exactly one of those things. In the gathering genre, the system that was always locked down was the tool system. Resources of a given rank usually couldn't even be attempted unless you used a tool of the matching rank, or the inefficiency was so extreme it was worse than not gathering at all.

But thanks to this game's damned freedom and realism, even the basic wooden pickaxe, axe, and sword in my hands could mine or cut weeds, trees, and stone. The minimum requirement was stats. High Strength and Endurance made it possible even with a lower-rank tool. Durability wore down faster, that was the penalty, but it still beat failing to gather the lush basic resources in front of the house and being unable to progress at all. And thanks to Master of Melee Weapons, my durability didn't wear easily in the first place.

So choosing melee weapons hadn't been a matter of taste. It had been mandatory. At least on this SSS+ rank Secret Farming Map.

If Magic had been S, there would surely have been some other route to develop along. In a game this free, what couldn't you manage? You would simply have had to take a far longer way around, and it would have been absolute hell.

"As expected. The direct approach is the right answer."

I swung the wooden sword as if mowing the weeds right in front of the hut. There was no edge on it. There was no reason it should cut.

Shrrk!

The weeds toppled, soft as cloth.

"Yeah. This is nice."

D-rank resources or not, they were nothing before S-rank strength. Wooden sword or not, averaged out, I ought to be able to clear things up through C-rank without much strain.

"Haa..."

I had clearly scythed away a great armful, and still the weeds ran on without end, choking every side of the hut. The sun that had stood at the zenith sank toward dusk in what felt like an instant.