One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Ren felt wonderful, even as he felt the filthy mud continue to drip from his still relatively tense body. He finally saw a way forward with this system. But just as he was feeling better, he heard a rustling in the crop beside him and quickly jumped back, bringing his scythe up in front of his body again. Then, slowly, Kendrin pressed through the crop and looked over Ren's dripping and muddy form. He then let out a roaring laugh at the sight as he held his gut over how silly Ren looked.

"Hahahaha, how'd ya get so damn filthy? It's only been less than an hour. And what ya doing with that scythe pointed at me? See a ghost or something? Hahahaha!!"

As Kendrin continued his laughter, a few more low chuckles could be heard in other parts of the field nearby as many of the farmhands pictured Ren coated in mud as he was. For his part, Ren's brief moment of pride was already blown away of the hot wind of Kendrin's laughter and he felt his taught muscles go weak with how ridiculous he now felt. Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw a familiar shadow leap out towards Kendrin as he was still laughing. Ren moved to warn the man, even as he was still annoyed with each gut busted laugh, but then, out of nowhere. Kendrin's hand flicked out and caught the shadow, his laughter dying on the wind with a grunt.

"Cheh, little bugger ruined my good mood." Then, with a large knife, he chopped the wriggling head clean off just a few centimeters from his hand before tossing the slowly bleeding carcass to the ground. "Gross bugs always ruining the day."

Ren could hardly believe his eyes. The thing he thought was so ridiculously fast and frightening was just treated like swatting a fly. It happened so easily and fast that Ren couldn't help but feel that the worm just jumped into Kendrin's hand. His disbelief must've shown on his face because Kendrin was looking between him and the worm he just tossed away. Then, he couldn't help but smirk as he asked." Don't tell me.....you couldn't take one of these leacher's bites and rolled around on the ground like a little girl crying?" Ren reflexively grimaced at the memory of dodging the disgusting worm, but that only served to egg Kendrin on further as he laughed all the harder at Ren's expense.

"Hahaha, oh gods above. You must be from the settlement. There's no way any true Kievan would be more than annoyed with these tiny bugs. Hahaha, oh gods. That was too funny." Kendrin soon walked back into the darkness of the fields, leaving Ren to contemplate his misfortune, before hearing a loud yell from Brenna.

"Back to work you bunch of lazy jokers. I want those fields cleared before noon or it's grubs for midday meal!!!" A bunch of fast splashes and shuffling brush could be heard as the rest of the field hands began moving all the faster to finish their work.

Ren sighed, before wiping away the large glops of mud from his face and torso as best he could before returning to his work. He couldn't help but wonder how Kendrin was able to move like that and if that was nothing more than a mosquito to these people, what exactly did they consider a challenge?

Ren soon resumed his messy work, cutting weeds and digging the ones that he could out from the soil. He soon encountered another one of the small disgusting beast. It leaped at him as fast as the last one, but Ren felt less distress this time and was able to side step the leacher before turning around with his scythe in hand. When the ugly worm jumped again, it only met his blade as he chopped this one in half. Taking a breathe at killing another one of the bugs, Ren couldn't help but admit he was just naive and foolish against the first one. It really was just a matter of experience, though, he still doubted that his old body would be able to keep up with the disgusting things.

Then, her perked up when he heard another the system. But it wasn't like before. Instead of the usual ding, there was just a off hum.

Notice: Awarded two experience for the slaying of another creature and absorbing it's vital essence.

'Wait.....just two experience? What the hell? That's worse than the worst mobile MMO out there. What is this pay to win crap? Are these worms really that worthless?' He couldn't help but lament at the fact that his new path to points and experience was just smashed to bits. If these tricky noob bugs didn't even give him more than a few pennies, what the hell did he have to do to make any progress with this damn system? It's like everything he did and tried was worth next to nothing to this damn bloodthirsty system of his.

Sighing, Ren just wiped his rusted blade and continued on with his work late into the morning. The sun beating down on him and causing him to reminisce about the comforts of air conditioning and the poignant lack of physical labor in his last life. But even so, he was able to push through it with his new body, and even succeeded in killing a lot more of those damn leachers. Though he was bit by a few when he accidently stepped into what appeared to be a small nest of them. With a total of twenty of the bugs dead to his scythe, he was able to rack up a total of sixty experience for the day. It wasn't too bad, but he really hoped at this point that he would at least see some progress once he hit the hundred experience mark, and not have to wait until the thousands.

Then, he heard a loud call "Hey! New guy? You finished with this area yet?"

It was obviously Kendrin, but as he walked through the tall crops, his massive body and nordic style looked noticeably less frightening in the daylight. Well, at least he wasn't the visage of a massive ogre with a deadly blade anymore, and resembled the farmer he was acting as. When he saw Ren still in the middle of the field and surrounded by plenty of weeds while also covered in mud and a few visible patches of blood on him, he couldn't help but sigh.

"Ah, guess it can't be helped. Oi, Dag, Ove, get your butts over here and help us out. Can't let ma make us go hungry for the new guy!" With that two more large bodies pressed through the crops. One was stockier in appearance and had a rather ugly face. His nose was massive, as well as his jaw and his forehead seemed to press out over his eyes. The poor guy looked like a muscly neanderthal that lost out on the height lottery of the village. The other looked a lot closer to Kendrin, except, he was smiling even while covered in dirt. He lacked a beard and seemed the youngest of them all, but had a very long main of hair down his back and was probably the least muscled of the large family so far. "Ai, why we gotta help the new guy? T'aint fair I say. Just let him go without a meal and let the rest of us eat." Said the stockier one.

"Eh, come on Ove, You know ma wouln't let us do that. 'Sides, he seems like a fun guy. Best to show him how it's done now, so that we don't have ta later." Said the younger one, probably meaning he was Dag.

"Just give us a hand here Ove. Won't take but a few minutes and we can all go back and eat. And new guy, make sure to watch. Don't want to be carrying you through the work everyday." With that, the three brothers had a good laugh as they swiftly began removing the weeds around the area. Ren was barely able to follow their swift movements, but they all seemed very skilled, as what took him several minutes took them no more than a second or two to accomplish. Not to mention how they took care of the leachers without even looking, but rather just slashing them out of the sky before they even got close.

'Ugh...what a day....' He thought, as they finally finished and headed back, just as the loud ringing of metal was heard from the edge of the fields.