Chapter 84: Stocking Up

With another week behind us, winter crept ever closer.

However, I had also harvested another two yields of my farm, which had expanded to double its size.

What did that mean?

Well, I now had a few dozen pounds of flour and around a hundred some odd pounds of corn cobs.

The rate for converting flour into bread was also relatively...

Broken.

One pound of flour, along with some water, produced six loaves of bread, each roughly weighing a pound each.

Normally, a pound of flour would turn into around a pound of bread.

I was turning a pound of flour into six pounds of bread.

So...

Yeah.

Anyways, besides me wondering why my system broke all known laws of reality, I had to harvest another giant field of wheat.

Aethisia and Yiksa were helping me, the two women using newly forged scythes to help reap everything, including the corn.

Camara was with Kalia, the two sitting on the stairs as they husked the corn.

While I did harvest more when I cut everything down, the 'corn' and 'wheat' I received and had in my inventory was unprocessed, and unless I wanted to use a special workstation to process everything via my system, which would eat at the larger yield, I had to do this by hand.

Even as I prayed and begged for a skill to process my wheat and corn more efficiently, one never came.

Besides that, I had leveled up another four times with my Survival System, bringing it to 44, while my Breeding System leveled at the same rate, bring it to 60.

Increasing my {Farmer} skill to VI, the percentages increased to 50%, and the skill had a new descriptor.

{Farmer VI}: (Expand)*Skill is currently at maximum; please reach Level 75 in order to continue improving*

That had been incredibly interesting, and {Skill Transfer} said something similar after I leveled it up to III, granting me the ability to give 2 Skills from both the Survival and Breeding Systems to my children.

However, instead of level 100, it asked me to reach level 100 instead on my Breeding System.

I guess that was so I didn't get too broken-

No, that didn't make that much sense; by then, I could have so many other insane skills...

Pushing the thought from my mind, I returned to harvesting my crops, a grin forming as I saw the large pile of wheat and corn that I needed to get refined.

Each ear of corn and eat bushel of wheat was another day we had something to eat, and while Rhefia had been preparing us for winter ever since she had encountered me, the amount needed was still ridiculous.

6 months of winter...

Obviously, not every day would be a blizzard, but I can imagine that the second to fifth months would be bone chilling, while the first and sixth would ease up slightly.

That was still five months of pure freezing temperatures, snow, and wind; we needed to prepare desperately, especially if it gets too cold around us now.

Food isn't the only resource we need; I've been getting stocked on wood, as well as pelts, so that we could keep warm inside our home.

There were a few more things I wanted to have an abundance of; water, Vetusberries, Nettla Leaves, cloth...

While I could likely get a good amount of water from melting snow, I didn't want to run out too early, especially not since we would need to have some water available to clean ourselves off; five months of being indoors wasn't going to be easy...

As for the other things, I wanted to make sure we wouldn't get sick, we would have tea to drink, cloth to patch and repair clothes...

Sighing, I gathered everything up and moved over to Camara and Kalia, staring at my growing daughter.

Kalia was now around five feet tall, and her pink hair had grown to be long, reaching down to her waist, and it was rather fluffy as well.

Her pink eyes had set more into her face, and she now had a more serious look to her; her smiles were still abundant and bright, but when she was concentrating on something, she had a cute serious expression, which was only amplified by her narrowing her eyes.

Besides that, she had started to fill out as well, her body growing more to be like mine than her dama's.

Her chest was getting larger, and her curves were definitely more pronounced.

Kalia had also flattened out with her skin tone; she had grown slightly darker, reaching a shade just lighter than her dama; not charcoal gray, but a little lighter.

As for her personality, she was still the same bubbly girl, always enthusiastic as she tried to help with everything, her curiosity only growing with time.

She wanted to learn everything, be it hunting, fighting, cooking, carving, farming...

The thirst of knowledge inside of her was boundless, and the one time she had seen me using Blood Magic to heal one of Rhefia's deeper cuts from a hunting accident, she had been completely enamored by the idea of magic.

So much so that I needed to start considering unlocking a secondary Magic, if possible, so that I could transfer that skill to her.

With a mind as sharp as hers, it made sense to give her that skill instead of something related to physical fighting...

Sitting down with my daughters, I started husking the corn as well, the entire family joining in while Rhefia watched on, her eyes scanning the forest just in case.

With the approaching winter, Geri had started stalking closer and closer to our home, and my wife wanted to guarantee no one ever got hurt due to negligence.

I would have called her out for not wanting to partake in the tedious work if it wasn't for that cut she got; Camara had told me that a pack of the monsters had attacked them when they were returning home, attracted to the scent of blood around their prey.

They had snuck up behind Rhefia, Camara, and Yiksa, and the largest one had targeted Rhefia, scoring that deep gash on her arm.

The monsters had been swiftly dealt with, but now my wife was sporting a faint scar on her chocolate skin, which pained me to see.

So, I smiled to her as she leaned against a tree, her amber eyes sweeping over us for a brief moment before retuning to the forest.

Winter would arrive soon, and it was already baring its frigid, ice laden fangs.