The farm improved because Jacob could not leave a solvable problem alone.
It began with the dirt.
Those older fields had gone wrong, and he figured that he could do something about them and restore the full capacity of the farm as it was supposed to be.
Jacob tried enchanted stakes. He tried careful watering. Then he tried watching drainage patterns and studying the crops until the frustration drove him to crouch, scoop up a pinch of soil, and touch it to his tongue.
It tasted salty.
Wrong.
Dead in a way soil should not be dead.
Years of hard use, poor drainage, and frequent Ruvka rains had left salt behind. The earth had been poisoned slowly. No enchantment Jacob could currently manage would convince plants to drink poison and thrive.
The answer came from swamp grass.
A specific kind of salt grass grew inside F-rank swamp-type dungeon gates. Its bulbs could break down salt and restore balance to damaged earth. Obtaining it should have been a job for adventurers, not a farm boy who had not yet unlocked the system.
Jacob went anyway.
Carlos Weaver made that possible.
Carlos led the adventuring party sent to evaluate the new Mire Gate near Ruvka. He was a powerful knight and not someone who was easily impressed.
Jacob changed that by showing him an enchanted sword with edge stability, structural resilience, self-mending properties, and minor trajectory correction built into the blade.
Carlos bought the sword for a few gold coins and a future favor.
Jacob valued the favor more.
He called it in and convinced Carlos to let him join the dungeon run. The trip began as a grass collection job. But it became something else before anyone knew what was happening.
The party went deeper than intended. They found a Behemoth boss at the bottom of the Mire Gate.
The fight should have been beyond Jacob. He survived anyway, and more than survived. He pushed external mana through the party mage's staff like opening a valve and used a pre-loaded light spell to neutralize the boss.
Carlos's system upgraded its danger assessment of Jacob by two levels that afternoon.
Jacob came out with salt grass, monster cores, a Void Knight's gauntlet, and some worthy crafting materials to use in his experiments.
The salt grass worked.
He just had to build a greenhouse for it to grow in. The type with atmospheric controls. Nothing too fancy. Though Gerald called it a herbarium or something like that.
The damaged fields began recovering. By summer harvest, the Hemlocks would have more productive land than they had managed in years. They had also purchased two additional plots from struggling neighbors who were glad to have the tax burden lifted.
He built an automatic seeder to plant the bulbs, too.
Jacob did not stop at just planting the fields, though.
He built a harvester as well.
The idea came from his old-world memories and his refusal to accept that the harvest needed to leave the whole family bent over in the field for a week.
The machine would separate wheat from chaff and move sorted grain into a wagon. Jacob knew what he wanted it to do. And Bran knew how to take his ideas and craft them into reality.
Bran was a young tinkerer from Ruvka. He apprenticed at the wainwright shop and treated every mechanical problem as a new puzzle to be solved.
Thus, he attacked the harvester design with obsessive precision, which made Jacob trust him almost immediately.
The brass gears came from a master blacksmith in Thornhold. The frame came together in the barn over two days. Then Jacob, Arthur, and Caleb enchanted it together.
That was where the family magic really started to change.
Arthur had spent twenty years thinking magic required rigid formulas. Jacob talked to him about intent over structure, and something shifted. That same afternoon, Arthur placed his first new-style enchantment on leather.
Caleb lagged behind, but not for lack of effort. Arthur promised to teach him the method as soon as he understood it well enough himself.
The harvester enchantments snapped together without exploding.
That alone made the attempt a success.
Something else happened, too.
Arthur and Caleb changed. Neither received a system message that explained what had occurred, but both felt the difference. Before that day, one enchantment before bed was all Arthur could manage. Afterward, he could enchant several times in a day.
Jacob did not know exactly what he had done to them.
He only knew his family had moved one step closer to him.
The list of things Jacob made kept growing.
A coat that stopped an impact, Arthur believed, would have shattered Jacob's ribs.
Greaves. Bracers. Reinforced boots.
A sword that guided his swing and linked to his armor through shared resonance.
A burlap sack that held things it had no business holding. Sera's shawl, which drew a merchant's wife into touching the fabric for ten straight seconds because she could not identify the material.
Gerald's wand, made from the same dark material as Old Thom's dagger, which Gerald called a true artifact even though Jacob had meant it as a commission.
He also enchanted Oren's cuirass.
Oren was a young swordsman who stayed in the Hemlock guest bed and spent his mornings killing goblins in the woods before sunrise. He began teaching Jacob sword forms after hearing about the wilderness training ahead.
His judgment was blunt.
"There is a difference between swinging a sword and using one," Oren told him.
Then he put Jacob through forms and footwork until the reincarnated mage was sweating hard enough to regret every clever thing he had ever said about combat.
Jacob re-enchanted Oren's cuirass that same night. He layered new protections over the old enchantment and integrated a core without stripping off the old enchantments first, which should not have worked.
When Oren tried to thank him, Jacob waved it off. Oren was teaching him the sword and would likely be there if the farm needed him. That made it fair.
Money moved through Jacob's hands in amounts that would have made most Ruvka villagers dizzy.
He sold the Earthshaper's Aegis in the village square. The blade carried triple-layered enchantments built around an E-rank earth core. It went for one hundred and twenty gold coins, fifteen E-rank earth cores, and five D-rank water cores.
He sold Carlos the original sword, completed paid work for Gerald, and even signed a royal land purchase contract with Arthur in the county capital to permanently record the Hemlock farm's expanded holdings.
Jacob also spent money as fast as his projects demanded it. Lots of it went to custom blacksmith parts and mechanical components crafted by the master blacksmith in Thornhold.
Then there were the Monster Cores sorted into glass jars.
At night, those cores painted his room in soft colors while he lay awake thinking of the next thing to build.
The transactions would have looked strange from the outside.
A twelve-year-old farm boy handled gold, cores, contracts, and impossible artifacts with businesslike calm.
Of course, Jacob was not exactly twelve.
That detail made everything complicated.
Gerald eventually brought him to the Adventurers District in Thornhold.
The district sat behind a guarded gate. A stone-and-timber guild hall waited at the end of a cobblestone path.
Adventurers moved through the place fully equipped with weapons and armor as well as battle scars, and carried the confidence of people who regularly survived encounters meant to kill them.
The guildmaster of Thornhold's branch watched Jacob demonstrate his magic.
Then he offered him an apprenticeship before the afternoon ended.
He was a combat mage with a scar over his left eye and an academy graduate. And he was not gentle when revealing weaknesses for Jacob.
He smoked a pipe and could cast force spells faster than Jacob could understand what was happening.
Jacob had spent months thinking his enchantments were impressive.
The guildmaster kicked that confidence out from under him.
One small strike destroyed the enchantments where his foot touched Jacob's armor. The impact sent damage through Jacob's body, and the guildmaster had to heal him afterward.
The lesson was clear.
Jacob's work was impressive for low-risk village use, like furniture or tools. Against real power, his equipment was trash.
Worse than trash, because it made him think he was protected when he was not.
The problem was core-binding.
Jacob had been skipping the step that gave high-end equipment the density and durability needed to survive serious combat. His enchantments were clever, and they were even unique.
But they were also fragile when measured against the wider world.
Little more than tricks that would make peasants happy.
The guildmaster still took him as an apprentice.
That said more than the insult did.
He saw Jacob's potential, and he wanted it sharpened before it got him killed.
He taught Jacob about magical density and core-turning.
Jacob finally understood why his fireball could barely damage an F-rank goblin. He had magic, control, creativity, and impossible insight, but he lacked density in his magic.
His mana was too thin. His power could do clever things, but it did not hit hard enough.
The guildmaster intended to fix that.
Unfortunately, Jacob was small even by farm boy standards. His body was unable to handle the magical strain.
The solution was boot camp.
The training grounds lay northwest of Thornhold, beyond the safer edge of civilization. The place was designed to be brutal.
Prospective adventurers went there to be broken down, rebuilt, and measured against dangers that could not be solved with talent alone. Only the ability to put your head down and contend with the grind would satisfy the created obstacles.
The guildmaster wanted Jacob to begin core-turning before he turned twelve.
He was strangely insistent about that.
He did not explain why.
Arthur noticed something fishy in the master-apprenticeship arrangement when Jacob told him about it. Arthur did not push hard enough to stop it, but the concern stayed in his eyes.
He knew it was only technically acceptable for Jacob to go along with the guild master's plans, but he also knew this was the type of thing the Trial Year of Ruvka village was created for.
Gerald added one more piece.
The training grove was full of excessive life energy. That energy was concentrated in the fruits that grew there. Eating the fruit could accelerate recovery faster than any normal healer or potion.
Paired with regenerative magic instead of restorative magic would allow the body to adapt, creating the perfect situation to train a core to turn. That is, if the mage could push their body far enough physically.
Gerald told Jacob to use that recovery window to practice turning his core as often as possible.
He said it would hurt.
But he told him to do it anyway.
Jacob treated that as an instruction instead of a warning.
Arthur handled the news like Arthur handled most things that frightened him.
He sat by the fire and whittled a stick down to almost nothing. He nodded more than he spoke. Then he told Jacob that this was what the Trial Year was meant to lead toward.
Children were given freedom from eleven to twelve so they could explore, fail, and find the shape of their lives before the system made that shape for them.
He said he would talk to May in the morning and then told Jacob to make better defensive equipment before leaving.
And he told him to stay safe.
Then Arthur closed his grandfather's old journal and went to bed.
Jacob had the distinct impression that his father sat with his quill for a while before the lamp finally went out.
Old Thom gave him no such softness.
Their last conversation before the training period was the longest they had ever had, which still ended with Jacob being thrown out.
The old sorcerer told Jacob that both he and Arthur would face trials. He told Jacob that stepping in for each other every time would cripple one or both of them.
That old man also told him that adversity was where strength was born. He had been watching to see how Jacob used the power that had fallen into his lap.
Apparently, he was satisfied.
He warned Jacob again about the dagger, too. His warning was that no one on Meldra could currently do what he did with magical equipment. That anything he made at B-rank or above would attract the kind of attention he would not want to bring back to Ruvka.
Then Old Thom told him to get out of his hut before he was forced to make Jacob his apprentice.
Jacob turned to ask one more question.
The door had already closed.
He flew back to the farm, wondering whether Old Thom had actually been anywhere near the field across from the greenhouse or whether the old man had somehow watched everything from inside his impossible house the entire time.
That was where things stood before Jacob left.
He had experienced a true reincarnation from the life of an antisocial adult who loved video games to that of a farm boy with magic. His memories gave him strange ideas that most people from this world might not have, but he was able to leave the baggage of his last life behind him.
He was given the gift of a name that seemed to make his soul stronger by the day. It supposedly worked by feeding his spirit, but Jacob didn't really understand much about that. He just knew that he seemed to have a rather high affinity toward magic.
He had spent two years turning a struggling frontier farm into something greater than it used to be, but it was uncertain at this point if he was changing the farm much or if it was the farm that was changing him.
He enchanted artifacts that trained mages called impossible.
But he charged fair prices for them.
Lately, he flew to the village when he was in a hurry, and the adventurers near the well were getting used to it, though some still watched him from the corners of their eyes. Only experienced mages were known to fly, and he still looked like a boy.
He sat with the chickens when he needed to think.
That part had not changed.
His father was still learning magic at thirty. His brother had followed him into it. His mother loved him with full bowls and fierce kisses. His little sister could still derail dinner with a smile and a sentence that went sideways halfway through.
He had Sera under the same roof, grieving but not alone.
He had Bran waiting for the next project.
He had Mira somewhere near the edge of things, watching the woods and the caves with silent eyes, noticing more than anyone gave her credit for.
He had Oren in the guest bed and goblins dying in the woods before breakfast.
He had Gerald watching from the academy side of things with a noble's caution and a friend's concern. The mage seemed to know more than he let on, but Jacob got the feeling that he was waiting for something; maybe Gerald was just waiting for him to grow in power.
He had Old Thom, as well, who threw him out of a dimensional gateway and somehow made that feel like guidance.
He had a master waiting in the north. A man he hardly knew, yet had apparently broken a few rules to help him grow in power.
He had a world that had not yet decided what to make of him.
That was probably fair.
Jacob had not finished deciding what to make of himself either.
He had two weeks before everything changed.
He used them well.
He made equipment for his family first.
He enchanted armor for them. Real armor. Not tools and not just prototypes as he had before. This was not clever household conveniences that made life easier, either.
This was something that could hold things together while he was away.
He rebuilt the defensive pieces with core foundations wherever he could. He checked the resonance and the failure points, ensuring it would hold out where it mattered most.
He made sure May, Arthur, Caleb, Lila, and Sera each had at least one item that would keep them alive if danger reached the farm while he was gone. Help them to hold on until someone could help, something that could absorb one more blow when all else failed.
Jacob also left Arthur with a weapon. He had wanted to give his father a sword, but Arthur insisted on an enchanted pitchfork if Jacob was dead-set on leaving him a weapon.
He simply said he could not explain it, just that he felt better with a pitchfork in hand.
And Jacob created something just short of an artifact. A pitchfork with three enchantments that would strengthen the weapon and its wielder, allow it to mend itself, and something to make the points much sharper.
With the weapon in hand, Arthur felt like he could take on that horde of goblins by himself, and Jacob was sure he could at this point.
He also trusted Oren.
Oren promised the farm would still be standing when Jacob returned.
Jacob believed him.
But, just in case, he used the last of his dungeon materials to craft an orb. It was an ugly thing, an amalgamation of furs and leathers of beasts with random fangs and claws sticking out of it.
But it was powerful, if nothing else.
He left it to Sera. It was a one-use item, but he figured it could take out Carlos if the unassuming girl could catch him off guard.
She was not a mage, but even with her small link to magic, she could tell the thing was incredibly powerful. It scared her, but it also strangely made her feel safe.
Then Jacob left.
Four months passed.
The guildmaster had told him exactly what to expect.
He would be pushed past his physical limits every day, and he would be pushed past his magical limits as well.
On top of that, he would need to take his body further than it was meant to go, eat fruit swollen with life energy, recover just enough to stand, and then do it all again the next morning.
The training grounds northwest of Thornhold were designed to turn the potential that the guild could see in promising new recruits into functional guild members.
Adventurers cleared dungeons, contained outbreaks, guarded roads, and killed the things that slipped through the cracks of civilization. That potential needed to be refined into something that could hold up to the challenge.
Potential had to be beaten into shape. And these grounds allowed the guild to push that potential where it needed to go.
Create the type of experienced adventurer that would not die in their first gate or at the first dungeon break.
Gerald had been right about the fruit.
It tasted like sunlight.
It filled Jacob with warmth so intense it almost hurt. It smoothed soreness into ache, and aches into pressure. That alone did not make the training easy. But it did make more training possible.
That was worse, in Jacobs' opinion.
He used every recovery window the way Gerald told him to. He turned his core until pain crawled through his ribs, up his spine, and shocked his mind until he was unable to think any longer.
He turned it when his hands shook and when his body begged him to sleep. He turned it after drills, after falls, after victories, and even after failures.
He turned it until he felt like his body would fall apart and tear itself into ribbons.
Then he ate the fruit, and healed his body with the regenerative magic that would allow him to adapt.
Then he turned it again.
The core turned and turned.
Sometimes it felt like grinding stone against bone.
Sometimes it felt like his mana was folding inward around a center that couldn't take the pressure anymore.
Sometimes it felt like he was being rebuilt from the inside by a combination of magic and mettle. But they seemed to fight against each other and rip each other's work apart, just to start anew after healing.
Yet, he did it anyway.
The person assigned to watch his back did not hover. The guildmaster had promised that much.
Whoever had been sent was stronger than Carlos was currently, and that was the only comfort Arthur allowed himself to keep when Jacob left home.
Jacob saw little of the watcher directly.
He felt the presence sometimes.
A shift beyond the trees or a monster that turned away before it reached him.
The message was clear enough.
He was not alone.
He was also not being saved from the training.
And that watcher showed their worth during the attack.
Half of the recruits were lost. An invading force headed to Thornhold managed to break through the defenses of the grove.
Jacob was able to hold his own, but he knew that his secret watcher must have protected him from the shadows because he was one of just a few recruits who made it through that disaster.
Yet, the training continued.
The guildmaster expected him to return as a Tier 1 mage.
The boy who entered the grove had been clever and talented, yet dangerously underbuilt. He had impossible enchantments but thin mana. And the body that housed that mana was but skin and bones.
He had a sword that helped him swing, but armor that was unable to stand up to a simple kick from an experienced warrior.
Four months changed that.
Four months of pain.
Four months of fruit.
Four months of magic collapsing inward and growing denser.
Four months of learning the difference between a trick and real power.
Four months of discovering that every limit had another limit waiting behind it.
And a small battle against a warring force just to try to break him.
Jacob Hemlock had never been the type to break.
Now the training was almost finished.
Somewhere northwest of Thornhold, beyond the safe roads and familiar fields, an eleven-year-old farm boy, soon to be twelve, stood at the edge of the life-energy grove and breathed through the last ache of the last lesson.
His newly defined muscles helped him look more like a pre-teen and less like a small child, and it helped that he had grown about three inches during this training session.
The world had thought him strange before.
Old Thom had called his work unique.
Gerald had called it impossible.
Carlos had watched his system reassess him in real time.
The guildmaster had looked at everything Jacob built and called it trash, then took him as an apprentice anyway.
They had all seen pieces of what he might become.
None of them had seen what was coming home.
He sat down one final time during this month-long training session and turned his core with no effort whatsoever.
Finally, his body had adapted to the rampage of magic and was able to sustain the pressure without falling apart.
Finally, the core could turn on its own.
Finally, the systemless boy was a tier 1 mage.
Finally, he was heading home.
Book Two begins.