Consciousness returned to Leo not as a sunrise, but as the harsh, sterile flicker of a fluorescent tube.
He tried to sit up. His body refused. It wasn't just tired; it was locked. His trapezius muscles felt like they had been replaced with rusty steel cables, and there was a sharp, chemical taste of bile in his throat.
"Rhabdomyolysis," a voice stated. It was a clinical baritone, stripped of any bedside manner. "Mild, but present. You broke down muscle tissue faster than your kidneys could filter the debris."
Leo turned his head. Standing over him was Dr. Hardy.
In the valley's lore, Hardy was the town doctor. In reality, he was a cautionary tale of biological intervention. A massive man with a dark eyepatch and a left arm that hummed with the faint whir of servos, Hardy looked less like a healer and more like a mechanic for human bodies.
"I... I was farming," Leo croaked.
"You were self-destructing," Hardy corrected. He adjusted a dial on the IV drip connected to Leo's arm. "You dehydrated your system, then pushed your anaerobic threshold for six hours. The result isn't a 'good day's work.' It's systemic shock."
Hardy picked up a clipboard. He tapped it with a pen—click, click, click.
"In the city, you pay with insurance. Here, we operate on a cash basis. The saline, the electrolytes, and the bed usage come to 800 Gold."
Leo closed his eyes. 800 G. That was the price of eight bags of turnip seeds. That was his entire operating budget for the first week.
"I don't have it," Leo whispered.
"Then I will put it on your tab," Hardy said, tearing the page off the clipboard. "But be warned: The valley does not forgive debt, and neither does physiology. If you come back here again, I won't just give you saline. I'll recommend you leave."
Leo was discharged at sunset. The walk back to the farm was a humilating limp. Every step sent a jolt of pain through his hamstrings.
When he reached the farm gate, he expected to find the field empty. Instead, he saw a small fire burning near the rock he had moved.
Sitting on an upturned bucket, warming his hands over a fire made of dried twigs, was Guts. The Brown Sprite looked even more ragged in the firelight. His skin had the texture of a russet potato, and he smelled intensely of wet leaves and decay.
"You look terrible," Guts noted, not looking up. "The Doctor took your money?"
"Not yet, but he will." Leo said, leaning against the fence to take the weight off his legs.
"Standard procedure," Guts grunted. He tossed a twig into the fire. "Humans always try to substitute money for stamina. It's a bad exchange rate."
Leo limped closer. "You're still here."
"I can't leave," Guts said. He pointed a knobby finger at the single square yard of dark, revitalized soil where Leo had moved the rock. "That patch there? That's the only place in the valley where the nitrogen cycle is working. If I step onto the grey dirt, I suffocate."
"Because of the Goddess?"
Guts spat into the fire. The spit sizzled green.
"The Lady isn't just a statue," the Sprite explained. "Think of her as the central nervous system. She sends the signal—the pulse. That pulse tells the worms to dig, the bacteria to divide, and us Sprites to hold our physical forms. When the Witch turned her off, the signal stopped. We didn't disappear; we just... scattered. Like dust."
Guts looked at Leo. "I only came back because you created a localized pressure system. You moved the rock. You sweated into the dirt. You created a tiny pocket of Order in the Chaos. I anchored to it."
Leo looked at the vast, dark expanse of the field. "I cleared one rock. There are thousands."
"And you have an Iron Hoe," Guts said, shaking his head. "Iron is dead metal. It has no resonance. You swing it, and the earth fights back. That's why your kidneys almost shut down."
"I can't afford a better one."
"You don't buy better tools," Guts said. He reached into his rags and pulled out something that looked like a tarnished copper coin. He flipped it to Leo.
Leo caught it. It was cold and heavy.
"That's a Casino Token," Guts said. "From the Old Tree. Worthless now, since the Casino is gone. But it reminds me of a truth: The only way to move this much earth without dying is to cheat."
"Cheat?"
"Magic," Guts whispered. "The Witch Princess sealed the Goddess, but she didn't seal the artifacts. There are tools in the Excavation Site. Old tools. Cursed tools. Things that don't push the earth, but command it."
Leo remembered the pain in his muscles. The feeling of the ground rejecting him.
"Dr. Hardy said I'd die if I pushed too hard again," Leo said.
"With Iron tools? Yes," Guts agreed. "With the Cursed tools... well, you won't die from exhaustion. You'll just sell a few years of your life for a few acres of corn. It's a mortgage, kid. Are you willing to sign?"
Before Leo could answer, a light flared in the distance.
It wasn't magic. It was the high-beam of a flashlight, cutting through the darkness of the valley road. Footsteps crunched on the gravel—heavy, erratic steps.
"Hide," Guts hissed. The Sprite dissolved instantly, turning into a small pile of brown dust on the bucket.
Leo straightened up, wincing.
A figure emerged from the dark. It was a man in a white lab coat that had seen better days. His hair was a wild explosion of grey static, and his eyes were magnified by thick, spiraled glasses.
It was Daryl.
He didn't greet Leo. He walked right past him, shining his flashlight beam directly onto the patch of revitalized soil where Guts had been sitting. Daryl pulled out a Geiger counter. It clicked furiously.
"I knew it!" Daryl shouted, startling the sleeping crows. "Localized photonic spike! Anomalous biological activity!"
He turned the light on Leo, blinding him.
"You!" Daryl accused. "You're the new variable. You did something to the soil structure here. What was it? Chemical injection? Radiation? Nanobots?"
"I... I just moved a rock," Leo stammered.
Daryl lowered the light, looking disappointed. "A rock? Impossible. Rock displacement doesn't generate Cherenkov radiation." He squinted at Leo, then at the empty bucket.
"You're hiding something," Daryl muttered. "And I need it. My experiment in the basement... she's failing. She needs high-energy water, and you just created high-energy dirt."
Daryl leaned in close. He smelled of ozone and burnt coffee.
"If you find anything strange," Daryl whispered, "don't give it to the Witch. She destroys. I preserve. Remember that."
Daryl spun around and marched back into the darkness, his Geiger counter clicking like a mechanical insect.
Leo looked at the pile of dust on the bucket. Slowly, it reformed into Guts.
"The Scientist," Guts sneered. "He wants to dissect the magic. Stay away from him."
Leo looked at his trembling hands. The doctor wanted his money. The Sprite wanted his labor. The Scientist wanted his secrets.
"I need to sleep," Leo said.
"Sleep fast," Guts replied. "The weeds don't sleep. And the Witch just sent a cloud front. It's going to rain acid tomorrow."