Chapter 5: The Letter

The Seoul guild master was the first one out of his seat.

Gyu-ho took one step back, into the gray doorway behind him.

The hall vanished, and he was standing in the wet grass beside the stone.

The doorway closed in the air behind him without a sound.

He waited a long minute for somebody to follow him through.

Nobody did.

He sat up all night anyway, with his slab across his knees, watching where the doorway had been.

A climber who cleared floor 9 could kill things a farmer couldn't imagine.

The arm the hound had raked was healing badly, red and hot under the undershirt strip.

On Monday he planted the seed he had dried, along the ditch where the water ran best.

On Tuesday morning the peppers on that row were the darkest red he had ever grown.

[Tower red pepper. Quality: Fine.]

[Growth: dusk to dawn. Keeps: 14 days.]

[Eaten: keeps the eater warm for three days.]

[First harvest at a new quality. 200 XP.]

So the seed remembered.

Grandma always said a plant passes on what you did for its mother, and he had thought it was sentiment.

The stone lit.

[Level 3. Radish seed, forty coins.]

[Ju Gyu-ho. Seller of an unlisted floor. Day 14.]

[Sow, Level 3. XP: 1,250 of 10,000.]

[Health: 61 of 100. Stamina: 55 of 100.]

[Hunger: mild. Thirst: none.]

[Coins: 200. Lots per Market: 2.]

The jump to ten thousand made him laugh out loud in the empty field.

He didn't know if ten thousand points was a month of Saturdays or a year of them.

He bought two radish seeds and planted them at dusk, with stream water, at the end of the ditch.

In the morning two white radishes stood with their shoulders out of the dirt, each as long as his forearm.

[Tower radish. Quality: Good.]

[Growth: dusk to dawn. Keeps: 7 days.]

[Eaten: closes the eater's wounds, in minutes.]

He looked at the red gashes on his own arm for a while.

Then he cut a slice and ate it.

The radish was crisp and sharp and a little sweet, and the gashes didn't change at all.

He had known it wouldn't work.

When the doorway opened again on Saturday, he came out of it slowly.

The Association man was there, with two more gray suits sitting by the lot door, arms folded.

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