The Duke's Son :Re-Chapter 191

“Again.”

The corners of Jae-Hyeok’s vision darkened. His ears rang, and all around, the land and sky seemed to spin.

“Again!”

Jolting, Jae-Hyeok blinked the sweat from his eyes.

His heart crashed in his chest, but his accompanying painting and the farmer’s shouting were distant, muted—it was as if the world had been submerged.

“Again!”

Again came the farmer’s frustrated shout.

Da... Damnit.

Jae-Hyeok felt bitter; at this point, he sympathized more with the farmer than with himself. How many times had he failed? Having such a slow student, the farmer had cause to yell.

Do-Jin’s simple face crossed Jae-Hyeok’s mind; his bitterness increased.

I know how this farmer feels...

Jae-Hyeok remembered what it was like helping Do-Jin train.

More than once, he’d nearly lost his temper with Do-Jin. There were times when Do-Jin seemed incapable of understanding and following his instructions, no matter how many times he explained.

But still...

Every moment Jae-Hyeok had spent with Do-Jin was filled with reward and satisfaction. Do-Jin had an unwavering desire to learn and grow. Moreover, his battle intuition and outlook were one of a kind. For Jae-Hyeok, Do-Jin was a source of courage and often inspired him.

Jae-Hyeok wondered, Will I ever inspire others in the same way?

“Oh, you’ve lost concentration. Since you have the energy to daydream, you can carry more,” the farmer said.

“Ugh...!”

Jae-Hyeok suppressed a scream as a huge weight crashed onto his back.

Knees wobbling, Jae-Hyeok adjusted the mountain of straw bales on his back while keeping balanced on his tip toes. Veins bulged on Jae-Hyeok’s neck; beads dripped from his jaw. Before him stretched an endless sea of golden rice stalks. In his hand, a sweat-slicked sickle.

Then came the command—

“Again!”

Jae-Hyeok took a step, bent, and swung his sickle. Dozens of rice stalks fell, which was nowhere close to the yield of the surrounding farmers. Despite his best effort, he simply couldn’t keep up.

Another failure...

“Still daydreaming? I’ve got plenty of straw, boy.”

Thump!

Another straw bale landed on Jae-Hyeok’s back. The straw bales looked like bundles of freshly harvested rice, but something was clearly off: the weight of each bale easily weighed over hundreds of kilograms.

Jae-Hyeok already had six of them on his back.

Did I just black out for a moment?

Jae-Hyeok gritted his teeth and took another step. It felt like his toes were shattering, but he persevered.

He came face-to-face with new rice stalks and swung his sickle, but he was one step too late.

Slash! Slash!

The farmers around Jae-Hyeok scythed the rice a beat before he did.

This can’t continue.

Jae-Hyeok was anxious from the growing disharmony and quickened his steps. His crouched walk resembled a waddling duck.

This isn’t easy.

The tool, posture, and environment—everything was unfamiliar and uncomfortable for Jae-Hyeok.

The biggest problem was that he kept leaning forward due to the awkward posture and excessive weight he bore. At the moment, his center balance was as fragile as glass.

It would be easier if I used mana, but then there would be no point in training.

How could he adapt more quickly?

Fortunately or unfortunately, at least he was adapting to the pain.

His toes were a bloody mess. His toenails had long shattered against the larger stones lodged in the dirt, the fragments of which pierced the pink flesh beneath and sank deeper with every step. Even so, Jae-Hyeok could handle it, especially now that he’d had some time to adapt to the pain.

The problem was...

I’m still too slow.

His actions didn’t speed up.

Walking, bending at the waist, and swinging his sickle—the precarious posture and the weight of the straw bales on his back reduced his range of motion.

No, it wasn’t just the weight.

As Jae-Hyeok paused briefly to twist his torso and swing his arms, he felt an uncomfortable strain in his lower back and shoulder blades.

Every time the six straw bales on his back swayed with his movements, the strain on his waist and shoulders increased to resist their momentum.

It has to be on purpose.

The more Jae-Hyeok learned, the more difficult the path to becoming a Reinhardt farmer seemed.

I still don’t know why I have to become a farmer. But... when in Rome, do as Romans do. Jae-Hyeok erased his doubts and cleared his mind. All he needed to do was follow Kyoreh’s arrangements.

......

“Hmm.”

At some point, Kyoreh stopped shouting and watched Jae-Hyeok with a strange expression.

......

How much time had passed? Jae-Hyeok drifted in and out of consciousness a few more times.

“Kyoreeeh!”

Suddenly, there was a loud noise like thunder, and an intruder burst into the rice paddy.

Jae-Hyeok reflexively turned his head and saw him: an over two-meter-tall man with ferocious blue eyes flashing amid long, fluttering white hair.

The man’s massive upper body was reminiscent of a bear. On his broad, bare chest, a lightning-shaped scar was etched deep into his skin.

Something about him felt familiar, but Jae-Hyeok’s mind was already at its limit fighting to stay upright. He stopped paying attention to the gangster and returned to his field work.

“Kyoreh, you! You kicked me out of Reinhardt last time, didn’t you?!”

The intruder, the Thunder Emperor, shouted loudly. In response to his anger, his mana created electrical currents that lit up the surroundings.

“Cool it! Can you take responsibility if you cause a fire?” Kyoreh clicked his tongue and used his farmer’s steps to cause the ground to shake. Then a water vein deep in the underground exploded, and a stream of water gushed out. The electrical currents around the Thunder Emperor latched onto the water and dispersed into the ground. “Besides, I don’t remember kicking you out. Didn’t you run away on your own?”

The Thunder Emperor’s expression distorted.

“Not here, but in Reinhardt! I finally managed to get over the wall, but you led the farmers to chase after me!”

“These fields are also part of Reinhardt. More precisely, these lands are the city’s gate. Only those who’ve proven that they’ve got what it takes as farmers are allowed past the fields and beyond that wall.”

“That is complete nonsense. Why do we have to be farmers?”

The Thunder Emperor asked this, but he wasn’t actually expecting a proper answer. He had visited Reinhardt four times already and was captured by the farmers every time. He came to realize just how insane the farmers of this world were.

“Who knows?”

As expected, Kyoreh didn’t give a proper answer. He just stared at the mountains in the distance with a disinterested expression. This rude bastard. Veins bulged all over the Thunder Emperor as the muscles of his jaw flexed.

Just then, another farmer replied on Kyoreh’s behalf, not wanting their sacred tradition to be misunderstood. “It’s a tradition established by the God of Farming. It’s said that when he was human and sought to become the Sword Saint, he trained himself by challenging passing travelers to duels. That’s how it all began.”

“God of Farming? What’s that? Some type of god for farmers?”

“To be precise, he’s the God of Agriculture.”

“Bah! No matter whether it’s for duels or farming, it all sounds like a random excuse. From what I’ve heard, that god of yours challenged travelers for his own training.”

“He didn’t pick on everyone. He only challenged skilled travelers to duels. And from this, he created an inspiring legend.”

No matter how you say it, it still sounds like that god of yours cornered people who were minding their own business and forced them into fights...

In the end, the Thunder Emperor held back the words he wanted to say. No matter how much he hated the farmers for beating him four times, this was Reinhardt, not Earth. Who knew what might happen if he continued acting wildly? More than anything else, having been kidnapped for the fifth time, the Thunder Emperor finally accepted that he couldn't bypass the farmers. He had decided to take the farmer’s quest, and since that was the case, he naturally needed to win first place.

I can’t lose to a kid like that... What’s with that kid, anyway? He’s practically a baby, and he’s already squirmed his way into Reinhardt? The Thunder Emperor could tell the boy was from Earth, which only made his presence stranger.

“... Sigh, okay. I respect your traditions,” the Thunder Emperor said, then glancing at Jae-Hyeok, who was cutting stalks in an exhausted manner, he announced in a generous tone, “You can try turning me into a farmer. I’ll listen sincerely this time.”

The Thunder Emperor was aware of the value of the farmers’ quest. From his perspective as a high-level player, a chance to gain 90 stat points was rare. However, what bothered him was that it would unlock the Farming Skill. Players only had three Skill slots. Currently, the Thunder Emperor had all his slots filled with the strongest Skills. He worried one of them would be overwritten by the Farming Skill. It was terrible just imagining it.

The Thunder Emperor fumed inwardly. The more I think about it, the more I feel there’s a chance it’ll happen.

Since farmers said that anyone who earned their recognition would become a great farmer, there was a good chance that, upon clearing the quest, he would get the Farming Skill and his Profession would change to a farmer.

The Thunder Emperor dreaded such an outcome, and yet...

I can’t run away from this chance, the Thunder Emperor thought.

Reinhardt was clearly full of benefits. He didn’t dare to guess what he would experience and what heights he would reach once beyond that wall. So he had to accept the mission, even if he ended up becoming a farmer and struggling for a while.

Kyoreh stared at him before slowly saying, “You do have the qualifications, so I’ll give you another chance. There’s just one thing different this time... ” A faint smile spread across Kyoreh’s face, which, from the Thunder Emperor's perspective, looked nothing short of ominous and creepy.

Kyoreh inclined his head toward Jae-Hyeok and continued, “At this boy’s insistence, the current quest has changed a bit.”

Ding!

[Even More Fun and Enjoyable Training!

....]

The same modified quest that Jae-Hyeok had received popped up before the Thunder Emperor, who then burst into laughter. “You reduced the deadline from three weeks to ten days? Does that rookie really think he can do it?”

The Thunder Emperor had suffered for over half a month in the fields before losing his temper and sneaking away. Yet this kid thought he could clear the quest in ten days?”

His arrogance is sky-high! From the start, the Thunder Emperor didn’t like Jae-Hyeok’s face for some reason, and now, his desire to compete and crush this kid was fully ignited.

He accepted the quest and hefted ten straw bales from the large pile at the edge of the field. Then he started cutting the rice using the farmer’s steps just as he’d learned before.

Slash! Slash! Slash!

His technique was no different from that of the native farmers, walking and swinging his sickle in time with the other farmers.

Meanwhile, Jae-Hyeok’s vision was blurred, on the verge of losing consciousness.

“Hahaha! You newbie! How dare you try to cross Reinhardt’s walls before me?”

Slash! Slash! Slash!

The Thunder Emperor was harvesting swaths of rice stalks and laughing madly when Kyoreh hollered, “Stop!”

Kyoreh helped up Jae-Hyeok, who had finally fallen, and glared at the Thunder Emperor as if he were a big disappointment.

“This boy has set an example, but you fail to understand it. Teaching you is meaningless. ”

“What?”

And thus began the start of the relationship between Jae-Hyeok and the Thunder Emperor.