Ch.1717. Star Fruit

The fruits weren’t blooming in vibrant colors.

Perhaps that was to be expected.

It would have been strange if this neglected dimension perfectly preserved the orchard from the fairy’s thousand-year-old memories of her previous owner.

But that was actually better.

The interior wasn’t maintained, with the remnants of fallen fruits scattered messily across the ground from years of neglect. Most trees were rotting, many barely able to stand, with only a few bearing fruit thanks to their superior species.

“They really put their heart and soul into this.”

Everything was perfectly designed, from the arrangement of trees to everything else—I just needed to plant fruit tree seeds here.

First, the high walls.

This alone was impressive.

The greatest danger when growing fruit trees is monsters.

Even crops planted right in front of your house suffer damage from creatures targeting them day and night. An orchard nearly 1KM away?

Planting fruit trees would be more like planting them for monsters rather than for myself.

No matter how diligently you grow fruit trees, it’s a matter of whether you can harvest the fruit before monsters eat them—it’s that simple.

This isn’t something you can solve by clearing out nearby sewers to eliminate rats.

The larger the biome, the wider the map, the more diverse monsters there are. Unless you clear all the land and surround it with walls, managing all the interior space is nearly impossible.

But this place had solved that problem.

Perfectly, to the point where I wouldn’t need to worry about it at all, despite never having learned construction skills or planning to learn them.

“This could even be used for regular farming.”

That’s how good it was.

With walls this sturdy, at least level 0 biome monsters wouldn’t be able to target the fruits beyond the wall unless they charged in groups driven by rage or instinct.

I looked at Lulu with newfound appreciation.

“You’re hiding some special ability, aren’t you? Why…”

“I’m an ancient fairy, you know!”

“Hmm… is that so…”

While I might feel like giving her snacks for navigating through weeds that block my view, building an orchard of this caliber for a fairy seems excessive.

Maybe it’s because I haven’t grown attached to her yet.

Or perhaps the previous owner built it because they wanted to and just told Lulu it was for her to make her happy.

Anyway, the orchard was an orchard.

After checking the living fruit trees, there were still about 20 of them.

Plus, inside the orchard was a storage shed twice the size of my hut.

Naturally, there were no fruits inside.

But there were some seeds.

“Thank you. Thank you.”

Though the previous owner was dead, their spirit remained in the seeds.

About a dozen fruit tree seeds and 50 recovery herb seeds.

Dozens of other useful seeds were sorted and stored in a corner of the warehouse.

“This is worth a fortune.”

Just selling the recovery herb seeds would make me rich.

Buying this many seeds with Farm would be impossible with my current amount.

After collecting the seeds, I took out my axe.

First, I needed to cut down all the rotten fruit trees.

They’re still wood, so they’re resources.

“If you have nothing to do, clean up the floor. The previous owner didn’t make this place to be used so filthily, right?”

“Yes…”

Lulu, perhaps reminiscing about the previous owner, flew around diligently cleaning the floor with her small body.

Though her cleaning barely made a difference—it would need a proper sweeping—but that wasn’t the priority right now.

As I cut down trees, dusk began to fall.

If I wanted to return, I needed to leave now.

Instead, I decided to stay here for the night.

Once the door was closed, there was no risk of monster attacks unless they could fly in from above.

The storage shed was more spacious than my hut anyway.

The previous owner must have occasionally slept here too, as there was a small bed in one corner.

The lack of a bathroom was unfortunate, but I’m not the type to be overly concerned with cleanliness while farming in this world.

The work continued late into the night.

Though mentally tired from doing simple labor for what felt like four straight days, my ten years of experience definitely showed.

Besides, as they say:

No matter how much you clean and decorate your own home, it never feels tiring.

If this were a new map in Farming World, I might have taken a break by now.

With my main map available, why work so hard here?

I could take it easy since it was getting tedious.

But this was my house.

My residence.

My dimension.

Thinking of each task as money, I didn’t feel tired at all.

Who would find it difficult to cultivate their own store or dig up money buried in their front yard?

After cleaning everything up, only the fruit-bearing trees remained, scattered throughout.

It looked a bit empty and not particularly attractive for an orchard, but it was neat and tidy.

I used a rake from the storage to sweep up the rotten leaves, twigs, and fruit remnants, then dumped them outside the orchard.

One of the good things about Farming World is that you can dump garbage like this.

Of course, if I dumped trash in my living area, I’d eventually have to clean it up, but natural waste like this would be washed away by rain or eaten by monsters if left outside.

It eventually becomes fertilizer anyway.

“They really spent a lot of money.”

Only one type of fruit tree had survived.

Star Fruit, a blue-glowing fruit that only grows in dungeons.

The seed for this tropical biome fruit tree could have been found in a level 2 biome or purchased, but generally would cost a tremendous amount of Farm to buy.

Finding seeds for this tree in a tropical biome is extremely difficult, and even the tree itself is rare to spot throughout the entire tropical biome.

It’s sweet and delicious when eaten raw, provides health recovery and regeneration effects, and is one of the trees players typically fill their orchards with in the late game. When made into jam or wine, it commands high prices just for its taste.

There were nearly 20 of these trees.

At this point, I was curious what the other trees had been before they rotted away.

“They must have really cared about you.”

“Hehe…”

Or maybe they just wanted to decorate an orchard using Lulu as an excuse.

Whether it was a coincidence or they were obsessed with Star Fruit and filled the orchard with them before dying, it was quite fortunate for me.

Recovery herbs and Star Fruit.

Even in reality, Star Fruit isn’t widely known.

Among fruit enthusiasts, it’s traded for hundreds of thousands of won, even more expensive than recovery herbs with their good performance and efficacy.

This is inevitable since it only grows rarely in tropical biomes, and cutting down trees to plant them in Earth’s tropical regions doesn’t guarantee fruit production. The fruit itself is also difficult to obtain, making it much harder to find than recovery herbs.

Still, since it’s a consumable fruit, the price doesn’t skyrocket beyond reason.

While buying a single fruit for hundreds of thousands of won is beyond my comprehension, I harvested all the ripe Star Fruits.

“This will be quite a haul when I leave.”

The remaining time would be perfect for planting and growing the recovery herb seeds before leaving.

“Here. Have one too.”

“Thank you!”

Rewards for achievements should be clear.

If Lulu hadn’t told me about the orchard, I might still be struggling today, just arriving at the village and wasting Farm while being taken advantage of by NPCs.

I don’t even know how the village is structured.

The very existence of NPCs is questionable.

While Farming World has NPCs because it’s a game, this is a dimensional rift or rift dimension—would there even be NPCs in an ownerless dimension?

So the orchard venture was successful.

Rewarding Lulu, who deserved all the credit, was only natural.

Star Fruit must be quite a delicacy for Lulu, whose staple diet is fruit.

Due to not being harvested for a long time, each tree yielded about 5 Star Fruits on average, and nearly 100 blue, shimmering fruits filled the basket.

I was about to toss her one when curiosity struck me. I pulled out some of the snacks Lulu had liked from my backpack and held them out.

“You choose. What do you want to eat?”

Star Fruit versus Lulu’s favorite spicy snacks.

The competition between spicy Swing Chips made from potatoes and tteokbokki-shaped snacks VS sweet and crisp Star Fruit was honestly not worth comparing.

It’s an insult to compare snacks that cost 2-3 thousand won with fruit that can only be obtained in dungeons.

But Lulu glanced at me cautiously and chose the snacks.

“Can’t I have… both, Master?”

As far as I can tell, her claim that fruit is her staple food is definitely a lie.