Chapter 4 : I stepped outside the house and what did I see? Weeds. Stones. Trees.

This game is unusual in that it doesn’t have a “status window” system.

Instead, it has a “Farming Window.”

At first, I cringed and thought, “Why not just call it a status window?” But now, it’s just a normal command I say without thinking.

[Farming Window]

• Name: Kim Suhyun
• Map: Secret Farming Map (SSS+)
• Day: 1
• Stats: Strength (S), Stamina (S), Agility (S), Magic Power (D)
• Abilities:
  1. Melee Weapons: SSS+
• Owned Farms: 100
• Level: 1
• Farming Ability Points: 0
• Mana: 50

In the Farming World, the status window is the farming window.

Some players who are used to the regular term just call it a status window. Even though I’ve been calling it a farming window for 10 years, I admit “status window” is easier to say.

As I open the window, a mix of awe and frustration comes out of me.

“Wow… fuck…”

On one hand, I lament the fact that even my maxed-out status window — which had reached level 999 — is now gone.

On the other hand, I’m amazed that I’m starting off in a world where everyone begins with F-rank stats, but I already have S-rank Strength, Stamina, and Agility, and even my lowest stat — Magic Power — is D, not F or E.

Usually, even S- is hard to get in this game, so the fact that I have both S and D stats shows just how insane the SSS+ melee weapon is as a starting base.

“So it’s melee weapons, huh.”

If I had chosen summons or magic, I probably would’ve gotten S in Magic Power, but Strength, Stamina, and Agility might have been D instead.

So even though it feels like a slight loss, it reaffirms that early in the game, it’s best to rely on your body.

And indeed, even in just a short time, my body feels noticeably lighter.

One of the most frustrating things when I woke up in this crappy hut was how heavy my body felt — a side effect of losing all my stats. But now that my strength is around S level (even if not the SS+ I had in my first Farming World), I feel somewhat recovered.

sigh
Looking at my number of owned farms and my level, I can’t help but sigh again.

Still, swinging the wooden sword makes a satisfyingly crisp sound.

What’s more, I see a skill I’ve never come across in ten years of playing.

[Master of Melee Weapons]

• Grade: SSS+
• Passive Skill (Melee Weapons)
  • Increases melee weapon attack power by 1,000%
  • Slows durability loss of melee weapons by 2,000%
  • Allows mastery-level handling of all melee weapons

“Holy shit.”

In this game, passive skills are incredibly hard to obtain.

They act like active skills just by existing, so they’re ridiculously valuable.

Even if you want to buy one with Farm, the in-game currency, passive skills cost over three times more than active ones — and SSS+ ones usually aren’t even for sale.

Of course, this is my first time ever seeing an SSS+ passive skill in this game.

The skill’s over-the-top perks just make me swear in disbelief.

“Ten times the attack power? Seriously?”

Well, technically it’s 1,100%, so that’s 11 times the power.

With this absurd attack boost from the start and S-rank Strength, I can probably harvest at least D-rank resources without breaking a sweat.

Then there’s the weapon durability bonus.

This helps a lot — if you hunt a lot, you need to constantly craft new weapons, which is a pain. This option solves that.

Even though melee weapons don’t consume resources like arrows for ranged weapons, they cost more to make. And unless you use them properly, the game’s focus on “realism” causes weapons to corrode and break easily.

But the best part is the final option:

“Allows mastery-level handling of all melee weapons.”

Honestly, this is the first time I’ve seen an option like this in the Farming World.

Normally, the Farming World prefers options with clear numerical values.

Despite all its talk about realism and freedom, this game is obsessed with quantifying everything.

From plowing a field to knowing how many seeds you need.

How many days it will take.

Current nutrient percentage.
How much water is being provided.
Even monsters — you know exactly what percentage of their health remains.

How much HP got reduced from hitting a weak point.

What kind of status effects are applied.

And yet, this is an option that inherently requires vague and subjective interpretation.

You can’t even tell if this is good or bad, can you?

Of course, it won’t be trash.

In this game, ranks are law and god.

An SSS+ rank is simply a god.

The level of ‘Master’ is probably far beyond what I imagine.

I wasn’t particularly worried.

As long as I’m benefitting from the game’s system, at least within the farming world, I’ll truly become a master of melee weapons, just like it says.

“No other skills… huh.”

If there’s anything disappointing—though it might sound greedy—it’s that they only gave me one passive skill.

The reason you learn abilities and raise ranks is to avoid grinding like a dog, and instead hunt monsters easily with a single “click.”

Magic is the prime example of that.

Rather than a muddy brawl where your teeth are knocked out and your bones get broken, it’s far more efficient and romantic to just “click” a fireball and roast some wolf meat from afar.

Just because it’s a melee weapon doesn’t mean it can’t have that same kind of charm.

As I mentioned before with Igi-eo-geom (technique over power), melee weapons can be cool and have their own “clickable” skills too.

Since it’s SSS+ rank, I was hoping they’d give at least one of those.

“Disappointing, but… oh well…”

Still, they gave me something.

I can always farm and learn those “click” skills later.

An SSS+ rank passive you can’t even buy anywhere? I’ll be satisfied with that.

And then, when I opened the door and stepped outside.

“Whoa.”

Tons of grass taller than me, rocks scattered all over, and trees so thick you’d need five people to surround the trunk—

That’s when I realized.

“Shit. So this is what SSS+ means.”

I thought the game devs turned over a new leaf and gave me an easy-mode map to enjoy the game.

Because that would’ve been the decent thing to do.

To be honest, they took away the map I spent 10 years building…

Even if the difficulty’s high, I figured they were giving me a place to restart with rare resources.

But that wasn’t it.

“These bastards. Is this what they meant by ‘choose carefully’?”

That one SSS+ ability wasn’t a privilege or a gift.

Without it, the game wouldn’t even be playable. It was just barely enough to balance things.

No wonder. The tall grass and trees in front of me, the rocks—

They were all basic resources I couldn’t cut or mine at all with F-grade stats and wooden tools.

That’s the usual view when starting a farming world.

Weeds, trees, and rocks all around your house.

Newbies complain that it’s messy, but veterans love it because the more overgrown it is, the fewer trips you need to make to gather early-game resources.

These are the most basic F-grade resources and the foundation of all crafting.

Later on, when you go farming for E-grade resources, you start finding boulders instead of stones, thick trees instead of saplings, and tough weeds.

But around my house were D-grade basic resources—a tier above.

“If I hadn’t gone with melee, this would’ve been a reroll.”

The biggest strength and weakness of this game in one word is: realism and freedom.

Because of that damn realism and freedom, bullshit happens all the time—

But on the flip side, thanks to that same realism and freedom, things that normally aren’t possible in this genre can be worked around.

Like gathering resources.

In most resource-collection games, the tool system is fixed: if your tool’s grade doesn’t match the resource’s, you can’t even try to harvest it.

Or worse, it’s so inefficient you’re better off not trying.

But in this game, because of the damn freedom and realism, I can still gather grass, wood, and stones with my basic wooden pickaxe, axe, and sword.

As long as my stats meet the minimum requirement.

If your strength and stamina are high, you can make do with lower-grade tools.

There’s a penalty, like your durability drains faster—

But that’s still better than being completely stuck because you can’t even harvest the resources near your house.

More importantly, thanks to the ‘Master of Melee Weapons’ effect, my weapon durability barely drops.

So choosing ‘melee weapon’ wasn’t a preference—it was a necessity.

At least for this SSS+ secret farming map.

Of course, if my magic power had been S-rank, maybe I could’ve developed another path.

In a game with this much freedom, nothing’s impossible.

But that would’ve taken way longer and been a total hell.

“The straightforward path really is the answer.”

I swing my wooden sword at the weeds right in front of my cabin.

It doesn’t have a blade, so it’s not really cutting.

Shrrrak!!

With a sound, the weeds fall softly.

“Yeah, this is nice.”

Even if they’re D-grade resources, they’re no match for S-grade strength.

Even with a wooden sword, I could probably handle up to C-grade resources without much trouble.

“Sigh…”

I definitely cut down a large bundle of weeds, but they were still everywhere.

The sun hanging high in the sky was already beginning to set.