Carl sighed, staring at the screen. He'd never played Farmville. What was it with giving him game worlds he had never played?
"I guess since the Jump Chain is set to automatic, there's no way to choose the worlds as places I actually want to go. Well, at least it's only farming. I'm sure I can handle that. I mean, there are still the perks and what not to help me get started. It's not like I'm going in with absolutely no advantages." Carl reassured himself.
"Let's see, Loss Conditions. I have to maintain positive financial balance. If I go in the red for more than 6 months, I lose. I can't go bankrupt. Losing isn't a jump chain ender, but I won't get to keep anything from this jump. That is strangely generous." Carl commented.
After thinking about it for a bit, Carl shrugged off his suspicions. From what he understood of actual farming, without the benefits of perks, keeping a farm in the black was actually a lot of work. Lots of things were out of your control, like pests, disease, drought, etc.
After reading the introduction, Carl learned that his only option was drop in, so he couldn't do like he did for the Pokemon world and gain knowledge from having a background.
"Is there actually a background for Farmville? Isn't the whole game just managing your farm?" Carl asked facetiously. "Ooh, what's this? If I'm successful all the farms I own will be added as an addition to my warehouse. And I'll even get more farms added on for each jump that will continue to grow during the jump. Very nice."
Carl started making his picks of specializations and perks that seemed good. He then picked some drawbacks to afford his expenses.
At the end of an hour of work, Carl looked back over his purchases, and just wasn't satisfied with what he'd picked.
"I'm sure I can do better." Carl told himself. He cleared everything out and started over again, making slightly different picks.
At the end of another hour, Carl was again staring at his screen in dissatisfaction. It just felt like he was all over the place. He could tell that he would be running himself ragged for the next ten years.
"The problem I've been running into with my picks is I've been trying to pick up a bit of everything to try to make sure I have lots of products." Carl decided. "I've been focusing on how Farmville is a farming simulator and so I've been focusing on how to grow crops and orchards, and everything in between. I've been thinking I need to get everything so I can be successful."
"Let's walk through this, then. Really, the only loss condition is going bankrupt. So that gives me a lot leeway to work with." Carl realized. "I've got a Warehouse with my own housing, daily food, electricity, and water. So all my basic needs are met. Even if I only sit in my Warehouse for 10 years while having a positive balance of money, I'll win. So, without any pressure on me, what do I want from this jump?"
Carl snapped his fingers, realizing he was being an idiot.
"I've been forgetting what I already knew, I need to create a specialization. In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world, I focused on magic. In the Pokemon world, I focused on having a perfect memory to help me through it. A background with money added on, and I was pretty much set for the ten year span."
"So, what do I want to focus on in this world?" After thinking for a while, Carl made his mind up. "I'll focus on being an expert with animals. I enjoyed my time in the Pokemon world, and wouldn't mind expanding on that. Nothing is forcing me to rely on growing crops, just because the world is called Farmville. I just need to remember not to spread myself too thin."
"First, for specialization I'll pick up Animal Husbandry 100cp. That will give me knowledge of how to raise and breed any mundane animal, even those normally found in a zoo. Just not dragons and unicorns, heh. Now for some related perks."
"Know Your Animals is free since I selected Animal Husbandry. That will shore up my knowledge of how to care for and feed any animals I raise."
"Butcher 100cp will make me an expert on butchering the animals, saving me both time and money."
"I'll pass on Veterinarian. I've still got my medunit that I can use to heal my animals of anything, so no need to waste the points."
"I'll pick up Animal Whisperer 300cp. Being able to speak to animals and have them follow my commands will make taking care of dumber than pokemon animals much easier."
"Hunter 200cp will make me an expert at tracking and killing wildlife, as well as creating hunting and trapping gear. I'll also get a warning sense if some dangerous predator is around so I'll always be ready to avoid their attack. A very specific spider sense is still a spider sense. I'll take it."
"Domestication 400cpwill turn me into an expert at domesticating wild animals and breeding them to get the desired results."
"But wait, if I take the Prehistoric Farming 200cp specialization then it will discount Hunter and Domestication, and give me Gatherer for free so it will cost the same for even more perks."
"So there we go, I'll be an expert on dinosaurs and giant ferns, able to add anything that roamed the prehistoric earth to my farm. And with Gatherer I'll have knowledge of when and how much to harvest from my crops, and what to leave behind. I guess that translates to an ability to know how ripe the produce is. That would make trips to the supermarket easy."
Carl chuckled, thinking off all the time he spent in the past, squeezing fruit and vegetables when he went shopping only to give up and just randomly grab some in the end.
"Okay, I'll also pick up a Crafting Specialty 100cp, the focus will be 'Anything made from animals'." Carl manually typed in his chosen specialty, and was happy when it was accepted. The jump document even expanded on it. "Expert at making trade goods from animals. You know how to use everything from the fur, leather, bones, and even the meat and sinews of animals in order to make quality goods." Carl read. He really hadn't expected such a wide ranging specialization to be accepted, but was pleased it was.
Looking further down, Carl next added some free generic perks for jumpers. Buy Menu & Express Delivery would give him access to a store to buy and deliver goods to his farm so he wouldn't have to go himself. Farming Community gave him access to a farming community to exchange ideas with. He could also ask for some basic items like building materials once a day, and if someone fulfilled the request, they both got the item.
Carl then picked the Beekeeping 100cp perk. The bees would produce honey and bring good luck to his farm that will result in bigger harvests. Carl was still going to be planting some crops, he just wasn't picking perks in relation to them. He still needed to feed his animals, and growing his own feed would help defray costs. So since he wouldn't have any perks for taking care of crops, the extra luck would help.
Next, Carl picked Salesman 200cp. It would make him an expert at selling anything that his farm produced, or that he made. It ensured he would always get the best price, and that he could sell everything he wanted. This was definitely one of those perks that would be useful beyond the Farmville jump world.
Carl reread the section talking about his Farm 0cp that he would be given. It would be 140 meters by 140 meters of undeveloped land. He chose not to buy any Expansions 50cp at this time. He could always buy the 20 meter by 20 meter expansions after he starts the jump, and Carl would rather use his cp for other things.
Every three months while in the Farmville world, Carl would receive a new 100 meter by 100 meter Additional Farm that would be placed somewhere in the world. He wasn't sure just what the document meant by each of the farms having a different theme, but he was glad that he would be able to teleport between his farms, if they were going to be spread around the world.
Carl was down to the Gear & Buildings part of the jump document, where he was given an additional 600cp for only that section.
There were three free items for him that each farm received. The Centrepiece Building that each of his farms would get, even if they only started off as a foundation, and he would have to build them himself. At least they came with a box full of plans and instructions on how to build it. And once he got it built, he would receive daily gifts of some kind of useful goods.
Next was the Storage Cellar that could store up to 100 individual items. It acted as a kind of inventory, since each item once stored took up the same space no matter it's actual dimensions. He could buy extra space to store more items for cp, or he could expand it himself once he was in the world by digging out more space.
And finally was the Storage Silo that would store up to 500 bushels of produce. He could also spend cp to expand it or expand it later by adding building materials. But no matter how much extra space was inside, it wouldn't get any bigger after the first expansion expanded it to double its starting height.
"I would be more impressed with these storage items if I hadn't already spent 10 years in the Pokemon World. They had very convenient storage tech. I'm so glad my warehouse is full of shipping bins with expanded space, it really adds to my storage capacity."
Fences 50cp would give him an endless supply of fences. This was an essential item for Carl's plan for his farm.
Next, Carl chose Super Fertilizer 100cp that would provide him an endless supply of super fertilizer that would double the amount his crops produced. Since his focus would be on raising, breeding, and processing animals, the less attention Carl had to pay attention to the plants while still getting a good yield the better, as far as he was concerned.
Carl had to pick up Animal Feed 200cp when he saw it. It would provide an endless supply of animal feed for his animals. With this new perk, Carl realized that he didn't have to grow crops at all if he didn't want to. His own food and his animal's food was now taken care of.
Ultimately, Carl's plan still required some crops to be present. It would just be more of a garden than farmlands that he would maintain on his farms.
Carl selected a Craft Shop 100cp dedicated to his specialty of animal products to be built on his land. The jump document on the terminal let him work on the layout of the interior, and Carl spent some time designing the place he would spend a lot of time making products.
Next Carl received a free Animal Pen for having selected Animal Husbandry, a free Beehive for selecting Beekeeping, and a free Totem of Divine Guardian for selecting Prehistoric Farming. By giving offerings to the totem in the form of harvest, crafts, and livestock, Carl would gain its blessing for his farm, giving him small blessings like faster growing crops and protection from crop parasites.
He then chose a Box of Building Materials 100cp that would contain enough building materials for building one building that would refill each month.
A Packet of Potions 100cp would give him 20 magical potions each month. The potions had various uses, from crops insta-grow potions, to animal fertility, to unwither potions. Carl liked the sound of that packet, and if he didn't need the potions in a given month, he could stockpile them in his Warehouse until he had need.
Carl saw that he had 150cp remaining, so he sunk it into Starting Capital that would give him $16,000 starting fund. If the winning condition was to stay in the black on his budget, he wanted a bit of a cushion to make sure he didn't fail.
Finally, Carl chose two Drawbacks.
Unwanted Critters level 3 for 300cp would make it so there would be all kinds of animals coming to try to eat his crops or snatch his poultry. Carl chose his Animal Husbandry specialization and Crafting Specialty with this drawback in mind.
One of the drawbacks to hunting is that a lot of the times even expert hunters don't bag any game. But with this drawback, the animals would come to him. The various small amounts of crops that Carl would grow would basically be the lure to bring in different types of animals for him to hunt and trap. He could then either kill them for their meat, leather, and fur, or capture them and domesticate them.
With being able to domesticate, train, and command animals, he would build up a decent force of guard animals to protect his farm and animals from wild animal attacks that made it through the traps. The trained animals and animal products that Carl would be able to sell on the market would keep him solvent.
And finally the Quests 200cp drawback said that he would have an endless loop of quests and missions coming in. At first it sounded annoying, but upon further reading, it said that it would be related to his specializations. So the thing requested would be things he would be doing anyway. There were time limits set for the quest, but no penalties listed for not completing a quest.
So with no negatives other than the endless quests being a headache, and for something he would be doing anyway, Carl was okay with getting 200 extra points. Who knows but that he would also get some important rewards from completing the quests too?
"Whew!" Carl mimed wiping sweat off his brow. "That was the longest I've taken on deciding perks and drawbacks. What a lot of reading."
Carl finalized his build after verifying that he was sure. The world went dark.
When Carl opened his eyes again, he was laying in the middle of his new plot of land. Getting to his feet, he looked around. It didn't look like a virtual world, it looked quite normal. The sun was shining from near the horizon, so it was either morning or nearly evening. Judging from the feel and the bird calls, Carl assumed it was morning.
He noticed there weren't any trees or large rocks on his land, so that was lucky. He had dug up one tree stump years and years ago, and it was a pain in the ass.
He could see his farm borders delineated by some wooden stakes. Turning around he could see the large concrete foundation where he presumed his house would go. To the left of the foundation, he saw the cellar. Further left, he saw the single story standing there. As Carl walked towards a pile of boxes that lay in front of the foundation, he saw the Craft Shop was standing behind the silo.
Next to the foundation Carl looked over the pile of boxes. Each box was about three feet on a side. Carl moved read the note he found on top of one of the boxes closest to him. It was the shipping invoice.
Box of plans for the Centrepiece House.
Box of Building materials.
Box of Fencing supplies.
Box of Super Fertilizer.
Box of Animal Feed.
Box containing an animal pen.
Box containing a Beehive.
Box containing the packet of potions.
Box containing the Totem of Divine Guardian.
Carl started moving the boxes over to the cellar first thing. Opening the door to the cellar, he saw a set of stairs going down. He started carrying the first box down. There wasn't a lot of room down in the cellar. He set the first box down, and it disappeared.
When Carl looked around the room in consternation, he noticed that a mural on the wall that was divided into a 10x10 grid. The grid in the upper left now had a picture of the box on it. Carl focused on the box, thinking about retrieving it, and the box appeared in front of him again.
"Not bad. A mix of real world and video game." Carl laughed.
Concentrating on storing the box, it disappeared again. Looking at the mural on the wall, Carl saw the box and a description of what was in it. Nodding in satisfaction, Carl moved the rest of the boxes, except for the box with the plans and the building materials down into the cellar for now.
Going back to the box of plans, Carl opened it up. He saw a blueprint, as well as a list of directions. Setting them out on top of the box, Carl then moved to the box of construction supplies.
Remembering from the Jump Chain document that he had to stated what building he wanted materials for, Carl stated out loud. "Centrepiece building." When Carl opened the box, he saw a flash of light that temporarily blinded him.
When he opened his eyes a moment later, he saw the supplies stacked neatly in the yard. In front of the supplies were a hammer and a screw driver sitting on boxes of nails and screws.
"Well, apparently it's self assembly? This Ikea house better be damned sturdy." Carl sarcastically commented as he picked up the directions and began reading. "At least the supplies are very clearly labeled." Carl commented, moving to pick up board A1.
A second later, Carl almost face palmed. Embracing his magic, he levitated the long frame board over to its position at a hole in the cement. Slotting it in, Carl soon got into a smooth rhythm as he used his magic to levitated pieces into place.
Soon enough he picked up the hammer and nails and continued putting his house together. Carl was so focused, that he didn't notice the passage of time, or feel any fatigue, hunger, or thirst. After some time, Carl finally finished laying the last floorboard inside the completed house.
Straightening up with a sigh, Carl wiped the sweat off his head. Looking around, he was shocked. He had been in some kind of super focused fugue state while building the house.
Opening the front door and moving out, he noticed that it was like no time had passed. Thinking over his memories of building the house, he realized that the sun had barely moved the whole time he had been building the house.
"That is so weird. It's like a time dilation field of some kind, so it only took a moment of real time. But I still had to physically build it. A mix of real world and game mechanics indeed." Carl shook his head. He looked at the single story house that had a living room, kitchen, dining room, one bed, and one bath, Carl was bemused at having built a house.
Going back inside the house to look around again, he noticed a terminal in what would be considered the living room. Moving over to see what options were available, he noticed a menu. The options were Farm, Store, Forum, Friends, and Local Map.
Clicking on Farm, he saw an overview of his farm. He saw there was an option to rearrange his farm. Curious about the feature, Carl moved the silo to the other side of his house. He didn't hear anything move outside, but when he went to look, the silo had actually moved.
"Not bad at all." Carl whistled.
He moved back over and clicked on the Store option. The store opened up. Up top there were tabs for the different sections. Seeds, animals, tools, vehicles, farm options. Clicking around, Carl familiarized himself with the functionality of the options.
Clicking on the Forum, Carl saw there were a number sections for different topics. Clicking on the FAQ, he soon got a clearer sense of how this world and the farming community worked. He read an introduction to the local people, got introductions to the market in the local town, and read various updates about the weather, animal activity, and other such things that concerned the locals and their farms.
Carl backed out and clicked on the Friends option, and found it empty. Not surprised, Carl backed out of the friends option.
Opening up the local map, Carl made note of his address, and the names of the owners of the nearest farms to him. His nearest neighbor was a few miles away.
The next thing Carl did was to return to the cellar and bring out the boxes one at a time to open. He placed the animal pen in an appropriate location, and opened and situated the endless animal feed station nearby. While the animal feed was endless, he still had to manually gather the feed and move it to the animals. The feed station would dispense different feed depending on what animal food Carl asked it for.
Carl then moved the box of fencing supplies to the edge of his property and started working. Pulling out the post hole digger, he first dug a hole, put a post down, then moved to the next one. When he had two in a row, he would nail the boards to the posts. He soon entered that fugue concentration time dilation state that he had previously when building his house.
Soon enough, he had a five foot tall fence around the perimeter of his property. It would keep out some of the animals for now. Not all of them would be deterred by such a simple fence, but enough so he could hopefully get everything set up and operating before changing the fencing so that he could allow them entry at specially prepared trap entrances.
Now that the outer fencing was done, Carl set up another square fence in one corner of his property where he soon placed his beehive. After placing it, he soon heard the bees inside waking up and moving out to do the things bees do.
Carl then placed his endless Fertilizer station in an out of the way corner that would be convenient to where he would place his fields.
He spent some time thinking about it, and decided to place his Totem of Divine Guardian in a prominent place on his land near his house. Carl didn't mind having it in a noticeable area because the Divine Guardian was a very useful part of his farm. And it would remind him of the need to keep it happy with tithes so his farm wouldn't be plagued by bad luck instead of good.
Carl re-entered his house to use the store, when he noticed a box sitting in front of the terminal.
"Ahh, that must be my daily gift. Let's see what's in it, then." Carl checked out the box. "Ahh, construction materials for a chicken coop. How did they know what I wanted for Christmas?" Carl chuckled.
Carl picked up the box and carried it outside, and soon a chicken coop was standing near the animal pen with a fence around it to keep the chicken in the immediate area.
He returned back inside to peruse the store.
He already had a hammer and screw driver, and left over nails. So Carl bought some of the other tools and items he needed, like a hoe to till the earth and prepare it for planting. A construction kit for a well, and a bucket to carry the water. Some butcher knives and skinning knives, the various tools needed to tan hide and prepare furs. Various seeds for planting some vegetables and saplings. Milk jugs, food containers, water troughs, salt licks, and all other things he would need.
He ordered 6 dogs, so he could get started training them for farm security. Once he'd trained this group of six properly, he could get another young bunch. That way the older dogs would make training the younger ones easier, in that they would assist him.
For now he would use his handgun or AR15 as security for now, but he would soon find some appropriate wood to make a bow and arrows and traps that he would place around the farm. Despite having plenty of bullets stored away in his warehouse, he was still here for at least 10 years. There was only a finite amount of bullets, but he could continually make new arrows.
He had noticed the drawback Extended Stay that could let him stay for up to 50 more years for 100 cp each 5 years. He wasn't positive he wouldn't take that drawback later. Maybe he would find an urgent need to purchase more specializations sometime in the future? Probably not, but he was going to keep an open mind about it for now.
Carl also purchased a dozen chicken to go with his chicken coop. Then he bought a couple horses and a dozen cows.
He exited the house and noticed everything he'd purchased were already here. He spent the next few hours organizing everything.
All the animals were still really young. He soon had them separated into their areas with food and water available. With some of the materials purchased, he soon had some kennels built for the dogs.
Carl stood in his yard as the sun was approaching the horizon.
"Well, that was a productive day. Definitely some mixed real world and game mechanics. There is no way I could do so much in one day otherwise." Carl smiled, enjoying the sense of having built everything he looked at. It gave him a profound sense of ownership.
Carl was woken up in the middle of night by the sound of his animals making a racket. He got up from his sleeping back, carrying his handgun, he left his tent.
With Carl's Tier 4 senses, he was able to clearly see the fox that was causing the racket chasing one of his chicks. "Damned bastard." Carl cursed while aiming and firing in one smooth motion, hitting the fox in the chest, dropping him.
Moving over to the chicken coop, Carl counted his chickens. The fox had one before he could get up.
"Well, I knew they would be coming. Gotta get the traps set up tomorrow." Carl grumbled as he picked up the fox. Now that the danger had passed, the six puppies were poking their heads out of their kennel curiously. Stashing the bloody fox away from the animals temporarily, Carl spent some time soothing his animals so they could once more settle down.
Afterwards, he took the fox to his craft shop where he skinned it and butchered the fox, letting its meat soak in some salt water to tenderize the meat. Carl then cleaned up the organs, so he could cook them up and chop them up to go into the dog's bowls the next day. No sense in letting any of it go to waste. Even the bones could be made into various little tools, like needles or buttons or whatever.
Moving back outside, Carl once more checked on the animals, and saw they were doing fine now.
Carl knew that pests would be attacking the farm, and his defenses and traps weren't fully prepared, so he had set up his tent that he'd used for ten years in the Pokemon world to be on call. And it was good that he did. Who knows how many of his little chickens the fox may have eaten? Probably all of them.
Carl soon got back to sleep.
Carl woke up as the sun was coming up. He started going about the needed chores, feeding each of the animals, preparing his garden plot and his orchard. He took his axe into the nearby woods, and started gathering the materials he needed to set up traps.
While there, he saw many animal tracks. Fox, dear, wolves, and rabbits, oh my.
When he returned to the farm, he started setting up snares and traps around the place. He added to the fence except around areas the traps were, to fool the wild animals into trying the easier routes in so they would get snared.
Looking at the animals growing before his eyes, Carl was at first surprised before remembering this was a reality/game world. The animals would probably all be done growing between a week, for the chickens, and a month, for the horses and cows.
So Carl spent some time in the afternoon working with the dogs on their training. Best to start young.
That evening Carl noticed an insistent beeping coming from the terminal in the house. When he checked it, Carl received his first quest. A neighbor had recently lost all their chicken to a fox. So they needed two trained dogs to protect them within 2 weeks. The pay (quest reward) was quite generous, far more than Carl had spent to buy all 6 of his dogs. He couldn't deny the quest, but he decided he would fulfill it. He would still have 4 of the dogs left afterwards, and he was already planning on buying more dogs in two weeks.
It had been a month since Carl started on his farm, and things had been going well. Any time he had some concerns about his garden or his orchard, he just had to hop on the community forums and easily find his answers. People were kind enough to answer pretty quick, if there wasn't already a posted answer.
One of the suggestions that helped the most was to buy a delivery box. It was linked with the market so he could simply place the goods he sold online in the box and it would deliver it to the buyer. It saved him from having to make the 30 mile trip to the nearest town.
He now had 24 dogs, and they were doing a fine job of protecting the place. He could even sleep in his house now. He had bagged many squirrels and several more foxes in the traps he'd set. Any that got by the traps fell to his dogs or dozen cats that he bought. There had even been a deer who jumped the fence that froze when he saw Carl. Last thing that gluttonous buck had ever done.
He'd purchased many more chicken, and was selling eggs and chicken meat through the market. The feathers actually also sold relatively well. Someone out there with the user name Pinfeather must be making lots of pillows.
He had been expanding the various accommodations of the animals, so the horses now had their own enclosure. He had been getting them used to the idea of saddles and that he would be riding them soon.
He had one bull and over a dozen cows now, and it was only a matter of time before he could start milking the cows.
So far he was still in the building up phase, so he hadn't recouped back to his initial investment, even though the chicken products and the furs were slowly making him money.
But once the milk and then the meat cows started hitting the market, he was sure to start making money.
Once he built up some more infrastructure and a pond, he was planning to start buying some geese and ducks.
Last week he'd gotten a quest for some dinosaur eggs. Carl had spent some time poking around the forest and hadn't seen anything resembling dinosaur tracks, so that quest was a no go. But it was like he'd assumed, there was no failure penalties. Just annoying quest givers demanding he fulfill their request.
"Look, guy. I'd love to get you some dinosaur eggs. I just don't have any. No one here has any that I know of. You're just out of luck, I'm afraid." Carl rolled his eyes. That Dennis Nedry guy had been really persistently annoying.
It had been 8 months since Carl started his time in Farmville. His original farm was expanded as large as it could go. The defenses were tight.
Several months ago, he had caught some hawks trying to snag his chickens. So he had caught them with his telekinesis. It took a bit of work, but he'd eventually tamed them, and bred them. They now served as anti-air defense as well as lookouts for any incoming pests.
He had 40 dogs that patrolled the fence in groups of four in different shifts. His two dozen cats were in charge of inside defense, making sure that any small critters that burrowed their way in were snapped up immediately.
His garden was producing nicely fresh produce very nicely. Most of it Carl sold, since he didn't need that much.
His milk and meat cows were making him tons of money. As was his other meat animals, like the ducks, geese, chicken, and turkeys.
He had two other farms available that he could occupy, but he wanted this main farm to be fully situated and producing him money before he started sinking time and money into his extensions. Especially now that he his dogs, cats, and birds could reproduce enough to quickly bring up the defenses of the other farms.
But Carl was quite proud. He already had three times the amount of money he'd started with. It was a lot of work every day, but it was satisfying.
Carl teleported to his first farm extension.
Looking around the surrounding area, it looked tropical, and it was humid as fuck. There were coconut trees, papaya, banana and some others he didn't recognize.
Well, time to get started.
Carl began the process of building up his Centrepiece building on this plot of land. The time compression fugue focus began.
Carl was celebrating his year anniversary in the Farmville world with Ronaldo and Marietta, Ronaldo's wife.
Carl had found a nice feature of the community function. He could hire a local to manage his additional farms. Which was a godsend, because Carl was already behind. Every three months he got access to a new farm, but he didn't have the time to be taking care of multiple farms. So, he finally discovered he could hire locals to work his farm. They get a wage for their work, while as the owner he gets a majority of the profit. Or has to pay for whatever disaster happens. But that's the nature of the beast.
One of the things Carl realized really quickly is that he couldn't always emulate his success from his original farm in his satellite farms. For one thing, he wasn't always there to keep an eye on it, and his hires didn't have his animal specialization.
So over the past four months Carl had hired Ronaldo and his wife to work his tropical farm. Ronaldo had a specialty in fish farming, so that's what Ronaldo did at his tropical island farm. Digging out the fish ponds by hand had been quite some work, but he and Ronaldo had done it.
Marietta had a talent for making the most exquisite jams. So the farm also had many fruit trees and bushes. Carl also shipped the fruits from his main farm to her to make the jams and jellys to sell at market, and they were making Carl lots of money.
So even though Ronaldo and Marietta didn't have Carl's experience with taming animals, once the dogs had gone through his training, Carl could tell them to listen to someone else's commands and they did just fine. They had saved a lot of trouble by being the defense at his farms.
One of the issue that Carl had found early on was that he couldn't teleport with any of his dogs, and since he didn't have the Link so he could not open two portals and use his Warehouse as a transit point. So he ended up having to pay a lot of money to get a shipping license, which solved his problems, even though he nearly went in the hole because of the cost.
Now that his second farm was established, Carl was going to start opening up other satellite farms. He had already gone through the process of developing two farms, and he was getting better at it. His first had been 8 months long before he'd fully developed it. The second was 4 months. He was planning to hire someone to watch over his main farm for a while, so he could work on getting the time down even more.
If he could catch up with the number of satellite farms he had available, then he could probably go back to minding his main farm and only troubleshooting issues here or there at his satellite farms.
But for now, he had a delicious meal that Marietta cooked to enjoy.
A busy year had passed for Carl. He had finally caught up with the satellite farms development. With each additional farm adding money to his coffers, he was able to blast through the development phase. He would quickly maximize the land extensions, build fences, traps, introduce dogs, cats, and birds as defenses. Hire a local, find out what their specialty was, and help them get started before leaving them to work.
Then he would go back to his farm and train more animals for deployment, and hunt more creatures, thus perfecting his skills at processing animals. Thankfully his critters drawback only applied to him, not to all his satellite farms. So only the farm he was staying at got attacked by crazy wild animals.
So far he had an English countryside that focused on sheep, wool gathering, and English foods.
A coastal area that focused on fishing and sea food.
A farm called Jade Falls in china that produced rice and the local hire's wife was the most amazing cook. They could produce dozens of dishes a day. It amazed him.
His sixth extension had been a Halloween Theme farm. It was weird, the entire countryside it was in was Halloween theme. It was always fall there. They produced everything associated with Halloween.
The seventh was Sunflower Meadows, whose specialty was flowers. Everything to do with flowers. Which meant they had lots of beehives, and also produced lots of honey.
And the eighth farm was Mistletoe, that was always in winter, and produced Christmas themed products.
By this point, Carl just shrugged at the silliness of Farmville. The fact that a perpetual winter farm still grew vegetables other such produce out of season no longer bothered him. It was the way it was, and as long as they made him money he didn't care. With the continual influx of money he could continue to develop farms. Farms that he would keep after leaving this world.
He sometimes wondered how he was going to keep working the land when his farms left this world with him. But that was something for him to worry about later. For now, he had to make sure he had as much land as possible before the jump ended.
Over the next several years Carl kept himself very busy. He found that he couldn't always rely on his dogs/cats/birds combo to help defend his farms.
His tenth farm was freaking Atlantis. An underwater farm. So, he had to adjust, grab his rebreather, and go out and catch some underwater animals for defenses. Domesticating some sharks had been an interesting experience. Domesticating octopi was actually easier. They were actually pretty clever creatures.
Once Atlantis was up and running, it steadily produced many things that only an underwater farm could. Pearls, coral, ambergris, and an assortment of underwater delicacies that couldn't be found anywhere else.
When he received a farm in Australia, he had been pretty excited. He got to train kangaroos. Those guys can kick. And they could fight nasty. But they were good for roving patrols to keep the big pests away. The day Carl saw a group of four kangaroos beat a crocodile to death was amazing. They kept coming at it from behind and the sides, and then retreated. The poor croc couldn't do anything, and eventually ended up becoming a pair of boots for Carl.
Carl also obtained a few farms that had magical creatures and plants, some that had alien biology, and some that were in a land of dinosaurs! Carl spent some time hunting dinos there, and he managed to get some young raptors that he raised up and domesticated. They were vicious creatures when they cornered prey.
And Carl obtained a farm for pretty much every cuisine on Earth. Italian? Mexican? Korean? Japanese? Mediterranean? He's got it all.
He obtained a couple farms that produce magical reagents, so he was happy that he would always have access to the ingredients for magical potions or rituals. He even had a couple farms that produced spiritual plants and animals for cultivators. Carl couldn't really make use of it now, but some day in the future he might.
He had a farm that produced gemstones, El Dorado produced gold, and one farm was basically a mine that produced all kinds of metals.
Another produced Marijuana. Seriously. It was a hippy themed one. Another produced all kinds