(Is he dead?)
A muffled sound came into Lumine's ears, like voices speaking through water.
(Hey, he is twitching his fingers. Alive right?)
What are the words that are coming into his mind right now? It's not something he knew, yet somehow he understood it clearly.
The strange voices sounded close, almost right beside his head, whispering and murmuring as if someone was watching him.
Lumine slowly opened his eyes.
The first thing that greeted him was a round green face.
It was so close that it filled his entire vision. Smooth, green, and oddly shiny, with two large dark eyes staring straight at him.
The creature leaned forward slightly, as if it were studying a strange object that had suddenly fallen from the sky.
Lumine blinked once.
His mind failed to process what he was seeing.
He fainted again.
Well, Lumine Sullivan was just an ordinary human who dedicated his entire life to plants. From a young age, he had always been surrounded by soil, leaves, and small seedlings growing in old pots.
Because of those plants, he lost his human life little by little, as others began to joke that he was going to marry a plant one day.
Which, honestly, was not wrong.
No girl had ever given their like to him anyway.
While other people spent their youth going to parties, dating, and enjoying life, Lumine spent his days inside greenhouses and research rooms.
His clothes always smelled faintly of fertilizer and wet soil, and his hands were almost always stained with dirt.
But who cares?
He had his plants.
As an Agricultural Scientist, there was nothing he loved more than plants and crops.
Watching a small seed grow into something alive filled him with a strange joy that no person had ever given him. He spent years researching soil quality, plant genetics, and new crop variations that could survive harsher climates.
He had done so much research, discovered so many things.
Only for others to steal his work.
His name slowly disappeared from papers that he had worked on for years. In the end, all that was left to him was a growing pile of debt and a small research facility that barely stayed open.
Still, he continued.
Because plants never betrayed him.
Well… even though he loved plants so much, in the end, he still died because of a plant experiment that went wrong.
The explosion destroyed his entire research place.
One moment, he was observing the reaction of a newly engineered plant strain. The next moment, there was a loud boom, and the entire laboratory turned into fire and smoke.
And that should have been the end of Lumine Sullivan.
With a sigh, he stirred his eyes again.
He was so sure that he died.
But why can he feel his heartbeat? Slow… steady… thump… thump… thump.
He could even hear sounds around him.
The soft rustling of leaves, the distant cry of birds.
Something was moving through the grass nearby.
His eyelids felt heavy, but he slowly lifted them again with effort.
This time, the blue sky greeted him.
Bright and wide above his head, seen through the tangled branches of tall trees swaying gently in the wind.
Sun rays slipped through the leaves and fell onto his face, as if the sunlight itself was gently kissing him awake.
"Argh, my back."
With a groan, he sat up, rubbing his backside with one hand. The ground beneath him felt rough and slightly damp, covered in fallen leaves and small pieces of broken twigs. Only then did he begin to look around properly.
Tall trees surrounded him from every side. Sunlight filtered through layers of green leaves, scattering soft patches of light across the forest floor.
The air smelled fresh, filled with the scent of soil, moss, and wild plants growing freely without human hands.
"Oh, I see," he mumbled to himself.
"I must have been thrown into the forest below the research building. What a powerful explosion," he added in a deadpanned tone, as if commenting on the weather rather than a life-threatening event.
He cracked his neck slowly, the bones giving small popping sounds, then rolled his shoulders to loosen them. But something immediately felt strange.
His body somehow felt light.
Lumine frowned slightly.
Usually, his body felt stiff from years of sitting in laboratories and bending over research tables, yet right now his movements felt smooth and easy.
Even his eyesight was better.
"Hm?" He tilted his head.
Can an explosion fix you like this?
Maybe he might be hallucinating.
Because right in front of him, there was a glowing green colored dialogue box floating in the air.
It hovered quietly, slightly transparent, yet bright enough to clearly read the words written inside it.
[Welcome, Lumine Sullivan, to his new life]
He blinked at it.
Before he could even question it further, the glowing panel flickered slightly.
[System initializing]
The letters rearranged themselves smoothly as if an invisible hand was typing them.
[System initialization completed]
A new window unfolded in front of him, larger and more detailed.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Farmer's Blessing System]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Lumine Sullivan
Class: Arcane Farmer
Level: 1
Growth Points (GP): 0/100
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Skill Trees Available
• Soil Mastery [Locked]
• Crop Mutation [Locked]
• Orchard Domain [Locked]
• Spirit Agriculture [Locked]
• Alchemical Harvest [Locked]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Land Owned
• Nothing
Current Crops
• Nothing
Passive Effects
• Plants grow 30% faster
• Fruits absorb ambient mana
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The glowing interface floated silently in the air, its green light reflecting faintly in Lumine's widened eyes as the forest wind gently rustled the leaves around him.
He smiled awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck as if he had just been caught doing something embarrassing.
"Hm?"
Then he slowly looked around. Only now did it truly sink in that he was no longer in a familiar place.
In the distance, tall mountains surrounded the land from every direction, their blue-gray peaks rising far beyond the forest canopy.
There were no buildings.
He wasn't anywhere near his research building.
"Um… are you something, uh… like a hologram?" he asked the floating green window, squinting at it suspiciously.
Then he sat there, waiting like an absolute idiot, expecting the box to answer him.
"When did the technology become this powerful?" he muttered in disbelief. "It didn't even need hardware."
As if responding to his confusion, the glowing box flickered again. The text changed smoothly, forming a long list in front of him.
[[ Please start gaining Growth Points to continue. You can earn them by:
Planting and harvesting crops
• Growing magical fruits
• Helping villagers or kingdoms
• Experimenting or crossbreeding fruits
• Defending your farm from threats
• Daily farming quests
• Seasonal events to unlock rare seeds
• Guild collaboration projects
• Defeating orchard mini-bosses
Accumulate Growth Points to level up, unlock skill trees, and expand your farm. Your journey as an Arcane Farmer begins now. ]]
The green light from the window reflected faintly on Lumine's face as he silently stared at it.
"…What?"
He slowly stood up, brushing dirt from his clothes. Only then did he look down at himself properly.
His eyebrows twitched.
He was wearing ragged brown pants and a loose brown shirt that looked like it used to be white many years ago. The cloth was worn out and rough, the kind of clothes someone poor or homeless might wear.
And that wasn't the worst part.
His hair was ridiculously long, hanging down messily around his shoulders like it hadn't been cut in years. When he touched his chin, his fingers met a thick beard that felt just as wild and neglected.
"…What the hell."
He slapped himself.
Smack.
The sound echoed slightly in the quiet forest.
"Okay," he muttered slowly while staring at the glowing green box floating in front of him, "something is very wrong."
Growth points. Guilds. Mini-bosses. Whatever this was, none of it made sense to him.
But then again…
Isn't the entire point of research discovering new things?
Lumine scratched his beard thoughtfully while staring at the system window again. His eyes slowly began to shine with the faint curiosity of a scientist facing an unknown phenomenon.
But before any research could begin,
He sniffed himself.
His face twisted immediately.
"…I need a bath."