Marigold was a beautiful little town, with one of the most adorable names in Fiore. If she had to pick her top town names in this nation, they were definitely Marigold and Orchidia. The other names were boring after you have said it a couple of times. After exploring and learning quite a bit, Diana felt ready to take on some request. She was still a low rank, so she would have to gather experience by taking the lower ranked requests, specifically the D-rank ones. The request that she had chosen for today was rather easy, but still required some effort. She was not used to carrying heavy things, but this job would definitely help build her stamina somehow. Arriving at the farmlands, she began to search for Farmer Jim, the client of her mission, who had requested to help crate and deliver his precious cabbages to a cabbage vendor at the market. Hopefully, it was not too far from where she would have to take the cabbages. She spotted a chubby little man with glasses, preparing some cabbages and wiping away sweat on his forehead. Approaching this man whom she assumed must be Farmer Jim, Diana asked:

“Hello, mister. May I help you with your cabbages?”

While holding up the request sheet to let him know what she was talking about, in case he had forgotten. The man raised his eyes to skim what was written on the sheet, then with a look of sudden realization, introduced himself and gave her instructions on how to handle the cabbages, how to crate them without ruining them, and how to get to the market where she would find the cabbage vendor to deliver the cabbage crates to. Diana folded the request paper neatly and tucked it into the pockets of her jeans and began helping Farmer Jim with his cabbages. She made sure she handled them very carefully since it seemed Farmer Jim truly treasured his cabbages. She could feel his eyes on her every time she laid her hands on the cabbages, but she grew immune to it after a while.

Placing the cabbages in crates in proportions that Farmer Jim had instructed, Diana started getting faster and better at it, being able to quickly crate them up and place them in a neat line. She was a perfectionist, you could not expect any less of her. Farmer Jim seemed impressed, which meant that she was doing things correctly. After putting together about ten of the crates, Farmer Jim informed her that she did not need to take them to the market, which relieved her greatly, although her primary goal of gaining some strength training sort of became a fail. She was already sweating, though as it was a pretty warm evening.

Farmer Jim left her all alone to the cabbages a while later, which was a surprise. This meant that he trusted her with his precious cabbages. Diana made sure she did not ruin a single one of them. She spent the ten minutes Farmer Jim disappeared during to finish preparing as many crates as she could. When he returned, he brought with him a jar of orange juice. That was very nice of him.

“Oh, you didn’t have to!” said Diana, although she was lowkey excited about having some fresh orange juice. It looked cooled as well. Farmer Jim insisted of course, and after a few times of pretending to refuse, Diana accepted the drink, pouring the orange juice from its jar into a cup and slowly sipping from it. After all, she was a well-mannered lady. She did not gulp down juice even if she had been thirsting for about half an hour working with cabbages and crates under the hot five p.m. sun. Farmer Jim placed the jar and cup on one of the crates and sat on his foldable chair. He was much older than Diana, which meant that he probably got tired faster, so she understood why he needed some rest. Feeling refreshed from the cold drink, Diana returned to her unfinished work. She was supposed to put together a total of a hundred crates to complete his request. So far, by roughly counting, she probably had around forty or fifty. Still a long way to go.

“How long have you been growing these cabbages?” asked the curious sorceress. She simply wanted to start up a conversation as the silence was killing her. Her question seemed to have motivated Farmer Jim, somehow, causing him to rise to his feet and continue with cabbage crating as well as he began to explain about his cabbage growing journey and his many adventures revolving around cabbages. Since he was on a roll, all Diana had to do was listen to him go on and on about cabbages, not that she did not like it. In fact, she enjoyed learning new things, and by the end of the unnecessarily long conversation about the vegetable, they had reached seventy or so crates, all neatly lined thanks to Diana’s OCD, and the sun was starting to set. Farmer Jim prompted her to work faster since he wanted to finish before sundown. Since she also wanted to get her rewards sooner and go back to her hotel, Diana nodded in agreement and picked up her pace.

“This should be the hundredth one,” Diana announced, pushing the last crate in line with the other crates. Now all she had to do now was to stack them in a cart. As the hundredth crate had been put together, Farmer Jim left to retrieve his cart and so they would start to stack the crates in the cart. It was easier since she had lined the crates neatly, so she could just push the cart along the lines and stack the crates one by one. After the last of the crates had been put onto the cart, Farmer Jim fished out her reward and placed them in her hands, thanking her for her assistance.