The Floating Hearth
By @john1208
Runa Fendrel is the rural village of Yarven’s most stubborn, sharp-tongued carpenter. For months, recurring nightmares of a catastrophic deluge plagued her sleep. When she warned the village, her ex-fiancé Tobas and his new partner Enna laughed her out of the tavern, calling it a bitter ploy to ruin their spring wedding. Pride wounded, Runa retreated to the highest hill, secretly waterproofing a massive, airtight barn and stockpiling pickled tubers, warm quilts, and rescued stray animals. Then, the megaflood strikes. As Yarven vanishes beneath churning waters, Tobas and the villagers are left clinging to the tavern roof. Runa sails to the rescue in her buoyant farm, ready to gloat. But the situation takes a bizarre turn when a mysterious voice begins offering her 'Miracle Rewards' for every betrayer she pulls aboard. Runa quickly realizes the trap: the luxurious rewards - endless feasts and lethargic warmth - induce a magical, deadly sleep, while heavier treasures threaten to sink the ark. To keep her sanctuary afloat, Runa must reject paradise, enforce strict chores, and remain the grumpy taskmaster everyone loves to hate. Can she keep her unwelcome guests awake and bailing water before the treacherous rewards drown them all?
2
The Zenith Orchard Anomaly
By @john1208
Bayu wakes up in the impossible: plummeting from the blowhole of an astral sky-whale straight into the penthouse courtyard of the Bhairava Spire's final boss. Armed with nothing but unearned confidence and a pocket of mutated seeds, he does the only logical thing - he starts a farm. While the world below panics over an apocalyptic prophecy regarding the 'Verdant Scourge' draining the Spire's mana, Bayu is busy coaxing the terrifying Rakshasa Sovereign into acting as his personal scarecrow. When his hybridized watermelons start regenerating severed limbs, the hunter economy implodes. Why risk death when you can make a fortune delivering Bayu's produce on the back of a legendary lightning griffin? Told through the alternating perspectives of the shamelessly opportunistic Bayu and Citra, an ultra-serious Guildmaster tracking the Scourge, the two plotlines collide hilariously. Citra wants to save the world; Bayu just wants to expand his irrigation trenches. But as a scheming ancient hermit nudges Bayu toward complete tower domination, will the bankrupt hunter conglomerates destroy his agricultural monopoly before his prize-winning cabbages are ready for harvest?
2