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After savoring the soft, lingering sensation of thick golden fur on his fingertips, Leo stepped out of bed feeling thoroughly satisfied. His movements were light and buoyant, much like a Little Fairy who had just finished a grueling shift at the Scarlet Devil Mansion and received a sweet, cream-filled cake from Head Maid Sakuya as a reward. He practically skipped out of the bedroom.
He left the still-sleeping Ran Yakumo and Flandre on the tangled sheets; their quiet, rhythmic breathing filled the room. The cat, Chen, had long since vanished to play elsewhere, leaving a small indentation on the mattress.
Gently clicking the bedroom door shut to avoid waking the ancient monsters, Leo walked into the living room and turned on the television. The cheerful, upbeat intro music played. Today was another food program from the Night Sparrow Canteen. He crossed his arms, wondering what new, overpriced recipe Mystia Lorelei, that famously black-hearted proprietress, was going to teach the valley this time.
On the screen, Mystia wore her signature apron, flipping a perfectly golden, fluffy egg dish in a sizzling pan.
"The recipe I'll be teaching everyone to make today is the Omelet..."
She plated the steaming dish, adding a garnish of fresh herbs.
"This dish sells for 125 yen. It's one of the budget items at our Night Sparrow Canteen. Due to the cost of ingredients, we really don't make any profit at all, so this dish isn't sold individually. It needs to be ordered along with other dishes, okay?"
Leo scoffed at the screen. He didn't believe for a second that the Omelet didn't turn a profit. On his end, the most ordinary, standard-quality eggs sold for 50G per pound, and a large jug of cow's milk was 125G per liter. At a superficial glance, it might seem like a 50-yen loss to make an omelet, but the Stardew Valley units were entirely different. A pound of eggs contained eight or nine individual eggs, and the milk wouldn't be used up all at once. Making one single dish used at most three eggs and half a jug of milk. It was a budget dish, sure, but considering the profit margins, she still earned quite a bit for the minimal labor involved. Capitalists are the same everywhere, he thought wryly.
After watching Sanae Kochiya's enthusiastic morning weather forecast, Leo pushed open the heavy wooden door and walked out of the Farmhouse.
The crisp, cool morning air hit his face. The scent of damp earth and growing green shoots filled his lungs. Even though they had stayed up late partying at the barbecue yesterday, Kagerou Imaizumi had still come over early. She was diligently walking between the neat rows of crops, swinging a heavy watering can. Wakasagihime was there too, currently sitting lazily on a flat rock by the fish pond, happily soaking up the warm morning sun and swishing her tail in the water.
Seeing the two of them, Leo felt a strange, profound sense of deja vu. It looked exactly like a hardworking, filial daughter-in-law toiling in the fields while carrying her mobility-impaired mother-in-law on her back to let her enjoy the fresh air. It made Leo feel like some heinous, black-hearted capitalist overlord exploiting their labor, dealing a critical blow of ten thousand points of true damage to his conscience.
Shaking off the guilt, Leo set to work. After harvesting today's mature spring crops—pulling crisp potatoes and plump parsnips from the rich soil—a familiar, satisfying chime echoed in his head.
His Farming skill had finally reached Level 5. A translucent blue screen floated before his eyes, allowing him to select a profession. He chose the 'Tiller' talent.
No magical field hands suddenly appeared to help him, and no glowing overseer's whip materialized in his hand. In the original Stardew Valley game, this talent would simply increase the flat selling price of Leo's produce by ten percent. However, in this hybridized real world, the selling price of produce on his app was entirely up to Leo's own word. Thus, the system had adapted. The talent had changed, becoming a permanent ten percent increase in base quality instead.
Roughly speaking, where it used to take 10 standard potatoes to make a solid pound of mass, the magical density increase meant it now only took nine, making the harvested crops grow visibly larger, juicier, and more vibrant.
This was quite normal and wonderful for agricultural plant products, but Leo shuddered, realizing it would be a bit eerie if applied to animals.
The other branch option, 'Rancher', originally increased the price of animal products by twenty percent. In this localized reality, that would mean a terrifying twenty percent increase in physical yield—like eating five sheep but somehow getting the caloric and physical effect of six. What kind of eldritch, Void Overseer logic was that?
Shaking the weird, existential thoughts out of his head, Leo placed the freshly harvested, high-quality crops into the wooden Shipping Bin beside his house. This bin was directly connected to his smartphone's Universal Shop app; as long as someone placed an order online, the goods would ship automatically through spatial magic, making it incredibly convenient.
Sitting on his porch, he pulled out his phone and, as usual, flipped through the back-end transaction logs.
Among the purchase locations that were uniformly labeled [Gensokyo], a place with an entirely different character count and vibe stood out. Leo spotted it at a glance; a five-character name mixed into a neat column of three-character locations was just too obvious to miss.
"Treyson Academy? Product purchased: Ten bottles of Eientei Specialty Carrot Juice (1-liter size), one crate of Stardew Valley Specialty Gold-Quality Carrots (5-pound size). Buyer: Tokubetsu Sū."
Leo blinked, staring hard at the glowing screen.
"Huh? How are Uma Musume players involved in this? And this buyer... it's definitely Special Week. Even though she's actually 'Special Fat,' she chose the username 'Tokubetsu Sū.' Talk about burying one's head in the sand."
Leo looked at this new purchase location with profound confusion. He had played the Uma Musume: Pretty Derby mobile game heavily in his past life and still technically had the app installed on his current phone.
When the game first launched domestically back home, it was shut down almost immediately due to the fragile perceptions and complaints of certain vocal idiots. After being dormant and locked away for over a year, it finally pushed through the strict domestic censorship boards and relaunched. The heavy price for that return was that the iconic 'Horse Girls' were heavily censored into 'Track Girls,' and the game tragically lost its signature animal ears and tails. Leo could be considered a frustrated witness to that dark history.
Having multiple connected worlds wasn't a bad thing, Leo mused, leaning back against the wooden porch railing. As his agricultural products gradually increased in volume and quality, the inter-dimensional shop would eventually attract more people from other worlds to buy them, or even visit Stardew Valley for tourism, just like those Great Youkai from Gensokyo currently loitering in his town.
These five pounds of raw carrots and ten liters of juice were clearly a cautious trial purchase by Special Week to see how they tasted. Otherwise, given her infamous, black-hole-like appetite, eating this tiny amount would mean something was seriously weighing on her mind.
Opening his phone to find Special Week's direct order page, Leo tapped the chat icon and tentatively typed out a message. He mainly wanted to ask if they had any standard farm animals for sale over in their world. He couldn't count on Gensokyo for normal livestock—everything there was either a Youkai, a fairy, or a familiars—so he could only see if he could import small animals from this newly appeared, slightly more normal world.
Mo Gu: "Hello, dear, are you there?"
Ding. A system window immediately popped up on his screen, glowing with an authoritative golden light.
[As this is the first conversation, the Three Goddesses have intervened to supervise this session to prevent telecommunications fraud. Please mind your words and behavior.]
He didn't get a direct reply from Special Week; instead, this strict automated reminder dominated the chat page. Unfazed by divine intervention, Leo simply sent another message into the chat, attempting to talk directly with the Three Goddesses. Since he wanted to set up a trade agreement to buy animals anyway, it didn't really matter who he talked to first as long as they had authority.
Mo Gu: "Are the Three Goddesses there? Care for a chat?"
A few moments later, the typing bubble appeared.
Godolphin Arabian: "We're here. What do you want to chat about, little brother? That carrot juice from your farm tastes quite good. After Spe-chan bought it and came to the Goddess Statue to pay her respects, I received a bottle."
Meanwhile, in an entirely different dimension.
Inside a lavish, sunlit divine manor, Godolphin Arabian—a strikingly beautiful woman with long hair featuring a blue and cyan gradient—was sitting at an elegant, white marble round table, gracefully typing on a holographic keyboard.
Beside her, sipping tea from porcelain cups, were the other two members of the legendary Three Goddesses: Byerley Turk and Darley Arabian. They were the absolute progenitors of this world, the source code that provided various convenient, reality-bending abilities for the modern Uma Musume.
For example, being able to easily outrun a speeding car on a highway, having an extremely fast physical growth period and an ultra-long athletic peak period, and possessing raw physical strength and speed far exceeding any ordinary human—these were just the normal, baseline blessings they bestowed.
The more ridiculous, physics-defying blessings included entering glowing 'Zones', activating magical racing 'Skills', as well as the strange, universal trait of being able to run at Mach speeds completely unaffected by whatever restrictive clothing they were wearing. High heels, heavy wedding dresses, restrictive swimsuits—even in these clothes, the Uma Musume could still sprint flawlessly without tripping or chafing. It really was a bit absurd when one thought about it critically.
Back on the farm, Leo tapped his screen.
Mo Gu: "May I ask if you have animals like chickens, ducks, cows, or sheep over there? I'd like to purchase some. I can pay with money or agricultural products."
Leo didn't bother to explain his situation much. Since they were the legendary Three Goddesses, functioning as the actual deities of their world, they should be very clear about his Stardew Valley status. Adding another world to their cosmic registry shouldn't be hard for omniscient beings to understand.
Godolphin Arabian: "We do. If you want them, you can go talk to Rudolf. We're just here to prevent misunderstandings caused by information asymmetry."
Just as Leo read the message, a new user frantically entered the chat room.
Tokubetsu Sū: "Eh? Eh! This name! It's the Goddess-sama! Goddess-sama, I love you! Did you receive the carrot juice I offered, Goddess-sama? Yay!"
In the bustling Tracen Academy cafeteria, Special Week, who had just finished her grueling morning track warm-up, had arrived for breakfast. Carrying a massive, towering mountain of food on her tray—several times more caloric intake than a normal Horse Girl, let alone a human—she sat down heavily at an empty table.
Just as she was about to find a short drama on her phone to watch while eating her mountain of rice, she saw the constant flashing notifications from her shop app. Clicking in, her jaw dropped, nearly spilling her food. She discovered this 'Mo Gu' farm owner was casually chatting away with the literal, legendary Three Goddesses of her world.
Godolphin Arabian: "The main party is here. You two chat; we'll just watch from the side and won't disturb you."