Kai didn't sleep much that weekend.
His mind was too loud.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw numbers.
Chickens. Eggs. Merges. Profits. Feed weight. Crate cost. Labor hours. Margin.
And all of it funneled into one idea:
"Scale fast or stall forever."
If he wanted to hit 100 eggs a week and keep up with the diner's demand, he'd need volume. The kind of volume that made a regular farmer cry. But with the Merge System… volume didn't mean mess. It meant optimization.
He looked at his crude chalkboard plan on the wall.
⸻
WEEKLY PLAN – EGG OPERATION
• Base cost per Lv.1 chicken: $4
• Merge 2 x Lv.1 → 1 x Lv.2
• Merge 2 x Lv.2 → 1 x Lv.3
• Lv.3 = 2 eggs/day = 14 eggs/week
• Needed to reach 100 eggs/week: ~8 Lv.3 hens
• Total Lv.1 chickens required: 32
• Total investment: 32 x $4 = $128
⸻
Kai whistled. "Hundred and twenty-eight bucks… and I only got forty-three."
He wasn't about to sit around begging for a loan. His town was too small and too broke to trust a young farmer with nothing but a notebook and a half-broken coop.
So he did what he always did.
He hustled.
⸻
Sunday morning, he loaded up his old wheelbarrow with three dozen eggs from the Lv.3 hens and biked into town.
Not just to the diner.
He went door to door.
Knocked on houses. Talked to moms, grandmas, gym bros, even old war vets who barely opened their doors anymore.
Every time he cracked one of those golden-yolked eggs open on a portable skillet he'd rigged to a propane burner, the reaction was the same:
Silence. Then disbelief. Then $5 for a half dozen.
By sunset, he was out of eggs and up $92.
That night, he went online and scoured every local poultry listing. Craigslist. Rural Facebook groups. Bulletin boards. Handwritten fliers on feed store windows.
By morning, he had arranged pickups from four different sellers.
Twenty-six chickens total.
⸻
"You running a damn poultry mill now?" one man laughed, handing Kai a dog crate full of birds.
"No. Just fixing America's food," Kai said, handing over a wad of crumpled bills.
⸻
Back at the farm, the system buzzed as the chickens were scanned and merged. The process got faster now. Cleaner. Like the Merge System was learning from use.
Merge Complete
32 x Lv.1 → 8 x Lv.3 Layer Hens
Egg Output: Projected 112/week
System Bonus: Volume Efficiency +5%
Kai stood in front of his reinforced coop, hands on his hips.
The birds were calmer. Heavier. Their feathers had a slight sheen. One even looked him dead in the eye like it knew it was better than normal livestock.
He liked that.
He opened the app again and tapped through the next goal.
New Objective Unlocked:
• Reach 200 eggs/week
• Merge Coops x2 → Industrial Coop
Business Tip: Labor = Time. Merge = Margin.
⸻
By Tuesday, the diner doubled their order. Word had gotten out. The owner—an old ex-biker named Hal—offered Kai a corner freezer if he could keep up egg supply.
"You run this clean, I'll throw in another hundred a week," Hal said, cigarette dangling from his lip.
"I'll keep it clean," Kai said. "You keep paying."
⸻
But Kai wasn't stupid. He knew margins meant nothing if costs weren't tracked.
So he sat down at the kitchen table with a spreadsheet pulled up on an old laptop.
He wrote it all out:
⸻
Operating Costs – Week 1
Item
Qty
Unit Cost
Total
Lv.1 Chickens
32
$4
$128
Feed (5 lb bag)
3
$10
$30
Water Barrels
2
$6
$12
Repairs (coop/mesh)
–
–
$14
Gas for deliveries
–
–
$18
Total Expenses
$202
Revenue:
• Diner: 40 eggs @ $1 = $40
• Local Sales: 72 eggs @ $1.25 avg = $90
• Total Revenue: $130
Net: -$72
⸻
Kai leaned back.
"Negative seventy-two. First week."
He smiled.
"That's fine. This isn't a hustle. It's a business. And businesses bleed before they feed."
⸻
Wednesday morning, he made the next major move.
Merge Coops.
He'd built a second basic one from junk and salvaged wood over the last three days. Barely standing, but just good enough.
He scanned them both.
Merge Complete:
1 x Industrial Coop
• Capacity: 24 birds
• Waste Auto-Fallout System
• Egg Collection Tray Installed
• Disease Risk: -80%
• Labor Hours/Day: -3
Kai looked inside.
The coop now had sloped floors. Roll-out egg trays. Self-cleaning grates under the roosts. He didn't need to shovel poop anymore. He didn't even need to crawl in to collect eggs.
He blinked at the labor hour stat.
Three hours saved per day.
That was twenty-one hours per week. Almost a part-time job worth of time saved — instantly.
"God damn," Kai whispered.
This wasn't a cheat code. It was a scaling machine.
⸻
He updated his spreadsheet again.
Labor saved = 21 hours
Kai's time value = $15/hour (industry average)
Effective labor gain: $315/week
He couldn't pocket that yet, but he knew what it meant.
Margin.
Margin meant survival.
Margin meant future.
Margin meant freedom.
⸻
That night, he sat by the porch, watching the hens move in and out of the new coop.
The merged ones were strong. Quiet. Efficient. They weren't dumb birds pecking at shadows. They were assets.
And the eggs? They were selling faster than he could produce them. No website. No ads. Just taste and word of mouth.
⸻
The Merge System pinged again.
Advisory:
Consider land merge to increase soil yield and reduce property tax burden.
2 x plots available: .45 acres each
Merge will create:
1 x Unified Parcel
• Drainage Efficiency +50%
• Soil Nutrition +25%
• Zoning Value: Agricultural
• Annual Tax Reduction: -$700
Kai narrowed his eyes.
"Wait. Property taxes drop when I merge land?"
He pulled out a dusty folder from the house drawer.
Property tax bill: $1,200 a year.
If that dropped to $500…
"…I just bought myself $700 with a finger tap."
He scanned the two plots.
Merged Successfully
Unified Parcel now available for expansion
Merge Bonus: Crop Module Unlocked
New Feature Available:
Crop Slot Activated – "Starter Lettuce Bed"
⸻
Kai grinned.
Chickens fed the people.
But crops?
Crops built influence.
People who buy eggs are customers.
People who buy produce every week?
They're subscribers.
And that meant recurring income.
⸻
He stared out at the field.
It still looked dead. Dusty. Like a piece of America everyone forgot.
But that wasn't what Kai saw.
He saw spreadsheets.
He saw routes.
He saw value chains.
And most of all, he saw a truth that nobody wanted to face:
"You don't live off tech.
You don't live off tweets.
You live off food.
And if I control the food…
I run the world."