After logging back in John immediately headed west toward town. The hour long walk went by quickly and he found himself once more surrounded by stalls of cheap, useless junk. Navigating the street, he quickly found Ex sitting behind a booth looking terribly bored.

“The stool is new, how much for that?” John asked.

“Ha-ha,” Ex said dryly.

“Where’s Sally?” John asked, looking around for the silver Draconid.

“She’s at a class, should be back in an hour or two,” Ex explained.

“Ah, well, hopefully what I need isn’t in her inventory.”

Ex perked up at that sentence. “What are you looking for?”

“Three fire stones, three life stones, three death stones, and three water stones,” John rattled off.

“Hmmm, I’ve got everything but the life stones, all of those get snapped up by healers, myself included,” Ex said.

John frowned and ran his fingers through his beard, considering. “What about those Mana Cores? Can you put aspected mana in them?”

“I… don’t know, actually. Most of us can’t aspect our mana. Grandma Loren only showed me how recently, and as a Novice in the skill I definitely can’t use it in battle. Anyway, let’s find out.” Ex held up a hand and a mana core popped into existence. He stared at it for a moment and it took on a subtle green glow. “Huh, it can, that’s actually really useful.”

“Great! How much for 12 cores and the other stones then?” John asked.

“Five minutes ago I would have given you the cores for a copper a piece, now I’m re-evaluating their worth,” Ex said as he eyed the orb, he then shook his head. “Whatever, I’ve got a whole stack of them, a copper each, and five coppers for each of the fire stones, one each for the death, and one each for water.”

“Five coppers for a fire stone? Isn’t that a bit much?” John asked even as he willed a silver out of his inventory.

“Still less than half what they charge everywhere else,” Ex pointed out. “And we have a lot of fire mages about.”

John handed over the silver and received the cores, the stones, and 67 coppers back.

“Need anything else?” Ex asked.

“Yes actually, I’m ready for some dead bodies,” John said.

“Really? How much are you paying?”

“Well, you’re going to kill and eviscerate them anyway, all I’m asking for is that you bring them out with you… so… maybe a few coppers a stack? The bodies stack in your inventory, right?” John asked.

“Yeah, Sally checked that already. So long as the bodies are all in one piece they stack. And I don’t know John, inventory space is valuable…”

John snorted. “Really? What are you spending it on?” His eyes raked over the poor quality pieces of armor and implements on display. “I mean, I doubt armor stacks, and you’re going to get maybe a couple coppers for a piece at some point? I’m offering, call it 5 coppers per twenty corpses, that’s a guaranteed return!”

Ex wobbled his head side to side. “Can’t blame me for trying. That said, I’m holding you to that per twenty bit.”

“Why was that imp- ugh, Sally can fit 100 corpses per inventory space can’t she.”

“Yup! I’ll be nice though and assume you meant large creatures only. No stacks of 20 rats and bats,” Ex said with a grin.

“Uh, yeah, large corpses are what I was imagining,” John admitted. “I should probably be more careful about my wording. Which brings me to my next request, Herb Slime goo.”

“Ah yes, I was wondering when you’d want that. Honestly I don’t mind stopping at the first floor to pick some up, especially if you’re paying for it, but we’ve got nothing to keep it in,” Ex said.

“Hmmm okay I can see that being a problem… Uh… hmmm I wonder if I can create jugs…” John pondered aloud.

“What do you mean ‘create jugs’,” Ex asked.

“I have Create Earth, it allows you to make stone, dirt, gravel, sand, stuff like that, so long as it can be found in the region,” John explained.

“That sounds really useful. So what, you just imagine what you want and then create it?”

“Sort of, yeah. I’ve not tried to make anything really delicate with it yet, that might require more precision than I have,” John admitted.

“Well, go ahead and try it, what’s the worst that happens?” Ex said encouragingly.

“Alright, here goes nothing.” John held his hand over the counter and started gesturing as he cast Create Earth. He slowed down the creation to a crawl, using a small amount of mana and, for the first time, purposefully choosing to create less material than the spell allowed. Slowly he generated a simple bowl of granite, then he brought the sides up further until it was more like an Urn than a bowl. Letting the magic go he inspected the object.

[Name: Granite Urn]

[Quality: Common]

[Description: Cast from solid stone this urn is a functional piece that can hold anything you put inside it.]

“Well, that seems to have worked,” Ex said as he picked up the urn. “Bit heavy, though I suppose we won’t notice that once it’s in our inventories. No lid?”

“I mean, I could make a lid, but there’s nothing to hold it on. I think I could try making some threads on the inside lip and a matching set on a lid, but it certainly wouldn’t be water tight,” John returned.

“Eh, go for it, some proof against spillage is better than none,” Ex advised.

John concentrated again, adding large threads to the inside rim of the urn, and then creating a lid which would fit inside. He tested it, and it didn’t work right. He adjusted the threads on the lid and tried again, it almost fit that time, but not quite. He tried a third time, and this time managed a loose fit. Not wanting to have to go through that ordeal again, John took blueprints of both the urn and the lid, so he’d be able to recreate them more easily.

Ex examined the two pieces and then screwed the lid on. It wasn’t a tight fit, and it wobbled a little when he tilted the urn from side to side, but in the end he nodded. “That’ll do. Now you just need 19 more of them.”

Pulling up the blueprint, John filled in the ghostly outlines with stone, a task that was both much quicker and easier than trying to wing it, and soon enough he’d finished with all 19 of the urns. “There, that should be sufficient. Same price as bodies?”

“Double,” Ex said firmly. “The bodies we’re going to kill anyway. For this we have to capture the slime, then basically squeeze it out into a jar. Even at one copper per two pots I’m being generous.”

John thought it over and then nodded. “Deal, ten coppers per stack. But I probably only need a few pots, call it four, to start off with.”

“Deal, Sally and I will be headed to the dungeon when she gets back. We should have some corpses and goo for you by this evening. How many corpses were you thinking to start with?” Ex asked.

“Uh… two stacks? I’ve set up a large Ritual of Cleansing to clean them of toxins and diseases and stuff, it should be able to hold forty bodies if we pile them up, I think. How big are the bodies?”

“Spiders can get up to four feet if they spread their legs out fully, the big rodents can get as large as five,” Ex informed him.

“Yeah, forty should be fine,” John said. “Alright, I’ll see you both this evening then.”

“Yep, this evening, thanks for buying! Oh wait, where’s your farm?” Ex asked as John started to walk off.

“Straight east from the road, you can’t miss it!” John called back and kept walking.

Arriving in the square John found Grandma Loren surrounded by a small knot of people, all players by the look of their equipment. At first he feared something was wrong, but as he got closer he could hear that she was instructing them on how to go about learning Mana Manipulation and Mana Sight. Not wanting to interrupt, he waited until her current lecture seemed to be done, then approached as the players started to drift off.

“Ah, John, how are you doing today dear?” She asked affably.

“Pretty good, I set up a ritual earlier today and just brokered a deal with Excelsior to bring me bodies,” John said.

“Bodies? You’re not becoming a necromancer are you? Nasty business necromancy, people won’t be happy if you take it up.” She said sharply.

“Uh, no, nothing like that. I just realized the other day that the dungeon was basically providing free fertilizer in the form of dead bodies, and figured I could take advantage. The ritual I set up is to clean them of disease and poisons and stuff,” He hastily explained.

Loren eyed him for a moment then nodded. “That’s not a bad plan at all, I’ll have to admit the idea hasn’t crossed any of our minds, bodies aren’t usually useful unless you’ve got an alchemist to process them… Hmm, I wonder what other uses we’ve been overlooking,” she mused.

John shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you, to be honest the idea only came to me just the other day when I was trying to figure out how to compost all that grass I have.”

“So you’re going to cleanse the bodies, then compost them, that’s pretty clever. Disgusting, but so is most composting to be honest. You’ll want to ensure the compost pile heats up properly, even if you kill off any diseases they already have, you don’t want to tempt fate,” she said.

John nodded. “I hope to use Hasten Decay to help speed that up, but I’m going to need some way to make it cover a larger area.”

“There’s a feat for that, Increased Size, it multiplies the amount of matter and energy you can manipulate by ten,” Loren informed him.

“That’s pretty good, I’m honestly not sure what feats I’m going to take at five, but that one definitely makes the ‘maybe’ list.”

Loren nodded. “There are lots of good options, and depending on how you’ve been doing your work you might have some unique possibilities, so I can’t really give you too much advice. Unfortunately, I’m unlikely to be nearby when you level up, or I’d be happy to help you make choices.”

“Yeah, it’s too bad there’s no way to gauge how close I am,” he griped.

Grandma Loren tsked. “What is, is. Now, what brings you into town today?”

“I needed mana stones for my ritual, I scaled it up to hold the bodies, and now it costs ten thousand fire, life, death, and water mana,” John explained.

“Hmmm,” she sounded disapproving. “You shouldn’t go messing with rituals at your rank, they can do weird things if you mess them up. Exploding is the least of your worries.”

“Well, I think I got it right, the system says it’s a Ritual of Cleansing, so here’s hoping. Oh! Right, I also picked up this.” John willed the iridescent seed into his hand and showed it to her.

Loren looked at the seed, and then said. “Now where did you find a Prismatic Tree pit?”

“Someone had it listed for a silver on the auction. I figured I’d take a chance since it looked interesting,” John admitted.

“Hmmm a good purchase, I take it they had no idea what they were selling?”

“Nope, said they had no idea what it was,” he confirmed.

Loren nodded her head. “A very good investment indeed. These seeds are usually priced in gold, not silver. You have to understand that each tree produces very few viable seeds, approximately one in every million fruits it spawns will have a seed. Some farming families go entire generations without ever seeing one from their trees.”

“So… what’s it good for? Does it just make fruit?” John asked.

“Ha! Just make fruit. Prismatic Trees grow differently depending on how you tend them, no two trees are the same. Give them the right materials and they won’t just grow fruit, they’ll also develop magical effects, though those can be many and varied,” she explained.

“So I should probably wait to plant it, given how rare it is.”

“Usually you’d be right. Planting something this rare at your level of experience and ability would be foolhardy. I’m afraid that’s not an option though. Prismatic Seeds are only viable for a short time, and this one is almost done for, you’ve got about a week before this one expires.” Loren shook her head. “You’ll have to make a plan for it now.”

John ran his fingers through his beard as he digested that. “Alright,” he said after a long moment of silence. “What do you suggest?”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you with this one John, I’ve never grown a Prismatic Tree before. No one here has. They’re just that rare. Best I can tell you is to think about what you want it to be, and then give it what you think will work best toward that goal,” she advised.

John gave a nod and was just settling back to think when a new popup appeared.

[Quest: The Prismatic Tree]

[Description: You’ve obtained a seed to the coveted Prismatic Tree, unfortunately this seed has been mistreated and left to stagnate, meaning its potential is almost spent. If not planted soon the seed will wither and die, becoming a useless piece of bio-matter. Plant the seed within 6 days, 10 hours, 52 minutes and nurture it into a Tree.]

[Reward: A Prismatic Tree (Variable), 200 – 2,000 Leveling Points]

John grunted in surprise. “I just got a quest.”

Grandma Loren looked over at him. “For planting the tree?”

“yeah, it says I have six days to plant it, and then I need to nurture it into a tree, the reward is ‘A Prismatic Tree, variable’ and 200 to 2,000 leveling points,” He explained.

“The points are probably based on the quality ranking of the resulting tree. It’s too bad you don’t have more time to prepare,” she said with a sigh.

John shook his head. “It is what it is. Do you think it’d be better to give it to Frank, or maybe Ellie to plant?”

Loren gave him an appraising look. “You’d really give it up to someone else?”

“I mean, I recognize I don’t have the skills required to grow this right, it’d be horrible if we ended up with a Poor Prismatic Tree because I’m a bad farmer,” John said.

After a moment Loren shook her head. “No, you should plant it, John. It’s good to know your limitations, but you also need to try and exceed them or you’ll never grow. Just do your best.”

John nodded, and then stood, a crazy little idea worming its way into his thoughts. “Alright, I think I have an idea.”

“Well, then you’d best get to it!” Loren said with a smile.

John nodded, and then walked back out into the market.