While John was tempted to sit down and do nothing but make mana stones for the next seven hours he knew he had some work to do first. The bodies would be cleaned by tomorrow morning, which meant they had to go somewhere when they were done. His basic plan was to dig a pit, throw all the bodies inside, and then use Hasten Decay to break it down quickly. The only question was if he should break the bodies up first, and if so how.

Breaking the bodies up would make them decay faster, however it would be a laborious process to do without tools. Not breaking them up was much simpler, but would likely result in costing more time and mana. While he mulled it over, he pulled up the information on Hasten Decay.

[Name: Hasten Decay]

[Description: This spell speeds the aging process of all things, dealing time-based damage to whatever it is targeted at.]

[Current Rank: Novice]

[Amount: Small]

[Current Rate: 1 day per second]

[Mana Cost: 15/second]

According to what he could find on the internet, cold composting could take anywhere from one to two years, which meant at his current rate of one day to one second it would take a minimum of 365 seconds to turn the target into useable compost. If he aspected his mana to time it’d cost three mana per second to use which, with his current mana pool, was around 290 seconds, of course he was regenerating mana at almost three fourths a mana per second, so in reality he could probably hold the spell almost twice that long.

The next thing he had to decide was where he was going to deposit the first load of carcasses. Originally he’d intended to divide them up between a couple garden beds, but the Prismatic Seed changed his plans a bit. He hated to wait to the last minute to plant the seed, but he needed to hold off as long as possible if he was going to give it the best chance he could. The first problem was picking a site, it couldn’t be here on his farm, he didn’t have space for what he was hoping to grow. That said, this was now his place of power, his ability to clear and nurture the land would drastically decrease once he left his claim. Was there a way to extend it?

Thinking about it, the only thing John had done that might qualify him for Domain was the way he’d cleared his land. Instead of clear-cutting or burning he’d dug it up with Move Earth, using his magic to make the task manageable. That must have been how he ‘saturated’ it with his magic. Could he expand his domain the same way? There was only one way to find out.

Standing up, John left the cellar and headed for the southern wall of his farm. Once there he opened the wall up so he could exit, and waded out into the grass outside. Grabbing up some wooden stakes he placed one at each southern corner of his existing claim, and then paced off another section of territory. When he placed the final stake he got the same notification as last time.

[You have staked out an area of 270,400 square feet, do you wish to add it to your existing claim?]

[Y/N]

“Yes,” John said aloud.

[New claim size registered.]

Stepping onto the new claim, John checked his mana pool, it was at 440. He then walked back into the walled portion of his farm, and his pool jumped up to 880. So, he could have part of a claim that was saturated and part that wasn’t, making it possible to expand. The first thing to do, then, was to expand outward to the center of the newly claimed section, and clear an area large enough for the pit. With that plan in mind, he got to work.

Starting at the center of the southern section of his plot, he began to clear the grass in a three-foot path toward the center of the new claim. As he’d hoped, the domain expanded with him as he performed the work. By the time he was ready to log out he’d managed to make a path to the center of the new plot, and clear a circle with a diameter of roughly eighty feet, more, he suspected, than enough space to begin with.

***

Logging in the next morning, the first thing John did was head out to the newly cleared site where, over the course of ten minutes, he dug out a pit ten feet deep with a twenty-foot diameter. Turning from the pit he headed back inside the wall and over to the cleansing ritual.

He arrived to find the ritual had fully run its course and was no longer running. The vultures from yesterday had returned, as had some of the smell, though it was markedly less terrible. John began touching the bodies and willing them into his inventory. Soon he had two stacks of twenty, one of spiders, and one of giant rodents. He walked back out to the pit and deposited the bodies inside. He then went to the cellar and started grabbing up bundles of wheat. He made a couple trips before he’d fully filled the hole with the leftover grains. Then, taking up position at the edge of the pit, he started to cast Hasten Decay.

For the next 28 minutes he stood there and held the spell. By the time he was out of mana the initial area he’d been working on was a thick brown mess which, given its similarity to the pictures he’d seen, seemed to indicate a successful compost. However he’d only covered maybe one three hundredth of the pit, which meant it’d take him almost seven days to completely decay everything at this rate. Much too long.

“Help, show me the Apprentice rank information for Hasten Decay,” he said.

[Name: Hasten Decay]

[Description: This spell speeds the aging process of all things, dealing time-based damage to whatever it is targeted at.]

[Current Rank: Apprentice]

[Amount: moderate]

[Current Rate: 1 week per second]

[Mana Cost: 15/second]

John looked over the numbers and did some quick math. Moderate size seemed to be about double Small size, and 1 week per second reduced the required time from 28 minutes down to 4, which would mean he could complete the entire pit in just ten hours, still a bit long. However, he didn’t actually have to cover the entire area of the pit, did he? The meat was the important part, if he bunched it together he would have a smaller area to cover. If he condensed it down to even half the size it would take only five hours. That would be close, but doable. If he used Hasten Decay for the rest of the day, and half of the next it should rank up, then the second half of the day would finish off the pit. That would leave only two days until the seed had to be planted though, and he needed to make mana stones so he could gain enough money to purchase reagents for it.

Running his fingers through his beard, John did a little more math. If he could produce a Life mana stone worth 3,247 mana every 60 minutes, that meant that in one and a half days he could produce 24 Common quality stones with 3,247 mana each, or he could combine them to make larger stones. Say 15 stones worth 5,000 mana each. Those would all be about the same size as the stones he could currently buy, but have twice the capacity. He opened the auction once more and checked the prices on stones. There were very few Common stones, and they were easily going for double the cost of the Poor ones. That meant he could easily net a gold or more per stone. If they sold in time, and that was a big if.

Nodding to himself he got back to work casting Hasten decay. For the next seven hours John cast the spell and regenerated mana over and over again. He logged out at noon for the obligatory hour of exercise, restroom, and lunch, then logged back in and went straight to the purification ritual. Checking the contents of the pots, he found that they were now only a quarter full each, with a thick, vibrantly green sludge. He combined them all into one pot, using Control Water to squeeze every last drop out of the three empty pots. He then collected the mana stones which had become a quarter of their original size, giving him 100 tiny space mana stones, each with 2500 mana. Popping the pot and the stones into his inventory he got back to work.

Around two in the afternoon John got the notice he’d been working toward.

[Hasten Decay has Ranked Up due to continued use. Novice à Apprentice]

[125 Leveling Points banked.]

After that notification the work went much more quickly, and by the end of the day John had a pit full of dark, brown compost. Using Move Earth he mixed in some of the dirt from the large pile nearby, and churned the entire pit to be sure he’d gotten everything. He didn’t see anything but a few bones that hadn’t quite broken down, but he wasn’t concerned about those. He finished mixing in about a quarter of the soil he’d originally excavated, and then went to bed.

The next morning he began making mana stones. After about an hour of experimentation with the spell he found that he could create mana stones at the rate of four mana per second, four times the speed at which he’d been expecting. In addition, his original time and mana estimates had been off, meaning his actual time to create a stone was 12 minutes (including the time spent using Mana Drawing) to create a stone with 1,087 mana. This meant he could produce a stone worth 5,000 mana every 55 minutes, for a total of 24 stones. Returning to his work, he began producing stones and placing them in the auction as fast as he could finish them.

In just a few hours John was exhausted. It took an enormous amount of mental energy to control the flow of mana so that it was stable instead of irregular bursts. He’d been less than diligent on one of the first stones, and had ended up with a stone of Poor ranking, after that he’d been extra vigilant. By noon he had a burgeoning headache, and he welcomed the chance to log out and relax for an hour. Once he logged back in the torture began anew, and he pushed himself to continually make stones. By the time he went to sleep that night he’d pushed himself into another migraine and was not looking forward to the next day.

The migraine had dissipated by the morning, but it had left John tired due to interrupted sleep. Still, he knew he needed to press on. He’d already made 16 stones, and of those all but five had sold, netting him 11 gold, and he was hoping that by the end of the day he’d sell all of them. So he sat down once more and began creating mana stones. Eight hours later he both got a notification and kicked from the game.

[Create Mana Stone has Ranked Up due to continued use. Novice à Apprentice]

[125 Leveling Points Banked.]

[Attention: You have been in game for more than 8 hours, as it has been determined that you are in a relatively safe space you will be logged out at this time. You will receive a one hour lock out, during this time please see to your personal needs.]

Logging back in an hour later, John immediately checked the auction. All but three of his stones had sold, giving him 21 gold total. He decided there wasn’t time to wait for more and began making purchases.

The first thing John bought was a Potion of Blink, which went for 8 gold and allowed the imbiber to make short range teleports for 30 seconds. The next item on his list was actually a plant called a Displacer Lily, the plant was difficult to collect because it could teleport itself to nearby locations as a form of protection; that cost another 5 gold. While he was purchasing those two his final stones sold, leaving him with 11 gold left. Knowing he needed to make it count, John carefully went over all the listings.

He finally settled on a single item, this one a mineral. It was called Void Stone and was apparently the preferred material for building Portal Gates, because it was attuned to the Space element. Indeed, it was so attuned that large concentrations would sometime generate natural portals of their own, which could lead to almost anywhere. He had just enough gold for a quarter-pound of material.

Stepping up and out of the cellar he found it was nearing evening and he knew he had to hurry, the seed didn’t have much viability left, just a few hours according to the quest prompt. Making haste out to the patch of fertilized earth. John took out the pot of Great quality Herb Slime Goo and set it down to one side. He then started casting Create Earth and formed a large bowl and a hefty pestle. Opening his inventory, he started shoving the tiny space stones into the bowl until all 100 of them were contained within.

He grabbed the pestle, which was really just an oblong piece of granite, thicker at one end than the other, and began to slowly crush the crystals. He wasn’t actually sure this would work, he’d never tried breaking down mana stones before, but he had high hopes. He slowly ground the crystals up, and was pleasantly surprised to find them making a fine dust. After a few minutes all the crystals were reduced to powder. Opening the urn of goo, he poured the dust into it, scraping out the bowl with his hands to get as much as possible. He immediately got a popup.

[Skill Gained: Alchemy]

John looked from the prompt to the urn, which had started fizzing. He suddenly knew that he needed something else to stabilize the solution, something that bridged the two magics he was trying to mix. Hastily he took out the Displacer Lily and started mashing it in the bowl he’d used for the stones. Hopefully the natural balance of space and plant would stabilize the goo, because he had a feeling it was going to go very badly if it didn’t.

The lily paste got poured into the goo mixture, and he used the pestle to give it a good stir, counterclockwise, because that felt right. The mixture still bubbled, and he felt he needed to add heat. So he used Evoke Flame to create a halo of fire around the base of the Urn as he continued to frantically stir. Slowly, ever so slowly, the goop thickened, becoming almost jelly like. He didn’t know what to do next, but it didn’t seem like it was going to explode, so he stopped both the heat and the stirring. He inspected the pot.

[Name: Crude Void Serum]

[Quality: Common]

[Description: A combination of Great quality Herb Slime Goo, Space Mana Stones, and a Poor quality Displacer Lilly, this mixture is meant to be used to imbue something with the power of Space. Drinking is not advised.]

This was… good? Especially for bathtub… er… urn alchemy. Hopefully the sum would be greater than the parts, or he’d just ruined some perfectly good materials.

Next came the void stone. He wasn’t sure how to grind this up, as it seemed just as hard as granite. Decided that maybe it was time to try something new, he held the stone in his hand, and cast Move Earth. Instead of reshaping the Void Stone he imagined it crumbling into a fine sand. He felt the mana resisting him, and he pushed harder. Slowly the stone began to crumble in his hand, tiny flakes dropping into the bowl he was holding below it, until the entire stone was nothing more than a fine sand. He looked at it, and then decided he didn’t dare mix it into the Crude Void Serum. Instead, he mixed it into the dirt where he intended to plant the seed.

Finally it was time. The sun was getting low, and the seed didn’t have much time left, so it was plant now or never. John took out the seed, the colors of which were faded to almost nothing. He then hesitated. Once more instincts kicked to life that he didn’t know he had. Hesitantly he took the seed and dropped it into the urn. Immediately the gelatin like substance began to froth and churn again, but as it did so the level of the goo slowly dropped, as if it was being drained. After a few minutes all that was left in the urn was the tiny seed. It had turned entirely black, and seemed to suck in the light around it. Further he could feel that it was about ready to sprout. Hastily he plucked it out of the urn and buried it in the fertile ground where he’d spread the Void Stone sand. Finally, he pulled out the potion and poured it over the now buried seed.

For a moment, nothing happened, then a tiny little sprout pushed its way out of the moist ground. John held his breath, but nothing else happened. There were no visible signs of it growing quickly, and he hoped that was a good thing. He inspected the sprout.

[Name: Prismatic Sapling]

[Quality: N/A]

[Attunement: Space]

[Description: Though the seed for this tree was badly mishandled, the seedling has been enriched with a variety of substances and is in good health, hopefully, in time, it will become a mighty tree.]

John gave a sigh of relief, then looked around. It was almost dark, and he didn’t have much time left. He needed to wall off the sapling lest the bunnies come back and make a snack of it. He immediately began casting Create Earth, building a wall five feet high with a radius of only 10 feet around the sapling. He finished the wall with but moments to spare.

[Attention: You have been in game for more than 8 hours, as it has been determined that you are in a relatively safe space you will be logged out at this time. You will receive a one hour lock out, during this time please see to your personal needs.]