John walked into town and headed directly for the square. When he arrived, he found Grandma Loren sitting in her usual position and reading a book.

“Afternoon,” he said as he sat down next to her.

“Hello again John. What brings you into town today?” she asked him as her book disappeared.

“Well, I may have done something really bad,” he started off.

“Hmm, you’d probably best start at the beginning,” she said.

So, John told her the story. He began with the preparations he’d made for the seed, then how he’d planted it, and what he hoped it’d become. How he’d defended it against the rabbits and then the design he’d made for the henge. His discovery of how intent modified magic, and then his grueling slog as he made the marble monstrosity. Then he finally came to the part about the quests.

“So I finished the henge and suddenly I got quests from both Thuana and Ira to dedicate it as a shrine to them. Except each one came with ‘The displeasure of a goddess’ as a failure clause,” he explained.

Loren frowned but made a ‘continue’ gesture.

“Well, I didn’t want to upset Thuana because she could neuter my tree, and I didn’t want an upset Ira because she governs all plants and growing things, which would make farming pretty hard. So I… dedicated the henge to both of them an added in Ledos as a third,” he said.

“Hmmm that worked did it?” she asked, sounding skeptical.

“Sort of? I think both Ira and Thuana tried to kill me, but Ledos intervened and gave me a new quest to name the shrine something appropriate to all three gods. Said that if I did he’d bind them to make good on their quests.”

“Oh? What did you name it?” Loren looked surprised and intrigued.

“The.. uh.. Gateway of Worlds,” John said, looking a bit abashed.

Unexpectedly, at least to John, the old woman didn’t laugh at the pretentious name, instead she just looked thoughtful. “Gateway of Worlds… they must have very high hopes for that tree of yours.”

“Huh?” John blinked, confused.

“Use your head John, you didn’t really think it was the structure that caught their attention, did you? You made that in less than 24 hours with poor quality materials. Any fool with Create Earth, Mana Manipulation and a smidge of artistic talent could build a henge of marble. It’s what you built it around that’s important. The tree is what made it special,” Loren admonished him.

“But the tree is a half-formed idea at best. It probably won’t even work out! I’ll most likely end up with a tree that teleports itself around, or gives out fruit that displaces you or something,” he responded.

“Because there are so many different trees that can teleport or give out fruits that take the user to other places,” Loren said sarcastically. “Besides that, these were quests, which means they came with rewards. What did you get?”

“Uh, well I got something called a Portal Serum and a blueprint for a ritual called the Ritual of the Space Grove,” John said as he took out the crystal vial and showed it to her.

Loren looked at the vial for a moment. “A potion that grants the imbiber a limited portal ability for a short time. Very rare and of Exquisite quality. Give it to a plant that changes based on the magic it absorbs and you’ve a strong contender for a portal power,” she explained after a moment. “As for the ritual, it sounds like it’s made to nurture a plant with a Space affinity, likely strengthening any powers it already has.” She paused here and considered. “What did you offer as your sacrifice?”

“500 leveling points to each deity,” John admitted reluctantly.

Loren winced, but nodded. “That’s probably the only thing you could have offered that would satisfy all three. And because of the quality of the sacrifice they had to give equally good gifts. Which explains why you got such a rare potion, and I suspect that ritual is tailor made for the shrine.”

“I still can’t help but feel like I’ve made a bad deal,” John said as he put the vial away.

“It’s not the worst thing that could have happened, and you weren’t wrong, having the displeasure of either of the two would have been bad. Though they’re probably displeased with you anyway, they’re just not allowed to act on it,” Loren said. “Anyway, I’d take that serum back to your farm and feed it to the tree right away. The Prismatic Trees are most impressionable when they’re young, and their powers ossify as they get older. Load it up with as many spatial magics as you can get your hands on as fast as you can.”

John nodded, and then hesitated. “Can… can I feed it mana directly?”

“I don’t see why not, I wouldn’t feed it anything other than Space mana though, and be careful not to oversaturate it. When things get too full of mana they tend to explode,” she advised.

“That sounds bad,” John said.

“If it were any other plant I’d be worried about the idea, but a Prismatic Sapling? Odds are you can’t feed it enough mana to impact it in a negative fashion, they use the stuff to grow after all,” Loren said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“Wait, does that mean it’ll grow faster if I feed it mana?”

“Probably, I’m not sure, most farming families never tell anyone what precisely they did to rear a Prismatic tree, and they’re too rare and valuable to do any real studies. Also, no one has ever had the insane idea to turn one into a portal before. You’re in uncharted waters John, you’ll have to find your own way out. Oh, and you’ll probably be in a world of trouble if you kill the tree now that it resides in a shrine. So don’t do that,” Loren said with an amused smile.

“Great, no pressure,” John muttered.

“Indeed. Now, run along and play with your plants, I’ve got a novel to finish,” she said, and then lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Sir Percy just saved the fair maiden and is about to get his reward.”

“That was more than I needed to know,” John said as he stood up.

“Goodbye John,” Loren cackled.

“Bye!” he called back as he headed out of town.

***

Upon his return to the farm John went straight to the Prismatic Sapling and applied the Portal Serum. The magic goop soaked directly into the plant, but seemed to have no other effect. Hoping he’d used it right he put the bottle (which was a beautiful crystal decanter) away and then turned his attention to the Ritual of the Space Grove. Pulling open the blueprint he projected it onto the Megalith.

The megaliths lit up with perfect geometric designs and shapes, each of which seemed like it belonged exactly where it was placed. After looking at it for a short time John was certain that he definitely could not have created something that fit so perfectly or was even half as elaborate. After a moment he decided to use this as a learning opportunity, and check every measurement, curve, and rune against the knowledge in the book. One thing was certain, this was going to take more than a few hours; the time required might even be measured in days. However, he also had to build a road within the month.

Leaning against the wall around the tree, John started doing a bit of math. He needed to build a road from here to Runic Rock, and given that the reward was variable it needed to be a good road, not just a dirt trail. So, he started with the basics, how far was it from here to Runic Rock? A quick internet search told him the average person walked at a speed of three to four miles per hour. Err on the side of four miles, just for caution’s sake. A good road would allow space for two wagons to pass each other. The internet once again provided a few numbers, it appeared wagons tended to vary in width from four to six feet. So assume you need at least two to three feet between wagons that were passing, and maybe a foot to the edge of the road, call it 17 feet wide.

So, 4 miles was 21,120 feet long, the road width would be 17 feet wide, and the road bed would have a depth of about 5 feet. So, 21,120 times 17 times 5 came out to… John struggled for a moment with the large number then finally gave in and used a calculator. 1,795,200 cubic feet of earth that would need to be moved. He could move earth at around 4 cubic feet per second at a cost of 2 earth mana per second which meant it would take him… 125 hours to dig out the road bed, call it 8 days of work. The big problem now was Mana.

John only had a pool of 450 while off his land and a regeneration rate of 22.5 mana per minute, which meant he could only continuously cast for about 4 and a half minutes, then he would need 5 minutes to regenerate his full pool. The slow regeneration rate meant that it’d take a little more than twice as long to complete the project, 10 or 11 days of work, and he wouldn’t have even started laying the road yet. This meant he couldn’t afford to use his own mana for the project, he’d need to use earth stones, of which he’d need 360, which at a cost of 1 copper a piece would come out to 3 silvers and 60 coppers.

He would then need to lay the road, which had the same dimensions as digging it out, but would cost twice the mana, and progress at half the speed. That meant he’d need another 720 earth stones and it’d take 10 days. This meant a total road construction time of 32 days and a cost of 10 silvers and 80 coppers.

John grunted in annoyance. First, there was no way he could take 32 days away from his work to just build a road, that was insane. He needed to set up the Ritual of the Space Grove and get new plants in the ground. Second, he didn’t have 32 days in which to do the work. It would be so much easier if the road were part of his domain, then he’d be able to do ten times the work for the same cost in mana. There was nothing stopping him from claiming that stretch of land, the big problem was saturating it with his mana. The only method he knew to do that was to clear the land the same way he had been.

“Help, is there a faster way to saturate land with my mana?” he asked.

[Answer: Yes.]

“Let me guess, I’d need to buy the Tutoring module if I want to know more,” he muttered in annoyance.

[Answer: Correct.]

John took a calming breath. He needed to know how to expand his domain, and he needed to know pretty much now. He could directly impart mana to things, Grandma Loren had confirmed that. So maybe he could impart mana directly to the land? He didn’t use all that much mana when he was clearing it. Ten unaspected mana, or two earth mana. Two earth mana per square foot wasn’t much, but it was still 718,080 mana to cover the entire stretch of the road. That would take him… 816 full mana pools to cover, if he was in his domain, 68 hours of casting and regenerating his mana pool. But, he would complete the digging and construction ten times faster. That would mean actually digging the road would only cost 12 and a half hours, and laying the road would cost twice that. In total it would take him almost three 16-hour days to complete, for a total of almost seven days of work.

Another calming breath. Break it down into smaller pieces, John thought to himself.

As he thought about it, the problem was that he kept approaching this as a single block of time. It didn’t have to be though, he could break the project up into sections, taking a day here and there to do the work. The same was true of tending crops. The only thing he had to do immediately was the ritual. If he planted a crop now, there would be stretches of days that he didn’t need to tend the crops, he could work on the road during those times. It would mean he couldn’t do much experimentation this month, but he needed a solid foundation for his work anyway.

Nodding his head, John stood up, and got to work.