Ex and Sally hadn’t shown up last night, but he had gotten a message from them (apparently the communication module was only required to send messages). They’d only managed to get about half the bodies he wanted, so they were going to collect more with the morning run. John was fine with that as it gave him time to do some morning work. For the first four hours he worked with the tree, feeding it mana and trying to impress upon it his desires once more. The magic within it was nearly unresponsive, it appeared it was solidifying quickly. At this point he was fairly certain it wouldn’t be changing without drastic measures, like the introduction of a powerful magical effect or item. Breaking from the tree, he watered it, and then moved on with his morning.

John made Mana stones for the next four hours, unlike the four he’d made last night (which were for the cleansing ritual) these were for sale, so that he’d be able to pay the Knights when the road was complete. It was closing in on noon when he was interrupted by the sound of Sally bellowing his name.

“HEY JOHN! WE’RE HERE!” she shouted.

John wandered up and out of the cellar where he’d been working, and waved as Sally leapt over the wall. Ex just leaned against it and waited to be let in.

“Hey Sally, try not to disturb the neighbors, I want to stay on their good side,” John said as he approached.

Sally and Ex glanced over toward the shrine, where they were getting the stink eye from the same orc woman who’d voiced her disgruntlement the other day.

“Oops,” Sally said, she didn’t seem terribly apologetic.

“Who are those guys anyway?” Excelsior asked.

“The Knights Magi, they worship Ledos, or work for him, at least. They basically protect the shrine and take care of things like controlling the toll for entry and exit,” John told them as he opened the wall and let Ex in.

“Why do they all look so disgruntled?” Sally wondered aloud.

“Well, the woman giving you the stink eye said this wasn’t what she expected, so I’m assuming she’s mad about being posted in the middle of nowhere. The ones digging the road though… I’m not sure, they glared at me both times I passed them yesterday,” John said.

“Punishment detail,” Ex said in a knowing fashion.

“Punishment detail?” John echoed.

“Yeah, it’s not any different than digging ditches or latrines. My dad’s a big military history buff, it’s the kind of thing that’s done to punish people,” Ex explained.

“I guess that makes sense?” said John as he started leading them toward the ritual site.

“What are they guarding?” Sally asked as she followed John, one eye on the shrine.

“The tree, mostly. It’s magical and we’re all really hoping it turns out to be a certain kind of magic.” John said.

“Oh! That tree! What kind of magic does it have?!” Sally all but bounced with excitement.

“Portal, we’re hoping. Not entirely sure that’s what we’re going to get though, making a tree like this has never been done before. So far as we know,” John explained as he came to a stop in front of the ritual circle. “Just put them here like last time.”

“Cool!” Sally said, and started dumping the bodies onto the stone slab.

“A portal tree?” Ex asked. “I suppose that’s one way to fix our transportation issue. Hope it pans out for you.”

“So do I,” John said.

Sally dropped the last of the bodies and stepped outside the circle. “All done!”

“Great, do you want to watch me start it this time? I’ve just got to buy some items that represent purity for it, then I can start it,” John said.

“Sure!” Sally said excitedly.

John pulled up the auction tab and searched for the same items he’d use last time. One silver and ten coppers later John had the three items. He set them, the bowl of clean water, and the mana stones in the provided hollows, then activated the ritual. Sally made some appropriate oohs and aahs as the ritual displayed its light show.

“That’s cool!” Sally said after it’d died down to its more subtle glow.

“Eh, it was alright,” said Ex.

“So how long will it take?” asked Sally.

“24 hours,” John replied.

“Seems like a really long time just for a cleanse,” Ex said skeptically.

John shrugged. “Dunno, I don’t have the spell, I do know it’s supposed to be able to cleanse most things up to… uh…” He quickly inspected the ritual. “Exceptional rank poisons, diseases, and contaminants. Not sure how that compares to the actual Cleanse spell though.”

Ex looked thoughtful for a moment. “I’m not sure actually, Cleanse is hard to level up, so I’m still only at Apprentice rank. It’s never mentioned grades of disease or poisons. Some things do take longer to cleanse than others though,” he admitted.

“Does it work on dead things?” John asked.

“You know, I’ve never tried,” Ex replied. “I guess I’ll give it a go when we run the dungeon this evening.”

“Let me know how that turns out,” John said.

“Will do,” Ex said.

Sally, meanwhile, had wandered over to (and was looking at) the Purification ritual. “This is the one that purifies things, right? Want to try it on some Mana Cores?” She asked as the other two lapsed into silence.

“I’d love to,” John told her. “But it’s expensive to run and I need to redraw it anyway, it barely worked last time. I won’t have time for that for a couple of days. I need to make more mana stones for sale, get these bodies cleansed and decomposed, plant corn and berries, and work some more with the tree.”

“Boooooooring!” Sally exclaimed.

“Very,” John admitted. “But hopefully it’ll pay off.”

“Maybe you should look into getting the Media Interface,” Ex said.

“Media Interface?” John asked.

“Yeah!” Sally said. “It lets you download movies and music to watch and listen to while you do other things!”

“Sally likes to play music while we delve. The media interface can be set up to allow those nearby to hear it as well,” Ex explained.

“I guess that sounds useful, but I can do a lot of that already with the Web Interface,” John said skeptically.

“Yeah, but the web interface has a Hud that can get in the way of things, the Media Interface can be minimized and still work!” Sally expounded.

“I’ll think about it, I haven’t got much money left, and I’d probably need to sell a good chunk of mana stones before I could afford it,” John said.

“Oh,” Sally said, less enthusiastically.

Ex shrugged. “Anyway, you need anything else while we’re here?”

“Nah, thanks though. I still need to figure out how I’m delivering all this Herb Slime goo to my plants, so the urns are all still full, and these bodies should be enough for two more plots,” John said.

“Well, let us know. C’mon Sally, let’s head back to town,” Ex said and headed toward the way they’d come in.

“Bye!” Sally said with a wave as she followed Ex.

“Later!” said John.

John watched them go for a few minutes, and then logged off as it was about that time.

Coming to in his bed, John slipped off the headset and sat up. He then went through the suggested exercises for keeping himself in shape, and then made some lunch. While he did so he considered what he wanted to do. His plan currently consisted of getting his plants in the ground and then doing his best to ‘tend’ to them so they’d increase in quality. The big problem was, what did he do next? Were there even player chefs who’d purchase his ingredients? Should he mill the wheat into flour himself? What about corn? Should he mill some of that down into corn meal or flour? How do you make corn flour?

John tried to open the web interface. Nothing happened.

“Signs you’ve been playing too much VR,” he muttered to himself and then finished the last of his sandwich.

He stood, washed his plate, and then returned to his room. There were still a solid 15 minutes before he could log back into the game, so he opened his laptop and looked up how to make Masa. It turned out to be a frustrating experience, as most recipes simply used pre-made chemicals, and it wasn’t until he actively searched Native American history that he figured out how they’d done it. They’d used ash from their fires to make Lye and then soaked the corn in that before processing it.

John glanced at the time and saw that he’d spent a good 45 minutes in his research. With a disgruntled sigh he closed the laptop, put on the headset, and logged back into the game.

Finding the farm much as he had left it John returned to the cellar and made mana stones for the rest of the day.

The next morning passed the same way the last few had. He began by feeding mana directly to the tree, which continued to soak it up like a sponge. By this time its magic seemed to have well and truly solidified, making his attempts at further coaxing fruitless. After four hours of that he spent the next four making mana stones, putting the total production at 16 for the last two days, 12 of which had already sold. In addition he received another point in each intelligence and wisdom, bringing him up to a total of 50 in each.

After lunch he checked on the Ritual of Cleansing, which should have finished just before he logged out. He found the ritual had indeed finished its run, letting him collect the bodies. He then moved over to the second of his twelve plots and dropped forty of the bodies into it. He then went to work on them with Hasten Decay, a task that took about five hours. After mixing the freshly composted material with the dirt, he shaped the soil into rows and furrows ready to receive both water and seed. Taking out the package of corn he used about half of it broadcasting seed onto the raised portions of the garden bed. Finally he watered the field until he felt he’d given it enough.

After finishing with the water, John was about to call it a night when he remembered one last task he had to do. Turning away from the plot he moved to the first large pile of grass and, with an effort of Evoke Flame, lit it on fire. At first the fire didn’t want to take, it was simply too damp, however John had started with a very small amount of flame rather than overdo it, so he ramped up the heat until the pile blazed merrily. He then exerted his will over the fire using Control Flame and coaxed the flames to burn faster. Eventually nothing was left of the pile but ash, an he moved on to the next pile. Between the two spells it didn’t take him long to finish off the grass piles within the wall, leaving him with a few patches of blackened earth and ash. Both of which disappeared with an effort of Move Earth. Then, finally, he went and logged off.