Logging in the next morning, the first thing John did was go check on the chookers. He found them roosting peacefully; all except the male, of course. John held up a flame so that he could see the interior and the male’s head whipped around, its beady little eyes glaring at him. John, not wanting to deal with the angry reptile right now, slowly backed out, making sure not to turn his back on the thing. Then, secure in the knowledge that the chookers would stay put for the moment, he went to examine the tree.

The tree was looking much as it had been, though it had once again grown slightly bigger. The leaves had also darkened over the past few days, becoming a deep gray-green, a few even turning black. John had initially been worried when he’d started noticing the change, however communing with the tree had washed his worries away. The tree seemed to be in good health, and his instincts were telling him all was well.

Making his customary rock chair, John sat, set an alarm, and touched the tree. As soon as the mana began to flow from him and into the tree he was swept away once more. Normally he felt the tree’s morning lethargy and contentment. Today, however, the tree seemed to have different plans. He could feel the magic moving around inside it, and as his own added to it that feeling of movement became more turbulent. Soon he could feel power amassing, doing… something.

Releasing the flow of magic, he opened his eyes and looked at the sapling. He could just barely make out the flow of mana inside it, all converging. There, at the end of one of its branches was a bright, glowing point of mana, as he watched the glow grew stronger, and then faded, leaving a small, black bud behind. Even as he watched the bud unfurled to reveal a brilliantly white flower that glowed with a light so soft it was visible only because the pre-dawn light hadn’t taken hold yet.

He stared at the flower for a few moments. John honestly wasn’t sure what to do. Should he tell someone? After a moment of thought he decided he’d tell the knights on duty as he left. It wasn’t imperative that the commander be informed of it immediately, so it could follow what he assumed would be the chain of command. That sorted, he moved on and tried Inspecting the flower.

[Name: ???]

[Quality: ???]

[Description: ???]

John made an annoyed noise and ran a hand through his beard. He absolutely needed to find the points to increase Inspect to a higher rank, but he wasn’t sure where those would come from. He was fairly certain at this point that he was going to fail the Portal quest, what with the deadline being just six days away. Perhaps he could find a few more quests? Thinking about it, the portal quest seemed like it’d come out of nowhere. He had simply been thinking about how badly the area needed one and the quest had appeared. Was it possible that he’d generated his own quest?

“Help, is it possible to generate your own quests?” John murmured quietly.

[Answer: To a limited degree it is possible to generate a quest, usually such quests involve something or someone that is of primary concern to multiple people, or will have a large impact on the location. For instance, your desire for a portal was mirrored by many people in the settlement of Runic Rock, you were also not the only one who received said quest.]

John nodded as that made sense to him. Everyone would care if a portal sprung up, but almost no one would care if he tried pushing his own limits. For now he supposed he’d just need to make do with increasing his skills and the points that came from leveling.

Shaking himself out of his musings, John looked back to the tree. He could see that mana was still shifting inside it and had started pooling at other various points. All the little pools of mana were on branches and as he watched they slowly resolved themselves into nine new buds, all smaller than the original one. One by one the new buds flowered, but unlike the first, none of them were pure white. Two of the flowers had petals that started white at the center and slowly changed to a deep, almost midnight blue at the edges, three of them were edged in a beautiful yellow-gold instead, and the final four went from white to a deep, sanguine red instead. All of the blossoms glowed with the same soft radiance as the first. John tried Inspecting each of them in turn, only to come away with more question marks.

Sighing in frustration John reached out and connected with the tree once more. Flowing into its consciousness he could feel that it had used a fair amount of magic and was now starting to restore its nearly empty pool. His power trickled into it, barely a drop in the bucket. It seemed like the tree might have just expended several days’ worth of power just to make those ten blossoms. For a while, he just sat and continued to feed the tree power, then, when his alarm went off, he broke the connection and stood.

Walking out, he put the wall back to rights, and then headed for the entrance to the shrine. When he reached it, he paused to look between the two knights. One of them was the Orc woman he’d spoken to before, the other was a Human he didn’t recognize. Stepping toward the Orc he stopped a few feet away and spoke.

“The tree has bloomed. I can’t identify the blossoms or their properties, but I thought Commander First Class Helen should probably be made aware at some point,” he said, being sure to get the title right.

“I’ll submit a report,” the woman said. “Is that all?” Her voice was clipped and unfriendly.

John sighed. “Yes, that’s all.” He said wearily.

The knight simply nodded, and then went back to watching the road. John, who knew a dismissal when he saw one, headed back to the farm, where he could already hear the chookers making a racket as they ran around the area. He could see them jumping the fence and running out into the grass again. He sighed at the sight. There was no way he could keep them corralled, and he currently had nothing to feed them. Given how much the pamphlet said they could eat, that’d be a problem sooner rather than later.

Checking the coop, John found that the water trough was mostly empty, so he used an application of Control Water to clean it out and then Create Water to refill it. Next he checked the nesting boxes which, to his surprise, appeared to have been recently disturbed. Crouching down and searching inside them he found 19 chooker eggs which he disappeared into his inventory.

John wasn’t sure what he was going to do with the eggs just yet. Preserving them was difficult and as he’d already seen his inventory did not prevent things from decaying. His cellar was pretty cool, being 12 feet under the ground kept the temperature pretty stable, so that was a storage option for the short term. For now, he decided he’d see if anyone in town wanted them. He needed to get some corpses from Sally anyway; dungeon creatures being the only way he could afford to feed the chookers long term.

After checking on his growing plants, John started the walk into town. What had originally taken him an hour in uneven, grass covered terrain, now took little more than 20 minutes at a leisurely pace. It was amazing the difference a good road could make. Unfortunately, the road also seemed to attract more than a little attention. He passed no less than three groups headed the opposite direction, and had to wonder what he’d do if they messed with his farm. A not unlikely event given the way some players acted in other games.

Upon reaching town John found that a lot of players had set up their booths nearby the road; though as usual they were making little in the way of actual sales. “Oh hey!” Someone said from one of the nearby stalls. “You’re that farmer guy got beat up by rabbits! It’s John, right?”

John turned his head to see a gnomish woman sitting behind a stall. She was wearing the same ratty, patchwork armor as everyone else. “Uh, yeah.” John admitted, feeling slightly silly when she said it like that.

“Awesome! I’m Sarah, I delve with Ex and Sally sometimes,” she said with a grin.

“Oh right, Sally mentioned you, you’re an Ice user, right?” John responded as he gravitated toward her stall.

“Yep! Pretty much the only one in town too, I do a pretty brisk business fighting the Ooze Lord with other teams these days. It’s only a couple copper per trip but it adds up!” she said cheerily.

“That’s pretty cool, getting any good drops?” he asked.

“Nothing but some small mana stones,” she replied. “Which I’d be happy to sell you if you needed?” she asked hopefully, then sighed at the shake of John’s head. “Never hurts to try. Anyway, I was wondering if you’d tell me, what’s the road for?”

John looked back at the road and realized what an incongruity it was. It was a well-made, paved, double wide stretch of road that looked fit for a major thoroughfare rather than the backend of nowhere. “Well,” he began. “I had a quest from three gods to build a road out to their shrine, and the reward was variable so I decided I should design the best road I could.”

“Huh, so it just goes out to your farm and a shrine? Who built it? I don’t think we’d ever seen anyone in that particular uniform before,” she inquired further.

“Those are squires for the Knights Magi, they’re Ledos’ order of Knights. They teach their squires engineering and construction, and their commanding officer offered to build the road for a few gold,” John explained.

“Gold? You have gold?!” Sarah asked excitedly. “Where did you get it?! Was it a quest reward? The most I’ve seen anywhere around here is silver!”

“Uh… I make mana stones and sell them on the Auction,” John replied as he held up two hands in a warding gesture.

“Ugh, but that costs 20 dollars,” Sara grumbled.

“Yeah, but it was worth it, the module directly takes from, and delivers to, your inventory upon sale or purchase, respectively. Mana stones go for a fair amount, especially the life and fire ones,” John explained.

“Eh, I’ll have to think about it. It’d be more enticing if the dungeon dropped more things worth selling than just mana stones,” she said. “Alright, thanks for sating my curiosity.”

“No problem, it was nice meeting you. Oh, wait, do you know if they put up a Job Board yet?” John asked.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, it’s in the square out front of the store, can’t miss it,” Sarah replied.

“Thanks,” John said as he walked toward the square.

Making his way into the square he saw that Loren was talking with a small group of (presumably) players. She appeared to be taking them through some kind of mana exercise. Having nothing pressing to discuss with her, he didn’t intrude and instead made his way over to the store. Sure enough, there was a large board standing outside. The board was about four feet tall, set on three-foot stilts, and had a one-foot overhang all around the top, obviously to keep off water. Attached to the front, bottom left corner of the board was a wooden box filled with small nails, a tiny hammer sticking out of them. The only thing that was missing was paper.

John stepped past the board and into the interior of Theodore’s store. The large ursine man was, as usual, behind his counter. The rest of the store was mostly empty, with only a couple people browsing the shelves. John walked up to the counter.

“Sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for paper and something to write with?” John said to the large man.

In response, Theodore reached under the counter and pulled out a small stack of paper and a couple of what looked to be pointy bits of charcoal. “’s a copper for a sheet, usin’ the charcoal is free,” he said.

John nodded and passed him a copper. He then took one of the sheets and picked up the charcoal stick. He quickly found that writing with charcoal was almost as bad as using the quill had been, however a few moments later he had a (mostly) legible notice promising 1 copper per urn for herb slime goo, with a notice to see John for urns.

“Thanks mister Theodore,” John said as he put down the charcoal. Theodore just nodded.

Heading back outside John tacked the sheet to the board and then used the hammer to drive the nail in deeper. That done he stepped back and read the notice, which he’d put at around eye level.

Purchasing: Herb Slime Goo

Unit Size: 1 Urn (see John for Urns)

Pay: 1 copper per urn

Deliver To: John’s Farm (at the end of the eastern road)

Satisfied with the notice, John turned to find that several people had drifted over to see what he was doing.

“Herb slime goo? Gross,” said a catkin woman. “You get to handle the slimes,” she pointed at a wolfkin man to her left.

He rolled his eyes and looked to John. “You’re John I take it?”

John nodded. “That’s me, I take it you guys are interested in gathering some materials for me?”

“Sure, I take it that price is set in stone?” the man asked.

“Yep,” John replied.

“How many urns have you got?” the wolfkin asked.

“I can make however many you need,” John said.

“Great, I’ll take 20.”

John gestured toward the runed rock and its bench. “Let me have a seat and I can start making them.”

John moved from the board over to the bench, sitting well away from Loren’s ongoing class, and started making urns. It was quick work and soon he’d given out three batches of twenty, one to the wolf-cat duo, another to a trio of humans, and the final set to a lone ursakin. She’d just left when Sally and Ex sat to either side of him.

“John,” said Excelsior seriously. “We need to have a talk.”

“Yeah! A talk!” Sally echoed enthusiastically.

“You’ve been offering other parties better rates than us,” Ex said in his best godfather impression. “We can’t have that from you John.”

“We want better pay!” Sally interjected. “Also, I need more urns, it’s really silly to take up an entire inventory slot for just 20 of them.”

“Don’t you have like, two hundred inventory slots?” John asked.

“That’s not important! What’s important is that she can carry two hundred urns in a single slot! That’s two hundred coppers, or two silvers. There are exactly eight herb slimes on the first floor, each of them produces enough goo to fill half an urn and we can clear the first floor in less than 15 minutes. That’s four urns per run and about thirty runs per eight-hour day, which nets us one hundred and twenty urns of herb goo. Or one point two silver coins per day!” Ex expounded.

“I see you’ve been thinking about this,” John quipped.

“Ex likes money!” Sally interjected.

“Right, but what’s he going to spend it on?” John asked.

“He doesn’t, I’m pretty sure he hoards it like a dragon,” Sally said in a conspiratorial tone.

“I do not hoard money!” Ex said haughtily. “I acquire it against future need and spend only frugally!”

“Then you should get the Auction module. You can sell Poor quality mana stones for ten to twenty coppers, two to three times that if they’re fire or life,” John told him.

“Oh, you bought it? How does it work?” Ex asked, haughtiness forgotten.

“It deposits to, and takes from, your inventory, so there’s no physical auction house. Items I put up for sale are ‘held’ until sold or until their listing is up, I assume, I’ve never not sold anything,” John explained.

“That’s pretty nice,” Ex admitted. “It’d also mean we didn’t have to trek out to the farm to sell you bodies. Though I guess the road’ll make that trip easier.”

“Oh yeah, it’s much faster!” John said. “It took me only 20 minutes to get here, apparently roads have qualities, and the higher the quality the faster it boosts your movement.”

“Cool!” Sally exclaimed.

“Nice,” Ex said at almost the same time, though more sedately. “Anyway, back to the original subject, we need more urns, and you’re paying us the new rate too, right?”

John grinned. “Yes, I’m paying you the new rate,” he said even as he started to churn out more urns.

“Great!” Sally said. “We’ve got another dungeon run after lunch. Anything else you need?”

“I could use several more rodent bodies. Maybe four? I just got some carnivorous farm animals that eat a ton of food every day. Honestly, if the dungeon wasn’t here, I probably couldn’t afford to feed them. As it is, I’m going to need new corpses daily for them.” John explained.

“Oh! What are they?!” Sally asked excitedly.

“They’re called chookers and they look like tiny wyverns, you know, the kind you see in Dungeons and Dragons art?” John said.

“Tiny wyverns? That sounds like trouble,” Ex said.

“Yeah, they keep hopping the wall, and I’m certain if I’m not careful they’ll run off and become a horribly invasive species,” John grumbled.

“Well, we can get you some more bodies, try not to ruin the plains before this afternoon, okay?” Ex said, amused.

“Yeah yeah, yuck it up,” John said good naturedly.

“So what kind of animal are they? Meat? Egg? What do wyvern eggs taste like?!” Sally asked enthusiastically.

“Well apparently chooker eggs are delicious, at least according to inspect and the pamphlet that came with them. I haven’t tried them yet. No way to cook anything,” John admitted.

“What have you been eating?” Ex asked incredulously.

“Meal bars.” John admitted.

“Those nasty brick things Theodore sells?” Sally inquired.

“They’re not nasty, mostly they’re tasteless,” John said.

“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Sally rejoined. “You should get some fruits and vegetables, Frank and Ellie sell them pretty cheap, and what’s the point of eating virtual food if it doesn’t taste good?”

“Where would I keep them? Not all of us have two hundred inventory spaces!” John said in annoyance.

“Well who’s fault is that?” Sally asked with a grin as Ex snorted.

John grumbled about leveling points as he handed Sally the last urn. “There, one hundred extra urns, that brings you up to one twenty, right?”

“Yep!” Sally said.

“Alright, I’m going to log for lunch then,” John said as he stood, stretching.

“Yeah, we should probably do the same, then get going to the dungeon,” Ex said.

“Later John!” said Sally.

“Later!” John replied.