The talk with Theodore had turned out to be entirely painless, the ursine man agreed to post a notice twice daily, once when the store opened, and once after noon, for the low price of two coppers per post. John paid him for a month’s worth of posts and topped off his meal bars. Proceeding to Phillip’s he picked up the chooker door, for which he paid another 15 coppers. Afterward he started on the walk back to his farm, keeping his improvised umbrella up the whole way.

Upon returning the first thing John did was check on the chookers. As he had suspected, he found them roosting inside the coop. Entering he made his way over to the two troughs and gave a shrill whistle, causing all the chookers to look at him. Finally he dropped the bodies in the trough, and the flock immediately moved to partake in the morning offering. It was only once he was outside that he realized the drake hadn’t given him any guff this morning, and he had to peek back inside to be sure it was still there.

After confirming that the drake was indeed both alive and with the flock, John took out the door, and pushed it into the doorway using Move Earth to seal it in. He then proceeded to do the same with the flap door, pushing it in off to the left of the main door. Stepping back, John took in his coop. While it didn’t look good per se, it was certainly functional, and finally secured against the elements. Satisfied, he turned and headed toward the storm cellar.

Once inside he sat down to make the mana stones he was going to need for the Ritual of Cleansing. The change in quality of his control was immediately apparent, it took him almost no mental effort to create a Common quality stone now and, with a little experimentation, he found that if he devoted all his attention to the task he could create a Good quality stone. Further, the speed at which he could produce the stone had increased to 24 mana per second instead of the original four mana per second. As a final experiment he attempted to use the lowest tier of Mana Drawing at the same time, and found that it was possible so long as he kept the quality at Common or lower. Going off that he decreased the quality of the mana stone, and found that he could use the second tier of Mana Drawing if he made only Poor quality stones. However some quick math made it clear that taking breaks to use the full power of Mana Drawing would actually make the work go faster.

After a few moments of thought John didn’t see any reason not to use Poor quality stones for the task, he wasn’t selling them after all. It was the work of only 22 minutes to generate a mana stone containing 6,285 water mana. The resulting stone was smaller than a golf ball and he set it off to the side as he created the others. An hour and change later he’d finished with the task and had moved on to purchasing the reagents he’d need to start the ritual.

One silver and ten coppers later he had his standard Soap, Krystal, and Pure Philter and was ready to go. Dropping a few items from his inventory onto the straw bales he scooped up the stones and alchemical items and headed out for the ritual where he wasted no time dumping out the bodies and activating it. As he watched the colorful glows spreading across the engraved geometric designs he felt vaguely guilty that he wasn’t purifying the corpses he was feeding the chookers. It was a risk he knew, but he couldn’t run a cleansing ritual every single day. Maybe he could get Ex to teach him the Cleanse spell instead, that might work. With that thought in mind he headed back for the storm cellar and logged out for lunch.

Returning an hour later John was surprised to find the cat and wolf kin duo waiting for him outside the wall. When they saw him, the woman waved and gestured him over. Walking to the wall, John made it part so they could come in.

“Hello, welcome to the farm,” John said as the two peered about.

“Not as much here as I expected,” the woman said. “No house or barn?”

“Not yet,” John said. “I’ll get there eventually but there’s always been something else that needed doing first.”

The wolfkin grunted and then spoke. “Where do you want the Urns?”

John looked around and tugged at his beard before speaking. “Give me a moment, I didn’t think about that.” He then turned and used a quick application of Create Earth to generate a raised stone slab roughly eight feet east to west and four feet north to south, stopping only when it reached four feet in height. The duo watched, looking intrigued at the blatant display of magic.

“There we go, you can set them there,” John said.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone generate so much material that fast,” The man replied, even as he started appearing the urns onto the impromptu table.

“I’ve got a feat that lets me do large volume spells while on my farm,” John admitted freely.

“Just while you’re on your farm?” The woman queried.

“Yeah, it’s called Domain. It requires that I saturate land I own with my mana before I can use it,” John replied.

“Drat, it’d be really useful in the dungeon, I’m AshWolf by the by,” the man said.

“And I’m CallyCat,” the woman interjected.

John nodded at the introductions. “You can achieve the same effect with the Dynamo, Improved Volume, and Expanded Pool feats,” he explained. “It’s costly to purchase three feats, but if you’re going for a mage build it’s well worth it.”

“That’s really good to know,” Cally said. “Any other tips?”

“Yeah,” John said with a smirk. “Talk to Grandma Loren and do what she tells you. She knows a lot.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” Ash said as he set out the last urn. “That’s twenty urns of goo.”

John nodded and paid out 20 coppers. “Thanks guys, do you want me to make more urns for you before you head back?”

“Sure,” said Cally, and John took a moment to generate the new vessels.

“Thanks,” said Ash.

“No problem, I’m happy to have the materials,” John explained.

“Well, we’ll be heading out then,” Ash said in parting.

“Later,” said Cally as the two left.

John closed up the wall behind them and then looked to the urns on the table, they were getting rained on and the lids weren’t liquid tight. With a sigh he created a stone awning over the table to keep the rain off. He then considered what to do next. He wanted to try creating magic plants and he had a couple ideas. The ones that involved the slime goo, however, related to Alchemy, and he didn’t want to try any more of that in urns over uneven heat sources.

John had never been really good at chemistry, but he knew you needed to be precise in whatever you were doing. Be it with heat or measurements. In this case that might also mean brushing up on the metric system which, come to think of it, he might want to use for his rituals as well, given the need for precise measurements. That said, the rituals had been designed with feet and inches in mind, so he wasn’t sure that’d translate well. In any case, he’d need equipment to do alchemy in, and on, which was just another thing he’d have to build or buy.

Rubbing his forehead, he sat down on the covered table and took a moment to think about the things he needed to do right now, what he could do later, and what he might be able to pay other people to do for him.

The list of ‘right now’ chores was actually pretty short. There wasn’t much else he could do today, since mostly it all involved waiting for other things to finish. The ritual wouldn’t be done with the bodies until tomorrow. The chooker meals were pretty much automated with the quests (which he’d offered at a copper per body). And finally, the garden plots didn’t need much more than a cursory examination for pests or other ailments.

The list of things to do later was a bit longer. He needed to learn more enchanting, purchase alchemy equipment (and books), create someplace to store belongings, build a barn for animals, equipment, and more food storage, and perhaps expand his storm cellar. Also, he needed a mana well to run the enchantments he wanted to add to everything, and to claim more of the surrounding land.

Finally he came to the list of ‘things I can pay people to do’. He could probably pay the knights to design and erect some buildings for him, namely a house with attached storage and crafting space, and a barn. He could almost certainly buy the alchemy equipment from the Auction, and that seemed the best choice, since he didn’t even know what he needed. And he could continue paying Sally, Ex, and the other players for bodies and slime goo, so that problem was sorted, at least until people found a better revenue source.

His thoughts settled, John decided to start with checking on his plants, so he made his way around the table and coop and moved to check the three planted crops. The wheat was a little over a foot tall at this point and seemed to be having no troubles, though he dutifully checked it for pests, only to find none. The corn was much smaller at only a few inches in height and also showed no obvious problems. The berries were as he’d left them, small sprouts that barely poked above the soil, like the other two plants, there were no issues he could see.

Moving on he decided that now was as good a time as any to expand his land so he grabbed the claim spikes from the storm cellar and headed out the western portion of the wall. He spent the next little while measuring out what he wanted and then planted the stakes, extending his claim by another 540,800 square feet, making the entire claim a large square once more.

Returning to the storm cellar he put the claim spikes down and considered what to do next. If he wanted the knights to raise buildings for him, he’d need to pay them, he’d also be needing money to buy alchemy equipment, so the next thing he should do was get more of that, this meant making more mana stones. Fortunately with his new ranks in Mana Manipulation he could make Good stones now, which were even smaller than Common stones, and thus could hold more mana and demand a better price.

Setting to work he started creating new mana stones. He found that the Good quality stones could hold 7,500 mana at about the same size as a common held 5000 and a Poor held 2500, which was to say a stone about the size of his thumb, or close to about two cubic inches. Better, it only took him about 30 minutes per stone now meaning that over the next six hours he was able to produce 12 Good quality life mana stones.

When he opened the Auction to list them, he found a nice surprise in that all his chooker eggs had sold, giving him 36 more coppers. Pleased, he listed the rest of the chooker eggs for the same price. He then took a chance and placed all 12 of his new stones each in its own day long auction with a minimum bid of one gold and fifty silver and a buyout price of four gold. John didn’t actually expect anyone to buy the stones for four gold pieces, however it’d be good to see how far he could push the price on the Good stones.

As John had worked both other parties had dropped off their urns of goo, bringing his total up to 60. The lone ursakin from earlier had also dropped off the four bodies needed for the chookers’ dinner. Content with the day’s work, John went to bed.