The next morning was blessedly clear, though the ground remained well sodden. John exited the cellar, holding up a small flame to light his way in the dark morning. He made his way over to the tree. The blossoms had fallen off, he could see the crumpled petals in the mud around its base, and in their place were small, green fruits. Taking his customary seat, he connected with the tree and could sense that its power was flowing mostly to these new adornments. With care he started slipping his own energy into the flow once more, even as he let the tree’s proto-consciousness flow over him. It was happy still, the rain had been good, and it was creating something, a task in which it seemed to find immense satisfaction. It was, however, depleting the nearby soil, and had started stretching its roots further and deeper.

John frowned, he’d known he would need more bodies for the tree, but he’d forgotten. It was just one more thing he’d have to take care of. It would be easier if he had built closer to the dungeon, or even the town. As time went by he was going to need more and more bodies to satisfy the growing requirements of his farm, and he wasn’t sure how to handle that. While automating the requests for chooker food had been easy enough, he didn’t need 40 bodies daily, making that quest much harder to automate.

As his alarm went off John broke contact with the tree and returned to the farm to find a human and orc duo waiting to drop off this morning’s bodies. He paid them and threw in a few extra coppers for the wait. To his dismay he was running low on coppers and would need to break another silver before this evening’s drop off. Idly he wondered if he could do that through the auction. Gathering up the bodies he made his way into the coop and replaced both food and water while giving the now usual sharp whistle. The chookers were definitely associating the whistle with food now, which meant they’d probably come when he called them. Probably.

Checking the nesting boxes John found 53 eggs, 10 of which were actually Good quality instead of just common. He wondered what made the difference even as he opened the Auction. First he checked his ongoing auctions and found that the stones were up to around two gold each. The chooker eggs had all sold, netting him 96 coppers, neatly dealing with the low copper situation. Briefly he wondered who was buying all the eggs, but he didn’t actually care. He put all the chooker eggs up for auction, though he placed the Good quality eggs up for six coppers each instead of three.

Checking the time he had about three and a half hours before the Ritual of Purification would finish, so he had some time to take care of things. The first thing he did was send a text to Ex and Sally asking for yet more bodies. That taken care of, he turned his mind to the idea of farm buildings. The question was, did he pay the knights to take care of it, or just do it himself? He spent a few minutes considering it and then decided to just do it himself.

Moving toward the northern edge of the farm he decided to build near the storm cellar, allowing him to create a set of stairs that would lead to it from the inside of the house as well. Opening the Blueprint module, he began designing. About an hour later he finally settled on a rectangular building about 40 feet long and 30 feet wide. That’d give him room for a kitchen, living area, work space, a bedroom and above ground storage. He then extended it downward into a three-room basement with a tunnel stair combo that led down the last bit to connect with the storm cellar. With a gesture the blueprint expanded out of his interface to leave a holographic representation overlaying the area he’d decided to build in. Then, with an effort of will and a gesture, he started digging out the area.

Back when he’d built the storm cellar, it’d cost him over seven hours of time just to dig a hole of lower total volume than this one. In sharp contrast, it took only ten minutes to fully excavate the foundation and basement of the new building. John paused to marvel at how far he’d come. Between the Domain feat and the ranks he’d banked in the skills, the task had become entirely trivial. Less trivial was the use of his new Earth to Stone spell. Being at Novice rank the spell’s volume per second was about a fourth that of the Journeyman ranked Move Earth. Meaning it actually took him 14 minutes to convert the loose dirt to first a foot of gravel at the bottom of the hole, and then six feet of solid granite on top of that. Next, he used Move Earth to gather the few large piles of dirt he still had from previous construction, and started turning it into stone for the walls of his basement.

The construction of the basement walls, stairs, and ceiling took another four minutes and used up almost all the leftover soil. Then, still following the projected blueprint, he began to fill in the walls of the building. The interior was divided into five rooms, a kitchen, a combined living and dining area, a bedroom so small it bordered on a closet, a storage room, and finally the workshop area, which took up almost a full third of the space on its own. John left space for three exterior doors, one to the living area, one to the kitchen, and one to the workshop. Each of the rooms also included a generous number of quartz windows through which to let in light, as well as a skylight built into the slightly domed roof.

All together the construction of the building took him less than an hour, though it was nothing more than an empty shell at this point, without doors or furniture other than the built-in granite workbenches, shelving, and countertops. Still, it would work for now, and he was certain Phillip would have some standard furniture he could purchase. Though he’d need to commission doors, as the carpenter didn’t have nearly enough in his pre-made stock.

Checking the time John determined he had a bit more than an hour and a half before the ritual was done. Looking around he conjured a stone bench near the front door, sat down, and began designing the barn. An hour and twenty minutes later he’d decided on a large building with a 40 by 80 foot floor plan, with an attached 20 by 40 foot creamery. He’d included four 10 by 10 foot stalls for cows and two 10 by 20 foot stalls for goats and sheep respectively. This left him with an aisle of 20 feet in the center, and a 40 by 40 foot area at the front of the barn for storage.

Satisfied, John saved the blueprint and then just relaxed into his seat for the next ten minutes. Then with a sigh he stood, stretched, and made his way over to the Ritual of Cleansing. He had to wait a few minutes as the ritual spooled down, but eventually it finished and he collected the now cleaned bodies. Then, checking the time, he decided to take the obligatory lunch break slightly early.

Returning from lunch, John headed toward the garden plots and dumped the bodies into the fourth plot and started decaying them. As with the last time he performed the task, it took a full five hours to reduce the bodies to the mushy, smelly, and rich compost that would be useful for plant growth. During that time he was forced to stop to receive the delivery of more bodies from Ex and Sally, and another set of herb slime goop from Ash and Cally. Finally, however, it was done and he moved on to making the mana stones he would need to run the Ritual of Cleansing again.

So, he spent the next two hours making the required mana stones, only to receive a welcome pair of notifications at the end.

[Due to constant use of mana you have gained +1 Intelligence]

[Due to continuous regeneration of mana you have gained +1 Wisdom]

Smiling, John purchased the same ingredients he always used; though he held off on actually performing the ritual, deciding that would wait until morning. With that taken care of, he checked on the chookers one last time, and then went to bed himself.

The first thing John did the next morning was start the Ritual of Cleansing, after which he went and had his daily communion with the tree. It was doing just fine, and its little fruits were slightly bigger and a slightly lighter shade this morning. The ursakin from the other day (who turned out to be named Kodiak Maximus, though he was fine with just Kodi) dropped off the morning bodies for the chookers and yet another set of herb slime goo.

After feeding the chookers, John gathered their eggs, of which there were an even 50, 10 of which were good quality. He added them to the auction and received money for the ones he’d placed yesterday, as well as 23 gold, 21 silver, and 10 copper for the life mana stones.

Determined to take care of the goo urns next, John gathered them into his inventory and walked them over to the wheat plot where he deposited them on the ground next to it. He then went through the tedious process of removing all the lids. After that was done he used Move Water to pull the large mass of goo out of the jars and began to slowly deposit it over the field, doing his best to spread it in an even film over the area. Once he was finished the plants briefly glistened with a layer of green slime, however that quickly faded as the film was absorbed and the plants grew a few inches. Satisfied, John re-collected all the urns, lidded them, and returned them to the table from whence they’d came.

That finished, John turned to his newest plot which he had decided to use as a testbed. He began by dividing the plot much like he had for the berries and then raising all the disparate sections up to waist height. Next he divided the westernmost part of the raised beds even further, creating dozens upon dozens of small square plots no more than four inches in length and width. These would be where he tried germinating new crops, and he wasted no time preparing the first test. Holding his hand out over the first of the many squares he began creating life mana stone, however instead of a solid crystal he imagined making a trickle of fine dust. He was rewarded for his efforts with a grainy powder pouring out of his hand and into the test bed until he had a fine layer of the stuff, which he quickly mixed into the soil.

John next took out a small handful of wheat kernels and planted them, then he moved on to the next plot, repeating the process, except this time with death stone. John proceeded in this way until he’d finished another six plots, one for each of the basic elements. Then, holding his hand out over the area, he cast Hasten Growth. After almost half a minute the first few shoots began to appear, poking out of the contaminated soils. After a full minute most of the plants had died, leaving only a few stragglers in each of the plots. After two minutes most of those had died off as well, leaving only three stalks of almost fully matured wheat, two in the life plot and one in the water plot. By three minutes the stalks were fully mature, though they looked sickly. John Inspected the stalks.

[Name: Life Tainted Wheat]

[Quality: Poor]

[Description: Grown in soil saturated with life mana, this wheat carries that same taint as the soil it grew in.]

[Name: Water Tainted Wheat]

[Quality: Poor]

[Description: Grown in soil saturated with water mana, this wheat carries that same taint as the soil it grew in.]

This was… Not what John had been hoping for. Taint was generally a word with negative connotations, which probably meant bad things for whoever consumed the wheat. Still, maybe a few iterations would produce a more useful change?

He harvested the stalks, dried them with Control Water, and spent a few minutes divesting them of their kernels, which went right back into the soil from whence they came. He watered the plots, then used Hasten Growth once more. All of the kernels sprouted, and more than half made it to maturity. Unfortunately none of them had a different descriptor. Selecting the plants that looked healthiest, John discarded the rest and began a new cycle.

For the next hour John repeatedly grew and discarded plants. By the end all the plants he’d grown were looking healthy, but they still carried the ‘tainted’ descriptor. With a sigh, he decided there was nothing to do but eat some and see what happened. Grabbing one of the stalks he divested it of its wheatberries and popped them in his mouth, chewing slowly and carefully. Almost immediately a new prompt appeared.

[Debuff: Life Tainted.]

[Description: Your mana is aspected entirely toward life.]

[Duration: 30 seconds.]

John looked at the debuff and considered it carefully. It was a way to automatically aspect your mana, it seemed. This was actually not a terrible thing, unless of course you were in a situation where you needed to cast spells of different elements quickly. The debuff was short lived, but that was probably because he’d only eaten a few kernels. Who knew what actual prepared food would do? Still, interesting as the debuff was, it wasn’t really what John had been hoping for.

After a few minutes of pondering, John pulled up the remaining stalks, tied them into little bundles, and set them aside. He wasn’t prepared to just throw them out yet, but it was time to try a different experiment, which meant cleaning up the old one.

Holding his hand over the first of the plots he called on Move Earth, and tried to sift the mana dust out of the soil. Other than taking a bit of time it proved to be a fairly painless process, and soon he’d separated out six piles of magical dust. Another moment of concentration saw those small piles fused into tiny stones, which he promptly dropped into his pocket for later disposal. Next he replaced the soil in the small plots with some from the nearby larger plot, and proceeded with his next test.

Taking out a handful of kernels, John tried channeling mana into them directly, as he regularly did with the tree. He took it as slow as possible, adding only a single point of mana. Unfortunately this proved to be more than the kernels could handle, and they immediately exploded into tiny pieces, pelting John with plant shrapnel. John yelped, more surprised than hurt, even the hand that had been holding the kernels looked unmarred. Wiping off his hand with a frown, he picked up the bushel of life tainted wheat, and pulled the water out of the kernels to dry them. He then repeated the previous test with several of those.

This time the mana took hold, and he slowly added another point, then a third. As he added the mana to the kernels, he felt a strange echo of his communion with the tree, and gained a distant sense of how much mana they could hold. Four points each seemed to be the limit, and he paused to Inspect the handful of kernels in his hand.

[Name: Life Saturated Wheat Kernels]

[Quality: Poor]

[Description: Grown in soil saturated with life mana, and then further infused directly, these kernels are fully infused with life magic.]

John rolled the kernels around in his hand for a moment, then chose one of the testing plots and planted them. As he finished covering them, he knew something wasn’t right with the soil, these plants wouldn’t be able to grow as they were. Following that ‘instinct’ he took the tiny life mana stone out and turned it back into fine dust which he mixed in with the soil. Feeling better about it, he cast Hasten Growth and watched as little stalks began to poke out of the soil. Three minutes later he had a small handful of fully grown wheat. Plucking it from the soil he examined it again.

[Name: Life Saturated Wheat]

[Quality: Poor]

[Description: Grown from kernels saturated with life mana, this wheat carries echoes of that magic, making it a barely acceptable alchemical reagent.]

Smiling John pulled the water from the wheat and plucked another handful of kernels. Once again he infused them with life mana, managing to double the previous amount, and then went to return he seeds to the soil. As he did so he once more sensed this soil wasn’t right for the seeds. Thanks to Mana Sight he could still see there was life stone dust left in the soil, but not much. Perhaps it needed more? He concentrated and another small pile of dust formed. After mixing it into the soil he felt better about it, but it still wasn’t quite right. He wasn’t exactly sure how to fix it though, he hadn’t felt the need to better prepare the soil for the tree, but he had mixed in the void stone already, so maybe that’d been enough? Alternatively, the tree was already magical in nature, perhaps its innate magic meant the soil didn’t need any special additives?

Frowning he thought about it for a few minutes more but didn’t have any bright ideas nor system supplied inspirations. It was possible his Farming skill simply wasn’t a high enough level; he was only Apprentice in Farming after all. Still, maybe there was something alchemical he could add to the soil? Pulling open the auction he ticked the filter for alchemical items, then specified ‘Life’. There weren’t many results, in fact there was only one: Golden Ginseng Syrup. The cost was five and a half gold, and the quality was common. By its description, it was meant to be used in further alchemical refinements.

John debated buying the syrup for several minutes. It would take almost a third of his gold, and more than half his silvers, and there was no guarantee it’d be what he needed. With a shake of his head, he decided against it. What else could he do? He could try creating another serum, but that could go disastrously bad without actual equipment, besides, he was out of herb slime goo. Tugging at his beard he gave a frustrated sigh. It didn’t seem like there was anything more he could do.

Looking down at the kernels in his hand he wasn’t sure what to do with them. He didn’t want to throw them away, but at the same time he had no way to really store them. Not for the first time he lamented not having the Bigger on the Inside feat. With a sigh he pushed the kernels into the prepared soil anyway. Perhaps he’d get something out of it. He then bundled up what remained of the Life Tainted and Water Tainted stalks, and took them down to the storm cellar.