I knew I needed to get through the gigantic vis crystal if the goblins wanted to stay where they were. We would also need to find a Guardian which should end up being one of the goblins themselves. Anything else seemed unfitting. They had such a tight-knit community, anyone not part of it would have trouble getting along with them.

After that, the question was how to grow food.

“So how would one go about growing crops or any plants really underground? I know there’s some flora found in caves but it’s usually just moss and mushrooms. The goblins already have a cave with trees growing but they need the wood for building and crafting”, I asked Nymph.

“Underground trees? With white wood and black or deep-blue leaves?”

“Yes. Those.”

“I see. Those are a common specimen. They grow near nodes sustaining on the excess vis seeping into the ground. You can only really find them in saturated environments.”

“Wait. Does that mean if the goblins harvest their vis crystals, the trees won’t grow anymore?”

“Most likely.”

“The node isn’t even in the cave where the trees grow, how long has it been undisturbed?”

“It’s not? Where is it then? And how large?”

“There’s another cave close by which has a ton of crystals growing in it. One particularly large one sits above a rift in the ground. I got my medium enrichment from that but after my recent visit, I’m pretty sure the node is deeper underground. I don’t know how large it actually is.”

“I see how that might be a problem… Have you observed how much the trees have been growing since you started draining from it?”

“No. But there was a pack of monkeys living close and draining some vis from the crystals before I arrived. I don’t think I disrupted the ecosystem by much?”

“Where are the monkeys now?”

I held her stare for a moment.

“Dead.”

“Then the trees should prosper. Depending on the size of the node you won’t have a problem as long as the large crystal stays. Just be careful about how much you use the resources.”

I nodded.

“This is a real conundrum you have there. I half wish I could come along…”

I knew she was not serious from the feelings accompanying her words. Still, I could not help but make an offer with a bit of mirth.

“I can just fly you there.”

Her scythe twitched and cut a leaf in half.

“How lo… No. Don’t tempt me.”

“So you want to see the world? I’ll be sure to tell you tales from all my adventures.”

The mantis shook her tiny head.

“That’s not it. But still, thank you. Now, back to your original question. Mushrooms will probably be your best bet. If you can find a suitable specimen. Moss as well. You could let it grow on the walls of the mushroom farm to use the space more efficiently. Other plants would require magical assistance unless you have a subterranean ecosystem to imitate. I don’t have much practical experience with that kind of flora.”

“Magical assistance like what you do with the grove? So basically, tons of herba vis or essence…”

She nodded.

“That’s the gist of it. You’ll need the ones actually tending to the farm learning how much energy each plant needs and how to procure said energy. Arbor helps with trees and terra can manipulate the ground into more nutritional soil. That would reduce how much herba you need to supply.”

“What about messis?”

Nymph tilted her head.

“What’s that?”

“The aspect of crops. A combination of humanus and herba.”

“That… might help? But procuring such a rare aspect would likely be more difficult. How have I not heard of it?”

“The dwarves aren’t too fond of thaumaturgy. Unless you have a Thaumonomicon, learning about all aspects would be very difficult. I have even found one that was not in the tome.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

“Combining ordo and vacuos creates tempus, the aspect of time.”

“… time?”

I nodded.

“That seems powerful but also rather common. How would so many insane minds not think about time being an aspect?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there’s a second entry with the less common aspects. Time, for one, is not something that’s part of many dissoluble objects, which is a property most thaumaturges use to create their items. They might simply not think about metaphysical concepts.”

“But then how do they know about the eldritch?”

“It’s… probably in some items? Magic is an aspect, as is energy. Wait, do clocks have tempus? I have to do some research…”

“You mad bird.”

I felt her smirk mentally.

“Don’t you lose your mind, okay?”

“I think there’s nothing to lose anymore…”

“Well, that’s ominous…”

We kept our eyes on each other while her [Telepathy] started to dig. After a minute she had made basically no progress. I could feel her frustration growing. The intense connection allowed me to observe the Skill at work in more detail so I let her be, for now.

After about five minutes, she gave up.

“That’s some impenetrable wall you have there. How can that be at your age?”

I tilted my head.

“My body is young, my mind not as much.”

“How would that even work?”, she shook her head.

I clicked my tongue.

“No idea. It just happened.”

After that, we kept some small talk before I decided to move on. I would definitely need to dig through stone, no matter what. There was a lot to learn before I had to get back to the village.

I spent two days in the library gathering some more knowledge about mining. Particularly, how to stabilize bigger rooms and what to look out for when searching mineral veins. Other than that, I wanted to think about getting a smith or at least the basic equipment and gain some experience with actual mining. I planned to fly to Diggerberg, the city of mines, after getting my tools ready. Or my tool, rather. The excavation focus.

I found a merchant dealing in gemstones and purchased a light green emerald the size of an eyeball. It cost me a total of four gold and was cut into a symmetrical shape approximately spherical. I had some earth crystals already so I only needed some quartz. Sadly, the merchant only held ‘precious’ stones which seemed to include the rather cheap material. He told me it was only used for imitation vis crystals as decoration. At least he knew someone I could buy the material from.

The quartz cost me another gold because I could only buy a small chest with tiny broken pieces or a box of decent material. There was enough for at least twenty excavation foci but the tiny pieces could not be used.

I found a secluded place away from town just in case anything went wrong and got to work. The emerald was the centrepiece and everything had to be set around it. I had lots of quartz and could actually work it, unlike the shards where I drained most of the vis on touch. The milky-white crystals were very brittle and it was impossible to cut them with my normal talons so I shifted to my metal and crystal form. It took me a few tries but soon I had a batch of crystals fitting snugly around the emerald. I carefully added the ones holding earth vis using some leaves to isolate them from my body.

Now I only had to fill the construct with terra and perditio to finish it. Luckily, I had both those aspects within my Core. It was just a matter of willing the magic into the crystal. Perditio broke down the quartz and earth crystals where they touched and terra then restored them in an interlinking web or green and white. I suspected the same was happening with the emerald in the middle but I could not confirm it visually.

After almost half an hour of careful and slow manipulation of my personal energy, the crafting was done. Now I only needed to use the focus. I could make a wand but I wanted to try something else, first.

I held the focus close to my body with a tendril of darkness. It was embedded all around, leaving only a small opening pointing away from me and towards the ground. Pulling earth mana from my Core and pushing it into it did nothing. Destruction mana was the same. Only when I combined both did the focus react. A thin beam of green energy poured out of the opening and hit the ground. I observed a tiny dent forming where it landed and slowly deepening. Meanwhile, fine particles of energy, almost like dust, flowed towards me and fell to the ground in front of my feet. A tiny pile of dirt formed where they landed.

It worked, somewhat. But why was the power so low? I adjusted the mana going into the focus, experimenting with different ratios. Increasing the amount of terra made the beam’s glow more intense. The digging actually slowed down coming almost to a standstill. Reducing it again, I increased perditio next. Within a few moments, I had a dark-green beam of light extending from my focus and earth was rapidly piling up in front of me. I had to cut the flow before the material would reach that high.

Prototype test: successful. The excavation focus worked. I was wondering how far the rate of perditio to terra could be pushed but it was impossible to test more without figuring out where to put the waste. I had hoped it would really just destroy but that was not the case. At least the pile was only about half as big as what came out of the hole. That was with destruction mana being about five times more than earth mana.

I tried again, this time going for a ten to one ratio. The whole was still twice as large as the pile in front of me. At most a tiny bit deeper. I had no good way to measure. It looked like one to one in destroyed versus leftover material was the best I could do.

Next, I tried widening the opening in my shadows. It did nothing. The beam was the same size and pointed in the direction I held it. It turned out the focus had sidedness and I could only release beams into the direction the earth crystals pointed. I could also only shoot it out of one of them at once. At least I found I could slightly bend it with my will. The range was limited to around five metres. That was probably enough for now. It could destroy earth and stone easily. Even the quartz crystal I sacrificed would be mined easily. I found the best ratio for mining was two to one, destruction to earth. That would keep most material. Or recreate it. I did not entirely know how it worked, only that I still had a perfectly fine if slightly smaller quartz crystal.

I really hoped the dwarves could help me figure out how to deal with the rubble. Surely, they knew what you could use it for. Otherwise, I might have to repeatedly mine it to destroy more and more. That was way too much effort for the kind of scale I wanted to dig. I really hoped it would not come to that.