Upstairs

Chapter 61

With Agony gone, my usual routine reasserted itself. I went back to playing with my layout and getting my layers into a better state as I expanded them. After a week, though, I felt a kind of itch.

I'd bought a few surface tiles every other day and had a respectable amount of land to my name. Despite that, I couldn't exactly say I'd done much that was useful with it. The set dressing I'd added was nice, but it didn't really provide much strategic value.

Considering my options, I decided to focus on surface tiles for the rest of the month. Thanks to the layout of the valley, it wasn't hard to buy a relatively straight line up the center to the entrance of the natural stone maze. That probably wouldn't look useful to an outside observer, but I considered it a security system of sorts.

The moment anything set foot on a tile I owned, I'd be aware of it. I couldn't say if adventurers would realize the same thing in turn, but I wasn't concerned. Having a couple hours of lead time on any potential hostile parties was worthwhile in my book.

I didn't stop with that line of tiles, however. Instead, I expanded out from it to engulf the land slowly. An advanced warning was nice, but if I was going to buy that much, I might as well own the valley outright. No sense in leaving massive blindspots they could wander into easily.

That I was having a ball playing with the environment was entirely beside the point. Thankfully Elim was game to buy me whatever I wanted since he'd departed from his mother's and was in the fief's capital after two weeks. So I had building supplies and everything else my weird little brain could think to covet in short order.

While I was busy leveling a lot of land, I recalled that I'd forgotten to amend my standing order. Since Elim had had access to much in the way of variety before, I'd held off on asking for certain things. An oversight on my part.

[Hi Elim,

Please buy any and all art supplies you come across. One of every color, if it's paint or other pigments, you know the drill.

Thanks,

42]

Once the text was sent, I got back to my project. I had a vague notion of how the Romans built their roads with layers and suspicion about how that might apply to a building foundation. This was definitely an experiment for my own amusement.

The process was simple in a 'and now labor for hours in the hot sun' way. I depressed an area slightly larger than I needed and filled it with gravel. I didn't have to pack it down manually, thankfully. It seemed like the system could detect what I wanted and supplied it as desired.

On top of that went a solid stone slab that I'd carved to look like a fieldstone foundation if you weren't looking too closely. If it were real, someone would have had to spend an obsessive amount of time getting the stones to fit so perfectly. Once that was done, I started playing with chalk to design a layout.

[Mistress 42,

I'll make sure to keep a lookout for the requested items. Did you wish for me to stay in the capital a while longer, or should I return home? Though I spoke with the village headman about your plan, I cannot confirm if he'd enacted it yet.

Your Servant,

Elim Grey]

Elim's reply gave me a jarring reminder that I had a larger scheme in the works. It was easy to forget about the fake quarantine that was supposed to happen soon. Out of sight, out of mind, as it were.

[Rest up until the end of the week, then head back. I don't distrust them, but I'd feel better if you supervised the initial stage and could report to me.

-42]

I wrote back after a few moments of consideration. I had planned other things that could help the village out, but I couldn't enact them myself. Not that Elim couldn't simply head back to the capital or possibly a significant port if I really needed something afterward.

Elim would need time to move his family once his business with the village was done, but it wouldn't be a problem for me. Not one worth being concerned over anyway. At worst, I'd have to wait a couple weeks for him to have access to better markets when he went to survey his grandfather's estate.

With the more serious business dealt with, I got to work putting up the actual house on the foundation. It wasn't too time-consuming a process thanks to how I could manipulate my materials and didn't have to actually bother with lifting things unless I felt like it.

In short order, I had what I felt like was a lovely two-story farmhouse. The kind that looked like it would belong in a picture book. It took me three tries to get the structure correct so that the top-level didn't sag in odd spots.

Apparently, architect and engineer had not been former professions of mine. Thankfully I could make beams as sturdy as needed and eventually hit on the correct formula for spacing. Though I didn't have a genuine reason for it, I was enjoying my dollhouse-like farm.

Just to really drive home its nature, I added a chicken coup and animal shelters. Then, messing with the ecology a touch, I increased the density of the grass growing in the sections I owned. Finally, into the newly lush pasture, I added in some sheep, chickens, and horses from samples Elim graciously 'borrowed' at some point.

The only thing that was really missing by the end of the month were occupants. The place had a very eerie 'suddenly abandoned' feeling to it. Like the owner had just gotten up and walked away for no apparent reason.

Unfortunately, that wasn't something I could easily remedy myself. Adding a true lived-in feeling would just make it weirder in the end. So, deciding to split the difference, I sent a mass text to the skeletons asking if anyone wanted to play the caretaker. Of course, a skeleton wouldn't use it the same way a living being would, but it would be better than leaving it stand vacant.

It wasn't long before I had a hoard of curious skeletons turning up to take a look at my efforts. They couldn't accidentally wander outside of the borders of the dungeon, even above ground. Now that the area they could explore had been expanded, they seemed excited.

I felt a little bad that I hadn't thought of them while I was working. I still made a point of checking in on them but hadn't considered that they might find what I was doing interesting.

"So… What do you think?" I asked Dawn. She'd been looking the house over thoroughly from the moment she'd arrived.

"This is a mansion for a noble?" Dawn asked. I felt my orbs flicker.

"Noooo… What gave you that impression?" I asked, flatly confused. It was two stories but only three bedrooms. Really, I'd designed it with Elim and his family in mind, though I wasn't going to admit it.

I wasn't about to ask him to come live in the valley. He didn't have a reason to, and it would make him less useful. That didn't stop me decorating one of the rooms with a little girl in mind, though.

"An inn then? I've never seen such an odd place," Dawn offered with a shrug.

"What's odd about it?" I asked, still not understanding what the issue was.

"Well, it has many chambers and… that weird space. Like a tunnel but not," Dawn explained.

"Hold on, you think private rooms and a hallway are strange?" I asked though it was clear she did. I wasn't asking because I didn't get that, but because I couldn't think of a more coherent way to form my actual question.

"I grew up in a single room home as a child. I think the richest man in our town had two rooms," Dawn offered. I almost said something but paused. It was easy to forget sometimes that design features I took for granted weren't actually common. At least not in the context of history. That wasn't even factoring in cultural differences.

"Right. Well, I was just trying to make a farm for a single-family… That building over there is supposed to be a workers' bunkhouse. Which I now realize might be overbuilt," I offered. I'd made it like a dorm with small rooms in it. Tiny rooms by my standards, if I were honest.

I was really going to need to text Elim and find out what was expected for houses locally. I apparently knew jackshit on the subject which could prove a problem depending on what I was trying to do.