Cless looked at the wall in front of the gate and found that a carriage would have difficulty maneuvering to make the turn. She moved the wall further, out in the middle, making it slightly bell-shaped. The turn would be feasible at a low speed. She raised reinforcements to the wall around the gates and got a turn with a radius of about eleven meters. She followed the path to the front of the manor's foundation pulling stone from below and creating a driveway. There would be another one coming out and reaching the other side of the gate T-intersection.

She met everyone for lunch. They spent most of the morning lazying around as there was only so many chores to do. Cless told them what happened at the Lord's place and earned the support of her guild. Now that her anger and hunger were sated, unless the two people from the guild were top experts, and she felt like Gilean was really dangerous because he was too laid back, she wasn't in any real danger. Maybe she should upgrade her armor. She doubted the brigandine or the cougar-worm bodysuit could withstand attacks from level hundred-plus experts.

They talked about the blueprints Cless carved on the stone slabs. Some changes happened. Kurt wanted his room on the top floor with a balcony so he could take off and land from the air. Venaris shifted her room to the other wing, leaving Cless with the right side of the second floor entirely for herself. They reshaped some rooms and added three guest rooms. She expanded her plans for the building by a meter on each side and changed the design of the stairs. Instead of two flights on each side of the second-floor landing, she would have one large staircase that branched in two, left and right, to climb up.

"But it means we can put this whole smuggler problem behind us. I'm not setting a foot outside this property until the house was finished. We'll need to hire a glassblowing studio to do our windows, a carpenter for the doors and a blacksmith for the metal bits. Venaris, Kurt, and Silverfang will go with Heimdall to find these specialists. Vic will work on the landscaping and the plants while I do the stonework with Kate and Chad."

The four left to hire the specialists and Cless dove into to work. She reinforced a meter of stone around the basement and extended the foundations of the pillars down for another five to ten meters depending on how soft was the ground beneath. Kate carried the stone blocks up, following Cless' orders on where to place them. The next hours were occupied by using the stone on the surface to raise the pillars, grow the floor of the second level and the external walls. Her available stone ended halfway through. At least the structure was solid enough to be left alone while she went down into the catacombs to farm more stone. She had Kate and the golem carry the stone away. The hours drained away. She felt the group of four that left return and decided to call it a day.

"I see you've been busy," Venaris remarked, walking inside the skeleton of the house. "Could you close off a room so we don't have to bivouac one more night?"

"I can finish the guest rooms. If we hang curtains on the windows and door, it might count as an enclosed space and let ventilation flow."

"Good. I'm setting dinner with Heimdall while you do that."

Cless used another hour to finish the structure of the two guest rooms at the front of the left-wing. They could use the basement but the idea of sleeping underground was enticing only for Kate and Shad. They ate dinner and Heimdall took off. After the curtains were hung over the windows and door, Cless Skill took over and heated the room.

"We secured the glassblower and the blacksmith. The carpenter is unavailable because there's not enough timber. Once spring starts, they will be able to start logging upriver and float the logs to the city."

"We could buy the tools and make a small sawmill and carpenter's workshop here," Vic suggested. "Then we cut our own wood and I'll supply the doors and wooden furniture we need."

"Why don't we go the full set? A smithy, a kiln for pottery. Another furnace for glass." Cless completed. "Or I can seek the spellbooks to craft without tools."

"Nobody is doing that," Venaris popped their dream bubbles. "It is a huge investment and you'd have to grind the proficiencies. Even with all the piled-up bonuses you have you still need to know how to use the proficiencies. And I don't see a way to power the sawmill. We don't have a stream or a windmill."

"We have a five hundred Strength critter." Cless imitated Kate's gorilla-like sloth gait.

Venaris furrowed her eyebrows. "No. Go to sleep. You better finish this house before it rains!"

"Okay, don't jinx it!"

She slept the four-ish hours her body needed to because one of the boys' Skills and descended into the catacombs. She went five levels down to harvest stone without disturbing those sleeping on the surface. Cless shaped the bricks and sent them up through the layers of soft stone and gravel with Terrakinesis, trading area for fine control to quell the vibrations. She was right behind one of the large rooms in the rear of the basement. It was slower than having the golem carry the stone up but she had nothing better to do.

She sensed Heimdall opening the gate and returned to the surface. At the second catacomb floor, the guild woke up and she created a golem to carry the stone. After breakfast, Cless spent the whole day reshaping the prison level of the tunnels a few floors underneath the basement, removing the rusted iron bars and using Kate and golem to carry materials upstairs. Instead of shaping the original tunnels into wider tunnels and using the leftover materials, she shaped wide, sturdy load-bearing pillars and dug a tall, wide room around them, both lowering the floor and raising the ceiling.

She returned to the surface for lunch, checking the basement. Around a hundred metric tons of stone ready to use. Cless sent a golem to bring the stone to the surface and found the first problem. The stairs leading to the kitchen were made for humans, not golems. Her solution was to make a ramp leading to the surface. She wasn't going to keep the ramp as part of the structure but just close the wall and the exit up, leaving a hollow space. After lunch, she spent the whole afternoon and part of the night shaping the stone on the first floor. Almost done but she didn't run out of materials.

The first rays of the sun were banishing the stars and Cless was already forcing her will on the stone to flow in the shapes she desired. Morning officially came and she sensed two people at the gate. They crossed inside and stopped again. Heimdall plus guest?

Heimdall and Helga.

"Hey, Helga. Welcome." Venaris greeted them.

"Wow. You guys sure work fast," The barmaid excitedly exclaimed. "This is the biggest house I've ever seen!"

"That's just the first floor. Is that our breakfast? Something is smelling so well!"

"We got some smoked sausages and cheese from a friend's farm. It is my day off so I want to help around."

They ate and Cless returned to work while Venaris showed Helga around. Cless didn't tell Helga to go enjoy herself somewhere not related to work but the squeals the barmaid was giving were gold. She changed the staircase to double up the steps so the golem could climb up. She found a small speed boost for her construction speed. If she animated the stone to walk on its own, it could save her time to shape it into place as the material wouldn't have to move as much.

The pillars of the second floor were already up and Cless shaped the spiral staircases for the servants when the specialists came to visit. The glassblower and the blacksmith examined the building and gave Cless their quote. Overpriced ones. She had to negotiate both of them down and the glassworks for the entire manor reached eighty-five crowns. It included the windows for all three floors and the huge skylight Cless wanted for the great hall. The blacksmith closed his services for forty crowns. The frames for the doors, including the front and back doors to the common room.

What didn't make Cless happy was the time it would take for the glasswork to be installed. Two freaking months. Cless wasn't going to wait that long for windows! She was going to buy sand and make her own glass. She commissioned only the first-floor windows for now.

The sixth day after the audience with the Lord, Cless had the second floor complete. It had too many walls and no less than three spiral staircases. Four days later and the house's structure was finished. Feeling mischievous, Cless added a secret staircase leading from her room down into the basement. It had no doors, windows, or openings of any sort and also no ventilation. She could blink in and out of it or open up the stone wall with magic if she needed to.

Work had to be interrupted. Spring rains fell and the torrential downpour threatened to drench everything. Cless got away from a flood by opening a drain to pull the water pooling at the lower levels of her land into the catacombs. All she had to do was join the drain to the waste chutes going down.

A girl looked at the rain and mumbled, "It sucks."

Cless spent a few minutes watching the waterfall from the sky through the window before she let the curtain fall down. Stone awnings she molded over the windows when the first rain fell kept the water away from the room and her Skill kept the room warm. They were currently living on the second floor, the room that was supposed to be hers. With fifty-six square meters, it was more than enough for the four of them. Heimdall was the only one going out in these two days of unrelenting downpour.

"At least it gives us time to catch up on our spellbooks," Venaris reminded her.

Cless returned to the book she was reading, the fourth-tier Earth magic, crystallomancy. It dealt with the shaping of crystals and gemstones. She was able to learn five spells up to level seventeen. The basic level one spell was Crystal dart, an armor-piercing attack spell. The crystal created crumbled after a few seconds. Gem Amulet enchant and charge a precious crystal to release healing energy on demand to the bearer, to heal disease, poison or wounds. Crystal Messenger creates a single-use resonance between two crystals to send a message between them when needed. Lapidate showers an area with shards of crystals, dealing armor-piercing damage on a cone. Gemcutter polishes, cuts, reshapes and clears gemstones and crystals, retaining most of its carats and increasing its value. She had three more spells to learn, one at level twenty, or ninety-five in her case, another at level twenty-four and the ultimate.

After another three days trapped inside the stone room, the rain gave them a respite. Cless dedicated herself to finish the house. There were another two staircases on opposite sides leading from the second to the third floor. The reduced load allowed only two pillars to hold most of the weight to hollow out a donut in the other two. She had more than two meters to work with. With a thick pillar forty centimeters in diameter, she left twenty centimeters of walls on the thinnest part, leaving seventy centimeters wide steps. She closed the skylight with overlapping veneers of stone until the glass panes were ready to be installed. They would not let the rain in but allowed airflow to ventilate the whole building. The great hall had a ten-meter tall open space above.

She raised the two staircases three meters above the ceiling to make turrets. The top looked like a crow's nest of a ship and gave a vantage point to look over the entire northern district of the city. To even out, she raised a hollow structure on the other two pillars to make it look like there were four turrets. Cless and her guild spent a lot of time exploring their new and still unfinished home. The stone structure had no glass, no metal, and no wooden parts yet and it looked like it was carved of a single piece of rock. There were no seams and the veins of the granite twisted and mixed along. It felt more like a sculpture of a manor than a proper building.

"I think you should put a brick texture on the walls. The way they are now, it is too uncanny," Vic pondered.

The lamiak was right. Seamless stone felt strange, even wrong. She liked the polished granite of the great hall's floor but the walls and ceiling needed to lose this cave feeling.

"I guess that once we add carpets, curtains, paintings, and furniture this will look more like a proper dwelling," Venaris commented, her voice reverberating across the great hall, the distance between opposing walls almost enough for echo to form.

From the floor where the gnome was to the skylight frame above,

"And once we have windows and the skylight panes, this won't feel as cold," Vic added.

Their next task was set. Get wood, glass, and metal to finish the house.

House Floor Plan:

Powered by Spreadsheet magic.

Red: Heating: Fireplaces, chimneys.

Grey: Stairs.

Black: Support structures

Blue: Open space.

Magenta: water / waste disposal

Yellow: Balconies (second floor) - feature (either a statue or a fountain, courtyard).

Green: Grass.

Blue: Food preparation area.