I looking at the little seed spreading. Now not so little anymore. It hasn’t gained too much mass yet, but it now covers the entire volume of dirt in my inner world. There is not a single continuous piece of soil larger than a couple of inches that doesn’t have at least one or two of the thinnest of roots through it.

While the speed of growth is even beyond the main grove, what surprised me was something altogether different. From a cursory examination, two different species are occupying the place. My Aether connection with the little seed tells me something quite different.

At first, these mint or mana herb shrubs were indeed a different form, but now the little seed somehow integrated them into itself. And removing any doubt, my Aether now can feel the totality of this mana recovering herb.

There was not much I could do with the information, but from this simple interaction, and the fact Pando seems able to absorb other life forms, my imagination goes wild.

This is why I focused the last day on growing a new shrub. Not from the existing one, but from the roots of my seed.

The experimentation took me well over a thousand mana, but I succeeded. A tiny branch with two leaves sprouts on the opposite side to the shrubs. To confirm my hypothesis, I take one of the baby leaves, even if pains my heart, and put it on my mouth. After chewing a little, the very faint, but distinct effect comes into play.

Almost nobody ends up chewing these leaves. There has been extensive research to make a mana potion. However, without making it more concentrated the effect is so minimal it barely merits mention. The tests equate it to a 1 percent increase in mana regen until the person has regenerated about a tenth of a mana point. That means, depending on the mana regen you need to eat a leave every 10 to 30 seconds, and by the end get 1% of mana regen. If the effect stacked, either in duration or effect, there may be people that would chew it non-stop, but the precise timing needed to achieve the perfect effect and the lackluster returns discouraged almost everyone from doing it for now.

I leave all that for later, what merits a little more though is the implications of absorbing a new species into Pando. Only from this, it is hard to conclusively say anything, but it seems from now on I can regrow these plants on demand even without access to the original one.

It is not certain, and the testing methodology is from the proper scientific method, but I believed in Pando and watched the whole ordeal closely with my Aether. There was no seed transfer or something like that through any internal channels from where the mint herbs currently are and the new place. What I could do with it? Ohh, the possibilities.

More thought about that can come later, however. I send a couple of mana and open a couple of portals from my inner world to the ground around me. After a few seconds, roots are growing.

It is still far too slow to have much use in combat, but eventually, it could be a viable tactic. I’m getting better at it with each attempt, but even throwing a hundred mana at the problem was not going to be faster. The fine control and mental images that accompanied the mana packet send to whatever I wanted to grow were the greater restricting factor.

My close relationship with the seed was helpful, but apparently nothing overwhelming. At least in the current endeavors, who knew what the future hold. After the roots, thin as they are, grow about a foot they stop. There is still a bit of mana in them, and I ask them to move. This action, even if it is not overwhelming, is also helped by my connection to the seed. Without even a smidge of mana, I could tell it to move through our Aether Bond. But to make it a viable strategy in combat, the movements needed to be measured in seconds or even better fractions of a second, not minutes or hours.

As the sun climbs higher in the sky, I finish up this session, and a couple of things at my house before heading for the village.

The indications of the upcoming attack were getting stronger, and in about a week an attack was bound to come. I talked with Charlie before, and if he had done what I asked, and even I didn’t specify why, I would be bringing him a surprise.

With nothing else on my agenda to do around my house absorbing a little of the mana from the battery fills my mana pool again and gets me ready to leave. I feel a slight burn absorbing the mana. Something I have only begun to notice recently, and it merited more study, but if my assumptions were correct, I couldn’t just store a million mana on this battery and come back a decade later to reabsorb it. Some of the mana here was not even two weeks old and its compatibility with me was already starting to degrade.

I begin running to the closest mine. My mana slowly trickles out, but each of my steps is faster and faster. The time passes without my notice, and even after the hard run I arrive refreshed on the outskirts of the mine.

There is a single scout from the villae around, and I wait a minute before sneaking in the mine. My perception filter while inside the forest was a really big help. This one is the iron ore mine. Having never come here, I stare around at the familiar and the unfamiliar. It is almost eery how similar in some aspects it is to the copper mine I saw previously. Except for the color of the rock that is a darker shade, almost black. The actual ore will be deeper in, but I stop well before in a cave.

Beside the carts with ore already dug deeper in the mine there is a larger closed wooden container. Tree meters tall by three meters wide by five meters long.

Opening the lid on top, I look inside, and see it is already full. From the size, I would estimate at least 80 tons, probably more like 100.

Behind me, footsteps approach and trying to avoid notice, I enter the container after sending a little of the ore in my inventory. My hearing is fully focused outside, but whoever had been hitting the pick further inside the mine, and was now bringing another load of ore to the smaller but still large containers just dumps it all in before I hear their footsteps getting further away again.

Another minute and the banging is back on, with the noise I concentrate on sending all the ore to my inventory while only reducing the height of my inner world, to otherwise not disturb the soil. It takes me almost half an hour given I stop whenever the miner comes back with another load of ore, but even then it didn’t take me too long.

-------------------------

Having passed on all three mines, though the openness of the limestone was a challenge, I return to the village with most of each of the three mines' output. I thank my lucky stars I did not have to worry about the mass, if it was only a weight reduction spacial bag, anything even remotely resembling this would be quite difficult to accomplish.

With a big grin on my face, I enter the familiar village and head straight for Charlie, and after a minute or so find him in his office.

“So, are you going to tell me why you wanted all that ore and limestone like that?”

With a flourish of my hand, and trying to appear like a magician, I summon one of the medium ore stones to my hand. About the size of a closed fist. After a moment, and as his brows furrow I answer:

“Well, I just wanted to teleport them all here.” His gaze leaves the ore in an instant, and he staters straight into my eyes. After a moment, a realization comes to him when he notices my big grin.

“Not teleportation, but how did you bring that here? And how much?”

“You are right, not teleportation. Everything is in my inventory. Basically, I got a space bag tied to myself. Big enough to bring all of it at once, from all the mines.”

His intent gaze from before redoubles, and I think he is going to go catatonic. Half a minute passes, and I let him think a bit about the implications.

“Can you teach anyone else?”

In a regretful tone, I reply:

“In less than a decade, I doubt it. Not even how some of it works. Before you ask, it is only for me. Can’t give it to someone else, it is more like a skill than any physical object.”

“And I doubt you will want people knowing about it. Too much trouble, and reduces the element of surprise in a few cases. Too bad the space bags on the merchant are not cheap.”

“I didn’t see any.”

“You did not see plenty of things. New stuff started showing up around day 25, at first always stuff almost inconsequential, but there have been a few things more substantial. Like the two health potions, we used on the last attack.”

“So we can now buy health potions?”

“Yes and no, most days a new one shows up, but even that is not guaranteed. We have around 15. Along with a single mana potion. Why the system is so stingy with mana potions we don’t know, but that is the situation.”

“Did you guys buy the space bag?”

“We were thinking about it, but it didn’t seem to be worth the cost. One gold for a bag that can fit what? 100 kilograms? It may be useful for our scouts, but not much more at this cost. After a small bribe, we discovered the properties of the bag, and it only reduces the weight to about 20%. We will probably buy it in the future, but for now, it wouldn’t make much sense.”

“For a gold coin, I agree. The weight reduction would help a lot say: our scouts, but it is nothing overwhelming. They would only need a heavy pack if they were on a much bigger trip than usual, and couldn’t stop at any village.”

“Yeah, now let’s see about a place to put all of that ore, and talk about what it will cost the village.”

I get up making my way out as I say:

“I was thinking, for now, you guys focus on anything that can strengthen the village from the troubled times to come, and using the coin I have on the bank, hire people from outside the village, not to detract from the current efforts. That will free up a few trusted people for a small project of mine.”

“What kind of project?” He asks suspiciously.

“You know, just connecting the battery at my house and here.”

This makes him pause, as the thought probably didn’t cross his mind to do something like that. At least not so soon.

“I see possibilities. Do you think that whatever capacity we add to your house would not even count towards the village?”

“Best guess: Likely not. Transporting the materials would be a breeze with my help.”

We both laugh a little and leave his office with wide grins heading for whatever place he thinks I can dump all this ore. With a little secrecy, we could conceivably keep the whole thing under wraps for a little while. When it came to the public notice, I didn’t have to tell anyone the size and nature of my ‘space bag’.