“Get your arrows here! Enchanted arrows!”

“Spell wands, right over here! Never leave the city without one!”

“Staves and foci! Quicken your casting!”

“Fortified weapons and armor for all you warriors out there!”

The enchanter’s district was much like the merchant’s district, only louder and busier. Whether One is a simple farmer looking for a watering tool for the dry season, or an adventurer looking to increase their combat power, everyone has something to sell or buy here. Only a few powereds are capable of producing non-magical items worth more than the mana they put into making them, but almost every powered can learn spells, and therefore produce basic enchantments with the right training. And spell enchantments are always valuable.

What happens if I run out of mana, and don’t have time to recharge with crystals? What if I run against something resistant to all of my forms? What if I want to protect a particularly rare form, or bolster one of my stronger forms’ physical prowess? Enchantments are the answer.

I’ll want to learn enchantments eventually, especially as a space mage. Almost nothing is quite as valuable as teleportation or inventory enchantments, so people pay top dollar for them.

There’s a lot here that I could really use, but I’m not here today for enchantments. I’m here to find monster engineers.

Slimes might not be artificial, but they’re still monsters. Surely they’d be useful materials at least, considering their abundance and simplicity. Or maybe not. I don’t actually know anything about monster engineering outside of common knowledge. But it’s my best lead at the moment, so I’ll see it through.

Wading through the crowds, I eventually came across another white marble building, almost identical to the library, with a black painted sign reading “The Ranch”.

I descended the spiral staircase until I got halfway down. Then the stairway started going up for some reason, then sideways, then upside down.

Okay, but why? I understand making it ascend halfway through. There’s probably just an invisible gate there. But why the gravity magic? Is this some artsy fartsy gravity mage’s debut into architecture? Why can’t they just express themselves in a more normal way, like drunken rants, or saying goodbye to their best friend of 18 years with an insult? I mean, sideways stairs? Come on! City folk, I tell you…

After finally rounding a loopty loop, I came to a small white room with a door leading outside, and a glass window in front of a big red button labeled “press here to self destruct”.

Ignoring the instinct to push the button, I opened the door. The door led to a long flat plane with walls as wide and tall as Aurelia’s, and orange grass. The sky above me was clear and purple, though I’m unsure if it’s real or just an illusory ceiling. An odd mix of people of various races — mostly orcs — in lab coats and flannel shirts with overalls wandered the area, either observing or interacting with copious amounts of different monster species behind fences and walls of assorted materials. Slimes behind glass walls, plant monsters in mud with electrified walls, amalgamations behind wooden fences, and I’m pretty sure that’s a dragon in a thick wire mesh dome. Who in their right mind would try to contain a dragon? I already know the answer based on the stupid stairwell they have to climb, but are these people insane?

“Howdy, stranger!” A voice called over to me. She could only be described as a cowgirl: a human with a cowboy hat and braided blonde twintails. “Haven’t seen you ‘round these parts before. You look lost. Whatcha lookin’ for?”

“Uh, howdy. Hello. What is this place, exactly?”

“The ranch, bud. Didn’t you see the sign?”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, yes. We’re at the ranch. But where is the ranch, and why is the sky purple?”

“Prayog is the planet’s name.”

“That was a planetary gate I stepped through? Why use a whole planetary gate for a ranch?”

“A monster ranch, hon. What, you want us making superweapons a stone’s throw away from civilization?”

“That’s… A good point, actually. Explains the dragon.”

“Oh, no. That’s just Amicissimum. She’s friendly.”

“A dragon? Friendly? Why is she being contained in a dome, then?”

“Oh, she’s not being contained. She’s just feeding one of her personal creations.”

“Personal creations — you know what? Forget I asked. I don’t want to know. I’m not here to satiate my curiosity right now, I’m here for slimes. Are those slimes over there for sale?”

"Them? I suppose we can sell some. We need them for one of our experiments, Omnes Comedenti, but there’s enough here to sell the extra. Market price is 100 mana crystals, as I recall."

“That's a bit out of my price range at the moment. I'm running an experiment of my own, and I don't exactly need them alive, per-se. Do you have any that have passed away recently, that I can get at a discount? Neutral aligned, preferably."

"We've got plenty. Not a day goes by where at least a dozen of them don't die. Normally we just extract their remaining mana and use the rest of them as compost. I suppose I can just give you their remains, but you'll have to pay for them if you need them pre-mana extraction. About 10 crystals per."

"I'm not actually sure about the necessary conditions. I'll take them post-extraction, and get back to you tomorrow with the crystals if that doesn't work."

"Alrighty then. Come with me and I’ll get you some."

“Thank you kindly.”

I followed her a couple minutes walk from the entrance, until we came in front of one of the plant cages with a sign above it reading ‘Annuum.’ For the most part, it was just a pit of mud and potato plants, but a few of the potatoes seemed to have uprooted themselves, and were walking around. The Annuum, I assume. The girl grabbed a goop-filled bucket from outside the cage, and handed it to me.

“Here you go. If you need anything else, ask around for me. I’m usually not too hard to find.”

“Will do. I didn’t catch your name. I’m Sylas, by the way.”

“Georgia.”

I waved goodbye, and found a good spot away from too many prying eyes to phase the bucket and its contents into my empty terrarium, then hop inside a portal to it.

After going inside, I was disappointed to find the bucket of slime remains remained remains, and retained their deathly status, refrained from regaining their lives to leave the bucket apparatus.

Perhaps the slime died too long ago? Or maybe extracting the slime of its mana prevented its resurrection within my subspace. Regardless, its failure to revive means that there are limitations on what I can and can not resurrect.

This also means that I’ll need to procure enough funds to purchase the dead slimes before their mana is extracted, but at least that’s within a more reasonable price range. Just 10 mana crystals each.

Over the next 12 hours, I was able to produce 12 mana crystals. I didn’t even blow up once! I must be getting good at this, even having skipped sleep again.I should really stop doing that, but there just isn’t enough time in a day to do everything I need to otherwise… Once the neutral mana problem has been solved, I’ll take a break then.

Having procured the necessary funds, I went over to Rhannu’s terrarium to break the news of him getting roommates.

Rhannu furrowed his brows. “So your plan to prevent monsters from spawning in this space… Is to have me share it with a monster. Several monsters, in fact.”

“Just a few baby slimes. It’ll be fine. People keep them as pets, for Vorfahr’s sake.”

“Humans, maybe. I don’t remember seeing any dryads with slimes in Tycoed.”

“Look, I’m sorry about this. But until I can find another way of dealing with the neutral mana problem, this is the only way I can find. Look on the bright side, once I finally purchase enough of them to prevent monster spawns in this terrarium, I’ll finally have enough time to make this place more comfortable for you.”

“It has been rather boring.”

“Yes, and I’m sorry for that. And if you want it to get better any time soon, this is the best solution I’ve found.”

“Alright, alright. I hear you. Bring it in.”

“Thank you.”

---

“Hey, Georgia.”

“Good morning, Sylas. Did everything work out okay?”

“No, I think they need to still have their mana in them for it to work.”

“Alrighty then. You should be able to find some in the extractor building. Just tell Nishkarshan that you need a slime, and he’ll take care of you.”

“Thank you.”

I walked in the direction Georgia pointed me, and eventually found the extraction building. The entrance was chilly enough to make my breath visible. There were three doors labeled “dissection”, “mana extraction”, and “processing”. I headed into the “mana extraction” room, and saw monster corpses piled high to the ceiling. A large orc man was bent over one of them, visibly siphoning the mana out of them somehow.

I called out to him. “Hello, I’m looking for Nishkarshan. Where could I find them?”

The orcish man didn’t turn around, but pointed his thumb at himself.

“I was told to ask you for a slime.”

“I’m busy. Take the corpse, leave the crystals by me. Ten of ‘em.”

“Which one is neutral?”

“If it’s translucent white and small, it should be what you’re looking for.”

I left the ten mana crystals I had made overnight, and looked through the building for a slime matching his description. There were monsters of more species than I could count, several slimes that were blues of various hues, a few multicolored giant slimes, etc. Eventually I came across what I was looking for, small and translucent white, and phased it into Rhannu’s subspace.

I’ll have to get more later, and check in on Rhannu and the slime to make sure everything worked out, but I’m running late to my first official mission.

“Thanks for the help, Nishkarshan.”

He waved me off with a grunt.

After walking back through the overcomplicated staircase to Aurelia, I was greeted by flashing lights in the shapes of words in the air in front of me. “Sylas Terrarium, report to the Interplanetary Government’s Adventurer Guild’s Aurelian Branch for mandatory assignment.”