Lunch came and went and John found himself with a bit of free time. He didn’t need to worry about the plants right now, and feeding the chookers wouldn’t come until later. There were some things that’d he’d need to do, such as creating an access to the area they’d be installing the ley line tap, but nothing needed his immediate attention. With that in mind, John sat down to examine the auction.

He’d been considering what his father had said about the different regions, and wondered why he wasn’t seeing anything in the auction that might come from other nations. A few minutes of poking and prodding the interface revealed that the auction had a ‘region’ setting. John prodded the button and received a drop-down menu listing all the countries his father had mentioned and several others he hadn’t. Every option except ‘The Eternal Empire’ was greyed out.

“Help, why can’t I access the auctions of other regions?” he asked aloud.

[Answer: Because your area does not currently support international trade.]

“So if we were to open a trade route, magical or mundane, with another nation I’d have access to their auction as well?”

[Answer: Correct.]

“I don’t suppose there’s an extension for the Auction Module that will allow international trade without an existing trade route?”

[Answer: There is not.]

John frowned at that. He didn’t actually want to purchase another module (he already felt a bit silly that he’d spent real money on some of the modules he already had) but it would have been nice to know that the Auction Module wasn’t actually worldwide. Or, not yet, at least. That said, he did wonder if he might not have a way to reach those other locations already.

“Help, what’s the range limit on a pseudo-portal fruit?” he inquired.

[Answer: The pseudo-portal fruit has no known distance limitations at this time.]

“Is it possible it has unknown limitations?” John pressed.

[Answer: As a new magical item that has not been fully tested, its properties are not fully known, it is possible that limitations may be discovered at a later date.]

John made an acknowledging grunt, waved the answer away, and stood up. There were a lot of ifs and maybes in that idea, but he liked where it was going.

If the pseudo-portal fruits could take him to other nations across the world, then the problem simply became getting portal coordinates. John wasn’t sure how one found out the specific… frequencies? Of portal anchors but he was willing to bet he didn’t have to walk to the other side of the planet to find out. Of course, this would be so much easier if he could just use a true portal fruit, and he briefly wondered if the emperor would grant a special dispensation for the use of one. He shook his head after a moment of thought; that’d be a pretty tough sell.

Heading into the storage room he took the stairs down to the basement, spinning a ball of light above and behind his right shoulder as he did so. He quickly passed through the basement to reach the tunnel that led to his storm cellar, realizing as he did so that he’d forgotten doors for the basement rooms as well. After a second of thought he decided that they weren’t important enough to worry about right now.

Once in the cellar he turned his attention to the south where he could see the thick cord of focused mana flowing under the property. It was positioned so that it ran right through the center of his original claim, lining up almost perfectly with the road. He briefly reflected on what BR had said earlier; it was indeed serendipitous that the ley line was here, and that it ran under his farm. It was almost too convenient.

With a shake of his head to dispel the unwanted (and probably unimportant) thoughts, John moved to the south-western corner of the cellar and (with a thought and gesture) created an archway that ran under the highest point of the stairs. Carefully he moved the stone about, pulling out the excess until he revealed the compacted dirt behind the thick wall. Now came the tricky part, because John would have to extinguish his light in order to use the spells he needed.

Taking a deep breath John let the light go. Then he slowly reached out with his awareness and connected to the land around him. An immediate sensation of rightness came over him, letting him know that the land was healthy and prepared for whatever he intended for it. Narrowing his focus, he tried to consciously sense the specific area around himself. It was difficult, he still didn’t have the granularity required for sensing specific objects or people, but he could get a general sense of the area he was in. Where he was standing was a void in the ground, and he could sense its edges and shape. He then expanded that sense forward from himself, and began to move.

A gesture with both right and left hands activated Dirt to Stone and Create Earth as well. He could instantly feel the strain as all six of his mana strands were in use to support the three different spells. He didn’t let that distract him however; instead he started weaving the three spells together, turning the dirt in front of him to stone and manipulating it (and newly created rock) into an arched tunnel. All the while keeping track of his progress by following the void he was creating in the land. Two and a half minutes in he was forced to stop due to running out of mana. For the next three minutes and change he stood there and refilled his energy, then he started the process all over again.

Normally John would have been able to dig a long, wide tunnel in maybe three minutes. However, he was being slowed down by the much lower leveled Dirt to Stone spell, and the fact that he had to literally feel his way forward. Still, even with the limitations he was working under it only took about twenty minutes for him to excavate a downward sloping tunnel that was almost 180 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 8 feet tall.

John stood at the end of the tunnel, looking at the ley line that was just beyond the wall of dirt in front of him. Were it made of actual light it would be blinding him right now and he wondered if the thing would have a physical presence in the world. He pondered that thought for a moment, took a deep breath, and then dug out the final few feet.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Perhaps he’d break into some hardened tube that carried magic like a conduit. Perhaps he’d find a strange ore or stone that had magical properties. What he hadn’t really expected was just plain dirt. More than a little disappointed He cleared out a ten-by-ten room with the ley line running through the center. Finished he released the three spells and his focus on the domain. Then, with a gesture and a thought, he activated his light spell once more.

The room was, as expected, a dull grey stone box. It was also slightly lopsided, as was the tunnel that connect to it. A few moments with Move Earth adjusted both the tunnel and the room to be less crooked. John then exited back to the storm cellar and took the stairs up to ground level where he could survey farm.

A quick check showed no areas where the land had dipped or sunken, so he probably didn’t have to worry about a collapse anywhere. Still, he spread out his domain sense and swept it over the area around the tunnel and new room. Getting back a sense of solidity, he nodded in satisfaction.

Finished with that side project, he retreated to his house and sat down to begin filling his land with more mana.

***

Four(ish) hours later saw him standing in front of the Ritual of Imbuing as it spooled down. The block of marble looked much as it had before, although a quick Inspect put the lie to that.

[Name: Imbued Nebula Marble]

[Quality: Great]

[Description: Found absolutely nowhere in nature this marble has to be created by use of the Create Earth spell in an area where sedimentary rocks and trace elements are normally found. This particular chunk of marble is a quality example and might grace the home of a well-off merchant. Due to being bombarded and saturated with a high volume of magic, this particular piece of marble has become quite mana conductive, leaving it easier to pass mana through, but harder to effect with spells.]

It was annoying that the description didn’t say how easily it conducted mana, nor how hard it would be to effect it with spells, but a little math told him what he needed to know. If a Deific quality imbued material cost 100 times the mana and affected 1 percent of the normal total volume, then a Great quality material should cost 40 times the mana and affect 60 percent of the normal total volume.

John paused for a moment as he considered that. Shouldn’t 100 percent effectiveness cause spells to have no effect? Maybe there was just a minimum threshold that couldn’t be overcome? That seemed most likely. Shrugging off the consideration, he turned his attention back to the block of stone. More specifically, how he was going to move it.

A quick casting of Move Earth showed that wasn’t going to work. The mana cost was insane at 80 mana per second, and he couldn’t quite control all of the stone at once, but it was close. He couldn’t lift the block either, he didn’t even try that, 27 cubic feet of marble had to weigh more than he did, so picking it up was out of the question. That really left only one option. He was going to have to move it by moving the stone around it.

Checking the ritual circle was completely spent he smoothed it out with Move earth. He hadn’t wanted to destroy the circle, but he also didn’t really want these circles in the front room of his house forever. They’d have to go eventually, so it might as well be now.

Next, he molded the stone under the marble block and started moving it in a wave motion towards the storage room. The offending chunk of rock began to move with agonizing slowness and he stopped to reassess. This particular method wasn’t working very well, so maybe time to try something different. Instead of creating waves, he reshaped the stone into rollers and pushed the marble across the top of them as he forced them to turn beneath it. The resulting screech of stone on stone was unpleasant, but the block moved, if almost as slowly as the original wave method.

For what felt like forever (but couldn’t have been more than an hour or so) John struggled to get the marble block into place in the ley line chamber. Eventually, with a final grunt and a heave, he pushed it into the center of the empty room and gave a huff. He hadn’t expended this much effort since his first few days pulling up grass.

[Due to strenuous physical exertion you have gained +1 Strength]

John snorted. That point of strength would have been way more useful about an hour ago. Still, it was nice to see your efforts rewarded. It was even nicer that players didn’t sweat, because he could only imagine how much less pleasant such physical exertions would have been if they did.

Turning away from the now firmly emplaced imbued marble, John began to clean up the mess he’d left in his wake. He smoothed over scrapes in the floor, rippled stone, and the occasional roller he’d missed. Soon enough the path he’d taken looked like it’d never been trod.

With that finished he headed back to his room, and spent the rest of the evening working on expanding his domain.