John exited the guest house into the slightly chilly but also brightly sunny day. If the barony was about to be formed, he’d have to move fast. Once the baron or baroness was appointed all land in the barony would become ‘locked in’ and he’d have to pay for any new land he wanted. While he hadn’t wanted to admit it, what Lady Oswald had said made sense; he should move his farm. But that meant he needed to get his stakes and quickly find a new area to claim before the barony became a reality.

Striding with purpose he headed toward his house, where he retrieved the spikes from storage. He then considered his options. Or, option, rather. There was only one way to go, east. He needed to follow the ley line, so that he’d be able to reinstall his tap wherever he set up. The question was, how far east? Also, how was he going to move the tap? He couldn’t lift it, and thus couldn’t put it in his inventory… maybe there was a spell for that? “Help, is there a spell that will let me lift heavier objects?”

[Answer: The Strengthen spell can increase the user’s strength by a percentage based on the rank of the spell and appropriate modifiers such as the Increased Size feat. The Tactile Telekinesis skill will allow the user to lift objects based on their intelligence statistic instead of their strength statistic and will multiply its impact in the same fashion as the Strengthen spell does strength. The Telekinesis spell will allow the user to lift, move, and manipulate objects based on their intelligence statistic, which will be multiplied in the same fashion as the bonus to Tactile Telekinesis.]

John pulled up his character sheet to take a quick look at his statistics.

[Name: John]

[Race: Basajaun]

[Level: 7]

[Mana: 560]

[MRegen: 28/minute]

[Leveling Points: 2,420]

[Attributes]

Strength: 38 Constitution: 39 Dexterity 10 Intelligence: 56 Wisdom: 56

[Skills]

Alchemy – Novice Animal Husbandry Enchanting – Novice Engineering – Novice Farming – Apprentice Inspect – Novice Light Armor – Novice Mana Drawing – Journeyman Mana Imprinting – Journeyman Mana Manipulation – Journeyman Mana Sight – Expert Mathematics – Apprentice Measuring – Apprentice Meditation – Apprentice Ritual Magic – Apprentice Swordplay – Novice

[Spells]

Create Earth – Apprentice Create Water – Novice Create Mana Stone – Apprentice Control Flame – Novice Control Water – Apprentice Earth To Stone – Novice Evoke Flame – Apprentice Evoke Light – Novice Hasten Decay – Apprentice Hasten Growth – Novice Move Earth – Journeyman

[Racial Perks]

Disaster Prognosticator Megalith Mastery Plant Tender

[Feats]

Domain I Green Thumb I Magriculture Mana Stone Maker

His strength was currently at thirty-eight, even if the spell gave him a one hundred percent increase to strength, that’d only give him a total strength of seventy-six and a quick internet search told him that a block of marble of the size he was using weighed two tons and change; he highly doubted he could lift that. Both the telekinetic spells were right out, as they’d be trying to magically affect the block, which would resist them and massively inflate the mana cost.

After a moment John realized the error in his thinking. He now had the Portal spell; he could just open a gateway and shift it through the same way he’d moved it originally. Nodding to himself at the simplicity of the fix, he headed out, walking out the back of his property, and heading east.

***

John walked for a solid two hours, following the ley line. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, he just didn’t want to pick generic spot number two. Not much thought had gone into his original farm location and although it’d worked out better than it might have, he was hoping to find something better, or at least different. However, it seemed that wasn’t to be, at least not so close to the town. In a way that made sense, if there were anything truly marvelous out here someone would certainly have noticed it by now. After all, he was only about nine miles away from Runic Rock.

Taking out his claim spikes, he measured off four hundred paces to the north, eight hundred paces to the east, then eight hundred paces to the south, and finally another eight hundred to the west, giving him a square parcel of land eight hundred paces to a side.

[You have staked out an area of 4,326,400 square feet, do you wish to claim it?]

[Y/N]

John nodded his head, even as he mentally gave the go ahead.

[Land Claim Formed. Do you wish to register this claim with the nearest town?]

[Y/N]

Once more John gave his assent and the prompt disappeared; he then looked about and sighed. It was going to be a lot of work to get this patch of land changed into something useable. The first thing he needed to do was make part of it his domain. Stepping into the patch of land that was now officially his, John emptied his mana pool into the ground, sending a flood of life and earth mana rushing out and claiming a good two hundred and eighty square feet as his. From there he was standing within his domain, doubling his pool and regeneration, which would make the next steps easier. A little math told him that he would need somewhere around four hundred and ninety-one hours to fully saturate his new land. Fortunately, he only needed a portion of it for now, about three hundred thousand square feet should be fine, and that’d only take him about thirty-five hours; a pain to be sure, but a bearable one.

For the next hour he worked his way around the perimeter of what would be the first (and central) section of his new farm, saturating the edges, then creating a waist high wall all around it. Finished with that, he turned his attention to clearing out the grasses and other plants that currently clogged the interior. As his hand rose to cast Move Earth, he had a realization. He’d been saturating his land originally by the act of using Move Earth spell on it, but that was back before he had such a ridiculously large size; before that it’d been a relatively slow way to increase the domain’s size. However, now it should be much, much faster given the large area he could cover per second.

Waving his hand, he poured mana into the weave that made up Move Earth, and began to till the grasses and weeds under at a prodigious rate. With the spell consuming two earth mana per second, and tying up two of his mana strands, he could run three strands through his body to activate Mana Drawing, which made his regeneration rate just under six mana per second. In other words, he could run the spell indefinitely. It was really too bad he had only the one mana strand left, or he could have run a second Move Earth in parallel, and doubled his efficiency; although, if he used only the second tier of Mana Drawing and ran a second Move Earth spell he could sustain that for a little more than an hour, as he’d lose less than one mana per three seconds. Then, once he was empty, it’d only take another three and a third minutes to regenerate his full pool. Nodding to himself, he released the third strand of Mana Drawing, and cast a second Move Earth.

Over the next half-hour he cleared out one eighth of the three hundred thousand feet he’d boxed in. Satisfied with that, he logged out for lunch.

***

After logging back in John spent the next three and a half hours working even as he pondered why this act of magic counted as ‘saturating’ the land. Finally, when he was done, he asked the question.

“Help, why does altering the terrain with magic count as saturating it with my mana?”

[Answer: By magically forcing your will onto a location which you have claimed you attune the already present mana with your own, making it count as yours.]

John pondered that for a moment before asking his next question.

“Help, is there a faster way to attune existing mana to my own?”

[Answer: That information is covered by the Tutoring Module, would you like to purchase a month-long subscription to the Tutoring Module for 100 USD or 1000 Gold?]

John let out a small huff; he walked into that one. “No,” he said even as he considered putting it on his purchase list for after his harvest. Maybe he should ask some of the Knights Magi, they might be willing to teach for a price.

Moving over to the wall, John hopped up and sat on it even as he pulled up the blueprint of the Portal spell. The blueprint was complicated, and it took him almost an hour of trying to successfully complete the spell on his own, and even then, only barely. Had he not been using the Blueprint Module, he was certain he couldn’t have done it at all, not without having someone there guiding him through it and displaying it each time he tried, anyway. Given the time and effort it would take a teacher, it was no wonder the price of spells was in golds.

Sliding off his perch, he waved a hand and opened a portal. A line of light appeared in the air before him and quickly opened into a full-size gateway showing the Galaxy Tree and interior of the Gateway of Worlds on the other end. He nodded his head and stepped through. He’d been trying to portal onto his farm, but it was as Lady Oswald had said; all portals would be redirected to the shrine. This would mean he had to move the ley line tap to the shrine before he could portal it to his new location, but that was less effort than trying to drag it six miles.

He had just stepped through and released the spell’s weave when a couple of notifications popped up.

[Congratulations to Lady Susanna Oswald, the newly minted Baroness of the Runic Rock Barony]

[Congratulations to all new Land Owners of the Runic Rock Barony, your Land Claims have been folded into the new barony and are officially yours so long as you can pay the taxes.]

John dismissed the notifications and then made his way out of the shrine, which was already filling up with the carriages of nobles trying to get home. The problem seemed to be that they had to call for portals from other locations, since the shrine couldn’t currently create its own. On his way by John couldn’t help but notice the unhappy, and occasionally downright furious, faces of the few nobles he could see. It appeared this was not a joyous occasion for them.

Arriving back at his farm, John was surprised to see the new baroness sitting under the pavilion by the gate and sipping from a mug of tea.

“Did you have someone watching the shrine so you’d know exactly when to be in the right position for my return?” he asked in some amusement even as he bowed to acknowledge her station.

Susanna merely smiled at him as she sipped her drink, she then put the mug down and gestured to the seat across from her.

“I assume, from your return via portal, that you went and found a new location for your farm?” she asked as he made himself comfortable.

“Yeah, about six miles out. I spent most of the day prepping a section so I could move things to it. It’s going to be a pain, but you’re right that staying here is going to cause me more problems than not,” John admitted.

The baroness nodded, even as she poured a second cup for John. “Good, in that case I have a request. I would like you to sell me the northern third of this plot.”

John sipped his tea as he considered the request. “Can I ask why?” he asked finally.

“Of course. As the new baroness I’ll be expected to maintain a baronial seat, which is to say a place from which the barony is run. In most cases that is a modest mansion with perhaps two or three out buildings. The land there should suffice and it’s easier to work with you than with the Titans, who hold the land north of you, and south of the Knights’ compound,” she explained.

“I take it they weren’t in a selling mood?”

“They said they’d be happy to set up a lease. I declined.”

John nodded. “I suppose I could sell it to you, sure. Though, I’m not really sure what the land is worth.”

“A lot, actually. This close to what’s going to become a center of trade you could easily charge as much as a copper per square foot,” Baroness Oswald said.

There was a moment of silence as John did some mental math. “So… what? Fifty-four gold?”

“And a little silver, I believe,” the baroness said with a nod.

“That doesn’t seem like a lot,” he said with a slight frown.

Susanna paused; her cup barely lifted off the table. “Mister John, how much do you think is a lot of gold?”

“I don’t know, A few hundred gold, maybe?” John responded hesitantly.

“Hmmm… That’d be quite a sum indeed. But it’d be unusual to pay that much for almost anything below a Divine ranking. Do you often pay for things in gold?” she asked thoughtfully.

“Well, most things on the auction are pretty expensive, especially rarer items,” he explained.

“Can you give me some examples?” Susanna asked.

“Um, let’s see, I paid around five gold for a displacer lily, and eleven or so for a quarter pound of void stone, eight gold for ageless ivy…” he trailed off as he saw Baroness Oswald’s eyebrow raise slightly. “What?”

“Those were some rather expensive purchases. What exactly do you think copper and silver are worth?” She inquired.

“Well, I assumed day to day items would be worth a few coppers at most, luxury but non-magical items are probably priced in silver, and most other stuff would be priced in gold, I guess,” John said.

The baroness shook her head. “Gold isn’t something you earn so easily, whoever you’ve been buying from has been fleecing you, unless those items were all very high quality, and I’m guessing from the face you’re making that they weren’t.” She set down her cup, not having taken a sip. “Alright, there are a few things that are obvious, such as the rarer the material the more it costs, and the higher the quality the more it costs. The problem you’re having is that the items you’ve purchased aren’t all that rare, and aren’t high quality. Void Stone isn’t common, but if it was rare enough to be priced in gold we wouldn’t build portals out of it; similarly displacer lilies and timeless ivy are rare, but no so rare as to be all that hard to get.”

John stared at her in consternation for a moment, as he realized that what she was saying made sense. He’d paid three master craftsmen in silvers for their work, granted it hadn’t been with magical materials, but two had been rush jobs and resulted in high quality goods. Further, everything in the general store was priced in coppers, including the mana stones. It probably meant he was being grossly overpaid for the stones he was putting up for sale.

“How much would two cubic inches of Exceptional quality mana stone cost?” he asked.

“Well, that’s a bit rarer and it really depends on the element of the stone and how available they are. But a good rule of thumb would be to pay a copper per hundred points of mana they hold for an aspected stone. That really only holds true until you hit the higher ranks of course, but that’s only because there are very few people who can make mana stones with a rank greater than Incredible. Also, I expect that price to drop at some point, apparently someone figured out a way to teach people to make mana stones easily, so we’re going to see a lot more of them on the market in the coming years,” the baroness explained before taking a sip of her tea.

“You do have to understand,” she continued, “that, ultimately, you’re not looking at a finite item; while any given stone will run out eventually, people can just make more. Further, if such things were very expensive, how would common people afford them?”

“And how much should I be paying for enchantment work?” John asked.

“Depends on the enchantment and the skill of the enchanter, but I would expect most enchantments to be in the mid silver range, high silver if they’re of middle quality, a low count in gold for anything truly outstanding. Again, anything above Exquisite is going to jump the price drastically, and Divine is all but off the table; even if someone had a divine rank enchantment, selling it would be silly unless they were in the direst of financial straits. Even if they did, only high nobles would be able to afford the cost.” Susanna explained.

“So, if someone was charging me three gold for a ley line tap…” John suggested.

“Hmmm… how good is the enchanter?” she rejoined.

“Newly minted journeyman, making the most basic of taps,” he admitted.

“You’re basically being robbed. For a ley line tap of that cost I would expect at least exceptional quality with several safety features built in to help prevent the cracking of cores and at least four, maybe five, elemental converters,” the baroness said.

“Elemental converters?” John inquired.

“Ah, it lets an enchantment change the elemental affiliation of the mana flowing through it. It’s the same difference as imprinting an elemental concept on raw man. Granted, you’ll almost only ever see them for the four prime elements and occasionally life and death; time and space are harder for most of our people to grasp, though the players seem to have a much easier time for some reason,” she replied.

“So, I’m definitely overpaying,” John noted.

“Yes, though I would have thought you’d pay the Knights Magi for such a task?” her tone made the sentence more question than statement.

“I… I didn’t really think of it? I know they can make buildings and such, I didn’t think to ask about enchanting,” John admitted.

“Each of the knights is required to learn a magical creation skill or spell of some kind. Ritual, Enchanting, alchemy; even creation of mana stones is acceptable. Odds are good you could have hired them for much less. Though, I suppose I should encourage people to hire the new craftsmen more than the knights. Still, I would let your enchanter know that you’re on to them, and haggle for future upgrades of some kind as their skill advances,” Susanna advised.

“Yeah, I’ll do that, thanks. Wait, doesn’t that mean you overpaid me for your stay? In fact, you were willing to way overpay!” John said.

“You clearly haven’t seen what the Titans were charging. As much as thirty gold for a plot of empty land. It was frankly scandalous and certainly won’t be tolerated in the future, I was actually expecting you to ask me for more; it was a pleasant surprise when you insisted on only three gold,” She admitted.

There was a moment of silence as John contemplated this, then frowned. “But what about the crop I’m growing? Alchemist’s Sponge sells for silvers, not coppers. In fact, if I’ve done my math right it’s worth almost two hundred and ten gold.”

The baroness bobbed her head. “And how many times do you think you can grow that crop in a row? For that matter, how many do you think you can usually grow at once? You’ve pressed right up against the edge of what you can have in a given area, and the local mana saturation is suffering for it. It’ll be months before this area fully recovers, possibly as long as half a year. During that time mana wells nearby will work at reduced rates, and people will have a harder time regenerating mana. You’ve probably already noticed you can’t regenerate mana as fast as normal near your greenhouses. When mana starts to equalize it’ll create a noticeable dip for probably a couple miles. That’s why most grow only a few plants at a time, spread them over large areas, and demand a high price.”

“Am I going to get in trouble for lowering the local mana?” John asked worriedly.

“No; though mostly because there was no one to complain, and no one to complain to. A fine would have been the likely outcome; not enough to dip too substantially into your profits, but enough to hurt,” Susanna explained. “In this case, we can’t fine you for people choosing to move into the area after you set up your crops, that’d be both unfair and unjust.”

“Alright, thanks for explaining things to me,” he said.

“It was no trouble, though I fear we’ve strayed far from the topic at hand,” the baroness replied.

John nodded to her then spoke. “I would be happy to sell you the land,”

“Excellent! Now, if I may inquire, what do you intend to do with the rest of the land?” Baroness Oswald asked.

“I don’t really know. I’ll be taking pretty much everything to the new farm once I’ve set it up. I don’t really have plans past that,” he admitted.

“Here’s what I would suggest then,” the baroness began. “Either rent the land out to others and put the onus of development on them, or develop the land yourself and diversify your business. There are several good options for the location, but I would split it between warehouses and crafting halls. The Titans will be setting up individual shops with housing, and that’ll be useful for those with money to pay for them, but that’s also a long-term investment that most of your people don’t seem keen on. They’d prefer to have somewhere they can do a bit of work before going off to do something else. The warehouses will be required for pickup and drop off by couriers, and for long term storage of goods. Having them adjacent to the portal would allow you to charge a premium for the space.”

John combed his beard with his fingers as he listened, then thought for a moment before he commented. “Wouldn’t the warehouse walls need to be imbued to stop people from breaking in?”

“Yes, but you can get imbued bricks fairly cheap, depending on their quality. At just Good quality, bricks run somewhere around twenty-five per copper,” the baroness explained.

John gave her a goggle-eyed stare. “That can’t be right!” he protested.

“While I cannot give you the specifics on how stone for building is imbued, I assure you that number is fairly accurate for most mundane stones; though the price just about quadruples for each subsequent quality increase, excepting of course for Perfect, Artifact, and Deific, which are much, much more expensive. The price also increases if you want luxury stones, but that’d be a poor choice for warehouses,” Susanna said.

John sipped his tea as he thought over everything he’d just been told. Diversifying his business would be good for his in-game wallet, but it’d be problematic to try and get any actual real-world cash for storage space unless he could guarantee safety or was willing to reimburse losses. Crafting halls… if a system existed for leasing in-game areas for real world cash, maybe; he’d have to look into it.

“Thank you,” he finally said aloud. “You’ve been really helpful.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Baroness Oswald replied. “I’ll have a contract drawn up for the sale of the land and you can confirm everything is in order. Then…” she paused and frowned. “We need to get a bank in the area… actually that’d be another good option for part of your land. The Eternal Vaults would happily buy a portion of your land to set up on. In fact, if I were you, I’d do just that, and make a permanent account and a vault box part of the sale price.”

“I take it a vault box is some kind of storage?” John asked.

“Quite so, they come in varying sizes with the smallest being no bigger than a jewelry box, and the largest being about three cubic yards. Keep in mind that the larger your demand, the less they’ll be willing to pay for the land. That said, given the rarity of some of the items you’re already growing, you may want to push for an actual room,” she replied.

John nodded. “Alright, say I wanted a room sized vault box, and a permanent bank account, what should I be asking for the land?”

The baroness gave the question some thought as she finished her tea. “I would push for a merchant grade account, that’ll get you some level of priority and is the highest rank you can get outside the peerage. That combined with the storage, I’d say don’t go any lower than a copper per thirty square feet. Keep in mind you’re looking for lifetime coverage, so they’ll want the land for cheap.”

“Alright, thanks again.”

“As I said, it’s my pleasure.”