“You must be Styx, I’m Bren the mage. Mircha mentioned you might be able to help me with my founder's quest if I help with your one?” The man walking up was about my own height of 5 '8 and lean, which was surprising for an earth mage, with sandy hair and deep brown eyes. Wearing a workers jacket of leather and trousers I was surprised at how much of a normal builder the mage looked like.
“That would be me, I don’t know much about your quest but if you're willing to show me yours I can show you mine” With a laugh I brought up my quest prompt and willed it to share its information with Bren.
Looking at his prompt I could see why he wanted to help now.
Founders Quest (Bren - Earthen Construction Mage):
Assist with developing the village. You can do this by teaching, building, planning or providing resources. Things developed by someone you teach with the information you provide will also count a small amount towards completion.
Current completion rate: 2%
“So, I was told you need to build this cave into a healer's house of some kind and that you had zero classical training on building or magical building, which don’t get me wrong is amazing for me, I come from a family of mage builders so I am hoping if I can teach you some useful methods and you use those effectively I can get some good progress out of this” As he spoke he started pulling some dog eared small pocket books out of his jacket pockets.
“These are some basic reference books that I know inside and out, so I am happy to pass them on. Honestly my great grandfather had a similar founders quest so I came reasonably prepared. If you're free did you want to walk me through how you're thinking of laying this out? Then I can do some maths, come back tomorrow and get the walls done up before we get into working out what building related magic skills your mana type and class might work with”
Leafing through the three small books as he passed them over their titles were definitely interesting, ‘uses of combat mana types in crafting’, ‘creation and sustainment of mana crystals’, ‘development of mana infused buildings and their evolution into carded structures’. All were concepts I knew existed, like how people living in a city understand farming. I have seen the product of these skills, and conceptually knew someone did that work to build the building or environment, but had no idea it was something I had ever even considered how to approach.
“Before you get too excited, walk me through what you want to set up, tomorrow I can get that knocked out or if it's simple enough I might be able to do it today. I heard they are starting the levelling hunts tomorrow so we both might end up busy but after if not before I will get the walls done at the least” Passing him my drawing and walking him through the cave explaining it, it seemed my plans seemed reasonable and achievable for a first go at setting the cave up as a healing house.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
There were a few changes he suggested, like adding small vent openings at the top of some of the walls spaced out, although apparently my fire mana should work okay to create flame generating mana crystals you can still cause issues as contaminants burn and create smoke building up in a space. Otherwise it was mostly adding some sconces that Bren would put holders in for mana crystals for lighting, and apparently I dramatically underestimated how thick the walls should be but space was one thing we had in plenty so that wasn’t really a stress.
“Well I will see you at dinner Bren, thanks again, I know it helps your quest but I do appreciate the help. I wouldn’t have a hope of building something without it, let alone the mana crystals. I don’t think combat mages usually learn these skills, although I do kind of wonder why it seems useful”
As we spoke we exited the cave and I got ready to move what stones I had found to the places Bren had marked.
“Oh that is actually easy to answer, for a crafting based mage like myself my mana is fairly simple. I use earth aligned mana and fuel my skills with it. But for a combat mage like yourself your class gives you a more specific mana, for you I think its some restorative fire based mana, maybe something more specialised but that will show itself as your class develops. The main issue is combat mage mana usually is purely designed to function a certain way, instead of being changed by the skills used, so when you build a crystal from them they can act violently or be unstable, or have unexpected effects. For your mana though it should just give less heat then real fire and potentially a small healing effect around it as that matches how your mana behaves I think. That is just based on the heal I saw you use on the road though, so please be careful when you make those”
I decided to take that advice to heart and read through the book in detail before I tried creating one, just in case my mana did something unexpected so at least I knew what to do about it.
As Bren left I realised looking around most people had only set up their campsites then gotten to work hunting, I knew settlements came with minimal staff and supplies on purpose. Last time a city outfitted a group the monster waves they faced wiped out several nearby towns. Whatever system governed monsters and dungeons seemed to only reward adversity, when a small enough group with a real risk of failure set up a settlement often they would find a small common or uncommon ranked dungeon, a few natural resources, and be able to slowly build up and expand humanity's reach. More often than not these towns failed, people left or things became too difficult, but that is what the system was rewarding pushing through with these benefits to the settlements that lasted.
This did mean that most people were only level ten to twenty, and when we had pushed a half day past a village already based in level twenty to thirty uncommon monster territory, that meant we were underleveled by a fair amount. So it wasn’t too surprising people wanted to get levelling as the priority then build the settlement as they felt comfortable.
Realising I was going to have to wait until dinner to at least realistically have a chance to find out when I could go hunting with a team I pulled my sleeping roll out to the grass near the cave entrance. If I was going to read exciting, but dry, materials on how to use my mana to develop this cave into something to be proud of then I was going to do it in some nice afternoon sunshine.