With the crabs back on scavenging duty, I turned back to the lagoon. It really was beautiful. A pity it was unlikely to stay that way.

Floating back over to the shipwreck shore of the lagoon, I began to survey the shallows. It was mostly smooth, fine sand over here, with the occasional rock here and there. Perfect for what I had planned.

Righty-o, let’s see what I can do with forty-eight mana.

For once, I think I’m going to try and visualize what I want before I actually buy anything. I don’t want to build everything only to find that I put everything in the wrong place and can't move it.

So, if I put a platform here, and a dock here, a bridge here and there, and a walkway over there…

Yeah, yeah, that looks, well, will look good. Though, it does bring up the question of what to put opposite the platform… Maybe a big boulder? Yes, I think that will do it. I took a step back and looked over the lagoon, envisioning my plan.

Yes. Yes, I think I can manage all that with fifty-three mana.

Wait, what?

I took a second look at my mana. Fifty-three. Didn’t I have only forty-eight earlier? Did I misread it? I mean, I know my mana regenerates, but it’s nowhere near that fast. I must have misread it, but how on earth did I mistake fifty-five for forty…

It’s gone up. My mana has increased again. It’s doing it right before my very eyes. Fifty-seven… fifty-eight… fifty-nine… sixty… sixt-…no, no it stopped at sixty.

Sixty, my mana capacity. You know, I’d been wondering why I even had one of those, beyond making me feel nauseous or go loopy whenever I absorb too much mana. But if that’s my limit for generating mana myself… why has the rate of mana generation gone up?

What changed?

It didn’t happen during any of the attacks, it didn’t happen when I was absorbing everything. So, what… I trailed off, eyeing the lagoon. Was it when I claimed the lagoon?

I played my gaze over the surface of the water, then surveyed the shores. Nothing up here, nothing on the shore aside from those plants. So… is it something in the water?

Slowly, carefully, I lowered myself down into the lagoon. I found myself reflexively holding my breath as the waters closed over me, but of course, nothing happened because I don’t have lungs anymore. Still, it took me a moment to realize that. Longer than I’d have liked.

Down below the water it was… tranquil. Calm. The waters were clear, and mosaics of light and shadow from the water’s surface above danced across the sandy bed of the lagoon. The sand spread across the entirety of the lagoon’s bottom, small grains shifting lazily in a gentle, unseen current. Though the lagoon was shallow around the periphery, no deeper than the tallest man, the bottom in the center of the lagoon sank sharply, dropping deep enough for colors to become muted and lost. In the epicenter of the deep rose a formation of ancient volcanic rock, and from the center of that ancient gathering of stones shone a soft glow.

Intrigued, and possibly a bit enthralled, I floated through the water, down towards the stone formation. As I drew closer, I could see that the formation was hollow, little more than a series of stone pillars grouped together. I crept up to the edge and looked in, and I found the source of the glow.

In the center of the small alcove there floated a ball of energy, a small sun of scintillating colors. Gossamer strands of light flowed from a crack in the rock beneath it, floating up like spiderwebs caught in a gentle breeze until they melded seamlessly into the gently shining ball of energy.

Somehow, instinctively, I knew the energy to be pure mana.

I dared not draw closer. For one, I could taste the mana that thing was giving off. Blue raspberry, by the way. Not my favorite flavor in the whole wide world, but when you don’t have a tongue, one tends to forget the shear novelty of being able to taste.

Secondly – and this was the real, primary reason I wanted nothing to do with the big glow-y ball – Lusca had wrapped itself around the pulsating orb, and, as soon as I had crested the top of the rock formation, had started giving me the evilest evil eye I had ever seen.

If looks could kill…

Shuddering despite myself, I slowly backed away. Letting myself rise up out of the lagoon, I decided that the ball of energy being hugged by a very angry octopus was a problem for future me.

I wonder if Wilhelm knows anything about that ball, or what it is. But, again, that is future me’s problem.

Floating over to the shore nearest the shipwreck, I recalled the mental blueprints I had drafted earlier and conjured up a short walkway that protruded out over the water, wooden supports sprouting up to prevent its collapse. It cost me three mana, and I turned my attention to my … hm, what do I call that popup that displays my health and mana? My Status bar? My status bar. I turned my attention to the status bar.

For a long while, nothing happened. Then, just as I was about to give it up as a bad job and try to figure out why the mana regen wasn’t happening, my mana level increased by one point. I sat and watched with bated breath as the mana bar slowly increased to fifty-nine, then on to sixty, and then stopped there.

When nothing further happened, I slowly nodded, deep in thought.

I think I may have the mana regeneration thing figured out.

It’s like… it’s like breathing in versus eating. You can only breath in so much before your lungs are full, while you can continue to eat after you are full, though if you eat too much in too short a time, you’re likely to vomit. There was a considerable pause between placing that walkway and the start of the regeneration, which I think means that mana doesn’t regenerate while mana is being spent. It makes sense: you can’t breathe in and out at the same time, only one or the other.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

I have to wonder, though. Why did my mana regenerate so slowly before? My mana regeneration was so negligible as to be nonexistent, to the point that I wager it would have taken at least a day to fully regenerate from nothing, if not longer. But now that I claimed the lagoon with the spring of mana within, what would have taken a day will probably only take an hour.

Argh, math. It never fails to give a headache.

Still, I can’t help but to feel that I’m missing something. Hopefully I’ll figure out what it is before too long, otherwise it’s going to drive me crazy.

Sighing, I put the matter of my mana aside. I tried to figure things out and only came up with more questions. Story of my life.

Right, back to defacing the lagoon.

Accessing the construction menu, I floated a short distance to the north and placed down a square, nine-mana wooden platform, half on and half off the sand. Then, I connected that to the center of the walkway I built earlier, which cost another three mana.

I paused, looking at the walkway I’d just placed down. It’s the exact same width as my previous walkway, and a third the width of the platform. Is it… Dammit, I don’t have any hands to hold apart and estimate measurements with.

The sound of bouncing cannonballs crashed from the depths of the orlop deck, followed by the angry clatter of bones. Oh, that gives me an idea.

Tiny, I called. Tiny, come here! I need your hands!

There was a small commotion from the orlop deck, and then two skeletal hands flew out and landed in the sand, defying all rules of logic and biology by somehow staying together and not flying apart like the lack of connective tissue would suggest. Oh, goddammit.

Tiny, I called patiently. I need your hands with you still attached to them!

For a moment, there was silence, then wood began to creak. Stomping out into the sun, Tiny tromped over to his hands. He bent over and put his hands back on, mostly by just poking the palms with the ends of his ulna and radius, and then promptly continued lumbering in my direction. Finally, the wooden slats of the walkway creaked under Tiny’s feet, the ogre of a skeleton stopping to stare down at me.

There was just one problem.

Tiny, I pointed out. Tiny, your hands are on the wrong arms.

Tiny just continued to stare at me.

I sighed, wishing for the bridge of a nose to pinch and a hand to pinch it with. Fix it please. If it didn’t get fixed, it was going to bug me until… nyagh!

Silently, Tiny looked at his hands, then slowly took them off and put them back on right. Well, okay then.

Okay Tiny, I commanded. Put your hands on the sides of the walkway here, then, without changing the distance between your hands, bring them up to… I paused, taking in the skeleton’s height. …Waist height, and hold them there.

If he had eyes, I’m pretty sure that Tiny would be blinking slowly right now. Still, the giant skeleton complied perfectly, bending over to put his hands on either side of the walkway, then straightening up to hold his hands before him at waist height.

Thank you, Tiny.

I studied the space between Tiny’s hands. What is that, a meter? Why is my base unit of measurement the meter? I don’t use metric, I’m an… I’m a… I’m from somewhere that doesn’t use meters but…

Ugh… my head hurts again.

So, back to the measurements, it looks like one mana will buy a meter’s worth of… well, whatever I’m building. I’m not sure why I didn’t notice this earlier.

Meh, whatever.

Mentally dismissing Tiny, I turned away from the oversized skeleton and made for the end of the first walkway. Let’s see, what was I going to put here again? Oh yeah.

Opening the construction menu again, I plopped down a two-meter by five-meter platform, centered on the end of the walkway in the middle of the long side.

Nodding to myself and humming a pleasant tune, I hovered over to the opposite end of the lagoon. Stopping in front of the gate, I placed down a five-meter long walkway out into the lagoon, protruding from the shore perpendicular to the gate. From there, I placed another five-meter walkway perpendicular to the first, offset from one end by a meter. Then, I added another walkway perpendicular to that one, though only two meters long this time, then I added another walkway perpendicular to that one, but this one was seven meters long, offset from the southern end by one meter.

Viewed from the south, it kind of looked like a lowercase µ with a line sticking out from it, almost as if someone was writing it out and jerked their pen to the side in surprise.

Stepping back, it looks good, but I still have nineteen mana to work with, and now that it regenerates at a respectable rate, I don’t have to worry about running out of mana at an inopportune moment! Like getting attacked.

Wait, do I regenerate mana during an invasion? That might be important to find out.

But I’ll worry about that later, because this little project of mine should help out on the defense front. Time to decorate!

So, let’s open the construction menu, scroll down to the objects, and… oh hey, I have a category for stone construction. When did that happen?

First though, let’s… let’s… My train of thought trailed off as I looked across the lagoon. Tiny? Tiny, what are you doing?

Tiny was, as I had commanded, still standing there on the walkway, his hands held out at waist height. Didn’t I dismiss him? No, I didn’t actually say anything to him, did I?

Tiny, I called across the lagoon. You can stop now! Go… go back to your cannon!

Slowly, Tiny lowered his arms. Then, ponderously, Tiny turned and lumbered away back into the depths of the orlop deck.

Well, that happened. Now, where was I? Oh right, objects. Let’s see, let’s see… Ooh, a clothesline, that’s perfect. I’ll just plop it down lengthwise in the middle of the seven-meter walkway, and viola. No, that’s still not it. Violets, violin… darn it.

When did I absorb a clothesline? Eh, whatever.

Well, that’s the long walkway taken care of. Now let’s go up north a bit to the shore. Hmm, what am I going to put over here? You know what, let’s look at the rock construction.

[Stone Construction]

[Construct Stone Pillar: 2 Mana]

[Construct Stone Wall: 2 Mana]

[Construct Stone Door: 2 Mana]

[Construct Stone Floor: 2 Mana]

[Construct Stone Guard Tower: 30 Mana]

Excuse me, stone construction. Man, this stuff is more expensive than wood stuff. Makes sense, stone is more durable than wood. So, let’s see… stone pillars, huh? I like those, let’s get… hm… five.

Okay, the square platform is over there, so… let’s put a pillar right over here in the sand directly across from the platform, and center it thusly. Okay, that looks good. Now, let’s add a second pillar over here at the waterline. Then, take these two pillars, and put them against the outer wall here and here, though not too close and not actually touching the wall. Nice, okay. And finally, the last pillar will go, here, on this little outcropping of rock poking up out of the water.

And I hereby proclaim the Fort Kickass Shooting Range complete!

Well, mostly, I still need to install a cannon on the square platform to finish the artillery range portion, but… shooting range!

Over there on the two-meter by five-meter platform will be the gun range, where my skellies can practice their shooting, using random articles of clothing I summon up onto the clothesline. The square platform will be the artillery range, once mana regens enough to buy another cannon (the novelty of regenerating mana will never get old… maybe), where gun crews will use the five stone pillars to practice traversal and aiming.

And as a bonus, the whole thing doubles as a defensive line!

Giddy with excitement, I zipped across the lagoon and made a beeline for the shipwreck. I got to get Deadbeard out here with Mullroy and Murtogg. Course, I have to find them first.

You know, I should see if Wilhelm’s done with the armory. I wonder what he’ll think of the shooting range.