I need a place to work.

It’s fine to work in the empty mansion, but if anyone sneaks in, I need a place to hide and keep private. I have some plans for the future, but it’s best if they’re kept secret.

High enterprising secrets.

Luckily, I have a shovel, a pickaxe, and nothing but time. Telekinesis helps; especially since that means I won’t get tired.

Using anything that can be considered a bucket, I use the pickaxe and shovel to loosen up the bricks in a wall and the dirt beneath. Telekinesis, sadly enough, does not allow me to circumvent weight limits by focusing on the bucket only.

I don’t even know why I’m doing this. To distract myself from the inevitability of insanity that comes from an immortal, unending afterlife? Most likely… That’s an issue for the future me.

What I need to worry about now is fulfilling some childish dreams of my own. Like having my own fort, maybe getting a girlfriend in a medieval world where the Sexual Revolution has not occurred, and will not for centuries.

I need a comfortable technology level to operate my dreams. Maybe, just maybe, if I play this right, I can rule the world.

What are we doing tonight? The same thing we do every night.

God, that show hasn’t aired for centuries. Anyway, I’m going to have to Dr. Stone this situation to the extreme.

An uncouth person would replace the last four words of that sentence with ‘bitch’.

I'm going to have to Dr. Stone this bitch. Except with minimal chemistry.

I’m cold, not emotionless, nor a perfect little princess. Cursing is what I want to do, and a few words here and there can’t even begin to underline the situation I’m in.

A few logs that my axes had cut and stripped earlier are lined up to support the catacombs I’ve dug out. Obviously, they aren’t optimal for what I want, but a basic series of rooms and passageways underneath don’t need much.

Steel could add multiple levels, but that’s a future prospect. A prospect that could lead into me taking charge of an Industrial Revolution, and subsequent Gilded Age.

Perhaps I should deal with the farming situation before the revolution, though. Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin and Interchangeable Parts should work fine. Then Lowell’s Mills, minus the poor working conditions and what is practically slave labor.

Bessemer Process for steel. Electricity, oil, railroads, banks. Mass production, here I come!

Let’s not get ahead of myself.

I’ll need people in charge. Quality golems. That’s the most likely solution. Most feasible, too. I just need to deface the copper currency to make a rudimentary microphone to be able to listen and a poor speaker. Then, put on a cloak, pretend to be an elderly person—who would be a sight to see due to the medical technology available, except for Light Magic—then buy things.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

I’m not going to make everything myself… Well, I am! I’ll just start with poor quality tools, regardless of how the saying goes, then make better tools from there—Ship of Theseus style.

Now, time for a crappy crafting montage.

————————————————————————————————————

[ Through repeated actions skill: Spirit Telekinesis(Major, Active) has ranked up to Spirit Telekinesis(Maximum, Active) ]

That was boring.

Specifically, creating a hole in the ground with buckets. Then lining up the pillars and beams. Small air vents for air. Not that I need it, but the lanterns do.

Anyway, the telekinesis ranked up twice. From a good 800 pounds, to then what I assume 3,200 pounds. If I follow this linear slope, then my current weight limit should be 12,800 pounds.

All with my soul. I could easily life a few cars now.

I lifted at least thrice that amount out of the foundation of the mansion.

In the end, the forest now has a sizable mound in it now, and in a similar way, a good portion of the riverbank is missing. Why? Clay. I need a basic furnace to melt down these coins. However, that means clay, which also means charcoal, which means wood chips from the flying axe in the forest. If I can find coal, that means coke fuel.

Coke fuel means I don’t need as much air pumping into a clay furnace. Of course, at that point, I would probably be using steel furnaces, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

So, a poor excuse for a furnace that looks like a three-year old’s craft project is filled with hastily-made charcoal. At the center, a crucible made of clay sits. The sand molds carved with Telekinesis are most likely the most detailed part of this project, and even they don’t work right.

I need copper wire. I don’t have the tech required for wire, so thin metal strips are my next best option.

I ignite the coal the good ol’ fashioned way: friction. Using Telekinesis, I rapidly spin a stick, heating up the coals until they smoke. Dumping the copper in and using the aforementioned skill, the copper slowly begins to melt.

Normally, this would never get hot enough to melt copper. I must admit that I’m cheating a little. The Element Shift skills are both alchemically based, meaning that I can shift things around the periodic table.

It’s typically used for turning gases into another. There isn’t much to change anyway. In this case, I’m concentrating the carbon in the charcoal.

[ Through creative actions you have unlocked the skill: Element Concentration(Minimum, Active) ]

[ Element Concentration — A skill to separate and condense elements in an object. Additional mana can be added to convert the excess elements. Cost: 10 mp per gram. 2^(x-1) per gram of element shifted by periodic mass number. ]

As it should be.

Unfortunately, this also kills all of my mana in a matter of seconds. The atomic mass of the leftover calcium and the several valence shells quickly drains my pool beyond the point of equilibrium.

The copper eventually melts, and I take the crucible out, pouring the contents into the molds. I can’t make true microphones nor speakers without magnets, so I have to do this in a roundabout—and musical—way.

What I’m doing would be typically done with high-carbon steel wire coated with copper. These are strips of ‘pure’ copper. If I had more mana, then this would be actually pure.

Then I use some locks to put tension on the strips. A few small hammers hooked up to my mechanical, magical motors, and I now have a shitty piano.

I can twang the notes, and it can almost be mistaken for a voice.

…Screw it. I have thirty tokens. This should only take about ten, anyway.

[ Through purchase you have unlocked the skill: Sound Magic I(Minimum, Base) ]

[ Through purchase you have unlocked the skill: Vocal Emulation(Minimum, Active) ]

[ Sound Magic - The base skill for using magic with a modicum of comprehension. ]

[ Vocal Emulation - Uses magic to project the user’s voice. Cost: 2 mp per minute. ]

Right. Time to work this into the piano. It’s always much easier through a medium.

————————————————————————————————————

A bit of tinkering later, and I now have a microphone and speaker set. Best part is: I made it sound like my original voice. Not this…wispy…reverb…stuff. It’s cool, but other people would probably be freaking out at a reversed echo.

Here I stand, at the edge of the property boundary, after a quick fly through the forest path.

The sun beats down, yet I am unable to feel even the heat. My donned cloak covers most of my…non-human deficits. Preparing my psyche, I step through the gate.

…

…? YES! Haha haaaaa! Suck it, universe! No property boundary can stop me!

*Crash* My body collapses as I run out of mana…again. Fuck.

My spirit is forcibly pulled out of the body and back through the gate. I sigh and use Telekinesis to pull the body back. The far-off view of the capital city, across the plains, seems so far away.

Why is there a mansion here? Is this the Duke’s capital estate? I’d expect him to have like…land, not so close to the city. Well, he does have a massive, perhaps artificial, forest.

So what happened to his old land?

Doesn’t matter. It’s back to the drawing board for me.