"Damn," Lucas says. "And you trust your grandma?"

I just finished telling him about the Quest the god issued me, the incentives, and Grandma's letter to me telling me to take on any gods-given Quests I'm offered. The goal of distracting him on the way here worked and he didn't jump as much when monsters were nearby, though he did still nearly drop the jars a few times when some attacked.

At least he was distracted enough to forget about the attacks while we walked.

"Yeah," I answer. "I'm starting to accept that the letters are from her, at any rate, and I trust her enough to… well, I know we barely know each other so it's understandable you'd be wondering. Until I moved to my current place, I lived with her starting near my sixteenth birthday."

"Parents die?" He asks. "S-sorry if that's a bit insensitive."

"They're dead to me, at any rate," I tell him.

"Because of the whole gay thing?"

"Nah," I say. "They actually knew the twins were into guys before they knew I was and treated them fine, so they're definitely fine with that. It's more… I started dating this guy when I was fourteen. Bit early for that in some eyes but it's high school, people date. He was kind of abusive and extremely manipulative. Very much into gaslighting as well. It fucked with my head a lot and my parents believed him over me whenever he said something."

Lucas winces at that. It's bad enough to get manipulated by someone you think you're in love with but who's really just fucking with your head. It's worse when your own parents don't believe you when he says you did or said something and it's not true.

"Yeah," I say. "The twins kind of realized things a bit late into it and went to our Grandma. They just turned eighteen in February but you wouldn't have been at school with them since we went to a private school. They're pretty good dudes."

"Wait," he says. "Hold on. Three brothers are all gay?"

"Yeah," I snort. "Not impossible, just not something someone expects. Anyway, once they realized that I was being abused and our parents were believing the other guy over me on stuff, they went to our grandma. It was a little bit too late but considering they were only about thirteen or fourteen at the time, I can't fault them."

"Something happened?"

"It's how I met Tessa, a close friend of mine," I confirm. "She saw the abuse going on while I was out shopping and put a stop to it. She's much of a fighter but she's got a strong will and zero tolerance for bullshit. My ex… well, his reputation was completely ruined after that. He went to the public high school, so you might have heard about him."

"Are you talking about Tessa Banker?" Lucas asks. "I know she ruined the reputation of a guy a couple of grades over me back when I was a sophomore. He got kicked off the football team, too."

Tessa went to the public high school. Based on my interactions with her after we met, I got the idea that she had a bit of a reputation at her school for not being someone to mess with. Not out of toxicity but because she'd make sure the situation was fixed and your own toxicity was revealed to all.

"Yup," I tell him. "That was my ex. I lived with my grandma until I graduated high school and moved here two summers ago."

We've reached my house now, though I start leading Lucas through to the back through the gate, making sure it latches behind us.

"What Grandma said to my parents after the twins went to her…" I start. "Well, let's just say that I definitely trust her a lot. And my parents are dead to me. They've tried buying back my favor but it's not working. Managed to pull out of the twins that I do a little bit of gardening so they gifted me a bunch of pots of herbs. Not bad, I guess, but a bit excessive."

Lucas is looking around my back yard now. We'd gone to his house when we met up the other day so it's his first time seeing my stuff. Even with the deck, gardens, and trees, there's plenty of space leftover.

"What kind of job do you have?" He asks. "If you can afford a place with a backyard this nice at only… eighteen, I guess. Since you're twenty now."

"Eighteen, yeah," I say as I lead him over to my deck. "The summer after I moved in with Grandma – watch your step going up so you don't slip on the ivy – that summer, I took on a part-time job. Made only a couple of grand and spent about half of it on personal pleasure like games or eating out. Invested the other half and made some really smart and lucky choices. I actually pulled it all out of stocks at the end of last year – so about three and a half years later – and invested half into secure growth. With what was left over, my combined bank accounts had over a million dollars in them."

That's not an exaggeration, either. In reality, it was closer to two million dollars. And that was just half of what I'd managed to turn a grand into in just three and a half years. An absurdly high rate of growth caused by extremely good fortune on the stock market.

"You… what?" Lucas stops and stares at me.

"It's possible if you get lucky with investments," I shrug. "I honestly wasn't expecting that to happen and it's not like it matters now since the stock market kind of doesn't exist."

"Yeah," he sets the two trays of mason jars onto the table. "But you mentioned you got a ton of syscre from the incentive, right? So you're probably richer than most. Or anyone who wasn't given a hell of an incentive from a god."

"There is that," I say. "Sit down. How are you feeling?"

"Still in pain," he answers. "And not just from the ambient Mana burning me. Those potions really aren't the strongest."

He drank his last two [Basic Healing Potion]s on the way here, which doesn't surprise me. The injuries he had were pretty severe. At least every little bit of healing from the potions is adding up to make him better.

"Yeah," I say. "They're good for healing up lighter wounds but bigger stuff… no way. Not in a reasonable amount, anyway. You can have the ones still on the table, though, if you think there's nothing bad with drinking more potion. I've got plenty."

"You do?" He asks. "How? Did you buy a bunch?"

"The incentive included five [Starter Pack]s," I explain. "Haven't pulled them out yet, though. Only the Skill Scrolls from four of them to learn the selected Skills. Was grabbing some extra spells before heading out to look for you."

"Ah," he says. "I went with [Lesser Heal] for mine."

"That's not going to help your injuries," I tell him.

"I know," Lucas says. "But I'd rather be a healer than a fighter."

"There are other things you could have gone with."

"I know," he stretches a little. "I already know how to cook so unless the requirement to get that Skill is super high, I don't need the Skill Scroll for it. Maybe be a healer, maybe be a chef? I dunno. Thought about alchemy but decided to go with healing."

"The [Alchemy] Skill is one of the ones I went with," I say. "It was my final Class before taking the [Level-Block Potion]."

I open up one of the nearer boxes and pull out the token for the healing potions, then I grab one of them when they appear and open it up, downing a couple of doses. I'm going to start working on getting the Perk now. There's no reason to delay even if I can only do a little bit of progress with what's left in the day.

"For the damage from the air?" Lucas asks.

"Yeah," I answer. "But if your body is regularly healed while suffering the damage from the ambient Mana, it'll also strengthen against it and become more resilient. That, in turn, will lead to a Perk which further boosts this. If you want to go for it, drink two doses of the potion every hour that you're awake."

The golem originally said every hour eight times a day, but later clarified that it doesn't have to be as strict as that and we could potentially earn it faster by drinking the potion more often than suggested. I'll still stick with the two doses every hour portion for now, though.

"The Perk also gives you boosts every time your Status gains a Level as well," I add. "Though since you're heading off tomorrow, you might have to take longer to get the Perk than I will here. It's a high amount of ambient Mana and the golem said that the 'safe' levels are about fifty miles away from this area, so you'll still be in a higher zone for at least a week of traveling, probably more."

"About that…" Lucas hesitates.

"Yeah?"

"Um…"

And the timidness is back. His face has flushed a little red and he's fidgeting in his seat, looking down at his hands as he plays with his fingers.

"If you think I'm going to be mad," I say. "Just know that I tend to not get mad unless someone does something that's actually wrong. Your expression before you hesitated made it sound like it was more a selfish thing than anything."

"Y-yeah," Lucas fidgets again, then takes a deep breath. "W-would it be okay if I stayed here?"

That's the furthest thing I would expect him to want to do. It's definitely not something I'd have expected and it's not something I'm entirely opposed to, though I know it might also be dangerous.

"Stayed here?" I ask. "Why?"

"W-well," he fidgets again, then starts rushing out his response, even with his stuttering. "Y-you seem like a really good guy a-and it'd probably be really lonely for you if you were by yourself for the six months. A-and I can help you out with healing and maybe alchemy so that you're not doing it all by yourself. P-plus you're really hot and w-we never did have sex the other day a-and I was kind of disappointed b-because I was really looking forward to it. And Dad kind of teased me after, too. H-he says you're a cool guy and definitely boyfriend material but if y-you wanted to just be f-friends I'd be find with t-that, too. I-I just don't think you s-should have to stay out here a-alone and try to manage it b-by yourself."

That's a lot to take in but it boils down just a few main points.

1) Lucas might be a bit down that I backed out of sex the other day and my size apparently wasn't a problem for him.

2) Lucas's dad straight-up told him he thinks I'm a good guy and that we'd make a good couple.

3) Lucas wants to help me out in my Quest even if it's just as a friend rather than as friends-with-benefits or as boyfriends, but he'd be happy with either of those as well.

"I mean, I was prepared for at least a month without contact of others, possibly up to six months," I tell Lucas. "But if you're willing to get stuck here for six months with just me and not your family or other friends…"

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"I asked your Grandma if we'd be able to keep talking using the h-hawk," he tells me. "T-that's part of the letter I wrote."

"You said in it that you were going to ask me if you could stay here with me so I wasn't taking on the Quest alone, didn't you?"

"Y-yeah."

"Thanks, Lucas," I say. "That's actually pretty nice and yeah, if you want to stay here with me for my Quest, you can. It never said I had to be alone and the god hasn't given me any sign that accepting your offer would break the rules. But don't think you have to have sex or offer yourself to me or whatever for it. You can be here as just a friend if you want."

"N-no!" He exclaims, face red. "T-that's not why! I really do think you're hot, Carter! A-and your size is intimidating b-but I still want to at least try it! Y-you just seem like a really nice guy and my d-dad says you are, too. He said he knows you from p-picking up Logan sometimes this past year?"

"Yeah," I nod, then point toward Logan's house as I continue. "Logan lives there and I met him the day I moved in here. He and his grandma baked me cookies as a house-warming present. A lot of cookies. And brownies. Also two pies. Logan went a little overboard."

Lucas giggles, clearly aware of how Logan can be when he gets into his baking mode. The funnier part about it is that Logan doesn't even have a sweet tooth so though he might sometimes end up baking a couple hundred cookies, six batches of brownies, nine pies, four cakes, and three cheesecakes, he might only eat ten cookies and slices of brownies, cakes, pies, and cheesecakes before they go bad.

"Greta's health has been failing a lot lately," I explain. "So she's needed some extra help in caring for Logan. She's his great-grandma, sort of like me and Grandma, and is up there in age. I know she's been looking into giving custody of him to one of his uncles, probably set for this summer, once school is out. I've been helping watch him a bit and have picked him up from martial arts a few times, or dropped him off and stayed to wait for him to finish. Kyle's your step-dad, right?"

"Yeah," Lucas nods, then shakes his head. "But I see him as my dad. He and Mom met when I was fourteen and only married two years ago, but he's been pretty good on the dad front."

"Glad to hear it," I say. "He seems a cool dude."

"He is," Lucas confirms, then shivers a little. "Brrr! I'm not sure I want to know what it'll be like when night fully sets in."

"I got hoodies in one of my new [Starter Pack]s," since I was receiving extra sets of clothes beyond just one pack's worth, I decided to go with those for one. "You can borrow one if you want. Hope you don't mind, but they're both green."

"No," Lucas looks at all of the packages on the table. "The god really wanted you to stay, huh?"

"Yeah," I say. "But we're going to have to get cleaned up before I even consider giving you one of the hoodies. You're covered in blood, and I'm covered in your blood."

Lucas looks at himself and his eyes widen as he realizes that he's still covered in blood. It's not his fault, though – he's still a bit dazed from nearly dying. Then there's all the information I've flooded him with to help keep his mind off of the attack.

"O-oh," he sways a little despite sitting. "Y-yeah. L-lots of blood. B-but how do we g-get cleaned up? T-there's no power s-so no water, r-right? O-or heat for it. W-we'll f-freeze."

I give him a big smile.

"Magic, of course."

I locate one of the two boxes with the tokens for the [Health and Hygiene Pack] items in it and open it up. From inside of it, I pull out a token which has a folded towel on it and a thick, fluffy green towel appears on the table. A second towel token is removed after that, along with a black-and-dark-green shower pouf. Next up is a glass bottle of shampoo and conditioner, then finally, a glass bottle with body wash in it.

Those aren't all the items I need and I locate one of the two [Water Kit] boxes. From within that, I pull out a token with a blue-green crystal on it and a bluish-green crystal roughly an inch in size appears in my palm. It's not a perfect sphere and more like a piece of crystal someone found in the ground or in a rock and broke off, so its edges are rough and uneven, sort of like the ones for the maginiite I find in monster hearts.

[Water Maginiite] A crystal filled with raw water magics. When dropped into water, it can purify even the most brackish and contaminated of ponds.

I inquired about maginiite while picking out my things for the incentive earlier and learned that they aren't a one-use item but can be reused over and over until they run out of magic. When used in ways such as described in their info windows, they don't constantly use up their magic but only when actually doing what it describes. In other words, the water maginiite won't be fully used up the moment it enters into impure water but purify it as it detects contaminates.

How that works, I don't know, but it doesn't matter. Magic can do as it pleases.

The [Water Kit]s each have three pieces of water maginiite in them and are probably meant for purifying found water to drink, but it'll work for this as well.

"Whoa," Lucas says as he reads the information on the crystal. "This is part of the incentive?"

"Yeah," I answer. "And I'm sure it'll be an expensive crystal to buy while I have six of them since I was given two of the kits. So I guess you were probably right – I'm definitely one of the wealthiest people on Earth right now. Okay. That looks like everything for this. Lucas, stick with me. Stoneshot squirrels and stonefang snakes still show up back here so it's better if you're closer to me. Grab a mana potion as well, just in case."

Lucas gets up and follows me off the deck, and I'm sure he's wondering why I left that stuff behind and why I wanted to have a mana potion (he grabbed two). Instead of explaining, I just walk all the way to the back of my yard, which has a slight downward slope there, and pick out a good spot for this.

It's away from the gardens so it won't affect the food growing there in case things go wrong, especially with the slight downward slope of the ground. At least, I hope that's the case. It's also not too close to the spot where I'm butchering and trying to tan the monsters I'm killing.

"Here is good," I nod.

"For… what?" Lucas asks.

"Temporary cleaning station," I answer. "Should probably make it in someone else's yard, but I don't feel like ripping down part of the fence and walking around would take too long for comfort. But mine's big enough anyway so there's plenty of space. Would you mind grabbing some wood?"

Lucas looks to where I pointed. Close to my shed – which is behind the big tree in the back-right portion of the yard – is a metal rack with chopped wood on it. That one is completely filled with firewood while there's also a second rack that is mostly filled. I have a fire ring in the yard and originally planned to normally have at least half a rack's worth of wood just in case I want to do something.

Except Logan told his uncles about making s'mores with me when it was ten degrees outside and they decided to drop off a fuckton of extra firewood literally that coming weekend so that we could do it more often. Why they had that much extra wood just sitting around, I'm not sure I want to know.

At least they were kind enough to bring an extra stand for it.

Ever since then, they always bring up a fuckton of wood anytime they come to visit Logan. And that started last winter. Not the winter that just finished (but might be back due to the Mana Flood) but the one from the start of last year.

So I've pretty much never been short on wood for a fire. That's going to come in handy here, though I might need to find a way to get more dried wood soon. I didn't see it listed in the System Shop but they might have some.

While Lucas grabs some wood after setting down the potions, I hold my right hand out in front of me with the palm facing the ground. The brownish-orange [Earth Mastery] spell circle forms in front of my palm and I feel my Mana drop a little as I flex this spell a bit. Soil begins to lift up, grass and roots coming with it.

Roots of the bigger tree are exposed from this so I put the soil back in, but mixed around a bit so that the grass isn't poking out. Once the soil is packed down as well as I can manage, I create stone on top of it and use my magic to push it down as much as possible.

Rather than this being a bunch of little pieces of stone, it's a giant slab of it seven feet in width and length and a good foot in thickness. I'm able to get three inches of it into the ground and make sure to generate more stone toward the back to account for the slope so that the slab is level.

Walls for the base are created, each one two feet high and six inches thick. They're sealed into each other and the base with earth magics, then I step into the basin. Lucas finishes bringing over wood as I do this and I realize that he wasn't really sure how much to bring and brought over quite a lot.

"Was this too much?" He asks as I look at the wood. "I wasn't sure what you're doing but it looks like a big space so I grabbed a lot. Er… it was fine to use the wheelbarrow, right?"

"It's cool," I tell him. "Probably should've explained. I'm making a shower and that's going to be for heating the water. We probably won't need that much wood, but it's better to have extra than too little."

Not that we couldn't just grab more if we needed it. The stacks are fairly close.

"A shower?" He asks. "How will it work?"

"This is the lower tank," I tell him as I start using earth magics to smooth the surface to an almost polished-like state. "I'm currently removing the porous nature so that water doesn't seep out. I'm going to make an upper tank as well that will hold the water and have a spot for a fire to heat it with. Using magic, I'll slide open a panel that lets some water flow out using gravity."

"Which will… flow into this?"

"Not directly," I say. "There's going to be a top to this with holes in it for a drain. We'll be on that, showering. And the water maginiite will purify the water after it comes into here, which will allow us to move the water back up to the upper tank using [Water Mastery] for future use.

"This is just until we can get something better set up," I tell him. "Since I can create water using [Water Mastery], it's not like we're wasting anything. And the water maginiite is something which purifies water better than any other method currently available to use."

I won't fill the upper tank all the way, either. That's since the water will probably freeze overnight if the temperature keeps dropping. If I fill it up all the way, then the water will expand and probably break the stone, which I don't want to deal with. Avoiding breaking the stone is another reason to make the water-touching surfaces unable to absorb water.

"Are you putting a heating thing in the lower tank, too?" Lucas asks. "To keep the water there hot and also maybe our feet?"

"A lower heating system… right," I say. "That wouldn't be a bad idea."

Especially since it would help to keep the shower room itself warm as well.

I get to work on creating a section for that, removing a two-foot-long section of one wall and creating a square leading in from that with more walls which are only an inch and a half in thickness. That's for the fire and in theory, it will still allow the full lower take to heat up just from the heat in the water spreading. I'm not an expert on this sort of thing and I'm not going to pretend to be, either.

With the lower tank's heating space created, I check over everything to make sure it's as smooth as possible on the inside, then put the water maginiite inside of it and step out of the tank. I next create a three-inch-thick floor on top of it, making sure both the top and the bottom are as smooth as possible for everywhere within the tank and that it's sealed onto all of the walls for it.

Then, I create a slope in the floor which leads down to a spot toward the back-right but still near to the center, where I create some holes to let the water drain out. The holes and the sloped area are smoothed down again just to make sure, then I hop off the shower area and take a few steps away.

Lucas puts some wood into the heating section as I examine the front. This needs some extra work for sure. There's something important which I forgot about when planning this in my head.

A gesture of my hand begins the creation of a front area for the shower space. When making this, I was thinking about the area to shower itself, not for where we'll change. This front section is brought out five feet and supported on four-inch-thick posts of stone and is only five feet in width. A space for a fire is created underneath, then stairs are created to lead up to it.

"What's that for?" Lucas asks.

"Changing clothes," I answer. "Realized we might want a spot to store our things while we're showering as well. We can also make a fire underneath it to heat the stone there so that we're still warm when we get out."

The next step is to create walls for the showering space, starting with the shower itself, then the front area. This area is made to be 7' in height, since Lucas and I are both under 6' in height and don't really need too much extra space. I make sure to smooth out the walls for the showering space as well and once this is done, I create some posts in the showering room. Just in case the upper tank is too heavy, so that there's more support for it.

Creating the upper tank is essentially the same as creating the lower tank, except I give it a heating box which stretches all the way across the back wall, but which is also only one foot in height. With all of the upper tank except its lid created, I start using [Water Mastery] to fill it with water. I only fill it up to about a foot and a half in height rather than the full two feet, then I create the lid for it and seal that on.

"Hand me some wood," I tell Lucas. "I'll fill the box up here and light it so the water can start heating up."

"Is that safe while you're on a ladder?" He asks. "Wouldn't it be safer to make stairs leading up there?"

"Probably," I answer. "But I've already used up a full mana potion, so whatever."

Lucas stares at me for a few moments, then sighs and starts handing me wood. Once I've stocked the heating box up here, I light the wood with [Fire Mastery] in a few different spots, then climb down the ladder and move it away.

Just to be certain, I light both of the other heating boxes as well and take a few steps back toexamine at my work.

"It's not the best of jobs," I admit. "But it'll do until we can set up something better. With more knowledge."

"Do you think that'll be possible?" Lucas asks. "I mean, we don't have much information."

"The System Shop sells basic tomes to learn how to do things," I tell him. "Including construction and enchanting. One of the [Class Starter Kit]s I picked out for the incentive was for the [Enchanter] Class and it includes a guide on magical enchanting. The hope is that I'll be able to use the lessons from that to improve a few things. If I'm lucky, it'll give enchantments for heating up things like the water in this and in purifying the water as well. If not… well, at least I tried."

"Okay," Lucas says. "Now… one more question."

"Sure."

"It's starting to get dark out," he says. "And with the changing space having a roof as well… how are we going to see to shower?"

"That… is an excellent question," I tell him. "I'm sure I'll come up with an answer by the time we bring the stuff for the shower and our changes of clothes over here. If not, then we'll have to improvise."

Lucas snickers.