"Hey, Lucas?"

Lucas looks over from where he's preparing a breakfast of a hash meal and raises an eyebrow. There's quite a lot of stuff that he's pulled out from the meal crate and it's made me aware of just why there's so much of a price difference between them and the pouches.

Since I didn't collect any of my kills on our way back home, I was able to put some stuff away and then relax a bit. Instead of actually taking the time to relax, I opened up the tome on magical construction and started reading it while I waited for breakfast.

"I think I know why the incentive for the Dungeon Quest is what it is," I tell Lucas.

"Why's that?" He asks.

"First," I say. "Some basics. Magical construction is just the use of magic to perform construction work. Creating and moving stones to make stone or brick buildings, an application of water magic to evenly dry out trees in a shorter period of time, and so on. It also includes things like enchantments to strengthen the structure, how to seal stone so that air cannot pass through it and is therefore better-insulated, and even how to make doors and windows for buildings. I'll probably need to look through the tome on enchanting to fully put things together."

"So it gives you basics, but not how to do the enchantments?"

"It does give some," I say. "But it would definitely be easier if I actually learned enchanting from both obtaining the Skill and from reading the tome on it."

"Okay," he says. "So magic crystals can be used? I kind of figured that since you have the water maginiite in the shower house."

"More than that," I say. "Improving soil fertility isn't the only thing earth maginiite can do. According to this, when used as a key ingredient for mortar, it enhances the strength," I flip back a few pages. "And here, it gives directions on how to create a form of magical insulation using – get this – air maginiite. And goo from a slime monster. I haven't seen any yet but the fauna guidebook does mention a couple that are apparently in the area."

"Insulation? Really?"

"Yup," I glance down at the tome for a moment. "You can make a seal using those two. Just slather it between two layers at least an eighth of an inch thick and it'll form a barrier which helps prevent passage of air. The thicker the layer, the more effective the seal is, though this recommends using two or more layers rather than one if going past an eighth of an inch in thickness."

"So three layers of wall," he says.

"Yeah," I say. "It does mention that other combinations can provide added effects as well. I'm guessing we could do that for a freezer. The inner layer being with ice maginiite if that exists and ice slime to help cool the inside, and the outer layer with air maginiite and slime to both help keep the cold from escaping but also keep heat from entering."

"Neat," he says. "We could use that for the water tanks for the shower, too."

"Yeah," I say. "Fire seal on the inside to help heat the water and air on the outside to help retain the heat and avoid letting the cold in."

Even if it did enter, it would end up warmed up by the fire seal. That would mean changing how we initially heat the water, though, but that's neither important nor part of what I wanted to tell him.

"The tome doesn't teach about making baths and stuff," I say. "So that's probably something we'll have to figure out over time. However, what's in here should be enough to build a house. A very temporary one for now with a more long term one later, once I know a bit more and we have more materials to work with."

I hold my right palm out toward a branch on the tree by the deck, a little bit above where Lucas is working on lunch. The spell circle I was summoning finishes forming and a [Stone Bullet] appears, shooting forward and blasting the stoneshot squirrel out of the tree before it can attack Lucas.

"Does it say anything about that?" Lucas asks as the now-dead squirrel falls to the ground beside him.

"Not really," I tell him. "There is a note at one point mentioning placing a barrier around the property, and to learn about barrier enchantments for more information."

"…helpful."

"Extremely," I agree. "So it's possible, but we don't know how. That said, the trick I used on the shower house to keep the water in should also act as a bit of a barrier to restrict airflow through the walls, and the book does have directions on how to make doors. Once the very short-term house is built, we should have a safer place to stay."

"Okay," Lucas looks around the yard for a few moments, then returns his attention to breakfast. "Even with your gardens and the temporary shower house and the shed and the trees, there's still plenty of space to run around here. Are you going to build it in the yard?"

"No," I close the tome and set it on the table, then get up so I can put the squirrel in the butchering station. "My current house is getting destroyed by natural magic, anyway, so I'm just going to demolish it and move the rubble. Will take some Mana and time, but probably not too long."

The other spot that would make sense for it is where the road is, since the lot across the street doesn't have a tree close to it. There's more space and it'd be easier, but I want to save that spot for a more permanent home.

"We'll need to remove the stored items that are converted first," I tell Lucas when I return to him. "So that none of that gets destroyed. The main issue will be the door to the new house, since we don't have any wood on us. I could cut down one of the trees here for that and use magic to prepare it the way the tome instructs, though. Just not sure I want to."

"Which tree?" Lucas glances at the one by the deck, then turns his attention back to breakfast. "Breakfast is almost done."

He probably wants that tree gone so that squirrels stop trying to attack him from there while he's cooking or relaxing.

"The one directly in front of the house," I answer. "It'll give more space as well, I'd just need to move the garden in front. Or destroy it."

"Okay," Lucas says. "Breakfast is ready."

We move breakfast to the deck, then sit and start eating. The entree is a form of hash, with cubed-small potatoes, egg, crumbled breakfast sausage, some herbs, red bell pepper, and a few other things. On the side are cinnamon-glazed apples cooked in a skillet and banana bread made in a dutch oven, with an icing to slather on them. Since the directions on the kits come with directions for dutch ovens, Lucas only needed help with the heating portion of that.

Using some of the milk I bought at the System Shop and hot cocoa powder I already had stored, we drinking hot cocoa with breakfast. Water would have been suitable but we chose to go with milk for the added flavor and creaminess.

We finish eating breakfast, then Lucas gets to work on cleaning the dishes while I start removing everything that can be saved out of the house and into the back yard. That results in quite a few things taking up space here and I don't want it all just sitting on the ground, but there's not much to do about that at the moment unless I want to waste Mana.

Lucas begins helping with this as well, including moving stuff off of the deck as needed. That actually makes this go faster as I'm able to just bring the stuff to the deck and Lucas moves it to the yard.

Once everything that is safe for the area is in the yard – and not on the deck – I stand back and hold my right palm out in front of me. A greyish-white spell circle begins to form in front of my palm and when it completes, there's a poomf accompanied by a notification in my vision.

Before I can read what's in the vision, the spot between where my deck and one of its posts connect together explodes inward, away from me.

You have learned [Air Blast].

"T-that's one of the spells t-t-the d-d-deer u-u-used a-a-against m-m-me," Lucas stammers with more than a little bit of fear in his voice.

I hadn't thought about how just seeing the spell in use might trigger some of the trauma of what he went through yesterday.

"Yup," I say. "It's called [Air Blast] and I acquired the Skill for it just now. Memorized the spell circle for it while fighting one yesterday," I look at him and find that he's turned pale and is shaky. "You don't have to watch if it's hard for you. I know it might be frightening after what happened yesterday. This is faster and safer than with degrading tools, though."

"N-no," Lucas says. "B-b-b-but you m-m-m-memorized the spell c-c-circle while f-f-f-fighting one of t-t-t-the d-d-deer?"

"Yup," I look back to my house. "Spell takes a full second longer to cast at base than the bullet spells and a little bit more Mana, but it's more destructive. Might use it against them sometime just to see how they like it."

"Y-y-you're ins-s-sane."

"So I've been told," I grin at him. "Getting back to work."

It costs me a full bottle of mana potion and a half to reduced my house and deck to a pile using [Air Blast]s. Doing this reminds me that we completely forgot about buying more potions at the System Shop earlier.

Whoops. Writing up lists is definitely important.

Taking a small break from that, I teach Lucas [Air Bullet]. He struggles a little bit with the spell but manages to learn it after about fifteen minutes. That awards him with the [Elemental Mage] Class, then we use a wheelbarrow and [Air Mastery] to transport the rubble a little bit down the street when going right from mine. All of it gets dumped into the yard two houses down, just to give us more space.

We also rip out the stuff buried in the ground as well, since that would just cause things to collapse as it dissolved away. The wires would only create smaller holes but thinks like pipes would create much larger ones.

Filling in the pit can wait until after lunch, though.

"Jeez," Lucas plops himself onto the ground once we're done. "That was a lot more intense work than I expected."

"It was less than I expected," I admit. "Was thinking it'd take more even when using magic, but using magic turned out to be a lot more effective than I anticipated. Let's eat lunch and after that, we'll work on building the-what now?"

"Huh?" Lucas gives me a confused look.

"These gods…"

You have received a special Quest incentive. [Dungeon Loot Storage Ring] Begin the [Ezrelnim Island Grove] within the next 24 hours and before building yourself a home (storage for food and supplies is acceptable) to receive your incentive.

The god is going to give me another storage ring, and this one seems like it might not be temporary. Something which allows me to store loot from within Dungeons. Just like I can tell what "Varies" means in the gods-granted Quests, I just"know" that the ring allows for storing anything I take from inside a Dungeon, as long as it fits within the space inside.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

What's curious is that the god wants me to go there within the next day despite my inability to gain Levels and current attempt at gaining a Perk. Either taking on the Dungeon will be fast enough that it won't affect the attempt for the Perk too badly or it'll reset my progress if I drink healing potions in there.

The fact that they want me to go into the Dungeon before building myself a house suggests there's something in there which I might be able to make of use in the grove. More wood? I've got plenty of it here. There must be something important there, though. The god was definitely reacting to my thoughts.

I really want to know why they seem to be more active than Grandma's explanation suggested. This isn't just "nudging" me for stuff with a Quest, it's issuing me Quests and incentives to get me to do them or in a certain timeframe.

Something is definitely going on here and I want to know what. If only the gods would just tell me instead of doing things this way.

"Hellooooo," Lucas waves a hand in front of my face, startling me. "There we go. Been calling your name but you got pretty lost in thought. What did the gods do now? And why are you looking at me like that?"

"You didn't stutter one bit there," I give him a kiss on the cheek. "Nice."

"C-C-Carteeeer!"

"Alright, alright," I chuckle. "The god or gods seem to want me to try the [Ezrelnim Island Grove] Dungeon within the next twenty-four hours, and they'll give me a [Dungeon Loot Storage Ring] if I do. To be received upon entering."

Lucas looks down at the ring on my right ring finger. It's the temporary storage ring I was given yesterday after accepting the incentive for the residency Quest, though its description is different from then. Now, it just reads as a "darkness steel" ring with a trace of darkness magic in it. I expected it to just vanish after expiring rather than changing, but I guess I got to at least keep it.

Sadly, it really did lose the ability to store items when it expired.

What I'm not going to mention to Lucas is that I can actually tell from the reward notice that the ring is going to change back to being a storage ring if I go into the Dungeon within the next twenty-four hours. That doesn't matter as much as the knowledge that I've been given an incentive, so there's no reason to mention it.

"M-m-maybe they're upset you p-put it on the r-right instead of t-t-the left?"

"Nah," I say. "But I really wish Grandma were here. I'll ask her about the flood of Quests and incentives next time Fea comes by because it's worrying me a bit. That said, one of the conditions for this also requires that I also don't start building myself a home before going in, though I can build a storage thing for the stuff now in the yard."

"W-what could be in there that's important?" Lucas asks.

"Not sure," I answer. "But I suspect there's something that will be useful for building a home."

"A-any idea what?" Lucas asks.

"No," I answer. "But I do have an idea of where it might be."

"Really?" He asks. "Where? Why?"

"The sports park," I answer. "It's a large open space with clusters and lines of trees scattered around it. A grove can be just a light or moderate distribution of trees with no underground. Technically, the trees near the play area would count as a grove, just a tiny one. With the ponds there, you've got the water factor. The [Zorvinax Forest Caves] Dungeon is on a heavily-wooded lot. Caves don't have much to do that with that but trees do."

"W-what if it's not there?" Lucas asks.

"Then it's not," I shrug. "But the god seems to think I'd be able to find it within a day, so I want to at least check somewhere that might have a chance of being it. After lunch, I'll build the storage for the supplies, then would you be cool if we checked there? If we head west off my street, we can get there in about ten minutes unless something particularly strong attacks."

Lucas thinks about that for a few moments, then nods.

"Okay," he says. "T-that makes sense. T-there may be m-monsters at the p-park that w-we haven't encountered y-yet."

"I know," I say. "So we'll be as careful as necessary and I'll protect you. Don't worry."

Lucas nods, then gets up and brushes himself off.

"L-let's have lunch n-now."

Rather than making something new for it or using the leftovers from dinner, we try out the meal pouches. I go with one that has spaghetti and meatballs from my first [Starter Kit] while Lucas pulls out one of the sloppy joe pouches from his own [Starter Kit].

This does create more stuff which needs stored since the tokens pop out all of the pouches when removed from their boxes, but we'll deal with that later. Right now, we want something other than last night's dinner or monster meat but which doesn't require too much cooking.

The meal pouches come in what seem to be brown paper pouches that have a slight feel similar to parchment paper. They're sealed on both ends and come with directions on their fronts for how to prepare them (in addition to what's inside them).

Interestingly, the directions include two versions for activating the sigils on each container inside. First is simply touching the sigil on a container and saying "Activate". It drains 3 Mana but activates the enchantment. Second is to push 1 Mana into the sigil, and there are directions on how to manipulate one's Mana in order to do this.

"Why does it cost less?" Lucas asks.

"Probably because one method requires it to tap into your magic," I guess. "Adding in extra power needed to do so, or something like this. When you learned [Lesser Heal], did you gain [Mana Manipulation] or [Mana Sense]?"

"No," he answers. "I just… knew how to cast the spell. I'm not really manipulating my Mana directly, I don't think? It's hard to explain. But once you taught me how to do it, it's like something in my process changed, allowing me to directly manipulate my Mana into the spell circle."

Not the greatest of explanations, but I understand what he's saying. Magic learned through the scrolls alone give you their related mastery Skill but they don't teach you how to manipulate your Mana. You're more of "activating" the Skill rather than "casting" it.

However, now that Lucas knows how to cast the spell properly, the simple "activation" aspect is gone, allowing him to rely on his actual casting rather than the System for the entire thing. There will still be some parts the System is used for – like reducing the casting speed – but it's his casting ability at work for the spell circle formation.

"Exactly," I say. "If the System really is here to help us, then it would make sense that they would want to encourage us to learn how to use and learn magics without the scrolls. That's probably why they included the tomes as an option, too."

Lucas looks at his meal pouch.

"So the reason it has directions for how to manipulate one's Mana," he looks at me again. "Is so that people actually have a way to learn how even without studying magic through a tome."

"And if they know how to manipulate their Mana," I say. "Then they can do things like I do – learn spells by observing ones cast around them. It also lets them learn how to activate enchantments that need it but don't have the cheat of just saying a phrase to activate it."

"Which is something else that can help us," he realizes. "Since not everyone who makes magic items might know how to do that."

"Or it might be more costly in terms of resources to make those," I say. "Thus making them more difficult or expensive to craft. Or both."

Lucas stares at his meal pouch for several seconds in silence.

"You're right," he looks at me. "All of this is suspicious and I can see why you're skeptical even while trusting your grandma."

"Yeah," I tear open my pouch. "But right now, there isn't much we can do to figure things out so we should just roll with some parts."

Lucas nods and tears open his pouch, then starts pulling things out of it.

For my meal pouch, the food portions are held in boxes that seem to be made out of a thick, paper-like material. Each box has a lid that seems like it's glued on, but it will come off once the food is ready (or I could rip it off now, but I don't). The lemonade is in a slishe bottle with a screw-on lid. Each separate container has a sigil on it for activating the enchantments.

Also inside of the pouches are the necessary utensils that seem to be made out of thick paper.

I activate the sigils for the box with the spaghetti and the one with the breadsticks, which begin to glow when I do. Based on the directions, the process takes ninety seconds once the sigils are activated.

It doesn't say that they'll be heated or cooled as needed but I'm going to assume they are since I can't think of another reason to have enchantments on the containers, especially on the slishe bottle for the lemonade.

As I wait for my food to be ready, Lucas waves to get my attention.

"I have an extra box just for the buns and it's going to come out toasted."

"Neat," I say.

"Yeah," he agrees. "What do you think the food is like? Just dehydrated stuff that's rehydrated?"

"We can find out," I say. "My spaghetti just finished."

The lid for the spaghetti detached once it was ready, meaning I don't need to peel or rip it off at all. I move the lid to the side and find within the box-bowl food that looks like it was only just cooked inside, the noodles topped with a thick red sauce and four large meatballs on top of that. Steam rises up from the food, which has a slight shine to it like something freshly-made would.

"Lucas?" I say as I notice something.

"Yeah?"

"There's spatial magic at work here."

"What do you mean?" He peeks in. "Oh, huh. That looks fresh, not dehydrated and rehydrated."

"We weren't looking at the boxes," I move the spaghetti box onto the pouch it came in. "It's small enough to fit into the pouch but there's no way this would have fit in there. Not with the other things. And look – I'm fairly certain my lemonade is bigger now."

Lucas looks at his bottle, which contains root beer, then at my bottle. He hasn't activated the sigil on his drink yet but that actually helps with the comparisons.

Both bottles were the same size when we pulled them out yet mine's now larger.

"I don't think the sigils are actually heating or cooling things," I say.

"They're in a stasis," Lucas realizes. "And activating the sigil ends the stasis and also ends the spell that compresses their size."

How the spell will stay fueled over time, I'm not entirely sure. Since these are apparently made by the gods, however, it doesn't matter. They follow the rules the gods made, not the logic that I'd try to find in them.

"The ninety seconds must be to make sure it happens safely," I tell him. "Makes me curious about what would happen if we didn't follow the directions and just opened things."

"Probably burst the excess out or break the container or something," he says. "Please don't test it."

"I wasn't planning on doing so right now."

"C-C-Carter! N-n-never!"

I just laugh and open up he box with my garlic bread sticks in it. Much like the spaghetti, both bread sticks are steaming in the cold. Lucas's food is ready so he assembles his sloppy joe, which comes with a side of coleslaw and another of garlic mashed potatoes topped with cheese.

We dig into our meals, with me rubbing my bread sticks in the sauce for the noodles to add a little bit of extra flavor. For some reason, Lucas tries adding a little bit of his coleslaw to the sloppy joe, only to decide that's not a flavor he likes (though he does like the coleslaw by itself). I don't touch my salad until the rest is done as I prefer eating the salad last when eating pasta.

Once we're done with our main meals, we activate the containers for our desserts. My chocolate-chip cookie is three inches in width and almost half an inch in thickness, making it quite the big boy. Lucas gets a slice of apple pie that looks damn delicious when it's ready.

"Half of my cookie for half of your pie?" I offer.

"Deal," Lucas immediately responds. "That thing looks hella good."

I split my cookie in half while Lucas uses his fork to cut his pie in half, then we swap halves and dig in. While the meal pouches don't offer us high-quality food, it's not bad in taste. The cookie and pie are both delicious.

"Makes me want to try and make a pie," Lucas looks at the tree. "Hope you don't mind, but I tested an apple earlier and everything is definitely unaffected by the cold."

"I think they are," I tell him. "But the Mana that's flowing into them from the soil is preventing it from taking hold. At least, that's my theory on it. That at least benefits us as it means the crops aren't dying on their stems. Branches. Whatever. We'll still need to harvest. I have the other ingredients to make apple pie so if you want to do that tonight, we can do it."

"Cool," he says, then stretches out on the ground. "What now?"

"Let's take a few minutes to rest," I tell him. "I'll clean up. You just relax. The next part of today's project is all me, anyway."

I take care of the dishes, then pick out the spot for the temporary storage building, toward the right-hand side of the house when facing it from the back yard here. Creating the structure isn't too difficult with the use of [Earth Mastery] as it's just a floor, four walls, and a ceiling. I make it twelve feet on each side, along with two support beams running across the ceiling, each with two support pillars.

Once I'm sure everything is sealed, I start creating shelving using [Earth Mastery] and Lucas starts bringing things into here to store them.

"How stable do you think the shelves are?" Lucas asks as I create the last of them.

Each shelf has four legs and a series of trays to act as the shelves. I went with four legs for the best stability but I can understand his concern. There's some from me as well but I'm not an expert on this sort of thing so it's not like I can just make sure they're perfect.

"Should be enough," I say. "But let's not test it beyond just storing things on them. I made them thinner so they'll be lighter, so they should be fine as long as nothing slams into them or too much weight is put on them."

"Alright," he says as we exit the building. "Going to cut down the tree to make a door? Wait, we don't have hinges."

"The construction guide tome has information for that," I say. "But no. I'll just seal it with [Earth Mastery] for now. It technically recommends something else for a stone roof, too, but this will do for now. Hopefully. It's all temporary, anyway."

As in the sort of temporary where I can make something better tonight.

"Alright," Lucas says.

We finish moving our supplies into the storage building, then focus on making sure we're ready for the trip to the sports park.

"What do you think is most important?" Lucas asks. "Beyond just what you're keeping in the backpacks?"

"Let's do two [Basic Healing Potion]s," I say. "And two [Basic Mana Recovery Potion]s. This isn't for going into the Dungeon, just for traveling, just in case. Also, that's two of each of them for each of our bags, not between them."

Lucas nods, then we grab the stated items. I also add more twine to our packs just in case, then we do one more check of our packs to make sure we're ready to head out.

"Ready?" I ask Lucas.

"N-no," he answers, then takes a shaky breath. "B-but let's g-go."

"Alright," I say. "And remember – if a monster's attacking, it's okay to hide behind me. I'll protect you."

"T-thanks."

"Let's get going."