"What was the point of that?" Chance asks.

"Hm?" I look at him as I cap the bottle.

"You just drank some aura potion before healing potion," he says. "What was the point of that? The aura potion was a waste and it seemed pretty deliberate rather than an accident."

Both potions are similar in color so it can be easy to mistake them for the other if they aren't labeled and checking their information in the System doesn't happen. Chance is right, though – I deliberately drank aura potion before taking a couple of doses of healing potion to restore my body some.

"Just an experiment," I tell him. "Want to do it while the others are in the Dungeon so there are fewer people telling me I'm wasting potion."

With three of them gone, that means that there's only one around who can tell me that and I'll have an easier time ignoring the comments.

"And this experiment is… what, exactly?"

"Know how we all have [Mana-Infused Body]?" I ask and he nods. "I want to see if we can do something similar with Aura. Both are energies within us, after all, so it would stand to reason that if we can infuse our body with one, we can infuse our body with the other."

The name of the Perk I have now is telling about the actual thing that earns us the Perk. As our body heals over and over, it becomes infused with magical energy. That's part of why it builds up a resistance to Mana Burn.

Because this is an effect from the ambient Mana assaulting our bodies from all sides, then an energy that's spread throughout our body in a manner similar to how the ambient magical energy is seeping into us could theoretically do the same thing. This is just a suspicion, however, which is why I want to test it.

If I can get something like an [Aura-Infused Body] Perk, it should increase my resistance to Mana Burn even further.

"I guess that's fair," Chance says. "But I won't believe it unless it happens."

"Understandable," I shrug. "Guess it's time to get to work."

Chance sits at the table and watches as I demolish the temporary house, then use earth magics to move the rubble to another space, which used to be a house three doors down from me. Thanks to everything old having been dissolved, however, it's now mostly just a semi-shallow pit in the ground.

I return to my lot and start looking over the papers that Chance and I drafted up over the past two weeks. Neither of us are architects but we can at least do basic plans. Amateur-level ones created using just the knowledge we've acquired from our tomes.

The job doesn't need to be professional or even permanent, it just needs to work for us for now. We can sort out a more stable, secure home later.

I set up a new fire pit for Chance to work on, this one further into the front yard of my lot than where the old house was located. Chance and I work together to heft a large cauldron onto that and he works on making a fire for it while I use [Earth Mastery] to create a large basin next to his brewing station which I then fill with water, a larger piece of water maginiite placed inside of it to ensure the water within stays pure.

Now that the brewing station has been set up, Chance starts moving over the items he needs for his job and I begin tearing out part of the ground where the road and the yard across the street were. Rather than building the new house where the old one was, I'm giving us more yard space, and this section is a little bit more clear of trees when considering the added growth in the existing ones. We did have to rip out some that tried to grow in this space as well but that was yesterday's work.

The increased growth is still going on, so we wanted to make sure there would be as little in the way of today's work as possible.

With a one-foot-deep hole dug out, I compact the ground and continue refilling it until it's compacted and still only one foot in depth. Then, I head onto another lot where we've stored items. It's the one which used to be the left-hand neighbor of the lot across the street of mine.

Since nothing is around anymore and it's only me, my brothers, and my friends here, I've laid claim to all of it.

Some of the preparations that we did over the last two weeks were making and preparing materials. Lucas, Wyatt, and my brothers contributed to this and I'm going to take a guess and say that the trio who went into the Dungeon might have also done so in order to get out of helping with the actual construction bit.

One of the items prepared are one-foot-thick stone slabs. All of them were made by me as I can make the strongest ones thanks to my higher Magic than the rest of them. I'm not quite at double the Magic that Lucas has but I'm nearing it, and he's the closest to me in strength.

These slabs were soaked in an alchemical solution that Chance and I worked up, though my water magics helped it seep and absorb into them faster so that we didn't have to deal with it freezing in the cold nights. It took me about a day to get the technique down but now, I can infuse stone with our brews without too much difficulty.

Using [Earth Mastery], I bring the first of the slabs over to the pit in the ground.

"Ready?" I ask Chance as I carefully set the slab in. "Or need more time?"

"Give me about ten more minutes," he tells me. "Then it'll be ready."

"Alright," I say, then head over and grab another slab to bring over.

Rather than placing this one into the pit, I set it to the side, beginning to transfer all of the slabs over so that they're closer. I also begin bringing over and stacking bricks using my [Earth Mastery], though those are faster to move thanks to me being able to put them into a wheelbarrow and haul over a full load. Moving the slabs one at a time took more effort and Mana.

When Chance is ready, we pull out the concrete-like mixture that he's brewed up and slather it onto one of the edges of the first slab, then I move another slab into the pit and press it against that until there's about an eighth of an inch between them. The excess seal is removed and slathered across the other end of the second slab, and this process is repeated over and over. Soon, we have our version of a foundation, thirty feet long and twenty feet wide.

The concrete-like mixture is our own recipe, made using a mixture of local materials and stuff from earth slimes from within the Dungeon. I had to head back in the other day to grab more or we wouldn't have had enough for everything we're doing for this house. The solution that I infused the slabs and bricks with was a strengthening one and the stone slabs have a very thin coating of a seal on the bottom and non-connected edges to prevent water absorption.

A much better base than the temporary shelter I constructed, which was just a building of stone I conjured and sealed together with [Earth Mastery]. A floor, four walls, a slab roof, and some support pillars, sort of like the shower house.

Chance gets to work on brewing up a new mortar mix, then we use that for the bricks. The use of [Earth Mastery] speeds this process by a lot and allows for greater precision. Two doorways, as well as space for windows, are created as I build up the house. As I apply and place the bricks, Chance continues to brew up more mortar mix, transferring the new batch into the wheelbarrow once the wheelbarrow is nearly empty.

With the bricks magically-strengthened and the brewed mortar also magically-strengthened, the walls should be fairly sturdy. However, this isn't all there is for the house. We want this thing extra sturdy, as well as having a barrier against air to keep warmth in during the colder times and heat out during the warmer times.

Rather than getting started on that, however, Chance and I stop for lunch. We eat leftover spaghetti from last night's dinner and relax a bit after washing the dishes.

"Think they went into the Dungeon to avoid helping out with the house?" Chance asks.

"Probably," I shrug. "But it's fine. The two of us are handling this fine and now that we're in a rhythm, we can get the rest of the walls done pretty easily. It's the roof that will take us some extra time, but we do already have everything cut and ready."

"Yeah," he stands and stretches. "Let's get started on the seal."

We both stretch a bit, then go to the cauldron and start a new fire underneath it. Once the fire is ready, we start grinding up ingredients. I grind both mana crystals and air maginiite while Chance grinds air slime cores and an antler section from a breezestep deer. Chance switches to grinding up some herbs from my garden and found elsewhere in the area while I take over grinding the cores and antler with my greater Strength once I finish with the crystals.

"Do you remember the ratios?" I ask as I refill the water basin. "I can grab the tome if needed."

"I wrote it down," he tells me. "Let me go grab the papers."

Chance hurries over to the back yard area and grabs some papers, then returns to the brewing station and looks through the sheets until he finds the right one.

"Here we go," he says. "You're using water magic to apply it, right?"

"Yeah," I answer. "It only takes Level 2 in the mastery to manipulate them and my [Water Mastery] is Level 3."

I do have Level 2 [Earth Mastery], but so does Chance and he's the one doing most of the application work for the mortar brew even as he mixes up more. This frees me up to focusing on just putting in the bricks.

"I'll get started on the seal goo," Chance tells me. "Will probably be about twenty to thirty minutes before it's done, I think."

"That's fine," I tell him. "I need to bring over more bricks, anyway. I'll get the second fire set up."

I get to work on that while Chance makes the goo and once it's ready, we very carefully move the cauldron to the opening for the back door, which is the closer side to where Chance's station is set up. The cauldron is both heavy and too wide for the doorway, so we can't bring it in. We need the sealing goo to stay hot, however, so it's put over a second fire I made.

Once it's in place, I begin using [Water Mastery] to pull out the goo and begin applying it in a layer about one-eighth of an inch in thickness to the interior walls. This is the air barrier seal that will interfere with any air that would manage to pass through the bricks and mortar. Not much should due to the brew I seeped into the brick but we want to be extra-sure since it's still dropping to around freezing at night right now.

The next step isn't to add in the bricks but the channels for the doors. The back door for the house is on the left-hand side when facing the house from the back, while the front door is in the center of the front. They were both positioned to be fully on a stone slab in order to ensure I wouldn't need to work through the mortar brew on the foundation too much. I'll still need to, just less than if I didn't ensure this.

On the inside of the brick wall, I use [Earth Mastery] to create a channel three inches thick and one-and-a-half inches deep in the ground at each door. It begins two inches left of the door when faced from the inside and continues along the wall from there to three feet to the right of the door when faced from the inside.

Along each lengthwise side of the rectangular groove, I create a series of holes, each a quarter of an inch deep and three-eighths of an inch in diameter. Each hole is paired with another on the opposite side, and they're all just-barely above the bottom of the channels. With the help of [Earth Mastery] to actually get them in, I insert wooden rods a quarter of an inch thick and an inch and a quarter in length. The rods, too, have been infused with a strengthening and resistance brew.

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Since we don't have hinges, the doors we'll be using are sliding doors that run on those rods in the channels. The bricks are a little bit more than three inches in width/depth and the doors we made are nearly that much in thickness, so it should be a good fit. At three-and-a-half feet in width, the doors will close fully and when they're opened up all the way, will have a little bit protruding into the three-foot opening.

Now that the grooves and rollers for the doors are set up, I get to work on putting in the second brick layer using the mortar that Chance brews up for me. Another layer of air-seal is put up, then the doors are put in as a third and final layer of brick is.

The doors aren't too difficult to install, but they're a fair bit heavy. We made them using two layers of boards, a sealing goo between them both to hold them together and to create a barrier against air passage. Wooden pegs were also inserted to hold the doors together, sealed in with more sealing goo as well.

Combined with the doors resting in the channels and extending past the sides of the opening and up into the wall section above the opening, there should be a pretty effective block for air to enter through them. A handle on each side of each door allows us to open and close them without issue.

The main problem would be that there's no lock, but that's not something we're going to worry about for now. None of us knew how to make them, we're not even sure if there are other survivors still here, and the construction guide didn't offer any advice so once the doors are installed, I just keep working on building the walls.

"Alright," I say once the walls are finally done. "Doors work fine and the walls are done."

"Yeah," Chance says. "But there's still more to do. Fireplace and chimney before or after dinner?"

This is taking quite awhile and might have been better as a two-day project, but magic is definitely helping to speed things up here.

"Before," I answer. "That way, we can focus solely on the roof after dinner."

"Alright," Chance says. "Let me get the mortar batch for that brewed up."

The alchemy recipe for the mortar we'll be using in the fireplace and chimney is a little bit different from the rest since we don't want it to block the airflow. Installing a fireplace is so that we can warm the house. The bricks I made using my magic should be at least as resistant as normal bricks and that's before factoring in the strengthening solution I infused them with.

I bring in a stone slab that's three inches thick, thirty-eight inches wide, and four feet long. That gets sealed into the floor using a mortar brew. We place it on the left-hand side of the back wall, opposite the center from where the back door is.

This isn't central for the house and keeps it away from the two doors, which I hope will reduce the odds of a fire in it being affected by a cold wind blown in when a door is opened. Since we have the air-seal in the walls, the heat should have a harder time escaping so it doesn't really need to be fully central in the house, either.

With the base in place, I begin creating the fireplace itself. It's given a two-layer-thick brick treatment for both the actual fireplace itself and the chimney, and the mantel is just a plain slab. Nothing fancy for the decoration, which Chance is bummed about, but neither of us are that good at manipulating stone with [Earth Mastery] yet and neither of us are stonecarvers.

Once the fireplace is finished, I prepare us a proper meal using a meal crate. It's just the other beef stroganoff one from my [Starter Pack], though I make some caramel to swirl into the brownie. The caramel adds a little bit of extra flavor to change things up a little.

With all of the work Chance and I did today, we stuff ourselves full, nothing leftover by the time we finish eating.

"You do the dishes while I handle the windows, okay?" I suggest to my brother.

"Alright," he says. "Good luck."

The windows were something Chance and I prepared yesterday. Creating the glass with [Earth Mastery], shaping it into panes, mixing up a clear air barrier to seal them with so that they're still mostly transparent, and framing them with alchemically-treated wood. That was something we knew we'd need a lot of time to get down right so we worked on it ahead of time.

I mix up another seal brew to use as I install the windows into their openings. They aren't designed to be opened so it's mostly just squeezing the frames into place. It's a tight fit, indicating I measured maybe a little too well when creating the holes for them.

Thanks to the walls being more than nine inches thick, the windows are actually pretty small in comparison, thickness-wise. Their frames are only three inches thick. I put the windows at the outer edge of the walls so that we have a shelf inside, then use the seal goo I brewed up for it to fill in the final gaps.

That's all smoothed out, then I step back and examine my work. A good job.

Chance joins me once all of the windows are installed, then we get to work on installing the roof. A support beam is stretched across the center of the house along the length, supporting posts installed at either end to hold it up. From that, we start creating the triangular frame for the roof, using wooden plugs and some sealing goo in place of nails since we don't have those.

Once that's fully set up, we install the guttering. It's made of branches we carved trenches into and then treated with a brew, so all we have to do now is make sure it's measured and cut right and then seal it together. I make sure it's installed properly as well as the flow-away drain portion of it, then climb back up onto the roof to double-check the seal for the gutters up here.

It all looks good, so I think that's where we have to call it tonight. The sun's already set by this point so it's a bit too dark to continue.

"Seems we won't be able to finish tonight," I stretch a bit, making sure not to fall off the partially-finished roof as I look down to my brother, where he's starting to clean out the cauldron. "Probably would've had enough time if we didn't go to the Dungeon and if those three hadn't gone in."

"Want to stop now?" Chance asks. "I have a solution to the light problem. Had a suspicion those three were going to flee from building so decided to hide it until now, but I finished it on Wednesday. Well, at night."

"Oh?" I raise an eyebrow.

"Give me a minute," Chance walks away from the brewing station and starts rummaging through some stuff, eventually pulling out a trio of items.

"What are those?" I ask as he brings them over.

They look to be wooden cylinders with reed handles and bluish-white runes. Instead of answering, Chance sets them down by the cauldron, then grabs some mana crystals and returns. He pulls off the top of one and inserts a mana crystal into a slot inside and the runes on the outside begin to glow.

"Lanterns!" He proudly holds it up. "We don't need stuff with light magics to make enchantments that produce light so I worked on these so that we can see at night. They aren't the best but I'll improve the design over time."

"Oh, cool," I say. "I was going to look into making lanterns after we finished building the first house. Yeah, we can keep working. I think it should be safe, anyway."

Chance activates a second lantern, then passes both of them up to me. He lights a second, then gets to work brewing up the seal for the roof. I jump down after setting up my lanterns, then I use the wheelbarrow to bring over the shingles.

My brother spent threedays working on making them, all carved from wood using [Air Mastery]. There's not any fine detailing to them so they were fairly easy to make, even with some of them being curved pieces of wood (for capping the join at the very peak).

He's a madlad, but I can't really judge him for it. I memorize spell circles I see and even let monsters nearly finish theirs just so I can learn them.

Chance mixes up the roofing sealing goo while I do this and once it's ready, I begin installing the tiles. They're sealed to each other and the battens in a process which takes nearly three hours from start to finish, fully helped with the use of magic.

That's not all there is to do, however, so I return inside and climb up into the rafters, then use more of the seal to completely coat the underside of the roof, making sure the barrier is as even and complete as possible. A special mortar brew is then mixed up for where the chimney passes through the roof and applied and finally… Chance starts working on another sealing brew as I bring more wood over.

We could end the day here but neither of us want to. There's really only one thing left for us for the construction itself and we'd like to do it now, just to get the construction over and done with.

"This is a bit eerie," Chance says once I have to wait for him to finish."Nothing's attacking us at night."

"Yeah," I look around. "We normally have those damn owls coming after us if we're still outside this late."

There's an owl which lets out its hoots at night and when it does, those who hear it are lulled to sleep. I've killed four of them in the past week and I'm fairly certain there are more here.

"Maybe they feel less confident when you have fewer people to protect?" Chance asks. "It takes you three shots to kill them so they have more time to come after someone. With just me and you, however, I can just stay close to you and they'd have to deal with that."

"Maybe," I look at the trees around us. "But things are far too quiet. It's giving me the chills. And that hasn't happened once since the Mana Flood."

My instincts don't warn me of any near danger so I'm hoping it's just a quiet night for some reason. However, it can't be because of some sort of sense of danger or something – the owls can tell they have a chance at killing me. As long as they can get some hits in, anyway.

So them not taking the opportunity is a bit worrying.

"Yeah," Chance agrees. "But let's just hope it's nothing bad and we're just getting a break."

"Let's," I say. "How long until the seal's ready?"

"Five, maybe ten more minutes," he answers.

"Okay," I say.

I build a fire in the fireplace so that the interior begins to heat up. It's pretty cold outside now and while Chance is able to produce the sealing goo despite that, it'll be better if we get the inside heated up so that we're putting it down in warmth.

Once the sealing goo is ready and the inside of the house has warmed up some, we begin the final stage of the construction of the house: installing the floor. There's no way we're walking around on concrete so Lucas, Wyatt, Chance, and I made flooring planks using a mixture of wood, magic, and some alchemy.

The sealing goo both glues it down and seals it further, creating a barrier that moisture can't get through. The treatment we gave the wood also makes it water-resistant, though it did give it a faintly bluish-green tint. That goes for all of the wood used in the construction so far, though, so at least it matches.

"There we go," I say once the flooring is installed. "And now the house is complete! Construction-wise, at least."

"There's still plenty more to do," Chance says. "But yeah. Fuck has today been a long one."

"I offered to end things after the sun went down, but you said to keep going," I say.

"Fair enough," he yawns. "But fuck am I tired now."

"Let's get some stuff moved in," I say. "Like our blankets."

"Where are they?" He asks.

"I moved everything from the temp. shelter into the storage house," I tell him. "Let's set up our beds."

We move all of the blankets into the house, Chance spreading out his to the right of the fireplace while I set up mine up to the left. Since it's my house, I get to pick out where I sleep first and I'm picking the spot that will be less-affected by the opening of the back door.

Without beds, we're just using the comforters we were able to buy from the System. Chance and Collin are each using two for their beds and one for covering themselves. Lucas, Wyatt, and I are snuggling at night so we're using six for our bed, but still just layered completely on each other instead of beside. That provides extra cushioning for us, and it seems that Chance has decided to steal his twin's bed blankets to add more cushioning to his.

"Can I put more wood in the fire before bed?" Chance asks instead of responding to my smirk. "Or is that too risky?"

"I built the fireplace with fires in mind," I tell him. "That's why there's an extra eight inches of stone in front of the opening. Just make sure the wood you add is in the spot meant for it and we should be fine."

"Alright."

I bring in more wood for the fire and Chance adds some to it, then I snort.

"What?" He asks.

"The others," I tell him. "Glanced at the Party stats. Their Aura and Mana is still fluctuating a little. Wyatt just took a few hits but it looks like Lucas is healing him. Odds they forgot that there's no daylight cycle in the Dungeon and are waiting for night?"

"That's a bet I won't take," he snorts. "Yeah, they probably forgot."

"Probably," I say. "I'll clean out the cauldron and take care of removing the temp. alchemy station. You go ahead and get some sleep."

"You sure?" He asks. "You did a lot more moving around than I did, Carter. You're probably even more exhausted than I am. That can wait until morning. Er. Daylight morning."

"I know," I tell him. "Get some sleep, man."

Chance nods, then bundles up under the blankets and quickly passes out. He's right about me being exhausted beyond belief but I still want to get this cleaned up anyway.

As I do, a notification appears in my vision, proving a theory I decided to test today right.

Aura permeates the bodies of all living things but due to constant damage suffered throughout and the Aura which seeped in while you healed, your body has become tougher and more resilient. Now stronger than ever before, you have earned the [Aura-Infused Body] Perk.

It doesn't apply retroactively so there's no immediately-noticeable benefit to it, but I hope it also improves my resistance to Mana Burn.

I call up its information to see what the System says.

[Aura-Infused Body] Your body has been damaged all throughout and has absorbed its own Aura, increasing its ability to hold it and strengthening your resiliency and might. Your resistance to Mana Burn has been increased. [Per Status Level]: +50 Aura; +50 Mana; +0.0010 Aura Regen; +0.010 Mana Regen; +5 Strength; +5 Constitution; +5 Vitality; +5 Soul

It does increase my resistance to Mana Burn (which the System seems to have adopted as the term for it uses in messages for me), and it awards nearly the same stat bonuses as [Mana-Infused Body] does. There's one difference: instead of granting me Magic, it grants me Strength. I'm a bit curious about that, but I doubt the golems at the System Shop will answer if I ask since I don't think it would count as "basic information".

"If there's a god watching," I say. "Don't take this as an invitation to send me off on random Quests."

I might trust my Grandma… but I'm still having a hard time accepting that the gods won't pull crap with me.

"Also," I add. "Good night."