Although I had slept for a few hours, after the funeral I’d returned to my room more gloomy and exhausted than before. It was uneventful, and was held at the cemetery next to the chapel. I’d gotten more than a few cold looks from the villagers, but at least nobody said anything.

Back in my room, Darya and I discussed a plan for some dungeon runs over the next few days. I also wanted to continue trying to snag a Goliath Turtle -- the village was really low on food, and something like that would be godsend. Aside from that, I also wanted to keep looking for wand parts for the petrified wood chunk, and to scrounge up as many evolution points as I could. The [Stronger Bones] evolutionary upgrade proved itself incredibly useful, even if it came at the cost of bony protrusions.

Darya touched my shoulder. “Cheer up,” she said, but she herself looked miserable and tired. She plopped down on the bed next to me and closed her eyes.

“I should be telling you-”

The door banged open, and Amelia stepped through in a hurry, quickly followed by five villagers that I hadn’t met before.

“I know you said not to tell anyone, but,” Amelia hesitated, gauging my reaction. “I got a brilliant idea. Well, we have. Meet our [Farmers,] … and a Mud Mage.”

Well, that didn’t take long for the word to get out, I thought to myself, but I wasn’t going to scold her. I felt like I owed her, as she had just come from her father’s funeral. The secrecy about the Nexus was going to sooner than later, and especially here in the village.

“I’m all ears,” I said.

Amelia introduced the five that came with her, and then rolled out a scroll on my table. It showed a diagram of the island with a drawn line of walls and a gatehouse on the west side, dissecting a thin slice of the island from north to south.

She tapped on the sliced section. “Portals and anchors should be set here, outside the walls and the gatehouse .” Then she circled a section showing ten rows of raised garden beds inside the walls, placed adjacent to the north walls.

“If we could bring in soil and water from the outside, then we could grow food year-around without the risk of frost, drought, or blight. With the [Farmers] to increase the yield and growing time, we could have a harvest within a few weeks, but we need to start now. Today.”

“Sixty raised garden beds? That would require an enormous amount of soil and water. How do you plan to do that?”

Amelia tapped to a portal drawn outside the walls. “For water we’d need a second sustained portal placed by the waterfall in the woods, then pipe the water through the portal, straight through this wall, and out to the beds here.” She pointed to a line cutting through the northern wall toward the beds. “As for soil, that’s where Stulyn comes in. She can lift, gather and move a lot of soil through the portal, and the farmers will spread it around the beds.”

“Can we afford all this?”

“Just barely, but yes.”

I looked over the list of structures that needed to be done. “I see. You have put a lot of thought into this, haven’t you?”

She gave a weak smile. “Mother provides when times are desperate, and this is a grand opportunity for us.”

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Amelia rolled up the diagram and we walked through the portal to the Nexus. On the other side, the new guests whispered in hushed, excited voices at what they saw.

Their excitement only increased when I plopped down four sections of the largest of available walls. Forty feet high, four feet thick, and ten yards long. In the middle, and to match the walls, I placed the largest gatehouse, portioning off a thin section of the island.

We walked through to marvel at the sheer size of it. Inside the gateway, the dim area was illuminated by lanterns, and was blocked off by a portcullis on each side. The two towers on each side had an imposing presence over the island, standing at over sixty feet tall.

The walls were lined with many arrow slits. Normal humans wouldn’t be able to get over them, but this world had magic. Some could fly, or [Leap] over them in a single bound. This was a good start, but the place would need additional magical defenses. Afterward, I moved the five portal anchors, and the first sustained portal outside the walls in the narrow slice on the west end of the island.

“Set the portal for the water over there,” Amelia pointed to an outside, north section of the wall, and we’ll take it from there.”

“Come on, I’ll take you to the waterfall,” Darya said.

The sun was low over the horizon when we left the village and followed a stream northward, cutting through the forest. I was hoping to come across some wild animals to bring back to the village, but nothing stirred. Only small birds moved about, and none of the squirrels looked fat enough to hunt.

It didn’t take long to reach the waterfall. It was only a few feet high, with water flowing over a couple of massive boulders, splashing down into a small pool below. The water was shallow and surrounded by a sandy flat area. Using my key discreetly, I opened a portal on the sandy bank so it would face the waterfall.

“How’d you do that?” Darya asked me, pointing at the portal. “I didn’t see you using any orbs.”

“I might tell you later,” I said.

She pursed her lips, looking hurt. “You don’t trust me?”

I crossed my arms. “You tell me. It took less than a day for the word about the Nexus to get out.”

Darya chuckled. “Well, it wasn’t me who did it. My sister was never good with secrets. She’d tattle on me to my parents all the time.”

“And you’re tight lipped?”

“To the grave.”

Bob chimed in.

I smiled. “Alright, I trust you. Remember that tablet with the stupid riddle nobody has figured out?”

Her eyes lit up. “You did? Tell me!”

I went over the mistakes in the riddle and what the actual solution entailed -- all thanks to Bob. Then I showed her the resulting key.

“Really?” she said with a disgusted look on her face. “How did gods ever expect anyone to figure that out?”

I shrugged. “Well, let’s hope it doesn’t get fixed.”

We walked through the portal, and on the other side, Amelia and the others were waiting for us. After they checked the placement of the portal, I converted it into a sustained portal. Using Editing tools I moved it north and out of the way, close to the walls. Using another Editing tool, I sliced a foot thick cylindrical hole right through the four meters of the wall at a downward angle. All that was left was for them to snake a pipe from the waterfall, through the portal and to the wall.

“You should hide the portal on the other side somehow, so nobody comes across it by accident,” I told Amelia.

She nodded. “We’ll do that once we have water flowing.”

Putting down sixty raised beds was going to take a bit of time. Each one was made of stone, four feet wide by sixteen, and two feet tall. While I was busy doing that, Stulyn and the farmers had gone out through the waterfall portal. Shortly after, massive balls of dirt, mixed with twigs, sand, clay and mud, floated right back. Soon the area around the portal was filled up high, as more dirt and soil balls were stacked high. Still, even at that rate it would take them days if not weeks to fill up all the raised beds.

“We’ll need you here to move them around and arrange them better,” Amelia said.

“Let’s do that in the morning?” I replied. “It’s already late, I need to get some shut eye before midnight. Darya and I have dungeons to run.”