Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooornnnning!
Today is the day I commit to our next goal. Don’t let me put it off. I’m off to check the farm and have a quick breakfast and then we can start brainstorming.
I finally have some free time. All my responsibilities are gone!
Mwahahaha!
…
Alright! I wanted to wait till after my chores to start considering stuff but I kind of already did it.
I’m sorry. You can help me decide what to do!
Here are my main plans.
One. A new shiny shower and plumbing and all sorts of good stuff. My happiness will skyrocket the moment I can start having baths. I want like a hot tub or something. Shouldn’t be too hard to make either!
Two. Expand the plant farm. I have one bed of snow peas that sadly did not grow in a week and a bed I still haven’t planted…that does not a farm make. I want rows of magical plants I can harvest and eat or turn into stuff or sell…
Three. Expand my farm animals. Currently. I have dairy and that is it. Animals are more involved…and now that I think about it I don’t really want meat animals I’d have to kill myself…but something like chickens so I can lay some eggs might be good.
Four. Focus on myself. Finally start pushing all my skills now that I have the time. Run through the list and really give each skill some time to grind.
Five. Start focusing on crafting a bit harder. Figure out how to make a forge for metal or a sewing machine that jumps up and down with wings or something.
Besides those goals…I can try asking for tasks from the goddess and I can’t forget the favour I got from her…but those aren’t really goals.
What do you think I should do?
Technically I could work on them all at once…at the very least #4 can definitely be done with the others. I guess I included it because I keep putting it off to work on stuff that seems important. This is me saying I’ll try phantom breathing as hard as I can!
#1 is the most involved…#2 I’ve already sort of tried and ran into a roadblock when it came to selling my blood. #3 I would need to build pens and figure out more of what I want to buy. #5 would be super fun but I feel like It might be skipping some steps…Getting better at using my skills first seems more important than jumping straight into crafting unless I’m confusing myself and crafting would be the best way of increasing my skills?
#5 is probably the lowest priority now that I’ve said it out loud.
I think…I think honestly my favor could help kickstart any of these. I could ask the goddess for stuff directly but It would be better to use her to unlock stuff I can then focus on myself. Like, Animals for existence right? I could ask her to get me some more animals and that’s all well and good but I could also ask her to connect me to a new market that sells animals right? Then I could get them myself! Same with more produce. I wonder if I could access a better seedshop? Right now I have a cornerstore home hardware style place full of tons of odds and ends but…a sort of like farmer store might be good? Like a store farmers go to to buy stuff? Market for farmers instead of a farmers market?
I could also try and use the favour to increase the size of my property…oh I really want to run some gatcha pulls on a new chunk of land. It might have wild stuff I could explore in it! But I’m not fully utilizing all my current space yet and buying more right away feels like jumping ahead….kind of like #5 on my list.
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Ahhhh! Come on why is decision making so hard. I think I’m going to go with #4: Skill grind. You guys can vote or something and figure out which of the favour dependant tasks you want to focus on afterwards. Mwahaha, Delegating decision making has never felt this easy.
Let's go check my current status.
Self status (click to expand)
Tier 48
Status: Healthy
Skills 6/6 ->
[Triboadhesion] Tier 19
[Mana Crystal Creation] Tier 6
[The wings of fell] Tier 6
[Phantom Breath] Tier 6
[Eyes are the window into the soul] Tier 9
[Organ Item] Tier 2
Okay. Let’s see. What of these is the least utilized? Organ Item right? Yeah. I think so too. What have I been ignoring the most? Organ Item doesn’t count because I just got it.
…I think it might just be phantom breath. Wew. It is the one that’s the hardest to test when I have other priorities. I do think I should work on that.
Alright then. Well. I guess I should just use it to start. See how hard I can push it when I really try?
It takes a single deeper breath for the skill to start pulling me in.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Quickly I fall deeper into nothing. I let myself fall and notice the world breaking faster this time. I already know my vision is gone. This time I don’t get scared. I’ve done this before and it's been fine.
I breathe as deep as I can. Soon each breath is laboured. Each breath is painful. I stop.
Slowly the world comes back.
Alright! That’s a good test. A huge chunk of the day is gone but that's fine. I can leapfrog a day with more testing. How would I combine my skill? Triboadhesion has helped me maintain a link to the real world...I've already made a maze of smoke I can hide from time in and that's definitely done alot. No clue where I would even start with wings eyes and making an organ item. MCC...feels like it should help somehow. Can I...convert my smoke into a crystal? I start breathing once again and this time begin focusing on gathering up the smoke.
I already tried this before but at the time I just kept ripping the skill off myself. This time I work slowly. I wrap my whole body in smoke and slowly pull bits off with triboadhesion. Carefully I squish those bits together, gather, push, gather, push.
It takes a surprising amount of smokey mana before it starts to seem almost solid.
Immediately I stop and pull the compressed smoke towards myself gathering it around my form.
I feel heavy. Much much heavier all of a sudden. No clue why - bits of the compressed smoke float into my nose in an inhale and I instantly feel lighter. That breath is incredibly laboured however and I stop once again carefully dropping out of the smoky state.
Wew. Okay. I'm safe. I'm going to try it again.
I keep going for the sake of a test. Breathe as hard as I can. Compress some smoke and snort it. I’m not a big fan of pain but I’m also not afraid of it you know? Besides if I’m doing it to myself this way it feels more like the burn of lifting weights than it does something bad-
I feel my vision darken slightly. My lungs are on fire and yet I need to know how hard I can push myself.
…I forgot to set up a timer or something. Rip. I’ll ask a farmhand how much time has passed when I’m done. I compress smoke slowly while labouring and then snort it.
Woof. That feels dangerous.
I can barely push my breath out. I can barely breathe a gasp in. Why did I toss more weights on when I was already struggling!
I push harder. I can breathe just a bit more! It hurts but I push farther just to see what-
Suddenly a sharp pain fills my lungs.
I fall to the ground gasping for breath. Too far. Too far! I cough and a tiny bit of blood flies out.
That…that’s no good.
I continue to take short panicked gasps and slowly the world comes back. It’s still day time. …or maybe I skipped a day.
I feel strange. I really hope I didn’t injure myself too badly…
In this moment I realize something. I’m getting a feedback from my lungs I hadn’t been getting before. Something…different? Did phantom breath go through a qualitative change just then?
I close my eyes and try to feel whatever feedback I’m getting. What…what is it trying to tell me? I try and compare the feedback to other feedbacks…and suddenly it hits me.
This isn’t feedback from phantom breath. It's feedback from "organ item". I…accidentally turned my lungs into magical lungs.
I think.
Oops?
...
Hey Len, how much time passed? Did I lap a whole day?
...are you serious? How many days did you say I skipped?! 1000!!!! AHHHHHHH! Over three years AHHHHHHH!!!!
Oh. You're joking. it was just a week. Well... that's still massive but definitely feels smaller when you compare them like that.
Oops?