Huh?

…

Hey sorry, I blacked out. ‘Last little while was a bit of a blur haha. What have I been doing?

I’ll be the first to admit I’m confused. Why are my hands so dirty? What is all this? Have I been kidnapped by gnomes???

Slowly my memories return.

First we…we planted the fruit and vegetable trees. They all ended up being placed roughly next to both the old forest and the lake – The empty sort of corner area.

That was simple enough. Diggy diggy. Shove sapling in hole. Pat hole shut. Kiss baby tree for good luck. Move to the next one. Come back when I remembered to water them all – helping Len get each and every one of them nice and cozy.

Easy.

Next we planted the sour plant. Thematically it seemed like it should go in the old forest but the old forest isn’t really a swamp…just scraggly. I ripped up all the grass around an area between the orchard and forest and sort of threw all the eggplant seeds in the area hoping they will thrive. Still need sour stuff to shove here…If I find stuff I’ll feed the little guys don’t you worry.

And then…well and then we moved onto garden beds. I remember buying lots and lots of boards and sort of mass glueing them together while the fishyminer held a stack and sort of flew around beside me offering new boards. I think I made each garden bed in a few minutes max and sort of roughly sprinkled transmutation fertilizer in every bed to kill the grass…

That’s where I started to enter a trance pushing my timeskip breath higher and higher…I tried experimenting with shoving some of my attention and focus through the suit which sort of helped? Made my memory real wonky but I – how much time has passed? Do you know? It seems longer than usual…

Anyways! Sam Reporting for business! We now have some 80 something odd beds in a…dammit.

Don’t squint and try to make sense of that you guys. It hurts ‘yeh eyes. Yer widdle wee eyes!

I kept wanting to give you a 8x10 or “9x9 missing one corner” style response but these beds are squished weird and not placed on a square grid. Also why are most of them pentagons instead of boxes? The only boxes are my first few squished ones near the edge – every bed past that point ended up with five sides. I guess I just gave up on compressing them even if they look weird? Individually they look fine but if you try staring out over the patch your eyes hurt as they stretch and shrink and do weird things.

Focus on whats in front of us and you’ll be fine.

Next was the mass planting of course. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea to continue timeskipping our planting efforts but there you go. Mostly planted? There's a weird pile of half opened plants in the middle of the beds as if timeskip me didn’t know what to do with them…Oh wait. No those are all the plants with complicated planting instructions. You go me! Those need all of our mental faculties to figure out.

The final thing I tried to do was design a better watering system. Not that there’s any system better than Len but you know? I want to make his job easier.

The idea should have been pretty simple. A starting point – not made yet but I’m imagining a sort of cistern on stilts – and then a little track the water can flow along before dripping onto beds.

Now. In my fugue I already set up a sort of aqueduct – two boards glued together in a V shape on random stilts as it travels overtop of beds.

I notched little holes in this V using maxie but…well I came across a problem hard enough to stump my dumb brain.

It’s a simple problem. All the water sort of falls out the first few holes.

How do you make water go all the way to the end? How do you make sure to evenly water everything?

More aware this time, I started to fiddle with the holes – gluing sand around them to shrink the holes helps a bit…but its still uneven. Ideally I’d figure out how to make some sort of like sprinkler…is there a way of making a sprinkler organ?

If only I had some convenient sprinkler mana…

Do any of my skills help? I mean…I could make spinning propellors with magic wings but those only really work if one of you are operating them…theoretically I could make some wind up ones with clockwork pieces but those have a level of fine detail I haven’t been able to manage yet.

If I was putting any of you on them I might as well just leave it to Len…

This feels like something I should be able to solve on my own. If only my phantom breath was a more external type of time magic – I can almost imagine making each hole slow down all water that enters it. That would back up the start of it and let the water keep flowing till it reached the end…

Does that make sense or am I being extra dumb with brain clouds floating about my head?

Like, If there are several tubes that are slowed down the water should reach all of them before draining equally…I think?

Can I build something like that by capturing my breaths and making an organ that uses phantom breath mana?

…

Is that overkill?

Will it even work?

I keep thinking “probably not” but I might as well try it – right?

Finding some cloth, I set to work on my fake lung. I don’t have much that’s air tight but I did manage to make some phantom breath tight organs when I made my current suit. The idea is to separate out the mist and smoke because they don’t really interact well…then glue one of them all over the containment and shove the other inside.

With some effort, I glue smoke to the outside and breath mist into the chamber and then I try angling it on the bottom of a hole. Pricking my finger with a practiced motion I smear a single tiny smear of blood about the inside and stand back.

…

Oh! Right water.

Hey Len, want to get some water and pour it in this spot so we can test how good your replacement works?

…thank you.

…

Len returns with a full bucket and dumps some water across the top of my little wooden aqueduct.

The liquid flows down and sort of…mostly flows into the organ which suddenly gets wet and then drops its content everywhere.

Alright. I’m going to say this was a failure. Theres no sign the water was slowed down at all – phantom breath is way too complicated of a skill to just shove in a bag and hope it works. I should have guessed based on the machinery all around me.

I think…I think we’ve gotten distracted.

Fine, it was me. I got distracted. I also thought of an idea and wanted to follow it through without really asking people what they thought.

Len – do you even want to be replaced? I’ll let you think for a bit. Keep in mind watering the peas was a quick chore to help out but watering the entire farm will be a full time job.

Okay. Back to the main event! Lets just look at them one at a time. Give me a sec to peer into this wrapping…okay. This plant is the magic mimic plant. It's going to need a place as pure and simple as possible.

Considering how hard it's supposed to be to plant I’m kind of worried…but I think I’m going to be able to maintain it better than others so maybe I shouldn’t be?

I feel like we need to create a special balanced mana greenhouse but that…may be overkill?

Okay. No. Let's do that. It’s such a picky plant I want to do good by it. We can do a low effort sort of quick isolation thing.

First I take one of my pentagon garden beds and begin to move it. So far nearly the entire world is covered in “stuff”. We have the Beach desert, house, pond. Scraggly forest, orchard, garden beds.

Considering it started off as nothing but empty grass there's very little field left. The guarden beds bunch up against the orchard forest and desert on one side. We are going to need to ask the goddess for an upgrade soon – someone start drafting up a really convincing email for why we need the space!

Picking the final empty area of my land I place the solitary garden bed down and set to work sprinkling transmutation fertilizer and stirring the innards until it's mostly grass free.

Now. How should we keep the mana all contained?

…

We could build cement walls like the house. Took ages and ages to make that house but we could do it…Ideally we would make it out of glass actually. Glass is just sand fired and set right? Do you think the blue sand would fire into glass?

…

Probably not. Glass is from the silica in sand not the red-blue weirdness.

I think the main thing to keep in mind is that mana…doesn’t really care about physical stuff as much. It can sink right into materials and I’m pretty sure it could sort of waft through a simple wall I built if I just focused on making it solid.

Also plants need sun and the fake sun up in our sky counts. Not sure I want to replicate that inside a stone building. I don’t even have nice lights in my real house yet!

No we have to focus on blocking mana. Theres one thing that immediately springs to my mind.

…my phantom breath suit. It feels weird to bring up after that failed sprinkler prototype but one thing I’m sure about mana is that while mana can mix together…it also blocks other mana for the most part.

I’m also pretty good at keeping phantom breath mana in one spot. Loads of practice with my suit and skill upgrade.

All we have to do to make a mana insulation barrier is sort of make two cloths of mist and fill the inside with smoke. Double paned wall!

Of course you have to glue the two panes together a whole bunch and the end result is more poofy than flat but it does sort of make an invisible wall in the end?

I set to work cranking up my suit's time dilation and then bending its exhaust pipe into range. All my breaths flow through the suit and then expel in this one point…I then use MCC to slightly compress that output allowing my skills to better interact with it.

Breathe. Glue. Breathe, Glue.

It doesn’t take long at all to enter a trance when using this skill. Not a forgetful fugue one – I’m not playing around with feeding attention through anything. No this is a proper timeskip. I let the world speed up around me and watch as if from a distance as my hands move in a blur – gluing and compressing mana and time into an invisible bouncy castle wall.

My skill works best when I don’t think about it – as soon as I start wondering how my hands are moving so fast I stumble. As soon as I try and imagine moving my hands that fast they stumble. It's like the good old “you’re now manually breathing”. My body can do the actions way better than my mind can. Even if my mind is apart of that body…you know. Best not to think about it. My skills getting weird as it integrates with my suit and upgrades itself in tier.

Soon I’ve made a sort of long wall. I go ahead and find 5 long wooden poles for the corners and glue them in tightly. Really should have done this before I filled the bed with dirt but it's fine.

As soon as that is done I try and wrap my wall around the beds – it passes through the poles I made with the tiniest of force but after rubbing everything througouhly I glue them in place and everything settles down.

I made a tiny bit too much but that’s the good end to be on – with some effort the extra flap is glued in place using a temporary glue. I can use this to open and close the wall like a door if I want.

Finally I make the roof. I really wish I had done this first – This whole greenhouse is a mess of unoptimized order. It's really hard to get the top on right because I can’t reach the top unless I’m on my tippy toes. I end up dragging it overtop and badly gluing excess to sides. It's not quite mana tight but I have mostly full coverage and that’s all that matters.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Finally I stop and watch as the ugly bouncy castle fades. So much work for so little visible gain – it looks like a normal garden bed with 5 empty poles sitting around it randomly.

I can step through the wall just fine – why it doesn’t block my suit I have no clue – and while I could just drag the plant through the wall as well I’m terrified of breaking my expensive little sprout so I open up the door.

Here we go little princess. An entire garden bed to yourself. I hope you grow into a nice and pure mimic bush so I can rake in the cash.

I lean forward on my knees and kiss the top of the sprout for good luck.

Then, with a quick shuffle to get upright I begin to use MCC in the enclosed area.

Compress, compress, compress – okay. Everything seems kind of balanced? Theres a tiny bit more of a playful feeling mana in here so I carefully drag most of it together and glue it to my chest.

Boom. Balanced greenhouse!

Let's go see what our next needy plant is.

I travel back to the pile and check one of the boxes.

This is the floating plants. Easy enough – I think we just have to treat them like eventual balloons. Give me a second…

Buying twine from the hardware store I get to work making a sort of teepee above one of the empty beds. Big old stick in the middle. 5 lines of twine to the corners. Wrappy wrappy in a spiral like a spider web (I had to take the poll down once again to glue all the connections in place before lifting it back up and burying it once again). Boom! Easy!

One net above the garden masterfully glued together.

There are actually multiple floating plants but I only have a few of their seeds so they all fit in this one bed. I kind of feel like I should make multiple of these so the three different float plants can have their own areas…but I can transplant them later if it makes sense? The planting instructions also mentioned tying them down like balloons but the seeds aren’t floating so this feels better. When they start floating we can reconvene.

Finally there’s some fire blossoms. One of the more magical sounding herbs with less of a exciting reality.

It sounds like flowers that are on fire or something right? Totally magical? Turns out they are less blatant than that. Black and dark green flowers that are otherwise incredibly mundane looking. No they are called fire blossoms because of their planting requirements. This herb “just” need to be grown in a place with tier 2 fire influenced or tier 1 fire established environments and maintain a healthy temperature range of 20->120 degrees Celsius.

In this one case the system is incredibly obtuse. What do those mean? Are they some well known terms in a very obscure dimension or something? I mean I can kind of get it from context but come on!

My solution is to raid my collection for fire related pearls.

Way back when, I planted some pearls in my snowpea bed. That was to try and mutate them or enhance them somehow – didn’t work because mana isn’t that convenient. Maybe if I had a skill for that it might have done something but I can’t tell any change that’s happened.

These fireblosoms needing firemana feels more like a PH requirement than anything else. They need a certain level in the surroundings and soil and stuff to survive. Some plants don't care about PH, some plants really really care about PH. We still need to make the sour plants more acidic.

Picking an empty bed – breifly considering going through the work to make a greenhouse and then deciding I’m fine – I set to work.

Fire pearl. Spark Pearl. Heat Pearl galore! One pearl. Two pearl. Red pearl. Blu-not the water pearl!

Once all the pearls are in place about the bed I stare thinking. Should I just…leave them in the dirt? Should I smash them?

If I smash them…well the fire mana will infuse the whole area much better but it's also likely to drift away…

Dammit. Do I really have to make a second greenhouse? I think the last one took a whole day to make – it only felt like a few minutes because I timeskipped it.

Okay yeah. Let's do that. Fine. I got it I got it. I have timeskip, might as well use it. It’s a workout for my skill yada yada.

I prepare this bed as a near duplicate of the last. This time I do everything in a more efficient order. Roof goes on first tightly tied to 5 poles. Poles go next – glued quite securely to the ends of the bed. Cloth next, wrappy wrappy all the way around. Bed done I come I head down to the desert following a winding path between the beds and grabbing one of the random blue-red stones that lay about it.

I glue it to a stick from my dwindled stick pile and head back makeshift hammer in hand.

Those pearls won’t know what’s coming to them.

…

Oh! I also have some endless fire!! I told you guys not to let me forget it…I don’t want to use it all but I can bring the smaller bucket as well for added magic fire pazza!

I collect all my tools pretty quickly then get to work smashing all my pearls.

Let me share something embarrassing. First smashing attempt? Wasn’t that great. I hit the pearl and it…pushed into the soil.

That’s it.

Hehe.

Pretending I had thought about it all along I gathered a second stone to act as an anvil for my hammer.

Flat stone down. Pearl on top. Hammer above. Blam!

Pearl one smashed.

Flat stone down. Pearl on top. Hammer up above my head. Blam!

Pearl two smashed.

I work my way through them all watching as they appear to disappear. Each is almost disappointing - the surroundings feel ever so slightly warmer. I’m once again reminded of just how much mana must be in the surroundings normally – the pearls I smash are barely a drop in the bucket.

I’m getting worried this was a waste. My poor collection!

Finally the last pearl is smashed. The surroundings…are a bit hotter than normal but that’s it.

Wew.

I wonder if this counts as influenced? I think there is definitely more fire than normal in the surroundings…I’m worried this will fade in time though. It shouldn’t – the place is mostly mana tight…

It's just – I’m kind of sad it wasn’t more…I don’t know. Crazy. I feel like mana is always weaker than I think it is. Skills are made of mana and so far they are all pretty hecking crazy right? Skills are immediately magic – so why is the mana that fuels them…the mana that is output whenever I use a skill. Why is that mana not equally crazy?

Raising my hands in the air I begin to use MCC. Compress. Compress. Slowly start to see the mana in the surroundings I’m compressing…compress, compress.

As I work, I start to notice there is in fact a higher quantity of fire mana in the soundings…but I’m getting back maybe 1% of what I dumped. I don’t even know if I could make a pearl from this!

I do notice something as I work. There's…a very faint amount of some faint…moisture mana? Something like that. It feels wet and misty. That water related mana interacts with some of the fire related mana and…cancels out. They mix and turn into something new that’s entirely different from fire or water – it doesn’t even conceptually become something that sounds like a combination like steam! At least not at this scale. They mix and just delete the opposing part of each other's concepts or something shifting into a different mana that matches some of whats left?

Sorry yes that’s a question. I’m not sure so I’m wondering what you think. It’s the best description for what I’m feeling I have.

MCC doesn’t give me a stronger feedback than that – and that feedback is small enough It might just be hallucinated.

It does remind me of something simple…a lot of the magic books I’ve read have mentioned not having opposing mana types. I really should have scrubbed this area first. I’ve already discovered the environment feels different when I overuse MCC in an area.

I set to work on that – moving around my invisible box and trying to capture all the mana that might be “breaking” my fire mana. I even take a few of the types that feel stronger than others – just in case they are suppressing the fire just by being too much.

I need more fire pearls.

So far the best source of fire mana is making a fire – now, it's not like the fire is made out of fire mana or anything…but it seems to influence the environmental mana somehow turning some of it into something close to it?

It’s the best way I know of making more of the mana I want. Yep. It’s a plan.

I head to the beach. It's been…a few hours from my subjective point of view and a few days ignoring my skill.

I should probably head to sleep but I want to finish this first. You understand right? It’s my last plant and I want to get it all done at once.

In other news, my stomach was gurgling and I 'figure I’d double up the collection with dinnertime. No one is here to tell me I can’t have grilled cheese every night!

Guys.

Guy! It's been a loonnngggg time since I collected cheese. I kind of skipped over days without checking. My schedule was borked by timeskip!

That’s to say when I went to check the cheese I found…something strange.

It looked almost like an alien egg had exploded under my bed. Chunks of gooey cheese lined the bottom and size a ripe smell wafting up to me.

Is dairy okay!

I rush to the pond checking dairy’s favourit hunting spot. Where is he?

Are you okay? I’m sorry I haven’t been ignoring you…

Deep within the water I suddenly spot him. Dairy…and Dairy two electric boogaloo.

I missed so much time he had a baby! He had a baby and I missed it!

Damn, Do I have to start calling dairy a girl in my head now? Do slimes even have gender?

Was that really an egg like I thought or did dairy split in two in like using mitosis or something?

…I really don’t know enough about my one farm animal. I don’t even know if he eats anything or not.

Oh come on out of the water papa dairy. Let me give you pets!

Come on up!

Don’t you remember me?

…

I’m disappointed dairy hasn’t come up for pets yet. I’m sure he see’s me. Still I have work todo. Dinner to grill.

There's no point in trying to extract fire mana from a smol fire so I set to work building up a bonfire once again. Had to scrape some ash to the side and get a few more rocks to make the ring perfect once again and the last of my chopped tree goes in the pit.

Should I chop down another tree?

You want me to keep the forest?

Using the flat boards I’ve been using for construction seems expensive…one tree. One tree because we have it and it's dumb not too. Theres still plenty left in the forest!

I heft Maxie for the first time in a while and stare at the woods in determination.

My stomach choses that moment to gurgle louder than ever.

I should just eat something small…but no! Gotta work if I want to eat!

Ahhhhh!

I spin around one of the trees closet to the edge of the forest aiming a lot of chops on the side closer to the beach. Chop. Chop. Chop. This tree looks old and dry – hopefully it being near dead means it will burn better.

I want to timeskip physical labour but this part seems dangerous to speed up.

Finally with a triumphant timmmmber a scraggly partially petrified tree falls to the sand. Crash!

Now that the beast has fallen it's time to butcher it!

I relax my skill allowing time to start ignoring me and maintain as strong a hold to reality as I can.

My suits time barometer…tempusmeter? Clockdifference? My time gauge reads something like '3.2x speed' as I get to work chopping everything to bits. It feels like no time at all before everything's chunked and I set to work building the fire.

Smol branches and some paper. Magic Firestarter. Bigger branches. BOOM Massive hunking log! Surprised you huh?

:3

Let me have my fun.

…

I really like fires. They are just so fun…the flames…hypnotic…the lights…so pretty. Tell me the flames aren’t gorgeous. Just tell me!

The majority of my firewood is weird. Living trees don’t burn well – you really have to dry them out to get them to catch…and these trees are slightly petrified or something? Still the one I picked seems mostly dead and even if it takes a while to catch it does seem to burn well.

I wonder if I can try removing any wet mana types around here?

Dancing around my bonfire I air clap my hands trying to remove anything that might hinder the fire. It doesn’t take long to strip some wetter types – the fire is making a lot of carbon dioxide obviously but its also making some mana equivalent to carbon dioxide. Something like vacume mana? Dead air mana? Either way removing that weakens the carbon dioxide and makes the fire burn hotter. Removing the “living” mana from the area makes the wood more likely to burn.

Tossing a grilled cheese on the fire using diary’s egg remnants doesn’t seem to hurt the fire any…

…

I take a bite of my new grilled cheese and wince. This is the first time dairy’s cheese hasn’t been melt in your mouth amazing. It's… it's okay. Not inedible. If anything its probably close to blue cheese or something?

I don’t like blue cheese.

Some weirdos do, so maybe I’ll squish the rest of this into a block and try and sell it? Limited time only mystery smelly cheese?

And the melting it didn’t do this taste any favours…I just gagged slightly with that last bite.

Don’t waste food!

I finish my dinner sadly and then get to work gathering fire mana.

As soon as I start purposefully removing the mana types I was aiming for, the fire dips.

I work slowly…as long as I pull it bit by bit the fire stays burning – some sort of reaction happening where the fire either converts or drags fire mana out of the surroundings somehow. As long as it stays above a certain point this reaction continues.

I start to timeskip once again – 3x speed is almost my default and easy to maintain. Harvest a bit. Wait for more wood to burn. Harvest a bit.

Instead of making pearls I just bunch it all together in blobs and glue it to my front. After my entire front is covered it starts to feel uncomfortably hot, so I head back to my fire greenhouse. A tiny bit of bad mana has returned so with some effort I scrub the moisture and vacuum and darkness and extinguish and whatever else feels anti fire out of the surroundings.

Then I drop my new mana watching it fade into the surroundings slowly.

The air feels decidedly warmer. My bucket of endless fire has strengthened – the flames licking up out of the top of it by this point.

Might as well spread that around right now?

I dump the tiny amount of endless fire into my dirt and sort of gently spread it around – hoping it doesn’t get snuffed out by the dirt.

I then head back to the bonfire and collect more fire mana. This is going great! I wonder how much longer until the areas infused or whatever?

The fire is dying down but I think I’ve done mostly enough.

I gather the last bits of hot mana types more aggressively – my efforts snuffing out the fire for good the coals dimming visibly as I work. There! This should be enough…

Let's head back to the greenhouse.

I skip back up the path humming happily to myself and then pause in horror.

My garden bed is on fire.

No. you don’t understand. This is the goal yes – I want the area to be all burny and fire mana filled – the problem is the bed! The bed around it! My poor polls holding the greenhouse up! All of it is burning!!!!!

Rushing into action I panic and yell for Len to come spray water all around it. Why didn’t I think of using something other than wood for this bed. Stupid. Stupid.

I need cement but that takes so long to make – I need more rocks.

I run to my desert waving for the fishyminer to help me load up on supplies.

Quick! Before we burn my whole property down!

It's nighttime now and everything is lit up by a dim glow from the mana on my chest. The fire mana I’m not throwing into the area until I fix this!

Bucket. Where are my buckets!

There. Sand. Stones. Oh hey! There you are Len. Toss water on the grass all around the bed I don’t want it to spread!

I grab more sand dumping some water in the bucket and struggling to carry it back to the burning mistake.

Help.

Send help! Firefighter Len! You’re doing great!

I set to work making cement and throwing it on all the burning boards I can see. Its haphazard and slapdash but I can’t rub my hands on the outside of those boards they are much too hot.

Len driveby dumps water as I’m working – like a firefighting helicopter zooming in to douse me in water.

I don’t even mind the drench – it's helping triboadheshion somehow letting me solidify sand as soon as I spray it.

Bit by bit we solve my mistake. The poles are completely burnt up – the whole mana insulation barrier ballooning out and sort of bobbing around when I use MCC to try and see it.

Seems to be intact – the door is letting mana out!

I jump into the middle of my smouldering greenhouse and dump the rest of my mana before spinning and gluing myself in here.

It's not quite as dangerous as I’m making it sound. Other than a ring of smouldering about the insides aren’t completely on fire. The air in here is dry and hot – uncomfortably hot but not dangerously so. I run around the inside throwing the rest of a bucket on the boards and putting out most of the fires.

Now for another batch!

I jump out of the greenhouse – passing through one of the ethereal walls as I do feeling a cool wash of air at the border like I’m stepping into an air conditioned building.

Back down to the desert. A second batch of everything.

A less panicked run back. A more careful spray of instant cement.

Finally after a third batch I feel like I can breathe. The whole dome around this bed is visible – a sort of warping of space like a dome shaped heat wave.

Inside the dirt has grown nearly pitch black – the endless fire patches flickering in the few spots I’d spread it to.

Carefully I bring my fireblossoms into the area and begin sprinkling them about. One seed falls into the endless fire and pops like popcorn a red dust flying everywhere – these plants like it hot but not too hot…

Finally I can breath again. Everything is fixed. Every seed is planted.

And I’m exhausted.

I’m going straight to bed – I can barely keep my eyes open as I head back to my house in the dark of night.

Goodnight friends. I’m pooped.