Good morning! Today we are going to crack it! Crack the legendary plumbing problem right open! This I do swear on my very name-name!

Hey :3

Do you wake up before or after me wherever you are? How has your day been so far? I feel like I’ve been a bit of a bad friend considering I’m always telling you how I am but never asking how you are in exchange…

What do you do when I’m time skipping? Do…you just sit around waiting for me to come back or…do you miss me when I’m gone?

Well! I’ll try and get better at that. I’m here to listen no matter what your problems might be. I hope your day has been fabulous! I hope your whole week has been fabulous!

Alright. Let's see. What do I have to do to start…

I start to skim through my daily routine throwing together an unhealthy cheese sandwich and wandering around the property sticking to my pathway where it exists. I’m going so fast I nearly make a mistake! My magic mimic plant’s environment started to warp slightly off the “pure” nothingness I’ve been trying to keep it at.

No clue how or why it got like this, but a quick spin through with MCC lets me balance the greenhouse once again.

Happy enough with the results after my second sweep I continue – the only other pause I take is when I see Dairy attempting to climb a tree. Why? What do you see boy? Do you need help?

Part of me really wants to see why Dairy is trying so hard to climb this tree so I decide to play the part of a god. I am the deux ex machina in Dairy’s journey to the top of the tree!

Uppp you go. And there!

I watch as Dairy wiggles about in blobby shock before clinging to the branch for dear life.

…what was your plan once you got to this point? Do you want down?

A moment after dairy finishes panicking, they pause and slime forward in a rush. Without fully understanding what’s happening, I watch dairy glomb all over a particularly dirty patch of the tree – some dried, caked-on nature stuff.

Within a moment, the dirty bit of tree is gone. Glommed off where it floats about dairy’s insides all free form and floaty like.

Actually… I can see just enough of the process to understand a bit more. Dairy…ate the gross bit of tree leaving the bark clean and suspiciously wet. The gross bit broke apart into teany tiny chunks before my eyes and slowly but surely the chunks got…sort of surrounded by more opaque gunk. Soon its not nearly as obvious – the brown bits are painted white and chunked so small they aren’t obvious.

I’m…starting to get a strange sort of feeling guys…

I stare at the tiny chunks of white and then at the cheese in my sandwich suspiciously.

Guys…what is my cheese made out of? How would I go about figuring that out?

I eye my sandwich in apprehension before taking another bite. Its just so good. I almost rather not know…

…its safe to eat so I shouldn’t be that weirded out by it, but I’ve never really stopped to wonder what dairy ate.

It’s kind of dumb, but I thought slimes were slimes no? Dairy’s never seemed to be starving and while he does swim around the pool a lot he doesn’t really seem like he’s drinking…

I start to walk away but then realize my second mistake of the day. I nearly left dairy up here! Poor guy!

Grabbing him from his branch I lower him to the ground and watch him glomb away into the forest for good luck.

Alright. Now I'm ready!

I'm just going to wander over towards my system point and accidentally search every store I have for a slime guidebook or something.

For curiosity you understand!

Nothing important. Just...curiosity. I want to be a good slime rancher. Need to know proper Dairy care.

Is it worth asking the goddess for a book?

What about asking her for information? She…she did give me this slime. She probably knows everything there is to know about it.

It's…been a while since I last spoke to her. She hasn’t reached out and I timeskipped a lot of days…has it been over a week? Over two weeks? I don’t want to bother her but…I also don’t want her to think I’m ignoring her?

I just mentioned this morning I wanted to be less selfish and self centered.

Let’s draft this up real quick.

Dear goddess, How has your search for a new hero been? Have you been well?

…

Okay.

Um. I got my response. The goddess is doing better btw. She’s found a hero! A proper hero – someone excited and willing to become a child solider. This new hero is doing a full reincarnation thing where he is born on a new world instead of just appearing like I did. Not sure why they wanted that but…well maybe it’s a requirement? She didn’t say. Apparently this hero was born on a world cracked by chaos. Theres a demon king that’s been consolidating power and becoming more and more of a nuisance for himself. Of course. Standard JRPG fair. Good portion of isekais follow that formula not that I’ve read many. Didn’t realize it was real till my own near conscription.

So! Poor kid has 22 years to defeat this demon otherwise the demon will crack the whole world wide open...thats bad in just so you are aware. It would summon more of its kind in a exponential cascade of misery like a humanoid invasive species killing off all the locals.

I’m…going to be tasked with helping this hero. Helping outfit him at least. Part of the perks of his job will supposedly be a gift based system that will randomly give him items he might need.

A system creating useful items from nothing! Healing items! Cooking items! Weapons and tents and flowers and more! How useful! Random useful items gifted in moments of peril! Gatcha ala system cheat! In times of need! In times of boredom!

Wouldn’t it be great if useful items were randomly created for free? Randomly generated from the ether? A system you could ask for something from and even if it didn’t have the item stored it could create it for you? A seemingly bottomless cornucopia of crafts?

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Can…you tell from my voice the truth? It’s me. The items aren’t being created for free. I’m creating the items. I will be at least – I’m the secret labor force in the background…

Sorry, I don’t mean to sound too annoyed by this.

This is kind of exactly what I asked for! At least its exactly what I promised I could do – I said I could outfit a real hero and I meant it. I just…hadn’t been told about the goddesses plans yet. I wonder when she was planning on telling me if I hadn’t just asked?

I wonder if I should sign everything I make and gift – make sure the kid knows who’s making him his stuff. Get some recognition for my labour even if I signed up for it…

Well. It's fine. I’m not actually mad despite how I initially reacted. I have quite a few years before I have to really start putting in the effort. Theoretically the kid won’t start facing danger for over a decade or so. Knowing this I can start stockpiling everything he might need well before that point.

Anyways. Slimes. Dairy in particular. You probably guessed the answer right?

Of course dairy needs to eat. He’s a living creature. Of course cheese isn’t just being made for free and hatched when I ignore it…

It's kind of gross but here it goes. Slimes feed on filth. Nasty gunk. Waste…anything you would censor with rainbow sparkles in a kids movie. The cheese I’ve been eating happily? It's…well its something created from all the germs the slime has eaten. I think real cheese is made from germs as well but…I don’t tend to think about that you know?

Cheese hatching into a new slime is because the cheese eggs I’ve been eating mutates germs into a new slime somehow…so slimes are like germs maybe.

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I slap my face a few times then check the market.

We need some more supplies for construction. Wood…because it seems like my need for wood is bottomless. Don’t give me that look.

I get some weird twine – looks like scraggly lumpy rope but its pink and slightly slippery to touch. The regular brownish and rough twine I got before.

… Grab a few sticks while I’m here and a new stack of buckets.

Alright! Meet me over by the bath and we can get started.

…

You ever figure out the best way of setting this pump up Ishner? …you don’t want to run it. Oh I agree. As easy as it would be to set you – or someone else – up pumping everything like a muscle….well that would just be handing lens overworked job off to you.

Our goal is to make the very first perpetual pump! Other than rain and the natural water cycle at least…our goal is to make the second perpetual pump!

To break it down! The goal! Get this water from down here. Alllll the way up there! Some three-ish meters to the tippy top of our basin. Big ‘ol distance.

Our constraints! My skills! Machining…is a bit iffy. As long as the parts don’t have to be too precise, we can make anything you guys can think of with some good old Triboadhesion. The problem of course is precision.

One on hand. Of my skills, the one that seems to generate the most “stuff” from “nothing” is wings. Wings as a skill likes as many moving parts as possible – the more steps and the more moving parts we build the better…on the other hand, moving parts are hard. The more interlocking gears or whatever we make the harder it will be to build.

Wings as a skill has made clockwork birds fly…but the clockwork needs to be a whole rube goldberg machine before it works. It also only generates lift upward and becomes less and less efficient the less like a wing it gets, but those are less important. I…haven’t once used the skill properly. I’ve cheated with mana feathers and letting you guys operate them. If I commit to trying to use wings to get this job done it might just be the first real use of the skill…unless I’ve just bent it so far from that state my wings don’t work that way? Maybe.

The second skill that seems the most promising is organ item creation. From an organ standpoint I have an input. Water, maybe some other energy. I have an output. Water…plus gravitational potential maybe? Conceptually an input and output for that is easy…just have to make a hole for the water to come in and out.

The third and most important part of the organ equation is the middle bit. The “transform”. I need a magical core for this organ to convert my input into my output. I…don’t really have a material that magically converts water into water plus height. I can maybe maybe think of a few systems I could make to do it…but no. Organ creation turns the “create a pump” into a “I have an input, an output, now create a pump” problem. It just sort of shifts the hard part doesn’t it? Organ mana also works with moving parts just fine but…as far as skills go its nearly the opposite of wings. Wings wants as many moving parts and doodads as possible. Organ mana…prefers a pure and simple concept with as few side effects as possible. It also prefers a balanced equation and doesn’t lend as well to closed systems…

Hmm…

Hmmm… Maybe if we sketch some ideas out?

…

Twenty minutes of sand doodling later and I have two main ideas. Both use the same secret sauce. I’ve tried to meditate on my skills – using them while staring at the drawings and while the feedback has been slightly spotty both feel like…they might work?

Idea one. The wing focused method. The idea is simple. I have just a bit less than a bucket worth of endless fire. As long as it doesn’t get too wet or too…broken by water mana the fire should act as a constant smallish heat source.

I take the fire. I make a pit and a sort of pot thing. I drain a tiny steady trickle of pond water into the pot. This makes steam. Steam spins some spinny things. They go over here and up there and around this part of the doodle that looks sort of scrunchy then spins this thing over here…All these gears and pullies and stuff will all have wings on them and it will rotate a big old wheel filled with buckets. The buckets come up to the top, hit a little peg, get dumped. Badda bing batta boom. I’ve transformed a small amount of lift from the steam into a large amount of lift with the rube goldberg machine filled with feather mana multiplying that force x100. I know it sounds like I should just feed some of the power from the end around to the start but that…just doesn’t seem like it will work at all. Like trying to fly by picking yourself up by your belt buckle. No, flying works by flapping really hard and pushing off stuff.

Where was I? Oh, yeah this plan is called operation Big bucket wheel! I’m like 90% sure it will work. Might take a long time to build some of those swirly bits and I’m not sure if covering everything in sand to increase friction on the gears will prevent things from slipping or slow it down…well anyways. That’s plan one.

Plan two. The organ plan! It involves trying to replicate the natural water cycle. First off, that pear shape you see around it? That’s the shell of the organ. Its not to scale but I’m imagining it will be the entire height of the house. Like before we’ll make a smallish channel to bring water in the bottom and then cook it up with the magic fire. The steam will travel all the way up here. Sort of twist around that hook shaped tube, and condense down into the high up basin. If we use this plan. The two magical cores of the organ would be the magic fire down here and then up near the top I can fill the whole upper area with snow peas. They should hopefully help cool the steam down enough to drop in the top and when it becomes an organ the peas should hopefully last longer and not break the moment they get heated…

Plus side for Big ol hook pear is no moving parts! I’ll have to push my paper mache skills to the limit to get this shell made but the design is simple and elegant.

Random notes Bonus section go!

Note one! It should distill the water! I think distilled water isn’t that good to drink…and I’m not sure if its bad for plants or not? Maybe plus. Maybe minus. Someone who’s an expert on plants tell me.

Note two – Electric boogaloo! I…am not sure the temperature the water will reach near the top…it might be just below boiling? Very warm at least to start? I don’t know. Will be amazing for getting a hot bath…but if I try and water the garden with it I’m nearly positive I’ll pre-cook my veggies.

Note three – final thing to keep in mind! I’m not sure what the max flow rate will be.

From my skill feedback mental planning mumbo jumbo I’m nearly 100% sure it will work. The problem is scale…even though I am sure it will work, I’m not sure how fast it will work. How much water can a very small fire’s worth of steam really transport? Organ mana will definitely tie the whole thing together and make it chug along happily…but how much will it boost the thoughtput?

There's a good chance this will be a whole bunch of work and it won’t be good enough...

I could divest my options. Try and make both. See which one works better...but that's twice as much work and I don't have alot of endless fire. It's a limited resource unless my fire aspected greenhouse starts producing more! If I make two versions half the size with half the fire each that's still twice as much and will only end up being the average of the two anyways...

So…there we have it. Let's pick one and only one for now. I’m going to ask you guys which plan you think is best to start working on. That way if it fails we share the blame!