Moving to the divine shop I focus on all the settings a sick feeling in my stomach. Can I trust the goddess? She seemed excited to work with me…was that a lie? Did she design this place with exploitation in mind? Did she…what? My brain is a spoon. Give me a second.
Slapping my face I spend a moment to formulate my thoughts. I untangle my mental state before sending the email so it’s not too rambly or accusatory – How do I contact the goddess?
Picking one of the options I see settings and sliders appear. Backing out I switch to “custom land” and this time the screen expands until I’m left looking at a notepad with cute little whisps spinning about in the top right.
Each option in the divine shop is basically a form like the ones you might have to fill out and send to your apartment to get the pipes fixed or fridge jiggled. Custom sheets drop everything to basically a blank page with a “enter your request here” style blurb. I play with the presets a bit more than settle on a custom form.
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Custom request form: 👻
Hey goddess,
What happens when my lands upkeep reaches 10,000 – what happens when it reaches 2,000? Why is my land leaking and why did you give me a skill that makes that worse?
How much is it to buy more ‘environmental mana’ and how much is it to fix the ‘leaking mana due to spatial restrictions?
How much is buying more land? None of the options you gave me gives me any real numbers…for example how much are divine credits worth? If I picked the buy money for you option how much would a single one of them go for?
Besides that you’re doing great.
Thanks,
Sam
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Ah…failed a bit there but there’s also nothing I want to exclude…that’s why I added the ‘you’re doing great’ on there. I’m hoping it makes it sound better. Do you think its too pointed? Should I drop the “why did you give me a skill” part or leave it? You’re right. I’ll leave it. 3-2-1 press send!
And now we wait. How long do you think it will take the goddess to respond?
…
This is taking forever…
Just as I finally turn away, I see a new wisp float into the screen while holding a letter. They open it the animation stretching and seamlessly becoming a large note in the center of the screen.
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Dear Sam,
Attached are some responses to your concerns. Please reach out if you have any further questions.
When your environmental mana drops below tier 1, effect maintenance will go into power saving mode. In other words, functionality will begin to slowly switch to emergency scripts and limit themselves on a sliding scale. The first to go should be simple things such as the lights – the day night cycle isn’t that expensive but it’s also not as important as the atmosphere being filtered and kept around the space– those systems begin to fail around 5000 mana give or take long after a large number of quality of life features have failed.
2k EMA is an estimate of when the magic holding the spatial warping and stitching fails – everything will unravel and rip apart at that level. I’d estimate the danger level is double that point – gravity and air will fail around 4k EMA. I do not recommend getting anywhere near that point – I’ll let you take out infinite loans on mana infusions if needed and will try to warn you repeatedly. You can also opt into me fixing your atmosphere automatically if it ever gets dangerous – I should have set that up by default I’m sorry I haven’t done this before. I wouldn’t want to auto charge you without your permission.
Your space is leaking due to being located in a liminal void slipstream tethered to non planar temporal █̵█̸ nodes proxied through my authority █████̵͖͠..
This was done to satisfy your ‘requirement’ of being completely safe from harm. I mentioned it both in the contract you signed and the tutorial.
To reiterate. Nothing can get to you in that location – not even other gods or fate or karmic bonds. Nothing. Technically you are dependent upon me – if I die, the links keeping your position ██ will be unencrypted and the tethers will decay. That would potentially slide you into regular voidspace or ██ at the absolute worse…But non combat gods never die, so you really are safe to the literal best of my abilities.
The skill I gave you is one that can help you make money with limited resources as soon as possible. It does require environmental mana as a resource but…it’s the cheapest high return skill I could give you – cheap in this case means it has low use in typical hero work, not that it is bad. Should also help with crafting some higher quality items if you can tier it up a few times – I’m hoping to collect on some points once you level it more but its mostly useless for me until at least tier 8.
Did you open each option I gave? Raw environmental mana shouldn’t be too much… Maybe a bit over 1000 for…lets say 100 1 mana pearls by the end of the month? A 10:1 ratio at least should make a good quest.
On the other hand moving you to a different location would cost a similar amount of effort. Transferring you to nearly any type of place would be 100 pearls by the end of the month worth of effort. If you wanted to fix how much mana is being dragged away I could shift you to a regular void between worlds? Should drop the environmental leakage by half if you aren’t being buffeted by the slipstream…as a bonus, nothing but gods, void beings and ████̴̧̼̱̋ demon ████’s could get you there and I’ll camouflage you for another point or two so the chance of that happening is limited but not guaranteed.
That environmental leakage is not something we can fix without giving up your absolute safety.
The only way of reaching zero environmental leakage is to either place your space somewhere where the environment outside of it is also tier 1, or overlay a second system on top of the automatic one. You can probably keep all the mana from leaking yourself with a tier 16 or higher mana crystal creation skill.
As a note, if you decide to move the space to a physical location with a higher environmental mana than you currently sit at – tier 2 or higher for a good enough pressure – than the leakage would reverse, a steady trickle of external mana entering your space. You could even switch the filters to equalize your mana with the environment as needed! Right now you have security through obscurity, plus absolute █████̶̠͆ blocking the single passage to you – again nothing can reach you where you are…if you decide to move, you might want to ask for a different form of protection be it a barrier or similar to protect you instead.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Buying more land…that really really depends on the market. It's really hard for even a goddess like me to make space from nothing – It's much more cost efficient to carve off space from broken planes or more accurately buy from some of my friends that are in the business of space trading. My job does not give me a lot of spending money – I also don’t have the time to work for free. I promise not to tack on too high a cost for my own effort – I’d just be charging you what I had to pay plus a tiny time fee for me to integrate it into your space. Bonus for expansion is you can get a discount for bulk purchases as its easier for me to integrate large chunks of space than it is small ones. Note some internal costs will increase while others will lower depending on how much more space you add – it gets easier to keep your planet together the more you add and with a larger landmass the gravity and related ██’s cost less per square panel to run and will slightly cancel out the increased surface area for environmental mana to leak from…
Listen just let me handle the backend of your space I’ll keep my end of our bargain and promise I’m not ripping you off.
Divine points aren’t money = they are a measure of how many favour’s you owe me with no interest or any of that gunk. Don’t relate them to money because that fluctuates and you can’t exchange it backwards.
To make up a trade.
Forests and lakes are prime real estate but I have two already that are just gathering essence in a drawer somewhere, each roughly your current size. First two would be cheaper because of that – I’d be willing to part with them for 100 pearls each. Checking to see if ███̶̠͆ has some…yeah if you want more imagine the exchange rate is a parcel four times your current size. For 24,000 pearls give or take. Random land is much weirder – and dependent upon some things like how good I am at cards that day.
Please reach out if you want to confirm an exchange.
The world's best goddess.
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I calm down slightly as I read her reply.
It’s not so much the content – some of it reads like gibberish and a few words are glitched out in that eldritch way. No it’s the way she described everything. She has costs as well – she isn’t trying to force me into a position where I’m slaving away for her.
Not…not fully at least. She does want me to work for her but I already said I would.
It's enough I feel bad for doubting her. The math just seemed strange. Moving past that. What should I do?
Should I buy environmental mana? Or move myself to a tier 1 environment that’s less safe?
…I’m not actually that paranoid – I mean I am afraid of being attacked by something stronger than me but it seems like the goddess went full over engineering on the safety net protecting me from literal gods and fate and whatever else…
As long as I’m not singlehandedly changing the tide of a war yet nothing should bother me right? Should I move myself for now? Move and…
Cost benefit analysis. Let’s go! If I buy environmental mana for 1000 and pay for it with 100 1 mana strong pearls I’ll be left with 900. At 41 lost per day that’s…like 20 days before I have to do it again.
If I move myself to a tier 1 environment it costs the same amount but I won’t have to pay it again in 20 days.
I might want to buy a super barrier instead which would be another 100 pearls…and I can always ask her to move me back here or somewhere else if things get dangerous.
100 pearls…well in terms of time I can make a pearl in just under 10 minutes if I concentrate and don’t mess up. 100x10 easy math that’s a 1000 minutes. In hours that’s…why are times weird numbers? They suck. It’s like imperial units – it's hard to do mental math with 60s and 24s.
Okay, 6 pearls an hour is 10 and 5 and…1 and a bit. Just a bit over 16 hours. Each divine request is like putting in two full work days of slightly boring and repetitive work to pay it off. Not…not fun but not the end of the world.
…it would be good skill grinding though and I’m sure once I get a higher tier in my skill it will be less to pay for. If I think of it like 2 days of work to buy a piece of land that’s really cheap!
I wonder if the goddess will stay at 100 pearl requests forever or if she’ll start raising that higher in the future?
She made it seem like 100 pearls are pocket change and considering she’s the one who gave me the skill that’s probably true…
What to do what to do…what do I want, what do I want. Something something they should make a song about that…okay I’m going to draft up a second email and I think I’m going to have to be decisive about this.
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Custom request form: 👻
Hey Goddess,
Thank you for your detailed response, it does a lot to soothe my worries.
I want to buy both the lake and the forest spaces for 100 each by the end of the month – you mentioned a discount for doing spatial expansions at once do I get anything for getting them at the same time? If I throw in the cheapest non toxic, none dangerous chunk of land as well can you give me a discount? So I can see what that’s like?
I would also like to move to a relatively peaceful tier 1 or even better a tier 2 area if there’s one most people would consider ‘safe enough’. I appreciate the amount of effort you put into making me safe but I wanted to be put in a nice neighborhood – not a bomb shelter. I kind of wish you consulted me so I didn’t have to pay to amend it after.
If needed and if it’s better to get stuff done at once, I’d also like alternative defenses. Something like a strong shield or similar able to defend against anything dangerous that might exist naturally in the place you put me instead.
Finally I don’t want it right now but what does removing a skill entail? I don’t think the last one I got is something I would want.
Send request
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I look at the response carefully then edit out the ‘I wish you consulted me’ bit. I’m dumb okay – it was in the contract and I signed it while pretending I could read it. I add a few commas and then delete them before hitting send for good. I think this will be a good purchase.
It should be 300 pearls give or take depending on the random space and how much she values her barrier making skills.
Bit over 6 days of straight effort if I do it all at once or…whatever that relates to if I spread it over a full month. 4 weeks of quarter days? With Fridays as vacation days?
It seems doable but I’ll probably finish the job sooner because I’m worried about forgetting about it and getting late on the payment. I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew but the sooner I get this bought the faster I can get off the ground.
Finally I get a response.
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Okay Sam,
Answering your question first. Surgery to remove a skill is usually a rare ability. I can do it easily enough in comparison to mortal mages and it doesn’t cost me much at all in the grand scheme of things...I’ll never make this cost excessive – It would be for the best for both of us if you aren’t stuck with skills that don’t help you. If you use it repeatedly in a short amount of time I might get annoyed being on call but if you set ‘at your earliest convenience' in the timeframe for it, I won’t ever mind.
If you do want to remove a skill I have two notes you should keep in mind. Removing skills located ‘behind’ other skills is harder to do and has a higher cost both in effort for me and temporary side effects for you. The best skill to remove is your newest gained skill and the worst is your first, because I have to reach behind and pull it past the newer ones. Additionally the higher a tier you raise a skill the more integrated into you it is and the more effort is needed to yank it out. There's no long term danger to either option it just becomes harder for me to do and takes more out of you.
Moving on to the rest of your request and starting the process…
I found a random sample and bought it – ██ was pretty convincing and I have a hard time saying no. I really hope you want it – it’s a stone filled desert roughly 10 cubic ██’s long un altered – wasn’t too bad. Cost me a single █. You did say you wanted something and I can’t return it…if you don’t want me to integrate it, let me know but I’ll still pass the cost to you.
Mini Forest (discounted)+mini lake (discounted)+desert (discounted)+transfer+my time and energy would net you a bill of 350 pearls.
This isn’t worth 350 processed and crystalized mana – this is a steal when you think about it. I just need some lesser pearls for a personal thing and want to help you out as you start off this partnership.
Safest tier 2 environment is in a fae dimension. A barrier that can keep them out would be a massive amount of work…but one that can stop anything up to a war dragon is easy enough and those don’t appear anywhere that’s not an end stage battleground.
Please confirm you would like me to enact these changes or a different location chosen. If a spot between planes in this fae dimension doesn’t work I can keep looking.
~The world’s best goddess.
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Well…I guess that’s it for my purchase.
Responding yes for the tier 2 environment and confirming the ‘purchase’ I anxiously await the changes.
I don’t have to wait long.