Let me take you on the ride my world is currently experiencing.
To start there’s a slight…I want to call it a lurch but without motion? Theres a noticeable sort of "shift"?
Let me try again. Instead of appearing to jerk in any direction, everything I can see appears to violently…stay still.
Dun dun dun.
It's hard to explain – that’s just the way my mind wants to reason about what just happened. I wish you could feel this, there's no real way of describing it properly. It's a feeling. A lifestyle!
In every direction, the entire horizon seems to roll and twist violently – bits overlapping like my vision is seeing double or the space is phasing into each other. It's all wibbly wobbly let me tell you. Next I hear a quiet sort of rumbling like massive explosions are happening just out of my hearing range. Like the air is shrieking at dog whistle decibles. Its a very loud silence thats all I will say.
My eyes begin to hurt more than normal when I stare at the weirdness. Nope! Don't stare at weirdness Sam. No going blind on your first day.
I shut both eyes tightly, then stare towards the ground before slowly opening them once again.
Slowly I pan up trying to watch as safely as I can. When my vision gets far enough upwards to spot the change, it is already finished. Ahead I can see distant blurs of green – trees that look so far away and squished – they look like someone used that wide filter for memes. Wide trees!
High above the sun looks dim – like someone blocked the harshness while keeping its position mid sky. The world is plunged into evening before it is evening time. Let there be dark!
Okay but seriously. Someone gave Mr sun shades or something – I can stare up at the light without blinding myself now – not that I’ll admit I just did that. Remember sun safety people. Even if they are fake suns.
Everything – absolutely everything about my world also looks a bit different – and it’s changing fast enough I can actually see the change as it happens.
It’s almost like someone found the saturation slider on the world? Slowly but surely everything begins to tinge a bit more colourful. A bit less grey. A tiny smidgen less rough looking. All the colours are the same and the light is actually a bit lower…but the colours continue to saturate, looking prettier and prettier the longer I stand here looking.
Look at my hands! Look how nice they look! I guess this is the fae environment getting to work? Only thing that makes sense.
Looking up I notice faint colours in the sky as well – like someone heard about the northern lights and tried to replicate them in daytime when it’s hard to see backlight by the sun.
Stepping towards my sign I swipe to the space status to see what Mr System thinks of the changes.
Space status (click to expand)
Tier 1.
Mana saturation: Size 3.5 units. Environmental mana. 31,543m Upkeep: 35,000m. Critical minimum 3000m. Surplus. 5mana/day (leaking in from atmosphere due to spatial location. Access inventory Access the divine personal shop. (new options available) Access the tier 1 interdimensional shop. It looks like as my size increased, my “upkeep” increased by the same multiple…because the upkeep is not a cost but a total saturation my space needs to stay at. I think maybe the bits of land the goddess stitched in were less than tier 1 considering I’m now less than the upkeep state. Either that or she lost some of my mana when she ripped a hole in reality. So I can assume tier 1 environmental mana saturation is 1000 mana per 1 ‘unit’ size which I already decided was around 100ft in circumference plus weirdness. If space is additive and my math is right…I’ve over tripled my total space. More importantly, I’ve dropped below the upkeep cost and my world is struggling to fill up once more. Why? Did any of the space chunks the goddess glued to me have less environmental mana in them? Probably the ‘desert’ – I shouldn’t have said yes for that. Ah well. Clicking the ‘disable filter’ button I see a bright pulse of that saturation fill the world. The saturation meter rapidly fills before shooting up over 3500 and continuing to climb. It finally peaks and slows down as the environmental mana approaches 7000 – finishing its climb just under 8000 mana. More important than that something changed on my space status. As soon as the environmental mana ticked over 7k I got a ‘tier 2 saturation’ tick as well. It seems like if 1000 environmental mana/space unit for tier 1 means tier 2 is 2000/unit. My chest feels slightly tight – reminding me ever so slightly of the feeling when I’ve gotten my random skills. Not nearly as aggressive but slightly uncomfortable. Slowly my body acclimates to the increased mana and the feeling goes away. That’s good. I’d hate to deal with that pressure permanently. I do now have a new question… Is the skill wizard just filling my body with mana and hoping it makes an affinity? Or is it doing more? Is it low tech or high tech? I can’t tell. If its just giving me a mana bath and hoping I unlock a skill will I randomly get skills without meaning to? I have another question. Does the store have mirrors? I bet I look fabulous with this filter...the store does in fact have mirrors but not priced in curiosity range. Ah well. Time to explore! … My world is still very small. It takes me less than a minute to walk around the entire new section twice and see it off. 140 steps in all directions somehow hide so much more space in between. Honestly I can barely contain myself from running everywhere – I'm trying to measure it scientifically but my legs want to do the zoomies. It looks almost like directly across from the sign the world was unpeeled like an orange. Strips of new space were then sewed in and everything was smoothed out afterwards. I’ve given up figuring out why space is strange but the new area does fit eerily well. That's enough testing! Time to explore! I break down my survey early in favor of adventure. What did I get! If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. The “forest” is a “chunk” or blobby stretched-out section of nice high gnarled trees that look like they are hundreds of years old. Oak? Spooky Swamp trees? No they have quite a bit more root and trunk. I like them. Big Halloween energy. It's a vibe and I'm all over them. Maybe I should have paid more attention to “been in my desk for awhile”…nah this is better! A fun surprise instead of a scary one. Next the water chunk. The lake borders this forest and the grasslands and makes a vaguely triangle-shaped pool of water surrounded by a thin strip of sand. I say vaguely because with such a clear shape I can actually see the edges distort as I walk around it. The triangle bulges ever so slightly as I make a lap, visibly pushing outwards and in depending on my position. It looks more like a pond to me than a lake – just too smol you understand – but it's crystal clear instead of scummy and deep beneath I can see small fish spinning about looking disoriented. Poor guys…I wonder if they taste good? I love fish. Fish are food not friends! The final “disappointing” “desert” is not nearly as bad as I’d have imagined. It’s a dark red-blue sand filled with light blue boulders and the goddess seemed to have used it to fill in gaps created by this restructuring. all around the beach and in the spots that should have sewed together badly there are now blue sand. A large chunk is pushed up against the water making a small beach on one side, while little patches are here and there at the seams of everything else as if she were literally stitching it into the land. Maybe she was? Either way I now have blue stone which has to have some uses. Staring at this – this change of my scenery it suddenly becomes clear in a way it hadn’t been up till now. I flop to the ground just to stare at everything – glueing bits of grass to each other in prayer to the great grind. Guys. I just figured something out. She’s really a goddess…shocking I know. She really is an impossibly strong creature able to bend the world to her whims. This…this is magic in a way that outshines everything I’ve seen up till now. Why hadn’t it sunk in till now? How could I have sent such casual messages to her? Look at this! Maybe some of the other things she has done cost more or were more technically impressive…but this? Just look at it! it boggles the mind! This is a scale I’m not used to. It has a “pzzzam” to it that nothing so far has shown me. I need to windmill my arms to show how crazy it is. I’m kind of overwhelmed by it if I’m being honest. I’m going figure out how to turn the stuff into a house and facilities, but for now I kind of just want to sit here on the beach and start working on paying off my loan. It's one thing to make a priority list its another to actually work on it. Scooting down the sandy expanse I take off my pajama slippers and push my feet into the lake. Ahh…that feels nice. You should try it! I wiggle my toes a bit into the sand and watch the ripples float away from me. The ripples split apart into a cool pattern the farther away from me they get – constructive and deconstructive peaks dancing across the surface appearing and dissapering hypnotically. Gathering some sand behind my back I create a little sand-backrest-seat-thing and then scooch myself into a comfortable position. I cup my hands together and absentmindedly begin to form pearls. I’ve decided! This is my new office. I will be doing all my work from my personal beach. Len can take my calls – I need to set up a drink station so I can sip smoothies in between meditation sessions. But this is it. I've decided! … It's really sinking in. I know I said that but its sinking in even harder as I sit here wiggling my toes in the water, my mind watering. It's like the texture of the sand and cool water is enough to prove to my stupid mind that this is real when nothing else was. This…this is my new life isn’t it? it really is? I’m not dreaming or something? … …it’s not too bad if I do say so myself. Place is a bit of a fixer upper but I can get used to it. I need to make a house – I was planning on starting that for the rest of the day but I'm still shook by the change. My mind is struggling to process how weird this is and I don't know why. … Partway through the day, dairy appears at the far side of the lake. He looks so incredibly excited I wish you could see. He's jiggling and wobbling with the energy of 10 daries. With a massive leap, the little guy jumps in the water and sinks to the bottom. I continue to work, watching the little guy as he gloms along the edge of the lake. Majestic. A goo in his natural habitat. He's not actually that fast if I'm being honest but he's having so much fun I can't help but laugh. I hope the water doesn't become contaminated with rotting milk...but honestly my feet are probably doing more damage. This isn't drinking water okay! Its fine. Speaking of feet, by the time dairy gets to my side of the lake he spirals around my feet in exploration. It tickles and I giggle watching him brush up against me. I think diary has forgiven me for that traumatic milking experience. After tickling the heck out of my feet he continues on up beside me brushing along my side before heading off to the forest. Wait till you see our new trees Dairy. You'll love them. .. It takes almost three hours until I grow bored of making pearls – quite a bit longer than it had taken in previous sessions – and while I haven’t improved by leaps and bounds, there was a period of concentration there where I got really speedy fast with the pearl creation. 23 pearls into my debt. I run back to Mr. Sign – nearly getting lost despite how small the place is – and return with a bucket to transport my pile of pearls. Loot! Hey, someone remind me to make paths so I can keep track of where everything is. I'm likely to get lost if I expand this world anymore I swear to heck. Paths are lower priority than buildings and stuff but still. I need markers to navigate. I have all this nice blue sand now – it could work. I jiggle the bucket as I run and can't help but grin at the clinking sound that rings up to me. Thats the sound of sweet sweet money. Shoot! I have to pay the goddess don't I? I did better than I thought. Better than estimates at least – my normal pearls each took around 9 minutes to make, but there was a small period of focus where I dropped to six minutes per pearl near the one hour mark. Zen mode – I hope I can trigger that more often – I made bank! I really wish I could have kept that speed up consistently – in related news, why haven’t I reached tier ‘4’ with this skill yet? I’ve used it so much by now. Is it just a harder skill because it's stronger? If I was gluing stuff as much as I was making pearls I would totally have gotten some sweet levels for this effort. Bringing the pearls to my inventory I see a little ‘payment’ box on the side – that hadn’t been there before. Dragging the 23 into the box they sit there as a little counter updates the total I have remaining. I pull them out and the counter goes down. Okay. So this is separate from the store and simpler. Much easier to see and interact with. Very intuitive. Thumbs up to the goddess...she's really a goddess wow. Seems the goddess isn’t taking her payment until I make more but at least I know how I’m giving them to her now. I’ve used most of the day already – it feels like so much happened. The day started off horribly but I did end up being productive. Still even with all the changes it feels almost like I’ve wasted the day? Like when you do nothing but spend the entire day in bed – then do your laundry in the afternoon so you feel accomplished. Sure you can pretend you were productive but there’s a guilty undertone. We both know the truth. Yeah I definitely could have spent my time better. I still want to make a bathroom and craft area. I might see about starting that tonight as the last steps for the day. Before that I’m actually starving! Let's see about buying dinner – It's not my fault I don’t have a kitchen yet okay? We buy food until we can afford to make it even if this is more expensive. I…forgot something. I need to sell one of the pearls if I want to eat. I should actually sell a few. It's no good constantly needing to sell stuff before I can buy anything. The store connection has been restored and I think it’s a good time to check the ‘new stores’ option. The existing store just has sandy bread and jam and meat. I need to see what my options are. …okay. I think I got it. Turns out, by this location being easier to access, the system meant my current “interdimensional store” module was more than enough to access a local market away for no real change in capabilities. Thats what I like to hear! All I had to do was pay the goddess to fiddle with the connection a bit and gain access to a fae auction house – she valued the 2 seconds of adding that as a full pearl then told me not to eat anything I bought. She also sent a note that keeping this connection when I moved would be much more expensive. Isn’t that disappointing? As soon as I expand access I’m told I can’t eat from the new area. This one has so many delicious looking things on it as well. The goddess – blessed be her holiness – is probably giving me that warning for a reason but come on! It's tantalizing! She has to know I have bad self control. This store is structured differently from the second and has an entirely different set of produce. While store #1 give heavy hardware store mixed with alien corner store vibes, store #2 has a selection closer to a farmers market. Everything looks more handcrafted if that makes sense? It's also quite a bit more of an auction. The store itself is the auction instead of feeling like the auction is tacked on and many of the items are one of a kind. My “Money” from store 1 didn’t transfer over – this fae store doesn’t have a currency as far as I can tell. Instead all the listings are bartering for things with the costs varying widely from a flower crown to 100 years of your life or your first born child. I squint at that last option. Guys, I don’t think the "Sky Witch" has my best interests at heart. Getting real sus vibes from her. Remind me I have to be careful while trading for anything in this store. I do like the idea of an enchanted axe being traded for “something cute” so maybe I’ll actually go for that. I need an axe to get wood for my buildings after all. ... Alright, I've scanned the entire auction house. The axe definitely seems safer than some of the other options and I do need a tool if I want to start chopping down the trees. Yeah…that seems like a plan for the rest of the day. There’s just one problem. …what would a fairy think is cute?