I should have at least a few days before anyone else shows up here. Thomas and the chief are heading into town today and won't be back until tomorrow. They also probably won't make the trip through the forest to reach me for another day or two after their return. It's doubtful anyone else would want to come visit me even if they know about me.

That guarantees I can use some heavier magic without getting noticed by others. Not that I've been too worried about it since I'd be able to tell if someone was approaching in time to stop the use, but this is something that would make it more obvious. Better to get it all done when no one else will be out here, then come up with an explanation for how I acquired it, than to get interrupted and have to figure out how to explain the partial progress.

One of my projects has been clearing the undergrowth between the cabin and the cliffs to the north. I haven't done it fully but I've managed to clear a twenty-foot-wide trail leading to the small opening for the cave. Things are a lot faster now than they were when I first started this, and only part of it is due to me learning how to do it better and my stats increasing, allowing me to use more force and magic in the process.

Part of it definitely came from the forest spirits. They didn't do anything blatantly obvious but there's a noticeable increase in the ease in which things pull up or cut than when I started and I can feel the presence of more forest spirits during the process.

I haven't removed the bush concealing the cave yet, as there's something I want to do before revealing the opening.

"O spirits of the world," I murmur. "Guardians of earth and stone, this cave is too small-"

An earth spirit forms in the air in front of me, his body only about 3" in height and made of brownish-orange light. It seems almost as if he has a membrane making up his skin with the inside empty, as is the norm for all spirits. He takes a male humanoid form with tiny motes of orange light dancing through him.

"-to make proper use of for me, and I ask for your permission to expand it so that I may reap the benefits which it may provide to me."

The spirit is already giving me two thumbs-ups before I can finish, but I do so anyway. With how small the cave opening is and it being hidden behind a bush, it could be a sacred spot to the spirits. Before causing changes to something which could be sacred to them, it's always best to ask permission.

"Thank you," I tell the spirit, who gives me several enthusiastic nods before vanishing from sight once more.

If one local spirit gives permission, then all have given it. They tend to be a collective on this sort of thing.

With the permission of the spirits, I get to work removing the bush and move it to the side. I make sure to dig up the roots as well so it won't regrow, then use earth magics to fill in the hole with magically-conjured soil.

Now it's time for the heavier magics.

I extend my hands forward and begin carving out the opening, shaping it to be almost exactly three feet in width. The height of the opening is increased to a little more than six feet, with a slight arched top to it. This tunnel is extended all the way to the more open space in the back of the cave, about four feet back.

Inside of the cave proper, it's about eight feet in height and roughly six on each side, though it's not really square. It's damp within, and six slimes lurk within. That's two more than I saw the other day, but that's fine. They quickly fall to [Magic Missile]s, the concussive force of the bolts blasting their membranes and bodies apart.

When they die, the slime monsters poof into black and red mist and half-inch magic crystals plop down. One of them drops a three-inch sphere of goo, held together by its own membrane and tinted the same blue as the slimes were.

That can be used in alchemy, or I can use it to produce a new slime. Since raising them will let me acquire their goo through other methods, I'll save it for now. The loot is moved outside of the cave with the slime sphere carefully set down so that it doesn't pop.

There's plenty of slime goo all over the inside of the damp cave, but a decent amount of it is probably contaminated by the soil and minerals the water brought with it. A [Flamethrower] burns through all of it, filling the cave with an acrid smoke I expel from within via some gusts of wind.

That seems to push me over the edge on [Elemental Magic] as a notification pops up.

[Elemental Magic] is now Level 4! +100 MP +1 Magic

Little by little, I grow more comfortable with the amount of mana I have. It's still nowhere near what I had before the reset, but I'm sure I'll be comfortable if I reach even a quarter of that. Enough to take care of my daily activities and be prepared in case of an attack.

When I finish purging the cave of the gunk and smoke, I reshape the inside a little bit to make it circular around the edges, expending it to nine feet across and I turn the roof into a sort of domed structure, starting at seven feet in height at the edges and ending at ten feet at the top. Some of that is with reshaping of the soil and stone, some with using a little of what I excavated to pad as needed.

With that finished, I bring in some sticks, branches, leaves, and other plant debris. My use of [Flamethrower] is only temporarily removing moisture from here, more will enter over time and soak into this stuff as it decays. The mana disc mushrooms will then grow on those, granting me more of the reagent for mana potions. I can already see moisture forming on the walls and ceiling, so I know I didn't mess things up.

This was a trick I sometimes used when camping in a mana-rich place for an extended period of time. Mana disc mushrooms aren't as sensitive to light as a few others, and the moisture level here helps a little with that. The trees out front will supply shade to the entrance as well so it'll stay darker inside.

While this might make it seem easy to farm reagents for mana potions, doing this on a large scale isn't too viable. I'd need to create a lot of these caves and constantly supply all of them with plant matter for decay and growth. There's also the matter that it needs to be in a mana-rich environment unless one is supplying it with mana artificially which has its own complication. Areas with enough mana lingering around to produce it on a large scale are rare outside of Mistlands, too.

So small scale operations are fine, large ones are a lot more difficult.

I gather up my loot from the slimes and bring them back to my camp, storing the slime sphere in one of the jars Zolbiatz sent me here with.

Returning to the cave, I move the soil and stones leftover from the cave, spreading them around the ground and adding the stones to the pond. The same is done with stones dug up as I create a semi-long hole in the spot I've chosen for my garden, close to where I found my first mana mint plant. I keep the excavated soil here as I want it for what's coming later.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Now it's time for the more tricky part of today's plans. I head up to the evergreen barrens and locate a smaller mana berry bush pair, then carefully use earth magic to remove the soil from around the base of it and the roots, eventually extracting the bush from the ground. I leave the soil where I dug it out and carry the bush back home.

I carefully set the bush into the hole, using earth magics to move soil and compost around the roots. There's still space beside it in the hole, but I don't fill that in yet and instead, return to where I pulled the bush. It's fairly rare for a mana berry bush to grow alone, and the small one I chose to transplant was no different.

While they're both called "mana berry bushes", they're actually two different breeds of them. I don't know why they grow in pairs like this, but I'm not going to take one and not the other just in case it's actually important. They do seem to grow better when in their breed pairs based on what I've heard, but no one's entirely sure why. When out of their native environment – like barrens – they also grow worse so keeping them in their pairs or more is better.

This area does have enough ambient mana for it to not be an issue, but I want to be safe just in case. The moment I finish filling in the soil around the second one, a nature spirit appears.

He looks quite close to the earth spirit I saw earlier, except green with golden motes. Older nature spirits have flowers on their heads so this one is on the younger side as it's missing that.

He inspects the bushes even though I know he's able to tell whatever it is he wants immediately. I watch as the spirit pretends to be inspecting with a critical eye, then he gives me a double thumbs-up before soaring to one of the bushes and plucking a berry which survived the trip. He pops it into his mouth, gives me a cheeky grin, then vanishes.

Before I can do anything else, he reappears and pulls off a lot of berries, gobbling them down and doing the same with the ones which fell to the ground during the transfer process. The moment there aren't any berries left, he vanishes again. That only takes him about twenty seconds and he really picks the bushes clean.

I snort and shake my head. Spirits can be goofballs at times.

While he was gobbling down the berries, he was also repairing the minor damage to the leaves and branches. Without a need to repair those, the bush will have more energy to put into producing new berries. Based on how quickly other things have grown, I'll probably have two bushes full of berries again within a week.

Especially if he also helped the roots settle in while he was picking the berries up off the ground.

I don't need extra mana right now since I conserved it by carrying the bushes myself and raw shaping of the elements already present costs a lot less mana than standard spells. The bushes not having berries right now won't be a problem for me, and I can always return to the barrens to harvest more if I need to brew up another batch of mana potion. I still have some of the mana disc mushrooms from the original harvest leftover so I can still do a little brewing before more grow in the cave.

With my morning chores for today taken care of, I harvest some potatoes and an onion from where I'd planted them, then take them to my prep table… which has a nature spirit standing on it. As with all spirits, he has a young appearance, though the pink-and-purple flower atop his head indicates he's quite old.

"Hello," I say, and he waves. "Is there something you wanted help with?"

Spirits can do quite a lot on their own when it relates to their domains, but there are plenty of things which they can't do. They'll either ask spirits who can do it for help or approach people they like.

This one flops onto his back and starts rolling back and forth across the prep table, then vanishes.

"Alright, then," I chuckle, then continue preparing my lunch.

Today's lunch is a sort of hash with small potato cubes, some onion, some herbs, and some minced rabbit with a little bit of butter used in the earlier part. It's a rough meal but it works well enough and once I clean everything up, I decide on processing the wood here some more. With as many trees as I've cut down, I should probably find more to do with it than just storing it, such as giving it away.

Some can be used for furniture, some for construction, some for arrows, and so on. I start the processing by taking thick branches and cutting off their extending branches with my axe, then begin chopping them into wedges a foot and a half in length. The firewood is stacked together and after about an hour, I have a suitable amount of it prepared.

I'm also a fair bit hot despite the cooler spring air, so I pull off my tunic and hang it on a wooden stick I stab into ground just for holding it. The tunic's become soaked in sweat, I warmed up so much. Chopping the wood would have been faster with magic but I don't want to spend the mana on it after the work I did this morning.

In addition to that, cutting the wood manually like this gives Skill Experience for [Gathering], even if it's not much. Since it's a basic form of harvesting, it'll take me longer to Level it this way. All of the tree cutting I've done with magic gave Skill Experience for it and I'm still at Level 0 for it even with my blessings.

Which I expected, considering its simplicity. I didn't even have too high a Level in [Gathering] before the reset.

A cast of [Lesser Heal] soothes my muscles, as they were aching from the work, then I decide to take a more full break and cool off more.

I strip down and head into the stream, the icy water biting at me the moment I enter. Immediately, I take a deep breath and sit on the bottom of the stream. The waters are crystal-clear, the small stones making up the stream bed stirring up a little of the clay-filled soil at my movements but not much. A small cloud of murk forms but it's low and fades quickly.

After holding my breath for as long as I can, I exhale and watch as the bubbles rise up, then inhale. No water enters my mouth as I do this – an extremely cheap elemental magic exercise learned by many beginners of it is how to create a small filter over one's mouth and nose. It prevents water from entering while generating air, though an advanced version of it which costs less mana but takes more skill actually filters the water which passes by, allowing me to inhale the air dissolved within it.

At least, that's according to the book detailing the exercise I found about four years ago. I don't quite understand how air can be dissolved within water but the book's author felt certain there was and the spell does seem to extract air from water.

I perform the exercise for a few minutes and just as I'm about to give up, the water in front of me shifts. A spirit takes form, his body appearing as if made out of water with tiny, greenish-blue motes glowing within his skin. Unlike the others, he doesn't have legs but a fish tail.

He gives me a little wave before swimming to the side and giving a high-five to another water spirit, this one opting to manifest with a pair of legs rather than a tail. He then swims over to another water spirit with a pair of legs instead of a tail and gives him a high-five as well. The three water spirits then look at me expectantly, as if asking a question.

"I can only maintain this for about seven more minutes before dropping lower in mana than I want from my current," I tell them, this trick technically not working for me to speak, but river spirits are able to understand me just fine when I do. "But sure."

All three pump their fists upward in silent cheers.

They pick up small stones from the bottom of the stream and use their magics to weather them into identical, round stones with a single flat face. The spirit with the fish tail etches the magic runes which translate to "water spirit" onto the bottom of his and shows it to me, then all three turn their stones so the flat faces point toward the bottom of the stream.

Now, they start passing the stones back and forth. The speed at which they do so should be impossible underwater, but they're river spirits. Currents and water don't bother them or their actions in the slightest. When they finish they look at me expectantly.

I point at the one on the right, who looks at the flat part of his stone and makes an exaggerated shocked expression before showing me the flat face with a beam. He's got the one with the runes.

The game continues until I need to surface so I don't go too low on mana, and the trio of spirits wave goodbye to me before vanishing, their stones falling to the bottom of the stream. When I surface, I shake my head for a moment, then shiver.

As used to the cold of the water as I became while sitting on the bottom, there's a sharp difference between that and the feeling of being wet and touched by cold air. It only takes me a minute to adjust and once I do, I exit the stream and feel that same extra chill against my entire body.

I'm not sure what my plans are for the afternoon, but the more immediate plan is to rebuild the fire and warm back up.