“A seedspeaker,” Nita said, cocking her head, “You know, she prepares the seeds before we plant.”

Taka had no idea what that meant.

“I have no idea what that means.”

“Don’t you grow food in that city of yours? How do all the people eat?”

“Well, yes, but I don’t grow it personally. I’m too busy killing monsters.” Taka played up the defensiveness in his voice into a joke. Nita tilted her head back and forth, considering, before conceding the point.

“Being a seedspeakers are one of the most important jobs for growing crops. Maylin is the only one in the villages around here. She tells the seeds to grow fast and healthy before we plant, and keeps the harvested grain fresh for longer over the winter.”

Taka considered Maylin’s profession of seedspeaker. It certainly seemed like an important job, probably using some life or plant mana infusion skill that granted longer term health benefits to crops. More skill was required for longer duration effects, so it was impressive that someone who likely lacked Root Perch’s comprehensive education could manage it.

Unfortunately, this answer did nothing to help with the reason he’d asked the question.

“When I’m fixing her house, what should I add to make her job easier?” Since he was already fixing her home, he might as well do something nice for the woman. She deserved it after the scare of nearly losing her children.

Nita scratched her chin.

“Mostly she works at the old granary.” Nita gestured past a row of homes, presumably to where the granary was, “I don’t know if she needs anything at home to work.”

“Thanks anyway, Nita,” Taka said, letting the kid go. It was at that time that the first of the kids approached with a stone the size and shape of a dinner plate. He didn’t even need to extend his mana to recognize it as brittle shale, not especially useful for construction, but he thanked the kid all the same.

The beaming smile he got in return was worth more than a gemstone.

Taka decided to take a brief break to find the village granary before he started construction. It took only a couple turns and three helpful villagers to get him there. What he found was a squat building of mortared stone, with a roof missing half its shingles, which Taka noticed were made of slate. Maybe he could use the brittle stone after all.

He knocked on the door, but received no response. Clearly, the village had more important things to do today than sit around in the granary. Discovering that the door was locked, he glanced over his shoulder before conjuring a long, flat stone, poking it through the gap between the door and frame, and unlatching it.

He felt a bit like a kid, sneaking into the cupboard for sweets, which brought fond memories back to him. Either no one saw or cared, and he slipped inside.

The inside of the granary was dark, but his perception attribute was high enough to get by with the light from the open door.

The building was fairly simple. Inside was a large, ceramic cylindrical silo, which had four openings on the bottom at equal intervals. A set of stairs to his left, which lead to a kind of half-level. He had to duck his head to keep it from hitting the ceiling. From there, he saw the silo was divided into quarters, each of which contained grain. To his eyes they appeared the same, but when he reached out his mana sense, he detected subtle plant-affinity mana hiding within the grain in two of the sections that was absent in the others.

The mana reminded him of some forms of devious poison that lingered in the body for extended periods before becoming active, but this had life-giving properties, rather then toxic ones

On the half level used to access the top of the silo, there was a chair and table with a bowl of grain that lacked any mana. Taka could clearly imagine Maylin sitting up here for hours, filling her bowl and infusing life into it grain by grain.

Taka shuddered at the thought. It must be beyond tedious. He didn’t know much about farming, or even gardening, but he had to imagine there was a faster method.

But that wasn’t the problem he had come here to fix. He was here to fix a home.

Extending his mana senses, he examined the structure he stood within. It had been well built considering the resources and abilities of these villagers, but it was clearly very old. The foundation was made of mortared stones, like the walls, but the considerable weight of the silo full of grain had cracked it in several places, while the walls had smaller cracks.

It took Taka only a few minutes to seal the cracks, but there was little he could do to prevent future damage without rebuilding the granary from the ground up.

“Oh,” Taka said, realizing exactly what he needed to do. The villagers wouldn’t let him demolish and rebuild it, but he could give them something that could replace it, while helping out Maylin and her boys.

With his revised goal in mind, he would need more stone, and he couldn’t rely on what the kids were gathering.

Taka left the building, making sure the door was locked behind him. An older man walking by with a bag over his shoulder gave him a confused look, but Taka just waved as he passed, doing his best to walk at his normal speed to avoid suspicion.

He returned to the fields for materials. It took three more trips to further fields, but soon he had what he needed.

Now he could actually get to work. It didn’t take long to demolish the building, and most of that time was carefully extracting the families personal belongings, which he set aside in a box he shaped from some of the less useful stone.

Once the old home was out of the way, he braced his feet against the earth. His mana wasn’t endless, but he could stretch it further than most with one of favorite skills.

* Tremble Foot (Rare)

* Type: Defense, Passive, Combination, Attack

* Affinity: Force

* Range: Self

* Cost: None

* Effect: Absorbs a portion of all kinetic energy exerted against you. Your total capacity for absorbed kinetic energy is based on your Toughness attribute. You may discharge this kinetic energy through your feet, either directly or by adding its power to compatible skills.

Passive skills were a hotly debated topic at any Slayer’s Guild. Some argued that the most dramatic effects of active skills far surpassed the steady, constant effects of passive skills, while others held that constant benefits without stamina or mana costs were obviously superior.

Taka wasn’t one to argue, but he’d been in enough battles that stretched on far longer than expected, leaving him and his allies mana and stamina reserves dry, that he could appreciate any power he got for free.

But even the most passionate advocates against passive skills had to admit that Tremble Foot was an amazing skill, which combined the best elements of passive and active skills.

The constant reduction in physical damage was great, but it really shone when he used the stored kinetic energy to enhance other skills.

The reservoir of energy was only compatible with three of his skills, and he most often used it to increase the strength and range of Yank and Earthquake, but it could also be used to supplement the mana cost of Earth Manipulation.

And considering the energy capacity was determined by his Toughness, his highest attribute, and the fact that he hadn’t bothered using any of the stored energy while fighting the Ridgeback, he had plenty to spare.

Channeling the kinetic energy through his feet, as the skill required, Taka stomped, forcing the earth to flow up and out of a growing pit. The excited cries of the children brought a smile to his face, but he didn’t let it distract him. Dirt flowed into a massive pile in what had been the home's backyard.

He winced as stray bits of dirt splattered the nearby buildings. Moving this much dirt was difficult, especially with stored kinetic energy instead of his own mana. He’d clean up once he was done digging.

Once he had enough space for a foundation and basement level, Taka stopped channeling energy from Tremble Foot. Using the finer control he had with mana fueled Earth Manipulation, he smoothed and shaped the sides of the hole. Reaching out to his gathered stone, he summoned all the quartzite.

While the stone was lovely, with its ivory color, accented with gray, it had a tendency to stain when exposed to water. The discoloration didn’t affect its durability, but it made it an undesirable material for anything visible that got wet regularly.

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He knew there were mundane and magical means to prevent this, but he didn’t know any of them, so he settled for using quartzite as the foundation. hundreds of stones, small and large poured over the edge of the pit, spreading out until they formed a roughly even layer.

Taka reached out a hand, eyes pinched shut in concentration, putting more mana, effort, and attention into his Earth Manipulation than he did for any quick and dirty combat applications. This would be a permanent structure, a home, and he intended to do his best.

He whispered stories of the molten rock deep in the earth, easing them into a semi liquid state. Hands outstretched, he shaped the stone like a potter's clay, paying attention to every point they joined together to ensure their internal structure fully combined, leaving no points of weakness.

Normally, this would be impossible without a more focused skill, like Stone Manipulation or Liquid Stone, but Taka had trained for years to focus the broader power of Earth Manipulation onto any of its sub-elements, giving him most of the abilities of Stone Manipulation, though with a higher cost in mana and concentration.

Once the stone was joined into one solid piece, he switched from thoughts of magma to memories of all the homes he had lived in over the years, all the places he’d felt safest. He shared the deep memory of his mother’s embrace, his father’s strict, but compassionate lessons, and all his favorite places to hide when playing hide and seek as a child.

Of course, rocks didn’t understand concepts like safety or love, but the memories held Taka shape the intent of his magic as smoothed the foundation’s surface and fed it with a gentle trickle of mana. The mana wove together internal weaknesses, encouraged the quartz crystals within to join and grow, and filled every grain of stone with a gentle mana, strengthening it before fading away.

It was nothing as dramatic or effective as a strengthening enchantment or a transmutation, but it was the best he could do with his current abilities, and would endure longer than the home on top of it, probably longer than the village existed.

Taka repeated the process to form walls rising a bit higher than the top of the pit, making them thicker at the bottom where the pressure of the surrounding earth was greatest.

Once the basic framework was complete, Taka considered the layout. It was his intention to place a silo in the basement, like the one in the granary, he realized that if he really did make something more durable and usable than the primary silo, other people would probably need to access it.

Surely Maylin wouldn’t want people trekking through her home to get to the basement, not to mention there was the potential danger associated with letting anyone have free access to your home.

The solution he arrived at was to make the stairs down to the basement accessible through both a side door, and a door within the home, which could be locked like their front door.

Happy with the solution, Taka began constructing stairs along the basement’s left wall, which would reach the first level at the back left corner.

After finishing the stairs, Taka decided to convert the area beneath them into shelving, the vertical walls of which would serve to support the stairs above.

He considered adding the roof, which would serve as the floor for the first level, but opted to finish the basement first, to take advantage of the light. While he could get by with his perception, it was hardly his highest attribute, and it would be embarrassing to miss something important just because it was too dark.

His next task was the silo itself. He opted for separate, rectangular silos, rather than a divided cylindrical silo. He formed them from his abundant supply of granite, with the bottom slanted towards the opening at the bottom. He paused at the dispensing mechanism, wracking his brain to remember how they were made in the granary. When he couldn’t remember, he left the openings. He’d return to the granary to check when he needed time to regain mana.

Remembering the set up of the rest of the granary, he created a desk for Maylin to work. He didn’t bother with a chair, as he was sure she’d prefer something more comfortable than shaped stone, but he did make a couple bowls from the slate the kids were gathering like the one that held grain for her to infuse with life.

While he was at it, he figured he might as well create a full set of dishes, plates, bowls, and cups, along with a few larger pots and jars for storage, all of which he arranged on the shelves he’d incorporated underneath the stairs. He was putting the finishing touches on a pitcher when a slight headache told him he was running low on mana.

Even though this minor shaping was cheap, any expenditure of mana dramatically reduced how much mana he regained.

He pulled up his status to check the exact levels and found he was down to around 10%. Every slayer, every half decently trained combatant, knew to keep some mana in reserve in case of emergencies, so Taka took the opportunity to return to the granary.

Walking up the stairs he’d created, he exchanged salutes with the kids still ferrying rocks to him.

“How are you feeling, cadets?”

“Good.”

“I’m good.”

“I’m a little tired.”

“What’s a cadet?”

“It means a young soldier,” Taka explained, crouching down to talk to the girl on her level, “Thank you so much for helping me out with the stones. But you can stop if you want to.”

“Nah, most of us have chores to do, but our parents say we can skip, as long as we’re helping the slayer. I’d rather find cool rocks than scrub dishes.”

The other kids nodded their agreement.

“Alright,” Taka said as he rose to his feet, “Just don’t work too hard. And nobody go down into the basement yet. It's not safe yet.”

“Why is it underground? And why is it so big?”

Taka looked down at the basement in surprise, then to the surrounding homes. He felt a blush begin in his cheeks as he realized that a single level of the home he was building was twice the size of the largest home he could see.

And he still had yet to add the ground floor and second level. Compared to his personal estates, it would be a cozy garden shed, but it might as well be a lord’s manor to the villagers.

“It’s only the basement that’s underground. There’ll be an above ground part too,” He explained. He excused himself before he was forced to answer the question about the home’s size, but didn’t manage to escape a more difficult question from the little boy who’d said he was tired.

“Can you do my house too? My parent’s can find a monster to knock it down.”

Taka had a nightmare vision of this kid and his parents running out of a dark cave with a gaggle of Ridgebacks hot on their heels, leading them back to demolish their home, and then half the village.

“Please don’t go looking for any monsters.” He pushed all the earnest pleading he could into the request that he could muster, “I don’t plan on fixing anything that was destroyed on purpose, even if a monster does it. So, no monsters, okay?”

He stared down at the kid until he received a muttered, “Okay”.

The level of reluctance in the agreement had Taka doubting the boy’s sincerity, but it would have to do.

He left before the kids gave him a panic attack with their questions and ideas.

His mood lifted during the walk over to the granary, memories of his own youthful ‘genius’ and the chaos he’d caused, as well as a few of his son’s. Luckily, Cal had his mother’s brains, so he hadn’t been nearly as reckless as Taka himself, but there had still been a few impressive blunders.

The most memorable had been when Cal had snuck into the family vault to see what skill cores and shards Taka had collected over the years and chosen to keep instead of sell. His wife, Pattina had blamed the whole event on Taka, since he’d mentioned to his son that it was his intention to give him those skills when he reached the appropriate age and level.

Taka had taken that one on his chin, he knew he wouldn’t have been able to resist that kind of curiosity at fourteen. Cal was smart enough to find the key in Taka’s dresser, and the essence lock was keyed to Taka and Pattina’s blood, so it naturally had no issue unlocking for Cal, who carried both.

What had tripped him up wasn’t even the vault's other defenses. No, Cal was caught by an artifact that Taka kept more from curiosity than anything else.

* Cloak of the Hungry Deep (Artifact)

* Level: 4

* Condition: Pristine

* Description: A cloak, fashioned from the leather of a great sea beast. The edges of this cloak can transform into tentacles which seek out nearby sources of life. The tentacles restrict their prey while slowly draining their life, which is used to repair the cloak and, presumably, heal or empower the wielder. This cloak is soulbound, but has unknown requirements for potential wielders, which have never been fulfilled.

* Attributes:

* Soulbound (Vitality Attribute) (Unknown Requirements)

* Self Repair

* Adaptive Fit

* Growth

Luckily, a servant had noticed the open vault and alerted Pattina before Cal’s health was seriously drained, but both father and son got an earful about the dangers of breaking and entering, and keeping dangerous items where kids could wander across them. Taka had very carefully avoided explaining that a magically secured vault was exactly the place where artifacts like this were expected to be stored.

At his wife’s insistence, he’d paid for additional security measures to be added to the vault, and locked the Cloak of the Hungry Deep in a box. Its twisting tentacles had done their best to drain his health when he shoved it inside, but it was too low level to cause him any damage.

He’d even inquired about selling it, but few people were interested in an item that tried to kill anyone who got near it, and those that still wanted it were unwilling to pay enough for him to bother.

Taka finally returned to the granary and tried the same stone conjuring trick as before to get past the lock. The latch was slightly jammed, likely due to him improperly locking it when he left earlier, so it took him half a minute of wiggling to get it open.

“More secure than our vault,” Taka muttered.

The interior was exactly the same as it had been, so he didn’t waste time looking around and went straight to the openings at the bottom of each section of silo.

The valves appeared simple, just holes that could be blocked by inserting a wooden board into a slot. He pulled up one board to test it and immediately realized his mistake.

Grain came spilling from the opening and onto the floor.

Unfortunately for the village grain supply, years of monster fighting had drilled into him an instinct to retreat from the unexpected, so he dropped the board and stepped back. His foot slipped on the swiftly growing pile of grain and he nearly fell, further delaying him.

By the time he stopped the flow by closing off the valve, the grain was ankle deep.

Taka shook his head in self recrimination.

“I’m an idiot.”

“I’m not inclined to argue.”

Taka jerked up his sagging head to see a man in the doorway, backlit by the daylight. It was the same, elderly man that had seen him leave the granary the first time. Either he lived nearby, or he’d waited to see if Taka would repeat his inexplicable visit.

“Normally, the only thieves I catch are rats. You’re mighty big for a rat, son.”