John watched as another group of people approached his building. Many dressed in similar garb as the ones who marked his building the previous day, but some were wearing looser robes in a matching dark red colour. They walked around his building, pointing at the marks they made, arguing amongst themselves about the best way to approach the problem.

A few hours passed as the group wandered around his building, drawing figures and plans in their books, before one of the men entered his building—a shorter man, with brown hair and tanned skin.

"Hey, so we're all ready to get started whenever you give the okay. This will probably take a few days though, maybe a week." The man said, leaning in the doorway.

John nodded his head, and the man went back outside.

"All good! Let's go!" He yelled to the group.

A couple of the robed individuals began charging some magic before bursts of wind slashed into the walls where the marks were, cutting through the stone. Other robed individuals—mages, John thought—pulled the stone section out of his wall, the sun shining through the newly formed hole at the bottom of his wall. The small stone block collapsed onto itself, folding over and over as it was squished into a bag one of the mages held.

The same mage pulled out what looked like white clay, almost liquid in its form as it draped over her hand in clumps. Another mage surged with magic as they willed the white clay into the same shape as the new hole in John's wall. Sweat beaded on their brow as another mage came up and pushed some of their own magic into it, the white clay solidifying into solid stone. The group took a break for a half hour, and then the same mage who formed the white clay pushed it into the hole, perfectly fitting.

The group repeated the entire process over again, creating a hole right above where the white stone sat, moulding another bunch of the clay to the exact shape and then solidifying it. But this time, as they took their break, another mage grabbed some similar-looking black clay from the storage mage's bag and spread it on the top of the white stone.

When their break ended, they pushed the white stone into the hole, the black putty squishing between the two pieces, dripping down the sides. The regular workers without robes scraped it away with metal tools, and the mage who solidified the white stone clay did the same process to the black putty between the two pieces, gluing them together to form one solid piece with a thin black line between them.

It looked nice, John thought. He was excited to see the finished product, there was sure to be a lot of pleasing contrast, and that was a good thing, John thought.

He watched as the workers continued their process of ripping out sections of his wall, forming new blocks of the white marble and gluing them together with the black putty. It was fascinating, he thought. To see all of them working together, each one having a specific job, a dedicated thing that they excelled at.

The material seemed like it would even give John some trouble to work with, the fluid state it seemed to be stored in would require some work. He thought he could teleport the clay into place, with a spacial barrier to keep it from flowing around. But the magic that imbued it with solidity was something John couldn't figure out just by watching it. The material would be useless if he had to maintain his space magic constantly just to keep his building from melting.

He wondered if he would even be able to do what he thought, or if the material would squish into itself and end up uneven. The blocks that were being inserted seemed perfectly even, not one spot being denser than the other. If he just let it float in a barrier, the bottom section would be compressed, at least a little. He had no means of manipulating each individual molecule, at least not without a lot of planning to create a rune that could do it.

The humans impressed him once again, he found. Doing something that even he couldn't see an easy solution for, although not quite without a considerable effort this time at least, he thought as he watched sweat bead on the white stone mage as they manipulated it into a block once more.

The day passed, as John watched the group work through a small section of his wall bit by bit. Each block took a little over a half hour to finish installing, and was not much larger than a person's head. The group worked the whole day from dawn to dusk with nary a break, bar the time they spent resting after forming each brick.

Not one customer came into John's store that day, to his disappointment. He wondered if it was because of the group working on his building, perhaps they were scaring his customers away. He hoped not, he was still open after all. The entire purpose of doing it this way was to not have an unnecessary interruption to his service. The side benefit of course was that it produced a better-looking product in the end, he found.

He wondered why more of the buildings made of this stone didn't do the same thing. Perhaps it was something they hadn't thought of before, and John was a brilliant innovator. Perhaps it was because of John's refusal to shut his business down that this method even became viable in the first place, and nobody else was so stubborn about their hours.

Regardless of why, he was pleased he got to take advantage of it. He looked at the small section on one of his walls, the white and black patterns drawing his attention. It was pleasing, and he was quite excited about the finished product. It seemed a week was a bit of a generous estimate though, he thought. If this was all they did in a day, this would take many weeks.

The days passed, as John watched the group return in the morning and work through the day, to head home at night. Four days later and they had almost finished an entire wall. Some days they showed up with more mages, able to work on multiple sections at a time.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Towards the end of the fifth day, the owner woman showed up again, much to John's disdain.

"Hello sir, just here to make sure everything's going well for you, sir. Do you have any questions or concerns, sir?" She asked.

John shook his head and then realized he did have a question. "Labour payment?" He asked. The woman told him that he would be paying per day on an ongoing basis, and that had never come up.

"Ah, yes sir. We haven't yet run through the gold you gave us for the materials and it's been enough to pay for labour as well. If we need more we will let you know, sir."

John nodded his head. "Anythin' else?" He asked.

"No sir, that's all sir. Thank you, sir." She said and left to go speak with some of the people outside. Telling them to make sure they don't offend the owner and do anything he asks, then headed off back down the street.

She was less grating today, but something about her just irked him. He couldn't quite explain it, couldn't quite understand it himself. But she just felt wrong, to him. She was human, he knew. She wasn't powerful, there weren't any illusions. But there was a feeling of wrongness about her that bothered him. Something fake, disingenuous. But he wasn't sure what.

To his surprise, a customer walked in shortly after the woman left. He hadn't been expecting any while the construction was ongoing, disappointed that it seemed to scare them all away. But that wasn't the case, he found. Perhaps only some were bothered by it, and he would still have some interesting stories while his building was redone.

"Hello," the woman said, her black dress almost reaching his floor as she walked towards the bookshelves.

John nodded his head.

She took her time browsing through the bookshelves, looking at various books of all different genres. Some fiction, some studies or documentation on creatures and landscapes. After a while she just spun around in place with her eyes closed and then pointed at a random book, bringing that one to John's desk.

"I'll take this book, whatever it is, I guess." She placed the book down in front of John. It was a book describing the tools used by leatherworkers, both the production and usage of said tools. It didn't seem to be the de-facto standard on either, but it was competent enough at illustrating both.

"I'm an adventurer, I go exploring the world finding horrors to fight. Sometimes it gets boring though. Not the fighting, that's always enjoyable." She smirked. "But the finding the monsters part. That can be boring. So I started bringing along books to read now and then and got the [Dangerous Reading] skill if you've ever heard of that. Lets me read faster the closer I am to dangerous monsters. Don't really care about the reading faster part, but a side benefit is I can tell if there are dangerous monsters nearby depending on how fast I'm reading. So now I just kinda drift around while I read and if I suddenly speed up I know there's something fun around.

"Gets extra boring though since the books don't last that long anymore. By the way, I've never read even nearly as fast as I can read here. You must be quite the monster." She said, smirking at John.

A challenge, he thought? Less brazen than the previous one. And she shared an interesting story. It was still not worth his time to fight with her, nor was it something she should be entertaining if she wished to keep her life.

"I will not fight you if that is what you are askin'," John said.

"Damn. Well thanks for the book anyway." She vanished, appearing a few streets away, tossing the book into the air a few times before she flew off.

A skill that lets you read faster the closer you are to danger was quite interesting, John found. He wondered how the danger was defined since the girl was in no danger in John's store. There was almost no chance that John would harm a customer, let alone risk his store. And yet her skill seemed to recognize him as being the greatest danger she had been near. Perhaps it was just recognizing powerful mana forms nearby, rather than an abstract concept of danger.

Though for the girl, perhaps stronger creatures would be dangerous, as she would always challenge them. And the system recognized this, calling it some form of danger sense. It was interesting to see how the system would shift its behaviour depending on the person interacting with it. Would the other girl with the reading class have acquired the same skill, but called Mana Reading, or something of the like?

Perhaps the other girl already did have something of the sort. Though with how she seemed to be reading, speed wasn't very much a part of it anyway. Maybe she didn't have something similar.

And to think it was just a skill she acquired by reading while she was out adventuring. For it to be so simple to acquire new skills, new abilities that can completely shift how she lives her life. John was almost envious.

The following couple of weeks passed without another customer, the woman the only one unbothered by the construction it seemed. Disappointing, but he at least had one interesting story in the downtime and got to watch his building transform which was also enjoyable.

The most interesting part for John was his ceiling. It was the final piece they worked on after all of the walls were completed.

Many more mages were brought in on the final day, and they ripped out the entire ceiling in one piece. Several stone mages held up a thick gray stone just below where his ceiling would be. And then several more mages formed the white clay into one solid piece filling in the ceiling. The black putty was formed all around the edge with even more mages, and then a few more solidified the whole section in place, creating one solid white block that John called his ceiling.

He was disappointed that they didn't do the same process as the walls, the black and white patterns were something that he quite liked. The smooth white ceiling was less interesting to him, but he supposed it wouldn't be seen as often either. Not by most, at least.

The group left afterwards, and the owner woman showed up about an hour after.

"Hello sir, your building's all done, sir. Is everything to your liking, sir?" She asked, handing him back the ring he created for her. A handful of gold coins were still inside, he found.

John nodded his head, the building was better than he had ever hoped for.

"Good, great. If you ever need more work done, sir, you know where to find us. And if you ever change your mind about selling more rings then you know where to find me. Thank you very much, sir, have a great day, sir." The woman left, looking back at the building as she was a little way down the street. She shook her head and then continued towards her own building.

It was done, John thought. His building was complete, there would be no more workers disturbing his customers, nor him as they rested and whispered about John. He looked around at the black and white mesh that made up his building now, satisfied with what he had. No longer was he surrounded by the gray cobblestone. His windows in particular looked excellent, the dark slate contrasting with the white marble just as he had hoped.

He sat in his chair and waited for his next customer. Now with his much nicer building, he was certain he would have many more customers to learn about.