A couple of days later, I’m hiding underground near another relatively close village as I control a root avatar hundreds of kilometers away. Made to perfectly mimic the root suit I was previously wearing and simulate my body weight.

I may eventually be able to add illusions to it and convince someone that there is a face underneath like I have shown in a couple of villages, but my fine control of the illusion runes is not there yet. After finishing, I move the avatar to the same quickly grown flying bicycle it arrived on and speed away from the village before finding an isolated place nearby and in a few minutes have the whole thing dismantled and spreading underground as not to waste the roots I grew or leave any trace behind.

Remotely controlling the flying craft is mana intensive and requires a lot of attention to bypass the system’s restrictions on autonomous vehicles, but flying for a kilometer or two is quick so it’s no great loss of time.

Four hours later, the expected travel time from this other village, I leave for another village, but this time not with the root avatar but in person. I could have skipped this one and gone remotely as well, but this penultimate village added just a hundred kilometers to my trip.

Planting the seven customary seeds to speed up my progress, I feed mana into them and wait for their resident mage to make his appearance. After a few minutes, we are sitting outside and he finishes listing off what he wants.

“Yes, after accounting for the defenses and mana shield for these buildings, spend the rest of the time growing as much mana storage capacity as possible. That will be very useful.”

I nod and say: “Sure thing, I have started the growing process and will be able to make a battery good for about 20k mana if everything goes according to plan.”

“Then I will get out of your hair,” the short mage says before shuffling back to the village. I close my eyes and concentrate as much as possible on the boost from my first subclass skill, nature connection. It can’t be used at the ranges a village reaches, but anything up to about 150 meters is fair game and I place my hand atop the book as I sit in the root ‘chair’ I made before starting.

Though right now I’m using it like a grimoire, that is just one of its many functions. Unfortunately, even after a lot of testing I didn’t find it to be much faster than working without it, all it does is help keep track of bigger and more intricate runic patterns, which would eventually be useful as the complexity of the runes go from dozens or hundreds of runes to tens of thousands and beyond, but for now I have a little problem with that given how my mind worked.

The hours go by as the sun climbs higher in the sky until the mage comes back just as I’m about to finish. Behind him follows an old woman. She walks slowly and carefully as if each movement is a great effort and minimizing the wasted energy is the most important thing in the world.

Though even beneath the hunched posture and most wrinkled skin I ever saw, there is a lithe strength that the system has brought back to even the people closest to death’s door.

“Are you finished? Four hours of your dedicated time?” The short mage asks me.

“Yep. As promised, four hours of exclusive work on the runic formations in your village.” I say.

“He lies… he did not work on the runic formations for the entire time.”

I look at the old crone feeling my stomach unsettle. But as I turn a questioning look to the mage, he simply replies:

“She is our Truthsayer.”

Nodding as if I know what exactly that entails, I carefully chose my next words while facing his scowl.

“I had a little bit of the needed structure before officially starting and I accelerated the growth through some external methods that were not suitable for other villages. With that in mind, I carefully calculated how much I would have managed to grow erring on the side of caution to your advantage if I was off in my math.”

She looks at my eyes, almost boring a hole through my skull so intense is her gaze, and I almost take a step back. Her eyes are black voids that peer deep into my soul and I should know the feeling. I lock into place when the faintest whiffs of mana come from her as she activates whatever skill she uses with much greater strength than before. I sense no runes even after the mana dissipates. It takes me a moment to remember breathing and I barely notice as she speaks.

“He tells the truth.” She speaks to him with her eyes back to normal and the tense atmosphere simply gone. Though as I look at him, maybe it was just me, he doesn't seem like he felt anything. Yes, too much I don’t know about the system.

“So why didn’t you just explain?” he asks me.

“I didn't really see the need and it would only invite people to be feeling cheated if I started adding all kinds of caveats to my conditions, something I’m fairly certain you are feeling now,” I say watching the old crone move back into the village.

“Yeah, I have to admit even knowing you are telling the truth I’m feeling…as you put it, cheated.” He says before changing the subject. “We would appreciate it if you didn’t spread any rumors about her abilities.”

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“Done, I don’t like people butting in my business as well.”

“You don’t say.” He says, shaking his head and I give a sheepish grin.

“Tell you what, one-time deal, 10 percent discount. How does that sound?”

“Can’t you bump that a little higher?” I give him the stinky eye as he waves it off, pulls a few coins from his pocket, and starts counting. “Well, it was worth a shot. So that’s 36 Pando silver coins, after the discount.”

I nod and extend my hand grabbing all of the coins while wondering how they acquired so many of this batch in the last couple of days. They all touch my hand and pass through the natural Aether formation around me I feel the smidge of Aether attached to them is much stronger than what I felt in the mint just a couple of days ago.

Perhaps one day I would find a way to allow them to accumulate Aether without me having to grow the little roots at all, but for now, I will spend a few minutes here and there growing them to provide the needed anchor for Aether.

I get up from the chair and prepare to say my farewells, but as he leans in the direction of the village, my stomach growls, and instead of heading off, I ask him:

“Can I get something to eat in your village?”

Looking back at me, he says:

“Umm, sure, you will just have to let us see your face.”

“Why does everybody want to see my face?” I ask, playing it up a little, though the question gnaws at me.

“Honestly, I’m not sure either, but it’s strange seeing someone completely covered in roots, so if you want to enter…”

I accompany him inside the village after removing all the roots covering my entire head and thinning the covering on my body, just to keep things fresh and not become predictable.

Inside the village after passing the gates, I’m greeted by exactly what I expected, small wooden huts precisely in the same spot as everywhere else in the instance, except they don’t reflect sunlight into the brownish color of wood but a myriad of bright colors.

After months away from Earth, I gawk at everything as if I had never before seen something like this. From the outside, not a hint of the scarlet, pumpkin orange, or the dozens of other vibrant colors all around can be seen.

“It… has been a while since my visual cortex has seen so many bright colors. Well, with exception of our food, but even then…”

“Yes, besides the green we have from the trees, punchy pigments are surprisingly difficult to acquire.”

I look at him trying to parse out more from what he told me, but seeing this he continues.

“You know how each village is developing a certain identity?” I nod and he continues. “Well, we have plenty of artists in our village and almost everyone at some point in life made a painting or three… hundred. After one of us found a little bit of clay with, a vivid reddish color, the second and third person joined in the color race and you can imagine the result when people start competing.”

“Complete mayhem?”

“Or artistic creativity, whatever you would prefer to call it.” We arrive in front of a green shop built beside the inn, a shade of color I only ever saw on a few rare bird feathers, almost neon green. How are they getting such a variety of colors around here?

“Welcome to the most upscale restaurant in our village.”

“Can you sell me a sample for all the colors in the village?”

He looks at me confused.

“Are you trying to steal your methods?”

“Not particularly, and I will pay, say… a copper for each unique color, just don’t mix them to sell me slight shade variations.

“Two coppers.”

I nod in affirmation not even bothering to haggle and he gets on his way, presumably to assemble a set of colors in short order. I sit down at a table with silk cloth and fine cutlery before being attended to. I glance over the menu, but while the presentation is as upscale as they could get in the place we are at, the menu items don’t have anything exotic. An assortment of vegetables and choices of meat from the closest villages. At the end, as the very last item, I even find my persimmons, though with a hefty 2 copper price tag attached to it, significantly pricier than I sold them for.

Their near-magical ability to find so many different colors did not extend to their food, though there are a couple of new items, so I start with a salad, bread, and a sauce from something supposed to be avocado.

I had never been to anywhere that could be referred to as an upscale dining place back on Earth, but everything looks and feels just like as I imagined. With a finely dressed server coming to my table to bring each of the plates as I finish the previous one, and what most of the dishes lacked in novelty, they made up for in the simple artistic sense that makes it look like each vegetable piece or grain was hand placed on the plates.

Some twenty minutes later, as I’m on my third plate, the same person that attended me till now returns with a suspiciously similar box to what the merchant used when I got samples from him.

He puts a stack of 8 boxes on the table and starts speaking.

“This is our standard kit of colors, there are a few more, but this is what our traveling salesman uses when presenting options to other villages.”

I look up at him frowning. “Is there a big enough market?”

He tilts his head to the side before saying:

“Hmmm, kinda, it’s not very big but we sold pigments even to a village some 900 miles away and we are not trying to be like your village, raking in millions of copper coins a month.”

I start to protest, but even if we were not there already, it was only a matter of time. A million copper coins a month is less than 4 gold a day. Whenever I had the time to work on the smithy, I made about 20% of that with two +7 weapons.

“We are not there yet but I can’t deny most villages can’t match us in production, though not for a lack of trying. If you are selling so far away there must not be much competition, but how are you doing business so far away?”

“The mercantile system is a really big help in transporting goods and collecting payment.”

I look at him and after a moment he smiles, imagining what I’m about to say.

“We can’t collect money through the merchant, only transport items, that is why we didn't even bother. Far too expensive for little convenience as we still need to move the money around ourselves.”

“So at least in this aspect, we are ahead of you.” He gloats.

“I’m going to inform the village about this conversation. I think there is a mutually beneficial arrangement to be made.”

“Or we can call them ourselves now that we are in the network.”

I grin thinking of the suddenly much larger market we will be able to reach with their help. Communications are already established and they were relatively close by at less than 300 kilometers, now all Charlie had to do was make to seal the deal, and as I give him 8 silver Pando’s coins he walks off with a big grin on his face clutching them in hand like a kid on Christmas.

With a flourish of my hand, a thin and flexible sound isolation runic formation rises from the ground at an inch per second as my entire skillset; creation, mana manipulation, engraving, nature connection, and nature manipulation come together. In seconds, after I’m cocooned, though still able to see outside, all sound from the other tables is completely gone and I call the village.

They will definitely be interested in the mercantile system this village has access to.