As I walk back into the village to prepare for my departure later today, I hear Charlie calling me.

“Nash, wait a minute.”

I look back and wait for him to jog over and catch up.

“We didn’t suffer nearly as much in this attack compared to all the other ones before.”

“Thankfully, it was time something went our way. Still, I heard you had a new vehicle, some type of flying craft that the MRI designed.”

“Yeah, what of it?”

“Why didn't you say anything? We could use one of those.”

“I don’t get where you are going with this, just talk with them. I’m sure they would share the schematics.”

“That is not what I mea.…” Charlie looks around at the nearby people. As a response, I draw a few roots from the inner world and form them into the shape of an isolation rune. Not anything fancy like Blackwood’s, but plenty for our purposes.

“Now nobody can hear us, go ahead.”

“Your powers continue to amaze me.” He shakes his head at yet another of my displays before looking at me in the eyes and continuing. “Look, for us making a vehicle would only be useful for short trips. There is nobody else with a mana pool nearly as big as they would require to go even to the closest village. But you have a near unlimited range. What the village is requesting, is that you bring a couple of people with you when you go someplace far away.”

“Well, I was planning to circle the high level zone.”

“You… yeah, that sounds like something you would want to do. Still, that will be over 10 thousand miles. That is a long trip.”

“Almost 14 thousand, but close enough.

“Either way, we are prepared to pay in mana storage. A battery that can hold a million mana sounds about right.”

I shrug and say:

“It’s fine. I can even return the battery when I come back but I will need more than that in mana storage. I don’t know how many people you want me to transport, but the costs will be high and I don’t want to stop at any unknown villages and pay to have the battery recharge.”

“Sounds prudent, I don’t think revealing your capabilities openly to be wise.”

Shrugging, I look around and start to run the numbers in my head to confirm my gut feeling.

“How many people do you want me to take?”

“You are going quite a lot farther than I was expecting. I think I can scrounge 24 people. Split into trios, each group with a bag of holding.”

“With that much weight, even counting the batteries I will dig up, I will be short over one million mana points, and that is already taking into account that I will be dropping them off in the middle of the trip and lightening the load.”

“How does 1.4 million more in mana storage sound?”

“Perfect, and as I said, I will return it after the trip.”

“I can’t say I don’t appreciate that, but we are almost getting the rune casting working perfectly. By then with your help, we won’t need to hoard the batteries as much, and the amount of time and headaches you will be saving us by taking the scouts on this trip is worth the expense.”

I shrug and ask him:

“How are you going to buy 8 bags of holding? Aren’t they like, a gold a piece?”

“Let's just say we got a one-time 3 gold discount for anything in the merchant’s shop and our finances are pretty healthy right now. The five gold will nearly wipe us out of liquid capital, but we will manage. This is too good an opportunity to pass up.” Charlie says with a big grin on his face despite the lack of funds the village will be under. “When will you leave?”

“Ummm, I was planning on leaving at sunset at the latest, but I suppose I can wait till sunrise. I’m going to have to build a flying craft to hold everyone.”

“Somehow I think you will manage.” He says rolling his eyes as he touches the closest rune to him.

After settling on the final details, I walk away as I start on the framework for the vehicle in my inner world. I think about using my single-person bicycle as a base, but that wouldn’t save any time, so I leave it alone.

I need more detailed and precise schematics than something whipped up on the spot, regardless of how effortless I make it look. So I get the MRI’s mages help designing a runic structure. Burges is not there for a change, but I leave a model of the craft I’m building and my requirements for it and they promise a proper schematic by tonight.

I pass in front of the very first building I entered in the instance and remember the grouchy shop owner.

How has he been? Maybe I would do well to see him. I walk to the shop with a smile on my face and enter it.

“Ohh, did the guild get enough money to buy the next book?”

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“Uh, no. I just came to take a look around, maybe buy a book if I see something interesting.”

His whole demeanor changes. And now he is genuinely excited.

“Ohh, yes come on in, come on in.”

Where was this enthusiasm on the first day we met each other? And so I ask him about that.

“You practically ran me out on the first day, why the sudden change?”

“Well, I got to admit that wasn’t my finest day. There are reasons for my actions, but I’m stuck the whole day in the library without a single person to talk to. It’s just soo boring. Nobody comes to buy any books besides the guild.”

“Well, with how expensive the books are, you should at least be making bank.”

He looks confused to me. I forgot, he just told me he didn’t have much contact with us. He hasn’t picked up human expressions, so I explain what I mean.

“Making a lot of money.”

“Given I only sell a single copy of each book, and with the lowest possible margins no, not really. But each race has its way of doing things and yours apparently is very good at sharing.”

The conversation continues for another few minutes in that direction, and I’m glad to take a look behind the curtain. Usually, the shopowners try their hardest to give the impression that things just happened by magic, and even the blacksmith usually doesn’t let us in on much of his dealings with the system.

We still don’t know how he gets metal resupplies. Stuff like that is always kept behind a curtain and it seems I just got a peek through.

As we talk I look at one of the books the very copy of the introduction to the system that the village bought the first week. One silver coin for one book. I look at it with my perception field as I hold it in my hand. I prod at it carefully while looking at the shopkeeper attentively, he doesn’t react in any way, so I slowly send my ‘scan’ deeper and deeper.

I try to read it for a minute, and I can make out the pages with the book closed, but the ink on it is still beyond me. It doesn’t even show up on my radar. I look at him and something tugs at my heart. Perhaps it shouldn’t have, I must have seen a dozen other things just as heartbreaking, but his cheerful talking and my subterfuge wrench my chest in a conflict I never thought could form so fast. But that doesn’t mean I will stop, nor that I wouldn't take advantage of the situation.

We need this opportunity, and letting it go to waste would be dumb.

“Well, I’m no longer living in the village but…. I have a way of contacting it.” I start to grow a small wood formation and connect it to the outside through both the door and the window. Placing a small hand-sized disk on the counter, I explain. “This is a remote communication formation. Whenever I‘m checking on the village, I can also contact you.”

“Ohh, yeah, I’m not supposed to let it happen, but I guess that it shouldn’t hurt too much to bend the rules a little bit.”

“Well, I must be on my way, I will just,” I pull a single silver coin from my inner world and place it on the counter. It would be good practice if nothing else.

“Well, thank you,” he says. I notice as tears almost begin to fall from his face, and I have a feeling that he is emotional for more than just our actions.

Was today an important date, or did something remind him of someone he was missing? Shaking my head I start to walk out.

I now have my root in the shop. When I finally manage to read a book while closed, I will be able to read anything in this bookshop.

Or rather when I managed to read this type of book, as I can already read the reward book and notes made with the ink we bought from the Merchant with the perception field. Did they specifically make it so that it would be harder to read with any skill like mine? It’s possible, but it doesn’t matter, I will eventually overcome this small obstacle.

I walk out pretending to put the book in some inner pocket of my vest but send it into the inner world.

Getting to the town square of our village, I sit and begin earnestly working on the flying craft. In a couple of hours, I have a very sturdy frame that took little to no conscious thought from me to grow after the initial outlining. I also begin to form the runic structure, but I stop myself before spending too long on it. I walk over the village and outside collecting some of the battery back into the inner world, though not all of it keeping some of it in their place.

As night approaches, I head for the MRI in hopes that they will have finished the blueprint, and I’m not disappointed.

“You surpassed yourself this time, Burges.”

“Nah, It wasn’t hard. We pulled everyone to work on it. And it hasn’t been tested yet, there could be something fundamentally wrong with this design.”

“It will work, even if I only get a very mild boost compared to the normal speed or economy over days at high speed it will add up.”

“Glad that we managed to meet your standards. Now on another subject, we are making progress on data handling and transmission, but our scribe ran out of space to transcribe.”

“Ohh, you have been busy. Here are some more for you to fill.” I say glad that they are making good use of it. From my inner world, I pull a block that should allow for much more data to be stored. There are quite a few things to figure out, but this is a good start. “Show me what you have been up to then.”

And that is exactly what he does. I occasionally even stop growing the runes on the flying craft in my inner world just so I can pay attention to the small details, and there are a lot of them. This is half the reason I formed the MRI. The big stuff I could probably keep track of, but the thousands of small optimizations, and keeping track of everything is simply beyond mere humans, even with all the mental enhancements from the system.

And with enough effort, the small stuff, could also eventually grow into something large that I would never have achieved without tremendous amounts of time.

After getting an update on the more promising lines of research and what they had achieved in the last few days, I finish with mana batteries and my supply hunt for the trip before returning to the central square. There I start a light meditation to speed up the craft not only in time but also to make it good.

Whipping up something like the small formations that I make throughout the day was all fine and good, but there is something intangible about working on something and getting every last bit of potential out, instead of going just 80 percent of the way there like with most of my formations.

In battle and during daily use it is simply dangerous and wasteful to spend hours on something that could be done in seconds or at most minutes, but if I had the time, even a one percent improvement could be the difference between happily ever after and ending as a chew toy for a certain Panther. Going over the designs from Burges I saw so many of the ways my shortcuts were hampering my formations.

I need to practice both and tonight it’s time to improve the true craft, which requires time.

Peaceful and serene I meditate with the light from the moon at my back with all of my attention on polishing the details of the flying vehicle. Two hours before the sunrise I look at the gray sky and stop my work.

If I was already doing the full round, I might as well do something else. So I lay back to get a little sleep, after all, I had just decided to spend days awake for the whole trip.

As the first rays of light start to hit me, I get up and open my eyes already knowing all around me. Not to the full hundred meters diameter, but enough that I make the whole group waiting for me while avoiding a headache.

“Hey, is everyone ready?” As they nod, I start a work of magic blinding everyone for a moment and moving the earth pretending that I am bringing the craft from underground.

They all open their mouths looking at a long wooden flying ship. No windows, just a pair of doors at the front of it. A 9 meters long sleek main body with poles extending forward and backward.

One of them, a little more talkative than the rest exclaims.

“Hell yeah, we will be traveling in style!”