Hesitantly, I lift the soil back up. Those 'branches' were the yellowed bones of at least eight corpses. They wouldn't be so hard to look at if they didn't still have large pieces of decomposing flesh stuck to their bones. I send Salem a mental message to keep the kids busy while I deal with this. I'm so glad I can stop breathing so I don't need to smell these. I wonder how I didn't see these when I looked underground. I can only see what's right in front of my face down there so I guess I just missed them. Thinking about them being right next to me all that time gives me the creeps so I push it from my mind. Right now I need to decide what to do with them.

I could rebury these bodies but I don't want them near where I'm growing food. I could just dig some graves but that would permanently take up a significant amount of my very limited space. Maybe I could cremate them? That doesn't seem too disrespectful.. or.. something like cremation? I glance around nervously for a moment before resummoning my staff and steeling my resolve.

It's almost painful to have the amount of mana that I do now. It's definitely more than all the mana I've collected combined. I try really hard not to think about where it came from. I need something to take my mind off it so I decide to put some to use. My rabbits came back with lots of seeds as well as some flower bulbs which I immediately plant and pump mana into. It takes very little compared to the amount I have now, so I use a bit more than I was planning to. Ivy crawls up the stone brick walls as carrots, potatoes, and various other vegetables grow, along with a lone apple sapling which blooms and bears fruit incredibly fast. Flowers grow and bloom, lining the sides of the house, giving it a happy and welcome feeling.

The only thing breaking up the happy tone is a very large toadstool which grows in the dead center of the garden. I send out my mana with the intention of plucking it, but I'm caught off guard when it starts pulling in mana, it sucks up almost as much as I used in the garden before I manage to wrench the back the line of mana as if it were a rope snapping.

Does… does this mushroom have eyes? The toadstool blinks a few times, ending our seconds long staring contest before letting out an adorable yawn and pulling itself out of the soil with stubby little legs.

I'm not embarrassed to say I squealed when the mushroom waddled over to the flowers and let out an adorable sneeze after sniffing a black bell shaped flower with bright red stamens. "I'm not sure what you'll do but I'm keeping you!" I watch mush for a while, he seems content to stay in the garden, occasionally napping by burying himself in the soil. Oddly, when he does this he produces mana. I wonder if he's making it himself but it seems more likely that he can break down whatever is in the soil. I read that mushrooms could do that, once. I think.

I leave the little cutie to it while I get some more work done. I feel like I've forgotten something but it's probably not important. I decide to clean out the well room and connect it to the basement but since the well room is deeper I'll have to make another room below the basement to connect it to. I pop into the basement to start digging and see that my core has jumped to about grapefruit size. If it keeps growing at this rate I won't be able to move it soon. I'll move it lower in a bit. But first I'll need somewhere lower to move it to, I decide on a spiral staircase through the stone so I won't have to make another ladder the stone takes even more mana than the dirt and I can move less of it at a time but with the amount of mana I have, it doesn't take long to get to the level I want. As I dig, I use the stone to form bricks which I line the basement walls with for a bit more structure.

The deeper I get, the more I find that isnt stone. Well, that isn't the same ordinary gray stone. There's quite a lot of gems and metals down here, more than I'd expect at least. it's mostly quartz and iron but I do find a couple beautiful pieces of what looks like opal. I put the especially pretty things in the chest upstairs and the rest of the non stone in a pile next to the forge. I still haven't found any coal for the forge so that iron ore probably won't be too useful. Wait, am I dumb? Can't I just use my mana to purify and shape the iron? I try just that. Focusing on the pure iron, I split it from the oxygen in the rust and immediately the whole lump grows red hot and melts. I wasn't trying to heat it yet but I shape it while it's still hot into a rough ax head. It's very crude but it'd probably get the job done. Guess I don't need the forge for myself but if the kids ever want to try, they'll probably need it so I leave it where it is.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Back to mining, I hollow out the space to a bit smaller than the two rooms above it and start digging towards the well room. I don't want one long hallway, and i hit a deposit of some stunning blue crystals about halfway so i form another room where they were and make it as long as two of the other rooms, making it look almost like a banquet hall, that doesn't sound like a bad idea so i leave a large slab of stone in the center for a table, i smoothe the top to a shine and give it some indentations on the side for peoples legs. I'll need some chairs to finish it but I'll take care of that once I'm ready to use it. I continue the tunnel on the other side of the room and break into the well room after a few yards.

I didn't spend a lot of time here, for obvious reasons. But after what I've seen in the garden, this hardly spooks me at all. I look over everything a bit more closely and realize that those symbols I saw on the cauldron are also basically everywhere else. They're all highly complex but given their placements I can't imagine they're just decorative. I'll have the kids take a look and tell me what they think. On second thought this place is still pretty scary, I ought to take the symbols to them. I summon a few thin stone slabs from my stone pile by the shed. I really need to find a better storage because the pile is already bigger than the cottage.

With the slabs, I take them to each symbol and copy the symbols onto them. It seems that every symbol is different because by the end I've used the front and back of three tablets.

The skeleton still lies in the center of the room. I'll have to get rid of this one too, since I'm not planning on having an undead army. I wave my staff and the skeleton is gone. Though now that I can see the stone table it was on, I see the inscription carved into it. It appears to be a coat of arms consisting of an elf with a wand and some kind of dragon person with a staff, and the text 'intus magica vivimus aeternum. intus spiritu iterum resurgimus

Looks like latin which i guess shouldn't surprise me since those books are in english. I wish I knew what it said though. Other than the cauldron and the stack of water damaged books, there's not much else in here of note.

I pop back up to the cottage to see what the kids are doing and find them in the middle of a heated debate with Salem.

"No, I'm absolutely certain about it. The white birds taste exactly the same as the gray birds. I dont think they're even a different species." Salem confidently states.

"You're out of your mind! The white ones are fatter which makes them more greasy and better for stews, the gray ones are leaner and better for frying." Aulos gestures wildly to the two mid-sized plucked and beheaded fowl.

"You've got those totally backwards, Aulos!" Lyre pipes up. "The fat ones are for frying and the lean ones are for stews.

I can't really tell the difference so i leave them to their debate and head out to the stone pile. It's pretty huge at this point so I'll have to take care of them. I figure I'll use them for something and decide on a tower. Mostly because they look really cool. I make a round stone foundation at the back of the cottage and start building up. I float upwards for a better vantage point and notice that the invisible barrier is now about five yards bigger than it was. I pop around the perimeter and sure enough it's the same in every direction. That's probably got something to do with the size of my core but its perfect for a tower since i can now make it exactly the height I want it. I keep building up until it looks about right and form a spiral staircase as i go. At the top, i form some arches around the edge to hold up the roof and make it the same way i did with the cottage, this time coming to a point.

I pop back a ways to admire my work but it doesn't really match the rest of the cottage, its too new. I pump some mana into the ground around it and ivy crawls up the sides along with moss. I keep going until the plants reach the top and look again. Perfect, that looks amazing and took up a lot of the stone, bringing it back down to a small pile.

I pop back inside to see if the children have finished their argument and find Aulos stirring the cauldron with both birds' meat inside. No one looks happy so I guess they came to a good compromise. I pull up all the veggies from the garden and put them in the basement, forming a stone pot to store them in. I'm not sure if that'll be enough for the winter so I pop back into the garden and find that new seeds have already been sown. I look around and find my little mushroom carefully putting seeds into the ground. They're so adorable! I pump mana into the seeds to get another crop going. Once they're all pretty big, I harvest and store the food, and Mush starts replanting.

I leave them to it and look back at my mana level. I still have more than I ever have even after all that so I make a few more hawks, I don't make these ones sentient since Acci should be able to report back with their information too.

Wolves seem like a pretty good idea now so I make five, they take a lot of mana but I still have a surplus when I'm done so I pour the rest into the largest one, making them sentient.

"I'll call you… shadow!" I quickly think of a name.

Shadow nods and walks off with his pack without a word. Maybe he's shy? I'll try to talk to him later. For now I pop back into the cottage and the stew smells delicious. I hope no one gets sick of stew anytime soon because that seems to be the specialty of the house. Maybe I'll make an oven and stove top? I'm sure everyone would appreciate that so I'll put that together in the morning. Everyone seems happy for the moment now that it's time to eat, so I watch them scarf down the stew while savoring my own bowl. It's absolutely delicious