John sat in the cellar and thought about what he could and couldn’t do. He couldn’t make a plant more complicated than saturated at the moment, speaking of which he didn’t know what the effects of life saturated wheat were. Grabbing one of the few stalks of life saturated wheat he manually extracted a wheatberry and ate it.

[Buff: Fast Healing (Minor).]

[Description: Your body’s natural ability to heal has been boosted by a minor amount.]

[Duration: 15 seconds.]

John looked at the prompt with pleasant surprise. This was the kind of thing he’d been looking for. He remembered all too well how the game simulated injury and that it didn’t seem to accelerate natural healing at all. This made everyone reliant on magical healing, and was probably why life stones sold so well. However if you could accelerate healing with food items, especially cheap food items, then it’d be a viable out of combat healing method. The only question would be is if it was cheaper than using mana or a potion.

John was just considering planting an entire field of the saturated wheat, when he realized he’d need to fill the soil with life stone dust. While filling a four-inch square with a sprinkling of dust didn’t take a long time, filling an entire field would take quite a while. One cubic inch of Poor quality mana stone was worth 1,250 mana, and cost him three and a half minutes. Each field was 30 feet by 85 feet… Filling an entire plot with an inch deep of mana dust would cost 459,000,000 mana and take him just under three years to generate. That was unreasonable, and impossible. Even if he cut it down to a tenth of an inch of dust (which he was certain wouldn’t be enough), it’d still take over three months. Sighing, he leaned back against the wall. He needed more mana, and maybe a way to concentrate specific kinds of mana in one place?

Idly he took The Enchanter’s Handbook out of his inventory and checked to see if it had anything on mana wells. It did, indeed, cover mana wells, unfortunately the runework was entirely beyond him at this point. With a sigh he put the book away and let his eyes wander over the cellar. At this point it felt like his goal was impossibly far out of reach. He’d sunk 150 dollars (not including what he’d paid for the headset) into this, and he had basically no return. Worse, he was two months in and, aside from the magic tree, he had no crops worth mentioning.

John ran his fingers through his beard as he thought. He should have argued for a year, not six months. As it was, two thirds of his time would be taken up by winter, making it impossible for him to grow any standard plants. He just didn’t have time, he needed an enchanter and an alchemist if he couldn’t do those things himself. Perhaps the knights had an enchanter on hand? How did he go about soliciting their assistance? Who was the appropriate person to speak with? John tugged at his beard in annoyance.

With a sigh, he stood and stretched. Sitting down here moping wasn’t going to get him anywhere and he had a couple hours before he needed to log for lunch; he might as well use that time to good effect. Exiting the storage cellar, he moved to the north-eastern part of the wall around his farm. With a few moments of fiddling, he expanded the blueprint for his new barn and placed it abutting the wall itself. He’d be using the eastern half of his claimed land as pasture for his animals, if he ever got any.

Between Move earth, Earth to Stone, Create Earth, and his prepared blueprint, it didn’t take him more than an hour to raise the barn. Finished, he looked over the structure critically. It was boxy, being 40 feet wide, 80 feet long, and 12 feet tall. There were two spaces for barn doors, one facing the pasture land to the east, and one facing the rest of the farm to the west. Both doorways were designed for large barn doors, ten feet in width and eight feet tall. The attached creamery had a doorway to both the interior of the barn and the exterior, so one could get in either way. The interior stalls each had their own window (made of clear quartz), taking up most of the wall behind each stall. The creamery itself had large granite work stations and most of the southern wall was taken up by quartz windows, letting in plenty of light.

The hardest part of the design had been the roof. John had worried it would collapse under its own weight, so he’d added support pillars down the length of the center aisle, which seemed to have worked just fine. Once more he’d included plenty of sky lights, ensuring that the entire interior was well lit, at least during daytime hours.

Nodding to himself, John decided it would do. Now he just needed to put in orders for the doors, and maybe find some more animals. Hopefully ones less aggressive than the chookers. Speaking of, the little terrors had been quiet for a few days, and he wondered if he should be worried. He glanced over at the coop. Even from this distance he could see the drake poking its head out of the flap. It seemed to be examining the ground, and tentatively put one taloned foot out to test it. Seemingly satisfied the chooker strutted out and was followed by the gaggle of hens. Once more the entire flock went over the wall. John sighed and hoped there’d be no more ‘training exercises’ involving his flock.

Since the chookers were out, and John had some time left, he decided it would be a good idea to clean out the coop. Walking over he created a small rock and used it to prop open the door. He then got to work. Using Control and Create water he used a small wave to scour the floor clean and sweep up all the used straw. He swept it out the door and into a floating ball in front of him. He walked the ball of filthy water and straw over to the testing plot and dropped it inside. A few minutes with Hasten Decay turned it into a new patch of fertilizer, and he headed toward the storm cellar. He grabbed a bit more straw and hauled it up to the coop where he scattered it once more. Satisfied, he decided it was time for an early lunch.

Logging out John immediately took care of his bodily necessities. Then (as usual) he spent the next half hour doing stretches and exercises. Afterward he took out a frozen meal and nuked it, he then settled down to eat. As he spooned the mush (which was pretending to be potatoes) into his mouth he considered his problem some more. What could he do to deal with his current problems? Both Alchemy and Enchanting would take 12 days each to reach Journeyman, that was most of a month he really didn’t have. But he needed at least one or the other to progress. He sighed and tried to tug a non-existent beard. Maybe, he considered, I should choose one or the other, I could maybe sacrifice twelve days.

He considered the choice for a few moments. Alchemy would likely give him better options for growing plants, from elixirs that would increase growth rate or quality, to potions that might enhance or help create magical plants. It was useful and something he’d need… eventually. Enchanting on the other hand would give him the ability to create a Mana Well, which would increase his available mana immensely. In addition, it might actually allow him to create contained environments in his garden beds, which would allow him to grow crops during the cold months, extending his growing time by two months. Thinking of it that way, Enchanting was the clear winner. Nodding to himself, John finished his lackluster meal, and logged back in.

John came back to his avatar in the cellar, where he’d left it. The first thing he needed to do was visit town and have Phillip make doors for him. Setting down the road he noted that the chookers hadn’t gone very far this time. He could easily hear them nearby and see the grass move as they ran through it. He was glad they weren’t ranging far, but he wasn’t really glad they were ranging at all. Still, the only alternative was to lock them up, and he expected that would impact the quality of their eggs.

Shaking his head, he continued down the road, and soon found himself walking down the main street. The street was… different. There seemed to be a lot more players than normal milling about. In fact the street seemed to be almost packed, making it difficult to navigate without running into someone. John did his best not to run into anyone, but there was a lot of jostling going on anyway. Still, he managed to make it to Phillip’s shop, which was fortunately empty of all but the carpenter himself.

“Ah! John, how are you?” The small man asked as he sat on a table and whittled at a small piece of wood that was swiftly transforming into a detailed figurine of a horse.

“I’m alright,” John replied as he glanced out the window at the crowded street. “Any idea what’s going on? That’s a lot of people…”

“Players from the inner empire,” Phillip said, as if that explained everything.

John pondered that for a moment, and then remembered a conversation he’d had with Loren after he’d first logged in. Hadn’t she said players who started in the core cities would be looking to leave soon enough? It seemed they’d finally made it all the way out the Runic Rock.

“Have they been causing any problems?” He asked.

Phillip paused in his carving to make a so-so gesture. “Some of them are clearly itching for a fight. Others are obviously treating this world like the game you believe it to be. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if there are more than a few bad apples in this bunch. From what grandma Loren has said, we’ve been relatively lucky in who we got until now.”

John nodded. “Yeah, it’s been surprisingly pleasant, I honestly expected more griefers and player killers.”

Phillip paused as he looked at John, “I’m not sure what either of those are, but I can guess the last one from context.”

“Ah, a griefer is someone who,” John hesitated, never having had to put the actual meaning into words before. “Someone who… does their best to ruin other people’s fun. Usually that involves destroying things, or doing things purely to upset someone. And a player killer is what it sounds like, someone who kills other players for fun.”

Phillip nodded and resumed his carving, though he was now frowning. “There are people like that in this world too, we just call them criminals though.”

John nodded and looked around, a little uncomfortable. The store was as he’d seen it last, filled mostly with functional and sturdy wooden furniture, with a couple of intricately carved display pieces thrown in.

“Well enough about that,” Phillip said with slightly forced cheer. “What brings you in today? Something interesting I hope?”

“Oh… uh, not really,” John said apologetically. “I actually need doors, four interior doors and three exterior doors, along with two sets of barn doors to fill a pair of ten foot wide and eight feet tall frames.”

“I don’t suppose I could interest you in some carving work on the barn doors? They do make such a wonderful canvas…” The little man trailed off hopefully.

John hesitated, he didn’t need fancy barn doors, but he was going to pay to have them varnished, so if it didn’t cost much more he could probably safely indulge the carpenter. “Well, I’d like them to be solid like the cellar door I bought from you, the three exterior doors as well. How much is that going to cost to start off?”

“Well, the exterior doors will cost you a silver each, same as the last one. Interior doors, depends on how solid you want them, the cheapest is just fifteen coppers, but they tend to be flimsy things. I would suggest something like what you bought last time, good and solid, those run fifty coppers. For the barn doors, unadorned but varnished will cost you something like one silver per door, or eight silvers total as you’ll be wanting two upper and two lower doors in each frame.” Phillip explained as he put the finishing touches on the miniature horse, which looked quite lifelike.

“And how much to make them interesting?” John asked.

Phillip grinned. “That depends on how interesting you want them! I could do something basic for a few silvers, though the more complicated it gets the more it’ll cost you.”

John thought about it for a few moments then shrugged and nodded. “Alright, whatever ten silvers will get me on one set of barn doors, the other set will be facing the pasture, so no one will ever see it. Oh, and actually, let’s change one of those interior doors to another exterior, I can swap out the door on the coop so it’s waterproof and use that one as an interior door.”

“Excellent choice!” Phillip said ecstatically. “Do you have a particular theme in mind?”

“Um… no?” John half asked.

“True creative freedom! Excellent! I do love it when I’m allowed to work without constraints,” Phillip was positively beaming at this point. “I’ll get started immediately, unless there was something else you needed?”

“No, that was everything,” John assured him, feeling slightly bemused. “I’ll see you… in a few days, to pick up the first few doors?”

“Yes, that’ll be fine,” Phillip assured him.

“Alright, see you later then.” John said and headed for the door.

“Goodbye,” Phillip replied, even as he set the horse carving down to an equally detailed knight.