The next morning was accompanied by a light drizzle, the sight of which caused John to sigh in annoyance. It seemed the further they got into the ‘rainy’ season, the more rain they got. He supposed that made sense, but the mud and poor visibility were starting to get to him. The one bright spot was that the chookers didn’t want to leave their coop at all, which meant no spontaneous field exercises to capture his farm animals. The downside was that he had to clean out the straw more often. While he wasn’t hurting for straw at the moment, he was going to have to grow more grain for it eventually, or maybe he could just buy some from Frank.

After reforming his umbrella, John made his way over to the shrine and spent some time with the tree. While he’d been saturating his domain, John had spent some time thinking about the tree and its quick development. Normally, after a certain point of growth, you start pruning a tree to help it grow in specific directions. Mostly this is to encourage airflow through the canopy and help ensure sunlight reaches the lower parts of the tree, however it could also be used to encourage fruiting.

John wasn’t sure he wanted to prune the tree at all; he knew intellectually that it was to help it, however, having felt it’s proto-sapience, he didn’t want to do anything that might cause it pain or grief. Having considered the problem, he decided to try simply telling it what was needed. As he fed mana to the tree, he consciously tried to impress on it the need to keep its canopy loose and to focus its energies on existing branches instead of creating new ones. The tree didn’t seem to respond to the imagery, so he supposed he’d just have to wait and see what happened.

Finished with the tree he stood and returned to his farm. It was a couple hours yet until the bodies were finished in the purification ritual so John delt with the chookers and retreated to the cellar once more. Settling down on a straw bale he quickly dealt with retrieving his new earnings from the auction (netting a nice 216 coppers) and placed the next batch of eggs (of which there were only 40) up for sale at the same price of three coppers each. Then settled in to spend some more time pushing mana into his land.

Connecting to his domain was strange, but not unlike his communion with the tree. The moment his mana connected he felt like he’d become a part of the land, or it had become part of him. The connection wasn’t terribly strong, nor was it precise and detailed. For instance, he couldn’t single out any of his garden plots, nor could he have picked out a specific set of footfalls upon its surface. Despite this, the connection was profound, like suddenly being able to see after having spent an interminable time in darkness. He could feel the land about him, welcoming and bolstering him. He could also feel where it ended.

The contrast between his land and ‘not his land’ was sharp and defined. The land went from warm and welcoming to cold and indifferent without any gradient in between. All his attempts to push past that barrier were met with failure, he simply couldn’t gain purchase. However, the land he had claimed but not made part of his domain was different. It still felt indifferent, yes, but it was porous and pliable, willing to change its mind.

Making the pliable land part of his domain was as simple as pushing mana into it. He’d done some experimenting that first evening and had found that earth mana was not in fact the best option for this task. The land would accept it, but he could sense there was something missing from it. He’d tried raw mana next, though the efficiency was terrible and the land found it even less satisfying than the earth mana. Of the other elements, the only one it responded to was life, and it was much like earth mana, missing something. After considering the conundrum for a moment, he decided to try something different. With some concentration he’d created two aspects at once, life and earth, and fed both into the land at the same time. The result was that each point of mana spent gained him twice the coverage.

While it took more effort to maintain two aspects, John felt it was well worth it, given that it would reduce the required time by half, leaving only 100 or so hours of work. Better, he found that he didn’t need to concentrate too much on the task; which meant he could do things like reading or watching movies. He had decided not to work on other things at the same time; not just because controlling more strands of mana would have been difficult, but also because he needed some time to relax and an evening of binging tv shows had been just the thing. His only regret was the lack of snacks to go along with it.

After a couple of hours, John returned to the surface where he found that the drizzle had stopped, and the ground was only lightly muddy. Pleased that he didn’t need to lug around his makeshift umbrella, John made his way over to the ritual of purification. Once there he encountered a problem he should have seen coming. He didn’t have inventory space for all the bodies, which meant he’d have to make multiple trips.

Gathering up the first batch of bodies, John took them over to the plots and deposited them in the northwestern most plot, the one he’d originally had wheat in. He then repeated the process six times, depositing 40 bodies in each plot, until the six eastern plots were filled. He then considered his second problem. He’d been using Hasten Decay to reduce the bodies, however his previous method was to just plop them down in a pile and then work at them piece by piece. He’d spent five hours on the task each previous time, but in reality there was a lot of wasted space between (and inside) all the bodies in question. What this meant is it didn’t need to take that long. Better, he didn’t need the meat, bones, or organs in pristine condition, in fact mulched was better for his purposes.

John considered the problem for a moment, and then decided that the best option was to try compacting the bodies. After several minutes of thought, and taking into consideration the strength of his Move Earth spell, he decided on a container ten feet to a side and five feet tall.

He moved to the northern end of the aisle between plots, and created a three-foot-deep pit that abutted the exterior wall. He lined the bottom with granite a foot deep, and then created foot thick walls that were five feet high, for a full two feet below ground and three feet above. Next he created the lid, making it slightly less than eight feet to a side, so that he could easily lower it into the pit. After a bit of careful testing, he found that he could indeed lower it into the pit and raise it up without too much grinding at the sides.

Pit finished, he started moving the bodies into it. After the first 30 bodies the pit was looking remarkably full, however some quick calculations told him it’d only take 32 minutes or so to decay the entire pit. He’d been way over-casting, which was not a pleasant thought given the amount of time it had cost him.

Grabbing the lid with his magic, he dropped it on top of the bodies. There came a sickening squelching sound as it settled on top, however it didn’t descend very far. That was fine however, as he had intended to force it from the very beginning. With an effort of will, he began pushing on the rock, trying to move it further down. He was rewarded by further squelching and cracking along with a plethora of noxious and disgusting odors. How, he wondered, did something that was cleansed so thoroughly smell so bad? After a moment spent fighting his gag reflex, John continued his disgusting self-imposed task.

When the lid was finally two thirds of the way down the pit, and fluids were starting to collect on top, John figured his task was finished. He lifted the plug out, cleaned it with some water magic, then put it off to the side as he threw in the last ten bodies. Once more the plug went in, and once more he fought to reduce the filled area. By the time he was done he judged the pit was about three quarters full. A bit of math told him that it’d take about 24 minutes to decay the sludgy mess.

John let out an annoyed growl. It had taken him almost 10 minutes to crush the bodies, and it would take him 24 to decay them. That was a total time of 34 minutes. Given that it would take 32 minutes to decay just 30 bodies, he could assume it’d take little more than another 10 to finish off the rest, for slightly more than 42 minutes. He was saving maybe eight minutes. It wasn’t worth the extra effort.

He sighed and set about decaying the goopy, soupy mess of broken bones, torn flesh, and mixed liquids and after a half hour or so it had turned into a rich brown slop. With a gesture and a thought, he began moving large chunks of it out and transferring them to the first plot. He then moved on to the next set of bodies. By the time lunch rolled around he’d finished three of the plots. After lunch he spent a little over an hour and a half preparing the last three.

Sally and Ex dropped off the next set of bodies not long after he’d finished setting up his plots, forcing him to take a break to make the required mana stones for the ritual. Fortunately, with his current stats it was possible to make a stone with 10,000 mana in just over half an hour. Unfortunately, two hours was more than enough time to draw scavengers and he had to chase off a half dozen birds and twice that many in small rodents. It was a good thing the ritual cut off scent, though the birds would probably be back anyway; they could still see the bodies after all.

Ritual activated, John returned to his garden plots. There wasn’t a lot more he could do tonight other than purchase the seeds he needed. Pulling up the auction he quickly filtered to plants and then seeds, then looked specifically for alchemist’s sponge. It wasn’t particularly difficult to find and for the low price of a silver each he purchased twelve bags of seed.

Each seed bag was slightly larger than a fat grapefruit and had a definite heft. When he opened one of the bags he was surprised; he had expected to find them packed full of small, fine seeds. Most research he did on herbs suggested that was typically the norm. These however were more like the size of dried peas. Thinking perhaps he’d bought the wrong thing, he Inspected the seed.

[Name: Alchemist’s Sponge Seed]

[Quality: Poor]

[Description: The seed of the alchemist’s sponge plant.]

As he continued to examine the seed, John began to feel the tingle of his ‘instincts’ once more. This time they were telling him there was more to this plant than he’d read. In fact, the more he looked at the seed the more certain he became that it was, in fact, a magical plant all on its own. He wasn’t sure exactly what was magical about it (aside from its properties as an alchemical base) but he was sure that without that understanding he wouldn’t be able to get the best out of it.

Checking the book again yielded no insights into his sudden feelings. It was as he recalled, the plant had no special restrictions or instructions for growing other than optimal planting depth (one half to one inch), planting distance (36 inches apart), and optimal sunlight (full). It did however note that it was rare to see one above good quality outside of specific regions of the empire. John pondered the information for a moment. It sounded like certain areas had something the plant needed to truly flourish. From the list, Runic Rock was not in one of those regions. Still, it would grow here, and that’s what he needed right now.

Moving to the plot in the upper north-western corner, he quickly used Move Earth to create inch-deep furrows 36 inches apart. Then, after opening a hole in the low wall, he walked in and started dropping seeds into the furrows one by one. While this method of planting was much more efficient than the broadcasting he’d done for his previous crops, it also took interminably longer. Broadcasting just required that he walk at a reduced pace while throwing seeds; this method required actually measuring (if only visually) the distance between each seed, and all but stopping to drop the next seed into the furrow.

All together it took him almost an hour and about 590 seeds to finish the plot. He was unhappy about the number of seeds required, as he’d barely put a dent in the first bag. It seemed he was going to have a lot of leftover seed. Still, he supposed that it was better than having to buy more.

A quick use of Move Earth saw all the seeds covered, and then an application of Create Water further wetted the already damp soil. After that he moved on, finishing the next three plots before it was time to log out.