The first thing John did the next morning was plant the acorns. He took them off to the partially cleared section of his land and planted them about 50 feet apart each and dropped a gentle stream of water on them until the soil was damp but not saturated. That finished he returned to his task of yesterday, and started in on the final four garden plots.

By the time mid morning arrived John had finished the final bit of script work, and had started in on empowering the first of the twelve plots. He broke up a dozen of his new water stones and lined runes and sigils with them until he was satisfied the design would work. Stepping back he took a good look at his creation.

[Name: Sprinkler Plot]

[Quality: Common]

[Description: An enclosed patch of earth in which to grow crops, the sides of the enclosure have been enchanted in such a way to evoke water over the plot in a gentle, but sustained, mist producing about 4,000 gallons of water over the course of about 2 hours when activated.]

[Connected Devices:

Mana Well]

[Current Charge: 0/90,000]

[Charge Rate (When Active): 179/Minute]

[Mana Discharge Rate (When Active): 13/minute]

John frowned as he saw the numbers. 13 mana per minute meant it was costing a total of around 1,560 mana, probably a little more because the system didn’t use decimal places. By the calculations he’d done last night it should cost only around 1070 mana to water a plot approximately this size. So where was the extra mana cost coming from?

“Help, why does this have a higher mana cost than simply casting a spell?”

[Answer: The quality of the construct is only Common, meaning it uses approximately 50% more mana to achieve the same effect.]

“Huh. Can I get a breakdown of how quality affects mana consumption?”

[Answer:

Quality modified mana cost:

Poor – 1.75x

Common – 1.5x

Good – 1.25x

Great – 1x

Exceptional – 0.75x

Incredible – 0.50x

Exquisite – 0.25x

Perfect – 0.125x

Artifact – 0.0625x]

“Wait, a magic item can use less mana than actually casting a spell? How does that work?”

[It appears you’d like tutoring on a specific subject, would you like to purchase the Tutor Module for 50 USD or 50 Gold?]

“No, please don’t remind me that I can purchase the Tutor Module again.”

John looked at the completed plot and contemplated for a moment. He could plant something right now, or he could wait. In fact, he should wait. When he’d started this he’d jumped in feet first, thinking he could just plant things wherever whenever and then harvest them as they came. But that hadn’t worked out, had it? He’d had too much wheat, and too much corn. He currently had no buyers, and according to Inspect both his Corn and Wheat were of poor quality, which he couldn’t imagine would sell well. No, he needed a plan, and step one was getting everything ready for work.

With about an hour of work John prepared the next plot for use, and then paused to consider what to do next. He’d used 24 of the water stones he’d made last night, leaving him with just ten, not quite enough for another plot. He could of course make two more stones, it’d only cost him 30,000 mana from the well. The problem was making enough stones for all the plots. He had 10 more plots that he needed to line, and at 12 stones per plot that came out to 90 thousand mana per plot, or 900 thousand mana for all of them. Which meant the cost to make all those stones would be nine million mana, or about three days of mana regeneration.

His immediate worry was that it’d take too long, that he couldn’t just sit around for three days and wait for mana to regenerate. However, he stopped and made himself think about it. The alternative was to purchase the poor-quality water stones. Not only would that cost him some of his remaining funds, it’d also very likely reduce the quality of his work, meaning the mana cost of running everything would increase. Alternatively, he could wait, perhaps take Ex and Sally up on that offer to run a dungeon, and create stones each day when the well was full.

Nodding to himself, John decided that’s what he’d do, hopefully a dungeon run or two would get him a level, an he could spend a couple of the days working on a skill or spell to bring them up from Novice to Apprentice, saving him some points.

John held out his hand and concentrated, creating two deep blue water crystals, which he promptly added to the other ten he had. He then filled in another plot and got to work on his Measuring skill. The next few hours were mind numbingly awful as he took a stake, measured it, re measured it, and then used it as a measuring guide for everything else.

Phillip hadn’t been wrong, the measurements of his doors, windows, and even wall heights and widths had been off. It looked like he could measure with his eyes to within a few inches, but that meant thicknesses, heights, and widths were inconsistent, and the errors got larger the bigger the object. He pushed on, measuring everything he could find, and once he was out of things to measure, starting all over again. Pausing only to empty the mana well and make more water stones.

Just as he was beginning to get ready to give up, John got the desired notification.

[Measuring has Ranked Up due to continued use. Novice à Apprentice]

John cheered considerably at this news, that was 200 less points he needed to spend. He then looked at his house, then the barn, and finally his new garden plots. He groaned. Phillip had been right again, now that he could see how off things were he definitely couldn’t leave them that way. The only thing that stopped him from correcting it all right away was the fact that he’d need to do it all over again when he reached journeyman rank.

Unsure of what else he could work on he opened his character sheet.

[Name: Johnathan]

[Race: Basajaun]

[Level: 4]

[Mana: 300]

[MRegen: 10/minute]

[Leveling Points: 0]

[Attributes]

Strength: 23 Constitution: 23 Dexterity 10 Intelligence: 30 Wisdom: 30

[Skills]

Engineering – Apprentice Farming – Apprentice Light Armor – Novice Swordplay – Novice Meditation – Novice Mana Manipulation – Journeyman Mana Sight – Journeyman Enchanting – Apprentice Inspect – Novice Mana Imprint – Journeyman Measuring - Apprentice

[Spells]

Move Earth – Journeyman Create Font – Apprentice Create Earth – Apprentice Move Water – Novice Hasten Decay – Apprentice Create Mud – Novice Create Mana Stone – Novice

[Boons]

Mana Stone Maker Bigger on the Inside Master Builder

Looking over his options he found himself more than a little disappointed. Everything he might readily practice was already over the novice level with the exception of Inspect, and he wondered if maybe he hadn’t been profligate in spending his points. Would it have been better to raise everything the hard way? He’d been too consumed with doing things now, now, now. To be honest, he still felt that way about some things, and he’d absolutely be using points to increase things to Journeyman rank. After all, Move Earth was his most used spell and it’d taken the better part of a month to level just with normal use. He definitely didn’t have time to sit down and practice a single skill for an entire week just to raise it.

John closed his sheet and looked around, it was late evening and the well wouldn’t be full again for another 14 hours, so call it nine am tomorrow. John was tempted to fill in another three plots, but with how the dimensions were off he decided it’d be better to wait until he leveled up measure again and remade them. With that thought in mind he went and logged off.