As the negotiations run over half an hour and other things are included in the deal, I come to realize it would be futile to wish for things to wrap up quickly. They will take at least another couple of hours. I wasn’t idle during all this time, as I can do plenty of other things while sitting in this back and forth, but I want to make a point, so I get up and walk to Charlie delivering a piece of paper.

“This is the minimum I will accept. If they don’t meet it, no deal.”

As I turn to leave, one of the others ask:

“You are just going to leave? Are you agreeing to anything Charlie negotiates?”

With a smile, I answer simply.

“Charlie knows not to try and screw me over. Besides, we have a good working relationship, why would he ruin it over a single deal?”

Ignoring the other questions, I leave.

Two hours later, I finish another few tasks in my ever-increasing list, like manually moving all the excess mana from the village's mana batteries to my own gigantic battery grown in the inner world. I didn’t explicitly need to do things this way, but handling massive amounts of mana was a good exercise and it even helped slightly alleviate my problems with Aether.

I sit for a little while to connect with the roots underground.

After the strange events after my last time playing with Aether, I don’t even think about experimenting with it, at least not any time soon. Even improving my own capabilities with it will have to wait for me to recover.

Something positive did come from it, however. My connection to Pando’s seed was now even deeper than before. I grow thin roots around and within me, even surrounding the organs inside my body. Though the original seed, and focal point of his consciousness, Pando’s seed, who is now in the inner world, left behind to this day the thin and flexible roots in my ocular cavity. If I got used to the feeling of the roots around my eyes, anything around my gut and muscles will be even easier.

My attention goes to the largest tendril underground. Reaching almost ten miles and anticipating the connection to my home, I start to channel a constant and significant stream of mana into it and to a few other places, though my focus is mostly on this longest tendril. I thicken the roots and start to make them more redundant. But most of my attention goes to growing the last of the connected seeds in all directions in search of the next one in line.

As I succeed, the tendril becomes a mile longer. I repeat this over and over freely spending mana, and trying to overcome the slight mental bottleneck that sending my perception so far away through such a thin tendril creates.

Less than an hour later and about 20 k mana deep, I feel elation as I finally succeed. With no reservations as the roots surrounding my house join the fold again. The little guy in my inner world is nearly overwhelmed.

Transmitted through our bond, joy fills me as I sit there for a while. But as always, the next thing comes and I get on with my day, or night as it were.

I turn on the metaphorical tap of mana for Pando’s seed. A constant stream of mana, about two points a second which he is more than happy to concentrate on using exactly as I intend, to thicken the connection. It is nice and all to have a connection available, but the feeling of trying to squeeze through a long tube is claustrophobic, not something I submit myself to if I have another choice.

I think about my book. It has been too long already. Well, at least now I know what I’m going to be doing next on the trip over to Max’s village. But before leaving, I have a few more preparations to make.

To that, I find a couple of people I trust, to accompany me, to the closest herb sites. I found that the system slowly replenishes the Earth in those spots if you take it, so I will be skimming a little bit off the top, to fill my inner world. It had increased significantly in volume, and I wanted to increase the land area again. The bunnies and my buddy are sure to appreciate the extra space, and the extra volume to fit in more runes to make my battery even bigger is a nice bonus.

I start to prepare by mentally separating the dirt depleted of nutrients and where I would add the new soil to expand the area. Perhaps, I could even overfill on dirt slightly so I could already have some of the benefits from a larger inner world, and not need to immediately go again to fill it the next time I increase its size again.

I can also put plenty of seeds on the ground on my way around. The apple size-ones may be too heavy for our scouts, but the benefits they provide are worth it for someone not fighting the weight penalty.

I’m carried from the village by a pair of people with plenty of stamina while laying on my wooden wheeled contraption. I can just imagine the strange scene from someone else’s perspective, though I don’t mind it so much and just shrug it off.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next day I stand beside Charlie ready to leave. Everything there is even the remote possibility I will need is stuffed in my inner world. I even spend a few silver coins on the Merchant to prepare.

Better safe than sorry on an endeavor like the one we are undertaking.

Charlie continues speaking and I drag my distracted mind to the business at hand.

“Well, considering you didn’t actually get the message you were supposed to, you did very well. Still, even if there isn’t any monetary reward, the priority on buying their commodities and asking for mana in the way you did was a brilliant move. With the way I structured the payments of mana, we will get more than you initially asked for.”

Still absentmindedly following his talk, I chuckle and answer:

“Paying interest rates in mana. They will eventually realize the value of mana, but while they treat it as a cheap resource, it would be foolish for us to not get as much of it as possible.”

My distracted response has nothing to do with him boring me, or that I don’t appreciate the nearly limitless mana budget for the foreseeable future.

Compared to the crux of my introspection, all that seems unimportant. We were an army heading against another. I look at almost two thousand elite soldiers. The very best from a dozen villages with another two thousand we will meet on the way.

Four thousand fully armored warriors prepared to bring death and destruction, should it be needed. And we might not have a choice.

Discussions ran rampant about the best way to go about it, but the politics of the situation and time frame forced a few less-than-ideal solutions. Perhaps the next Max that shows up, even if he is stronger, can be dealt with in a better way. But for now, the best we could hope for was a straight full-strength attack on the very heart of the enemy's forces after days of negotiation.

As we all march forward Charlie heads closer to the front, while I follow near the supplies being carried at the back. With so many mages, around, they splurge a little on the mana. With their magic, the trip is much more comfortable. It’s not smooth, but it becomes good enough that our carriages, at least the ones with suspensions, can easily keep a good pace.

On a couple of them, I see prisoners tightly secured through my new sense. My stomach churns, but it’s the nature of the business at hand. Everyone is counting on things working out neatly while preparing for the proverbial human-bodily-function to hit the fan.

We soon fall into a steady pace, as I attach myself to a carriage. This way, I can fully focus on what I had been planning for the whole trip instead of dividing my attention. In only a few minutes, I start to plant the medium-sized seeds I prepared. Every few paces another seed makes its way from a simple but effective runic structure that shoots it into the ground with a little of earth magic. They dig about a foot under the ground, and can right afterward break their shell and start to extend the thin tendrils grown inside of them.

The scouts have a couple of the refilled ‘planting staffs’, and they work on establishing a connection. After the main link is established, the seeds they plant will be a great help in making the connection more robust. I want as much redundancy as possible.

The medium seeds I chose are based on the same principles as the other two, and they took little mana to grow. Grapefruit-sized seeds with a slightly thicker strand than the small seeds coming from it, they extend almost to the level of the big seeds.

Pushing my awareness through a very thin straw was tiresome, so I thickened them a little. Planting them close to each other, even without my intervention, the roots should form multiple connections with their neighboring a reasonable time frame, which addressed the same problem from another perspective.

The other major change is the amount of nutrients left in the seed after the initial connection. The main purpose is to accelerate the development of a greater number of more robust connections. All that just to avoid feeling squeezed through a straw. I wasn't particularly claustrophobic, but it was a very strange sensation, and proper planning will do a lot to mitigate it, a needed precaution as the ranges increase.

I let the matter rest, and start on something long overdue, my book. I need to upgrade it, but I don’t know much about it. I had guessed maybe a library would be a good start, but how to implement the idea was a mystery to me.

I go over the last few notes I got from Burges when leaving the village to update myself on the latest advancements in magic. The focus is on runes. What configurations worked best? How do they affect mana consumption? How hard they were to draw? I read Merlin’s and the MRI questioning and conclusion on that and a myriad of other aspects of magic.

Even a few tidbits from our interaction with other villages made their way in the notes. Though even if our village was significantly ahead of everyone else, the other villages were making progress.

I also read what was added to the book. After absorbing it all, I begin to work.

Leaving the village, especially now that I’m heading in an unfamiliar direction is good for my mental health. Ideas I felt being stifled in the previous week start to flourish again. Being confined to bed seems to still hold me back, but I’m slowly coming back to my old self.

I try dozens of different things and work on aspects of the whole, but there is still too much missing. My conclusion is that I will need to make another rune. Following my thought process, I will again make a complex rune that will directly wield the result I want, supported by ones we are already familiar with. It worked wonderfully for my last rune, so why over-complicate things?

My Aether is however still very sluggish, so I just cycle it around me lazily, as I think of what rough shape and goals for this new rune.

Fresh ways of approaching the problem and solutions start showing up; I note each of them down as I allow myself to explore mentally all that I can. You never know when you will come up with something brilliant.

The next morning comes as the distance to Max’s village shrinks. Even with the magical camouflage hiding us, at about 110 miles from his village, we run into his scouts. They don’t approach, and we don’t bother to chase them very hard. Not because, we will fail, but hiding was never our real intention, just a bonus if he failed to find us until we were much closer.

We continue to head in at our constant pace, in only a couple of hours, we will be stopping so everyone can get a little sleep. Far enough away that any attack on the part of Max would not make much sense, but close enough we can complete the march in just three hours.

I let the idle thoughts drift away before getting back to work. Soon, however, I think perhaps I will be better served by sleeping and being fully refreshed for the endeavor to come.

I dream of runes. Shapes my awakened mind can barely hold swim around in my head. Dreams filled with adventure, and the amazing feeling of exploration fuel my imagination.