After Galen took some steps back, Kalla asked some of her followers if they had any tree saplings with them and not surprisingly there was a good collection of everything the ordinary forest had to offer. I decided to test with an oak seed, because it had the most similarities with the hearth tree when looking at it with my mana senses.

I checked if I could infuse it with fire mana only to see it burning before my eyes. Ok, next one please.

After that I decided to try mixing different elemental mixes to counteract the effects of fire mana, but that became increasingly harder. Water mana was the direct opposite of fire and the two mana kinds fought against each other in the seed, making it explode spectacular and much to the fear of Kalla.

I thought that I perhaps would need a kind of catalyst to make it happen. Wait, what is a catalyst?

'I thought that a little bit knowledge here and there could help you with your work, little one, so here is the gift of the day' came the voice of my creator.

Thanks a lot, I thought and got back to the job.

Infusing life magic in between the fighting water and fire magic did the trick. At least my seed didn't perish suddenly. Now I only had to grow it abit.

“Hey, Kalla, how big can a hearth tree become?”

“I know that our old tree had a diameter of more than 30 feet, why?”

“Please take the changed seed 80 feet away from me and plant it there. If this goes like I want it to, then I will create more of it and use them as a first defence line and additional hometrees.”

Kalla took the tree just to the edge of my influence and planted it there into the ground. Then I send my life magic into the small seed with additional fire and water mana to strenghten the effect. It took only moments for a sapling to grow. Its bark was dark brown, almost black with a little bit of red in the mixture. I took a look at its description and was pleased with myself.

Mana-infused Dungeon tree

Resistent to fire and water magic

That's what I talk about. Now that I had a template to work with, I could start with my modification of the hearth tree. I sent my mana into the sapling and wanted to modify it. But the same awareness I could sense before, now stood in the way and tried to fight me.

“Don't fight against me, all I want to do, is to make you stronger against your foes.”

As if it had understood what I said, the resistance suddenly ended and my mana flooded the small sapling changing its properties. The Bark had changed from white like birch to the red-brown color of autumn leafs. And the leafs themselve were almost blood red.

The elves looked at the changes with awe and after checking its properties Kalla's jaw hit the ground.

“Marcus, you made the hearth tree resistent to water and fire magic.That's amazing.Could you make it also resistent to axes?”

Thinking about how hard it was to change the tree as it was now, I was quite sure that my abilities were not enough for any further changes for the foreseeable future. Perhaps after my skills leveled up to beginner or adept.

“Sorry, Kalla, but I think that's out of my league for some time, but I will try as soon as possible. And now let us make a home for your people.”

In the meantime Galen had organized all the elves with a maximum of 1000 mana in a lineready to send their mana to me. My passive mana regeneration went up like crazy from all the elves in my influence and I was sure that I would level up again today.

I connected my energy to the tree and let him grow in size. After 5 minutes the sapling had grown to 10 feet, depleting 10 elves in the process. All of them were let to the side and fed to regain their strength as fast as possible.

“Marcus, wouldn't it be better to level you up also? If you had a greater mana capacity more of us could give you our mana.”

I really liked this princess. Always considerate of my well-being and her people. Hopefully in this order sometime in the future.

“If you want I will not object. With all the people here my passive regeneration goes through the roof. I think about creating some walls around this place. The possible attack in the night makes me anxious and with a wall between us and any foes I would feel much better. I will take the mana for another level. That should bring me to 1500 and the next level up to 2100 if I read my progression right.”

She reflected for a moment. Galen harrumphed and then spoke.

“It would greatly improve our performance and if Marcus could create bigger mana stones for all the mages we could gather our mana in the stones for him to use without a chances of blasting him to pieces.”

Hey, there are signs and miracles to be witnessed. The old geezer had a good idea and swallowed his pride and in the same stride offered a way for him to get his mana stone. Perhaps I had to reconsider his uses for me again.

Kalla thought about it for a moment.

“I will send some scouts back into the woods to check how much time we have until the goblins reach us. But we should bring Marcus level up twice at least. And then he should try to create the strongest mana stone possible for the mages to give him their mana. This should boost construction time the most. But all mages have to keep half their mana at all times in case of an attack.”

I had to admit that the beautiful elf was a better strategist than me. So the next mana infusions were used for leveling me and then create a strong mana stone. The stone was the size of a marble and made of the same blue crystal like myself. The instant it was lying on the ground Galen grabbed it and I only waited for him to say my precious, to make his face expression perfect.

“Galen! That's for all mages to use, so go around and let them charge it up. You can keep it for yourself after the work is done. But if it suddenly disappears before that, I will give Andarin your sorry ass for practice. So be a good boy and do as I say.”

He did look a bit ashamed. She seemed to have hit the nail when she spoke about the disappearance. I returned to the hearth tree and with my greater capacity it became much easier for the elves to share their mana with me. When the sun began to settle, the hearth tree was 40 feet high and it became more difficult to grow it. The mana stone had been returned and sucked dry by me more than 20 times and the elves had build tents around the new hearth tree with patrols wandering outside of my influence. I created stones between their tents and used my fire mana to heaten them up for improvised bonfires to use for making food.

I took the chance to look at my status when everyone took a rest for the evening.

Name

Marcus

Race

City dungeon

Level

6

Mana

50/2100 1/h reg

80/minute from citizen

Int

11

Wis

11

Cha

11

Luck

10

Skills:

Earth

Newbie 2%

Water

Newbie 9%

Air

Newbie 0%

Fire

Newbie 9%

Life

Newbie 10%

Mind Speech

Adept 5%

Architecture

Beginner 1%

Range of influence

80 feet

Number of citizens

135(providing 80 mana/minute)

--------------------------------------POV unknown----------------------------------------

Damn Princess! After all the work i put into destroying her and her family she has again the luck of the gods shine on her. I will destroy you and your traiterous family for good!