“So, is that a yes?” Akiel asks uncertainly. Not only is he still suspended in air by his head, but the two criminals also have yet to make their decision. “No my boy, of course not! We can’t be returning to the infernal place we came from. The journey's just starting, there is no going back!” the clown quips. “Clown, either we help him or kill him. You decide. I will not be leaving loose ends around here.” Cedric growls.

“I told you, Cedric. As long as your little mousy doesn’t leave her home, nothing short of a dragon with ill intent can make it through that formation. I had to pull quite a few favors for that one. Just let fate do its work. Please remember, she’s not yours anymore.” the clown says exasperatedly. Still hanging, Akiel asks tiredly, “Can you let me down anytime soon? You can forget I even passed by. Just leave me on top of this monument.”

The clown and Cedric had been debating for an hour and neither seemed to be conceding. “I will not change my schedule! We will be in the beastman plains by next week and tour the underwater city of merfolk after we finish there. That's at least a year, after that we need to cross to the next continent, this one doesn’t have much to see besides those places anyway.” the Clown aggressively shouts.

Being ignored by the clown, Akiel addresses Cedric, “Then a year later, when you have toured both places. I’ll even promise that I won’t touch your beloved.” The Clown’s grip strengthens on his head as several cracks start to form. Using remodel, he prepares to discard his head and eject as far as possible in a smaller mass. “One year, Clown. It’s perfect, we can destroy the kingdom if his plan seems feasible and destroy him if it isn’t. I swear, nothing will hinder your traveling plans in the future. Just let me make an adjustment this once.”

Relenting, the clown replies sourly, “Just this once, but I never want to hear about that wench again. You understand?” Not even bothering to get upset, Cedric happily assents. Lowering Akiel to the ground, the clown steps on his head. With his vision blocked, Akiel waits for an indication of what was to come. As far as he is concerned, the deal is sealed for a year later. Glancing to the side with his peripherals, he catches a glimpse of laces and ruffles. ‘Is the Clown wearing a dress?’ he thinks to himself.

“Listen up, construct. I’m going to set up a link between dear Cedric and you. It’s like a contract, but more personal. Both parties will feel when the other side does actions that counteract their side of the agreement. All I need is your full name.” The clown shifts her foot and lets Akiel look over the side of the stack. Impatiently waiting for them to leave him, he answers quickly, “Akiel Don, my name is Akiel Don.”

After waiting a few minutes, he feels something stab into his head and the pressure lessen on his head. “One year from now, 415 days. We will come back. Your side of the agreement is to prepare and protect the wench from harm. Only the wench mind you, the toadstool of a man can rot for all I care,” the Clown whispers into his ear. With a small tingle, in his head, he relaxed.

After waiting a few moments, still ready to eject a small mass of himself away, he gets up. No sign of the duo except a few pairs of footsteps. Sighing, he gets up and remodels his body to fix the stress fractures. “One year. In one year, I have to construct the means necessary to siege the kingdom and annihilate everything in my path.” Clenching his fist, he stares at the sunset.

“My first mark on this world. Let's make it unforgettable,” he mutters. Smiling in anticipation, he lowers his gaze to the ground below. A village sprawls out below. Remembering his task as a babysitter, he turns on his mana sight. Everything but one of the farthest homes near the fringes look normal. Not only was it glowing bright with mana motes, but it also seemed to draw mana from the surroundings.

Babysitting wouldn’t be too hard but being close to them would hinder his progress. With the regeneration of mana already being a problem, He would never be able to do anything if the mana in his immediate environment was being taken away. Deciding to visit their home to study how the mana is being gathered, he examines the area further out into the forest. Being in the part of the region where the desert meets forest, the forests near the desert line seemed sparse.

Picking a point just outside the villager's eyesight, he walks to the edge of the stack. Whether people actually come up here or it being a natural rock formation, a large amount of uneven and varying sized steps lead to the village. Smiling at the convenience, he starts the much easier way down. Halfway down the stack, he finds some of the round-bottomed birds that showed him how to fly. They were roosting in a large cave-like cavity on the rock face. Several signs of human or sentient involvement could be seen. From the empty bowls to the piles of fresh fruit. Shaking his head, he continues his way down. He would find out eventually when he mingled with the villagers.

Reaching the bottom, he ducks behind a boulder, evading a feathered person taking a bowl full of liquid up the monument. Besides the obvious, the head also seems to be more angular than that of a human. His legs are thinner and his arms fray out into feathered appendages. Sneaking around the rock, he slowly creeps out of the person’s sight. Making sure the thing couldn’t see him, even from afar, he waits a few moments until it is well out of sight. Cursing his new body size, Akiel resolves himself to get better materials to build his body.

Skirting around the village, he finds the house of the woman he is supposed to keep safe. Throwing a cursory glance around, he finds that no one is around. The fields were empty and so is the area immediately around the house. Slowly making his way around the house, he approaches the back.

Reaching the rear wall, he turns his mana sight on. Ignoring the moving masses of mana he focuses on the flow of mana. It really isn’t too difficult, until a certain point, the flow of mana is three dimensional, it flows as if being pulled to a point. Tracing the mana from that point shows that the mana follows a series of circuit-like patterns leading to different runes and formations.

The main takeaway is at the point where mana changes nature is a cluster of symbols. Pulling out his guidebook, he flips to a previously discovered tab. Bound, holding up to 7 slots, he can bind items to his guidebook. In the case of the item being destroyed, the slot would too be destroyed. Taking the first slot is the encyclopedia. Tapping on it causes it to materialize in front of him. Storing the guidebook away, he references each symbol until he finds something similar. Tracing the symbol in the book, he finds the one used on the house wall to be several times more intricate.

Smiling he mutters, “So it’s the encyclopedia of the basics.” Taking out his guide book again, he flips to the notes page and scrawls the rune down. Giddy with excitement, he slinks off into the darkness. After realizing the moonlight wasn’t sufficient in the forest, he walks to the dessert partition. Opening the encyclopedia, he finds a rune for emitting light. Carving it into a stone, he injects some mana. Suddenly, blinding light pours out of the rune before the stone cracks. Frowning he tries again, injecting less mana this time. Given less mana, the rune glows dimmer than before but still manages to light up the ground a few meters away.

Satisfied, Akiel carves a total of five light runes and walks back into the forest. Finding a clearing, he embeds the light runes into the surrounding trees and injects mana into the stones. Making sure none of them break, he lights up the clearing. ‘First thing I need in a survival situation is food and water,’ he thinks to himself. Looking around, he nods to himself, ‘Mana is present and there seem to be plenty of living things for me to ease my boredom on’

Turning to the trees he contemplates making an axe before realizing his weight should be enough for breaking these thin trees. Lowering his center of gravity, he charges at the tree and smashes his shoulder into it. Snapping the thin tree, he drags it back into the clearing. “That’s one. Just a bunch more to go. Excess is always better than a shortage.” Akiel utters.

Gathering several tree trunks, he imbues mana into them. Remodeling them into planks, he finds himself in a dilemma. Most of the planks had bark on them. They also didn’t seem strong. More than the stiff and reliable planks he should be using, these seemed a bit too flexible. Giving up, he decides that construction isn’t his specialty. ‘I might be able to hire a few villagers to make me a building.

Sighing, he pushes the pile of wood to the edge of the clearing. Grabbing one of the light runes, he wanders into the forest and drags back several large stones, checking his mana levels, he decides it’s time to change into a more friendly size. “With a larger body, I could deal with many larger and stronger things, but my mana consumption also increases drastically. Now that I’m trying to settle down, I should be able to spend my mana as fast if not faster than my mana regens right now.” he ruminates.

Remodeling himself into his original form, he shakes off the extra stone, Walking over to the stone pile he just added to, he infuses it with mana and forms a flat slab on the ground. With the ground being a mix of dirt and sand, he didn’t see any way to possibly engrave mana gathering runes. Taking out his sketch of the improved mana gathering rune, he uses remodel and slowly traces each line. Standing up, he marvels at the square meter sized rune.

Turning his mana sight on, he watches as massive amounts of mana rush to his rune. He smiles as the slab starts glowing with mana. Deactivating his mana sight, he could still see it faintly glowing. The amount of mana had reached the point where it became visible! Just when he thought it couldn’t get better, the stone slab cracked. “Oh yeah. I forgot that stone has a limit to the amount of mana it can hold.” Bending down, he reaches for the slab and tries to take in the mana gathered. Stopping just short of filling his current bodies capacity, he laughs. “Now this is what turbo charging is called. Now, If I can just limit the amount of mana drawn, I should be able to continue using stone for now.”

With his body fully charged with mana, he stares in the darkness. The light runes had run out of mana. “Well… Where did I put them again?” Fumbling around in the darkness, he looks for the light runes.

*****

“Hey! Hey Mortimer!” Helios excitedly calls. “Hey! Hey, Mortimer. Check this out. The new Jason, Akiel is building a base!” Lazily getting up from his seemingly invisible seat, walks over to Helios, “Just turn the mirror on so I can see.“

Helios enthusiastically waves his ever-growing horns. With a flash, a small rip in space forms showing Akiel’s current base. “Whoa, that’s not a base. It’s a ticking bomb. You know that too many runes would cause the mana structures in the area to distort and implode right? Should we warn him?” Mortimer asks mortified. After thinking about it Helios says, “No, it’s fine. If you look closer, he seems to have figured out that part. Each of his runes seems to be on a different medium. I love the way he has designed the battery though. It has no defensive measures, but just the slightest obstructions in his premade mana pathways and several cubic meters of matter will evaporate in a mana baptism! I mean just look at the surroundings, you can see that it probably blew up several times already.”

Giddy with excitement, Helios closely examines the structure. Still mortified, Mortimer walks back to his chair and flops onto it. Shaking his head, he says, “Tell me when the nutjob blows himself up, I’ll bring the next one,” before falling asleep. Nodding his head, Helios continues to watch with interest, “Just why would he need such a big battery?”

*****

“Back to work!” Akiel says to himself. Walking around his previous base, he examines it with his mana sight. It was supposed to be his base, but after a few explosions, he realized that storing mana in the form of batteries isn’t simple. It’s like trying to harness nuclear power without any of the proper fail-safes. In the past month, not only was his base blown apart but he himself was caught in an explosion twice before learning better.

Using an insulation rune on a few of the top and bottom layers, he managed to keep the mana between the thin plates but dissipation through the sides was still a problem. After blowing the battery up a few times on a miniature scale he figured out he could insulate most of the battery and keep two openings. One larger and uninsulated to let the mana in. The current of mana entering the battery alone should suffice to keep mana from dissipating too much. On the other end is a smaller plate, with a small and weak insulation rune. When the mana capacity is close to the limit, the mana levels would inundate the weak rune and allow excess mana to flow out. This way, It would be less likely to overload.

The battery seemed to be working perfectly. The mana continuously ran through a loop through the dozens of layers of stone he used. With the help of a few villagers, he had set up two braces that hold the layers apart. Not only did the mana seem to retain itself in the stone, but he was also able to take from it while it recharged. The only problem is to decrease the size.

Just a few weeks ago, after examining the house’s formation again, he found out that the gathering rune is supposed to be used to feed mana to another set of runes. Immediately implementing this, he made long-lasting light runes. The only problem is that stone degrades over time. After attempting to make runes a few different ways, he concluded that stone can only support the constant use of a rune for about a week.

To remedy this problem, he asked the villagers about other materials. Until now, he had offered to do miscellaneous work in exchange for currency which he used to hire villagers to make his second base. Eventually, he was told to check an old mine to the west. The only problem is that he can’t leave the battery alone, he has to disperse the mana before leaving. The amount it holds is enough to level two city blocks. The problem isn't that it would destroy the forest, but that if a villager stopped existing because of him, he wouldn't be as welcome. That itself wasn't a problem but to babysit Cedric's love, he had to stay close. Now just wasn't the time to draw attention.

Touching the battery, he uses his body as a conduit to transfer mana back into the environment. Once done, He leaves it as is and returns to his new base, located a kilometer away from the village. With a proper wooden structure, courtesy of the villagers, he was able to remodel stone slabs to be the walls and left the ceiling with a checkered pattern to let light in.

Apparently, this area didn’t get much rain if any. Grabbing some of the newer runes he had engraved, he stored them inside his body and got ready to leave. To make a rune, he needed a liquid substance to conduct mana. he found some in the village, but due to the lack of supplies for that particular product, it costed much more than what Akiel wanted to spend time earning money for.

Grabbing his stone spear, he heads out. Remodeling the base door to assimilate with the rest of the bases. “Now, no one can enter,” he mutters. Swinging the spear around, he heads to the west. Going in the direct opposite direction of the stone stack, he hums a crude bar song that seems to have gotten stuck in his head. “Let’s get a makeover,” he chuckles to himself.