For some reason, Sigil Lake had no shovels. It wasn’t the most used farm tool by any measure, and lumberworkers didn’t much need it. The builders might need it down the line for more solid foundations, but as of yet, there weren’t any of them around. Without shovels, Theo and Willam had to resort to filling the beds with dirt from the big mound Theo had created with their hands and the other farm tools, which weren’t really designed to move mass from A to B.

  The decision to make one big pile of sandy dirt instead of dropping it down into the separate beds was an easy one to reason; mana cost. With one looped spell, Theo could cast a whopping fifty-one ‘Create’ ‘Earth’ spells. He didn’t, but he cast an ‘XXV’ amount of loops at the spell. He thought it to be twenty-five, and it was! A total of forty mana poorer later, a big mound of soft dirt remained in front of him. Since it was so loose, it spread wider than he had initially intended rather than as high, but that was fine.

  A surprise to be sure, Theo found that when he weaved the first sigil, his System activated. It waited until he was finished and retrieved the message himself before he gained some more understanding about one of his recently earned traits.

  Sigil Weaving System

  Sigils function: Loop (x25): Create Earth.

  Sigil Spell Activated: Create Earth.

  Iterating

  Iterating

  Iterating

  (...)

  One of his traits from the previous nights, most likely, had integrated the sigils into his System! Maybe with this he could more easily learn the large amounts of unknown sigils!

  But that wasn’t the only thing the System wanted to let him know about. He grinned wide as he saw a message he had been expecting any time now.

  Congratulations! You have earned the Level One skill Earth Affinity.

  Earth Affinity (Level One): Dry. All stats +5.

  Hank barely mentioned the glowing ears at all when he saw Theo weave the sigils. He left shortly after the mound was complete with a slight chuckle and a wide smile on his face to get some basic signs made.

  Theo and Willam finished spreading the dirt over to the rest of the beds as evenly as they could, and even had some to spare by the end. A time would come when Theo had the opportunity, the time and the energy to calculate how much dirt was made from each spell, but today was not that day. His entire body, clothes and all, was filled with dark and light dirt that stuck to him like clay and chalk both. Once he patted his own chest to loosen some of the dusty dirt and a cloud of brown rose into the air in response to the light tapping of his hand. His throat was dry and his nose and lips were as well. Nothing a bath in the lake wouldn’t fix, though clothes were a bit of a weak spot.

  The current plan was to build more housing, and a lot better housing than the barracks that stood now for another influx of skilled people. As proof that they had no idea what they were doing when requesting the first batch of people, the impromptu lumberyard was filling up with logs and planks both while the builders had barely gotten to use it. More of them were required, and more still if they managed to build a true lumberyard for the woodworkers to work in.

  While the two builders were mostly busy doing small work whilst planning the entire town and its building designs right now, even if they were to be building at top speed, the lumber would pile up on them. If two more builders moved in and started to work, that would likely break them about even, leaving them with a pretty large supply as a backup. That balance would shatter when a lumberyard was built, so hiring three or four builders was likely a better option.

  The problem with that was as obvious as it was complicated; what would they do with so many builders later on when the town had grown more? They didn’t know how many villagers would move here eventually, nor how the town would fare in the ranking in two years’ time. While Brook Town’s ranking had been sabotaged from the get-go to assure its demise, it still wasn’t easy for a town to survive the first ranking after its immunity. There was only a finite amount of towns supported by the world, as odd as that sounded to Theo, and those that managed to keep themselves on that list for another year were almost surely better off the next year. New towns weren’t rare, but their survival was.

  None of this made any sense to Theo, but it seemed to be one of those basic things regarding this world that he just wouldn’t be able to understand.

  If they were being hopeful, there was no trouble hiring the extra builders. Constant growth needed not just more and more people, but bigger and better buildings and constructions as well. If not, there would be no way to keep them busy, no way to pay them fairly and no way to keep them here.

  The upsides far outweighed the downsides, though, especially considering the downsides were only theoretical in nature as of right now. All the upsides were practical and pretty clear. More builders would be needed. Whilst Hank Hankersson had been helping Theo and Willam, Bella had been busy getting everything measured up and ready to get going. A house, built like a normal house for all intents and purposes, but instead with a multiplex of bedrooms. It would be another barracks, bigger and fit for only half the people, but that half would get a room of their own, with a door and everything. Efficiency would still reign supreme for a while longer, though, and rooms would have to be shared.

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  This house would be quickly followed by a few identical houses, but wouldn’t instantly replace the more stable-like barracks already built. It would allow more people to join without sharing in the hovel that was the first barracks. There would also be a shared area with some basic necessities like benches to prepare food and a table to sit at. These houses were designed to be altered to a single household in the future, with most walls easily removed or between rooms for a more open feeling. Again, it wasn’t something that would happen shortly.

  Hank returned with rough signposts and just as quickly as he had arrived, he returned to his wife to help her build. Theo and Willam stabbed them into the ground next to each bed and started planning their experiments.

  When all the beds were done, Willam went and retrieved several small pouches of seeds and handed the gifts over to Theo. He eyed them all, his smile growing wide in appreciation of Willam’s foresight and friendship.

  Item: Pouch of Gingerelli Seeds (x30)

  Item: Pouch of Banaberry Seeds (x25)

  Item: Pouch of Limen Seeds (x10)

  Item: Pouch of Violetberry Seeds (x50)

  The first bed, designated #1, would be the most basic and natural of them all; it was filled with regular, local soil and would be watered with the lake water. Due to Theo’s experience and pre-existing knowledge about them, as well as the amount of seeds he was given, he added the Violetberry Seeds to this bed, settling with just ten of them at once.

  Bed #2 got ten more, had freshly created soil mixed with the local dirt and would be watered with lake water. #3 was all Theo, all day, with only magically created soil and water to nourish another ten violetberry seeds.

  The next two beds, these ones in a new row in the 3x3 grid they had prepared, had fifteen gingerelli seeds each. While there were more violetberry seeds, chances were they might have to replant some, and if not, they could always save them until the true garden was ready. All thirty gingerelli seeds were planted, the #4 batch planted in mixed soil and would get mixed water. #5 had old soil and would only be watered by the freshest of sigil water.

  As these were the only ones Theo had any previous experience with, the experiments ended there. To be safe, and while fully trusting Willam’s much more experienced thoughts on the matter, it was much more likely to be due to the soil Theo had made, maybe even the water as he hadn’t seen such fast growth before. As such, they planted all the ten limen seeds into #6 and five banaberry seeds into each of the last three beds. Banaberry bushes were quite large, Willam had explained, and more than that would likely be detrimental.

  All-in-all, thirty violeberry bushes, thirty gingerelli roots, ten limen bushes and fifteen banaberry trees had been sown. Theo studied Willam’s water restrictions for each as they planted them, trying to learn everything he could for himself. Self-sufficiency wasn’t just a hope for him, but a goal. He still had no idea what the end product of each of these would even look like, but he was excited to finally be doing something for himself again. Theo later stored the pouches in the tool shed along with Willam’s seeds. Two pouches had been emptied and two still contained seeds within them, twenty violetberry and ten banaberry among them.

  Next up was watering. For the moment, especially considering that Theo’s magic was already back to brimming after all this planting and digging around in the dirt, Theo filled buckets of water both from the lake and with his own magic. Limen needed quite a bit of water, while the banaberries needed about as much as the gingerelli. In the future, both Theo and Willam wanted a well a bit closer, or perhaps, after the experiments ended and the water proved more nutrient rich, a water tank to withdraw from. For now, a bit more mana than otherwise necessary was used. Theo couldn’t wait to really get ahead by using his loop and newly bolstered mana regen.

  Night was threatening with its sunless sky when everything was finally done for the day. The next morning Theo and Willam would have to re-water everything, even Willam’s crops. In a few days they might start seeing the early results of their experiments, and in a week those results might be clearer still. Willam specifically withheld how long it usually took for any of the recently sown seeds to bear mature fruit because he was rather certain that Theo’s magic changed things.

  The two men bathed, though this time they had to scrub their own clothes as Wen was busy helping the other villagers. Even Grace was doing busiwork. Theo nearly did a double-take when he was certain he saw the feminine form pull a log along the ground by herself in a showing of strength equalling that of Lumberlord Julie Woodrow’s powerful figure by herself. He was sure he saw visions brought on by fatigue and fell flat into the lake’s serene waters to relieve himself of the day’s hard work, tension and stress before starting to scrub his clothes clean.

  Again he and Willam sat by the nightly fire, a rather cozy tradition Theo would very much like to be repeated every night, almost as naked as the day they were born. Everyone was talking and chatting amongst themselves as they ate skewers of meat and foraged mushrooms and wild vegetables along with handpicked fruit and berries. A trick Theo learned by the more experienced skewerists was to char the meat a bit too much on the outside. This would not only add a bit of texture in its crunchiness, but also add some often much-needed flavour. The small animals Fischer had procured for the day were unrecognisable as Theo had only seen them skinned, but it tasted good enough, if not a bit chewy.

  “So you’re going to the dunge tomorrow, right?” Wen asked some time after dinner. Darkness was setting and the ambience had settled down somewhat, but it was too early for anyone to have gone to bed just yet. She eyed him, her own clothes dirty and ragged, her blonde hair more ashen than normal and her skin with a thin layer of dust covering everything from her face to her hands.

  Theo was getting dressed in his clothes which had been lying beside the fire to dry all evening. They were hot to the touch, not scorching, but comfortably so. It was like they had just been taken out of the dryer, if not a bit moist in some places. “I suppose we are,” he answered a bit nervously.

  Wen and Grace had been oddly friendly, or at least downright conversational with each other that night. Grace showed no sign of intentionally teasing Wen, nor did Wen growl at the other woman’s every word uttered, not even those spoken to Theo.

  Wen turned to face Grace, seated another person over, Bella being in between them. “What’s down there? Will you be fine?”

  “The dungeon is adolescent, so it isn’t all too dangerous. There’s only a single floor with a fruit-themed monster nest. Don’t expect anything more than a few low-level minions and a single boss monster.”

  “Fruit-themed monsters?” Theo asked.

  “Dungeons often create their own variants of things in their vicinity. There were wandering sproutlings of abble trees and one larger tree variant boss when I was there, so I expect the same tomorrow.”

  ‘Abble trees?’

  “How do you fight them? You don’t seem to have any weapons,” Theo then asked. The thought hit him suddenly, and his nerves simultaneously started whirring.

  Grace grinned. “Good ol’ fisticuffs.”