For around a month all Bjorn spent his time doing was cutting the stone blocks into shape for their walls. He managed to cut on average 1 and a half stones per day to the proper size that they were trying for. At first when he started with his project he was able to cut the stone to size in 2 days. Now at the end of the month he was able to accomplish the same task within a day. He was able to gain tons of progress during that time.
Congratulations, you have advanced in your skill: Masonry. You have reached level 9. Stone structures you build with the stone you work with will have their durability increased by 18%. You also have 18% increased working speed while making stone products.
A lot of the progress that Bjorn managed to make was due to his increased Skill gain. The 3x rate for his skill gains paying dividends. The other more obvious progression had more to do with Bjorn's time spent. He learned a lot over that month on how to cut stone. Where he needed to strike to get the cleavage he wanted. How hard he had to strike to remove close to the amount of material he wanted to. He was by no means a master, but as these things go he made massive progress very quickly early on and then began to slow down. Especially how he didn't have anyone to teach him. He had never missed YouTube nearly as much as he did now.
Meira started helping out, but by doing so she made another trip back into town to buy more chisels. She said that when she went back she was welcomed with open arms pretty much everywhere she went. Bjorn wasn't sure if it was because of the fact that she was a life mage and everyone was trying to get on her good side. Or if it was that they were just trying to get on the good side of an obviously powerful mage. Or even if it was just that she was now well liked around town.
Either way by the end of the month they had 50 of the stone blocks to place. Which was not really enough for anything, but the 300 lbs. Stone blocks on average were a bit of a pain to maneuver. So instead of setting them in place they left the stones in mostly neatly stacked piles of Stone blocks.
Finally after a month they decided it was time to start construction on the house itself. By The time they wanted to start placing the stone it had snowed several times more. Refilling the work that Meira had done to move the snow last time. Which was a bit of wasted effort but it was no real bother to them. They just spent some time clearing the snow once again. This time they decided to just clear out the east side of their hole instead of the south east corner. The reasoning for that was so that they could hopefully build the east wall and be done with that side.
On the morning they started actual construction Bjorn began hauling the heavy blocks up 2 at a time. He could in theory take 3 but with how large and heavy the stones were there was no reason to do more than that. He placed them into his bag of holding, greatly reducing the weight of each block. Each of the stone blocks took up a 2 by 4 section of the storage grid.
As he was doing that Meira was preparing the mortar that they would use to basically fuse the stone together. The list of ingredients wasn't overly long, but the crafting process was a bit involved. It also would set relatively quickly, turning into something akin to concrete. Because of that Meira would spend a portion of her day preparing the mortar as Bjorn hauled bricks up the hill. Once the mortar was close to being finished Bjorn would hop into their hole and start moving the stone bricks around so they were almost in position.
Finally once the mortar was ready Meira would hop down and help Bjorn apply the semi-liquid material to one of the sides of the stone. Then they would maneuver two stones together. The mortar itself had a shelf life of just around an hour. But once it came in contact with the stone it would catalyze with the granite and they would have to move fast before the material hardened, they only had around 2 and a half minutes before it would set, fusing the two stones together. Once that happened they would no longer be able to move the stones as they would become too heavy for their combined strength to move.
They started their work on the northeast side of the building. They first fused two stones together on the frozen ground that they made sure was as level as they could make it. Then they would place the stone on top of it, offset by half a block letting all 3 fuse together. They then made the base layer just 1 block longer and then another block attached to block 2, 3 and 4. Letting them fuse. Then blocks 3 and 5, gaining another foot in height.
They progressed this way until the mortar was either fully used up or had hardened on its own, making the container in which it sat useless, they only made that mistake once. As such it still took them a few days to use up the stockpile of stone bricks that they had made. Which nearly made it to the top of their hole, on one side.
As they built upwards they placed the stones so that they were leaning every so slightly outwards. They did this just in case the ground around their stone retaining walls decided to try and push the wall down. Bjorn was the one to suggest that as he had heard once upon a time that it was a good idea when building stone walls.
When they were finished with placing their 50 blocks Bjorn stood there looking down at the progress they had made. It wasn't even fully covering a single wall. He looked at Meira and said, “It's a bit underwhelming. All that effort for a month just for this to be the outcome.”
Meira looked down at their progress. “I would agree with you if we were just building something for the sake of building. But we are wanting our home to last, so I think we are making great progress. The only things that are worth having in your life take time.” She said with a smile on her face.
“I disagree. And I think the universe also disagrees slightly. I think the most worthwhile things that I own I got with little effort and time.”
Meira smacked him on his arm. “Stop being stupid, you know what I meant.” Bjorn just smiled.
Over the next month they had the process of making stone blocks further down. A large pile of broken granite pieces started to form. All of the pieces that broke off ended up in that pile. This month the two of them managed to make roughly 90 granite blocks. The only reason why that number wasn’t larger was because Bjorn began cutting the large pile of excess granite down. Any chunk of granite that he could get a brick out of he did. The bricks that he was making were 3 inches by 6 inches by 3 inches in size.
Even though it was tough work Bjorn actually started to enjoy the repetitive nature of the work. He also started to enjoy when he hit the rock in just the right place, and with just the right amount of force to where the face he was working on just sheared off.
On days where he felt just a little bit lazy he would actually work on the bricks rather than the large stone blocks. The bricks took considerably less time to make so by the end of the month he had a large pile of stone bricks set aside, currently collecting snow. He was planning on using the bricks that he was building to cover the floor in their basement. But until the snow fully melted it wasn’t worth trying to put them into place, it was too much of a pain in the ass to remove the snow.
They spent the time once again building the wall up. This time they managed to finish the wall on the east side. When they were finished placing the stone the wall stuck up around 6 inches over the top of the soil. That was as tall as they were planning on making it for the time being, As they were going to make another layer up, but Bjorn wanted to start setting wooden beams into the stone itself, which he decided was best to wait until the winter was over for that.
Once they finished the east wall they started working on the south wall. They didn’t get very far as the east wall took a good portion of their current stone blocks. And so the monotony continued onwards. Almost all of their time was spent either huddled in their little shelter to stay out of the wind and elements, or out in the clearing preparing more stone blocks. He was getting faster and better at cutting stone though.
The lean-to that they had build actually managed to surpass all expectations so far. It did a wonderful job keeping the weather and elements off of them, all while actually cutting the wind that came howling through their little glen often. It did all of that while barely ever losing any of its durability. They did a much better job with building it than they expected.
One thing that actually surprised Bjorn was what he got from reaching skill level 10 in masonry. He wasn’t surprised at all that he got the skill level, but the perk he got from it.
Congratulations you have advanced from a novice mason to an apprentice mason. You have gained a perk. Stone, and stone items now feel 25% lighter to you.
Unsurprisingly to no one, that made working with the stone just that much easier. It used to take everything that he had to rotate one of the stone blocks. Sometimes it was actually impossible for him to move the stone around. In those cases he would have to either put it back into the bag of holding or go find Meira to help. Sometimes they weren’t able to move a block even while working together. Even though the stone block itself was close to 300 pounds finished, often the stone it came from was considerably heavier.
Now however, it actually became considerably easier to move the stone he was working on, making it so he wouldn’t have to stop what he was doing to hunt Meira down. After doing some testing it didn’t extend to Meira as well, even while they were working on the stone together. Which was a pity, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
As they worked together Meira was slowly opening up about her past. She had been a little closed off about her past, honestly everyone in his party had been. Bjorn knew not the push however, as each time she did she would retreat back into herself and it would be a span of days before he got her to talk again. He learned small tidbits here and there though. It was as if she had put up walls to keep people out and couldn't trust anyone. And Bjorn was slowly breaking them down.
He knew for example that she grew up in a small elven town in Laolin, the elven kingdom. It was a relatively peaceful town, but didn’t have much going for it. It did have a leather worker who was quite successful and helped prop up the village's failing economy. They found out that Meira had two perks related to spellcasting at an early age. They then diverted their entire resources to teaching her magic and letting her learn how to cast spells considerably better. So she literally had access to her magic from an early age.
Their way of life was slow, and peaceful. Not much happened while there, it was just the ideal childhood, with parents who cared for her, townsfolk who loved her and took care of her. Tons of other children to play with. All while the town funneled their meager resources into helping her become a mage.
She talked a great deal about her parents, her aunt, and the kind village elder or leader however you want to view it. She did so freely, but when they started to stray towards the day her family died she would clam up and stop talking. Bjorn made the mistake once of pushing just a little bit to get her to tell him. When he did so she grew cold and stood and left, she didn’t return for a day and a half. When she came back she pretended as if nothing happened.
By the end of month 3 they had just under 100 stone blocks to put into place. The slower pace had to do with the winter getting colder, and had more snow. Making their working hours shorter. This made it so that they could probably put the south retaining wall in place. This put them in an odd situation though. It became obvious that they wouldn’t be able to finish the stone walls that would make up their basement before the end of the winter. They had greatly overestimated how large they had dug their hole. But instead of shrinking the endeavor they decided to stick it out, seeing how they had already started the work.
They actually spent some time talking amongst themselves to decide if they continued on the path they were already taking, or if they should change it up slightly. What they ultimately decided on was to put their efforts on building the house on hold for the time being. The reasoning behind that is that in roughly a month spring would start to arrive. Which meant that they would have to switch gears for a little bit. There were a hundred and one other tasks that they would need to get done to start their farm.
If they were going to start a farm they had stuff that they needed to do, such as store tools, seed, and grains. They had to till up a field to plant the seeds, which meant they likely had to remove stone from their field. They had to make sure that the only thing that could grow there would be their crops. All of this would be made much easier if they had a place where they could store their materials and keep them dry.
So that is what they did, after they placed the next 100 stone blocks they put a pause on work on the house itself. And then they began making a structure where they could store their stuff in a more permanent structure. They also needed to go collect all of the stuff that they would need, but that was a problem for the future.
One thing that came unexpectedly the day after they switched their projects was that Bjorn gained a level.
You have gained a level. You gain 4 (base 4) free attribute points to allocate.
After he pulled up his character sheet he noticed that he actually had a pretty respectable strength stat as it was, so he didn’t necessarily want to put more points into that for the time being. No, what would help him tremendously was putting a point into dexterity and agility. Truth be told it wouldn’t be that big of a boon, but he wanted to. He hated how slow and clumsy he felt. Especially after having the elevated attributes of being a level 25.
With all of that in mind Bjorn put 1 point into his dexterity bringing it up to 12, and 1 point into his agility also bringing it up to 12. He debated for a few minutes where he wanted to put his last two points. Even though it pained him just a little bit he made the decision that would make Meira happier. He put the last two points into charisma. He personally thought it would have been a smarter choice to put those two points into strength, or dexterity, or even agility.
There were two reasons as to why he didn’t do that though. The first reason was that with his charisma going up he would undoubtedly become more attractive, which would undoubtedly make Meira happier. Who didn’t like it when their significant other became more attractive? This would also make people more likely to like him, making dealings with them easier.
The second reason why he didn’t put the points into the other attributes had more to do with a theory that he had. He theorized that the closer he got to the attribute gains cap it would become harder to continue to gain more points. His theory was that the more points he had in any given attribute the harder it would be to gain a natural attribute. This theory was sound, at least to Bjorn, as the better he became at any aspect in his life the harder it had become to further progress. That was abundantly clear by his skill gains. After his alchemy skill got to over level 40 the progression had slowed to a crawl.
One thing that did surprise him however was that he didn’t gain any talent points for leveling up. He hadn’t before with his first level after the reset, but at that point he had spent the majority of his time trying to help Meira and himself get off the mountains. He also wasn’t necessarily in the best frame of mind at that time, so he hadn’t noticed.
He had a theory on why that happened as well. He theorized that there were two outcomes, maybe he had to advance in alchemy again to start gaining talent points, plausible but not likely. No, what he figured was more likely was that he had to reach level 10 to start accumulating talent points for his profession once again.
Such were his thoughts as he cut down a tree that he would then cut down to a more manageable size. He actually at first thought about cutting down a large tree, delimbing it and then try and stuff it into his bag of holding. So he did just that, he spent the day finding a tree that was around 2 feet in diameter and then he cut it down. He set to delimbing the bottom of the tree and shaping it so that it would fit within his bag of holding. He put the mouth of the bag of holding to do just that. It didn’t work.
To be more accurate he gained a prompt that he hadn’t seen before.
This item is too big to fit within the space folded within the bag of holding. Try again later.
This goes to show that even with how wondrous of an item his bag of holding was, it wasn’t the solution to every problem. But he could use it to store more manageable sections of the tree. But that would be a problem for tomorrow.
He made his way back to camp and found Meira sitting around the fire making a stew. When she heard Bjorn coming she looked up with a smile on her face. Her eyes met with his and they lingered on his face. “Dinner smells good.” He said to her as he walked up behind her. She kept her eyes on him the entire time he walked over. He bent down and gave her a kiss. For some reason she held him in place making the kiss last.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
When she finally let him go he settled down near her, they made small talk as dinner cooked. They talked about all sorts of things, like the weather, plans that they had, and she made no attempts to hide her light flirting she was doing while dinner cooked. As they talked she slowly made her way around the fire scooting closer to him. Normally while they sat next to each other they held hands or Bjorn put his hand on her thigh. Not tonight, her hands explored his body relentlessly. After dinner she drug him into bed. That night he got less sleep than he normally did.
The only thing she said was, “You look very dashing tonight.” Other than that her actions told him everything that he needed to know. All regrets that he had previously about ‘wasting’ his attribute points on charisma were promptly forgotten, and never resurfaced again.
The following morning Meira pulled him back into bed one final time after breakfast. Once he was finally free from her grasp Bjorn made his way into the forest. In Between his workout sessions he had the night prior Bjorn realized that he was getting way ahead of himself by cutting down a large tree to provide lumber for building. The log that came from the tree was entirely way too big to work with. So he left the tree where it was, he would get back to it later.
Instead he began searching through the forest for a much more manageable sized tree for its wood. It didn’t take long and he had the tree down, delimbed, and he could even lift it once it was cut in half. He carried both logs back to their camp and set to work. First he stripped the bark off the exterior of the tree and then he used his draw knife and chisels to shape the logs even further.
Once the log was bare Bjorn tried his best to cut a straight board out of it. Which to no one’s surprise, he failed at making it straight. It was close enough though so he set that one aside. He cut a second board and then he began working on making the nifty contraption that the wood workers from Lief’s Crossing used. He helped with setting it up and looked at it daily so he had a decent idea how the tool was built.
It ultimately boiled down to two fancy saw horses that where easily adjustable to change the thickness of board you wanted to cut. It also required a straight board. As he worked Meira joined him and actually took their stones that doubled as sandpaper and she began slowly working on the plank that Bjorn made. She unerringly continued working on the plank trying to make it as straight as possible.
By the end of the day they had something made that was close to how the one in Lief’s crossing was built. Close enough to do the job, but not exactly perfect. Either way Bjorn began using the saw horses to hold up the large piece of trunk and they squared it off. From there they made wooden posts that were 4 inches by 4 inches. They cut them down to 10 and a half feet long.
Their next goal was to place the posts in the ground so they figured out where they wanted the building to be built. They ultimately decided just below where they made their way up the hill. Then they dug 2 and a half foot holes in the ground, which was no easy task as the ground was still frozen. Their shovels and the pickaxe worked wonders on the frozen ground.
They placed the posts in the ground around 10 feet apart. They tried their best to make sure that the posts were upright and straight as best they could then buried the posts. Next they began cutting wooden planks. These they sized to 2 inches thick by 6 inches wide, by 11 feet long. When they had made 10 of the boards they began affixing them to the posts that they made. Bjorn and Meira worked together to make square holes in the planks and the posts. They then made pegs that were ever so slightly tapered so that it would hopefully hold the planks in place.
They then began fitting the boards in place. As they worked they started on the bottom side of the wall, and worked their way up. Each new board that they put into place they would overlap it with the board below it by about an inch before securing it. This hopefully would create a good layered effect helping wick any moisture away from the inside of the building. Once they finished getting the boards in place they went down the sides with their saws cutting of any excess wood that stuck out on the edges.
The next two weeks were spent just like this, building boards, making them so they would fit on their design, and then putting them in place. By the end of the week they had managed to build a doorway and have all 4 sides enclosed. Which was a nice start.
From there they began working on the roof. There was little doubt on how he wanted it to go, as almost all homes back on earth used the same framework for their roofs. So Bjorn began to figure out how they were built, and how they would do it with their structure. What he settled on was building a cross beam on top of the framework that they had already built.
As he built he realized his mistake, he most definitely should have built the crossbeams first before putting the siding in place, as one of the walls was leaning inwards slightly. But both he and Meira were inexperienced builders so mistakes were bound to happen.
Once the beams were in place Bjorn broke out something he thought he would never have to again, and that was pothagriam’s theorem. He taught Meira what it was and then the two of them calculated how large of a triangle they would need to build for the roof. They ultimately decided to put a large post right in the middle so it could serve as one of the sides of the right triangle they were wanting to build, and then mirror. They made the post 2 feet high, which made it so that they had the length they needed to make for their right triangle. Once they had their final answer they added a foot because they wanted to make an overhang, to help keep water off the sides of the building.
Lastly before they set the beam in place they cut two notches into the wood, one at the end so it could sit on the post in the middle. The second further down where it would come in contact with their frame, so that hopefully their roof support structure would stay in place. After a day of planning and then execution they had one side completely perfect. It was held in place by itself, but to make extra sure they affixed it into place with wood. Once that was done they just mirrored it on the other side. Lastly to finish of the support for their roof they made one more long 4 by 4 to connect each side of the roof together.
When it was all said and done it looked very similar to a roof on a house back on earth, Bjorn was happy. Now to finish off the roof they had to figure out what they wanted to do to wick away water. Which they settled on tearing down their lean-to and using the canvas and leaves as a temporary solution to their problem. In preparation for this move they build crisscrossing thin wooden beams to help hold the canvas in place.
Luckily for them by the time they got to that point in their construction the weather had started to turn, longer days led to snow beginning to melt. As well as snowstorms being fewer and far between. Even though the ground was still covered in snow they decided to take a chance after one more half hearted snow storm.
They took the canvas and leaves off of their lean-to and began to transfer the canvas and leaves over to their new roof. It wasn’t quite large enough, so they had to do a little bit of sowing with some of the leftover scraps from the first time they built the lean-to. Luckily for them they had expected the lean-to to need constant repairs during the winter so they had prepared extra leaves. Ultimately they hadn’t needed to so the extra leaves were able to be used to finish the roof on the new building.
The last two things that they needed to do was build a door for the building, and finally make some sort of floor, that way they weren’t standing in mud as they stored their stuff. Luckily for them they actually had stone bricks that Bjorn had made stored up. They were going to use it for the basement in the main house, but the need now was for the storage shed that they had built.
A few days later the shed had a full stone brick floor. Bjorn got a little tricky and came up with a pattern that was fun to look at. It was to be quite frank, a waste of effort, but Bjorn didn’t care. He enjoyed putting it down, and making the pattern look good. As he was placing it he and Meira cemented it in place, further making sure that no moisture seeped through the ground and wetting anything that they decided to store.
Lastly They made a door out of spare lumber that was too small to be used for the building itself. It was crude, but it worked. They hung it with two leather straps that they had bought during the winter. With the building done they took a step back and just drank in the work that they had done.
Once again, another quality that Bjorn had never seen before. Decent? This just further made him believe that he was right, and that building’s qualities came with different names than items do. But it was good to know that their only 2nd building that they built was of the decent quality. It was as if the universe literally told him that his construction wasn’t bad, which felt good. This just set his curiosity about qualities of buildings on fire. It also made him curious if there were other effects that could be
This was also the first time he had seen an effect on a building. Which made him curious if they had always been there and he just hadn’t unlocked the ability to see them yet. Or if it being Decent quality had something to do with it. When he asked Meira she had no idea either. So another question to be answered later.
Now that they had an actual structure to their name they moved all of the various items and goods that they had underneath their lean-to into their storage shed. It was amazing how much crap they had managed to accumulate. Moving everything took a few hours.
Even though the universe seemed to think that the storage shed was finished, Bjorn disagreed with that assessment. As such they began to work on shelves, racks, and overhead beams so they could store everything, and hang herbs up to dry. There were still a few things missing from inside the building, for example, there was no place for a fire. They had built the entire building around storing goods, not people. It was also missing any type of window, reducing the amount of light that got through. But that wasn’t a major problem, as there were a few gaps here and there that let through just enough light that the interior could be considered low-light.
Now that the frame for the lean-to was basically useless they also moved their sleeping arrangements around. Soon their tent was pressed up against the west wall of their storage shed. Purely for the purpose of helping keep the wind off of them. It also managed to serve the nice purpose of helping keep water off of them when it rained because of the overhang that they built into the ends of the roof.
Happy with their building and with a place to store, finally the two of them went into town to try and collect what they needed to farm this next year. They got hoes, scythes, and bags of seed. They got potato seeds, carrots, wheat, corn, some weird tuber like thing, something that by Meira’s description was a mix between sweet potatoes and cauliflower, and finally some peas,
Their total haul didn’t take up too much room as they were the ones who were going to have to make the fields, which they expected to take a lot of time and effort. So they went light on how many crops they were going to grow, and the quantity of each crop. What surprised Bjorn was how similar the food that they could get in the Eld was to that on earth. He would have figured with a different ecosystem that the plants wouldn’t be similar.
Although the cost to getting all of that set them back another gold piece. Who would have thought that setting up a farm would cost so much money? Even though it cost them a good amount to get what they needed they were still sitting quite flush with coin. At the rate that they were spending they could live for several years, probably even a hundred without having any issues paying for everything. But the money isn’t why they were taking up farming.
They made their way back to their land, slogging through the mud and wet underbrush, as the snow had already started to melt. They slopped their way back to their farm and paused when they saw their clearing.
Staring into the land, Bjorn envisioned all of the things he wanted to do to it, how he wanted to change it. Meira joined him, sharing a silent companionship. “You know.” Meira broke the silence. “It sure would be nice if we had a bridge across that river. It sure would make going into town easier.” Her comment was mainly to point out how high the river currently was. With all the snowmelt the river was unusually high. Much more and the flow would flood over into the meadow surrounding it.
“I know. I have some worries about flooding though.”
“Same. But there isn’t anything we can do about that. At least our storage shed is up higher somewhat, so if there is flooding it shouldn’t be an issue for us.”
“That it is. Shall we?” He asked.
When she nodded back the two of them made their way down river. Normally when the river wasn’t moving so fast they would move up river to cross. But with how high it was they had to find a different place to ford across the river. It was an inconvenience, but only a minor one.
Once fully across they stored their goods and decided to take a stab at clearing the grass and rocks from an area to make their first field. They very quickly learned that the effort was futile. Even though they had magically enhanced strength and stamina there with an undeniable truth. Digging, and moving in mud sucked. Soon they abandoned the task calling it ‘Fruitless.” and instead got back to working on the house.
It was about 3 weeks later when they finally deemed that the ground was dry enough for them to try and work on making a field. They would have the week prior, but there was a large rainstorm that came through. The rain was unusual as the rain was warm. This caused the rain to help accelerate the melting of the snow. Which would be good, if not for it providing the last bit that was needed for the river to overflow and flood the meadow.
Instead of getting annoyed they just took the punches as they came and kept working on the house itself. Meira proved right as the shed was high enough up that they didn’t have to worry about the shed flooding. On days where they were tired of crafting stone blocks they made smaller stone bricks, if they didn’t want to do that they began backfilling along the already completed wall.
After that large rainstorm and flood the suns had come out and they had a warm spell. It was the first time they felt like it was really spring. With the ground finally dry they got to work. And for the umpteenth time Bjorn missed the machines back on earth. He never really appreciated how much they were capable of until he no longer had access to them.
It took several days to create a piece of nice tilled ground. Completely devoid of weeds, grass, and rocks. Once again the bag of holding and portable pocket came in clutch. Allowing them to move considerably more material than they would have been able to with just a wheelbarrow or even their hands. If it wasn’t for their elevated stats and their two magic items it would have taken weeks.
As it was they suffered another setback, as when they were almost done prepping an area of 300 feet by 400 feet another rainstorm came through. This happened the day before they were finally going to plant everything. Making them have to wait several days to plant, as it remained overcast the entire time.
During those few days they worked on the house itself, finally completing the south side of the basement and started working on the west wall. Luckily for them it was the smallest wall that they had to make, making it so they were halfway done with it by the time that the suns came out and made the ground dry enough once again for them to try planting.
This time they weren’t going to take any chances. As they tilled the ground they took the time to plant their crops as they went. It didn’t take nearly as much effort to till the ground this time. Now that all of the grass, weeds, and rocks were gone the hoe sunk into the ground very easily breaking it up. The entire process was oddly satisfying. In that field they planted the corn and the carrots. The reasoning behind that was back on earth those two crops tended to take a long time to grow, so they figured they would take advantage of the longer growing season and prepare the next field.
3 fields in total was what they made over the course of the month. That was what they needed to do to plant everything that they had bought. Now all that they really needed to do was wait. Ultimately there were a few things that they had to do occasionally. Such as go through the fields and pull any weeds that grew in their nicely tilled soil. But for the most part the hard part of the farming process was done. In a few months Bjorn would begin spending his time walking through the fields and casting his light rain spell.
This freed up their time to move onto other projects. The one that Bjorn was most interested in was setting up a herb garden. He had saved a few of each herb that he could hopefully plant and begin to propagate them. Once he had that set up he could hopefully continue with doing his alchemy, but baby steps first.
Towards the bottom of the hill where it turned into cliff face was where Bjorn determined was the best place for them to set up the herb garden. So they began cultivating the soil in that area once again. It was a much smaller area but certain herbs took special conditions to grow. And so began work.
For example the ranarr herb that he had needed to be planted in a clay dense soil. The only reason he knew that was because Medera had instructed him as such, during the many hours she gave him instruction on alchemy. He had never truly appreciated what she was doing for him at the time. She wasn’t just teaching him how to do alchemy, but how to become a self sustaining alchemist. From his experience not many of the alchemists he had interacted with had this in depth of teachings. This made him unique amongst his fellow alchemists, he was a better alchemist because of it.
One thing that rankled him ever so slightly about Medera was that she taught him all sorts of stuff about herblore and how to cultivate plants. The issue was even though she did that she never actually let him care for any of the plants in her garden. This led to him being surprised when he got a new skill.
In the Eld there are many paths to power. One such path is through your connection with nature. You have just started walking down the path of learning not only how to harness that power, but how to grow it, and care for it. You are one of the few rare beings who care for the cultivation of this world's natural resources. Do not slack in your duties.
Congratulations, you have advanced in your skill: Gardening. You have reached level 2. Plants under your care are 8% less likely to be affected by diseases.
He figured it came from him planting those herbs that he was able to currently. Even though he had quite a few plants that required special conditions to grow. He had considerably more that didn’t care, that could grow in a rock. They planted those and began work on making raised beds that they could fill with the requirements of the other plants.
The benefit from his new gardening skill made him wonder. When it said plants under his care, did that mean all plants, or did that mean just his herbs. Because if it was all plants raising that skill would be a massive boon for his and Meira’s time as farmers. It had to right? Otherwise it would say herbs and not plants. Not that he would ever really be able to test that. Even without the information he still made a mental plan to spend some more time gardening.
All in all, they had made large strides in their desire to build a home for themselves. But at the same time they had many many more tasks they needed to do to make this meadow truly their home.
(If you don’t care about skill growth you may skip to the next part.)
Congratulations, you have advanced in your skill: Masonry. You have reached level 13. Stone structures you build with the stone you work with will have their durability increased by 26%. You also have 26% increased working speed while making stone products.
You have advanced your skill level in carpentry. reaching skill level 12. Durability of wooden items you build will be increased by 30%.
Congratulations you have advanced from a beginner carpenter to a novice carpenter. You have gained a perk. Wooden items you create have a small chance to increase in quality by 1 step when they are finished.
You have advanced your skill level in construction, reaching skill level 15. Buildings you build will have 30% increased durability.
Congratulations you have advanced your skill level in farming, reaching skill level 9. Crops and herbs that you cultivate from a sprout have 18% increased yields.
Congratulations you have advanced in the skill: Survival, you are now skill level 8. You are now more likely to see dangerous situations before you are in them.
You have advanced your skill level in woodcutting, reaching skill level 7. You will do 17.5% more damage to trees and wooden objects.
You have advanced your skill level in stealth, reaching skill level 8. You will now be 32% harder to spot while stealthing.
