By the end of the day, I had finally finished dispersing this toxic soup. Now it was possible to breathe at the foot of the mountain without fearing that your lungs would crawl out in five minutes. But a new problem arose: I was starving like hell.
There was no wildlife in sight. Apparently, my little earthquake and the raising of Mount Slick had scared off everything with legs, wings, or at least a self-preservation instinct. Sad. In theory, if you wait a couple of years, there will be a real nature reserve here—the conditions are perfect now, after all. But my stomach didn't agree to wait even an hour.
POP. I'm in so forest. Nabbed a daydreaming deer. POP. I'm in the middle of soone's orchard. Plucked a couple of ripe apples. POP. I'm back at the foot of my mountain.
The poor deer didn't survive such a high-speed movent through space, but that's less hassle for —I was going to eat it anyway. I quickly polished off the first apple, and tossed the core with the seeds into the warm, moist earth.
STOMP.
I lazily stomped my foot, pouring a bit of mana into the soil. An apple tree grew right before my eyes, turning into a sprawling tree strewn with fruit in a matter of seconds.
Then I found a convenient crevice in the rock where a thin, bright-orange stream of lava was shooting out. The perfect stove. I skewered pieces of at on an improvised spit and held them over the heat. It slled like roast, the fat sizzled, dripping into the lava and flaring up in small sparks.
"Hmm..." I bit into the at, squinting with pleasure. "Yeah. Needs spices. So salt, pepper... Cos out a bit bland."
I consoled myself with the thought that when the residents arrive, they'll drag along seasonings, proper dishes, and everything else. At least, I really hoped so.
After a hearty lunch, I simply sprawled out in the shade of my instant apple tree, lazily chewing on another fruit and looking at the horizon. A plu of smoke from my mountain-kitchen slowly drifted into the sky. I waited. Sooner or later, soone had to co to this light.
I sat and thought. The golems were taking their ti. My ice couriers either got lost, or the world turned out to be too big. Maybe I should get down to business in the anti? Although... whatever, too lazy. Or not too lazy? Or maybe too lazy after all?
"Doo-doo-doot, doo-doo-doo-doo..." I started whistling so little tune, picking at the grass with my fingers.
I think I forgot sothing important. But what exactly?
"Right! What kind of state is it without transport?" I smacked my forehead. "Need horses, logistics, resources. Sure, I grew trees, got a forest right nearby, but what am I going to haul all this on?"
I should get a herd. Go to the nearest city and buy so horses. Hmm, and what do I offer in return? Gold seems to be accepted everywhere. And in this mountain, even a blind man could find a gold vein—I pulled it out of the depths myself, after all.
I went deep inside Mount Slick, picked at the wall, and pulled out a gold nugget the size of a fist.
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"Well, that's enough for pocket change," I grumbled.
POP.
I teleported to the nearest city. It's freezing cold out here, snow flying in the face. Wait, I'm in the north, what herds could there be here? Horses need warmth and grass.
POP.
Much better. I found myself on a lush green adow sowhere far to the south. At least forty excellent horses were grazing on the horizon.
"HEYO!" I yelled, waving the nugget.
The horse herder, upon seeing , jumped up, ripped the musket from his shoulder, and aid it right at the bridge of my nose.
"What do you want, kid?!"
"Easy, man. I co with good intentions. Let's make a trade: I give you this gold, and you give
those horses. All of them."
The man kept aiming, his finger resting on the trigger. But greed is a stronger thing than gunpowder. He slowly lowered the barrel.
"These aren't my horses," he muttered. "I just get paid to graze them."
"But if the owner was offered this much gold, would he sell them?" I tossed the nugget in my palm.
"Yes," he exhaled, not taking his eyes off the shiny stone. "You could buy three herds like this with that gold."
I tossed the gold to him. He caught it with both hands, nearly dropping the musket.
POP.
I returned to the foot of Mount Slick along with forty bewildered horses. The steeds began to neigh in fright, looking around at the snow-capped peaks, but I was on the "outer ring," where my artificial sumr was blazing away.
"Damn, what am I going to feed you with?" I scratched the back of my head.
Had to accelerate nature again. I touched the earth with my hand, pouring mana into every square ter. Juicy green shoots imdiately burst from the black soil, turning into a thick adow in a matter of minutes.
That's it. Now I can definitely rest. I flopped onto my back, putting my hands under my head, and stared at the sky. Through the fog, the clouds seed blurry, but the sun was still beating down.
And then a terrible pang shot through my head. A sharp, throbbing pain made
squeeze my eyes shut. Déjà vu washed over
completely: it felt like I had laid on the grass just like this and looked at the clouds... a thousand tis. Ten thousand tis. The exact sa sky, the exact sa grass, and this endless cycle that I just can't rember to the end.
"Again..." I whispered, trying to hold onto the slipping images.
But the images crumbled.
A week passed. A week of hopeless, viscous boredom. Nobody ca. Nobody at all. This wasn't just strange; it was starting to annoy . My ice golem-couriers either decided to take an indefinite vacation, or the world had completely died out while I was busy with landscaping here.
So as not to go crazy from idleness, I started setting up the household. I carved out a spacious stable right in the thickness of the mountain—now my forty horses live in five-star conditions. Yesterday, I got around to agriculture. Sowed a patch on the outer ring with so seedlings—whether potatoes or grain, I don't know. But just in case, I buried an entire loaf of bread in the ground.
And why not? There are sugar maples in the world, why can't there be bread trees? Makes sense. Plant it—and wait for the buns to ripen on the branches. With sugar, by the way, I sorted it out quickly: grew so beets, evaporated them down to a thick red syrup. It's sweet, will be useful for the household. And a sugar maple settled right nearby, dripping with sap.
Now all that was left was to wait for the residents so they could hill it all up, boil it, and bake it, while I could sleep peacefully. But the residents weren't coming.
Out of sheer boredom, I threw myself into engineering. Created a mining worm-golem. I cast its head out of Hadfield steel—a funny thing from the fragnts of my old knowledge: the harder you press on it, the tougher it gets. Perfect for punching through rocks. I coated the teeth with tungsten carbide—mory also suggested that this was the hardest crap around.
The behemoth turned out magnificent. In a compressed state—about six ters, and if it stretches out to its full might, a whole ten. It's hollow inside so it can swallow the rock and imdiately pile it into its "belly." When working, it heats up so much that you can throw ice into it and get endless steam. I suspect working on the sa team with sothing like this will be a real treat—heat, noise, and fog—but on the other hand, it will dig very efficiently.
I sat at the entrance to the mountain, looked at my steel worm, and chewed an apple.
"Where are you, people?" I mumbled into the void. "I've got innovations sitting idle here."
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