Procurement
Roan woke before dawn with a list.
He pulled it up on his wrist device — a slim band of adaptive metal that projected a holographic display above his forearm. The device was standard civilian tech back home: computer, communicator, scanner, personal database. Most of its network functions were useless in this dimension, but local operations ran fine. The list hovered in pale blue light, organized by category and annotated with priorities.
Fats: butter, cream, animal fat, nut oil — CRITICAL Aromatics: onion (have garlic), ginger-equivalent, coriander-equivalent Acid: vinegar, citrus-equivalent, fermentable fruit Umami: aged cheese, fermented paste, dried mushrooms Sweet: sugar, honey (limited supply) Spice: pepper, chilli, cumin, cloves, cardamom, cinnamon Protein: steady poultry supply (wolf), dairy animal, eggs
Half the list was crossed out — problems solved or partially solved over the past weeks. The other half stared back at him, unanswered.
“I can’t keep waiting for peddlers,” he told Milo, who was perched on the counter in the pre-dawn quiet. “One sack of garlic in three weeks isn’t a supply chain. It’s luck.”
“What do you propose, Master?”
“I propose we go find what we need.” He gestured at the hovering list. “This forest has been producing mana-enhanced versions of everything we’ve planted. That means there are wild equivalents out there — plants that have been growing in this mana-rich environment for years, maybe centuries. Mushrooms, roots, herbs, fruits. The Greymist isn’t just a monster wilderness. It’s a pantry. I just haven’t opened it yet.”
“The Greymist is also home to demonic wolves, griffins, and lesser dragons.”
“The demonic wolf brings me hunt. I think I’ll manage.”
“Your confidence is either admirable or suicidal, Master. I have not yet determined which.”
Roan dismissed the display with a flick of his wrist. “Get the Spider ready. Full sample collection and analysis kit. We leave after Rin’s lesson.”
The magic lesson happened in the clearing behind the restaurant, in the cool blue light before sunrise.
Rin stood across from him, barefoot in the dewy grass, looking every bit the serious instructor despite being twelve years old and barely reaching his chest. She’d prepared for this — Roan had seen her practicing forms the evening before, running through the exercises her royal tutors had taught her, adapting them for a student whose situation was nothing like anything her tutors had imagined.
“The first thing every knight trainee learns,” she said, “is the mana shield. It’s defensive. You circulate mana through your arms and project it outward as a barrier. Like this.”
She raised her hands, palms out, and concentrated. A faint shimmer appeared before her — translucent, slightly blue, about the size of a dinner plate. It wavered, solidified, then held steady. A basic shield. Textbook form.
“Now you,” she said.
Roan raised his hands and tried to replicate what she’d described: circulate mana through the arms, push outward, form a barrier.
The air in front of him solidified.
A wall of golden-white energy snapped into existence — not a dinner plate, but a flat plane stretching two meters wide and floor to ceiling, so dense that the morning light refracted through it in prismatic bands. The grass at its base flattened from the pressure. The nearest row of sentient grain ducked.
Rin stared.
“Is that right?” Roan asked, genuinely uncertain. “It looks different from yours.”
“It’s…” Rin swallowed. “It’s a matter of scale. You might want to make it smaller.”
“Smaller. Right.” He concentrated, and the wall compressed to roughly the size Rin had demonstrated. It was still far denser than hers — almost opaque, humming faintly with contained energy. “Better?”
“Better,” Rin said, in a voice that suggested she was revising several fundamental assumptions about magic. “Let’s move on.”
The second exercise was a mana pulse — a sensory technique that sent a ripple of energy outward and read the reflections, mapping nearby life forms and mana concentrations. Standard scouting tool, useful for navigating unfamiliar terrain.
“Range for a beginner is about five meters,” Rin explained. “With practice, you can push it to twenty or thirty. The best scouts in the Valdris— in the military,” she corrected quickly, “can reach a hundred meters.”
Roan nodded. He closed his eyes, gathered mana the way he gathered heat for his cooking flame — instinctively, without incantation — and pulsed.
The wave rolled outward from him like a stone dropped in water. It passed through the garden, through the restaurant, through the treeline. It kept going. Past the stream, past Orion’s cottage, past the wolf’s den, into the deep forest beyond.
Information flooded back. Every living thing within range lit up in his awareness like points on a map: the grain in the garden, the fish in the stream, insects in the bark of trees, small mammals in undergrowth, birds roosting in the canopy. The wolf, a bright ember of mana half a kilometre away. Orion in his cottage, a vast deep reservoir of carefully structured energy. Lyra upstairs in the restaurant—
He flinched. Lyra’s signature was different. What he sensed wasn’t a human mana pattern. It was something enormous compressed into a small space, like an ocean stuffed into a bottle. Layers folded inside layers, dimensions of energy that his pulse couldn’t fully map because they extended in directions that didn’t correspond to physical space.
He opened his eyes. The pulse was still expanding — he could feel it ranging further, touching things in the deep Greymist that made even him excited. Someone who had seen numerous alien creatures across the galaxy, and here was an entire world of new ones.
Large things. Old things. Things that noticed him noticing them.
He pulled the pulse back. It contracted reluctantly, like reeling in a fishing line that had caught something heavy.
“How far did that go?” Rin asked. Her grey eyes were very wide.
“Far enough,” Roan said. His mind was sorting through the data, filing most of it away, but two pieces stayed at the front: Lyra’s impossible energy signature, and the things in the deep Greymist that had looked back.
All the more reason to bring the Spider. It was very sturdy, built from some of the most advanced materials humanity had ever produced. It had cost him half as much as his old ship.
But what he said was: “I sensed mushrooms. A lot of them, about four hundred meters northeast. And something that might be wild onions near the stream bend.”
Rin blinked. “You sensed mushrooms?”
“The pulse maps living things. Mushrooms are living things. They also have a very distinctive mana pattern — dense, networked, different from plants.” He paused. “Is that not what you use it for?”
“Most people cannot detect plants.”
“Oh!” He was already walking toward the kitchen to get the Spider. “Third exercise after the foraging run?”
“The third exercise is telekinesis magic,” Rin called after him.
“Perfect. I need to move a heavy stockpot.”
Rin watched him go. Then she looked at the patch of flattened grass where his mana shield had been, still slightly scorched from the energy output. She looked at the garden, where the sentient grain was slowly straightening itself back up after cowering from the pulse.
She pulled out the small notebook she’d started keeping — hidden in her satchel, alongside the Imperial Succession Seal — and wrote: Master Roan performed a basic sensory pulse with an estimated range of 10+ kilometres. Used it to locate mushrooms. Does not appear to understand this is remarkable.
She underlined the last sentence twice.
From Orion’s cottage window, the old wizard watched the magic lesson conclude and the chef disappear into his kitchen with purpose.
He’d felt the mana pulse. Everyone within a kilometre had felt it — the trees had swayed, the fish in the stream had briefly oriented in the same direction, and Orion’s carefully calibrated ward perimeter had rung like a struck bell.
A beginner’s sensory pulse. Ten kilometres of range. And the man had used it to find mushrooms.
Orion sipped his morning tea, which was already cooling because he’d forgotten it during the lesson, and contemplated his life.
Then he felt something else in the echo of Roan’s pulse — a distant response from deep in the Greymist. Something large and very old had stirred at the touch of that energy wave, the way a sleeping predator stirs when a vibration passes through the ground.
Orion set down his tea. He would need to reinforce his wards tonight.
The forest northeast of the restaurant was different from what Roan remembered.
He’d walked this direction once before, during the first week, on a brief scouting trip that hadn’t gone far. The trees had been ordinary then — tall, broad-leafed, typical temperate forest. Now, three weeks into his residency, the change was unmistakable.
The trees were bigger. Not dramatically — maybe ten percent taller, trunks slightly thicker — but enough that the canopy had closed into a continuous ceiling of green that filtered the morning light into cathedral-like shafts. The undergrowth was denser, more varied, and studded with plants he hadn’t seen before: flowering vines with petals that pulsed faintly with mana, ferns whose fronds curled in patterns that seemed almost deliberate, moss that grew in geometric spirals on the north side of every trunk.
The Spider skittered beside him on its six legs, sample containers open and ready, its sensors sweeping continuously. Milo’s voice came through the robot’s small speaker.
“Master, the ambient mana density at this range — approximately four hundred meters from the restaurant — is three times the baseline I recorded on our first day. The enrichment zone is expanding.”
“The Greymist is naturally mana-rich. Makes sense it’d fluctuate.”
“This is not fluctuation. This is a consistent radial gradient centred on the restaurant. Or more precisely, centred on you.”
Roan stepped over a root. “What do you mean?”
“I mean the mana density decreases in direct proportion to distance from wherever you are standing. When you walk, the peak moves with you. The restaurant’s location shows the highest sustained levels because you spend the most time there, but the enrichment follows your physical position.”
Roan stopped. He looked at the Spider. “You’re saying I’m doing this?”
“I’m saying the data is consistent with that hypothesis. Your body processes atmospheric mana and releases it into the environment. The effect is cumulative — areas where you spend more time become more enriched.”
A long silence. Roan looked at the transformed forest around him — the taller trees, the luminous flowers, the geometric moss. He thought about the giant vegetables. The sentient grain. The mana-enhanced fish. The wolf that had chosen to guard his garden.
“How far does it extend?” he asked.
“Currently, detectable enrichment reaches approximately one kilometre from the restaurant. The effect diminishes with distance but does not fully dissipate.”
One kilometre. A circle of transformed land, two kilometres across, centred on his kitchen.
Roan processed this the way he processed every piece of information: calmly, practically, with an eye toward what it meant for his work. “So the ingredients I find in this zone will be more mana-rich than anything further out.”
“Significantly so.”
“And the closer to the restaurant, the more enhanced they’ll be.”
“Correct.”
“Then this is the best foraging ground on the continent.” He resumed walking. “Show me where the mushrooms are.”
“Master, you don’t seem concerned about the implications—”
“Well, we are far from civilisation. An alien modifying the environment…” He sighed. “But this is common across the galaxy. Organisms affect their surroundings. We just happen to be doing it with mana instead of carbon dioxide.”
The Spider was quiet for a moment, then its legs clicked forward. “Mushroom cluster detected. Forty meters ahead, on a fallen log near the stream bend.”
“Good. And Milo?”
“Yes, Master?”
“Log the data. All of it. Mana density readings, enrichment patterns, the radial gradient — everything. I want to understand what I’m doing, even if I’m not going to stop doing it.”
“Logged and cataloguing, Master.”
“And flag anything that looks like it could relate to dimensional travel. Wormhole physics. Spatial folding. Whatever this mana actually is at a fundamental level.”
A pause. “You haven’t given up on going home.”
“I’m building a life here because I might have to. But I’m not going to stop looking for a way back just because I’ve found good mushrooms.” He pushed through a curtain of hanging vines.
The mushrooms were extraordinary.
They grew in clusters on a fallen trunk that had been slowly decomposing in the mana-rich soil, and they were unlike anything in Milo’s botanical database — which, given that the database covered eleven galaxies, was saying something.
The first variety was broad-capped and cream-coloured, with gills that shimmered faintly gold. When Roan picked one and held it to his nose, the aroma hit him with physical force: deep, earthy, with a richness that reminded him of aged cheese and roasted nuts and something else entirely — a warm, almost sweet undertone that he’d never encountered in any mushroom from any world.
“Mana concentration in this specimen is exceptional,” Milo reported as the Spider scanned. “The mycelium network beneath this log extends approximately thirty meters in every direction. It’s been absorbing ambient mana for what I estimate to be several weeks — since the enrichment zone reached this area.”
The second variety grew lower on the trunk — small, dark, almost black, with a dense texture that crumbled like dried spice when Roan pressed it between his fingers. The smell was intense: musky, savory, with a depth that reminded him of the best aged tamarind — concentrated, complex, almost fermented. This was umami. Pure, concentrated, magical umami.
“I’ve been looking for you for three weeks,” Roan told the mushroom, and meant it sincerely.
The third variety was unexpected. It grew at the base of the trunk where wood met soil, and it glowed. Not brightly — a soft, pale blue luminescence that was barely visible in the filtered daylight but would be striking at night. It was small, delicate, with a cap like a tiny parasol. When Roan carefully extracted one, it pulsed once in his palm — a gentle throb of mana, almost like a heartbeat.
“Master, this specimen’s mana signature is unusually structured. The energy pattern is rhythmic — cyclical, self-sustaining. I’ve seen similar patterns in…” Milo trailed off.
“In what?”
“In the theoretical models I’ve been running for dimensional bridge mathematics.”
Roan went very still. The glowing mushroom pulsed gently in his hand, its blue light steady and calm.
“Explain.”
“The mana in this fungus circulates in a closed loop — energy flowing through the cellular structure, reaching a boundary, folding back on itself, and cycling again. It’s a miniature contained system. The mathematical topology is similar — not identical, but similar — to the models I use for wormhole stability calculations.”
“You’re saying this mushroom works like a tiny wormhole?”
“I’m saying the mana pattern shares structural properties with spatial folding. It’s not a wormhole. But it suggests that the mana in this world can be organised in ways that relate to dimensional physics.” A careful pause. “It’s a data point, Master. Not a breakthrough. But it’s the first data point we’ve had.”
Roan looked at the mushroom for a long moment. Then he carefully wrapped it in a cloth and placed it in the Spider’s most secure sample container. “Mark this location. We’re coming back for more of these. And I want a full analysis of everything.”
“Already running.”
He collected samples of all three varieties — generous portions of the cream and black mushrooms for cooking experiments, and every glowing specimen he could find (seven, growing in a tight cluster) for Milo’s analysis. The Spider stored them in separate containers, environmental sensors recording every detail.
The walk continued. Over the next two hours, Roan catalogued his expanding pantry with systematic thoroughness:
Wild onions growing near the stream bend — smaller than cultivated varieties but intensely flavoured, their mana-enhanced oils sharp enough to make his eyes water from three feet away. The Spider dug up bulbs and roots for replanting.
A berry bush with dark purple fruit that tasted sour and something floral, with a tartness that puckered his mouth pleasantly — Roan ate three, waited twenty minutes for adverse effects (none), then harvested a basket’s worth. The Spider took cuttings for propagation.
A root vegetable growing in the rich soil beside an ancient oak — when Roan pulled one up, it was dense, fibrous, and released a sharp aroma that hit like raw ginger but with a peppery bite underneath. Not quite pepper, not quite ginger, but something in between. He’d been searching for heat and warmth for his spice palette. This was a start.
A stand of wild herbs growing in a sun-dappled clearing — one with feathery fronds carrying a sharp coriander-like fragrance, and a low creeper with tiny leaves that released an unmistakable mint-like coolness. The Spider collected seeds, cuttings, and full plants for transplanting.
Near the clearing’s edge, a climbing vine with small dried seed pods that rattled when shaken. He cracked one open. The seeds inside were dark, aromatic, and carried the warm complexity of cardamom.
Each discovery went into a mental file, cross-referenced with recipes: the cream mushrooms would be extraordinary in a rich gravy. The black deepcaps — he was already naming them — would elevate every dish as a finishing garnish or dried seasoning. The berries could become a tangy chutney for the jungle fowl, or reduce down into a sauce with the honey. The ginger-pepper root would transform his tempering options overnight.
“I’m building a menu,” Roan told the Spider, somewhere between the herb clearing and a promising patch of what looked like wild methi growing in the shade. “Not just a survival kitchen. A real menu. Multiple dishes, varied techniques, seasonal ingredients.” He was talking to himself as much as to Milo, the way he always did when a vision was forming. “Appetiser: deep-fried fish with citrus herb and fresh vegetable salad. Soup: cream mushroom with wild onion and grain bread. Main: roasted fowl with mint chutney and root vegetable mash. Pasta course: grain noodles with garlic, tomato, and seared fish. And a dessert — I need sugar for that, but the berries might work with honey if I reduce them down.”
“Master, you are designing a five-course menu while standing in a monster-infested wilderness.”
“The monsters aren’t in this part. The wolf has a territory. And—” He paused. The mana pulse from that morning had given him a rough map of the area. Nothing large within the enriched zone. The wolf’s presence kept predators out, and the creatures in the deep Greymist stayed deep. “And I know where they are now. That pulse Rin taught me — I can use it before every foraging trip. Map the safe area, avoid the dangerous zones, focus on the richest patches.”
“You’re using military-grade sensory magic for grocery shopping.”
Roan picked the last of the wild methi and placed it in the Spider’s carrier. “Anything for a good meal, Milo.”
Back at the restaurant, the afternoon became a flurry of organised activity.
Roan designated the shaded northwest corner of the garden for the mushroom cultivation. The Spider prepared the ground — layering decomposing wood, leaf matter, and soil in the proportions Milo calculated would best support fungal growth. Roan planted the spores from the cream and black varieties in the prepared beds, spacing them carefully.
The glowing mushrooms went into a separate, smaller bed that the Spider constructed from a hollowed log filled with substrate. These were research specimens as much as ingredients — Milo’s analysis was running continuously, mapping their mana topology, and Roan wanted them where he could monitor their growth.
The wild herbs were transplanted along the garden’s south border. The onions went in beside the garlic. The berry cuttings were planted near the stream, where they’d have water and the richest mana concentration.
By late afternoon, the garden had doubled its variety. What had been a simple vegetable plot was becoming something more complex — a carefully curated ecosystem of mana-enhanced ingredients, each chosen for its culinary potential and managed with the precision of a chef who took his sourcing as seriously as his technique.
The sentient grain, which had watched the proceedings with swaying interest, leaned toward the mushroom beds and appeared to be… sniffing them. Its stalks extended, brushed the surface of the soil, and withdrew. Then it rustled in a pattern Roan hadn’t seen before — a slow, rhythmic wave that started at the base and travelled to the tips.
“The grain is reacting to the mycelium,” Milo reported. “The mushroom network is already extending into the surrounding soil. The grain’s root structure appears to be interfacing with it.”
“Interfacing?”
“Exchanging mana. The mycelium is acting as a conduit — connecting the grain’s root network to a broader underground system. In effect, the mushroom network is creating a communication layer beneath the garden.”
Roan looked at his garden. His sentient grain was now networked with his magical mushrooms through an underground fungal internet. Above ground, the vegetables grew in orderly rows. Below ground, invisible threads of mana-rich mycelium were weaving everything together into a single interconnected system.
“Is this a problem?” he asked.
“Unknown. But the grain seems… happier.”
The grain swayed in confirmation, its stalks catching the afternoon light.
“Then we’ll monitor it.” Roan stripped off his gardening gloves. “I’m going to the kitchen. I have mushrooms to test.”
The third magic exercise happened in the kitchen, because Roan insisted.
“Telekinesis,” Rin said, standing beside the heavy iron stockpot that Roan wanted moved from the lower shelf to the counter. “The principle is simple: you project mana beneath an object and lift. Control is the challenge — too much force and you shoot it, too little and nothing happens.”
“Show me.”
Rin focused on a wooden spoon. It rose from the counter — wobbling slightly, rotating once, then stabilising a foot in the air. She held it for ten seconds before setting it down. “Like that. Start with something light.”
Roan looked at the spoon. Then he looked at the stockpot. The stockpot was the problem he wanted to solve — the spoon was not.
He extended his hand toward the stockpot and lifted.
The pot rose smoothly off the shelf — no wobble, no rotation, just a clean vertical ascent. It floated to the counter and settled without a sound. Twenty kilograms of iron, moved with the casual precision of a man picking up a teacup.
Rin stared at the pot. Then at Roan. Then at the pot again.
“That was the heavy one,” she said.
“That’s the one I needed moved.” He was already reaching for his knife. “Can I levitate multiple things at once? If I could keep ingredients suspended while I work the pan, it would free up a hand.”
“That’s… an advanced technique. Most wizards spend years—”
Two onions and a fistful of herbs rose from the cutting board and hovered in a neat line beside the stove, rotating slowly.
“Never mind,” Rin said faintly.
“This is going to change everything.” Roan was grinning — the focused, electric grin of a craftsman who’d just discovered a new tool. “I can temperature-control with one hand, levitate ingredients with the other, and use the mana flame for precise heat. Rin, this is a three-hand kitchen. I’ve cooked with six arms before, but this is better — the mana is more precise than mechanical limbs.”
He was already experimenting. The cream mushrooms from the morning’s harvest lay on the counter, cleaned and sliced. He heated fish oil in the pan with a mana flame held at exactly the temperature he wanted — and for the first time, the flame didn’t flicker. His morning practice with the shield and pulse had taught him something about control that transferred directly to the kitchen. The flame was steady, precise, adjustable in increments he could feel.
He levitated the mushroom slices into the pan in a single layer — no crowding, perfect spacing, each piece hitting the oil at exactly the same moment. They sizzled in unison. The aroma that rose from the pan was the richest thing Roan had smelled since arriving in this world: deep, earthy, buttery despite the absence of butter, with that warm sweet undertone that was unique to these mana-enhanced fungi.
“Oh,” he said quietly. “Oh, these are special.”
He seared them for ninety seconds per side — golden-brown, caramelised at the edges, still tender in the centre. He slid them onto a plate, shaved the black deepcap over the top in paper-thin slices, and finished with a pinch of salt, a drop of garlic-infused fish oil, and the faintest dusting of the dried ginger-pepper root.
He tasted it.
The flavour was so complete, so deeply satisfying, that he had to set down the fork and close his eyes. The cream mushrooms had a richness that rivalled the finest meat he’d cooked in three centuries. The black deepcap added a depth that was almost indecent — musky, savory, complex in ways that unfolded over seconds, the way a good garam masala reveals itself layer by layer. And the mana in the dish was doing that thing Rin had described with the pasta: inviting rather than pushing, warming the body from inside, gentle and vast.
“Rin,” he said. “Taste this.”
She took a bite. Her eyes went distant — she was watching the mana with her perception as much as tasting the food. “The mushrooms have a different structure from the vegetables,” she said slowly. “When you eat it, instead of opening individual channels, it… harmonises everything.”
“Good or bad for the person eating it?”
“Good. Very good. A wizard would benefit enormously. Their mana reserves wouldn’t just deepen — they’d become more efficient. Better flow, less waste, smoother casting.” She took another bite and couldn’t help smiling. “A knight would feel their whole body relax. Like a massage that reaches the energy channels.”
Roan was already planning. Mushroom dishes as a dedicated menu category. The cream variety as a main ingredient, the black deepcap as a finishing element. If he could get butter or cream from Harsk’s next visit, a mushroom korma would be transcendent. A mushroom and fowl biryani once he found rice. Seared mushrooms with a tempering of curry leaf and garlic. Deepcap shavings over everything.
“We’re going to need more mushrooms,” he said. “A lot more.”
“The spore beds should produce within days, given the mana density here,” Milo offered. “And the original site in the forest will continue to produce as long as the fallen log decomposes.”
“Good. I want a steady supply. This is going on the permanent menu.” He flicked his wrist and the ingredient list projected above his forearm. He swiped Umami and watched it cross itself out. Then Aromatics and Acid and Spice, each one annotated with a quick voice note: “wild onion, citrus herb, peppery root — transplanted, growing.”
The list was getting shorter. The kitchen was getting stronger.
The telekinesis lesson continued into the evening — not as a formal exercise, but as Roan integrating magic into his cooking workflow. Rin watched, occasionally correcting his form (“you’re using too much mana for that — a lighter touch will give you finer control”) and mostly marvelling at how quickly a man who’d learned his first spell that morning was revolutionising his own kitchen.
By sunset, Roan could simultaneously maintain a mana flame, levitate three separate ingredient groups, and use the mana pulse at short range to monitor the internal temperature of a cooking dish. He’d invented mana-assisted cooking in an afternoon, and he hadn’t even realised it was an invention.
“You should name this,” Rin said, watching him levitate a finished plate of mushroom-topped grain bread from the kitchen to the dining table without spilling a drop of garlic oil.
“Name what?”
“What you’re doing. Using magic to cook. It’s not wizard practice and it’s not knight training. It’s something new.”
Roan considered this. “It’s just cooking.”
“It isn’t. No one has ever done what you’re doing — using mana manipulation as a culinary technique. The way you control flame temperature, levitate ingredients, sense doneness with a mana pulse — that’s a discipline. It should have a name.”
“If it needs a name, you can name it. You’re the one who sees what’s actually happening.”
Rin was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Wizard’s cuisine.”
“Wizard’s cuisine.” Roan tested the phrase. It felt too grand for what he was doing, which was simply using every tool available to make food taste better. But Rin’s grey eyes were serious and bright, and he could see that this mattered to her — the idea that they were building something new together, something that didn’t exist before.
“Alright,” he said. “Wizard’s cuisine it is.”
From the doorway, Lyra watched them name a new magical discipline over a plate of mushrooms, and added another line to her internal report: Subject has formalised his mana manipulation techniques into a structured culinary practice. The child is documenting everything. Threat assessment: impossible to calculate.
Night fell. Roan sat on the kitchen steps with the robotic cat in his lap, reviewing the day’s haul.
The garden was richer by a dozen new species. The mushroom beds were planted and already sending pale threads of mycelium into the surrounding soil. The glowing mushrooms pulsed softly in their log bed, blue light visible in the darkness — small, steady heartbeats that Milo was analysing frame by frame.
The kitchen had been reorganised to accommodate his new mana-assisted workflow. The shelf where the stockpot had been was now a levitation staging area. The stove had been adjusted for finer mana flame control. A new drying rack, built by the Spider that afternoon, held slices of the black deepcap being dehydrated over low mana heat — shelf-stable umami that would last for months. Beside it, strips of the ginger-pepper root were drying into a powder that would become the backbone of his spice blends.
“Milo,” Roan said. “Status report on the dimensional analysis.”
“The glowing mushroom specimens show a consistent closed-loop mana topology. I’ve mapped three complete circulation patterns, each slightly different. The mathematical structures share seventy-three percent similarity with stable wormhole models.”
“Seventy-three percent.”
“It’s not a bridge, Master. It’s a data point. But it’s the most relevant data point we’ve found in this world.”
“What would get us closer?”
“More specimens. Larger samples. And ideally, a way to observe how the topology changes under different mana conditions. If I could see how the loop structure responds to increased energy input—”
“I’ll grow them in the highest mana concentration I can provide. Right next to my usual station in the kitchen.”
“That would be directly useful, yes.”
Roan stroked the cat’s synthetic fur. The night was quiet. The three moons hung in the sky, and the garden glowed faintly — bioluminescent mushrooms, mana-bright grain, the soft shimmer of enhanced plants settling into sleep.
He was building a restaurant. He was building a home. And somewhere in the gap between mushroom spores and wormhole mathematics, he might be building a way back.
“Master,” Milo said. “I’m detecting movement on the eastern road.”
Roan looked up.
“Multiple vehicles. More than the first caravan — I count at least eight wagons. And a separate group of riders in formation. They’re carrying torches. Estimated arrival: forty minutes.”
Roan stood. Through the darkness, beyond the garden and the stream and the treeline, he could see it — a string of tiny lights on the distant road, moving steadily toward the clearing. More lights than last time. Many more.
“Lyra,” he called upstairs.
Her window opened. “I see them.”
He was already walking toward the kitchen, his mind shifting gears with the practiced speed of a man who had run a thousand dinner services. “If they choose to dine here, we’re going to have a busy night.”