Exploring possibilities.

John left June, busy reading a pile of books from John and his mother, reclined on one of the comfy chairs of the library with her legs spread and one hand between them. The idea of spending the night reading with her, while she was riding his dick, was tempting, but he finally no longer had to hide and evade his mom's attention; this was the perfect night to explore some of his kingdom and finalize some projects.

After all, June was now a subject of his kingdom and would come to visit pretty often, so opportunities to spend time with her wouldn't be a problem. John returned to the bedroom, and when he opened the door, a huge cloud of steam escaped the room. The inside of the bedroom looked like a steambath, and John was suddenly happy of the spartan furniture of the room. Vesta was still in bed, half awake, getting massaged by the bed in what was left of the water. She seemed still out of it and wouldn't be able to return to the forge right away. John checked to see if she had cooled down and was glad to see that the heat had gone down to the point where her new nanosuit could handle it. He kissed her on her forehead and let her sleep in peace.

John knew that his mother and his girlfriend were busy getting to know each other. The former probably trying to milk details of John's new life from the latter. Anna was for herself trying to milk something else.

John picked a few things from the storage chest and jumped on the quad. The powerful headlights of the newly acquired vehicle were illuminating the Arcadian night. John nearly hit a deer on his way to the mountains, the tendency of these creatures to run in front of vehicles held true even in this world where only one vehicle was present. The animals were not limited to their spawning points: forest teal deers and mountain goats could be seen grazing on the plains; the flying creatures were spreading everywhere, and even the scarabs were venturing out of the maze to the surface, where they became easy prey for larger predators. John slowed down the quad each time he spotted the flash of something reflecting his headlights. It was delaying him a bit, but he soon ended up with a bit more than a full stack of scarab carapaces in his inventory. They would be useful to make armor for the ratfolks, but he could maybe create larger items with it; chitin was a pretty sturdy material for its weight after all.

John could see the crackling light of the Lightning Stones on his left and a few spark butterflies flying over the tall grass. This would have to wait for him to be on his way back, getting a mine would mean a stream of crafting materials or at least an easy way to procure some. Testing his theory on the Arcane Sanctum could wait a few hours.

On the horizon, he could see the gloom of the coming dawn; with the short days of his kingdom, it meant that he had only 20 minutes left before sunrise. The first rays of the sun were hitting the mountains and floating islands, taunting John with their inaccessibility.

At the foot of the mountains, using the quad became too dangerous, as John wasn't used to it enough to ride it over the rocky terrain and boulders. He decided to continue on foot. The vegetation had spread, too: the mountain had some bushes, weeds and small trees growing on it now.

It was a good exercise to train with Parkour, running, climbing and jumping from rock to rock in search of resource spots and an area suitable to build a mine.

His exploration of the mountains yielded some results: Some of the winged serpents nested here rather than on the floating islands; something useful that he wouldn't fail to relay to Cali; the fried chicken style bits that Anna had prepared using their meat were marvelous. He raised Parkour to lvl 5 and was now even faster and more agile in the hard terrain; paths that used to appear as dark orange were now closer to yellow, and the ones in red, judged impossible to use before, were now reduced to very challenging. John had also found a few resource spots, raising Harvest to lvl 4. The mountains had more of these than he expected, and he had gathered quite a significant amount of loot even without finding a mine.

32 units of Limestone
286 units of Stone
48 units of Granite
25 units of iron ore
15 units of lead ore
15 units of tin ore
12 units of copper ore
6 units of silver ore
6 units of sulfur
2 Citrine gems
1 Malachite gem
1 Aquamarine gem
1 Ruby gem
1 Topaz gem

The total might not be worth a lot of money, but it was enough material to make a few rooms, craft new equipment and upgrade some aspects of his castle.

In the shadow of a rift, he finally found what he was looking for. The stone here was marred by rust colored streaks, and a part of the mountain was glistening.

Discovery: Iron ore vein (medium)
This spot is rich in iron; it can be turned into a mine. You have to clear the surface to build a mine on this spot.
Progress: 0%

"Awesome! And medium sized? That's probably enough iron to forge a bunch of things. And I'll be able to unlock the tier 2 of the buildings now. The mine should not require too much materials to build; I guess, some lumber, stone and tools, maybe some rope. Let's clear this stuff and get going," he exclaimed out loud, a little disappointed to have no one to share this with. The first thing he did was to mark the spot on his map, only to realize how far in the mountains he was... And that he had forgotten to mark where he left the quad.

John took his multi purpose axe from his inventory and grabbed it in a way that allowed him to use the pickaxe. He swung it towards the hard surface as hard as he could and...

A progression bar appeared, localized on a small bit of the stone, contrary to the classic resource spot, the progress from a single hit was barely noticeable. He swung back and began hacking at it without pause for a good 5 minutes... He had reached about half of the bar now. For the second half he began using Charged Strike every five hits, and it proved rather effective, cutting the time it took in half.

The bit of stone disappeared leaving a square hole with about one foot per side. John checked the general progress to get an idea of how long it would take...

0,5%

"Fuck! I have to destroy 200 blocks like that? Ten minutes per block, that's 2000 minutes... 33 hours? Just hitting on stone... More than 5 days at 6 hours a day doing this? This is insane... I don't even get anything from the destroyed bits... Repairs alone on the tools will cost a lot. There's got to be a better way... " he wondered.

John summoned a Shadow Clone; the jet black double started to hit the stone on the right of the rift while John focused on the left. It was progressing half as fast as John was, but that still meant that having it around would cut the time by a third.

Two hours, this was what it took to destroy 20 blocks, reaching a measly 10% progress on the thing. He had even obtained an achievement for this, and it was making it worth the time.

Achievement unlocked: Trying a notch too hard!
You just spent 2 hours in a row doing nothing but hitting at some rocks with a pickaxe. What's next, punching trees? You have really no life!
Rewards
1 wooden pickaxe
1 torch
1 birch sapling
1 diamond.
100xp

The diamond was a nice bonus for something that he would do anyway, the rest of the loot was trash. John began to wonder if Gaia was really doing all this stuff herself or if she had assigned some sort of nerdy guardian angel to oversee him. Some of the puns were just awful.

He backtracked to the plains and followed the mountain’s edge to find his quad. He drove away for his next stop. He took care to park the quad pretty far away from the crackling stone circle; he did not want to fry the electronics of his new vehicle less than half a day after getting it.

It was the other thing that he had to investigate: the limits of his traveling to and from the kingdom as well as inside of it were becoming a real bother. The Arcane Sanctum building promised to fix this and, from its name, should be useful in mastering his powers more fully. Mrs Wentworth had explained to him the basics of what it was but not how to make one. A place of great power, centered around a focus, that he could harness and bend to his will. His kingdom had two of these places that he knew of. The fountain of life was the hardest to tamper with due to its link with the forest; borrowing power from it could have bad consequences. The other was this place, the Lightning Stones, a circle of a dozen tall dark stone slabs crackling with sparks and electrical arcs.

Lightning was what came to John's mind when he was thinking about power. Pure energy discharged in an instant strike. John stripped down, removing every equipped item that he had on him. He stopped for an instant, standing naked facing the stones, with only his royal ring on his finger. It might sound dumb, but he felt like he should not remove it; it was his crown, his mark of power and ownership of this place, it felt wrong to remove it. He decided to trust his instinct and his luck and walked forward without removing it (yet ready to do so at the first sign of trouble).

This was his best chance at beginning to understand how to harness the power of a place. He had put the mind numbing hours of mining to use and finished to transcribe the dwarven book, and it had produced an interesting effect. He had been offered to add the runesmithing specialty to his forge training; a thing that he immediately accepted. Sadly he wouldn't be able to use all of the runes contained in the book right away; for a dwarven rune to work, the person inscribing it had to understand it, and it required some further study and experience to understand the more complex ones. But the specialty meant that when he forged items it would be easier to add runes to them and they would be able to hold more runes that items of similar quality; these bonuses would rise when he would become a journeyman and master.

John sneaked between the stones and went to sit cross-legged on the flat, round stone at the center of the circle. He was looking around himself, trying to capture the layout of the place clearly in his mind. The spark butterflies were gathered here by the hundreds, and the electrical tension in the air gave the place a very weird atmosphere.

John recovered something from his inventory; he needed a focus, apparently. The strange Hyperium crystal with its light golden hue and crackling blue energy seemed perfect for this. Holding it with two hands, he closed his eyes and tried to focus on his own energy, the energy of the place, the energy of the crystal and, through his ring, the Hearthstone, center of the realm, the physical form of it? Contained within and yet containing it...

John could feel the energy intensify, raising his hair and tingling his skin. Now motionless, the butterflies were flying close to him, some even landing on him. In his mind, in his Meditation, John was building a replica of the circle, in the most minute detail. He could see the flow of magic, the energy flowing from stone to stone, coming from the ground, coming from the sky. The stones in his mind were starting to get covered with runes, coiling over each rock in long lines, circling a single large rune on each of them. John didn't know these, he could hardly read them, but he was focused on trying to remember them. As the runes grew in number, he could feel the elements shifting. The earth was vibrating, the wind blowing stronger, raindrops falling from the sky, a sky that turned to total darkness, without sunset or warning, strange buzzing and glowing flowers were blooming around. John was lost in this vision, lost to time and space, unable to tell how long he had been meditating or where this vision started and reality stopped.

His vision was taking form, the stone circle slowly turning into a building, the ground getting replaced by marble engraved with golden circuits, artefacts on pedestals facing each stone, and, at the center, a throne. A place of magic, a place of power, an Arcane Sanctum...

John could almost touch it, feel it, it was so close...

When suddenly, a blinding flash followed by a deafening noise erased it all as a giant ball of lightning fell from the sky to crash into the center of the circle. Pulled like by a magnet, the bolt of charged energy struck at the crystal that John was holding and his world exploded.