As expected, Elm was hanging out in the underground city when Rud returned to the Grove. He found her in the tower, rifling through some cupboards. The elf turned, smiling when she saw him before her face dropped.

"Not that I'm one to judge," Elm said, taking a long moment. "But why is it pink?"

"Oh, are you talking about my super fancy, extremely expensive new backpack?" Rud said, turning and striking a pose to show off his new pack. "Yeah, I can fit about 500 leaves, a few thousand acorns, and at least 10 buckets of water inside."

Elm raised a brow. "Is that what you have in the bag currently?"

"Maybe," Rud said, withdrawing a live squirrel from the bag. The creature skittered up his arm, perching on his head. "Did you know you can store live creatures in these bags?"

"Where are my nuts?" the squirrel asked.

"In the bag, silly," Rud said, withdrawing a few acorns and holding them up for the squirrel to eat. "Now you stay there like a good little squirrel while daddy does his work."

"I have absolutely no words," Elm said, doing her best to hold back the giggles. "Is he gonna stay there while I tell you what's going on in the tower?"

"She is going to hang out until I get her back to the surface," Rud said with a tut.

"Well, she's more than welcome to listen to my dry lecture on lingering arcane magics and an old abandoned magic school," Elm said, turning to regard the sparse room. There were things scattered here and there, but from Rud's estimation, it had once been some sort of office. There was a desk with papers still strewn about it, and many cabinets and cupboards holding random junk.

"So what's the damage?" Rud asked. "Why are we getting so much strange, arcane magic coming from this place?"

"I have narrowed it down to one feasible possibility," Elm said. "This was an institution of high magical learning from an era of sorcery long gone. There is an interaction taking place between the giant crystal embedded in the cave's ceiling and a magical artifact somewhere, perhaps even one of your cursed objects."

"Boil it down for me. What do we need to do?" Rud asked. "Break the crystal? Find the object? What?"

"Dealing with the crystal is the best bet. We should destroy it completely," Elm said. "Don't make that face at me. I know what I'm doing… Kinda. But dealing with artifacts can be dangerous. Not everyone is as lucky as you to find a useful artifact. Some just explode when you interact with them, like super-charged versions of your cursed objects."

It didn't sound like the best plan to Rud, but he wasn't a master of the arcane. From what he understood, if he took a little chunk of that crystal in the ceiling, he could use it to help rivers grow and enhance their observatory. He had kind of abandoned that plan in favor of finding a similar crystal somewhere in the academy, but if Elm said they needed to destroy it, then that was the case. Of course, his interest was in the grove's safety, so he had to check a few boxes before he gave her his blessing.

"What's your plan to shatter the big old crystal?" Rud asked. "How dangerous is it, and does it pose any threat to the grove?"

The squirrel atop Rud's head squeaked, requesting another acorn. The druid was happy to provide.

"We can exploit a property of the crystal to destroy it without threatening the grove," Elm said. "It requires energy to maintain its form, so if we drain away that energy, it should shatter harmlessly. The smaller pieces will be much less reactive than the larger ones."

"What's the catch?" Rud asked.

"The mechanism I want to use to absorb the power is the Sacred Tree," Elm said. "She acts like a battery for both druidic and arcane energies… right?"

"Yeah, she can process latent and active energy, but I don't know about that," Rud said, looking out the window to spot the giant crystal. The squirrel squeaked for more acorns. The druid pulled another from his bag, wondering why the squirrel had even left. "Hold on, let me ask…"

"What do you think?" Rud asked.

"That's a lot of energy to absorb," Ban said. "I don't think I could stay at a low rank and absorb that much energy… unless…"

"She has a plan," Rud said, smiling to himself. "Just gotta get her going and then she'll go wild on a project. My guess is she wants to make nodes on her roots and store the energy, running it through her Energy Condenser for long-term storage."

"Well, why bother asking me?" Ban asked.

"Tell her not to rush it. I have some experiments to run first, then we can decide the best course," Elm said.

Rud stuck around while Elm ran her magical tests. That involved a lot of fancy arcane arrays, chanting, and even a dance. No, not a dance. The druid realized Elm had just tripped a bit too late, and had already clapped a beat for her only to see her face go a pale shade of pink. Only an hour later, the Sacred Tree came back with an answer.

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"We can do it," she said. "I'm already working on the building we need, but we'll have to buy at least one upgrade for it. It should synergize with the Energy Nodules building and allow us to store refined energy. Even with that, I'll jump to Rank 2 at the minimum. Maybe even Rank 3."

"What's the point of staying at a low rank?" Rud asked.

"The more I can develop myself without ranking, the stronger I'll become. I'll be happy so long as we stay under Rank 5, and I think I can use some of that energy to infuse myself. It just depends on the quality of that energy."

If Ban got stronger so did the Grove and all the things within it. Rud assumed she knew what she was doing, so of course it fell to her to decide. He was just there to make sure everything went smoothly.

"Just let me know when you're done and I'll upgrade it," Rud said. "I've been neglecting my subclass for quite some time… so I think I should work on that."

After a decently long silence, Elm waved her hand before Rud's face. "Done talking?" she asked.

"Oh, right. Yeah, just run your tests and Ban will be ready in a bit. She needs to make a new building that can accept the energy."

"Perfect," Elm said. "I could use Jasper's help, if he's around."

Rud thought back to the way Jasper looked in his mortal form and shivered. "Yeah… I'll check his schedule."

Rud checked with Jasper reluctantly, sending him down into the underground city. He made his way back to the surface, releasing the squirrel and checking his progress toward Rank 2 for his Grove Custodian class. Farseeing was at Level 9, Cheesemaking at Level 4, and Animal Husbandry at level 4… He was seriously slacking with his subclass, but couldn't blame himself. Taz had taken over Mining, Smelting, and Smithing so he had some catching up to do.

"Time to take care of some animals," Rud said.

Before heading over to the cow and goat pen, Rud found a brush and added it to his bag. Sometimes it was hard to tell what actions were increasing his skills. However, as the druid brushed out the coats of both the cows and goats, he could feel his skill ticking up slightly. Perhaps that was because he was so close to level 5, but he needed to raise his animal husbandry skill.

After a while of caring for the animals, both direct and indirect actions related to them contributed to his skill growth. As he was cleaning up the pen and expanding the paddock, his skill finally rolled over to Level 5, allowing him to select from a long list of potential upgrades. As expected, they weren't insanely powerful upgrades that would change the way the skill worked. But a few were interesting enough, and one stood out. Rud inspected it.

[Grove Handler]

Animal Husbandry Upgrade

Description:

What good is a custodian without a bunch of critters to take care of!?

Effect:

While within your assigned Grove, you gain a better understanding for the animals under your care.

Just by the description, it didn't seem worth taking. But there were often times when even Clear Communication wouldn't cut it to figure out what was going on with animals. The description was vague, but Rud liked it so he took it. The moment he did, he felt a flood of information entering his mind. One goat didn't like the kind of grasses within the paddock while another wanted to move to another area entirely. A cow under his care had a sore on its foot and another was having issues with biting insects.

Rud immediately felt better about his pick, puffing his chest with pride as he lorded over his animals. Their needs were clear to him now, and he got to work without delay. The pen needed to be bigger, covering more types of grass and plants. That was easy enough for him to accomplish with his affinity for Plant Magic. He expanded the pen far enough to encompass several bodies of water, running and still along with a few fields of trees and tree stumps.

The cows weren't clean enough. They wanted a place to scratch their thick hides and jump into the water. The creek and lake Rud picked for the task would be perfect. Although this would make the animals happy, the druid's only concern was they would be unable to find their way back to the barn.

"Okay, animals," Rud said, clapping his hands and activating Clear Communication to gain their attention. "You have a lot more space. But you need to remember where your home is. Yeah, the lake and the creek are awesome. You've got some amazing scratching posts. But this is where you come at night. Okay?"

"Nuts?" one cow asked.

"There are some hazelnut trees over there," Rud said, gesturing.

"Ahhh!" a goat screamed.

"Yeah, juicy grasses over there," Rud said, pointing again. "Any questions?"

"Yes, when can we expect nuts?" another cow asked. "I like nuts."

Rud sighed. The problem with cows that had once been squirrels was their desire to both climb trees and eat large amounts of nuts. Both creatures weren't smart, so they had trouble figuring out stuff on their own.

"Nuts are over there," Rud said.

"One more question," another cow said.

"Bye," Rud said, shifting into his raven form and flying away.

"What about the nuts!?" the cow shouted after him.

At least the animals held it together long enough for Rud to get his work done with them and test the upgrade. Now he only had 5 more levels to go to get Animal Husbandry to Rank 1. Although Jasper had claimed to be a beefy cheese master, the druid made his way to the kitchens to cook. Of course, this required a stop at Taz's freezer to grab his chilly milk. He entered through the mine entrance, stopping every few steps to listen to the sound of a pickaxe ringing against rock off in the distance.

But the sound wasn't coming from the spots where the dwarf normally mined. Instead, it was near the passage where they had originally found Major. Which was odd, considering the scatter of bats that still hung out in that place. Rud poked his head around the corner, his brows knitting as he spotted Taz just off in the distance mining away. He looked back, noticing how the bats were completely undisturbed.

"What'cha doing?" Rud asked.

Taz jumped with a start, looking over his shoulder and shaking his head. "Nothing good," he said. "Got a weird feeling about this part of the caves."

"What kind of weird feeling?" Rud asked. "A feeling like you really gotta pee, or that there's something worth mining over there?"

"The second one," Taz said. "Come on. Grab a pick and help me out."

Rud looked between the darkened passage and the freezer room behind him. There was plenty of time to make cheese… Wasn't there? It wasn't as though he was rushing against anything in particular. It was only his own desire to get his Grove Custodian subclass to Rank 1 that pushed him forward with that endeavor. Jasper had made enough cheese to hold them over for a while.

"Why not?" Rud asked. "I'm sure nothing horrible will happen to us."

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