I tinued w on the b space for awenty-six days until I finally pleted the shell of the spabsp; The facility is built into the hills b the side of the valley with no roads currently. While I worked, I spent some time cutting trees down along a trail that led here, so we have the beginnings of a road at least, though I imagi will be some time before a proper road is built.

  The facility itself is quite rge with the first floor f a rge U shape, and the much smaller sed floor resting against the hillside. The first floor's insides are still empty with structural pilrs supp a rge empty hall, it's nearly 30,000 square feet in size, and towers twenty five feet tall. It would be easy to fuse it with a massive warehouse given how empty it is. It's partially built into the hillside, which provided the stone from which it was built. The small sed floor, which stands only 15 feet tall internally and with a square footage of 4,000, rests atop the back of the building, built into the hill as well, causing the roof to run directly into the hillside.

  Beyond this part of the facility though is a foot wide stairwell headed diagonally down, aimed deep uhe tallest part of the hills surrounding the valley. There, nearly 100 feet down, I have another spabsp; This space is 10 feet tall, and 50 feet oher side. The whole pce had to have it's walls reinforced with stone shaping, to prevent aquifer water from leaking in. This aquifer is a bit below ground, so I'm sidering building a well here iure so water will be easier to access here.

  Iure, the underground space be expanded as needed, but for now I figure it should work for any immediate experiments. Some of the medium sized crystals that I grew in the past could make it closer to the surface than this without breaking, so if we e up with a good way to move crystals here, I think this should fun as a det testing space for them.

  I have ahat I try reted to transp the crystals over the surface which will hopefully prove fruitful, otherwise, I might have to sider digging a hidden chamber where I grow more crystals over here, as I know I transport chambers with deteriorated crystals and regrow them. Though none of that matters until the snow melts, which is still a few weeks away.

  I 't quite get a read oher Tiberius likes the space or not. Sometimes it seems like he's excited by all the possibilities for experiments, and other times he seems overwhelmed and disappointed by the ck of anything being in the space already. The whole facility isn't just for him though. The first floor of the building is divided into five roughly equal sized ses, of which I let Tiberius pie to use.

  I shouldn't have been surprised when he picked the se adjat to the stairwell headed into the basement. It makes sense given he'll be using the facility more than anyone else. He already has made multiple requests for many different tools and maes for me to make for him, to which I told him to pick carefully, because he's only getting a few of them. I'm not about to bee someone's b assistant. If he wants many different tools, then he o pay someoo make them, or start showing valuable results.

  The initial tools he wanted for doing blood testing experiments were easy enough to make, so I spent five days making all the various tainers for blood, and the apparatus he requested for partially submerging crystals into said blood. While I worked, I advised him to haul plenty of water to the b space, since I hadn't dug the well yet, and w with blood without any water sounds like it's asking for trouble.

  Despite my advice, Tiberius only hauled a small amount here, though it seems he's much more brains than brawn, because he did seem exhausted by the endeavor. I've decided to dig the well sooner rather thao provide water here, as I'm ed about health ditions in the area if I don't.

  Even the health ditions wouldn't have been quite enough, but I decided I wao work on a project that would require some problem solving and could be of some be moving forward. This isn't going to just be a manually operated well, I'm hoping to make a wind-powered water well. Prior to gaining access to leather, this would be an exceptional pain to make, but with leather, it should be possible to make detly funing check valves by which a small windmill pump water to the surfabsp; If I get this w, it potentially opens up the stru of more wells, giving us access to deeper fresh water reserves in locations where getting water might otherwise be hard.

  One of the biggest challenges with this project will actually be getting the metal to make the pump rod. I io have the rod be a steel core with a thin surface coating of lightstoo help with bidity and roofing. However, as I've mentioned before, we'll actually o do some sging to get our hands on more iron. Fortunately, I shouldn't o go diving into sunken ships just yet, because we still have a det amount of iron on hand thanks to the onballs that were fired at us on the far beach.

  I shouldn't hat much iron for this project, so I'll just take a wagon to the far side of the isnd, and load it up with as many onballs as I haul back, and that should be more than enough for this project.

  As it turns out, when you don't o sleep, the round trip to the far beach, including the couple hours pig up onballs, only takes a little over three days. sidering how many onballs were left buried in the sand, I've decided to put in a request for a few moblins with wagons to go haul onballs back to the city. We'll have good uses for the iron o's turned into steel, but the onballs themselves are cast iron or worse, so they'll o be reprocessed to remove some of the carbon to make them into higher quality metal.

  While I wait for Karsh to reprocess the iron, I'm going to start digging the well. Ultimately, it's going to be a real pain to hand dig the well, then close it up with a pipe so that it works for pumping water, but I don't have a great way to drill down the fifty feet to the aquifer in that area without just digging myself into the hole. I cut a pipe with stone shaping, but removing the stone would be difficult, and ensuring that it's properly sealed would be hard too if I 't see it.

  Once Karsh fihe initial iron reprocessing, I'll give him instrus for the meical gearing, bearings, and valves that I'll need made for the well pump. The windmill to drive this pump will be much smaller than the windmills by the sea, so it shouldn't be quite as plicated to actually assemble.

  Digging the well and having Karsh make the parts I requested took nine days in total. I cut a dder into the wall of the well, and made a harness on my back for hauling rocks as I dug the well. When I reached about thirty-five feet deep, water started to trickle in very slowly from the walls, so I started the process of turning this into an automatic water well.

  First, I used my new magic, pulverize, on the floor to create a detly rge area of sand in the floor of the well. Then I assembled the pump der with it's leather and steel check valves. I then got a rge piece of rope, and draped it down the well with a weight where I wanted my water pipe to be located. Then I slowly worked my way along the rope, stone shaping a pipe around the rope, so I could know that the pipe was retively straight.

  Once I reached the bottom, I dug into the sand where the pipe would ect with the pump der, and after doing multiple measurements, I attached the der and buried it ba the sand. I still o have Karsh make the actual pump rod, but I o know the exact length I needed before it be made. For that I'll also o build the windmill that will sit on top, as well as it's pipe. I want it to run into a holding tank, so the actual exit from the well should be a little higher up to aodate that.

  Once I get everything hooked up, I seal the sandy portion of the well off pletely, and then I'll make some kind of removable cover for the top of the well to keep anyone from falling in. I don't want to pletely seal it though, as the leather in the plunger check valves should be repced if the flow rate slows down, which is likely to happen at least once a year, if not more frequently than that.