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  He also turned off, heading out towards the smithy. He'd yet to meet the Collier and wanted to introduce himself. He saw several thin pillars of black smoke so he was sure the man was at work.

  The smithy was also hard at work, Eddie heard the sound of metal striking metal and it sounded like there was more than a single smith at work. At the edge of the woods, amidst the stumps that had been left behind when the lumberjacks worked their way through the area, stood a man and a boy. They were staring at a pile of dirt that emitted a trickle of black smoke.

  “Hi,” Eddie called out.

  The man spun around, pushing the boy behind him.

  “Are you the Collier?” Eddie asked as he approached.

  “That I am, who be you?” the man asked.

  “I'm Eddie, the guy that hired you. Sorry I couldn't meet you before now, I've been incredibly busy as of late.”

  “Aye, Liv pointed you out to me, but you were building that fort and quite focused on that. I'm Ulf, and this is my son Arne.”

  The man finally allowed the boy out from behind him and Eddie looked at the two of them for a moment. There was a ghost of pain on their faces and Eddie imagined that it was from being driven out of the home they'd made.

  “Is Arne your helper?” Eddie asked.

  “Yes, my boy makes a fine assistant. A good hand with a shovel and learning just how to turn wood into charcoal in lots of different ways. Right now, we're burning out these stumps for it. Your lumberjacks have been busy cutting and I thought you'd like the stumps gone as well, especially since we can turn them into charcoal at the same time.”

  “Do you pay your boy?” Eddie asked, a plan for gaining another employee in his mind.

  Ulf looked at him strangely.

  “The boy has a roof over his head and food in his belly. That's all he needs for now.”

  “Would you mind if I officially hired him as your assistant? I'd pay him a copper a day for now until he's good enough to work on his own.”

  Eddie looked at the boy, who looked to be still on the short side of ten years of age. Ulf was glaring now.

  “Which would probably be four years or more from now,” Eddie said.

  Ulf calmed down immediately.

  “Don't know why you'd pay the boy when he'd be doing the same he is now for free.”

  “Because I think people should be paid for their work,” Eddie said. “I didn't realize I was hiring a team when I hired you or I would've stipulated it them.”

  “It's your coin, if you want to pay the boy for doing the same he is now, I wouldn't dream of naysaying you,” Ulf replied.

  “Done then, he can pick up his own pay when you get yours. By the way, I don't know if Liv or Karl told you, but we're building a house specifically for you. The one you're in is a rental. If you saw the foundation and fireplace right before turning off the road, that's where your house will be, even closer to your work site.”

  Ulf stood up straighter.

  “It looks to be a fine place, if the rest of it matches once it's finished.”

  “I'll be building it with my own hands, so it should be,” Eddie said, “and now, if you'll excuse me, it's been nice to meet you, but I need to go. Too much to do and not enough time to do it in.”

  “Thank you Eddie, sir,” Arne said.

  “Aye, thank you sir,” Ulf added. “Your offer was a lifesaver when it arrived.”

  “I'm just glad that Liv seems to know everyone and their business around here. She helped both you and me out with this one. You're very welcome and I hope you're happy here, but as I said, I've got more work to do.”

  Eddie turned and walked to the smithy. He didn't really have anything he needed to do there, but he wanted to see how it was working out. When he peered in, he saw the apprentice had been positioned between the two smiths. He was currently sharpening more broadheads while each smith pounded on their own anvil.

  As he watched Eddie realized that he did have something for them to do. Reaching into his inventory he pulled out the caltrop Paul had let him take after the fight at the fort. He stepped into the smithy and waited for Opron to notice him.

  Delgar saw him first and Opron looked up from his hammering when the other smith's hammering went silent.

  “Opron,” Eddie said.

  “Eddie, what can I do you for?”

  “I don't know what your smithing schedule looks like, but I was hoping you could make some more of these. Paul hacked a way to make them, but I thought it was a good idea and that you could probably do it faster and better.”

  He stepped forward to hand the caltrop to Opron and the smith moved, blocking Eddie's sight of whatever was on his anvil. Eddie thought about mentioning it, but he really did have other things to do.

  “Just a few nails twisted together to make a caltrop. Nasty little things,” Opron said.

  “Yeah, but can you make more easily? A lot of them?”

  “Sure, I can probably do molds for them. Not so good for real nails, but for nails for caltrops? Should be easy enough. I'll get the apprentice to twist them together after I cast the spikes. Might be a couple of days to get a decent number of them though.”

  “Do what you can. I've got to get up to the farm. I might finally be able to realize some profit on the crops in the commercial field up there.”

  Opron looked vaguely interested, but didn't say anything else so Eddie took his leave and continued to the farm.

  ~ ~ ~

  When Eddie got to the farm he could hear one of his farmers out chopping down trees. When he saw Osmond out in the field weeding he headed for him.

  “Hey Osmond,” Eddie called.

  The farmer looked up and moved over towards Eddie.

  “We need to do something with these crops,” Osmond said. “It looks like if we just leave them here the weeds grow faster and faster.”

  “Well then, you'll like my news. I need you and Brandr to harvest all this stuff and get it ready for shipping. I think I have a lead on someone to take it to Brightport and sell it off for me.”

  Osmond grinned.

  “Do you know what you want in here next?” he asked.

  “I think we'll keep a small corner of the field growing some of those same herbs that are here now, those are spell components and evidently pretty valuable. The rest of it I'm thinking about giving over to a variety of grains, and some hops. I've got a guy that's going to be brewing and he could use easy access to all that stuff. I'll have to ask him which grains and the like he wants, but that's my tentative plan.”

  “Good, I know grains a lot better than most of this stuff. Some of what we've been doing has been best guess, but it all appears healthy so far. It'll be good to harvest it while it still is.”

  “Well, that's what I need you guys doing. I'll get you seed for the new crops we want to put in. You can get seeds from the herbs yourselves, right? I know I can get grain seeds, but I'm not sure about the ones for the components.”

  “Yeah, we'll probably need to leave a few plants to go to seed and harvest those when they do, but we'll harvest most of it.

  “Well, that's what I wanted to tell you. You guys have been stacking your planks up here now?”

  He'd noticed the stack of lumber as he'd walked onto the farm, it was especially obvious after he'd picked up all the rough hewn planks from here a few days back.

  “Yeah, we saw you going all over the place to get the ones we'd already done and decided to make it easier on you.”

  “Thanks for that, keep stacking him where you are. I've got another building I'm doing a short distance away and this will be an easy trip to get the lumber I'll need.”

  “Will do, but it won't grow much for a couple of days until we have your crops taken care of. It's nice to get the extra coins, but not at the cost of ignoring our primary job. I'll make sure Brandr understands that also.”

  “Thanks for that. I'll come up with the guy when it's time to pick up the crops, or at least send a message for you with him. Ju
st store what you harvest in the barn for now.”

  Osmond gave a nod as Eddie turned and started walking back to the inn.

  ~ ~ ~

  When Eddie returned to the inn, the first thing he did was put his fingers to his mouth and give a short, shrill whistle. Once it had quieted he spoke, wanting to share his information before he forgot to do so, again.

  “Hey everyone,” he said loudly. “I spread the words just a few days back that anyone who wanted to could set their respawn here at the inn, well outside in the yard anyhow. I'm not taking that back, but I wanted to let you all know that there's an even better option.”

  It had been quiet after his whistle, but now you could hear a pin drop.

  “There's a living temple down near the crossroads, Tiana and I just finished it up recently. Freyja has blessed it, and there's a number of blessings it bestows, but the pertinent one here is that if you set your respawn there, your respawn time will be halved.”

  An excited murmur greeted his words, but he waved for quiet again.

  “Also, it's a non-combat zone so if you die to one of these goblins raids that seem to be increasing in frequency and ferocity, then you'll have time to regain your wits, and your health, before going back out to fight them. Thanks, that's all I had for you. Please spread the word.”

  The inn, quiet a moment before, was rapidly filled with excited adventurers trying to talk over one another. Several adventurers got up, tossed coins on the table, and immediately filed out through the door, eliciting a groan from Eddie as each one tapped his inn sign as they left.

  ~ ~ ~

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Specialist Harmon took a deep breath before returning to the body of the Giant Wolf. He was acclimated to it now and had no problem walking around the clearing. When he took off through the woods, bounding around trees and up onto tree limbs as high as twenty feet off the ground, he still didn't have any problems.

  He went back to the clearing, his tongue hanging out to help cool himself off as he panted. Unconscious of that he laboriously pulled up his command line interface and thought out the commands to teleport his wolf form to the rest of the squad where they were starting to move the goblins towards the Meadowlands.

  He appeared in a flash amidst a small horde of goblins, several of whom shrieked and drew weapons when he appeared. He'd warned Campbell of what he planned so when the massive Half-Breed Goblin Champion heard the shrieks he leapt over and backhanded those goblins whose weapons had been drawn.

  “Boss,” Campbell said. “Looking good.”

  Harmon's command line screen had come with him when he teleported, so he initiated a chat and told Campbell to group him with the rest of the squad. Once he was in the group he dismissed the command line interface and thought into the group chat.

  [group chat: Harmon (Giant Wolf) – How are we progressing?]

  It was getting easier and easier for Harmon to think out the letters for the wolf brain to form and he had a sneaking suspicion that whatever the spark that still inhabited the wolf was, it was growing smarter from his efforts.

  Doesn't matter though, he thought. I'll get rid of this construct after the attack so even if it is growing smarter it won't make any difference in the long run. Although I'll make sure to note my suspicions in the report. If that happens all the time and this same spark is in the constructs that Greenshaw has us researching, then it could be an issue later on. I know I'd still be having problems controlling this body if the spark weren't here and able to be manipulated, so it may end up being a necessary evil in the long run.

  As he'd been thinking Campbell had answered his question.

  [group chat: Campbell (Half-Breed Goblin Champion) – No problem, specialist. This is the rally point for the rest of the tier three villages, once they're all here we'll move to the second tier on this line and collect all those. While we wait for those goblins to gather, we'll also be driving the tier one village inhabitants at the players. I've already got assets in position for that.]

  Good, at least he can follow orders even if he can't write reports to standards, Harmon thought. Now what do I do in the meanwhile? I was so bored at the clearing. I want to hunt!

  ~ ~ ~

  When Eddie made it to the inn he was immediately accosted by Becky.

  “Since Karl's back now, can we do the dun— err, finish that thing we started? Maybe tomorrow?”

  Eddie groaned mentally, keeping the sentiment off of his face.

  “We'll ask. Tell you what, you can ask everyone else and if they all agree then we'll do that. I'm up for it, but I don't know what plans others might have.”

  She broke into a smile.

  “Well, I already talked to Karl, Allie, and Dominic. They said they were okay with it if everyone else was. Tiana's at her temple, so I haven't asked her yet and Jern's at his place up at your farm. So, just two more and we're good to go for tomorrow.”

  Eddie had to laugh.

  I guess she really is that manipulative, although that's not a horrible thing in this case. It does explain how she got Paul to agree so quickly though, she'd probably been working on him about it for ages and then when she got me to agree and mentioned my name, Paul was probably happy to say yes, just to get her to stop.

  “Well, you know where Jern is, although he'll probably be down here in a couple of hours anyhow. Tiana should be back by dinner time as well.”

  Becky grinned happily. Eddie was puzzled though, she was stroking her arm through her sleeve, but he'd swear that her hand wasn't making it far enough down to get to her arm. Then he noticed the other lumps on either side of where she was stroking.

  “Um, Becky? Are you alright? It looks like there's something wrong with your arm,” Eddie said.

  She glanced down and noticed what she was doing.

  “Oh no, I'm fine. He just gets really excited when I do, and I'm all excited right now. So I was trying to calm him down.”

  “Him?” Eddie asked.

  She looked around.

  “Come outside, you probably don't want anyone seeing him in your inn.”

  Without another word, she walked towards the door.

  Eddie, confused, followed along.

  Once they were outside she turned back to him.

  “Eddie, meet Bubbles.”

  She proceeded to reach into her sleeve and a moment later drew out the head of a rat.

  A large rat, Eddie thought as she continued to pull the creature out of her sleeve. That thing's as long as her forearm, longer if you count the tail.

  “Well, I knew it was wrong to keep stealing Lucky and you know I stopped. So I went hunting for my own pet and met Bubbles here. No, I didn't charm him at all. I used Animal Friendship and bribed him. You'd be amazed at how amenable food will make a rat. So then I got the message and everything, and now he's my pet.”

  “At level two? That's impressive.”

  She shook her head.

  “No, I went up to level three even with the very short time we were in the dungeon. That's when I got Animal Friendship. I chose it as my third level skill. I got another nice surprise for a tier two spell as well, I'll show it to you when we get to you know where.”

  Eddie blinked, several times.

  “Okay then,” he said. “I'll look forward to it. Now I need to go in and talk to Liv.”

  “Okay, I'll go talk to Jern about it since he's normally not here as early as Tiana,” Becky said.

  She headed off east on the road, towards Eddie's farm. Eddie headed into the inn to see if Liv needed anything.

  Liv did indeed need something. There was another facet of the control room that Eddie hadn't known about.

  “See, I need the budget for the inn. I could just deposit the inn's profits into the inn's treasury, but I thought you might like to give it seed money so there's some petty cash and keep receiving the profits yourself,” Liv said.

  Eddie hadn't known what the metal cube in the control room was, he'd used it as a footrest the cou
ple of times he'd spent any time in there, but now he did. It was a safe, accessible through the controls of the inn. A solid cube with no door that only allowed those who had access to the control room to get to the coins within it.

  He quickly went through his coins, dumping a load of copper and silver and a few gold into it.

  I figure mostly it'll be if the servers need to make change as opposed to paying for other things the inn might need, Eddie thought, but there's the gold in there also for things like the flour order. I'll pay Bjorn myself, after I talk to him and only if I decide he's trustworthy. I trust Liv, but if he's her man then she might have a biased opinion of him.

  Liv was satisfied with the amounts Eddie had put into the inn treasury and when he told her to let him know if she needed more she simply nodded.

  “You know I will,” she said.

  Eddie spent the rest of the day, what there was of it, finishing off the first of the garden beds in back of the inn, then planting them. After consulting Liv on what vegetables she wanted available next for the kitchen, he planted the bed according to her requests, then gave in and spent the rest of the evening in the inn common room, spending time with Tiana and mingling with the rest of the adventurers.

  ~ ~ ~

  The following morning they got all the group together, Becky having obtained Jern and Tiana's assent to trying the dungeon again. They were all fairly eager, but also wary due to the vast quantity of spiders they'd found in the first room last time.

  As they paddled out the island this time, the paddles were unmolested, but three times there was a thump and a rocking of the raft as something large struck it from underwater. Jern was slightly green by the time they got to land. He was the first one off and immediately grabbed the raft and started pulling it onto the shore, even before everyone else was off of it.

  They made their way to the dungeon entrance and once more all consented before the door would open. Lucky was no longer hanging back from Becky, although she did normally keep herself more than a few feet away from her.