Greed God chapter 96

February 2nd 2016 Gemworld 5:00 PM EDT

The  next morning Barbie talked to her dead and sent him the way of the  house, and after a teary goodbye to her old man headed out with Cherry  to do recon on the nearby forest. With Cherry's ghostly abilities they  should be able to get some top notch spying done if they found any  villages or anything nearby. Plus Cherry would be able to keep an eye on  Barbie and keep her safe. Part of the reason I added the whole 'or  through inaction allow her to come to harm' clause in their orders. The  two of them would look out for each other.

Once they were  gone though Zee and I went out searching for more materials for merging.  H rank stuff was decent income, and with all the shit we gathered I'd  actually made it back to twenty five thousand again. Mostly stones and  plants, it wasn't like the every single thing was H rank, but this place  was an obvious treasure trove of uncollected mats that no one had been  around to pickup. Or maybe this place was so magical stuff like this was  literally trash. Either way I would have plenty of materials for  merging.

Barbie and I had discussed what to do. With my  limitations (which admittedly were mostly made up) we decided going big  was a bad call. We didn't need one huge powerful building. We needed  like a dozen or two reasonably nice ones like the cottage. Rather than  build up a castle first thing and proclaim myself a lord we were  planning to create a village to draw in workers. Then we could have them  help with gathering materials and performing labor, cutting down the  time needed to gather the things for my castle.

Because I  WAS going to get a castle. It was like...the one thing I wanted most  here. Princess pussy and a castle were like the biggest check marks I  needed. First thing we needed though was to find out if there were  actually PEOPLE. Strega had offered to do a life sense spell, but she'd  warned me given the magic strength of all the animals and plants there  was almost no way the results would be reliable. So that left me here  waiting for the girls before we started on the village, tearing up trees  and shit was time consuming so we didn't want to do it if we didn't  have to.

Which left me with Zee and Strega. "So, can the  two of you tell me a bit about your magic? I know Strega uses blood  magic, and Zee you talk backwards. Why the huge difference in style?" I  knew Zee was homo magi, but I was curious if her style was exclusive to  the species or if I could learn it too. Granted blood magic would work  fine for me with my advantages, but it seemed stupid not to learn both,  especially with Zee having a much higher ranking than Strega did as a  sorceress.

Sadly that didn't seem in the cards. Zee  shrugged and waved off the question. "Genetics. My magic is inherited,  hers she learned the hard way. I'd actually be impressed at how much  she's accomplished if she didn't literally murder people to fuel her  spells. I mean, you can use the backwards talking as a focus, magic is  pretty flexible. Any language or structure can be used as a focus as  long as you can visualize it. More developed magical systems have the  advantage of streamlining and generations of entrenched belief though."

I  nodded in understanding. It was a shame to be locked out of learning  it, but honestly with my vitality it wasn't that big of a deal. Luckily I  didn't have time to stew on it, because my girls had officially arrived  back as we were talking. Cherry and Barbie came out the forest looking  tired but unhurt. I assumed Cherry had used a ton of power to look so  exhausted, which was a great sign as far as I was concerned. If she  needed to use her ghost abilities or even her thief powers they must  have found some people worth hiding from. Or animals I guessed, but I  could use those too.

I gave them a lazy wave as they  stepped into view. "Hey ladies, good to have you back. I trust you had a  productive trip?" I was excited to learn exactly where the hell we  were, and maybe to get a map of this place that I could use to plot a  heading for a good place to start my faction and hopefully get the  attention of the Amethyst bloodline. I imagined knowing where the fuck  we were would help. I kind of hoped the purple trees were a good sign,  but a part of me knew that was just an objectively bad metric to base an  assumption on.

Barbie, who looked even more tired and  twice as annoyed as Cherry came over and plopped down with her back  against the tree next to me. "Yes. We managed to find some locals. This  place is in the middle of two nearby villages. Luckily these people  speak English for some reason. We spent a few hours waiting nearby and  collecting info on the local community. Our clothes aren't really suited  for the area so we didn't actually engage."

She paused to  take a breath and Cherry cut in snugly. "This place is the Emerald  forest. As far as we can tell it's pretty much dead center in terms of  location. The Amethyst lands are directly below us. Given your plan the  placement isn't bad, but we would want to head south a bit before we set  up. Putting ourselves on the Amethyst border will increase our  reputation in that area faster. Otherwise we have to try to get a  meeting and then convince the princess. Makes more sense to acquire some  value first, maybe even let her come to us."

I  popped to my feet. "Good enough for me. Barbie, I assume you have some  basic idea where to start? Because I'm ready to get going." I frowned  and looked at the cottage. "Although...Zee can you and Strega ward that  thing? I don't want someone getting into it after we leave, and honestly  it might be a good idea to have some kind of backup base if we need  it." The sorceress nodded and, contrary to my expectations, simply made a  few motions and muttered a few words and the whole place vanished.

I  blinked at her and she just shrugged. "I put concealment spells on that  tree you had me enchant remember? They're part of the house now, I just  had to activate them." That was convenient, I just shrugged, ready and  excited to go. I turned to Barbie. "Don't suppose you managed to get a  map while you were there?" I'd sent Cherry with her specifically to make  sure they did snag something like a map if they found one. Her thieving  powers should have made it easy enough, and running around without one  would be pretty stupid.

She  huffed but nodded at Cherry, who smugly withdrew a rolled up piece of  paper. It was stiffer than normal paper, closer to parchment. She passed  it to me and I unrolled it, stopping cold when I saw what was on it.  "You've got to be fucking kidding me." They both shrugged, looking a  little sheepish. I rolled my eyes and glared down at that map...which  was of a giant fucking island continent in the shape of a godsdamned  skull. Seriously, we were in the nose region right now and would be  heading down towards the teeth.

The  only upside was the mountain ranges were clearly marked, so we could  use them for a heading. I turned to Zee. "Can you fly up and get a bead  on the mountains on this map? Keep yourself cloaked, we don't know what  might be up there." That got a nod and a few muttered words, causing her  to fade to near invisibility. She zipped up and was gone for a few  minutes. I watched the sky carefully, not wanting any surprises, but  luckily nothing noticed her after her cloaking spell. She was back in  about five minutes with our heading and we set off.

We  walked for probably a few hours, wanting to get further toward Amethyst  but not to leave the forest. The trees were going to be a huge source  of versatility for us. Finally we made it far enough that we could see  the Amethyst plains in the distance. The trees had gotten deeper purple  as we walked, and I wondered if they really were colored in such a way  as to be based on location. Finally I stopped us. "Alright everyone.  Time to start pulling up trees. We have some work to do here."

Waylon,  Sally, and I were the main workhorses, given our strength, and we  officially got started on the preparations. Barbie was shockingly  helpful with this part. "Alright, you guys need to pull up the trees  completely, roots and all. We're going to have to till all this land  before we put the houses down. It'll save us a ton of time setting up  farms later. Farming is big business in the villages we saw, so we're  going to need to make sure anyone who makes their way over has a plot of  land they can use to grow."

Farming  seemed like a good idea. I had some ideas about creating houses  connected to the land they were on, making the whole thing a farm that  could hopefully give a magical upgrade to the whole plants thing. Plus  seeds were preobably low enough rank that I could mass merge some crops  for them to grow. I was pretty excited about this whole thing. I'd  always loved kingdom building sims, and making my own village and  growing it into a powerful faction sounded fucking awesome.

Pulling  up the trees was tougher here, the root systems seemed thicker for some  reason, but I was an F ranked superhuman, plus Waylon assumed his  were-croc form and could literally grab one in each hand and rip them up  given how huge he was. Between the two of us and Sallys titan strength  we managed to get everything torn up in a few hours. We saved the trees  to use as materials and got to work tilling. That was less difficult  because in his terror croc form Waylon was so big his claws could be  used as a plow.

Finally  we finished everything off and built another shelter a bit off from the  massive empty plot of land we had designated for the houses, which I  then upgraded to G rank the same as the last one. We used the same  materials so we ended up with the same cottage, though that might also  be because it was what I was aiming for. Finally we settled in for some  food. I'd managed to collect some fruit and berries while I was  stockpiling materials, and my appraisal told me what was safe to eat, so  we had plenty of food.

As  we sat down to eat I gave everyone a nod. "Alright folks. That seems  like everything we need to do for tonight. I think Barbie has some  ground work she's hoping we can get done before we start construction,  but barring that I think its safe to say that Lord Village is officially  underway." Honestly I'd have liked to set up plumbing, but I was pretty  sure I could merge a plumbing system for the whole village if we got  the pipes and stuff so I wasn't worried about it.

Everyone  looked pretty psyched about the idea, and I was glad I wasn't the only  one. It would have sucked to put up with whining about wanting to go  home while I was trying to build my village, but everyone seemed pretty  cool with the vacation, so that was a load off my mind. I looked around  at the clearing we made and couldn't wait to get started. I made a  mental note to ask Crassus for some advice here too, this seemed like  his wheelhouse. I had a feeling this was going to be where my system  really showed its worth.