[Beastborne: Voracious] (Book 5) Chapter 34

Chapter 41

The pair of Beastbornes were still walking along the inner circumference of the wall that kept the rest of the valley apart from the settlement.

Hal looked over at the longhouses, most of which were already up. One stood out like a half-made skeleton, a dark prow of timbers standing against the starlit night.

The dwarves were making good progress on the longhouses. Those were needed to keep people housed and safe before the snow came. With that new guy, what was his name?

Hamrin. Right. I’m going to need to get better at names.

With the Gourmage, Hamrin, they might just have their food woes sorted out. Hal had told the Council to give him anything within reason to secure their food supply.

That, even above the housing situation, was paramount. Without food, they would starve and while things were lean right now, they weren’t that bad.

But they would get worse.

Elaise, if she would stop hiding from him, had offered to teach them how the Ebon Star tribe gathered food in the snow, but no offense to her and her tribe, Hal didn’t want to survive.

Brightsong, if it were to have any future at all, would need to thrive.

He knew enough of the expeditions and hunts that the tribes did to keep themselves clothed and fed during the harsh winters of the Shiverglades. A place where even the depths of summer held ice and snow in the shadows of the trees.

They took up an exorbitant amount of time. Time that his people could be training, studying, or improving themselves in one way or another.

Or, he thought, taking a moment’s respite to enjoy life and remind each other that we’re safe and alive despite all the Shiverglades had thrown at us

That was important, too.

There was no use in doing all of this if he was only going to treat his people like machines. People needed to improve, sure. That was important to grow both personally and professionally, but that was all there was to life.

They needed festivals, celebrations, and joy. Brightsong needed to live up to its namesake.

I wonder if I should introduce some holidays from home?

Though his To-Do list was nearly a mile long at this point, Hal felt sure of his next few steps. His Kol’thil had been a thorn in his side for far too long, and now with that gone, he could do some real work.

The Heat Space Copper Sigil he used on Hirash to unnerving effect wasn’t originally intended to harm people. It could, obviously, as he had demonstrated, but it wasn’t its function.

However, unlike Carve which was explicit for stone only, Heat Space had no such restrictions. Of course, the loss of heat would be tremendous without some insulation. But even if they were able to get a promising iron ore vein worked on, they still needed to smelt the damn thing.

And therein lied the bottleneck. They didn’t have enough iron to do what they wanted.

The dwarves had assured Hal that they could use a mobile smithy, the sort of thing they used in their tunnels. It wasn’t effective, or fast, but it could get the job done.

Eventually.

They didn’t have eventually. Hal needed the smithy up and running and to do that, they needed iron.

A glance at the status of the settlement showed that they had 2 tons of the stuff. All well and good, but a smithy required 6 tons of the metal. They had more than enough stone and wood. They were particularly within reach of a huge stone surplus after Hal’s little carving spree.

Hal checked the Smithy building’s information in the Settlement Menu.

[Smithy]

Produces worked metal goods from raw ore and raw metal materials as well as forges new metals. Placing this building adjacent to a river with an additional Waterwheel attached increases effectiveness by 50%.

Materials

Wood: 2t

Iron: 6t

Stone: 10t

Parameters

HP: 750

DEF: 20

MDEF: 20

Occupancy: 10

Production Rate: 2t per worker

Construction

Cost: 350

Difficulty: 2

Worker Limit: 10

With a smithy, they could produce higher Tier tools. And with Heat Space and maybe even dragonfire, Hal might be able to do the job of several mobile smithies at once.

It was his hope that with just a few days of work, he could have them on the road to a proper smithy and with tools that matched their current skills.

A waterwheel would help tremendously. Of course, it also used up iron and lumber, which was a byproduct of the sawmill. Something not yet completed and therefore made the wondrous waterwheel out of reach for the time being.

[Waterwheel]

A large wheel that is attached to an applicable production building that greatly improves efficacy by using the motion of the river to turn a great wheel and power various apparatuses. Requires an adjacent river.

Materials

Lumber: 3t

Iron: 1t

Stone: 1t

Parameters

HP: 200

DEF: 10

MDEF: 10

Occupancy: N/A

+50% Efficiency of attached Production Building.

Construction

Cost: 100

Difficulty: 4

Worker Limit: 10

They had a third of the necessary lumber, and of course it would have been a terrible idea to make a sawmill ahead of making a smithy, but still Hal hated all the obstacles to getting even one single production chain going.

He frowned at nothing in particular as he looked over the settlement’s production buildings. They were well poised to take advantage of Brightsong’s plentiful wood and stone deposits, but that was about it.

With Hamrin’s Gourmage, they were now likely to take advantage of the farms they had going up, which was an incredible feat unto itself. He didn’t want to pressure the young man too much—

Wait, “young man”? Hal thought to himself. From what Mira had to say, he wasn’t much younger than me, if that.

Yes, he thought, but you feel old as dirt after everything you’ve been through. Arriving on Aldim broke, alone, and immediately robbed. Being tossed into prison, chased more than I would like, then tossed into another prison, getting my Kol’thil busted up, being shunted to the Abyss and back, the Drakst….

Hal shuddered and tried to force the memories of the last two out of his head. A lot had happened in his short stay on Aldim.

The Abyss was bad enough, but being the Dungeon Guardian, even for a short while, had nearly broken him. The feeling of the Dungeon’s powers unfolding like a mandala was probably one of the most arduous things he had ever had to endure.

Strain didn’t hold a candle to it, but having to put up with both? Hal shook his head, catching an odd look from the Kinslayer, who was watching him out of the corner of his eye.

What must she think of me?

He probably sounded and looked a little crazy. Shaking his head, gesticulating with his hands, looking up at the stars and very likely muttering to himself.

It wasn’t as if Hal was crazy—not as far as he knew, but if he was locked up in a white padded cell somewhere in Seattle, he’d rather not know—but he wasn’t used to being near somebody as silent as himself.

There was almost a refreshing feeling to it.

We are, in a way, the same person. Makes some sense, doesn’t it?

The Kinslayer was polite—or unnerved, though he doubted it—enough to not make any commentary on his odd behavior. Which Hal was grateful for.

Another glance at the Settlement Menu.

We have more than enough Elysian Points (EP) to start chaining together Gift of Production. With that and the smithy operational, we might be able to get a sawmill or two up and then some waterwheels.

[Manatree: Gift of Production]

As the Manatree’s power grows, so too does its ability to imbue others with its gift of Elysian. The Manatree can imbue up to 2 individuals with doubled Crafting Point generation for as long as they remain within the Manatree’s influence radius or 24 hours pass, whichever comes first.

EP Cost: 30.

Duration: 24hrs.

Hal was confident that between Bardan and Athagan, they would have the start of a decent supply chain in a few weeks. Hopefully less, though Hal wasn’t very optimistic in these circumstances.

It seemed every day there was another new challenge the Shiverglades threw at them. From dirt so hard that their shovels took a royal beating just to dig up a foundation, to rockslides off the mountains, and the ever-present cold.

At least the monster attacks were mild and easily put down ever since they instituted the watch. That was one thing that had gone right, at least.

With the interior of Brightsong walled in for the most part, though Hal noted that the walls were hardly better than a fence, they were essentially isolated from the rest of the Shiverglades. Their claim had been accepted by the land itself, and the few monsters they saw nowadays were mostly curious wanderers.

Thankfully, there was nothing like the waves of monsters that had attacked them with unrelenting force when they first staked their claim.

Set them on the right track, give them the tools so they can tackle some of the harder construction efforts, and then I can be free to hunt monster essence and enhance my Monster Core.

There was still so much work to be done both in the settlement and on the mountains themselves.

Hal had done his best to design little switchback staircases that would be incredibly easy to ambush any enemy unwise enough to try to climb them without permission, but there was so much more to do.

Crenelations had been, to the best of his ability, cut into the overhanging lip of the mountainside, but it was rough work and definitely not something you wanted to look at up close.

With [Highsteel] or better tools, the dwarves would not only be able to create more buildings for Brightsong, but they could also work on the Gap and the tops of the mountains where he had begun work himself.

Perhaps that dream of seeing spires and castle turrets wasn’t so far away.

After all, dwarves were renowned for their ability to work with stone. His attempts, feeble though they were, must look like a child’s attempt.

To that end, Hal remembered another pressing issue. Bardan’s son, Athagan, along with Durvin and Ashera, needed their souls restored. They had been broken when he pulled them back through to Aldim. A small piece of who they were, which unfortunately included at least one Class per person, was splintered.

Since the Shiverglades seemed to hold nearly every Dungeon in the country of Fallmark (at least that was how it appeared to Hal’s senses), the souls had many places to house themselves until their owners could retrieve them.

Ashera didn’t want her soul fragment back. She was finally rid of her hated Class and wanted nothing to do with it. That was her choice, and Hal respected it.

Even if he was a little worried about the implications of having a piece of her soul somewhere out there.

But Durvin and Athagan were valuable members of the Council and were, in effect, useless without their soul fragments. After getting Elora’s back only recently, Hal realized he could kill two birds with one stone.

By delving into another Dungeon, he could shed some of his Hollow essence, while also reuniting soul fragment with its owner.

He didn’t quite feel comfortable leaving the Kinslayers, Giel, and Tristal alone in Brightsong, but he had put it off long enough already. With his Kol’thil fully functional once more, and a way to power it without harming his own advancement, he might have an easier time of it.

As he was mulling over whether he would talk to Durvin or Athagan first, the Kinslayer suddenly stopped and turned. Her eyes, a faint fiery purple haze to her irises, bored into his. “Are you going to kill me or not?”