Fabulosa and I spread Charitybelle’s old equipment across the arena floor and divided it up. We had avoided the melancholy exercise, which somewhat ratified her exit from the game. Charitybelle would have wanted to see her things put to good use.

  Fabulosa seemed fine with me taking the Charm of Rescue as I expected. She took the Charm of Protection—Primal and a +2 willpower ring. We gave her armor to the dwarven brothers, Bernard and Blane.

  Bernard took the beautiful banded armor Charitybelle bought in Grayton, while Blane took Tardee’s ornate plate mail. The pair looked opulent in the attire, but they’d earned it, working hard to rank up their skills. They practiced as a team, with Blane specializing in attacks while his older brother Bernard carried a shield for them both. They both preferred bludgeoning weapons, so I gave Bernard the Black River Cudgel and Blane the town’s mighty Metamorphic Siege Hammer that looked appropriate in the hands of a dwarf.

  When Blane brought the Metamorphic Siege Hammer into the battle college, Dino inspected it. He smelled its wooden handle. “Ah, a comely scent—like a freshly hewn sapling, felled in the spring amongst the blossoms. Cut down in its youth—but it lives in the capable hands of our friend, Blane. Coarse leather wrappings embrace the handle—all but enticing one to strike a proper blow. Its metals are conjoined with a haughty mithril blend—an alloy marbled with Bluepeak irons. The headpiece is garnished with floral filigree. Oh! It is quite a handsome weapon.”

  He returned the hammer to Blane, who looked uncomfortable and unsure how to respond.

  Blane found his tongue after slipping it into his belt hook. “If she wallops vargs, I’ll give ‘er a go.”

  I didn’t have the heart to carry Charitybelle’s old weapon. Weapons felt more personal, and I didn’t need distracting thoughts during combat. Fabulosa focused on her Phantom Blade, leaving me with my Creeper spear. Since Bernard trained for tank duty, I gave him my Prismatic Shield. Though I would miss its stamina, I wouldn’t miss its interference with primal spellcasting. If I needed the shield’s True Sight ability, I’d ask Bernard to trigger it or hand it over.

  I took Charitybelle’s Charm of Protection against dark magic and her old buckler, which I’d initially won from the hydra. The shield wouldn’t diminish my primal magic damage and complemented my melee skills.

  When Dino eyed the Flying Wall, I handed it over. I might as well let him fondle it for a while.

  Dino eyed the shield. “Ah! And for the insouciant warrior—eager to play coy, are we?”

  He waited for a response, but I didn’t understand him.

  He hefted the buckler with his fingertips. “You will learn to tease your foes until this little one takes wing. Quite the complement for a bearer of spears.” He examined the shield’s inside. “I find the brace a bit tawdry for such a doughty little cover. I suppose it’s what one could expect from a masterwork item. Nevertheless, I shall gird you to employ it to full effect.”

  As someone who spent half his teenage years poring over library books, my vocabulary overshadowed that of most adults, but even I found it challenging to understand Dino. “Thank you, I think. I look forward to learning.”

  My response satisfied Dino, who handed the shield back to me.

  I handed him Creeper, my spear, whose tip granted me infravision.

  “Headed with a keen blade whose applications are too salacious to discuss in mixed company. What you do with it lies beyond the scope of polite speculation.”

  Even though Fabulosa giggled and covered her mouth, I resisted the urge to protest.

  “My purview is your role in battle, governor, not your perversions.”

  I audibly sighed. I’ll admit, the spear deserved its name, but watching Dino swing at softballs grew tiresome.

  Dino sobered and held the weapon from its center like an actor delivering an oration. “Its balance isn’t displeasing, but its coarse, multilayered wrappings still bear a bouquet reminiscent of an abandoned tannery.” He stopped and arched a single eyebrow at me as if I missed a double meaning. “This one’s black Cherrywood finish has the rebellious tang of the Eastern Wilds. Despite its carefree pedigree, the grip should be formidable in the right hands. I hope you will not disappoint.”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Dino gave so many backhanded compliments and insults I didn’t bother parsing his words. I took Creeper back after his strange evaluation ended, and we proceeded into our daily training regimen.

  The town continued to develop while I worked on runes and trained. After building the third barn for our horses, the crew focused on a pottery and a bakery. Since Forren’s fireplace bonus didn’t give free kilns or ovens, the masonry demands meant longer build times.

  The bakery processed flour into bread, bumping our diet rating to 93%, thereby increasing our health and work crew’s efficiency by two percent. We’d see more prosperity if we could bring our culture rating over 57 percent, but Hawkhurst’s efficiency stabilized enough to survive our absence if we made a trip to Arlington.

  I held off on a dock until we needed one. It served as a prerequisite for a shipyard, a tier 3 building, so it wasn’t as if we could build a ferry anytime soon.

  I aimed to improve both our defense and culture at once, selecting a shrine for our next building in the queue. I dreaded assigning workers to it. Its heavy masonry would take a long time to erect, but it gave the town something to focus on while we went abroad. I considered the shrine a defense structure because it unlocked the blessing, Glowing Coals. We could only cast it within our settlement’s boundaries, but singeing wolf paws held an irresistible appeal.

  One evening, Fabulosa, Beaker, and I had settled into our dinner when Blane and Bernard rushed into the town hall. Their eyes were wide with excitement, so I reached for my spear and opened my map interface to check for red dots.

  “Apache! Guv!” Blane yelled to get my full attention. Half the town stood in line for food, but everyone turned to watch him. “The siege hammer! It goes through stone!”

  I squinted in confusion.

  Bernard made a fist. “It’s a siege hammer, Guv. It cuts rock.”

  Blane threw up his hands. “Great blows, sir! Miss Charitybelle’s old hammer solves our quarry problem. Maggie’s blocking out stone—’tis brittle as peak shale.”

  Maggie Hornbuster, the town’s quarry master, appeared at the doorway out of breath. Freya and Girtha, two of her workers, flanked her, and all wore grins.

  Bernard tried to explain. “Me brother had the idea to drap it on Hawkhurst Rock, to test its structural damage. We tested it on two blocks that Maggie’s crew had set aside because they were the wrong size.”

  Maggie waved her hand as if to slap at Bernard. “Wrong size? Bah! Yer bum’s out the windah! Thar’s nothing wrong with me cutting. I didn’t like the look of the vein, so I told the lasses to save it fer something ether than a cornerstone.”

  Bernard pressed his meaning. “But the point is—the stricken block cleaved into two. The cut is pure clean!”

  I looked to Maggie for confirmation. She nodded her head. “Tis true, Guv. Using that bonny hammer for the quarry, we can chop blocks faster than we can move ‘em.”

  I leaned back and exhaled in relief. Charitybelle’s Metamorphic Siege Hammer had been staring us in the face. It solved our last construction problem.

  The settlement’s core gave a world boss bonus called protection, making our stone too hard to quarry. The hammer from our first mandate provided a workaround.

  I flipped open my build interface and looked at the shrine.

  Converting favor points into rushed projects took a little math. A roundhouse took one worker 71 days, or 568 hours to construct. Rushing a project costs 1 favor per second per assigned worker. To rush a day of construction for 29 workers, we needed around 14,000 favor points. It had been 53 days since Charitybelle saved Fabulosa by giving her the blessing of Hot Air. Forren’s followers generated 2,916 favor—a drop in the bucket for what we needed to rush the shrine.

  More blessed followers would make Glowing Coals more expensive. Luckily, I excelled at being frugal. I’d need 2,000 favor points for Fabulosa or me to have Glowing Coals. That meant rushing construction wasn’t about to happen soon.

  Forren’s fertility magic came to fruition as well. The camp had five dwarven babies crawling around. Unfortunately, they didn’t count as followers until adolescence, but they bumped our settlement’s population to 61. We welcomed every addition since we numbered well under 500, the next settlement level.

  Barely a building, the shrine’s wall-less structure covered the altar like a stone pavilion. Aside from its bonuses, the shrine proved we could repurpose the siege hammer to quarry Hawkhurst’s hard blue granite.

  Instead of two workers taking a full day to produce a single block, it took only one worker a day to make five. The siege hammer increased our quarry productivity by a decimal, reducing the shrine’s construction estimate to a quarter of what it used to be.

  Six days for a shrine! I couldn’t believe it. Traveling to Arlington and back would take longer, so I queued something to follow. By the time the crew finished, we’d get a 5 percent bump in culture, jumping our efficiency to 81 percent. I felt spoiled as I skimmed over the possibilities. Base-building possibilities fueled me with exhilaration for the future.