It didn't take long for the first worker to break under the pressure.
"I want to join the prayer so please grant me your protection!"
In a life or death situation like this, praying to a tree was the safer option for him. After the first worker had said those words, the others all echoed him.
"Very well, you all may come here and join the prayer."
They bolted over as fast as they could. Reaching the others they got on their knees and repeated after the others. Naturally, since they didn't truly mean what they said and only did this to preserve their lives, the faith stream coming from those 80 workers left much to be desired in both quantity and quality.
But I couldn't force them to believe in me like most of the others did. Only time could make them into devout believers.
Now that my temporary goal was reached I expanded the borders of my bloodlust once again. All the beast that had come here immediately retreated. They were even kind enough to drag the corpses with them, leaving little cleanup work to do.
Both the messenger and Aldi soon left the town and everything resumed its peaceful state. The workers had also learned from the previous incident. They were quite terrified by it and tried not to make any complications.
A few more months passed like this and the number of workers had increased to around a thousand. Another show of power wasn't necessary either as all new workers had been informed about the requirements of living here.
The one thing bothering me was the fact that the town was split into two parts. The inner part was more or less the old village. It contained people of both genders and all ages. The outer part, on the other hand, was made up of about 800 men.
The problem now was that this town was dependent on new workforces from Utgard since the workers would age and there was no second generation to follow up.
I had asked the messenger why there were no women being sent here. The answer was that they simply couldn't find any willing ones. A lie. Some of the workers had told me that the was a good amount of females that had volunteered but were rejected.
Honestly, I couldn't do much about this anyway, so I just ignored it.
Sadly, the reality of things wasn't kind enough to let me enjoy this peace for long. The wealth I was generating would surely tempt greedy individuals to make their move.
It didn't take long for the first noble to visit. A visit to give salutations to me as he claimed. Strangely he didn't exchange a single word with me during his stay here. Instead, he spent his days talking to various people and one of them was Erik.
I would be a lie to say I wasn't concerned. All the conversations had been held at the entrance of the clearing. They purposefully tried to conceal what they were talking about. At first, I tried to ignore it, for peace sake. I didn't wish for more deaths.
Then the second and the third and the fourth noble came to visit me. The situation had repeated itself multiple times and I couldn't take it anymore.
I had been unwilling to do this, as I wished to give them some measure of privacy but they had forced my hand. My roots that had stayed underground all this time slowly moved to the surface until the whole clearing was dotted with them.
The surfaced roots all had a rune of listening imprinted in them. These runes were then connected to a rune of recording on my trunk. Privacy was now officially abolished.
The next secret talk of those nobles would not be so secret anymore! If they dared come here again that was. To my great chagrin, they really didn't.
Three months passed at an agonizing pace. I could listen in on every conversation held but there wasn't anything useful!
The fourth month had nearly passed and I was really hoping a noble would be there this time around.