Even with horses, the journey was still long and tedious. Fishy and Clara shared a horse whilst Ziu was on his own. They both had to stop every few hours to let both Fishy and the horses rest. Their journey back to Fintan village ended up taking longer than when they were walking.
"Welcome back, my lord." Back in Fintan village, two days after they left Va, all the villagers stood to greet them as they returned.
Fishy stood looking at them unsure of why the villagers seemed so happy. He assumed it was thanks to his return and successful mission of recruiting a swordsman for the village, and proceeded to introduce him.
"Everyone," Fishy said, "This is Ziu. He'll be living here and teaching people how to fight and defend themselves."
The crowd cheered but it died down quickly as a small community at the front dragged Fishy around the village causing Ziu and Clara to chase after them.
"Look what we did, my lord." One of them said showing off his creation to Fishy who was speechless.
In front of Fishy stood a building that was unlike any other. Instead of having several holes and missing planks, he faced a traditional Japanese house with an overhanging roof and sliding doors.
Fishy was amazed at what they had built and walked around on the wooden floor, taking his shoes off to keep the place clean. He wandered around not questioning about the fact they stole some of his secret blueprints but instead was brighter than ever.
"Who is this house for?" Fishy dared to ask.
"It's for you, my lord. The executives can also meet here until we build a meeting hall, as said in your blueprints."
Fishy looked at the man who was speaking to him and assumed he took the role of head builder. A man that was small enough to be a dwarf and even crafty enough. Fishy didn't know the proper etiquette of asking about someone's race and therefore decided to leave it and just assume this man was a dwarf.
"That's Silmor…" Clara whispered into Fishy's ear. "He's a dwarf…"
"Thanks, I kinda figured that…" Fishy replied sarcastically before going back to admiring the building.
"Right!" He said, "First off, these aren't the blueprints I gave you. These were in the elder's house. Second, I'm not living here."
"Oh, you are," Silmor said easily pushing Fishy and slumping onto the ground. "We build this for you."
"It's unfair for me to live here whilst you all live in shitty broken houses. I'm not doing it. Even in Va, there was no building this big and what is this room?!" Fishy said unlocking new areas of the building.
"A tea room," Silmor replied. "We thought you might enjoy relaxing and having a few meetings should guests arrive."
Fishy couldn't complain about the genius of the man that stood before him. At every point, he wished to say something but couldn't find a single fault. Fishy looked around again and inspected every individual element like a strict health and safety inspector. He approached a random wooden post in the middle of the room. It blended in well with the wooden interior and went unnoticed. Fishy looked up and saw how it was supporting the roof that was above him. Upon kicking it as gently as he could, it shifted out of place and along with it, the roof also moved.
"Yup! No one is living here!" Fishy said forcing everyone out before the place crushed them all.
"Hehe…" Silmor laughed as if he was hoping Fishy didn't find out about it. He slowly backed away with the other villagers, looking for a way to escape. However, they couldn't break out of Fishy's lecture.
"This is why I gave you the ACHIEVABLE blueprints!" He screamed. "We don't have good materials for a building like this. The wood in this area isn't good for something like this."
Even if the builders knew it was true, they were too eager at the ideas they hadn't seen before and scrapped everything they knew about safety.
"No one is to step foot in this building until it is rebuilt," Fishy demanded before he turned around, only to see the triplets kicking the post that was shifting even more out of place.
"NO!" Clara and Tin screamed as the building came crashing in above them.
"Are they ok?" Everyone was asking trying to dig their way in whilst Fishy could only get more and more visibly annoyed.
"FOR GOD SAKES!" Fishy screamed waving his hand to create the same wind magic he used against Ziu, lifting the building up showing the triplets surrounded in one of Fishy's barriers.
"Thank god…" Tin said as she ran up to hit her children for messing about.
"You mastered that quickly," Clara said to Fishy's annoyance as he still wasn't back on track.
"Alright!" He announced again. "This is Ziu. Everyone say hello... He's a swordsman. He'll train us… everyone back to work… and clean up this mess."
# # #
"Sorry about this place," Fishy said to Ziu as he gave him the premium tour of the village.
"Do not worry, my lord." Ziu bowed as if he was a royal knight. "I will do anything for you."
"Right…" Fishy said, unable to bring up the conversation he wanted to. "So… I have a request."
"Anything, my lord." Ziu bowed again.
"I want you to teach the villagers how to fight. But that's for later as we don't have any villagers. I want you to teach me how to fight."