The room turned out to be a long ruined classroom. The remnants of desks and chairs were scattered around its spacious confines, crumbled and broken by time and whatever had happened here. There were the same scratches and dents around the classroom's doors that had been around the entrance to the building.
The walls had writing on three surfaces and was a blank square for the last. The blank wall was closest and perpendicular to the doorway. The quality of the blankness reminded her of a blackboard or a whiteboard. Cora gently touched the blank surface, rewarded by a flicker of images. The flicker continued for a couple of seconds before blanking back out.
"If you can fix the globes in the mines, then you can fix this thing," Blue said from the far side of the room. She was standing in front of a rather large picture of a furnace with pictures of ores and ingots next to it. "This is the explanation you were looking for, and the lathes are over there." Blue looked towards the end of the room.
Cora glanced at the pictures. They seemed self-explanatory. A picture of the ore, a number next to it and a singular ingot underneath of what it must look like when processed. Looking towards where Blue indicated, two large stone lathes were standing. Each had an intake slot large enough for the granite blocks to be slid into, and the output slots were different sizes.
Cora walked to the lathes, realizing that they were larger than she'd expected. There was the intake slot that fed to a flat plate with spouts aiming at it and a thin disk of metal on another metal arm waiting by the side. She tried to touch it and was repelled by a shock.
"There's preservation spells and protection spells on them," Blue said, laughing her weird hacking cough laugh.
"Thank you for informing me," Cora said, sucking on her stung finger. The thrill felt more like she'd tapped the end of a taser than an old metal artifact. "How do I use it if it's coated in protection spells?"
"Just use your mayor title," Blue returned. It batted a chunk of rock around the floor. "That will unlock everything."
Cora opened up her status. Under titles, the one for mayor glowed in a faint golden light. She clicked on it.
'Mayor of Wilderven - the current mayor of Wilderven. All hail its renovation!'
Cora chuckled. Whoever wrote the descriptive tags for some of these info boxes was genius. She double-tapped it to equip it, replacing 'Draconic Friend.'
It was as if someone poured a vat of refreshing water over her head. She felt purified from the inside out, and the world gained a subtle sparkle. In her view, small labels started floating around.
'Broken school desk - value 1 copper - to fix: 1 wooden slab, 4 stone brick'
'Broken school chair - value 1 copper - to fix: 1 wooden slab'
Cora blinked and shook her head before turning towards the lathes.
'School grade brick lathe - break protection?'
'School grade slab lathe - break protection?'
Cora frowned at the labels. Then she nodded decisively, hearing a crisp shattering sound. She reached over and touched the nearest lathe, causing another box to pop up.
'School grade brick lathe - value 800 gold (+20k age) - use: insert stone and choose size of brick. Wait for bricks to finish.'
"That's too simple," Cora huffed, dragging the large sack as close to the lathe as she could. While the granite blocks didn't really weigh that much while in the sacks, she'd never picked them up, just swooped the sack over it. "Is it because it's a school thing?" She mused, glancing around the classroom.
The spots where windows would be were just rough holes. While there might have been windows at one time, they were long gone. Whatever had happened here, the only remnants left weren't telling any stories.
Cora held the mouth of the sack to the intake slot and thought about withdrawing one of the granite blocks really hard. She was rewarded by the sack mouth expanding around one of the granite blocks inside. She titled it just a bit, sending the block firmly into the chute.
The granite block made a solid clunking noise as it slid onto the cutting plate. Cora stared at the simple console. There were only five buttons and a lever. They were labeled from 'decorative, small' to 'general building.'
After thinking for a moment, Cora pressed the button for 'general building.' She had no clue what the other four sizes were for at the moment, and general sounded more like something she'd use to replace the broken bricks on the stairs leading to her office in City Hall. Cora honestly didn't feel like hopping up the broken steps like a goat every time she needed to visit her office.
The machine whirred to life, jets of water splashing against the granite block. The arm with the blade reached out, the blade starting to rotate at high speed.
Cora took a step back and circled around the machines. There weren't any pipes or hoses connected to them to supply the water. She looked back at Blue who was watching the process in fascination.
"It's been glyphed, of course," Blue said, noticing Cora's look. "Don't you have glyphs where you're from? Backwards place, then," the cat muttered under its breath, causing Cora's eyebrows to raise slightly.
Cora was distracted from the cat by the first of the bricks leaving the output shunt. She walked over and picked it up. It was a plain, grey rectangle with a 'W' embossed on one side surrounded by a simple leaf pattern.
'General building brick (Wilderven government) - value 30 gold (+300 rarity) - (Decorative, building, weapon) - a general building block for a government works in Wilderven, the capital of the Wildlands. Can also be used as a weapon if need be.'
Cora raised the brick to eye height and tried to estimate just how many bricks the granite block would make. Math wasn't her strongest suit, despite her ability to calculate dividends and P/E amounts near instantaneously given the right information. She'd always dismissed Nate's disbelief, likening it to figuring out sales tax.
"Staring at it isn't going to make it glow or anything, or do you want to play with it?" Blue got up and walked over to Cora, sitting by her feet. She looked up at the brick in Cora's hand. "It looks like some of the older ones in the outer quadrants. They aren't as damaged out there, just abandoned," the leopard explained before sauntering towards the door. "You should work all the granite you have. You're going to need a lot of bricks and slabs and stone in general."
"How do you know?" Cora asked, exasperated. She tossed the brick into her inventory. "You're a leopard."
"I'm also the current guard of Wilderven. I can see what's needed to fix things," Blue explained before it disappeared out of sight. "Bring them back to the field when you're done. I'm going to take a nap."
Cora opened her mouth to remark on that when she heard a familiar ding.
*****
'Mission Quest: Supplies for Wilderven
Description: Blue, the warden of Wilderven has asked for stone supplies to aid in the rebuilding of the town. Bring her the supplies at the site of the Mayor's Fields.
Requirements: the results of four worked granite blocks.
Reward(s): 1 bag pepper seed, transportation circle activated'
*****
Cora paused at that. She knew that term. She opened her status screen and tapped on the Quest tab. Then she tapped on 'transportation circle.'
'Transportation circle - Every town and city of renown owns a transportation circle. Whether you can use it or not is an entirely different story. Work hard to gain enough renown (or money) to buy a trip to foreign climes!'
Cora frowned and then looked up and out of the nearest window. Artful devastation met her eyes.
"I've got a teleportation circle?" Then she paused and reread the quest description again. "Wait? Am I supposed to repair this entire place!?"