Cora sat on a ruined desk, staring at the lathe. She'd decided to turn three of the blocks into bricks and the last one into slabs. The bricks generated one experience point each when placed in her sacks. She'd decided to put them into the empty small sack that she had instead of back into the large sack. Cora wasn't sure that if she put the bricks into the large sack if it would interfere with withdrawing the granite blocks. Currently, the only things in the large sack had been granite blocks.
Each block had, surprisingly enough, generated general use bricks. Each brick still had that 'W' embossed artfully on one long side. Cora figured that if she used them on the City Hall steps, she could face the 'W's outside to provide treads for what would otherwise be a slippery surface.
The lathe worked noisily on the last granite slab. She'd opted for slabs because she was curious what the other lathe would churn out. So far, only one had slid out, still embossed with that fancy ���W' insignia. It was about an inch thick and twelve inches across. That checked with her choice of a medium sized general use slab.
Cora sighed and stood up. The slab lathe took a bit longer than the brick one. That one sat, steaming lightly from creating so many bricks at once.
She wandered back to the hallway. Unlike most of the other buildings she'd investigated, this one wasn't as damaged. Even the designs on the walls were still there, untouched by whoever had invaded. They were faded by time, but by being sheltered by a mostly intact building, they hadn't eroded as badly as they could have.
She wondered if it was because whoever had invaded had found whatever they were looking for or had been interrupted before they could destroy anything. She had a feeling that the protection glyphs she'd dismissed from the lathes could generate more than a tingling spark.
Cora walked down the hallway, glancing into empty, mostly denuded classrooms. She wondered what the rooms were meant to teach. Some clearly had never contained a lot of desks or chairs for students to sit at. The building wasn't large, merely a couple hundred feet with a classroom every thirty.
When she reached the last classroom door, she discovered that it wasn't a classroom but instead a forge. Here there was destruction. The forge showed clear signs of being demolished by a hammer of some sort if she was judging by the hammer marks on the floor around it. There was an untouched kiln standing by a wide window on the other side of the room as well as some sort of tool set hanging in a neat row beside it.
Cora eyed it with disfavor. She'd bet that it was also glyphed. She wasn't sure what to make of the whole glyph thing. What had been protected was very random. Why protect a kiln and tools but not also the forge? Or why protect the lathes instead of using it to block the door?
Cora walked to the forge and studied it.
'Brolim's Forge - value (inestimable) - to fix: 20 special large stone bricks, 12 iron cloud ore, 5 mystic gold ore, 8 large general use slabs (Wilderven), 1 uncut star sapphire'
"Special bricks?" Cora said with a frown. She turned towards the kiln and shook her head. She'd come back to look at that later. "I wonder if it'll take a partial set of materials…"
Cora reached into the medium sack and pulled out a handful of ores. She'd found that the sack acted like a regular one if she didn't specify what she wanted. She picked out two iron cloud ores.
She held them over the broken forge, surprised when they trembled and then vanished from her hand. She reinspected the forge.
'Brolim's Forge - value (inestimable) - to fix: 20 special large stone bricks, 10 iron cloud ore, 5 mystic gold ore, 8 large general use slabs (Wilderven), 1 uncut star sapphire'
Cora nodded to herself. At least she had some of the things it needed. Then she laughed at herself. Of all the things she could have started to fix, a forge was the absolutely last she'd ever have thought of.
She wasn't even sure how someone used a forge. She had a shadowy idea of putting ores into it and getting some sort of metal back, but how that was achieved was beyond her ken.
She thought about it as she rummaged in her bag for cloud iron and mystic gold ores. She had had good luck while mining. Cora felt that she was lucky since she'd only mined five mystic gold ores.
Then she paused. According to her quest, she had to give up the results of finishing the granite blocks to Blue. Whether or not she got the use of them back afterwards, she didn't know. That meant that she was going to have to go back to the mine again to look for more granite blocks.
Cora sighed. Then she applied the rest of the ores she had to the forge as well as the uncut star sapphire.
*****
"Here you go," Cora said, dropping her sacks at the base of Blue's oak tree.
Blue flowed down the tree. She stopped midway, just the height of the sacks off the ground. Then Blue reached out a paw and batted open the mouth of her large sack. She'd placed the stone slabs into that bag once they were done. Blue then checked the small small sack, purring cheerfully.
"I'm really surprised that they fit in this little sack," Blue said, finishing her descent to the ground.
"I'm also surprised. Makes me wonder just how large a harvest the corn actually is," Cora said, glancing at her field. She wasn't surprised to see that it was now ready for harvest. All her new activities had taken a long time. "Is it going to harm the sorghum that I didn't water it?"
Blue bonelessly shrugged.
"It's just plants. They don't seem to be harmed by missing a bit of moisture," Blue said. She stuck her head into the large sack, stunning Cora.
"Are you okay?" Cora asked, trying to hold back a wince. She had a mental image of Blue's head being stored and her headless body slumping to the ground. The mere thought had her panicking. "Blue?"
"What?" Blue asked, pulling her head out of the sack . She blinked at Cora. "It's just a sack. It can't harm you," she said before snagging the small sack in her teeth and pulling it closer. "Now I can show you where to store these." The cat glanced at the field. "Or do you want to harvest the sorghum? I think there's a tool for that in the shed."
Cora glanced at the field. From her research, she knew that she had to cut off the heads of the sorghum canes and dry them to recoup her seeds as well as turn it into something edible. She was happy that the sorghum was the grain variety and not the sweet. Otherwise, she would have missed the right time for harvesting, even if she'd set the game's timer to alert her when the field was ready.
"I'll take care of the harvest first. It'll take it a few minutes to resow the stalks afterwards," she said, moving towards the little shed set to one side of the field.
Kai the goblin had built the little shed when he had harvested the red clovers. His escorts had ferried bits of stone from nearby ruins to help him do so. Thinking about it, Cora realized that there was probably more damage somewhere she was going to eventually have to fix. Then the little goblin had transferred all of her farm tools to the little shed he'd built.
Cora shuffled the tools around before finding a rusty scythe with a splintery handle. She smiled as she gripped it and watched the transformation. Since she had her Mayor's title equipped, a new information tag popped up.
[Brolim's Hoe discovered! - Brolim's Hoe recognizes you as the new Mayor! - Brolim's Hoe sets you as its new master! - Brolim's Hoe activates self-repair option! - Brolim's Hoe appropriates 1 MP for repair!]
Cora blinked at the mass of information. Her mind went back to the forge. It was also labeled as a Brolim. She started wondering if there was something seriously special about whoever Brolim was.
"Give me a few minutes, and then we'll put the stones away," Cora said, hefting the scythe. She flexed her fingers around the handle, finding it a comfortable fit.
It only took a few swings before the scythe set the height to work at. Then it merrily continued on its way, reaping a quarter of an MP with every swing.
By the time she ran out of MP, the field was completed. Cora let out a little sigh of relief. She really didn't want to take longer than she had to to finish. She had paced behind the scythe, stowing the reaped sorghum heads in her baskets. Then she placed them to the side and turned towards Blue and the sacks.
Blue was sitting there, watching quietly as its tail twitched. When the cloud leopard saw that she was done, it stood up and started walking towards the east.
Cora scooped up the sacks and followed her. She observed her surroundings as she walked, finding that the buildings she passed were larger than the others, nearly cavernous in some cases. The path they were walking on was also not as damaged as the other roads had been, the grass prevalent in other places missing here.
She wondered about that until she caught sight of a rabbit darting away from the corner of her eye. Its fur was a mottled black and gray that blended in with the ruined buildings. She glanced at Blue and saw that she had stopped, her head turned to follow the darting image of the rabbit. Even her muscles quivered with strain as the leopard fought not to chase it.
"Later," she heard Blue mutter to herself. "I will chase those things later. I will not do it until later. I will obliterate those evil, tasty little morsels."
Cora kept quiet. Like Blue had once told her, she was level 330 and Cora a measly level 1. Well, she was level 3 now, but it still stood to reason that it wasn't much of an improvement. Remembering Blue's comments, it made her wonder just what level the rabbit was at. It didn't really look like the rabbits she'd seen around the beginner's areas.
After a few seconds, Blue continued on, her tail wagging behind her viciously, the tip making snapping noises as it thrashed around.
Cora silently followed, glancing around to see if she could locate more rabbits. She was disconcerted to realize that she kept seeing gleams of light where there should be none. Her brain kept insisting that the rabbits were stalking her, or rather Blue. Cora shuddered and hurried to catch up with Blue.
They came to a stop in front of a series of buildings lacking doors. The buildings were large, merely four walls and a roof. None of them were in the state of disrepair of the rest of the town which was surprising. There were runes etched on top of each of the four buildings.
"This is the stone building," Blue said, stopping in front of one. "Put the stones there."
Cora glanced at her and then walked into the building. Inside, broken shelves littered the floor while there was also rough sectioning done with stone posts and rails.
'Broken brick shelf - value 1 copper - to fix: 1 wooden board'
'Broken inventory display - value 35 gold (8700 fixed) - to fix: 1 light globe, 1 elemental core, 1 magicite ore, 1 ingot mystic gold'
Cora paused at the display. It took up nearly a quarter of the wall beside the empty doorway. She could tell that the mystic gold was probably part of its frame. The original was mostly gone with signs of tool marks around it showing that someone had pried it out. There were shards of a glassy substance nearly fused with the wall.
She sighed as she opened the sacks and carefully shook out the bricks onto the floor. There was a flash, and then the bricks were neatly lined up in one of the nearest sectioned off areas.
"I sort of understand now," Cora murmured to herself, shaking the slabs out of the large sack. She glanced around the large, still mostly empty building. "This is going to take me a while to fill." Checking the other small sack, she decided to keep the stone shards. They barely filled three percent of the sack's capacity.
She walked out of the building to find Blue staring fixedly in one direction.
"Blue? I'm going to go back and sow some corn, maybe go mine a bit more," Cora said, easing around the tense leopard.
"Sure, sure, just go. Those little morsels are just begging for my attention anyways," Blue said distractedly.
Cora walked away, willing herself to not look back. She was positive she didn't want to know about Blue and her supposed war with the weird bunnies.