Cora dumped the last of the stone shards into the stele. Then she called up the status screen for Wilderven. She'd found that as long as she was within the town's borders, she could call it up at will.
It was one of the few advantages she'd found. Cora found that she regretted experimenting with the tabs. Once chosen, you had to build the item picked with no recourse or take-backs.
It was highly aggravating.
She'd chosen 'City Walls' when she'd first discovered the tabs, and now was realizing just how long that was going to take using stone shards.
Cora was still unsure why she needed stone shards and not just bricks and stones to build the walls. The only relief was that she didn't have to supply any mortar. She wasn't sure where she could have gotten any of that.
The tab for stone shards still showed a need for stone shards. There was just a thin line lit up near the bottom of the graphic for city walls. In Cora's opinion, that was surely worrisome.
Cora thought for a second. As far as she could tabulate, she'd dumped about forty pounds of shards so far. That was a good number considering that an inventory slot only held two or three pounds of them, and the sacks she had weren't much better.
It was a mystery. Cora smiled. She was tempted to tell Lorenz about the discrepancy. He'd be interested in something so weird.
Even she had to admit to an urge to investigate. Even granite blocks would fit four to a large sack, but the small sacks would only hold a pound of shards and the mediums would hold just a little over double more.
Cora hadn't checked it using the large sacks. She'd been too busy trying to get granite blocks to turn into much needed bricks. The small sacks wouldn't fit one block, and the mediums would only hold one.
"The dryads should be waking soon," Blue said, sitting down next to her. "Staring at the steles again?"
Cora glanced at her and then back at the shards stele. It was clearly marked now, 'Shards' written in dark brick letters down the side and a pictorial representation of a shard on the top near the intake chute.
Beside it stood two more steles. One was marked 'seeds' and the other was marked 'water.'
Cora frowned at the 'water' stele. It had popped up after the shards stele had appeared along with the 'seeds' one. She'd just returned from the orc village to find them growing next to the shards stele, and they'd been fully formed when she'd returned from Cochran.
"It's weird that I have steles needing water and seeds," Cora admitted. She wasn't even sure how to carry the water. She didn't have any containers, not even a canteen.
Thinking about it, she hadn't seen a single well in the town so far. That made her wonder just how the people had lived. They couldn't have just made magical water. Cora had been told over and over that magical water wasn't good to drink.
She'd never asked just why that was. Now she was wondering if maybe she should go back to the orc town and ask.
Cora huffed out an annoyed breath. Plants needed water, right? She'd never actually grown anything before. Lorenz was the one with the perennial green thumb. He could just look at a plant and boom! Perfect, leafy greenery.
It was rather aggravating. Still, his father did own a thriving nursery now. It was just a shame that the man was scum and left his wife and kid for a blonde bimbo. A gold digging blonde bimbo whose eyes lit up every time Lorenz visited his dad and talked about being on the basketball team.
Cora shook the thoughts of Lorenz and his family out of her mind. She needed to concentrate on the task at hand which was buying a ton or two of stone shards.
If she relied on herself, then it would take forever to collect enough. Stone shards only occurred when you were mining, and they only dropped if you found a 'rare' ore or gem.
Cora was lucky enough that the mine attached to Wilderven churned out a lot of rare ores and gems. It was just that trading them for other things was getting difficult.
The ores were just too rare. When she'd left Cochran, her new friends Kylen and Enlais had warned her that the jewelers were part of a massive guild and kept track of sources of rare gems.
And the guild wasn't above strong-arm tactics and dirty tricks to secure those sources.
Cora wasn't even at level 10 yet. The last harvest had put her over level 9, but she still needed a little bit more to make it to that magical number.
Once she hit level 10, several things would unlock and become much easier.
The teleportation circle would turn into a two-way node instead of the one-way that it was.
She'd be able to access more of City Hall instead of just her office. Currently, the hallway that led further into the building was blocked by a mass of broken stones that she couldn't touch. Cora suspected that the blockage would just turn into waste stone which the system turned into mortar somehow.
At least that seemed to be what happened when she disposed of the broken bricks on the City Hall steps and replaced them.
Blue said that the barrier that surrounded the town would expand just a bit more when she hit level 10 and that currently, it only covered a small part of the town.
Cora personally thought that Blue believed that her reaching level 10 would make it possible to evict the bunnies that infested parts of the town.
Somehow, Cora thought that it wasn't going to work that way. She, personally, had no problem with the bunnies other than the fact that they were much, much higher leveled than she was and aggressive.
As long as she didn't venture into their territory, they didn't bother her. Plus, they seemed to be scared of Blue.
Cora suspected that Blue ate the rabbits whenever she could. There didn't seem to be any love lost between the two.
It wasn't like the rabbits were weak little herbivores, well, omnivores. Cora still remembered her Great Aunt Jerry laughing as she watched a horror movie about killer rabbits.
The idea seemed a lot funnier to seven-year-old Cora than it did now to much more grown up Cora.
Cora tapped the top of the water stele thoughtfully. There was a lake in Wilderven somewhere, but she hadn't really taken the time to explore the area. She'd been there exactly once.
It was a pretty area, and from the looks of it, once held a thriving dock area. Cora made a mental note to look for some fishermen or trade captains.
Blue had told her that there was access to the ocean. How true that was was something Cora couldn't figure out.
Then again, she wasn't quite clear just where Wilderven was on a map in relation to the current 'explored' status posted on the forums. She just knew that it was far and how to get back from the orc town.
Cora dismissed the thought and wandered towards her field. She'd planted some of the new corn that Sycamore had brought. With luck, it would be ready for harvest by now.
She was haphazardly weeding—it helped to improve the crop's quality—when she heard an unfamiliar 'ding.'
Cora stopped what she was doing and wiped the sweat from her brow. Then she paused and slowly closed her eyes. A quick glance at Blue's amused face where she was lounging on her favorite oak tree proved that her realization was right.
She sighed, pulling out a clean square of silk from her inventory. Kylen's mother, Mrs. Horald, had stuffed a whole stack of sixteen into her hands when Cora had left Cochran.
It had been interesting. She wouldn't have thought that anyone carried handkerchiefs anymore.
While she wiped the mud from her face, she called up her status screen. There was a blinking dot on the messages tab. That made her blink in surprise.
She only knew four people playing the game. Heidi was more apt to real life call her, Lorenz was too busy doing whatever in one of the mage towns, Nate—having moved in upstairs—would just stop by and help himself to the contents of her refrigerator and Lorenz's mom, Andrea would never bother to send her a message. Andrea was more likely to real life call her as well, but unlike a call from Heidi, an invite to a home-cooked meal would accompany it.
Heidi didn't cook. Cora wasn't sure if she knew more than using a microwave to heat something up.
It always made Cora grin to remember. While Heidi thought that her grandmothers' threats of sending her to 'bride school' were made up, Cora was positive that they weren't. She'd seen the brochures for various etiquette and cooking classes the last time she'd visited Heidi's family home.
She tapped the dot, surprised to find that she had a message from Kylen and another from Ufgar. She'd nearly forgotten the orc guard, it had been so long.
She scanned Ufgar's first. Kylen was a rich kid, and she didn't foresee him running into any trouble until they were closer to Wilderven.
Cora frowned at the contents before dashing off a quick acceptance. She hadn't expected him to bring both him and his fiancée, at least that's what it sounded like.
She glanced around the ruins that were her town. Cora had been cleaning the City Hall steps, one quarter step at a time. Since the steps stretched from end to end of the building, she didn't think she was doing too badly.
She still needed more granite blocks. If she hadn't experienced it herself, she would've never guessed the sheer amount of bricks she'd need.
Cora sighed. She'd have to pick out a couple of residences to at least give Ufgar a choice. Then she'd think about the fiancée afterwards.
Then she opened Kylen's. He said that they were planning to take a caravan to the closest township, Farthenham Hills and then walk the rest of the way if necessary.
Cora paused, staring at the message for a few seconds.
"There are caravans?" She asked Blue, looking up at the big cat.
"Of course, there are! Caravans transport all sorts of things, you know," Blue replied. "I've always wondered why you didn't try sorting out the caravanserai offices first."
"Because you didn't tell me about them," Cora ground out. She closed her eyes and gave herself a shake. "I could have had a caravan transport things, couldn't I?"
"Well, you do need a lot of stones, and transport pads don't take carts," Blue replied, standing up and stretching. She promptly laid back down. "You could always just try to lug a lot of bags. That would be entertaining."
Cora sighed. She turned and walked towards the warehouse area. She'd start her search for the caravanserai offices there. She was only happy about all that test prep Heidi and Lorenz had made her take with them.
As far as she was aware, it should just be a caravanner's office or something similar. Though even Cora had to admit that the word 'caravanserai' stirred up a better sense of adventure.