Looking at the rows of kneeling hobs and trollkin and then goblins lined up in formation behind a single ogre with its forehead touching the ground, Director Carlyle says, "How the fuck do you even think to do this shit? Most people will come to a place like this, kill everything, and spend the next few days fishing for iron with magnets. You want to strip-mine this place?"
It had been three hours since my brawl with the original four leaders of the caldera goblins and the sun here was already setting down from noon. Back home it was already evening and Lucinda was probably wondering why I was not home for dinner. I could only hope things went well here so hell there would be worth it.
"I like money and I like monsters," I reply with a casual smile at the director who should know me well enough by now. "For me, money and monsters go hand in hand. Here we have over fifty monsters who are so far perfectly enslaved by Poniard. With a few days of development in the caldera and settlement USING the ogre and his kin, they will no longer have the will to fight us. Besides, they're all stagnant so if we help them start evolving again they will be indebted."
"You really think that's how it works, don't you?" Director Carlyle sighs while shaking his head sadly. "When we deal with numbers of tamed beasts like this it's because they were born and raised in captivity separated from their wild predecessors. This is a large number of just those predecessors and you want us to make them healthy?"
Nodding my head with a thin and forced smile, I say. "With a hundred workers and a couple of mages, we can level the entire floor of the caldera and dig out a new settlement in the walls. Then we pop the top open on the spring by blowing a hole in the back wall. Besides metals, this place probably has every kind of magic stone present from quartz to diamonds and even some shit we don't have on Earth. What grade are the metals in the area?"
Giving me a thin-lipped frown that looked much like my smile, the director says, "C grade, the overwhelming quality is what's poisoning the creatures who are naturally inclined to live in metal-rich environs. I know what you're about to say, a couple days might fish up a couple hundred pounds from the entire caldera and that's only magnetic iron so how much shit is really here? Right? We're talking about intentionally re-stabilizing a portal so that it becomes permanent, this is over my head kid."
"But it comes with a work force," I argue impatiently. "Listen, we both know portals have been allowed to re-stabilize for reasons just like this. Territories that could easily be wiped clean are left standing for training purposes. Staying connected to this region could double the country's resource income after a couple of months of development. You know this, the people over your head know this, just make the calls and see what they say. There are still whole days left on the portal."
"You just created so much work for me," the director sighs tiredly while rubbing his forehead. "If this pays out, though, I could retire in a couple of years with a percentage off of this place, though. Alright, kid, I'll start making phone calls. I'll have some mining equipment brought over and commission a trio of C grade mages I know, you've got one day to prove these strays can be put to work. If you can do that, process will be that much easier. don't say you can't, either, because you can cheat with Si-Pon like I know you did with the raptors."
"So, what, do I just have them level the caldera to lay the foundation?" I ask casually, ignoring his stab at my business ethics. "If we use healing magic on them to keep them going through the night, we could have this place free of debris and smoothed out by tomorrow afternoon."
"Good, and get those little gobs ready for transport," Director Carlyle orders suddenly. "There's enough there to fill both of your dorms right now. If this works out, I want half of them trained like the kobolds."
"Half the mountain goblins for phalanx units and half the forest goblins for archers and swords," I say casually, knowing there would be a dozen of either goblin left over to clear up half of my contracts with. "The phalanx was the most effective part, anyway, the archers just kept the enemies' heads down blinded and the swords kept them in front of the shields. Kershaw was smart to pick up on those tactics."
Giving me an unreadable look, the director says, "That man is not to be underestimated. He might work for me but he could probably have my job if he wanted it. You know how cheap shows have these fighting groups and behind every group there's some shady but super strong shadow leader? Kershaw is basically my shadow leader."
"And he still brings you coffee in the mornings," I remark with a smirk. "Alright, get your job done while I start on mine. If I were you, though, I would go ahead and send a few work crews down mountainside to start harvesting cane and other trees."
Turning around without waiting for a response, I approach the company of prone goblins and kin before loudly shouting, "Up!" From where she stood nearby, Poniard emphasized my order in goblin and soon after everybody was standing on their feet awkwardly looking around. "Face forward!"
Poniard once again translated and suddenly everybody stopped moving and stood at attention like scared new recruits at a boot camp. "Poniard, repeat after me. Your jobs! Are now! Collecting! Rocks!" Levelly meeting the ogre's gaze, I wait for Poniard to finish translating before saying, "Right now! Move!"
The ogre seemed to understand what I was saying because he started loping forward like an ape while Poniard was still talking. After passing us by and heading toward the rockier ground fifty yards out from the wall, the ogre found a boulder too large for the others to move and simply picked it up. "Pile!" I yell when the ogre turns to look at me with the six-hundred-pound boulder the size of my body held over his head, pointing off toward the far side of the caldera.
Hooting softly as if acknowledging my order, the ogre starts carrying the boulder where I pointed as the hobs, trollkin, and gobs started looking for rocks they could carry. Even with the ogre's immense strength and vitality, though, it could only labor away like this for about half an hour. The lessers as well did not even last as long.
It probably took these guys a week when they were still healthy to build this wall with the other ogre and trolls, to build the same wall again at this rate would probably take a month.
Seeking to save at least some time, I have Ms. Gwyn heal the ogre and let the lessers rest crowded around her artifact. Then I put the ogre to work finding very large boulders and smashing smaller boulders against the. When the small boulders broke, it was in pieces small enough for the others to break and in this fashion the ogre could work for a longer period of time in a single location slowly chipping away the larger boulders.
While this took place I had Karen transmute two large stone cauldrons while she and Poniard used their magic to distill the water into the second cauldron. The first cauldron was then boiled by Leo and contained all of the solids and impurities left behind in the distillation process. In this way, we were refining the tainted water into mana water while farming the impurities for metals and other minerals.
By the time the ogre had to stop after a full hour of work, the first cauldron already had a silty lining on the bottom and the lesser creatures were ready to start transporting. To save Ms. Gwyn's mana for the long term I emptied my pool performing lesser healing on the ogre for some minor bonding before sending it to rest with the artifact. As for the time spent waiting on the lessers to tire out, I kept busy setting other plans in motion.
After having fed our familiars all the hearts they could eat, giving my familiars a troll heart apiece and the ogre his comrade's heart to help reinvigorate its mana, I gathered up the dozen-plus extra hearts and just dumped them into cauldron of mana water. Then I added to it the birds and critters that Glaive had been out 'fetching' while Karen made a new cauldron and sorted through herbs that Si-Pon went to collect.
Between the cannibalism of magical body parts and the parts of other animals, there was naturally a large quantity of almost clean MP in the cauldron already cooking. After adding in the herbs Si-Pon said would have the most benefits for goblins, it was a hotpot of mana that might help to bring the settlement out of stagnation.
In a single day? Probably not. However, there was a vast mountainside of rich magical soil and wildlife still at our disposal and this cauldron alone could feed the settlement til noon tomorrow. The biggest issue was constantly purifying and storing water for the settlement.
Night time and overall exhaustion forced us to stop all work for the day, but we had managed to fill multiple cauldrons with clean water and the distilling cauldron was one-fifth full of silt on the bottom and sides. A fair amount of this would probably become an impure slag when refined but there was so much iron content in general that everything else would become a feasible C grade scrap steel.
Even though the others did not mind spending a night inside the portal I could only send them on their way, stating I had to test the fear and respect of the settlement by camping here with only my familiars. Instead, I asked them to please stop by my house and do their best to pacify my guardian. I even mentioned bringing up 'goblin whisperer' to keep her busy for an hour or so.
Not long after they left the few work crews the director brought in to clear a road out of the caldera for tomorrow's logging dwindled down to a skeleton crew of two large tractors and a handful of people with guns and spotlights monitoring the area. Normally there would not be a night crew, but this was a settled area whose inhabitants were still here to ward off greater predators as well as a small D grade unit- my familiars and I- camping in the area.
The guys with guns were C grade mages and warriors, anyway.
My camp was a simple shelter of a troll's six-hour stretched hide draped over a large half-circle of piled rock wall. To the left and right of the fire outside my shelter were two similar shitty structures of differing sizes. One had the other troll's skin for a loose roof and the other had the dead ogre's stretched hide and all of our shelters had floors of goblin skin.
For some unfathomable reason, Poniard had the ogre sitting across the fire from our shelters facing the settlement as if keeping watch from the goblins and lessers. Glaive did not seem to intend on sleeping tonight, sitting in the tall opening of her shelter with Kobold resting across her lap. Poniard, though, had helped herself heartily to the stew and was currently snoring away in her shelter.
Considering the stats of a stagnated low-low D grade ogre versus a mid D, armed adult kobold that Poniard and I had trained, I had no trouble relaxing in my shelter with Glaive on guard duty. However, the air here was hot, humid, and pretty thin so I had trouble getting comfortable in or out of my equipment. By the time I was finally drifting to sleep after midnight I was woken up again by a sudden outburst of numerous guns opening fire.
Glaive and the ogre were both on their feet when I came out of my shelter wielding an ivory sword and revolver but neither of them were making a move despite looking in the same direction. As the scene of the fight seemed to settle as I looked over, I suddenly hear the work crews cheering with their guns and lights in their air. They got a big one.
*