Back to home. [Day 16]

It has been a tiring two day walk back to the village. Nothing of importance happened just another group of stags and some horned rabbits that we killed.

Through whilst walking back I did start to think about those stags, mainly how they gain EXP. If they spend all their time eating grass, I doubt they spend much time killing other animals to get the EXP.

This got me thinking about how they can evolve which led me to what they were eating. The grass is still considered a living thing so it must give EXP except that they are not killing the grass as they are only eating the blades of the grass and not the roots as that would kill it.

I thought that maybe they have adapted so that the grass that they eat is changed into EXP and that is how they level up. I also imagine that the EXP given by it is very little explaining why there are very few evolved Zirn in the herds of Stags. They might even do the contract of sharing EXP and pool it all together to make one powerful to defend the herd.

For the moment though I can't think of any other way that they can evolve so I will just stick with that until proven otherwise.

I spent quite a large portion of the walk thinking about that which made the walk much quicker.

Entering the woods, I was more familiar with I reach the village. It is very late in the evening, and I am tired after my journey, so I head straight for home and bed. Going past the gate I can see that there are some people manning it.

After a quick talk with them, I found out that they are some extra men from the village who volunteered to guard the village whilst the rest of the guard squad left. I also find out that it was Valret how organised that.

Amazing work Valret for doing that as I kind of forgot that. That was very iodic of me, thank you Valret for thinking further ahead than me.

Not to self to thank Valret for his thinking about the guards for the village. For now, though I want a warm bed and sleep.

A new day means more work, today I want to check in with everything in the village and see how things are progressing.

Walking around the village I can see that more of the houses are being patched up and fixed and don't look like a fart could blow them over. Well, maybe a large one could have.

I also see that there are more Kabalt walking around the village than before. It just made me realises the extent of the bandit's control that so many people were stunted by them.

The first objective today is to check the wall and ditch.

At the gate, I can see that on both sides much of the wall has been rebuilt with the old wood being taken down and then used for firewood for people and the new wood replacing it. For now, the wood is just having a basic varnish plastered over it to stop it rotting which is collected from a local plant that I have never heard of but seems to work. But it seems to be quite a lot like Linseed oil but smells different.

In the future, I will have to somehow introduce better materials and such to build with.

The ditch seems to have made much better progress than the wall as I can see that it is going around a large portion of the village now. Whilst I was walking around Walfried spotted me and gave me an update on everything telling me that most of the houses are stable and repaired and that the ditch goes around half the village. He also told me that with the current progress the wall should be done by the end of the month at the latest.

He also told me that he has set one of his apprentices on the construction of the new houses towards the west of the village and that it is on schedule. I was also told that Horst wanted to talk as there was some breakthrough in the mining.

This got me excited as I am hoping that he has managed to start mining the iron.

Finding Horst was not difficult, as he was at his forge working with his apprentices. Horst and one apprentice were making weapons and he was teaching him whilst the other two were making tools such as saws, hammers, nails, and such.

Me: "Horst, I can see that you have iron by the looks of it."

He quickly looks up when he hears my voice and then talks to his apprentice whilst handing him what looks to be the beginning of a sword.

Horst: "Lothran you are back, ha, look at this."

He then reaches a workbench and brings out a sword.

Horst: "Just made this one, the first of the swords made. Sadly, these are all common levels, but they will get better once my class advance. As you can see, we managed to finish the tunnel to the Iron and started mining it. We managed to speed up the mining when some people evolved into Kabalt and became stronger, so speed increased."

Me: "Good work with the mines also you said your class I thought that it is difficult to get classes out here."

Horst: "They are difficult to get for combatants whilst craftsman classes are a bit easier. You just need to make several items at any level of whatever class you want, and you get it. To advance you then need to make an item of increasing quality per rank of the class. For example, I am a rank 1 weapons blacksmith and to level up, I need to make several common weapons to get to the highest level of Rank 1. Then I need to make an uncommon weapon to advance to the next rank which is for me Rank 2."

Me: "Why is it so difficult to get to the next rank then."

Horst: "Well if you are an apprentice to a higher-ranked class person that you, levelling it is very easy as they can help you but if you are doing it yourself for the first time then it is difficult. I have been trying to advance for a whilst with any materials, I could get which were very rare for me. I would experiment with anything to make things and through trial and error see if I could make something new and better. It was slow due to low materials but now with the Iron, I have plenty to experiment with and try to advance. I also asked some of the village leaders if they had any blacksmiths in their villages and only Nilahr and Flugl had any. So, I asked the guards that went with them to ask the blacksmiths there for any tips, they could give me if they wanted. We will just have to wait and see."

Me: "Well I wish you luck in your attempts, and when you do tell me quick, I want to be some of the first people to congratulate you."

I then leave Horst to allow him to get to work and his experimenting.