After a belated birthday party, I settle back in to do some more studying and practicing. I decide to spend much of December in the hearth trying to unlock some cooking-related skills and help out with the holiday feast.

“I’m not letting you handle knives at three years old, even if you are a reincarnator,” Aunt Myrtle says.

That’s the problem with being back here. The goblins don’t tell me what I can and can’t do just because I’m a small child.

“Why don’t you help make cookies instead?”

Skill acquired: Crafting (Baking)

I would probably be hard-pressed to unlock every single skill in the big book of general skills. The ones I can vaguely remember I learned how to do once are quickest, though.

Skill acquired: Maintenance (Cleaning)

Can’t get away with not learning that one. Despite vetoing knives, Aunt Myrtle is determined that I learn the skills she thinks I need to learn. Being closer to the floor just means I can scrub them better, I suppose.

For Hearth Day gifts, I make little stone figurines for every one of my family members whose names I can remember.

Your Crafting (Stoneworking) skill has increased to 3.

They’re not terribly good. I might be able to make a chess set with identifiable pieces at this point, but I’m still quite a way from being able to get the detail necessary to make a Space Marine. They’re still better than something anyone expected to receive from a three-year-old.

The New Year comes, and all the students board the skyship for Crux Academy. Daisy’s going with them this time. She won’t have her apprentice class until the 4th, but they’ll take any Elite under the age of 21.

“I don’t think they’d take goblins, though,” Daisy says. “Perhaps eventually, if more villages follow Grubwick’s example.”

Anise, Meadow, Milo and I head back to Grubwick in March. There’s no monsters on the surface outside of dungeons this time of year, so travel will be pretty safe. It’s still rather chilly, though. On foot, the trip from Corwen to Grubwick takes two days, and we usually make camp at the Hedge Maze and pop in for a quick run. After completing a dungeon once, you get fewer rewards, but can traverse it more freely and sometimes access secret areas barred to first-time delvers. Notably, one of the newly accessible places is a clearing with a fire pit and plenty of room to set up half a dozen tents.

“Yeah, the friendlier dungeons usually have a place like this,” Anise says. “There’s rest spots in less friendly dungeons too, usually at the end of each floor. They might want to try to eat you, but if we didn’t have a safe place to rest between floors, we’d just leave rather than delve deeper. The Hedge Maze, though, just wants people to relax and have a good time.”

“I still don’t understand why the word you call them translates to a word for an prison basement,” Milo says. “This is obviously a park.”

“Language evolution,” I say with a shrug, not even slightly wanting to explain games to him. “I will not subject you to more of the sillier slang of my generation than necessary. Except yeet. Yeet is a perfectly cromulent word.”

“I still don’t know why Common sounds like English when it’s clearly not,” Milo says. “But it is far from the strangest thing about this world.”

We return to Grubwick to check on their supplies. Their hunters managed to collect plenty more meat and their gatherers plenty more mushrooms. They’ve restarted their agricultural attempts, having learned more this time around.

“We got lots more mushrooms to trade for rocks,” says their head mushroom gatherer. “Fulfilling the quest Grubwick gave me for it even got me to Elite rank!”

“Congratulations,” I say.

“Now I’ll be able to find more mushrooms with magic!”

It’s time to build a bridge. First, though, to secure a fresh supply of limestone from Penbryn, as the goblins used up the remainder of the last batch building a goblin-sized building across from the human-sized one. They trained up a building crew of six-year-old goblins so that some of them could unlock classes with the new skills.

I guess this is my crew now. Barely adult goblins who are eager to put their new class to good use.

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Penbryn is having problems with their main quarry and won’t make any further trades until they’re resolved.

There’s a crow watching us. I wouldn’t have even noticed it if I weren’t habitually using [Aura Sight] at all times. Its aura is bright azure, a color I have never seen around a living being normally associated with knowledge. A normal animal has an orange aura, and a monster has a red aura, but blue? Very odd.

Your Clairvoyance (Aura Sight) skill has increased to 3.

I’m only left to ponder the mystery for a moment before it’s gone, flapping off out of range and out of sight.

The others leave me at Penbryn’s school to play with toys while they deal with the problem, because while goblins don’t care, the Penbryns would find it incredibly odd if someone took their toddler into a dangerous, potentially monster-infested quarry. I find a new puzzle that wasn’t here last time I was here. Let’s see if I can complete it before we have to leave.

You have completed a Hard difficulty puzzle in less than an hour. Your Search (Puzzle Pieces) skill has increased to level 2.

I manage to finish it a few minutes before I get another notification.

Your party has cleared Briar Hill Quarry. Skill acquired: Discipline (Delegation)

Great, now I’m getting skills for sitting back and letting other people do things for me.

“What was the problem?” I ask when the others return.

“Weird ghost bat infestation,” Anise says.

“They weren’t actual ghosts,” Milo says. “They were merely semi-transparent monsters with an incredibly annoying scream. My ears are still ringing. I shall need to add [Silence] to my list of spells to add to my repertoire.”

“Yeah, I hate sonic attacks,” Anise agrees. “Let’s go order our limestone delivery.”

Penbryn is willing to make another limestone trade. All Grubwick still really has is mushrooms, but some of them are apparently very good for cooking and potions. We have the limestone delivered to the place where we’re building the bridge and make preparations.

Jay Penbryn shows up to observe and assess the bridge. Anise, having learned Goblin herself, translates for him.

“I certainly can’t be absent for this historic moment,” Jay says with some amusement. “Never thought I’d see goblins building things with proper stone and not just slapping together some bones and hide and calling it good. Why here, though?”

“Test run, honestly,” Milo says. “Anyone that gets damp gets branded ‘fish bait’.”

“And here’s the charismatic goblin I’ve heard so much about,” Jay says. “You the foreman here?”

“Oh, no,” Milo says. “That’s him.” He points to me.

Jay blinks. “A small child? Or is that a halfling? Wait, is that the kid who listened in on my lectures?”

I wave at him with a grin and don’t bother explaining myself, just working on getting the goblins ready. I check to make sure we’ve got all the stones we need (plus some extras because we’re bound to mess up) and have them start setting up the scaffolding. It’s not as secure as I might like and our methods won’t work for building a larger bridge, but I make notes of where we can still improve.

We build a bridge. Some goblins still get damp, but this is a completely unnecessary bridge over a two foot wide creek. It would mean that a cart can pass more directly without having to go a long way around or be pulled by very determined high level devil-goats.

Congratulations! Your party has completed a small bridge. Your Crafting (Masonry) skill has increased to 3. Skill acquired: Tending (Management)

Dangit. I have become the very thing I once despised. Management.

“Good work, everyone!” I say. “It doesn’t look like it’s falling down, and the scaffolding only collapsed twice! Which means all of you would be dead twice over if we were doing this over carp-infested waters.”

Jay comes over to inspect the bridge and poke it a bit before pronouncing it, “Adequate, for novice goblins who have been taught second-hand by a toddler.”

That’s… probably praise?

“I did suspect you were a reincarnator from how closely you could pay attention and not get distracted constantly,” Jay says. “And I’m guessing the tiny, eloquent goblin is too?”

“Was it that obvious?” I ask. “Aw, I have 3 levels in Subterfuge (Acting), too!”

Jay gestures toward the cute stone arch bridge over the creek. “This is a little bit beyond playing with blocks, kid. What ever even gave you the idea to build things? Most reincarnators I’ve heard of spend their childhoods fervently preparing to delve dungeons and fight monsters. Did your Hearth give you a quest to civilize the goblins and build things or something like that?”

“… Something like that,” I hedge.

Corwen gave me its blessing to do whatever I want, but it was already weird enough to explain to my own family who saw the words of the core in their own heads. I still have to wonder what sort of quests Milo saw when Grubwick re-enabled his quest window. I’m guessing we’re still getting quest prompts and our cores just hid them, and I’m going to have to wait four more years to see what quests have been generated for me that I likely did something completely different from what it asked.

“I don’t think they’re ready to bridge the underground river yet,” I say to Milo. “They’d all be fish bait.”

“You need better scaffolding,” Jay says.

I nod in agreement. “And I learned Masonry, not Carpentry. Nobody wants to let a three-year-old play with saws and axes. Aside from the goblins. Most of these goblins are seven years old.”

“Let’s not give up on the idea yet,” Milo says. “Look at what we’ve accomplished so far.”

“It’s not good enough yet,” I say.

Jay pats me on the shoulder. “Just keep at it, little reincarnator. You’ve got many years ahead of you and you don’t need to do everything at once. You and your goblins built a perfectly serviceable bridge here.”