CONGRATULATIONS! Technique rank-up! Chop Tree rank 3 has reached rank 4. Experience gained.

Josh dismissed the notice and surveyed their progress.

In six hours, they'd managed to clear a good chunk of their land. About half an acre, he'd say. It had been slow at first, even though these trees were relatively small and all the reclaimers had plenty of experience lumberjacking. There was just too much logistical work that Josh always forgot about. Someone had to strip the branches off the fallen trees and haul them away. They didn't have the equipment for that.

At first.

Constructing a wagon big enough to carry the logs was easy enough. Josh had gotten into the habit of carrying around nails, screws, and other miscellaneous tools to help craft new blueprints. Luckily, Operative Jonah had insisted on making sure both Josh and Ruth knew every complicated wooden mechanism he could think of, so they could make wheels and axles. Josh could make a waterwheel and a wooden elevator, if he had to. But even a well-made wagon would still be heavy with a few logs piled in, and none of them were specialized in Strength.

Ruth found the solution, with her runes. She had already demonstrated her Gravity rune back in the dungeon. That had been a crude thing, just the rune itself, inscribed into the tool. Feed mana into it, and it made something heavier. She had already discovered how to invert runes, so a Gravity rune would make something lighter, but hadn't found a use for it. Darius had suggested putting it on the cart, and that had helped significantly.

She still hadn't figured out how to make the runes self-powered, but she did manage to give them the ability to retain mana by attaching a Gravity rune, a connector rune, and a Capacity rune. Any one of them could push mana into the rune-chain, and it would last for a few minutes. Long enough to run the logs outside and dump them.

Once the logistics of getting the logs out of the way was done, there came the question of improving their speed at actually cutting down the trees. Josh's tricks with techniques and spells were nice, but he was still just one man. Even if eventually he could cut down a tree with one swing, he wasn't there yet, and Ruth was coming along even slower.

The answer was more runes. This time, Ruth didn't try anything fancy, she just put a single Gravity rune on their hatchets, as she had done with her club. It took a bit for them to get used to putting mana into it right as they brought it down. Once they got the hang of it, they could chop down trees twice as fast as before. Josh thought they made as much progress in the last hour as they did in the first five combined.

“Not bad for a day's sweat,” he said cheerily. “Might finish up tomorrow, you reckon?”

Mary poured a cup of water over her head. “Get me some healing for my hands, and maybe.”

Ruth perked up at that. “Oh! If I can find some healing items, I might be able to help with that! I'll just need to copy down the runes!”

Josh nodded. “I expect there's something like that in the shops.”

“It will be expensive, though,” Darius said as he toweled off. “I doubt turning in these logs will earn us much.”

Ruth scrunched up her face. “I checked. They're offering ten credits per log! I know trees are cheap, but surely they're worth more than that?”

Josh shrugged. “May as well just use them ourselves, then.” The experience reward for the quest came out to 8 points per log, which wasn't worth hauling them over to the citystone. Maybe if Ruth managed to create a self-propelled vehicle... He looked up at the darkening sky. “Everyone ready for supper?”

“Sure!” Ruth said with a grin. She looked around. “Where are we going to eat?” Then she frowned. “Or sleep?”

“Town this big has gotta have enough inns to station an army and a half,” Mary said. She stretched a few times as she said it, getting the kinks out of her back. “Find something that smells good, rent a couple rooms.”

Josh nodded. “We can build our own homes—hell, this far out they'd expect us to. Not tonight, though.” He yawned theatrically. “Think I'm tired enough for a good ale at the Prancing Pony or whatever.”

Darius rolled his eyes. “People have more imagination than to name an inn The Prancing Pony.”

As it turned out, they didn't.

There were several inns scattered around the town, but Josh and Mary both insisted on picking the one named the Prancing Pony. Josh thought the reference was hilarious, Mary didn't get it but thought Darius' annoyance was hilarious, and Ruth didn't get it but was happy to just go along.

The inn was a wooden building about the size of a small restaurant in the Old World. It wasn't overly crowded, though it wasn't empty either. There were a few scatterings of tough-looking people sitting at tables and drinking from mugs. Of course, out here everyone was tough-looking. You had to at least be able to fake it if you wanted to live past the nominal edge of civilization. Thankfully, that also meant many of them were wearing masks to foul Identify, so they didn't earn any extra looks for that.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

The man at the counter who was polishing glasses wasn't wearing a mask, though. A quick Identify labeled him as [Attacker: Level 16]. Not bad, considering how early it was in the year, and how little need he would have to go out and slay monsters. Josh wondered if there were some special repeatable quests he could do, bring drinks to the citystone or something. Then authorized town representatives could withdraw the drinks and distribute them. No, if that was the case, the inn would be built around the citystone...

Josh was knocked out of his musing by the bartender's wide grin. “Newcomers, eh? Name's Manean Smith. Call me Manny. What brings you to my humble watering hole?”

Josh stepped forward with a smile of his own. “My friends and I just got some land in the area. We're not done getting it ready, though, so we'll need dinner and rooms for the night.”

“Sure, sure. Just tonight, or longer?”

Josh thought about it. They could probably finish clearing out their land tomorrow if they pushed, but there was no way they'd finish building homes. Not even with his Architecture skill. “At least tomorrow night. After that?” He shrugged. “Think we plan to just play it by ear.”

“Fair enough.” He moved to grab some menus. “I recommend the pork. Or, if you don't like eating Jungle-touched, our soup isn't bad.”

Josh handed the menus off to the others. He doubted anyone would care about eating monsters. He was more squeamish on the matter than most people, and even he didn't care most of the time.

Manny rolled his sleeve up as he did some dishes, catching Josh's eye. “That's a nice tat.” It was the number 50 in large, block letters, with a date written underneath it in smaller numbers. It was thirty-two years ago. Josh couldn't for the life of him think of anything he had heard about from that time worth tattooing on yourself.

Manny laughed. “Yeah, it's my pod. Seems silly now, but I always wanted to be sure I remembered where I came from, you know?”

Josh blinked owlishly. “Wot? You're podborn? You've got a name, though.” He waved his hand. “A family name. You know what I mean.”

That earned him a snorting laugh. “Yeah, I get that a lot. I was born in an off year. You know, when the Immortals let parents use the pods for their own kids.”

“Oh, that makes sense.” Josh guessed most podborn who weren't orphans didn't see a need to advertise it. “Did you have to drink that stupid goo for the first eight years?”

Now it was Manny's turn to blink. “Why, yes. You're podborn?”

Josh grinned. “Josh Hundredborn, at your service. Pod 96. I'm told I came out big and happy.” He affected a sigh. “And then they gave me a tube of that stupid nutrient paste and I didn't know food had taste for sixteen years.”

“...sixteen?” Manny asked.

“Had some developmental issues.”

Manny nodded. “I hear that can happen.” Then he chuckled. “Looks like you got over them, though!”

Josh laughed and flexed his massive bicep. “Yeah, they overdid it a bit, you think?”

While they had been chatting, the others had been looking over the menus. They ordered, and Manny promised to bring out their food in a few minutes. Josh just ordered the daily special, which was some sort of pulled pork sandwich.

“I'm jealous,” Ruth said, pouting as she poked at her food.

Josh chuckled. “Then you should have ordered the sandwich yourself!”

She rolled her eyes. “Not that.” She waved her fork, indicating him up and down. “You're all big and muscly. Dad would never let me do anything, so I look like a stupid doll. My base Strength is a three.” She poked at her food despondently. “I'll bet yours is, like, seven.”

“It's five,” he said dryly. “You ever tried weight lifting? I thought you said your dad let you do whatever, as long as it wasn't dangerous.”

She sighed. “Yeah... but I was always a Healer. Never really found the time to exercise for hours a day, you know? Strength is pretty much useless for them. Most of the physical scores, really.”

Josh snorted around his sandwich. He swallowed his bite, then jerked his thumb at Mary. “When I first met this mucker, she was running a physical Mender build.”

Darius looked up, a completely deadpan expression on his face. “You must be joking.”

Mary just laughed. “Nope, it's true! I was in one of those research groups, you know, where they have you try all sorts of random tricks to see what you get junk for? I got some nifty Mender techniques, could even get some pretty good use outta them.” She paused, thinking, as she chewed. “The reset—”

“Don't talk with your mouth full,” Darius said flatly.

Mary glared at him, swallowed, and continued. “The reset hit before I could go all in, but I think I was close to unlocking some arts. That's where the real power in the build would have been.”

“If you want, I can show you some moves,” Josh said to Ruth. “I exercise in the morning, and having a buddy always helps. Get a little bit of extra motivation, yeah?”

“Is that really appropriate?” Darius asked in a long-suffering tone.

Both Josh and Ruth just blinked at him. “Why wouldn't it be?” Josh asked.

Darius looked between the two, then shrugged. “I suppose so.”