“Little guy reminds me of one of my niece's slime, she got a tamer related core, but she uses it to help her crafting as it polishes gems for her. He got any special skills or should we not consider him part of the hunting unit, just more of a pet?” Dergets seemed very intent on giving Ember all of the pats he could manage, which was fine with me as Ember had finally stopped jumping around over the mudd incident now.
“Mostly a pet, his very low level for now and his affinity suggests he might be able to help healing wise in the future but I don’t want to just throw him into combat and hope for the best you know? Anyway, what's our process from here?”
“Well I need to talk to Mircha, give him this paperwork, and confirm we are available. Once our new junior healer arrives to man the fort while we are away we will plan our next trip. I am thinking we should do just a short day trip at least for the first run, if everyone is on board with that?” Looking around at everyone nodding, Kev got up and extracted Dergets from his petting session with Ember.
“Right, in that case we will come by after dinner the night the new healer arrives, which will hopefully be soon, to touch base with you Styx on when you think you will be right for the first trip. Thanks again, seriously I appreciate that this is a lot of trust and very much not what either of you signed up for originally, but I think we can find some great results to grow both ourselves and the settlement”
Waving them off with Ember the two men headed off, and having a sudden realisation I quickly grabbed Chris’s arm before he could run away to “Hey, do you reckon with that loot I gave you you could see if you can make something for one of them? I only was really considering it for myself because I was worried I might end up fighting soon without a party, but if we can boost them and improve our combatants I think that improves our capacity as a team more then if I tried to suddenly start learning a weapon or anything more complex then the hand to hand Sula is teaching me”
“No problem, I was already thinking what I have been able to trade for and what I might be able to craft up out of it for all of us, I might have something that could work skill wise for your gloves and hand to hand combat though so if it works out I will pop over with it to discuss it with you” Speaking as he grabbed the small bag containing the loot Chris made his way off as well, hopefully to get crafting.
“Alrighty Ember, so we need to go update the list, looks like we might have some more goals to add on there” Looking over the list I found a few new things to stack on, and a few that I had just rushed writing out that I should expand on to help keep it clearer for myself.
After a good hour of thinking, talking to Ember about it to hear my thoughts aloud, I was able to wrap up a new and improved list for our goals.
1. Finish the cave related founder quest.
2. See what this slime core can become, a tame could be useful
3. Train with Sula until I feel confident to tackle the next stage of the dungeon
4. Learn the remaining body enhancements with Sula’s assistance to avoid making a mistake
5. Set up a proper healing house with rules and a shift schedule with this new healer. Set up scheduling for healing cave staffing when new healer arrives, times I will be here to allow the new healer time off, and improve supplies for healing and comfort during treatment.
6. Improve my bloodline / start actively using my refinement to improve it.
7. Be more active in the settlement / help settlement grow.
I felt a lot better with this list, my path and focus was steadily firming up, plus hopefully I could get more involved. Despite having basically every hunter visit me at least every few days, with how underdeveloped the settlement was almost everyone was still involved in hunting to some capacity, I hadn’t really involved myself with the community which wasn’t the kind of neighbour I wanted to be.
Making up my mind I realised that while the cave would be finished when Bren visited tonight, I needed to get started on some of the other items and spread myself out a little more. Skimming it over I decided to go visit the farm and say hello. While I had interacted with our druid/farmer a little bit he almost never needed healing having his own passive regen skill, and being our only skill based farmer he was too busy to be visiting around socially. I had even wandered past his farm lots a few times while out doing things, but hadn’t ever thought to really stop and talk or check on how he was going.
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Having made my mind up I grabbed Ember, and set out to make a social visit.
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“Hey healer, what brings you out of my way? Everything alright?” The druid, a tall man with deep blue eyes containing starburst patterns throughout, stood up from the soil he was doing something to and brushed a hand through his shortly cropped blue hair leaving a dark trail of damp looking soil running over his head.
Chuckling a little at this I looked around the farm, and saw four large fields each at least fifteen square metres, “Nothing wrong, going to be honest I haven’t been the most social member of our little settlement here and so I thought I would come see how you are going, most of the hunters and even the cooks have reason to see me occasionally but I don’t think I have ever had to help you. No complaints, less healing needed means less pain for people, but I did feel bad I hadn’t properly introduced myself when I realised” as we started talking I realised I felt far more nervous actually coming over to say hello then I had thought I would when planning this out just before.
“I don’t blame you, I really don’t get many visitors despite being so close to some of the sleeping spaces I can hear people snoring while I work in the early mornings. Names Graves, parents were a bit morbid, nice to meet you properly” Grabbing Graves hand to shake I returned his greeting “Styx, and same to you. So, despite eating plenty with this little guy's help I have no idea what you are growing. Care to show me around?”
“Certainly, and if you happen to come across another slime core let me know? They are great for pest control and weeding if trained well but it takes more time then its worth for larger operations usually. You gotta start early so your early slime can train others later as you grow. This field I am in now is a few tubers, trying to see which grow best in these conditions. I have some skills around knowing what plants need to develop best but almost all of my more useful skills depend on plants being high enough grade to have some basic level of soul. Without that I can’t actually tell much, so I need to work out what grows best then cultivate it to a higher grade which I have a skill to help with then I can properly get things running” Looking over the field I could see the tell tale white flowers I had seen at a farm not farm from home that grew tubers as well, specifically they grew potatoes and larkus.
“This field next to it is for wheat, thankfully when the merchants swung by last time they had some higher grade seed, so I can rapidly grow it although it costs a fortune in mana to do so. This is how the cooks have had fresh wheat to grind into flour weekly. Once I level up a bit further I am hoping to make it twice a week and avoid having to expand the field. As I mentioned, weed clearing, pest control, and also watering are massive time sinks so expanding it only grows that.” Currently the field only had some smaller sprouts, about a hand span high, but it was definitely impressive to clear a harvest weekly, and explained the wraps plus breads we had been enjoying despite other things becoming more simple as we used our own sourced foods.
“Usually you avoid this, it creates worse quality food by a lot and you need a dedicated person to manage it, but the more food security we have the better so it's worthwhile for now. The field behind the tubers is for some gourds, there is a local wild variety. One of the hunters found a small field of them in the forest. The meat is decent when cooked, and the cooks tell me the seeds are safe to eat as well so they are hoping once they have a larger supply of them we can use them to help make some nicer rations.” Looking over the strangely bright green small gourds it looked like they were being left to grow naturally, and they were very early into that growth if their size was a judge as they were about the size of my closed fist currently.
“The last field, just to the right of that one, is currently empty but I am spending my excess time and resources on enhancing the field. Hopefully if we find something good I will be prepared for it, or if we just need to rapidly grow food this field will take some time before its drained of good quality soil so it should cover a few worst cases. Then there is my pride and joy, next to my tent in the middle of the four fields is this beautiful little sapling. It's not much now but this is a blood iron oak. I brought it with me, it was a gift from my grandfather, with the hope to get some space to grow it, with the right skills druids can grow trees into buildings, so I am planning to make this little beauty into my home and our raw plant matter storage” it was strange seeing such a large adult man so excited about a tiny little tree, but it was really endearing to see just how much passion was present in growing these plants, particularly his tree.
“Does the sapling have a name yet? And this is great, no doubt I have you to thank at least partly for how great some of our meals have been. If Ember or I can help let me know, but otherwise if I can win another slime core I am quite happy to trade it in exchange for another tour of your set up. I need to make a move, but feel free to pop over to my cave anytime for a chat"
“Will do, I know slimes like a variety of food so I can even bring over some of my peppers? They are behind where my tent is currently but I have a small little garden just for them. Spices aren’t worth the cost of importing, but I really enjoy my spice so I managed to bring some seeds with me hoping I could get them to grow. Judging by this little guy's colour, he has some kind of flame affinity, so he should enjoy some of my hotter ones too. I won’t keep you anyway, but I will definitely take you up on the offer to visit soon” waving goodbye I headed off with Ember, deciding if Bren wasn’t waiting at the cave for us to finish the building off I would find him and drag him back so we could complete it.