I knew that Kalla would be shocked, but her complete disregard of a man who threw his body between danger and the escaping elves did somehow disturb me.

“Princess, Andarin defended you and the other elves against the goblins with his body and his sword even if all of you despise him for being so weak with magic. Just to let you know, I have him shown a technique to strengthen his body way beyond everything any normal elf could reach, and he was able to learn it only because he has tought himself the mana manipulation skill, which is something even your brightest mages haven't done. I admit, that he did it by pure chance, but nonetheless he did it. Now tell me, if you still find him useless.”

I wasn't able to hide my anger very well and some personal grudges from my former life came to bear in this moment. Who wasn't regarded poorly by some others who thought themselves better than the rest? My school life was so hard and filled with anger because of these social bullies, and now I had the same problems here.

“Kalla, I have decided that I will make it mandatory that all citizen in my city will have to learn basic mana skills. There will be a school open for everyone to learn what he or she needs for becoming a mage if the person wants that. I may be not able to avoid some bullying because someone isn't so capable with increasing his or her mana pool but everyone will get the chance to pull himself out of misery.”

The young elf looked at me like I had knocked her over, “Excuse me Marcus, but what exactly is a school?”

Now I was at a loss for words. They didn't even know what a school was? I had to remind myself, that this world was the counterpart of earth's bronze age. I saw Andarin's sword and recognized it as a bronze weapon. Metal technology was just developing, so perhaps I could help with that also. At least I knew that iron came after bronze on earth and that iron was something contained in red rocks. Hm, back to topic.

“A school is a place of learning where people with knowledge about a topic teach others, usually kids about it, therefore increasing chances for future generations to develop new lore and technologies. They learn to read and write, basic mathematics, their people and the world and also new languages.”

Kalla listened to me fascinated and her eyes showed that she tried to imagine such a place.

“With such a place we would be able to reach new heights in no time, “ She said with a dreamy voice, then suddenly frowning, “But the people who teach wouldn't be able to do their usual work, so wouldn't that be a problem?”

I sighed and prepared myself for a long explanation of what a specialized job is, and what advantages it carried  compared to the usual jack-of-all-trades. There existed some crafters, Dorien was a good example, but they all learned many other skills too. The same was commonplace on Earth until the late middle ages, where scholars could learn all the knowledge the world had to offer in their lifetime. As beings with a much longer life span than humans elves were prone to learn many more skills and develop them too a much larger degree, but I wanted them to specialize more so they would expand their knowledge more.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Kalla wasn't convinced at first but when I summarized all the advantages of having higher skills in comparison to having many skills with a much lesser degree, she began to understand my point of view. I would have to invest time and money in a good education system, but I was sure that I would reap endless benefits from it in a very short time, relatively. I had endless time at my disposal, and with my guardians I had already people I could use to teach different skills quite easily as I was able to give them my own and with enough time they would all become masters with them, even if I had to force them to master the skills.

I spoke until shortly before dawn with Kalla about schools and my own experiences with them and totally forgot the time over it, when the princess suddenly yawned and then blushed.

“Excuse me please, Marcus, but I'm very tired. I would recommend to ask Kitara about a good team for Andarin. I still cannot believe that he will be so important for your plans, but if you think that he will be a good asset for the town, go ahead. He is yours.”

She slightly bowed her head and went to one of the three shelters that I had completed in the night. The sun rose over the horizon and illuminated her body in golden light, letting me enjoy a wonderful new morning to continue building my city.

********************POV Ildara****************************************

I sneaked through the dense undergrowth of the Great Forest, always fearing that the near goblins would detect my presence and warn the horde of my approach. My elders had sent me forth to investigate the loss of contact with our brethren in the south some weeks ago. Their hearth tree was a sprout of our own and had matured enough to hold a sentience only a decade ago. The whole tribe was young and not very big so we helped them sometimes with tools and weapons from our crafters in exchange for materials found down here in the south, like ironwood and some special herbs used by our potion makers.

I was quite terrified when I encountered the first goblins and lizardmen after I entered the former territory of the Driaden tribe. Almost running into a patrol of them I could save myself by diving into a pond and keeping down as long as possible. With my high endurance that wasn't such a big problem, but if the reptilians would have cared more about their surroundings and checked for any footprints they would have discovered me. Luckily they were so full of themselves that they neglected the sounds I made and went away shortly after.

Since that time I investigated their troops and what they did to my kin. My uncle lived around here and I couldn't imagine how these stupid goblins were able to destroy a complete tribe without suffering heavy losses. All my discoveries pointed to some help from the inside, but that was impossible. Which lunatic elf would ever help our mortal enemies destroy a hearth tree?

I saw three goblins some 30 meters forward standing near an old and half-dead oak looking away from me. I checked the wind and was happy that it blew in my face, so they wouldn't be able to smell me. I have to admit that the sense of smell was much better than mine but regarding the fact that they were also much more animal-like that wasn't very surprising.

Their greenish pelt speckled with brown spots made for very good cover in the forest, and their apelike faces had a big sensitive snout and big fangs on both jaws. I have seen apes called baboons and the goblins resembled them somewhat. Goblins didn't have so long tails and walked upright, their hands had sharp claws and they were average about 1,4 meter tall. With their good night vision and superhuman smell they were excellent hunters but their hearing wasn't very good, which was good for me, as I sneaked closer to them to hear their wicked voices talking.

“Gammorren telling going south. We kill elves and find big treasure. Shaman saying, catching big crystal, city dungeon.” The animal-like voice of the goblin to my right spoke of something I dreaded the most and also gave me some hope. My kin was alive, but they were hunted and what was this crystal, this city dungeon?