Right now, there are three groups out and none of them are expected back any time soon. That leaves him with a lot of time to think. He realizes that he should have probably staggered the wasp's deployment a bit, that way the mages wouldn't have been able to hit so many with each spell. He also realized the acid slimes were not as effective as he thought they would be as it took them nearly a full minute to eat through the elven footwear and on the battlefield a minute might as well be an eternity. He would need to use them more as living traps than as creature encounters. maybe he could get the telekinetic snakes to practice throwing them. He is certain they will do much better if they happen to land on a fleshy bit instead of attacking the armor. Speaking of snakes, he just realized that he hadn't used any of his snakes aside from the telekinetic snakes playing defense. In truth he had to admit that he had been far too reliant on his larger creatures in that last battle. This left him with mainly smaller creatures for protection right now, admittedly there was a lot of them but still.

About three weeks later beta team, sent to check on the elves, returns. It seems they are busy shoring up defenses. They appear to be expecting a retaliatory strike, which ordinarily would make sense. Seeing that their entire attacking force was wiped out it's only natural they expect retaliation. Sadly, for them, all this does is give Logan's spawners more time to replenish what was lost defending the sanctuary. As much as he hates to admit it the increased defense means the elven camp and slaves therein will probably be off limits for a while. After letting them rest for around five days he sends them out again. this time kind of east by southeast. He had been fixating on the eight major directions for some reason he couldn't quite explain.

Meanwhile the group sent to attack the kobold camp returns with the four newest residents, while beta team is resting. Given the choice they all decide to become warriors. During that time Logan had only managed to afford one expansion to the west due to his significantly reduced mana accumulation rate. Now that his mana accumulation rate is back to normal though, he plans to upgrade more of his spawners before doing any serious expanding. First up is the chicken spawner which promptly spits out something that has very few if any chicken features. To be fair he's sure it has some chicken features or it wouldn't be in the chicken spawner. He could probably even see the chicken features if he really looked, but honestly It looks more like a two-meter-tall raptor. Roughly three days later he upgrades the snake spawner. For this he gets a two headed snake. He's past the point of being surprised by creatures having multiple heads thanks to his wolves, so instead he just takes a closer look at what makes this snake actually special. It turns out that this snake can inject both poison and paralysis with its fangs depending on which head bites you, or both if both heads happen to bite you which is the more likely outcome.

The next day alpha team, which had been sent to search past were the eastern kobold camp had been, returns without having found anything. That is disappointing but not entirely unexpected. This time after letting them rest he sends them out kind of south by southeast. There isn't anything directly southeast but maybe he will find something by moving his search to the left or right just a little. He really wants to explore the human city to the southwest but that will have to wait until he can either find a way for humans to move faster or until he is much bigger, thus bringing his boarder closer. Right now, the length of his longest boarder is barely a drop in the bucket compared to how far the average human can walk in just one hour. Still every meter he expands helps in one way or another.

This time instead of upgrading he decides to expand again. He still plans to upgrade more spawners, but he also wants to continue slowly expanding. Well, that and he is hopeful that the buildings west of the town hall will be intact just as the buildings east and south of it were. As they waited for the recon teams to make it back, he managed to buy another two expansions. This allowed him to confirm his theory as there where a number of buildings west of the town hall that appeared to be completely intact. Others that were further away, while not being completely intact, were also not completely destroyed. According to what Joel told Cid the houses directly west of the town hall was for soldiers and their immediate families. Which was different from the bunk house used mainly for guards that were without either a partner or children. Something he only knew because of how highly regarded soldiers were within the last human city.

A few days after buying the last expansion recon team beta returned. They hadn't found any new camps, but they had found a group of five former slaves that had managed to escape on their own. They were all in pretty bad shape, having bruises and small cuts. According to the recon team two of them even had lacerations so serious the recon team gave up a few of their healing potions to insure they could even make it back to the sanctuary. On top of that they were all malnourished and suffering from various stages of dehydration. Over the following week, as the sickliest among them is nursed back to health, he upgrades both the wasp spawner and the mantis spawner. The wasp spawner gets him a shield wasp that increases the magic resistance of wasps nearby, while the mantis spawner just slightly increases the spawn rate of all but the basic mantises. Eventually three of them became warriors while the other two decided to help Adam.

Recon team beta remained in camp longer than normal, mostly because Logan thought it would be nice for the new arrivals to see familiar faces. At least until they were back to full health and properly settled in. After that the recon team was sent out again, this time to check on the kobold camp to the northeast. Just as they were leaving team alpha returned reporting that they hadn't found anything. That was the news he expected but he still wanted to check the general area every three or four months to make sure either the kobold or the elves hadn't established another camp while he wasn't looking. This time, after resting, they were sent out east by northeast. There seemed to be a lot of camps in that general area, so he had some hopes of finding one somewhere between where the eastern kobold camp had been and where the northeastern one was.

He decided to focus on expanding for the time being. Even managing to buy an expansion while alpha team rested. All of his spawners are at level 8 except the spider spawner, and he fears they don't yet have room for what will surely be a 16m diameter spider if the previous upgrades to the spider spawner are anything to go on. Sure, a small handful won't be too bad, but he is picturing hundreds of them completely covering the area. His other large creatures are already making the area crowded enough as it is. He only controls just over a tenth of a square kilometer after all, and although that sounds like a lot it's actually not when you consider how much he is trying to cram into it. It won't be so bad once he owns the whole town and some area beyond and can keep his creatures outside town where they can still protect the humans without getting in the way constantly. In fact, he is beginning to suspect the amount of available area is what determines if he gets a free spawner when he expands.

Over the next three weeks he manages another 4 expansions. This got him a few houses some of which were even completely intact, aside from some slight damage due to having been abandoned for so long. It also got him a step closer to the town hall being usable. More of the houses in the residential area where now usable as well since they were no longer 'dangerously close' to the edge of the sanctuary. Not that he was hurting for places to sleep but he still wanted every human to have their own house, or at least wanted the families to have their own house.

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Team beta returned a few days after he bought the latest expansion. They reported that the kobold camp no longer contained any slaves and barely had twenty kobold. He thought about just letting the humans go and wipe the camp out, but then he remembers the feeling of his mana accumulation going from being like an open tap to a slow trickle. Some part of him, the dungeon part if he had to guess, really doesn't like losing his mana flow. So instead of sending the whole human army he sends ten warriors, a fire mage, and a couple of healers, along with fifty dire wolves. The wolves were ordered to kill anything that wasn't human, and the warriors were ordered to collect anything that was salvageable. The fire mage was ordered to make sure the camp was unusable before they left.

After beta team rested for a bit, during which time Logan bought another expansion, they were sent off to check on the elvish camp. He wanted to give them some time to calm down but not enough time to organize an even larger army without him knowing about it. To that end he sent a lesser wolf with them. If the lesser wolf returned on its own it would mean the elves are preparing to attack. This way the recon team would only need to worry about staying just ahead of the elves instead of trying to rush back as fast as possible. As they were leaving the team sent to attack the kobold returns with some bits of armor and some weapons but not much else.

Around three days after beta team left alpha team returned. They found signs of a trail which they believe leads to another kobold camp eventually but it's well beyond the two-week limit for travel time. He was tempted to have them follow the trail anyway but decided it wasn't worth the risk. Instead, he had them travel west by southwest to see if there was anything between the dwarves and the other abandoned human city. While they were resting up preparing for the recon mission, he bought another westward expansion.

The following two weeks he managed to get three more expansions. Getting him a bunch more housing as well as some intact mansion and corresponding servant's quarters. He did get some houses further south that were not completely intact and a few that were just foundation but that was to be expected at this point. Shortly after getting the third expansion the scouts which had been patrolling beyond the western boarder reported dwarves in the area. According to their report the dwarves didn't seem to be directly aware of the sanctuary, but they did seem to notice that some trees had been cut down fairly recently. Also, according to one of the scouts who spoke dwarven thanks to having been a former dwarven slave before being sold to the elves, they were searching for more slaves because demand was at an all-time high. One of the dwarves apparently even joked that the elves were buying female slaves faster than they could breed new ones and joked that perhaps they should show a little self-control if they want the slaves to last longer. What the dwarves didn't seem to know was that demand was high do to the large number of slaves rescued over the past year, not because the slaves were dying.

He decided to keep an eye on them but to not do anything that would draw their attention. He was a little worried for the group that had been sent out towards the west but didn't have a way to warn them should they return early. He also didn't know if this was the only group of dwarves out searching for 'wild humans'. From what the scouts could tell they seemed to be observing the town but not approaching it. Logan considered maybe the recent reconstruction efforts had caught their attention. The scout however believed they were noticing the smoke from the various fires throughout the town. Either way, he wasn't about to tip his hand unless they entered his sanctuary. After all he doubted they were dumb enough to let themselves be lured in. The dwarves departed towards the west after observing them for most of the day. Logan's hope was that if they returned, and he had no reason to believe they wouldn't, they would be expecting to only fight a relatively small group of humans that somehow went unnoticed until now.

As he was buying another expansion beta team returned with news. Apparently, the elves were still maintaining a stronger security and had even posted watches so they couldn't even get close enough to count the slaves although their appeared to be several. They also couldn't tell if they were preparing to attack or how close they were to launching said attack. This troubled Logan because he wanted to rescue those slaves and he knew without needing to ask that the humans he'd already freed felt the same, but he wasn't prepared to throw away all the progress he'd made up till now to do it. Even luring them to the other side of the camp wasn't guaranteed to work because they were all on guard against attack and he could only send a max of 50 creatures with the human army due to his limited influence over how creatures would behave once they left his territory. The other time it had been enough because there were fewer elves, and they hadn't been on alert, so he was able to catch them off guard. He was confident though that he would eventually be able to send large armies of creatures with complex battle plans.

As frustrating as it was, he decided patience was the key. After all they can't stay on high alert forever. Turning his attention away from that which he could do nothing about for the moment, he decided to send them up to check on the orcs to the northwest. As much as he didn't want to poke the sleeping bear 'so to speak' he felt like he needed to at least check to see what they were up to from time to time. Watching the recon team leave he buys another expansion.

He expected alpha team to return within a couple of days of beta team departing. So, when they didn't, he began to get worried. First three days, then four, and then five and as he bought another expansion he was really starting to worry. After buying yet another expansion he was starting to fear the worst, that they had all been captured and were now dwarven slaves. A fate he considered to be worse than death. A few days after buying that expansion though, alpha team finally returns. They apologized for being late but explained that there were a few groups of dwarves between here and there that they had to be extra careful to avoid. After letting them rest for a bit he sends them out again. He had briefly considered sending them north but between the orcs and goblins the odds of finding humans that direction was extremely low so instead he sent them southeast again. He didn't expect to find anything like an enemy camp, but he hoped that they would find other humans that managed to escape.

As he was buying another expansion beta team returned with news that the orcs appeared to be fighting someone as there were signs of recent battle. They couldn't tell if it was goblins, dwarves, or even other orcs but they were definitely fighting with someone. As for the expansion he noticed that some of the residential buildings for whatever reason were more north-south than east-west and they were 7m by 12m instead of 6m by 14m. If he had to guess it was their attempt to break up the monotony. Either that or whoever laid the stone foundation made a mistake and everyone just sort of went with it. He had just finished buying yet another expansion and was about to send them off again when one of the scouts reported a dwarven army approaching. It was a small group of only around thirty dwarves. Apparently, his assumption was right, and they expected only a small group of humans with little if anything in the way of weapons and armor. It's almost comical how underprepared they were for what they were walking into. Deciding there wasn't any real threat he sends beta team out towards the east hoping to find lone groups of humans if nothing else. He also makes a conscious decision to let the humans deal with the dwarves sending everything else into hiding as much as possible. After all it doesn't matter how they die, as long as they die inside his territory, he still gets the mana from them dying. The humans are grateful for the chance to defend their home, and Logan agrees that this could be therapeutic for them. Especially the ones who were once held by dwarves. He instructs the humans to remain hidden until they are pretty far in and then surround them so they can't escape.

It takes the dwarves several hours to make it to the sanctuary. As they make their way into his territory completely oblivious to everything surrounding them Logan can almost feel the anticipation in the air coming from the humans. The dwarves are overconfident, and they will soon pay for it.