The rescue team arrived home almost as fast as the original recon team did which was unusual since he had expected it to take at least half a day to pull off the rescue. Turns out the kobold thinking the elves had stolen their slaves attacked the camp and killed most of the elves. The elves that were left where exhausted, wounded, or both. They were certainly not expecting to have to fight off another attack so soon. It didn't help that they managed to stealth kill three of the remaining eleven before being noticed. A few quick fire spells took care of most of the rest with the elves own mages being too low on mana to offer much resistance. the rest were mopped up by the melee units who took care to only use the kobold weapons. All total the plan went far better than he dared hope it could.

The total number of humans in the sanctuary was now 120. It seems like Yangus and his crew just can't build houses fast enough which given the alternative is not a bad problem to have. This just means that he has been able to successfully rescue a lot of people in a relatively short time frame. Not only that but thanks to his efforts the dwarves and orcs are at war as well as the kobold and elves. The goblins are a bit of an unknown and one he can't really do anything about since anyone he sent would either need to pass dangerously close to the orc camp or go through it to get to the goblins. He also has no idea where it actually is aside from just northeast ... ish

Turning to the people I just rescued, naturally my first priority is to make sure they're all healthy. After that he has Cid question them about what the elves were up to given their increased warrior presence in the camp. As it turns out the elves had orders to investigate the old human city. The one we were currently in. It seems the team that had been sent to set up an outpost and clear out any monsters was wiped out completely. "So, it turns out they weren't attacking me specifically, but rather just clearing out monsters" he thought to himself before listening to them continue. They had suspected that there might be traps but assumed that was left over from when humans lived here. "I completely overestimated how much the elves knew then" he thinks. This just reminds him of something he'd been forgetting lately 'never assume anything'.

Moving on to their rolls within the sanctuary. Understandably most want to be warriors but a surprising number want to be mages and have the magical aptitude for it. All total there are two new air mages, a new light mage, new shadow mage, and a new earth mage. There was also a man who had been owned by a dwarven stonemason before being sold to the elves as 'breeding stock' to pay of a gambling debt. He was never allowed to touch the equipment, but he saw how it all worked and is pretty confident if Carver is able to make the proper tools, he can do stonemasonry. The rest is fairly straightforward. The new warriors join the beginner course, and the new mages go to train with others who share their discipline. At some point he wants the new shadow and light mages to combine their efforts like the other two, but they need to master their own magic first.

As everyone settles in and things begin to slowly get back to a routine, he once again goes over what he has and what he needs. Well first off, the cooks need a bigger kitchen because that small kitchen inside the one servant's house isn't quite cutting it anymore. Even working in round the clock shifts they can barely get the food ready in time just due to the limited number of cooking surfaces. He looks around and notices the two intact mansions both have huge kitchens each one able to prepare and cook much more food than the servant's kitchen ever could. This gives him a new goal, expand north until the cooks feel safe working in the new mansion directly above the boarding house. He is already wider north-south than he is east-west, and he doesn't like the idea of getting even more lopsided, but it can't be helped. He realized long ago that he is rarely ever going to be perfectly square, and he'll just have to get used to that idea. Sticking with the kitchen theme he still needs to find more of a variety of foods. He also surprisingly still needs more houses. They were being claimed even before Yangus and his crew could even finish working on them. That being one problem he is glad to have. Finally, he decides that he needs more info on the dwarves. He knows where the nearest camps for most of the other races are and their size but nothing about the dwarven camp. He also wants to get an idea of the goblin camps location and size but with the orc camp right there he simply can't.

It's decided then, after giving them a few days to rest he sends the six man recon team out west to locate the dwarven camp and asses their strength. They are told to turn around after two weeks if they still haven't found anything.

After watching them leave he quickly grabs up two expansions to the north, with all the new people he only needs a little over a day and a half to get enough mana to expand that direction now. This netted him part of the servant's houses attached to the mansions. From what he could see two of them on the far west appeared completely intact while a third appeared to have only minor damage. Another one appeared to have major damage, but part of the wall was still standing while the other two were reduced to foundations. Lending further evidence to the idea that the last great attack was halted right here.

The more experienced warriors were forced to move their mock battle to the open field between the starting area and the bath house so it wouldn't be in the way when the other mansion across from the boarding house starts getting used. This gave both sides a lot more room to maneuver and forced them to change their strategy. For one thing the Mages had to be mindful of what was behind their target. More battlefield awareness is always a good thing. Besides that, there is almost enough people graduating from the advanced course now to double the size of these mock battles with even more getting ready to join the advanced class. Once people start actually using the Bath house they may need to move their mock battle yet again but for now it will work fine where it is currently being held even with the increased number of participants. The four amigos including Siobhan have even started participating in the mock battles from time to time. Naturally the other life mage is on whatever team those four aren't to make sure both sides have a healer which causes the mock battles to last much longer. "This can only improve their endurance" he thinks while watching the latest mock battle.

Over the next week he buys four more expansions north while waiting on the recon team to report back. These expansions don't hold any surprises for him since he already pretty much knew what he was getting. Also, over the last week a few more women apparently conceived. This now makes seven expectant mothers only two of whom don't yet know they are expecting. He again decides to let them find out on their own but this time he does tell Cid so that he can look after them. Logan can already see the day when this city is thriving once again. He has even begun to hope that one day there may be multiple human cities again.

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For the safety of the city, he decided that he needed to eliminate the camps surrounding it. The problem was that every time he did, they just rebuilt. There was also the fact that slaves were usually included in the rebuilding effort, otherwise he would have sent fire and air mages to destroy everything beyond any usability back when he first got them. Discussing the problem with Cid brings him back to the orcs. True they consider humans food, which is arguably worse than considering them property, but they don't keep livestock which means their camp isn't likely to have humans in it. Well ... not living humans anyway. There was also the fact that it was by far the closest. Close enough in fact that he had a couple of scouts keep tabs on it during the day and report back at night. according to them they still haven't recovered from the goblin attack. Cid told him that orcs don't cooperate the way other races do, they believe in survival of the fittest and as such refuse to help other tribes or even ask for help from other tribes. So, the goblin attack combined with a dwarven retaliatory strike has them almost completely crippled with less than 20 orcs in the entire camp. As for why the goblins haven't finished them off, he has no idea, but the dwarves made their point with that one attack. Destroying the orc camp might actually be possible with the human army as it is now plus destroying it would also give him access to the goblins. There may be other orcs out there but if tribes don't help each other, they can be dealt with as they pop up.

With this in mind he has them hold off on the mock battles for a day so they can be well rested for the assault. Even knowing how low the enemy numbers are he wants to stack the deck even more in his favor. Along with thirty melee fighters he sends three fire and three air mages, Lulu and her partner, as well as both healers. He often wonders if the others would still be alive if he hadn't been so cautious and had sent both healers. They are ordered to take anything the sanctuary might be able to use and destroy everything else.

The next morning, he watches them depart and hopes they'll all return. He also hopes that they're not spotted by either the kobold, dwarves, or goblins. He knows he'll have to deal with them eventually, but he'd rather do it on his terms.

While he's waiting for them to return, he notices a few of the cooks checking out the larger kitchens in the mansions. He had thought that it would be a lot longer before they used them, but he guesses the need for extra cooking space was greater than he realized. The pretty quickly realize they can cook much more food simultaneously and thus don't have to spend as long each day cooking. The addition of Boar meat opened up so many different possibilities, but they haven't had the time or the resources to experiment lately. Their new taste testers are going to be putting in a lot of overtime.

Early the next morning came the return of the forces sent to remove the orc threat. Several of them needed more healing sessions but luckily, they all made it back. To celebrate he expands north and that's when he sees how the enemy was getting through. apparently, there is a huge gap in the wall between the eastern and central mansions that includes part of the shared back wall. With barely a thought he removes the walls separating the three areas and uses it along with some stone from his inventory to repair and reinforce the surrounding wall. He also consolidates the three gates in the southern part of the wall into one gate near the center and puts another gate in near the center of the north end of the area.

He's no fool though so while he waits for the recon team to return from the west, he has his scouts patrolling the northern area just outside his border to be extra cautious of goblin activity. It's a long shot but there is always the possibility they were trying to get to the sanctuary and orcs were just in the way. How they would have known about the sanctuary isn't clear, but he has learned time and time again to never rule out anything completely. Another week goes by and still no word from the recon team. He tries not to panic sense he did tell them to only turn around if they haven't found anything within two weeks travel time. While he was waiting though he bought four northern expansions and two southern expansion which surprisingly netted him nothing. Well, nothing aside from the rest of the street in the northern part of his territory. He was curious about that as he doubted he was at the edge of the city already. He also doubted the city was that small. It would be ridiculous to assume they got as big here as they did back home but still, he doubted it was this small. Still, he decided instead to focus on expanding east-west for a while in an effort to actually get people to use the bath houses. He had fire mantises go in there and use their fire breath to raise the ambient temperature of the building, but the people are just not comfortable letting their guard down that close to his border. Even having the wall there doesn't help.

It takes him slightly longer to save up enough mana to buy the east and west expansions due to the extra area he now gets per expansion, but after 6 more days he was able to expand three more times. twice to the east and once to the west. Those eastern upgrades were important because now he can have his larger units patrol along the streets that now wrap completely around the edge of his territory. He doesn't have them all going the same direction though as that inevitably creates an opening in the defenses. Instead, half go clockwise while the other half go counterclockwise.

With the defenses sorted, for now, He looks in on his Residents and sees that the newest residents are adjusting well. There is barely anyone in the beginner class anymore and the mages have even begun to master the basic spells. The cooks have now fully moved into the two intact mansions and the old cafeteria was immediately claimed by the new stone mason Adam. For his part Adam was asked to provide the houses with an extra layer of stone wall after Yangus gets done building them. Carver was nice enough to make a pickaxe, a hammer, and various sized chisels for him to use but actually getting the stone still takes time. To aid him logan marked off several places for him to get stone by absorbing 20cm wide strips of rock to indicate the boarder of where he's allowed to mine the stone. He could just give him the stone, but he doesn't know how big of stone blocks he plans to use. Besides which just dumping all the stone in his inventory right outside Adam's shop would make the whole area just hideous to look at. Not to mention how much space it would take up.

Allyson is busy researching all the new alchemy ingredients the team brought back after destroying the orc camp. She has even managed to make a few basic health and antidote potions. The real exciting news however is that she was able to harvest a few seeds so after they get ready to harvest, with a little help from Logan to speed things along, she'll be able to make even more. Sadly, she is still missing an ingredient for the firebomb things the elves used. Regardless of that she can't wait to grow enough of the herbs she does have and get enough potions made to start experimenting with some of her new things.

Two western expansions later and he now has part of several new buildings. With these expansions people are finally starting to use the bath house. Shortly after buying the expansion, the recon team returned home with troubling news. It would seem the dwarves don't have a camp that can be raided for supplies and to free slaves. What the recon team found instead was a cave entrance leading to one of their underground cities. They can't give much more details than that since they didn't get close to the cave for fear of being detected but the entrance was full of enough groups entering and leaving for them to know what they were looking at.

With attacking the dwarves a no go for now he turns his sights back to the elves they should have had time to rebuild their camp by now which means fresh new slaves to rescue. He gives his recon team a few days to rest and get a bath. Before he has a chance to send them out though he gets word that a huge goblin army is marching south. It's unclear if they know the sanctuary is there or if they are just marching toward the human city looking for pockets of human resistance. Either way they'll soon be here, and they'll need to be dealt with. The scout doesn't know how many there are, but he can see several hobgoblins and goblin shamans mixed in with the army. The hobgoblins are the warrior cast of goblin society, while shaman are the goblin equivalent of mages. The fact that both hobgoblins and shaman are included means that this isn't just an exploration raid.