Expanding north is tempting and maybe he'll regret not expanding north, but the allure of the unknown is too hard to resist so he expands south hoping for something new to see. Anything besides the walled off yards with the single houses in each section. True one that he knows of included servant's quarters which are technically houses but still. He wants no he needs something new, something unpredictable. Which is exactly what he gets as stretching out from west to east are parts of what appear to be foundations where houses once stood each of them 14 meters wide. He'll have to wait for one or two more expansions to see the total size of each foundation assuming that they aren't bigger than the mansion.
He spends the rest of the day going over strategy in his head. Deep down he knows the best thing for them is for him to remain invisible for as long as possible yet still there is a part of him that knows he can do more now. He needs to stop thinking of himself as the same as when he only had the mantis spawner. He has defeated entire armies after all. Even the humans under his protection are far better prepared to defend themselves than they were when Siobhan lead them here. Speaking of Siobhan, the mock bravery he witnessed so long ago has turned into real determination. The only problem is that he still can't actually do anything outside his territory. Once they make it to his territory though he is pretty sure he can handle whatever is chasing them. Maybe he is getting overconfident but if there are other human slaves nearby, he has to try. Especially now that he is even stronger than when he defeated that elven army both in terms of sheer numbers and in terms of average strength of his units. In the end he is reluctantly forced to admit that being trapped in a box, even if it is an ever-expanding box, doesn't leave a lot of room for strategy.
Realizing that he might be a little overconfident he goes ahead and throws another upgrade on the boar spawner in order to get it up to at least level five with the rest of his spawners. It then spits out a boar that looks like a bigger version of the normal boar he got at level two. A much bigger version as this one is around 300kg. He focuses on it to see if there is anything special about it other than its size. What he finds is that it's hide is about four times denser than a normal boar its size making its skin almost a literal suit of armor. This will delay his next expansion but if the recon team is successful, it will be a moot point since additional humans will boost his mana generation.
The next ten days pass by without incidents. He does manage to expand south two more times and gets the rest of those foundations as well as what appears to be a much less well-maintained rock path. Turns out these uh . . . houses, he guesses were all 14 by 6 meters so are just slightly larger than the servants' houses. Sadly, there isn't enough of any of the actual structures left to determine if they were two stories or not. Looking around at the destruction throughout the city based just on what he can see he begins to seriously question how and why those servants' houses were still mostly intact. He can understand the library and the bath house seeing as they are made entirely or almost entirely of stone. The servants' houses though by all rights should have been destroyed along with the mansion.
While interesting this mystery like the others will need to be put on hold for now because one of the scouts just reported that he saw the recon team headed back with a group of humans. They are still a ways out it seems but the scout is confident they will be back by nightfall. The scout also reported that there appeared to be a large number of humans with them. Sure, enough about three and a half hours later the group started trickling in. The healthier members of the group arriving first. They were understandably frightened of the spiders at first but one of the recon team members explained the situation and they reluctantly moved past the patrolling spiders. It helped that the spiders basically ignored them. They relaxed once they saw how many humans were in the settlement and heard everyone reassure them that the animals here would not harm them. After everyone had made it in and the life mage as well as Lily had a chance to examine everyone, he had Cid come and start asking questions.
Turns out they had fled southwest after escaping from a kobold camp. If that is true, and he has no reason to doubt it, that would put the kobold camp somewhere east of them. How they managed to escape Logan had to admit was actually pretty clever. From what they told Cid everyone pretended to be really weak to trick the kobold into lowering the number of guards watching them. Meanwhile those that could train did whatever they could to raise their physique in absolute secrecy. All the while still pretending to be weak and near helpless. The kobold being prideful never once questioned how they were somehow suddenly physically stronger than humans almost half again their height and twice their weight. Eventually they decided that they didn't need spell casters to watch the humans. This as it turns out had been exactly what the humans were waiting for. Kobold mages after all are some of the strongest magic users around. Over the next several days they slowly stockpiled supplies and then one day they just pounced on the unsuspecting guards who were dead almost before they even realized what was happening. After that they picked a random direction which turned out to be southwest and just started wondering. Sometime later we encountered your people he said ending his story.
The next day they worked on getting the new people integrated into the community. Unsurprisingly most wanted to join the army. He still finds it odd to think the number of human warriors who are actually skill enough to engage in open combat is large enough to count as an army. At the very least if they didn't before they soon will after the new guys get trained up for a while. They were of course shown to the smaller training room and given some wooden weapons to start. They started to protest being treated like children when they had defeated the kobold and escaped without any help, but Joel was quick to point out that they had by their own words caught the kobold completely by surprise by pretending to be helpless. He also went on to explain that real fighting is about more than brute force, and that brute force isn't likely to work against a skilled opponent who is expecting your attack. There was also some who seemed to have a talent for magic. In total there was two fire mages, an earth mage, and a water mage. They also had the benefit of watching the kobold mages show off and then practicing in secret. This meant that the fire mages among the new arrivals could probably teach the other fire mages a thing or two. They were shown the way to the small training hall designed for mages and told they could use it until they were confident enough to participate in the mock battles. There were also a few who agreed to help with food prep which was getting to be a pretty tall order with how many mouths they needed to feed. they were shown to the farm, even though the farmer did most of the harvesting, and were informed about the chicken spawner as well as the relatively new boar spawner.
After getting the grand tour and learning how things work it took them another few days to settle into a routine. The good news being that all the new people knocked a full day and a half off the amount of time needed to expand meaning he now only needs three days instead of four and a half. This meant that he now had enough mana to expand again. The question is, should he continue south? After all, the whole idea was to extend his borders out away from his starting area on both the north and south side. On the one hand if he expands his border out away from the foundations Yangus could start building individual houses there. On the other hand, his northern border is a lot closer to his starting area than his southern boarder plus he will get to extend the premade wall around everything eventually. He still doesn't want to block the street by placing a wall there though.
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After going back and forth on the pros and cons of expanding each direction he eventually settled on north. When he does, he is surprised to find another new spawner this one a wolf spawner apparently. Naturally he spends the mana to upgrade it to level two seeing as the first few upgrades require almost no mana relatively speaking. What comes out of the spawner is a wolf about the size of a large fox or small coyote. From the looks of it the wolf probably only weighed around 9kg. Another upgrade to the spawner later and he got what he thought of when he thought wolf. This one being 85cm tall at the shoulder and weighing 70kg. after allows some time to let a little mana build up, he went ahead and splurged on the fourth upgrade producing what can only be described as a Dire Wolf that weighed a staggering 150kg. That's 150kg of razor-sharp claws and teeth with presumably the strength and a bite force to match. "I think I've actually seen bears smaller than this thing" he remarks thankful it's on their side. Sure, the boars were bigger and arguably more dangerous, but they just didn't inspire fear the way this dire wolf did. He's tempted to throw another upgrade on the spawner just to see what he gets but he feels like the upgrades he has is enough for now.
Instead, he decides to focus on expanding a bit more. So, while letting his mana build up, he checks in on the new arrivals. The mages are in the small magic duel room practicing their spells. They have a larger variety of spells thanks to being able to observe the spells being used. Knowing the spells doesn't mean knowing how to cast them accurately or that they're comfortable using them in combat. The fact that they were used on other humans only reinforces their desire to learn to cast these spells accurately in combat so they can use them on as many kobold as possible. Logan isn't thrilled about their thirst for revenge, but he does understand it. As long as they don't do anything stupid, he'll try to let them work through their anger their own way.
Turning his attention to the new would-be warriors he notices Joel giving them a lecture on proper form and why "just hit them with the pointy end till they stop moving" isn't a viable strategy in actual combat. He drives the point home by having four of them face off against him at the same time and subsequently beating all of them without even breaking a sweat. In fact, he barely moved, they mostly defeated each other. "Battlefield awareness is your greatest asset" he began without even giving them time to get back to their feet. "Being able to put a lot of power behind each swing isn't nearly as important as knowing how and when to swing." "You just got lucky" one of them says standing up and grabbing one of the wooden training swords. "I bet you can't take me one on one" he says before charging. Joel just stands there. He doesn't reach for a sword, doesn't try to move out of the way, just stands there watching. As the guy begins his swing Joel reaches up with one hand and grabs the hilt of the sword. At the same time, he spins and does a quick hip check to get the guy off his feet. Meanwhile with his other hand he uses the guy's own momentum to send him tumbling across the floor. The whole exchange happened in the blink of an eye and now Joel hade the sword and the other guy was on the ground. After letting the guy get to his feet and return to the group, he asks the group "now do you believe that perhaps I may have something to teach you" with a surprising amount of both calmness and patience. The rest of the day goes about as well as you'd expect for a group just learning to properly wield weapons.
A little curious Logan decides to ask Cid why nobody seems to know how to use a weapon before coming here. He doesn't expect everyone to have been former soldiers but surely there should have been a few by now. As it turns out according to Cid this sanctuary is the closes thing to a village or town humans have had in 30 years. Cid also informed Logan that he personally can't remember when this many humans were gathered in one spot without being in slave pens.
The next morning, he sends out a six-man recon team working in pairs of two. This time however they have orders to search to the west and see if they can locate the kobold settlement. He also has Cid inform the others that they may be getting sent out to rescue more slaves soon. If things keep up the way they're going Logan can see the day coming when humans will be able to handle this sort of thing on their own and leave him to focus on expanding and defending the boarder.
While waiting on news from the recon team he checks in on the fire and air mage attempting to create a combo spell. They have managed to create a kind of fire tornado by wrapping the fire wall around a fast-swirling bit of wind created by air magic. Calling it a tornado is a bit generous though as it's only 4 m tall and around 60cm at the base. It is also exhausting for both of them to cast and maintain. The main benefit being that it can't be blocked or countered easily. Another combo spell involves one casting flame, a spell that works similar to the fire mantis's breath attack but from the caster's hands, While the other casts wind gust to increase both the intensity of the flames and their reach. This combo is trickier than it sounds because if wind gust is too strong it will dispel flame but if it's not powerful enough it will have no effect. there are a few others they are working on, but they don't seem to be quite ready. After watching them for a while he sends Cid down to ask them to teach their combo magic to the others. He only has one other air mage, but their experience might inspire others to come up with combos on their own.
Switching gears for a moment the new kitchen helpers seem to be eager to learn and the former apprentice is happy to have an apprentice of her own now. While they work, they talk about eventually teaching a class on basic cooking skills once the sanctuary expands far enough for people to have their own homes. Apparently, they like the idea of turning the cafeteria into a diner. They also think it would be good for everyone to not rely on them for every meal.
Now you might expect Logan to be upset at hearing them talk like that, but it actually makes him extremely happy to hear them talk about and plan for the future. He also happens to agree that it's not fair to put the responsibility for everyone getting fed on just a few people but there isn't much he can do about that at the moment. He did notice some people choosing to sleep in the bunk house on the surface so he has hope that eventually life will return to normal in the city. At the very least he now has hope that everyone will indeed stop sleeping underground eventually.
When he has enough mana, he quickly decides to expand north reasoning that a few boarding houses can support more people than the seven individual houses he'd get from expanding to the south. He only has the front step for now, but it appears they are there just as he predicted. Sadly, there was no new spawner but after not getting one for so long he had been getting spoiled lately with two spawners in rapid succession. What he was not ready for was that when he expanded again three days later, he noticed that all but the eastern most mansion were still intact. Seeing this he tries to go through the multiple possible explanations in his head. The first one being there was an attempt to rebuild at some point after the city was destroyed. The second being that they managed to hold the line here but there weren't enough people left to defend against another attack so the survivors fled taking what they could with them. This would explain the lack of books in the library and would also account for some houses being inexplicably left standing. surrounded by ruined buildings. The third being that a group managed to hold them here sacrificing themselves in the process while the rest escaped and since there was no one left to root out the attackers saw no need to destroy the remaining buildings. There are a few other scenarios he can think of, but they all seem increasingly less likely.