Logan takes this time focusing on the core, once more paying attention to anything he may have missed or simply skimmed over before. Eventually he sees it, and notices that he has a lot of stone in his inventory along with a not insignificant amount of dirt. He still isn't exactly sure how the inventory works or where all this stuff actually is but thinking about it gives him a headache, so he just accepts it. He also notices that he has the option to spend mana to purchase a spawner, but for now even the cheap ones are prohibitable expensive.

Deciding to get back to work he first takes a few minutes to check in on Siobhan and Lulu. They are oddly enough cleaning the house and getting it presentable. After that he looks at the expansions, up is still the cheapest but for now he doesn't see a reason to get that one. The only one that really makes sense right now is expanding east and getting the rest of that new house. He doesn't quite have enough to afford it at the moment though. With that he is back to waiting so he decides to do a quick check of his combat readiness. He currently has a large rat swarm, a small dire rat swarm, an army of mantises, and a ridiculous number of wasps. He can't believe he's already been here three weeks.

With the girls boosting his passive mana generation along with everything else defending his territory from all the little creature it doesn't take to long for him to save up enough for the expansion. Getting it gives him what he believes to be almost the entire second house. If the first house is anything to go by, he is only one expansion away. He wastes no time in sending a few of the lone rats not yet part of a swarm to deal with the roaches and any other creepy crawlies that might be in there. One thing that sticks out to him immediately is the lack of a new spawner. With only three spawners his defenses can still get overrun rather quickly, even with the seemingly large army of defenders he has right now. He also notices yet another door he'll have to repair. This pretty much confirms that he is in a village that was attacked. The real question he decides is whether or not he is in the middle of said village or near the outside. This is important because being on the edge of the village means he may soon find a forest or wooded area if he keeps expanding. Being in the middle means he would have to reach the edge first.

Focusing on what he can do he combines the new bits of wood his rats brought recently with the ball of wood he made earlier and starts to work on forming the door to the underground area wanting to make that hide-able as soon as possible. It still won't be a sturdy as he wants it to be, but he figures he can fix that later. Grabbing a few of the worst looking metal cups and plates from the other house he makes a pair of hinges to attach the door to the stone doorframe. With all the practice he's had lately the entire process only takes a few hours. He knows he really should get some lights down there but that is on the back burner for now.

Right now, it is getting close to dark, and Cid has just returned with an extra 25 people. Logan is ecstatic because for the moment his passive mana generation far exceeds anything he dared dream possible. He honestly doubts he'd be able to notice the mana gain from his troops killing a lizard or two. With this new mana income, he decides to upgrade the spawners. However first he moves the rat spawner to outside by the stairs leading to the underground area. This costs him a fair bit of mana, but he did it because he noticed the spawner was starting to look a little cramp where it was. He had actually considered putting it in the underground area, but he didn't know if his normal rats would be able to get to the surface or not. As it is it appears like the move will not be instantaneous. Upgrading the praying mantis spawner to level four produces a ... fire mantis about the same size as a goliath mantis. This one however apparently breathes fire as it takes it upon itself to test out its abilities by launching a string of fire into the air. Upgrading the wasp spawner to level four just seems to increase the likelihood of an assassin wasp spawning.

That done he turns back to his new uh ... residents he guesses would be the correct term. As it is they are deciding where everyone is going to sleep for now. They aren't exactly sure where the borders are, so they don't want to travel to far from what he is calling the main house. At least until he finds an official looking building of some kind. Surprisingly most decide to sleep in the underground area and Logan resigns to make actual rooms as soon as he has the space. He suspects that as his territory expands most people will move into the houses, but he soon reminds himself that assumptions like that can lead to critical mistakes later on. After all, in his old life he never had to worry much about the place he slept being easily defendable. Sure, houses got robbed sometimes but there were no roaming armies going around pillaging villages and killing people for sport or doing god knows what else to them.

While they slept, he repaired the door on the second house. This one required two chairs worth of wood just to repair but he still needed some scrap metal to repair the hinges needed to attach it to the wall. Sure, he could use the metal plates and cups, but he wanted to save as much of those as he could so his residents could have somewhat civilized meals. He also poured a lot of mana into one of the seeds that was now between the two houses. Partly because he wanted to see what kind it was and partly because he wanted to feed his residence. unfortunately, it appeared to be a tree of some kind and likely would need either a lot more mana or a lot more time to start producing. With morning fast approaching he starts to wonder if he'll be able to give his residence anything in the way of food or water. The rats he sent out earlier hadn't found any water, or more likely had but with nothing to transport it in had no way to get it back to his territory. "Some sanctuary I am" he grumbles to himself.

In the morning most people are noticeably disheartened to not have a free meal in front of them. That is until Joel, who appears to be the oldest among them even though he would barely be considered elderly back on earth, stands and begins to speak. "We just had the best night's sleep any of us can remember and yet you whine about not getting breakfast in bed?" "The sanctuary offers us safety," "one thing we never truly had before." "Would you now give up your ability to feed and clothe yourselves because of a good night's rest?" "It would be selfish of us to demand of the sanctuary that which we can do for ourselves." His speech seems to have had the desired effect. A few people are even talking about the best place to set up traps to catch some food. While others are discussing ways to get and store water. Nowhere is there a complaint to be heard. Logan still plans to provide food and water, but it no longer seems to be as pressing a concern as it was. what is impressive however is when they cast a spell on some rocks to make them glow almost like a lamp, essentially solving the lighting problem.

With the food and water starting to get sorted, at least for now, he turns his attention to expanding to the east. This gets him the rest of the second house as well as another half meter beyond. Still no new spawner though. Logan was not amused, to say the least. To cheer himself up he focuses on the rat spawner which had just finished being moved. He buys the level five upgrade, and it doesn't get him any new rats but focusing on the spawner he sees that the dire rat spawn rate went from every eighth to every sixth rat spawn.

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

After the disappointing expansion that morning he wanted to expand again but wasn't sure which direction to expand, so he decided to watch the people going about their day hoping that would give him a clue about what is around. He already had enough for another expansion thanks to the number of people feeding him mana, but he decided it might be a good idea to learn which direction to expand. Unfortunately, what he learned was that it didn't really matter what direction he expanded. This village was actually a city, apparently it was the last human city on Thana. On a side note, he also learned the planet he was now on was called Thana. Besides that however he was in the middle of the city and what he had thought were fields had at one point been well maintained lawns. Those houses were actually for servants to live in. "What do you know, I finally made it to the ritzy neighborhood" he chuckles to himself. He also learned that the entrance to servant housing usually faced towards the main house since they would be going back and forth between the two a lot. With that in mind seeing as the houses both had north facing doors he decided to expand north. he was hoping to find some useful raw material in the mansion. What he found instead was a snake spawner and nothing else. He was overjoyed to finally have a new spawner and immediately bought the level 2 and 3 upgrades which caused the snake to auto spawn and spawned a snake that at eight feet long was twice the length of the others. he also likes that their green scales help them hide in the field.

With the new spawner boosting his mood he decided to check on the wood pile since a few of his residents had taken it upon themselves to help the rats gather wood. He took some of the odd branches and incorporated them into the door to the underground stairs making it almost as sturdy as the stone it was surrounded by. With that finished he also decided to finish up the door on the second house by adding a bit more wood.

Now though he desperately needed scrap metal, or at least stuff he could use for scrap metal. With that in mind he once again expands north thinking a mansion must surely have a lot of things he can use for scrap metal. Instead, all he finds is more fields. On the bright side at least his army has room to spread out more now. It was getting a bit cramped.

That night he once again focused on pouring mana into the tree from the night before and it finally began to bear fruit. Oranges to be precise. With that done he started to turn his attention to one of the other seedlings but noticed it was turning morning so decided to wait until the following night. The lighting spell apparently needs to be reapplied at least once a day. Upon exiting the underground area however, the residents were excited by the new fruit, and Logan was excited that the constant mana infusion had caused the tree to produce oranges that were nearly twice as nutritious as normal. He also liked finally being able to provide something besides shelter. Thinking about nutrition he decides to look at his spawner purchase options. He takes a few minutes to sort through them and finds some that could work as a food source, as well as having impressive combat capabilities if their earth equivalent is anything to go by. He doesn't yet have the mana to purchase them but knowing they are there gives him hope for the future.

For today he decides to focus on building private rooms for his residence in the underground area. Not really a necessity, but he believed everyone deserved some privacy. Besides he had already promised himself that he would do it, since they seemed to prefer the safety of being underground and had already begun to decorate. He started on the wall right in front of the stairs making a five meter long one and a half meter wide hallway. Then on either side of the hallway he made two 2.5 meter by three meter rooms. He still wasn't comfortable digging underneath the house, but he hoped as long as it wasn't wide open caverns it would be fine. Further down the wall of the underground area he made another hallway with an identical set of four rooms. He spaced them out so that the rooms shared their walls to maximize the available space. By the time he had finished it was getting dark again. After discovering the new rooms some new lighting rocks were created and placed inside. He had expected the rooms to go to the elderly or perhaps maybe the women but nope. Apparently, the rooms went to young couples who wasted no time in using their newfound privacy to reeeaaallly enjoy each other's company even though there weren't yet doors on any of the rooms. Logan couldn't fault them for it though because the last human city having been abandoned didn't bode well for the population of humanity as a whole. Besides which, privacy these days was probably in short supply and judging by the sounds coming from those rooms the uh ... tension had been building for a while.

Logan of course busied himself by pouring mana into one of the seedlings this one apparently was a wheat seed. Not great but not the worst thing either as he can take the seeds and create a field of wheat for making flour as well as anything else the residents may be able to use it for. The question is where. He didn't want to risk the wheat field getting destroyed, but he also wanted there to be enough wheat to actually matter. The best location at the moment seemed to be between the servants' houses and where the mansion should be. He placed a few seeds there deciding he could move the field later if needed since it was still just a few plants. He also noticed that the orange tree was starting to grow more oranges on its own. It wasn't exactly overnight oranges, but he guessed it would only take a week for each batch to ripen.

It had been a while since he checked in on his core, which was apparently his heart. The core was now the size of a volleyball, and he knew that it needed to be moved before getting much bigger than a basketball. He didn't know what would happen if it no longer had room to grow but he didn't want to find out. He thought about placing it in the middle of the underground area, as he certainly wasn't going to just leave it lying around on the surface. He trusted every one of his residents but also wondered if other humans would be as trustworthy. Still, he had a little time.

He still wanted to find that mansion and potential source of scrap metal, but he also needs to provide a source of meat as well as a source of water. So, he decides to hold off on spending mana for a while. Instead, he distracted himself by focusing on crafting weapons and shields using the bits of wood that had been brought in. He didn't want them to ever need to fight but he figures it couldn't hurt for them to have the means to defend themselves. For the weapons he made simple spears with extremely sharp points and clubs with wood spikes on the end, which of course were deadlier than normal do to containing super dense wood. The shield on the other hand was tough to design because he wanted it to be unbreakable but also wanted it to actually be useable meaning, they would actually need to be able to lift it with one hand. In the end he came up with a design that was very heavy, but he believed was still liftable. He felt like those who chose to train with it would soon gain enough strength that the weight wouldn't pose an issue. Still, he didn't have much wood but with the residents helping to gather it he had enough to make four shields four clubs and eight spears.

As evening approached those who had been out checking traps returned with the days haul along with four other humans. They had apparently just escaped an Elvish slave camp about a week's journey south of here. Based on what Logan could gather by listening in. Everyone welcomes them with open arms and Logan enjoys the increase to his passive mana gain. What he doesn't like however is the tactical situation he appears to find himself in. Orcs to the north of his territory and Elves to the south is not a great position to be in. As he listens to them talk over the daily meal, such as it is, he learns that everyone is at war with everyone else for control of Thana. With the only common thread between the different races being that there can be only one and all others must be killed off or enslaved. "This must mean that they believe we can no longer pose any kind of significant threat to any of them" says Cid a little insulted. "Probably best that they think that for now" chimes in Joel. "At least until our current position becomes more defendable."