After yet another month of waiting in which time he got six more expansions, two towards the east and then four towards the west, it's finally time for some things to kick off. First there is the experiment he's been planning for a while now. He can still only send 50 units at a time outside his borders. He remembered though that for whatever reason swarms counted as a single entity, at least when it came to giving them commands. His hope was that they would count as a single entity in other ways as well. The plan was to try sending 50 large swarms of rats which would equal thousands of rats. A bit anxiously he gave the command for fifty large swarms to travel northwest and attack the orc camp. He then crossed his metaphorical fingers that the 50 large swarms would go and not just a single rat from each swarm.

It turns out his suspicions were right on the money. Once a swarm is formed, they are counted as a single entity in every regard. This works doubly well because the normal rats he sent shouldn't arouse suspicions. With any luck they will appear to be a naturally forming mega swarm rolling through the countryside looking for food that just happened to come across the orc camp. He doubts they'll clear the camp in one attempt, that's not the point. The point is to reduce their numbers as much as possible to give any humans hiding nearby a chance to either find the sanctuary or be found by someone from the sanctuary. Ideally, he'd like to send 50 large swarms of the giant spiders or really giant spiders, but they spawn much slower than the rats. This first attack was more of a proof of concept anyway. No sense keeping the really giant spiders out of the fighting so their numbers can build up if such an attack wasn't even possible after all.

The second thing that was happening was the inaugural flight of the recon team that had been training with the giant black eagle. Oddly Joel just had them fly in increasingly widening circles to get a better understanding of what all is around the sanctuary. Logan has to admit it's actually pretty smart. It's entirely possible there are camps and such dangerously close that they just kept missing, not likely but still possible. Far more likely is the possibility of a person or group being three- or four-days travel from the sanctuary without even knowing the sanctuary is real or that it's relatively close. He wanted to have a small army of what he referred to as rapid response units that can be deployed when a person or group is spotted to help bring them in. Unfortunately, that would have to wait until all three of the recon teams were comfortable on their flying mounts.

Unless, ... a strange thought just occurred to him that was both so obvious and so game changing that as soon as it occurred to him, he mentally face palmed. Why had he not thought of this before? There was absolutely no reason why he couldn't put a saddle on some of his larger non-flying creatures. Sure, the straps that held it in place would need to be considerably longer but that was a trivial matter. The real question is which creature would he make into mounts. They each had their pros and cons. Spiders where out right off the bat, he didn't need the people they were trying to rescue running away from them. That also eliminated several wolf variants. Ideally it needed to be something where the people could clearly see the rider on top of their mount. That way they would know it wasn't a wild beast. Eventually, he settled on the stone wolves. At 250 Kg they were large enough to hold a rider but small enough that the rider would be clearly visible. Their stone skin also allowed them to handle more weight than they would otherwise be able to even with their size.

Having made his choice he informs Maribel, through Cid, who agrees to get started on saddles for the stone wolves right away. He also asks her to make enough so that the human army can ride them into battle, or at the very least ride them to where the battle will occur. He'd also like to have them bond with the scouts so that they can help to scout out the area around the town and keep an eye out for potential threats. He can feel that he is right on the cusp of upgrading his ability to send out units. His ability to give complex orders to his creatures before they leave has been gradually improving, but he can since that the number of units he can send is more like his spawner upgrades in that it will occur in stages. The main difference being that this upgrade is involuntary meaning he can't postpone it, not that he would want to, and he can't make it come any faster. Well, technically he could postpone it by refusing to grow but he feels like that would be stabbing himself in the foot.

He still wants to wait until he owns the entire town before committing to any major offensive. That way he can either repair the existing wall or build one himself. A few small preemptive strikes to keep their numbers from getting large enough to threaten the sanctuary shouldn't hurt though. The spawn rate of the rats is such that he can send out 50 large swarms every few months. Eventually they're bound to catch on no matter how low their intelligence is but he's banking on that taking several rat attacks at least. He's also hoping that they won't have the numbers for a counterattack when they do, assuming they can even locate the sanctuary in the first place.

With that plan, such as it is, put in motion he decides to move on to finally upgrading the bird spawner some more. The next upgrade he got ironically gave him a spawn rate increase. It was ironic because he had avoided upgrading the spawner so that it wouldn't have other things it needed to spawn so the giant black eagles would spawn faster. The next upgrade though was something else entirely. According to the spawner it was called a stormbringer, not a very comforting name in Logan's opinion. It apparently possessed storm magic which seemed to be a mix of air and water magics. As powerful as he was certain it was, he wasn't sure he like the idea of it possibly summoning a tornado in the middle of town. Still, it was great to have around for if and when his defenses get overrun. No point trying to save the buildings if the people are going to get taken after all.

Unfortunately, with all that taken care of there really is nothing left to do but wait. He can't even watch the skirmishes because the fighters are all busy trying to bond with a stone wolf, which as it turns out is nowhere near as simple as bonding with lesser wolves. As he waits though another month passes and with it comes five more expansions. Only now does he start to consider that claiming the entire town might take longer than he originally thought it would. Not a surprise really considering he never knew how big the town actually is. He could ask sure but where's the fun in that. It also occurs to him that he has no way of knowing how successful the rats were without sending a group of humans to investigate. He didn't expect any of them to survive, they are just rats after all, even if there are thousands of them. It would be nice to know how much damage they caused though.

On a slightly brighter note the flying recon team did manage to locate a couple of small groups of three and seven people respectively. After which a group of wolf riders, as they began calling themselves, was dispatched to guide them in. Oddly out of both groups he only got one new mage and that was a life mage. Carver and Addam got two new apprentices each though, while Maribel just got one. The rest rather predictable became warriors, although now there is a rather extensive training course which has been established do to constantly having to train new recruits and get them up to speed. Part of the reason he hasn't reclaimed the smaller underground training area is that it's perfect for beginner groups to hone their skills and improve their confidence before being tossed into the deep end, figuratively speaking, and participating in the mock battles or even tournaments.

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It was nice to see that at least some of his plans were paying off. As much as he wanted to step up his control of the surrounding area, he knew that he still wasn't ready. Although, he had long since stopped fearing for his own personal safety and the safety of those within his sanctuary. He wasn't overconfident, he told himself, he just had faith in the ability of his creatures. The fact that the human army could reasonably handle an army of equal size didn't hurt either. That and the largest army he had yet fought, not counting goblins, only consisted of a few thousand individuals which he could easily whittle down to a number the human army can manage. Not that they could field an army that size every day. one thousand years isn't that much time in the grand scheme of things after all. he estimated that those with a reproductive rate similar to humans might have as much as 20 or 30 thousand members. While elves with their extremely reduced reproductive rate would be lucky to have 10 thousand members. Meaning that the last attack they launched against the sanctuary likely cost them a large chunk of their offensive capabilities, effectively crippling them. The number of goblins though was truly incalculable given that they breed at a rate that would make rabbits jealous and could easily be in the hundreds of thousands if not millions.

Another month and another six expansions later and he now has two flying recon teams. He thought about making them all flying recon teams, but he figured a team on the ground might be able to spot something a team flying overhead wouldn't. The expansions themselves consisted of four to the west and two to the north. He was now almost a fourth of a square Km. As for why he suddenly started expanding north, he didn't really have a good reason. Sure, that is where the current biggest threat is, aside from the dwarves who haven't really been aggressive except for that one frankly pathetic attack, but the main reason is that he just felt like expanding north for a bit.

With the two flying recon teams Cid informs him that they now have an accurate map of the surrounding area up to 100 km away and are working to expand it. They want to at least expand it out to the point where the recon teams managed to get to on foot. Granted it usually took them two weeks to travel that far moving in a single direction whereas the flying recon team is trying to map out the entire area around the sanctuary. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, they haven't found any camps or other settlements they didn't already know about. The fact that they've managed to explore so far does give him an idea though. The other human city was too far away to send a recon team to but with them being able to fly now they might be able to explore it and bring back anything useful. He doesn't want to give direct orders to the recon team after giving the humans control over their own affairs so instead he suggests through Cid that they send one of the flying recon teams down to the other city. He suggests they take several of the health potions and a few regen potions just in case. As for what to bring back he suggests looking for books or any other documents so they can reclaim as much of their history as possible. Besides the mind needs stimulation as well, not just the body, and the books they have almost everyone who can read has already read twice sometimes three times. With the promise of new reading material, they soon depart to the cheers of a group of noncombatants that had gathered to wish them luck. After all, despite everything else this would still be the first time a human had set foot in one of their ancient cities in over a hundred years.

For the first time in a while, he finds himself with nothing to really focus on. In this state he found his mind wandering towards the various spawners he now had access to. He had to admit to being curious about what the next, and he suspected final, upgrade would bring. whatever it was it was it had to be good being the most expensive upgrade yet by a lot. The question is, did he dare find out when the next spawner was surely just an expansion or two away. There was of course another thing to consider, which is what if he never gets another spawner. As unlikely as it seems he can't reject the idea outright. After all, when this all started he got a spawner almost every time he expanded and yet now, he is lucky to get a new spawner every six months or so despite still expanding at least once a week. It's easy to fallow that pattern and conclude that he will eventually get his last spawner if he hasn't already. There had to be a reason it was possible to buy spawners he concluded. The first few free spawners must be to help a dungeon get up and running. He suspects that most 'normal' dungeons, if they exist in this world, don't have the steady supply of mana that he has enjoyed. Remembering how he used to think ordinary lizards gave a lot of mana causes him to mentally shudder.

He goes back and forth for a while over whether to expand or upgrade one of the spawners. Upgrading one of the spawners costs only slightly less than a single expansion which is why he's hesitant to spend the mana on it. As much as he wants to expand, he has been curious about the next expansion for a while now. Level 10 feels important but that's also why he has avoided getting it. A lot of his creatures seem uncannily intelligent and given the current circumstances with the state of the world he doesn't want to spawn anything that would have human level intelligence. Putting aside the moral implications of an intelligent being forced to do your bidding, he isn't sure how the humans would respond or how it would respond to the humans. True intelligence implies a certain level of free will after all.

At the end of the day, he decided to bite the bullet and get the upgrade. He decided to upgrade the rat spawner since he hadn't done anything with it in .. well .. years at this point. What he got was not what he was expecting. In fact, of all the thousands of things he considered that he could have gotten, up to and including intelligent rat people, what he actually got never even crossed his mind. He got another rat spawner which was automatically placed in his inventory until he decided were to place it in the world. For a moment he thought about the likelihood of the other spawners being the same. The other spawners did all unlock auto spawning at level 2 after all. Suddenly struck with a bit of inspiration he decided to open the spawner shop and look at the cost of a rat spawner, as he did he noticed that the cost of the level 10 upgrade was exactly half that of buying a spawner from the shop. He guesses that is to incentives upgrading spawners you have instead of buying new ones. Clearly there is an intelligence at work here. Which is kind of obvious now that he thinks about it. A system this complex doesn't just happen after all. Shacking his nonexistent head to brush away such thoughts he places the new rat spawner just outside the northern wall of the town hall turned palace. To his dismay it is currently setting at level one. Not entirely unexpected though he was hoping it would already be at level 9. He spends a few weeks getting it up to level 9 and finds that it is exactly the same as the 'parent' spawner. Still, he has effectively doubled the rats spawn rate. He does wonder if a fresh store-bought rat spawner would be different, just not enough to actually find out. He has other plans for now. A wicked smile creeps across his nonexistent face as he focuses on the spider spawner. He's tired of playing defense. While he still doesn't want to commit to any major offensive, especially against an enemy stronghold and certainly not against possible enemy dungeons that have had so much longer to beef up security. He is however looking forward to clearing out the last of the camps that are relatively nearby. The ones on the surface anyway, he still intends to try and rescue any human slaves held by the dwarves, but is reluctant to attack a major dwarven city just yet.