He decides to practice a little bit, so he studies one of the bricks that Carver made. Focusing on it very intently he slowly begins to disassemble it. Before he even realizes what he is doing, he has completely disassembled the entire stone brick cause it to crumble into sand right there on the spot. Now he tries reassembling it which doesn't work. What he can do is create an exact duplicate of that stone brick right down to the most minute detail. He can also create as many copies of that brick as he has materiel available, which he does by creating a pile of bricks in less time than it would have taken him to mold a few extremely crude bricks by hand. Carver was very grateful and began actual construction of the furnace part of the smithy. Logan is not sure that the stone can actually handle the heat required so he sends Cid to ask about it. Carver assures them that before he fires it up for the first time, he will use a basic rune to increase the heat resistant property of the structure as a whole. Well, he is the professional, so Logan leaves him to it.

Next, he moves underground and creates some torches along the walls, luckily thanks to the woodcutters and the fact that these torches never burn out he has plenty of wood. He then looks in on Maribel but there isn't a whole lot he can do to help there since every piece needs to be custom made. Finally, he carves out as many more rooms as he can fit on the first floor of the underground area. This time he creates the doors before the room is needed.

Everything is running like clockwork, which is great, but Logan is bored. It will be at least another day before he can expand again even with all the invader mana he is getting from this morning's expansion. With nothing else to do he turns his attention to the original four. He watches as Joel trains some of the younger folks by teaching them some basics on how to fight. As he watched them sparring, he could pick out flaws in their form which Joel apparently also caught as he would sometimes point them out. Other times he would let them learn the hard way, by allowing their sparring partner to take full advantage of the flaw. Siobhan is one of his students and is among the top of the class from what he saw. Lulu is simultaneously practicing her magic and teaching what little she knows to the few who are magically inclined. Cid is still quietly keeping an eye out for the intruder Logan sensed earlier. He is tempted to upgrade one of the spawners, but he wants to at least get the rest of the library just in case there are a few books left in there. He thought about asking Cid to have a few people check the rest of the library, but he doesn't want to distract him to much while he is busy keeping watch on everything. Besides the city will be his eventually so there isn't any real rush at the moment.

As bored as he was at the moment, he was smart enough to know that it can't last forever, so he decided to try his best not to jinx it by wishing for something to happen. Instead, he relaxed and just let time pass even though he'd rather be doing anything else. After an agonizingly long wait of not having any way to distract himself or occupy his mind he finally has enough to expand again. This time he actually did manage to find a couple of books, one of the books was labelled as being an 'introduction to magic'. As much as he didn't like reading, this was knowledge that he would need, and he figured not reading it would be like carrying a sword and choosing not to use it in battle. It mostly just contained a list of magic disciplines and some basic information about each. Still, he now knew magic was divided into 9 disciplines. They are fire, water, air, earth, lightning, life, light, shadow, and force, the one he had mistakenly called telekinesis. There was even a brief description of each as well as a few basic low-level spells for each school. The first five were pretty self-explanatory even to someone who knew absolutely nothing about magic like Logan. Though he did decide to refer to lightning as electricity to help him understand what it was and how it was used. Likewise, he decided he would continue to refer to force magic as telekinesis since it was basically applying a force using only mental energy or mana. Light delt with creating and manipulating light. The book mainly talked about light mages creating a soft glow to help illuminate dark areas or creating light-based imitations of actual swords and shields. He had to wonder though what would happen if they took that soft glow and condensed it down and focused it on a tiny area. Shadow was the opposite dealing with removing light and oddly enough adding darkness even in a well lit room. The book mainly talked about shadow mages hiding in and manipulating shadows. The last one was Life and dealt with restoration magics. The book mainly talked about life mages taking jobs as healers and about how they cured disease, healed injuries, and could counteract most poisons. The other book was labelled introduction to alchemy. It was, as the name suggested, basically a beginners guide to alchemy. It talked about the various equipment alchemists used and how to prepare magical ingredients even giving some examples of basic herbs. As Well as a basic description of rune crafting and how each line of a rune has a specific purpose. At the end of the book was a section title potion crafting basics which went over a list of low-level healing, antidote, and resistance potions. It seems potions can have slightly different effects based on the ingredients used. He guessed whoever took the other books considered the knowledge in these too basic to bother with saving. It was a long shot, but he was still hoping that there was a collection of human knowledge hidden somewhere out there. He had Cid tell Lulu about the books so she could go and collect them. He would have had Cid go get them himself, but there was still the matter of the life force that was unaccounted for.

Lulu, being entirely self-taught, was delighted to have the book. Turns out nobody ever bothered searching the library because they just assumed anything of value had already been removed. The alchemy book was given to Allyson, who seemed to have a genuine thirst for knowledge. She was also very timid and shy, preferring to be alone with her thoughts, so spending time alone in a room studying was just right for her. Logan couldn't understand how anyone could want to spend the majority of their time alone, but he was glad that everyone seemed to be finding their own little space. He wanted to give her tools to work with but most of the equipment required very specifically shaped glass. What he could do, after studying the now empty glass vial dropped by the female orc a While back, was create the glass vials to hold the potions once she is done. At least he could if he had access to glass. There wasn't really much she could do without equipment, but she could at least practice a few of the less dangerous runes. Lulu's magic class on the other hand was progressing smoothly now that everyone was able to grasp the fundamentals. They would soon hit a wall with what they could learn from the book but at least some progress was being made for now, and with a greater understanding of the basics they have a much better chance of learning higher tier spells on their own.

He watched them practice and started to see which discipline of magic they were best suited for as some spells where obviously much easier for them than others. From the looks of it the group contained three fire mages, two air mages, a life mage, and a shadow mage. Lulu seemed to be the only light mage. The life mage was particularly welcome because a good healer is always required at some point. He is sure the others will come in handy as well but being able to keep people alive and heal minor day to day injuries makes the life mage invaluable to the continued prosperity of the community that has formed here.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The next morning Carver fired up his forge for the first time. It would still be a while before he had a proper smithy going, but at least now he could get started making all the equipment needed. Logan would have Cid ask him about making glass later once his smithy got going. Allyson would just have to wait a little longer, assuming Carver could do it at all. Smithing and glass blowing were not the same thing on earth, but earth didn't have real actual magic as far as he knew. He watched fascinated as Carver set about making the things he would need to do his smithing properly. As he watched he idly wondering how much magic would be involved.

Later that day he expanded again, this time he was certain he had gotten most of the rest of the library. After all "how big could the library actually be right?". He did manage to find a few romance novels and some novels that were more action packed. He even found a few fantasy novels including one were magic didn't exist, it was comical to him because the author seemed to think technology couldn't exist without magic. He guessed that would be a common enough opinion for those you'd never known a world without magic. In the end however there was nothing he could actually use.

To take his mind off the fact that he hadn't found anything useful he decided that a second sparing arena would be needed. This one would be longer and narrower than the other. It would also be turned ninety degrees and set up more for magic duels. He planned for there to be lots of things for them to hide behind. He also brought down some water mantises to fill a small trench along the edge just in case the fire magic got out of hand. This would also be good practice for the resident life mage since unlike physical weapons there was only so much you could do to dull a magical attack. He didn't want them hurting each other but he also knew if they were ever going to seriously improve, they needed to actually practice in as close to real combat as he could make it while minimizing the risk of serious injury. Being the most complex room he had ever designed, with each centimeter being painstakingly carved by his will, it took him a couple of days to actually make it. There were multiple columns and a few walls to hide behind as well as some elevation changes, which given his limitations at the moment basically just meant a few small one to one and a half meter hills, some including sheer drops that formed what he had begun calling a baby cliff on one side or the other. He suddenly wanted to make a huge sparing arena for teams of people but that would have to wait until he had enough room.

He was thinking about what else he could do right now to help the humans become self-sufficient when he felt a mental tug from Cid. Apparently, the scouts that were out had noticed a group of elves to the south of the city. It seems they had been searching for their escaped slaves for a while when the smoke from Carver's smithy drew them here. It's likely that without Carver's smithy it would have taken them much longer to find them, but what's done is done. They would be here within a few hours. He ordered most of his creatures to take up positions while staying hidden, then he asked Cid to get everyone underground. They would be helping defend the sanctuary someday but today is not that day despite their protests. Besides, they would be his ace in the hole if everything else failed. At least that's what he told them, although he wasn't sure how many more times that line would work. In truth, he had designed it so that anyone entering the underground area would do so via the secondary stairs hopefully bypassing where the humans are completely. This was his ultimate failsafe to protect the humans under his care.

Logan was expecting little 2 foot tall bearded people with pointy green hats, pointy green shoes, and pointy ears. Instead, they were roughly human sized and aside from the ears, and extremely pale complexion could be mistaken for human. It suddenly made more sense how they were able to capture humans. There wasn't nearly as many of them as there was in the last group of orcs he fought, but they seemed significantly more intelligent. Most infuriating of all was that not a single one fell for his traps. He sent out his wasps to poison them, but they had healers who were adept at treating various poisons. He then sent the snakes to try and overwhelm the healers. That worked but not nearly to the extent that he had hoped it would. Between the fire magic burning the wasps and earth magic crushing the snakes the fight was not going well. The quantum wasps did give them some trouble but the thing about fire is you don't need to be precise when aiming. Continuing the theme, he sent out the spiders to both poison them and try to wrap them in silk threads. Slowly he noticed the elves start taking out vials of what he guessed where antidote potions, possibly in an attempt to help the healers conserve energy. This was what Logan had been hoping for and he had a few rats that were hidden nearby steal a few of the potions. They would be delivered to Allyson for study while Logan used his dire rats and lightning rats to prevent the elves from giving chase to get the potions back. After acquiring a few more potion samples of various kinds he unleashed the horde. The elves were both more agile and more adaptable than the orcs but the slow relentless assault was Gradually starting to take its toll. He watched as the first elf to fall had his throat ripped open by a dire rat. With that, the tide of battle shifted as one by one the elves had their throats ripped out or their stomach ripped open. Suddenly one of the elves pulls out a large glass vial which looks different from the others. She then proceeds to throw it into the midst of one of my large dire rat swarms, killing those rats instantly. The elves were apparently not quite as finished as he had thought. Logan wasn't out of tricks either. He wanted to get his hands on one of those magic grenades, at least that's what he is calling them. The next time the elf went to use one of them he had one of his telekinetic snakes catch it in midair and take it safely to the makeshift alchemy lab. Allyson would be plenty busy for a while. He wanted to see if they had any more tricks, but this battle was already costing him more troops than he deemed acceptable given the number of invaders he was facing. With a thought he sent in the vampire snakes to wrap things up once and for all, ordering them to target the healers. They tried to fight back but between the vampire snakes stealing their very energy and the dire rats and lightning rats keeping their friends occupied the fight didn't last much longer.

In the aftermath he studied a few sets of elven armor of various sizes. He figured Carver could make alterations to get the fit exactly right and it would still be better than his crude attempts at making armor from scratch. The problem was that the elven armor was apparently made of orichalcum which he didn't seem to have. While he isn't sure if it's stronger than iron or by how much if it is he does know that his skill is very specific. He can't just swap out another material unless he first studies another piece of armor made from that other material. Even then he would need to study an entire set of armor made from that other material in order to make a full set from it.

He has Cid give the all clear and tells him to have a few people collect whatever they can from the elves. Allyson is ecstatic to finally have something to study but she reminds Cid that she can't actually study anything without proper equipment. Luckily Carver says he can make the equipment she needs, but it is a lengthy process requiring multiple steps so it will probably take a few days to make the first piece and close to two weeks to make a complete alchemy set. He also went on about how the temperature of the fire had to be just right and the mixture of sand and other minerals had to be perfect for the glass parts and so on and so forth. Logan kinda zoned out for a while if he was to be completely honest. Since all he really cared about was that Carver could do it and was willing to, he figured that he didn't really need to know the details.