Now that he finally feels comfortable expanding north and south, he is ecstatic to find out what he might get. After all, 342 square meters is a lot of area to acquire in one purchase and that's just the surface. In fact, he feels the same as he did the first time he expanded past one of the prebuilt walls. He also feels almost like he is leaving his island home for the first time. It doesn't help that the stone paths actually make the area he is in now feel kind of like an island. Either way he takes a metaphorical deep breath and buys the expansion. Turns out the stone path was actually a path. He had been a little worried he had misinterpreted the evidence. The stones path is five meters wide with another wall on the other side with a series of three gates. He suspects that they lead to mansions similar to the one in his starting area. It wouldn't make sense for there to be multiple libraries and bath houses this close together after all. That alone rules out it being an exact mirror image of what he already has. He also doesn't see the poor getting their own private wall, Hince why he thinks a series of three mansions await him to the north.

As he looks around waiting for his mana to build up again, he can't help but note that his gamble actually worked. Infact with his new really giant spiders he is arguably even stronger than he was during the last attack despite not yet having the same raw numbers. As much as he wants to, he avoids blocking the stone path by placing a walls on it connecting his old wall with the new one further north. He reasons that the humans will need that path sooner or later, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Checking in on Yangus he finds that the mansion is mostly finished. The first floor is done, and the second floor is well over half done. At this rate people will be moving in, or at least it will be ready for people to move in after another week or so. He isn't about to force anyone to move to the mansion, but he had intended the room they now occupy to be for general bulk storage. Judging by the last expansion though Yangus may be really busy really soon which should end in people having much more personal space than they do now. That alone he figures will help morale more than almost anything else. After all he can still remember the change in morale from him just giving them private rooms, and those didn't even have a door at first.

Musings on the future housing situation aside he turns his attention to the four amigos who have all graduated to blunted weapons. Watching them fight you'd forget that their all just children. Even Siobhan the 'adult' of the group is only 9 years old. She still wins against the three warriors most of the time but it's getting closer to a 50/50 win lose rate every day. Lily the healer is always eager to treat any bruises. He spends the rest of the day watching them and Marveling at their progress.

The next day he decided to check out his new favorite duo. Lulu and the shadow mage were actually starting to learn how to fight as a team. They no longer got in each other's way. In fact, it won't be long he thinks until they actually start helping each other. Already it is taking Three melee fighters to even pose a challenge and he can't wait to see what they are capable of when they actually start working together instead of just staying out of each other's way. He spends most of the day watching them until they stop to eat. They're definitely going to be his ace in the whole if they learn to combine their talents. After the meal he spends the rest of the day watching the farmer tend the crops, not that they need much tending thanks to the mana infusion and his troops making sure pests never reach the plants. The farmers tasks mainly involve harvesting and in the case of wheat replanting. Still, he seems happy to be doing what he's doing.

The following day he went back to watching the mock battles. They had started to hold them on the surface recently. However, instead of holding them in the field where he thought they would they decided to try and protect against an 'actual attack'. Half of them stood just outside the old wall while the other half moved to the other side of the new wall. There must be some holes in the wall he can't see because shortly after leaving his perception the attackers must have split up and half went to the far right gate and half went to the far left gate. After a few minutes he realizes what's happening. In a real battle you're not always going to know where the enemy is coming from or what their group will consist of. It's actually a brilliant training tool he has to admit. As for the rules instead of just touching the wall the attackers have to actually get someone inside the gate to win. The attack begins from the far right and the air mages of the defenders use wind magic to slow their approach and try to keep them off balance. They do have more powerful spells but those aren't the kind you wield against friends and allies even in a full combat training exercise. As the defenders are dealing with the five melee fighters that emerged from the far right two fire mages and two melee fighters appear from the far left. They nearly succeed in storming the gate, but the defenders manage to notice in time and are able to drive them back towards the remains of the group from the right. The defenders then begin to push them back even further when another melee fighter appears from the left gate and begins sneaking his way across. With the defenders focused on driving back the attackers he actually makes it all the way to the gate without being noticed. In fact, it isn't until the attackers are 'defeated' that they realize they had already lost a long time ago. After the battle they discuss what happened and how instead of driving the attackers back they were the ones being lured away from the gate. The biggest issue and the one that a few of them had a hard time accepting was not just that they had gotten overconfident after dealing with the fake sneak attack, but that the sneak attack itself was a fake out to begin with. That evening after everyone has had time to rest they go for another round this time with the roles reversed. The attackers divide themselves into three equal groups this time. The defenders, quickly notice that the attackers are a man down. Having just used this strategy aren't lured away from the gate and so are ready when the last guy tries to sneak past. After a brief discussion the defenders acknowledge that they anticipated the sneak attack because they knew the attackers were a man short. This prompts them to make the number of attackers random each time.

That morning He has Cid talk to some of the mages about the possibility of combination spells. After all they should be able to add air to fire in order to strengthen it. He has a few of them go down to the large arena which doesn't get used much these days so they can practice combining spells without accidentally destroying stuff. The first few times the spells just counteract each other but he knew it wouldn't be simple.

Leaving them alone to practice he turns his attention to really giant spiders "I should really look up what they're actually called" he thinks before dismissing the idea. He likes his name for them even if it is a bit to on the nose. He does briefly consider how silly their name will be once the spider spawner has a few more upgrades, assuming the established pattern holds. In fact, the one reason he hasn't upgraded the spawner aside from it taking a significant chunk of mana he could be using to expand is that he doesn't yet have the space to be dealing with spiders the size of small houses. Bringing his attention back to the Really giant spiders he focuses on their patrol route. He had the ones in the north stop so the humans could do their mock battles. He thought about having them wait at the side of his territory and resume patrolling once they were gone but he doesn't have enough control yet to issue multiple precise orders at once. So instead, he has them and they're really big spider escorts patrol along the inside of the wall since they can easily climb it if something needs to be dealt with. Their amazing hearing isn't really hampered by things like walls being in the way, as such they are still very much useful.

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That afternoon he once again turns to watching another mock battle. It's the closest thing to an action movie he's likely to see for a while outside of actual battles. He can tell that they're getting really good. When they first picked up their weapons, they looked like a bunch of toddlers just learning to walk. Now though they did things that several months ago he would have sworn was impossible, and with such ease too. That may be an oversimplification, but the point is their progress is staggering.

That night he actually pondered sending them to rescue more slaves. Their progress was such that he trusted them to succeed. The only problem was that he didn't actually know where any slaves were. Well, that and he was still a bit uneasy about potentially kicking a hornet's nest so to speak. If he wants to make this world safe for humans he's going to have to go on the offensive eventually though, so why not now. First, he needs intel. For this he sends a three-man team first thing in the morning. They are to go out and look for signs of other humans with orders to only engage if they are alone. The group will be staggered with the leader being up front. Then another warrior holds back a ways in case of ambush. Finally, the third hangs back even farther in case of a secondary ambush while the second guy is helping the first. Is the plan a little paranoid . . . yes. Cid certainly seems to think so. Is it going to end up saving their lives . . .. possibly. At any rate he wants to make sure at least one of them can make it back. The reason being so he knows where to send the others, and ruffly how many to send. It'll probably be a while before they find something since the odds of stumbling across another group of humans, enslaved or not, on their first recon mission is astronomical. Still, you never know. They travel south so as to not interrupt the fighting between the orcs and the dwarves.

With that taken care of he expands to the south. Partly so they have slightly less distance to travel if they have to retreat but mostly because he was going to expand south anyway. With this expansion he gets the other side of the stone path which he has begun referring to as a street because it resembles as street and street is easier to say than stone path. He also gets a boar spawner. Hey, a new spawner. Which he immediately upgrades to level two. The boar that stepped out is around 70kg. That doesn't seem impressive, but the spawner is still just level two and wild boar were some of the fiercest animals on earth. Aside from that BACON or at the very least ham. He isn't sure if they have a concept of bacon and eggs here, but he is sure they'll love it if they don't. Plus, bacon grease can be used to make so many things. He is quick to tell Cid that they may harvest the boars for meat and leather, and they are delighted to have a source of meat besides chicken. Now stepping back, he realizes that he was so focused on the spawner he almost overlooked something very important. There is no wall to the south, which means whatever is there is either outside the city or they didn't feel it deserved its own wall. Which isn't to say they left it undefended since there is still the possibility of an outside wall around the entire city.

After a little time has passed, he decides to upgrade the spawner again, "might as well get the new team up to snuff" he reasons. What comes out of the spawner is around 230kg with 35cm long razor-sharp tusks. "That's quiet the leap in power" he thinks to himself part of him kind of hoping this isn't going to be similar to the spider spawner were they just get bigger and bigger. Since he spent half a day longer than he needed to letting his mana build up before buying the expansion he has enough for one more upgrade. It doesn't produce anything new, so he focuses on the spawner and sees that it increased the spawn rate from one every four hours to one ever three hours. He also sees that the new boars are actually called dagger tooth boar.

The rest of the day he just watches more mock battles. The next day however he has his southern scouts go out as far as they dare to keep an eye out for the returning recon team. He doesn't want the scouts going too far but in case the recon team needed to retreat he wants to know what's coming before it gets here. Also, they may have wounded that need tending to. Either among themselves or among a group of humans they rescued. After that he goes back to watching more mock battles.

He starts off the next morning by monitoring the two mages he asked to work on combining their spells. They have gotten to a point so the spells don't cancel each other out but they still aren't combining. He has an idea about that, sending Cid to go talk to them he asks the fire mage to produce a wall of flame. Then he has the air mage try to blow air through the wall of flame. At first nothing happens. The mages explain through Cid that air magic is weak against fire magic. Logan just has the air mage keep trying and asks him to slowly increase the amount of force he uses with each attempt. Suddenly after what felt like an eternity there is a ripple in the flame wall. The next burst of air magic causes it to bulge out making a tiny but noticeable bubble. By this point both mages are too exhausted to continue but at least now they have a direction to focus on and soon they will have a foundation on which to build other spell combinations.

After the meal He watches his new favorite duo. They still haven't learned any combination spells but then he isn't sure if that's even possible with them as unlike fire and air where one is weak to the other light and shadow are literally polar opposites. Still, they have learned to cover for each other's weaknesses. Also, their ability to summon both weapons and shields from thin air means they will never be caught unarmed. It's been less than a month but already the way they dance around each other while fighting it's like they can read each other's minds.

The following day he decides to check on Yangus and sees him working on the roof of the boarding house. Soon enough it will be finished, and he can get to work making the actual furnishings. He has Cid ask him how much he has left to do after the roof, and he finds out that Yangus is far from finished. All total he'll need to make 36 beds, 36 small chests, 36 door locks, a receptionist's desk, as many small tables as he can fit and still have room for people to walk around, and several chairs. He even has a plan to ask Carver about some locks for the chests just in case an invading army gets past the wooden door locks. The wooden door locks are more for peace of mind than actual security after all. He even has plans to ask Maribel about wrapping one of the chairs in leather to make a receptionist seat.

After that he spends the rest of the day watching more mock battles. The 'attackers' are very creative and always trying to come up with ways to either trick the defenders or brute force their way through. As everyone heads to bed for the night, he realizes that he has enough mana to expand. Going north he's pretty sure he knows what he'll get, and it'll take a few expansions to get it all, but he'll have a lot more housing in the end. Then again there is always the possibility that he could be wrong. There is also the matter of the wall to the north were as the south doesn't have a wall. The south is also completely new since it doesn't follow any established pattern, so he has no idea what to expect. The question then is north or south?