The recon team sent down to the caverns spent several hours looking around before deciding that it was "probably safe" to send Adam and his apprentices to mine. Logan still encouraged them to send a few warriors with them anyway, just in case. The recon team had reported a few iron nodes, but they were a pretty good distance down into the mine. Logan wasn't sure how he could be so certain without mining some, but he didn't argue. "It's probably just a magic thing anyway" he figured. Now that he had a steady source of iron, he could start making some serious changes. He didn't want to get ahead of himself and become overconfident but one of the things holding him back was the lack of a reliable supply of metal. Now he could afford to 'waste' metal on things like plates, bowls, cups, and eating utensils. Stone and wood had worked until now, but metal was just so much better. In fact, he had decided long ago that metal cooking pots were a necessity in order to cook enough food fast enough. He also made sure to pass on to Cid the idea of metal cooking utensils with leather handles to protect the cook's hand from the heat. It should work much better than the wooden cooking utensils they were using now, especially when dealing with open flames. Cid was of course only too happy to pass along this knowledge. He also had Cid speak with Carver and Adam about putting a layer of metal between the stone and wood from now on. He didn't bother going back and redoing existing houses. His hope was that after noticing it in a few houses the enemy would assume all the houses were the same. "Another step towards being properly civilized" he thought as he redoubled his efforts to make sure the next generation grew up without fear and without having to grow up before they've even had a chance to be a kid.
As the days turned into weeks, he found himself torn between watching the mock battles which were now reaching an epic scale and waiting to see what the miners managed to collect. He Also managed to grab four more expansions which surprisingly still felt like unwrapping a Christmas present. He had worried that he would start to grow bored with it after a while, but that doesn't seem to be happening. He still enjoys the thrill of discovery what he gets with each expansion. He was going to get a fifth expansion, but he had another idea. If his plan works like he thinks it will, he may actually want more large birds. So, with that in mind he goes ahead and buys two more upgrades for the bird spawners. This in turn gave him access to the giant variants of the raven and black eagle with 4- and 10-meter wing spans respectively. This was not entirely unexpected given the giant crow he had gotten earlier but he was kinda hoping for a magical bird of some kind like a thunderbird or Phoenix. Still the giant black eagle was plenty large enough to be ridden. This meant that, in theory, he could expand his area of influence. He was still careful about going to high or too far, not wanting to draw to much attention too soon. What the giant black eagle also allowed him to do was act more quickly in the areas he could already influence. Instead of taking weeks to reach the elf camp, assuming it even still existed, he could get there and back in only a few days. By having recon teams pair up with giant black eagles, they could survey more area much faster. It would also be much more accurate because it wouldn't be weeks old by the time it reached the head office of the town hall which had been converted into a makeshift thrown room. The recon teams were all out right now, but he calculated that there would be enough black eagles spawned for one, maybe two, recon teams to mount up by the time they got back. Assuming of course that they actually can ride them. Getting on is one thing, staying on mid-flight is something else entirely. To help with that he had Cid ask Maribel about making some saddles. Figuring she would need to take a few measurements, assuming she even could, he had the black eagle walk to her shop. It was now that he appreciated all the open space throughout the town. He couldn't have it simply fly over to her shop because it needed a sizable area to land and the roads where only five meters wide compared to its ten-meter wingspan.
He still had more upgrades he could add to the spawner so there was still the possibility of a magic bird of some type. For now, though he decided to move on. He would get those upgrades eventually but for now he had what he wanted. Besides he wanted to give the spawner time to actually spawn several of them before adding more things for it to spawn. In the meantime, he waited to see what kind of saddle Maribel would come up with. "Did they even have saddles in this world?" That question alone forced him to acknowledge just how little he knew about Thana even after all these years. Granted it hadn't actually been that many years, but he still felt like he should know more than he does. Cid isn't much help though as even Joel the resident elder barely remembers living in a human city as a child. Nobody remembers a time when the humans had multiple cities much less the need to travel between them, but Logan figures they must have at some point. It was all academic anyway since he didn't expect Maribel to know how to make one all the sudden even if they did exist at some point. He just wondered if he was introducing another new concept or reintroducing an old one. Either way he decided to just describe, through Cid, what he wanted and leave her to figure it out. Ideally it needed to prevent the rider from falling out while still allowing mages and, eventually, archers to attack, all without limiting the birds range of motion.
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Another month past while the humans toiled away at the tasks they had been given, during which time he managed to get six expansions back towards the east. Yangus and Carter were having the same issue Logan had which is to say that any string strong enough to hold a useful amount of potential energy would either snap the wood they were using for a bow, or the bow would be so thick aiming would be impossible. "Clearly there must be a certain kind of wood needed that simply didn't grow here or perhaps anywhere on this world" he said to himself. Not that he necessarily believed that, but he couldn't see any other reason for the failures plus there was the fact that archery never came about here despite the relative technology being at a point where it should be commonplace. He gently nudged Cid to go and suggest Carver try experimenting with the strange metal the elf armor is made of. Perhaps combining it with iron will produce an alloy capable of doing what a bow made from the material would need it to do. He doubts it will be that simple, but he is confident the solution will end up being a metal alloy of some kind. Unfortunately, the only metal he has a ready supply of at the moment is iron. He isn't even sure at this moment if other metals even exist here. Five years ago the very idea of a world lacking basic elements would have seem preposterous, then again five years ago he would have placed the whole idea of other worlds, magical creatures, and magic in general firmly in the realm of make believe.
Maribel on the other hand is making significant leaps in progress. She has a basic design laid out already. It resembles a horse saddle like the kind you'd find in competitive rodeos, but with a raised area along the back and side that is just tall enough to prevent someone accidentally falling out while being short enough to allow them to cast spells or, eventually, shoot arrows behind them. The tricky part, according to Maribel, was getting the saddle to stay in place without hindering the wings in any way. In the end it all worked out and all that's left is to actually build them. Well, that and letting the recon teams get used to the idea, as well as the sensation, of flying. Logan thought about suggesting two person saddles but decided against it. The birds being part of the sanctuary will return to the sanctuary instinctively and if they run into anyone out on recon missions they can simply land and inform them of which direction to go. Once a person or group is located, they could even send a group on foot to meet up with them and guide them in.
The following month consisted of Maribel actually making the saddles as well as various members of the recon teams getting used to riding the birds by taking laps around the perimeter of the sanctuary. The hardest part it turns out was actually forming the bond. That way they could leave the sanctuary without him having to specifically send them out. It was hard because while bonds can be encouraged they can't be forced. Logan also acquired five more expansions during that same time, but the focus right now was on increasing the sanctuaries effective range. They started slow, just taking off and landing. By the end of that month, they at least made it to a point where they no longer looked nervous while riding the birds. At least according to Cid who although he can see the boarder can also see through it. It did mean that they were a recon team short while one of the teams was getting use to riding but Logan believed the increased mobility would be worth it in the end.
Carver unfortunately wasn't having any luck with any of the ratios he tried. This wasn't too surprising though since he only had the two hard metals to work with. What he needs is a way to make the metal more flexible, or indeed able to flex without losing its shape. Logan can only hope that one of Adams apprentices turned miner stumbles across a soft metal like aluminum or tin. As it is all he can do is wait and wish that he had some advice to give. Unfortunately, he was never into archery and so doesn't know a thing about Bows aside from their general shape and a very basic idea of how to use one. Now that he thinks about it though, action movies probably aren't the best source of reliable information so he may know even less about bows than he thought.