With everyone back his mana generation once again ramps up. With it he quickly gains enough mana for an extension. The next eastward expansion doesn't get him anything he wasn't expecting. It also fails to answer whether he is close to the edge of the town or not, but he kind of figured it would take several more expansions to answer that question. He allows everyone to rest up for several days. He'd like to send them right back out, but people aren't machines. They need breaks. After about five days though he decides they've rested enough. He sends beta team to check on the kobold camp, while alpha team heads west. He hasn't really been keeping as close an eye on the western area as he should. He doubts the dwarves will build a camp above ground but in truth he knows nothing about actual dwarves.
The next day he expands again and goes on to gets another two expansions while waiting for one of the two recon teams to return. This gets him the rest of most of the building foundations he had been acquiring. He has already made up his mind that he is going to continue expanding east for a while because he wants them to actually use the farm which they won't do while it's so close to the edge. Shortly after gaining the last of those three expansions beta team returns with news. There are only around 24 kobolds and just 3 slaves. It seems they no longer have the manpower to properly maintain it, but their pride won't let them give it up. A situation Logan realizes is easily exploitable. He doubts even their pride will force them to send more kobold to be slaughtered indefinitely but he's going to take advantage of the opportunity to whittle down their numbers while he can. To that end he organizes another rescue party.
He doesn't want to send everyone this time because he doesn't feel like it's necessary. He does send around 50 melee fighters and 10 mages though, combined with their lesser wolf companions it should be more than enough to deal with 24 kobold. He still sends the recon team with the rescue team since they have the most recent firsthand knowledge of the area, and thus are best suited to actually guide people once there.
While that's going on he doesn't fail to notice recon team alpha isn't back yet. He is hoping this means that the dwarves are still right where they were the last time he explored west. While waiting for news from either team he gains another two expansions. This gets him the rest of the building foundations he partially owned but doesn't let him know if that is the edge of town yet or not. It hardly matters though as he's already made up his mind to continue expanding east for now, so he'll have his answer soon enough. He does take this time to look over his territory though. There is a lot of things that need to be rebuilt, which is tough when nobody has any idea what most of it was supposed to be. It shouldn't take too long though as there is now an entire team of people with the woodworking skill. He also takes note of the number of women who have gotten pregnant in the last few months, surprisingly a few of them already had a kid. Speaking of children Jankin and a few of the other babies in his age group were already crawling around causing no end of worry for their parents. They know that none of the animals will harm them as they all belong to the sanctuary, but that isn't the only hazard for babies just learning to get around on their own. He has also asked the people not currently in a relationship to stay in either the boarding houses or the newly rebuilt soldier's bunkhouse to save the houses for families. He is slightly worried that some of the couples may be related and are just not aware of it but there isn't anything he can do about that. Allyson and her knew apprentice are eagerly performing experiments on some of the samples that were brought back. Exactly how the 'magic grenades' are made is still a bit of a mystery, but she feels certain it's a mystery she can solve. She is also looking into what appears to be a more potent version of the healing potion.
Coincidentally both teams return almost at the exact same time. Recon team alpha reports that the dwarves appear to have made no attempt to expand this direction, but they stress that they have no way of knowing what is happening underground. The rescue team reports a complete success despite the kobold receiving reinforcements of around seven additional kobold. The good news is those seven kobold brought with them another slave making the total rescued four instead of three. All four of them decide to become warriors after being shown around and realizing what they have accomplished so far. Logan would have thought that at least one would become a mage but he's not about to complain about four new recruits in the growing army. He supposes that it is now big enough to be called an army, even if it's not a particularly large army.
He once again gives the recon teams about five days to recover. When he sends them out again he sends team beta to the other kobold village to check on things there. Mainly he wants to see if the kobold numbers are getting thin everywhere, or if they are just sending fewer supplies to that one camp for whatever reason. Team alpha he sends back down to the new elf camp to see if they've managed to rebuild yet. Having already lost one camp they could either consider this whole area just not worth it or send a massive force to reinforce the camp. One way or another he would soon know.
It'll be at least three weeks or more before he hears from either team. Two weeks is about the limit as to how far away he is willing to send people, even to rescue slaves, because the longer they are away the greater risk they are killed or captured themselves. As much as he wants to save everyone right away, he knows that if he actually tried, he'd lose everything he's built up so far. The last thing he wants is to grow overconfident and overextend his new army.
Taking a moment, he checks in on a few of the craftsmen he hasn't gotten around to talking to in a while. Carver is annoyed to not have anything to work with anymore. He ran out of metal to work with at some point. Logan asked him, through Cid, why he didn't say anything, and he answered that "I didn't want the whole community to be put in danger just to get me some more material to work with.". Logan thinks about it for a moment and slowly realizes that it has been a while since the sanctuary itself was attacked. The goblins didn't really use armor, and the few that did only had a helmet or at most a helmet and chestplate. Carver needed metal to work with there was no way around it. The question was would he find metal ore if he expanded down and if so, how much. He relays his question to Cid who relays it to Carver but neither of them knows how far down metal ore is. Eventually though Logan decided it was a moot point as he didn't want to have to save up for over two years for a single downward expansion. He instead asked Cid to talk to the warriors and had them make sure to grab a few bits of armor to carry back. It ain't much but if everyone grabs a piece of armor every time it should add up. Next up Logan goes to check on Maribel who is in charge of basic clothing as well as leather armor. Although few people, either here or back on earth, would call the silken garments she makes using the spider silk 'basic clothing'. He takes a minute to ask her how she's enjoying her roll and if she needs anything. "Na, I got my freedom, that's more than enough." she says with a smile that suggests there's more to that statement than she's letting on. "I'm just happy to be a part of this" she says making a sweeping gesture with her hands as she spins in place. "Besides leather and silk are both renewable resources so it's not like I'm in danger of running out." she adds quickly. He then turns to the four amigos who although no longer spending all their time together are still together more often than not. They're so mature for their age it's easy to forget just how young they are. He would like to get to know them better, but he also feels like talking about their past could be an emotional minefield. Siobhan has spent a lot of time talking to them though, and Logan is happy they at least have someone they can turn to. Not that he's opposed to the idea of listening to their stories, he just doesn't want to dredge up painful memories. As for right now they seem happy enough and are currently watching a group of babies play. As for Siobhan herself that false bravado she had when they first met has been replaced by a very real desire to ensure the safety and happiness of anyone younger than her.
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After about three weeks Logan had managed to gain 3 expansions. He expanded east not just to get the farm up and running but also because he wanted to see if he was in fact at the edge of the town. That did not appear to be the case, however. Either they were willing to put up with the smell to keep their food supply a little bit safer or they had some form of magical fertilizer that didn't smell. With the latest expansion the farmers felt safe enough to begin slowly transferring crops over to the designated farming area. The orange trees stayed where they were cause moving a tree isn't easy. They did however plant a few more trees near the apple trees in the new farming area. Logan trusted that they knew what they were doing. Recon team alpha returns about three days after the last expansion. They report about 100 elves guarding around 30 human slaves. This gets everyone excited, and they immediately start planning a rescue mission. Eventually they settle on the same plan as last time. He starts to Have Cid voice some concerns but then realizes that since none of the elves survived the last attack in order to report on it the same attack might just work again. Just like last time he gives the 50 dire wolves the same basic orders, kill elves but above all protect the humans.
A week after the rescue team left, he buys another expansion. He had been much closer to getting an expansion but with the rescue team gone it took a little time. This expansion just gets him more foundations, or at least parts of foundations. Only now does he think about the fact that he has no idea what a town in this world actually needs to function as far as infostructure. He doesn't have time to ponder it for very long though as recon team beta just returned. It seems there are just over 50 kobold guarding around 6 humans. From the description the rescue team gave it appears they are having trouble dealing with the goblins that are relatively nearby. The team was able to spot a few signs of recent combat such as injured kobold and burn marks on structures. Now would be the perfect time to strike, except that everyone he could strike with is currently heading towards the elf camp. Well, he does still have some option. It's just not something he's ever tried before. He allows the recon team to rest for a few days but then sends them right back to the kobold camp along with 50 of the monstrous spiders. the spiders he orders to protect the humans and kill anything that isn't human. The hope is that should any kobold survive, it will look like a natural swarm. Hopefully if any do survive, they will just assume the humans were eaten along with their companions. Basically, the only reason he is sending the recon team is to release the human slaves and guide them back to the sanctuary. After all, it's unlikely they would willingly follow a bunch of, from their perspective, wild monster spiders. All he can do now is wait for the results of his two rescue missions.
While he waits, he once again checks in on Yangus who is loving the creative freedom of foundations with no preset form or function for the building that should be on top of them. The team that he now commands allow him to focus on designing new buildings. He says that it allows him to improve his skill by pushing the boundaries of what is possible in construction. A lot of his plans recently rely on stone as a key loadbearing component even if it is still primarily a wood structure. He is still a woodworker at heart after all. After that he checks in on Allyson who says that they still haven't cracked the secret of magic grenades, but they have made a major breakthrough in the more potent healing potions. By breakthrough she basically just means that they discovered that it involves a lot more than just multiple distilled healing potions crammed into one. It uses the same ingredients plus one more that she hasn't identified and is not in the book. Her apprentice has been put in charge of replacing all of the healing potions that the rescue teams took with them. Leaving her to do what she loves most, research and study.
He didn't actually manage to expand before the rescue team sent to attack the elves made it back to the sanctuary with the newest residents. He did get pretty close though. The plan worked even better than last time, and as if that wasn't good enough news there were actually 36 human slaves. Predictably the majority chose to become warriors. However, there was still a fair number who became mages including two light mages, an earth mage, a fire mage, and the communities second ever force mage. Of the remaining group one went to study under Adam, one went to help the farmers, two went to help prepare meals, a lot of people do prepare their own meals now but there is still a considerable number of people that prefer to eat in the makeshift cafeteria, one went to join Yangus' group, and one went to train under Carver. "Yangus is going to have to give his group an official name if it gets much bigger" Logan thinks to himself.
The added benefit of all the extra people is that it took a little over a full day off of the amount of time needed to save up for an expansion, and a little over four months off the time needed to save up for a downward expansion. He Still considered it far too long to wait for an expansion. Hopefully though hitting the elf camp a few more times will bring the number of people in the community up to a point where he only needs to save up for a few months. Still because he was so close already, he managed to save up enough for another expansion less than a day after the first rescue team made it back. This got him a couple of building foundations near the farmhouse that he is certain was once used to house and care for livestock. Clearly such a building isn't needed anymore. He will of course tell them what he knows of raising livestock, which admittedly is very little, if and when any group decides to try and create a settlement outside the sanctuary.
He sends recon team alpha off to the eastern kobold camp after letting them rest for about five days. He did manage to expand again just before sending them off, and again just a few days before the second rescue team returned. This rescue went off the rails from the very start. For one thing the kobold had gotten reinforcements from somewhere. The camp was also currently under attack from the goblins. When the monstrous spiders jumped into the fight it turned into complete and utter chaos with goblins and kobold still fighting each other while fending off the spiders and the spiders attacking indiscriminately. The one positive was that the recon team was able to use their stealth skills to sneak up and unlock the slave cage during the confusion and lead the now former slaves out of camp without being seen. The reinforcements brought a few slaves with them making the total number rescued eight. Two of them became mages, becoming a water and air mage respectively. The rest became warriors.
After this he thought seriously about upgrading his spawners once more. He still didn't like the idea of possibly creating intelligent creatures, but he also knew that stronger creatures would eventually be necessary. He also knew that another spawner wasn't a guarantee especially not any time soon. He was reasonably sure he would get another spawner eventually. Still, he would need to max out his spawners sooner or later. Somehow, he not only knew such a thing was possible but also new that his current spawners were getting close. His best guess is that it's a dungeon thing. He decided long ago not to question knowledge that seemed to be instinctual.