As he waits for his mana to build up so he can expand again he watches a few more matches most of the time they have mages on both sides but sometimes they only have mages on the 'attackers' side. Not for any particular reason except that there just aren't enough mages for every battle to have 4 or more and they know the attacking army will usually always have mages. They usually try to limit themselves to two matches per day since some people have to participate twice in order to make the teams even.

Finally, though he saves up enough and expands west and what he gets confuses him. The building, aside from just being bigger than he thought it was, also doesn't seem to serve any purpose. He is wise enough to know that not all buildings need to serve a purpose. He also knows that it may just be something so far removed from what he knows that he can't see the purpose. The one area of the building he can actually see into has a solid stone floor with stone benches along the walls. At first, he thought public outhouse but there are no tell-tell holes in the benches that he would have expected to see. The only other thing he can think of that it might be is a jail cell. He could just ask Cid about it but he kind of likes having something to discover. Besides he's probably over thinking it anyway.

Before he could get any further down that train of thought though one of the patrols reported seeing some dwarves to the west. It was just three scouts from what they could tell. They wouldn't be enough to pose any kind of threat but still Logan ordered everything into hiding for now. He didn't want the scouts running off to get help after all. Only a fool invites danger when it can be avoided. As the scouts explore the city though they inevitable get closer and closer. That is when Logan gets an idea. He asks the humans through Cid to help defend their home to which the happily agree still proud to have something worth defending. He asks them to use only orc weapons while defending the sanctuary. They have no idea why he would not allow them to use weapons crafted by their blacksmith, but they don't object. Eventually they find the sanctuary and even manage to make it a good ways inside. If Logans plan is going to work he can't risk any of them escaping. Eventually though he orders his wasps to swoop in and sting them all at once while simultaneously having Cid gave the order for the human warriors to attack. The battle is unremarkable as the Wasp venom nearly did the job for them. The next part does elicit some protests though, at least from the younger members of the group. He wants them to carry the bodies to a spot northwest of the sanctuary to a spot between the orcs and where the dwarves were first spotted. Then he wants them to leave a few of the orc weapons with Dwarven blood on them behind. If all goes well the dwarves will think their men were killed by orcs. With any luck this little ruse will buy them another couple of months, although he'd settle for a couple of weeks.

He does learn something though. Apparently, he gets mana from things dying in his territory, it doesn't matter how they actually die. Although it would appear he gets less when they are killed by something not specifically created by him. He didn't notice it when the orc commander died because he was still relatively young at the time and had just gotten a lot of mana from the other orcs in that group. Part of him actually missed the influx of mana he got from fending off a huge attack, but he wasn't stupid enough to go inviting danger. No, instead he knew that discretion was the better part of valor and so he would wait and let his mana refill gradually. He would try to go unnoticed by non-humans as long as possible. The next few days were fairly tense, but it seems unlike orcs the Dwarves notice rather quickly when their people go missing. The ruse worked it seems, at least that was the impression the human scouts got. Dwarven blood on orc weapons apparently being all the proof they needed. For once Logan was grateful that most others tended to jump to conclusions. A trait he normally found really annoying when dealing with people back on earth.

Getting back into the normal routine he expands to the west and is eager to learn more about the mysterious building. Unlike the library which had a large open floor plan this building seems to be divided into two distinct rooms. One appears to be 6 meters north and south with three meters extending out past the larger room south of it. The southern most room, so far at least, is about four times that size. He hasn't expanded far enough to get a true measure of their exact size yet though. There was still nothing that would give away the buildings purpose.

As he settled in to watch Yangus work on the mansion for a bit while the others were between 'battles' in the arena he suddenly felt Cid trying to get his attention. Allyson had found some herb seeds somewhere. It seems these particular herbs were used as an ingredient in healing potions as well as some basic antidote and poison resist potions. Allyson was wanting to know if the sanctuary would make them grow fast like it did with the wheat and the oranges. They were very small plants, so it didn't take much mana to quadruple their growth speed. He might increase it more later, but not right now since a few other ingredients were needed to make it actually usable. He didn't want it to become overgrown. As Cid relayed Logans message Allyson seemed satisfied with that.

With that unexpected but not unwelcome distraction dealt with he once again turned his attention to watching Yangus. He had the basic framework figured out and was trying to decide on room placement and sizes. The idea, as far as Logan could tell, was to create a boarding house of sorts with multiple bedrooms. Yangus wanted to make the rooms large enough to be comfortable but also wanted to fit as many as he could into the building. Mainly though he wanted to get the design finished before starting construction. This mostly resulted in him mumbling to himself while making notes on some blank sheets of what looked almost like paper but was clearly not.

He had just decided to let Yangus do his thing and turned to watch a 'battle' that was about to start in the arena when he noticed one of the scouting patrols return with four additional people. The new people were all children. More specifically they were female children. Apparently, the Dwarves were intending to trade them to the elves for various potions and other things. They usually traded any female children that were born as soon as they were old enough to survive the trip. It seems female slaves were highly valued by elves for reasons Logan did not want to think about considering the state of the female slaves his residents rescued from the elves. Looking them over they appeared to be around four to six years old. He also noticed that they appeared to be well fed except for the past few days. Speaking of the last few days it seems as though it's been a while since they had anything to drink as well. The first thing he does is have Cid ask Siobhan to look after them. She is the closest to their age and thus would have an easier time relating to them, and them to her. At least that was the idea. Then he had Cid go inform the life mage that she had some new patients that needed a quick check-up. Cid explained that they weren't in any immediate danger, so she agreed to look in on them as soon as the current battle wrapped up. The idea to have Siobhan look after the kids turned out to be a good one to as they bonded almost instantly.

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"It just seems to be one distraction after another today" he mused, but as long as they were pleasant distractions like new herbs or escaped former slaves he wasn't going to complain. Unfortunately, with only one life mage it meant that arena battles were cancelled for the rest of the day while she tended to the new arrivals and helped Siobhan get them familiar with their new home and new family. It seems that the oldest of the group who it turns out had just turned six a week ago had both a talent for and interest in learning life magic. She was able to cast a simple heal spell after watching the life mage cast it a few times and having it explained to her only once. Granted she had the benefit of actually having someone teach it to her but still. The other three it turns out wanted to be warriors like Siobhan, which is part of the reason the oldest girl wanted to learn to heal. The second problem was that they needed new clothes. They weren't exactly naked, but he thought it would be good for them to not have to wear clothing that reminded them of being a slave. With this in mind he concentrated on one of the larger spiders and had it go down and deposit a large amount of non-sticky silk for Maribeth. He then had Cid go down and ask Maribeth to make some clothing for the kids using the silk. While Cid was there, he also had him ask her to look into making pillows and a mattress by wrapping feathers in silk. He also talked about silk sheets for when it gets colder.

The next day Siobhan volunteered to teach them basic fighting skills and went to go ask Yangus about some wooden weapons they could use to practice without risk of getting hurt. He happily agreed as it would give him a chance to get his mind off trying to convert the mansion into a boarding house. The actually 'weapons' only take him a few hours to make. At first he makes a shield, two swords, a long sword, a club and a spear. Then they have the girls try out each weapon, weapon combo, and weapon shield combo to try and decide what type of fighting style feels right to them. Two of them decide on the club and shield combo while the other rather surprisingly, since it wasn't an option anyone else had even considered, wanted to dual wield clubs. They aren't sure how viable that is in actual combat, but nobody tries to talk her out of it. Yangus spends the next little bit making another shield and three more clubs. They end up storing the practice weapons near the blunted weapons that are no longer used anymore. The life mage shows her younger protege how to check for and then heal bruises after each sparing match. Then they are left to train with Siobhan who is frankly just excited to have someone in the settlement younger than her. That doesn't mean she slacks of on her duties. She is extremely patient with them and spends a long time just teaching them the proper way to hold their weapons. However, she clearly wants to get them up to speed as soon as possible despite their age. She just doesn't want to push them to hard given what they've been through. Towards the end of the day Maribel finally presents the young healer with a white silk robe and simple silk panties. Each one imbued with a heat resistance rune. The younger healer hugged Maribel for a solid five minutes and then tried them on immediately. Maribel also plans to make a trouser shirt combo for the other three, but a simple white robe just felt right for the healer. She also wants to make at least a couple of extra pairs for each of them but that will take time.

A short while later it's time for another expansion to the west and he is starting to understand about the other building. The one room is six by nine meters with a second door leading further west and one door leading into the southern room. He still doesn't have the entire southern room yet so he can't say how big it is but there are stairs leading down to an area 155cm lower than the rest of the room. He suspects that this is either a swimming pool or a public bath house which would make the smaller room a changing room and would explain why it has two doors. He doesn't send the water mantises over just yet though in case it needs repair, or he is wrong about what it is. well, that and he hasn't exactly found a sure way in yet and he wants to wait until the entrance is inside his territory.

Getting back to his people he watches Carver for a while to see what it is he does. at the moment he is melting down a crate of orcish helmets for the raw iron. That process takes a while though and Logan quickly gets bored and shifts his attention elsewhere. The four amigos as he has taken to calling them are currently getting lectured by Siobhan about proper form. The little healer doesn't really need to be there for the lecture but is staying anyway. Turning his attention to Maribeth he sees her hard at work trying to make the shirts large enough to grow into but not so large that they slide right off them. Turning his attention again, this time toward Lulu, he sees her in one of the smaller dueling arenas facing off against the shadow mage. It makes the most sense really as their powers seem to be polar opposites. It seems that Lulu has managed to figure out a way to turn a simple lighting spell into a condensed beam of light and direct it at a target. The Shadow mage for her part creates a shield from the darkness around them. Then counter attacks by creating physical weapons out of shadows. This of course is blocked by Lulu creating a light shield and then light weapons of her own. This weird ballet went on for several minutes until Lulu attempted to catch the shadow mage off guard with a light beam attack to which the shadow mage dodged underneath and thrust a shadow blade up at an angle that would have been fatal had the shadow mage not stopped. Lulu wasn't expecting it because it was a move that if it failed would leave you vulnerable and even if it succeeded would put you in an awkward position to defend against an attack from someone else. Logan would consider letting them participate if they could come up with a few more ranged attacks. He loved that they had a way to deal with enemies that got up close but still not knowing how rare light and shadow magic are didn't want to risk putting them on the front lines. Not that he wanted any of them on the front lines but still, he'd rather it be the melee warriors. Turning to the large battle arena he sees a battle has just started. The defenders have apparently learned from their mistakes as there are four warriors staying back to protect the mages. The attackers have also learned as they quickly take advantage of their numbers advantage on the front lines. The defending mages for their part try their best to aid the defending melee units by lobbing spells at the attacking melee units, meanwhile the attacking mages try their best to keep the defending mages distracted. Logan can't see any fault with either strategy but then he isn't exactly a military strategist.

Remarkable having the four extra people just barely increases his mana generation by a noticeable amount. although it is enough for him to afford an expansion a few hours sooner than he would otherwise. That being said it still takes him around 20 hours to afford an expansion. When he gets it though he finally gains access to the building. There is a smaller room attached to the large changing room with double doors for an entrance. There is also a large gate in the wall similar to the library gate which he will probably seal up at some point. Aside from that he notices that the lowered area in the other room is mostly intact so after repairing a few small cracks here and there he sends in his dire rats and large spiders not yet in swarms to deal with any invaders and also sends a few water mantises to fill the lowered area with water. once the majority of the invaders are dealt with, he asks Cid to see if the cooks would be willing to go over and cast a purification spell or whatever it was they used on the water area the way they did with the jug of water. He thought about having the fire mantises heat the water as well but it's not easy to heat water from the top down without evaporating it away. He decides he will eventually use a few of the fire mantises to maintain a fairly high Ambient temperature in the room making it more relaxing to be in. It will be a while before it gets used mainly because they don't want to remove their armor that close to the sanctuary border, but the humans all seem to be excited at the prospect of a proper bath.