Early the next day
David missed not having Azanii for breakfast, but she could not allow herself two days of rest without training and she did not want to spoil herself with all that delicious food when her clanmates were eating the equivalent to spam. The simple sausage and eggs went down quickly before he got ready to leave. To his surprise two [Initiate] Lycan began escorting him. After a moment of being uncomfortable, he looked at one of them.
“ Go get the councilors and inform them we will have an official meeting during lunch. Arrange a guard of those rank Warden or above around the city core as there is where the meeting will be held. Also, arrange for lunch. Make sure it is known that Master Jake and his wife Master Jasmine to be there as well. I know it is last minute, but be sure they find a sitter for their daughter.”
With a tap on his chest with his right arm and a slight bow, he starts moving away as David starts walking. The hundreds of wood cabins seemed half haphazardly put up with little thought of sanitation or other runoff. When the snow melts, he knew there would be problems. A topic he was sure to bring up with the council later.
As he wandered around David left the residential area of the fledgling city and entered the Warden section. Already hundreds were running around. Some were running drills in exo suits while others were practicing hand-to-hand. To his mild shock, he saw not only humans but also dwarves, Lycan, and some of the Rabbitkin he had not met yet.
After observing for over an hour, David decided it was time to head to the meeting. Unfortunately, he did not know the way, but luckily his escort did.
-----
“All right Laddy, we are here. What do you want to talk about?”
David looked at the dwarf who had a mug of beer in one hand and a turkey leg in the other. While the lycan went for a more modest sandwich like David.
“ Well, there are some complications. But I think it about time I held up my end of our bargain.”
Slowly David raised his hand and activated a prompt on his visor.
Begin Transfer? Y/N
With a nod, David felt the literal weight lift off his shoulders as massive amounts of data, blueprints, and copyrights are transferred to the core. Master Silve, who was in the middle of drinking his beer started choking on it before upchucking the drink in a spray that covered the table. Luckily for the other two they were on each side of him. David raised his hand and one of the dwarven maids Silve trusted started cleaning up the mess. That is when David noticed Gark dropped his sandwich midbite and his jaw followed it to the plate.
“ By the great forge Laddy, warn a man before dropping such a grenade.”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
David merely gave him a look.
“ Alright, fair enough. You bloody did well say you gonna do what you did. Still, that is tens of thousands of times more than the entire content of the Royal Library.”
David raised his shoulders and took a drink of water as the maid finishes cleaning up and gets Silve a fresh beer.
“ The bulk of that is culture stuff. Music, art, idiots with too much time on their hands using it in creative and self-destructive ways. I did a quick search and there are over ten thousand self-inflicted nut shots videos in that.”
The dwarf catches himself before giving David an uncertain look.
“ Dare I ask, why?”
David raises his shoulders again.
“ Money, fame, because they don’t want to have children. I spent my time creating a suit of armor in hopes that it would lead me to get laid.”
Gark chuckled at that.
“ How was that quest?”
David smirked and ignored the question.
“ Anyways, that was part one of the meeting. Next, we got to sort through this mess we call a city. Master Silve, I trust you with the mountain, but you said you have had some difficulty?”
The dwarf puts his food and drink down and cleans his beard with a cloth.
“ Aye, we of the Ironforge clan are an old clan. We were part of the original crafting of the old city but shames me to say this, we have been squandering our heritage. A few thousand years of lost knowledge and poor management have turned our ancient house into a minor one. With that, we lost many of the old ways we pretended to keep. Oh, me and me boys got the brawn for the job and the drive...”
“ But you lack the knowledge of your ancestors. We lycan try to preserve our history as well, but many times we only have stories that are little more than a hundred years old.”
“ The humans of my world were more... fortunate, I would guess. I highly doubt we have records as old and usable as the dwarves, but we have preserved hundreds of years at least. Oh, we still fought each other, but we learned to preserve our knowledge through wars.”
“ How, Laddy, did you do that?”
David shrugs once again.
“ Copying it from our rivals. You see a pointy stick used by your enemy then all you got to do is make a pointy stick yourself. You just need to figure out how. In the process, you find a sharp rock and add that to the stick. Then your enemy has the idea to throw the stick...
So the history of my people has developed. One advancement in war leads to another. The bow and arrow lead to shields and armor. Hey, that metal is hard. Let's coat our leather armor in that. Oh, they have boats to catch fish to feed their armies. We better make boats to stop them. That guy in full metal armor is slow. We have these animals he could probably ride. We have discovered this strange powder. Let's make bombs. Oh, if I can focus the power down a tube it is dangerous...”
David pauses to see Silve with a hand on the handaxe on his belt. His eyes focused on the gun on David’s left hip.
“ In the end, my world was one major incident away from salting the land of every nation so badly. Our numbers would have died out in a matter of years if not months. And we had more people than I had credits when we met.”
Silve grips his ax again but it was Gark to speak.
“ We must not allow such a thing to be our path.”
David nods to that and Silve releases his ax and agrees as well.