With Pacifica’s assistance, I now had a tentative solution to my formation materials problem — and hopefully, as a result, to my azoth supply problem. She’d been very gratifyingly open to negotiation. As it turned out, she was perfectly happy to accept payment in the form of more silver ingots like the test sample I’d shown her. We’d eventually settled on a finder’s fee of five percent by weight of however much clay she managed to bring me, paid in an equal weight of silver, plus expenses for food and lodging. I was probably overpaying her, but it wasn’t like I had anyone else who could do the job. Besides, it would help her break free of her parents once her stay with me ended, and that I was willing to pay a premium for.
Although a solution was now in sight, it was still off in the middle distance. Pacifica wouldn’t even leave for Nikolai’s Ford for several days: I needed time to nail down the details of the plan, gather supplies, manifest a few more silver ingots for her to trade for actual coinage, and pick which of the goblins I was going to send with her as backup in case anything went wrong. In the meantime, other problems also needed my attention. Most important among them was the problem of food. Winter was always a lean season for the goblins — Nar-shesh had told me it wasn’t uncommon for the adults of the tribe to only eat one meal in the space of two or three days, to stretch their supplies. That was with the benefits of a full year’s preparation and stockpiling: we were operating under much less favorable conditions.
I’d made some small steps towards food self-sufficiency already. [Fertile Caverns] had been steadily working away over the last few days of downtime. Mushrooms continued to sprout in my caves: I'd moved some humus and dead wood into the farm cavern to serve as a more hospitable substrate than bare rock, and that had accelerated the process noticeably. There were now perhaps a dozen bats flitting about the spike cave, and the third floor’s waterways continued to accumulate inhabitants — though what they were eating down there other than each other, I wasn’t sure.
[Spontaneous Generation] seemed to have picked up the pace somewhat, as well. The past three days, it had held steady at a rate of two new minions a day. They’d all been animals so far — two new mushquirrels, another giant cave lamprey, a snake, and a pair of dog-sized spiders. The spiders were a novel addition to the menagerie. According to the system, they were “small cave spiders,” which I found inordinately amusing. A fantasy world with giant spiders? No way. That would be sooooooo original!
They had started weaving webs across hallways in the second floor, though, quite clearly trying to trap and eat my goblins. Bad spiders! No! Goblins are not food. The simplest solution would have been to just squash them, of course, but that felt cruel. They didn’t seem to understand my orders to leave the goblins alone, even with the universal intelligibility of Apophic to monsters, which prompted me to experiment with the minion-behavior-management functions of my dungeon menu. I immediately bounced off the same error message I’d gotten the first time I tried them out, with Chompy — couldn’t set minion behavior without assigning them to a zone, couldn’t designate zones except on complete dungeon floors. Really should have seen that one coming. I hadn’t empowered a second-floor boss or finished the arena yet, and I wasn’t sure when I’d have the time. In the meantime, I compromised by walling the spiders inside a room so they couldn’t menace the goblins. Don’t worry, I left a hole big enough to let air in and toss scraps of food through, since it was going to be at least a few days. It obviously wasn’t ideal, but it was better than nothing.
And yes, before you say anything, Teekas was level 10 already so I could have made her the second-floor boss. I immediately discarded that option, though: it would be an obvious violation of the agreed-upon conditions of her employment. She wasn’t a combat minion, she was a logistics minion.
…Who’d bitten a tatzelwurm’s face off.
Look, I thought she’d do just fine as a floor boss, but she’d drawn a clear boundary.
[Natural Resources] hadn’t been idle either. Here and there across my domain, trees thickened and grew taller, their levels climbing without me needing to use [Empower Minion] on them. Some of the fungi growing in the caves had medicinal or alchemical uses, or were poisonous. Thankfully, since I bound everything as a minion when it spawned and therefore knew what it was, there was no risk of the goblins mistaking any of the poisonous fungi for edible ones.
It was easy to tell which skill had spawned what things. All of the edible flora and fauna that [Fertile Caverns] created were level 0 or 1 — insignificant, in the system’s eyes, and not something that my more powerful minions could farm for experience. The spawns from [Spontaneous Generation] and [Natural Resources], however, had so far been scattered from levels 2 to 7, averaging around 5.
In addition to the products of my passive skills, there were the fauxtatos and bloody holly that I’d created with [Azoth Mutation]. Those were just my names for them — the system only showed them as “Mutant Bush” and “Mutant Tuber.” I wasn’t sure if their mutations would actually breed true, allowing them to be cultivated normally rather than me having to spend azoth to induce each new harvest. It was probably a moot point, though — nothing was going to grow over the winter. Though, could it? I felt like I’d heard the phrase “winter wheat” somewhere, but was that a real thing or just a marketing gimmick that beer companies used to sell seasonal products? I had no idea — I was a city girl, completely disconnected from my food’s origins and production.
All told, however, even I could see that it wouldn’t be enough to support us until spring. I didn’t really have any ideas to make up the difference other than “steal from the humans,” which I did not think was a good plan. Strategic considerations aside, stealing food had a different vibe than stealing pipeleaf, a luxury good produced for export. That wasn’t a place I really wanted to go. This lack of ideas on my part was why I’d been waiting patiently for the goblins to wake up so that we could formulate a plan.
Waiting… patiently.
So patiently.
“Nar-shesh. Nar-shesh!”
“Huh? Whuzzah?” he said blearily, sitting upright on one of the down mattresses.
“Wake up, man, it’s past sunset. We have stuff to do,” I said, patiently, while patiently turning the light-arrays in the room on and patiently- okay, yeah, you get the idea.
“Are the humans attacking?” Nar-shesh asked, rubbing his eyes as he clambered upright.
“No, they’re not,” I said.
“Then what’s the rush? Fuckin’ hell, let me eat something first,” my right-hand minion grumbled as he made his way over to the nook in the cave that served as my minions’ meagre larder.
“We need to get y’all some coffee,” I said. “Fuck, I miss coffee. New long-term goal, hit up Fantasy Ethiopia and get some coffee importing going on.”
“What’s Fantasy Ethiopia?” Nar-shesh asked around a mouthful of fauxtato.
“How is that your first question and not ‘what’s coffee?’” I said. “It’s a country that may or may not exist, it’s where coffee comes from.” Our conversation continued in this fashion as the rest of the goblins began to wake up. After what felt like hours but was realistically like fifteen minutes, tops, I had everyone assembled — the goblins, plus Pacifica and Striga, for whom I was using [The Heart Whispers] to provide a running translation of what everyone else was saying. “Alright, good morning, everyone. Or evening, I guess. As some of you may have noticed, we do not have enough food stockpiled to make it through the winter. I’ve called this meeting so that we can figure out how to change that.”
The goblins looked at me in confused silence. Eventually, Neraru raised a tentative hand.
“Neraru, shoot. Whatcha got for us?” I said.
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“I thought you were going to feed us,” she said. “Did I misunderstand? I thought we weren’t stockpiling food because we didn’t need to.”
“Ah, no,” I said, feeling awkward. “I can’t do that. Or, rather, I can do that, but it won’t be enough.”
The goblins all looked at me like I’d just told them the family dog had been hit by a car. “But… but you’re a realmheart,” Sarsu said feebly.
I sighed. “My skills use azoth just like anybody else’s, dude. The magic food comes out of the same pool as the free levels, and the terrain reshaping, and the reanimating corpses-”
“The what now?” Nar-shesh asked.
“The reanimating corpses. I can reanimate corpses,” I said. “That’s beside the point.”
“Wait, you can bring people back from the dead?” Kizurra asked, eyes wide.
“No, I can reanimate corpses,” I said. “They’re not people, they’re just, like, puppets made of meat.” I hoped that was the case, at least — I hadn’t actually had a chance to use [Raise Zombie] yet, but its description of the zombies as “necromantic constructs” did not suggest sentience to me. Condemning people to some sort of nightmarish existence enslaved within their own decaying corpse was a little bit more horrible than I was comfortable with. “Look, can we stay on topic? Food! We need it! How can we get it?”
“Hunting, farming, and foraging,” Teekas said, holding up three fingers. “As for farming, for every crop I can think of it’s too late in the year to start, and they wouldn’t produce anything before the spring anyway. Fish farms or oyster beds, same problem. We can sidestep that to an extent with your skills, but there’s the azoth issue you mentioned. I can’t speak for everyone else, and I wouldn’t presume to tell you how to spend your azoth, but I feel like if we had to choose between food and levels right now, levels are definitely more important.” She looked at the others questioningly and received a round of nods and words of agreement. “So that leaves hunting and foraging.”
“And stealing,” Kizurra said. “Just saying.”
Teekas rolled her eyes. “And stealing, yes, but given that you all almost died let’s leave that as a last resort.”
Kizurra scoffed and rolled his eyes but didn’t press the issue. Pacifica, though, surprised me by speaking up. “We could… buy food?” she said hesitantly. “Not from Planter’s Bend, obviously, nor any of its neighbours, but Nikolai’s Ford or Pikevale I could probably go to. Since I’m already going there for the clay, I might as well, right?”
I considered it. “That runs us into the azoth-supply problem again, though,” I said. “Since I’d have to make the silver. Then again, I’m making the silver anyway, and I imagine food will be cheaper than formation materials. Worth considering, Pacifica, good suggestion. Let’s add that to your mission objectives.”
“Isn’t she supposed to be a hostage?” Kizurra asked skeptically.
“No, that’s just a trick we’re playing on them,” Teekas said. “We’ve been over this, Kizurra.”
“I’m aware that it’s a ruse, thanks,” Kizurra said. “I meant, isn’t it going to be a problem if our alleged hostage suddenly isn’t there if the other humans ask for proof she’s still alive?”
He had a point: that was a risk. If the villagers thought we’d killed the hostage, they had no reason not to just storm the fort and we’d be crushed under the weight of their numbers. “It’s a risk,” I said. “But I think the options opened up by having a human that can interface with the human economy for us are valuable enough to justify that risk.”
Kizurra was visibly not satisfied with that. “And why is she willing to do that for us, huh? Go behind her people’s backs like that?”
“Because I’m paying her,” I said dryly. “Generously. On delivery.”
That shut him up for a moment, but Kizurra was a natural talent at finding things to take issue with, so he bounced back quickly. “Well, what’s to stop her from making a break for it with the treasure you give her to trade with?” he asked, triumphantly pointing a finger at Pacifica.
“Because I’m going to be sending two of you with her, both for her protection and as insurance. Kizurra, despite appearances I am not in fact a complete idiot.”
He crossed his arms, face carved in a deep teenage scowl. “Alright, yeah, fine,” he conceded. “That might work.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Now, could we please get back on track? Teekas, you were saying about hunting and foraging.”
“Foraging could get us at least part of the way to where we need to be,” she said. “There’s still a good number of chestnuts left. Um, sumac, rosehips…”
“Pine flesh,” Immir-shesh chimed in.
Teekas made a face. “Sure, pine flesh, I guess,” she said, without much enthusiasm.
“What the fuck is pine flesh,” I whispered to Nar-shesh.
“It’s the inner bark of some kinds of tree, mostly pines,” he said. “It’s soft enough to eat, and you can grind it into flour.”
“That sounds gross,” I said.
He shrugged. “It’s not my favorite, but it’s a lot better than starving.”
Teekas had been continuing to list various types of forage still available this late in the year. “-sunflower root, chicory, a bunch of mushrooms… The point is, there’s stuff still available, but we’d have to really strip the woods bare.”
“There’s also the danger of foragers getting attacked,” Nar-shesh said, tossing his chin at Teekas. “By humans or otherwise, as we were recently reminded. We’ll need to go in larger groups. It’ll slow us down, but there’s no helping it.”
Teekas nodded in acknowledgement of that, a slightly haunted look in her eyes. One hand made an abortive gesture towards her face that she diverted and tried to play off like she’d always intended to rest her chin on her hand thoughtfully. She had, I assumed, been going for her mouth, trying to pick phantom hair and skin out from between her razored teeth. Poor girl, I just wanted to bundle her up in a blanket and squeeze her until she forgot about everything.
…Y’know, the same way I wanted to comfort and support all of the goblins as they grappled with their traumatic experiences! Anyway, moving on. Teekas was talking.
“And then hunting,” she said. “Striga’s been a great help so far, and we can supplement what she brings us if we start setting traps and snares, but the real problem is that we can’t properly preserve the meat, and prey will be increasingly scarce as we get deeper into winter so we can’t just hunt for it when we need it. Really, that’s the heart of the problem — preservation, not supply.”
“Smoking won’t do it?” I asked.
Malik, who’d been overseeing the drying of the lean cuts from the pig, shook his head. “It’ll slow the spoiling, but what we really need is salt,” he said. “We’ve got no idea if there’s even any salt licks nearby, and trading for it is out since we’re surrounded by- Well, hm.” He nodded at Pacifica. “Suppose you could have her pick some up when she goes to trade. Though with all the stuff we’re asking her to bring back, how’s she going to carry it?”
“Hm,” I said. “I might be able to just like…” I checked my status window. Yeah, I had enough azoth to do a little bit of matter-manifestation. I summoned up as vivid a mental image of salt as I could — table salt, rock salt, coarse-grain kosher salt, salted butter, salted caramel, potato chips, a mouthful of seawater, salt salt salty salt salt — and a brief flurry of coarse white crystals fell from midair in front of Malik. “Oh, I probably should have made sure someone had a container ready for that, huh,” I said sheepishly. “Anyway, I can just make salt, so we don’t have to worry about that. I think. Taste that and make sure it’s actually salt and I didn’t fuck it up somehow.”
With a dubious raise of his brow, Malik squatted, stuck a finger into the pile of salt, and tasted it. Almost immediately, his other eyebrow climbed to match the skeptical one. “That’s pretty good,” he said, surprised. “Smooth, no harsh aftertaste, white as snow… This might actually be the purest salt I’ve ever seen.” He grinned. “I can work with this.”
“Sweet!” I said. “Or salty, I guess. Whatever. Conjuring matter from nothing like that is a lot more azoth-intensive than just reshaping what’s already there, so it’s not like we have unlimited salt to work with — I’ve gotta make more silver for Pacifica, and whatever else we might need — but I’ll give it a few timeslots on the manifestation rotation.”
“We could start tanning hides, too, with salt,” Sarsu said. “It was a shame to waste the pigskin like that.” He did, indeed, look genuinely morose over the fact that they’d had to discard the hide of the pig Striga had killed.
“Intriguing, but not directly relevant to the food problem,” I said. “We’ll circle back to that later, Sarsu, thank you for mentioning it.” A sudden thought struck me, a stray recollection from an early conversation. “Immir-shesh,” I said.
“Yeah?” he said, with a surly bite to his tone. Man, who crapped in his breakfast cere- ahhh, right, I’d snapped at his mom the other day. Yeah, okay, fine. Even if she was being a huge bitch, he was within his rights to be snippy with me.
“I’ve got an idea,” I said. “And I need your help with it. See me in the lab after we’re done here.”