I woke up early morning and I felt a lot better after having a good sleep. I got ready slowly making myself some tea and breakfast and feeding some meat to Goose. The wolves had gone out to hunt but Goose decided to stay with me today.

I didn’t know why but he seems to want to fly less nowadays. Usually, he's always in the sky looking down and enjoying himself but like right now he is perched on my shoulder while we are walking towards the quarry.

He hasn’t shared any feelings as to why he was doing this, so I didn’t want to press him right now. And I also did enjoy the feeling of him on my shoulder. In the future, we would not be able to do that when he started to grow bigger.

Last night when I made it back to my land, I was a bit taken aback by how little strength my land gave me but now I’m quite certain that was because the nation itself was supporting my strength so the difference between my land and the nation's land was smaller. I could already imagine that we could be extremely powerful in defence of our nation in the future.

My mind was still occupied by the formation of the military. Our biggest problem wasn't equipment or training it was the lack of personnel. Our nation occupied a huge land area close to the size of the island of Ireland. The largeness of this was surprising. I also didn’t like how David mentioned it so casually just so he could see my dumbfounded face during lunch.

I put it out of my mind then because I had more important things to think about but now I had at least a few free days where I could just do some simple work that I liked to do and think of things. There were little over 400 people living here in our nation who all did give the vow to the nation but still that few people owning so much land was actually quite stupid.

Well to be fair most of it was just grassland that would be extremely hard to colonize because of that simply ridiculous number of rabbits and other wild animals that would tear apart any planted crops.

But even with such a large land area, there's only one village in it which was again crazy. The closest town to us was just 11 kilometres beyond our border. When I ran past it, I did feel some life in it but who knows what has become of it by now. That town led to three villages one of them being our village the others further west and north more towards the coastline and one of those villages was where my apprentices came from.

I did not like that the town was so close to our border, yet we didn't know what was going on out there. The problem again was that we didn't have the population to effectively scout outside our borders. One thing that we could do was put together a small military force and occupied the town for some time then we could take over the town and the surrounding land claiming it for our nation but it would take away a significant number of our military forces for a long time. Plus owning land is not that important you could still do anything you want on that land.

A few times I have had an idea that perhaps we could get the goblins on our side as an alliance or perhaps even be part of our nation, but I think if that were to happen, they need to initiate it. I just wouldn’t feel right offering that. With the power I possess, it could come off as a poorly veiled threat if they do not comply. Then there are the rock creatures that I now must be a lot more careful around as I do not want some kill squads after me.

There are also some other problematic places in our nation where the ecosystem is quite unique or delicate. I have been thinking that perhaps we should have wildlife conservation land. Perhaps a Reserve like they used with the indigenous American people. But this had bad implications.

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I wanted areas of land where nature could live in peace or as much peace as we can give it. Perhaps we could even have rangers that own the land but are responsible for preserving its ecosystem instead of making it a homestead.

There were many possibilities and many directions we could go in, but I didn’t want to take over nature like we started to do even before industrialization. I would like it if we could stay closer to nature. That just feels better.

I have always felt that living with nature is much better than trying to bend it to your will. I didn’t enjoy the cities back on earth. I liked nature and how it made me feel. It was all more primal more real than life in a city. Life in a city was indeed easier, and you seem to get more out of it, but it was somehow less real which didn't make any sense because how could reality have a different amount of realness?

I finally snap out of whatever that trail of thought was when I saw my apprentices working. I quickly estimated how much work they had done, and I was proud as they were closer to finishing than I expect them to be.

Now their appearance was a different story. They looked like rich parents kids who were forced to do manual labour in a coal mine. The only difference was that they weren’t complaining and actually doing their work but the way they looked was awfully similar.

I let out a bit of a laugh which unfortunately was a bit too loud as they all started to glare at me as soon as they saw me. That made me laugh a bit more which made them give up their hostile attitude. They just started to work again. This helped me take my mind off heavy things and I started to help them. When I ask them why they looked like that I got quite a funny story in return.

Arthur had a brilliant idea which wasn’t that brilliant. He tried to use his abilities in a bit of a different way than I thought them to use them while splitting rocks. The end result was that he did succeed but there were a few side effects. One being a huge blast of pulverized rock that covered them in dust. I was glad that they had learned how to test pushing abilities which probably saved their lives.

Arthur had basically thought up how to use explosive force to split rock, but they didn't have dynamite to light up and then get safely behind some cover. He did the same thing but with a hammer that he swung to get that effect.

I was just glad that they weren’t hurt but I was also impressed with the damage capabilities he demonstrated. There were a few more funny stories, and I was surprised that they had such an eventful time during the past two days.

We were done with the rocks by evening but I gave them the next day off so they could relax before starting to work on their tools again. I used that time to go and mine more iron ore which help level up digging and mining. I spent the rest of the night smelting some steel so they could make some more tools. I also used that opportunity to take 70 more ironwood saplings which was the limit for this year as otherwise, the tree might start to suffer. Planting them was easy enough.

The next day everyone was in this smith. My apprentices were making tools and I was making steel rods so I could strengthen the cart so we could bring larger quantities of stone with every trip. I also made four more sets of steel rods so I could make more carts in the future which could transport a lot of weight. I still want our road project to happen soonish.

During the night I strengthened up the cart and I was quite pleased with how it worked out I also beefed up the brakes. I was enjoying the night after I finished my work knowing that tomorrow I will be going to the village so we could finish setting up the military and the day after that my apprentices should be done with their tools and we can start bringing the foundation rocks over to the build sites.

It was still a few hours before sunrise when a shiver went down my back. It took me a moment to figure out what was happening. There were enemies in our nation. I quickly dived into land authority and started to close in on the location of the intruders.

I had felt intruders before plenty of monsters crossed our borders daily, but this was different the alarm was more urgent and stronger. In my haste, I was soon looking right at the intruders through my ability. In an instant, I knew that I had made a mistake. I had gone too close.

I was stupid I had seen stronger monsters noticing as I looked at them too closely. They never found me and that helped to drive off most of those monsters but I now looked at two humans. One was clueless but the other one knew someone was looking. I pulled back but it was too late. They retreated beyond our borders and out of my sight.