I ran straight back to my home and the first thing I noticed was the half-built inn that was just at the border of my land. Just 100 meters behind it was the dungeon entrance where there seemed to be quite a dispute. Everyone was quite worried about the dungeon entrance being closed and when they finally noticed me approaching, they all swarmed towards me trying to explain over each other.

There was a group of legionnaires and a few adventuring parties and five of my own apprentices. While they already believed that the dungeon was adding another floor none of them were completely certain about it. When I explained to them what was going on with complete confidence they finally started to calm down. Everyone went back to the village except for my apprentices who went back to grinding their skill levels.

I have been teaching them different skills that they can gain and then letting them train their skills past the basic tier at which point they can choose if they wanted to continue grinding the skill or not.

It took me a while to understand this but having access to all these skills is not necessarily a good thing. You need to be careful that you don't put too much time into skills that you are not interested in but getting past the basic tier has a relatively low time investment and has a great reward of gaining you an ability.

The first thing I properly taught my apprentice was the intent of what you want while tiering up skills. Even when the skill might not be something you're interested in, the intent can help you get things that you are interested in. Since ability choice can be influenced to some degree it is important to keep your mind focused.

With this, a few of my apprentices have gained important abilities that have helped a lot with the things they want to do in the future. The big problem with this is if you don't know what you want to do in the future.

For my apprentice who didn’t know what they wanted to do, I first let them test out different kinds of tasks. If that also didn't work sometimes it just might be a good idea to let fate take over and perhaps you will get an amazing ability that you can use to build something around it.

That happened to one of my younger apprentices. She didn’t know what she wanted to do so she just continued to grind the basic skills. One of the first skills she advanced was fishing only because she liked the taste of fish.

The ability she got was to make bait taste better and spread further. That made fishing quite easy but also catching land animals with bait. Now she's quite focused on fishing and trapping and seems to be enjoying herself immensely. It's sometimes hard to make her focus on other skills and working on the homestead but it seems like she still wants to make her own homestead just somewhere where she can fish a lot.

After that trail of thought, I focused back on the inn. The first, second and third floors were built but now there was a need to add supports for the roof but they were quite heavy. With my help, the work went a lot faster.

With the help of George and a few of my apprentices, we were making quick progress. It was a fun time working with them, but the fun was constantly interrupted by me having to train. Like this, three days went by fast and we finished building the main structure of the inn. All that was left was some smaller work and making furniture.

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I left that work to George and my apprentices while I went to delve into the now-open dungeon. The first three floors were still the same but the 4th one was a lot bigger and to my surprise the strongest enemies turned out to be foxes and not wolves as I expected. They were faster but also had some control over fire. I didn’t rush through the floor. I slowed my energy circulation as much as possible and didn’t use a lot of strength with my abilities so I could test out how the fox fights. With that knowledge, I will make a comprehensive guide for anyone who wants to delve into this floor.

There were no first-rank opponents in the dungeon and even the final boss was still at silver rank. The final boss for the floor was two twin fire foxes. While individually they weren’t much stronger than the other fire foxes on the floor, they had a bit more speed, but their coordination was scarily good.

They also seem to be quite clever so fancy tactics will probably backfire on anyone who tried them. For this final fight, I think it would be a good idea to just be straightforward and try to press both of the foxes in different directions so they couldn't combine their fire manipulation.

Before I left the dungeon, I spent some time releasing a portion of my energy into the dungeon so I could thank it for its excellent new floor. While most of the furniture was not ready a few tables were. I decided to sit down and write down everything important so the information could be given to anyone who wanted to delve.

It was still a bit difficult writing in a foreign language but that was mostly because I didn’t have a lot of practice. My memory was now good enough that learning a new language would be quite easy. While you can get by with just common not every place in this world uses this language.

After that, it was time to do some exciting work. Months ago, I found an interesting tree. I expect because of a large storm it had partially fallen over on top of a large rock. Not only that but two different trees had fallen onto that partially fallen tree and over the course of many years a natural almost 90-degree bend formed near the base of the tree.

If I had to guess the tree was about 70 years old and it had struggled to every moment of its life the only reason it continued to grow was the few evolutions it had. Eventually, it grew too large and pulled out all of its roots. So now I had a large tree with an almost 90 degrees bend that would make a beautiful bar counter.

It was now ready thanks to my ability to accelerate its drying. From it, I could get a countertop that was a bit over 60 centimetres wide. The straight part was almost 6 meters long while after the bend it would be another 2 meters. Now that is already an amazing bar counter but if I were to cut it straight in half and then merge them at the ends, I could get a 12-meter bar counter that would have a bend at both ends with another two meters of bar counter. Now that sounds like an amazing addition to the inn.

The main room of the inn is just large enough so it would fit beautifully. After a little bit more planning I proceeded with this idea. To get the perfect cut straight down the middle I propped the log up while securing the sides further so that it couldn’t move.

I went and got my two-handed sword and started to imbue it with a lot of energy. I grabbed ahold of this energy with my abilities and started to change what the energy did. I extended the blade and made it razor-sharp. Then with just one swing, I cut the entire log in half leaving me with two almost perfect surfaces that only needed a little bit more work to make them perfect.

The rest of the build was also quite fun. Making and installing the supports to hold the countertop at the proper height took a while as they need to be sturdy and hold a lot of weight. Then I added wooden skirts to hide the support so it would look better and more like the bar counters I am used to. With the height of the bar, I will also need to make bar chairs but that is not urgent.

Next, I added the lower part of the bar counter where the barman can work. I made it basic but that also meant that Val could change it to his specifications if he wanted. I was incredibly happy with how it turned out.

While there were still a lot of things that needed to be made for the inn, I think it’s about time I went back to the village and informed Val that his inn will soon be finished and that he can already come and move in with his family.