Saturday morning I went off to the dungeon with the old team. Felicity wasn't there, but she did text me and say she had some stuff to do but afterwards she'd like to go back to the tower, and she'd meet me there. That seemed just a little bit presumptuous, just assuming I'd say yes, but then again I really didn't have any good reason not to.

The dungeon run was the same as always. Everyone seemed to understand we were just sort of going through the motions and there was no real challenge here. But then, we weren't really here for the dungeon itself; it was a team-building exercise more than anything, and measured in that regard, it was pretty successful.

Afterwards I headed out to the sight of my new property. Wow, that was a bit surreal just thinking that. My property. I owned this land now. I owned this land... that suddenly had a bunch of cars and trucks parked along the edge of the highway as I approached, including a flatbed hauler at one point. What the Abyss?

I found an empty space big enough to pull off the road and got out of my car, walking back about a quarter mile to where I had seen some kith on my land, and my suspicions were quickly confirmed when I got close enough to recognize some of their faces. There were around thirty of them there, and they were all from church, including four in full paladin armor minus helmets. Two of them I immediately recognized: Charles Ellis, and of course his daughter.

"Felicity, what are all these kith doing here?" I asked as I walked up to her.

"An act of service," she said. "You told me you needed a construction crew, so I made a few phone calls. Who better to help you build than a bunch of Builders?"

"I also said I couldn't afford one right now."

"That's why it's an act of service," she said, seeming a bit confused by my confusion. "Haven't you done these before?"

"Yeah, I've helped folks who were moving pack up a few times, or brought over food when someone was sick! But land development? Not to disparage your intentions, but isn't that something best left to professionals?"

She gestured to some of the folks standing nearby. "Brother Thomas has worked thirty years as a logger. Sister Quinn, civil engineer, twenty-three years. Brother Casey, road construction, eight years. There are a lot of kith with relevant professional skills at church who were happy to help."

I nodded slowly. "Well maybe, but... wow. That's just a little bit overwhelming. How am I supposed to accept help of this magnitude?"

"Just take the Path seriously," she said. ""Build up those in need, that all may be strengthened.'"

So there was a cost attached. Pay it back in kind, bind myself more closely with the church because now I'd owe them one Abyss of a social debt, and...

And that's totally not how she saw it at all, was it? How had I gotten so cynical about my own religion? To her it was as simple as the words themselves: they help me, I help them, and everyone becomes stronger. Actually a decent system if enough members go along with it.

"All right," I said. Then I lowered my voice as a thought occurred to me. "Oh, what about you-know-who?"

"Warned already. He's you-know-where and we won't be going anywhere close." She gave me a playful little smile at the turn of phrase.

Wow, she has a really nice smile!

I immediately felt guilty about noticing that, now that Joanna and I were... what exactly? I wasn't sure, but we were kissing at least, so I felt bad about noticing another woman.

"All right," I said, stepping back. "What's the first step?"

"First step was placing flags to mark the boundaries of your holding. That's already done, with monster-repelling enchantments and everything. Now we need to clear land to build a road."

"Ok, where does that go?"

"Don't ask me, it's your land."

Wow. It really was. "All right. Uhh... the road should start around here and go straight to the house site. Which I haven't picked out yet either." I pulled out my phone. "Isn't there a spell that interfaces with the map spell to design stuff like this?"

She held hers up. "Bond me your phone?" When I opened the bond she sent a spell transfer offer, and it came with the data already set out denoting the boundaries of my land, plus a tree sigil marking a specific spot a ways in. With that, it was easy enough to pick out a spot to build a house, about a quarter-mile to the east of the tower. "How about here?"

"That works." I sent the data back to her phone, and she sent it to some of the others, and they started casting illusions to mark out where the road should go. Brother Thomas headed over to his truck with a few others, and they came back hauling a chest full of axes and saws.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

I walked over to him. "How can I help? I don't have training, but I've got two arms and a strong back."

"Felicity tells me you're an enchanter. Do you have any rune plates on you?"

"Yeah, I always carry a stack of them in my spatial bag."

"That's great. Can you make our gear cut better?"

"Sure. Just give me a few minutes. It'll just be a little ad-hoc thing, not as good as you could get from a factory, and you'll need to channel mana continuously or the plate won't stick to the tools."

"But better than nothing, right?"

"Quite a bit, yeah."

"Good. To even add a bit of enchantment, the store-bought models charge you an extra 500 crowns minimum per unit, and it only goes up from there. If we can get them homemade it's a huge savings for that alone."

So I started etching enchantments that would let someone channel mana into their axes to make them strike harder, or saws to make them cut deeper. As soon as I got one ready, someone would take it and go off to start cutting trees, under Brother Thomas's direction. Meanwhile, the paladins put their helmets on and retrieved their shields and maces from where they'd been sitting by the side of the highway, and started patrolling the work area for monsters. After a few minutes I heard someone banging on their shield, but no fighting noises followed.

As the trees came down, a few workers would use axes and saws to lop off the limbs, then some mages levitated them over to the flatbed truck, stacking up all the timber. Behind them, we had another team setting up barrier spells around the stumps, blasting the stumps apart with explosive spells, then flattening the terrain and hardening it with earth shaping to form the beginnings of a dirt road, about wide enough for two and a half cars. Once I got all the enchantments ready, I joined in on the blasting crew; fire wasn't my strongest element but it made for some pretty good practice.

Most of the work turned out to be doable by untrained laborers as long as we were supervised by a few kith who knew what they were doing, and we kept at it for several hours, filling up the back of the truck several times. It drove off and came back and we'd fill it up again, but when the sun started to sink low the paladins herded everyone back to the highway. We'd made about three quarters of a mile worth of progress.

Mr. Ellis came up to me. "This is some fine property you've got out here," he said. "That enchanting work pay well?"

"It does, sir."

He gestured with his arm at the expanse of land around us. "This well?"

"No, that came from elsewhere."

"Felicity tells me you've been spending a fair bit of time together lately, exploring these woods."

"It's true. I had reason to come out here, and asked her to come along for protection."

He narrowed his eyes slightly. "A young man and a young woman might find themselves with other reasons to go out into the woods alone..."

If only he knew how alone we weren't out here! "Meþas as my witness, I've never tried anything with her, sir. In all honesty she's a little bit intimidating." She probably got it from her dad!

"She ever try anything with you?"

"DAD!" Felicity came hustling over when she saw me being grilled by him, and smacked his upper arm with a gauntleted fist, making a loud clang of armor against armor. "You know me better than that!"

He scowled at her. "I do. Know sometimes you can be a blind little girl who doesn't know a good thing when it's standing right in front of her. You're gonna lose one abyss of an opportunity if someone else grabs him first."

Neither of us really knew what to say to that; we just looked away from him and, more importantly, from each other!

He added a quick "just sayin'!" and walked away.

"Wow, Brad, I'm so sorry about that!" Felicity said, walking off apart from everyone else and beckoning to me to follow.

I came along and did my best to laugh it off. "I know. Parents, right? Not your fault, the crazy stuff they say." I shook my head slowly. "Always kind of felt like he disapproved of me. Now he sees I own land and suddenly... that."

She nodded. "He wants what's best for his kids, always has. But sometimes he interprets that his own way rather than his kids' way."

I was about to commiserate with her more, when one of the church members walked up to me. I didn't know him particularly well, but I'd seen him driving the truck carrying the wood off. "Brother Webb, I was asked to dispose of the timber. Felicity assured me that you had no particular use for it, so I've been hauling it to a local lumber yard and selling it there. By legal right, the revenue is all yours, but by custom some of it should be shared with the church, having provided the labor to clear it."

Technically, by legal right I could take issue with him selling off my trees without my consent, but Felicity had been right; I had nothing better to do with them. "I agree. You guys did the bulk of the work, so... does 70/30 sound good?"

His eyes widened slightly. "You're offering 70 percent to the church?" Was that a lot? I wasn't really familiar with how this worked.

"Honestly? I'd like to offer 70 percent to divide up among the laborers. Let them each keep it or donate to the church as feels right to them."

From the look on his face, that was clearly Not How This Is Done, but after a moment he nodded. "Very well. The funds are being held by the lumber mill until I can get details for them. For the loads I've hauled already plus what's left here, I'll estimate today's work will bring in around 83,000 crowns gross, give or take."

What? "For a bunch of trees?"

"This is good-quality hardwood, Brother Webb. They're going to cut it up and sell it to carpenters and homebuilders for three, four times that much. But yes, with the price of lumber as high as it is right now, you're sitting on a small platinum mine here."

One where the value of the trees alone is worth the price I paid for it several times over. Wow! But, like the mine he compared it to, that resource would be worthless once I used it up. Best to hold off on any plans to go into the timber industry for the time being. "And you have experience with doing this sort of stuff?"

"I do."

"You said that's gross revenue, right? Can you ensure that all the taxes get paid and then divide up the rest like I said?"

"I can. Thank you, that's extremely generous of you!"

"Oh, one other thing." I turned to Felicity. "Can you round up everyone that hasn't left yet? It's been a hard afternoon's work. You know Rodrigo's, the orcish steakhouse on 8th and Central? Tell them I'm treating everyone to dinner tonight who wants to come." I let out an incredulous little laugh. "It seems like I can afford it!"