William was surprised as he got to the outskirts of Runick. Most of the burned out ruins had been removed. New constructions now occupied most of the old foundations. He had discussed construction plans with Kena at several evening meals. But at the time he hadn't thought she was listening.
He had been a civil planning engineer for a few years. But he never enjoyed being the boss on actual worksites. He knew there was a planning committee behind all his work but never understood the scale.
As a point of curiosity he delved down the rabbit hole of city planning one evening.He woke up with several dozen of tabs and notes on his desk. He couldn't stop talking about the subject for a week. Matilda had more or less enjoyed him talking about the subject. But it was more out of curiosity then real interest. The subject had certainly improved their overall ability at city building games. At least in ones that simulated real traffic flow.
Kena on the other hand had only met Will. She barely trusted his word on the water purification system but it had worked. He had shown her his air rifle she wasn't too impressed with it. She took notice when Cluci had shown her the penetration of the rifle into the wooden targets. Afterwards she looked at it with the same curiosity Matilda showed for anything he was vocal about. However Kena was curious because of her grandmothers stories probably. Even Cluci was on a toys for work or XP basis.
Seeing his ideas for the village turned real, now that was surprising. He could see the large smoker he proposed chugging along its chimney belching smoke. He had talked at length about food preservation with Kena. As he walked the outskirts he also saw preparations for the proposed root cellar. The proposed cellar also contained an area for ice. Kena had told him that a nearby lake froze over during the winter by several feet. William's eyes had lit up at that. It was one more way to preserve food. Which was good as the roughly hundred more mouths to feed didn't help the current food shortage.
Since William had seen the goblins working on the village he couldn't stop but ask why? His speech months earlier might have swayed several of them but there were always hold outs. Now that he was closer, Will could see both the young and old helping. Will thought back to the moment he was killed by the marauding ogres and trolls. Screaming, yelling, and the pain of being pancaked was the only real thing he remembered. So what had happened?
As William waltzed into the village he noticed both goblin and human working in tandem. While the village certainly now a larger percentage of goblins it seemed to not matter. His eyes eventually saw Cluci perched up on one of the many new constructions. William wondered just how he had survived the combined attack on the goblins. William then spied the air rifle in working condition but with a few cosmetic additions. He then worked out a plausible story that relied on the idiocy of the lesser trolls and feral ogres and the quick precise shooting of Cluci.
William decided to hail the young ravenfolk as he was eating what seemed to be a snack. “Hoy there, mighty fine work you seem to have done here while I was indisposed!” Cluci seemed to both breath to speak but also continue eating. Instead, he only found himself with a coughing fit spraying food everywhere. Eventually Cluci regained a composure to speak up. “You waited for me to take a bite didn’t you?” “I can neither confirm nor deny your statement. Mind telling me how you survived the attack?” “Oh that was easy. Flew into the tent hid behind near rotten goblin chief hid me real well. Turns out the rush kinda removed the smell for me. The ogres and trolls seemed to be more occupied with the goblins so I started doing my thing.” He pulled out his given air rifle with new respect.
“This thing went through their heads like a cleaver on bone. I couldn’t keep the trolls down but it allowed the more courageous of the goblins to rally. They ushered the rest of the goblins out of the mine. Fortunately the druid and the chief died. The druid was trying to save some sort of treasure so I left him to it. He promptly died as the trolls started to regen and gather up their haul unfortunately that meant your corpse as well. So in the end I just pointed the goblins in the direction of Runick. Seems they are quite ready to accept your invitation. The rest of the villagers certainly love their help. Oh and I managed to also not leave Grock. He healed up quite nicely thanks to the village witch.”
As William tried to see if Cluici’s involvement in the tale was made up at all he eventually decided it really didn’t matter “Well good to see my rifle finally impressed you. Seems everything is in order. Did we get any iron ore from the mine or did you just leave it be for almost three months?” At this point Cluci got up and jumped off the roof then landed on the ground soon after. He then looked at William almost as if he were stabbed. “How dare you insult your sniper of all things. Of course we didn’t leave it be there was a lot of good salvage to be had besides the iron ore. We had to be sure the trolls and ogres were gone before going back. We have a mound of the stuff over by the foundations of the old Vun blacksmith. Oh before I forget Kena will want to talk to you she finally got her class a month ago. She isn’t happy about it as even her witch of a grandmother couldn’t answer what it was. All her grandmother told her was to ask you when you got back. She’s been sitting on it for a month having to slowly figure things out.” “Did Kena tell you what it was.” “Yeah she did said something about some sorta fundamental force multi school wizard. She has no idea what any of it means at all its mostly gibberish to her. She said she was going to kill you when you got back. I told her she couldn’t. It didn’t seem to sway her.”
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William could only gape at Cluci’s words. Kena’s class was quite possibly tainted by him. Which probably meant he had tainted every child’s prospects in the village and would have to teach them about their individual classes as they came. Great more work for me then.
However at the moment he had a subject to experiment on. Kena’s class probably allowed her to get every single type of magic if she practiced enough that is. He just needed to remember everything he could about the four fundamental forces of physics. As well as draw the courage to stand tall against an angry woman. William’s thoughts crossed to an accurate statement that he felt continued to be flawless in what it conveyed. But only literally not that shit about love. Hell has no fury like a woman scorned. There was no way he could hide. He would have to meet what he had most likely birthed from his presence in this world.
Eventually, several hours later, William summoned all the resistance he could which was very little in the face of women he had respect for. That feeling quadrupled for his wife, but she wasn’t around currently. Prepared for a reckoning he marched on to find Kena.
Cluci had pointed him in the direction of a practice field that had appeared one day. It was mostly for Kena but Cluci had set up a few targets as the are was so large. For what William actually found at the site was Kena. But it wasn’t the nice flat piece of land William had envisioned. No, it looked like pictures of no man’s land in world war one just without the knee deep mud. When William took a look he tried to guess what Kena was trying to do. From his vantage point it seemed like she trying to make points of strong gravity to draw opponents to displace them. But then it quickly failed and turned into a shrapnel bomb. So that’s what Cluci meant. Well time to talk or she won’t get any better. “Hey there Kena I was told you could use my help.” The young woman's body quickly whipped around to face the noise and a single word that conveyed every emotion she currently had came out as a predatory growl “YOU”. At the single word the courage William thought he had vanished instantly.
As if he was prey stunned in fear he stood stock still as Kena closed the distance babbling and shouting as she came closer. “What did you do? My grandmother couldn’t help me with my class. She’s an expert on the topic. She could only tell me what one of my ‘fundamental forces’ ‘gravity’ does but her words just don’t make sense. She said that you probably knew everything but you’ve been gone for months now. I have been the perfect student to my grandmother. I learned everything there was to know about the system from her. Yet here I am nearly blowing myself up every single time I try to take my grandmother’s advice to heart.” Kena almost seemed to want to punch him as she approached. Her anger almost radiating off her. But when she finally got to William she only lightly hit him as she slumped to the ground crying. With the crying young woman at his feet Will finally snapped out of his prey response and looked down. What he saw was a number of memories of his wife doing the exact same thing. He immediately went to comforting her as much as he could but what would truly help would be giving her direction for her to grow into her class. “Hey everything is going to be alright I know everything for you to get started on your class. I am sorry for any amount of tampering my presence had on your class but the only thing I can say is lets try and make the most of it.” After his words Kena seemed to calm down a bit so he immediately made a [ Contract ] for him to teach her about each of the fundamental forces in return for more questions. Kena didn’t even question it. Will promptly felt a screen lightly touch his face. Huh no more slapping?
[ **NEW** Contract: (Fundamentals of the Universe 1?) Teach Kena Vun about a Fundamental Force of the Universe. Rewards: Earn another contract?, +200 manapool, 1/10 Loyalty of Kena Vun]
Uh… that third reward better not turn into something else like in some rpg games. I respect Kena nothing else, my wife is still alive… somewhere out there.
So William made some basic stools from some branches laying on the ground and started the process of teaching Kena.
“So which fundamental did your grandmother tell you about?” “She talked about gravity. But it wasn’t in great detail she said that when she got yanked here there were stories about its definition being changed due to some discovery. But what she said was that it was the attraction of two objects acting on one another.” “Alright if I remember right she said she got yanked in nineteen twenty. Yeah not surprised your grandma only had that. What she described is a part of Newtonian physics. There is one key difference from my time and hers. This might start sounding weird at some point just know its true and if you lose me stop me and I can explain it the best I can. I can even show you all the cool demonstrations my physics teachers showed me. But for a few of them I’ll need something pretty fundamental to my life back in my universe for me to show all of them.
Anyways, first imagine a simple flat sheet with nothing on it. This represents space-time. To break that down think of one of my chess boards I have made for the children but tilt one vertically. Then make a corner using three boards and expand those three boards to the biggest you can imagine. That is space. Space is three dimensional meaning it has depth and volume like you or me. Time plays the last part time is always forward in a straight line it might slow or speed up depending an awful lot on speed and the point of observation but I digress. Anyways lets go back to the sheet of space-time if I was to drop a large glass ball into the center the sheet would stretch to accommodate the ball therefore creating a well or pit. If I then take a much smaller ball and place it on the sheet its almost guaranteed to fall towards the larger ball right. However if I give that same ball a little bit of a push on the edge of the sheet the ball will circle the larger one almost indefinitely. Now there are a few other things that break this idea but everything touchable or you can see follows these rules nearly to the letter. I actually would say most of the time. There’s a whole other section of physics called quantum that kinda deals with the edges of this law. I stopped when the math became to abstract for me to continue in my curious venture. I might be able to teach you some quantum stuff but even I am fuzzy or don’t understand it. But the quantum level won’t really impact you until we start dealing with the other fundamental laws. Anyways lets see if we can put this into practice.”