We finally broke through to the other valley after another twenty days of work. The tunnel is a little over a third of a mile in length, and elevates by almost ninety feet over the length of the whole tunnel. The horizontal wells were actually the biggest slowdown by the end of construction because of the amount of running water. The reservoir level has finally reached a low enough level to resume some amount of quarrying again, which should help provide the road construction crews with plenty of excess stone with which to resume construction of the road across the second valley.
They can resume construction on the road tomorrow, and I'll trade off and work on the artificial tide pools. I really want to get first hand experience for just how much fish is actually being produced, and how much more the new pools will provide. We've established quite a few government jobs that require only a single goblin to operate, so I'm hoping to increase the population again in the near future to reduce the percentage of the population that works directly for us.
One of the jobs that I neglected to realize we'd need included the person who is supposed to feed the eagle, and there was quite the panic as it came down the mountain only for no offering to be placed for it to eat. After that incident was resolved, we asked for a volunteer to permanently take that job and negotiated payment for them.
There is also more competition for the rope maker now. The clothes maker has started to charge people to add pockets to their simple clothing. Some people prefer the pockets, others prefer the strings of coins. I've heard murmurs of some goblins looking for places to safely hide their coins at as well. I've got no clue how to make a keyed lock though, so they'll just have to get good at hiding them. We've already dealt with a second would-be thief, who was caught trying to sneak into another goblin's house while they were gone. Ideally, we get a banking system organized, and they can just keep excess wealth stored there, but that'll require a lot of planning, and we have more pressing concerns.
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The other construction crew had made really good progress, so I only ended up working for eight days to finish the next artificial tide pool layer. Surprisingly, some of the fishergoblins protested the new layer being added. The reason seems to be that they have a harder time cornering their portion of the market when there are even more fish and other sea life available for harvest. Some of them were happy though, like the bulk fish seller. Ultimately, they'll just need to adapt to changes as they come though. Those who can't will fail.
I've also started paying a handful of goblins to start quarrying in the reservoir again. The two who are actually breaking stone are those who have gained earth manipulation already, and they're being paid slightly more than the standard laborer pay. I'm paying two more goblins normal labor pay to haul the stone that the other goblins break all the way back to the village. We always have need for more stone.
Next, I think I'm going to expand our salt evaporation ponds again. Without requiring even more engineering, we're already using about a third of the available space for salt evaporation ponds along the bay where we harvest our sea food, and I'm thinking about doubling it. First, we need more salt to support preserving more food for a higher population, but secondly, salt is a decent trade commodity that doesn't spoil, and is basically renewable.
Plus, all this gives me an excuse to cut some trees down myself to gain more levels. I've done a bit of tree felling over the past months, but I've mostly left it to the other construction crews so that they can gain levels and expand our workforce capable of doing tasks on their own. Since they're working through the next valley over, I can take the opportunity to gain these for myself.
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The tree felling of the area was completed after 35 days, and I ended up paying a lot of goblins to haul wood and make charcoal, which actually ended up being an extra boon, as there had been a slow drain on the money in circulation. This gave me a way to recirculate a decent chunk of the money that we'd been acquiring through the fishergoblins' fees to use the artificial tide pools.
I'm now very close to the level cap again, which has me thinking about what I should pick when I do.
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Level: 97
HP: 3176/3176
MP: 1568/1568
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation, Improved Dexterity, Heat Resistance
Magic: Improved Stone Shaping, Tectonic Sense, Improved Earth Spike
On one hand, I haven't even been offered an evolution in a long time, which means I might be forced into prestiging. On the other hand, if I do have an evolution available, would I want it? I suppose it would depend on the options I have available for traits or magic. Plus there is the cumbersome issue of evolution making housing a problem. We seem to get bigger when we prestige or evolve as demons, which means whenever we hit certain thresholds, like Zaka did, we end up needing specialized housing to hold our larger forms. Even for hobgoblins it's almost too small in a standard house after they prestige a few times.
Another thing to consider is that I should probably work hard on something that I would like to gain some form of trait or magic related to. I level so slowly passively, that I could spend months working on something specific for a long time and maybe get offered something to help with that in the future. The question is, what sort of task would I like to gain a trait or magic for?
Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind is metalworking. I gained heat resistance before from working around it so much, so I wonder if there might be more things available to me if I keep pursuing it. I'll pay some goblins to do the manual labor of digging the dirt from the new salt evaporation ponds, then I can stone shape them, but in the mean time, I'm going to go mine a bunch more metal ore, and have it shipped down to the village to smelt.
I'll put in an order for more shells from the goblin that collects them to ultimately make more of the high quality metal. Since it seems to have a pretty high value with merchants, I'm hoping to hit two birds with one stone, and provide us with more trade goods while attempting to focus my potential traits or magic into the same area.
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The seashell collecting goblin was ecstatic that I wanted more shells. They'd been taking up public labor jobs since currency was introduced because no one wanted to buy their shells. I offered to buy buckets of finely crushed shells from them at a pretty hefty price of two of the large copper coins per bucket. Considering they had quite the stockpile of shells already, I'm sure they're happy to finally have someone buy them, even if they have to crush them first.
After placing a standing order for them, I made my way up the mountain and began excavating more ore and shipping it back to the village while I waited for news of the salt evaporation ponds to be completed. All in all, I spent twelve days on the mountain mining ore, while paying goblins to ship it back and pulverize it with the crushers, so that it would be ready for processing when I return. Before I left the mountain, I grabbed a decent amount of all the currency to bring back to the village to help keep currency in circulation. Some of the goblins have taken to collecting a lot of the small coins, rather than ever using the medium value coins, since that's the coin they use every day, which means there is more demand for that denomination than I thought there would be.
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When I returned to the village, I had to go finish stone shaping the areas around the new salt evaporation ponds before I could start smelting metal, which I'm now hoping to begin tomorrow. The ponds ended up taking eleven days to finish. During that time, the road construction crew has started their construction through the craggy quarter of the island, which will slow their speed heavily. A lot of stone and soil need moved to properly make the road through that portion of the island. Thankfully, we have excess stone, so the pace can probably be kept up if they can hire more help to actually move the rock to the destination.
The carpenter goblin actually came up with an innovation, if a small one. A pulled wooden cart. It's not much, but as long as it's on a road, two goblins can work together to move way more material than they would be able to by just carrying it. It's based on the rail carts I made, so there are some improvements that could be done to make it much better than it is currently, but I'll leave it to the carpenter to see just how clever he is.
At this point, the road construction crew has started camping for weeks at a time while they work as well. They have daily deliveries of not just stone, but also food, so they're able to keep up a good pace. Not too much longer though, and even the deliverymen are going to have to camp out as part of the process. I've had a message sent to Zeb that he should consider building a copy of my inn building somewhere on the far side of the other valley, where the deliverymen can sleep, or the crew themselves if they want.
At some point while they were building through the second valley, it became nonviable to make the trip back to the village to recharge mana, because they'd recharge it in the same amount of time as if they had just waited, that was the point where their construction pace slowed considerably, as their mana became the limiting factor for their work pace.