After the next six-day stint, the mine had to switch to horizontal shafts, because the vein had deviated too far from the vertical shaft that was being dug. I agreed to stop directly helping with extraction for the sake of morale as well. Though I can still help with peripheral matters if I think it will improve the miners overall speed and effectiveness, but I don't currently have any projects like that in mind.
One of Zeb's teams finished building the new warehouse just outside the city, so now I can begin sorting goods that we'll eventually trade without worrying about accidental mix-ups happening. I also got the chance to talk with the crew doing salvage, and they'll haul one cart's worth of trade goods over to the other warehouse in addition to the food they haul for themselves whenever they're headed to the bay. While that won't result in everything being hauled over, it's labor that would have been wasted otherwise.
Speaking of Zeb, it seems like they've managed to retrofit the human and dwarf houses with windows, though now that it's spring, the evening temperatures will be a little warmer. The windows will at least keep the frequent rains out though, so I suppose that's a plus. Zeb also seems to have come up with a new design for an apartment for goblins that's four stories tall. It's quite impressive in comparison to most of the other buildings in town. I decided to look through it to see what the final design ended up as.
The first floor of this building doesn't seem to have any rooms for goblins to live in. Instead it boasts two large kitchen areas, a central dining area, and two moderately sized rooms that each had a table and a few chairs. Honestly, it's quite similar to a hotel's design as there are two stair wells on opposite sides of the building which go to different ends of a central hallway on each floor which is flanked by rooms. There are a total of twelve rooms on a floor, so the building houses 36 goblins in total. There are also 12 pillars which are about three feet in diameter that run up the height of the building to provide added stability in addition to extra thick walls.
I got a look at another building that he seems to be currently designing which is clearly sized for hobgoblins, it's still in its early stages so I can't tell much about what the final design will be, but it does seem to be another high density building based on it's size. If he tries to make it house just as many hobgoblins, the building would be significantly taller than the other one, so I hope he's not doing that.
I haven't been paying much attention to my level, and it barely has moved at all. I've done a bit of tree cutting and other work that normally gives me some levels, but even then it isn't much.
Level: 7
HP: 1579/1579
MP: 1156/1156
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation, Improved Dexterity, Heat Resistance, Partial Sleep
Magic: Improved Stone Shaping, Tectonic Sense, Improved Earth Spike, Thermal Hands, Pulverize
Honestly, I'm thinking I'd like to gain some levels, though the number of trees I'd have to cut down would be astronomical to show any results. Though that would maybe be a good starting point. For a long while, we've been stockpiling salt and not trading it. The reason for this was to have a strategic stockpile in case we have another war. Though now that we've spent some time doing so, we can probably start trading some of it again, as we produce about ten times the amount that we use over the course of a year.
What I'm thinking about doing is felling a significant number of trees in the next valley over near the coast. Just beyond where we're digging out the new artificial tide pools, I'm thinking we should build more salt evaporation ponds. If I can finish that project before the summer, then they can be operational for a decent portion of the year where they're functional. Long term, salt could be a semi-stable commodity for us to trade if we build a port.
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In thirty-six days, I'd cut down a considerable number of trees from the other valley to make room for even more salt evaporation ponds. As I worked, I thought about the idea of converting one or two of the ponds in the other valley into solar stills by essentially making a greenhouse over the pond to increase the rate of evaporation. Right now, the ponds are only effective for part of summer and fall when there isn't much rain, but building a greenhouse over the pond would make it effective year round, and we could increase the rate of evaporation even in other months. I don't want to attempt making one until we've got a good stockpile of quartz for glass in the city though. We don't need the salt immediately, and if we produce too much we won't even be able to trade it. After all, I'm already practically doubling our available production of salt by making all these new ponds.
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Level: 19
HP: 1939/1939
MP: 1288/1288
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation, Improved Dexterity, Heat Resistance, Partial Sleep
Magic: Improved Stone Shaping, Tectonic Sense, Improved Earth Spike, Thermal Hands, Pulverize
Though now that I've cut down the trees, we'll still have to remove stumps and roots, then dig out the ponds and waterways for ocean water. Honestly, I should take the time to build a proper road from the tunnel across this valley as well. We'll need it when the new artificial tide pool is made, and it'd speed up the hauling of all the various materials from this valley.
I already have about three dozen goblins processing the various trees I've cut down. Quality wood is being sent to the carpenter, where as the rest of the wood is being divided between paper making and charcoal production. The stumps and roots will similarly be divided up between paper and charcoal as they're removed.
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Given our larger population, I mobilized even more goblins to help with the development in the area. An additional six goblins are helping dig the path for a new road, and another twelve are working on removing tree stumps and roots in the area where the salt evaporation ponds will go. The goblins processing the rest of the wood have made decent progress in the last sixteen days, and there are constant cart loads being hauled to various destinations.
I've been cutting stone from the new artificial tide pool construction to use for the new road in the meantime. Though I'll probably want to take a short break soon as its about time for me to check in on Tiberius, and I should check in on how the mining team has been doing and spend a day or two pulverizing more quartz if they have it.
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I checked in on Tiberius first, which ended up taking about two days' time. The first day was spent waiting for him to return with some more fish to show me what he's been working on. He's seemingly given up on weaponizing the electric fish alone, which I'm not that surprised by. As I mentioned before, it's very hard to control electric arcs, and proper use of organs for something like this practically impossible at our current technologic level.
What he's done instead though actually does utilize the electric fish somewhat, albeit in a way that's somewhat different than I expected. There are quite a few kinds of fish around the island, and one shoots out spines made of bone as a defensive weapon. Those spines are embedded in a special muscle, or maybe it's proper to call it an organ? Either way, that organ contracts when electric current goes through it, which limply tosses whatever is embedded in it. However, if you apply mana at the same time, it properly propels the item inside it, albeit somewhat wildly.
What he's done is fashioned a barrel that can help guide and aim the projectile fired from the device, and by using the electric fishes blood as a conduit, it provides both the mana and electricity that causes the organ to propel the item out. So I suppose I need to retract my statement about utilizing organs, though many organs are going to be useless, this one seems somewhat useful, though you still need the ability to infuse mana into the liquid. The current prototype is somewhere between a gun and a crossbow. The projectile that is used needs to be somewhat long to be properly propelled by the organ, but it also needs a barrel to guide it. So maybe a mana powered blowgun is a better description?
Reloading it takes a bit of time, and I don't think it'd be easy to automate that process. It's about as simple to reload as a crossbow and I suspect it takes about as long, but it's much lower effort, so it has that going for it. I'm interested in what improvements he'll make to the design, so I left him with a bit more money than last time to continue his research for a few more months.
I then went and took three days pulverizing more quartz that had been mined. The mine has been producing less and less gypsum, and the quartz output has increased comparatively. They've also been producing more output since I let them use the crystal trays more effectively, so we've got quite the excess amount of quartz.
Zeb's prototype building was also completed, and I looked through it. This building is only three stories tall, but stands a little taller than the four story goblin building as each floor is taller to accommodate hobgoblins. The entry floor is similar to the other building, with two kitchens and rooms, but the two floors above each house ten hobgoblins, so the total population housed in the building is twenty.
His construction teams have built two more of his goblin high-rises and are working on another hobgoblin building to match the prototype. Zaka has been kept pretty busy with summoning, and I'm really starting to think we'll need to figure out how to get more demons capable of imp summoning if we want our population to increase any faster than it already is. That said, we're getting about two new goblins a day currently, so compared to the races from the mainland we're multiplying exponentially faster.