Jonathan made his way down the road, more of a path than a road, really, but he had been getting fewer calls, and the last few were all false-positives. The last three were just deep rain puddles that had overeager people hoping they had something special. At least they paid his travel expenses. Of course the one before that was a village that dug a false opening, perhaps thinking that he was the one responsible, instead of just someone who found a way to communicate with the real responsible party.

As soon as he saw the first few cottages, a young boy ran up to him to ask if he could really give them a new well and their own forest of magical trees. He told the boy that he could not do any of that himself, but if they really had an entrance to the fruit dungeon, then he could probably convince it to do that, yes.

The boy was so excited he wanted to take me straight there. That was fine, knowing if this was a real or fake call before talking to the village elders would probably make his visit go more smoothly anyway.

The opening looked promising, it was exactly one foot across(as far as he could tell) and almost a perfect circle. The ground around it was not muddy even though the water was almost level with the dirt. He kneeled down next to the opening, lowering his walking stick until it touched the bottom. The water came up exactly to the six foot mark on his stick, and the hole had a firm bottom instead of a muddy one. After checking that the bottom was smooth and even across the entire circle, and tasting the water to see if it he could taste the dirt or grass surrounding it, he was confident that this was a dungeon entrance. He was looking forward to the fat commission from helping them set up a grove of magic fruit trees that would secure the future of this village for quite some time.

Now it was time to go talk to the village elders to see what they wanted and what they could afford.

Scouting report

It took three days for the giant fire eagles to escort theRoc from Roc 2 to Mountain. When they approached, the Roc from Mountain 1 came up to meet them.

The older Roc attacked and drove off the freshly spawned Roc, killing one of the escorts in the process.

The scouting party consisted of three giant fire eagles, two returned.

Well if the Roc is not lonely, then why does it keep chasing off the local giant eagles when they nestle down together and start grooming each other? The wolves, bears, eagles, camels, and other defenders all seem reasonably happy, be they giant, dire, or otherwise, but that Roc does not seem at all content. Perhaps that is part of being a solitary legendary animal? Does it want me to move the eagle nests further away again? Or perhaps it is just grumpy? Then again, the goblins needed that underwater village to be happy. Even if I can only have one Roc per mountain range, perhaps I-

Intruder Detected

Oh?

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Oh, it is just that intruder with the miniatures, probably wanting me to expand another one of my locations.

There seem to be a lot of would-be harvesters around, as almost all of my undefended, and many of my lightly defended sub cores have had invaders coming around to collect my grass and then collect the fruit from the trees I plant to replace it.

Looks like they have the miniature with the little stone wall in the middle and a tree on each corner out. They are almost to the edge of my claimed area, so clearly the local harvesters want my entrance in a more convenient place for them to use as a water source. Better claim the area in front of the miniatures person so I can follow to where they want the new entrance.

It is a little ways, but not as far as some of the other times, so to acknowledge the request, I make the half-floor high circle of stone around where they place the miniature. I can plant the trees later, once I know where the rest of the mana generation will be happening.

Once the invader pulls their miniature from inside the stone wall, I dig down a couple floors and fill it with water and some water-grass so it should remain self-sufficient, even when they take out lots of water with those buckets they use. That done, I claim the area ahead of the intruder and plant grass behind them as they make a slow procession holding clumps of dried grass above their head in both hands.

A short distance later, he puts away one of the clumps of grass and pulls out one of their miniature trees, holding the grass out to one side and the tree out in the other direction as they walk the perimeter of the new grove area. I must admit that it is a pretty good rendition of one of my basic mana trees or else I might not have figured out what they were trying to communicate the first time they did this. After marking out a nice big area, perhaps four times the size of the core-killer base, they pull out some of my fruits to indicate which ones the harvesters have a particular interest in. Much like before, they only want a couple of the acid and poison trees, with a few more of the other types, but they mostly seem to be interested in the Fire, Ice, and normal mana fruit. It also looks like they are only trying to direct my plantings for one small corner of the orchard area. That is appreciated, as some of the towns with smaller orchards would try to direct what I should plant in more than half the orchard. Not that I am willing to take that much direction.

I am not willing to give that much control over what types of mana I generate to others. Sure I can still do whatever I want with the grass, but if I am planting the grove, a significant majority of what mana I want to generate will be at my discretion, not theirs. Admittedly, the town by Travel 4 tried to take exception to my ignoring their requests and tried to go after my sub-core to coerce me. After I destroyed that sub-core and discarded the area, the other harvester communities got a lot less demanding.

Once I had grass outlining the orchard area and had planted the specific requested elemental trees, I went ahead and linked my water channel to a secret door under the new well and closed up the old entrance. In addition to having harvesters around that would want to prevent anyone from trying to coerce the source of their grove, and thus rick losing it, the additional passage to a place convenient for the harvesters also helps hide the actual location of the sub-core, just in case.

I wonder, perhaps I should send out scouts to find other structure groupings where I could plant a sub-core and a grove once they show me where they want it. That would mitigate the risk of making them unhappy with me for destroying their things and thus wanting to seek vengeance while letting me spread out more to cleanse and refine more mana. I must admit that it would scratch that instinctive drive to spread out and fix as much mana as I can. True the mana in this region is not nearly as bad as the mana in the region close to the core killer spawn point was, but it would still benefit from a near-by dungeon core to tidy it up and keep it flowing smoothly.