My new house was finished. Jaina insisted that it was the first major project of her appointment.

According to her, my status was a reflection of the status of the community. The more put together I appeared the more both the citizens and any visitors would believe in the strength, and more importantly, prosperity of New Lordaeron. She had a point. It would be hard for new folks to respect a person sleeping on the ground.

Don't knock it though the purple grass was quite comfortable.

She had it constructed higher up on the hillside so as to overlook the town. The view was nice, or it would be once we brought more life back to the Badlands.

While not the largest structure in our town it was the more ornate. She had discovered that the Assemblers and Probes could output just about any material that they had a deep scan of on record. Then she discovered that they could apply pretty much any color to a material on a molecular scale. So my new home was clad in gold veined blue marble blocks.

When I confronted her as to the why of it, she replied that it looked both impressive and beautiful. Well, she wasn't wrong, I just felt like a poser living in a tiny palace. At least the inside was done in rich dark woods. Solid seamless pieces of wood that would be impossible normally. She really enjoyed the abilities of Khalai manufacturing.

Everything was engraved or enameled or painted in scenes of my time here. Some areas had images of stories told by Sally or Megan. I actually enjoyed looking at these tales given a visual form.

The footprint of the building wasn't much but it was three stories of small scale majesty.

The top floor was a suite of rooms centered around my bed and bathing rooms. A tiny library/den, a sitting room, a decently organized closet. Also an armory slash tiny workstation, for if the mood to tinker struck but I didn't have time to get to one of the Forges.

The second floor was much the same minus the armory, for important guests or dignitaries.

The ground floor was the kitchen, but most of it was taken up by the Meeting Area which was totally "not" a modestly sized throne room. Yeah. Well my new rather large, not a throne, chair was at the very least pleasant to sit upon. A little too much gold embellishment for my tastes, and were those fucking rubies in the eyes of the wolves heads carved into the armrests. Yes. Yes they were.

At this point, I was wondering why the Khalai didn't just buy the human factions off. Probably never occurred to them. Both their unique physiology and advanced technology mean that material goods didn't matter to them. It was all about honor and purpose, and humans had a hard time with both of those.

Eh, time to get some rest on my new giant and very comfy bed with the ladies.

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Pops happened so fast that it was one sound.

Mr. Wick was trying out a variety of guns I had assembled for him. He just put fourteen rounds into targets with near perfect accuracy, in about 4 seconds. To say he was impressive doesn't begin to cut it. No augments no superpowers, just fucking endless training and practice.

I was excited to see what he could become.

He was quite as stand offish as he had at first seemed. He spent time with the Raynor and his troops running drills and we even set him up a suit of power armor. He performed amazingly but didn't like wearing it.

He had this stare that was his default look, most people felt judged or terrified by it. After a week or so of exposure, I can safely say that feeling never goes away.

But he didn't mean anything by it, that's just how he looks. He helped the troops get more accustomed to the new rifles and their sidearms. He even taught them better ways to move and fight outside their armor.

Which begged the question.

"What's wrong with it?" Worried about my latest design overhaul.

"Nothing. Need to feel the air. Better sense of the action." He shrugged.

Interesting. I hope any cyberware doesn't screw him up.

"So if you could change any one thing to make yourself better what would it be?" Speed, strength what could elevate this legend to the next level?

"Better perception and reaction. Everything else can be trained or accounted for if you know what's going on, and understand it."

Huh, food for thought. I've noticed everyone has a different answer for that. I pondered who was right, or was this an all of them situation.

Since Mr. Wick didn't want the power armor, I made him a suit. Same style as his pervious one, but I managed to not only improve the armor rating and get the shielding in place, I snuck in a cloaking field. Now, it wouldn't work for long when not under a Psifield, but it might help you get out of a bad scene.

Not that Mr. Wick needed a cloaking field, he was really good at going unnoticed to begin with. Which really screwed with my head the first time he snuck up on me. He radiates such an aura of death that you'd think it would be impossible to hide. That was wrong. He could dampen his presence to almost nothing, it even affected his mana signature.

Jaina had started giving lessons in basic mana shaping to everyone who was interested. Not only was I there to see what was the same and different in her methods, but Mr. Wick was there absorbing the lessons like a sponge. He said it was a another valuable tool for his collection.

The though of him wielding shadows as weapons and just cursing folks to death was frightening. He could end up with a literal death stare.

What a lovely thought.

Megan, Sally and Jaina were thick as thieves. I rarely saw them without each being nearby.

They said it was nice to have a woman around near their own age that didn't treat them like they were crazy or one reason or another. Hmm. I hadn't thought about that. I'm glad they had a friend, even if she was from a whole different culture.

She was also fascinated by my healing abilities. Her mana couldn't quite be shaped that way for some reason. To be fair mine had a hard time being shaped into a more focus damage spell. Sure, I could do raw mana blasted but they were highly inefficient, she was the same in healing sure she could flood your body with mana and it helped with your own healing abilities but no where near as well.

As a side note, neither one of us was as effected by the mana of the other as say Sally. Nor did Jaina's mana have as strong an effect on folks as mine did. Some sure but it wouldn't be causing anyone to pass out anytime soon.

She postulated that it had to do with the essence of our mana. Her was all about water, mine was all about nature. That said she was likely to start deeper experiments once her tower was done.

Towers were required for Mages, she insisted. Just as a Druid must have a grove.

A what now?