Rolly knew he shouldn't be arguing with a pregnant woman who already had eleven children, but Dora had a habit of getting on his nerves. First, she'd complained to him about the taste of the water after the wyverns took a bath in the pond. Then he'd spent half a day looking through the thickets looking for 'little baby Ferdy' only to find out she'd miscounted her offspring and named most of them 'Ferdy' after their father. That had started her latest series of complaints that Ferdinand didn't pay attention to her and didn't visit. Rolly believed her but made the mistake of pointing out that Ferdinand sired hundreds of calves. Eventually, when she demanded he let her move to the new pasture, he happily told her how to get there.

That had been a mistake as well, in two ways. First, she couldn't find the path, and second, she told half the pasture where she was going. The sedge beasts all decided that the lands beyond the Fae Portal were a better pasture and were complaining to Rolly that their path to 'the tasty new grass' was blocked. Eventually, Rolly had a large herd of sedge beasts following him as he led them to the hidden path to Suzette's Fae Realm. Only the path wasn't there.

Rolly stared at the close-set trunks of young oak and sassafras trees that blocked his way. "Damn, I just cleared a path two days ago. What the hell is up with this forest?" He'd been using the goats to trim back the foliage and eat the new saplings, but even they couldn't keep up with the accelerated growth of the forest. And more trees weren't the only problem. These were tougher trees, with thicker bark and wood that a normal axe or adze bounced off of. Somehow, the forest was leveling up.

He blamed both the druid's old magic and their ring of rune stones surrounding the city. The first function of the stones was to keep people out of Gadobhra. They did a good job of that. Contract workers could approach them, only feeling the effect if they got very close and were the first Tier. Other workers didn't feel the aversion that made everyone else turn and wander off in a random direction. This made the front gates the only viable entrance to the city, much to Billy's delight. He only had to use building points for an impressive set of guard towers instead of rebuilding the entire wall around the city.

Between the nearly impenetrable forest, the rune stones, and the high, crumbling rock walls, it wasn't easy to get into Gadobhra. Billy offered a quest to find another way in, with a reward of 100 gold pieces. Several adventurers had tried, and none succeeded. The Baron didn't worry about the walls and spent his building points on a formidable gatehouse with two tall stone towers, double gates with the ACME logo, and a portcullis. He wasn't expecting trouble, and gates were always open, but they made a statement to anyone walking into the city—especially the spies from other corporations. The murderous-looking automatons only added to that statement.

The second effect of the stones was to absorb mana and channel it into the old druidic spells that encouraged rapid growth and constant breeding in the sedgebeasts, along with the continual replenishment of the forest designed as another barrier to entry. Rolly had already noticed that his herd was increasing faster recently, he suspected it was from the runestones functioning better after they were connected to the Hermetic Shield.

The druid's spells added to the effect of his legendary Shepherd abilities, and the meadows were filling up with large herds of mutated cattle. The calves running and playing today would be adults and pregnant in two weeks. This wasn't a bad thing, but he needed to talk to Ozzy about increasing his rate of thinning down the herds. For now, his solution was sending the excess off to Suzette's discrete fractal dimension.

The first time he had visited her realm on his own, he found that his herds had preceded him, and so had the sedge grass. While the majority of the land he could see wasn't changed, a hundred acres near the portal was the deep green of sedge, with scattered bones of sedge beasts killed from eating too much poison, and dire lizards killed by the sedge beasts. The giant lizards that inhabited the fae realm were used to being the apex predators, but much of their power was drained when the old countess consumed the magic from her land during her battle. They were still horrible creatures with endless appetites, something they had in common with the newer arrivals, but a fight with an angry sedge beast didn't always go their way.

Just how much the two breeds of animals had in common became apparent to the Shepherd when he found a dozen calves with sharp claws, scaly hides, and elongated snouts or thick reptilian tails. The crossbreeds had no problem eating any of the foliage and enjoyed chewing on the bones or carcasses of poisoned animals. Rolly was happy with them, although he nearly lost a hand trying to look at their sharp teeth. "Better than goats, these things will eat anything, I bet."

So today, Rolly was moving a herd of five hundred sedge beasts to the small creek and through the portal. With the trail overgrown, the beasts wouldn't get there on their own. A quick whistle summoned his herding wyverns and for a few treats, they tightened up the beasts into a tight herd. Rolly rode the largest bull at the front of the herd and yelled for the rest to follow. His Crook of the Pathfinder opened up a trail through the forest that would last until the last of the herd passed by. Until he could find a solution to the fast-growing trees, he'd need to open up the path each time he needed to move the herd. Some of the more independent bulls were going to complain about the situation, but it couldn't be helped. With five hundred new sedge beasts in the pocket dimension, the life and death cycle that cleared the poison would accelerate, giving more pasture to the expanding herds. Rolly had no idea what the creatures would eventually look like, but he was anxious to find out.

After the runestones had been added to the mana system, the effect on the forests that circled Gadobhra was felt immediately by the lumberjacks. Jon, Cham, and four other workers attacked the forest every day, cutting trees from dawn to dusk, yet there were always more trees. In the last week, they'd been losing ground as the forest thickened, the trees grew faster, and anything near the walls grew taller and taller. The piles of logs were building up and workers from other areas were putting in overtime to help with cutting limbs, stripping bark, and hauling the timbers away. Many of the workers put in the overtime cheerfully. Swinging an adze increased their strength and gave them ranks in a weapon that was effective at killing creatures in dungeons. Like butchering in Gadobhra, it was treated like an event with barrels of wine and beer brought out each night, laced with Suzette's stamina potions.

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After a solid week of losing ground to the forest, Jon and Cham went to see the Baron and explained the situation. As expected, Billy wasn't unhappy with the situation. "So, along with a never-ending supply of fresh meat, the never-ending supply of timber is increasing? Outstanding news, boys. Excellent job. We can always use the timbers for building the new sausage factory and other projects. But it sounds like you need a few more people swinging axes?"

"It would help, I'm worried we might even lose the road into Gadobhra. We're clearing new growth near it every day, and Rolly is using goats to chew the new saplings, but the forest seems determined. We're also getting higher-tier wood from some of the trees, which takes a veteran lumberjack to harvest, and takes longer. Jon and I trained in the Ironwood forest, but the other four guys and gals don't have our experience. They need more enhancements to get up to our speed, and we should start training another half-dozen lumberjacks. Plus more drying sheds for seasoning the good timbers. And furniture. If we had more carpenters we could start making more finished furniture from the better wood. There's going to be a market for that when people start moving into the City."

Billy liked everything he was hearing. More contract workers and higher-level workers were the solution. As Northern Regional Manager, he could shift people to where he needed them. "Layla, do we have any villages under my control that have excess workers? Hiring more isn't an option, not with Vern working against us."

"I'd love to get those twenty-five people he has parked in Thunderhead doing mostly nothing. That copper mine was such a shitty deal, but he won't admit it or give up his control. It's infested with dwarven undead and old tombs and could be hiding all sorts of treasure and ore deposits."

"Agreed, but the board is believing Vern, and not me. What else do we have?"

The Baroness thought for a second, "One option is the two groat farms near Daylesford. Vern set them up with twenty-five workers each, and they are barely turning a profit. The two managers are never in the game and Vern has them doing work for him. The result is fifty workers still in the first tier growing just enough low-quality grain to keep the operation in the black, but not produce any profit we can get out hands on. Too much of the Northern Region is like that, with a few exceptions. Let's send ten of our Tier 3 farmers down there and let them take over the work. We can promote Sanderson to the foreman position and let him run both farms. Then we retrain the top half of the workforce from there as farmers in our fields here and reassign the rest to be lumberjacks and other classes we need."

"Make it so. That will give us our new lumberjacks and ease the load a little on these two hardworking employees. You said production was up, Jon, how much overall, do you think? Compared to the preceding months."

Jon and Cham began talking to each other, calculating the growth rates, the increased board feet in lumber they got from larger trees, and the amount of clear, knotless wood they were getting from the higher-level trees. After two minutes they had their best guess. "Call it 160% this last week. With more help, we can probably do a little better."

Billy looked at the two of them, both were looking impressive with their Ironwood Enhancements and magical axes on their belts. They were moving up fast, almost to the fourth tier. "Excellent. I want to see if we can't do even better than that, but we do need to make sure you boys get your days off and time to enjoy your bar down in the catacombs. All work and no time to drink beer isn't any fun, right?"

Both men nodded their agreement. Too much overtime interfered with bar time. Then they looked at each, other nervously. "You know about the bar?"

Billy smiled, "Hard to hide a good bar, people talk. And at first, it didn't bother me, not at all. What you guys do in your off-hours is up to you. But then I got to thinking, it's not your bar, is it? Technically, it belongs to me. As would any small profits you turn."

Before they got too nervous, he went on. "I was thinking how it would be a shame if ACME had a change in management and the new person, probably Vern, didn't recognize your hard work and defacto-ownership of that fine underground tavern. So I have a solution. I'll give you six new lumberjacks, and if you can get wood production up from 160% to 200% for the next three months, I'll have Suzette sell you that chunk of Sedgewick for one copper piece. How's that sound?"

The two lumberjacks looked at each other, "Sounds like we need to sharpen our axes and get to work." They smiled and bowed, and got back to work, making the short run to the forest in only a few minutes.

"That went well. I like the deal for the bar."

"I agree, especially since we're actually at 210% and that doesn't take into account our increases when we move to Tier 4 next week."

"Under-promise and over-deliver, always a good way to operate." Jon's axe bit into a twisted trunk of a huge Rowan tree, which responded by kicking him with a root and knocking him back thirty feet.

"You dare attack Rowdy Roddy Rowan? I'll murderize you two tree-killers."

Cham cheered, "He's a level 15 Elite. That will give us the last enhancement points we need. Get off your ass and get swinging."

"Yeah, if we win! Watch his roots!"

"Even losing is a win. That gives us more bar time."

The pounding of hooves heralded Ben's arrival. "You guys ok? I'm sort of busy. Need to talk to Billy and get some wagons moving. And General Themis is looking for volunteer Contract Workers for a special job."

"We're in! Pick us up on your way back, we'll have this critter chopped into kindling by then."

"Or we'll be fertilizer. Be careful, I don't want to miss a big fight, it's more fun to die in those!"