Manning

Sapients.

The itching I'd felt were sapients approaching my northern border, which I'd managed to verify. My owl was roosted upon a taller oak tree behind the lines of willows, where it had been watching the group since they set up camp the night before.

Not much happened throughout the night after, it seemed that they were all tired from a long journey. Thankfully my owl has very little difficulty seeing in the dark or dim lighting, although the only thing I'd observed was the group taking turns sleeping. The only one I'd recognized was Jeremy, the young man whose life I had spared.

Finally, the sun rose, and with it the makeshift camp began to stir. Tents were collapsed, a new fire was constructed further away from the previous one, and they each began setting about their tasking. Wasting no time, I watched as the three of the shorter sapients began offloading lumber from their cart and the fourth began to use some sort of magic. It was obviously earth based, but I could not get a good read on it from inside my domain. The grass in a wide circle began to shiver and then boil.

There was a large upheaval of dirt spitting upwards, unrooting all the plants in a 75-meter radius. It looked like pure carnage to me, with gouts of plant matter and soil spilling everywhere, but was over within 10 seconds. The short man collapsed backwards in the epicenter of the brown circle, and instantly sat back up with his legs crossed and eyes closed. It looked a bit different than what the woodsman had done, but I was sure that he must be meditating to recover his mana.

On the outer edge of the circle I watched as the other three half men and a woman with blue hair began stabbing stakes of wood into the ground, accompanied by a lot of pointing and hand motions. Unfortunately, they were far enough from the bank of the river to be outside of my hearing.

Soon enough however I witnessed another of the men start making punching motions at the ground. With each jab into the air the ground between the wooden stakes seemed to depress itself, getting more and more compact. This continued for almost an hour as a large rectangle of compressed ground slowly became visible. I suspected that if this were within my dungeon I could have seen the magic with my senses, but the owl had no such ability.

Two of the sapients, a male and female who looked likely to be related, spent the hour charming back the wild grasses and weeds in a path towards the forest, a road I assumed. It was around this time that the owl heard a large crashing.

Swiveling its eyes back towards the large circle, I saw that the first half man had recovered and managed to cause a large amount of rocks to pour out of the back of a wagon into his circle. He beckoned over the punching man and together they started weaving their hands in intricate motions.

It looked as if the rocks were water as they began pouring over each other and filling in the circle. Over the course of 20 minutes or so the rocks slowly filled in the area now vacant of grass until it was filled, and then poured over until the circle was eventually a square. With a last burst of energy, the rocks compressed themselves, seamingly interlocking in an intricate pattern.

Both men, now much more weary looking, wandered over to the cooking fire where the female animalistic sapient was cooking. It made sense to me that magic must be a very hunger inducing process for the sapients who could not easily feed off the ambient mana like I could as a dungeon and creature of magic.

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I'd wasted enough time watching them and was now confident that they were not planning to raid me to avenge the dead thugs. They were building a settlement, and I still was not properly set up to protect Ash, Cara, or myself. It was time to start fortifying my position.

I looked back at the enchantment ability I learned from killing Echil and decided my first course of action was to cast it. I'd put it off because of the constant cost. The ability only worked in forest or jungle environments and maintained itself by placing a tithe on the mana trees and other plant life put out naturally. Whereas it did not make sense to hamper my growth rate previously, now that the adventurers were finally here I figured it was time.

As I activated the magic I felt my passive mana recovery take a sharp decline and felt a buzzing of energy in the air. The sensation was so powerful it almost felt physical, and I took it to be the interaction between the trees and magic.

Now it was time to start making some glades within my forest. The first glade I left primary empty, just a large circle with a 25-meter radius. I was planned on adding something here later that the sapients might like, to charm them into entering my forest so I could leech the mana they put off.

The next three clearings I filled with my coppernut trees and populated with families of my attack squirrels and insects. Finally, I got to the natural grove that Ash and I had been sitting in. So far, I had the 4 coppernut trees and the hedgehog warrens here with me, but I wanted something more in case trouble arose. For now, I had my male Boar wander the brush surrounding the grove with orders to not stray too far.

I'd be more comfortable after the female gave birth to more boars, but for now this is what I had. Almost as an afterthought I added in a ring of the numbing berry bushes to the first grove along with some fig and apple trees whose growth I accelerated a bit. I did not know when they were going to venture back into my forest, but having some food would probably encourage them to go deeper in.

I spread the blackbirds throughout the forest and had squirrels positioned to leap upon any sapient who wandered too far from the path I'd prepared them through my wood.

Looking upon the coppernut trees I realized that they were releasing more mana for me to absorb than other trees, with the fruit bearing trees also ahead of the average oak. This had to be because they were more complex lifeforms in some sort, and it gave me an idea of what to make next.

I'd started to crossbreed the fruit trees a while back but hadn't paid it much mind recently. I located the grouping of trees towards the center of my forest and was surprised at what I'd seen.

There was a collection of various fruits, with apple/fig hybrids making up a majority. I did not know what the fruits tasted like because I had no sense of taste, but the local field rat population seemed to be enjoying the fallen fruits on the ground. I had a blackbird pick up one of the fruits and fly it closer to my hill. I found it much easier to manipulate the mana closer to my core than a distance.

Settling upon my next project being some sort of enhanced fruit, I looked out to the sapient group once more. I'd spent a lot of time killing trees and absorbing them to clear the groves, as well as creating the path through my wild nature and enforcing it with the passive enchantment, so the sun nearly ready to begin setting.

They'd set their camp up again at the build site and were preparing to to eat. The half men were still laboring away at the compacted square soil, but there was now a massive skeleton of a building standing there. It looked like it stood taller than any of the trees in the forest, but I had a hard time discerning its actual height from a distance and through another creature's eyes.

The four thicker half men were carrying large pieces of timber and hammering them together to build a frame while the blue haired female and another smaller, scrawnier looking, male guided them. I decided they must be the brains while the other four were the muscle.

Checking up on the rest of them I watched the two-light skinned purple sapients laying plants out next to the cooking fire on a blanket. They seemed to be doing meal prep and nearby the female beast-woman was weaving rope together out of the tall grasses that grew around there. Jeremy sat next to the fire staring into the dark in the direction of my forest.

Finally, I searched for the two elves and the beast-man around the camp, but that is not where I found them.

I watched through my owl as the male animal-sapient and both woods-people slowly approached the forest armed with bows and axe at the ready, it seemed like they were going to be hunting for dinner.