The celebration went on late into the night. It was a wilder and less uptight celebration compared to what Kazius and Alice were used to… But that only made everything about the night all the more memorable.
A month had passed since the celebration. Even now, when Kazius closed his eyes, he could picture it quite vividly. From the way Alice’s eyes seemed to shine and almost look like a sunset when the light of the bonfire reflected on them… To the joyous howling they ended the celebration with.
A lot changed that night, but also a lot stayed the same.
The group still started the morning with breakfast together. This was followed by Kazius spending time with Alice and Damon, to try to climb to the peak of Mount Cyklon. Each day they seemed to get farther and farther up.
After training, Kazius would hunt with The Tribe, instead of doing so with just Alice, Damon, and him. It was a good bonding activity that while not 100% necessary for food, it was a good source of establishing a bond between him and his new people. Sometimes instead of hunting, they would go fishing in their long boats. It was an activity Damon was very happy to participate in.
All of this was something found to be necessary since Kazius did not share blood with the Tribe. It had actually been a suggestion from Alice. While such a thing was not possible for a country like Ratier, such a thing was doable for a town that was on a much smaller scale like Vargstam.
‘It is important that the people you lead feel a connection towards you.’ Or so she had claimed in her reasoning.
Still, despite the issues of blood connection… If this was the start of his path to becoming a King, Kazius could not have asked for a better starting point.
For starters, most of the population of Vargstam was bilingual. They spoke Common with a large variety of mastery levels. The only ones that were fully fluent in Common were Damon, Caleb, and Egil, but The Tribe themselves understood a good amount of it. This made communication a lot easier when it came to Alice and Azanor. They each acted as aids to Kazius, using their own past experiences to give the best advice they could. For this, Kazius was quite grateful to Zelphar, the culprit behind this.
Another big source of help was Egil. Kazius was able to fill in some of the gaps in what Damon had told him about Zelphar and Vargstam itself thanks to him.
For starters, Kazius discovered that Damon’s father had hated Zelphar before he even got involved with Damon and Caleb’s mother. When Zelphar had first arrived to the Tribe, he worked closely with Damon’s grandfather, Blaeser, to make life even more convenient for Vargstam. As former nomads, they had much simpler technology. Before Zelphar arrived, Vargstam used to use bonfires to cook, not even proper stoves.
Along with teaching the Common tongue, Zelphar had taught the people of Vargstam how to make light crystals to light their homes, even with the almost nonexistent amount of Mana that they had. There were a lot of things that were convenient and provided a better standard of living that were introduced by him. Overall, Vargstam had gone through a massive technological update thanks to Zelphar.
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Kazius supposed this explained why despite Vargstam being so different, he found Damon’s home to be very familiar to what he was used to. Then again, if places like Veleno could be so much more advanced in terms of forging and metal processing, it made sense that with how widespread and nonunified Monsters were, that they would have large gaps in the kind of living situations they were in.
This information aided Kazius a lot in understanding his new people.
Returning to Kazius’ new routine, after hunting or fishing, Kazius would eat with his friends before he would spend time with Alice, Damon, Azanor, Eve, and Egil in a council meeting. During this time, the people of Vargstam were free to approach The Chief’s House and voice any concerns.
Overall, Vargstam did not have a lot of problems, but that did not mean there was no work to do. Kazius would spend a lot of time giving Egil orders for him to spread around, but at times Damon or Alice would organize things for him.
Kazius intended to increase the scale of the farming that was done in Vargstam as well as other things to plan for the future. After all, at the rate the people in Vargstam had kids… The population of Vargstam would explode… Excluding the fact that Kazius intended to hopefully have more Monsters that would look at him for leadership in the future… Kazius needed resources… A lot of them… Things that would give him leverage in the future.
During this whole process, despite not understanding the full reason for Kazius’ urgency… There was no one that was more helpful than Alice. Unlike Kazius, she had studied a lot when it came to things that a ruler should know. From politics to possible obstacles that Kazius could face… Alice was there every step of the way advising him.
At such moments, the amount of studying she had done for the sake of Ratier truly shined… Which only made the situation she ended up in even more upsetting to Kazius.
Another matter that Kazius intended to work on, without explaining too much, was security and military force… Or at least what he could manage right now… The biggest obstacle in this was Vargstam’s minimal manufacturing abilities. Thankfully, Vargstam’s surrounding mountains provided natural fortification. This meant that if an army were to ever approach Vargstam, there wereery few places that they could come from.
It was a shame to be so limited, but what Kazius could do for now was to have a patrol always checking the valley… Even if the Oracle could only be used once a year, Kazius wanted to be extra careful. Leo and Alex had seen them not too far away, if they came back and stumbled into Vargstam, they had to be ready.
Thankfully, the Monsters that were closest to Vargstam were not hostile. Apparently, to the far North, where there were more mountains, there were Frost Giants. The mountains they lived in were tall and normal mountains that were cold towards the top… Unlike the ones near Vargstam.
In fact, according to Egil, who knew of one of the few meetings between The Frost Giants and Vargstam, The Frost Giants were deeply unnerved by how strange the mountains near Vargstam were so they stayed away. Due to this, they barely made contact with Vargstam, not even to trade. Something Kazius had zero complaints about.
To the far East, Vargstam had neighbors that were… Concerning… But not unfamiliar.
In the map they had gotten from Veleno, there was an area named Cemetery… And according to Egil, in that direction, there was an area where the sun did not reach. A place full of fog and the undead. Thankfully, the undead were not particularly eager to go mountain climbing nor smart enough to find the way around the mountains, so they never wandered into the valley.
Overall, things in Vargstam only grew more prosperous… Due to this… The seemingly almost paranoid preparations that Kazius wanted done were accepted without any sort of backlash.