I spun up the flywheel to its maximum speed before we headed up to the warding room. I really needed to make a battery of some kind...

In the warding room Chantelle had cleared off the table and when we entered she did something and a holographic projection sprung up from it. Half of the table was a blue outline of my claimed territory, with models of trees ten centimeters high, my clearing in the middle. There was a red dot just in from the edge closest to Chantelle's village, and it was moving towards the clearing.

The other half of the table was a close up view of the detected group. There were two humans and one Arachne, though the display wasn't clear enough to see details.

"I set up the detection ward to trigger an alert when anything larger than half a human entered your land." Chantelle said. "I came to get you as soon as it went off."

I nodded. It looked like it would take them five minutes to reach the clearing at the speed they were going. I could feel Chantelle's worry, as these were very likely the same people who had attacked her village.

"I'm almost prepared for them." I said. "I should be able to set something up before they get here."

I only had time to set up one program, maybe. And there wouldn't be any time for testing or debugging, so I would have to translate one of my existing programs. I decided to go with the one that measured and manipulated heat, as the enemy was probably winter priests and I would expect them to use some sort of cold effect to attack.

"How is land divided up here?" I asked Chantelle to distract her from her worrying.

"In many parts of the land there are caretakers, like the Forest Keepers for the forest." She said. "They have magics that are specific to their area that makes it unwise to attack them. I thought that humans had wards that kept them away from where we settled, but that is obviously not right. It's possible that all caretakers give out claims of land to those who can uphold whatever terms they require."

"And humans?" I asked. "Kingdoms, empires, what sort of governments are there here?"

"My village was independent, my mother was the highest leader." She said. "We held our land through the power of our wards. Other villages align themselves with one god or the other, summer or winter, and use their power to keep the land. They would make up the only kingdom, led by the gods themselves through their priests."

"So if you can claim land, and have the strength to hold it, you can start your own country?" I asked.

She nodded. "That's what you did. You have to be a lord to sign a treaty, after all." She said.

The humans and Arachne had arrived near the edge of the clearing and had stopped.

"Stay here." I said to Chantelle. "I want you to be safe behind the walls."

I went out through the entrance room and shut the heavy stone door behind me. There was no reaction from them, so I cleared off the ever-present snow and sat down on the stairs that led down from the platform leading to my door. I was happy to wait, I could work on my code.

Not having any memory constraints was great, I could write things out longhand, which meant there were less mistakes. The heat sensing and manipulation that I had worked on as Chantelle was explaining how land ownership worked was about as good as I could get it without hours to tinker with it.

An interesting thought I'd had was to use my power as a sort of shield. If I soaked my power into, stone, say, and spread out any force that hit it over its entire area, and anchored into the ground, I should be able to reinforce my structures against attack. The Forest Keepers hadn't seemed to have much trouble breaking a hole in the tower I had made, after all, so stone wasn't as secure as I'd thought.

I tinkered with the code for fifteen minutes or so, and ended up with a rather good effect. I moved some stone from my stockpile to be nearby. Chantelle would have felt more than the low level of concern if they had moved, so they were still in the same place. Let's move this along.

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"You know I know you're there, right?" I said loudly towards them.

They walked out of the trees and stopped ten meters away from me. The humans, both male, were wearing very fancy blue robes, with bright blue embroidery, and carried staffs that looked to be carved from ice. One had a badge made of ice pinned to his robe. Very wintery. The Arachne, female, was wearing a black shirt, and was several meters behind the humans. It occurred to me idly that I hadn't seen a male Arachne.

"We are here to arrest Chantelle Warder, heir to the Warder clan, on the charge of sedition." The human with the ice badge said. "We have tracked her here. Hand her over."

Tracked? Unlikely, as we'd used my Pocket Dimension. Ah, maybe they had tracking spells.

"I am C.C., lord of this part of the Forest." I said, placing the same emphasis on Forest as Mal'Thorn did. "The Warder clan controlled their part of the Forest and owed no allegiance to your god, there could be no sedition. What has happened to them?"

Badge man sneered at me. "The great God of Winter has claimed all lands. The people of that insignificant village defied him, so they have been arrested and taken to the Fortress of the Gods. Or killed resisting arrest."

"Your god has declared war on the whole world?" I said. "I can see where you get your arrogance from."

I shook my head. "This is my land." I said. "Your god has no claim here."

"Then we will kill you and take the girl." Badge man said.

I raised my right hand, facing my palm towards them. My left hand, holding my orb, went behind me. I settled into a fighting stance and waited for them. It was a bluff, I still had no idea how to fight. And I had left my stone sword inside.

Thankfully, the two humans turned to face the Arachne and all three of them started chanting. The snow behind them started to raise up, forming into a sheet of ice ten meters wide, two meters long, and ten centimeters tall. This must have been what they were preparing in the forest. A bit bigger than I was expecting, but it was at least the same type of attack as I had prepared for.

The Arachne kept looking at me like she was expecting me to interrupt them. I wanted a display of force to make them go away, and countering their spell head on would be perfect for that. So I let them continue their chanting with an obvious look of patience.

I couldn't push heat effectively this far away from the ice sheet, but I could push my passive sense that far. My power met a wall around the ice that I couldn't push through. I couldn't affect things with an active spell on them? I walked up my stairs to place myself between their attack and my building, directly in the center.

Their chanting continued, and the ice sheet continued to get thicker. It must be some sort of siege spell. I was getting a little bit concerned that I didn't have enough energy in my orb to counter so much ice.

"Okay, this is getting ridiculous." I said. "I was going to counter your attack and send you on your way, but if you're going to stand there chanting indefinitely I'll just kill you and be done with it. If you can't end it with that much preparation, you can't end it."

With a shout all three of them fell to the ground and the ice shot forward.

I pulled a slab of stone in front of me as a shield. I would take most of the force of the attack, but the rest would still hit my building. I pushed my power into the stone wall of my building and my shield.

As the sheet of ice hit my shield I superheated the forty centimeter tall section that it hit, instantly turning the ice into vapour and shattering their spell into pieces in two halves. I heated the outer layer of the wall where the ice would hit and the remainder of the ice exploded into steam. I had to reinforce the stone to withstand it, and it slammed me into my shield. Some quick adjustments, pushing the heat from the steam touching me into my orb, stopped the superheated steam from scalding me.

Ow. That could have gone better. I wasn't visibly hurt, though, which was enough. I soaked my power through the steam and shoved it upwards. It wasn't terribly effective, as I didn't have anything to shove against, but the steam wanted to rise and after a few moments I could see the clearing again. The two humans were sprawled on the ground, and the Arachne was flopped behind them, her front spider legs damaged. All three were conscious, though.

"Get off my land." I said to them. "You don't have the power to take me. I will take any further provocation as a declaration of war and kill you."

Badge man laughed, though it was weak. His badge had melted, and his face was red. "Our God was right, you won't attack first. We were just a probe, to see what you would do. Our God wants Chantelle Warder, and you can't stop him. He will send as many as he needs to take her."

Well, that is interesting. I don't know where they got the impression that I wouldn't attack. True, I had been doing a lot of running away, but that was more because I was so completely outmatched. Now that I was on my way to having my Artificial Intelligence set up I would be much better set up to fight.

"Go." I said. "Your god is wrong. I won't tell you to leave a third time."

Badge man sneered at me again, but helped the other man up and left without a word. They didn't offer any assistance to the Arachne, who hobbled after them on six legs.

It looks as though I would need to increase my defences. And work on my combat potential.