I made my way around the ice wall that surrounded my fortress, clearing the snow in front of me and flooding the ground underneath the ice with heat. The wall melted slowly while I was next to it, the section that was touching the ground quickly melted but the sections ahead held the ice above the heated ground. The more of the perimeter of the wall I melted the faster the earlier sections would melt as they weren't held above the near-molten ground.

It took me ten minutes to make my first circuit of the wall, arriving back at the tent of the priests. They had it halfway deconstructed and loaded up onto stretchers made of ice. The first priest to see me let out a shout and ran into the still standing portion of the tent while the rest of the priests formed up into ranks facing me. A few moments later the priest in charge came out of the tent and headed towards me cautiously.

I waved him away. "You've still got about twenty minutes." I said. "As you can see, only a third of your ice wall melted before it stopped melting entirely."

He nodded to me and ordered his priests back to work. The water from the melting ice had flooded the area, and the priests had churned the ground they were working on into mud that had then frozen into rough uneven ground. Where the higher ranked priests were working they had summoned a floor of ice that was much easier for them to work on.

I continued around the wall and after the gap for my stairs the ice wall had melted to almost half of its forty meter height and the water from it had frozen into a sheet of ice that extended out into the forest. When I got back around to the priests again they had their tent fully packed onto their carrying poles and pairs of lower ranked priests had each end.

They were just forming up into ranks to head north as I passed them, continuing to melt their wall. By the time I made it around the fortress for the third time and back to them they were all gone. Heading back to the stairs to the top of my fortress the ice wall on the other side of them had completely melted, all that was left was a shallow moat of water bordered by my fortress wall on one side and ice on the other where the residual heat hadn't yet let it freeze.

I headed up the stairs and into the fortress, sealing the exit behind me, and then down to the ward room. I wanted to check that they had left with the detection ward. When I got to the stairs just above the ward room I found Maaata, the druid enchanter goat lady, pouting on the landing surrounded by various small mana crystals, several books on enchanting in the beast people's language, and various other enchanting things.

"Maaata." I said. "What happened here?"

"Chantelle threw me out of the ward room." Maaata said.

I sent a ping to Chantelle requesting her presence in the simulation I had of the model of my immediate surroundings and she arrived a few moments later as a transparent form of her body. We dropped down to a slower speed and she looked around.

"I'm just in the ward room." Chantelle said. "Though it looks as though you'll have to shove that stuff further out of the way to get in."

"Did you throw Maaata out of the ward room?" I asked.

"I did." Chantelle said. "This is my room. And she made a complete mess of the place. She even messed with my wards, which I wouldn't mind except she has no talent with warding. The modifications are all over the place."

"Well you did run off while leaving the potentially fortress-destroying recharge ward running." I said. "I asked Maaata to watch over it, so that, you know, the fortress didn't explode."

"I should have been more polite then." Chantelle said. "She can't have the room back, though."

"And maybe make it so the fortress won't explode?" I asked.

"Mm..." Chantelle said. "Some sort of venting back to ambient mana if the mana crystal gets over a certain amount full..."

She twitched her fingers and a transparent screen appeared in front of her that she started creating symbols on. I couldn't complain, though, as I'd zoned out several times when a new idea occurred to me.

"Chantelle." I said. "You're still in my sub-simulation of my surroundings."

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"Hmm?" Chantelle said. "What? Oh, right."

And she disappeared back into our shared simulation. I sped back up to normal speed, less than a second having passed.

"It is her room." I said to Maaata. "But I can build you your own room on this level. And I will make you a dozen mana crystal orbs. In return for your enchanting the new Forest Keeper area with your sunlight enchantments."

"Yes my lord." Maaata said. "Thank you my lord."

I made her a quick six meter by six meter room, sharing a wall with the ward room, and gave her a stone table and chairs to match.

Thinking that the mana crystals might have been some of the appeal of the ward room I converted the table top to mana crystal and built a mana crystal pillar. Maaata would have to ask Chantelle to hook them up to the rest of the mana network that the fortress was running on if that was what she wanted.

I made the dozen small mana crystal orbs I'd promised and gave them to her as she was moving her stuff into the new room. As I was leaving I noticed the old baths that I had made even before the fortress had been built. They required me to create and banish the water manually myself. I spent a few minutes building a small water reservoir on the floor above it and a waste water tank on the floor below and hooking them both up. They should still have some way to heat the water... But I set that aside for something to look into later.

What I really needed was a large ten meter by ten meter portal to efficiently excavate the large masses of stone that would be required for the Forest Keeper area. But without access to more Arachne silk steel thread I would need to carve a once-off large portal under the fortress and it would take three and a half hours and not be usable for anything else...

As I was thinking that the interface I had to the System sent me a ping for a new display.

Message from follower: CaptainMew

Note: Messages are highly moderated so as to not affect the simulation. Why can't you duplicate Arachne thread?

Why can't I duplicate... Wait, followers can see what I'm thinking too? That is a bit disturbing. I shook my head and focused on the question, setting that can of worms aside for later.

I didn't think to duplicate the thread because... I'd bought it and for some reason that made me put it in a special category where I should buy more of it. I drew some stone from my Pocket Dimension and used it as the source to duplicate the Arachne silk steel thread, not including the Pocket Dimension doorway symbols on it, and it duplicated fine. So I can duplicate it, I was just being an idiot.

I set my digital side to making a forty meter length of the thread and headed up the fortress stairs. I almost tripped on a step when my biological side nodded off into a micro-nap and it would probably completely crash again soon. I had only gotten six hours of sleep, and that had been interrupted by someone trying to stab me.

There wasn't much I was doing now that required my biological side so I made a detour to the human floor. I had destroyed the bed I had made in my Pocket Dimension when I needed to build my first digital presence. And I was sure they had more comfortable beds than the one I had managed to make. Veya was still standing at the portal of the human floor, though there weren't many villagers coming or going for her to direct.

"Veya." I said. "I need you to take me to the most comfortable bed that you have in your village."

"You what?" Veya said, frowning at me.

"A bed." I said. When she frowned even harder at me I caught up to what she thought I was asking. "Not like that. I destroyed my last bed..." That sounded bad, but I pushed on. "I need a new bed so that I can make a duplicate of it for my own use."

She was frowning less now, but it was still there.

"Follow me." Veya said.

She led me to one of the larger buildings in their new village and into a nice-sized side room that had a bed, a desk, bookshelves, and a wardrobe. The bed was very big and comfortable looking.

"This is my daughter's room." Veya said. "For when she wants to stay with us. We moved all of the things from her room in the old village to here. If you need a bed you can take hers."

She said that last bit as though she were trying to make me feel awkward. I sent Chantelle another ping and she joined me in my local simulation.

"Yes?" She asked, then looked around. "You're in my room... Why are you in my room?"

I played back the conversation I'd had with her mother from the beginning and she burst out laughing.

"You propositioned my mother." Chantelle said. "Oh, I know you didn't mean to, I can feel your embarrassment. And she's definitely messing with you now. I told her about us, so she probably feels entitled to make you squirm a bit."

"I see." I said. "You don't mind if I make a copy of your bed?"

"Feel free." Chantelle said. "It's very comfortable, like sleeping in clouds."

I returned to normal speed, my attention back on Veya.

"Chantelle informs me that you're messing with me." I said. "She also has no problem with me taking her bed."

I started duplicating the bed into my Pocket Dimension. When I was done I turned to find Veya studying me.

"You're the first one she's shown any interest in." Veya said. "If you hurt my baby I will make you regret it."

"I will protect her." I said.

Veya nodded and led me back to the portal. The duplicated bed was next to my Mind Link so I stepped through the portal, and then through the stone wall of the portal nexus as well, and finally sank into the bed. My digital side started carving the Pocket Dimension doorway symbols into the Arachne silk steel thread as my biological side fell asleep.