By morning, I’d managed to learn several words in the Gnollish runes due to their simplistic nature and could passably write hello in what was being recognized by my translation skills as ‘Westilion Common’ which I assumed was this world’s equivalent to America or at least Europe.

As much fun as trying to teach myself other languages was, when Kohaku awoke and saw the scrawling on the clay tablet, she practically leapt out of bed to try and teach me the fox-kin hieroglyphics. Not quite ready to reveal my understanding to her yet, I sent a quick feeling of cleanliness, which prompted her to run off to bathe.

Returning with a fresh set of robes, she started her lesson in earnest and by midday I was able to write out a greeting, much to Kohaku’s enjoyment. That’s when I decided to have a chat.

“Can you hear me, Kohaku?” was what I decided to open with, since that was essentially the first words I’d tried when I summoned her.

Her ears perked in momentary shock before she nervously spoke, “What does Master wish to speak of to his humble servant?”

Ignoring the uncomfortable master and servant talk, I replied, "I simply wish to defend this valley, and to do so I must have people I can trust. Do you accept this responsibility?"

My reply seemingly carried a lot more weight that I had thought, as she fell into a seated position and visibly started to have many varying thoughts on the matter, but seemingly dropping the subject once she got her bearings. “You'll fight the Tide, yes master?”

“Indeed, and perhaps one day be rid of the scourge for good."

Our conversation seemed to give her some confidence and soon Kohaku got up and headed outside, giving the pits a passing glance.

Without anything else to really do, I left her to her devices and focused my attention on the little bunker that served as Kohaku’s room and started carving once again.

To start, I moved the ramp over and made the door part of the left wall, before leveling the newly formed hall flat. From there, I created two larger rooms off the hall that were just shy of touching the two pits, proceeding to dump out all the inorganic materials I had collected into one, and creating a rudimentary barracks in the other. I unfortunately didn’t possess nearly enough fabric and wood to make all of them beds, so I settled on small pillows in slightly shallow recesses.

With no real additions available at the moment, I began the next step. Summoning the five new fox-kin.

As expected from Kohaku’s summoning, the hellhound meat in my storage formed a slurry and stripped itself off its own bones. The skeletal structure of the hellhounds was rather intimidating, possessing two sets of jaw bones filled with rending teeth, I could only imagine the bite force they could bring to bear.

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The bones themselves flew out into the real world and began modifying themselves with sickening crunches to form the skeletal structure of the fox-kin, before being coated in spaghettified meat. Like last time, the fur began as a patchwork of differing colours, albeit to a lesser extent than Kohaku’s due to being from the same beasts.

With the last eyes formed in their sockets, the five tumbled bodily to the floor, earning a light groan from one of the larger fox-kin. Checking his status revealed his name to be Dun, and his class was listed as load bearer. According to its description, he was basically a living support beam who’d be stationed with labourers in mineshafts to keep them safe during their inevitable collapse.

The second most notable of the group was the smallest, a male named Tushu, who’s Scribe class was described like that of a librarian.

The other three were all female labourers, Zhen, Leng, and Nan, with Nan being the only one possessing the aptly named hardened labourer class. Its description seemed to just mark her as slightly more efficient at both work and sleeping.

Kohaku seemed to have noticed the commotion from afar, and had made her way over, peering into the newly formed quarters. Without any candles, I just assumed they had natural night vision, as Dun sat up, stiffly rubbing his shoulder he had landed on, and stared right back.

I realized Kohaku was in the armor I had manifested for her, so I mentally spoke before there could be a misunderstanding.

“Welcome, all of you. I am the Core of this valley, tasked with defending it with my life, and I humbly request your assistance. I may have summoned you here, but I will not force you to fight. I can sense you all can serve me in other ways. The peace is short, and grows shorter each night, so I must ask this of you. Will you join me?"

It came out more like a rallying speech than I intended, but it seemed to hit the right chords.

Dun got to his feet and gave a slight nod to the air but said nothing.

Tushu yipped excitedly as the message sunk in, materializing a scroll and charcoal before scribbling the message down word for word in the fox-kin hieroglyphs.

The three girls gave a slight grumble but agreed seemingly on principle.

A quick message to Kohaku had her bringing them some warm water from her room, which they accepted with some scepticism.

Observing over the course of the remainder of the day, Dun and the trio of girls seemed more familiar with one another, which I theorized meant they could be form the same mines, and essentially all of them gave Tushu a wide berth.

Apparently, he reeked of The Masters, which automatically isolated him since the others here all had dirt practically caked into their fur even when freshly summoned.

I mentally made a note to myself to keep an eye on Tushu as well as always examine the fox-kin classes in future summoning, in case this scenario might occur later.

By night all my fox-kin were asleep, Kohaku in her private room, Tushu on the left size of the barracks, and the rest on the right. As expected, the fox-kin had no complaints about sleeping on the literal floor, which saddened me slightly. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, in their minds they left one slavery into another, so why wouldn’t they accept such conditions?

With a quick thought, I absorbed wood from the stock room and made poles in between the resting spots as well as hooks along the roof. I placed the wood back as dowels and made a pile of hellhound fur hides in one corner.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Tushu wandered in with a blank look and began cataloging and organizing. I hadn’t even seen him get up. Wrapping the last hide onto a dowel, he checked off another spot on his manifested scroll before blearily wandering back to his pillow and collapsing.

I adjusted my mental notes.