I left Freehold with a promise to Soren to return in the near future to discuss my place in the village. I wanted to sit down with the traders who made the trip to and from Gurt as well and discuss details, but I was not in a big rush. Freehold was a nice little community, of that I had no question. A part of me really did want to settle there immediately and work directly with the people.

Buda and Treepo greeted me in the forest just beyond the sightline of Freehold’s guards, and we mounted up to ride back to where I left my herd. The fact was, with my skills, knowledge, and magic, I planned to move faster than the people of Freehold would be comfortable with. My dreams and goals would unquestionably bring Freehold wealth and other benefits, but they were likely to draw attention. Until I knew whether the attention would be good or bad, it was best to give the settlement some plausible deniability.

I was also a little worried about the community rejecting my ideas and pushing me out, or on the flip side, trying to take ownership of it all. Though some of what I planned was fundamentally immune from theft—unless someone was a double-advanced tamer—a part of me was still nervous to build up the beginnings of my plans where another settlement had a passive claim to them.

Soren had shown me his map again after our discussion about territory and, though crude and non-exact, I was still able to determine more or less where the extents of Freehold’s passive claim lay. There were acres and acres of land between the north-most possible claim of Freehold and the mountains. To be safe, I would set myself up north at least that much over again, which would effectively put my “second settlement” bordered up against the mountainside, which worked for me. That was that much less wall to build, and unlike Freehold, I would not be waiting for the Kingdom to come build stone walls for me.

A part of me was nervous to build my own “walled city” in the wilderness, since the construction of a wall seemed to be part of the process which welcomed a settlement into the Kingdom. Would building my own walled settlement be a declaration of independence from the Kingdom, if discovered? I assumed not, on account of Freehold having wooden walls. Since I was not actually trying to declare independence, if conflict ever came to my territory, I just needed to capitulate to the crown, in which case I saved some other stone mage a huge amount of work.

Besides, the walls that I planned to build would only be so tall as to contain desirable beasts and keep out possible predators, not the towering walls of a true walled city, where guards could walk up and down the full length. I was not building a settlement so much as a beast farm. It was a personal compound, although calling it a zoo might also be accurate.

As I dreamed up the outlines of my beast farm, we arrived back at the tunnel where I had kept my herd contained and safe. I had excavated a larger cavern on this side of the mountain and fully walled off the pass to the barren north, both from the northern side—with natural camouflage masking the route—and from the southern side with a simple wall that blended into the cavern wall. I checked in with the herd, infused a bit more food for them all, then took a step back to align my mental outline with reality.

“This is going to be so much work,” I said with a laugh, before setting myself to the task of quarrying the side of the mountain for bricks.

* * *

Buda was a simple, happy creature, who I mostly used as a mount since evolving him from his origins as a terror from the jungle. Though always good for a warm hug in his evolved form, I never forgot the way the first ramhogs I met could absolutely shatter the trees in the jungle with their charges. I was making use of that talent again, and Buda was absolutely demolishing trees along the future border of my territory.

His chore was made easier by my orders to stick to smaller trees that would have less value. The bigger ones, particularly the trees that seemed like valuable hardwood, I painstakingly cut through with a rust buzzsaw, carefully felling them towards the inside of the area where I would later reclaim them for future use.

“I’m going to need to unlock a carpentry skill,” I mused as another tree fell.

The more temperate species of trees in the region were not exactly what I was familiar with from Earth’s boreal regions. The jungle trees had not been familiar either, but I was not from a tropical region on Earth so I had less knowledge about trees like that in the first place. As I cut these trees, I sniffed at the freshly cut wood, trying to sort them into mental categories similar to the ones I had for trees on Earth. Two species seemed contenders for potential future sugaring, but many would likely only be good for firewood. The work made me wonder about which jungle trees my family has used for cooking firewood when I grew up. I had been so absorbed in my own world and training that there was a lot about my childhood life that I had failed to learn about.

The trees that were felled for my use left behind stumps, and Buda was leaving behind jagged, broken messes of tree stumps as well. The ones that were directly in the path of my future wall were magically drained of all water then burned out with a flash of controlled fire magic. Having witnessed Vorel’s use of fire magic in the final battle of the north, I had a new appreciation for fire magic, and used it to rapidly convert the carbon in the stump into carbon dioxide before smothering the reaction to avoid causing a forest fire.

Trailing behind the forestry crew were the ground crew, the pair of rockstalkers I tamed from the north. Rockstalkers were not specifically built for digging, but they were still fairly capable at the task. I had them excavating a trench where I would set the wall. The forest floor was loam rich in humus which was not easy to move with magic. It was a mishmash of too many compounds and organics that did not respond properly to my 4-point magic. I was able to pull various oxides out of the mix, but moving it in bulk was a job better suited to good old fashioned digging.

If I were on Earth, I would have felt a need to dig below the frost line to build a solid foundation for the wall, but I was planning to magically bind together the whole stone wall which would have a huge amount of weight when combined. I was not that worried about the wall shifting or cracking, and if it did, I could just throw more magic at it.

Even so, a small trench would be nice to start with, and it would stop casual diggers from getting under the future wall. I had no idea what kind of beasts were native to the area, save for the handful I had already seen. I had seen a few birds that I intended to look more closely at later, a few rodents I was not that interested in aside from initial cataloging, and a few midsized beasts which fled when we started dropping trees that I would definitely follow up on.

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The rockstalkers, on the other hand, were very interested in the rodents. Every so often they would dig up a nest and noisily enjoyed the tasty treats within before getting back to work. I identified the small rodent as a vorbil, and it seemed to occupy a niche in this forest similar to a chipmunk from Earth. I abstractly wondered if they would be as cute as a flying nodmouse when evolved.

Once the trench was dug, I started setting in the big blocks of stone I quarried, which was easy with my inventory. It felt like cheating, compared to the stone mages who would need to burn MP to move stones around, but it made the wall grow quickly. As I lay the stones beside each other, a little twist of magic helped connect and bind them, and I did that again when I stacked blocks on top.

After my time in the magical desert of the north, I had trained myself to use magic more efficiently, and felt even more capable with all the magic surrounding me in this forest. Coupled with my increased Absorption buff, I was able to do quite a lot of work each day before draining my MP and settling down to rest.

That was not to say that the whole project came together in a matter of days. Though the work went quick, it still took weeks just to clear and set the foundation layer. I was laying a claim to a lot of space, as my walls were designed to contain year-round grazing fields for my herds as well as additional space for barns, housing, gardens, growing fields, and orchards. I was planning on setting deep roots here, which is why I ensured I would not be stepping on any toes with the nearby village, and also that I would get along with the people of the village.

We did get along, I quickly learned. In the time it took to build the full wall, I had returned to the village as planned and made it a regular occurrence, having conversations with Soren and some of the hunters and craftsmen. The hunters were quick to share information about the types of beasts that lived in the area, which to watch out for as threats and which to watch out for because they were good eating, and I made sure I would not be stepping on any of their toes selling meat to the village. Since meat was a trade good that the village used to buy grain from Gurt, my contributions would be welcome.

The local threats probably would not actually threaten me much, since if they were high enough rank to be a threat to me they would have prevented the settlement from thriving so well, but they could be a risk for my herds. I would need to gauge their actual ranks to set up a capable guard, likely one of the same beasts but tamed and evolved. I was more interested in the mid-sized grazing beast called a “mursin” which sounded like it filled a deer-like niche in this forest, especially after buying some of the meat to try from the village. It was probably the same beast my work had disturbed.

As my wall came together, I left a large gap at the south, facing the direction of the village. I needed to figure out how I wanted to set up a gate, but I definitely would need additional resources to make that happen. I could probably get some of the craftsmen in the village to do the work for me, but I was not sure I wanted to reveal too much to them until I had really proved myself as a valuable member of their community. What I was building would be valuable to them once it was done, but could potentially look like a threat before then, which I wanted to avoid.

After a few weeks, Soren caught me on my regular visit into town to let me know that a small trade convoy would be headed into Gurt in the coming days. It was too early in the season for grain, but summer produce was in season, so Freehold was sending in some traders to exchange preserved meat for fresh vegetables. Mostly, the village ate what it could forage or grow in small-scale gardens within the village walls, but there were some people whose time was better spent practicing their specialty than gardening, or simply did not have the know-how and skill to grow a diversity of food. With limited space within the walls there was not enough produce grown and scale to feed everyone, particularly perennial fruits, so to keep diets healthy, the village bought in what it could. The village was also in constant need of salt, so we would be buying more of that as well.

Preserved meat was not as valuable as fresh meat, but fresh meat would spoil in the summer heat. Fresh fruit and vegetables also had a short shelf life in such a primitive world, so that mostly evened out the trade, because excess that could not be processed was wasted otherwise. I need to find a beast that fills the domestic pig niche to turn slop into value.

I told him I would be back in time to head out with them, and headed home to get my affairs in order before I headed with the convoy to Gurt and back into civilization.

* * *

My full wall would not be finished before I left for Gurt, and that was a lot of distance to put between me and my tamed beasts. I did not know exactly how far I could push the distance without breaking the bond, but I was relatively certain that the more beasts I had tamed the less distance I could put between us before things started to fall apart.

I would need to set things up in such a way that I could drop the bond for the bulk of the beasts. I knew that I could retain some bonds over quite a distance, as I had left Buda in Teichar when I climbed the western mountains, but that was when it was just him, myself, and Treepo. At the moment, I had close to two dozen bonds active with the addition of both my herds and the rockstalkers.

Given the limitations of time, I had little choice but to enclose them somewhere with food until I got back. Fortunately, I had a small amount of foresight, and knew that it would be a long while before I finished my walls. As I had mined the mountainside for stone blocks, I had dug out large enclosed chambers for the beasts to use as barns. The mass of stone kept things cool in the summer and would keep some of the windchill off in the winter. They were not the barns I had initially envisioned for my territory, my mental image of a more idyllic and traditional red barn, but once I got to work pulling stone blocks from the mountain I realized I could shape a small amount of the mountain to my needs and accomplish two things at once. The more I worked, the less sense it made to then build stand-alone structures, at least in the short term. I planned to build more functional barns eventually, and these caverns would still be useful as a root cellar or for storage for firewood and hay.

For the moment, I sorted the two herds into separate caverns—I was not sure how well the two beast species would blend as a mixed herd without taming magic, and the coming trip was not the time to find out—and left behind enough meat for a few weeks before closing the entrances up. As with the last time I had needed to do something like this, I left ventilation holes for air and some light.

With the herds sorted, I turned to the remaining four beasts.

The herds would be a bit spooked if the tamer bond broke, but they would ultimately be fine, even in enclosed captivity. They were all originally from the same herds, and they were all naturally herbivores, so aside from some posturing for hierarchy, I did not anticipate any problems. The meat I left—and I still sometimes found it weird that all beasts could eat meat, even natural herbivores—was technically infused with my magic from having been stored in my inventory for a long time, but that magic should fade away after being left out for a while. I could easily re-tame them when I returned.

The rockstalkers, on the other hand, could be an issue. I could not keep them with the herds because they were predators, and one of the natural predators of the quadhorns. If I kept them together and the tamer bond broke, I did not know if they would fight and potentially kill each other, and I had grown fond of them. Isolating them in their own cages was an option, but seemed like it could be cruel if they lost the bond and panicked.

“Ugh, I’ll just bring all four of you with me. Hurray for invisibility!”