As winter again settled over the capital, construction on the new Guild buildings progressed, and the various people whose lives I had touched on my journey further settled deeper into their new roles and their new homes in the capital.
The Tamer Guild farm northeast of the city had developed by leaps and bounds thanks to Rena being present to streamline things, having had a headstart over the construction within the walls. All the stone needed to finish up the city work had been mined and moved, so I made a trip out of the palace one morning to the construction site, wearing a simple illusory disguise.
I glanced around at the laborers and mages working with the stone, frowning at how slow the large Adventurer Guild building was coming together. The laborers were hauling some materials around, but the stone mages were sitting off to the side.
Walking over to the foreman, I tapped his shoulder, and he turned to glance at me. “Can I help you?”
“Uh, yeah, I was sent over by someone from the palace to help,” I said, glancing around. “You folks all right?”
“They’re taking a break, recovering their magic.”
Already? It’s so early. No wonder this is taking so long.
I glanced around at some of the mage’s wrists, frowning. “You don’t have magic meters?” I asked, raising my wrist. I had switched from a chain to a dark leather band, wearing my meter more like a watch from Earth than a bracelet.
“I’ve got one,” one of the mages said, and lifted his arm up. He activated it, and frowned. “Only twenty percent left.”
I debated asking him how much he started the day at, but I was more interested in the fact that most of the other mages had just shrugged. “Why don’t the rest of you have them?”
“Too expensive,” one grunted. That was annoying, since I had checked how much the mages were being paid for this rush job, and it was more than enough to cover the cost. I would have to make sure Morgun only contracts mages who either have a meter or are willing to take the cost of one out of their pay in exchange for one in the future.
I unstrapped mine from my wrist, and held it out to the mages. “You can borrow mine to check your magic for now,” I said, and no one moved to take it. I glanced at the foreman, who shrugged.
“They’re on break,” he said simply, a bit defeated.
Ah. Just lazy, then.
After putting my magical watch back on, I activated it, showing the forman. “Well, I’m full up. Put me to work.”
Over the course of the rest of the morning, I made massive amounts of progress on the building at the foreman’s instruction. Realizing that they were going to be shown up and that it might reflect poorly on them, some of the mages soon joined back in and helped, even taking me up on borrowing the magic meter so they could double check their reserves. Others grumbled, doing the bare minimum, and I took note of their names with appraisal to make sure they did not get hired again for official work unless absolutely necessary.
The foreman eventually stepped in to stop me around lunchtime. “Hey, you… wait, what was your name again?”
“Oh, I didn’t say. It’s, uh, Bil,” I said, quickly reaching for an alias I could use.
“Well, Bil, you got to slow down. You’re going to burn out.”
I shook my head, lifting my arm and pushing some magic into my meter, which still displayed sixty three percent. After all, the work was just gently moving some stone around and creating connections between them. “I’m good.”
The foreman whistled, looking between my meter and my face, which was neutral but showing no signs of weariness. “Well. All right then. At least grab some lunch. The palace is springing for some high quality meat.”
Shrugging, I thanked the man, and grabbed some lunch with the other mages, who looked at me with various different expressions. A few came over to talk as we ate some skewers of roasted meat, valuable enough to restore a non-negligible amount of MP for the mages with smaller magic pools, asking about my training and magic studies. I had to dance around a few questions, having mostly been self-taught and not able to share the truth about certain things.
Other mages glared at me, but that hardly bothered me. They would still get paid for this job regardless, and their laziness and hostility was just working against themselves.
The afternoon went by quickly as we continued to make massive amounts of progress compared to what had been done previously, and I moved on to one of the secondary buildings to move stone quickly, leaving the delicate work of binding and carving to the others. When my magic hit the single-digits, I slowed, and then stopped soon after, looking over my work with pride.
A hand clapped on my shoulder, and I looked over at the foreman. “Well, you sure put on a show today. Will you be back on the next workday?”
Unlike mundane laborers, the mages were only contracted to work every third day, so they would have time to replenish their magic between workdays.
“I won’t be able to return, no,” I said, looking over at the other mages and raising my voice slightly. “Unfortunately, the king needs me for another project. I actually have to return to the palace now and let him know how this one is going.”
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
Suppressing a grin of schadenfreude, I watched the laziest of the mages glance at each other nervously, some cursing under their breath as they realized that I held a bit more status than they realized.
“Ah, shame. Well, you did excellent work today.” He dropped his voice. “Hope these folks learn from it,” he said, motioning back with his head, chuckling.
“Keep up the good work,” I said, nodding, and turned to head back to the palace.
* * *
Construction speed picked up for a while after that, but the project could still only advance so fast. In the meanwhile, I spent some time making more adventurer scales, bulk produced the aluminum-filled badges for Rena and the new Tamers Guild, brewed lots of MP potions, concocted extra healing draughts from concentrated fruit juice and syrup, and made a limited run of some cheaper, silver magic meters.
The latter few items would be sold at the Adventurers Guild. The Church was doing decent business with the expensive gold magic meters which would last forever unless physically destroyed, but they were only really affordable to established mages with good income, and there had not been enough time to train up a large number of new priest apprentices yet. The number of apprentices was on the rise with the reforms made to the Church and the increased safety of education, but it would be years before they cycled out the next generation of healers and mages.
Meanwhile, there would be a need for mage work through the Adventurers Guild as well. The plan was to only make the MP potions and silver magic meters available for sale to iron rank adventurers or stronger, since anyone weaker would be limited to collection and errand quests. Those that advanced to the combat-worthy ranks with a magical focus would benefit from the improved ability to track and restore their magic, but might be priced out of the ones available at the Church, so this was a stopgap measure to smooth out the launch of the Adventurers Guild.
Eventually, I would be teaching some brewers how to make the stronger MP potions with beast crystal and deepwater pearls. That would have to wait until the Kingdom was bringing in many more pearls in quantity from trawling, which was not happening soon, though we had subsidized some ships and were encouraging them to be built. In the short term, magic meters meant that brewers could infuse their potions with more MP and create stronger base versions of the potion anyway, though it was still difficult for other people to appraise the true value of restoration potions.
That led me to start experimenting with creating something which would feedback general ranks for MP potions, so I began prototyping a new artifact that could be used to appraise those which would feedback to the user that they were weak, basic, strong, and other tiers of value based on the restoration amount.
As it always did, the days passed by one after the other, seemingly even faster than ever as I got to spend time with my siblings, teaching math to Mari and little Varus, when he sat still long enough to learn, and enjoying my personal time with Sera. Before winter was fully over, the construction on the buildings had finished, and all that needed to be done was furnish, decorate, stock, staff, and plan the launch.
By spring, the Adventurers Guild was just about ready to launch. The Tamers Guild had already opened next door, my original institution seeming small by comparison to the grandeur of what we were attempting with the larger building, but the true size of the Tamers Guild was realized outside the city walls. Rena had informed me that they were doing good business, already sold out of spare tarands and had started a lengthy waiting list for future tarands once they were bred or transferred from Freehold.
Without me to sneak north of the mountain and acquire more, tarand supply was going to be limited to what the Guild could breed, moving forward. As with the quadhorns I acquired from the Velgein government in trade, I might need to request they make an expedition east to acquire more to meet the Kingdom’s needs, although I was not sure what I could trade in return to merit that. Perhaps I can give them some of our next generation of bred stock, which are semi-tame from being raised around humans, and teach them to use them with reins and mundane training instead of magic.
The Tamers Guild had already brought in some good membership numbers in the capital, and was even starting to pay out on bounties. With the breeding pairs of companion beasts that Rena had brought with her giving birth in spring, she was also preparing to wean and sell the young, meaning pet ownership was about to be on the rise in the capital.
I grabbed my to-do list and added another couple of items to it: talk to advisors about constructing more parks in residential areas with waste collection/compost and make sure Rena has litter boxes and straw available for sale and educate new owners on waste management. I did not need another round of dealing with complaints about pets pooping on the streets like I had gone through in Freehold with a slew of first time pet owners.
Standing and stretching, I glanced around to find Rika, and noting her absence, left my office to find my frosted direfox friend. I found her curled up around Mari and Varus, who were scratching away at slates trying to solve some math worksheets I left them. Initially I had just wanted Mari to understand and internalize percentages to help her manage her magic, but my smart younger sister had taken to it and was already learning some basic algebra.
“I’m going to take Rika for a walk,” I told my siblings, who glanced up at me. “Want to come with?”
“No thank you,” Mari said, turning back to her math homework and frowning as she read the next problem.
“Varus?”
“Ummm, where are you going?”
“Probably just the training yard.”
“Oh! Yah. I’ll come.”
I walked my beast and brother out to the training yard, and while we were out there, grabbed some wooden training swords and did some light sparring. Varus’s fifth birthday was right around the corner, and I had already had some really nice new ones made for him which I was excited to give to the birthday boy. He already had decent form, though he had no weight behind his blows yet.
“Nice strike,” I grinned. “Now see if you can parry this!”
Once Varus was exhausted, I waved to Regan, Ben, Borgan and the other soldiers I recognized in the yard and headed back inside.
Navigating the palace hallways with Rika trailing behind, Varus and I made our way to our parents room, and after knocking, we entered to find Horg alone, sitting at a small desk and frowning over his notes for the launch of the Adventurers Guild. Varus ran over and gave him a hug, and I followed to peek over Horg’s shoulder.
Horg scooped Varus up and sniffed him. “You smell like sweat. Were you boys out training?”
“Yup. How’s this going?” I answered, motioning to the paperwork across his desk.
“I think we’re just about ready. Hiring’s all done, and now I’m just working on what I’m going to say.”
“You’ll be great, pop,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I’m excited to hear it.”