I finally received my skillfruit harvest from Rena, who apologized that the yield was a bit low since we had limited fertilizer to work with. We both knew that yields of thirty or more fruit per tree was possible, but instead we got an average of twenty five per tree.
Still, that was about two hundred and fifty skillfruit for me to eat over the coming year and progress my skill level even further.
Winter arrived, and Siral started walking and saying his first real words. That was exciting enough, but Sera also became pregnant again, and once it was announced the capital celebrated another heir.
Largely, my reign had gone quite well. There had been some unruly and problematic malcontents, mostly wealthy people who had been growing their fortune from the suppression of the north, but Atlessoa had kept a close eye on that situation. There had been only a couple individuals who seemed like they would be a real problem, until they mysteriously died.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
Some of the nobles who ran the other walled cities had sent some letters or even visited the capital, and some of them were a bit displeased about the change in lineage, but most of them were benefiting enormously from the increase in trade I had brought to the Kingdom with the tarands. The magic refrigerators sweetened the situation even further, and after handing off some of the first versions for their use and the promise of more to come to improve trade and quality of life, suddenly I was a “very wise and capable leader” in most of their eyes.
I was more than happy to buy their respect with the promise of magitech industrialization. If I could only lock in the fuel source, I could improve the lives of everyone in the Kingdom.
Unfortunately, trawling for deepwater pearls was turning out to be a bit of a disaster. I knew trawling was not a sustainable practice, but I had not accounted for how it would stir up the beasts of the ocean. Ship attacks were on the rise, and many of the beasts were magical, or simply quite ancient and powerful. Hunting magical ocean beasts at least brought in more magic crystal, but it was a complicated situation that resulted in the temporary cessation of trawling. Our stores of pearls and crystal were large for the moment, but it was not sustainable.
That was hardly a surprise to me, since coming from Earth, I was well versed in the unsustainability of industrialization. I hoped that with magic, instead of fossil fuels, we could circumvent that issue, but mining the ocean for magic was not proving to be the answer.
I began brainstorming oceanic filtration systems, possibly farming blueclams and pumping ocean water through a clam farm so that they could grow pearls for us to use, but the scope of what would be necessary would require a lot of magic just to pump the water, and I was not sure the pace of pearl creation would be worth the cost of pumping.
Manual labor in place of magic could work, but who would be doing the pumping? Not Velgein slaves, I knew that much, but I also knew that slavery and exploiting children and poor laborers was exactly how that sort of thing happened on Earth, and not just historically.
Using beasts of burden for labor could work, except that there were not that many tamers, and most of the tamers I knew—myself included—would not want to overwork their beasts. Tarands were being used across the Kingdom to improve transportation, and tamers used beasts in battle, but they were still largely well-cared for. Treating a beast as purely a cog in a machine would set a bad precedent which could lead to a lot of abuse, which was already a risk that the Tamers Guild was watching out for.
For the moment, the Kingdom was still harvesting beast crystal just from defending the commercial transport ships from the stirred-up wildlife, providing resources for the brewers in the know to make MP potions and to keep that industry afloat. That was important, because the increase in mage capability that came with it was helping construction efforts across the Kingdom, as well as other provided services, not the least of which was healthcare.
Largely, the Kingdom ran itself, so long as I was not trying to revolutionize anything and cause new complications. The farms produced grain, which fed the people—and increasingly the tarands which were improving trade and transport—and the excess was being exchanged in the north for steel, improving the quality of tools, transports, and weapons.
As another winter progressed, my advisors and I tracked all this and did our best to deal with any issues that came up. Through Horg, I heard how Regan was doing in Roko, as I had created a paired communication artifact for them before he had left. The Roko branch of the Adventurers Guild was growing at around the same pace as it had in the capital, and Regan, Chevei, and her son so far had not encountered any problems in the city. The Guild there was attracting more Al’Tiolese interest than Horuthian, for the moment, as it provided new opportunities which those who were struggling needed.
Unfortunately, hunting had a bit of a startup cost, so it was slow going. As interested as they were, the poorer people in Roko could not just rush out and start hunting beasts for meat sales. If they could have, they probably already would have, just for food.
Rena had sent a tamer she vetted to work the corresponding Tamers Guild branch in Roko as manager, a man named Sherig who had really taken to it in the last year. Roko was limited in terms of what it could provide for tamers, without having a local Tamers Guild farm, which the Guild would be looking to sort out in the spring. Frankly, Roko was just too developed, with so much of the region around the city being farms and with major roads extending in each direction. There was not much around in the prairies aside from the wild oxilires that farmers already utilized on their farms.
Pet culture might grow, and breeding pet beasts was doable within the city walls in theory, but that did not provide opportunities for the impoverished the same way that it did on the edges of the Kingdom. One of the few opportunities that it did provide the city was pest management. Young Al’Tiolese people were happy to learn how to capture and sell some of the problematic beasts that took up living within the city walls. The Tamers Guild did not pay much for it, but the Adventurers Guild had butcher services and in turn provided something like polerat meat for pretty cheap to the lower class families that would be interested in such a thing. Hopefully the economics of it would find a maintainable balance.
Morgun had trained up a junior advisor during the time he spent in Roko building out the Guilds, teaching him what he learned in the capital through the full process of building out the new branch. While Roko had limits to what the Guilds could achieve in that region, there were lots of opportunities further south. The desert was full of dangerous and powerful beasts.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
As such, the junior advisor was sent on to Haklan, to begin working on the third branch of the Adventurers Guild, alongside what would be the fifth branch of the Tamers Guild. The beasts that the Guild could work with would be different that far south, as the extreme heat and lack of grazing land would change the dynamic and prevent certain beasts from living comfortably, but I was sure new opportunities could be found.
Morgun, as he said he would, proposed to Nodel upon his return. She said yes, and they had a lovely little private wedding in the usual fashion. It was not long before Nodel also announced a pregnancy, and I was hopeful that our kids could continue their parents’ friendship into another generation.
With the news of a Guild being built in the south, Gorban approached me about making a similar move as Regan. He was beginning to miss the south and his home of Taraponi, which was a lot closer to Haklan than the capital.
I approved his request to leave the army and join the Adventurers Guild, though I left the decision about Guild leadership to Horg, not that I had any doubt he would choose the man for the job. Gorban’s polearm trainees were arguably not as developed as Regan’s cavalry, and there was still a glaring weakness when it came to mounted polearm users, but his southern guandao style was not perfectly suited to mounted combat in the first place.
My advisors hunted down some skilled two-armed experts to hire on and fill in the gaps for training, and I knew that in time things would continue to grow and evolve. There was no need to rush, since we were not actually planning on going to war, and banditry was not on the rise since quality of life was largely improving across the Kingdom at the moment.
Shirel would be returning south with Gorban, which was a loss for Atlessoa who had trained the woman to be her second, but we were lacking eyes and ears in the south as it was. I built another paired communication artifact to send south with Gorban for the Guild, but in secret also provided Shirel and Atlessoa an additional paired artifact so that she could continue her work as part of the information network in the south.
Over the seasons, I ate into my new skillfruit harvest. After picking up the Mounted skill and bringing it right to an expert level, I finished pushing 3-Point Magic up to match my other magics to 10% of the way to mastery. I also started putting a few more skill points into Strength, because it felt good to be strong, taking it to 5% mastery. The last points continued to go into Taming, which reached 59.1% mastery.
SP: 0
+ 3-Point Magic (100/1000)
+ 4-Point Magic (100/1000)
+ 5-Point Magic (100/1000)
+ 6-Point Magic (100/1000)
+ 8-Point Magic (100/1000)
+ Acrobatics (0/1000)
+ Brewing (0/1000)
+ Butchery (0/100)
+ Cooking (0/100)
+ Detect (0/1000)
+ Enchanting (0/1000)
+ Foraging (0/100)
+ Horticulture (0/100)
+ Inkmaking (0/100)
+ Inventory (0/1000)
+ Knotting (0/100)
+ Leatherworking (0/100)
+ Literacy (0/1000)
+ Mounted (0/1000)
+ Needlework (0/100)
+ Negotiation (0/100)
+ One-Armed (0/1000)
+ Ranged (0/1000)
+ Smithing (0/100)
+ Stealth (0/100)
+ Strength (50/1000)
+ Taming (591/1000)
+ Tanning (0/100)
+ Two-Armed (0/1000)
+ Unarmed (0/100)
+ Woodworking (0/100)
Before I knew it, Seranedra and I welcomed our second son to the world. We had a bit of trouble coming up with a name for him, and when Sera asked if there was anyone important in my life I wanted to name him after, I thought back and settled on naming him Boshan.
No one aside from Sera really knew why, and people might find it strange to name the second prince after a humble butcher out in Mirut if they did, but Bosh had been a hugely important person to my progress at the start of my second life. He paid me a fair price for the meat I brought him, even though I was a child. The fact that I had a way to turn the beasts I killed into food for my community had really eased my conscience about my need to kill so many beasts for my training, as well, rather than just let it build up in my inventory endlessly.
Most importantly, he equipped me with my first real blades, which had saved my life when I pushed myself far enough into the jungle to encounter the draconewt. In a very real way, I would not have been there without him.
Between growing older and having children, time seemed to accelerate for me. We bid farewell to Gorban and Shirel, then welcomed Morgun and Nodel’s firstborn to the world.
When I was not watching my children grow up before my eyes, I was continuing to work on and perfecting new enchantments and artifacts, as well as working on the problem of renewable magical fuel sources. Farming blueclams seemed to be a bust, since they needed a lot more depth and water pressure than I could provide in a controlled setting. I began working on physical filtration of ocean water to see if I could isolate the magical element itself, but it was proving rather elusive.
Still, despite my failures in that field, the Kingdom was doing well and my more mundane and social projects continued to grow. It was rare to see a convoy that was still using oxilires over tarands, and the Tamers Guild membership had grown substantially, to the point where Rena started to differentiate between ranked members who actually pursued advancement and those that just wanted to buy pets.
Rena was able to piggyback off the Adventurers Guild communication system which, combined with flying messenger beasts, allowed her to stay in contact with Gurt and Freehold after setting up a small Tamers Guild branch in Checkpoint as a relay. Ultimately, the Adventurers Guild would likely open a branch in Gurt as well, improving the coverage and speed of communication for the Guilds, but I left that to Horg.
With the proof of concept for a communication network, I began working with the Church to do the same thing across all the walled cities to streamline census and crime information transfer, and started working on better ways to record and sort through all that.
Once Siral was four and Boshan was three, Sera and I finally welcomed our first daughter to the world, who we named Rodessa.
As with Siral, neither Boshan nor Rodessa showed any signs of being reincarnators like myself. I was grateful for that, and I enjoyed raising my children without the weight of another world on their shoulders.
Time passed, and life was good. I was happy, still deeply in love with my wife and my new family, and doing well for the Kingdom. I had almost nothing to complain about aside from some small snags with my personal projects.
Yet every night, when I went to sleep, I felt the smallest of an itch in the bottom of my feet.