Part 1 - Smith and Tamer

Urist yawned as the clouds in the distance turned to violet.

Finally, the watch is over, even though everyone told me not to take watch as I’m the boss, I can’t skip out of the duty. Afterall, I need to set an example that even a leader must work hard for his people.

Musing such thoughts when the sun peeked over the horizon he turned and patted Yri on the shoulder.

“Let’s get to work shall we?”

“Yawn… Alright, Boss lets do it.”

Seeing how cheerful the farmer was, Urist smiled having her to be the one to wake everyone. He, on the other hand, headed to the back of the base to meet the new arrivals. Since he had bought a new civilization stone he expected two extra dwarfs to appear.

Walking to the room, four dwarfs wearing different clothing from one another appeared. With a smile, Urist started welcoming them.

“Welcome brothers and sisters! How are you?”

“Good!”

“Alright.”

“Where am I?”

“Is there a forge?”

All of them had various confused expressions as Urist started explaining where they were. It took a bit of explaining, but they quickly came to terms with where they were. When they were compatible they started talking about their professions and their names. They were Rytar the Commoner, Magic Tamer Reaver, Apprentice Smith Hot, and the Warrior Arben.

Urist also learned what those jobs entailed, a Commoner was a jack of trades that could learn any profession given the knowledge and time. They also came with an extra skill slot to make up for not having a job so they had good talent.

When Rytar went to check his skill shot alignment, later he learned that he had an extreme distribution towards head being H6:B1:L1. Such a slot alignment meant he was great for anything that dealt with the mind, but he was total crap for anything else. Urist decided to put him under Qrtia care to learn magic.

Moving onto Reaver who had a bubbly personality had quite the job. Magic Tamer was a Tier two class that would have cost 5000 to summon her personally. She was an offshoot of a regular magician that used mana to tame creatures along with traditional training methods. He was quite curious if she could tame that wild goat and the kids since they weren't magical creatures.

Arben was quite the same as Elrish a tier-one warrior. He seemed quite reserved and didn’t speak many words. He seemed ready to prove himself and when he learned of the expedition he wished to join the gathering. Urist agreed since he wanted to spend today getting most of the wall finished by today.

And finally onto the tier one Apprentice Smith Hot who said he felt naked without a forge to use. When he heard that they were making preparations to make a forge building he was quite pleased and asked to help in the construction. Urist threw him over to help the construction of the kiln.

With the new dwarfs sorted, Urist started buying food so that the group could eat lunch together before heading out. While eating Urist checked the market in the corner of his eyes to see if there was anything he wanted to buy later.

Besides going over the regular market, most of the auction items were quite useless and nothing caught his eye. He had the thought that he could start selling some fried bricks after they got a good supply going. Knowing full well that they couldn’t count on naturally gained points to sustain their ever increasing number forever. They need to export items to gain food, tools, and items while also develop, farms, hunting teams, and mining.

More problems to deal with at a later date. If by tomorrow we can’t get a builder, I'll buy one. Too bad, I don’t have experience in building anything larger than a forge otherwise I wouldn’t spend the points. Also, we’ll eventually need a miner otherwise we’ll run into problems.

Having never ran a large scaled mine before, he was hesitant to dig in their home cave too much for fear of a cave in. Also, he debated on getting an earth magician to help dig through the cave. 

Since if water mages existed it made sense for them to exist as well.

His thoughts running at full speed he said good luck to the expedition team which consisted of Rork, Elrish, Arben, Baikm, and Briana. Thanks to his trip through the forest Baikm had unlocked the skills map and forest walk allowing him now keep up with the group.

At their fading figures, he yelled at them to be careful and watch each other's backs. Urist then worked together with Rat to cut and move trees. Which, thanks to all the rope Ormila and Urmom kept making he felt confident that they had enough to tie the logs together.

When he wanted to take a break,  he and Uria would drain some Origin Flames from time to time as it recovered.  Urist had recently bought a book on the basics of magic to which they left Rytar to study and watch the fire. To help Rytar learn faster Urist asked Qrtia to talk to Rytar on how to use magic, once she had finished draining the bricks.

While this was happening Reaver was training the goat, dog 1, and 2 branding them with her magic. The two dogs were quite easy to brand since they were quite loyal to the dwarfs and would hunt any rats that they came across.

On the dog’s shoulders appeared a red brand mark that appeared to be a tattoo of a wing. Reaver told Urist later that this was her symbol and the color of her soul. She told him that every living thing had their own symbol that was with them since birth.

She had some trouble branding the goat for it being an adult that had a wild spirit. She exhausted her mana pool just to get the bull-headed goat under control. She didn’t use her magic on the kids seeing it not worth it to control them since they were quite young and could still be imprinted on.

 

Part 2 - Attacked

 

Giving a mighty roar Urist ruthlessly cleaved into a tree with his ax. Hack, hack, and hack, in three mighty swings the tree began to fall. He waited for the tree to fall before laying his Ax to rest. Picking up the shovel next to him he began digging around the stump. Once he felt he had dug enough dirt he put the shovel next to the ax. Spitting in his hands for good luck Urist found a good spot to grab the stump pulled upward with all his strength. 

Popping sounds could be heard as the stump roots snapped under pressure. With one mighty roar, the stump was now removed then thrown to the side. 

One more down, I wonder how many trees we have left to remove? 

Wiping the sweat off his face, Uirst looked at how much of the wall was done. They were making good progress having about forty percent of the wall done. He didn't quite know why the bamboo seeding was important, but the seeds could maybe be used for food. They already had started cooking and eating fresh bamboo shoots for fiber.

From the chats, he learned that others were having the same problems with solving their food crisis. With more members joining their civilization every day and no food to reliably eat. They could only buy food using points making the leader's hearts bled with remorse. Although they brought in fish, mushrooms, and wild game back home to eat it wasn't enough.

“Rat you hungry? Think it’s time for a snack break.”

“Sounds good, my stomach is rumbling.”

With that decided the two of them put their tools down and Urist opened the trade window and purchased some cheap food from another civilization. Instead of points, he traded raw clay. However, this civilization had a fatal weakness despite being quite lucky with their abundance of huge food resources. 

Their weakness was that they lacked materials such as clay, metal, and sand. Of course, he decided not to trade them as the small amount of metal-rich dirt was needed greatly. And besides that, the sand wouldn't be much use to them as well without a kiln. At most the people he was trading with, could make primitive clay pottery.

Although we could also make pottery it wouldn't be in large quantities and would take some time to make. For now, just buying buckets of material is a cheap alternative since making pottery is hard. Still, since we’re making a firing place for bricks we could sell the extra for food or points.

Eating a strange purple fruit called Lilavoll, his gaze wandered around the area. Near the cave, he could see Uria and Hot working had to extract more metal using the frother. Currently, they were working with the tin since they had a good batch of copper ready to go.

Ormila and Urmom were taking a break from making ropes to play with the loadstones to collect iron. Despite being assigned to making rope team, they had other tasks to keep boredom away such as making and designing traps.

It was the same for Lun and Ariel who used their gathered bamboo to make cool items with the tools they begged Urist to buy. Currently, they were making shelves to hold things outside of the civilization crystal storage.

The air was quite peaceful, however, Urist couldn’t help but feel that something quite off he just couldn't put his finger on it. So he kept working by cutting trees down and pulling trunks. 

Since Reaver had nothing to do, after she had finished taming the animals she came over to help dig holes to put the fence in. As such every dwarf was hard at work in their jobs even if they were taking breaks.

It wasn't until the afternoon passed that the exploration team came back. But Urist wasn't smiling as Arben was carrying the wounded Elrish on his back. Behind them was Rork carrying a large dead tiger on his back with Briana and Baikm holding two tiger cubs each.

"Get him into the cave! Uroa! Prep the medicine, I'll buy the thread and needle!"

"Boss, what do we do with these?"

"Hand them over to Reaver! Quick we must save Elrish!"

Arben rushed into the cave with Briana in tow. Urist was quickly going through the market buying an expensive first-aid costing 600 points. He also bought a needle, and thread in haste and then carried the stuff over at the entrance.

Elrish was moaning in pain laying on his front as blood gushed from his back.  Urist took a shot out from the first aid and shot the dwarf with anesthesia near the wound.

Elrish let out another moan of pain before Uroa stuffed his mouth with a mixture of medicine. In his half-conscious state, he was forced to swallow the paste of bitter-tasting medicine.

Within a minute knocking him out cold. Urist was quite surprised by how well the mixture worked these two girls weren't slacking. Next, the two girls worked together hand in hand to clean the wound of blood. They checked that although there was a lot of blood the cuts weren't that deep. 

Three lines didn't go that deep, about 1/8 inch at the deepest part. By luck it had seemed,  any deeper and his spine would have snapped as a large claw mark ran along his entire back.

Cleaning out his wound with plants and water the girl's hands fumbled at first since this was their first treatment. But in time they managed steady their hands and clean out the wounds and stitch up Elrish wounds.

Seeing how little of the first aid was used Urist felt quite ashamed to have bought it. Still, he didn't regret it, at least now they used the bandages within to cover the stitches.

They then carefully laid Elrish on his back and put him on a new comfortable leaf. Urist asked one of them to watch over Elrish and make sure when he didn't make any sudden movements waking up.

The last thing they would want is for him to reopen his wounds. With such things handled and Elrish life not endangered Urist gathered the expedition team and asked for a report.

Standing nervously, the four dwarfs stood before Urist, not sure what to say.

"How did you run into a tiger? Why do you have its cubs? How was Elrish injured in such a way? I want to know everything that happened after you went out!"

Of the four dwarfs, the three males looked over at Briana who was the eldest. Seeing them act this way, Briana had the sudden urge to strangle them for pulling the attention of the boss towards her.

With a sigh, she began her tale, "So boss it began like this..."

Part 3 - Taming Tigers

Briana talked about the event leading to meeting the tiger and cubs. They had collected the metal safely and it wasn’t even half a mile away from them and ready to pick up. It all started when they decided to go check out the traps to be more helpful. They were checking and resetting the traps after gathering the quarry today. They were feeling disappointed finding such few wild game from the traps and hoped to find something in the last few traps.

It was on these last few traps that disaster stuck, they weren't paying any attention and were attacked by a tiger. Luckily, Elrish was quick on his feet and near a large game trap that the tiger triggered it only giving him that single wound. Its luck was really poor, having the trap snap around its neck strangling it.

At that point, she helped get Elrish out of the way and Arben used his spear to stab the tiger in the neck repeatedly. It soon died by choking on this blood and they decided to bring it back with Elrish and come back for the soil.

When they moved forward though they heard mournful cries nearby and Arben did a quick search and came up with four cubs. He then remembered that Urist wanted to raise more pets so he brought them back to see how he wanted to deal with them.

Although he was quite mad that Elrish had gotten injured it wasn't their fault for getting attacked by a tiger. Despite there large frames they could be quite sneaky and lay in ambush.

Since it was near the trap Urist guessed that some blood must have settled on the trap drew the tigers attention.  Through that was just a guess it might have just been hunting for food in the area for its cubs.

Whatever the case may be, he knew that the dangers would grow with each day. Maybe instead of one full-grown tiger, there might be two that attacked next time.

Still, from this event, they had gained four tiger cubs and since they had a tamer it would be good to use them. Urist checked with Reaver and was given the a-ok in her ability to tame them since they were quite young.

She also said that she could add extra service since they were strong creatures. She could add a mark that'll allow the cubs to grow faster. 

When asked in detail how they would grow faster, she replied that if the tigers ate a creature's body. It would gain life essence that could then be used to grow their bodies into adults at an explosive rate.

That wasn't all to the spell, it could also turn a normal creature into a magical creature. Unfortunately, this spell couldn't be used on dwarfs to awaken their magic talents it would instead make them explode into gore.

After gaining all that information Urist left it to Reaver to train the tigers and dogs as hunting companions. The dogs have been lazing around doing nothing in camp since they were more of watchdogs.

Urist gnashed his teeth at the thought, "It was time for them to learn there keep!"

Now deciding on using the dogs it would best to now name since it would be a problem to name them Dog one and Dog two. With that thought, the question was what to name them. 

Urist was mulling deeply over this question and decided to do what he always did for animals he got in games.

To have their names start with R.

The dogs that were male and female were Rolo and Rona respectively. For the tigers they check and there were two males and two females. 

The largest of the bunch was a female and named Rama and was more black striped then orange. The next two were around the same size were male and female and were named Rain and Rocka had the usual pattern of tigers. 

For the runt of the litter, he was a little special being a white tiger with clear blue eyes he got the name, Rex. With that handled Urist turned his attention to the next problem.

What to do with the mother tiger?

That was the question on his mind. He didn't feel quite right to skin it and eat its meat in front of the cubs. He sighed for his soft-heartedness and decided to sell the corpse on the market.

With so much meat and materials on the tiger, it should fetch a good price on the market. Although he wouldn't eat the tiger he wasn't a fool to bury such a treasure it would be a waste.

Sending of the tiger off Urist said a prayer before exiting the cave. Looking at the timer, there was still some time in the day. They should have enough to make the kiln and fire it so they could finally start on metal production.

Only he decided to first to check on Uri's farm to see how far she had progressed. He noticed that Lun and Ariel had put in some work around the garden putting in a bamboo fence to keep the goats out from eating the sprouts.

With their mother now tamed she wouldn't run away so the kids just hung around her. Reaver had set some rules for her not to venture any farther then the fence and have them free reign in the area.

Urist heard Uri's full displeasure of the goats and questioned if they couldn't kill them. It took some time to cool her down and a cup of goats milk helped bridge the gap.

"This is quite tasty! And it came from that accursed goat?! I guess I can forgive them for now..."

Such a quick change in attitude left Urist almost speechless. 

"As expected of milk it can tame even an angry farmer. Hm, let us hope for more goats to turn up to have more milk!"

Urist said a silent prayer and then left Yri to her own devices after learning the farm was going quite well. Finished chatting with Uri, Urist checked his timer in his head and smiled.

It was time to make the kiln.

 

Part 4 - Making and Lighting the Kiln

 

Musing such, Urist got to work on making the Kiln. They had gotten the materials ready and now it was time to mix up some concrete to form the base. Then he and Qrtia used magic to quicken the process. Using the materials at hand Urist decided on mixing up M10 ratio for concrete which is one part cement, four parts sand and six parts gravel.

Urist poured the mixture inside a big bucket and allowed others to mix it up before pouring it into a leveled hole. Using their magic in tandem the cement quickly began to set, allowing them to make the kiln on the foundation. The next step was to mix up the mortar to be three parts sand and one part cement. Urist allowed the others to mix as he laid bricks, towel in hand while slathering the mortar.  

He went for a square design that had two openings on opposite sides to save on bricks. Combined with an air intake coming from the bottom instead of a top-down design. The size wasn’t that large as this was more of a prototype design, its purpose to be for practical usage of small batches of metal refinement or used to fire bricks as needed.

We should make a few more as our needs will be growing. For now, this should be fine for our current needs.

Feeling good about how successful the construction went Urist almost didn’t notice everyone staring at him. 

Giving a quick cough Urist turned to Qrtia, “We’re almost done, Qrtia suck out some of the water from the mortar and I’ll finish it by giving it heat.”

“Got it, boss.” Giving a nod Qrtia focused on the mortar and started chanting.

Blue swirls surrounded her as a spell symbol broke down into lines falling over the mortar lines. The Water was then slowly drawn away into the lines before it started to separate and merge again producing a sphere of floating water. With some quick hand movements, the water was drawn to a bamboo bottle and stored.

When she was finished, Urist closed his eyes for a moment and pulled out the flames from within himself. Opening his eyes he saw a small flame dance around his palm. With a quick motion, he threw the flame onto the furnace watching the flame slowly engulfing the furnace as it slowly grew into ablaze. The flame then stuck to the surface like gum and with a thought, Urist let the temperature slowly rise.

Watching this display Qrtia muttered under her breath, “Wasteful monster. What does he think magic is? Something without laws? He should be struck by heavenly lightning.”

Only Urist was too entranced in the feeling of having control over the flames. After playing with it for a bit he found out that he could instinctively control the temperature and the movement. He pushed back the thought of testing how hot the flames could go and focused on heat treating the kiln for the next hour.

When finished, besides mental exhaustion Urist noticed that the flames covering the kiln were smaller. 

Was it because of the extended use of high heat that I feel so worn or because I had the flame so long outside my body? Also, why did the flames get lower? Was it because it’s stored energy was used up or something else. Hmmm. This needs more testing for later.

While pondering over his magic Urist opened the market. Afterall even if he was exhausted, the feeling of accomplishment had to be celebrated.  

Booze. Booze sounds good right about now. Let’s see what they have. Oh? 5 points for a bottle of wine? Although it’s low-grade it’s enough for now. Ten should be enough for us.

With a few quick presses, boxes of wines appeared making the surrounding dwarfs bewildered. 

“Rat go fetch the bamboo cups we’re drinking!”

“Got it, boss. But um, what are we drinking?”

“Wine!”

As the dwarfs whispered to themselves wondering what this wine was, Urist pulled the bottles out of the boxes and as he pulled the last one Rat came back with cups.

“We’re drinking nine of these with the last one left to Elrish when he wakes up. I’m sure everyone is fine with that right?”

“Sounds good boss. But what is wine?”

Hearing the question Urist only smiled and shook his head as he began pouring into the glasses.

Urist didn't even know if they were at a legal age to drink, but then he thought again about the subject.

Screw that, this isn’t earth I don’t need to follow alcohol restrictions as long as I follow my golden rule. Never drink with you are in sorrow, always drink for a celebration!

Sitting around the fire the dwarfs started talking excitedly. After all the work they put into this, from this day forth they could now create their own weapons filling them with pride.

Seeing them quite happy made Urist smile warmly.

"My fellow brothers and sisters this kiln signify our first step in calling this piece of land as our own! We've worked hard to get to this point! 

"All the blood, sweat and tears will lead us now to having the ability to forge metal and take our fate into our own hands! And so I join you in this drink full of joy to light the forge!" 

"OHHHHHH!!!"

At this time Urist motioned to the dwarfs that it was time to drink. They all gingerly placed the cup on their lips and took a sip. Their eyes widened in shock at the smooth and mellow taste of the wine and start chugging.

Urist joined them in drinking bottles one by one. It wasn't clear how it began but soon the group of dwarfs started dancing around the fire.

Then they all joined into song and kept drinking. By now everyone was suitability buzzed with a few exceptions who decided to keep a clear head.

Namely, Urist and Uria who stopped after a few cups. They talked about it and figured they would take first watch for the night. The two sat side by side and watched the other party to their heart's content.

Seeing the sight warmed Urist's heart, even in his hazy memories he couldn't quite remember having such fun with his family. Not having the memory of his past family he didn't know if they were alive or dead but for now, this was his family.

Being bold Urist grabbed Uria's hand which made her jump and look at Urist with curiosity in her eyes. Her stare caused him to blush and pulled his hand away.

Urist scratched his cheek and looked away thinking to himself, "The wine must have gotten to me what am I thinking."

As he was trying to explain his actions a warm hand landed upon his shoulders. Urist turned just as Uria leaned on his arm and wrapped her arms around his. 

"It's incredible what we managed to do Urist. At first, I thought we wouldn't be able to survive. Then you showed us the way to live, working your hardest to keep people doing things to survive. You are one incredible boss and family member you know that Urist?"

Hearing Uria's words made his heart feel a warmth he had never felt before. Remembering all his useless days this was the first thing he didn't screw up royally.

It made tears fall from his eyes at how far he and the dwarfs had come. To get to the point that they were farming, going to be able to forge and have a wall to protect themselves.

Just the thought of them making everything work to get this far. To reflect on this filled him with a deep accomplishment. But he knew that this was only the beginning their peace was fragile.

Everything could go up in smoke in a single day if they weren't preparing for the rat tide and beast swarm. They needed more weapons, better defenses, a stable source of food and shelter.

Although they had accomplished so much they were still lacking in so many areas namely living space. He knew they needed to get those oxygen light crystals tomorrow. 

With them, they could expand the cave safely without fear of suffocation to death if his thoughts were correct. Still, that was for tomorrow, for now, he would enjoy the night.

Leaning back against Uria he replied. 

"I couldn't have done it without everyone's support. You don't know this but I was a screw up in my last life, everything I touched turned to shit. If I didn't have you guys none of this would have happened, I should really be thanking you Uria."

Urist couldn't see that Uria was blushing intensely using her hair to cover her face. She didn't know what was coming over her. What was this feeling in her chest of her heart beating fast enough she could hear it?

The two didn't move, they listened to the drunken singing of the dwarfs and the sound of the others breathing.

The night passed in such a manner.

Bamboo Seeding timer activated 3 Days 13 Hours 23 Mins

Rat Tide timer activated 10 Days 13 Hours 23 Mins

Beast Swarm timer activated 18 Days 13 Hours 23 Mins

Point Amount:  2247