The sky remained dark, but the brightest of the moons was just about to set over the horizon, which meant the sun would not be far behind. So far I had yet to ever see the sun and any of the moons out at the same time; the world had a strict day/night divide. The slight illumination of dawn beginning to encroach over the lands, I could make out the figures of villagers beginning to go about their day. Tuning out {Ancient Memories} for the moment to make things easier on my head, I reengaged .

definitely was the most burdensome of the new senses. Humans are primarily visual creatures, and their sight usually overrides everything else in its immediacy—in much the same way strode to the forefront of the mind and demanded absolute focus on itself. It quickly grew easier to use, but in pushing everything else aside it tried replacing vision without adequately making up for the portions it subdued. Conscious effort nullified this downside, but who wanted to spend every moment consciously working to see?

Strolling back into the village, I waved to Erwin who sat along the banks with a fishing rod in hand. Starting a distance from the edge, I performed a running jump across the river for fun. Feet quickly thumping the grass, my leap cleared the entire thing by at least a meter to spare. Landing in a sliding lunge across the ground, I put one hand to the ground to stabilize myself. Wearing a serious face, I stopped in the cool pose for a while.

Okay , admittedly you are fun to have around.

“Hehehe, it’s good to be young, isn’t it? Have your fun before you get as old as I am.” Erwin chuckled from his spot, and I gave an exaggerated bow.

“I hope I can be as content when I reach Senior’s age.” Smiling, Erwin was a pleasurable conversationalist. That could be applied to most of the village really, you had to be able to hold a conversation if you’re just sitting around for hours. I wasn’t looking to chat, so I kept moving a little ways further.

If the stream acted as the center line of the village, then all the houses would be on the west side. The north-east quadrant was where the makeshift lumberyard had been set up, and the southeast would be where I worked on setting up that sheep pen Pan wanted. I couldn’t just loiter about and chat all day, some work had to be done to repay them. Helping Ria was more of a personal promise to Pan, eating the village’s food required more tangible services at least.

With my increased strength, such simple manual labor was easier than before; and with the aid of two s I could progress even faster. A one man building crew, I could work with a fair amount of ease, freeing up my mind to think on other things.

Primarily, I found myself thinking about how to manage all the surplus minions that wouldn’t be able to travel along with me. Just destroying them would be a waste, but leaving them to wander about would bring trouble. Hiding them might be feasible for when I returned one day.

I looked at the post hole I was digging for the fence. The answer to that was actually much more obvious than I thought.

They were undead, they could crawl into some graves for a while. The decomposers that were prevalent in the remnants of the battlefield appeared to avoid the skeletons and zombies. That only applied to some insects, but when Khthju had bit the zombie when testing their capabilities, he practically retched, larger scavengers would not find their taste appealing. Other processes of degradation might be present, but they acted on a much smaller scale—the negative energy that flowed within the undead might also provide a resistance to such things as well.

This could be a large scale test. Phrasing it like that made me feel much better about it all. Minions could be given up for SCIENCE!, as long as they weren’t just being wasted I could easily give them up.

Cheerfully digging at the ground, I began plotting for the interment of minnies. An interesting idea crossed my mind, but I was putting the cart before the horse—I still needed to go back and collected the undead from Yhrack. I wouldn’t need to be gone long if there were no distractions, but I figured doing so at the moment wasn’t the best idea. After everyone went to sleep and Tagalong Girl’s training ended would be a good time.

As the sun began making its way up into the sky, I took a break to go feed Ria breakfast. Touching her horns to wake her up, once again she acted withdrawn. Giving her the bowl to eat on her own, she quickly scarfed the meal down, not forgetting to throw suspicious and accusatory glances my way.

At least Ria remained quiet on the issue of traveling, although that was likely only the case because her mouth was full. Nevertheless, not having to argue about inevitabilities meant the day started off well.

A good omen to start the day, I headed back outside. Looking up, several large clouds loomed on the horizon. Cumulonimbi, or at least that’s what they seemed to be, if not for the ragged bottoms. Instead of a normal, flat bottom, they clearly poofed out at the base though they did increase in size with elevation. The clouds also formed in a strange fashion, slightly slanted in the direction of the winds.

Despite the discrepancies from the recalled forms of meteorological phenomena, there was no doubt that what approached was a rain cloud. Visibly darkening the air beneath, the village was in for something a little more than just a drizzle. From what I could tell, it didn’t seem as though a windstorm would be accompanying it, not that the storm needed it to make village life miserable.

Showers dampened everything, and though the residents were rather upbeat most of the time it only took a bit of precipitation to dampen their spirits. Mud got everywhere, the older houses leaked—in general what they could usually do without became more apparent. Rain soaked in and promoted mildew and malaise. Things were better than before, but Salt Village still hadn’t returned to the average quality of subsistence living.

Looking around to help ready for the oncoming rains, I spotted Ginger and Hannah checking to make sure that the brining barrels were all properly fitted along with checking the other sites used for food preparation. Given the generally mild weather, and terrible smell generated by gutting fish, a lot of the cookery and prep work was done outside. As was well suited to such tasks, I headed over to help clean up.

“Looks like the first storm of the season isn’t far off. I hope you’ve taken to sleeping inside nowadays, sometimes they can get pretty bad.” Ginger looked up from the offal being sorted out, frowning at the oncoming clouds. “It’s a good thing the harvest has finished. We should have plenty of straw to keep the rain out this year as well.”

“Ah, don’t worry. It’s gotten too cold to sleep properly outside, so I’ve taken to the indoors recently. How badly does it get around here? I don’t think the houses could stand too much, but if that doesn’t count as a storm…” The leaning tower of clouds slowly approached, and while it didn’t take the cake as the largest, it certainly dwarfed many earthly formations. That it only counted as a forerunner to the actual storms seemed to herald a monsoon, yet Ginger didn’t seem to worried about it.

“To be fair, the houses really don’t stand up to the real storms. All we can do nowadays is hope not too much damage happens and patch up what’s ruined if it floods. After a few years of not having what was needed to fix things up, the old homes were washed away.” Sighing, she looked towards the current homes. “Thankfully Pan has brought those who remained together and coordinated our efforts. The fact that he’s given Ross and Hannah the blessing to build a new house means our village is on its way to a full recovery.”

“Flooding?” I raised my eyebrows a bit surprised. Given the steep banks of the river, I assumed that would have been the high point of the flow. And to the sides it was a flat plains, or apparently a floodplains. Which may have made sense if it fertilized the farmlands, but since that wasn’t the reason, why settle near it? “Does that happen often? Why put the houses so close to the river then?”

“Oh no, the waters don’t rise every year. Properly built homes should be able to withstand flooding so long as they’re kept together. I hear when the village first started up, they floated logs down the river to help build the homes, and we haven’t moved since then. It was really only the fact that we ran into trouble that forced the old houses into disrepair.”

“That makes sense I suppose.” It made enough sense to buy into it, but I didn’t see why they would continue to stay so close. A few dozen feet back should help, the waters couldn’t get too high. The river already ran between half to a full meter below the banks. I certainly had the imagination to conjure up 40 days and nights of rain, that seemed unrealistic.

Given that the settlements weren’t propped up on stilts, it wouldn’t be too bad. I just hoped my companions would be able to put up with it. Their tolerance for such things likely was much lower than my own. Adventures were filled with hardships, but it would be no good if they were too excessive.

“Let’s focus on the task at hand a bit more, shall we? It’ll be here before you expect, and if all this fish is left out, there will be a right mess afterwards.”

Going around to help clean up the food about to be preserved, as well as store the tools susceptible to warping. Frequently looking back up, I watched as the clouds slowly approached. Over the period of several hours, the leading edge wavered up and down, the rainfall oscillating, increasing during the high points. I make no claim to be a meteorologist, but I was fairly certain that wasn’t how weather normally worked.

As the day went on and the pillar of precipitation approached, people began milling about the village more than usual. Most everything had been put away, and the pole fishers safely stored their gear away—no one wanted hooks getting lost in the mud. However the oncoming storm didn’t appear to be rushing at great speed. A solemnly approaching giant, that built up a slight sense of unease in the village.

Children stayed well within sight instead of running amok as they usually did. Rion and Tagalong Girl both looked a bit tense; though perhaps thinking of them as somehow qualitatively different than the rest of the children was a mistake. Seeing Tagalong Girl warily glancing up every other second reminded me that even if she did act strangely at times, I needed to remember she was still only a kid. A good time to start, but also one where the mentor needs to be cautious.

Well, she wasn’t cowering at the occasional clap of thunder that sounded, so that was good.

Speaking of, I left the crowd to make sure that the thatching on the hut Ria and I lived in was sound. Things were already bad enough for her without letting her get soaked. My usual tall grass had already been cut once a few weeks prior and had not regained a good enough height for a proper second shearing, so I walked a little further. It was quite convenient that roofing material grew like a weed in the area.

Taking out one of the goblin weapons, I began cutting and binding up a few additional bundles of thatch. Luckily as long as you weren’t starting from scratch, you could basically just throw the stuff on the roof. Not exactly, but who’s interested in a lesson on medieval roofing? Point being that was enough, even though the top couldn’t be made out. It wasn’t exactly a rush job, just one that didn’t require fine craftsmanship.

Using to pack in another bundle of stalks, Ronnie came running up to me. Sprinting for all he was worth, he began to quickly ramble with big eyes. You could never really tell if he was nervous or excited, only that he was high energy.

“Alric! Hey, there are a buncha people on their way! Pan says they’re paladins!”

“Paladins? Did he say anything else?” Questioning him, I turned to look off into the distance. Sure enough I could spot a cart and horses trotting towards the village, with a hurried contingent of figures dressed in white. They looked to be on the verge of being overtaken by the stormfront, and were pushing themselves to try and remain ahead.

I gauged them to be a quarter of an hour away at most. There was a non-negligible chance that they would be the group sent to inspect the village, but even if they weren’t Derriad didn’t exactly have a third amendment. Though it wasn’t much, any amount of cover would be welcome and members of the church weren’t to be denied.

Given the rush they were in, the ensuing chaos to head for a dry area meant that there would probably be time to scope out whether they were Salt Village’s official tax collectors or not before they started running around and inspecting the place. Arrogance and highhandedness might be a standard feature, but malice was a fair weather activity.

I’d rather not be forced to ditch the village so abruptly, but the storm may have pushed the deadline to us faster than expected. Confirmation would be needed first, then—

“Alric!” Ronnie spoke up, interrupting my internal planning session. He looked at me expectantly.

“Right, right.” I cast a and for him. Ronnie frequently ran messages around the village for me, since he loved the little displays of magic. It could have had something to do with his odd mana field…

Tapping my chin, I realized I’d lost track of where I was in my plan.

Shrugging, I’d mostly winged it so far. Things wouldn’t go so wrong I couldn’t nudge them in the right direction.