I checked up on the wall building second thing the next morning, first thing was breakfast, and they had gotten nearly half of it done. This team had gotten a ton of practice with wall making since they were the ones that built the first wall section, but the real boost for them was they had Valerie to lead them. Since her base caste was worker she knew exactly how strong a worker was, so she could push them to the limit, and she had the mental stats to react organically to things like the different shapes of the trees. I made sure she wasn't going to burn out trying to work as fast as possible before I headed to the plant to see how it was doing. It's mana pod bush wasn't fully reformed, and it's meat puppet was still laying there, if I didn't know it was a puppet I would have believed it to be a corpse.

The other bushes had already started their transmutation into the plant types that I asked it to form, and it's main bulk had shifted a little bit deeper but looking closely I could tell it had only settled in and wasn't still descending. Since nothing else needed my attention in the new area I went back to the center and checked out my boar hide. It was still stiff, but no longer rock solid, meaning it properly soaked up the juice and should now be extremely resistant to decay. For the next step I had to slather it in more hot brain juice and then stretch it out and bend it as hard as possible without tearing it. Once more having several magic hands was useful, I could work on several parts of the hide at the same time so it took less time than a normal person could.

The moment I felt it was as good as I could make it, my previously passive leather working skill kicked in and the hide wiggled strangly in my grip and became slightly better quality, as in the color of the skin side became more even and the fur became a little softer. It wasn't a lot since that skill was only like, level four... no wait it was level six now, guess making this gave it a couple levels. Anyway, it was good to know it did more than make the steps slightly faster, I figured it would since blacksmithing skill did the same thing, my copper nails were really nice before I used up the copper making rings. Now that I knew it worked I could ramp up production, I just needed a specifically designed drying chamber so I could dry out more than one at a time.

I went out and brought back a few mounds of clay and started designing it, I dug out a meter deep divot and built a firebox in the ground with a short ramp leading to it. On top of that I made a lid with smoke outlet pipes on the four corners that then converged back into a single exhaust in the middle. This was to force the top of the box to heat up instead of all the heat going straight up the chimney. Over the firebox I started building a large chamber, about three meters wide, the floor was made out of the stone blocks the workers carved out when they made the stairs. Above that I made about the bottom third of a dome from the clay but then I stopped and carefully separated it into large bricks, each one just small enough to fit in the furnace.

The size of it meant that even dry clay would sag from the weight, I needed hardened clay brick to make sure it formed properly. My precision with clay work meant the bricks I made should fit together near seamlessly after baking. While you would normally let clay cool down slowly to prevent thermal shock, I could feel it was safe, probably from some combination of skills and working with it so much magically. It took hours to work through the sheer number of bricks that needed to be cooked, so it was a good thing I had other things to do while waiting. I had attached a five types of dirt ring to my back with 'move dirt' while I worked on fleshing the two newest boar hides made from soldier kills.

Once the first chunk was done I coated the outside in a thin layer of more clay to make sure the seams in the bricks were sealed then I started building up the second layer, this layer had divots installed in the walls for poles that the hides would be placed on. I had made one wooden pole and used it to make sure the divots were on opposite sides. Again I took it apart in brick form and while they cooked I gathered more wood and worked on carving out all the poles I would need to fill the dome with them, as well as another soldier dropped off another body to cook. The final layer was where the dome started to curve inward in a more pronounced manner, most of it could also be turned into bricks, but the central chimney needed some extra work.

I made an inner chimney that stretched from the firebox through the middle of the dome and out the top, the cap was then surrounded by a secondary opening and a clay ring held in place by small pegs of clay. This design lets both the smoke and water out the top without them contaminating each other. I also added a cap system by having a lower overhang attached to the central pipe that went outward until it was past the outer opening, and the central pipe had a normal cap. This monstrosity of a clay mess had to be cooked on it's own fire because it wouldn't fit in the furnace and I couldn't break it into smaller parts that would. While cooking up the brick for this section one more soldier and Christina came by to drop off some more bodies.

I stopped her and had her help me clean off the hides so I could explain what was going on with my construction by having her participate instead of just telling her. Once they were cleaned I demonstrated to her how to place the hides on the poles so they could dry properly before showing her what the finished product would be like. Due to how her hands were built the softness of fur didn't really transmit through them, but when I had her rub it on her face she could feel it, since her face was the only unarmored part of her body. She headed inside to take a break while I finished up building, it was nearly night by the time the chimney was finished cooking and installed. In the firebox I transferred all of the hot coals from the furnace and added some extra wood before mostly closing a hatch to limit airflow. After a few minutes of checking the heat to make sure the dome would get hot inside without becoming fire hot I sealed the door and went inside for the night.

Waking up the next day, I was more comfy than usual, while sleeping snuggled up with Victoria was pretty good by itself, just the one bit of fur over some leaves made it even better. I didn't really notice how much I missed a proper bed until now, I was kinda so out of it the first few days out of town I didn't notice, and I just got used to sleeping on the ground before I could start to care again. Victoria woke up while I was reminiscing, and while her exoskeleton made her less bothered by laying on a hard surface than me, she still enjoyed laying on something softer. I told her that if she thought that was good, wait until she tried a cotton stuffed futon. She said she was looking forward to it, before a quick kiss and a 'see you later' later I headed up to see how how things went.

On the way up I passed by Valerie and her worker team passed out in a pile in the second chamber from the entrance. I poked one of the workers and luckily she was still connected to the group, so she was tired but functional enough to answer me. I asked what was with them sleeping in that location and it turned out Valerie tried to push on through the night but when one worker passed out from exhaustion the other four ganged up on her and dragged them away from the wall. I realized then that I didn't actually order Valerie to not push herself, just strongly suggested she didn't, but the other workers took it as an order and when they determined she was pushing it that order overrode her order to keep working.

I praised her, and by extension her team, for making sure they kept... a valuable hive asset healthy. I had to word it in a way they could understand, personal attachment reasoning went over their heads, but value to the hive made sense to them. After saying that to her, she, and the sleeping workers connected to her, gained a faint smile. It was a simple sort of happiness, the pleasure of a job well done, but that seemed to be the most emotion I could pull out of them. I told her to get back to sleep, and once they were all well rested they could get back to working on the wall. I finished heading up and checked out how much wall was done, they were very close to finished, there was only like four meters left to do. But behind that a few logs were pretty crooked, they must have been putting those up while tired.

Slipping past the gap I headed to the middle to once more check how the alraune was settling in. Most things were only slightly different from yesterday, but the energy pod had been restored and looking at it magically I saw some new growth under the puppet flower, a third root was growing from it, running parallel to the second one and barely noticable was the nub of a forth root. I had no idea how more of those roots would make it a better conversationalist but it looked like it was trying so I would keep up my end and feed it. I grabbed hold of the bulb on the pod and poured on the juice, the mana transfer skill seemed to make that process more efficient, I needed to add a little less energy than the previous time and the only difference was I had another level in that.

Like the times before it automatically squeezed the provided energy into the core, but this time there was no visible response, probably because it was already feeding energy into the puppet flower. With it fed I next checked out how well my drying oven worked on the five hides it baked overnight. It went okay, they were dry but not completely, the fire probably needed to be fed a bit more instead of letting it smolder for one night. Being dry but not hard was fine since I was sure I could slather all of them in brain ooze today, if I needed several days then they would need to be really dry to make sure they didn't decay before I could coat them. Walking over to the cooking fire I saw that the skulls from boars killed during the night were set off to the side for me so I could melt their brains.

Sadly, I was the only one that could apply the coating, soldier and worker hands were just way too hard and sharp to apply pressure to a hide without cutting it and a celestial was so small they wouldn't be able to apply enough pressure. It was just a kind of task that needed hands that could apply high pressure while being soft, but since they had no real need for leather it wasn't that much of a downside for them. Next batch I planned to de-hair so it could be made into actual leather that would be used for boots that I could then enchant properly before experimenting with the boots of speed enchantment.