Chapter Fourteen

John

Despite the massive success their last expedition had been Sam, Camille, and John were stuck at camp. Apparently some of the other adventurers had seen how much they got from the dungeon and wanted a chance to raid it as well. John was worried that the dungeon might grow too fast for them if they took a break, but since he signed onto the expedition it wasn’t really his choice to make.

Since that was the case, John decided to enjoy the little conveniences of camp as much as possible. He found a cook who agreed to bake him pastries and a farmer who swore he could turn the honey into a good mead. All he had to do was give them both a bit of the end product in exchange. Those were not the only luxuries he was glad to be getting. The carpenters had finally built enough houses that there was one available for John. No more choosing from a drafty lean-to or a tent. Now he had an honest to goodness house.

Of course enjoying the benefits of being in camp was not the only thing John did. He regularly got with Sam and Camille to work on their coordination and plan future strategies for raiding the dungeon. They were not improving as fast as they had been in the dungeon, but they also were not having to go through life and death battles.

They were probably also growing their skills and coordination slower because they did not have full days to devote to training. Everyday they had to patrol the perimeter to make sure it was safe for the farmers and stop fights whenever they broke out among the civilians. John kept that schedule with nothing exciting happening until his pastries were done.

He thought about hoarding them all to himself, but there were enough that he would probably get sick if he ate them before they went bad. While considering who to share them with he realized that this was a good opportunity to talk with Olivia. He hadn’t had enough chance to poke fun at her ever since they got off of the ship. He went to her cabin and knocked on the door. When she opened it she said

“John? Do you have something to report? I thought you were just doing standard perimeter checks.”

John held the pastries behind his back as he said

“Ah. Well I don’t have anything to report, but I thought I might be able to lure you away from that paperwork and enjoy some pleasant company.”

Olivia smiled as she said

“Oh? You better have something good if you want to lure me out.”

John put his hand to his heart and threw his head back dramatically as he said

“You wound me my lady. Is my presence not enough?”

Olivia continued smiling as she said

“well I am a busy lady you know.”

John continued putting on a dramatic performance as he shoved the pastries out in front of him and said

“Would some of these as tribute be enough to lure you out?”

Olivia’s eyes sparkled as she asked

“are those what I think they are? Where could you have possible gotten pastries all the way out here?”

John laughed as he said

“ you can’t expect me to give you all my secrets. If I did then you might try to bypass the middleman and leave me without company”

Olivia responded

“Alright, you have convinced me. Where shall we go?”

John thought for a second before saying

“I spend all day wandering around the woods. How about we go check out the coastline?”

John and Olivia left the cabin and walked towards the water. Once there they chatted as they walked. John started to feel a bit peckish, so he turned to Olivia and asked

“Do you want to find somewhere to sit down so we can eat these?”

Olivia responded

“How about we go out to the edge of the dock? If we go anywhere less secluded I’m worried we will be mobbed by sweets deprived civilians.”

John's first reaction was to say

“Since when do we have a dock?”

and his second was to say

“That sounds great.”

Olivia laughed and said

“you weren’t kidding when you said you’ve only been out in the woods for a week. We finally finished processing all the timber we cut down to clear farmlands so all kinds of buildings have come up recently.”

Once they got to the end of the dock they sat down side by side and ate pastries while feeling the mist from the waves crashing on the dock against their legs. They sat there eating in comfortable silence for a while until John started to feel something funny. His heart was racing, his face was red, and he started sweating despite the cool breeze. His initial thought was

“Wow, I knew I liked her, but am I falling in love now?”

He only had a second to ponder that before he realized that his current circumstances were caused by something else. Mana started to flood his body and he had to focus to keep it circulating safely. He turned to the side and saw that Olivia had closed her eyes and was also focusing on controlling her mana. That eased his worries and let him put his whole focus on controlling his mana.

They both sat there for an hour until the increased mana flow finally started to abate. He looked to the side and saw that Olivia had already gotten up. Once she saw that he got up she said

“I know you want to keep yourself as the middleman, but I think I’m going to have to insist you tell me where you got those pastries from.”

John sighed and said

“I guess I do owe you an explanation after that. I got the pastries from one of the bakers. I gave him the honey and he made pastries for us to split”

Olivia’s face scrunched up as she thought before she said

“There must be something special about the pastries. I actually have a bit more mana than when I ate them and normal pastries don’t do that.”

John replied

“Well I did get the honey from the dungeon.”

Olivia continued thinking before saying

“Hmm. That wouldn’t do it on its own. Was there anything special about the bees?

John thought back to the bees and the painful stings they gave before saying

“They were giant”

Olivia looked at him with disbelief and said

“You used honey from a dungeon monster to make pastries?”

John looked embarrassed as he shrugged and responded

“It seemed like a good idea at the time. Where else are we going to get sugar?”

Olivia sighed and said

“You said you gave some to other people right? It was alright for us since we both know how to use runes, but you better go stop that baker from eating too many or he might hurt himself.”

John sighed as he got up to go find the baker, lamenting the abrupt end to their date. He turned to Olivia and apologized before bolting off into the dark.

Olivia

Olivia sighed as she watched John bolt off down the dock. She had been enjoying their little break, but with John gone she figured it was time to walk back to her cabin and get to work. She admired their new forge, healers house, and first tavern as she walked by them. They were at the center of the settlement and she hoped they would be the start of a thriving town center in the future.

The only thing she didn’t like about them was that they represented the start of commerce. Until now everything in the camp had been on the expedition's budget. That was coming to an end soon though. Once the businesses were in operation for themselves she had to figure out how much tax to charge, a way to collect the tax, and what to spend the tax money on. It was just more work to add on to what she already had to do.

As she kept walking past less interesting buildings her mind started to shift back to her time with John. It really had been fun up until he ruined it by feeding her possibly poisonous honey. They had gotten lucky with it having a beneficial effect, but he should have known better than to just eat something random from a dungeon.

Though now that they did know what the honey did, it was destined to be another best seller from the dungeon. Any product that could permanently increase its users mana was generally worth more than its weight in gold. Once she realized that she thought

“Huh, this was probably the most expensive date I’ve ever been on.”

and laughed as she got back to her cabin and started going through paperwork again.