“Hey, Uria?”

“Hm? What is it?”

“Why do you keep snea-- Oh yah the promise.”

“Heh.”

Pushing Uria out of the bed, Urist knitted his brows with his hand. He didn’t sleep well last night thinking about how bad this rat swarm was going to be. His eyes were bloodshot and his mind was pounding with a headache.

Waking everyone up to get back to work Urist turned to Uria, “Hey can you take care of new ones? I wanna spend more time with the expedition and plan out what we’re doing.”

“Fine. But you owe me, you can’t dump all of your responsibility on me.”

“Alright, alright I owe you one and promise to make it up to you.”

Skipping out the exhausting bit of the day, he gathered the expedition team and headed out earlier than usual. He wanted to check the condition of the bamboo as early as he could so when he opened the gate everyone's eyes opened wide. The bamboo had turned completely blood red and had seeds the size of around two fingers.

That wasn’t the only change on the forest ground the ground was covered with seeds and there were rats lazily eating the seeds around them. Seeing this his worst fears were realized seeing all the food and the rats current size.

You could consider on average a rats size give or take about the size of a fist depending on where you lived on earth. Compared to the other day these rats had grown to about the size of two fists and there were thirty of them lazily eating the seeds ignoring the dwarfs.

With the hair on his neck standing up, Urist said coldly, “Kill them all. Reaver let your pets go wild.”

“Understood boss! Go forth my little darlings~”

The lazy tigers and golden retrievers walking next to the tamer's ears perked up and looked around and started to snarl before jumping into the pack. The rats now sensing danger from predators tried to flee only it was too late for them!

To lead the pack into battle unexpectedly was the tiny white tiger Rex and his big buff sister Rama splitting off into two directions. They each led one of their siblings and one of the retrievers on a path of slaughter grabbing the rats swinging them back and forth as their teeth bit into them severing spines and crushing organs.

Not to be shown up by Reaver’s pets the rest of the expedition team joined their loyal companions to wipe out the rats. It didn’t take long for the rats to route and the battlefield lay two dozen fat rat corpses bleeding and crushed.

Collecting up the dead rats Urist gave them to Reaver to feed her pets dogs and tigers to help them grow. They had done well in that little battle killing about twenty out of twenty-four rats with Rex getting the most kills.

Urist raised an eyebrow at how well Rex had done, killing six rats with Rama taking five. Their killer instincts were top-notch out of the group. Inwardly, he made a note to check if there were more tiger cubs for sale and if not get some more dogs.

Even if the two dogs killed two rats each it was still better than the dwarfs who got barely any kills. With that test out of the way, Urist ordered, “Alright guys, it's time to head off! Fatty at the front, Emu, Uroa, and Reaver at the center. Reaver, have your pets cover Fatty flanks, Rat and Elrish you will be covering their flanks and I’ll cover the back.

“Our first order of business is to check the traps to see if we caught anything. The second is to count how many rats we see above ground and kill as many as we can. And while we’re out we will gather as many seeds and rat corpses back to base which… as you can see won’t be that hard. Does everyone understand?”

““““““Understood Boss!””””””

…

Meanwhile, on Uria’s side, she was currently commanding the workforce at the base. She had the new people that came today their jobs were Carpenter, Earth mage, Pottery Maker and Shield Warrior.

The Earth Mage, Carpenter, and Pottery Maker were put straight to work in helping strengthen the wall. The Shield Warrior was handed over to Unicy’s Matilita unit to get a hold of learning each other's strengths.

Despite Unicy being a General that specialized in Cavalry Archers. She had the basics to teach warriors fighting with different weapons a way of working together. With how well Unicy was training the troops Uria placed most of her focus on finishing the wall.

By now the wall was about fifty-five percent done with most of the watchtowers skeletal frames in place. Thanks to the extra Earth mage the pace of enforcing the wall would be finished faster than expected.

The wooden pulleys that Urist bought were being placed on the finished parts of the wall and running through with rope. The metalsmiths were working in rotations letting their bodies rest when one of them grew tried. In the corner, Runesmith and Blood Mage were taking the maces and enchanting them.

With what they wouldn’t say, the two were grinning ear to ear talking to each other in hushed tones that pissed her off. Urist before leaving told her to let them do whatever they want since they seemed like good people.

Even though he said that she still didn’t trust that blood mage who smelled of Iron and kept asking for blood from everyone.

‘If he tries to harm us I’ll have Unicy beat him up!’

Uria had a headache coming on with ordering everyone about to get the wall finished faster. She was beginning to understand what sort of pressure Urist was always under to keep everyone alive.

‘Guess I’ve been pretty selfish. So this is the pressure he feels weighing on his shoulders.’