Markus knocked, then opened the door to Clement’s room. The lieutenant was currently alone.

“Markus, good to see you. I hope people are showing you around like planned. Or did you run into any trouble?”

“No complaints. In fact, I already met with everyone and learned a lot of new things. It was a nice opportunity you gave me, I am quite happy with how it turned out.”

“That’s good to hear. Everyone I talked to so far was telling me what a talented person you are.” The lieutenant smiled at Markus. Of course Clement would get reports, Markus had already expected that much. That was why he held back and tried not to show his true powers to anyone here.

The lieutenant asked Markus to take a seat, then sat down himself.

“Well, I am not going to ask you again to join the army. In fact, there is a problem we have right now, and I want you to at least listen to it. Do you have any concrete plans now that you have finished your ‘tour of our facilities’?”

“Nothing certain for now. I will leave here today, maybe tomorrow, but I will probably stay in the area for a few days.”

“Then stay at least until tomorrow. I want Lieutenant Wynn to brief you on the topic, as it concerns both her and her niece. She is… on an errand right now, but will be able to meet you tomorrow, I suggest meeting here again after lunch. Of course you are free to sleep at the barracks tonight.”

It sounded rather dubious, and the lieutenant wanted him not to talk to any of the other soldiers about their planned meeting. After agreeing to come back tomorrow and at least hear them out, Markus had the remaining day for himself.

He already had a small selection of tools and resources, but he still had to greatly improve on that front. Markus also needed a base of operations, even if it was only temporary, where he could work and experiment without worrying about anyone else noticing.

He hurried north, out of the village. When he was out of view, he opened the menu and cast the three spells he had not learned yet. Going through his spells list, he was satisfied. The new spells did not seem useful in battle, but it was somewhat satisfying to have learned four new spells in a single day.

[Repair Organism

Continuous Cast, Single Phase:

Intensify Effect]

[Soften Mineral

Continuous Cast, Single Phase:

Intensify Effect]

[Soften Organic Material

Continuous Cast, Single Phase:

Intensify Effect]

[Drain Moisture

Continuous Cast, Single Phase:

Intensify Effect]

All of the spells had a single phase in which the spell consumed mana until it was cancelled. Deliberately pouring out more mana while casting made the spell stronger, that was just about it.

While the first spell would be useful in case Markus encountered an injured person he wanted to help, the other’s looked like they were mostly meant for alchemy.

There were also two other messages in the log.

[Skill: Restoration Magic] gained.

[Skill: Material Manipulation Magic] gained.

He had already noticed with the magic torch spell, but when he actually chanted a spell, he also got the skill for it. Markus maxed out all three of the new magic skills, then casted the light spell from the menu. He could now make the sphere several times bigger and brighter than before, even when using the same amount of mana.

[Healing Magic:

Affinity for casting magic of the ‘Restoration’ category. Improves efficiency and maximum effect. Scales with ‘intelligence’ stat.]

While dashing through the forest towards Vrosa, Markus wondered how strong his attack spells would become if he had the skills, and a proper wand. He would have to get one at some point, but so far he was doing more than fine without using one.

Markus had gotten used to just rely on his stats and skills for navigating through the vegetation, and was basically flying through the dense forest, and his speed went up considerably compared to before. It was earlier than the last time he entered the town, and almost everything was still open for business.

Asking a few of the townspeople for directions, he approached a large workshop near the edge of town. The attached store was dealing in forged tools of all kinds, although many of the things on display were meant for woodworking and lumbering. Buying saws, an axe, a wood plain, but also tongs, a heavy hammer, chisels and a box of nails, he left the store with enough tools to fill a crate.

He tried to make it look like he was struggling to carry the crate out of the store, but once outside, he quickly hurried into a back alley and put the items into his inventory. Going into the store again, he purchased even more things. A shovel, pickaxe, some metal sheets and plates, everything that he felt was needed or useful in the future.

His next stop was the market square. There were no stands specializing in alchemy supplies, but he got a suitable household scale, a cauldron and a mortar with pestle from one of the merchants. One stalls that had a food stand attached also sold spices, and he bought a small bag of peppercorns and something that looked and smelled vaguely like curry powder.

He was pleasantly surprised to see the older one of the girls he had ‘rescued’, Tessa, working at one of the other food stalls. Markus walked over the market and bought a few smaller items that might come in handy. He hurried though, he had no time for sightseeing.

Markus then entered a store that dealt in higher priced items. There were two armed guards at the door, but Markus had already changed into his good clothes before entering town and was let through without trouble.

The store had many different kinds of goods. Watching over the items on display, he saw high quality textiles, decorations like small statues and paintings and also a small selection of weapons and armour. What he was most interested in at the moment were magic tools though, so he approached the man standing behind the counter directly.

The tools they had in stock were few and overpriced according to the UI reading. When Markus asked why it was so expensive, the man first said things like his items were of very high quality and almost never broke, that’s why they were in fact cheap. Markus pressed the issue, and in the end the merchant admitted that the region had lost much of its economic appeal because of the dragons, so business was slow. He also gave Markus a small discount, but it was still expensive.

Markus bought two small ‘fire plates’. One that produced a continuous flame like the one at Springkeep’s kitchen, just smaller, and one that could produce a flame based on the magic energy used, very similar to the one in the alchemy lab. Overall he had to spend one whole gold coin, 8 large silver coins for the cooking plates and two for a set of two magic lamps, similar to those in the tavern.

He had no urgent need for the lamps, but he wanted to take one or both of them apart to see how they were made. They were surprisingly pricey though, so he wondered why they were available in abundance at the base and the tavern.

His last stop for today was something like a pharmacy next to the local hospital. The hospital was only a regular looking house, where two healers did their best to heal as many wounds as possible. The pharmacy was more like a shop dealing with potions, but the shopkeeper also doubled as some sort of doctor who would hear out the symptoms of his customers before selling a suitable remedy.

Markus was not really interested in buying medicine, he wanted to get empty phials and flasks, so he could dabble in alchemy himself. After buying ten phials with a cork lid and two large flasks, Markus left the town.

He was still missing some items he could not just buy on the market, like building materials and large items like an anvil or a functional grinding wheel. Those items had to be ordered in advance and were either delivered or loaded onto carts. Markus planned to scour the destroyed villages near the ‘dragon mountain’, as he had dubbed it, for these things, or to make them himself if he had to.

On his way south, he stopped by the tavern to rent the room for another night. When he asked about Abigail, her mother made a happy expression, but said that her daughter was currently at the keep to serve dinner, then promised that she would tell ‘Abby’ that Markus had stopped by and asked for her. To avoid having the girl wait for him in vain, he told the woman that he would probably be back late tonight.

Opening the map, he took a closer look at the destroyed settlements, in particular the amount of ruins left standing. Having selected a few promising targets, Markus roughly planned his route, then ran south at top speed.

He avoided taking anything large that would be noticed along the main route south where the soldiers seemed to patrol regularly, but once he had reached a more secluded place he used the inventory function freely. Broken and half burned roofs, withered tools and bricks, everything vanished when Markus touched it.

He could not take things that were still ‘attached’ to the world and showed up as a structure on his map, but once he broke it off or pulled it out of the ground, he could take it without any problems.

Markus finally came across a destroyed metal workshop. He made sure to collect all of the broken tools, the anvil and even broke apart the forge and took as many of the materials as he could.

When he got hungry, he took out the boar he had roasted a few days ago. It was still as warm as it was when he had put it away, so there was no risk of it having gone bad.

Finally, Markus had to decide on a location. He did not plan to make the place his permanent home, so the requirements were quite lax. He wanted it to have a water source somewhere in the vicinity, be away from any road or settlement and have at least partial protection from the elements, so he didn’t have to spend much time on building something he would soon abandon again.

Using a mix of his map function, his skill boosted vision and high movement speed to get a good overview, he settled on a small mountain on Soba Kingdom’s side of the river near the ‘dragon mountain’.

There was a shallow cave on one side of the mountain, more like a dent that was 10 meters deep and high, but the ground was reasonable in the centre of the cave. It was only a few hundred meters away from the river and a few kilometres away from the next settlement, so it fit all of Markus’ criteria.

The first thing he did was fell a few trees to clear the space near the cave entrance. Utilizing his wood-working skill, it was a pretty easy job. While hacking at the trunks, he got a new [Two-Handed Axes] skill after a few well-placed swings, which he raised to level 5 to get the job done even quicker.

Sawing off the tree crowns from the trunks and removing protruding branches, Markus left the trunks out in the open, near the cave. He would need dry wood at some point, keeping them in the inventory all the time would only keep them fresh.

Going a little into the cave, he built a square low-walled fireplace with some damaged bricks he had gotten by breaking down some of the ruined structures in the destroyed villages. He wanted a place to let a fire burn unattended without risking a forest fire that could draw attention. It was pretty shabby, but he was satisfied with the quick results.

Markus then emptied the large pot he had found in the bandits camp, which still contained some stew with questionable ingredients. Drying some a pile of the fresh branches with the new spell [Drain Moisture], he filled the pot with broken down wood to the brim, then put the lid on it. He wanted to punch some holes into the matching lid, but when he put it on the pot, he saw that it was poorly made and there were some very small gaps already.

Placing the pot on some bricks he had put into the fireplace, he stuffed a bunch on dried wood scraps under and next to the pot until the fireplace was filled as well. After putting a few bricks on the lid to make sure it stayed in place, he lit the up the fireplace with a few tiny, low energy fireballs.

If everything worked as intended, the wood inside the pot would be heated without burning, the resulting gas escaped through the gaps and after a few hours Markus would have a pot full of charcoal. If that happened, he could then repeat it easily as many times as he wanted.

The sun was still up, but it would become dark in an hour or so. The final thing he could hope for today was find one crucial material for the construction of the base, which could also prove useful for other things. Starting near the river, he dug a hole in search for a source of clay.

Digging was apparently influenced by the construction skill and his high stamina and strength allowed him to work at a high pace already, but he decided it was finally time to max out the construction skill, which he had kept at level 5 until now.

The first hole he dug out yielded no results even after he went as deep as he was tall, so he moved to a different location a few hundred metres away. Finally he found some material that was usable. It contained small pieces of stone and was a bit gritty, but when he formed it around in his hands it generally kept its shape.

He marked the location of both his ‘clay-mine’ and the cave on the map, then went to the river and washed himself off, before rushing back to the village. By the time he got there, it was already dark for some time, but there were still some soldiers in the tavern drinking. Abigail wasn’t awake anymore, so he just greeted her mother and went to his room.

Sitting on the bed and undressing, Markus noticed something happening on the map. As soon as he took off his pants, some of the markers inside the village and military base changed from yellow to red. At first he was a little worried that something sinister was going on, a spontaneous vampire transformation or similar.

When he checked again, he found that the red dots were all regular villagers or soldiers, mostly females though. He had a vague idea, then put his pants on again. Most of the indicators went back to yellow. Apparently, the colour of the marker indicated the initial reaction a person would show him. If he busted into a bedroom naked, they would attack him outright, which was somewhat understandable.

They would probably be startled and not be very friendly if he was dressed as well, but it seems like most would be willing to exchange a few words before deciding whether or not to fight him. After his little ‘experiment’, Markus turned off the interface information for the night, then went to bed.