Year 2, Winter, First Month, First Week.

The Council members sat around a simple stone table near a fairly isolated border of the outpost, for now, that was all they could afford. After a week of putting off fires all around their new home, they finally found time to meet up and decide their next steps. Strangely, the new Council member was the first to speak.

“First, I would like to thank everyone for trusting and giving me this chance, I know my past isn’t the brightest but I promise to use all my knowledge to help us escape the Kingdom…”

Lew stood up and sincerely bowed to everyone. They decided to keep the tradition, so Kanin was the first to report.

“With the additional help, we finished processing all the harvested crops. Adding the Kingdom’s crops we have enough staple food for five to six seasons… Now, until we arrived at our new land, there’s no reason to keep the entire department going, but I would still like to keep some people working with me on a few projects… Even after building the basic facilities, I think we could spare some space to plant a few fast-growing vegetables. Since Karl adapted the heating circle to warm the entire outpost, the low temperature won’t be a problem, also, it wouldn’t hurt to supplement our reserves... As for when we leave after winter, I talked with Toni and Alfeur, they said there’s a lot of useful resources in the Forest, so I would like to do some foraging to help on our reserves. We might even find some rare plants…”

Everyone agreed with Kanin’s proposal to keep the Farming Department going with fewer members. Since they didn’t have to work for the Kingdom anymore, the lack of manpower stopped being a problem. Next, it was Katlyn’s turn.

“The last week was hard on the Hunting Department. I’m sure everyone is tired, but practically all hunters are suffering from magic poisoning and too many have wounds… We still need time to recover, if it wasn’t for Sania’s team going out every day, we wouldn’t have anything to report... They mapped the space of ten kilometers around the outpost and found the first MT beast…”

Surprisingly, the Council members remained calm, they were getting used to handling the problems. Katlyn continued:

“We still need to check the rank and the exact location of the beast, but we know it’s probably around here, nine to ten kilometers from the outpost.”

Katlyn pointed to a section in her drawing. For the last few days, she was using Sania’s descriptions to draw some landmarks near the outpost. Besides asking for more recruits, Katlyn didn’t have anything else to report. Then, it was time for Alfeur to speak.

“Most of my trained workers had to take some time to recover too, but with a few extra hands, we should finish building all the basic facilities before the end of the month. The Forest’s resources are great, but we’re having some difficulties working on them… We also need to find a solution for our temporary camps, we don’t have enough materials to build tents… Our current resources are enough but we need to consider the future, it could be a few years before we managed to establish a trading route, it would be good if we could convince Arnold to stay…”

Reiner took the cue and started her report:

“Most of our efforts were focused on adapting the heating circle to cover the entire outpost and adjusting the magic barrier. The levels of magic energy inside the outpost are still dropping, unfortunately, the barrier can only keep the high-density energy outside from entering, but the levels inside still need to decrease naturally… Next week, we should be working with Arnold to either convince him to stay or make use of him as much as we can. After that, we are opened to the Council’s requests…”

Mary was the last one to speak, she looked a little older, probably the last weeks had weighed on her.

“The Health Department is exhausted, the cases of magic poisoning didn’t drop. We don’t have enough healing beds for everyone, so we have to rotate them, but even so, five people died from the poisoning, mostly elders… Fortunately, the more severe cases decreased and we shouldn’t see any more deaths…”

The Council meeting kept going until the sky turned dark. In the end, the Chairmen decided on a few urgent and secondary actions for each department. *

***

Karl looked at his eager disciples and smiled. A few concerns about a lot of people learning too much appeared in the last Council meeting, so he decided to stop doing the open lessons. Of course, he would still present the tools publicly but he would refrain from explaining the technical details, which he would still do for the disciples. After the magic re-drawer and the locater, the magic barrier was the new sensation in the Alchemy Department. Since only his direct disciples knew how the tool worked, the others were betting and making long discussions trying to guess how it worked. And now was time to finally explain it.

“Let’s first look at the major Array (without the powering part), we can easily separate the whole Array in three parts: Defining the characteristics of the barrier, generating the barrier and positioning the barrier. Remember to always analyze it from the outer to the inner parts. Just some points before we start, we are using a bubble crystal because one of its properties is a protective barrier. The difference of this barrier is that it bars specific elements to protect what is inside, so we also need to supply the information of the elements that it should bar. Last, besides that we’re using mostly Runes, to transform the property into something real (Manifestation), make it stronger (Focus) and bigger enough to cover the outpost (Stimulation).”

“The first part is the Array that defines the characteristics of the barrier. We use the Combination Array (One smaller circle inside of another circle) the get the property (protection barrier) with the right characteristics (bar beasts and dense energy). So, we combine three Arrays, the Property Extraction (outlined pentagram) to get the protection barrier property, and two Signature Extraction (pentagram) one to get the beast’s blood signature and the other for the MQ energy crystal signature. Combining the three, we have the property: a barrier that protects from beasts and dense energy.”

“Next, we need to create the barrier physically by manifesting the property from the last step. So, we just need to use another Combination Array to combine the property from the last step with the Manifestation and Focus Runes. We didn’t need to use the Focus Rune here, but I decided to add it to make the barrier stronger.”

“After we combine these Arrays, we already have the barrier, so we just need to place it in the right position. To do it, we just need a Direction Array (Triangle). I added a Stimulus Rune inside the Direction Array to help making the barrier bigger so it could cover the entire outpost. Take note that I could have added the Stimulus Rune before, but it’s always better to leave it for last, because of the consumption of moving something bigger.”

Council Report

Villagers

Total: 2125

Elders: 30 (-4)

Adults: 1267 (-9)

Teens: 712 (-20)

Kids: 58 (-2)

Babies: 70

Health Department

Sick: 12

Wounded: 70

Magic-poisoned: 600

Decisions

Farming

Plant the fast-growing vegetables Start foraging

Hunting

Keep track over the MT beast Discover its rank Train recruits Training with Lew to learn how to use magic energy

Crafting

Finish constructing the basic buildings Define and craft all needed resources for the upcoming journey Use Arnolds abilities Think of a strategy for fast-building in the journey

Alchemy

Tools for forging Tools or strategy to facilitate the drawing Tools for the scouting unit (scout for MT beasts and dangers) Tools for communication, transporting, building Experiment with combine Fighters and Alchemy

Health

Nourse the villager back to health Improve the treatments (Mostly for cuts and broken bones) Study the specif effects of magic-infused meals