Year 2, Winter, Second Month, Second Week.

“We should rest here for a few weeks or at least until the storm ends…”

Elder Said had a pitiful expression, and unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one. Walking through the forest was wearing their health bit by bit. Every day, another person fell from either magic poisoning or exhaustion. They have covered a lot of ground, but not without a cost, and right now, the price of keep moving might have become too expensive.

In the first few days, they walked almost 20 kilometers, something they judged impossible in the past. However, a combination of lucky and dreadful events pushed them forward at an unimaginable pace. First was the report of an attack that quickly spread through the endless line of travelers, fear of getting caught by the Kingdom powered their every step. Then was nature’s blessing that allowed for almost a week clear of snow during the day. Last, was the Alchemists’ creativity supported by the crafters’ diligence to build what they called winter tools, which offset the rest of the climate challenges.

But then, the tides turned. The threat of the Kingdom that never came and the consequences of pushing deep into the forest slowed their pace until they were walking less than ten kilometers in a day. The relative bearable conditions created by the winter tools started to diminish as a big blizzard slowly formed. More fell and they soon couldn’t keep going anymore.

Toni searched around the Councilors until his attention stopped at Kanin, who had finally recovered enough to participate in the Council meeting, he said with some uncertainty:

“I don’t know if that’s wise, we just escaped them and they could catch up with us at any time…”

The observation pushed the Councillors into another round of wishful-thinking and unrestrained naïvity. Toni sighed, they hadn’t experienced the slaughter carried by the enemy only a few days ago, how could they understand it? Unfortunately, shortsightedness was one of the consequences of facing a painful situation, most would only be able to see the current problem, which was taking lives every day. However, between the 16 Councillors, someone would always be able to see reason, that was one of the benefits of collective decisions. Karl was the one to offer a solution this time.

“We could organize a long-distance surveillance system to warn us of their approach like we did with the MQ beasts. Our mistake wasn’t only stopping too close to the Kingdom, if we knew of they were coming with at least one day of notice, we could have escaped without suffering causalities. If we expand our range of surveillance we would be able to react on time.”

The possibility of resting without compromising their safety instantly compelled most of the Councillors to agree with Karl without considering much. Some even allowed themselves to be relieved. However, a few remained controlled enough to identify the problems in the plan. Katlyn was the first to point out a flaw.

“Expanding the surveillance reach would indeed solve the problem and might even help with tracking the beasts better, which we also need to discuss since we located three MQ beasts nearby. However, we go back to the lack of manpower, which was what prevented us from spotting that spy group in the first place. Right now, the Hunting Department only has 80 hunters that could keep the watch, that’s barely enough to keep the beasts away. If it wasn’t for winter having fewer beasts roaming around, we wouldn’t capable of even that…”

But Karl wouldn’t propose something without considering its feasibility.

“We have to think of a solution for the lack of manpower, but we could establish the surveillance system with just a small team of healthy hunters… The surveillance system only needs to make two things, locate the enemies and report them fast. The locating part isn’t difficult, we could craft another magic locator using our second wind crystal, so we could keep using the first locator to track the MQ beasts. Now as for the other part, I could design a tool for long-distance warning, so we would only have to send enough hunters to defend themselves from the beasts they might find. ”

The curious expressions made Karl realize he wouldn’t be leaving the meeting without explaining a little more about the tool.

“Since we received the MQ and hybrid crystals we’ve been studying ways of using them, which brings me to the lightning crystal. The lightning element has some properties that could be used to instantly transfer signals between long distances…”

“So the scouting team would just need to keep and use the tool the report back if they locate anything.”

Katlyn almost couldn’t repress her excitement, besides helping with the situation, the warning tool had promising future applications. If they could expand the range of communication between hunting teams, the possibilities would be endless. Unfortunately, they couldn’t spare time to discuss it right now, aside from security problems they also had other pressing matters.

The traditional order for presenting their reports couldn’t be maintained at this time. Although all departments would have something to report, they had to deal with urgent matters first. Once they re-establish and recovered, a new meeting would be needed, but for now, it was time for Mary to reveal the size of their tragedy.

“61 deaths and practically half of our numbers are either wounded, sick or poisoned. We need to do something about it fast. Earlier I had to choose between letting a hunter die from bleeding or magic poisoning. In the beginning, the healing bed helped to save a lot of lives, but currently, we can’t use it in most of the cases because the sick and wounded are also suffering from poisoning…”

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much they could do about the deaths besides hopping the Kingdom would let them breathe and recover. Even so, Karl promised to think of something to help the Health Department save more lives. The rest of the meeting took less than 20 minutes. Each Councillor left the meeting with a task, with hard work and a bit of luck, they would overcome this difficult situation and come out stronger.

***

While Anya complained of their hastily and less than professional work on the winter tools, and Wein found it unbearably difficult to endlessly fix their mistakes and improve their shortcomings, Oliver loved the exciting experience of drawing on the go. After 16 days of working non-stop in the tools, the trio could finally rest.

It had all started the night they left the outpost, before sleeping their Master gave them the task of constructing the tools that would save everybody from freezing. The task wasn’t out of the ordinary, but the execution time would be their greatest challenge to not say almost impossible. To meet the deadline, the trio would have to manage the other disciples as Karl managed them.

The first challenge was selecting and forming the teams for each tool, it would be disastrous if a tool didn’t work because a disciple drew an Array wrongly. Fortunately, one person knew everything about every single disciple, from what Array they could draw to the average time they spent drawing it. The Head of the Alchemy Department didn’t take ten minutes to divide the disciples according to the Arrays each tool would demand. Reiner also organized all the required resources in record time, freeing the trio of direct disciples to focus on the design itself.

As the most capable disciple, Anya was responsible for designing the mobile heater. Although she had to decide on the specifics, Karl had already set the guidelines. The tool would need to be efficient but providing as much heat as possible was its major goal. Since it could be powered by a HQ energy crystal, energy efficiency could come later. The tool itself was actually simple, it just needed to generate heat in its center, which meant using the warmth property from a MQ fire crystal and manifesting it. Specifically, the mobile heater would use the Extract Property Array (star form) and a Manifestation Rune. Of course, they would also use the Stimulus Rune and Direction Array (triangle form) to direct the effect while making it stronger.

Wein’s task was also simple, designing a wind circulator to spread the warmth further. The design of the tool was similar to the MAC, using the wind affinity property from a LQ wind crystal to attract and push the wind towards the chosen direction. The wind circulator Array only needed an Extract Property Array (star form) and a Direction Array (triangle form).

To better distribute the warmth through the line of travelers, Karl suggested using connected bamboo tubes with holes along the way, like the ones used for irrigation. If the warmth circulated inside the tubes and exited through the holes, it would be easier to distribute it among the line. Although the heat wouldn’t be evenly spread and they would probably lose a lot through the tube, it was the best (only) option for now. Since the location near the heater would be warmer, the elders would stay there and the rest would be placed according to the logical priority. Wein would draw more wind circulators to be placed along the tube to keep pushing the warm air.

Last, Oliver’s task was the one that left more room for creativity, he was responsible for designing a snow cleaner. Besides warming the travelers, it was also important to reduce their contact with the snow to avoid getting a cold and weakening them. At first, cleaning the snow might appear inefficient, but with a magic tool, the task could be facilitated to an efficient point. In the end, the tool’s design ended up being quite simple, just using the water affinity to push the snow away. The Array was drawn over a wood plank which was tied to a bamboo pole to help pushing it against the snow. To improve the effects, Oliver arranged for two bigger cleaners to use the two MQ water crystals, while four others would use LQ water crystals.

Fortunately, the designs were simple and the prototypes were ready three hours after they started. Even though the disciples didn’t know how to draw Runes, the department always had a few removable samples of every Rune for emergencies when Karl couldn’t draw them. With a few adjustments, the first line of travelers departed four hours before dawn. The disciples and some crafters had to follow the line closely, the possibility of problems appearing along the way was given.

When they departed, Reiner could finally feel relieved, she always pretended to be prepared and calm but in reality, she was scared. At that time, the image of dozens holding the heater and the bamboo tubes was a little funny, most looked solemn and very careful knowing they held the livelihood of thousands. The snow cleaners only made the scene more peculiar, they diligently pushed the snow to the sides, some cleaners even redid the work to thoroughly push away the remaining snow.

Council Report

Villagers

Total: 2064

Elders: 22 (-8)

Adults: 1243 (-24)

Teens: 690 (-22)

Kids: 53 (-5)

Babies: 8 (-2)

Health Department

Sick: 105

Wounded: 92

Magic-poisoned: 800