Chapter 22 I must gave gained a few things during the battles last week, but I decided to wait with looking at it till after the patch came out. No use trying to make decisions now when everything will change anyway. Gave me some time to think. This is when I decided that if I couldn't sing I might try one of my dad's other hobbies and that was to write down his adventures. I spent two days with the help of my friends and a bit of cheating by asking AI-Me for help on the stats and changes I made so far. From now on whenever I had a free moment to myself I would write things down in my notebooks. Once that was done I finally convinced the girls that I needed some fresh air and they would accompany me while I explored the city. It had a weird feel to it. It was built along one road that spiralled inwards with the buildings growing smaller the further along you went. Because the road bent you couldn't see more than a hundred meters ahead or so, which made the city feel tiny. About half the citizens were elephant-kin of the various sects that followed the Maiden. Ranging from pacifist monks to the more militant paladin orders. Seeing some of the paladins around I decided to pay a visit to the barracks that housed the unit that rescued me and Moira. They were housed near the main gate as taking a bunch of rhinos into the city probably wasn't a good idea. As we came back past the twins' parents' house we also picked up Grim. He told us about helping queenie set up a new franchise of the Meet, Meat and Mead restaurant. The area around here wouldn't be good for keeping bees that made good mead though. The area was too swampy and the flower pollen here would give the mead a weird taste. So he would need to try and set up a regular route. Before that happened the were-rat problem needed to be fixed. As sending a whole army with each shipment would be expensive. We could smell the compound before we got to it. Let's just say that rhinos leave behind a lot of dung. The guards at the entrance recognised Grim and we were let in to meet the leader of the patrol. We found her scrubbing down the mounts in the stable. When she saw us she walked up to us and gave a sort of salute by tilting her head to the side and raising her trunk. "Sergeant Tracy Runq at your service. It's good to see that you are up and running” And gave me a handshake. "Yeah, apparently me being part vampire means bloodloss hits me twice as hard as anybody else." I winked at her. "Not to mention being up nearly three days straight fighting all the time." She chuckled at my joke. "I'm just grateful that we had a patrol in the area that were on mounts." And she gestured to the stables behind her. "These twenty are the only mounts we have right now, and they are all males. As you can imagine we had to ship the males and females on separate ships. Didn't want the males trying to fight over a female as that would wreck things. The only problem is we got attacked and the ship carrying the females sank. So until we get another shipment this is all we have. It also went down with most of our fighters and our top leadership." "Ahh, no offence I was wondering how a young-looking sergeant was in charge." "None was taken, I have to say the first couple of months I didn't really feel like I was ready for the responsibility of leading the regiment. But in the two years I've been here I've grown a lot. Trial by fire and all that jazz, am I right." I nodded, "Yeah I felt the same way in the beginning but after the fight at the bridge I feel like I can handle being in charge." "Speaking of the fight on the bridge, we are setting up an expedition to clear the way there and will be recruiting regular cavalry and patrol for the road. The expedition will leave in about two weeks' time if you are in, Just waiting till this patch thing is sorted out, and everyone is used to the new skills and stats.” Tracy added. "Your spear wall will come in really handy." "Of course, ill be in, we need to head back to Storm Cove anyway." I shook her hand and after a bit more small talk we made our way back to the house. When we got there I asked everyone to meet up in the main living room. "So I've been out for a little bit and had to take it easy, but now I want to know everything that has happened in the last few days." Grim filled me in on the rescue. Aura had finally finished the two automatons and just needed to find a power source now. Missy and Sissy had both had their awakenings. Missy was a Lorekeeper, she would be able to learn a bunch of spells both divine and arcane, but her spellpower would be limited by how much knowledge she had stored in a library that she would have to build at some point. She had a spatial trunk that held a ton of books and that would have to do for now. I offered her the position of administrator for the army. And assured her that when we settled down she would be the head librarian. (Authors note: She was also the one that convinced me to use this book as a learning aid) Sissy was a Stonewarden. She could command earth elementals and beasts with an affinity for the earth. It was a hybrid ranger and cleric class. She already had a couple of tiny gargoyles as pets. I offered her the role of army scout, and when I unlock a regular unit, she would be the first in line for a command. With Missy as the administrator and Sissy as the scout also in charge of hunting, they would both be working closely with Grim as the quartermaster. Now for the next couple of weeks, we would be doing small jobs here and there. I had the skeletons and Moira help Grim with building the restaurant. I decided that if I was going to be in charge of a settlement that getting some skills in that department would be useful. I spent a good amount of time with the twins' father learning the basics of architecture and city planning. I also bought every map I could find of the continent and combined them into one atlas that we would be adding onto. Sissy was also interested in it and as the scout, I gave it to her for safekeeping and for making notes. Aura didn't have any luck with finding good power sources in town, so she spent the time upgrading the skeleton's armour to full plate. The helms were open-faced and Moira asked if they could have a bear motif. With the bone shields, the long spears, in full plate armour they looked magnificent. I decided on only wearing a metal breastplate and keeping the rest leather for ease of movement. Aura was still working on her own armour that she wouldn't let me get a peek at. Missy and Sissy both went with leather armour. Sissy was also gifted a bow by her mother. Missy had her spells so didn't need anything but was taking lessons from Bob. Grim just stuck with his two cleavers fitted with thick leather straps to his back and still liked to go bare-chested apart from the straps making an X. When he got his fury up his muscles bulged so much that everything he wore would just rip. Thank god he still wore cloth pants. Missy and Sissy had to talk him out of getting a kilt. Luna got a leather saddle. Aura was even able to custom make a leather headpiece for her, including a leather collar that would protect her neck and throat. When I joked about getting her some dog tags to hang from it, I spent the next day in bed with a concussion from the swiped she gave me. Then finally came the patch day.