Osmond swallowed his food and washed it down with some water before answering the paladin’s question.

“From what I can tell, the wall around the village was built by an earth mage. It’s the same kind of sandstone wall Regis used to make for our camps.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad one?” Sophie asked the important question between two bites.

“It’s a good thing,” Valerie noted. “This place is nowhere near the size of what we need for a proper settlement that could make a difference.”

“I know it’s a small place,” Letty spoke up. “But what does it have to do with the walls?”

“A wall created through earth magic can be easily erased by it as well,” Fabien explained. “You remember how fast Regis could wall up the clearings back at the riverside. Now that his mastery over the spell increased, he should be able to cover more ground at a faster pace.”

“Not to mention that his walls are taller and thicker than before.”

“Okay...” the wood elf looked at them, still unsure what they were trying to say.

“We should be able to start building a second wall further out from the village while leaving the first one intact. Once the second wall is completed, the first wall can be erased to properly structure our settlement.”

“I hate management stuff,” Cruz grumbled. “So I’ll leave it to you dorks. Just make sure I get a proper house for me and that the outer wall is strong enough to keep everyone safe.”

“That’s the plan,” the pale youth nodded as he turned toward the dark elf. “What do you think? Is it feasible?”

“It should be,” Regis sighed. “But it’s going to take a lot of work. The ground needs to be flattened and turned into stone to make the buildings stable enough, not to mention that proper infrastructure has to be built as well, which means roads. Lots of roads.”

“Let’s first mark out where the wall is going to be,” Quentin patted the dark elf on the shoulder. “After that, you can work your magic to your heart’s content.”

The two of them headed out along the main street of the village leaving through the gate. Soon the broken cobblestone Road switched to the faded dirt path they used before to reach the village. Regis was the one to break the awkward silence first.

“So what do you want to talk about with me?”

“What makes you think I wanted to...”

“Come on Quentin,” the dark elf rolled his eyes. “Even an idiot would have figured that out. So what’s wrong?”

“To be honest,” the paladin sighed. “I wanted to find out how were you doing.”

“I’m fine. Why?”

“You’ve been quiet in the past few days. Even more so than usual. You told us about what you’ve experienced with the monolith, but you didn’t say anything about how you feel. It’s not every day that something like this happens and I know it took a toll on you. We can all see it.”

“What do you want me to say?” the spell weaver walked with slow steps. “It was bloody terrifying. That thing influenced me without me even noticing it until it was too late. Not even Natalie’s charm thing was able completely to get past my willpower, but this thing did. On the bright side, at least we got some good stuff out of it.”

“And some arrogant nobleman that wants to silence us.”

“That too.”

“On another subject,” Quentin changed his tone somewhat. “What are we going to do about this place? It’s not exactly how I imagined it, but with some work, it could be worth the fuss.”

“Thorn Vale is huge,” Regis stopped when they were a good three hundred meters away from the village gates. “There’s plenty of space for us to expand and it’s well-defendable. It also has all the basics down, so we could immediately bring some people here to help us.”

“That is,” the paladin looked at his companion. “After you lay claim to the land, Sir Regis.”

“What?” The spell weaver looked at his friend somewhat flustered by his cut-and-dry statement.

“Back in Hunor, I had some talk with Father Steon about how the hierarchy works here. This marking we all received gave us a lot, the caste acknowledgement being one of the most obvious aspects. We’ve been doing a lot of good deeds and all that, but I’m still at least twelve hundred away from being promoted to a lesser noble and I’m pretty sure that the others are in a similar situation.”

“Well, it’s not easy to get ahead in life, right?” Regis tried to joke it away, but Quentin’s expression stayed as serious as before.

“Perhaps, but you did manage to become a noble, didn’t you?”

“What makes you say that?”

“You killed two demonic collaborators and according to Edmund, the Heart must have approved of that. Not to mention that you changed recently. You might not have noticed it, but the air around you is different. Your presence pretty much demands attention and respect, your back seems straight as an arrow and your gaze is more discerning.”

“So you’re trying to tell me that I’m acting snobbish. How nice.”

“I’m serious Regis,” the paladin’s voice went flat. “I get that you don’t like nobility, probably some shit from back home you’ll likely never tell us, but right now we need your noble standing. Thorn Vale is a duchy without an owner, just waiting for someone to claim it. All the work we’d put into fixing up and expanding the village would go to waste if some other noble just walked right in and claimed it.”

“And so you want me to do it before them. Do you really think the others would just go along with it? We’re talking about the right to rule. That’s not something you just...”

“They already agreed to it,” Quentin placed his right hand on his companion’s shoulder. “We talked it over while you were working on the gateway and everyone agreed that this is the best thing to do. Fabien even joked about how the one guy who would hate to do it is the most suitable to do it because they didn’t want to do it in the first place.”

“He always had a shitty sense of humour,” Regis sighed as he looked back at the village. “I’m not going to be able to do it. I need time for my crafts and meditation and practice and...”

“No one said that you’ll have to do it alone. We’ll help with whatever is needed just as before, so don’t worry. You’ll have time for your beauty sleep. Now that we talked it over, let’s get back to the important things. How big do you want the extension to be?”

“We’re about three hundred meters away from the gate,” the dark elf noted. “That should be more than enough for now. I could harden the ground along the river and build a straight wall down beside it, or include it into the village.”

“You mean we could expand on the other side of it as well,” Quentin hummed as he looked at the empty and uneven rocky ground on the other side of the river. “It would be a lot of work for sure, even with your earth magic. On the other hand, there would be plenty of space for us to work with.”

“We could clear out the edge of the forest further in,” Regis pointed towards the zigzagging line of trees a bit over three hundred meters away from the river. “That should provide us with the wood we’ll need for the building as well as the space we need for the village and the farmlands.”

“Letty’s not going to be too happy about the whole deforestation thing.”

“Those trees are already dead and she knows it. We should cleanse them and use them as building materials than just burn the stuff. We would need to cleanse the area of the leftover corruption either way.”

“Sounds like a plan I guess. So where do we start?”

“I’ll start by reshaping the riverbed and hardening the ground into stone on both sides for the length of the area we’ll use. The other end of the village should serve well as the end line for now.”

“Spreading ourselves too thin would leave us vulnerable, so this size should be more than enough for a while. You landscape as you planned to, while I head back to the others. I’ll send over someone to watch your back in a rotation. A lord can’t stay without guards after all.”

“Yeah yeah.” The dark elf sighed as he walked over to the riverside while Quentin headed back to the village.

By the time Cruz showed up for her guard duty, the spell weaver already hardened the ground for nearly twenty meters along the river while shaping the riverbed into a smooth and angular one on that side, reaching halfway across it.

“I see you’ve been busy.” The wood elf ascetic noted after clearing her throat.

“Well, I do have my work cut out for me, so I’ll try to waste as little time as possible.”

“You want to expand the village all the way out here?”

“Yes,” Regis nodded. “Quentin and I both agreed that we should give ourselves enough space for the future, so I’ll fix up both sides of the river and get a huge ass wall up around the place.”

“As long as I get a proper house out of it, your lordship.”

“Seriously?” The spell weaver looked at her exasperated.

“Too soon? Too soon.” Cruz sighed as she unceremoniously plopped down on the hardened ground.

Regis just shook his head as he continued with his work. Over the following hours, the dark elf managed to reach halfway towards the village with his terraforming project while his companions periodically switched places to provide a guard for the busy spell caster.

“It’s getting late,” Amanda noted as she watched the sun go down while standing not far from Regis. “We should head back.”

“Guess that’s it for today. I should be able to finish this side of the river by tomorrow noon.”

“This is going to take days if not weeks,” the blacksmith sighed as she looked at the empty land around the village. “At least we’ll have plenty of space for the houses once everything falls into place.”

As the two walked back to their reclaimed settlement, night finally took hold of the valley. They closed and sealed the gate of the village before heading over to the market square where the light of a candle lantern caught their attention. It lured them back to the smithy where they made their temporary base. Sophie stood outside the door with Letty, the young women waving at the incoming duo.

“We were starting to get worried,” Sophie said as they ushered the pair into the building. “How did it go?”

“I managed to terraform half of the river on one side.” The dark elf claimed.

“It’s going to take a while if you want to reshape the entire riverbed throughout the village’s territory,” Osmond noted as he looked up from the wooden chair he was sitting on. “Not to mention building a wall around the place.”

“Rome wasn’t built in a day either.” Regis reminded his companion as he joined the others at the dinner table.

“I… we could help with the wall as well,” Mary spoke up after a moment of hesitation. “I learned the ‘raise earth wall’ spell back in East Fork. If I teach it to the others, we could work together to raise a big enough earth wall. You would only have to reshape and harden it.”

“That would indeed cut down my workload.” Regis nodded in agreement as he thought through the idea.

“We’ll see what we can do about that. On the bright side,” Quentin spoke up. “The entire village was cleansed from the lingering corruption, along with some of the land surrounding it, as well as the river.”

“The further we go outward,” Valerie hummed. “The less corruption we have to deal with, so it gets faster to clean up the mess they left behind. We should be able to cleanse the rest of the area you guys picked for the settlement expansion by tomorrow evening.”

“Don’t you think,” Letty said after a spoonful of soup. “That we should plant that Landwaker seed now that the area is clear? I could use a land fertilizing ritual to give it a head start and we could all cast the ‘growth boosting’ spell on it periodically.”

“She’s right about it,” the dark elf nodded. “The sooner we plant it, the better. It’s going to need a lot of time and help to grow into a proper tree, and we definitely need the extra arcana in the air.”

“If we do this,” Osmond cleared his throat. “Then we’ll have to be sure not to let anyone into the village unless they’re meant to stay here. We don’t want any loose lips chatting about the high-grade tree they’ve seen in a barely defended settlement.”

“True,” Quentin sighed. “You told us before that people were ready to wage wars for less valuable Landwaker trees. We’re not strong enough to defend it if people find out about its existence.”

“We can’t keep it a secret forever,” Cruz reminded the group. “Sooner or later someone will talk.”

“We could camouflage it,” Letty offered the idea. “There was a spell in that druidic book Regis found for me back in East Fork that could somewhat alter a plant’s looks and information. Although I would have to cast it every two or three days, it should be able to hide the tree’s true nature from people unless they have a high-ranked identification spell.”

“And the downside?” Fabien asked about the important detail.

“It would lower the quality of the fruits of the tree and restrict some of their effects.”

“That’s not a bad deal,” Osmond agreed to the idea. “We can use this camouflage spell when someone we don’t want to see it is here. Otherwise, the tree can just stay as it is.”

“It’s best if the locals don’t know the truth either until we’re ready to protect them and the tree from those that would come for it.” Fabien stated.

“I guess it’s decided then,” the dark elf sighed as he looked at his companions. “We’ll plant it before heading out to do our planned tasks tomorrow morning. Later on, I’ll also put up a barrier around the tree. After all, we don’t want history to repeat itself. Thanks for the soup by the way. It was really good.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” Mary said with a smile as she helped Fabien pick up the empty plates. “Letty managed to forage some healthy vegetables from the forest, and we figured that some warm soup would agree with everyone.”“We should turn in for tonight,” Cruz yawned. “We’ll start early tomorrow.”

A cleansing spell and a toilet break later everyone drifted into sleep, not working until the next morning.