Quilly made a note. “What’s next?”
Salem and I were about ten miles from the village's border, deep in The Wild Woods. Bird songs and the buzzing of insects filled the forest around us. Without all my speed enhancements, Salem would never have considered bringing me this far in, but I could now outrun almost anything that would pose a threat. I crouched, staring at the giant’s footprint. It was nearly six feet long.
“You’re sure this is less than a day old?” I whispered.
“It was not here when I checked yesterday,” Salem replied. “And it is the first time that I have found tracks this close to the village. Two weeks ago, its wandering only brought it within twelve miles.”
I blinked, surprised and confused by his statement. “You just said miles.”
Salem shrugged, looking away into the forest. “A slip of the tongue.”
I scowled at the blatant lie. “No, it wasn’t.
“I assure you it was.” His tone was too smooth and easygoing.
“Liar.”
He turned and glared at me. “How dare you.”
I glared right back. “Don’t play the victim. I’ve never explained to you how far a mile is. And I have the memory to know that, remember. What the hell is going on, Salem?”
Salem sighed, looking visibly defeated which was a much bigger reaction than my comment deserved. “If you must know, since you acquired that insufferable crown’s mark, our bond has grown significantly stronger, far stronger than it should ever be with you carrying my mark for such a short amount of time.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, it is nearly as strong as the bond I shared with my previous companion. I now grow stronger with you, and I get glimpses of your mind, learning information like your stupid measurement system.”
I put the whole mindreading thing aside because I knew he couldn’t control it from what I’d read, so there was no point making a fuss about it. “Is that why you’re bigger? I thought you were just getting fat.”
Salem rolled his eyes. “No, you didn’t, and yes, when you received the blessings in the capital, I did as well. I also receive the bonuses from your marks and titles, but unlike the blessings, those will vanish if you give my mark to another.”
“Wait, your last master was like a super-rich and powerful wizard. Did you double up on blessings? That’s supposed to be impossible.”
Salem smiled smugly. “Impossible for a human, perhaps, but not for my kind.”
“That’s not fair!” I tried not to sound like I was whining. “Is there a limit?”
Salem shrugged. “There is. Obviously I can’t receive blessings from the same companion twice. Your weakness, not mine. And usually, it takes at least a decade for the bond to grow strong enough with a new wizard companion for a familiar to be able to receive them, or so I have heard from other familiars. I honestly thought this depth of the bond would be impossible with you. It is hard enough to achieve with a wizard.”
“Are we like, best friends now?”
“No.”
“Oh, thank goodness. I didn’t want to have to fake that.”
I grinned, showing the asshole I was joking.
Salem chose to ignore me. “Can we get back to the giant matter?”
“I have one more question. Did you get my attribute increases and access to my farmer class?”
“Thankfully, no. Our bond isn’t strong enough to give me that which you received before the bond strengthened.”
I grinned, excited. “What about after I get through my threshold? Will you get access to it then?”
“It is possible.”
My grin grew wider. “Don’t worry, Salem, I promise I’ll make sure Ranic teaches you how to grow turnips. It wouldn’t be right if you were a farmer who didn’t know how to grow turnips.”
“No, it wouldn’t. Then I would be no better than you. Now, can you try to focus? We are quite literally in one of the most dangerous places in the kingdom.”
“Sure, so it took the giant two weeks to move two miles closer. At that rate, it would take ten weeks for it to reach the village, but giants don’t increase their territory that way. They do it based on their level, and at higher levels it takes them longer to increase that level, so we’ve probably got closer to three or four months, depending on what it can find to eat. We’ve got plenty of time.”
“No, we don’t. I’ve noticed an influx of larger predators. And the number of trolls and ogres has increased tenfold in the time you were gone.”
I paused for a few seconds going back over everything I had read in the past month, looking for a reason. “Damn it. The giant’s aura is weakening the aura projected by the village to keep those monsters away. Its growth rate could change sporadically. The only way we will be able to keep track of it is by how close it comes to the village.”
“I came to the same conclusion. I believe I should—”
Something big roared in the distance. It was less than a mile away.
Salem and I looked at each other, and as one we turned and started heading back towards the village at a run.
Chapter Forty
NEW INVESTMENTS
Wind tugged at the bandana, pulling it tight against my mouth. My boots of speed raced across the granite-paved road that the construction guild had finished laying last week. It was about a foot higher than the land around it, so it wouldn’t get bogged down and flooded by heavy rain. I was on my third lap of the village, doing my morning run in preparation for the giant, moving at around sixty-five miles an hour, when a worker on the side of the road began waving me down several hundred yards ahead.
I carefully began to slow. I’d learned I couldn’t do so quickly. Just because I could somehow move this fast, that didn’t mean I had the strength to safely stop my momentum in a few yards.
Running at this sort of pace was just nuts.
It had already taken me weeks of practice to build up to my current speed over smooth, even ground, and I still hadn’t reached my maximum. It would take me a few more months to reach it, and I was already eating like an Olympic athlete to deal with all the calories I was burning. It was like the universe was laughing at me. I’d spent months running and watching what I eat, trying lose the weight the previous owner of my body had gained, only to suddenly have to do the exact opposite and gorge myself at every meal so I didn’t look anorexic.
I came to a stop beside the worker, barely panting despite having run more than thirty miles. High endurance and constitution had a few great benefits. “What do you need?”
The gangly teen took a second to reply, stunned by my speed. Most of the hired workers had become used to my morning run, but there were still plenty of people that hadn’t.
I was one of them.
“Um, sorry to interrupt, sir. Master Miner Datter asked me to see if you could speak with him. He says it’s urgent.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s waiting for you over on the western side of the reservoir site, sir.”
I nodded. “I’ll go see him now.”
Master Miner Datter scowled at nothing in particular as I stared into the pit where more than 3,000 miners worked. What little hair Datter had left had turned white, and his once muscular frame was now small and hunched, leaning forward over a cane. Despite his appearance, you would be mistaken to think the 193-year-old was past the stage where he could work. He was down there most days swinging a mallet next to the rest of them.
The miners had removed all the dirt from the area where the doughnut-shaped reservoir would be located and were now working their way through the granite underneath. Groups of men and women were formed into lines, cutting into the concentrated granite with hammers and wedges, forming the stone into construction materials of all varieties.
Those materials were being picked up by the construction guilds and transported all over the village. Granite-paved roads and stone farmhouses were going in everywhere. The finished roads were doing more than just
helping me learn to run faster. They were already speeding up productivity, letting wagons transport goods more quickly, and the concentrated granite houses looked sturdy enough to survive a cyclops. When everything was finished, my farm would be able to house at least 3,000 workers and their families, and there wouldn’t be anywhere in and around Blackwood for a wagon to get bogged down.
Datter turned to the side and spat. “It’s your money, Arnold, but working around that damn tower in the middle of the reservoir and making it circular is doubling the price of construction. I know you factored that in, but you really should reconsider. That scholar is just wasting your gold with his insane ideas.”
I stifled a groan. “Datter, if you called me here to complain about the tower again, I’m going be annoyed.” I liked the old man, but he was beginning to get on my nerves with his efficiency peeve.
Datter grunted. “Sorry, it gets on my nerves. Stupid bloody thing.” He heaved a sigh and shook his head. “I called you over because my boys found a small vein of poor quality jade this morning and I was wondering what you wanted us to do with it?”
My eyes filled with dollar signs and my mood improved. “What’s the jade worth?”
“About five crowns. As I said, the quality is poor, so it won’t make jewellery, but there is a fair bit of it, so you could get a nice small table with a few chairs made from it. You could get a bigger haul if I pulled it out myself since my focus is in that direction. It might be enough to make a nice desk.”
The dollar signs vanished. “How much?”
There were almost a dozen master miners involved in the project. Each of them had their speciality, with promotions of one sort or another that allowed them to be more effective than others in some way. Datter’s speciality was jewels, but he wasn’t here because of that. He was here because his speciality allowed him to detect changes in the rock yards before the miners reached it. Collapsing walls wasn’t a huge issue with concentrated granite, it being so insanely tough, but you couldn’t have such a big project without someone with the skill for safety reasons.
Datter smirked greedily. “Well, being a master miner of some means, I can pull out 50% more than the boys and girls down there can. I might even improve the quality a little. That extra jade would be worth about three crowns, so I’d be happy to do it for one.”
“I take it this is outside our contract?”
Datter’s smirk grew. “That’s a very astute observation. And you are correct. You’ve hired us to mine concentrated granite, not precious stone. We will, of course, pull it out of there since it is in the way, but any additional benefits to that extraction will cost extra. I can show you my copy of the contract if you would like?”
“No, that’s not necessary.” I dug my hand into my pocket and pulled out my purse. I grabbed a gold piece and handed it over. This wasn’t about the jade. You didn’t reach the old man’s age without enough wealth to ignore a sum as trivial as five crowns. The sideways looks he was giving me said he was testing me for some reason.
Datter took the coin and pocketed it.
We watched the miners work, listening to the sound of stone cracking and hammers hitting wedges. The miners moved quickly, far quicker than anyone should have been able to, considering the difficulty of their job. Stone slabs the size of cars were broken off the pit wall, halved, halved again, and then broken down into small blocks that could be moved by hand to wagons that were waiting to leave the pit via the ramp that had been built against one wall. All that happened in a matter of minutes, instead of the hours or days that it should have taken.
Datter looked around, apparently checking to see if we were alone, and then dropped his voice. “It has come through the guild hierarchy that the regent wants those in charge of this project to drag their feet. Now, normally, the other masters and I wouldn’t do anything that might upset the regent or the guild, but a few of my colleagues are not the sort of people who wish to turn their hand against someone bearing the crown’s mark. Many of us wish they were because this leaves us all in a precarious position. If we ignore the regent, we will probably lose our position in the guild.”
I nodded, still not seeing where he was going but suddenly liking the old guy a whole lot less. “That is a difficult position, but I’m sure you have an answer for it.”
Datter snorted. “I didn’t until this morning. Like I said, I’m all for slowing down a bit of progress if the regent wants us to. But do you know what happened this morning?” He didn’t wait for me to reply. “What happened is I saw jade where there shouldn’t be any jade. Now, that got me thinking. Why is there jade where there shouldn’t be jade? Jade just doesn’t appear. It follows rules. So what rule let jade form down there?” He stepped closer and clapped me on the shoulder, chuckling to himself. “Well, let me tell you, there are actually a few rules that let jade form down there. Each one is rather unlikely, so I had to go looking for more clues, and then I remembered your village’s wizard. A man too experienced for a place this small. And I got thinking to myself: why would there be jade and a wizard where there shouldn’t be jade and a wizard? Maybe that’s because they are both supposed to be here, and if they are both supposed to be here, then they might be here for the same reason. And if they were here for the same reason, then that reason would have to be that there is a crystallized mana deposit somewhere under our feet.”
“A rather far-off answer to your original question, wouldn’t you think?”
Datter chuckled some more, crinkling his face with wrinkles and hungry, greedy happiness. “Yes, quite far off, but if it were true, it might present an opportunity. Do you have any idea what happens when you have a village quarry near a crystallized mana deposit that it’s linked to?”
“I imagine you get jade?”
“Not just jade, but jewels of all varieties. Now, do you know what happens when you have a village quarry owned by an individual with the crown’s mark that is near a crystallized mana deposit and managed by a master miner like myself?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You get lots of jewels.” He whispered the word jewels huskily with almost sexual intensity.
I’d heard of gold fever and this sounded like something similar.
“You would also get a large amount of concentrated granite, I imagine.” I didn’t want to turn Datter or the other masters against me, but I had to be practical. I wasn’t going to pay for a quarry just to keep him quiet or stop them from dragging their feet.
Datter scowled. “Well, yes, you would.”
“And that much granite would be hard to use in a small village with few villages close by.”
Datter’s scowl grew. “Yes, it would be.”
“Which means investing in such a quarry wouldn’t be such a good idea.”
Datter frowned at me, confused. The confused frown continued for several seconds before he tentatively asked a question. “You do realise that when the lord of a village lays down a quarry, they can decide between quality and quantity, right?”
Datter knew I was incarnate, and that I might not know that, so his tone wasn’t patronizing.
“Nooooo…” My response might have been a bit more cartoonish than I intended, but I couldn’t hold back my surprise or stop myself from grabbing his shoulder and stepping closer, well past the man’s comfort zone.
“Well, you can,” Datter said, immediately uncomfortable with my sudden proximity. “In most cases, a village will choose quantity over quality for the increase in production it offers, but you can always go for quality straight away. It will make the mine significantly smaller, but either way won’t affect the quantity or quality of jewels produced, only the granite. You wouldn’t even have to level it past the first level as the creation of jewels won’t actually be a part of the quarry, but an outlet for the transmutation properties of the crystallized mana’s overflow.”
My jaw dropped. “Now, that does sound promising, but I’m still not sure what your intentions are.”
Datt
er calmly removed my hand from his shoulder and stepped back. “My intentions are simple. I will personally take charge of the project with the full ramifications of going against the regent falling on me. I will keep everything on time and on budget, and if the regent becomes upset, then the others will throw me under the wagon and have me removed from the guild. If that happens, you will purchase the quarry and make me its sole miner, allowing me to chase those beautiful shiny stars to my heart’s content, paying me 10% of the value of everything I pull out.”
This was one of those times I was thankful for my father’s teachings. “I need to think this over before I give you an answer.”
Datter patted my shoulder, grinning. “I understand, but if I don’t have your answer in a few days, the other masters will start dragging their feet.”
So many things about this world were different from my own that I wasn’t sure if I was happy or upset that contract workers seemed to be the same no matter what universe you lived in. Some were honest men and women trying to do good work and some were crooks willing to squeeze every cent they could out of their employer.
Several hours later, I sat in Emily’s parlour, across the table from her, Isabelle, Redcliff, and Ranic—who eventually came over from the construction of his house of scholars after I sent the third runner asking him for help.
Nervous butterflies filled my stomach. I’d thought over Datter’s proposal and his not-threat threat he had pointed at me. I’d even talked to the other masters and ran the numbers. I didn’t have the spare money for the project to run over-budget. Datter told me they could easily add another 10,000 crowns to the project's cost by dragging their feet if they wanted to. It wouldn’t even be that hard. The other masters had confirmed this as fact.
Isabelle smiled at Redcliff and then rolled her eyes at me. “What are you up to now, Arnold?”
Oh Great! I was Reincarnated as a Farmer Page 46