One day, he received word that another investigation team had made its return to his city. He went to his chambers and sat down very slowly and deliberately on the sofa in the reception room he always used for classified meetings. Across from him sat three people—two men and a woman, all B-ranked adventurers.
This group, he already knew well. There was Gido, a thief who excelled at reconnaissance. Kabal, meanwhile, was a master of defense. Being fighter class, he willingly served as a wall for the rest of his party, and he did his job well. He tended to crack jokes a lot, but he was no slouch. Finally, there was Elen, a sorceress whose skill set was geared toward the more unique types of magic. She had a wide variety of spells at her disposal, but her true skill lay in supernaturally enhanced movement. It was also worth noting that her careful planning always did wonders to boost her party’s chance at survival.
That was the team Fuze had sent to examine the cave Veldora had once been sealed in. His first reaction upon seeing them was slight amazement that they were safe. That cave was more suited for people with B-plus ranks or higher, and if you took its master into account, tracking down an A-minus traveler or two was usually your safest bet. Even if Fuze himself ventured in—not that his guild responsibilities would ever let him these days—it would likely be quite a slog if he took it solo.
Regardless of their ranks, these were the people Fuze had sent to find out what was up with Veldora at the moment. He’d made the decision because of their uncanny knack for staying alive. The ability to avoid battle while gathering intelligence, in this case, was worth far more to him than employing a B-plus powerhouse.
If something had happened to them, though, Fuze would have had to take the heat as guild master. Sending people into areas they were unqualified for by rank was a clear violation of guild regulations. A branch head daring to try that would create controversy if the incident became public knowledge.
But this was the group Fuze had wanted, and nobody was happier to see them back now than him.
“Let’s hear the report,” he said, ever careful not to betray his emotions. No matter how appreciative he was inside, he made it a point not to offer them any reassuring words. The trio was used to this.
“It was awful, man!” Kabal blurted.
“I so need to take a bath…,” Elen agreed.
“Yeah, the hardest part was tryin’ to keep this pair from ripping each other apart, I’d say…,” Gido commented.
Their debriefings almost always started like this. Their eyes, however, were deadly serious. It probably was indeed awful, Fuze thought.
The report began with a description of the monsters they’d found in the cave. After bluffing their way past the tempest serpent that served as the area’s guardian, they’d proceeded past the sealing door. It had been clear early on that Veldora was gone, but they’d spent another week or so exploring the cave, just in case. The end result: definitely no guardian, or leader, to speak of inside.
But one thing had caught their attention the most.
“Here’s the thing, though,” Kabal said. “Once we were done with our examination and went out the door…the tempest serpent was gone.”
“Right, yeah!” Elen exclaimed. “I couldn’t activate Escape inside the door, so I spent all that time figuring out how we’d get away from it… I feel like such an idiot!”
“Yeah,” said Gido. “I brought along an illusion and heat-generating trap, and I didn’t even use ’em. At least it saved us some time, though. Gettin’ past it on the way in was one thing, but gettin’ out woulda been another.”
What was the meaning of this? This tempest serpent had a tentative rating of A-minus. It was absolutely the strongest presence in the cave. Not even Fuze liked his chances much against it. It was the whole reason why he had fretted over this trio’s chances of a successful trip.
Something had definitely happened over there. Fuze could tell that much. And he needed to know what.
“All right, guys. I’ll let you rest for three days or so, but after that, I’ll need you back in the forest again. Not inside the cave this time—you’ll be examining the area around it instead. I want you to leave no stone unturned out there, all right? Be thorough. That is all.”
“‘That’s all,’ he says!”
“Three days? That’s it?! Give us a week, at least!”
“Yeah, yeah… You know he’s not gonna listen to us, guys.”
Fuze didn’t let the protests bother him. He had some new information to stew over. What could be going on in that forest…? He lost himself in thought for a moment…then opened his eyes, only to find three pairs of spiteful eyes staring at him. These guys… He sighed, then yelled at them as he always did.
“Why are you still here? Get out! Now!”
The trio hurriedly excused themselves.
✦ ✦ ✦
Three days later, Kabal, Elen, and Gido were preparing for their forest trip.
“That was barely any time off…,” Elen moaned.
“You said it, girl,” Gido replied.
“Could you stop complaining for a moment, guys?” Kabal, the more-or-less leader, admonished with a lack of conviction that indicated his agreement. “You’re just depressing me now.”
They had few routes into the forest to choose from. The monsters had been growing incredibly active in recent days, to the point that not even the merchants were willing to send wagons into the forest. Hiring bodyguards was out of the question—they’d lose money on this job if they did. If they wanted to visit the forest, it’d have to be on foot for the time being. They would have had to walk at least a little, since the path to the “Sealed Cave” was too treacherous to navigate in a horse cart.
As a result, preparation would be key. Procuring several weeks’ worth of preserved food was a challenge in itself, but without it, they stood every chance of starving to death before they even reached their destination. Elen’s magic, at least, guaranteed them potable water whenever they needed.
When they were largely done and it was time to head off, a person approached them, speaking in a voice that was somewhere between young and old, male and female.
“Excuse me. If you are headed for the forest, would I be able to join you along the way?”
The mask the figure was wearing prevented any guess at the face behind it. It was an ornate, beautiful mask, but it bore no expression at all. There was something vaguely unsettling about the whole package, but…
“Fine by me.”
“Wh-whoa! I’m the leader here, Elen! What’s your problem?!”
“Ahh, you know her. Once she decides on something, there’s no changin’ her mind.”
“Thank you.”
Those words of gratitude were all the masked figure said before silently following behind them. Thus Kabal and his band found themselves with another companion as they ventured into the forest.
✦ ✦ ✦
The sound of chopping trees and hammering echoed throughout the forest. Slowly, the new town and its houses were beginning to take shape. In our minds, at least. We were still busy laying out the water and septic system, so for now, it was still just a clearing.
This system took the direction of its flow from the river we were adjacent to. We planned to have a water-processing building eventually, although it was still under construction. That’d be where the river water was purified and distributed to people’s houses.
On the septic end of things, we built a large chamber out of wood that we planned to bury in the ground. The wood’s inside surfaces would be treated to improve their resistance to rotting, then reinforced with cement. That was what we were working on now. We’d lucked out and found some quicklime-type material off a nearby hill.
Meanwhile, another building outside of town would be our waste-processing facility, where we planned to make the fertilizer we wanted.
In addition to this, I was having the crew build a large temporary building, a sort of gymnasium they could sleep in during construction. It was rather slipshod since we had no intention of making it permanent, but it would do the job.
Outlining the assorted neighborhood divisions was going along well. The upper-class houses, including the one I’d stay in, would be built near the cave mouth. We’d have a line of homes meant for the tribal elders, with the other residences spread out around them.
We were doing this before anything else, so it was easy to lay out the town plan without getting things cluttered and mixed up. It was basically built in the shape of a cross, with a wide main street, making it easy for townspeople to work as a group if the need arose. We’d have to be careful not to create long lines of identical roads—that’d make it easy to get lost—but it wasn’t too much of a concern.
The only real disadvantage to this setup was that it could be easy for enemies to move around in case of invasion—but if they actually made it to the center of town, it’d mean a dozen other things would have failed by then.
No point dwelling on that scenario. If we got wrecked, we could always just rebuild.