The kitchen wasn’t the only place that got upgraded. Bedrooms now had touch activated lamps, so the occupant could turn the lights off to sleep. I also made improvements to the toilets. A more comfortable seat, easier cleanup, and a magic item that got rid of unpleasant smells while filling the room with a sweet scent became standard features. Each had a bidet function and toilet paper that never ran out. Before, the toilets had been much more plain—they had been basically just a hole with a special Sprigumdrop at the bottom to clean up the mess. These new ones were even better than modern bathrooms back in my original world. At the time, I wasn’t thinking “I want the best toilets in the world!”—I just wanted to see what I could do with my powers, and I happened to end up with the best toilets in the world. As for the waste, the new system broke it down, filtered it, and turned it into nutrients for the towers.
Wait, if it’s all being used, can it really be called waste anymore?
I didn’t know what sort of currency the humans here used, or what sort of value they placed on it. Eventually, I wanted to be able to trade goods and services with them, but I couldn’t start doing that without a better idea of what things were worth. Otherwise I could set prices too low or too high, or end up letting my people get ripped off.
Anyway, I spent the days before the army arrived making various little improvements, and they finally entered the tunnel I’d prepared. I was fairly confident they’d choose my nice, safe tunnel over a creepy forest swarming with deadly monsters. Seriously, while I was outside making more towers, a huge snake appeared, and just its head was bigger than I was. Speaking of its head, Ringo chopped that right off. It wasn’t as bad as my encounter with the bear, but blood still went everywhere. I let Ringo off with a light scolding, since he was just trying to protect me, then had his squad bring the snake’s corpse to Hammer for processing. The bones and skin could be turned into weapons and armor. The meat was essentially useless to us, but I had it taken to Bistro to see if he could make something nice for our human guests.
Oh yeah, the guests. Everything pretty much worked out as planned, and the humans followed the tunnel until they reached the huge arena I’d set up. On my orders, Ringo warned them of the danger. It turned out that the skill I had for understanding my subordinates was a two-way street, so in other words, we shared our levels of language understanding. If one of us learned a new word, we all knew it. That made learning languages way easier. If I could get all of those humans to talk to my cute little minions, we could learn the language through immersion super-fast. Unfortunately the conversation between Ringo and the human visitors was pretty short, but I noticed Hegram and his men in the group talking to him. I was glad to see them, and hoped they’d be willing to work with me some more.
As the battle began, I was positioned on a balcony in a special booster seat—er, throne, so I could see over the railing. Even though I was flanked by a whole bunch of guards, we all watched the proceedings in silence. It took about two hours from start to finish. When it was over, I gave them a standing ovation, but my guards didn’t join in, so it probably wasn’t very loud. Early on the humans took a big lead, but I was a bit worried there at the end, since the numerical advantage didn’t really work out for them. The lower level Sprigumdrops died fairly quickly, but the higher the level, the longer they survived, and the more humans they knocked out in the process. Hegram’s group were definitely the heroes of the battle. Without them, the humans might have been totally wiped out.
Well, there was one other guy who held his own. He seemed like he might be the army’s leader. I was curious about him, but any conversation was going to have to wait.
After the battle, there was a long rest break. They found the healing fountain, and got all the humans who’d fallen unconscious back on their feet. Hegram’s group ended up with most of the magic bags; the other two went to the leader guy whose name I didn’t know. There was more resting, and then they entered the main tower, where I had picnic tables prepared, and Bistro set out plates with servings of giant snake meat. Bistro couldn’t taste test his own work, but he’d prepared the meat by breading and deep-frying it like chicken, then sprinkling it with lemon juice. I probably haven’t mentioned it, but I’d summoned more Sprigourmet chefs after Bistro, I just hadn’t named them—one “man of my dreams” was enough. So he had plenty of help getting all of those plates ready.
Once the soldiers figured out there was hot food available, they threw caution to the wind and dug right in. There were some who seemed worried about poison, but they quickly joined in when they saw everyone else enjoying themselves with no ill effects. Of course, we didn’t really have enough space to feed a whole army at once, so they kinda had to eat in shifts. In a way, the language barrier worked out for us here; if I’d told them they were being served snake and they didn’t want to eat it, I would have felt bad.
For those who asked for more, I had Bistro serve a nice dessert. Those chocolate covered strawberries were a big hit. I noticed that some of the soldiers pocketed the metal tableware we set out, but I was okay with it. I’d noticed that before many of them ate with either wooden utensils or none at all. And if they harbored guilt or gratitude for the “gifts” they’d received, they might be less likely to attack us.
Hegram and his group showed up well after the feasting was already underway, and I had them escorted to a special dining area away from the riffraff. I planned to eat with them personally, to improve my language comprehension skills.
The circular table in the special dining room was more elegant than the long picnic tables in the main area. There was a candelabra, with a trio of lit candles in the center, atop a white table cloth. My chair was almost a bar stool, to make sure I could sit level with the much taller humans.
When the humans filed into the room, they looked surprised to see me. I was surprised too—Hegram had brought leader-guy with him. I called over a guard and told them to inform the kitchen that we’d need another place setting. A few moments later, a member of the kitchen staff appeared and set another place at the table. Once that was done, I motioned for the humans to sit and join me, and the food was brought out.
They were served the choicest cuts of the snake meat, while I essentially skipped straight to dessert. Those strawberries were the best. The mood was a bit awkward, so I tried to start up a conversation.
“Hegram, good see again.” I felt like a character in a caveman movie. I was trying my best, but I didn’t quite have the sentence structure down, and my vocabulary was missing a lot of words.
Hegram didn’t seem to mind, though. He said something I couldn’t translate—probably the equivalent of “Likewise” if I had to guess. Then he motioned over to the leader-guy. “Sedriz,” he said.
Ah, so leader-guy’s name is Sedriz. Good to know.
“Sedriz. Good. Meet.”
AAAAGH! I was so embarrassed. It was all part of the language learning process, but my poor dignity was in tatters. They had to think I was such a moron. Please have patience with non-native language speakers, they’re usually trying their best!
The humans seemed to enjoy the food, and after dinner they were more than happy to talk with me. I wasn’t able to follow the entire conversation, but the gist of it was that the ruler of the town I had visited wanted me to come back. Apparently he hadn’t known I was locked up, and he wanted to apologize in person. If you ask me, sending such a huge army to “persuade” someone to come listen to an apology was a bit heavy-handed...but it wasn’t like he could really hurt me if he tried, so I agreed to go back. My guards were not happy about it, but I wanted to pursue a peaceful relationship with our neighbors, at least for now.
Ideally, they’d be able to send people to the forest to visit the towers, kill monsters, and buy goods. In return, maybe we could buy fruit from them. Okay, it wasn’t perfect, but I was betting this huge, monster-infested forest was pretty problematic in terms of trade. If I were to open up a safe trade route, our neighbors surely stood to profit. Faster, safer trade would mean better lives for the people. I could also charge a toll for using it, which would help cover my nonexistent costs... I wondered if I should start paying my minions. Did they even want to be paid? What would they even buy?
I guess we had something like a communist society right now, with everyone working for the greater good without expecting anything in return... Actually, it was really more like they were all my slaves, and I was just a tyrannical dictator. When I put it that way, I guess I’d never really thought that deeply into it... Maybe I shouldn’t have just accepted it.
What if I made some places for them to relax? There could be a swimming pool, and a spa, and then I could give them some sort of currency to spend on their time off. Wait, did they get time off? I mean, they did take breaks in between expeditions. Did they even want time off?
You know, I probably need to get to know my people a lot better, otherwise they may start to resent me.