Rud wasn’t happy that Mint’s predictions came true. He couldn’t see the gathering of the dungeon energies last night, but as he stood by the fire he realized it was true. Mint, Dean, and Sarya had been off before dawn, battling against another series of elemental creatures at the new dungeon entrance. The druid watched the group fight from his tower, already having breakfast. These new dungeon creatures were made of electricity, interlaced with metal and stone holding them together.

  “Not much we can do, huh?” Taz asked.

  Rud allowed his vision to snap back into his head. “Yeah. Except to organize the adventurers.”

  “Is that your job?”

  “Anything related to the mortals is my job.”

  The reason Taz had followed him into the tower was one of selfish excitement. Before the wolves had even run off to fight against the monsters, the dwarf was clearing a section of the forest away. He had become part of the grove enough to count those trees, which Rud would plant later. With his curiosity about the new dungeon satisfied, the druid departed from his tower. He felt the Aspect of Bent fade as he arrived near the construction site.

  “How big is this hall meant to be?” he asked, looking at the swathe Taz had cut.

  “Big. Think about an enormous meeting hall, then think of a bigger one.”

  This wouldn’t be a building made of a single tree. Rud imagined the structure in his head. He would need to stitch together a few trees to make it work. While he wanted to be upset with the work, the idea was really neat. It was close enough to the village that people could walk down the street to get breakfast. The hall would be central enough to the Sacred Tree that the members of the grove also had easy access.

  Rud excused himself from the work site, pointing out the stumps that still needed removal. As expected, Oak and her people were lounging around in the vast yard of the village. He approached, waving awkwardly and guiding his path of the gravel with his staff.

  “Hey. So, the dungeon popped up,” Rud said, handing over a sheet of paper. “That’s everything I observed regarding the dungeon.”

  “Oh! Thanks,” Oak said, taking the paper. She looked contemplative for a moment, as though her thoughts drifted away from the idea of the dungeon. She snapped out of it after a moment. “I suppose we’re ready. I’m not sure if we’re excited about lightning monsters.”

  “We aren’t!” another adventurer shouted. That got a laugh out of the group.

  “But we’ll make some decent coin!” put in another.

  “Right. Coin,” Oak chuckled nervously. “Thanks, Rud.”

  “No problem. Seriously, I did nothing.” Rud turned, leaving the mortals to their mortal contemplations. The dwarven hall was the only thing on his mind now. Although it wasn’t really a dwarven hall. He couldn’t imagine a dwarf building anything out of wood. Unless it was created to be burned.

  Taz had made quick work of what few stumps were in his path. He had even marked the general area for the hall with stones, and had piled more stones up off to the side. Clearing the work area was necessary, since it was unlikely that several trees would line up enough for the plan to work. The dwarves might have accepted a crooked building, but Rud wouldn’t. He started by planting seeds and watering them with double-enchanted water. That brought them to the early sapling stage, thanks to his Druidic Infusion upgrade. It took a few hours to get all four trees to the proper stage, even with the Plant Growth spell. Taz complained for most of the duration. He also brought suggestions.

  “The entrance should be right here,” Taz said, gesturing with his hands to draw a line between an invisible building and the road. “Connect the road directly with the building. And we can put some traditional dwarven statues outside.”

  “What makes a statue traditional?”

  “Normally they depict dwarves. But some holds have a favored animal. And other times it comes down to the individual artist. Once a dwarf gets an appreciation for a lovely spider, they can’t get that thought out of their head. That’s all they’ll carve from that day on.”

  “You’re doing the carving. What lovely little creature do you like the most.”

  Taz let out a long sigh, his eyes fluttering slightly. “Badgers. I adore badgers.”

  “Badgers are cool,” Rud agreed. “I think I’m growing partial to wolves.”

  “Bah. Badgers are better.”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  With all four trees grown well enough, Rud started the shaping process. That’s when he realized that four trees wasn’t enough, and he expanded out to eight. This ate a few more hours of the day, but Taz insisted that it was right. Whatever that meant. This wasn’t the druid’s first time merging two trees together, but it was his first time attempting such a massive building. It wasn’t that the building was tall. Such a feat might be impossible for his current skill level. But the floor plan was a rambling thing that stretched too far in any direction.

  ###

  Taz’s longhouse idea was a bit of a pain to work on. Rud wouldn’t have considered such a massive gathering space if the dwarf’s eyes didn’t twinkle when they looked upon the construction site. There were no absurd techniques that went into the building, though. The druid found it easy enough to weave the eight massive trees together. He had marked the weird owl as ‘strange but within the parameters of the grove’ in his mind the night before and threw himself into this new project. The floors had all joined and most of the walls were complete. His only challenge now came from the chimney-like thing above the massive fire pit.

  Lacquer would prevent the interior of the structure from burning outright, but Rud wasn’t confident that it was enough. Taz had already outlined the size of the firepit. The druid could take ten big steps from side-to-side, which made the exhaust of the monstrosity even more difficult. A series of temporary stairs and catwalks clung to the walls and ceilings of the building, giving him access to those high places. He swallowed hard as he looked down at the dwarf, twenty feet to the ground at least.

  Rud worked his way up through the exhaust chute, which he had formed out of the tops of the trees. He pulled stairs out from the wall, the leaf on his head burning through mana as he walked. Once the roof of the chute was formed to prevent rain from soaking in, he paused at the top and considered the best step forward. The thought of his tea business came to mind. That kiln Mint brought to the grove could endure some extreme temperatures.

  “Mint?” Rud asked after descending through his maze of stairs and walkways. He waited for some time, finally spotting the wolf lope through the entrance of the building. She had led the adventurers to the dungeon, which should have freed her from her duties guarding that dungeon. “Could you get me some heat-resistant bricks? And mortar?”

  “Oh! Good idea!” Taz said, bouncing with excitement.

  “Certainly,” Mint said, turning and dashing away. That was that. No formalities.

  “If I’m not back before she finds the brick, you can start on that horrid chimney.”

  “Up there?” Taz asked, poking a grubby finger toward the ceiling.

  “You want a big fire pit? You gotta do the work.”

  Taz grumbled, but said nothing more.

  Pet projects like the longhouse weren’t Rud’s only duties. His core tasks related to the grove and its health. Everything else was secondary. That meant collecting as many fragments as possible, as Ban was planning to ascend to her second rank. The druid started with some farseeing, writing his observations on paper given to him by Mira. The monsters were moving eastward, heading for Barlgore with intent. The blue skies were also shimmering with magical indicators. Rud inspected those for some time before he understood. Rain was coming. Likely tomorrow.

  Rud folded his paper neatly, heading back to his mushroom house. The pot of wax he had used to seal his ceramic tea jars had long-since cooled. The druid placed it on his stove and waited for the wax to heat once again. A principle of tree shaping that Basil had taught him was the concept of fine control. While the wax heated, he worked on creating a stamp for a wax seal. The first few attempts were failures, but by the tenth one he had something resembling a cartoon wolf stamp. He sealed it with Lacquer, finding that both the Shape Plant and Lacquer spell worked on recently dead plants. After that, he stamped his letter shut by drizzling wax on a spot and pressing his stamp into it.

  “Oh, that’s just adorable,” Rud said, smiling to himself. He passed through some bushes, arriving in the stump grove. He removed a few letters from his mailbox, and a pile of high-quality fragments.

  The first letter was from Feather, who confirmed their deal. The second was from Mira, who claimed she would be busy with another project and couldn’t visit the grove. At least she had the courtesy of leaving a letter. Before heading out from the stump field, Rud checked on the house he had built for the loggers. They kept it immaculate, but were currently away. He grew more trees for them to cut down, zipping between the enchanted pond and the fields.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Another group of adventurers was approaching the grove by the time he was ready to get back to the longhouse. They bowed at a distance when they saw him and remained there. Since the group was a mix of beastfolk and humans, he assumed they were Sparwyn natives. The superstitious type that wouldn’t interact with spirits unless they absolutely needed to. Rud got out of their way, heading to check on Taz’s progress.

  A series of colorful dwarven curses issued from within the longhouse. Rud snuck into the building, watching as mortar splattered to the ground below. The dwarf was standing on a walkway high above, clutching onto the rail and shouting. Mint was below, laughing up at him.

  “Help me, you wolf!”

  “This is much more fun!” Mint shouted back. “You’re not even trying!”

  Rud excused himself, finding the nearest bush before either person detected him. Thanks to his staff, his mana had been topped off since his shaping effort on the longhouse. He found the massive pile of ingots and got to work, imbuing each of them with his druidic power. The Druidic Attunement ability attached to his class made this easier. The copper bars didn’t need the full power of the Imbue Crafted Item spell, allowing him to halve the cost during casting. This resulted in the entire stack of copper bars being enchanted, and a sneaky level in Crafting Magic.

  The skill rose to Level 5, unlocking his first upgrade for that school of magic. Rud flicked through the list of options, doing what he had done before. He singled out a few of the upgrades, certain that these were the best. His theme had been synergy, and that boiled down to finding upgrades that worked with his status as a custodian. The magical energy that pervaded the grove was often reflected in various upgrades, and there were two within the Crafting Magic skill that took advantage of this.

  [Resonating Magic]

  Crafting Magic Upgrade

  Description:

  Crafting Magic spells resonate within Sacred Groves.

  Effect:

  All items crafted with materials imbued with Crafting Magic gain a resonation effect.

  Resonation increases the power of one effect on a crafted item.

  This upgrade was interesting to Rud because it drew on the power of the grove, but wasn’t restricted to the grove’s powers. The items crafted with materials he imbued would become more powerful by default. That would allow crafters to tailor their end-result to be more powerful. But his other pick was more tempting. Not because of the implications of power, but because of what it represented.

  [Mint’s Blessing]

  Crafting Magic Upgrade

  Description:

  Crafting Magic spells gain additional power from the Guardian Mint.

  Effect:

  All items crafted with materials imbued with Crafting Magic gain an additional effect.

  These effects are related to Mint, the guardian of Gladesbale Grove.

  Most mortals saw the guardian of a grove as the leader. For most groves, they were right. Gladesbale might have been different, but anyone who bought crafting materials from them would go nuts for Mint’s name on an item. Rud had spent a lot of time thinking about the aspect that the wolf spirit represented. Her power made him think she was a war-like aspect, focusing on combat rather than anything else. But these were the early days of the grove’s development.

  Rud selected the Mint’s Blessing upgrade. He enchanted a bar of iron and inspected the result.

  [Spirit Iron Ingot]

  Epic

  Description:

  An iron ingot infused with the power of a Sacred Tree.

  Aspect:

  Ban’tanthein

  Bonus Aspect:

  Mint

  If Mint showed up as a bonus aspect, and the upgrade’s description claimed that Mint’s energy would infuse any crafted item with a bonus effect, Rud could draw conclusions. Ban’s aspect would add one effect and Mint’s would add another. While he didn’t know the pipeline for crafted items yet, he could assume that this would create some insanely powerful items. The druid took a moment to reflect on how out-of-place that seemed. If his grove could produce metal that would rival other producers within the world, the scenario seemed absurd. But crystals were crystals and he needed a lot of them.

  Fortunately, the stockpile of crystal fragments within the grove was growing. Rud checked on Taz—he was still working on the chimney—and instead headed off to work on his pottery and tea. The massive shelves within the tea drying building had made the process simple. The tea farm was expanding daily, resulting in an increase of production. Since the tea was simple to dry with the new building, the druid just cut the leaves and left them to dry. Adding fuel to the fire was the hardest part, but even that was simple enough.

  After firing twenty pots for selling tea, including cute engravings on the front, Taz approached his work area. The dwarf’s beard was thick with mortar, smears of the gray material across his shaven head. “Gonna need to fire it, but I’m almost done.”

  “Very nice,” Rud said, finding his skin similarly matted with clay. He washed his hands in his water bucket, getting some of the clinging clay off.

  Rud and Taz traveled together, finding piles of furniture of all sizes outside of the longhouse. Mint had delivered what she could scavenge, and it got the druid curious. With his tower, he might be able to spot the place where she stole all this stuff. But now was a time for details within the longhouse. The duo worked on cleaning things up. No dwarven longhouse was complete without at least two sets of massive double-doors. Rud found those harder to make out of the living wood than regular single doors, but a few failed attempts was all he needed to make it happen.

  “These will have to do,” Taz said, hoisting lanterns for Rud to see. Between his teeth were a few nails and in his other hand a hammer.

  Rud took the glass lantern from the dwarf, shaking his head. “I’ll hang these. With magic, instead of nails.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  The lanterns were interesting. Rusted iron frames with glass—often cracked. There was a dial on the bottom of the lanterns to turn them on and off. Instead of taking fuel to do the work of lighting, they sucked mana from the air. He had no idea where Mint had found them, but wouldn’t complain. Any more fire within the longhouse and there would be a problem. Rud shaped the walls of the building, creating delicate loops to hold the lights. He lined the exterior walls with them, and hung some along the ceiling.

  At half-power, the lamps all seemed to function without the need to charge. Taz insisted that the lights were dim enough to capture dwarven ambience. The duo approached the massive stone firepit, which now had a scattering of chairs surrounding it. Long tables ran along the length of the building, chairs pushed into those as well. Rud watched as the dwarf crumbled Fairy Peat, sprinkling it over thick branches in the fire pit. A few swipes of flint on steel and the fire roared to life. It leaped to the ceiling, licking the bricks for a moment.

  Rud held his breath, clenching his teeth as he expected his hard work to burn down in an instant. But after removing the protruding stairs and catwalks, all that was left on the ceiling was heat-resistant brick. The smoke drew upward, but the heat radiated from the fire. Within a few minutes of the duo basking, the fire calmed down to fill the area with comforting warmth.

  “This fire will burn from this point,” Taz said, pounding his fist against his chest. “Until my dying breath.”

  Rud bowed his head, unsure how to answer the dwarven prayer. The reverence the dwarf had for the fire was overwhelming. Excitement built visibly in Taz’s body, forcing him to fidget on the spot.

  “Feels like home!” Taz shouted at the ceiling. He cleared his throat after a moment. “Except for all the wood.”

  “Feels like home!” Rud shouted, trying to match the dwarf’s enthusiasm. “Are ya gonna sleep here?”

  “I might. Just need a few beers and a brawl to make it feel more like home. Wanna fight?”

  “Not even a little,” Rud said, waving the thought away. “Hey Mint! Taz wants to fight!”

  “Oh, no. I didn’t say that,” Taz said, holding his hands up defensively.

  But Mint had already appeared at the door in her human form. Her breath came in ragged gasps as she locked eyes onto the dwarf. “Let’s tussle!”

  Rud removed himself from the longhouse before things got out of hand. Once Mint had beaten Taz’s butt, the dwarf was supposed to make some perpetual stew. But the druid had to sate his curiosity. He passed through a bush, arriving at his tower. He checked for owls before assuming the Aspect of Bent. Then he began searching, scouring the landscape for that lost town. The mortals wouldn’t have pushed too deeply into the area. They had likely created a town near the lake. That was at the edge of his viewable range, but with his skill increasing by the day it wasn’t that hard.

  The first sign of civilization Rud saw was a small path. He mistook it for a game trail at first. After following that road, he saw his first ruin. A wood and stone building had collapsed in on itself. Scattered things sat around it, most of which had been reclaimed by the forest. This place was outside of the grove to the southeast. Parts of the town were on the edge of the lake, but it sprawled from that point to the west. The druid allowed his gaze to shift from a zoomed-in view from his perspective to the top-down perspective.

  During his viewing session, Rud’s Farseeing skill hit Level 3. That expanded his range enough for him to see some of the lake. He used his top-down view to spot a ruined dock resting at the lake’s bottom. The cold weather had preserved it well enough. If he squinted hard enough, he could see something looming on the surface of the lake. Far enough in the distance that he couldn’t make it out, and layered behind a sheet of fog. With his new range, he scanned for more interesting things but found nothing. The ruined town lingered in his mind, as it was well-preserved for such an old place.

  Rud wondered if the mortals even knew about it. Those superstitious folks might think it was a bad idea to investigate such a place. At least they sailed on the lake. Perhaps one of them would know what the shape in the lake’s center was. It was directly in their path if they were sailing from the southern shore of the lake to the northern shore. The druid stretched and yawned, slumping against the guard rail and allowing his vision to refocus.

  “I’m ready to upgrade,” Ban said, speaking into Rud’s mind and startling him.

  “Really? Are you sure?” Rud asked. He ran an inventory in his mind. They had about twenty-five high-quality fragments. He knew that was more than enough for her to upgrade, even if she had to get from Level 6 to Level 10 to hit Rank 1.

  “I’m sure. The Energy Nodules expansion has helped me immensely. I feel far less strain on my body, and the increased rank will reduce that further.”

  Once again, Ban knew best. Rud nodded, heading down the stairs and through the thickets. He arrived at the Sacred Tree, finding his supply of fragments and approaching Ban. He hesitated as he drew closer, but slapped his freckled cheeks. “Let’s go!”

  Rud placed fragments against her bark and watched as they vanished. The tree glittered with energy as she shunted Reserve Energy into Upgrade Energy. Eighteen fragments later, and a pulse of power spread out from the tree. It was strong enough to send the druid tumbling back onto his butt. He wrapped his cloak around himself as the pulses of light grew quicker until Ban was glowing with multi-colored light.

  “This might take a while,” Ban said. Her voice sounded distant, as though whispered from a far part of the grove. “Make sure my energy levels are topped.”

  “That’s my job, ma’am. No need to fear.”

  Rud put on a brave face. But the moment he felt the tree fade from the grove, he dropped the act. His surplus of fragments had dwindled in a flash. Something deep inside him said the grove was now vulnerable. Ban had said something long ago when he had expressed concern for her. She could defend herself. Well, not when she was sleeping.