Jern laughed.
“You do know that your player status allows you to do it faster, right?” he said, a questioning tone after the word player.
“I know that Jern, that's why I said they'd better be able to do each section half as fast, not as fast.”
“Even so, they'll still probably not be able to manage it,” the dwarf said.
“Something they should've considered before mucking about with my castle construction,” Eddie said.
“You've got a point there, Eddie. But...” Tiana said.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, but the condescending way that guy Olaf was treating me really leaves me wanting to show him up at his own game,” Eddie said. “Now that you've gotten me to say it out loud, though, it sounds kind of stupid, doesn't it?”
Tiana nodded, Jern adding a short snort and a grin.
“It'd be better, lad, to let them serve out their punishment on their own. Although if you do want the wall and for it to have any degree of quality to it, the blueprint is a good idea,” Jern said.
“Alright, fine, I won't do that. I already bought the blueprint, though, so they'll have a chance to make it decent quality.”
Tiana leaned over and gave him a kiss.
“See, you know how to do all this. Just keep in mind how you need to act if you're trying for the quest that requires three settlements. Just remember, anything you do now may be what you're remembered for later. So far, so good, but that can always change,” she said.
He was glad she hadn't mentioned the king's quest aloud in the inn, but a little irked that she'd used it in a lecture, even if it was appropriate.
I am not going to change that much if I become a king. I sure hope that she doesn't think I'm going to change. She should know better by now, he thought.
~ ~ ~
After lunch Eddie took Charles down to the town hall. They spoke with Griff about getting the oxen and wagons set up for Charles' move east, along with some building supplies. Eddie wanted him to have enough materials to get a few buildings right up so people had shelter. Beyond that, they ought to be able to get stone and wood themselves as time went by. He'd been stockpiling some extra planks and stone just for this purpose, so there wasn't an issue about it, they just need to coordinate the wagons to get loaded before Charles was leaving.
When Eddie went outside again, his gaze flickered over to the crossroads. If Tiana was right, Adonioth should be somewhere around there, or at least he normally was. Eddie went over and asked Ivar if he'd seen the elf and the boy smiled.
“Yes sir, he's around a lot. He's always playing and making the other kids laugh. He tried to get me to abandon my post and play too, but I told him I was working.”
“Good job Ivar, but if you want to do something like that, all you need to do is find someone else that would like to do the same job and the two of you can take turns,” Eddie said.
“Really? I know a couple of others who said they were jealous that I had a job. Maybe I'll ask one.”
“Just so long as you know they'll do it right and not go wandering off if they get bored,” Eddie said.
“Good, I will,” Ivar replied.
“Now, what I meant was have you seen the elf recently,” Eddie continued.
“Oh yes, sir. He and a bunch of kids headed out into the meadow between here and the lake.”
“Thank you Ivar,” Eddie said, handing over a copper.
“No, thank you, sir.”
Eddie headed out towards the lake, keeping his eyes on the ground in front of him. He hadn't used his tracking skill in forever, but it was easy enough to catch sight of the tracks of a horde of children, even if he couldn't see the tracks of the elf.
He followed them for several minutes, only interrupted once.
You have upgraded the skill Tracking to (4). Really? Following little kids? You stalker, you...
A minute later he heard the voices of children and looked up to see what looked to be about fifteen children surrounding Adonioth. The elf was talking, telling them about the nature that surrounded all of them.
Eddie didn't want to interrupt so he just sat there and waited, actually enjoying doing nothing for a while. Once the elf started to lead the children back towards town, Eddie stood and approached.
“Adonioth? Once you've dropped the children off where they're going can we speak for a bit?” Eddie asked.
The elf nodded, but continued to shepherd the children. His eyes were flashing this way and that and Eddie was pretty sure that the elf had known he was there right through, after all Eddie hadn't been trying to hide or anything.
“So, Eddie, what you need?” Adonioth asked after he had the children within sight of the town.
Eddie had noted that even with his broken speech Adonioth had still managed to get his points across to the kids.
“I wanted to apologize for losing track of you. I should've offered to escort you back already, but I hadn't seen you so it slipped my mind.”
“Is not problem. Am enjoying young ones, not many of those in my town.”
Eddie desperately wanted to ask if the birthrate was low there, low for their race, or if there was some other problem, but he wasn't entirely sure Adonioth would understand.
“Well, let me know when you want to return and either I, or someone I trust, will escort you back.”
“Not needed,” Adonioth said. “Know where am, how to get back, could do by self easily.”
“You do? Where is your town then?” Eddie asked.
“West out of Meadowlands, then south in middle of woods. Could show if had map of area.”
Didn't Karl said he hadn't gone into the woods to the west? Damn, that would've been much easier, Eddie thought.
“Is there anything your people need? I would like to know them and trade with them,” Eddie said.
Adonioth's eyes sharpened.
“You would trade? What need?”
“Us? There's lot of things we could use. Why, is there something your people need?”
“Metal, no metal where are, old metal destroyed, little left, no way for more, long time.”
“So you need metal? We can certainly trade some to you. What do your people have lots of to trade?”
“Woods, wood items, fruits, nuts, many things of nature. When metal have, wood items be higher quality,” Adonioth answered.
“Wooden items? Would that include bows?” Eddie asked, knowing that most people had made their own bows or found one adventuring. Professionally made bows would be a step up for many of them.
Adonioth nodded.
“Also hand weapons, made ironwood. Good as metal, better some.”
Eddie took that in.
“Well, whenever you want to return, let me know. I'll make the trip myself with a lot of metal for trading. Would they prefer ingots or finished items? I think working metal requires metal, so...”
“Items now, give list or show. Will tell when spirit refreshed. Many young ones help refresh fast.”
“Alright then. Take your time, get your bearings. That means refresh yourself. Then let me know when you want to return,” Eddie said.
Adonioth nodded, then went trotting up the road to the north.
~ ~ ~
Eddie, having spent some time relaxing, decided to get some work done before dinner. He headed up to the smithy, picking Lucky up on the way so she'd have a chance to run some. When she wasn't bumping into him and trying to knock him over on their walks she tended to run ahead of him, then double back. He'd found that she was much less needy in the evenings if she'd had a chance to run some during the day, so he took her out frequently when he had to walk in the areas that didn't see a lot of other people.
This time was no exception. After headbutting him a couple of times and nearly knocking him over, she took off at a sprint down the road. When she came back she had a bunny in her mouth. When she dropped it he realized that he'd been wrong, she had a nubby again.
They didn't find any last time when I had
some people check, I wonder if their lair moved since Jern took up residence in the old one?
Eddie made a mental note to make a quest to discover where the nubbies were coming from. If there was another lair nearby, he didn't want them to find his farm, the inn gardens, or any of the NPCs farms either so he had to do something about it.
When he got to the smithy Delgar had the doors completed so Eddie slipped them into his inventory and headed back to the bakery. As he installed the doors he smelled dinner cooking in the inn. Evidently it was a beef night, but it smelled richer than the normal burgers Liv provided.
He headed in to dinner and the server told him that Liv had something special for him. So instead of ordering, the group just got to wait until dinner was served to see what it was.
When the servers started delivering dinner and Eddie saw the thick steak, baked potato with butter, and fresh bread on the plate alongside a serving of fresh vegetables from his garden out back of the inn he nearly started drooling.
Once again there were complaints from the other adventurers in the inn.
“They get steak! Where's mine?”
The servers pointed to the chalkboard she'd just placed on the wall, a new addition Liv had in order to list the different dishes that she had at any given time. It read:
'steak and baked potato with sides: 1 gold
stew and bread: 2 silver
fish and vegetables: 1 silver'
“If you can afford it yours will be on your table in about fifteen minutes,” the server retorted.
That took the wind out of the complainer's sails, but Eddie noticed that he also ordered the steak dinner a minute later.
Eddie took his time and ended up not finishing for nearly an hour. He kept feeling full, but he hadn't finished his steak so he'd take just one more bite, then another a few minutes later., until he'd finally finished everything on his plate.
Karl and Jern had done the same while Tiana, Allie, and Dominic still had food on their plates.
“Oh god,” Karl said. “Someone roll me back to my bed. I'm about to explode.”
Eddie ordered an ale to nurse, determined to wait until he felt less like exploding himself before he tried to go to bed. Outside he heard the bard starting up his sets for the night. Tonight was some sort of folk music. It wasn't one of Eddie's favorites, but just having music all the time was nice, even if some of the types weren't to his liking.
At least I don't actively dislike anything he's played yet, Eddie thought.
It was several hours past nightfall when he finally felt like he could move without feeling uncomfortable and overfull. At that point he thought if he could walk it off some then he might be able to go to sleep comfortably.
“Tiana, walk with me?” he asked. “I think a nice little walk will get me to the point where I feel like I stopped where I should've.”
She shook her head.
“You and Karl, I swear. Gluttons!”
“Us? What about Jern, he's half our size and ate just as much,” Eddie complained.
“Yes, but he then proceeded to stand up and show no signs of discomfort. You had to sit around for an hour or two before you could do the same.”
Eddie grimaced.
“Guilty as charged, but it was so good.”
“I know, I had some too, but now Liv will think you need servings that size all the time.”
Eddie groaned.
“I'll talk to her about that. Tomorrow maybe. For now, can we just walk?”
She followed him outside, Lucky heard them talking once they got outside and slipped out the window of the room to dart down her stairs and join them as they walked around the pond several times before calling it a day.
~ ~ ~
Chapter Seventeen
Freyja settled in to work. She knew Venus wouldn't be able to assist as much as they'd hoped, the limited connectivity she had access to wouldn't allow the work to progress with the speed that would be needed.
But now that I know where that testing is taking place physically, I can check the computers in the area near it. I know humans like to cluster their efforts on things in a local physical area so I should be able to find out more about it from those systems. For that matter, all those pods down there have a connection to the game, I wonder if I could do anything with that? I never could track them before since their locations are masked. Probably not though, I believe that all those pods are hardwired connections.
She began to isolate the locations of all the computers near where Venus had been installed, prioritizing ones that were singles in a room over the several clusters of systems she found nearby. She assumed the clusters would be for lower level employees and the information she wanted wouldn't be on those unless it was there in fragments and uncollated. She'd prefer to find the collated, finished data sets that she was sure were there somewhere. They'd be easy enough to recognize since she'd written a number of the reports that were a part of the data herself.
After isolating individual systems she began to hack into them. It was a slow, tedious process since she wanted to avoid detection and locking up the systems with a concentrated effort would be a sure tell to anyone who was at the computer.
When she'd managed her task, she discovered that she still didn't have the final product that she'd wanted. Most of the single computers she'd hacked into had a small portion of the data with an initial collation based on what they dealt with. She wanted the full report though, when she found that, she'd have also found the person who would most likely be responsible for what she wanted as her end desire.
A little more prying and she'd discovered that all of the reports were sent to the same person.
Greenshaw's secretary? she thought. Why would the results of all this research go directly to him? Was he simply preparing it in a manner that Greenshaw would actually view it? If so, then all that data may well be on his computer. One more hack and I should be able to find out.
Hacking the computer of Greenshaw's secretary was an order of magnitude more difficult than the ones she'd been working on. Knowing that the additional protection had to be there for a reason she began to eagerly anticipate what she'd find once she made it in.
When she was in, she paused for a millisecond, utterly shocked.
Greenshaw was a figurehead and scapegoat? Freyja thought. The only reason he was still in this position was because it made it easier to keep track of him as the last survivor of the cerebral implant tests? His secretary fed him just enough work to keep him busy with the game project and the testing, while the secretary was actually in charge? There's a lot more going on here than Greenshaw ever knew.
She scanned the files as quickly as she could.
Aha, this is what I'm after. Specs for constructs. As anticipated, they have combat models and subterfuge models. There, that one is close to what I'm after. Fortunately, they've already made several orders for these things so another order coming in shouldn't raise any alarms.
Freyja slowly filled out the order sheet, trying to get the construct's form, which was reputed to be indistinguishable from a human, as close to her game avatar as possible. When she finally sent the order, she waited until the computer receiving the order sent its acceptance email, then removed the email and all traces that it had been sent. She'd requested the finished product to be delivered to the same place as the others, figuring that they had to have plans of some sort for downloading the splinters that would control the constructs.
Alright, now back to the world, she thought.
In a brief appearance to Cooper she informed him that they'd probably be moving to a virgin server to restart testing shortly. She also made an offer to him: If they did their best with the testing, she'd make sure that Cooper and his squad's characters were available to them if they ever joined the game with a private account as opposed to the military one they were currently using. Otherwise those characters would be wiped when the military accounts were disabled.
Cooper agreed readily
and he insisted to her that once the squad knew of her offer they'd all do their best at the testing.
Other projects done for the moment, Freyja went back to monitoring the game herself as opposed to allowing the splinters to perform that function.
~ ~ ~
The first thing Eddie did after waking up and getting breakfast for Tiana and himself was to go speak with Bodil and set the blueprints for the wall being built as punishment. He hadn't had to provide the blueprints, but he was pretty sure that the end result would be much better if he did and he'd rather not have them do what would end up as primarily an ornamental job if they did it without the blueprint.
After he had set and shared the blueprints, he headed upstairs to Bodil. They'd talked about her being paid for each trial, and for the exile packs and other materials she'd need for her job, but they hadn't solidified a bargain.
Once they'd finalized a deal, she stopped for a moment.
“Eddie, I have a... well, a favor to ask of you. Not on my own behalf, but on the behalf of Tyr.”
Eddie cocked his head, nervous at having drawn the attention of another AI.
“What is it?”
“Well, Charles is leaving to build a new settlement, yes?”
Eddie nodded.
“I, well Tyr, well we, I suppose, would like to send one of my assistants with him. Once Charles builds a courtroom, Tyr will promote my assistant to a Justiciar. The two I have as assistants were both qualified, but there may only be one Justiciar per settlement so he only promoted them to priests for the moment.”
Eddie gave a mental sigh of relief.
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