' = Internal dialogue
ยจ= Normal speech
* = Sounds / Etc
-Chapter 29 Start-
After that night, I decided to improve whatever means we had to defend ourselves. I wanted to prevent any sort of cult from infiltrating our ranks.
Jaina decided to extend her stay after teleporting back a temporary settlement that was heading down to Dustwallow March. Her people had just entered the barrens, but they were suspiciously slow. They hadn't moved from there for a while now according to Belmont.
I asked Jaina for advice when I realized she would be around for a while, with how she would prevent infiltrators from accessing her settlement, how she would go around preventing such a thing, and how she would identify her citizens. The answer was quite simple and went like this: Create a way for the citizens to identify themselves.
After discussing this with Belmont and Calia, we had some ideas on implementing this properly.
So I kickstart our expenditure of thorium ore even further by making them into enchanted tokens.
The town currently has around two hundred mages. Most are hedge mages. In other words, they had no formal education.
So we had to train most of them to do enchanting properly. I was one of those who wanted to learn the skill as well, and I joined in on the crash course Jaina offered to give.
It was surprisingly easy to enchant items, or at least for me. I just had to put my intent behind it and the materials given to make that specific enchantment. This left Jaina pouting as she kept repeating, "That's... cheating..."
She had apparently spent months learning how to enchant basic things, and I had managed to do in the first session she had given us, which I supposed the reason was me being so attuned to the arcane in general.
So as Jaina's crash course on enchanting was done a week later, we started enchanting the thorium with specific materials to get the intended enchant for the tokens.
Enchanting was probably what took the most effort and time, but in a solid second place, we needed to find a way to make them bind the tokens to each individual. Ultimately, we figured out a way to correctly bind the tokens. The method was like soulbinding, in what I could recall from the game, but vastly different in actuality, as these could be stolen only after the one wearing it died, as the wearer would not give it his or her mana to the token.
So, in the end, we made four different kinds of tokens, one for VIPs, one for visitors, and one for citizens. And lastly, one for guards or anyone in a position that required them to identify people when necessary.
Visitors got a token that only worked for one visit, and they had to be thoroughly searched on entry to the town. They would be handed a temporary token which they would give back to the guards at the gate upon leaving the town. If they didn't, then these people were blacklisted from future entry.
Guards were given a specialized token to wear at all times, and if it was removed, they would need to go through a lengthy procedure to gain a new one, which was plenty of motivation to never take it off their uniforms. There were other fail-safes to this, in case the uniform was stolen, as each guard had different signatures and would occasionally scan each other's tokens.
If an enemy or someone who had stolen one and that token were to be shown to a guard or anyone with an Identification token, the token would flash red briefly. The person holding it would be immobilized by a paralyzing spell and captured.
Even if this all sounded heavy-handed, I felt it necessary if we were to prevent people like the Twilight cultists or, worse, kind of masses to fester and ruin the town from within.
The process of distribution took a few weeks. The fact that every citizen within the town had to sign a waiver to receive their tokens was mainly the cause, and having more than ten thousand citizens signing a waiver took plenty of time.
We made people sign the waivers because we needed to have their mana signature, as every living being had mana inside them, albeit barely unless they had magical potential.
Surprisingly, many tauren travelers had decided to get themselves a token as well, as citizens of the town.
Most welcomed the tauren, while some of the elves, even with similar beliefs towards nature and the like, were against it. That was mostly the more extreme night elves who were against everything that wasn't like themselves and were actually on thin ice regarding their behavior.
Belmont and Calia had decided to make rules about order within the town, which those specific night elves chose to ignore. So, as a result, those elves received tokens meant for travelers and were denied permanent stay.
After making the town more secure, I focused on my little projects.
Which was trying to domesticate five rapidly growing hydra hatchlings the size of a grown husky. Now multiply that with three additional personalities per hydra and add the fact they behave like cats.
It was, in short, a nightmare, and a day of constant wailing was on the schedule. The neighbors don't dare complain about it as it came from my home...
But that soon changed one day later, as Jaina, currently living in the guest room, awoke in the middle of the night looking grumpy beyond belief. She enchanted the walls around where the hydras were wailing with a soundproof enchantment and went back to bed.
Also, I am saying five because Nessie was not among the troublemakers and became one of my greatest helpers to keep them from lashing out.
Valeera's egg hatched, too. The hydra hatching from the egg she cared for turned out to be a white-colored hydra with vibrant green eyes and had proven to be the hardest to deal with.
Valeera was one of two that it would listen to in the slightest. Nessie, of course, was the second, as she had wrestled all the hydra hatchlings for supremacy and won.
The fact that Nessie was now some sort of alpha among the small hydras waddling around in the pool at my home helped immensely.
Within a few weeks, the hydra hatchlings were no longer hatchlings.
I had to find another area for them, which turned out to be the small settlement down at the beach, as the dwarves and I cooperated by making an enclosure in the ocean, which had an area of around two hundred meters, half of it on the beach and half in the sea.
How we managed to do it was simple, the dwarves made sketches on how to make it the most secure for the hydras and the fishers nearby.
Hence, as they constructed the most optimal enclosure, I removed and held away the water, which turned out to be good practice for my water affinity, I could keep this up for hours, and when I no longer had the mana to do so, I just froze the water around the construction, as the dwarves could do what they did best.
This only took four days, and my Water Affinity slowly increased. I noticed that all my affinities now grew at a snail's pace, as the days of practice with water only increased it by one percent. Even with that one percent, I felt the increase in control come with it.
The dwarves had finally finished building the enclosure of some type of hardened stone and thorium mixed together, plus a special recipe from one of the dwarves related to the Thorium Brotherhood.
It was probably the most secure thing in the nearby area, hell I would believe the enclosure walls were better than the town walls, or that would probably be true if the enchanters hadn't gone wild with the thorium...
Speaking about the thorium, the naga had tried to recapture their lost mine recently, no doubt because of the ongoing strife of rogue satyr and a couple of roaming mindless undead, but the naga was repelled easily, and we had no casualties.
Belmont had decided to follow up on that, though, and went by himself to determine where the naga's main camp was and if their leader could be found. He left his current job in town to his loyal little follower, the little elf girl who keeps following him, and she proved surprisingly capable.
The remaining week that month I spent holed up on my new second-level basement floor, as I finally had found the *Surprise* the dwarves had left me.
It was a magic-powered furnace, a workbench filled with tools, a solid hardened thorium anvil with several enchantments, a ton of thorium stocked up in carts, and plenty of different kinds of metal and crystals they had found in the mine.
What stood out the most was the furnace, though, because when I wanted to test it out, the furnace brightened up the entire room as the flame inside turned purple, and the thorium I put inside melted into a metallic puddle, which was weird, as thorium is one of the strongest metals of Azeroth.
I even discovered I could control the heat as easily as I could breathe, which got me thinking. Lately, I have been struggling to enter houses normally due to my increased height. What if I tried to compress myself to return to my previous height?
The result was that I managed to shrink down to around two meters, but it felt... Unnatural and weird, so in the end, I decided not to compress myself unless the situation called for it.
After playing around with my magic for a while, I got interrupted by a knock at the door. It was the dwarf who had access to my house, who had come to tell me that I had visitors at the gates who were asking for me specifically.
So I got geared up in my standard leather armor and left the cloak behind. I couldn't be walking around looking like a shady figure at all times, could I?
People gave me odd looks as I exited my house and approached the gates. They seemed not used to seeing me without my usual attire.
Then I reached the gates and was met by a small horde of bipedal bears looking at the wall in wonder, too busy to even give me attention as I walked out and met them.
But as I got close, they finally turned toward me and got serious. Turns out the furlbog tribe was from the Timbermaw Hold faction, who wanted to thank us for our aid and had since heard from several other furlbogs that this place was apparently very magical for them.
So, in other words, they were here because of curiosity and wanted to ask me personally out of respect if they could enter our *Den*.
I agreed and made them all go get tokens for visitors from the entrance, which took quite a bit of convincing to give out to them, as the Timbermaw, or furlbogs in general, do not like material wealth, which the tokens looked like.
After that, I left them at their own devices and went to the beach to visit the hydra enclosure. And spent the rest of the day around Nessie while walking on top of the water.
Now four days later, I had been experimenting with my furnace and workbench, trying to make myself a pair of weapons, or a weapon for that matter. I had always been a fan of gauntlets and wanted to make something in that style. I recently got my hands on some schematics the gnomes had drawn for me and spent much time trying to make a base out of thorium.
So I decided to utilize the technology they used on my furnace and make it into a weapon specialized for me, except I could imbue my affinities into them, effectively layering them on top of each other. This was easier said than done.
But as I don't sleep normally anymore, this became less of a time sink than I initially thought.
The result was just the base, as I lacked the materials necessary to build myself any lasting weapon after all. After considering what I want to put into the weapons, I think back on my knowledge regarding the *Game* and what information was given to me by the gnomes and dwarves in terms of what would be required.
As to not have the weapon(s) destroyed after a single use of me going all out. The result of that information was: Pyrium, Elementium, Arcanite, and Titansteel, all of these were rare and would be pretty hard to get.
I decided to turn my gaze toward the Eastern Kingdoms, considering going there for the time being just to get my hands on Pyrite, Arcanite, and Elementium. Though the last one might be a long shot, I wouldn't mind robbing the Black Dragonflight of some materials.
As there has been no news on how Cenarius and the elves were doing about the invasion of the demons, things weren't dire yet, and perhaps saving Cenarius's life might have delayed whatever the Legion had planned for the region.
So I made my way towards Calia's house to look for Jaina, as she could save me some time by making me a portal.
I knocked on Calia's door and was promptly received by her and welcomed inside. There sat Jaina and Valeera having a comfortable evening, I hadn't had time to visit for a while, and she was enthusiastic about the town's progress, while Valeera was a bit peeved at the fact.
I had been occupied lately, so she ended up training with the other kids Belmont was training in his... Basement.
Valeera was having a significant increase in proficiency with throwable weapons now, trying to become even more deadly after the episode with Lunara when she threw her spear at Grommash was probably ringing in her mind as she decided that.
Jaina had been teleporting back and forth between her settlement and our town for a while now. For the time being, her people were settled in the northern barrens on the border to Ashenvale.
As we sat and talked for a while, Calia suddenly perked up and said to me, "So, uhm, Medan? You know we have just qualified from being a town and into a city, right? At least according to the regulations we had back in Lordaeron, and I must say that it's getting slightly tiresome to call it 'Town' or soon to be 'City', so we need to figure out a good name."
I nodded at that. Calia had a point, I had completely forgotten to bring that up these last few weeks, so I told her we'll choose a name soon, maybe after the next journey. Valeera perked up at this. I was going to shut the fact down that it was too dangerous this time, and I would be going alone if it wasn't for the fact that she gave me a begging look.
I sighed and didn't refute her from joining.
Jaina looked at me for a moment before looking at Valeera and smiled. I soon asked her if she could make me a portal or something to the Eastern Kingdoms, like Stormwind or Ironforge.
She looked at Valeera and me with a questionable gaze and nodded slowly, she could make a portal to Stormwind for us, but she herself hadn't visited Stormwind for years, so she was uncertain about the current situation in the city.
So after an hour of pleasant chatter, I told Valeera to go and pack her stuff. I went to get my new enchanted bags as well. I could finally get rid of the ooze bag. I later stored it, though, it was a nostalgic item, and I wanted to keep it around.
After asking Calia for her signature and a letter just in case what we had discussed after my return from the fight with Tichondrius would come true.
During these weeks, I have had a few talks with her about my journey toward the Eastern Kingdoms, and this was one of the things she wanted me to do.
She had asked that if I traveled to Stormwind, I would lend a hand if things were dire. If they were struggling with her people immigrating from Lordaeron, I could point them here instead, or at least most of them.
This would, in turn, give us even more citizens, as these weeks left quite a few empty areas with the new housing that had been built.
As it turned out, we needed more farmers, people who were experienced with the produce of food, other essential professions like woodworking, stonemasons, teachers, basically we needed more manpower as we were expanding outwards, as of now our population was around eleven thousand.
When she was finally done writing the letter, she handed it to me as I left to prepare what to bring with me.
After telling Jaina I would be back soon, and went back to prepare. I didn't have much to bring except my gear and... the item I had tossed aside a while ago, the orb I had received from Chromie. I had put that item on the shelf for some time now, but it has become of use once more.
My new bag was quite the item. It reminded me of the bags when this world was a game for me. Now I could store quite a lot of mass, like supplies, armor, clothes, and a few weapons for my journey to Stormwind.
However, it was limited down quite a bit, it wasn't like I could go and pick up a large stone brick, and it only took up one slot. No, it considered weight and bulk, as it automatically downsized the items to fit inside the bag, though the items were still as heavy until they were put inside.
All in all, I could carry around twenty kilos of mass with the bag, and if more were put into it, then the shrinking enchantment would no longer apply.
When I was finally done packing, Valeera also came out with an identical bag, it turns out she had gotten one as well, and Belmont rewarded her one because of her training with his recruits, as I was pretty occupied during these weeks I had failed to notice.
She mainly had brought a few sets of clothes, some standard leather armor that only fit a teenager, several sets of throwing knives, two reserve daggers, a crossbow and twenty bolts, and some food supplies Lanira had packed for her as snacks.
All in all, much more reasonable than my own preparations. Then we both walked side by side back to Calia's house, and Jaina greeted us with a smile at the door.
"So you both ready to see Stormwind? I must warn you, please don't get in too much trouble. I have seen what you both deem harmless, and I have to disagree with some of what I've seen these last weeks." She said with a nervous smile on her face.
Apparently, playfighting with hydra's was somewhat of a dangerous sport, 'Though their teeth hurt slightly... I got to admit.' I thought
Even if the hydras weren't larger than an adult human male, their teeth were razor sharp, especially Nessie and Valeera's hydra, which she named Bluey. Yes, she had the same naming sense as mine, and I was impressed.
Jaina had just materialized her portal as we both looked at her. I smiled and thanked her for making us a portal. She smiled back and looked towards Valeera and me, "Good luck, don't get in too much trouble... please?" Jaina pleaded. Valeera just grinned as she walked through the portal.
I shook my head before I pushed my magic into the Orb of deception, my features now looked pretty much the same, except for my height lowered down to 1,9 meters and my ears had turned much more human-looking. However, my hair and eye color wouldn't change, as the magic in the orb had issues transforming it.
This caused Jaina to raise an eyebrow in surprise at the item when she saw me use it. Then I waved toward Calia and Jaina as I traveled through the portal following Valeera.
After being briefly disoriented, I opened my eyes to see that we were in the middle of a dark chamber, clearly unused for a long time considering how much dust rested above covered furniture, then I made my way toward a window and removed the planks covering it.
Only to be surprised when I look outside. We're high up in some building, which I can assume is south of Stormwind after catching a glimpse out the window. At least from my knowledge, I might be wrong, considering this place is vast.
I feel as if all my previous knowledge about Stormwind had been massively downscaled.
I beckon Valeera to come over to me as I lift her up in a carry and jump down the building. She was obviously surprised but not scared as she was completely calm as we slowly descended down to the ground.
Only to be spotted by several people with their faces covered by old worn cloth, pointing at us in astonishment.
'Now, what's going on here?'
-Chapter 29 End-