All in all, it took most of that day to work out the details, first giving Ben a full description of the battle, as he noted there were only a few reports on the previous fights with the hydra. That had been one of the reasons no one went after it anymore. Killing one or two adventurers was one thing, wiping out entire parties made it impossible to get specific info, and that made it hard to make future plans of attack.

This would be added to whatever info packs they liked to give adventurers on certain types of monsters and encounters they might expect. It wouldn't be broadly useful, but sometimes even esoteric knowledge would be surprisingly versatile. For instance, my idea of freezing blocks of ice in the bony necks to stop them spouting poison was apparently not a strategy in the books, despite facing things that could do something similar in a few out of the way places in the world.

Ben did pause and raise an eyebrow at the description of (Up Scale Arrow) but he accepted it as real without a need for me to demonstrate. He noted a few things down about it, and by the time he was done, the bar beside him began to hum, the Guild seal on the top of it blinking in a variety of colors. He seemed taken aback by that as he pulled out a few sheets of paper and began to run the bar over them.

It was only now that I noticed the bar was just wide enough to cover a single sheet, which said they might be mass produced somehow, despite this being a fantasy kingdom. Regardless of that, as he gently pulled it down the length of the page, I watched as writing appeared on it, and suddenly questions popped into my head, as I realized I was staring at a magical fax machine in action.

What was the range? How many pages could be done per day with it? The colors, given his reaction, must represent different Halls, and given they all arrived at once there must be some kind of sampling queue to organize stuff. Did it pick from that in some predetermined order as he kept making more and more pages, which piled up fairly high by the time he was done in fact?

I voiced some of these to Ray as we waited for him to finish, and she answered most of them, pointing out working one of those was the last thing you learned when taking your position as a Hall Administrator, which had been her old job. Luckily, given her specific position, being there to help the Heroes deal with the Waves, she'd had two others trained in it, which was the only reason she'd been able to come with us so quickly.

By the time she was done answering my questions, Ben was done printing out the pages, and then began to shuffle through them. At the angle I was seeing I honestly doubted, even if they'd been written in a language I understood, I would have been able to read them. Luckily, my translation ability could care less, and helpfully translated them as he flipped through the stack of papers.

Most, as it turned out, were incredulous demands for more information from other Hall Admins. Some even straight up said he had to be lying, only to say on another page that the 'global list' did indeed show a legit claim on that bounty. At least four were people, unsure genders or if they were human, demanding to know if the bounty claimant, myself, was single, which was amusing, if a bit of a bit gold diggy.

The last few were the actual relevant ones, mostly from what I could only assume was the head of the Guild itself giving Ben instructions on how to process this, and even a few pages that had lines and everything for me to sign, which acknowledged that I was now Lord of Hydra Gorge, and with all the rights, responsibilities, and privileges therein, along with a few tidbits about how long it would take them to assemble the one-thousand-three-hundred-sixty-eight gold pieces of the bounty.

Signing it all, after taking a moment to read the stuff, which was fairly standard contract fluff, assuring them I was the one who made the kill, which I debated as it was actually the brothers who did that, but they assured me as it was my party, I was still considered the one who did it. Better, I was able to have Ray, in her capacity as an officer of the Guild, sign off on it right away.

"Okay, they're going to take a while to process all that…mind, I should have mentioned the pearls, but we'll get to that. For now, I have to ask what are your plans for your new town? That Gorge used to be bigger than Thud back in the day, with the capacity to house at least five-thousand in its stone walls. With the hydra gone, it certainly could again," he said, and I cocked an eyebrow.

"Is that a personal question, or one from the Guild?" I asked, and he shrugged.

"A little of both. While the roads have changed over the centuries, the route through that gorge is still one of the fastest between the Capital and the northern trade routes as it follows the land. Heck, bypassing it loses traders a whole day, sometimes two, so opening it back up again is likely as not to kill business in Thud," he pointed out, and then tapped his quill on a blank sheet.

"Beyond that, it's a demesne, not a domain. The two used to be the same, but modern takes on a domain make it still subservient to the royal of the country. Any city you chose to build would not be so subject. You could literally write your own laws, so long as you pay proper taxes, and that is something the Guild will be interested in, given the King's current…biases," he pulled on the tip of one of his own ears, which said all that needed to be said about those specific biases.

"Any city built there would be able to authorize adventurers with its own Hall. That alone would free up a lot of resources for us, and encourage some…immigration to it that would be grateful for the excuse," he explained, and I was about to ask what it would cost to open a Hall in my city…only to realize why he was asking it like it would be a favor to the Guild itself.

The Guild, the Adventurers, they were a disruptive influence. Even at low levels, one of them was as powerful as a dozen men, and it went up from there. I'd seen what Lucia and others could do in their teens in terms of levels, and since then, they'd grown to the point where there was probably no number of normal people that could stop them. Heck, if EVERYONE could level up all over the world without needing the Hourglasses or the Heroes, there would be no reason to summon us, as by now people would have enough levels to trounce the monsters from the Waves, collectively speaking.

That was why you had to be selective in giving this ability, the power of Levels, to people, however. After all, it created a who watches the watchers situation. If one of us went bad, like Naofumi had been accused of doing, who would be able to stop them? Heck, given what Lucia and Ray had said, there were times in the past when there HADN'T been anyone to stop a Hero from going bad.

So to a ruler, they would be a disruptive influence. Anyone else would see them as something to be regulated and controlled. I didn't, but that was because I was a Hero, because I wasn't from this world, and didn't grow up thinking about the consequences. After all, soldiers in peacetime, in this case between Waves, got bored, and an adventurer who was bored was one who was likely to make their own sort of 'fun',

It was a sobering thought, but I shook it away. Even if it might cause problems down the line, we wouldn't have a future if we didn't start getting stronger now. The adventurers we'd seen in this country had barely been able to hold their own against skeleton knights and giant wasps, and everything I'd seen said the Waves would only get stronger from here. The adventurers at that point would be killed, and then the normal people…slaughtered would be the best descriptor.

"I see, okay then, let's talk terms. I want an Adventurer's Hall built in my city. Moreover, I want them to operate freely. This is not the time to hold back, and I'm willing to authorize everyone I can to start on quests to wipe out monsters, either the remains of the Waves, or just general nests and such," that seemed to be enough, to start with, as Ben pulled his quill close, and began to write down.

"I would also request administrative assistance. I'm not from this world, and given my opinion on the royals in this country, and its guards, I'm looking to hire outside assistance in the running of my city," I said, and Ben nodded absently, before stopping a moment and looking up.

"You want the Guild to run this city?" he asked, and I nodded back at him.

"I've had nothing but good relations with them. Half my party is from them, and until the Waves are over, I won't be able to do much in the way of running a city anyway. That, and I'm hoping to turn this place into a Guild sort of town. A place for adventurers to come, buy and improve gear. Maybe even have people made into adventurers, if I do that without forcibly joining them to my party, as I've been told that more than six causes issues," I said, hoisting up my Bow.

"Beyond that, I will offer freedom to slaves. Anyone who has a seal they want removed, they can come to me, and whenever I'm in town, I will spend time doing so, free of charge," I added the last remembering how expensive the seal breaking holy water was.

"That does NOT mean, sadly, that we can take runaways, and we need to make that clear. As much as I'd love to, we'd be asking for trouble with that. Instead, I want the Guild to start buying all the slaves they can, and bringing them to the town. Take it out of whatever I'm earning with my hunts and such, and if that runs out…we'll think of something else," I said, considering what I was asking. After all, a great slave could cost gold pieces, not silver, but still, it made sense.

"You're going to support their efforts? What's to stop them from simply recapturing the ones we free, and trying to sell them back to us again?" he asked.

"If they do that, they'd be in violation of this nation's own laws, which have strict guidelines on how slave seals can be applied, and for what reasons, including debts and certain criminal offenses. If I find one of those people guilty of violating that law, I will issue the oldest punishments I know of. I start with taking a hand, and I work my way up from there," I said bluntly, and rather than being taken aback, Ben smiled at that.

Suddenly, there was a sound, like a small gong going off, and Ben's stats, which I'd been observing out of the corner of my eye, went up. It wasn't a huge boost, about twenty-five percent on average, but it was there, and I wondered why, until I looked at my wrist and remembered I'd left my Bow in its (Chain Breaker) form. Not for any real reason, I just thought it looked neat, but still, at least it answered one question on what it meant by,

'Follower' when talking about who it boosted.

"I…" he began, looking at himself, and I smiled back at him, as I motioned for us to continue, with my listing out what I wanted in my new city. We would need construction, so engineers or builders, that included rebuilding or repairing the road that had once to run through the middle of the gorge, as well as construction of a large metal grate to go over the waterway in the lake, to keep it from being a point of weakness again.

After that, I wanted farmers or others like them. There used to be arable land in that gorge, not a lot, but enough to help increase the food stores, and I wanted that growing as fast as I could get it. I also suggested blacksmiths, crafters, and other such, to help facilitate the idea of turning it into a Guild town of sorts, a one stop shop for most of what an adventurer would need on the road.

By the time we were done hashing it out, the fee to simply start my town was over five hundred gold pieces. That being the case, I asked to open an account with the Guild, mostly towards either improving my town, or getting better or new gear. It would still be some time before the town was in any livable state, though not as long as I would have expected, with a timeline measured only in weeks, not months.

Not to say it was a completely done deal. There would be more decisions to make once it was set up. Tax rates, various conditions for immigration, and the like. I would leave most of the minutia to the Guild itself, but I'd have my finger in most of the pies, if only to keep some control over what was supposed to be my city. It was with a smile that I rose up, and Ben asked me one final question.

"I've got a lot of paperwork to file, but that does leave us with one last order of business. Namely, a town needs a name, and I doubt you want to call it Hydra Gorge anymore. The old name is long since lost to the ages, so what would be a name you'd like for it?" he asked, tapping the quill onto the piece of paper, one of the forms that looked printed, right on the box for the name.

"Sanctuary," I said without missing a beat, and then had my party follow me. The sun was setting, and we'd need to find a place to bed down for the night. Then, tomorrow, we started farther north again, and maybe swing by and hit a dungeon or three on the way to our final destination.