A Moment of Peace

I stretched my real arm and put my artificial arm back on. I looked around and took in my surroundings. The air was crisp, cold, and smelled of forest. I had been sleeping with Orin all night so I was still warm, but as soon as I sat up the cold bit at me. I used intuitive manipulation to heat myself back up.

'I'm going to have to hunt something for furs.' I thought, but just then, my armor changed shape and was now an ample set of fur.

"Heh, Changeling knows what I want." I laughed. "Up next is finding my glasses."

I used Eneru Sight to look for the most conductive things on my body. Of course, my equipment showed up, but my eyes also registered some conductivity.

'Found them.' I started to use intuitive manipulation to pull my glasses off my face.

"Ewww! They're under my skin! Dad! Why!?"

I very carefully extracted my glasses from my face, cast a temporary vision spell, and inspected them.

"Ah! That's what happened! Dad put a hibernation protocol on them for when they're suppressed, then they got stuck in a loop when they didn't have the Eneru to go into hibernation. Easy fix." I infused Eneru into them, overloading their processes and forcing a restart.

I placed my glasses back on.

[32 new entries in the Log]

"Huh? Open new log entry 1."

A projection of one of the rejuvenated prisoners appeared in front of me.

[Unable to read name rune, context-based name assigned]

[Prisoner 1]

Sex: Male

Race: Natural

Height: ~158 cm

"OHHH! This is gold! I'm going to bring them with me, I can't imagine they want to stay in Gluaze."

"You have to find them first dumbass." Orin stretched. "For now you have to lay low and get the ship built."

"You're right, I'd best get to work."

I turned away from the gantry and started improving the workshop, insulating it, refining its furniture, and creating more tools.

"What are you doing? Aren't you going to work on the airship?"

"First I need a place to steady my cold hands. If you want to help, then you should hunt. We are going to need the hides and nothing will grow out here so I will have to eat meat too."

"You got it, just make sure to eat that bag of food you stole from the fort."

'I've got to make one call before I start.'

"Dad?"

"I'm here kiddo, what do you need?"

"Tell Devin to gather a crew and follow my golems."

"Sure thing, I'll make sure he resupplies you as well."

Dad's wink was tangible, even through a mind-link.

"Alright, love you, dad."

"Love you too kid."

The mind-link ended and I continued working on my workshop for the rest of the day. Near the night, Orin came back with a deer in his mouth.

"Hmm, I guess it's finally time to use the one skill Laura taught to me."

Orin dropped the deer and I hung it up on a tree branch. I grabbed a knife that I made with flow manipulation from my tool bag and started work on gutting the deer. I wasn't quite as skilled as Laura, but it still took me just five minutes to gut the deer and leave it to bleed.

"Scary! How many times have you done that?" Orin jumped back at the ruthless assault on the deer corpse.

"Twice now, but it's not much different to disassembling a machine so my muscle memory helps."

I left the carcass hanging and took its hide with me.

"Let's get drying this." I tossed the meat from the bag of food to Orin "Dig in, it's the best we are gonna have for a while."

I salted the hide and got back to work. After one more hour of precision work, my Eneru ran out.

'It's only slightly past noon and I have no Eneru left. I'm going to have to do it manually.'

My wild breakthroughs have been helping me physically, but they don't make me stronger, they just make me use less energy to use my muscles.

I used a bit of my remaining Eneru to make a log sled and left the rest in reserve to keep my artificial arm running. I grabbed my ax and started cutting down trees.

I swung with extreme inexperience, I remembered how to do it because of my past life, but I didn't have the muscle memory to back it up.

Once I felled the tree, I started splitting it up. Hours later I had a nice stack of firewood.

"Now that the deer has no blood, it is ok to be stewed." I slow-cooked part of the deer with the remains of the milfoil I found in my icebox, gave Orin the parts that I couldn't eat along with some more bits, and hung the rest of it high in a tree.

Orin slurped down an intestine and grabbed a leg to eat. Then the stew finished and I devoured it in seconds.

"Good night Orin." I went into the workshop and laid down on the floor, waiting for Orin. I curled up into a ball and woke up the next morning surrounded by Orin.

"This is going to be quite the routine."

I left my workshop to find a veritable caravan of students. Ben, Devin, Vincent, Teo, and Ward all showed up, even John was there. Then there were some other people that only my logs recognized.

[Bock Gluaze]

[Prisoner 4 - Amended to Jerod.]

[Prisoner 7 - Amended to Bella]

Behind them were my golems and somehow no footprints lead to us.

"Is this everyone?"

"Yessir!" Devin said.

"Now, what is a prince of Gluaze doing here?" I directed my attention to Bock Gluaze.

"I'm here to leave, ever since my dad got an excuse to exile me, he has made my life hell. For my entire life I was at the bottom of the royal ladder, so leaving and becoming a peasant isn't much worse."

He wasn't lying, unless you were the crown prince or second in line, you were garbage to the royal family.

"In that case, it's time to get to work!" I clapped my hands together for emphasis and started giving out orders.