The underground city was immense, yet we weren’t there to explore.

“Come on, can’t I just go in a little ways?” Bevel pleaded from where she hung above me.

“I… fine, I’m gonna take a look at the Waygate anyway. But keep me in sight at all times,” I told her after another glance at the Waygate. My first thought was how useful this place would’ve been during the Howling season. My second was how annoying getting anything here would be without the infrastructure to support it. I knew the matching Waygate was in far worse condition, so it wouldn’t help with that. Then again, depending on the size of the place, I figured I should at least see how much work was needed to make repairs.

While a quick inspection revealed that I could probably repair the Waygate in a matter of hours, I ended up following Bevel deeper. We spent half an hour peeking inside abandoned buildings and investigating where the light was filtering through.

“It’s like that rock you make, the stuff that’s transparent,” Bevel said, knocking on it. “But it looks like its mostly covered in dirt.”

I nodded from where I was following at the base of the cavern. We’d reached a sort of town square, though it was more of an elongated rectangle. There’d been a fountain in the center, and one of the spouts still spat out water, though the decaying runes were on the verge of failure, causing the water to come out in little spurts.

Our explorations had proven that I definitely wanted to get this place running. Really needed more Worlds materials though, so I could get the Waygate online. Not just this one either. I didn’t even need high end resources, as long as I could get enough tier-1.

Crossed fingers that we could barter some of the tier-3 heartwood to Spellford since the Howl wasn’t blocking trade anymore. Xoth’s ship would be making the trip soon. Might be able to get something aboard that.

“Okay, we can come back another day, but there’s other stuff for us to be doing,” I called up to Bevel.

She reluctantly followed me back towards the Waygate where I created a pool portal using the water from the malfunctioning fountain.

Then I went and gathered up the formerly stranded merchant’s children and we brought them to Tetherfall.

It was rather amusing watching Esbee have what she consider ‘actual guests.’

We were politely ignored as she whisked the four confused young adults away. Watching her gently usher them with inhuman strength was amusing if nothing else.

While Esbee was doing that, Bevel went off for lessons with Calbern while I went to visit Inertia.

The perpetual clanging of her work had once more returned to the area above Tetherfall. No longer was she content to stay within the workshops though. An industrial surge that blanketed the plateau and beyond, now freed from the tyranny of the Howling season.

A blessing, really, since it meant the occasional explosion tended to be in far safer conditions at far safer distances. It was a little concerning how often things exploded considering Inertia disdained the idea of bombs.

Shaking my head, I picked my way past a crew of mixed refugees. Several of Nexxa’s rescues had been folded in, I noticed. While that was good, it reminded me of yet another project we needed to work on. With our population ballooning so fast, we needed a way to pay people.

Considering our skilled enchanting workforce, Alister had mentioned that there was a system he’d always wanted to try. A set of central nodes that were linked to each other with variable exchange rates for tasks and mana. He’d read about it once, and apparently it’d worked really well, until the central government of the kingdom had collapsed for unrelated reasons. Not reassuring, but he’d gone on to claim that’s what happened to most currencies when the backing country collapsed, and we could actually use hard currency that let people store mana as well.

Either way, the enchanting would come later, since I’d tasked him with providing a full mockup of the idea.

Another crew walked past me, wearing full facial masks, including the air filters they’d first come up with when working on the Howling Defier. Turned out they were good for keeping fumes out too.

Which helped. With over a hundred people now working under Inertia, the entirety of the small plateau around the chasm had been converted into industrial processes of one sort or another. And a lot of those stank. Water Breathing once again proved the value of a well selected first Order spell, keeping the smells at bay.

In addition to taking over the plateau, there was a crew carrying a bridge frame to be placed to grant access to what other flat land was within easy reach. They’d been cooped up for months, and now that they were out, they were going full steam.

Steel columns had been raised and left exposed during the final days of the Howl, each of them different.

Test materials. An experiment to see what alloys and shapes stood up to the insane winds best, all of it unenchanted.

I found Inertia amongst several of those twisted columns. They looked to have been battered by something the size of Fang, a very noticeable dent in the center of them. She was whistle hissing at Bolts, who’d had an extra letter added to his name in recognition of his improved proficiency.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Even as I hopped over a twisted beam, he nodded, waving as he ran off to deliver her instructions to a crew of Tethered that were hoisting several frames into place near the edge of the plateau.

“Looks like things are still moving along nicely. We on track for the rebuild?” I asked, chinning towards a somewhat distant but visible plateau situated just off the road leading to Verdant Point.

“Yes,” Inertia replied, waving me after her. In the same moment, she squatted, wings snapping to the side.

I was in the air even before the knockback of her own launch lifted me higher. Then I was following her towards the frame of our next airship.

While I’d called it a rebuild, in truth, the design was vastly different than the Howling Defier. Most of the parts would be different too.

For one thing, it would only be using a minimal amount of Granitas, and that would be for the freight elevator. Most of that rare tier-3 material was in the three presses. Each was a different size, greatly expanding the amount of parts we could create. Those had three dedicated crews of twelve people running them almost non-stop. Even with the materials we’d received from Conflict, we were going to have to start our own mining operations soon.

The maintenance on the enchantments for each press ate up at least an hour each day to refresh, just from the constant stress to underlying the material. I couldn’t wait for our newly ensouled Tethered to unlock their first slots so one of them could take over. I’d forgotten that we couldn’t help accelerate their growth until after the first slot had been unlocked, and while they were all diligent in their studies, with the Howling season over, mana was at a premium once more.

Which was part of the reason why the airship below us was going to use a minimum of mana.

There’d be a few enchantments for quality of life purposes, and there’d be several sets of replaceable filtering enchantments, but the airship itself would be entirely capable of flight and landing without any mana at all.

It would be pretty damn slow without it, but that was an acceptable trade. A single accidental thrust by a warlord trying to seize control wouldn’t be enough to bring it down. Even a concerted effort would have a hard time causing it to crash.

The speed was partially deliberate too, cause if someone took it over, it was going to be really slow if they didn’t have the mana to pump into it.

A pot of black tarry oil reminded me such a strategy would only work as long as it used mana for propulsion.

We weren’t planning to burn oil, so much as use it for other materials. Once our oil production was online, anyway.

While scouring Cape Aeternia for all the random clusters of isolated people Balthum had driven to ground during his reign, the Tethered had also found several spots where oil was literally bubbling out of the ground.

After I’d brought some to Inertia, she’d mentioned having to keep the inferno drakes clear of something similar in the bog she’d set them up in.

Unfortunately, none of the oil deposits were in locations near existing roads, so that was yet more infrastructure we needed to put in place.

Ironically, the fastest way for it to happen might’ve actually been if I went off to fight the hordes in the east for a week. Nexxa figured I’d be able to unlock my second and third slots in no time, and the extra mana regen would be huge.

Long as I survived, of course.

Honestly, I was already happy enough with my progress. As long as I was designing or building new things, working on new enchantments or spells, or spending time with my newfound family, the little number that indicated my progress continued to go up. Not terribly quickly. It’d been a week since I advanced, and it had only moved a single percent, roughly a twentieth of how fast I’d have brought it up if I’d spent my time in non-stop combat. On the other hand, it had gone up while simply doing things I loved anyway.

Besides, there was a better way to add infrastructure. Pay someone else to do it. Totally an option with the Howling season behind us.

I followed Inertia down to where the new cockpit of the airship was being assembled. Well, less cockpit, more bridge.

The new airship was frankly absurd in how large it was. Bigger than the smaller leviathans, sitting at over five hundred feet in length and eighty in width. But Inertia had been adamant that if we wanted to fly it anywhere other than Cape Aeternia or along the high road, we needed it to be big enough that people and monsters alike would see the size as a deterrent.

Another four favors from Conflict had gotten us most of the materials we’d needed for the frame. And the huge stockpile of wood Xoth had been collecting had been mostly repurposed already for the panels. Which were much easier to shape properly without needing my assistance, since the panels didn’t have to be bent as tightly. That was important on a project this size.

Still, even with all that, we didn’t expect the ship to be ready for its shakedown for several weeks. By that point, we expected Inertia’s crew to have doubled in size again.

Inertia walked me through, pointing out the issues that had already come up. And despite lacking Tresla, I was still able to mostly understand her. It helped that we were working off schematics and Inertia could write or draw any time there was something she couldn’t convey with a single word and a hand gesture or two, yet there were plenty of times I understood without needing to fall back on such.

After a complete walk through the ship, during which I used a few Shape Tool spells to help adjust sections that hadn’t come out perfect, I convinced her to join us for dinner.

Another thing that had changed.

The table was full that evening, and would’ve been crowded even without Inertia.

Not that I minded.

There was a sense of quiet accomplishment around the table. Despite the challenges of the Howling season, we were through to the other side.

Sure, refugees were continuing to stream in and the monsters were getting worse.

But it felt like we were making real progress.

Of course, that was when Nexxa joined us with the news.

“Went out to cull the horde. Figured I’d push all the way to the front,” Nexxa said, grabbing a bowl of stringy vegetables with some sort of orange and green sauce on them. “Ran into Books along the way. He’s rolling towards us with these giant wagons, absolutely loaded down with people. He said he had at least twenty thousand, last he counted.”

“Damn,” I said, rubbing at my forehead.

“That’s not the worst of it,” Nexxa said, plopping down on the other side of Tamrie, who was absently picking at a bowl of fruit that were close enough to cherries to effectively be the same. Nexxa reached over and grabbed one, Tamrie not even noticing, she was so focused on her reports.

“The Pillars are gone.”

“Eat a damn skewer and leave Tamrie’s cherries alone,” I grumped at her, holding the spindly stick of grilled veggies and meat out to her. “We knew they were falling.”

“Honestly, I’m more worried about how we’ve started gathering lumber,” Tamrie said, shaking her head. “Did you know the Tethered are throwing giant spinning blades of carved stone off the top of Mount Aeternia to knock down trees?”

“Yep!” Bevel said from across the table. “It was my idea.”

I sighed. Not because of the giant rocks. But because we really didn’t need to be knocking down more of those trees at the moment.

Where was I supposed to put all that heartwood?