The pair of them shifted their view to get a look at the town from overhead.
Doyle, ‘Oh, wow, it’s really managed to change again. Where are the apartment blocks? I know I’ve been distracted, but weren’t they literally just built last year?’
Ally laughs, ‘As if it hasn’t only been a couple of years at this point. Though to answer your question, they’re spread out more and make better use of the land. In particular, the raccoonkin, along with enough humans, are fine or even happy having a room underground.’
Doyle, ‘Are they already worrying about their skyline or some such?’
Ally shakes her head, ‘More like they’re spreading their philosophy of redoing things constantly to the regular citizens. They’ll build a new place to house what the apartment would. Then move everyone over and knock the old block down to be rebuilt. I’m sure they’ll stop being so proactive at some point, but for the moment they’re renewing everything at high speed.’
Doyle, ‘I would figure many wouldn’t be too happy about that? Just going by history, such things are pushed back against.’
Ally shrugs, ‘On one hand, Ace is basically what you’d call a dictator. What he says, goes. On the other hand, no one really has anything and most are still too nervous to really settle into a place, especially out here on the edge of the community.
‘Anyone looking for a permanent place to settle is going to move inward. And yeah, a few have done so. Because that’s the other secret to fewer apartments. Ace isn’t forcing people to leave, but more than a few aren’t welcome to stay.’
Doyle, ‘Really falling into the role, I see.’
Ally nods, ‘Ace is holding himself back better than many would, but that only goes so far.’
Doyle, ‘Well, I guess I need to take a closer look at town to see what’s changed.’
Ally, ‘I will say one thing. They don’t have any more system buildings. Ace has been debating a few options, but has held back so far. He wants to save up for a few at once or a big-ticket item.’
That all said, they settled in and passively observed things.
People of all four races stream through the streets. And admittedly, most of the traffic is focused on the dungeon, people are just living their lives. Whether that means buying food at the market, working somewhere which already includes a couple of places identifiable as office buildings. Though those are small, single-story affairs.
Seems they managed to get bamboo-based paper figured out. Though it is clear that more than enough of the paper in circulation comes from wood. In particular, the wood taken from buildings being torn down to replace.
A quick look at the forest shows that there is a large logging operation going on. Though, thankfully, it also looks like the forest itself isn’t a passive figure in this exchange. Monster attacks are common at the logging camp and the basic trees seem to be regrowing at a pace unheard of before.
And that wood isn’t only being used for building. Doyle makes a note to increase the coal deposits as they’re using a not insignificant amount to make charcoal. Though with magic, the process is a lot more efficient despite using a dirt mound to fire the wood into said charcoal.
One particular bit of efficiency is that they use wood-melding magic to shove all the small branches and sawdust together into proper blocks of wood. Sure, it wouldn’t pass muster for proper furniture or what have you. However, when used to make charcoal? Maybe it isn’t the best, but it does work.
Though there was one other thing about the forestry work going on besides wood and charcoal. A constant flow of letters back and forth. Doyle ignored the why for a little because the how interested him more. They were using the pigeon griffins to send the letters back and forth.
Which brought him back around to the why. Or rather, Doyle doesn’t really care why they are sending so many letters, but why use the pigeon griffins for such a short distance? A regular pigeon should work fine.
And the answer?
Well, it was quite boring. The pigeon post office worked just fine for any message returning to the place. Which was why it worked for the merchants and such. They brought some birds with them on the way out and used those birds to return messages, but only return. Once the message is received, the town can’t send a reply.
Not that the pigeon griffons can manage that for the merchants and such. That would be asking too much. What they can do is ferry between two locations that are relatively close to the post office. They don’t even need to return to the office except at night.
This led to why they were going back and forth so often. Admittedly, there are a lot of messages that need passing. Magic is doing a number on the trees. They’re still normal trees, but with the tendency to have odd growths which need reporting. But even without that, to keep this working requires the pigeon griffons to keep flying back and forth or else they’ll just return to their coup.
They don’t need to be flying constantly. However, if they settle down enough at one location, the griffon will think of home and decide to head there the next time they’re flying.
An interesting quirk that makes Doyle want them even more. After all, a monster that naturally patrols sounds pretty nifty. Well, that and they’re griffons, no matter how far down the chart, but that second reason was there from day one.
Satisfied that he has seen what there is to see with the town’s lumber camp, Doyle turns his attention elsewhere. And this time it is the cattle that catch his attention.
They’re doing better than fine. Since the dungeon pumps out so much beef, the entire herd has been shifted over to focus on dairy. Which means they’re pampered as far as regular cattle are concerned.
Even before the system came, it was a known thing that happy cows gave more milk. This didn’t always translate into good conditions. After all, it is not as if this doubled the milk each cow would give. So instead of individual happy cows, big farms settled on a lot of cows.
For Wolf’s Rest, both magic and limitations meant the cows lived on some prime real estate. A Skilled farmer can milk many times what is natural. While from the other direction, the cattle needed to be protected from literal monsters so you can’t have a giant free-roaming herd.
Not only would you lose a lot of them, but it would lead to a population boom for the monsters. Which is bad to begin with, but these won’t be harmless monsters. They’re going to be creatures capable of taking down a full-grown cow. Whether by itself or in a pack? That spells trouble.
Doyle mostly spent the time watching as one farmer brushed down the cattle. They really lean into the brush, and whoever it was certainly has some Strength! People don’t generally stay upright when a cow leans on you.
There are also a few cowherds spread across the field. They’re clearly on the lookout for something. Threats? A cow in distress? Eh, whatever it is, they’re not seeing it right now.
Doyle actually sticks around the area for a while to try and figure it out. Except neither do any of the cows end up in distress nor do any threats show up. Though it does allow him to observe the cows being milked. Which normally wouldn’t be exciting, except it allows him to at least see part of how skills and such can get more milk out of a cow than is physically possible.
The answer to this is that the milker’s Mana spreads into the udder and helps the cow’s own Mana turn into extra milk. This seems to now be a natural process. Skilled hands simply manage to get more overall.
Doyle spends more time than he probably should on this discovery. In particular, depending on who does the milking and which cow, the resulting milk changes . At the base level, the milk is always at least the cows usual output. However, there are those with a focus on quality or something of the like.
They might get less milk from a cow than others , but the resulting milk is magically delicious. Which, from close observation, seems to be a matter where instead of the Mana turning into more milk, it instead infuses the milk further.
An interesting thing, especially since this likely has a massive effect on any calves. Though Doyle gets the feeling that milk from someone with a skill isn’t going to be as good for them as if it was directly from the cow without an intermediary. He isn’t sure why, but the added Mana from the skill interaction changes the milk.
His best guess being that no matter what else, a person using a skill to milk something will result in milk that is better for the species of the milker. This doesn’t mean it is worse for a calf. Just that it isn’t as good as it would be if the cow could naturally produce such magically delicious milk.
What finally draws him away is back at the logging camp. Doyle had been done with them, but suddenly the pigeon griffon traffic picked up. It was clear that something was going down. More than that, he couldn’t help but notice when Jim practically flew out of his office after getting a message delivered from the officials who had been handling the messages.
Doyle is there before Jim, though that is basically cheating as he just opens up a new view out by the logging camp. Still, Jim doesn’t actually take that much longer to get there himself. His strength is on display for those who notice.
As for what caused the commotion? The lumberjacks found a magical tree, which they could tell is special because their axes couldn’t cut it. More than that, when one of the stronger lumberjacks takes a swing at it, their axe itself breaks. At least this leaves a mark.
Jim arrives just before this happens and so is there to observe the results. Which doubles his interest as he figured it was simply going to be a slightly tougher tree. He had the people move away from the tree and give him some space to examine it.
This means only Doyle and Ally see what he actually does. To the people on the scene, it appears that he took a piece of the broken axe and rubbed it on the bark or some such. In reality, Jim doesn’t bother with the axe piece, instead rubbing his thumb over the bark.
Not that he is at the point of having skin tougher than metal, except that was the point. The bark bent under pressure. More than that, it sprang back into place not like a branch that had been bent, but rather like a metal spring.
Then, in a blink and you’ll miss it, Jim casts a psionic effect. Doyle didn’t recognize it, but Ally did. Jim was testing if it was magnetic. A simple thing, but the positive result told Jim what he needed to know.
Jim turns to the gathered crowd, “This oak is a special find! An hours pay in bonuses for the entire camp! Bring me a griffin and some paper.”
The entire camp bursts into cheers as someone rushes off to get what Jim wanted. And once he gets the paper, he publicly writes out the note. The top declaring the bonus and a bit further down, mostly ignored by the others since they had their bonus pay confirmed, is a note to send out someone to transplant the tree.
What others miss is the fact that Jim infuses a wisp of his psionic power into that message. Doyle and Ally aren’t sure what this means, but are sure they’ll know soon enough.