Chapter 130 Master’s plans
Third Person Point of View
Master felt another connection to an undead he controlled snap as the person on the other end died. For a brief moment, his hands paused before getting back to writing the troop reports for the eastern undead troops attacking the wall. He sighed as he realized whatever was attacking all of the higher-ups in his army wouldn’t stop at just two, and if he lost more, it would have a negative impact on his plans going forward.
He pulled on his connections as his metaphorical eyebrows raised when Master saw they were separated. They were supposed to work as a group, yet two had died alone already, and the remaining members were split into two groups, one much farther into the dungeons than the other. His eyes widened(or would have if he had them) again as he pulled on the connections further in before he realized there was interference with the connection.
This only occurred a few times in the past, and normally only after extreme distances weakened the connection, but never when he was in his place of power. Never so many all at once. Something else was at play here; were they in part of a dungeon that caused interference? Why was it happening now that he was dead set on recalling them back?
As he questioned more and more, he didn’t understand why; he just knew he had a decision to make. He could either cut his losses, let the other group go forward and hope they make it through, or come back… Or send the second group forward to catch up. The problem with the connection so far away is that he couldn’t communicate from this distance.
The connection was more like a feeling he could give them. Come back, stay, go forward, only straightforward feelings like that could be sent over such a long connection. He thought for several moments before sending the ones he could still contact, a ‘be wary’ feeling, and a ‘speed-up’ feeling over the connection. Only now did he regret not going with them; it would have trivialized the problems they were having now.
Leaving now and trying to join them would be a mistake because the eastern front seemed to be catching on to the lack of powerful undead leading the troops. Master was only capable of keeping the undead line from collapsing by leading them from his castle. Still, the coincidence of his generals going into an area that blocked off his connection and the eastern army finding out about the lack of troops so early felt off to him… And he needed to find out why his luck was suddenly so bad when all of his plans normally worked out perfectly.
…
“Whoa, look at this rock I found!” Tems picked up a rock before showing it to me with a big smile on her face. She was acting like her old self now that we got the break away from our kids, and I was enjoying it as much as my wives were. This was a good break for us, even with all the fighting, we had plenty of time to just relax in the new landmarks I made.
“Wow, what a cool rock. You going to keep it for your collection?” She thought about it before putting it down. “No, I’ve got too many cool grey rocks already. It’s unfortunately not special enough.” Sophia chimed in now. “Hmm, maybe I should start a rock collection too. Then we could trade rocks with each other. Wouldn’t you like that, Tems?”
She waited to respond before answering. “I’m the only rock collector in our family, so we don’t have to fight over who gets the cool rocks. If you start collecting them too, then we’ll always be fighting over who gets them when we come across special rocks.”
“Ye kanae collect ores as I do,” Delilah spoke, dropping back into her accent that she normally didn’t have so her children wouldn’t grow up with it. It took her years to learn to speak without it, and she wasn’t setting her kids up to have that same problem integrating back in with non-dwarven society. “That just sounds like a job. We already do that when we adventure.”
“Aye, but ye donae keep them fer yerself as I do.” “That’s because I like money more than ores and rocks… Why don’t I just start a money collection?” Sophia asked herself a rhetorical question, but Olivia answered it anyway. “Because you’re terrible with money. You spend it faster than you can make it, and you’re in debt to every single one of our family members old enough to know what money even is, even some of the kids.”
“Well, when you put it like that…” Sophia trailed off, her voice getting lower as she kept speaking, as Millicent pointed out. “Oh, that field looks like it could be a good place to find rare herbs! I’m going to scout ahead. Does anyone want to come with me?” Leaf didn’t say anything, as she just followed behind her, hoping she wouldn’t need to make conversation as they ran ahead.
“I collect weapons, and I’m with Tems. I’d rather be the only one collecting weapons… I’m going ahead too; I want to make sure the undead didn’t start fighting Roka and Sarah since they went ahead to scout.” Silk ran forward before passing up Millicent and Leaf. We started applying the buddy system ever since we killed the undead giant, but Silk was strong enough by herself and headed to another group of two that I didn’t think we’d need to send anyone with her.
The group was brought to a stop once we made it to the other side of the field because there were several fruit trees, and we needed to replenish our food stores in case something bad happened. Cherry picked out several of the fruits closer to being ripe as she prepared to make a, funnily enough, cherry pie. But there were also walnuts and orange trees clustered in that particular patch of forest as well.
Several of us were carrying sacks of nuts and fruits that we’d boil down into jam or peanut butter and store them at the safe zone and in several of our storage rings. When I said we, I meant mostly Cherry, who’d get help from others to get the biggest boost to the quality. She wasn’t going to get anything higher than uncommon from things I didn’t raise myself, but if we were starving, it would be better than nothing.
I let them all know. “Start looking for the next good spot to set up a safe zone. We've got to keep watch for undead now, too, so someone should stay up tonight.” I waited for someone to volunteer before Leaf sighed. “Fine, I’ve got a new book I’ve been wanting to find time to read, but we’ve been far busier than I thought we’d be on this trip.”
I stretched as I felt the start of fatigue in my body right before the day was done. After setting up the next safe zone, I only felt tired from the sheer amount of work we had to do to make an area habitable, and I was starting to run out of stored flowers to set up boundaries. We’d only be able to set up one, maybe two more landmarks or safe zones, then we’d have to go back to our farm to get more. If we rushed there and back, we could probably do it in a few days, especially if we split up and left a few of the slower people behind while we made the trip.
But, from the old map I was looking at, we should be reaching the end of the cluster of dungeons soon. Within the next few days, then we’d see what to do from there.