[Year 11 Month 9: Continued]

  The beast-kin all jerked in surprise, my voice seemingly coming from all around them, unable to tell it was just in their head. Several unsheathed their blades with uncanny speed. Combat-oriented.

  “Who’s there?!” the man who I presumed was in charge shouted. “Show yourself!”

  I saw that he used a skill, it’s mana sweeping through the surrounding area. His eyes grew confused, and he muttered, “Nobody is there?” His wolf ears were twitching.

  No longer speaking to the group, I sent a wave of calming emotions, targeted at the leader. Curiously, I watched as he seemed to realize what was happening.

  “Spirit!” He cried out, drawing the attention of those near him. “It’s a spirit!” The group seemed to grow excited at that, with all of them immediately putting away their weapons.

  What?

  Not having been the reaction I expected, I quickly questioned Astrid, who seemed to know the most about them. “Oh gods! I completely forgot!” She hit her head with the palm of her hand. “Beast-kin aren’t aligned with the two gods of the churches, and consider most spirits to be good luck.”

  That made a lot more sense.

  Recalling what the leader had said, I made sure only to ask the three adults. “Would the churches maybe hunt them down because of that?”

  They paled.

  Turning my attention back to the beast-kin, I once again projected my thoughts to all of them, but addressed the leader. “Are you being hunted by the churches?”

  The question snapped the leader out of his revelry, and the mood quickly soured. “The Church of Selium, without the threat of the Vexus, began a purge of beast-kin.”

  He gestured to himself and those around him. “I am one of the chiefs of a small village, and they are some of our best hunters and guards. We come seeking shelter; we didn’t know your claim to this place.”

  I sighed, “If you truly have positive intent, we can work something out. For now, we will wait till the others come back.” Apparently, they didn’t know I had been watching for as long as I had, as I saw some signs of unease sweep over the small group.

  Ignoring this, the leader merely nodded his head.

  And so we waited.

  It took half an hour for the others to arrive. Not including the ten that returned, there were an additional 113 people. Meaning they had a total of 133 beast-kin.

  The leader, who had introduced himself as Nobu while we waited, quickly ran out of the village and explained the situation to the other two chiefs. One of which was a woman, so I guess Chief and Chiefess? I imagine the ability to level has somewhat accelerated the whole equal rights thing here. I mean, obviously, it still exists, but maybe it's better?

  I still didn’t like the fact that Penelope’s class was [Homemaker]. Maybe I can find a way to level her up and get her a class evolution.

  That aside, Nobu’s news of a local spirit had the obviously tired people in a good mood. The vast majority of their people were likely not used to having to walk extensive distances in a short period of time, although they do look quite fit overall.

  A few minutes later, the three leaders came together and spoke to me. The woman spoke up, “Hello, spirit? My name is Mika. We wish to settle this place. Nobu mentioned you had terms, however?”

  I responded, having received permission from the humans and Safli to reveal their presence, “I have a small group of survivors from the previous village. I expect you not to harm them and treat them as equals.”

  Apparently, this was a surprise to the three, but Mika replied shortly after my statement. “That is acceptable, we have come to live in their homes. I promise we will do our best to treat them as equals.”

  Considering their supposed reverence for spirits, they would do their best to keep their promise, or so I hoped.

  [Year 11 Month 10: 1 month has passed]

  So far, there had been no significant conflict between the new and old villagers. The beast-kin were surprisingly kind to the children and treated them similarly to their own. The two human women also had similar treatment.

  The only person who had received any negativity was Osbert, and Nobu had mentioned it was possible, as it was a large force of armored men that had forced the beast-kin out of their homes.

  “It will fix itself,” the chief said. “It just will take some time.”

  On a more positive note, after a week or so of keeping up my [Warding Pillars], I let the newcomers receive my blessing, which was greatly welcomed by all, especially the sickly.

  [You have gained 133 Blessed]

  [You have 371 Blessed]

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  With the old houses still mostly being intact, with only a few being completely unrepairable, the families slowly began to split up, claiming a home and fixing up whatever they could.

  The beast-kin had no issue with the previous name and opted to keep the same for ease. So Gorn Village had once again been established.

  Interestingly enough, rather than spreading into the entire village, they chose to stick near me, preferring the houses closest to the hill. This habit was especially apparent when I removed my [Warding Pillars], bringing the number of [Protection Pillars] up to four. The health regen is now more valuable since there were proper guards once again.

  Possibly the most saddening change to my daily schedule was the survivors. Penelpe and Astrid decided to live together, along with several of the younger kids.

  Now that two of the seven children had grown old enough to get their classes, and with more people who could watch over them, the only children that really stuck with Penelope and Astrid were their own toddlers, and Salfi, although the elf generally stuck around me for most days.

  Osbert had joined up with the new guards and had even made some friends, sleeping in a house closer to the walls that had been repurposed into a little barrack.

  Overall, I became much less busy, no longer needing to watch and wait for something bad to happen constantly.

  It made me a little sad, actually.

  [Year 12 Month 1: 3 months have passed]

  [20 Blessed have died]

  [You have leveled up twice]

  [You are now level 19]

  [You have gained 2 more pillar slots and 5 more totem slots]

  Only one village resident had died. It was an older woman who passed similarly to Inra; once again, the dead were buried on my hill. The beast-kin preferred being buried near a spirit if they had the choice, and I didn’t mind.

  With the new level up, I had enough pillar slots to try the new option. Well, new as in never used. Its been a while since I unlocked it.

  [Year 12 Month 2: 1 month has passed]

  [2 Blessed have died]

  The [Nurishment Pillars] were tricker to use. Turns out they weren’t for nurishment of people, but of the soil. I ended up having to talk to the farmers who had planted their first crop to actually find a use for them.

  One of the farmers happily mentioned that it would speed up plant growth. When asked why, he just mentioned it was a skill that let him see the development of crops. As they had planted considerably later than they had wanted, it was probably the reason it would be harvestable by the time fall rolled around.

  I realized that I had completely forgotten about the [Mineral Pillar] that I had stuffed down in the nearby cave, which had been producing materials for the last year or so. Leading to me being the proud owner of several hundred kilos of raw metal and crystal that I had no idea what to do with.

  Asking around, I found out that the beast-kin had a smith who had been wanting to set up. Her name was Sahil.

  The smith was quite different from the other beast-kin, as she lacked the common animal tails or ears that others had, and instead looked completely human if it wasn’t for the scales covering different parts of her body. Apparently, whatever type of beast-kin she was made her more fire-resistant and almost cold-blooded in nature.

  When Sahil had found out about the ore I had been accumulating. She had grown quite angry, as she was under the belief that until some trader had arrived or some vein of ore was discovered, she was out of a job.

  “Shame on you,” were her first words to me. Although they quickly turned into words of praise when I had a few stronger beast-kin bring her over fifty kilos of iron ore. A bit more than half of my supply.

  As I had nothing else to do, I watched her setup a makeshift forge. I doubted it would work well, but Sahil seemed determined to make it work. While I didn’t know enough to really ‘judge’ the smith’s work, it looked like a challenging task.

  It was only when I watched her use a stone slab as an anvil that I grew doubtful. I'm pretty sure there is a reason for Smith's using an actual metal anvil rather than a stone block found in a back alleyway.

  Of course, I threw that opinion out of the window when I saw the signs of a skill being used, somehow changing the stone to work better as an anvil.

  Her using a skill to influence the stone block gave me an idea, and when Sahil looked to have a spare moment, I asked. “Can skills be applied to the object itself? Like, are there such things as enchantments?”

  Still hammering away at the now flattened piece of iron, she nodded, responding in between her hits. “I would hope so, otherwise weapons wouldn’t be of any use to higher-level people now, would they! Some classes can engrave runes into them after, but most have to be done during the process. Doesn’t matter when, just that it happens.”

  Curiously, I asked, “Would you mind if I tried it with this?”

  She paused hammering for a moment, inspecting the metal that had begun to take the shape of a sword. “Fine, but you better not mess it up.”

  Similarly to how I first created my old totems, I had to focus on my [Blessing of Warding] skill, this time however, I wanted to see if I could do something slightly different.

  Instead of letting it generalize and have the possibility of converting the blade into a totem, I focused on the enhancement aspect, trying to influence the outcome of the imbue.

  As I did my best to apply it to the weapon, suddenly I felt some resistance. It was stemming from the metal itself, and while I think I could force it to accept the application, for whatever reason, I felt like it would weaken the outcome.

  Finally, I coaxed the iron into letting me imbue it with a Blessing, the resistance having fallen away entirely.

  [You have Blessed 1 weapon]

  [Blessing of Warding has upgraded]

  [You may bless inanimate objects during their forging process if they are under your influence. Blessings are not always equal]

  Intending to tell Sahil of my success, she merely waved me off, able to see the results for herself. “Any self-respecting smith can inspect their creations. Now go away as a finish this.”

  While I await the results, I did some minor reorganization of the pillars, moving them to optimize the radius and thus effect. Although I did leave a few of the radiuses overlapping the little house that had become the town infirmary, it was rarely used due to the natural healing effects.

  Within the hour, Sahil finished the blade and held it up to the sun, which had an hour or two to go before setting. She whistled, “For a blade forged with essentially rubble, this turned out nicely. Might give this to Nobu.” Reading some notification, she spoke aloud for my sake. “The blade being more durable is probably due to me, but the resistant to corrosion, and a boost to damage? That’s all you. Overall, that’s solid. I would put it slightly below what a level 30 enchanter could do.”

  When I asked Sahil what her level was, she merely waved me off, “Hah! You wish you knew.”

  Yeah, she’s right about that.

  With night soon to fall, she quickly wrapped the blade in some leather and made me promise to help her out occasionally.