Fer the most part, the more of the mana we manage to take over the more concentrated the monsters are gonna get. Less places to go an’ all. To take the northern half of our lake with the least casualties possible, we can just keep building in that direction and focus our defenses along the northern walls. Ballistae and all will be pretty useful for warding them off. Its a slow process, and definitely dependent on the population expansion to make practical use of it but no need gettin ahead of schedule and making a great big ghost town. Though if you wantin to take the lake to the southeast of Uudistar, not as much resistance down there due to lack of mana.

Okay lake wars aside, Sakki climbed a mountain on his scouting adventures and got a pretty good look at the land nearby. Particularly some strange village near river ways. I say strange because it isn’t particularly large but a lot of people keep coming and going from it. As if every single building in it were housing ten people per room or something.

Labor improvements are going well, as for investing in the enchanting businesses, there definitely isn’t a shortage of that given that’s kind of our entire gimmick. Though I’ll make a note to push unguided youths to consider such degrees at the university.

Greetings Keeper! It is a glorious day for the Oda people. Iwanagi has continued his discussions with the Archdruid. What attracts them to mana is that it is their primary food source. These creatures are very large and supernatural, the mana is what enables their anatomy to exist. Otherwise the food chain that would have to exist to support them purely by biomass would need to be far larger then the forest could feasibly provide. While they supplement their diet with other more typical foods, mana is the primary driving force to create them. This also reveals how to determine what to expect in different biomes. Generally, the more widespread and less concentrated the mana is -such as in the forest- the higher the number of them will be but the smaller in size they will get. This is why the forest is home to many pack hunting varieties. Areas with highly concentrated mana resources scattered around yield larger creatures, such as the frozen north. Evidently the secret to existing alongside them is to not to have enough mana to draw their attention. As with most beasts, they tend to weigh the risk/reward as well as effort required to acquire their food. If you have very little mana they will move on to easier and more lucrative prey. If you are a wizard they’re a lot more liable to take their chances. How Ki effects their dietary needs and interest is not quite understood though. Might be worth experimenting.

Kaze reports in that while they have many fine warriors they might do better as agents intended for brute force usage. They do not know the lay of the land in our continent, and they do not understand our society, culture, or economics. As such appointing any of them to be a commander could have its pitfalls as they learn to adapt to the larger world they are just now discovering. On the other hand, appointing one of them as a commander could smooth over relations as we integrate them and give them a face they feel comfortable with as their leader to traverse the world and risk their lives for. So the choice definitely has its ups and downs either way.

In other news, Kyoko’s father, the town’s local carpenter, passed away recently and she is trying to raise her eldest son to continue in the craft since as a woman her own skill at woodworking she learned from him is heavily disregarded. Her youngest has been -wait a minute I just flipped to the next page. She’s been integrating well into the town of isolationists and so far remains undetected. The isolated village actually has a lot of access to whatever they may need due to their position at the border of three different lands conveniently assisted by their lake that has decent stores of mana. While they lack for need to trade, its their need for security that ails them. The badland raiders harass them lightly them only because they’re so far away from the raiders home territory of operations. If the badland natives knew about the resources the village has access to they would likely put a bit more effort into taking over them. This has created their isolationist policy, as they are trying to conceal their wealth as not to attract such attention. Kyoko says they are also in possession of a unique artifact that the whole village was actually built around, which is why the center of the place is a temple. Said artifact apparently acts to hide their stores of mana, which is why the monsters are not so prevalent a threat to them.

As for magic items of benefit to monks, such things do not truely exist. Monks by their nature are masters of the weapons they wield regardless of the weapons properties, I’ve seen Shime beat swordsmen with a stick. Not even a staff style stick, just a bendy tree branch she used to whip them on the nose until they didn’t want to fight anymore.

The deal with the golems has been sorted out, and the armies raised as desired to travel to Tethalyn. So here are the new girls –

Ankathi Nikolaides is the new commander. She’s one of the more accomplished witches within the coven and is practically royalty for it. Ever since announcement of the discovery of the elves she has taken in interest in the chance to wander out into the world. I do advise caution with her, she’s a little crazy in the sense that she has a very dominating personality. She has a habit of assuming her superiority over those she interacts with, exception to you and me but that seems to be it. She is however one of the most talented commanders and shows great potential as a conqueror…just be careful not to give too much slack on her leash or she might start initiating genocides when we aren’t looking…I should go check on Areti.

KouKou is an oddity within the coven, known also as ‘the weird owl girl’. She is specialized in working with familiars but keeps making only one kind. She could be described as creepy at first glance but around the coven she’s known as the cute one, which has resulted in her wearing a hood and skulking around shadows to try and alleviate her reputation. She has failed and is still the adorable one. If you meet her you’ll see what I mean, place a sweet fruit nearby. KouKou is one of the better choices for scouts due to her parliament of owls. She’s basically untouchable if she doesn’t want to be caught, so she should be safe from the monsters. Well safer then most at least.

In order to keep up variety, Aima is the opposite style of witch to KouKou and is more of a ‘hit it before it hits me’ type of operator. She is very skilled in combat focused magic and knows how to fight for herself. In particular she is very talented with healing magic, and its reverse cousin of harming magic, utilizing mostly touch spells. She’s a bit more of an intense personality as well, in scouting the forests I expect her to probably have more useful data on the habits of monsters thanks to her methods…expect dissection reports.

The troops are moving around, KouKou already found a village lurking in the forest, a population of about six thousand. Notably they were not on the map we got from the elves as for the location of their places, and this village seems to have more humanoid inhabitants and a distinct lack of long pointy ears. A few are there but it definitely isn’t their main population.

Also there have been some losses in Marilena’s army due to the monster attacks, though nothing too significant yet. In final news, financial trade has been booming as people have grown more used to the highway between us and our allies. So we have a bit more money coming in now, and it looks to be on the rise.

In continuing our adventure we came across a small fort, while the population is small this is unlike most of the villages we come across. It is walled and home to nothing but fighters, it seems to be a bit of a badlands raider outpost and it boasts significant military strength.