Chapter Three-Hundred Forty-One

I don’t like it.

It’s been a couple days, and the thieves guild hasn’t done anything.  No, they’ve done something, just not something that makes them look strong, which sets off warning bells for me.  I wish we had been able to get a foothold into their headquarters before it happened, but wishing won’t help it now.

A big chunk of the guild left town.  Karn says it looks like a schism, but it looked to me like he also felt something’s up.  As much as I feel like we need to learn more, I don’t think I can really step up the spying operations right now.  I already have bees wandering all over their guild, being nice and obvious.  If I send even more bees, it’d definitely tip them off that I’m not buying whatever they’re trying to sell.

I think at this point, it’s better to stay in the dark and let them think I don’t know, instead of confirming it.  It’s annoying to be the one in the dark for a change, but I think if I press more right now, it’ll tip them off to how much I actually do know.  And with Cappy finally making good headway into their headquarters, I’d rather let them think they have me.  If they’re confident, maybe Cappy can hear what they’re up to.

So yeah, half the guild is gone, and the other half doesn’t seem too worried.  They even seem to have more money to throw around, if the activity at a few seedy bars is any indication.  It makes me think the Earl has paid them for whatever they’re up to.  If it was a schism, whichever faction came out on top always has a bit of a celebration of cash and such, but I still feel like something’s off.

“I can only do so big of a sigh for you, Boss,” teases Teemo, and I chuckle as he pulls me from my thoughts.  He’s right.  Sighing and worrying aren’t going to help, and I have better things to do than just mope and try to guess what the Earl and the guild are going to do.  It’s like with the infiltration of Hullbreak: some parts of a plan just need time to develop.  And with the Tree of Cycles and the Forest of Four Seasons, I have a lot of things to develop while I let Zorro and Cappy do their jobs.

Constantly looking over their shoulders won’t help me, and won’t make them do their jobs any faster.  Patience is what I need, or at least a distraction.  Luckily, I have a lot to distract me.

While I’ve been busy trying to thwart the Earl, the delvers are still happily delving.  In fact, now that the thieves seem to be backing off, it feels like the casual delvers are trying to make up for lost time.

The manor and yard are always going to be popular, but now the caverns and the crypt complex are getting more attention, too.  The weekend warriors are starting to get good enough to brave the harder areas.  I would try to serve their needs better with my next expansion, but I have enough on my plate right now.  Besides, I think it could be a good niche for Violet to try to fill eventually.  She’s still a bit nervous about combat challenges, but with how eager Onyx is to have some fun, I think she’s seriously considering it.

Not any time soon, but I wouldn’t be surprised if her eventual next expansion will be into the aquifer lakes for a medium challenge combat area.  I bet she and Hullbreak would have fun working together on some watery denizens.

Hullbreak’s own expansion is going well, too.  He’s carving up into the cliffs now, and seems to be playing with the idea of timing something with the tides.  He carved a lot under the water, too, so I’m interested to see where he’s going with it.  Using water to act as a timer for delvers is a pretty slick idea and could make puzzles or combat more interesting.  I’m trying not to poke my nose too into it, but I’m looking forward to what he makes.

But I can’t get too distracted with what my friends are doing and lose track of my own project.  There’s actually an interesting issue developing that I’m not sure what the best solution would be.  The four seasons have been established long enough that some cracks are starting to show.

In nature, the cycle keeps everything balanced.  Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter all keep their balance by taking their turn everywhere.  My sections, though, are going to be those seasons forever, or at least as long as I keep them working.  Spring is all about waking up, getting started, new growth and so on.  But it’s hard to perpetually be waking up.  Eventually, you’re going to be fully awake, depending on how much coffee is needed.

Summer, I think, is easier to keep going, same with Winter.  Summer is growing, Winter is sleeping.  There’s things to keep track of, for sure, but they’re both pretty stable.  Fall is like Spring, but in the opposite direction.  It’s going to bed, finishing, preparing, a state naturally leading to another one.  So what are the options?

Well, one would be to not make them static.  I’m already moving a lot of things around, I don’t think it’d be too difficult to slowly move the entire thing around, too.  It’d be a big wheel, lazily spinning along and dragging the four seasons with it.  The biggest problem is my spawners.

The wolves basically need to be in Winter.  If their spawner was in summer, they’d be miserable, and a big part of why I wanted to make the forest was to be able to really lean into the seasons with denizens that excel in each.

The other option is to basically keep doing what I’m doing.  Titania has been great at organizing the denizens, and even with her lab and research, Poppy is starting to step into the role of making sure the environment works smoothly.  And helping them each, is Goldilocks, and a lot of my resource denizens.  The rats are especially helpful with maintenance in general.  New shoots are always needing to be moved from Spring into Summer, leaf litter in Fall needs to be moved around to keep Spring and Summer working without too much mana consumption, and so on.

If I had more mundane stuff, it probably wouldn’t work.  But I have a lot of magical things to grow.  The fruitbats have been proving their worth, populating the sections with plenty of cool flora, and I think Poppy is experimenting with magically adapting the trees to fit better in their seasons, too.  The denizens are settling into their seasonal niches well, and I’m getting enough mana that I can start upgrading some more, even with me making payments back into the ally pool.  I’m probably going to leave the plant spawner alone for a bit, because I want to give it spatial affinity before I upgrade it.  I’m also getting tempted to give the snake spawner the last push to get ready for another enclave, maybe even with the birds and the bees, too.  That’d be a big project, though, and definitely one to tackle after I have the forest properly situated.

That doesn’t mean I can’t lay the groundwork at least a bit.  The bees and snakes not only have the lair upgrade, but only have one more denizen type to go until they’re maxed.  My birds don’t have a lair yet, and are a full denizen behind, too!  I eye the costs and what I have to spend, and it looks like it won’t be too bad.  I could wait until after my Sanctum goes public, but I should be fine to upgrade them now.

I start with the lair, moving the spawner from atop the manor and into the canopy of the Tree of Cycles.  Caws echo as the spawn rate increases dramatically, and I can feel gratitude and satisfaction from Poe especially.  Not only will he be better able to keep an eye on the surroundings, but if he needs to smack around some of the Earl’s people, he’ll have that many more birds to do it with.

He’s also going to get a new variety to go with the new numbers.  While there’s a lot of options, I’m leaning toward the simple one of bigger birds.  I lock in the new upgrade and watch the new dire raven hatch.  It doesn’t come out all gooey and nightmarish like a normal baby bird, probably because it’s an adult.

A normal raven is around a foot, maybe a foot and a half tall.  Poe is a good six feet, though posture can make him look taller or shorter.  The dire ravens come in at about the halfway point, almost four feet tall.  They also look a lot meaner than the other birds, and even meaner than most of my other denizens.

I probably should have expected it, I even saw it in the description, but reading and seeing are two different things.  They even have death affinity, which is a little scary.  I don’t think they’re going to be doing like Grim did to that scythemaw and just turning their foes off, but I do think they’ll be foes the stronger delvers will need to be careful around.

They have huge wings and oversized talons, as well as piercing glares.  The last I don’t think is actually anything they can attack with, but they do look pretty intimidating.  Which makes the almost childlike curiosity I feel from it all the more amusing.  From what I can tell, mentally, they’re similar to what would usually be the last denizen from a spawner.  They do say corvids are smart. While I get a good look at my new denizen, I feel Poe call for it to give its first expedition.

Poe also has a new report for me, and I think he’s happy to have the new, bigger birds to send out.  At the edge of what he can cover, he just got a report of a lot of armed and armored elves walking down the road.  Most are on foot, with a few on horseback, as well as several large wagons of supplies.  There’s a lot more detail than usual, I guess the ravens really like the shiny armor and colorful banners and flags.

I pat Poe though the bond, hoping he can encourage the expeditions to maybe learn heraldry.  It’s not needed here, but it could be useful in the future.  Not all marching armies will be waving the banner of Horlon, the current king.