The next day, we had accomplished as much as we could. It wasn’t like we were leaving for good. Every night, we returned to Chalm. However, I could only really give us one solid day where we could just sit back and focus on Chalm. Thus, I made sure to check everyone’s progress before we left. I still had a job to do, and if we managed to save the king, it would go a long way to surviving this conflict against Lord Reign, especially if the Imperial Cloud Meadow joined in.
I actually didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. It wasn’t like I had been in any wars. This wasn’t even a war from my own world. This was a war with monsters, magic, and job classes. How the heck did I know what I was doing? I said some things to the Knight simply to intimidate, but I was intimidating a dead man. If I had to say the same words to Lord Reign in his mansion, I’d assuredly keep my mouth shut. So, even though I had declared war on Alerith, I wasn’t really planning on making a move until I was ready.
I left Raissa behind. She protested a bit, but once I revealed we were on the 25th floor, she had to admit that her usefulness would be limited. Rather, she’d be more useful to me if she worked with our new recruits, helping them pass through the dungeon’s training program that the pair of us developed. Plus, I didn’t tell anyone this, but I wanted her somewhere safe, given that she was probably carrying my children.
Terra’s walls weren’t the cleanest walls. They were more like vertical mounds of dirt. I looked at them with a frown.
“S-sorry, Master, it was all I could do in a single day.”
“Nonsense!” The Guild Master, who was also at the walls, declared. “This is splendid. Of course, it’d still be nice to get a proper wall built, but for the moment, this will do. “
I decided he was right, so I wiped the frown off my face and patted her head. Being able to erect a twenty-foot dirt wall around a place in a single day was already miraculous. To expect it to look like one of those stone fortresses was simply me being greedy.
“With time, I’ll condense and straighten the dirt!” Terra responded with a clenched fist.
My desire for better seemed to have motivated her rather than depressed her. It looked like our wall, like everything else, was going to be a long-term project.
After I checked on the wall, I went to check on our soldiers. The city of Chalm, at the moment, had a population of about 5,000. This was up from the original couple hundred who lived in old Chalm. This included the refugees from the bandits who are still ravaging the countryside of Aberis, the slaves I purchased and then had sent to Chalm, Miner’s town, and then those who were simply just interested in the opportunities of a growing city and had heard about us.
Of those, we had about a hundred adventurers and about two hundred who were hired as city guards. The adventurers couldn’t be expected to fight in internal disputes. Unless Lord Reign attacks and threatens the safety of the citizens, I couldn’t count on the Guild Master’s help. Those were his words, although he said them with a bit of apology. Then said, he was willing to let Chalm pay to have the adventurers train them, so that’s what we did.
So, we had two hundred soldiers. I considered bringing the sisters back from the Capitol to train them, but I wasn’t sure I trusted Salicia with an army. Right now, Raissa was training their survival skills, the Gladiator I saved from the coliseum was training them to fight to the death, and Lydia only had a short time to train them in swordsmanship.
The Guild Master was still stepping in, but at the moment, I had no one to officially lead my troops. I would need to continue to be on the prowl for more talented people. Perhaps, I needed to hit up the slave market again.