Blood Shaper

Chapter Sixty-nine

The revelations of the previous night only weighed on Kay’s mind for a moment after he woke up. In the end, guns weren’t that big a deal in a world of magic. That wasn’t to say they couldn’t be useful or anything, but he wasn’t going to spend a lot of time worrying about it. Cindy seemed really interested in helping Karl with his experimenting and testing, so he’d leave them to it and see what they’d come up with.

After getting breakfast, he started walking over to the government building to figure out what to do. Should we start calling it a town hall or something? It sounds a little better than ‘government building’ for everyday conversation. He paused a few feet from the door when he saw a pair of children running around at the edge of the lake. A boy and a girl of the same age, they were splashing in the water and laughing. Kay looked around and saw no one watching them. With a frown on his face, he started walking over towards them.

He passed a large rock and stopped, noticing the woman laying down with the rock supporting her back. “Oh.”

She glanced up and saw his expression. With a frown of her own, she scowled up at him, “What?”

“I thought no one was watching them and got worried.” He nodded at the kids.

Her expression cleared up, “Oh, yeah, we’ve got watching them down pat. Someone’s always been with them since they joined up with us.” She watched them play and grinned. “I’m glad we finally found you guys. It’ll be nice for them to not always be on the move.”

Kay also watched the kids splash each other and dance through the shallow water. “We need to build a school,” He muttered.

“What?”

“We need to build a school,” He said louder. “There are more kids coming with some more people that are going to join us, and we need a place for them to learn.”

The woman pushed herself up to her feet, and Kay finally recognized her as the fire mage that had been fighting the hydra with him. “The people from the ogre and oni village? Darten’s people?”

“That’s right.” Kay held his hand out to her. “I’m Kay, by the way.”

She quirked an eyebrow at him, “I have heard your name before,” She shook his hand, “I’m Claudia. You got a teacher in mind for this school of yours? Our group doesn’t have anyone that’d be that good at it.”

“Eleniah, my adviser at this point, I guess, is a teacher. Tier five in that class.” He paused and made a thoughtful face, “Might be tier six at this point, although I’d expect her to have told me about it. SHe;s had it for awhile and she's told me it's her favorite class, so I wouldn't be surprised if she'd made that jump by now.”

“Trust me, she’d have said something.” Claudia chuckled, “Besides that, though, it takes ages to get your tier six class. She’s probably got some… time…” She frowned and glanced over at the government building. “Wait, isn’t Eleniah the elf lady who was arguing with Cindy?”

“Yeah, she’s my mentor slash adviser, but she was the person who taught me after I ended up in Torotia.”

“She’s a fighter, though…

“She started off as a Teacher, then became more of an adventurer because of family stuff, got a combat class tier five, then started working on tiering up Teacher again.”

Claudia raised both eyebrows in surprise. “Damn, that’s hard work. And she followed you out here to make a new town in the middle of nowhere?”

“It was her idea.” He narrowed his eyes, “In fact, a lot of what I’ve been doing since I got here has been her idea. I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

“Do you trust her?” Claudia asked.

“Yeah.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Like here?” Kay pointed at the ground. “About two months.”

She shook her head, “Sorry, I meant this world.”

“Oh… almost a year now? I think?”

“I’d say you’re doing fine. If you were still following her around with no initiative two or three years in, that’d be a problem. But you aren’t even that bad right now, from what I’ve heard. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

He stood there for a moment. “Am I worrying too much about things?”

Claudia laughed loud enough to draw the attention of the two kids. “It is an Outworlder thing!”

“Huh?”

She giggled at him. “You and Cindy do the same thing of worrying too much about stuff. If it isn’t a problem, don’t focus on it. Deal with it once it becomes a problem.”

“That seems… I don’t know, too healthy? What am I going to do without my usual dose of paranoia about my behavior?”

Claudia rolled her eyes and muttered to herself, “There’s two of them now, just my luck.”

“There’s two of what now, Miss Claudia?” One of the two kids asked as they ran over, and each glomped onto one of her legs.

She looked down at them with a wide smile. “Kay here is an Outworlder like Cindy. And what did I tell you about calling me ‘Miss’?”

“So, he’s weird like Cindy?” One of them asked.

The other one, at the same time, shouted, “You don’t like being called ‘Miss’!”

“Probably, and yes, that’s right, just call me Claudia.”

The boy and girl stared up at him with wide blue eyes. Their blonde hair was soft and cut short on both of them.

Kay waved at them. “Hi, I’m Kay.”

“Hi.” The girl said softly.

“Hi!” The boy exclaimed. “I’m Cayden, and this is my sister Kaitlyn. We’re five!”

“Are you two twins?”

“Yeah!”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you both.”

Kaitlyn looked up at Claudia. “I’m hungry,” She almost whispered.

“Alright,” She reached down and lifted both kids to sit on her hips. “Let’s go find some food.”

“Can we find dad, too?”

“I’m sure we’ll find him somewhere around here. I think he was going back to sleep when I got you two, so we can look for him there after we eat something.”

“This is the place where dad gets to do his work again, right?” Cayden asked.

“That’s right, his job is going to be very important.” She glanced over at Kay and murmured, “He’s the administrator that Cindy picked up.”

“She said he was a city planner?”

“I’m sure he’s done things like that, but he’s experienced in a lot of fields from what he’s told us.”

“Interesting.”

“Dad ran away with us because they wanted him to marry someone else after mom died, and they said he couldn’t keep us, so he left!” Cayden declared cheerfully.

Kay tried to keep his face from cracking as he choked down a laugh at the childish over-sharing. Claudia smiled and rolled her eyes.

Kaitlyn snuggled in close to Claudia’s side. “And then we met Claudia.”

“Yeah! She’s the best!” Cayden joined his sister in pushing in tight against the fire mage.

“Thanks, guys,” She smiled down at them, “I like you two too. Now let’s go eat something before you start trying to chew on my arm again.”

The two kids both burst out laughing as Claudia modded goodbye and started carrying them towards the mess hall.

Kay waved at them and then started walking to the government building. Eleniah and Ahthia were inside with a blonde-haired human man.

“Hi,” Kay waved, “I’m Kay. Would you be Kaitlyn and Cayden’s dad?”

The man stood up with his arm outstretched. “Yes, that’s me. My name is David Mariston. Err, sorry, just David, actually. I really need to get used to that.”

Kat turned his head slightly as he looked at him, “Sorry?”

“Ah, um. Well, my family has probably disowned me at this point, so I don’t think I’m technically a Mariston anymore.” Seeing Kay’s interested expression, he continued, “My family is minor nobility. After my wife died, my family told me I had to set aside my children and remarry to forge better connections for the family. So I decided to join up with a rag-tag band of adventurers and other people looking to get out of not-so-wonderful situations and ended up here.” He grinned at them, “I heard you could use someone with my talents?”

Kay threw back his head and laughed. “David, I think we’re going to get along. And yes, I’d love to have a capable administrator sign on with us. Claudia told me you’re supposed to be pretty good.”

“I’m a tier three Administrator, a tier three Architect, and a tier three Clerk,” He replied. “I have a couple of other useful Classes and Skills as well.”

The three of them gaped at the man in surprise.

After he recovered, Kay turned to look off towards the growing “residential district” of their little base-becoming-a-village. “Now I’m wondering what Cindy’s move is.”

“She said you would.”

Kay turned back to David. “Did she?”

He nodded, “She said you’d get suspicious. She also said, and I quote: ‘I am spoiled. David and Yrythan are the keys to making sure I remain spoiled.’”

“Who’s Yrythan?”

“One of our fellow misfit travelers. He’s aiming to become a Sanitation Mage.”

Kay stared with narrow eyes. “This seems… too good. Too… serendipitous. Something bad is going to happen.”

“…Okay…?”

He shrugged. “Whatever, we’ll deal with that when we get to it. What were you guys doing?”

“Going over your maps,” Ahthia replied and pointed at a few of them spread out over the table.

“Yes, these are quite nice.” David picked one of them up and turned it to face Kay, “As you can see here, and also right outside, the lake gets wider here, and the walking area becomes narrower, I think it would be good to set up a dock at this point here in order to support eventual fishing boats that could supplement the food income for the settlement.”

Kay sat down, leaned in, and started listening to an experienced person show off their expertise. And he’s an Architect? I wonder what kind of bullshit was going through his family’s mind when they decided to piss him off and throw away such an asset.

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