Gladesbale Grove [druid, litrpg, town building, slice of life, cozy]

Rud walked down the road, right outside of the logging camp. He was never sure what to think when he was traveling outside the grove. It often felt like he left a piece of himself behind, which was partially true. Some of his powers stayed back there, including the Custodianship skill he was trying to level up. His magic was less effective out here as well, but this was part of his job. Delivering the good news to the loggers was more important than his comfort right now.

That road wound through a barren landscape, bordered on the south by rocky hills and to the north by an unenchanted forest. Old stumps littered the area, all in various stages of rot. While plant energy lingered in the air it was thin, replaced by something else. Rud couldn't put his finger on it, but he didn't like it. He paused, cocking an eyebrow as he soaked that energy in.

"This feels important…" Rud scratched his head, trying to link this with something he was supposed to do. After a few minutes of standing around like a spirit without a goal, he moved on. It would come to him later. He was still new at sensing and manipulating magic. He pressed on, finally arriving at the logging camp after his stroll.

The door to the main building opened, revealing a person Rud didn't recognize.

"Looking for Mira," Rud said, waving excitedly.

"Just a second," the man said, scampering off. Mira appeared a few moments later.

"Rud!" Mira said, performing the sign of reverence. "Please, come in."

Nodding, Rud pushing into the entryway of the building. It was made from lumber likely taken from the area itself. With a creaking wooden floor, drafty walls, and a leaky ceiling, he wasn't impressed. But the fire that burned in the fireplace was nice. The slow crackle of the flames almost dispelled whatever discomfort he had experienced before entering.

Mira rushed over to the fireplace, putting a kettle on. She cleared away a spot at the table dominating the room's center, pulling a chair for him. "What are you doing so far outside of the grove?"

"I come with good tidings!" Rud shouted, jumping onto the chair. He tapped the butt of his staff on the ground, a smile painting his features. "The dungeon is cleared. You're safe to get back to logging."

"I saw those horsemen," another logger said, poking his head out from behind a support beam.

"Yeah, do you know anything about that?" Mira asked. "They don't tell us anything."

"Only what I could see from the grove. A group of about five rolled in, clearing the dungeon in no time. We think they were high-level adventurers."

Mira shared a look with her fellow loggers. "That's the funny thing about Barlgore and this entire expedition. I'm not sure we have anyone above Rank 5 here. If you include Feather."

"Guess it depends on what you consider 'high-ranked' right? Anyway, what does that mean?"

"It means we have some fresh bodies in town." Mira bounced with excitement. "They said there were some people coming in from the mainland, but this is great!"

"Is it?" Rud asked, not sure what he thought about it. More people didn't immediately equate to a pleasant situation for him.

"More fighters means less problems like this," another logger said, this one a cat-woman. "Gods know we need help. Ah, not including the amazing job the Great Spirits have done."

Rud waved her concerns away. "We do what we can, but we're still young."

"We'll get back to work right away." Mira thumped her fist on the table. "I wish they would have told us they were done, but that's how it goes. The little guys always get squashed underfoot. Especially with high-rank adventurers. They stink."

Rud accepted the hospitality of the mining group. He drank some tea and ate the simple food they had there. While it wasn't impressive, he was happy to take anything they offered. It felt more like an equal exchange than anything else, since he had given them so much. And Mira wasn't the kind of person who held debts. She seemed to be eager to pay those off as early as possible.

After exchanging enough pleasantries, Rud headed out. He stopped off in the stump field, taking stock of both the strange energy he had felt before and the amount of trees he needed to regrow. With enough of the day left to sort a few trees out, he began planting seeds and growing them on the edge of the grove's boundary.

While waiting for his mana to regenerate so he could cast the Plant Growth spell, Rud pulled in some of that stump energy. He held it before him, finding it to be an agreeable bit of floating energy. It collected as a brownish color before his eyes, but only when it had been concentrated. Otherwise, his senses weren't strong enough to detect it. It wasn't the aspect of rot. The druid got no sense that this was a negative aspect. Instead, he got the faint feeling of the same plant energy he was familiar with.

Springing from his seated position, Rud shouted. "I got it!"

Pulling some plant energy from a nearby tree, he observed as the two energies combined. At each point they touched, one canceled the other out until there was nothing. The power he was messing with was the opposite aspect of plant magic. The negative version of it. Ban had told him about this, but he didn't understand it at first. He wanted to remove the air from bottles, so she told him to use the negative version of wind magic. The negative of plant energy wasn't 'no plant', but something more complex. It was the hole left by where a tree had been and was now gone.

"I suppose this has implications for the grove," Rud said, tapping his foot as he thought. There was a balancing act with what he was doing in the grove. He should be mindful of that.

Practicing with the wind above wasn't fruitful for his attempt to learn how to make negative wind energy. Rud gave up on that only after a few tries. He had to start from a place of power and work his way backwards. Which meant working directly with his plant-aligned skills first, plotting a course for his magical development from there.

Good thing the grove was full of that energy.

The energy of the grove flooded through Rud's body, making him stumble as he arrived at Ban's clearing. He wasn't outside for long, but his new magical sensitivity doubled the normal effects of returning home. He was becoming more a part of the grove by the day, making trips outside challenging. But the plant magic around him took on new colors, swirling in places where plants grew and being sucked into those spaces between. The druid approached one section of negative plant energy, inspecting the brownish magic.

"I figured it out, Ban," Rud said, poking his finger into the swirl of magic. "Negative energy, that is."

"Good job." Ban's voice filled the clearing. "It will take you some time to develop this ability, but I know you can do it."

Rud did a pose, feeling confidence flood through his body. She knew how to nudge him in the right direction. To make him feel like he could do more than he should have been able to do. Once he reached another block with learning about negative energy, he considered what to do with the rest of his day. He did chores around the areas designed for mortals, cleaning whatever little messes they left behind. Clearing the tubs was easy enough and they didn't need to be cleaned. Magical water, or something like that.

The other things the adventurers left behind were shards and core fragments. Lots of them. Rud snuck through the forest, arriving outside of the Blacksmithing Workshop. Taz was busy somewhere else. Likely in the mine, clearing away sections to get at the juicy ore. The druid rubbed his hands together, slinking across the way like a cartoon villain. It was still at Level 1. Of course it was, Rud was the only one that would add core fragments to the mix. He cracked his knuckles, pressing fragments into the building until it reached Level 5.

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"Let's see what we got," Rud said, smacking his lips.

"This is adorable. Helping your friend out?" Ban asked.

"Yeah, I just need to go through this list to find a good upgrade. What do you think he would want?"

"Let's see the options…"

Rud and Ban went over the list of things they could pick for the workshop.

"This one is interesting," Ban said, bringing Rud's attention to the Singing Hammers upgrade.

[Singing Hammers]

Blacksmithing Workshop Upgrade

Description:

Is there a better sound than the singing of hammers early in the morning? No, there isn't.

Effect:

Blacksmithing actions within the workshop are less taxing.

Increases the quality of the items you create depending on the quality of your hammer.

"That would be a great upgrade for me, but will Taz care?" Rud asked.

"Good question. Well, there's plenty more! I never offer the best first, though. You should know that."

Ban had a way of organizing her offerings in a logical way. He always just took them as a lump thing, never concerned for the order. But she gave the worst option first, working up to the best one as though attempting to build tension.

There was an upgrade that made metal stay hotter for longer, which was always fun. Another one made the forge use less fuel, and still another increased the general quality of items depending on the quantity of dwarves within the room. But Rud and Ban narrowed the list down until they had one option that would work well for them. It was always a sane strategy to go for upgrades that were offered.

[Infusing Strikes]

Blacksmithing Workshop Upgrade

Description:

Strike with the power of aligned forces!

Effect:

Each swing of your hammer has a chance to imbue an item with an amount of latent magic. The potency of this effect depends on the amount of aligned energy in the surrounding air.

"The grove is so thick with magic, it would be a shame not to take this one," Rud said, shaking his head. "How can we resist?"

"Agreed. Any upgrade that offers bonuses based on the surrounding magic should be taken immediately," Ban sighed with satisfaction as Rud selected the option. It attached to the Blacksmithing Workshop building, bolstering its power. "Do you have enough core fragments to push this to Rank 1?"

Rud counted the fragments in his bag. The druid had more than enough, although he was unsure if he should use them. He thought about it for a moment, realizing that there was no use holding onto them. He had upgraded Ban's core buildings recently, and that elven girl had given them a few more fragments than he expected. Without explaining himself, he shoved more cores into the building and watched it grow. The Sacred Tree giggled with excitement.

"First upgrade option… Let's see," Rud said, inspecting the list. "Find something good this time, Ban."

"I'm on it… Oh, that was easy. Inspect Mint's Fury."

[Mint's Fury]

Blacksmithing Workshop Upgrade

Description:

Who better to model weapons after than the Wolf Spirit Mint?

Effect:

Items created in this workshop will gain a bonus to damage, speed, and durability.

"That was an easy one." Rud shook his head, accepting the upgrade without thinking about it. That was his general rule. If he was given an upgrade aligned with Mint, Ban, or concerning the usage of local magical energy, he would take it. And there wasn't a question that this one would be good. It offered bonus damage, speed, and durability. It wasn't just good for making weapons, this upgrade could also create normal metal items that were more durable than others.

"Well, that was an exciting session. Do you have more?"

"I want to hold onto the last ones," Rud said, shaking his bag. It made less of a jingling noise than before, as he had emptied most of the core fragments from within. "Never know if you're going to need an emergency upgrade."

"Always prepared, this custodian."

A quick pose was all Rud used to answer. The hour was growing late, but he had fallen into the habit of staying up later than before. He wanted to blame the tea he was constantly drinking, but there was more to it than that. Ever since coming to this world, Rud had been interested in the way things worked. He remembered times on Earth when he wasn't in the city, looking up at the night sky in amazement. How could something like that exist, especially compared to the waking world. But the night's sky here was even more impressive. The shattered moons overhead sprawled over a starscape with exactly no light pollution.

This world was called Asevar. It meant something in some long-dead language, but that hardly seemed to matter. Rud didn't know if the words he heard here were interpretations of some other language, or the real thing. It felt as though he were speaking in English, but that was impossible. Within Asevar there were a sprawl of continents he knew nothing about. Only the Aiswyn continent—a place he determined was roughly the size of Australia… maybe—was known to him. It was a place the Kingdom of Sparwyn had invested a colonization effort into, although the effectiveness of that effort was unclear.

The nightly report was thankfully thin. Rud spent time in his Observatory, sipping tea and slurping a bowl of soup. He had snagged it from the longhouse before retreating to his post. Maria made light conversation, but the silence between comments was welcome. Especially when the sun fell below the horizon, changing the sounds of the forest in a blink. This gave him time to study the wind energy above, interested in understanding the way the negative pockets of wind magic formed.

It was almost like how low- and high-pressure systems worked. One filling the void left by the other. But when these forces combined, they canceled the other out entirely. Perhaps he was a long way from understanding the way it worked, but that hardly seemed to matter. He was having fun.

"Do you have a report?" Nulsa asked.

Rud blinked a few times, holding up the letter he had written hours before. "Yeah. Where have you been?"

"Scouting," Nulsa said. "Following Tuft and his group to the west. They already made it out and are ranging into the mountains.

Rud sighed, shaking his head as he handed the letter over. "I can't imagine traveling that far. For what?"

"Adventure, I think," Nulsa said. "That's what adventurers do, isn't it?"

"Yeah, that's in the name, isn't it?" Rud said, drumming his fingers on the table. "Are you any good at magic?"

"Not really."

"Rats. Perhaps I should visit that Elm girl in Barlgore…"

"I saw you flagging outside of the grove earlier. Perhaps a trip isn't advised to go so far." Nulsa hooted softly as though to punctuate his thoughts. Well, a good hoot was always welcome in Gladesbale Grove.

"You're not wrong. I think Ban wants me to suffer through it."

"It isn't suffering. You're learning. There's a difference."

Nulsa was right, of course. Rud had to keep his mind focused on the future. He needed to think about long-term things for the grove, not immediate satisfaction. This gave him an idea.

"Could you help me with a project?" Rud asked.

"Naturally. Which one of your many projects?"

Rud couldn't hide the smile on his face. Nulsa knew him better than most others in the grove. Perhaps it was because they had spent so much time talking in the Observatory. Or perhaps the owl was just that perceptive. He explained Ban's problem with diseased trees and the expansion they were performing on her Unified Grid building. "So what I need you to do is find diseased trees."

"What makes you think I can do that?" Nulsa asked, tilting his head too far to one side.

"I know your magical senses are top-notch. Don't pretend like you don't have the best eyes in the grove."

"How would you like me to mark them? Nulsa asked, a tone of amusement playing in his voice.

Rud tapped his chin for a few moments before snapping his fingers. "We'll get some ribbon. Or ripped cloth, you can tie them around the trees."

"I don't have fingers."

"So you can't tie a knot?"

Nulsa seemed to shrug. "I'll figure something out. This is for the health of the grove, right? I can do it."

Rud nodded, resolved to use every tool at hand to push forward. Nulsa would make it so they could clear large sections of the forest before Ban even connected to those trees. She wouldn't need to wait for him to regrow those trees before connecting to them. Because it would have already been done.

"Do you need me to find some ribbon?" Rud asked.

"No. I know where Mint steals her supplies from."

"Okay, then," Rud said, watching as the owl flew away. "Guess he's getting to it. Leaving me here alone. Talking to myself awkwardly."