Return to Jorgaldur Volume IV: Reunion

Change of plans

Eldi was having breakfast at the mansion, while waiting for Gjaki. She had gone looking for Goldmi and her family. The girls had vacation, and they would stay there in the mansion, with some vampire children.

Coinin had offered to take care of them, although she hadn't been the only one. However, only she had learned Slide from Goldmi, in order to skate with her children. They were older now, but she had grandchildren, as well as many nephews.

"Aren't there purple carrots?" Cuina, one of Coinin's sisters, protested.

"You'll have to get used to it. There're no stocks," Diknsa informed her.

"How's it possible!? But... It's season! It's when they're tastier..." she lamented. They were her favorites.

In fact, they were always fresh. When it was time, they used to buy large quantities, and they would ask Gjaki to store them. The vampiress had complained more than once about being a portable pantry, since carrots were by no means the only thing in her inventory. Nonetheless, she only complained, she didn't stop doing it.

"It seems that there's a plague of snail-bulls. The roads are blocked," the devil vampiress explained.

"Can't we send Gjaki? There must be a Gate over there," Coinin proposed, laughing softly.

She knew that her friend would go, but not without complaining.

"Don't be so pampered," Diknsa rebuked them. "You can do without those carrots, and Gjaki is busy. In addition, they surely have problems to collect them and take them to the market. She would have to go farm to farm."

"How many of those snail-bulls are there? Is it a mountainous area? What levels?" Eldi suddenly asked, expectantly.

The rest looked at him a little confused. He seemed too interested in a boring plague of snail-bulls.

"There should be hundreds. Maybe thousands. For the area, they'll be below 90, although not much. And yes, it's mountainous," Diknsa estimated.

"Hi! We're here! What's for breakfast?" Gjaki then appeared.

She was with Chornakish, who had been waiting for her. There were Goldmi and her family too.

"There're no purple carrots..." Cuina grumbled.

"Gjaki, Goldmi, change of plans," Eldi greeted them.

"How's that? What happened?" the vampiress asked, surprised.

"There's a plague of snail-bulls of a suitable level," Eldi reported. "Those who have blessings of that level, or enough strength, can also come".

"Ha, ha. We've started to improvise quite soon!" the elf laughed.

"We haven't even started..." Gjaki shrugged, as she assumed that her plan had changed before it started. "Let's see... Those who can give blessings and are between 75 and 85 can come. Also, those who can push a stone like this. It's a good opportunity to level up."

They all looked at the huge rock out of nowhere. Then to the vampiress. None moved. They had to finish breakfast first.

The first thing they did was going to an old abandoned quarry that Gjaki had discovered thirty-odd years before. Although rocks could still be mined, the quality was no longer sufficient for construction, which had been its use in the past. That was precisely why it had been abandoned.

They didn't care. They just needed good-sized rocks, as round as possible. Gjaki and a few residents of the mansion went there. They spent several hours mining enormous stones, and giving them a bit of shape.

They used orichalcum picks to extract them, which were more than enough to penetrate the rock. The few dwarf-vampires in the manor had volunteered for the job. They enjoyed it.

After that, with chisels also made of orichalcum, they gave them a more or less rounded shape. It didn't have to be perfect, just be able to roll down the hill. Although a couple of those rocks were destined to never fulfill their function.

One of those who had offered to help was Chornakish. Although he had worked hard to improve his level and learn skills, to fight alongside his beloved, he also had another hobby, sculpture. That was the main reason he had offered.

"Chorni..." Gjaki shrugged. "We have work to do. I'll keep it for you. I'll leave it in the workshop later."

"Ah... I'm sorry... I've..."

"You were in your world... Ha, ha. When you start sculpting, you lose sight of everything," the silver-haired vampiress laughed.

He smiled a little awkwardly, a little embarrassed. The stone had suggested a bear to him. Therefore, he had begun to shape it, and hadn't thought of anything else.

His beloved put the rock away, unable to stop smiling. She liked that side of him, and she loved some of his work.

The vampiress looked at him, resigned, a couple of hours later, when the scene repeated. Once again, she put the new sculpture project in the inventory. Despite that, the panther demihuman had rounded many rocks. It was awfully easy for him.

All morning, Gjaki had been picking them up and storing them in her inventory. She was unable to help but smile at the prospect of dropping them.

Eldi, Goldmi, and Elendnas spent the morning watching the snail-bulls. Hawkeye came in handy, as did a similar skill from her husband. Nonetheless, nothing was better than a goshawk flying over the ground, while the lynx dozed.

Eldi, for his part, was in charge of Flattening some points of the future route of the rocks, once the best paths had been decided. The group's mission was to decide where to drop the rocks from, as well as make any necessary adjustments.

Also, while they were at it, they had first accepted a guild mission to eliminate snail-bulls. There were many adventurers and mercenaries busy with it, but they weren't enough. They would need months to clean up the area.

"If they hadn't decimated the toads-colossus, they wouldn't have that problem," Eldi criticized.

The situation about those predators was complicated. Some advocated protecting them, others wanted to hunt them for their materials, and a third group wanted to exterminate them. The truth is that, without their natural predators, the number of snail-bulls grew until there weren't enough resources in the forests to feed them. Then, there was that kind of slow but unstoppable stampede.

With this, thousands of them ended up dying, thus surviving those which had been left behind. For a time, they would be quiet, until their numbers grew again. In addition, the result of those stampedes was often devastating. People might even have to abandon cities.

Snail-bulls could climb over the walls, or over the corpses of their kind, and weren't easy to eliminate or block.

Perhaps, a solution could be to hunt them continuously, but their meat was inedible, so it wasn't profitable. Everyone knew it had to be done, but no one wanted to be the one to do it.