Blood Shaper

Book 2: Chapter 21

The last two weeks had been productive in a number of ways, including making four fields for Rhia to grow crops in. She’d promised that she could handle the work by herself, and it seemed like she was managing. Apparently, she’d gotten a rarer Skill when she got her Novice Farmer Class that reduced the work she had to do.

The four fields weren’t that big, but they also didn’t have a huge population or an overlord to send taxes to, so they could afford to start small and build up. Across the four fields, Rhia was growing a kind of bean Kay hadn’t heard of on Earth, gimoz beans, called homesteaders’ friend because they grew quickly and had large yields. The other three fields had potatoes, yams, and a grain called Silkwheat. Those four crops were apparently the standard set to bring when starting new commodities because they covered the full circle needed for crop rotation. Kay didn’t know anything about crop rotation except that it needed to happen, so he said “good job” and felt comfortable with their food stocks.

Or at least he would if he didn’t have to worry about giant birds eating their crops.

“They showed up while I was with everyone else at the tunnel!” Rhia shouted as she followed Kay back to the fields. They’d cut them out of the forest to the north and gotten a number of trees for lumber out of it.

Kay waved with his open hand in acknowledgment and focused on running. Losing their food supply now could cripple them.

The four fields had a singular solid stone wall around them about waist high. Kay vaulted the fence with one hand and swung his halberd up into a ready position as he landed.

Then he paused to stare.

Four gigantic turkeys were pecking the ground in the potato field and scratching at the dirt with their claws, trying to unearth the potatoes. Each of them was almost five feet tall and twice as thick as the farm-raised turkeys Kay had seen on a field trip in school one time. They looked like walking turkey blimps that had escaped a Thanksgiving Day parade.

“Are… are those giant turkeys?”

Rhia glanced from the birds to Kay. “I don’t know; what’s a turkey?”

“Turkeys are a kind of bird that are a bit like chickens, I guess? People raise them for food like chickens back home, although I don’t know if you can get eggs from them.” Kay stared at the oblivious birds for a second. “It’s not the end of the world if we lose a few potatoes, right?”

“We can lose a few without it being a big deal,” Rhia agreed, “I can grow potatoes from other potatoes, but I don’t have much seed left over for the other crops. Why?”

“Cause I’m going to take a second and practice my Inspect Skill on them,” Kay muttered his response while he concentrated on the closest turkey. He felt a trickle of mana flow into his eyes as he stared, and a moment later, a box popped up.

[————————————————————]

Voracious Drop Turkey - Tier II Equivalent

- A species of monster turkey that attacks by falling on enemies, they lack intelligence. Constantly on the search for food to bulk up their bodies, they will ravenously attack smaller animals and are considered a pest by the communities whose food they eat.

[————————————————————]

“Huh. They’re tier two equivalent turkey monsters. They fall on their enemies as an attack.”

Kay watched as one of the monsters managed to successfully dig up a potato, which it threw into its mouth. The turkey monster’s beak split in three as it choked down the potato hole.

“Well, that’s creepy.” Kay walked forward with his weapon ready. “I’d like to grab the others who need combat training, but apparently, they’ll eat everything around, so they need to die now.” He glanced over his shoulder, “Rhia, keep a safe distance, please!”

“Got it!” She scrambled over the wall and peaked her head up just enough to see.

The turkeys managed to finally notice Kay after he’d shouted, and they raised their wings at him in a threat display. The wings were massive and absolutely covered in feathers that helped the creature look even bigger than its already enormous size.

Kay cocked his head and examined the creature’s feathers. “Hey, we can finally make some beds out of you.” He grinned and started gathering blood above his hand. While the turkeys danced back and forth, making deep-toned gobbles in an attempt to drive him away, he compressed the blood down. With a flick of his will, he released the compressed blood like a bullet and blew the head off the closest turkey.

The gobbles grew louder as the birds became outraged by their comrade’s death. With a flexing of its powerful legs, one of them leaped into the air. It flapped its wings a few times to gain altitude, and upon reaching the highest point it could, it closed its wings and started to fall. It oriented itself towards Kay, who watched as the giant bird monster fell towards him.

Kay waited for a second, then took two steps to the side. The monster landed on the ground with a thud a few feet away from where he’d stopped. As it struggled to stand, Kay cut its head from its neck with one slash.

The last two turkeys had started to turn back to digging for potatoes when they noticed the second of them die. It seemed to get through their tiny brains that they needed to fight here, and one of them threw itself forward in a lunge while the other leaped into the air like its dead friend.

Kay neatly impaled the charging turkey that had headed in a straight line towards him and dealt with the last of the monsters the same exact way he had with the second.

He looked over the dead bodies. “Wow, they are really stupid.”

“It probably doesn’t hurt that you’re faster and stronger than them,” Rhia commented as she walked back over.

“That’s true,” Kay admitted, “But I wouldn’t even be worried about sending Dolik and Leya to kill some. Hell, that’s probably a good idea. Inspect said they’re considered pests because they eat people’s food, so when Meten gets back, we can gather up a group of people who want to have Combat Classes and send them on a turkey hunt. It’ll get us meat and feathers and remove a problem all at once.” He grabbed the closest body and held it up. “I’m going to run these over to Senik and send someone over to be on guard for you.”

Rhia stared at the monster corpses as Kay gathered them up. “Should I get a combat Class?” She asked him. “I have a slot for one, and it would help me defend myself and my fields.”

Kay shrugged as he picked up the last turkey with a hoist of floating blood. “It wouldn’t hurt anything, and you’re right about being able to defend yourself. You could pick up a Class that uses a weapon that is similar to one of your tools, or you could even learn from Eleniah and get a hand-to-hand combat Class.”

She nodded heavily. “I’ll think it over and pick one.”

“Alright, until then, I’m still going to send someone over to guard you and the crops.” Kay waved goodbye and started floating his kills over to the joint dining hall and kitchen. I really should have thought about guarding the fields before this! Rhia insisted she’d be able to run away from any threats, so I left it alone. If we kept Rhia and lost the crops, it’d be better than losing both, but losing the crops could be disastrous!

Kay stopped by the tunnel that Darten had made earlier that day. It looked like they’d just finished the last barrier and were debating what kind of symbol to put on it. “Dolik, you’re off of symbol arguing duty. Run over to the fields and keep an eye on Rhia and the crops.” He displayed one of the turkey bodies. “These things went after Rhia’s plants, and we don’t want anything else eating up our food supply.”

Dolik got a good look at the dead turkey monsters and nodded. “Got it; I’ll keep an eye out.”

“If it’s more of these, you should be fine. They’re tier two equivalent and dumb as hell, but be careful. Run if you need to. You and Rhia are more important than the fields.”

He nodded again, his face serious. “I understand.”

“Good.” Kay looked over at Darten and Leya, “Don’t worry too much about the symbol, just make it obvious. If it’s a symbol that means death, that’s fine. Just something that says, ‘Don’t fuck with this.”

Darten nodded and went back to debating with Leya, who was still staring at the slab of stone over the tunnel’s entrance.

Kay paused right before he was about to leave. “Has anyone seen Eleniah? I thought she was right behind me when I went to deal with these things, but she was gone when I noticed.”

Dolik stopped and pointed at Kay’s office, “She went back in your building!” He called to Kay, “That was a few minutes ago.”

“Thanks!” Kay walked over to the dining hall and descended down the wide stairs into the kitchen area. The tunnel that connected some of the dwarven rooms to the second level was too much to get rid of, so they’d just dug deeper into the ground to make the food storage level and turned the first basement level into the kitchen.

“Hey, Senik! Got more meat for you!” Kay called out as he gently floated his catch down into the kitchen.

Senik looked up from his work to see the dead turkey monsters floating in front of him, suspended by tendrils of blood. Everyone had gotten used to Kay’s method of carrying bodies pretty quickly. “What the hell are those things?” He demanded.

“Turkey monsters. Voracious Drop Turkeys, to be exact.”

“What’s a turkey?”

“Poultry. We ate turkey all the time back home. Cut it thin, and it’s great for sandwiches, and whole roasted turkeys are a staple for a few big holidays in my home nation.”

“Ever had it as smoked jerky?” Senik asked as he went back to slicing some other meat into thick slabs. “Because we can’t store meat for a long time right now, so I can make some for dinner tonight, but the rest we’ll have to prepare, so it keeps.”

“I personally haven’t had any turkey jerky, but I know it exists.” Kay gently set the bodies on one of the stone tables for dissecting. “We have working smokers now?”

Senik gestured up at the rear of the building, “Yeah, finally got a few up there. I’ll get these ready and start most of it smoking as soon as possible. You said it’s good in thin slices as sandwich meat?”

“Yeah, but we can save our bread if we need to; it’s good a lot of other ways too.”

Senik grunted appreciatively and nodded at Kay. “I’m so glad I decided to leave the Clans. I get to cook with a kind of meat I’ve never even heard of, and I’ve only been here a few weeks!”

Kay chuckled. “I’m glad to be of assistance to your culinary dreams. Want me to drain the blood out of these?”

“No! You rip it out too fast and ruin the meat. You need way more practice before I let you do that in my kitchen. I’ll let them drain naturally, and I’ll set the blood aside for you.” Senik pointed at a wooden tub sitting next to the butchering table, “That right there’s my blood bucket. You can pick it up later.”

“Sure, whatever.” He shrugged and started upstairs, “Keep as many of those feathers as you can please; we can use them for pillows or mattresses if there are enough.”

“Got it. Send someone down with a sack or something to put them in, will you?”

Kay turned around and headed down another level. “I’m sure there’s a couple of empty sacks down here… Yup. Here.” He held them above his head as he came back up.

“Huh?” Senik glanced up then returned his attention to the meat he was cutting. “Oh, good. Leave them next to the bucket, will you?”

“No problem. See you later, Senik.”

“Bye,” Senik muttered, his concentration entirely on his work.

Kay went back up to his office building and stuck his head inside. Eleniah was sitting there with Ahthia going over more papers. “Why’d you run off?”

She glanced up at him, “I didn’t see the point in standing around watching you killing weak bird monsters, so I came back.”

“You could have said something.”

“I did.”

“Oh,” Kay frowned, “Really? I didn’t hear you.”

“I told you that you had it handled and left.”

“Sorry, then.”

“Meh,” Eleniah pointed at his chair, “Sit, I have a plan.”

“A new plan?” He sat in his chair and leaned against the table, “Do we need a new plan?”

“Yes, because you are stagnating a little, and that’s no good.” She pointed at him as she leaned in. “As your teacher and mentor, I’m sending you on a training journey!”

“What?”

Ahthia rolled her eyes. “There’s nothing vital for you to do here until Meten gets back with everyone he’s bringing, so she wants you to pick an area around the valley and check it out for threats or resources. You’re basically going out scouting.”

“No! It’s a training trip! You can’t come back without the body of a powerful opponent or an interesting find!”

Ahthia rolled her eyes even harder. “Come back in a week or if you find something worth reporting before then.” She leveled a flat look at Eleniah, “You’re bored, aren’t you?”

“A bit, yeah,” Eleniah replied, “But mostly I want Kay to know that there’s going to be more to this than him sitting around solving minor problems and killing weak monsters that get too close.” She turned to him, “We still need you to get stronger and stronger, so while you’re out scouting, look for opportunities to grow.”

“We’re sending me, the leader, to scout?” Kay asked. “Not to toot my own horn, but isn’t that risky?”

“Everything in setting up a brand new settlement is risky. In this case, we have two people that can be sent out to look around us, and I’m staying here to defend everyone,” Eleniah told him, “So you get to go see if there’s anything we need to worry about before we more than double our population.”

“Should I take Darten?”

“No, because I’ll be training him up a bit, along with Dolik and Leya, and he still has work to do. Your only job left is planning things out for when we have resources we haven’t gotten yet. So my advice for you is that you should go scouting around us for threats or valuables.”

Kay thought it over for a bit, “Alright, we’ll go with that. I’ll leave tomorrow and be gone for a week at most.”

“Great.” Eleniah grinned, “I’m glad you took my advice.” She snickered when he rolled his eyes at her, “Take Murunel with you. It’ll give you another set of eyes and let her explore and see more.”

“Alright, alright! I’ll do whatever you say, number two. I’ll go start getting ready now, and I’ll grab Murunel while I pack.”

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