Chapter 30 – The Return of the Mayor

Within 10 seconds of my return Mar and Blots had raced through the open door to my office to stare at me.  I waved.

“I never thought I’d say this, but I missed you,” said Mar.

Sadly, I kind of missed him too.  Our relationship was an odd one, but it was one of the few constants I had on Ordinal.  Blots looked like he was about to burst.

“Mayor, I’d like to ask you something,” he began.

“Of course, what do you need?” I asked.

Blots was about to say something when Mar elbowed him quite viciously, “Nothing.”

They both said some heated whispers to each other, apparently Blots was trying to get hitched and wanted me to do the ceremony because Julia sucked at it. Mar was trying to talk him out of it. I wondered who the lucky girl was because I never saw Blots with any females. He just hung out with Mar and of course his adopted daughter Voan.

They did hang out a lot, if I was dating Blots I’d be jealous of how much time he spent with Mar. They ate meals most of the time. I mean…

“Mister Mayor, I need you to review this,” said Mar, thrusting something into my hands, breaking my chain of thought.

“What’s the problem,” I asked pulling out a few bits from my inventory to put on my desk. A drop puma skull that had been fused into carbon by someone, probably Shart, using an obscene amount of magic.

“The Falconians are,” began Mar as Blots whispered something about being diplomatic into his ear. “Are using their wealth to unfairly disadvantage the town.”

“How so,” I asked pulling out a Behir claw.

“Well, it’s just that with all their money they are buying up everything and making things tough for the native Windfallians,” said Blots. “I’m afraid that by the time they are done, Windfall is just going to be an extension of Falcon.

“So, what do we need,” I asked pulling out a pair of pincers from my bag, I tested them to ensure no more poison was coming out.

“In the simplest form, the common folks in Windfall are being bought out,” said Mar. “I don’t know what you can do about it, but we need help and you seem to be the only one who cares.”

I pulled out a bag of gold, “Here’s 10,000 or so.”

I should count these. Eh.

Blots boggled but Mar just shook his head, “That’s a nice thought, but we’d need at least 4 more bags like that to even start…”

I pulled out another bag, then another. Quickly deciding that my desk was too full I started tossing them against the wall. “I think I have like twelve bags, if that’s not enough I can get more.” The floor started bowing from the pile of gold, I put in a work order to have it reinforced.

Mar twitched, “That’ll do.”

I nodded, “Anything else, I mean aside from the other pile of requests you are about to drop on me?”

Blots made to say something, but Mar shook his head. Finally Blots just hugged me.  Mar thought about it for a long moment, and I had to give him the encouraging eyebrow, but he joined in too.  My office family was together again.

“Fenris has been keeping the town in check, there really isn’t anything more for you to do right now,” said Mar.  “Give me a bit and I’ll have some things for you.”

I wasn’t sure how to feel about that, so I dropped into menu time.

“Shart, you are still pondering the imponderable,” I said, adding Jarra to the Army of Windfall.  Then I spent some war points and added a support position, ‘Chief Medical Officer’.  Fenris might complain, but I doubted it.  He wouldn’t complain about Jarra under pretty much any circumstance.

He was smart like that.

Shart grunted, “I’m just checking the plans for that device we found.  I want to understand why he built it.”

“That sounds like fun, I’m going to tour the town, are you interested?”

I got no response, which wasn’t unexpected.

Fenris was doing his best, but he had several key problems in being the temporary Mayor.  His biggest weak spot was that his Administration skill was simply not high enough for a town of this size, which was causing him to slowly slide behind even with the skill points he earned as mayor. I brought up my Administration skill.

· Master Administrator - Your skill rank has increased again, you can now administer multiple sites and your administration skill grants a bonus to all administrators reporting to you.

The effect of the skill was that Mar started actually taking up much more of the slack than I expected, even making some low-level decisions he would have traditionally pushed off on me.  I was actually kind of jealous there, but there was a pretty big difference between me and Fenris in Mar’s mind so it sort of made sense.

My clerk genuinely liked Fenris, while Mar and I had a strange frenemy style relationship.

With my higher Administration skill and a nearly 60 to one time ratio, I began blasting through the routine drudgework of administering Windfall.  Mar had improved significantly since last time I was here, but my Administration skill was all the way up to Master and the difference showed.   I signed work permits, adjusted work orders and every other bit of drudgery that I dreaded every day so quickly that they became a blur.

Three thousand permits later, I found the first actual decision.

The council approved for a wall to be built around western Windfall, and I had to decide what that wall would be.  Picking up the request, I found the full notes from the town council written on the bottom.  OttoSherman favored a wooden wall, of course, but the main debate had been based on how unlikely it was that the Western Gate Fortress would fall.

I wasn’t so sure of that.

I cycled through the options and selected the most robust wall option I could find that could be completed in the next few days.  Then I placed it on high priority.

The whole process took me maybe 5 minutes due to my Administration skill and a minute of real time equaling an hour in menutime so I stepped out of the office into silence.  The assistant clerks as well as Mar and Blots were staring openly at me.

“Dimples?” I asked, which was still a weird nickname.

“That was our day’s work,” said Mar.

“Lots of experience since I was in Jersey,” I said.

“I suppose,” said ‘Dimples’, dumbfounded. That was still a silly nickname.

“Well, that should make your job easier,” I said and stepped outside.  I was near my house, but Fenris was still there with his family for lunch and I didn’t think now would be a good time to bother AvaSophia.

No time was ever a good time to bother her.

We were on better terms than before, but better terms didn’t mean we were buddies. She was still afraid that I was going to get Fenris killed one of these days.

I activated my Disguise skill and made sure the Hide in Plain Sight perk was engaged.  It made me look far less noticeable than I would have otherwise, and with it active most people wouldn’t spare a second glance at me if I didn’t do anything to attract attention.  Right now, seeing the town just operating well was all I really wanted.

I walked past my house quickly; Ashe had replaced some of the flowers in the window with more seasonal plants.  Every house near me that had been vacant when I left wasn’t anymore, and I walked past several Falconian professionals as they rushed to some job in town.

After making a drop off at the Dalton girl’s place, where Punny told me to have an ‘Egg-celent day’, I turned around and went towards the town square.  I loved how close to the middle of everything I lived.  I never really missed my car in Windfall, walking here was always so much more enjoyable than on Earth.

For me to have only been gone a few weeks, the changes were pretty pronounced.  The fountain in the center of town was still there, but the destroyed statue that spouted water was replaced by a massive statue of Badgelor.

“At least it is coming out of his mouth,” I said, waving at a child as I walked towards the golden badger.  They’d updated their sign, so it looked a bit more like the statue, and I already missed the old sign.

A young man named Lance, whom I didn’t recognize, brushed past me roughly, or at least attempted to.  My mitigate activated automatically and he bumped off of me.  He frowned, and he adopted the far away stare of someone using the Lore skill on me before he scrunched up his nose without an apology.

I hadn’t checked my sheet in a while so I brought it up and remembered that everyone else could only see my first class.

· Jim, Wizard 15, BFF of Sir Dalton

· HP 2440/2440

· Mana: 1700/1700

· Stamina: 2730/2700

· Warrior 16 - Duelist

· Mage Knight 15 - Eldritch Guardian

· Adventurer 15 - Explorer

· Cleric 15 - Herald of Badgelor

· Monk 15 - Way of the Badger

· Great General - Rank 12 - Army of Windfall

· Swashbuckler - Rank 6 - The Nosebleed

I snorted at Great General and Swashbuckler.  I had not reactivated those classes, but since I still had the army and boat they still showed up on my character sheet.  The problem with those two classes is that they did very little to empower me personally, so even having them active only granted me their levels in hit points generally.  With them deactivated, I had access to the talent trees as usual, but they got special mention on my character sheet.

Lance grabbed the last seat and after a moment of looking inside the building, I realized I wasn’t hungry.  I never was due to my Hiking skill perks.  That sort of took all of the fun out of eating, so I kept walking looking at the various buildings as I went.

The Falconians had been busy, buying up all of the residential housing they possibly could in the eastern half of town.  It was not hard with their amount of gold, but that forced the residents of the town who sold onto the western half.  It took me all of a half second to realize why they were buying all the land up, they were close to the mayor’s house.

Snorting, I noticed a child looking over at me and I grinned at him.

“Have you been eating your vegetables?” I asked.

The child’s eyes went wide, and he ran off.  Kids.

The main street was far busier than I remembered, with lots of people moving into and out of a bunch of new adventuring shops.  The new crop of provincial refugees had all been settled in the western half of the city and they seemed to mesh well with the Windfallians.  Probably because virtually all of the Windfallians had been provincials before the collapse of the Northern and Southern kingdoms.

There were several new armor makers operating at full tilt, customizing various pieces of armor.  I brought up the town menu and noticed that pretty much the entire industrial area of Windfall was running at or beyond maximum capacity.  We were at war and I was curious to know what that looked like.

First, I swung by the Creek House and chuckled.  Fenris decided since he wasn’t living there at the moment, he could expand it.  When I’d first given the house to AvaSophia it was little more than a shell.  She’d turned it into a home.  Now Fenris was turning it into a Manor.

Kappa walked out and sat next to me, “You are back.”

“I am,” I replied in the language of Wargs.  There was something wrong with the poor dog, he looked almost sick.

“How is it going?” I asked.

“Very well, I am completing all of my tasks efficiently,” said Kappa.  He looked drained.

I brought up the town menu and checked on him.  Fenris, or more likely AvaSophia, must have assigned him something.

“Where is JoeClarance?” I asked.

“He is around, doing important things in town and I have my own tasks for the moment,” said Kappa, who then snorted.  “In truth I’d rather be running around with him but AvaSophia says I should not come into the nice Mayor’s house.”

“I could invite you over,” I said.

“It smells like badger,” replied Kappa dryly.

“Mate, I need you,” called GrrDane.

Kappa groaned, his shoulders lumping. “This was all well and fun in the beginning, but it is getting tiresome.”

Poor guy, I wondered what was bothering him.

I started back towards the industrial area, eager to see the upgrades.  The Wind’s Saw was just over the water and while I could just jump the creek, that would qualify as something obvious so that my disguise skill wouldn’t keep me hidden.

I didn’t get very far before I noticed a large contraption setup next to the damaged bridge.  The bridge had been damaged by Maggie, and with the heightened flow of traffic Fenris decided to replace it.

The water was being held in check by no fewer than four clerics while the construction workers were trying to place the piles that formed the base of the bridge.  Each long wooden pile would be treated alchemically and would last practically forever, unless they were sabotaged again.  The parts next to the shore were already completed, and now they were using magic to clear the water and skills to get the piles in place.

The crane was something I built a long time ago, and several men were staring at it trying to figure out how to get it to work again.

“It needs a chicken,” I said as I saw CarpenterJohn scratching his head.

He looked up at me and shook his head slightly.  “Of course, it does.”

I looked at the work site, they were trying to put in some support piles with the crane.  The piles didn’t look that heavy, so I hopped down.  A crew of six adventurers were holding the first long wooden pile, each using skills to keep the giant log in place.

My Engineering skill activated, and I spotted right where the second pile should go so I used Power Lift and picked it up.  I was up to Expert with this skill and had taken a perk to double the amount I could lift using it.  With my Tier 2 body, I found the long wooden pole to be manageable.  Quite easily manageable in fact.

Grinning, I brought it over to the spot and placed it down.

“Neat trick, but unless you can drive it get ready to hold it for a while,” said one of the adventures.  He was a burly Paladin who’d probably gotten a quest.

I considered that and then pressed down on the pile with my Power Lift.  On Earth, the downward force would have lifted me off of the ground but on Ordinal my Mitigate skill prevented me from being moved even by my own skills if I wanted.

I drove the pile nearly 8 feet into the ground before looking up and checking the height with my Engineering skill.  Two more pushes and it was in the proper spot so I walked over to the other pile and took it from that group.

Lifting it up and adjusting the position minutely was no issue. Then I pressed that one into the ground as well.  It got caught about halfway down where it hit a rock.  I had a lot of options there, but I ended up leaping to the top and using a Falling Star strike to channel it down further.  Unfortunately, I drove it too deep which forced me to pull it back up slightly before I was satisfied with the placement.

“Perfect,” I said, leaping back up to the shore where the crane was being moved into position.

JoeClarance stopped in front of me holding a chicken, “Father says that all your contraptions need chickens, poor birds.”

“They know what they did,” I stated and continued towards the Wind’s Saw.

The massive sawmill was operating at full tilt, and I could already see some improvements on the site from when it started operation.  While it was a Tier 4 building, the Town Menu now labeled it as a Tier Four Plus building, due to multiple building upgrades.

Margwal noticed me looking at it and stepped over.

“Are you the foreman here now?” I asked.

“No, technical expert,” said the level 25 Engineer.  Margwal looked pretty much like I’d seen her in the elf city, except she was in her working clothes.  Those had been changed to a much more steampunk version of that equipment.  Her perfect skin had a black oil stain under her eye that looked nearly permanent at this point.  Also there was the cigar she was chomping on letting out a trail of snow white smoke.

“So how much better?” I asked.

“Well, when Beakatrix showed me how to build a Shadow Pump, which allowed me to access the Shadow ley line in town, I politely asked Fenris to let me build one. When it was done, I hooked several buildings up to it.  This is the latest design, and the best one in terms of efficiency.”

“I notice the barrier isn’t up,” I said.

“Yes,” she replied, adopting Hansa’s at ready position, “It can be reactivated at need, but there is only so much energy we can access with our current equipment.  Until we manage to repair the main Shadow tap we cannot power Windfall’s industry and barrier simultaneously.  Apparently there was a bunch of things built into the tap that not even Beakatrix recognized.  The acting mayor decided getting military production maximized was critical.”

I nodded.  It was Fenris’ decision, and I trusted him.  When he’d mentioned that the barrier was fixed but inoperable I wondered about it but now realized he made the correct call.  The Wind’s saw was more than twice as productive as it would have been otherwise.

I continued to walk down the road, trying to remain anonymous as Margwal pointed out various other industrial facilities in Windfall that the war had forced Fenris to make operational.  We had a hammer mill, which produced higher quality iron ingots far faster than the small shed outside the mine.

“That was tricky, I had to install a mana convertinator to convert the mana from Shadow to Fire.  My initial design was only 33% efficient, but my current design is up to 42%.  As my skill improves that may go as high as 75%.”

A cart was pulling out of the hammer mill, and I stopped the driver.  He looked at Margwal then behind me.  I used my thumb to open up a container, activating my Rogue skills to make the box look as if it was untouched.  The ingots were of the finest quality, and I smiled before setting the high steel back in place and closing the lid.  The seal against tampering was still intact.

“Good work,” I said and Margwal beamed.  She was cute when she smiled, which caused her to instantly stop smiling.  Margwal was not cute, she was serious.  Serious like a blizzard.

She stayed at the hammer mill to check on some of the equipment and I kept walking towards the barracks, or the place I still thought of as the barracks.  Army base was a better term.  The base of the Army of Windfall had been expanding prior to us winning all those victories, and by now all the space around it that squatters used for temporary housing was replaced by more military buildings.

Two common Windfallian soldiers were stationed at the entrance and due to my Great General perks, they automatically knew who I was. They let me in while crisply saluting but kept everyone else out. The central part of the base was the training grounds where hundreds of soldiers were practicing their drill.  Many were wearing the gear of the army of Windfall, but an equal number were wearing Falconian gear.  The symbol of the Falconian Union of Crown and Kingdom was large on their backs.

Zorlando spotted me and walked over, flanked by Lorraine.  Zorlando had been taking my steady drip of experience well, and the fighting in super hell had pushed him all the way to level 50.  Lorraine was several levels below that, but still in the high forties.

Just like Exp Share on my pokemon.

“How are the drills progressing?” I asked, watching the troopers practice.

“Very well, I Zorlando, have trained the Dashing Dandies into a force fit for the stories,” smiled Zorlando as he smoothed his mustache.

“Excellent, I would have expected no less,” I stated causing the former mercenary to grin.

“Sir Dalton and Fenris are on a tour of the castle, you should go there at your earliest convenience,” said Zorlando as Lorraine visibly steeled herself.

“I’d like to speak to you about the training regime,” said Lorraine.  She inhaled and then plowed on, “Your entire training syllabus is amazing, but really peppered with searching for hidden animals in the bushes.”

“Pumas,” I said, quickly checking, there were none.  “I don’t understand.”

Zorlando shook his head.

Lorraine continued, ‘It's just, some of the troops are wondering why we are so fixated on getting ambushed by wildlife.”

“Wildlife?” I asked.

“She thinks we are doing too many Puma Checks,” said Zorlando.

I brought up the menu and prepared to remove her from the army command structure.  Lorraine waved at me before I finished.

“I just question why we are doing so many,” said Lorraine.

“They could be anywhere, I went down to Newark and there were Pumas there,” I said.

Zorlando nodded, “Those foul creatures would be there.”

Lorraine’s eyes went wide, “You went to Newark?”

“Yes, to save Jarra, she’s tending to Badgelor now,” I said.

“You saved Jarra, excellent,” smiled Zorlando before he noticed my expression and looked curious. “Were there problems?”

“Yes,” I said simply, looking back to the entrance of the camp. “I’ll tell you about it later, but now I have to go back to the town square.”

Loraine looked around. Her eye’s opened  and started standing straighter, “What is going on?”

I dropped my disguise skill, smiling as my title ‘the Curious Puppy’ appeared next to my name. I inhaled, letting the weight of the moment settle on my shoulders. Zorlando noticed instantly, and Loraraine stopped seeing Jim.

· Title Change – Mayor of Windfall, you are the legendary Mayor of Windfall who is destined to fight the Dark Overlord to save the world.

“Lorraine, there will be no changes to the training.”

She nodded. “I understand, my Mayor.”

“Zorlando, if you wouldn’t mind, please accompany me, Lorraine please gather up the Dandies and meet me in the square,” I said.  “Do hurry.”

Zorlando nodded, putting on his helmet.  Lorraine looked at me intently, then at the mass of adventurers following me.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I’m so very tired of putting up with anyone’s shit, so I’m going to politely explain who the fecking mayor is to them,” I said.

I was going to war.