Reginald: Sir, if I may speak out of line...
City Lord: You may.
Reginald: You gave the letter to a Magical Construct. We don't know how intelligent it was, so the Young Man probably never even received the letter. Moreso, It's been just about two days, we don't know where the Young Man lives or how far it is. It could be multiple days worth of travel.
City Lord: One of the Guards said the Young Man was carrying Alice. No matter how sickly and skinny Alice was, he couldn't have carried her for more than an hour. The Guards said the Young Man was probably the same age as Alice. By the way, The Golem was intelligent enough to take the letter, so it's safe to assume it did give its Master the letter.
Reginald: Ok, assuming the Young Man did get the letter, why are you so confident he will come here? The Guards were previously trying to kill him. From his perspective, returning here would mean accepting death.
City Lord: I thought of that, so I made sure to write down and assure him that we do not want to kill him.
The City Lord has a look of pride on his face, looking very proud. Reginald temporarily took his glasses off and gently rubbed his eyebrows. Probably thinking that he doesn't get paid enough for this.
Reginald: Sir, if you wrote down what I think you wrote down, then I guarantee the Young Man will not come here. Repeatedly assuring someone you don't want to kill them will have the opposite effect. The Young Man most likely thinks that you do want to kill him.
The City Lord paused, His Prideful look is gone and he has a look of realization on his face, or maybe a look of shock and confusion depending on how he interpreted Reginald's words.
City Lord: Well, uh... I'll just wait for Alice to wake up and see if she knows where he lives.
Reginald: It's doubtful she does. He most likely carried her from the location he found her to here, not stopping at his own home. You should give up on the idea of finding him and just be happy that you have your daughter back after two years.
City Lord: Why would I give up? He saved my daughter. I need to at least compensate him! He was on the road leading to Clorilwood... Maybe he's from there? There's also a little mining village along the way, maybe he lives there?...
As the City Lord was thinking out loud, Reginald sighed and chimed in.
Reginald: I hear there is a Mercenary group that set up camp a 4 hour walk away from Clorilwood. Maybe the Young Man's parents are in that Mercenary band? That could explain how he was able to get Alice away from Bandits.
City Lord: Yeah! Maybe that's true! Although why would the Mercenaries send a child to return a kidnapping victim? Also, the Mercenaries wouldn't be avoiding the possibility of getting paid. Either his parents or the kid himself would have came here by now.
...
Back at Cashews Fortress...
The walls are repaired enough to keep people out and a door is placed up. Meanwhile, Cashew is multi-tasking right now. He is constantly raising up a shield and having all 3 of his Golems hit it until it shatters, while he does that, he is slowly reading the book he has on necromancy.
Cashew: Ok, so... Necromancy is even more simple than Golem Construction, but at the same time, more complicated. The Runes you have to draw are much simpler than the ones for Golems, but in the case of a skeleton, you have to draw the Rune on each joint of the skeleton, you also have specific runes for each bone. And Crystals are used as the Core for all undead summons... So that's why she stole my hard work?...
Cashew flipped through the pages of the book on Necromancy, pausing for a moment to re-summon his Magical Barrier. With all 3 Golems punching it, it's now a lot faster. After 12 hours, the barrier now takes 14 hits to shatter from the Stone Golems.
Cashew: Hm... Neither book talks about Zombies or zombie like undead summons. So if I wanna use Necromancy on those corpses, I'm gonna have to find a way to get just the bones... But half of them have caved in skulls. The bones are most likely too damaged on half of them.
The Barrier shattered again, so Cashew raised a new one.
Cashew: I could use Healing Magic on the corpses, but I stopped practicing that 1 spell I have once I got the regeneration from dragon meat. So it might not work. Assuming healing magic can work on corpses at all.
The Barrier shattered once again, but just as Cashew was anout to re-summon it, he stopped, as if he thought of something.
Cashew: When was the last time I slept? Was it at the Cabin? Before I got arrested? That was almost 5 Days ago. I haven't slept in 5 Days! Insomnia for the Win!
Cashew got up and cheered for insomnia for a moment, but then stopped.
Cashew: Thats bad... The Sun is almost down... Let's sleep for the first time in 5 days.
As he said that, he lead two of his Stone Golems outside, recharged their Cores with Mana, told them to find a spot to rest, then shut the Fortress Walls door behind him. Recharging Billie Nelson's Core as well and telling him to rest on the inside of the walls. The Wood Golems are all resting, not doing anything, and were already recharged.
After getting the Golems situated, Cashew headed inside the Fortress, the bodies that Cashew had were already frozen with ice magic and moved to one of the Jail cells, Cell 2, More Specifically.
Looking around, Cashew also realized that he doesn't have a bed. Sighing, he went to the storage room, picked up some of his animal pelts, and placed them on the ground, stacking them up a little to add cushioning before getting his blanket out and placing it down.
Cashew: I'll order one of the Golems to use the Battle axe and cut the tree log from before into smaller pieces. Maybe 2 meters of length. I can put that into my Pocket Dimension and head back to the mining village again, borrow their saw again... Maybe I should have them collect grass as well to act as the mattress?
Cashew went back out, ordered one of his Golems to cut the tree trunk into 2 meters long sections, and ordered the rest to collect grass until the sun is completely down. He then went back inside and went to bed on the stack of animal pelts.
...
17 Hours. Cashew slept for 17 hours before waking up. He woke up all groggy with all 6 of his Wood Golems surrounding him and looking at him. The Wood Golems don't have face muscles or the ability to be expressive, but it's obvious they were worried.
Cashew: How long was I asleep? The place is dark! I was asleep long enough for the fires that the bandits had to go out? I need to do something about lighting as well.
Cashew slowly got up, his head Aching from his head pain.
Cashew: My head has been doing pretty good lately, I actually forgot about the permanent head pain... Maybe when I blew my head up to Traumatize that woman, it got some of the dirt out and the head pain isn't as severe anymore.
Cashew got up after the less severe head pain moved on and he went outside, there was a surprisingly large pile of dead grass in the courtyard of the fortress. The pile was taller than Cashew. The Tree trunk was also cut up nicely into 2 meters long pieces, with the top of the tree, which was much skinnier being left alone.
Cashew had some things he wanted to do before heading to the Mining Village, so he opened his Pocket Dimension, ordered his Wood Golems to move the wooden logs into the Pocket Dimension, then ordered his one Stone Golem to use the remaining Stone from Mining and turn it into bowls that Cashew can fit in. Using his wooden bowl as a reference.
Once that was done, Cashew ordered Billie Nelson to carry the bowls into the fortress and place them inside. There was a really large table at the top of the stairs on the stage type area, so Cashew made the Stone bowls placed next to the table on each side.
The Fortress interior had torch holders on the walls, but they were too high for Cashew to reach, plus He only saw himself being at the large table when inside, so that area needed the lighting the most. Much more than a storage room and room of jail cells.
Once he was done here, Cashew then headed towards the mining Village again with 1 Wood Golem following him.
Once he reached the Village, he asked to borrow the handsaw again and ordered the Wood Golem to cut the tree trunk into parts for a bed. 4 Thicker pieces for legs, 4 more thick pieces for the edge, and several planks to act as the mattress holder. The bed Cashew was making was similar to a bathtub. It was gonna be a square bowl like flat surface with legs. Dead grass would go into the "Bowl" like area, some animal pelts eould go on top of the dead grass, and Cashew would lay under his blanket on top of the pelts with more pelts on top the blanket. Just like the bed from the cabin.
Cashew put the cut pieces of wood into his pocket Dimension as well as excess wood, then he approached the same Old Man from yesterday to buy more nails and discuss the Wood Golem deal again.
Old Man: Me and the Inhabitants talked about your demands for letting us borrow your Wood Golem, and... 5% per mine Cart is too much. That would include any Iron we mine and it wouldn't help us at all. With that deal, you'd basically keep all the profits your Golem mines and we would get nothing. It would be no different than if we didn't have the Golem in the first place.
Cashew: I see... And do you have a counter offer or are you not interested in the Golem at all anymore?
Old Man: 1% of the Mine Cart.
Cashew: 1%?
Old Man: Yes. 1%.
Cashew: I believe I said this yesterday, but the Golem doesn't need sleep. It can stay in the Mine 24 hours a day, so long as I keep refilling it. But, Ok... I'll change the Offer. 500 Copper coins per day.
Old Man: Oh, that's a lot.
Cashew: But with the Golem working 24 hours a day, it should be easy to make up.
Old Man: We would barely break even.
Cashew: What do you even use the Iron for? Can't you make weapons? There is a War going on not far from here.
Old Man: We primarily make tools and Iron materials, like the Nails you just bought. As for Iron weapons, nobody uses Iron weapons anymore. Only people on a budget and criminals use Iron weapons. As for the war, like I said. The Soldiers don't use Iron weapons, and if I'm wrong, then they most likely have their own supplier for Iron weapons. Best we can do is Iron Arrowheads. Even if they did want Iron weapons from us, our mine doesn't pull enough Iron to supply a war. So we mostly make tools and whatnot.
Cashew: So you primarily make iron tools, but you couldn't sell me a Handsaw and a Woodcutting axe last time?
Old Man: Handsaws are difficult to make because of the teeth. As for the Woodcutting axe... We didn't have any in stock.
Cashew: I wanna buy a Handsaw and a Woodcutting Axe. No, how about this, make them for free, and I'll let you use a Wood Golem for 10 days for free.