The following day, everyone was busy salvaging the damaged building in the harbor district. Although it was cold, it was not as bitterly cold as the blizzard they had sailed through. The ocean water, being warmer than the river water, tempered the winter weather somewhat.

  “I can’t help but think that maybe something like this is what happened that caused the people to revert back to tribalism.” Alex sipped some morning tea with Fufi, Ariel and Merumeru in the carriage.

  “It’s a sad truth.” Ariel, in her new ice fairy form answered. “The human popution has been going down for decades now and constantly staying on the move is a very viable strategy. Demons are also trying to strike out on their own to avoid joining some sect. Aqua said that is probably how the local ice cn started.”

  “We really could have used Aqua’s help.” Alex set down her tea cup. “She didn’t even show up and with her water powers it would have been a big help. Plus, she was all cagy about the demons invading. It was incredibly suspicious.”

  “Meru ru ru.” Merumeru expined that the water nymphs had to at least pay lip service to the winter court, and they were scheming to do something about the ice cn in their backyard.

  “How’d you find out about that?” Ariel looked at the slime in disbelief. “Though it does make some sense in hindsight.”

  “What’d she say?” Alex's gaze fell upon the slime girl.

  “Meru!” Merumeru nodded smugly.

  “Merumeru was slinking around when you were crafting the toy boat.” Ariel transted. “She noticed that a Yuki-onna from the winter court came to the isnd and heard an argument. Apparently the winter cn found some humans that figured out that if they defeat sleeping nymphs then it counts as defeating a monster and can help them with leveling up. So the winter court said they had to go, and using the ice cn to do it was just two birds with one stone. Aqua didn’t agree with judging all the humans because of a few bad apples but was ordered to fall in line because now it is the winter court’s time to rule.”

  “You got all of that with the less than 10 words she said?” Alex boggled.

  “Elemental nguage is less about the sounds and more about the meaning.” Ariel fluttered her insect wings.

  “I wish someone would have just let us in on the pn.” The bck-haired magical girl grumbled.

  “They probably thought that we couldn’t keep a secret.” The little ice fairy’s voice sounded like the chiming of gss bells.

  “I can be sneaky.” Alex crossed her arms.

  “Magical girls are not known for their ability to be discrete.” Ariel pointed out.

  “I suppose that my infiltration of Yvne’s barony didn’t go as smoothly as hoped.” Alex gave her that.

  “And I’ve sailed into a trap before.” Ariel admitted.

  “So what now?” Alex looked out the window, the vilgers were busy starting their day.

  “I suppose we should see what we can do to help these castaways build shelters to survive the winter.” Ariel flew up to the window. “There are some ruined buildings, but they are all for little people.”

  “Little people?” Alex didn’t notice it before but none of the buildings looked very high. None of them had roofs, but she just assumed that along with the roofs getting destroyed some of the height of the walls went with it.

  “Little people.” Ariel put a hand at about waist height then furrowed her brow. “Not that little, this diminutive form is going to take some getting used to. Gnomes, this was a gnomish port before the demons crossed the ocean.”

  Alex blinked in disbelief. “I suppose I forget that you’ve been around a lot longer than you look. I’ve only met one gnome, and I don’t think he is typical for the race.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Ariel sounded mock-insulted. “As for gnomes, the story of their town is a bit sad. The demons occupied this isnd as a staging point when they were coming down on the hero in force. Some of the gnomes got captured but the demons didn’t really have a reason to keep them so they let a bunch just flee. Gnomes are good tunnelers. So my guess is that most couldn’t escape to the sea and fled underground. But who knows how that went. This isnd was abandoned when a tier 2 fire demon decided that causing the volcano to violently erupt as a cultivation resource to break through to tier 3 was a good idea. It became an inferno and then was covered in toxic gas for years after.”

  “The demons left after that?” Alex guessed.

  Ariel nodded. “Yeah, nothing but fire demons could have lived her comfortably. With the hero defeated then there wasn’t any way to fulfill the contract with no humans around. So they had to abandon it.”

  “Hopefully we are far enough from the kingdom of Jass they won’t come knocking.” Alex worried.

  “If that big guy in the capitol wants to move then this pce won’t be safe, even if the forces of the deep turn against him.” Ariel shuddered. “But we’ve hopefully at least found a safe pce to shelter for the winter. We can regroup and pn our next attack.”

  They joined the vilgers for the day setting up the isnd for habitation.

  Rose and Edelweiss proved very good at clearing out the hardened va that caked a bunch of the former roadways. These two dolls proved quite useful in demolishing ruins.

  The water-shooting doll could also carve out bricks using her squirt gun with the hose set into the bay.

  Lily, the doll, having a bow, wasn't terribly useful in construction projects.

  Edelweiss could use her spear with the rotating tip to carve out rock. She went through a lot of spear heads but with the non-combat cssers around it wasn’t hard to get more stone drills made.

  Merumeru finished her portal pipe that day. It went back to the isnd where they stashed the remainder of the supplies that were left behind when fleeing the ice demons.

  Funi did some exploring and it looked like the ice demon horde didn’t head towards the capitol. They went to Yvne’s barony and headed north from there, skirting the border baronies and the swamp. The fmingo couldn’t go and do a flyby of the kingdom’s nds because of the king’s edicts against the pink birds but she could get a good gnce at the direction thousands of demons went just from observing from afar.

  The isnd, once barren due to demonic presence, was slowly recovering its natural vitality. Patches of bushes, grass, and other vegetation characteristic of a rge isnd now dotted the areas not covered by hard volcanic rock.

  The vilgers adopted a building technique from the gnomes: the construction of stone arches. The few surviving structures, held together by gravity alone, were often half recessed into the ground on their first level, with some even boasting basements a testament to the gnomes' preference for subterranean dwellings.

  Everyone had brought tents, and Merumeru's return trip provided extras. With approximately 700 people, they managed to erect the walls of a rge warehouse on the first day. By cleverly using arches and gathering local pnt materials, they anticipated having a thatched roof on the warehouse in short order.

  Merumeru took it upon herself to inspect the town's plumbing. The sewer and aqueduct system, which once fed a retaining pond higher up the mountain, was in ruins. However, the slime girl's affinity for pipes led her to begin her inspection at the harbor's sewer outlets and work her way innd.

  Alex eyed the knight in shining armor. “I suppose we can’t just leave you looking like this.”

  The isnds were abundant with obsidian, and the magical girl had collected a significant amount after the va flows had cleared. While the dark knight considered obsidian an inferior bck, it should be better than the current suit of shining armor.

  “Maybe I can just put the metal in a dirty fire and the carbon will just leave a bckened casing.” Alex poked at the comically rge sword.

  After getting some of the people with smithing csses who politely humored the magical girl about the idea, Alex discovered that while it did put some bck on it, it also added a patina to the metal. So if the bde got cleaned off again, then it would turn into a rainbow-bde.

  “I’m not sure he’d be too impressed with that rainbow colored metal.” Fufi commented when Alex dusted off the bckened soot from the sword.

  “We could try to melt the obsidian into it?” Alex looked at the smith.

  “That won’t work.” The smith shook his head. “Steel has a much higher melting point, getting it hot enough to work with will burn away the obsidian.”

  “Have you worked with obsidian before?” Alex gave him a suspicious look.

  “No Ma’am.” He pointed at himself. “But my bcksmith skills let me know if something is possible with the materials on hand. If you want to combine the two you’ll have to find a different method.”

  If forge and fire wouldn’t work, then perhaps caustic chemicals would.

  “I’ll ask Merumeru if she can help out when she’s free.” Alex thanked the smith and went to search the harbor for the slime girl.

  When she popped out of a sewer main, the brown-eyed girl cleaned off the slime and smiled at her. “Merumeru, do you think you can help me with a little project when you get a chance?”

  Merumeru took a break from her dirty sanitary work and spent a couple hours using her slime body to melt down enough of the metal to infuse the chunks of obsidian into the sword.

  Now the sword didn’t look much like a sword but more like a giant club with a whole bunch of wicked looking bckened gss shards sticking out of it.

  “Is that edge lord enough for the Sir?” Alex looked to the fmingo and slime girl for confirmation.

  “We’ll find out when he wakes up.” Fufi didn’t sound concerned. “Though when he does wake up there will be worse problems because that would mean that demons are nearby.”

  melchi