Back Home

After we stayed at Speranza for one night, we were finally ready to teleport back home, to End Town.

Just like before, we all gathered outside as a group, gave our farewells to the innkeeper Doris, and casted teleport to the gates of End Town.

Once we appeared right at the gates, both Harvey and Thomas rushed to the front to show their credentials. However, contrary to the other cities, the guards at End Town saw us appear right in front of them and greeted us with open arms.

"Ichiro, you are back!" exclaimed one of the guards, making both knights turn around with an unamused expression. But of course they wouldn't be startled by that, since they were pretty used to seeing me teleport from time to time.

As we entered the town, we started to get swarmed and surrounded by the villagers. Not in a bad way, they were simply happy to see us return safely, and since lots of people were gathering around us, I told them to gather everyone at the town's center at night so we could have a party.

First, we needed to leave all of their bags and stuff in my house, but as soon as that thought crossed my mind, I realized that my house was not nearly big enough to hold all of these people.

As soon as we got to my humble but cozy home, I had to ask the rest of the group to wait for a few hours while I remodeled the place. Thankfully, Yoru told me telepathically that he could show the town to the group while Vespera and I did our job.

As they left with Yoru leading their sightseeing trip, we began our home remodeling. First we needed more rooms, at least three of them, one for each of the maids and one for the princess. Since the young Lord Reinar would be joining us a month later, I decided we should build his room too.

For both Harvey and Thomas, I chose to build an annex to my house. Basically, it was a smaller house connected to mine with all of the appliances and rooms they would need. Since they were only going to stay there until the knights barracks were built, I thought it would be fine to have a guest home, in case I had more visitors in the future.

It took us less time than I had calculated, which made me think that I was getting much better at it. I had almost forgotten I had the title of "Master Craftsman" that made me work more efficiently. In the end, we finished up all of the rooms and the annex house in an hour.

My house, which used to look like a normal home, similar to the others in End Town, now looked a little more like a mansion. Of course, it wasn't a mansion as big and luxurious as the one the Duke had in Glorya, but it was the biggest home in our town without a doubt.

Once our job was done, I made some limeade with the "lemen" I had in my void pocket, chilled it with ice magic, and sat at the front porch with Vespera, savoring the labor of our hard work with a nice cold limeade on a hot day.

About a half an hour later, the rest of the group arrived back at my house. The princess seemed to be more curious about the limeade than looking at her room, so I served them all a cold cup while I showed them their new chambers.

The four new rooms inside my house were exactly the same. They all were the same size, they had the same closet, same bed, desk, and chair. I did think about making the princess' room a bit bigger and more luxurious, but she didn't seem like the type of person to actually care for that type of stuff. Call it intuition, if you will.

I took out all of their bags and luggage from my void pocket and left the maids and the princess in their rooms so they could organize all of their things. Meanwhile, I took Thomas and Harvey to the annex.

The annex was nothing that I considered special. It had a small kitchen, a bathroom with a tub, and two bedrooms. It was way smaller than the normal houses I built for the villagers, but I thought it was good enough for a visitor, and they weren't staying there for a long time either way.

Both knights looked surprised, asking how it was even possible to build such a place in so little time. But honestly, the place itself wasn't even hard to build. It was mostly the sewage system from the bathroom that ate away most of our time. I didn't tell them that though.

I gave the knights their luggage to make themselves at home, and promptly made my way out to go to the town hall to see how Jackson was doing.

As soon as we arrived in town, Jackson split away from the group and quickly made his way to the town hall, which made me think he was probably pretty worried about leaving all that work to his assistant.

When I got there, I saw quite a few people doing paperwork in desks that were rowed on the sides of the main room.

("I don't remember seeing all these people working here before…") I thought as I glanced at the workers. Some of them I recognized, but others were completely new faces to me. I kept walking towards the counter at the end of the hall, where I saw Jackson's assistant talking to another female beastkin worker.

I hadn't even made it to the counter when she saw me and started waving. "Ichirooo, it's good to see you again!" she said with her joyous tone.

The jolly brown-haired woman was called Sairen, and she was the assistant that had been in charge of Jackson's work during all of our time outside of town. While she usually acted happy and silly, she was actually quite reliable, and her leadership skills were apparent after I had seen all of the new employees that were working at the town hall.

The beastkin woman that was with her was a new trainee, and Sairen was teaching her the ropes of the job. From what she told me, a group of 25 beastkin arrived at End Town a few weeks ago and Sairen did her best to incorporate them all and give them jobs.

All of the new arrivals were staying at the inns or family homes, so I told her that Vespera and I could build their new houses the next day to free up some space for traveling adventurers.

After a quick small talk with Sairen, I made my way upstairs to Jackson's office. I expected to find him running around the office with mountains of documents in hand, but he was just sitting down at his desk writing something, and the pile of documents next to him was pretty small, too.

"Oh, this is nice… Your office feels like… Much cleaner." I said as I approached Jackson's desk.

"I'm just as surprised as you…" said Jackson before letting out a long sigh and leaning back on his chair with a smile. "I'm glad I was worried for nothing, though."

"That's just the more reason to celebrate tonight!" I exclaimed as I banged on his desk.

"You sound pretty energetic for someone who just had to build a house. Must be that young body of yours." said Jackson, making both of us stare at each other for a second, then burst out in laughter.

Since everything in town hall was running smoothly, I told Jackson I would be seeing him later at the town's center and made my way back home to see how my visitors were doing.