Chapter 13 - Found
Unlike what Danny thought it didn't take much time to develop batteries for mana. Since a mana core worked more or less in the same way it didn't take her long to figure out how to do it.
With that she had finally developed a way to get mana from nature and safely store it. But theory would take her only so far, now it was time to see if it really worked. What she made was something like a mill it would take the energy provided for its rotation and transform it into mana.
At first, she had the idea of using wind to make the mill move but since they had a river close to them, she used that. The river now had a bridge that people would use to cross to the other side when leaving through the city, a little further from the city, following the river were her new mills already working and storing mana in her batteries.
The mana still wasn't being used for anything but she had already gotten Diana's approval to make a place here to manage the mills and the mana gathered, kind of a power plant.
Her next step was obviously expanding the ways she can get mana and then distribute it through the whole city to effectively cut the use of mana stones.
Evienne was very happy with this development, so many people had already come to the town and it was now starting to look like a place where people would actually love to live.
What made her even happier was that her children had grown up very well. From what she called Diana's batch, since it was the first batch of eggs since Diana was here, 5 children were born from the original 6 eggs. One died even when she had made them more stable than usual.
One of the new additions to the family was something like a water dog that ended up looking like a whale. Since he needed to be in water to live comfortably at first, he stayed in the river but when his size got so big it almost couldn't fit he followed the current and reached the ocean where he still communicates through the hive mind.
Another one was a very small animal identical to a house fly, there wasn't anything really special about this one. It simply flew here and there like a usual fly.
Two were similar to worms excepts much bigger and were now actively participating in the expansion of the nest since they have an extremely strong digestive system that allows them to just eat the dirt and stones without any problem.
Although they didn't seem as special as Arachne or the little snake Evienne still loved them the same. And just because their appearance wasn't strange or they didn't exhibit any strange characteristic right out of the egg they still had the innate abilities each of Evienne's children are born with.
…
"Why are we even here?"
Three humans were walking through the forest with barely any care in their minds. At request of the guild, they were investigating the reason behind the sudden changes in the forest.
Although the forest was relatively safe since it was close to the capital it still had monsters. Yet from seemingly one day to another the monsters seemed to have gotten a lot rarer and the forest a lot safer.
At first glance it seems like a good thing but the people in charge think it may be because of a stronger monster appearing in the forest.
That is why they sent 3 experient people to look into the matter and report back their findings.
Three men in their forties, they worked together almost their entire lives and complement thousands of requests. They had entered the canopy of trees a few hours ago and still hadn't encountered any monsters, only normal animals.
Slightly alarmed by this they didn't let it get into their head and continued normally their walk into the deeper parts of the forest.
At some point around their mission, they started hearing distant voices of people and started walking in their direction.
Happily talking and carrying a few animals they hunted were the hunters from the town. As usual, they came out early in the morning to hunt together with the monsters from the colony and were now going back at lunch time. The monsters had already returned with the biggest part of the game.
Finding people in this forest wasn't strange but after the guild issued a ban it surely wasn't normal to just see people casually hunting here, so the 3 men decided to follow them.
Only after half an hour of walking did they reach the town. The man that came from hunting entered leisurely but they did not follow them inside. There really wasn't a reason to, they had gotten what they came here for.
With monsters roaming the streets and helping building houses, it was pretty obvious that this was the reason for the recent changes in the forest. They did not know how or why monsters that were usually aggressive were cooperating with people but that wasn't their job to find out.
…
"Are you just going to let them leave?"
The whole forest was under control of the colony, as soon as the men entered it all the surrounding members already knew and kept an eye on them.
Together with Arachne, Danny was on the future power plant taking care of their mana generators when they approached the town. Although slightly alerted Arachne didn't make any move and just let them leave without causing any problems.
'Yes. Just tell me what you need for your so called power plant.'
Why? She didn't know but that was what Diana told her to do through the hive mind and she would obey it. In the end, Diana was the one that was planning their rise in power. If she told her to leave them it was because that would bring them benefits.