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Gryn used the excuse of taking it up with his team to force me into having dinner at a bunkhouse with them and then staying the night. Our time was not spent idly as I told them much of what I could about everything that had made me mess up my pilgrimage as well as what was expected of them in the future.

The next morning, all of Gryn's team decided to go with my plans and were introduced to the remaining warrior drones. They also selected serpents for to keep and speed-mature them with my help. For some reason, only the girls got the larger rock terrors while the guys got the smaller and sleeker water terrors.

The young serpents were easily to bond than the bugs, the bugs required me to force a psychic link between their already deconstructed minds and Gryn's party. The serpents could recognize friend from foe based on sight and were more open to personal magic bonding. Either way, the process of claiming familiars took two hours of the next morning.

After that, they examined Sili and tried to leave their own impressions on the future dragon be feeding her and talking to her. This was probably what my parents had done while waiting for me. An hour later, the team left me with a list of their current sizes and armor requests before heading out back to their camp.

A cursory skim of the lists told me everything I needed to know to make their different suits.

My parents soon found me trying to do some shopping in the village, offering copious amounts of silver coins for copious amounts of fish and whatever herbs they found while traveling. Because Guild officials were coming, I could afford to stay in the village for another day to collect on fish and put word out about the herbs. Up the mountain, I could just wait to collect on both products and control the introductions of villagers to serpents.

Potentially right in front of the Guild team.

My parents were still unhappy with me but did nothing to stop me from stimulating the local economy. They did, though, make me listen to them complain about Gryn and his party leaving without saying goodbye and then took it out on me with a lecture on responsibility. Then they left me there to make my public relations with the excuse of keeping the serpents out of trouble.

They just wanted to go play with the giant snakes while they could.

I ended up spending five hours wandering around the bridge meeting people and being asked about my familiars. Most of these questioners were the children of the village that I had originally impressed. In full view of their parents I offered to sell them a serpent 'around their age' for the cheap price of ten fish and a hike up the mountain with their parents.

This earned laughter only from the children. They even walked away to their usual fishing spots making jokes about how many fish they could catch. Somebody else, of course, would have to make the hike up the mountain.

After a few hours and taking in gossip and familiarizing myself with people I had already visited, some of the boating crews using rafts started drifting down the river to the village.

There were two types of fishing here. Communal style commercial fishing done on large rafts and retired people fishing for family and fun. The commercial fishing was done on these rafts and the centers of the twelve-by-twelve-foot platforms were cut out to accommodate a mesh well for fish.

These rafts had live-wells containing dozens of surface fed and netted fish. Not long after the rafts were received at the lumber docks they herd about the recent priority order for fish. I was found hanging out with the kids watching them fish and talk smack to somebody who was technically their age or younger.

I left the kids to redirect the rafts upstream to my camp where I paid them a silver coin for every fish they threw out onto the rocks for my current serpents. After this I would make a small pool off to the side of the river in which to store the fish they would ship to me. Even though I was ordering large quantities of fish, to maintain a certain order I was making the delivers a collective effort of the villagers interested in bonding with a serpent.

They would stockpile roughly half of their hauls in my pond and then a dozen or more individuals would make the hike first. For the fish' sake they would be measured in something equivalent to a five-gallon bucket and shipped in a larger ten-gallon wooden cask. For the average youth, traveling with this would be the limit of their Strength stat and they would have to travel with little to no gear.

I mean, I was on something of a journey for the gods. Why should everybody gain something for nothing? How else will I start the trade inducing tradition of setting out on foot from the bridge village?

By literally buying all their fish to increase their hunting needs to increase their desire for serpents. Their lumber industry will then spread the word about the snakes through its few trade routes and the use of snakes guiding logs on the river would become invaluable.

After, of course, the water terrors aided the fishing industry by learning to herd fish from the upstream pond into the ravine.

This time next year, there should be a few new housing structures on either end of the bridge to compensate for the flux of both serpents and travelers through the area.

After letting my parents oversee the feeding of the serpents while I leveled out the neighboring ground into a large seven-foot pond bordered with a wall of natural boulders to use as a fish farm. Because the young snakes were over fed and my parents were easily distracted, I went ahead and built a second pond across from the first a few hundred feet back from the village.

For now, only one would be in use for trade purposes. Eventually, though, both ponds would house fish to be bought by the barrel. The only thing missing was somebody to shoot them.

My parents were surprised that I had already secured enough porters to feed the entire snake population with one wave of deliveries. The hunters alone had yet to return and they would certainly want to acquire their own serpents.

After the initial delivery that I would use to teach Sili how to create psychic bonds with people and serpents, I could bring Sili and some of the larger adolescent serpents for the children and elderly to pick through at the ravine one day before I left.

Did I really think the children would get serpents for pets which would require magical awakening and training? I believed the elderly would do it to compensate. Certainly a few parents would cave when pressured with the religious aspect of the serpents and setting.

Most people already used magic on some level so I would only have to actually trigger magic for the kids. Once Sili learned how to tap into other people and creatures, inspiring their magic would be a simple trick to learn. I could make a big show about how anointed status and set the mood for future relations with the oldest and youngest generation at once.

Once Sili was rested from her feast of everything the young serpents could not stomach, I left the breeding stock to my parents to eventually transport to Templeton while I continued my pilgrimage

I rode the evolved basilisk's head upstream to the ravine and then up the next faster flowing waterway to the next waterfall. From there we all switched to traveling on the ground and I rode my wisps at the speed that the serpents set. We finally stopped at the second to last waterfall to make camp in its reservoir.

After waking up in a hammock supported by my wisps over the sleeping Sili, I quickly switched to hovering and put my hammock away before waking the others. Since they had eaten just the evening before, they were well fed enough to continue traveling not long after waking up. I simply ate a light meal of bird and venison jerky while hovering.

It only took a couple of hours to reach the steppe where the rest of the serpents were patiently waiting. They were all capable of hunting on their own at this point so they were not overly needy. They seemed only briefly curious as to the disappearance of their youngest members before returning to their usual lethargic lives.

Once the serpents were settled, I sent the wisps out with the specific job of gathering upper quality herbs. Around the side of the mountain away from the village. I had already taken too many resources from the local area.

In fact I found myself talking to Sili about the need to keep the serpents from fishing around the ravine and becoming more reliant on rock terrors for hunting. She herself could handle a large portion of the hunting but the serpents needed to stay fit and healthy. If the humans started making the serpents lazy, that was no good for anybody.

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