Dominik woke up in a very familiar bed in the village. He was in the spare room in the mayor’s house. There was a young woman sitting in a corner, who seemed surprised when he finally woke up.

  “Oh sir, you’re finally awake!”

  “Finally? How long have I been asleep?”

  “You’ve been sleeping for a bit over a week sir.”

  “A week?”

  Dominik had plans, he still had plenty of time, but he wouldn’t risk whatever caused him to sleep for so long until he was finished. He had no idea of whether it was growth, or simply the time spent since the last time he’d slept, but there was no reason to find out right now.

  The woman smiled. “You must have been pushing yourself too hard sir, the others told me it must have been overexertion from too much reliance on support magic instead of getting sleep. When was the last time you slept?”

  Dominik thought for a moment. It could have been days, weeks, months, he had no idea. “Days, maybe weeks, I don’t know really. It’s been a while at least.”

  “Weeks?!”

  Later, he spoke to the mayor and some of the others, apparently his wife had come to check on him a few times, but left him in their care for now.

  The mayor asked. “If I might inquire sir, what were you doing when all of this happened? I was told some of the people heard voices, and a few of them were speaking to you directly.”

  “You could call it training, maybe more specifically druid training. I practiced healing the villagers from a distance, and speaking to them. I’ve never been able to use telepathy, not that I had been taught. So I learned how to do it.”

  The mayor and the few other people sitting around his table seemed happy to hear it was nothing terrible, and was in fact good. They also found it lined up with a few people being miraculously healed of old aches and pains, even little scars being healed. He bid them adieu and left to see his wife.

  He walked toward her cave, then looped back around and ran toward the dungeon. When he returned he met Fran and explained what he’d been doing.

  “That’s a very useful skill, I’m glad you’ve found out how to do it on your own. I would have brought you back, but I expected some of the villagers may offer to bring you here. And even if I had them bring you to the cave then I brought you here, they might go and check on you, or on us, and find it suspicious when we wouldn’t be there. And of course, protecting your main body took precedence.”

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  “Yes,” said Dominik. “I agree with your decision, but its somewhat disturbing that a week has passed. I have some plans I don’t wish to have interrupted. A personal matter of course, not worth explaining until I’ve finished.”

  Fran tried getting an answer, but he wouldn’t tell her, so she accepted simply waiting to see what it would be. After this Dominik went and spoke with the denizens of the dungeon.

  The dwarves were carving out their own living and working quarters, as he’d allowed them to do weeks ago. Of course, there weren’t many of them, but they had sturdy pickaxes and other tools made of his eldritch bones. And some of the troglodytes would choose to come help the dwarves, and even made themselves living quarters in the dwarven area, clearly enjoying each other’s company.

  Dominik hardened the walls and hallways that were finished. There weren’t many, but they were well made. Afterwards he continued to the lizardmen. They were in the area he’d made for them.

  A large open area in the cave. He’d made flowing water to prevent stagnation in the small lake he’d made in the cave, and he added mana crystals to the bottom to use light water purification spells to make sure it would always be clean.

  A large mana crystal on the roof of the room acted as a sun. The lighting was very similar, and it emitted a warmth similar to the natural sunlight outside. The lizardmen enjoyed lying beneath it. Some of the troglodytes also enjoyed the sunlight and swimming in the water. At least, those whose eyes had adjusted to the rapid evolution he’d enacted most quickly. Most others still had a slight sensitivity to this light and avoided the area completely.

  Dominik went to the hobbits next. They had a small home in the dungeon, and a very large garden. Dominik had created an artificial sun, like in the lizard’s room, and he hoped it would provide the nutrition required for the plants.

  He also put mana crystals under the dirt, which were supposed to provide the rest of the nutrition to make it a sort of fertile soil. Of course, this was all experimentation on Dominik’s part, he wouldn’t know if it worked, or how to adjust everything, or what to adjust really without plenty of trial and error.

  The halflings cared for the plants, and reported on anything that seemed unusual to them. They told him what they thought the problems were, and what they thought needed adjustments as best as they could. Dominik had the guildmaster send seed packets with ravens weeks ago for his research. Though he didn’t specify what kind of research of course.

  The halflings also had a large room not far from where they lived for growing mushrooms. The strange dwarf also came by to help with it, apparently dwarves were quite good at growing mushrooms in their own caves and such, it was a sort of tradition for them.

  Dominik let Xiaofang continue training, and met with her and the others at dinner. She was slightly more talkative, but only barely. And of course the troglodytes were in a good mood, they had even started trying to speak Gothic, and occasionally some other languages, he assumed. Some of them had spent a good amount of time with the other races, so it made sense they would try and communicate with them first. Or rather, that they had more experience with these different languages.

  Other than caring for the dungeon and the denizens of the dungeons, he spent his free time focusing on learning more fire magic, and in controlling it. But most of all, he focused on increasing the intensity of his fire magic. That would be the most important part of his plan, which he would need to execute soon. He wasn’t going to wait another year. Soon house Ostragoth would fall.