I worked for a few more months on the handful of remaining crystal growth apparatuses to try to finish the new lab space.  By winter, I was down to only one apparatus left to complete.  After it''s complete, I should be able to theoretically grow a mana crystal from a tiny seed all the way up to the 16-foot size of the largest apparatus.  I was interrupted, however, by a construction team notifying me that they were going to start work on the crane and pit above the mana crystal lab that I''d previously planned out.


    Since their work is going to take a few years, I''m glad they''re starting on it now so there won''t be any trouble when it comes time to move the 16-foot crystal out of the lab.  If my calculations are correct, that crystal will weigh close to 100 tons, so I''m glad we''ve already started making steel cable to handle that.


    At the same time, Zeb has also sent a construction team to get started on the construction of the lightstone facility I discussed with him.  Or, at least, the sea wall portion of that facility.  He''s reached the point of adding another construction team again, so more projects can happen at the same time.  Additionally, with the majority of the dwarves having left, we had quite a bit of surplus housing available, so there is less pressure to build it quite as fast.


    After I finish up with this last crystal growth apparatus, I plan on going back to the city for a little bit.  I want to talk with Zeb about new projects related to the tunnel, and check in on how the goblins we summoned in the tests have been adapting.  If things are manageable, I have a few new ideas to try out to see if we can increase our effective population growth rate.


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    After a month of work, I''d finished up the last of the crystal apparatuses, and I''d given the construction crew working on the pit enough instructions that they''d be able to work on their own for some time without any problems.  I discussed with Zeb plans for improving the tunnel through the mountain and beginning work on a new city on the far side of the island.


    Previously, there were multiple good reasons to build a city on the far side of the island.  Now, however, the reasons distill down to basically defense and resource access.  We no longer have any trade partners, and with the dwarves not being an option anytime soon, future trade will be limited.  That is still the side that we ship off in our longboats to have soldiers periodically hunt the giant lizards on the far island and there is a lot of unused land, so there are advantages to having a village over there at the very least.  My idea of having a merchant capitol designed to be impressive and attractive to foreigners, however, has evaporated.


    I find myself a little frustrated that we''re basically being pigeon holed into developing more military weapons to keep ourselves safe.  The dwarven king clearly views us as a threat, at least some humans view us as dangerous, and the elves are using us for their own purposes.  I''d like to think that when the next demon invasion occurs, maybe the demons themselves could be something of an ally, but based on how Zaka and Shasta have both talked about them, I doubt that will be the case.  Our society is quite the distant offshoot from what would be considered normal demon culture.  If we want access to mainland resources, I can only think of three options we have left.


    First, try to find an obscure trade partner in some small human country that we can use as a middleman to get what we want.  I''m not a big fan of that, as it still opens us up to growing negative sentiments, and the middleman can just as easily be cut off if our trading is discovered.  If I can make a large list of items I''d want to buy a lot of to last us a significant amount of time, we could potentially make it work for a few years though.


    Second, try to have a large impact in the next demon invasion on behalf of whichever side seems more amenable to future trade.  If we''re making new military technology anyway, the line between offense and defense can get quite blurry, so this could be an option.  Even if it doesn''t repair our image entirely with mainland countries, it''d send a message that we can''t just be ignored.  If we have a large impact, any smart nation would probably not want to be outright enemies with us.


    Third, stage our own invasion to claim territory.  This is the option I''m least attracted to, but it could be an option.  It''s honestly more of a follow up to the second option, if push came to shove.  Ultimately, while we''ve got a fairly resource rich set of islands, they''re still islands, and what resources we have are more finite than any continent would have.  Further, since these islands are volcanic, we''ve also been quite limited in our specific ores and metals we have access to.  Who knows what effect new metals would have when infused with fluorite, and that''s only scratching the surface of what sort of magical effects might exist out there.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    We''ve been doing a good job of converting what we do have into useful items, but not having access to trade has started to really wear on me.  The dwarves and humans that I''ve worked with have been a good source of knowledge from their homelands, but most of them aren''t specialists in the fields that I''d like to get more info on.  For example, are there any other specialty ores or metals on the mainland?  Could we, for example, get access to nickel or cobalt?  Cobalt, could potentially be found in similar deposits to the ones we''ve been mining, but the technology level of the rest of the world is a little odd.


    They already have hand powered centrifuges, for example, but also seem to have settled largely into late medieval tendencies.  Perhaps these pure metals are known, but their usefulness is so limited with the rest of their technology that only a small number of specialists know of, or use them.  Even if I found Cobaltite, I''d be hard pressed to recognize it or even refine it.


    In any case, having a village of some kind on that side of the island is a strategic asset, at the very least.  Given the large bay, it''s the easiest location for an enemy to invade us with a large scale assault.  Having a static population, complete with food and housing, makes stationing more soldiers on that side of the island logistically easier for us.


    Ultimately, Zeb wasn''t that keen on trying to build a whole new village over there, but I was able to talk him into starting the work for it.  That side of the island is a bit wider close to the sea, so building a sea wall over there is quite the large undertaking.  Thankfully, there is already a massive amount of stone stockpiled from building the tunnel.


    The tunnel also reduces the travel time from one side of the island to the other to less than a day, and the travel itself, while dark, it actually quite easy, with a very smooth gradient and flat ground.  Which then brought me to the second thing I wanted to talk with him about, the tunnel construction teams.


    Soon, the central area will be complete under the mountain, and a year or so from now the other half of the tunnel will probably be widened all the way to the center.  I know he''d probably be glad to convert these mining teams back to construction teams, but I''ve got a list of things I''d like done in the tunnel.  I''d like for a moderately sized sewage pipe to be excavated under the pathway.  We already drain a considerable amount of water out of the tunnel, so I''d like to set up small rest stops throughout the tunnel.  Ultimately, in a dark place like this I''d hate for it to slowly build up filth.


    So, I want travelers to be able to go to the bathroom, and that be separate from the water that drains out of the tunnel.  We''d just redirect a small amount of the water into the sewer pipe, and that should help keep the running water clean and available for drinking.  That project is actually quite a bit smaller than the overall undertaking of digging the tunnel, so it should only take a couple of years to complete.  The other project, which is much bigger, is that I''d like to dig two flanking tunnels from the central area, perpendicular to our existing tunnel''s path.


    These would only be the size of the initial scouting tunnel, and would ascend, rather than descent towards the surface.  The reason I want these two new tunnels are two-fold.  I want to have new scouting for mining is the primary reason, but secondarily, it would add more water flow into, and eventually out of, the tunnels and to our city.  Long term, I''d actually like to expand the central area slowly, until it can house something of a population itself, if we can get reasonable lighting in there.


    Zeb was far more hesitant to agree to those two projects than he was to the idea of a new village.  The benefits of the sewer pipe, compared to its time cost could at least have some benefit as the tunnel gets used more casually over time. The idea of new scouting tunnels, however, wasn''t worth it in his eyes.  After some back and forth, I had a pretty good understanding of why they aren''t worth it to him as well.


    Outside of hitting a pocket of mana crystals or iron, any resource we find is basically just going to get stockpiled.  We still have large stockpiles of lead, zinc, and copper just sitting unused.  By comparison, we do have dozens of construction projects lined up that would have short term payoffs.  If either situation changes though, he''s more than willing to discuss the issue again at that point.  For now at least, we''ll only be getting the sewer pipes put in, unless conditions change.