Chapter 18 Just A Random Joe

A few comrades and I were ordered by one of the dryads to go with the Alicanto and find ore to take back to our village.

It was a simple task to follow the Alicanto to a vein of ore then mine said ore.

The past day and a half were just us building and building and building no break.

That woman was a slave driver.

The only time I have heard her not call us slaves was when we were in the presence of the Lord.

In fact she might just have split personality disorder or something. The change in mood is just so drastic.

When around us she is a slave driver of the highest order but around the Lord she is the sweetest gal you'll ever meet.

Of course we weren't ungrateful to our creators.

They gave us land to build, food to eat, and tasks to do what else could we want.

Seriously we were programmed to like work so really even if I complained it was all half hearted because we loved our jobs.

When we were first created we were tasked with making temporary accommodation for ourselves and so we did it and we had a hell of a lot of fun doing that.

Once we were done with our temporary houses we slept and the next day we were tasked with expanding the territory facilities.

We were given blueprints for tree houses.

Oh the irony dryads giving us blueprints for trees, even now I still snicker at it.

…

"Hey Joe what you snickering at we got to get working" a friend of mine yelled in my ear.

"He, nothing just reminiscing,"

"Reminiscing! We haven't even been alive for 3 days. What can you reminisce about" my friend laughs.

"HA! Yeah anyways where are we I kinda spaced out and just followed the group"

"No worries bud, we're about to set camp the Alicanto found a vein apparently, it's actually why I had to break you from your thoughts"

"Ah good, good am I doing the digging,"

"Yep saved the digging job for you may bud"

"Hell yeah"

"Heh, go dig your hole bud I'll point you towards where we need to dig."

…

My bud directed me towards the dig site.

It had been cordoned off so that we would know where to go.

Iron can be mined in several ways, the one we chose to do was an open mine where we would just dig massive amounts of dirt where it would then be transported over to another group where the rocks in the dirt would be taken out.

Those rocks would then be sent to the forge group where they would burn the rocks at the right temperature where the rocks would be melted but the iron within would not have reached its melting point.

Unfortunately I was not able to dig the hole yet.

We had no tools, just a bird and a dream but that wouldn't be for long.

Some of the others were setting up a forge using clay that we had found on the bottom of the waterfall in the territory.

Although it wouldn't be the best it would still allow us to melt the rocks that we find.

…

And so the mining went.

All I had to do all day was dig and dig and I was happy.

By the second day we had excavated enough to supply the miners, ie: me and a few others with metal shovels and picks allowing our efficiency to soar.

There is no greater joy for me than digging.

Up and down. Up and down goes my pick.

It had been hours since I had started but it was still as enjoyable as ever.

Although this would be the only day we mined for now as we don't have sufficient storage devices.

…

By the end of the day we had mined it all the ore that we could carry comfortably. Hopefully the next time we go out the lord will have us make carts beforehand so that we may bring back more.

But that would be another day today. Each of us 20 would head back with 15 pounds of processed iron ore on our backs and a further 5 pounds of unprocessed iron ore.

That was all we could comfortably carry without hindering our movements too much.

…

We were halfway back when we were ambushed by a pack of wolves however there was no reason to worry.

While the Alicanto species aren't exactly known for their combat power the Lords Alicanto has sufficient combat power to defeat this group of wolves.

As soon as the wolves approached us the leader was already dead with a fatal case of claw to head.

The rest of the wolves were cowed with their leader dead.

However one wolf was brave enough to charge at the Alicanto, baring its teeth to prepare to bite at the Alicanto's neck.

The other wolves, seeing the courage of their comrades, had finally made up their mind and… ran

"Huh" I said out loud the other wolves must be much smarter than we thought.

The lone wolf that had dashed towards Alicanto was brutally killed.

It was as if the Alicanto had seen the attack coming in advance as it had shifted its position to angle its beak toward the eye of the wolf.

The wolf was not able to change course in time and was pierced through the eye into the brain.

…

There were only a few more interruptions to our little exposition back home but they were all dealt with by the Alicanto.

We had nothing to do, just lug and lug our way back home.

When we got back the first thing we did was bring all the ore to the storage area set up by Lady Melia.

…

"Oh that's convenient."

"What's convenient?" Aoif asks.

"Seems my mining team is back, while we don't have the copper that we need for the teleportation we do have the iron now."