Nateaser: Reborn As My Love Interest

Nati - Chapter Thirty One

The time has come.

With the Goddess out of town, I could finally concentrate on my work. I took a deep breath before the moment of truth and aimed at my wooden target, pulling the trigger. The bowstring made a loud twang, nicking the fins of the bolt, and flew right over it.

"Come on, Nati, that was embarrassing," I mumbled, but nobody saw that. I wanted to test my crossbow ages ago, but things got hectic. Solo experimenting was a good idea.

"Timber!" An orc yelled, and a tree came crashing down.

Last week flew by. The orcs cleared a huge chunk of the forest to build a wall hundreds of yards in diameter. They left space for future expansion, enclosing the bathing place with its treeline intact and leaving only small gaps for the gates and the stream.

"It will give out five logs with some leftover..." The woodworkers discussed their next step. They cut the trunks into fifteen-foot pieces, and a third of it was buried into the ground. The one they studied looked like Hickory, a perfect material for my crossbows.

The first wall was finished in three days, and they started to build a second ring. Slightly shorter and a yard inwards, they piled earth between them. They dug a trench with Lambert and Omerta racing each other, who moved more dirt with a single spell. I wanted to learn magic too.

"Not bad for a human." I heard the witch. "I guess you won this time. This is what I get for not specializing in earth magic."

"It's not my strong suit either, I only know what was needed for agriculture." The wizard answered. "I'll have you teach me your tricks as a reward then, how does your barrier spell sound?"

If I was already at the point where I had to decide which spell I learned next... But I had my tasks. While they built lookout towers and the stream filled the ditches, I was to provide the weapons to defend ourselves.

The place became unrecognizable compared to how I found it. The beastmen built different projects. Fenna's volunteers visited the swamp two days ago, while I studied the map, and gathered clay with the orc kids.

They loved to play there and formed figurines from the mud. The craftsmen used wooden molds to make bricks instead and built multiple large kilns in the village to burn the clay for two days. The blacksmith lent his brand-new bellows out, and the operation ran smoothly. He helped with materials too, limiting the time spent on my crossbow.

"Can we take this log?" The harmony between the races seemed remarkable, considering how suspicious the fox girl was the first time.

Some beastmen worked to turn trunks into planks using handheld saws, which seemed tedious, but they made good progress. The stream wasn't strong enough to power a sawmill.

"...If you cool it too fast, the nail will shatter when you hammer it into the wood..." I caught a glimpse of the blacksmith leaving the shop. Other than Fenna's volunteers, more beastmen arrived, and one became his apprentice, getting a crash course.

The small tribe I found two weeks ago shaped into a proper settlement, but I wasn't thrilled about the name...

"The windows aren't completely symmetrical, move that to the left." The one responsible for this terrible mistake shouted. Fenna's people constructed her embassy today, a solid building with the foundations only laid this morning, but some walls were already standing. They used bricks and wood, and the orc shacks next looked like children's hideouts.

Even the mess hall seemed shabby in comparison, and this was only the start. I wanted a bathhouse with a sauna, warehouses, a town hall, and more new houses. The beastmen's chieftain wasn't keen on the old shacks.