We arrived at the Narrows a little later than scheduled. The sun was now setting, and the goblins were out in force, cackling and screeching into the night. In order to protect us from those nocturnal little fuckers, I had Sapphire use > to shape the terrain. Now we’ve got a 3 meter tall earthen wall completely surrounding the camp with a single narrow ramp connecting the top of the wall to the camp.Since we were trying to avoid attracting attention, no fire was lit. We quietly ate our rations while watching the sunset from on top of the walls. Watching the sunset over the Acheron River was quite an experience. At first, the sky looked like it was on fire. Then the blazing red sky gave way to the encroaching darkness slowly but surely. Eventually, the sun disappeared under the river, as if the mighty river swallowed it whole. This river, about 1-2 klicks wide at the Narrows, was the western boundary of human civilization on this entire continent. It flowed fiercely and proudly

Before I could blink, spring had arrived. The 3 months since my trip to the Narrows have been busy, to say the least. And the ever-growing to-do list showed no sign of slowing down. Between upgrading my gear, designing armored carts, managing my forge-smithy, training new apprentices, raising a wolf mana-beast puppy on the down low, hunting for mana crystals, and inventing a knockoff of the MG-42, I hardly have any time left to sleep. Natalia had 239 employees of the Galahad Trading Company. However, only a few dozen of them were able-bodied men. At this point, it was more accurate to call the Company a battered women’s shelter slash temporary orphanage than an actual company. After the company meeting, only 184 of the employees had expressed interest in “moving out of the city” with Natalia. The rest of them (mostly men) wanted to strike out elsewhere in Carnwennan, perhaps thinking that this city was the best they could ever realistically hope for. I suspected that once she told the

I was abruptly awakened by the sound of my bedroom door bursting open. Loki instantly jumped out of my bed and growled like a good boy that he is, but then relaxed a bit when he saw that it was Emma who suddenly entered.“Rummy! Wake up! Something terrible has happened!” Emma urgently shouted. I had no fucking idea what was happening, but my Ranger training instantly took over. “Alright, tell me what happened while I get ready.” I calmly replied as I began to gear up for battle. Within a minute, I was fully dressed for battle. Unfortunately, one minute was all Emma needed to tell me how badly I fucked up. The supply run convoy that I told Nairi and Prompto to take part of got attacked by those Yellow Shirt morons. “Why?!? Do these idiots know what they’ve done?” I loudly complained. What could they possibly gain from this!? Is this some 4D chess move I didn’t understand? Thanks to this dumb stunt, their allies in the negotiating room would either have to give up outrageous concessi

*BOOM!*Another prototype violently exploded. Nairi yelped in fright as the broken pieces of the prototype scattered all over the testing ground. I sighed in defeat. “Well, let’s clean this up and take a quick break…I need to think...” It’d been almost a full day, and zero progress had been made. All of the prototype firing mechanisms I’d tried so far had resulted in the cartridge eventually getting stuck outside the chamber. And when the firing pin struck it outside of the chamber… boom. This was a natural result of having a machine gun with such a high rate of fire- eventually a jam would result in the gun catastrophically blowing up. If it weren’t for the fact that I only put a quarter of the usual amount of the elemental dust in the test ammunition, my eyebrows would’ve been burned clean off by now. Damn, this was frustrating! Based on the results so far, the rate of fire was simply too high for the receiver to handle and the firing pin failed to stop when the gun was jammed.Na

Our convoy, which consisted of 6 armored carts and 3 regular carts (that we borrowed from the enemy), quickly made its way to the eastern city gate. Fortunately, the guards were too busy dealing with the fallout from the city-wide sandstorm and we easily slipped through. The travel plan was similar to the path we walked on our last exploration- exit the city through the east via Clarent Road and loop around the city through goblin country. We didn’t need to pick a fight with the Rangers in the west and we didn't want to.After we left the city, we noticed that a pursuit force of about 120 men was patiently stalking us from behind on the flat country road. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that they were waiting for the men from Clarent to sandwich us for a pincer attack. We could lose them in the woods, but the sun was almost setting. Traveling in the Wild with this many people in the night with only half the amount of armored carts was a recipe for disaster. So while I would rea