One week and the salt evaporation pond and el are done. Rather than show random goblins how to operate it, I show Zaka, and he figure out who should know how to use it. Ultimately, salt be used for a lot of things, but it drastically increase the shelf life of smoked meat, and it improves the fvor of a lot of foods. I'm certain the goblins will put the pond to use. I did decide to make one additional ge to my initial design. Namely, it has two gates for closing off water. The first is much closer to the o, and the sed is at the pond itself. That way, iure, if necessary, more ponds be made to expand the salt produ.

  Iime it took me to finish that project, Zeb seems to have fully recovered, and he's back to testing pnts as potential food sources. Apparently, some of the oblins have started to think he's a little crazy because he's tinuing to test pnts. I don't fully disagree either, but sometimes you have to be a little crazy to make progress. Starting tomorrow, work begins in ear oh up the mountain.

  I've been w for almost ten days, and progress has actually been happening much faster than I thought. The reason for that has been assistance from goblins and Zaka. Zaka seems to have vinced some that this is a project worth w on, and we've had teams of ten w with me at any given point. I suppose if you are making the long trek up the mountain once a month, it'd probably be o have a more fortable and safe walk and down. As such, I've beeing at mana capacity every day, and the others are hauling and pg the cut bricks in the way I've described, so I just fuse them together, which takes very little mana.

  At the current pace, we've been building about fifty feet a day, and as of today, we're about halfway between the reservoir and the vilge. In aen days or so, we'll be able to run carts from the quarry down to the vilge. Then we'll head from the stop he quarry up the mountain towards the stop point. Thankfully, during wihe reservoir is basically empty, so cuttione from it has beeively easy. Each foot of length in the road is taking about sixteen cubic feet of stoo build, which means that after ten days here, we've actually only expahe reservoir by about 2%. If we keep w at a det pace though, we'll probably expand it by over 10% this winter, which may not seem like much, but it'd at for about 18 hours of the stream's non-flood flow rate, which really is quite a lot for one guy cutting stone.

  Three more days of work, and although there isn't anythio report with the path, there has been a breakthrough in pnts from Zeb's side of things. He found a different forest clearing where the ground was quite muddy despite the ck of ret rain. In that clearing, there were a lot of somewhat tall stalky pnts. When he pulled some, he found that multiple in close proximity all shared the same rger bulb root. So he brought one full pnt back, and it seems that not only is the root bulb edible, but the stalk seems to be as well.

  I gave him some advi how to make a floodable field, and told him to try to make one on the downstream side of the vilge withiy walls. I told him to make it pretty small, sihis would be a testing field. If it turns out to be useful, then we try to build a rger field outside the walls, but we o have the goblins observe the pnts for a longer period of time before we sider them to be useful friculture. Once he gets the field done, he'll transpnt a handful of the pnts into the garden for more observation.

  Only six more days, and the leg of the path between the vilge and the dam is pleted. With this, we're probably about 1/15th of the way doh the eh up the mountain. Which is a pretty slow pace, of course, it'd be even slower if I didn't have a bunch of the goblins from the vilge helping me. Another nice bonus of the current work is that we now have a path from the vilge up to the dam, which means the trip to start the work here each day is going to be even easier than it was before.

  Despite the easier trip to the dam and reservoir each day, over the past ten days, the pace of stru has slowed quite a bit, down to only thirty feet a day. The reason for this is that many of the goblins are w for less time than before, or have quit entirely. Acc to Zaka, it's because hauling the stone uphill is much harder than downhill. Zaka himself hauls a lot more stohaher goblins, so the pace hasn't slowed that much, and having regur goblins still digging out the path down to the bedrock is still work that they easily do. Either way, we've only made it about 300 feet, and the stop isn't for another 900 feet, so we'll see how everything shakes out for stru going forward.

  The past eight days have seen a few different improvements that I've been happy about. First, Zeb finished up the test field, and after I double checked it, he transpnted a handful of the new pnts into it. Sihen, he's started helping oh stru. Another major improvement came from a few goblins that had been helping prestiging into improved enduranbsp; As path stru has been tinuing, they've had to cut some trees down, and a few maxed out their levels retly.

  With their improved endurance, and Zeb helpih fusing and cutting stone, stru is back up to fifty feet a day. Although that was ial improvements, so we're only at about six-hundred feet pleted right now, or about halfway to the nding.

  Fifteen days, and we've gotten to, and pleted, the nding. As the dista further away, the pace slowed down, because it took longer for the goblins to haul materials up the mountain. We've decided to take a short break for a few days now. That should give the goblins some time to rest, but also gives me some time to make a couple of carts. Since we now have a plete se of the path up the mountain, we may as well take advantage of the cart tra it to haul stone up the mountain. If possible, it'd help us even more if Kaga would tribute, since we know he single handedly push two full carts up a track by himself. Of course, I'd also like to try the winch system for the carts, but we'd literally housands of feet of thick rope to attempt that right now.

  I'm going to have to think on ideas for a meical braiding mae so that the goblins actually plete that request. If I e up with one, I'll build a new workshop in town so that the goblins make rope more effectively.

  After three days of rest, I've made a few carts for stru purposes, and I also made a small w model for meical braiding. It involves three bobbins, twears, and a figure eight track such that the bobbins trace a path for braiding material. In a full sized one, I'll have carriers on the bobbins, and a pair of wood drums that hold the finished braid taut while pulling it out of the mae.

  So, despite the fact that I could begin path stru again, I'm going to take a few days here to build a rope making shop instead. I'll probably make a few of these maes, and they'll each be designed for different size threads, so that the goblins have some flexibility in what they work with. The rgest one I have in mind will almost certainly require that I gear it down signifitly to be able to operate it for any realistic amount of time.

  It took five days of work to get the maes made, the shop pleted, and to show the goblins who were ied how to operate everything safely. The good news, is now the limit on rope is actually a problem of gathering raw materials, rather than manufacturing. The bad news is that they'll need a lot of raw materials.

  Another problem on the horizon is that any day now, the mountain snow is going to start to melt, and we'll get the heavy spring rains again, which means I'll be limited in the areas I cut stone from in the reservoir safely. In order to facilitate that, I actually o build a bridge over the upper part of the stream now, so that when it's running full bst it doesn't halt work entirely.