The return trip up the mountai different than it had all the times I'd made it in the past. The sights were the same, and the path was familiar, but the emotions I felt along the way were sadness a. This is partially self-imposed, to remio be more careful. It might not just be myself that gets hurt if I do something reckless.

  As such, I won't be growing any me crystals for the foreseeable future. I have a few projects that should be more muhat I work on to keep developing new useful objects. I've got a lot of the unknowal ore ready to smelt, the path down the mountain is only about half-way done, and I would like to prrow spuds up here.

  Given how much meat I was being given before, both Zeb and I were ing the spud terraces, but I 't say that we'll have a steady food supply from here on out, so adding that to our repertoire is a good idea. For now, lenty of smoked meat from all the excess from the lizard siege, but we'll need a steady food source moving forward.

  It's been a day since Zeb and I returo the mountain home, which is once again my only home. We got everything re-opened without any issues, and so we've decided on our course of a for the few weeks. It's actually still a bit chilly up here on the mountain, although the snow has at least melted. Normally, we return up here a few weeks from now, after there has been more time for it to warm up. As such, there is very little pnt life growing right now.

  For the few weeks, we'll make sure that the spud terraces are kept in good dition, ahem anized appropriately to ehat spud pnts grow well. Ohing I'd like up here is a smokehouse of our own. Food on a drying rack isn't nearly as good as smoked meats, and the smoked meat keeps longer. I 't say I'll go hunting a lot, but I'd like to at least have the option up here, if the opportunity arises. As such, I won't make it particurly rge either. I pn on carving it out of the mountain, like I did for Zeb's house. I'll ect the hallway from Zeb's house to it, so it has access from both inside and outside the cave plex.

  It took five days to carve out the new smokehouse area up here. I sometimes fet how much faster I work up here with access to the crystals to recharge my mana. Which was the whole reason I attempted to make the giant crystal for the vilge in the first pbsp; With the smokehouse done so early, Zeb and I started to brainstorm projects to work on.

  Oion is to smelt all that mystery metal ore we've crushed up. It's quite bor intehough, and unless we find a good flux agent, I don't know that it's useful in it's current form. Maybe when the goblin envoy arrives, we ask for some seashells to be brought up month, and attempt to use them as a flux agent, although I'm hesitant to ask for anything right away. It'd probably be better to wait a little while before I ask for anything to be brought up to me.

  A sed option is to work oh up the mountain. Finishing that would at least make the trip easier for the goblin envoys that e visit, and might help repair my image among at least a few of the goblins.

  The third project has some potential, but is a project that rivals the reservoir in the vilge in scale. The idea is to build a new reservoir up here, well above the cave entrance, with the purpose of using it to harness free meical energy from rain and snow. By digging out a rge reservoir a few hundred feet up the mountain, we could pipe the water down all that vertical distance before having it spin a turbine bde, utilizing all the gravitational potential energy. The differeween this and the reservoir in the vilge is that there isn't a tinuous stream up here, so all the water would be collected from snow melt and rain.

  A fourth idea that I didn't discuss with Zeb, but one I'm ied in, is leaving the cave for a while, and expl. Since Zeb isn't as skilled in bat, this is something that I'd be doing alone. I wouldn't be doing this right away either, but potentially after we finish one of the other ideas I'd sider it. After all, I've only really been in my small local area here. I've explored a little years ago, but I really would like to have a better y of the nd here. It's only a few thousao the summit of the mountain from here as far as I tell, so that itself would only take a day or so to make the round trip.

  Zeb and I decided to work oh between the goblin vilge and here. We've been w on it for the past eleven days now. It'll make the goblin's trip up here better, and it's something the goblins are already alright with me w on. The other two projects are o the goblins, so we decided it would be best to keep from potentially feeding any political motivations of the goblins opposed to new projects. As for the idea of expl, I haven't brought it up yet with Zeb. I also want to let the goblin envoys know, so that if I'm missing, they aren't suddenly ed.

  The goblin envoys arrive tomorrow, and I'm actually thinking about at least going up to explore the peak first. As I've been w oh, I've found myself craving the ge of pace, and to do something new. As such, tonight, I'll bring it up with Zeb, and tomorrow I'll let the envoys know that's what I pn on doing. I doubt anyone will care about it, sidering it's not that far. However, after that, I'll pn out what I want to explore moving forward based on what I see from the peak.

  The path itself is ing along well. I estimated st year that it'd take another year of work to plete, and I'm shortening my estimate now to about six months. I've got two reasons I'm shortening my estimate. The first is that both myself and Zeb have better mana capacities than I was expeg when I made the estimate, rgely due to the events of the lizard siege. The sed reason is that I wasn't pnning on w on it full time before. I nning for only w on it in off time, and while I had no other projects to work on.

  The goblin envoys didn't seem to care if I went up the mountain to see the summit. Zeb said he wants to e along, and I almost said no, but I figure for a day trip, it'll be fine. We also got hat the goblins are still w oh from their side as well, so I'm shortening the estimate to between four and five months, depending on how effectively their side works. I'm sure it'll be nice for those travelling up the mountain to not have te through forests to make it up here. In some ways, it makes me feel a bit less like I'm exiled, and more like I'm just living outside city limits.

  I'm not sure whely we'll go up to the summit of the mountain. I'm trying to wait for a cloudless day, so that I have as much of a vieossible. Until then, we'll just keep w oh up. We've been felling more trees along the path as well, and at this point, they're getting too far to haul all up in one go, so they've started to pile up. When I'm waiting for my mana to recharge, I'll either haul some wood back up the mountain to use crystals to recharge, or process the trees to make logs that I haul along the path. Ohe eh is do should only take a few days to haul all the remaining wood either up or down, since we'll be able to use carts to move it from oion to the , until it reaches its destination.

  Until that point though, I want the wood to be covered, so it doesn't rot from rain. As such, I'm sidering building an intermediate depot along the path, where materials could be stored. I'm not sure if it'll get much use outside of this particur situation, but since I'd rather not waste a bunch of wood now, so I'm going to start on it at the stop ih.