"Come on, Griffin, you're going to miss class," I say.

"It's boring anyway," Griffin grumbles, reluctantly getting dressed. "Mipsy stole my pants! Stupid cat."

"She did not!" Burdock protests. "You just lose stuff."

I miss having a room to myself in Hebron. Now that Burdock is back from school, I'm having to share a room with three other boys and a monster cat who is now the size of a panther. I have half a mind to move into one of the upstairs storerooms just to get some peace and quiet.

Griffin finally locates his pants (under his bed, right where he kicked them last night, of course) and declares himself ready to go. I put my Invocation focus necklace on before we head for the door.

As we step outside, I spot two figures with white hair, the taller one of them shooting monstrous bats out of the air with blasts of frost from her wand. I send my vis through the copper around my neck, point a finger at the flock, and a chain of lightning bolts fries three Basic-rank bats. I freaking love being able to do that. Even if it makes me feel a bit tingly afterward.

"I still can't believe you get monster swarms like this every year," Misty says.

"You regretting deciding to stay in Corwen for the season?" I ask.

"Void, no!" Misty laughs. "I'm getting so much experience from this. I've already gotten Wizardry (Elemental Barrage) up to level 22."

We head inside, dropping the younger kids off at the lecture room and heading for the library ourselves.

Jade is inside, sitting at a table reading a book about skyships. While Rowan returned to Talgarth for the fall season, Jade opted to stick around Corwen rather than hide in a hole full of dwarves, even if it is her Hearth now.

"Hey, Jade," Misty says. "Why didn't you want to stay in Hebron?"

Jade makes a face. "I wanted to do more drills around the boat, since I'm an [Apprentice Pirate], and didn't want to be stuck in a cave for months. I don't get as much experience and it sucks. Hopefully they'll get the ledge set up soon so we can get to Hebron from there instead of spending hours trudging through the Underswamps every time. There's not a lot I can do there to help out with all the crafting and things they're doing."

"Aren't you afraid you'll miss bonding with your family?" Misty asks.

"Not really," Jade says. "Hebron's weird and still working on becoming itself. I'm grateful to have a hole to hide in if I need to, but also grateful that it expects nothing of me. I want to stay close to the boat for the moment even if it's not going anywhere. Maybe we can hover it above the village and snipe bats from the deck later?"

"Sounds like fun," Misty says.

A young woman, heavily pregnant, comes into the library and flops down heavily into a cushy armchair. It takes me a moment to recognize her as my cousin, Daisy, back from Crux Academy and apparently prepared to start contributing to the population.

"Daisy!" I say. "I missed seeing you get back from Crux Academy."

"It's going to be weird not going back, too," Daisy says. "I'm still an [Apprentice Wizard] for now, but my naming day is on January 4th, so I will soon be finally turning 21 and picking a Journeyman class."

"Thank you for the subtle reminder of when your naming day is," I comment.

I saw this kid off to boarding school as a little girl and she has come home ready to be a mom. There are already several children under the age of 7 in this Hearth and soon there's going to be one more. If they keep going at this rate, we might have to expand the school in a few generations.

"Misty, this is my cousin Daisy," I say. "Daisy, my friend Misty Harrow. She joined my party in Gleam. There was a whole adventure. We fixed a thing and the bad guy got away. It was a little anticlimactic."

"You really need to work on your storytelling," Daisy laughs. "Misty, you planning on going to Crux Academy?"

Misty nods. "My family agreed to pay for it, but I'm still nervous."

"Don't be. It isn't half as dangerous as rumor makes it out to be. You will hardly ever get mauled unless you go around looking for trouble."

Jade puts in, "Isn't looking for trouble the whole point of attending a school that's a dungeon?"

"What about you, are you going?" Daisy asks.

"Basalt promised I could go if I wanted even if we had to go further in debt to Corwen to do it. Man, I want to get some treasure of my own, but the dungeon drops at Elite rank are enough to save up silver, not cover costs in gold."

"The gold will be rolling in once the wine starts flowing," I assure her.

I sit at the top of the tower and pull out the halfling Warlock's teacup, and use [Trace Connection] through it to see if I can get a sense for where she is, keeping an eye out for any wandering bats to shoot out of the sky. I get the vaguest impression that she's somewhere below me and in the general northwest direction, but the connection is weak and I can't even be certain she's still in Gleam.

Westminster's quest sits on my log, incomplete. I will probably run into her again at some point and need to 'stop' whatever she's doing. I'm not too worried. I hope she kicks a few things loose.

I put the teacup away. The essence contained in it probably won't last forever. Something she'd used since childhood or crafted herself would retain essence longer, but this was merely something she'd used daily for a few months. At least if it's safely tucked away in my bag of holding and not being brushed against by other aether and vis, it decays slower.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The village now has entirely too many babies and I've got three months of them to look forward to. The worst of it is that I can understand them all perfectly and they are all incredibly precocious but incredibly inane because they're still babies.

The red season passes with many bats slain and many feasts of delicious monstrous venison. I send ghosts out to survey the monsters in hopes of spotting some of the deer-things off by themselves that my party would be able to pick off, but wind up largely having to leave them to Uncle Falcon's party to hunt down.

Still, the lack of being able to leave the village doesn't mean I get nothing done, of course. Between reading, crafting, and parkour races around the village with Jade, I keep well occupied.

The dark season settles in in mid-November as the surviving monsters start to withdraw to wherever they come from. The deer monsters leave first, while the bats annoyingly linger for a while longer.

And at the end of November, my naming day.

You are now 10 years old. All physical attributes have increased by 1.

I always try to see if I actually feel any stronger, but the effect is subtle. Still, I prepared some weights to see if I could lift more. The difference between 12 Strength and 13 Strength isn't huge, but I definitely have a tiny bit less trouble lifting a heavy box than I did before, even without using [Feather Light] on it.

I opt not to take a midnight jog around the village to see how 13 Endurance compares with 12 and just go to bed. There will be cake and presents in the morning.

"Happy naming day, Drake!" Anise says. "I can't believe you're ten years old already. It seems like just yesterday we were getting kidnapped by goblins and lost in swamps!"

"Those wouldn't be key moments I want to remember," Daisy puts in.

Anise waves her off. "It's fine, it's fine, everything worked out okay!"

I receive a small pile of presents from various family members. Some books, both fiction and nonfiction. Some clothes, both dark devil-goat wool and more colorful imports. There's a jigsaw puzzle depicting a massive surreal space waterfall with a ship sailing up it.

I sort through the small pile of books, categorizing the adventure novels about skyships and the history book about skyships. There's also an instruction manual about how to tie 50 types of knots. I didn't even know there were 50 types of knots, but apparently Uncle Falcon thinks it's very important to know. I suppose I could always use more levels in [Rope Use].

A group of goblins arrives at the gates of the village shortly after noon, including Milo, Copper, and Griza. Having a Legendary in their party means they probably didn't need to worry too much about wandering monsters, but I notice something different in their auras.

Name: Milo Grubwick Tempest Tiganna Race: Goblin | Gender: Male | Rank: Heroic | Tier: Novice | Class: Diplomatic Child Disposition: Friendly | Mood: Cheerful

Name: Copper Hebron Tempest Tiganna Race: Dwarf | Gender: Male | Rank: Elite | Tier: Journeyman | Class: Instructive Craftsdwarf Disposition: Friendly | Mood: Chuffed

"Hey guys," I say. "Good to see you. And congratulations! When did you advance?"

"With the completion of the forge, Copper and I received rank advancements," Milo says. "The system told me… let me just send you the notification windows. You're probably curious about the class options I received."

Congratulations! Your civilization has entered the Bronze Age. Under your wise guidance, your people have thrived. You have attained Heroic rank.

For reaching a new rank, you may choose a class.

Class: Avaricious Child Description: Greatly increases experience gained while working toward the increase of your material wealth and improvement of your financial situation.

Class: Diplomatic Child Description: Greatly increases experience gained while working toward building strong diplomatic relations between your civilization and others.

Class: Progressive Child Description: Greatly increases experience gained while working toward the advancement of your civilization in any way.

I don't begrudge him ranking up so much faster than me. His accomplishments are comparatively much greater because he started with less.

"When you promised you'd help me rank up, I did not imagine it would take the form of spawning dwarves with skills that could be taught to my goblins, resulting in receiving civilization advancement Deeds. Will I become Legendary should they eventually reinvent computing technology?"

"I don't know which specific break points might be worth significant Deeds, but I suggest working toward a printing press."

Milo nods. "Fantastic idea. I don't suppose you know how one is actually made, do you?"

"Nope!" I say cheerfully. "We might need to reincarnate somebody who knows how to make one."

"Can we get Leonardo da Vinci?" Milo asks jokingly.

"He's expensive and has a long waiting list," I say. "I looked. He's fully booked for the next fifty lives. We can probably get someone who was once in the same building as da Vinci."

"Wait, we can summon specific people?" Milo asks.

"We can try, anyway, but yes, I can see their names and things about their lives."

"Would it be considered… inappropriate to summon my wife?" Milo asks quietly.

"What was her name?" I ask.

"Mary Eleanor Pennyworth née Grossman."

I send a message via [Astral Contact] to Pinion to check, and receive a reply after a few moments.

"She's alive out there somewhere," I say. "I can tell you her name if you want."

Milo frowns thoughtfully. "I do not currently have the means to go searching, regardless. We lack a vessel capable of inter-skymote flight. But we'll get one someday."

Searching the Heavens for your reincarnated loved one is romantic. I don't know how long it will take us to be able to leave the skymote, but I'm not in any rush. As it is, Milo hasn't even made it to adulthood yet and he has already made it to Heroic just because he spent the last decade working to drag goblin civilization out of the Stone Age and establish strong trading relationships and alliances with humans.

"So, did you come out this way just to wish me a happy naming day?" I ask.

"And we've brought a present, of course," Milo says. "It is no longer my own naming day, thanks to dying and reincarnating, but I have not forgotten that we once shared one because our cores were colluding to incarnate us on the same day. So we brought you something you might appreciate."

He offers me a crude hide scroll wrapped in sinew. I unroll it to find shaky writing in imperfect Common describing a formula on how to make goblin glue. It contains a number of highly specific warnings that make me wonder just how many goblin casualties their glue alone caused. On the other side of the scroll is a description of how to make a formula that can dissolve the glue.

"Klog sends her regards and regrets that she's too busy to make the trip," Milo says with a touch of amusement. "But I'm sure you'll get some use out of her special glue formula."

"I'm just glad that at least one of these ingredients can only be found in the Underswamps, because otherwise I'd be terrified of what a certain set of twins might do if they got their hands on this scroll."

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