All My Summons Become Divine Girls

Chapter 213: Seventy-Two Hours

The next two days disappeared into ore carts, wall repairs, and the steady rhythm of a town relearning how to work. Every morning the miners marched east under escort, every evening the stockpile behind the registry grew taller, and every night Marrick wrote numbers that would have been a fortune anywhere else in the kingdom.

The boy grew through all of it, which would have been normal if he were growing at a normal speed.

"He doesn’t fit the shirt anymore," Vella reported on the third morning, holding up the tiny outfit a seamstress had gifted them four days ago, "the one that fit him perfectly when we came down the mountain."

"Aria," Hajin said, watching the boy hang upside down from a ceiling beam for no reason anyone could explain.

"He’s grown four centimeters since hatching," she said from his shoulder, tilting her head at the upside-down child, "so his clothes will last about a week each. The seamstress should start charging you a subscription."

[ dungeon_astronomer: ] four centimeters in three days is genuinely terrifying math, at this pace he’ll be borrowing Hajin’s clothes by autumn

[ chairman_of_naps: ] the seamstress is about to have the most reliable job in the region

[ kernel_panda: ] hold on, did the system mascot just make a JOKE? character development in real time

He decided not to think about where that math ended, mostly because the day already had a deadline on it.

The seventy-two hour estimate ran out around noon, so he spent it at the mine with Juna at the treeline and Loccy planted in front of the main shaft, standing so still that only her ears kept moving. The miners worked in tense silence behind her, every clang of a pick followed by a dozen glances toward the forest.

Nothing came for the first hour, then Juna’s ears snapped toward the northern slope a moment before the birds went quiet.

"Pack incoming," she called out, already moving along the ridge line, "six of them, boar-types, two hundred meters and not slowing down."

The miners scrambled back toward the shaft entrance while Hajin stayed exactly where he was, sitting on an ore cart with the boy in his lap. Loccy turned to him with her whole face asking the question, practically vibrating on the spot.

"All yours," he confirmed.

A single wing unfolded behind her in a flare of pale gold, the hammer forming in her grip a heartbeat before the first boar crashed out of the treeline. It was a three-Shard at best, charging in a dead straight line with its head lowered, so it had time to register exactly one swing.

The hammer caught it mid-charge and sent it cartwheeling back into the second boar, both of them going down in a tangle that plowed a trench through the slope.

She was already gone from where she had been standing, appearing above the third with the hammer raised, cratering it into the ground with a sound the miners felt through their feet.

[ GachaAddictGreg: ] the bunny has ended three lives in four seconds

[ StoneColdViewer: ] imagine being a boar, minding your own business, coming back to your old feeding grounds after the scary landlord finally leaves, and the first thing you meet is HER

[ MiladyVella: ] she’s been sulking since the holding record broke, this is therapy

[ PickaxePete: ] the miners stopped working to cheer, this is the best content on any world

[ ashley (Mod): ] Six boars against one Loccy... someone really should have warned the boars.

The last three boars actually tried to run, which improved nothing about their situation. Loccy ran the fastest one down before it reached the trees, swinging with enough restraint to leave the corpse intact, then dragged all six back to the shaft entrance in two trips like she was tidying up a room.

The miners cheered her name from the shaft, and she stood there soaking it in with her fists on her hips, her sulk from the past three days visibly evaporating.

Hajin walked the kill line with the boy on his chest, cutting each core free while Aria logged the yield. Six low-grade cores sat in his palm by the end, still warm, and the boy had not blinked once since the first one came free.

"You know what, this actually solves your food problem," he realized, handing one over and watching it disappear in three crunches, "the mountain feeds you now. Marrick is going to cry from relief."

[ TaxpayerOnEarth: ] the "food" line item just became self-sustaining, the books are healing

[ kernel_panda: ] boar-to-baby pipeline, a perfect closed economy

The cleanup took the rest of the afternoon, dragging carcasses to the butcher cart because meat was meat with the granaries this low. Near the end of it, the boy wiggled out of Hajin’s arms and wandered to the exposed rock face beside the shaft, pressing one small palm against the stone.

Something under the surface answered him, a faint line of light tracing through the rock like a vein waking up. Hajin caught it from the corner of his eye, and it was gone before he could even turn his head fully. The boy stood there for a long moment with his palm flat against the stone, then looked back at Hajin and smiled like nothing had happened.

"Aria, did you catch that?"

"Give me a moment," she said, floating over to the rock face and hovering there for longer than her scans usually took, "...nothing. No anomalous readings, and the mana here looks exactly how it should. For what it’s worth, I don’t like that answer either."

’I know what I saw,’ he thought, studying the blank stone while the boy toddled back and reclaimed his spot on his chest, ’and rock doesn’t light up on its own.’

He filed it next to every other question this mountain refused to answer, because the practical problem in front of him was bigger. Today was six boars, but the estimate said the whole eastern sector would refill within weeks, while his entire security plan was currently one bunny who needed sleep and a wolf who could not be everywhere.

"We can’t rotate four people around a mine, a town, and a border forever," he admitted on the walk back, thinking through the roster out loud, "Elise and Sable are already doubled up on patrols. We need actual soldiers."

"The town barely has enough hands for the fields," Juna pointed out, falling into step beside him, "you’d be arming farmers."

"Farmers with forged gear and something to protect," he shrugged, adjusting the drowsy weight on his chest, "Cassie’s group froze at the sight of a horned rabbit when I picked them up, and now they run my patrols. People learn fast when someone finally bothers teaching them."

The sun was almost gone when they reached the gate, which was when he noticed Juna had stopped walking.

She stood a few steps back on the road with her nose raised, her ears angled toward the ridgeline south of the mine road.

"Two men were up on that ridge today," she said slowly, turning to follow the scent along the wind, "hours, judging by how deep the smell sits, tucked behind the rocks where nobody working here has any reason to sit. Tobacco, oiled leather, and horses shod for long roads."

"Watching the mine all day before riding east," he concluded without needing a second to think, "someone wants to know exactly how much gold this mountain gives up before they come take it."

He followed her gaze to the ridge, one hand rising on instinct to cover the back of the sleeping boy’s head. to the ridge, one hand rising on instinct to cover the back of the sleeping boy’s head.

"So the monsters came back on schedule," he muttered, turning the day’s math over one more time, "and it looks like the rats did too."