Chapter 1800: Bunnies Need Orders
While Karl was busy in the shop, the Tiny World was going crazy with productivity.
The bunnies were ramping up their need to be helpful, now that they were settled into their new homes, and the Dragon Priestesses at the Orphanage had proven incredibly competent, leaving nothing that actually needed to be done.
So, the bunnies were only doing things for each other at first, but they were all too eager to please, and they ran out of things to do much too fast.
So, they had started just following people around, looking for things to do.
Until Tessa had realized the issue, that was.
"Alright. Everyone, gather around. I have made up a work rotation!" She declared.
That brought bunnies running from every direction. Finally, someone had concrete directions for them. They had been given spectacular new classes and skills, but they had been left unattended to figure them out, and that was not a bunny’s strong point.
"Those of you with trade skills, you will join teams working on your trade skill from eight until noon. Then you have two hours for lunch and to clean your personal dens. Following that, you will report back to the training grounds to work on your class skills.
For some of you, that means going back to your trade skill areas, and that is fine.
The chefs have multiple meals a day to prepare anyhow, and the gardener class bunnies can move to another field.
For those of you without trade skills, I have come up with a work roster based on what we’re short of. Most of you will be with the dragons, working in the fields of Alchemical resources. They require greater attention than the food crops, and the pros can tell you what to do.
I will post it on the bulletin board today, and update it as needed, so check it every morning."
There were audible sighs of relief as someone took charge of their lives again.
Tessa knew that the Bunnies were intelligent and motivated sorts, but they had generations of strict obedience bred into them. The ones who misbehaved had long since been culled by their masters.
So, what was left was a docile population who were used to simply doing what they were told.
It had gotten to the point that they actually began to stress out if you didn’t give them orders. So, she would send the combat capable bunnies through the training tower once a day, giving them purpose aligned with their class, then send them out to do random tasks so that they didn’t feel like they were slacking.
When the bunnies were stressed, the whole Tiny World felt unbalanced, as if permitting a bunny to suffer was against the rules of the world. Even if it was something as mundane as letting them get bored.
While Tessa knew that Chaos reigned in Karl’s team, with Thor being the only order aligned teammate, she was a naturally ordered person, who followed the god of war.
War had rules. War was controlled chaos. Not quite order aligned, but structured in a way that was certainly not chaotic.
Strangely, setting the bunnies on their morning tasks was actually helping Tessa understand something about the nature of the fundamental rules.
In a way, the bunnies were like the logistics staff of an army. They did their jobs behind the scenes, and kept everything running. It wasn’t glamorous work, and generally far less dangerous than the warriors on the front lines.
There would be no glorious charges nor epic duels between the logistics staff and enemy champions.
But they were the backbone of the war effort.
The way that most teachers put it was that "An army runs on its stomach", with an emphasis on having nature magic to make food. If you had food and healers, you could keep an army going, the logic went.
And to an extent, that was true.
But it wasn’t everything. It bypassed the human factor, the manpower that went into the invisible tasks that prepared even the healers to go to war.
The craftsmen, the acolytes, the supply staff, the chefs. When you went to war, the ones fighting weren’t only the soldiers, it was the whole nation, to some extent. Not in a proverbial way, but because their efforts were all vital to some aspect of a full scale war effort.
As she marshalled the bunnies to battle against the great enemy of boredom, Tessa smiled at the memory of doing exactly this on a smaller scale when Lotus got bored during their time at the Seminary Academy.
The long-eared assistants were all sent off to their daily tasks, and Tessa was about to go check on her eggs when she felt something shift inside her.
At first, she thought that it might be an injury of some sort, and then a brief but horrifying thought that she might be pregnant again. But then the imbalance began to shift to a growing sense of power, and Tessa realized that her last revelation was enough to trigger Tribulation.
She had gained enough understanding of the Fundamental Rule of War to fill in the last gaps that training and experience hadn’t covered, and now she was going to advance.
Whether she was ready or not.
Thor was the first in the Tiny World to sense the Tribulation Lightning, and followed it to where Tessa was standing in the middle of the plains.
That was their designated spot for tribulations.
It was out of the way, didn’t raise huge winds that damaged crops, and didn’t get lightning in the lake that killed the fish. That mistake had been made once, and it had taken far too much effort to save the aquatic population.
So, no matter what your element was, you either went to the back mountain, or the plains.
You could fly over them if that made you happy. Or dig a hole and sit in it. Even fill a pool with water, but no tribulation at the lake.
For Tessa, that didn’t matter. She wasn’t aligned to a physical element. Red Dragons breathed fire, but that was simply a matter of effectiveness in battle. Few things survived being melted with dragon fire.
Sensing impending fun, Cara appeared beside Thor with a bag of popcorn and a pitcher of juice whose colour should not exist in this plane of existence.
"Alright, let’s get this show on the road. Everyone else is on the way here now."
