Chapter 128: A Small Victory
However, the power influx from the windmills was a secondary celebration compared to what came later that afternoon.
Eggs were a common enough dungeon item from the Rat King Dungeon, but none of them were fertile. Apparently, that was not true of the ones that were gained from the Common Grade random loot boxes.
A batch of them had been forgotten in the dorm, as the hero who collected them had been in the main building. And when he returned to his room, he found that there was an entire brood of hatchling chicken monsters tearing apart his belongings.
They were the size of regular chicks, but jet black, and their little claws could tear through the wood of his bed legs with ease.
Once they were given some feed, in the form of leftover vegetables, the small chickens proved to be incredibly amenable to being relocated, and they were brought out to Kalli’s office, as the walls and furniture legs were all made of stronger materials than the luxurious woods of the academy’s dorms.
Kalli stared at the tiny birds pecking at her floors and shook her head in dismay.
Clearly, it was up to her to find a way to make a chicken coop.
Kalli checked her store inventory, and found what she needed.
{Uncommon Grade Chicken Wire} suitable for containing low-level monsters under 20kg
That would do, since they couldn’t peck through it.
Then, Kalli purchased a bundle of metal posts for a Point, and a sledgehammer to drive them into the ground. Her only question was who she was going to sucker into taking care of the chickens.
[ There has to be someone with experience in this. I know nothing about keeping chickens happy, and I’ll be damned if I was reborn into the apocalypse to become a chicken farmer. ] She decided.
Just the thought of running an equipment store and chicken farm combination was laughable.
But before long she was setting up the chicken coop, and had even spent another credit to get a metal shed to give the chicken coop a roof and an indoor area for the nests.
Spare tuber leaves and branches made basic nests for the chicks, and Kalli put out a metal bowl full of ground corn and one of water for them. They were chickens, they had to figure it out, right?
Sure enough, within minutes, they had honed in on the food, and the group of little black fuzz balls was munching happily in their tin roofed shelter.
"How are they doing? I came with an extension cord and a heat lamp. When we did lab experiments, we had to keep the chicks extra warm overnight," Reggie informed her.
"Oh, I didn’t know that. They seem happy in their shed. I think there’s enough open area out front for them as well, all caged with wire. We will see how they go, but I know nothing about being a farmer, especially about farming monsters."
That made Reggie laugh. "I don’t think that there is a single actual farmer in Marimgar at this point. All we have are a bunch of graduates who know a little about how it’s supposed to be done in theory."
If there were no actual farmers, there was nobody to tell her that she was doing it wrong, so Kalli decided that she would just keep feeding the chickens and hoping they would grow up.
If they were all roosters, that would be awkward, but there was some hope that they could get a steady supply of eggs out of the group.
Kalli felt an old familiar cramp in her abdomen and frowned. So, it was that time.
Reggie didn’t notice, but Yara had just stopped behind them, and sensed that the Coordinator was in pain. So, she cast a healing spell, and Kalli straightened as the cramp faded.
"Thanks for that. Our newest additions are settling in well enough, it seems. I don’t know if this is the right sort of home for them, but it looks good enough for now. How are the other projects coming along?"
"The second coat of paint is on the apartments, and the window frames are all sealed.
It will take some more time to finish the new shutters, but they’ll have enough outer shutters to seal the broken windows by the end of the day. The tuber plants are beginning to stand up now that the soil is less waterlogged, but our moat idea has been scrapped, due to the change in the river’s flow.
According to the inverters, the new windmills are providing a steady twenty kilowatts in the relatively moderate breeze that we’ve got right now.
Not enough to fully replace the Generator, but enough to take most of the load off when the demand is lower.
We’ve got a lot of wood in today, trees that were downed in the forest and cut into sections.
Also, the new sawmill is working very well, but appears to be high loss, using a chainsaw for the cuts."
"Perfect. Then, we can say that we’re basically back at the same condition that we were before the storm, with only a few degraded portions of the buildings?"
"That is fairly accurate.
On a related note, the rooms with damaged windows have had the storm shutters sealed using plant fibre and tar. Battening the hatches, the dockworkers said. They use it to seal entrances to ships, and they assure us that it will be effective at keeping rain out of rooms that don’t have glass, even if they’re too dark to use for general purposes."
"Good enough for me. Dark sleeping areas make some people happy, anyhow. Plus, we’ve got working lights. All the bulbs are low-draw LED ones anyhow, so a few more lights on won’t overload our grid.
At least not now that we have that steady input from the windmills."
"Alright, enjoy your evenings, I really should start updating all the data with the reports that were brought in today. I will see you soon."
Kalli returned to her office, where a whole stack of exploration reports were waiting from the teams that had returned while she was building the chicken coop, more than she remembered getting in a single day before.
But that likely included the reports from the storm, and the ongoing work orders for the buildings as well.
Far too much paperwork.