Kyle looked at the distant Count for a moment.
Meanwhile, the Count was terrified inside.
He had never met the Lord living in the north of his territory, but from what he had seen, this Lord had the power of a Duke, at least.
This was not someone he wanted to anger.
However, his property was damaged, and it was right that he got some compensation.
But at that moment, something shocking happened.
Two birds, one green and one red, landed on one of the rocky outcroppings around Kyle.
Both birds were so powerful that the Count couldn't even hope to defend himself.
Kyle raised a brow and looked at the two birds, who were just waiting patiently.
In the end, Kyle just shrugged and turned to the Count again.
"Yep, sorry about that," Kyle transmitted his voice to the distant Count. "How much?"
The Count sighed in relief when the Lord didn't act in an offended manner.
"We need to refill the ground, regrow the plants, check on the beast population-"
"Yes, yes, how much?" Kyle asked, interrupting the Count.
"50 Ether Gems should be enough," the Count said.
Kyle scratched his head.
'I have no idea how much money something like this costs, but I can afford that without a problem.'
"Sure," Kyle said as he summoned 50 Ether Gems, which he then floated over to the distant Count.
"Thank you, my Lord. The matter has been settled. If you ever need any help, feel free to reach out to me," the Count spoke respectfully.
"Yeah, sure," Kyle said.
The Count performed a polite bow before going back to the capital of Forest Haven Cradle.
Meanwhile, Kyle looked at the two birds with furrowed brows. "Why are you still here? I said you can leave."
The red bird, a big swallow, summoned some fire, which spread across one of the walls.
When Kyle saw the wall, his brows rose.
The bird wrote something!
"We don't know where to go," the bird wrote.
Kyle scratched the side of his head.
'I mean, the two of them were probably following Maester Lillian for decades. They probably have no idea how to live as free beasts.'
"I dunno," Kyle said with a shrug. "You want to grow stronger, right? That means you need powerful meat. Just go fly around and search for a Monster or something."
More writing appeared on the wall.
"Humans are powerful," the bird wrote. "Killing the wrong Monster might kill us."
'Huh, it's right,' Kyle thought. 'Compared to normal beasts, they have seen how powerful and organized humanity is.'
"Can we just stay here? " the bird wrote.
"I mean, sure," Kyle said with a shrug. "Just don't break my stuff. Also, you should really avoid killing any humans in the surroundings, but you probably already know that."
The two birds nodded.
"Although I'm not sure where you can find food here. I mean, food you can eat."
"Wait," Kyle suddenly said. "Can you consume metals?"
The birds shook their heads.
'Can't eat metals? I thought beasts could do that.'
'Maybe only Metal Affinity beasts can do that?'
"Well, nevertheless," Kyle said, "there are a bunch of things in the ground below. Metal Elementals, Earth Elementals, and a couple of powerful Monsters."
"This area belongs to me, and as long as you don't leave it, it should be fine. You can just keep digging. If you find a Metal Elemental, kill it."
"But nothing comes for free, you know that, right?" Kyle asked.
The birds nodded.
"You can dig in my mine and eat whatever you want. If you kill a Metal Elemental, bring me the materials. Also, I need to teach you a bit about how to create a stable mine. If you just keep digging, you will cause a cave-in."
The two birds looked at each other.
That sounded like a lot of responsibility.
They were not familiar with handling responsibility since they only followed orders.
At the same time, this also reminded them of the time they had been forced to follow Maester Lillian's orders, and they didn't like that.
"We can leave whenever we want," the bird wrote.
"Yes, you are free," Kyle confirmed. "As long as you follow my rules, you are allowed to stay here, but you can also leave whenever you want."
The two birds looked at each other.
"We accept," the fiery bird wrote.
"Good, then, my territory goes from…"
Kyle started to explain a lot of stuff to the birds.
His territory, what they were allowed to do, what they were not allowed to do, how to mine ore, how to find enemies in the ground, and so on.
All of this was very awkward for the birds.
Birds lived in the sky.
But now, they were digging kilometers into the ground to fight enemies in the underground.
Luckily, these birds were quite intelligent, and Kyle only needed about a day to explain everything of relevance to them.
Eventually, the birds started digging.
The firebird was melting the ground, and the windbird was using its wind powers to fly the molten ground out of Forest Haven Cradle.
They were not just creating tunnels. They were creating a humongous hole. Since they couldn't harden the walls without Earth or Metal Ether, they were forced to transport the considerable amount of debris out of Forest Haven Cradle.
From time to time, a bunch of ore appeared in front of Kyle's doorstep.
Eventually, it became too much, and he got rid of the roof of the biggest hall in the Inheritance Crypt so that the birds could put the metal in there.
'You know, they are actually really fucking fast at mining ore,' Kyle thought.
As he kept watching the birds doing their work, Kyle just scratched the back of his head.
'Who would've thought that I would get bird miners. Who even thinks of using birds as miners?'
Kyle just shrugged. 'Oh well, if it works, it works.'
'Anyway, I should focus on my Methods.'
tg://resolv?domain=StrongestHammerGod
The author's patreon. If he gets more than 1000€ per month, he will increase the number of words in the chapter.