Crysteffor woke up the next morning with one heck of a hangover and a stiff back from falling asleep on the floor. He knew he was being an idiot when he did it last night, and the sore cramp in his back was proving that point. He stretched, got up, and went downstairs for breakfast, finding Sophia Catherine and the mayor all in the middle of breakfast, which was new, as far as he knew. Besides the three having to work in close proximity with each other for the past few days, they didn't usually eat breakfast together.

  “Ahh, at last our uninvited guest is finally awake.” Catherine sighed, levitating him over a chair and plate.

  “Uuhr, yeah, sorry, I was working late on those documents last night. Decided to have a nightcap before bed and ended up finishing off the flask. Uuug shouldn't have done that,” Crysteffor groaned, plopping down in his seat, thankful for the small pile of greasy meat on his plate.

  Normally, meat would be a luxury, but with an army of monsters at the gates, it was pretty much the only stable source of food they had at the moment. He didn't know why they didn't just grow crops. With them this far out it didn’t make sense that they weren't fully self-sufficient in that way. So there had to be a darn good reason for it.

  “Yes, well, the word has come down from our benefactor, your …. Requested incarceration has come to an end. You're free to roam around the village as you see fit, though it is heavily implied that you are not to go past the residence section in the underground sections. Though I highly doubt you'll be injured or harmed if you do try to do so. As the few who attempted to go deeper have found their way barred before being escorted or in the case of one very lost, very drunk man, carried out. I'm pretty sure the only one of us who would be allowed to go too far in the underground is Sophia.”

  The young girl's head shot up when the mayor mentioned her name. It seemed she had been a little too engrossed in her breakfast to pay attention to the conversation, though he didn't blame her. For a poor seamstress's daughter, a breakfast this exquisite didn't happen every day. Even if it was little more than a few eggs and some lightly seasoned meat. He guessed some salt, black pepper, and maybe a local herb from the nearby forest.

  That was another thing that had interested him. There were no salt mines in the area, and yet Austin seemed to have the capability to produce the stuff.

  “Sophia, if you don't mind me asking, do you know where Austin gets his salt from. It was my understanding that there weren't any mines in the area.” Crysteffor Asked before taking another bite of his meat.

  The girl got that odd look that only children made when they were focusing on something or trying to think of a particularly hard problem as her eyes glowed for half a second.

  “He wants to know why you ask first?” Sophia asked seemingly curious herself at this point.

  “Well this far inland salt is hard to come by without a mine for it and the nearest mine is in the dutchy over. So without a mine or salt marsh or ocean to extract salt from using purification magic. Salt is rather valuable around here for how hard it is to come by. I guess it's just the urge to try and play at being a merchant rearing its head again, in all honesty it's just passing curiosity.” Crysteffor sighed with a small shrug assuming Austin wouldn't actually answer his question.

  However, after a few seconds Sophia’s eyes glowed again. “He says he gets it from the monsters. When he breaks down the bodies after we burn them. He extracts all sorts of stuff from them then uses it to make the coal and the salt, he can even use it to make bits of metal as well though it takes a lot to make them though. He said it's like alchemy he's breaking it down to its base elements and then just making blocks of those elements to store them for later use.”

  That through Crysteffor For a loop he had heard from hunters to always use every part of the animal you could. The bones, the pelts, even the organs that weren't edible, they would try to find a use for them. However, with the ongoing battle they couldn't make use of all of the corpses, it was just too much, and they couldn't afford to leave them around for the dungeon to consume and reuse them. Or worse they might begin to rot and spread disease. The fire pits in which the corpses were burned were nearly constantly a light as guards and Austin’s metal beasts tossed pile after pile of corpses in.

  Unfortunately, despite their best efforts the air outside was rather foul with the smell of death. Crysteffor was more than a little sure the only reason the insides of any house around here smelled any better would be thanks to a Basic cleanliness ward. While the town mage wasn't too exceptionally well trained. She more than had enough power to set them up and a basic ward like that shouldn't be too hard to begin with.

  He was getting off topic with that if Austin really could use alchemy or something similar to make use of the materials within those pits after they had been burned he could in theory reuse just about anything. It was then he remembered the abundance of the scavenger beetles the dungeon had been pumping out. At first he had just assumed it was the dungeons attempt at countering Austin's metal beasts but weight where had Austin gotten the metal for them in the first place?

  “Sophia, could you ask Austin? .. did I pronounce his name right? Well can you ask him to come talk to us.” Crysteffor asked hoping to get his questions answered from the source rather than translated through a little girl's understanding of it.

  While he had no doubt Sophia was being as honest and as close to what Austin was saying as she was capable of, she was still a young girl of less than 10 years by his estimate. Sophia's eyes flickered for a second, another thing he’d just have to get used to.

  Mages’ eyes usually only glowed like that when they were using a lot of magic. He had only seen the girl actually struggle with her magic once when his former subordinate attacked her instead of the traditional glowing eyes, he was used to the silver markings running across her skin lit up as small sparks jumped between them. The scary part was they had to apply burn salve to her hand as the small artifice within had gotten so hot it had burned the skin near it. However, before he could sink to deep into his own thoughts there was a small flash and Austin appeared before them.

  “You wanted to speak with me directly.”

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  “Ohh yes. I hope I'm not overstepping with these questions and feel free to ignore them if I am but I was wondering. If you're getting the salt from the creatures you're breaking down where is all the metal coming from?”

  This question got Austin thinking for several minutes the strange metal eye that's somewhat came off the side of his head rotating as it stared at him. As if it was inspecting Crysteffor very soul for any signs of deception.

  “At first much of the metal came either from my supply rooms or from the wreckage of my ship”.

  That last part had thrown everyone for a loop they were a very very long way from any major waterways. The only water way he could think of that would be large enough for a vessel bigger than a small dinghy would be the river that connected to the capital that was a dutchy and a half away.

  “A ship? But we're nowhere near any waterway or is it like those sky ships the dwarfs make.” Catherine asked eyeing the floating figure in the middle of the table.

  It would have looked like he was sitting on the table if it wasn't for the fact his legs were going clean through it. Though Christopher didn’t notice any of that he was just Happy he wasn't the one to have asked the question

  “No best I understand you don't have the right word for the type of ship in your language the closest translation I can find is void ship or star ship. My ship did not sail in the seas or the sky though I have no doubt it would have been capable of doing so if I had ever saw the need to. No, my vessel sailed the infinite Darkness between worlds and stars” Austin let that sink in for a moment before he created a rough and he did mean rough estimate of what he assumed the planet looked like. Based off of a globe he had seen in Catherine's home in his outstretched hand.

  “This is your world and this is a rough estimate of your solar system based off of what I can see from your night sky.” the small orb in Austin's palm shrank followed by three others spinning around what resembled a fireball.

  “Like I said I do not have access to accurate charts so this is the best approximation I could make of what I currently believe your solar system looks like. Wait why do you have a term in your language for a solar system but not a void ship regardless this big ball of gas and fire in the middle is your son. The orbiting spheres around it are world’s most aren't habitable the one closer to the star is too hot its surface is likely equivalent to what you would see in a burning volcano. Where this further out one is too cold though doubt it have ice or such judging by its red coloration. It's likely colder than any place on this world even in the warmest areas. My ship could not only sail between these worlds but between systems as well” Austin paused here considering just how much more to tell them.

  Meanwhile Christopher's mind was spinning, he had to activate his poker face skill just to keep his face from paling at the reveal. Before swallowing down the vial that was working its way up the back of his throat.

  “I believe the metal demons in your churches mythos also possessed a void ship which is the most likely reason they were able to kidnap humans. I won't go to in depth as I do not wish to start any philosophical or religious debates. But I knew the humans before they ended up on this world before a great and powerful empire tried to wipe them out. My guess is the monster from your legends was some sort of slavers who captured human refugees during that catastrophe. As I myself fought against the very empire that tried to wipe them out and was busy dealing with that conflict I cannot say what happened here. Only that I came along much much later and in all honesty I still don't quite know how I got here. I was injured in a fight and my vessel was badly damaged. I had to flee between systems and in all honesty I have no idea where I was going. I was just trying to escape for lack of a better word. I mean that quite literally there's no translation in your language for half the terms I need to explain this. But I hit something I don't know what or even know how. All I can remember is an impact and the next thing I know I'm waking up my ship is buried underground upside down and little Sophia here is being chased by a monster. I believe you more or less know the rest of the story from there.” Crysteffor Reached for his glass of water and downed it in one go very much wishing it was something a bit more strong like wine or spirits. He really really hoped none of what he had just heard would get him branded as a heretic.

  “So are you going to try and mend your ship and what about the rest of the metal I don't know how big your vessel is, but you've invested quite a lot in the underground and the various metal beasts you employ I doubt that covered all of it.”

  “No, the vessel is beyond salvaging, and I have already began to convert it into the underground facilities. Though I will say your estimates of how much material I had to work with are quite off considering you have no way of knowing the exact size of the vessel was or how much survived. I will say currently I'm mostly getting my metal from breaking down the scrap shell or I guess the local name for them is scavenger beetles and the various highly toxic minerals in the soil. The entire valley is filled with regolith. This is just my best guess here but it's my assumption that when my ship crashed it struck either a volcano or a very metal rich deposit turning it to slag. You see the reason why meteors seem to fall from the sky on fire. Is when an object falls from such an extreme height it picks up so much speed it gets incredibly hot due to the friction of the air hitting it. When my ship crashed it didn't crash the same way a meteorite would it tried to save itself up to the last moment, slowing itself down dramatically but also generating an exceptionally large amount of more heat. So much so that it melted the ground wear it landed to the point it was almost submerged in molten rock. That said the vessel or at least what is left of it is quite large and if it had struck your world at that speed, it would have well let's just say None of you would be here.” Crysteffor face finely paled poker face no longer being enough to contain his absolute shock and horror.

  He glanced around at the others around him and saw they were while distressed, they clearly didn't understand the scope of what Austin had said. His detect lies hadn't been powerful enough to give him a full understanding but when Austin had said they wouldn’t be here that was an extreme understatement. If his ship had crashed into their world at its full speed, it would have been apocalyptic nobody would be here.

  “Just just how big is your ship?”

  Again, Austin took a moment before answering.

  “If you really want to know, well this valley that the village sits in it's not a valley at all it's a crater and what's left of my ship takes up almost 2/3 of that crater. Buried and grown over but buried beneath your feet is a massive complex. That at one point was an even more massive void vessel built to fight in wars that shattered worlds. I may be crippled, I may be exhausted, I may be glitchy, but this dungeon was never going to win against me. I am how do we put this I'm playing nice. This world it has its own system of power, it has its own culture, its own ecosystems and I don't want to disturb them. If push came to shove, I could wipe that dungeon off the map but also create a giant crater full of poison that would take hundreds of years to heal. I don't want that, I wish to leave as small of a mark on this world as I can so I'm taking everything with a very very gentle touch. Do not get me wrong I do not intend to sacrifice life, and I'm sickened by how much has been lost already I… I want you to be assured I'm pushing myself to my absolute limits that I can achieve without taking those more heavy-handed measures. I wish to remain as unknown as possible to establish myself here and learn of this world and its peoples and in time return to the heavens above and the void beyond. I will be up front and say I would like to see humanity returned to their former glory. That would however have to come far after me regaining my own strength but like I said this world is too heavily inhabited, it already has its own people's culture and environment. So, I would likely have to find another habitable world or heavens forbid forge one….. Weight why the heck does the word meaning alter an environment to make it more habitable translate into the same word as smithing metal in your language.” Austins avatar groaned face palming the metal eye clicking shut as he did so.

  “Uugh you know what, I should really stop asking these questions about language until I find someone who can give me an actual explanation beyond just. Ugh just cramming the language itself into my head. Let’s just ignore that for now but yes, I have much I'd like to achieve much I'd like to get done and I would like to do it with as light of a touch as possible. Until such times as I can begin on these other goals I will stay here and help this village. Mostly because I literally can't go anywhere else, I'm stuck in my ship. My creatures as you call them can somewhat travel freely but I myself am far too anchored to the ship to be moved. And while I can inhabit any of their forms it is the equivalent of using a skill and not truly moving into the body. They are too small, too weak for me, the only thing that can hold me and sustain me is the ship. Maybe in the future when I once more have access to the heavens above, I can consider making myself a bit more mobile but for the time being I am quite literally stuck here.” That was the first bit of news that had actually eased Crysteffors Concerns.

  With Austin stuck in the valley he wouldn't be able to project his strength at anywhere else anytime soon. While in theory he should be more concerned than relieved about that especially considering he had already decided to throw his lot in with the strange spirit. The fact that this thing had weaknesses at all was relieving. Though he had tried to use his skill to prove Austin wasn't a God or godly being he still seemed like something far beyond the realm of mere mortals like himself and if anything, if the legends about such beings was true, they were not things to underestimate or infuriate.