The difficult part began after the battle at the starting town's dam was won. Dealing with the aftermath of a conflict is always harder than winning it.

  Several warriors were injured and left me during the pincer attack, but fortunately, none of the injuries were life-threatening. With the assistance of some awkwardly quiet tribe people, who seemed just as uncomfortable as the injured warriors, the wounded were transported back to camp on an ox-drawn cart.

  “This is really awkward.” Alex squirmed. “I want to leave.”

  “How so?” Ki smiled.

  “Didn’t we just hurt them and ruin all their stuff? You’d think they would hold a grudge.” Alex expined to the green-haired nymph.

  Ki hummed, “Wouldn’t it be hypocritical for what they did to you to be okay but when you do the same thing to them it is not okay?”

  Alex boggled at Ki’s expnation. “That is a really weird way of thinking. Raiding your neighbor is okay? You’d think it would escate into a war.”

  Ki chided him like he was a child. “Now you are just being silly. Who would want to risk their people by constantly escating a conflict when day to day survival is a challenge.”

  Alex still didn’t get it. “I don’t get why burly warriors would have any respect for a little girl.”

  Fufi let out a chuckle, amused by the unintentional mistake she'd overheard in the conversation.

  Alex backpedaled upon hearing the fmingo’s chuckle. “Not that I’m a girl, it is just I’m wearing this frilly dress and have a high voice. And I was dancing with dolls… The point being you’d think they’d look down and bully me.”

  Ki spoke slowly like a mother expining something to an ignorant daughter. “Why do you think that I wanted you to join in the fight against the chief?”

  “Because you were worried about Merumeru?” Alex pointed to the toddler-sized slime girl.

  Ki shook her head. “No. Merumeru had that fight won. She didn’t need any help. You have to understand the culture of these nomads to work with them.”

  Alex furrowed his brow, still not getting it. “I still don’t get it. How would fighting against their leader not make them have bad feelings towards us?”

  Ki sighed. “Okay, let's make this simpler.”

  “Huh?” Alex tilted his head. His hair ruffled around a bit as he did so. It had grown at an arming rate for the month and a half that he’d been in this world.

  “How do you think they pick a leader?” Ki asked, her voice full of kindness and patience.

  “They take a vote? Or maybe representatives vote?” Alex guessed.

  “No, that is wrong. It is by battle. The chief is the one who can defeat the previous one.” Ki corrected.

  Alex’s eyes widened. “They don’t think we are the new tribe leaders, do they?”

  Ki tilted her head. “I don’t think so, afterall a tribe is a group reted by blood. There would likely need to be some kind of consummation involved in joining the tribe. You know, joining bloodlines and all that.”

  “Don’t just say something like that. You skipped the whole part about meeting developing feelings of love then overcoming obstacles to stay together and form a family.” Alex facepalmed.

  Ki ughed. “What you were not actually considering were you? I was just kinda guessing there anyway. The point being is that except for the meat heads, Chief stone ax was not liked. But because no one was stronger than him he got his way. He even left that Handverk guy behind when he fled. There is a power vacuum in the group that got abandoned. Then magical girl Alex shows up with a dose of justice. If you were in their shoes, who would you think better of?”

  “Okay, okay, point made. What should we do now?” Alex conceded.

  “Well, this once was a human town. Unless there is a need to drive them off into the wastends to get picked off by harpies, could they give settling down a shot?”

  Alex nodded.

  “What do you think Fufi?” Alex asked.

  “It is worth a shot. If they prove to be like chief stone ax then they can just go and join him outside the woods.” The fmingo agreed with Ki.

  The pn set, Ki and Alex expined how things were going to go from then on.

  The tribespeople agreed to stay and rehab the town.

  Handverk agreed to lead the crafters. Most of them were left behind. But he wouldn’t look them in the eyes. Perhaps, he was afraid of retribution from the whole betrayal.

  Merumeru, who easily resumed her plumbing work, fixed the plumbing issue at the adventurer's guild and installed a sink, bath, and shower.

  Over a few weeks, Alex and Fufi explored and cleaned the remaining ruined houses, salvaging many useful items like weapons, tools, and furniture by simply dusting them with the feather duster.

  The nymphs were surprisingly open to sustainable logging practices, including repnting and avoiding clear-cutting, despite Alex's expectation of stricter restrictions. However, the town's popution was only around a hundred, limiting the speed of tree harvesting.

  Merumeru started to restore the bath house after the plumbing was sorted in the adventurers guild.

  The building was a rotten pile of wood. However the foundation and the stone lined pits in the ground were still there.

  The slime girl did her magic in getting the drainage working again. She set up some faucets too so they could fill the tubs. The original bath house had a well and they could heat the water with firewood. But all of the metal barrels for heating water had rusted into dust who knows how long ago.

  Alex thought finding metal would be a big issue in the future. The demons had forced the free humans back into the stone age, while the vassal states seemed to have it better. This regression in human culture was concerning, but it also spoke to human resilience in the face of mind control. Alex prioritized shelter for everyone, postponing the dungeon. They built log houses around the fountain square and restored the adventurer's guild, adding a wooden roof.

  Handverk and the other crafting cssers didn’t have much experience with making buildings but they were quick learners. Most of them had skills that reted to their nomad lifestyle, things like repairing equipment, maintaining wagons, or building simple tools. Most of them were better at woodworking than Alex.

  He didn’t mind. These people could use all the help they could get. If someone could use a saw and a skill to make pnks out of a log as quick as a mill then it just meant they could get everyone housed quicker.

  The adventures’ guild building had a second floor like one would expect for such a building. There was a main hallway with dorm-style rooms with a pair of bunk beds on either side of the room. The bunks had cloth mattresses filled with straw that Alex sewed himself. Locks were not a thing so the doors to the rooms could be boarded shut from the inside. There was an end table up against the wall and wooden shutters on the exterior of the building. Gss windows would be nice but Merumeru was only one slime girl.

  Alex didn’t feel right asking her to create dozens panels of gss. One of these days they could try to make a gss smelter but that would have to come ter. The priorities were food shelter and cleanliness.

  Alex really hated how badly the barbarians stank from body odor. He couldn’t give them proper soap but cold water and scrubbing was a start. It especially bugged him to see the tribe's women with matted hair and dirt encrusted skin. In what kind of world do girls get the right to make themselves look pretty taken from them?

  The st thing on the second floor was a big room that Alex cimed. It was part office, part workroom, and part meeting room. It had several windows and cabinets lined the walls. They didn’t have much paper to speak of. Some of the crafters could make parchment but none of them could make ink. So writing consisted of using a piece of charcoal to write things down.

  Alex didn’t like it. It always made his small fingers bckened with dirty powder. Ink was another thing on the list to reintroduce to humanity. Instead of resorting to this dirty method of keeping track of the town, Alex used his phone to keep track of important things from meetings.

  After one meeting discussing progress and barriers Alex sat at the desk looking dejected. Ki was standing beside him. Fufi was roosting on a cabinet.

  “Ugh, this sucks. I feel like I ended up as a mayor somehow.” Alex compined, looking up to the ceiling.

  “Don’t worry, unless you have the mayor css, no one will consider you a real mayor.” Ki unhelpfully added.

  “Can someone with a mayor css take over? We’ve been doing these building and stockpiling projects for weeks and I want to just run away back to the farm.” Alex ran a hand through his green-streaked-bck hair.

  “You remember how people get csses in this world right Alex?” Fufi sounded a little annoyed at Alex’s compining.

  “Yes, they ask the gods for them.” Alex answered. He knew this one.

  “Well, you see, the stone ax tribe gets csses through their shamans. They set up a tabernacle and people can do the ritual there. But shamans that have experience in those rituals all went with the chief’s group. Also, the gods that give shaman csses tend to shun civilization.” Fufi expined.

  “So we can’t get anyone new csses? What about Luna? Can she give someone a css of mayor?” Alex asked his familiar.

  “Remember, she is the goddess of cuteness. Only the cute parts of civilization fall into her domain.” Fufi replied.

  “So what? If someone was found worthy to get a mayor css from her then her skills would be focused on making the town cuter?” Alex wondered aloud.

  Fufi nodded. “Or make the town's inhabitants cuter.”

  Alex pondered. “That actually might be really useful to magical girls. There would be some good synergy. Say a tailor could make a dress that gave cuteness+1 then if she did it in cute town with the mayor’s skill helping everyone with their cute creation it could maybe be a cuteness+2 dress instead?”

  “Now you are getting it. Behold the importance of cuteness!” Fufi cheered.

  Alex rolled his eyes. “This world is so weird. But I guess we have to roll with it. Oh, Ki do you still want to try to ask for a css? Maybe we could take a break from all of this for a couple of days and visit the grotto and see how they are coming along.”

  “Merumeru and the nymphs finished it up a few days ago. I bet you’ll be impressed with how cute it looks. It has lots of lovely flowers. My sisters really overdid themselves on gardening.” Ki beamed proudly.

  “Merumeru was there? I thought she was hanging around here doing plumbing. I’ll try not to think about the fact that she apparently can be in two pces at once. I’ll get a headache.” Alex sighed.

  “That slime girl is sometimes hard to find.” Fufi added. “Even from a bird’s eye view.”

  melchi