Magical Girl? I’m not sure about this.

Fufi gave the Nymph a bit of a look. “Magical girls really shouldn’t be involved in politics. That is not playing to their strengths.”

Fufi nodded in agreement with the leaf-haired girl.

“But my class is a bit weird.” Alex grumbled. “If the only things we have to work with is stone and wood then how am I supposed to make better toys? Having the whole world regressing or turtling is not good.”

Ki tapped the desk, causing it to sprout a few buds. “Have some faith in the people you trust then. It doesn’t have to be you that does everything herself.”

“Going to have to put some faith in them.” Alex ran a hand through her black hair. “The hope was to drop off some food and then drop off several loads of ore that we got near the temple. I’d like to use that to make some new toys and people with a smithing class are the way to go for that.”

“Can you team up with Ariel?” Ki suggested. “The demons are on the back foot right now so it might be a good chance to get some levels. Besides, magical girl teams are really cute.”

“They are!” Fufi strongly agreed.

“Meru!” Merumeru looked to also agree.

Alex wanted to team up with some other magical girls. Grace and Ariel were the only real candidates. Sakura, being a baby, was right out. Also, Ariel had a habit of wrecking boats which wasn’t a point in her favor. Grace was having a bit of a crisis of identity but hopefully with some time she could come around. Having someone that knew demon society from the inside could be a great asset.

“Anyway, lets get your cart loaded up with food so you can go back to the humans that got evacuated.” Ki waved a hand. “We’ve been building a bit of stockpile of fast growing fruits like tomatoes and berries in the warehouse the past few days.”

Alex nodded, and her thoughts got brought back to more pressing issues.

The nymph handed him a thin piece of wood with some etched writing on it. “These are the people that can come back if they want, non combat classers, people with farming and forestry classes are a big help to caring for the land.”

Alex read the document and saw some names and classes on them. There were a couple hundred of them.

“I’ll deliver this to Cecil.” Alex tucked the weird wooden tablet under her arm. “Let's get going.”

The group headed out, loaded the carriage and trailer, turned it back into card form and took the two portal pipes to head to the island where all the humans wintered that fled the demons.

Upon exiting the portal pipe the scene looked very different from what she remembered. It looked like the place had gotten hit by a natural disaster but was recovering. The stone buildings were still standing but the ground had ruts in it from water, there were some piles of debris in various places. Some buildings were missing doors or had roofs that were in various states of repair. The higher places were okay, but the stuff close to the harbor got the brunt of whatever hit this place. Of note was that the cement-creating-doll contraption wasn’t where she had last seen it.

Alex glanced back at the portal pile and sighed. “Hopefully someone is here that can help us. Either Cecil or Baron Somnus. Did I remember his name right?”

“Why Somnus?” Fufi headed down the partly-washed-away road. “I thought you didn’t like the kingdoms nobles and wanted to avoid them.”

“Because he comes across as the least ambitious of the nobles.” Alex kept pace with the flamingo. “From what little we’ve seen with some of these demons they control people through deception. King Jass is controlled by succubi that flatter him, Baron Somnus wasn’t really controlled, he just got put to sleep. Maybe he was slothful to begin with? I don’t know but some of those people we picked up, I wonder if they haven’t found a way to betray us to the demons already. So who is the best person to trust?”

“Could it be that he’s the only one whose name you actually know?” Fufi giggled.

“That too.” Alex smirked. “I guess I’d prefer to interact with them as little as possible.”

Some people were wandering the streets. Alex noticed a few of them being quite skinny. Others wandered around saying stuff in a language that no one seemed to understand.

“Đài Loan mới là quốc gia thực sự của Trung Quốc. Những kẻ cộng sản là những kẻ chiếm đoạt.” One old man frantically exclaimed while running down the street.

“Weird.” Alex watched the crazed person but didn’t make eye contact.

“Maybe it is one of those martyrs?” Fufi guessed. “I heard they would get cursed so they couldn’t speak an understandable language.”

“Certain groups find what they are saying extremely offensive.” Alex looked to Merumeru. “Can you understand?”

The slime girl just smirked.

The last time they saw the nobles and other people with leadership classes they were gathered by the harbor fussing about the flying cloud.

Luckily, they had a jetty built along the harbor. And it looked like the rocks and sand that they had been dredging took the brunt of the tsunami. The flooding still damaged things. Sink holes formed, likely from water draining away when things got sucked back out to sea. Some of the walls had crumbled that were built to withstand a demon attack. Some of the ferro cement ships washed ashore. A few that were smashed against the jetty were just left there, apparently gutted and added to the barrier that kept the open ocean out. Oddly enough, some sunflowers grew in the sandy parts of the jetty alongside witch hazel like on the island. The harbor looked like it still would be a strong fortification against demons.

They appeared to have built an even bigger stone building not far from where the dry dock was. Alex guessed that might be a good spot to start looking. Some stone warehouses were adjacent to the building so it looked like a good place to offload the goods she brought. There was quite a bit of foot traffic around this area.

“Hello?” Alex greeted the people in the lobby. “Is Cecil around?”

A well dressed woman approached her. “Ah, magical girl Alex. Let me introduce myself, I'm Lady…”

Alex rudely cut her off, weary of noble social skills. “I can’t stay long.”

The black-haired girl wearing a plumber outfit looked to another bystander. “Is Cecil in?”

An older, salt-of-the earth gentleman that Alex might have recognized from Yvne’s barony answered this time, sparing a glance at the women than addressing Alex. “Most all of the combat classers are taking the boats out to the mainland. Cecil included. I think he said that Lord Somnus should be in charge of things.”

“I need to offload some food I brought from the nymphs.” Alex glanced toward where the warehouses were. “Can they just be put in the warehouse. Can anyone help? I need to go get some ore to refine too and come back. Are there still smiths around?”

“Just use that warehouse over there.” The man pointed. “I’ll go with you. We are not short of hungry people looking for work.”

They departed.

The man bowed slightly to the annoyed looking lady and everyone made a hasty retreat to the stone warehouse. It wasn’t hard to summon the carriage with trailer in tow and get some men to offload all the foodstuffs into the warehouse. After which, Alex got some people that looked like they would fit some of the spare plumber outfits she had in the carriage. They went into the portal pipe, loaded up a fraction of the piles of palladium ore that was piled up and headed back.

The sun was starting to set by the time they unloaded the ore into a different warehouse.

Lord Somnus came in person when the carriage was being offloaded. “You certainly don’t like to wait magical girl Alex. I was just upstairs when you came into the guild.”

“There was a creepy lady that was there.” Alex bluntly confessed. “I’d rather not deal with nobles.”

“Me either.” The old noble yawned. “I’d rather stay in bed. But did you need anything? I figuredI should check before you go and join everyone getting levels by cleaning out the remnants of the demon forces in Jass.”

“None of the nobles want to do something productive like that?” Alex wondered aloud.

He shook his head. “Combat classed nobles are illegal in the law of the demon queen. Almost all of the nobility gathered here are non combat classes, most commonly food production related because that is what the biggest problem has been for many years.”

“Right.” Alex sounded a bit hesitant. “I got this list of people that can come back and live in the forest. I’m not sure who all these people are or if they would rather stay here.”

She handed over the wooden tablet.

The man looked it over. “My guess is that they’ll be easy to find, mostly people from the tribes or from Yvne’s barony. Do you have outfits for them to take the pipes back?”

Alex nodded. “Not enough, but I can fix that up in a few days. We have enough cloth back in town to make stuff.”

Lord Somnus advised. “Perhaps not having too many of the outfits out there would be good. If that is the only security for the portals they are not very secure. But anyway, we can get the ore processed. What do you want done with it?”

“It is an odd metal.” Alex paused. “Something easy to work with. I’d like to make toys with it but there is quite a bit so I won’t need it all. The place to collect it is just really cold and windy is the problem.”

“There have been some gnomes that showed up.” Somnus wasn’t sure about how to feel about this from the look on his face. “Though calling them gnomes is weird, they are more gnomed shaped than anything else, but they seem to be very good with metal and machines. But they are really weird.”

“How so?” Alex wondered.

“Your contraption that made cement, the thing with the dolls.” He struggled to put this to words. “They wanted it really badly, and after trading for some things to help with the boats, we gave it to them, they took it to some kind of temple and some of the people that joined them saw things turn very spiritual. They started calling it the blessed machine, or something like that. Anyway, when they did their ritual, the dolls glowed and what I’ve heard is that it produced much better cement at a greater rate than it was before.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad.” Alex had met a goddess of cuteness after all.

“They take it a step further.” The lord made a face. “Many of them replace their parts with machine parts, or golem parts, they give of hisses of air when they move. My understanding from talking to people is that it keeps them from having to rely on feeding their people as much, they can just use compressed air canisters to fuel their bodies.”

“How to they refuel them?” The black-haired girl furrowed her brow.

“Underground.” The old maid pointed down. “They have fill stations or something like that. Maybe that is why they need help, with that mountain destroying the ocean floor the damage to any nearby tunnels must have been large.”

“Sounds like a very confining existence.” Fufi commented. “They burrow deep and wait for the land above to die and hope that they can pick up the ashes afterward. It is not that different than Sakura’s plan.”

Alex agreed but didn’t want to stick her nose in things. If they could help her with material for dolls that was all she really needed.

The trio finished unloading and went back to Bob and Martha’s farm that night. They slept outside with some of the people that were helping transport things, and the next day did trips back and forth to get all the ore dropped off. It filled up a whole warehouse with the oddly colored rocks.

Alex lended some clothing to people wanting to go back. Like Ki predicted, it mostly farmers wanted to return. The people that did things like smelting and smithing liked this place better. The nymphs didn’t appreciate all the soot and smoke so here was a better place for them to practice their craft.

Eventually the fleet of ferrocement ships came back. When word got out everyone went to the docks to see them pull into port.