The Family man and his non-Family bodyguards retreated from the gathering, never getting close to me. Sama watched them go, and then turned her eyes on a few other opportunists who looked to be angling for a word with me. A twitch of her finger, and some rather smelly Boonie Boys and Bonnies wandered over to glare at those people from close range, giving them a noseful of the creatures of the sea. Clearly irritated, those people tried not to inhale as they hastily retreated some distance.

I heard Sama grunt to herself, Marks making sharing that stuff very easy. I was busy Assaying everyone to make sure they were okay, and ensuring word was being posted of anything new I found. The local Boonie Boards were humming now more than ever as observations of new stuff were shared and alerts hastily posted, often in mid-tide when something surprising came up. Just a few Sound mages posted along the Breakwater could relay new things happening back and forth quickly, Psychic mages do the same, and if those didn’t work, text message alerts would.

Teamwork and sharing was how Humanity stayed in this fight. There were a lot of people who didn’t believe or care about that, but they were the ones who let others die for their own benefit, too.

I didn’t know about other nations, but the American military seemed to be pretty professional in many ways, fully involved with both squad and formation combat, and exchanged news and information rapidly and effectively. It was nice to see. I’d been told it was because the Families had nowhere near the military influence that they wanted, and wise Hunters stayed away from Family forces if they wanted to survive fights like this.

Of course, plenty of people did take advantage of Family money, but there were a LOT of stories about how unscrupulous most of those sort were, pure mercenaries with few inhibitions about screwing over others. Family members in the Hunter profession had a huge uphill climb to earn trust from any other Hunters, and so basically always had personal squads of their own instead, which perpetuated their reputations as untrustworthy with their Family-centric conduct.

Heck, the Families even had a preferred area of the Boonies for hunting/experiential training, and the rest of the Hunters left it to them.

---

My clean-up basically took an hour, after which I waved to everyone still left before they all trooped off to Boonie Hall, where fresh kills had been brought up, butchered quickly, and some very fresh seafood meals were being prepared for all the Boonie Boys and Bonnies, one of the oldest and most enduring traditions in Boston at this point. Their chowder was literally world-famous now.

Briggs finished up with his daily tactical discussions with the Shore Mages, shaking hands all around, and joined up with me and Sama next to the battlements of the Breakwater.

“Jellyfish barbs,” he muttered by way of greeting. “That looked like a right nasty concoction, too.”

“They’ve got it under the scopes now. I think it reduces the victim to basically edible sludge the things can eat, but isn’t effective against Aquatics, clearly made for warm-blooded creatures. Wouldn’t be surprised if there’s eggs in it, too.”

“Unsurprising,” muttered Sama. “I noted six different locations on the boards, none within a quarter-mile of us. It’s possible they didn’t want to try it out on us personally, but they are waiting to see if there’s any reaction from our end.”

“Probably through the sewage systems, if nothing else,” I agreed. “If the stuff can consume organic waste, it could explode through the sewers in no time.”

“Generating oozes, slimes, and who knows what else, in addition to disease carriers,” Briggs grunted knowingly.

“Or maybe coral growths or overland reefs or something to clog things up. We won’t know until some work and mature.” I glanced after our crew of fighters who had headed off to Boonie Hall. “How’s things on the Waterhouse coming?”

“Impressively quickly,” Sama confirmed softly. “That Mass Geas was wonderful for keeping things quiet. The Boston Families are still eager to talk to you and start up partnerships, so they don’t have any idea that we’ve already secured the land, are working on the last zoning permits, and basically we’ve got most of Chesterton Township on board to form the hospitality services end of things.” The farmers in the area had a money-bomb dropped in their lap, complete with some easy loans, and were piling in to help and get things arranged. Not being able to inform others about it removed a lot of temptation, too.

“The other sites?” Finding land to put the Spellhouses on took some exploration and consideration of where we wanted them. Like holy sites, they were going to be visited for a very long time, so anywhere they went up, money and people were going to be coming through the local communities. Likewise, the need to house and feed all those people was going to explode, and so accommodations and eateries had to go up quickly, let alone traffic and infrastructure considerations.

It was a bonanza to said communities, and given we didn’t want to shove money into the already-deep pockets of the Families, choosing where to go and who to work with was something that took a lot of time and people to do properly.

We also had to make sure late-movers couldn’t come in with money, buy out people, and take over after the Spellhouses were established, so Right of First Sale clauses were included in just about everything we were doing. What we wanted was to give some local communities a big share of the pie, not to see that money flowing out to some Family somewhere.

It was hard, but enforced closed lips on the process really helped get it all through, and the fact that Sama and Briggs were growing and recruiting all the time did, too. Allegiances were made for this sort of stuff.

Helped loads being able to Aura-read and really speed the process along, too.

Heck, Sama had a whole university-course equivalent training program for hospitality services up and running, ranging from construction to maintenance to management. The Earthhouse environs were basically a huge classroom for such, and the graduates would be moving out to the other sites quickly as things progressed. Even if the graduates didn’t get a position around the Spellhouses, they’d be qualified to work in hospitality management anywhere in the world.

Tons of non-mages in the world who wanted better lives for themselves, after all.

It was an area I could glance at, but didn’t oversee. Briggs directed most of it, with Sama messing with the fine details and implementation. The energy the two inspired in the people of Redshore was definitely greater than I did, my influences being in the Caster/teaching area.

I glanced at my Detect Time. “Got that meeting in an hour.”

“So damn excited,” Sama said drolly, rolling her eyes at the reminder.

“But you’re so good at positive diplomatic interactions with the Families!” I exclaimed in a shocked voice.

“I don’t like dealing with them at the best of times, and now you’re showing me their Auras and I just want to throttle the lot of them,” Sama huffed. “Why did you even agree to a meeting with them? They have nothing to offer us.”

I just tilted my head at her. “You’ve taken over two hundred of their research and production personnel from them, already have the preliminary market set up for the Lesser Healing Potions, and they haven’t managed to get any intelligence out of anyone, despite a variety of eavesdropping, threats, blackmail, coercion, bribery, infiltration, and espionage. They’ve actually really restrained themselves in a variety of ways, you know? This is probably the last opportunity for us to knuckle under before they start taking the gloves off.

“To be honest, I’m wondering what they are bringing that makes them think we will do that.”

Sama considered that, spinning an eye up at Briggs, who looked a little intrigued.

“The Dow Family is one of the richest in Michigan, as well-known as the Fords, and they control most of the Alchemical factory business in the state. Only the DuPonts have more influence than them in alchemy at a national level, and only on the East Coast, as it were,” Briggs rumbled thoughtfully. “They’ve alchemical holdings all through the Americas, too, and recruit worldwide. Having them on our side could be a positive, but their elitist reputation is not for show. They give lip service to the Labor Union, and relations are cordial, but down south, their holdings don’t have any unions if they can help it, and the differences in worker treatment are very apparent.”

Briggs took his broad, low power seriously. I was literally the most powerful mage in his Allegiance, along with the KIA boys. No true Mage was underneath him yet... but that was also something that was going to change soon.

People were gaining Levels with a speed that would be considered alarming if any outsiders knew what was going on. Sure, sure, mage Levels could only be gained at the speed of cultivation, rah rah. Except we had the ability to get Soul Crystals and everyone to Tier-4 Stars, maybe Tier-5, and those Refractory Towers were some of the best cultivating locations in the bloody world.

A certain someone Buffing others so they could survive one of the nastiest combat zones in the world might have had something to do with that, too.

“Have you been having problems with the Labor Union?” I asked archly, noting his tone. He was pretty union-approving, but he had his limits on anything, of course.

“Greed,” he said shortly. “The Labor Union is the most infiltrated of the Unions, probably because it started east in the factories, and the Crime Families got their hooks into it. The workers need the Union, but the Families backing it leech at it and push for more. It’s the reason a lot of other Families despise unions entirely.”

“Other than having to give up absolute authority over their holdings, and not being allowed to treat non-major Casters as they wish?” I wondered guilelessly.

“Yeah, in addition to that,” he agreed soberly. “They’ve already been sniffing around my operations, looking for an excuse to try and organize people. It won’t work with an Allegiance here, but every branch of the Union is more people to siphon dues from.”

I knew how well he paid his people, having the attitude that capital was meant to profit those who worked it, not just those who owned it. The money he made for himself he kept for himself, of course, and everyone understood that he needed money to expand operations and hire others, too.

Unions were there to protect workers and ensure them fair treatment, since the government alone was usually not enough to do so. They were often violently needed in this world, but then those running the union often got the idea that all such workers should be under them, and the union suddenly became the problem, not those employing them.

It was an age-old story, and as normal, it started at the top, where the powerful people were clawing for advantages and willing to force and seize any opportunities they could to get them. Higher cultivation was not a cooperative effort!

At least, not before now. I was working on it...

The national Unions were dominated by the Labor Union, who worked the factories of many industries; the Teamsters Union, who moved stuff around; the Mining Union, which was basically nationwide at this point, given how dangerous an occupation it was; and the Lumber Union, which was all about the reaping and regrowing of the forests which were their livelihoods.

There were many branches and specialties within those unions, of course, with the Labor Union spread between steelworkers, assembly line workers, textile workers, process workers, and dozens of other job specialties, all under one roof as jobs requiring people, but not magic, to do well. It thus had the least amount of personal power, yet covered the greatest number of people, making it the most susceptible to outside mages coming in as enforcers and patrons, then throwing platitudes at the normal folks while scooping up the free money from their dues.

The Lumber Union actually had its core strength in Michigan. The ‘Bunyan Line’ was something plowed across the entire state by Paul Bunyan himself, and above that line forests were not allowed to be clear-cut, the Lumber Union still standing by the words of their founder and Michigan’s greatest Wolverine Hunter nearly two hundred years later. The words of the Lumber Union had become pretty much law some time ago, and the forests and wetlands that remained in the state had to be regrown or replaced if cut down or filled in.

There were plenty of landowners who had complained mightily about those rules, of course, wanting to do whatever they wanted to with their lands. Just like people who polluted, said landowners often got dead messily at the hands of Plants or Beasts they stirred up unknowingly, and the détente with said creatures had actually profited the state immensely over time.