Therazane the Stonemother was happily visiting her relatives in Desolace on the Prime Material Plane.
Her main base, meanwhile, was undergoing earth-shattering changes.
To make travel easier for the earth elemental creatures, straight roads were laid throughout Deepholm.
They saw roads cutting through mountains and bridging rivers, stretching straight into the distance.
The earth elemental creatures excitedly ran onto them for a stroll.
These neat, level roads greatly increased their movement speed.
For the first time, they realized just how useful flat roads could be!
They utterly despised the winding, bumpy old roads they had used before!
Actually, if the earth elemental creatures had the perseverance, they could have built the roads themselves.
As natural earth spellcasters, building roads was hardly difficult for them.
But without an authority coordinating everything,
expecting them to build roads of their own accord was absolutely impossible!
The social structure of earth elemental creatures was much simpler than that of other intelligent beings.
Even highly social insects were better at getting things done than they were.
Though they possessed considerable intelligence, they simply had no interest in using it.
Even knowing full well how useful the roads were,
these fellows would never take the initiative to build any.
Of course, Herad did not need them to do anything else.
They just needed to diligently dig up obsidian and deliver it to the designated locations.
That was what Herad needed them to do.
To make collecting obsidian easier for them, Herad established many collection stations throughout the region.
Earth elemental creatures received identity tokens there, then earned points by turning in obsidian.
They could not make sense of this novel arrangement, no matter how they tried.
But then they saw a wealthy fellow bring in a large amount of obsidian, turn it over, and head to