Congratulations! Your city has built a Basic Town Hall.

One week later and without the previous level of fanfare, the city’s second major building was complete. In stark contrast to its Superb, Rare sibling, the Town Hall was rather drab, no more than a long, single-roomed, wooden building. Apparently, as the city leveled up, there would be less aesthetically bland options for the hall, but for now, it was undeniably built for function over form.

While the Town Hall was the only larger building added since the bathhouse, a few simple wooden shacks had concurrently been built as well. According to Tuk, these were necessary, as without them, the settlement would be stuck at the “Outpost” level, whatever that meant. Not completely clear on the specifics, I opted to take his word for it.

As the notification hit us all, a few quick cheers erupted from Tuk and the rest of the crew. I let out a brief congratulatory whoop of my own, but before the foreman could rope me into any more work, I said my farewells and disentangled myself from the group. There was, after all, a reason we’d made the hall in the first place:

Congratulations! Your settlement has constructed a Town Hall. New settlement options are now available.

Settlement Energy Generation

The population of your city can now store and generate greater quantities of settlement energy. At your current settlement level of City, Average (due to damage and lack of population, settlement level artificially set to Hamlet), the amount of settlement energy collected is capped at 250 per day.

Note, the more powerful a citizen is, the more settlement energy they can generate. See the settlement energy interface for more details.

You have been offered a quest: It Takes a Village

Level your settlement up to the Village rank.

Requirements:

Population: 250 (Current: 149)

Build at least one non-housing building (Completed)

Rewards:

500 Settlement Energy

+10 Prestige

+250xp

Settlement energy, at last! Finally, the end of this behemoth of a quest was in sight!

Needing some time to myself to sort everything out, I made my way to one of the as-of-yet-unoccupied shacks. We’d yet to sort out any kind of furniture, but that fit my needs fine. After entering and shutting the door behind me, I plopped myself onto the floor, back against the wall, and pulled up my settlement interface.

Current Settlement Energy: 10

Daily Settlement Energy Generated: 33/250

What the hell? How were we only generating 33 energy a day? Not that I actually knew how much that was, but considering the max was 250, it certainly felt pretty damn low!

As if to answer, the interface suddenly switched to a detailed view with a long list of all the residents’ names. Besides each name was a number, detailing how much settlement energy they were producing for the city.

I noted with interest that the values fluctuated quite widely, and while I wasn’t able to figure out a precise algorithm, I did notice that those with higher levels tended to produce more.

After scrolling for a while, I was convinced the total should have been significantly higher, until I noticed a small asterisk next to most of the names. I focused on it, and when the explanation popped up, I read it with a groan.

*Note! This total includes beings who are not registered citizens of your settlement. Non-citizens generate settlement energy at 1/10th their normal rate. Adjusted total energy: 33

Well, shit! Finally I had a settlement that was able to generate energy, and most of it was going down the drain!

Well, no use crying over it. I doubted I’d be able to turn the Ftheran builders or the Redmoss shadows into official citizens seeing as they already had settlements they belonged to.

That being said, I wasn’t trying to generate enough to run an entire city — I just needed one thing. I returned to the settlement interface, browsing through the options until I found my query: Settlement Energy Options. A list appeared of all the things I could use the energy for, incredibly short seeing how limited my hamlet currently was. A few lines down, I saw it:

Dungeon (Deactivated)

All dungeon features are unavailable until the dungeon portal is reactivated.

Reactivation cost: 5000 SE (Locked until settlement reaches the Village rank)

The figure would have staggered me if Amak hadn’t already alerted me to it. I ran the math in my head, only now realizing exactly how important it had been to go to Drawgin.

If we were generating energy at the maximum 250 per day, that would be an easy breezy 20 days to wait. As it was, however, with our measly 33 energy per day, we’d be stuck waiting for around five months. In fact, once the builders returned to Ftheran, it would be even longer.

Never mind whether something unexpected would happen with the dark god or what would happen to the forest: I was most emphatically not living in this lightless, blighted wasteland for that long. Hot baths and an eventual dryad bar notwithstanding, I doubted many others would be able to stomach such a long stay either.

Thankfully, though, that wasn’t a problem! Soon the adventurers from Drawgin would arrive, and hopefully they’d bring a much greater share of settlement energy with them. For now, all I could do was wait.

As it turned out, there wasn’t much waiting to be done. Late into the very next day, they were sighted, a long procession incoming from the north of the city. On getting the report, I hastily made to intercept the city’s new denizens, exiting the barrier and making my way across the cracked earth that made up the deadlands.

Nearing the approaching fighters, I was glad to see that they’d come in the numbers promised: Estimating numbers wasn’t a particular strong suit of mine, but it was evident that they’d come in the hundreds. Their heavy footfalls carried clear through the otherwise silent air.

It was also unmistakable that they’d be giving me much more settlement energy than the residents I currently had. I inspected a few from a distance, noting they all had combat classes, and judging by their healths, many had already reached the 25 mark in Constitution.

I crossed the final stretch between us, and the procession came to a halt. A pale and weedy man, bald and dressed in a striking purple robe, extricated himself from the crowd. As he moved to meet me, I examined him.

Carpin: Level 9 Logistician, 180/180hp

Considering Drawgin was a fighting city, I was more than a touch surprised to see him amongst the fighters, but perhaps anticipating the question, he answered it as soon as he neared.

“Greetings. I’m Carpin, one of the few non-combat focused citizens of Drawgin. I specialize in planning and city logistics, and I was sent by Agath to make sure things go smoothly during our stay. Would I be correct in assuming that I’m speaking with the settlement owner Tess?”

Agath had sent someone to handle logistics? That was… helpful actually. There wasn’t much to do, but having someone to handle the minutiae like figuring out who would sleep in the Town Hall versus the shacks was a nice weight off my back.

“That’s me! Let’s walk and talk, and you can tell me if there’s anything you need from me to make this easier for you.”

With that, I added the group to the city barrier’s accepted list, and we all continued towards the city. I explained the housing situation to Carpin, and we passed through the barrier uneventfully.

Once all of them were in, I eagerly summoned up the settlement interface.

305 new residents have been added to your city.

Total population: 454

Daily energy increase: 239

Quest Completed: It Takes a Village

Received:

500 Settlement Energy

+10 Prestige

+250xp

Congratulations! Your settlement has reached the Village rank. New daily energy cap: 500.

On top of that, I also received the next settlement quest in the chain — to level the settlement to a Town — but I dismissed it without much thought: It required us to hit 1000 residents, and it didn’t look like that was happening any time soon.

Rerunning the math, I saw that it would now take us just over two weeks to hit the 5000 mark, an altogether manageable timeline, even if none of them became citizens. I explained this to Carpin, and he took it in stride.

As a courtesy question, I asked if he’d need anything else from me, but from his collected demeanor, I somehow doubted it.

He inclined his head and responded as expected. “I believe that will be all that I require, thank you.”

The fighters taken care of, I split off from the crowd. Carpin beckoned them to follow and headed to the Town Hall, and with that, the final piece of the settlement puzzle finally fell into place.

No sooner had I walked a few paces, however, than did a voice shout out from behind me.

“Tess! Hello!”

I swiveled back, catching sight of the speaker, a lanky older man with a curly white mustache. To his sides stood two more figures: a short party-hat-wearing gator man and a partially scaled woman with a single, lizard-like eye.

“Barb! And Jason! And Kex! I didn’t expect you to come!”

“And why wouldn’t we? Imagine our surprise when we discover our dungeon-diving companion is a settlement owner, and on top of that, one who needs temporary residents! Had you but told us, of course we’d have come!” He appeared so earnest that I immediately felt a pang of guilt at not mentioning it to the trio until Kex chimed in, taking a brief pause from her chewing to speak.

“Mmm. Heard you had a dungeon. Think he was just hoping it had more things with hair in it than ours.” She truncated the thought by pursing her lips and blowing a large brown bubble which popped a second later.

“Uh. You can blow bubbles with that?” I tried to hide the extent to which my soul had cringed at the sight, but wasn’t sure if I’d managed to do a good job.

“Mm. New skill. Makes me look cool. Look.” She pushed me the skill description, and my concern only grew deeper.

Bubblemud

Allows the user to increase the stickiness and elasticity of any chewed mud, rendering it possible to blow mud bubbles. As the user grows more adept with this skill, their Charisma will increase.

Current bonus: +1 to Charisma

Yeesh. Well, if that’s what she was into, uh, more power to her I guess.

Temporarily sidelined by Kex’s bubble-blowing prowess, Barb jumped back in. “Dearest Kexstella, I resent that notion: I’ll have you know I’m here out of a pure sense of camaraderie. Finding a dungeon of the more hirsute variety is just a bonus is all.”

I chuckled at his good-humored indignation. “I guess I can understand why Barb would want to come, but what about you two? Isn’t a mud dungeon kind of perfect for your classes? I figured you’d want to stay put.”

Up till then silent, Jason piped in, fixing me with an off-puttingly intense stare. “Tess, there are some things that are more important than leveling up. One of them… is friendship.” He paused, turning his gaze off into the distance as I stood there stunned. “And also, throwing rocks in the dark sounded fun.”

“Mm,” Kex pitched in. “Pain in the ass to find new people to go into the dungeon with too. Easier just to follow Barb. Also interested to see how dark-infused mud tastes. You think it’ll be kinda smokey? I’m thinking it’ll be kinda smokey.”

Well, it wasn’t as if much time had passed since I’d seen the three, but it was nice to know they hadn’t changed at all, I supposed.

“But in any case, where is dearest Calilah? Doing well, I’d hope?” Barb absentmindedly stroked at the side of mustache as he spoke.

“Honestly, I’m not really sure. It’s been a while since I’ve seen her.” She’d been taking longer and longer trips into the forest as of late, and it was getting hard to keep tabs on the mischievous rogue. “I’ll let her know you all came, though; I’m sure she’d love to say hi.”

“Ah! Lovely. Then once everything is up to snuff around here, I do hope we can dungeon dive once more, once yours is operational. In any case, however, I believe we should be departing before we lose sight of the group.”

He was right — Carpin and the fighters had pulled ahead, leaving the four of us behind. We quickly said our farewells, the three of them broke into a jog to make up the lost ground, and once again I found myself alone.

Without much else to do, I decided to spend some time training, walking until I found a relatively clear stretch of ground and moving through the spear forms I’d learned from Rock. In between the forms, I cast my spells in quick succession until my mana dipped down. The skills leveled much more slowly if they weren’t being used in combat, but progress was progress nonetheless.

Eventually, exhausted, I called it quits and retreated to the forest. As I’d grown quite comfortable living amongst the trees at this point, I’d opted to leave the settlement’s proper housing to the fighters. Practically as soon as I got into my tent and laid down on the hide bed, I was asleep.

In the midst of strange dreams where memories of Earth collided with those of my new life, a sharp pain in my side jolted me to alertness.

With a cry, I threw myself out of my bed, searching for the unknown attacker, until my brain finally processed the combat notification.

Cal forcefully pokes you in the side for 1 damage.

“Cal? What the hell!” The darkness, coupled with her skill in stealth, made it hard to spot her, but a moment later my Perception picked her out. She sat on the corner of my bed staring up at me with a kitten-like innocence.

“What? Last time I woke you up, you told me not to use knives. See? I can listen.”

“For the love of- Normally! Wake me up normally! And what was so important you had to wake me up in the middle of the night anyway?” As my heart rate began to return to normal, I could feel a headache coming on from having to deal with the girl’s antics.

She smiled broadly, a hint of genuine excitement in her eyes. “Tess,” she replied. “I found something.”

Stat & Level Updates:

Construction 6 → 8

Character Sheet:

Name: Tess Age: 26 Race: Human Class: Arcane Arsenal Level: 7 Experience: 5061/7250 Prestige: 764 Health: 190/190 Mana: 200/200 Stamina: 200/200 Stats: Constitution: 19 Strength: 21 Endurance: 20 Dexterity: 19 Intelligence: 25 Wisdom: 20 Perception: 26 Charisma: 17 Luck: 23

Skills:

Weapon & Armor Spears: 8 Archery: 8 Small Blades: 4 Unarmed Combat: 4 Swords: 3 Hammers: 2 Staffs: 2 Axes: 1 Medium Armor: 4 Heavy Armor: 1 Movement Dodge: 3 Magic Life Magic: 5 Water Magic: 5 Fire Magic: 4 Spells: Minor Healing: 6 Conjure Water: 6 Flameploof: 4 Resistances Trauma Suppression: 9 Poison Resistance: 6 Heat Resistance: 2 Detection God's Eye: 6 Detect Trap: 5 Detect Secret: 4 Tracking: 2 Social Drinking: 4 (+5) Conversation: 4 Trade: 3 Flirt: 2 Deception: 1 Gambling: 1 Craft Woodworking: 6 Jewelry Making: 5 Herbalism: 2 Alchemy: 2 Construction: 6 General Reading: 1