“Bloody hell, there’s got to be a way of getting rid of that eye searing orange,” I swore to myself. I minimized the new prompts and dug around the system settings in my UI until I found the section I needed. I went through the color pallet available for specific prompt types and just changed them all to the neutral blue color that most of them appeared as. “That’s better.”

I looked around and saw Magnus helping Cody to his feet, then I saw Kassandra stirring from her crumpled heap. I turned to her, intending to check on her condition, when my knee buckled, sending me to the ground. I looked down and saw a massive gash on the side of my right leg. When the fuck did that happen? I checked my Ki reserves and found that I was fairly low. Damn near empty! With a deep breath, I pushed five points of my Elemental Ki through and saturated the torn flesh.

Faint green flames flickered out of the injury and I could see faint wisps of smoke rising out of the damage. I closed my eyes and sent my senses in and watched what the Ki was doing. I saw as particulates from the dirt and other sources were consumed by the Jade Flame, escaping in trails of smoke. It left the wound sterilized as the flesh knitted itself together. Once the deeper part of the wound was cleared, the skin sealed itself up and then worked on the deeper trauma. Interesting. definitely a more complex healing process than when I used basic Ki. Faster too, it seems.

After a minute, and with the aid of my still unenhanced Razor spine spear to support me, I got back to my feet and hobbled over to where Kass was just sitting up.

“How you holding ” I asked.

She let out a groan of pain. “That fucking hurt. Did you see the truck that hit me?”

“That Alpha really did a number on you, sent you flying with just one kick. What possessed you to try to stab it from underneath its belly? You had to know there was a good chance of getting trampled there.”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time. Most creature’s underbelly is a weak point. Besides, I thought I would be able to shadow step out of there before it could retaliate,” Kassandra winced as she touched her own ribs. “I was obviously wrong.”

“Broken ribs?”

“Broken ribs, a concussion… several debuffs that are going to take a while to fall off.” She paused for another moment before a smile grew on her face. “Ding! I gained three levels and can finally choose my Advanced Class now.”

I flexed by damaged knee and it felt stronger. Fairly confident that it would support my weight without the spear, I put it away and held out my hand. “Come on, let’s get you healed and we can work at cleaning up this mess.”

Kassandra took my hand, tried to get up, but collapsed with a suppressed scream of pain when she tried to put weight on her right leg. “Fuck! My leg’s broken too.”

“Let me see if I can help with that.”

She nodded; teeth gritted against the pain. I laid my hand on her leg. Carefully, I pushed basic Ki out of my palm and into her limb. I closed my eyes and could see inside of her wherever my Ki went. I guided it down along the bone until it came to the break. The fibula had snapped with a long angle, but fortunately, the broken pieces hadn’t separated much, a fraction of an inch at most. I focused on gathering my Ki on both ends and drew the ends together.

Kassandra let out a pained grunt as the bone reconnected. Once they were aligned properly, I focused on infusing the bone, reinforcing it, and creating a temporary cast on the inside. “That ought to do it. I’m pretty sure the Ki will dissipate in time, but until then, it’s holding the break together. You should be able to get it fully healed well before then. Think you can walk now?”

Kassandra wiped sweat off of her forehead, then held out her other hand. “Let’s try.”

“Alright.” I took her hand and braced myself. With a small exertion of strength, I pulled her up to her feet. She groaned and swayed a moment before she violently expelled everything she had ever eaten. At least, that’s how it seemed. She had fallen back to her knees, hands braced against the earth. She stayed in that position until she was dry heaving.

“I think you should stay here; I’ll bring a healer to you instead of the other way around.” All I got in reply was a weak nod as Kassandra crawled away from the puddle of sick she had made.

I walked over to where Magnus and Cody stood, Magnus talking while Cody hung his head. I also saw Rowan, Rose, and Kiara come out of the gate and head in our direction. “You guys alright?” I asked.

“Yeah, we’re fine,” Magnus said. “Cody here is just having a bit of difficulty.”

“What happened? I saw him take a nasty blow from one of those metal spikes.”

“Well… it would seem that that was the first major injury he had ever suffered, and well… he got scared and just curled up in a ball. Now he feels bad about it.”

“I… I’m sorry. I failed you. I failed everyone,” Cody said. The poor boy practically radiated shame and self-recrimination.

“Dude, seriously. You didn’t fail anyone. Sure, you got overwhelmed. Severe injury is very traumatic, especially for a fourteen-year-old.

“But I-”

“No buts about it. Your help was essential to keeping our new home safe. You did far better than anyone had a right to expect. You protected everyone behind those walls,” I said while pointing at said walls. “not only did you physically protect them from the monsters outside, but you have amazing healing abilities. You can heal severe injuries in seconds. Speaking of which, there is someone who needs your healing abilities right now. Can you help her?” I pointed at Kassandra, who had since shifted and was lying on her back.

Cody looked over and saw her. “Yeah, I… I can do that.”

“There’s a good boy. You go heal her and we’ll see about getting everything around here organized,” I said with a pat on his shoulder. Cody turned and walked over to Kassandra, his back straightening more and more until he managed to resume his previous confidence.

“That was one hell of a tussle,” Magnus said. “The quest rewards were pretty sweet, too.”

“Yeah, it was. What did you get for the quest completion?” I asked.

I got a Meridian reinforcement pill. It’s supposed to make my next Meridian more permeable or something. Make it easier to absorb the Elemental Ki so it can expand and handle the power easier. Kind of like those Meridian cleansing pills we had before. Also, it gave me two thousand credits. Didn’t you get the same?”

“No, I guess as the Headman, my rewards were all Settlement based. I got Essence for the Settlement bank, a small boost to Loyalty and Morale and an extra quest. Nothing about getting a new pill or even a credit reward.”

“Damn, bro. That sucks. Looks like I’ll be pulling ahead of you now,” Magnus said with a chuckle.

“You might want to wait a bit before taking that pill,” I said. “That old Chinese dude, Dr. Ming, he said that he could detect an imbalance in our foundations from advancing too fast. He said he should be able to help sort it out, and that it could be dangerous to try to push for advancement too soon.”

“Well, shit. How’s he supposed to help? Isn’t he only body rank three or four?”

“Apparently, he’s a Ki healer. Had an acupuncture practice before the end of the world and has already started doing more with Ki regarding healing than either of us, despite our advancement.”

“Do you trust him?” Magnus asked.

“Well, Rose, Drake, and Kassandra knew the man before they were all enslaved. He was helping the cultivators at their, um… let’s call it a proto-settlement. They were staying in my son’s old elementary school and were working on getting a City Core until they were driven out by giant ants. They trust him well enough, and I didn’t get the sense he was malicious or anything. I figure we might as well talk to him and see what he has to say.”

“All right, waiting a bit couldn’t hurt, aside from a few monsters like this,” Magnus said while nudging the corpse of the Alpha. “We over power every other creature around.”

“John, are you okay?” Rose asked once her little group had gotten close enough.

“I’m a little banged up, but nothing serious,” I replied. I looked at my Hp and saw I was still down to half left. Once I thought about it, my ribs started aching more and the rest of my body let out a protest.

When Rose saw my wince in pain as I shifted a bit, she immediately started casting her healing spell. I watched as the gathered green light flow from her wand and pass into my chest, where I felt its warmth spread throughout my body.

“There, that should help. After all my bonuses, it should give you back about forty health over the next five minutes. If that’s not enough, I can recast it then. Anyone else need a heal?” Rose asked.

“Um… well… if you don’t mind,” Magnus said.

“Where are you hurt?” Kiara asked abruptly and immediately brought her first aid kit out from her storage ring and started checking the man over for injuries.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing major,” Magnus said as he shrugged her off. “I’d have taken care of it myself, but I’m almost out of Ki. Let this nice lady cast her spell and save your poultices for later. Mana just recharges on its own, but you’ll have to gather more herbs to replace what you use.”

Kiara bit her lip for a moment before nodding her ascent. “Fine, maybe I should get myself a healin’ spell, too.”

More to dispel the awkward feeling in the air than anything, I changed the subject. “What did you all get from the quest reward?”

“Huh? Oh, I got an extra thousand experience points,” Kiara said. “Between that and all the experience I got from the beasts; I gained three whole levels! You’re looking at a level seventeen Herbalist now. Only eight more levels until I can get a prestige class.” She radiated with pride over her new level and had every right to. Her levels had soared ever since we had met her, and everyone needed to be as strong as possible in this new world.

“Yeah, almost everyone on the wall gained five or six levels,” Rowan said. “It looks like the Xp awards vary depending on your contribution levels, so everyone who was only level three or four got maybe a quarter of what we got, except for the quest reward. They all got the thousand Xp bonus. So, one and all are at level nine. Just a stone’s throw away from getting their own advanced class.”

“Damn, did anyone else get any experience or quest rewards?” I asked. “No idea about those who were in the longhouse, but harper got two Divine Favor points and reached the second rank. I think Zoey got one of them Meridian pill things and we all got a couple thousand credits, too.”

“Not too shabby,” I said. I then looked around at all the corpses littering the field. “We need to get looting, though. We don’t need any scavengers or predators coming around.”

“Right you are,” Magnus said, then he touched the Alpha Steelhorn he had killed.

I was surprised when a new window appeared in front of me.

Alert!

A citizen is attempting to loot a beast that was slain in a Settlement Defense quest.

As Headman of Jade Redoubt, you may choose how to allocate looted resources gained in defense of your Settlement.

Do you wish to transfer all looted items and credits to Settlement Storage, or allow looted items and credits to go directly to the citizens doing the looting?

“Hold up just a sec, the System is asking if I want all the loot to go to Settlement storage or to let whomever loots a creature to get the loot.”

“Okay, what’re you goin to choose?” Magnus asked.

“Since it specifies that it’s for creatures slain in defense of the settlement, I think I’ll go with the Settlement storage for now. We can distribute it all later. Is everyone cool with that?”

“Good enough for me,” Kassandra said. I turned and saw that she was walking normally and seemed to not be suffering any more debuffs. Cody walked just behind her, and I swear, it looked like he had been looking at my ex-wife’s butt. When we made eye contact, he blushed and looked away.

As I suppressed my chuckle, I heard everyone give their agreement, so without further ado, I selected the Settlement storage option and watched as the gigantic ram dissolve into multicolored essence and blow away into the wind. We then spread out and each of us touched one ram after another, and before long, all forty of the smaller beasts blew away in pretty lights and I received a summarized loot prompt.

Jade Redoubt has gained:

Steelhorn horns x80

Steelhorn Fleece x40

Steelhorn Meat x10,000

Spirit beast Core B8 x40

Alpha Steelhorn Horn x2

Alpha Steelhorn Fleece x1

Alpha Steelhorn Meat x7,000

Beast Core E1 x1

c6,760

Essence x1,075

I nearly choked when I saw how much meat we had in the Settlement storage now. “Um… if my math is right… we have almost a year’s worth of food right now. As long as we don’t mind being strict carnivores,” I said.

“Wait what? How much meat did they give us?” Magnus asked.

“Well, we have ten thousand pieces of meat from the smaller rams, and seven thousand pieces of meat from the Alpha. Every time I’ve looted meat, it always came as one-pound, flat square pieces. Kind of like having a perfectly square steak. Like what I handed out at the last rest stop before entering the valley.”

“Damn. That’s a lot. If the settlement storage is anything like our rings, then it won’t ever go bad either. What else did we get?”

“You know we can’t live on meat alone, right? We need fruits and vegetables, especially the kids,” Rose admonished.

“Yeah, I know, but it will definitely take some of the pressure off of feeding everyone. Let’s see, we have the fleeces… fleeci… fleeceses… fuck it, I’m just calling it fleeces. We have forty fleeces from the smaller Steelhorn and one from the big guy. We got all the beast cores, forty of them body rank eight and the energy rank one. Plenty to work with now. We also got almost seven thousand credits, which I think I’ll reserve for the settlement since everyone else got a credit reward, and an extra thousand Essence for the Essence bank.”

“Not bad, not bad at all. You know, I bet them fleeces will have some interesting traits. If we have anyone that knows how to work with it, it might make some kick ass cloth armor,” Magnus said.

“I know how to card wool and spin thread,” Rowan said. He blushed when we all turned. “My grandparents raised sheep, and I had to learn as a kid. My grandmother made her own yarn for knitting.”

“No judgment here,” I said. It was obvious that he felt embarrassed at knowing the skill. “It’s a useful skill. If no one else knows hoe, we can recruit some of the citizens to help. Speaking of citizens, we need to find out what everyone can do and I need to figure out what all I can build here with the System.”

“We can gather everyone and do some interviews,” Rose said. “Find out what paths they are all on, what skills they had before… well, everything, and what they are interested in doing here. If we can match people to jobs they are interested in, I think we will have a happier population than if we just assigned people at random.”

“You are better with people and that whole job interviewing thing than I am,” I said. “Plus, I still have this new quest. I got a quest for a quest reward, fucking quest chains.”

“What’s the quest?” Kiara asked.

“It’s called ‘The Lambs Bounty’ and apparently all these fuckers live in a meadow somewhere up in the mountains. There’s apparently a bunch of yews and lambs up there. We have an opportunity to find them and claim the labs for ourselves. We just have to deal with the yews. If we do, then we get a bonus for domesticating the lambs. If we don’t then there’s a chance that a new Alpha Steelhorn will rise up and attack us again.”

“You have to accept the quest,” Rowan said. “I don’t want to have to kill the poor lamb’s mothers, but we can’t let another threat like that come for us again.”

“Rowan’s right, besides, having our own sheep will provide wool, hell we can harvest their milk and make out own fetta and Manchego cheeses,” Magnus said with a happy groan at the thought.

“Does the quest tell you where the meadow is?” Kassandra asked. “Is there a time limit to complete it?”

“No, there aren’t any time limits listed, but it also doesn’t tell me where the meadow is. I going to go ahead and accept it. Maybe Tess can do some scouting from the air or something. She is our only flying creature we have that can scout for us. It will take forever to find them just tromping around on foot.”

“Yeah, we can do that,” Rowan said.

I nodded. “Well, for now, we can let everyone know they are safe once again and we can get all this admin shit done so I can get to building.” With the agreement of everyone around me, we headed back to my new Hamlet.