The people all cheered at that, although I knew that they were more cheering at the idea of sacrificing me. Still, someone shouting about the prospect of me being murdered if I didn’t perform adequately wasn’t entirely different from the shareholder meetings back in my old world. I was confident that I could turn things around in a month. At the very least, I could prove that my work was beneficial to them. But I needed to lock in one additional detail.
“I will agree to those terms,” I said. This seemed to surprise Leopold, who thought it would scare me away. “On the condition that, as long as I live here, you will cooperate as if I were a champion. There will be some difficult decisions that I must make. I need to know that you won’t revolt against my authority.”
Everyone turned to Leopold, waiting for his reply. It was interesting to see him receive such reverence, as if he were the authority in the town. Hemmings had not developed as great a relationship with his people. I wondered why.
“Fine,” Leopold said. “You have a month to get this place fixed up. We’ll do as you say, but in thirty days, if we aren’t happy, your fate will be quite horrific.”
“If that’s what it takes, so be it,” I said. I would do right by these people. I would give them exactly what they needed in order for all of us to survive.
Chapter 7
Setting the taxation policy was like playing with matches above an open vat of gasoline. The people cooperated, just as Leopold had promised, but the satisfaction score of the village dropped down to -25. According to Hemmings, this was in revolt territory, although the deal that had been made with Leopold would prevent them from doing anything too drastic—for now.
Still, the conversation had gone better than I had expected and, now, we were able to move forward. I would have to prove myself to them, but I didn’t doubt my abilities to do so. With the collected gold of 50, I was able to pay for the promotion to Master of Caravans and the first bandit payment.
I opened up the promotion menu and looked at the now available option to promote a villager. I could turn anyone into the Master of Caravans. The most important skills were Navigating, Bargaining and Combat. Looking at the list, most of the people were woefully low on all aptitudes. Hemmings had the highest Bargaining skill, but I had handled most of the deals already. I just needed someone who could navigate.
A peasant woman, named Hatha, age 23, had a navigation skill of 4. This was the highest of the village, but all skills maxed out to 20. This was fairly low; still, it was the best I was going to get. I selected the option to promote her and watched to find out what would happen. A spiral of blue energy came down from where I was watching, towards Hatha who was sitting idly on a barrel, staring at the ground. The word ‘Promoted’ appeared over her head and she gazed up at the sky for a moment in curiosity. And then, an aura came around her; it was green, indicating that she was going to work.
I had seen the same aura around Leopold as he got up early in the morning. Green meant a specialist was performing their tasks. Red meant they were resting. Yellow meant there was something wrong, usually something for me to fix. That’s what Hemmings had told me.
I wondered about the mechanics of promotion and how it worked. Did it imbue her with a knowledge of what needed to be done? That had to be the case, or else I just handed a serious job to a complete beginner.
I queued up the order to deliver the wheat to the target city and saw that there was a transport time of 12 hours, round trip. Hatha would be able to load the wheat, deliver it, accept the gold and return within that frame. I was a bit nervous at sending her out, but knew that Finch wouldn’t bother the caravan. After all, there was so much more for him to gain if he just lay around in the afternoon.
The bandits hadn’t begun construction of the road yet due to the lack of funds. I could see that there was a cost of repair above the road, but the price was 500 gold pieces. I had the option to use volunteer manpower, which brought the cost of material down to 250; however, that was still a far road for me to have that kind of capital.
As the Caravan took off, I noticed that there was an indicator floating above the road, informing me that the quality was reducing travel speeds by 100%. This was why, I realized, the total travel time to Reed had been twelve hours. But there wasn’t much for me to do other than suck it up and wait.
I would be receiving a payment of 210 gold within the day and thus needed to plan accordingly for how I would use such gold. There were basic tasks that could be done to improve the village, such as paying to repair the roof of the town hall for 15 gold. But in doing so, there would be no economic benefit, just a bonus to the aesthetic of the village. Beauty and decoration would be the last thing that I added to this village. Right now, I needed industry.
Looking at the various buildings and promotions that I could hand out, I had several paths to choose from—although I was unsure of which to pick. The first path would be to focus on upgrading the Farm itself. An upgrade to level 2 would increase the weekly yield of wheat from 10 to 20, which immediately solved our deficit in the trade deal with Reed. Yet, it wouldn’t really bring us any more money due to the fact that they only had a demand for 15 units a week. With the excess wheat in storage, we could afford paying the extra for ten weeks, which eventually would lead me to be able to upgrade the Farm. Upgrading the Farm was 200 gold and would take ten days.
The second path that I thought about was building the Salt Mine. However, the mine was outside of our borders and that meant that we couldn’t access it until I built a Territory Marker. Those markers cost 50 gold and simply claimed an area outside of the city limits, putting a small border around it, sort of like an outpost. Building the mine itself would cost 300 gold and then there was a fee of 150 to promote someone to Prospector. It would be three weeks before I could afford this, but that was cutting it way too close, especially since my life was on the line here. The mine would be my long-term goal, but for now I needed something that would help the people see that I would bring serious benefit to them right now.
The last path that I considered was building a Butchery. The building only cost 75 gold, and promoting the Butcher would cost 100. The building itself would provide us with several benefits. The first was that it stored and preserved all excess meat, up to 100 units. These units would not go bad, thanks to the Butcher’s abilities to cure and preserve the food.
The second benefit was that it increased the happiness of the locals by 2 points. And finally, it generated 5 gold per week, as the population would visit the shop side of the Butchery in order to make purchases of their weekly meals. With the Hunter’s Shack generating 2 meat per day, we would be able to start storing enough food for the winter as well. Overall, it was the best possible choice that I could make today.
So I waited until the Caravan returned. My body was sitting behind the Mayor’s old desk, one that he had cleaned out to make room for me, but I had been spending almost the entire twelve hours watching over the village, taking note of what could be done. Oh, if only running my businesses had been like this! I would have been able to watch all of my various companies and factories flourish and grow in real time! Hell, I never would have had to leave my desk except to eat.
It was late at night by the time the Caravan returned. The words ‘Successful Journey’ hovered above the caravan’s head, and as soon as Hatha passed the gates, the gold indicator in my view jumped up to 210. In addition to that, I saw the words ‘Level Up’ hovering above Hatha’s head. It appeared that working in this world would also increase the skill level of a worker, albeit in a much more visible way than back home.
Yet, the notification did not leave her as she traveled about, putting the horse back into its stall, unloading the wagon and then going home. The Worker symbol on my view was glowing, indicating that it wanted my attention. I opened up the tab to see that I was able to level Hatha up by selecting one of three traits. They appeared before me:
Shrewd Bargainer: Hatha adds an a
dditional 10% profit to each trip.
Savvy Navigator: Hatha cuts all travel time in half.
Packmaster: Hatha can deliver supplies to 2 locations in the same trip.
I was surprised to find that I was responsible for improving Hatha’s skillset to such a specialized degree. But this must have been the true power behind having access to the Great Picture, being able to grant the villagers these special abilities. I selected the Shrewd Bargainer trait and watched as Hatha’s level increased to 2. This would not only help out the bottom line, but would further offset the cost of working with the bandits to keep our roads safe and clear.
With the gold in hand, I put in the construction order to build the Butchery. As I had suspected, the grid overlay popped up, allowing for me to place the building wherever I wished. The extra space within the borders was fairly small, but I figured that placing it next to the Hunter’s Shack would make sense. That way, they wouldn’t have to walk too far to transport the meat from one area to the other.
Once the order was queued, a pile of rubble appeared where the building was supposed to be. A progress bar was hovering over it, set at 0 percent. I had the option, I quickly learned, to assign a number of peasants to work on it. The more who worked on the shop, the faster it would be built. The base number of 10 days to construct was assuming I was using one peasant. By adding 10, I was able to cut the construction time down to only one day.
When the sun rose the next day, I eagerly watched as ten of the peasants began to glow green, heading to the pile of rubble in order to accomplish the deed. However, just because ten people were working together, didn’t mean that they had the necessary experience to get the job done. Without a Foreman, things quickly turned into chaos. Some of the workers just stood around, while others tried to do tasks that were already being completed by other workers.
I grimaced when I realized that the building progress bar barely crawled up to 5 percent within the first five hours. Apparently, I had been very wrong about the idea of adding more people to get it over with faster. Some trial and error would help me learn how many of these workers I could add before it became too many.
I immediately reduced the working population to 5, dismissing the rest to go about their regular business. I could see that they were relieved, and went about doing the usual, idle tasks that peasants took care of—such as cleaning, storing supplies and tending to their children.
The five workers I kept were able to quickly find a cadence, since the amount of tasks that were necessary was fairly small. Each worker picked one job to work on and, soon, the progress was moving steadily towards 100% complete. I watched in excitement and curiosity as the building continued to shift and grow. This wasn’t like normal construction, because the building seemed to grow in spurts, devoid of the actual physics of erecting an edifice. Yet, to the people, this was business as normal.
I had to take a break from watching the construction and return to my physical body, so that I could take care of a few inconveniences—such as eating and getting some sleep. I was growing rather…addicted? Was that the right word to use? Perhaps ‘obsessed’ would be better. I was growing obsessed with watching the village from above, watching as it operated, so that I could learn the best ways to improve it. The world worked so differently from my own, in the fact that everyone’s actions were so clearly understandable. I could focus on a peasant and see exactly what they were up to at any moment, as long as they were in work mode. There was still privacy for those who entered into their own homes, of course.
I slept for a few hours, but found myself tossing and turning in my bed. Sure, it wasn’t the most comfortable of living spaces, as the Mayor’s bed was lumpy and filled with straw, but that wasn’t what was keeping me up. Rather, it was the excitement at seeing my brand new Butchery built. It was almost like I was a kid again, waiting for Christmas.
The next morning, I rose up and hastily entered my office after getting dressed as quickly as I could. The Mayor was sitting in my office, waiting for me.
“Good morning, sir,” Hemmings said as he stood from his old seat and gestured for me to take my rightful place behind the desk.
“Good morning,” I mumbled as I drew the book from my satchel and opened it up, returning to the view of the village.
“There was a bit of an accident,” Hemmings said as I scanned the area, looking for the Butchery. The building progress was still at 70% and no one was working on it.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Well, one of the workers passed out from exhaustion while working overnight,” Hemmings continued. “He wasn’t able to reinforce one of the support beams and half the building came down on Josus.”
“Is he okay?” I asked, closing the book and turning my attention to the Mayor.
Hemmings nodded. “He broke his leg but he’s alive. I had to order them to cease working on the building. In the meantime.”
“You say they were busy all night?”
The Mayor sighed at that. “Yes. Unfortunately, you uh, you forgot to set the construction schedule. A Foreman would have done it automatically, but without one, they just went to the default times that were set. Which were 24 hours.”
They had started working at five in the morning yesterday. Had they been working the entire time without taking a single break? I grimaced at the realization of what I had accidentally done to these poor workers. Someone could have been killed. I turned a little pale as I put my hands on my head.
“I swear, I didn’t know.”
“I figured as much,” Hemmings said. “Truly, I blame myself. I should have mentioned this to you once the construction started, but you seem to handle this whole thing so intuitively.”
“They must be angry,” I said.
“Livid, sir,” Hemmings replied. “But the good news is that they don’t hate you any more than they already did.”
“Is there any way we can help the injured man? Josus?” I asked.
“A healer could be summoned, although it would be rather expensive,” Hemmings explained, tapping on the book, indicating for me to open it. I complied and followed his instructions to go to yet another page, one that I had not used before.
There was a large list of different people that could be hired for large amounts of gold. Some of the higher tier individuals could be hired for upwards to ten thousand gold pieces. I was taken aback by the sheer price of working with these folks.
“This is the Adventurer board,” Hemmings explained. “These individuals are for hire and will aid in whatever task you hire them for. Unlike the villagers, however, adventurers are independent and do their own thing. So whatever you hire them for, they will perform, but without your direct supervision or commands. They have an initial hire cost and then a daily price.”
I sorted through the board until I could find a healer. Fortunately, they were far cheaper than ten thousand gold pieces. Some healers were skilled only at healing magic, while others were skilled with a variety of other magics as well. Hiring a low-level healer would cost me 25 gold and it would be 5 gold per day to retain their services.
I glanced at my financials. The Butchery was already paid for, which left me with 150. I still needed to promote a Butcher for 100. So I could theoretically afford to pay 25 in order to get the healer, but still…that was a steep price for a broken leg. But then again, I was the one at fault here. I hadn’t considered the workers’ needs, nor did I realize that a schedule would be necessary. I needed to make this right.
So, I selected the option to hire a healer named Vira, who would arrive within twenty minutes. She would automatically see not only to Josus’ needs, but also those of anyone else who was sick or injured within the village.
“You’re a good man, Charles,” the Mayor said. “I appreciate your kindness to the people, even if they will not.”
I did not reply. Instead, I began to study as much as I could about construction schedules, as well as the other pot
ential threats that could hurt my people. I wouldn’t allow this to happen again, no matter what.
Chapter 8
In spite of the setbacks, things in the village were beginning to look up. The arrival of the Butchery was well received by the people, and the man who I promoted to Butcher, Karl, had an affinity for it, increasing his own personal happiness. This, in turn, increased the happiness of the entire village by 5 points, putting them into a good mood.
Yet, the Satisfaction number did not budge. It was still at a negative 25, leaving me scratching my head as to how I would possibly get back to the positives. Hemmings explained that new buildings and increased happiness wouldn’t have an instant effect on Satisfaction—rather it would increase over time. Just because I didn’t see results now, didn’t mean I had failed. It would just take the villagers a few days before they were able to appreciate the leadership behind a specific decision.
With the Butchery built, I noticed that the level of Tine was close to increasing. An experience bar beneath the town had filled up halfway, leading me to believe that if I were to add another building, it would go up one level. Would I be able to specialize the town as well? I hoped so.
Thanks to the new shop, we were making a passive amount of 7 gold per day, which came out to be 4 gold after the daily cost of each specialist was added in. 4 per day would be enough to pay off the bandits each week without a problem, but wasn’t nearly enough for me to work towards building the mine.
Instead, I turned my attention to the Hunter’s Shack, to check what options were available to me. The meat we were generating wasn’t bad, but if I was able to increase the production, we would be able to sell it to another village.
The way the Shack ran was that it required a peasant to work on it during the daytime. The peasant would go out into the woods and hunt for a few hours. Thankfully, since there wasn’t any heavy traffic in the woods, nor were there other villages nearby, there was plenty of deer to be found in the woods. Yet, the peasant wasn’t trained, nor was he equipped with the proper gear for hunting. His yield was relatively low.
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