Stronghold?

Nathan looked at the message in confusion, but the system's words still confused him. He blinked to make sure he wasn't hallucinating, but yep, the words were still there.

Outpost successfully destroyed.

Would you like to claim an outpost and convert it to a stronghold?

He scratched at his chin, beard still yet to start coming in as he was only eighteen. He tried to put two and two together from the information he had on the ground. The imps' base was called an outpost if he read the information correctly. The second thing that bugged Nathan was why. Why had the system waited until morning before giving him the notification?

There'd been ample time between when he killed the last of the imps and when he'd fallen asleep. More than enough time for the system to inform him that he'd destroyed the outpost. The only reason Nathan could come up with was that the buildings themselves held more significance than he'd known, or maybe he needed to occupy the building for a specific amount of time before he'd be offered the option.

What even was a stronghold?

Nathan hoped that the system would aid by answering that question, but nothing changed. The same question from earlier still hung in the air as the system awaited his answer. A stronghold probably meant a base, and seeing as he already planned to turn the imps' outpost into a base, he might as well take the system up on the offer.

"I'd like to claim and convert."

Nathan waited for a moment, watching as the words of the system disappeared, leaving an empty blue screen hovering in the air. He felt a little jittery at the possibility of owning a base of his own. Plus, if it was one recognized by the system itself, then it'd most likely be better than anything that he'd built by himself.

[Conversion started. Name Stronghold to proceed.]

Nathan looked at the screen, his confusion apparent on his face—name his stronghold? He hadn't even thought that far. With a sigh, he started thinking up names, drumming them up and discarding them.

"Gosh, is this what parents go through while naming a child?"

Let's see.

Brick Wall? Nah. Nathan's Block? Nah. Blood Shelter? A definite no.

So far, Nathan had managed to come up with only the stupidest names imaginable. He felt like he'd want his stronghold to strike fear and yet hope. Maybe something with "guard" in it, or "blade." Nathan wanted to take his time to name the stronghold as he had a strong feeling that the system wouldn't let him change it once he confirmed his choice.

For the longest time, Nathan just stayed still, his mind doing the most work. He continually shifted through his options until he came up with two finalists:

Blood Rock—because of his Blood Pawn class, or Crimson Wall—because it sounded a little rad.

Ultimately, Nathan didn't really think it mattered though; as long as he had a place to rest his head, he'd be fine.

"I'll name it Blood Rock."

Name assigned to stronghold: Blood Rock

As the Lord of this stronghold, you are responsible for upgrading, building, and maintaining the stronghold until you pass the duties to another or pass away.

Conversion Complete!

Nathan couldn't believe it—just like magic, the stronghold was now officially his. Then his eyes hit the other words.

Lord?

Since when had that happened? He had no idea what that was supposed to mean. The stronghold by itself was just ashes right now, and there wasn't anyone or anything to lord over, which just made Nathan feel like the system was trolling him and making jest of his situation.

The blue screen winked out after he read the last word, but he still had the message stuck in his head. He was apparently responsible for building, upgrading, and maintaining the stronghold, which felt a little unnecessary for the system to state. Like, who else was supposed to take care of his property if not him?

The building part did confuse him if he was being honest with himself. How exactly and what exactly was he going to build? Were there requirements for things or a sort of blueprint he was supposed to follow, or could he just freestyle it like he'd planned to earlier?

The plan from the start, even before the system had started this crap about strongholds, was to just build himself a little wooden cabin, or at least something like that, with some of the felled logs that still hadn't been carried into the camp—hence they were spared from the fire. He didn't have a hammer or nails and such, but he was pretty sure that he could make something work using just his bare hands. It probably wouldn't be amazing or spectacular, but it'd protect him from the elements for the time being.

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It had already started to get colder up here, and Nathan wasn't really surprised considering that when he'd last been in his own house, it was almost wintertime. So how exactly was he supposed to go about this? He highly doubted that the system let him convert the outpost into a stronghold just to give it a name or just for the sake of it. He just needed to find the right command for the system to aid him. Going on a whim, Nathan thought of the most generic term associated with this kind of thing.

Stronghold status?

Nathan crossed his fingers and hoped that the system would respond to that thought. If it didn't, he had zero ideas on how he was going to make the infernal thing pull up information on the stronghold crap. Turns out "stronghold" had been the magic word as the familiar blue screen popped into existence, words already filling the screen.

Blood Rock

Lord: Nathan Orion

Delegate: N/A

Buildings: 0

Traps: 0

Population: 1

Ra'ahal coins: 0

Nathan winced at the screen that was displayed to him—this was worse than humble beginnings. This was ground zero; it certainly reflected what the stronghold looked like right now.

If Nathan was uncertain that the system had been mocking him when it used the word "stronghold," he was certain at this point. The words on the screen were nothing to write home about. The only one on the screen was in the population section, and even that was just the system counting him as the sole occupier of his make-believe stronghold.

He reined in his thoughts as he'd concluded that they'd begun to go haywire. Thinking like that right now wouldn't solve any problems for him. He'd just be delaying getting to the main issue of the day. He might as well get to it. After all, he had planned to do it without the system, and he shouldn't let the poor stats get to him.

Speaking of stats...

Nathan let his eyes rove around the stats that were available to him concerning the stronghold. The name Blood Rock had taken hold on the place, and Nathan was kinda glad he'd gone with that instead of Crimson Wall. Mostly because there was no wall, and he had zero idea how he was going to construct one without any nails. Blood Rock, on the other hand, wouldn't be difficult for him to explain.

All he'd have to do was take a rock, beat some dumb monster over the head with it, and voilà—Blood Rock. He could even build a museum in the stronghold and claim that was the very rock he'd used to kill his first monster, and it was what had inspired him to name this place Blood Rock.

There were a couple of half-truths in there, but he doubted that anyone could fact-check him, and he couldn't fathom that anyone would care that much about a dumb rock when they were busy fighting for their lives. Regardless, Nathan still let out a chuckle at the off-the-bat illusion that he'd just cooked up.

Just a few moments after being referred to as a lord, and I'm already thinking like a politician.

Nathan snorted at the thought. No doubt the world wouldn't go back to the way it was before. He wondered what would fill the power gap that would open up with the loss of government and the politicians. With the way he saw things, purely using the master imps as a case study, the world would probably operate on a "the mightiest rules and the weak follow" kind of arrangement. It was certainly primitive, but Nathan couldn't argue with the logic behind something like that.

That was low-key how the world had always operated, just that they'd gotten a little civilized with it. Those countries with nuclear weapons at their beck and call often led the ones without and the ones with less.

All the system had done was take them back to the dark ages where you actually had to be strong to rule, not just cunning with access codes to nuclear weapons that you could hold over everyone else's head. But he digressed, looking at the next stat, he let out a low whistle.

Lord: Nathan Orion.

It was nothing but a fancy title right now, but Nathan would take anything he could get at this point. Besides, he couldn't deny that it had a certain ring to it. Moving on, he went to the next stat.

Delegate.

That one was self-explanatory, at least that was what Nathan thought. It wasn't that difficult to come to the conclusion that it was probably talking about the person he'd leave to handle his stronghold while he went out for... any reason.

Buildings.

Nathan wondered what this one meant. Don't get him wrong—he understood what the word "building" meant, but in this context, he felt like he was out of the loop. Was it a way for the system to label whatever he built with his hands, or what? Shaking his head, he moved on to the next stat.

Traps.

This one was pretty much clear to him; everybody knew what traps were, and most especially Nathan. Trust him, he'd know—after all, he'd fallen into one made by low-level imps. He however wasn't sure that was what the system was talking about, but he'd dissected the stat as best as he could with the information he had.

Population.

This one made Nathan chuckle, this one made Nathan wince, and this one made Nathan crazy. There was just a number one, indicating that there was only one person in the stronghold, which was pretty much just a burnt-down clearing if Nathan was being honest with himself. He briefly wondered if strongholds were supposed to be like all those kingdom-building games he'd played when he was much younger. It seemed like it from all the things Nathan had read so far. He'd seen a couple of things like these in those games he played online. With a shrug, he focused on the last stat.

Ra'ahal coins.

Nathan wondered what the actual pronunciation was; he just called it Ra coins. No point trying to murder a name he couldn't pronounce properly and one that he'd never heard before. Heck, the system itself had never said it out loud to him before, so he didn't know what exactly he was supposed to call it. For all he knew, it was a guttural sound instead of a word, and his mind was just trying to make him think it was a pronounceable word. Shaking his head, he took his mind back to the main topic at hand.

Ra'coins.

He wondered what the schematics were for this particular stat. Was it to tell him how much the stronghold had in its treasury, or was it a way for him to keep count of the taxes he'd impose on his subjects? Heck, maybe it could even be a way for him to purchase things for the stronghold.

Wait a minute.

A new thought popped into Nathan's mind unbidden—what if the coin count here was actually linked to his coin count on his own status screen? Had he somehow spent all his coins by converting the outpost to a stronghold? A shiver ran down Nathan's neck at the thought of losing all the coins he'd worked for just to name a burnt piece of land. With a thought, he pulled up his stat screen to confirm, fingers crossed.

Status.