By dawn the rain had stopped, though the sky was still cloudy. Karl said a short prayer at breakfast, and no one objected. It seemed fitting for Sunday morning.
The foraging party formed up inside the gate. Doug and Chenelle were staying in Endurance, along with Jake, Letisha, Paul, Terry, Jim and Michael. That kept some of the heavy hitters available for town defense.
Karl looked over his group. He had eleven other combat classers with him. George and Christine were both coming along as scouts. Jo and Tabitha offered to take rear guard. Duncan and four more of Kat's group were in chain mail, most guarding the sides. Alain and Valerie opted to be near the front, and both had borrowed gray robes from the armory. Karl wondered what the robes did but didn't ask. Duncan and one of his travel companions had agreed to operate the recycler, which trundled along behind the party.
There were a lot of people who lived on Post Road, and Karl didn't feel comfortable escorting dozens of unclassed people at once. They decided to take the eight whose houses were closest to Endurance, and see how far they got. Everyone agreed to load up and carry things back, so inventories started out empty.
The first house was past the ruins of the fort on the right, about a quarter of a mile away. Mrs. Emily Whittaker was the sole resident. She packed up her clothing. There wasn't much left in the kitchen after the group had come through Saturday to equip the cafeteria for the cooks. The linen closet was eagerly emptied; far too many people were sleeping on carpet with only their spare clothes wadded up as pillows. Jo asked if she could take the mattresses, then used her inventory trick on them.
Mrs. Whittaker said they could recycle her car, as well as the entire garage and its contents. Everyone came out to watch the machine work the first time. The car yielded eighteen metal, and the garage door another eight. The rest of the garage turned into forty wood and three stone. The blocks, ingots and lumber came out the back and landed in neat stacks.
An hour passed, and many people were asked to carry things, but finally Mrs. Whittaker stepped back and cried a little as the recycler ate her entire home. As the back of the unit grew full and heavy, it detached, and the main unit proceeded to build another wheeled pallet to hold the next load. Jo and Tabitha volunteered to push the pallet back to Endurance, since it was still so close. Within half an hour they had caught up with the group again, working on the second house.
Mr. Ames wasn't willing to sacrifice his house, but he did offer the car and garage, since it was clear that they would never be useful again. After an hour of packing everything he wanted, and letting the group take what they wanted, the entire party reported that they were nearly at capacity, even with backpacks. They decided to all go back to Endurance and unload.
The problem became where to drop everything. They settled on the meeting hall as a staging area, and put Mrs. Whittaker's personal items in one pile, and Mr. Ames' in another, and the donated materials in a third. Jo brought the mattresses into apartments. Food was taken to the kitchen. Then they headed back out.
The next two houses went similarly, with garages and cars sacrificed but not the houses themselves. Again they needed to return to Endurance to unload. They took a break for lunch, then went back to it.
The next three houses had no survivors, and so the party raided for everything, then had the recycler eat the rest. Those went faster. The following trip actually had Ms. Taggart visit her house. She was surprisingly no-nonsense about it. It only took her twenty minutes to make her selections; it actually took the party longer to finish grabbing everything else Endurance might find useful. As they finished, she walked up to Karl with a sour expression.
“Sir Karl.”
“Yes, Ms. Taggart?”
“Do you intend to make Endurance a lasting home for people like me?”
Karl nodded. “For everyone we can rescue. I want to build a fine, prosperous town, one where children can grow up in relative safety.”
“And if we last long enough for me to grow old and unable to help, will I still have a home there?”
“Yes. I promise you that.”
Ms. Taggart scowled. Swallowed. Her mouth worked for a few moments. “Very well,” she said finally. “You may raze my house for materials for Endurance. I am putting my entire future in your hands, Sir.” She made it sound like a threat.
Karl caught his breath for a moment and chose his words with care. “Thank you, Ms. Taggart. I will do my very best to live up to the trust you have placed in me.”
She gave him a terse nod, then stalked off to watch closely as the recycler destroyed her home. Karl wondered if she was counting exactly how many units of metal and wood her house yielded.
The last house they visited belonged to a man who seemed to want to save everything he owned. He didn't even want to donate his car. They had to leave with him still unsatisfied because they couldn't carry any more. After that it was getting late enough in the day that Karl called a halt to further expeditions.
When he checked the menu for expanding the Safe Zone, he found that they had 392/1100 in metal and plenty in wood and stone, as before. In two days at this rate, we'll have enough metal to expand! I wonder if we could manage it tomorrow somehow... He thought back about the amounts of metal extracted from the cars vs the houses. A house had more metal in it but took a lot longer to recycle. It looked like the equivalent of 55 cars would be the grand total, and from here about 30 or 40 more cars' worth of metal was required.
The problem is the time it takes to travel between the cars. A lot of these houses are almost a quarter mile apart. I probably shouldn't be greedy. Karl gave it up for the moment.
At dinner he announced their progress to a round of applause. He also made sure to single out the contributions of Mrs.Whittaker and Ms. Taggart, donating their entire houses, and there was more applause for them. Mrs. Whittaker smiled, but Ms. Taggart seemed not to know what to do with praise, and ducked her head towards her plate.
At the Town Council meeting after dinner, Paul reported that they now had sensors. Jake explained that he had set up six alien baby monitors spaced along the south wall, and had used his Tinker skill along with Madeleine's Carpentry skill to build reflectors so that the signal would primarily come in from outside the Safe Zone. One person was needed to stay next to all the receivers, and Paul had already put that into his watch rotation, requesting a small soundproofed guardhouse be built when convenient.
Maria announced that the violin had been auctioned for twelve gold. Everyone immediately did the math to check that they couldn't expand yet even if they poured it all into buying metal ingots from the Shop. However it looked like a possibility for Monday evening, depending on how future auctions and looting turned out. They also discussed getting a second recycler to speed things up, and argued for a while whether they had the combat strength to send out two teams. Finally Karl tabled the discussion so they could move on.
George gave a brief but sobering report on Notoriety. “The mildest title they have is 'Kinslayer', which you get by murdering another human being—not doing it in self-defense. There's 'Despoiler', and 'Clanslayer' and 'Villain'—that one you get by killing fifty people. It gets worse from there. I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that some people are already getting those, but...anyway, there are twelve entries under Notoriety so far.
“In the plus column, we have four entries with Renown, one of which is jointly for Jo and Tabitha. I can't tell whether they each get their own entry or not because they're basically always together. Probably the System will split their feeds if and when they spend some time apart.
“Anyway, the good guys have gotten titles like 'Hordeslayer', 'Hero', 'Defender of the Spawn'—I checked, it's different from Daniel's Spawn Defender title. This one woman in Africa, Sir Karl doesn't know the language, but watching the video I can get the gist. She got added to the list because she basically defended an elementary school from an uncommon spawn, by herself, killed it, and saved over fifty young children.”
“Don't mess with Mom,” Sarah said with a grim smile.
“Especially if she has a twelve foot long pole with a blade on the end and looks like she's been practicing with it for ten years,” George added. “Anyway, I just wanted to wrap up on a more positive note.”
“Thank you, George,” Karl said with feeling. “Kat? Anything to report?”
“Not a lot. There have been a couple of housing disputes that I had to break up. Because of the big piles of personal possessions, I've posted a guard in the main meeting hall.”
“Need reinforcements?” Paul asked.
“Nah, I've still got guilt trip material on some of my guys. I'll hit you up when I run out though.”
“Sarah?”
“The housing situation is causing a lot of frayed tempers. Basically people are sleeping on cold hard floors at the moment. If you guys can program in some basic amenities to the next expansion like mattresses and linens and towels, that would be great,” she told Jake, who looked sheepish.
“Sorry, we rushed the job. It will go better next time. There's a structure called 'lodging' we're planning to build that seems to have all the fixings, but I'll double check. Letisha's been designing all day while she sits in the mews.”
“Okay, if there isn't—” anything else, Karl had been about to say, when they all heard a loud yell from downstairs. Paul, Karl, George and Kat all shot to their feet. “Meeting adjourned,” Karl said shortly. Paul was closest to the door and opened it, but Kat took the lead by virtue of jumping up onto the table and across it and diving through the door the moment she had clearance. Karl wasn't sure it was combat downstairs but he made for the door with not quite so much haste.
By the time he got to the top of the stairs, Kat was standing at the bottom and holding up a hand to halt the others as she watched something. “Everything all right?” she called out. She dropped her hand, so Karl and the others came down the stairs at a reasonable pace.
“Everything is fan-fucking-tastic!” Karl could hear Jim shout. The scout gave a roar. “YES!”
When he got down to the foot of the stairs, he could see Jim doing a victory dance in front of one of the Shop lines. People were starting to throw questions at him. Abruptly Jim got a hold of himself and shimmered a moment but failed to disappear with so many eyes on him. He cleared his throat.
“Sorry for the disturbance, everybody. Everything's cool.”
Karl walked over to him, with an eyebrow raised. “Jim? Something you want to share with us?” Jim blanched at that, and Karl mentally kicked himself for his word choice. He clapped his mouth shut for a moment and waved his hands in denial. “Not what I meant. You've already been plenty generous, Jim, I just want to hear the story. Let me guess: an auction went well?”
“Uh, yeah, yeah, you could definitely say that.”
Karl smiled. “It was that loot you got off the uncommon mama bear, right?” Jim nodded. “What was it? I assume now that it sold you can tell us?”
Jim was sobering up quickly and took a deep breath, lowering his voice. “Yeah, I guess so. It was a monster core.”
Karl felt his eyes widen. “An uncommon monster core?”
“The item grade was uncommon, I assume because I got it off an uncommon spawn. But the quality was 'poor', which is just one step above 'junk', so I figured you'd want to stick with your 'good' quality core for Endurance, which is three levels higher than 'poor'. Since mine was an inferior one, I figured it wouldn't hurt to sell it, right? I mean, we'd only need it if we were going to build another completely different Safe Zone, and it was like pulling teeth to build this one, right?” Jim was starting to look distinctly nervous now.
Karl nodded to reassure him. “That's fine, Jim. After all, it was your loot, and now it's your money. But in the future, if you find something that rare, I'd appreciate it if you gave the town a chance to put in a bid for it before putting it up for auction. I'm not saying you'd have to take our offer, just that it would be nice to get a chance at first dibs.”
“Oh. Yeah. That makes sense. Sure, Karl. Sorry I didn't think of that.”
“No problem.” Karl thought for a second about how to talk to Jim, and then leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Yesterday, when my auction for my big box of spices came in, I got twenty-nine gold. Did you beat that?” He quietly asked him in a conspiratorial tone for encouragement.
“Oh, yeah,” Jim said smugly, and then got a wary look, as if regretting saying that much.
Karl whistled softly and grinned. “Nice. Well done.” Karl clapped him on the back and raised his voice back to normal levels. “Congratulations! After your big gesture with dinner last night, maybe this is karma rewarding you.”
Jim still looked nervous, and there was definite tension between them. Karl tried to think outside the box. He wants to keep his gold, we want his gold for the expansion. How could we both get his...? Karl smiled and relaxed.
“Jim, would you consider loaning, not giving, some money to the Safe Zone so we can expand tonight? You don't have to say yes,” he added quickly, raising his hands. Jim abruptly looked really relieved. Good. I found a solution that is win-win.
“Absolutely. How much do you need?”
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
“Let's go upstairs and talk about it.”
* *
In private, Jim negotiated with Maria, and finally agreed on a zero interest loan, so long as it was repaid at least a gold per week. The town borrowed forty gold from Jim, and Karl could tell that wasn't all the gold the rogue had gotten for it. But forty gold was plenty for the expansion, or so they hoped.
“Okay, Maria, it's all you now. See if you can buy us seven hundred and fifty metal.” If the price stayed constant, they had more than enough, but if it rose as a result of the demand, who knew? Maria borrowed Karl's pad, because it was possible to buy from the Shop with it remotely, though they still had to go to the pedestal to receive the ingots. After a few minutes of everyone hovering while she was scrolling through the Shop menus and looking at prices, taking notes in a paper notebook, she looked up, scowled, and shooed them all out of the office so she could work.
Karl paced outside the office like an expectant father. People generally left him alone, but after a little while, Doug asked Karl to take a walk with him up to the mews. Wondering if something was up with Letisha or the egg, Karl accepted the distraction and followed him out into the evening air.
Clouds were scudding along quickly, and the stars were starting to show between them. With the lack of light pollution, even those glimpses were breathtaking. I'll have to remember to come out here on a clear night and really take a look, now that it's safe to do so.
Doug waited until they were a little ways from the community center and checked that there was no one nearby before speaking. “So, Karl, I wanted to talk to you about Chenelle.”
Karl swallowed. “Yes?”
“I hear she used her usual level of restraint and tact when expressing her desires.”
“Um...”
“Karl.” Doug stopped walking, so Karl perforce did likewise. “I'm not mad. Not at either of you. Seriously. Chenelle has had boyfriends a couple of times before while we've been married. I had a girlfriend once. It so happens neither of us have had another partner this year up to now. We're both fairly selective in who we date.”
Karl blinked a couple of times during that. “This is...not something I have any experience with.”
Doug nodded. “Most people don't. Polyamory certainly isn't for everyone. It requires a certain minimum level of emotional maturity to succeed. But Karl, before you dive into lessons on polyamory, you first need to decide whether you actually have any interest in Chenelle. I want the air cleared between you two, one way or the other.”
“I haven't...um...” Karl trailed off, unsure of what to say here.
“Okay, see, Karl, the point I want to make is, that's about the only bad answer: leaving it hanging.” Doug smiled. “Either way, you have my blessing. Though I'll warn you, she can be a bit much sometimes. And a little impulsive, or maybe that's impish.”
Karl couldn't help but smile back. “So I've noticed.”
“I'll say one more thing and then leave the topic so you can think about it. It's this: the absolutely most important thing is communication. Don't guess, ask. If you're uncertain, get clarification. Don't hide things; don't let things fester. Make sure everybody knows where they stand, and people of goodwill can find a way to coexist. And that includes not leaving Chenelle in the dark about your feelings longer than necessary. Take all the time you need, but once you know, tell her. Okay?”
Karl puffed out his cheeks and exhaled. “This is one of the weirdest conversations of my life.”
“Okay?” Doug repeated.
Karl took a few seconds, then said, “Okay.”
“Good.”
“Is there actually anything going on in the mews I should be concerned about?”
“Not that I know of, but I'm sure Letisha would appreciate a visit.”
“Fair point.”
Doug nodded and turned back towards the center. Karl swallowed, then called, “Thank you, Doug.” It seemed an appropriate thing to say, anyway.
“You're welcome.” Doug called back and kept walking.
Karl stood there for a minute, then shook his head in bemusement and walked to the mews. As he approached, he heard voices inside.
“Yeah, but if we get the barracks, we get bonuses to combat,” Jake was saying.
“I just don't think many people will want to live in barracks even if it does.” Letisha sounded doubtful.
“I think some will. Enough to matter. Let's see if we can convert just half of it to apartments?”
“Does the barracks come with the linens and everything? We don't want to mess that up again.”
“You're right. Let's hunt that down before Karl calls on us.”
Karl smiled and turned to go. He could still hear the conversation for a few more moments.
“How are you doing that, Jake?”
“It's a trick from the Help on Help book. There, see?”
The voices faded with distance. Karl took a moment to inspect the Supply, and it felt good to see the ingots and lumber in neat stacks. Then he heard cheering coming from the community center, and started hurrying. Doug came running out, and flashed him a thumbs up as he ran past to the Supply, where the recycler had been parked along with its spare rolling pallet. Then he brought back the empty spare and headed around to the wider main entrance with it.
By the time Karl caught up, everyone was eagerly shoving tables and benches to the sides to make room, and Doug pushed the pallet up to the Shop kiosk. “Hey Sir Karl, bring that thirteen strength over here, will ya?” he called back, and Karl nodded with a grin and came forward.
Doug started pulling ingots out of the Shop delivery compartment, and passed them to Karl, who stacked them on the pallet. It should have been backbreaking work, but it actually wasn't that bad. He expected he would get tired before he finished doing it 750 times, though. This will take a half hour or so? He and Doug were not the only two people with double digit strength, so they could switch off with Chad, Michael, and maybe others.
“Hey, someone should go tell Jake and Letisha that they'll be needed here in about half an hour,” he called out.
They had just finished loading the first pallet and were moving it out through the doors when Jake and Letisha came running up. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Jake called, waving his arms.
“What's the matter?”
“Leave the rest in the Shop. The System will move them for us!” Jake explained.
“I thought it all had to be moved to the Supply to be used, right? So the System wouldn't take random belongings of people as raw material every time we did an upgrade.”
“Or from the Shop itself. Shop-bought raw materials will be fetched from wherever they are.” Letisha explained.
“So these...?”
“Can be left anywhere and the System will deal with it,” Jake finished.
Karl thought about the sight of the initial construction of Endurance. “Um, wouldn't that cause a problem for people in the center? To have ingots floating past? And what about the doors?”
Jake and Letisha looked at each other and Karl ended up edging close to Letisha to listen as they shot quiet rapid fire comments back and forth. “...maybe we want to prop the doors open and leave the path clear?” “Will that work?” “It runs on intention...” “I think you're right.” “Prop the doors open,” they finished louder, simultaneously.
A few people laughed, Jake and Letisha included, but an instant later she clapped her hand over her mouth, cutting off the beautiful sound as a lot of attention turned and focused on her.
“Sorry,” she mumbled from behind her hand. “Damn it.” Then she turned and saw that Jake was staring at her and looking gobsmacked.
“Oh, no, not you...” she whispered.
Jake lost his stunned look and several different emotions seemed to flit across his face: concern, worry, sympathy, determination, protectiveness. He took a deep breath, then leaned even closer to her and whispered, though Karl could barely hear it. “Not all the time, anyway,” he promised her honestly. Then he raised his voice a bit with a firm smile, looking straight at Letisha. “Come on, we've got an expansion to lay out!”
They turned to move in opposite directions around the pallet and Karl was right in Letisha's way. She looked up at him warily, then seemed to relax ever so slightly when she saw he wasn't looking at her adoringly nor lustfully. Quickly he bent over and whispered in her ear, “He meant that. I can tell.”
She jerked her head back and stared at him. Karl tapped his temple, winked and turned away. A few seconds later he glanced back and she was staring at Jake, biting her lip, her eyes shining until she blinked away the extra moisture.
Young love, Karl thought fondly. It's good that Jake... Abruptly he stopped.
Oh, shit.
Michael is not going to be happy about this.
Since there was nothing he could do about it, Karl sighed and put it out of his mind for the moment.
He walked in and explained to everyone that the path had to be clear and the doors propped open, then walked over to the build pedestal. Within moments there was a crowd.
“All right, let's do this. Expand Safe Zone,” he called out.
You have sufficient resources to increase your Safe Zone.
Resources required:
Wood: 1500/1500
Stone: 1500/1500
Metal: 1100/1100
Designated power source for Safe Zone: Monster Core – uncommon – good
This power source will sustain four expansions from base.
“We're good! Jake, Letisha, work your civil engineering magic for us.”
The duo called up the proposed expansion, and started adding buildings. “Okay, we are allowed three new buildings in this expansion,” Jake began. “This one is what the System calls 'lodging' and seems to be an apartment building we can expand. It does come with basics like mattresses and linens; we checked. It will hold sixty people.” A cheer went up. “We set it up so there are some single apartments and some for two or a family.”
“The second building is a barracks. It can normally hold 30 or 40 people, but I think it will be a while before we have 30 people who all want to stay in a barracks, even if it gives some pluses to combat skills.”
“The hell it will,” Paul declared. “I think we'll be using that at capacity very soon. People don't have to stay there all the time, but if they're going out on missions, and staying there will boost their chances of survival? Who wouldn't take that?”
“What's the issue?” Karl asked.
“We were thinking of turning half of it into apartments for ten more people, but if you think we should keep it as is...?” Jake hesitated.
“Let's err on the side of having room to hold more people. Go with the full barracks,” Karl decided. Nobody in the crowd watching seemed to be grumbling, so these seemed like easy decisions. The duo fiddled with the controls, then looked up and nodded.
“For the third building, we weren't sure what was best, so we have a list of our options.” Letisha handed Jake the pad he used so often, and he called up notes. “Basically we can go for even more housing, a barn, a grain silo, a couple of kinds of greenhouse, an orchard, a woodlot, a chicken coop, a smithy, a tannery, and we can add fields, apparently for planting.”
“What about things like a city hall, with a jail and courthouse and so on?” Kat asked.
“Those are grayed out; we don't have access to them yet.”
“Are those all of the options?” Karl asked.
“We think so.”
Karl frowned. That didn't feel right. “It seems to me as if something obvious is missing, but I can't put my finger on what.”
People called out various things: fire station, school, restaurants, library, armory, bank, lumber mill, a mall.
Karl snapped his fingers. “That's it!”
“A mall?” Doug asked dubiously.
“A marketplace. A building where we can go to make things and sell things to each other, like a crafting hall maybe?”
“A crafting hall is one of the more advanced options we can't get yet.” Jake said.
Karl frowned, thinking. “Well, what about an...I don't know, a basic office building? Even just a hollow building we can construct our own spaces in. We need a place where people can make things and sell them. We can make up our own shops. We can hire the Carpenter to help. Can you do that?”
Jake and Letisha looked at each other, thinking. “We could just get a barn and modify it from there,” Letisha proposed.
“Or a barracks? No, you're right, the barn is closer. But can we get it with lights and bathrooms?”
“Sure, we can customize it. It'll cost a bit more, maybe.”
“There's a metal allotment per building and a barn barely touches it.”
“Fair point.”
“It won't give any bonuses to anything, though.”
They argued a bit more, then came up with a design.
“So what do people think?” Karl asked the assembled group.
“Strongly in favor,” Maria spoke up.
“Likewise,” Sarah said.
“We should go with a smithy or woodworking place of some kind,” Paul argued.
“More housing!” several people shouted.
Madeleine cleared her throat and stepped forward. “Speaking as a carpenter, if you can get us lumber, I can work with a team to build buildings. We don't have to wait for the System to consent to do it for us. They won't be magical buildings but they'll work. We don't have to wait for permission to have a market.”
People mulled that over.
Karl said, “I'm now inclined to get more lodging, fix the housing problem so it doesn't come right back tomorrow if we find more people. Constructing our own buildings actually feels like a good idea, but the lodging is for comfort and modern conveniences. And the most important thing right now is easing our immediate problems. In a few days the recycler will get us enough material to expand again, after all. We don't have to fix everything right now.”
There was some arguing, but in the end, they went with two lodgings and a barracks. Paul asked, and it turned out that the lodgings had a first story with walls of stone, so that they could serve as a fallback position if monsters managed to breach the walls. They placed them close together and somewhat close to the gate. Karl remembered to ask for small wooden buildings for the guards out on the walls, but Madeleine said she could build them fairly quickly.
“All right, let's make sure everyone knows this is happening before we activate it,” Karl called out. A couple of people went over to the apartment building, and Paul sent someone to the wall to get people off of it. Finally, Karl completed the instructions for expansion and told the System to proceed.
It was fascinating to watch. The eastern wall actually lifted into the air, while huge amounts of dirt moved in, and some new stone walls made for supports for the terrace. The hill to the east was excavated further, and stone flew out to extend the walls. But the real excitement for people came from watching the ingots fly out of the Shop delivery chute and join the lumber and stone in assembling two lodgings and the barracks.
Karl didn't like the one-note nature of things so far, but housing had to be the first issue. After the build table changed color, indicating that the expansion was complete, people hurried over to inspect apartments and claim ones for themselves. We just added comfortable housing for 150 people. We have to count that as a win.
But Karl was already looking forward to the next expansion.