The days since our return picked up in pace after that. It was odd not to have to prepare to fight constantly and it gave us all time to recover. Needed time.

When Jonathan returned, he came with nearly 20 people in tow which almost doubled the population of our little camp. The area his family returned to was higher in mana and the monsters near them were stronger.

E-ranks were common there making it a more dangerous place to the unprepared. Since most weren't that strong and couldn't handle them, more elected to choose the unknown and travel back with Jonathan rather than stay where they were.

After informing them of our planned trip, most broke off to stay in the nearby city, even when they knew of the two guilds' current conflicts and the ongoing fight there. It was understandable, not many would agree to join on a months-long trip into unknown lands with strangers.

Still, some stayed. Most who did had ties to someone in our group already but others who agreed to stay didn't have anything binding them to us. I was skeptical of their motives but they seemed honest enough.

Security would become an issue as we grew and was something I had to start considering now. It was best to be prepared for something to happen now rather than try and fix an issue after it occurred.

Lay down the Law so that no one could claim ignorance.

Which was the sort of thing better done in the beginning, which was what I did.

While telling them of our plans, I also told them of the Laws I had come up with and their subsequent punishments. My aim to build a city made me form them a while ago. After long talks with my father and nights spent thinking about it.

It was hard not to think back on the punishment I carried out for the thieves while conveying them or the talks with my father about this subject. The former for its unpleasantness and the latter... that just made me sad.

The response to what I said was mostly shock and surprise. I laid it out plainly and bluntly so there would be no confusion.

Most of what I had come up with was common sense. Little things that everyone knew not to do but required to be said anyway. Those were normally punished by fines or manual labor.

With the new currency, I didn't have a good picture of what something was worth yet but the fine amount could be changed later. Plus, people hadn't had a chance to make any money yet so there was another method added as punishment.

Manual labor sounded harsher than it was. With stats being what they were, it wasn't like the slave labor of the past. At least that wasn't what I was going for.

As of yet, not a lot of things required that kind of manual labor but I formed the Laws with the premise of running a city in mind, not a caravan.

Once we got up and running, there would be plenty of labor to go around and it would come in handy then.

That was mostly for people who didn't have that much money and couldn't pay the fine. I wasn't going to make them do backbreaking labor or anything dangerous, just work off the crime they had committed with sweat rather than coin.

With the smaller infringements out of the way, the big stuff was the only thing left. Watching the faces in the crowd change when it went from fines and labor, to limb removal and the death penalty was stark.

Theft or anything in the same family; scams, fraud, dishonest dealings, and such, carried with it the cost of a hand. Keeping with the punishment we had already established.

The healers we had could already regrow limbs so it wasn't that large of a punishment but it felt fitting. As healers got better, that may need to change but for now, a hand was enough. It would also carry a monetary penalty but that was secondary to the limb.

The death penalty was what most people were aghast at. It was working its way out of the legal system before the System arrived but now it was back in full force.

I was not a government, nor was I a large faction spanning land the size of a country.

I didn't have the ability, or facilities, to hold people for extended periods of time in prison. Life in jail wasn't really something I could enforce. Nor did we have the people to spare to stand guard. That may change in the future but I didn't think it was likely.

We were at a rocky time right now and firm rules were required. Life in prison was a mercy we couldn't afford.

People who murdered and killed during this time period were better off not continuing their stay on Earth. While harsh, that punishment was reserved only for the harshest of crimes.

Plus, some crimes deserve death. The Mindbreaker came to mind when thinking along those lines.

I didn't glorify it or try and downplay what it was. It would make me a killer, I knew that, but that was something I had come to terms with.

Some would disagree but they were welcome to. I wouldn't force anyone to see things my way and they were free to leave.

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A city without Laws was better off not being a city.

People reacted differently but I felt good about getting that part over with. It was the bad side of leadership and it was nice getting it out of the way now.

The next hard part would come when someone finally broke one of them. If they thought I was joking or I would go easy on them for their first offense, they were in for a harsh reality check.

They would learn I was a man of my word.

Other than the unpleasantness of doing what was needed, Jonathan's return let me do something I was looking forward to.

My affinity was in dire need of an upgrade.

Eating the fruit was similar to consuming my bloodline. It was painful but not overly so.

The energies inside the fruit exploded out inside my body once it was consumed and I could feel as it worked through every inch of me.

It was similar to my Body Refining in that it held both Ice and Wind inside of it. It was skewed toward the Ice and Cold side rather than the opposite which was where they differed.

It worked on more than just my body though. I felt it reach past and into my core, where it felt like my Spiritual Anchor was housed. It spread throughout my spirit the same as it had my body and it changed the Ice it used to hold into the Arctic.

It saturated every part of me in Arctic energies and forced my body and spirit to change and resonate with it. Where it once only resonated with Ice, it grew and deepened.

My connection with the Ice and Cold grew and Wind was added into the fold. It was like placing two tuning forks next to each other of the same frequency. One that was ringing brought the nearby fork in line with the frequency it was giving off.

The fruit rang inside me and I changed to match its tone.

The slow process made me immovable while it was occurring and it took several days to complete.

While I was under, the rest of my family prepared for our journey. Carts were built and provisions were stashed away. What animals were near were hunted and what plants that were edible were foraged.

We dried what we could and ate what we couldn't. A full cart was dedicated solely for food storage and that would soon become two if people kept joining.

My senses were entirely focused on what was happening internally as things progressed around me.

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Austin

Their return to Earth was like a breath of fresh air. One Austin hadn't known how badly he needed until he experienced it.

The mounting pressure released and he felt free again. Just the initial scouting of the area brought him more joy than he had experienced in the past week.

Earth had changed so much and everything was new. The city he lived in was fundamentally altered, the terrain heaved up in some places and smashed down in others.

The trees were different along with the plants. They had a vibrancy and life to them that they hadn't before, positively glowing compared to their mundane counterparts from before. The animals didn't charge at him with reckless abandon either and scurried about like animals should.

They behaved how they would have before the System instead of the aggressive manner in the tutorial. It was yet another breath of fresh air.

He could feel his profession growing by the minute as he explored lands for the first time that no human had laid eyes on. No one had set foot here and it was him who had done so first.

His skills worked to nudge him to places unseen and sights he couldn't even dream of before. He had traveled farther away than he should have, but Chris was there to take care of anything.

Austin could barely comprehend the entirety of the changes.

One of the biggest was that plants weren't as docile as before. Along his journey one came at him with snaking vines, seeking to capture and strangle him while dragging him back to the plant's roots.

His surprise was so great, that it had nearly been on him before he reacted. It couldn't hold up against his skills and was promptly burnt to a crisp, but the fact plants had changed so much made him excited.

The possibilities alone were endless.

When training with Rachel, one of the things she stressed the most was improving his mana sense. Rachel swore by it and constantly pestered Chris to practice it.

Austin, by sheer proximity, caught some heat for his as well. She claimed that it was the most important skill to train and he believed her now.

Spots of odd mana density or interrupted flows revealed hidden beasts that even his eyes couldn't see.

Invisibility!

Stealth and ambush predators had evolved to become invisible to the naked eye! Even if one got the jump on him and left a nasty wound, he couldn't keep the grin off his face at their appearance.

Their return was everything he could have imagined and it had been less than a week. Plus, this was one of the lowest mana areas around.

What kind of things would be in the hot spots? What would the dungeons be like?

The closest one was calling his name but he didn't allow himself to be swayed. He could afford to travel a bit farther away in the name of scouting but a multi-day trip toward the Southwestern dungeon was too much, even for him.

He would get his chance at a dungeon soon anyway, there were many on the way they had planned. He may have nudged their path a few times to hit them but he was fairly certain Chris knew what he was doing.

Him going along with it was permission enough.

Austin didn't doubt Chris wanted to see what they were just as much as him. The stories that Gabriel had told made his blood pump faster. Floors to explore and treasures to find.

No one was certain if the dungeon from the tutorial would be the same as dungeons now but they couldn't be that far apart. It wouldn't make sense for a tutorial to introduce a dungeon only for it to be wildly different than what they actually were.

Their tutorial, as odd as it was, didn't venture that far away from reality. Austin still remembered the description from the first day they were there.

Category: Area Defense(Modified)

It was based on the Civilization Pylons and introduced them to pylon ownership. Waves would be sent and upgrade challenges needed to be completed.

It was what their tutorial was meant to teach them, City Ownership.

Gabriel's tutorial was described as, Category: Dungeon Delving

It didn't take a genius to guess what theirs was meant to teach them. The explorer in him wanted to search out different areas of people to see how many different tutorials there were.

Each one would give them some much-needed information about the world they found themselves in.

Just the two he knew about barely scratched the surface of what was out there. He couldn't tell how he knew or why he was so certain, but there were countless things to see and experience.

He couldn't wait to do it all. The multi-month-long trip was like a dream come true. The distance alone they would cover was more than he had ever traveled, even before the system.

The farthest from Ohio he had ever seen was the beaches of Florida and the trip was all highway. This was through miles and miles of wilderness, an entirely different trip altogther.

Something in him was growing and he could feel it inside. The urge to not sit still was getting harder to fight and he couldn't keep the smile off his face.

Everything was so new!