After my initial trip to the new hunting lodge, I had fallen into a busy routine, a routine that consumed a full week. Every day, I traveled between the town and the hunting outpost, sometimes several times a day, supervising construction on both locations carefully.
At the side of the town, supervising the construction of the outer town structure took most of my time, particularly the connecting basement and the casino. The basement was important, but luckily, not too complicated. Just layers and layers of wooden walls reinforced with stone layers, enough to make sure it would function well as a panic room. After a couple days of effort, the basement had been established perfectly, ready to function as a training room and an emergency bunker.
In comparison, the casino had been a true time sink. My employees were quick to learn and serious about their work — I had already picked them for their personality, and a few subtle, Charisma-backed suggestions made them even more focused. I trusted them to handle the operation during my absence
Unfortunately, that didn't mean I trusted their abilities when it came to supervising the details of a casino, especially one that was supposed to function as an upscale luxury place of entertainment — well, upscale by frontier standards — so I had to make sure every detail on the casino was as perfect as I could manage.
The design, in particular, had many things to consider to make sure people spent more than they could afford, triggering their subconsciousness to force them to make bad decisions; which was much more effective than just bludgeoning people with Charisma and risking getting caught.
The design of lighting was the first step, making sure the interior was bright, constantly moving, and acoustically solid; keeping the patrons alert, happy, and most importantly, hopeful. Of course, that was just a start.
My next aim was to create a subtle labyrinthine interior, with the most fundamental locations like bathrooms and counters near the center to make sure customers had to go near the more attractive and fascinating games,, during them in. Of course, bathroom doors and other utilities also blended, making sure people too had to search around.
Of course, the most important thing was the low ceilings, and the absolute lack of windows. Never remind a gambler about the amount the time he wasted, and the windows had an unfortunate tendency to do that.
And, those were just the features to make the customers stay longer and play for bigger amounts. There were many other challenges, from where to place the tables and build concealed corners, so that, despite the chaos, the employees tasked to observe the floor would have maximum visibility, to make sure no cheating was going on.
Yes, they had the Perception to assist, but only a moron would make their job harder than necessary.
With all the details that went into the design, the casino consumed most of my time. Comparatively, I didn't pay much attention to the smithy, letting the girls get a handle. Part of it was the relative importance; as the blacksmiths were mostly experimenting and getting familiar with their new abilities without producing anything while the casino had already turned into an impressive source of silver, funding the rest of the guild.
Though, that wasn't the only reason for it. After all, while it was temporarily useless, it wouldn't be true in the future. I simply didn't know enough about smithing to make spending time overseeing their building efforts worthwhile, so I left them to their own devices.
On the positive side, it functioned as a test for them, forcing them to cooperate.
Though, admittedly, there was a disadvantage to that. It deprived me of my entertainment. Watching them carefully tiptoe around each other, each afraid of revealing their disguise was the closest thing I had to a sitcom.
Not revealing the truth to them was mean, maybe … but. it was definitely entertaining.
While the town had consumed quite a bit of my time, I didn't neglect the hunting outpost either. While I would have preferred I didn't have the added responsibility of handling what was essentially an independent village, I wouldn't say that it was just a burden.
For once, every trip gave me a nice chunk of experience, giving me several million points each day. More than a thousand people, constantly hunting the beasts that were rushing toward the outpost amounted to a lot, even if I took only a few points from each individual kill.
The result spoke for itself.
[Experience: 72,192,028]
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While the eight of them were busy with the smithy, I had already transferred the three old men to the hunting outpost after they had finished with the construction work and building furniture. Instead, they were overseeing the construction of the walls of the outpost…
While, at the same time, managing their own experimentation on how to build ballistas. While the siege weapons that the outpost had purchased were garbage, the need was real. And, while it was possible to find buy a few decent ones, I would prefer more over less.
Constructing them directly was easier once they managed to find a way to do so. Two woodworkers and a blacksmith were a good team to work on the construction, while the hunting fortress provided them with high-quality monster parts.
Technically, it was more expensive than buying when factoring in the market value of all the parts they wasted, but it was an acceptable tradeoff to make sure we were self-sufficient in one of the more critical aspects of our safety.
Especially since the casino was enough to produce all the cash we needed, mostly in the form of silver, but the occasional gold started to mix in — which immediately went to Zolast to hasten the construction of the dungeon.
We even had some excess silver to build a large leveling ward to the outpost, though I was yet to initiate, letting Zolast focus on the creation of the dungeon, and while people that leveled up had to travel to the town and pay the fee.
I had several aims for that. First, I wanted Zolast to finish the dungeon as soon as possible, and establishing a large leveling ward would take several days. Even the small, mobile one the had constructed — one that was currently insufficient to address the needs of the outpost — took days for him to finish.
This time, it'd be several times bigger. Hopefully, with proper assistance, it would merely take days rather than weeks. As, even after the establishment of the dungeon, Zolast would have a lot of work to do.
Second, I wanted to get more proficient in manipulating mana, so I might learn something from watching Zolast build the ward. Without a proper skill to help me, I had to experiment blindly with mana, limiting myself to creating basic shapes and patterns, hoping that they would be useful later on.
It wasted three more mana stones from our already dwindling storage, but my increasing abilities were worth it. I doubted that I would just learn how to copy it, but it would be enough to show me if I could learn magic without skills or not. If I could, I might consider revealing Zolast about my mana manipulation and ask for lessons.
I didn't want to reveal my ability to wield magic, even to Zolast, unless I was convinced that he could help.
There was a third advantage of delaying the leveling ward. It forced the people in the hunting outpost to travel to the town to level up. And, when in the town, they had acted freely, thinking that they were not being supervised.
Of course, I either watched them myself or asked Karak to do so. It was a test of loyalty. Some of them used the opportunity to immediately sell themselves to the highest bidder. Those were the kind of people I preferred to get rid of, the sooner, the better. Others accepted bribes from the various forces, promising to report our movements … and even sabotage the outpost once they received orders.
Those, I have been treated two ways. The spies, I actually kept, were just positioned in less sensitive locations, making sure I had a way to feed false information to other groups if necessary. Getting rid of the spies after recruiting would only alert them further.
Any opponent would get antsy if they didn't know what was going on. Misleading them with mostly-accurate information was a much better choice.
As for the saboteurs … well, people disappeared during hunting trips all the time.
I had no concerns for traitors.
It had been a long, exhausting week, one that kept me awake and busy … but the benefits were equally impressive.
A sharp attack distracted me from my musings. I moved my head slightest as I swung my staff, which landed on Mahruss's diaphragm, forcing him to collapse without his breath. At the same time, Karak used his only arm to swing his own wooden sword, hoping to take advantage of my forward rush.
I took a slight step to the left, forcing him to extend his attack. He did it perfectly, breaking the attack movement of his skill, only to start it halfway again.
"Excellent progress," I said even as I blocked his attack, followed by a counterattack that landed on the side of his head. A bit rough for a spar, but I always believed pain made the best teacher, and the convenient healing abilities everyone displayed allowed me to use it a lot.
"Rough as always, boss," Mahruss said as he struggled to stand up. "I thought that with my new Skills, I will be able to resist a bit more, but it doesn't seem to be the case. You were right about them not being useful without proper control."
I chuckled. "And, imagine that it took only three days of constant beatings to learn that," I said with a chuckle.
That was the last major change I had managed to accomplish during my busy week. I bought a few new Skills for my employees. The sudden development of the area meant that low-level skills, like the eight-step basic swordsmanship that my opponents had used against me earlier could be purchased.
Like everything else, they were quite a bit inflated at the moment, going for several Derums at a minimum, but it was a good investment to ensure the security of the Casino. After several days of working with every single bouncer, I was confident that they were able to handle any ordinary emergency in my absence.
I was far more interested in acquiring some stat stones, but that seemed to be much more difficult to achieve.
Right now, only Karak and Mahruss were in the basement for some special training. "Continue sparring for another half an hour, and no skills," I said as I started walking out. "Then, I want you both on the floor. I need to visit the outpost, and it might take a few hours this time."
"Be careful outside, boss. Monsters are especially active during the night," Mahruss answered while Karak just nodded.
"Good," I said as I stepped out.
However, unlike what I had said to them, my destination was not the Hunting outpost.
No, with everything working as expected, it was time to visit Town Maell once more.