The next morning, I was up quite early thinking about what we needed to discuss during the next meetings. I started my rounds early. I first visited all the guards that were on the night shift and listen to some of their feedback.

It seems that while we have melee weapons, we were missing ranged weapons and we didn't have anything to deal with big monsters or animals. This needed to be addressed quite quickly. I will need to make some ballista but that would also require some modifications to the walls or the towers.

Next came a visit to the underground storage facilities. There was enough food, but some juggling needed to be done. I wanted to plant a lot more than we would need so we could sell off the excess but then we would need to forage extra plants and roots for food until the harvest comes in. The number of rabbits in the grass sea should mean that we will not run out of food.

I was quite surprised at how plant-based the diet around here usually was. For most people meat was a luxury item, so they did not have it often. Most people will be quite glad to hear that more meat will be available.

The Grass Sea was an interesting question. I didn’t want people to just start hunting there and possibly upsetting the natural order of things. But I also didn’t want to ignore that resource. There will be most likely a need for some sort of caretaker for the land that would help track and advise on how much hunting can be done. Thinking more about that idea there might be quite a few interesting developments that could be done but that will depend on if the system will allow things like that to occur.

When I got up to the meeting room David was already there shifting through the books. “Good morning, David. You look busy.” I got a laugh in return and a greeting, but David remained quite distracted. “Are you looking at our food numbers and seeing how much we can plant?” I asked him while I sat down.

“Yes, and while tracking this is quite hard without magic books, I find it an interesting challenge. But I do hope that someday soon that will change because while it’s novel now I believe it will grow quite tiresome over time.” It was now my time to laugh.

“Don't worry my friend those magic books are a high priority for me. I will most likely have to make quite a few bows to get the funds. But one is already bought and will come here with the summer caravan from the Thorn Rose company.”

He looked at me quite surprised and thanked me but quickly got back to work. There was still some time until the official meeting started but slowly people started to trickle in. I scooted closer to him to see what he was writing down. They were different kinds of plants and how many acres we were going to need to plant. But I was puzzled as I didn’t see potatoes on the list. “Hey David, what about potatoes have you not just gotten to them yet?”

The scribbling stopped and he slowly turned his head towards me. “What do you mean potatoes we don't have any, right?”

Well shit. “Ha ha, yes, well, I did think I had given you the paper I wrote down the things that I have in my root cellar. I quickly started to pat myself down to see in which pocket I had that piece of parchment, and I quickly pulled it out and gave it to him.

I had to scoot my chair back while David looked at me with an absolutely venomous look. He looked at the parchment I gave him and then he took the quill and tipped it in ink. The entire time he was looking at me as he started to cross out basically every number that he had written down. Fuck he was way too scary right now. Luckily the look didn’t last long because he started up his work again and I could wipe the sweat off my brow.

There is a reason why you never mess with the quartermaster, and I really need to make sure this doesn't happen again. Fortunately, I could project some of David’s anger towards me to other people as I could see some of them trying to hold back chuckles as they looked towards me. I was able to shut them up quite easily with just the look and that did make me feel a bit better. The following meeting was all about food and how we were going to get it.

It was another long meeting but something that wasn’t as bad at least for me. We needed to plant quite a lot and for that, we also needed to make some new equipment and repair old ones. We especially needed to make a few more ploughs for the potatoes to be planted.

Currently, we didn't have exact locations as I wanted to go around and look over the land to see the best places to plant different kinds of plants. I didn’t have to spend too much time on that as other people were quite knowledgeable, from being farmers for a long time.

I still wanted a meeting with them as I had quite a lot of information to share that they might not know, and I was certain that they had information that I didn’t know.

Next up was the discussion about our security. At the start, I remained quiet as I didn’t need to interject. The plan was to start recruiting people who wanted to have a combat role. We have not yet decided on what kind of combat roles we will be needing so currently we were just thinking about teaching the basics to anyone who wanted to join.

But before we could go on to the specifics, I raised another point. “I would also like that every person would receive some form of combat training.” That brought everyone up short as none of them had expected something like that. “What do you mean? Everyone can’t be a fighter why would we need to train them.” I looked into the eyes of the knight that spoke before I answered everyone.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Every person can help somehow and if they know how things work, they can help without being a hindrance. We always need someone as suppliers for example archers on the wall always need arrows.”

“There are many things that regular people can do to help someone that is fighting, but for that they would need the training to know how to do that.” The discussion continued for a bit but in the end, everyone agreed that this was the best decision, especially with so few people here.

Having so few people was also a problem but not currently, so this wasn’t a high priority. I made us have generous breaks between meetings as we didn’t have to hurry that much as there was still quite a lot of winter before we could start with anything substantial.

This was good news as we would have plenty of time to teach people and explain what was going to happen. I was quite glad about this as otherwise waiting for spring would be unused time but now, we will spend it quite productively.

POV Salazar Dragontooth

My years of being the regional head of the adventurer’s guild has fortified me against bureaucracy but after the meeting I had, I still developed a headache. But I was glad that it was over, and I didn't have as much responsibility anymore. I looked at the map as it updated. Our controlled area includes the two duchies, three neighbouring counties and the capital city that were no longer under our control.

The Princess or perhaps Queen would be the correct title assumed control of this area with a lot of concessions to us. I hope that she can remain in power I don’t want any of the city-states to conquer her territory.

That would mean that I would have to sit at the table with some of the people that left the adventurer’s guild to start their own countries. They were supposed to be on assignment, and they just abandoned them and none of them had the courtesy of declaring their intentions. If I had to sit with them, I do not know if I can control myself and not kill them.

But if I did kill them there would be so much paperwork but then again, we now have a lot better relationship with the assassin guild. Perhaps I can get them to kill a few rulers under the table. That might be a good idea.

But my good mood was soon soured as I remembered the horrible state of the world. The hunger has killed so many. During the last ten years, about 60% of the entire population has died from different causes.

The plague only took about 30% but the dominoes it toppled did the rest. The situation will not get any better as wars start but I am hoping that the assassin’s guild and adventurer’s guild will be able to hold back the worst conflicts. We have also been able to prevent dungeon breaks but that's only with the dungeons that we know of there simply aren’t enough adventurers left to find new ones.

The main problem is if we start losing access to dungeons and the people controlling them deem them too dangerous to keep around and start destroying them. It will cause a snowball effect where every dungeon's destruction means lots of new seeds will be floating around just waiting to become new dungeons that will eventually become a problem.

I hope that the higher-ups will agree to the proposal of releasing this information so everyone would know the danger. But I also understand the reluctance as some people will inevitably try to use that information for their own gain and that could end badly.

It was a difficult question, but it needed to be answered. Looked back at the big map that was on my wall as it had finished updating. It was weird to be looking at this view of it as usually, I would not be displaying the different countries on it. I went and switched it back to the mode it used to be in that gave information about who controlled parts of the Kingdom and who were the major players.

The information now was so sparse. We only knew a little bit about some of the city-states but currently, most of them just had the ruler’s name and their folder information. For the Queen’s Kingdom, there was another big organization that was able to survive besides the Queen’s own.

The Thorn Rose company. They were the absolute winners in this horrible situation. But I was glad to learn that they didn't have to resort to questionable actions to achieve this they just planned correctly and were lucky.

I looked up towards the north of the map and located the small, claimed land up there. It was quite isolated from everyone else but I now know that the village there was the place where the Thorn Rose company hid their family members.

A fucking brilliant plan but the man that helped them seemed also quite interesting. In the grand scheme of things, he is nothing special as there are many new transmigrators that have appeared with all the death that has happened and most of them have been surprisingly well-mannered.

Still, I would like to question him about any information and his past life that he still possesses. Perhaps there are new things to learn but that will have to wait. There should not be any urgency in this matter.

The more urgent thing is all the churches that have started building their power base. I am quite torn about them as some of them are gifts from the earth that help their communities survive and thrive, but some seem to be too caught up in their religious talk and might become quite problematic in the future.

There is also the problem of the undead that have been spreading quite quickly and there also seems to be quite a lot of people gaining classes relating to them. This has been quite a big problem as we don't have the infrastructure built to track those people in such numbers and that covers the entire world. Hopefully, the kingdoms that will emerge would be strong enough with our help to eventually eradicate those nests.

I put the map back into country mode and try to calculate the forces that might start wars in the spring. The Queen’s Kingdom should be safe enough at least for now but there are quite a few power-hungry rulers that will probably try to conquer as much territory as possible. Hopefully, the other rulers will be able to hold on or delay them as much as possible as I would much rather deal with smaller city-states than a big Kingdom.

My musings were interrupted as someone knocked at my door. I called him in and received horrible news. It seems that a raid dungeon was spotted forming and by the calculations made it will most likely be finished forming sometime during the spring.

Hopefully, it will not be one of the horrible raid dungeons and something that isn’t new. If that’s the case, it might just be shit news. I watched as the message adds to the information on the map so I could see where it was located. It seemed to be almost at the centre of the old Kingdom but a little bit north.