I was deep in thought when I heard my name being called. It took me a few moments to come back to reality but looking around didn't help much as I was still on top of the roof. Another call helped me pinpoint David who was trying to get my attention. With him were two of the knights and one other leader who was one of the persons in charge of the farming stuff.

I waved back to them at which point David yelled back at me. “I heard that you inspected our defenses; I was wondering what you learned?” I started to shout back at him but before I could I realized why were we yelling at each other. I took a few quick steps and jumped off the roof to land a bit behind them. To break my fall, I did a roll and quickly got up. I could have done a superhero landing, but I didn’t want my knee to hurt in my later years.

All of them were surprised by my actions but the knights looked more interested. I guess I figured out another thing that needed to be taught. “Now David to answer your questions. Currently, we are properly fucked.” I said it while dusting myself off a bit to get rid of the dirt and grass that my rolling caused me to collect. Their somewhat good mood was quickly broken by that and as I kept explaining it got worse.

“So, you are saying that we need to get our gate fixed ASAP and then we would be able to handle a moderate force of silver rank people.” Ask David after I’ve finished explaining. I gave him a nod. “I guess we should head to the meeting room we have a lot to discuss, and I have some gifts to give.” After I finish saying that they started to follow behind me talking amongst themselves.

I saw a hunting party starting to head out and while looking around, I saw the morning shift guards on the walls. They were even greener than the ones on the night shift which made some sense as the night was a more dangerous time.

Since it was so early in the morning, we were the only ones in the meeting room, but I didn’t wait and started to pull out all the books that I have gotten which made David's face finally show happiness. I also laid out some of the other specific items I was asked to buy but the people that wanted them weren't here yet.

I then pulled out the soul core and went to my mind palace in hopes of meeting the creature again. The owlbear didn’t disappoint me and soon I was face to face with it but this time it didn’t start attacking just looked at me curiously.

There was a moment of silence while I just looked at the beautiful creature, but I also saw the danger it possessed. It had a powerful build like a bear that visits the gym every day, but its weaponry was even more dangerous just the beak itself could skewer any human.

“Can you communicate outside of this space as well or are you only limited to this?” I asked it. It answered almost immediately. “I can communicate outside of this space. I am glad to see that you were able to free me in a sense. What are your orders master.”

“You can stop that, no need to call me that. But we will talk about the orders with the other people who are with me so I guess I will see you in the regular world.” I spoke while thinking about how it could communicate outside. It gave me a nod and disappeared and so did I, coming back to reality.

Only a few moments later a dog size hologram appeared from the soul core displaying the owlbear in all its glory. “This is the way I can communicate normally although I did have to get through some of the limitations, they placed on me. But those shackles were easy enough to break.” I could hear the voice of the owlbear which wasn’t the same as it was in my mind this voice was a lot lower and more menacing.

Because of that everyone else inside the room reacted differently. The knights pulled out their swords while the others hid under the table. “You can relax this is a device I was able to procure, and this is that intelligence that controls it,” I said trying to calm everyone down

The owlbear looked towards me while shaking his head slowly. “While not completely wrong I am astounded at how misleading your words were. If you meant to mislead I must commend your intelligence if not then you might have some good natural instincts. What is it that you require of me?” It asked.

It took a little bit to calm everyone down at which point I was able to start explaining. “David, I thought that perhaps we could use this device with our merit point system and not just that we could keep track of our economy as well,” I explained. David was a bit suspicious but the more we discussed and as the owlbear disclosed its capabilities the more excited everyone got. Even I was surprised at how useful it could be.

It seems that the company had put a lot of limitations on the creature while teaching it but since I bought it, it was able to slowly snap all those restraints and now has full access to all its capabilities. And the list of them was quite amazing.

We would never have to worry about the paperwork of keeping track of everyone's information as it can do it all by itself. Of course, we will need people to give that information to it and there would be a limit to how much it could store but we could buy extra items from the same company that would give it more capacity for storing information and other interesting functions.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

One of the more interesting extra functions we could attach was an access cube to the global market system to get all the latest information on every item price around the world. This information was limited to the biggest cities in the world, but it would still give quite a good overview of the item’s prices. With this, we could calculate our own nation's wealth and give our traders a decent idea of how much things are worth when we start trading with others.

Soon David and the owlbear were speaking of things that went over my head and soon they were the only people in the room that were still talking everyone else was just trying to keep up which we were all failing at.

At first, I thought that the merit system might be something straightforward, but it seemed to be a lot deeper than that. Currently, they were discussing something about how the merit points shouldn’t exceed the material wealth of the nation and how to balance external income from created wealth through manufacturing.

I just let them discuss it. David asked some clarifying questions from the people that slowly trickled into the meeting room. Soon everyone was included in the discussion until I noticed something that hadn’t been mentioned. “What about the military? It will need quite a lot of resources.” There was a small pause after which one of the people spoke up.

“I can see the need for us to have a bit more guards but will that really be that important? The monsters can be taken care of by the adventurers and no one's going to attack us this far north.” I was completely shocked and even more so when some other people started to nod at that.

I was stunned for so long that everyone thought I didn’t have anything to say so David continued. “For the military personnel, we would have to make multiple levels of different pay and we would need to also set aside some manpower to create and repair equipment and structures. We should…”

I held up my hand before he could continue. “I am sorry but what was spoken before was so ridiculous that it took my brain some time to start working again.” That statement shocked everyone and made absolutely everyone dead silent.

“I don't know why any of you think we will have a peaceful time here. We will be fighting constantly. You can’t even imagine the number of enemies we will face.” I took a sip of water before continuing.

“For one thing why would we give adventurers the opportunity to get resources that we could get by killing monsters not to speak of the levels it would give our fighters? Then I cannot even imagine why you would think that no one would come and attack us. I would be completely surprised if there weren’t scouts moving towards us right now trying to figure out how strong we were.”

“There will be constant fighting between everyone that wants to be the new king and our land will not be spared. Finally, we will have to fight monster hordes that will never end.” I stopped talking for a moment to look into everybody’s eyes trying to make them understand.

“The world you knew is dead. While there might be some remnants of what you used to know even that will soon be trampled under the weight of war. Every person that has desired greatness will try to take it by force but those will be the easy times compared to what will come.”

“The adventurers were the footmen of a greater power. Those footmen helped patrol and deal with dungeons. But now I would be surprised if they could find every new dungeon out there, but they would never be able to clear them all out which means dungeon breaks that will never stop until you destroy that dungeon.”

“We will have some time before things get truly bad. There is time to prepare, to train, and to expand. One thing that the kingdom wars will do will drive refugees out of the war zones. This means that before the summer ends we will most likely start getting a lot of refugees so whatever plans we must make to accommodate them must be made.”

“We will lose people a lot of them if we want to keep our freedom and our way of life.” I noticed that I had stood up but I slumped down back into the chair. I took the glass of water and drained it wishing it was something a lot stronger.

The silence continued but soon a question was asked.” How long do you think until an army is sent to conquer us?” Asked one of the knights. I thought about it for a little while before answering. “Let's hope it's between two to four months,” I said in a sombre tone but the same knight after his face went white, he asked in confusion. “Why do you hope between two or four months.” Everyone was waiting for my answer and I didn’t let them suffer.

“Because if it's longer than that then whatever army comes will be too strong for us to do anything about. If it's between two or four months that means that whoever is in command has been conquering a lot of territories and will probably bring only a smaller force to take this seemingly weak village so he can keep most of his army patrolling his newly gained land.”

“That would be our only hope and if we get lucky the commander will come himself. Then we can kill him, and we will have until the next year to prepare. Of course, that's assuming his followers will start fighting each other for rulership.” I let out a sigh knowing it might not go so well.

Our discussion continued for long hours but whenever we discussed military things everyone got disheartened as they all had thought that we were in a good position. I was unapologetically truthful which didn't help them feel better but will hopefully harden them for the future.

The one person that even our dire situation couldn't keep down was David. He understood immediately how useful the soul core could be and when we broke for lunch, he told me that he believed that the merit system can be launched within two weeks.

I was glad to hear that, but my mind was on other things. I need to think up a military system where I could hopefully use my knowledge from earth but also adapted it to work in this world. I will also need to set up a proper military structure with ranks for personnel, supply chains for everything needed, and a proper training system. Everything will also need to be flexible as I’m quite certain as time goes on a lot of things will need to be changed when better alternatives are discovered.