As the winter was coming to a close, I started making plans for the expansion of the village, and my empire.

I of course had a rough plan in mind, like having at least 40-50 more farmers, and around 100 more people by the next winter, but that was, like I said, just a rough plan on how I wanted my future demographics to be.

But other than creating more people, I actually had to worry about getting more exp and research points too, and if I don’t actively seek out new quests, I will simply not get them.

And to get new quests, the easiest thing I can do is to research. But there is a big problem with researches in the shape of me not wanting to spend my current research points on them.

I mean... I had already researched blessing heal after I teached that girl how to make leather and got a quest that told me to get 5 healers.

But with my remaining 5 research points I wanted to get grant knowledge no matter what as being able to just skip the process of teaching people how to do their jobs would save me a lot of time.

And while I am talking about it... why wait?

Then with quick motions I opened my research tab and clicked on Grant Knowledge, and then I opened my system menu to see the skill Grant Knowledge next to my other 2 Emperor Skills and clicked on it.

And clicking the Grant Knowledge skill then opened a new tab with 2 sections, Knowledge and... Classes?

Knowledge:

Level 1 +

Level 2+

Level 3+

Classes:

Production +

Magical Production +

Fighting +

Magical Fighting +

Support +

Curious, I started clicking around and quickly figured out that the Knowledge section was for my researches and, from there, I could grant people the knowledge of each research I had in full.

But all the Level 1 researches costed 1 Mana Stone to grant to another person, Level 2 researches costed 1-2, and the Level 3 researches was empty... probably because I just researched Sapience and Grant Knowledge from Level 3.

And then moving to the Classes, and clicking on them at the classes, I learned that, while the classes gave only partial knowledge on things, they also were WAAAY cheaper than granting full knowledge on things.

For example, for the cost of a single mana stone I could grant someone the class “Farmer” and then they’d know everything from animal husbandry to normal farming.

Of course, they wouldn’t be experts on every research they learned through their classes, but they’d know enough to be able to start farming without much of a problem, and they’d close the gap between their knowledge and experience in a few months.

And that wasn’t even the best thing I could do! For a mere 2 mana stones I could grant the class Alchemist to someone, and for a mere 3 mana stones I could grant the class Healer to someone!

And the healers would have some alchemical knowledge to make basic remedies other than having access to the blessing heal from the get-go! That’s just great!

Though, sadly, I didn’t have any magical fighter classes right now, and the only magical production class I had was the Alchemist, but that was good enough for now!

Then, as the winter ended and the spring begun a new, the farmers started farming and I created 20 Homunculi and immediately granted them the class Farmer.

And as they joined the previous 20 farmers, the construction group started on expanding the Granary, and I started giving the smelters some new equipment to make.

Nothing too crazy, just a few things for masonry as I needed to make millstones to turn all the wheat we were harvesting into Flour.

And, after they were finished with making the masonry equipment, I ordered them to start experimenting with making metal armour.

Nothing fancy, only copper armour on the first attempts to get into the groove of things as I only want them to get experienced enough to be able to make an armour to qualify to bypass the Armour Making research and grant me a new quest.

I of course didn’t think that the 6 people in the smelting crew could do that right now, but I’d be giving them more people in a few months, so they should at least get started, no?

Then I got the members of my “exploration group”, which had been just helping around in the winter, and brought them to a hill to help me start mining some good rocks to make millstones.

The millstones I was going to make were going to be hand operated ones, as, while ordered a small group of 10 people to start constructing a windmill, it will take them more than a month to actually finish it.

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And I’d make the millstone for the windmill later, for now we just mined the stones and transporting them back to the village, which only took a day, turning the stones we had into proper millstones took me a week each though, and at the end of 2 weeks we had 2 millstones that Jesse and his cooks could use to start making bread.

Though the bread we made right now would be simply... shit. As time passed, we would start getting better and better at it.

So, everyone had to deal with the subpar quality bread for now.

And a few days after I gave Jesse and his crew the hand mills, another house was completed by the construction group, and a new couple moved into their houses.

And a few days later I created another 6 people, and teached them how to gather, without giving them classes, and made them the new gatherer team.

And the day after I finished teaching them how to, and what to gather, my 365th day in the new world rolled in and... I didn’t feel anything much really.

Just a bit of emptiness as I wondered about how many more years would pass in this world before the great game or whatever ended.

I probably don’t need to say this, but I don’t want to be here.

I simply couldn’t care less about who or what won or lost the Great Game, but, as I have power over the people around me, I’ll try to give them the best life I can.

And, hopefully, I won’t cause them to rebel and bring out the guillotines.

Not that I’d mind giving people political power in the future. I just hope they never think that I think myself as holier than them, and there is no misunderstanding in the future. But let’s be honest—there definitely will be.

And the best I can do is to take care of them in the future as peacefully as I can.

Another 5 days later after my anniversary in the new world... fuck, I should’ve congratulated Jonathan on his birthday, shouldn’t’ve I?

Well, its too late now, but anyways. After another 5 days later, the body of the windmill was complete!

But the parts that made it a windmill were not there, but the construction group making the windmill could do most of them in the next week, I just needed to make the millstone, which I could easily finish before the week ended as I had mined the stone already.

Oh, and 2 days later another house was completed, and only 5 days after that the windmill became fully operational.

And now, we wouldn’t have to worry about making enough flour for the next year or two, as our hand mills and the windmill itself should be more than enough to grind all the wheat.

Though I needed other crops, as Dark Onions we grew from spring to fall and the “Wheat” we grew from fall to spring were just not enough diversity, and a season of plague or bad crop would definitely kill people.

And for that I only had 1 solution—Alchemists!

Creating 2 Homunculi, I gave them both the class Alchemist, and set them to experiment with the Rainbow Sapling, and the new plants the gatherers brought.

They’d also make healing pastes out of the Opal Berries as, while the pastes were not that great at healing, getting rid of small injuries quickly would be great for hunters and... everyone actually.

...Wait, will people make band aid in the future? I mean, Opal Berries are quite common in the forest, and making a simple paste out of them is not that hard so, after my empire industrializes and all, we may just never invent band aid—or even if we do, you probably won’t find it in corner stores as Opal Berry paste is just better.

But I guess there is no problem with there not being a band aid in my civilization as... well, there is just no negative sides to not having band aid.

Though it feels a bit weird knowing that I’ll probably never see a band of band aid as I used to always have one or two with me while I was a kid as I’d fall down constantly.

And the fact that people might just have tubes of Opal Berry paste with them just comes as weird to me... though that future is far away, so let’s just forget about the weird future of my empire, for now.

And as the days passed the windmill became completed, and another house was completed at my 393rd day in the new world, and it seemed that the spring this year would be just normal with nothing new or interesting really happening—

Research bypassed, Armour Smithing.

“...What a way to prove me wrong!” I said aloud, as information about how to make a plethora of armours flooded into my mind, and I knew that the smiths had managed to make an armour good enough to qualify to bypass the Armour Smithing research.

Quickly moving to the smithing huts, I saw a full plate armour made of dark-silverish Wootz Steel, an alloy made of copper and iron used in India which was known for its durability, and the ability to be honed into a sharp edge.

When I asked Rae, she had said that she’d only accept a full plate armour to bypass the Armour Smithing research.

And I was honestly very surprised that our smiths could make a full plate armour by themselves, as, while making a full plate armour would take an experienced smith only a few days, making a full plate armour without having any prior expertise in the field in only 2 months?

These guys were proper geniuses!

I, of course, congratulated them greatly, and thought of something to gift them for their great work but I just couldn’t come up with any.

If I had a working economy, with proper coinage and such or just a few bars of gold, I’d give it to them.

But I simply didn’t have any.

So, I asked them if they wanted to keep this first plate armour they made, which surprised them as they didn’t expect to be able to be allowed to keep it but insisted that I take it and give it to someone who could put it to good use.

“...Okay, I am remembering all of your faces and giving you something valuable in the future.” I thought to myself and etched their names and faces into my mind.

Going to my house I tried to equip the armour but... it was simply too small for me.

Lamenting my immense size for a few moments, I put the armour back on the ground, and inspected its plates, the chain armour beneath it and the leather straps.

But quickly moved on from it and checked if I had gotten a new quest—and I had!

Shining Armours – Make 5 plate, 10 chainmail, and 20 Leather armours. – Rewards. 20 Exp + 2 Research Points

That was... too many plate armours. We could of course make it, but it’d take a month to simply make them—assuming that I assign a few new Homunculi to the smelting group as the current plate armour we had, had taken quite a bit of time and resources to make.

The chainmail armours would take another month as well, and the leather armours... may actually take a longer than a month as we only had a single tanner.

Though I had been having a hard time coming up with uses for the hides we got from the Tier 2 monster we killed last year, so this should be a good use for its leather, and I think we should be able to use all of its leather to make 20 leather armours, with metal plates to support them of course, without a problem.

And as the skin of that tier 2 was just tougher than normal, due to the amount of mana in its body, these leather armours should provide quite a bit of protection to the ones wearing them.

Though I’ll need to actually move forward with my plans and make the Guards, earlier than expected.

I’ll probably give them all the “Regular” fighting class, which gives them all the information needed to use bows and spears, and the class says that after I discover more melee weapons, the people that become this class will have the option to choose what weapon they want to learn how to use.

Which might be a problem as it is not a good idea to have too many different equipments in use in an army.

So, I might just make all of them use spears, or I could just make them all either spearmen or archers and save on a mana stone on all of them.

Though choosing what class to give my future soldiers was easy, what was not easy however was...

“To choose who’s going to become my knight in shining armour...” I muttered, looking at the dark armour on the ground.