The next day, so on my 499th day in the new world, I summoned 2 healers to help me with the births that were going to happen in a few weeks.

And I wanted them to get accustomed to people they were going to help give birth as, if you are going to put the lives of you and your baby in someone else’s hands, you might as well be at least acquainted with them, right?

They currently resided in the barracks, with the majority of people, and I designated their workspace to be the hut that acted as a church because they already had a blessing.

And with the coming of the Healers, the Alchemists could worry less with healing other people and start focusing on actually experimenting with different mana herbs and try to make new types of alchemical product that were not just salves.

And other than assigning 2 of the 6 tanners into starting leather armour production, I looked forwards to the births that were coming and after a mere 11 days, the first birth happened which went... pretty well all things considered, and a healthy baby was delivered.

Then nothing interesting happened for the rest of the year.

More and more houses were completed, more babies were born, yada yada yada.

A few days after December started and we entered our second winter, I was in my room eliminating the last people from my list of potential “Head Guard/First Knight” candidates.

I had already created, and given classes to 16 more people, and 8 more houses were completed.

In addition to that, 3 more babies were born in the last 3 months, but in a month or two, it’d go from a single baby per month to 2 babies per month as we had upped our family house construction a few months ago.

Anyways, back to talking about my potential first knight candidates.

As you probably have thought, quite a few people had stepped forwards after I made it public that I was looking for a knight, and I had interviewed a few people every few days, and I was left with 3 people that were my potential knights.

Jonathanne, Joshua and Jay.

And yes, I’ve kept to my promise of naming everyone I’ve created with a name starting with J. Though, I’ve told people that they didn’t have to name their kids with names that started with J, so the future generations will have the pleasure of meeting Bob.

No need to thank me! Just doing my part!

And as to who I am going to actually make my knight... well, all 3 are hunters, and they all would probably make good knights and soldiers, but I am going to go with Jonathanne as she’s the second Homunculi I’ve ever created, so it only makes sense to choose her!

Though our initial guard corps will not have that many people for her to command over as... well, we just haven’t seen a lot of threatening monsters around, so keeping 35 people in the army just doesn’t seem that great of an idea.

I am probably going to just keep 16-17 people in the guard corps, with 1 or 2 knights, 5 guards in chain armour and another 10 in leather armour.

By the end of year 4 I’ll definitely have 35 people in the army, or more, but not by the end of year 3.

In the morning, I broke the news to all 3 and told them that I decided on Jonathanne to by my first knight, but I also told them that if they were still interested in joining the guard corps, I’d make them officers under Jonathanne with the prospect of becoming proper knights themselves in the future, which they were happy to accept.

Then I have Jonathanne her plate armour which... she physically could not wear by herself... and then gave all 3 of them leather armour and told Jay and Joshua that they were now Jonathanne’s squires, and they were to act as her hands, and most importantly, help her don her armour.

Then I teached them how to actually don the armour, and then explained them their new duties.

Which was to train, train, train, and... train. And sometimes hunt down monsters that I ordered them to kill.

And they quickly accepted this fact as I had told them this before. I also told them that they may have to kill people in the future, which they did not understand the reason to, but after an hour of explaining them how malefactors may appear in society, and that sometimes killing their fellow men might be the only option, they reluctantly accepted that they may actually have to kill people in the future.

Not that they looked that pleased with my explanations, but I didn’t really need them to accept that they might actually kill people right now.

Then as winter progressed, we finally completed the last house inside the log wall at day 645.

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But thankfully, we had already started the preparations to expand the wall already, so the construction of more houses didn’t have to wait for too long—and the people outside the walls didn’t have to be in danger for too long.

And to cope with our expansion outside the hills, Construction Group 2 had started building an earthen wall next to the river, that blocked the river from both sides to defend both the village, and the farms from floods.

The earthen wall wasn’t anything fancy, its height was only around 50 centimetres, and it extended for 600 meters on each side of the river, and its construction would take around 2 weeks, but it’d deal with most of the small flooding coming from the river without a problem!

And the damage taken from the larger floods would be somewhat lessened thanks to it... let’s just hope a large flood doesn’t hit next year, because if it does, it is going to suck.

Other than that, after the winter had started, I once again disbanded the gathering group and conscripted them into the construction group and summoned a few more construction workers to make a small group of 12 workers and sent them to the lumberjacks to help cut down enough trees for the next layer of the log wall we were going to make.

And I was planning on putting 100 meters of empty space between the current wall, and the second wall, which would put the diameter of the new wall at 160 meters, and make its circumference 480 meters, and to make the new log wall, we’d need about 720 logs.

Which was... honestly, not that much.

One lumberjack could process an entire tree a day—but that is processing it into planks and such, so a lot more work than just cutting it.

And someone with a saw could cut down a single tree in about 2 hours, so if the construction group 3 only cut down 48 trees a day, with each worker cutting down 4 trees a day after an 8-hour workday.

They’d need only half a month to cut down enough trees to build the wall.

Oh, and look! Construction group tree was formed at day 605, and we are at day 645!

So yeah, they are long done with cutting the trees. And they’ve been digging a 2-meter-deep trench into the ground for the last 25 days, though it will take them another 55 days, or until day 700 to be done with the trenches, meanwhile, the logs they’ve cut will have dried enough to be used and GC1, or construction group 1, will be able to continue making houses pretty much without a hiccup.

And after a few more days the GC2 will be done with the earthen flood barriers and will be able to start the construction of the log wall while GC3 continues to dig the trench for the logs.

So, everything is going well, with the only problem being the fact that we’ve only reached a population of 184—counting me and the 8 babies of course.

So, I’ve not been able to reach my 200-population goal, but with 3 construction groups at hand, we should be able to make a lot more houses next year!

Which will hopefully put us close to around 350 population at the end of year 3, including all the babies of course.

Then as the days passed, and the flood barriers were done, I assigned GC2 to help dig out the trenches instead of starting the log wall as the wall itself would only take a few hours to put together.

No joke, making the wooden “gates” was actually going to take longer than making the actual log wall, which I was not sad about.

After another 19 days, with the combined effort of both construction groups the trench was fully dug, and the assembling the log wall, which included putting the logs into the trenches and making 4 wooden gates in the 4 cardinal directions, took only a day more, and then, we had another wall!

And, as only a few days before, at my 695th day in the new world, the winter ended, I was more than comfortable with summoning a few more people to freed up space in the barracks, and ordering all 3 teams to start construction on wooden houses, though CG2 had only 15 people to work with as the 20 farmers that helped them normally returned to the field to help out with the harvest.

And I sent the 4 new people we got to the farms too! Afterall, housing was good, but food was a necessity to live! And I really wanted to get at least 300 people by the end of the year!

By the time construction groups 2 and 3 were done with their house, the farmers were done with their harvests and 22 of the 44 farmers were free to help the construction groups, so I put 20 of them into group 2 and the rest 2 into group 3 and sent them on different construction projects.

GC2 would be returning to making family homes, while GC3 would first be starting the construction of a proper industrial district, with stockpiles for all of our ore, wood, and then workshops for carpentry, tanning, and smelting.

This was going to be a... large project to say the least. But it would be done!

And first they were going to start with a soap workshop in the commercial district instead of the industrial one, as I want to take an actual bath with soap instead of just water.

Don’t blame me! Sanitation is important!

But as the CG3 only has 14 people, including the 2 free farmers, making even just a basic hut will take longer than normal.

Then, a few weeks later, on my 716th day in the new world, the soap workshop was completed!

And I immediately created 2 more people and gave them the knowledge on how to make soap!

And they spent 2 weeks gathering everything and producing their first batch!

And at the eve of my second year in the new world, I could finally get a proper bath and... it felt fucking great!

All the grease and dirt I had collected over the course of the last two years, gone!

For the first time in this world, I felt free!

“Haahh...” I sighed, and collapsed on my bed, coming home from my 30 minutes of bliss.

Though even though I was happier than I had been in the last 2 years, I also felt a bit... empty.

The village had grown quite large, but I basically hadn’t completed a single mission the whole year!

And the only research I completed in the last few months was at the cost of selling my soul to the devil!

So, no a no bueno year overhaul but... not that bad either.

Afterall, even though I hadn’t done a lot this year, at least empire system wise, I had developed my empire quite a bit and I had gained a few thousand mana points and even 6 more hp!

System Window:

Name: Damian Tier: 2

Hp:106/106 HpR: 1

Mp: 6.404/6.404 MpR: 1

Skills: Mana Sense, Mana Manipulation, Mana Eyes, Weapon Mastery

Emperor Skills: Homunculi Creation, Absolute Order, Grant Knowledge

Blessings: Chosen Of The Goddess Rae, Heal

Party Members: 0

Only 6k mana was... not a lot, but hey! I was just starting! And if anything, I am the strongest Homunculi right now, and I’ll remain as the strongest Homunculi for a few dozen years so, that should count for something, right?

...Right?!