Mark woke the next morning feeling as if he had slept eighteen hours, even though it had been roughly six. He started his day by pulling some instant coffee mix that he thankfully found in one of the heater meals in his pack and sat outside the town hall to relax some. It was not quite the same as sitting on the porch at his house, but he could at least trick himself a little and enjoy what few creature comforts he had.

Arlo was the next to wake up and joined him outside. They sat outside just enjoying the silence that seemed so foreign from the last few days. The sun had fully risen when Mark finally spoke up. "We should scout the surrounding areas today. We don't know what is out there and better knowledge of what surrounds us can help. I have the map, but it only shows me topography."

Arlo nodded before voicing his assent, "I agree. I'm somewhat eager to do so, but it's not something that would have excited me before. I also can't remember ever wanting to be awake this early, but I can't deny that something in my bones is urging me to move."

Mark went back in to grab Charlie who had the last watch, before finding the rest already equipping their gear. This time, they left the heavy backpacks, and Mark saw them packing some first-aid materials into smaller backpacks. There was even a new addition to the team which Mark was happy to see as he wasn't sure how or when his new soldiers would spawn. It seemed that this one was also equipped with what Mark assumed to be his unit's standard gear. Mark simply nodded to his soldiers and said "Let's go."

With his men gathered around him, he split them into two groups of two, with him being in the lead of the first, which he called 'alpha', and the second was placed under Arlo, which he named 'bravo'. With more men, they were able to form two wedges spaced roughly fifty yards apart. They performed one last check that all of their equipment was in good shape, and set off.

They started by heading north to some foothills that Mark had scouted from the map and planned to make a large circle around the new town. The first hour passed rather uneventfully and they found themselves at the start of the foothills. As they searched through, Arlo noticed that the hills had a red hue to them and suspected that there was iron within. Mark confirmed it when he noticed that his compass was behaving abnormally around the hills. Mark made note of this, not only for navigation but also because if he found a way to mine, then these hills could potentially provide supplies. He still didn't know how this would interact with the Basic Resources, but he guessed that there was some conversion that could be made. Even though the hills could become a source of materials, they were over four miles from the town, so Mark was hoping that they would get some vehicles soon.

Once they reached the hills and began to make their circle around the town, Mark had Arlo take the lead, hoping that he would get some experience at navigation, even if he didn't gain the skill. As they made their way from the hills, they entered a forested area. It did not have the massive trees of where Mark had started but was filled with as much underbrush as trees. This was a slight annoyance to Mark because it meant that they had to make slower progress, and it meant that he might not make the whole circuit of the town in one day.

Thirty minutes after they left the hills, Arlo halted their movement and called Mark forward. Mark left his two soldiers to protect them from behind, then moved up. Arlo pointed out another pack of wolves that seemed to be patrolling through the forest. The wolves were moving at a slow pace and seemed to not have noticed the soldiers. This left Mark with an opportunity.

Before the integration, Mark had been interested in military tactics, something that he felt led to his option of commander when he selected a class. Something he had learned was how effective a flanking maneuver would be. The idea was that one unit would open fire on the enemy, drawing their attention, while the other swept in from the side, with the first group slowly ceasing their fire as the flanking element would move through the enemy. This was his opportunity to do such a thing. Mark quietly and quickly told Arlo his plan and told him to wait five minutes before opening fire.

Mark moved as fast as he could while continuing to remain quiet and gathered the two soldiers he had left. He would have thought it overkill but the wolves that he had seen seemed to be bigger than those he had fought before. Not only that but there were also seven this time. With limited time, Mark was just able to get his soldiers into position before Arlo opened fire.

Mark waited a few moments before beginning his assault. He watched as the wolves howled and sprinted in the direction of Arlo's group. As soon as the wolves passed his line of fire, Mark pulled the trigger and hot lead flew through the air. Barely half a second later, Mark's two soldiers joined in the assault. Where Arlo's shots were mainly to keep the wolves occupied and weren't very accurate due to the distance, Mark and his soldiers took carefully aimed shots, attempting to deal maximum damage in a short amount of time.

As Mark fired, he realized that he had been imparted with some knowledge from his Rifleman skill. He had never received any formal training in how to fire a rifle, but he knew where to find the edge of the trigger reset, limiting how much his hands moved. He knew the precise point of when to pull the trigger in between breaths. When he focused on these things, combined with his superior dexterity and strength, every single shot was placed exactly where he wanted, despite the nearly 100 yards of forest that separated him and his target.

The wolves were now truly confused and the pack paused for a moment, unsure of which group to attack. These few seconds, which felt much longer in the heat of battle, cost them dearly. The precise fire shredded the wolves and blood soon soaked the forest floor. In the fifteen seconds since the assault had begun, five of the wolves were dead or dying. The remaining two wolves fled deeper into the forest, away from the town. Mark wished to chase after them, but they were simply too fast. He could possibly keep up with them using his high strength and dexterity but was both concerned about fighting them by himself and leaving Arlo and the rest of his soldiers alone on the chance that another psi-bear were to come along. While he wanted the experience points, it wasn't worth risking Arlo or his soldiers.

In the end, Mark decided to drag back the corpses of the wolves to the town. They could not last forever on the few berries and small game that they had found, and Mark's supply of heater meals would not last forever. For the next hour, Mark, Arlo, and his men dragged the dead wolves back to the camp. He would not normally go through the trouble to drag these wolves back, but Arlo had mentioned that he knew how to clean them for eating.

Back in the town, Mark found Mike sitting at the desk in the front room of the tent. In his hands was a tablet of some kind. Mark had seen him fidgeting with some device on his wrist and assumed that he had found some way to upgrade it into a tablet.

"Have you looked at this thing?" Mike asked in as enthusiastic a voice as Mark had heard from him.

"No, what is it?" Mark answered.

"It's a tablet that's supposed to help manage the town. I don't know how you haven't checked this thing out. There's all kinds of cool stuff you can build."

Mark walked around behind the desk to look over Mike's shoulder and saw that it showed the things that he had seen in his Town Management Menu. "I hadn't seen it before, but it seems kind of useless to me because I already have that in a system menu that I can see like our character screens."

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"Oh," Mike said, deflating a little. "That's cool. You should definitely build some of this stuff. Seems like it could help us a lot."

"Yeah, I wish I could. I just don't meet any of the requirements for the stuff."

Mike rolled his eyes and said, "You clearly didn't look very closely at the requirements, did you? Most of the workshops only require having a person with an appropriate profession as a citizen."

Mark realized that the kid was right. He hadn't examined the Town Management Menu at all. He knew that he should, but there had been so many buildings and it seemed like his time would be better spent trying to keep the town safe than sitting around reading through menus. It had been shortsighted to do such a thing. He nearly smacked himself in the face when he thought about how the System expected them to "become spacefaring again." It wouldn't come from running around in the woods slaughtering wolves just for the experience points. Things like spaceships would need to be built, likely with lots of manpower, and something that could supply the means to do so, like workshops from the Town Management Menu, would help greatly.

"You're right. I didn't look at the requirements. The problem with having a citizen with the appropriate profession is that I don't know how to gain citizens."

"Okay. That's fair. I don't know how people become citizens either, but maybe I can figure it out. I just can't believe you got this whole town menu thing, and you didn't even bother to check it out."

"I thought you said this whole thing was bullshit."

"Don't get me wrong it is one-hundred percent bullshit, but that doesn't mean it still can't be cool. I'm gonna keep reading through this thing. I'll let you know what I find, but I expect something for it."

"How about some wolf meat?"

"What?" Mike exclaimed with an incredulous look on his face.

"You wanted something for helping me out with learning about how to run the town. I'm offering wolf meat."

"Yeah, I heard what you said. I'm not deaf. I wanted to know how you got the wolf meat."

"Me, Arlo, and the soldiers went hunting this morning and killed some wolves. Arlo said he knows how to clean them for cooking."

"Okay, I'll accept this as a one-time thing, just because I'm starving, but you've gotta find some better way to pay people than wolf meat."

"Fine, fine, just let me know what you find."

Mark then went outside to see how it was going with cleaning the wolves. Thankfully, the standard equipment for Mark's soldiers came with a combat knife that in a pinch could work for carving the wolves. Arlo had made decent progress, managing to clean one whole wolf in the short time Mark was inside with Mike. The soldiers were even helping out and were in the process of starting a fire big enough to cook all of the meat at once. Arlo told Mark that the meat would not be ready until sunset, even though it was only about midday now. With half of his force tied up in making food for them all, which was a priority, Mark resigned to go back inside the tent and help Mike look for things that could help with creating the town.

"Back so soon? I haven't found anything in the thirty seconds since you walked out," Mike joked.

"Yeah, it's going to be until sunset before the meat is ready, so I'm going to help you look."

With several hours spent reading through menus, Mark and Mike had managed to learn a lot about managing the town. As it turned out, anyone who wished to become a citizen of a town could do so easily, they just had to state their intentions. They also learned that the town halls had levels, and the levels dictated how many System-sponsored buildings could be constructed. The benefit of the System constructed buildings was that they would be built nearly instantaneously, and were upgradeable. There were a plethora of buildings that Mark would be able to build, provided he had someone with an associated class or profession, but since his town hall was only at the first level, he had a limit of three. This was not to say that other buildings could be built within a town, but that they would have to be built normally, as well as being outfitted with any machinery or tools that were needed at the builder's or owner's expense.

Mark also learned a little more about his Duke title. The level of nobility title determined the total area that the town could lay claim to. It also determined the number of towns that could be subordinate to him, though this was not something that Mark saw becoming relevant for quite a while. Late into the afternoon, there was a disturbance outside, and one of the soldiers came inside to tell Mark that a few people were approaching the town. Mark went outside, surprised that anyone had found the town, but he guessed it wasn't impossible as he didn't know how densely the System had packed people into the forests.

"Oh, thank God. It's the army," a shrill voice yelled out from across the field. She immediately came running at Mark and the soldiers. The soldiers instinctively raised their weapons, wary of someone unknown running at the camp. Mark quickly had them stand down, as this woman did not seem to be a threat. "Listen, there's some freak over there that drugged me and has been playing some extremely elaborate prank on me. Making me think I'm stuck in some kind of video game. You need to go arrest him, like right now."

Mark paused for a moment, unsure of what to say. He quickly realized that she must be in denial about the whole integration, and had woken up near someone who she assumed drugged her. He soon saw the "freak" in question only about thirty yards behind her. He just looked like a normal guy.

"I'm sorry, but we aren't the army. We-," Mark started.

"You're not the army? Oh, you're those weirdos that like to dress up like they're in the army." She said in a judgemental tone.

Mark sighed and said, "We're not doing this for fun. Things have seriously changed, and you've probably not been drugged. We all woke up here three days ago."

The woman looked like she was thinking it over, or just thinking about bolting again and running off into the woods. Mark didn't really want to have to take care of her, but he knew that if she ran away, she would almost certainly die. He didn't know how exactly it worked but hoped he could calm her down with the help of his high charisma.

"How about this, we have some food, and I'm sure you're starving after three days in the woods. You eat with us and we'll make sure that the guy over there doesn't do anything weird, and you won't have to go back into the woods alone. I'm Mark, what's your name?"

She harrumphed, but answered, "Trinity." She went and sat down next to the fire and Mark felt like she wouldn't try and run away. Next, he turned his attention over to the guy who was still standing awkwardly a short distance away from the camp. Mark waved him over but was still a little wary of him on the off chance that Trinity was telling him the truth about him being a freak.

As he got closer, Mark noticed that he couldn't be older than twenty, which was about how old he guessed Trinity to be. He guessed they were probably college students from the look of them. The man stopped a few yards away from Mark and spoke up.

"Hey, I'm Will. I promise I didn't do anything, I just happen to wake up next to Trinity and she thought the System menus were some prank by me."

"Nice to meet you, my name's Mark. I believe you, but I understand where she's coming from. It would seem like she is drugged. You can come to eat with us and we will try and get this all sorted out over dinner."

Will took a seat on the opposite side of the large fire pit from Trinity. Mark sat down at the midpoint and started explaining what he could to Trinity. It took the better part of an hour, but as he explained what he had gone through, she slowly was warming up to the whole idea of the integration and that everyone now had a character sheet like in a video game. She, unfortunately, had not played many video games, so Mark, with some help from Naomi and Arlo, was able to explain to her some of the basic concepts. By the time they were done, the meat had finished cooking.

They ate a silent dinner, which everyone appeared to enjoy, despite the lack of seasonings. They were all too focused on finally getting some hearty nourishment and everyone looked to be better for it. Once the meal was over, Will approached Mark and asked if Mark would let him stay here, as he knew nothing about surviving in the woods. Mark eagerly agreed and learned that Will was a medic, which was great for his first citizen.

Soon after dinner, everyone went into the tent to get some sleep. Mark set his usual watch with one of his soldiers taking the first watch. Mark was fairly happy with the day, though he wished that he had been able to explore more of the surrounding area, but he was ecstatic to have gained his first citizen, which he confirmed when he checked his town menu. Mark was almost too excited to fall asleep, which turned out to be a good thing, as wolf howls filled the night air.