"The greatest strength is knowing you’re weak. The greatest victory is not needing to win. But above all else, the greatest skill is delegating." — The Tao of Idleness, Book 4, Verse 9

I stared at what passed for the beginning of my village, feeling like someone had handed me a box of off-brand plastic bricks with no instructions. The Well – the Accumulation Pool, right? - pulsed behind me, the sole consistent thing in this weird new reality. In front of it, the Medical Hut sat slightly apart, a lonely structure I’d thrown up in a panic, hoping it would stabilise Lia. And had somehow screwed up my build queue even before I knew that was a thing.

I didn’t want to be too down on myself, though. The Hut was clearly doing its job. Lia was lying peacefully within it, still unconscious but not getting any worse. I’d gone over at least a dozen times, checked for some sign—anything—to tell me she was improving. However, while the pixelated interface reassured me that her vital signs were "stable" – I was beginning to learn to hate that word - she wasn’t about to jump up and dance a jig. It was pretty sad to look at her like this. She wasn’t even groaning anymore; which seemed wrong for someone who carried a sword nearly twice her size.

Slumping against the wall of the Medical Hut, I felt panic begin to set in. I wasn’t ready for this sort of responsibility. Sure, I’d managed to avoid dying again (but I couldn’t help but feel that was credit to the Great Slacker rather than my own endeavours), but taking charge of building a village in the arse end of nowhere? Ensuring Lia didn’t croak? Figuring out how to fix a twisted build queue? That felt all a bit above my pay grade. Not that I had any idea what my pay was in this world.

Mind you, the faint hum of the Medical Hut was actually quite reassuring behind my back. It was an almost soothing buzz, like a mini-fridge filled with beer. But having this here, and having it taking care of Lia, was causing me an issue. I wasn’t supposed to have built it first, was I? I pulled up the interface again; everything was greyed out. The system was ticked off with me for skipping ahead, wasn’t it? Classic gamer mistake, right? Building out of order, going off-script. But I hadn’t had much of a choice, had I? The alternative was watching Lia bleed out on the floor. And if I wasn’t supposed to be able to use gold to rush progress, why was there even that option in the first place? All a bit hypocritical, no?

As if in answer to my thought, the village screen blinked, and a new prompt hovered in the air like an annoying pop-up ad.

Warning: Village growth out of order. Penalty incurred: 500% resource gathering.

‘Pay for progress’ will not be active until normal parameters are established

"Oh, fuck you," I said. "You’ve clearly just made that up."

A part of me knew this was all trial and error. Like a game you stumbled through, pressing buttons until something worked. But another part of me - hello, Creeping Paranoia. Oh, and you brought your friend Crippling Anxiety with you. Missed you guys! - was seriously starting to worry. If I couldn’t figure out a way to get the ‘normal’ parameters re-established, it wasn’t just all those wasted resources that’d slip through my fingers. The whole damn village would stall before it even began. And I think that meant Lia dying too. Because, sure, she was ‘stable’, but I think I needed to get that Hut upgraded in order for her to start to make an improvement . . .

I shuffled back to the Medical Hut, glancing at Lia’s pale face. Her breathing was even—good—but there was still a thin sheen of sweat across her brow. I sat down next to her, taking her hand, feeling that gnawing sense of helplessness return.

"Not what you signed up for, huh?" I whispered. "Not sure I did either. I wonder how long the Elders will wait for you to come back before fucking up your dad?" Shit, I wish I hadn’t thought about that. It wasn’t like I needed to stakes to be even higher.

Quest Update: The Gambler’s Debt.

48 hours until evidence of the death of the Alchemist is required to be delivered to Eldhaven

Failure (or Refusal): Lia’s father will be sleeping with the fishes. And then she will never, ever fuck you. Reputation between Empire and [Unnamed Village] with changed to Hostile

Yeah. Sure. Why not. Keep ratcheting it up, see what you get. I am absolutely at my best when the pressure is on. I think my record is pretty fucking disastrously clear on that front.

In lieu of having much else to occupy my time right now, I opened the Village Interface again, trying to make sense of it all. There was a basic infrastructure laid out in pixel form, the bare minimum, I assume—Village Hall, Medical Hut, Hunter’s Lodge, Storage Shed and… not much else? Those options weren’t overwhelming – even if they weren’t all greyed out because I’d built the fucking Hut out of order - but at least there was a clear logic to it. Linked resource nodes – no idea - from the surrounding area appeared to be open for me to make use of, but with that epic debuff running, there was pretty much nothing available.

Had building the Medical Hut completely screwed this village over even before it had began? That would feel pretty on-brand for me, to be honest. The interface obviously hadn’t liked what I’d done by paying gold to complete the Medical Hut, but it had let me do it. Almost begrudgingly.

I focused in on the ‘resources nodes’ – one of which was a thin little line leading to the woods beyond. Hang on, what was that showing there? I physically followed the dotted line from the Well out into the woods and was rewarded by the sight of two little pixelated figures busying themselves at the end of the mental pathway. They were weirdly low-res, barely more than a bunch of squares with rudimentary arms and legs, stumbling about. But they were moving. They were swinging some sort of axe against the trees, and at their feet were building up little bundles of wood. Their actions were mechanical and oddly hypnotic.

Workers Deployed: +2

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Resource Wood Gather Rate Increased

Of course. Of course they were little worker sprites. In this world, where apparently I’d become some sort of village-building aficionado, I have my own labour force made up of two cartoon figures.

I watched my little pixel workers bumble around, gathering wood in a semi-efficient manner. It was laughably slow, but at least it was something. But the more I watched, the more I realised how detached from it all I felt. Was this the way things were supposed to be? Me, sitting here, staring at workers I couldn’t control, and hoping that it was all going to be enough?

Is that much different than how you were living your previous life? a voice said in the back of my mind. I could be wrong, but I actually think that might have been ‘me’ rather than a Great Celestial Being trying to teach me a lesson. I always knew I was a judgmental prick.

And what about Lia? Her limp, motionless form was really bothering me. No smart quip was going to make her situation any better. If I was going to heal her, I needed to upgrade the Medical Hut to a level that would move her beyond ‘stable’. But to do that, I needed to get this whole ‘village’ thing working properly. I had no doubt that I could generate enough resources to make that happen eventually – and I was nothing if not able to wait the universe out - but that 48 hour ticking clock was concentrating my mind some. If she didn’t improve enough to be able to get back to Eldhaven and clear her father’s debt, then none of this—clicking, building, whatever—mattered. I wasn’t some chosen hero or powerful warrior. I was just a guy fumbling his way through and hoping to impress the girl enough for a pity lay. It's good to have goals, right?

Come on. Concentrate. IIf the system had let me build the Medical Hut out of turn, what other loopholes could I exploit? Sure, I might not be able to ‘pay to win’ until I got things back on an even keel, but there had to be a way to game this. There always was. I scratched my head, watching my workers. They continued their slow, robotic chopping at the trees, a pile of neatly trimmed logs building up at their feet. The whole scene felt surreal: it was both comforting and maddening, like watching ants build a hill one grain of dirt at a time.

“Come on; there’s got to be something I can do to push things along. .”

The Medical Hut, maybe? There was something about it that had caught my attention earlier. The pixel workers had to have spawned from that, didn’t they? I didn’t have anything else built that they could be connected to. I hadn’t noticed it at the time, being too distracted by everything else. But now that I was a bit more focused, that seemed the most likely. I toggled over to the Medical Hut's details.

Medical Hut (Level 1)

Status: Active

Capacity: 1 Patient

Workers Deployed: 2

Abilities: Stabilize (Unconscious), Generate Workers (Medical Assistants)

Hmmm. It didn’t say that before, did it? I mean, I’m not going to complain that the fucking thing also created workers. But that seemed to have been adapted on the fly. “Great Slacker, is this you fiddling around the edges?”

Nothing.

My mind started to pick over the implications. If the system let me cheat one rule - and it looked like the Great Slacker was messing around with things to my benefit too - maybe it would let me cheat a few others? Could I manipulate it all a bit further? Was there a way to push the system and generate more workers from this one, measly building? If I could, it might give me enough of a boost to fix the resource problem before everything went down the pan.

But how? I toggled around the interface, searching for a hidden option or Easter Egg. It was frustrating, like trying to break into an old game’s hidden debug mode.

Idle Gains: +0.5Wood.

Okay, there was that. A function of just existing as a Freeloader seemed to be bringing in resources. It wasn’t going to be anywhere near enough to make much of a difference, but it was something. I imagined I’d get another whack of stuff overnight, too. Probably gain another level? But I wasn’t sure it would be enough on its own until I overcome this fucking sneaky debuff. It was frustrating because, with all the gold I seemed to have, I sensed I would have had the resources to build everything in the proper order and have got the Medical Hut sorted before Lia had died.

This all felt like a slightly crappy way to teach me a lesson about not rushing, to be honest. Fuck you, Great Slacker.

Idle Gains: +0.5 Food

I had to think bigger than sitting around and waiting. There must to be a way to push this system onwards, to break through the barriers it had put up around me so that I could upgrade this fucking hut.

Then I had an idea. I leaned down, resting my hand against the Well. It thrummed beneath my fingers like it was bursting with energy. Could this be the key? Was there something about this Well – this Accumulation Pool - that could unlock more of the village’s potential without just waiting? I had no idea how it worked, but it was clearly tied to this place. And it was powerful. That was why Balethor was here, after all, wasn't it? I closed my eyes, focusing on the Well, trying to will it to reveal something—anything—that could help. For a moment, nothing happened. Of course it didn’t. I was trying to commune with a fucking hole in the ground surrounded by rocks. But then, just as I was going to give up, I felt it—a faint pulse of energy, like a fluttering heartbeat. A bright light flared in my vision, and suddenly, I was standing in front of a new interface screen.

Accumulation Pool Abilities Unlocked. Spend Resources to access:

Well of Power: Tap into the Well’s energy to boost production for a limited time.

Resource Surge: Double all resource gains for 30 minutes.

Worker Surge: Generate additional workers temporarily from existing structures.

“Hell to the yes!” I whooped, grinning. This was it. The cheat code I’d been waiting for. Without wasting another second, I activated the Worker Surge ability.

Nothing happened. The words ‘Spend Resources to access’ turned red on the screen. Not a problem, dude, I have cash to spare. I pressed it again.

Spend resources to access? Are you sure Y/N

That would be a 'Y'.

Immediately, my two workers stuttered, then multiplied. More sprites blinked into existence, each one identical to the others, but all moving with a new sense of pace and purpose. Hundreds of the little fuckers fanned out, scouring the surrounding area for resources, gathering wood and stone at an accelerated rate, like locusts on speed.

Idle Gains: +35 Wood, +24 Stone, +13 Food.

Finally. The resource counter began ticking up faster until I had enough to create the Village Hall. Big whoop. I'm sure you expect me to have activated the construction queue immediately, don't you? That Tech Tree violation debuff is all but history, right?

Yeah. I probably should have mentioned the other important detail that occurred. Apparently, the Accumulation Pool doesn’t accept gold . . .

As my HP flew down to zero, I had just enough time to think that I’d be wise to try to start reading some of the small print in this new world . . .