"The wise man builds on a foundation of patience, but even a fool can raise a tower. It’s the strength of the base that determines how long it stands." — The Tao of Idleness, Book 2, Verse 7.

I was sitting on a log, staring at the interface. My workers were faffing around with the construction of the Village Hall in an infuriatingly slow way, which reminded me of every tradesman I had ever had cause to contract back in my first life. I mean, maybe I was being unfair – four hours to build an entire building is still pretty damn fast in the grand scheme of things – but in the context of everything else that was going on, I couldn’t help but chomp at the bit slightly.

Idle Gains: +0 whilst all workers are occupied. Tech Tree violation is likewise active.

This absence of any available resources trickling in is a massive concern. The debuff my fledging village is under appears to mean that its own resource gains are pretty much non-existent, and if my two workers aren’t able to bring anything in while building . . . Fuck, it is going to take even longer to get the prerequisites I am supposed to have up and running before I can upgrade the Medical Hut. This is going to LOOOONG.

Time passed.

My workers worked.

I pondered.

During this time, it occurred to me that maybe rushing the build of the Medical Hut had been jumping the gun. But then again what choice had I truly had? Leave Lia there to bleed out while I flung up a few other buildings? Nah, no point being a Monday morning quarterback – do you like the transatlantic metaphor there? Trying to broaden my horizons somewhat. Time on my hands to think, see – I made the best choice I could at the time. Throwing up the Medical Hut was a good thing, even if I was now being punished for cutting corners. Cutting corners in a way I was kind of encouraged to . . . A lesser man would start suggesting a little bit of entrapment here . . .

That thought pulled me back to that first night in jail. Good times. After all the humiliating admin processes, I’d ended up sharing a cell with the grimiest of all the smack addicts who – that day really was the gift that kept on giving – was startting to go through epic withdrawal. To keep him calm, he apparently had this mantra he kept chanting throughout the night - "Leave the ashes where they fell. Only the flames ahead matter" – which, at the time, kind of resonated with me. The idea of ‘letting go’ of what had gone before and focusing on the future was pretty fucking appealing at that moment in time. Especially as the cold never bothered me anyway. However, my naïve belief this dude was going to be my own, personal prison Yoda was slightly undercut the following morning when he pissed all over a guard and was marched to the Block never to be seen again. Oh, and I later found out he was in for arson. So, yeah. Maybe the whole ‘ashes and flame’ thing was not really all that reliable a philosophical touchstone . . .

Where was I?

Oh, yes. Waiting.

***

A couple of hours later, for something to do, I opened the interface again and - guess what! - the exact same options flickered in front of me. Village Hall: under construction. Then, a Hunter’s Lodge. Finally, a Storage Shed. By which stage, surely, I would be out from under all this debuff bollocks, and I could start paying to win again? Solid plan. No notes. However, the more major issue right now was that I didn’t have nearly enough resources to start the next building, and - whilst the Village Hall was going up - there were no goodies whatsoever flowing in. As I wasn’t sure I had the will to rip myself a new one via the Well of Ascension to have another Worker Surge, I found myself in quite the quandary.

You know what? I’d always known having proper, adult responsibilities was going to suck the big one. I just never knew it would be this fucking complicated. Or involve Wells of Ascension.

Also, I couldn’t let go of the idea that I was – literally – doing the exact opposite of what was supposed to be my takeaway here. The Great Slacker—assuming this whole setup was his doing—had been pretty clear about the value in stepping back and letting things play out. And it kind of felt like all my problems thus far weren’t that I’d chosen the wrong building to construct but that I'd chosen to do anything at all. On the other hand, though, Build. Stabilise. Fortify. How did that little triplet fit in with a ‘stand around with your thumb up your arse and see how it goes’ philosophy?

The image of Arson Aaron swam forward again. Maybe - just maybe - my key learning point here was not to invest too heavily in life lessons from manifestly unsuitable mentors . . .

FUUUUUCK!!!! All this second-guessing - and the waiting. But mostly, the second-guessing - is driving me mad. No matter how you tried to slice this particular cake, I needed more resources, and I needed them faster. The Medical Hut had come with its own pixelated staff, but while they were stuck building the Village Hall, they weren’t contributing to the resource-gathering process. And unless they were gathering materials, I wasn’t going to be building up the rest of the village. And in less than two days, some fucking loan shark was going to kill Lia’s dad . . .

I missed my stakes being nothing more complicated than if I’d have enough Universal Credit left over at the end of the month to buy toothpaste.

Okay. Enough lollygagging. I snapped the interface closed and began pacing around my village. I mean, go with me on that description. It was really just a clearing in a haunted wood containing a rundown Medical Hut, a building site of a Village Hall and a Well that seemed to be a Hub for a vast, cosmic network of reality-changing possibilities. Quite the vibe. I needed something to speed this construction up. I didn’t think I could sit here spinning my wheels for the next hour and a half. The Great Slacker might approve, but I was completely wired right now, and at this rate, Lia’s dad would be chum before I could upgrade the Medical Hut and get her back to Eldhaven to prove we'd actully completed that fucking assassination mission. And that was assuming I didn’t get wiped out by some random event or that the Empire or the Rebellion didn’t send a death squad to crush my little village.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

That thought hit harder than I expected.

I still hadn’t really processed the fact that little old me was on both of their radar. The Rogue of Eldhaven. A title that appeared to carry all sort of weight I hadn’t earned, and a reputation I didn’t fully understand. How long before someone came knocking from Lia’s home town, expecting me to act like the badass I clearly wasn’t? And it wasn’t just the Empire I had to worry about, either. From my experience with the people we’d menaced on the way to crush Balethor, the Rebellion wasn’t exactly thrilled with me setting up shop around here, either. I was caught in the middle of a conflict I didn’t know anything about, with two factions breathing down my neck, both – apparently - more than capable of ripping me a new one.

And neither of them seemed like I side I wanted to be on.

Reputation:

Empire: Suspicious

Rebellion: Hostile

Fame: +10 (Global)

I shook my head, trying to clear the fog of doubt clouding my thoughts. I wasn’t equipped for this. I didn’t have the skills, the knowledge, or the experience to navigate the political landscape of this fucking world. Hell, I barely had the wherewithal to cope with the average football phone-in. But that didn’t change the fact that this was my reality now. Lia was counting on me, and this village—such as it was—was apparently my responsibility. Sorry, Great Slacker. I can’t afford to sit around waiting for things to happen. I had to make it work. Somehow.

I glanced at the construction of the Village Hall. The pixel workers inside were doing their job, slowly knocking up the structure, but that was it. As they weren’t helping me gather resources, I needed more workers and more hands to lighten the load. I opened the interface again, scanning through the options. There had to be something I was missing. Some way to unlock more resources that didn’t involve making myself pass out with pain via the Well. I had to be smarter about this; work with what I had to build on the foundation I’d already laid. Because, like it or not, developing this fucking village was my only shot at plotting away through things.

I was still staring at the numbers when something shifted. A new message pinged into existence, floating in front of my eyes.

New Construction Available: Basic Resource Worker

Cost: 10 stone. 10 wood. 10 food. (alternatively, pay 50 gold)

Hire a basic resource worker to help gather materials. 2/10 Worker slots allocated.

Fucking A.

I felt some of the weight lift off my shoulders - even as the timing of the message became the most sus thing that happened to me yet. This was the first glimmer of something helpful I’d seen in hours. A basic resource worker—just what I needed to take some of the pressure off. Yeah. Just what I needed. Hmmmm.

A second message pinged.

Opportunistic Luck: Level Up.

Then another one.

Opportunistic Luck ( Rank 2): Your knack for unintentionally landing on your feet improves. You're now slightly better at blundering into good fortune without trying. Whether it's finding lost coins or dodging disaster, your luck just got a little sharper.

Okay. Look, I’m not all about looking gift horses in the mouth. Luck is my highest stat, after all. Maybe this is just how those particular dice roll? Maybe. And a 50 gold cost? No worries at all. I recognised that, for most people, that would be a ridiculous fortune to throw at a pixelated helper, but a Freeloader of my experience? De nada. I quickly checked my most recent Loot Leach notifications. Yeah, I’d cleared 50 Gold just sitting on my arse pondering the meaning of life. I’d also picked up enough XP to move myself 1% away from Level 4. Oh, and a massive wodge of junk inventory items. I’ll have to figure out something to do with them sooner or later. But for now, I needed that worker. I needed the Village Hall. Then, the Storage Shed. And then the Hunter’s Lodge. And then I could upgrade the Medical Hut – fix Lia - and get the fuck out of here and back to Eldhaven. It was good to have goals.

As if sensing my new found motivation, the interface chimed again.

Hint: Building multiple structures at once may drain your resources, but it increases your overall productivity. Balance your choices carefully.

“Yeah, thanks for that.”

Balance. That was the key, wasn’t it? But I wasn’t exactly known for balance in my old life. I’d always been more of a ‘wing it and hope for the best’ kind of guy. But here, in this strange new world, that approach wasn’t cutting it. Not anymore, whatever the Great Slacker might be hinting at. I shook my head, trying to clear it. I couldn’t afford to get lost in existential questions right now. I had enough on my plate without spiralling into a crisis of identity. First things first: hire the worker. Then, I could worry about figuring out the rest.

I opened the interface again, mental fingers hovering over the option to buy the worker for 50 gold. I tapped it without any further hesitation. A few seconds later, another tiny pixelated figure materialised in front of me. Just like the others, it had no distinct features, just a blob of colour and basic limbs.

Worker Hired!

Assigned to: Resource Gathering

Progress: +2 Wood, +1 Stone, +1 Food per cycle

A small - very small, let's not carried away - smile crept onto my face. This was progress. Slow, yes, but progress all the same. With this Worker gathering resources, I might well have enough to start building the next structure when the Village Hall completed.

Without any further ado, feeling pretty happy with myself, I settled down on what I was starting to think of my ‘revelation’ log, and had myself a little nap. Everything would be completely sorted and finished when I woke back up. Right?