"Impatience is the mother of poor decisions. But sometimes, sitting idle is the father of defeat." — The Tao of Idleness, Book 4, Verse 3.

Within an hour, the Village Hall was finally done. The Storage Shed followed quickly after, and this should’ve made me feel like I was finally making some progress. It didn’t. Instead, I felt a now familiar knot of anxiety in my gut, the one that whispered how fucked I was. Scar’s people were definitely helping my Pixel Workers speed things along, but even they couldn’t do all that much to combat the pre-requisite debuff. Sure, a couple more buildings were up, but I could still feel it constricting everything we were trying to do like a vice.

Idle Gains: +15 Wood, +13 Stone, +10 Food

Support Costs: -14 Wood, -12 Stone, -10 Food

Debuff Active: Tech Tree Violations detected. Penalty to all gains (500%).

Even with my Pixel Workers and Scar’s guys focused totally on resource gathering, I still didn’t have anywhere near enough to throw up the Hunter’s Lodge. To be honest, it was like pouring sand into a bucket with a hole in the bottom. And all the time, the clock ticked down until the return of the Rebels. And the Empire’s ultimatum. And the splattering of Lia’s dad.

Scar stood by the Village Hall, his arms crossed, a deep frown creasing his face. His crew were mostly all off in the woods, just returning to drop off piles of wood, stone or the occasional deer into the Storage Shed.

“We’re still stuck, aren’t we?” I asked.

He grimaced. “You’ve got the Village Hall and the Storage Shed up, for sure. But you’re still operating under a fucking beast of a debuff. Until you get the foundational stuff sorted, you’re being strangled at birth.” He side-eyed me for a moment. “If you’ve any gold, you could boost the last building? Would be worth it in the long run.”

“Nah,” I said, shaking my head. “Cash isn’t the issue, mate. That ability is on lockdown, too. To be honest, I think someone’s hoping to make my life as difficult as possible.”

Scar smiled at that. “I don’t think the Maker is singling you out personally, Rogue.” I winced at the echo of my last proper conversation with Lia there. If Scar noticed, he didn’t mention it. “Trust me, I’ve seen this sort of thing before. Settlements that get off to a bad start and skip key steps? Happens more than you would think. It’s like everyone thinks they're the first person to try to run before they can walk. The system always pushes back. And hard. And that’s just normal villages, not ones built on Accumulation Pools. It’s a miracle you’ve managed to get two further buildings up, to be honest.”

I looked at the benefits a functional Village Hall would be giving me right now. Yeah, those Resource Collection increases and Worker boosts would be sweet. Although nothing like as helpful as the Defensive Perimeter . . . “Anything more we can do to fix it?”

Scar shook his head. “No, You need the Hunter’s Lodge. Once we get that up, things should sort themselves out. And it’ll help with things like scouting. If the Rebels are coming back, it’d be great to have a bit less Fog of War.”

I sighed. “Okay, so we need more resources, right?"

“Which is why my little lot are running themselves ragged. Your workers are concentrating on the Wood, so we’re hitting up the quarry for stone and trying to build up a food supply chain. It’s slow going, but we’ll get there.”

“Before or after World War Three breaks out?”

Scar ignored my question, turning to yell at a few of his group that had returned from an expedition and were now, in his words, ‘fucking lollygagging’. The wiry woman with the bow—who I’d started mentally calling Not-Maid Marian—flipped him the bird and led a few others back into the trees.

I watched them go, feeling a bit useless. Then - hey, who would have guessed it? - a notification hit.

Level Up: Level 4 Achieved!

Well, wasn’t that a coincidence? I hadn’t even done anything particularly noteworthy to deserve it – and with all my random gains seemingly switched off right now, it was a bit of a surprise I’d stumbled across that last 1%. Although, if Berker was coming back soon, a level-up felt good.

Name: James Brook

Level: 4 (0% Idle XP Gains)

Class: Freeloader

Health: 128

Mana: 0

Stamina: 54

Strength: 6

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Agility: 21

Dexterity: 20

Constitution: 14

Endurance: 4

Intelligence: 10

Wisdom: 10

Charisma: 11

Luck: 20

Class Abilities:

Borrowed Strength: Your stats increase based on those around you. Find stronger allies to grow more powerful. Random Trigger Modifier.

Lazy Aura (Rank 2): Enemies within range are increasingly likely to lose interest in attacking if you do not engage. Additionally, enemies who become disinterested may leave Loot behind as they leave.

Loot Leech: You passively collect resources from your surroundings.

Passive Assistance (Rank 2): You have mastered the art of doing nothing, while everything happens around you. At this level, as well as reducing the cooldown for the Critical Hit buff to 30 minutes, your mere presence provides a slight boost to nearby allies' effectiveness.

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. Lucky Bystander: When in the presence of an ally their combat effectiveness increases by 5%. Duration: Permanent.

Skills:

Stealth (Lvl1)

Game Player (Lvl1)

Unallocated points:

5

Well, Game Player was new. I assumed that had appeared after defeating Berker. Although I hadn’t got a notification or anything like that . . . weird. I pressed down on it to see what it said.

Your natural talent for understanding and mastering games enhances your strategic thinking. You quickly grasp rules, exploit weaknesses, and outmanoeuvre opponents with minimal effort. The more complex the game, the faster you adapt, making you a formidable player in any scenario.

Hmm. I wondered whether I had gained that ability after beating Berker or whether it had somehow appeared on my sheet beforehand. I certainly had seemed pretty decent at picking up the rules of a game I’d never played before. More Great Slacker shenanigans? That felt about right.

I opened the Progress Points screen, hovering my mental cursor over the Luck stat. As usual, it was calling to me like a siren.

Luck: Increases chance of positive outcomes, random events, and unexpected survival in dangerous situations.

It was hardly the most dynamic use of my Progress Points, but it had gotten me this far, hadn’t it? In fact, it felt like I’d scraped by on Luck for most of my life, both here and back in the real world. Although, considering the way things had shaken out in the last year or so. Ironically, right now, it seemed like the only reliable option I really had. Why not pump more points into it? I was about to do just that when Scar reappeared at my side, wiping sweat from his brow. He glanced above my head and immediately frowned.

“You’re not seriously going to dump all your points into Luck, are you?”

“You can see my stat sheet?”

“Just the basic numbers. I assumed you were displaying them to show off? I mean, reaching Level 4 as a Rogue is nothing to be sniffed at. Fair play to you.”

I really need to figure out how to switch that visual feature off. There was nothing showing above Scar’s head. “What Level are you?”

“7. Most of the rest of my crew are 5s and 6s. We’ve had a hard life of late, and that's boosted us through”

Fucking hell. I was two days in and already at Level 4. I’d need a decent explanation for my rapid growth if these guys hung around. I thought again about Lia’s Level 15 – she must have been doing some serious shit for the Empire to get that high. On the plus side, at least it didn’t seem that he could read my Class. “What’s wrong with maximising Luck? It’s been working for me so far.”

Scar snorted. “Sure! Luck works great until it doesn’t. You’re a Rogue, not a tank. Your Class will let you blitz weaker opponents, but that natural advantage won’t save you when the real threats show up. You need to balance out your build far more.”

“Balance?” Why does everyone keep giving me the same advice?

“Constitution, Agility, maybe even some Strength. Your Luck stat’s fine, but it won’t mean a damn thing if you get cornered. You won’t survive on sheer chance forever.”

I hated that he was right. Deep down, I knew dumping all my points into Luck was a lazy way out. I’d been getting by on dumb fortune and avoiding direct fights, but that wasn’t a strategy. It was gambling, and eventually, my luck would run out. Even with Game Player appearing as a Skill.

Scar must have seen the frustration on my face because he softened his tone. “Look, I get it. You’re a Rogue. You want to keep things quiet and sneaky. But trust someone who knows when I say you’ll thank me when you’ve got the Constitution to take a proper hit or the Strength to cut through a jugular.”

I sighed, reluctantly splitting the points between Constitution and Strength, three in the first and two in the latter. This made sense, to be honest. If I needed to use the Well of Ascension boosts again, I needed to make sure I had the Health to pay the cost.

My total health ticked up to 134, and immediately I felt a little more robust. Not like I could take on the world, but maybe could look a belligerent teenager in the eye. “There,” I said. “Happy?”

Scar clapped me on the shoulder. “Happier, yeah. You’re not going all in on a toss of a coin now.”

“Thanks. Appreciate it.”

He headed back to his crew, leaving me to mull over my decisions. As much as I hated to admit it, Scar had a point. I was coasting on Luck, and that was only going to get me so far. If I was going to survive whatever came next—especially Berker’s inevitable return—I needed to be more than just a fluke merchant.

“When the shit flies, even the wisest cannot dodge it all. In that moment, skill and preparation are but leaves in the wind. It is Luck you will need—every scrap of it. The Tao of Idleness teaches that fortune often favours the idle, for those who rush into the storm only catch more of the spray. Better to stand still, let the fan spin, and hope the winds blow in your favour."

Oh great. Apparently, the Great Slacker disagreed . . .