“When life hands you a ticking clock, sit down and take a nap. No problem ever solved itself through panic.”— The Tao of Idleness, Book 5, Verse 21.
Apparently, when the chips are down, and your back is against the wall – or any other banal metaphor of your own choosing. Go on, knock yourself out. I’m a bit stressed right now – no amount of pacing around the clearing or glaring at a Medical Hut makes time pass any faster. Oh, I’ve got another one. Did you know it’s true what they say? ‘A watched Warrior never heals.’
Particularly when you really, really, really need them up and about and able to defend you against the imminent arrival of some punchy Rebel scum and villainy. Look, I know some men might feel a touch emasculated by wringing their hands, running back and forth and generally praying for the awakening of their good lady saviour. But do you know what? Fuck them, guys. There is no amount of Alpha Dog bullshit which can deny the reality that unless Lia wakes up before Berker and co return, I’m totally and utterly screwed.
I was checking in on her every few minutes – just to fulfil my burning need to do something – but, as if mocking my Freeloader status, all the system offered me on these increasingly regular visits were vague reassurances, none of which were actually helpful.
Healing Progress: 87%. Awakening Disabled Until Full Recovery.
I’d run the maths – well, Mabel had run the maths. Who then told Scar. Who, rather regretfully told me. But I was at least maths-adjacent, so that counts. Right? – and, judging by the amount of time it had taken the Medical Hut to bring Lia to 87%, she wasn’t going to quite wake up before all the ‘fun’ started. Which – I don’t mind telling you - felt pretty fucking coincidentally shit. I’m all for injecting a note of jeopardy into things, but it really did feel like someone’s thumb was pretty heavily on the old ‘chance’ scale here. And here was me stacking Luck and all . . .
Hence why I was standing outside the Medical Hut, staring at the pixelated shimmer of an ongoing medical marvel, willing it to HURRY. THE. FUCK. UP.
“Come on. Come on! Come onnnnnnn!!!” I shouted, opening and reopening the Medical Hut Interface as if refreshing it might change the increasingly settled reality.
Rebel Countdown: 2 hours 15 minutes.
“Plenty of time,” I lied. I’m not really sure who I thought I was kidding at this stage because it certainly wasn’t me. That healing bar continued to stubbornly move ever so slowly forward. I mentally tapped at the interface again, hoping to magically cause it to fill up. You know, like you see in the movies when someone’s petrol tank is on ‘Empty’ and they tap the dial in expectation that will make a difference? Fuck. I’m literally ‘poor forward planning man whose plane is about to fall out of the sky.'
Apt.
As I had at least a thousand times during the last few hours, I attempted to throw gold at the situation. If there’s one thing my hours (and hours) of moving pixels around on my phone had shown me, it was that the players with the deepest wallets could rule the roost. And now, with my Loot Leech Ability back up and running, I wasn’t just a whale in this world. And I wasn’t even a Kraken. I was Cthulhu’s older, wealthier brother. The one with really, really, deep pockets and all the Bitcoin he could shake a malformed tentacle at.
System Override: Combat Event Imminent. Gold Boosts Disabled Until Conflict Resolved.
Nope. Didn’t work this time either.
“Fuck you!” I yelled at my interface – startling the already jittery members of Scar’s posse. The system – who I was now thinking of as the anti-Great Slacker - was clearly messing with me. Again. Yet another moment where I really needed to be able to splash the cash – an option that obviously existed in this world - and speed things up was, of course, the moment it decided to switch that path off. Again. A Freeloader could begin to take such things personally.
I walked over to the Village Hall, hoping for something – I’d take literally anything at this stage - that might give me an edge before the Rebels arrived. The various Village buffs had come all online earlier after we’d unpicked the Tech Tree violation, and while I’d planned to explore them in more detail, the pressure of, you know, impending doom made it pretty difficult to focus on much beyond survival.
Nevertheless, as alternative paths were looking a little scarce, I tapped into the Village Interface again, flipping through what it had to offer.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Upgrade: Resource Collection Efficiency (Level 2) N/A in Combat state.
Increases idle resource gathering by 20%.
Upgrade: Worker Productivity (Level 2) N/A in Combat state.
Boosts construction speed by 10%
Upgrade: Defensive Structure Plans Available N/A in Combat state.
Requires 100 Stone, 80 Wood, and 10 Iron
Awesome. Because, sure, the absolute time you want your choices narrowed is when you are about to enter combat. I’d spent pretty much all of the last day trying to speed up resource collection and improve the productivity of my workers and now I had a way of doing that automatically. And it was switched off. Timing is everything, yeah?
Not having any iron and not being allowed to pay for it either was also a vibe. Almost like the system was really leaning into the ‘man’s reach must exceed man’s grasp’ philosophy. Shit. I needed time, and that was the single most valuable thing the system was refusing to grant me.
The clearing was suddenly feeling smaller, tighter, as if it were closing in with every tick of the countdown clock.
Idle Gains: +45 XP to keep your pecker up
Perfect. Gaining XP for a morale boost just before my imminent slaughter was a wonderful irony right now. All gains are appreciated, Great Slacker, but anything that isn’t going to help me fend off an army is all a bit superfluous, no? I’d even take some words of actual wisdom to help right now. There must be some sort of Sun Tzu ‘Art of Idle War’, right? Or, and I think this is a touch more pertinent, you don’t happen to have access to a rail gun you can fire my way, do you? You know, the lazy kind?
Bupkiss. Silence. Nada.
I was beginning to suspect there was no quick fix here. No magic button to solve all my problems and provide a ‘Get out of Massacre Free’ card. I checked the Medical Hut again, hoping beyond hope that Lia might somehow be ready to wake up and be ready to deal with this mess.
Healing Progress: 88%. Awakening Disabled Until Full Recovery.
“Of course.”
Oh, and you might be wondering what my brave, stalwart allies were doing whilst I was going quietly out of my mind? Digging trenches? Sharpening blades? Swearing blood oaths and generally preparing to die in my defence? Nah. Not so much. Scar’s people had spent the time packing up their meagre possessions in preparation for legging it.
“Scar, mate,” I tried again .“Are you absolutely sure about this? I mean, I can literally pay you whatever you want to help me out here.”
He didn’t even look my way. “As I told you before, we’re not mercenaries. You’ve got two hours, maybe less, before the Rebels show up. We’ll wait nearby until the last moment just in case the psycho bitch wakes up and pulls your ass out of the fire, but that’s it.”
“Come on, mate! You can’t honestly be planning just to leave me to die. Not after all we’ve been through.” I mean, sure, I wasn’t convinced that a day or so of a building montage and some lame words of wisdom quite made us the Fellowship of the Ring yet, but I was willing to give the old guilt trip a go. I was getting desperate.
Scar’s expression, however, didn’t change. “I told you from the start, Rogue. We’re builders, not fighters. We feel bad about leaving, but we’re not dying for you.”
“You’re really just going to fuck off?”
Scar shrugged, wiping his hands on his trousers. “We’ll be in the woods, watching. If you make it through, we’ll come back and help you rebuild whatever the Rebels leave behind.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Well, I could. But outrage was an emotion I could work with right now. “You’re fine and dandy with watching me get torn apart by the Rebels?”
“It’s not personal, Rogue,” Scar said, his voice frustratingly calm. “It’s just not our fight.”
“Not your fight? You’ve been helping me build this fucking village! It’s as much your home as it is mine!”
“You think we haven’t done this before!” There was a hitch in his voice now and, if I wasn’t so pre-occupied by my imminent death, I might have felt bad for him. “We’ve built a dozen villages just like this one. And the thing the Rebels – and the Imperials – have taught us is that it’s not worth dying for them.”
His words hit harder than I expected. I knew Scar and his crew weren’t idealists—they were survivors. But I’d hoped, somehow, that I could count on them when it came to the real fight. Now, it seemed like that hope had been misplaced.
“We’ll see how things play out,” Scar said, adjusting the strap of his bag. “If you survive, we’ll stick around a bit longer. But for now, we’re out. Dema will hang around and keep an eye on things. She’ll let us know how it turns out.”
And just like that, Scar turned and motioned to his crew. They began disappearing into the forest. Within minutes, the clearing was empty except for me, the Medical Hut, and the faint hum of the Village Interface.
Rebel Countdown: 1 hour 45 minutes.
Fucking… fuck. This is a fucktastically cosmic fuck-up of a fucknado, swirling through a void of utter fucklessness. And here I am, standing in the fucking middle of it, wondering how the actual fuck my entire existence turned into one giant, never-ending fuckscape of pure, unfiltered fuckery.
I wasn’t best pleased.