Year 1566, summer.
The carriage was moving fast and they would soon reach Primeval, capital of Astella first among the human kingdoms and favored kingdoms of Aris, god of war and honor. From what Luca had read, his own goddess deity, Techna, didn’t have the best of relationship with Aris as their domains were fairly opposed. And the king of Dawnheart kingdom had done his best to prevent the meeting of the kings and heroes to take place in Primeval, which is why it had taken so much time to organize. Ultimately though, the king had to accept his fate as Astella was the strongest human kingdom and the only one to have been blessed by the summoning of three heroes.
Luca had been informed they would leave two days after he successfully drafted his first blueprint. During the two days, he had worked on a few other blueprints, successfully bringing his [Conceive] and [Design] skills to level 5. As the skills leveled up, drawing up blueprints became more intuitive, he could feel what would fit and what wouldn’t. Furthermore, he could also feel the two rare skills relying on his other classless skills, working in a synergy which bade well for his future class.
It was a two-week ride to Primeval and he had been given his own carriage to share with Acai. Their relationship had gradually gotten better as Luca opened up. He could now talk longer when they were together and he enjoyed asking Acai questions about the world and the life he lived in. Books were great but they could not provide the insight and the meaningless yet essential details that made up conversations and concrete life experiences. On the other hand, Acai was getting interested in Luca’s work. He would sometimes comment on the crafters’ works or discuss about crafting theories with the hero. Acai was after all a priest of Techna, even though he didn’t want Luca to become a crafter he loved talking about techniques and works.
So Luca spent most of his time in the carriage talking, looking outside at the fantasy world he now lived in, or designing new blueprints and leveling. He had now moved away from woodworking to smithing and jewelry, but he had yet to draft anything better than common quality. He would also sometimes be invited by the king to travel alongside him and they achieved a somewhat cordial relationship.
The king was a powerhouse with a level in the 70s and an epic royal class. At his level of power, people could usually live for centuries, but he was relatively young as his father died during the Great Calamity and he had reached his current level through war and blood. He obviously didn’t have much consideration for Luca but after a few conversations he understood that his hero was more of the intellectual type, which would at least be good for the diplomatic nightmare they would get into. So they talked and prepared for how they would present themselves. Luca would be presented as the Dawnheart kingdom hero and, officially, was preparing himself to become a kind of archmage.
Luca of course didn’t tell the king he had other plans.
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The first few days in Primeval had been hectic. Luca had met with all the eleven other heroes, most of whom were plainly just dumb brutes drunk on their blessing. Seven of them had already unlocked their class all choosing combat classes. The other heroes were level 9 and on the verge of choosing their own class.
Then the days were spent in a big council where kings argued on what would be the best kind of action. The gods had been clear that the heroes were sent to reconquer Lalcqia, the Lizardmen continent, from the hands of the demons and that the other species also had received heroes with the same task. The issue was the human continent of Speria was still recovering from the demon’s invasions. Very few resources could be allocated to an oversea conquest and many monsters had leveled during the invasion, resulting in unstable situations in all kingdoms and a need to stabilize the countryside.
Thus, it was argued that the heroes should level up by adventuring before going overseas. Not everyone agreed with this idea and some high priests claimed it was defying the will of the gods not to rush to Lalcqia and that the time lost in Speria could allow the other races’ champions to take a precious lead. Moreover, not every kingdom was happy to have heroes running around in their backyard and the sooner they were gone the better.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
But they eventually reached an agreement. Heroes would create parties among them and with some natives, they would level up to level 50, which given how powerful their class would be was not overly hard and could be achieved in a few years, and then they would sail to Lalcqia to fight back the demons. The kingdoms agreed to create a common fund to help the heroes install colonies and frontiers town on Lalcqia to hold the land.
It took a week to reach that point, after which the heroes held a special meeting where they discussed forming a party. It resulted in two parties being created, one with all the heroes who had already chosen a class. They were a more hot-tempered bunch and Luca felt little love for them.
A second party was formed with the four remaining heroes, Luca himself refused to join any party. Needless to say, his decisions were heavily looked down upon. But during the week he had seen his share of bullying and he had retreated into his mutism.
This reunion was held the day before and now Luca was walking toward Helena’s room. Helena was the leader of the second party of heroes and Luca felt she was fairly reasonable. Someone he could maybe work with.
He knocked on her door. Helena called him in. He opened the door and saw that all four heroes were there. He breathed in. Gotta do what’s gotta be done he said to himself.
“Hi,” Luca said uncomfortably.
“Oh, it’s you! Changed your mind about not joining our party?” Helena said with a big smile.
Everyone looked at him with eager eyes. He felt himself redden at their attention but kept going;
“Uh. No, not exactly. I was more here to… I have an offer to make.” He blurted out. Then stopped, looking at them to see how they reacted.
“Oh, ok, what is it then?”
Luca had thought again and again about how he would present things. So he said the next words very quickly before he could stop himself: “I will choose a leader/administrator class, I think it has great potential and I don’t want to fight directly. I want to lead and develop the city you guys will establish when you go to Lalcquia. It would give you guys a better base to adventure and develop from and to come back to when you need to heal and rest. And also, I would…
“Wow, wow, slow down.” Jordi cut him. He was a tall and skinny man who had already announced his intention to specialize in a ranger class. Usually rather discreet, he had an obvious distaste for the other party of heroes, partly because he didn’t seem to like bigger groups, partly because they were obviously a terrible bunch to be with.
“For starters, what’s a leader/administrator class? You don’t expect to lead us right?” Jordi continued. The three other heroes agreed with his questions, nodding and looking at Luca for answers. At least they didn’t outright reject him, they had the good sense to hear him out. Which is why Luca had hoped to work with them.
“Leader classes are classes which give bonuses to management and to subordinates.” The heroes didn’t look happy at that. “But of course, I don’t expect to lead you guys and to have you as subordinates. My bonus would be more for the city and the people who would colonize the continent, not a fighting bonus but a crafting, farming, or training bonus mostly. That’s why I would specialize in administration.”
“And what bonus do you expect to gain?” Helena asked. She was a tall blond woman who wanted to become an Archmage. Luca liked her as during the meetings she had proven to be very clearheaded, thinking before acting and gathering data before making any decision. That was probably why the three others had agreed so easily to be led by her.
“Crafting bonus so as to make better gear, architectural bonus to build faster and more efficient building, discipline, and training bonus to train better militia… I don’t know exactly yet, the hero blessing should allow for a crazy bonus down the line. Did you guys notice how everything works around stats? A smith has a productivity stat which determines the number of items he can craft by hours, the productivity stats of farmers determine how much more than a base yield his lands can produce…”
“Ok, I see, so you want to spread the bonus of your class to a whole town and maybe more, and you think it will give us an edge for the reconquest? Is that it? “ Helena asked.
“Yes, yes, that’s it.”
“I think we can work with that. But concretely, what would you do and what would you expect of us?”
They were done for business.