People stood in shock as they saw this gigantic dog suddenly appear from the small tent, some screamed and ran away but most has been standing around waiting to see what was going on as they had heard rumours of magic trees and monster pets.
BOB started sniffing around the tent not bothered about a thing since he sensed that nobody in camp can do him any harm.
There we a couple of surprised gasps when Louie stepped out of the tent, he stretched himself out and his armour disappeared to be replaced with a loose-fitting shirt and pants with short boots.
He looked at the people and greeted them with a head nod.
"Good day everybody."
"When are you going to kill the monsters?" Somebody shouted from the crowd which raised a couple of murmurs and agreements.
"Yea, we want to move to Paarl."
Louie looked to the place from where he had heard the voices shout and saw somebody duck away behind others.
He turned his full attention on the crowd who grew quiet and took a step back.
"Why, my good sir. Yes, you who threw the question out here and then ducked away like a coward. Ready to let other people face my wrath for you. But wait I see some children over here, why don't you come and hide behind them, I'm sure they will be powerful enough to keep you safe."
There was some shuffling as a guy fled the crowd in panic.
"To answer our cowardly friend who ran away. I'm not here to solve your problems for you. But I will lead a group to Paarl in 7days."
There were some quiet cheers and smiles. "But there will be no more than 20 members and they will have to be able to fight. I won't accept anybody that can't defend themselves. This will be a traders caravan."
The mutters kept getting louder. And suddenly cut off as BOB walked up next to Louie and rattled everything with another deep growl.
"I imagined there will be a meeting tonight." Louie looked around and spotted an open patch of ground, he pointed to it.
"Over there just after dark, so go home and tell the people."
At that moment the tent flap opened and the Sargeant walked out, he didn't look happy but was willing to show Louie around.
Louie nodded at the sergeant while rubbing BOB behind the ear.
"So Sargeant where do we start first? I got a lot of ground to clear. But first I want to go over there."
Louie walked over to the open ground and walked around the edge and every ten meters he would remove from his inventory a 3meter long stone staff with a round ball at the top that he shoved into the ground.
After the second staff, the Sargeant asked what he was doing and he explained about the meeting he had called and he was placing some lights for the meeting area.
The sergeant looked at the staffs and shook his head as all he saw was a round ball on a stone staff.
Louie held a staff out to the Sargeant and using
"Why are you covering the light up?"
Louie actually looked at the Sargeant in shock.
"You know that this is South Africa, you think that if I leave the glowing light here for more than ten minutes that somebody won't try to steal it?"
After he was finished placing the last staff, he turned to the Sargeant. "I will show you what I intend to do and then you can decide who you need to introduce me to."
He looked sceptical but agreed.
Louie walked to the middle of the area and using
He made another round outside the circle of lights and also levelled that area, gathering more stone for the stairs.
There were a few shrieks and gasps as people saw their tents suddenly level and stone flowed like a wave of water following Louie around.
He walked up to the stairs.
"Follow me, Sargeant."
The sergeant looked wary at his casual display of power but followed him up the stairs.
Louie started by creating a two-meter thick wall two meters from the edge of the platform and walked around till the wall meets at the starting point, then he created a staircase running up the outside of the round wall, As they climbed the tower the stone flowed up the outside of the stone tower and the wall became higher and more stairs were added till they were about twenty meters above the ground.
There was a small platform on top with a low wall around the edge. Loo took out a chair from his inventory and sat down to meditate and recover his mana.
The sergeant looked around in wonder. "How are you doing this?" He whispered.
"I'm showing you this but please don't spread the details around."
He concentrated on his earth manipulation spell and see if he couldn't edit it a bit to send only what he wanted to the Sargeant. And to his surprise it did.
The Sargeant sighed and looked defeated. "How are you doing this?"
"What, the spell description is before you."
"No, this? everything? All the small stuff you know. The sending of this blue box? How do you know all this?"
Louie scratched his head.
"Time flows differently in the Dungeon we had five days of fighting and trying to figure out what we can do, while one day passed outside. I will give you some advice Sargeant. Talk to the gamers and try to understand how this system work and then experiment with the settings and all the stuff on your status page, think outside the box. But for this, just think of sharing the BB that you are looking at with who you want that's near you. BB are Blue Boxes. Sher's idea."
Louie stood up and pointed at the Dungeon to the right of the tower.
"I intend to cut away the cliff on both sides of the dungeon make it into some kind of walled terraces. Then raise a wall around the front of the dungeon with a watch post to check the coming and going. I also want to level the riverbed in front of the Dungeon so it's more of a channel as it runs inside the town walls."
"Then to the right of the Dungeon, I'm going to raise a wall across the old road and over the runoff up the hill a bit then over to the right and then back across the river. I'm going to raise this bank of the Molenaars river till its level with the road and raise a wall on top it all the way to where the old and new road meets."
Louie turned around, "I want to level this whole hill in front of us and go from the left of the dungeon up the Elands river for about a hundred to two hundred meters then raise a wall across that river then to the left till I meet up with the wall over there, the whole wall would be about 5meters high and 3meters thick and 1.8 kilometres long. I also thought that while I was shaping the walls and the cliff that I could make 3meters high 6x6meters spaces inside the hill I intend to flatten, people can use that spaces to stay out of the weather."
Somewhere along the way, Louie had lost the Sargeant. He wanted to clarify his thoughts when there was a shout from the bottom of the tower.
The sergeant looked over the edge and waived and shouted that the person must come up.
"Sorry, but what you want to do is way over my head. Talk to her and she will tell you if it can't be done."
He indicated the person coming up the stairs.
Onto the platform walked a solid-looking woman, she held out her hand and pumped his vigorously as she grinned.
"Dacota Meyer, Civil Engineer. Damn but this is impressive." She patted the wall of the tower.
"Solid. I saw it go up and just had to come to meet the person that can do this."
Then she turned back to Louie. "That your mutt down there? He is a bloody beast that one, what's his name? Kerberos?"
She laughed as she said it. Louie stood in wonder staring at the whirlwind of a woman
"His name is BOB. I'm Louie and I want to start building a town here. Hmm, give me a second."
Louie opened his journal and started drawing the plans he had in mind. After he was finished he sends the plans over to Dacota.
"Look in your inventory for a piece of paper."
She raised an eyebrow but opened her inventory and with a surprised look, took out a piece of paper. She looked at the plans drawn on it when the paper disintegrated and blown away in the wind.
Seeing that distant look that Louie started associating with people studying their status she shook her head.
"Wow, how did you do that. And can you really do what you propose on the plans?"
Louie planned to sit down tonight and make a detailed explanation of all the little tricks and stuff they had figured out about the system during their trip to the dungeon.
He also planned to make a map and a full explanation about the dungeon and what can be expected to be found and also what to do in preparation for clearing the Dungeon, and how to defeat the golems.
He intends to do that all in his journal so he can share the knowledge with more than one person at a time.
"Let's go to that hill to the left of the dungeon that you want to level. I want to see how you do this."
They went down the tower and as Louie wanted to take the tower down Dacota told him to leave it up.
"It will make a good watchtower." She turned to the sergeant. "Paul, can you place two guards up here?"
He agreed.
"Sargeant I would like to talk to you later. I got some weapons that I think your troops could benefit from. We might be able to do a deal?"
He took a shield and spear from the bulwark and showed the sergeant. "I saw the weapons that your troops were wielding at the dungeon. These weapons are mana infused weapons they are ten times better, not to mention the eye appeal, than the ordinary handmade weapons your guards are using. You can keep those. Try them out."
He took a couple of steps before he stopped.
"Listen, you guys still have your rifles? I'm willing to make a deal for them. The steel barrels are a high-grade metal and I would be able to use the steel to make swords and other stuff."
He took his ninjato out and handed it to the Sargeant.
Dacota whistled in appreciation as she saw the weapon.
"Can you channel your mana?"
When they gave him a puzzled look. He took the ninjato and directed his mana into it and the blade burst into flames.
"Damn I want one." Dacota was ecstatic. He chuckled as he saw her excitement.
"Think about it Sargeant, rifles are worthless only good as scrap metal. Pretty soon all the Firearms in the armouries will be absorbed by Gaea and then we will lose out on all those high-grade metals."
The sergeant nodded. "I will think about it, what you want for the blade?"
Loo just shook his head. "Sorry Sargeant. I can't break up a set." He removed the naginata.
Dacota turned around and walked away. He could hear her mutter. "Weik Dywel. (Be gone Devil) Stop tempting me."
He chortled as he placed the weapons back in his inventory.
They found her at the bottom of the tower kneeling next to BOB where he was laying on his back while she was rubbing his belly.
"Damn, he is big."
She smiled as she got to her feet. "Let's go over to the dungeon and look at those cliff faces you want to modify."
He turned back to the Sargeant. "I can make you a weapon if we can agree over the rifles."
They nodded at each other and Louie walked away with Dacota.
It took the rest of the day for Louie, with Dacota's input to turn the cliff around the Dungeon entrance into walled terraces, with 9x9sqare 3metre high hollowed out rooms cut into the back wall.
It was starting to get dark as they were walking back to where the tent was set up for something to eat.
"It's easiest to start from the top of the cliff. It's like using a hot soldering iron on wax. I liquify the stone and just let it flow downwards till it reaches the edge of my spell AOE. The toughest part was to shape the walls up and over the top of the cliff. That took a lot of mana."
Dacota shook her head. "You did in one afternoon what would have taken us months to do. I love the system."
She received a few angry stares and mutters at the remark from people walking past but they only glanced at BOB and hurried along.
"What are your plans for tomorrow?"
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
He looked thoughtful for a moment. "I think I will take all those blocks of stone that I shaped from the run of, and move them over the old bridge and start building up the Molenaar riverbank and finish the wall across the old R101, blocking off that section of the road, that's where the baboons are coming from and where I must go to get around the mountain."
She saw a lot of people milling around the tower. "What's going on over there?"
"I told people there will be a meeting in a couple of minutes, got to go talk to them. Spread some bad news. Nip a lot of hassles in the bud before they start."
Louie walked around the clearing and uncovered the lightstones as he went before going to the raised stoep around the tower.
The officers were already there, together with Sher and Joe. He greeted them as they climbed the stairs and turned to the crowd.
Joe stepped closer and whispered. "I tried to place the cornerstone and it won't let me." He shared a BB with Louie.
Attention This land can only be claimed through a cornerstone by the one that claimed this Cornerstone.
After bonding the cornerstone to this land, the rights to this property might be leased for a share of no more than 49%
Cornerstones and properties are not transferable but can be claimed as loot through combat.
Property size 25square kilometre. Properties may not overlap.
After reading Louie shrugged and held his hand out to Joe. "Give me a 1 iron bit.
Louie took the coin and shook Joe's hand.
"Congrats, you just leased the land for the next 100years. Tell me later where you want the cornerstone and I will come to plant it." Joe gave Louie a fierce hug.
"Thank you, brother."
It caught everybody's attention as a golden light enveloped them.
They smiled at Sher who just shook her head. "I was at the Dungeon earlier, Its notification changed."
Huguenot Tunnel Dungeon Requirement for entry; Party not exceeding five members, Level 5 -10.
Dungeon level 5 instanced. Blue. Mechanized. Challenge.
The dungeon must be cleared before parties can exit.
300 Days till Dungeon break if not cleared.
Party must exit the Dungeon for the break timer to reset.
Dungeon limited to three instances. (0/3)
Louie read the notification and smiled.
"Nice, 3 teams at a time, each in a separate Dungeon instance, that would make it easier."
Joe looked at all the people milling around the tower.
"You called the meeting? Why? What are you going to do?" They all stood closer to hear what he had to say.
Louie looked to the Captain and Sargeant.
"Judging by what you guys saw. What do you think are the chances of there being a government, hell even a South Africa anymore?"
They wanted to argue with him but had to agree that the chances were very slim even non-existent.
"Got to start over. Bend the tree while it's young. Cut away the fat."
They looked horrified at the thought of what he might do. Joe wanted to object but Louie cut him off.
Louie looked at Joe. "Kindness does not mean soft, some people will blame us for not keeping them safe, you should shut those thoughts down quick. We can not save everybody we are not the police, there is no place in this new reality for big jails where people sit around safely behind bars while others care for them. We help those that want to help and better themselves."
He turned towards the crowd. It looked like most of the civilians were there.
He even saw the Doctors standing in a cluster at one side of the crowd.
He equipped his armour under his long coat just leaving his helm and mask off.
Sher and Joe looked worried but did the same.
Louie stepped to the edge of the stoep catching everybody's attention.
He was never good with speaking to people, not that he was scared, it's just that sometimes he tended to repeat things and ramble a bit, and crowds make him uncomfortable.
When he opened his mouth, he thought of trying something and channelled his mana to his throat and mouth and was surprised when it worked.
The mana infused his words with magic, carrying them over the people like a mist so it sounds as if he was standing right next to them.
"Evening all. None of you knows me but I'm the highest levelled human here at the moment."
He pointed over his shoulder at the tower. "This is a tower that I built in a couple of minutes."
Let them stew over that.
Most had seen it go up and a lot has been watching him working at the cliff.
"The old ways are no more. The days of handouts are over. The I WANT THIS, I WANT THAT FOR FREE, are no more. The days of sitting behind a fancy desk doing nothing and reaping in the benefits are done. The days of sending young people to their deaths and then claiming that you know nothing, are over!"
He calmed down as he felt Sher cast
One of the Doctors stepped forwards and shouted at him. "Who gave you the right to tell us what to do?"
Louie looked at him.
"Did you not hear what I just said? The days of demanding and receiving things for free are no more. NOBODY GAVE me the right to do anything. I HAD TO WORK HARD FOR EVERYTHING I HAVE NOW! This is the new reality."
"But today is your lucky day. Do you know why you are lucky? You are lucky because today you get to choose."
"Today you get a chance to change your life. You can choose between being a naysayer or a go-getter. If you are a naysayer then you are waiting for everything to go back to the way things were, to the land of milk and honey."
"You are waiting for your handout from the government, for somebody to step up and do what you are too lazy to do yourself."
He looked at the Doctors and people were slowly shuffling away from them.
"You better wake up and see the monsters at the door."
Sher was chain casting
"Then, there are the go-getters. I walked through the camp a couple of hours ago, and do you know what I saw? I saw people working, building walls, planting gardens. I saw children, no correction, I saw young people as young as ten years old carry rocks to worksites in their inventory without waiting for a handout, do you know why they did it?"
"I asked one boy and he said that he wanted to be safe. They did it because they wanted to feel safer today than they did yesterday. They are working hard to better themselves and the place they are going to stay in. And you know what? The system will reward hard work. If you work hard at being a blacksmith or as a tailor, then the system will reward you with the Blacksmith or Tailor class. That is a go-getter."
"Now to the important news, many of you have seen me do some work around the camp, like raising this tower and working on the cliff around the Dungeon. . . yes there is a dungeon here, and before you ask me what a dungeon is, well that's a long story, but the short version is that a dungeon is a place where those that want to fight can go to get stronger."
"After this week the naysayers and layabouts will not be tolerated here."
There was a shout. "You have no right to tell us what to do, or where to go. How DARE you speak to us like this, we are not your common street trash! I am Karel Smit a doctor. I have studied for years to get where I am now. I have received the "Top Doctor" award not once but twice—”
Louie saw it was the same Doctor and channelled his anger he felt for the pre-pulse government into his voice.
“I don’t give a fuck about what degree or award you might have received before the pulse, and I doubt anyone else here does, either. Do you think the TerrorApes and other monsters out there give a shit about your degrees and whatnot? Yeah, maybe if you use them as fuel for a fire then you might scare them away for a couple of seconds.”
The Doctor, aghast that Louie had actually interrupted him, opened his mouth again. “Wha-“
“No! Shut the fuck up! I don’t give a fuck about you. I don’t care what you think. I could kill you right now and nobody here could stop me and the amount of experience that I would get from your death would not even shift my exp bar.”
Louie looked him directly in the eye, daring him to speak.
“My friends and our companions, have fought our way through that Dungeon, fighting golems that would make you shit your fancy suit pants and run screaming in terror, we killed everything in our path, facing off against golem mages and archers, four to one against us. And we are here and they are not. Get that through your heads. In this new post-pulse South Africa, shit I don't think South Africa even exist any more. So in this new system worlds, humans are nothing but experience to others."
"So Mister Karel Smit, pedlar of stolen medicine, not even Doctor."
He saw the shock on Karel's face.
"Yes, I call you a liar if you claim to be a Doctor. If you don't want to work then you are nothing in this new world, so get out of my fucking face."
The other Doctors turned around and slinked away after the fuming Doctor.
People made space for them to leave.
After they left Louie spoke up again. "If there is anyone with any medical training and are willing to put in the work I want you all to step up here after this meeting. We can help you."
He calmed himself as he looked around.
"As I was saying, I have been doing some work, why? Because we," he indicated everybody on the stoep.
"We are going to build a town here. A town with strong high walls that will give us a good defensive position to stand and fight the monsters from. The walls should be done in one week. Then you will be given a choice. You can choose to stay here and make this a safe place for you and your children or you can decide to go try your luck somewhere else."
Louie waved Joe forward.
"Joe has bought a system recognized chunk of land. Yes, people, there are many ways for you to own land, one is that you must buy it from the system through a system shop. And it is on this land."
Louie stomped the ground. "Here is the place that we are going to build this town."
"If you choose to stay, If you choose to be a go-getter, then you can choose to come up here, and you pick up this sword, this spear and shield and you choose to walk towards the wall, if needed."
"Every day you stand upon the wall and you kill monsters to protect your families, if needed."
"Every day you go out to gather resources to help grow this town, if needed. You choose to stand in front of your family when the wolf is at the door. If you are a go-getter then you get the right to come up here and help us to decide how we can build our houses, how we can better this town."
"You choose to keep all your people alive. If you don't want to choose then get out of this town because this new world can't have wannabe officials and layabouts and naysayers riling the people up to open the gates so that the go-getters can be killed and wannabes can try to take over, to try and rule."
"There is no place for wannabes in this town. If you want to rule here but don't want to put in the work then leave and go build your own fucking town far away from here."
"From tomorrow, there will be an enclosure next to the gate where Peddlers can put up a tent to peddle their scavenged products, from next week peddlers will get a two-week permit, that they can renew 4times, to trade after which they must move on or apply for town membership, take an oath and learn a specific trade"
"I am going to lead an expedition to Paarl in 7days, it will be a small convoy. There will be no more than 20members and they will have to be able to fight, and have a trade if possible. So if you don't have a trade but want to go with me then you have a week to convince the system to give you a trade or class. This might be a permanent position since I want to start a traders caravan."
After the meeting, there was eight young people and one older female waiting at the base of the tower.
Two were a husband and wife team that ran a veterinary clinicc and had degrees in veterinary medicine, four were the people that were with Sher before she went into the Dungeon and the older woman was a midwife for the poorer farmers.
The last two were a surprise, they were two beautiful young med students that were with the doctors but left because some of them were starting to make demands and talking of repopulating the earth.
Louie just shook his head and told the married couple and the students that they will have to report to the medics tent the next morning to see if they will qualify for the spell.
They agreed but were still hanging around unsure what to do next. He looked them over and asked.
"You guys got a place to stay?"
They looked at each other and shook their heads.
"Ok. I will make you a place to sleep tonight, but if you fail tomorrow then you must move out to the places that will be built later the week, agree?"
They nodded.
"Ok, I will be right back."
He walked to the cliff and liquified a whole section and caused an eight-metre tall wave of stone to follow him back to the tower.
They stood back and looked at him with fear-filled eyes as he formed the stone into walls floors and roofs facing the base of the tower with the doors opening onto the stoep he couldn't make glass so he made a lot of small holes in the front and the rear wall and grouped them together to create some kind of stone lattice windows like those he had seen in pictures of Moroccon houses.
For the door, he made a simple stone disk that roll in a track inside the room that can be rolled in front of the round hobbit-like opening and sealed from the inside with a peg that goes through the disk into the wall.
Inside each room he placed a Lightstone with a thin stone bowl that can be placed on top to cover the light. In the back corners, he raised six knee-high platforms on which he placed a bedroll each. He created four rooms that were slightly narrower in the front than the back that were big enough to house six people each.
The medics said that they were sleeping in the tent with the injured troops that were currently empty thanks to the Gaea Tree as everybody started calling it.
He bid them good night as they entered the rooms.
Status
Name:
Lewis (Louie) Poren
Race:
Human (Male) Lvl 10 (192 850/ 204 800 -> lvl 11)
Class:
Seeker (2) (35%)
Sub-classes:
(exterminator) (1%)
Titles:
* Jack Black Brodifacoum.
* Trailblazer.
* (Dungeon pioneer)
Affinity:
Darkness
Statistics
Health points (HP):
380
Mana Points (MP):
230
Stamina (SP):
460
Critical Hit Chance
4%
Attributes
Strength:
19
Agility:
15
Constitution:
19
Perception:
18
Intelligence:
11
Willpower:
12
Charisma:
7
Luck:
5
Free attribute points:
0
Skills
Skill
Level
Progression
Wu shu
3
60/100
Improvised weaponry:
9
51/100
Glacial Rage:
6
00/100
Meditation
4
30/100
Regeneration:
7
88/100
Mana Manipulation:
7
20/100
Survival:
7
20/100
Pain resistance:
6
85/100
Poison resistance:
3
37/100
Cat`s eye:
2
14/100
Senses:
3
90/100
Armourer
4
95/100
System Minimap:
1
40/100
Cartography:
1
00/100
Class Skill Proficiencies
Investigation
Level 4 (14/100)
Tracking
Level 4 (24/100)
Intuition
Level 8 (55/100)
Analyze
Level 8 (95/100)
Spells
Spell
Level
Progression
Activation
Improvise
4
65/100
Touch
Earth Manipulation
T1, lvl5
70/100
Cast
Earth Sense
3
90/100
Touch