The next morning Louie was busy on one of the balconies. He had made meter-thick sliding rock screens that could close off the outside spaces, the problem was creating frictionless channels for the screens to slide in.
He looked to the side as he saw movement from the corner of his eye and took a break when he saw it was four small spiders coming down the mountainside, dragging a monster body between them into the camp.
Curious, he followed and saw them taking the carcass to the outdoor eating area where some of the women were skinning a couple of bodies and preparing the meat to be smoked on a cobbled-together smoker.
He stood and watched as the spiders dropped the body off at one woman who nodded her thanks before going back to her work.
Louie was curious when he saw a boy sitting at the same table, handing small pieces of metal to the spiders as they went past.
He silently slid into the bench opposite the boy.
"Hi." The boy snapped around and looked at Louie before jumping up and running to the woman, from the resemblance Louie could see that she was probably his mother.
Louie held up his hands not to scare the boy further.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."
One of the spiders jumped on the table between him and the boy and his mother, Louie noticed it was smaller than the rest, in fact, all four of the spiders standing now between them were smaller than the other spiders.
There were 3 Tarantulas and the one on the table was an orb weaver and they held their front limbs in the air clearly meant to scare him, he leaned back as he projected a non-threatening aura at the spiders who were clearly determined on protecting the boy.
Suddenly Ansi was there in all her queenly splendor and the four young spiders scuttered back and hid behind the boy and his mother who also flinched under the pressure of Ansi's aura.
"Easy, easy Ansi, they didn't mean anything by it, they were just protecting the boy."
Ansi bobbed and made a soft hissing noise at the spiderlings before she shrunk back to her small size and left the food preparation area. Louie saw Witney walking up to the table.
"Eeak, Ula, you guy causing trouble?"
The spiders scurried towards Witney and made sure that she was between them and Louie.
"Aah, of course, they are the guard's spiders. Sorry, Witney, I hadn't meant to upset them."
"Sorry Sir --"
Louie stopped her. "It's my fault, they were just protecting the boy."
She nodded before leaving with the spiders following her.
Louie turned back to the woman and saw that the boy had left the eating area and was at the low boundary wall watching the pets patrolling the area.
"I did not mean to scare him."
She turned back to butchering the carcass.
"Not your fault, it will take time, the children here had it bad, grownups can process what happened here, but the kids, for the couple of kids that survived, it was bad."
Louie nodded. "I can't imagine what it must have been like, but I will give you my promise that I will do my utmost to stop it from happening again."
She turned away from him as she wiped a tear from her eyes.
"Thank you."
He changed the subject so as not to embarrass her further.
"He isn't afraid of the spiders?"
She looked to where the boy was squatting and stroking the carapace of one of the golems.
"No, he was always fascinated by any strange insect, the spiders are something new, something strange. He has been spending every day with them since you guys came, he is going to miss them."
"Do you think that he would like one of his own?"
She turned back to him. "You can do that?"
When she saw him nod his head. "Thank you, I think he would love one."
He gave her an egg. "I don't think that he could imbue it with mana since his status isn't unlocked yet, but Naomi hatched her egg and she doesn't know how she did it, so it might also work for him."
He looked at the boy.
"Let him carry it anyway and take care of it, it might hatch."
"Thank you."
She looked at the egg and called the boy over.
"Tony!" Louie heard her call out as he left the mess area and went back to sculpting the inside of the cliff.
Louie had just started sculpting one of the outside balconies when there was a shout and he saw everybody running towards the tunnel so he dropped what he was doing and rushed to see what the commotion was.
It turned out that the first person that entered the mine after 'the King' was killed got the option to claim the mine, and since Frans was 'elected' to be the leader they had gone to call him.
Frans claimed the mine but not as his, he claimed it in the name of the community, since the owner gets 50% of all material mined from the mine and the rest belongs to the person doing the mining, this will ensure that the profits get used for the good of the community.
Louie was intrigued by this because he had been curious about how mines now work since the day that he found that ore vein near Starter Town.
'It looked like you must first start to mine before you can claim that mine.'
Louie shrugged and returned to finish the balcony he was working on before he turned his attention to the hall where everybody slept the first night and turned it into an indoor mess hall and kitchen area with stone wood-burning stoves and fireplaces.
Diedre flagged him down and hands him a togbag. "What's this?"
"I found it in the second to last BOT, I thought it was toys and wanted to give it to the kids here, it must have belonged to a kid and it was in one of the cars that you dropped in the Dungeon, look inside."
Curios Louie opened the bag, "those are toys from that children's series."
"Yip, the bag is full of toys, except they aren't toys anymore, and those, they might be dangerous, they are traps and I don't know if there is anything in them."
Louie used
"I thought so, maybe you can use it somehow?"
"I will see what or how we can use them, thanks, Deidre."
"No problem boss," she whistled as she walked away swaying her hips.
He tore his eyes from her backside to look back into the bag, he took out a pair of sunglasses with a fake nose and a mustache, he used
He found that sculpting this place was much tougher than making both his tower and the Fort since here there wouldn't be many guards and perimeter walls, the whole structure was inside the mountain so everything must be able to be closed off at night without suffocating the people inside.
The walls of the chambers also had to be condensed and toughened so that creatures and monsters with digging abilities won't be able to easily enter the structure, Louie hoped that they were going to use the capstone and turn the structure into an outpost, because as he speculates they should receive an alarm if something breaches a wall.
He made the blacksmith and gold workshops at the top of the structure and incorporated the outside water source to run through stone pipes in the walls and through the furnaces to act like a donkey water heater to supply the bathrooms with warm water.
He had just finished creating a defensible hidden entrance for the cave structure, he hoped they settled on a name for the place soon since it doesn't feel right to keep calling the place 'the structure'.
Later he came across Celia where she was negotiating with Mina on the Gold prices and future deals and took a breather to hear what deal they were striking.
"The vendor will trade 1 kilo of 24karat gold for 200G coins since the coins aren't pure gold but a mixture of copper and silver, but we will offer you 160G coins for 1kilo since we must find a Dungeon and clear it to trade with the vendor. When next we come through here we can renegotiate the price of gold again. We will also act as a postal service if you have any post or stuff that you want to have delivered to somebody in Paarl, Starter Town, or Worcester, we would suggest that you hold off on that for now since we don't know the state of affairs in Paarl but once we will establish a camp there we can try and get a list of survivors and then we can set up a regular mail drop or item exchange for a minimal fee if we have the space available."
He was relieved since it looked like the trading caravan would be in good hands and that Celia was the right person to do the trading.
He saw Naomi sitting to one side talking to a young girl and it took him a moment to recognize her as the young girl that he healed the first day, she shrunk away as she noticed him looking at her.
Naomi saw her trying to hide and looked around to see what was the cause.
When she spotted him she grabbed the girl's hand and dragged her towards Louie.
"Uncle Louie?"
He smiled as he heard her calling him uncle.
"Yea Naomi, how are you doing today?"
"I'm fine thanks," she dragged the girl out from behind her, "this is my friend Trish."
Louie looked at the fearful girl and remembered her brutalized and bloody body when he found her in a cage but also remembered Leon saying that she didn't remember what happened to her.
He bent down so as not to seem so threatening and held out his hand to her.
"Hi Trish, I'm Louie."
She hesitantly reached out and quickly shook his hand before stepping back behind Naomi.
"Uncle Louie, can Trish come with us?"
"Naomi, what about her parents and you know how difficult the road was up till here, we don't know what the roads look like ahead."
The moment Louie mentioned her parents he saw Trish lower her head further and came to the conclusion that they might have been some of the people who were killed.
"She is all alone," he saw the tears running down Trish's face and her shoulders shaking, "and Ma said that if you said it ok then she can come with us but that I must look out for her and train her and David how to fight the monsters."
Louie looked over to where Celia was talking to Mina and saw that they were watching them.
Celia, with a serious expression, gave him a nod of her head.
"Ok Naomi, if she wants to come with us then she can, but you must promise to watch over her . . . and David? Who is David?"
Louie looked perplexed as Naomi told him about the boy David, and that Uncle Kotche had said during breakfast, was going with them and that he was also all alone.
Louie didn't like where this was going and went to talk to Mina.
He nodded at them, "Celia, Mina, good day. What's the story with the kids?"
Celia spoke up first. "This morning during breakfast, which you missed, Kotche spoke up and announced that he will be taking the boy, David, with him and that he had asked if he could join the caravan guard. He is only 11years old but has no parents and Kotche was willing to take responsibility for him. I think that's where Naomi and Trish came up with the idea."
Louie turned around and looked at the two girls. His heart started to bleed as he looked at the crying Trish.
Mina looked lost, "They don't want to stay here, I can't blame them. Their parents were killed by that piece of shit," she took a deep breath, "I have tried talking to them but I have the feeling that if you don't take them then they might just decide to follow you on their own."
"Sigh, ok, they can come but, all three of them will spend one day helping and learning from each crafter or soldier, we will start with them spending the day with Kotche, he will teach them how to defend themselves, then the next day with Sher learning about surviving nature and after that, Mainey can teach them first aid. I just hope we don't regret this decision."
It took Louie a total of three days to finish the structure inside the mountain and help fix the tunnel so that there was no evidence of the bandit camp or their dark deeds left.
Louie kept in touch with Joe, Johan, and DD every night to inform them of their progress towards Paarl and had also given Frans, Mina, and Jafta each an OCD, together with pics of the other outpost leaders, and had them introduce each other.
He hopes that they will establish a way for the leaders to stay in contact and get a list of names in each community so that they can join families together if there were any.
That night they finished modifying the last caravan with the help of some former panel beaters, now miners and it's just up to the spiders to finish covering the caravans with their spilk and it would be done.
They had decided to push on the next day and we're sitting around a firepit when Jafta came up to him and asked how they could use the capstone.
They sat down at a table near the fire.
"First, I want to tell you about your options. There are two. Option 1. We can install the capstone and it will turn a building or in this case, I think it will turn the whole base into an outpost. Or Option 2. You can give me the capstone and I can turn this into my outpost and install you guys as officers, the upside with option 2 is that there will be a portal that connects it to my tower in Starter Town, the downside is that I don't know how the portal works, it might be that the portal can only be used by me. I will only be able to tell once I use it."
"Once you use it? You haven't tried it out yet?"
Louie shook his head, "I should have but I didn't, something I need to rectify as soon as we reach Paarl."
Jafta got up and nodded. "I will go talk to Frans and come back to you."
It was about half an hour later that Jafta was back together with Frans and Mina and it was decided that they would go with option 1, but they came to a compromise and allowed Louie to sculpt himself a tower inside the cliff which he can later turn into an outpost linked to his Tower in Starter Town.
There were exclamations of wonder and amazement as the capstone transformed the structure into an outpost, the biggest change was that the doors and balcony openings disappeared into the cliff face when it was closed for the night. The only indication that people were living there was the outdoor mess area that was now where the old road was in front of the newly christened, Mountain Holm.
It took Louie just an hour to hollow a tower out of the cliff.
'Is it still considered a tower if it's inside a mountain? There is no actual building, lol' he shrugged as he finished and went back to the fire which had now turned into a farewell party.
Louie smiled as he listened to Frans and Mina going over a list with Celia for last-minute stuff needed for the outpost and Leon, Kotche, and Jafta discussing defenses and training methods.
"There are now lightstones in each room, but I think you must check with the next vendor for some kind of central heating, maybe a charm or something and a way to repel vermin. We don't want a hidden nest somewhere in the mine or an unused room." Frans sighed, as a community leader's life was a busy one, especially when an entire Mountain Holm had to be made livable.
Louie smiled as he thought of the future and knocked on a wooden cutting board on the table. 'Touch wood. Maybe, just maybe we all can make a safe place for ourselves and our children in these new worlds.'
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
The next morning, after a hearty breakfast, was full of tearful goodbyes and promises of daily reports before they set out to see if they could reach Paarl before nightfall, again.
It had been four days after first encountering the bandits but Louie was glad to leave behind a hopefully strong outpost with Frans and his miners of Mountain Holm.
They reached the first vehicle half an hour after they left the tunnel.
Sher sniffed the air, "something is burning."
Louie stopped and took a deep breath through his nose but even with
"Are you sure?" He asked, and she nodded.
"It's faint but since I unlocked
"Ok, we will keep an eye out."
Louie used
They planned to use his last Smelter every night and turn the axles and chassis into steel ingots for Derek to make weapons and armor, to sell, or for their own use.
They were two hours from the tunnel when they saw the red kombi that was the one Jafta said they were driving.
It took a couple of minutes to find the cleft in the side of the road from which the ants attacked Jafta's party. They had decided the previous night that if they can find the entrance then they will go check the nest out and if it's still clear they will seal the opening off to prevent anything else from making a nest there.
Louie wanted to leave the guards with the traders and children outside while they went in to check the nesting site but they disagreed and in the end, it was decided that they will be in the middle while the guards watched the back.
Once they entered the opening the tunnel opened up and they could move around without any fear of hitting their heads. This worried Louie a bit, why would ants need such big tunnels?
The search turned out to be uneventful with them only having to kill two giant bats that were hanging from the roof of the tunnel.
Vespertine Bat
HP: 25
MP: 36
After the release of mana, the small Serotine bat has evolved into the Vespertine Bat
Description: This bat has a wingspan of about 2.4meters. Their color is variable from dark greyish-brown to midnight black with underparts greyish or dark brown. Wing membranes are blackish-brown. They live in small groups of two or three huddled under bridges or in caves. Their flight is rather slow and fluttering - jinking and turning in search of flying prey. They rely mostly on stealth and their ability to cast Sleep on their targets.
Attack: Sleep.
Luckily everybody was armed with ice and lightning wands, even the children, but Louie had modified their weapons to work from a mana stone with a trigger and a safety switch. The last thing they needed was one of the kids accidentally shooting one of them or themselves, although Kotche had drilled them the whole of yesterday on using the wands.
The nest was unoccupied but they found two beautiful crystal horns amongst the remains from the bat's kills.
Louie decided not to collapse the nest but keep it as is and just create a door to seal off the whole cavern, you never know when you need a place to hold up in.
As they neared the entrance Leon caught a glimpse of something shining and upon further inspection, they discovered a streak of silver on the wall.
Louie use
Large Silver Vein
Description: This is a large vein of silver, and it is known as a precious metal. Using the proper mining skills this vein will produce between 100 to 150tons of silver ore over two years, there is a 10%chance of unearthing various gems and a 2% chance of mana stones while mining this silver vein.
Condition: good.
Once claimed and mined, the ore can be smelted and used to fashion inlays on armor and weapons. The processed metal can also be sold to the vendor
And further, towards the entrance, they found another vein but this one was of iron and several copper nodes.
When he used
Copper Node
A node is a deposit of Copper, Silver, and other precious and semi-precious metal ores that regenerate due to the high mana that saturates mines. The miner can wait for them to respawn, time to respawn varies according to the rarity of the metal.
Attention
You have found an Iron vein inside a cavern system, this constitutes a mine, do you want to claim this mine?
You can claim this mine for yourself or another entity after claiming this mine it can be leased out for 49% of the profit.
Claim for yourself: Y/N
Claim for another entity: Y/N
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Attention
You have found a Silver vein inside a cavern system, this constitutes a mine, do you want to claim this mine?
You can claim this mine for yourself or another entity after claiming this mine it can be leased out for 49% of the profit.
Claim for yourself: Y/N
Claim for another entity: Y/N
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Louie shared the BB with them and told them that he was going to claim the mine under STC (Starter Town Trading Company) and then they could see if Mountain Holm would like to mine the ore and nodes for half the profit. The other half would be divided into 30 shares of which 8 would go to the company and the other 22 would be split up between all of them, who are now considered partners in the STC.
They all agreed and watched as Louie contacted Frans and struck the deal for the mine. Louie agreed to create a mine barracks for the miners just inside the entrance and a lockable entrance.
He doubly made sure that there were enough ventilation shafts in the mine before closing the door behind them.
As soon as he closed the door he received a BB.
Attention
You have claimed a mine that has multiple metal nodes and different metal veins for your company.
Would you like to name this mine?
Y/N
Once you have named this mine then the company can spend Gold to improve the security and Living Quarters of the mine and miners.
Y/N
He called everybody together and shared the BB with them.
They had an impromptu company meeting while they waited for the miners to arrive.
They decided to name the mine STC since the name would appear on any interface of a person with a system minimap and the last thing they wanted was for somebody to know it was a mine, they also decided to use gold to improve the living quarters of the miners but to wait and see who was coming to mine the resources.
Leon was chosen to run the company while Celia was in charge of sales and acquisition, each tradesperson had their own division to run and Kotche would be in charge of the overall security of the caravans while it was decided that with his background, Counselor would be in charge of headquarters security and to help run it, once a headquarters was established.
Not long after, Jafta showed up with a squad of troops he was training and a bunch of miners and some ladies that would support them, which consisted mostly of young teenagers and two older men that Derek knew from the mine.
It turned out that the teens were sent to learn and unlock their mining skills since they were mostly used as pack mules in the gold mine.
After some discussion with the old and new miners as well as the support staff, Louie spent a hundred gold to make the barracks comfortable for them all.
Everybody watched in amazement as the barracks changed, there was even a small workshop with a crude furnace where the metals could be cast into ingots. They decided to leave it like that and then to feed those ingots through the big Smelter at Mountain Holm to remove the impurities and separate the different metals that might be mixed into the ingots.
Louie noticed that the gold was automatically deducted from his total as he ticked the boxes next to the suggested improvements on the mining BB.
Jafta was impressed as two huge stone golems rose out of the ground next to the mine entrance when Louie ticked the Security Box and leveled it up to Level 5 for the mine.
"Damn, I must talk to Frans, I think we must do the same and create a company and use it to update our gold mine, none of us thought that these upgrades were available when we urged Frans to claim the mine, I guess there is a difference between claiming the mine for a community and company-owned."
Louie shared the BB of the mine upgrade with Jafta although he couldn't do any changes since all the boxes were greyed out, he could still see what upgrade options were available.
Louie wasn't happy when he received a BB as his
Attention
Because this spell has primarily been used to build structures, the spell has evolved and is no longer available during battles. The spell has evolved into Mana Construction. This spell can now only be used to construct structures outside battles.
"What the fuck!"
Everybody looked at him when he exclaimed in anger.
Sher placed her hand on his shoulder. "What's wrong Louie?"
He shared the BB with them and explained that it looked as if the system sees him more as a crafter than a fighter. Everybody was surprised because this was the first indication of a spell evolving and they wondered if it is something that would happen when their spells and skills reach T3 or if there was a threshold that a spell must reach before it evolved.
"I wonder how the system will know when I'm in battle? If I sneak up on some monster from behind and then drop it in liquid stone, without it seeing me, does that count as using the spell in battle?"
Louie wanted to experiment with this new restriction and see if he could find a way around it, or if he couldn't do anything to change it then they must change their way of fighting.
After everybody was settled in at the mine and goodbyes were said, the team was on their way again.
They only found another couple of cars on the road before the rock strata changed again and they assumed that they had entered another stretch of altered or inserted landscape.
The landscape changed again, it looked like the changes is becoming more frequent.
It was past noon when they spotted the roofs of buildings through the trees to their right, it was the first sign of civilization that they had seen other than the tunnel.
According to a pre-pulse area map that Leon had, it used to be a trout farm, so they decided to go have a look and see if there were any survivors.
Luckily it wasn't that far from the road, but only glimpses of the roofs were now and then visible through the trees.
The main house of the farm was destroyed and there were no survivors or even monsters around. There were a couple of outbuildings that were still mostly intact but all the trout pools and dams were smashed and destroyed. They decided to stay at the farm for the night and made a camp around one of the outbuildings furthest from the river, to see if they could catch a glimpse of the elusive monster that had the pets in a state two nights before.
There was a lot of scrap and farming equipment laying around so Louie set up the smelter and while the traders set up camp Louie and his team went around collecting all the metal for Derek to start turning into ingots.
It was an uneasy night and tension was high, but the elusive river monster did not make its appearance.
After a hearty breakfast of fresh river crayfish, which turned out to be nearly 50cm each, the camp was packed up and they were on the road again.
Surprisingly the stretch of road was quiet, with no monster attacks.
If it weren't for the strange plants next to the road and the big golem Dog and Spiders then they could have been just another group of hikers on a mountain road on some peaceful Saturday afternoon; well, that was before the pulse changed everything.
Every now and then Sher would touch a tree as she walked past.
She suddenly stopped and looked to her right. When she stopped they all stopped and suddenly everybody was alert and weapons appeared in their hands.
She looked through the trees before sprinting down the slope towards the river.
Caravan members (Starter Town Trading Company: STC)
* Lewis (Louie) Poren (leader )
* Leon Koen: (2IC) pet (Seera: Black Widow)
* Sheralee Van de Merve: (Healer) pet (Ansi: Queen spider)
* Mainey Fish: (Medic, indentured) pet (Stitch: Orb Weaver spider)
* Celia Malan: (Merchant) pet (Jon: Goliath birdeater)
* Naomi Malan: (underage) pet (Blue: small jumping spider)
* Trish and David: (Orphans) pet (eggs)
* Diedre Viljoen: (Tailor, indentured) pet (Sisy: Weaver spider)
* Francine Viljoen: (Jeweller, indentured) pet (Bling: fantasy Crystal spider)
* Micheal Nasser: (Leathersmith)pet (Rover: Huntsman spider)
* Derek Samuels: (Beginner Blacksmith) pet (Ember: fantasy fire spider)
* Kotche (Soldier) pet (Stomp, brown widow spider)
* Counsellor: (Wedge, spear)pet (wolfie: wolf spider )
* Christian Else: (Water mage) pet (Rob: blue Tarantula)
* Shadow: (Scout) pet (Selina: Assassin spider)
* Jackson Pollok: (Warrior) pet (Zephyr: Wolf spider)
* Debbie Poerstamper: (Warrior) pet (Bar: big Spiny Orb-weaver)
* Witney (Warrior, guard,) pet (Ula: Tarantula)
* Sean (Air mage, guard,) pet (Sweep: Tarantula)
* Barry (Warrior, guard,) pet (Papi: Tarantula)
* Garth (Ranger, guard,) pet (Eeak: Weaver)
* Heuwy (Warrior, guard) deceased
Status
Name:
Lewis (Louie) Poren
Race:
Human (Male) Lvl 11 308 525 – 409 600 = Lvl 12
Class:
Seeker (5) (25%).
Sub-classes:
(exterminator) (2%)
Titles:
* Jack Black Brodifacoum,
* Trailblazer,
* Liberator.
* OFS (One Finger Salute)
* Dungeon pioneer
* David
* ?????
Affinity:
Darkness 0.001%
Statistics
Health points (HP):
484
Mana Points (MP):
440
Stamina (SP):
583
Critical Hit Chance
4%
Attributes
Strength:
22
Agility:
17
Constitution:
21
Perception:
20
Intelligence:
25
Willpower:
15
Charisma:
7
Luck:
5
Free attribute points:
0
Skills
Skill
Level
Progression
Wu shu
5
95/100
Improvised weaponry:
T1: 1
51/100
Glacial Rage:
6
30/100
Meditation
5
50/100
Regeneration:
7
93/100
Mana Manipulation:
7
60/100
Survival:
9
25/100
Cooking:
0
10/100
Restoration
9
75/100
Harvesting:
7
20/100
Herb Lore:
0
00/100
Whittling:
0
00/100
Pain resistance:
9
70/100
Poison resistance:
3
42/100
Cat`s eye:
4
65/100
Senses:
4
55/100
Armourer
5
95/100
System Minimap:
3
85/100
Cartography:
1
50/100
Public speaking
5
05/100
Spell Transformation: *
1
30/100
Backstab:
0
00/100
Skewer:
0
00/100
Scholer
0
00/100
Learning
#
#
Quick study
#
#
Know-how
#
#
Class Skill Proficiencies
Skill
Level
Progression
Investigation:
6
35/100
Tracking:
4
40/100
Intuition:
T1: 1
85/100
Analyze:
T1: 4
75/100
Lore:
1
00/100
Monster Expert
2
60/100
?????
0
00/100
Spells
Spell
Level
Progression
Activation
Improvise:
T1: 0
0/100
Touch
Mana Construction:
T3: 0
00/100
Cast
Liquefaction:
9
85/100
Cast
Earth Sense:
2
40/100
Touch
Weapon Schematics:
T1: 1
90/100
Touch
Syphon:
0
05/100
Cast
Transfusion:
0
00/100
Touch
Electrocute:
0
05/100
Cast
Suffocate
0
00/100
Cast
Waterboard
0
20/100
Cast
Cauterise
0
10/100
Touch
Shadow Step
0
15/100
Cast
Fear:
0
00/100
Cast
Concussion Blast:
0
00/100
Cast
?????
0
00/100
Cast