Akira waved to captain Pegleg as he and his hastily trained skeleton crew slowly sailed out of the lake and into the Unfreezing river heading to the south sea.
Just like that the legend of the horrifying and utterly crazy skeleton pirate captain Pegleg, was born. All who saw his flag would tremble in fear due to his many famous battles with both humans and demigods.
But for Captain Pegleg the worst part about his fame was the fact that all the women who saw his flag would run away, while all the strong men would flock to come and play with him and his crew.
What an utter disappointment. But those stories are for another time.
“Are we going to start searching the island now?” asked Varbu, happy to be once again exploring with Akira.
“Yeah, the faster we can get done the faster we can start working on planning the village. We have a lot of work ahead of us before we can have everyone join us,” said Akira.
He felt a heavyweight on his shoulders to get the village built fast so that the werewolves and their allies had a permanent and more secure place to live.
“Stop being such a downer. Let's go to the top of the hill to check out the rest of the place!” said Varbu as he began walking up the hill without looking to see if Akira was following.
Ten of the werewolf warriors were ordered to protect their campsite with all of their supplies. The rest surrounded Akira in loose box formation making sure that nothing could reach him without first fighting them.
On either side of Akira was Audun and Klyn who would use all their skills to keep Akira alive if something happened.
When Akira reached the top of the hill Varbu who was surrounded by a few of his own guards raised his eyebrows at the overcautious formation around Akira.
“Looks like someone is moving up the ladder of importance. What are you? Some sort of VIP?”
Princess Gobalina just looked blankly at Akira blinking a few times not saying anything.
“Let's focus on the task at hand,” said Akira skillfully dodging the question.
Now that he was at the top of the hill he could see that the rocks that he had seen from below were in fact broken stones that had been part of a castle wall that was now nothing more than rubble covered in snow.
There was a large area inside a ring of rubble that was flat and open with more rubble at the center.
“Doesn't this look like it used to be some sort of castle?” asked Akira.
“Huh, I thought it was just a weird place with a lot of rocks but now that you mention it, it sorta looks like one if you tilt your head this way and look at it that way,” said Varbu as he looked at the broken walls with his head and body at an awkward angle.
Akira stepped over the crumbled wall and stepped into the center of the opened area. He kicked some of the snow away to find what looked like a flat rock floor underneath the snow.
He kicked and stomped his foot on the stone floor to see how solid it was.
'Yep it is definitely solid rock,' thought Akira as his foot throbbed in pain.
“This place has a good foundation. We can clean it up and rebuild everything after we finish working on the village. Instead of camping near the lake, we should move our stuff up here and use it as our temporary base,” said Akira.
“I will go inform the others to start moving the supplies and tents up here,” said Dolph.
Before leaving the top of the hill Akira left a few warriors behind with the task of clearing the snow and rocks out of the center of the ruined castle.
Behind the hill and the ruined castle was a large forest that covered a large majority of the island.
“Let's go and see what's down there!” said Akira.
Akira descended the hill still surrounded by the warriors with Varbu and princess Gobalina following them.
They stopped next to the trees on the outer edge of the woods and inspected several of the trees.
“These look like we can use them to make some sturdy log houses,” said Akira as he patted one of the large trees.
They continued into the woods and explored everywhere for the rest of the afternoon. Finding several different species of animals living here from rabbits to even reindeer.
Surprisingly they did not find any monsters, but they had only done a quick scan of the area to get familiar with it so there may be something that hid from them.
As the sun was going down they returned back to the top of the hill.
Akira was happy to see that the jumbled mess of rocks and snow had been cleaned up.
The warriors who had stayed behind had already finished moving the supplies and tents along with working on the camp defenses by piling up the broken stones to create a makeshift wall that was packed with snow to hold it together.
Their only entrance to enter the camp was guarded by two of the warriors.
As they entered the new camp they found that the flat stone foundation was still a little wet but was drying out now due to the several fires that were burning.
“Good work everyone,” said Akira nodding to the warriors who had gathered to welcome him when he returned.
“Varbu, princess Gobalina, after you get settled into your tents, come find me so that we can plan out everything that we need to do from here on out,” said Akira.
Thirty minutes passed before everyone was gathered inside Akira's tent. His tent would be used as the meeting place until they had some buildings that they could use.
They spent over an hour discussing what they felt was the most important thing they needed to start working on first and then things after or alongside it.
“Okay, so now that we have our goals set straight. We'll need to split up everyone into different teams to fulfill those tasks,” said Akira.
“I can lead my men and any werewolves you want to give me and go cut down the logs for the houses. I'll make sure that it is done quickly and efficiently so that we can start building,” said Varbu flexing his muscles.
“Right, I'll leave the logging to you. The majority of warriors will be sent to you for help until we have enough logs to start building. Although it would be best if we had dried wood to build the houses we can only work with what we have,” said Akira.
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“While we were in the woods I saw several nuts, berries, wild vegetables, and other herbs that we can gather for food and medical uses. If I can also find some seeds we can see about planting them when the weather warms. That is if this place will ever warm-up,” said Klyn.
Princess Gobalina raised her hand and spoke for the first time in front of Akira, “Gi giii gii giiiii gi.”
Akira looked to Varbu for translation.
“Um... I think she said she wants to help Klyn with gathering the food. I have only been studying their language recently so I could be wrong,” said Varbu.
“Gi!” said Princess Gobalina as she nodded her head.
Akira nodded back at her, “I'll give both of you a few warriors to hunt and gather food so that we don't run out while we are working. There's plenty of snow rabbits, reindeer, and fish in the lake. Burkin do you know anything about the seasons here?”
“On the topic about the weather it's about 150 years old, from what I remember reading this place does have something that you can kinda call a summer but it only lasts for a few months there is really no spring or fall everything is all smashed together.
At that time the warm weather melts most of the snow. So if you plant enough hardy and quick-growing plants you should have no problem with stockpiling food for the rest of the winter.
Even if you have a bad year the city's farther north have longer and warmer summers. Most every year they sell off their surplus to the trade city to make some money which also helps feed those villages farther south that have shorter summers,” said Burkin.
“What are we going to do about the other island?” asked Dolph who was currently acting as the head of Akira's guards.
“It looks pretty barren and rocky to me. We can check it out later after we have the log cabins built,” said Akira.
“I'll take charge of planning the village and overseeing the building of the houses. Now that we have sorted that out I think we can call it a night,” said Akira.
The others got up and left his tent after bidding him a good night.
Akira ate a quick simple dinner of dried meat and a few of the berries that he had gathered earlier in the day.
Wiping his hands he pulled out the map and a piece of blank paper and began doodling on the paper copying the island's features onto the new paper. He created some squiggles to mark important places for future development and drew boxes to represent houses and other future buildings.
“There, I’m finished! This should help with making sure everything is placed properly,” said Akira looking at his handy work satisfied with the finished product.
Ding!
New title has been received!
Worst artist in the world:
You have created something that is so horrible that no one would ever find out what it was originally meant to be.
Seriously you suck at drawing, but I'm sure that the crazy 'Art' lovers would love to buy this 'Unique' picture as they might see something in it if you tilted your head this or that way and stared at it for a few hours.
+5 fame.
Out of pity for you, a new Tool has been created.
City blueprint planning: use this tool to properly plan your village. When you finish, a blueprint will be created.
“What's with these hash messages? Why didn't you say anything about my drawing skills earlier?”
The system was silent and did not reply to his question.
Akira closed the rude messages and opened the new blueprint tool.
Ding!
The tool only has very limited options until a village is fully built and other resources are found.
Immediately after closing the message, his vision went blank for a second. When he could see again he found that he had a ghost-like body that was now hovering over the island looking from far above allowing him to see everything including his tent where he was sitting and the warriors that were patrolling the makeshift walls surrounding the camp.
“Next time, warn me if you're going to do something like this!” shouted Akira as he felt a little sick from the out of body floating sensation.
He quickly looked around to see if anyone had heard him but it seemed no one could hear him as they continued with what they were doing before.
On the side of his vision was a small vertical row showing a few simple log buildings pictures, as well as an outhouse and what looked like different types of dirt roads.
When he touched one of the road icons. A loud thump sounded as the road appeared on the ground beneath him.
There was still no reaction from any of the warriors who were patrolling.
Akira returned his attention back to the road and found that there were four arrows above the road pointing in the cardinal directions, with another two arrows on each side of the road one curving to the left and the other curving to the right.
Floating above the road was a green checkmark along with a red x.
He played around with the arrows to see what everything did.
Whenever he pressed one of the arrows the road would move a short distance in the direction of the arrow and The curved arrows would turn the road in a curved 90* degree angle.
'What are these buttons for?' thought Akira looking at the two buttons above the road.
He reached out and pressed the red x and a crumbling sound could be heard as the road disappeared.
'Hmm so the other button is for making it stay in place?' thought Akira as he placed down another road and pressed the green checkmark. All the arrows went away and only the red checkmark remained.
After a few more minutes of testing out stuff, he cleared everything that he had placed down.
“Time to get serious! Let's look for a good spot to start the village,” said Akira.
After searching he decided to start planning the village near the bottom of the hill not that far from where they had first camped.
He started to create a large grid using the roads as guides to keep everything straight while creating multiple squares.
Inside of the squares he placed down four basic one story long log cabins that could house up to 20 people. He rotated them so that their doors were facing the road in front of them one pointing to each of the 4 roads. There was one outhouse added between the four houses.
“Can't be fancy right now. We can always work on something better in the future,” said Akira as he thought about how troublesome the bathroom situation might become later on.
He continued to plan the village this way making changes when the terrain called for it. While doing this he made sure that there was a large open central square for town gathering and trading. After placing several hundred houses and roads he took a moment to look over everything and made a few changes before he was satisfied with the end result.
As if sensing that he was finished, a flashing button at the top of his vision started to blink. It read [Create blueprint]. Akira pressed it and a window popped up.
[Please name the blueprint.]
“Village #1!” said Akira.
After confirming the name the message box closed.
And again his vision blanked out for a few seconds before returning back to his body.
“That is very jarring. It's going to take some time to get used to it,” Akira muttered to himself sleepily.
The blueprint tool icon was now blinking so Akira pressed it and a new drop-down appeared showing his new blueprint.
He pressed on the 'Village #1' tab under the created blueprints section.
A second later a detailed opaque map appeared in front of him with his exact roads and houses just as he had placed them.
There was a message in red under the blueprint that read [Unable to use blueprint since the selected area has snow rocks and other debris covering the ground. Clear it to move on to the next stage of planning.]
“I was expecting a physical blueprint but I guess this will have to do,” said Akira as he closed the map.
It was now late in the night when he exited his tent and walked towards the walls wanting to look at the area that he had picked for the log cabins.
The bright moon was out lighting up the whole island. From atop the wall, he could see that the snow below was still undisturbed.
'I guess the build mode doesn't affect the real world,' thought Akira.
“Who's there?” asked a guard as he walked closer to Akira.
“Just me. I was out for a stroll,” said Akira.
“Oh, it's you chief. Can't sleep?” asked the guard.
“Yeah, something like that,” said Akira who was feeling really tired.