Twenty days had passed relatively peacefully for Arthur and the settlement.
With new residents coming in every day, the atmosphere slowly but surely became bustling and vibrant.
The amount of small huts already reached 57 and all of them housed one or two people, with the exception of Mei, who insisted that the groyote family would sleep in the same hut.
This provided Arthur a thorny problem as the huts were meant for humans, Banban and the growing cubs could not fit inside.
Arthur tested and experimented a whole day on how to modify the existing building, but to no avail. It was only the next day that he gave up on trying, and tried to build a simple log house without the help of the system.
After building and manually modifying the entrance for the groyotes, he got a notification for the new building, Loghouse. After this, he realized the potential for discovering new building templates.
Arthur experimented for quite some time and was greatly delighted with the results at the end of his testing. It was now possible to get a proper template for many things he needed, for example stone road and a fence.
With the increase of population, stone and wood resources became more easily available. One of the newcomers, Kurt, was especially a welcome surprise when Arthur found out that the tools Kurt made were of much superior quality than the ones he made.
Without hesitation, Arthur designated Kurt as the official tool maker, and he became quite popular among the other settlers.
New and better tools were made, and every day brought about small improvements to the settlers' life.
The increase of population provided a great overall improvement, but as there were more and more people, some of the personalities started to clash.
Few of the strong men and women had organized hunting parties, and the topic of debate and small scale fights were usually about the food and furs.
The hunters who succeeded in their hunt insisted that they would keep what they caught and some wanted their share, arguing that they were all working hard for the greater good.
This gave Arthur some headaches as he usually avoided trouble, but he could not ignore the developing conflicts and discontent within the settlement. It was only after seeking advice from Jonathan, he persuaded the hunter groups to give a share of their prey to everyone and he would make it up for them in the future.
While they were not 100% convinced, they decided to agree to it for now when Arthur asked Nick to deal with troublemakers.
The hunters and the rest had been long enough in the settlement to see Nick getting excited, and when they heard the exclamation “Yah!” They shuddered and played nice.
With temporarily resolving small scale conflicts, Jonathan gave thumbs up and a nod for Arthur before he coaxed the excited Nick to go fishing with him.
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Arthur woke up to the first rays of sunlight shining on his eyes, and he groggily dragged himself out of the small hut to the small stream of water. With yawn, he scooped the crystal clear water and splashed his face. From behind him, he heard a melodious female voice greeting him.
“Morning Arthur. You are awake earlier than usual?”
“Morning Charlotte. I just couldn’t sleep well since I know that today is the day we can upgrade the settlement.” Trying to hold out a yawn, Arthur turned to smile at Charlotte.
“Right, the usual time of the summoning is still some hours away so what are you going to do before that?”
“I kinda promised to go exploring the forest with Caleb and Nick, but they are still fast asleep so I might skip it at this rate.” Taking a glance towards the row of small huts in the distance, Arthur smiled and answered.
“Okay, take care!” Charlotte scooped some water in a crude jar and said her goodbyes.
Looking at Charlotte's swaying hips disappearing into the distance, Arthur gulped and resentfully reproached himself. ‘A beautiful lady takes some initiative to talk to me and I just keep going about the upgrade into the village. I can’t believe what I have become.’
“Status”
✶ Arthur Cromwell ✶
Title Class/job None None/Settler
Level 3
Primary attributes Secondary attributes Talents Unspent attributes Strength - 20 Luck - 8
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0 Agility - 15 Charm - 11
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Vitality - 15 Leadership - 5
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Stamina - 15 Dexterity 6 Hp 150/150 Intelligence - 15
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Expand + Mp 80/80 Spirit - 8
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
After scanning his status, Arthur lifted his shirt a little and saw definite improvement, both in the status board and in his outlook. His abdominal muscles were becoming clearly more defined, he had lost some weight and started to feel more energetic as of lately.
The mysteries of the system had started to reveal some of its magic to the settlers.
Killing beasts yielded experience to level up and doing work associated with the job could yield experience and stats, but this had to be confirmed later. As the only person with a proper job title, he felt frustrated and helpless when he could not confirm his findings.
The main stats and skills could be trained with hard work or unused skill points, but so far the secondary stats row and spirit were trickier. He could infer that he had gained dexterity from tinkering around and leadership was obvious to him. Somehow he had gained 1 point of charm, but luck seemed impossible to increase.
Putting these thoughts about the system mechanics aside, Arthur took brisk steps towards the main road where he kept looking around himself. New faces were starting to begin their days, and quite frankly while he could remember the face, the names of most people went from one ear to another once he heard them. While some greeted him enthusiastically, some focused on their own work, Arthur gave them all a small nod of acknowledgement.
Thinking back when he first started to plan the outline of the settlement, he had come a long way.
Rows upon rows of small huts, mixed with Mei’s log house that stuck out from the rest like a sore thumb, organized, stony street with wells for each row. With a sigh, he gazed at the great mountain range in the distance. ‘I shouldn't have let Caleb name it. What kind of stupid name is Snowstone mountains anyways? The mountain range is clearly dark in color, but it beats Mei’s suggestion hands down.’ With a shudder, Arthur looked at his arms and saw goosebumps. ‘I won’t let her name anything new in the future.’
“At least it is not called rockhead mountains…” He muttered quietly as he made way towards the summoning portal.
[Quest: Upgrade settlement into a village]
[ Requirements - reach 100 population (96/100) X ]
[- 40 small huts (40/40) ✔ ]
[- Workbench ✔ ]
[- Well ✔ ]
Quietly summoning the quest in front of him, he checked the contents and nodded. It was still a bit early, but to make sure, he made his way towards the plaza area.
A week ago, there had been plenty of confusion about the time, so Arthur had made a prototype of a sundial. Fortunately, the system had recognized the design and he could place a few of those in necessary places for people to grasp the time.
During the summoning, Arthur marked the time on the outer edges of the sundial, and the usual time was around noon.
Even as he was pacing in the plaza in circles, he got more agitated as more people he couldn’t remember the name of came to him for a small talk. ‘Please go away and let me wait in silence’ passed through his head, but still kept smiling politely and listening to the settlers dumb stories about person X snoring too loud in the night.
“Alright, I get it. It is about the time that we are officially upgrading to a village, so I strongly believe that we can build better homes with proper sound insulation in the future.” Forcing a smile, he tried to give a politician's answer but choked on his next words when the person in question cocked his head and started to ask what was insulation. ‘Goddammit.'
Seems like worming his way out of the conversation was not on the table, so he dejectedly prepared to give the curious villager an idea on what he was talking about. But just as he was opening his mouth, he heard a quiet hum and small twinkles of light coming from the summoning portal.
The surrounding villagers knew what was coming next.
“Finally! Ladies and gentlemen, today is the day we officially become a village.” Grinning widely, Arthur spread his hands to the sides and prepared to welcome their new residents and changes that were about to come.