As Daven walked out of the Class Hall, Hassan’s group of four formed their own clique while Roy walked to the side along with Aswad.

“My lord, what class have you chosen?” Aswad suddenly asked with an eager expression.

“Apprentice Elemental Mage,” Roy chuckled. “It sounded more cool than the normal mage class, so I guess it’s going to be better.”

“Elemental Mage? That is a very good class,” Aswad raised his eyebrows in slight surprise. “Even though it is much harder to advance than normal classes, you will be that much more powerful when it reaches a high level?”

“Do you know someone with this class?” Roy frowned. He had an inkling that Aswad was someone that was born in a different world, possibly the one where the monsters came. In either case, his vast knowledge about the new rules of the world must had come from experience.

“I did know one,” Aswad smiled and looked beyond Roy with a longing gaze. “Jasper, a true master elemental mage. He was able to turn water into hot steam and burn his enemies’ skin with it; freeze water with wind and create snowstorms; combine water, wind, fire, and lightning to create world devouring explosions. One of those explosions ended up killing him too.”

Aswad looked down and paused before saying that last sentence. However, instead of looking sad, he just chuckled and looked lost in his memories.

“Was he a friend?” Roy looked at the well-dressed young-man in interest. Even though Aswad’s words were shocking, his change of expression was even more surprising to Roy. For a second, he thought that Aswad’s face could only make a friendly unassuming smile.

“A friend?” Aswad paused for a second. “Yeah, you could say that he was a friend. Yeah, he was a friend.”

Seeing Aswad lost in his own thought, Roy nodded with a smile. The young man’s earlier words rang in his ears.

You’re going to protect me and the territory, huh? Well, that’s one worry off my chest.

While Aswad was silently reminiscing his older days, Roy suddenly remembered the starting skill that was given to him by his class.

“Oh, I wanted to ask you something,” Roy snapped Aswad back to reality. “Do you know about mana manipulation? I got it as a starting skill, but I’m not exactly sure what it does or how I can use it.”

“Mana manipulation, you say,” Aswad looked up at Roy. “It is the true basic skill of a mage. Without you cannot call yourself one.”

Aswad then opened up his palm and conjured a fireball on top of it, “This is similar to your own skill. Without true mastery of mana manipulation, you can still increase and decrease its size.”

Aswad’s fireball shrinked to the size of a pea before raging into a mini sun, scaring Roy off, “However, with mana manipulation, you can do things like these.”

The fireball shrinked to the size of a small rock and hovered on the index finger of his right hand. Suddenly, another small fireball appeared on top of his middle finger, and another on his tumb, and soon, ten fireballs hovered atop each of his fingers.

“With even more mastery of mana, you can do even more sophisticated tricks.”

The fireball on top of Aswad’s right index finger flew atop the others and rotated around his hand. Another fireball soon joined, and before Roy could understand what was happening, all ten fireballs danced around Aswad’s hands.

“Now, if you reach even higher mastery, you can do something like this.”

The ten fireballs all increased in size and flew to the sky. They all converged into one giant flaming orb, before transforming into a fire phoenix. The magical creature opened its beak and let out a sharp scream.

“Is it alive?!” Roy looked at Aswad with eyes wide in shock.

“No, it’s just a trick,” the young man chuckled. “It’s a wind spell. More specifically, it’s a spell from a subset of the wind affinity; namely sound.”

Roy stayed silent for a second to absorb all the information that he had just received. In the end, he couldn’t help but ask the burning question in his heart.

“Can I do something like that too?”

Aswad looked at Roy and lightly chuckled, “Of course, my lord. You will just need to train your mana manipulation skill.”

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“And, how do I do that?”

Before Aswad could reply to Roy, Jack and Robb walked out of the Class Hall and made their way toward the two.

“I believe that we can discuss your training at a later time,” Aswad lightly bowed. “There are still many urgent matters that will be need to be done first.”

Roy looked at Aswad with disappointment for a few seconds before nodding with a defeated smile, “You are right. Our work for the night is still not done.”

“So what was that about?” Jack put his arm over Roy’s shoulders. “What rotten things were you talking about?”

Roy looked left and right with an awkward expression, “Ehh, I don’t think it’s neither the time or the place to talk about it. There are too many ears.”

Seeing that it was a private conversation, Aswad bowed and left the vicinity. Roy couldn’t help but thank him deep in his heart.

“Is it about the rat you were talking about earlier?” Robb asked in whispering voice to make sure no one could hear them.

Jack, on the other hand, was not as discreet, “Rat? What the fuck are you talking-”

Robb muffled Jack’s mouth with his hand and starred dagger at the latter, “Shut the fuck up you idiot. Why are you so loud?”

Roy pushed Jack’s arm off his shoulders and said in a low voice, “We’re going to talk about this later—with just the six of us.”

Jack took a second before understanding Roy’s meaning. He nodded slightly in a calm manner, letting Robb take his hand off his mouth.

“I get it,” Jack replied with a barely audible voice. “I trust you.”

With this discussion over, Robb changed subjects, “So, what’s the plan now?”

Roy looked at the empty space around them and smiled, “We should start by making some houses—lots of houses.”

“How many?” Jack asked.

“It says that each house can have five people in it,” Roy explained while looking at the lord management screen. “How many of us are there?”

Jack did some mental math while bobbing his head before answering, “I would say about fifty, give or take.”

Roy nodded and concluded, “Let’s make eleven houses then, they are not that expensive.”

“Are we going to build the houses now?”

The trio turned around to see Hassan making his way toward them along with the rest of the group.

“Sorry, I overheard you talking.”

“It’s alright,” Roy shrugged. “And yeah… Since we’re going to spend the night here, I figured it’s best to have those houses built as soon as possible.”

“You’re right about that,” Hassan scratched his chin and furrowed his eyebrows, “I’m just worried about the design for the village. If we’re going to get more people to join us, we can’t just be putting houses wherever, we’re going to need roads, and districts, and parks. That can become difficult if we don’t plan them early.”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Aswad stepped in. “The system makes it very easy to change the location of all buildings. Also, when the village levels up high enough, there will be a position for a city planner whose entire role is to design the city as perfectly as possible.”

All seven looked at Aswad with wide eyes at the new knowledge before Roy chuckled and shrugged, “Well, you heard the man. We can worry about that stuff later.”

“Let’s just put them next to the shop and the halls,” Robb suggested. “It will make it easier to get what we need.”

Roy nodded and voiced out the command in his mind, Create House.

A few meters next to the Class Hall, wood emerged from the ground and formed a small one storey house. Roy stepped foot inside before the rest of the group followed after him.

The door opened to a fairly large living room with five medium-sized beds made of sheep wool and oak wood frames, each adorned with intricately woven blankets in earthy tones. The room was illuminated by soft, flickering lanterns hanging from the exposed wooden beams of the ceiling, casting a warm glow upon the rustic, yet cozy, interior.

“This looks good,” Jack’s eyebrows shot up in surprise as he nodded in approval. “When they said that each house could have five people, they meant each one will get his own bed?”

“Yeah, right,” Hassan chuckled. “We could easily put ten people here.”

“We don’t need to do that though,” Roy let out a hearty laugh. “These houses are so cheap I can make one for every person.”

“Please, do,” Tyler looked at Roy with eyes full of hope. “Sleeping next to these guys is impossible. The smell of sweat kills me every night!”

“Now, I’m just hurt,” Daven put his bandaged hand on his chest and faked a sad expression. “I didn’t think you hated us so much.”

“Yeah, this is really sad,” Hassan clicked his tongue and shook his head. “I thought we were friends who went through life and death together. But this guy just wants to get away from us.”

Tyler tilted his head and rolled his head, “Come on guys, it was a joke.”

While Jack’s group were messing around with each other, Roy shook his head and gestured for his two friends to go out. Without wasting much time, Roy built one house after the next until the last one was formed.

By the end of his spree, eleven houses were erected and covered a sizeable chunk of the walled area.

“Thank the gods the graveyard was outside the walls,” Robb commented with a chuckle. “The place would have been cramped really quickly.”

Roy nodded at Robb’s assessment. Even though there was enough space to make another twenty or thirty houses, the village would have become jam-packed and hard to navigate through. It was due mostly to the lack of roads and a proper planning of districts and sections.

“You guys are assholes, you know that?”

Roy was surprised by the familiar voice before he turned around and found Fred walking toward them with a limp.

“You really left me next to the lake alone without anyone keeping an eye on me?”