The council followed us to the manor and, after seeing the state of the people who had been brought back, entered the meeting room. Grabbing our seats quickly, I gave the rundown of what happened and why it seemed like we had 13 new community members. I don't know precisely what they are now since I haven't had time to go through the notifications I have received.
"Did I hear wrong? Or did I hear about a boss monster that is level 11 and running wild now?" Draemish asks her face a wall of unreadable emotions.
"There is a monster out there that is level 11 and is a boss monster. I don't know what that means since we were more worried about trying to defend from it than fight it. I am just glad it decided not to attack us. It might give us some more time to work on more defenses. I want to review my notifications, and we may have a general idea of what we are dealing with." I answer as best I can before I get curious about some of the notifications I received. Opening the first one, I am neither happy nor sad about what it provides.
- A Helping Hand (Completed)
Due to an offer of assistance, Koto has called upon your aid. After the auction is over, you have the option to assist Koto in tiering up her settlement in the settlement trial.
Due to the late call for aid, Koto cannot maintain their settlement. The monsters from the Tier-up Trial have taken over the settlement, and now, as a last-ditch effort, Koto seeks some form of aid or asylum. Your following actions will determine what assistance is provided. Will you aid the last remnants of this settlement and lead them to a more forgiving home, or will you abandon them and lead your party home?
Having decided to stay and help the settlement to the best of your abilities, you managed to keep the monster swarm from entirely overwhelming you. Sadly, there wasn't much you could do to help further. Koto declared war on you in the final moments of your struggle and immediately surrendered. While this allowed you to conquer her settlement, you have instead decided to raze it to the ground. It appeared to be the correct decision as you could give them the asylum they were not expecting.
Tasks:
Assist Koto's settlement in seeking a place of relative safety: 1/1
Rewards:
13 X Slaves, 5 X Large Bag of Experience
AND
1 X Small Chest of Wealth, 1 X Gigantic Wooden Resource Box -
Slaves... I had slaves... Something in my gut tells me it is wrong to think of those people in such a situation. I panic for a second before a skeletal hand rests on my shoulder.
"What is it, Drake? We need to know what is going on." He says, his tone as calming as it can get.
Pointing to the door, I tell them, "Those people out there, they are my slaves." The thought of owning another person makes my stomach lurch in a way that hasn't since I was first told there was no way to fix my heart before I came to Corenthia.
"If they are, what do you want to do about it, Drake? I don't think you should dive into it too much for the time being. I am sure we can find a way for them to be here peacefully without being enslaved, but it will take time. So, until then, keep going through your notifications."
Nodding my thanks, I get my mind under control and continue with my notifications.
- Congratulations! Your settlement won its first war. While it was in a manner that would be called non-typical, you have managed to win this war. Reward: 1 X Small Iron Noble Chest for the leader of the settlement, 1 X Small Class Equipment Box for each member of your settlement
Congratulations! Your settlement won a war in under a day. While it was in a manner that would be called non-typical, you have managed to win in under a day. Reward: 1 X Class Level-up token for each member of your settlement
Congratulations! Your settlement has won a war without any casualties. While it was in a manner that would be called non-typical, you have managed to win this war with no casualties. Reward: 1 X Small Iron Specific Population Scroll Chest
Congratulations! You have razed another settlement after winning a war. As this was your first settlement, you will receive a boost in the rewards the razing process has given you. -
When I looked at those four notifications, everyone in the settlement received them simultaneously, including the rewards appearing before each one. I want to get all the notifications out of the way, so I continue.
- Congratulations, your skill, Barkskin, has reached level 5.
Congratulations, your skill, Minor Healing, has reached level 8.
Congratulations, your skill, Shield, has reached level 10.
Congratulations, your skill, Mend, has reached level 6.
Congratulations, your skill, Nature's Grasp, has reached level 5.
Congratulations, your skill, Basic Staff-wielding, has reached level 2.
Congratulations, your skill, Leadership, has reached level 8.
Your group has slain 368 Ant Worker Level 4. Experience Received: 92
Your group has slain 256 Ant Worker Level 5. Experience Received: 128
Your group has slain 96 Ant Soldier Level 6. Experience Received: 72
Your group has slain 54 Ant Soldier (Elite) Level 6. Experience Received: 81
Your group has slain 30 Wolf Level 8. Experience Received: 60
Your group has slain 8 Wolf (Elite) Level 9. Experience Received: 64 -
The experience from the monsters we managed to slaughter, added to my current knowledge, is enough to push me up to the next level. These notifications include two more.
- Congratulations, you have razed a settlement. All available resources in the settlement have become your spoils of war.
Received: 13 X Slaves
Tier 1:
542 X Stone
1356 X Wood
347 X Metal
0 X Food -
Sighing, I can only be thankful for the resources themselves. I know how hard it is to get wood, and with the overabundance we have now, I would be more than willing to splurge and build some more buildings and even extend the walls to include more area, but that is something we can deal with later.
- Event has been triggered:
Due to bringing back a boss monster, a monster swarm will arrive at your settlement once a week until the boss monster has been defeated. The swarm sizes will get increasingly difficult as the boss can rally more monsters under its claws. The first swarm will arrive in seven days. For each swarm, there will be an amount of monsters that need to be slain before they retreat to regroup. As this is a special event for your settlement, you will receive rewards based on how quickly you defeat the boss monster and how many swarms you defeat. The boss will increase in power the longer you wait to kill it.
Good Luck
Countdown till the first swarm: 6 Days, 23 Hours, 20 Minutes -
Putting my head in my hands, I hope it isn't like the settlement we just came from. Taking a deep breath, I address everyone gathered. "I have just gone over my notifications; as you can see, several were involved in the settlement even though most didn't participate. I can only say it is their good luck that they received the boons from this without having to participate." Pushing my head up, I look at every one. "We have a little under a week to prepare for a swarm of monsters. I hope it isn't too many, but who knows how things panned out for the other settlement."
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"We should bring in the leader, Koto, and ask her why the situation got so out of hand for them." Shadow states while looking me dead in the eyes.
Turning to Laxreal, I ask, "Could you get Koto and bring her in? I want to clarify things as soon as possible before we continue with our discussions."
Nodding, he heads out and returns within a minute, Koto in tow. I gesture to the seat at the other end of the table for her to sit in. Once she gets to the end of the table to take the seat, she refuses, but instead, she looks at everyone in the room and bows to them.
"Thank you, everyone, for the help; I know this doesn't mean much, but I appreciate it. I looked, and I know my status, and I hope you are kind enough not to torment my people. Any punishment they would have placed on them, I would like to take in their stead." Her eyes show a determined look of one that knows she screwed up and is willing to make any amends for those that were under her care.
"Koto," I start, but Zul'Zara interjects.
"We be not wanting slaves. You be one out of fate, not willingness on our parts." She gets up and approaches the woman, lifting her so she can see all of our faces. "I may be speakin' out of place, but we be a fair group of people. You be seeing the freedom you had before, it might just take some time." Zul'Zara looks at me.
"What she says is the truth," I agree with her, "I didn't want you to be a slave, but in this instance, it might have been the only way for you and the remaining people to survive. So, I apologize that you are in this situation, and as Zul'Zara said, we will look for a way for you to remove the enslavement you and your people have."
Her eyes appear hopeful, "I would very much like that if it is of any help; I do know of a couple of ways for someone enslaved to redeem themselves. Most places that raze settlements typically aren't so nice that they might give that option, forcing people to work till their deaths, but of the two options I know of, they are both very humane. The first is the enslaved could pay off their enslavement. The amount needed will vary based on what the lord of the settlement thinks of a minimum amount. The second is for the owner to have a high enough noble rank; you could buy annulment vouchers from the system."
"That is good news. Where would I find the information about the amount you would need to 'redeem' yourself? And what noble rank would I have to be to buy an annulment voucher?"
"There should be an option when you focus on me. Being a lord, my minimum amount will be higher than someone who wasn't. And for what rank would you need to be, at least a Viscount, to be specific? But I could be wrong; I haven't seen many slaves, and those I did were in the darker sides of the world. They are an easy way for someone to level up their nobility class to a certain extent."
"How does PUN register when you have enough funds?" I asked.
"That is simple: I either have to have the funds already saved up or through selling goods or services. Typically, slaves have it rough because people will use them for the services." She says while shivering. "Once you have enough funds, though, as long as the owner of the slave accepts the money, then they are free to go."
"Couldn't I just give you the money so you would be able to get your freedom?" I asked.
"You can, but it doesn't seem worth it for most people; they would rather get the work out of us than let us go like that."
Taking a moment, I do as she had said and look closer at her.
- Koto (Enslaved to Drake) Level 6 Hunter/Level 13 Scribe/Ex-Lordress
HP: 24/30
MP: 5/5
Cost to redeem: 20 Gold to 1 Platinum -
Immediately setting the amount to the lowest it could go, then turning to Laxreal, "Can you go and get the gold we have left? Let's deal with this so I don't have to worry anymore."
Nodding, he leaves to get the money. "One more thing," I ask, "With the amounts, I have seen gold, and now I have seen platinum, but what are the exact exchange rates?"
Smiling, she looks at me, "It starts with copper, then silver, gold, platinum, and finally diamond. The exchange rates are 100 copper for silver, 100 silver for gold, 10,000 gold for platinum, and 10,000 platinum for diamond."
"Why have I only seen gold then? None of the other lower denominations showed up."
"Probably because you got them through coin pouches and were especially lucky that you did so. Typically, the pouch will choose one type of denomination and then base the amount on that."
"Okay, thank you for the information," Laxreal says in my place as he walks back into the room with the funds while I contemplate the astronomical amount of wealth I spent at the auction. "Can we get to some of our other questions?" he asks her.
"Please ask. I will do my best to help where possible."
"Before that, you are here as an equal, so please sit," Draemish suggests. Her face is slightly more relaxed but still tight from the brief conversation about the boss monsters.
Taking her seat, we ask questions about what happened with her settlement.
"What happened that made you end up in the situation you were in?" Draemish asks.
"Well, my community wasn't heavy into the military. Most of the people from my settlement, in one way or another, were primarily crafters. This overwhelmed the few militant types when there weren't enough people to deal damage to those monsters."
"So, you ran into a situation where having more military might would have been better?" Draemish asked.
"We should have had a primarily crafting-based trial since I was tiering the settlement based on my crafters. It shouldn't have been the situation of us getting swarmed by monsters but instead having to craft a certain number of items of a certain quality to progress the settlement."
"Do you know what could have caused the discrepancy?" Shadow asked.
"One option is that there were items involved in the settlement that went against the rules for a startup; either someone brought in a higher quality item than they should have, or there happened to be more level 10 warriors than crafters, causing the trial to shift into that sort of direction."
"Some of your people were withholding information from you, so you didn't clearly understand where your settlement was." Laxreal succinctly summarizes.
"That about sums it up; I also think that it is possible that my siblings put plants into my initial settlers and were under strict orders to do what they could to ruin my chances of tiering my settlement up before them.”
At the mention of her siblings, I asked, "Why would they need to do that?"
"Because, when it comes to who to invest in further, my father would look at the success of each of our settlements after two years. The fact that I could get to where I was is surprising. But I wanted to put my best foot forward; in the end, it looks like I couldn't succeed in doing anything other than being a burden to someone else."
Up to this point, one thing bothered me: I needed the question answered: "My settlement had an attack, and we needed to defend it. Did the same thing happen with your settlement?"
Nodding, she looks around the table, "Yes, we did, but we didn't progress past the tenth wave, and to be honest, even with my settlers primarily focused on crafting, most of us are either hunters or mages. So, we had many options to clear out the enemies without worrying about being overrun. I also only had about 20 people with me, so the most we had for enemies was about 50, and even then, they were easy enemies."
Thinking about what she said, I can only think they had good luck with their waves and didn't have to worry about being overrun. Maybe they had monsters that couldn't climb, or their levels weren't high enough to make it hard for them to get through the waves quickly.
"What do you want to do here? I know that you had to give up your settlement even for the potential to survive, but what do you think you will be able to do?" I asked, more curious now that we have someone who has been incorporated into PUN for longer and would better understand the system than Ritotorous or me.
"Honestly, I just want to work on my profession and get it to the higher tiers. Getting my class leveled up would be great, but it isn't a requirement right now. Instead, I think everyone who was a part of my settlement would like some downtime to figure out what had happened. Also, I would like to ask. How far away are you from your tier-up?"
I checked that information and quickly found the answer.
- Settlement Tasks:
Have a total population of 100 (95/100)
Have at least one settler complete their class or profession upgrade (15/1)
Note: These tasks can not be skipped. Upon completion, the settlement will receive an advancement quest to progress to the next settlement tier. -
Looking for everyone's support, they nod, "We are five populations from being able to tier up the settlement. I also have that token I won, so we shouldn't have to deal with your tier-up trial."
"True, but there is something that you need to know before you finalize the tier-up process. It would be best if you used that token. The process starts immediately, and if it doesn't register that you have used that token, you will still have the trial, meaning that the token will sit there till it can be used again for another one of your settlements that you start on another world."
"Which would make you losing your settlement that much more painful since the one item that would have let you continue to progress was just sitting doing nothing," Demetrius states, to which Koto nods.
"Alright, it sounds like we should use that token right away, then." I turn to ask Laxreal if he can get it, but I am stopped.
"Don't use it right now. I will wait till you hit the population amount. You don't have to tier up immediately, but when you use the token, you only have a day to start the process. It would be best to get the population and have them level up a bit to ensure they can handle the straggling monsters that come from time to time."
Thinking about her recommendation, I have one thought that comes to mind. Looking around the table, I ask, "Why don't we simultaneously use the monster swarms to help level up the settlement and everyone? We have been pretty split between those here for military purposes and those working more heavily in their professions. I wouldn't doubt some easy levels would be against their thoughts."
When she hears about monster swarms, Koto pales a little. "What do you mean monster swarms?"
"An event was triggered because of that big boss monster that came through when we retreated. It will now lead a swarm of monsters every seven days to the settlement until we kill it. My only thought is that we should use it to level up those lower leveled and then work from there. We do have the advantage of having the materials for more defenses."
She nods slowly, "Yes, but what are your average levels in the settlement?"
"I don't know. We haven't done a census of that sort of information yet, though it wouldn't be a bad thing to do soon. Laxreal," I turn to him. Would it be possible to get a quick tally of what our average level is?"
"It shouldn't be too hard; if we set up something that makes it so those that leave have a card or something that we can use to help keep track, that would be wonderful."
That makes me think of adventure and mercenary guilds from my games. They had cards that helped to keep things in check, and certain cards gave specific bonuses. I wish we had a building like that to get this more organized. Coming back to the room, everyone is looking at me. "What?"
"You had the, 'I am thinking about something from my world,' look, what was it," Draemish asked.
"I was just thinking about adventure guilds and the like; in the games and novels I had, these guilds would have a way to track that information and set up a system of quests for people to go out and complete for those in the town. I just wished we would get a building for something like that soon."
"Drake," Vranjaya starts, "We have sssomething like that. We jussst haven't been able to build it yet."
I quickly looked at the building options and found the Adventurer's Guild. I put it off because of one main factor. It requires an Apprentice Foreman, Woodworker, Blacksmith, Tailor, Enchanter, and Scribe. We didn't have anyone at the apprentice level yet, so there was no way we could have built it without using some of the other tokens we had accumulated. We only have five Wood Profession Reduction Tokens, so using them all on one project didn't seem like the best option, considering that I was able to become an Apprentice Enchanter. I am curious if we have enough people for the selected roles to be able to complete the building now.
"Can someone check to see if we have an apprentice blacksmith, woodworker, tailor, scribe, and enchanter on hand?" I asked the room.
"Leave that to me," Eleanor offers.
"Good. Is there anything else we want to ask Koto before I have her go and comfort her people about the situation?" I asked the gathering.
I see everyone shake their heads and see that some people are ready to move on to some tasks. I stand up and thank them all for coming. The next thing on my plate is to get rid of these slaves as soon as I can. No one deserves to be a slave, and I plan on making that a point in my settlement.