“Go to the town hall,” Callum said. “Things might get dangerous, and it’s probably best if you are safe for now.”

Mike said they could handle whatever was coming, but a stare from Callum silenced him. If this was the Vipers, then things could turn bad, quickly. He hoped that Eliza was nearby if it came to fighting, but he hadn’t seen her since the day before.

A deep breath, and he was ready to face them. The overwhelming numbers would likely prove too much, but that wouldn’t stop him from doing as much damage as he could. That could dissuade them from going after the people. He couldn’t yet make out any details of what they were wearing, they were simply too far away.

Prepared to meet his end, he confidently marched over to the approaching army. As he got close enough, he noticed that none were wearing what he typically saw from the Vipers. There was also a distinct lack of makeshift weapons that, despite the name, the gang was famous for.

Finally, he got close enough to make out the face of the man in the lead. His shoulders sagged with relief. It was who he had saved from the bear, but why had he come with so many people?

“Ho, there,” the man shouted. “We mean no harm.”

Callum had surmised as much. “Why are you here?” he yelled back.

“We want to join you.”

That was a first for Callum. If they truly wanted to join him then he would be glad to have them. It looked like most of them were already armed to some degree.

“Come with me.” He exaggerated the movement of waving them over and turned to go to the obelisk.

He slowed his pace so that they would catch up with him and the first to do so was the man he had saved. A quick use of Identify told him that the man had gone up to level nine now, likely from the bear they had fought.

“I’m Joseph,” he said, holding his hand out.

“Callum,” he responded, shaking his hand.

“Thank you, for saving me. I owe you my life.”

Callum waved him off. “I just hope that someone would do the same for me if I was in a similar situation. I was surprised when you left without saying anything.”

“I had to get back to these people, to see if they were alive. We were inside that forest when everything . . . happened. We had gotten separated, but you saved me and helped me find who had survived.”

That statement caused Callum to take another look at the people that were gathered with him. There was a haunted look on their faces. Injuries were present in most of them, and some were crippled through more extreme injuries or outright missing limbs. Callum felt sorry for them but was impressed that they had survived that long if they were in the dungeon when it was created.

“How did you survive the initial attacks?” Callum asked.

“Luck, I think. Nearly twenty of us originally sharpened sticks and were able to take down a few wolves. After that we got lucky with the chest that spawned and were able to survive. Many of us did not make it. Of the original twenty, only five are here now. The others are stragglers we picked up.”

Callum nodded solemnly. He didn’t want to ask any more questions after hearing such a somber story. However, Sally might be able to get these people whole again. Physically, at least. Emotionally, they may never be. He waved over to Ryan and told him to go and get Sally. If they had a shot at it, he might as well take it.

“Well, here is the town. We unfortunately don’t have much spare room, but we are working on it. Sally, the one who treated your wounds, is coming. I think she may be able to help at least some of your people.”

“Thank you. I’m finding myself owing you more and more. If there’s anything I can do to help, please let me know.”

Joseph then turned away to tell the people that they could rest. Sally arrived only a few minutes later and quickly set to work on trying to help them. Callum watched, taking it as a hard lesson what brutalities he would find in the world, and that there was still more to come. Refugees of one kind or another would likely continue to surface. He hadn’t even seen everyone that was in the forest, and he feared the worst for them.

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He wanted to induct the new people as citizens, but that would have to wait. While he watched Sally work her magic, he Identified all of them to get a rough idea of what he was working with for new townspeople. They seemed to average around level five, with the highest, other than Joseph, being level seven, and the lowest being level three. The levels followed a logical order of classes, with the warriors making up the higher levels, followed by rangers, then rogues, and finally mages. It was surprising that the mages had gained any levels at all.

Callum wanted to go back to the few he had been training, but they had left by the time he got back. It was probably for the best, as he now had more people on his hand who would need houses, among other resources.

One of those resources was food. He had seen people making trips to scavenge grocery stores, but that wasn’t sustainable. Farming seemed like the solution, but he knew nothing about farming. Someone else might, and he would ask around, but most of the people that he now called citizens were city slickers. They didn’t know the first thing about farming. It was only three days into the apocalypse, but it was better to solve that issue before it became a problem.

A good starting point would be to at least check the menus on the obelisk. It took a solid ten minutes of scrolling before he realized that he could sort the list of things he could build. Everything he had done so far had just been towards the top of the list. It was a blow to his ego to realize that mistake, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

With the list sorted by food, he saw lots of things that popped up. Farms, orchards, livestock pens, butchers, and bakeries, to name a few. Most of the farming options specified that it did not come with the supplies to start the farming process. It was disheartening as that severely limited what he would be able to start with. A warning noted that it did the basic part of setting up fields to be planted, and had a fence to protect the crops, but everything else had to be accomplished by the people running the farms.

That made for another thing that he was going to need to go to the library for. It was slowly going from something optional to something necessary. The problem with going to the library was that it was much deeper into the city. So far he had stayed pretty close to his territory and hadn’t been gone for very long periods. The dungeons had kept him away to a certain degree, but he had a feeling the trip would likely be a day-long thing, possibly two. If he was able to beef up the security of the town, then it became a possibility to be gone, at least just him, for that long.

Since he was still at the obelisk, he started on the workings of his plan to secure the town. The first thing that he felt was needed was a wall. Luckily, there was a wooden wall available for purchase with the cost scaling with the perimeter of the wall. As a test, he selected an area that gave the town room to grow, but wouldn’t be too large an area to defend.

He staggered a bit at the cost. 5,000 units of wood. That was more than had been gathered in total between him and the woodcutters. He still needed 2,000 for the town hall upgrade and the people that had joined needed houses. There was still a dire need for more woodcutters. He would have to ask Joseph if the people with him would be willing to.

Callum looked over to where Sally was healing the new additions to the community. It looked to him as if she was moving slowly, trying to preserve her mana while having a moment to talk to people if they needed it. The willingness of people to help when everything went sideways was something that he would have to remember.

In the town hall, he could see that the ones visited by Sally were doing much better. Joseph himself looked to be nearly completely healed.

“I hate to bother you Joseph, but honestly more help is needed cutting wood for homes, and walls. I figured I would come to you first to see if the people with you are open to it.”

“Absolutely. We will need some axes, but I think many of us would be willing to help.”

Callum sighed in relief. “Thank you. I can provide the axes. Right now we only have four people cutting wood, but they can probably give you some pointers if you’ve never done it.”

“I have to ask, how did you build the houses? It’s only been a few days, but somehow you have several wooden houses.” Joseph started to stand, but Callum held up a hand to stop him.

“It’s through whatever entity gave us these powers. That stone pillar out there lets me interact with the town as a whole, letting me use the wood from the cut trees to build things.” Callum continued with a basic explanation of how the town worked. It was enough so that Joseph would be on the same page, but without giving away too much. He also requested that Joseph and his people register as citizens when they could.

Callum stood from where he had been sitting beside Joseph and went back to the stone obelisk. First, he purchased six axes. That cost him half of his current gold, but to him, it was worth it. What he needed was a way to make axes without spending gold on them. Weapons were also a priority to be made rather than bought.

He flipped through the menus again until he found something promising. A forge. That could solve the problem of the axes, but he would have to ask around who might know how to forge anything. Another unlikely thing, as the only person he had known to forge anything was Aaron, and that was just because he had taken an elective in college. That would have to wait, though, as the forge needed him to upgrade the town again.

There were simply too many things that depended on him upgrading the town, so he would have to refocus on that. He had gotten distracted by one thing or another, but the town was crucial to his, and the people in its, survival.