Chapter 3 Upgrades and Materials
She closed the messages again. It was an absolute carnage inside the chat channel. Instead, she focused on the second message of the system. She saw in the corner of her eye that Nour released the poor and now drained desert beetle.
{[Access to the worldwide Lord and Ladies trading platform granted.]
[Here you can trade items and materials with billions of others.
Note: Trade information without guarantee of fairtrade.
Trade at your own risk.]}
She accessed the site and the first trades she saw made her eyes go wide.
[You get 1 Unit of Meat – You lose 1000 Units of Wood]
[You get 1 Unit of Meat – You lose 1000 Units of Crystals]
[You get 1 Unit of Meat – You lose 1000 Units of Stone]
[You get 1 Unit of Meat – You lose 1000 Units of Refined Iron]
Immediately she closed it again. What is with these prices? How can somebody afford this even with a decent location of the castle. Without manpower you cannot achieve this yourself.
“My Lady, I found something weird inside the dog's corpse while dismantling it.”
Xhemile turned around to approached Nane and entered the building. She held a small brown crystal inside her hand.
[Earth Crystal]
She the rolled her eyes and asked the system the use of this crystal.
[Can be used to craft items, upgrade- build buildings, trading]
She then asked the system to show her current available uses of the crystal.
[Item Crafting – None
Building Structures – None
Upgrade Structures – Castle, Summoning circle]
She then concentrated on the available upgrades.
{[Castle Upgrade
Rank 1
300 Units of Mudbricks
150 Units of Wood
10 earth crystals]
[Summoning Circle upgrade
Rank 1
100 units of stone
25 earth crystals]}
That is relatively cheap considering my current location. But without a river no mud especially reeds to mix the mud with, about the drying of these bricks I don't need to think about that considering the sun and temperature here.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
She thought of something else and started to look at the chat again to confirm something. After scrolling enough, she found what interested her.
[Messages]
“Hey what materials do you guys need to upgrade your castle? I need 100 units of wood and 50 units of stone.”
“I need 100 units of stone and 50 units of wood.”
“What are your castles made of?”
“I have a wooden castle.”
“I have a stone castle.”
“Stone.”
Interestingly almost every castle needs other materials to upgrade, they probably need better materials at higher levels like basalt or refined iron eventually even steel or magical materials like, I don't know, elven wood? Mine needs mudbricks. Weirdly nobody else asks for mud or mudbricks in the entire chat after filtering everything. Xhemile was contemplating, but then she looked at Nane, which she looked at her a bit weirdly. “Err... I found out the use of this crystal. We can store it for now and use it later probably.” “Alright, my Lady.”: Nane answered and directly afterward the crystal disappeared from her hand.
{[1 Earth Crystal stored in storage.]}
Xhemile then concentrated on her storage and a screen popped up.
{[Storage]
The Storage is used to store things. When the castle heart and owner are destroyed or surrender all materials can be obtained by the person which the castle was conquered by.}
Castle Heart? Where is mine?
{[Castle Heart]
[Rank 0]
[Durability: 100/100]
The Castle Heart represents the core of the castle. When destroyed the castle will be destroyed and all subjects will become refugees as well as the owner. If the owner surrenders, he can be placed as a vassal for this castle, in this case the castle will not be destroyed and subjects will continue to follow the owner. It is stored by [Level 0] Castles next to the summoning circle.}
Well good to know for later.
She looked again at Nane and asked her.
“Nane, what did we gain from this [Desert dog]?”
“Responding to my Lady, by dismantling the corpse we gained 10 units of [desert dog meat], 5 units of [desert dog bones], 3 units of [desert dog fur], 2 units of [desert dog teeth] and 1 unit of [desert dog intestines] as well as 1 unit of [desert dog tendon]. Ah and the 1 [earth crystal].”
“Can we do something with these materials?”: Xhemile asked again, while storing these materials.
“My Lady, we can cook the meat but without fire it's impossible, but we can dry it to make dry aged meat. We can craft crude weapons out of the bones or make a bow with the tendon. The fur we could make armor or clothes with but we require a leatherworker for that and teeth can be used to craft arrows or to trade with other tribes.”: Nane answered. Her chatter with the tall woman was disrupted by an angry howl outside paired with angry barks. Xhemile jumped up and rushed outside with the other woman to find three other desert dogs attacking the protection zone of the castle. Her entire subjects, including herself, walked in front of these dogs to look at them while they were aggressively scratching and biting the barrier. Nanu the handed the spear to Nour which she grabbed and immediately used on a dog piercing its torso then twisting the spear so it got stuck, dragging the dead dog inside the barrier.
[Subject (Nour) killed one [desert dog] of Rank 0
Gained lord power.]
Xhemile was again close to puking but she swallowed the sour feelings down and stared as Nour gave the spear to Nane doing the exact same thing,
[Subject (Nane) killed one [desert dog] of Rank 0
Gained lord power.]
She then held the spear towards Xhemile, but she just stared between the spear and her subordinate quickly shaking her head. “You need to do this my Lady. You must steel yourself against even harder challenges because one day there will be a person trying to do the same thing to you.” Nane words made sense so she grabbed the spear, trying to aim at the torso of the dog which was now even more furious jumping against the barrier. She the stabbed. Her aim was off, the dog whined and then tried to jump and attack her even more clearly pissed off. She only hit the side of his right foreleg. She then tried again, this time successful, her spear made weird crunch and then the dog fell on his side clearly dead now.
[You killed one [desert dog] of Rank 0
Gained lord power.]
Xhemile fell to her knees and looked stunned at her shaking hands. She then started crying. Nane picked her gently up and brought her back to the castle inside her bedroom in the tower. She carefully placed Xhemile on the small bed and covered her with a thin sheet, then she left the room. Xhemile cried for a few more minutes and then fell into an exhausted slumber.