Elas sighed as he wrote down another worker's name and stats on a piece of paper. He had greatly underestimated the amount time and effort deciphering the stat graphs took. Skimming through someone’s abilities took a few minutes at most but skills and talents were not standalone things. Every stat interacted with dozens of others in a massive spider web of interdependencies. It quickly became obvious that there simply isn't enough time to get into the specifics with everyone.

He had decided to skim over most people and only delve into the details of those that were highly promising. Even so it still took him an entire week to go through all the working age adults. He had put off the children and elderly as even if they were promising the elderly were not worth investing into as they will not live to the midgame without expensive life extensions and the children were unlikely to have developed skills and talents as they were still growing.

Out of all the people he had checked he was only able to find four that were worth training in alchemy and even then none of them were particularly outstanding. He expected they would reach journeyman in alchemy in a decade with their talent. Even under his tutelage he doubted any of them would become better than adepts.

It wasn't really much of a problem as he never expected to find anyone amazing. If talented alchemists were so common then the emperor would not have worked so hard just to maintain his imperial alchemical workshops. Even at its height the Ministry of Alchemy had less than ten thousand alchemists and that was during the age of myth. When Elas left there were less than a hundred superior or above alchemists left which caused them to start accepting even adepts to bring up the numbers.

Argis had gone above and beyond Elas’s expectations. Not once had the man bothered him after being given his initial orders. Elas had not given him enough money for the task and expected him to ask for more after the budget dried up. But Argis had kept a strict budget, opting to only buy the most important tools and instead directed his people with woodcraft skills to create the rest from the few trees they felled. He had also gathered the people with cooking skills and tasked them to create meals on a budget which ended up being a lot of porridge.The lack of metal tools had greatly slowed their pace but they had plenty of time as gathering the construction materials would take the carpenters until summer anyway.

Elas figured Argis only started his managerial stint recently which would explain the lack of milestones. After Argis’s showcase of skill Elas was convinced to set aside some time to truly delve into Argis’s stats and guide him to obtaining all the milestones and achievements of an excellent administrator.

As for the rest of the workers, Elas was more than happy offloading their management onto Argis. He planned to train the more physically gifted ones into soldiers in the future but for now they could hopefully gain some physical milestones while performing general labor.

He stood up from his chair and paced around the cabin while maintaining his crown’s vision; he discovered that as long as he could maintain a relaxed state of mind he could effectively multitask while using the crown. He accidentally stumbled upon the feature when he was pacing around the room mindlessly in between the long stat deciphering sessions with the crown still on.

At first he panicked as he suddenly found himself in third person view but further testing revealed that he can still see through his regular eyes as if it was his peripheral vision. He had always closed his eyes before as he usually meditated while using the crown. He couldn't do anything complicated as that would require focus which would end the crown's vision but he wouldn't run into things at least.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He skimmed over the elderly who were all fairly skilled as they had already lived their lives. Two elderly men rammed large logs into the ground pounding it flat like it was nothing. Elas dived into their stat graph for a few minutes before surmising they were journeyman miners which were rare in the north where there was an acute lack of mined resources. They were both incredibly close at becoming adept which explained the budding superhuman strength as a result of compounding hard labor milestones but at their age their path was nearing its end.

What was a surprise was the old matron leading half a dozen cooks to feed everyone was not just an adept but someone well on her way towards the next category. It was rare for someone in a crafting profession to get so far outside of major cities as some of their achievements require rare materials that would be in short supply in most places. At her current skill level she could probably turn bark and weeds into palatable cuisine. No wonder none of the refugees died from starvation during the winter even when their supplies were dangerously thin. Elas expected that the elder council would have a new member in a few years once the group fully integrates into Farhaven’s populus.

Elas turned his attention on the children which were mostly helping clear the weeds and carry lighter items around the work area. As expected they had underdeveloped stats though they were all slightly stronger than the average child which was probably the reason Argis had allowed them to help with work. It was probably part of their communities education as children were normally given chores that would help them obtain early milestones.

All children had high talents as the possibilities open to someone so young were many but few would ever reach their limits. As they age their situation and choices would cut down most of their talent until they become closer to reality. Of course the rich and powerful could afford to develop their talents more effectively which resulted in the rather stark difference in blessings between commoners and nobility.

There was simply not enough time and resources in the world for everyone to reach their peak. Even noble families tend to focus their attention on the most promising offspring. This culture of funneling resources into a chosen few had become even more solidified due to the current desolate age making everything much more rare.

Even if the wooden crown incentivizes quantity over quality, at some point enemy champions would be virtually invincible when fighting against the average soldier. And because the wooden crown had no combat bonuses Elas would need either more champions or better champions to hold his ground against the other sovereign's combat abilities.

Elas moved his vision around looking for whoever he missed when he found himself staring at a rather ridiculous situation. A young girl probably not even ten years old walked across his vision carrying a massive log which she then used to ram the earth emulating the two elderly miners.

Chaos ensued as the adults quickly scolded the child for engaging in such a dangerous activity which resulted in the child pouting and tossing the log she was carrying which almost hit someone standing behind her. The scolding only escalated from there and for good reason to.

Elas focused on the girl bringing up her stat graph.

“What the hell?!?” He couldn't help but gasp as he stared at the most absurd stat graph he had ever seen.

It looked like a sea urchin with how absurdly over developed the physical stats were compared to everything else. Elas doubted even the geniuses in the capital had such absurd stats at such a young age. Compared to an adept soldier the girl's strength might not look like much but she was a child and Elas could only imagine the absolute monster she would become given resources and training. Luka should start worrying about his job as in a few years he would not be the strongest warrior in town.