“What do I do!?”
“Use your new perk, quickly!”
I concentrated on the Mouthpiece perk and, within seconds, I felt my essence get drawn into the Mayor with the cone hat. It was a strange feeling, as I was in charge of the minion’s bizarre bipedal body, but did not sense anything through its skin or strange finger pads, nor could I taste anything when I licked things, sadly.
“Toad, stop licking the ground and get over here and deal with this lunatic!”
I snapped out of my experimentation and started hopping over towards the whomen with the strange head and four-fingered hands. When I got over to him, after some trial-and-error, given that my minions’ bodies seemed poorly designed for my preferred mode of movement, I stood erect on my two borrowed legs and looked at him intently with my bulbous moist eyes.
“My word, I daresay this entire cesspool is full of monstrosities of the worst proportion!”
“Hello, I’m Toad.”
“I suppose you are. My name’s Monroe Gilfroy Gilbertim. I am the Tax Collector for the realm of Earl Sharpee Inkledinkle Johnson.”
“Crap,” I heard Imu whisper. “I think I know exactly where we are in the world now…”
“I’m the Mayor! I’m Toad, son of Toadimer and Toadilda, grandson of Toado and Toadette, who are also my uncle and sister-cousin!”
“I am not surprised one of your disgusting flatheaded ilk would have such a foul lineage.”
“Why does your head look like that?” I asked him. Imu stood behind the strange-looking whomen and was waving his little chubby boy-arms frantically. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to tell me.
Monroe put his four fingers to his protruding forehead, the supple skin and watery pouch there squishing about and letting his digits sink into it. “A flathead, such as yourself, would not comprehend my superior genes!”
“Is that why you also have only four fingers?”
“Obviously!” Monroe responded, incensed.
Imu was now holding up his Encyclopaedia so I could see the text, and, though I could not read, I somehow understood what it said.
The text on the magical pages of his tome announced: “Earl Sharpee and his people are VERY VERY INBRED! They idolise their own birth defects and do not take kindly to mockery! Tread carefully!”
“What’s a Tax Collector?” I asked the angry, strange-looking whomen.
“We collect a Tithe for the Earl from all those living beneath his graceful and benevolent rule. You are illegally living in his forest, so your Tithe will be quite steep, I tell you!”
Imu abruptly jumped into the space between us, and started very quickly deescalating the situation and dealing with the man.
“Sire Gilbertim, we are a newly-established settlement, but you will find our fields fecund and bountiful in their harvests!”
“Indeed?” the man seemed to have instantly calmed down as soon as Imu started buttering his whistle. It reminded me bitterly of how I’d been forced to treat Toadicus as Lord of the Swamp.
Can’t we just beat him to death or feed him to the Goose2? I mentally asked Imu, having understood the need for subtlety now.
Imu, however, completely ignored me, while showing the tax-collecting water-pouch-forehead whomen our barn stock-full of newly-harvest vegetables, tubers, and wheat.
“My, my, my,” Monroe exclaimed repeatedly. “I shall have to inform his Earlship of so terrific a place as what you have managed to make for yourselves within his lands.”
After some more extensive back-and-forth, Imu sent him off with an awkward handshake, caused both by the over-one-metre in height difference, but also the trouble of locking hands when one individual lacked a prominent digit.
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“This is really bad.”
“That guy was ugly.”
“Okay, pot calling kettle black, but, also, shut up for a second, I have to think. We now have to deal with paying a Tithe to the Earl whose forest we are inside of…”
“Is it going to be expensive?”
“Not so much expensive, but, rather, I am not sure how they will react to our explosive growth. After all, just a week prior you were only capable of making a single minion…”
“Because Settlement Cores are rare?”
“Not rare… unheard of, more like. Some Dungeons, like those belonging to Lord Deathheim, are often targeted by overzealous priests and vigilant knight fraternities, and, if we have to deal with Missionaries due to our unique status, I might lose my mind.”
“Are they worse than Tax Collectors?”
“Much, much worse! Imagine if Girl Scouts selling their delectable cookies also forced you to listen to a six-hour sermon about their lord-and-saviour… And, if you try to shoo them away they not only won’t sell you cookies anymore, they’ll send a crusade to wipe you off the map. Have you any idea how many hundreds of times I’ve had to listen to their asinine babblings about Lady Light!?”
“So, what should we do?”
“We’ll build a second barn to store our wheat, and we’ll dedicate three of our five fields to just wheat, since that’s what the Earl will want as tax, but we’ll also focus heavily on evolving as fast as possible. Sooner-or-later we will gain the power to challenge the local Earl and insulate ourself from whatever troubles he might bring us.”
“We should get started on the Breeder and Animal Pen then.”
“Exactly.”
[Crafting List]
>Structures>Agriculture
—Animal Pen (Workbench)—
Unlocks the ability to evolve a minion into a Breeder and spawning cattle
Required Materials: Stone, Timber, & Wrought Iron
I ended up placing the Animal Pen on the opposite side of my Hamlet, next to the Farming Plot that lay furthest from the Forge. Armed with their iron hammers, the Builders erected the basic structure within half an hour, leaving behind what was simply a round fence enclosure with a gate that held a locking bolt. The Pen also came with a little shack, which was similar to a basic house, and, following Imu’s advice, I built a Stone Dyke around it. The end result was a large five-by-ten stone enclosure for cattle, with the Pen at the end.
Since there didn’t seem to be any specific requirements for which minion I could evolve, I simply chose the one I’d recently spawned to replace the dead Builder, who’d been slain by his competitor for the cone hat of Mayoral office. As soon as I tasked the minion to enter the pen, he started sprinting, as though his life depended on it.
“They seem very gung-ho about evolving,” Imu said, amused. “At least this time it’s just the one. Probably we should refrain from pitting them against each other again, it doesn’t seem very conducive to a healthy settlement atmosphere.”
After the minion entered the shack, I poured all my essence into it, and the single opening in the door let out an extremely-bright light, which quickly turned red and was followed by a cataclysmic crash and splash, like the time when one of the insane squirrels bellyflopped into the pond where I’d lived in the swamp.
“Make sure you hold off on how much essence you give them,” Imu scolded me. “You literally made the poor guy explode from too much power being forced into him…”
To really underline this, the door to the little shack fell off its hinges, and I was forced to send a Builder over to repair it. I also made the Builder wipe away the mess left behind by the would-be Breeder.
“I’ll try again,” I said, spawning a new minion and sending him straight into the newly-cleaned shack of the Animal Pen, and letting a moderate amount of my essence flow into it. Again there came a light through the window in the door, but then it died down and a mist emerged with the triumphant arrival of my second evolution.
Unlike the Mayor, the Breeder had not been gifted a hat, but instead he had a weird thing around his neck and, when he picked up and equipped the left-behind simple clothes of the man who had died before him, his attire turned dark-brown.
“Hm, a necktie, how odd.”
I was about to reply, but then the System awarded me new blueprints for my accomplishment.
Congratulations! For constructing your first Animal Pen and evolving a Breeder, you unlocked the ability to construct a Well to produce Fresh Water, as well as the ability to craft a Poop Shovel to handle cattle leavings! HAVE FUN SHOVELLING SHIT YOU ******** ****! I HOPE YOUR INTESTINES ARE USED TO **** YOU IN YOUR MOIST LITTLE **** YOU ***** ***** ***********!!!
[Crafting List]
>Structures
—Well (Workbench)—
Enables minions to gather fresh groundwater and increases minion motivation in nearby structures
Required Materials: Stone + Shovel tool
>Items>Tools
—Poop Shovel (Workbench)—
Grants Poop-shovelling skill and increases minion Fertilising speed and efficiency by 30%
Required Materials: Wood & Iron
“She’s very mean,” I said.
“At least we can now provide our minions with water… but I’ll get in touch with Support.”