[Evolution Requirements]
Village => Town
- Build 100 Houses (62/100) -
- Build 5 Merchant Shops and evolve 5 Merchants -
- Build 1 Armoury and evolve 15 Guards (6/15) -
- Build 1 Fletchery and evolve 10 Archers (2/10) -
- Build 1 Mount Pen and spawn 5 Mounts -
- Build 3 Carts and have them deliver goods to neighbour villages/towns 8 times -
- Establish Trade Relations with neighbouring villages/towns -
- Build 20 pieces of assorted Furniture for your houses -
- Build Beds and Breed your Minions with each other -
- Build a continuous Fortified Stone Wall around the centre of your Demesne, including important builds like Mayor’s House -
- Build 1 Hermit's Lodge and evolve an ostracised minion to Toadcaller -
“We’re getting close,” I commented excitedly, looking at how much we had already completed of the requirements for my next evolution.
“It’ll be a while yet,” Imu remarked wisely. “The Fortified Wall is eating up most of our stone and the Foragers can’t keep up; the carts require us to build a Woodshop and evolve a Carpenter; and we still haven’t even looked at Merchant Shops and what they require.”
My Guiding Fairy was lounging atop his mustard-yellow mount, while flipping through his Encyclopaedia.
“We should build a quarry,” he then said. “We can keep it on the edge of our settlement and it’ll at least make our wall problem easy to handle. Plus, we might get lucky and hit some ore veins or something.”
“What about wood? It’s taking the Foragers a while to gather that too now,” I commented, looking around the enormous clearing within which our settlement resided. Just a few more lines of trees removed and it would be impossible to call this a forest anymore.
“If you’ve noticed, a lot of sapling seeds have been stored into our barns.”
“Saplings? Like tadpoles?”
“Sure… anyway, since we have an excess of minions that stand idle, we should have them replant the trees in the forest. Hopefully, since your core’s magic courses through them, the trees will grow rapidly, just like our crops, even if they don’t replant them within our demesne.”
Twenty of the laziest most idle minions, listen up! I mentally commanded. You are to replant the cut down trees of the forest, so that we do not run out of trees!
I hovered around the northern quadrant, where the idle minions seemed to congregate en masse, many of them standing in line before the bakery. It took a few minutes, but then twenty of them broke off and went to one of the barns, each grabbing a handful of sapling seeds and moving out into the deforested forest to reforest the deforestation.
Congratulations! For organising a reforestation effort and cleaning up the mess you yourself caused, you have gained the [Green Thumb] perk!
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
[Green Thumb] – All attempts at planting crops, seeds, and plants are always successful.
“Look at the System actually being useful for once,” Imu commented sharply. He looked over the where she was dancing in a ring with a bunch of unassigned minions, each of them holding hands. “You know, I hate to admit it, but I think your plan to put her into a physical body kind of helped.”
“Thank you,” I replied.
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“Are you sure?”
To avoid having my Baker die of exhaustion, I evolved another Baker to serve under him, and soon the long line before the Bakery windowsill seemed to shorten, although it never fully went away, as the minions of my settlement had learnt to live entirely off of bread and water.
Because it seemed to make the most sense, I decided to put the Stone Quarry in the southern quadrant, at the very edge of the current limit of my demesne. At first, I had my Builders craft a bunch of Stone Shovels, before sending off a newly-appointed team of thirty Diggers to excavate the marked-out blueprint of my Quarry which lay flat on the ground, just like with the Farming Plots. As soon as the Diggers arrived and got to work, the blueprint vanished from the ground, though the workers seemed to instinctively know the limits of the area they had to work within. It was quite strange.
As they dug a large square ten-by-ten hole into the ground, I had my Builders make a bunch of Stone Picks, and when the Diggers could dig no deeper, thanks to the dense layer of hard compacted earth and rock, I sent them off to each get a pick, and soon they were banging away at the tough sediment layer, sending fragments of stone and clumps of earth flying all over.
Since Imu recommended it, I placed a Well near the Quarry site, so the minions would not all die of dehydration.
“We should get to work on the Woodshop, before they start amassing a pile of rocks and whatnot for us to transport. Another couple barns also couldn’t hurt.”
[Crafting List]
>Structures>Crafting
—Woodshop (Workbench & Anvil)—
Unlocks the ability to evolve a minion into a Carpenter and making complex wooden contraptions
Required Materials: Stone, Timber, & Wrought Iron
Even though our northern quadrant was kind of crowded with other crafting buildings and houses, I decided to put the Woodshop there anyway. Within an hour or so, my team of Builders had constructed the one-storey building and I picked one of my countless idle minions to become a Carpenter.
After injecting him with my essence, he emerged from the simple building in a mist of ominous smoke and light, wearing a wooden skirt and weird cups over his mammary glands.
“This customisation system is actually pissing me off,” Imu grumbled. He stood up and pointed at the self-satisfied Carpenter, “I mean, look at him! What is that outfit supposed to be!?”
Moments later, System came running and picked up Imu in her arms and took off towards the southern quadrant. The Myling yelled at her to let him go, while his mustard-yellow toad mount hopped after them.
I bade the Carpenter construct three wooden carts, before following behind in my essence form.
We came to the Hermit’s Lodge, before System set down the flustered Imu. He pulled out his Encyclopaedia and smacked her leg with it, while complaining about her always picking him up.
A change came over System and the arms of her doll automaton fell to her sides, then she took a single step back, before torpedoing her foot into the middle of Imu’s legs, punting him a few metres through the air.
“Congratulations! Don’t fuck with me, Boi!”
I was about to tell her to be less violent towards Imu, when I noticed a figure sat in the depths of the Hermit’s Lodge, hugging his legs. His face had tiny eyes and small lips, so it was obvious that he was genetic freak of nature deserving of being ostracised, such that he was never able to procreate and pass on his twisted, disgusting features.
“Look! There’s a minion ready to become a Toadcaller!” I exclaimed.
Imu grunted something, from where he was curled into a ball a few metres away, but it wasn’t legible.
Instead of waiting for him to recover, I sent in a portion of my essence to evolve the minion, but it did not seem sufficient, so I doubled the dose, then doubled it again when that also didn’t work, nearing the edge of my limits, but then the transformation took hold, and a white light emerged from the hovel that lay between the roots of my tree. Halfway through, however, the light turned violet and there came a loud reverberating chirp, as though the world’s largest toad had just been birthed.
A puff of pleasant-smelling swamp odours wafted out of the Lodge’s doorway, alongside thick, viscous smoke, and out came striding my Toadcaller.
Imu had regained his composure at this point and we both beheld this newest evolution together.
“Why does he look so human?” Imu wondered, not having seen the minion beforehand.
“Why is he wearing the skin of a toad?” I asked, horrified.
System ran up to this new minion, and clasped both her doll hands on his disgusting human-sized cheeks and said, in a deep sonorous voice, “My boy!”
Congratulations! For evolving a Toadcaller, you unlocked the ability to construct various Scopes and other Enhancements to your Core!
[Crafting List]
>Structures>Core Upgrades
—Appraising Scope (Hermit’s Lodge)—
Unlocks the ability for the Core to view the level and statistics of any entity
Required Materials: Murderous Minion’s Soul, Happy Minion’s Soul, Lazy Minion’s Soul, & Guiding Fairy’s Tear
“Ah, for fuck’s sake…”
“I’m gonna need one of your tears,” I told Imu seriously. “I want this upgrade.”
“I hate this System,” he replied.