There stood sixty Guards and thirty Archers aligned before my Fletchery and Armoury. Most wore the basic clothes of my Loom minions’ manufacturing, but all had their proper weapons. It seemed now that the Frog Hide armour was a sign of seniority amongst my armed minions.

To start off my evolution of a Cavalry Man, I took a Mount and a Guard and somehow managed to get both inside the Armoury’s narrow doorway.

“Good thing your toad mounts are so squishy,” Imu remarked.

I flooded the building with essence and suddenly a massive smokescreen obscured the entire building, pillars of light shooting out at random in a murky-green lightshow. Even evolving my Lord had not been so spectacular a show, but I saw the reason why, when the smoke dissipated and revealed that, not only had the minions inside evolved, so too had the Armoury.

The building stood now two-stories tall and was equipped with a gate next to its previously-minion-sized entryway, in order to allow something bigger to get in and out.

Hopping out of the new gate came the evolved toad Mount and Rider. The Toad had bloated in size, becoming a lot wider, and its rubbery skin was now covered in dense keratin plates, making it look like the damned offspring of a toad and a lizard. Additionally, the front legs of the toad had fierce bone protrusions that looked like claws and were sure to be fierce weapons in battle.

As for the Rider, the first Cavalry Man of my settlement, he had undergone a similar metamorphosis as my Lord minion and was now designated as a Toadkin. Unlike my Lord however, his transformation had not only removed his ears and altered his skin, but it had also altered his physique, bulking up his body so that he looked like a whomanoid version of Toadicus.

Name: Cavalry Man

Occupation: Cavalry Man

Species: Toadkin

Level: 20/80

Alignment: Lawful-and-Obedient

Faction: Toad Town

The Frog Hide clothes he had worn also morphed into chitinous armour of dense keratin and the hat became a helmet that covered to top of his bald head and only left the bottom-half of his head, near the jaw, exposed.

His sword had somehow changed into a glaive, which more-or-less looked like the previous iron sword mounted on a metre-and-a-half handle. Just to confirm what it actually was, I inspected it:

Name: Sword-Glaive

Occupation: Cavalry Man’s Polearm

Species: Polearm (Weapon)

Level: 1/100

Alignment: Looking-forward-to-chopping-heads-off-evildoers

Faction: Headchopper’s Club

With Imu helping me by feeding my essence to the Mount Pen Breeder, I evolved the rest of the Cavalry Men over the next half day, and when twenty of them were seated atop their superior toad Mounts, looking all fearsome and whatnot, I bade them patrol my demesne looking for troublemakers, and they all quickly hopped off to do just that.

“Good idea,” Imu praised. “Our settlement has gotten rather big, so it’s good to be proactive, rather than having to always be the one to send the minions to where they’re needed. Plus, urging your minions to be self-sufficient will lead to a better army down the road.”

“Army? Is that what we’re making?”

“Yes.”

I got all nostalgic at the word. “It reminds me of when Toadicus led all mature toads on a warpath through the frog pond. Those were some great times.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Imu frowned, then quickly changed the subject, “Next are the Archers.”

When I evolved the first Archer, the Fletchery underwent a similar change as the Armoury, and grew into a four-story tower of a building, with lookout holes at every floor, making it seem like the building could defend itself quite well if it needed it, and, given that the Honking Calamity had already visited its wrath on this part of my settlement, it wasn’t such a bad thing.

“Have you inspected the building yet?” Imu asked.

“I can do that?”

“You can appraise anything,” he said. “Remember how you appraised an onion?”

“Oh, right.”

“Alright, inspect it. Come on, don’t tarry!”

So prompted, I activated my Appraisal and looked at the new Fletchery:

Name: Fortified Fletchery

Occupation: Fletchery

Species: Fletchery (Crafting (Building))

Level: 2/2

Alignment: Defensively-neutral

Faction: Toad Town

Immediately after, a message appeared:

Congratulations! For inspecting an evolved building, you have gained the [Property Pimping] perk!

[Property Pimping] – Enables you to evolve any building in your settlement using your essence. Evolved buildings will have their positive and negative effects made stronger, and their productivity and efficiency will also increase, along with making them sturdier.

“Is this why you wanted me to inspect it?” I asked Imu.

“How else am I supposed to get around that dumb Spoiler-Free Zone thing? It’s rather hard to guide you when the System has decided I’m not allowed to ‘spoil’ anything…”

“What should I evolve first? My Quarry? My Guild Office?”

“The Quarry is not a bad one to start with,” Imu hinted. “But, first, evolve the rest of these eager Archers already! They’ve been standing around waiting to be evolved all day!”

“Oh, right.”

I picked the eleven other Archers I needed and sent the other archers off to patrol atop the walls of the Castle, the inner settlement, and the halfway-completed quadrant walls. Those Archers not picked seemed quite upset about it, but they could also get their evolutions when I became a Castle Town or if any of the Sharpshooters died, which seemed likely to happen.

After all the Sharpshooters had been evolved, I noticed that their appearance differed quite a bit from the Cavalry Men. Where the Cavalry Men were bulked-up and potent-looking, the Sharpshooters had become tall and lithe, their evolutions seeming to make them more agile and nimble. Their armour, be it flimsy simple clothes from the Loom or Frog Hide, had become form-fitting jumpsuits with pieces of hard plates protecting a few vital areas, like their neck, torso, and groin. Their heads were now also covered in a strange piece of armour over their eyes, which had a thin membrane over their eyes, which, when I looked at them, seemed to enlarge their pupils. Their bows had grown longer and more potent-looking.

“What kind of helmet is that?” I asked Imu.

“They look like a form of sunglasses with a serious zoom to them.”

“What do they do?”

“Let’s them see further, I guess?”

I inspected the glasses:

Name: Smudge

Occupation: Smudge on Zoom-lenses

Species: Glassius Smudgicus Annoyingashellicus (Stain)

Level: 2/12

Alignment: Hatefully-despises-unstained-surfaces

Faction: Big Smiling Fat Lump Inc.

“What the hell?” Imu asked. “And why is a smudge working for the Big Smiling Fat Lump? He’s a God of hedonism and excess…”

“Oops! I missed, let me try again:”

Name: Zoom-lenses

Occupation: Sharpshooter’s Eyewear

Species: Glasses (Tool)

Level: 1/1

Alignment: Looking-ahead

Faction: Screw 20/20 Vision United

I sent the Sharpshooters off to join the Archers in patrolling atop the walls, then flew over to my Quarry, where several dozen Diggers were toiling away, every impact of their picks was preceded by a chirping grunt of effort. Without sparing a moment, I sent my essence into the fundament of the Quarry and it quickly began to glow, terrifying the workers within, but, before they could escape, the deep pit was engulfed in light and smoke.

When the smoke cleared, several Diggers lay dead at the bottom, having fallen down off the ledges they worked on in their panic, but the walls of the Quarry now glowed with many new deposits, some of which were clearly silver and Gold, as well as some that were like the jewel I’d once seen at the bottom of the pond, before a big mudskipper had swallowed it.

Imu came hopping over on the back of Goldie a moment later, witnessed the pile of dead minions at the bottom and sighed, but then he saw the new deposits and remarked, “All in the name of progress…”

“Although,” he added, “Maybe warn them next time?”