“Stop punching the tree!” Imu yelled, as one of my newly-created minions furiously hammered its front legs against the sturdy bark of a pine tree, all its front-toes broken and bent-out-of-shape.
“How else am I supposed to fell a tree?”
“With tools, you imbecile!”
“That was uncalled for.”
“Just make it stop before he dies of exhaustion!”
With a thought, I made the whomen halt his assault, but no sooner had he stopped, than loud honking came from the distance.
“Aw shit, not again! Run!”
“I’ll make my whomens fight it!”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea…”
“It’s really strong,” I remarked.
“It has killed five humans now… I’ve never a seen a goose that angry. Also, I got a look at it with my Scope and it’s level twelve now…”
“Scope? Level?”
“Nevermind that for now. We need to get this thing built or we’ll never get anywhere.”
“I need to make tools, you said.”
“Yeah. Have your new minions collect some sticks and loose rocks, then they can craft a workbench. With that they can make primitive stone tools, and with those tools they can harvest the materials needed to make the house.” Holding his book in front of him, he showed me an image for reference.
“That makes sense. Actually, no, it doesn’t.”
“Just do it, please…”
I ordered my two new whomens to go out and gather the materials Imu mentioned from the surrounding area. As a result of repeatedly creating the whomens over-and-over, they now only cost two-fifths of my essence pond, so I could immediately make two after resting.
Sometime later, both of my whomens returned, one carrying a stack of dry sticks of varying lengths, and the other struggling to drag a large stone through the grass.
“You know, it really bothers me that they don’t have any… erm… reproductive organs. I can’t even tell if they’re supposed to be male or female.”
“Maybe they’re neither?”
“I… well,” Imu stopped to consider it. “Let’s just go with that. But we seriously should give them some clothes, like what I’m wearing.” He pointed to his shorts.
“How do we make those?”
“Maybe there’s some options to pick from once we have the crafting table.”
Without him telling me, I focused on the idea of a workbench, imagining the image he had shown me. It looked mostly like a flat stone with legs.
Immediately the ghostly outline of the bench appeared where I had wanted it to stand, next to the outline of the house. With another thought, I made the two whomens bring their burdens to it, and when they came close, their materials suddenly vanished, and they started constructing the workbench by waving their hands around in front of the outline.
“That’s really odd,” Imu commented, and I had to agree with him.
With a poof of smoke and dust, it was suddenly complete, and the two whomens automatically returned to finding more wood and stone, my previous command still in effect.
Congratulations! For constructing your first item, you have gained the [Crafting List] perk!
[Crafting List] – See a visual list of all of the items and buildings you are capable of crafting and constructing.
“Well that’s useful.”
“Whose voice was that?” It had sounded like a lady, but with a flat and emotionless tone.
“That was the System. It vocalises achievements like that and rewards you with perks. The one you just acquired is similar to one that Dungeon Cores normally obtain after carving out their cave. Strange that you weren’t awarded for expanding your territory or spawning minions though.”
When the whomens returned, I had recouped enough essence to spawn another, who I kept near the workbench, while the other two returned to harvesting. I then brought up the Crafting List, ignoring all options aside from tools:
[Crafting List]
>Items>Tools
—Stone Axe (Workbench)—
Grants Woodchopping skill and increases minion Harvesting XP by 10%
Required Materials: Stone & Wood
—Stone Hammer (Workbench)—
Increases minion Building Speed and XP by 15%
Required Materials: Stone & Wood
—Stone Pick (Workbench)—
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Grants Stone-picking skill and increases minion Harvesting XP by 10%
Required Materials: Stone & Wood
—Stone Scythe (Workbench)—
Increases minion Foraging Speed and XP by 15%
Required Materials: Stone & Wood
“I only have four items I can make right now,” I said disappointedly.
“That will change as you continue to construct more things,” Imu replied, leafing through his book. “Plus, those are just the Items in the Tool category.
“For now, just have your idle minion craft one of each, you should have just enough materials for that already.”
I followed his advice, and, after ten minutes, the four different tools lay waiting on the workbench, the bug-eyed minion immediately grabbing the hammer for himself.
“He seems to want to be a builder,” I commented.
“He’ll be whatever you want him to be.”
“That’s mean. If I can make my own community, I will not be a tyrant, like Toadicus over in the Swamp. He’s the reason so many of us toads are bachelors still, hogging all the females for himself.”
“You could send one of your minions to squash him,” Imu said matter-of-factly.
“I’m above all that now.”
“Revenge is healthy for your soul.”
“Shouldn’t you be giving me good moral advice?”
“I’m a servant of Lord Deathheim. His name has death in it.”
“I suppose that makes sense, but no, I won’t stoop to his level. He’s even worse than a frog! He’s a traitor to Toad-kind all across the forest!”
“Oh look, your minions are back with more materials,” Imu announced, changing the topic.
With a mental prompt, I urged the gatherers to take the axe and pick, before sending them off again. The Builder remained idle in front of the workbench, not having moved a hop since making the items.
“Take a look at clothes and structures, maybe there’s something we can make with the sticks and stones.”
[Crafting List]
>Items>Clothes
—Simple Pants (Loom)—
Increases minion Charisma by 2
Required Materials: Yarn
—Simple Sandals (Loom)—
Increases minion Movement Speed by 25%
Required Materials: Yarn
—Simple Tunic (Loom)—
Increases minion Health by 25% and Resistance to Cold by 30%
Required Materials: Yarn
“Hmm, I need a ‘Loom’ to make clothes?”
“Maybe you can craft that already. Check the structures list.”
[Crafting List]
>Structures>Crafting
—Anvil (Workbench & Forge)—
Enables Metal Working, but lowers minion motivation in nearby structures
Required Materials: Iron
—Firepit (Workbench)—
Enables Simple Cooking
Required Materials: Stone & Wood
—Simple Loom (Workbench)—
Enables the Crafting of Simple Clothing
Required Materials: Wood (sticks / timber)
—Stone Forge (Workbench)—
Enables Ore Smelting, but lowers minion motivation in nearby structures
Required Materials: Stone
—Workbench [1/∞ Constructed]—
Enables Crafting
Required Materials: Stone & Wood
Builder whomen, craft a Loom and Firepit!
Immediately, the Builder looked around, confused.
“You need to place the blueprints first,” Imu commented, apparently clued-in to my mental commands.
“Oh, right.”
I put the loom next to the workbench, and the firepit in front of the house, the outlines immediately appearing. Excitedly, the Builder got to work, swinging his new hammer through the air in front of the transparent loom.
Sometime later, the loom was finished and the Builder moved on to the firepit. When that finished as well, a fire was already lit within the ring of stones.
“Can I craft clothes now?”
“Nope.”
“Aww.”
“You need to get your hands on some yarn, which,” he skimmed through his Encyclopaedia briefly, “is made from harvested plant fibres, such as hemp, cotton, bamboo, etc.”
Good thing the downtime waiting for the constructions to finish had helped me recoup enough Essence for another minion. I concentrated real hard, and out popped another naked whomen from the ground, a twin to the Builder next to him.
“The fact that they’re identical stands out way more when they’re people and not skeletons and zombies,” Imu remarked philosophically.
After grabbing the scythe, the new Forager whomen went out into the forest in search of plant fibres. Despite knowing that creating another minion would exhaust all my available Essence, I went ahead and did it anyway, but as I tried to make it appear, I was halted by a message from Lady System:
You have reached the limit of maximum Minions [4/4]! Build more houses to increase the cap.
“A minion cap based on houses and not demesne size? That’s a new one.”
“Why didn’t your book tell you that?”
He flipped through the pages while pointing it at me. “There are literally an endless number of pages, and it’s called the Encyclopaedia of Infinite Answers for a reason. You have to ask a question for the page with the answer to appear. I don’t know which things are similar to a Dungeon Core and which aren’t, so I haven’t asked a question about every single minutia!”
“Alright, sorry, I didn’t realise you took this so seriously.”
“Listen, even if your core gets destroyed, I’ll be fine, so I’m taking this seriously for your sake! And my promotion to Knight.”
“What was that last bit?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, thank you. And I’m sorry again.”
“Don’t mention it. Just consider every moment not progressing as a moment wasted.”
“That’s a pretty toxic work ethic, even to me, and I lived in a swamp for two months.”
The sound of heaving and puffing, as well as the noise of snapping branches and rustling leaves, immediately brought our quarrel to a halt.
“That’s a pretty determined minion,” I commented, watching one of the harvesters drag an entire tree behind him, his bug-eyed big-lipped face red from the exertion. The tree he had chopped down was a pine easily seven metres long from bottom-to-crown.
“That is probably enough for the house,” Imu said. “Once you have increased your Minion Cap, you should make another woodchopper, so they don’t have to experience near-death moments of exertion every return trip.”
Combined with the pile of stones the stone-harvester had already hauled back, it seemed we had enough materials to finally construct the house, whose ghostly outline had been bugging me for a while now.
“Builder: build, that, house!”
The minion ran over, and immediately looked around confused.
“Frog-it, what now!”
“Look at the requirements for the construction of the house.”
I brought up the crafting entry:
[Crafting List]
>Structures
—House (Workbench)—
Increases the maximum available minions by 4
Required Materials: Stone & Timber
“It says it needs ‘Timber’.”
“You can craft that at your workbench, using the tree.”
I sent the Builder to the workbench, and, in just a minute, the seven-metre-long tree was reduced to smaller, evenly-cut pieces.
“How did he do that??”
“Magic?” Imu replied.
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”
“Alright, Builder: build, that, house! Pretty please.”
The whomen ran over to the outline of the house and started swinging his hammer wildly. Though it might have taken twenty minutes, I stared at the progress with bated breath, not that I was actually capable of breathing. Alas, I was but a pebble.
When a poof of smoke and dust announced the completion of the house, a System message announced a new skill:
Congratulations! For constructing your first house, you have gained the [Who’s Home?] perk and your Demesne has been expanded slightly! Kind of creepy perk, not gonna lie.