With Wrought Iron in hand, I could finally set to work making the Mayor’s House.

“Poor Smithy,” Imu remarked, watching his replacement working some Crude Iron into Wrought Iron, using his specialised hammer and tongs.

“It’s weird that it wouldn’t give me the tools to handle the iron first,” I replied.

“Poor man lost his hands from holding all that molten slag…”

“It’s okay, I reabsorbed him.”

“It’s not okay! You don’t know if his consciousness lives on! He may be gone forever!”

“Why are you being so weird about this?”

“You tyrant!” he cried out loud. It seemed a sore topic for some reason.

His outrage reminded me of my eight cousin four-times removed, who had sworn off eating anything with wings, after accidentally swallowing a beautiful butterfly. He had died later of starvation, but we’d all told him that there was no such thing as wingless mosquitos and flies.´

“Builders! … you know, do the thing.”

My eight Builders ran straight to the base of my core tree and started swinging wildly with their tools.

I watched excitedly as the portions of the house appeared out of thin air, somehow taking the items out of the nearby materials pile they had stacked. Still, it took quite a long time, and by the building’s completion it had become early morning.

Though I’d tried my best to sustain the Builders with vegetables from our farmland, two had still perished.

“Why do they keep dying?”

“I’m amazed you even made it out of childhood,” Imu replied.

“It was very traumatic. Do you know how many animals eat tadpoles? ALL of them!”

“Exactly, I don’t get how you made it through that, but don’t recognise the symptoms of malnutrition and dehydration!”

“Oh… They need water?”

“And something more than squash and cucumbers!”

“Why are you in such a bad mood lately? Have you entered your egg-laying phase?” The women in the swamp always became kind of hostile when that happened.

“I don’t… Actually, I’m not even going to deign that with a response.”

“Alright. We have the Mayor’s House now. What next? How do I figure out which of my minion is the oldest?”

Imu leafed through his Encyclopaedia. “It’s… hmm, weird… you’re supposed to just know, instinctively?”

I concentrated real hard, trying to imagine that I could sense my oldest spawn, but nothing much happened. Instead, I had a different idea.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Ten minutes later, everyone except the minions in high-risk fields, like foraging and toolless smithing, were assembled before the Mayor’s House.

Minions, raise your hand if you’re one day old!

Only about half raised their hands.

“This is very depressing to watch.”

Raise your hand if you’re two days old!

About one-fifth raised their hands now.

I continued like this until only two were left. Two Builders.

“They seem about the same age,” I said.

“How do you plan to choose?”

You two seniors, whoever can make it to the Mayor’s House first will get to evolve!

Nothing happened for about five seconds, but then the two Builders started sprinting towards the house, shoving at each other and showing a remarkable amount of enthusiasm. The other minions, without my prompting, had begun cheering and making strange sounds out of their big-lipped mouths.

Then something happened which I had not expected, one of the Builders lunged at the other one, bringing them both to the ground with a heavy thump. The one who had been tripped struggled for a bit, but then the other Builder lifted its tool and slammed it into its head, over-and-over.

“Holy shit!” Imu exclaimed. “Make it stop!”

“Erm… I can’t.”

After the forty-third strike, the Builder with serious anger management issues stood up, breathing heavily and his hammer stained with goopy flesh and brain matter. The other one looked like my sixth uncle after he was crushed by a log that one of those weird tree-chopping Whomens had tossed haphazardly at where he slept in the tallgrass.

The now-definitively-oldest of my minions walked casually towards the door of the house that was soon to be his, but before he went through the wooden door, he turned and looked at all the gathered minions who had been cheering him on moments prior. They all took a synchronised step back in blatant fear. They hadn’t even feared the Goose2 like this!

“That guy is gonna be trouble,” Imu predicted.

“It’s fine, I’ll be able to control him.”

“I will hold you to that promise.”

When the door to the Mayor’s House closed, nothing happened and the minion stayed inside, not emerging as a changed being.

“How long will this take?” I was getting quite impatient now, with all this build-up.

“It will take until you actually focus on making him evolve.”

“How?”

“Focus on him and imagine you’re feeding your essence to him.”

I followed these vague instructions, but, within moments, lights shone out the primitive windows of the building, and there followed something akin to a clap of thunder, with a thick mist of smoke curling out the windows and from under the door.

Then the minion walked out the door, to rapturous applause from the still-watching congregation of minions, four of which had died of dehydration during the long wait.

“Nothing’s changed,” I said.

“He has a hat now, and his clothes are purple.”

I zoomed in close to my first evolved minion. He wore a strange cone-like thing atop his head, apparently this was called a ‘hat’. In a way, it looked a bit like some of the shells that the slugs who thrived in the gloopy soil of the swamp often wore on their bodies.

Congratulations! For evolving your first minion, you have unlocked the ability to craft Furniture! Get comfortable, you worthless scum!

“This System is ridiculous,” Imu complained. “Apparently, you can now craft six-hundred-and-eighty-nine unique pieces of furniture, one of which is called a Minion Chair…”

Congratulations! For evolving your first Mayor, you have gained the [Mouthpiece] perk! Have fun living vicariously through your minions you sick piece of ****! GO **** YOURSELF, YOU ABSOLUTE ******** **** ****** **** ****** ***********!!!!!

“Imu… what was that?” I asked.

“Hm… I have no idea why the System suddenly got super abusive. I’ve never seen that before…”

“Is that going to become a problem?”

“Let me try and contact the System Support Staff.”

“The what? … Wait, what’s that?” I asked, mentally pointing to some strange creature that had started wandering around my Hamlet, trying to talk to my minions.

“That’s a…” Imu leaned from his perch on the branch he’d watched the Mayor brawl from. He lifted his fingers up to his eye, forming the bubble of his scope. “Uh… oh… hell.”

“What?”

“…It’s a human.”