Chapter: Rapid Expansion

Erik’s idea was alarming, not because of his words but the scope of it.

“What about people that might want to leave?” Blaze asked, they had come to the beast mountain dungeon but some might want to leave to venture through the ten realms and leave the dungeon.

“They are free to leave and return as they desire but for our safety they will need to make an oath to not reveal anything about Beast Mountain Dungeon. If they come into trouble and they need help then we will do what we can to help,” Rugrat said.

“On the military side of things what do you want to happen?” Glosil asked.

“Sections of the military will be dispatched to protect our trading convoys, others to gain experience in the beast mountain and secure a safe place around the entrance to the Dungeon. They will protect and defend the dungeon and also look to go on scouting forays to see what are on the other levels,” Erik roughly explained what was happening in the other levels that had been cut off and the creatures had turned wild being placed into essentially holy lands of different affinities.

He didn’t miss the glow that appeared in everyone’s eyes, if they could get access to these areas then their strength would only increase.

“Our first priority is to build up the Dungeon, to make it habitable. Then clear the area around the dungeon and establish contact with towns to trade with. From there we will focus internally in growing our own strength, this might be sending people on missions to other cities to establish ties, or to higher realms. I won’t lie to you. I want to keep the Beast Mountain Dungeon a secret as it will give us a base to increase our strength dramatically. Still we must not become insular, we need to keep our eyes open, to create the role of recruiter, these people will look for those that might not have a high ability, but they are driven and loyal. If they are driven and loyal then with lessons and resources we can turn them into powerhouses. Also, Blaze I want you to set up a mercenary outfit, the Alva Mercenaries. This way our people will be able to increase their fighting abilities and gain resources.”

“I will see to it,” Blaze said.

Erik picked him as Blaze had interacted the most with the outside world, being a knight captain and someone that lived in a massive city.

“Jasper it will be your job to establish trade with other towns, this will be to sell our products and take on further building jobs. These jobs can be passed to the crafters that we will look to develop in Beast Mountain. Both of you will be the eyes and ears of Beast Mountain Dungeon, it will fall on you to recruit talents and increase the dungeon’s reach,” Jasper and Blaze stood a bit taller, hearing the importance of their new roles.

“Elise, you will be in charge of the city, at the beginning this will be a multitude of building projects, then it will turn to managing the people as well as the workshops and the academy. The library will be free to access for everyone, if someone wants to attend the academy, they must pay a fee to show their commitment, they will be supplied with housing, food and studying supplies to push them forward. Taran, I hope that you will assist Elise in this endeavor?” Erik looked to the burly smith.

“You have my word,” Taran said, he wasn’t one to bow, but his word was good.

“I plan on building not only an academy where teachers will be paid to nurture students and their abilities, but also a formation workshop, woodworking shop, tailor shops and a cookhouse, to raise formation masters, tailors, carpenters and chefs. We have a great number of works from the gnomes on these different crafts, people may use these facilities, but they will need to pay a fee and supply their own materials. We have seen how just having a spear, or a crossbow can greatly increase our fighting strength and a good meal can increase our recovery speed. With this support I expect great things for Beast Mountain Dungeon. I also propose that we rename the Dungeon to Alva Dungeon,” Erik said.

His words were calm and slow, but they were nonetheless shocking.

“With this, we, I can’t even begin to imagine what would happen, if we told people that we even had these kinds of workshops and an academy, people would come from miles around,” Blaze said.

“I think that changing it to Alva Dungeon makes sense, I also agree with Blaze and it makes me understand why you want us to make oaths to not release this information. Other cities don’t have this ability, cities need to have a certain population or groups to enter their cities before they can build these different places, with the gnomes’ left knowledge we can pass this gap in one jump. If cities and people were to learn of this, they would come and wipe us out for these treasures, let alone the first realm, even people from higher realms would be tempted,” Elise said.

“We will move forward together to increase our strength,” Erik knew that while he might be interested in a lot of different things there was no way that he could complete it all by himself.

Rugrat was interested in smithing and formations, Erik in healing and alchemy, those were just four different paths. Backing was everything in the ten realms, if one was able to get good gear and to have the best training aides then their path would be smoother and easier to travel.

Erik and Rugrat didn’t have this kind of backing, nor did the people of Alva, if they could rely on themselves to create it, they wouldn’t need to worry about these issues anymore.

They took another couple of hours to iron out the details before the meeting came to an end.

All of the department heads gave oaths to not reveal anything about the Alva Dungeon to any outsiders.

The Dungeon was still dark when everyone left, there was a lot to be done still.

Erik and Rugrat stretched, their night was still young.

“Okay, so, blueprint time?” Rugrat asked.

“Blueprint time,” Erik said, calling up the construction interface.

=========

Blueprints

==========

Alchemy Lab

Smithy

Formation workshop

Tailors

Cookhouse

Mana Mine

Stone Mine

Growing house

House

Beast Stables

Barracks

Market Square

==========

Clicking on each of the blueprints, they could see the blueprint of each building with different modifications, next to them all was the resource cost. Most of them were blocked off as their mana requirements were too high.

“First of all we need to remove the need for these to rely on mana, we can hook them up later when we have more power to spare,” Erik said.

“Always with the hard stuff,” Rugrat said, he pulled out some diagrams and put them on the table, Egbert, can these be added to the blueprints?” Rugrat asked.

Erik looked over, they were the plans for the logging camp, Wall, watch towers as well as public bathrooms and showers.

They had made all of these things in Alva town, Rugrat, working closely with the construction crews got a set of detailed plans that he was now using.

Egbert looked at the plans, he waved his hands and they disappeared.

“You know, you could just use the input function,” Egbert complained.

==========

New Blueprints added:

Logging Camp

Wall

Watch towers

Showers-public

Bathrooms-public

==========

“Now we just need to build a hospital and an academy,” Erik said.

“You want to do the hospital I’ll do the Academy?” Rugrat asked.

“Works for me,” Erik said.

With the blueprint tool Erik was able to use components from the other blueprints and combine them in new ways, like blueprint copy and paste.

The hospital was extremely rudimentary. There was a seating area up front, a reception and then behind it there was a large medical bay, its layout was simple, a bunch of beds with dividing curtains. There were showers and bathrooms as well as supply rooms.

“Different from the healing houses I’ve seen,” Egbert commented.

“Oh?” Erik said, as he entered the ‘hospital’ into the system, right now he wanted to have the basic buildings, it would be up to later architects and crafters to update and modify them as needed.

“Most healing houses look like an upscale manor as they treat only the rich and nobles. This is much simpler, focused on treating as many people as possible, instead of making them feel important,” Egbert said.

Erik looked over to Rugrat’s designs, the academy had four entrances, it was shaped like a square, with L shaped buildings at each of the corners, each corner building had six classrooms that could hold thirty people. Rugrat had only made the basic structure, again modifying them would be up to the users.

Other than the classrooms there was a main building in the middle of the academy’s grounds, it was the largest by far and it had three stories with each floor getting bigger.

It looked incredibly solid.

“What’s the main building?” Erik asked.

“The library, on the first floor there will be novice grade books, on the second level, Apprentice, the third Journeyman, other books will be held onto by the staff until we can build more floors,” Rugrat said.

Erik nodded, he liked the people of Alva, but he didn’t know if they could ignore the allure of Master and Expert books. The collection Egbert had given them was vast and mainly consisted of Expert level information.

Erik looked at the map of the floor.

“Shall we start?” Erik asked.

“Alright, but we should group things together,” Rugrat said. He added a few modifiers as a circular grid line appeared around the dungeon core.

“To our nine o’clock we have the beast stables, I think we both agree that the barracks should be there, not only are they right next to the beast stables where they can get mounts, they’ll be right on top of the emergency exit, allowing them to react if anyone tries to force their way in We’ve also got a road already to that area so we don’t need to do anything else.”

Erik nodded, Rugrat didn’t waste any time and put down the barracks, it was based on gnome design but all of the formations wouldn’t be added in. It was a simple courtyard for training, with places for soldiers to sleep, take care of their gear and learn new fighting skills.

“Tracing back to the Dungeon, we have this free area from half five to one o’clock, we can turn that into housing, keep them away from all of the workshops,” Rugrat said.

“Let's put a hospital as a midway between the dungeon core and the barracks, that way if people are hurt in the living areas they can easily get aid, also if we’re in a fight then the people at the barracks aren’t too far,” Erik said.

He put down his rudimentary hospital. Then they laid down where roads were going to be through the housing area, it was very linear as they didn’t want to waste space. At the twelve o’clock position they put down a large market that would meet up with the dungeon core and extend halfway down the housing district, behind it would be a warehousing district, continuing clockwise one would enter the academics and workshop area.

There was the cookhouse that bordered the market area and then the academy, it was the largest building with the woodworking and formation workshop behind it, the smithy and alchemy lab in front. Continuing down there was the manor with the tailors behind it and several large growing areas. These were basically greenhouses that would supply the people with constant food.

“Alright, so how are we going to sort out pay?” Rugrat asked.

“We will give everyone a house, but then they will sign a contract to build everything we’ve planned out. We will pay people that prove themselves to be capable teachers, as well as the military, librarians and the merchants will get a commission based off of what they sell and how much. People will pay a fee to use the market, warehouse space will be rented, we will pay farmers for the growing houses and we will own everything that comes out of them. Those that go to the schools will have to pay a fee, but they can sell whatever they make. We will take a ten percent tax on anything that is sold inside the city,” Erik said outlining his ideas in broad strokes.

“Priorities for building?” Rugrat fired off.

“Barracks, hospital, growing houses, homes, academy, workshops, warehouse district and market square,” Erik said after a moment's thought, looking to Rugrat.

“Makes sense to me, first we need to have some defenses, then the military can kill beasts and we can start trying to grow crops, bringing resources in. Right now we have places that people can sleep, while they’re not comfortable, they’re survivable. I would also say that we build temporary showers and bathrooms and a water treatment center, Roska would only need to use a separation and purification spell and our water would be clean. With formations we could automate the process but that would take more power,” Rugrat added.

“It always comes down to the amount of power we have, at least we’ve got tons of resources left over from the gnome buildings,” Erik said.

“While your people work in shifts, the robots can also help to build the structures all the time. It will cost energy, they’re best used for laborious and time intensive but simple jobs, freeing up your people to focus on studies and increasing their strength,” Egbert said, seeing he had both of their attention he continued. “They can also be powered by monster cores instead of straight mana stones.”

“Have them start taking supplies needed over to the barracks location and the growing areas, Egbert, I want you to talk to Elise and tell her about their abilities, using a mix of our own people and the machines will save us time and effort.

“You think there’s anything else that we might be forgetting?” Erik asked Rugrat.

“Probably, but I don’t know what it would be. The sooner we go dungeon hunting the better. I trust our people,” Rugrat said.

“Yeah,” Erik said, he wanted to experience the building, but he needed to find that dungeon core.

“Looks like it’s time for another adventure,” he checked his quests. “I still need to get those damn alchemy ingredients.”