RIck connected to the game the next day after classes and running a few errands. He left the castle bedroom after equipping his clothes and made his way downstairs to the basement workshop. Before joining the game earlier he had looked online at the schematics for a paper hole punch and now set out to make a six hole paper hole punch. With a little trial and error, he successfully came up with a design he was happy with and even acquired a recipe for it.

Next, he moved onto making decorative wooden book covers with six holes spaced to the exact measurements as his newly created six hole paper punch. When he received a recipe for the hand carved wooden book covers he moved onto making clip metal rings that could fit through the holes in his book covers.

Now he had almost all the tools and materials needed to start making books. There was one last thing he needed to make and that was a dip ink pen. A dip pen is similar to a calligraphy pen, but the tip is thinner and slightly pointed.

He used his wood carving skills to make a wooden ergonomic grip for the pen and then he used his metal sculptor skill to make a precise metal tip that he fit into the wooden grip. He also acquired a recipe for the dip pen and made a few copies of it.

After packing up the dip pens, paper hole puncher, wooden book covers, and metal binding rings, Rick left the workshop and walked over to the Officials Building and opened up the opened up the Buy Unit Menu. Before spawning in any new units he decided to review a selection that he had not investigated yet since he never had any use for it until now. Rick had so far looked into the Military, Laborer, and the Crastman Menus, but he had never looked into the Religion or Artist menus.

Now that he had a Temple he would need to soon look into the Religion Menu, but for now, he was more curious in the Artist Menu. Rick clicked on the Buy Artist option and the menu opened up for him.

Spoiler: Show Artist Division Classes! Artist Division Classes Artist Fresco Painter Glass Painter Illuminator Limner Stone Sculptor Painter Wood Sculptor Actor Composer Playwright Poet

Oh? It looks like there are Artists and Performance Artists available. I think I should take a look at the descriptions and figure out what these guys are capable of.

Artist An Artist produces drawings with chalk and Charcoal mediums. Fresco Painter Fresco Painting is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid or wet plaster. Glass Painter Glass Painters produce color designs on the glass with paint. Illuminator

An Illuminator produces illuminated manuscripts.

An illuminated manuscript is a hand-written text that contains beautiful decorations and illustrations that use reflective metallic paints.

Limner

A Limner is similar to an Illuminator. The only difference is A Limner uses regular inks and paints

They will also produce hand-written text that contains beautiful decorations and illustrations. They just do not illuminate them with reflective paints.

That is the perfect class for what I am looking for right now. I do not need to bother looking into the other three classes they are all self-explanatory.

Rick closed the description menus of the different classes and spawned in four human females with Book Printer as their first class and Limner as their second class. Next, he spawned in a Male human with Merchant as his first class and Blade Master as his second class. He sent them all to the Chancellor's office for the usual explanation of where they were and what was expected of them by Irene and then Irene passed them off to the messengers who's job it was to point out the restaurant and find them all available apartments.

Before sending them all off, Rick asked the new group to meet him at the castle when they were all settled in and he told the messengers to make sure they knew where the castle was before leaving them. He then left the Officials Building and went over to the castle library. Using his recipe he made a four drawing desks and arranged them along the back wall and placed a table next to them. On the table, he placed down a couple six hole paper punches, The stacks of cloth paper he made, a large stack of wooden book covers, dip pens, and a box filled with metal ring binders.

As he was moving the scroll racks over near the station he was setting up his Chamberlain Damon came into the room with the group he had just spawned in. Rick walked over to Damon and decided he should add him to his friend list so that he could keep in contact with him. He demonstrated how the voice chat and text messages worked and then he asked Damon to go find the Captain of the Guard for him and have him report to the library.

Damon then left in search of Talos and Rick led the small group over to the station he had just set up. He explained to the four women that he wanted them to start transferring all the scrolls over to book form. Rick then showed them how to use the hole punch on the paper and place the paper between the wooden book covers and lastly slide the metal rings through the holes in the book covers and sheets of paper to make a completed book.

While they looked over everything he supplied them with, Rick took out some charcoal ash that he used to make his charcoal pencils with and mixed it with a small amount of water to make ink. He then tested out the dip pens with the ink to make sure the ink was not too light or thick. When he had a good mixture he used the recipe to make a few bottles of ink and told the ladies to practice with the dip pens until they were comfortable with them. He didn't mind if they wasted a little paper and ink getting used to the ink and pens before they seriously started transferring the scrolls to book form.

He then gave them each a set of paint sticks to also practice with and told them that he wanted the four woman to not just copy the text but to also add illustrations and artwork that was related to the information or story in each scroll. Rick left it up to their discretion of what to draw he just made sure that they knew he was looking for books that could be considered works of art, not just pages filled with words.

He left then four females to their practice and went over to talk with the male merchant who had been sitting at a table patiently watching everything he was showing the four women. Rick escorted him to the castle armory and had him put on a spider silk under-armor, one of the formal outfits that were being made to sell at the store, a leather belt, two nice long swords that hung from his waist, and one of the leather hip pouches that he had made for the sales girls.

Rick then walked back to the library with the Merchant after equipping him in the castle armory. He sat down with the merchant at a library table and found out his name was Bernard. Rick gave Bernard a good amount of gold and silver coins to place in his hip pouch.

He then explained to Bernard that he wanted him to buy books from stores in Silverhall City and to talk with other merchants in the city about importing books from other races around the starting continent. Rick also gave Bernard a copy of the store key and told him about the teleporter on the second for. Rick told him that he could stay at the city Inns, rent a place in town or use the teleporter to return to the city. Rick told him that what ever he chose to do he would pay for it. He then added Bernard to his friend list as Talos the Captain of the Guard walked in through the library door.

Rick also added Talos to his friend list and told him about the Military Academy and how General Sturm would be training the troops there. Rick wanted Talos to split the palace guards into two teams and rotate them between sending one team to train at the Academy with Sturm and the troops while the other team guarded the castle every other day. This way the palace guard teams would train one day and guard the next day.

He stated that he also wanted the on duty guards to patrol the castle walls and also station two guards at the castle gatehouse and two guards at the castle entrance from now on.He then let Talos head out to set up the teams and arrange patrols.

When Talos walked off, Rick opened a Portal to his store and took Bernard through it to his office. He told Bernard that if he decided to stay in the city he could leave the books he bought in his office since he came there every day. He then took Bernard upstairs and introduced him to the store guards so that when they saw him enter the store after hours they would not suspect him of being someone they should attack.

Rick then passed out a few silver coins to each of his store guards and walked Bernard to the front door and let him loose on the city to start finding as many books as he could and bring them back to him. He checked on Barat and Nelie to see how things were going and found out that he now had four more female sales girls that Nelie had found. The new girls were just beginning to learn all the new products sold at the store, but the extra hands helped take some of the pressure off the other sales girls who were constantly going from one customer to the next all day long.

He restocked the store with the merchandise in his inventory and then introduced himself to each of the new faces. Rick talked with each one of them individually for a few minutes and even answered any questions they had, before returning to his office once again. He sat down at his desk and reviewed the sales records and also collected the money from the previous day's sales from his desk drawer.

When he was finished in his office, Rick placed the sales records book on Barat's desk and left the store. He made his way around the corner to walk through the central plaza where the isles upon isles of vendors sold their products from small stalls. Rick wanted to restock the restaurant with food so he started with the butchers. Even though He had still had hundreds of pounds of smoked meat at the tower, RIck decided to leave it for the Tigers and Dire Wolves. He bought a wide selection of meats and since he was buying so much of it he took the time to use his Charming Presence skill and Charisma attribute to work some decent deals.

Even though his farmers were already producing vegetables and some fruits, he went to the farmer's section and began working deals for large amounts of vegetables and fruits. As he went from one vendor to the next he found someone who was selling large amounts of sugar. This was a product that he had almost forgotten about even though he had a couple confectioners working at the restaurant and the castle, Rick had never given them a stock of sugar that was needed for almost all desserts.

Using his Charming Presence he talked with the farmer about where he was getting some much sugar and found that he had a small plantation that they grew a plant similar to sugar cane that thrived well on the main continent. Rick made a deal with the sugar farmer to buy all the sugar he had left which was roughly three hundred pounds and a large bag of the seeds. When he used his Identify skill on the seeds the description window popped up.

Sweet Stalk Seed

Sweet Stalk is similar to sugar cane but it can grow in cooler environments.

When the plant grows to maturity it can be cut down and a new plant will later grow from the cut stump.

There is no need to ever replant Sweet Stalk it will always regrow.

Rick closed out the description menu when he was sure he was given the right seeds and continued his shopping. When he had gathered enough food to keep his people fed for a week or two he opened a Portal in a side alley to the garden area that his Half-Dryad Daisia was always experimenting with the different plants and trees he brought her. He walked with Daisia over to the crop fields and had the farmers use their skills to improve the Sweet Stalk seeds he just bought.

His farmers used their Seed Nourishment skill on the large bag of seeds to make them healthier and to grow faster after being planted. Rick then picked up Daisia and flew off into the air after thanking the farmers. Daisia was screaming with delight while Rick carried above the city to look for a place to plant the new seeds. He decided to use an area outside the walls around the water reservoir.

Before planting the seeds he used his Move and Shape Earth skill to cut out narrow irrigation channels all around the plots he was going to use and connected them into the moat. When the water flowed into the channels the earth began to absorb the water turning the soil a darker brown. He then once again used the Move and Shape Earth to make shallow ruts in between the irrigation channels. He dropped the Sweet Stalk seeds into the narrow rut at even space so the plants had enough room between them to grow and receive enough sunlight.

When the seeds were planted and buried he let Daisia go around and use her skills Soil Enrichment to provide the field with plenty of nutrients. Next, she began using her Plant Growth skill to accelerate the plant growth cycle inside the Fast Domain. It wasn't long before all the seeds small plants. Rick decided to use his Cartography skill to see how the city was progressing as Daisia was finishing up.

Spoiler: Updated City Map.

I can already see the small specks of green from the Sweet Stalks growing in the fields around the aqueduct. It looks like Jereme and Handil are just about done with the Northwestern apartment district. I should go find them soon and tell them where to start building next. That long orange roof building south of the castle must be the Military Academy with the training field just south of it. There is the new steam engine paper factory with the purple roof between the farm fields and the Academy.

Let's see here, I now have Ninty apartment buildings and each one has twelve apartments. Ninty times twelve is one thousand and eighty. Wow, We already have one thousand and eighty individual apartments? I wonder if I should think of something else to get the two construction crews started on then? Rick pondered over what to build as he looked at the map.

Daisia came walking over to him and told him that she did as much as she could for the day and would come back tomorrow to grow them a little more. Rick scooped her up and told her to hang on and he zipped back to her garden in a matter of a few seconds and dropped her off to fly over to the restaurant. Rick entered the restaurant kitchen and made a couple more stone runic refrigerators and then charged all the storage gems on all of the kitchen appliances.

Rick opened his inventory and stocked all of the refrigerators with the food he purchased. Using his carpentry skills and wood shape skill he made a barrel with a lid and used the recipe to make a few more and fill them with the bags of hundreds of pounds of sugar he bought. He placed a few barrels in the corner and told the cooks and confectioners not to be shy and let him know when they needed certain things. It seems the confectioners had been just making cakes and desserts without sugar until now and they were not very appealing.

He then flew over to the castle kitchen and dropped off a couple barrels of sugar and filled the fridges with some of the foods he purchased earlier. After talking with the kitchen staff, Rick wrote up a list of all the food he had left them to work. This they could look at the list and plan out the meals for the week.

When he was finished in the kitchen he left the castle and flew over to meet up with Handil and Jerem. He instructed them to move over to the crafting district one they had finished filling all of the Northwestern residential plots with apartment buildings. Seeing that they only had a couple buildings left he cast a Fast Domain and helped them to finish so that they could begin building crafting buildings.

Rick packed up all of the materials they had left over and he transferred them to an empty crafting plot. He even went over to the stock pile and pulled enough materials off it to get them going for a while so they were not standing around waiting on a delivery cart to come along. Just as the two crews began laying the foundations for the next set of crafting buildings, Rick dropped the remaining supplies off for them and flew over to the Military Academy.

He found General Sturm working with the cavalry, Infantry, and Balista units. They were practicing moving together and quickly forming lines and Shield walls and the cavalry practiced maneuvers out on the infantry lines flanks. Rick went over to General Sturm to let him know that he would be bringing on more units add that in the next couple days he wanted to attack the northern Nekomimi settlement. With the quest coming along and bringing on all the half-orcs to live with them the attack was pushed to the side for a couple days.

Now that everyone was settled in and they were back on track, it was time to begin preparations for the next battle. Rick instructed Sturm to make sure the infantry was well drilled in the shield wall and Testudo because he had a feeling that the next battle the enemy would rely on ranged weapons from the way they had attacked them. They had never sent any melee fighters out during their ambush it was just a constant barrage of arrows until they were forced to flee.

When he was finished talking with General Sturm, RIck made a pass through the crafting buildings and picked up everything that had been completed. He stowed all the items in his inventory along with a few carriages and then flew over to the Officials Building. In the empty office next to Chancellor Alexadra's, he turned it into a lounge by adding a couple couches tables and chairs. He then went into Alexandra's office and let her know that he was going to hire more messengers for them and that he had made a lounge for them in the empty office next to hers. This way the messengers could hang out in there out of the way until they were sent off to gather information on the apartments or assign apartments to new citizens.

Rick spawned in four more messengers and sent them over to Alexandra's assistant Irene to be debriefed on their job. While the new messengers were being filled in on their duties Rick sat down at a table in the lounge and wrote out a list of military units.

Spoiler: Military Units List.

Rick had been recently trying to balance out the genders for each race whenever he spawned in new units. This way there was a better chance of his people finding someone that they may want to marry and have kids. If this was possible it would help supply the city with future citizens.

When he had a balanced list of the new units he wanted to spawn in he walked out to the System Gate in the main hallway.

Classes Amount Gender Race Battle Axe Hero_Arua Knight Twenty Ten Males - Ten Females Half Giant Hero Knight_Electro Mage Twenty-Five Females Human Cleric_Assassin Fifteen Eight Males - Seven Females Half Angel Mounted Archer_Mounted Spearman Twenty Females Elf Blade Master_Battle Mage Eleven Females Valkyire Hero Ranger_Druid Ten Males Elf Balistia_Battle Axe Hero Ten Females Dwarf

He went down his list and spawned in the new units and just about wiped out his entire saving from the past few days. Rick had Irene send the eight messengers out with the new military units to find available apartments for them. Rick told the messengers to show them the restaurant location after finding them their new homes and then to take them over to the Military Academy and have General Sturm take command of them.

When the large group of people left, Rick went back into the lounge and sat at the table to write up a list of all the military units he currently had. It was getting to the point where it was hard to keep track of them all and he needed a list for the future to try and keep them balanced.

My Total Military Units List The Main Army Classes Total Amount Male Female Race Mounted Archer_Mounted Spearman 40 20 20 Elves Hero Knight_Electro Mage 50 25 25 Human Battle Axe Hero_Arua Knight 30 15 15 Half Giant Cleric_Assassin 20 10 10 Half Angel Blade Master_Battle Mage 20 N/A 20 Valkyire Hero Ranger_Druid 20 16 4 Elves Balistia_Battle Axe Hero 20 - 20 Dwarves Assassin_Pyromancer 10 - 10 Forsaken Assassin_Hero Ranger 1 - 1 Nekomimi Battle Dancer_Battle Mage 2 N/A 2 Kitsune Pyromancer_Hero Ranger 2 - 2 Aquatine TOTAL NUMBERS: 215 Store Guards Classes Total Amount Male Female Race Assassin_Cleric 2 2 - Human Blade Master_Battle Mage 6 6 - Human Assassin_Spy 2 2 - Human TOTAL NUMBERS: 10 Palace Guards Classes Total Amount Male Female Race Hero Knight_Electro Mage 25 25 - Human Hero Ranger_Hero Knight 10 10 - Human Hero Ranger_Druid 15 15 - Human TOTAL NUMBERS: 50 TOTAL Military NUMBERS: 275 Units

The new units were now sent off to find their new apartments and to be sent over to General Sturm afterward and he had a list of the total number of troops he currently possessed in his inventory. He felt that he was caught up with everything he wanted to do for the day so he went over to the castle to do some training.

He went into the basement Elemental Training room and charged the storage gems in his Multi affinity Rune circle. When the gems were all topped off with mana he activated the Fire, Lightning, and Space Runes. He closed his eyes activated Fast Domain and began circulating his mana through the three active runes.

Rick trained the three elements for an hour and then he activated the wind rune and connected his mana to the rune. One by one he began reconnecting to the others until he was training with Fire, Lightning, Space, and Wind altogether. WIth the help of Fast Domain, he trained a total of four hours in only 20 mins of game time. The long duration did not put any strain on him it was the same as just sitting still and meditating. The speed of the game was increased in a small area around him, but it felt like a normal progression of time.

It seemed that when the Fast Domain spell was active it was like Rick was on a private server that progressed at 12x normal speed, you knew it was faster than normal, but you just couldn't tell because everything around you was synced to your speed.

He did become a little restless just sitting there for so long so he decided to take a break. After he had deactivated all the runes he stood up and opened his flashing notification icon.

Spoiler: Show Notices!. Elemental Affinity Increase: Fire Affinity Level 1 Master 52% Elemental Affinity Increase: Lightning Affinity Level 9 Advanced 16% Elemental Affinity Increase: Space Affinity Level 4 Advanced 89% Elemental Affinity Increase: Wind Affinity Level 7 Beginner 27%

Rick closed out the notice windows and opened a portal to the limestone quarry so that he could gather up all the piles of limestone dust and fragments of broken limestone blocks. It had been some time since he had come out to gather all the built up piles so he was surprised to see how much had accumulated over time. He stored it all away in his inventory and opened a portal next to Jessica's General store and walked in.

Jessica was quite shocked to see him come into her store. She had figured now that he had his own store he would not bother to shop at hers anymore.

Jessica didn't seem to mind though she was just happy to see him and excitedly told him about all the changes that had been happening for her since the corrupt nobles vanished. She had made a few more new import contacts and her inventory showed it. She not only had new products but a better-stocked inventory and by the sounds of it, her sales had more than doubled for her now. She knew that it was thanks to what Rick had done, but she did not directly mention it.

She knew that Rick did not want to be connected to the incident and only said thank you for everything to him with a smile. Rick gave her a wink and a smile and went down one of her isles to grab a few lengths of rope. He paid for the rope and promised to come back soon and make a big purchase from her. Rick gave her a mischievous smile as he opened a Portal right behind him at her counter. He took a step backward and vanished right before her eyes and closed the Portal behind him.

He chuckled to himself as he thought of the expression that must be on her face right now. He looked around him and found where the furthest north road along the river ended and walked over to it. Using his recipes he made a groma surveying tool and a few six-foot long wooden stakes. While using his Fast Domain again he began lining up a straight northern route with the survey tool. once he placed a stake he would use his survey tool to place the next one. He tied the rope he just bought from one stake to the next so that he had a straight line where the edge of the road would be.

When he ran out of rope he went back and used his Move and Shape Earth skill to cut out the width of the road. When the road was cut out he pulled the stakes and ropes up and continued further north. As he marked out the road, Rick began to angle the road gradually away from the river so that it went straight toward the mountains in the distance. His Fast Domain allowed him to reach the mountain in fifteen minutes of game time even though he had spent three hours of surveying inside the Domain.

With the North road now marked and dug out all the way to the edge of the northern mountain range, he flew off to the river and began gathering huge amounts of sand and river stone from the shoreline. Rick flew back to the road and began layering the dug up road with the river sand, limestone dust, Limestone chunks, and river stone all the way back to the city. When the roads base layer was complete he used his Move and Shape Stone Skill to cut the 10-foot by 10-foot cubes of stone in his inventory into stone pavers.

He used his old smelting pot to mix a large batch of cement up and began cementing stone pavers along the length and width of the road. Rick had first started the game with his Paving Skill at level 7 Intermediate thanks to his experience from the Marine Corps so he was able to lay the road out at a decent speed. Then with the help of Fast Domain added he was able to move quickly into the distance as he left a level stone paved road behind him.

The sun had already set before he had reached the end of the road so he activated his Night Sight and finished the road in the dark. The main reason he was so eager to complete this road was that he needed to establish a mining operation. He could no longer simply buy iron from his former teacher in Silverhall City. He looked at it like a good thing since it would save him money that could be spent on other things from now on. He had been spending so much money on troops lately that even if he could still buy coal and iron, he wouldn't have enough currency to even buy anything.

Rick flew back to the castle once he was done with the road and went right up to his room and unequipped his gear. He laid down on the bed and disconnected.

Disconnect!