Louie and Joe went to the spot that Joe had chosen for building the Townhall and looked around.

Even though it's now fully dark he can still see perfectly well, although his does cast everything in a slight green tint. He took out a Lightstone and handed it to Joe so he could make sure of the positioning of the Cornerstone.

"Are you sure you want it there?" Louie walked twenty meters to the left.

"This would be the perfect spot. If you build here and the front of the building facing down towards the road, then you will have a clear view in all three directions."

"That's true but that's too close to the riverbank, and I heard from an old Stonemason today, that this region was prone to a bit of flooding, and I imagined that it would be ten times worse now."

Louie nodded. "True, Dacota showed me the floodwater marks on the cliffs but I'm going to raise thick walls across the Elans river with balanced flood gates that can be quickly lifted to allow the flood to flow down the channel and out the other side, I'm also going to fill this whole section of the riverbank up to be level with the road, so I think that you can place the cornerstone up here."

Joe thought it over before he agreed and placed the tall stone pillar where he wanted the corner of his town hall to be.

Louie placed his hand on the pillar and after saying Yes to a BB asking if he wanted to claim the land by activating the pillar.

It glowed blue for a moment before sinking into the ground leaving only the top 60x60 centimeters sticking 20 centimeters out of the ground.

"Well, there you go. The cornerstone of your town hall." Louie saw a blue flashing icon in the corner of his HUD.

Attention

Claimed area radius of 15sq kilometers (10 000 sp)

For being the first settlement started on this continent,

This settlement will receive:

+5000 sp (settlement points)

+25% settlement area

+15% fertility inside settlement walls. (last 5years)

+25% fertility in a radius of 500 meters outside settlement walls. (Last 10years)

Attention

Existing mana saturated structures detected: (gain Settlement points per structure)

Tower: claim/demolish? (3000)

Partially constructed settlement walls: claim/demolish? (1000)

Partially constructed housing: claim/demolish? (500)

? ? ? ? ?: claim? (3000)

Dungeon Level 5: claim? (10000)

Louie clicked claim on everything which made a lot more BB appear he waved them all away, although the ????? Were slightly worrying.

He moved over to Joe and said. "I acknowledge the contract between myself, Lewis Poren, and Joseph Wilemse. For the building of a settlement and the surrounding settlement area."

A wave of energy burst from the cornerstone and swept through the camp and over the hills only to return a moment later and impact Joe, staggering him and bringing him to his knees.

"Damn!"

Louie grabbed him and helped him to his feet. "What the hell was that?"

Joe got a faraway look as he was checking his BB

"That was me being bonded to the settlement and the surroundings. There are two people held up in a building out to the east and another group in a few buildings further out. There is also a nest to the north."

He pointed out into the dark. "It's in a cave and it's a big one. I will ask the Sergeant to send teams out tomorrow to go check it out"

Louie looked at the first two BB again. "What is SP used for?"

"It's used to prepare and sculpt the land for the placement of the settlement. I will talk to Dacota and see what can be done."

"Good that will give me a bit of breathing room, she knows what I wanted to do. Wait, I will send you a copy of the plans we discussed for the building of walls and stuff."

Louie sent him a copy of the plans from his journal. "I think I'm going to turn in. See you tomorrow Joe. Have a good night."

Joe just grunted as he was lost deep in the plans he had for the town he wanted to build.

Later Louie sat on his bed inside the tent and looked through his status. It has been a productive day. His has reached tier1.

Tier advancement to Level 1

Experience gain will decrease by 50%

This tier grants 5% less mana usage in casting this spell.

This tier grants the user a 10% increase in the Creation and control of earth elemental constructs within his AOE +2% expansion in the area of effect.

'Damn, it's going to take twice as long to level this up, but wait does this mean that I will be able to create earth golem bodyguards? Hmm, gotta try that out later. Nearly level 11. Or does my Level also advance to Tier 1? Anyhow I will only be able to enter the Dungeon one more time before I advance to level 11 or Tier 1 and I don't think I will be able to enter the Dungeon after that.'

Louie pressed down on his OCD on his wrist and sent it to Joe.

(Joe: I want us each to lead a team through the Dungeon, I think we can only do it once before we get to Level 11 and then are blocked, so talk to the Sergeant and hear of a team that can go with you and Sher. Pick the most experienced gamers to be on Sher's team. Need to power level them and rush them through. With the maps and the known dangers, you guys should be able to do it in one real-time day. Louie)

'BOB has grown so big I think he will have some trouble with some of the passages in the spider lair. I wonder if this spell will work for him?'

He shrugged.

'I did buy it with him in mind.'

He held out the cube to BOB who gave it a sniff and then swallowed it.

Attention

Your pet has absorbed a spell cube meant for humans, your pet will be granted the spell as a skill. Allow him the Micromorph skill

Y/N

Louie right-clicked on

Micromorph

This skill allows the user to reduce its size down to the dimensions of its birth. Higher-level users may retain or have boosted strength, weight, mass while they are at a reduced size.

Level 0-5: User can shrink down to half of their normal size.*

Level 6-10: User can shrink down to a quarter of their normal size.*

Level 11-15: User can shrink down to a tenth of their normal size.*

Level 16-20:User can shrink down to a tenth of their normal size but may retain their strength from the original size while they are at a reduced size.*

(* = not smaller than birth size. Last 24hours or till cancelled.)

'Nice, this will help when he grows too big. I wonder how this will work for him, he wasn't born.'

He took out his workbench and a barstool and started working.

He started on transferring his thoughts about everything inside the dungeon over to the pages in his journal till he had something that covered all the basics that he felt he could give the teams tomorrow.

He had spent a bit of time with BOB and decided to work on seeing if he could incorporate those mage parts in creating some kind of mage weapons.

From what he could understand from 'Engraving for Dummies.' He would need something to use as a conductive material, so he decided to crush some mana stones into a powder and fill the runes he wanted to carve. It was only later that he realized that the stones might have exploded when he crushed it and berated himself for doing something stupid again. Luckily it didn't explode or lose its power.

He had just filled a stone bowl with the mana dust when he got a message from both Sher and Joe at the same time.

(Louie: attack, camp under attack. Joe)(Louie: fire. help. Sher)

Louie jumped up from his workbench, equipped his armour, and rushed out of the tent and into chaos.

The fire was clearly visible from where he stood, somebody had set the Gaea tree on fire. Whatever kind of tree it was, it seemed to be highly flammable.

People rushed from the towering inferno with all their possessions as Louie ran towards the tree but there wasn't much he could do since he had no control of fire or water.

He joined a team and they helped the people to move their stuff clear of the fire when BOB suddenly rushed into the inferno and dragged a small body out of the fire.

Louie raised a wall of stone between BOB and the fire as he ran over and knelt next to them, he tried to pour a health potion down the child's throat, but it was too late.

Sher found Louie kneeling amidst the devastation, clutching the small body to his chest with tears running down his face. She looked on as he lifted his head to the heavens and screamed his rage at the person who did this.

It seemed even the heavens answered as a light rain started falling, limiting the fire to the tree and saving some of the surrounding tents and shelters.

Sher chain cast as Louie's dark mood started to spread to the people and rumors started spreading that the Doctors were responsible because they had moved their tent to the gate just after they left the meeting. Sher and Joe who just arrived having heard the scream, quickly quelled the rumors.

The tree burned till there was only a three-meter-high stump left. Sher healed those she could, but there were just too many that were sleeping under the tree or building their shelters nearby.

Six people were badly burned, they only survived because of one person, he was wearing patched together armour and a medic bag over the shoulder, apparently, he was handing out some of the health fruit from the tree and that healed the burned victim, still one man lost both his hands when he held up a piece of the burning roof so that the family inside the shelter could escape.

The rumor started again that one of the doctors was heard saying that it's a good thing that the stupid tree burned down.

Sher had to cast again as the mood of the people erupted again after somebody brought up that rumor of the doctor's complicity.

Louie wanted to go kill the doctors but Sher and Joe calmed him down and convinced him to investigate the fire since there was no evidence to implicate the doctors.

Louie thought of the system and agreed on one condition, that they bring the Doctors to the tree.

People rushed over to drag the struggling doctors to the burnt tree.

Meanwhile, Louie had gone to the cliff and brought back a wave of stone and shaped two rooms next to the stump.

The Doctors were all pushed into the one-room amidst lots of bluster and threats from them.

Louie, Sher, Joe, and the officers went into the other room and he created a doorway that he opened and closed joining the rooms through which the doctors were brought in one at the time.

All the doctors stood defiant stating that there was no evidence of them having anything to do with the burning of the tree.

Louie took out a thick leather cover book and asked each of them as they entered the room to swear.

Karel was first. He scoffed at them and placed his hand on the book, and took the oath. "I swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth while I am in this room." He was shocked as a golden light enveloped him.

There was a vicious look in Louie's eyes as he stared at Karel, who suddenly realized that he was outbound, to tell the truth

Sher looked at the book. "Where did you get a bible?"

Louie looked down at the book in his hands. "This? This is just an old book that I found laying around. I thought that he would feel more confident thinking they are swearing on a bible."

After questioning the doctors, it was found that the six Doctors bribed a boy with a fire affinity, with medicine which he needed to heal his bedridden mother.

The three med students knew that they planned to destroy the tree but not the details.

The doctors were marched out to the tree.

Louie looked at the gathered Doctors in front of the tree while all the survivors gathered around. He channeled his mana into his voice again.

"These Doctors could have used their knowledge to help and heal people and in doing that they might have unlocked a healer class and affinity, but they chose to force people to pay exorbitant prices for stuff that did not belong to them. Even the fact that they insist on getting the recognition of healers while acting as a pharmacist, that could have been overlooked."

"And then they decided to burn down the healing structure of this town and in doing so they deprived over 5000 people of healing services, even that might have been overlooked. But then the fire that they started killed a child and severely injured six people of which one lost both hands. That can't be overlooked."

Sher walked through the crowd and kept on casting to calm the people.

"That can not be tolerated."

"Hereby all six of you, so-called Doctors are banished from this settlement and the settlement territory, you are allowed to take with you enough food and water to last one day and you are allowed one weapon, if you do not have a weapon then one will be provided for you."

The people cheered and suddenly the Doctors tent went up in flames.

People rushed to put out the flames but left it to burn as they found the tent empty of any belongings.

The doctors shouted and screamed that somebody had stolen all their belongings and about the unfairness of this kangaroo court.

They were taken to a table where Louie had placed a bunch of ratkin weapons and a bag with lunch and a bottle of water for each of them.

The doctors looked dejected as they shuffled towards the gate in the direction of Worcester, each took a weapon, but when it was Karel's turn he took a dagger and lunged at Sher who stood nearby.

BOB and Ansi tackled him and BOB tore off his arm while Ansi hugged his face and injected her poison through his eyes and into his brain.

There were a couple of screams from the shocked spectators but none interfered or offered help while he laid screaming in the road, as they had no mercy for the suffering he had caused.

Ansi wrapped his body in webbing that BOB picked up and carried away.

After that, the med students swore an oath to serve the town to the utmost of their ability and to do their best to get the healer class, and the town swore to care, feed and house them for the next ten years of their indentured service.

As the sun came up over the mountains the people gathered and stood around the giant stump bemoaning the loss of the tree.

One boy stepped forward and laid his hand against the stump, leaning down he placed a flower at the base of the burned tree.

The boy stared on in wonder as the ash started to fall away and the stump turned into stone. He looked at the back of his hand where the cut he had received that morning slowly healed.

People stood closer and marveled at the image of a pregnant woman with a spear and shield that was magically carved on the stone tree stump. People started whispering 'Gaea's blessing'.

The first shrine to Gaea was born.

One enterprising young man was seen gathering all the ash that he could into his inventory and carrying buckets of ash away from the scene.

After asking around, Louie tracked him down and asked him about it.

Having assured the man that he was not in any trouble, he was handed a block of soap.

"I made this yesterday from a branch that somebody broke from the tree, I burned it and made lye from the Ashes."

Stone Tree soap

The number one reason for using soap is of course to clean the body, but the benefits of this soap include the gentle moisturizing effects the soap has on your skin. Since this soap doesn’t contain detergents but is made from the ash of a blessed tree, you will find that these natural soaps are not irritating but have an effect that will heal and rejuvenate the skin.

+50% health and mana regeneration + Relieve mental stress (while soaking)

+50% to mental abilities +100% Psychic Resistance (last 30 minutes)

+50% The subtle smell of nature last 24hours

"I'm sorry for the loss of the tree but this was an opportunity that I couldn't let pass."

"Damn." Louie held out his hand. "Lewis Poren, call me Louie."

The slightly nervous man shook his hand.

"Fredrick Brown, Fred, used to be an apprentice chandler by trade."

"How many bars of soap did you make?"

He looked embarrassed as he explained that he only had one tree branch that broke of as people gathered fruit and he had to burn that for the ash, its slow process since he doesn't have any pots or containers to work the ash into lye and cook the soap, as well as having to use the neighbor's fire.

Louie stopped him and handed him a couple of pots and a one-burner mana stove that he had looted from the dungeon's second restroom kitchen.

"You can pay me with four bars when you have them. Go see Sher, the army healer. Tell her what you are doing. I bet she will be able to help you with some fragrances for your soaps. You can keep all these." Louie indicated the kitchen appliances.

He shook Fred's hand as he left his lean-to.

Louie went to the Gaea shrine as people started calling it.

He was studying the pillar when he saw the rain washing some ash into the gutters next to the road.

On impulse, he followed the gutter to where it disappeared into a drain. Looking around he crossed over the street towards the river and looked where the drain might exit but he couldn't see anything.

'Hmmm, got to tell Joe about the ash and that it might affect the place wherever all the soot from the tree ends up.'

He was on his way to find Dacota and do some work on the cliff face when a shudder ran through the camp and the whole escarpment that he wanted to flatten suddenly sank into the ground and the walls rose all around the perimeter of the proposed town.

"Damn." He hurried to the site where the Town Hall was going to be built and saw Joe together with Dacota and the Sergeant standing next to a stone table.

"Morning everybody, Joe what was that, you took nearly all my work away?"

Joe laughed as he waved at the table and the blueprints. "Morning, Louie, come check this out. Touch the table."

Louie walked up to the table and reached out and touched it. Immediately his vision was flooded with BBs. He swiped everything away just concentrating on the wireframe model that overlapped the area around them.

"Nice, it's a town building grid."

"Yea, I Joseph Wilemse absolved Lewis Poren of any debt he has towards me in connection with building this starter town."

Louie felt a weight lift from his shoulders as the contract between him and Joe disappeared.

"Huh? Thanks, but why."

Joe indicated that Louie must look around.

"Do you see it? Look at the people. Everybody is working and running around. The speech and trial you gave motivated the people, gave them hope for the future. And with this settlement table, I can use Settlement Points to help build the town. It only cost 10000 points to do all the earth modifications that you proposed and raising the walls."

"The walls cost the most because the first level was just a wooden palisade wall that even I would be able to huff and puff down. The rest of the town we are going to build by hand. Dacota will lead that, together with some trades she found that could work with stone. Every time we finish building a building we can claim it and receive settlement points. Look at the section about settlement buildings claimed."

Settlement structures: (gain Settlement points per structure)

Wizards tower: demolish? Y/N (3000)

Constructed settlement walls: demolish? Y/N (10000)

Partially constructed housing: demolish? Y/N (50/house)

Gaea's shrine: claimed (20000)

Dungeon Level 5: claimed (20000)

"I could build most of this town with just the table and settlement points but every time a building is built and then claimed we save the SP that would have been spent on construction and we receive a couple of points. I would like to have a healthy amount of SP for emergencies and repairs."

"We are cheating a bit. Normally the Townhall must be built first but with the buildings you claimed last night we had a couple of partially completed structures that we could finish, like the walls and the fifty openings that you carved around the Dungeon, it's a pity that we couldn't claim the Dungeon though."

"We couldn't?"

"Nope, it said that it is already claimed, guess dungeons belong to Gaea."

'Hmm, better keep it quiet for now that I claimed it, and I see that the tower has changed to a Wizards tower.'

"Did you see the shrine? The moment the tree became a shrine, the town received 17000 SP."

"Thank you, Joe. This will free me up a lot. I can now go do some other stuff that I need to do before going to Paarl. I will talk to Dacota and see if there is anything that she wants my help with."

Louie started walking away but stopped and turned back to Joe.

"Have you guys put together your teams for the dungeon yet? We got to get some guys through there to level them up. By my calculations, people would only be able to go through twice before they will be blocked from entering. I wonder if all Dungeons are like that or only the Challenge Dungeons?"

"Yea, we talked to the Sargent and we are going to split the Gsquad into two, Sher will take one team and I will take the other."

Joe walked with him over to where Dacota and her team were talking.

"Morning Louie. Looks like Joe did most of your work."

"Hi, Dakota."

She turned to her team. "Guys this is Lewis, if you don't know, he is the guy that built that fancy tower over there in a couple of minutes. He is going to help us build some houses."

The one guy stepped forward and introduced himself and his brother as Samuel and Alister and they were builders, they knew most everything that had to do with building houses.

The old guy was muttering something about Tagati while giving Louie the evil eye.

Dakota spoke to him. "Uncle Gharies. He is not a Tagati, (evil Sorcerer). He has the same power as you that allows you to split the rocks, he can just make the rocks soft like clay and build stuff from it."

The old man was still hesitant as he held out his hand for Louie to shake.

"Plesier om jou te ontmoet Oudste." (It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Eldest.)

Behind him were about ten younger men that he waved away. "Skoert! Die grootmense praat." (Go away while the grownups are talking.)

All the young men. If young men were between 30 and 50 years old, moved away while he glared at them.

Louie glanced at Dacota from the corner of his eye and she whispered. "Several generations of kids and grandkids."

Louie nodded and sadly remembered one of Cindy's big family gatherings he had been invited to.

Joe waved as he was walking away saying that he got to go look in on the preparation of the delving teams that Sher was trying to teach how to use imbue with Bow and Slingshot. He also reminded Louie that he had promised to create a lot of big stone barriers in front of the Dungeon for the delvers that they could load in the panniers and drop when needed during their delve.

Louie agreed to do that after he was done helping Dakota.

They went to where Joe had used SP to level and shaped the whole section of the mountain that Louie wanted to level, now there were two rectangular stone structures.

It is as if somebody had taken a knife and cut away a whole section of the mountain and left two big straight slabs of stone twenty by twenty meters wide and five hundred meters long, nearly from the Elands river all the way down to the wall at the lower end of camp.

"What do you have planned here Dakota?"

She explained that she wanted him to start from the top and leveled the roof stepping down to the lower end, with a low wall all around and water cisterns at each step.

Then work from the top down, creating rooms facing outwards to an open hallway. Basically, he would be making long rows of apartment blocks.

After hearing some grumbling from Gharies the stonemason, about wasting their time here. Louie decided to make the apartments just 8x2.5meters high and ten meters deep rough openings and leave the finishing to them.

He walked down the roof of the structures and molded all the extra stone into blocks that he placed in his inventory, for later use in creating the barricades the delvers would need.

When asked about his inventory space and the big ten cubic blocks of stone, he told them that he had a chest in his bag that he had bought in the dungeon store where he could put a lot of stuff.

The sun was nearly straight overhead and burning down on his head when he was done with the top row of open apartments, the hallway connecting each apartment in front and stairs leading down every fifty meters

He left them to their work of finishing each room and went to the open ground in front of the dungeon where the G-squad was training under the supervision of Sher and the Sergeant.

Louie approached the troops as they were training their ranged attacks.

Each one had a metal slingshot that was put together by the blacksmiths, not nearly in the same category as Sher's but good enough to take down a golem since the golems were made from the vehicles in the tunnel and the current vehicles might as well have been made from aluminum.

Sher had borrowed the most complete golem body Louie had and they were now using it as target practice.

The last person had gained the imbue skill after two hours of trying. And now they were just training their shooting ability, some of them still had much to learn.

They all moved back to the barricades across the road where Louie had created some seating for them and sent each a copy of the notes and maps he made of the Dungeon.

There were exclamations when he told them to get it from their inventory and they read it.

Shouts of skill books were quickly dismissed by Louie as he told them that it's a slight cheat that he discovered with his journal, which also caused a stir because nobody else had a journal.

They had worked out a strategy of 'just shoot the fuckers in the head' that they were going to use against the golem and the mini-bosses but were still trying to work something out on how to negate the regeneration of the Dungeon boss and his lieutenants.

They had also drawn up plans for modular barricades and traps that triggered massive blocks of stone to crush the golems that Louie quickly created.

The whole affair looked like a shooting range kill house that they can take apart and use sections off when they need it.

He saw one of the troops fit the description of the person that used the fruit on those burnt in the fire and called him to one side.

"You were healing people at the Tree?"

He nodded. "I'm a trained paramedic, I couldn't just leave them."

"But you used the fruit that you must have gathered, knowing that with the fire there wouldn't be anymore, and still you used them."

He shrugged. "I did not pay for them, it cost me nothing to use them to save their lives."

"There won't be any more fruit."

He shrugged again. "I will find a way. I hear the vendor has a whole range of potions, I will get some there."

Louie held out his hand. "Lewis Poren, what's your name, soldier?"

"Jelani Musa. Sir."

"No need for Sir. Just call me Lewis or Louie."

Louie handed him a small glowing glass-like cube. "I hope this works for you."

He looked at the cube as if it would bite him."What is this?"

"That my friend is a healing spell. If you have the right skill set then it will grant you a healing spell and maybe more. Hopefully, it will work for you."

"How does it work?"

"Just crush it in your hand, I think." Louie shrugged, having never seen it done.

"You think?" He looked at the cube. "What the hell, why not." And crushed the cube which turned into sparkles and was absorbed into his hand.

'Huh, just like with Ansi and the core.'

Jelani went down as if he was hit with a 2x4 and Louie caught him just before he hit the ground. The other troops jumped up and rushed over, shouting and asking what happened.

Jalani waved the others away as he sat up and said he was fine.

After a couple of minutes, he looked at Louie.

"I received a class, I got 4 skills and 1 spell"

Louie clapped him on the shoulder.

"Nice. Congrats, what did you get? Just look at your class and spell and think of sharing them with me."

Combat Medic: level 0

A skilled Combat Medic can hold their own in a firefight and keep their squadmates alive and fully healed.

+100% Damage dealt when defending a squadmate.

Less 50% damage taken when defending a wounded squadmate

Class Skills

Brace: Level 0 (Touch)Heal minor bone damage

Stitches: Level 0 (Touch) Close minor wounds

Recover: Level 0 (Touch) Boost target health regeneration 50% last 2min

Recovery: Level 0 (Cast) minor heal squadmates over 4 min, radius 5metres

Spells

Smoke Grenade: Level 0

Create a smog to obscure you and your squad from the enemy for one min to facilitate extraction time can be extended with additional mana added

Cost: 10MP+2MP/min

Everybody congratulated him and Louie felt more hopeful for the medics waiting for him at the tent.

Louie left them to their planning after telling them that since today is Tuesday, he would be taking his team through the dungeon on Saturday.

'Now I must just find a team.'

The sergeant called him to one side and told him that he agrees to the proposed deal for the rifles.

As they moved to the captain's tent where all the Rifles were stacked Louie asked to see what weapon the Sergeant was using as his own and swapped them with a decent sword and shield that they had taken from the golems and asked how they were training with the weapons.

He found out that there was one of the young soldiers that were into HEMA and he has been giving them pointers.

Louie took all the firearms which included a couple of revolvers, pistols, and shotguns that some of the civilians had hoarded hoping that they might start working again later.

The sergeant also handed him a list of names.

"What's this?"

He explained that it was a list of the civilians that wanted melee weapons in exchange for their firearms. Louie nodded and gave the sergeant a bunch of swords and axes and asked him to take those civilians and train them because he didn't like just handing weapons to people that did not know how to use them.

He also gave the Sergeant 100 of the 190 spears that they have farmed from the bulwark golems and 70 of the 72 shields, for his troops to use.

Before the Sergeant left he told him that he will be going back to Worcester to look for survivors or to see if there are people that might have started a base or something and needed some help, he would like 50 of his recruits to join him as a training exercise.

He would supply them with spears but they would have to bring their own shields and that they must prepare to do some running because he wanted to reach Worcester before dark.

They will stay the two nights and come back Friday.

He also sends a message to Joe telling him that he was taking the 3 indentured med students with him.