Louie was glad to be back home.

Home? Yes, this place felt like home, but I still got that feeling I needed to get out there. As if something was pulling me south. Better go report to Joe and the Captain.

Leon brought the troops to a halt. "I'm going to take them to the guard barracks and then I will report to the Sergeant. Where should I meet up with you after that Sir?"

"I will probably be at the Command tent. If not there then try the tower."

"Ok. Thanks, sir."

Louie sighed, "You know that when you are in my Caravan that there will be no more ‘Sir’ or salutes?"

Leon shrugged, "I will get used to it, later sir." He turned around and gave the troops orders as they started to march away. The civilians who came with them were shown to the information tent and Louie took a step towards the Command tent when there was a huff behind him and BOB bumped into him.

He turned around. Shit, I have forgotten about them.

Louie told the people following him to go to the tower and choose one of the rooms for themselves as he would be by later.

He asked around ‘till somebody pointed out that the Captain and Sergeant were at the new barracks that had been built to the right of the Dungeon bridge.

As he walked through town, he saw that one of the six-story high apartment blocks that he had started carving was nearly complete and all the finished apartments were occupied. He could see though that there were still a lot of people without a place to stay.

He saw the barracks and noticed the blacksmith’s Smithy and a few other workshops were all located to the right of the barracks next to the river.

From the smell, there seemed to be a tannery also.

He wondered why there had been a tannery established since it was possible to get the skin fully processed when the animal was looted. There were a bunch of people with bows and crossbows standing around an open shed with huge vats. Hmm, hunters, aah processing the skins of the animals harvested.

He wasn't pleased when he saw that the runoff from the vats was channelled into the nearest storm drain since he knew that the drains dumped directly into the river. Fuck, haven't these people learnt anything? I will not allow this place to pollute nature.

The people around the tent slinked away when they saw his angry face as he stopped to look at the Drain. He stepped over to the embankment to look at the exit of the drain but couldn't find it, looking around he started moving a bit downstream but still no exit. He cast and found something strange.

There was a network of tunnels under the road that branched off and went under most of the town.

"It's a kind of sewer system,"

Louie stopped the spell and turned to Joe as he came walking up to him.

"Hi, what are you doing here?"

Joe smiled, "When some hunter runs into my office sweating buckets and telling me about you glaring at the tanners and looking at the sewers, then I just had to come to see what is bothering you."

"Sewers?" Louie asked.

"Yip, let me show you. I knew you talked about humanity destroying the earth for profit, so we decided to go green. All our waste goes into the sewers where it's processed."

Louie thought of the spell and the artefact that he had.

"Watch." They stood in front of an opening, in what used to be a cliff, where an older woman in a wheelchair was teaching a bunch of kids their words and spelling.

"We’ve got two old ladies that are cousins and used to be teachers. They decided to start a school. We are waiting for the builders to finish the apartments, then they will start on the school. Here comes the late class."

Out of one of the other openings came about 20 children between 10 and 15 years old, they were all armed with clubs or long sharp sticks and wearing thick aprons.

"There are three classes. The Early class is the babies till 5 years old, the Middle class are 6 to 10 years old and the Late class are 10 to 15 years old or ‘till they unlock their status."

They followed the class till they neared a door guarded by two people.

As they entered the door one of the women that were guarding the door took the lead. She took out a torch and lit it by sticking it in the fire they were sitting around and went down the stairs into the dark. A couple of the older kids also took out torches and lit them from the fire.

"Where are they going?" Louie wanted to know.

"The sewers. It's the first time that they are going down there. It was decided that their class assignment is to check the sewers each day and kill anything stronger than level 1."

"Sher created a moss that eats any waste. Yesterday morning she noticed a slime down there and after killing it they backtracked the spoor. It's like a snail, it eats anything that it flows over, they found a spawn point."

Louie looked alarmed. "What?"

"Don't worry. We have been monitoring it the whole night, it only spawns level 1 slimes every hour or so."

Louie started searching through his inventory. He took out all the mana lanterns that they looted from the rat's nest in the school.

"Shit Joe, you can't send them in there with those stupid torches. If one of the kids dropped a torch then they would be blind down there. Use these mana lanterns, we found in a nest. It's much better than a stick with cloth wrapped around it."

Louie gave all the lanterns to the remaining guard.

Joe slapped Louie on his shoulder, "Don't worry brother. We’ve got people down there watching them. Today is a test run. For the next month, the Late class will go down there in teams of ten to clear the sewers once a day."

"We will see how it goes. So far it's working because the water that comes out at the exit, outside the gate, is clear, but it's just the second day so we will see."

"Joe the children are our future. Please keep an eye on them."

"Don't fear Louie, harm will have to come through the whole camp before it can get to the kids."

Louie used to watch the progress of the class in the sewers and saw that there were four other people around watching over the kids. He nodded.

"OK."

On the way to their office, Louie stopped at the blacksmith who now had a sign stating that they were, Kramer, Kramer & Davis, which sounded more like a lawyer’s firm.

He gave them 3 sets of weapon blueprints from his journal together with a full set of blacksmith equipment from the Dungeon, a forge, anvil and smelter included.

He also dropped the huge old tracked CAT drainage plough which caused much excitement when they saw all the heavy steel and they started talking about the metal bottleneck.

"Bottleneck?" Louie wanted to know. "What bottleneck?".

Joe answered before the Blacksmith could, "Sooner or later we will start running out of metal. The rest will be turned into rust by Gaea. We need to get to the big steel mills and get those metals before everything is gone. We'll need something to replace it at that point, that, or we’ll need to start mining."

"Damn, we need somebody with a surveyor or geologist skillset to look for ore deposits,"

Joe said that he will talk to some of the old-timers to hear if there were any old mines around.

They also stopped back at the school where Louie left all the books that he had taken from the library for the kids. There were even a couple of self-help starter books on gardening and DIY around the house.

"You have been busy," Louie remarked as he looked over the town. "How is the Dungeon Diving going?"

"It's going well." He knocked on a wooden post. "We lost two people when they got cocky facing the Boss yesterday but other than that it’s been great. We are sending three teams a day."

"What do you want to do with those squirrels you caught."

Louie shrugged, "to be honest, I had nearly forgotten about them. I wanted to start a kind of teaching program, but I think your slime farm is a better option. I will have a look and see if I can find a use for them, or just have them killed for the loot."

They entered a boardroom style room where everybody stood against the wall or sat around a folding camp table.

"Ahh, I see that you found him." The Captain stood up and held out his hand.

"Welcome back Louie."

Louie shook his hand., "Thanks, Captain."

"Call me Pete, I've been out of the Police for a while now. We made some changes while you were away. I'm the Mayor now." He didn't look happy about it. "Paul is now Guard-Captain."

Louie smiled. "Congratulations on the promotions Mayor, Captain." He nodded at the former Sergeant and all the other people.

Removing one of his stone blocks he created a big round table that could easily sit twenty people with a high-back stone chair facing the door with two slightly smaller chairs on each side.

He indicated that Joe should take the highback and the Mayor and newly promoted Guard-Captain the other two. He also created a long bench around the table and greeted everybody.

He surprised Sher with a big hug. "I missed you guys," he whispered.

The original table and chairs quickly disappeared into inventories as they all took a seat at the newly created table.

They started by telling him about the town economy that was starting up, but he stopped them.

"I don't need to know stuff like that. This is Joe's town. He is renting the property from me. As long as you guys are happy with what you are doing then I'm happy."

He started telling them about the three days that he had been gone and everything that had happened. They agreed on only sending a new team of troops every third day to the Fort as well as some trading goods.

They were astonished when he told them about the Troll and the BB he received. He visualised the Troll and sent them each a pic from his journal.

Dacota wanted to know more about the Fort and the capstone and how it worked since they had cleared out the big nest to the west the day before, which turned out to be level 2 ants with the queen as level 5, and that had given them chitin that the armourers were very happy about and they had also received a capstone as loot.

Mrs Thatcher, the new school headmistress, thanked him for the books and the lanterns to help the physical fitness class as she called the Sewer cleaning teams.

The school curriculum had changed a little. From 08:00 till 12:00 was academy hour where they learnt reading, writing and other skills like cartography and different crafts.

After a break, till 16:00, they had physical fitness that taught them weapon mastery using wooden weapons, as well as the theory of mana manipulation and meditation, ending with them having to visit the sewers or training tunnels as Mrs Thatcher called them.

Louie looked at the head of the crafters, a Mr Craig Nasser.

"Mr Nasser. ."

He held up his hand interrupting Louie. "Just call me Craig, my Dad was Mr Nasser. Every time somebody says, Mr Nasser, I expect him to answer."

"Ok, Craig. Do you have somebody good with cloth, like a tailor or weaver, somebody like that?"

He nodded and said that a couple of old ladies had taken up mending clothes for people and were known as the Sewing Circle.

Louie asked for and received directions to their workspace.

They discussed the happenings in town for a while before Louie invited them all for a Braai at the tower that evening.

As they left Louie told Joe and a rather thin woman named Marge, who was in charge of a soup kitchen that fed the guards and anybody else that was hungry, about the pallets of food and asked where he could place them.

He offered to build an underground storeroom as he did at the Fort but Joe said that they already had one.

As they got to the barracks kitchen, Marge took them through what looked like a walk-in fridge door, down some stairs and into a huge walk-in pantry. It was about 10x30 meters big with shelves running along the walls. On one of the walls, some of the shelves were stacked with medicine.

Joe saw Louie staring at the shelves. "We think those are the missing meds of the doctors. It was found in bags on the steps of the Townhall yesterday morning, nobody knows where it came from."

"I think we have a vigilante in town, some strange things are going on, but the Captain will find the person."

"You can place the pallets along that wall, young man." Marge pointed to a bare wall at the back.

He looked at the pantry. "Uuh, did I mention that there are about 70 pallets?"

Joe shook his head and opened his status to look through his options of Town owner. There was a shimmer in the air and the pantry became twice as wide.

Louie started removing pallets, placing them in three rows down the centre of the room with enough space between them to accommodate people looking for stock, but kept a couple of pallets for himself.

"I had some people at the Fort sort the stuff out."

Marge stood in slack-jawed wonder staring at all the stock. He opened his Journal and instead of sharing the pictures that he had, he thought of removing the pages and giving them to her. The pictures disappeared from his journal.

She blinked as she got a notification. "Huh? You sent me something?" She removed a thick ring binder with each page having a picture of a pallet and a list of the stock on it. "Nice, thank you, young man."

They left her sorting through the stock.

Louie reminded Joe about the braai scheduled for later, and set out to go check on his tower.

He hadn't been there since he had given the speech and made the rooms at its base.

He slowly walked through the Town looking at all the changes that had taken place in the past three days.

There was a whole section of crafters who had turned the front of their workshops into a place to display their wares.

People greeted him as he went. Mostly everyone remembered him from his speech and the doctors’ trial after the tree burning.

After following the directions he found a space where the ladies were sitting around a couple of tables.

There were clothes neatly folded on one table. Most of the space was open and empty.

"Good day Ladies. Is this where I find the Sewing Circle?" He felt a strange sensation in the air and realized that it was the mana in the room that was acting strangely.

The ladies all stopped their work and looked at him before one stood up and stepped up to the table.

He felt the animosity in the air. "What can we do for you?"

He was confused because as far as he knew there was no reason for the animosity towards him.

"Hi. . yes I found some clothes while I was gone and I thought that you ladies could use them for people who are in need."

He started with the suitcases that were in the Rolls Royce and then placed all the baggage that was in the Lux Liner tour bus that he took from the motor pileup the night of Johan's march.

There was a lot of baggage.

All the ladies came to the table and looked at the stack of over 60 bags and suitcases.

"First..." The old lady that spoke was shushed by the one that stood before Louie.

"Where did you find all this?" Louie was really getting tired of the animosity towards him. He looked at them all and shook his head.

"Looks like I'm at the wrong place. I will take this someplace else."

Louie felt the mana gather around the leading woman.

YOU WILL ANSWER ME! Her voice reverberated as a pain burned through his head as she tried to dominate his mind

The pain died down to a low burning, and was quickly transmuted into a vicious rage—seething anger that needed to be quelled.

With a growl and a burst of primal energy, Louie equipped his armour while he raged against this woman's intrusion when suddenly the pain just stopped and the woman collapsed.

He looked up in confusion at the old woman with the broom handle behind the one that tried to attack him.

She sighed. "I apologise, our First has become very unstable in the last couple of days."

"Agreed," all the ladies said in unison.

He removed his Helmet and mask as his rage died down.

She sighed again, "It's time that I took back the position of First."

Louie was slightly freaked out by what was happening and the way that all the old women were acting.

They looked at each other before all nodded together again, "Agreed."

"So mote it be." The other old ladies bent down and lifted the one on the floor up before carrying her to one of the bunks in the corner.

"Uuh, what just happened?" Louie asked in confusion.

The old lady placed the straw bristles on the floor and leaned on the broom.

"Sorry about that. I'm Sara, First of the Sewing circle."

He looked at the broom the old woman had in her hand and saw a couple more against the wall. His gut started screaming, Witches.

He had heard a lot from his Gran about the old women and their hearth and home craft to know not to mess with them.

He nodded to let them know he understood.

She leaned towards him. "Now where did you find all this."

He explained about finding the bus and all the luggage that was in the trailer and storage compartment. She listened and thanked him.

"What do you want for all this?"

"Pardon?" He asked, confused.

She explained. "The new economy works on the Dungeon coin system, every time somebody kills a monster and loots it they get a couple of coins, so everybody is working with those coins. We pay the people 1 iron Bit per piece of clothing, then we fix it up and sell it to the others for 2 Bits or something of equal value."

He saw that it didn't look like they had enough food to regularly eat a meal.

"I don't want anything for the clothes, I found them and if you can use them then you are welcome." He looked at the old ladies.

"Are there any more weavers, seamstresses or tailors around here?"

"No, most of the women know a bit about mending clothes but there are no tailors here."

He walked past the suitcases and against the wall placed the loom, spindle and other weaver tools He also gave them ten rolls of the Gnomewrap and ten spools of Spider Silk, together with two sets of tailor starter kits for the day if they wanted to start teaching somebody.

He also invited them to the tower for the Braai.

They were very grateful as he watched them sorting the clothes according to size and need of repair.

He felt good as he left the shop, but decided that he would drop the rest of the stuff that he took from the workshops in the dungeon, with Joe and let him hand it out to those in need.

Loo stared at the tower. It looked slightly different from what he remembered.

Maybe I'm just thinking of the tower at the Fort. I haven't been here since I raised it and only been up top once. Well, no time like the present.

As he stepped up to the tower he saw everybody and two guards standing outside the entrance.

He looked at the medics and the sisters. "Why are you all standing out here?"

"There are Guards here, they won't let us in," Sally replied.

"Afternoon guys why are you guarding my tower?"

"Afternoon Sir. The Sergeant ordered guards to the tower top the day you raised it sir, but when the shift changed later that night, we were unable to enter the tower, so the Sergeant told us to just guard the door and not to let anybody go in, but we have tried and the door won't open for anybody."

"Strange." He reached out to the door and it opened at his touch

.

Greetings

Your wizard's tower is ready for formatting.

Would you like to initiate formatting now Y/N

Huh? Not now. He pressed N.

He showed everybody into the tower. "You guys can use the rooms again." He looked at the sisters. "Follow them and get someplace for yourself."

He reached down in the bedrock and brought stone out in waves that he used to strengthen the walls of the tower and stairs, then created a basement with a couple of rooms and a door that came out behind the spiral stairs leading to the roof.

He also created an enclosed BBQ area next to the entrance and in doing so he closed the circle around the tower. Hmm the first floor is done, make another round of rooms on top of that? Maybe later.

He liquified more bedrock and took it up the stairs, bringing a wave of stone with him.

He created another room on top of the tower the same as he had made in the Fort. Placing his bed he created a table and an ensuite where he placed one of the cleaning sculptures.

Sculpture of Prestidigitation

If this device is touched it will trigger a burst that instantaneously cleans all objects in a radius no larger than 20meters.

Cooldown: 30 seconds

He also created a cistern on the roof connected to his shower with one stone pipe encapsulating one of the mana burners at eye level sticking partially out of the wall, for heat control. Haha. Good thing the mana machines can still work underwater. It's not like electricity.

He created a shelf and looked through the toiletries for some body wash and shampoo with relaxing properties to stock it with.

When he was done he went down to the BBQ area where he created two tables where he prepared and marinaded the two frog legs that he got as loot.

Prism Bullfrog Loot Received

25S halves

2x frog thighs

12 lengths of reeds

1x jar with pond scum (reagent)

1x prism frog skin

He removed the frog from his bracelet and placed it on the table, and stood back to see if it would dissolve.

After a couple of minutes with nothing happening he smiled. He took his Bowie out and started to harvest the frog.

He gained another set of frog legs and skin.

He swiped the notification away as he gathered the ingredients for the marinade.

He had a nice recipe for frog leg, making the marinade was quick but he had to leave the meter-long frog thighs for three hours in a mixture of the oil, onion, parsley, lemon peel and juice, salt, mustard and basil.

As he had placed his pallets in the basement of the tower he had found most of the ingredients, although some of it was dry he hoped it would still work for the marinade.

He had made two stone tubs and using one of the ice-mage nozzles, he zapped the floor of the tubs a couple of times before half filling it with water.

He removed and placed a couple of crates of beer and cooldrinks inside.

It wasn't long after he was done that the first people started to arrive, and he lit the fires.

Joe, the Mayor and Captain had each brought marinated meat while the others had brought snacks and salads The snacks mostly consisted of bite-sized fried meats or Biltong and Droëwors.

When Marge arrived she immediately took over the braai and started with the meats that the others had brought.

She looked sceptically at the four giant drumsticks in the marinade, but Louie assured her that he would braai them himself

Everybody was enjoying themselves and was astonished when he brought the thighs out. He didn't want to tell them what kind of meat it was but one or two who had the inspect skill quickly spread the news.

Luckily all were willing to give it a try.

He removed the legs from the marinade and patted them dry and preserved the marinade. He made sure the fire was ready but not too hot as he placed the legs on the grill and started to braai them.

After about 20 minutes of turning them regularly, they were tender and juicy. Heating the marinade with butter and garlic, he poured it over the legs.

They were all salivating as the flavour spread around the fire. He started carving the meat as he got a notification.

He had to stop for a moment as he realized that it was the first time since the apocalypse that he had done his own cooking.

Marge looked at him, "You ok?"

"Yeah I just unlocked my cooking skill." He smiled as he started carving the meat again.

The braai went on late into the night, leaving everybody sated from all the grilled meats and alcohol It was the first time in nearly two weeks most of them had had any liquor.

Everything was casual and the people genuinely seemed to get along well with each other.

Everybody enjoyed the frog legs, people had meat piled into plates, skewered onto sticks or shoved between slabs of bread. Louie couldn't figure out who had brought the bread but nobody complained as it was consumed.

“How long before you leave for Paarl,” Craig asked Louie between conversations.

"We would like to leave Sunday, Monday at the latest."

"What are your plans when you get to Paarl?"

"I don't know, I just know that I must go in that direction, it's got to do with my class. I'm hoping to get some people there that would like to do a regular run to here and Worcester."

Craig nodded. "A regular trade caravan between Worcester and Paarl, with a stopover here would be nice."

"Yes, my thoughts exactly. You work with leather, right? Do you think you can make something with these?"

He handed Craig the bullfrog skin that he had harvested a short while ago.

"Wow, I have never seen any leather like this, I will have to talk to the tanners and see if they know of a way to treat it without destroying the colour changing effect. From what kind of animal did you get this?"

Louie smiled indicating the long bone laying next to the fire.

"A frog skin? Damn, I will come back to you after I’ve talked to the tanners."

Prism Bullfrog skin

This skin is harvested from a Prism Bullfrog. If treated correctly this skin might retain the frog's racial traits.

Dazzle: strobe light effect for 3sec, can cause blindness

Absorption: Water: Absorb water molecules in the air through the skin preventing thirst.

Louie shared the BB with him. "No problem, it's yours. Do with it what you want."

Joe found Louie away from the crowd, deep in thought as he looked at the people around the fire. Joe joined him in leaning against the wall.

"You ok, Brother?"

"Just thinking, I have become a one-trick pony."

"What do you mean?"

"I have become too reliant on my spell."

"It's a great spell and the way that you use it makes it OP," Joe said.

"It's a great spell that's true, but it has a lot of weaknesses. When I was in that basement and that Rabbidevil blocked my spell. I would have been screwed if Sally and Kallie didn't kill that thing. And with the boss fight, if I didn't have any stone with me then I would have been useless, what happens if I must fight underwater or in the air?."

"I shudder to think what would happen if I'm, for some reason, in the middle of a big stretch of water and get attacked by a monster. What am I going to do? Bring out a multi-ton block of stone to shape? I will be screwed."

Joe shook his head. "You are resourceful. You will figure something out."

Louie's mood lifted a bit and he grinned as he sent Joe the blueprint of the boltgun.

"I made something, but it has a 5 min reload time. Look in your inventory."

Joe took the copy out and looked at it, "What's this?"

His look turned to shock as the paper turned to dust and he received the knowledge. "Fuck me."

"Yeah, but once it’s fired those first 10 bolts then it takes five minutes to recharge. I need more offensive and defensive spells. To fill that gap."

"Wel you are going into the Dungeon. It's the perfect time to get and train some spells."

"True, but those spells are only available at the vendor after the Spider Queen fight, but I will manage till then."

Joe slapped him on the shoulder as he stood up to go get another beer. "You will, Brother, you will."

Upon his return with his beer, Joe asked. "Did you check out the Town interface?"

"No, why?"

"I have been studying it pretty much every moment I can and found that the higher level Town Hall makes certain buildings available."

"What buildings?"

He grinned at Louie, before answering. "Guildhalls, so sooner or later we will get the option of starting Guilds."

"Damn." They both sat quietly, thinking of the Guildhalls they saw while playing MMO games.

"Yeah, I can't wait."

They both clinked their beers bottles together. "To Guild Halls!"

As things wound down, Louie sent people off, usually with some extra beer or cool drinks.

He gave the ladies of the Sewing circle all the leftover braaied meat in an extra Cook's Pantry Bracelet that he had, they were grateful when he explained to them what it was and how it worked.

Louie handed each of the people that were going with him an amulet that would allow them to enter the lower apartments of the tower even if he were not present.

After everyone had helped him neaten the place he used the sculpture to make sure everything was clean before he and BOB went up the stairs to his room to get some rest before diving into the Dungeon again.

Status

Name:

Lewis (Louie) Poren

Race:

Human (Male) Lvl 10 (197 585/ 204 800 -> lvl 11)

Class:

Seeker (2) (55%)

Sub-classes:

(exterminator) (2%)

Titles:

Jack Black Brodifacoum, Trailblazer, Liberator. (Dungeon pioneer)

Affinity:

Darkness

Statistics

Health points (HP):

380

Mana Points (MP):

280

Stamina (SP):

470

Critical Hit Chance

4%

Attributes

Strength:

19

Agility:

15

Constitution:

19

Perception:

18

Intelligence:

15

Willpower:

13

Charisma:

7

Luck:

5

Free attribute points(AP):

0

Skills

Skill

Level

Progression

Wu shu

3

60’100

Improvised weaponry:

T1: 0

51/100

Glacial Rage:

6

30/100

Meditation

4

30/100

Regeneration:

7

88/100

Mana Manipulation:

7

60/100

Survival:

7

20/100

Cooking:

0

10/100

Harvesting:

0

0/100

Whittling:

0

0/100

Pain resistance:

7

65/100

Poison resistance:

3

37/100

Cat`s eye:

2

14/100

Senses:

4

20/100

Armourer

4

95/100

System Minimap:

1

40/100

Cartography:

1

50/100

Class Skill Proficiencies

Class

Level

Progression

Investigation

5

35/100

Tracking

4

24/100

Intuition

9

85/100

Analyze

T1: 0

20/100

Spells

Spell

Level

Progression

Activation

Improvise

5

95/100

Touch

Earth Manipulation

T1: 9

40/100

Cast

Earth Sense

2

20/100

Touch

Weapon Schematics

5

70/100

Touch