Chapter 175: Sim simulator

Heading home, I begin the tiresome process of designing a city. Now, it seemed simple at first. It wasn’t, not at all. First, I build a plan to have plots divided up by roads in a grid. But then I realized that it would not take into account status and individual property prices.

So, I designed a plan that had plots that increased in size as you reached the middle. Which hosts my sky island’s obviously. The city is a good way away from the island, so it’s not too intrusive on their sunlight.

Heading to my island, I went far enough away that it was visible, but not incredibly large, somewhere between 1000 and 2000 meters. I then fenced it off in a square grid using large obsidian walls. To top it off, above the walls, I created pencil blocks, so there was an invisible barrier. I made this barrier about 5 blocks tall. This alone took me a couple of days, which put what I’ve signed myself up for into perspective. At this point, I realized that every moment someone dies, and I need to start moving people in.

With great haste, I produce a temporary village. Square houses of wood with bunk beds. A large farm to feed them all. Got a few animals and placed them into an animal pen nearby. Just making a temporary village as fast as possible. I then covered the entire thing in wooden walls with a glass roof.

With this done, I hastily return to the town I still have access to. Setting up a teleportation point people can step on.

With that done, I create myself a podium and speak.

“Hello, I am building a city, a place of safety. If you wish to join me and the city being built, please step on this teleportation pad.” Not the most charming of speeches, but a few pedestrians walked over. All had become bored with the repairs to the walls and hastily building buildings.

“What’s wrong with fixing this city?” One of them asks.

Removing my helmet, I crouch on the podium, meeting his eyes. “It will be perfectly safe; you will have the opportunity to own land and have a part in building the city.”

He stepped back slightly in surprise, hand on chin. I had similar conversations with passersby, but most chalked it up to bragging and left. After the 5th group, I began to feel a little dishearted at the fact no one was interested in joining my city. Sitting back on my now ignored podium, I ponder what I should do. Like, this city will be fully functional soon, and I will lose my chance. And I need the people here to get the word out to other cities that were teleported nearby.

Messaging Jengal on my phone, I manage to convince him to help sell it. Although he is skeptical of the whole city-building business. Walking up to my podium, having used my teleport… Wait, my teleportation network is still intact. My dislocator obviously doesn’t work; it uses coordinates to function. My teleporters were a physical item that would have moved with the cities. Quickly, I check the teleporters. Ignoring Jengal, who said, “Hey, how you doing?”

A good half of them are still within cities. All with differing amounts of damage. The lucky ones with walls intact. Most seemed to have banded together and fought off the lycanite mobs, but the villagers were still scared.

Heading back, I shake Jengal by the shoulders. Handing him some teleporters, “bring people from the other cities. Get them to join my town” and sending him on his way. He begrudgingly goes, complaining about me being in a rush. How naive he is, being on a safe island. That won’t last long when he sees the state of all the cities.

Heading back to the city, I begin work of laying out land markers. The central field will be in the middle of the town. I want a road in each cardinal direction to stretch across the landscape. Being able to look from the walls right to the center of the city. These roads are what I start with. Reinforced stone for durability, 16 blocks wide strait away from the city. The area Is relatively flat now, the hills having been ported out in the scramble.

I sweep the area, flattening the areas that had meaningfully sized hills remaining. My pickaxe making short work of them.

Just the roads and landscaping burnt another few days. In that time, Jengal convinced a few loan stragglers and a single-family to move to the temporary town. Making it all the more promising for the future. I’ve taken to sleeping less and less so I can work on the city. It became a little bit of an obsession. Cassie was quite annoyed when I declined cuddles in favor of building roads.

She was only mollified by the fact that lives are at risk and my promise to give her unlimited cuddles after. Once the area was relatively flat, I didn’t want it to be a super-flat, just trimmed the fat off the land. The people who will be building the houses can do the rest of the work.

With the roads complete and terraforming done, it’s time to break up the land. This only took me a day and a half with my super flight. All I did was place the corners for land for buildings. Making sure lots of space between them was left for roads and small buildings.

The land around the main field was broken up into extensive areas. Enough for several mansions each. Next, was large, but not stupid large areas. Enough for gigantic buildings. They were like rings going down in size. Continuing this trend until the land was that of large houses. Once that was all marked, I began making significant roads that branched off the main roads. Just quickly, I placed down routes between each of the rings. Placing them in long stretches, half-complete between each circle. This divided each circle with a large road that would allow easy access.

In the middle of each ring road corner, I placed a sizeable circular land designed for parks. Allowing me to build quality of life areas. I might also make them into markets too. One market, 1 park, 1 market, 1 park.

With the land now marked out, I began the painstaking process of building a wall. If this city expands, another wall shall be made. But for now, it needs some defense. So I shall wall it in then light it all up with Glowstone. First of all, I just make a reinforced stone wall, a single layer thick 5 high. Using my builder’s wand, I build it as fast as I possibly can. Just something to keep the monsters out. It would do nothing during a blood moon, but one isn’t expected. This is just a placeholder.

It took over a week, a week of non-stop building, to build such a massive wall around such an enormous area of the divided land. At one point, I had Cassie delivering me dinner so I could get it done faster.

With a primary wall done, I place Glowstone upon fences along all 4 main roads, then on the corners of each marked land. Using the time to also add borders around each corner just to make the land divides more clear.

The amount of people in the temporary town has ballooned, especially since they can visibly see the city being made at a record pace. The walls appearing over the night, the bright glow from behind them.

Since I will be moving them in soon, I erect a gate on each of the 4 cardinal directions. The gates each being made of obsidian and being very durable. I would have made it out of reinforced obsidian, but I wanted to be quick. This is a temporary thing, after all.

With the gates installed, I begin to let people in. Telling everyone to only claim a piece of land they know they can handle. If it’s too big to take care of, they will be downgraded.

With people, they will naturally form the town. It’s just about patience. I am not gonna sit here and pretend I know how to make a city. But… If I build the foundation and let them set roots, they will do it for me. And having my home in the dead center makes me the de facto leader. Or I think that’s how it works. Either way, if I keep building awesome stuff, they will just accept me.

Just outside the walls, I rapidly produced some absolutely massive farms. Creating a little of every plant I have collected. Almost growing wild, but with some order as one type of plant per field. This gives the residents abundant food, although it’s slightly far from the more lofty people who accepted land near the city’s center. If they manage to keep it, they will be in a good position.

I changed one of my farms into a wood, stone, and marble farm. All essential items, so the seeds were easy to produce. They started to pump out insane sums of the materials, and I funneled all this into free chests inside the town.

Flying over, I shouted out that free building materials were automatically being stocked into said chests. I even gave them a large quantity of woods to work with. Trying to inspire a bit of creativity in their buildings.

With them all building houses, I supplied them each with phones. I produced a video on the essentials of building, including recipes for stairs, planks, slabs, and all that good stuff. That made me realize they would need glass, so I also started adding that to the chests of building materials.

It was insane to watch the dirt hovels change into half-decent houses overnight. I guess building in Minecraft really is unfair. Back at home, it took months of hard work and careful calculations. Making the price astronomical and unattainable for most people. Here, you can just do it yourself.

As they started to build their homes, they used Jengal to bring more people over. All having realized that this might become something great. Most of the people had lost their homes, families, and properties and had nothing to lose. So they gambled on my city. And I intend to let them win the lottery, so to speak, in thanks for trusting me.

With people actually moving in, it was time to get some formidable defenses up and running. The walls needed to be mountains, that’s for sure. If missiles and body armored soldiers are a risk, we need a good-sized barrier to keep them out.

The building material? Reinforced obsidian and condensed cobblestone. More specifically, octuple compressed cobblestone. The stuff is nigh unbreakable. I’d like to upgrade it to sextuple, but I simply don’t have the infrastructure to make that much cobble. To produce the octuple, I had to set up far more generators than I chose to count. Thankfully, they cost pennies to make, and I’m immortal. My time is valueless.

I also got the reinforced obsidian being auto-crafted. The crops were farmed, the obsidian made, and then combined to make reinforced obsidian. I thankfully found a more manageable recipe than the one I was familiar with.

Using the obsidian, based on the original wall, I made the skeletal frame of the future fence. Got to keep the neighbors out after all.

The wall was about 10 blocks wide and 30 blocks tall. A significant size, that’s for sure. Starting with the bottom layer being marked out with the obsidian. Two massive rings around the city, 10 blocks apart.

Then, every 10 blocks, I would create a pillar of obsidian, making 2 more rings mirroring the bottom of the wall. This all took weeks to do, with constant effort. Neglecting my typical distractions due to the crises at hand. Even while building, I’ve had to fend off countless elementals.

Once this bloody wall is done, I am checking on the vampires. I am genuinely concerned about their health. At some point, they disappeared off the news. Well, the rumors of them did. Then all this happened, and I feel bad for not visiting them. That’s either an excellent thing or an awful thing.