A day passed by without the spearmen ever finding anything. That left me with a choice to make. I either had to send the unit north into the plains, or I had to send them south into the rest of the volcanic region.

Realistically, going north was the safest option. All those tiles produced a good enough amount of food to keep the unit supplied.

Going south would be harder to justify. Not only did I know that those crabs were somewhere to the south, presumably still along the obsidian barrier, but none of those tiles really produced any food. The scorched forest tiles were the only ones that would give any food, and barely any of it.

There was one other option.

Instead of going either north or south, I could go just a couple more tiles to the east and discover the next region. It couldn’t hurt, and discovering more of the map was always going to be a good thing. Plus there was the chance of it being a third, similar region to either the plains or volcanic regions. The chances of that were low, and it might set our search back a day, but we were already right there. Not to mention that it would keep us next to the border in case anything went wrong. It would do the most in regard to searching a wider area, too. Going either north or south would only expose a couple more tiles. Going east would discover a new region and search more tiles per movement point. Going north or south would only get a few new tiles within the unit’s view. Going east would get everything to its northeast, east, and southeast exposed.

More importantly, my gut was telling me to take the obvious best option.

That was why I sent the units eastward.

Then, while they traveled, I claimed a new lava lake tile to begin claiming territory toward the volcano and opened up the settlement info to check on the updated income.

With both the Drying Racks and Sparring Field completed, all that was left was to recruit the hunters. The labor was also high enough now that all of our military units would finish building in two days, which would have been really nice.

If we had population to use.

It was disappointing, but at least we would get one hunter unit.

Aside from that, we were getting one new technology a day which meant that the Gathering technology was finished. Unfortunately, the only thing it unlocked to build was a tile modification that required a population unit which meant we couldn’t build it. Fortunately, and more importantly, it was the pathway to unlocking more technologies to research.

Well, as soon as I managed to get to a point where research options could be completed in a single day, I got bumped to the next tier where research was more expensive than that. I expected that, to be fair. It wasn’t like I would get to go through the whole research tree getting every new technology in a single day. At least the cost only increased by five. Assuming that the technologies after it were going to increase by another five, that meant I would still be able to research the ones after it in just two days each.

Now, the obvious choice was Basic Crafting. I assumed that new building it unlocks would further boost our production, and the technology itself was going to unlock a good amount more. Getting Basic Crafting would open up Basic Weapons, Basic Tools, Tanning, Ceramics, Trapping, and Elite Hunters. That last one was my main target. Though, it might be better to get Basic Weapons, Tanning, Leatherworking, and then Elite Hunters. I assumed all of those would let me actually equip our units with better gear whereas Elite Hunters would be a new unit type.

It really depended on what would be better: the stats from a new unit type, and any potential abilities it might have, or equipping the unit with non-default equipment.

Fortunately, Thad was around to answer my question, taking a break in the shade of the Council Pavilion.

“Thad, I need some insight,” I said.

Thad looked up at me and nodded. “With? Wait, where’s Enna? Not used to seeing you without her.”

Enna woke me up in the morning through what seemed like a significant amount of pain. It turned out that it was every woman’s favorite time of the month for her, and she apparently had a reoccurring trend of having incredibly painful cramps. “She didn’t feel good. Told her to take the day off and to rest.”

“That girl must really feel sick if she couldn’t work through it.”

Well, she could have, but I didn’t want her to. She deserved a day off anyways.

“So, what is it you need?”

“You’re familiar with some of the previous games, so tell me what you think is probably going to be better. Going for the Elite Hunter technology, or getting the techs for weapons and armor.”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“What sort of materials we’ve got to work with. Considering we don’t even have any trees to harvest, we won’t even be able to make different gear out of wood. Hold on, let me get a bit more basic.”

“Please do. This system is more in-depth than what I’m used to.”

“So, let’s say you unlock a weapon technology. That gives you the option to equip our military with more diverse weapons. But we need to make those weapons out of something, right? They’ll get their default gear without having to worry about materials, but you need materials if you want to make anything else. That means wood, metal, monster parts—you name it. The weapon types themselves only have traits and modifiers. You know, something like a longbow might have longer range and boost the damage of whatever material it’s made out of. Let’s say the longbow uses a hundred and fifty percent of the material’s damage value. You use wood as a material. Wood has a base damage value of ten. Use that to make a longbow and the longbow will deal fifteen damage. Some materials can even add extra traits to a weapon or whatever. But the point is, all unlocking those technologies does is uh… let’s say, the technologies give you the blueprints—the instructions, for how to make something. But you’ve still got to go out there and gather the materials to make it.”

“Then unless we can get some materials, we’re not even going to be able to make anything. And I’m assuming that we can start getting materials by building some Gathering Camps, which require population to staff.”

“That’s right.”

“Then it’s going to be better to go for Elite Hunters. I’m assuming I’ll be able to upgrade my hunters into elites once I unlock that unit type?”

“You’ve got it.”

“Then that’s what I’ll do. Thanks for the explanation.”

Thad waved his arm at me to let me know it was no big deal. “Don’t worry about it. Not like I’m doing anything important right now. The building queue is done for actual buildings, so all I have to do is sit around until there’s something to do.”

“Alright. Take it easy. You’ve been hard at work these past few days.”

“I’ll make sure to. What do you plan on doing?”

“I’m going to look around the place. Talk to some of the others and get to know them some more. See what they think about everything and if they have any ideas we might not have thought of.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me.”

I nodded and turned to leave. “Thanks again. See you later, Thad.”

“Oh, one thing before you go.”

“Yeah?”

“I’d be careful around Sara. Now that she’s been cut off from Lucy, I have no idea how she might act.”

“Already planned on it. But thanks for the concern.”

Sara was already a potentially dangerous element before, and now she was likely in a position of extreme stress. That made her even more dangerous. Potentially.

But at the same time, I struggled to worry about her doing anything dangerous.

After all, I knew exactly how she felt.