Two weeks passed. In that time, we became an independent faction, assimilated a minor faction, threatened another major faction, claimed a volcano, acquired two settlements, lost one of our starting units to giant crabs, and found a good assortment of rare biomes all around our starting area that we could rapidly work toward now that we had such a high daily influence income.

Seventeen influence a day was huge for us. I struggled to imagine anybody having a higher influence income than us, but I wasn’t about to assume we were the only ones who got lucky with features that boost influence.

That aside, with seventeen influence, we could afford two tiles connected to our main settlement going by the full cost of six each.

But the one tile was discounted due to being connected to three tiles, so that only cost five instead of six influence, and we got a free lava lake tile due to completely surrounding it. So, that was two tiles for the cost of five influence, leaving us with twelve influence for two more tiles at full price.

That allowed me to claim the tile with the Big Game modifier at full price, and that caused the tile immediately to its right to have three adjacent tiles connected to it for another discount. It would only save, and leave us with, one influence, but every little bit would matter in the long run.

As for the tile with a feature to the right of the Big Game tile, it wasn’t exactly anything special.

More happiness was always nice, though.

So, with four new tiles, we gave our food a tiny boost, got another point of science, and earned sixteen new labor a day.

The Fluff Bison could be acquired for six influence tomorrow, then that would leave us with two tiles connected to the Frost Chameleons for another full-price claim, and that would leave us with five influence plus the one leftover from today, so six in total for a third tile tomorrow.

But honestly, with our territory already as large as it is for a single settlement, I would rather spend those excess points on Mount Hound. Six influence would be enough for three tiles at Mount Hound, and Mount Hound needed to increase its resource gain so that it could be a more useful settlement. It had good, nearby features, too, so it would be a waste to not get those claimed. So, tomorrow would bring us two new tiles for New Liberty and three new tiles for Mount Hound.

Speaking of Mount Hound, the Crafters’ Tent finished which meant that the Workers’ Tent and Drying Racks were up next. Both would get finished in a day due to the leftover labor from finishing the Crafters’ Tent. Between those and the new tiles we’d be claiming, it might be best to queue up some Volcanic Predators at Mount Hound to boost our numbers. The Workers’ Tent would take Mount Hound up to thirty-three labor a day, which would give us one Volcanic Predator unit every five days, and claiming new tiles for Mount Hound would probably boost that up to four days.

“Actually,” I said out loud to myself while looking at the map. “If we claim those three lava lake tiles to the north of Mount Hound, that’s another twelve labor a day. That will take us up to forty-five labor a day after the Workers’ Tent finishes. That’s enough for one Volcanic Predator just over every three days, which means we’d need to boost it a bit more. What’s that feature again?”

That feature on the third lava lake tile just might be enough to boost our labor and get those Volcanic Predators done every three days.

I remembered why it didn’t stand out to me before. It was just another duplicate. But, more science is never a bad thing, so I still planned on getting that tile even if it wouldn’t get our Volcanic Predators done within three days instead of just over three days. I’d always be able to claim more tiles the day after anyways.

Alternatively, we could grab the woodland tiles since they offered the same base stats as the lava lake, and we could build gathering camps on them to gather, what I assumed would be, wood. It would also be bold and announce just how close our territory is to the other faction’s. A power play, claiming territory just outside of their own.

I wasn’t opposed to that, but I wanted the lava lake tiles first since that would get us some more science. Then we’d go for the forest tiles.

With that being settled, it was time to get productive for the day. Productive meaning… talk to the others and play simple games with each other since there was nothing else for us to do.

So, I stepped outside my tent.

“Oh! Good morning, Alpha!” said a man standing just outside of the tent who I didn’t recognize. He was as tall as me… and a member of the Volcano Hounds. He was also the first male I had seen of their species, and the fact that he looked naked from what I could see concerned me a bit. There was nothing anywhere from his waist up aside from the metal collar around his neck.

When I looked down…

I let out a sigh of relief that he had a metal slab matching the ones over the girls’ breasts that covered up his crotch and behind him. He still left extremely little to the imagination, but leaving something to the imagination was better than leaving nothing to the imagination.

At least now I knew that all of the Volcano Hounds were one step away from being nudists.

“Morning,” I said. “And ‘Alpha?’”

The Volcano Hound male nodded with a bright, energetic smile. “It’s what we call our leader! The Alpha!”

That made me think back to the researcher from Earth who originally came up with the whole alpha dynamic in wolf packs only to refute their own research later on, debunking it.

Now, here were actual people that looked like humans mixed with wolves who refer to their leader as the Alpha.

I jokingly called myself an ‘alpha male’ when shitposting on the internet, but I never expected to get unironically called it.

Hopefully, there weren’t any minor factions who had a habit of called their leader Sigma. I didn’t want the “sigma male” meme to come true.