So apparently donating spells to become purchasable in the mage tower could also increase his contribution to the town and grant him credits for their purchase.

That meant exactly what it sounded like. Aki spent the next twelve hours messing around with low level spells to both fill out his pockets and his skill tab.

After about twenty skills formed however, a forced fusion began and he was left with Green grade skills for free form casting of anything elementally related to fire, air, earth, water, light and darkness.

Then again, that was around 124 skill points in twelve hours just from the spells, so he wasn't much complaining since he also didn't want to practice everything for ten thousand hours.

Not like he was stupid enough to believe having a shit ton of low level skills would be of any actual use for long if he didn't put at least some of them in the higher hundreds.

Even now his grinding speed was not as good as it could be. He needed a proper training method in a safe space if he wanted to actually get anywhere near his goal too.

He didn't have unlimited mana anymore, and this was still the apocalypse, so of course shit could happen when he had his pants down.

[Your village has visitors.]

And now he had to go greet his prospective tenants.

As he had not yet named it, all that came to mind were cringy ass names really, his village still lacked a few features in it's infrastructure, but those were nearly decorative until he upgraded the place into a town so that didn't matter much.

Rather, he had to welcome the first actual human of his area to finish the tutorial. Perhaps they were even in a party! His Nexus node only worked for humans though, so none of those from other species would have left their tutorial to find themselves here unless they had been smack dab in this piece of nowhere.

The only reason he'd even put his village here was that he thought maybe the invaders had been put next to some good resources.

"Howdy strangers. Congratulations on finishing your tutorial so fast. I'm Aki and this here is my rapidly put together village. Yes I am an earthling and made the armour I'm wearing. If you have any questions about this place please visit that wooden hall right there." He quickly said his pitch, waving over the older couple shielding a blonde child behind them.

"You… what? I just got a notification saying I am the first human to finish the tutorial in this area, how could you have come here and already started building all this if you were also a human!?" Exclaimed the male, drawing the sword he'd been holding onto for a bit now.

"Because I got stuck out of the tutorial." He shrugged. There wasn't any way that he could actually convince the man that he was not a threat. The situation was just that stressing and the amount of time they spent acclimating to their new reality was completely different. "I'm not going to be forcing you to stay or anything, but the village manager, someone who was specifically hired by the system to deal with explanations of this sort, should be here any, there you are. Show them some proof of authority or something already, I thought you'd already talked to them inside the teleportation room or something and now they are super at edge because I came to introduce myself." Aki said, first talking with the man but abruptly turning to a third point and referring to the materialising elf lady.

She seemed momentarily disgruntled at his reaction, as if he thought her completely without tasks to manage in such a new outpost, but she had to do her job.

"Welcome users, I am Lala, the spirit manager." Despite using what Aki considered to be a creepy ghost entrance and an alarmingly sweet voice, the manager seemed to have partially disarmed their visitors quite a bit.

As she started her own explanation, it was easy to see that the small family hung onto her every word, the girl even seemed enchanted with the fairy-like woman.

Aki really wanted to start working on developing either an easily retractable armour or a spatial pocket to store things, but he simply didn't have the expertise for the former or the stats for the later.

He'd tried. He wasn't figuring out what happened if he took longer than it took for a small tentacle tip to pass before closing the damn rift.

At least he had some bags of holding while he couldn't buy better space pockets.

"But what about him then?" Asked the older man.

"I don't follow. That is the village founder." Pointed out the manager.

"What is he?"

"Dude, I'm right here. I'm eighteen, brazilian, and not making a show out of this. If you don't think it is safe here then just get your class and skedaddle, I'm not stopping you." Aki shrugged again, looking at the bald and tall man leaving the teleportation hub. "Hello there sir, congratulations on sur…"

"Shut up kid, I have business with these idiots here." He sneered, threateningly looking at all present as he walked closer. The little girl ran towards the manager and both the adults took out their weapons. "Did you think you could run away? That amulet is mine. Don't think I won't hurt the kid to get it either because when I'm done with you I will make sure it hurts when she…"

He didn't get to finish, a mana orb caving his head in from above before the body caught fire and quickly burned to cinders, the ashes quickly scattering to the winds and the burn marks on the stone disappearing just as quickly.

"And it's because of idiots like him that I didn't bother to take off my helmet." Aki sneered, unsummoning his grimoire without anyone having even noticed it to begin with. “Sorry you had to see that. This doesn’t change things though, you can still come and go as you please.” He explained, though neither of the adults seemed to much believe him, and the little girl didn’t much understand what had just happened for one reason or the other.

Things got a bit awkward from there, but miss good cop had things working again in no time. As time passed, more and more people started to come, the village growing buildings out of the ground as Lea brought back more and more city tokens.

There were a few more incidents where he had to kill assholes, which caused some panic, there even being a guy that leveled up to ten and came back to kill him or so he declared, but he also died quickly enough after refusing to even listen. Something about freedom or whatever.

The job was extremely boring and awkward, but it just needed to be done, so he powered through it while strategizing his growth.

Around midnight, Aki was finally relieved of his greeting job as the spirit manager informed him that there was to be a monster horde attack coming in a few minutes.

Luckily there was already someone who'd taken command, so he didn't even need to mind the collection of the corpses. The man was in his late thirties perhaps, tanned and with graying hair from stress, but definitely one of the top ten beauties around with his broad shoulders, heroic nose and trimmed black beard all agreeing with his muscled body about how much of an Adonis he was.

"Aki, seeing that you are here, am I to assume you will also participate?" Robert asked, his imposing figure barely turning to refer to the new arrival.

"I will make sure no one dies, but that's it. Just don't go about divulging it ok? I'm no baby sitter, and this isn't something I will always be here to help with either." His answer seemed to satisfy the man.

Some people simply didn't adjust to the new reality as fast as others. Robert had been successfully leading a growing group ever since the beginning of the tutorial.

"I see you have still not taken a class. A wise choice I'd say, you're one of the few that seem to have things figured out. As long as you form a reliable chain of service around you the city lord class will be yours." He noted, trying to break the ice.

"It'd take time though. I'm not sure I will be listened to if I try and put in the time to accumulate enough contribution. Class skills grant a lot of power." His deep voice resounded with a bit of resignation, but he also gave a quick glance to the young man standing beside him.

"True, but that's only if you want to take my so-called privileges from me. I can appoint whoever I want as city lord." The revelation made the older man lose focus on the battlefield for a moment, a mana orb hitting a wolf about to grapple one of the defenders. "You could be the prime minister administering in the stead of your incompetent and young monarch." Which he was, because fuck if he understood actual administrative work or charismatically making people work for you, that wasn't for him and he didn't want it. Leaving the whole thing to the spirit manager was dangerous as she didn't yet have any connection to this planet and could leave after the end of her minimun term, leaving behind a basic AI, which would fuck everybody when it happened.

Not like he trusted her enough to actually allow for such problem to even begin happening however.

"This is a rather heavy proposal. I would like to think about it."

"Don't think too hard on it. I know you are gathering lieutenants already, so just let me see how well you can do the job. If I see you going full crazy dictator I will be sure to warn you even."

With that exchange done, they stood at attention to help with the horde when necessary. After a couple of hours, the whole affair was done, and Aki was able to give the job of dealing with troublemakers to someone else. Not that he wouldn't be up for helping, just they were expected to not need him.

Zone conquered in one day. It was that easy with his current power. Had he not received the Nexus node then he'd need to look for survivors and things would have gone much slower, but this was bound to happen one way or the other.

Going for his room in the wooden town hall, Aki was completely uninterrupted. As he actually got there though, he couldn't help but notice how there was a couple doing their business in the room next door. It was the apocalypse so of course they needed to release some stress, and it didn't sound like a rape scene considering the declarations, so he just went to look for another place in which to quietly train, eventually settling in the hunter's guild training grounds. At least that trope made a bit of sense.

Taking out his gauntlets, he then slashed his left arm before putting a finger into the wound and widening it enough to drop some drops of a weak acid he'd bought onto it.

Now he was poisoned, melting and under excruciating pain, so he needed to start producing a training halberd, get used to mid ranged combat while spell casting. It'd be good if he could have the safe zone's tripled regeneration on his side, but the training grounds increased regeneration by fifty percent, so it wasn't like he wasn't getting anything either.