“I do suppose that it would be best to avoid speaking of such a sore topic.” Kain replied, switching his attention back to the Menu. He looked over it again, searching through it to see if he could find anything new or old within it that was even remotely worthwhile. Eventually, though, he stumbled upon a feature that he had long since stopped using for one reason or another.

Perhaps due to his nation’s continued expansion in territory, resources, technology, and population, the ‘Buildings’ tab now sported quite a number of new things that he could add. Of course, like the earliest buildings, these were also only able to be formed in that pseudo-space that made them both exist and not exist simultaneously.

The new structures/ power-ups were nothing all that special at first glance. He did schedule some of the older stuff to finally be built, but there were a few new things that he was on the fence about. He read through their descriptions, and those were the big reason why he was so hesitant to order the menu to make them in the first place.

To be clear, he wasn’t sure whether these potential dangers existed merely as fluff/ flavor text or actually would impact things, but while he had not gotten to his current position by not taking risks, there were certain risks that simply should not be taken. One of the buildings that were listed, the Baskerville Hunting Grounds, had description text that stated the following.

“A haunted realm, patrolled by ever-hungry monstrous canines that bridge the gap between life, death, and undeath. Any who step foot within them will find that their fates shall end in a brutal death, torn to shreds by ravenous lupine creatures that appear from nowhere in the dead of night, bringing a heart-stopping terror to the weak-willed and a gruesome death by claws and fangs to those too foolish to flee and never return.”

Now, what Kain got from that was a mixed bag. On the one hand, it likely meant that the already dangerous prospect of invading Darksol and its puppet states would be even more dangerous, as there would now be roving bands of feral dogs, Fel Hounds, and maybe something else stalking the lands by night. On the other hand, the wording made it rather obtuse as to whether allies or even neutral parties would find their nights to be dangerous as well.

Kain would have asked the Menu to clarify the exact effects of that building, among others, but the menu was being rather bitchy. Of course, it had good reason to be, as Kain had neglected the use of it for a decent while, which almost certainly hurt its feelings. Kain therefore decided to avoid building anything for now, and instead focused on the Menu’s other myriad uses.

One of which was a more… well… visually impressive usage. It was a relatively new thing, but one he had dabbled in a bit before. Now, Kain wasn’t the best at making things in a virtual environment that both looked good and were actually effective at the same time, but he was good at doing one or the other. This was one of the reasons he was now far more invested in this little application, which essentially let him design actual buildings and other such things.

Now, as you, the readers, might know, Darksol is, well, Aesthetically Evil. That is not to say that Darksol itself is actually pure evil, just that it has a bad habit of having a very Evil-looking appearance to everything. And while it is true that Darksol and its vassals had done a lot of nasty things, they had steered clear of some of the more… inhumanly evil actions, only directing its full-blown malice towards those who some might consider to be deserving.

Okay, maybe that last part isn’t entirely true, but it was how things had been for the most part. Regardless of all of that, Darksol’s general architecture was something you might see from a Generic Evil Fantasy Faction, but that by no means mean that the people themselves were evil. Just as someone could have a potent love of violent, gory, near-snuff-porn entertainment but still be absolutely the nicest, most loving and least violent and bloodthirsty person you’d ever meet, Darksol itself had a deep love of what most would consider ‘Evil Architecture’.

And so, this was why the tool Kain was using was so fun to mess with. He had used it before, back before the tree-hugging militant hippies from Arcfira attacked. Back then, he had created a decent number of fortifications, even creating a whole line of them that was able to both be psychologically imposing and also decently defensible.

Now he was back to that and drafting designs for even more sinister constructs. Towers that were covered in spikes which themselves were covered in razor-sharp barbs would soon begin to appear here and there, their tops each holding a large crystal that burned with balefire. These would serve both as light for those who traveled by night and also as generic maa-shooting towers that would aid in defense. While their shots traveled slowly, they would never miss and would seek their target until they eventually caught and hit them, inflicting all manner of debilitating effects upon their victims.

Other structures soon appeared to aid these, such as large, dark granite bowls filled with a bubbling red liquid that was the consistency of blood. These would emit an aura that invigorated both the living and the dead, so long as they were on Darksol’s side, and an enemy that endured prolonged exposure would slowly slip into an ever-deepening blood-frenzy that would see them attack their own in fits of madness.

However, Kain only had so many ideas bumping around in his head, and while those two were useful, they were not nearly the limits of what he felt he could do with this little tool. Therefore, he decided that tomorrow morning he would issue a challenge to the nation as a whole. Any man, woman, or child, living or undead, could put forward an idea for something that could be added as a construct. Their designs would be evaluated, and when they were compared, a few winners would be chosen.

To the victor would go… something. Kain hadn’t thought of what the reward would be yet, and he figured that it would come to him sooner or later. However, the contest would undoubtedly give the nation more stuff to do things with, and hopefully that stuff would be less offense/ defense-oriented and more civilian/ economically orientated in nature.