She nodded. “That will be fine. I’ll be happy to provide you supplies.”
“Thanks,” I said, beaming at her before turning to the remaining peasants. “Roy, can you go with her and then take them hunting? We’re going to have lots of hungry peasants. We’ll need lots of food.”
“Yeah, I’ll take care of it,” Roy replied as a train of ten peasants began to follow behind Dora. Then he spun on his heel and made his way after them.
As I watched them go, I turned back to the remaining people gathered who looked at me like they were waiting for orders. There was the locksmith who had taught me earlier as well as the priest who had buffed me when I’d been with Sabre. In addition, there was a tanner, a baker, a trapper, a fisherman, and a carpenter. Interesting.
Before the peasants could all get out of range, I selected four of them, causing them to stop mid-movement and turn to look at me.
“Can two of you go with the fisherman and two of you go with the trapper?” I asked, and when they nodded, I turned to the craftsmen. “These guys will help you. Get what you need from Dora, and then go do your thing, okay?”
“Will do!” Ronnie the Fisherman said as he grabbed two of the peasants and began marching them off, while the Josh the Trapper turned to regard me.
“You want me to trap for meat or hide?” he asked, staring at me expectantly. “I mean, obviously all animals will provide some of both, but depending on what you want, we set different traps.”
“What does hide do?” I replied, not sure what hide would be used for.
“Hide is a crafting material, used to make armor and various other items,” Josh responded, shrugging at me like it was common knowledge, and maybe it was, just not common for me.
“Go for hide then,” I said, rubbing my chin. “I’m pretty sure we’ll have enough food between Roy’s group and the fishermen.”
“As you wish,” he said, swinging into a bow before turning and grabbing his two peons. “Let’s go you apes. Josh has got a lot to learn ya.”
As I watched them go, I turned back to the baker and sent him to help those making camp before turning to the carpenter, and like with the cook and Kapre, a menu opened above his head, only none of the buildings he could make seemed very useful since we already had shops for nearly every profession already. I was about to dismiss him to go help make camp when a couple structures caught my eye.
Fletcher’s Shop
Durability: 1000
Use: Allows the creation of Fletchers. A Fletcher can create various types of arrows.
Cost: 100 Thatch, 1000 Wood, 500 Fiber, 100 Stone
Apothecary
Durability: 1000
Use: Allows creation of Apothecaries. An Apothecary can create various types of potions.
Cost: 500 Thatch, 1000 Wood, 100 Fiber, 100 Stone
Music Shop
Durability: 1000
Use: Allows the creation of Musicians. A Musician will increase the abilities of nearby NPCs.
Cost: 300 Thatch, 1000 Wood, 300 Fiber, 100 Stone
My mouth dropped open. All of those would be useful, but the costs seemed pretty high. Still, the music shop definitely seemed the most doable. While it wouldn’t give much advantage on its own, per se, the musicians could make everyone better.
Still, for now, I didn’t have the materials to make use of this guy quite yet. Having him stand around would be sort of prohibitive, but I didn’t want to send him out where he could get killed. That would put a huge damper on the whole building stuff thing.
“Carl,” I said, addressing the carpenter, “can you and Polluck go help make camp?” Then I selected the two peasants I’d originally sent to help the cooks and had one go off to join the fisherman, and the other go to join the trapper.
They both gave me grudging nods as everyone began to go about their work, but I didn’t let it bother me. Everything was going according to plan. Now, I just had to hope my friends finished their quests in time for it to matter.
34
“I understand the problem!” I snapped, glaring at the Kapre as I looked over our pitiful haul of materials. There was no way we were going to get enough for it to matter, and while I didn’t particularly care about the NPCs, I did care about slowing down the Skeleton King’s siege until we could defeat him. “I’m just not sure how you want me to fix it.”
“Well, you’d better find out because without more workers to gather materials, we won’t have enough infrastructure built to mount any kind of defense,” the Kapre said, and the sad thing was, he was right. Even with Gereng using haste on everyone, it’d been an hour and besides getting the basecamp by the fountain set up, we’d barely managed a handful of sections of wall. We just didn’t have the material.
“Well, I know what we have to do!” George cried, turning toward the assembled peons and rubbing his paws together. “Come on, ladies. It’s time to get bizay!”
“No,” I sighed, shaking my head at the rabbit. “We don’t have that kind of time.” The sad thing was, ethical issues aside, even if I wanted to make all the female peasants produce children, according to the menus above their heads, it would take almost twelve hours to go from pregnant to full grown peasant. To be fair, it wasn’t that long, but it was a lot longer than we had at the moment. Worse, there would be a four hour gap during that time in which someone would have to care for the babies, and that was something I did not want to deal with.
No, we needed workers. Fast.
As I stared at the stone and wood pouring in, I huffed. The problem was twofold. Gathering took time and both stone and wood were heavy, so the peasants couldn’t carry a lot back by themselves.
I scratched my chin as I watched the parade of peasants rolling in with handfuls of stone. Maybe… maybe there was a better way.
With that thought, I turned back toward the carpenter who was trying unsuccessfully to tend to a peasant who had smashed his own foot with a pickaxe because he had rolled a one on one of his swings. Sigh. Stupid critical failures.
“Hey, Carl,” I said, moving toward his as I made the assembled peasants return to their menial tasks. Part of me felt bad about the whole ordering them around like slaves thing, but they were NPCs and NPCs had to gather materials. It was how the world worked.
“Yeah, boss?” Carl said, shaking out his sandy hair as he looked up from the bandaged peasant. “Want me to do something else I don’t know how to do?” He gestured at the bloody foot wrapped in bandages. “Maybe sing a song or dance a jig?”
“Nope,” I said, ignoring his grumbling. Let’s just say I’d been to this particular rodeo before, and not only had I ridden this bull, but I had the T-shirt to boot. “I was wondering if you could craft some wagons, that way they could put their stuff in the wagons and then go back to work while one carries it.”
Carl scratched at his blond beard thoughtfully as a menu icon appeared overhead. “I think so…”
Human Drawn Cart
Durability: 100
Use: Can be used by a single Peasant to carry up to 1500 pounds of material.
Cost: 10 Thatch, 100 Wood, 10 Fiber, 5 Metal
Horse Drawn Cart
Durability: 500
Use: Can be used by a single horse to carry up to 5500 pounds of material.
Cost: 50 Thatch, 500 Wood, 50 Fiber, 25 Metal
“Um, do we have horses?” I asked, tearing my eyes from the menu and turning them onto Carl.
“I don’t,” Carl said, shrugging at me. “What do you want me to do?”
“Chill for a second,” I replied, moving away from him and approaching Cain. “Say, do we have any horses in town?”
“No horses,” Cain replied with a shake of his head. “No large pack animals of any sort.” He stroked his beard. “They’re not common in these lands at all.”
“Drat!” I growled, annoyance filling my voice. The horse carts would be much better, but either way, the normal carts would be a lot better than we had now. “Hey, Carl, can you craft six cart
s?”
“With pleasure,” Carl said in a way that didn’t make me think it was particularly pleasurable, but I was going to roll with it because as he spoke, a bar appeared over his head indicating he was starting to craft an item, and it would take ten minutes to complete. So, an hour to make all six. That would help, but we’d still be losing a lot of time.
Either way, there was no way around it. We needed more people, and not just a couple more. No we needed at least three times what we had. It was time to change the game. Hopefully.
“Once those carts are done, stick two by each of the gates and rotate them,” I said, addressing Carl before turning to the Kapre. “Work on assembling the stone walls. By my estimates we’ll need forty foundations and forty walls. Make sure half have window frames.”
The Kapre muttered something in response, but I was too busy moving toward the north gate.
“Um… shouldn’t you be here to supervise?” George asked, hopping along beside me.
“Yeah, probably, but at the moment, we’re super low on workers and we need more.” I shot the bunny a wry grin. “But I’ve got a plan.”
“Why do I think your plan doesn’t involve drunken orgies?” George asked, the disgust obvious in his voice.
“You’ve got me,” I said as I exited the gate and tried not to notice how dismal our defenses looked. Due to the shortage of materials, we’d only been able to extend the stone walls out from the gated area two sections on either side, and it was only had gone one section high. I knew we’d need at least three to four sections high to keep them from scaling it with ease, plus we still had to build platforms for the archers to stand on… you know, assuming we got archers.
Hell, we hadn’t even crafted a real gate, but that was partially because I really wanted to use metal for the gate because it’d be the most likely place they’d try to break through, and we really couldn’t have that. Still, none of that was going to matter if I didn’t find more workers. Fortunately, I had an idea.
“You going to explain yourself?” George asked as we made our way across the plains and into the dense forest. “Because you’ve passed the area where the peasants are mining and what not.” George turned and pointed back behind us.
“Dude, do you think I’m going to mine myself?” I asked, incredulous as I showed him my open palms. “These hands were not made for manual labor.” I shook my head at him in disbelief. “That’s why I became an engineer.”
“So you could be lazy?” the rabbit said, narrowing his eyes at me. “No one likes someone who doesn’t help.”
“Firstly, I am running this whole show,” I said, waving my hand back toward the town. “There’s nothing to do until the preps are done, and unfortunately, that shit is taking too long. In six hours, the Skeleton King’s siege will begin, and at this rate, they’ll walk around everything we’ve built and murderize us.”
“Which is why you should be helping to gather materials,” George admonished, but instead of replying, I waved him off.
“Shush,” I said as we approached the goblin cache. Like before, there were three goblins sitting around it playing that weird game with the chicken bones. It was a little surreal because the last time I’d been here, I’d been ten levels lower, and they’d nearly killed me. It felt like forever ago, but it really hadn’t been more than a day.
“Boss, what are you doing?” George asked as I stepped out of the brush and waved at the goblins. “Don’t you remember how many of them there are?”
“Hello,” I called, smiling brightly. “How’s the game going?”
“You!” the goblin about to throw his chicken bone snapped, turning his yellow eyes upon me as he leapt to his feet and pointed a warty green finger at me. “How dare you come back here!?”
“I come in peace,” I said as the other two jumped to their feet and whipped out their short swords.
“And you’ll leave in pieces,” the left one snarled, drawing his thumb across his throat and making a “snkt” noise.
“Or, I give you all the chance not to die,” I replied, walking casually toward them. It was a bit harder than it looked since, while I wasn’t afraid of these three necessarily, their horde scared the crap out of me. “It’s a simple choice. Die or live. I know which I’d choose.” I covered my mouth with my hand conspiratorially. “It’d be live.”
“Look, bub. Clearly you’re a bit dull, but even if you kill us, the horde will avenge us!” the goblin in the center said, leaping onto the trunk they’d been playing on and scattering the pieces of their game everywhere.
“What the fuck, Gromarty?” the right one snarled, glaring at the center goblin. “You just knocked all the pieces off because you were losing. Admit it.”
“Shut your whore mouth!” Gromarty shrieked, turning his angry yellow eyes on the goblin who’d dared to open his whore mouth. “I did no such thing.”
“The horde is exactly what I’m looking for,” I replied, confidently before picking a piece of non-existent lint from my shoulder. “I need every last goblin’s help to keep you all alive.”
“Um… boss,” George said, tugging on my pant leg while pointing at the surrounding bushes. They’d practically come alive with goblin eyes that glared daggers at us from everywhere. A sudden tremor rippled down my spine as I looked around. I’d forgotten just how many there were, and while I wasn’t quite sure how many goblins I could take now that I was level fourteen, I was willing to bet it wasn’t the hundred plus goblins I saw surrounding us.
“Awesome, you’re all here,” I said, swallowing down my sudden pang of fear. I had to be confident or this wouldn’t work. “I was hoping you could hear my offer.”
“No one wants to hear anything you have to say, adventurer,” Gromarty snapped, leaping off the trunk and disrupting what remained of the game pieces. “We only want to chop you up and eat you.” He licked his lips. “The only question is whether you’d be better with ketchup or ranch.”
I tried to ignore his question and continue on because it was totally ridiculous. I mean, the answer was obviously ranch. Everything always tastes better with ranch.
“If you do that, you’ll die. The choice is yours, really.” I shrugged. “Besides, we both know the correct answer to that question. It’s both.”
As Gromarty opened his mouth to reply, the right one shot him a withering glare that made him shut his trap.
“What choice is that, adventurer?” asked the right goblin asked, sheathing his sword and coming toward me.
“The Skeleton King’s army is coming to ravage these lands in the next couple hours. When he does that, I’m pretty sure you’re all going to die.” I raised my hands palm up and took a deep breath before blowing it out with my teeth. “But I may be able to help you avoid that.”
The goblin looked at me for a long time as if measuring what I had to say. “We do not need your help. We are goblins. We will fight them until their bones are ground beneath the might of our horde.” He raised his fist into the air, and as he did, a war cry burst from the bushes surrounding me and the pounding of war drums filled my ears. “For we are goblins. We will fight until the last of our enemies dies thrashing and bleeding on the battlefield.”
“Or, you join forces with me, and we fight together and win.” I quirked a grin at the goblin. “Because I’m going to win, and not only that, I’m going to kill the Skeleton King. Then, instead of dying or whatever, you can bask in the glory of his defeat.”
“What you say cannot be done. The Skeleton King cannot be killed,” the goblin replied, shaking his head. “And we do not ally ourselves with liars.”
“Would a liar have this?” I asked, pulling the Medallion of Courage free and holding it out in front of myself. “The Sword of Infinite Sorrows is being forged as we speak, and we have already recovered the Broach of the Fallen Warrior.”
“Then why do you need us, oh, valiant warrior?” the goblin said, and the derision in his voice was obvious. “You have everything you need.”
“We need men. The town needs men.” I nodded to the goblins. “In order to beat the Skeleton King, we need everyone to fight him together. The humans in town cannot do it alone, and I’d guessing you goblins cannot either.”
“We do not fear death,” the goblin replied, moving closer to me. “Do you think us cowards?”
“No, I think you’re mighty warriors.” I knelt down so I was eye level with the green-skinned creature. “But more than that, I know you guys can build anything. That’s where we need help. We have to complete the defenses before the Skeleton King arrives, and when it comes to building stuff, us humans pale in comparison to goblin engineering.”
“You wish us to build?” the goblin replied, shock filling his voice as he looked me up and down. Behind him, I could hear murmuring from the bushes.
“Yes, I wish you to build,” I said, nodding. “What’s more, the town has agreed to let you guys continue to live inside it afterward as payment. In short, by helping, you will have ensured a home in the town for future generations and be given exclusive trading rights.”
“Your deal has merit.” The goblin said, narrowing his eyes at me. “How do I know you can deliver what you promise?”
I knew then that I had him. I mean, sure I’d made up that other stuff about sharing and trade, but that would come during the after part of the siege. If we lost, it wouldn’t matter because we were dead. If we won, I could finish the quest and skip town to let the NPCs argue amongst themselves. Sure, it may have been a dick move, but I needed to win and no skill I could think of was going to allow me to withstand a siege by myself with all of four sections of wall.
“I’m the mayor of the town. Just bring your people over,” I said, nodding to them. “See for yourself.” With that, I turned on my heel and strode back toward the Town of Silver Gables, confident they’d follow.
35
“Well, I guess that’s one way to get more people,” George said as goblin workers bustled about, helping the peasants collect materials. Now, thanks to the addition of the goblins, we now had enough materials coming in to maybe build something before the siege.
Soulstone: The Skeleton King: A LitRPG Novel (World of Ruul Book 2) Page 23