Chapter 22 - Two week meeting part 2 (18 Jan 25)

Before Harold made a move, the weight of their predicament pressed heavily upon the room. The village's current lead hung in the balance, dependent on the swift decisions they were about to make. Harold didn't move the marker on the table this time.Instead, he pulled a slate closer and turned it so everyone could see."Before we go any further," he said, "I need to go over perks."That got everyone's attention.Harold took a moment to look around the room, his gaze steady and confident yet shadowed by a hint of fatigue. His leadership was evident in the way he carried the weight of their collective hopes. "Not the ones we've already earned," Harold continued, letting the silence underscore his authority. "The ones I planned around before we ever got pulled over. World firsts. Regional firsts. Individual thresholds. I'm gonna cover part of why it is so important and why we need to take some risks right now."Josh opened his mouth, then thought better of it and closed it again."I didn't write these down because they weren't guaranteed," Harold said. "I wrote them down because if we don't get them. It would harm our long-term standing in this basin and our standing as humanity as a whole. Last time, one of the Lords attempted to skip a lot of the foundational perks and hyper-specialize in stone. Importing much of what he needed. But when his source of stone was cut off by another lord, his territory collapsed. We need these general and world-first perks in order to stay in the lead."He tapped the slate once."We've already hit one. World's first Monster den clearance, that one wasn't as surprising as we have nearly double the soldiers being summoned as every other village." Harold took a quick sip of water as he continued talking. He could see the people around him paying attention to his words. "I guess one of the rare or epic-tier villages could have done it, but their losses would have been horrendous unless they threw adventurer bodies in as well. I don't like risking the adventurers that way, though.""They'll lose a random perk on death, and the amount of time it takes for them respawn will increase by half each time. The few people who have died already can attest that it's not comfortable. We've already had one person shy away from adventuring, feeling your death each time isnt something most people want to deal with.""Mark, what's the respawn timer on the guy that's died four times already?" Harold asked.Mark gave a quick snort but looked serious for a moment. "You know he died to a goblin, right? I'm not sure he's cut out for this life. But his respawn time is about 13 hours for his latest death. He's actually how we figured out how the timer increases. Each death, the timer goes up about 1.5 times. And it started with a 4-hour timer. It's pretty brutal. At ten deaths, you're losing about a week of time, and that will only increase."Harold nodded to Mark while a couple of the others discussed that in quiet voices. Marget was the one who actually spoke up."That rate of deaths and the timer increasing is unsustainable. We don't have a source of new adventurers without recruiting from other settlements. If we have full teams out for weeks at a time, it would be a massive manpower loss for us."Harold was already nodding as she talked. "Exactly the point I wanted to make, Margret, thank you. We need to cultivate these people. We can't afford to risk losing any of them. They are too important to our future plans.""Back to the perks and Den clearance, though. That gave us Quick Start, and Hale can attest to how much of a game-changer that one is."Hale nodded. "Soldiers are already feeling it.""Good," Harold said. "That one was mandatory, because of that, it will be easier to turn our soldiers into elites."He slid the slate slightly."Next are the settlement-based firsts. These are slower, but they stack with individual perks and the lord perks I get. I know they seem small, but they're additive. For example, combining the Efficiency and Yield perks can speed up our construction efforts by 10%, allowing us to build essential structures more quickly. and that will only go up as time goes on." Harold looked at Beth and Josh."First building. First communal housing block. First fortified perimeter. Those are all common and uncommon. We haven't gotten all of those, but I think we will get about 60% of those, and they will stack a ton of modifiers onto us. Furthermore, we can get more of these since they are based on the building material, so we can get another one if we get the world or region first again when using stone. What isn't known yet is that concrete does count for that.""Critical for all of these is that we were constructing on the first day. The majority of Lords took a few days to get organized and start building. Then almost all of them are still struggling. We were lucky enough to have the manpower to really throw into projects immediately."Beth frowned slightly. "We didn't know there were perks attached based on building material.""There are," Harold said. "Mostly boring ones. Efficiency. Yield. Reduced waste. Strength. They don't look flashy, but they compound. We're gonna need as many stone modifiers as possible since stone will be the primary building material in the future."Josh didn't smile this time. He leaned forward, forearms on the table."So those perks don't change what people cando," he said slowly. "They change how long they can keep doing it and how much we can get out of it."Harold nodded once. "Unless they get some kind of material perk that lets them manipulate that material, but yeah."Josh glanced around the room. "That means the settlement that gets those first doesn't just grow faster. They'll make fewer mistakes. Lose fewer people to dumb stuff. Burn out slower."He scratched the back of his neck. "Which means by the time anyone notices the difference, it's already too late to catch up."Beth looked at him, surprised.Harold allowed himself a slight nod. "They can also make learning easier, but yes, humanity's most successful regions in the past were all owned by one Lord who focused on getting as many boring modifiers as possible to make his people more productive."Harold moved on."Individual general perks," he said. "These are the ones everyone should eventually earn just by living and working."Margaret tilted her head. "You're assuming people won't sabotage themselves.""I'm planning around averages," Harold replied, wagging his hand.He ticked them off with his finger."For example, First sustained labor without injury. First week without missed rations. First night watch rotation without incident. These unlock endurance, focus, and fatigue resistance perks."Caldwell blinked. "Those don't sound rare.""They aren't," Harold said. "They're common and easy to miss, but they stack."He paused, then added, "Most settlements don't even know they exist until someone else advertises them on the forum. Once we get most of these, I'm going to put the how-tos for many of these perks on the forum so we can maintain our lead. I plan on using information like this as a way to cement my authority and knowledge among our people." As Harold spoke, a flicker of skepticism crossed Beth's face, her brow furrowing slightly. She exchanged a glance with Josh, who raised an eyebrow, as if silently questioning whether revealing these details might undermine Harold's control or lead to unforeseen consequences.He looked toward Hale."A lot of time training new troops isn't going to be about combat," Harold continued. "It's going to be about unlocking a sequence of basic perks. Endurance. Recovery. Discipline. The other part is mana exercises. Teaching them how to circulate it without hurting themselves. There are a couple of things I can unlock, and with some accomplishments, I can create perks soldiers can unlock that are condition-based. One of them is a challenge our scouts can complete to earn a better stealth perk. Things like that."Hale looked extremely interested in that but let his questions sit until later."Then there are the risky ones," Harold said. "The perks we choose to pursue."He touched the marker near the dungeon again."First, clear of a dungeon. That's a regional first. The perk tied to it is critical. Maintaining control of that dungeon matters even more because there are only two dungeons in this basin. Once we get control of that dungeon, we need to make sure it's being cleared as much as possible, which means adventurers need to be stationed there instead of elsewhere, and they won't like that. But we need the material we can get from it."Silence held for a moment."These perks aren't about raw power," Harold said. "They're about tempo. Like the heartbeat of survival, it drives us forward, getting faster, steadier, and harder to kill before the other races here outscale us."He glanced around the table."And for the time being, they make taking control of the other villages in the basin much easier."Josh spoke up. "You planned this before the world ended."Harold shrugged slightly. "It's hard to plan when you don't know how everything's going to go. I tried anyway."He walked over to the wall where a stack of slate tablets had been waiting. He picked them up and handed them out one by one."These are lists of perks and how to earn them," Harold said. "Mostly common. A couple of uncommon. All available to everyone."He looked around as people scanned the writing."Nothing flashy. I wouldn't be surprised if some people already have a few of these. I didn't distribute this earlier because I wanted people to learn them naturally. But we need to speed up, and this helps."He nodded toward the group. "Distribute that to your people."He took a breath before continuing."There are two other regional perks tied specifically to this basin. First is killing the region's monster leader. That's an adventurer job, eventually. The soldiers could do it, but we would lose far too many, and we don't have the equipment to do it. I'm estimating another year before we are ready to kill that Croc, and we absolutely must be the first ones to kill a regional boss. Unfortunately for us...the region boss here is an absolute monster. We need to increase our technology level."No one argued."The second is clearing both dungeons," Harold said. "Both are currently out of reach."He shifted topics without ceremony."The next world-level perk we need to push for is advancing from a village to a town. Most of the requirements are already in progress. Population is the biggest limiter. After that, it's support infrastructure and surplus food in the larder."He frowned slightly. "The system's vague about the exact thresholds. I'm extrapolating based on forum discussions from before. Some of it feels arbitrary."He looked up again."Sorry. That was a lot to dump on you all at once."He rested his hands on the table."Questions?"Beth spoke first, frowning slightly as she reviewed her slate."On the town upgrade," she said. "If population is the main limiter, do we risk hitting it before the settlement can actually support it? We're not exactly slowing intake."Harold shook his head. "We're not stopping summons. We need the experts it brings. The tools. The soldiers. Cutting that off would hurt us more than rushing."He tapped the table once. "The solution isn't fewer people. It's building fast enough to absorb them."Beth nodded. "Alright. That's workable."Caldwell followed, adjusting his stack of slates as he looked for an exact one."About the surplus food requirement," he said. "Does the system count raw stock, or does it need to be processed?"Harold exhaled quietly. "I believe it's processed."He shrugged slightly. "The system doesn't actually tell me. I'm extrapolating from old forum discussions and what people complained about. Raw food spoiled on them and didn't count. It doesn't help that we don't have salt."Caldwell grimaced. "That tracks.""Plan for processed," Harold said. "If I'm wrong, we lose some efficiency. If we plan for raw and I'm wrong, we lose too much food."Caldwell nodded once. "Understood."The room settled again, everyone recalibrating around the constraints they couldn't argue with.​Across the table, Evan and Mark exchanged a look.Evan cleared his throat. "On the regional monster leader and the dungeons," he said. "We'd like to talk through that with you later. Just the adventurer side of it."Mark added, "Not now. Just… when you've got time."Harold didn't hesitate."Yeah," he said. "We'll sit down later and go over how adventurers fit into this world. What I expect from them, and what I'm planning to give them in return."The brothers relaxed slightly at that."I'm not using adventurers as expendable scouts," Harold continued. "They're not a resource to burn through. They're how we deal with problems soldiers shouldn't be handling."He looked directly at them. "If I'm asking them to risk themselves, I'll be building systems to support them. Better intel. Better gear. Better recovery."Mark nodded once. "That's what we needed to hear."Harold let the moment settle."Alright," he said. "If there aren't any more questions, we'll break here. Get your people spun up and be back here in 15 minutes. We have one last topic to go over."The chairs shifted. Slates were gathered.The meeting dissolved back into motion.