Chương 76: Chapter 73: Changes Realized

When I finally opened my eyes, the morning sun was streaming through the window, though it didn't look like it had been up for very long. I quickly pulled up my status and wasn't surprised to find I hadn't even slept long enough to trigger the standard Well Rested passive bonus. Despite that, I felt absolutely incredible. My body and internal energy reserves felt like I was eighteen years old again, but multiplied tenfold. I felt as refreshed as if I'd just turned in a solid twelve hours of deep sleep.

Denise, of course, was already out of bed. With the sun fully up, she'd naturally be over in the big gym's kitchen. I figured I should just get used to calling that building the Great Room, because that's exactly what it had become. It was the heart of the community now—the place everyone went for communal meals and conversation. If you needed to track someone down and they weren't answering on the radio, the Great Room was always your first stop.

If the person you wanted wasn't sitting at a table, someone nearby would inevitably know exactly which corner of the campus they were working in. Before throwing off the covers and leaving my comfy bed, I decided to pull up the primary settlement interface to inspect some of the new developmental pathways Novus had unlocked.

I still needed to physically slot our harvested mana crystals to power up different sections, but for now, I just wanted to see what default options were already active thanks to claiming the crystal core. As I'd noted the night before, our perimeter wall was fully established and we could easily manage our static defense placements. What I'd completely failed to notice during the initial chaos, however, was that the layout of the iron gates was modular.

As part of the core's automated repair and restructuring functions, I could physically alter the footprint of various facilities. The listed modifications were significant, and they stood to drastically improve the day-to-day quality of life for the people living here. The first major upgrade applied to the individual classrooms families were currently using as makeshift apartments. The core allowed me to structurally convert each classroom into a self-contained, single-family flat.

Each unit would gain a functional kitchenette with a standard stove-top—except these wouldn't rely on propane tanks or electrical grids. They were powered directly by the facility's localized mana lines, drawing energy straight from the crystal core. Instead of an electrical element heating the pans, the burners generated a steady, controlled flame manifested from raw mana, behaving exactly like a high-end natural gas stove.

Next, I could manifest a compact bathroom inside every single unit, complete with a functional toilet and a walk-in shower. The catch was the material cost: as a trade-off, the old communal restrooms scattered around the academic wings and the existing shower blocks in the small gym's locker rooms would be permanently dissolved by the system to reallocate the plumbing architecture.

I wasn't entirely certain how gutting the locker rooms would alter the small gym's layout, but providing individual families with actual privacy was a massive win. The public restrooms in the Great Room, the cafeteria, the fine arts building, and the library would remain entirely untouched to handle public traffic. The only immediate hitch was the operational cooldown: the interface restricted me to structural modifications once every twenty-four hours.

Since I had already spent my daily allocation the night before by erecting the stone walls and erasing the physical damage left behind by the horde, these domestic upgrades would have to wait until tomorrow. Moving on to the next tab in the interface, I sat bolt upright in bed.

"Sweet baby Jesus," I muttered to myself. There was a dedicated System Store option. The interface allowed me to officially designate a physical storefront attached to the main office building. Right along the main exterior wall facing the central quad, there were four old attendance windows. Back before the world ended, students used to queue up at those windows to report late, grab hall passes, or buy tickets for school events during lunch breaks.

Now, the System offered to convert those exact glass windows into automated, self-help kiosks. Our people would be able to simply walk up to a terminal and purchase survival items directly from the system's market using their personal coin. If they had a bound storage device, the purchased items would instantly teleport directly into their personal inventories. I wasn't entirely sure what would happen if someone without a storage ring tried to buy a bulky item, but I quickly shook the thought off.

Honestly, who cared? Virtually everyone within the settlement's walls had managed to gain a basic ring by now anyway. The absolute best part of the feature was that, as the Mayor, I didn't have to wait for the physical kiosk construction to access the marketplace. As long as I was standing anywhere within the geographic boundaries of Novus, I could open the System Store directly through my personal interface. This was bound to be dangerous for my financial health.

After clearing the dungeon and picking up the siege rewards, I had over four hundred gold coins burning a serious hole in my pocket. I eagerly tapped into the store's primary menus and was completely blown away by the sheer volume of available goods. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Everything you could possibly think of was listed.

Of course, "available" was a relative term depending entirely on whether or not you actually had the coin to back it up. Glancing through the pricing tiers for high-end gear—especially properly enchanted weapons—it was painfully obvious that gold was going to be a major bottleneck for our society moving forward. I spent the better part of an hour browsing through various supply sections, learning everything I could about the market's inventory and pricing structures.

In a fit of executive indulgence, I made a couple of critical purchases that effectively bankrupted my savings, then finally forced myself to close the screen and crawl out of bed. Walking into the private bathroom to brush my teeth and handle my morning business, I caught my reflection in the mirror for what felt like the first time since the world broke. The night before, I'd been a little too preoccupied after my shower to look at myself, but now I stood there and stared.

The man looking back at me was a lean, heavily muscled specimen. I wasn't overly bulky like one of those slow, lumbering muscle-beach blockheads, but I was undeniably ripped to the bone. My skin looked healthier, my posture was perfect, and if I wasn't mistaken, the attribute threshold had actually granted me a couple of extra inches of height. Even more surprising, a significant portion of the gray hair had completely faded out of my beard.

What little silver remained was neatly intermixed within my goatee, which was perfectly fine by me. It gave the look a bit of rugged character. Young, athletic, but wise. I absolutely loved it. Since my primary combat gear still needed a deep chemical wash to remove the lingering stains and stench from the fight, I pulled on a clean, casual outfit—something I hadn't done in what felt like an eternity. I slid into a pair of broken-in jeans, a comfortable t-shirt, and stepped into my favorite rubber flip-flops.

Hell yeah. Jeans and flip-flops. I chuckled to myself, knowing Denise was probably going to tackle me the second I walked into the kitchen looking this relaxed. Stepping through the double doors of the Great Room's cafeteria, the rich, buttery scent of breakfast hit me like a physical wave. Denise was standing near the hot line, setting out another massive, steaming tray of fluffy, golden-brown pancakes.

Just looking at the fluid way she moved, it was clear she had already processed her own siege rewards and allocated her new attribute points. I focused my vision and fired off a quick Inspect. Race: Human Level: 15 Class: Restaurateur I raised my eyebrows, looking her up and down with an appreciative grin.

"Nice," I said, walking up to the counter.

"You think so?" she replied, her eyes crinkling as a beautiful smile broke across her face.

"Yes, I most definitely do," I murmured, reaching across the partition, wrapping an arm around her waist, and pulling her into a deep, lingering kiss. Right on cue, Joe's gravelly voice echoed from the back corner of the cafeteria.

"GET A ROOM, YOU TWO!" I pulled back, looking over at Joe, who was sitting at a corner table holding his steaming coffee mug up with a knowing nod and a grin. I turned back to Denise, giving her a playful wink.

"Any chance?" She playfully slapped my bicep with a resounding NO and forcefully shoved a clean tray into my hands, pointing me toward the food line. I didn't argue. I piled a massive stack of fresh pancakes onto my plate, pairing them with hearty portions of crispy bacon and perfectly scrambled eggs. I had no earthly idea where the logistics teams had managed to secure this much fresh bacon, but I was incredibly glad they had.

I grabbed a cup of black coffee—even though my upgraded constitution meant I probably didn't need the caffeine hit anymore—and to my absolute delight, spotted a row of heavy glass jugs filled with ice-cold milk resting in galvanized bins of crushed ice. I poured myself two large glasses, balanced them on my tray, and walked over to slide into the bench opposite Joe. We talked through a few immediate operational details while we ate, focusing mostly on the logistics of the clean-up crew.

Joe filled me in on where the washing stations had been established to help the combat teams scrub the remaining zombie fluid off their leather armor. Before I cleared my tray, I asked Joe, "Do me a favor and gather up the core dungeon team. Tell them to meet me in the main administration conference room in about an hour." Joe nodded around his mug.

"You got it, boss." Once breakfast was settled, I made my way over to the agricultural yard where the designated washing stations had been built. The yard was an ideal choice; it featured a massive commercial floor drain right in the center of the concrete lot, and it sat significantly closer to the school's heavy-duty industrial water heaters.

In retrospect, putting our cleanup here the previous night would have been a hell of a lot smarter than doing it right in front of the main administrative entrance, but honestly, I didn't care. I spent nearly an hour meticulously scrubbing my armor, weapons, and combat clothes with heavy soap. Once the gear was completely clear of grime, I threw the fabric layers into one of the commercial dryers the tech team had successfully wired up to the grid.

Thirty minutes later, I was pulling out warm, clean-smelling, bone-dry gear and folding it neatly back into the dimensional space of my storage ring. The immediate crisis was over. Now, it was time to run our town.