Chương 77: Chapter 74: Base Building Grind

On my way to the main administration office, I keyed my radio and hit up Zack, asking if he, Tony, and Henry could meet the rest of us in the conference room. Before heading in, I made a quick detour back to the cafeteria to deposit the heavy cuts of giant snake and wyvern meat we had harvested from our dungeon run. There were a couple of new faces working the food prep line whom I hadn't met yet.

I had them clear out space to pack the fresh monster meat deep into the chest freezers, then handed over the clutch of leathery snake eggs we had recovered. I leaned over the counter, giving them dead-pan, unmistakable instructions: "These belong strictly to Joe. If they get lost, misplaced, or turned into an omelet, your lives are on the line." They nodded rapidly, their eyes wide.

Walking back through the kitchen, I said a quick good morning to my mom and Mamo, before snagging my wife by the hand and heading down the hallway toward the administration block. When we walked into the executive conference room, everyone I had called for was already gathered and waiting around the long oak table. As we pulled out our chairs and sat down, a familiar, deep-seated gaming instinct started to tingle in the back of my mind. It was time for a textbook base-building grind.

"First off," I began, leaning my forearms on the table.

"How is everyone holding up after the zombie siege?" Zack spoke up first, shifting in his seat.

"Everyone seems to be doing okay. They're still pretty shaken up, obviously. I mean, we just got actively besieged by thousands of actual zombies. But once the notifications settled and the level-ups hit, morale skyrocketed. Honestly, I don't think we have a single person left within the walls who is under level ten." I glanced around the room, surreptitiously checking the local readouts. Zack was right.

Not a single member of our core dungeon team was below level twenty-five anymore, while the rest of the community leadership team hovered comfortably between fifteen and twenty. None of them were pulling numbers anywhere near as high as my level thirty-three spike, but the baseline growth was incredible.

"Very nice," I replied, nodding slowly.

"That's some serious attribute scaling across the board. It's huge for our collective security." I paused, tapping my knuckles on the wood.

"Speaking of our population, though—I noticed a fair number of people walking around the quad this morning that I didn't recognize at all. I know Zack and Tony brought in a bunch of their extended family members while we were diving the dungeon, but this looks like a much bigger crowd." Tony spoke up this time, leaning forward.

"Our scouting teams have located several small pockets of survivors and isolated families hiding out in the surrounding residential areas over the last few days." I blinked.

"We have dedicated scouting teams now?"

"Yeah," Joe cut in from my left, a smirk playing on his face.

"Where exactly do you think we secured all that fresh bacon you were shoving into your face during breakfast this morning?"

"They also managed to herd a couple of loose dairy heifers back to the school barns while they were out executing sweeps," Tony added with a grin. I let out a low whistle, pumping my fist." Yes. Outstanding."

"Okay, so what are the new arrivals doing to earn their keep?" I asked, wanting to make sure our logistics were keeping pace with our headcount.

"Everyone's been assigned a vital infrastructure role," Zack explained.

"Whether it's clearing the exterior fields for new crops, managing the livestock rotation, or helping out on the kitchen line." I glanced over at Denise, who gave me a firm, validating nod.

"We even assigned a couple of the craft-heavy guys to help Pete get his forge up and running."

"Perfect. That actually leads right into what we need to break down this morning," I said, clearing my throat. I quickly walked the room through everything I had discovered within the town interface regarding our facility repair and modular redesign capabilities. They all leaned in, visibly thrilled by the prospect of private plumbing and integrated mana stoves.

"Before we take another step, though, let me clarify how this system functions," I continued, dropping my tone to something a bit more serious.

"Because the initial quest to secure this compound started with me, and because I'm the one who physically bound the crystal core, the System officially recognizes me as the Mayor of this budding settlement. Technically, the prompt specifically designated our territory as a hamlet." I held up two fingers.

"According to the interface rules, there are only two ways for me to ever lose that title. Way number one: I willingly hand it down to a direct blood heir." At that, Mike let out a loud fist pump from the end of the table." Yes! called it!" I rolled my eyes hard at the kid.

"Way number two: I get defeated in open combat. And by defeated, the System explicitly means killed. Now, look—I didn't start this entire crazy process because I had some grand, burning desire to play politician or lead a post-apocalyptic civilization. I only did this to build a secure sanctuary where our families could actually survive and thrive. With that being said... is there anyone sitting in this room right now who wants to throw down and challenge me for the position of Mayor?"

With a massive, shit-eating grin breaking across his face, Mike slowly started to raise his right hand. I pointed a finger dead at his face before it cleared his shoulder.

"I will literally beat your ass, kid." Mike just giggled and dropped his hand back to the table.

"Seriously, though," I said, looking around the room.

"Does anyone actually want to challenge the seat?" Silence blanketed the conference room as people just looked back and forth at one another, shaking their heads. I turned to Joe on my left, my eyebrows raised in a silent question.

"Don't look at me, bro. I don't want a single part of that nightmare," Joe stated flatly, waving his hands defensively. I turned my gaze over to Denise on my right, giving her the exact same look. She stared back at me for a few seconds, her brow furrowed in utter confusion, until the exact nature of my silent question finally clicked in her head. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. She reached over and delivered a resounding slap right to my upper arm.

"Stop your sassiness already!" I threw my hands up in immediate surrender.

"Hey, I'm just performing my due diligence! I know exactly how much you used to love watching your true-crime murder marathons. I'm just making sure I don't end up as an episode of Snapped." A ripple of laughter broke the tension around the table.

"Alright," I said, smoothing down my shirt.

"With the politics out of the way, let's talk logistics." I reached into my storage ring and pulled out the five pulsing mana crystals we had harvested, lining them up neatly across the center of the wood.

"For those of you who weren't down in the depths with us, these are high-grade mana crystals. They're classified as an uncommon resource and serve as a primary catalyst for various specialized crafting applications. We recovered these along with the core itself. For our immediate settlement layout, we can physically slot these into the central control panel to permanently power up different functional guilds." I tapped the table, counting them off.

"The basic options available to us right now are a Forge, an Alchemy Lab, an Enchanting Room, and a Mechanical Engineering bay. We can also choose to construct a Builder's Lodge, a Farmer's Lodge, a Combat Training Facility, a Great Hall and a Bardic College." I watched as several people instantly perked up, their eyes locking onto the glowing gems. Henry, Pete, and Alex looked like they were about to leap out of their chairs as their respective professional domains were called out.

"Now, since these specific crystals are only of uncommon rarity, it means we can eventually organize dedicated hunting parties to go out and quest for more of them. We might even locate a few other dungeons to help the rest of our combat groups level up." The dungeon team nodded in immediate agreement, clearly favoring that approach." Or..." I purred, catching everyone's attention again as I smoothly summoned a sixth, identical glowing crystal out of my ring, letting it clink softly against the first five.

"We can just bypass the waiting period entirely, handle the material cost right here and now, and get this entire compound operating at maximum efficiency today." A collective gasp rippled around the table. Low murmurs of"Where did he get that?" and"How is that even possible?" broke out among the non-dungeon crew. Denise, of course, didn't flinch. She was already an absolute master at just rolling with whatever insane System nonsense I brought home. Once the chatter died down, I dropped the real bomb.

"We now have functional access to a localized System Store." If the extra crystal had blown their minds, the formal revelation of a direct line to a global system store completely melted their brains. People looked like they were losing their minds. Except for Denise, who just offered a soft, knowing smile. God, I love that woman. Holding up my hands to quiet the immediate explosion of questions, I signaled for calm.

"Let me explain, because this is the primary reason why I asked if anyone wanted to challenge my seat. Having a fortified settlement is great, but holding an executive mayoral bond that grants a direct, active link to the global System marketplace is an entirely different level of survival.

"Now, I won't be able to configure the public self-help kiosks at the old attendance windows until tomorrow due to the facility redesign cooldown. But as the Mayor, I can access the interface anywhere within our borders right this second.

"With that being said... every single one of us on the dungeon team walked out of that instance with a little over four hundred gold coins in loot. And right now, I need everyone who was on that run to transfer exactly half of their gold back to me." The members of the dungeon team immediately locked eyes with me, their brows knitting together in various expressions of skepticism and confusion. Before anyone could vocalize a protest, I held up a hand to cut them off.

"Every single coin is going right back into infrastructure to jump-start this town. And before you give me an answer, let me pivot topics for a second so you can see exactly what I'm buying with it." I turned my focus down the table toward Henry.

"Henry, can I trouble you to craft me another custom storage ring?" Henry blinked, looking slightly bewildered.

"Uh... yeah, sure, Derrick. I can do that."

"Awesome," I replied. I offered my left hand to Denise, who gently took it, pressed a soft kiss to my wedding band, and smoothly slid the gunmetal grey, titanium band off my finger before handing it down to Henry. He caught the band, turning it over in his hand preparing to outline the spatial enchantment, until I held up a palm.

"Wait on that one." I reached into my ring, produced a completely different, intricately carved gold band, and slid it across the polished wood toward him. Henry caught it, focusing his eyes to trigger his appraisal skill. The second the data registered, his eyes dilated to the size of saucers.

"What the hell is that?" Joe asked, leaning over to catch a glimpse.

"It's an enchanted attribute band that grants a flat +10 to Intelligence," I explained to the room.

"I've been meticulously analyzing the math behind how our attributes dictate our core pools, and while the scaling curves are a bit strange, one correlation is absolute: Intelligence directly dictates your total mana volume and processing capacity. With a flat ten-point jump to his base Intelligence, that single ring is going to hand Henry an extra hundred points of mana to utilize during his crafting sessions." I turned back to Henry, whose jaw was practically resting on the table.

"Here, you might as well take this to pair with it," I added smoothly, sliding a heavy, leather-bound skill book across the wood. Henry stared down at the tome, his hands visibly shaking.

"Derrick... I don't think I can accept this. This is too much."

"Nonsense," I shot back with a warm smile.

"You literally handed our entire combat roster a massive force multiplier when you figured out how to craft those custom storage rings from scratch. It's the least the community can do to invest in your talent."

"What exactly is the book?" Alex asked, leaning forward with intense curiosity.

"It's an Enchanting Spell-book for Beginners," I stated.

"Learning it guarantees an immediate, automatic mastery of three distinct, common enchantments applicable to either weapons or armor. The initial choices are randomized by the System and only provide minor baseline buffs, but they represent a foundational set of recipes we currently lack—and they can be systematically leveled up through repetition just like any other skill."

To keep the momentum rolling before anyone could overthink the numbers, I turned my attention toward Alex and slid an identical gold ring and a separate heavy tome directly to him. The ring carried the exact same Intelligence modifier as Henry's, but the text on the cover of the book was entirely different.

"That right there," I explained, pointing to the volume, "is a Beginner's Recipe Manual for Alchemy. It contains the precise blueprints for compounding common recovery potions, including health, stamina, and mana. I believe there are a few utility recipes tucked into the back chapters as well, but I only had time to briefly glance through the index before purchasing it." For the grand finale, I reached deep into my inventory one last time and pulled out a softball-sized pouch made of thick, supple leather.

It landed on the table in front of Alex with a heavy thud.

"Do not open that pouch until you are safely inside your lab space," I warned him seriously.

"That is highly concentrated, powdered mana crystal. From what the store's item description indicates, it is one of the premier stabilizing ingredients for compounding high-grade mana potions and arcane solutions. A single pinch goes an incredibly long way." I leaned back in my executive chair, looking out across the stunned, utterly silent faces of our community's leadership. I raised my hands showing they were empty and gestured to the six glowing crystals sitting in the center of the table.

"And with those purchases, my personal bank account is officially, completely bankrupted. So... what's it going to be, team?