Chương 83: Chapter 80: A Semblance of Normalcy

One person who truly benefited from the new wage system was Denise. Her specialized class as a restaurateur was actually a unique sub-profession that blended both the chef and merchant disciplines. Now that the settlement was charging for meals, she stepped into her role fully, running the cafeteria much like a bustling inn or tavern, complete with dedicated cooks and serving staff.

The meals only cost a few coppers at best, but the experience points and skill gains were incredible for her—and those who ate her food reaped the benefits of her specialized nourishment buffs. The progression was even more pronounced whenever Isadora sang her verse of inspiration from the gazebo. Being the sharp business owner she was, Denise quickly hired a man named Matt, who possessed a specialized brewer class.

The brewing discipline functioned as a lesser branch of the alchemy profession, though it focused entirely on crafting beverages rather than brewing magical potions. Matt had been an avid home craft-beer hobbyist before the world changed, and he eagerly used his old passion to grind out experience and make a very comfortable living. Depending on the specific type of ale or beer a person chose, a single cold mug could cost as much as a full meal, if not more.

Needless to say, the citizens were thrilled to have a cold beer back on the menu. For families who preferred to cook their own meals inside their assigned living quarters, Denise set up a storefront to sell raw ingredients. She stocked meat brought in by the hunters, who were paid directly by the settlement, alongside fresh produce gathered from our agricultural fields. If anyone needed specific staples, they could also purchase various food items directly through the system store.

Every bit of coin Denise generated went right back into funding her establishment, covering the wages for her kitchen crew, the servers, and the dish-washing staff. To accommodate everyone, the tavern remained open around the clock. A fair number of citizens preferred working the night shift, especially the glassblowers. They always seemed to be getting under the feet of the blacksmiths during the day, which had caused some minor friction between the two crafts.

Working late hours resolved the spatial issues, and there were always guards on duty around the clock who needed a hot meal. We made it a policy never to charge active guardsmen for food while they were on duty; that expense was paid directly out of the settlement's coffers as a small token of appreciation for their protection. Dog was an absolute fixture wherever Denise went. He had fully and truly bonded with her. They always say animals choose their owners, and he had definitely chosen her.

He could usually be found lounging near the kitchen doors, happily gnawing on a stray bone or a thick scrap of meat. That wasn't his entire routine, though; he still went out to hunt on his own terms. On regular occasions, he would trot down to the drainage canal running along the backside of Novus and pull massive fish straight from the water like a grizzly bear. The local fishermen who supplied the settlement learned to give him a wide berth so they wouldn't interrupt his hunting.

He also lent a hand to the guards patrolling the perimeter walls whenever trouble stirred. We were starting to see a noticeable influx of wild beasts wandering into the town center, their bodies clearly altered by the dense mana saturation bleeding into the world. They were growing significantly larger and far more aggressive than their pre-system counterparts. Interestingly, animals that had been traditionally domesticated grew larger as well, but they tended to retain their temperament without turning vicious.

One night, a massive mountain lion used the shadows to stalk a guard detail walking the high walls. I don't know if Dog picked up the scent, heard the soft tread of its paws, or simply sensed the threat approaching, but he covered the distance in a flash to intervene. The mountain lion, which looked easily twice Dog's size, launched itself over the parapet and tackled one of the guards straight to the stone walkway.

The beast sank its claws deep into the man's chest and was actively lunging for his throat when a volley of arrows thudded into its flank, disrupting the lethal bite. While the predator was distracted by the pain, Dog came out of nowhere, throwing his entire weight into a tackle that knocked the beast clean off the fallen guard. As Dog and the mountain lion began circling one another, snarling and looking for an opening, a pair of guards and one of our newly trained healers rushed forward.

They managed to drag the mangled man back to safety and immediately began channeling healing magic over his wounds. It was an incredibly close call; the deep puncture marks had left the man right on the brink of death. Luckily the beast's claws had missed the guard's heart, which probably would have caused a quick if not instant death for the man. Out on the walkway, the fight turned into a perfectly synchronized game of distractions.

Dog would lunge aggressively at the mountain lion, and the moment the beast turned its attention to strike at him, the ranged guards would drive more arrows into its side. Whenever the predator turned its fury back toward the archers, Dog would instantly spring forward to bite and tear at its hindquarters. Realizing it was severely outmatched and in mortal danger, the mountain lion finally broke off and attempted to leap off the wall to escape.

A sharp-eyed guard managed to nail it with a well-placed arrow directly in the front shoulder, completely locking up the joint. With its mobility ruined, Dog pounced onto the flailing animal, clamping his jaws firmly around the back of its neck and dragging it heavily to the stone. That gave a nearby guardsman plenty of time to step up and drive a heavy spear clean through its heart, ending the skirmish.

Perhaps the greatest breakthrough—or rather, the most significant revelation—came when we discovered we could permanently alter our baseline attributes using advanced alchemy. Through careful calculation, we realized a person could increase their Strength and Constitution stats by a maximum cap of twenty percent of their naturally assigned values through specific alchemical mixtures. These specialized attribute-boosting potions were incredibly complex to synthesize.

That meant, despite my progress, I was completely incapable of brewing them myself. Alex was the only one in the settlement with a high enough rank to handle the delicate process. When he successfully mastered the recipe, the system rewarded him with a massive windfall of experience.

I was still only pulling in double-digit chunks of experience for the basic health and stamina potions I churned out, but experience was experience, and the automated sales were keeping my personal coin balance, and that of the settlement, incredibly healthy. We collectively decided to keep the existence of these attribute potions completely under wraps for the time being, restricting their use solely to our immediate family members.

It wasn't out of malice or a desire to keep the general populace weak; the reality was that the ingredients were staggeringly rare and the production costs were astronomical. The vast majority of the community couldn't dream of affording a single dose, so there was absolutely no sense in broadcasting the news, building false hope, and risking widespread civil unrest.

The potions, however, were on sale in the system store and if a settlement member found the listing and wanted to save up the extremely high gold cost, then we wouldn't stop them. We wouldn't however be informing them that we were the ones making them. The only two people outside the immediate circle who could actually afford the price tag were Pete and Henry, but they would undoubtedly want to secure doses for their own families and apprentices, and the news would inevitably leak down the line.

To make it work, Alex and I used our personal funds to completely subsidize the project, systematically boosting every member of our family as far as their natural stat caps would allow. We intentionally spread the dosing process out over a period of several weeks so the physical changes wouldn't appear jarringly overnight. To any outside observers, the physical improvements were easily written off as the natural result of standard leveling over time.

As the attributes took hold and our families leveled up, everyone began looking noticeably younger, sharper, and vastly healthier. The systemic changes were incredible: Frank's chronic diabetes completely vanished from his system, and Chad was entirely cured of the severe congestive heart failure that had plagued him for years before the system arrived. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

On a personal level, my biggest breakthrough came when I noticed a fascinating mechanic hidden in the settlement interface: I was passively receiving tiny increments of experience whenever the citizens of Novus gained experience or increased their skill levels while within settlement land. I had been scratching my head trying to figure out why my personal level was climbing at such a ridiculous rate.

In just a few short weeks, I was already closing in on level forty, despite only taking the field during a handful of major zombie horde incursions. I hadn't personally slain nearly enough monsters to justify the jump. I finally solved the puzzle one night while reading through a system-generated guide I bought regarding estate management and leadership dynamics.

Tucked into the text was a clause stating that a settlement founder receives a passive dividend of approximately one percent of all experience generated within their territory. I was absolutely ecstatic. I had also completely overlooked the fact that my official title as Mayor granted me a permanent ten percent bonus to all training-related experience, on top of the shared chunks I received whenever the guards cleared out monsters during the nightly wall defenses.

Pulling up my user interface, I took a look at my current standing. [Level Up: Current Level 39] I had managed to climb a total of six levels since the conclusion of the initial siege. Thanks to the milestones from my level twenty-five evolution, I had accumulated a stockpile of eighteen free attribute points and twelve unassigned skill points to distribute. I split the attribute points evenly, dumping nine points into Strength and nine points into Wisdom.

[Attribute Allocated: Strength +9] (Current: 73) [Attribute Allocated: Wisdom +9] (Current: 68) Next, I turned to my skill points. I split them right down the middle, investing six points into Alchemy and six points into the Blacksmithing skill I had picked up while sweating over the anvil with Pete. The sudden influx of systematic knowledge forced both skills to jump ranks.

[Skill Ranked Up: Alchemy - Journeyman Rank 1] [Skill Ranked Up: Blacksmithing - Journeyman Rank 3] My progression left me noticeably ahead of the core dungeon team, to the point where people were openly asking how I was out-pacing everyone without spending my nights fighting zombie hordes and monsters in the ruins of what was the old town.

I pulled Denise aside and explained exactly what I had discovered about the territory mechanics, but I kept my lips sealed around everyone else to avoid putting a massive target on my back. Instead, I told the community that the rapid leveling was simply the mathematical result of juggling two separate production professions simultaneously, practicing both Alchemy and Blacksmithing religiously every single day.

Coupled with my daily physical training and constant teaching sessions with the guard, the explanation made perfect sense to them, and they dropped the issue. In fact, the cover story had an excellent side effect: it inspired several civilians to seek out various crafting hobbies and secondary vocations in the hopes of growing stronger and gaining attributes without having to risk their lives beyond the safety of the walls.

While it was entirely true that you could build a solid foundation by leveling professional skills, they would never experience the massive passive surge I was getting from the land itself. I saw no reason to burst their bubble, though. As our operations stabilized, our scouting details began regularly locating scattered pockets of survivors who desperately needed assistance out in the ruins. We brought them back to campus, and Novus began filling up at an alarming rate.

We quickly ran out of available space inside the primary facilities, forcing us to expand outward and begin structurally repairing the damaged residential houses in the immediate neighborhoods surrounding the campus boundaries. This expansion effectively birthed a dedicated municipal construction industry overnight, employing dozens of workers and granting foundational Builder professions to civilians who hadn't settled on a specialization yet.

When we had originally activated the central crystal core, the automated system interface essentially made Frank's old job as facilities manager entirely obsolete. Fortunately for him, this new expansion was the perfect pivot; we put him in complete command of the civilian construction crews to manage the workflow and oversee the various job sites. The expanding perimeter also created a massive demand for new positions within the guard.

We didn't just need bodies to stand watch on the primary walls of Novus anymore; we had to establish active, structured security patrols through the residential blocks we were actively reconstructing. From there, it turned into a massive cascade of new professions. Alongside the construction crews and neighborhood patrols, we needed an army of blacksmiths just to forge the sheer volume of structural tools we lacked; such as hammer and nails, saws and various other cutting tools.

We also had to expand our tech teams in order to repair tools and machines that were otherwise damaged in the System's EMP. The tools and machines that were repaired were unfortunately only the battery operated ones as we didn't have long enough power cords to hook up and reach to houses around the settlement, despite retrieving a fair number of ten gauge power cords that would be able to handle the line drop from being plugged in so far away. We also figured out a clever method to help our glassblowers excel.

Rather than forcing the blacksmiths to spend hours refining raw ore in the main smelter, we realized it was infinitely more cost-effective for them to simply purchase clean, refined metal ingots straight from the system store. This freed up the high-temperature smelting furnace entirely for glass production. We started purchasing pure, clean sand from the system interface for absolute pennies(coppers actually)—literally dirt cheap.

The sand was fed directly into the furnace, melting down into pristine, molten glass that the workers pressed into heavy cast molds to cool and solidify. Once stable, the glass sheets were scored, cut to precision measurements, and used to replace the shattered window panes throughout the residential houses. We even used the molds to churn out heavy glass beer mugs for Denise's tavern.

Since we didn't have a dense forest nearby to log for materials, we relied on the system store to purchase bulk shipments of finished wood planks to rebuild doors, reinforce structural flooring, and complete all manner of framing projects. It felt like we were living through a localized, apocalyptic industrial revolution. The upgraded Builder's Lodge was firing on all cylinders, working overtime to supply raw components for the various construction sites.

When they weren't framing walls, the carpenters were focused entirely on manufacturing furniture. A large portion of the inventory went out to furnish the newly reclaimed neighborhood homes, but a massive chunk was diverted to the citizens who were still living inside the immediate perimeter of Novus. A significant portion of the population was still far too traumatized by the initial collapse to even contemplate living outside the safety of our main walls.

There were still far too many desperate, lawless marauders roaming the distant city sectors, willing to rob, steal, and murder just to scrape together basic survival supplies or grind out easy levels. Our nightly neighborhood patrols were doing an excellent job of suppressing those issues within our active sectors, but the psychological comfort of the main campus was hard to break.

The families who insisted on staying inside the main facility required a massive volume of specialized furniture, namely sturdy bunk beds and storage dressers, to maximize the limited space. Eventually, our numbers swelled to the point where the existing classrooms, turned living units, were completely packed to maximum capacity, forcing us to reconfigure the interior layout of the Great Hall.

Fortunately, a massive foyer sat directly between the cafeteria and the old basketball gymnasium, meaning we could expand the housing footprint without having to sacrifice a single square foot of the main dining hall. Accessing the master settlement interface, I spent some resources to install comprehensive, gender-segregated communal bathrooms and hot showers, tucking them away to occupy as little floor space as possible.

The vast expanse of the remaining gymnasium floor was utilized to build clean, uniform, cubicle-style walls, effectively transforming the arena into an organized, barracks-style housing wing. Because families and individuals were forced to compromise on privacy in the communal space, the council officially set the rent for the gymnasium cubicles at exactly half the standard rate. Honestly, the arrangement worked out beautifully.

The vast majority of our single, unattached guard members jumped at the chance to move their quarters into the gymnasium barracks. The location put them right across the way from both the training hall and the tavern, and the half-rent price tag let them hoard their weekly silver wages. The setup was absolutely perfect from my perspective. I vastly preferred having our primary combatants living together under one roof.

The shared environment naturally fostered an incredible sense of camaraderie, trust, and tight unit cohesion within the ranks. Out here in the apocalypse, that absolute level of trust was infinitely more critical than it had been during my years in the military. When the world ends and the monsters swarm, you truly only have the person standing immediately next to you to watch your back.