Lord Of The New World

As the day progressed, I started up conversations with people as they passed, finding great joy in the fact that I finally had someone other than Rae to talk to.

But all the conversations I had that day were... frankly boring.

They just didn’t have a lot of things to talk about other than reporting to me about how their jobs were going and simply greeting me.

Though the nights were livelier thanks to the hunters bantering about their exploits that day, and days prior.

And... nothing interesting happened tomorrow, or the day after that. Other than me noticing that the other Homunculi couldn’t see Rae that is.

Though I was apparently the only one who was surprised by the news as the Homunculi just thought that normal people wouldn’t be able to see Rae, and Rae supported their thought, informing me that only I and my party members could see her.

“...Actually, while we are talking about party members, when am I going to be able to “up-lift” advisors out of my people? And why are they called party-members again?” I asked Rae, after the homunculi that we were talking to went away.

“Actually, I’ve been meaning to give you the ability to summon or up-lift your party members in this level! Of course, I am going to not allow you to turn everyone into party member. I’ll probably only allow you to have a set amount of party members at a time and make the process of making party members more and more expensive with each additional member.

“And about why they are called party members... remember when I said that there were sapient species that had developed in this galaxy even before me and my siblings started summoning our champions?” Rae asked me.

“Yes. I do. But what does that have to do with the weird naming scheme?” I then asked her back, confused as to why that would be important.

“Well, the thing is, as you can imagine, most of sapient races don’t want to appoint a random guy that dropped out of the sky as their supreme leader, especially when the only claim those random people have to their whole civilization is that they were chosen to be the champion of a god or goddess.

“So, my parents gave us a “Hero System” to give to our champions, and the Hero System has a few basic parameters and limitations built in it, to make the Great Game fairer for everyone. We can, of course, change the system to our hearts desire, but we still have to make it “balanced” somewhat.

“But, ignoring all that. The whole point of the “Hero System” is either, to help the champions become so important in the civilization that they are a part of, that the entire civilization has to give the champions some concessions, allowing the champion to guide the civilization they were dropped into.

“Or to help the champions in simply overthrowing or infiltrating the highest levels of the civilization they were dropped into, effectively becoming their sole leader, or the puppeteer.

“And as you might’ve guessed, that is no simple feat. And here comes the party members! Which are basically there to be the backbone of the champions, covering their weaknesses and helping them in managing the vast empires they have to lead!

“And that’s basically the reason why party members are called party members even though they are basically just advisors! And the reason why I didn’t change the name of your party members to just be “Advisors” or to “Heros” or something else is because... I couldn’t be bothered to!” She finished, saying the last part louder than everything else.

“...Did you really need to talk about that? Couldn’t you have just said that you couldn’t come up with a better name or something? And, on another note, how would a single champion even infiltrate an entire civilization? And would them having a lot of party members matter at that point?” I asked her.

“Yes, I of course needed to talk about all that! Now, you know how the other champions may act, and when you inevitably try to conquer a star faring civilization in the future, you won’t have to bother me about their champions!”

“...Rae, it’s been less than a year since I’ve come to this world. And it’s going to take a few hundred, if not a few thousand years for me to encounter star faring civilizations. Do you really thing I am going to remember all that?” I told her, exasperated that she’d even assume that I’d remember all of that after a month, no less a whole millennium!

“Umm... yes?” She answered, seemingly confused.

But before I could point out how stupid she was, she continued on giving examples on how a champion might infiltrate entire civilizations.

“It’d actually be quite easy to infiltrate entire planets as a champion really. If you are intelligent and let your targets, come to you, instead of going to them that is.”

“What do you mean by that? And how would you infiltrate an entire planet by letting its elites come to you?” I asked, confused as to how such a thing might be done.

“Simple really, just open a shop!” She then said and looked at me like what she said made sense.

“...What? How would a shop be enough to infiltrate an entire civilization?” I asked her.

“Well, a normal shop wouldn’t. But a shop that is run by a champion? Absolutely!

“Think about it! A champion, with a system designed towards production can make the best items possible! A blacksmith champion can make magical swords that can cut tier 3 and 4 monsters with a simple swing, and an alchemist champion can make elixirs that can heal any illness or the most grievous wounds!

“And as the stories of these extremely powerful items spread, individuals with actual, political, power will seek them out! And if you are an innkeeper champion or an hotel manager of sorts, you’ll have a lot more time to get to know your “customers”, allowing you to implant ideas into their minds through “friendly” conversations!

“And if you are a champion in a world where information doesn’t travel fast, you can just act like a wandering wizard that helps out whoever he finds, or a wandering merchant with wares that you cannot find anywhere else!

“It’d be quite easy to implant ideas into people’s minds at any step of the way really, and you can always also just become a great general or an advisor to an already established nation or highly know magical academy!

“Possibilities are limitless really.” She finished and... not gonna lie, I agree with her on that one.

But other than agreeing on her with this, the possibilities of other champions just being guiding forces in their respective empires opens a wide range of possibilities to me in the future... possibilities that don’t require me to go on prolonged campaigns against interstellar empires and possibilities that give me the opportunity to simply crush the head of the snake with one swift move, instead of wasting time and lives dealing with its tail.

Though, all of this information isn’t really that important to me right now.

What’s important to me is the coming winter, which officially started in my 240th day in the new world.

As I left my home, I saw a layer of snow covering the ground.

Though I had expected to see some snow for a while now as the leaves on the trees had died a long while ago!

As I set out to care for the animals, I watched the construction group work on the new houses that they were building which were, for once, proper houses... kinda.

They were just wooden houses with 3 rooms and were designed to be the main type of house for the people in my empire for some time as they were relatively easy to build and took only 1 month to complete with the 35 workers I had.

I had also made the gatherers join the construction group, as there was nothing to gather right now, but even though the 10 additional people had helped the construction group, they were not much help right now.

After they completed this house though, they would actually become experienced enough to be useful.

And, while these houses were designed for 4-5 people to live in them, so a nuclear family basically, a lot more people could be fit inside them if needed though.

And if I ever ran out of space to build houses in, which would not happen soon, I could always just add a second floor on top of them, which should only take another month to do so!

But I doubt I’d need to do so for... a very long time.

And, if you are asking me why I haven’t just researched Grant Knowledge and given the gathering group members the knowledge on how to construct a house like this... that’s because I am not sure if I can afford to spend my research points right now as I want to get both the blessing Heal, and Grant Knowledge.

But I only have 9 Research Points.

To get a few more points, I was planning on teaching someone tanning, and then giving them a tannery.

But before that, I wanted our first proper house to be completed.

And no, I didn’t know who was going to live in it. I was probably going to just put the first 2 people that decided to get married in the house, but not sure about it.

But thankfully, the next month passed by in a breeze... not really as a few people got injured and I spent a lot of time caring for them, and the horses.

Though, of course, I prioritized the people instead of the horses.

And, on that note, I realised that we kinda stopped getting a steady supply of mana stones every day, and instead we only got 1 or 2 every few days.

Which made sense as animals of the forest didn’t have access to their sapling anymore, and I had kinda killed the thing that was helping them tier up.

But still, a bit sad that I don’t have a steady supply of mana stones.

And, in case you are wondering, I had about 300 mana stones right now. Give or take a few, but around that number.

I don’t have a use for them right now, but I should find a use or two relatively soon... relatively soon being after I researched magical language, and whatever researches that come after it.

Though I would’ve liked to research it right now... which I am more than capable of doing so, the construction workers were already done with the first proper house, and had completed a basic hut in which I could build the tanning equipment.

And build them I did! Though I could only build them at night and a few hours in the day, so it took a few days for me to do so.

Then I asked around for people that were willing to become a tanner, and a girl from one of the hunting groups came forwards.

It then took me a week to teach her the basics of brain tanning, which was a tanning technique in which we, very surprisingly, used the brains of the animals we killed.

Preparing a batch of leather this way took a week or so, and we had quite a bit of hides lying around, so she could start making a lot.

How good were the leather made with this method? Well, mainly the indigenous people in north America made this type of leather back on earth, and they are known to be good for clothing and footwear so pretty good.

For now, at least. As it is not really that easy to mass produce, so it is likely that it will be forgotten in a few decades, but it is enough for now.

And a few days later, so on my 289th day in the new world, another house was completed! And thanks to the gatherers being experienced workers now, the next houses should take 3 weeks to complete rather than a whole month!

Also, a few couples came to me in private and said that they wanted to move into the new houses and start their families.

I could only grant the wish of the first 2, but I put the others on the queue, so when the next house was done, they’d be the first one to get it!

Then another 3 weeks passed, and on my 310th day in the new world another couple got their houses!

And after the new couple moved into their house on the night of the 310th day in the new world, only 20 more days were left until the next spring.

Which was exciting as with the spring, I’d be able to create more people! But also, I felt a heavy weight in my mind as I believed that I’d have to create at least 100 more people the next year, and I had to at least make 40-50 of them farmers as I was fully relying on the current hunters and gatherers to fill in the gap and feed 100 people, which was just... not reliable.

Thinking about when and how to create the new 100 people, I decided to order the 45 builders, counting the gatherers from last year that had become fully fledged builders, to build more barracks, as I wanted to create the first 20 farmers a few days before or after we started harvesting our wheat fields.

And with 45 builders, we should be able to build a barracks for 5 people every 5 days, so 4 more barracks before the end of winter.

And only then could they return to building normal houses