Survivor: Definitely Not Minecraft

My barony stretched out before us, a mosaic of rocky soil and sparse vegetation broken up by irregular chunks of forest. The border march was broad and mostly undeveloped. Gent's lands were sizeable, but he had done little with them apart from building a manor for himself and commission a low-yield mine. About an hour's ride from where we were going to settle, there was a hamlet full of people I’d never met, but who were soon going to be paying me a tithe. I had wondered how a kingdom could exist for hundreds of years without its populations spreading out and taking over every available territory, but I supposed most people just did their best to eke out a living wherever they were. The ridge around the mine was too rocky for farming, and the only local development was the set of shacks that had housed the laborers. Gent was sure to give me trouble at some point, but from what I had heard, Otto had made the new hierarchy clear.

I estimated that there were about a thousand lillits trailing behind me. Boffin had been trying to take a census as we traveled, and it was a work in progress. People were still unaccounted for from the raid and what had happened in the Wastes, and an appreciable number of the residents of Eerb had volunteered to be a part of the founding of a new town. They brought supplies with them, though we were a long way off from being self-sufficient. A stream ran relatively close to the mine. It wasn't broad enough to satisfy a group of our size, but it was something, and I could see about digging a few wells for the long-term.

“It’s hard to know where to start,” Esmelda said, leaning into my arm. While we hadn't discussed our relationship status, she'd been increasingly affectionate in the days since my return. While what had happened the first night out of Eerb had thus far been a singular event, I was doing my level best not to be weird about it or push too hard to make it a regular thing. I was happy, she seemed happy, and there was a lot of work to do. We could proceed at whatever pace she wanted. I would have said we were dating if we weren't technically well past that.

Legally, we were married, and most of the lillits were stoked about it. They saw me as a hero, not just for the skills their goddess had blessed me with, but because of what I had done. No one, apart from me, blamed me for the deaths on the bridge, at least not to my face. I still occasionally caught Boffin wearing a disgruntled expression when he saw us together, but that lingering sourness likely had more to with the circumstances of our marriage rather than the fact. We hadn't asked for his approval, and he wouldn't have given it if we had, but here we were.

Esmelda's words emphasized the enormous nature of the task at hand. Boffin had drawn up some plans for the layout of the town, but he wasn't familiar with the land or its requirements. Under normal circumstances, a group like ours wouldn’t survive long enough to get established out here without substantial outside support. There were just too many people to live off nature. Fortunately, though the Survivor System wasn’t ideal for slaying dragons, it was tailor made for town building. By this point, the lillits all knew what I was capable of, as well as the drawback that came with my blessings.

Sequestering myself in the evenings was now standard procedure. We'd spent a few days in Eerb preparing for the migration, and I had left well before dark to ensure the lillits weren't in danger from mobs. Esmelda had come with me on my first night back, but otherwise, she had stayed in town. All the Eternal Torches and gems I'd liberated from the Way Station were well short of what was required to prevent spawns entirely, and even with a hundred more, phantoms could still appear in the sky. Fortunately, we had the harpies to keep the airborne mobs in check.

The lillit's reactions to having giant black birds following me around were mixed. On one hand, their presence added to the mystique of my being a chosen champion of the goddess. On the other, there was some concern that the harpies would start snatching babies when they got hungry. My assurances that their favorite food was monsters had done little to assuage those fears. Celaeno and Esmelda had a lengthy chat, and seemed to have taken to each other. Celaeno expressed a general disinterest in lillit flesh and promised the flock would not prey on the livestock or populace of our community. Not all the harpies could speak, and those that did knew only Kevinian and their own language, which was unintelligible to non-birds. But they weren't animals, and I was confident that their matriarch could prevent the flock from causing and serious trouble.

“I know you want to do everything yourself,” Esmelda said, “but you don’t have to. Everyone here has skills they can contribute.”

“I know,” I said, “I can’t be everywhere, and I’m going to waste a lot of time just managing spawns.” I glanced up at the sky. We'd arrived with the sun high overhead, bathing the rocky ridge in light. “We’ve got a few hours today, at least. So what do I do first?”

“There are hundreds of lillits here who can help with construction, if they have the materials and tools to do so. Even you can’t build as fast as all of them together.” She made a face when she noticed my grin at the implied challenge. “Well, not faster, I mean. For now, give them what they need to get to work, and focus on farming. We’re rationing as well as we can, but it’s all going to be gone in a week. Lack of shelter isn’t the most pressing issue. We can survive a little rain, and the first snow won’t be for months yet. Eerb is helping, but how much food do you think Godwod would lend?"

“Not enough,” I said. “Can you and Boffin get this place organized while I work on the food situation?”

“It’s a deal,” she said, holding out her hand for me to shake. “Shall we discuss my share of the profits?”

“You’re silly,” I said. I took her hand and pulled her into an embrace. Dongle had been talking about loaning us funds from what I assumed was a stash of buried treasure, and he'd come prepared with a timetable for repayment and potential profit sharing from the mine. As much as he was a fan of mine, he was a bigger fan of money, and he desperately wanted to rebuild his business. Esmelda and I held each other a little longer, and then I walked over to the shacks beside the mine to provide tools and supplies for the workers. She ran off to talk with the other influential lillits hoping to get everyone on the same page as far as the division of labor went.

Watching the sun, it seemed to take me about an hour to completely break down a single cabochon into all its original component materials. The cabochon had to be broken into medallions, the medallions into tokens, and the tokens into coins. It was a ridiculous exercise, and after a few minutes, I started throwing them down with both hands, looking like a crazy person imitating a windmill. Of course, the onlookers could see that I wasn’t crazy, because I was performing a very peculiar kind of magic; multiplying coins.

If I was going to do the absolute best I could for the lillits, then I could no longer waste time hiding my advantages from them. After what had happened at the way station, I felt I could trust them not to run to Henterfell or King Egard and start telling tales, but eventually, the people of Drom were going to hear about me and know that I was magic. It was something we would have to deal with down the road.

There were gasps when logs started popping into existence where I threw the coins, and a crowd of lillits who probably had better things to do gathered to watch. I didn’t bother trying to be orderly or to build anything. This was just to provide wood for construction to begin. Once I had surrounded myself with logs, I made a crafting table. The way station had left me with a ready supply of granite, wood, clay, and iron rich sand, as well as actual iron. It was more than enough to get the ball rolling for a little town building.

After placing the table, I produced iron axes and shovels, a dozen of each.

A pair of middle-aged lillits were taking in the process with growing consternation. They stood side by side, muttering to each other. The man on the left was taller, and from his proportions could have been easily mistaken for a human. A thick mustache shaded his mouth, and it looked like he was chewing on it. The other man was the most muscular lillit I'd ever seen, with broad shoulders and bulging arms, though he was only about four feet tall.

“This is how you craft?” He said, mouth gaping. “This isn’t smithing, it’s...it’s blasphemy!”

I paused. “Blasphemy against what?”

“Decency!” He shouted. “I dedicated my entire life to the craft, and you’re, you’re throwing coins at a table!”

The mustached lillit sighed and took the other man’s shoulder in a firm grip. “Doesn’t matter how it gets done,” he said. “Matters that it gets done.”

“It does matter!” The first replied, mortally offended. “This isn’t the way you smith.”

Now that I was paying attention, I was certain we'd been introduced before, but I couldn't remember his name. Had he been at the church when Esmelda and I got Tipple to sign off on our union?

"Sorry," I said, "Who are you guys again?"

The mustached lillit stepped forward to firmly shake my hand. "Perrin Perrinson," he said, "master carpenter. I'll be making sure all those logs are put to good use."

"Duad," the other said. "I ran the forge in Erihseht."

"I'm glad you're both here," I tried to reassure him. "It's not a competition. Your skills are more necessary than ever."

“For what?” He threw up his arms. “You could produce as many tools in an hour as my shop did in a year.”

“It’s like you said,’’ I gestured at my table, “this isn’t smithing. I’m not an artisan. I’ve got particular things I can make, and I can make a lot of them, really fast, but I will not spend the rest of my life focusing on putting every smith in Drom out of business. Your skill matters, and you can teach others, which is something I can’t do. This is to get us started, but I’ve got ten other jobs, and what I really need to be doing is the things no one else can.”

Quad shook his head, looking at my shovels like they were a pile of venomous snakes. “And what’s that?”

“Farm.”

They both looked at me like they were sure they hadn’t heard me correctly.

“We have farmers,” Perrin said.

“And they can take over for me when it’s set up." I looked over the pile of resources I'd deposited so far. "Boffin's talked to you about what to build first, right? Do you mind just putting together frames for now? When I come back tomorrow, I’ll give you a bunch of clay and stone. But this is taking too long. I need to put some distance between me and the camp before nightfall.”

The mustached lillit gave me a serious nod. I had a feeling he was as offended by my methods as the smith was, but he knew he wasn't out of a job. “I’ll do what I can.”

Waving goodbye to the lillits, I took my backpack, weapons, and a few torches due north of the mine. Black shapes followed me in the sky, as comforting as they were ominous. After I’d gone a few miles, the lillits were well out of sight behind the ridge, and I picked out a nice-looking meadow to be the site of my mega farm.

A single torch in an open space provided about fifteen feet of relative safety. I'd added Shadowbane to all my Eternal Torches, and I was confident in the protection they afforded me, though I would still have to be careful around trolls. I crafted a pole fifteen logs high with sticks jutting out from the sides that I could use to climb up, then planted a torch on top. I’d brought two more with me, having left the rest behind with the lillits, and I added matching pillars to house those. Each pole was ten paces apart, creating a roughly triangular zone of illumination for me to work within, and the extra height would keep the phantoms from swooping in at me when I wasn’t looking. The next step was putting together another crafting table, producing yet more logs, and converting them into planks to fence myself within the pillars. It was going to be a long night.