Risen World 177 Chapter 123: Putting Together James Town

Joshua found himself standing outside of the portals that lead back down to earth. It had been a few days since he had first visited Nathan's shop for gear and now he had everything he needed for his next expedition. His scale blade was new and improved, his armor was able to stand against just about any creature that was below level seventy although he would still get hurt if he took on to many blows, and his back up weapons were more than strong enough to hold their own. The same could be said for Amy and Lilly as they both had smiles on their faces after they had stopped by Nathan's shop to pick up their gear before they would head out.

The minimize skill that Joshua had given Nathan was the main reason that their gear was improved so much. The skill made it so that the inscriptions for the enchantments that Nathan would place on all of their equipment was smaller and would take up less s.p.a.ce. This gave the room for more inscriptions allowing Nathan to place more permanent enchantments on their weapons and armor.

In Joshua's case Nathan not only put a magic resistance enchantment on all of his new leather armor like before, but also a unique enchantment that adjusted the armor to whatever element he was facing against and lessened the damage taken from that element from then on. This would be great when facing against elemental creatures in the future and Nathan put similar enchantments on Lilly and Amy's armors. The scale blade on the other hand was the thing that got the greatest boost when it came to the new enchantments for Joshua's equipment's. With the s.p.a.ce gained from the minimize skill Nathan was able add another enchantment to the scale blade that made it so that whenever aura was channeled through it the aura would be amplified as long as it was still being channeled.

This new ability worked well with the enchantment that was already on the scale blade since they both had to do with the amount of aura being channeled into the weapon. The first enchantment made the sword heavier on impact depending on the amount of aura that was being channeled through it. This meant that as Joshua aura grew the strength of his attack would grow as well. The new enchantment made it so that the scale blade could hold more aura at a time thus making the previous enchantment more powerful. It also sharpened the aura which made attacks with aura more powerful even without the impact. Energy slash and aura blast type attacks through the scale blade would travel further do to the denser aura and would deal more damage. All in all it was a big upgrade for Joshua.

Lilly and Amy both got upgrades for their gear as well. In the armor department it was similar to what Joshua's armor had been upgraded with for the most part, but it was the weapons that had their own unique upgrades. Lilly's staff now had an extra enchantment that empowered any spell that she used as long as it matched the element of what her staff was currently linked too. So if she used flame like spells when synchronized with Cinder then they would pack a far larger punch than they had in the past. It was a good boost to her offensive capabilities so that she wouldn't have to rely completely on her pets for damage going forward. It was a good thing that she had a bunch of support like abilities for her pets, but she was going to have to have a few trump cards of her own as they started taking on tougher dungeons. No one knew when they would run into a situation where they would be split apart and have to fight through on their own so it was imperative that they all had a well-rounded skill set just in case.

Amy on the other hand got an enchantment for her gloves and boots beyond just the normal aura enhancing one that she had been using before. The boots had a speed boost enchantment that activated whenever she channeled her aura into them. This made it so that her movements would be faster than before and that went great along with her high dexterity. Her gloves on the other hand were given an extra knockback effect whenever she punched something when she channeled enough aura into her fist. It would do well for her when some of her skills were on cool down and she needed to break out of a fight.

Now that they were all ready to head through the portal Joshua was the first to go through with the two girls following close behind. They appeared right outside of James Town and the first thing Joshua noticed was that unlike when they left the place there were pavements and groundwork all over the area. Apparently Henry had been visiting the place over the last few days, he was already getting the foundation laid out for the town. Sure enough Joshua could see Henry off in the distance looking at something while Adrian and Aito simply stayed close by and talked with each other.

"I'm surprised they're already here this early?" Amy said as they made their way over.

"Not everybody likes to sleep the entire day away like you do." Joshua said with a small smile as he dodged a punch his little sister threw at him. "Hey none of that now. I'm just joking."

"Well stop joking at my expense then." Amy said before rushing off to see what Henry was up to. Joshua and Lilly followed at their own pace since it wouldn't make much of a difference and soon they all ended up standing together looking over Henry's shoulder. "So what have you gotten done so far since you started working on the town?" Joshua asked.

Henry didn't even so much as turn his head as he replied completely focused on the designs he had laid out in front of him. "So far I've gotten the drainage system in place along with the pavement for the main streets in the area. I've also got the foundation for some buildings already being started since I know for a fact will be needing those buildings even in such a small town as this one."

"What types of buildings are you talking about? Do you mean like the town hall thing?" Lilly asked as she remembered the system pointed out some buildings that were designed so that there would only be one per a town.

"Yes, the town hall, hospital, fire department, and police department are all buildings that can only have one per town. I've already set up a foundation for those places towards the center of town. This will make it so that they are a similar distance from everywhere in town at all times. So if we have any issues in the future they will be able to react to them quickly." Henry explained getting a nod from the others.

"You say that like the towns going to function like…well like an actual town. I mean I know that the buildings will be somewhat similar and all, but I highly doubt people will just jump back into doing things like before the world changed." Adrian said as he scratched his head in confusion.

"If you had been paying attention during all of the times we had visited Laura's and Madalyn's territories then you would have realized that they've already been doing similar things." Henry said as he turned around to look at all of his friends and future guild mates outside of possibly Amy. "Although we have the hub city for now we don't know how long that will last. We can't expect the system to hold everything up for us forever. That would just be a foolish thing to do, so instead we need to start preparing for the eventuality of humans having to live on this planet full time again in the future."

"So having things for normal everyday people that aren't explorers to do would be a good thing. Plus the defenses for the town given by the system are just that, defenses for the town. They would only be useful against an outside threat such as beast or another group trying to attack the territory. They wouldn't actually be useful if some idiot nearly burnt down a neighborhood or building on the inside of town. You would need people to handle that." Joshua said understanding where Henry was going with his explanation.

"Exactly we need to be prepared for running our own society once again in the future instead of expecting the system to take care of everything forever. Sure it will probably still be a part of things since we all now know that there is actually life out there in other places in the universe. Life that is far more advanced than we are at the moment." Henry said getting a nod from everyone else. "So at this point I've sat the foundation for all the major buildings will be needing going forward and I've already started setting up areas for market districts and housing districts along with a few solar panel farms that are spread apart from each other. That way if anything happened to one of them we'd still have the others up and running."

"You sure have thought a lot of this stuff out already." Lilly said with a smile as she looked over everything on his design plans. "When Joshua and I looked at this all we could think of was setting up from the center out, but not how exactly we'd do that."

"Well Henry's always bee into city builder games, it could get quite grating when he got all of us to play those types of games with him." Adrian said with a sigh as if he was remembering something annoying. "Doesn't really matter now though, I'm just glad he's here to do all of this kind of stuff instead of us."

"That's because the only things you guys ever think about is combat. At least Joshua had some ideas towards studying medicine, but he still couldn't care less about anything outside of that." Henry said with a frown as he looked over the design once again. "Now I just need to figure out where to put the specialty building once we get our guild up and running."

"Specialty building?" Joshua asked a bit surprised at the new idea being casually thrown around.

"Oh I guess you guys haven't exactly been to visit any other towns at this point." Henry said with a frown as he looked towards Aito, Adrian, and Amy. All of them just turned their heads and started looking around the place as if they had just found something interesting. Henry sighed before continuing his explanation since he knew he wasn't going to get any help from the three muscle heads. "Specialty buildings can only be gained once you have a guild running the town. So Laura and Madalyn both have a specialty building in their territories. These specialty buildings come from the Guild leader and are a direct reflection of that person."

"So it's like getting a boost based off of the abilities of your leader?" Joshua asked getting a nod in return from Henry.

"Yeah for the most part it's how you described it. The privileges you get from the specialty building depends completely on the soul beast of the leader of the territory along with their jobs." Henry said before looking at Joshua trying to figure out exactly what Joshua's specialty building would be giving the territory.

"So what kind of specialty buildings do Laura and Madalyn have then? I'm sure you guys have been to them before."

"Well Laura's isn't all that surprising when you think about it. Her specialty building helps people that train there to learn a better way to flow their mana when fighting. As a bonus anyone who trains there for a set amount of time will get a bonus in casting speed and magic power for a time period after leaving. They also permanently get better at controlling their flow of mana which could help in a lot of ways. Even I've trained there before." Henry explained getting a nod from Lilly and Joshua. "Madalyn's is a bit different though, her specialty building trains on potion making and poison application. Just about everyone in her guild has a good use of poisons at this point because of it. Madalyn's is more of a knowledge thing so it's permanent as long as you learn. Also you get a boost in poison resistance after leaving for a time period."

"Well I wonder what my specialty building will be." Joshua thought aloud as Henry went back to putting on the finishing touches. Everybody was waiting to see just what he would come up with.