Myriad's Conquest 8 Trouble

Wooden watchtowers have been built and were placed on every directional side of the fences and near the village's gate. The watchtowers were also built outside the village, close to important places such as the salt pan, the copper mine and the farmland for precautions against any attack.

Rows of simple houses could be seen has been constructed in the east side of the village. Dorhok and his construction's team have been working on it after they have finished with the watchtowers.

A total of six houses has been completed, and some families already lived within these houses. Adrian has prioritized the families that had children within their members when he distributed those houses.

According to the full calculation of 60 villagers, Seastar needed to build at least 20 houses. Building all the houses to completion would require a total of 400 units of wood and 200 units of stone. Dorhok and his construction's team could build two houses per day.

Fortunately, the materials that were required were all available.

As originally, after building 3 km long fences and nine watchtowers, Seastar only had 350 units of woods left. But with the supplies of woods from the logging camp and recycling the materials from the rubbles, it was enough for the project to be completely constructed. So Dorhok and his team didn't have to worry about the construction's materials at all.

The houses were built on the east side of the village. This particular spot has been marked as a residential district. Adrian wanted the district to be stretched farther to the east and north across the river in case of future expansion. While the village's central district where the Lord's manor is located would be functioned as the "downtown" area, where plaza, markets, shops, and stores will be erected in the future.

The west side is where the village's administrators buildings and offices would be built. And military buildings like barracks, armory, and training field will be located at the southwest side. Thus, Adrian had divided the village into several districts.

Operations in all of the resources gathering facilities have been increasingly well. After being reinforced by more manpower, both the logging camp and the quarry had been running flawlessly these past few days.

With six people a.s.signed to each facility, the logging camp now could gather 60 units of wood per day, while the quarry able to gather 40 or 50 units of stone per day.

Just yesterday, the salt pan harvested the latest batch of salt and transported them to the village. A total of 20 units of salts. As expected from the salts that were harvested using the new harvesting technique, their quality is top notch. There are fewer impurities within them, they were more dry and soft compared to the previous batch, their color is more white, and their taste is even saltier.

However, there is still a gap between these salts and the modern salts, which had better quality. But, for the people of this ancient world, it was already the best. Since they could only sell it when the merchant from Eires is visiting, the salts could only remain inside the warehouse.

These high-quality salts will become Seastar's first unique product. And hopefully, it could also increase Seastar's attractiveness. Adrian had warned Gina to keep the new harvesting technique as a secret because these salts are extremely valuable and were deemed as a strategic commodity. This was the only Seastar's advantage for now until they could produce other unique kinds of stuff.

Meanwhile, Seastar's militia unit has been formally formed. Since the ground on the east side of the village was being used as a residential district. Zilong has moved the militia's activity to the southwest side.

And because the barracks haven't been, build yet, the militia temporarily used several military tents that were given by Adrian as their sleeping place and headquarter.

Those tents had cost Adrian quite amount of System Dollars.

Each member of the militia received a complete set of beetle's armors that was forged by Guido. The armor was dark green colored and their weight was quite light. Its appearances almost looked like leather armor, but these beetle's armor offers more protection.

Their form was not gaudy or bulky, so they fit well with the member's body. In summary, these armors were not bad at all, even Zilong start wearing them too.

Guido has made the armors to be uniformly. Hence, each of these armors had the exact same appearances.

Since he has gotten himself the copy of several smithing manuals. Guido skills and profession have raised to a whole new level. His smithing time had become much more faster, and the quality of the things he forged was getting higher and higher. He was getting more skillful as a blacksmith.

Guido even decided to accept an apprentice. A young human male that was originally in Dorhok's construction's team. Both master and apprentice now are really busy making more beetle's armor as the number of carapaces in the warehouse were still a lot. Adrian had ordered them to turn all the carapaces into armors. Thus, they were both had been working nonstop.

The militia was extremely excited when they received the armors, all of them quickly clad their body with it. And truthfully, they were all looked like a proper military unit. Their appearances were even better than most military forces in this world.

It must be known, most soldiers that served various countries, even the powerful one across Gloria now, still need to procure their own equipment themselves as these countries won't supply them. The same situation happened on earth before the advent of professional standing military.

Too bad, the militia still lacked proper weapons and other essential gears, as Seastar currently still can't produce them. But it was already more than enough at this current stage.

Zilong has organized the militia into two squads with five men on each. They were headed by squad leaders. Currently, the squad leaders are Schmidt who leads the 1st squad and Zeke leading the 2nd squad.

In order to let the militia gained some experiences and to further trained their coordination, Zilong rotationally brought each squad to the southeast forest to hunt some dangerous beast and games. They also already started patrolling around the village and manning the watchtowers.

It has been three days since they were formed, and all members of the militia had changed their original profession to soldiers.

With all of that, the militia's basic form was already completed. They would have to wait for the influx of new residents if they wanted to increase their members. It was also aligned with Adrian's primary mission.

He needs to have not only a country with a strong economy but also a very powerful military to help him accomplish his mission. As Adrian's mission would definitely involve waging war on another realm that was besieged or occupied by the devils, demons, minotaurs, and other stronger races. He might even need to wage war against foreign universes as well.

That is why, for the time being, he already set his sight on the northern portion of Wilderness Island. He wanted to use the north as his foundation to unify the rest of the island.

***

At this moment, Adrian had just finished washing his body at the river behind his manor. The water there is really clean and hygiene, one can even see the bottom as the water is also clear enough. So it was safe to have a bath there.

Adrian is heading for the residential district to check the progress of the houses project.

Along the way, he saw a group of women who were on their way to the farmland.

These women originally didn't have any activity after cleaning up the beetles' remains a week ago, they were mostly doing the cooking for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the outdoor kitchen. But they could only spend their empty time in between by just idling around.

Bored, they start asking Adrian for some work to do. Since it was like that, Adrian didn't mind, so he racked his brain as he tried to come up with a solution.

He found some various plant's seeds such as flax, cotton, sugar cane, tea, and even coffee were actually sold in the System Shop. And According to the System, once Adrian level up the System, many more plant's seeds will be available.

This revelation caused Adrian's mind to be filled with ecstasy since this means Seastar could produce more rare commodities and it could increase the amount of industry within the village. Although flax and cotton weren't that rare in this world, importing from elsewhere is too much of ha.s.sle, while having to cultivate them here would be a much better option. These two commodities are important components for the textile industry. Though, Seastar also needs wool from sheep.

Sugar cane can be made into sugar. Adrian thinks it could be categorized as a luxurious commodity in this world's ancient era setting. But that was because the technique to produce them weren't simply existed or too difficult, which result in low production output and thus, expensive price.

Fortunately, the System Shop also had Sugar Production Manual, that contained a traditional sugar production technique to which it could be utilized with the current technological capability of this world.

Coffee and tea would be popular drinks if they start advertising it to Eires mainland. The problem is, while coffee could be cultivated on the farmland near the village, tea cannot. It needs to be cultivated on much more higher elevated grounds, especially the mountainous area.

Adrian had decided to buy all of the seeds, as well as the related production and cultivation manuals, then he distributed them to the women. He ordered the women to cultivated flax, cotton, sugar cane and coffee using 2/5 of the farmland as their cultivation ground, while the rest will be reserved for the grains in the near future.

He appointed a 30 something years old human woman named Mira as the head of the strategic farm, it's basically a temporary department to manage these four commodities and their cultivation. Currently, the cultivation has been running well since it was started four days ago.

Mira was leading 10 other women as they are heading for the farmland when they caught the sight of Adrian.

"Good morning, Lord Dornan." The women immediately greeted Adrian simultaneously and respectfully.

Adrian smiled as he greeted them back, "Morning ladies... On the way to the farm, huh... Well, don't let me keep you, then. Carry on."

He went about continuing his journey to the residential district, while the women start giggling and whispering as they steal a glance at him.

***

Just a moment after the sunset.

Adrian has returned back to his manor and now he was in his room.

Tomorrow will be one week since he was summoned into this strange world, a lot of things happened. He didn't know where will the future brought him to, but one thing for sure, he is ready for any challenges ahead.

He stretched his body a little, he was actually feeling tired currently. Adrian has started practicing his martial art every morning these past few days. His Western War Style mastery has raised by 3%, which is really slow. But that is how one practicing martial arts.

You cannot expect to be able to master a martial art completely that had dozens of complex moves and instructions with only practicing for a short time, right?

Not only that, but he also begins to practice his other skills like swordsmanship, archery, management. Though, management was actually raised because Adrian subconsciously used the skill when he manages his village. Thus, the skill gained more proficiency.

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Name: Adrian Dornan

Race: Human

Age: 17

t.i.tle: None

Ident.i.ty: Lord of Seastar Village

Profession: Knight

Profession level: Normal (97/5000) (+0.3 STR, +0.2 Intelligence, +0.2 Const.i.tution, +0.2 Vitality, +5% territory management efficiency, +5% territory security)

Territory: Seastar Village

n.o.bility: Landed Knight (+5% territory order, +7% in territory protection against beasts, +3% citizen loyalty)

Skills: Basic Management Proficiency (12%), Basic Sword Proficiency (7%), Basic Construction Proficiency (2%), Basic Archery (0%), Basic Riding (0%), Basic Law (0%)

Martial arts: Western War Style (5%)

Combat technique: Gloria's Wings (Gold), Swift Tiger Thrust (Yellow)

System level : Level 0

System EXP: 6800/20000

Strength: 1.6

Intelligence: 0.4

Agility: 0.8

Const.i.tution: 0.2

Vitality: 0.2

Money: Gold: 10, Silver 100, Copper 1000

System Dollar: $1,000

Equipment: Gloria's Defender (Epic), Dark Leather Jacket (Normal), Plain White Cloth (Normal), Dark Leather Pants (Normal), Dark Leather boots (Normal)

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Other than that, his stat didn't change much except for his System Dollar which had been reduced to merely $1,000 now. And it looks like knight profession exp could be raised by doing activities related to both management and combat.

Just as Adrian wanted to check his stat further.

Knock!

Knock!

Someone has knocked his room's door, Adrian frowned. But he immediately relaxes and starts beckoning, "Come on in."

It was Zilong who entered Adrian's room, he didn't even enter deeply into the room, Zilong only stood by the door and spoke urgently, "Excuse me, milord. But we might have a problem outside."

Hearing that, confused look appeared on Adrian's face. But he quickly got up as he felt from Zilong's tone that something really happened.

Both Adrian and Zilong went outside the lord's manor, they saw the villagers had gathered at the center of the dirt road while they were in the middle of ruckus and conversations.

Seeing Adrian had appeared, Rogar walked to him while a worried look plastered his face, "Lord!"

Adrian sees Rogar's distressed expressions and asked him, "What's going on?"

"Over there, lord." Rogar replied while also pointed something in the east direction.

Although it was already at night, the skies are really clear, stars were shining brightly and the blue moon illuminated the entire Gloria magnificently. Thus, one can see really far ahead clearly as it wasn't truly dark.

Adrian followed Rogar's finger and saw ma.s.sive smoke rising at the eastern horizon above the forest, he can also see the faint outline of red and orange colors accompanied the smoke which could be easily discerned as fire. A big and raging fire that apparently, is in the middle of engulfing something.

"What's located in that direction?" asked Adrian.

"It's the village my daughter lived in, lord." said Rogar gravely.

Adrian stares at Rogar with widened eyes.

He hastily orders Zilong, "Zhao! a.s.semble all the militia now!!"

Zilong nodded while cupped his hand before executing the orders.

Not long, the militia has lined up in front of Adrian with a stern and rigid expression on each of the member's face. They were ready with their complete equipment.

Adrian looked at each of them and speaks, "Something has happened to our neighbor's village. That is why I want to go there to have a look. The 1st squad will come with me, while the 2nd squad will stay and defend the village... Are you guys clear?"

The militia loudly replied in unison, "Yes! Lord!"

Adrian nodded and turned his head towards Zilong, "Zi... I need you to come with me as well. You're the strongest around here. We could use your help."

Zilong nodded, "Yes, milord."

Just as Adrian was about to leave, he sees that Rogar is staring at him hesitantly and it looks like he was ready for something too as he had a sword hanging on his waist and wearing leather armor, "Rogar, do you also want to come with us?"

Rogar immediately nodded his head. He really wanted to come as he worried about his daughter and her husband.

"Welcome aboard." said Adrian before giving order to Zeke, the leader of the 2nd squad, "Zeke! Once we're leaving, you'll be in charge of the village for a while. Lockdown the village, shut the gate. And remember. Before we return, do not let anyone get inside the village and don't let anyone went outside too. Do you understand?"

Zeke gulped as he replies, "Yes, lord. You can count on us."

"Alright... Let's move out."

Adrian is signaling his group to immediately depart. Finally, he, Zilong, Rogar, and the militia's 1st squad began walking through the village's gate and heading for the east.

***

The village where Rogar's daughter lived in was called, Yarra. It was located near the river's delta 25 km east of Seastar.

Between Yarra and Seastar, lays a lake just below the mountain. Yarra was situated on the lake's east banks.

According to Rogar, Yarra is the second largest village in the north, with a total population of 200 people. It was a very strategic location. As there are two bridges, build near the village. One bridge was build as the only gateway to Yarra, while the other bridge was basically built on top of the delta itself and functioned as the only way to cross the river to the further east, where Ironide Village, a village which specialized in mining tin and iron was located.

Approximately 50 km further to the southeast of Yarra, another village existed near another delta called Crossing Village. The river was split here as one branch of the river leads towards the island's northeastern coast while the other branch of course flowing to Seastar.

Most of Yarra's residents worked as farmers and harvesting pearls from the nearby lake. The surrounding land around Yarra is much more fertile than the ground around Seastar.

Yarra village's chief is Rogar's old friend. Their relationship has been forged from a long time ago, ever since Rogar first stepped his foot on this island. Even Rogar's late wife is Yarra's native, and his daughter also married and lived in Yarra. So Rogar couldn't be blamed at all if he was really worried and anxious about them.

Besides, the old Seastar's villagers are mostly still related to the villagers at Yarra. Hence, it could be said that both Yarra and the old Seastar is really close and interconnected.

Adrian was really curious about that Ironide village, but he can't think about them as he still had a very urgent matter currently.

Each member of the 1st squad is holding a torch with their hand. Even though it wasn't really dark, but torches could lighten their surroundings a little and is also useful to frighten nearby animals.

Adrian now is not wearing his usual dark leather cloth set, but he clad his body with a set of beetle's armor. Even though the beetle's armor is only Normal grade and it didn't provide stat bonus, this armor has better protection than leather armor. And as Adrian had measle vitality, he couldn't take risks.

Zilong also wore his own beetle's armor while his Rare grade East Dragon Spear strapped on his back.

This group of 8 people proceeding fast towards the east. The distance between Seastar and Yarra is 25 km, more or less. So it would take a while for them to get there.