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Congratulations! You have completed the Trials of the King. You may now name your claimed territory. The Territory Management menu is now open. Currently claimed territory: 1,256 square kilometers Currently claimed settlements: 1 Current population: 1 Currently unclaimed settlements: 1 |
As soon as the last monster died, this message appeared in front of me. At first, I was shocked by the size of the territory that it listed, before realizing that it must be counting the area of the entire trial as claimed land. For that same reason the nearby village had also been marked as an unclaimed settlement.
I thought about it for a moment, seeing that I could name both the nation itself as well as the starting settlement. After some deliberation, I decided to name both Fallcry.
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Congratulations! You have become the King of Fallcry! As you have entered a position of nobility, you are allowed to give yourself a surname. Please choose your surname now. |
…It would probably be a bit too much to just use Fallcry again, wouldn’t it? I let out a sigh, shaking my head. “Advent.” I answered after a moment. Given its meaning of the emergence of a particular event, as well as being a shortened form of ‘adventurer’, I thought it suited me.
Now… about the population of Fallcry. How could I be a nation with just a single resident? And that one resident was me. Looking around the empty lot that I had been defending, I wanted to retort, though I knew that there was no point in doing so. It likely hadn’t counted Bella and Diane because they were in the village at the time that the nation was founded.
Speaking of which, I quickly made my way to the village, where Diane and Bella were both helping move a few wounded soldiers to a doctor’s hut. When I saw Aetra overseeing the situation, I approached solemnly. “My apologies… I really had no idea that this would trigger such an event.” I said, but she shook her head.
“I could guess that from the behavior of your friends. However, that halfling girl insisted that we move everyone to an area with natural flooring.” Aetra responded, turning to look at me. “She said that you’d be able to help once you made your way over.”
I blinked at that, before my eyes widened. “Right. One of my skills. As long as I am standing on natural terrain, I can create a recovery area.” As I said that, I made my way over to where the wounded were being taken, and saw that the back door of the doctor’s hut had been left wide open, leading to the garden behind it.
I focused, activating my Nature’s Warden skill, and allowing the rejuvenating effects to wash over the warriors from the village. I wasn’t sure how quickly NPCs like them would heal, but this would certainly accelerate the progress.
I was just about to activate my True Dragon Manifestation to empower this skill further, when another system prompt appeared. I had nearly forgotten that Nature’s Warden was one of the skills that had been on the cusp of evolution. Naturally, I accepted this evolution, allowing the skill to change into Vitality of the Forest-X.
This new skill directly increased the benefits of the former, but also accelerated plant growth in the surroundings. Or, at least, that’s what the description said. Looking around at the rocky landscape, I couldn’t help but notice a distinct lack of foliage appearing.
Aetra walked over, nodding her head as she noticed the effects of the aura, once I stopped concealing it with False Identity-X. “So, this is another of your skills, then.” She commented, and I nodded my head.
“It is. Though, may I ask a few questions about this land? There are some things that have been on my mind ever since we arrived.” Aetra looked over, her wrinkled face staring back at me. “What is with the division between the forest and this rocky landscape? Normally, you wouldn’t find such a clear dividing line. There would be plants breaking through the stone for at least a short distance.”
“Oh? Is that how things are where you are from?” She asked with a faint chuckle. “Here, it is as you see. The land is split cleanly by terrain. If you cross the border, you will even experience an entirely different climate, one which refuses to pass the border. There are areas in this land where molten lava flows mere feet away from a frozen tundra, or a sun-baked desert immediately gives way to an overgrown jungle. That is just the way of Chimeris.”
“I take it that Chimeris is the name of this land?” I questioned, and she nodded her head. Inside the hut, I could see that some of the patients were visibly beginning to recover, their injuries fading under the soft aura. “I assume you can still carry resources across the border, or you would never have been able to build these houses.”
“That’s right. However, the ground here is unfit for farming. For that, we have a small field cleared out across the border, within the forest.” As Aetra said that, Diane walked over, wiping her brow.
“Everyone’s accounted for.” She said, giving a firm nod. “We’ve got eighteen injured, but no casualties. I already distributed healing potions to the most critically wounded, so the rest should be good with just your aura.”
“Thanks.” I smiled back at her. “You should have an option to register for the nation now, by the way.”
Diane’s eyes twitched wider, and she looked at her own interface. Soon, I saw the population of Fallcry tick up from one to two, and then to three as Bella seemingly found the option as well. That, or she was listening in on us from inside the hut. She was among the wounded, after all… though her injuries seemed to be primarily on her hands and wrists.
I looked at the redheaded elf laying on a bed of thick leaves, and she offered me a weak smile, waving a bandaged hand. “Sorry… I got a little carried away.”
I simply shook my head. “You protected people. That’s what matters.” I told her, before turning to face Aetra. “I hope that my people and the chimerae can continue to be good neighbors in the future. If you need anything, please feel free to ask.”
Aetra had an amused look on her face when she heard this. “Oh? What exactly are you expecting us to need from your nation of three people?” She said, before letting out a light laugh. I could tell that there was no real scorn in her tone, but rather just a pure attempt to lighten the mood.
“We’ll be having more people arrive in the next few days.” I promised. “Once they figure out the schedule for the rift, I’m sure that they’ll start making their way over.”
With that said, I sent a message to Ennolf, letting him know that I had managed to pass the trial. Though, he no doubt was able to guess as much, given that the message listed my full name when I sent it.
Advent, huh? Do you know what realm you ended up in? So far, it looks like the portal changes connections every fifteen minutes, and there are at least a dozen different territories that it connects to. It’ll probably take a few days before players are able to really get the schedule finalized. Once we have that, we’ll start the migration process.
I nodded my head, though it was concerning how frequently the rift changed. I was sure that would greatly impact travel in the future. With that said, I opened the new menu, Territory Management. Most of it was just a series of reports, such as established dungeons, population, and a national map.
However, there was also a Territory Shop that I could access. Curious, I chose to open the shop, wanting to see what items were inside. The first thing on the list was none other than a Respawn Anchor, much like the one that Wisteria had given me.
In addition, there were pre-built structures like the mailbox, or ones that needed to be assigned to a target building such as a bank. There was even the option to create a teleportation nexus, like those found in cities among other countries. Now I could somewhat understand how the various nations had all of these features, especially something like the mailbox that could send items across the entire world.
However, I had to pay for everything out of the nation’s treasury, which was currently empty. I could donate my own funds, but I didn’t have all that much on hand. At present, I had almost three platinum. While I could buy a mailbox for one platinum, the bank cost five. Ironically, I’d have enough to afford the bank if I had access to my money that was in the bank.
Still, if I got the mailbox, we could finally sell the dismantled whales that had been sitting in my inventory. That would get us more than enough money to buy the basic facilities we needed for our first city.
“I’m going to head back to the city.” I told the others, seeing that the warriors inside the hut were pretty much healed at this point. At the very least, nobody would be in danger anymore. “There are a few things that I need to take care of, now that it’s been established.”
“Nobility?” Diane asked, but I shook my head.
“The management window says that the first noble slot will be unlocked at a thousand residents.” When I said that, Diane clicked her tongue.
“Still… twenty percent decrease to mana burden. It’s a nice effect.” She said, glancing at what must have been her skill window.
I chuckled at that. “I’m going to be setting up a mailbox, if you want to get the whale materials registered with that auction house.” I told her, and her eyes widened. She quickly moved to follow me back towards the walled lot where I planned to build Fallcry. “I also need to make us a proper house. We’re still going to be adventuring, so I don’t know how often we’ll be using it, but we can’t not have a house, right?”
Diane nodded at first, before smirking slightly. “You didn’t even think about us having separate houses, did you?” She asked, causing me to blink. She was right, that thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. I had gotten too used to living with the two of them.
“I mean… if you want a separate house, I can make one?” I offered, but she shook her head.
“It’s fine. Like you said, we won’t be using it all that much anyways. No point taking up the space to make three houses.” Though she said that, I could see her lips curling upwards under her facemask, clearly pleased.
“Right. We’ll need to get that key mailed off to the league, too.” I added, remembering the dungeon key that we had been holding onto for a month at this point. Diane nodded her head in agreement, and we soon arrived within the fortress walls.
“You make the mailbox, and then trade the stuff to me.” She said, causing me to blink. However, she pointed outside the walls. “There’s a hydra corpse waiting out there, not to mention other potentially valuable loot. We can’t just miss out on all of that now that we have somewhere to offload it. Though it’ll be better after we get the bank, we can make do for now with just the most valuable specimens.”
I chuckled, nodding my head. “Right…” After saying that, I opened the menu to purchase the mailbox, placing it just inside the western gate before heading out to start looting.
