Garrick looked over his building map again and then went and remeasured. It looked off, and he could not figure out why. Then he found it: someone had knocked over one of his staked lines and put it back in the ground but not in the correct place, so he went and fixed that. Garrick had drawn up the village map for Stonehaven even though it was only an outpost now and only had enough to meet the System requirements to complete it. He had started building about twenty minutes after he came out of the gate.
He was almost in the dead center of the zone. He did not really pick the location; it was just where he came out. His horse had been so heavily laden, and he was so encumbered himself that he had barely made it through the gate. He had finally settled on bringing all of the hammers, not just one, so he almost had to drag his way through the gate, and the huge backpack Dale had handed him did not help.
From the moment he started construction, his mentality had been simple: if you build it, they will come. It was the second day before the first one arrived. Her name was Brielle, a Healer; she had told him she followed the sound of construction to him. His construction plan was simple and relatively scaled down. There were sixteen things on the plan. Brielle had told him it was a little obsessive, but when he built her a temporary shelter, which she said was nicer than the place she had lived in the last three months, she stopped complaining.
He had realized that day that she could not work as hard as his standard work crew, so they came to a compromise: she would work for him four hours a day with at least one break in between, and then he would let her do what she needed to do. Of course, she had to make the food because he just did not have the time to do that. He gave her the pack of food Dale had given him, along with all the stored food he had, the cookbook, and the spices.
He had also given her the saplings, the seeds, and the instruction manual for the orchard. He had read it far enough to find out spacing requirements and had staked out where it belonged just outside the south gate, not that there was a gate or walls yet. But he knew where he needed to go, and it was on the map.
On the third day, a man named Adam showed up. He was a Ranger, and with him Garrick had created the outpost. It was named Stonehaven just like his drawing of the village indicated. He had promised Mark and Sarah that he would create the school the day he created the outpost, so he did that. He had Adam and Brielle help him pick the subjects. He brought up the list to review it again.
[School Curriculum]Basic EducationUnlockedReading Level 1Writing Level 1LockedArithmetic Level 1Record Keeping Level 1Manual Study Level 1Research Basics Level 1TeachingUnlockedTeaching Level 1Lesson Planning Level 1LockedStudent Assessment Level 1Group Instruction Level 1Mentorship Level 1Curriculum Development Level 1BuildingUnlockedBuilding Level 1Tool Handling Level 1LockedStructural Planning Level 1Material Selection Level 1Repair Work Level 1Reinforcement Level 1CraftingUnlockedPrimitive Crafting Level 1This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.Material Processing Level 1LockedRope Making Level 1Container Crafting Level 1Simple Furniture Level 1Utility Crafting Level 1SurvivalUnlockedFire Starting Level 1Shelter Building Level 1LockedWater Gathering Level 1Navigation Level 1Weather Awareness Level 1Emergency Foraging Level 1MedicineUnlockedFirst Aid Level 1Patient Care Level 1LockedWound Treatment Level 1Bone Setting Level 1Infection Control Level 1Emergency Medicine Level 1HuntingUnlockedHunting Level 1Tracking Level 1LockedTrap Setting Level 1Field Dressing Level 1Game Identification Level 1Bow Hunting Level 1◈ ◈ ◈
After he made the school, he delegated running it to Adam since he had fewer tasks so far. Garrick made sure that Adam signed up for Teaching so that he could take care of all the future students that would come. Adam had protested at first until he was also bribed with a temporary shelter, which was the best place he had lived in too. It was only temporary, but it did have two rooms and a working door, which amazed Adam.
It was the fourth day, and he felt like he was behind. He knew people were going to start coming to the zone as brand-new Level 0 with no place to live, and he really wanted to be able to house them on day one. The biggest bottleneck was labor. Adam also agreed to do his share of the daily labor but insisted on only three hours a day, as he had other priorities to handle.
At dinner the third night he commented about how he could see someone else on the guild map, which led to him sharing the guild with the pair so they could see what they were talking about. Whoever they were seeing wasn't close and wasn't heading toward them, so Garrick did not consider them a priority.
He wanted his workshop completed along with the storage shed so he could use the System storage and get some of the clutter cleaned up, and then he could pull what he wanted out without having to sort through his bags. With the help of his two assistants, he was able to get fifteen trees cut and limbed during the day and, using his horse, dragged them over near the camp in his wood storage area. There he sorted them and tagged each log for its specific use.
This afternoon the plan was to rip them into boards using his two-man saw, so he hoped Adam would be more useful on the saw than Brielle had been yesterday. Garrick could tell that with her healer class, she did not prioritize strength and agility. While he was waiting for Adam to show up for his shift, he looked around the valley he was in; to the east, far in the distance, he could see mountains. Maybe a future source of stone and possibly ore.
To the west he could see trees, lots of trees. There were so many he could not see anything past them. At some point after he finished this village, he would hunt for the next location to build. Maybe he could even go to where that other person on his map was. Most likely they would love a village built for them too. Maybe they would even have more workers to help, which would make this quicker.
As he was waiting, he started to think about Mark; he wondered how he was doing. They had made a great pair. Mark was good at finding places that needed building, and he was good at building. Mark always found the places worth building. Garrick simply made sure they would still be standing long after either of them were gone. All he ever needed or wanted was more workers.