Chapter 105: Sect Growth
Benton turned to Mo Jian. “Honorable Mayor, how about the villagers?”
“My fellow new inductees are all diligently cultivating ten hours per day as instructed and are approaching the second minor realm, Esteemed Sect Leader.”
“I was more thinking about how we should proceed for the future,” Benton said. “When they reach minor realm four, the martial oriented ones will get weapon techniques and proceed along the same path as Zi Delan’s group now. We haven’t established a clear path for the craftspeople.”
“Ah. They’d be able to produce more quickly if we started them with a crafting technique, Esteemed Sect Leader.”
“Production is important,” Benton said, “but they wouldn’t be able to defend themselves when the beast tide comes.”
The mayor shrugged as if to ask, “Which do you value more?”
That was a tough question. Benton was eager to get his pavilions up and running, and it already was going to take the villagers around a month just to reach a minimum cultivation level.
“I’ll open that to the council for a recommendation as well. Do we first want to get the villagers established doing the job we recruited them for or have them obtain a minimal proficiency with weapons?”
Yang Xiu, usually the first to respond, had nothing.
“If the attack is not imminent, it would seem wise to start crafting, Master,” Zou Tian said. “Even if the attack is imminent, we need arrows, and hopefully, our lives are not truly dependent on these newest sect members defending the sect.”
“They obviously will not be the first line of defense, but beast tides are chaotic. Our frontline fighters may not kill every beast before it can get inside the sect grounds or the village. Everyone who can wield a weapon will be valuable, even if only to save their own lives.”
“I think a compromise solution is in order, Master,” Ye Zan said. “It only takes around a week or so for most people to reach Small Success. Have the villagers attain that level with their craft technique, which should be even faster for them since they already have familiarity with their job. Then, they can mainly work at the designated position but train a couple of hours a day with weapons.”