Chapter 14: Expansion
21 Days Ago
A young man stood stiffly in front of Erika, clearly forcing himself not to falter as he held out a carefully woven bag. It was handcrafted, the patterns neat and deliberate, dyed in soft colors with a design that leaned unmistakably girlish.
“Miss Erika, I spent the last three months making this bag specially for you,” he said, voice tight despite his effort to sound steady. His face had already given him away. Red, nervous, hopeful.
A few other young men nearby watched without saying a word. A couple scoffed mockingly, jealous that they don’t have something good to offer to Erika.
But somehow Erika didn’t immediately take the bag. Instead, she hesitated. Her hands hovered slightly forward, then stopped. Her expression softened as her eyes lingered on the gift, and slowly, they began to glisten.
“It’s so beautiful…” she said softly, both hands rising to cover her mouth as if she were looking at jewelry rather than a simple woven bag.
The young man’s expression brightened for a brief moment—
—until Erika turned away.
She didn’t take it.
“Miss Erika, what’s wrong?” he asked quickly, the confidence he had gathered collapsing just as fast. “D-did you not like it?”
“No! I like it so much!” Erika replied, her voice rising, eyes already tearing up.
The young man stood there, confused, caught between relief and dread.
“But I can’t take it,” Erika continued, her voice trembling as she tried to hold herself together. “I know that to make this, you sacrificed your time… time you should have used to find proper food. Look at you… you’ve gotten thinner than before.”
The young man froze, and the others who had been watching could no longer hide their reactions. The mockery faded, replaced by silence as the weight of her words sank in. They hadn’t expected her to notice, let alone care.
Erika gently clasped her hands together and lifted her gaze toward the sky, tears still clinging to her eyes.
“Oh, I wish there was a way for everyone to be happy doing what they’re good at… without having to sacrifice their own well-being.”
No one spoke. No one moved. They could only look at her, standing there like a beautiful saint, untouched by the kind of selfishness they knew too well.
“Actually,” Theo suddenly appeared, “I think I know a way to make everyone stay healthy while still focusing on what they’re good at.”
Three days later, the village began operating under a new structure of organized tasks, exactly as Theo had suggested.
And after that, the similar kind of scene kept happening.
Whenever Erika felt troubled by something, it somehow led to another improvement within the village. Improvements that somehow aligned perfectly with plans Theo and David had already laid in the beginning.
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Present
Chief Tara’s Tent
But one might question how Theo was able to change the village’s way of life so easily.
Sure, there’s Erika, who made the village men feel like the changes were necessary.
And there’s David, who had earned their respect through his fighting ability, which, as it turned out, went far beyond just slinging.
And there’s also Theo, who always acted kind, approachable, and somehow ended up becoming close friend with almost everyone, even though he was doing that to learn what people around him wanted and where they could be pushed.
But the village still had a chief. Chief Tara was the one who formally ruled this place. No matter how much influence Theo built, nothing truly changed without her approval. So the real question wasn’t whether the villagers accepted the changes.
It was whether she did.
“Chief, we’re here,” Theo said as he opened the tent flap and stepped inside, David following behind him.
“Ah, finally you’re here,” Tara replied cheerfully. She stood by her table, looking over a parchment with a hand-drawn map.
In truth, Tara didn’t care much about the changes happening inside the village. Because for the past few weeks, her focus had been on something else entirely.
A plan. One that Theo had proposed to her.
“Is that… the map?” Theo asked, his eyes fixed on the parchment.
“That’s right.” Tara looked at Theo and David with a sharp gaze, a grin spreading across her face. “Our scouts have finished the mapping like you requested. Now we can start planning how to start our expansion properly.”
Expansion. That was the idea Theo had sold to her. Expanding their influence, turning Tara and her village into the leading force among the scattered scavenger tribes. And Tara liked it.
As for Theo, his reasons had nothing to do with loyalty or ambition for the village. He simply understood how this world worked. If he wanted to survive, he needed to grow stronger. And the most effective way to do that was by following his system’s rules.
More territory meant faster growth. Everything else was just a means to reach that point. It also helped that David was on their side. A former king, so uniting villages wasn’t exactly new to him.
Theo and David stepped closer to the table, examining the map. It clearly showed the position of their village along with the surrounding terrain. But that wasn’t what mattered right now.
They focused on the clusters of markings scattered across the map. Each icon represented a settlement similar to theirs. The ones marked in the same color—black—were scavenger villages.
Everything else wasn’t.
“Eight scavenger villages…” David muttered, eyes narrowing slightly as he traced the spread. “And these other settlements, ma’am?”
He pointed toward the far eastern side of the map, where several icons were grouped closely together, all marked in blue.
“Those belong to the beastman tribes,” Tara replied. “In a way, they’re similar to scavengers. Mixed origins, different backgrounds. The difference is, they’re all beastmen.”
“Beastmen?” David asked.
“Half man, half animal,” Tara explained, already accustomed to having to clarify things for outworlders like Theo and David. “They’re agile, stronger than most, and many can use traits from the animals they resemble.”
“Interesting…” David murmured, rubbing his chin as he studied the cluster more carefully.
He didn’t dwell on it for long, shifting his attention back across the map.
“And these?” he asked, pointing north of their position, past the stone ravine.
“Barbarian tribes,” Tara said. “And the name fits. They’re violent, war-driven, and built for it. Muscle, aggression, and not much else. Around here, people learn quickly to stay out of their path.”
“Sigh… meanwhile, the scavenger tribes only have eight villages in total, while the others have dozens,” Theo said, his gaze lingering on the scattered black markings. “Still, I suppose it’s better than having no friends at all.”
“They’re not friends,” Tara corrected immediately. “Every scavenger village looks out for itself. That’s how they survive.”
“Ah, right. I forgot,” Theo replied easily.
David remained silent for a moment, studying the layout more seriously.
“The positioning of the scavenger villages isn’t great,” he said at last. “They’re too spread out compared to the others.”
“It’s intentional,” Tara answered. “Scavengers keep their distance. If one village is raided or overrun by monsters, the survivors can’t run to the others and drag the problem with them.”
Theo frowned slightly at that.
“Cowardly way to live…” he muttered.
“That’s how it’s always been,” Tara shrugged casually.
David’s gaze shifted from the map to Tara.
“I just hope,” he said quietly, “that deep down, the others are just as tired of running as we are, ma’am.”
“Well, that sounds more like your job,” Tara said with a smirk before shifting her gaze to Theo. “Isn’t that right, Vice-Chief?”
Theo let out a tired sigh. “Yeah, yeah. Just wait until we manage to tame one or two of the hounds.”
“How’s the progress?” Tara asked. “How long until you can actually tame them?”
Both of them turned to David.
David scratched his jaw slightly before answering. “I reckon it’ll take about another month before even the weakest demon hound starts listening to us.”
“And one is enough for us to make our tour,” Theo added with a smile.
“Ku… ku… HAHAHAHA!” Tara burst into laughter, clearly entertained by the thought. “Me, riding a demon hound, visiting every scavenger village… I can already see the looks on those idiot chiefs’ faces when they realize what’s coming.”
Her grin widened, satisfied with the image in her head.
“That’s something worth seeing… fufufu.”
“Just remember, ma’am,” David said, keeping his tone steady, “you’ll need to start joining the pattern training soon. And you’ll have to personally feed them so they can get used to you.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Tara replied casually. “You just keep training the hounds and my men into some proper military.”
And that was the plan they had been preparing. Tara would be paraded as a rising power, a figure strong enough to bring the scattered scavenger villages under a single banner. Her banner.
It helped that Tara was naturally ambitious and hungry for power. She played the role perfectly without needing to be convinced, becoming the ideal front for everything Theo intended to build. The more she pushed outward, the more space Theo gained to grow his own influence behind the scenes.
All this effort… just to barely reach level two.
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Bimbanana's History Class
Pic: Ancient Greek Road Pebble Mosaic
The Stone and Pebble Pathway, the world’s first durable infrastructure for trade and troop movement, has been used by civilizations since at least 4000 BCE.
Originally a simple collection of flat river rocks used to prevent mud during rainy seasons, it became a sophisticated engineering marvel (like the Roman Via) until it was eventually evolved into modern asphalt and concrete paving during the 19th century.