I Built This City [LitRPG Lateral Progression Kingdom Building]

It was chilly this day, more so than the recent spring days. Still well above freezing, so only a few dwindling mounds of snow remained in the more shadowed portions of the forest, fallen from the branches to collect in heavy piles. Warm enough to melt snow was still well below comfort for a human, though.

Ellen rubbed her hands together and puffed on them to warm them up. She was ready, and had been ready for several minutes now. The magnitude of what she was about to do was nerve-wracking, and she knew she was just procrastinating in giving it a try.

“Stop procrastinating,” Hunter grumbled. “If it doesn’t work, we’ll just figure out something else. It sounds like it should work, though.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ellen sighed, crossing her arms and looking out over the “road” in front of her. Not that it resembled a road much. She knew that’s what it used to be, eighty years ago, and she could see it on her map in the Settlement Interface, but it was a lot harder to see in person.

All the Ellens had been gathering their wood from the trees on this road, chopping them down in an attempt to clear it enough to make the road visible and—hopefully—usable. This was where the bulk of their wood over the winter had come from, and with so many Ellens working at it she’d assumed they’d made good progress.

Now, looking at it, Ellen realized they’d barely made a dent in the progress needed.

She glanced behind her at the large space that she’d flattened, making a platform in the slope of the hill that would keep any logs from rolling away. It was a pretty large log pile, two dozen meters square, but currently almost empty. She had just created it, after all.

“I guess we’ll see if we have enough for it,” Ellen sighed, pulling up her Settlement Interface. Specifically, a new option that hadn’t existed until she’d gotten her Level 12 Ability.

She’d used several Settlement Points already to flatten the area for the log pile, but the Land Mana had already regenerated from that use. It had been a decent test of the new Ability, but this next feat would really stretch what she thought it would be capable of.

“If you’re sure it won’t be a problem for you, I’ll start now,” Ellen muttered to Hunter. So far, their logging hadn’t disrupted the Landkeeper in any way, but the scale was very different.

“Get on with it!” Fisher called out, and some of the other Ellens chuckled. Every one of them knew why Ellen was nervous, but that didn’t make it easier to wait. The only one who seemed patient and quiet was Scholar, whose eyes were unfocused from staring at the Settlement Interface as well.

Ellen sighed again, but she concentrated and spread her will over the area she’d identified as the road. Her Ability used Land Mana and Settlement Points, but it also drained her personal mana as well. She was unsurprised to feel the chill spread through her as her mana drained out and triggered the effect, plummeting rapidly. Within moments, she was well below half her reserves.

She could feel the basic shape of the road, and where it used to be. Even after nearly a century, the forced reshaping of the earth left lingering tells. It hadn’t been a stone road, merely packed earth… but loosening that packed earth had taken time and the growth of numerous trees and shrubs. The top layer was thoroughly loose dirt, but further beneath some clumps remained. The difference was subtle, and Ellen wasn’t sure how she could feel it, but she could.

The ground rippled as Ellen added a slight bulge down the center, to let rainwater slide to either side instead of forming puddles. She’d seen that done in other roads, so at least wasn’t totally inept at making a road. She added two ditches, one on either side, to collect spillover, but wasn’t sure where they should lead. She’d have to add proper drainage later. All of her attention was on forming the road.

Earth compacted and clenched, crushing or forcing out the roots. Small, fibrous roots like those in ground cover were severed at the base, while the larger tree roots were forced out, uprooting each one so the forest was filled with the creaking groan of toppling trunks and crackling branches as they snapped or bent on the way down. Trunks from earlier tree felling bubbled up from the earthen stew, tumbling to either side once the ground firmed under her magical force.

The ache of mana depletion started to throb through her chest, and Ellen stopped with a deep, panting breath. Smith was there right away mopping at the sweat that rolled down Ellen’s forehead, and Carpenter steadied her as she felt a woozy wobble in her balance. She shook it off and then gave Carpenter’s hand a pat to let her know she was able to stand on her own again.

“Well, that’s impressive, though kind of disappointing as well.” Hunter squinted as she raised a hand to shade her eyes, watching the trees still toppling and rolling into place. “It’s going to take a lot of work to get these stripped and dragged to the log pile, but I guess we have plenty of wood now. Think you can finish the dry storage with this, Carpenter?”

Carpenter shrugged. “Easy enough to build with it. Most of that we can just use the wood as-is, honestly. So long as the floor is properly dried, we’re good.” She gestured at the huge mess. “The problem is getting all of that stripped and chopped up and dragged off. Poor Melissa has her work cut out for her.”

Ellen sighed, “I didn’t even get a third of the way through. It’s going to take weeks before the roads are connected anyway. Take your time.”

“Don’t feel too bad, that would take us months to do by hand, even if we all had the tools for it,” Smith pointed out. “And most of us don’t want to take time out to chop down trees when we could be working on our own jobs, you know.”

She knew. Ellen knew as well as any of them, but unlike the Adventuring Party she felt comfort in speaking it out loud. So did Smith, apparently, despite her sister being one of the more taciturn Ellens.

That had drained all her mana, but apparently it had worked well. “The cost must scale faster the more ground it covers,” she grumbled.

Reshape Terrain was the Ability, and it was, like many of the Abilities granted by their strange classes, only situationally useful. In this case the situation was that it could only work on her own land, and it used both mana from herself and from the land, along with Settlement Points. So far the mana had regenerated quickly, but the accumulation of Settlement Points was still a mystery to her.

Even if it were limited to land she owned, Ellen still found it a powerful ability for a mere Level 12 to have. She had experimented with it in small ways by creating footpaths between the buildings in Onroc Anroll, and then a larger test by flattening the terrain near her to make a place for the logs to be stored. It was still a very clumsy Ability right now, but what she’d just done was still incredible.

“Did you learn anything, Scholar?” Ellen turned to ask the quiet member of the Adventuring Party that still stared forward, locked in on the Settlement Interface.

Scholar shook her head to clear it and blinked a few times. “Hmm? Oh yes, very much!” She gestured toward the mountain. “Land Mana is recovering much faster while the others are in the dungeon. We think the mana the dungeon generates contributes to it. We are still not sure about Settlement Points, but we believe they are gained from adding to the hamlet. That’s the next test.”

Ellen wobbled slightly and took the offered support from Smith. “That isn’t something I want to try doing again right away,” she admitted, the mana drain making her dizzy. “I’ve never drained myself this much. Do I need to lay down, Scholar?”

“You should recover in a few minutes without laying down,” Scholar assured. “If you reserve about one fourth of your mana instead of spending it, this shouldn’t happen. We really should teach more of you how to use magic even if you don’t have a Class for it. None of us Ellens ever know if we’re going to split. Just look at Fisher and Cobbler!”

Fisher looked up suddenly. “Hmm?” She was listening more than she seemed though. “Oh. I suppose that would make sense. Cobbler and I took these jobs because they’re quiet, but something like the Woodwright could be interesting. There were some truly strange options on the list, you know. I’m just glad I found one that was useful.”

Ellen knew that calling her “Fisher” was a misnomer now. She’d gotten started with fishing, but rapidly moved on to handle basically every general task, and was working on a garden. Her Homesteader Class wasn’t a weird and rare one like most of the Ellens took, though it was uncommon nowadays. Perfect for what she wanted to do, just uncommon.

The news was interesting… but they still had other questions to answer. Ellen pulled up her map and switched it over to the mountain area. The dungeon’s influence blob had grown considerably since she’d first seen it. She estimated it had enough room for six floors, though she was no expert. The thought made her sigh heavily.

“You’re looking at the dungeon, aren’t you?” Scholar chuckled. “We have been examining it. The latest large growth happened right after Fisher and Cobbler appeared. Growth afterward has been very slow. We do think that it grows more quickly when an Ellen… duplicates. We think that is why it named us a rival, as it knows somehow it gets stronger by defeating us.”

Ellen turned the image of the map in her view, nodding at what Scholar said. She squinted down at how the blob was misshapen and nibbled her lip. “Have you figured out why the dungeon doesn’t look like it’s taking over the iron mine?”

She couldn’t see the entire iron mine on the map, since they hadn’t gone deep into it, but the way the dungeon’s blob was distorted matched up with how she’d assume a mine shaft went. Ellen hadn’t sent any other Ellens to look, since if the dungeon was in there on some offshoot tunnel then it was far too dangerous. Besides, they’d need to finish shoring it up.

Though they did have plenty of timber now.

Scholar shrugged. “Same idea as before. Somehow, the fact that it is carved out by humans makes it untouchable to the dungeon. That doesn’t match what we know about dungeons, but maybe Uncle Anroll will have a better idea. Or maybe it can’t touch it because it’s considered part of the town, and the town is linked to the dungeon? We need a real dungeon expert, not just us.”

She hesitated a moment.

“I hope it is the manmade part, though. That would let us do what we need to do.”

Ellen dismissed the interface and nodded in agreement. It would be nice to have access to the mana plume again. Scholar’s plan was just so… out there. She sighed.

“I’d better pack up and get moving to Merriweather before the real rush starts. I’ll see if Uncle Anroll is there.”