Tribal System: Conquering the Wild Women with my Club

Kellar explained, tracing the internal sections with charcoal. "The pointed lead or iron bullet sits at the top. The metal casing will be hollow inside to hold the compressed powder charge, and at the base, we will place a primer. To trigger the detonation upon a sharp strike, we need a compound sensitive to impact... mercury fulminate or silver fulminate."

Lennis furrowed his brow, processing the unfamiliar chemical terms.

"Fulminate?" asked Lennis. "Where could we obtain such a substance?"

"We can synthesize it," Kellar answered with resolve. "We need to dissolve mercury—which we can extract from the cinnabar ores in the deep caverns—into concentrated nitric acid, and then mix it with distilled alcohol. The chemical sediment formed from that reaction is volatile. A single spark or a firm strike from the rifle’s hammer onto that tiny cap will instantly detonate the powder inside the chamber."

Lennis’s eyes gleamed with awe and understanding. He held the papyrus with both hands as if it were the tribe’s most sacred relic.

"With this design..." Lennis whispered, "we will no longer rely on slow matches or worry about wet weather. The shot will be instantaneous, and the pressure within the barrel will multiply tenfold."

"That is correct," Kellar agreed, "but it is not enough. A bullet like that will be tenfold more powerful, yet it still won’t penetrate the carapaces of those beasts. My plan is to use the stones we found."

"The Wind Stones?" asked Lennis, his eyes widening.

"Precisely. The Bear God has shown me that we can use them to enhance the bullet, though I do not yet know how to accomplish it. As soon as we arrive, gather the craftsmen to work on the bullet design and the firing pin mechanism. I will attempt to discover how to harness the power of the Wind Stone to upgrade the ammunition."

"I understand, Great Shaman. If the Bear God decreed it, then he must have a plan for us."

"Yes, the Bear God will guide our path."

Kellar leaned back atop Ignis and opened the system panel within his mind. Ever since the last update, he hadn’t received any quests rewarding Tech Points, and he desperately needed 50 to unlock advanced warfare enchantment blueprints—a predicament that was driving him mad.

He reviewed the tribe’s territorial development tab. He had nearly finished the entire checklist:

[Tribal Development Panel]

[Expand your territory] (Completed)

[Build roads] (In Progress)

[Build a drainage system] (In Progress)

[Build an educational system] (Completed)

[Build a security team] (Completed)

Only two quests remained to claim the point reward. To pave the highways and line the drainage network of the capital city, he required a construction material.

I almost forgot, thought Kellar, a spark of excitement flashing in his eyes. I have the hydraulic cement formula.

He recalled the exact ratios engraved into his memory:

[Hydraulic Cement Formula]

Limestone: 75%

Clay: 20%

Iron Oxides & Gypsum: 5%

Process: Fine crushing, high-temperature kiln firing (1450C) to form clinker, and final grinding with gypsum.

"Lennis," Kellar called out, interrupting the craftsman’s scribbles. "I need you to dispatch a team of scouts to the southern river hills the moment we arrive. We are looking for deposits of limestone and white gypsum."

"Limestone and gypsum?" Lennis asked in confusion. "What would we need those stones for, Great Shaman?"

"To create a new material that hardens into solid rock when mixed with water," Kellar explained. "If we want to pave roads and build drainage channels that will survive the winter, we must produce this material by the ton. We need seventy-five percent limestone, twenty percent clay, and five percent iron oxides and gypsum. Everything must be finely crushed, fired at extreme temperatures of nearly fourteen hundred and fifty degrees in a kiln to form small stones called clinker, and then ground down again with the gypsum."

Lennis listened carefully and nodded slowly.

"The river miners have indeed spotted white veins of limestone and gypsum near the clay pits..." Lennis noted, furrowing his brow. "But we have never fired anything at such extreme temperatures. With conventional fire from wood and ordinary coal, reaching nearly fourteen hundred and fifty degrees in a kiln of that scale will be difficult."

"We will build vertical shaft kilns with reinforced mechanical bellows to force airflow and concentrate the heat," Kellar commanded. "That cement will yield the roads and drainage our tribe requires. With it, we will complete the capital’s transformation."

Lennis continued taking notes on his papyrus, nodding in silence at every instruction. Although he didn’t fully grasp the complexity behind the process or the exact figures of the required temperature, he knew full well that his duty was to execute. He simply had to trust the Great Shaman; his job was to do as he was told.

Kellar refocused his attention on the mental interface. Opening the System Shop tab, he began browsing through the catalog of finished goods and knowledge blueprints.

He couldn’t help but notice once again the immense price gap between finished resources and their technical blueprints. A single fifty-kilogram bag of processed cement cost one hundred Tribal evolution Points in the shop, whereas the formula itself had cost five thousand. He did the math quickly: buying processed cement directly would yield barely fifty bags for that equivalent—a small amount. Unless it was an emergency, spending points on processed resources made zero sense.

He kept scrolling through the list of skills and magical schematics until one particular item caught his eye:

[Skill: Speak with Animals]

[Cost: 10,000p]

Kellar thought of the giant eagle they were keeping captive and starved back at the main village. It would be useful to communicate with it directly; perhaps through words he could convince it to swear loyalty, or at least the skill would ease the process of taming wild beasts for the tribe.

Determined to check if he could afford it, he glanced up at the top corner of the panel to check his balance.

[Tribal evolution Points: 25,432p]

Kellar froze in his tracks mentally.

Wait, wait... what the hell? he thought, blinking in absolute shock. He distinctly remembered that before the battle he barely had a little over four thousand points left.

Where on earth had the other twenty thousand points come from?