Though throughout the coming weeks of increased income, Jim got the Barrais spy network onto a personal task. See, Jim had noticed a blind spot of Ace’s. While he was watching the other settlements, he wasn’t actually paying attention to their conditions. He had the numbers, but not the stories behind those numbers. Jim was actually suspicious that he wouldn’t have cared if the rest of the community vanished.
Which Jim considered quite short-sighted. Then again, in theory, Ace was only one of the inner circle. Except as of late, it seems things had gone from “first among Equals” to “First among equals”. Because, while officially in the eyes of the system and to those on the outside, Ace was the ruler of the town. Things had always been meant to be a council.
Except most of the inner circle didn’t really want to rule, or rather, didn’t want to rule the town. They were fine taking control of their own areas of expertise. Which worked, but meant Ace was almost completely in charge of external diplomacy, barring trade deals.
Now, Jim was in charge of the Adventurers Guild. So technically, his responsibility was both very targeted and yet broad. His command covered the Entire world. Period. He was The Guildmaster of the planet. But right now?
His actual subjects were almost entirely within Wolf’s Rest. There were no other Adventurers Guilds on the planet. He would know. So the only adventurers were those who joined right here in his guildhall. And most of those who bothered joining were also the ones planning on staying in town. Oh sure, a few of them did occasionally head back to their settlement of origin, but very few. Especially after getting a taste of the luxury this town had.
Cheap housing? Safety? Cheap and abundant food? The ability to get said food for free if you spent all your money on the now booming booze industry simply by killing some monsters in the dungeon? Better to stay here and send back supplies bought here to their homes. In fact, going by the statistics, over two-thirds of the town’s growth was from the families of his adventurers moving here.
Jim wasn’t going to let this blind him, though. The guild was more than just a gathering place for adventurers. It was also a place that gave and received quests. That put out orders to call monsters and take care of bandits. They weren’t the police, but they did support their homes.
And more than that? They supported their families. Built right into joining the guild was basically a form of life insurance. You mark down your inheritor and anything you had stored at the guild, anything that was recovered from your body, any pending rewards, and a portion of any guild fees you ever paid would be sent to them.
So while Jim’s direct remit was quite limited in who it covered, if wide in physical scope. There were strings he could pull to expand it. So Jim turned his eyes to those settlements where adventurers had come from.
A small settlement called Riverbend for obvious reasons was only three settlements away and was the first “story” Jim received. Helped along by the expanding presence of boats to carry goods. So, with a certain amount of expectation, he pulls a rough bamboo cloth paper out of a piece of bamboo and unrolls it.
[
The Adventurer’s Brother
Acts the town's trader and diplomat, though he mostly spends his time fishing otherwise. The brother sends enough meat that the people of the settlement only go hungry once in three days. Though most of the meat is goat, with an occasional axebeak haunch when the sixth floor runs are light.
Ironically, the bird meat costs more in resources as it takes a three-day stew to be edible by those in town who have leveled much. Thankfully, there is a stand of trees close enough to provide wood. And speaking of which, the giant stew pot they use for this is the settlement's treasure.
It took the brother an entire month to gather the needed ore, coins, and favors. During that month people suffered, but the ability to stew axebeak seems to have been worth the cost.
Visiting merchants mostly buy pottery. One of the “elders” of the settlement seems to have been a college teacher who taught such things. Thankfully, the river bend they live next to has a significant deposit of clay for them to use. Though the needed charcoal for firing the clay is a drain on their wood supplies and is a problem when they need to stew axebeak more than once in a month.
Honestly, they probably would be able to fully feed themselves if part of the brothers income didn’t go directly to acquiring quartz and copper. The settlement was luckily blessed with an outcropping of microcline. Otherwise, their pottery wouldn’t be worth as much as it is.
Did you know that you can make a simple glaze out of ground quartz, copper oxide, and microcline? Or at least, I think that is all they use. They haven’t perfect it and are constantly changing the mixture and how fine they grind things. Also, I think they’re using limestone at some point? Bone ash was also used for a hot second.
Anyway, their pots hold water, so we should probably send someone to try and learn what they’re doing above board. I don’t think this DIY glaze was part of the college course. It seems the old lady in charge of it all had been interested in ancient cultures and the history of the craft as well as the modern implementation of it.
I see hope for this settlement, unlike many around it. Once a batch of potters and ceramic workers have been trained up, their works will be quite valuable. So even if we do get the glaze recipe, I feel a standing trade deal might be for the best. Maybe acquire a sample of high-quality clay and feed it to the dungeon? Do you think it would spawn glaze as well?
]
Jim sighed, it was bad, but not as bad as he expected. After all, it was a settlement towards the center of the community and along the river Wolf’s Rest was on. Which meant merchants would stop by often and the non-stop flow of meat would partially come to rest there. Even if only the pieces that are older and wouldn’t survive a longer trip. Though for every copper coin worth of meat that made it there, they likely paid two coppers.
Jim settled back and grabbed the special section bamboo the message had been hidden in. It couldn’t exactly be reused. No one could see bamboo being moved out as well as in. That would raise suspicions. Which was also why they weren’t feeding it to the dungeon. Nevermind Jim doubted it would be added to any of the early floors. The stuff didn’t fit the themes. Jim crushed the bamboo and his Qi vibrated above his skin, reducing it to dust.
Though soon enough similar reports were coming in at a steady clip.
[
Parents of an Adventurer
Well, they live in a shack, but that’s about all you get here. They’re only a settlement or three out from the center of the community so things are safe enough. No reason for people to focus on more than a roof and winter was mild enough. Besides that, while there isn’t much proper food, the system wasn’t cruel to the area.
You know, since this is where all the elderly and children got tossed. They have system soup kitchens, though only for said elderly and children. Not only that, but the elderly are given flavorless gruel. Still good for everything they need nutritionally, but boring to the extreme. Only the kids get decent meals.
The regular people? They eat sometimes. I can’t really say much more than that. Those who have any kind of drive don’t stay here permanently. Rather, they cycle through on a schedule. Taking time to grow stronger and gather food. They aren’t training any skills related to crafting, though. Only the elderly are doing that, and not much as they’re mostly in charge of watching and teaching the children.
]
[
Two Adventurers visit often
And there wouldn’t be much of a settlement if they didn’t. This place is out of the way. Merchants don’t visit and there aren’t enough animals to hunt in the area. I fear that come next winter? People are going to starve.
I know it’s against orders, but I’ve been trying to get them to think of heading to Wolf’s Rest. At least a few of them. This is supposed to be anonymous, but if you can, identify the adventurers who come from here and watch them. We aren’t shy about inviting people into the town so either they’re suspicious or they’re suspicious of us. Neither is a good thing for us.
]
[
The Adventurer’s Friend is Dead
I didn’t stay around since my target isn’t living here anymore. They didn’t starve, though some will now. We have bandits. Put up the bounties.
]
[
An Adventurer Retired
So he’s ruling this settlement with an iron fist. I think they voted him in originally? Now since the terrain around here is rough, people don’t visit and no one has reported this yet. Guess I’m the first to tell on him. It would not be good for our members, even those retired, to start setting up their own little feudal states.
People aren’t technically starving. Though they always go hungry. The guy is the only one able to properly hunt and he’s taking advantage of it by forbidding others from even trying, stating safety concerns.
Yeah, we really should get this fixed? Soon if possible. Don’t want to let rot like this fester, especially since we know about it now. It is extremely hard to hide a fire in a paper bag. So now that you have been directly informed, directly fixing it should be the next move? Yeah, hope you do something.
]
Jim laughs at the last message. Oh, sure, the topic is grim. Inevitable, but still something he can’t let stand. At the very least, Jim, as the planetary Guildmaster, could not let someone who had been an official adventurer start a micro-nation by force. That would set a bad precedent.
Governments needed to trust the adventurers to at least not overthrow them or take their land. Otherwise, they might be tempted to kick the guild out or something. Which, of course, doesn't end well for anyone involved.
The guild doesn’t like being kept out of places. They’re sort of a big deal and keeping them out tended to mean bad things were on the horizon. And not just because the guild would force their way back in. Rather, there were certain quests that every guild kept up. Things like the extermination of wild undead and culling certain universal pests.
And suddenly a nation doesn’t want the famously neutral Adventurers Guild around? Well, it might not always be as simple as one plus one equals two sort of thing. Though time and again, no matter what else is going on? Those “pests” tend to get out of control in a very harmful way.
After all, what might be a simple pest in small numbers can quickly turn into a catastrophe. The example his introduction manual gave was “hungry grasshoppers”. They liked to eat Mana, you see?
Anyway, get enough of the dog-sized insects together and they become a swarm of Gluttony Locust. They are what the guild refer to as having an uncapped threat level. When a swarm of them first gets going, they’re only able to eat magic and other things a normal locust can eat.
And if the locusts simply needed to grow stronger to eat more, that would be a pretty high-level threat. It wouldn’t be uncapped.
Instead, the Gluttony locust gains power by simply having more of themselves. The bigger the swarm, the more things they can eat. From Mana, to Qi, and slowly expand until they can eat every supernatural power. And from plants, to wood, bone, and finally they can eat the earth itself.
Eventually they don’t have a planet left and either they die or the universe has another apocalyptic threat. Because if they don’t die in the vacuum of space? That means they’re going to eat the rest of the solar system before spreading slowly through the void. The only saving grace is that it takes many, many solar systems of mass before they can eat gas giants and magnitudes more to eat suns. So while it is a world-ending threat, they can still be handled by regular people. Past a certain point, though? The swarm can eat the universe itself.