Chapter 22: City Building
If you want to yell at me you can do so in my discord: https://discord.gg/T395tt4HUU
***
Several hours later, my Minion Manager walked up to me.
[I've got the end-of-day report]
-
<End of Day Report>
Total resources gathered:
- {x1243} wood
- {x20} leaves
- {x71} meat
- {x488} rocks
- {x2} iron
~
Other:
- {x24} Scout Minions Crafted
- {x2} Minion hut built
- Hut repaired
~
It was much easier to keep track of everything once it was displayed like this. I was gathering resources at a very quick pace. At this rate, I would be able to start expanding my settlement.
Suddenly, I received a notification.
[Bug Alert: Global Rankings have been debugged.]
I opened up the Global Rankings.
-
[GLOBAL RANKINGS]
New-Gen Humans
1. Mackenzie Franklin - 1624
2. Noah Gait - 1122
3. Oliver Moran - 1121
4. Louis Talman - 989
5. Rodeen Sadeghinad - 865
~
[Your rank] #29
[Your Estimated Progression Score] - 743
-
Suddenly my EPS had been updated. It was much higher than it was previously. I guess the bug fix meant that my EPS now was accurate. Even so, I thought I was improving rather quickly, however, there are quite a few people who are above me—Mackenzie Franklin had more than double my score.
It would be quite a bit of work to continue pushing up the rankings.
I took a seat on a slightly moist log as I waited for the rest of my group to come back. I fuelled the fire and it began flickering in the small firepit. Ah, this fire was quite small in comparison to the great hut fire yesterday. The fire grew and hypnotically flared in my eyes, it was a nice view, the orange, red and yellow, dancing around in the air.
The sky was starting to darken, it wouldn't be long until the zombies arrived.
I continued waiting beside the firepit, for some reason, the rest of my group was significantly tardier than normal.
I wonder what they were doing.
I set up the stone crockpot and boiled some water inside. I still didn't have any vegetables or spices so I had to wait until the others came back.
An hour passed and none of them came back.
The sky was now starting to seriously darken, there was practically no light coming from the sun anymore. The weak purple-orange rays of light were blocked by rough grey clouds floating in the sky.
A few more minutes later, I heard a noise coming from the forest.
"Heyo, William~"
Chloe was the first to return.
I looked at her clothes which were a mess. They were covered with dirt and mud and blood. Parts of the cloth had been ripped off and there was obvious wear, creases almost covered her entire clothing. Her hands had dirt mixed with blood, travelling all the way up her forearm. She was holding a crimson-red stained platinum sword in her right hand.
It looked like something had happened.
"What happened," I asked.
"Oh nothing much, I went out and gathered some more ores."
"Why are you such a mess."
"Hey... that's not very nice~ I got in a fight, that's all."
"With what."
She returned her sword to her inventory and pulled out a dark piece of clothing.
"A person, I'm not sure what they wanted, I tried to get some information out of them but they didn't say a word. All I have is this clothing that they were wearing."
She passed what appeared to be a dark-grey hoodie to me.
Who did this belong to?
"I think they were trying to kidnap me, the person was armed with a lot of ropes and a large bag. They also concealed practically their entire body, I'm not sure what their goal is."
"That is a little concerning."
I checked my Minion menu.
I was surprised to find that several of my Minions had died and others had been severely injured.
"Something seems to be killing my Minions as well..."
"How about we hunt them down~"
"I'll think about it, it's not great to have people threatening us and hurting my resource collection."
"Okie~ so what's for dinner?" She asked.
"Uh... Elrich hasn't returned, so I don't have many ingredients, I only really have meat and water."
"Ah... that doesn't sound too great~"
"Did you manage to see the others while you were out?"
"I haven't seen them at all."
There was a chance that they may have been attacked by the group of people that Chloe was talking about. It was pitch black in the forest so there was no reason for them not to return. It was also highly unlikely that they would get lost, they seemed to be able to return without issue every other time.
"You think that he may have been attacked?" I asked her.
"That definitely is a possibility."
"I guess we can search for him tomorrow."
"Ah, aren't you more worried about him?"
"I mean, it's on my mind."
I decided to just cook the meat directly on the fire, it looked like we weren't going to be having anything else tonight. As my food cooked, I looked over at the two new Minion huts, quite a few minions were crammed inside, and the space was starting to get too small to fit my very large amount of Minions, and most of the Minions were just wandering around the area, not too far away from the abyss that was the forest.
Chloe passed some of the resources she gathered to me. There were several different ores, all of which my Minions would struggle to gather in their current state.
I watched as the steaks cooked above the fireplace. The smell permeated through the air as the edges began to brown.
I figured that it was likely that my Minions gathered fewer resources than normal because of these attackers. I guess I'd really have to go deal with them. By the sounds of things, I assumed they were human and not some other race but I still couldn't be too sure.
"Is the food ready?" Chloe asked.
"Yeah, grab one."
"Thanks~"
The two of us ate our steaks in silence as I thought about what I was going to do tomorrow. It would probably involve me taking action.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone