FFF-Tier System, SSS-Rank Wife

When we ventured out for the jungle of death with just me and Selia, we only needed a day to cross the distance from the town to the woods.

But now there were around thirty of us. And rather than just a backpack or two, we hauled along several carts worth of supplies, tools, and all the stuff that we might come to need in the coming weeks.

It took us two days to cover the whole distance before. But now?

By the time the sun came low in the sky, we maybe made a fifth of the distance.

"Okay, everyone," seeing Selia give me a look and nod her head, I turned and called out to the group. "That's where we will rest for the night."

A wave of relief went through the whole crowd.

Even though all we did was walk and pretty much everyone in this group was used to covering long distances on their feet, prior experience in this kind of effort only made things a little bit easier.

"The end of travel doesn't mean the end of the job, though!" I quickly added, only to smile when I heard the sighs of relief turning into sighs of dissatisfaction. "You wouldn't want to sleep under the open sky, would you?"

I could see it in their eyes.

When I told them about the remaining work for the day, they fully expected me to bash them with some unreasonable demands.

And all things considered… they had all the right to expect that.

I was already extremely generous with my pay. But what I did while keeping the future in mind, where considerable pay was just one of the factors that could restore the town to its former glory…

For them, I was the kind of idiotic noble that pressed others to do his bidding and was happy to just throw money not to hear any complaints about it.

What they weren't prepared for was me being just… me.

"Sir, we have enough materials to set up two camps if we wished so," one of the adventurers stepped out. "But at the rate we went today, it's still going to take us several days just to get to the edge of the jungle. And if we are to camp there for a lot longer…"

The hesitation was all visible on the man's face.

He didn't oppose the idea of setting camp just because, but due to the problems he foresaw.

And sure, if we used up our resources to set up a camp on the very first day, we could still reuse most of them on the second, third, and the following days.

But just like a piece of cloth would grow more and more ragged if we were to change its form over and over again over the course of daily assembling and disassembling our camp.

Still, I smiled and shook my head.

"I'm not talking about setting a camp," I crossed my arms over my chest, "but about building a simple shed instead, mostly with the materials we can find at hand."

I relaxed my arms only to drop my hands on my hips and slightly raise my chin.

"Why else do you guys think we brought so many nails, hammers, and people skilled in simple crafting along?"

For a modern person like me, to build a structure was a daunting task.

Starting with a mountain of paperwork that would need to be filled even if I was to try to build on my own property, through the resource procurement, securing skilled manpower, getting an architectural project, all the way to the job of using the resources, skills, and manpower to turn them all into a finished project.

All-in-all, building a small shed in the modern world would be a massive undertaking that could often take a year or even longer, depending on the mood of the coffee-sipping ladies in the back of the government's office.

The cost of doing so was something I dared not even think about.

But here? In this world? And especially in the place no one either dared or had any business in claiming?

If anything, whoever owned this land would only ever be thankful to us for doing something with it, if it could bring more human presence and thus push away the presence of the monsters!

Still, if it was just me, I would never think about building a shed out of nowhere. And if not for Selia coming in clutch to enlighten me on how easy of a task it actually was, I would likely settle for sleeping under the blanket of the raw stars and cold air.

It was her that suggested — mid coitus, to make things all the weirder — how we could just build the sheds as we went along.

Doing so would not only mark the distance one could safely travel, leave behind structures we could use upon our return… but I also quickly expanded it to an idea of making it reloading points for the coffee once the business starts growing and later, once we attracted other adventuring parties to try their strength at the forest, who would be there to stop us from turning those simple sheds into traveler's inns?

Now, however, we reached a point where plans intersected with the founding actions designed to put them into reality.

And so I watched… No, scratch that. I joined everyone as they quickly divided themselves into groups before going off to do their part.

Surprisingly, it was the weakest of the entire crowd — an actual construction worker that lost his company due to a bad gambling session — that ended up taking charge here.

As for me, I joined with the guys merely hauling stuff around, making my rounds between a nearby thicket of trees and the place we ended up choosing for our construction site.

Within the entire group, only Selia opted out of this shared effort. Not because she was too great to pull back her sleeves and get sweaty with the rest of us…

But because I needed her to play that kind of a role.

'Poor girl,' I thought, sneaking glances at Selia's bored face whenever I dropped one of the ends of a freshly cut tree after hauling it all the way over to the construction site.

There, a total of seven guys with knives, machetes, and saws still continued to work on the previous log we brought.

It was nearly a third of our total manpower. And still, they couldn't process one log before we could bring another.

I couldn't fail them, though.

This was the advantage of actually working with everyone else.

I could see them working their damn hardest!

Processing a log simply wasn't all that easy of a task.

First, it had to be stripped of all its branches. Then, someone had to carefully remove the bark without damaging the wood underneath. Next, all the blemishes and connecting sections had to be cleaned out and cut away — a part where Uriel, the party's high-ranking adventurer — came in clutch, using a borrowed axe to limb the tree much faster and cleaner than we otherwise could.

Even then, once a tree's trunk turned into a clean log, the two adventurers with woodworking experience would spend quite some time marking it and then cutting it into pieces, turning just a long block of unshapely wood into planks we could actually use.

We stopped with maybe just an hour left until the last of the day would slip out of our grasp. And yet, by the time half of that time passed, there were already six cleared-out logs embedded deeply into the ground and rising just high enough to become a skeleton of the soon-to-be shed.

That's also where the relentless work of the woodworkers proved to be invaluable, allowing the guys that just returned from a quick scouting run around the site to take the planks and start nailing them down to the structure's skeleton.

Thanks to everyone's efforts, by the time the last light of the day started to flicker on the horizon as the dark-red light of the setting sun started to turn into the true dark of the night, we'd managed to finish a simple shed in the shape of an elongated rectangle and with a slightly angled roof made out of bundles of high grass.

It was by no means a fancy, permanent structure.

Both the winds and rain could easily leak inside, there were no floors, windows, or even the most basic amenities.

What we got was basically a massive wooden box erected out in the middle of nowhere with only the length of the nearby road reminding us we were still within the realm of civilization.

But still, it was better than flimsy, makeshift tents and much better than sleeping under the raw sky! Most importantly, however, it could fit our entire group!

Better yet, the guy responsible for the whole construction was mindful enough to add a simple chimney, made with whatever stones and clay people could find on-site, adding a source of warmth to help us ward off the cold of the night!

"Guys…" Standing before the shed, still yet to enter it, I couldn't help but feel emotional.

Then, I slowly turned my back to the shed and my face to all the guys that worked really hard to satisfy my request.

"Guys, what else can I say?" I shook my head. "It's a job well done. And while there are a lot of improvements for the future…" I glanced over my shoulder, as if harshly judging the end result.

The tension in the air was almost palpable.

'Is he going to tell us to work even more, I bet that's what they are thinking,' I grinned to my thoughts, then shook my head.

"But for today, that's all. Feel free to try to nestle yourself in that shed as best as you can. We will draw straws for who will be on the guard duty and then we will draw again to decide who gets which watch."

The air was still tense, but now it was sprinkled with some surprise as some of the adventurers were to this moment certain this whole shed was just for me and Saintess to use.

"But once we are done with that, you guys are free to rest, to play, or to do whatever your hearts desire," I shrugged my shoulders before putting a small, relaxed, and sympathetic smile on my face. "Oh, I will also be preparing a meal for everyone, but I will need one or two volunteers if you guys want the food to happen sooner rather than later."

That was the full extent of the additional work I wanted to ask of my men.

To cut some vegetables so that I could focus on other parts of preparing the meal for everyone and cut down on the time needed to, just as I said, make the food happen.

And even after half of a day spent on walking and pulling the carts, then an hour of intense work of putting that shed together, right when any modern person would pout and refuse to lift a finger…

I saw exactly what I expected to see — a bunch of adults, uncomfortably shifting as they waited for someone else to volunteer.

'It appears just the promise of the food isn't enough. So, it's time to use my trump card,' I smiled to my thoughts while raising my hand to gather everyone's attention.

"Did I forget to mention that whoever helps me with the food will be exempted from the guard duty for the night?"

The crowd stirred. The air tensed even further.

And then, everyone's hands shot up as they all suddenly found themselves fond of the idea of cooking food for thirty hungry men!