Silver Spoon Series

Once they were back in the 'safety' of the third tier area, Alan sent the group off to Elstree to get settled in while he made a side trip to Indiana. Thadrick and his group were taking up the other five rooms at Jessica's boarding house, and they were looking forward to a hot meal. Dantelion may be a good leader, but he couldn't cook like Alan. Score one for the Earthling.

Alan wasn't going to the dungeon core empty handed. He had a collection of new gear to show Indiana and a buddy that it just had to meet. While he had been sitting in tier one and waiting for the group to return to their campsite, in addition to working on his mana, he had been thinking. While the party had been packing up, Alan had taken on a little project. Using some of the raw materials scattered around, plus the odds and ends in his storage items, Alan had constructed a small wooden cage.

It only took him a little while to find what he was looking for, and then a minute to subdue it. He now had a level two squirrel safely stored in a little jail. It would have been great if he could simply stash the creature in his necklace, but he needed it alive. His nipple ring could handle live creatures, but only in a nascent form. Hence the need for the squirrel cell.

The small beast wasn't a huge improvement, level-wise, over what Indiana could already replicate, but it would add some more variety. He would have loved to grab a cougar or wolf, but they would have required a much larger cage. As it was, he had enough trouble keeping the squirrel from breaking out. The little butt-turd not only had really sharp teeth, but its tail was a respectable blunt weapon and it had cracked several of the bars.

Alan's recent work with mana had been useful. After exploring the wooden cage's aura, he first simply reinforced it, making everything more durable. Then he worked on breaking apart what he knew of nature mana, until he found wood mana. Using this he was able to fuse the bars to the top and bottom of the cage. The final product wasn't perfect, he was unable to make it one solid piece, but the limited connections he was able to create provided a significant boost in its durability.

All of this had been done while they made their trek back and he was talking with the others. He found himself much better able to multitask these days. The really strenuous mental work, however, was saved for the natural pauses in their conversation, but a lot of the infusing could be done at the same time. The cage had ended up being plenty strong to hold the acorn chucker. Somehow the squirrel must have secreted some acorns on itself, and once it was unable to break its cage anymore, it had started whipping them at people.

It was a good thing that most of the people had a constitution class, and could basically shrug off the occasional head-nut collision. Nephila didn't, but she was fast enough to dodge, and Elluin was also slinking around in the back as per usual, so the squirrel rarely got a clean shot at him. When it did connect, the elf would stomp around and swear for a minute or two and then heal the bump on his head. By the end of the trip, Alan found himself admiring the squirrels pluck and wherewithal. The thing had pelted them with over forty acorns, enough to make a squirrel sized statue so he was unsure where they were coming from.

The others had repeatedly asked him why he was bringing the squirrel back, but not wanting to share his connection to Indiana, he just told them that he wanted to 'try something'. Once he arrived at the dungeon, he found three groups standing around. That was a lot since only one could go in at a time, but after some questioning he found out that they had started traveling in groups, ostensibly for safety, but Alan was pretty sure they just liked the comradery, and an excuse for slacking off from work.

The villagers didn't really understand his connection with the dungeon either, but they were used to Alan having a few idiosyncrasies. He also covered taking out all the new gear by explaining to the villagers what each weapon was, pretending it was a lesson. A few of them were interested in what they saw, and he told them that most of it would soon be available in the adventurer's store. He didn't mention that they might start finding them in the dungeon in the near future as well.

After he had gotten everything out, and then put back away, he told the waiting groups that he was going to meditate. Really he just wanted some alone time to see how Indiana was doing. The dungeon seemed to be pretty intelligent, and not only could he check on the core's growth, but also what it was noticing from the villagers. At this point they were on a several day rotation for running through the dungeon. By now, every villager should have gotten their classes, and they could run between thirty and forty parties a day. This meant it would take three to four days to guarantee everyone a spot.

"Indiana, how is it going?"

I have made much progress, with so many people running through I have dramatically increased the size of the domain I can claim. I waited to talk with you before doing so, however. Should I be trying to expand horizontally, or instead spread vertically and add more floors?

"How much more space are we talking here? Enough for another room, or more like a whole nother floor?"

I can claim not quite double what we have so far.

"In that case, I would suggest expanding horizontally for now. Let's make some big floors, and we can make an even more challenging final encounter to add after the one we already have in place."

We could do that. But I have to warn you, I cannot give as big a reward for partial completion. If they leave before the final encounter they won't get as nice a reward as they do now, even if they finish extra rooms before that.

That wasn't a mechanic that Alan had known about, but it made sense. The reward was based on the energy the adventurers released both from their struggles, and from defeating the dungeon monsters. If they turned back before the final challenge, then the core wouldn't have as much energy to reward them with.

They spent some more time going over what the new spaces might look like. Indiana appreciated the new creature, even if it was of a similar level to what it already had. They added a new room full of smaller trees that were crawling with the squirrels. Half of the little terrors would be tasked with engaging in melee combat while the others would use their ranged attack.

It turned out that the creatures had an ability that let them create their own acorns. That was how his cage-bound nut-goblin was able to throw so many. Sadly for the squirrels, the acorns were purely magical and wouldn't provide any sustenance, but they made for effective missiles. When deciding on numbers, they went with eight per area, with three pockets of animals scattered around. It should prove a good challenge and force the parties to start thinking more strategically. They could have added more, but Indiana could only have so many monsters in his dungeon at once. If they added too many squirrels, it would limit what the final fight could offer.

The first 'boss' room stayed as it was, but a second one was added after it. This one contained a small pack of wolves. There were only three of them, but each was a level five monster. Indiana's source material had been level eight, but the quick learning core hadn't been idle all this time. Some of it was spent working on the creature blueprints he had and playing around with the scaling. Going up was harder than making them weaker, so turning down the level hadn't been too difficult.

Indiana had also spent time working on the few enchantments Alan had exposed the core to. Between watching him infuse a few items, craft some scrolls, and the alchemy that he and Samson had done, Indiana had gotten some decent experience with mana and magic. The core thought it had managed to create a working magical infusion that had added durability. It wasn't the flashiest of enchantments, but it could be very useful, especially if Smith hadn't come around to making weapons and armor yet.

Just in case something was wrong, Indiana hadn't put its work into circulation yet. The dungeon core wanted Alan to take a run through first and check out the reward. Indiana needed him to see it first, it had pride and didn't want anyone else to see an inferior product if it turned out there was something wrong with it. It would cause a slight hitch in the dungeon schedule, but Alan didn't mind. Thankfully, most of the other changes they were doing could take place while people continued through the current portion. All of the new parts would simply be separated by the walls, and the village parties could take another short break when it was time to connect things. Alan would also need to warn them that the challenge they thought they knew would be changing.

With that in mind, he got up from his supposed meditation and went to check in with the waiting parties. "Which of you guys is the next party to go in?"

Alan watched as fifteen people had a sudden realization, and then they collectively started to sweat. Finally one of them, a wolf woman, spoke up. "Uh, none of us Mr. Silver Spoon. The party in there now is the last of us to make the run. There should be others arriving soon."

Alarms had already been ringing based on their initial reaction, and those words didn't help. "Is that usual? Shouldn't they have gotten here already."

The same wolf woman answered again. "Um…yes. Usually a few of the parties after us would have shown up shortly after the groups who went before us left. We try to get here at least an hour before our run to give us time to settle in and make sure there's no down time in the dungeon."

After finding a large group here when he arrived, that was the answer he had expected. Alan hadn't worried before because he figured the groups here were waiting to go in, not waiting to go home. Something was wrong. It was at times like this that he wished he had a way of communicating over long distances. The Network may have brought a lot of incredible things, but the loss of technology was a blow. Fortunately, he wasn't without any means of figuring out what was going on.

As the Network designated owner of Elstree, Alan had access to the town menu. A quick look over showed him that there was a problem, and his feet started moving before he fully understood the issue. He did have enough left over mental capacity to tell the parties at the dungeon to stay here for now before he took off, but everything else was focused on moving as quickly as possible and getting all the details he could on the crisis.

And a crisis it was. There, near the top of his town notifications, was a message saying the village was under attack. The messages on his mental HUD could come from a number of places. There was of course the Network, they could also show up from other people if he was in a real party, and he had experienced them from being in the Army array as well. In addition, he also got messages from his towns.

Amthraxia, his small homestead that he shared with TS and now Akilatjin, was a tier zero village and didn't seem to have that feature yet. Elstree was tier four, however, and he had been initially flooded with messages. Every time a bounty was turned in, a building was completed, or several other notable events happened, he was getting a notification about it. Since he had Roger to run the place for him, Alan had muted the messages. That turned out to have been a mistake.

Just over two hours ago, a notification had popped up that Elstree was under attack, but it provided no other information. There had to be a way to mute most town notifications while still receiving such important emergency ones, but that would be a lesson for another day. Scanning the few messages above that one, Alan allowed himself to slow a little. The first message after the one informing him of the village being under attack, was a notification that three people had been killed. Apparently, once the attack notification was sent, he got reports on the status of the battle. It wasn't very detailed, probably related to either his own low level, or the villages. Or, more likely a combination of the two.

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It wasn't the death of some of his people that caused him to lose some of his urgency, it was the message at the end. Before that one, and after the one listing the deaths, there were a few notifications about damage to buildings. It simply said 'A village building has been damaged', which wasn't super helpful, but it let him know that the enemy, whoever it was, had gotten into the village proper. The final message, and the one that put his mind at ease a little, had said 'The village has been successfully defended'.

Alan was still running at an impressive speed, but he now took a little more time to make sure he wasn't going to trip, run into something, or otherwise mess himself over. With his stats he was able to make the trip in about ten minutes. That was far faster than he normally took to cover the distance. His first sight of the village told him that things weren't awful, but something had definitely happened. The fields around the village were empty of workers, despite it still being daytime, but there were people scattered around the perimeter, clearly on watch.

Because of the size of the village, due to the farmland, it looked like a sizable chunk of the population was filling this role. Whatever the attack had been, they clearly weren't sure it was over. Since there was a lack of urgency in their bearing, Alan decided not to stop and check in with those on guard. It seemed that the threat was not an urgent one, so he would let them do their duty and he would find Roger. The mayor should know the most about what was going on, or be able to at least point Alan in the proper direction.

At the village square he found pretty much the rest of the settlement's people. It wasn't very polite of him, but Alan ran around the edge of the crowd and appeared next to Roger and a few of the more well known villagers. People like Jenny and Monos, and a few others who had taken up leadership roles now that everyone had classes. While Alan was fast, he wasn't a superhero yet, and the crowd had gotten a chance to see him coming and watched as he ran up to the steps of the town hall.

Roger managed to get the first words out. "Silver Spoon, I'm glad you're here." The fact that the mayor was using the title the villagers had bestowed upon him, and not his name, let him know that his presence was being used to calm people down. Roger really was good at his job. "I'm sure you got the message about the attack, but it was probably light on details."

It was hard not to wince at the reminder of how he had completely missed the Network's warning, he would have to figure out how to properly filter those notifications. "That's true. I did see that some people died and some buildings were damaged. Can you tell me more about what happened?"

Roger nodded, and then he got a look in his eyes, like he was looking back at something terrifying.

Roger had been doing his thing all morning. As the mayor and, as he was coming to think of himself, Alan's friend, he had been the first to receive class stones. He hadn't been doing much active training however. He was one of the few villagers who didn't have a party. There wasn't a nicely divisible by five number of people in the village, but even if there had been, he still wouldn't have been in a party. It was too much of a commitment considering all the other things he had to do. Also, he just didn't see himself becoming an adventurer.

He wasn't the only one who thought that way. There were close to twenty other people who also felt like adventuring was not their future. Smith was one, he saw anything that took him away from his forge as a distraction. Jessica was another, claiming that she was too busy maintaining the real adventurers' rooms. Those were her words, not his. Roger thought she was holding back because of his own decision. It may be selfish of him, but he didn't mind that it would keep the gorgeous rabbit woman closer to him.

He planned on occasionally making a run through the dungeon. They kept an extra spot at the end of the schedule for those who didn't have a normal party. So far he had gone once, and it hadn't been a great experience. Roger had not distinguished himself as an individual, but the fact that the party he ended up in didn't work together normally really showed. They had managed to complete the whole thing, but that was mostly due to one of the village's hunters who also didn't have a party.

The man was a hunter both by job and by class. For his second stone, Johan had taken fighter. The elf relied on a spear as his main weapon, but he had developed a trap making skill even before he had a real class. It was hard to level skills without a class, but it was possible to pick them up. In the end, he had almost singlehandedly taken care of the larger threats and Roger and the other healer had been busy keeping the rest of them alive. After seeing how effective he was, Roger was surprised the elf didn't have a party. After checking around, he discovered that he was simply a loner who didn't want to tie himself down.

The end of the dungeon rotation was coming up again, and he was thinking of having another go, but it was hard to muster up much enthusiasm. Currently he was busy with planning the village redesign. With someone as strong and wealthy as Alan in charge, it was clear that Elstree was going to grow. If it wasn't wiped out in the next tier, that was. Roger was going to plan on still being alive after the next challenge, and if those plans didn't work out, it wouldn't matter to him anyway.

To those ends, he was looking to reclaim many of the homes in the center of town. Most of them would be demolished and rebuilt as stores, inns, and larger houses. Now that Alan had added so much extra road to the main street, he could move the unhoused individuals to apartments farther out. Some of the displaced people were complaining, but the village wasn't that big yet, so it wasn't really much of a change for them. When Elstree grew later on into a town, though, it would provide them with a thriving marketplace area.

Nothing had been torn down yet, but he was hoping to see that project started in the next day or so. With their new classes, the construction crews were looking forward to seeing how much more efficiently they could operate. Roger was putting the final touches on where he wanted the new houses to be when he was interrupted by a series of notifications.

Town Update: Elstree is under attack!

Town Update: A villager has been slain in the attack!

Town Update: A villager has been slain in the attack!

Town Update: A villager has been slain in the attack!

Intellectually Roger knew what those notifications were, but it took him a few moments to process what that meant. Had Chrisly and the rest of his team returned for vengeance. Was there a monster horde attacking the village? The first thing he needed to do was let people know that they were under attack. Panicked villagers with too little information might end up causing more trouble, but he had a responsibility to them and they deserved to know that something was happening, even if they didn't have any details yet.

Plus, now that they all had classes, they could actually do something. He needed everyone to get themselves armed and ready. Whatever was coming for them was going to find out that they weren't some soft bunch of serfs ready for slaughter. He winced mentally at using that term, but then he got his mind back onto important matters. Stepping out into the lobby of the hall, he summoned his two messengers.

"Daisuki, Aya, get over here." They were brother and sister fox people who had both chosen rogue and constitution classes. Probably because they already had the job of being his assistants and knew that there was going to be a lot of running.

They could tell from his tone of voice that something serious was going on, and the usually playful siblings hurried over and didn't make any jokes.

In a calm voice, but with a lot of urgency, Roger explained what he needed. "The village is under attack, I don't know where, or who, but some people have already died. Split up and run down main street in both directions. Simply call out that we are under attack and everyone should arm themselves and find their parties. When you get to the fields, do the same and start working your way around clockwise until you arrive back on the other side of town. I will hopefully know more by the time you finish, but try to find me and tell me anything you see."

With barely a look at each other, they took off out the door. He half expected them to wedge themselves in the frame in their hurry, but Aya accelerated while Daisuki hesitated a step and then they were outside and running. He could hear them calling out the message already. They were good kids.

Roger's own gear was stored in the spatial item he had as the mayor. It wasn't necessarily fair that he had one while others didn't, but some of the villagers returning from the dungeon were coming back with their own storage rings. That could result in a huge improvement in the village's efficiency if everyone could get one. Still focused on the attack, the Mayor strode out the door and stood on the steps, looking around. He wasn't going to see anything here in the office.

He didn't think he'd be able to tell anything from here, but he wanted to give off an air of confidence so running around was not an option. He also thought that someone would eventually send a runner to let him know what was going on, and it was important to stay visible and easy to find. It paid off a couple of minutes later when a farmer ran up. A sprint from the fields, even as close by as everything was, would have normally left the woman winded, but now that they all had classes, such a trip was barely an inconvenience.

"Mr. Mayor, we're being attacked. A bunch of undead ran into the fields from the northwest. They caught a few people who were preparing a new field unaware and killed them before anyone knew what was happening. Fortunately we weren't too far from the training grounds and someone heard the screams and came running. We're holding them off for the moment, but there are only about twenty people there and they need help."

It was about this time that the first parties were coming together. Some were no doubt heading out looking for the trouble, but some of them had the thought of coming here to the main square to see where they were needed. Roger sent them in the direction of the trouble immediately. Then he had a decision to make. Should he get closer to see what was going on and help direct the defense, or should he stay here where people could find him easily?

Alan must have infected him somehow, because he just couldn't stay still while his people were in danger. He told Jan, the farmer who gave the report, to stay here and direct people. She was to start alternating where she sent people. One group to the scene of the fighting, then the next to a different section of the perimeter in case there were more monsters out there. Then he made use of his own improved body, too bad his stats were in more mental aspects, and headed for the battle. On the way he got some notifications about buildings being damaged. That didn't bode well. When he arrived at the scene, he finally got his first look at the attackers.

Undead: Wrackspawn (uncommon) Level 5

The creatures look like people, but people who had died in a horrible way. Their bodies were burned and broken, bones jutting out of blackened flesh and holding skeletal clubs in their maimed hands. As both uncommon and such a high level, each of the creatures would have been a deadly challenge for any one of the villagers. It looked like they were facing somewhere between fifteen and twenty of the undead horrors. Somehow he hadn't gotten any more notifications of villagers dying, and it was no doubt thanks to their recent training.

The fighting had begun in the fields, with at least one dead monster visible, but it seemed that the villagers had fallen back to the village proper when they realized the scope of the attack. If these wrackspawn had pushed farther into the village, they could have done a lot of damage and most likely killed a large number of unprepared villagers. Instead they were focused on their prey, the people who had been farming and those who had come to help, who it seemed had retreated into the nearby houses.

The undead were currently beating down the doors and breaking through the windows to get to those inside. They were taking a beating to do so as mages and archers were pelting them with attacks while the tanks did their best to keep them out. The parties Roger had sent were also on the scene and they were changing the dynamic of the battle. The seemingly mindless corpses were now having to deal with attacks from the hated living from the front and back.

The monsters could have turned as a horde and torn into the villagers behind them, but they were still too focused on those inside the houses to coordinate their attack. If they were even capable of such that much thinking. Instead, they were drawn off one and two at a time by well-coordinated parties. Now with the number advantage, they were able to start whittling down the wrackspawn's numbers. More parties started to arrive and soon it became a clean up operation.

While Roger didn't need to do much to direct the battle, he did use his mage class to throw a few gusts around to knock some of the undead off balance to foul up their attacks or to provide an opening for the villagers to strike. Soon he gave that up and switched to healing those who were taking hits. These things might be doomed with all the villagers streaming in now, but they were still tough opponents and people were getting hurt.

Thankfully, by the time it was all over, no one had been killed. There were some injuries that would take repeated castings of their healing spells to fix, but they had only lost the original three people. Only. That word didn't seem appropriate, but Roger knew it could have been so much worse. After getting an official notification that the town had successfully defended against the attack, he was able to breathe easier.

The stray healers on sight, he directed to stay and take care of the wounded. He then tasked a bunch of the parties with going out and standing watch around the perimeter. While they had managed to handle this attack, there might be another one coming behind it. Monster waves were a thing that happened in the Network. He also went with another group to personally oversee the collection of the remains of their fallen comrades.

Their bodies were badly mangled. It wasn't that the undead had tried to eat them, they had simply torn them apart. It wasn't enough to simply pull off an arm or leg, they had smashed them into even more pieces after that. There was a lot of rage in those things. The funerary detail had collected the bodies the best they could and stored them in Roger's brooch for now. They could figure out what to do with them later.

The undead corpses were also a concern. Not wanting them to somehow reanimate, Roger had them dragged well outside of the village and fields and then burned in a big bonfire. Several mages with the fire starter talent had contributed to the flames and the monsters were reduced to ashes in no time.

Almost half the village was left on guard, and the other half assembled in the village center to hear what their Mayor had to say. Roger was talking with one of the groups that had first responded when he noticed a man running at an impossible speed down the street. It didn't take a perception class to figure out who it was. Thank goodness, now he could dump this mess onto someone else.