When Ben sat down and began to figure out how much stuff he would need to produce to properly cloth and armor his troops, he began to think it was a mistake to have created them already.
He looked over his long list of the clothes and items for his troops and started to form a rough plan of which structures would need to be built or used to make everything.
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[Recruit Clothing, Armor, and Items]
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One each: Black military tactical backpack
Three each: Red leather quiver
One each: Red mithril compound bow
Two each: Red leather arm guard
Ten each: Long and short sleeve black ergonomic silk shirts
Ten each: Long and short sleeve black cotton shirts
Ten each: Military style black cargo pants
Ten each: Black cotton running shorts
Ten each: pairs of black cotton socks
Two each: pairs of black leather tactical boots
Two each: pairs of black running shoes
Ten each: black cotton sports bra
Ten each: black cotton regular bra
Ten each: pairs of black cotton long johns
Two each: pairs of black tactical rubber knuckle gloves
Ten each: black male cotton underwear
Ten each: black female cotton underwear
One each: Black hemp wool-lined winter jacket
Two each: Black wool winter beanies
Two each: Black nylon shell wool-lined winter gloves
One each: Laundry bar with embroidered name and room number
One each: Hygiene kits
One each: Red Mithril chainmail tunic
One each: Red Mithril chainmail leggings
One each: Black Mithril breastplate
One each: Black Mithril thigh armor
One quiver of: Bodkin tip arrows
One quiver of: Broadhead tip arrows
One quiver of: Field tip arrows
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'Seeing that I need to make 300 chainmail tunics, 300 chainmail leggings, 300 breastplates, 300 thigh armors, and 300 compound bows out of Mithril I will need more mines.'
Ben was already getting low on money, so he decided to sell off a portion of the gold ore he had been stocking up on. He had dreams of somehow turning it into gold coins one day, but he needed to get his troops properly geared up right now.
He decided even if it wasn't necessary he would build the new Mines near the original. This was only to keep them all in a group so that if he had to ever make any changes to them they would all be grouped in one spot.
[Mine]: Produces nickel, cobalt, iron, gold, silver, copper, platinum and mithril. Production amounts depend on the mines level [requires: stone, wood] [cost: 200g]
Ben placed down three more Mines and upgraded them along with his original mine to the max level of five. He had always been using only one Mine which was a level one this whole time. Now that he had four level five Mines at his fortress the gold ore he sold should be quickly replaced in no time.
[Auto_Notice] [The system has advanced a level! System Level 16!]
Some pieces of clothing on his list that he planned to design were to be used in late fall and winter. These pieces of cold weather clothing would need to use wool as an insulator.
Ben currently did not have many man-made materials on hand to use as clothing insulators. He happened to remember wool being one of the better natural insulators for clothing so he chose to use it with his current clothing designs that would be used by his troops.
To produce wool he needed to make a new Sheep Ranch over near the other Farms, and Ranches.
[Ranch]: Can raise: Horse, Sheep, Cattle, Pig, Goat, Chicken, Rabbit, Turkey, Deer, Alpaca and Victus native animals. [Possible to produce hides, furs, meat, milk, animal fat, eggs, feathers, antlers, horns, sheep wool, alpaca wool, hair and many others depending on the animal chosen]
After he picked out a spot and began construction of the new Sheep Ranch Ben went back into the fortress and placed down a [Fletcher] workshop just south of the Pharmacist.
[Fletcher]: Produces arrows, arrowheads, crossbow bolts, ballista bolts, and bolt tips.
[consumes: feathers, wood, metals, nylon, plastic, glue][requires: stone, wood]
As the Fletcher workshop was being constructed he had time to go to the other workshops and set up the interfaces to begin making the clothing, items, and equipment on his list.
When the Fletcher was built he had it begin to make Bodkin tip arrows to use against armor, Broadhead tip arrows for hunting and unarmored enemy and Field tip arrows which were ideal for archery target practice.
The last workshop that needed to be constructed was a [Shoemake]. Ben had already built a Shoemaker at his Goldcrest store and thought he should also build one at the fortress. Tt would be much easier to making one here and not having to transport all the footwear from the store Warehouse to the fortress Warehouse. Moving things from his original Warehouse was easy because it could be opened anywhere he was but the store Warehouse could only be opened if he were within its radius.
[Shoemaker]: Produces dress shoes, high heels, sandals, sneakers/running shoes, boots, loafers, and flats. It also comes with a custom design menu that allows you to design your own shoes. [Locked until: built tannery][consumes: wood, leather, plastic, rubber, steel, cotton fabric, hemp fabric, silk fabric, nylon, wool, chosen metals][requires: stone, wood]
There was still the armor and bows to deal with and even though there wasn't enough Mithril to make everything he could still make the design and begin production.
Ben walked over to the Armorer workshop and upgraded it to a level five and began looking through all the possible chainmail designs made on Earth. After discussing the different styles with the system he decided to begin producing what was known as riveted chainmail.
Chainmail was often made up of small metal cut circular links in the shape of a letter "C". These letter c links would be looped through the center of one another and squeezed closed to make a row of links that looked like letter "O"s interlinked together.
They would continue to squeeze these cut links together and make sheets of chainmail that could be used to make chainmail tunics, chainmail hoods, and chainmail leggings.
From what the system told him this design would often lead to the links being pulled apart due to the weak point where they had been cut and squeezed to fit them together.
The riveted chainmail was put together like the C link style, but the armorer would insert a rivet into the overlapping C ring of the links so they wouldn't separate like the regular C style chainmail.
Ben obviously chose to go with the riveted chainmail and was just beginning to design the riveted chainmail armor when he thought of something.
His armor design wasn't being made by a human armorer, it was being created from the submolecular-scale to a full chainmail tunic. If this was the case why would he need rivets at all?
His armor could be designed to have solid circular rings all interlinked together without any cut weak points. They did not need to be linked together by hand one at a time the system could create the chainmail as one completely linked piece.
After discussing it with the system, Ben was informed it could be done. This was a major change that could save lives on the battlefield. If an arrow, spear, or sword tip were thrust into the chainmail links there was no way for the links to separated unless they were actually cut through.
Since Ben planned to use Mithril to make this chainmail the rings would have twice the tensile strength of modern steel. There was no possible way for the crude iron weapons of this world to cut through Mithril.
The soldier would still be exposed to the blunt force trauma from a weapon landing on the Mithril chainmail, but they would be safe from being slashed or pierced.
'Now I need to think about the sizes I want to make this armor in. There are 150 men and 150 women of all different sizes that need armor that fits properly.'
'I could have them all line up at the armorer workshop and have them scanned the same way I was for my custom armor. It is possible, but it would probably take a couple of days to run all of them through it and record their sizes. I need to come up with an easier solution.'
Ben was stumped trying to come up with the best way to make the armor for everyone. He was thinking about just making three sizes of small, medium, and large. The only problem is the armor would be baggy for some or too tight for others.
It was impossible to fit everyone into just three standard sizes. While he was struggling to come up with a better solution the system interrupted his thoughts.
*Ding!* [You do not need to scan the new recruits. You are forgetting that I was a part of the recruits creation. I have every one of their exact sizes stored in my memory. It is possible for me to input these sizes into the workshops to have the clothing, armor, and weapons made to perfectly fit each individual soldier.]
When Ben heard this he slapped his forehead.
'I never thought about the possibility that you would have recorded their information. Having a quantum computing brain that can store anything as if it were recorded to a hard drive would make remembering the size and shape of three hundred people a simplistic task. Wait, doesn't this make you one of the most knowledgeable self-aware beings in the universe then? You can never forget anything that you learn and you can solve complex problems in fractions of a second.'
As Ben was thinking of how this sounded like the abilities of a deity a name popped into his head.
'System, I just came up with a name that I think fits you. The name is Athena. As in Athena the goddess of wisdom. It is a nice name and it fits you perfectly.'
*Ding!" [Athena the Greek goddess of wisdom and war. She is known for courage, strength, arts, crafts, and her strategic skill in warfare. I agree this name does fit the new altered me now that I have been programmed to help you craft items, weapons, armor, and to create a fortress to be used to start or prevent war.]
'Athena it is then, I'm glad you approve. So then, Athena, can you help me by inputting the sizes into the Tailor, Seamstress, Armorer, Weaponsmith, Shoemaker, and Leather Products Manufacturer. I could also use those sizes at the Nylon and Plastic Products Manufacturers that are under my store in Goldcrest.'
*Ding!* [Affirmative, I have just sent them out to every structure in the fortress. I do not have a link to the store workshops at this present time and will need to wait until you travel back to Goldcrest city to input the sizes there.]
'It's fine, most of the products being made by the nylon and plastic manufacturers are winter clothing so there is no rush on it.'
With the "sizes" issue out of the way, Ben designed a large black military laundry duffle bag with each recruits name and room number neatly embroidered in red thread on them. As the workshops completed the personalized clothing it was all automatically sorted into these large black personalized laundry bags to keep their new clothing from being mixed.
In a few days when everything on the list was made Ben would load those 300 laundry bags filled with their new clothes into his inventory and drop them off at each room.
Once the recruits had stored their new clothes away in their personal closets they could use the laundry bags to send their dirty clothes down to the Barracks laundromat on the first floor.
For the next two days, Ben hung around the fortress making sure everything was being made and sorted properly. He even found a decent compound bow model in the system store and had the bowyer copy it and begin production of 350 of them.
The compound bow was much more advanced than the basic longbows. His recruits had been created with the knowledge of how to use simple wooden longbows so Ben had to make another stop at the school and add a couple more lessons to the classrooms the archers would be using.
The new lessons were called [Basics of Compound Bow Shooting], "[Mastering The Compound Bow]", and "[Compound Bow Sharpshooting Techniques]". He set them up so that they had to completely learn the first lesson to move on to the following lessons.
Now his archers would have some understanding of the compound bows that he would be giving them in a few days time.
When he had the new lessons all organized, Ben left the school and opened the warehouse menu to see how everything was coming along and to check the flow of his raw resources coming in.
With the extra Mines which were all upgraded the metal ores were now beginning to pour into the warehouse. It would only take four or five more days and the recruits armor and bows would be finished.
Just like the bows there were additional pieces of armor also being made in mixed sizes of small, medium, and large. This way they would have backups available to replace damaged equipment when he wasn't around to replace them. They could use this backup armor until Ben came back to the fortress and used their sizes to make a new custom fit set for them.
There was now only a day left for the store's grand opening and it was time to head back to the city.
Before leaving General Victor was given almost a thousand of the Flourishing Domination strength building pills made at the Pharmacy to distribute to the troops. He was told to give them one pill a week for now so that they could first see what effects they had.
There were also the Indigo Iron Fruit growing on the Spirit Farm since the day he had scanned that extra fruit. He now had a large surplus of them in his Warehouse. The only problem was he wanted to see if anyone would volunteer to eat one before having all the recruits eat them.
Ben still remembered the extreme pain that he had gone through when he ate his and his body was much stronger than his recruits.
Athena assured Ben the Indigo Iron Fruits would not kill the recruits, but it would feel like someone had tossed them inside of a 500-degree oven for about thirty minutes. They would more than likely pass out like Ben had when he ate one from the agonizing pain.
Ben also gave General Victor a couple of the Indigo Iron Fruits to see if the recruits were up for the challenge of eating one along with the Flourishing Domination pills that they would all be ingesting.
The large black laundry bags were also dropped off to each room now filled with the military clothes. The armor and weapons were still in production but at least now they all had matching military styled clothes, undergarments, and footwear to wear and would no longer look like a mixed assortment of civilians.
In a few days, Ben planned to return to the fort and distribute the rest of the clothes, armor, and weapons that still were not made yet.
Ben left the Barracks to track down Rayner and found him relaxing in the Recreation Center trying to teach a couple Elven recruits how to play poker. There was a decent gathering of his followers and new recruits gathered around all having fun together.
He was glad there wasn't any type of discrimination against the Elves who were obviously not human like the rest of them. At most the humans would curiously ask them about their pointed ears and blue or green hair when they happen to speak with the Elves.
It may have been due to the fact that most of his followers were once slaves so they would be more accepting of others races.
They had never been able to voice their opinions or feelings and did not possess any signs of human prideful arrogance. They were all living a dream they never thought possible and were now able to share it with a few new friends who just so happened to be a little different from them.
Ben momentarily interrupted their game to let them know that he would be opening a store in Goldcrest and would be gone for a few days. He asked them to spread the word to everyone that he would be leaving shortly.
He explained to the present Elves he had dropped off clothes for everyone in their rooms and when he returned from Goldcrest they would be issued their weapons and armor.
While they were all saying goodbye and wishing him good luck with the store he was secretly casting his Zoom spell and after the one minute cast time was up Ben vanished right in front of everyone.
Now standing in the store basement he had a huge smirk on his face as he thought about how everyone was freaking out over him just disappearing before their eyes. He had always hidden the fact that he could use magic from the people of this world as one of his trump cards and it was fun to now show off a little.
He didn't mind using his magic in front of his people because they were cut off from the rest of the world and loyal to him. They knew most of his secrets and Ben did not mind. If they ever had to go into battle together it was better than they all knew what he was capable of and what to expect. If they were surprised by what he could do at the wrong time it would cost a lot of lives.
Ben activated his Night Sight and looked around the dark basement.
'Alright time to get this place ready for the big opening day.'
Ben thought to himself as he opened the store Warehouse and began taking out the things made over the past few days while he was at the fortress.