The next person who showed up was Ralfe who quietly sat down after greeting everyone. Then there was an old man that looked very approachable which Malik recognized him to be the medic who was treating the people in the back during the fight against the beasts. And lastly was Val who looked extremely hungover.
Once the last of the village leaders sat down it was finally time to start the meeting. The old village head stood up and started introducing everyone.
"Ahem ahem. Young master as you know I'm the village head and that is my son Val who should be taking my position after me. That is Ralfe the village artificer and lastly that is old man Alder, he's a traveler that knows many things and luckily for us he decided to settle down in the village. He takes both the role of the village doctor and teacher." After introducing everyone he sat back down on his chair.
Once all the introduction was out of the way it was finally time to get down to business.
"What does this village produce and how much?" Malik asked while looking at the village head.
"Our village sits in very rich fertile land and there is plenty of food from both farming and gathering to the point where it's basically impossible to go hungry and we also have plenty of water making us completely self sufficient. Unfortunately due to the lack of mana in the area all the crops are all just normal food which does nothing to help with strengthening our people. Because of it we have to go out hunting a certain distance away if we want to find tier one beast and rarely even a tier 2. Other than food though there is nothing else we produce." The old man that had started talking happily ended with a sigh which everyone followed along with.
Malik nodded his head as he listened. He had noticed the low amount of mana in the air when he had first come out to land but he thought it might have been something normal for humans and that dense mana was just something found deep in the sea, but it looks like he was wrong.
"What about people? How many are there in the village right now?"
"We should have a bit over a thousand two hundred since we lost 342 people during the attack and of the people we have there should be around 200 elders, 400 children and the rest are adults." The old head quickly answered.
Honestly he was surprised hearing such a detailed answer, he was expecting something much more vague but it looked like they were organized at least to a certain extent.
"What about mines? Have you found any close by?"
This time it was the big burly Val with the tired red eyes that answered him. "We found a mountain a few kilometers south from here that is rich in both iron and copper, however that mountain is infested with gravel bats which makes it impossible to mine. They bury deep into the stone and make large ball shaped nests by turning all the rock surrounding it into gravel. it makes it completely impossible to create a mine since we don't know when we will hit one of those gravel pockets and have everything come down on us." All the village leaders sighed once again as Val finished explaining.
Such a huge mountain full of resources just sitting there completely ownerless yet it was impossible to mine due to those weak little creatures.
He made a note to check that place out later with Mina when she was done with her training. It shouldn't be too hard to remove those creatures from there.
"What about the village's strength? How many warriors do you guys have?"
This time it was the village head that answered. "Val here is the strongest person in the village as a mid second level warrior. Second would be Ralfe as a peak first level warrior with his fireball inscribed wand. Other than them we have only 30 other first level warriors left after the beasts attack."
'Hmmm…Though this village doesn't have many people it's not so bad since it will allow me to implement changes much quicker but we also need to find a way to get more resources so we can train new Warriors and raise their levels and that's not counting the future Chosen as well, their resources are much rarer and expensive. This world is dangerous and unless I completely block this village from the outside world and take care of the people like big babies for the rest of their lives this would never work out. I need to find a way for them to grow strong enough to stand on their own.'
Seeing as the young divine was quietly thinking to himself for over a minute now everyone turned their heads to Ralfe and signaled with their heads for him to do something.
Honestly they weren't expecting much from Malik. It's not that they looked down on him or anything after all he was a Divine! But how can a divine creature that lived in the bottom of the ocean for who knows how long think up for solutions to grow a human community? It's not a coincidence that over 99% of Divines tend to leave basically all of the decisions concerning this to the humans themselves.
Clearing his throat Ralfe spoke up pulling the divine out of his thoughts. "Young master forgive me for speaking but may I give a suggestion?"
Malik nodded to him, giving him permission to speak.
"I suggest for young master and young miss create and train your first Chosen as quickly as possible and after giving them some training to send them to take missions in breeze city. There you can get missions from multiple other cities close by and by completing them you can get the rewards stated on the missions which could be basically anything from armor and weapons to cultivation resources." Ralfe said as everyone nodded in agreement.
"That is indeed a good idea, however I will only be creating Chosen a few weeks later so lets put that away for now. I actually have a few good ideas that I came up with last night that we could start to produce which will not only strengthen the village but it could even become our brand in the future!" He said as he pulled up the scroll he had been working on since yesterday.
As the village leaders looked at the scroll that was almost completely filled with strange symbols some couldn't help but start to be a little hopeful. 'Maybe the creatures from the sea have something useful down there we don't know about? If only one of those things were to work then wouldn't our life drastically change?' Seeing the excited old people he couldn't help but let out a small smile.
Turning the scroll back to himself Malik cleared his throat and started to read it out loud. "The first thing is black powder! It's an incredibly explosive powder that can be used either as weapons or in mining! Some people even use it to light up the sky as entertainment and those aren't .... Next is Cement! It's a mixture of different things which end up becoming a liquid that turns into stone when dry its inc... There is also Rubber!.... Hot Air Balloons!.... Alloys!.... Crop rotations!.... …." While he was reading out all of the things in the scroll the young divine didn't notice that everyone was looking at him with a strange face. He spoke for almost 10 min before he said everything and was completely satisfied. Honestly he only knew the basic idea of all these things which he looked it up due to curiosity after hearing about it in every novel he read but he was sure that with enough experimenting he could get it down perfectly. When he turned back towards the village leaders he saw them looking at him with a strange face that made him feel a bit awkward. He already didn't feel right acting as if these inventions came from him now with their looks on him it made him even more uncomfortable.
"Why are all of you looking at me like that?" He said with a frown.
The village leaders looked at each other for a few seconds before the old man Alder decided to speak up.
While giving a wry smile he started to speak up "Young Master … All these things already exist. For example the crop rotation was created by Nissa the Harvest Fawn. She is one of the largest exporters of food in the continent. The same with the other ideas…. "
The young divine was stunned still as he heard that. 'Isn't this a medieval fantasy world? How is it these things already exist? Am I the reincarnator or are they?!'
It was then that the old man spoke up once more. "Y-Young master, could it be you know the secret behind all these things? Even though they all exist they are all top secret of the cities that created them and are solely used by them as well so if…."
As the black haired young man sitting at the end of the table heard this he couldn't help but let out a loud laugh which startled all the village leaders.
'I see now! They aren't reincarnators like me! Because of the rules of this world it kick started everyone to scramble in creating new things by experimentation. Unfortunately their selfish actions of keeping all the secrets to themselves have held back the world from progressing! Now what would happen if I were to put all these ideas together in one place? Wouldn't that? …'
"Muahahahaha!" Not being able to help himself he once again let out a loud laugh which sounded a bit more diabolical than the first one.
The village leaders couldn't help but feel a chill down their backs as they looked at each other with the same question in their minds. 'Are we going to be ok?'