"Aghhhh!" Nolan opened his eyes abruptly.
For a moment, he felt a familiar pain all over his body, which forced him out of his dream.
Luckily, he was alone in the house. If not, he would have had trouble explaining why he screamed. And no, he didn't sleep alone in the house because he was the leader and had some privileges, but because no one dared to enter the house and sleep back to back after what happened yesterday night.
"System, what did you do?" Nolan asked angrily.
[The system gave the host a little electroshock]
"System, are you trying to kill me?" Nolan gritted his teeth in anger, but he controlled himself and didn't scream.
[Host, the system is not an alarm]
[From now on, each time the host needs the system's help to wake up, the electroshock will be longer]
"You..." Nolan once again controlled himself and gulped his anger.
He could not waste any more time pointlessly arguing with the system, so he left the temporary house.
Since it was dawn, everyone was still deep asleep.
Nolan made his way to the river. There, with the help of the water, he tried wiping off the blood that yesterday night got to the bottom of his blue-white hanfu. But since the blood had already dried, Nolan had a hard time wiping off the blood. He did wipe a bit of the blood, but if one looked closely, he could still see the light blood-stains.
Seeing that no matter how hard he tried, he could not completely remove the light blood stains, Nolan gave up.
He then took the bloody sword out of the Reward inventory and washed it in the river.
When he finished cleaning his sword from the blood, he returned to his temporary house.
Before his temporary house, he took out the five bags containing the axes, shovels, and pickaxes. In addition to the tools, he took out five bags of grain.
After he took out all the needed things from the inventory, Nolan took one axe out of the bag and stored it in the inventory. Then, he walked to the river again.
Before the river, he took off his clothes and stored them in the inventory.
He stepped into the river. His feet sank into the cold water.
"Huuuuh!" The cold shock response came kicking in, forcing Nolan to greedily gasp air.
A/N: Cold Shock Response - When the cold receptors in your skin are all suddenly stimulated they cause an involuntary gasp.
Nolan stood in the water for a few minutes, letting his body adapt to the coldness of the water.
Then, he slowly started moving forward. With every step he took, his body submerged more in the water. Somewhere in the middle of the river, the water got so deep that Nolan couldn't touch the bottom, so he was forced to swim.
The deepest point of the river was about two meters, but luckily, the river was not very wide, only about five to six meters (16-19 feet).
Because of the small width of the river, Nolan quickly crossed it.
He found himself on the shore on the other side of the river, in the evergreen forest.
He didn't waste any time and quickly took his clothes out of the inventory. After putting the blue-white hanfu on, he took the axe out of the inventory and started swinging it at the tree trunk with the intent to cut it down.
...
Pam!
Thud!
Pam!
An hour passed.
The sun had already come out, and the sky was crystal clear, indicating that the day would be nice and sunny.
The beggars started waking at the sound of Nolan striking the tree trunk.
Though Nolan struck the tree for an hour, he was still only halfway. And he was still halfway because the axe was new and well-sharpened. If not, he would have needed far longer than an hour to cut the tree this much.
As the beggars woke up, they headed directly outside.
"W-What's that?" A beggar pointed at the bags with tools and grain before Nolan's temporary house.
"It's tools." Kelton, who was already outside, replied.
Left of him stood Alfred, and right of him stood Stephany.
"When did he buy all of these tools?" Alfred asked.
"We bought them yesterday." Kelton walked to the bags.
"But I didn't see you carry them yesterday. And how did you carry so many bags by yourself?" Alfred asked, confused.
"Don't ask me. All I know is that the Boss knows sorcery or has some magical item. He can make the items disappear and then appear again."
"B-But, how is that even possible?" Alfred asked again, in shock.
"I told you I don't know? Why do you keep asking me?!" Kelton raised his voice in annoyance.
He took a bag of grain. "Everyone, let's eat and then help Boss Nolan. We couldn't laze around while he is working." Kelton shouted.
However, contrary to what he expected, an awkward silence filled the atmosphere.
The image of the headless bodies from yesterday was still fresh in their mind. So they didn't know what to do. Go back to the city to continue being a beggar, or continue following Nolan and risk death?
"I know what you are worried about!" Alfred shouted. "You are worried that if you continue following Nolan, in the end, he will kill you like he killed the others yesterday, right?"
"Yes!"
"It's better to be a beggar than lose our lives."
The beggars spoke in approval of Alfred's words.
"Don't be delusional!" Alfred shouted again. "Since we started following Nolan, in the past few days, have you worried about food? No, you haven't. Boss Nolan provided us with food so we wouldn't worry.
And didn't Nolan kill the others yesterday because they wanted to rebel? Were they not the ones that wanted to kill Boss Nolan? So why should he feed dogs that bite their owner? As long as you don't try to stab our Boss in the back, he will not harm us. And on top of that, as long as we work obediently, we will be rewarded and will no longer be beggars!"
Hearing Alfred's reasoning, the beggars could not help but lower their heads.
"But what are you doing?!" Kelton shouted from the bottom of his lungs, joining Alfred's side. "You sit here wondering whether to stab Boss Nolan in the back while he is on the other side of the river, cutting trees so he would build you houses!" Kelton paused for a while. With his gaze, he swept through the group of beggars.
"Do you think he doesn't have a choice but to be here and build you houses?! Kelton continued angrily. "Just so you know, in the city, Boss Nolan owns a restaurant.
People are fighting so they could enter the restaurant and try the amazing food inside. He can just sit and enjoy luxurious life! But what is he doing instead? He is there, cutting trees, just so he could build houses, just so you, almost unknown people to him, would have a roof over your head!"
The beggars lowered their heads even more. They felt as if they had sunk into the ground from embarrassment. Only after Kelton pointed it out, they realized how selfish and ungrateful they were.
"I-I AM SORRY!" The usually shy Perun bent ninety degrees in apology.
This took everyone by surprise, but the beggars quickly came to themselves, and they all bent ninety too.
"WE ARE SORRY!" They all shouted.
"Don't apologize to me, apologize to our Boss," Kelton said.
"But apologies alone won't be enough to amend you. After all, you all wanted to betray him once." Alfred added.
"Then what do we need to do?" A beggar asked.
"Work! Work hard on building the village and show our Boss how sincere you are in following him. If you do this, naturally, over time, the Boss will forgive you." Alfred said.
"Stephany, let's go. We are not needed here anymore." Not wanting to ruin the atmosphere, Kelton, still holding the bag of grain, whispered to Stephany, who remained silent the whole time.
Stephany nodded, and they both moved away from the group.
"Now, everyone line up next to each other," Alfred commanded.
The beggars obeyed and lined up. Since the group was too large, they formed two long horizontal lines.
While Stephany cooked with Kelton, Alfred counted the beggars, the males, the woman, and the children.
He counted them so he could know how many males were there and how many women so he could give everyone appropriate jobs.
In the end, he counted the whole group to consist of about eighty-three people. Including him, Stephany, Kelton, and Nolan, there were eighty-seven people.
Out of those eighty-seven people, including Stephany, there were eleven women. And excluding Stephany, the rest were either in their late forties or early fifties.
The reason there were not many women was that they could never become beggars because if the woman was young, she could always get a dirty job by selling her body. Of course, as long as she wanted.
As for children, including the twins Sem and Sam, there were five.
And the rest of the group, or seventy-one people, were fully grown, capable males.
Alfred then divided the males into a group of three. Two groups had twenty-five members, and one group had twenty-one members.
He then assigned the tools to the groups. He gave the pickaxes to one of the groups, which had twenty-five members, and the axes to the other group. As for the group, which had twenty-one members, Alfred gave them shovels.
Since Nolan had bought tools for more than a hundred people, excess tools were left. But this was not a bad thing. After all, if some of the tools break while working, there will be other tools to replace them.
"Alright, everyone. The group that has shovel tools will be called the shovel group, the group that uses axes is the axe group, and the last one is the pickaxe group." Alfred said. "After we eat, the pickaxe group will mine stones from the hills, the axe group will cross the river and cut trees together with boss Nolan and the shovel group will search for a way around the mountain. You will clear and adjust the way so carriages can pass.
As for the children and women, just help Stephany cook. You can do whatever you want for the rest of the time." Alfred gave jobs to each group.
By now, the grain porridge was cooked, so Alfred led the groups to eat.