Ondra woke up before midnight. He has not yet had a chance to acclimatize to the change and adapt to the new time zones. It was the same feeling as jet lag.
Joseph stood guard in front of the puny residence. All other subjects were sleeping already.
"Hi Joseph"
"My Lord"
"I have one request for you, Jozef. I would like you to act as a scout from tomorrow. We are still a small village and we need to get information about the surroundings, wandering people and other lords."
'With less than 10 people, it's hard to progress. Builders, lumberjacks, miners and many other jobs that require strong men are needed. Luis is a fisherman, Gabriel will go hunting nearby. I need more people, but now mostly men are needed. If Joseph finds a wandering group or two tomorrow, that would be great. Although he is older, he has the best predispositions and stamina of all.' was the train of thought in his mind when he spoke to Joseph.
"I am pleased to do so!"
Ondra took the twig and opened the Territory section in the Status menu. The entire map that he and his subjects discovered during the day was automatically consolidated there. Unfortunately, the status windows were only visible to him.
He followed the map in front of him and drew a simplified map on the ground with a twig to share with Joseph.
"I slept enough, you can go to sleep and I will guard. When you wake up in the morning, you can go explore the area like I showed you. Do the same as today, if you meet someone, try to approach with caution and if they are friendly, bring them here."
I can finally read the chat. I totally forgot to read what was going on as I was busy.
The regional channel is still empty, I won't be the first to write.
"Together there are more than 80 billion lords and a trillion people"
"How are u?"
"Did you wake up at midnight too?"
"How do you get these numbers?"
"It's sunset right now"
"Hehe.. it was dawn like an hour ago."
"I've been trading statistical regional data, I'm almost 99% complete."
"How huge is the planet to support so many people, imagine there are more than a trillion people on Earth."
"Where did you find the summary stats? I changed them too, but I can only see them individually"
"It's sick number of people"
"Yeah, I didn't expect so many lords. I guess this contest won't end and we'll be here until we die."
"It's my talent, I can process data automatically. This is the only use I've found so far."
The local channel was mostly full of spam, but there was little useful information.
The global channel was the same, but some lords shared information about their races in a heated debate about which race was the best.
This information allowed Ondra to better understand Lords from other planets. There were several human-like races with many differences, from hobbits to giants, but they were called themselves differently. The largest group were races that resembled insects. Not only did they have significantly more planets than the human races, but the population on each was at least fivefold that of Earth. He recognized two other large groups, similar to demi-humans and monsters from games and novels. There were four other groups of lords. There are marine types, living mostly underground, living in symbiosis with nature. Ondra couldn't categorize the last group, they were sort of a mix between weak corporeal form like slime and mages using telekinesis and telepathy.
Ondra continued reading the chat and keeping guard, and in no time it was dawn.
All ten people stood in front of Ondro as if announcing that they were ready.
"Joseph, you can go already, as we agreed earlier. Parker, we will go together to subdue the barbarians you met yesterday. Everyone else you build a fence, as I mentioned yesterday. When you're done, Adeline with Elise and Charlotte will prepare the plot for planting, 10 acres should be enough for now. Elen, please keep building the shacks with Angela and Barbara, I hope we get more people soon. Luis will help the others as needed and then at dusk he will catch enough fish for us to eat tomorrow and Gabriel will explore the wilderness and can hunt or tame animals if the opportunity arises." Ondra gave decisive instructions although he was trembling inwardly.
There was enough material for today and tomorrow, but he would have to plan how to get more material, primary wood, in the near future. With an abundant food reserve there was no danger of shortage, but it is better to use fresh meat.
Only Parker remained as the others began to follow orders they had been given. Parker didn't look like a soldier at all. Only the rusty sword on his side indicated that he could fight.
At the moment when Ondra wanted to set out on the road to meet the barbarians, he realized a fundamental flaw in his plan. When he leaves, there will be no one to protect the settlement and there will be only 1 man besides the 6 women.
There was only one option.
"Parker, move within 2 kilometers diameter and see if there are any strangers. If you meet someone, return here immediately."
It wasn't a foolproof solution, but it was the only one he could proceed at the moment. He was almost sure wandering troops are not moving fastly neither in one direction only but rather circle around.
He estimated that Parker would be back in 2 or 3 hours. At that moment he remembered that there was no breakfast and his subjects were already working. He wasn't hungry himself, but skipping meals will definitely affect people's sentiment. Making a note in your mind is not enough because he can forget like now. He added the information about not skipping meals to avoid low spirits as a note in the Help section and created another note with daily tasks including a point to use alliance licenses.
Then he directly created two new licenses and put them on automatic trading.
After closing the Status menu, a surprising message awaited him.
The system recognized your help information. You can choose 2 rewards from the list below:
- skill book "swordmanship"
- skill book "swift walking"
- job class "carpenter"
- iron sword