Chapter 273: Building Community

Proper cleanup of the lower levels of the city took four days.

But by the end of the four days, the city of Marimgar had made an incredible amount of progress, on a level that Kalli had never expected.

The higher level heroes were stacking teams to take newbies through the Rat Demon dungeon to build experience in combat, and to help them try for level 1, while they worked their hardest to build their strength and endurance with the daily quest.

That effort alone had brought them nearly a hundred new level 1 members, and Kalli had an entire sheet of new level 0 System activations waiting on her desk for her to review.

It seemed that most of them didn’t actually want to move out of the hive city.

They had built up their own sort of community on the Arks, and they didn’t want to abandon it now, they just wanted to live better where they were. And that was something that Kalli could help them with.

Since they were coming up every day to run the Rat Demon dungeon anyhow, or to work odd jobs, they were getting points.

The first twenty were to be reserved for a skill, once the System made it available. But most of them didn’t get to see it right away, they had to do more to make themselves qualified for any sort of class.

Usually warrior, as Kalli soon discovered.

That always seemed to be the issue. Healers and warriors, warriors and more warriors. Sure, it took study and knowledge to have a chance at becoming a mage or a druid. But still, there were too many warrior types.

They were going to have to teach more of them how to use a rifle effectively so that they had a balance of ranged riflemen type warriors, and front-line shield warriors.

At least then, they could form a full and proper group without having enough mages.

Perhaps there was some sort of solution to that which Kalli hadn’t considered yet, but she suspected that it required some sort of magical training books, and she didn’t see anything like that in her store.

There were many things in it, but nothing resembling magical training tomes or spell books.

Maybe she was the wrong sort of shop owner?

Chances are that one of the other nations got someone who could do it at the start of the trials, but they likely didn’t make it this far.

Marimgar got a Coordinator, Kalka got a Strategist. That suggested a pattern to her that others should have gotten a leadership caste class. But if they didn’t listen to them, or the chosen guidance person didn’t level up in time, they were screwed.

Not that Marimgar actually listened to her.

They had abandoned a special forces team who asked too many questions and ditched all the heroes who remained in the Academy as soon as they saw a chance to get away. Not exactly a shining example of government efficiency.

Now that the city had been cleaned up, and the fields had been mostly drained, so that the surviving crops didn’t die, they were actually back in pretty good shape, a week into the trial.

Kalli was proud of that.

Even though the weather had thrown them a curveball, and made the trial harder than they had guessed that it would be, they were still doing quite well.

They were ahead on growth rates, despite a lack of fighting for survival, and they were even rebuilding the stockpiles of supplies that they had burned through. Even Kalli’s stockpile of points was beginning to recover from the pain she had put it through building their new cistern and drainage system.

But now that it was in, she was sure that she should have done it when she first built the city.

It could hold up to the deluge that they had suffered, with minimal overland flooding, and it could dump enough water not to back up even if the rain continued for days. It was a wonderful backup supply for the city’s crops and green spaces as well.

There honestly wasn’t much that the city needed, except for more of everything that it already had.

And that could wait, as they had housing for everyone, and the people still weren’t even settled into their new neighbourhoods. Once they were, and things were starting to run in a more normal manner, they could look at changing and upgrading things.

While it was tempting to rush through the changes every time that she had points, Kalli knew that many of the real improvements were not from having fancier things, but in truly settling and making your house a home.

Already, people were planting fruit trees in the green spaces of the hive city. They should grow, as long as they were watered and not broken as saplings, as the lighting was a full spectrum, just like regular sunlight.

That would be a nice change for everyone once the trees were grown, but most of the ones planted were regular fruit tree seeds, and would take years to grow into mature trees.

Still, long-term planning was a good thing.

The more that they could do it, the more smoothly things would progress within Marimgar, and the less that Kalli would have to stress about things collapsing the moment that she stopped overseeing all development.

Not that they could do most of it without her.

But that wasn’t the point. She wanted things to mostly run themselves, and then they could come to her for major projects, like new buildings or infrastructure.

Like they had started doing with the "Primitive Weapons" that were being made out of bone and stone.

Those were proving remarkably deadly in the hands of the level 0 crowds that were entering the Rat Demon Dungeon, and the healers were beginning to look less like they were about to have a nervous breakdown, and more like they were simply overworked.

But Kalli suspected that state would never truly end for the healers.