Chapter 31 - Strange plants and village plans

The moon is high in the sky, most creatures are sleeping but within the white tent of a small village, a little monster is causing enough racket to wake up the neighbouring villages. One can hear persuasion, bribery and trickery being deploy in all their glory but the little monster will have none of it causing the whole village to awaken at the cries of "NO" and "I WANT TO SLEEP HERE".

The people within the tent try for many hours to persuade the little monster to no avail when finally, exhausted the people within the tent give in and let the little monster do as it pleases, grinning from ear to ear it climbs into the bed of the two people wedging itself between the two. This displeases the people within the tent but after adjusting all the bedding, the trio finally settle in and proceed to dream land.

If it's not completely obvious, the trio are Jack, Jessica and the newest addition, Mai. Leah has escaped somewhere and hasn't returned after saying that she needs to check something. Jack has been left exhausted after the day and this night time fussiness was the last thing he needed almost instantly passing out as his head hits the pillow, not allowing him to notice someone has pricked his skin and licked it.

Jessica is also exhausted but she doesn't consider it a bad thing, "It's just training for when we have our own little monsters" she reassures herself, secretly hoping that when she eventually has children, they're not going to act like this. Her face blushes red upon looking at Jack's sleeping figure and her future children with this man sleeping next to her, her life has certainly changed since she met Jack.

She was struggling to find food, shelter and safety before she met Jack and while her meeting with Jack was fraught with many trials and tribulations, she can say honestly to herself that she feels much safer, secure and happier than she has ever since her parents left her life and this world.

The night slowly makes way for the morning, the tent is quiet while the trio sleep. Jack has not moved while he slept but Jessica and Mai, well Mai has somehow turned around on the bed and has been kicking Jack in the face at times while Jessica has cut off his arms circulation with her head. This will lead to an unpleasant situation when he wakes up but he happily slept through it all.

The sun rises indicating that it's morning and the first person stirs awake from the bed, it's the little monster. She leaves the bed promptly at the crack of daybreak but not before taking another drop of Jack's blood unbeknown to all. The dawn makes way for morning when another person in the bed stirs awake, it's Jessica this time.

She awakens to see Mai has left the bed, Jack is still sleeping and looks quite relaxed while sleep. Jessica upon looking at his sleeping face leans in and gives his cheek a kiss, secretly hoping that he'd wake up but Jack doesn't stir. Jessica leaves the bed and gets dressed for the day, washing up slightly before leaving the tent and being greatly surprised at what she sees.

Jack doesn't wake up until noon, he first tries to roll over but in his still sleepy brain remembers that he had two other people in bed with him. His mind is jolted awake when he isn't able to feel the people sleeping next to him, looking around the tent he can see that he's the only one inside but strangely it's still dark outside.

He's now worried that he slept the whole day and something happened, he quickly gets dressed in his robe that feels quite strange to wear and leaves the tent but is almost instantly stunned by what he sees, it's a forest.

A forest has grown around the tent overnight for some reason, there are many trees that look like they have been growing there for many years, some look like bottlebrush with their long red flower, some look like Lilly Pilly with their little purple cherry like fruit, there's one of the most beautiful purple Jacaranda trees that he has ever seen giving the feelings of spring. That's just the trees, there's countless flowers and shrubbery giving the ground a very colourful appearance with yellow, purple, white, green, pink and the rare blue.

Countless insects are buzzing around the flowers that suddenly sprouted up overnight giving the whole area a very fresh feeling of spring, the air in the area just feels so fresh that breathing it in deeply just gives you an invigorating feeling as though you were a kid running through the brush.

Looking up to see what's causing it to appear dark, there's a massive willow overhanging the tent causing a strange comparison to the flowers surrounding it. The willow almost looks depressive with it's leaves that stretch downward covering up the sides of the tent.

Jack has no idea what's going on, Jessica and Mai don't seem to be here so he can only ask the two guards posted out the front. They aren't very helpful just telling Jack that all these plants appeared after daybreak suddenly, not having any answers Jack decides that it's not very important and that he needs to get onto the day's activities.

Jack proceeds to go into the city hall building, Hilda is the only one located there currently as Bane is handling matters of internal affairs, many of the people that came back with Albert haven't been vetted and there's a big lack of general information. Jack hears this and tells Hilda his plan, he will be converted the bandits of the mining village into an underground information gathering force while operating within the so called 'underworld'.

"Are they suitable for that task?" Hilda asks with a serious expression, this will carry massive amounts of risk depending on how they operate, if it's just gathering information it should be fine but allowing them to operate as a 'gang' or 'mafia' force carries a lot of risks for Dragon – Phoenix village.

"Many of them won't be suitable but I feel confident that Amber has what's needed to operate a force like that, she was able to take over her bandit group with barely any strength and a slight charm technique. If she is given proper backing then she should be able to surprise us, if not then we just find someone better" Jack explains to Hilda his justification, she retains her sceptical expression but ultimately gives in to Jack's suggestion while saying, "As you wish lord".

The two then discuss the plans for the kobold villages, they will be located not too far from the goblin village in what they're now going to term as the 'Exotic Race' area. In the future when so called exotic races submit to them, they will be settled within this region and it will be properly developed to accommodate their specific race requirements.

They so far have collected Goblins and Kobolds, both are small creatures that prefer to live in cooler dark regions, goblins will often find some sort of cave to setup in and expand outward into the open as they grow, kobolds like to dig their own burrows and spend most of their time underground thus they need to be setup in a rocky area.

In the future if they gather Orcs, Trolls, Gnomes, Imps, Ogres and almost any other race that almost looks like a corrupted human they will be setup together, the more humanoid species will be setup in a different area such as Elves, Dwarves and Dryads. There are also many other races to consider but Jack hasn't met any of them yet, if they have a human form then they will be able to just stay within a human city.

Jack outlines his plan for transportation, there will be a single major road travelling through each major city that will be based upon the road that has been created within Dragon – Phoenix village already, it's 12 carriages wide already which should be enough as this will be transportation for the 'common' people, teleportation does exist within this world and Jack is excited for it. He suddenly remembers that he got a teleportation crystal from the NPC within the crystal room, holding the crystal Jack is tempted to use it but decides to not.

"Lord, I believe that we can set up a natural defensive barrier if we dig a canal here that the ants will not be able to cross" Hilda says while pointing to the simple map they have been working with, Jack looks at the map and where she is pointing. The ants if they chose to leave their hill will be able to easily overrun the village, Jack originally planned on quickly creating some village walls to block them but utilizing the naturally poisonous water of the stream nearby is a much better plan.

"I think that's a good idea, we will need to discuss with Drakon when he returns but the kobolds that we have captured should allow us to quickly dig a canal there." Jack replies while nodding towards Hilda.

"Lord, Drakon actually suggested that previously but because we lacked digging tools and the goblins took too much time to dig a simple pit, we decided as a group to not bother with this approach"

"So that's why you were getting the goblins to dig a pit, ok let's go ahead with that plan"

The two talk for some more time discussing the village, currently they are still expanding the buildings to allow each resident to have a house but as most of the newly spawned villagers are being placed in the military, the current barracks type housing is fine. The farming area is growing quite well, it will only take a month and half for the newly planted Wheat to become harvestable with yields being improved by 40% minimum.

The population right now is small and they're able to sustain everyone with the small farming land cleared of poison but it's always being expanded. Water will be the biggest issue as filtration is slow, currently they are filtering the water through a triple layer charcoal filter then boiling it in massive quantities, Jack wants to investigate to see if there's anyway to clear up the source of poison entering the waterway but is unable to do so at the moment.

Maurice the researcher enters the city hall building while the two are discussing the water issue, he has a few things to say about this topic but chooses to remain quiet until the two people finish speaking, Hilda and Maurice have had a few issues between then. Maurice wants to focus almost his entire effort in reproducing 'Aeros' because it will revolutionise the village but they literally can not spend the resources nor time to aimlessly search for the raw materials across the countryside.

"How goes the forging of materials?" Jack asks Maurice when he's done discussing with Hilda.

"It's going great, the different colours of ants give us different results, the black ones are incredibly tough but not particularly heat resistant. The red ones are heat resistant but not very tough, if we combine the two we get the best properties of both and we are researching about how to improve our yields" Maurice answers closing his eye while pushing up his glasses at times, he doesn't feel pleased with having to deal with dead ants all day but his loyalty is with this new village.

"Great news, what about the demonic sheep? Have you worked out how to control them, how to make more of them and what to use them for?" Jack shoots off multiple questions quickly, he is excited about the prospects of the demonic sheep especially after that demonic qi helped him break out of the vines Mai wrapped him with.

"We haven't worked out how to control them, I need to acquire more demonic sheep to study their behaviours but from what I've been told it might be hopeless, they must feel an instinctive response to attacking anything living with demonic qi. Perhaps if we are able to shape their minds as they go through the demonification it will have better prospects." Maurice answers with a slight sigh at the end, he was hoping for a better answer but what he said was the truth.

"What of making more of them and using them for things?"

"We should be able to make more of them by imbuing them with demonic qi, luckily we have the orbs that the other ones dropped that contain a lot of demonic qi but I suggest we find the original source of the demonic qi as we can only split the orbs a few times before they lose their effect and I do not know how much demonic qi it will take to trigger a transformation" Maurice quickly explains before taking a deep breath and continuing;

"As for what we can use them for, the bodies are death contain no demonic qi so they are safe to consume, it appears the energy orb will condense all the demonic qi but leave their body transformed so their wool retains the demonification properties, basically making their wool like iron but retaining the flexibility of wool. We have knitted and woven the wool into wearable armour that we can massively provide to the soldiers…. Also your little phoenix wife seems to enjoy making under garments out of the wool" Maurice finishes speaking while quietly speaking the last part.

Jack raises his eyebrow at the last part of the sentence but the rest of it makes him feel incredibly glad that they found the demonic sheep. Jack, Hilda and Maurice discuss about how to priorities the usage of the wool and ant carapace, the ant carapace will be used in place of iron resources for now so they will be creating many different types of weapons and shields out of it. The black iron wool can luckily be created by the tailors and will not affect the forging so they can have both being produced at the same time.

There's not much more for Jack to discuss with Hilda for the time being, the wolves have stopped stalking the goblins and they have settled in properly finally. Some of the goblins have even expressed interest in becoming goblin riders but as Dragon – Phoenix Village doesn't have the job change stele required for that, they will never become good at it nor acquire the skills needed to do it properly.

The final problem is the black poisonous substance that the goblins have been digging up from the plains area, it has gathered into a ball that is roughly 5m in diameter. Some people have said they have seen it move, thus worrying about it becoming a slime soldiers have been posted to watch it but nothing has happened with it.

Jack wants to keep this poisonous substance secure because it may be useful in the future, he is just unsure about how to store this as nobody has ever bothered to store massive quantities of it before. Jack wants to go visit this blob of poison and see if the system indicates it as some sort of monster or it just remains a blob of poison.

Jack finally ends this impromptu meeting with Hilda and Maurice, they need to wait until Albert comes back with new population and Drakon & DeeYo with the kobolds to make any more plans.

"Oh, the researchers said that they have unlocked a new civil job stele so I suggest you go see them" Maurice says while he is leaving the building, Jack nods towards him before turning to Hilda, "I want to see some designs for an imperial palace at some point, I don't want to live in a tent while everyone else is getting a proper house".

"Lord, I will draft up some grand White Dragon Palace designs that will let you feel the might of the old White Dragon Empire" Hilda says excitedly, almost slurring her words as she talks about the greatness of the White Dragon Empire. Jack gives her a smile and exits the building; he is considering where to go when suddenly in his mind:

'SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT – Black Burrows Village has submitted to your general 'Drakon Laoshe' and has gained 20 Achievement Points.'

"System announcement – You have gained 15 Achievement Points."

'SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT – Purple Burrows Village has submitted to your general 'Drakon Laoshe' and has gained 20 Achievement Points.'

"System announcement – You have gained 15 Achievement Points."

'SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT – Burrow Back Village has submitted to your general 'Drakon Laoshe' and has gained 20 Achievement Points.'

"System announcement – You have gained 15 Achievement Points."

.......

Jack's mind doesn't stop resounding with this message, the prompts appear one after another before his face and he is shocked and unable to speak, he has no idea what's going on but it appears that 7 kobold villages and 2 goblins villages submitted to Drakon for some reason.

Jack wants to run off to where he left Drakon and DeeYo but holds back his excitement and goes back to his tent, marvelling at the trees and flowers that let his mind feel refreshed and clearer, taking deep breaths before he enters the empty tent and cultivates to calm his excitement and allowing himself to get stronger, while he waits for Drakon to return to the village.