Pestilence and Famine

He continued to visit the retirement village during the week, helping out where he could and gaining points. Some tasks were simple, such as keeping the forgetful old lady company as she walked around the ground and constantly asked who he was again. Others were more tiring (anything involving that old man). And some were just plain embarrassing, not things he wanted to ever remember;

"...My legs are bent with my kne*s resting on either side of his head. My b@tt@m sits on his chest, taking my w*ight which leaves my secret opening utterly g*ping and vulnerable, not to mention very close to his sinful m*uth. I can feel his breath on me, fluttering and making my heart stutter…."

"Say it with more feeling!"

"Yes and with an edge of breathlessness!"

The book club cackled like a coven of witches as his face coloured with fifty shades of crimson.

He refused to take part in modelling for the art club once he recognised the woman in charge was also the same person leading the book club.

Visitors came and went freely, entering the retirement village bubble which currently existed in two places, but always leaving to enter their original world. Russell, however, could not follow them and always returned to the islands.

At the end of the week, he'd accumulated enough points to help fix the problem he'd admittedly caused and seal the space distortion. Russell felt a bit unhappy.

"They'll be alright, you know," the seagull reassured him. "They won't have been affected by the glitch at all and will continue on in blissful ignorance."

"Yeah, I know," Russell agreed with a sigh. "But I'll really miss that porcelain convenience!" He cried without tears as his eyes glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the hole/dunny.

The seagull flapped its wings and flew around the larger island several times and Russell cried for the second time as his points balance returned to zero.

[Kingdom Population: 2]

The retirement village vanished. In its place was a different sort of village; an Abandoned Village.

"I could only do this much," the System said, apologetically. "However, if we work hard, we can attract villagers to move in!"

"Yeah, tomorrow," Russell waved his hand in a pitiful manner. "I'm going to take a nap for a bit." This time, the seagull did not argue.

*****

Abandoned villages usually appeared after a famine or after pestilence. After the debacle with the Retirement village, Russell didn't fancy their chances about improving conditions in the Abandoned Village. One positive note, there were no bodies in the village, just small huts in a state of disrepair.

"Where would we even start?" Russell complained to the seagull after taking a quick look around.

"Well, we have no points to spend, so whatever we'll do, would have to be by hand!"

T^T

To Russell, most of the huts were not worth repairing; one was actually lying on its side as if it had been pushed over by a strong gust of wind, others had no roofs or whole walls missing. Tufts of grass grew inside buildings and one had become home to mushrooms.

He poked one, just in case it was actually a 100,000 year old fungus that had actually cultivated to the point it could morph into human form so he could enslave it and get it to do the work.

Mushroom …..

There was a well in the village with a bucket at its side naturally with a hole in the bottom, but the rope was okay. Russell ran… jogged back to the initial island and his chest, from which he dug out one plastic bucket. This ought to do for a replacement, right? He cut the rope off of the broken wooden bucket and tied it about the plastic one and lowered it into the well. The problem with the toy bucket though; it floats.

Russell tried lowering it again. This time it contained a stone which was enough weight to lower it into the water within the well, which was then retrieved for inspection.

"It looks clean…" Russell said, dubiously as he lifted the bucket by its plastic handle to look more closely.

"This water is drinkable," the seagull agreed, "but would still require boiling."

"So there's no dead cow or anything like that in there."

"I could have told you that without you retrieving water." The handle of the strained plastic bucket fell off. Russell's canvas shoes became soaked.

Leaving aside the well and wet shoes, Russell checked the soil using the System.

"Is it good? Can it grow things?'

"It's growing grass, Your Majesty, what do you think?"

"I think you hung out with that old man too much."

So whatever the reason for the village becoming abandoned, the well water and the earth was clean, the latter was also fertile. So pestilence and famine didn't appear to be the reasons behind the village's problems…

"You think too much," the seagull then informed him. "To hide the anomalies, it was just simpler to change a village with a small population into a village without a population. Otherwise, I would have had to replace each individual with someone similar in height, weight and age, and with the sorts of conditions in our Kingdom currently, the village would have become an 'abandoned' one in a week anyway."

"Oh," he sighed. "So that's the case." He began to head back to his own island.

"Your Majesty, where are you going?"

"If this place isn't unlivable and there's no regretful ghosts or anything, won't people show up eventually? I just need to wait, right?"

"But that could take an inordinate amount of time!!"

"So?"

"Think about what happens if God finds out your Kingdom's population is very much less than when he left it!"

Russell huffed, blowing his long bangs from his face. "Alright, what do I need to do?"

"First, we should fix up the village chief's house; its the largest one. Any number of people can stay there while the village is rebuilt by themselves! Then we should cut back some trees to form fields to show them where to farm! Also a wall or fences, keep wild animals that might appear at bay..." Russell spun around on his heel once more.

"I think I'll take the risk and wait…"

"Your Majesty!"