Lark
"So what's up with the sky?"
"What?"
"You know, the blue sky. I'm pretty sure we are underground."
"Oh you mean the fake sky. The ancient master enchanters created that. I don't really understand it myself but apparently, they used a variety of ores to simulate the sky. When Lark was created, the masters goal was to create a world where humanity doesn't need to face danger anymore. So they create Lark low below the ground with the fake sky and running river and all. Lark in essence is almost the same as the surface."
As Wang Lin continues to explain to Adam, they encounter a tall man with a white robe standing not far from them. Wang Lin and his team suddenly stop and salute the man.
"Good evening, Commander!"
"Good evening, everyone. Is this the person you talked about, Wang Lin?"
"Yes, Commander. He helps us defeat the Golden Buffalo and heals Tony."
"I see. Would you please follow me, sir?"
Adam replies with a nod and follows the Commander back to a mansion. As he enters, he sees a lot of people come and go either holding stacks of papers or even weapons and books.
"This is our base of operation and also my home. All business related to Lark will be conducted here one way or another."
As they walk, people sometimes stop to greet the Commander before going about their way. Adam watches on as they slowly approaches a door.
The Commander enters the room and sits on the chair behind the desk while offering Adam the seat in front of it.
"Before we start, I would to ask you to place your hand on this."
The Commander pulls out an empty stone tablet from his drawer and places it on the table. Adam complies and places his palm on it and he can feel his mana is slowly getting suck.
The empty stone tablet starts to glow and writings appear one after another. Adam watches as his name, age, level, title, and stats appear. Only his skill doesn't appear there.
The Commander's eyes open wide in shock when he reads the stats. It's not that he is worried Adam is not a human or a bad person. The reason he asks Adam to check it again is because the Identifying Ball can only check someone's rough combat ability. From Wang Lin report, he says that Adam ability is rated as EX. That is on the same level as the combat power of the Devil.
Adam looks at the tablet curiously as he really doesn't know why they keep on checking him. He doesn't really care if people can see his stats or skills since what can they do about it anyway.
But before Adam can ask the Commander anything, the guy suddenly stands up and bows to him.
"Mr. White, please helps us get rid of the Devil!"
Adam is shocked at the Commander's sudden movement but his attention immediately picks up on the word 'Devil'.
"The Devil?"
"I don't know if you know this, sir. But the Devil is the leader of the Demon's that often comes through the portal to slay the humans. A lot of people have died since they start and they are also the reason for the near extinction of humanity."
"I see. But you say they come out of a portal. I haven't seen any portal so far."
"It's because the Devil and his team only comes out every 6 months to kill us. The portal will close after they all return but each time they return, the portal opens up longer and longer. The last time they open up last for a whole week. We often set up a fake base up top to not give out that we have a base underground but I am not sure for how much longer we can hide from them."
"And what about this Devil you are talking about?"
"The Devil is the leader of the demons. He often just stays near the portal and lets the demon rampage around the world while he guards it."
"I see. So how do you know that if the Devil is killed the demons will stop coming?"
"Well, that we don't actually know for sure, sir. We only speculate that killing him is our only way."
"Hmmm. Alright. But I have 2 condition."
"Whatever you want as long as we have them and it doesn't hurts us, we will give it to you, sir."
"Yes yes. Anyway, give me some of your skill books. and I want a big piece of land."
"Right away, sir. I will call someone to bring it all here."
The Commander goes out of his room and he can hear some shouting and a lot of footsteps rushing at the same time. Not even 5 minutes later, the Commander returns with 5 more people all lifting a stack of books. They place it on the table and Adam checks them one by one.
Soon he finds what he wanted.
[Farming]
Item type: Skill books
Rank: E
Requirements: Level 1
[Cooking]
Item type: Skill books
Rank: E
Requirements: Level 1
[Construction]
Item type: Skill books
Rank: C
Requirements: Level 25, Architect
[Enchantment]
Item type: Skill books
Rank: C
Requirements: Level 25, Blacksmith
Taking all these skill books, Adam thanks the Commander and goes to the land that is given to him. Along the way, Adam frowns as his suspicion becomes true. If this is really the future Earth, that means that Terra really get integrated with Earth in the future.
After Adam arrives at the site, he summons his skeletons and they spread out to all corners of the land. Adam use the skill books and learns all of them.
[Farming]
Skill type: Passive
Rank: E
Level 1(0/10)
Desc: When you farm, all crops growth rate increase by 10%. 1% chance to increase the quality of product.
[Cooking]
Skill type: Passive
Rank: E
Level 1(0/10)
Desc: All foods that are cooked will taste 10% better. Increase 10% chance of food successfully cooked and 1% chance of food containing a buff.
[Construction]
Skill type: Active
Rank: C
Level 1(0/100)
Desc: When activated, earth will rise and will transform into stable building. Increase 10% of durability and comfortness.
[Enchantment]
Skill type: Active
Rank: C
Level 1(0/100)
Desc: Form a mildly random enchantment on the object. The success rate for enchantment : 10% E, 1% D, 0.1% C, 0.01% B, 0.001% A, 0.0001% S, 0.00001% EX
After he levels them up all the way so that the percentage is at minimum 100% except the [Enchantment], Adam commands his skeletons to start building a house. Well, that is an understatement. To call it a mansion will be more accurate.
Different from the rich people mansion though, Adam's mansion consist of one big house with only one small bedroom, one living room, one giant kitchen and one giant smithing room.
The kitchen and the Smithing room alone take up 90% of the mansion's space. Meanwhile, the space that usually have a garden is replaced with a giant farm full of different seeds and plants.
Now, someone that sees this will wonder, what is Adam doing. The answer is very simple. On the way to the Commander's mansion, they passed through the slum area and he saw a lot of poor people that are either sick or starving. That's not to say that the corruption runs deep in Lark. Even the Commander only wears some normal white robe with normal clothes underneath. And he is supposed to be the leader of Lark.
Adam is trying to improve the living conditions of these people since he can. Well, the other reason is because he thought it will help the evaluation of his clearance later. Of course, if that's just it, he wouldn't have taken so many lifestyle skill books. After arranging some skeletons to farm and cook, he goes into the Smithing room and arrange the skeletons to start smithing weapons, armors and tools.
The materials are naturally taken from ruins of buildings at the top when Adam encounters them. Although the quality of the metals are pretty bad, he can still extract some of them and there are a lot of ruins. Especially, once he dug them out.
Adam also sends some skeletons to heal the sicks with them wearing a full robe with a mask so that the people are not freak out. He also build a small market that have a few buildings for him to distribute his 'wealth'.
Along with a path, Adam sets up a guard at random intervals along the way from the city to his market, so that no 'snatching' happens. A week later, Adam spreads some flyers in the city to attract the people.
At first it starts of slow, but soon batch after bacth of people come to get supplies. Even the Commander comes at some point to get a weapon and a full set of armor. Of course it is not fully free. But Adam price them so low that 1 copper coin can be used to buy a month worth of foods.
And with that, 4 months pass.