Chronicles of the True Wizard

Felix walked as slowly as he could so as not to speed by Noah. He thought about removing his shirt to deactivate the set bonus, but thought that might be too weird.

"I see you managed to find yourself some clothes."

"Yeah, finally. Anything interesting happen while I was gone?"

"Some thugs tried to declare a siege, but I think it failed. They yelled at us, screamed at the air for a bit then left. It did make us start thinking about defenses though. A lot of the population has run through the puzzle dungeon already and some of them specialized. We now have a good chunk of builders that are specialized in siege defense, a few on offence. Lot's of other random professions too. We are working on getting shops up and running for all of them."

"Why not just use the marketplace and auction for all that? Oh wait, taxes?"

"Exactly, the marketplace and auction house charge three taxes, city taxes for the origin and destination, plus a System tax for managing the shop. Local shops only have the city tax applied to them."

"Oh sweet. How did you guys get so many buildings finished so quickly?"

"Mostly profession skills. Builders got skills to give them a bigger inventories for building materials, that was huge. Then skills for stuff like more endurance or more efficient building. Some skills that allow you to build stuff that you have built before instantly, for an increased energy cost. Then we had a chef manage to create foods that increase energy regeneration, we, the city, have been buying food directly from him. Then there are the miners, lumberjacks, blacksmiths, stone cutters an so on that all got skills themselves, not to mention levels and stats. It's all compounding to make things much faster than I thought possible. It's been great for my leveling though so, no complaints."

"I wasn't expecting much in only 120 days, but now, we might have a functional town and economy within a week or two. What will all the builders, lumberjacks and others do once the buildings are finished? I expect people won't want to build anything when we are a week out from the end of the tutorial?"

"Most of them bought some of the plots of land in the residential district and are planning personal projects. Basically, they are gonna build up levels and skills helping us, then work on a masterpiece or something to push levels and target better class upgrades."

"Oh cool, I guess that makes sense. Kind of sucks to not be able to bring it with you though. Unless The System lets them do that somehow. Oh by the way, I've been meaning to ask, what are we doing about water and sewage?"

Noah bent over laughing, "You didn't notice yet? We don't have to use the bathroom since the integration, The System just cleans it up until we get to our minor evolution, at which point you won't need it to clean up. Something like at level 25 race your body gets a minor upgrade to handle the stats, skills and so on. Then at race level 100, you upgrade it fully. Apparently not all races need a minor evolution, just the ones that start at F tier. Oh and water, at first we got it from mountain streams and snow, we are working on wells though. We had a few merchants abuse their skills to mark water as a sellable good and transport a ton of it at once. They got a ton of levels from the volume of sales, and we had cheap transport for a necessity. Helped the farmers a ton."

"Uh, I have no idea how I didn't notice that before, now that you mention it though, seems a little obvious. That does make it easier though, not needing to think about sewage. I was wondering about F tier and the race evolution though. I guess that makes sense. I don't think I could handle my set bonus without the race evolution."

"Oh shit, you already hit race level 25? You must have found a profession you liked then? Wait, you have an equipment set already? What does it do? Also you don't look any different…"

"Its just movement speed while traveling."

"That's still super useful though."

"Yeah it is, hard to control sometimes. How are the farms doing by the way?"

"No one has harvested anything yet, but it looks like it will happen in the next few days. None of the farmers are sure if their crops are growing so quickly because of the tutorial or skills or something else."

"Well that is convenient, is anyone still sleeping in the warehouse?"

"Nope, the city owns some of the houses and rents them out in the residential district, that let us move everyone out. The warehouse is mostly stone and building materials right now."

Felix hopped on the throne and found the financial section of the management screen. The first thing he noticed, was that the coffers held a massive 5.5 Million Tutorial Credits. The second thing he noticed was that the current tax rate was at 15%.

Felix looked around the screen at Noah, "How much have we promised to people so far?"

Noah pulled up a screen, "2.75 Million Tutorial Credits."

"The amount of money made on taxes is also going to go up because of the marketplace, auction and all the stores being set up too, right?"

"Yeah quite a bit I suspect."

"Any issues with my lowering the tax rate?"

"Uh, well if you want to do that, you probably need to lower your salary."

"I have a salary?" Felix flipped through screens until he found his salary screen. The salary for the leader of a town was set, by default, to 50%. If Felix approved the transactions Noah had already promised, the rest would be reserved for him to claim. He also found a salary for Noah and other people employed by the city he didn't know which were all at 0%.

Felix claimed his salary, then set his own salary to the lowest possible value, 1 Tutorial credit a year. Then he donated the entirety of the salary he claimed back to the city coffers. Finally, Felix set the permissions to allow Noah to request a withdrawal, it would notify Felix and he could then approve it from anywhere. Felix could just let Noah take from the coffers directly, but he was slightly paranoid of embezzling or stealing. Worst case, if he was in a fight, Noah would have to wait a few hours for approval, which shouldn't be an issue.

"What should I set your and all the other people we employ's salary to?"

"Uh, that's up to you. We've been using the Tutorial Credit as about equivalent to a dollar for now."

Felix thought about setting the salaries to some set amount per month, but figured making it a percent, at least for Noah, would make it so he was incentivized to make the city wealthier, not that it mattered. He set it at a couple percent of the city's overall income.

"Well, I also don't know what any of these other people do, you can set their salaries then it will ping me for permission."

Remembering something Noah had said earlier, Felix flipped through to a siege screen. He read through a log of the exact same message repeated over a hundred times within a single minute.

Siege declaration failed. Attacker's level is too low to declare a siege on this fort. Highest level attacker must be at least half of the level of the fort's leader.

That's convenient, would have been a real pain if the fort was sieged while I was in the dungeon. Would I have even been notified?

With nothing else to do, Felix hopped off the throne. Noah pulled up the city projection which now showed all of the new buildings and the plots of land for sale.

"So city defenses? We start with repairing the wall I assume?" Felix said.

"Yeah that's what I was thinking. We can get all the siege specialized builders working on that. Now that we have the marketplace, some harder to obtain materials should be accessible so the industrial district is gonna be a big pull now. We had things like alchemists and engineers that couldn't do much other than the dungeon without the marketplace."

"Oh what do we need to upgrade the town by the way?"

"Nothing, you just need to say ‘Yes', I think. Then, for the next upgrade, you have to pick the upgrade path."

"How do we upgrade it then?"

"Just go to the upgrade screen on the console."

Duh.

Felix hopped back on the throne and found the upgrade screen.

Tutorial Fort Upgrade

Congratulations!

Your fort has met all requirements to be upgraded to a Minor Town (Tier 2).

Requirements:

Population of 1000+

Housing for 50%+ of population

Leader Level 10+

100,000 Tutorial Credits (Consumed)

Would you like to upgrade now?

Yes.

No.

Yes.

Tutorial Fort Upgrade

Option Select

Please select a new building as a reward or an existing building to be upgraded.

Warning: This choice will affect future fort advancements.

Possible Options:

[E - Common] Barracks

[E - Special] Castle (Existing)

[E - Common] Warehouse (Existing)

[E - Uncommon] Laboratory

[E - Uncommon] Auction House

I kind of hate the idea of upgrading the castle. I don't spend much time here, so who would even use the castle and for what? It probably won't benefit the city itself much. It is the highest rarity though, by a fair margin. Ah, screw it, Castle. Worst case, it can be used as a laboratory for the alchemists and other professions.

Felix squinted as it was suddenly brighter, he looked around and realized he was standing outside next to Noah. Turning around towards the castle Felix almost regretted his decision. The castle had the same general structure as before, with the wall around a court yard, large towers and more space than Felix had any use for. After the upgrade though, it was bigger in every respect.

The wall was completely repaired and at least four meters tall, made of smooth stone bricks. The castle had three towers now, instead of one and they looked solid, unlike the one on the castle before the upgrade. The main building looked to be two stories taller than it was before, with the other buildings having grown a story each. The castle appeared to be made of smooth stone bricks, that looked like what the bricks from the ruins might have looked like in the city's prime. There were also many banners hanging around from the castle that were white with thin blue stripes running down the sides. In the middle, there was a simple logo depicting three peaks, in a dark grey, rising up around a castle in blue, surrounded by a thin blue ring.

Oh man, it looks great. Ugh, what would the laboratory have looked like, how useful could that have been. Agh, I feel a little bad I chose the selfish route. Is what it is at this point, let's see what's needed for the next upgrade, hopefully that changes the direction a little.

Felix looked at Noah sheepishly and shrugged before running towards the new throne room. He ran up to the gates, then through them when they opened for him automatically. He ran through the courtyard which was now filled with neatly trimmed grass and a well manicured garden of trees and hedges. The front door, instead of being an open doorway was now a two and a half meter tall wooden door with steel bands holding it together. Felix pulled on the right door barely managing to open it wide enough for him to slip through. He entered into a an empty room that spanned almost the entire floor plan of the building. Running down the middle was a long dark blue carpet with thin white stripes down either side. Next to the carpet, on either side, pillars were placed at even intervals each hosting another banner. Felix quickly ran to the back and up the staircase to the next floor.

The next floor appeared to be a banquet hall with a massive table spanning the majority of the main room. Felix ignored it and ran past to the next floor, which contained the throne, a vault and some other rooms. There was an entire other floor which Felix suspected would be a floor mainly for bedrooms.

Felix wasted no time, sat on the throne, and flipped back to the upgrade screen.

Minor Town Upgrade

Congratulations!

Your town has met all requirements to be upgraded to Major Town (Tier 3).

Requirements:

Auction House or Marketplace

Population of 5000+

Housing for 75%+ of population

Leader Level 25+

1,000,000 Tutorial Credits (Consumed)

Would you like to upgrade now?

Yes.

No.

Yes.

Minor Town Upgrade

Option Select

Please select an upgrade path for the fort.

Possible Options:

[E - Common] Militaristic

[E - Common] Trade

[E - Uncommon] Empire

[E - Rare] Fortress

[E - Special] University

The fact that there are two separate combat options being offered to a town focused entirely on professions is a little worrying. The other forts are probably being offered a combat focused path based on the direction some of them seem to be heading, likely with a higher rarity too. Can I get more information on University?

Minor Town Upgrade

[E - Special] University

You have met the requirements for a Special upgrade path.

Requirements:

Special grade building suitable to be a University.

75%+ of population with a profession level higher than their class level

2,500,000 Tutorial Credits (Consumed)

Warning: The selected Special grade building may be altered during the process.

Would you like to upgrade now?

Yes.

No.

Holy shit this is going to cost almost all the credits in the coffers. It seems like a great option though. The trade path would be great, to maximize on the expansion of the town and leverage all the money the town will likely make from profession focuses. However, this town is focused on progressing professions, not just becoming rich. A university would, hopefully, support learning and growth, and hopefully also have facilities for research, alchemy and engineering. Yes. . . . . .