"Harken, stay here and protect the plateau and civilians. I will descent the road alone and quickly gather the wood resources below"
"Yes lord!"
A few minutes later Jack returned with [wood x5000kg].
He had hoped for more, but realised that the civilians had used a lot of the initial small trees, to create the surrounding palisade of wood poles below.
Harken and the troops was busy with lookout duty and guarding the plateau. And all the 30 human civilians was busy cutting the meat near the small water pond in the middle.
"Gynda, how long will this take, and how long do you think this amount of meat will last us?" Jack asked while he walked to the pond area.
"Its hard to say for sure how long it will last. But I estimate about fifteen hundred kilos or more of pure meat"
She pointed to the apes and bears in turn.
"The apes weigh about 200 kilos each, and the bears about 500kg or more. Removing the fur, entrails and bones will leave much less for meat weight."
Jack was satisfied with the answer. That was surely enough for a long time with the current number of mouths. But Jack planned to have many more mouths soon enough.
'The apes fur and hair is thin and nasty, but...'
"Can you preserve the fur from the bears?"
"I don't have the skills myself, but another civilian already told me that it's a shame we don't have a tannery yet" Gynda replied, feeling somewhat wasteful.
And Jack agreed. It was a waste to toss such large uncommon furs. But as it is, they didn't have a choice or they would just begin to infest and rot away.
Jack left the plateau, thinking it would take a while before they finished.
Finding himself back at the goldmine he gathered the gold ores mined the past two hours.
His estimate had been correct.
[Do you want to transmute 100kg of gold into 10.000 gold coins?]
Jack clicked yes and went back to the summoning portals.
[5000 gold coins received. 500 Trash troops summoned. Completion time: 83,3 minutes]
Jack sighed. And went back to the dwarfs who was busy tunneling.
They had almost completed half of the 100 meters tunnel in just two hours.
'Impressive speed, I wonder how far they are tomorrow'
Jack gathered the stone resources they had stacked in the small cave he had designated to them.
[Stone x4500kg]
'The gained resources are slow though... Just 4500kg after tunneling for 50 meters'
But Jack didn't feel too sad about it. It was enough to begin building something.
At the tunnel entrance, opposite the stone table he had previously made, he finally used the house blueprint.
[Common house blueprint, trash rank. Description: You know you can just manually build your own house right? But with the common house blueprint, you can easily upgrade your house and it comes fully furnished! There is no better house for civilians! Living space: 10. Cost: Wood x1500. Stone x500.]
When he used it, a frame appeared in his view, the same way that the lord system appears.
A frame 10 meters wide and 15 meters long appeared. Seeing it wouldn't fit properly in the main tunnel, having future logistic in mind, he moved outside to the plateau.
As he looked at the plateau, he also wanted to keep this space free from housing. And building it below the road to the plateau also seemed too dangerous at the moment.
Jack turned his eyes to the sides of the main entrance. Here the leg of the mountain continued to climb, but above the entrance he figured that with the help of his ability, he could even-out the mountain rocks enough for a stable foundation.
So most of the day went like this. The dwarf civilians busy mining gold and stone. The human civilians cutting and drying meat.
And Gynda, the most busy of all, tended to a small area of wild blackroot, cooked meat in 3 large pots and otherwise oversaw the busy civilians on the plateau.
Meanwhile Harkens troops was reinforced by 500 new trash troops and new guards and patrols was assigned.
When evening came, Jack had exhausted himself beyond his mental capabilities. But he was done.
A two kilometers wide, and 6 kilometers long stretch of rocky mountain had been evened out to a buildable area above the main entrance.
The buildable zones was 2 kilometers by 2 kilometers, roughly, with leftover rocky hills enclosing them to protect against the weather.
There was 3 of such zones in extension of each other, connected by a 10 meter wide and 10 meter long roughly made staircase to reach each level.
It was necessary to make the stairs as the mountain really began to grow upwards after these 3 zones. But other than that, these 'building zones' didn't take too much energy to even out, as they were more or less naturally flat to begin with.
At the beginning of the first zone, Jack finally placed his first civilian house.
Jack decidedly placed 2 more houses so they formed a 'U' shape in the left corner of the first building zone, just above the main entrance.
[Lord resources: Wood x500kg. Stone x3000kg. Iron x0kg. Gold Coins x5000.]
He had purposely let the edges of the rocks remain, such as at least half of the house was protected by the rocky sides.
'They look like old farmers huts... easily housing a large family or 10 civilians.. Though they look like it wont take much to break them down'
Jack went closer to inspect them and saw 10 small rooms with straw-beds and thin blankets inside. There where a small kitchen and even a small room with a few wooden buckets.
'I wonder where my troops and civilians have dumped their feces so far?'
[Common house blueprint, trash rank. Upgradeable: Living spaces: 20. Cost: 1000 Gold Coins. 2000kg wood. 1000kg stone.]
'Wood is the cheapest resource on the tradehub, yet for me it is the most problematic to get to, with the threat in the forest'
Jack returned to the entrance and got embraced by Gynda and the human civilians, when they heard that they each had their own room tonight, and in the future.
Gyndas hand was sliding along Jacks hand as she gave him a large bowl of meat soup.
She blinked warmly a few times before rushing up the crudely made stone stairs, to the building zone above the entrance.
'What was that about?' Jack watched her move up the stairs and suddenly caught himself looking at her young and mature but, as it bounced as she went.
Jack decided to avoid the forest below for now, and directly went to the gold mine and converted additional kilos of gold.
[Gold coins x45.000]
It had apparently taken about 8 hours to finish his job at the new building zones, even with his new strong body.
He had also gathered the stones from the dwarfs, who had finally made progress inside the mountain.
[Stone x20.000kg]
And finally with only [Wood x500kg] remaining, he knew he had to buy from the tradehub.
He made a few other lords happy after buying a substantial amount of wood.
[Lord resources: Wood x5000kg. Stone x20.000kg. Gold coins x11.250]
He had bought 4500kg of wood at the price of 5 gold coins per kilo. A total of 22.500 gold coins. But then came the all-devouring 50% buyers fee and claimed an additional 11.250 gold coins.
But Jack didn't care for now. Finally he could build his lords mansion and sleep well tonight. Tomorrow his gold reserves should be replenished.
Jack went to the tunnel the dwarfs had finished. But on the way he made a quick stop.
[10.000 gold coins received. 1000 Trash troops summoned. Completion time: 2 hours and 46 minutes]
Jack was satisfied. Tomorrow he would have 1500 trash troops to wage war on the forest!
Following the newly made tunnel, Jack reached the dwarf building zone that was currently being mined and hollowed out.
They have made good progress and the entire right corner, 100 meters down the right side from when he entered, was clear and ready to be build upon.
[Lords mansion blueprint, trash rank. Description: This is the lords home and most important building. Sleeping here increases sleep value. It provides basic lord features such as [Territory Map] and [Lords Missions]. Building this is fundamental to any Lord. Upgrade to unlock additional Lord features. Cost: Wood x5000kg. Stone x15.000kg]
Jack used the blueprint and saw the same frame-view as before. However this one was much larger. It was shaped as an 'L' laying down, with two floors.
He put it down in the spot he had chosen, and it appeared.
It was not as old and frail looking as the civilian houses, but it was still trash rank and looked old and dirty. But if you could look past that superficial appearance, it looked very well made, by someone very skilled. With significant hand-carved patterns in the wood-work.
Walking inside the mansion area the system prompted.
[Current features: Resource deposit. Lord mission board.]
'So that's what this square formed area in front is for. I guess the civilians can now dump the resources in this spot and it will go into my lords resources automatically... Convenient'
Jack tested it out. Yelled to a few nearby dwarf civilians, and they emptied their load of stones in the area.
And just so, the stones vanished and his lord resource increased.
Jack continued to check the mansion and found a large kitchen, a bath-room, a room to drop his feces, a meeting chamber with a large mission bord on a even larger table, many rooms and finally the master bedroom.
Closing the heavy wooden door behind him, he finally saw the double-bed under the closed window. It had soft feathers as a mattress and in the pillow, and a soft thick blanket.
When Jacks head hit the pillow he slept instantly.