The warehouse no longer felt like a warehouse.It felt like a city in rehearsal.By the time the sun rose on the final morning, they had overflowed into the adjacent buildings without anyone ever formally deciding to do so. One space filled, then another, and then it simply became easier to knock through interior access points than to pretend the operation could still fit inside four walls. As the walls gave way, Harold paused amidst the chaos. He took in the echoing footsteps amplified by cavernous spaces and the sharp scent of cut concrete, each sensory detail a tangible reminder of the expanding scope and his rising urgency. The warehouse, once a solitary unit, had become a lifeline stretching across structures, and every breath he took seemed to share in the collective urgency that the task demanded. More than five hundred people now moved through the complex.Engineers. Tradesmen. Logistics workers. Security. Families with children who stayed close and quiet. Students from Sarah's class, some of them barely out of their teens, along with instructors who had seen enough panic in their careers to recognize direction when it appeared. Caldwell's people handled the perimeter, disciplined and alert, while volunteers ran supplies between buildings in steady, unglamorous loops.And in the middle of it all was Harold.He didn't shout or posture. He pointed, assigned, redirected, and adjusted. Groups formed and dissolved as needed. Tool caches appeared where none had existed before. Sleeping areas were reorganized twice when the flow demanded it.Most of them had chosen to be crafters.It was the sensible choice. Builders. Makers. Planners. People who understood that survival came from infrastructure more than heroics. Roughly one hundred and thirty had committed to being adventurers, a number Harold tracked carefully. He would have liked to have more, but it was enough to explore and defend. Harold knew that with fewer adventurers, the risk of catastrophe increased. A single breached gate might mean ten lost lives. Without adequate defenders, the small breaches could quickly escalate into fatal consequences. Until the military got going, they would be all they had to defend his small settlement.He carried a small notebook everywhere now. A bestiary filled with both the recollections and the warnings from the old forums that he could remember. One sketch had a caption: "Leaves no bones," hinting at the lethal nature of certain creatures. Crude sketches and handwritten notes detailed which creatures traveled alone and which hunted in packs, underlined warnings of territories that produced early perks yet were capable of swallowing people whole.Sarah sat with him more than once, listening intently as he talked her through routes and priorities."Here first," he told her, tapping the page. "It's dangerous, but the reward's worth it. Only one person gets that perk. You need to be early." Harold explained."And this one?" she asked."Skip it. Looks tempting and kills a lot of people. You can't afford to lose a perk from dying by going after that so soon."She didn't argue, and she wrote everything down. "Not a fan of losing a perk when I die," she grumbled."Sorry," Harold said, laughing. "I didn't make the rules."Some of his knowledge came from experience. Most of it came from reading. From watching other people die and learning what they'd done wrong from forum threads that had devolved into blame before going silent forever. They were very lucky that the system allowed them to use a discussion forum in the first few years after they arrived. It was the only way Humanity had to talk to each other, and most of his knowledge came from that.He crafted constantly.Healing potions. Stimulants. He even tried to make something to cure a woman's arthritis that mostly worked. Nothing miraculous, but enough to prove he could do something that shouldn't be. Enough to convince the last holdouts that he was telling the truth.Not everyone stayed because they believed him.Some stayed because the world outside had begun to tear itself apart.Riots rolled through cities in waves. Stores were stripped bare. The news ran endless loops of experts arguing while footage of violence played beneath them. Governments called for calm. The military tried to maintain order, then thinned, then broke apart as soldiers chose families over orders.The projected impact zone shifted daily. Somewhere in Europe. Big enough to crack the planet. Or maybe not. The estimates changed hourly.It didn't matter.The order was breaking down faster than ever before.The clang of pots echoed softly in the dining area as food reached eager hands, each recipient exchanging smiles or quiet words of gratitude. In another section, low voices marked the change of guards, with each team fluidly replacing the last as if part of a synchronized dance. Training sessions buzzed with energy, groups cycling through warm-ups and practice drills, their movements a testament to the rhythm they had come to rely on. Each action, perfectly timed and purposeful, transformed the space into a living, breathing organism, operating without the crutch of hope. It was a heartbeat, steady and strong, driving them forward.Harold stood on the catwalk overlooking the main floor late that night, watching people settle into places they didn't yet realize they'd carry with them into another world.Tomorrow, all of this would end.Or begin.He checked his watch once more.One day left.Harold didn't linger on it.He left the catwalk and headed for the conference room they'd claimed early on, a glass-walled space that had once been used for quarterly forecasts and was now crowded with folding chairs, maps taped to the walls, and a table scarred by constant use.The people inside were the ones Harold had pegged as leaders when they shifted.Beth and Josh sat together near the front, notebooks already open. As former site supervisors and assessors, their expertise had naturally positioned them as construction leads by necessity, not title. They had argued through load limits, supply bottlenecks, and failure points until Harold trusted them without reservation. They had recruited a lot of their friends and coworkers to join them.Caldwell stood near the wall, arms crossed, watching rather than speaking. Logistics, transport, money. The kind of man who thought in flows instead of ideals. Harold already knew he'd end up managing resources and the economy by default. Caldwell hadn't objected. He rarely did when something made sense.The two brothers flanked the doorway.Former military. Both of them. Quiet, alert, identical builds but different expressions. One smiled too easily. The other barely did at all. Caldwell recruited veterans exclusively, men with records that survived scrutiny but probably shouldn't have and deeds that spoke louder than resumes.They'd chosen the adventurer path without hesitation."Figured someone needs to go hit things," the quieter one had said earlier.Harold had agreed. A lot would depend on the adventurers.Near the far end of the table sat one of Beth's "uncles".Professor Martin Hale. Army before academia. Classical history with an interest in early Greek and Roman warfare. He'd listened more than he spoke at first, then asked questions that cut straight to the weak points.By the end of the conversation, Harold had stopped trying to test him."I don't want an army to begin with. We won't have the people," Hale had said calmly. "I want to focus on developing elites that can use these weapons and formations. That will make up for our faults in others."He'd sketched as he talked. Legion structure. Unit cohesion. Discipline under pressure. Then he'd layered in Macedonian pike formations, adaptable ranks, overlapping fields of threat. Harold had other ideas he wanted to develop, but those plans came later. Warfare in a magical world was complicated."Changeable heads," Hale had added, tapping the page. "Armor-piercing. Or if needed, ones with a bleed effect. The head will change based on what the need is."Harold's crafter instincts had lit up immediately.It was an interesting theory; he would have loved the time to run it down. It was practical and modular."You lead until we can find someone better," Harold had said.Hale nodded. "That's how it should be."And then there was Margaret.Sharp-eyed. Older. Unimpressed by almost everything. She sat near Harold's side of the table, flipping through a checklist he hadn't realized he'd handed her days ago. Mother of one of Sarah's classmates, but she also seemed to know Hale, which was odd. Former operations manager in a career she refused to talk about.She had opinions, and she let you know it.She also had a talent for cutting through nonsense and keeping him on task when his mind tried to fracture into a dozen directions at once."Eat," she murmured now, sliding a protein bar toward him without looking up. "You skipped dinner again."Harold took it without comment; he knew better anyway.He stood at the head of the table and waited. The room quieted naturally."This is it," he said. "Tomorrow we leave."No one reacted loudly. No gasps. No speeches. These weren't people who needed drama to understand the stakes."Roles are locked," Harold continued. "My biggest worry right now is that someone from the group decides to be a lord, and because we will all be linked, take a portion of the people here. We can't risk being separated like that when we all come together. We all need to arrive together; our organization depends on it."There were no objections."Our priority on arrival is cohesion," he said. "We land together. We move together. We build before we expand. Our first months will be focused on gathering supplies and building."The brothers nodded once."Construction begins immediately," Harold said, glancing at Beth and Josh. "Logistics and supply control stay centralized."Caldwell inclined his head."Training starts as soon as we're stable," Harold said, looking at Hale. "We aren't making an army yet. We need people who won't panic and will fight when needed. You'll have a month to make a functioning century from the recruits we get. They'll be training, but they won't know Roman formations."Hale smiled faintly. "I can work with that."Margaret cleared her throat. "You've got 3 unresolved decisions, and 2 you're pretending don't exist."Harold sighed. "I know.""And you'll handle them," she said. Not a question.Harold turned alittle to look at her. "Yes, I will. Thank you."She nodded and checked something off.Harold looked around the table one last time."This won't be fair," he said. "It won't be clean. And it won't be kind. We are about to spend a lot of time getting dirty and getting to know the worst sides of each other."He paused."But it will be organized. And we can't fail under pressure, we are only planning on humanity's survival here." Harold chuckled.That, more than anything else, seemed to settle the room.Outside, the warehouses hummed with quiet preparation.Beth broke it first, sliding a hand-drawn map toward the center of the table. "I've got the settlement broken into zones," she said. "Living space, production, storage, defensive perimeter. Nothing fancy, but it can be expanded."She tapped the page. "First structures go up in this order. Shelter. Water access. Food prep. Then storage. Everything else waits."Josh leaned in. "If we try to build everything at once, we build nothing well. Alot will depend on how much material we can gather a day."Harold nodded. "Agreed, we will have a starting selection of tools and supplies that come when I start the Village. But we will need to make more urgently."Beth continued. "We'll need bodies to gather raw materials early. Stone, timber, clay. I'm trying to balance how many adventurers we can spare without weakening perimeter security."One of the brothers frowned. "You're talking about pulling fighters off the line."Harold answered before Beth could. "I'll generate quests for resource gathering. Remember, adventurers will only respawn if they are on a quest. We can absolutely not afford to lose any of them."Both brothers looked at him."Adventurers decide what they take," Harold continued. "Some will want to scout. Some will hunt. Some will run supplies. I won't force assignments. The adventurers need to decide what they want to do; we must balance freedom with need.""That risks imbalance," the quieter brother said."Yes," Harold said. "But forced labor breaks morale. Early autonomy keeps people alive longer. We'll adjust once the system stabilizes."Professor Hale nodded slowly. "Voluntary action scales better early anyway. Discipline comes after survival."Beth flipped a page. "If even half the adventurers take gathering quests, we can meet material thresholds by day three. We need at least 500 cubic meters of timber to ensure we have the foundations ready.""And if they don't?" Josh asked."Then we build smaller, I guess," Beth said.Margaret spoke without looking up from her checklist. "You're all assuming perfect communication."Harold glanced at her. "I'm not."She looked up then. "Good. Because I'm flagging decision bottlenecks already, too many people waiting for approval will slow everything.""I'll delegate," Harold said. "Structure leads decide within their lanes. I only step in when it affects survival or expansion."Caldwell finally spoke. "And recruits," he said. "The ones generated by the system. Craftsmen, farmers, labor.""They arrive with tools tied to their livelihood," Harold said. "We integrate them immediately. No idle specialists. Construction priorities might shift based on who comes through the recruitment portal."Caldwell nodded. "That'll help."Hale leaned back slightly. "Training timelines?""You'll have a month," Harold said. "After that, I'll need everyone we can gather for a mission. I can't wait longer than that."The louder brother frowned. "And you still won't tell us what that mission is?"Harold looked up sharply. His hands hadn't shaken in a while, but the thought behind the answer stirred something he didn't bother hiding."Not yet," he said. "Some things I have to keep close to my chest."No apology. No justification.Margaret checked another box on her list. "You've answered everything that matters."She paused, then added, "For now."Harold let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding."This is the cleanest we're going to get it," he said. "Once we arrive, things will break. We'll adapt."No one argued. Outside the conference room, the warehouse buzzed with people who didn't yet know they were about to start from nothing.Harold glanced around the table, then smiled, the tension easing just enough to matter."Now," he said, "who wants a beer?"
