Chương 203: (198) 3.63. New Decisions, Same People

For the first time ever, Vin was the first one to arrive at the council meeting. After waving hello at Linda, who seemed to be helping a crafter put in what sounded like an application for some sort of pickling shop within town, Vin entered the newly built council room and grabbed one of the open chairs. Just like their old meeting place, the council room was little more than five comfortable chairs spaced evenly around a large, round table.

There were a few whiteboards on the walls, and a small side table with what looked like a handful of assorted snacks in the event the meeting ran long. Unsure how long it'd be until the others arrived, Vin pulled out his journal and began jotting down some ideas for potential minor artifacts he might be able to create. He'd have to run all these past Shia before he dared try anything of course, but it was still fun to think about them.

Part of him itched to make a new page and begin jotting down all his findings about the neilans, as was his tradition after each fragment, but he resisted the urge. He wanted his journal to be an instructional aid, not a treasure map for potential weapons of mass destruction. While he was wondering if there was any point in giving the new guard a method of Sense Curse, the door finally opened, and in walked Spur and Witherson, currently in the middle of a heated debate.

"-have to learn to share, we just don't have…" Spur trailed off as he realized Vin was already waiting for them, and the colonel did an actual double take.

"Vin!" he laughed, walking over and clapping him on the shoulder before taking the seat beside him.

"Phil told me you were back, but I wasn't sure if you were planning to join us today or not. Glad to see you're still in one piece, as usual."

"After seeing how much progress has been made in the past few days, I was too curious not to drop by," he admitted, earning a small but self-satisfied smile from Witherson. As the Architect spearheading the town's construction, she was clearly proud of what everyone had managed to accomplish under her.

"It's crazy what an injection of nearly three hundred decently leveled crafters can do in just over a week," Spur nodded.

"While it was definitely a hassle to get the former prisoners screened and their offshoot living set up, their labor has been hugely beneficial."

"I wanted to ask about that," Vin said, nodding to Witherson as she took the seat on Spur's other side.

"Don't you think separating them from the rest of camp like that is kinda… I don't know, setting a bad precedent?" Spur blinked at the question, before letting out a deep laugh as though he'd cracked a hilarious joke.

"Vin… That little offshoot suburb was their idea," he chuckled.

"There are a good chunk of the former prisoners that have decided to fully merge with Terra and have received apartments to live in within our walls. But more than half of the former prisoners decided being surrounded by our walls was too close to confinement for them. They're happy being a quick stone's throw away from camp, and we still trade and share resources, so it's worked out wonderfully so far.

In fact, your sub-councilor Kelly assigned one of her people to the task of ensuring things were going smoothly in their offshoot just the other day. Tom, the town's other Diplomat from the third wave. I believe you've met?"

"Briefly," Vin nodded, remembering the quiet, studious looking man a few years younger than him that Kelly had introduced him to. He'd have to ask Kelly how he was doing soon enough, but he certainly approved of placing the Diplomat where he would shine and level.

"What were the two of you arguing about anyway?"

"Allocation of resources," Witherson said, frowning at Spur once more.

"The colonel believes that splitting essential materials at a rate of 70-30 between crafter and support classes is fair, despite the fact that the crafters aren't just working on their own projects, but building an entire town as well. It should be closer to 75-25."

"We know crafters are using materials to work on the town, it's why the split is already 70-30 instead of 50-50," Spur sighed, sounding as though he'd said that same line a dozen times already.

"Witherson, take it up with Golrim if you have a problem with the numbers. He's the one who said that would be the most fair split for advancing the town while still allowing the support classes to level. Myers already checked his work and agreed with his calculations." Witherson opened her mouth to argue, but was interrupted as the door swung open again, revealing Phil and Alice.

"Hope you guys didn't get started without us," Alice grinned, taking the seat beside Vin as Phil closed the door and took the final seat.

"Is Witherson complaining about the supply distribution already?"

"Indeed she is," Spur said, rolling his eyes.

"Witherson, can you at least shelve it for now so we can go over more important matters?"

"Fine," she nodded, crossing her arms and leaning back in her chair.

"Thank you. Now, as always, might as well start with you, Vin. Otherwise the rest of us are going to be sitting here all meeting just wondering what crazy news you're going to drop on us when the time is right."

"Nothing crazy to report this time around," Vin said, doing his best to keep his face neutral and his eyes on Spur as he answered.

"We found a fragment with some kind of protective dome covering the entire thing. Spent two days trying to get inside without anything to show for it. Other than that, we dropped by the Sacred Forest and paid Erik a visit."

"Really? You spent two entire days without finding a way in?" Spur asked, raising an eyebrow in disbelief.

"You couldn't ask your girlfriend to teleport you past the barrier?" If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"Alright, does everyone know Lumel and I are a thing now?" Vin demanded, more surprised than anything.

"You haven't even met her yet!"

"Gossip travels fast when your entire civilization is the size of a large highschool," Spur shrugged, narrowing his eyes.

"The question stands."

"No, I didn't want to distract her and risk her blowing herself up while she was working on creating an artifact to allow people to access the Underside via the dungeons," Vin said, hoping to distract him.

"Which she succeeded in doing, by the way. Shia and Alka can now use the Underside without me present."

"Well that's great news!" Alice butted in, clearly trying to thaw some of the tension spreading across the room.

"I'll admit I've wanted to head back down there again ever since you guys took me on a trip through the Underside. Any chance Lumel can make me one?"

"They take her a while, and she's been using her own resources," Vin admitted, not entirely sure where Lumel had gotten the silver rings or gems from for her artifacts, or how many more she had in her extradimensional storage.

"I can ask her though."

"At the very least, we should ask her to make enough for Alka's potential Slayers," Phil chimed in. Vin was surprised he wasn't asking for one for himself, but he supposed it wouldn't be all that useful for someone that spent most of his time within their fragment anyway. The artifacts would allow access to the Underside, but they wouldn't let anyone through a corridor if they hadn't already crossed into that fragment above ground.

"Even if those six don't end up earning the Slayer class, they are shaping up to be an elite unit of shocktroopers. It would be smart to grant them the ability to quickly travel wherever they need to go."

"You just want to give Tall Phil a present," Alice teased, earning a glare from Phil. Leaning over toward him, she mock-whispered loud enough for everyone to hear.

"Alka's nickname for the other Phil caught on, and now the running joke is that Phil is envious of his taller counterpart."

"Careful Alice, don't forget Phil's the new captain of the guard," Spur said, his suspicions around Vin and his lack of a report already forgotten.

"He might place you under arrest if you annoy him too much."

"I'm going to place you all under arrest if we don't get this meeting back on track," Phil frowned, ignoring Alice and Spur's joint snickering.

"Witherson, it seems Spur is struggling with the weight of leadership. Care to take over?"

"Certainly," Witherson said, smirking as Spur did his best impression of a fish gasping for air as he gaped at his old friend.

"Regarding construction, it's finally time to decide on the final project within the center of town. The leading proposal so far has been a combination library and clock tower. Thoughts?"

"Do we actually have enough books for a library?" Vin asked, looking around the room.

"I mean, I know each wave brings over a bunch of textbooks. But that's a lot of dry reading if you ask me."

"It would be pretty much entirely non-fiction, but it would be an excellent resource for the crafters," Witherson nodded.

"Currently, the books are somewhat spread out all over town, and tracking down the one someone is looking for is unnecessarily tiresome. Though more often than not we find them in Kym's apartment. And this vote isn't for whether or not we'll build a library, but for if it will be in the center of town or not."

"A library would be a nice central feature, and giving us a better way to judge time has been long overdue," Alice chimed in.

"Having to find one of the few people with analog wristwatches whenever I want to know the exact time is a huge pain. I tried the sundial route, but that's got its own problems."

"Setting up training for warriors and accurate guard rotations is too difficult without an accurate judge of time," Phil nodded.

"I vote we get started."

"Then I officially call the motion forward," Spur said, glaring at Witherson as he beat her to the punch.

"All in favor of starting on the construction of a library with an attached clock face in the town square?" Five sets of hands went up, and Spur nodded.

"Excellent. Witherson, get your people started on that as soon as possible. I'm also tired of staring up at the clouds whenever I want to judge the time." The next hour was spent going over minor things that, while interesting, didn't really matter to Vin all that much. Things like petty disputes between Earthers, permit requests that needed to be approved or rejected, or deciding if certain actions constituted a crime on this new world.

For example, Vin discovered that when it came to combat classes, the amount of effort one put into killing a monster was reflected in the experience gained after the monster was slain, but a moderate boost was always given to whoever dealt the final blow. Apparently, there was a rather talented archer within the third wave that had developed a bad habit of sniping the finishing blow on monsters after melee fighters had thoroughly weakened and slowed it down.

People had repeatedly asked him to stop, but when that didn't seem to do anything, they'd brought forth their complaints to the council.

"To think I'd have to rule on whether or not kill-stealing was a crime," Spur muttered, drumming his fingers on the table.

"I suppose if anything, I should just be happy the disgruntled fighters decided to involve us rather than taking matters into their own hands. Thoughts?"

"If he's talented enough to hit those shots consistently, I could talk to him and take him under my wing like I did Shredder," Phil offered.

"Our numbers are only going to keep growing with each wave. I have Captain Reonelli under me now as well, but I could always use a third hand."

"That works for this current situation, but we still need a ruling," Alice pointed out.

"Personally, I'd recommend something like a fine, but seeing as we don't have money, maybe a brief house arrest?"

"Sorry, super off topic, but I was wondering about that," Vin butted in.

"How exactly are all these shops and restaurants working without money?"

"We're planning to institute some form of currency eventually, but we decided to wait on that until the nine waves were completed," Spur explained.

"The final waves are already going to be at a severe disadvantage societal wise due to their low levels, so we figured there wasn't a need to make that a financial disparity as well right out of the gate. For now, it's more of an 'we're all in this together' kind of thing. Crafters want to keep crafting newer and better items, so giving away their old stuff makes sense. Chef's want to cook food for others, and frankly can't stand dealing with one another, so the separate restaurants work wonders.

It's far from a perfect system, and it requires a lot of oversight to ensure nobody takes more than they need, but surprisingly, it's worked rather well so far. And now that we have an actual guard patrolling the town as well, I expect most of the wrinkles to get ironed out."

"Huh… That's kind of neat," Vin said. He knew it was only temporary, but the realization he could walk into one of the 'stores' and help himself to some gear was a fun thought.

"Now, back to more important matters," Spur said, clapping his hands together and shooting them all a crooked grin.

"Repeated kill-stealing… All in favor of the death penalty?"