Chương 519: Pressure

<Felix, I finished looking through my upgrades, > I said, before I sent all of my friends my two upgrade options. <I'm strongly leaning towards the first choice. It seems like a really useful upgrade, both for our fight for more lives, and just for general future worlds. What about you? > <I got something a bit more interesting, > said Felix. <I only got one upgrade option.

It's an upgrade that lets me specifically upgrade wooden materials - which is a bit of a divergence point, since so far most of my build is built around metal production and manipulation so far. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that. I mean, on one hand, I have spent most of my time this life working with plant materials, so it actually makes perfect sense. It would be a useful upgrade, too - it allows me to make wooden materials far stronger and more resilient, and give them several properties akin to metal.

It doesn't match the rest of my build, though, since most of my other abilities rely a lot more on direct metal manipulation, rather than things that are like metal. > <I think that right now, we can't afford to be too picky with evolution upgrades, > said Sallia. <Does it give you any kind of combat benefit? > <Yeah, it'll make any wooden items I use much stronger.

If I pair it with the consumable item I prepped for our big fight, I can probably jack up the effect to an even higher level than what it can already do. I can probably make it shave off an extra few grades of stats from whatever I use it on? > Felix didn't sound entirely confident, but he didn't sound like he was grasping for straws, either. <Well, in that case, I figure it's probably best to take it for now. We need every scrap of power we can get before the big fight.

> I felt a trace of guilt flash through the mental communication, sent through by Sallia. <Sorry, Felix. I normally wouldn't push you for an upgrade you might not want, and I know that I'm not the one who's ultimately paying a price for it, but… > <No, you're right, > said Felix. He sent a mental sigh through the bracelet.

<It is definitely something that will improve our survival odds, and honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if I find a good way to integrate it all into one coherent ability with another evolution or two. I was just being a bit hesitant. But you're right, we don't have the option to hesitate right now. When we get back to the Market, I'll take the evolution, unless I find something better. > With that settled, our group of friends fell silent as we marched through the foggy woods and back towards the settlement.

When we returned to the settlement victorious. The other members of the village seemed to practically vibrate with excitement. Our victory wasn't just a small success in hunting - it represented a path to survival for everyone here. We had finally found a way to set ourselves at the top of the food chain on this cold, misty island - which meant there was real, tangible hope for the future.

Our settlement wasn't doomed to a slow death spiral, as the fog pressed us in until we were forced to flee and pray that we stumbled onto another habitable island, or suffocated. Once we got ourselves situated, I checked everyone to make sure there weren't any serious injuries, and we had a few minutes to assure everyone we were safe and get ourselves situated, we met back up with Veritum at the workshop.

"So, we finally get a chance to see one of the corpses of these things up close," he said. I also glanced at the fog core curiously. We hadn't had a real chance to loot after the last hunting party, since it had ultimately ended in a failure.

"Do we keep it, or sell it to the fog pillar?" I asked.

"I don't know. What do you guys think you can do with it? Does anyone have a good Feat that would let them assess the value of the fog core as a material?" asked Veritum, as he looked at the craftsmen. The craftsmen looked blankly at us, and I sighed. The shortage in more specialized or strange Feats really was a huge pain in the neck. We had lost too much during the great migration. Finally, Felix sighed.

"Since we don't know what it could be useful for, how about we trade this one for information about the bark we used to make those swords," said Felix.

"Then, we craft some more swords, use that to get some more levels, and then we specifically arrange for someone to pick up a Feat like that next time. It does mean we'll have to wait a bit longer to see what these things are useful for, but we have major logistical issues we need to resolve anyway." I saw a few other people nod at Felix's words, and finally, Veritum joined in.

"Sounds reasonable enough to me." With our decision settled, Veritum settled in for a long conversation with the craftsmen about what upgrades we could make to the wooden swords, while I returned to my house, gave my father a hug, and then settled down to relax for the day. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. The next day, a group of traders left for the fog pillar, and returned with ten saplings, as well as the supplies for several more wooden swords.

Apparently, the wood we had used to make the wooden swords was something we would need to grow for ourselves, since the fog pillar was now out of supplies for them - but we had enough to arm another dozen or so swordsmen, which was enough to keep the craftsmen occupied for a while. The saplings themselves would grow quite a bit faster than a normal tree - apparently, they needed about ten years to grow, according to the fog pillar.

They also needed constant mana infusion during their growth period, which was a bit of a pain in the neck - it meant that some of the people of the settlement needed to constantly tend to the saplings. The leadership ultimately decided to get a few of the more magically inclined kids to work on it, which made me feel a bit weird. In a strange way, this was child labor, which I didn't really like. On the other hand, this was a very different world.

Schools weren't really a thing here, since everyone's path became wildly different depending on which Sparks they had. Also, with the severe manpower shortages that our settlement currently experienced, we definitely needed more people to help corral the younger kids. In the end, I decided that I should turn a blind eye to it. Sometimes, practicality trumped how I felt about things - and the practical thing was definitely to get every hand we could into making our settlement survive and grow.

After that, we started to settle down. The slowly growing group of anti-fog swordsmen started to set up a regular patrol route around the settlement. I also joined them, since my extinguishes were exceptionally effective against these creatures and I was also an extremely effective healer. Two days after that, we ran into another fog bank near the village and succeeded in killing it, although I didn't manage to strike the final blow and get the levels.

Fortunately, the Market at least gave me an assist for the battle. Slaughter: Assist in killing a Fog Bank for the first time Achievement +300 300 Achievement wasn't much, but it was still better than nothing. We kept that fog core in storage, for whenever one of the craftsmen finally picked up a Feat that would let them assess the value of the fog core. The next few weeks settled into a stable routine. Fog banks still showed up with concerning regularity - once every few days, typically speaking.

However, at the very least, we had a way to fight back against them now. The groups of patrolling swordsmen, plus me, meant that we had a way to fend them off and keep our woodcutters and farmers safe as they brought more raw materials into the settlement. Our actual buildings finally made good progress, and after two weeks, we had basic housing for everyone and a functioning sewer system. We also got a few opportunities to test the enchanted bonfires we had set up around the settlement.

They had worked well enough to drive the fog banks back, at least, and the fires could usually hold off the fog banks long enough for swordsmen to make their way over and deal with the threat. Over three weeks, I also started to notice something else. We were levelling… quite a bit faster than we had back when we were nomads. You have leveled up! Frost Void Mage has advanced from level 70 to level 77!

+12 Free Attribute Points (X7) +9 Sense (X7) +9 Mind (X7) +9 Vitality (X7) +20 Mana (X7) Power: you have leveled up a (3-facet) Compound Spark (X7) Achievement + 1200 (X7) In total, I had gotten 8700 Achievement from my seven levels, as well as the extra 300 Achievement from getting an Assist on the fog bank. That brought me from 316, 024 Achievement to 324, 724. A hefty and respectable total. I liked the levels, but they also made me think about why we were levelling so much faster now.

Part of it was because of how unusually dense the levels were for killing a single fog bank. Each one offered far more levels than most monsters did back in our original dimension. However, the biggest reason was because of how frequently we fought monsters now, and how much the levels from those fights were concentrated on the few people that had proper weapons.

I had never thought about it before, but the way we had lived on our old plane made it rather hard for us to gather the same kind of levels that people in a settlement could gain. That was because we didn't actually get into fights very often - we generally had one big battle every few months, before we entered a long period of relative peace as we travelled through the tundra, scouted for new supplies, and prepared for the next encounter.

Most monsters couldn't keep up with village-bearing beasts, so we were mostly safe while travelling. That meant that for months on end, there was no good way to gain more progress besides training - and training had severe diminishing returns as one gained more levels. Here, there was no peace. Instead, the fog monsters constantly probed the edges of our defenses. After a week, there was a fog bank every single day.

By the end of the second week, there were occasion days where one or two fog banks showed up near our borders and tried to kill a few of us. We were gaining levels at a tremendous rate, but I was also starting to get a bit nervous. There had to be some kind of threshold beyond which the fog monsters stopped ramping up the frequency of their attacks, but I wasn't sure when we would hit that threshold. Furthermore, my suspicions that the fog banks were a bit more intelligent than they let on had started to grow.

I wasn't sure whether this lurking threat would finish off our settlement or whether we would stabilize, but I was definitely starting to get the feeling that we hadn't resolved our problems as neatly as I had thought. Pressure on the settlement was growing with every month, and I wasn't sure how to fix it.