The Forgotten Legacy

After they all moved into the living area, no one commenting on the boy who followed them, Shaun tore shreds off of Viv and everyone else. He let all of his pent-up anger out, he started with the food issues, then the guards who were failing at what they were supposed to be doing, then he finished off with the atrocities of what had occurred with the kids in the group home.

He did have to give them credit though, they didn’t try and defend themselves and instead just listened to everything he said. Some, like the food shortage, they already knew. When he started to go into everything else though the reactions were much different. Viv for her part looked to be as angry as he was which was a promising sign. The others had a mix of guilt, disgust and rage at what they were only now finding out.

When he was done he took a seat on a couch and let them all process all these new problems while he calmed himself down.

“Elijah, isn’t it?” Viv was the first to speak, and surprisingly it wasn’t at Shaun. The boy in question stood shell shocked at what had just happened and only managed to nod at Viv when she spoke to him. “I am sorry. For everything you and the other kids have had to go through. This is all on me. I made a promise to look after everyone here, and clearly, I have failed at my job. I will make this up to you, I promise.”

“It’s okay. It’s not your fault, uh, Miss.” Elijah had turned bright red when trying to reply to Viv. Shaun had to hold himself back form poking fun at him. Viv was an attractive women, if they were basing her looks off of pre integration levels she looked like a super model. It was one of the benefits of increasing your race, with it came some cosmetic changes that some would say made you more attractive to the human eye.

“Please, call me Viv, and yes, it is my fault.” Viv turned to Shaun then and gave him a look he couldn’t quite decipher. “Shaun, how long until Eric arrives do you think?”

“A few hours maybe, why?”

Viv didn’t reply to him, instead she started to give orders to some of the people he didn’t know that were present. They were tasked him gathering the heads of the cities and ensuring that they knew what was happening, this would be a first and final warning, if any were found to have knowledge of what was happening in the settlement and not actively reporting it and fixing it they would be banished. Others were tasked with going to all of the group homes and ensuring that what was happening in Elijah’s was not happening in others.

Listening to Viv she left no room for argument. She was taking this seriously, to the point where she looked ready to do start throwing people out at even the slightest hint of untoward behaviour. When the only people left were Viv, Gabe and Li as well as him and Elijah, Viv sank back into a couch and covered her face with her hands.

“Harder than you though it would be, isn’t it?” Shaun could see just how much the running of the settlement was weighing on her, there was a lot to balance especially this early on.

“You have no idea. It is one problem after another and I can barely solve half of them.” She took a deep breath and composed herself. “I am going to cut straight to it Shaun, the food shortage is a huge problem. We are trying to start an economy but without stores and coin flowing we are at a stand still. Materials for crafting is scarce and the F grade dungeon aren’t cutting it for our strongest fighters to level up. If something doesn’t change and soon, we are screwed.”

“Everyone was told that the food issue was going to be solved though? That’s what they said in our city anyway” Elijah spoke up and Shaun couldn’t have been prouder in that moment.

“We do have a solution, but only if the person we need agrees to it.” Viv turned to look at him after talking to Eli, the look on her face was one of desperation.

“Me? How am I supposed to fix the food shortage?” He was so confused, he didn’t have that much food in his inventory, in fact more than anything he had materials and items that he had bought in the tutorial.

“You know we can buy specific stores from the settlement crystals. Some are specialised in that we can sell goods to the wider multiverse or even to other settlements. Others though will let us buy things like raw materials, gems, leathers and pretty much anything else, including food.” He remembered glancing over some of these stores when he was at a settlement crystal. But if he remembered correctly those would cost…..

“You need coin.” Viv nodded back at him without saying a word. “How much?”

“Just one of those buildings costs several gold coins. We have managed to buy one food store but they cap how much you can buy in a single day. We need several of them in every city if we are going to be able to completely eradicate any food issues. Even then it costs in coin to buy the food we need so without a way to earn coin, like through selling loot and items that are crafted, we won’t be able to sustain the settlement.”

Everything that Viv said made complete sense, with no incoming and outgoing coin there was no way for the settlement to truly form an economy. Without the initial coin being spent to kick start the process a settlement was almost guaranteed to fail.

“Okay, I get it. So how much do you need to get everything started?”

“For the stores, enough money to provide crafters in the short term, enough for a good amount of food to last until the economy is up and running. All of this across 6 of the F grade areas? We would need about 100 gold coin.”

“That’s a lot of coin Viv.” He already knew he was going to give it to her. He had over a platinum coin so even though it was a lot it wouldn’t break the bank. “Do you think you will be able to bring in enough through selling stuff to be able to recoup enough of it back to buy stores in the other areas? Or will you end up needing more coin then too?”

“We have already agreed with the crafters that they will need a % of all of their profits back to us until the money we spend on them is fully returned. We are also able to take a cut from everything sold through the stores. Given rough estimates we should be able to spread through all of the F grade areas eventually with no more coin needed. It will be slower but we can make it work. Once that is done we can pay it all back. We don’t know enough of the E grade settlement areas yet though. I haven’t been to a crystal but I guess that will change in a few days. We aren’t planning on moving into an E grade area anytime soon though.”

“No point in delaying it then.” He willed 100 gold coins to Viv and he got the notification when she accepted them.

“I didn’t expect you to agree so quickly, but thank you. You have no idea how much this will help.” Viv started to stand up, but he waived her down, indicating for her to sit.

“Regarding the problem you are having with the E grades needing to get stronger. The last of the dungeons are more straight forward and honestly, so much better.” He spoke through each of the new dungeons and the best way to do them as well as what loot one might expect now that they were claimed. “I would advise that the Win the War and the Bow before the Queen dungeon are the best for levelling. Also, they are fun.”

“They also aren’t very close. For most people it would take days to travel that distance. Not everyone can fly Shaun. But I do appreciate the run down on all the dungeons, it will be helpful to plan around potential loot. Eric hated the Prime dungeon, but the loot was, interesting. He got pieces of tech that we have crafters looking at to see what can be done with it.”

“You really need to figure out a transport system.” She was right the distance was pretty far for most people.

“I am aware. Is there anything else? I have stores to buy and I have to travel a long way to get it all done.” She looked eager to get going, he couldn’t blame her either.

“Yeah, I am going to set up a new home for the kids, probably spend some time around here with them for a while so I want an area close to an F grade dungeon with plenty of space. I will terraform it how I need and spend any coin I want on stores. I also want someone you trust to help look after them while I am gone doing what I need to do, send me a plenty of people so I can interview them. I am not ready to do a D grade dungeon, not yet, but we both know that the time will come eventually that I will have to leave and finish off this settlement. I need to focus on crafting and my skills for a bit though. That will take time.”

Viv was deep in though for a while, trying to figure out the positives and negatives of this situation. Slowly she nodded and they came to an agreement. “Okay, the goblin dungeon, you remember it? It’s the next dungeon over from the furthest settlement to the east. You can have the dungeon and claim all the surrounding area until you are ready to move elsewhere. Agreed?”

“That’s fine with me. And the people to help look after everyone when I need to go?”

“I will have a dozen people I trust meet you in 2 days, that will free you up to finish up the E grade area. Does that work?”

“That works for me. Eli, what about you? Think everyone will be happy moving out of the city for a while and training with me?” He didn’t mean to put Eli on the spot but considering he had listened to the entire conversation it wasn’t like he had been left out.

“Yeah, I think everyone will be happy to come with you. We all want to stay together though. No splitting up.”

“Shaun, do you really think it is a good idea to train kids. No offense Elijah, but Shaun you are without a doubt the strongest person on the planet. If you are going to train people wouldn’t it be worth focusing on those that will be able to help with the war?” The exasperation coming from Viv was next level. Clearly, she didn’t approve of his plan.

“Listen Viv, I am not training people that are fully grown adults that need a push. If they wanted to be stronger they would be stronger. We all fought hard for where we are and we didn’t do it by being complacent. I am going to train the kids, if they want it, because they don’t have anyone else and I would much prefer to spend time with them then a group of lazy guards. Also I’m pretty sure I have told you that I am not really interested in getting involved with this war, my end of the deal was to claim the settlement and hand it over by the end of the year, not fight the war for the planet for you.”

“Fine. We can discuss this at a later. Now that we are done I am going to get working. Tell Eric to come find me when he is back.” She left without saying a word, Gabe and Li followed after her although Gabe said that he would meet up with him tomorrow once he was situated in his new home, even giving him another hug and saying sorry for Viv.

“That went well, I guess.” he said it out loud without really directing it at anyone, Eli was the only one left anyway.

“She said you were the strongest person on the planet.” Eli wouldn’t look at him and he was practically whispering. Damn it Viv.

“Don’t stress about it man. Ignore what she said, I was never going to train any of her guards, especially not after what you have told me about some of them. Besides, this will be way more fun! Besides, we have to stick together, right?”

“Are you sure about this? I told you how rare it was to get a class or profession, or even a skill before 16.”

So that’s what it was about, he thought I would be wasting my time in training them just because they didn’t have the full system yet. “You do realise that if anyone can get you ahead of the curve, it will be me, right? Screw how rare it is. We can train and train even harder. The worst that will happen is that when you do get a class at 16 you will be so far ahead of everyone else that you will be a force to be reckoned with.”

Eli didn’t reply but that also meant he wasn’t going to say no to being trained, he was going to do for these kids that no one ever did for him. He didn’t have long on Earth but the time he did have he could spend helping the youngest generation.