Reincarnated As The Heroes Guide

Chapter 101: Dockworkers

One of the men laughed at Kalli’s wording. "Miss, I know what you’re worried about, and I suspect that you shouldn’t worry as much as you do. You see, most of the people in this group were Gomand Dock Program workers."

"Respectfully, I have no idea what that means. Despite the name, I am not local."

"Ah, that makes sense. You see, the Gomand Docks are a Union project. Almost all the men are members of good Union Families that follow the Code, and the women are all our relatives.

There will be no mistreating of the women, not in our building."

The men all held up their left hands, showing off identical ritual scars across the palm, presumably from a blood oath.

Kalli chuckled. "Well, in that case, we’ve really saved the best of society, haven’t we?"

The man shook his head. "We did, at the start. But now we’ve lost too many. We stayed at the back because we’re family men, and it was our job to take care of the kids. But after the bunker, everyone who wasn’t part of the Union went west to follow those cowards, thinking that they had a secret safe place to go to.

We just followed the feeling of safety from the protection spell that Temple put on us all. He might be a preacher, but his father was one of ours."

Kalli nodded, and mentally calculated the changes that they were going to have to make if all their new arrivals were labourers from organized crime controlled dockworker unions.

Really, it wasn’t much.

If they were all strangers or from rival factions, it would have been a thousand times worse to keep things under control, but when they all knew each other already, they had some sense of community, and they were much less likely to try to turn the apartment into their own kingdom with hoarded resources or some other nonsense.

It was similar to the first building. The members of that group were all neighbours, and mostly worked at the same few companies, so there weren’t many strangers there either. But both groups were heavy on the elderly and children, as those who could fight had been cut down first.

"Alright, then we just need to decide what areas will be farmed, what will be planted, and how much of each. It will be mostly tubers, as they are incredibly high energy, and even a thin soup of them is enough to keep you feeling full.

I will give this new world that much. It’s got some good food in it.

That’s really about all that it has going for it, the rest of the world is in pretty rough shape. From what we’ve seen, there is only one building in the area, a large black temple surrounded by water.

We haven’t gone to explore it yet, as it’s surrounded by crab nests, and we’re not up for that sort of fight with a reliable food source.

Now, if you can get me some names of people with trade skills outside the docks, people for the first shifts in the fields, and who is going to be in charge of cooking in your building, I will make sure that they all have whatever supplies we can manage."

The men at the doors smiled. "Well, we’ve got some of that taken care of. We looted a couple of restaurants during the first days, before moving to the shelters. So, we’ve got industrial scale cooking supplies.

Unfortunately, the docks at Gomand were struck by monsters in the first fifteen-minute invasion, and that sunk three cargo ships, as well as heavily damaging the cranes.

So, we were limited in what we could pull out of the containers, and that is mostly gone now.

However, we do have a fairly good set of basic supplies. Better than any of the others who came to the shelter. I suspect that was part of why they didn’t want to stay with us. We had the supplies, they had come with nothing.

So, it was only natural that they took up their fair share of the work, and that made many of them bitter."

Kalli nodded. "Well, hopefully that’s all settled now. Because if your wife beats you for being a slob, I’m not going to save you."

From somewhere in the next room, there was feminine laughter. Many voices, so it wasn’t a small crowd listening to their conversation. It was as many as could approach the front of the building, but out of sight, in case Kalli had come with bad intentions or there were monsters.

"Do you want us to start today? Or is there something that you need to prepare in advance?" One of the men asked.

"You can start whenever. There are two basic ways to plant the tubers. Either dig rows and till the soil, or just dig a pit and toss it in. They don’t seem to care which method you use, they’ll grow.

Of course, they’ll also attack you once they’re grown, but that’s the price we pay for good food these days.

The only other things we have that will grow are some spices and herbs, and those will definitely need a proper garden dug for them. Fortunately, they are not toxic and not violent. Other than that, it will mostly be up to the heroes.

Every day, they’ve got missions to go out and keep the monsters at bay, but we will be sure to bring you meat."

One of the men smiled. "If you don’t mind, I was a butcher down by the docks until this started, and I have plenty of experience in curing and smoking meat for storage. I doubt that we have salt to pot the meat, but I know other methods.

I ran a rustic living short video channel on the side, a lucrative enough business. But I learned more than a few things that are going to be practical if we can still get the resources."

Kalli smiled. "Well, we’ve got a dungeon that we can recover basics from most of the time. It’s not perfect or guaranteed, but we’ve got flour, and the chef at the Academy has a great sourdough starter."

The man nodded. "Baking is my wife’s thing. They like her better on the cameras anyhow."