Chapter 297: Second Day

The second day of the Fifth Trial was much more lively than the first, where most of the city slept through the day. They were so worried that this was going to be another high danger kill quest that everyone had stressed themselves out, and now that they had the chance to just unwind for a day before getting to work, everyone made the best of it.

Sure, they did their daily quests, but then most of them went back to bed for a nap.

So, when the second day started, everyone was well rested, and ready to go.

The first order of business? To find the newest of the level 0 members of society and drag them through the Rat King dungeon for supplies. The more times that they could do it, the faster they would get the points to buy a skill, and the faster they would reach level one.

It was important enough that the System had named it a primary goal of the whole trial, so there would be no slacking allowed until they were at least level three, and they could do the first two dungeons daily.

That was the standard that everyone silently agreed upon.

Kalli was not as adamant that they advance once they awakened, she was more interested in what it took to actually trigger the level 0 status.

There was no clear trigger, no magical item, or routine, that would make you awaken.

And the resident of the hive city had tried.

There were whole forums dedicated to discussions of the tactics that had worked so far, and the ones that hadn’t. Letting the algorithm analyze their output was keeping the computers busy, but it was starting to come up with suggestions that almost made sense.

There was no single action that seemed to work, but the more that you tried, the more likely you were to succeed.

However, trying to trigger it by doing things that made you money or other personal gain didn’t do much. All the things that worked seemed to be tasks that helped others. The sort of people who helped seniors with their shopping, or who put in the extra work to make sure their neighbours had what they needed, those were the ones who advanced.

But trying to emulate them usually failed.

Sometimes, you could fake it until you made it, and simply become a better person, one that the System recognized as worthy. But most of the time? You just ended up giving up and trying a new tactic after a few days or a week.

That wouldn’t get you the recognition.

A small group of team leaders had gathered in the Hall of Heroes after turning in their early morning quests, and they were quietly plotting to find ways to complete the trial.

Alexei raised his voice to get their attention. "Hey, do you think that we might help people advance if we took the farming? There are so many new plants out there after the flood, that we can’t handle it ourselves. I think that if we send out whole teams to work the fields and harvest what it ready, we might be able to get some more advancements.

If we set up some farmhouses, and patrol stations, we might be able to expand the city limits. The territory seems to adjust to our efforts, so if we build further from the walls, we might actually manage to convince the system that we deserve to have more territory.

Now that we’ve got more people, we might actually be able to patrol outside the walls.

It won’t be easy, but it will go a long way to securing our food supply. No matter what else the trial wants, food is the most important part."

Kalli nodded. "I have the twenty farm equipment orbs that it gave us, and the token for a perfect preservation warehouse.

I don’t know how large the warehouse will be, but I’m pretty sure that it can be huge. If we get twenty teams of people with potential to gain a class headed out to work the farms outside the walls, with guards of course, I think that it might help.

The goal is to awaken them and get humanity ready for whatever happens to this world next.

So, you’re not wrong about the food being important."

From the doorway, Sanchez greeted the small group gathered with Kalli. "We will get right on it, Coordinator. Just keep track of everyone’s effort. If it really works at a better rate, we’ll keep adding to the teams instead of replacing them. It might awaken some farming and nature related classes if they keep at it."

"That’s actually brilliant. We could use more variety in the classes, and the only way we’re going to get them is to have people who don’t have one start doing the things that we need.

I approve. Whatever you need, come to me for it. I will make sure that you get it, and I will provide the farm equipment. The system says it’s basic farming equipment, but we all know that has a pretty wide range in practice.

It should do everything that we need it to do except win a fight with a tuber plant.

Asking the farm equipment to do that was probably a bit much. But if they cut the plants down, they could likely harvest them with machines, then replant one of the tubers at each location, to keep the plant going.

The art of magical plant horticulture didn’t really follow the traditional growing season methodology that Kalli was vaguely familiar with.

The problem was, that was the system that they were all familiar with, and none of them were quite certain how to go about adapting to this new set of rules for crops. Even if they had the equipment, they were going to need to come up with a whole new set of farm practices.

Hopefully, they had someone in the hive city who specialized in that, or it was going to be a huge headache.