Chapter 303: Life Outside

The new watch stations were an instant hit, far more than Kalli had expected, and there was a waiting list to be stationed at them as staff. If there were going to be guards and a greenhouse, someone needed to clean, cook and tend the gardens.

That meant a full time staff at each of the four way stations, on top of the guard rotation.

Those spots were not only new, they were out in the open, which many saw as freedom from the confines of the city, and a chance to live life with a few restrictions lifted.

Sure, there was danger, but the danger was mitigated by the fact that there were guards, and the building was sturdy, with a decent wall. Not enough to stop everything that might come at them, but it would certainly slow down Goblins or the Flatfoot Warriors.

That had led to hundreds of applications for every open position, and it was apparently up to Kalli to sort them.

At least, the computer, and everyone using it, forwarded them all to her.

Could this be called a promotion? Director of Human Resources? Or just another role as Coordinator?

It could go either way.

But Kalli sorted the applications to people who had some sort of relevant experience, and then a second pile of those young enough that they had no experience at all. If her memory served her right, mixing the two was the best way to go.

Those whose experience was entirely in other areas might want the job, but they were not at the top of the list to get it.

Soon enough, she had a short list of staff for the positions, and sent out the approvals, with a request to report in the morning, with a week’s worth of clothing.

That would be enough that they weren’t changing staff every day, and not so long that they were going to be burnt out living in the towers if the staff didn’t work well together. Really, Kalli didn’t intend to rotate them at all, if they wanted to stay there.

But given how fast things moved during the trials, they might not be there more than a few weeks before things got hectic.

And if it came down to combat, they might have to swap those staff out for ones who could hold their own.

She wouldn’t put the ones who had reached level one there yet, unless they were on Guard Duty. They needed to get their daily dungeon runs in, as well as their work hours, and training in the advanced gym was much more valuable than training alone in the fields.

Keeping up their physical growth was key to the progress of the teams, though training the body couldn’t advance the mana pool.

That was something that they needed to work on, Kalli knew.

If they were going to advance humanity to all gain system abilities, they needed to find something that worked to improve the mana affinity of the people of Marimgar, especially the ones who had just arrived.

Even though they were all gifted with class skills, they fell behind in every other way, and it would be a struggle just to get them up to par for the level that they had.

Until that was done, she certainly couldn’t say that they had succeeded.

The thing was, they weren’t short on warriors with strong bodies. They were short on repairmen, cooks, mages and healers. None of those skills could be developed in a gym, and they had just started running classes.

A few days were not going to be enough to get anyone up to speed on a new skill, much less a whole new profession.

There were some who already knew a trade, but getting that trade to become a System Skill was still largely by chance. It was all too much luck and not nearly enough hard data that she could punch into a program to replicate results.

If she had that, then she would be much more confident in her abilities. The data was her domain, her area of expertise. And right now, she was missing too much of it.

What she really needed was some proof that teaching others how to use magic really worked. If they had that, then she could start forming a database for the best methods to create more mages and clerics.

Logically, she knew that it was coming.

Everyone who thought that they might have some talent in that area had signed up for classes.

But not knowing how long they had was putting her on edge.

What if the other groups managed to finish their trials before she managed to learn how to teach humans to become mages on their own, and activate the System across the majority of the population?

What if it wasn’t even possible within a few weeks or months?

What if it would have taken years for them to be ready and the System had assigned them a task that could never be completed within the timeframe that they had? Like the clearing fifty kilometres of territory, when every square metre of it was covered in monsters.

It could be that the mission completion options were only perfect score guideposts, and they were just supposed to do the best that they could.

But anything less than completion felt like losing, and Kalli hated to lose.

The city didn’t share her penchant for overthinking, or for spiralling down the potential downfalls of not completing the tasks fast enough. Instead, they were spreading a cheerful mood, as the harvest of the fastest growing crops came in, and the city’s greenhouses turned out the next batch of fresh produce.

But even better than that, some of the new arrivals were vegetarian for cultural reasons, and they had a whole new set of recipes that nobody in Marimgar knew.

So, there were even more ways to use tubers and lentils coming to the kitchens every day.

A great victory in the minds of the people.