Chapter 319: Half A Million

There were a few side effects of having so many new residents with System access.

For one, they now had far too many people who hadn’t reached level one to be taking them all through the Rat King Dungeon every day. You needed a few people who knew what they were doing, just for safety, and even if they took the most imbalanced group they could, there simply weren’t enough of them.

So, there was a waiting list, and the level 0 residents were all in a queue to get turns in the dungeon, while the level one and two members did it together in groups, then challenged the Goblin Dungeon, which was level three, to push their levels up as fast as possible.

Life was all about getting as many levels as they could, because levels came with power, and skills, and having both made life easier in ways that most hadn’t expected.

Like the fact that you could trade in material drops at the Hall of Heroes.

It didn’t just process it, you could get value for the raw materials or monster corpses, and that meant more points. More points meant faster advancement to level 1, but the System wouldn’t let you trade in things that you hadn’t earned.

Still, when you were working with one or two points a day, even getting a damaged bag of flour as a drop could often earn you an extra point.

It was the unspoken source of most of the luxury goods in the lower city, as people treated it as a "Bonus" to fill their family’s demands without using up their daily savings. It was just too difficult to say no completely, without offending your family and causing yourself so much extra stress that staying at home became untenable.

Explaining to the housing authority aboard the Arks that you were getting a divorce and needed a place to live was more than a little embarrassing, even if they understood, and would help you find a place the same day.

In fact, it might actually be worse that they understood.

Unfortunately for Kalli, by the end of the next afternoon, she had the same trouble again.

There were so many quests active that it wasn’t even the start of the night shift, and her points were capped out again. She was going to have to do something grand, but preferably subtle, to improve the city and burn these points.

Perhaps a defensive upgrade?

There were all sorts of things in the list, and while she could buy food and supplies, they actually had more than enough of both right now, simply from what the residents were buying and producing.

The answer came to her in the most simple possible fashion.

Upgrading the city walls.

Technically, they were a building, according to the System. So, she could "improve" them to a higher standard, and that would burn a massive amount of system points to do the entire wall.

If it wasn’t enough, she could do the housing along the inside of the wall as well, but she was reasonably certain that just doing the outer surfaces of the wall, and not the structures inside of it, would be more than enough to use up her points to the cap.

And with the improved technological level of the walls came an improved level of security.

Not just from the improved defensive alloys and synthetic concrete, but the improvement granted the walls some basic additional functions that the System apparently considered to be essential.

Like most of the upgrades, they were magical and not technological, but in the best possible way.

The walls gained defensive magical circles on the walkway, in two different varieties.

One would allow mages to raise a barrier over the wall itself. The other would repair the wall should the barriers fall and it took damage. To a magical fortress, that was the bare minimum the System would consider to be appropriate, but to the residents of Marimgar, it was amazing.

It was also a new source of knowledge for their mages.

As soon as they noticed the changes, the ones on wall duty were out inspecting the magical circles. It was all magic that they could do, on a personal level, but if they could learn how the circles worked, they could learn to alter it and use it to create magical defences wherever they were.

A whole new set of spells that didn’t rely on the System’s Skill Tree.

To the mages of Marimgar, that was more valuable than anything else. They were reaching the higher tiers of their skill trees now, with all the branches of the lower tiers already filled. So, they had a much wider range of magic than they did during the early trials, but every advancement took them days or weeks of work to afford.

Sure, it was grand magic, often immensely powerful.

But if it wasn’t useful in their daily lives, they would have been better off with a book of cantrips. Something that would let them do a wider variety of household magic would be incredible.

Most could already adapt the spells that they had to do all sorts of minor tasks, especially [Mage Hand], but if they had one that would sweep, fold laundry, or blow dry their hair if they weren’t a wind mage, it would be great.

And even most of the wind mages struggled, because their fire magic wasn’t strong, to the breeze to dry their hair was room temperature or colder.

Those who could do both were considered lucky.

The only ones who were considered luckier were the Clerics and Druids, who could use [Cleanse] on themselves to get that fresh out of the shower cleanliness at any point during the day.

No more sweaty stringy hair at the end of your shift, just [Cleanse] and you were good to go.

Not that it eliminated showers. Hot water and scented bath products were still a very mentally necessary part of the day. But it certainly helped.