Chapter 110: Beacon of Hope

"I will definitely… think about this offer."

In the end, my offer didn't fall flat on the young man, but rather, couldn't bring fruitful results right away. But instead of flaring up, I simply nodded my head while looking thoroughly at Penne.

Contrary to that, if he were to make the decision on the spot, I would actually put my own reasons for putting such a proposition forth into doubt. Only an idiot or a madman could accept life-changing opportunities without even a second thought. 

And I never intended to recruit either of the types. 

"Think about it thoroughly. I believe you know what you should tell your friends about our little… discussion?"

In fact, I had no doubt. With my initial guess about the slightly complicated background of the young man in front of my eyes proving correct, I was pretty damn sure that I could gauge his personality quite well. With that, there was no doubt that the more volatile pieces that we discussed over the last hour would never see the glory of becoming public knowledge. 

"I do. Please, I know I'm in no position to demand any kind of treatment yet, but don't sell me short. It's insulting."

Even though the words were harsh, Penne's tone was as far from being angry as it could be. With his lips forming into a small curve, his eyes brimmed with energy that he lacked when he first entered the room. As little as my idea could change his position right away, the benefits of the long term relationship between the two of us was where he could seek his true rewards.

I was all against rewarding people from the get-go. It would make it no different from buying them like some kind of mercenaries if not tools. Offering a remuneration for loyal service was one thing, but putting any benefits on the line of recruitment itself didn't fit nicely with me.

"Don't worry about it. Isn't it just a matter of time before you will prove your worth? I will look forward to it."

Sending the young man off with this slight encouragement, I looked down at the papers that I was working on before the visitation started. Thanks to Huskarl taking responsibility for creating a barrier that would separate the town they were forming from the rest of the world, the list of stones that I decided with Sander on preparing was mostly production oriented. 

With the idea of using the stones to make even more stones surfacing, we wasted nearly two hours discussing what's necessary, what would be advantageous to have and what could be cheaply replicated with human labour.

This relatively short meeting with the craftsman resulted in two more big piles of papers landing on my desk. Even though I could delegate someone else to do this job for me, this was one thing that I couldn't be careless about.

The recruitment of the new talents to the faction.

Turning the paper on the extensive report of the state of the city's economy and employment, I read into the precise data outlined in it. Somehow, even after the apocalypse, most of the statistical offices continued to work. Whether they were funded by some kind of mistake or whether they served some nefarious tools in the hands of hidden power, it didn't really matter that much to me. 

After all, I didn't seem to go against the one controlling those organisations, making it easy to trade resources for information, especially when I was looking for the stuff that those groups were already trained in obtaining.

'Carpenters… They might be of some use regarding the packaging… Three of them to the pile…"

Murmuring to myself as I went through the extensive list of candidates for various jobs within the lands of the Boruta cult. Bit by bit, one huge stack of papers turned into several, neatly arranged towers, with each pile amassing resumes that I  separated into four categories.

Starting with, do not employ under any circumstances, it was the largest and easiest category to get into. Without any extraordinary achievements on the field, one could only count that others would prove to be just as average, as only then would a normal person have any chance of escaping this group later on. 

The second group consisted of people that were worth taking care of but would be employable only once the artefacts project would reach its final stages. Before the process of turning simple charged stones into finished products would be finalised and mostly automated, they fell out of my grace. After all, even with the first offers that were bound to soon start appearing, the funds that my church had were quite limited. 

The third batch of resumes outlined people that were simply too important for my faction to miss on. From logistic managers, through business owners all the way to skilled craftsmen. As long a specific person could contribute to the cause of my faction all on his or her own, they would get the privilege of being employed in the first swing of the standard recruitment.

But ultimately, it was the last pile that brought all the most crucial candidates together. From IT engineers that I hoped to rebrand into Artefact Conceptual Workers,  through programmers and designers that would create schematics for new types of artefacts once the knowledge from Ayda's manual would be converted into an easily understandable compendium..

In other words, for someone's resume to appear on this last pile of documents of mine, he had to specialise in one of the things that Sander believed to be absolutely necessary for the factory that he was already planning to make.

Thankfully, as enormous as this task appeared to be at first, dealing with all the papers took me only a few hours. With the time spent on helping Sander and talking things through with Tommy's group and Penne boy later on, by the time the last piece of paper found its way on top of one of the piles, the sun was already hanging low over the horizon.

But I wasn't going to stop working even for a short moment.

Switching seats from one of the tables to another one, located right beside a huge window displaying the great, empty area of the meadows that originally weren't even included within the boundary of the city,  but now made up the greatest part of the land that my faction owned, I took a look at yet another pile of papers.

This one arrived during my meeting with Penne, putting an awkward stop to our tense negotiations. Smiling to my memory of the face that the young man made when he noticed how much work I was putting to later date only to talk with him, I cast my eyes on the paper… Only for my pupils to suddenly grow big on my eyes, as if attempting to soak all the light reflected from the piece of paper, unable to accept the importance of what appeared to be written on it.

"Finally…"

So excited that I even managed to let my voice leak out, I didn't even bother to look at whether someone somehow sneaked into the room only to see this uncool behaviour of mine. In the end, the content of those papers finally brought some change to the stalemate of my preparations for the raid at the system's quest.

With several trips to the apocalypse world that I conducted during the sleepless hours of the days past, I already confirmed that not even a single tool that I could find there would work. If my guess was correct, then I could only build up the entire set of utensils once I would regain the ability to connect with the core of the system, which seemed to be the very bracelet that I found first.

This guess would also explain how I was able to find this most important element first, before getting dishearted by constant failures to use the technology without the bracelet.

To put it in simple words, those bracelets seemed to work in a similar way to how smartphones did just a year ago on earth. Even with countless peripheral accessories that one could buy, the phone still made the anchoring point of the entire system, allowing the headphones, speakers or even television to work in the first place. 

With all my perks of conquering the apocalypse world now gone, I had to urgently find some other source of power that would let me finish the quest. The quest that I had to finish in order to let Ayda visit my world. The quest which continued to weight down on my heart heavily.

Thankfully, just the first page of the report that Sander sent me was already enough to create a beacon of hope in this desperate situation of mine. Just from the proposed names of the stones that Sander was willing to attempt creating on the spot, I noticed with glee that my personal firepower could once again reach levels required for me to be confident in a fight.

Fireburst stone, Freezewave stone, Physical barrier stone, magical barrier stone, hybrid barrier stone, execution stone, thousand slashes stone… Letting the reins of my imagination free, I could tell what each of those artefacts would be capable of doing. The only question that remained at this point, was…

How effective those stones would be? How many charged stones would it take to fully unleash their potential?

Because as it stood now, the only thing that had to happen before I would be able to venture for that huge quest of mine, was Sander developing more efficient ways of powering those artefacts! 

After all, my entire faction would go bankrupt if we had to pour those expensive stones into each occurrence of their usage!