Chapter 321 Into the Future! Everyone's resolution Part 2

321 Into the Future! Everyone's resolution Part 2

.

.

—--------------

Following his visit to the Mercenary Guild, Dale went to the sole smithy in town, his favorite place...

He expected to see Barme doing the same thing he did every day and to hear his complaints about how he didn't have any Ore to work with or how his toe still hurt from when his hammer fell onto it...

But instead, he saw something different.

Inside his shop, Barme could be seen talking with eight different people of several ages, albeit none looked younger than his father...

They all looked like Barme... And in a sense, they all smelled like him... Coal, sweat, iron, fire!

Smiths!

... After a moment of inquiry, Dale quickly understood the situation.

These people naturally gathered here in Barme's shop because they were... Well... Bored, and itching to do something with their hammers.

Having left their home, their shops, and their previous life behind, there was nothing they could do now.

Even if they had dragged their tools and materials with them, unless they made a forge out of clay, there wasn't much they could do right now.

But having heard of Barme's workshop, they all flocked here... And against his expectation, Barme welcomed them, albeit there wasn't much space here.

Dale was glad that had been the case, with nine smiths instead of one, Resko's supply problems would certainly decrease... No matter how capable with the hammer they were.

In fact, it was unlikely that only these people were smiths among the survivors, there were likely a dozen or two more, either apprentices, their children, or other smiths that had either retired, given up on their craft, or merely not heard of Barme's forge due to circumstances.

With these numbers, it wouldn't be difficult to set up a Workshop, creating an environment for their craft to grow!

The problem was... Making one...

And that was when...

[Side Quest, A Smith's Plight has been activated]

[Description:

New Smiths have arrived at the Village, but they have nowhere to work!

Provide them with a working environment as soon as possible so they may resume their craft!

Or else... They'll keep pestering you!

Requirements:

Construct a Workshop with enough space for ten individual Forges 0/1

Or construct ten individual Smithies 0/1

*Bonus rewards for each extra Forge constructed*

]

A simple Quest with a simple description, but with rather complicated requirements.

In the first place, this wasn't a Quest an Ordinary player could complete, it was something only he, who had control over the land could do.

Dale had an idea of how to complete this Quest given Resko's condition, but for now, he bode them farewell.

Of course, Barme continued to pester him about the mines and the ores he needed, which led the other Smiths to do the same once they learned such places even existed.

They were all laughing as they did so, causing Dale's expression to sour a little.

But it wasn't like they only did that, they actually gave him a good idea.

With how many people there were now in Resko, it may very well be possible to have some of them work in the mines.

According to them, they already had Miners working in the old tunnels beneath the forest in search of ores, it was very dangerous and because of that, they were all extremely talented and pretty strong themselves.

Not many survived, so those that did had to be either strong or lucky.

The smart ones weren't there in the first place...

In any case, although his Quest hadn't updated, it had only been a day since they last met, so it was expected for their conversation to end like this.

09:12

As such, Dale gave her a hand by creating an excuse, explaining the conditions surrounding the forest in a way that painted Ophelia in a strong light, glorifying who she was.

And although she felt embarrassed to be talked about like that, she didn't stop him in the end.

These girls needed a role model in a sense, and although she was lacking, she would be said person if it meant giving them peace of mind as they hunted.

And then, upon hearing how the forest here was... Well... Things went as expected, these Amazon-like girls became extremely enthusiastic.

To them, it didn't matter how strong the prey they hunted was, they had families to return to, so the easier their job was, the better.

There was no pride about them becoming nonchalant with how 'easy' everything here was, it was more of a small worry, or trauma.

They didn't want to grow weak in the case trouble came to them, they didn't want to lose their edge...

But they were tired, they wanted to take it easy... Seeing how life was here in Resko, they didn't want to go back to how things went.

These people slowly understood how difficult their lives were as they compared themselves with the people of Resko.

They had their own problems, yes, but... Yeah?

Anything was better than what they had before.

They were all very thankful to Dale for having rescued them and for having given them food when they first met, one of them even hugged Dale so hard he almost lost his breath.

Those girls were strong, more so than it appeared at first...

Thanks to his food and medicine, she managed to save her husband and see the smile of her starving child, is there anything better than that?

That is why Dale was so haggard... Those titanic girls all hugged him as they thanked him.

It was fun and all, but had this happened before the Ritual, he wasn't sure if he would've survived this encounter...

How utterly horrifying.

...

"Huff... I need a time off..."

'But it's barely been over an hour since I left the inn...'

Walking on the streets, Dale took a moment to relax and breathe as he thought about who to visit next.

"... Time to go."

After confirming his target, he went on with it, thinking about what he had experienced so far.

'It seems the Survivors are slowly integrating themselves into our community, or maybe it's the other way around.'

'With the difference in numbers, it's hard to say which culture will devour the other in the end...'

'Of course, I'm being a bit dramatic here...'

He wondered, if there were so many smiths and hunters, would such a thing repeat with the other Elders?

In a sense, there were always a few Survivors near every Elder he visited.

Even Illia mentioned how several people had gone to visit her at the restaurant.

It's not too farfetched to think that they'll be together.

'Things are going too strangely smoothly... Maybe that is one of the powers of the System...'

Even if these people may look self-aware and in charge of themselves, there is a completely other side of reality they aren't paying attention to as if there was a veil in front of their eyes...

The way everyone kind of bonded together... Wasn't very realistic... Although it wasn't like Dale had ever seen anything similar before either.

Maybe this was just natural Human behavior and he was the strange, antisocial being there...

Thinking about this made him grunt.

...

.

.

.