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All the strange edge cases and oddities around how the System determines settlements were interesting. However, Courtney was able to report back to the others that, despite the confusion, they should be relatively safe. Not that they couldn’t in theory develop an area into a settlement by themselves, but they wouldn’t be able to manage it accidentally.

And since they only planned to make a single building without too many extra rooms? The chances of being anything besides maybe a small compound was non-existent. Not to say Jason plans for their living arrangements to be primitive. He is going to have more than enough time to refine their living situation.

After all, the plan is to live there until level 49 or depending on the bottleneck quest, maybe even 74. Sure, going by their leveling speed so far, that might not seem like much. Except they just spent months traveling and had barely advanced.

With each bottleneck, the needed experience to level increases dramatically. It is entirely possible that if they are slow, they might be living there for multiple years. Jason, in particular, doesn’t see that as too likely. The Deep Wilds aren’t exactly going to baby them along. Either they will advance quickly or they’re likely going to get wrecked.

Of course Rosha and Courtney aren’t quite as optimistic about their leveling speed. Jason doesn’t have the best feel for what normal people deal with. Sure, he knows the numbers, but with how his cultivation skill reduces the scaling experience requirements, he hasn’t personally felt the pain.

Not that Jason would mind it taking a while. It would just mean more time for him to cultivate, both in-game and irl. Though thinking about it, that would slow down things as well. Not him cultivating, mind you, but the fact that the other two will want to do so as well.

Either way, they need to choose a location to settle down first. Except things aren’t quite the wild west, at least not for those wanting to settle near anywhere already established. While settlement 306 doesn’t own too much land, that’s not directly around their walls, they do have certain administrative rights. So, early next morning, the party makes their way over to the office in charge of such things.

*Ding-a-ling*

The bell above the door rings as they enter. In the middle of the room towards the back, a mostly human man looks up. His slightly pointed ears on others might point to a grandparent or further back elf in the family and he was clearly not one of the beastfolk or animalkin, except he had a pair of antlers on top of his head. Kind of strange, but they had all seen stranger while in that last city.

The man sets aside his current paperwork. “Well! Hello there, you must be the outsiders that popped in last night. My name is Callen Stalfo and how may I help you? Though as a warning, we aren’t accepting new residents quite yet.”

Courtney steps forward, “Good thing we aren’t looking to stay. We’re looking to do some homesteading of our own, but want to be within reasonable distance of a settlement and a border guard suggested yours.”

Callen nods, “While our settlement has been set up for a bit, we don’t have that many attached homesteaders. Not surprising, what with the giant monsters. The settlements along the edge have less of those to deal with.”

Courtney, “So we have the pick of the litter, if only they weren’t all in a bad place.”

Callen, “Now don’t be too down on our settlement. The kingdom won’t let us hang for too long. This is the leading edge of the expansion, after all.”

Courtney shrugs, “True, but in a way, your settlement could be seen as having pushed too far ahead of the others. You might be waiting until they have set new settlements up towards the edges that even things out. They might even leave you to live or die on your own. You are not ‘Settlement 306’ for nothing.”

Callen, “You aren’t wrong, but the threat here is too much for them to hope for a new settlement to handle. We have already defended ourselves numerous times and know our way around these giant beasts.”

Courtney shakes her head, “Yet you still are having trouble. Maybe a new settlement would figure something out that you haven’t.”

Callen sighs, “Fine, we might, potentially, in an edge case, be a bit screwed. What do you want? It isn’t like we have some obvious demerit to living near here as we don’t plan to die any time soon. There aren’t even taxes in place yet”

Courtney, “A good place to settle. We both know that you only reveal harsher locations to travellers. Now, I’m not asking for some easy place behind the settlement. We want to be on the edge. However, we don’t want to be in the way of some known threat.

“As far as I can tell, the giant monsters shouldn’t really bother with us normally. We just need to make sure to not settle on one of their paths. So what do you have?”

Callen sighs again, “Well, not as bad as I expected. Let me show you the map.”

Callen pulls out a big sheet of parchment.

Halfway between the center and one corner is a mark for 306 and heading off of it towards that corner is the road. Outside of those features, the rest of the map is an unending expanse of forest. Interspersed are a number of clearings, both big and small.

More important, though, are three red routes that Callen points out as the paths most Giant beasts are taking to the settlement. Of course, after a certain distance from the settlement, they start to branch out like a river delta until the mapper stopped bothering to mark them down. In particular, the path to the left was much darker than the others.

Callen, “So this is about what you wanted to know. Of course, I won’t try to deny that we have some more accurate information, but you were never going to get that.”

Comments

Dennis

Now that map was a nice thing to have in this chapter.

dragonheartednovels

I bought a cheap drawing tablet a bit ago to draw some art for my series and this was something I could put together and not have it take too long or look like butt. Still need to make a cover for NR. At least I've got something put together for Banished Talent already so it will have a cover when I release it.