Gamer Tools: Kingdom Architect, A LitRPG Adventure

With the dawn of a new day, the morning silence of the Barren Hills of Deepshadow was gradually disturbed as the first members of the village left their homes.

The horrors of the previous night faded as doors and windows opened, with the morning breeze refreshing the home of 41 persevering humans.

The smell of herbs and food spread through the Eternal Village, signaling the start of a new day. However, today would still be about addressing yesterday’s problems.

The first to leave their homes made their way gloomily towards the barn, their eyes marked by dark circles. The silence of their mouths revealed the somber mood of the morning.

As they gathered in front of the barn, the entire village soon assembled, where two simple wooden urns, shaped like rectangles, held the bodies of Tedric and Adie. The two men were dressed in their best clothes, their faces clean but with cotton threads visible in their nasal passages and ears.

Jonn had been there since dawn. He hadn’t slept for a minute after a night full of problems. But his dark circles didn’t seem as deep as Elie’s, who was standing to his right, along with Arber and Lance.

Those closest to Tedric and Adie soon placed white flowers inside their coffins. They said their words of farewell, some teary-eyed, others unable to contain the emotion of parting.

Tears streamed down the faces of even the most respected men, while the hearts of the other members of the village trembled. Even those not so close to the two couldn’t help but be moved as they watched the urns being lowered into the graves.

The village cemetery was situated atop a hill, one kilometer away from where the Council was located.

Several gravestones marked the resting places of the inhabitants who had died throughout the history of the Eternal Village.

However, few people were buried there. The village had never had over 70 inhabitants, even at its peak. Its little over 100 years of existence were not enough to create a long history with many members.

Some of the village’s dead had fallen far from home, their bodies lost at the sites of their deaths or destroyed by enemies. Some members had abandoned the village over the years, traveling to supposedly better places in search of hope.

The village had never been prosperous. What held it together was its distance from cities and the inherent tranquility of the countryside.

Though it had never been great, it had been much better in the past, before the Third Magic War. Previously, there had been plantations in the area and even exploration by distant groups that didn’t go beyond the village boundaries and exploited the area without interfering in the lives of the village’s ordinary mortals.

Now, however, the situation seemed to be worsening. For the first time in decades, the village was in danger of having fewer than 40 inhabitants.

Jonn and his companions watched as Tedric and Adie’s urns were lowered to the bottom of the graves. One by one, members of the village used a shovel to bury the two.

Each of them did their part with hearts full of grief.

Jonn finished closing the last of the graves in less than an hour since it all began. Tim helped him place the headstones with the names of the two men, warriors and heroes of the village, lost the previous night.

The group of people left the cemetery in silence, gradually turning their attention to their responsibilities.

They needed to take care of Jonn’s land, the greenhouse, the animals, their own homes, the injured horse, the mining, and much more.

Heading to the Council with Elie, Jonn planned to call his fellow villagers one by one throughout the day to update them on their duties.

Jonn, Elie, and Petyr had talked extensively over the last few hours, reaching important conclusions about how to reshape their village.

Petyr needed to recover before he could start training the warriors. Meanwhile, Jonn’s plans were more focused on farming and mining, which would take time to bear fruit. Elie, however, had plans that could begin more immediately.

“Let’s start with old Tim,” Jonn said as he sat down next to Elia and Petyr, leaving Eliot to fetch the village blacksmith.

Soon Tim stood before the three of them, with Eliot standing behind him.

“Village Elder,” the man greeted Jonn and the others present.

“Old Tim, you will continue to handle mining and weapons production. But you must add something else to your forge. Find someone to teach. We’ll need you producing not only weapons but also metals to build walls for the village.”

“Walls?” Tim frowned.

Jonn nodded. “We’ve decided to redesign the village. Elia will start discussions with the villagers in the next few days, but our idea is to move the village to an area of about a thousand square meters. Currently, our homes are spread out over 10,000 square meters. We can’t continue as we are. Protecting such a large area with so few warriors is unfeasible.

We’re going to build new houses in a smaller area, where we’ll wall off the surroundings and build watchtowers. This will make it easier for us to handle situations like the one last night.”

Tim scrunched up his face, considering what the village would look like based on Jonn and Elie’s plans. “In that case, I can offer some recommendations.

Old Elder Hewet always told me about a place he lived where people didn’t have to worry about fetching water for washing or where to dispose of their waste. I’ve never had the chance to discuss the ideas he gave me before, but now seems like the right time.”

Elia hadn’t expected that old Tim would actually contribute more ideas to the project. She had imagined earlier that some of the older members of the village might resist change.

Everyone was used to having space and living at a certain distance from each other.

“How would that work?” she asked, intrigued.

The man explained, “We could build a tall cistern connected to the houses by metal pipes. I can make the pipes and the cistern. We can create an underground waste storage system during the construction of the new village.

The way the village is now, it wouldn’t be workable. As the Village Elder said, we have an extensive area, which makes it difficult to build anything. But on a smaller plot of land, we could accomplish these feats that will improve the lives of the villagers.”

Tim had always wanted to implement the ideas he had heard from Hewet. But the village lacked resources and manpower. It still did, but out of necessity, they now needed to make the effort, giving him the opportunity he had long wished for.

Jonn looked at Elia and said, “You two should work together to make these ideas possible. If we can spend less time disposing of waste and collecting water, we could have more hands working in the greenhouse and the mining area.”

Tim left the Council with a twinkle in his eye, eager to tackle his responsibilities and looking forward to the next meeting with Elie. He was already planning the order of tasks needed to put his plans into practice.

‘We can extract water from underground and make it reach a high cistern using the village animals as the power source. Then we can ensure everyone has water in their homes without having to work hard for it.’

As Tim left, Petyr said to Jonn, “We need a group to go after the two horses that were with Wy and me. They can’t have gotten far after fleeing from the wolves.”

“There’s no risk of them being hunted down by the remaining wolves?” Elia asked with concern.

With the two horses missing, they only had Tedric’s horse left in the village.

Petyr shook his head uncertainly. “I can’t say for sure. There might be two wolves left around the Barren Hills of Deepshadow. Is it possible they could kill the horses? It’s not impossible, but it would be unlikely, to say the least.”

Jonn said to Petyr, “I’ll just finish sorting out the village’s most pressing matters and then set off with Wy. But I’m afraid it will be a couple of days before I can leave.”

Petyr didn’t complain. The horses were important, but they were not more important than what Jonn was focused on now. The priority was the villagers and the community.

I doubt those two wolves stayed behind. They ran away from me because of my mana. The horses are most likely lost in the area, out of danger.

Even though his thoughts differed from those of Elia and Petyr, Jonn said, “But I’ll be on the alert for wolf tracks. If we find anything while searching for the horses, I’ll see if we can eliminate them.”

Petyr and Elia agreed with his decisions before she changed the subject.

“What are we going to do about the Aether Tears?” Elia asked.

Petyr had heard the outcome of the red-haired enemy’s interrogation and agreed to keep the matter secret. He looked at Jonn, interested in the opinion of the one who knew the most about the mana crystals in the village.

“I still don’t have a definitive solution. But my idea is to replicate what happens with the greenhouse. We’ve never had a problem before, but I can tell you that the plants in the greenhouse have been creating those crystals for a long time.”

I’ll see how to replicate this later. I haven’t yet analyzed the structure of Grandpa Hewet’s greenhouse.

Jonn concluded, “Give me a few days to decide. I need to conduct some tests before I can be sure.”

They didn’t expect an immediate answer and soon shifted the conversation again. The next village member would arrive a few minutes later, and they would proceed with a similar approach to the one they had taken with Tim.

That would essentially be the day’s work for the three of them. Jonn didn’t plan to return to the field to mine until he was back with the village horses, though he intended to check on his plantation later.

Around midday, the village cooks would go from house to house offering wolf meat stew, the first decent meal they’d had in weeks.

Even though wolf isn’t known for its tasty meat, every village member would eat until their bellies were full, an unusual experience for them.

The older women of the village would soon start crafting fur coats from the wolves’ remains, making the best use of the combat spoils.

The animals’ carcasses would be taken to Tim’s house, where he planned to create artifacts from the sturdy wolf bones.

Tim acted quickly. Even before nightfall, he had already selected not one, but two individuals to learn his art of forging artifacts. One was a village child, and the other was a farmer, whom he would train in the evenings in the short term.

Jonn watched as his companions slowly turned their attention back to their activities, and soon it would be time for him and Wy to set off to retrieve the village’s horses.

On the morning of the third day after the incident, Wy and Jonn would embark on another journey together around the Barren Hills of Deepshadow.