Gamer Tools: Kingdom Architect, A LitRPG Adventure

The next day, Jonn woke up early and went directly to the front of the Council.

There, he parted ways with Phantom, who accompanied Tim and the men who were working in the mine to the Limonite rock site.

It didn’t take long for Ice to appear along with Wy, who was on his horse, which now recovered from the injuries of days ago.

After dismounting near to the group, Wy thanked Elia, who took his horse and headed to the animal area with the brown-furred creature.

Wy approached Jonn, Eliot, and two other men already waiting for Petyr.

This was the group that would begin learning to fight as warriors starting today!

“Here he comes,” Wy smiled upon seeing his friend and hunting leader back in his normal condition. Petyr still carried some not fully healed wounds on his body, but he was well enough to fight.

The red-haired man, with a diagonal scar on his face, stopped 12 meters in front of the five individuals waiting for him. He placed the sack he had taken earlier from Tim’s house on the ground and squatted down.

“Come here and choose your weapons,” he said, without looking at the group.

Jonn was not officially part of this class, but he approached to pick one of the village’s brand-new weapons.

As they gathered around Petyr, the five saw him reveal seven shiny, extremely gleaming weapons. They were so sharp that just by observing them, the group knew how lethal they could be.

There were three swords, two spears, and two daggers.

Eliot wasn’t particularly interested in the weapons, keeping his bow on his back while merely admiring the good looks of the new arsenal.

“Eliot, choose something. I want you to continue your path as an archer, but you need to know how to use weapons against enemies within your body’s reach. Your arrows won’t harm someone 3 meters away from you.”

Eliot allowed his companions to choose the larger weapons first, leaving himself with one dagger.

Petyr continued, sharing the knowledge Hewet had passed on to him. “For now, we will focus on training with a single weapon. Each weapon requires different techniques, and I warn you that you will need a primary weapon. However, I will teach you the basics of each of the village’s weapons throughout our training. Knowing how to handle only one type of weapon is a terrible weakness to have on a battlefield.”

The men listened attentively, with Jonn hearing about this for the first time. Hewet had taught him many practical things, but the art of war was not one of them.

The red-haired man continued, “While you will have a primary weapon and know the basics of weapon handling in general, you need to have the dagger as your secondary weapon.” He presented the short blade, one of which was already in Eliot’s hands.

“Daggers are short-range weapons, useful in assassinations or situations where you lose your primary weapon. They can have various uses, so you will become familiar with them throughout our training.

For now, only two of you will train with them, but old Tim said we will have 6 more daggers in the next 3 months. All the village warriors will eventually have a dagger.”

Seeing the doubt in the eyes of the less experienced, Petyr explained, “Swords are the easiest type of weapon to master. Given their lightness and the organic, natural feel of their movements, even a person without guidance can learn the basics. Those in doubt should choose swords.

However, a battalion needs warriors capable of wielding different weapons. The correct method of fighting is in groups, not individually. Know that whatever your choices, you will work well with your allies, even if you have more complicated weapons, like a war hammer.”

Jonn had already used a spear and a sword before and had his preference.

Swords are indeed easier to use, lighter, and faster. But the spear suits me better, given my advantage of having mana and a stronger physique than normal people. Spears are more decisive, with superior attack power compared to swords.

For now, I will master the art of wielding a spear.

He looked at the dark weapon in his hands, examining the blade at the spear’s tip while feeling the solidity of the grip on this artifact.

I haven’t used the Celestial Magnifying Glass on artificial artifacts yet… I’ll get to that, eventually. Maybe I can work with Tim to create better weapons. But we have too much to do for me to worry about that now.

With each person wielding their weapon of choice, Petyr kept the two remaining ones with him and stood up. He used one sword to show to his village companions.

“Each weapon has its own technique, as I mentioned before. But before we dive into the different combat techniques, there’s something important you need to understand about weapon handling.

A good warrior needs a series of characteristics. Among the essentials is balance. You need to train your bodies to develop resilient cores,” he said while demonstrating a simple vertical attack movement with the sword, intentionally forcing himself to lose balance.

“If you lack good body awareness, your attacks will be weaker than they could be. You may lose balance, or fail to protect yourself from a counterattack.

Your first lesson is this: train your bodies and get used to moving with your weapons as if they were extensions of your bodies.”

He signaled with two fingers and continued, “Following that, train your eyes. Understand that, eventually, you will find yourself in the vulnerable position of being attacked. If you don’t have a good response capability, you won’t last long.

The method to train your eyes is practice. Fight among yourselves, fight against enemies, fight with anything that can threaten you. This will lead to the improvement of your reaction time.”

Petyr continued speaking for over 15 minutes, explaining the basics of how to work on their muscles, how to seek improvements in their response capabilities, and even the importance of studying enemies and their movements, both before and during combat. This was the part of the training where he taught them what they would need to do on their own from now on.

Eventually, Petyr dedicated himself to demonstrating the basic steps with each of the weapons available today, explaining when it was best to use them, their strengths, and weaknesses. Every technique had something that made it special, but also had weaknesses. A good warrior knew how to leverage the benefits of their techniques and exploit their opponents’ weaknesses.

Today’s training lasted two and a half hours, enough for the red-haired man to present two techniques for each weapon to his students.

At the end of the session, Petyr said to Eliot, “You can train with the bow on your own. You are much better than I am at it, so I won’t waste your time trying to guide you.”

Eliot nodded in understanding.

Petyr turned to Jonn and said, “That’s it for today. If you really want a specialized guard, we can cover the basics for it in just over two months of training. But we will need appropriate clothing, hierarchy, and rules.”

Jonn wasn’t surprised by the lack of immediate progress on his mission after establishing the village guard. Today had been only the first training session.

They were far from being considered a guard!

“I will talk to Betta and Molle about producing the village guard uniform. We’ll discuss the hierarchy and rules of the militia later.”

---

Time passed, and the sprouts in the village’s second greenhouse grew into mature plants and roots. Some were large enough to be seen from afar, if not for the structure concealing them.

Green fruits were gradually gaining color, signaling the approach of the first harvest.

Arber was no longer sufficient to care for the plants daily, and twice a week, Jonn spent more time than he initially planned on his plantation land.

With a month having passed, hope had blossomed in the village. Even the most skeptical community members couldn’t help but feel optimistic about resolving the food crisis.

While Arber worked alone this morning, having received Jonn’s help the previous day, the Village Elder was on one of the village’s three horses, alongside Elia and Eliot in the animal area.

Ice and Phantom watched them from the other side of the fence that separated the common area from the cows and horses area, while Petyr, Lance, and Wy observed the three youths.

The group was preparing to leave!

“Ice, monitor the village and obey Petyr. Help the village members if something happens and wait for my return.” Jonn ordered the sitting wolf, soon after hearing a bark of understanding.

The humans were not surprised by Jonn’s order. They had grown accustomed to the white-haired boy’s orders to the wolves and the subsequent obedience of the animals.

Looking at Petyr, a man dressed similarly to Eliot and Wy, but each of them with different crests on their left chests, Jonn said, “I leave the village in your hands. But I will try to return as soon as possible.”

“Don’t worry about us. The village will be standing and stronger when you return,” the leader of the recently established guard replied with a confident smile.

The group was leaving today to meet with a group of traders from Sylvestria, the territory northeast of the Barren Hills of Deepshadow. This group regularly passed through one of the Royal Roads north of this region.

Since Hewet’s time, the Eternal Village had been doing business with such a trading caravan.

“Be careful on the journey, Village Elder,” Lance said with a more worried look, visible in the wrinkles of his sun-kissed face.

He looked at Elia and added, “Help the Village Elder to get good deals. Today we have little to sell, but next time they pass through the region, we might have food to trade.”

“I’ll do my best, Uncle Lance,” the woman on Jonn’s right promised, her eyes shining as she prepared to embark on this journey.

Her satisfaction extended far beyond the opportunity to negotiate for the future of the Eternal Village. In front of her were the beginnings of walls and constructions for the new village. Men were working to erect the structures that would house the entire local population in no more than four months.

Part of the 3-meter-high wall, intended as the major protection against invaders, was already fully erected, while other sections were still in the early stages, with only the main columns standing.

From where Elia stood, she could see the village’s main reservoir, built 5 meters above ground level, with metal pipes leading down to the ground.

The supply system would be soon operational, just as the underground waste collection system was already completed!

The first house within the walled area was 50% complete, and in a few more days, the village would begin the gradual migration from the outer area to the area protected by the under-construction walls.

Elia was naturally in a very good mood, being the key person responsible for such a project.

But Jonn was even more optimistic than his ‘competitor.’ Besides having contributed significantly during the initial construction of the new village’s foundations and solving several construction problems with [Analysis], Jonn couldn’t help but smile when he saw his current status.

He had made further progress in his mission two nights ago and got the first of his rewards!

[Save the Eternal Village]

[Progress: 3/20]

[Prizes: 60 attribute points (redeemable only every 3 progresses or by completing the mission); 5 {Skills} (redeemable 1 every 4 progresses or by completing the mission); 1 Immortal Shard (by completing the mission).]

…

{Name: Jonn Irondoom}

{Age: 16}

{Level: 1 (46%)}

{Reputation: Level 4 “Elder of the Eternal Village!”}

{Stats:

[Health: 163] [Mana: 146 (176)] [Stamina: 141]}

{Attributes:

[Strength: 14] [Agility: 13.5] [Dexterity: 12.7]

[Constitution: 16.3] [Endurance: 14.1] [Intelligence: 14.6 (17.6)]

[Wisdom: 13.7 (16.7)] [Charisma: 10.2 (13.2)] [Luck: 10 (12)]}

{Resistances: None}

{Skill: [Analysis]; [Essence of Life]}

{Artifacts: [Wildheart Talisman].}

He had added 6 attribute points to [Intelligence], [Wisdom], and [Constitution], and 3 attribute points to [Strength], [Agility] and [Endurance]. But a month of hard work, physically and magically, had helped him improve almost all of his attributes on his own.

He knew that the Third Magical War had victimized the world’s strongest mages and reduced the world’s mages’ population. But beyond that, Hewet’s books didn’t speak of many magical levels. As far as he knew, there were only 15 levels.

Someone at level 1 like him would already be strong in today’s Valorian!

With the beautiful image of his status slowly disappearing from his eyes, Jonn left the village alongside Elia and Eliot.