Chapter 33 (1/2)

Randidly walked towards Donny, annoyed that he stepped forward and was forced to deal with the cop, but glad that it had turned out simply. He was slightly worried about making sure that the town honored the deal and brought him glassware, but if they dragged their feet, he started actively taking it, and they wouldn’t be able to say anything about it.

Mostly, Randidly just wished the system included some skills that helped with interpersonal skills… at this point it was halfway between something he didn’t want to deal with, and half something he didn’t know how to deal with. He had been a quiet gamer before the system came. He wasn’t equipped for this...

Still, once he had all those containers, he could really up his potion production, which would benefit the whole village.

But for now, Randidly went to speak with Donny, who appeared to be still glaring after the police, and Daniel, who had walked out of the Chieftain's House and was speaking rapidly. Awkwardly rubbing his neck, Randidly approached. After today, he was done interacting with people.

***

After a short discussion, Randidly believed he had made himself clear.

The first building they would buy was the Recycler building, which would buy certain parts from the corpses of monsters in exchange for currency they could spend at other Shops. This would build excitement for the eventual shops to come, and give the people an immediate goal, which would keep them satisfied.

These justifications were Daniel’s, and Randidly agreed. He in fact agreed so much that he directed Donny to concentrate solely on leadership, leaving Daniel to make the bland decisions about construction.

When framed as construction, Donny seemed to agree, whimsically smiling as he recounted his heroic stand against the police to himself.

The final order of business Daniel wished to discuss was food. Specifically, they had meat, but were any of Randidly’s crops able to be eaten…?

Annoyed, Randidly dumped most of his first haul onto the ground, the non-potion making items, and returned to his fields and watch stand, exhausted mentally.

But just as he settled down into his spot to train, he saw the corpse of the cat he had killed in the cracked plateau, and groaned at the memory of one more discussion he had to have before he could focus on training.

Grumbling, he walked over towards Sam’s campsite, the cat laying across his shoulders. He thought about the three crouching bodies of who he assumed were Sam’s daughters. Unbidden, the words of the teenager rose to his mind.

‘It looked like fireworks.’

Randidly looked down at his hands as he crossed the clearing. He hadn’t even stopped to consider the beauty of his magic, just its utility. He had come into this world with the system an inch away from death. It was hard to see these skills as anything but tools of survival, and survival meant killing others for strength.

But his strength remained insufficient. Outside of the safe zone, he was once more an inch from death. This small cat was enough to force him to go all out.

Sydney…. Ace….

Randidly’s hands tightened into fists. It was hard to realistically think that he could find them before they were forced into a situation where they would die. Without Randidly here, the group probably wouldn’t have had a village for several days, or a week, tops. The police probably would have made a concerted effort to hunt down the goblins at some point.

If they were out there now, without classes...But there was no way to find them in the huge area of the map. It was better to operate on the assumption that they would survive. They both were strong. Far stronger than Randidly had been, prior to his experience in the dungeon. They would live.