Chapter 119: Odd Jobs
Chapter 119: Odd Jobs
Gerry gestured toward the upper levels of the Academy. "The rest are doing odd jobs. Fixing damaged buildings, helping the tinkers repair gear, mending clothes, we’ve even got a dentist now.
He’s working with the healers, as we don’t have proper painkillers. But some people urgently needed work."
Kalli nodded. "I will go visit him, I’ve got some medicine stockpiled. I grabbed it the first day, before things got too bad."
"Oh? How did you manage that? I thought we were all under surveillance by the army?"
Kalli winked at him. "A lady keeps her secrets. But I’ve got enough for emergencies, and if we’ve got a proper dentist, he’s the closest thing we have to a doctor or surgeon.
Wait, do dentists even train in that?
Whatever. He went to medical school, he’s got to know more about anatomy and surgery than the rest of us, except maybe the combat medic."
Gerry cleared his throat. "Actually dentists go to a specialty academy, it’s not quite the same. But you’re right, he’s what we’ve got. Marimgar Academy isn’t a medical school, though we do have an incredibly advanced research lab for new medicines here.
There are likely a few people there now, working to see if they can generate a new medicine from the resources that we do have.
If they can make something out of the new plants that we managed to harvest, it will be huge for our future survival chances. I don’t know if they can actually do it, but it’s worth exploring."
"Alright. That sounds like it’s well within the quest parameters. It should also save lives, which sounds heroic to me.
That’s something I’ve been wondering about. Our people are called heroes, but there isn’t anything particularly heroic for them to do with this mission."
"Perhaps because we flunked the last one so bad that there’s nobody left to save?" Gerry whispered.
Kalli nodded. "That is a distinct possibility. The survivors from the other bases are likely the only ones we’re going to see, unless the exploration teams find signs of other groups that are still out there.
I hope that they can, and we can bring some people back into the base to grow our numbers.
Soon, we will start looking like a proper town again, as everyone is getting paid in System Points by the quests. I think that’s the point, to at least maintain or improve our living conditions as the Trials progress."
Kalli returned to her office, and soon had an entire stack of documents waiting for her to process.
"Well, Coordinator, you’ve got your work cut out for you now. We sent teams way out there today, all the way to the beaches, past the forest, and nearly thirty kilometres west inland.
There isn’t much to report other than a load of the Magma Corrupted Monsters that seem to respawn faster the further we get from the Academy. By the time that the Student Council team was twenty kilometres northwest, the time was down to under five minutes, and they were fighting nearly constantly to get back to Marimgar."
Kalli frowned at the news.
There was definitely no shortage of monsters in the area, so maybe she should set some higher goals and see if the teams could get more points in a day?
The problem was that she was afraid if she set them a Nightmare Mode Quest, it would trigger something that Marimgar was not yet ready to face.
At the end of the day, she should have enough points to add four more turrets, and that should be enough that they could at least cover the whole perimeter without any gaps. Once that was accomplished, the heroes would at least have somewhere to fall back to.
However, the more groups that came back, the more paperwork she was collecting, and Kalli began to realize that she was going to need far more time than anticipated to finish recording this all.
Then, she realized that she didn’t have to do that at all.
She could just purchase one of the advanced devices from the store, as they would come with a scan function. She could scan all these documents in, write a short analysis prompt to have the device sort overlapping data and assign everything to a geographical location for easier reference.
Then upload it to the app, and they would have a much more complete working map.
Still, Kalli spent the entire day building the code just to add the data automatically to the app after scanning, and updating the world map around them, as the topography didn’t match what was recorded in the Academy’s database.
She added a fog to everything that hadn’t been properly mapped so that the teams could see everything that needed recording, according to the System, and then began to wonder how everyone was doing on System Points. They should be into the more advanced skills now, unless they were getting every basic one that they could.
And, they should be getting close to having their first level six heroes, if they didn’t already have one.
Curious, Kalli checked her own details.
{Name} Kallista De Marimgar
{Class} Coordinator
{Level} 5
{System Points} 832
{Notice, please perform System tasks to gain points.}
{Class Skills} [System Points Store], [Storage Realm]
{New Skills Available} Please Choose Level 5 Reward
{Weapons and Armour Discount}
{Increased Store Inventory}
{Expanded Storage Realm}
Kalli frowned as she realized that she hadn’t been paying any attention to her own stats.
But the fact that she was already level five suggested that the heroes, who were also getting experience from killing the monsters, should not be at the level she thought they were.
If anything, she should be behind the average.
It also meant that the special forces team should be reaching level two soon.
The magma corrupted monsters were much stronger than anything they fought before, and that had to count for something.
Unknown to Kalli, that combat experience counted for far more than she had anticipated. The Magma Corrupted Monsters were all level five and six, the expected difficulty level of the second trial.
Only, her heroes were far better equipped than what the trial considered average, and the presence of modern weaponry in every group gave them damage on par with monsters twice their level, even before the bonuses from their class skills were calculated.
Every group that went out had at least one rifle user with them, often two or three. And the firepower made all the difference.