Chapter 249: Outer Fields

The first few days of the trial passed in a blur of official notices, new shop openings, factory supply requests, and constant updates from the repair teams about the state of the heroes’ gear.

They were making good use of the new {Material Converter} building, using scrap materials that weren’t good for much of anything else to make armour plating to upgrade battle armour.

The progress in the city was much less chaotic than Kalli had expected, and the guards had the underground city pretty well settled by the end of the third day.

There were still some issues, but that was to be expected when they had simply grabbed every qualified resident of their nation, and then crammed in as many additional refugees as possible.

Not everyone on the Ark was someone who was well-adjusted to begin with, and after this much stress, many more had cracked under the pressure. However, there were professionals to help with that, and zero tolerance for criminality.

Outside the city walls, the earth mages and the tractors had been making excellent progress at opening large fields for the planting of tubers, and other crops.

Initially, they had planned to plant nothing but Tubers, but after some consideration, they decided to diversify, just in case they actually managed to hold the area. In that case, it would be best if they had the most diversity of crops possible, and the amount of food that they could plant outside the walls was immense.

The city was incredibly dense, and even with hydroponic greenhouses, the growing area was limited.

But with fast-growing alien plants, they could open up hundreds of acres of cropland in a single morning, and expect to get at least one harvest off it before the month-long trial was over.

They didn’t have long to get all the fields opened, if they were going to get a harvest before the end of the trial. But at the rate that they were going, they were going to have a thousand acres planted in the next few days.

Most of the seed came from the greenhouses, some came from Kalli.

But the whole exercise was remarkably cost-effective, and the conditions within the city were improving steadily, along with Kalli’s Points balance.

Kalli thought about ways to improve the number of quests that they could get.

They had working four hours and fishing quests active, along with the exercise quest which was for stats, not points. Nearly everyone did two of the three every day, as the System didn’t count fishing as a skilled trade.

At least, not when there was a separate quest for it.

Unfortunately, when she tried to set more busy work sorts of quests, she got the same response from the System.

{All Quests must be productive and sufficient to justify their reward.}

And what could she do if it wasn’t going to let her set quests to keep people busy? She could do a job board, but that was already an easy quest, so it wouldn’t let her duplicate it.

After everything that had come before, the fourth trial felt a bit anticlimactic.

Then, on the fifth morning, Yara burst into her office, looking panicked.

"Coordinator, I need to make a request."

"Go ahead. If I can help with it, I will."

"I want to take a team out of the city on an extended mission. We just picked up something on satellite that I need to verify," Yara insisted.

"You need to be more specific than that. Anything more than a day trip is unusual for our people, and that already covers a lot of territory, with the speeders."

"I was searching for survivor enclaves, since the System said that there were more. And I found something near Astaqra Towns, on the west coast of Dadah Lake in Tehaquia. It matches with the signature of my family’s vehicles, and they are transmitting a standardized satellite tracking ping.

It took us a bit to decode it, but I’m certain that those are members of my family, and they’re headed east across the desert."

"So, there are survivors. But the map says that is two thousand kilometres from here."

Yara nodded. "Yes, but for the speeders, that is less than a ten-hour trip. Leaving this morning, we can be there before dark. There are multiple monster hordes in between us and them, but none of them are flying creatures.

I think that we can make it to them and guide them safely back to Marimgar."

Kalli examined the map again. If they went straight east, they would end up facing giants, ogres, and dozens of tribes of smaller monster.

Southeast, and they would reach Yizi Lake, which was massive, basically an inland sea. And if they circled the south side of the lake, they would end up running into the undead horde around Deriran.

"How large is this group? Can they come back on the speeders?"

Yara shook her head. "No, there are thirty vehicles in the convoy, including buses."

"So, a survivor group on the run. Alright, give me a moment and I think that I can arrange something that will help us rescue them. One of the smaller Arks should be able to go with you, load everyone, and bring them all back.

They have a couple of transport helicopters, which could pack fifty or more people in an emergency, but they don’t have the range to make it there and back without refuelling.

I think that if we send a speeder escort for an Ark, it will be the safest method of recovery.

Sending you to try to escort them through thousands of kilometres of hostile territory with only a patrol of speeders has too low of a survival probability," Kalli decided.

"You’ll actually go that far to help recover my family members?"

Kalli smiled. "They’re presumably human. If they’re on the run, and can’t stabilize a home for themselves, they’re not going to do well for the trial, and that will put them in a bad spot next time.

If they were stabilized near the lake, I would have suggested that you just find a way to contact them without leaving home.

If one of the Ark Commanders agrees, I will approve this mission. If they don’t, we will have to discuss tactics."