Chapter 307 – Tier 3 Trial Part 4?

“Rewards?”

A pop-up message appeared before him out of nowhere. It looked similar to the usual world message but the usual white text over the black bar was changed to a green bar. The moment it appeared a strange occurrence took place. His opponent’s body which had been turned into wood chippings, started to flicker before vanishing.

The ring of fire that had been around them was also gone and the enemy army which still had around fifty soldiers started to run away. Apparently, without an officer or leader-type unit they would lose all will to fight. In Roland’s mind, this was something that would only work in a small-scale battle like this. Probably if there was another unit like the Wooden Commander present, then it would have taken over.

‘Those tooltips did say something about the Wooden Captain being able to command a small force, perhaps there is a proper number for it, maybe fifty soldiers at most?’

He wasn’t sure but all of the wooden soldiers and their variants had some type of description. Roland needed to read between the lines in some cases as the trial wouldn’t offer him all the information outright. Perhaps if he wanted to send out his own troops he would need to split them out into smaller battalions. At least the Commander was able to lead a small army of troops of around two hundred and fifty.

“Hm… it dropped the armor and the halberd.”

While thinking about his future a strange occurrence was taking place. The leader unit that he had defeated in single combat or at least what was left of its mangled wooden body, started to flash. Within a few seconds, the flashing started to turn into a rapid flickering. Then in a flash, the body of the one he slew vanished and like in a game left some loot behind.

Roland picked up the large halberd and quickly noticed that it was made from a slightly better alloy than regular steel. The half-plate armor that the commander was wearing wasn’t much better than what he had on but when analyzing one of the parts with the help of this world’s system, he was given some more information.

‘Interesting, that just confirms my previous guess and it actually gave me the whole number now.’

If he assumed that his captain could control around fifty units, this chest piece would double his ability to lead. The other pieces didn’t really have any bonuses and were all made from regular steel. The grade was at an intermediate level which was below something he could make by himself. Normally he would replace the breastplate he made himself but considering the bonuses, it would probably be better to give it to his captain unit.

‘I’m probably seen as a special unit by the system controlling this trial, wouldn’t be strange if I was only limited by the number of units my settlements can contain.’

Usually, in strategy games, each base had a limit of residents that it could contain. This was usually a limitation brought by the game’s system itself as there wouldn’t be enough computing power to manage thousands or hundreds of thousands of moving components on a screen. He wasn’t sure if the same thing could be said about this simulated world he was in now.

“My Lord, the enemy is retreating, should we pursue them?”

“No, we don’t have the manpower for that quite yet, just have them take the weapons of the ones we managed to defeat.”

“Of course my lord!”

At first, it might have seemed that it would be a good thing to chase after them. They would not be able to gain that much from taking their equipment. After the battle was over the bodies of the defeated soldiers started flashing just like the commander did. They had already enough that dropped here there was no reason to endanger the troops or his encampment.

…

“Hm… this might be a lot more complicated than I assumed but I also still need more information, creating more scout units and establishing a proper army is my top priority now.”

After the battle was over Roland was sitting in his throne room which had slightly shifted to a more robust looking one. There was still no padding for his behind but at least there was some fuzzy hide for his back. Some time had passed since he won the duel with the enemy commander and received the rewards.

He continued expanding his economic empire as he realized that everything that he was making required resources. As he saw it there was probably a way to win this scenario by just outearning his opponents. If his army had enough time to grow and if he could equip it with the best gear around, then no one could destroy his fortress.

Since the small skirmish, his town center and the fort had been upgraded to the next level. After gathering enough stone resources and wood he was able to progress. It was quite a sight to behold when he clicked the button as the whole place went through a fast change. More flicking occurred and the buildings just changed shape and expanded in scope slightly.
The market building didn’t need upgrading, after the center leveled up the number of merchants was doubled and he was also able to buy more stock. Iron weapons decreased in cost and steel ones became more prevalent. Some deep steel ones even appear on the market which he was tempted to stock up on. These were the type that he had a lot of practice with and could potentially change into game-changing weapons with his runes.

A few new buildings appeared after the upgrade, including a chapel. It would allow him to train cleric units which informed him that he was getting more magic into the mix. There was no way to produce mages yet but it wouldn’t be strange if there was a way to get them later.

Then there was also an academy building that appeared. It was a research building focused on queuing in new technologies. At the moment it didn’t have much besides a few options, one of them was masonry while the other one was a guard tower. It didn’t show what this would produce after finishing but the name gave him an idea.

Masonry would probably allow him to change out the palisade walls made of tied-together logs into proper stone walls. Then the guard tower would probably be a palace to store his archers and give him a way to defend his fort even better.

With the dawn of the academy, he also realized that the blacksmith’s building served a similar purpose. It was actually a research building in disguise as creating better weapons and armor would boost his new units. The moment a new unit was built it would come equipped with some default gear and this would depend on the level of the smithy.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Previously the units he encountered only had thin leather or fur armor on. After being able to produce half-plate iron armor and even steel armor, the new recruits started coming out pre-equipped with metal armor parts. Archers that wore light armor came out with hide variants so it was enough to produce heavy armor to have the light and medium counterparts appear.

‘I guess to sum it up, I need regular houses for civilians to increase my population. I can then assign jobs to those people, either send them off to be regular workers or turn them into soldiers. I won’t be able to assign them to anything if there isn’t enough food being generated, the same goes for water…’

Roland had to keep tabs on a lot of things during this trial. The previous one where he just needed to focus on fighting and crafting seemed like a breeze compared to this one. The thing didn’t even start but he was already not sure what he should invest into. Building up stone walls and guard towers felt like the obvious thing to do but he could also spend the resources on other things.