Tom walked away from the crowd, with Alex following closely behind them. Tom did his best not to notice how bouncy her new figure was with every step she took.

  "So, where did you go? You disappeared after the first dozen?" Tom asked.

  "I had marked some of the early people as potentially useful staff members. I had them take over after a while so I could get started on other things," Alex said with a smile that made his cheeks heat up.

  "I was able to gather enough people to get started organizing everything. You'll need them to sign a contract to ensure their loyalty. Ugh, this would be so much easier with some Bureaucratic Skills," she said.

  "You're not going to pick anything up?" Tom asked.

  "My build isn't based around paper and ink like yours," Alex protested. "I am aiming for the pinnacle of magical power."

  Then, her expression shifted to one of contemplation.

  "I could aim for the [Pharaoh] class. It has some great magic skills with some leadership potential. But then I would need to pick up [Magician], upgrade it to [Dark Magician], and then combine it with the [Nobel] Class. Ugh, and with the xp recruitments for each level increasing every ten levels, this is going to be impossible." Alex mopped. "I just want to get [Arcanist] to level 30 first."

  Alex leaned into Tom as she complained, and Tom did his best to hold her reassuringly. While they weren't saying anything about it, Tom could tell this was actually stressing Alex out a lot more than usual. Tom could sympathize; this was day two of the system, and he just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep. He almost wished they had gone with Alex's idea to go full murder hobo.

  "The kitchens are already set up, fortunately, and the first man you resurrected, Will, he's a baker, not a system [Baker], a normal one, and he's already starting to make bread. I also roped off the Communications classrooms after Adams gave us those radios. I think we could turn them into a proper communications center. Abbadon has also roped off areas for Smithing Alchemy, and I've identified several rooms for craftsmen. We have two for chemistry or alchemy. The school also has classrooms for sewing, carpentry, butchery. We even have a chop shop for cars." Alex said as she shuddered in Tom's arms.

  "Are we focusing too much on crafting?" Alex asked nervously.

  "No," Tom retorted. "No matter what the system says, this isn't Noralon. There are no towns nearby we can fall back on. How long will we have ammunition? What happens when we need to build additional fortifications for the school? Hell, we don't even have enough weapons to equip everyone. It's better to get people started on leveling their crafting early than wait until we need it," Tom said as they arrived at the location that Alex had marked out as a potential smithy.

  With all of the people arriving, the settlement was already level 2, giving him 204 settlement points to play with. The room was already a metal workshop, so it had a lot of what he needed already. Opening up the settlement interphase, he went through the options.

  "Before you do anything, remind me how settlement points work?" Alex cut in.

  "You don't remember?" Tom asked. "Don't you have a [Knowledge] skill?"

  "It's for magic, not system stuff like yours. Besides, I'm ultra stressed right now and can't remember at the moment, so just tell me," Alex said as she poked him in the side.

  Tom let out a sigh as he started to explain.

  "Settlement points allow me to make any number of modifications to Hopkins. The field keeping monsters away, the animal lure, and even the durability enhancement are all purchased using settlement points. Right now, I'm spending them to get us a working Foundry as opposed to waiting God knows how long to build it ourselves."

  "What about the other options?" she asked.

  Tom briefly considered blowing her off and just buying the Foundry. But she was really pretty.

  "Alright, what were we thinking of?" Tom asked as he tossed her the settlement interphase.

  Alex blinked as she started surfing through the interphase. She had full admin privileges after him.

  "We could use it for this Mana converter," Alex pointed. "I don't really want to live without my computer."

  "Already on the list," Tom said.

  "Better rooms for people to live in," Alex suggested

  "We have people. What we need are resources," Tom said. "It would be much more efficient to just rob a few Ikeas or home depots and just build more rooms."

  "Right," Alex muttered as she rubbed her eyes. And we can't just max out the monster repellent field because it doesn't work half the time."

  "That's why I maxed out the durability bonuses instead of the monster field." Tom pointed out.

  The two of them started relaxing as they got into the minutia of min-maxing their settlement.

  "What about a greenhouse then?" She asked.

  "I'm combining that with the Cauldron and the energy condenser for the alchemist Cauldron. Should be worth plenty of bonus settlement points."

  "Right, we get, I think, a 5% bonus for every level of rarity, right?" Alex asked.

  "yep. We went from level 1 to level 2 when we hit a population of 500. Level three requires us to build three special buildings or, in this case, rooms. We need three rooms that are not residents. More than that, by increasing the rarity of the Foundry by using special materials, we can get bonus points on our next level up. Hence, we're getting the Foundry of the Demonic Dragon Emperor," Tom explained.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "Hmm, I'm going to say no. The Foundry of the Adamantine Torch Dragon would be better," she said matter-of-factly.

  Tom frowned.

  "But The Foundry of the Demonic Dragon Emperor will allow us to make Infernal gear with special effects against magic. On top of that, we can augment the crafts with [Blood sacrifices], [Demon summons], and [Infernal Corruption]... OK, I can see your point." Tom admitted as he heard himself speak.

  Alex chuckled. "Don't you know, I'm always right. You should listen to me more often."

  From a game sense, Tom hadn't been wrong to pick the demonic dragon emperor. The downsides could be ignored or even embraced. In the real world, that would be bad. Tom bit his lip. He really needed to alter his perception of his new reality. He would not come back if he died. He needed to remember that, especially as it was his job to resurrect everybody else.

  "Yeah, you're right. The extra points aren't worth having if we need to supervise the forge 24/7," Tom said as he purchased the [Foundry of the Adamantine Torch Dragon]

  Tom immediately felt the Torch Dragon Egg and the Adamantine Anvil leave his inventory, appearing in the center of the room. The surface of the anvil began to ripple. Then, the ripple started to spread across the room like a drop of wine into a cup of water. The alterations leached into the floor around the anvil. Before either of them could react, the transformation spread beneath their feet and climbed up the walls, up in an expanding wave until the edges met again on the ceiling as they did. The room itself expanded, and the floor sunk into the ground as they got an extra story worth of height out of the room as it changed, expanding and swallowing up the two nearby rooms as it became a proper Foundry.

  At the same time, the dragon egg sunk into the floor as the Foundry rose up out of the corner of the room. The Foundry was a square made out of black brick and decorated with metallic dragons. A staircase led up to the lip of the foundry formed on the side as taps appeared at the front of the Foundry, ready and able to pour out any molten material inside. A woosh signified the Foundry coming to life.

  "Holy," Alex gasped as she looked around in surprise and wonder. The classroom had completely changed. The basic gray of the concrete floor had turned rough and black, and veins of magma stretched out across the floor as if they were about to erupt, but they were only warm to the touch.

  The walls had turned into gleaming obsidian, and the windows, which were now high above them, appeared to have specks of color embedded within them.

  The other anvils had become smaller versions of the main one in the center of the room. Each was now composed of the same clear reddish-black metal as the first. Even the metal shop tools and machines that had been in the room beforehand were no longer mundane steel but instead transformed into Adamantine. Decorations of coiled Dragons and erupting volcanoes decorated the room and tools. Almost as an afterthought, a Forge popped out of the ground from one side of the room and started burning happily. The entire Foundry had become a place of utility and beauty.

  "I didn't expect it to be so beautiful!!" Alex breathed out as she looked around the room.

  "Meh," Tom said, unimpressed.

  "Meh?" Alex asked in shock.

  "It's only level 1," Tom said as he looked around his new Foundry. It's a good start."

  "You need to appreciate beauty more often," Alex chastised him as the notification popped up.

  DING!!!

  "I'm not sure how this is meh," Alex stated. "This was amazing."

  "More amazing than the Texadons Great Reef?" Tom asked.

  Alex suddenly grabbed his arm.

  "Oh my god. Do you think the Texadon Reef is real? Like it might actually be in the world now?!" she asked excitedly.

  "That was a part of the game. It wasn't real." Tom protested.

  "It was a part of the game, but now the game is real!" Alex pointed out.

  "The Texadons Great Reef, the Crystal Caverns on top of Gyrian Tomb, Mirror Lake, the shop with a thousand doors, Lumo's palace—those places might be real now. Hell, the Skylord palace might be floating over our heads right now. We could go there for real," Alex said as she beamed.

  "Assuming they're real and were transplanted onto earth with everything else." Tom pointed out.

  "Wow, just kill all the fun, put the fun in camps, why don't you, you fun Nazi."

  "Very funny."

  "I'm just saying, I just want to have a picnic in the real sky-hold parks."

  "You know what, fine, it's a deal, if it exists, I will take you there for a picnic with dragon steaks and golden apple cider," Tom promised.

  "It's a date, then," Alex said. Then she froze and blushed as she realized what she had said.

  Tom blushed but tried to brush it off.

  "Alright, Alex. Let's go deal with the Alchemy room next," Tom said as he led the stunned Alex out of the room.

  You may skip to the next chapter.

  Base

  Personal: +4 INT +4 WILL +3 EGO +3 CHA

  Racial: +3 WILL +2 END +2 SPIRIT +1 CHA

  Level Bonus: +1 to all Stats

  Mini-Character List

  Tom: Our Protagonist, the party healer

  Alex: Tom's best friend and the group's wizard

  AN: