Lord of the rings

The small community moved along and gathered in the throne room in front of the new Altar. The vertical stone slab was carved with a lot of symbols, depicting a sort of medieval kingdom, with farms and peasants, knights and ladies... At least a dozen rings were stuck in the stone, waiting to be unlocked by a special event.

John put his hand on the hand print, just under the gilded crown carving at the top of the Altar. A large interface window opened on the right side of the altar, strangely even Sylvia and Vesta could see it.

"This is it; as you can see a lot of it is greyed out and can't be read, but there are interesting things. The next ring is for the moment we get a population of 10, let's see the list, there might be things we can unlock," explained John.

"There's a lot of stuff and it looks like it is only the start of it," replied his lovely queen, happy where she was, in his arms.

STR:
build a mine: Deep pockets (+12 inventory slots)
Assign a worker to your mine: +5 STR

AGI:
Build a hunter's lodge: Hunter's eye (tracking ability and better aim with ranged weapons)
Assign a worker to your lodge: +5 AGI

END:
build a farm: Gourmet (better bonuses from food depending upon its quality, increased duration of bonuses from food)
Assign a worker to the farm: +5 END

INT:
Build a laboratory: Efficiency (-10% materials required when building/crafting/cooking)
Assign a worker to your laboratory : +5 INT

WIS:
Build a library: Scholarly Mind (allows to memorize a book and, if fulfilling all pre-requisites, to learn and understand the contents of memorized books, except skill books)
Assign a worker to your library : +5 WIS

CHA:
build a chancery: Diplomat (people you speak to are 20% less aggressive towards you)
Assign a worker to it: +5 CHA

LIB:
Build a courtesan chamber: Family planning (togglable birth control: normal cycle, fertile, infertile)
Assign a worker to it: +5 LIB

Build an armory: Mobile Armory (+1 equipment set slot)
Assign a worker to it: +10% durability auto repair per day for weapons and armors stored in it.

Build a road: +20% travel speed on road per road lvl

"Those are pretty useful perks we can unlock! And possibly +5 to all stats on a single item seems pretty good. It doesn't say how to get more skills or to upgrade the pathway system though," remarked Anna.

"Wait... On the left, there's more... Build arcane sanctum to upgrade portals... Build all seven stat related tier one buildings to unlock the second skill slot. I guess it will probably unlock a new list of buildings too, if it calls those tier 1. Can't wait to see what more these things can do," replied John.

"I could man the hunter's lodge, what do we need to make one?" asked Cali.

"Don't you already have a library? You should have this bonus already," said her sister, nearly at the same time.

"Hmm, that's right! Anna, check your interface."

"Nothing, just the craft skill."

"Ohh, I have to claim the rewards, look!" he clicked on the circle on the side of the line linked to the library and it suddenly shined a depiction of a few bookshelves on the stone slab was now in color and no longer light grey.

"I have it now! Scholarly mind. It will be useful at school and for a lot of other things. Thank you!" she said, French kissing her boyfriend. "It's the most amazing thing that could ever happen to me! Can you put someone as librarian?"

"I wonder if we can... Ohhh I can't assign myself to one of the buildings or stations," he told her.

"Of course silly! You're the king! Try putting me as librarian," she replied.

"It would accept it, but wouldn't it be better to make you chancellor? You're already doing some of the work. Taking care of everyone around here. The bonus will disappear if we unassign the person, so let's see what we can build before deciding who can do what," he proposed.

"That's a good idea!" replied the three girls in one voice.

What was needed to finish the laboratory would need to be bought, it couldn't be crafted. The mine and farm would actually require a lot of manual labor to prepare the area before being built and would only count as built once in use. The same could be said about roads; that would probably wait for the kingdom to have more people or for the king to be more powerful.

The chancery, second seat of power after the throne room, would only require a few things: office furniture, paper, writing material, a few shelves and a seal of office to make edicts official. The furniture could be easily crafted (and upgraded afterwards), and a few school supplies would suffice to equip it, so the only thing that John needed to focus on was the seal.

Some wood and a little bit of slime material (for extra comfy cushion on the seat) were enough to convert one of the free rooms of the second underground floor into an office, the seal ended being made of a small piece of enchanted wood, a bit of copper, silver and a golden coin (and a small amount of steel).

The interface let John appoint his queen as a chancellor. He had a monarch page in his interface now, listing the kingdom elements, his subjects and the jobs available or occupied.

"So, what is the next order of business?" he asked his new chancellor.

"Lots of things, we need to see if we can build the lodge and decide assignments for Sylvia and Vesta. We have to start thinking about a code of law. You need to contact your scientist friend, she might help us for the lab setup. We need to figure out how to present this place to June and how soon we can invite her here..." she listed.

"I'm... Well, I know I should be honest with some people, like my mom and probably June, but the more I think about it, the more I see that there will be a lot of issues coming from it. I really could use your help on that... OK, the lodge! We need some living trees next to each other, some wood, some stone, a knife set and a leather working station, six hunting trophies... I think we have all of that. Let's do it!" he announced. The prospect of having his girlfriend at his side when he would have to explain these things was really comforting and removing some of the stress he was feeling about it.

Before leaving he checked the requirements for the armory: in addition to a crafting station and a few weapons and armor, he only needed some wood and metal for the weapon and armor racks. The shopping carts from the store were useless in the kingdom, their wheels wouldn't work on anything else than a flat, hard surface and they would be unusable on stairs, so they ended up becoming materials to be used in future improvements. The place didn't look like much, and he had to move the crafting station to one of the underground rooms, but it was enough to unlock the perk. He had displayed a few of the lizardskin armors and obsidian spears from the elven expedition on the racks, it wasn't really impressive, but better than to leave the place empty. John had now 3 equipment sets, while the other ring bearers had two. He would now be able to have both his combat gear and school uniform available in addition to whatever he would be wearing.

"This will make stripping and getting dressed so easier. No more time wasted when I'm with my boyfriend," said Anna, demonstrating it by making her uniform flicker on and off. With her limited inventory, storing two full sets of clothes without taking any slots would be pretty handy. Cali was less concerned about it, usually only wearing a loincloth, if even that. But she would be happy to have her hunting gear handy on a simple command. John realized that his companions were under equipped and that he should take some time later to buy or craft a few things for them.

Building the hunter's lodge was pretty easy, once all of the materials gathered, be only had to click a button. The wooden building was built between two trees and had some observation platforms in the branches that could be accessed by ladders from the roof of it. The inside was spartan, with little furniture except for the frame used to cure leather and pelts. The walls were decorated with pelts, horns and skulls of animals that Cali had hunted.

John was happy to have unlocked 4 ring perks so far, Hunter's eye, Diplomat, Scholarly mind and Mobile armory. More than half of them were a lot more useful to the girls than to him, overlapping existing skills he had. But the +5 AGI from Cali being assigned to the lodge and +5 CHA from Anna being chancellor were pretty nice.

He was about to plan for the next thing to do when he was interrupted by his phone ringing. The interface relayed calls when his phone was in his inventory (a function apparently disabled during combat, from John's experience with it).

John never had many friends that knew him by name and the list of people who had this number was really limited. He checked the caller's ID.

Incoming call from Danielle Kislev
ANSWER IGNORE

He had used a good bit of his mid day break, but being able to directly go back to school was a plus. He had time available to speak with her and maybe even for her to visit.

"Sorry, darling, I think it is better if I take this call. I hope we will still have a bit of us time."