It had been quite a few hours since Alice's squad had arrived, and they went to sleep in the night without a bonfire, since the enemies would have spotted them if they did. This left the temperature rather frigid for most of the people here, where you could already see one's own breath.
Early in the morning, the group returned to the work they had left off in the night. It was gathering the leaves of a certain type of tree. This particular plant grew all around the Western Continent, and its main use was in creating smoke signals.
There plants would be easily lit on fire, and would create large amounts of non-toxic black smoke that would be seen for miles away.
Naturally, they would not be used for signals. Alice had noticed that the wind was not strong, but was definitely moving. She would be suing this wind to deliver a blinding layer of smoke into the enemy camp so that she could infiltrate and rescue the prisoners within the confusion.
"Ma'am~ If I may?"
"Go ahead."
"Why don't we use the Locosara Visser? It can make the smoke poisonous as well, and although it might not do too much at first, and nothing at all to the stronger individuals, it would definitely render most of the men in the enemy battalion unable to fight."
"But that would also make our people unable to fight. But that is right! We do not need them to fight, just run. And once we bring them out of the enemy camp, would could administer the antidotes!"
Everyone on the team had been given a brief course on poisons and antidotes by the Leon kingdom.
"Alright. 2 of you will begin the search for the antidote ingredients and will begin the process of creating the antidote for a whole battalion. 4 of you will go in search for the Locosara Visser, and begin making an odourless poison from this to prevent the enemy from becoming on guard. We need to make it seem like one of their careless soldiers accidentally caught the forest on fire, resulting in the smoke. The rest of you search for the leaves to create the smoke itself. We need a lot, and I need this to be complete by the end of the day! We will take action at night time."
"But we will also not be able to see" one of her squad members questioned.
"Do not worry about that. Although I will not be able to see the enemies, I will be able to guide up to the building where your battalion is held. Also, make sure to inject the antidote before we go in to prevent becoming useless deadweight. It takes about 4 minutes for the poison to take effect. After 2 minutes of the smoke being released, we will go in. Is that clear?"
"Yes ma'am."
While Alice was busy collecting leaves for her smokescreen, Ken had been building his nation steadily.
While SPU was helping him delegate people and bringing in more of the capital's population into the church of systems, as well as having night time lessons with the two princes in the presence of the king, Ken himself was also busy.
Jack had given him the 'Overlord system', which actually felt like a lot more power and authority to Ken than being the king of the nation itself had been for years!
In just a few days' time, the investments Jack had put into the common folk of the capital began to pay off as they began to earn him exp at a rather stable rate. This allowed SPU to now go on his 'night-time expeditions' any longer, and allow the legend of the Masked Protector to spread throughout both the citizens of the capital and its rotten underbelly.
Ken looked through his status and quests.
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Overlord's System
Name: Ken August
Age: 31
Ruling State: Cayden
Level: 2 (23/100)
Class: None
Titles: King of Cayden
Current state: Tired
----------------
Strength: 3(3)
Vitality: 2(2)
Stamina: 3(3)
Toughness: 2(2)
Dexterity: 2(2)
Sense: 2(2)
Mana: 1(1)
Aura: 1(1)
Stat Points: 2
----------------
Skills
Basic Management Lv 1(70/100)
Basic Charisma Lv 1(10/100)
==============
==============
Overlord Quest- Capital
Just develop your capital. Make it acceptable as a proper city at the very least.
Tasks:
1] Bring in half the people of the capital into the church of Systems (55/130,000)
2] Increase basic literacy to 50% (0.001/100) [Hint: Education can be provided to system players, at the cost of exp.]
3] Create a stable water supply in the capital (Aqueduct system)
4] Create a sewer system in the capital
5] Secure food for citizens
6] Increase the citizen approval of yourself in the capital to 10% (-50/10)
=============
'Sigh, after so many days, my approval rating is still at negative 50…' Ken thought to himself.
Surprising his approval rating is so low. Sure he was sick, but he didnt receive the country at a perfect state and destroyed it at his reign.
I would even say that due to SPUs actions the general populace should feel somewhat safer under his reign and at least be a solid 0 approval?
I mean, the 'System' is a god, so, the king is following the system, the population doesn't have any approval towards the king, but towards the system? It doesn't show but '1] Bring in half the people of the capital into the church of Systems (55/130,000)' it seems like the system is better than the king already...
It shows the population is 260,000(on the capital), so having negative -50, is a lot better than -100,000, it means many just don't care, and the population have mostly neutral thoughts about the king, only a few are really angry or dislike him, if you count each number as a population number...
I think the best way to get things right would be doing a population meeting, where the population tells what wrong in the kingdoom and the King shows everyone, he will be really repairing the city by doing the things the population tells him to, like:
'there is people are going hungry'
'there is less jobs for the population',
The king could resolve both with teaching the population without jobs how to hunt animals and then putting the meat they hunted on the market while paying them for the job, or even improving the farmers with systems to help the grow of plants and getting some of the population to also grab fruits and wild vegetables on the forest along with hunters to protect them.
@P_F12 Approval towards their new religion that brought the positive change does seem possible indeed. Didnt think of it as them being separated due to now being a kingdom religion "brought" by the king.
On another note, I dont feel the rating would be indicative as to all the population on the scale but a sort of average metric. maybe from -100 to 100 with -100 complete rebellion mode, 0 neutral and 100 completely satisfied.
And to be honest. I still fail to grasp how hopeless this kingdom is. We still need more worldbuilding on it to actually grasp why they are so destitute. Sure, we are told they are the poorest of the poor as kingdom goes and nobles keep their riches as hidden and non use as possible. But poor against who?
Physical money can be hard to come by but barter should be the number one way to trade within the kingdom if they are in such a deep economic problems.
I was going to expand on the kingdom being poor alot more but when i saw all i had typed it went very deep on geopolitical and economical liabilities on any existing kingdoms and the errors of having the same currency for all and blah blah blah. >.<
@Aloreal
Maybe it was sabotage, I mean there was 14 nobles corrupted by a fallen/evil god, the king was also poisoned to not interffer with the nobles' plans, maybe the pain and disapproval of the king would generate a type of overthrown on the royal family and help a fallen god back into power by getting a kingdoom filled with hopeless/pissed off population? Corruption also causes those problems, even if there's only 14 nobles being corrupted by the fallen god, there is also normal corrupted greedy nobles...
Now that you said about the approval is true, since the '6] Increase the citizen approval of yourself in the capital to 10% (-50/10)' if the 10% is the population is /10, 100% of the population would be /100,
umu, cool, thx chap
Hmm maybe he should get going with those quests
Thank you for the chapter.<3