[D'sP] How They Became Refugees - Chapter 373

Now, while most of the inner circle wasn’t all that interested in the bricks, one person very much was. Jimmy understood what it meant for most buildings to be made of them. A simple thing to figure out by looking at how buildings were made in history.

Sure, the rich and powerful would do stuff like make castles and such. However, most buildings are made from the cheapest stuff that is readily available. One country is particularly rocky? Lots of rock houses. Another one has all the trees? They’re going to have wood buildings. A certain river has a ton of clay? Clay bricks everywhere.

So for this place to make so much out of quartz bricks? It meant three things. Lots of quartz. It was cheap for them to make into those bricks. And most importantly, it was easy. After all, it doesn’t matter if a place has a ton of giant stones around if they don’t have the ability to move them or easily break them down.

Now, the concept of a brick with quartz mixed in isn’t unheard of. Such things have been done before to add a bit of glitter to the product. However, that isn’t what the people had been describing. Jimmy had to go back and re-question some people, but in the end, he got a proper idea of what they were.

People had been describing them as bricks, because they had the shape. Which was a relatively effective shape, so that made sense. What most glossed over was that it seemed more like sandstone, except made of quartz instead of sand. Sort of like someone crushed up a bunch of crystals and then epoxied it together. Though they certainly didn’t use epoxy.

And this was where Jimmy’s interest lay. Whatever they did had to be easy and cheap. That meant they weren’t melting all those bricks into shape or anything. While possible, they weren’t so far ahead that they had fusion power or anything. Wouldn’t have turned so hard into magic over electricity if they did, at least Jimmy assumed so. This left some sort of process to connect the quartz together and Jimmy wanted that process.

He had spent a ton of time working with bones at this point. In fact, in an effort to catch his bone carving skill up to his carpentry skill so they could merge, his most recent house was practically made of bone. The problem was that bones weren’t exactly the most convenient shape. Though even if you make their natural shape fit in, it kind of looks creepy. If he could figure out their technique for forming the quartz into bricks, it might help him do something similar with bones.

Jimmy admitted this was a bit of a stretch. However, he thought it was possible and so even if the quest didn’t have the answer? Attempts would be made to make it work, anyway. The town already has some roads of crushed bones, so it wouldn’t be too out of place.

Besides, it was the one resource they would likely always have access to at the highest of quality. After all, while the dungeon did have some boneless enemies, it seemed to really like goats and kobolds. Though Jimmy and the rest had avoided all attempts to use kobold bones. That didn’t feel right. Not that they would outlaw the general use of any non-sapient materials. Just that they wouldn’t personally use stuff from near sapients like the kobolds.

Of course, with such a big matter, Ace and Jimmy aren’t the only ones with their own special wants and desires. The Barrais want a look at any magic security stuff. Even a simple lock with magic added on would be of great interest to them, let alone actual magitech.

Kelly, of course, is offering quite a lot herself for anyone that manages to find books, journals, or research notes on the integration of magic. Even Camila is getting in on the action, despite the fact that whoever these people were, they were the opposite of the kin when it came to tech and development. Though just as equally, the fact they could still grow enough food in an ecumenopolis was of great interest to her. After all, they had to have been doing so even before the magic came around.

Oh, and there was Doyle, though he couldn’t exactly put up a quest for stuff. Of course the bricks interested him, though more as a one and done kind of thing. After all, he just needed one brick and that would be enough.

More important to him, however, was any magitech he might get his hands on. Ace and the others in town wanted it as examples to build from in the future. Their current abilities limit the use of the stuff since by its very nature, magitech requires masterwork crafts, at least at the start for the more complex things.

At the simplest level, magitech would include making leather armor from a fire resistant creature to make said armor fire resistant. As Ally termed it, inherent magitech. Now, it isn’t quite as simple as just curing the leather and making the armor like normal. You need special materials and processes to bring out the effect.

Any magitech more complex than that is going to need enchanting and imbuing. That in turn requiring masterwork materials. This is where magic and magitech split, because making leather armor and enchanting it with fire resistance is not magitech. If instead you use the fire resistant leather above and run strips of it down the leather armor and enchant specifically those strips to pull in heat and direct it away, then you’re dealing in magitech again.

Of course, with enough research into material science the high end of magitech dips back down into being inherent again. After all, why enchant those leather strips if you’ve figured out a method and the right alchemical processes to make them do it without enchanting? It is at that level that magitech truly shows the effectiveness of technology for raising the floor.

Without the need to enchant, it becomes possible to automate the creation of such things again, instead of requiring a master craftsman to make the parts for you. Though at the highest level, you still mastercraft when possible because then you can include other enchantments since the inherent magitech isn’t taking up enchantment slots.

Doyle can just sidestep the early problems of a place light on master craftsmen. After all, everything he makes is a mastercraft. Because dungeons are just that much of a cheat. Though that does make him hope Ace and friends will end up dumping a bunch of junk on him after the quest. After all, they’ll likely end up with a ton of stuff that is broken or on testing they break. And what do you know, a dungeon doesn’t care as long as it isn’t too broken. With what defines “too broken” being more of an intent sort of thing than how actually broken something is.

That brought up an annoying pain point. Doyle still didn’t have the pattern for trees. At first, he thought it was because all the original wood had been heavily treated, being pre-system stuff. By now, though, he had gotten much fresher stuff in the form of wooden weapons and armor. Which you would think would give him the pattern.

But noooo, that wood wasn’t “tree” enough. Maybe if they had dumped even a single acorn or a fresh branch into the dungeon, things would be different. However, unlike a lot of byproducts, wood chips and such have a ton of uses, even with how much the town is rebuilding things. And that doesn’t count the fact that they have wood mages who can compress the scraps all down into excellent firewood.

Doyle stops, realizing he was getting a little peeved about the subject. It’s not their fault. He turns to his last floor where he has gathered a party of fully realized kobolds. Though hopefully, besides the healer, it won’t be the actual team he sends. While they would do alright, these kobolds were just a selection of those who were ready to go.

That means they don’t have the scavenge skill, which would be unfortunate as Doyle had already spent four pattern adjustment points to get the skill. Which, admittedly, was pretty cheap. It seems kobolds are naturally good at it. Still, it was points spent and so hopefully the quest portal doesn’t pop up before the new batch of kobolds with the skill had a chance to become real.

And Doyle isn’t the only one facing the deadline with worry. All around the world are people only now realizing they aren’t really ready for something like this. The horrible news of an entire community falling was enough for many to start really striving to advance. But it was the quest’s potential to reveal a major pitfall that caused despair.

After all, not every community was placed near a forest or some other naturally dangerous location. Some places had been skating by on the fact that they believed there wasn’t anything too dangerous around. Whether that was true was up for debate, but it was what they believed.

Worse, as long as they received even a single refugee, how that community fell was revealed. They had been placed in the fork where two rivers joined together. The rivers were of decent size and so held back any true danger from most of the settlements. Even the danger of starvation was quite low in the early days as there was a ton of fish to feed them.

This ended up causing a bit of a divide as those settlements on the edges away from the river were forced to handle all the true danger. Not that the other settlements didn’t provide them support. Being basically a wall against the wilds was kind of important so the other settlements provided them food and such.

Except that was how the divide formed. Ace was right to avoid the top ten percent. They had gotten arrogant in their power. No longer was the food payment or a gift for what they did, it became their right. It was that attitude and a change in the river that caused their downfall.

While those in the edge settlements would go on to tell people that the other places stopped providing enough food to keep up their work, the truth was the fish population dropped. Despite this, the other settlements still tried to provide for them, they just couldn’t feed them as lavishly as they had been. Nevermind the fact that they had a dungeon with some kind of antelope in it they could have been hunting for their own food.

Of course, anyone knowing that the community ended up falling would have twigged that the fish population decreasing was a bad sign. It wasn’t the settlements eating them all or them moving somewhere else. A new predator had arrived and soon made itself known. They must have been close to the ocean, as one day, krakenoid beasts rose up out of the water in search of more meat. Worse, those monsters had mental powers capable of stunning people and so that first attack was devastating.

Did those defending the edge away from the river rush over to help once they found out? Of course not! After all, they hadn’t been receiving enough food and if those “having it easy” in the settlements they protected wanted help? Well, they better bring them more food. Nevermind the fact that the fish were mostly gone and they had lost a ton of their fishers.

From there, the actual fall of the settlement was quite rapid. People abandoned the shores right away, but that didn’t keep them safe. The krakenoids and their mental powers drove channels deeper into the community, allowing them to feast even as the people ran. It was at this point that the system decided the community had fallen.

In other communities that had taken in the ten percent, people heard many stories about how much the “fall” was nonsense and that they had it under control. Of course, just as equally they had heard the truth from many more. At least, as long as they didn’t focus only on the getting those from the ten percent, ignoring the others.

What The Refugees Saw - Chapter 372

Why The Low Attendance? - Chapter 374