While I and my doubles were laying out the railways in the kingdom, we were also registering the people in each territory as my villagers.
The project consumed lots of my village points, so this could be considered the compensation for my efforts.
Obviously, I asked for permission first from the ruling lords before adding their citizens as my villagers.
“Register as villagers…?”
“I’ve never heard of a Gift like that…”
“My territory’s not a village though?”
The lords looked puzzled and asked some questions, but thanks to the king messaging them beforehand, none of them declined.
It also helped that the Duke Kaion and Duke Talister had cooperated already.
Before long, I had registered over 1,000,000 villagers.
<< Ta-ta-ta-dah! Congratulations! Because you now have more than 1,000,000 villagers, your village has become level 12!>>
<<10,000,000 village points have been acquired as level up bonus.>>
<<You can now build more kinds of facilities.>>
<<Maximum village area has been increased.>>
<<The village skill [Copy and Paste] has been acquired.>>
The new facilities I was now able to make were the following:
<<Cemetery (300 points): a well-lit and pretty graveyard. Prevents tombstones from weathering; prevents tomb robbing; prevents corpses from turning into the undead. Assures that one shall rest in peace.>>
<<Elevated Ground (500 points): a tall plateau that offers a good view>>
<<Residential District (1,000 points): a zone that has as many housing units as the space allows. Has features that prevents crimes as well as noise.>>
<<Cathedral (1,500 points): a holy facility that serves as the center of faith. If one was to pray here, maybe they can receive the divine protection and favor of the gods?>>
<<Amusement Park (2,000 points): a leisure facility that comes with various attractions. Hang out here and forget your daily worries away!>>
“A gravesite, huh. We have more people now, so I guess I should consider making one soon.”
Thanks to a number of factors—like the overall age of the villagers being low, the hospitals, and the retirement homes—death in the village has been rather rare so far.
For that reason, we only had a simple graveyard set up in the village.
Also, in this world where burial was the more popular method of taking care of corpses, the said corpses occasionally crawled up from the ground after turning into an undead.
Apparently though, a cemetery built by my Gift would help keep that from happening.
“If I’m going to build a Cemetery, I guess it’s better to build it in an Elevated Ground, right? Rather, why is something like an elevated ground a facility…?”
It was more of a terrain than a facility, I thought.
“Well, there are manmade elevated ground, I guess.”
As for the Residential District, it seemed like it allowed me to build multiple housing units at once. I could do so one by one, of course, but this seemed like the more efficient way both effort-wise and cost-wise.
“Now, the Cathedral…Millia did say she wanted a bigger church, but…”
According to Millia, there were now more people attending the services in the village’s church. It has gotten to the point where people were almost elbow to elbow.
Their solution to this was to hold multiple services at differing times instead of just the one.
If it was just a matter of making the church larger, using Facility Customization would do. However, it seemed like the Cathedral—which essentially was the upgraded version of a church—offered an effect that wasn’t present in a church.
Given all that, I decided to clear the eastern side of the village and turn it into an Elevated Ground.
On top of that elevated ground which overlooked the entire village, I built the cemetery.
Graveyards tended to give the impression of being a gloomy place, but the cemetery my Gift built was almost like a well-maintained park or garden. Moreover, because I placed it so high, not only was it actually bright there, the view from there was also nice. It was definitely a pleasant resting place.
“I should make a road all the way to the top. Oh, and build an observation tower here as well.”
A road made by my Gift could make traversing even slopes easy.
Even the elderly shouldn’t have any problems visiting their dearly departed now.
And then, in front of the Elevated Ground, I built a Cathedral.
“Woah, it’s so magnificent…!”
What appeared before me was a large, splendid structure that could rival even a palace. It even had some spires.
“Is this…? Luke-sama, can this be the new church!?”
“Y-yeah. It turned out to be much larger than what I thought it would be though. Especially since you’re our only priest…”
“You don’t have to worry about that, Luke-sama. Churches from all over the kingdom, including Areisler, are already preparing to send priests and nuns to our village.”
“Huh? Is that so? How many people are we expecting?”
“About a hundred.”
A-a hundred!?
“*(After all, the village is now the center of faith in all of the kingdom! Fufufu!)*”