Chapter 307: Chapter 305 – Tier 3 Trial Part 2

“So, is this supposed to be the lord’s throne room or something?”

Roland spoke to himself while entering the shoddy-looking fort. It was on a motte which was a mound formed to house it. The elevation wasn’t that high up and the wooden walls consisted of the same sharpened logs tied together by rope. These fortifications wouldn’t really stop anyone, perhaps people below level twenty-five would have to scamper around him but besides that, it would go down quickly.

It was not much of a fort as there weren’t any watchtowers outside and only one building directly in the middle. The size of this building was comparable to a small house but there was a lot of space around it. This wide open space gave him the impression that it was supposed to be filled out by something and the answers he found on the inside.

The inside of this almost hut was primarily empty. A long brown carpet made out of some sort of animal hide led up to a large chair which was probably supposed to be his throne room. The position of the throne was slightly elevated and on the sides there were several windows that let some sunlight in. Besides the large chair, there were also some torches that could probably be lit when the space needed to be used during the night.

When entering this place he had the Lord’s Aid puppet trailing behind him but the moment he entered this area the automaton stopped in place. It didn’t seem that it wasn’t able to enter the area by itself but waited to be allowed inside instead. It seemed that the wooden people really saw him as their leader and would follow some rules concerning this role play here.

Roland decided to go around this place and after reaching the throne his gaze landed on it. The thing was made all out of wood and lacked any type of soft cushioning for his behind. Perhaps he would need to use it for something later but for now, he discovered a door to the side. When going through it he was taken to what looked to be the Lord’s bed chamber. A large bed with a mattress filled with something was there for his use. To the side, he also spotted a chair at a desk with some parchments and notebooks.

“Nothing to actually read, just empty pages to write things in… how long do they expect me to be in this trial?”

There was a quill along with some ink that he was very familiar with. It was just like the first one that he used when he went through his runic mana scribe faze. When looking at this place he had a premonition that it could take a few months before he gets out. The pages here were probably to take notes and maybe to plan things out for the future. His first task was to defend this place which he needed to prepare for.

“The fifty soldiers I have wouldn’t pose much of a threat to the current me, the enemies are supposed to arrive in around a week's time, what should I do in the meantime? Is there anything in here that I can use?”

Roland had hoped to at least find a map of the area somewhere in here but it wasn’t there. Perhaps he would need to draw it up himself while exploring the areas around the castle. As it stood he had some time to allocate to everything. The soldiers had their orders to train up as he had gone to the barracks but he had yet to decide on the resource allocation.

‘I just wanted to be a shop owner…’

This whole trial was making him want to cancel and go pick up the Master Runesmith pathway. While he was fine fighting monsters and crafting gear, leading troops wasn’t something he was familiar with. When going down into dungeons he was also a solo adventurer with only Agni being his only companion. When joining other groups he was never really part of them and never cared about working as a team player. Now he needed to somehow lead these puppets to victory.

‘Well, these automatons might be more like golems than people so it will make things a lot easier, they also don’t seem to question me in any way.’

While contemplating his next step and gathering more information he finally decided to sit down on the throne made for him. It would be quite tiresome to go around this place on foot as it wasn’t that small. Luckily to his surprise when he sat down another system panel popped out before him.

‘Wait… this looks similar to one of those games…’

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Roland came from the modern world and had gone through all sorts of types of games. Role-playing games and strategy games were some of the ones that he enjoyed. The interface before him was quite low on the graphical spectrum but it was similar to some of the strategy games that he played.

In the upper right corner, he could see the same gold icon that he witnessed when interacting with the merchant. To the right side of the icon was the number corresponding to his current gold level. When he tried tapping on the gold to get more information he saw the letter one with a plus sign next to it.

‘Huh… could this be how much gold I gain per day… or per hour?’

Everything started making more sense as this whole trial was shaping up to be some sort of game. The plus one gold was probably how much of it he would gain per cycle but he would only know after some time passed. At the moment he had exactly a hundred gold but it wasn’t the only resource that was there. After going through various other screens filled with pixel art he found that there was a lot more to this thing than met the eye.

‘It is a Runesmith-related trial so it’s normal for it to have all those various materials.’

The screen gave him a very intricate list of materials which were also separated by quality. There were metals like iron, bronze, and mythril. Some of them came in ingot form while others in raw ore form. They had quantity numbers assigned to them but as it stood now he only had simple metals at his disposal.

‘There is an actual map… but most of it is covered by dark fog… this is really just like a strategy game map. Does this mean I have to send a scout out to look for other resources?’

It didn’t take him that long to grasp the situation here and the controls were easy to understand. The trials were said to be created to suit the people taking them and also adapt to their life experiences. In his previous life, Roland spent countless hours playing games that shaped this test that could create a whole world within itself. Probably if a denizen of this world took the same trial the parameters would change to suit their understanding of things around them.

He wasn’t quite sure if this was a blessing or a curse just yet. Thanks to this system within a system it was possible for him to automate a lot of things and quickly order his troops around. However, if the trial wanted to remain fair it would need to turn up the difficulty of it all. It wouldn’t be strange if the added information would cause the opponents to become stronger, either by the size of their troops increasing or their tactics becoming more intricate.

“Okay… first I need to send someone out to scout for more resources, this small encampment is generating one gold but everything costs at least one gold…”

This throne room allowed some conveniences as he didn’t need to directly go to the barracks to assign the training regiment to the soldiers. The one Wooden Warrior that he didn’t give a new class was also there, now that he was here he began thinking about the future. All of the lower-level soldiers had numbers attached to them that corresponded to their levels but also how much they leveled up from training.

Roland needed to wait for a day until he calculated all the numbers but perhaps before the enemies arrived in a week's time he could advance every one of his wooden men to another class. When thinking of this and the mapping problem he realized that he could assign a Wooden Scout class. Each of the classes had a small description to go along with it which made the choice a lot easier.

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