It was Hudson who upgraded first, taking two days after the big group left. Miya followed soon after, more than a day later.
They could tell that without the inn, they would’ve still taken quite a bit longer to finally break through that barrier. They praised him a lot, and the news that the inn could ’soften the rank barrier’ would definitely spread in Town.
When they checked out, they gave him a lot of toughened cores as a bonus, and he was finally left alone with the staff.
Finn didn’t think there’d come a time when he’d be thankful he didn’t have new customers. When they left, he finally heaved out a breath of relief.
He looked at the large area. Time to build! Really!
The first thing he did was to lay out the roads. Even if he didn’t go to school, he observed the real world long enough to know roads were important.
For one, he knew that a place like the slums, where planning wasn’t done, was dangerous, and many people got beaten or even killed there. Of course, that was an extreme example that wouldn’t happen within the barrier, but the practicality was there.
Besides, if one were rushing or injured, how annoying would it be to reach a dead end instead?
Anyway, now that he had the [Pathwalks], there was no way he wouldn’t use it. While they made manual ones, those didn’t look as pretty as he hoped. Not to mention, they could only place them sparsely due to the lack of manpower and materials.
Pathwalks from the Hearth System were different. They would likely be built up quickly as well.
Of course, their earlier efforts in making tiles were not in vain. The Pathwalks were only buildable within the inn walls after all. What about beyond that? He could still use those outside, to hopefully guide more and more customers to his side.
Anyway, the 2 meters by 2 meters module was adjustable in dimension. This meant that he was not limited to a square. He could form it into an elongated path, which was what he was doing.
He first designed the plaza in his mind, which he placed in front of the inn, but with several meter easement or gap, which he’d eventually plant some shrubs in.
The plaza would not be small, as he was predicting higher traffic here. He could still remember how crowded it was a few days ago, and he shivered at the thought that this area would have the same.
For now, he had to organize the layout well to lessen the confusion. He wasn’t in the position to shoo away guests for his own aesthetics, but he could at least control the amount of traffic staying around the inn building to make things less energetic in areas where people just wanted to rest.
This was also why there was a buffer of green and shrubs between the main plaza and the inn, and the camping areas would also be located far away from it.
Speaking of the plaza, it was designed to hold a hundred or so at a time. The circulation was wide enough that stalls could be placed at the sides and still have decent width for normal foot traffic.
He also left behind a large tree at the center of the plaza. They’d add benches here and a small garden for small groups to hang out in.
As for the stalls, since he knew that since level 0 and level 1 were sometimes used as a shortcut for certain groups, he did hope some caravans would set up shop once the customer base stabilized.
According to Pang (after being fed with another core, of course), once enough items for gold/core transactions outside of the Inn’s functions occurred within the territory, a new function would be made available.
The tax system.
With it, the Inn would receive 10% of all proceeds of these trades. That would pretty much be passive income, yo!
He then headed to the back-of-house gardens. He had already placed quite a few [Gardens] when the place expanded a day ago.
For now, they only looked like typical raked soil. People would only know it was special on their own if they observed it closely for days, and/or if they used an assessment tool.
After the upgrade, gardens increased their maximum purchase cap. He added a few more, clustering them into 2 by 3 blocks, with space for a person to walk in between.
He mentally assigned which ones would get which plant, and a lot of them had to do with bindergrains and thornroots, which were the most filling fruits, and the main ingredients for most long-term food like instant noodles, crackers, protein bars, and so on. He also planted a lot of the plants used for his sauces, pickles, and wines.
He made reads to the east and the west connecting to the plaza, with one heading to the woccs, but did not do anything else yet.
The next thing he did was to upgrade the building! After the Inn was upgraded, the functions and the rooms themselves didn’t upgrade automatically. Each change was paid for manually. This included the basic shell.
[Would you like to upgrade Basic Shell for 10,000 Hearth Points?]
He pressed yes, and a new window appeared for him to choose which rooms to appear.
They were all in text format, so he didn’t have to stress himself in layouting the rooms. He just had to choose which rooms he wanted, and the system would adjust accordingly.
Including the existing basic amenities, 5 basic bedrooms, and 3 improved bedrooms, he added 10 more basic bedrooms, 7 more improved bedrooms, and 3 Luxury Bedrooms.
He also chose to add the new functional rooms like [Staff Room], [Staff Training Room], and the [Inn Shop]. The rest of the room types did not show up while the Main Building window was open, meaning they were meant for separate buildings.
The staff watched as the current roof disappeared, leaving behind the walls, which soon grew vertically as well. It followed the layout of the ground floor, except there were balconies built up, cantilevered on all sides.
"Waooo..." The staff were in awe, watching the magic. Micc, the mage, was particularly affected. He was so emotional that he stood up absentmindedly, forgetting he had a bad leg, so he almost fell down.
Durgan caught him in time, and Finn only shook his head with fondness. He then looked at his staff who stared at him, with eyes sparkling, excited to see what the changes were.
He laughed. "Shall we go take a look?"