Anyway, now that they had a precious earth mage, their jobs of improving the roads was expedited.
The current width was sufficient for now so Micc’s earth skills were mostly used for tiles and jars.
They’d use his earth to gather enough material and the staff would work together to make the products. Micc handled the tiles using the molds, his ability hastening each batch production.
Drying them and then heating them takes a few days, but he was busy fighting monsters and gathering cores and he barely noticed anything.
When monsters run out, he’d get the staff to reinforce the path walks too.
He got the plant sprite to bless the spores for surgefern, improving their health and growth rates.
The effect was linked but what could he do?
The lining of surgeferns seemed to have some effect, but if the number of monsters increased then that effect would be negligible. He maybe could use the findings here to the expansions, which wouldn’t have many of the amenities in this place.
So after finishing off the new batch of monsters he went back home and ranted to Pang, who was lounging as if sunbathing on one of the garden recliners.
Did he get pudgier?
Finn shook his head of the thoughts, going straight to the point. "What are the other ways to protect areas outside the barriers?"
He had to feed him another core of course, but since he didn’t have many toughened level cores, he fed him about ten awakened stage cores.
"There is a beast-repelling rune. It can work forever as long as enough energy is embedded into it."
"What? Where?"
"You have to activate the Runemaker’s Workshop first."
"What?" he uttered. "I thought we only had—"
Pang mouth became an asterisk, and he realized it counted as a spoiler.
Finn sighed and threw over another set of awakened cores. Fortunately, he had upgraded already so this was less painful.
Sadly, the core was just enough to remove the ’asterisk-mouth’ and he had to feed him another core for him to speak of it again.
"It will become available once a certain productivity and sales is reached in the other two workshops, la!"
Finn’s eyes sparkled. He didn’t know anyone who could make runes yet, but he’d cross that bridge when he got there. Anyway, if people could see how much Durgan and Haurus, among others, learned, then maybe people would jump at the chance and volunteer to be his personal rune maker!
That said, it once again emphasized that he needed to get the smithy and the pharmacy to churn things out soon, and this meant he needed a lot of raw materials.
Similarly, now that he had mastered C-Class cuisine, he decided to focus more on strength gathering, especially due to the damned new mission. At the same time, he didn’t want to completely ignore his cooking. Anyway, the bonuses he received with those were not a joke!
He felt like he had reached the apex of what he could make at C, however. This meant that if he wanted to get closer to making B-class cuisines, he should get more superior ingredients! And these superior ingredients were likely only found deeper in the danger zones!
Fortunately, since he was going to hang around Level 2 more often from now on, or at least its borders, it wouldn’t be too far-fetched of a dream to reach this within a few years.
A lot of alchemic ingredients also needed superior ingredients, and a lot of them were nearer the dungeons than not.
It was actually a virtuous cycle. Essence food had subtle permanent effects aside from what was in their descriptions, which were all temporary.
There were also alchemy products that had permanent improvements to the body. The stronger he got, the rarer the material he could get, as well, and eventually he hoped to reach the peaks of both.
However, the fact of the matter was that even toughened stage warriors would have a difficult time in the Level 2 zone of the danger zones, even at the borders judging by how things were going.
Collecting the ores from the cave there might be too much for him now...but maybe he could get adventurers to collect them?
They could also collect other materials for him. He could let them use the expansion, which was also covered by the fees paid in the main inn.
Many would be heading to those areas anyway. This might also liven up the economy of the place, encouraging trade.
But at the same time, he didn’t want to use his own currency to buy them. He didn’t want to spend gold at all! And definitely not essence cores!
What could be a way for him to get what he needed, but at the same time not losing the resources he needed?
At this, he received a lot of inspiration from his home planet’s capitalist society.
Should he set up an exclusive point system?
A point system wherein he’d buy things or services from others, but instead of paying in the usual currency, he’d pay them with points he could assign arbitrary value to.
He could also assign the specific core level he needed. So, in this case, he needed tons of toughened cores so he could, perhaps, exchange one for one point or something.
These points could be used to buy things in the Inn for what seemed like a lower amount of money. He’d also give bonuses.
It could also be like a voucher, too, which would encourage them to keep coming back. He was pretty confident people would come back, but it wouldn’t hurt to ensure their frequency, right?
On earth, it was like the ones used by famous coffee chains like Moonbucks and Coffee Beams, wherein the people would be incentivized to visit often so as to not waste the points.
He heard that they were practically treated like a bank of sorts, because it took money and paid interest in exclusive products/services.
The more he thought about it, the more it made sense.