Chapter 6 The Beginning
I stared blankly at the screen. What kind of system asks its host if they were a girl or boy. Pokémon came to mind. Can't they just scan my face or something?
So obviously, I said, "I am a boy."
[And what is your name?]
"I'm-" I cut myself off from answering. Do I really want to keep my old name? That name was a sign of my old life, of the modern civilisation. Shouldn't I give myself a new name? It's not that hard too, with loads of names at my disposal, from films and history alike. I could take the name of anyone, Alexander the Great, Sun Wukong, Liu Bei, King Arthur, Caesar, Siegfried.
But out of those names, only two really stood out to my situation. King Arthur, the ideal king that sacrificed his life in defence of his country, and Caesar, who brought the entirety of Gaul under Roman rule and established himself as the ruling dynasty of Rome. If I could bring even half of what they did, to this honourless world, I could die satisfied.
"My name is Arthur, Arthur Caesar."
[Hello, Arthur Caesar! Please customise your appearance]
Woah, I was given the equivalent of a free plastic surgery by this system. It seems not too bad after all. So after an hour of tweaking, I managed to give myself quite a great appearance, looking like one of those immortal Chinese cultivators. And I just realised my wolves were gone. Oh well, I had hoped they'll be my pets, but that's too much to ask for, isn't it?
[Quest completed!
Reward: Full Forge of Empires System/Grimoire
300 Diamonds
5000 Coins
5000 Supplies
1xTown Hall
200mx200m Land
10xForge Points]
[Host, please place down your Town Hall.]
And where did I want to put the centre of my future empire? On one of the seven hills or on the plateau? Of course, being rather lazy (I did not want to walk up a slope every day), I told the system to place it in the plateau. Immediately, I could see the Stone Age town hall in the distance, roughly centred on the plateau. And walls, roughly 1 metre tall made from a mishmash of stone and wood springing up in a rough 200x200 area. Just missing the edges of the Plateau.
"System, why are there walls, I do not remember this feature from the game."
[These walls are for an extra layer of protection in case of attack. Remember you are not in a game anymore, and with no war, people can easily sneak into your city. So be certain to upgrade the wall when the time comes.]
Then the screen vanished, and I looked around in surprise for a second. If my system was gone, how am I meant to create a great city?
Then I felt a weight settle down in my arms, and saw a book, a heavy black book with 'Forge of Empire System', embossed on the cover. It looked to be made of animal sling and rough parchment. I flicked it open and I could see a isometric drawing of the city, basically only the town hall at the moment. And underneath the picture, were the words
[ Welcome Host! This grimoire form happened as the host's civilisation is not advanced enough to allow me any other form. When you progress in age, the form I take will change as well.]
I gaped at the grimoire. This was going to suck. I was probably not going to have the screen back until I enter the virtual future. It would simply be inconvenient to carry the grimoire everywhere I go.
I sighed. No use crying over what can't be prevented, after all. It seems that this system also lacks quests, which was understandable, as it would be way too easy other wise. So I flicked over to the technology page and placed all needed forge points into stilt houses and researched the technology. Now since I'm the only one here, I'm not sure how that would affect the rest of the population. Whether it was up to me to spread the technology or it just spontaneously appears in everyone's head. But what I did know was everything there was to know about stilt houses, at least as a Bronze Age person would.
And here's another difference from the game. Apparently I can collect supplies from things outside e.g chopping down trees, and supplies were collected from production buildings, which now apparently had a function that they can convert whatever they made to supplies, and supplies can be converted to building materials to build things. And now the advisors that you had in the games started appearing.
And the book opened and writing started appearing.
[Do not worry about mutiny as of yet, host, as a gift, your first 1000 citizens will be extremely loyal, unless you do something which is too horrible. Except for Ragu who will be loyal until he betrays you in the colonial age, although this could be avoided...]
Well that's both good news and bad news. This means I would be able to forget about politics and betrayal for the present, but I'll have to face it sometime in the future.
I sighed and swapped my current supplies to build six stilt houses, only to gape as my book helpfully informed me that it will take 1 hour for them to finish. If this I how long it takes for one of the quickest builds in the game, then I shudder for what it'll be for the stuff by the Industrial Age.
Then I looked at the forge point counter in the grimoire and almost screamed. Where the recharging time is, there was 6 numbers. 23:58:56 x2
So every day I'll get only 2 forge o points. I cursed and stomped my feet in quite childish rage. At this rate my civilisation will take years to even match the other civilisations of the ASOIAF universe. Even getting to the Iron Age will be difficult.
"System, why do I only get two forge points a day?" I asked, a veneer of calm stilling my face from making any change in expression.
And back to me on the page was written, [because you do only have 2 scientists. Every scientist will give the civilisation 1 forge points a day.].
I could already roughly guess where scientist came from. Probably from schools.
So I poured my forge points into spears and started building the spearsmen barracks as well as a couple of hunters, each of which will take one hour to construct. I would need to keep my city fed, after all.
And so with those constructions in place, I went back into my town hall to sleep the hour away. The bed in it was at least comfy, for the Bronze Age anyway. And so I dreamt, dreamt of eventually reaching the future eras.
