Chapter 29: The Impending Food Imbalance

[A brilliant victory, you gained 16500 experience]

[You scavenged and obtained]

[Ordinary resources: Wood 10000 units, Minerals 10000 units, Food 10000 units]

[Special resources: Mercury 1000 units, Gemstone 1000 units, Crystal 1000 units, Sulfur 1000 units]

[Gold Coin ×100000]

[Points ×10000]

[Your level has been raised to LV6]

[You gained 1 Free Attribute Point]

[You can choose one skill from the following three skills]

[1. Basic Mysticism (recovers 10% Magic Value daily)]

[2. Basic Sailing Technique (increases sea movement by 50%)]

[3. Basic Soul Summoning Technique (10% of enemy troops killed in battle become your Skeleton Soldiers)]

[Your level has been raised to LV7]

[You gained 1 Free Attribute Point]

[You can choose one skill from the following three skills]

[1. Basic Pathfinding Skill (reduces the terrain's effect on movement by 10%)]

[2. Basic Offense Skill (increases damage of melee attacks by 10%)]

[3. Basic Magic Power (increases damage of attack magic by 5%)]

Well, this annoys Basic Magic Power again, and here it comes up again.

At level 7, he directly chose Basic Magic Power; the other two, he felt he didn't quite need, and then felt his Magic Power churning within him—then there was no more.

As for the remaining Basic Magic Power Skill Book, it would have to be shelved for now, to see if it would be sold or kept for other heroes to use later.

Qin Muye was quite torn about the skills at level 6, he really wanted both Basic Mysticism and Basic Soul Summoning Technique.

Especially Basic Soul Summoning Technique—after learning it, should he encounter similar large-scale clearance activities, he could acquire a lot of labor from living beings afterward.

But the problem was that it definitely wouldn't be useful in the short term since his surroundings were controlled by the Undead Force, and the monsters in the monster sieges were also undead; Soul Summoning Technique would be useless.

As for Mysticism, it was a significant improvement from Heroic Unrivaled; at least it wasn't just 2 points daily, but 10%, which was actually quite good for someone with a high Magic Value like him—but he valued the skill itself more.

Wisdom Skill, Mysticism, Magic Power—the set looked coherent. After thinking it over, he ultimately chose Basic Mysticism over Basic Soul Summoning Technique.

There would be plenty of opportunities later; there was no need to choose now.

[Lord/Scholar LV7 (5685/10000)]

[Hero: Demon Blood·Boiling Spirit Monster LV7 (570/10000)]

This time, not only did Qin Muye level up two levels, but even Demon Blood advanced from level 5 to level 7, although the experience had already been surpassed by Qin Muye.

And Demon Blood also learned two new skills, Basic Defense and Basic Resistance.

[Basic Defense: Reduces physical attack damage received by 5%]

[Basic Resistance: Reduces magic debuffs and damage received by 5%]

The former increases physical defense while the latter boosts magic defense, both of which are quite good skills, especially since these skills can be stacked on troops. Although Basic Resistance offers only 5%, it reduces damage and resists negative magic, making it quite practical.

But 5% is indeed a bit low.

However, now is not the time to think about these things; it's crucial to spend the resources at hand and convert them into strength.

He recruited all 142 remaining Magic Energy Spirit Monsters, costing 14,200 Gold Coins, which took 14% of the hundred thousand Gold Coins, a bit painful indeed.

Then, he spent 1,000 units of stone to upgrade the training ground to LV2.

[Training Ground LV2: Ordinary troops can enter to train, and after a certain time, evolve into Elite Level troops]

[Current capacity for ordinary troops: 0/400, Heroes 0/2]

Time was lost, but the capacity for troops and heroes doubled, which means joint training as well as individual training can be conducted.

After that, naturally, he purchased a large amount of resource-building and basic-building blueprints, such as the dwellings he needed, as the Mage Tower could no longer accommodate the 660 Spirit Monsters.

Essential buildings such as the tailor shop, lumber mill, and mill were all required. After purchasing these, Qin Muye made a rough estimate and began construction on all the buildings.

13,000 points turned into 26 building blueprints. The first construction did not cost much in resources, but he still needed to pay for upgrades.

For instance, the Blacksmith and Iron Mine, which he had already upgraded to LV2, also improved in effectiveness and were now in full swing.

Of the 659 Spirit Monsters, 400 newly recruited Magic Energy Spirit Monsters were pulled away for training, while the remaining 259, including Frenzy Blood Spirit Monsters and Magic Energy Spirit Monsters, were assigned to work in various important buildings to produce resources.

He needed enough resources to work 8 hours a day, otherwise, the resource output would decrease or even stop altogether.

During this time, Qin Muye also released Healing while training the 400 Magic Energy Spirit Monsters and continued to study the Spirit Monsters.

Having gained the Basic Mysticism and Basic Wisdom Skills, Qin Muye felt he might be able to help the Magic Energy Spirit Monsters advance from troop level 1 to level 2.

"Sigh, once the training is done, I'll still have to spend money on equipment..." Qin Muye sighed. He still had 85,800 Gold Coins, which was enough to equip each Spirit Monster properly, but the problem was that these were likely just transitional equipment and would be difficult to deal with later.

But ultimately he grit his teeth and equipped all the remaining 459 Magic Energy Spirit Monsters, deciding to leave future issues for later and focus on surviving for now.

If tomorrow brings more than 2000 Skeleton Soldiers, he was going to have a headache—such a huge mass was terrifying.

And the day after tomorrow, and the day after that. By the current doubling rate, he would have to face 8000 Skeleton Soldiers the day after tomorrow. How was he to fight that?

But it wasn't without hope, after all. If he could convert all 659 Magic Energy Spirit Monsters into Frenzy Blood Spirit Monsters, there might still be a fight to win, but the aftermath...

Qin Muye was already feeling the food crisis. Each day, a single Frenzy Blood Warrior Spirit Monster required 9 units of quality food, while a Magic Energy Spirit Monster needed only 6 units of food. However, feeding all 659 would need 4,254 units daily, a major expenditure.

Fortunately, the recent rewards have been plentiful. Along with aggressively cultivating farmland and establishing a positive cycle of food harvest, he was barely able to maintain a balance with a little surplus food.

Qin Muye estimated that unless he accelerated expansion and increased farmland, with the current situation, he could support up to 700 Magic Energy Spirit Monsters at most, not counting the Frenzy Blood Spirit Monsters.

That's why he exchanged everything for basic building blueprints and resource building blueprints. Because once his Frenzy Blood Spirit Monsters finished training, once the monster siege event ended, his little territory would face a food shortage.

"Damn... I need a Hero to manage this." The thought alone gave Qin Muye a headache; he was not cut out to manage state affairs.