"And another thing, when attacking try your best to keep as quiet as possible until the job is done. Shouting 'I gotcha' when you have in fact gotten nothing is sort of embarrassing," Lucius said, to which Ghost replied with a stubborn huff.
"Anyway, your loss couldn't have been avoided. You guys had no means of communication, so even in a perfect world, there would have been a lag even if you had done as practiced," he continued, before erasing the drawing on the ground.
"I would've taught you guys hand signs, but, yea..." he said, referring to their lack of arms, "-and foot signs won't be as expressive. So we'll leave that for after you evolve." The leaflings nodded at this and began standing up, assuming that the talk was over.
"Where do you guys think ?o?'re going? We still haven't decided on your punishment."
***
The next morning, before sunrise, a group of leaflings was using sleds to pull stacks of twigs up the mound.
"Oi, pick up the pace or I'll add extra rounds," Lucius shouted, referring to three leaflings who were struggling to pull their sled up the slope.
The leaflings were drenched in perspiration and from the way they were breathing it was as if they would collapse at any moment.
"Lucy, don't you think this is a bit much? I mean, I wasn't even supposed to be in their group," Ghost complained, as she tugged at the ropes of her sled with all her strength.
"And yet you were. Get moving, if you put your mind to it, you'll be able to finish before we start with your morning training routine." The leaflings groaned in complacency upon hearing that their suffering wouldn't end even after they were finished.
"Look, Alpha and his group are already done, you should strive to be as focused as them," Lucius responded, gesturing towards three leaflings that were lying down at the base of the mound, dirt sticking to their drenched bodies.
"But they've passed out!" Ghost complained.
"A small price to pay."
Ghost and her group ended up finishing their rounds an hour after Alpha and his group due to the number of breaks they took. A total of 50 twigs were brought to the top of the mound, more than enough for Lucius's plans.
"You guys can rest up, make sure you're back to full strength before our photosynthesis sessi-" He was about to say, however, all the leaflings were already fast asleep, tired to the bone from exhaustion.
~Guess I should get to work as well,~ he thought to himself before heading out into the forest.
The first structure Lucius wanted to build was a sort of watchtower, for that he would need four large pieces of wood to act as pillars, and blades of grass to fashion rope. Finding branches large enough to act as pillars but still small enough for him to drag around proved to be a problem. But after searching for several minutes he found a few just light enough for him to manage.
"Ahhh, there we go," he huffed, having dragged the last branch towards the left-most edge of the camp's perimeter. His body ached from overwork, and every breath felt like it would be his last.
~On the plus side, I must've gained around 20 extra points into strength and stamina,~ he thought, taking a look at his stats.
┏━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━┓
─────⋅☾ Player Details ☽⋅─────•
[Lucius Elwood ]
[Level 3: 0/300]
[Leaf Being lvl.1- [10/100]]
[Sunlight's blessing] +5 to all stats
─────⋅☾ Stats ☽⋅─────•
[Agility: 1(6)]
[Strength: 30(35)]
[Stamina: 26(31)]
┗━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━┛
"Anyway, let me have a look at my daily quests while I rest," he whispered haggardly before opening his quests tab.
┏━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━┓
─────⋅☾ Daily Quests ☽⋅─────•
<Absorb water> 20 exp
<Grow> 100 exp
─────⋅☾ Milestone ☽⋅─────•
<Buy 1,000,000 Evo points> 600exp [Unlock ??? in item shop]
┗━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━┛
~A million Evo points!? What, that's like 100 million helios, and if I absorb them at a rate of 200 per second that's... that's close to 140 hours of photosynthesis, are these guys crazy?~ he thought to himself doing the quick maths.
~But still, 600 experience and a new item? If it's anything like the solar core, I might be able to get the leaflings to evolve even faster, in fact, I myself might evolve again. If it lets us have a better chance of dealing with the potential threat at the border, I'll gladly carry out any quest, no matter how absurd," he resolved, picking himself up before starting with the work.
Before he could even begin to think of building the watchtowers, he had to dig holes big enough to bury the sticks in. If the holes were too shallow, the watchtowers would easily be brought to the ground, so he found a small twig close by, snapped it in half, and used the sharp edge to begin digging a hole.
After three hours he had dug four holes all deep enough for him to be completely submerged in. The work could've been done in a shorter time frame if he didn't have to take so many breaks, however, it seemed that his body was terribly weak as after just a few minutes of digging nonstop, it would spasm from pain.
~Another 23 points into strength and 18 into stamina. That was well worth it, I guess,~ he whispered in between labored breaths. After taking a short 30-minute nap, he began the actual work.
He dragged one of the branches towards a hole and used all his strength to lift it off the ground ever so slightly, just enough to direct it into the hole before pushing it until stood up straight. The branch was perhaps four times taller than he was, and with one quarter of it being in the ground, it was equivalent to a three-story building to a leafling.
"Perfect," he heaved, before filling the whole with dirt and testing the stability of the pillar. After confirming that it was indeed firmly planted into the ground, he repeated this process with the other three branches. The work took an hour to complete before the four pillars stood in a square-like formation.
~5 points to strength and 3 to stamina. Perhaps I'm getting more used to the work, maybe that's why I'm not getting as many points,~ he thought to himself as he rested on the dirt.
