One Last System

Finding out what room we wanted to take for ourselves was quite exhausting yet fulfilling at the same time. Yet, as much as I would want to just focus on fixing its state and introducing some basic improvements…

I was the lord of all my time no longer. And if I wanted to keep the cohesion of my faction, I had to ensure everyone could see me working harder than they would ever do themselves.

'I will be able to get it easier after a few days… but the first few of them are crucial,' I thought, forcing myself to stand up from the sofa while prompting my dearest along.

"We need to go back," I said in a small voice.

Seeing Mia's peaceful face when I cuddled her on my lap… Doing anything that could harm this image of peace and happiness that Mia represented for me could only be called heresy.

Yet, it was a heresy I had no other choice but to commit.

"You are right." Mia stood up without a single word of protest. "We can't be slacking while everyone else is hard at work, can we?"

I only had Mia's positive attitude to thank for the atmosphere we left the room in. I expected it to be sorrowful, full of unwillingness. Instead, just like I hoped to cater to everyone's morale, Mia made sure to do the same for me alone.

With her positive mood propping my own morale up, it took us only a few moments to struggle over the broken parts of the corridor and through all the barricades formed by the ruble. And just like that, within less than a minute, we moved from the comfort of a nice sofa in the room of our choosing to what could only be called total chaos and disaster in the main room of the auctioning hall.

'Nearly everyone has left already,' I thought as soon I stepped into the area.

Most of the cultivators were gone, likely off to complete the missions they picked for themselves. And yet, now that most of them were gone… this place somehow became dirtier and smaller at the same time!

'What are those guys even doing?' I freaked out while taking a quick look at the few cultivators that remained in the place.

Yet, all my confusion disappeared under the light of enlightenment when I finally figured it out.

It wasn't that the area was now stacked up with resources or trash, nor was it like it shrunk down in size.

The people who remained in this place busied themselves with ripping out the chairs that were stacked all over the place before. And from the looks of how hard they went at this simple, wooden furniture, the task wasn't as simple as just moving said chairs out of the way.

'Wait, isn't this strange?' I suddenly realized. 'This entire place is a mess but all those sets were in perfect order?' I thought.

Yet, rather than wasting my time thinking about small details like that, I simply glossed over them while putting my attention back on the topic I had to prioritize.

'This is going to be easy,' I thought when I managed to spot hundreds if not thousands of potential rune stones amongst all the rubble I could see within the main hall alone.

And without any delay, I got to working, looking for suitable stones and throwing them on the stage if I was satisfied or just throwing them onto a small pile if their quality wasn't up to par.

'That's a bummer,' I thought a few moments later when the seventh stone in a row turned out to be a dud.

Sure, there were some stones I could use among all the rubble, but those were stones that builders either used as insulation or filler. In other words, unprocessed stones. Because all sorts of solid matter that came out of human hands and was common enough to be used as a building material ended up crumbling in my hands even before I could finish the process of drawing a rune on it.

"Hey, you!" I then called out to the few cultivators that remained in the area. "Do any of you knows how to write?" I shouted my question.

Despite all the failures, gathering the stones I needed was a job both simple and something I would finish before long. And as soon as I would get to the most tedious phase of rune drawing which was about actually calculating the formation and scheming its design, I would have quite a lot of time and brainpower left on my hands.

And being the efficiency freak that I could showcase to be at times, I couldn't stand the idea of just wasting the potential of this time.

"I know how to read and write," one of the cultivators approached before I could get tired of waiting. "What do you want me to do?"

"Just come with me," I said before moving over to the edge of the elevated stage. I then sat down on it before reaching for the first of the stones I gathered.

Creaaaak….

The wood of the stage gave out a worrying sound as soon as I rested my weight on it. And instead of explaining the job to the guy I just called, I ended up simply staring at the thing for a while.

"This stage will need fixing," I muttered. I turned my head to the cultivator that approached me. "Make sure to note it down, along with everything else I will point out while working."

The young man first opened up his eyes wide. He then took half a step to the back, desperately throwing his eyes all over the place.

He rushed off towards a nearby pile only to rummage through the rubble for a bit.

In less than a minute, the young man was back in front of me with a piece of a charred wooden spike in one hand and what appeared to be a stone slate in the other.

"Fixing the stage," the young man muttered as he scribbled some marks on the tablet.

"It's a priority," I muttered, putting away one of the finished stones before grabbing another.

"Fixing the stage, priority."