And while all that drama is happening with Ace and Doyle plans around it, the world advances. Up the river, Melonie Bennett was also having her own problems. It was a bit of an ironic twist, really.

Her problem had gone from people not wanting to accept the system, to almost cult-like worship of it. And it was only "almost cult-like" because of a ton of hard work on her part. Melonie almost missed the system deniers. At least they were easy to handle, what with the lack of skills, stats, and paths.

These new crazies? They fully stepped into the grind. Now, Melonie honestly didn't care if they worshiped the system. The problem was how they did so. To them, all that mattered was to advance. And the best way to advance?

Why, challenge other people, of course! Sure, the combat focused types can just head down to the dungeon. In fact, most of those types had left even before things got culty. Those who were left? Crafters and socializers.

Now, you might figure it was the social types causing the most problems. After all, someone trying to grind lying could cause a good bit of chaos. Except, once you knew a person was a lier, it doesn't matter how skilled they are because people just wouldn't want to deal with you at all.

No, it was the crafters causing the most problems. Whether it was using things that didn't belong to them or constantly challenging others to crafting competitions, they caused chaos all around. The worst were those who picked up art skills.

Within the uninhabited section of the town, there wasn't a surface uncarved. Even the places still lived in were being marked. Whether it was wood or stone, cloth or leather, or even the grass. Maybe if those crazed crafters had a single connected style, it would have at least been tolerable. Instead, each creation and piece of art was its own thing.

Now, Melonie wasn't too worried about the old buildings being marked up. It was clear that those weren't long for this world. Though admittedly, such abuse would likely make that timeline shorter. However, the settlement had just gotten around to tearing down buildings so as to replace them.

Those new buildings? Melonie wasn't going to allow them to be vandalized like the rest of the town and so needed to crack down on the system fanatics. But how do you manage something like this?

Well, a few of the vandals were easy enough to find. Those with a consistent style stuck out. So if someone marked a building with roses and there was a guy in the market trying to sell wood tools all carved up with the exact same style of roses? Not too hard to figure it out.

Not all of the vandals were that lacking in sense. Though Melonie did have a solution, it just wouldn't be cheap. All she had to do was hire the Barrais from Wolf's Rest. They could easily stalk around the town for a week or so and pick out all the wild crafters.

However, she wanted to give them a chance. Melonie really wanted to believe in the goodness in people. So she had a plan. There would be one new building put up in the cleared area.

Before that was started, though, Melonie threw them a line, giving them that one chance. She made an announcement that the new buildings would be off limits, that she would go after anyone who vandalized them.

Yes, this basically challenged those vandals to mess with the buildings. That was the point. While Melonie wanted to trust them to do the right thing, she also wanted to weed out the rotten apples before they could ruin the others.

She hated it, but Melonie knew that she would never truly get rid of this not-a-cult. The system simply did too much for them. She could only hope to weed out the bad actors and maybe give direction to the others. After all, they're going to be building a ton of new things and who better than crafting fanatics?

So she sat back and watched the first building go up. Not that this took all that long. It was a simple building and she had the materials for it gathered and processed well ahead of time. In fact, she had more than twice the materials needed.

Why? Because some idiots can't wait. They didn't end up using all those extra materials, but it was shockingly close. See, some crafters decided to add their own flare to the building before it was even finished.

Now, Melonie wasn't against a bit of art. However, when some idiot carved crazy spirals into the wall the second others turned their back? Well, it is easier to just replace the carved up wood while hauling off the idiot.

So, now the building was up, and night was approaching. Melonie stood before it and shook her head. She knew that by tomorrow, it wouldn't look anything like what it did now. Which was why the Barrais were already in town and on the lookout.

Melonie turned her back on the sacrificial building and returned home. A home that hadn't been safe from the vandals, either. Though they had only managed to carve some minor works into the sides of the house and dig up patterns in the yard. Yeah, the settlement was quite a mess.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

And so was that building come morning. In fact, it was worse than a mess. At least, the other buildings were still livable. The new building that had been completed just a day before was now ruined.

Well, Melonie was steaming mad at this. Sure, she expected it to be marked up and vandalized, inside and out. She had even made sure that the night patrol had been on a predictable route over the last week to tempt them even more. However, they went too far.

Instead of simple carvings, they cut through the walls. Melonie could see the sun rising behind the house, through the house! And the roof wasn't going to do its job, that's for certain. Oh, and they did not leave the yard out either.

Instead of odd flowers grown in a pattern or small ditches dug to make a picture, they ruined it. Deep holes were dug, all greenery was gone, and large stones were strewn about in chaotic lines. Melonie had only been planning to punish them lightly so they knew she could find them. Now? Well, exile was her being kind.

Melonie turned to the left, and Susan was there. "Gather them."

Susan smirked, "We figured you might have wanted to talk to them. My husband is now gathering them. We'll even separate them by how serious their vandalism was. I'm sure you're angry with them all, but a few that showed up early had simply painted their tag on the building. I doubt we can even see their work anymore."

Melonie, "I'm not feeling too kind right now and I figured you would understand. Why do you seem to be on their side?"

Susan shrugs, "Wolf's Rest hasn't exactly been peaceful either, but of course me and my husband keep things out of sight. So, I've had to talk to more than my fair share of these types. The more extreme vandals waited for the small-time folks to finish before they got at it. They didn't know if you could catch them, but if you did, they wanted to drag the others down with them."

Melonie squints at her, "Well now I don't want to come down on them like a sack of bricks. You worded it like that on purpose."

Susan nods, "But for a good reason. I understand anger, trust me, I very much get the desire to go all scorched earth. However, we both understand that isn't the best way."

Melonie, "Whatever, bring them here and split them up however you want. I'll judge it how I see it once the settlement gathers."

Susan, "Yep, settlement. Do you plan to change that?"

Melonie shakes her head, "Not everyone can start on a gold mine. We're way too late for an anchor. Those hundred cheap anchors are long gone."

Susan smiles, "Well, it is true that people have purchased all the anchors. Though not all of them have been used."

Melonie squints at her, "You have one? I figured the system would limit we can buy how many in an area."

Susan shrugs, "Yes, but the limit is two per a clump of settlements. That way, there is a possibility of competition. Though I suspect the claim that they only sell 100 is a lie.

"It just doesn't make sense. Think of how big the world is and supposedly they are only going to set us up with 100 towns? Sure, cities can make towns, but what if one continent doesn't receive a single anchor? Some larger countries could easily monopolize them all, let alone continents. Anyway, do you want it or not?"

Melonie sighs, "We'll talk about this after we deal with the crazies."

Susan raises an eyebrow, "But if you were an official town, well, you could do a much better job of punishing them."

Melonie, "We don't even have a name!"

Susan, "Well, good thing we're about to have all the people here! I'm sure you can roll naming the town into dealing with the vandals."

Melonie, "Hmm, I don't feel like just calling them vandals, at least not the destructive ones."

Susan shrugs, "Fair enough, maybe refer to the destructive ones as cultists? Now how about making this place a town?"

Melonie sighs, "Fine! Though I really want to know why you want this so much?"

Susan, "Wolf's Rest will never spread. It is equally true that the point of setting up early towns is to have cities develop and take over the surrounding settlements. These groupings of settlements? All set up to develop into a bunch of micro-nations.

"The entire world has been turned into a giant battle royale between settlements. It seems the system's goal is to nudge our world towards as few nations as possible. I'm sure the system would prefer the entire world to end up under one ruler."

Melonie nods, "That does make sense. To us, all we ever knew was a single world and so multiple nations makes sense. In the wider universe, though? If each world has a single nation, that would still be a ridiculous number of nations. So while the system isn't going to force us to bow to some galactic nation, it certainly isn't beneath 'encouraging' us all to join together."

Susan nods back, "True. Though it seems like most of the town has been gathered and the vandals and cultists are ready. So you should probably spend a second thinking about what you want to say. The vandals will be the ones with just their hands tied together, while for the cultists we also tied their feet together."

Melonie rolls her eyes, but does take the time to figure out what to say. While that was happening, the settlement had a chance to see what happened to the building. They were less than pleased and so once Melonie was ready herself; it still took a while to settle them down.

Melonie stood in front of the crowd with the vandals to one side and the cultists to her other side. About twenty of the one and seven of the other. She cleared her throat, "So this happened.

"You might have also noticed that we have those responsible already picked out. In fact, I can see some of you are breathing a sigh of relief. We saw you sneaking around.

"Anyway, I'm not heartless so these people won't just all be thrown out. This larger group simply left tags and small carvings. They showed up early and left early, same as the rest of you who didn't even work up the courage to try. I'm sure that since you all cleared out before the others arrived, that you knew something was going to happen. We aren't holding that against you."

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