Skill-Eater: Prison World Saga-Chapter 17: Puppet Town

Edge woke up early the next morning, filled with the rising excitement that comes with hunting big game.

After saying hello to Riller and Jumo, who were debating the merits of various prey, he ate breakfast, grabbed his pack, and then stepped through the front door to greet the rising sun. The crew wasn’t heading into the field for another few hours, but he had a couple of errands to run before they left town.

Edge waved to Trapper and Blue, who were conducting combat drills in the yard, then made his way out of the hunters’ quarter.

Other than picking up his order at the Forge, there was only one stop left on his shopping list. It was time to head into the alchemists’ ward and buy some of the wares he’d had his eye on. While he was there, he planned to get the potion he’d stolen from Warren identified, as he had been curious about its contents for some time now.

He started crossing the districts, taking in the ambiance of the settlement as he walked. This was the third version of Puppet Town he had experienced. Edge had been here once before the anomaly, back when the economy was focused on puppet tourism—filled with people obsessed by making their fortune from the Prison World broadcasts collectively known as the feed.

He had returned shortly after the disaster struck. An unprecedented event that had destroyed every tourist’s original body, trapped them on Ord for the foreseeable future, and shuffled the surface of the planet like a deck of cards. Everyone had been in a state of shock, reeling with the sudden loss and grappling with their unprecedented change in circumstance.

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This version, now that the town’s residents were coming to grips with the reality of their new lives, was a marked improvement to those dark days. People were still afraid, but they were coming out of shock, adapting to this new chapter in the planet’s history. A life where they had to be willing to defend themselves from the myriad dangers of a magical world. Dangers that hadn’t even begun to fully manifest just yet.

There were far more people on the streets than before, most of them armed. There was an intensity to the way that they walked and interacted with one another. Their conversations were centered on hunting and training. On crafting and conditioning. Ranking up their powers and the synergy between various skills. They were driven to grow stronger and acted like there wasn’t a moment to lose.

For his part, Edge approved of their change in attitude. The ones feeling the pressure had the right of it. The sooner that everyone living in the settlement started thinking like them, the more likely they would be to survive the trying days ahead.

The stark truth staring them in the face was that the residents of Puppet Town were locked in a race against time. They had to take advantage of this period of transition—this patter of rain before the deluge—before powerful creatures from the surrounding biomes migrated into the area en mass.

The scientists were still evaluating the changes that were taking place across the Ivory Plains. But they estimated that it would finish transitioning from a low-threat biome to a mid-threat region sometime within the next two months. And there was no guarantee that it would stop there if higher concentrations of magicytes continued flowing in from the frontier.

One thing was certain. Whatever the Ivory Plains looked like a year from now, it wouldn’t be anything like what had come before. Running into stage-two beasts and monsters would become a common occurrence, and the biome’s stage-zero and stage-one inhabitants would start evolving soon too.

Unfortunately, since only a fraction of Puppet Town’s population was cored, they couldn’t meet these emerging threats simply by cycling up their cores and ranking up their skills. It was vital that the cored citizens aggressively acquired experience, but everyone else needed to step up to the plate too. While the uncored couldn’t take to the field and fight on the front lines, they could still defend the town and support the others’ efforts.

It meant that everyone needed to be armed and armored. That gear and hunting tools needed to be mass-produced and distributed to the general public. Weapons, alchemical concoctions, and countless other devices had to be manufactured and put into people’s hands as quickly as possible. The settlement needed to collect resources at an unprecedented rate and finish transitioning the town’s industry to meet its changing needs.

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Cores could occasionally be found in sealed chests or awarded by the System for completing quests. Now that the residents of Puppet Town were surrounded by the frontier, there were bound to be more of these opportunities than before, but it still wasn’t enough. Dialla estimated that at least half of the town needed to be cored if they wanted to live through the year, and meeting even a portion of that goal would require taking some calculated risks.

It meant that on top of everything else, the hunters had to start culling early stage-three beasts. High-stage beasts were the only naturally-occurring source of core seeds—the main material required to manufacture Basic cores. As Edge had learned first-hand, taking on prey of that caliber was insanely dangerous but would yield vast amounts of experience and high-grade crafting materials.

In addition to hunting for resources and core seeds, everyone in the settlement needed to know how to defend themselves via conventional means. So that they could protect the town now and would be ready to fight at full strength when and if they bound a core. Earl had begun training a militia, and everyone who didn’t belong to one of the hunting associations was encouraged to join.

To incentivize people to do what she wanted—to attend these various trainings and risk their lives on dangerous missions—Dialla was in the process of implementing a contribution-point system. Points would be awarded for drilling, resource gathering, crafting, scouting, and more. Right now, they were the only way for an uncored person to get their hands on a core, unless they found one in the field.

Contribution points could also be redeemed for various perks and luxuries, ranging from mana seeds to upgraded housing. Most hunting activities were still rewarded with Credits, so Edge hadn’t had a chance to earn any points yet. Not that he really needed them given his situation.

In addition to pushing people into action, the point system ensured that the individuals who received cores were team players. People who were willing to follow orders and work hard to improve the town.

Violet had already earned quite a few points, since she was helping the peacekeepers and the militia condition their attributes, along with anyone else who was interested. Her new Travelers’ Boon skill had a healing effect, although it wasn’t nearly as potent as Edge’s Regeneration.

But Boon still helped damaged muscles heal faster, letting people benefit from aggressive exercise at an accelerated rate. The rest of the crew was taking advantage of her skill too, working on maxing their conditioning as quickly as possible. Since Violet was using the power so often, it should advance to rank two before long and become even more useful than it already was.

On that note, the deputies were out on the green now, training fresh volunteers for the town militia—a group of uncored fighters that could assist the peacekeepers in times of trouble. Mel was leading one group through a series of drills, laying it on thick like the badass she was. She broke character long enough to exchange an amused smile when she noticed Edge watching, and he waved as he walked by.

In addition to its cored defenders and uncored support staff, Puppet Town was protected by two other forces. The first was mechanical in nature—the town’s magitech turrets, wall, and dome.

There were two plasma turrets mounted beside both gates, which provided firepower strong enough to deter stage-three monsters and beasts. Not to mention jailbirds and other predators of the human sort. Edge hadn’t had a chance to see them in action, since Earl and the hunting associations did their best to drive away anything hostile before it got that close to the settlement.

The wall was made of high-grade steel and concrete. It was reinforced with dozens of layers of rare and valuable resources, each of which was designed to repel a different form of attack. So far, nothing had breached the wall during the settlement’s 200-year history and each generation of tourists had added to its construction.

Last came the dome—a powerful magitech shield that prevented unauthorized teleportation into town. It also provided limited protection against artillery, although it was designed to shield the residents from hostile spells, not incoming shells. The dome required vast amounts of aether to run and the aether distillery devoted a considerable portion of its production to that task.

The final force defending the town was its guardian beasts. Since cored beasts were far more common than cored people, and working with beasts was a part of everyday life for the hunting community, it only made sense to rely on them for protection too.

There was a limit to how many cored creatures Puppet Town could support, given the concentration of magicytes in the region. Although it seemed like that wouldn’t be a problem going forward. Right now, Edge knew of a dozen guardian beasts, along with a small stable of mounts that would bear a rider. Not to mention, the creatures bonded to the town’s various hunting crews.

Only two of them were stage two. One was a ram the size of an Earth elephant, which its trainer had named Zero. The other was a rhinoceros named Zen. The beast wasn’t much larger than its earthly counterpart, but it was even more deadly than Zero, thanks to its collection of lightning-based skills.

As he pondered these weighty matters, Edge passed the public green while wondering what the future would hold. He was looking forward to his next purchase, glad that he still had some Credits to his name.