The night after the worlds merged, Kalli didn’t dare to leave the walls of Marimgar Academy.

The once mighty city of Marimgar had been reduced to rubble, destroyed by the merger of hers with a magical world full of monsters and disturbing beasts that were sure to give at least a few of her fellow Academy residents nightmares.

But for saving at least a few of the people, the System had given her a reward, even as it had called her performance "Below Average".

{Results} 210 Heroes and 305 civilians have remained to settle the village of Marimgar.

{Completion Status} Below Average

{Prize Calculating} Uncommon Grade Academy Amenities bundle awarded.

Kalli stared at the message, hoping that it would give her better news if she read it again.

The [Uncommon Grade Academy Amenities Bundle] seemed like the sort of thing that might make their lives just a little bit easier now that the merger of worlds had destroyed everything that they had hoped they could rely upon, the infrastructure of a modern world that no longer existed.

Kalli accepted the reward, and touched her hand to the floating black box marked with a three-dimensional image of the Academy grounds.

{Rewards Granted}

2x Uncommon Grade [Water Well]

1x Uncommon Grade [Power Generator]

3x Uncommon Grade [Tradesman Workshop Bundles]

1x Uncommon Grade Bronze Statue of Kallista De Marimgar

Ignoring the giant bronze statue of herself, which she instantly moved into her [Storage Realm] space, now grown to the size of a medium warehouse, Kalli inspected the other items.

[Water Well] produces up to 1000 litres per hour of clean water.

[Power Generator] 30kW maximum sustained output. Requires 30 mana per hour to operate.

[Tradesman Workshop Bundle] May be activated by Heroes or Awakened Humans with a trade skill to grant them a 100 square metre workshop equipped with the basic tools of their trade. Uncommon Grade workshops include basic power tools, but require outside power connections.

While Kalli was trying to stifle her dismay at the outcome of the first trial, where she had completely misjudged the parameters of the trial itself, the other residents of the Academy were celebrating.

The completion of the trial had awarded a massive amount of experience, and many of them had levelled up, in addition to receiving the quest completion reward that they were waiting to claim.

That was an excellent start, but now they had to start to move forward.

They had one dungeon, the Rat King Dungeon, which was level one, and gave mostly common grade items, plus some food. Kalli wished that they had managed to find a way to get a second one before the first trial ended. It didn’t look like they were going to get that chance between trials, and everyone needed to build their power before the second trial started.

Without a dedicated spot to do quests, they would start to fall behind on their progression rate. And when they did, that timer to the next trial would sneak up on them entirely too quickly.

{Trial Two will begin in 7 days}

The message was still there in her System Interface, waiting to count down.

Kalli lay back on her bed and stared at the ceiling. Tonight wasn’t her night for watch, so she had the whole evening to sleep. She just needed to be up with the first light so that she could try to reassign quests.

Her alarm went off seconds after her eyes opened, and Kalli reluctantly spent a System Point to replace her evening wear with a fresh option from her System Store.

The [Loungewear] package came with three different colour options of undergarments, a cotton nightgown and a pair of fluffy slippers. Just what she needed, as the items purchased from the store could be instantly worn and swapped to suit the situation.

Better, they would always come back out of storage perfectly clean. No more laundry trips for her, as the {Light Composite Armour} bodysuit that she usually wore under a set of elaborate robes that she had gotten as a quest reward was also a store item.

{Quests Available}

{Daily Training Mission} 60+ minutes of constant moderate to heavy physical exertion per day has a chance to increase physical attributes at an increased rate.

{Easy Mode Hunting Quest} Stoneshell Crabs. Maximum 5 members. Kill 1 Stoneshell Crab and harvest its corpse.

{Easy Mode Gathering Quest} Collect 5kg of edible plants from the wilderness, more than 500 metres from the Academy.

{No Free Form Quests Available between Trials}

Kalli sighed as she saw that there were only two missions available, and they were both easy mode. Perhaps the dungeon might be more valuable than she thought. It would still give rewards, even without a quest, and they were significantly more powerful and better geared than they were when it was first opened.

Kalli activated all three quests, set them to automatically renew for the next 7 days, as long as they were available, and left her room to go to breakfast.

"There’s a quest to harvest food? That’s different. Does anyone even know how to find edible food? Or do we just guess and bring back whatever looks edible?" One of the warriors was asking.

"You could just bring a ranger. They’ve got an innate talent for it. The System tells them when something is edible."

"Oh, that’s easier. How many Rangers do we have?"

"About four?"

That would not work out well. Four Rangers with sixteen others only give a tenth of the heroes the advantage of having a Ranger who could spot edible plants. Though, if they told the others what was edible, they would be able to harvest it based on description, so it shouldn’t be too hard.

Assuming that there were actually that many edible plants to be found.

One kilo of plants per person didn’t sound like much, but the area was a forest grown through the rubble of a destroyed city. Just finding edible plants in the wilderness was going to be an accomplishment, even if they knew what they were looking for.

Finding them every day for a month was going to be nearly impossible.