The system interface shimmered above the ground like a ghost's blueprint.
Toren knelt in the dirt behind his hut, hands coated in soil and moss, eyes fixed on the glowing schematic that hovered half a meter off the ground. It spun slowly, a translucent diagram of a single-room housing unit—sloped roof, ventilated sidewalls, modular frame design. Simple, elegant, and—most importantly—buildable with the materials they had. Barely.
Model: Shelter Pod (Primitive Tier)
Materials Required:
—Fiberwood planks: 20
—Insulation moss bundles: 12
—Reinforced alloy struts: 4
—Energy sealant (optional): 1 unit
He had the first three. The fourth was a joke.
Energy sealant? No one had that. Maybe old Wess had a dried-out cartridge left from the ship stores, but it was more ceremonial than functional—used as door glue for the village hall. Toren swiped the option off the schematic, watching the structure shift into its lower-efficiency variant.
Insulation efficiency reduced by 18%. Structural integrity: Moderate.
He sighed and sat back, rubbing his thumb across a knot in his palm. A week ago, he'd have called this impossible. Now? It was merely difficult.
He'd spent the last two days quietly assembling materials—trading carved stones to the children for spare moss, hauling collapsed planks from the south slope, bribing Wess with two clean fish to borrow his old plasma cutter. No one asked questions. They thought he was building a storage shed.
But according to Kora, the kingdom needed four of these shelters, occupied for three full days, to pass the objective. That meant organizing construction, convincing people to live in them, and doing it without raising suspicion.
"Kingdom tip: leadership begins at collaboration," Kora said dryly from nowhere in particular.
Toren muttered, "You're just trying to make me delegate."
"Your refusal to ask for help will statistically delay development by 342%."
"Do you always quote numbers like you're grading a report card?"
"Yes."
He stood, stretching, back cracking faintly. A warm breeze swept through the trees, scattering pale yellow leaves across the clearing. Birds—or the local equivalent—chattered from the canopy above.
He eyed the other half-built shelters along the village's edge—slapped-together hovels patched with vines, tarp, and anything heat-resistant. Most leaned to one side. One had collapsed entirely after last month's storm.
If he could build even one clean structure and get someone to move in…
That was the start.
He took a step forward, then froze.
A shadow had appeared in the clearing's edge, arms crossed, one foot tapping.
Mira.
Tallish, wiry, with a streak of copper hair escaping the oil-stained scarf wrapped around her head. Her expression was unreadable, but the wrench slung across her shoulder did most of the talking.
"So," she said flatly. "Gonna tell me where you got the ghost schematic, or should I beat it out of you?"