Second World

As for Nerd, he was a magic user with the spell traits of Arcane, Summon, Curse, Enchant, Manipulate, and Offense. His affinities were the two opposite elements of light and dark.

He had only one talent, Raging Mana. This talent increased all offensive spells to deal 20% more damage. It also improved his chance of learning offensive spells.

"I still like Nerd more even if he only has one talent," John said. "His offense-oriented magic will be able to decimate many enemies in a war compared to a bow user."

"Does everything have to be for war purposes with you?" Jack asked.

"Yes," John replied.

"Well, I will still go with Howard. Nerd might be better in dealing with a high number of enemies, but I think Howard will be more useful when going against a Boss enemy," Jack said. "We can just recruit Nerd later when my sovereign level increases."

John didn't try persuading Jack otherwise.

Jack sent an invitation message to Howard. Not long after, he received a reply that Howard had accepted.

Jack proceeded to install two skills on him. The first was Mark, which was also Elite Marksman's exclusive skill. Target marked by this skill would receive increased damage. The second was Disrupting Shot, which Jack thought was a must-have skill to anticipate going against an enemy spellcaster.

Now, all five royal agent slots had been filled. He then checked the Gear options under the Install command. It showed all their equipped gears.

Duke Alfredo's gears were already top-notch. His robe equipment was set equipment of super rare grade. His weapons were a set of casting gloves of unique grade.

Jonathan's equipment was decent but nothing to speak of. He wore a combination of rare and uncommon grades. There was an option to spend the kingdom's coins to upgrade his equipment. But upgrading using this option could only be done till the super rare grade. The agents needed to manually find or craft unique or legendary equipment if they wanted to equip one.

Jack spent around 2,000 gold coins to upgrade Jonathan's equipment to super rare grades.

The other three agents were all recruit-level. So, their equipment was the most lacking. Jack spent almost 15,000 gold coins to upgrade all their equipment to super rare grades.

Now that their equipment was upgraded, their survival chance should be better. He could now send each of them a command. There were six commands. Quest, train, learn, adventure, Hunt, and Escort.

Even though Duke Alfredo told Jack to freely give him commands as Jack saw fit, Jack decided to choose the adventure command for the Duke. This gave him free rein.

Jack was still learning the ropes of ruling this kingdom. He figured the duke would want to help Duchess Isabelle in assisting him for at least the first week. Normal command lasted one week, but he could always change the command any time if he wanted.

For Jonathan, Jack gave him a quest. The kingdom had a list of quests that needed attending. Normally, outworlders or native adventurers were enough to take care of them, but after the invasion war, the number of quests had increased due to manpower shortage.

Jack chose one quest which was to raid a hideout near Therural. Therural was another of Themisphere's small towns. A gang hideout had appeared nearby and caused unrest in the town. This caused a reduction in the town's security and happiness stats. If the hideout was destroyed, the town's stats should improve and so did its economy and production.

The hideout's level was within Jonathan's range. He should be able to take care of it without a problem. If Jonathan completed the quest, he would not only receive exp points but a bunch of other rewards as well.

Quest command lasted until the quest was completed, but Jack could also cancel it and have Jonathan perform another task if he wished to.

For the remaining three recruits, Jack gave them all the same command, Train. What they needed the most at this moment was increasing their levels. Train command was the most reliable command to level up without any risks. Commands like quest and hunt also gave exp points, but if the difficulties were too high, the agents faced the risk of dying. Adventure and Escort yielded exp points too but the rewards were too random.

After giving the commands to the royal agents, Jack finally completed learning the monarch system's features.

Jack exhaled a relieved breath. "We are finally finished," he said.

"But our kingdom coffer is already down to 2,201,800 gold coins," Isabelle said after seeing the country overview on the main screen. "We used up more than two million gold coins in this session, while our kingdom's net income is just a bit over seven hundred gold coins. We won't be able to spend as much as we want by next month."

"The highest expenditure is from constructing the buildings for every settlement," John said. "The duchess is right. With our current economy, next month we might need to be selective in choosing which buildings to build on which settlements."

"If you run out of coins, you can just have the settlements perform special actions instead of constructing buildings," Peniel said.

"Special action?" Jack asked.

"Go back into the city overview, please," Peniel said.

Jack gave the other an apologetic expression. Here he thought that they were done already.

After opening the city overview and randomly selecting one settlement, Peniel asked Jack to scroll down the list of buildings to build. Many different types of buildings could be built, so they didn't exactly review every single one.

Four buildings without any cost were near the bottom of the standard building list. No gold coins, no mana cores, or the days required for building. That's because they were not building. They were special actions instead.

These special actions were trading, which had the settlements focused on the settlement's economy. Synergy, which focused on productivity. Patrol, which focused on security. And Entertain, which focused on happiness.

"If you didn't have enough coins to build anything, you can use trading for your building slots," Peniel explained. "This way, your settlement will produce more coins than they normally would."

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