Arknightcraft Modpack
Chapter 458: Before Mass-Producing Troops, You Must First Mass-Produce Farmers
After successfully summoning a maid, everything that followed became much simpler. To tame a Touhou Maid, all that was required was a single cake. For the people of this world, that might not be an easy thing to come by—but for Steven, it was practically a freebie.
Without hesitation, he fed a cake to the chibi-cute girl in front of him. When red heart-shaped particles popped up over her head, signaling successful taming, Steven reached out and poked her cheek.
A short, stubby body topped with an oversized head—she looked like she had stepped straight out of a moe anime.
This wasn't Steven's first time using this mod. He was well aware that despite their cute appearance, these maids possessed combat power on par with Iron Golems.
"Mashter~"
In a soft, childish voice, the cartoonish maid called out to Steven, remaining in a squatting position as she lifted her head and stared straight at the only male in the room.
Her gaze was as pure as that of a newborn baby—just one look was enough to melt anyone's heart.
In truth, the maids' intelligence was roughly equivalent to that of a six- or seven-year-old child. They could understand simple commands, but compared to the vicious two-legged beasts of this world, they were utterly outmatched when it came to scheming.
But that was more than enough for Steven.
"Good girl. Go wait over there. I planted some sugarcane—being self-sufficient shouldn't be a problem, right?"
Ruffling the maid's little head, Steven also swapped her appearance to a skin representing Autumn Hecate—the Harvest Deity—before pointing toward the sugarcane field in the corner and placing a hoe into her hands.
The mod called itself Touhou Little Maid because it allowed every maid to be reskinned as characters from the game Touhou Project. Naturally, these skins didn't grant any of the original characters' abilities—at least not before Steven added any particularly strange mods. For now, it was purely cosmetic.
That suited Steven just fine. He only needed the maids to work and fight; he didn't need them to wield bizarre supernatural powers. The abilities they already displayed were more than enough to satisfy him.
The little maid looked blankly at the hoe in her hands, then at Steven, before breaking into a sweet, adorable smile. After that, she obediently toddled over to the still-growing sugarcane field, crouched down, and propped her round face up with her thick, carrot-like arms, quietly waiting for the crops to mature.
Due to the version of the Touhou Little Maid mod Steven was using, these little maids could grow stronger not only by increasing affection levels, but also by being fed white sugar, which allowed them to level up and recover health.
And with that, Steven had just solved his first problem on the road to mass-producing troops.
So, in theory, the final form of these little maids under Steven's command would be something on the level of over 200 red hearts of HP, paired with nearly 100 points of melee damage—a truly monstrous existence.
To put that into perspective, even something as absurd as a Warden only had around 45 base damage. These maids could reach over a hundred, and that was without factoring in weapon bonuses or armor damage reduction. Once you realized that, it became obvious just how terrifying these seemingly harmless, three-head-tall little creatures really were.
Of course, that was the theoretical endgame. Steven had no intention of painstakingly raising affection with each maid one by one. Relying purely on sugar to power-level them, their melee damage would cap out at around 40 points. Even so, that stat line was still enough to completely crush the vast majority of warriors in this world.
And the most ridiculous part? As long as they had enough sugar in their inventory, they could freely convert one piece of sugar into one point of HP, effectively granting them unlimited self-healing. In other words, unless an enemy either emptied their entire sugar stash or killed them in a single blow, what awaited them was an endless, relentless assault.
After confirming that these maids matched his memories almost perfectly, Steven finally waved his hand decisively and began his grand troop-spamming project.
Taking into account the size of the underground chamber and the amount of points he had in reserve, Steven thought for a moment before stopping after summoning exactly one hundred maids.
Once all of them had been tamed with cake, Steven didn't rush to equip them with weapons or armor. Instead, he pulled out a massive pile of pickaxes and hoes from his inventory and distributed them one by one to the still-dazed little maids.
With another sweeping gesture, Steven changed the skins of half of them to Nitori Kawashiro, the representative of heavy industry. Then he pointed downward, signaling them to continue expanding the underground base beneath the snowy plains and to build even more farms.
As for the rest, he dressed them—just like the first one—in the skins of Minoriko Aki and Shizuha Aki. These maids were assigned to work behind the excavation teams, focusing exclusively on planting sugarcane and various food crops.
After all, to develop, you first need farmers.
Mine more, and you can spam troops to your heart's content.
There were no population limits on his side anyway. Max out farmers and infrastructure first, and producing soldiers later would be laughably easy.
Given the current situation, the correct move was obviously to have these adorable little maids work a bit harder—to make up for all the points he'd invested in them.
Feeling every bit like a freshly minted capitalist, Steven watched the tiny maids bustling about, hard at work, and couldn't help but smile.
If he really thought about it…
Building an underground kingdom of his own didn't seem impossible at all, did it?
<+>
Note: Character Illustration is in this Google Drive:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iuyfwNVFHzIi9H4rWNT_lAm7jTSiah_M
<+>
If you want to see more chapter of this story and don't mind spending $5 monthly to see till the latest chapter, please go to my Patreon[1].
Latest Chapter in Patreon: Chapter 521: Is That Something a Normal Person Would Say?[2]
Link to the latest chapter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/152281351?collection=55713[3]
https://www.patreon.com/collection/55713?view=condensed[4]
[1] https://www.patreon.com/collection/55713?view=condensed
[2] https://www.patreon.com/posts/152281351?collection=55713
[3] https://www.patreon.com/posts/152281351?collection=55713
[4] https://www.patreon.com/collection/55713?view=condensed