Year 5, Day 1
Eastern Plains of Avalonia
The replay began.
Fifteen minutes of real time.
Five years compressed into a single, breathless montage.
Hyun-woo watched from his invisible perch as the world obeyed.
Greenhollow's fields tripled in size, irrigation channels spider-webbing outward until the entire valley shimmered with reflected sky.
Highfield's hilltops sprouted windbreaks of poplar and the first experimental water-wheel groaned into motion.
Oakrest's ancient trees fell in perfect rotation (never more than one in twenty taken) while charcoal kilns smoked day and night.
Copperrise became a scar of red earth and bronze dust, children hauling baskets of glittering green stone to new smelters that never slept.
Calder's Ford and Stonebrook transformed into brick kilns and workshops; the air itself turned the color of fired clay.
And everywhere (every single village) roofs rose higher, walls thickened, doors hung straight and strong.
He watched a seven-year-old girl (Elyse of Riverwatch) become twelve, knees scarred from carrying clay, but smiling because her family's new house had a real door that closed.
He watched Rowan Calder, now fourteen, shoulders already broad from felling oaks, laugh with his friends as they raced to finish the granary roof before sunset.
He watched Harlan Calder age five years in fifteen minutes, hair going gray at the temples, but standing straighter than ever as he read the new tallies: surplus grain enough to feed fifteen thousand.
The counters settled.
Population: 11 847 (+18.3 %)
Food Surplus: +54 %
Structural Integrity: 91 %
Specialization Efficiency: +41 %
Belief Strength: 128 % (overflow converting to permanent Authority)
A golden notification bloomed.
[Achievement Unlocked: "The Quiet Revolution"
First player to achieve full specialization + structural overhaul in Turn 1
Reward: +20 % permanent resource efficiency for all citizens
Global announcement in 3… 2… 1…]
Global voice chat detonated.
#004 (weeb):
"WHO THE FUCK IS VALDRIA1 AND WHY DOES HE ALREADY HAVE 128 % BELIEF?!"
"I only have 73 % and half my villagers are building a hotspring bathhouse shaped like my waifu!"
#023 (German edgelord):
"Scheiße. My population dropped 400 because I told them to build barracks first.
Meanwhile Spreadsheet-kun is playing full farming simulator."
#008 (KaiserDrache):
"Doesn't matter. I just wiped out two NPC tribes. Population now 28k.
Enjoy your little clay huts, farmer boy."
#156 (Brit):
"I tried to make afternoon tea mandatory.
My Speaker is now addicted to boiled nettles.
Send help or biscuits."
#077 (the troll):
"I named my capital 'Big PP Town'.
My villagers think it's a prophecy.
I have created a religion."
#189 (quiet until now):
"...I spawned completely alone on an island.
I have 11 believers left.
If anyone can hear this, please send boats."
Hyun-woo grin then muted them again.
He didn't need the noise.
He needed the next five years.
But first, the world slowed just long enough for three short scenes to burn themselves into his memory.
Scene 1 – Greenhollow, Year 3
Elyse, age ten, stood on a stool to reach the granary tally board.
Her fingers were black with charcoal as she scratched the new number: 2 847 sacks.
Her mother watched from the doorway of their new brick house (two rooms, real windows, a door that actually closed).
"We have so much," her mother whispered.
"More than we can eat."
Elyse looked up at the empty sky where no one was watching.
"Thank you," she said to no one.
And meant it with every bone in her body.
Scene 2 – Copperrise, Year 4
A boy named Torin, twelve, coughed bronze dust as he hauled another basket to the smelter.
His father had died the winter before the Faceless One came.
Now his little sister ate meat twice a week.
He wiped sweat from his eyes and grinned at the foreman.
"The Voice said the mountain would feed us," he panted.
"And it's doing it."
Scene 3 – Calder's Ford, Year 5, the last day
Harlan Calder stood on the new stone bridge his people had built across the river.
Behind him, the village (no, the town) gleamed with red brick and fresh thatch.
Children laughed in the streets.
No one was hungry.
No one was cold.
He pressed a hand to his chest, where the Voice lived.
"I don't know your name," he said quietly to the wind.
"But I would die for you."
High above, Hyun-woo felt the belief thread from Harlan thicken into something that felt dangerously close to love.
He closed the replay.
Turn 1 had ended.
Turn 2 was loading.
And for the first time since he arrived, Lee Hyun-woo realized something that made his nonexistent blood run cold.
They weren't numbers anymore.
They were people.
And they had just given him five more years of their lives.