Rule Zero: The Village Mission

The New Rules And Earning Point

Chapter 10: The Points of Power and the Roxia Economy

The gates of the Twin Spring domain had never officially opened, but the rumors of a paradise hidden in the mist had traveled faster than a messenger hawk. By the dawn of the second month, the " Neutral Zone" was no longer lonely. A crowd had gathered at the boundary—beggars, runaway laborers, and even a few rogue cultivators who had been discarded by the rigid hierarchies of the Great Clans. They stood staring at the silver-bark fence, their eyes wide as they smelled the scent of roasting meat and fresh bread wafting from the Great Hall.

Luvia stood on a raised platform in the center of the village square, her two wolves, Kage and Tsuki, sitting like stone sentinels on either side of her. She looked at the desperate faces beyond the gate. Her overthinking mind was screaming. If I let them all in as members, the village will collapse. If I turn them away, I’m no better than the Lotus Clan.

She stepped forward, her voice amplified by a small spiritual device the System had provided.

"Listen up!" she shouted. "I know why you are here. You want the food, the safety, and the gold of the Roxia Clan. But I am not a fool, and this is not a charity. We are not taking in any more full-time village members. The core of this clan is closed."

A murmur of despair rippled through the crowd. But Luvia held up a hand.

"However," she continued, "I am opening the Roxia Labor System. If you want to eat, if you want to earn, and if you want to stay within the protection of our walls during the day, you will work. But you will not be paid in gold—at least, not at first."

She unveiled a massive, high-standing board made of dark polished oak. Across the top, in bold, silver letters, it read: THE ROXIA POINT SYSTEM.

The Architecture of the Task Board

Luvia pointed to the board with a wooden rod. The newcomers craned their necks to read the meticulously carved lines.

"In this village, your life is measured in points," Luvia explained. "Every task has a value. You do the work, you get the points on your wooden token. You disrespect a member, you are banned forever. No second chances."

She began to walk the crowd through the mathematics of her new world, her cafe-manager brain operating at peak efficiency.

Entry & Selection: "Just for passing the interview and being selected for a job, you start with 50 points. Consider it your sign-on bonus."

The Harvest: "On the left side of the board, you will see the plant list. 10 points per basket of harvest. But look closely—different plants have different values. Harvesting the delicate Moon-lilies is worth more than pulling common water-stalks."

The Timber: "On the right side, the logging tasks. 20 points for 12 perfect planks. Again, the wood matters. Silver-bark pine requires more skill; it pays more."

The River: "30 points to catch a full bucket of fish. But beware: if you damage the fish or the bucket is under-sized, the points are docked. Precision is everything."

The Kitchen: "40 points to assist in the kitchen for one meal’s preparation. If you help cook for the whole village, the points multiply per meal."

The Maintenance: "Dislike the fields? 50 points to deep-clean the Great Hall and the public baths. Everything must shine."

The crowd stared at the board in stunned silence. This wasn't the slave labor of the Black Cloud mines. This was... a game. A logical, fair game.

The Math of the Roxia Gold

"Now, the part you care about," Luvia said, her golden eyes flashing. "The profit. You cannot buy things with points, but you can turn points into the currency of this world. My math is simple, and it is final."

She tapped the bottom of the board where the conversion rates were listed:

The 100-Point Milestone: "Hit 100 points, and you can convert them into gold. But because I value loyalty, hitting 100 points gives you a 50-gold bonus. That’s 150 gold for your first 100 points."

The 500-Point Milestone: "Hit 500 points? You get 100 extra gold, plus the 50-gold bonus for every 100-point interval you passed. That’s 250 bonus gold on top of your base pay."

The 1000-Point Legend: "This is the highest tier. 200 extra gold, plus the 50-gold bonuses for the ten times you hit 100, plus the 50-gold bonuses for hitting 500 twice. If you work hard enough to hit a thousand, you will leave here a wealthy man."

A man in the front row, a former accountant for a merchant guild, gasped. "That... that math is actually generous. It rewards the grind."

"It rewards honesty," Luvia corrected. "You can turn in your points every three days. Not every day. I need the three-day gap for my Elite Ten to verify the work and for the System—I mean, my ledger—to calculate the taxes. If you try to cheat the count, you lose everything."

The Luxury and the Subscription

Luvia then dropped the final bombshell. "Since you are working, three meals a day are free. Standard stew, bread, and water. But I know some of you want more. You want the dessert? You want the premium fruit? You want a month-long 'Subscription' to the VIP dining area? That will cost you 1 point for a month-long pass."

She leaned over the railing, looking directly at a group of young men. "If you don't want to pay the point, your house is outside the fence. You can walk back for lunch and walk back to work. Choice is yours. But time is points, and points are gold."

Special and Emergency Missions

"Finally," Luvia said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "The Rare Tasks. If one of the Elite Ten—Mian, Kai, or the others—asks you for a 'Special Mission,' like building a new wing of the stables or specialized crafting, that is 70 points. These are optional. And the rarest of all? An Emergency Mission. If the alarm bell rings, and you step up to defend this village or solve a crisis, you get 80 points instantly. But pray you never see those."

As the crowd began to scramble for the registration table where Roxia Renji was waiting with a stack of wooden tokens, Luvia sat back down. Her head was thumping. She had just invented a freelance gig-economy in a cultivation world.

[NOTICE: SYSTEM ANALYSIS COMPLETE.]

The blue screen flared in her mind, and for the first time, the System sounded genuinely impressed.

[LOGICAL ANALYSIS: 10/10. UNCONVENTIONAL MANAGEMENT: 10/10. USER LUVIA, YOUR INTEGRATION OF MODERN 'GAMIFICATION' INTO A MEDIEVAL LABOR FORCE IS UNIMAGINABLE. BY REMOVING TRADITIONAL CURRENCY IN FAVOR OF A CLOSED-LOOP POINT SYSTEM, YOU HAVE CREATED TOTAL ECONOMIC CONTROL. I PRAISE YOUR UNIQUE AND LOGICAL MIND. YOU ARE TRULY THE ONLY ONE WHO COULD TURN 'SURVIVAL' INTO 'CORPORATE EFFICIENCY'.]

"I just didn't want to pay them all in cash up front and go broke," Luvia muttered to herself.

[ADVICE: YOUR 'MATH' REGARDING THE BONUSES IS ACTUALLY A PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAP THAT INCREASES WORKER RETENTION BY 400%. YOU ARE A NATURAL-BORN CAPITALIST, ROXIA LUVIA.]

"Shut up," she smiled.

The village square was now a hive of activity. Roxia Kai was leading a group of twenty new workers toward the forest, each of them clutching their wooden tokens as if they were made of diamond. Roxia Sora had fifteen people in the farm, explaining the point-value of different vegetables.

"Remember!" Kai shouted to his group. "You want that 50-gold bonus? Make those planks perfect! Roxia Luvia doesn't accept jagged edges!"

By the afternoon, the village looked like a well-oiled machine. People weren't grumbling about the heat or the hard work; they were comparing tokens.

"I'm at 40 points already!" one girl chirped as she hauled a bucket of fish. "Two more buckets and I've hit the kitchen-help bonus!"

Luvia watched from the Great Hall, her wolves resting their heads on her knees. She had done it. She had expanded the village without losing control. She had created a labor force that was motivated not by fear, but by the math of the "Point."

As the sun set, she saw the first "Special Mission" being completed. Kai had asked a group to help finish the Maternity Wing for the animals. As he tapped their tokens with a specialized spiritual stamp, the workers cheered.

"We’re not taking in members," Luvia whispered to Tsuki, the silver wolf. "But we’re sure as hell building an empire."

The Twin Springs was no longer just a village. It was a corporation. And Roxia Luvia was the CEO.