This crazy, fanatical woman was an interesting one to be sure. She kept calling Kain her savior and her liberator, as well as talking about him like he had seen her before and had helped her when she was on death’s door. Whenever Kain told her the truth, that he had no recollection of such events (because momma didn’t raise no liar), she took it as his not remembering every one of the individually countless people he had ‘liberated from the shackles of fate and destiny’ or other such crazy and overly zealous nonsense. Her name, Alistaira Crowley, reminded Kain of someone from Earth’s history and a song by Ozzy, which was fitting for her dark and mystical nature. He led her into the city, although she likely would have followed him into there even if he had gone on ahead.

As they walked back to the castle, she regaled him with her life-story. The similarities between the semi-transparent presence that those who were spoken to by the ‘voice of God’ had seen and Kain's current body were beyond uncanny, which led Kain to the idea that he had been flexing his power for centuries after he was entombed, even without the newer will inside actually doing something with the vessel. Kain had likely been stirring up trouble within the lands of his foes, using his absurd levels of power to affect change even while he recovered from the battle that had forced him to slumber. Although, as he inquired about the major events of the war and what had happened during the fifteen centuries that he had been asleep, one thing was clear. Kain had fallen asleep almost a decade before the final battle for Necrograd and had been fully entombed mere days before Necrograd fell.

So, Kain hadn’t been at the battle, and his absence was what gave the Forces of Light the capability to defeat the Darksol Empire. No, it wasn’t just his absence that caused the fall, but also Alexis’ disappearance at roughly the same time that made the forces of the Empire so weak. Had either one of them been around, the war would have ended very differently. Kain was asked about why he had fallen asleep at such an inopportune time and where Alexis had gone to, but as Kain wasn’t truly 'Kain' and what memories he had from him were vague at best he had no answers to give.

…

It took some convincing to get the people who had fled into the castle to view Alistaira as a fellow citizen, and thankfully she was able to put her craziness away for long enough to be diplomatic. She and her horde of undead were more than willing to work to prove their usefulness, or rather she was and her undead had no say in the matter. The undead mob was going to be useful in going out into the Gallows Woods to collect edible flora but were going to be completely useless in trying to snag some more meaty meals.

The living animals in the woods would steer clear of the Undead, and thus it would fall to Kain himself to go out a rustle up some protein. Well, he would have done so today if he had not already secured a few months’ worth of dead animals to eat. With the edible flora being brought in on the regular, Kain now had more time to spend experimenting and inventing, two things that the newest citizen of Necrograd was more than happy to join in on. While he had to convince her that he had lost some of his memories during his sleep, this made the perfect excuse to get her to teach him about magic, politics, and history.

In between the multiple lessons that day, the two of them worked together to develop and test new inventions, such as a magically motivated power hammer for use in metalworking. Despite technically being his teacher, there were some things Kain knew that she did not. One of these things was the existence of bioelectricity, which he showed to her with the old ‘salt and a dead frog’ experiment. Every time Kain blew her mind with new information, she would bring out one of her many, many, many books and diligently take notes for future experiments and study.

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They both had a great deal of fun discussing the potential ramifications of fusing science and magic into new and fascinating forms. She especially was fascinated by the Periodic Table of Elements, which was a shocker to her that all matter was made up of, as she put it, ‘tiny, powerful blobs of purity’. When Kain told her the kind of power that a sustained chain reaction would unleash and the effects of such a device both in the short and long term, she coined the phrase ‘World Killer Weapon’ to describe them. Kain was concerned she may try and replicate some of the earliest human experiments with radiation and radioactive materials, so he quickly informed her of how dangerous radiation was to anything alive.

She taught Kain just as much as he taught her, and by the time their first session had ended, the day had turned to night and back again. It was the second month after Kain had claimed the city as his own, and it was time to make good on his promise. Yes, so much had happened in but a single day that it was nearly as eventful as the day he awoke in this world. This was the first day since he came here that he had stayed up for a whole twenty-four hours, as the last time he had done so was a week prior to his death on Earth.

Kain wondered what happened to his body back on Earth, and if it was dealt with in the way he had wanted it to be. But to dwell on something he had no way of knowing was a waste of time, so Kain discarded such thoughts and focused on the now. He sat upon his throne and willed the mana that was in reserve to become the Corrupted Fields. A ripple in space from the depths of the castle spread out until it hit the barrier and with that the Corrupted Fields were complete. Rather than simply teleporting into that pocket-dimension, Kain instead opened a portal and with several dozen farmers in tow, he entered into the Fields.

The land there was definitely corrupted, as were the plants that grew there. Fields of grain swept out in front of me, their bodies black with golden seeds attached. Rather than leave it to potentially harm my citizens Kain tasted the grains himself, with Alistaira doing so immediately afterward. There were no differences between this grain and the grains from Earth, at least by taste and nutrition. In fact, the grains here were definitely just the GMOs from Earth, just with a different color palate. To the farmers who bit the bullet and followed suit, the grains here were superior to any that were elsewhere in the world by leaps and bounds.

The yield was greater, the grains themselves were larger and the taste was to die for. But while he was hungry, Kain didn’t want to stand around munching on grains, so he withdrew a wild carrot from my Inventory, only to have it vanish and a new patch of land appear in the pocket dimension containing a large amount of more modern carrots with a deeper orange color. Kain tried the same with different flora, which produced the same results, generating patches filled with larger, more numerous, and more flavorful versions of what he had taken out. Thankfully this only happened once per different plant, so he was able to get a meal in before leaving the farmers in the pocket dimension to harvest what was there.

Of course, Kain supplied them with some extra hands (undead ones) and some tools to collect and sort the various plants and he kept the portal open as he left so that they could take as long as needed without having to rush to escape the closing door. Now, rather than going out to forage, Alistaira’s undead were being put to good use as untiring and unpaid farmhands. Kain didn’t need a military right now, and he doubted any sane person would march an army through the Gallows Woods just to attack this place, despite the fact that such a thing had literally just happened yesterday. Besides, lightning wouldn’t strike twice, right? He had another month to wait before he could make the final agricultural building, the Bleak Pastures, and he intended to learn from his teacher about what this world had to offer as he taught her about what science he had memorized.