Short summary of the last chapter:
Spoiler :
As the first ‘season’ came to a close we watched Voice summon his Chaos lifeform to kill off a few dozen people. At the end of the chapter he found a place to finally place a city, as he has been wanting to do for a long time now.
Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate!
As I first looked over the spacious area I was about to claim, I felt fulfilled. I had finally come to a place I would call mine. I was going to make this the best city/country in the game. According to EDI anyone that owns a city could be considered a king.
I’m not about to pay taxes to someone else. People were going to have to pay taxes to me, just to enter my overly powerful (in the future) city!
I started by having Eli absorb mana from the inside of the mountain. Only specific pockets though. I had plans for the rest of it. When Eli would finish absorbing the mana, it would be sent to me. Eli traveled up and down the mountain a lot during the time.
Since Eli traveled through the ground it didn’t take much time. So I got the earth mana pretty quickly.
The earth mana absorbed from the earth itself doesn’t stay inside one’s body for long. A few hours at most. By then it would have completely dissipated, replaced by the person’s own natural earth mana.
Since natural mana was permanent, that is what I used to create the houses. The first buildings I made were extremely close to the mountain. In fact, parts of the buildings were part of the actual mountain. They were all very tall.
It was as if the mountain was sprouting sky scrapes. Each building was actually four stories tall. That was the limit that my skills told me would still have structural integrity. Each level was equipped with two patios overlooking what would become my city. Each building was a perfect rectangle, and had a flat roof. Each building was 30x30 feet and stood at 40 feet tall.
These were going to be the ‘bureaucratic’ buildings. There were four in total.
The building closest to the right was for the school. I was going to have the children of my town learn as much as possible. The bottom three floors were for the students, the higher up the more difficult the classes. The top floor was used for materials.
What better way to ensure a certain group can oppress the rest of the world than having them be dozens of times more intelligent than anyone else. This building would symbolize my city’s thirst for perfection of the mind.
The second building was the guard’s tower. It came equipped with an underground basement that was two stories deep, and twice as wide as the building above ground. Those were going to be used for training the guards that would come in the future.
The amount of material training I was planning to give my guards would make most armies pale. This building was going to symbolize my city’s desire for perfection of body.
The third building was designated the mages guild. Only the first two floors would be open to the public. The top two floors would each be used for training individual pupils, or whatever else the master of the guild wanted.
This building would cost more than the others, but give us a huge boost if people were actually to become mages. This building was going to symbolize the power of my city.
The final building was the ‘Affairs’ buildings. It was were the diplomatic meetings between people of the city would be held. I decided that building would be the one to take care of the residence, and make sure their needs were met. They would be in charge of enforcing the laws in a court of law.
This building was going to symbolize the equality and fairness my city held in such high esteem.
Even though it sounds easy, it took me an entire day to do each of those buildings. For the guard’s tower I didn’t get to sleep until late into the night.
I spent the next day creating a perfectly smooth stone wall around those four buildings. It arched from the building on the right, to the building on the left. It met the mountain on each side. The top of the wall had merlons dotted on the side away from the buildings. Merlons are the blocks you sometimes see on castle walls.
There was a reason for this, but I’ll get to that later.
The wall only had one entrance. The gate, made completely of steel, took me an entire day to make by refining metal mana. Dirt to stone, iron to steel. It wasn’t that big of a logic leap to figure it out.
The gate could only be opened from the side where the taller buildings were.
After the wall I built another arc of buildings. These buildings were each three stories high. Just one story below the ones on the first arc.
They were much wider than the other buildings though. So there were only about a hundred of them. These buildings would be used as housing for the populous. They were going to be like apartment buildings. Each one was three stories tall. For the higher floors one could use a pulley located inside. This is where the population of the town was going to live.
After the second arc of buildings was complete, I spent time making another wall with another steal gate.
In the third arc there were a little over a hundred buildings. They were each two stories high. Some of these had the same 100x100 feet dimensions as the first arc. This arc was further divided into sub arcs. There was the ‘pleasure sub arc’. A place to buy food and wine, no prostitution though. This is also where the adventurers were going to have their inns located. Those buildings obviously were a bit bigger than the shops and craft areas.
There was the ‘crafting sub arc. Obviously this is where you would go if you wanted to have something crafted. Finally there was the ‘trade goods sub arc’. If you wanted something other than just weapons or armor it was best to go there.
Each of the sub arcs had sections for the individual types of businesses, but it gets a bit overly complicated going into that much detail.
Then came another wall. The stone blocks used for cover and to fire arrows from were again located away from the buildings that had already been built.
The fourth arc which was only one story tall, was guard housing. Any time a guard was on duty they would have to stay there. This is where the bulk of the guard duties were carried out. Identity checking, bounty placing, guarding, things like these were done there. That way the guards would be first up if the city was attacked. There were hundreds of buildings in this arc.
The walls were always just as tall as the buildings directly behind them. So the last wall was only ten feet tall.
Now, as for the reason that each arc only had the merlons facing the outside, that was for the same reason as why the buildings got progressively shorter.
Imagine if you will, that my city got raided. Well that would be a bummer right? Not really. First off they would have to scale the perfectly smooth city walls. While being shot at by archers I might add. After that there was a nice bit of open space between the wall and the first building.
Once they got to the first building, wouldn’t they have the upper hand? No they wouldn’t! The buildings closer to the center got taller as they went. From eight foot tall ceilings closest to the wall, to the eleven foot ceilings closest to the center.
Spells and arrows would be hurled from a higher location the entire time they were trying to invade. Once they got to the second wall, about sixteen feet tall, they would have to start the whole process over!
The only thing I lacked was a surplus of guards to complete my plan. Once I got a few hundred guards my city would be nigh impregnable.
The process of creating my city took four months altogether. Making each building perfectly sculpted got me a new skill though! Sculpting! It said I could change class to some legendary moonbeam sculpture or something. I didn’t though. I wasn’t giving up my mana manipulation for anything.
Each and every building was evenly placed from each other, and from the road. The roads were created quickly. On each side of the road, there were buildings facing it. That also meant there were buildings that had their backs facing each other. I made sure to maximize the area I was using.
During the time I was making the city I had my fairies doing different tasks for me. Each of the inns had two nice hot springs area. Each spring could hold up to ten people at once. Each spring had a solid wooden fencing going around it. There were male and female sections in each inn.
The hot springs were all fed from the same source. During this time Tear had gathered about a million gallons of water. That is the size of a small lake. The water would eventually dissipate though, so I had Eli hook up a small divert in the nearby river to take some of the water to underground lake.
My hot springs use up about a thousand gallons of water each day. The river had mush more than that flowing from the mountain top down into it. I could have harvested the water directly from the mountain, but the forest needed the water too.
If I stopped the flow I would probably get bitched at by Gaia.
Besides giving me a city, working with all of that earth mana each day gave me an unexpected side bonus.
My earth purity shot up to 75. In only four months’ time I had actually gotten to the three quarters mark! I did surround myself with nothing but earth mana, and stone, for months on end though. It was only natural that my automatic purifying process would give me some gains. 75 though! It was an outstanding number.
My earth affinity didn’t jump as much percentage wise, but it went all the way to 90! Just ten more and it would be my second mana type to reach 100!
It doubled. I got two bonuses from that. At 50 I got
Many Blessings of Gnome (Major)
Gnome has upgraded your blessing.
When you feel the flow of mana in the earth you may detect a Mana Crystal if it is close enough. In addition you will be able to unlock the full potential of Mana Crystals.
The upgraded blessing allows you to further sense materials in the earth. When you feel the flow of mana in the earth you may detect a gem of some sort if it is close enough.
Basically I could now feel any rubies, sapphires, diamonds etc. There weren’t very many around me. Even in the mountain I only got a few from it. The blessing at 75 is what made it worth while.
Many Blessings of Gnome (Complete)
Gnome has fully upgraded your blessing.
When you feel the flow of mana in the earth you may detect a Mana Crystal if it is close enough. In addition you will be able to unlock the full potential of Mana Crystals.
The upgraded blessing allows you to further sense materials in the earth. When you feel the flow of mana in the earth you may detect a gem of some sort if it is close enough.
The complete blessing allows your manipulation of earth mana to reach a new level. When you come in contact with a gem of any sort, you will be able to ‘refine’ it into a better quality. Furthermore, you will be able to automatically sense the quality of any gem you come in contact with.
Basically there were five levels of quality. Splintered, fractured, cracked, whole, and Pure. The higher the quality the more they would be worth. I tried upgrading the quality. It took a day to increase the quality of a ruby from splintered to fractured. Then a week to get to cracked.
You can imagine how long the higher levels would take. Still I was only 10 points of affinity away from reaching the final blessing. If I got one. I mean it said ‘complete’, after all. Something good was bound to happen though.
Neither the affinity nor the purity went up after that though. I assumed there was something I was missing. Perhaps a quest I needed to do, or some secret favor I had to do for the earth god.
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By the time the city was finished I looked back at the mountain. The more of the city I made, the more earth mana Eli had taken from the mountain.
Each arc of the city required more mana. Instead of getting more from further in the mountain, I had Eli take it in the form of smaller circles. The smaller circles began to form a familiar shape. After the four months, in game time, a shape began to take form.
It was a crude, and blunt, version of Malbork Castle. (Look it up I think it fits the theme of the city well) The center of the castle overlooked the rest of the castle. As the area neared the outer edge, it got closest to the ground. I spent the next two weeks consolidating the earth mana in the castle.
I was using the blunt tips of the towers, and making them into the sharp tips of the castle people would normally would see while viewing Malbork Castle.
The entire castle was made of sheer-faced stone. All of the sides were as smooth as they could possible get. In order to climb them from the outside one would need to actually break through the excessively dense stone mana.
Even the rooftops I had altered. There were no shingles, the rooves were completely smooth, and had nothing for grappling hooks to attach to.
The brickwork of the actual Malbork Castle was indeed imposing, but the pure smooth stone structure was far better at fighting hordes of enemies.
There was no furniture or appliances in the entire castle. It took two weeks just to force the thick stone mana into even thicker, and finer, mana.
It was located on a plateau created from harvesting earth mana from the mountain. The mountain itself loomed behind the castle, striking an even more imposing figure.
The end result was very much worth it. I had a castle that looked like it could take on the Mongol hordes. It only took a couple of weeks since it had been slowly ‘excavated’ by Eli the entire four months before.
Aren’t I just the little genius?
The next step was the farmland. During the few months Eli and I were creating the castle and city, Tear and Drake gone through the trouble of creating hot springs for each of the taverns. That only took a few weeks though. After that Tear had another project.
Tear, with the help of Moro and Sol, began to help cultivate the area around the city. Tear pulled streams of water from the ever flowing river, and made small streams that would go to where the houses of the farms would be located.
Moro and Sol had already been hard at work, making the ground ooze with light and nature mana. The combination of the two mana types working in conjunction worked wonders. The land quickly became as fertile as if Gaia herself came down and blessed it.
After the areas I settled as farms were finished the two returned for their next jobs.
Moro cleared out the grass, and planted tree seeds along the perimeter of where I decided was my land. That would at least make Gaia no hate me for clearing out vast amounts of grassland for human’s use.
Sol went into the underground lake, with Eli’s and Drake’s help, and blessed the water constantly. The effect was that the hot springs now gave a slight healing effect on those that soaked in them for a few hours each night.
Now what was Golem doing during this entire time?
The mountain I had put my castle on had a lot of iron ore running through it. Golem harvested that iron ore. Now iron ore can’t be used right away for anything. It has to be smelted down to remove impurities.
That is what Drake helped with right after the hot springs. Golem harvested the iron ore in the form of unpure mana and, with Drake’s help, purified it.
The resulting mana was high purity iron mana. The amount of metal mana taken from the mountain in those four months was staggering. It was enough to outfit an army for decades. That wasn’t what I was going to use it for though.
I had Golem constantly refine the metal mana, and place it below the city before it escaped from Golem’s body. Little by little a shape began to form.
The metal mana was no longer iron. It was steel! I don’t know why it went straight from iron to steel with no alloys added, but there was a lot about mana I didn’t know. I got a book that told me all about it, but I couldn’t read it!
The motherfucking god of luck tricked me! I could only read a few pages, the pages weren’t even always in the same place! The book was obviously coded in dozens, if not hundreds, of languages. The dwarven part was in dwarven. The wood elven part was in wood elven. Etc. etc. So in order to read the entire thing I would literally have to learn every language that has ever existed in this world.
The steel below the city, at the end of the four months, covered the entire bottom of the city. So not only was the entire city made from reinforced stone, the bottom of it was even made from steel. There was no way, other than flying or having an upward battle to break into my city.
There was a reason I didn’t have a hug amount of archer towers pointed at the sky. During that four months something scary happened.
One day I was just finishing up the final touches on the largest of the guard barracks in the outer arc. I saw something in the sky, a dark figure that seemed to cast an even darker shadow.
I buffed my eyes, and cried out in alarm. As I looked at it I noticed the wings, and all of the feathers had a silver hue. The fur on the hindquarters were a deep golden color. The body was of a majestic lion, the head was of a vicious eagle.
It was Nightmare-Wing! Its face looked to be angry, but my motive sensing couldn’t determine anything from that far of a distance. I had healed the mother fucker! How dare it be angry at me!
I could hide, and probably die later, or fight and die quickly. I decided to fight, but I first recalled all of my fairies from their respective jobs.
It landed on the ground in front of me. As I readied myself to stealthily draw my staff and attack, it did something I hadn’t expected.
It’s claws dragged on the ground, and it knelt before me. I was stunned. Its face had clearly looked angry earlier. In a heavy accent it spoke.
“Voice, you have saved my life. As is only proper I now pledge myself to your cause.”
Suffice to say I was incredibly ecstatic. Apparently the gryphon’s ‘code of honor’ had deemed that he now had to serve me until he felt like he had paid the price back.
I could make use of that. Oh yes I could.
“Nightmare-Wing, tell me, how is your mother? I tried to treat her wounds after she got me the materials to heal you.”
He nodded his majestic eagle head. “Ca-Caw!”
In a loud, ear piercing cry, he called for her. She quickly appeared on the horizon. Her speed was alarmingly fast.
Only it wasn’t just her. Behind her flew a veritable swarm of creatures. All sorts of flying creatures were darting towards me.
This might be a bit more than I thought I unintentionally gulped while looking at the massive formation of airborne creatures. They began to land on all of the surrounding buildings, and walls. Even with the steel below my feet, and the polished stone surrounding me, I felt as if my city was easily overcome.
Then a perfect idea came to my mind. “Very well! I have the perfect task. One that will cancel out all of any debt you believe you owe me.”
Nightmare-Wing looked at me, obviously expecting something bad enough to be considered being sent to his death.
“I want you to protect this city. I will provide roosts for everyone here, and will gladly help you obtain food. If you protect my city we will be considered even.”
He slowly nodded his head. “Right. Fighting every day, with my life on the line, is the only way to pay my debt back. No matter if it is archers, burrowers, or even giant spiked snakes, I will make sure to kill all of them!” As he spoke he got more and more into it. His face lit up as if he had made the determination of a lifetime.
I hated to interrupt but… “um, actually that’s not right.” I said in the meekest voice I could muster.
He looked at me, obviously confused. “What isn’t right?”
I looked sheepishly at the ground. “I only wanted you to protect the city from flying beasts or monsters. There is no need for the other things.”
His face dropped from the utter dedication, to a look of embarrassment. “*Cough* Well I see. I overestimated myself a bit there. Haha…” I could picture him rubbing the back of his head if he could.
“But if that’s all, it will take an entire lifetime to pay back my debt to you. Especially when you are feeding and housing my brethren here.”
That’s the point retard.
“No no no. Don’t think of it like that. You are free to leave whenever you want. As are your brothers and sisters here. You are by no means stuck here forever. I would just much more safe with the power of such a mighty army that rules the skies being near my insignificant city.”
Every word I spoke made the humility he felt rise. He obviously felt more and more indebted to me.
He gave me one more nod. “Fine, I will accept your offer on behalf of all of my brethren.” With a screech they took to the sky.
After that most of the earth mana came from the caves hallowed out for the avians. Creating a single castle in this manner wouldn’t have actually provided even half of the materials I needed.
The avians never asked for food. Instead they hunted in the forest. They hunted monster and animal alike. I guess they felt too proud to let me give them food and shelter. Just one was enough.
They were quite good at keeping the airways clear of traffic. Any avian that was dumb enough to get close was either chased out, or in rare occurrences, allowed to join Nightmare-Wing’s army.
After the city and avian homes were complete, Eli got to work helping create the farmland. It didn’t take much on the part of my earth fairy. Most of it was already done by Tear, Moro, and Sol.
One night.
A small rumble in the earth mana outside of my city caught my attention. It was finally time!
Now you’ll remember, I hope, that I said EDI and I found this spot together. She hasn’t been mentioned this entire time. There was a reason for that.
She agreed to do whatever I wanted in return for allowing her to join me. It seemed a little bit much just to be in a team with me, but she wanted to do it, so who was I to say no?
I quickly made my way to where the rumble took place. The ground was opened and hundreds of people were pouring out from it.
These people came from two distinct places. The most numerous came from River’s Cross. The entire city seemed to have come. I had sent the leader, Elvina, a letter. The letter went on and on about how I wanted the great goddess Undine to be represented in my city.
Of course the town of River’s Cross was only too happy to oblige me. How could they not? I single handedly saved their entire crummy town.
In addition to the people of River’s Cross, came Evan and his wife Elizabeth. Both wore smiles. Beside them came a dozen different monsters, each carrying burdens that would be used to set up a smithy.
Behind them was Susan. She smiled and waved happily when she noticed Voice. The monsters that held her gear were even more larger in amount than the ones that held the smith’s.
After her came several dozen people Each one of them had one or two monsters carrying things for them. Even the mages, with the Guild master from Rand had come, as per his agreement with Voice. He even brought with him a few other mages. The wind magic teacher was one of them. The amount of materials they brought took dozens of monsters to carry.
At the rear of the entire procession of NPCs, several yards behind everyone else, was one person. Surrounded by hundreds of monsters all bearing heavy loads of books, was Lydia. Lydia was carefully checking each and every monster to make sure all of her precious books were maintained.
With that, I at least fulfilled my promise to her.
Finally came the players. Hundreds of players swarmed past the tunnel entrance to get outside. They had been walking in that tunnel for over a month now. Everyone was happy to finally see the light again.