Short summary of the last chapter:

Spoiler :

Voice did a few failed experiments with purifying his fairies, but also made a type of surveillance system using the eyes of zombies. He also admits that he hired bandits to attack the city.

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Floating eyes would attract a lot of attention. So I embedded a small metal shard in each of them. The shards basically used EDI’s ability to bend light. The light was bent away from everything but the recording device.

So technically someone might be able to see little black dots moving around occasionally, but no one would believe they are my surveillance system.

I wanted to add the light bending on the eye itself, but there just wasn’t enough room. Physically the eye already was covered completely in runes. If the runes were more powerful I might have been able to do it without the metal shard embedding itself inside, but I couldn’t at that time.

I put all of the eyes in the darkness mana purifier. The shards I put in the light mana purifier. After a while I put the eyes in the wind mana purifier as well, then finally in the light mana purifier.

Each of the eyes became much more powerful. They could keep their charges for a long while longer than if they weren’t purified. There was only one problem.

The skeleton I purified earlier had lost the purification after being out of the purifier for a few hours. That meant the boost was only temporary. I guess it was different from me since I was only using them as assistance to purify my mana, not getting power from them directly.

While the eyes sat in their purifiers, I had my fairies come back. I didn’t want them to accidentally see anything they shouldn’t have.

I also sat in my fire purifier, then wind. It would have been better to do fire then water, but I needed those two to be higher, at least if I was going to increase my pure mana capacity.

In the nine hours I had the eyes purifying, I increased my wind mana by 2 points, and my fire by 3. I figured something out though.

So it’s true! When I have higher affinity, purifying that type of mana is faster! Damn! I need to get 100 affinity in everything if I want to go as quickly as possible.

Although darkness and light mana rose at the same speed. I attributed that to the fact that I was the chosen of Mar, so I probably gained light mana more quickly.

The eyes finished. I got up from the wind mana purifier, and walked over to the light mana purifier.

I grabbed up the dozens of eyes using wind mana.

“Alright guys. Looks like it’s time to go! Make sure you all keep an eye out for the enemy!” Hehe, keep an eye out

I pumped each one full of mana, one by one. I might have had an effective mana total of about 9.4 thousand, but it still took a lot of time to get done with the large batch of eyes.

I mean each one could 1k mana. I had to meditate just to fill them up in any reasonable amount of time. The eyes swarmed around the town.

One by one the flew out of the window nearest me. One by one they began to fly around the town randomly. I couldn’t program any set flight pattern, only that they should stay within a certain distance of the glass pane that controlled them.

Soon all of them were out but two. Without the knowledge of the dwellers of the town, they were being spied upon. With the eye system out I would be able to snuff out anyone that committed any crime.

I didn’t expect crime to be a problem any time soon, but preventative measures were better than reparation.

The second to last eye I had set to go straight to the outer arc’s gate. It was one of the only two that I set controls on. It was set to follow the light mana signature of the first person to pass through the city gate.

I set my fairies on tasks as well. Tear was to check all of the water supplies. Moro was to make sure no poison was left in the town. Eli was check all structures and make sure they weren’t being compromised. Golem had to check on all things metal, including the metal disk below the city.

I made sure every avenue I could think of was covered. Although I hired the bandits, I didn’t actually want them to damage my city more than needed.

Within a few hours of sending out the eyes, I got a response from the one watching gate.

Ohh~ I hope this guy is fun to watch~ I had started on the dark avenue of voyeurism.

I zoomed in on the person, by finagling with the glass pane. The person that was probably a bandit looked in all respects to be normal.

It was a woman. A skinny woman, with lightly tanned skin. She was wearing adventurer’s leathers that covered up her modest figure.

She didn’t seem shifty in the least, but a good spy wouldn’t.  

Now the city got adventurers that wandered in, but only about one or two a week. Of course they usually stayed for at least a few weeks.

So getting a random adventurer like her wouldn’t bring up suspicion from the city.

The girl made some small talk with the guard, but only as they ferried her to the second arc. They had been trained to not let anyone wander around the outer arc. Not even if I was specifically there with them. No one was allowed to wander. Nor were the guards allowed to talk about the outer arc.

So although the girl talked to the guards, and they even talked back to her, she was not allowed to wander about the city. It seemed as though she asked to at one point, but the guards got serious and shook their heads.

So she was led to the second arc, and released to do as she pleased in the adventurer’s arc. She wasn’t allowed past the second arc, although she could explore the second arc at her leisure.

She went into basically everything. I was almost certain she was the spy. The second eye was still watching the gate, so no one new had passed.

The eyes began to come back at that time. It had been about ten hours since I first released them. That was the amount of time they could run for. I had to begin filling them all again.

It was a bit difficult to pay attention to the info from the girl, and charge the eyes at the same time. Thanks to task master I could fill them without even really paying attention to them.

I watched every place the girl went. Of course she went to the well, and to several taverns that had no residents. She wasn’t allowed in there, but she seemed to mentally note their locations.

After watching her for the entire day, I was her enter a tavern. While she was in the tavern, I flew into the dungeon entrance that was hidden in my castle. I changed my appearance using disguise, and went to the tavern she was staying at.

She sat at a table surrounded by men. She was drinking with them.

“Thank ye kindly fine lady! Ale bought by another is the best tasting ale!”

“HAHAHA!” The other men were laughing with him.

As I entered the tavern, I deployed an eye I had charged and kept. I made it fly to her, and stay around her. She would eventually have to go back to the camp. The longer she stayed here the more likely it would be that she got caught. If it was me I’d leave the first night.

After ordering a drink, I sat and thought about how I could best make use of her if she did go back to the bandit camp. Obviously I’d know where it was, but I couldn’t remote control the eye from that far of a distance. It would just follow her until it began to run out of mana. If she didn’t leave before that, I’d have to figure out another way to actually find the camp.

After I spent a bit of time in the tavern, nursing my drink, I left. The eye had been specially programmed to follow her, so I didn’t have to do anything other than watch it through the mirror.

I got back pretty quickly, and began to watch the bandit girl. She was in her room changing. I would have looked away, but she wasn’t real. A complex coding is still a code. Although EDI had emotions and things, she could be changed with a thought from EDITOR. That isn’t a real person.

The bandit girl had seduced a man from the tavern, and was eliciting information from him. Things about how the city was made, how far the watch towers could see, etc.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

And here I thought that family men wouldn’t bed the first morsel that threw herself at him. I guess men really are pigs.

Of course I was an exception. I didn’t try to fuck everything in my past. Although using sex drive against someone is a good tactic, it’s bad when they can be so easily led.

I was trying to think up a way to shore up this defense as well, but then stopped myself. Who was I to try to change human (NPC) nature? Even if I did, I’d just be making it harder to lead them by the nose.

I didn’t spy on the two while they were actually having sex, but I did make sure she wasn’t doing anything suspicious. She left soon after they were done.

The man lay there, either in deep sleep or actually dead. Since I didn’t want to incite worry just yet I sent Sol over there with my amulet of Mar. Turns out the man wasn’t dead, just sleeping. He did have an STD according to Sol though, a pretty fresh one.

I asked, and it turned out Sol could heal it. It did take a nice chunk of mana from Sol, though. Therefore, Sol had to sleep for a while to recuperate.

I watched the girl return to the bandit camp, but not before she poisoned a couple of wells. That was fine. I had Moro (and secretly Kretchof) go to check the poison out. It was only something that made one nauseated.

It wouldn’t cause death or anything, so I didn’t need to purify it just yet. Like I said, I did want a bit of panic. Otherwise I’d have wasted my gold hiring these bandits in the first place.

Over the course of the next few days I spent much of my time creating, and recharging several of my ‘recon orbs’. I made about a dozen or so more, and spent a huge chunk of time keeping all of them charged.

Because the orbs couldn’t change the pattern they went through, I did notice a few small gaps in security, so I patched those up with a couple of extra orbs. I also sent ten orbs to the bandit camp. Since I had it timed, basically perfectly, I could send one out and it would reach the bandit camp right as the other left to get recharged.

That day several people had to stay home because of the sickness. Someone brought a sick person to the mage’s guild, but they seemed to turn the others away.

Now that’s not right.

They were supposed to be serious magic users. They couldn’t, or wouldn’t, heal a simple sickness? It didn’t make sense that the two people didn’t go to the church first though.

They did go to the church after though. The church was treating a small number of people for this, and seemed to be a bit stretched on man-power.

I wasn’t going to help until someone came to the castle to ask for it though. My castle had a personal well that collected fresh mountain water, so I didn’t really need to bother with the poisoning. Not to mention I’d just be able to absorb the poison to make mine more potent.

Not much though. The poison had to be pretty freaking powerful to increase the ability of Moro’s final form. That, or I had to stay submerged in the poison for extremely long periods.

A few days went by. People began to get more and more sick. The temple of all gods was absolutely packed with people seeking healing. Even the mage’s guild decided to try to investigate the illness.

On the third day I noticed that the bandits were preparing to attack, so I made my move. The girl had been going back an forth from the city, bringing in several animal pelts and hundreds of pounds of meat each day.

She wasn’t the one that hunted all of that of course, that was thanks to the bandit group. They were efficient I’ll give them that. They hunted everything in the area, then had the girl sell what they didn’t need to eat for that day.

They got food, and she got trusted by the people of the town.

Heh, it’s too bad that I already know their plan.

I smiled a bit at the fact that they thought they were outsmarting me. I mean come on! They didn’t even check on who their employer was! They deserved to be taken advantage of.

When it looked like the bandits would attack, probably that night or the next, I got to work.

I had secluded myself in my purifier rooms over the course of all three days. So nobody knew what I was doing.

I made a big show of ‘being sick’, and got to work. I took out some purified water, enchanted with the ability to cure poison. It was only a small beaker worth, but it sufficed. I wasn’t using it to actually cure the poison anyway.

I poured it out inside of one of the wells. At the same time I had Sol, Moro, Tear, (and secretly Kretchof) purify the water of the poison. In moments the poison was all pushed out, and absorbed by Moro and Kretchof.

We repeated this with every well in town.  By the fourth, out of twenty, people had started to gather to watch me. Like I said, I made a big deal out of looking sick. The worse I looked while doing this, the better I’d look in the future for having done this.

I walked to each well. I could have flown, but that might have made me seem like I wasn’t as sick as I claimed. So I walked.

By the tenth well, people were cheering while I worked. Someone had realized what I was doing. They realized I must have figured out the cause of the sickness and was fixing it.

By the fifteenth well, basically everyone in town, aside from the guards, were watching me. By the time I had finished the last well, everyone was congratulating me.

The sickness was a bit worse than what I was told earlier. People that got sick soon became paralyzed. Being paralyzed this day and age basically meant death. If one couldn’t work one couldn’t eat. There was no such thing as welfare or anything. You worked for the government, not the other way around.

While I was tempted to let a few of these guys die to show how bad the poison could be, I decided against it. I went to the temple, and instantly began healing people.

The priests of the temple could heal the paralysis, but it took a lot of time and effort for even one person to be cured. It was different for me.

The poison worked like a permanent de-buff. So I treated it like one. By taking apart the mana strands that made the poison, I completely disabled it. Although that alone didn’t help with the fact that the victims couldn’t move anymore.

That was easy enough to fix though.

About ninety percent of the people that lived in my city were human. I have human dissection 100%. I basically know everything about the human body possible. Of course this info didn’t help with real surgeries, but it helped in DIVE.

With my inspect showing the red lines of weakness, I was able to find exactly what parts were not working with each person. By flushing that part with light and fire mana, I was able to mend the muscles bit by bit.

This kind of thing was nothing compared to creating new and more powerful types of seeds. It took a fraction of the time as well.

Each person took roughly five minutes to be cured. I could have done it faster, but I needed to make sure that every part got the exact amount of mana it needed. Task Master helped, since I had fused a math skill to it.

I was able to easily calculate the exact amount of mana needed. Well I was able to closely guess. So I  used less mana than the thing said to be safe, and just held it there longer.

The more I worked though, the easier and more precise calculate was able to be. Eventually I was able to actually use only the exact amount of mana, for the shortest amount of time, and the patient would be perfectly cured.

Even though it only took five minutes per person, it still took a very long time to cure everyone. I even ended up going door to door for people that couldn’t make it to the temple.

Before I knew it, it was nighttime.

I sighed in exhaustion. Ugh, that was tiring. Note to self, never let people poison my wells again.

I smiled a tiny bit. At least if it isn’t me, hehe.

Some of the guards had been taken out by the poison, but most of them were ok.  After only an hours break, watching the mirror for safety, I sighed.

The bandits had been getting ready all day, and finally decided to pounce.

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Hey guys! Another chapter coming later today. I honestly thought i posted one lst week, but i guess i didn't. : (