Once the cultist fortress was dealt with, things had fallen into a routine, and a week passed.

It had been a very productive week.

I spent most of my time in the mountains, exploring the deeper parts while bringing the System Beacon I had taken over from the flying castle, revealing it while I explored the mountains. Since it had managed to awaken the sea beast from its slumber, I expected it to awaken any other sleeping King Beasts deeper into the mountains, if they were hiding there.

I didn't want to be chased by a giant beast for a day, but I wanted such a beast attacking our land and ruining everything we had worked for even less, so I chose to be proactive. Luckily, the mountain range had no such creatures.

Unfortunately, it wasn't true for the huge forest on the other side of the mountains. As I approached, some kind of beast started to stir underground. I pulled back, not even trying to see what the creature was. I merely retreated, and ordered Takis to build another defensive bulwark similar to the Wall, as well as several inner mountain bunkers by hollowing out said mountains, large enough to shield everyone in case of an emergency, and connect them with tunnels.

Once they were completed, our biggest weakness would be removed. It was an expensive and difficult task, but luckily, we could afford it. If there was one thing we weren't lacking, it was the high leveled worker classes, and the vitality and mana stones that were required to reinforce such bunkers.

Even after ensuring the relative safety of the region, I stayed there. First, I wanted to keep an eye on the army recruitment, which, at this point, had already reached twelve thousand — their performance convinced me to increase their numbers to fifty thousand rather than the initial plan of ten thousand. Unfortunately, only two thousand were geared like we wanted. The rest still had gear decent enough to hunt beasts, but not enough for a military operation.

Still, the extra Experience was certainly useful.

[Class: Hero

Level: 99

[Authority: 1,000,000]

[Health (2,400/2,400)

Mana (1,500/1,500)]

[STATS

Strength: 80

Agility: 100

Speed: 100

Vitality: 80

Attunement: 50

Perception: 80

Concealment: 50

Charisma: 100

Resilience: 50

Memory: 25

Intelligence: 25

LOCKED…]

[Stat Points: 245]

[SKILLS: —]

[ABILITIES: Elevated Life - Complete - Human

Heroic Party (8) ]

[Alignment: Unaligned]

I hadn't expected to reach the cusp of level hundred in less than a week, but twelve thousand new recruits exploring the mountains and hunting the bountiful beasts provided me with more Experience than I had predicted.

The only reason I hadn't increased my level to a hundred was hesitation. Since it marked Ascension rather than Promotion, I didn't want to increase it without getting a better sense of what it might imply. I wanted to wait until Zolast finished the dungeon and we could run some experiments. If we could swindle some more books from the princess, even better… If not, I was planning to visit the capitals of the various kingdoms and see if the royal libraries were protected well enough.

Of course, it wasn't just fear that held me back. I was also interested in helping the younglings improve. By channeling the extra Experience to them, I freed them from the repetitive hunting tasks, instead letting them focus on the infrastructure.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

A good deal, considering every single one of them was at level ninety. The rest of the Experience, I kept in reserve due to my next task.

Observing the Heroic Party candidates that the younglings had picked. Mahruss and Takis were the ones that identified the most candidates, their job allowing them to interact with the most people, but the others also picked some valuable candidates for me.

I spent some time observing them as they operated on the mountains, not only trying to make sure they had no divided loyalties that might make things complicated, but also trying to judge them and understand how they might react to more power.

Up until now, every single person I had allowed to join my inner circle gained that more through their personality and values than their capabilities, and I wasn't planning to make a change now.

Well, every candidate except the one I had saved from prison, but that didn't count. He was more of a decoy, but I doubted he was complaining. After all, not only had I saved him from prison, but also sent enough experience his way to bring him to level ninety as well.

He was being a good distraction at the border, immobilizing both Somaton and Ralum better than I had expected.

Still, my mysterious recruit withstanding, I had always believed that capabilities could be trained easily while values only corroded with power. It was even more true in a world with the System, where capabilities were implanted magically rather than through years of intense hard work … but that made it even easier to be tempted with more.

At this point, I couldn't afford to blunder about the Heroic Party.

For now, Dahmut was the only candidate who had managed to clear the checklist. More importantly, he had the personality to stay under the radar if brought to one of the capitals. I just needed to decide whether the Ralum or the Somaton capital was the better target to discover the tracks of the mysterious organization that had kidnapped Jertann.

I was about to visit him, when I received a message from Limenta, alerting me about another troublesome discovery in the mountains while prospecting for mines, adding another item to a particular problem we had been dealing with.

I could have talked to him through our connection, but he was not too far away.

I decided to visit them directly.

I asked him to find a private room and move there. Five minutes later, I was on a warded mountaintop, looking at the familiar figures of Limenta and Launara, though the way they looked at each other earned a chuckle from me.

Feeling mischievous, I decided to tease them a little. "I'm sure two young people have better things to do on a beautiful mountaintop than entertain an old man, so why don't you just give me a report, and I can disappear."

Launara blushed hard enough that I would have worried for her health if it wasn't for the System. Meanwhile, Limenta's color was only a shade lower as he whined. "Boss…"

"Okay, I won't tease you young lovers anymore," I said. Weird, my promise didn't seem to help their blush. I wonder why.

I said nothing while they sputtered in a nonsensical manner. I wished that I could tease them more. Unfortunately, we had work to do. "Show me the location of the newest breach," I said.

Limenta pushed the map of the region, with several different pins all over it, representing various locations. Mines discovered, surface settlements, bunkers under construction, hidden forges … and twelve blue pins, representing the most recent problem we had been dealing with.

"We have discovered two more breaches while exploring, boss," Limenta said.

"That makes twelve, and we didn't finish exploring a fraction of the mountains," I said. "That makes twelve potential dungeons. What an absurd problem to have…"

"Based on the general spread, we estimate there are at least thirty breaches along the region, boss," Launara said.

It wasn't a small number. Thirty breaches meant thirty dungeons. Of course, they were small breaches, and even if all of them combined, it would barely provide half of the Experience of the large dungeon the princess had been establishing…

Though, considering the main breach had been enough to make Somaton assign almost twenty flying castles and multiple flying fortresses to the region to take over — only forced away due to their border problems — it was still putting us at risk of an invasion.

Each breach still represented one dungeon valuable enough to prop up a minor noble house alone; and that was without our ability to improve the Skill production of the dungeons. They represented a huge value … but also a huge trouble.

Their existence meant that the value of the region was even more than we had initially estimated, making it a hot potato. We hadn't suspected their existence before, because everyone assumed that Set's little temper tantrum had been directional, and we wouldn't encounter any breach at the mountain range.

That had turned out to be a false assumption.

"We have already started building bunkers around them, and I moved some of the forges next to them. Currently, they are hidden, but …" Launara started.

"… but, sooner or later, the secret will get out," Limenta completed.

I smiled at their antics. Somehow, while running around establishing hidden forges for the followers of an ostracized goddess, their relationship had progressed from sharing elusive glances to completing each other's sentences.

Unfortunately, I was too busy and missed many opportunities to tease them along the way.

"That's inevitable," I said.

"Maybe we should slow down the prospecting," Limenta commented.

"No, that would only make things worse," I replied. "It would have worked if the region was smaller, but we don't have the manpower to block other people from sending their own teams. If we don't discover and block them, sooner or later, they will discover a few of them…"

"And, once they do, they'll start to wonder if there's more," Launara completed.

"Exactly," I said. "Ultimately, we don't have any choice but to hasten the arming of our new army and build more siege weapons. That way, we can scare them even after the dungeons are revealed. I doubt that they will dare to face a fifty-thousand-strong army all armed with magic weapons, and backed with siege weapons."

Launara's eyes widened. "Boss, we can't forge that much weaponry. You're talking about an army bigger and better equipped than the royal army. It's impossible."

"Really," I said with a sudden smirk. "What if I assign the first fifteen dungeons to your blacksmiths?"

Launara's expression shifted immediately. "That's more doable. But we still need at least five thousand Expert skills to support the new blacksmiths."

I chucked. "That won't be a problem…"