Quite a few of the nobles look dumbfounded when they hear the emperor's decree. With this one move the emperor has crippled the power of the faction behind his son. I imagine that this is going to lead to even more bloodshed, but it isn't my problem.

A few minutes later the commander returns to the throne room with fifteen female elves. The elves look confused as to what is going on, but they don't seem to be afraid. From that I would guess that they haven't been abused to the point of some of the others.

Emperor Rathburn says "Here they are. Is there anything else?"

"No, that concludes our business."

I lead the elves out of the throne room and once we are away from the spying enchantments I open a gate. Then I urge the elves to go through, they look at the guards surrounding them and then go through. Once they are through, I nod to Captain Choe, go through the gate, and close it behind me.

As soon as I step through, Athena appears at my side and welcomes me. She tells me she has informed Stillwater and that someone will be along in a moment. The fifteen elves are looking around in confusion and don't even seem to notice Athena.

Athena says "I'm sorry, we weren't expecting any more elves or someone would have been here to greet them."

"It's fine. I wasn't expecting to find more either. How are the ones from earlier doing?"

Athena says "They are still a little shocked and are unable to adapt to the situation. I am under the impression that they are having trouble believing that all of this is real."

"That's understandable. After a lot of bad things happen, it is hard to believe in a good thing happening. Give them some time to adjust."

As Athena is considering her reply, Brightfire comes rushing into the cabin. She quickly takes the confused elven women in hand and starts explaining things to them. I say my goodbyes and gate back to the castle, but Lin isn't there when I arrive.

It isn't quite time for dinner, so she is probably still at the library copying books. The trip to the capital didn't take as long as I was expecting it to, which is good. With nothing else to do I head outside and check on the gardens.

Surprisingly, there are already little green shoots growing out of the soil. I guess that the mana rich soil and water are causing the growth to be accelerated. It also looks like the golems have already taken care of the gardens for the day.

Since there are no new crates of weapons, I check the golems for errors. However, since there aren't any yet, that doesn't take me long and I am soon back to having nothing to do. I don't want to start working on Jarvis yet, so I head to the library to look for Lin.

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Lin says "You are back early. Does that mean that things went well or really bad?"

"Things went just as planned. It was actually kind of disappointing."

Lin says "Are you disappointed that you didn't get to burn the capital to the ground?"

"No. But I wouldn't have minded getting to kill a few nobles. The Imperial Guards dealt with all of them before I had a chance to."

Lin says "Isn't that a good thing?"

"I guess so. It was just rather boring."

Lin says "Even if it was boring, you went to save the elves and you did that. That is the important thing, right?"

"Yeah, you are right. So, did anything happen here?"

Lin says "Nope. I haven't heard from Almort or Zachariah. I have just been copying books all day. Are the elves going to throw another welcoming party?"

"I don't know, I didn't ask. I am sure that if they do, they will let me know."

Lin says "If they do, I want to go. The party was a lot of fun, much better than the human ones."

"Alright. I skipped lunch, do you want to go to the restaurant for dinner?"

Lin says "Sure, let's go!"

Lin quickly cleans up her table, then links arms with me and we walk across to the restaurant. By this point we already have all of the restaurant's dishes in the pouch. However, it is still a nice change of pace to eat in the restaurant for the atmosphere.

After dinner we head back to the castle, Lin heads to her tower and I go take a bath. As I am soaking in the lava, I start playing around with some mana. Based on the wall, I am trying to see what else I could make by solidifying mana.

Unfortunately, my hopes of being able to make any material I want are quickly dashed. While the technique is fairly cool, it is pretty limited in what it can make. Anything other than stone proves to be unstable and unable to absorb additional mana.

So, unless I want to make stone golems, this won't really help me much. Although, it could be useful for adding to the castle if I decide I need more space later. Then again, it could be used for cosmetics since I can control the color of the stone.

Right now, the castle is a pretty plain gray color due to mixing multiple types of stone. I don't really want to rebuild the castle, but I could coat it with a layer of created stone. That would change the color to anything I wanted and improve the mana gathering of the castle.

The coating wouldn't be as strong as the rest of the castle, but it would be easy to fix. Besides, that would only matter if the castle itself gets attacked, meaning someone would have to get through the defenses. That should be pretty unlikely and I like the idea so I go looking for Lin to get her opinion.

"Lin, what do you think of me changing the color of the castle?"

Lin says "Sure, but not black."

"Aw, why not?"

Lin says "Because you are not a demon king."

"I shouldn't have shown you those anime. Fine, what color do you think the castle should be?"

Lin says "How about white with gold accents? Maybe add some statues or something as well."

"If I do that, are you going to dress up as a Fairy Princess?"

Lin says "If anything I would be a Fairy Queen, get it right. But yes, I will dress up for you."

"Deal!"

Lin laughs as I rush outside to start redecorating and she goes back to organizing books. As soon as I get outside I start gathering mana to surround the castle. To keep things simple I create an inch thick coating over the existing stone.

Unlike the wall, I only put one spell into the stone and that is to help the castle gather mana. It is not to do anything specific, it will just increase the mana density inside the castle. That should help the plants to grow and keep the golems running no matter what they do.