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Ep. 1058 Castle Version 2.0 Part 3

"Well, that and the fact that I only sleep every three days. Why are you trying to catch me sleeping?"

Lin says "So that I can wake you up, silly."

"Oh, in that case I will sleep in tomorrow morning."

Lin smiles and kisses me which leads to us fooling around for a while before getting up to have breakfast. After breakfast Lin leaves to go to the library, but comes back right away. She then tells me that there is a mountain of crates outside before leaving again.

When I head outside I see that Lin wasn't exaggerating by much, it is a massive pile. The crates are of all shapes and sizes and they are stacked higher than the castle's walls. With a sigh I walk over and start opening and organizing the contents of the crates.

As requested the crates mostly contain materials of all types and grades. The metals I put into my ring, the stone I merge into the castle, and the wood gets piled to the side. Among the materials I do end up finding some crates of weapons for me to enchant.

Once I have gone through all the crates, I spend some time enchanting the weapons. When they are done, I re-crate them and stack them nicely to wait for pick-up. Then I turn my attention to the wood, including all of the empty crates which are made of normal wood.

However, even normal wood can be used for the spell to copy books, it just takes more. I spend some time compressing the crates into lumps just big enough to fuel the spell. That should be enough for Lin to use for the rest of the time we are here.

The rest of the magical wood I store in the castle for now since it can't go into the ring. If Lin doesn't end up needing it, I will figure something to do with it. If nothing else, I can always add it to the ship to add more density.

Then again, I could also use it to fix the overcrowding since I just had a thought. Modifying the ship would be difficult, but modifying the two pontoons wouldn't be. If I make them a bit bigger I can hollow them out to create more space for living quarters.

The downside is that it would increase the mass of the ship making it a little slower. It would also mean that I would need more floating metal in order to make the ship fly. However, it also means that I could make use of one of my crazier ideas.

The idea would be to make the two pontoons detachable from the main ship. Then they could act independently, it would basically be like having two destroyers to escort the battleship. However, that would be something to do as part of the version two upgrade.

It will also depend on how my experiment with the golems goes, since the pontoons would need cores. Ideally I would want these sub-cores linked to the main ship so that Athena could still control them. It is still just an idea, but I think that I could make it work and it would be useful.

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Not to mention, it would just be super cool, but I will have to see how things go. I don't want to have to create additional spirits, so if the linking won't work then I won't do it. Although, for now I can just improve the pontoons to create more space.

While I am thinking about the possibilities, I have some lunch and then head back to the workshop. I go back to working on the programming and it mostly goes well, but there is a problem. My idea for making Jarvis able to modify the castle won't work, the programming won't take.

I try it several different ways, but they all fail and I can't think of any more ways to try it. That is, until I think of doing it outside of the programming. Just out of curiosity I try to program other spells, but it doesn't work on them either.

Either spells can't be programmed like this, or I am straight up missing something. However, enchanting the castle with the stone shaping spell works and then I just program the control into Jarvis. Since Jarvis controls the core, controlling the enchantments linked to the core is easy.

So, any spell that I want Jarvis to be able to use just has to be enchanted into the castle. I am pretty sure that Athena can use magic directly, so I don't know what I am missing. Maybe it has something to do with sentience, I won't know unless Jarvis becomes sentient.

However, even without that, Jarvis will still be able to improve the effectiveness of the enchantments. The defenses will also work better when being directly controlled. Just as I am working on the finishing touches for the programming, Almort arrives at the gate.

"Hey, Almort, come on in. Does your visit mean that the council has decided what to do about the wall?"

Almort says "Hello, Ash. No, not yet. I am here because of something else."

"Okay, what's up?"

Almort says "The council has received a request. The southern empire is sending an ambassador specifically to speak with you. The ambassador will be arriving tomorrow."

"Arriving? Why doesn't the southern empire have a resident ambassador like the northern empire does?"

Almort says "Other than hiring adventurers and buying materials, the southern empire doesn't have any dealings with us. Besides, the two empires tend to be antagonistic with each other and that affects our relations with the southern empire."

"So, them sending an ambassador here is a big deal?"

Almort says "Yes, it is. So, the council would appreciate it if you would be willing to meet the ambassador and hear them out. With everything else going on, we don't want to offend the southern empire and makes things even more complicated."

"Yeah, sure. I can do that."

Almort says "Thank you! Are you okay with meeting them tomorrow? Or would you prefer the day after?"

"Tomorrow is fine."

Almort says "Alright. I will make the arrangements. By the way, I like what you have done with the castle. It looks almost holy."

"That is Lin's doing. I wanted to make it look like a demon king's castle."

Almort gives me a strange look before saying his goodbyes and leaving. Once he is gone I head back to the workshop to finish the programming. After I do one last check for errors I go ahead and activate the program.

At first, nothing happens, but I was expecting that, the program needs to boot up. Basically, it will take a few minutes for Jarvis to absorb all the information and take shape. After a few minutes I feel a pulse of mana exit the core and roam around the castle.