Luckily, before that can happen, the elders arrive and Core introduces them to the elves. The elders are Alger of the badger clan, Ekeerr of the bear clan, Vyken of the wolf clan, Lerab of the jaguar clan, and Trynt of the elephant clan. The first thing the elders do is to kneel and welcome me back as the king, which feels pretty good.

Only after that do they bow to Core and then greet the new people. They pay special attention to Lin when I introduce her as my wife-to-be, even more than the elves. After that they greet the elves respectfully, but they don't act the way I was expecting them to.

When I was here last, they thought of the creators as basically their gods. However, I am not seeing anything like that this time, which is a good thing in my opinion. I am guessing that Core put in quite a bit of effort to discourage the worship of her people.

After a bit of discussion, the elders take Stillwater and the others to introduce them around. At the same time, I ask Windy to give Lin and Bella a tour of the city, which she agrees to do. To avoid sitting around, Lizzy goes with them, leaving just me, Core, and the kids.

"So, Kechara said there are some things that you want me to take care of?"

Core says "Yes. You are the only one who can modify the enchantments. I want you to restore the sky to what it was originally. Some of our people have been having issues with the sun being up all the time. It is also affecting the crops to some extent. Also, I want you to extend the enchantments for the orchard to cover the new farms if possible."

"Alright. I should be able to handle that. Anything else?"

Core says "The earth mages managed to rebuild the bridges, but it would probably be a good idea to have the golems check them."

"Okay, will do. Kechara said that the barrier now only extends beneath the city. Are you still restricted to this room?"

Core says "Yes, I am. No matter the shape of the barrier, its core is still this room, so I can't leave."

"If it's okay with you, once I am done with the city I want to come back and take a proper look at the barrier and you. If I can understand what the dragon did, maybe I can modify it."

Core says "I don't mind you taking a look, but I doubt you can modify it. To do so you would have to be on par with the dragon who made it."

"I may not be as strong as him yet, but my knowledge of enchanting has improved a lot. Besides, he only helped, the elves designed the spell originally, right?"

Core says "That's true."

Kechara is still wrapped around my neck and when I leave the column the rest of the kids follow me. Before heading to the palace, I convince Kechara to show her siblings around the city. The eight of them go running off and once they are gone I enter the palace.

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Since I am wearing the crown, the doors open themselves for me and the defenses turn off. I head straight to the throne room and sit on the throne to activate the control system. There are quite a few things I want to do besides Core's list, but first comes some studying.

A few things I want to do will involve altering the enchantments, so first I need to understand them. My knowledge of magic and enchantments has improved a lot since the last time I was here. As I am looking at the original enchantments, I understand a lot more about them this time.

Not only can I see a number of mistakes, but I can also see areas that I can improve. There are even a couple of enchantments that I now know better versions of. This is actually going to be a lot of work, but the city will function better when I am done.

The first thing I do is replace those enchantments that I have better versions of. Next, I go through all of the enchantments fixing all the mistakes that I can find. Then I go through all of the enchantments making improvements where I can.

Finally, I go back through checking for any mistakes that the changes created. Once that is done, I find that I have freed up quite a bit of mana capacity. Some of that I will be using to extend the range of the enchantments to cover the plains.

Not only will it help the farms, but it will also help any additional farms that get added later. Restoring the sky enchantment back to its original purpose is really easy. It even uses less mana when it is nighttime, giving me more to work with.

With all of that done, I turn my attention to the city's golems and their programming. However, this is where I run into the first limit to the city control system. There is no way to modify the golems through the control system, I have to do it manually.

So, I issue orders to have the golems come to the palace in groups of five. While I am waiting for the first group, I add the kids, Lizzy, and Lin to those allowed to enter the palace. This is going to take a while and at some point I am sure someone is going to come looking for me.

As soon as the first golems arrive I open them up and start making the upgrades. I learned a lot building and programming my own golems and I am going to apply that knowledge. I need to do the physical upgrades first and then I will be able to change the programming to match.

The problem is that the city has a lot of golems and it is going to take hours to modify all of them. Luckily, the materials are already present so all it costs me is some mana and time. Although, compared to my golems, it is more accurate to call these just magical constructs.

I could turn them into proper golems, but that would involve completely rebuilding them. I may come back and do that at a later date, I just don't have the time right now. I could also add more golems later, for now the upgrades will have to be enough.

*DING*

Congratulations! Skill Artificer has progressed to level 2!

Artificer

Level 2

Int +10

A skill for crafting Golems and other magical items.

Well, the skill up makes all this work worthwhile even without the benefits to the city. As expected, while I am working on the fourth group of golems I sense Lin entering the palace. However, she doesn't come straight to the throne room, she gets distracted and starts exploring.

Using the controls, I keep an eye on her as she explores, but I keep working. She has permission to be in the palace, so there is nothing that will hurt her. She ends up exploring the entire palace, coming into the throne room last.