During the cultural festival, we didn’t neglect the other activities in our Kingdom. We had dozens of calves and fries baking in their mothers' ovens. Nenandil and I were busy half of the days doing prenatal checkups on the mermaids. We could send the prisoners away anytime but the mermaids grew used to their presence. Between the men extracting semen in the barge and the mermaids fraternizing with said men on the sandbanks of love, I wanted to have no part with it.

I spent my personal time with better endeavors, like using the services of the dead [Archmages] that pledged themselves to me to train my magical Skills. I went with the two palm-sized silk golems in a corner of the reef, training away from curious mermaid eyes. I used {Spirit Pact} on them, fueling their personal growth with 5% of my Exp awards each in exchange to having them cast spells using my Energy pool.

We butted heads a lot at the beginning.

"You blasted [Sorcerers]!" Marlowe cursed. "You think all you have to do to cast magic is to pour happy thoughts along with your MP and blast it out."

"It worked for me for hundreds of years," I shrugged.

The dead archmagister huffed and hissed. "What's the most expensive offensive spell you've ever cast? How much MP did you squander?"

"Six point four million," I answered nonchalantly.

Sumsar, the slave-collar enchanter blew a fuse. "Preposterous. A proper [Wizard] could’ve leveled a country with that much MP. I hope you find the laughs you are getting at our expense amusing, Your Highness."

I shrugged, "That's the truth. It didn't level a country but dealt close three hundred million damage to Bundeus."

"Gah!" He uttered a non-gormandizing groan and released dozens of air bubbles.

I set my title to {God Slayer}. "You can check my--"

Marlowe waved me away, "I saw it already but couldn’t believe it. Damned flesh clouding my judgment! Blasted curses, this Age of Eclipse is your doing!"

"Not mine. It was the dumb God that couldn't leave me alone. The guy murdered me right at birth or before it along with my whole family seventeen times before I fought back. I get along very well with all deities I've met but two, thank you very much."

Sumsar raised a silk eyebrow, "Just for the sake of argument, which ones?"

I poked my tongue out, "Not telling. Weren't you guys supposed to be teaching me magic and not berating me? Don’t forget who you serve now. I might pick up Necromancy and do some nasty things with your souls."

Sumsar sucked in a deep breath, then bubbled it all out. "As you wish, Your Highness."

Likewise chastised, Marlowe returned to his professor's facade. "When a wizard weaves magic, they have to be mindful of the diagrams. These will unfold into the full description of the effect they want. While Sorcerers patch together the effect directly with their minds with a greater expense of MP, wizards use a precise and efficient diagram to create the same effect. With a much better MP efficiency."

Huh. Basically, wizardry was analogous to functional programming. What would be sorcery in that parallel, then? OOP? A Lua script? Or maybe a Prolog program. You have just a faint idea of how you reached the result after you burst a couple blood vessels in your head but it did. No. Sorcery was akin to hacking with bash on the command prompt.

"What’s the good in MP efficiency if the bloody thing is awfully damn slow? Remember I counterspelled and messed with your reef-breaking spells and you were none the wiser."

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The smartass [Wizard] tried to pull a fast one on me casting his magic with my own Energy. I counterspell him and created two rainbow-hued glimmering {Force Javelins} aimed at his tiny golem ear holes.

"Still slow, old man," I taunted

"'Old', said the creature that's been around since the inception of the First Age," the tiny golem groused.

"Okay, let's learn wizardry,” I rolled my eyes. “What should I do?"

He waved a hand and glowing glyphs appeared in the air. "These are the fifty-seven basic glyphs for a wizard’s spells. Your first task is to memorize all of them."

Awesome. Not. But that was what’s for dinner so I chomped down on my wanderlust and “sat” down to study. Mermaids didn’t sit down. I prepared a mental compartment with the image of the glyphs and put myself to study them.

During this time, I also reviewed my open Perk choices. I had to spend them quickly or I would soon lose them due to the effects of {Bygone Hero}. I was slowly shedding the levels in the other Paths to keep my main progression intact but that would end one day.

> You gained the Perk: Social Queen Bee (very rare, situational): Add half your Ego to all Charisma tests against other females. Increase the reaction and reduce the aggression of other females two steps in your favor.

There was a similar Perk for males, its effects were a bit different. Instead of lowering aggressin, it stated that men would become romantically interested in me. A big bag of nope on that one. There was another Perk that caught my interest.

> You gained the Perk: Anthem (ultra-rare, situational): Select one original spell-song. That spell song's effect is doubled and its MP cost is halved. You must wait one year before you can change your Anthem...

For a whole month, I kept studying Wizardry for eight hours a day. I stopped the male seed collection halfway through that month. Ten thousand vials of semen should be enough to revive even England's failing sperm bank. The mermaids were satisfied and we had hundreds of new sisters in the oven. The Sunrod farms were a success. Everything was fine but I had to get rid of my prisoners soon or we'd have food issues once the mermaids gave birth. Since I didn't want to slaughter them, I had to contact the King.

I penned the letter, asking for their wergeld to be brought here along with enough space to carry all of them away since the ships they came on weren't going anywhere. I summoned a messenger bird with the return feature and sent it flying. Now I only needed to wait for the King's answer.

Training with the dead [Archmages] was very fruitful. I only had two main spellcasting Skills that resulted from the fusion of several others. Both saw some progress.

> You gained 6 points in Elementalist. It is now Master 57

>

> You gained 6 points in Evoker. It is now Master 55.

>

> You gained the Perk: Master Evoker (ultra-rare): Your non-elemental spells are 50% harder to defeat.

>

> You gained the Perk: Wizardry (uncommon): You use precise spell-formulas. You must learn and memorize the formula before casting a spell and must be cast within its parameters.

I now could cast spells in three styles: Sorcery, like Rosewise did, Spell-Song, or using Wizardry.

[Master Evoker] reduced the MP cost to maintain my Force barriers when someone struggles against them by a third. [Wizardry] unlocked the [Wizard] family of wizarding Classes too. I missed gaining Skill Points from Classes, though. Training Skills was too boring, and I had a whooping 61% learning bonus.

I had a hunch as to why they removed Skill Points from the Classes, in addition to the burning desire to spite me. With professions, people had less chance of fucking up their build. It streamlined the process of getting stronger for a world of morons. A world of morons, indeed.

Seriously speaking, the general public in late XX century North Korea had more educational opportunities than the average sentient in this world. I’m including the monster species like goblins, trolls, and orcs. That and the gamified leveling system perpetuated the "might makes right" mentality.

But that was something I couldn't fix. I could nudge and foster education in a few corners of the world, like in Windemere, and hope it would catch. But there was one great benefit to the ruling Class in keeping the people ignorant and weak. It was almost impossible to topple a king. Peasant revolution? Don't make me laugh. Ensconced in their privileges, the ruling class felt invincible.

Case in point I finally got an answer from King Romulus IV. It arrived via {Messenger Bird} the next day. I won't reproduce the expletives but his message was loud and clear.

> Return my son, niece, and the other nobles unharmed or there will be war. I won't let you torture them any longer.

Yeah. Sweet torture we were infliting on them. I mean, they weren't even forced to mate with the mermaids. That meant the ships were already en-route. He had no idea what kind of hornet's nest he'd kicked.