This time of the year, the ships flood into the Uroko gulf, attempting to do the last trades before winter hits. The big fortress-island blocking the mouth of the gulf was called Sadian’s shield, and its tall ballista fortresses would make short work of any ship attempting to pass without docking at the fort to be inspected and pay the customs fee. That was the key to Sadian’s prosperity. The country could invest heavily in its military strength and thrive without natural resources because of that chokehold.
What I intended to do was simple. Board the ships before they reached the fortresses and buy their cargo. Sadian only charged tariffs on incoming goods because the ships would leave with goods produced by their neighbors and when they tried to charge the merchants, the economical repercussions on the gulf region were too bad. If all the other countries, Windemere included ganged up on Sadian, they’d be wiped out of the map because of the inland advantage.
The strip of land I was about to claim for Windemere was not a bad deal for Sadian because so long they kept Windemere happy, we would work as a buffer state against the northern countries’ land sorties. They had the strongest navy in whole northern Auvanini so they weren’t too worried about a naval invasion. Maybe if my floating island technology was replicated, the third venue of attack would open but I doubted many enchanters could do what I did as cost-efficient as me. There was also the problem of lifting stuff to the flying islands.
One would think that taming monsters was the solution for that but I’ve never heard of a monster tamer Class. There was an ability under [Leadership] and a Proficiency for that but too few people used it. The rationale was that one strong combatant was better than a weaker horde, healing monsters was hard, they could turn on the tamer, and civilized settlements didn’t allow monsters to roam unchecked even if someone vouched for them. People had only normal animals such as horses, oxen, instead of tall fat yellow chickens or lizards or beetles for transportation and pulling wagons. The case with Fulgen and the griffins was exceptional. Without flying mounts, it was too expensive to use magic to lift stuff. Therefore, no airforce for the common kingdoms.
I dropped my passengers back in Windemere before going out on my own because one of the ways to approach it was from underwater as a mermaid. While I could hide my title, all that Mirina could do was to downgrade hers to [Princess]. One needed a Perk or an Ability to hide their titles while I needed to have one to display mine. It would be bad if word came out that the [Queen] of Windemere was engaged in such shady deals. Once I was near the ocean, I changed my mind and went with a harpy. One flyer was less threatening than a swimmer because the ship crew would be wary of something else hiding underwater.
Another thing the System didn’t tell about my {Ultimate Shapeshifter} Perk: It required a leaf and I transformed with a puff of smoke. I had to put the leaf on my head and imagine the shape I wanted. The smoke was magical and vanished within a fraction of a second. It wasn’t useful even for camouflage but boy was it showy. It was probably why it didn’t merge with my other shapeshifting Perks.
“Hail the ship!” I shouted at the first merchant schooner I found. A small, light, and fast vessel for regional trade, manned by a crew of up to eight people, carrying around three hundred tons of cargo. Or more, depending on the abilities of the captain.
The guy on the crow’s nest waved his hand at me and I landed next to him. He had his hand on his cutlass’ hilt but since {Appraise} didn’t show my Status, he wasn’t considering me dangerous. I was unarmed and unarmored, wearing only a sleeveless linen vest and a harpy bloomer. Yup, that’s the System name for the shorts harpies wore to cover their genitals and still leave their tailfeathers and bird legs free.
“What’cha wanna, lass?” The guy asked with a slur. Given the amount of empty ceramic bottles up here, he wasn’t doing a good job of watching out. Piracy wasn’t really a concern in these waters, the sheer amount of vessels meant pirates had a hard time sailing unchallenged around here. From up here, I could see another two ships far away.
“I came to trade. Buy your cargo. Where’s your captain?”
Long story short, the captain and I engaged in a heated negotiation but my superior numbers granted me the upper hand. I also parted with very little coin for his cargo; I offered him a soul-binding disguised storage ring out of the dozens I had and emptied his cargo hold. Onto the next ship.
Now that I had a baseline, the negotiations with the other merchant vessels were mostly the same way. Once I revealed the coveted and very expensive ring, the captains agreed to the trade and some even turned around to go back home. I went a few hours into the night and bought around twenty ships worth of cargo.
That would definitely put a dent in Sadian’s income for the next week. Unless things changed too much, I intended to come back and do it every third day. Those rings’ rarity value would decrease a bit once the captains learned I did it en masse but I expected them to hide the ring’s existence for quite some time. They’d probably use the ring to smuggle goods past the customs inspection.
I had my own birthday party to attend.
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I woke up to my birthday gift from the System:
> You gained one Fast-growth point in [Rune Scriber], [Harvester], [Baker], [Silkweaver], [Physician], [Martial Arts], [War Technique], [Clubs], [Blades], and [Assassination].
This Perk was a slow one but it was a long-term investment. One Proficiency pick at level 200 granted a person 100 fast-growth points. In a century, I would have the gains rivaling ten free picks. And it would only keep giving as I aged. By the time the brood-bitch finally decided to come down here to get her nose punched in, This one Perk would’ve added a lot of value.
We had three access points to the floating island. One at my garden near the Adventurer’s Guild, another behind the Royal Castle, and a third in the courtyard of Wisteria’s orphanage. The rusty fig there had a treehouse on top and the orphanage kids loved it. Now I looked at them as they ran around the emerald grass of my home, playing and fighting with summoned al-Mi'raj. I blunted the little devils’ horns so they wouldn’t wound the children but I gave the murder-bunnies orders to go light on the children nonetheless. Just as the exercise with zombie Kyuubi I put Mirina and Jocelin yesterday, they were gaining the benefits of my {Instruction (II)} Ability, giving them an 87% bonus to their learning rate to [Mobility] and whatever else they were doing, like bludgeoning the shit out of my summons. There was plenty to go by and I wasn’t sure they felt pain. Even if they did, getting the kids their Proficiency points was very well worth torturing a few ephemeral conjurations. The little tykes couldn’t see their gains because they didn’t have the System but at least it was one aspect they could grind ahead of their activation day. Or Awakening Day, as people nowadays used to call it.
The party was scheduled to start at noon and go throughout the night. I had a team of hired maids preparing the annex manor for the guests that wished to remain on the island for the night. Most of them did so the rooms were all booked with a waiting list. Jocelin suggested moving the trusted guests to the palace. So my classmates and Windemere’s finest would stay there. I turned the island a bit so the right side from the tree was facing northwest. Right in front of the tree, on a temporary stage, I had a level 150 blue dragon posing for the guests’ delight. It had instructions to not attack even if to fight back and to move slowly, changing its pose every few minutes. Something to awe the guests as they arrived, for the bargain cost of 2.7 million Energy to summon and 150k per minute to maintain, with my discounts.
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Despite my wish to keep it private, people liked to brag. A birthday party for the nation’s founder and local goddess in the sky was too big to keep quiet about. News of the birthday party spread through Windemere like wildfire. Hundreds of letters asking for an invitation flooded the castle. Some people needed to be invited. The captains of the Lamia knights, Fat Felix and the merchants he recommended (increasing his social capital and worth by a huge margin), Alfondric and the dwarven leaders, Kazuyran and his lieutenants, the newly appointed city governors, some high government officials, the elf matron Rania Pres'Hanya and Faerala along with some elves and fairies, the minotaur priests of Bit, Wyrrentis, now a contrite registrar from the Academy and a few teachers. Marlowe, Vanagon, Julia, Wysteria… Oh, right. I already mentioned her. Then Julia and her bishops. Yeah, if I had a [Pope], I ought to have [Bishops] too.
Mirina asked to bring three nobles from Lonid as her guests. The northern was still pestering her for favors and concessions, but they still had to pay for their stay. She hoped I could talk to them about my plans of bloody expansion to the west, then hint that I might want to go northwest too. To me, grabbing some fiefs from Lonid was an advantage, because I needed to build a new wall and the northern border would be smaller if I did advance northwest to round up the country. That would make the “old Windemere wall” an inner wall, completely surrounded by the new and improved one.
If that didn’t scare them away, they might as well be courting death. I would invade Lonid and consolidate Windemere as a local superpower. We had the cohesion and manpower for that, as well as the best training grounds in the shape of the underground Dungeon city. Once my education project rolled out, every Windemere citizen would have five years of mandatory schooling. Fortunately, everyone in this world was good at math, a necessity borne of the overly complicated System mechanics. Calculate damage, stack modifiers, Proficiency bonuses, etc. We were still stuck on the curriculum and the teacher training phase hadn’t launched yet.
Mirina suggested having me seated and receive the guests’ greetings one by one, but I insisted on walking around the venue and greeting them one-by-one. It was a long slog but I had the endurance to do it and people knew better than to annoy me with inane conversation. With my two lovers on each side, we went from group to group, receiving their well-wishes and handing out the Matriarch’s blessings like confetti.
A band of Windemerian bards provided the music. I intended to sing with them at the sunset. I hired about two hundred Kin to work as maids and waiters for the party. The buffet was mostly done by a few [Chefs] Fat Felix recommended but it had treats baked by yours truly during the early morning. The cargo I bought contained mostly preserved meats, fresh vegetables, grains, hides, wool, and other farm products. Windemere’s exports were mostly textiles and dwarven-forged products and we made enough to push prices down. Traders didn’t bring these things here.
The guests concentrated mostly on the northwestern side of the field, near the parapet at the edge of the island. That was one of the reasons the first official event was a luncheon banquet. I wanted people to see the land below with sunlight. The weather was lovely, courtesy of one of my tails. Weather magic was a bitch to use but with almost a quarter-billion Energy at my beck and call, I brute-forced it.
Walking around with twenty tails behind me was a challenge. But people kept a wide berth behind and around me and I used my {Titan Skin} sightless vision to maneuver around. I felt like I was in Rio de Janeiro parading in the Brazilian Carnival.
After all the greetings and introductions were behind me, I deactivated the portal, blocking anyone else from coming up. “Please be seated. Eat and drink. Let’s celebrate,” I ordered. No incidents happened during the luncheon and the guests scattered to explore the island and the palace. The only areas off-limits were my orchard and vegetable gardens and the underground. I had my own wards blocking those and it would take a very good and high level [Rogue] to get past them without my knowledge. Past the gardens, I had a spot of pristine forest with a two-meter fairy circle for long-range teleportation. It was too small to spawn fairies but the little guys on the Lierin forest could come up to visit.
A little commotion started when the nobles from Lonid recognized the palace but Mirina shot them down by telling them it was a gift from her father for rescuing the Royal family from whatever devoured the palace and carved a hole on the lakeshore. It seems the official version circulated by her dad did not put the blame on me. A wise guy.
Since nobody was pestering me, I finally found some time to spend with my father and uncle. Even though Helger and Baritono weren’t related by blood, the tall and nosy miner was too dear to me.
“Fourteen!” Helger cheered.
“Daddy!” I squealed, genuinely happy to finally have a decent father figure for a change.
“Hello, Your… how should I call you now? Goddess? Majesty?” Baritono comically (and intentionally) fumbled his pronouns.
“Just Haru is fine,” I cooed back at the black-bearded dwarf.
“Haru it is,” he smiled. “The party is fantastic and so is the drink. The dragon is really imposing,” he said with reverence, pointing his mug at the decorative summon.
“Well, I’m glad you liked it. Wanna go for a ride? I think I have a saddle for him and I promise I’ll be underneath to get you if you fall,” I grinned and flexed my wings.
“A dwarf is best served with lots of stone around him,” he choked a bit. “Glad there’s plenty of it underneath us. No, I don’t think the open air is for me.”
“Nah, pay him no attention,” Helger hugged me. “My girl grew up so fast! From a little...” He blushed and lowered his head when he remembered how dreary was my birth circumstances.”
I tugged his beard and pulled up, a social faux pas in dwarven society but for family.“No, no. Raise hour head, Helger Stouthammer. Our regrets and sorrows made us the people we are today, but they are over. Any debt left from that time is over.” My hands ran on his cheeks as I moved from his beard to cup his temples. “Let it go. I never got to know Nozmizla but I know you were a good friend. I can guess she’d thank you for giving her daughter home and your name.”
Then I hugged the ornery man to hide the moisture building up in his eyes. Nobody needs to see a dwarf cry. With a precise application of magic, I dried it for him.
“Baritono, Helger needs some --”
A shrill shout rang as one of my summoned al-Mi'raj was killed and vanished. “Filthy disgusting children, watch where you run!”
The temperature dropped a few degrees as an icy rage welled up in my stomach. My eyes flitted back and forth twice as I found the offender. One of the Lonid nobles. The orphans all took a lavish bath at the palace and wore new clothes (for them, I had no idea how many centuries ago I collected them). They were at their best but children being children, they were running around the whole place, mock-fighting and racing the al-Mi'raj for hours now.
I conjured a throng of {Force Tongs} that picked and lifted the haughty woman up. She couldn’t move a muscle for each bone of her body was pincered by a different tong.
** “How Dare You!” **
My voice rang over the whole island. Sheer terror painted the noblewoman’s face but I didn’t care. My kitsunebi flared to life at the tip of each tail.
“Haughtiness has no place in my domain, and these children are guests I personally invited,” I said, using my Abilities to carry my voice. I left implied she was little more than a party-crasher. “Disrespect the guest, disrespect the host. Worse yet, you disrespect the one that talked me into inviting you to my private party. I shall not tarnish this day with death if that’s what you’re worried about.”
I gave the dragon a command. “Take this woman to Perenneth. Deliver her only to the King, tell him she offended both Mirina and me.” After that, I wove an illusion of a subordinate Tabard of Windemere around the creature, along with barding around the shoulders with my own Holy Symbol.
With a roar, the blue dragon jumped from his dais and dove, snatching the noblewoman as I dismissed my tongs and soaring up before banking, doing a hundred-eighty over the island and diving toward Lonid. We heard the woman scream for all of five seconds before she was too far away. All eyes turned on me.
“I’m sorry,” I bowed to my guests, disarming their worries. "But mark my words. Children are a nation's future, the heirs of our legacy. Those who mistreat these precious gifts shall be prepared to bear my wrath," I declared and in the corner of my vision I could see Salia and the bishops drafting new liturgy. Oops.
I turned to look at the gaggle of orphans huddling behind Wisteria. “It is not your fault and you won’t be punished. Accidents happen, she should’ve known better. Your buddies want to play more, go, go!” I commanded the al-Mi'raj to bump the kids and scuttle away, teasing the kids to chase after them again.
“Go and play,” Wisteria’s calming and comforting voice amost gave them the encouragement they needed. The children, lowborn orphans, abandoned, were clearly cowed by the high-class guests and the dragon stunt.
I had an al-Mi'raj bump into the oldest kid to do some damage, and he broke out to run after the damned rabbit monster, limping with his left leg. As he cried his indignation, the other children joined him. The conversations resumed but now the guests made sure to step out of the way of the kids.
I laughed loudly, drawing attention to myself again. “Now, music! Does anyone want to hear the Siren of Atlantis sing?”