“What do you mean, separate!” Olivia exclaimed.
“Olivia, originally we were each going to make our own mercenary groups if not for the demon threat and the techniques being recovered. Now that you even have the statue back, it feels conflicting towards the development I need.” He said.
“I don’t get it.” She said.
“He can’t get the support for resources to develop the necessary defense and temples for the artifact’s pedestal and anything else he might obtain from the gods. It isn’t up for discussion, I am doing it after I’ve advanced to C rank.” he said.
“Why though? If it’s a resource then you just need to work and buy it.” She said.
“Half of all my division's earnings go to HQ. You don’t need to worry because you have 700 years on your shoulders carrying you through it but I don’t have that. I will be building everything on my own. The only annoying thing left is probably to copy the entire library.” he said with a scowl.
“We already have a lot of scribes working on it.” Maxwell said.
“You are Incentivizing this?” Olivia said.
“No but he already made the decision. It will be a branch of the golden lions. There were countless branches originally anyways but they were just not as… different. His Holy knight division has a different mentality since they focus on religion over the blessing of the statue… even if you will be able to obtain drops once we can produce them in larger quantities.” He said.
“It is for the best, also it will give us a good excuse to make a reasonable judicial system to control the order without letting corruption seep in.” He said.
“We are making that with the new government of Eshen.” Olivia said.
“That is a local system that affects the golden lion until they feel like it shouldn’t. The lawyers and judges are all in the command of the golden lions meaning it is a military state. If a few egos grow a bit too much then it will not end well even if they are loyal to the order. This kind of thing has already festered in the other orders from what the gods said. I will be setting up an internal system for my division but once my group has grown enough, that will be used to monitor the golden lions itself and I expect it in return, once it is time to fuse into one grand order, to find something similar that will monitor my branch from an unbiased outside view.” he said
“I will see to that.” Maxwell said.
“Father!” Olivia exclaimed.
“Setting up a proper judgment division is too important and I will eventually have to build that. A court system specifically for the golden lions.” He said.
“I don’t accept it! Since the order is technically in my name, you can’t make a mercenary group with the same name without my permission!” She exclaimed.
“Why would I care for the legal procedures in a lawless continent that we live in.” Logan said, looking at her like she was dumb. “Also, you guys are focused on establishing a safe nation but after I leave… with or without your permission, I will be a mercenary group which will go around helping the unfortunate. Only when you have a few more D ranks will you have enough people to start sending out safely and you are well aware how long that took both of us to reach and most of it was because of the fact that our bodies were enhanced through forging. None of our disciples have Legend weapons.” He said.
“Olivia, give it a rest. You are as aware as I that he will do what he actually decides to do. As an adult already he can leave if he wants so the best thing to do is to help where we can. Logan, your altar so we can make it into an official Branch leader altar. Different from the division leader one you have now, it will be enhanced to the same level as Olivia’s and will be able to create new altars.” He said.
Olivia was very angry but he took his altar out and after looking at it begrudgingly for a while she finally helped and did the ritual, causing it to change just a little bit but that was the important change.
“There, are you happy now?” She complained.
“No but it is necessary. I’m still confused about how I’m even going to start this beyond the tiny chapel Jade has… though I guess the first step is getting the material for a larger temple once the micro world gets better. I’m sure there are a lot of distressed people who wouldn’t mind living simple lives in the micro world.” He said.
“So establish a population first.” Maxwell said.
“Yeah, that seems like the way to go. Carrying the population and support is important but so is having money and resources that can be used in an internal economy.” he said and shook his head. “I’ll leave that for later, I’m going to focus on grinding away at mana until I finally upgrade. Once I’ve done a full cycle in C rank then I am sure I will have enough prep time to already be ready to leave.” he said.
Olivia groaned and stomped off.
“Emotional as always. You had best watch out for her and remind her to use logic before emotion or it could get dangerous.” He said.
“I could say the same to you since your outbursts of emotion tend to have far longer lasting effects.” Maxwell said and left as well.
Logan sighed and exited the HQ building in the town the army had built as their base.
Spreading his wind wings, he flew back to his division and handed out missions for small groups and patrol schedules before starting to train.
***
After the week passed Logan got back into the training but the week after Olivia let it slip to Jade what Logan planned and eventually Storm learned of it and the two went to ask for his plans after everyone was dismissed home.
Logan was on the communicator just following the news that could be published in Nuntip and the world.
“Master, what do you actually plan to do?” Jade asked.
Logan was silent for a while until he finally displayed something. It looked like a crystal.
Storm looked confused, “A gem?” He muttered.
“A dungeon crystal.” Logan replied.
“What about it?” Jade asked.
“I was reading up on the history of Caravan dungeons. Apparently the first dragon to achieve it only achieved it after his family and their predecessors silently entered nations of countless races gathering magical knowledge of all kinds until they achieved the necessary requirement that an infant E rank dragon could casually bind an unsentient dungeon core.” He said.
“And?” Jade asked.
“Although we all hope for it to not happen but since the demons here were able to completely destroy the magic network world wide, that means they could very casually help the demons on the other continents do the same attack they did. I don’t want it to happen, for sure, but once we leave, I intend to take one of the airships, since it is safer for us, and travel to the other continents. Unlike the 95% human based population of Nuntip, there are continents like Elrukia that possess only 40% human dominance and other races like dwarves and elves who are far more capable in different forms of magic.” He said.
“How do you even intend to invade them?” Jade asked.
Logan grinned and looked at Storm, “The same way the original earth dragons did it.”
Storm looked confused before his eyes widened, “Wait, me!” He said.
“Yes, your dragon magic transformation can be cast on other people right?” Legan asked.
“I can but still…” He said.
“Exactly, all we need is a racial change and not a true disguise as a different person. I doubt many soldiers will remain and probably only just the initial six children and my family might stay in fact but I doubt the monsters wouldn’t stay. In fact, I plan to make a few villages before I leave so there is a healthy population to grow in my micro world. It wouldn’t be hard to get a few smart people to become adventurers in those different nations and silently gather magical knowledge.” he said.
“You are jumping the gun.” Jade said.
“No, I am planning so that we don’t have to waste countless years of one or two people gathering knowledge. The group is a mercenary group so every person can make an effort for our growth. Also, we need to account for the huge store of knowledge we already have which is being copied. I’m still learning more of it and by the time we even reach any other continent I am confident that I will have learned at least half of the things in the library through magic books.” He said.
“What do you even want a dungeon core for?” She asked.
“If a desert train is capable of taking shape when a dungeon core is bonded to a wooden cart, does that mean that a dungeon can bond with any vehicle?” He said.
“What does…” Jade said before her eyes suddenly started widening, “Airship.” She said.
He smiled, “Yes.” He simply said. “Before we leave though, we need to visit the adventurers guild HQ so that we can purchase existing dungeoneer magic. Dungeoneers is a profession for people who can use dungeon altering or manipulating magic and they learned how to connect to the dungeon rules and manipulate those.” He said. “Without a basis for something we can’t do anything.” He said.
“What do you expect to form?” Jade asked.
“Who knows, I’ve been reading about dungeons and surprisingly they can take quite a lot of forms depending on their location. I even found one record of a dungeon being placed in the Town hall and it actually formed a city that eventually became a labyrinth city and navigating required knowing the structure of the city as well as special permissions that would help guide citizens, of course the ones that did that were sentient since only earth dragons have used non sentient ones.” he said.
Even Storm was frowning when he talked about it.
“So your idea is a mobile dungeon that can draw mana and produce a lot of resources over time. From what I remember, Caravan dungeons are almost 100% made of either sentient monsters or monsters that make jobs convenient.” He said.
“Yes but there is a documentary on caravan dungeons as well. Taverns produce commodities, rare spices, ovens form fire mana crystals and basically everything that is convenient is a natural resource that can be harvested and the dungeon will just replace. For farming purposes, also have greenhouse carts which never open up and contain very large distorted areas and hold large farms within.” He said.
“Okay but off the ground, how do you expect such a dungeon to achieve its capacity as a dungeon when it can’t pump mana into the ground?” Jade asked.
“How would I know? No one has done it because no one can do it. The fact that caravan dungeons work is probably purely because they aren’t sentient. I don’t know how it will work so it is purely speculation. If it doesn’t work then we can’t do anything about it and just place the dungeon in the Micro world where it will form into a normal dungeon and improve the capacity of the micro world to draw mana into it.” He said.
“That’s even more dangerous.” Storm said.
“Not really, look.” He said and quickly went through the files and began to read it. “Micro worlds with a dungeon within are said to be able to grow alongside the dungeon by giving the micro world a passive mana absorption which will drastically improve the owner’s mana endurance as they will not need to actively absorb mana to regenerate it to the point of combat efficiency. Because there is smaller space and more limited mana sources, dungeons will also be forced to grow slower as well but they tend to produce more resources compared to monsters. Their internal space distortion is also much greater due to limited space but they have a much closer connection to the world tree of the micro world since they are so close to their roots compared to the real world. Their presence also helps to purify mana to a higher level depending on how many floors they have as well which can allow the quality to rise by one rank higher than the actual owner’s natural mana quality.” Logan read.
When he said that, the others were actually surprised by the kind of benefits the dungeon gave in a micro world.
He showed them in detail.
“For there to be so much information, have they done this before?” Jade asked.
“Sure, Micro worlds are rare but Max proved it isn’t so rare that you can’t pay dungeons to create one. Heck, he purchased two of them for me and Olivia so we could make the new generation and carry them around. An even richer nation can easily have dozens.” Logan said.
“So you really weren’t thinking randomly, even if a mobile dungeon fails, you improve the micro world.” Storm said.
“Naturally, now I need to go to the library… how is the central library coming along in the Micro world?” He asked.
“The framework is built and we’ve already gotten part of all the bookshelves delivered.” Storm said.
“Great, so much to prepare for.” He said and got up and went to continue absorbing magic books and expand the range of knowledge he had access to.
Olivia was already there and her face soured when he entered but he couldn’t deal with it at the moment and got to his books and began absorbing the knowledge throughout the day until his head was pounding at noon and continued after a short rest. When night came he began to train again.
After two weeks, the mana quantity was already growing to the point that he had begun to replace the mana in each of the smaller orbs with the highest purity mana. It was annoying to do this but after learning the trick, he was able to channel the mana from the giant orb into the first of the orbs and eventually the entire orb was infused and upgraded with the mana. He went from each orb, improving their quality so that they would produce the highest quality possible so that the central orb would be processing the highest quality mana possible and induce the transformation.
Even still, the quantity had not reached the density needed and he just kept processing mana until midnight.
This simple peace lasted only another week because once the giant orb had achieved maximum capacity and he had changed the mana of all orbs throughout his acupoints, it finally triggered the transformation and at the center of the giant orb, finally the mana ignited and like all the smaller orbs, a flame burst. Unlike the blue flame of the other orbs, this one was bright golden and instantly began to spread and infuse into the central orb over the course of the next hour until it fully infused into the flow.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
When it did, it finally released C rank mana and he instantly felt the heat.
That mana instantly began to vent into his heart and each pulse would be followed by a pulse of evolution starting at the heart and mana pumped and processed slowly spreading through his body until his entire body shined momentarily as C rank mana infused into the mana structure and stopped.
After that his body began to store C rank mana in a stable manner and he could finally start processing his mana pool and he began as soon as he could.
Like most times that it is first done, the time required was short, half a day at most was needed and his mana pool was finally processed and it shined brightly and instantly he fell over unable to even cry as his entire body released the pull of the Micro world and started to draw mana like crazy.
His entire body shined and maintained the glow like a monster and even his wings sprouted on his back. C rank mana was now being produced in abundance and filled his body and his life force was evolving. This was what it meant to evolve as a human. Like Maxwell had done when he gained A rank mana and now like Logan. His life force was transforming and it was a painful process even with his mana infused body.
It was a more perfect transformation for him even and after an hour the light slowly faded starting at the heart and his body solidified until it reached his wings. They continued to absorb mana like crazy and pain filled him until finally the mana solidified.
On his back, shockingly, a pair of solid green feathered wings took form in full flesh and blood instead of just wind in a condensed elemental form.
The glow scattered and he gasped for air as he turned around in shock to find the wings on his back. The feeling was no different from before but his body had evolved to incorporate it completely. This included blood vessels and even muscles.
He moved it as naturally as his arms but it felt strange.
When he tried to withdraw it, they folded and shined before vanishing but he was very aware of their presence. They turned into wind but they were still extended and the mana channels would not return like it did before.
After blinking a few times, he frowned and instantly looked at himself as his eyes shined golden for a moment before he groaned and the magic changed.
“Shit… still too early for the full golden lion eyes.” he said. He changed his magic and tried to understand what was happening to him but before he could even start, every last living creature felt like the world trembled but it didn’t.
Still something shook in all of them and suddenly a window appeared.
The World Network has completely analyzed every last living creature and has categorized it. Status system is online and has been implemented.
All divine domains have been infused into the domain and all blessings have been calculated.
All magical systems have been incorporated into the network system.
As a result of the network system activating, celestials can now more easily interact with the mortal and underworlds.
The Dungeon system has been incorporated into the World network. Evolution of external monsters will now be more similar to what dungeons achieve and monsters will have more freedom to pick their evolution path compared to before as long as they are intelligent enough.
The Class system has been implemented and now all sentient beings can obtain a class. Warning, Sentient monsters will incorporate class into their biology and are likely to evolve into unique class based evolutions.
Through World network aid, humans will now be able to achieve mana infusion more naturally like monsters can however this is likely to result in actual evolution like monsters and will result in subhuman races being born as your bodies become more prone to adapt to your surroundings, your skills and particularly your innate abilities if trained properly.
Presence of Celestial weapons in the world is noticed. The Legend Sword system has been implemented into the world and now the flow of legend energy will flow more naturally to the proper capacity of each blade.
Welcome to the world system, to open your status screen please say or think Status. This will possess the same effect as higher level identification magic and reveal strength, skills, affiliations, blessings, skills and more. Certain things have been quantified based on the laws of the world. Furthermore, because the world network has been established, extra effects are now implemented as a result of mastery of skills.
If you require help, there exists a Help system which will explain information based on publicly known knowledge. Higher level System based information will also be explained for roughly 1 year after which the system restriction will come into play and will require enough strength and authority to access this knowledge.
Logan blinked and instantly opened the status screen.
Status
Name
Logan Holt McEwan
Age
23
Race:
Human (Winged Human)
Alignment
Good
Rank:
D+ ~ C-
Class:
None (Knight)
Blessing
Minor Blessing of the Pantheon of Knights
Affiliations
Order of the Golden Knight (Oath), Pantheon of Knighthood
Strength
D+ ~ C-
Agility
C+
Vitality
C+
Durability
D+
Magic Capacity
D+ ~ C-
Magic Resistance
D
He frowned at the many confusing things but most surprising was that he had a blessing. Clearly it wasn’t the grand blessing that Jade had but clearly his connection to her had sent this to him. It was probably also what allowed him to safely touch the pedestal.
“Help system, please explain the status screen.” He said.
Help system
The status screen is the hub which holds a basic quantified calculation of each person’s strength based on the modern adventurer’s guild ranking system.
Stats, the specific aspect of the body, are graded by the ranks Unranked, F, E, D, C, B, A, S, SS, SSS and Divine
Each rank is also divided between stats with a +, - or no symbol which indicates the level of power within that spectrum of ranking.
Stats that show two rankings with a ~ symbol between them means that the person in question is between the ranks, usually in their transition period usually seen when they have just ascended in rank and have yet to fully complete their basic transformation of their mana completely to the higher rank.
Name
The name of the person who was identified or the Status
Age
The age of the being
Race
The current race. The current user is Human (Winged Human). The presence of Wind Wing innate skill trained with mana channels through them along with a mana infused body has caused a genetic evolution into a subhuman race.
Alignment
The general personality and views of the person. Good Alignment tends to be righteous humans who do good for others because they want to see the prosperity of others. Bad alignment are those who will do evil. Above these are Righteous and Evil.
Rank
Your Adventurer rank, this is unlocked only after joining the adventurer guild and being officially recognized as a F rank adventurer.
Class
A special blessing, classes are a concept and a profession. Those with certain classes will be able to learn skills of the class with greater ease and lower cost and produce higher power. Certain skills can only be learned after obtaining a certain class. The class shown between parentheses represents your active profession while the other shows your class given by the system.
Blessing
Blessings identify the blessings given to all mortals from the gods and celestials. The blessings themselves can be further identified to show their effect on the mortals which is calculated separately and not directly displayed on the status screen.
Affiliation
Organizations and groups that each person affiliates themselves with. In normal cases, this will only show citizenship but when someone pledges to a loyalty altar or officially joins guilds, organizations and similar groups, they will update this to their affiliation.
Strength
This stat represents the quantified aspect of brute strength exerted without extra modifiers
Agility
This stat represents the maximum agility and dexterity that a person can exhibit
Vitality
This stat represents the strength of a person’s life force
Durability
This stat represents the raw strength of a person’s biological defense
Magic Capacity
This stat represents the overall capacity of mana that a person can contain
Magic Resistance
This stat represents the resistance to magic in general.
Identifying Magic resistance will allow each user to see the separate stat for each element of resistance they achieve.
Logan read everything carefully and his brows raised, “This is likely to put a lot of identifiers out of work in relation to racial identification.” he said and tried to press on his race but surprisingly there was no effect.
Please activate identification magic if you wish to identify a certain status in greater detail
“Or not.” Logan said. “This is like a video game or something.”
That said he wasn’t ready to read this in detail, he looked at other things.
“Help system, what other tables are there to show my parameters?” He asked.
Innate Skill, Skills, Traits
Logan opened all three to see what they are like.
Traits
Legend Sword host
Owner of a Legend sword, your biology is linked to the sword and will take damage should the sword be damaged.
Awakened grade sword blessings 10% to all sword magic
Wind Wings
An evolved innate skill which has become biological after mana channels and mana body infusion fused with it upon evolving sufficiently. In their passive state, these wings become completely wind but will instantly solidify into a physical body on a whim.
Innate skills
Brain overclock
Rank: C
An innate skill to channel lightning mana through the brain and nerves and increase reaction time and give kinetic vision. Without proper control and training, it is likely to injure the nerves and brain with overload. Full capacity without any danger is achieved at C rank or D rank if the user has mana infused body
Lightning Clad
Rank C
An innate skill to channel lightning through the skin, muscles, organs and bones to enhance the reflexes and speed of the body. Without proper control and training, it is likely to injure the nerves and brain with overload. Full capacity without any danger is achieved at C rank or D rank if the user has mana infused body
Skills
Golden Lion Weapon art
Rank: S
Level: 45
The weapon art of the Golden Lions. They include every weapon known to man besides ranged weapons.
Improves weapon handling: 31%
Increase weapon power: 31%
Sword Mastery
Rank B
Level 68
Mastery of the sword.
Improved power when using sword by 56%
Lighting Magic
Rank A
Level 30
Lightning magic mastery
Improved Lightning magic control by 20%
Improved Lightning magic power by 20%
Magic Mastery
Rank S
Level 30
A representation of your mastery of magic in general as well as the knowledge you have.
Improves Magic control by 25%
Meditation
Rank F
Level 40
The art of meditation to improve mana absorption.
Improved mana absorption 25%
Golden Lion’s Golden Eye
Rank C
Level 1
The unique eye magic of the Golden Lion’s. It is among the best identification magic and allows the user to see magical structures within the body of others and even identify unique body constitutions.
Logan’s jaw dropped that the wings had actually evolved into a biological trait and then went to the mirror he was happy that the wings didn’t leave a hole but when he formed them, he saw the armor open space and the wings took shape from that space.
He was happy that the clothing was modified to his unique condition but he wondered how he would explain it and shook his head.
“Still, it is quantified in levels of mastery… looking at my weapon art skill, it is really clear that I also need someone to fix any minor inconsistency that I might have. Sadly only me and Olivia have the highest mastery even compared to the old guys since we have 2 years on them.” He muttered.
Still it did not matter but it was amazing that the world was now revealing so much information but he wondered how this would affect the world itself. He was sure that this wouldn’t be a good thing because the world network was even aiding humans in infusing mana into their bodies as a means to enhance their survivability.
“It’s almost time to leave, I just need to finish my first cycle.” He muttered but he naturally couldn’t be silent. He walked outside where a lot of people were panicking at the sudden change and he helped them calm down and began to talk with his battle beasts until he proceeded to the HQ.
Surprisingly they were already having a meeting when he arrived and he just entered and stood at the back.
“... the threat this will bring also brings benefits. Growth rate will be easier to follow and it opens many possibilities for humans to finally surpass their limit with this class system. We just need to figure out this system.” the army general said.
“Yes but we need to figure it out first. Considering this system is ranking everything on adventurer guild standards, it is safe to assume everything was designed by the ancient hero who originally made the guild that pulled this stunt off. Do any of you know?” Maxwell asked one of the representatives.
“HQ in the central empire has yet to respond but not because it was ignored but from the readings, it seems there is an overload of contacts trying to connect so they are likely going one by one until they cover all the continent’s still active branches.” He said.
“Makes sense.” Max said before he noticed Logan in the back.
He made no gesture to call him and quickly moved on.
They went down the list of many worries and problems until the meeting was over.
At the end, Logan turned and left alongside the others and proceeded to his base. He started training, the micro world also began to react to his higher purity mana and those inside also noticed.
Still he did not warn anyone and just continued training for another two weeks while they dealt with the countless problems until he finished the first cycle and received information from the adventurers guild.
When he was firmly complete, he finally called Maxwell and gathered everyone in the Micro world to give the announcement and allowed them to choose.
As expected, the soldiers of Eshen picked to leave but all the monsters had no reason to leave.
When it was announced that Logan was making a new Branch of the Golden Lions focused on the Pantheon of Knighthood they allowed people and monsters to pick.
A large number of monsters wanted to move in because monsters always desire a god's divine blessing to protect them.
They established the trade center city where the main base was and the rest where villages had to open the land.
He also manipulated the rules of the Micro world that had begun to give birth to wild animals so that animals could never be stronger than F rank.
As for humans, there were those who were opened to living and moved into the Micro world that had now reached 80 km in diameter in a 150 km orb. It was nearly as big as the original HQ showing how much the world tree’s positioning made a difference. Of course this was after he arranged the new space after the tree grew.
Weather was also very natural now even without his control and 25% of the orb was now filled as suggested and starting to flow water naturally through magic from the world tree.
When it was all ready, he asked for one of the airships to travel more freely and with the remaining monster soldiers, they embarked and headed south very high up in international travel height instead of low and easy to shoot down.
After leaving, he took out the squire and disciple books and showed them to the others.
“Class books?” Jade said after he explained.
“Yes, they teach skills and change the magical class of the person using it. For normal people being recruited, a temple is required and the gods pick which class is best for them. For us four, we already have our class. Jade is a priestess so start with Disciple and learn the blessings of the god and then to priest while us three start with Squire and advance to Knights.” he said.
“We should make the temple so we do not mess up.” Jade said.
“Yeah but we need magical materials for the magical formations of the temple. I’ve already started to write down everything I learned and design the underground temple for the pedestal but it is years of investment.” he said.
“Makes sense, let’s focus first on getting things stable. We thankfully have a Legend smith with us training common and magic smiths.” Storm said.
“Yes, after we get all the information we wanted from the central empire we will be moving on to the other continents to get knowledge from different races and learn from the different views of magic.” He said.
They all agreed and got busy piloting the ship safely and watching out for other dangers. At the same time, Logan absorbed mana into the Micro world to completely grow it out and give the most space possible. In his free time, he took out Arashi and started to train her mana channels.