A few weeks after I completed the quest Birth Of Money, so on my 960th day in the new world, CG3 completed their next house, and I moved a family from the first wall into it, and promptly started using the emptied house as storage.

Though I couldn’t start renovating the new storage unit into something else as I didn’t want to take the construction groups’ attention away from building more houses, and I’d just summon a new construction group in the future like I said.

And we’d be entering winter in 40 days or so anyways, so I’d have more than enough manpower then to make any renovations I wanted to make.

But for now, just using one of the rooms to store coins, one for paper and writing supplies, and the largest one as an armoury was enough.

I mean it’d be better if we had proper storages for coins and weapons, but what we had right now was enough.

And I, of course, put a guard to defend the storage house itself, and put another 2 to just patrol the town itself.

They were not really needed as our crime rate was a comfortable 0%, but a few guards patrolling right now will ease people into accepting dozens of guards patrolling the streets in the future.

Not that there’d be that many guards patrolling the streets in the future, as I didn’t see a reason for the guards to be constantly patrolling the streets, but still, it was probably a good idea to start from somewhere.

Then, while I was waiting for the winter to arrive, I ordered 2 smelters to start experiment with bladed weapons, and new weapon types in general to bypass the weapon smithing research and gave them a few notes with drawings of the weapons they’d need to make for us to bypass the research.

They wouldn’t need to make anything too revolutionary, just a working double edged sword, a mace, a lance, and a halberd. Then we’d be able to bypass the research and, yes, I did ask Rae about what we’d need to be able to bypass the research, again.

And yes, I did ask her about what we’d need to do to bypass basically all the other researches I had, and, to no one’s surprise, to bypass research I just needed to do what the research was about, but not always what I’d think it was.

For example, to bypass basic road construction and city planning, I needed to design and make roads that were built to last for decades to bypass basic roads research, and I’d need to plan out the entirety of the capitol’s cityscape to bypass basic city planning.

I mean, I already had ideas for 4 districts, commercial, industrial, housing, and governmental.

But apparently just having them roughly planned out in your mind isn’t enough, and I need to actually go ahead and pour what is in my mind onto paper.

Which is... going to suck, but it was also something that needed to be done for me to get another quest so... here we go, I guess.

Then, as the days passed, I started to draw out rough sketches of the future city scape as I waited for winter to come, and for the smelters to complete the project I had given them.

And after barely a week had passed, the small group of smelters had already finished with making the new types of weapons, and I had bypassed the research.

And, wondering what the quest I got from bypassing research was, I quickly opened my Empire System to see 2 quests. One which I’d call a typical quest, that could be completed in a month or so if I wanted to and another one that... I just couldn’t complete even if I wanted to?

Side Arms – Make a total of 100 short swords or maces to be used as side weapons by your soldiers. – Rewards: 10 Exp + 1 Research Point

Magical Weaponry – Successfully enchant 10 swords. – Rewards: 20 Exp + 1 Research Point

“Rae what’s the deal with Magical Weaponry? Why give me a quest I can’t complete?”

“To push you towards researching Magical Language and the researches after that?”

“But they are already on my radar? And I’ve told you that I wanted to research them, the problem is I just don’t have enough research points, which you can solve by giving me quests that give me more than a single research point.”

“You already have a research point! Use that!”

“Didn’t you make it clear to me a few months ago, just after I gained the option to research magical language, that I’d need to research at least another research for it to be worthwhile? What point is there to research it now if I know for a fact that I can’t research the researches after it?”

“I mean... don’t you want to know what the researches after it are?”

“I do, but I just plan to do it gradually. I mean, currently the capitol is large enough that I am comfortable with starting new settlements next spring, and with new settlements, people should naturally complete the easier researches by themselves, over time. And then I can just complete the quests I got from those researches and progress further.

“There really is no reason to blitz ahed, is there? I mean, you seem like more in a rush for me to progress sometimes than me, even though you are literally an immortal goddess that doesn’t need to worry about time.” I told Rae and prodded her to maybe give me some reasons for her haste in this matter, and I dearly hoped that she hadn’t messed with anything in any of the nearby moons, like she had done in this one when she, willingly, planted an offshoot of the rainbow sapling on the rainforest continent.

...

Then for a few moments, she just looked at me without saying anything.

But the silence was immediately followed by my system’s popping out in rapid succession, and her spending my last research point to research magical languages.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

And as the information about 2 different languages, that I didn’t have any clue how to use, flooded into my mind, I could only move a hand to my temple and start massaging it.

“...Rae... why?”

“Why not? I mean, you were going to spend that research point on researching Magical Language, right? If anything, I did you a favour!”

“...I—Ahhhhh... forget it.” I sighed, and let it go.

Not because I didn’t mind her doing that, as I quite liked autonomy and having freedom in managing this empire and its researches, so her just using it without my permission was a huge breach of trust.

Which was to be expected from a brat like her... though for a moment I thought that she’d respect at least some boundaries.

Shaking my head, I turned my attention to the 2 researches that had replaced Magical Language, which were promising as both of them offered me a use for the useless languages I had.

Basic Elemental Inscriptions – An information packet about how to inscribe magic for the 4 basic elements, fire, water, earth, air. – Costs 2 Research Points

Basic Elemental Incantations – An information packet about how to cast magic for the 4 basic elements, fire, water, earth, air. – Costs 2 Research Points

Thinking for a moment about which one of the researches I should get when I get the needed 2 research points, I decided on getting elemental inscriptions, as I already had a quest for it and the number of magicians, or simply the amount of people capable of using magic in the entire empire was 1—or just me in other words.

So, it was just a no-brainer to get Elemental Inscriptions when I had the chance to.

But for now, I am just going to return back to writing the city’s layout and focus on just governing in general.

And by the start of winter, I was able to make a passable map and had bypassed the research basic city planning!

And opening my empire system—

Quest Starter City Planning completed! Rewards, 20 Exp + 2 Research Points have been granted in the Empire System!

“...What?” I said aloud in confusion as it hadn’t even been a few seconds after I bypassed the research, and I had already completed the research for it.

“Rae... why did I immediately completed the quest, just after I bypassed the research?” I asked her.

“Because it was enough to complete the quest? Duh.”

“...And what were the conditions of the quest?”

“To plan a town that is big enough to accommodate 1000 people.”

“...Wait, what?” I asked in confusion and looked at my plans once again, and counted how many people would be able to live in the city and... it just didn’t add up to 1000?

“Rae, only 720 people can live in the city I planned, where the hell are you getting those numbers from?”

“Huh?” She asked, this time being confused herself.

“What are you talking about? The max number of residents in your city is 1.800? Where the hell ARE YOU getting your numbers from?” She said, which made me even more confused...

“...Ohhhh... you are counting the family home as being able to have 5 people in them, aren’t you?” I asked her after a few moments of thinking.

“...Damian, did you hit your head somewhere? Didn’t you literally design those homes to accommodate 5 people?”

“W-well I did but... I don’t count the other 3 people as they are most likely going to be children instead of adults.”

“...” Then she only stared at me with slit eyes, not understanding why I was only counting adults which was... fair, as even the empire system counted both babies and adults, but I was thinking more of the working population instead of the overhaul population which was... perhaps wrong of me to do... but on the bright side of things!

I have 2 more research points! So, here I come Basic Elemental Inscriptions!

Then, as the information about inscribing the basic elements flooded into my mind, I thanked my past self for not immediately building a forge that could make steel with iron and charcoal, and instead deciding to use Wootz Steel as, while iron was bad at mana conductivity, copper was not!

And, while a Wootz Steel sword wouldn’t be as strong as a steel sword made from steel made with charcoal, or not as enchantable as one made from pure copper, it was the middle ground between the two worlds with its strength and mana conductivity, making it great for simple enchantments!

After information stopped flooding into my mind, I took a step back and started going over everything I learned about inscribing, and casting magic via them.

The process of inscribing took a long time as even small mistakes could ruin an inscription, or make it less efficient with its mana usage, which could force you to re-make the whole inscription from zero as inscriptions lived and died with how efficient they were with using mana as more mana simply meant greater power coming from the final inscription.

And, while a simple copper box with a mana stone in the middle of it, and some inscriptions for turning the mana inside the mana stone into water might not need that much effort to be put into it, trying to do it as quickly as possible would lead to more errors in the inscription, and would lead to the inscriptions draining all the mana in the mana stone before it could work for even half an hour.

So, the craftsmen who inscribed inscriptions onto metal would have to spend hours maybe even days on a single work, however insignificant it may be, and make sure that it wouldn’t drain all the mana stones that were used on it.

There was, of course, a way to make an inscription use the ambient mana but it was... inefficient to say the least, as there was simply not that much mana in the air to begin with. And, while you could also use your own mana to activate inscriptions, bigger inscriptions couldn’t be activated by a single person, so your own mana could be used to only supplement the mana coming from mana stones at best.

And the reason for there not being a lot of mana in the air is... well, to put it simply, most of the mana in the world is in living beings, ores, or the true dungeons, so, while ambient mana can be used to supplement the mana stones, it can’t replace them.

And inscribing spells onto earth or stone was... useless, as most of the time they weren’t homogeneous, and even if they were, they didn’t have that great of a mana conductivity, so you’d need to use a lot more mana to get a lesser effect than if you had just used a few plates of copper, silver, or gold.

And, other than those 3 metals, there was mithril, orichalcum, and adamantine that were really great with magical conductivity, with adamantine being the most mana conductive metal with also great strength and durability but I didn’t even know it existed a few minutes ago, and I certainly did not know where to mine it, so I was going to ignore anything above mithril for now, and focus on copper, silver, and gold as the main metals to inscribe spells onto.

Other than those 3 metals however, you could always use crystals too! The clearer the crystal, the better it was at mana conductivity!

And yes, glass was decent at conducting mana, but only around the level of copper, so, in the future, it might become the most used mana conducting material in my empire, but in the future.

Right now, copper was going to take the lead, with scrolls made from Tier 2 monsters and higher ones following it behind as, treating the hides of monsters with an alchemical process that... the research didn’t explain to me fully, it was possible to turn them into great mana conductors, equal to silver at their worst and some possibly even better than adamantine, but any magical scroll made out of monsters would only be usable once, instead of being usable for years in case of copper, and any other metals.

Though, other than their hides, bones, flesh, and blood of monsters were also quite mana conductive, so after a bit of treatment, their blood could be used as magical ink, their bones as magical scrolls that could be used for a few times, and their flesh could be turned into powder, and mixed with normal ink or monster blood to turn them into ink that could make inscriptions, or increase their conductivity!

The only problem in front of my empire is that simply giving people the knowledge of things is... not enough. Making inscriptions has to be practiced for years, so, while I will of course ask the inscriptors that I will create and give classes to inscribe things, whatever they make will be of subpar quality.

“...Though the process of inscribing metals can be automated in the future with simple machinery, though they will still need to be checked by inscribers, and anything more than simple inscriptions will still need experienced inscribers... oh well, that’s a problem for the future me to deal with, for now I just need to decide on what kinds of tools to inscribe onto as not everything should be fully enchanted."