After a short while Jonathanne and Joshua led their forces to the village, set up camp, and then started sending soldiers into the forest to find the whereabouts of the missing militiaman, and after 2 nights of searching, they were able to locate and rescue the man.

Not that he was un-harmed though.

The monster that took control of him was some type of blood sucker that had brought him straight to its nest, where its children could feed of off the man, so he was pretty drained by the time we rescued him.

Thankfully though, he was still alive by the time we got to him, and while his condition is still dangerous, he will probably live through this.

On the third day of the operation, we found quite a few more nests belonging to other Bloodsuckers, and after a bit of contemplation, I ordered the soldiers to scare them away from their nests, and kill those who they couldn’t scare away.

Maybe killing all of them would’ve been a better idea, but scaring them away won’t unnaturally lower their population, which will help them continue fill whatever niche they occupy in the forest, and keep the whole ecosystem functioning for longer.

Or it may just make them come back in the future with larger numbers.

No idea what’s actually going to happen in the future with the Bloodsuckers, but that’s the future me’s problem, not the current me’s.

...And, yes, Jonathan did try to sneak into the forest hunt down some monsters by himself, but he was quickly apprehended as, apparently, Jonathanne left some soldiers to look out for him.

As we didn’t really have any kind of prison ready to put him in even for a few days, or a proper court where we could judge him, he was just given a fine of few small coppers for attempting to disrupt the work of the imperial army.

And no, he was not happy with the fine, but after threatening him with increasing his fine, he gave in, although unwillingly.

In the future I may allow him to actually go and hunt monsters without my supervision, but that’d only happen if he had other people that would go monster hunting with him.

Otherwise—never.

Though it shouldn’t be hard for him to find a few like-minded individuals right now, or in a few years, as there definitely will be some madmen in the empire that are more than happy with risking their life for what is at best minimal gain.

“...Will adventurers ever appear in this world? I honestly can’t think of a place where they could start flourishing as the true dungeons, where there are practically unlimited number of monsters, are too dangerous, and most of the other dungeons are not dangerous and profitable enough for them to start flourishing.” I thought to myself.

But also, it was too early to thing about things like that, at least for now, as we were literally still in the 4th year of my empire and trying to guess what will happen in the future right now is... futile to say the least.

Though, on the futility of trying to guess what will happen in the future, I was actually planning on sending some colonists down south to make some small villages this year, and free space in the capitol but... people are a bit skittish right now due to the happenings in the northern village, so they are not as willing to go elsewhere right now... well, what a pity. But there is always the next year!

And with that, I mean we are jumping straight to day 1.821, the start of the fifth year’s spring as... well, there is really nothing to talk about for the rest of the fourth year.

The only thing that’s slightly interesting is the fact that the economy finally started taking off after a few years and a few shops started popping up around the already designated commercial district.

Normally, I’d make them pay for the shops that were constructed by my workers, that they moved into. But as this was the start of mercantilism, I just sent the CG5, which was a new group of construction workers I made, to help them build things for free.

CG5 would be the group focused on various private projects around the town, and maintenance of the buildings and the walls, so there were quite a few of them, with there being a total of 50 construction workers in the group, but only 25 of them were full time workers I paid regularly and the other 25 were just people around the time that had too much free time in their hand that signed in to get a bit more money and do something productive instead of lying around.

Other than that, I had made another barracks in the inner walls, and had a total of 60 soldiers right now, which allowed me to complete a secret quest for having 50 soldiers in active duty, which apparently didn’t count the militia for... some reason?

Anyways, the more important thing was the fact that we had reached the 642-population mark!

Hurray!

...Though, like a hundred of those 642 people were babies and children, but we can ignore that fact for now and move on.

We had 642 population, which was all that mattered! Another year or two, and I’ll finally reach 1000 population mark!

Hurray!

Now, we come to the good part of this new year, which is the part where we start even more settlements!

Over the last year or so, I had been planning with our exploration officer, and Jay to decide on the placements for future settlements, and we had decided on dozens of spots, each of which would make good villages and settlements of their own right.

But for now, we were planning spreading outwards from the capitol, and we had chosen 4 new village candidates, with the furthest of them being only a few dozen kilometres away from the capitol, which was a distance that could be covered in a day by a person, or in a shorter time by our riders and, yes, we had finally managed to start riding those horse cats from a few years ago.

We only had a few people capable of riding them, but they’d be enough to keep the empire connected for now.

Anyways, we planned on sending people to settle all 4 of the village spots throughout this spring. I would’ve liked to send them all out right away, but... supply issues.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

And the low number of soldiers we had.

I had kinda promised to protect the new settlements from monsters by temporarily stationing soldiers there, until the mayors had the time to set up their militias that is, so, other than keeping them fed and supplied with building materials for now, I had to also send small squads to defend the villages, and they’d need their own supplies to live too!

It was not a logistical nightmare or anything, but I definitely needed more middle management already, and party members too!

So, they could take some loads off of my shoulders with managing the empire that is. I had gotten Rae to tell me how many more researches I needed to get to at least see the research that’d allow me to get party members, and I apparently had enough to at least see it so... let’s do that before we send people out to start new villages.

The only research I needed right now was Basic Elemental Incantations, which would allow me to cast magic like a real mage.

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

Frankly... this research was getting me excited from just looking at it, as I couldn’t stop daydreaming about finally getting to cast fireball, which is probably the most famous spell ever.

But Rae had already told me that the spells this would teach me were the basic of the basic, and didn’t include the ability to cast fireballs. I’d need to research that myself, which was a pity.

But, without further ado, let’s research it!

Then I clicked on the research, and started going through the knowledge of how to cast spells as information flooded into my mind.

Then I slowly raised a hand forwards, towards the door of my house, and started channelling my mana towards my hands, and started drawing a red circle in the air.

After a bit of practice, I’d be able to do this with a mere thought, but for my first spell, I’d have to it slowly.

After a few seconds, I was done with my spell, and gazed at the magical circle in the air, and started incantating the spell, which took longer than the process of drawing the magic circle.

Though, after a few moments, I was done with it and casted my spell by saying “Spark.”, which caused, unsurprisingly, sparks of fire to come out of my hand, and go around the room...

And now there was a fire.

Great. Just fucking great.

You know, my genius, it really surprises me sometimes. Being the smartest person alive is really, really not easy.

Anyways, after half an hour the flames were fully out. Thank god I told the inscribers to make those staffs that spewed water.

They were quite expensive to operate as they drained a mana stone every 10 minutes, but they were worth every single mana stone as a group of them could deal with any fire quite easily.

Problem. My house completely burned down, and I am now a homeless monarch.

“...Guess I’ll sleep in the empty huts tonight.” I muttered to myself, and my comment was heard by a few of the guards, which put down the fire, and a few officials who had come out to look at what was happing, and the crowd of people nearby that had come to see the fire as this world was less interesting than it may seem at a glance.

Anyways, the officials and some of the people offered to take me into their homes for a tonight—or until my house was rebuild, but I rejected and just spent the night in one of the emptied huts, whose previous inhabitants were already in proper homes.

“Well, that was a shit storm.”

“...I really don’t know why you choose to cast a fire spell. You could’ve always just done something with water, earth, or air, you know? And they’d be safer too!”

“...Look, you can’t give me the ability to cast magic and expect me to not try the fire spell you gave me.”

“...I expected better of you.”

“Shut up Rae.”

“No.”

“...Fair.”

“Are you not going to look at the new researches you got?”

“Oh yeah... totally forgot about them because of the house fire.”

“Which was your fault, btw.”

“...Can you please move on?”

“Look, it was funny. Accept that and I will move on.”

“...Rae, my house literally burned down. What’s funny about that?”

“The fact that you managed to fuck up that badly in your first spell? And it didn’t even fail or anything! It was a disaster of your own making!”

“...Well, I guess it was a bit funny... though I am never going to tell anyone that was my first spell.”

“Oh, I will.”

“And how? Other people can’t see you?”

“From entering their dreams and giving them prophecies, duh.”

“Wait... you can do that?”

“Yeah. No rules against that. So, if you ever forget about it, don’t worry, I’ll make someone make you remember it.”

“...Anyways, back to the new researches then...” I said, ignoring Rae, and her non-threats of telling me that she’d never let this down.

Then opening my research tab, I saw 2 new researches. Uplift and Altar Of Summoning.

Emperor Skill Uplift – Gives you the skill necessary to uplift people into party members. There is a max cap to how many Homunculi can be uplifted, and this cap can be increased by increasing your empire level. – Costs 2 Research Points

Blessing Altar Of Summoning – Gives you the knowledge on how to construct an Altar Of Summoning, which will summon already dead souls, or ones that are about to die, and turn them into your party members. There is a max cap to the amount of people you can summon which can be increased by increasing your empire level. – Costs 2 Research Points

“...Huh, so I don’t have to summon people? Neat.”

“Wait—are you planning on just using uplift?”

“Yeah. I mean... I don’t see a reason not to. Afterall I wouldn’t want to summon someone here when they don’t want to be summoned now, would I?”

“Well... they wouldn’t be necessarily against the idea of reincarnation...”

“Oh? Are you sure about that? If they are... open to the idea as much as I was, I expect them to be more trouble than what they are worth.”

“W-wait! What if, what if they really wanted another shot at life!”

“...Why are you trying to convince me to research the altar of summoning so much? Surely your enjoyment in this great game and with my empire wouldn’t change much if I had a few party members less.”

“Well... I may or may not have a list of people that are not really satisfied with their current life, or were not satisfied with their past one, and want to take another shot at life. So, if you think about it, if you don’t summon them, they are just going to wallow in sadness until they reincarnate again—with none of their memories intact.

“So, you may as well just... go ahead and summon one or two, right? I promise they’ll be useful...

“And I’ve already turned the reincarnation setting on for your empire so some of them are going to reincarnate as one of your people even if you don’t want it, or already have. So, you might as well speed up the process.”

“Wait, what did you say?”

“I have a list of people that—”

“No no, after that. What did you say about reincarnation?”

“Umm... I turned the reincarnation setting on for your empire?”

“...WHY?!”

“W-why not?! It’ll be fun, won’t it?”

“Have you not read a goddam shitty power fantasy novel in your entire life—”

“I’ve read them all.”

“—those cunts are just going to find a way to make a fucking slave harem from children if they come here! Turn that shit off!”

“...Nope.”

“...Rae, turn it off.”

“You can’t make me.”

“...Argh! At least tell me, are there any reincarnators in my empire right now?”

“Well, technically—”

“Not counting me, of course.”

“Nope, there are none other than you. For now. But they’ll appear sooner or later.”

“...I really hate you sometimes.”

“Merci... so, this means you have no reason to not summon people, right? Afterall some souls will find their way here anyways, so you may at least have control over some of them.”

“...I don’t want to force people into a life they don’t want. If I summon them, they’ll be stuck with me for centuries, if not millennia—there’s no way I am going to let that happen.”

“...What if, you could audit them then?”

“Do, what?”

“Audit them. What if I let you talk with all the potential souls that you can summon whenever you activate the altar, and you get to choose one of them. How does that sound?

“And, if none of them are willing to take the job, you can just cancel the summoning and try again another day, sounds good, right?”

“...Well, I do see your point...”

“Great! Now, you’ll research altar of summoning first thing, right?”

“...Nope, still want uplift first.”