The rest of the buildings that had been constructed since we'd killed Typhon were built manually, with our own people working on them using resources we actually owned. Looking back on it, that had been the best option at the time but I doubted we would be able to get away with continuing to build and upgrade houses like that. People were still waiting in line to move in, and I had no doubt they would not appreciate us taking our sweet time to grow the city. No, houses would need to be constructed much faster in future.
Next up, I viewed the list of divine constructions.
* * *
Available Divine Realm Construction Projects:
Divine Portal (1/1) - Divine Realm Construction
God's Watchtower (1/1) - Divine Realm Construction
Hexagonal Prismatic Ambrosia Cell Tower (1/1) - Divine Realm Construction
* * *
The divine portal was without a doubt the one that saw the most use out of all of them. Every day, people from the city of Dion at the base of the mountain would cross through it and come to work in our city, only to return back to their homes at the end of the day. And Dion natives weren't the only ones who used it.
* * *
Name: Divine Portal
Level: 4
Level-Up Requirement. : Settlement Level 5
Level-Up Cost : 800x Stone Units (8,000 MP)
8 Divinity Points
Level-Up Time: 16,000 minutes (9,600,000 MP)
Description: A two-way portal that can be permanently placed at a distance of up to 15 miles from the guild core. These portals allow for instantaneous teleportation between them with absolutely no limitations on size and numbers, other than the size of the opening itself.
* * *
Every merchant and emissary that wanted to do business with Aphrodite came up to Mount Olympus that way. While my father forced everyone to climb his nine hundred and ninety-nine steps in order to meet with him on Mount Orthys--something that I always found arrogant and bad practice--my doors were open to everyone.
Everyone, that was, as long as they identified themselves as a friend of my realm. If they were coming with ill intentions, they would be barred from using the portal and would instead need to climb the mountain, with all the hardships and challenges that would entail. After all, we weren't just going to let enemies appear in our midst like that.
The portal being the first divine construction project I'd created meant that I was able to upgrade it when the guild core leveled up. With each upgrade, the portal became beefier in a way that was hard to describe, but that I could only think would make it stronger against attacks and against people trying to magically shut it down.
It also increased in size. Whereas only a couple people were able to fit through together in the beginning, if they were standing side by side, the portal could now fit a whole cart led by two of the gigantic oxen merchants use to pull the heaviest of loads. This made trading much easier, since if we wanted to trade metals or wood before that, we had to organize a human chain to carry the products through the gate. And, of course, mortals had limited strength, which made the whole thing much slower. The upgrades to the portal had simply made everything faster and more efficient.
The god's watchtower had thus far only been used once, but that wasn't a bad thing at all. When Typhon was coming for us, I got a notification about it and was able to prepare the city for the siege. Had it not been for that notification from the watchtower, the dragon would have killed hundreds of my people. If there was ever a project that was worth its cost in gold, it was this one.
* * *
Name: God's Watchtower
Level: 4
Level-Up Requirement: Settlement Level 5
Resources Needed: 800x Stone Units (8,000 MP)
8 Divinity Points
Level-Up Time: 4,000 minutes (2,400,000 MP)
Description: This watchtower was created with the single purpose of guarding the realm of the god who controls it. At the expense of 1 Divinity Point per day, said god will be notified when a creature of significant power enters a range of 100 miles.
* * *
The last building in the list of the divine construction projects was one that many people would likely kill to get their hands on.
* * *
Name: Hexagonal Prismatic Ambrosia Cell Tower
Level: 4
Level-Up Requirement: Settlement Level 5
Level-Up Cost: 8 Divinity Points
Level-Up Time: 8,000 minutes (4,800,000MP)
Description: Ambrosia is the food of immortality. Just as bees are capable of creating honey, so can places of power claimed by gods produce ambrosia. A series of interconnected hexagonal cells will produce enough ambrosia for one ration per day.
* * *
The food of immortality wasn't exactly an accurate descriptor for what Ambrosia would do for me. I wasn't interested in it giving me eternal life since I had that already. No, the useful part for me was what would happen if I was killed after having consumed it.
* * *
Item: Ambrosia
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Type: Consumable
Durability: 1/1
Grade: A Grade
Weight: 20st.
Description: The food of immortality. Ambrosia can only be created in places of power that have been claimed by a god. A mortal or god who eats ambrosia, will gain one instance of immortality. This means that if a person who has consumed it dies, they are returned back to life with full HP/MP and without losing any XP. Each individual can only consume one unit of ambrosia per day.
* * *
A ward against death was something that I had only ever heard rumors about, and only then in reference to single-use magic items of powerful gods from other realms--gods who were specialized in magic and instilling that magic into items. Nobody in the Greek realms had access to such items. And if I understood the rules correctly, only being able to use one unit per day didn't mean I would ever lose the effect of any ambrosia I had eaten even a month prior to that.
Thus, if I died in a fight having already eaten ambrosia a month ago, I would return fully rejuvenated. Being back up, I would be able to eat another portion of ambrosia and ward myself against dying a second time in the same battle. A god who could resurrect himself twice in a row would give significant trouble to anyone who dared challenge him.
Once all three of us had taken our fill of ambrosia and then stored a few portions in our inventories just in case, we needed to decide what we were going to do with the rest of it. One portion per day was not much, but was more than we needed. The most obvious choice was to find people who would spend money to get their hands on something like that. But there was a problem with that idea.
This was such a powerful item. I had no doubt other guilds would have no hesitation in attacking us to get their hands on the city--and therefore the means to produce it themselves--if word about the ambrosia spread too widely. I had no doubt that we would be able to stand our own against almost any guild in battle, but what about two guilds at once? And what if other pantheons learned about it? We just couldn't afford the risk. Not now.
Another option was to wait until we had enough portions to provide each of our citizens with one, but this carried its own challenges as well. Perhaps making them immortal and forever young wouldn't raise too many eyebrows, especially since these were people who would be walking among gods their whole lives, but all it would take was one person to brag about it before the same kind of trouble reached us.
It would be too difficult to control a secret of this magnitude if we went ahead and shared our immortality food with a bunch of mortals. Their favorite pastime seemed to be telling stories, most of which were not even true. If they had access to such a magnificent and powerful magic, no matter how much we implored them to keep it a secret, someone would surely eventually feel invincible enough to shout about it from the rooftops.
If we were going to risk that, we might as well have tried to sell it and make it known to others ourselves. And, in any case, we just didn't have enough output to be able to give a portion to all of our citizens yet. Especially not at the rate at which their numbers were currently growing. We would be hard-pressed to keep up.
Perhaps we would be able to revisit this, at some point in the future when we had the ability to produce more ambrosia each day or store it for long enough that our stock would cover all of our citizens and then some. For now, however, I just split it between Aphrodite, Artemis, and myself, having agreed to keep it a secret for the time being.
The last available list of construction projects was the one that was unlocked after Mount Olympus's core absorbed the blood of the world raid boss, Typhon.
* * *
Available Enhanced Guild Core Construction Projects:
Monster Slayers' Union (1/1)
Dragon Ghost Protector (1/1)
* * *
We had manually constructed both of these buildings over the course of the past two months but hadn't had the chance to utilize them to their full potential just yet.
* * *
Name: Monster Slayers' Union
Level: 4 (Maximum)
Level-Up Time: 8,000 minutes (4,800,000 MP)
Description: It is a gigantic honor and responsibility to rid the Apocosmos of the monsters terrorizing its citizens. The monster slayers' union is one of the few hubs that create quests and contracts to hunt and kill especially dangerous monsters. While the quests will eventually become available to everyone who visits the union, the right of first refusal belongs to the guild of Zeus.
* * *
The union had been quickly staffed with citizens of our city and quests started coming in from all over the Apocosmos. It turned out that all of the union buildings across the Apocosmos were somehow connected, and that most of the quests that were generated by any of them would be available to all.
This meant that people living on Mount Olympus were able to start a quest that would have them slaying a dragon in one of the nine hells, even if they had never set foot there before. Of course, most of those quests were not yet available to them since there was a minimum level requirement, but for someone of the right level with the means to transport themselves across the Apocosmos, this was a goldmine of an opportunity.
Hundreds of quests were generated each day but accessibility was still an issue for us. While we had a portal leading down to the city of Dion, that was about all we had. We needed to find a way to connect ourselves to the rest of the Apocosmos if we were to really expand our influence.
A portal to one of the central gate hubs of the Apocosmos--a place that plane-travelers used as a crossroads--would allow other slayers to visit our city and take part in the quests we were generating, as well as allowing people from the Greek realms to travel to other worlds, killing monsters for their own benefit while also spreading the word about Zeus's guild and the glory of Mount Olympus.
This too would perhaps also bring us trouble, since opening ways to other worlds would mean that travelers from elsewhere would be able to reach us just as easily. But we all knew that these were the hazards of becoming stronger and putting your name out there, and were willing to accept such risks. We just didn't have a way to do something like that just yet.
Aphrodite was already on the lookout for someone that might be able to construct a gate to such a plane, but people of that level of power were very rare and very expensive. These individuals were so sought after that I had no doubt we wouldn't find one to join us anytime soon, but I wanted to at least find out more about what kind of costs and timetables we would be talking about if we were to just hire one.
But without any leads at all for someone like that, I let the matter go and looked at the second of the buildings made available by our enhanced guild core.
* * *
Name: Dragon Ghost Protector
Level: 4
Level-Up Requirement: Settlement Level 5
Level-Up Cost: 1,000,000x Gold Units (1,000,000,000 MP)
Level-Up Time: 8,000 minutes (4,800,000 MP)
Description: The essence of Typhon, the one-hundred-headed dragon has been captured in the guild core and is available for use for as long the core exists. By constructing one hundred golden dragon-head sculptures on the periphery of the city, the ghost of the king of monsters can be unleashed upon anyone who dares attack the settlement. This defensive measure will cost 1,000,000 MP to activate, lasts for one hour, and can only be used once per week.
* * *
This one hadn't been used at all yet, but we'd wanted to construct it just in case my father sent another one of his pets to attack us. The dragon heads now stood proud around our city, protecting it, but I still had no idea what they were capable of doing.
Knowing that they would protect us from enemies once I activated them with the MP cost was nice but I needed to know their capabilities. That way, I would be able to strategize around their use and deploy them when they would be most effective. And I wasn't just being stingy about the cost that came with each use. Running a test was worth more than a million MP for me, and I had already tried it. The problem was that while the MP had been removed from our core's pool, absolutely nothing had happened. The skill's icon appeared in the guildhall's status and stayed there active for an hour before dropping to a countdown time of six days and twenty-three hours.
And there was absolutely no movement from them at all--no fire coming out of the dragon-head sculptures, no lightning bolts falling around our city, no nothing. All the preparations for the drill, banning people from leaving the city and from traveling through the portal, was for naught.
It was a comfort to know that we had a defensive system that most other guilds hadn't even heard of, but I suspected we would need to wait for an actual battle to reach us before we found out its true capabilities. As much as I hoped this day would never come, I had no doubt it wouldn't be too long.
Right as I finished looking at the overview of the buildings around us, I got the notification I'd been waiting for for so long.
* * *
Congratulations, you have upgraded the Guildhall - Divine Realm : Mount Olympus to level 5.
You can now upgrade all upgradable buildings to level 5.
You have unlocked 2 new construction projects.
You have unlocked 1 new divine realm construction project.
You have unlocked 1 new enhanced guild core construction project.
* * *