The end of winter was upon the world. All of the snow was swiftly melting away into fresh water that surged through the rivers and streams of the world. What was left beneath was the newly budding grasses and plants that brought what was once an empty cold world into new stunning life. Above in the sky the clouds remained, however instead of being gray and laden with snow they were plump with the warmer rain. Even the sun in the sky shone with ever increasing warmth with each passing day. Gone were the days of darkness and cold and here were the days of sunshine and warmth.

For the remainder of winter I had personally been immersed in my greatest projects yet. First there was the blueprints for a steam engine, something that would be tested out in Doovlin before anywhere else. Second were the textbooks that were planned to start a new system of schooling in the kingdom. Although it took a month or more to create these things they were finally complete.

My outfit had changed back to my normal shirt, pants, skirt, and vest. The winter clothing was fun but this regular outfit was one I liked so much more, especially all the pretty colors. It seemed silly, but since I had the ability to change my outfits at will I wanted to dress in something cute for each season.

At this very moment however I was preparing for my visit to the capital once again. It was time to discuss my plans for schools with the king and his closest advisors. Originally I was just planning to start it off with Quarely but I thought going to the top would be a better idea. As the goddess of the kingdom I had the ability to so why not? I decided to go in alone, though I had originally wanted Timothy to accompany me. Nope, today it would just be me and the backpack full of books I had on.

Upon arriving to the capital city Norlov through teleportation I quickly made my way to the front of the castle. It was the middle of the morning so lots of people were about. There at the castle gates the guards were already expecting me. Everyone working security knew about me by now and were fearful of making me angry. While not preferable it did work for me, as at least they weren't actively trying to hinder me.

Two of the biggest and burliest men I'd ever seen to date in the kingdom escorted me into the castle. They were all decked out in full plate and had big sword attached to their waists. If this was supposed to be a show of force to intimidate me I suppose it could have worked on a normal person. Not so much on a goddess that could turn into a two-hundred foot tall giantess in an instant.

While walking through the castle I took note of its interior. It was as impressive as one would expect the castle of a proud king to be. There were huge fancy rugs on the floor, beautiful tapestries hanging from the walls, and fancy trophies of various kinds here and there. Now that it was spring the fireplaces in the various rooms we walked by were empty, only used at night now. The people we walked past all seemed to be either members of the kings court or castle staff. Members of the latter group eyed me with great fear while the former looked at me with jealously and hate.

We finally arrived at a large set of heavy wooden doors. Here the guards both stopped before a young woman who stood at attention before it. She was some kind of maid and was quite pretty.

"We've arrived goddess." the first guard said.

I gave them an upwards glance and stepped past them and in front of the woman.

"Thank you. You're dismissed."

The woman was looking down at the floor, clearly nervous to be around me. She was even shaking a little.

With their task completed both of the guards quickly turned and left, the fear clinging to them unbecoming for the size of musclebound hunk they appeared to be.

"H-Hello Goddess Jenna" the woman stammered.

She was actually one of my worshipers. Now that I was seeing her soul up close I recognized her as one by the aura inside her. She had only prayed to me once that I could recall, something about her dog. It was an easy fix too, just curing some lame leg.

"Do you need anything before you go in?" she asked.

I smiled at her. "Nope. By the way: your dog's going to be just fine."

This surprised her and she gasped in shock, her right hand clutching her chest. She looked up from the floor and down into my eyes for a moment, the look of fear replaced with one of hope.

"T-Thank you goddess."

I nodded. "No problem. Now lets get this over with."

My own nerves were starting to act up. Giving speeches or presentations was always something that made my stomach upset. I was a goddess now so I had nothing to fear, at least that's what I told myself. The backpack seemed heavier on my back as I prepared to enter this room still however.

With her own nervousness fading the young woman pushed the doors open and allowed me to enter.

Once inside the room I looked around and took stock of the situation. It was a pretty large and fancy castle room. Lots of fancy art on the walls and tables with gold plated weapons and whatnot. In the center of the room was a huge wooden table surrounded by smoothly carved wooden chairs. This was the council chambers.

Sitting around the table were the people I had agreed to meet. The king Alphonse, the elf mage Illiad, and two men who I didn't know yet. One was supposed to be the head scholar and the other the head advisor. The elf stood up and began the introductions as mages seemed to handle those kinds of things.

"Welcome Goddess Jenna" Illiad said in that fake political tone. "I trust your travel was pleasant?"

With a huff and roll of my eyes I walked over to the table and took off my backpack. I tossed it on the table over my head and got myself up onto the chair that was left for me. It was across the table from the rest of them who all were sitting together with the king in the middle.

"Yes asshole elf" I replied. "Sorry that was rude. I meant Illiad."

He chose to ignore my insult and instead started the introductions. He first gestured to me.

"May I present to everyone Goddess Jenna. Goddess of knowledge and light."

Then he began introducing those sitting around the table to me.

"Goddess Jenna. You already know King Alphonse. Sitting beside him is the lead advisor of the court Benedil Daughterly. He is quite wise in both domestic and foreign affairs."

The indicated man had short brown hair, green eyes, and crème skin. He was a bit tubby and was dressed in fine clothing. For whatever reason he was looking at me closely as if studying me.

"Sitting next to him is Tadeo Yemm, the leading scholar in the kingdom. I'm sure you two will get along wonderfully."

This next indicated man was quite thing with fancy silver spectacles. He had sorta long red hair and deep blue eyes, with rather pinkish skin. Honestly he embodied the stereotypical nerd and the judging squint he was giving me was already annoying me.

Both of the men gave a sitting bow of respect. I didn't return such a gesture and instead used magic on the stone floor to elevate the chair I was in so I was on eye level with the rest of the men here.

Alphonse was sitting with his arms crossed looking like a pouting child. Upon seeing my lack of respect he huffed into his mustache.

"How very like a goddess! Coming into my castle and repaying my hospitality with such arrogance and disrespect."

It seemed the king at least wasn't afraid of me, though his misplaced self-importance was more annoying than not. He was like this when I first met him as I recall, just a stinky man who had everything I hated about royalty.

In response I sat up straight and smiled at him in a fake friendly way.

"Aww kingypoo! Don't act like that! I've been really nice to you so far haven't I?" I shrugged. "I mean I could've squished you between my fingers when we first met couldn't I?"

This made him huff and get a bit nervous. He shuffled in his seat and avoided looking directly at me.

Illiad clapped his hands together and spoke in a voice that betrayed his lack of enthusiasm.

"Goddess. As I recall you designed to have this meeting to discuss some plan you had for the kingdom. Is that correct?"

The plump man Benedil was next to speak. He sat up in his chair and looked at me almost like a predator looked over their prey. His hands were tented in front of him as he put his elbows on the table.

"Yes indeed. Pardon my boldness goddess, but you seem the type who enjoys honest discourse. May I ask why one as powerful as you would need the collaboration of us mere mortals to enact your plans? Perhaps your relative inexperience as a goddess is causing you to seek out the guidance of others. Or maybe you lack the power to enforce your will yourself, or simply refuse to use the power you have as an act of non-interference?"

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Was this shithead psychoanalyzing me? The anger bubbled up inside me and my face started to turn red. I saw a small smile appear on his lips as he clearly knew about my reluctance to killing and he was taking this opportunity to take a shot at me.

Oh I'd show him.

To calm myself down I took a deep breath in and out through my nose, then copied his pose and returned the smile.

"Benedil. If you could educate ants to make them of better use to you wouldn't you do so? My involving people like you is simply because creatures of lesser intellect take more easily to training when they feel part of the process. Wouldn't you agree?"

With a smug smile I sat back in my chair and looked across the table at him, even raising my eyebrows for extra flair.

His reaction was quite tasty indeed. There was a look of defeat in his eyes and perhaps even genuine respect as he slumped into his chair just a bit. Regardless of if I actually was as conniving as he was as long as he believed me his superior it would be so.

His voice was deflated. "Of course goddess..."

This intellectual beat down didn't go unnoticed by the rest of the table and there were no other smart-aleck remarks from anyone.

The nerdy Tadeo was the next to speak after he cleared his throat.

"So Goddess Jenna. I've been told you had some books to show us? I'm very interested in seeing what kinds of tomes a goddess can create. Knowledge is quite important to me as well, so in that aspect we are alike my goddess."

This guy at least wasn't passive aggressive, though it was clear he was trying to gain favor points with me. Whatever I'd allow it for now. Not like it hurt anything.

"Yes I do" I replied. "Here take a look."

Sitting forward in my chair I opened up the backpack with a loud zipper which caught everyone by surprise. Ignoring their response I slid the contents out onto the table. There were four books there: math, science, biology, and literacy. These were the topics I decide to start with, and of course each was just filled with the simple stuff like one would teach children.

Once the books were out on the table I slipped them across the table for the others to reach for.

"Feel free to look through them. I have a textbook on basic math, science, biology, and literacy. These are the four most important topics I could think of for a population. The plan is to start basic schools for the general public and increase their education."

Illiad took the literacy book, Benedil the biology, and Tadeo the math. Alphonse just glared at the remaining one.

"Educating the peasantry?" the king scoffed. "What madness is this?"

"She has a good reason to do so" Illiad replied. "Goddess?"

I crossed my arms over my chest.

"A better educated public actually is more beneficial for a nation's prosperity. Throughout history the higher the average intelligence of a citizen the more productive they are to their society, thus increasing the nation's GDP. That's the part you care about king bing."

Benedil looked up from the book he was holding in confusion.

"GDP? What is that goddess?"

I sighed and slid my arms down to my stomach. Of course they wouldn't know that. I cleared my throat.

"It stands for 'gross domestic profit.' In other words the amount of wealth a country generates through the production of goods for both internal sale and trade revenue."

"Wealth through education of the poor!" Alphonse scoffed. "The ridiculousness of it! It would just mean the poor had more wealth!"

Illiad gave the king a look and then returned to leafing through the book he had.

"She has a point your majesty. Even if the common folk were more wealthy that would mean they could be taxed more. Thus the crown itself would be become vastly more rich."

Alphonse crossed his arms and twisted his face into a thinking expression. It was probably pretty exhausting for him.

Tadeo lifted his right hand to point toward me across the table.

"Excuse me goddess. I have a question about something in this book."

I dropped my hands into my lap and looked over to him. He was holding the math book still.

"Yes Tadeo? You have the math book right?"

He nodded and cleared his throat. It was clear he was trying to concentrate on figuring something out and had been for a while now. That was probably why he had been so quiet.

"There's this lesson in here about something called 'infinity.' It has a strange symbol to represent it alongside numbers. Here its called an 'imaginary number.'" He looked up to me. "What is this strange concept?"

My expression brightened up, something that happened whenever I had a willing student. I sat up in my chair and leaned in onto the table.

"Oh that's easy! Its called imaginary because it doesn't really exist in the real world. Well I mean it does, just in weird ways."

"Let me see" Illiad said leaning over.

Tadeo tilted the book over so the elf could see the page he was on. Then once they were done brought it back in front of himself.

"A never ending number..." Tadeo said in thought. "Such a thing is impossible to exist in the world!"

I sat back in my chair and laughed.

"Ha! How about this?"

With a thought I summoned one of my books and floated up so they could all see. I then brought a picture of an apple tree. The apples fell to the ground and then began growing into new trees.

"How many apple trees have existed in the world or ever will in the future? You see as long as apples exist there will always be apples, more and more into the future forever! This is what infinity looks like. This is why its called imaginary. Infinity represents the possibilities of the future."

I then changed out the pictures on the pages for a sequence of numbers, starting counting from one and scrolling through more and more numbers.

"How long would it take you to count to one-hundred? To one-thousand? How many numbers are there? There is always another number to count! They never end!. Infinity is the realm of the imagination and has no upper limit!"

Most of the room was in clear confusion as to what I was even talking about, their minds unable to keep up with the concept. Tadeo however was having some kind of worldview altering revelation.

"I... I understand..." he said in a low voice.

Not sensing he was already overwhelmed, perhaps due to my lack of social literacy, I excitedly jumped up in my chair and put a new equation on my book's pages.

"You know about multiplying by zero already I'm sure."

Tadeo looked up in a daze at my book. On it were various number times zero problems and he nodded slowly clearly understanding.

I then laughed again in excitement. "Ha! Well check this out!"

On the page the equation turned into the symbol for infinity times zero, equaling zero of course.

"So when you multiply a number by zero you get zero." I explained. "Like if you count an apple zero times you get zero. Well what do you think happens when you count infinity zero times? You get zero still! Hehe... Zero infinities. An infinite number of nothing!"

It seemed like Tadeo understood what I was explained as the poor man's brain appeared to shut down. He just sat there in his chair staring at the book floating before me with a blank stare, his eyes glassed over. The book he was holding fell from his hands as they lost all grip.

I looked at him with wide eyes and blinked several times.

"Uh oh."

The others looked at him with concern.

Illiad stood up. "Tadeo?"

"I'll fix this!" I said quickly.

With a thought I dismissed my book and climbed up onto the table. I then walked across it and kneeled before the poor overwhelmed man.

The fastest solution would to just make him forget the whole thing, but could I actually do that? It was already possible for me to read people's minds and see their memories. Would it really be that hard to take the extra step and erase them?

Reaching out I took hold of Tadeo's hands and focused in on his mind. My eyes began to glow as I opened up his mind before me. As expected it was blank, the whole thing frozen up by the overwhelming information he had just received.

Thankfully as a goddess this sort of mind exploring wasn't new to me, having done it before and seen my own memories. So with a bit of concentration I was able to visualize his own mind palace of sorts. It appeared as floating books that sort of fluttered about like leaves in the wind. All I had to go was look around to find what I was looking for.

It didn't take long to find the memory I was looking for. The newest memories were the books floating closest to the top of this swirling void. With a thought I was able to reach out and take the "divide infinity by zero" memory into my hand. Looking at it in my left hand I wondered if I could really destroy it. Here goes nothing I suppose!

With a bit on concentration I imagined a blazing flame engulfing the memory. To my great delight and surprise the flame did in fact appear! Within an instant the book was ashes and then nothing. Wither or not this erased the memory was yet to be seen.

While I was here I thought I'd try something else too. If that might delete memories I wondered if I could copy them as well. Taking another memory book in my hand I looked it over. It was a childhood memory of his about eating a cake of some kind with strawberries. Another burst of concentration resulted in another copy of the book appearing in my other hand.

Amazing! Now how do I keep it myself? Maybe if I just push it into myself...

To my surprise and delight just shoving the book into my chest resulted it in being absorbed into myself. Then I could recall the memory as if it was my own! This was absolutely amazing! I'd have to use this to copy every-

My scheming was interrupted as Tadeo's mind began to start up activity again. Now that the clog of sorts was cleared he was recovering to his normal thought patterns. This was my prompt to get out of here for the time being.

Everyone was looking at Tadeo and me in concern and confusion. Only a few seconds had passed for the outside world due to the time dilation inside the world of thought. I was still crouched on the table and quickly stood up releasing Tadoe's hands, my eyes ceasing their glow.

"Well that's taken care of." I said matter of factually. "How do you feel?"

Tadeo put his hand to his head for a moment and looked up at me in bewilderment.

"Ugh my head hurts... What did you do goddess? The last thing I remember was... Was you telling me something?"

I smiled at him. "Don't worry about it. It wasn't important."

While he finished his recovery I turned around and walked back across the table to my seat which I promptly stepped down onto. I then turned around and faced them all again. It was probably best to finish up this conversation before the questions could start.

"Well that about sums up my plans for the schools. You're free to keep these books, I have other copies myself. What I need from ya'll is for you to gather up bright people that can serve as the first generation of teachers. When you find them send them to Vinedenne where I'll educate them myself."

Illiad nodded. "Sounds reasonable. Is that all?"

Alphonse was still sort of pouting and Benedil was just thinking about something.

"Yes that's it for now." I replied. "I also have plans for better plumbing for the kingdom but that can come later. For now these teachers is what I need."

The others nodded in agreement. Alphonse then sighed and grunted.

"As king I'll allow this. You'll have your teachers."

I smiled and picked my now empty backpack off the table.

"Good! Now if you'll excuse me I'm a busy goddess. I simply must be going."

There were no objections from anyone and so I jumped down from the chair and onto the floor. Then after tossing the backpack over my shoulders I started walking out of the room.

"Just one thing goddess" Illiad said.

I stopped and replied without turning to face him.

"Yes? What is it?"

There was a strange curiosity in his voice, almost like there was hope behind his question. It was very strange to hear coming from him and I didn't think anyone else noticed the little inflection.

"You seem to care a great deal about the humans of this kingdom. I wonder if you would care about others just the same?"

His question was clearly rhetorical and purposefully vague. If he was specifically using the word human instead of people he was clearly hinting at another group. He was an elf so he probably meant his own people. It was strange I'd never seen any others so far for sure. I'd certainly have no problem caring for elves I'd think. He deserved to know that.

"I'd say a goddess like me is full of surprises."

My response was purposely left vague as well, though it would be clear to him what I meant. The others probably didn't know what we were talking about though.

After giving a quick glance over my shoulder at the elf I walked to the door and pushed it open. Then I turned myself invisible and walked out and around the door. This was just to be mysterious of course and I was a sucker for theatrics. Then with a smug smile I teleported back to Doovlin using a worshiper there.