Alexia

After a heartfelt hug with Astrid the moment I see her, I quickly introduce her to the two dragons who are currently ignoring every last person here but me and Astrid.

“So this is your twin?” Vargas asks with a frown as he crosses his arms and stares at Astrid, looking her up and down for a moment. Then he uncrosses his arms and says, “Come back to me when you’re a Class S species yourself.”

I roll my eyes at that and ignore the dragon who is being more than a little rude right now.

Astrid on the other hand ignores him, not being one to care about others’ opinions of her much.

“What are you planning now?” Astrid quickly asks me, making me purse my lips.

“Well,” I start while glancing at the gates before looking above them. “First I’ll need to speak with Alara.”

I turn my attention back to the people on the bridge, a few of whom I now recognize as former denizens of Dimensional Block #109. Which is a little surprising, since I didn’t expect them to arrive so quickly.

None of them can fly after all.

They also all seem rather happy to see me. Something else I wasn’t expecting.

At this point I’ve gotten used to people fearing me on sight, so this is a nice change of pace.

I turn back to Astrid as I continue, “I’m guessing Alara’s wanted to speak with me for a bit now about the new people I recruited for the base?”

My twin smirks at that and says, “More than a little.”

Thought so.

It would be stranger if she didn’t want to speak after thousands, maybe even a couple tens of thousands of people started showing up saying that I sent them. Many of whom are in Tier 2.

Then again, I sent them with a note signed by me and an audio message recorded with some sort of item one random group had, so they should’ve been recognizable as being sent by me. Something I was a little worried about until now, after seeing them all here and welcomed.

One less thing to worry about now.

“Let’s head inside,” I tell the three. But both of the dragons simply look around for a moment without moving.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I glance at the two in confusion before Ethan says, “I’ll be heading to my own island to check on my territory.”

Oh, right. He has an island too.

Vargas quickly says that he’ll be going with Ethan, so I give them a brief wave of temporary farewell before moving on through the gates into the city.

Time to see what all has happened here since I’ve been gone.

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I pause to stare at the large building that is apparently the council building for council meetings for the Retreat. Which confused me at first until Astrid explained that they formed a council with Alara being the chairperson of the council. One meant to rule the city in a slightly more democratic manner.

Generally a rather uncommon method of rule, but one that works.

Throughout the city I’ve seen quite a few things that surprise me, proving to me that Dimensional Block #108 is definitely ahead of Dimensional Block #109 in technological readvancement. Even if that’s largely due to the fact that most of the people in Dimensional Block #109 are undead or people fighting to not become undead.

Or were? Since the lich king is dead now.

Or redead, I guess.

The status of the newly dead dead king aside, I’m still a little disappointed that despite there being some older style cars going around, there still aren’t any video games.

I don’t care that video games aren’t something considered necessary or even close to a priority for building civilizations. They’re still more important to me than vehicles.

Even if I can understand why they’d focus on the practical stuff first. It’s still a pity.

The city itself is rather large and has quite the variety of different styles of homes and buildings across it. Meanwhile the streets are practically flooded with people, proving the Retreat to have become a rather important and big force in the Dimensional Block while I was gone.

Probably in large part due to my protection.

I glance in the direction of the dwarf’s home closer to the edge of the city as I think about the maintenance I rather badly need on my gear that I haven’t had fixed in over a month of fighting and teleporting. Then I turn my gaze back to the council hall again from my place next to Astrid on the roof of some random building.

The two of us decided to teleport through the city so as to not attract that much attention.

Although the stronger people in the city all noticed me because of the natural quantum energy that I radiate being rather powerful, so we couldn’t hide entirely.

Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out how to hide my quantum energy inside of myself yet. Something that’ll help make stealth stuff a lot easier to do once I can figure it out.

For now, I’m just resigned to being a beacon for anything that can use magic and sense their surroundings.

I’m actually surprised that Alara hasn’t come out looking for me yet.

Or rather, I would be. If I couldn’t sense quite a few people inside of the council hall, likely having some sort of council meeting.

I glance at Astrid to find a grin on her face. So I ask with one of my own to match it, “Want to crash their meeting?”

She nods her head and we both focus on the council hall, which has several guards stationed around it and at the front doors.

Then the two of us both teleport straight to the front doors of the council hall, startling the guards at it into raising their weapons. But they both lower them again after seeing who we are.

And without even looking at the guards, we both open the doors to the hall, making the conversations inside stop immediately.

“Guess who’s back,” I state with a proud smirk at the surprise I see on any non-magic user within the hall.