Espionage experts or not, Rino was forced to acknowledge the prowess of those killer bunny monsters. In a different sense, they were terrifying.

The highway was dug and built so quickly that Rino missed his nap time after Sheila's drow escort reported the deed was completed. On top of digging fast, those monster rabbits ran fast too. Even for Rino, he needed a few days to fly from Town Zera back to Noir Province. However, these killer bunnies were able to dig their way over in one and a half days and run back in half a day.

The genesis fairies working on laying the mana web array were stumped when they saw the group who went forward return to report that the job was done. The drow escort found it hard to keep up with their pace, even with short teleportation magic.

No wonder Rino's mana recovery was non-existent! He only found out how much mana these monsters were consuming while they worked after they returned. With a combination of earth and dark magic used by over a hundred mid-levelled monsters, the World Tree and magic trees who shared Rino's soulbond could not keep up.

On the bright side, now that the highway was built, Rino finally saw some increase in his mana reserves when he told the spies to do physical labour instead. With so many bunnies around, they should be capable of keeping a lookout at spaced intervals around Town Zera's borders.

The speedy completion of the underground highway meant several things. Firstly, Rino could now call forth all the reinforcements he needed from Noir Province after the mana web array was linked to Cypress County. Teleporting will no longer use Rino's mana supply. Instead, it would be supported by the magic trees. These trees were good regulators of magic and constantly produced mana, unlike Rino, who had to receive mana from external sources as an undead.

A mana-saving trick that Kragami shared for long-distance travelling was to calculate the amount of time needed in the shadow realm. Although the necromancer wasn't sure about the exact amount of mana Rino could save from such a trick, he was certain that it would help the lich save a huge amount of mana when his goons were teleporting from Noir Province to Town Zera with goods.

Teleporting magic was a complex spell using the dark arts of travelling to the shadow realm and space magic to compress space and slow the speed of time before opening a portal to another part in the material world for the user to exit. Rino's teleportation gates were woven so that it took little to no time for the gate jumpers to get from one place to the other. Kragami was surprised initially when Rino shared his secrets. Those gates were not randomly hooked to the web mana array. He did not create a hexa-elemental magic world tree for no reason. 

Everything was part of his plan.

The mana savvy trick that his teacher taught him was to space the intervals between jumper gates closer to each other so that the time it takes to travel between shadow realm and physical world is shorter. The portal itself did not use much mana. It was Rino's additional buff magic such as speed, weight compression, space manipulation and advanced time-slowing spells that cost a lot of mana.

As a strong believer of quality over quantity, the suggestion to create cheaper portals in mass quantities for his underground highway made Rino uncomfortable. He might still be that cheap and miser peasant from the memories of his humble beginnings as a baron in his past life. But Rino never bought easily disposable things. Even his favourite leather boots were used for at least five years before his butler could tolerate those tattered boots no more and hired a cobbler to dispose of them in the name of failing to repair them.

Naturally, Rino wasn't too happy when he found out about it, but the cobbler assured him that a very good shoemaker friend made better and more comfortable leather boots that could be enchanted with magic. The hide of those boots was pricier than the ones he bought himself after receiving his first paycheque from a job the magicians' tower assigned him. He remembered the satisfaction as he parted with a sizable portion of his monthly tributes earned from his fief as a baron for that pair of glorious Wolfsbane Spider Silk and Granite Drake hide.

"Must I really remove those enchantments?" Rino asked over the telepathic spell.

Kragami remained unmoved by Rino's reasoning. Instead, he only told Rino how his shadow summons could work permanently transporting goods from Noir Province to Town Zera using the highway,

"Living creatures cannot remain in the shadow realm for long as the shadow realm does not have air. However, shadow summons do not require air. As long as they are provided with enough mana from a bond with their summoner, they can remain there forever. Distance is not a problem as you've experienced for yourself."

There was truth in Kragami's words, but Rino still had reservations. His teacher had a practical solution to station his summons in a line like some packing factory to transfer items from one place to another, jumping through a series of portals much like a relay race. However, that meant taking away most of Noir Province's good labour forces.

When Kragami heard Rino's concerns, he only barked in laughter at the lich's concerns. In the time spent in Town Zera, Noir Province started to take shape and grow without the monarch's knowledge.

"My lord, ever since you brought the villagers over, the population has been booming. It might not be enough to fill up every spot we need, but they are capable of taking over the goblin clan's post. Fronzo and his villagers are getting along very well with Zerg's villagers."

Blanking out on the news, Rino did not know how it was even biologically possible. One undead getting on at it with another undead to make babies… he couldn't understand how it happened.

"It's not what you think it is," Kragami warned, listening to his student's unfiltered thoughts via telepathy. Rino was so shocked that he failed to filter his inner thoughts out.

Waiting for his teacher to explain how it wasn't what Rino was thinking about, the lich waited uneasily. If shadow summons were like his children, did that mean he was now technically a grandpa? Rino shuddered. He was still too young for this sort of torture!

Amused by Rino's reactions, Kragami deliberately dragged the time out. However, Rino's low-key threat to shave his braided beard and long brows off made the necromancer spill.

"You know how sometimes a mountain lion would breed with a deer and things like that? Undead creatures can do something similar, but it doesn't take the birds and the bees to help. Actually, it's rather similar to exchanging body parts but not the kind you're thinking about with the insertion. In fact, there's a limit to how many could be created from the original undead. A compatible host must be present before the undead could multiply."

Kragami used the word multiply because it certainly was what it looked like now. Fronzo's villagers and Zerg's villagers were able to find compatible matches for hosts and created a new army of low-level undead clones. They're not powerful enough to evolve from a basic skeleton, but they are good at carrying out the less labour intensive menial chores.

From Kragami's story, the villagers took a book out of Rino's initial bone stonk market theory and mashed their ripped out bones from the main body to throw together onto a person who was originally injured. The healing magic charm that came with Rino's summoning worked its magic, treating the broken bones as something part of the original host, trying to reclone everything that wasn't already there. However, there was a trick to separating the cloned body and the main host before the host started to look like a freak of nature with conjoined body parts.

"You're telling me that the offspring are mostly headless? How do they work without skulls?"

Laughing nervously, Kragami explained that the new generation of undead had their ways around and worked efficiently. However, after the fourth generation of fusion undead that was literally a pair of legs attached to a moving pelvic bone, it was physically impossible to clone the next generation of undead.

"If you need strong reinforcements for heavy lifting, I suggest the hobgoblins. While the skeleton army isn't perfect, they can do the job. Those with only legs can carry buckets on their pelvis for those with only torsos. Those without heads can borrow the eyes of someone else who could see and give specific instructions. They listen to Fronzo and Erika well."

Unsure if that was a sight he wanted to see or not, Rino finally agreed to start the construction of almost seventy short teleportation portals along his underground highway. Kragami sighed in relief as the telepathy spell ended. It took him a long time to reassure his student that if there was a need in future, Rino could add all those regular enchantment spells and buffs to the portals.

Rino could be rather finicky about the strangest details sometimes.