All elves bent their heads at Chara and the young girl blushed to the pointed ears.

Kalla took her hand and smiled at her.

“I think, we will have much to talk about in the future. If you need anything, ask me right away and don't hesitate to entrust me with any problems you have. As soon as you have learned this mana manipulation skill Marcus talked about, I would like to learn it too and i'm sure that most of us would also be your pupils. Galen and the other mages will teach you their craft to make sure that you are able to defend Marcus and this city as well.”

Chara looked up to the princess and was awed by the beautiful woman. I was wary of the sudden change in Kalla's behaviour. If anything was clear to me now, then it was that I was no match in diplomacy and manipulating people for the princess, and for most of the older elves as well. They had too many years to learn skills I lacked. My next guardian will be someone who can teach me these skills and hopefully many more.

Until then I will learn every crafting skill the elves could provide me with. By the way I had one skill already that I could give Chara right away. I tried to send sculpturing to my guardian and was pleased with her surprise obvious on her face.

“Hey, Lord Marcus, did you just give me a skill?”

Hm, her manners would be something she had to train a bit. As if Kalla had heard my thoughts, she knocked Chara on the head.

“Show a bit more humbleness before your lord, young lady! If he allows you to speak so nonchalant with him then it's ok, if not, await punishment from me or him.”

She looked to my crystal and nodded to it. We had an understanding here. Training the first guardian was almost as important to the elves as it was for me personally. Chara had a big future but only if she reigned in her impulses and her mouth.

I was confident that Kalla could manage the girl, but I will watch her lessons, just to be sure that my girl isn't influenced in the wrong direction.

“Ehm, Marcus, what did she mean when she asked you about a skill you gave her?” Kalla asked me.

“Oh, that's easy. I learned the scultor skill when I created the figure of Tiria for the shrine and just passed the skill over to Chara. I hope that it also goes in the other direction too, that would be awesome. I think I said that I can give my guardians my skills, didn't I?”

“Sorry, but when you said immortality earlier I somewhat didn't listen to anything other anymore. So she can learn everything you have learned provided you allow her to learn the skill?”

“Yeah, seems so. I think,i can train quite the workforce here with my guardians. But I will have to check if they only get the basic skill or if I have trained the skill they get the imroved version. As I have only the sculptor skill right now and it is also not trained, I cannot check the theory until later.”

“I understand. Do you know, when you will be able to get your next guardian?”

“Sorry, no clue. I will try to ask Tiria about it, but I think it will be connected with my growth as a city similar to how dungeon cores get their bosses when they get more floors.”

Kalla nodded and then turned to her people.

“Ok, now that we have the blessing of our goddess and a new city guardian, let's celebrate our future here. I wish you a wonderful feast!”

And the elves started the party in earnest. I had already observed that the rate of male to female was off, but I didn't know why, so I just asked Galen who was standing near my crystal and watching the party.

“Many of our warriors died defending our home and our escape. So we have to accommodate for the next 100 years with this situation. The women will have to share their men with one or two other women. But if you think that would be heaven for the men then you are mistaken. Elven women are strong in character and know to use the tongue well enough to cut any man's pride low. So three of them would make any man shudder in fear. Harems sound funny but they aren't. Each woman wants her part of you and you have to provide it or suffer the consequences. If you have any ideas, how we can solve that problem then don't hesitate to tell me. I have now 2 wifes and both are bothersome if they join in taking me down.”

“You should work on your communication. Almost every sentence you said, was ambiguous.”

Galen was taken aback for a moment and then laughed out loud enough that some elves looked his way.

“Haha, I forgot that you have been a man before. Take the words as you want. They are true either way. And now excuse me, my two women have signalled me to join them in the party. I will be back in the morning for your idea of teaching me something.”

He walked away to two stunning ladies standing beside the Hearth tree, where the women each took one arm of his and talked to him at the same time. Poor guy, if he didn't remember what one of them said and she asked him about it, he would have hell to pay.

“Ok, Gillian, want to grow a bit? I have mana to spend and the elves provide me with it quite liberally.”

The voice of the tree was still a bit pouting, but at least she talked with me.

“Why not? I can't partake in the party and don't have to do anything just now, so let's start building. I will strenghten my roots first if you don't mind. The nutrients in the ground aren't the best. Your mana provides me with most things, but it would be better if I could gather the most of what I need without relying on you too much.”

“That's a good idea, Gillian. Perhaps I can expand my influence this way also to the ground below. I couldn't before and it somewhat angers me. I mean, how will I be able to build cellars for my buildings or tunnels for delivering things underground if I can't force my way downwards. Cities are above ground as wells as underground.”

“You are right. If I can help you with that, I will do my best. Just give me some mana to work with and I will dig down to to river to get some water. If you could dig a pool besides my trunk, I will transfer drinking water there for the elves to drink from. Oh, and by the way, you should also do something for providing the people with a place to do their business. It kind of stinks when the wind turns my way.”

I didn't know what she meant for a moment and she seemed to recognize it.

“They shit bricks just outside your influence, you dummy! Build a place where they can get the waste away from the city for god's sake!”

Oh, now I know what she meant. So the elves went outside to do their business. They would have to walk more than 140 meters to get away from my eyes. That was my maximum reach at the moment. Per level I got 20 meters more, and I didn't know if this progression was linear forever or if it went up later on.

60 meters from my body the hill ended in a steep cliff that went 30 meters down to the river. The elves had to climb up and down the hill I was on, if they wanted to get fish or to wash themselves. The hill was in the inner part of a river loop and surrounded on tree sides by water, which was the reason why I chose the place.

And I have an answer for the question if fish give me mana. They do, but not much of it. When I watched my mana, I also recognized a significant increase in the mana production.

The goddess had given the elves some alcohol and they made use of it with great enthusiasm. The side effect of it was that their ability to contain their mana was reduced. I could make use of that by building taverns with lots of beverages to drink in my future city. Alcohol rules everywhere!

Gillian gave me a mental knock on the head when my thoughts drifted away again and I had to concentrate back to to the present. I remembered pictures of toilets from my old world but I had no clue how they worked.

Running water did the trick, of that I was sure, but the rest of the system was an enigma to me.

“Hey, Gillian, how much water can you transfer from the river into the pool?”

I got a mental shrug.

“How much do you need? It all depends on how much mana you can offer me for growing my roots. With 1000 mana per hour I can get down to the river in less than a day and get 1000 to 1500 litres every hour or so, I think. Do you need so much or more?”

That wasn't a small amount I could work with.

“Does the water enchantment help with gathering the water? I mean I enchanted your seed when we decided to grow you here.”

Gillian laughed and I suddenly saw a transparent elven girl standing at the tree waving at me.

She had green hair, brown eyes and tanned skin. Wearing a dress from what looked like bark she walked to my crystal and touched it with her ghostly hand. I felt it the same way like when Kalla touched my body.

“Hehe, figured out at least making an astral body. Now I can travel around a bit and we can have better talks. You should try it also when you have time for it.”

The option of an astral body didn't occur to me until now, but I had to admit that it would be nice to walk around a bit, even only with an ghost as my body. I will let one of my subminds work on the problem for now.

For now I will try something new. If I can't directly dig into the ground by just absorbing material I will just remove the ground in layers. My test grounds were down at the river where I tried to dig a channel to the hill by absorbing dirt and then putting it back down into the river.

When I reached to the hill and reached solid stone I tried to absorb the stone, but I discovered that stone needed much more power to cut into. In comparison to dirt the needed power was almost 20 times as large. The elves gave me more than enough mana for Gillian and my new project at the same time.

Knowing now what to do I began to remove dirt from the hill to get down to the stone and then I cut stairs into it. At the same time I noticed my sculptor skill rising. My inner artist went wild at it and I began to use my mana to make the stairs more beautiful by cutting patterns into them, only to discover that I had a long before me to become a kind of Picasso with stone.

Discouraged I returned to simple but pragmatic steps.

Gillian watched my progress with her astral body and smirked at my failed attempts to be creative.

“Nice try, Marcus. The steps will it make easier for the people to get up and down, but you should add a handrail to avoid injuries.”

If I could face palm myself I would have done it. With a sigh I watched my work and tried to find a way for adding the handrail. I had cut down all the material. So I had to create the handrail out of stone blocks with sculpturing. How stupid of me to remove all the material.

“Perhaps you should use the vines again. You could let them grow into a kind of canopy for shelter in case of bad weather.”

My depression did hit a new record. This newly born tree child knew better how to help my citizen than I. I grabbed some vine seeds and began my work.