Samantha started, as I stared at the massive figure outside of Nova City’s walls.

I was able to walk up to the Geogiant easily—it was so focused on destroying the Mana Shield that it didn’t even acknowledge my presence. It had a hand plastered against the city’s Mana Shield, and every few seconds, the Geogiant’s massive hand would pulse with a bolt of electricity and the Mana Shield would flicker, the Mana Crystal losing a sizeable chunk of power.

The magnetic giant made of finger-length rods and grape-sized spheres had been standing there, with a hand up against the shield, for god knew how long. It performed the same, repetitive motion that indicated a complete lack of ingenuity or impatience.

The other monsters were giving it a wide berth, which meant I had all the more space to approach it.

First, I invested all my floating points into Strength, and I slammed a giant stone sledgehammer at the Geogiant’s leg to draw its attention. (One of the benefits of having several Interdimensional Pouches was that I could carry all kinds of random things with me). I was fairly capable of imitating the various cartoon characters’ ability to pull anything out of thin air. Or, I thought to myself, pulling items out of hammerspace.

I felt a significant amount of initial resistance, as the giant’s Mana Shield kicked in. But my hammer shattered the Mana Shield, and plowed through the leg. Even with over fifty points in Strength, my blow was unable to chop through the leg that was thicker than a washing machine. My hammer cut through the first few rods easily, but it was gradually slowed down, until it was about three quarters of the way through the giant’s leg. Any of the rods that I had directly smashed fell to the ground, providing me with scant amounts of experience.

But more often than not, my strike simply severed the rods and the spheres, and as I watched in fascination, I saw the rods and spheres reconnect, trapping my hammer in place.

It took even more mana invested in Strength to yank my hammer free from a stand-still, and then I stepped back, ready to run.

To my utter frustration, the giant didn’t even respond or acknowledge my presence, continuing to press its massive finger up against my city’s shield.

It had a slightly hunched back, and a completely featureless face, which made me wonder why the rods would even bother to take on the appearance of a humanoid figure.

I still had my mana invested in Strength, and I made good use of that fact. This time, rather than trying to hammer through the creature’s leg in a single blow, I whittled away at its leg slowly, like I was carving a turkey. With a sledgehammer.

The smaller blows shaved off the magnets easily, and I didn’t have to worry about the magnets rebuilding around my hammer.

I struck time and time again, until the leg was about half its original width when the giant finally seemed to notice me.

It was strange, because it had none of the human or animalistic responses that I was accustomed to. There was no angry roar. Just a sudden palm, flying my direction, in an attempt to squish me like a bug.

But I was ready for it. The hand was almost comically slow and cumbersome anyway (I could hear thousands of clicks and taps as metal rods and balls connected and disconnected from each other), making it a piece of cake to dodge.

I stood out of its range, waiting, and it paused for a full second, and then resumed its work on my shield, a single massive finger pressed against the Mana Shield, causing spark after spark to surge around the shield.

I groaned in frustration.

Samantha suggested.

I struck again, full-force, directly into the Geogiant’s leg. Before the leg could close up again, I took out one of my Igneal Explosives and tossed the ingot into the giant’s open wound.

Then, I tugged my hammer out of the giant’s leg and ran.

I felt the heat of the explosion on my back just a few seconds later, and finally, the giant took a lumbering step towards me.

Outrunning the Geogiant, it turned out, was a bit too easy. I had to slow down, a lot, because if I ever ran too far away, the monster would forget about me, or lose track of me, and turn to the city and continue its mundane spark-attack.

But I gradually drew the Geogiant around the city, towards the other creatures.

The Geogiant would intermittently swipe at me with a massive, clumsy hand, but those attacks were easy for Samantha to dodge.

Its movements were extremely unnatural. Despite its humanoid form, it didn’t rely on normal joints and muscles. It seemed to have a sense of form—a head, torso, arms, and legs. But sometimes, its arms moved like snakes, and its legs curved with every step, instead of hinging.

Once I managed to lead the Geogiant towards the swarm of other monsters, things started looking better for me, and worse for the roaches, octopuses, and Crystal Golems.

The Geogiant wreaked havoc on the other monsters attacking my city.

After about half an hour, the dense crowds of monsters began to break, and their self-preservation instinct began to kick in. The monsters began to retreat, out of the massive cavern that held my city.

I—or, rather, Samantha—had managed to convince the Geogiant that it was the fleeing monsters that had been attacking it this whole time, and so it eagerly followed them through one of the larger tunnels that led out of the room.

Meanwhile, I put on my Invisibility cloak and snuck back to Nova City to clean up the rest of the mobs.

Congratulations! You are the first on your planet to pick a Development Path for a city. +1 City Token.

It was a generous reward. I could either use it to upgrade my own city, or to construct a city in a Region that didn’t already have a city.

Samantha said.

I’m not in this for a power-grab, I shot back. I just want to find Petra.

I don’t want your help, I snapped, reflexively. I didn’t actually mean it, though. Without Samantha, I wouldn’t have known that it was even an option to develop a city like this.

The plan was straight forward.

Now that I had upgraded my city, there were several new buildings that I could make use of. There was an Extractor, and a Compactor. The two buildings were connected, and they reminded me of factories or assembly lines.

The best part, from my perspective, was that both buildings were essentially black boxes, with an input and an output. Very simple, straightforward to use, and most importantly, fully automated.

But first, I had to spend another 15 million coins on the Extractor. These buildings and machines were turning out to be huge money sinks, but Samantha assured me they would be worth it.

After its upgrades, the Extractor could take in and identify Fire, Earth, and Poison-attuned Mana Beads. It would sort the three types of beads onto three different factory lines. Then, through various mechanized processes that were completely unknown to me, it could extract the Fire element out of the Mana Beads, leaving most of the mana still inside the Mana Beads. Then, the Fire elements from many of the beads would be stored inside the Steel Ingots that I had purchased, at a much greater density.

As a result, this line of the Extractor spat out two products—a simple, unattuned Mana Bead, and, for approximately every hundred beads, one Igneal Ingot.

The Extractor would complete a similar process with each of the other types of Mana Beads. The Standard Bricks would be injected with the Earth Element, requiring approximately 100 Mana Beads to create one E-ranked Terrin Brick. The Poison Element could be stored stably inside the Jiin oil that I had purchased, creating a highly concentrated poison.

The Compactor had a much simpler job. The Extractor would automatically pass the Mana Beads to the Compactor, which would then condense and consolidate the beads into the larger, fist-sized standardized Mana Shards.

Most defensive wards the size of a town or city wouldn’t even utilize Mana Beads. The drain on the beads would create a more choppy, unstable effect for a mana shield, since the ward would drain power so quickly from Mana Beads.

So at the moment, there was a decent number of Mana Beads out in the general public, but a huge shortage of Mana Shards.

Now that the City was no longer under attack, it was time to start my mining efforts.

“Any questions?” I asked Justin and Feng, who were staring at me with bleary and astonished eyes.

Maybe I should have let them sleep in more, but I needed help gathering Mana Beads. Ethan and Ryker were already sending me messages questioning where I was, and I didn’t want to delay joining them any longer.

Hell Week was continuing in the rest of the world, and pretty soon, the Mana Shards I had provided the various towns with were going to be depleted. Speaking of which, when I returned to Reed City, I would need to purchase another Mana Crystal, since my current Mana Crystal was running low on Mana.

Originally, there had been six different entrances to the Wyvern’s Cavern, which supported Samantha’s previous theory that “all roads lead to the Big Bad Boss.”

I used some of my Igneal Explosives to collapse all but one of those tunnels, hoping that that would delay the approach of any monsters, and prevent Justin and Feng from being flanked.

“Remember, don’t travel too far, or your Communication Amulet will no longer connect to the Tower,” I said, as we explored the massive cavern that held Nova City.

As we walked, I absentmindedly snatched up some of the Fire-attuned Mana Beads affixed to the walls.

“Justin, take my Invisibility Cloak—if anything dangerous approaches, contact me immediately, get the hell out of there, and if it chases you to the City you can try to kill it from a safe distance. When you’re in the city, make sure you never enter the Merchant’s Faction Store.”

Justin and Feng were both loaded up with Mana Shield Amulets, Soul Shield Amulets, and even some extra Igneal Ingot Explosives.

Most enemies that they encountered here would far exceed their level… But as long as they stayed near the city, they should be able to retreat the moment they found trouble.

“Don’t be ambitious, and don’t be a hero. I will expect you to leave me a message every hour. If you don’t, then I will drop everything and rush over.”

“Yes, mom,” Justin said, sticking his tongue out at me playfully. “We’ve got it. Go save the world already. We’ll focus on making you rich.”