‘In order to stand on my own two feet, that stage is where I’ll need to be.’ I

had already reached the peak of tier 8 and all I needed to do to advance to the next level for both aura and chi was to spark my divinity.

‘And what divinities they would be.’ The divinity of cyclical balance and the divinity of all those elements I have carefully crafted. I smiled to myself.

‘It’s time.’

Without a gesture, a portal opened up right beside me, leading to a wasteland within the territory I owned. I walked through and looked around.

‘This is getting quite rare. I won’t be able to do this anymore in some years.’

The world tree had done its job and the curse afflicting the land was no more. Now, all the energy that went into purifying the land was used to increase the ambient mana in my territory to levels that can only be felt next to a wellspring of mana, and it was successful.

Where mana sprouts, life is bound to follow and I have been planting forests and mapping out the location of future cities over the past few years. The empress, once again, followed my example and had trees from the feywild dotting my territory and Flamel made sure to balance it out with magical trees of his own.

Among the three of us, the forests in the territory grew to an impressive size though they didn’t all have the direct attention of the world tree like the inner forest. Following the trees came wildlife that came on their own and revitalized a habitat that had probably been dead for several millennia.

As a result of that, empty land that just remains barren is quite rare and I am standing in one of the last remnants of that. This was the place where I gain the edge I need to be seen as a truly powerful individual in this world and not just someone strong for my age.

‘Let’s begin.’

I was prepping for what was to come when I felt a presence at the edge of my awareness. They did not want to be spotted and they were very good at hiding themselves, but after that debacle with the dragon king, I had honed my senses to the point that no one will ever be able to slip through my awareness again. I looked in the direction of the presence.

‘They are at least good enough that I don’t know who it is.’

“You can come out now.” I told the presence.

“You’ve gotten good. You’ve gotten very good, noticing me before I showed myself. I’m not the best at concealing my presence but still, very good.” Flamel came into being.

Once he moved into his estate, he barely paid attention to me and instead concentrated on doing research with the whitefyre orb as the focal point. He had come up with a few things that were familiar to me but quite novel here like a horseless carriage, an aircraft reminiscent of those crafted by the ancient elves, a cooking tool that radiates convectional heat and many more. His actions spurred an innovation spree powered by my orb that saw me ending up a very, very wealthy man.

He just went on an inventing spree and, honestly, made me a lot of money from all the royalties I receive when one of his orb powered contraptions are purchased. That is why I was so confused, seeing him finally appear in front of me after ignoring, well, ‘ignoring’ me for so long.

‘Well, time works differently when you are effectively immortal.’

“I’ve followed your work over the past few years, exquisite stuff, really.” I smiled at him.

‘The least I could say to a guy who has made me so much money.’

“You have, have you? I noticed you’ve pulled back from academia so I thought you wouldn’t have known.” He replied.

“I’ve been a bit busy with the land development and all that, you know. When everything settles down, then I’ll go back to academia. Until then, I can only read up on what interests me.”

“That’s too bad. Aelius, that brat, took you away from your calling in life to be one of his peerage. Though I did play a huge part in it so I can't really say anything, but it is sad knowing a mind like yours is trapped in administration when it should be advancing the world.” I shrugged at that.

“It’s not that bad. I get this whole land to myself-” I stretched out my hands as if to drive the point home.

“-and I get to flex my more….lets say artistic and organisational muscle in designing the cities and the layout for the territory as a whole.”

“Cities, so there is more than one? I’ve not seen or heard of anything other than Treehome and I’ve been planting trees all along your territory.” I chuckled at that.

“In the north-western part of my territory, by the shore line, I’m building a city. I cloaked the whole operation and have only a small amount of people have any information on it thus far. The ward I used is quite a bit similar to the one you used to hide the world tree before I was ready to show it to the world.” He looked at me silently for a few seconds.

“Hahahahahaha, so you even managed to fool my senses, at your young age. Well, tell me. Who knows about this place?”

“The master builder is the only one who knows exactly where it is. The rest were moved to and fro through teleportation so know nothing of its location. We’ve already reached the final stages of building and a lot of people have moved in, though they don’t know where they moved to. All they know is that they moved to a place that affords them a new life.”

“If this is all supposed to be secret, why tell me?” I smiled at that.

‘Because I can smell the money.’

“There is some….prime land available to build a vacation estate on and I only know a handful of people that can afford the location.”

“Heh, fine, fine. We’ll discuss that later.” He looked at me silently.

“I felt a shift in mana, a momentous shift, in fact. One that comes when something of great importance is about to happen.”

‘Shit. I thought I hid it well.’ He smiled, as if he could hear my thoughts.

“After being alive as long as I have, you start to sense these things. Well, unless you tangle yourself in the concept of fate, but you’ve hidden from even that, haven’t you.”

‘Of course I have, I have a nosey friend in Brandon that wants to see everything and he has gotten a lot stronger in that area after mastering the mind arts.’ I just smiled.

“Go ahead, form your divinity. I just want to watch why the surrounding mana seemed to be anticipating it.” I shrugged.

‘Oh well.’