The plans I have made and the different scenarios I’ve envisioned used up the entire night and now, dawn was blessing my newly created world.

The temperature under the World Tree wasn’t too warm, nor cold either. It was just perfect, which made me believe that this tree was looking out for the elves somehow. I am expectant for the future blessings it will provide.

Speaking of plans and blessings, all my simulations were pretty much for naught as I couldn’t reach a decision regarding what I should do next. So, like usual I decided to wing it. To my surprise, my Chaos insight (because of copyrights, no further tingling senses) activated slightly, pointing out that it might be the right decision to take.

After all, if everything was going to be planned, how would I take advantage of my unstable divinity?

“Looks like someone’s awake. How did you sleep Alexandra?”

[…good morning Michael. I… it was good.](A)

“Glad to hear that. We have much to do today, so I’m glad that you were able to get some shut eye.”

[You didn’t sleep?](A)

“I don’t need to yet, don’t worry. However this time, I might be the one to borrow your lap tonight.”

Realizing that she slept defenseless in my presence throughout an entire night, she looked quite flustered. I wonder if the other boys managed to make any progress.

Leaving teasing aside, I told her about my plans regarding housing and she blankly looked at me when I pretty much told her she‘d be sharing a room with Mia and myself instead of asking her if she wants to. Well, the good news is that she did not reject.

[So you want to have a ratio of one guy and two girls in general?](A)

“Minimum…”

[Why?](A)

“Well, our new world is huge and we have both space and resources to expand, but we lack the population to do so. Also, creating families is the best way to ease up the tension of being brought to a new place.”

[That still does not explain why you want to have two girls for each guy…](A)

“That’s because there are more girls than guys (and I’ll make sure to keep the same thing happening in the future) and I would prefer not to have any lonely girls out there.”

[Somehow I do not quite believe you, but I agree with your idea somewhat. However, we must not force the girls into doing something they will not want.](A)

“We won’t. They will have the option of picking.”

[???](A)

“We can group up the boys in a row and have the girls each pick one and each guy can be picked only twice. That way, everyone would be relatively happy.”

[…](A)

She was speechless and I could understand why, but this type of auction style event would keep people entertained. In addition, in order to create some hype, I told Alexandra that she would have to think of a way to announce the event.

Then, we changed subjects to what we’re going to do today. I told her about creating more tools and having the elves all accompany me and watch over the process of creating them. She agreed and said that no matter how good I am at building up new things, there’s a maximum number that I can create. Nevertheless, if more people learn how to do it, the production speed will surely increase.

[What sort of things do you want to create? The spears you came up with yesterday were excellent when hunting. Even the javelins were pretty much the same. The only problem was the fact that we lack familiarity with throwing them, therefore making it hard to actually hit.](A)

“I’m glad to hear they were useful. This time I plan to create some tools that will help us collect wood in bigger amounts. They are called axes and you can use them to fell trees.”

[To fell trees? Why do we need to do that?](A)

“Do you think that the houses we’re going to create will just sprout from the ground? We need materials for them. Wood is such a material.”

[I see. What else?](A)

“Well, we’ll need some shovels and similar other tools that will help us reclaim farmable land.”

[???](A)

“We can’t just live off hunting and foraging. At some point, we’ll have more people and the animals will be insufficient. Also, the fruits and vegetables only grow in specific times of the year. So what are we going to do about that?”

[I see... that is a problem indeed. What do you have in mind?](A)

“We’ll grow our own plants and vegetables and we will try to tame wild animals. That way we’ll have a way to get food and stock it up for when the world itself won’t be able to provide us with anything. Moreover, to be able to farm, we need to have plots of land that are clear of shrubs and other plants. To remove those we need tools to do it.”

[I understand now. Look! It seems like everybody is waking up…](A)

I realized that I should make use of this opportunity and drill some extra faith into the heads of the elves. I should have them pray before any meal and thank the God of Chaos (A.K.A. me). That way, I’ll make sure to increase my influence and also not lose any worshipers.

“We should begin to pray before every meal and offer our thanks to the God of this world. He did save us after all…”

[You are right! I was thinking of that as well yesterday. Do you think that would suffice?](A)

“While some offerings sounds…bloody, virgins sound even worse… so, no thank you!”

“I think just a prayer from everyone would be sufficient.”

[We will do that then. I will go and prepare the people for today and gather them to eat together.](A)

Morning light brought up the entire clearing and its people to life, while the forest also appeared to be filled with morning cries of different birds and animals, shaking off the dew from the grass and leaves.

The breakfast menu was pretty much fruits and some vegetables after which Alexandra led them into praying and thanking me for the food and the new life they were given.

New religion acquired by your civilization!

You can now select the name of your religion!

You can now select what sort of benefits your religion provides to your civilization from the following list:

- God King’s teachings: +50 points/day in Faith, Productions, Research and Social Policies.

- Desert Folklore: +50% increase in Faith points if the settlement is in the desert.

- Fertility Rites: +25% food growth rates in the territory.

- God of the Sea’s teachings: +50% production if the territory is adjacent to water bodies such as seas and oceans.

- God of War’s teachings: +25% increase in overall attributes when fighting inside the territory.

- Divine forest paths: Faith, Production, Social Policies and Research are increased with a percentage equal to the space the forest occupies in your territory. If the forests occupy 50% of your total territory grounds, the previously mentioned boosts will also be provided as 50%.

And that confirms that they properly believe in me now. The income of Faith points should be steady from now onward and I can actually increase it by selecting the template teachings of other religions from Earth’s past…

“While God King both sounds good and has nice increase per day in points, I think the last option is the best for the state of my current civilization, plus that if I was to have a territory, than surely the forest will be included in it. Therefore, that’s pretty much a 100% increase both now and later. Especially later on.”

While again, thinking about how I should ask Mia about what’s considered the territory of my civilization, I made a mental note of that while naming my religion ‘Divine forest paths’ (ripping off the old religions because anything name that had Chaos in it sounded odd…) and obviously selected the benefits of the similarly named olden one.

Your new religion ‘Divine forest paths’ has been created!

Due to your territory not being confirmed yet, no bonus can be applied.

“Aaaaaand that answers that question... Well, shit!”

[Master, what’s wrong?](Mia)

“Good morning love. Nothing much… Just created our religion and realized that we don’t have a territory yet…”

[Oh! So that’s what that notification was about. Do not worry master! If the elves spend one more day in this clearing, it will be considered our starting territory.](Mia)

“Eh!?”

If that’s the case, wouldn’t that mean that there will be no bonus whatsoever until I actually expand the territory? Damn…

[Master, Alexandra told us about the housing assignments. Will the three of us really live in the same place?](Mia)

“Looking at your expectant eyes, I guess you’re not against it. Why are you so happy about it?”

[Hehe! Is good that I am with master and Alexandra. With her around, is like having a little sister.](Mia)

I initially wanted to argue that a child like her that has been born just recently is not exactly fit to have Alexandra as a little sister given that she’s older, but I realized that in the grand scheme of things, Mia is indeed older than her… as strange as that might be.

“…that’s good then. What about the other elves? How did they react to housing?”

[Well, Alexandra told them that the girls with the highest contribution would be able to select the guy they will live with from now on first, so everyone is strangely hyped about it. Especially the girls.](Mia)

Hearing her say that is obvious that the guys became prizes for the competition Alex set up. That is good though. Having all of them pumped up might improve the production rates for research and learning new stuff.

I then talked with her about the general idea behind today and she agreed with gathering resources and building up as many constructions as possible, as fast as possible. I then asked her opinion about the Research options available and mentioned my plans as well.

[Master’s idea is good, but we need to go a step further if you would want to develop faster. We can have today a day of learning for everyone, but from tomorrow onward we need to have people continuously doing just one job in order to increase their proficiency in just one field. Jacks-Of-All-Trades are not as good as experts in just one field are.](Mia)

She made a fair point. I should begin to focus on creating professions; however, I don’t have the required number of people for an advanced administrative structure. For now, it will be just Alexandra at the top of the list and smaller team leaders depending on the field of work.

After breakfast, we all headed to the river, hauled big amounts of stones, both small and big, and brought them back to camp to be deposited. Given that there was food as well stockpiled in the clearing, we left a couple of people to guard it, while the rest grabbed as many stones as they could.

By lunch, beside the stones, which we had a bigger amount than required, we also gathered pieces of wood of different sizes to be used as handles.

With that covered, after lunch a rather serious Arts and Crafts class was kick-started.

[You three girls, less moving your mouths and more moving your hands, otherwise you will be unable to choose the person you like. The boys as well! The girls seem to both work and learn faster and better than you do. Aren’t you ashamed?](A)

From the looks of it, my purpose was just to serve as a live example of how to do things, while Alexandra acted as the class president and Mia as the teacher. The good news was the fact that they picked up things fast and soon, the first batch of axes was created.

Progress made in Tools research technology through discovery!

125 Research Points have been awarded!

While only about 10 barely useable axes were crafted, nine of them were done by the elves. Two out of them were actually better than my own, so I told Alexandra to keep an eye on them. Immediately after a total of 25 axes were crafted, a group of 30 people was sent to start chopping up trees. 25 as woodcutters and another five as guards.

"With that, we can start collecting wood. Now, let's truly begin the Arts and Crafts class!"