Short summary of the last chapter:

Spoiler :

Voice won the finals in the most unepic way possible! He then disappeared after receiving the reward of the laser sword.

Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate!

I spent the next several days doing as much in-depth research on the powers of my inscriptions as I could.

At least my purity and affinity for metal mana went up.

After I had made it back to my castle I realized I had a blinking icon. I mean I had expected a fanfare or trumpets or something.

Nope. John Smith just gave me a boost along with the message. I guess it went along with his(?) nature. He was rather stoic.

You have gained 25 metal type affinity, and 15 metal type purity.

That was it. That was the extent of the message. I mean, … , I’m not ungrateful for the boosts, but geez.

I had gotten 25 metal affinity from summoning Golem, but it never told me what my bonus from that was. Honestly I had forgotten at the time that I was even supposed to get a bonus. While looking through my stats and effects lists, I was trying to find out if I had gotten a bonus for getting 75 mana affinity.

Turns out I had the one from 50, but never noticed. Well it was because I had never used it.

For 50 metal affinity I got an upgraded stomach. Well the magical metal stomach got upgraded.

Technically I no longer needed to breathe except for once every minute. I had never tried it out, so how the hell was I supposed to figure that out!?

My lungs had been enchanted into robotic magical metal lungs. They could process the necessary elements out of the air I breathed at a magnificent rate. Technically they also filtered poison, but Moro already helped me with that.

The lungs would make almost any air I breathed into perfectly breathable air. It would make perfectly breathable air last far longer.

The boost I got from 75 affinity, though I wasn’t told, was enhanced muscles. Normal muscles already have a lot of iron (a metal) in them, but now mine had an unholy amount of various metals.

When I looked at the effect I was no less than astounded. If I ate a metal, I would be able to increase my muscle efficiency based on the type of metal. Ore gave the worst bonuses, but still gave some. The better the metal type, the better the effect and longer it lasted. If I could eat some heavenly metal, I’d basically be able to break diamond, only for a few months per pound of metal eaten though.

The fact that I also got metal mana purity put up some questions. Did the mana purity for others go up without their knowing it? Did each class of magic user have mana purity for their specialized type of mana?

Questions I’d have to answer to sate my curiosity.

To increase my pure mana, all I needed to do was to increase my light mana purity now. It was the lowest not, at 10. All of y others were at least at 15.

All I had to do was bathe in the light mana produced by the mana purifier, and I’d increase my mana purity.

When I looked at the mana purifier set-up I had created, it had different information than it had before the tournament.

Before it said ‘created by Voice0fReason’. Now it said ‘created by an ancient glyph master’.

After looking at it for a moment I noticed my magical mastery going up slightly. When I looked at the sub-skill runic formation, I noticed I was actually getting a small bit of exp.

I sat down in the light purifier. The blinding light was an all consuming white. I felt as if my eyes would go blind from looking. I had to cast the blindness debuff on myself just so I didn’t.

Despite that, my mind seemed to be able to visualize the white void before me in perfect clarity. After a few hours the whiteness began to play with my mind. At that time I went into the darkness purifier.

After a few days of this, with my buff to keep me awake, I was able to increase my total effective mana from 6174 to 7546. My mana purity for light went up to 15% and darkness went up to 18.

EDI hadn’t come by to visit me since I won the battle so cheaply. It didn’t really bother me since it gave me the chance to actually purify myself.

In the time where my mind was free to wander, I came up with several new ideas for the arena.

For one thing, there would be four different styles of fights there a month each a week apart. The first tournament would be a physical only battle. In that tournament, people could not use magic or archery. Assassin types were allowed though.

In this battle type the participants would fight one opponent at a time, until the final battle. The amount of battles would depend on the amount of participants. Of course the people could pledge to a god beforehand to gain benefits if the win.

The second type was an archery competition. Instead of fighting each other, the archers would be made to earn points based on hitting targets. They targets would start stationary, then slowly start moving. But that would only be a preliminary round. The real contest would start after that. Eventually the targets would be live monsters trying to kill the archer.

They would be able to pledge to a god to if they so wished. The winner would be determined by how many points they got. The point scale would be based on how many monsters they could kill. If two or more people tied, then the winner would be who used the least amount of arrows. If two or more people tied at that point, the winner was decided by me.

The third type of battle would be a magical battle. Only magic was allowed. I knew that one wouldn’t be popular for a while, but I was determined to make it so. The first step to having an army of healers at my back was to make magic more popular.

The magic battle would be a combination of actual combat, and ability to perform certain tasks. For instance growing a plant quickly. Fire people might have a hard time doing that, but each type of mage would be given a task that fit there powers. Obviously they could pledge to a god.

The final battle would be a battle royal tournament with all types allowed. I was hoping that this one would get the most notice.

They could pledge to a god.

Each set of people would get something enchanted by me as a trophy. The trophy wouldn’t be as great as the laser sword, but I would only be giving one to the top person of each tournament.

I also began to hire actual guards for my city. The adventurers still could volunteer for free room and board, but I would also pay some NPCs.

Every NPC had a job at the moment, but I wanted my homeless rate to stay 0. I also started to formulate a plan to start the cultivation of the farmlands. Late at night I created large stone walls around the areas I would declare as farmlands. I also erected watch towers for each one.

Well there were two farms, there were also only two watchtowers for that matter. Each one was five acres though. The wall there took a HUGE amount of time and mana to make.

It had only been a few days after all. With the help of Moro, Tear, Eli, and Sol, I made sure the land was pre-tilled, and had the most abundant resources to grow one could ask for.

I wanted to use the feces of Nightmare-Wing’s followers, but if that was apparently adding in new technology into the game.

The farming methods were very subpar. They apparently let one third of their fields go without planting each year. Something about getting it to regain its ability to grow food. They didn’t know about fertilizers or anything.

So I ordered some of the nature and earth mages in my mages’ school to study farming to increase the crop yield. I went into the guildhall to recruit them. The leader was out at the time so I talked directly to the people involved.

I gathered them then began to put my idea forward.

“I want you groups to work together to find a way to increase the amount of food a farm can produce. Leaving a third of the farm without crops is nothing short of wasteful.”

One of them objected.

“Really? Working on farms? The guildmaster told us we’d be working on the fate of the future by working with you! And you have us doing farm work!?”

He was yelling at the end.

I took a deep breath, and changed my attitude a bit.

I waved my hands in the air once, in an imaginative way. “Think about it!” I looked earnestly at them.

“If you succeed here you lot will be responsible for changing the world! No longer will people be forced to go hungry because there was not enough crops! No longer will farmers have to work the longest, most physically intensive days to barely survive!

“You will earn the undying gratitude of all those who work the land for a living! Your name might not be proclaimed by kings, but WO! There will be no one that does not know of you! For who spreads words faster than anyone else!? The maids, the beggars, THE FARMERS! Though you might not gain the undying loyalty of royalty, you would be forever praised by the ones that truly help a kingdom run!

“For, without a king we govern ourselves, without a military we defend ourselves, without mages we are ignorant, without adventurers we must never broaden our kingdom’s horizons, without food we starve and die!

“Would you rather our kingdom be known for the strong military it has, but also its starved citizens? OR! Would you rather we be known for our large amount of food, which would lead to large economic growth, which would lead to strong military, which would lead to the largest, happiest, most powerful kingdom in the world!?

“So tell me, oh great men of wisdom! What is your answer!? Will you help me!?”

By the end the people began to get excited and heated up. Several were nodding and shouting ‘yeah!’

At the end one person, not quite as caught up as the others, asked, “But we’re still going to be working on a farm?”

The people began to realize I had been working them into a frenzy to agree to help.

I sighed exaggeratedly. “Yes… you are still working on a farm. But think of the greater good! The amount of help you will be giving, or the fame you shall get because of that!”

The people seemed a lot less inclined compared to several seconds ago. In the end only a few decided to come along with me. These were the ones that genuinely seemed interested in helping their fellow man, or just who thought it’d be interesting.

One of the farms went to the people doing the experiments, the other to an actual family of farmers. I gave many seeds to both groups. Crops in this world grew in cycles similar to the real world.

The seeds were obviously enhanced by me infusing mana into their pathways. That way the start would at least be the best start it would be.

I gave some brief instructions to the mages, and let them be. They were to learn a bit of actual farming, and began to experiment with the surrounding ground.

I left them while smiling. If they could figure out the use of manure, or other such things we would instantly jump decades ahead of the other city-states in technology.

We did have our very own bomb factory though. I still don’t understand how she got her entire factory here. I had made her a special room to keep her things in, but even with all of the massive amount of glass she had carried in, she still didn’t seem to have the large metal tanks.

One day it just showed up. I decided to stop asking when she was obviously ignoring me.

I dropped several hints to the mages about how helpful Susan might be. This definitely seemed like something Susan would like.

So that is how I spent the next week in my city.

Now you might be wondering how I came up with so much food to house a small village worth of people. Well I was trading large quantities of potions, bombs, and weapons for meat on a once of potion for several pounds of meat. I also paid with potions for nuts and fruits.

The two things my city did not lack for was defense and water. Defense was handled by having the adventurers help out, and water came naturally from me.

The last thing I decided was to have the people wanting to join in my tournaments, or work as guards, had to show my several techniques or spells they possessed.

The given reason was to weed out those too weak to do what they were signing up for; the real reason was so I could steal the techs.

I wanted to increase my level by fighting in the arena, but I was still level 48 after winning. So I needed to find another way to gain levels. It was odd how quickly ShortDwarf gained levels.

Even with the exp ring, I was still a few steps away from leveling up.

I had my heralds (some random people I paid a bit of gold to) tell everyone about the changes. People grew somewhat excited about the tournaments, but not overly. After the first one was won in such an uncool way, I can’t really say I blame them.

I did kick it up a bit by allowing people to openly place bets on the winner. Although I said that the bets were ‘offerings to the gods, which will be returned with extra should one of that god’s champions win.’

So they were basically betting on which god would win.

At the end of the week, we were attacked by a group of bandits. At first they seemed astounded that such a city could spring up so quickly, just a few months, but then they made the erroneous decision to attack it.

The adventurer guards did a decent job at holding them off, I didn’t even need to step in. The bandits were all around level 60-70, so they weren’t a big threat to my city anyway. They had a few eagles try to spy on the city while they were attacking.

The eagles were quickly dealt with by the air support.

The bandits met a tragic fate when they were bombarded by the mass of arrows that pelted down on them. The arrows were mostly made from bone or wood. Bone because the adventurers would sell me entire animals to get potions. Wood because I could quickly grow a tree to full adulthood, then sing it down to make arrows out of it.

The fletching was done by having the two fletchers in town constantly making the arrows. I didn’t pay them a lot in gold, but that was because I kept their families properly fed, and housed. I also made sure that people that did things for my kingdom were given high priority on all things.

Information, hot spring usage, and potion distribution were just some of them.

Having a personal hot spring created for them put me well within their good graces. I had the arrows constantly made, but only while the armory didn’t have enough. At all other times they were allowed free range to do whatever they liked.

I also made it so that anyone that wasn’t a resident, or helping the country out by doing guard duty, was to pay small amounts of taxes. Only a small entrance fee. If they didn’t have the fee they would be admitted only if they agreed to do guard duty for a set amount of time.

The entrance fee was a flat rate for anyone. Although people with a lot of cargo had to pay as well.

The next tournament, one with only physical combatants, quickly came up. The arena was even more sparse than before, but that wasn’t the point anyway. I decided to keep the bottom three rows vacant, unless one of the viewers paid for ‘priority seating’.

Nobody did this time.

Everyone had to run there techniques by me for entrance. The moves that required someone to kill were outright banned, the others were told not to use the technique in a lethal situation.

I got quite the hall from those techs. Most of them were redundant, but I did get a few unique ones.

EDI had disappeared from the city. I hadn’t seen her the entire week. With all that was going on in the city while I purified my mana, she might have just been caught up in doing stuff.

After seeing everyone’s techniques that wanted to join the fights, I actually watched the fights as well. It was more to set up for the future than anything.

If I had a reputation for personally seeing these arena matches, then I could make a bigger statement if I missed one. Also people would be less likely to question it if I asked Evan to take my place again.

After watching the two days of fighting, I went to explore the dungeon. The power level had stayed about the same since a bit after I created a body for my mother. With the teleport traps, chaos monsters, etc. the dungeon was basically a death trap.

Over the next few weeks, my schedule went very much like that. I’d purify some mana, then I’d go make sure my plans for ‘DDay’ were all in order. ‘DDay?’, you might ask. Well that would be coming up very soon.

I elected a guard captain from the NPCs that were a part of my guard force. Not a very large pool. The best choice was a woman that had some mercenary experience.

I made requisitioned a simple uniform for the guards, and gave each of them a few specific items.

I had Chao start focusing on summoning undead. Though it might weaken the overall power of the dungeon, I also had him send out the undead a few days after the arena fights.

It was nighttime.

From a distant hill a lone figure could be seen. One of the guards on the guard tower noticed the figure. The figure timed it so the guard would have a perfect opportunity to view them.

The guard paused for a moment.

Something began flowing from the figure. The guard quickly realized this was some sort of attack. He blew the animal horn all guards were given.

Within seconds the entirety of the city guard was aroused, and were running towards their positions. I had the guard captain start drilling the guards for situations like this as soon as she was elected.

Within a few minutes every guard was on a different roof or wall, ready to strike down the menace that was coming.

Guard runners were going between every house to rouse the people within, and corral them into the innermost circle.

The NPC guards had the job of defending the innermost circle of the city, the castle. It took about ten minutes but every citizen was within the castle walls before the enemies had actually gotten to the outer-most arc of the city.

After the fog began rolling from the figure in the distance, the ground began to move. The guard on the tower, obviously a player character, noticed.

Although the pc could not see exactly what was happening that far in the distance, it was quickly apparent.

Bodies began to rise from the ground. A compilation of zombies, skeletons, even ghosts, began to come up from the ground.

As they broke free from the earth of Solun, they began to trek towards the city. It was the start of what would be known as the ‘War of Death’.