Riza sat on what must’ve been the softest bed in existence, feeling her feet sink into the pinkish rug beneath it as she gathered her racing thoughts, Andreya sitting down on the pulled-out chair opposite her.

Even for a simple desk chair, it was padded and comfortable, the kind of chair you could sit in for hours and be okay.

It was at that moment that Riza regretted handing the master bedroom over to Andreya and Adewyn. Sure, they could use the space better than she could, but look at what she was missing out on!

Electric lamp light illuminated the room, large red curtains draped closed over the tall window lining the wall, looking out at the massive black tower–a tower Riza now knew what it existed for.

Once Andreya had sat herself down, it was abundantly clear just how much better, how much healthier she looked, after having a bit of time to rest and a large chunk of work delegated away. She actually looked alive, for once.

“What’s with the late visit?” Andreya asked.

Late was an understatement. She was wearing only a nightgown, her feet bare and her hair loose and messy after being tied up all day.

“I’ve talked with the Demon Lord.”

Andreya’s tired face immediately adopted a serious look.

“Oh. I thought you couldn’t-”

“I used [Raise Dead], not [False Life]. I still haven’t figured out how to control it without taking linguistic skills myself.”

“Which you don’t want to do.”

Riza nodded.

“You have more humanoid demons now, don’t you? It should be possible to get one to create an item that lets you use linguistic skills.”

“That’s possible?”

Andreya nodded. “It’s rare but magic items that replicate skills exist, although I don’t know how they’re made. It’d certainly be easier than having each new demon take linguistic skills as well,” She said, crossing one leg over the other.

Huh. I hadn’t thought about that. My current humanoid demons all have a two skill tax so I can talk with them.

Before Riza could respond, the door gently swung open as Adewyn stepped into the room. She looked slightly strange to Riza at that moment, seeing her without her weapon and armour.

“Riza. You’re here,” Adewyn said, slightly surprised.

“It’s good that you’re here. There’s something both of you should hear.”

Adewyn walked over next to Andreya, leaning back against the wooden desk.

“The reason for the visit,” Andreya said, as Adewyn’s hand idly went to her shoulder.

“Yes,” Riza nodded. “I talked to the Demon Lord and what I heard was… interesting.”

Riza quickly recounted everything she had learnt, carefully watching her audience’s expressions. As expected, they appeared to be utterly bewildered at the news of demons and the Empire cooperating.

“That’s… Quite honestly, it’s unbelievable,” Andreya finally said after a stupefied silence.

Adewyn didn’t say anything, but Riza could see the hand on Andreya’s shoulder tense somewhat.

“I… What should I do?” Riza asked with a heavy sigh. The knowledge still weighed on her.

“You can’t tell the city. This information needs to stay just between the people we trust,” Andreya said immediately, and with harsh emphasis.

“You’re right. We’d need some proof anyway if we want anyone to believe us.”

“Or to trust you. Once you prove yourself as a capable Lord, people will just believe whatever you say.”

“Yes. Thanks for this talk. It’s helped a lot. I’ll leave you both for the night. I should really get some sleep”

In a room lit only by torchlight, with an earthen floor and rough, stone walls, two benches extruded from the rock itself were on opposite sides of the room, sitting two people, both staring at a single, inelegant ice sculpture in the middle.

Ice hung off the walls and covered the floor, lowering the ambient temperature of the room.

“I know it’s not very good,” Lefie said demurely, not looking at the statue.

“It’s far better than what I can do with a hammer and chisel,” Riza replied, getting up and walking around.

It was life-sized–a bit larger than Riza. It was a woman, with cartoonishly large eyes and an undetailed face. Long hair was tied back and fell to its tailbone and it was evidently wearing hand-crafted clothing, bearing a resemblance with what Lefie wore when they first met.

“She looks like you,” Riza commented after her inspection.

Lefie rolled her eyes.

“Fine. She looks nothing like you,” Riza replied but Lefie just sighed.

“It’s not that. I’ve just heard it enough times that it's lost its meaning,” She said.

“Well… consider it a testament to your skill instead, then. You’ve been practising.”

“I started practising a lot more after we fought, you know, the worm. What you did with my skills to kill it. I started thinking that I had barely even explored what I could do.

“Like, [Manifold Mastery] says ‘Enhance and control the intensity of an active essence skill. Can be negative’. I’ve just been treating it like another [Maximise Mastery] but that’s not all it is, is it?”

Riza didn’t reply straight away, instead looking at what [Manifold Mastery] described to her.

Hidden Skill

[Alteration Mastery] (10/10)

[Seeker Mastery] (10/10)

[Maximise Mastery] (10/10)

[Manifold Mastery] (10/10)+ -Learned

Control the intensity and range of a skill through -200% to +200%

She’s right. I’ve been so caught up in what’s going on I haven’t looked at the most interesting part of the skill.

“Have you tested it out?” Riza asked, and Lefie nodded.

“A little. I made some water appear and then tried making [Conjure Water] negative. The water disappeared and I was too scared to continue,” She answered shyly.

“This is good,” Riza said, her mind rapidly running with ideas to test.

Firstly, we need to establish a few things. Fog flowed from her fingertips as an open bucket capable of containing 20 kilograms of water. Converting between water in kilograms and measurements of length was actually quite easy.

Lefie conjured 10 kilograms of water, filling it up roughly halfway, and then inverted [Conjure Water] at 10 kilograms.

Riza watched as blue-ish tendrils of essence suddenly shot of Lefie and then vanished instantly.

Strangely, there was still water in the fog bucket, although it had noticeably decreased.

“Huh,” Riza intoned.

“This is what happened last time,” Lefie said, sounding a little disappointed.

“This is good. It’s progress. What did you feel when you used the skill? Were you focusing on the water?”

“It felt like [Conjure Water]? Except, it was hard to focus on the water.”

“I could see that. The skill worked all around you, like my [Intrinsic Tank] does…” Riza replied, thinking about ways to improve it.

Before she could come up with an idea, Lefie was already trying again only, this time, the blue tendrils reached forward from her and straight into the bucket, ignoring all else.

All the water was gone.

“What did you do? That looked a lot better.”

“I used [Inner Flow]!” Lefie answered proudly, with a smile on her face.

Riza’s unfamiliarity prompted Lefie to explain what the skill even was; she had taken it way back when they were first in the bunker and it allowed her to sense nearby water, like [Life Sense]. She hadn’t used it much but when combining it with [Essence Congruency] and an inverted [Conjure Water] it appeared to do the trick.

For the past few days, Riza had been doing a lot of work setting up systems and people and it was tiring. However, with all that work done, she had found some free time for herself. Originally, she had just planned to hang out with Lefie but now, it appeared that they had some testing to do.

The sun barely crested over the crumbling city walls, ruined even further by the fires and rioting that had occurred a week ago. A lone, young man hobbled down a near-empty street, far too early for the city to be bustling with activity.

He coughed heavily, the pained sound echoing between the buildings. It still stank of death.

Eyes bloodshot and baggy, mind hazy with fatigue, he hasn’t slept; his own coughing had kept him awake, and it was just going to get worse.

He had tried everything. Herbal remedies, old tales, and even got his pal Plit to bite him, to see if his ‘wondrous saliva’ reputation was actually true.

It wasn’t.

He had run out of options. Well, all but one.

Crossing the intersection, approaching the centre of the city itself, with the ominous black tower looming overhead, posters lined the walls all around him. Some had writing on them, but most were merely imagery.

He looked to the one to his right, seeing its eye-catching red and yellow design, its happy and smiling man right in the centre with wide, open arms. A red cross beset the man on both sides, a recurring symbol.

A group of men had been putting these up all over the city, with arrows as well, directing them towards the centre. The few people the man knew who could read said they were posters for a ‘clinic’. A place of health and healing that the Lord had set up.

No doubt, he’d have to pay for the healing, but he had exhausted all other options.

The building the clinic was in was large–a repurposed Chosen building. The man had stood back, watching to see if anyone entered. Some did, but they didn’t come back out.

Before his nerves could get the better of him, he shook them off and wandered on in himself.

Immediately, the bright whiteness of the room assaulted his eyes. The paint was thick, new, and blinding. And, it was spotlessly clean. Not a single smudge of dirt in sight.

A few chairs were pressed up against the walls, padded and wooden, but empty.

The man coughed urgently, pain wracking his chest so badly he had to catch himself against the wall.

A wall that was filled with posters. They resembled the ones all around the city. In addition to that red cross, there was also a recurring person shown on it, a person he had seen before.

The Lord.

She had a recognisable image, with that short, yellow hair and intense eyes, consistent in every drawing of her. There was no ambiguity with who set up this place.

A single other person was in the room with him; a lone man, with a shaggy beard and slicked-back brown hair, wearing a drab, grey tunic. He was sitting next to the sole other door in the room, and looked up from his book once he saw the man enter.

Nodding to show his acknowledgement, he placed the book on the seat behind him as he stood up, and peeked past the heavy wood doors into whatever lay behind.

The sick man could hear vague voices, but couldn’t make out what was being said.

The grey-dressed man returned quickly, sitting back down as he said:

“Doctor Arvil will be here in a minute.” It was clear he was uncomfortable with the foreign word just as much as the ill man was.

Sure enough, no later than a minute, another grey-dressed man walked in through the door, spotted his patient, and gestured for him to come follow him.

They shook hands as, presumably Arvil, asked for his name.

“Breannus,” The sick man replied, and was led through to the clinic itself.

Straight away, he felt better, as if he had entered a healing portal. It must’ve been the calm and tranquil atmosphere, he figured.

The rest of the building was stark white as well, with many curtains standing around, partitioning the large room into many smaller ones. Arvil led through the winding maze before pulling out a curtain for himself, leading the pair of them into a small space consisting of a fairly average looking bed and a wooden stool

Arvil sat down and gestured for Breannus to sit on the bed while he pulled out a journal and stylus.

“Hello, Breannus. I am Doctor Arvil,” He began, sounding no more confident than his colleague with that weird word. “I’d like to get some information about your problems to begin with.”

“My problems?” Breannus asked, voice raspy and quiet.

“Please, have a drink,” Arvil said, picking up a cup of water beside him and passing it forward.

Breannus took a tentative sip before eagerly gulping down the rest. Whatever was in this, his throat was already feeling far better than it had been in forever.

“Better?”

Breannus nodded emphatically.

“What is this?” He asked with slight amazement at the cup.

“Just water,” Arvil answered, taking the cup from his hands and returning to his journal.

“Now, why are you here? What symptoms do you have?”

What proceeded, contrary to Breannus’ expectations, was an interview of all things. Arvil asked about the illness, how long it had started, what he was doing when it had started and even earlier.

Once that was done, Arvil closed up his book and announced that he was going to start with the healing.

Placing both hands on Breannus’ shoulders, he spoke reverently:

“I call upon the powers granted by Lord Riza and almighty Skaldur to hereby heal this pained soul.”

In Breannus’ mind, there was no doubt whatever had just happened was a miracle. As soon as Arvil pulled his hands away, Breannus felt better than he had done in forever.

“That’s… this is incredible!” He practically shouted, his throat feeling slick and healthy and his chest pushed out air without even an ounce of pain. All remnants of his sickness had vanished in an instant.

“How? How have you done this?” He asked insistently, almost shaking with energy.

Arvil smiled.

“This is all possible through Lord Riza. Now, let’s get you out of here.”

The forest stood still. Rhythmic sounds of an axe chopping through a thick trunk could be heard a little ways away from Anere, as she sat, hunched over a map spread out over a stump.

It was a map showing mostly the surroundings of Trottor, a rather specific item. Arrows, circles, and crosses were marked all over it from her stylus, all failures.

Her job was to be alert and pay attention to her surroundings, yes, but this position was so quiet and calm that she doubted anything would actually happen, not to mention Ararth was currently scouting large swathes of the forest.

The rest of her team were happy to let her take this job instead of something closer to civilization.

While she waited for Ararth to return, she went over the discussion with her father this morning. On this occasion, she chose to eat breakfast at home, rather than with her fellow Chosen, absorbing all the morsels of information her father revealed in casual conversation, such as a disturbing development in adopting life magic in Rensenfeld.

Sooner or later, the entire province would turn into an undead wasteland.

Anere froze as a far-off rustling could suddenly be heard, her muscles tensing as her eyes focused in that direction, ready to either fight or flight.

But it was all okay as the hulking body of Ararth came into view, sliding to a standstill just before her. He shook his pendulous head sadly.

“They’re not there either,” Anere frowned, crossing out another section on the map.

This was taking longer than she expected. Just how hard was it to find a single tarny?

In the cosy, well-furnished study of the Lord’s Manor, Riza and Andreya sat around the large, wooden desk, with many books and papers piled high as Andreya scribbled down everything they were talking about, plates filled with half-eaten food spread out as well.

Hours had passed already and many hours would pass once more but Riza was fine with that; it had been a good past few days.

Four days ago, she had finished levelling up what were now her doctors. She had insisted upon that name, even though none of them knew what it meant.

The final build she had them take was [Heal], [Cleanse], and [Rejuvenate] to fulfil their medical duties, while [Maximise Mastery], [Meditate], [Well of Spirit], [Well of Essence], and [Knowable Essence] ensured they’d have the necessary essence regeneration.

The hardest part was the actual training, although it was easier than she expected. Comparing it to when she taught Daven and Sanders how to cure hunger and thirst through [Heal], Riza had developed a suspicion that the pair’s extensive use with essence and high level at that moment greatly helped with their understanding.

But with the doctors who had their skills for not even a day? It was pleasantly swift. They already had all the prerequisite knowledge of how the body worked. They understand the organs, the physicality of it all, so after testing it out on some dead animals, they were able to even regenerate lost limbs, after a bit of education from Riza.

Not big limbs, however. So far, it was just a toe or finger but that alone served as a proof of concept. Given enough time and experience, Riza doubted there’d ever be permanent amputations in her city’s future.

Although they lacked germ theory, and struggled to understand it, their understanding of how diseases and infections worked still worked because it was based on a general idea of ‘toxins’--there are poisonous things in your body that are making you ill.

[Cleanse] could successfully use this intent to cure people of illness and disease even modern medicine in Riza’s time couldn’t, unless you paid enough money of course.

On the topic of money, that surprisingly wasn’t much of a problem. With guarantees of food and shelter and the invaluable thing that were levels and skills, all of the doctors were fine with working for free, at least for the time being. Seeing how Riza controlled rent prices, it meant their cost-of-living plummeted to zero, although they still required money to buy luxuries for themselves.

However, the matter of payment wasn’t going to be an issue for a couple of months, they had mutually decided. They were paying for their levels through their labour, in a way.

Although, not much labour had been done at the very beginning. The posters had gone up, and Riza had even employed a few people to stand around and read them but most people were hesitant at this new ‘clinic’ that had sprouted up, even though Riza had been careful to not mention life magic in any way.

In fact, after some discussion, this was how Riza intended to operate going forward–with an emphasis on her own personal, vague power rather specifically life magic.

The common person knew life magic existed, and had a very loose idea of what it could do, but they couldn’t really recognise it or just refused to. If she flaunted her semi-immortality or excessively used [Senescence], maybe some would claim she was using the forbidden skills but considering how people thought the Regent’s immortality was otherwise fine, Riza felt she could portray her skills sufficiently differently to get away with it.

The main problem came because of the Lord’s Men incident. Although she had made her speech, not everyone was convinced, and her strongest detractors continued to spread dissent surrounding her rule.

That made gaining the first wave of patients especially tough but, sooner or later, the tides started to change.

The first patients were the most terminally ill, those who had tried everything and nothing had worked.

The doctor’s work wasn’t quite perfect. For some of them, they were unable to cure them. This was partly why Riza had instructed the doctors to find out everything they could about what their patients were afflicted with; to build up a knowledge base to use when curing future patients.

In the cases where the doctors couldn’t cure the patients, Riza was called in to help; she had enough medical knowledge to generally ascertain what was causing the problem.

From there, the clinic saw a gradual influx of patients once word started spreading around.

In fact, earlier this morning, Riza had heard something most unusual; people had actually started visiting the clinic even with nothing wrong with them. Of course, once inside, if they gave away their reasoning, they were turned away, only to return when they were genuinely in need of aid.

The reason for this was, apparently, there was a growing consensus that the clinic was a place of Skaldur’s presence. That explained its calming, soothing feeling everyone who entered left with, and so the more religious of the populace wanted to bask in his presence inside.

An unexpected development, and something Riza needed to keep an eye on going forward.

In other news, Daven and Tanniya had returned with the agricultural numbers.

When Riza was theorising a build for a farmer, she had used a one month and three-month timeline for crop growth as a basis. That turned out to be a very generous timeline in actuality; the most important crops like wheat or potatoes or other diet staples took a handful to over half a year to grow and depended on the right conditions, such as seasonal crops.

That was an improvement Riza hadn’t even considered; [Plant Growth], she assumed, substituted what plants needed to grow with just essence, meaning light or temperature or anything else affected with the seasons no longer mattered, as long as they didn’t die during growth.

However, given the longer timeline than she had calculated, her one farmer would likely need to be two or three that alternated [Plant Growth]. Not too large a deal, however.

This was what had led to Riza kidnapping Andreya to the study and discussing where to go from there.

The current plan was to train up a farmer and have them travel across the province to train more farmers. No doubt, a concrete example of shortening a half-year growth time into just a day or two would get people on board.

Of course, the farmer would need to be someone Riza could trust and they’d need demons, perhaps a nest, some bodyguards, people to enforce that the farmers follow the build… There were a ton of details that Riza still needed to iron out and that would happen after she was finished with the agricultural revolution in just Rensenfeld.

Speaking of, she also planned to have a farmer who could genetically modify plants. Increasing yield, shortening growth time, more hardy to adverse conditions, and a bunch of other stuff she’d need an adviser on.

Unlike with basic medical knowledge and applying that to healing, Riza had zero knowledge of plants or agriculture, making genetically modifying plants a much harder prospect.

Once again, the Riza’s lack of manpower was making itself known to her.

Thus, discussion of farming practices had changed to discussion of the law, which was what Andreya was currently writing down; codified laws and punishments.

It was paramount that they had established this before actually hiring judges and administering sentences since Riza wanted an objective, impersonal justice system to exist. For that, judges needed extensive knowledge of exhaustive laws which meant all the groundwork needed to be done before they could even think about implementing it.

Needless to say, Tanniya wasn’t very happy when Riza informed her of the timeline and threatened to do it herself. Riza wasn’t sure if she was joking or not.

Not wanting to detain everyone indefinitely, however, Riza had expedited dealing with some of the prisoners. Those who looted or destroyed or vandalised during the riots had been made to help out with those rebuilding the city, which was mostly just manual and menial labour, such as transporting materials. Riza had also fined them, giving the money back to those who claimed they had items stolen from them, confirmed by Andreya or Tiffany.

Critters followed them around to ensure they didn’t step out of line.

It seemed like an appropriate punishment.

Those charged with inciting riots and groups of looting but didn’t kill people had the same but harsher sentence.

Murderers, however, had a different fate. Ignoring her own opinions and trying not to place herself into other people’s shoes, Riza tried to be as objective as possible and that was focusing on rehabilitation. No matter how cruel the crime, she didn’t want her emotions interfering with the creation of a justice system.

Therefore, murderers and killers were now being detained in a relatively nice house that had been gussied up a little while Riza and Andreya discussed what their ultimate fate should be.

Andreya ran a hand through her messy, tied-back hair as her eyes glazed over the document in front of her.

“This is why I never became an Arbitrar,” She said.

“Arbitrar?” Riza asked, looking up from her own journal.

“They’re basically these judges you want to create. They assess the situation and dole out punishments. You should’ve met one back in Kratten when you were assigned to join the Dominion.”

“Oh yeah. I did,” Riza responded, vaguely remembered. It was quite similar to a courtroom.

“Actually… We could use the Arbitrar Laws as groundwork for what we’re making here.”

“Arbitrar Laws? Are they different to the laws that a Lord makes?” Riza asked, riffling through metaphorical files in her head.

“They’re similar. Arbitrar Laws handle anything related to the Dominion or the Chosen and they’re Empire-wide. The laws that a Lord establishes only have jurisdiction within the Lord’s province. Where the two overlap is when crimes require turning over the criminal to the Dominion or Chosen,” Andreya explained.

“Like using skills without permission?”

“That falls purely under the Arbitrar Laws. Murder is the preeminent example. Regardless of whatever laws a Lord sets up, there are a few Empire-wide rules they must follow that aren’t considered Arbitrar Laws. One such is the illegality of murder. By law, a Lord must turn over all murderers to the closest Steward, Custodian, or Arbitrar and that’s it. It’s the Arbitrar who decides what happens to the murderer from there, and it’s usually induction into the Chosen.”

“Uh-huh,” Riza said, not really understanding but wanting to move on. “We can use the Arbitrar Laws as a basis?”

“Yes. I recovered a book that covers everything.”

“And what do they do with murderers?”

“They get inducted into the Chosen and sent to the West of the Empire. Because it’s far more dangerous there, they’d be far more focused on surviving than hurting other people.”

“That’s not really applicable here,” Riza commented. Not only was it not dangerous, someone with actual levels would be too strong for her buffed-up critters to control.

“It might be. Think about what Meren said; you can kill the murderers and use [Raise Dead] and that solves your manpower problem easily,” Andreya reminded.

“I’m not going to take away anyone’s free will.”

“I’m not saying that you have to. Some encourage here and there would achieve the same effect.”

“But it’s still killing them. That’s…” Riza was about to say irreversible but that wasn’t entirely the case. “People don’t like being dead!” She said instead, recalling the visceral encounter when she raised Klannar and Tanniya.

“Daven seems fine with it. Working for you might be a better life than they had in the past. Certainly better than some of the alternatives.”

Riza wanted to respond, but didn’t, the mention of Daven sparking a thought in her mind.

She’s right. Daven doesn’t seem to mind being undead and relying on me to live.

But she still wasn’t convinced. She needed to talk to Daven herself.