“Behind every successful endeavor lay a great deal of preparations.” - Saying attributed to the Silver Maiden.

“You’re planning to stay longer this time, then?” asked the Bone Lord as he nibbled on some sweets happily. Definitely not the sort of look people would have expected to see from the immortal lich of Ptolodecca. That said, when he was in private with people he was close to – Aideen in this case – the Bone Lord could care less about his personal image.

“Yeah, probably a couple decades or so? I’m thinking of helping teach the kids while I’m around, since Kino’s with them too,” replied Aideen as her hand snatched a small pastry from the platter before the Bone Lord could. It was a small game between them they often did in private, though Aideen won most of the time since she was physically far fitter than the Bone Lord’s mortal guise. “I still feel responsible for that girl, so the least I could do is to help watch over her during her formative years.”

“An understandable sentiment,” noted the Bone Lord as he picked a piece of confection that was much closer to himself instead of trying to contest Aideen on a further piece. “I guess it’s not unlike what I feel when I take in some young students, that feeling of wanting to be there for them to make sure they didn’t grow up crooked.”

“Close enough,” admitted Aideen with a smile. Her worries about Kino notwithstanding, Aideen herself felt that she could use a break from the traveling, and at the same time, to make further preparations for her dream. She had told the Bone Lord about the location she found, and while he stated that he would be happy to support her in any way she needed, he also respected Aideen’s wish to build the city with her own efforts.

After all, it would be a different thing if the city was built and founded with support from outside parties compared to when it was done entirely by the efforts of the unliving like herself. The Bone Lord understood that logic well, as he understood why Aideen wanted to do it. After all, even though he was welcoming to the unliving, for them to live in his land would still feel like they were living in someone else’s house.

What Aideen aimed for was to give her kind a place to truly call their own, a home for their kind, built by their own hands, with their own efforts.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“You will need quite a bit of resources to build the city, won’t you?” said the Bone Lord as he changed the topic somewhat. “Do you intend to start gathering it in the years to come?”

“I’ll first talk to the others in town to see who would be interested in joining me,” replied Aideen with a nod. The amount of resources needed to build a city was not small, and while the Forest of Despair was pretty rich in natural resources, given the dangerous environment it would not be easy to gather them, at least at first.

That meant Aideen would need to bring the material for the foundation of the planned city with her when she returned there. Transportation was not a big issue, as the Bone Lord had insisted that she could ‘borrow’ a set of large-sized storage artifacts for that purpose, and she wouldn’t turn down that level of aid, which was something carefully considered to not be noticeable for most.

On the other hand, manpower was something Aideen would work out on her own. At the moment, there were far too few unliving that she knew of, and out of those, few had talents or skills that would make them particularly useful in pioneering some of the most hostile lands in the northern continent. That was an issue that would probably be solved with time, however, as there would be more people who rose into unlife with time, even if not many.

Aideen herself planned to take another trip to the northern continent once they had gathered a reasonable number of people who were interested in the idea. Her goal was to look for more unliving there, as some nations in the northern continent were quite welcoming to them. She also wished to review the political situation of the continent as well, as it was likely that some would not view people suddenly pioneering and raising their own city in the wilderness kindly.

If those people could be negotiated with, she would talk with them when the time comes. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be shy in letting them know what it felt like to fight against an enemy that would not die, no matter what one does to them. Still, those were hypotheticals for the future, though Aideen was pragmatic enough to know that such preparations would likely be needed.

Above all else, the number of unliving was still far too few. From the centuries that had passed since her own rise as one of the first, if not the first of the unliving, the Lichdom had tried to find others on a regular basis. What they found was that it was likely that no more than ten or so people rose into unlife every year or so, which meant no more than around three thousand of them at the present date.

That number was then reduced by those who had chosen to embrace oblivion on their own will as well, those who did not find eternity to be a blessing. There were only a little over a thousand or so unliving that lived in Tohrmutgent at the present day, most of them older ones who found eternity to their liking and living their fullest.

As for the number of unliving living elsewhere, Aideen had no real clue, but most estimates placed the number at no more than five hundred or so, a miniscule number, especially for her intended purpose. Chances were she’d have to wait another century or three before she could execute her plan.