BXBX NOVEL Chapter 316 Days 116 - 119
Chapter 316 Days 116 - 119
Day 116
The day started off with a general assembly. Everyone presented themselves, lined up in rows of their races, with their leaders standing before me. Reiman explained everything to them and so we assigned duties to them all.
The cyclopes intended to stay close to the Northern border of the West, making them virtually close to home, but after hearing the explanation to build a city in here, they decided there was no point. Diane and dryads weren’t happy to hear about me wanting to build a city here, so it took a bit of convincing to make her agree.
The cyclopes would be in charge of clearing the trees and altering the ground. The kobolds were in charge of transportation of any necessary resources like water and food for the cyclopes. It was unfortunate, but given how weak they were, they would have to act as errand boys for the labourers.
The new ogres and oni were also assigned to do the same job as the cyclopes. I wasn’t going to allow those lazy bastards to get everything easily. Of course, some of the stronger ones were put on guard duty in various sectors around the West. The wolves and panthers were the main guard force surrounding Larm as their aesthetics fit the perception of ‘Wild Monsters’ more than ogres and oni in armour.
The orcs on the other hand had nothing to do for the day and would only start their share of the work once the ground-levelling was done.
Shockingly, Yokino and her bug group actually made an appearance. For obvious reasons, she didn’t bring the entirety of her forces, but she was present now and was glaring at me throughout the entire event. I ignored her and focused on the remaining tasks.
You might be wondering why I’m already clearing the land without even having a plan. Well I had a plan!
Reiman had already come up with a blueprint for the city overnight. I was beyond shocked, but with the help of the agent, I added my own unique touches to the city to make it feel a bit comfortable for me personally.
Personally, I wasn’t busy that day so I just spent it on mundane things like talking to Ulva, or testing how strong she’d gotten. Normally, I’d have the other mes to converse with, but those guys were super busy inside me. And newer mes lacked any personality whatsoever. It’s like a personality kill-switch had been flicked after Hyakkun.
Speaking of Hyakkun, none of us could find him. I was starting to wonder if [Greed] had anything to do with it. Unfortunately, the skill couldn’t converse with me, so I just had to accept that Hyakkun was gone for now. Maybe he’d return to us.
Later that night, we had dinner as usual, except this time Rulis and Neburis were invited. I honestly expected them to reject the offer and take dinner in their rooms, but they were probably trying to not seem rude.
The guys were sceptical of the duo, and that dinner was possibly the most uncomfortable I’d been in a while. We ate in silence and the day passed by.
Day 117
Ugh. I’d completely forgotten that we were supposed to hold a meeting in a couple of days with all of Larm’s leaders. I looked to Reiman, and apparently, he’d already sent out a message to all the leaders and was organising the venue.
The only problem was getting everyone to be able to attend in seven days. Larm was a massive place. Travel within a single portion of Larm alone could take up to 7 days, that is if you were travelling hindered by the monsters. Using shortcuts you could greatly reduce this time, however that was within a single quadrant alone. Travel from one quadrant to the other takes a lot of time.
Even for me, the last time I travelled to the South, I was fortunate both my escort and ride was Shiroi. From the beginning she was one of the fastest and strongest, giving us an advantage. With her being a native, travel was fast and fortunately, our destination itself was already close to the border. Several factors lead to our journey being shorter than a week.
I couldn’t say the same for those living on the outermost parts of Larm. It would take them quite a bit to get to the West. Teleportating to their locations was easy enough and I felt it was the best option, but Reiman reminded me of creatures like the Marsh Rusalkies that couldn’t leave their marshes. There were other creatures that were most likely unwilling to leave their places unless I, maybe forced them.
It wasn’t a part of my intention to command everyone with force. That could create resentment towards me, which in a roundabout way could lead to our downfall. In that case, we had to devise a means to project the meeting to them.
For the South, we could easily use the mist like we did the last time. I doubted we could reproduce the same effect as efficiently in the other quadrants. After all, the communication technology of this world sort of wasn’t the best. Letters were the main form of long-distance communication and those took weeks to be sent between countries. For common folk it could range from one to 3 months.
This was besides the fact that the creatures in Larm didn’t use letters. Communication here was in person, meaning messengers had to run about. Magic could be used, but given how complicated magic was in itself, doing something as trivial as sending a message was unnecessarily complex and tiresome, meaning most people didn’t learn how to do that.
Maybe Yuuna, Tsuna and Kara could do it, but that would take a lot of preparation to instantly send a message to a different location. However, doing something like that required a key component which was [Spatial Magic]. Apparently, this was the hardest to master out of all the magics, even if you had an affinity for it. I mean, it was easy to me because of the agent, but most people couldn’t perform the complicated equations and spells nearly as fast as I did, so spatial magic was a no-no.
It\'d been reduced to simple party tricks like creating platforms to walk on or even to store some items. Advanced spells like teleportation required a lot of time to actually build up since the person had to factor in the logistics of where they were going, the issues of quantum displacement and the mostly uncontrollable mass of mana that appears whenever a portal appears. However, some people found a loophole through using beacons as lightning rods.
The teleportation would end them up at the location of these lightning rods. These lightning rods were mana signatures that the users were familiar with. Unfortunately, not just anybody could do this.
This was why [Space Mages] were a high value commodity. That made [Teleportation rings] and equally high value commodity that was hard to acquire. Which was testament to just how powerful the ‘Sub-Circle’ was.
All this to say that as of this date, there was no efficient means to have an online press conference with the leaders. The world’s level of technology was too low for something like that to exist and even then, the closest thing they had were projection stones.
[Projection Stones] were devices that recorded magical signatures in the environment and converted them into perceptible particles of light, giving the users a somewhat accurate in-real-time view of what was happening or a recording.
Unfortunately, these couldn’t transmit sound. Someone had to write what was said, show it to those on the other end, then continue from there. Or if some were good with lip-reading, the conversation could happen much more smoothly.
This was where the agent and Akkun came into play!
Combining their forces, both had come up with a solution to this problem by simply teleporting both light and sound. I didn’t get the complicated bits of it whatsoever, but they basically used the [Projection Stones] as a basis for the light and worked in a way to send sound using quantum displacement.
In case you were wondering, quantum displacement here was the randomised rearrangement of particles entering through a portal. Using this, they were both confident in their ability to rearrange the mana particles we unconsciously gave off as we spoke to convert it to actual sound. Or at the very least, make it so these particles could reach the target audience and some sort of automatic translation in the sub-conscious would happen.
See? Complicated nonsense!
I quietly ignored them to let them geek out and figure out whatever the hell they were doing. I told Reiman to tell them that not all of them needed to be physically present and that I would have a solution soon.
The day flew by quickly afterwards. The cyclopes still weren’t done levelling up the required space and the orcs were put on set-up duty for the conference.
That night, we had an awkward dinner once more. Shitsuke tried to make small talk with Neburis, but she completely shut him down, clearly uninterested in a conversation with a monster. Ruli- Maya, on the other hand tried to keep the peace, definitely scared that I’d kick them out for rudeness. I found the entire scene comical.
Day 118
This morning I found Maou spying on me from a relatively safe distance. Somehow, he’d noticed that I had questions for him and was avoiding me. I managed to sneak up on him and interrogate him on the matters concerning the shadow demons.
He claimed he had nothing to do with that and that rather, they suddenly stopped listening to him. I asked one of my shadow generals in front of him and to my surprise, Maou was telling the truth. According to the shadow general, there was something akin to a civil war happening in the Realm of Eternal Darkness, where they were from.
My patron goddess was currently battling against another god that governs the same realm that she did. Realm in this case being her element.
Basically, there were multiple gods of one element. However, there was one major honcho of these gods and would be known as the Great God of that element. Or in some case, the Primordial God of that.
Zatana was an ancient god. I didn’t know where she ranked in the hierarchy of gods as these didn’t even exist in the god rankings. According to the agent, the rankings for the gods were as follows: Primordial, Great God, Lesser God/Demi-god, in descending order.
She very well sat at any of these positions for all I knew, but from the sounds of things, her opponent wasn’t particularly easy to beat. The shadow generals couldn’t give me more information beyond that. I just had to take it as fact.
Maou, happy that I didn’t find him guilty of doing that, still acted suspicious. I wasn’t sure what he’d done, but it definitely couldn’t be as bad as interfering with a war. I asked him, but he didn’t spill. It came down to Julian to snitch and the butler wasted no time.
I’d never felt so wrong in my entire life.
As bad as interfering with a war? This guy practically just set off a nuclear warhead!
He told Zana I had gotten myself a new wife and that I was forgetting about her. What’s more, after hearing this, Zana wanted to come charging to the West, but other duties kept her in the South.
I suddenly felt scared and confused. Zana wasn’t my wife, so I’d never cheated on her. This brat just created drama out of nothing and was laughing at me. Maybe it was time to take up the rod.
That evening, Rulis was the only one present for dinner. Neburis was nowhere to be found and I couldn’t sense her sneaking about the forest, meaning she had left the forest entirely. Gently, I asked Rulis where she’d gone and she wasn’t really sure. This wasn’t the first time Neburis just disappeared without notice and it wasn’t going to be the last. Rulis had come to accept that, so there was no point overthinking things.
But just in case, the next time she came back, I’d sneak a shadow on her to make sure she wasn’t spilling our secrets somewhere.
Day 119
First thing in the morning, I teleported to the South to talk to Zana. She’d been in a bad mood and that was showing through her fog that turned into smoke, making it hard to breathe. Fortunately, most of the south guys lived in water, but those that didn’t were definitely in a lot of trouble.
Zana was sulking in her room, pouting while being comforted by her assistant. Outside her little cave, the lizardman chief was begging for her to turn the fog back to normal.
She whined about like a brat for a bit and asked me about Kara and if she was actually pregnant with my kid and stuff. I answered honestly and she looked at me with wanting eyes. I perfectly understood what she meant by that, but there was nothing I could do to help her here.
The whole thing with Kara was a total fluke. Something I definitely didn’t intend on letting happen again. I mean, if I could… I would. Like, of course I totally want to experience it again, but… the only way to do that is to magically reacquire whatever it was Kaleb Zen used on me and that wasn’t happening anytime soon.
‘Is there a way to repeat that whole event?’, Curiously, I threw the question to the agent.
<<Yes>>
Having heard that, I was left stunned. Maybe, just maybe, I could get my johnson back.
<<However, your constitution as a phoenix gives you a complete immunity to any and all toxins. The required drug is considered a toxin>>
Figures.
I went back to the West to check up on everything else. Kara called out to me and it turns out her stomach was growing bigger. She wanted me to talk to it…
Personally, I saw no need to do that, but Kara was probably going to be dejected if I didn’t do it. I ended up saying some weird and cringey things to the stomach, then ran away almost immediately. I waited purposefully for Neburis to return by dinner, but she hadn’t. I was getting somewhat anxious, but everyone had lives to live. Hopefully, their lives weren’t going to intrude on mine. Because if they did, I wouldn’t hesitate to end theirs. The only person who’s happiness mattered was me.
I spent that evening with Zana.
<A/N: OnG Exams pull up every 2 weeks, lol. Month long break… again. Sorry!>