Author’s Corner: First of all, an announcement! I’m moving into a new house later this week, and we don’t have the internet set up there yet. So, unless I strategically manage to tap into my phone’s internet in order to post chapters(entirely possible, I get bored very easily), there may be a day or two where nothing is posted. This is NOT because I am taking a hiatus or dropping the story, just moving to a new house. Also, please feel free to vote on the poll above!

After confirming the information on the ship, I logged back into my clone body down on the planet below. There were several elves surrounding me when I opened my eyes, who jumped back in shock. Apparently, they had not expected me to suddenly wake up or something. Sharon was already on her way back from her little outing, with an incomparably happy expression on her face. I could only imagine that she found a bunch of new animals to add to her grove. “John, I’ll be cultivating for a while to make space~. Should take me just a day or two and I’ll be ready to look around again.”

With that, she excused herself, and had a guard show her somewhere with a wide open area that she could meditate for a while. Part of me wondered just how many animals she had at the present time that would be able to help her cultivate, but Celeste promised to do a scan and send me an image, just because she was curious as well. Given that animals live, die, and reproduce so quickly when we got most of her animal companions from, she could have as many as double the number she had previously told me that know how to cultivate. Especially now that she is able to properly communicate with them.

Roughly half an hour later, Celeste sent me a mental screenshot, likely taken with the ship’s scanner, of Sharon sitting in the castle’s courtyard. Surrounding her were at least twenty wolves of various shapes and colors, fifty rabbits, even a pair of large armadillos the size of a car. At the very back, there was even a boulder lizard that she had only recently acquired before we left NeoLife for the last time. And they were all sitting straight up with their eyes closed, as if they were meditating.

So… she now has over seventy cultivating animals… I’m sure it’s just a matter of time until she converts them all… I sighed, shaking my head as I looked around. I wasn’t really seeing any vehicles that could be used to go between cities. Did they just ride large mounts, or were their vehicles hidden away from view? I knew that they had the technology, after all they had space ships able to travel to other planets in the system.

“Celeste, how long will it take to have the orbital laser ready?” I asked as I walked around, bored out of my wits. I could probably train my affinities, but we had just touched down on an alien world, and there was still quite a bit I wanted to do. Or, to put it more accurately, I wanted to do anything but training right now.

“Should be a little over ten days. I’ve gotten all of my construction drones working on it right now. But once it’s done, it’ll need a full five hours to charge between blasts. You don’t have the materials for anything more energy efficient in your grove.”

I wasn’t really surprised by this revelation, to be honest. In fact, ten days for an orbital weapon was still quite impressive. “Will we be able to take it with us to the other planets to help them out with their monsters as well?”

“I’ll make a towing cable so that we can bring it along, but it will take some careful piloting so that we don’t damage it in transit. Can you do a quick check, see if you’ve managed to acquire any more mithril in your grove yet?” After Celeste asked, I inspected the grove to do a search.

Mithril was, in essence, platinum that had been naturally saturated with magic. I only had one tiny ore vein that held any platinum in it, so there was not much to check. And in that small vein, there was maybe five grams of mithril. Definitely not enough for whatever she wanted to use it for. However, if I keep expanding my grove, more will naturally appear over time.

After I relayed the information, I heard a disappointed sigh from Celeste. “Well, it can’t be helped. Still, be sure to check every once in awhile, mithril is useful in a lot of construction materials.”

I nodded my head, and walked back out of the forest, towards the plains where the temple had been constructed. Already, I could see a long line of elves lined up in front of the temple, numbering no less than two hundred people. Standing at the temple’s entrance, Queen Talia was no longer wearing her silver gown. Instead, she was wearing a pure white dress with golden embroidery, and carried a white wooden staff. When she saw me, she smiled happily and beckoned me closer.

“Quite a… drastic change of attire.” I commented as I approached her, making her blush slightly.

“Not my choice… We received a message from the one called Aria, saying that this would fit our new role better than our last outfit. At the same time, our royal gown was transformed into this. It was… quite an uncomfortable experience.” When she said that, I blinked rapidly. Aria is doing stuff like that now? When I got my class, all I had to go with it was a quest telling me to find a trainer. Spreading out my Mana Sense, I found that her new outfit was lightly enchanted for defense, and her staff was constantly storing energy for something.

“Please tell me that she told you what they do, at least…”

“Do..? Are they meant to ‘do’ something?” Talia looked at me blankly, as if she could not understand the meaning behind my question.

“Oh for the love of…” I activated my Aura Sight and called out to Celeste. Need your attention down here for a minute. Can you identify that staff?

“Roger, Captain!” I heard the tired AI’s voice in my head as she looked through my eyes to identify this god’s handiwork. “This is an arcane enchantment, not a runic one. If I had to guess, it builds energy over time, and can unleash it in one big blast. The longer you wait, the bigger it gets. It’s not very efficient, though. With the energy stored right now, it’d barely be the same as a hard punch.”

I nodded my head, and looked to a very confused Talia, who had her head tilted to the side and awaiting my explanation. “This outfit and staff are magical. The dress is capable of providing a measure of defense for you, while the staff is able to store energy to fire a blast. I’m not sure what the activation condition is for the staff, though.”

“Eh…? Magical? You mean the power of the cycle?” Talia still had a confused look on her face as she glanced at the staff.

“Right. It’s possible to imbue items with power as well. I take it Aria is now listed as your patron..?”

Talia quickly shook her head at that. “No, no. My patron was listed as Halen.”

“Ah.. I don’t really know anything about him, but hopefully he’ll be a better help. Did you already set up the protective barrier?”

“Yes, as soon as I accepted the role of a priest, I asked Halen to defend this area. It was strange, when he did I was granted a vision of the range that it covers. Even now I can see that information, as well as others. There is now something called a ‘kingdom domain’ menu present.”

...You know, knowing about this earlier would have helped a lot. “I’d suggest exploring that, carefully.” Meanwhile, I was mentally asking Celeste what she knew about this.

“Sorry, Captain! I saw it mentioned in a few articles, but since it was unlikely that you’d ever set up a kingdom of your own I didn’t look too deep into it. All I know is that it is something that owners of a vast area get when they receive their class. I had thought that you would get it for the Seraglio, but either the population or the size of the ship must have been too little for it to qualify.”

Talia nodded her head, focusing on something. After a few moments, a window appeared in front of me. From the reactions of those nearby, everyone got one.

Kingdom AlertQueen Talia of the Woods has set a work order for Increased Agriculture. After a period of 7 days, the Agriculture rating of the area will be improved. Qualified participants may help accelerate this process.

Qualified: Scientists, Farmers, Geneticist, Worker

I was not expecting something like that, and looked over to Talia curiously. “What… just happened?”

“Uhm.. There were a list of upgrades we could choose from. We thought it would be best to secure food for our people, now that it is not safe to move beyond the boundaries of the kingdom. Did we do something wrong?”

I looked up into the air, and in the sky was a massive clock counting down. “Well… I guess we’ll see in.. six days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-nine minutes.”

“Uhm.. there’s an option to cancel the work order… should we do so?” She looked far more worried now, since I did not have the answers she wanted.

“No.. I think it’d be best to see how this develops.” In the meantime, I checked the area with my Aura Sight and Mana Sense again. It was faint, but I could see a trace amount of mana leaking from everyone present, myself included, and heading up towards that clock. “What other upgrade options were there?”

Talia began to list some of the things that she had seen in her window. Among them was increased internal security, increased defenses, increased weapons technology, and various others. There were also options to move or remove trees, change the landscape, and even change the architectural style. I had the feeling that being a ruler made your ‘playing experience’ similar to a real-time strategy game. I was slightly curious how this would work for the High Queen, but I’d have to ask later.

“Ah, right. Before I forget, would you like to be friends?” I asked Talia, and another window appeared in front of me.

Friend request sent to Queen Talia of the Woods.

Friend request sent to Queen Talia of the Woods has been accepted.

She blinked for a moment before nodding. “Uh… sure. Is there some significance to this?”

“Actually, yes. I wasn’t sure if your people had discovered this system yet, but people on the friends list can talk to each other at any time, regardless of the distance between themselves. Even if you are on a completely different planet or in a different star system, there doesn’t seem to be anything that I’ve seen to interrupt it.”

Talia nodded briefly, focusing again. “Ehh…? You are… my only friend?” I could imagine the queen pouting as she misinterpreted that.

“Ah… that’s… you just need to add them to your friends list.” I tried to console the queen like this, and she nodded her head slightly. “But… I take it that means the High Queen isn’t actually your aunt? Family was automatically added to the list when I got mine.”

“Huh? No… we just consider the other queens to be family. Since the High Queen has a higher status, it made sense to refer to her as our aunt. Besides, they have helped to raise and educate us since our mother passed…”

“Ah.. yeah, I heard about that. The slime chair incident.”

Talia let out a resigned sigh. “Yes… We became much more strict against slimes after that. Thankfully, our lightning guns have proven useful in deterring them.”

“They’re weak against energy damage and magic. Once your people start training, slimes will be easy to take care of. In fact, I could probably provide a few magic weapons for you to distribute to help you fight.”

The little queen quickly looked up to me, her eyes practically shining after I said that. “You would do that for us?”

I nodded my head, stepping back a bit in surprise. “Yeah.. I need to practice my enchanting as well. Though, you’ll need to teach them how to control their own magic before they’ll be able to activate the weapons I give you. Having a sword constantly emit flames would quickly turn into a problem.”

Talia furrowed her brow, but nodded nonetheless. “Still, you have our thanks. The green ones and the large bulls are easy to deal with if we focus on them with numbers, but those slimes are almost impossible to kill without a lightning gun. Even then, some have shown a resistance to it.”

“Well, there are too many types of slimes. Any with an affinity leaning towards lightning would be resistant.” I shrugged my shoulders. “But anyways, let me work on getting you a basic sword.”

Closing my eyes, I sent my consciousness into my grove. It was at this point I realized… I didn’t actually know how to make a sword properly. The last weapon I made broke after a few swings! Celeste, mind sparing a drone to make me a sword?

I heard a giggling in my mind, as one of the construction drones broke off from the ship and gathered up some metal. It seemed to hit the small pile of metal with a blue laser, which gradually reshaped it into a decorated scimitar with an ornate carving on its handle. It then repeated the process with another small pile to make the sheathe. Afterwards, the robot moved back to its construction job while I pulled the items from my grove. Maybe I should learn blacksmithing, but really it’s better to leave that to Celeste. No need to have too many people able to do the same type of crafting.

When the blue light emerged from my chest, and formed the scimitar and sheathe in my hands, Talia’s eyes went wide, and her mouth gaped slightly. No doubt, she was under the impression that I personally made this in the span of under a minute, so she was understandably impressed. A few of the nearby guards glared at me as they saw the sword in my hand, putting their hands on their own weapons. They seemed to have other ideas about why I was suddenly holding a weapon in front of their queen.

“Okay.. any special kind of effect you want on it?” I asked, wanting to try out a custom order for once. Since Celeste had given me the complete rune language, there was no doubt that I had the runes to make whatever effect I wanted. It was just a matter of if I had the skill as an enchanter.

“Hmm… maybe something to freeze? If a slime can be frozen, their body can then be smashed with physical attacks.” After she made her request, I nodded my head and stabbed the sword into the ground. Using Earth Manipulation, I formed a circle around the sword and began to work. Using runes, I constructed a simple ‘freeze on contact’ spell, which I then imbued into the blade of the sword, and began pouring water mana into it to strengthen the enchantment.

Once I was done, I put my hand on the hilt, and activated it with a bit of magic. Immediately, the ground around the blade was frozen, but the effect stopped at the circle. “Just put a bit of magic into the sword when you swing, and it should activate.” After saying that, I glanced at my mana, and saw that it took well over half of what I had to do that one enchantment.