Author’s Corner: Hey everyone! For those wondering, the poll does NOT mean he’s about to leave the planet. I just felt like it’d be good to get opinions early this time. There’s still work that must be done!

After a few hours, I found myself back in the queen’s castle, right in the middle of her throne room. However, unlike last time, I was not alone with her and Sharon. Instead, there were dozens of people standing around me, with Talia sitting on her throne. It was time for the promised lessons...

Out of a ‘kingdom’ with roughly fifteen hundred elves(this was considered quite large for this planet, before the monsters started killing people), about two hundred chose to be craftsmen. Three hundred chose to be hunters, one hundred chose to be priests, four hundred became fighters, fifty became rogues, another hundred and fifty chose to be mages, one hundred became knights, twenty became merchants, and the last nearly two hundred became druids or were undecided. Out of those, there were ‘leaders’ chosen from nearly every magic wielding class present to learn how to control their mana.

Naturally, Sharon was still cultivating with her animal army, so that left the job of speaking with the masses to me. Looking around, I took several deep breaths, quickly crafting a stone chair in my grove and pulling it out to sit on. This is the first time I’ve spoken in front of so many people in a long time! “Okay… I’ll do the druid training later… but first, mana control… something everyone needs to know.”

I slowly went about the process of teaching them how to sense their own mana, waiting for them to understand it. After that, I taught them how to move it within their bodies. To my surprise, there were a few people in the group that could be qualified as geniuses. They picked up the skills easily, and even expanded on them before the rest had caught up. One man had managed to use his mana control to reinforce his fist punched a small hole into the wall of the throne room. However, he forgot to reinforce his arm as well, so I had to administer some emergency healing.

Others managed to quickly awaken the Aura Sight and Mana Sense skills, which I had taken ages to figure out. As for Talia, she was quite good at it. In fact, when she first received the skill, she asked me what it meant that her Mana Manipulation skill started out as Basic Level 2, instead of Level 1. At that point, I explained the skill levels, and that typically a new skill will start at Beginner Level 1. Most of the people in the room confirmed this, except for those talented individuals who had managed to produce other skills already by working their mana.

I even honestly answered that my own skill level for Mana Manipulation was merely at the Advanced tier, so they knew that there was still a lot of room for improvement. To be honest, even I wasn’t sure what a Legend ranked skill would be like. It would essentially mean knowing everything there was to know about a subject, and being able to put it to practice. Wouldn’t that mean also knowing everything that could be ‘discovered’ later in the future? If that was the case, then once someone reached the Legend rank in a skill, there was truly nothing else possible for them to learn in it.

Once everyone present had managed to learn the basic Mana Manipulation skill, we moved on to schools of magic. Naturally, I could only teach two schools of magic since they were the only ones I knew. Aside from Nature Magic and Technomancy, all I had was my druid magic, and runic magic that I had almost never experimented with. I was already having Celeste send a complete list of runes to the elven database.

For the first magic school, I taught Technomancy. This was because most of the people that would be learning Nature Magic would be the druids and hunters. Quite a few people present seemed interested in learning Technomancy, including the queen. To teach them, I did the same thing that the man from NeoLife had done. I simply channeled a bit of mana in front of me and attuned it to Technomancy, letting them scan it and experiment for themselves.

With that taken care of, the throne room of the castle gradually emptied, until only a few mages, hunters, and druids were present. Once again I repeated the teaching method, this time with Nature Magic instead. When everyone had gotten that skill as well, I took my leave from the throne room, doing my best to not make it look like I was running away. The training for druids wouldn’t be for a couple days yet, because the ones present at the basic training today had to go teach all of the others what they had learned first. There was no point in teaching someone how to perform worldcasting if they can’t even feel their own mana.

The elves, I found, were rather considerate hosts. Rather than making us go back and sleep in our ship, they arranged a room for us at the local inn. It was only natural that we couldn’t pay, since we didn’t have any of whatever currency the elves used. And since the area could now be considered as ‘safe’, I summoned both Yin and Yang from my grove to let them look around. That caused quite another commotion as people saw what appeared to be a winged elf looking around happily with a strange bird that they’ve never seen before.

After getting my permission, Yin actually flew off, supposedly to find somewhere to cultivate the Lightning Affinity, since that was all she needed in order to evolve. The next few days went by rather slowly. With Celeste’s help, I managed to get quite a bit of information about the local elven culture. The reason that we hadn’t seen any vehicles was actually because the wood elves did not keep them. Most of the technology was kept with the high elves in the cities, whereas the wood elves were the caretakers of the forests. As such, they had as little technology as they could manage, so that they could still keep in touch with the outside world without damaging the forests that they protect.

Naturally, Celeste kept tabs on the monsters and their territory. The golem and the big ice wolf had remained where they were, not bothering others. However, the dragons and giant spider of doom had slowly expanded their territory, presumably in search of food. Thankfully, the big spider was NOT expanding its territory in this direction, and was instead going further north.

The druid training was going… slowly, to say the least. Right now, I was having the druids practice cultivation with the element that Celeste identified as being the most suitable for them out of the primary seven. To my surprise, there was only one that was cultivating Lightning Affinity right now out of the whole set, and he was apparently one of the ones that had come up with the idea for the tesla guns.

After the first few had finished cultivating to 5% affinity, I had them practice manipulating their chosen element. There were several gusts of wind, tiny fireballs, water splashes, and so on after that. The druids were very happy by now, and ready to do any kind of training that I wanted. So now, I gave them the most boring task of all, cultivating all seven affinities to 5% so that they could make a grove. This part of the training didn’t really need my help, until they were done with their affinities, so I told them to just find me when that was the case.

When Sharon exited her secluded cultivation, I asked her what kind of magic she knew. After all, she was not virtualized, so she should have gotten two schools of magic at the start. So far, I only knew for sure that she had Nature Magic, but according to her she also had Summoning Magic as a starter school. Though, she hadn’t had a chance to practice it much, aside from using it as a quicker method to call out her animal companions from her grove.

I asked Celeste to help her train it, since she had some information regarding most of the basic schools of magic. Unfortunately, Celeste herself seemed unable to utilize the information to cast the magic, likely because her aura was too different from the normal. That, or it just wasn’t possible to replicate a school of magic based on information read online.

Since Sharon’s Summoning Magic was still in the Beginner levels, she wasn’t able to properly teach it to others yet. Instead, she taught them tricks related to animals with Nature Magic, such as how to tame them and use the Animal Affinity. She seemed quite happy being able to teach, though every now and then I would catch a trace of annoyance on her face. Likely, it felt like her pride as a woman was being stepped on, since none of the elven men seemed interested in her.

As for me, while I was waiting for the druids to finish working on their affinities, I had Celeste help me identify a few local herbs that would be useful in alchemy. Given the elves’ ability to genetically engineer plants, there were quite a few high quality herbs to be found here. Though they were not designed for alchemy, and instead designed for more scientific medicine, their alchemic properties were good nonetheless. As such, I began teaching a few people the Alchemy skill, and gave them a few of the low level herbs I had gotten from Hascion in the future to plant here.

I was debating whether or not to teach them Soul Arts as well, but to do so would be far more difficult without the use of a Skill Shard, and I wasn’t confident enough to perform the procedure myself yet. After six days on the elf world, we were contacted by High Queen Maeve again. This was mostly just to thank us for what we’ve done so far, since they had managed to construct the statues in several castles across the three worlds, thus expanding their anti-spawn territories.

Although the High Queen did not personally tell us, Celeste found out by tapping their calls how the kingdom system worked for them. Apparently, it is a completely separate matter from the anti-spawn barriers, because a High Queen’s kingdom covers their entire planet. Likewise, rather than doing planet-wide work orders, they can issue commands to the queens in their territory to perform the work orders there, while their own work orders only work for the immediate area.

On the seventh day, we finally found out what the Increased Agriculture work order would do. When the giant countdown in the sky finally finished, it exploded in a burst of mana which sank into the ground. In the nearby farms, or any fruit bearing tree, the production immediately began to hasten. Fruits and vegetables were grown overnight, and would continue to grow right after seeds were planted. This lasted for three full days before it gradually returned to normal.

Then.. how are people supposed to help with that?! I couldn’t help but comment that in my head after seeing the trees and fields returning to their normal state. Thankfully, Celeste provided me an answer. “It looks like the upgrades can take two forms. One is a tech upgrade, such as adding irrigation to a field, while the other is a production speed upgrade. If nobody contributes towards a tech upgrade, it will default to the latter. One of the High Elf cities purchased an increased defense upgrade, and created a design for a large wall around the city, complete with sentry turrets. When the countdown finished, the wall was immediately constructed. Though the turrets themselves were not included, there were positions made for them on the new wall.”

Well… that did explain a bit… but still. Would it kill them to have a help menu? That earned me another giggle and further explanation. Apparently, a priest is capable of asking for information from their patron, if they pray at a temple where that patron is placed. Though the amount of information given is dependent entirely on the mood of the god that they pray to. I feel like Aria wouldn’t give any help that did not involve ‘fashion’, her apparent domain.

After learning this, I had Celeste send the information regarding as many other gods in the pantheon as she could, because I highly doubted that all of the elves had those three as their patrons. They’d need to have statues for the others as well, eventually. At the same time, I ‘logged out’ and returned to the ship, because it was the promised day of orbital death lasers!

When I arrived on the ship, I excitedly took off the headset and immediately changed into a void elf, moving to the airlock with Celeste. She was going to go with me, and help me place the satellite in a stable orbit around the planet. I was already looking forward to frying some of those big monsters from space.

This was… actually my first time being a void elf in space. Feeling the air thinning as the airlock depressurized, I almost panicked thinking that I wouldn’t be able to do the racial breathing. However, I soon found that although there was no air in my lungs, and it felt like I couldn’t breathe, I was still perfectly fine. Using my mana to inspect my surroundings showed me that a steady stream of void mana was being poured into me, separate from my passive cultivation. This was going directly to my lungs, as if I was breathing it in instead of air.

The next challenge was controlling my flight once we exited the ship. I call it flight, but really that’s not what void elves do. They have the ability to slightly alter which way gravity pulls them, so instead of flying, they just gracefully fall in the direction they want to go. This is mostly done by them focusing, and designating which direction they want ‘down’ to be. After I did that, and banged my head into the ship a few times… for practice, I swear… I managed to control my flight and pull away.

Seeing as there is no air in space, and thus no real sound, Celeste and I could only communicate mentally. “We need to move at least five kilometers away from the ship to get a safe distance for its orbit. I already did all the necessary calculations.” The Deus Ex happily informed me as she flew along, watching as I tried my best to swim through space after her. Note to self, dog paddling in space only serves to make you look like an idiot.

After roughly ten minutes of awkward flying, we managed to reach the spot that Celeste had assigned for the orbital death laser. “This thing only has basic steering thrusters, so be careful. Try not to let it fall when you pull it out.”

I nodded my head, focusing as I brought out the satellite in the same manner that I had retrieved the Seraglio from my grove. The satellite was even roughly the same size as our ship, so it took roughly the same amount of time to pull it out. Once it was done, I got a good look at the weapon of massive monster death.

The doom laser(that’s what I’m calling it, yes) was a big satellite dish roughly sixty meters in diameter, pointed at the planet while multiple layers of solar panels stretched out to charge it up. I could just imagine that once it fired, the beam would originate from the large dish, and crash down into the planet to wipe out whatever it was targeted at. I could not be the big kid with a magnifying glass while fighting giant monsters! The juicy experience was just waiting for me to take it.

“Yeah.. don’t expect any experience from these kills.” Celeste gave me a smirk as she explained. “From my research, the further you are away from a kill, the less experience you receive. This is theoretically caused by the soul dissipating in the air as it tries to make its way to you. Since we’ll be blasting from orbit… I imagine we’d get very little, if any, experience from these boss monsters.”

But.. but… my precious experience… My levels.... I suddenly felt depressed as we flew back towards the ship, waiting for the satellite to charge up for its first run.