As Lapodala said, the war didn't last much longer. Once the shield held up for another week, the blast of energy finally subsided. Greg was wondering how to deal with the people from the Technocracy, when a powerful mage flew over and just… Well, suffice to say, Greg was now very clear that he was not the top dog around here. Apparently there had been a higher level battle happening in space to keep the more powerful mages occupied, and now that the planet was safe, they were free to… clean up. Greg almost felt bad for them. Not enough to stop him from moseying over and dissolving all their equipment once they were gone, but still.

Not long after, a projection appeared in the center of the city, announcing the truth of what had happened to Earth, what the Mage Republic had done. The projection made a few empty excuses that Greg rolled his eyes at, before finishing with an apology and a plea for forgiveness. Since everyone here already knew, most eyed the projection coldly, their hearts already hardened to the Republic for hiding what they'd done in the first place, feeling that this explanation and apology was empty.

Then the projection went on to explain what their situation was now. First, the planet was theirs, fully. The ships would continue to project the shield to keep the planet safe, but otherwise, the Mage Republic wouldn't interfere at all with their development, beyond providing a few key resources. The first was the communication network, which could be accessed using terminals on the ships or by using a spell. The communication network allowed people to, well, communicate, mainly with the other ships, but also with the community of the Mage Republic at large. The more powerful the terminal or spell, the more of this network you could access, going from simple calls, to texts, to essentially the internet, to, as one could predict, mentally projecting yourself into a virtual world to interact with others. From there, more power would give you more and more control over this virtual world, but since no one could even do more than send messages at the moment, that was a distant concern. Thankfully the terminals were powerful enough to access the internet level of the network, so they could finally get some information on the Mage Republic. Oh, and Greg could download 'books', but even he had to admit that just having the information beamed into your head wasn't the same. Still, the Republic at least had a thriving community of authors creating these stories, so that was nice.

The next resource was the portal network. This one required not only a spell and a terminal, but it also required someone on the other end to help maintain the connection, and it needed both to be rather powerful. It wouldn't be helpful in the short-term, but once the average power level climbed a bit higher, it'd do a lot to connect the world together and eventually let them join the wider community, though that might take a while since they needed someone at the archmage level to open portals between planets.

The final resource was simply a map, showing the locations of all the various ships, and the general mana density of the various areas, color coded from blue as the lightest, to green, then yellow, then red, and finally black marking the densest areas, clearly indicating danger. The higher the mana density in the area, the stronger the creatures in that area would be. Their ship was currently in a blue zone, but the plains on one side of the mountains were green, and the jungle on the other was solidly yellow, with a few red patches here and there. Most of the ships appeared to be in blue or green areas, though there were a few that had ended up in yellow areas to make sure the whole planet was covered. What really surprised Greg was the sheer amount of ships that had ended up in the oceans. In order to cover the whole world, they'd needed at least partial coverage in every location, so while the landmasses had about three times the density of coverage as the oceans, that still left a lot of people in deep water. Thankfully magic seemed to make that a non-issue. Or at least, Greg hoped it did…

The group had gathered in Tessa's apartment to study the map, including a nervous looking Meredith who seemed to be doing her best to just fade into the background. "Do you think we could take this with us?" Greg asked, gesturing to the terminal conveniently embedded in Tessa's wall like a TV.

"We could, but it needs to be connected to the ship's systems to work, so I don't think it'd do us any good." Tessa replied.

"The artificers are working on making the formations that naturally gather pure mana more portable." Carlos commented. "Like a battery, you know? After that, they should be able to make the terminals more portable."

"By which point, we will obviously already be proficient enough in the spell to make it pointless." Victor rolled his eyes.

"Not everyone is going to work on a spell that only lets you talk to people, Victor." Carlos retorted.

"Talk to people? I want access to that virtual world!" Victor retorted. "Who wouldn't pursue that?!?"

"VR for the win!" Casey exclaimed, before instantly regretting it as the baby in her arms started to cry. "Oh, no I'm sorry Scott, mommy didn't mean to be loud!" She quickly assured him, rocking him back and forth to try and calm him down.

Greg grinned slightly at the gradual transformation from a wild twenty something to a mother. He even noticed Victor glancing over at the baby with a bit of paternal concern. *It's honestly kinda funny how a kid does that to you.* He thought to himself, his smile softening as he looked down at Ash cradled in Tessa's arms.

"Guys, focus." Jake insisted. "We need to figure out our first destination."

"Well, for starters, I think we should head through the plains. The jungle is just too dangerous." Brittany commented.

"I dunno. There are these kangaroo cows over there… I don't know if they're aggressive but I'm positive we don't want to be charged by a herd of them." Greg replied.

"Would you prefer being constantly ambushed by whatever creatures are lurking in the jungle?" Brittany retorted, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Been there, done that. Zero stars." Greg sighed. "Okay, yeah, the plains are a better idea."

Brittany nodded. "Then our first destination is going to be one of these three cities."

"Here's a question." Carlos interjected. "Obviously we don't want to travel through dangerous areas, but hunting and eating powerful creatures will help us grow our mana pools, while also providing us with valuable materials we can trade for resources, so we don't want to be too far away from dangerous areas either, right?"

"That wasn't really a question, that was more of an explanation." Jake pointed out.

"But he does have a point." Tessa muttered. "We aren't simply trying to explore the world, we're looking for problems to solve, which means we're going to need power and resources. We should pick routes that give us access to areas to hunt in."

"Then we should follow the mountains north, towards the equator. That's where the densest mana is." Brittany offered pointing at the map.

"Ugh, that statement just fucked with my point of reference." Carlos groaned.

Brittany rolled her eyes. "We're in the southern hemisphere, deal with it."

Greg studied the map for a moment, frowning. "I don't like the idea of hunting in the mountains… sure, on the surface they're green or yellow, but who knows how dense the mana is in those caves and crevices?"

"Generally mana is denser in areas with more biomass…" Brittany explained.

"I know, but again, who knows what's hiding down there? Mana makes it so that a lot of the things that used to prevent growth don't matter anymore. Sunlight, water, nutrients, all covered by mana. You could have a little pocket of the densest mana you could imagine down there, full of life, all hidden where no one can know, until one of the creatures living there makes its way to the surface for a snack." Greg shook his head. "No, I think we'd be better off in the jungle. So instead of following the mountains, why don't we cut across the plains and jump between these yellow zones?"

"Doesn't that seem a little… circuitous?" Brittany frowned.

"A bit, but are we really in any kind of hurry?" Greg shrugged. "I mean, even if it takes us a couple years to get to the equator, who cares?"

"Honestly, we should be trying to visit as many cities as possible along our path." Tessa pointed out. "The point isn't to get anywhere, it's to look out for any issues and see what we can do about them. If we skip cities, we might also be skipping a major issue."

"So we probably want to zigzag through here then…" Brittany commented, waving her hand at a certain section of the map.

"Well, hold on." Carlos interjected. "We know power is going to congregate around these danger zones, right? That's just how it works. The more mana you have access to, the faster you grow, and the danger zones have the most mana. So if we're looking for people abusing their power, shouldn't we focus on going to the places where people are actually powerful?"

"It isn't a matter of being powerful, it's a matter of being more powerful than the people around you." Greg shook his head. "Even someone weak can abuse their power if everyone around them is even weaker. I'd honestly say it's probably more likely to happen in a weak area. People are going to congregate around these danger zones, so it's unlikely that any one group will be more powerful than everyone else, since there's more competition. In these weaker areas though, you could get one group hoarding all the resources, keeping everyone else weak…"

"Plus, it isn't that you can't get powerful in a lower mana density, it just takes more resources." Victor pointed out. "If you're powerful enough to control most of what's being brought in, you could grow even faster than someone who was sharing all the resources with everyone else. It's like one person at the head of a small company can make more than a bunch of people at the head of a large company."

Greg nodded. "Just because there's more resources, doesn't mean anyone is getting a significant share of them. Each pound of meat may be worth more, but the guy with access to hundreds of pounds is still going to be doing better than the guy with access to one."

Everyone paused for a moment to stare at the map. "So… where does that leave us?" Casey asked.

Greg sighed. "Let's just fucking wing it."

""Language!"" Tessa and Casey exclaimed in unison.

Greg winced. "Ah, sh- er, sorry." He apologized. "But seriously, we don't have any real goal, and there's no way we're going to be able to visit every city out there, so… let's just go wherever we want and see what we find. We hear about an interesting danger zone, we go. We notice people never seem to leave a certain city, we go check it out. There are rumors of some group being evil fucks about everything, we pay them a visit. No need to create some kind of elaborate itinerary that we're just going to ignore anyway."

"That still leaves the question of what we should do first." Brittany pointed out.

"Our first priority should be resources at the moment." Tessa replied. "Which means we should head towards a danger zone and hunt for a while to build up our supplies."

"Aren't we literally right by a rather decent danger zone right now?" Jake pointed out, gesturing to the yellow splotch representing the jungle. "If we're looking to hunt, we should just stay here."

"I'm not saying you're wrong, but… I think if we stay here for much longer, we're going to get drawn into something we'd really rather not." Greg sighed. "I'm pretty sure Fredrick would love to turn me into some sort of political mascot given half a chance."

Tessa nodded. "We have too many connections here. If we let ourselves get drawn in, we'll never leave."

"Which obviously isn't the worst thing in the world, but I don't think it's the best thing for us either." Greg continued. "At least, I don't want to get dragged into politics."

"Let's be clear here, you're the only one who would be dragged into politics." Brittany pointed out. "The rest of us would be fine."

Greg blinked. "Well, that's fair…"

"Except that if Greg gets dragged into politics, the rest of us will as well, because we're associated with Greg." Tessa retorted. "Politics never just affects one person, it drags everyone in your sphere down with you, because politics is all about connections and we're Greg's connections."

"So basically, we can't stay here to hunt." Casey interjected to move the conversation along, rolling her eyes. "So where do we go?"

"Our city is the closest to a yellow zone in the immediate area…" Jake commented. "We're actually really well positioned, now that I think about it. A yellow zone with a bit of red, mountains with caves to explore, an easy green zone on the other side… are you guys sure we have to leave?"

"Yes, precisely because this city is so well positioned." Tessa replied. "Inevitably more and more people will make their way here, making this city more and more important. It might even become the capital for the area! We do not want to get dragged into that."

Jake sighed. "Then it looks like the best place for us to hunt is about four cities away, here."

"Why don't we just go hunt here?" Greg asked, pointing to a yellow zone a lot closer.

"There's no city there…" Jake replied, frowning at him as if that should be obvious.

"Yeah, but so? Why do we need to be near a city if we're focusing on hunting?" Greg raised an eyebrow at him.

"Because I don't want to spend a week sleeping on the ground?" Casey offered. "I've grown used to the comforts of city living. I ain't no rough and tumble country girl no more." She continued, putting on a fake country accent. "Plus, what about the kids?"

Greg shook his head. "Guys, guys, you're missing the point. You have me! I can make an entire freaking town for us all to live in anywhere we go! Like, literally, I spent a significant amount of time in the transmutation chamber making a town. I even managed to get showers working, with hot and cold water. Pretty much any basic appliance as well, like ovens, toasters, fans, shit like that. Though… I never figured out the microwave."

"Oh no, how will we ever cook our TV dinners!" Victor cried dramatically.

Carlos chuckled. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure microwaves were only relevant when frozen food was a thing. Now it's all fresh meat and vegetables you actually have to cook."

"Still, Greg had a point." Brittany muttered. "With his ability, we can comfortably live anywhere. We'd never need to go to a city."

"As long as we get better at this network spell, at least." Victor agreed. "Otherwise it's going to be a pain to try and figure out spells on our own."

"So everyone agrees, then? Our first destination will be this yellow zone here to hunt?" Greg asked, and everyone nodded. "Great! Then let's pack up and I'll show you guys how we'll be traveling!" He clapped his hands, grinning with an excited gleam in his eye.