《Monarch of Solitude: Daily Quest System》 Chapter 1 - Lazy Lich Bleugh! What''s that in his mouth? It tasted like dirt! Rino, a court magician previously, woke up disoriented. Did the mana bomb he set off not work? Why was he still alive? Did he not kill a single fucker in that world? How could it be?! As he slowly climbed to the top of what he thought was the copsed roof of the magic tower he used to work in, Rino gasped for air. Huh? Strange. He could have sworn gasping was usually apanied by a sound effect. Now that he was out of the rubble, Rino looked around. The ce was very dark. What time was it? He could only see a few shadows but not make out what they were. Scratching his chin, a habit he developed from early on, Rino tried to recall what happened. Creak! That sound startled him. Why did scratching have a sound effect? What was going on? As the clouds parted way for the full moon above him, Rino finally understood why the sound effects didn''t match his memory. In his full naked glory, Rino looked at his new bony structure in quite a literal way. He was thin before but never thin enough to see the insides of his pelvic bone. Honestly, this would have caused quite the scandal at the pce if he was still a court magician. Thankfully, he was just another undead in a mass grave that was left forgotten for a long time, judging by the weeds overgrowing on everything. Hold on! There was a slight problem. Although it didn''t amount much to anyone else, Rino was quite flustered. Was he currently a female or a male skeleton? [Neither.] Replied a voice from inside his head. [You are a lich.] Not very startled by the voice in his hollow skull, Rino tapped it twice to check that it wasn''t some stray spider monster who made it their home. [We are the Gods who watched over the world you destroyed. Rino, from henceforth, you are a lich brought back to life under our powers to redeem your sins.] If he was still alive, Rino would haveughed at it. Unfortunately, all he could do was make chattering sounds with his rotting teeth. You needed lungs tough, and Rino stopped almost at once when he heard his bones rattling. It was starting to annoy him. "Why should I?" Rino thought back as hard as he could, hoping he could mentally project his thoughts into a voice. "I don''t want to redeem my sins. Just throw me to hell or something." The Gods ignored him. It was unusual to see a person who didn''t fear Gods. It was more unusual to see someone who preferred to boil in hell than jump at the chance for redemption. Unfortunately, this nut case was the best candidate the Gods could find from Rino''s destroyed world. They needed someone adept at magic and freebour to repopte this seedling world. [You don''t have a choice.] The Gods told him. [Build us a kingdom, and we will let you rest in peace.] Rino looked around. A kingdom? With what army? Even if he dug up dirt and made bricks, it would take him thousands of years to build one! What kind of very contract was this? Rino didn''t agree to its conditions. Rest in peace? As if these Gods were going to let that happen. There was no peace if the kingdom couldn''t be built. That was what he understood. As for the kingdom? It can''t be built. Wasn''t this just bullying?! However, he was a very experienced court magician. Politics was his middle name. "Sure. However, I can''t do it immediately." The Gods paused. [Why not?] Rino looked at the hole he just dug himself out of and started digging a wider spot so he could sit insidefortably. "No resources. No blueprint. No money. No manpower. No pay." Irritated by his arrogant attitude, as Rino started to search for something he could use as a nket, the Gods discussed it among themselves. How did such azy person be a court magician? Why would such a talented butzy individual work to build a mana bomb to destroy the world? No matter how much they reviewed his memories, they still couldn''t understand. An hour passed, two hours passed. Rino was content. Who would have thought that being dead would give him the one thing he wanted most when he was alive? How ironic! He was starting to get ustomed to the sedentary life, listening to insects while watching the moon hide behind clouds from hisfy dirt bed, when the voice rang out in his head again, disrupting his silence. [I understand. To assist you in building the kingdom, we will provide you with a blessing that allows you to view a daily quest system that will guide you step by step a day by a day until you build the kingdom.] Rino rolled his non-existent eyes. Did he have a say in it? It wasn''t as if he had to do it immediately. What a rare opportunity to ck and- === Daily Quest #1 Objective: Relocate 5km to the east and 20km to the south. Tutorial here. === Whatever Rino was about to say died at once. These Gods were really desperate, or they were simply ve drivers who hated him. Would it kill them to wait one night?! [Your daily quest starts today, and it ends at midnight. The time is currently four in the morning. Please finish it before midnight.] Angry at the Gods for starting his assignment so quickly, Rino grumbles. East? South? He didn''t even know where he was! Did the sun even rise from the east in this world?! [The sun always rises from the east. Get moving.] Rino wanted to scream. How was he supposed to know? It was only four in the morning. Moving in any direction without confirmation of the right direction was going to waste more time. That''s right, the Gods simply said toplete the quest by midnight. It wasn''t as if he had to do it now. He could still nap for a few more hours. He was worked like a dog every day in his past life. There was not a single moment of peace back then, and every day, Rino slogged. It didn''t matter if he had to meet people, cure them, fix things or participate in high-levelled strategy meetings. Rino had no breaks. Everyone else envied him for his talents and high status as well as riches, but nobody knew his suffering. He couldn''t sleep at night from all the thoughts in his head, could not even take his shower alone for more than fifteen minutes, had to solve never-ending strings of problems and had money he couldn''t spend. Why give him money when he couldn''t have a vacation?! It was stupid! Hence, he blew the world up. It was too stupid to exist. Rino had enough. [There is an arrow in the Daily Quest System and a tutorial function to assist you on your quest.] Rino pretended not to hear. He saw that. [You need toplete the daily quest by midnight.] God said again, emphasising its importance and this time, Rino shifted himself to a morefortable position. The moonlight was a little too bright. Better pour some dirt to cover his eyes. "I know," he thought back. "I''ll do itter." Although he didn''t exactly ask for a new life, Rino wasn''t going to waste the chance he was given. This time, he was going to live a proper idle life. Not even humans, birds, or gods couldn''t stop him from idling, but they are wee to try. Chapter 2 - 6 Days To Sharpen An Axe The sun was already high in the sky at noon, but the Gods didn''t understand why a certain lich still wasn''t making an attempt to move. However, they could no longer use the divine voice message system, exhausting all their tries that day. Rino was in bliss. The sun might burn his bones, but he didn''t feel like moving. The pain was evidence of the living, or in his case, the undead. Although he couldn''t make the correct sound effects or project his voice, Rino had magic. It was magic that started everything, and Rino decided that it would be magic to end everything. He couldn''t allow the cycle of misery to continue. It was simply counterproductive. Hence, Rino was buying time by pretending to be asleep in his grave even if he should get moving. Besides, it sounded as if the Gods needed him to do something while pretending to be generous. In reality, the ex court magician could tell. They were desperate. After dealing with all kinds of people in his previous life, Rino wasn''t going to be that easily duped. Two could tango. After the sun rose, Rino discovered some interesting things. Normal undead would not be active under the sun simply because they''d be so badly damaged and might die from exposure. However, he remainedpletely functional despite the annoying pain. Inmon magic knowledge, he was a greater evil if his regeneration rate this fast. As expected, he wasn''t amon skeleton. On top of that, he had magical abilities. As he tested his regeneration limits, Rino used earth magic to dig around the grave. He counted a total of fifty-seven other graves. Earth elemental magic came to him naturally. Wind magic came less naturally as he could only conjure a gust to blow away the annoying des of loose grass that tickled his bones. There was nowhere to try fire magic, although water magic worked well. Basic elemental magic? Check. Rino felt like a master already. With this, he would be able to make good progress at building afortable ce to pass his sedentary life. Now, he was curious about holy magic and dark magic. In his past life, he had holy magic. However, in this life, he was a lich. Was it still possible? Rino hesitated. This could be the best idea of the century or the worst. If a lich was capable of mastering both holy and dark magic, he was close to the level of Gods. Maybe he would be able to ce curses on the Gods because he couldn''t possibly kill them. No matter how powerful he was, there would always still be a gap between those who possessed material bodies and those who do not. Speaking of physical bodies, didn''t liches have several spare bodies lying around if the one they were in was damaged badly? That was the reason why people of his world feared liches. Even as a court magician, he hated dealing with them. Even a newly born lich would have a few hideouts and spare bodies to escape to when they were destroyed. Rino felt troubled. That was a lot of work. To test his theory about a holy magic-using lich, he first had to secure his spare bodies. It wasn''t easy to find good bodies around, especially in this grave. He happened to be the onlyplete skeleton, even if he still had no idea if this skeleton belonged to a male or female before death. For now, all skeletons appeared the same. He only hoped that if his experiment failed, his new body would be a man. Liches could transform into a human appearance, but they normally took on the body''s previous appearance. Rino would hate looking ugly or of the wrong gender. Was this why woodcutters back in his previous world said that if they were given eight days to chop a tree, they would spend six sharpening their axe and two days chopping it? Preparations simply took too much time! No wonder people without magic oftenin about how long it takes to cook and clean and farm. For Rino, he never had to bother. Anything could be resolved with enough magic. Without servants, maids and butlers, Rino started to appreciate the people waddling after him constantly in his previous life. He was already busy enough with so many of them taking care of time-wasting activities. He could imagine not having them take care of things. Now, it was a little toote. Dark magic was very new to Rino. There were no libraries or grimoires around. He also didn''t want to try using holy magic, so the only solution to scan the ce. Hence, his only option was to get up and look for bodies that wereplete. Once he found something decent enough, Rino would infuse a part of his soul into the body and hide it somewhere safe. There was only one problem. The sun was too hot, and Rino didn''t feel like moving. If only there was a more helpful tutorial about his lich powers from the Gods. Why did they think that giving him a magic projection screen with a real-time direction indicator was better than a book about dark magic for newbies? You can find a location eventually, but you cannot learn dark magic without a guide. Whatever, the sun was getting hotter, and Rino was eventually unable to withstand the burning pain. He sat up and removed the dirt from inside his eyes, to his surprise. The pain was from literal mes on his exposed bones. So the undead of this world got set on fire when they were exposed to the sun. Rino quickly activated his earth magic to build himself a temporary shelter. The mud hut was constructed with a bony p, and Rino sighed in relief as the sun got higher. Now that he had some privacy, he started to think. What would be a good body he could still salvage from the looted graves? More importantly, which bodies were female? Rino nced over to the cracked tombstone covered by weeds and sighed. The words might have faded, but Rino also understood that he couldn''t understand this world''snguage and writing. Even if he could find a grimoire or magic book, it would still be useless for him. The lich mulled over it for some time. The Gods might be desperate, but he was not any better. He needed more information, and they needed him to build that stupid kingdom. You could reason with cows, pigs and sometimes humans. However, one doesn''t simply reason with a God. Rino looked at his daily quest window and made his decision. The Gods can threaten him for all he cares. He would be happier dead anyway. There was no way he would work for free! Chapter 3 - Rather A Rat Than A Lady Stuck in limbo for a long time, not knowing where to start, Rino eventually heard something he only saw on farms in his previous life. The scuttling of feet in between long grass caught Rino''s undivided attention. He craned his neck as much as it would go and spied the little grey creature as it let out a small squeak. That''s right! Even in abandoned graveyards, there were living creatures. Still, he found it strange. Birds should also be in the area if they were here. Why did he not see a single raven in the sky? Odd. Nevertheless, Rino made up his mind quickly. With animals, he didn''t have to be fussy about their appearance. As long as he could make a safe getaway, he would live to fight another day. It would be easier to disguise as an animal in search of his next target. If he didn''t have an ideal body, he could simply make one. Honestly, Rino preferred birds. The ability to fly was somewhat important for reconnaissance, but he was in the middle of nowhere. There weren''t many options avable. Studying the tiny grey rat nibbling on something that looked like a fruit, Rino was reminded of his bodily functions. He didn''t need to eat, drink or defecate. What about sleep? He tried to earlier, but it might be the hype of things in his new life that made him unable to get any rest. He needed to test it out after he confirmed his holy magic theory. "Sorry, rat," he thought and quickly trapped it in a conjured earth cage. He needed this rat to die first before he could imbue a part of his powers into the dead body. A Lich''s power is proportional to the powers imbued in each body. Many liches grow more powerful over time as the powers in their multiple bodies umte after many years of training. Rino did not need a powerful body. He just needed one to test holy magic on. Offering his apologies and prayers to the test subject, Rino speared it in the head with an earth spike. The rat died with a squeak and hung from the earth spike in the cage. The skull was shattered, but the body was intact without any missing parts. He could make do with this. Bringing the dead rat over was a slightly more tedious process without air magic. Rino was reluctant to use water magic too. He didn''t want to split his consciousness and feel disgustingly drowned after having his skull split open. One was more than enough, thank you. Hence, the lich designed a mud bridge to roll the corpse over to his little mud hut. The little grey rat had blood matted all over its fur, but Rino thought he would rather be a rat with a split skull than ady with knockers on her chest. Something about females didn''t sit right with him. His allergy to females must have been carried to his new life because Rino abhorred the idea ofdies very much even now. If he recalled correctly, transferring powers to another body required some kind of spell chant. Rino had no clue what sort of spell chants he should use without identally activating holy magic. He also didn''t know if chants in hisnguage would work in this new world. So far, Rino only tried using chantless magic. "Agua!" Rino thought and mustered the mana at the tip of his fingers. The spell formed even with his thoughts alone, and Rino was thrilled to see a bigger water ball form when he thought the spell out in hisnguage. Although he couldn''t feel the mana branches in this body, Rino was certain that it worked. Maybe he could transfer a portion of his new powers to this grey rat''s body and do a timed holy spell chant from a distance to observe the effects of holy magic on a lich''s body. In his little mud hut, Rino scribbled the magic circle he often used for summoning souls for questioning. Here, there was a different problem. Blood was often used as a medium for sacrifice. He didn''t want to do aplete soul transfer and had no blood. How was this going to work? Looking at his current skeleton body, Rino didn''t see any attached hair or pieces of his original body''s self that could be used. Maybe there was something in the grave that would be handy? Diving back down to the grave he crawled out from, Rino saw how looted it was. The coffin wasn''t closed properly, and most of the owner''s valuables were stolen. There was one dull brass ring with an unpolished rock lying in the corner that the grave robbers must have missed or deemed not valuable enough to steal and Rino rejoiced. That was amon Tourmaline! All crystals and gemstones could be used to store mana. If he didn''t have blood to offer, surely, mana could be a suitable substitute for calling out souls and binding them. In any case, it was worth a try. The Tourmaline crystal could not hold a lot of mana, but Rino estimated that it should be sufficient to imbue a small portion of his soul to this grey rat''s body. Once the circle was ready, Rino dug more space underground to work with the ritual circle. The rat''s bodyy in the centre, and he ced the ring in the sacrificial position before he chanted the spell in his mind. Nothing happened for a while, but Rino persevered. A minute passed, then two minutes passed. Still, nothing happened. What was going on? The circle was drawn correctly. The body was present. The ring was in the correct ce. What could it be? The realisation that holy magic might not be part of the lich''s ability struck Rino like lightning. Hurriedly, he chanted the lowest tier of holy magic in his head to see if something would happen. "Licht!" Nothing. No light came from his fingers. No floating ball of light to act as a torch in dark ces. Absolutely nothing. Well, what a failure! Rino looked at the dead rat and wondered if he had dark magic as a lich. While he was no expert, holy magic and dark magic were opposites. If the opposite of ''cure'' was ''curse'', the opposite of ''light'' should be ''dark'' as the basic spell. "Dunkel!" Nothing happened, and Rino felt silly for trying. Thankfully, there was nobody around to judge him for that. The lich tried to recall what he knew about dark magic in his previous life. While holy magic was mostly used to heal and act as a defence, pdins could use holy magic to exorcise and cast divine judgement onto demons. He didn''t know much about dark magic, but there were manyints and cases of dark magicians doing summoning rituals, mass sacrifices, curses that corrupted the environment and general destruction. Of course, certain species whobined dark magic with their bloodline, like subi, could charm people using dark magic. Other demons could use dark magic to teleport through shadows and all sorts of cool tricks that regr elemental and holy magic couldn''t. Hold on! Did that mean dark magic was cooler? Rino couldn''t believe he didn''t pay more attention to dark magic when he was still a court magician. It would have saved him so much trouble! At least now, he had his answer. Holy magic was not part of his vast repertoire. It was a slight pity but nothing he would miss too much now that he was a lich. Dark magic was cooler, and Rino wanted to exploit his new dark magic abilities to live afortable life. "Schattenseil!" he thought, visualising a rope made from shadows as he aimed it at the rat. To his absolute delight, the spell worked, and Rino moved the rat around with his newly discovered shadow tendril spell. It wasn''t telekinesis, but it came close. Were there any limitations to this seemingly basic spell? Rino cast another shadow tendril and moved the rat outside of his shelter. The shadow weakened tremendously under the sun but continued to hold the rat''s body. With a huge sigh, Rino brought the body back in. The sun was truly the enemy of all undead. Why was it so sunny in a graveyard like this? Shouldn''t the abandoned graveyard be a little spookier hidden deep in the woods with lots of fog around? That made a little more sense. For the next few hours, Rino explored many options of dark magic from what he recalled and understood in his previous life. Shadow tendril was a very useful spell, even though it was very limited. It took the lich a while to understand dark magic''s theory. Unlike light that was fuelled by the caster''s mana source and can be created anywhere, dark magic relied on the external environment to be amplified using a caster''s mana. In short, dark magic used the negative thoughts as energy and borrowed shadows as a medium for manifestation. Rino was able to use dark magic but with many limitations. He simply wasn''t miserable enough for it. However, when he recalled all the crappy things he had to put up with in his previous life, the shadow tendrils grew stronger even under the sunlight. What a convenient discovery! Now, to learn if teleportation was possible. He didn''t want to walk all the way to his new build plot. Rino checked the time. It was still midday. He had plenty of time before sunset to figure this out. Chapter 4 - A Lichs Shadow Dark magic was very limiting in several ways when Rino did not have many resources to work with. For the next few hours, he spent it digging up other peoples graves to salvage what he could for the long trip. There wasn''t much, but he found one good travelling cape that a forgetful grave robber must have left behind, as well as two more rings capable of storing mana. Rino washed the dirty cape with water magic, stealing an intact coffin to use as a bucket. Shadow tendrils were dependent on the size of the shadows avable around the castor''s area. As strange as it sounded, the shadow tendrils were like stretched out dough. They could only stretch so far before it broke. Without knowing the distance limit, Rino overestimated his ability a few times and had to recollect the things he wanted to drag over to his small mud hut. Recollecting bigger items was okay, but when he dropped a pile of fragile bones, he lost a few more pieces than he initially found. It was annoying. Thankfully, the sun was so strong that his travelling cape dried quickly. Rino spent the two hours waiting for it to dry, polishing his rings and charging them with mana. There wasn''t much around, and he didn''t want his bony toes to get stuck in weird things, so the lich started weaving loose strands of grass together. A make-shift sandal was better than going barefoot. It was almost near dusk when Rino was finally ready. He put on the cape, sandals and rings. After wrapping the grey rat''s dead body in some tattered cloth he tore from some disturbed corpse, he tucked it into the small hollow space in his skull and started his long walk. The Gods sighed in relief from above as Rino finally started his journey, walking in the direction the arrow pointed him to. As the lich walked, he collected small stones and ced them in his poorly made pouch. In case he was attacked, he needed a way to defend himself. A magician''s greatest weakness was physical attacks and close-rangebat. Not having a voice was terrible. Rino wished there was some way to project his thoughts into words. Maybe if he thought hard enough, the words he wanted to say could echo through his magic. Since it was a long walk with nobody to bother him, Rino wasn''t afraid to attempt even the silliest ideas. The people who judged him couldn''t do anything either. They had to deal with it. This was his golden ticket for a second chance at a better life! "Can''t someone stop him?" a Goddessined and moved away from the reflecting pond. Another God appeared miserable and shook his head as Rino continued mental projections. Only, he was sending it the wrong way. If only they haven''t used all their divine powers for the day to send him so many messages. "What should we do to make him shut up?" the suffering Goddess moaned. Thinking fast, the God in charge of this small world decided to alter the daily quest system. "We will give him a reward forpleting the daily tasks. He wanted to have a voice projection skill, right?" The Goddess nodded. "Dark magic for newbies or something!" "Teleportation!" another quipped, and the God in charge frowned. "We will give him Projection first. Hopefully, he shuts up after this." Rino, who was happy to explore different methods on his journey, wasn''t expecting a new notification. The daily quest window blurred for a moment, and there was finally a new line. === Daily Quest #1 Objective: Relocate 5km to the east and 20km to the south. Tutorial here. Reward: Thought Projection Skill. === That reward... wasn''t this too convenient?! Then again, Rino wasn''t going toin. Having a skill so easily from a daily quest system was like reading a grimoire. With his inability to understand this world''snguage, he needed this! As an undead, he felt no physical pain. What better way was there to travel than to use his newly acquired shadow tendrils as a grappling hook to propel himself forward? Unfortunately, it isn''t as easy as he imagined it to be. The first few grapples were fun, but as he picked up speed, Rino found himself flying into the air and possibly crashing on other taller structures he could get away from on time. Thankfully, he had high-speed regeneration. Otherwise, that cracked rib cage would start to be a problem after five consecutive crashes. As the tree fell behind him, Rino got up from the ground. It was amazing how a skeleton as light as him could create a crater on the ground after falling from twenty meters. The rings were still alright, but his newly washed cape was already dirty. What a pity. With only seven more hours before midnight, Rino wondered if he would make it on time. With no way to tell how close he was to his destination, he picked himself up again and formted a new n. Normally, he would be flying using wind magic maniption. However, he was currently terrible at that particr element. The other options were water bubble maniption, earth maniption or dark magic maniption. Teleportation was a handy skill that he didn''t have yet, so that was out. Shadow tendrils were difficult to master, and Rino was not a monkey. He would rather save the time picking himself up from the ground doing it. Besides, he wanted his cape to be clean by the time he got to the new build plot. If he used earth magic maniption, his newly woven grass sandals would not survive the friction. Hence, the wisest option was to risk the soaking wet feeling and put himself into a huge water bubble to roll to his destination. Liches didn''t need to breathe. He should totally abuse this feature. The Gods watched as Rino curled up and sat in his conjured water bubble, letting his magic roll him to where he needed to be after the failed attempt at tree hopping. Speechless, they looked at each other. Was it really so difficult to just walk? Chapter 5 - Hear Me! Rolling in a water ball was fun, even if it wasn''t the trendiest way to travel. Rino was thankful for his lich body. It wouldn''t be possible otherwise. When he reached the designated location, the daily quest window automatically updated itself. Rino grinned. He arrived with hours left to spare. How convenient! === Daily Quest #1 (Complete) Objective: Relocate 5km to the east and 20km to the south. Tutorial here. Reward: Thought Projection Skill. im your reward here. === Rino reached out to touch the screen, and automatically, knowledge flowed into his head. He was right. This was like reading a grimoire. Everything he needed to know, from mana theory to the correct method of execution, was crammed into his head. Rino felt as if he attended an hour-long lecture to master the art of thought projection, even if it onlysted a few seconds in reality. By the end of the experience, the lich finally understood where he went wrong. He had the right theory about projecting thoughts onto mana, but he didn''t set the target focus correctly to project it. In other words, whatever nonsense he thought nobody could hear back then had been entirely heard by the Gods. Jeez! Was there no privacy? If the Gods continued to watch his every move, he might lose more respect for them. Shouldn''t Gods be very busy answering prayers? How could they have so much free time? It was unfair! Without the ability to use divine voice, the Gods watching Rino could only stew in anger at his words. How shameless could a person be? After giving him the ability to learn thought projection, RIno was stillining. He had the perfect body and very advanced magical abilities. Why was this person so ungrateful? They''d never met such a soul before. Actually, scratch that. They met many souls like Rino, but most of those souls are burning in hell. The ex court magician would probably join them too after judgement if the Gods didn''t pull his soul for a forced reincarnation. How hateful! Not knowing what the Gods were thinking, Rino decided that the best way to pass his remaining time was to test his new skill. The fun about being a magician is to create new spells and find new ways to use them. He didn''t want to do any actual work, but it would be handy to know what he could do with his abilities. Back then, he was lied to by the king, who told him bing a court magician would give him ess to the most research facilities and books in the empire. He could bury himself in experiments all day. Thinking back, Rino could only me himself for being young and naive. Now that he was older, more dead and a lot wiser, Rino had to make full use of this time that he didn''t have to work. Thought projection magic... it was new to him. Dark magic was really fun! There were a few ways to use thought projection magic. It worked like telepathy mostly, but it could also create soundwaves. In either case, Rino was curious about only one thing. This could make or break him, but it was the only way. He had to find out. Calming himself down so that his knobby knees wouldn''t hit each other from nervousness, Rino recalled the steps to creating soundwaves. He didn''t know if he could alter sound waves to make it sound like what he wanted. The Gods only heard his soul''s voice but his body''s voice... he wanted to know really badly. umting mana to the head where Rino stored the little grey rat, he gathered his focus there and started casting a mana web outwards in all directions. This should be the listening range. Rino didn''t need anyone else to hear the voice in case it turned out the wrong gender. This was for his ears only. When the mana web was ready, Rino projected the thought in his mind as hard as he could. "ALL HAIL THE IDLE LIFE!" The force of his thought projection was so strong that the ground around him shook from the massive sound waves created. Even Rino wasn''t ready for it and felt dazed from the sheer volume. This was the power of thought projection? Even better, the deaf would be able to hear him despite the physical limitations. Thought projection works directly into the mind and not only through soundwaves. How fantastic was this?! Even more thrilled, Rino loved how his voice sounded like an ancient old magician. It was intimidating without thought andmanded fear. This was the voice of someone who dominated and conquered. It was a voice that said "HEAR ME" from the top, and everyone would have to listen. How wonderful! In fact, Rino started thinking about the practical uses for this soundwave thought projection. In normal circumstances, it was only used tomunicate. In unusual circumstances, he might use it to confuse his enemies and attack them. The mana web can be sent underground. Imagine causing an earthquake with just his thought projected voice. That would bepletely redundant as he had earth magic but having alternatives made everything cooler. The Gods watched as the crazy lich started to test his newly acquired projection skill in different ways. It was amusing for a while, but they remembered how long it took Rino to make his way over and became grumpy. "Couldn''t he have started travelling a little faster? He made us wait the whole day!" the Goddessined. Her name was Stephanie, and she was in charge of the small world''s repoption. Ark, the God in charge of the small world''s life cycle, sighed. As the project manager, he was to me for choosing Rino of every other soul from the exploded world. After that incident, he was demoted along with three other Gods to regrow a small world to build their divine reserves back up. If they failed, they would no longer be Gods. It was a serious matter. Ace, the God in charge of the small world''s prayer, looked glum. The poption here was so miserable as humans have just been introduced. They still lived very primitively and had no actual kingdoms. As such, Rino''s first and final task was to build this world''s very first kingdom with the knowledge he had from his previous luxurious world. He was somewhat tired of listening to the prayers of making rain or giving someone a prettier wife. "Don''tin," Phil told Ace. He was the God in charge of this small world''sndscaping. "I foresee a resource issue in the future because a certain project manager wanted a huge and grand kingdom. Look at our boy. Does it look like he would build an actual hut, much less a kingdom?" The four Gods looked at Rino from the reflecting pond and sighed simultaneously. They really chose the wrong person. Even with the daily quest system, this project might take several centuries toplete if they were lucky. Rino was not the easiest reincarnate to work with. Chapter 6 - First Brick As Rino toyed with his new abilities, time passed very quickly. Midnight came once more, and this time, Rino received a new daily quest. === Daily Quest #2 Objective: Build 10 bricks. Tutorial here. === Staring at the screen for a while, Rino dismissed it. Then, he resummoned it and looked at the screen once more. Wasn''t there one very important line missing? Oh well, the Gods probably forgot about it. Maybe they will updateter. Until they do, he was just going to have fun testing the limits of how far his shadow tendrils could stretch before they broke. If one shadow tendril wasn''t strong enough, ten would do the trick. For hours until the sun rose, Rino yed to his heart''s content like a child who was given a new toy. The Gods watched him impatiently. That b*stard... how could he look at the screen and ignore it so quickly? The sun was almost up. Was he going to waste a day away just like this? "Do something!" Stephanie urged, and Ark rolled his eyes. "What do you want me to do?" he asked. Even if they were Gods, it was pitiful to call themselves almighty. The lich in the small world really knew how to toy with them. From the reflection pond, the four demoted Gods watched the lich clumsily attempt to use dark magic. Ace was the first to find this strange. "Didn''t you say he was the best candidate because of how well he used magic from the previous world?" Ark nodded. "He is. Didn''t you see him use earth and water magic earlier with such proficiency? It was chantless." Phil raised a brow. Ace had a point. The lich wasn''t acting like a very experienced magician when it came to dark magic. He spent a very long time in the mud hut earlier doing strange things away from the eyes of Gods. Could it be that as a court magician, Rino did not know anything about dark magic? "Do you think he knows what he is doing?" Stephanie asked after watching Rino trip over his shadow tendrils for the third time after weaving the shadows together to make a sturdier jump rope. ording to Rino, he was trying to test the strength of shadow tendrils and how many are required to make a firm telekic rope. As the sun rose, the Gods continued to observe Rino, who soon discovered the importance of his ragged cape. Sunlight was fatal to many undead. For liches, even they burned under the sun. However, if the sun did not reach him, Rino would not catch fire. His exposed bones caught on fire as soon as the sun peeked from the horizon. However, the cape sheltered most of him, and Rino realised that it did not hurt where the cape covered. He needed clothes! Unfortunately, everywhere he looked in his new location, there was only an empty field surrounded by forest with ake deeper within the forest from the direction he came from. If his knowledge from the previous life served right, this location was perfect for building a huge settlement because of the natural resources avable. There was a clean water supply, forest for firewood near the kingdom and very fertile soil for farming where he stood. Apart from his vast knowledge about magic and other useless things, Rino waspletely helpless when it came to life skills. He didn''t know how to weave cloth or sew clothes. Even his rock pouch was starting toe apart. How scandalous! Thedies would probably line up to see his rocks drop. Rino snorted at his bad joke. Thankfully, his uptight butler wasn''t around to admonish him for cracking tasteless jokes. So what if he was a courtier with a rank? He wasn''t born a nobility. Rules didn''t mean anything to him. His nickname as the court''s wild horse didn''te without reason. Rino was the only person in the entire kingdom who knew how to frustrate the king to death. Some people imed he behaved like a ruffian in court on purpose just to have a legitimate excuse to experiment with resurrection magic when the king died from rage. Others said that he acted this way only because he could revive himself with magic even if the king ordered him for execution. It was a little sad to remember how people thought of him as the devil. In honesty, he only behaved that way because he wasn''t properlypensated for all his work. Receiving thanks wasn''t a payment. Receiving a house, a carriage, gold or horses was considered payment. When the Gods heard Rino''s thoughts, they quickly realised what they did wrong. Ark had forgotten to include a reward for the second daily quest. "Hurry up and add it in, you idiot!" Stephanie screeched, and Ark red at her. He was the project leader. Why did she have to call the shots?! Phil and Ace started to make a list while the siblings argued. Having siblings work together on the same team was akin to a nightmare. Sadly, they didn''t have much choice. Rather than waiting for the unreliable siblings, Ace and Phil learned to move ahead once they had a direction. "Here," Phil presented a list of reward ideas that Ace helped ssify by order of importance. "We think that Rino might like these rewards, but we need to give them to him by order of work done. Ten bricks really isn''t a lot, so giving him a book about dark magic basics would be too much. We should give him some sewing skills instead of giving him a new set of clothes. He has to learn to work for what he wants." Ace looked over at the forest. "There are silkworms and cotton in this area. If he wants a tutorial of that, we can arrange it as a side quest for his learning." Ark looked over the list and agreed. For someone like Rino, who didn''t want to work without rewards, the best way to motivate him without spoiling him was to give him the skills but make him work for what he wants to get. For the second time that day, Rino received another notification from the daily quest system. === Daily Quest #2 Objective: Build 10 bricks. Tutorial here. Reward: Textile Crafting Skills. Side Quest avable upon skill unlock. === Now, they were talking! Rino quickly smashed the tutorial button and followed the instructions step by step. In no time at all, the first earth brick was ready and baking under the hot sun. Now that hepleted the first brick, there were nine more to go. Easy peasy! Chapter 7 - First Side Quest Rino felt that he did the daily quest in record time. After creating all ten bricks using earth and water magic, Rino left them to dry for a few hours under the sun as he tried to take a nap. Then, he turned them over to dry the other side using shadow tendrils, only to discover that liches cannot sleep. He was simply physically incapable of that. The Gods above rejoiced at finding something they knew Rino would work for. As strange as it sounded, Ark had a feeling the troublesome lich might do his daily quests properly if they gave him a reward that allowed him to sleep peacefully without interruptions for a fixed number of hours if hepleted his quest. In his little mud hut, Rino shuddered. He suddenly felt uneasy, as if someone was plotting behind his back. Yet, the lich dismissed it. Textile Crafting Skills! The things he could do with it were limitless! It was even better than receiving pants from the Gods. If they gave him clothing article by article, Rino might have beenpletely at their mercy. Thankfully, the Gods weren''t very smart, not that he was going to let them know. Up above, Stephanie bristled. What did the lich mean by not so smart? Have they fallen into his trap after all?! "Whose bright idea was it to give him skills as a reward instead of items? Now, he''s just going to skive on us!" Ace looked away, and Phil felt wronged. Ark quickly intervened. His hot-headed sister was sometimes too unreasonable and quick to me others. "Steph, it''s not their fault. If rewards do not work, we can always do it the other way around. Aren''t you good at designing punishments?" At that, the Goddess of life cycle paused. Her eyes lit up, and a very demonic grin etched itself on her face. That''s right! "You reminded me!" she gave Ark a hug. "I will design the random divine punishment system for the daily quest system now. Only use it when he starts failing toplete the daily quests. I will make sure to get back at him for everything bad he said about us earlier!" The petty Goddess left them alone to design her punishment system. Ace excused himself after seeing that the prayers were starting to pile up again. Only Phil and Ark were left by the reflecting pool. "Should I redesign this area so that he has to split off in two directions during the side quest for different materials?" Phil asked. Ark thought about it. He might as well do that. Rino shouldn''t prioritise a side quest more than a main daily quest. It should be better to give the tutorial to him in parts to hook him for a little longer. "You do that. I will design the side quest system," Ark told Phil, who agreed and left to redesign thendscape. Ark watched over Rino while plotting the multi-part side quest that can only be unlocked upon each sessfulpletion of the daily quest. If Rino thought he could outsmart the Gods more than once, he was sorely mistaken. As the Gods busied away, Rino tossed and turned. The sun made him feel ufortable, so he dug up some earth and hollowed some space in the ground to rest in. His cape was dirtied once again, but more importantly, he couldn''t sleep. What was this nonsense?! Toplete the quest, Rino had to wait for the bricks to dry under the sun. They were a mixture of soil, sand, dried grass and small stones that were put into a mould he fashioned from earth magic. The Gods wanted him to make ten bricks for the daily quest, but there were no mentions about how they should be done. Technically, he should be done with the making process. These bricks would take days to drypletely before they can be fired, ording to the tutorial. It wasn''t his fault the quest was impossible to finish within a day. He did whatever he could. As Ark designed his side quest, he realised that Rino was right. The quest would take longer than a day toplete. Seeing that the side quest he was designing would span over several days while the bricks dried, the project managing God decided to give Rino a chance. While the mud bricks dried, Rino heard a new notification. The Gods must be really free to continuously update the system. It was already the third time that day, and it was only beginning to be evening. What did they want? === Side Quest #1 Objective: Locate all textile material-gathering spots. Tutorial here. Reward: Basic Fabric Crafting Recipe. === Rino stared at the new window for a long time. Didn''t the Gods say that he would only be rewarded with the skill uponpleting that daily quest? Side quests were only unlocked upon the daily quest''spletion. Checking the daily quest, Rino realised that it was still marked as iplete. He couldn''t unlock the Textile Crafting Skill yet, but they were offering him recipes already. What was the catch? Although he was suspicious, Rino didn''t let that stop him from preparing to leave. He should seize the chance when he has it¡ªanything to make his life easier. There wasn''t much to take with him except for the cape so that he didn''t get burned by the sun. Rino took onest look at the mud bricks and nodded. It didn''t look like it was going to rain, but he should probably still elevate them and build a shelter just in case. The worst that could happen now was his wasted day of waiting for them to dry. Rino wanted the Textile Crafting Skill fast. No dy was eptable. He wanted to make something to cover his bare pelvic. Even skeletons should be given modesty. Ark watched Rino prepare to leave and checked on Phil''s progress anxiously. "Is it ready?" The God in charge ofndscaping nodded. "As you requested. Do you think he will be happy to know that it''s a four-part side quest with many errand-running? You just want him to be familiar with the area by doing this quest, right?" Ark nodded. Regardless, there was no such thing as a free lunch in this world. Aszy as Rino was, there were ways to make azy mule work. All the farmer had to do was find the right method of motivating the stubborn mule. If the carrot didn''t work, the stick would do the trick. Chapter 8 - Rat Knife There were four locations scattered all around the building plot. If he were an ordinary person, the journey would not bepleted in a day. Enthusiasm was good fuel for determination, and Rino found himself making serious ns to cover every base. There was one main problem. He didn''t want to walk all the way to these four ces again once he had the crafting skills and recipes. He was busy trying to bezy, so Rino refused to do it manually. Those who were given the gift of magic should fully use their talents to make life better. Although Rino could no longer use holy magic, he was still a rather powerful mage. There were two things he needed to create magic circles for teleportation pads. The first was a high control over mana to create the waypoint, and the second was a transferring medium. As a court magician, he only set up teleportation pads at the church''s or king''s request. The medium the empire used wasn''tmon. Mithril was a very rare type of processed metal that only the King had control over. Rino couldn''t possibly replicate that in this world where magic and technology were both backdated. Thankfully, the map he was given in the side quest also indicated importantndmarks. While all four locations he had to find were far from each other, they were still within the same forest. It was easy to build a small teleportation pad from a simr material readily avable in the forest. Ark and Phil could not understand why Rino was not heading directly to the fourndmarks indicated on the map. If he used his unique travelling method, he would be able to reach them all within hours. Instead, Rino packed up and was currently trekking through the forest. He appeared to be looking for something, but they couldn''t understand his intentions. The good thing about living in a world with backdated history was the number of natural resources avable in the wild, undiscovered by anyone else. Back in his old world, honey could no longer be harvested from wild hives in the forest because the woodsmen kept cutting the hives faster than the bees could build them. Hence, the kingdom passed the order that only honey harvested from bee farms could be packaged and sold in marketces. Of course, wild honey and farmed honey tastes different. Rino found it a pity that he couldn''t eat wild honey with his morning toasts after the order was passed. It was one of the things that the lich would never forget. Here, Rino scouted for the oldest tree. The more ancient it was, the better. Most people wouldn''t think of it as valuable until muchter, when magicians discovered their ability to store nature magic. He was looking for a gem made from fossilised tree resin called Amber. It was said tost a very long time, and if preserved well, Rino was certain this medium would not lose to Mithril. After passing several gnarly trees, Rino found what he was looking for in an ancient tree that had once been struck by lightning. The aged tree survived even as it was split in two with charred fossilised parts. The resin that oozed from this tree hardened and turned into a kind of gemstone over the years. The oddly shaped amber growing on this tree was as big as a mirror, and Rino rejoiced. He could use this to create four teleporting pads and still have plenty of spares for future uses. As the amber can continue to grow if it was still attached to the tree, Rino only cut the portion he needed with an advanced water slicer spell. Then, he carefully sliced them into smaller pieces that fit into his bony hand and wondered how he should carve the magic circle into them as he imbued them with his mana. Amber was softer than most gemstones and can be cut easily with a heated knife or scratched by something sharp. Without tools here, Rino could only improvise. What was the next best thing to metal for a knife? He looked down at his hands and pondered. That''s it! The answer was literally right in front of him and even on him. Bone! So far, Rino did not see any animals. It was slightly sad, but he was d he brought the grey little rat''s corpse along with him. He never thought that he would repurpose its corpse into a tool, but it was what it was. He didn''t need another spare body now and had no idea how to use dark magic to do it yet, so this was probably the best decision to make. Rino retrieved the wrapped body from his skull. He had a dull sense of smell, but the stench of rotting meat was very distinct. The lich apologised briefly for not giving the rat a proper burial after its death. Instead, he was going to turn it into a weapon for the greater purpose. It was easy to get rid of all the rotting flesh from the bones. The only decent bones that could be fashioned into a small carving knife were the spine and tail. Everything else was too small and fragile. Rino got to work once he pulled the bones he wanted, separating them from the parts he had no use for and washed them thoroughly. He found a rough rock to work with and slowly filed the bones into the shape he wanted. There were moving parts to the bone, so Rino worked carefully. He made the spine into a knife that could slice and the tail into a knife that could carve. All in all, he was satisfied with the rough product and quickly took advantage of the setting sun to carve the magic circles onto all four amber pieces. Rino carefully tucked his precious rat bone knives into his poorly made stone pouch together with the amber pieces when that was done. It was finally time to locate the four resource sites with preparationsplete and set up his teleportation pads. Rino couldn''t wait to unlock his first crafting recipe. For some reason, crafting recipes reminded him of alchemical discoveries. It got the inventor in him worked up as Rino curled into a ball and sped off in his water bubble to the hemp site. Chapter 9 - Best Material For Underwear
The first location Rino rolled into was the cotton tree area. It was evident from how many white fluffs were floating in the air even before he arrived. They would make very good pillow stuffing, and the lich wasted no time finding a good location to set up his teleportation pad. By now, the sun had gone down, and Rino didn''t need to keep his cape hood up all the time. It was a pity he couldn''t carry cotton back without drenching thempletely in his water mobile. Fortunately, it would be an easy trip back once all four teleportation pads were functional. Rolling to the x field, Rino realised how strange it was. x usually grew in open areas, and the forest wasn''t exactly an open area. Yet, the x clung around the shrubs in clusters. This was definitely another world. The x flowers were usually blue, but these flowers were pink. Rino shrugged. x was good for linen, and as long as the cloth did not turn out pink, it was all good. Although it wasn''t the mostfortable material to wear, linen made goodhousehold items. He could definitely use some curtains to keep the sun out during the day or even a new pouch to hold his things. With experience, Rino didn''t have to mull over the design on the teleportation pad this time. Combining his earth and water elements, Rino used nature magic to grow a new structure to hold the amber in ce, marking the centre of the teleportation pad. He moved to the next location, which was a little further away from the cotton and x. Rino knew that some nobles with too much time and money on their hand in the other world liked this nt a lot for a different purpose. Initially used for medicine, these nobles eventually got addicted and started growing their own hemp fields. The lich didn''t know what was so good about smoking hemp, but doctors imed it was a good pain reliever among other effects andponents. Hemp grew very quickly and was essible to the poor very easily on top of being very useful. The empire struggled to control hemp production but not here. Rino thought about what he could do with hemp. Just about everything indoors was made from hemp. He remembered the papers he wrote in, the socks he wore, the nket he slept under and even his pant strings. Themoners often wore shoes woven by hemp. While it wasn''t as warm andfortable as leather, it was something most people could afford. Hemp was a necessity. Rino was happy it was also here in this world. Now that he thought about it, without hemp, their archers wouldn''t be able to draw their bowstrings either. He finally understood why the king was so vexed, thinking of a solution. To increase taxes on hemp was akin to cutting one''s flesh to stave off hunger. Restricting hemp will also lead to riots as basic necessities couldn''t be met for clothes. Increasing the price of hemp is also not a good solution. As addiction slowly festered within the city, Rino was now certain that his decision to build that mana bomb was right. There was no hope for humanity. It was all just going to rot. The water ball rolled past dense trees, and the scenery started to change after two hours. Rino might have a dull sense of smell, but even he could tell that the air was lighter here, and the ground didn''t smell as earthy. Eventually, Rino arrived at the hemp field and gawked. Unlike the hemp nts he was familiar with in his original world that reached only his shoulder, the hemp nts in this world were gigantic! They towered over him three times the height of a regr man. How did anyone harvest this? Seeing Rino''s reaction, Phil gave Ark a hi-five. It was a good idea to make the most useful nt the most difficult one to harvest. Rino had to work harder than this to outsmart them. Seeing how this might be his first uphill battle, Rino decided to let it go for now. There was no point in worrying for tomorrow. This was his future self''s issue. Now, he had to build the third teleportation pad if he didn''t want to be cursed by his future self, who had enough to handle on his te. With three locations found, there was only one more location to find. Honestly, Rino could not understand why there would be a specific ce to find silkworms for harvesting. Should these little buggers be everywhere munching on leaves until they sleep? So far, everything looked normal in this world, and Rino yawned. It was still considered early for him. There wasn''t a teleportation pad back at his temporary abode where he built a little something for his bricks, but it wasn''t an issue. All Rino had to do after setting up the teleportation pad at thest location was to jump back to the cotton ce and roll his way back. He might have to grab more amberter if he wanted to make a teleportation gate at his temporary home base. In the darkness of the forest, Rino sensed something ominous and paused. He cancelled the water ball spell and proceeded the rest of his way on foot cautiously. What was that noise? It sounded as if a tree had fallen. No, to be more precise, it was uprooted. Was it a monster? As he walked towards the location the map pointed out, Rino saw a huge shadow move in front of him. There was a huge pit, and in that pit, many giant worms were moving, munching on the tree thrown in it. Rino wanted to gag at how disgusting they looked, tearing away at the tree. However, he understood at once what this was. A monster nest. Something that he hated even when he was still a court magician. Subjugating monsters only led to more side effects. With a heavy sigh, Rino carefully walked beneath the shadows of trees to avoid getting spotted by the adult moth monsters. Thankfully, there was a safe spot behind a huge boulder, and Rino dug a huge space beneath the boulder with a hole justrge enough for him to crawl from. He quickly reinforced the soil around the boulder and hollowed the insides to dig stairs and a pit big enough for him to stand in. By the time he hollowed a space beneath the boulder, the ce felt rather homey, even if it was a little stuffy. Not wasting more time, Rino quickly used nature magic and grew some huge roots to hold his teleportation amber in ce to set up thest pad. With that, his job was done. Ping! === Side Quest #1 (Completed) Objective: Locate all textile material-gathering spots. Tutorial here. Reward: Basic Fabric Crafting Recipe. im your reward here. === Rino wasn''t going to wait. He imed the reward at once and looked at the recipe needed to make the mostfortable pair of underwear in the world - silk! Chapter 10 - Suspicious Reward There was still time for Rino to kill after his side quest waspleted. The reward gave him a Basic Fabric Crafting recipe for all four fabric materials avable in the area. However, Rino wasn''t sure if he was able to produce them with no prior experience. They seemed rather difficult to work with. Thankfully, there was an update to the daily quest by the time he finished setting up the teleportation pad at his temporary home base. The bricks were drying nicely, and it did not rain. === Daily Quest #2 (20% in progress) [Chain Quest] Objective: Build 10 bricks. Tutorial here. Reward: Textile Crafting Skills. Side Quest avable upon skill unlock. === Rino looked at the update progress bar and the new category. Chain quest? Wasn''t this a DAILY quest system? When did chain quest be a thing? Did the Gods take inspiration from multi-part side quests? Or were they simply terrible at nning daily tasks? Hearing Rino''s inner thoughts, Ark couldn''t help but want to cuss. The God in charge of this small world didn''t need to be told for his sloppy management. How did Rino find out so quickly? Beside him, Stephanie and Ace studied the lich''s newly built teleportation pads. They were impressed by how resourceful this candidate was. Ark''s decision to pull a soul from the destroyed world paid off. As expected of the best magician in thest world. Yet, they had to admit. All geniuses were a little touched in the head. Rino was a very difficult individual to work with, even though there was no doubting his skills. Rino sighed. It was now daytime, and he didn''t have a lot to do. The side quest hasn''t updated itself. Maybe the Gods thought he would take a longer time to locate all four materials and did not have enough time to prepare a new side quest for him. Either way, thezy lich wasn''t too worried. He needed to wait a total of five days before these bricks dried, so there wasn''t anything to do. Ping! Just as he thought aboutzing around, Rino heard a new notification and checked the window. There was a new side quest. === Side Quest #2 Objective: Gather the materials. Cotton - 0/20 pods x - 0/100 stalks Hemp - 0/500 stems Silk - 0/5 meters Tutorial here. Reward: Unlock location for an undiscovered mine. === The first thing that caught Rino''s attention was the reward. Unlock the location of an undiscovered mine? He couldn''t help but be sceptical. What if this undiscovered mine was a dud without any good minerals or gems? He wasn''t going to be so easily fooled. All four Gods watching Rino from the reflecting pond felt a chill. How did he know?! "Did you identally put the name of the mine?" Stephanie quickly shot a re at her brother, who shook his head. "No mention about what kind of resource it contained. How did he find out?" Ark scratched the back of his head. On the other side, Phil remained quiet. Initially, they wanted to let Rino have ess to the metal and gem mine, but Ace argued that it would cause dispute with the dwarves and humans who were already monopolising it. It was still too early for Rino to find out about other races. There wasn''t even a kingdom name to introduce himself as a representative of to convince others to move over and live with him. Four nervous Gods waited to see Rino''s reaction to the reward. Would he bite this bait? The sun left the horizon, and the weather started to feel hotter. Yet, RIno remained in his little mud shack, unmoving. He weighed the options in a high-speed calction that not even the Gods listening to his thoughts could follow. After a long time, the lich concluded that there was a 73% chance that the Gods were trolling him. Even if this was an undiscovered mine, it wouldn''t be a very valuable one. However! There was usually a reason behind their actions. So far, their series of daily quests and even side quests were targeting towards making him create certain things. They would rather equip him with skills and knowledge to make his underwear than drop him one from the quest rewards. That meant one of two things. One, the Gods were poor and stingy. Two, the Gods had no ability to interfere with the world in a material manner. Personally, Rino believed it to be a little of both. When the Gods spying on Rino heard his conclusion, they had different reactions from turning red to looking away or coughing awkwardly. The lich wasn''t wrong. They were very low on divinity and had to conserve their powers. Sending him material rewards was possible, but it took more divinity than teaching him a skill. However, they weren''t going to correct Rino''s misunderstanding here. It was better for him to not expect any material rewards from them. Noon was the hottest time of the day and also the time that would normally make the undead feel the weakest. However, Rino appeared unaffected. His enthusiasm washed away all traces of weakness despite the strong sunlight. Even if that undiscovered mine didn''t contain metal or gemstone, it had to at least contain something useful! Thankfully, the teleportationwork was set up and fully functional. It was not as convenient as the shadow hopping skill, but Rino wasn''tining. Teleportation pads were useful for teleporting not only people but things as well. Unlike a teleportation spell that only teleports a person or people and things in direct contact with them, the teleportation tform acts as a heavy cargo lift. Rino could load up as many items as he could on a tform before sending everything over in one trip. That way, there was no need to make multiple trips. First stop, cotton. It was the easiest after all. However, Rino wasn''t silly. He didn''t like having to make so many trips. If he simplypleted the quest and collected the bare minimum, these annoying Gods would create a new one in the future and ask him to go for more when a new project came. The lich was azy person. He didn''t want to do it. Hence, he was going to hoard everything, as much as this empty field could hold in one trip! Chapter 11 - Storage Solution One trip... Two trips... Thirteen tripster, Rino realised he had a problem. There was no more space to kick his new haul, but already, the floor was out of space. Apart from the brick drying station and little mud shack, everywhere else the eye could see was covered in either cotton, x or huge stalks of hemp. He didn''t have enough hemp toplete the quest yet, but he was already out of space. There was no need to think of what thisndscape would look like with his silk haul. Clearly, Rino overestimated the side quest''s quota. When he collected twenty pods of cotton, that itself made one trip. He had to make one trip for the x, which was great because his overall haul was about three hundred stalks. However, collecting giant hemp might be an issue. To not damage the stem that he might need, he could only teleport four or five nts at a time. He didn''t know which part was useful, so Rino uprooted everything. "Side Quest." === Side Quest #2 Objective: Gather the materials. Cotton - 20/20 pods x - 300/100 stalks Hemp - 57/500 stems Silk - 0/5 meters Tutorial here. Reward: Unlock location for an undiscovered mine. === Rino looked at the mess around. Barely 10% of his hemp collection quest wasplete, but already, he couldn''t see the ground. This was bad. He had to build something to keep all the materials. However, he was also feelingzy to make space. Was there a way he could simply chuck things further? The lich studied the area. Cotton and x could remain where they were. The hemp was piling up around his mud hut and brick drying station. They helped to block some of the sunlight, so Rino didn''t bother moving them. It served a purpose, or so he assumed. However, it would be too ridiculous to continue kicking over four hundred more hemp nts on this mud hut. The poorly built structure wouldn''t hold under all that weight. With that much hemp, Rino should be building a hemp forest. With a somewhat reluctant shrug, Rino gave up. There was no way around this. Even if he moved the teleportation pad to toss hemp all over this field, he would run into bigger issues at theter stage of not being able to find his materials or have enough room to move around or build structures. His future self would want him deader than undead, so Rino had to think of a better temporary solution. So far, he had earth, water and fire magic at his disposal. It might be just about the right time to test the limits of his fire magic now. If one couldn''t go up or sideways anymore, the only logical solution was to go downwards. Hence, Rino did just that and dug a huge pit after making an earth wall to keep his stray materials outside. Then, he tested his affinity with fire. Without needing to chant, a small me danced on the tip of his ivory finger. The me swirled and followed his finger movement without dy, and Rino was pleased. Looks like he was still quite the fire whisperer in this life as well. There was no problem with control. What about power? Injecting a huge surge of mana into that small me, Rino watched with amazement at how beautiful it transformed. The me ballooned five times his height in the air and became a brilliant shade of bluish-white. Unfortunately, without a sense for pain, heat or a good nose, Rino realised a tad toote that his salvaged cap was burning. The ck fabric burned to ashes, scattering in the wind, and Rino only removed it on time to save that pouch tied to his pelvic bone. Thankfully not all was lost, although another issue quickly arose. He was now on a different kind of fire without the cape''s protection under the sun. From above, the Gods watched Rino hop around in pain before slipping from his teleportation pad and falling into the chaotic mess of materials he harvested. Stephanie winced when she heard a crack. That had to hurt! Rino''s leg was jutting at an odd angle. Even without muscles or tendons, that thing does not look okay. She was right. When Rino finally got onto his feet, he quickly realised that his bnce felt off and tumbled back onto the soft soil. Looking down, he saw his dislocated right leg. Thankfully, the limb hasn''t fallen off. If it weren''t for his passive high-speed regeneration skill, Rino''s leg would probably not remain intact from the fall. It was a rather humiliating moment for Rino, who wasn''t used to being naked. He felt too exposed, and the pouch swinging from his pelvic bone didn''t make him feel better. If anything, that looked like a poor imitation for something he wished he had to prove his gender. The need for clothes never felt more urgent than now. After his leg was fully healed, Rino studied the hemp nts. If he stacked them nicely, one on top of another, they would form a very lovely sheltered pathway to keep him out of the sun. Without the cape to protect him from the destructive sunlight, this might be his only way to work. Gathering materials was no longer an option without his cape. Sighing, Rino looked at the earth wall. Better get started on that storage solution before nightfall. He had a lot to do and an undiscovered mine to im. One by one, Rino used magic to arrange the hemp nts like a house of cards, using earth magic to anchor their roots in position firmly over his working spot. After he did that, the lich started cutting the hemp nts into long rectangr pieces that resembled nks and ced them in a campfire formation, tall enough to rival his wall of earth beside the teleportation pad. The Gods were highly impressed by his innovation and efficiency. They watched Rino use fire magic to bake the wood from all sides while encouraging airflow with his minimal wind magic abilities. The wood took a few hours to dry, just a few hours before the sun set fully. Rino worked quickly and hardened the surface of his huge storage pit with earth magic. Then, he went back to the x field to pick up heaps of dried twigs and wild grass until there was enough to make several bushels. The dried grass and twigs were used to line the base and side of his storage space before the baked wood was pped onto them and cemented firmly with a huge mana st to hammer it into the earth. Magic simplified the building process more than what the Gods expected, but even so, it took Rino almost all day and many of his gathered hemp. The storage pit did not have a roof, but Rino wasn''t worried. There wasn''t a single cloud in the sky tonight when he looked up. The storage solution waspleted all in a day''s work. Satisfied, Rino checked his side quest log once more. === Side Quest #2 Objective: Gather the materials. Cotton - 20/20 pods x - 300/100 stalks Hemp - 14/500 stems Silk - 0/5 meters Tutorial here. Reward: Unlock location for an undiscovered mine. === It was as he expected. Using so much hemp, Rino had to go collect more. He looked over at the cotton and x pile. For now, those can remain where they were. Hemp was too useful. Maybe he should collect more if he could. It was an excellent building material, and he still needed to build more shelter ways now that he did not have a cape. No better time to start his mass deforestation like the present! Chapter 12 - Silk Heist As the saying goes, when one problem is resolved, another would surface. Rino should have known that the uphill battle was only starting when he built that storage solution. Gathering five hundred hemp nts might be tedious, but it was manageable and somewhat mind-numbing once the initial difficulty was ovee. The lich lost count of how many times he had to jump through the teleportation pads and kick hemp nts into neat stacks in his newly built storage pit but eventually, this was how much he collected. === Side Quest #2 Objective: Gather the materials. Cotton - 20/20 pods x - 300/100 stalks Hemp - 601/500 stems Silk - 0/5 meters Tutorial here. Reward: Unlock location for an undiscovered mine. === Happy with his surplus and three more hours left until midnight, he only had to collect five meters of silk from the monster silkworms. That in itself became a problem. "Does he know that side quests do not have a time limit?" Ace asked after noticing how stressed the lich looked. Ever since he arrived in the small world, Rino had always done things his way without a care for consequences. He even dyed finding this new location for building the kingdom until the veryst moment while exploring his new dark magic abilities. While Stephanie and Ark might find him annoying, Rino was starting to grow on Ace. Seeing the lich gnaw on his fingers made the God in charge of prayers feel ufortable. "He will figure it out in due time," Ark replied, and Ace remained silent. They wouldn''t be wasting a lot of divinity to send just one message to inform Rino about how the side quest system worked. However, seeing how everyone else in his project team disliked Rino, Ace couldn''t say anything. He just hoped that Rino wouldn''t take unnecessary risks tonight to battle the hatching moths and their parents. Monster moths were nocturnal creatures. The easiest way to harvest their silk was to wait for morning to arrive. There was no real need for Rino to fight the monsters. The Gods didn''t choose a location for the sake of endangering their chosen builder. If they really wanted Rino to die as soon as he was given a new life, they would not have chosen a lich''s body for him. Bing an undead was a unanimous decision because of the perks it provided. It was the best species to entrust their chosen builder with. Unaware of the divided opinions of the Gods watching over him, Rino could only weigh his options. These moth monsters were not difficult to hunt. They were extremely weak to heat and fire, something Rino had the upper hand in. However, it was not a subjugation request this time. In fact, eliminating these monsters would do him more harm than good. The monster nest was very small, and repopting was difficult for these nocturnal creatures. Even if they were huge and terrifying, they only ate nts. It wasn''t as if human lives were endangered. Rino had no right to massacre them. Besides, they were the producers of the best underwear material ever. Why would he do such a dumb thing? The only question now was how he would retrieve the monster silk without rming the adult monster moths or disturb the hatching cocoons. If Rino still had a heart, it would be working overtime without pay right now. Thankfully, he was undead. The most that happened was the uncontroble shaking and sound of his knee knobs knocking into each other. How could he distract the adult monster moths for a long enough time to make a dash for that sweet cocoon silk? Rino thought long and hard. Then, he had an idea. There were many ways to use fire. IF controlled poorly, fire bes the master. If used skillfully, Rino was fire''s master. Moths were drawn towards mes. Surely monster moths would be attracted to it as well, right? In any case, it was worth a shot. Ace watched with bated breath as Rino attempted to smoke the bees while stealing their honey. It was a scummy move but brilliant if executed correctly. He worried over nothing and felt a little silly. Yet, this was one more reason to support Ark''s decision to bring such a troublesome but massively talented person into this small world. Armed with a n, Rino wasn''t afraid. He hopped onto the teleportation pad and moved to the kemp forest, which was the closest point to the monster moth nest. There were preparations to be made. The first thing Rino needed was a good ce to hold a bonfire while not being too far from their nest. The moment the adult moths came to check the bonfire out, he would cancel the fire and rece it with an illusion for a bit before hopping onto the teleportation pad for a mad silk dash. This could be done after the new moths came out of their cocoon. Once he reached the monster moth pit, he would use shadow tendrils to grab pieces of the broken cocoons and pull them back with him to the teleportation pad. They might be too big to fit, but it was alright. Rino would dig a hole with earth magic to toss them down temporarily and seal it up once the cocoon was secured. After that, the lich could leisurely make a tunnel to retrieve the cocoon and expand the space underground as he needed to bring the huge silk bundle back. The n was perfect, but the clock was ticking. Rino hated to be rushed, but there was no use inining now. Nobody was here to listen, and the Gods were unsympathetic. Ace felt slightly bad for Rino, who was working hard toplete this second side quest in the most unusual method. There was no doubt about its guaranteed effectiveness. Rino thought everything out very well and nned ahead. However, it felt a little like bullying Rino, and if Ace didn''t know Ark better, he would use the project manager of being petty. Ark didn''t say anything as he continued to observe Rino. The lich was finally showing his true capability, and the project manager didn''t want to miss a second of this silk heist n. It was the most exciting thing they''ve seen someone pull off since thest world exploded. He was going to savour every single moment. Chapter 13 - Fashionably Tardy Timing was everything. Rino would know it as he set the triggers for the bonfire and illusion. All he needed was for those fat cocoons to start wriggling and crack open. However, nature could not be rushed. All he could do was wait as the clock ticked. Thest time he felt this impatient was when he had to go to the toilet in the middle of the long-winded speech that the King had his ministers conferred on him for his instatement as the first royal court magician. After that experience, Rino vowed to never give or make or ept such a long-winded speech ever again. He didn''t care if the person giving the speech was the king of the empire or a delegate from a foreignnd. Thus, his reputation as a mad genius spread far and wide. Rino didn''t have the chance to confirm who spread that rumour, but he suspected it was an inside job to help the nobles protect their general dignity. He was an earl earned under his own merits but born as amoner. People would rather forget his humble beginnings and call him mad to protect the empire''s reputation for his actions because they couldn''t control him. It made Rino very upset initially, but when he saw how much freedom he had as a mad person, he started using it as an excuse for everything, infuriating the king a lot when the old fart was still alive. No longer checking the time, Rino simply left it up to fate. If these worms didn''t want to start turning into moths, he would simply not execute his n. What can the Gods do if he didn''t make it on time? Fault him? Then he simply wouldn''t work in future. The only reason why he persisted and continued with this was for the material he wanted to cover his loins. A man can be penniless, but he must never be naked! There was a small rustling sound, and Rino quickly shifted to a closer hiding spot. The cocoons were moving! However, they didn''t appear to be very enthusiastic about hatching. Thezy worms were still crawling all over those two huge husks, and Rino wondered if both cocoons would hatch tonight or only one would. There was one that appeared bigger and one that was slightly smaller. The wait was boring even for the Gods as they started to yawn, dozing off asionally. Nobody kept track of the time, and even Ark wondered why they were still sitting around the reflection pond. Then again, there really wasn''t anything much to do in this small world. Apart from slowly recovering their divine powers, the Gods only had Rino to entertain them. There weren''t any cracking noises from the silk cocoons. However, they were shaking a lot more than before, and even the other worms were staying away from them. Rino wanted to grin, but his skeletal face wouldn''t allow it. The adult moths circled around the hatching new moths protectively, so the lich decided that this was the best time to proceed with his n. The spells were triggered, and Rino waited with a bated breath. It was very dark in this forest, so any huge fires nearby could be seen easily. If Rino could see it from his hiding spot under a bush, the adult monster moths would spot it before him too. At first, nothing happened. The adult moths continued to circle the nest protectively, but their natural instincts to fly towards light won over, and soon, Rino was left alone with a nest of hatchlings. Only the smaller cocoon was shaking a lot, and already, the head of the wriggly new moth could be seen. Other worms moved out of their way, not wanting to get squashed. There was no time to lose! Rino jumped into the pit, not caring if his feet sank into disgusting rotting soil. His eyesnded on the shaking cocoon and the huge prize beside it. Carefully so as not to disrupt the worms too much, he sidestepped the half-eaten tree and went straight for the hatchling, tugging at the cocoon with his shadow tendrils. The cocoon''s threads came loose quickly, and Rino was busy throwing meters of silk up the pit using his shadow tendrils. At the same time, he checked on the bigger cocoon that was showing no signs of movement. It would be a huge waste to let this opportunity go. Hence, the greedy lich used more shadow tendrils to unwrap the cocoon. Silk was precious and expensive. He didn''t know much about monster silk, but Rino was thoroughly convinced that there was no difference between monster silk and wild silk after running his fingers over the thick threads. The threads might be a little scratchy, but they were definitely the right feeling he remembered them to be. The naked cocoon husks were left in the pit as Rino gathered thest of his silk. Then, he quickly dumped what he had into the pit by his tiny portal. There was too much silk, but the adult moths were already returning. Rino jumped into the pit with the silk and concealed his heist with poorly gathered earth over his head in ast-minute ditch. The fluttering of monster moth wings above this thinyer of earth could be heard, and Rino yed dead. Maybe they would go away. He didn''t know how long he remained lying there ying possum, but by the time those fluttering sounds went away, the lich felt stiff. As he was underground, Rino paid no heed to the time. The silk threads were rolled into a huge yarn that was about his height. The yarn was then rolled over to the teleportation pad. He honestly thought he would need several trips to bring all the silk he stole back to his base. s, the only thing huge about those cocoons were the husks. There wasn''t a lot of silk thread to gather after he rolled them up. However, this should make him the underwear he wanted and more. When Rino returned, he realised just howte he was toplete that side quest. What he thought would be a three-hour mission took an entire night. The sun was already up, but thankfully, his quest was markedplete while he was busy ying dead. === Side Quest #2 Objective: Gather the materials. Cotton - 20/20 pods x - 300/100 stalks Hemp - 601/500 stems Silk - 226/5 meters Tutorial here. Reward: Unlock location for an undiscovered mine. im your reward here. === He might be tardy, but he did it in a good fashion. At least, that was what Rino thought as he imed his reward. He didn''t haveme excuses like missing the carriage or oversleeping. If anything, he was rather tickled by the thought of an undead ying dead. Up above, Stephanie made a face, and Philughed at the bad joke. Rino was trying too hard to justify his actions, and the Goddess stomped away. She didn''t spend an entire night watching him y dead to make a joke as tasteless as this. Chapter 14 - Go Clayzy Rino looked at his daily quest window that updated itself once more. === Daily Quest #2 (40% in progress) [Chain Quest] Objective: Build 10 bricks. Tutorial here. Reward: Textile Crafting Skills. Side Quest avable upon skill unlock. === Seeing how there was a 20% increase in progress since yesterday, the lich wasn''t in a rush to proceed with any more crazy side quests. However, he was eager to im his reward now that he had plenty of materials. Hemp, in particr, was a very useful resource for building things. He started considering future projects that involved it. But first! Rino had to im that suspicious mystery mine. === Side Quest #2 Objective: Gather the materials. Cotton - 20/20 pods x - 300/100 stalks Hemp - 601/500 stems Silk - 226/5 meters Tutorial here. Reward: Unlock location for an undiscovered mine. im your reward here. === The moment Rino imed the mine request, knowledge of the undiscovered mine''s new location was shoved into his head. From above, Ark and Phil watched as the lich fumed over hisck of privacy and the headache that came from shoving knowledge through a system. The Gods didn''t really care. It wasn''t a problem. Rino''s body was chosen specifically to be very robust. No amount of pain would kill it. The current small world wasn''t powerful enough to take down a lich, and even monsters wouldn''t be able to kill an undead like him. High-speed regeneration and mana recovery are passive abilities given to Rino''s new body for that very reason. Of all the resources this undiscovered mine could be, Rino wasn''t expecting it to be a y mine. Apart from pottery, y was practically useless! He was a lich. Liches do not eat. Unless he wanted to make fancy flower pots, there was no need for y, right? What were the Gods thinking? Before he could lodge aint to the peeping Gods, Rino received a new side quest. === Side Quest #3 Objective: Prepare the materials for weaving. Tutorial here. Reward: Uninterrupted sleep for 8 hours. === For a while, Rino couldn''t breathe. Wait, he didn''t need to breathe. However, the feeling was still the same. It was overwhelming. Ever since his introduction to this crappy afterlife treatment, the Gods were finally giving him something decent! Didn''t they know that sleep was the ultimate form of release from the world''s tension? FINALLY! Ark didn''t think that Rino would be so happy over a reward like this. However, he wasn''t going to question Rino''s life priorities. Everyone was a little odd in some ways, some more so than others. More importantly, giving Rino a temporary ability to sleep was going to provide them with eight hours of blissful peace. It was a win-win situation that benefited everyone. With his sleep on the line, Rino forgot all about his ambition to bezy. To be more urate, he was fired up to achieve the ultimate form ofziness. Eight hours of uninterrupted sleep... When was thest time he experienced such a thing? Rino couldn''t recall. For years, he never had a proper sleep. All he had were naps. Even the hours he spent sick in bed, his sleep was never peaceful. Now that he had all the materials he would ever need, it was time to start making these raw nts into something sewable. Rino clicked on the tutorial, and as expected, the tutorial exined the step by step process of extracting nt fibre for things like hemp and x. On the other hand, cotton and silk were slightly different. They do not need the soaking, peeling and drying processes. If anything, the cotton only requiredbing, twisting and weaving. Rino did the math. Twenty cotton pods would make stuffing for at least six to sevenfortable pillows. He didn''t want to waste it all to turn the cotton into cloth when they made good mattress stuffing. Even an undead should sleep in fashion. The most Rino would do is create a cotton towel with what he processed. He could use a bath from time to time. Rino looked through the tutorial. The easiest to prepare was silk. All he had to do was weave them into a huge fabric for his sewing purpose. Additionally, he could dye the threads in different colours if he wanted. Rino wasn''t going to argue. He was simply going to dye it ck. ck was the colour of the night but more importantly, it helped keep more sunlight out. There were many dyes back in his world extracted from natural materials, with the mostmon being woad leaves that his royal blue magician robes were often dyed in. However, Rino didn''t know what to do about ck dye. "Humph! ck is the colour of the devil. I guess we can give him the recipe for making dyes if he really wants that ck dye in his next quest," Stephanie said after hearing Rino''s concerns. Ace smiled and spent some divinity to send Rino a message. [The Gods have heard your request. A recipe for ck dye will be given for the next side quest.] Pleasantly surprised by the generosity, Rino nodded and started working on the material preparation. It was still many hours till midnight. Rino wasn''t taking chances. He would finish preparing all four fabric materials at the same time. There was very strong sunlight, and Rino paused to think. With a sun this strong, he should take advantage of it. Didn''t the Gods give him a y mine''s location? He should abuse it at once to make his life easier. Water seemed to be a thing that wasn''t readily avable in his current location. The nearest source of water was ake in the forest. Rino also didn''t want to dig a well here for that. Hence, there was only one logical solution. He would go crazy with y and use it to make a huge reservoir for soaking, washing and bathing purposes. Maybe he had a use for y after all. Ignoring the side quest, for now, Rino excavated a huge area several meters underground and fortified the soil above with hemp trees he rented after uprooting them. There was no harm in growing hemp in the area. The nt was surprisingly useful in many ways. Magic made everything easier, and the reservoir space was created very quickly. Rino simply dumped the excess dirt into the fertile fields. The farm could use more dirt anyway. Now, it was time to get some y. Chapter 15 - Au Revoir, I Have A Reservoir Getting to the y mine wasn''t difficult. However, collecting the y at the mine was tricky. As y was often found near wet and damp ces, the mine was located not too far from theke Rino wanted to steal water from. The only problem came in the form of his hands and feet. Wet y stuck everywhere on Rino''s naked body. The y he scooped wouldn''t stay and constantly slipped through his hands. Even if he set a teleportation pad in the area, it was useless andpletely ineffective. Rino did not have anything to collect them in or help him spread them out on the ground to cover the base of his reservoir. It was getting irritating after the fifth failed attempt. "I need a bucket and a shovel of some kind," Rino sighed. This was the problem when he started with no tools. Did he really have to fashion everything from stone, bones and wood? The Gods told him this was kingdom-building. Rino thought they would provide him with resources, manpower and knowledge, but instead, Rino was left buck naked, without a single tool and clueless about how to put his natural magical talent to good use. It was like casting pearls before a swine. Rino wanted toin. What kind of king had to crawl through y, buck naked and build reservoirs in his early days? Even the old fart he served in the old world had a nanny to feed him when he cried and wipe his bum when he pooped. How was this fair? In short, life wasn''t fair. No amount of whining or sulking will change the fact that Rino was a work ve now. Hence, he looked around to find a more efficient work solution. Hard work did not always pay off. Sometimes, smart work was more efficient. The idea came quickly, and soon, Rino was on his feet again. The forest was full of materials for him, and the lich was a resourceful magician. With nature magic, Rino expedited the growth of some huge leaves that he plucked. Then, he tore off vines and branches, tying them together in a circr fashion. It was strange to see Rino weaving a wooden basket. His fingers moved nimbly as if he was used to it. Come to think about it, didn''t the lich also weave his sandals from grass strands before? The Gods were now curious. Why would a court magician, who lived a life of luxury, be so familiar with weaving things? Rino took no notice of his surroundings. It was starting to get hot, but he was too engrossed with making the woven basket. One wasn''t enough. He would need a lot more than this for an effective trip. The lich swore he needed more hands for this task. A kingdom wasn''t built in one day, and Rino had a feeling, this rough start wasn''t going to get any easier. The Gods were simply going to load him with more responsibilities if they found out how much Rino could automate with magic. That''s not a worry. For now, that''s a worry for his future self. With that, the first woven basket wasplete and ready for use! Phil had to admit, Rino had talent when it came to weaving things. IF he wasn''t good at magic already, Rino could be a very good craftsman with his ability to adapt and create things. His resourcefulness and ability to think ahead was what made him a good inventor. Unfortunately, he had a disagreeable personality who would sell his kingdom''s secrets for shorter working hours. Rino pulled vines and tied branches together, adding leaves to the baskets and tossed them towards the teleportation pad. In less than an hour, there were over twenty huge baskets for use. The only thing left for Rino was to weave a smaller basket for the sake of scooping y and something like a shovel with a tter surface to spread the y out evenly. Ace yawned as he answered prayers. The other Gods left after seeing how hardworking Rino was. The God on duty asionally checked on their chosen ve to see his progress. It was impressive how the promise of uninterrupted sleep could motivate this magician. Thankfully for it too. Punishing Rino using the system would cost them precious divinity, more than the reward transfer abilities and blessings. If possible, Ace wanted to keep it this way. Rino worked diligently. Hiszy days were here. He could almost feel it! Twenty baskets of y were filled and dragged to the teleportation pad. RIno sent everything back to base and tossed the y-filled baskets to his excavated pit one by one. There was a lot of work to be done, but he had an idea. Ace watched Rino abuse the shadow tendrils to spread the y he collected all over the huge pit. With many strange-looking shovels, the shadow tendrils covered the area quickly with ayer of wet y. The entire process that should have taken hours waspleted in under ten minutes. Rino''s control over that many shadow tendrils was impressive, and Ace reported the discovery to Ark. The baskets and shovels were collected back, and Rino used fire magic to hasten the process of drying the y. By now, all the Gods were gathered by the reflecting pond, watching Rino create his reservoir. Would this bepleted in a day? They soon found their answer after two hours. Rino''s control over fire magic was so impressive that Ark had a feeling, he did not only retain his skills from his previous life but found a way to improve. With the y dried and baked using fire magic, Rino drew a gateway spell just over the reservoir pit. If anything, this reservoir looked like a giant bathtub with three sections. Rino built this underground and not above ground, making it hard for algae to form. There was no real need to purify the water or clean it. However, Rino still added a few magic circles to constantly heat the water up in the first section of the reservoir to be condensed on stone and dripped into the second part of the reservoir. The third part left empty for future uses. "I never knew gates could be used this way," Phil admitted, and Ark agreed. Magic gates were usually used to transmit a person''s voice. Opening a gate to transfer items would consume an incredible amount of mana depending on the item''s size and distance for travel. Rino was using it for petty purposes, but they had to admit, it was a very efficient method for water irrigation. As Rino created the linking magic gate at the bottom of theke on a rocky surface, he swam back up to check if the gates functioned properly. "Here goes nothing," he prepared himself and activated the gates. The connection clicked, and an unstoppable stream of water poured from the magic circle. Rino felt his mana draining rapidly, but what did he care? It was working! "Woohoo!" he jumped in joy. "Au Revoir, manualbour. I have a Reservoir!" Chapter 16 - Mana Recovery Filling up his newly made reservoir was a tall task. Even the Gods were impressed Rinosted so long using multiple spells concurrently. It was safe to say that the lich was a monster. No regr liches could do a tenth of what Rino aplished, even if they excluded his nimble fingers and weaving skills. "Do you think he would revolt if we increased his workload?" Stephanie wondered. Ark looked at his crazy sister. "Do you want him to revolt?" he asked and poked her forehead with full force. "Don''t cause more trouble for him. It''s good enough that there is progress." The Goddess in charge of the life cycle pouted. "But I put in a lot of effort in making the punishment system! When are we going to use it?" Ace groaned. "Think about our divinity ounts, will you? Why would you be stingy over sending messages but allocate so much divinity into the punishment system? The man hasn''t even done anything out of line. Look at him! He built a functioning water supply without us having to issue it as a daily quest. This is a mid-stage thing." The God in charge of prayers had a point, and even Phil agreed. Their candidate might have a disagreeable personality. However, he was doing very well. It hasn''t even been a week. There was no need to cast judgement so quickly. Everyone had a different working style. There would always be friction in the beginning whenever a new team was put together. It was so for Gods and more so for mortals. Unaware of the argument up in heaven, Rino rested for a while. He couldn''t feel his depleted mana recovering fast enough. How odd! Magicians should be able to recover their mana passively and quickly if they had nature around them. Mana was life energy, and magicians were containers for the life energy they absorbed from their surroundings. He couldn''t understand what was wrong. His thoughts started to spiral darker when he realised how precious magic was to an undead. Perhaps creatures of the dark recovered mana differently? He really needed to learn more about dark magic before it was toote. Due to his excitement at his newfound freedom, Rino failed to consider safe mana limits and over-exhausted himself. If his high-speed regeneration ability depended on his mana, Rino wouldn''t survive a hit from the monster moths. The depressing concerns and worries unknowingly helped Rino refuel his depleted mana supply, not that the lich was aware of it yet. He continued to think of alternative ns to work safely and a defence arrangement for his humble hideout. Twenty minutester, Rino did not feel as weak or tired as before. "Hm? My mana seemed to have recovered on its own. What happened?" Clueless, Rino did not dare to splurge on spells. He had a few things left to do using magic to hasten the material preparation process. Thankfully, the Gods did not specify the quantity Rino had to finish preparing. He could do a small bundle of x, hemp, cotton and silk each. The easiest way to counter procrastination, from Rino''s experience, was to start with the easiest tasks that took little to no effort. Hence, he started with the silk threads he collected into arge yarn. === Tutorial: [Silk Processing] 1. Unravel silk threads from cocoons. 2. Dye the silk in the desired colour. Wash and dry. (optional) 3. Twist them while winding them into a spool for weaving and sewing. === Looking at that description, Rino would consider this almostplete. All he had to do at this point was twist the threads and wind them into a spool for weaving and sewing. It wasn''t hard to make 4 spools fashioned from wood. Rino was quick with his knife work, even with a rat bone de. The spools weren''t the evenest in size, but they served their purpose as Rino cut a meter off the main silk yarn to coil it around the spool. === Side Quest #3 (25% in progress) Objective: Prepare the materials for weaving. Tutorial here. Reward: Uninterrupted sleep for 8 hours. === Rino grinned when he received that message. It was exactly what he wanted. With one down, there were only three more to go. The second leastplicated material to process would be cotton. Not wanting to waste too much of his collected cotton pods for thread making, Rino chose the smallest pod and started spreading the white fluff inside. There were several little ck seeds where the white fluff grew around, and Rino frowned as he referred to the tutorial. Those had to go. === Tutorial: [Cotton Processing] 1. Separate the cottonseed from the cotton fibres. 2. Spread and cardb cotton fibres to smoothen it out. 3. Draw/stretch cotton fibre strands into thinner strips, separating them. 4. Twist stretched cotton threads and stretch them out while winding them into a spool for weaving or sewing. === Rino looked at the second step. The cotton was starting to fly everywhere with the breeze in his mud hut, so he had to seal it up and work in darkness. It was difficult to make ab. However, he remembered the dead rat and the rib bones he threw out. They might be too thin to use as a weapon, but for ab, they were perfect! Locking his cotton in the mud hut, Rino went to the ce he tossed the rat carcass to. However, he approached stealthily. There were other creatures around the spot, and Rino readied his earth spikes. Ravens were finally here to finish off the carcass. What a lucky day for him! The Gods watching Rino were not ready to see more massacre. Those ravens feeding on the rotting rat corpse earlier now joined the rat in death as Rino drowned their corpses in a water bubble while heating it with his fire magic. "Do you think he is hungry?" Stephanie squinted. Liches shouldn''t need to eat or feel hunger. Why was Rino cooking the poor ravens? As they watched, Phil started to understand what the ex court magician was doing. He couldn''t help but admire the lich''s innovation. Rino saw how the corpses were changing colour. Hence, he stopped boiling the water bubble and let the water bubble burst. The corpses were steaming, but Rino got to work immediately with his bare hands, the perks of being undead. He plucked the feathers dry, gutted the birds and separated flesh from the bones. Rino cleaned the bones, polishing even the rat bones. He had a n for them - a n that might give him more resources he sorelycked. Chapter 17 - Water Mastery As the feathers and bones dried with the bricks, Rino dug holes in the forest and made primitive spears. The boiled raven meat was used as baits, and Phil approved of Rino''s innovation. Ark was slightly frightened of Rino''s potential. He knew he found a good candidate, but he didn''t think he would find one capable of both magic and survival. The project managing God thought they could control this man''s actions with the daily quest system, but they were wrong. No wonder nobody suspected a thing until thest world blew up. Satisfied with his monster traps, Rino decided to leave it to fate. If his crappy traps caught anything in the future, he would raise them and test dark magic on them to understand a little more about this mysterious art. For now, he had to piece the different rib bone sizes and create hisb. Cotton wasn''t the only material he had to use thebs for. x and hemp also requiredbing, even if their other processes were a little more tedious. Rino fiddled with the bones for a long time and used sticky tree sap as glue to hold the bones together in ce. Once he had his boneb, processing the cotton was easy. Rino presented his spool of roughly made cotton threads in no time at all, and the side quest system updated itself once more. === Side Quest #3 (50% in progress) Objective: Prepare the materials for weaving. Tutorial here. Reward: Uninterrupted sleep for 8 hours. === Now that he finished processing cotton and silk, Rino sighed. Processing x and hemp were equally troublesome as they had to be soaked and broken down using aplex dposition method. Rino did not have time controlling magic to speed those processes up. However, he had elemental magic that could help with it. When he was a court magician, Rino experimented a lot with magic and science. He birthed alchemy, and controlling magic on a molecr level was something only Rino could do. Today, that skill finally came in handy. The Gods were curious to know what Rino was up to when he grabbed some x to hang them from the hemp trees. ording to the tutorial, the first part of x processing was drying them under the sun in a standing position so that the stalk and fibre will end up straight and long. Rino wasn''t going to wait. Heck no! He had magic to dehydrate the x. Besides, he did not get along well with the sun, not in his previous life, and not in this life. Slowly but surely, Rino gathered all the remaining water from within the x strands as they shrivelled and dried into twig-like structures. The process did not take long at all. It also did not consume much mana, and that shocked the Gods watching him. "What just happened?" Ark asked, clueless and floored. Phil''s jaw dropped, and even Ace widened his eyes. Only Stephanie knew what Rino did. She saw this process before, but it was usually not used in manufacturing. "It''s a curse type of magic by manipting water within the target and extracting it. In ancient societies, this magic was often used as a form of execution in deserts. You needed to haveplete mastery over water to do this. This lich is a tri-elemental expert now. The only element he has a weakened affinity with is air due to his body''s limitations." Rino was pleased with his results. It might not be time eleration magic, but this worked very well. The x was as dry and stiff as it should be. Now, it was time to use his boneb again and untangle the dried x stalk before he grabbed his hemp for processing together with the x. A huge portion of x stalks got caught in the boneb and broke off. Rino was slightly saddened, but ording to the tutorial, this was meant to happen. If x that was too weak were used to create threads, the entire fabric would not hold up. Eventually, RIno was left with about seventy percent of what he started with on the x. It was a good idea to get more than he wanted initially. If he didn''t, he would have to repeat the process to get a handful of x to work with by the end of the process. The next stage was a little confusing as it involved hemp. Thankfully, Rino wove many baskets for the y before this. All those baskets needed a good wash before they could be repurposed. Although the tutorial mentioned an overlyplicated process of allowing bacteria to break down the stalk''s inner fibre and separate the inner from outer stalks for both hemp and x, Rino thought it wasn''t really needed. He would simply remove the inner stems using water magic by force. The Gods watched as Rino filled two baskets full ofbed x and untreated sliced hemp to theke he thought he wouldn''t be revisiting. There, Rino performed aplicated surgery procedure with the help of water, soaking his basket of hemp first as he steeped the x. Instead of dehydrating the hemp, Rino chose to use water around the hemp to slice them in vertical strips. After several hundred water slices, the hemp was sessfully turned into outer stalks that Rino kept and inner stalks that Rino tossed aside, left to dpose on its own on the forest ground. The strips were so finely cut that they fit in Rino''s hand perfectly. He processed a few more hemp cuts and tossed the basket of hemp to one side for thebing process. He then repeated the decortication process with the x. The sun was setting by the time Rinobed and dried his x. There were very few x fibres left in his hand after processing. However, there was enough to be spun into a spool. Rino saw the side quest window update itself and smiled. Only one more to go. As he stretched, twisted and spun the hemp fibre onto the spool, the Gods were amazed by Rino''s productivity. The sun went down a few hours ago, and Rino hasn''t stopped working. His disy of control over water magic floored everyone when he performed a nt surgery in the water. That level of precision was something not even Stephanie was ready for. Rino truly was a genius. Ping! Rino quickly checked his side quest window, eager to im the first sleep he would have in days since his arrival to this new world. === Side Quest #3 (Complete) Objective: Prepare the materials for weaving. Tutorial here. Reward: Uninterrupted sleep for 8 hours. im your reward here. === Not one to think twice about the idealziness, Rino smashed the option to im his reward and felt strange dizziness take over his vision before he copsed to the side unceremoniously in his mud hut. Sweet sleep, at longst. Goodbye insomnia! Chapter 18 - Weaving Machine Rino awoke and found a window waiting for his confirmation. The eight hours passed too quickly! He barely dreamt about anything! === Daily Quest #2 (60% in progress) [Chain Quest] Objective: Build 10 bricks. Tutorial here. Reward: Textile Crafting Skills. Side Quest avable upon skill unlock. im your reward here. === Thankfully, there was progress while he slept. Now, this was what he liked to see. Everything in life should be automated except for new creations. Rino hated menial tasks such as eating and showering. It took up so much time, and preparing for a formal event was the worst. However, one such luxury he allowed himself to have was sleeping. It was usually through sleep that Rino found some of his best ideas. Now that the chain quest was sixty percentpleted, Rino decided to check his side quests. The Gods must have updated it in his sleep. They had eight hours to do it. === Side Quest #4 Objective: Build a loom. Tutorial here. Reward: Recipe for basic dyes. === This time, Rino stared at the side quest. For some reason,ughter bubbled from inside him. This was too funny. A loom of all things? The Gods watched Rinough in silence with only teeth chattering as he did so. The lich really needed to learn some dark magic transformation to look less creepy when he did that. However, none of them understood why he reacted like that. A loom was a basic tool required for weaving cloth. It might be a tedious process, but ultimately, it made creating fabric easier. "I think he''s crying," Philmented even though liches were incapable of crying physically without tear ducts. Alone in his mud hut, Rino wanted to die. Why did it have to be an inefficient loom of all things? Rino was the saviour of his empire''s tapestry industry with his advanced weaving machine inventions in his previous life. It didn''t even require magic because most civilians were not capable of controlling magic. At the same time, mana conducting materials and magic stones were considered rare resources that only a handful of nobles could afford. Rino could not create something tooplicated, even if it were a hundred times faster. His weaving machine made his country the biggest producer of fabric and tapestry after the king ordered his weaving machine to be mass-produced. Almost everydy who wasn''t in the cooking industry were recruited into weaving fabrics. Yet, funnily enough, Rino had little idea about how to make his own clothes without the recipes or skills from Gods. He was only good at creating neat little works with his hands. Weaving became a useful pastime for him as the weaving widows taught him some tricks of their own. Unfortunately, they''re all dead now. Seeing how nobody could stop him from abusing magic, Rino decided to redesign his old weaving machine from scratch. Normally, he would use air magic to move things around. It was a useful ability. However, air magic was his weakest magic element as a lich. Rino had to work around it. Thankfully, he discovered the shadow tendril skill. The concept of weaving was simple. All Rino had to do was tangle the threads in a criss-cross method until it created a fabric of his desired size. Criss-crossing fabric neatly can be difficult without a frame structure to help hold the starting strings. A traditional loom was simply a wooden frame thatdies could loop their long threads over tautly while they pulled strings in a criss-cross fashion horizontally, line by line until it made a fabric. The weaving process for a meter long cloth could take a weaver several months toplete. If the pattern was more intricate, it would take even a skilled weaver almost a year toplete. Rino did not have the time, patience or dedication for such a project. He wanted his cape and underwear as soon as possible. Hence, automation was the answer. Phil and Ark studied what Rino was scratching on the ground. The lighting was poor, but they could make out some of Rino''s writing. It looked like Math, and the Gods wondered what he was up to this time. As the scribbles on the ground spread out, Ace started to understand what Rino was doing. Unlike the other Gods, he was in charge of their divinity ounts. These numbers looked oddly familiar. "He is counting mana output and maximum efficiency," Ace exined. "I think he wants to make a weaving machine and not just a simple loom." "Is that allowed?" Stephanie asked. "The side quest said loom. It has specific instructions in the tutorial. Should I prepare a punishment?" All three male Gods looked at her with dead fish eyes, and Ark smiled without humour. "Sister dear, are your brains for decoration? Do you have any idea what a weaving machine can dopared to a regr loom? You want to punish someone who is giving you a diamond ring just because you requested a brass ring and they didn''t give you the right one? Do you know how difficult it is for us to collect divinity in our current situation? If you have nothing better to do or say, kindly remove yourself from my field of vision." Ace felt slightly bad for Stephanie. While the Goddess could be annoying and was the youngest in their group, Ark can sometimes be a little too harsh on her. However, he wasn''t going to interfere in this sibling fight. Ark was their leader, and he had heavier responsibilities than all of them. Phil simply sighed as Stephanie yelled at Ark, cried and stomped on his foot before running away. Ark red at his younger sister and swore in a colourful ancientnguage. Phil only looked back at the reflecting pond. Rino found his answer and was getting ready to work on this incredible idea. He wanted to watch the process but knowing Stephanie and Ark, someone had to be the mediator before things be worse. "I''ll talk to her," the old God told Ark, who nodded. Of the four Gods, Phil was the oldest. He was like a grandpa to them, and even Stephanie respected him when he had something to say. Ace ignored everyone else. He was excited to see the birth of something incredible. Chapter 19 - Magic Meets Science The concept of weaving was simple. However, the process wasbour intensive. It required uracy and meticulous nning to create patterned work if desired. Rino wasn''t an expert. He didn''t intend to use a weaving machine to participate in the tapestrypetition. All he needed was for the machine to weave ck cloth. ck is the only suitable colour for an undead. It was practical and ssy. Anyone who disagrees would be a fool. The weaving machine had one job. It had to alternate the rows of vertical strings pulled taut on the weaving frame. That way, the horizontal threader could easily run through rows to the alternating vertical threads in time to the alternating speed. Normally, needles were used to push and pull threads in his weaving machine designs. However, Rino didn''t know where to find metal or how to process them yet. He could only use magic to fill in for that part of his n. Thankfully, shadow tendrils can be very urate if Rino put his mind to the task. Regr weaves only had one beam on the top and bottom. That was what Phil included in his tutorial. Ark watched as Rino gathered the wood and tree sap he needed. Rino faltered a little when he realised he didn''t have nails or springs for the design. The troubled inventor paused for a while but quickly overcame the hurdle by opting for moveable wooden parts and precision engineering. It was easy to do it using pressurised water magic. As Rino worked, Ark couldn''t help but like Rino a little more. While the lich had a difficult personality to work with, he was very good at what he did. As someone who had to look at the bigger picture, he could put aside personal differences to achieve the goal. It was a little sad that Stephanie was too narrow-minded to understand the importance of coboration. The wood was cut into even lengths using water slicer magic. Rino checked the strength of the wood and made even markings on the wood with a wider gap than normal looms. He was going to alternate vertical strings on each frameter. Once the tree sap dried on both frames, Rino ced the smaller frame in the bigger frame. He aligned it perfectly, finding the centre of both frames to impale it with a wooden axle so that they could spin back and forth. The design impressed Ace. This sort of mechanics wasn''t verymonly used. In fact, it was usually used for doors or windows. Nobody thought about applying these physics to a weaving machine. If only Rino was a little more willing to share his ideas with the masses, civilisation would progress tremendously with his creations. This small world needed him even if Rino didn''t know it yet. Rino hammered the wooden axle into the side of both frames before locking the extra bits in ce using tree sap. He tested the smoothness of the rotation and found it satisfactory. Now, to connect it to a foot pump and a pulley wheel system to constantly rotate the frames back and forth at an angle. Rino spent a good hour setting up the weaving machine, adjusting the strings he used. It wasn''t easy to find the right angle and size. If the pulley wheel moved too quickly, there was a chance of the strings on the frame snapping from too much tension. Rino didn''t want to be limited by speed, but he had to be careful when fine-tuning his design. For now, the frames were empty, but already, he could see several major issues. It took too long for the frames to meet at the same point after a while. The space between the frames was very narrow at the centre portion, with the wooden peg riveted into the frames. Rino sighed. This design would not work. He had to change the design to a frame that movedpletely and not just from the centre. This might be tricky. Over the next four hours, Ark and Ace watched how Rino tossed aside five prototype designs, each looking moreplex than thest. However, with every failure, they could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Rino smiled. This was it! The frames moved in tandem to the speed of his foot pedal. The number of rotations to the interlocking frames were finally at the right ratio. The frames were able to move at a fixed height and distance. The threads would not snap under tension. Most importantly, the horizontal thread passing through each cross-section can move smoothly in both directions in time to the changing frames. It was perfect! "I dub this the Weave Monster Sechs!" Rinoughed and rejoiced. He found out that silk was the strongest thread he had and braided them to form sturdy ropes for the pulley mechanism. This was the manualbour powered part. If the Gods looked a little closer. They would notice that the Weave Monster had several magic circles drawn onto the frame. Rino was using magic circle gates for the tugging and pushing of the horizontal thread. Each gate would activate a strong pulling force just enough for the length of the thread grabbed by a shadow tendril to reach the end. Then, the gate would shut and cut the thread automatically. The next gate at the other end of the frame would activate, repeating the process until the fabric isplete or the magic supply is stopped. The moment Rino named his invention, the side quest marked itself aspleted. Ping! === Side Quest #4 Objective: Build a loom. Tutorial here. Reward: Recipe for basic dyes. im your reward here. === Rino grinned in satisfaction and imed the reward. It would be a lot easier if he had needles, nails, and air magic to work with, but what the hell! This was good as well. If he ever needed to weave a lot, this baby would do everything he needed. The frame was as big as him, so making curtains, bedsheets, and capes would not be a huge issue. If anything, Rino was now slightly concerned about the overly little amount of threads at his disposal, except for silk. Before he could take a break, the system prompted him that he had a new side quest. Ping! === Side Quest #5 Objective: Weave a cloth. Tutorial here. Reward: Basic Pottery Crafting Recipe. === It wasn''t even midnight, but he had a new quest. Thankfully, he now knew how to make dye. Fortunately, ck dye was easy to make. All he had to do was find some oak galls to crush and boil before dumping as many silk threads as he could into it. Time to make his underwear and cape! Chapter 20 - The Power Of Depression Seeing how dyeing the silk and other threads would take a long time, Rino decided to quickly search for oak galls even when the sun was still up. It was evening, and Rino took advantage of the shadows to dodge the killer sun rays. In a forest like this, it wasn''t difficult to locate some oak trees. Checking the tutorial, Rino figured that he needed more than just a handful of oak galls. Once again, he brought one of the handy woven baskets with him. Contrary to popr belief, oak galls, also known as oak apples, aren''t fruits. They''re wasp eggs. Rino didn''t know about that until he started collecting them. "What the heck?!" the lich dropped the gall he was collecting after it broke open. Something white wriggled inside, and Rino shuddered. The oak gall wasprvae continued to wriggle, and Rino stared at it for a very long time. That''s right, why didn''t he think about it? Insects could also be familiars. The monster traps he created did not seem to attract any monsters. However, some clever birds made off with his bait when he passed by to check on them. However, Rino felt dejected thinking about it. He did not know much about dark magic, much less enve a living creature or summon the dead. There was simply so much to do and so little time, not to mention resources. He hated his new life. The sour mood made Ark slightly startled. Wasn''t everything progressing smoothly? The lich was enthusiastic about making underwear not too long ago. Why was he back to being a grouch? That was odd. It''s not as if liches were capable of biologically triggered mood swings. Rino wasn''t a female skeleton either. Why was he so bipr? Despite theints, Rino continued to collect oak galls, no longer caring if they were wriggling and alive on the inside. If he was suffering, every other living creature should suffer and die alongside him. They were going to be dye for his fabric, and Rino did not feel sorry at all for their sacrifice. The sun was down by the time Rino returned with his basket full of oak galls. Here, the lich realised a problem. He didn''t have a lot of things capable of boiling things. Thankfully, he had a third of the reservoir empty for now that he could use. However, it might be a little toorge. "I''ll just use earth wall to temporarily change the size," Rino reasoned. If he had to drain the water, all he had to do was activate the magic gate at the bottom of that tub and dump that wastewater somewhere. The n was simple. Rino smashed the oak galls with rocks and tossed the smashed bits in a new basket, lined with leaves thoroughly so that it acted as a kind of filter in the boiling water. ording to the tutorial, he should boil the crushed oak galls in water and sieve the crushed bits out, then dump the fibres into the dye water overnight to allow the colour to sit in before letting the fibre dry to take all the colours in. It didn''t sound difficult at all, and Rino had confidence the silk would be ready for weaving tomorrow. In less than two hours, there was a pit of very strange smelling murky water. Rino discovered that there wasn''t enough oak gall after the first soak, so he collected four more baskets of oak gall to transform the clear water into a pitch-ck solution. Slowly and carefully, he unwound the silk yarn into the half-filled ck dye pool. The water levels rose slowly but significantly as silk filled the bottom of the pool. Rino was afraid that those at the bottom would not have the chance to absorb the ck dye after he put everything in, so he stood by the dye pool and consistently stirred it using his shadow tendrils. The night passed quickly, just like that, but Rino''s mental state wasn''t the best. As he stirred, Rino''s thoughts started travelling in a dark direction. He recalled all the horrible things he had to put up with in his previous life andpared them to his current situation. Neither situation made him happy. When he was human, he had the ability to sleep but not the time. As a lich, he had the time but not the ability to sleep. The reward for his side quest was an uninterrupted eight hours of sleep. However, Rino didn''t enjoy that. It felt like a time skip, if anything, because he couldn''t enjoy the rest. There were no dreams either, making Rino grumpy. He took inspiration from only a few things - bath, sleep and in his workshop. As his depressing thoughts spiralled, something else happened. It took Rino a while to realise that while his mental state was progressively getting worse, his physical condition was getting better. He no longer felt that sluggish or fatigued, even if he had been using magic very consistently for hours now. His depleted mana was recovered to eighty percent of what Rino thought would be his maximum. He was surprised but soon figured out the reason behind this sudden recharge. Dark magic fed on the pain, sorrow, and fears of others. It was good at emotional maniption. As long as someone understood what fear was, they were vulnerable to dark magic. His mana''s power as an undead fed off negative thoughts and emotions. This new discovery made Rino thrilled. He wasted no time and started nning a mass production cycle. He needed more threads of other materials. It was never toote to start x and hemp production. Even without the sun, as long as he had magic, Rino could produce more threads. Now, all he had to do was put his mind in a dark ce to refuel his mana supply while he put his shadow tendrils to work. Rino finally understood why some dark magicians enved people. Their magic grew stronger with more suffering. By raising humans with hatred in an unhealthy environment, that toxic mentality will only fester, feeding the dark magician''s strength. Fortunately, Rino didn''t need that kind of sickening mana farm. He had enough painful experiences from his previous life to make up for it. Yet, it didn''t sound like a good thing to his ears to be so resourceful. He wondered why. Chapter 21 - Quality Sleep It was morning by the time the silk was thoroughly dyed. The system alerted Rino about his daily quest''s progression once more. Ping! === Daily Quest #2 (80% in progress) [Chain Quest] Objective: Build 10 bricks. Tutorial here. Reward: Textile Crafting Skills. Side Quest avable upon skill unlock. === Going at this rate, tomorrow would be thepletion of his chain quest. Rino didn''t know if he liked or hated chain quests. However, he knew that it was finally time to im his reward in time to make himself a really good cape and afy pair of underwear. Rino tried to imagine himself in some clothes, not knowing what he could make or wear. The shirts would not look ttering on him with this many bones showing. Maybe he should forgo it. Capes were always cool and practical. Rino would keep it and make an oversized one. He needed more shadow space if he was out in an open field with a need to battle his enemies. Shadow was the power for dark magic, and if there were not enough of that in his surroundings, Rino would have to make his own. More importantly, Rino was considering the most important question for men. In his previous life, he was definitely a brief kind of man. He hated the shifty-shifty he had to do with boxers, so he never wore them. However, things were not the same now. He was a lich. There was nothing to shifty-shifty down there, and honestly, he didn''t think the front pouches in briefs would be ttering on his very t pelvic bones. "Times are changing," Rino sighed. "Boxers, it shall be." Tomorrow will be the day Rino regained his dignity. It was such a simple thing - clothes. However, it was an important first step to regaining his shattered pride as a talented magician. If the Gods wanted him to build a kingdom, Rino could not say no. However, he was going to do it his way as much as possible. The idle theory was real, and Rino wanted to prove it. The best way to aplish things is not by working hard. It was by working smarter. Procrastination solved nothing. Automation solved everything. Work should work itself while he sleeps. Which meant he wasn''t going to get off his butt to weave anything. He would do it all from thefort of his mud hut hidden in his hemp shelter. Dyed silk was heavy. Rino didn''t know if he should empty the dye solution to dry the silk where it was or attempt to bring it outside slowly to dry it off with all that water absorbed. Maybe the dye solution could still be used for the other fabric he created while thinking about depressing thoughts during his fabric production spree. He currently had about a hundred spools of hemp threads and almost ten spools of x if he needed them. The only material Rino refused to process was cotton. He wanted to save that for the ultimate project. After much deliberation, Rino decided that he should drain the water away. Even if the dye solution was still reusable, the ck would not be as effective anymore. Most of its pigments were now in the silk. He would rather recollect oak galls when he needed more ck dye than risk having badly dyed fabric. Gray wasn''t ck, and only ck was eptable. The Gods above watched as Rino worked tirelessly. Despite his dark thoughts and mood swings, Rino''s actions were surprisingly calm and logical. He drained the basin of dye water and used fire magic to speed up the silk drying process before winding them into spools and cutting them to length. A man this insane in his mind was a dangerous one. Ark started to wonder if Rino would eventually prove to be more than they could handle. For now, the lich was doing very well. However, his mental condition was a little worrying with how often his enthusiasm fades and his homicidal tendencies, even self-harming ones surfaced. Rino felt no remorse about killing. It didn''t matter if they were nt, animals or monsters. The lich simply calcted efficiency in his mind before he did it. Would it be the same when they sent him citizens to join his kingdom progress? Stephanie would probably have a fit if he killed her creations, but they would have to wait a little longer to find out. Rino took a very long time to fully dry the massive pile of silk, even with fire magic. He was eventually forced to dry them in sections so that the dried and spooled silk could quickly be added to the weaving machine for weaving. When it came to multitasking, Rino was the best. He kept a non-existent eye on the weaving machine he brought into the reservoir cave while drying silk. The only thing that wasn''t ideal about this situation was the humidity. Fortunately, Rino took care of it by manipting water particles in the air and added them back into the pool at regr intervals. His work progressed smoothly even though Rino could not quite keep up with the amount of silk his weaving machine consumed. For his first cloth, he wanted to weave something bigger than his height. He might not have the ability to craft clothes yet, but there was something he wanted to try. In fact, Rino needed two of those silk fabrics. There was no time to lose. For hours, the lich dried and spun silk. The Gods took turns to keep an eye on Rino and listened to his bipr thoughts whenever he was running low on mana. It was a strange way to replenish mana, but it was the best method that worked for Rino. Ace tried not to judge it. By the time night fell, Rino had two veryrge pieces of silk. He quickly brought it up to his mud hut and renovated the mud hut''s space. He raised the ground of his new mud hut and widened the space by three times so that there was space to walk around in it. There were still no windows or doors, but the walls had holes in them now. Rino ran straight to his cotton pile and started filling therge ck silk cloth with cotton until he deemed that it wouldn''t hold anymore. Then, he threw the other silk cloth over to roll the edges and tied the end so that cotton would not spill from inside. The thing looked ridiculous, but almost immediately, everyone knew what that was. Rino dragged it back to his mud hut and ced it on the raised floor. This was good enough for now. He had more cloth to weave for everything else he wanted, but at the very least, he could enjoy his quality idle time infort with his newly made bed. Ping! === Side Quest #5 Objective: Weave a cloth. Tutorial here. Reward: Basic Pottery Crafting Recipe. im your reward here. === Rino took his sweet time to lie on his mattress and made himselffortable before he epted his reward. In the meanwhile, the weaving machine that he brought into his mud hut continued to busy away. It was time to prepare enough fabric for his clothes. Chapter 22 - You Must Be Kilning Me! The night passedfortably, with Rino just upying himself with fabric production. Midnight came, and Rino waited for it. This was the moment he had been waiting for! Ping! === Side Quest #6 Objective: Build a y Kiln Tutorial here. Reward: Bone Crafting Recipe. === For a while, Rino did not move. Was this a prank? Where was his daily quest? Shouldn''t that long-winded chain quest be markedpleted? He wanted that Textile Crafting Skill! As Rino raged, Ark silently apologised. The lich had been working very hard for a noble cause. However, they also needed to push him a little back into the actual direction. The side quests were created to assist Rino in skill acquisitions. They were not the actual purpose for his reincarnation as a lich. The kingdom would not build itself weaving silk and dying underwear. Phil returned with Stephanie, who still looked as if she wasn''t in the wrong. The Goddess red at Rino and ignored everyone. She was going to wait for Rino to slip up. The moment he failed to deliver results for his daily quest, even by one second, if it wasn''t a chain quest, she was going to make him dance in agony with her punishment system. Rino looked at his new side quest in deep thought. There was a pattern here somewhere. He was already aware that the Gods who sent him to this new world as a work ve could hear his thoughts. In fact, they must be really bored Gods for listening to his every thought without missing a single thing. The pattern started early on now that he thought back about it. The first sign should have been the divine voices sending him messages directly into his skull. They only stopped doing it frequently after Rino made ament about their intelligence and wealth. He should have known it was not a coincidence. The next sign happened when Rino was testing out voice projection using mana through his thoughts. He must have sent those amplified messages to the Gods until they could tolerate no more. There were only two reasons why they would offer him a quest with a reward of thought projection skill. The first was their inability to tolerate his yelling in their connection, and the second was their inability to close the observation channel. They might be in a position to constantly monitor him and had to put up with whatever he did. The following signs were very obvious with the chain quest development. Rino didn''t think of it earlier because he was still getting used to this world. However, the mud-brick quest did not have the necessity of bing a chain quest even if traditional manufacturing methods required several days of sun to dry those bricks before baking. Rino was a magician. He could have dehydrated them the same way he did to those x stalks. However, the Gods deemed it a chain quest after Rino''s arguments in his thoughts. This meant that the Gods only knew what Rino knew and showed. The odd reward for an uninterrupted sleep was also something the Gods picked out after listening in on Rino''s thoughts. He appreciated the good intentions, but Rino wished they''d think of the order in priorities a little more. To enjoy quality sleep, there were many preparations to be done. If anything, Rino would have prefered to learn some more useful basic skills like dark magic maniption. The Gods gathered to listen to Rino''s monologue cringed a little. Were they too obvious? Also, Phil felt slightly bad when Rino said that he would prefer a useful reward like learning dark magic to sleep. It might have been their collective decision to give a reward based on the difficulty of the quest done. However, the things that Rino have done so far did not match the quest difficulty. The lich went over and beyond their expectations. He definitely deserved better rewards than simple things like a dye recipe. For Rino, the most obvious pattern came in the form of rewards. When he refused to work on the daily quest because of theck of rewards, his boycott worked, and the Gods received a hint. Their intentions were clear. They needed Rino to be their arms and legs. Unfortunately, he was such azy b*astard that the only way to entice him was with rewards. The textile crafting skill was given to him when Rinoined about being nude and putting up with just a single salvaged cape. His cape burned away, and it suddenly became a priority. The Gods weren''tplete *ssholes in Rino''s eyes. In fact, they were good business partners from his experience. What he needed, they provided in the form of quest rewards. What they needed to be done, Rino had to fulfil in the form of quests. It was a fair system. So far, Rino could read their intentions simply by viewing the kind of rewards they offered in the quest. So why were they now giving him a useless reward such as bone crafting recipe? Where was his dark magic?! Did the Gods hate the idea of automation so much?! He could understand the need for a y kiln. But they had to be kilning him! They undiscovered mine as a y mine, he could understand. y was very useful. Those pottery skills? Rino can find some uses for them in the future. Having a few earthen jars or basins would be great if he ever had to dye fabric again. In fact, Rino could make himself a lovely bathtub with that skill. That was fine. y kiln was something he needed to bake the mud bricks. Rino can understand that. He had no problems with the purpose of the quest. However, he had a problem with the reward. Why bone crafting of all things?! Firstly, Rino did not see a lot of living creatures in his dested area. Bones came from animals and people. There was a material shortage unless he went all the way back to the grave he came from. Secondly, why in twenty-seven lives would he want to learn how to craft bone? He was a skeleton. It felt somewhat ominous to be doing so. Rino simply could not understand the need for bone crafting at all. "That''s it," Rino decided. "I''m not going to work until they change this d*mn reward." As a form of protest, Rinoy in his bed and tried to sleep. However, the curse of bing an undead only made him crankier. Up above, the Gods looked at each other. What should they do? Chapter 23 - For Your Own Good Just like a mother coaxing her sick child to take bitter medicine, the Gods had to find ways to pacify the upset lich. "You should do it," Ace told Stephanie. "Females are usually better at consoling others." The Goddess of life cycle shot Ace an incredulous look and the wise ones uninvolved stepped back decisively. There was no need to get implicated with this messy affair. In fact, it was good to be forgotten now. Phil quickly left the reflecting pond for his workshop, and Ark abandoned his sister with the God in charge of prayers. Ace and Stephanie were usually loggerheads with each other. One was a spender, and the other was a miser. Their personalities were justplete opposites. If it weren''t for Ark holding the team together, these two Gods might have never attempted a civil conversation. Instead of trying to bite Ace''s head off at once, Stephanie scoffed andughed in a shrill tone without humour. Her arrogant attitude was back, and her chin held high as she looked down on Ace like some kind of bug. "ying the sexist card now, aren''t we?" Ace wasn''t a fool. He didn''t bite the bait. Instead, he remained silent and returned her re with a cool stare. A b*tch like her didn''t deserve his attention. If it wasn''t for Ark and Phil, Ace would have left this team a long time ago. With his capabilities, it wouldn''t be impossible to rise through ranks quickly. Besides, it was Stephanie''s fault for what happened to them. As the Goddess of life cycles, she should have monitored that strange fluctuating numbers over the years. With the poption increasing every year, she should have realised something was amiss when the mana in that world was dwindling. Life was synonymous with mana. That dumb bitch should have known before all this happened. "It''s fine if you can''t," Ace brushed her off nonchntly. "I forgot that you''re not that capable. We don''t have much divinity to spare for you to fool around with anyway. I''ll do it." Initially, Stephanie was reluctant to talk to this annoying lich. Rino was a major pain in the neck, and after ruining the previous world, he got them all demoted. She hated him for ruining their lives, but there was nothing she could do about Ark''s final decision. Rino was the best candidate to bring into this small world and their best bet for aeback. However, she still could not forgive him for destroying their most profitable divinity farm. "Shut up! I''ll do it!" Stephanie raged. Instead of feeling amused or impressed that the Goddess could be so easily riled into doing what he wanted, Ace simply kept a poker face and shrugged. Hisck of reaction made the Goddess livid. If there was someone else she hated more than this lich, it would be Ace. Ever since they graduated from God Academy, the difference between herself and Ace was huge. Stephanie relied heavily on her connections with other Gods to earn her position. It was a very tough environment to survive, and Stephanie made it through by the skin of her teeth while Ace simply aced through every trial thrown his way by being himself. She couldn''t understand why someone like him decided to work with their crappy department. He could be overseeing domains instead of managing divinity farms if he wanted. If it wasn''t for her brother''s connections as a farm manager, Stephanie might be sent to travel the farms as an inspector intern for a long time before she had a posting. Ace always managed to find a problem with how she worked, and each time they fought, her brother would side with him instead of her. Stephanie knew she was inferior. However, she didn''t want to admit it. How was it fair that some people had everything without having to work for it, and how others would never achieve even a fraction of what they could even if they slogged their entire life? Even in the world of Gods, fate was too cruel. Hence, Stephanie refused to relent. Call her a bitch, but this was how she could hold onto her pride as a Goddess. "You will regret this," Stephanie warned cooly and left to find the message drafter. Ace was silent. His eyes never left the reflecting pond, and already, he was regretting it. He might have restricted the divinity funds, but Stephanie might use her private funds to send stupid messages and infuriate Rino more. Then again, it might not be a bad thing. Rino doesn''t know it yet, but he would figure it out soon enough. In fact, it would be great if Stephaniepletely messed up. He needed someone to y the bad cop for him to reap the benefits in the future. This was the difference between him and her. Ace yed the long game, but Stephanie was too short-sighted. So what if Rino doesn''t want to work ording to their ns? They should just ride on his coattail and think of other ways to harvest divinity. In Ace''s opinion, it would be difficult. [This is God speaking. Stop sulking like a baby and start putting your back into it! That bone crafting reward is for your own good. How else are you going to sew your own underwear without a needle? You''re such a dunce!] When Rino heard the automated God message, he frowned. This was a different God speaking. As a genius, he didn''t appreciate getting called a dunce. However, the message sender made sense. He thought about needles, but he didn''t know they could be fashioned from materials other than metal. The reward for making a kiln finally made sense, and Rino was convinced. However, he hated how this God was talking, so he simply refused to move, ignoring them. From the reflecting pond, Ace chuckled. Stephanie must be hopping mad by now. He wanted to see what else the stupid Goddess would do before he intervened. After observing Rino''s reactions for a while, Ace was now sure about what he wanted to do. He wanted to meet Rino in person. After all, true geniuses were far and few no matter which world they reside in. It was hard to find a kindred soul and even harder to be in theirpany. Chapter 24 - Rino Rebels Stephanie did not give up. Even if she had to dip into her own divinity savings, she was going to annoy the shit out of thiszy lich. The Goddess could already imagine that infuriating smirk on Ace''s face if she went back to the reflecting pond without Rino attempting his quests. The sun slowly rose, and Rino discovered the art of tuning out. He attempted several ways to block the divine voices in his head, but nothing worked. Hence, he could only attempt to program his mind to be immune to the noise, ssifying it as part of the background din. Ace yawned. Stephanie was really going at it. If there was one trait about Stephanie that he admired, it was her sheer stubbornness. Maybe that was her talent. Whatever she wanted, she would not stop until she had it. The God of prayers had to hand it to her. The Goddess must be very close to bankruptcy by now. However, she never stopped trying. [This is thest warning. If you do notplete the assigned daily quest, you would only have yourself to me when divine punishment strikes. You have been warned.] Impressed, Ace nodded. From persuasion, demeaningments and finally threats, it took six-hour for Stephanie topletely fall from grace. Yet, Rino remained unmoved by everything. Nobody knew if the lich heard the message or if he was deliberately ignoring it and not giving them any signs. If anyone chanced across the mud hut and discovered a skeleton lying on a very poorly made bed, they would probably give the poor man a proper burial. He was so still that he could pass off as a genuine corpse. Exhausted, Stephanie growled and stomped back to the reflecting pond. Ace was still sitting there with a sleepy expression. "Are you done?" he asked the fuming Goddess. Despite her best efforts, Rino remained unmoved. She red at the smug God of prayers and pointed a finger in his face. "Just you watch! If he doesn''tplete the daily quest on time, I have all the rights to smack him with divine punishment. I''m going to tell Ark now." Ace waved at herzily as the Goddess went to find her brother, most likely toin and ask for her punishment system to be implemented. Whatever. Ace was more curious to know how Rino was holding up on his end. As it was, the divine voice in his head finally stopped. The God spamming him with messages must finally be tired out after receiving no response. The sun was up now, and Rino stared at his ceiling. He was really bored. However, he didn''t want to act as some kind of dog, wagging its tail to please the disagreeable and childish God. Hence, he simply waited until the reward he wanted was ready. Besides, what was the worst that could happen to him? Death? He would wee that with both arms. Compared to the infuriated God, Rino had nothing to lose from not doing anything. It is his second chance at life. Might as well do what he wanted. ording to the threat, he would only get smite if he did notplete a daily quest on time. Nothing was mentioned about thepletion of side quests. Hence, Rino wasn''t going to do it, no matter what. He wanted to see what they would do to him for not doing a side quest. Nopletion simply meant no rewards and possibly no future side quests. It was a win-win situation in any case. If he ever needed bone crafting recipes, it would still not be toote to attempt it. Ace was impressed by Rino''s logical reasoning skills. Stephanie gave away so much about them with her brief interaction, and the lich had it all figured out. He was making full use of the Daily Quest System''s loopholes and finally rebelling against them. Rino didn''t care about the Gods and their whims. Nobody had time to cater to some stupid divine being who couldn''t even resolve their own problems. If anything, he was more interested in what was in it for himself if he helped them. Seeing that the representative they sent was someone with lower intelligence than him, Rino wasn''t keen to do anything they said. He wanted to see what else they would do. The quest window hovered annoyingly at the side of his vision, so Rino closed it. He wasn''t going to make a kiln. Not yet. To show his rebellion, Rino purposely focussed on thread production. He did many things, including checking his traps, hunting, collecting more cotton pods and making some pottery. The bathtub was on his to-make list, and Rino looked at his handiwork. It was only slightly past noon, and already, there wasn''t much to entertain him. "I might as well explore the area," Rino thought to himself. Ever since he arrived at this new location, Rino was so busypleting quests that he did not know his neighbourhood well. All he saw was this one small corner of his actual kingdom building plot. Rino sighed soundlessly. It was uneptable. As the lich decided on the best thing to bring along to save him from the harmful sun rays for his exploration, Phil returned. "How is everything?" the peace-loving old God asked. Ace shrugged. "Rino''s rebelling, and Stephanie might smite him by tomorrow if the new daily quest isn''tpleted. What is Ark doing? He hasn''t updated the chain quest." At that, Phil sighed heavily. Even from his workroom, he could hear the siblings arguing at the top of their lungs. He didn''t have to borate further, and Ace got the message. "Understood. I''ll let them sort their differences. Try not to get involved. I''ll leave the monitoring to you and get some rest. The prayers are piling up, and thanks to her, I have not replied any." The God ofndscaping patted Ace on the shoulder and thanked him for the advice. "Go get some rest. I will monitor Rino''s progress. You look more dead than Rino." The God of Prayers looked back at the reflecting pond. Indeed, Rino was livelier than he was even when he was rebelling. He thanked Phil and left quickly. If he wanted to watch a good show at midnight, he had to wake up on time and clear his piling work quickly. If they had a betting pool, Ace would bet all his divinity on Rino owning Stephanie in their inter-realm feud. Chapter 25 - Civil Work Rights The territory was so extensive that Rino wasn''t able to cover everything in a day. Not to mention, he decided to travel in a unique fashion. He had some sparerge pieces of fabric that wererge enough, so Rino wrapped himself up like a mummy. It was difficult to move without air magic proficiency. Thankfully, he was innovative enough and found a way to repurpose his shadow tendrils. Even so, he could not cover all of this new territory. It ranged from the edge of this forest and the fields all the way to those mountains he could barely see in the distance. There was no way Rino could cover everything. Flight magic was so useful, and he missed it dearly. Without it, he was like a magician without a wand. "I actually don''t have a wand," Rino realised on his way back. The sun was setting, and still, he did not receive the new daily quest. Were the Gods even going to give him the next daily quest? Or did they have trouble updating the daily quest system? Did having a chain quest confuse them? Rino tried to think positively but failed. He was very convinced that the annoying God was doing this on purpose so that he didn''t have enough time toplete the other daily quest that they issued. Rino rolled his empty eye sockets. If this was how the authorities wanted to abuse their power, he would give them a reason to really hate him. It wasn''t as if he never did this before in his previous life. As a court magician, he had plenty of opportunities to demonstrate his stubbornness. As a result, he was locked in his estate under house arrest for two years. All his servants were fired, the guards only gave him leftover food, and Rino had to do everything by himself even when he was an earl, all because he didn''t support an idea that the king had. Honestly, he didn''t mind. For those two years, it was very peaceful for Rino. With his magic, he started his own vegetable farm in the garden. He led a veryfortable life using his magic. The books he collected but never had time to read were read in those two years, even if he didn''t finish all of them because the king begged him to return when the gue struck and threatened to wipe the empire''s poption. That said, Rino knew how to tough it out enough until the other party surrendered. The Gods were messing with the wrong person. When the four Gods gathered at the reflecting pond heard this, three pairs of eyes instantlynded on Stephanie. The Goddess of life cycles felt pressured and quickly shifted the me to her brother. "It was him who forgot to clear the daily quest!" Ark couldn''t deny that. After arguing with his sister for hours, hepletely forgot to update the system. The project manager red at Stephanie then turned to Phil. "Keep an eye on her. I will take it from here." He quickly left for the office, and Stephanie huffed. Why was everything her fault now? These guys were too lenient. Sooner orter, they woulde to appreciate her. If they gave these mortals an inch, they would want a foot. If these mortals had a foot, they would ask for a mile. Mortals cannot be trusted. Ace hid a smile. Everything was proceeding ording to n. Now that Ark was taking over, negotiations would begin. He was only curious about the terms Rino was going to set. For this purpose, he unfroze the divinity funds for Ark to use freely. In the office, Ark sighed. He hated doing these kinds of things. Ace was usually better at it than him, but he didn''t want to escte the tension between them by asking Ace to handle negotiations because of his sister''s rivalry. Nervously, Ace updated the daily quest system and waited for his chance to send Rino a message. Ping! === Daily Quest #2 (Complete) [Chain Quest] Objective: Build 10 bricks. Tutorial here. Reward: Textile Crafting Skills. Side Quest avable upon skill unlock. im your reward here. Penalty: NA === Rino just reached his humble mud hut when he heard the system notifications. There were two more hours to midnight, and Rino wondered what the consequences would be if he did notplete the new daily quest assigned to him. Still, he eagerly imed the reward as he filled the newly made bathtub with water. As Rino soaked in the tub, he hummed a happy tune, uncaring if the Gods were peeking at his private time. The texting crafting skill was very handy, and Rino considered doing the side quest just so that he could quickly make a bone needle for sewing the underwear and cape. He didn''t want to go out dressed as a mummy again. It was inconvenient and extremely ufortable. [This is an automated message regarding a system update. Penalties will be introduced for Daily Quests for nonpletion within the stipted deadline starting from Daily Quest #4.] === Daily Quest #3 Objective: Fire 10 bricks. Time Limit: 24 Hours Tutorial here. Reward: Farm House Schematic. Penalty: NA === At the voice message, Rino raised a brow and snorted silently. Oh, so this was how the Gods wanted to y? No apology, just a system implementation and waiver of punishment as an act of generosity? Sorry, but he wasn''t that easy to please. Even the king had to personallye over and grovel with a publically announced apology before Rino agreed to return as a court magician. A man who knew his worth would demand his civil work rights. When Ark heard this, he knew that he wasn''t Rino''s opponent. With a heavy look in his eyes, he returned to the reflecting pond. He swept across the people around the reflecting pond, and his eyesnded on Ace, their best bet to salvage the situation. Stephanie made a face but swallowed the bitterness in her heart. The whole situation started because of the punishment system that they told her to create. After implementing it, it was now her fault the lich was unmotivated? How unfair was this? Ace remained neutral. He looked at Ark and back to Stephanie. "I''ll go down as an incarnate to meet this lich and resolve his motivation issues. In the meantime, put all his quests and punishments on hold. Any objections?" Ark almost cried with relief and apologised on behalf of the trouble his sister caused. When Stephanie heard that, she had to swallow her anger. Ace was probably the only one on their team who could turn the situation around. If anything, Ace''s stubbornness and selfishness would not lose to Rino''s. Now that she thought about it, they were really two peas in a pod. Chapter 26 - Cat Got His Tongue Ace was excited. He was finally sending a divine body down as an incarnate to meet Rino. Of course, he wasn''t going to expose his identity. Hence, the best identity to assume was an animal. Negotiating with Rino might be impossible, but tempting him will work. It was just how curious minds were programmed. Rino, who was still in the middle of weighing his options, heard a loud sounding from his traps in the forest. Cout it be...? The lich did not wait and took off running. Thankfully, it was now night, and he did not have to worry about the sun rays. He hurried over, using his shadow tendrils to carry him by the ankles and float over. For something to make such a loud sound, it must be a very big catch! Ace wasn''t expecting such a rough arrival. If anything, he thought he would be slightly more graceful with his choice of incarnate. Unfortunately, he did not have much time toin about the roughnding. His target was already approaching. The God of Prayers had to put up a good show. From above, Ark was impressed. Ace''s divine body was still sitting by the reflecting pond, but his soul wasn''t present. Stephanie looked over at her sleeping rival and wondered if he would kill her if she took this opportunity for petty revenge. Then again, her brother and Phil were present. It would be too petty to draw on Ace''s face in their presence. She would wait for the opportunity to present itself instead of acting hastily. Everyone held their breath at the reflecting pond. Rino was getting closer to where Ace was. They wondered how the first encounter would y out. Will theirst hope be able to sessfully change Rino''s mind and work with them? Whatever creature Rino was expecting to catch, he wasn''t expecting to see such a small animal. Why would an animal as small as this dark furball cause such a huge din? It even destroyed his traps. Could this be the true boss monster in the forest? A pair of glowing green eyes peered into the hollow eye sockets of an undead. The staredownsted long, with neither opponent willing to make the first move. From the outside, it looked tense. However, for the Gods sitting by the reflecting pool, they could not understand what they were hearing. "T-this beautiful coat of ck cuticles... those shiny jewel-like eyes, that yful flick of its tail and those terribly pink, soft paws! I-It''s a real cat!" Rino almost couldn''t breathe. Wait, he wasn''t even capable of breathing in the first ce. However, the sight of his secret crush standing before him made the lich feel as if his non-existent heart was about to explode! How could there also be cats in this world?! All hail the feline species! Ace was slightly crept out after hearing Rino''s silent monologue and wanted to take a step back. However, he now knew one more of Rino''s weaknesses. It was time to exploit it. "Meow!" the ck cat taunted and sneezed, conjuring a whirl of darkness below its shadow. Rino was stunned. Are cats usually capable of magic? He didn''t think so. However, this cat belonged to a different world. Maybe they were more magically talented. It was not a secret that some monsters in his previous world were capable of learning and using magic. Perhaps the same could be said about cats of this world. After all, they were a superior species in just about everything from intelligence, grace, cuteness and evenziness. He respected cats and adored them so much that he regretted not being able to find a way to cure his hyper allergy to fur in his previous life to own a hundred of them. In this life, he had the immunity of a lich and the power on an undead. Nothing was going to stop him from befriending cats! Ace leisurely liked his paws and listened to Rino hyperventte at his action almost in the same way an eventmenter would when they saw their favourite diator appear in the colosseum. He had an idea. There might be a change in n, but it was more favourable to Ace now that he had a very powerful card to y. "Meow!" Ace called out once more and flicked his tail, brushing it past Rino''s shinbone and made small shadow teleports towards the direction of the mud hut. Rino followed, trembling ever so often from excitement and disbelief as if he was in a trance. A CAT was walking around on hisnd and making itselffortable in his house! When he reached Rino''s mud hut, the first thing Ace did was to im the poorly made mattress as his. Rino watched as he circled and kneaded the cotton lumps before curling up and yawning deliberately. From the reflecting pond, Stephanie raised a brow. "What is he doing?" Ark shrugged. He had no idea what kind of negotiation technique this was, but he hadplete faith in Ace. "Perhaps it is a way to mentally disarm Rino so that he could ease the terms into the negotiation," Phil offered a helpful reply. Compared to earlier, Rino appeared to be a lot more honest and willing to do things. He just didn''t know what Ace would do now that he had Rino''s attention and unadulterated adoration as a cat. Rino was still thinking about ways to please this cat when he heard a voice in his head. "What are you standing there for, dumb undead? Go fetch me something to eat!" Stunned, Rino froze. What was that? It sounded nothing like the system''s messages of divine voices. If anything, the voice sounded rather young but arrogant. He could not tell the gender, but his suspicions were confirmed when the cat cracked an eye open from his mattress. "What? Cat got your tongue? No pun intended, skelly. Never heard a cat talk before?" This time, there was no mistaking it. The cat was using the same skill he had. It was using thought projection. "I must say, I was surprised. You had me fooled there thinking you were an ordinary cat. Since when did cats know how to use magic proficiently?" Rino thought back. Ace smirked, looking sinister as his pupils dted in excitement. "For an insignificant undead, you sure know how to talk back. Rinoughed with his teeth chattering noisily. "An insignificant undead, you say? I''m afraid you''re mistaken. I''m a lich and also a very powerful magician." This time, Ace attacked Rino''s sore spot. "A powerful magician? You don''t evenpare close to my master. What kind of magician are you if you cannot even teleport? You even had to walk to catch up to me." When Rino found out that the cat had a master who was a magician. He paused. This cat... while its background was suspicious and mysterious, it might be just what Rino needed now. "Dark magic... is not my strongest. I can use water, fire and earth magic fairly well." The cat scratched behind its ear with a leg andzily nced at the mud hut. "You call this fairly well? You don''t even have a firece in here. It''s freezing at night, and your house is not made from brick! The mattress is lumpy, and cotton is slipping from the gaps at the sides. My master may be poor and sloppy, but at least she had better standards than you!" Getting up, Ace walked to the door. "That''s it. I thought that I might find a new master, but you''re such a mess. It''s painful to even look at you. I''m leaving." Stunned and filled with a sense of urgency, Rino quickly called out to the cat. "Wait! Don''t go yet! If I build a better house from bricks and a firece, will you stay?" The ck cat nced back. "I''ll consider it. It''s too cold to be here tonight, so I''m leaving. The new firece and house had better be done in three days, or I will never return." With a sneeze, the cat summoned a shadow beneath its feet that consumed him, leaving only a few ck strands of fur behind as evidence of its presence. Rino looked at his daily quests. To hell with it! For the sake of winning the cat over, he would do it! Back in heaven, Ace opened his eyes and groaned. "Can you give me a betternding next time? My incarnate almost died before I could meet Rino." Ark patted Ace on the head and praised him for the job well done. Already, they saw how Rino geared up with all his woven baskets on the teleportation pad, jumping over to the y mine to gather the materials he needed for the kiln. Chapter 27 - Brick By Boring Brick Rino returned with all twenty woven baskets full of y. He hoped this would be all the y he would ever need for a kiln. ording to the tutorial, he should use y to build the kiln to fire and bake bricks to full hardness. More interestingly, mud bricks weren''t the strongest kind of bricks. If anything, y was a very important brick making material. Rino wanted to question the logic of making a y kiln to fire some mud bricks, only to use more y for more bricks. What use were these mud bricks, then? Whatever. His head hurt. He had a magic cat to please, and Rino didn''t have the spare time to consider anything else. Rino found the brick mould from before and continued to mould these bricks. However, one mould was too little. He needed to make hundreds of bricks. He wasn''t going to make a simple small kiln that could bake only five bricks. If he was doing it to fulfil the quest, that was fine. However, he had a house to build to satisfy the ck cat. Rino needed something bigger and more capable of mass production. As the sun rose, Rino started to feel slightly weak. Collecting y now would be a bigger hassle than before. He needed some kind of shade, so Rino fashioned arge sun hat from twigs andrge leaves that fell from his hemp nts. The process was very repetitive. Rino built his small y kiln by the y mine and decided to shift his modus operandi instead of cluttering his living area with useless structures. The mud bricks were fired quickly in Rino''s hastily built y kiln. He didn''t have time to search for firewood and simply controlled the heat with fire magic while letting the shadow tendrils continuously collect y and mould them. The y bricks were quickly dehydrated, and Rino found himself digging a deep hole to throw the dehydrated water into. He had no time for proper disposal and wished that the cat gave him a little more time than three days after iming the Farmhouse Schematic. At the same time, Rino collected his Bone Crafting Recipe reward after making the small kiln that he continued to use to bake more y bricks. Ping! The side quest was finally updated. === Side Quest #7 Objective: Craft a Bone Needle Tutorial here. Reward: 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. === Again with the eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Rino decided to put this quest on hold. He didn''t want to im the sleep reward when he was so busy. If anything, he would prefer to im the reward and apply that ability when he found the right time. From above, Ark considered Rino''s suggestions. It wasn''t difficult to add a reward bank function for consumables. If Rino was happy to do more quests and im his rewardster, it was mutually beneficial for the Gods too. "What does everyone think?" Ark asked his team gathered by the reflecting pond. Ace thought that it was an excellent idea. Stephanie didn''t mind. However, she insisted that the rewards could not be used to escape punishment if Rino decides to sleep for a few days straight and ditch his daily quest. "About that," Phil said. "I think it would be alright. Normal people sleep for eight hours a day. Rino doesn''t do that. He works whenever he is awake, and even when he skives, it doesn''tst too long. Rino deserves a rest day if you asked me." In just a week that Rino came to this new small world, so much was happening. When Ark thought about it, he felt that Phil had a valid point, although Stephanie made sense. If they had an urgent project that could not be put off, Rino''s use of his umted rewards could cause many inconveniences. "What about a wallet for sleep hours as a currency?" Ace suggested. "We can limit a daily withdrawal of sleep hours, and Rino can decide how many hours of sleep reward he wants to use within the daily limits." Ace''s suggestion satisfied everyone''s concerns, and Ark quickly excused himself to design the sleep reward system and an off day. Stephanie couldn''t argue. It was an excellent idea. Down at the y mine, Rino worked hard. The sun did not make things easier for him. He sometimes went out of the shadow''s range and caught on fire a few times. Not to mention, the heavy use of his magic was depleting his reserves. It did not matter how many depressing thoughts Rino recalled. Whenever he looked at the shadow on the ground, he was reminded of that magic ck cat. That would put a smile on his non-existent face, and Rino''s mana recovery would stop. It was a bittersweet feeling. Ping! Finally, his new daily quest updated itself. === Daily Quest #4 Objective: Build a Farmhouse [Chain Quest] 1. Build 8,000 bricks 2. Make Cement 3. Lay bricks ording to the schematic Time Limit: 72 Hours Tutorial here. Reward: Sleep Reward Wallet. Penalty: NA === Curious about the cement making part, Rino viewed the tutorial and felt his jaw cken. Why did everything use so much y? The tutorial exined that cement was made from one part wood ash, one part smashed terracotta powder and water. He had to burn wood into wood ash and pour it into the water to make a kind of sludge before firing it to a solid clump. Then, Rino had to dilute that clump in the water again and add the terracotta powder to make the cement paste that dried in a few hours, so he had to work quickly once he got to that stage. Making terracotta and smashing pottery y was something he could do. He didn''t need anything pretty so he could make tiles or something to smash. Wood ash was easy to make in a kiln. Rino had noints. However, the three-step process of making cement that dries quickly cannot be hastened. Anything that could not be mass-produced hastily and automated was Rino''s worst enemy. He had 8,000 bricks to make for the farmhouse, but already, Rino hated this monotonous process. He had to build this brick by boring brick on top of standing under the sun and risking damage if he got out of the sun hat shadow''s protection. How miserable! However, Rino wasn''t going to give up. The rewards were too good this time. ON top of that, this wasn''t a 24-hour challenge. It was a chain quest with just about enough time toplete before that cute ck cat returned. Rino was going to work hard to change that cat''s mind. Chapter 28 - Brick Head To ensure that 8,000 bricks were sufficient to build that simple farmhouse, Rino checked the schematic twice. The farmhouse had two bedrooms, a huge hall, a small kitchen and a storage room. The outhouse was included in the design, but it was not part of the main building. Rino found that slightly odd, but he could understand. It would be hard to sleep in the same ce with the smell. Even though he was a lich and did not need an outhouse, Rino decided to build one anyway to turn that into a luxurious bath area. After calction for his modification, Rino decided to make 20,000 bricks instead. In fact, he would make them all out of y instead of mud. He would need a lot of those for cement anyway. If he was going to make a house, he might as well make afortable one. The ck cat was a guest he wanted to invite over. A single wall was simply too cold. Rino wanted a double wall with dried reeds as instion between the brick walls. He would cover everything with cementter, so that''s a lot of ash he required. Not to mention, Rino needed a bigger kiln. This tiny thing isn''t going to cut out for mass production. The Gods watched Rino contemte over the number of bricks, and only Stephanieughed. "What a brick head," she mocked. "Just make them as you go along. Why calcte? If you have spares, then just stack them up somewhere. Bricks will alwayse in handy." Irked by the Goddess'' wishy-washy logic, Ace was about to say something when Phil beat him to the punch. "A true engineer knows how much resources are required to prevent wastage and coteral damage to the environment. Rino is calcting the number of bricks to produce ording to the different building phases. It''s a smart move, although we should have made it easier on him by doing the calctions first before handing out the quest." Ark felt slightly guilty. He was a project manager and not very well advised about construction projects. The information Ark received from Phil about building a farmhouse was 8,000 bricks. He never considered the other factors. Then again, Rino''s consideration for a special design made Ace blush. Why did this lich put in so much effort for just one cat? After calcting the chances of production failure, Rino rounded his total number of bricks to 50,000. He did not know if he could get the farmhouse built within three days, but it was best to worryter and do what he could now. There was no time for regrets. Even if he had to act bipr all day just to replenish his mana for mana powered brick production, he would do so without hesitation. Just like this, Rino found himself working harder than he ever recalled. As for that ck ball of fluffiness, Rino thought about its name. With its fur as dark as night and eyes sparkly like the stars, there was no more befitting way of describing this talking cat who knew dark magic. Noir was going to be the cat''s name. Rino didn''t care. Nobody could tell him otherwise. Ace bristled slightly when Rino decided on his name without consent. Stephanie was too busyughing, and Ace shot the Goddess a re only to see Ark struggling to keep a straight face. Even Phil had a small smile at the side of his mouth. The name was very simple but feminine. Ace should have seen iting. "Don''t worry," Ark tried to console Ace. "Noir can be a gender-neutral name too. It just means ck in hisnguage, right?" The God of Prayers sulked. Rino might not be thinking when he came up with that name. Making too many bricks must have turned him into a brick head somewhere along the line. Stephanie might be right about something for the first time. Yet, he couldn''t bring himself to smite the lich who was highly motivated at wanting to make that perfect home for Noir. "I think you should visit him more often as Noir," Philmented. "He might be lonely with nobody to talk to and apany him." Ace looked at Rino and wondered if that was true. If anything, Rino appeared happier now than he looked in the previous world as a court magician. Although the lich stillined about the sun and having to do work without any pay or appreciation, he wasn''t stressed or spiteful. Slowly, they saw the shape of the kiln starting to form as Rino expertly wrung y using water magic, fired them on high heat using the tiny y kiln and pped wet wood ash with crushed terracotta powder. The shadow tendrils never stopped working, and from his corner in the y mine, Rino continued to weave cloth manually. It was a true sight to behold while listening to his alternating thoughts. "The time they killed those three cats on the street, and I was toote to save them, I let the mother and her two kittens die. What a powerful magician I must be when I couldn''t even bring them back to life." Ark and Stephanie fell silent, listening to Rino''s depressing thoughts as his negative feeling welled up. The shadow tendrils worked twice as hard when Rino slipped into his negative thoughts that only spiralled. Ace was slightly worried about that mana going out of control, but Phil reassured them that Rino was still sane. He still knew what he was doing. "His focus is still present. Take a look at those bricks. The kiln''s foundation is fullyid out now. He doesn''t make more cement than required for anyyer, and the bricks are taken out on time. Rino still has his heart set on building this kiln and making his bricks. If he were to go past the point of no return, he would not be able to keep everything working so seamlessly." The Gods took a look at Rino''splicated brick building system. The shadow tendrils looked like they were going all over the ce at first nce. Some were manifested while others disappeared. They seemed to cross each other, merge together and break from time to time. However, their dancing never ceased. Upon closer look, Rino had a system going where each cycle would bake one batch of bricks just enough to finishying one newyer of bricks of his huge kiln. The basket of cement mixture was also calcted and made just enough for him to finishying thatyer of bricks, just in time for the new batch of baked bricks to be ready. Amazed, the Gods could not take their eyes off thisplicated but highly efficient build manufacturing process. Rino wasn''t just a magician. He was a one-man factory and a true genius in his own league. Even Stephanie had no choice but to admit that the lich had talent. Chapter 29 - A Useful Boner It was an ident. Nobody expected Rino to slip on y and fall against a sharp rock. However, that ident brought great findings. For the longest time, Rino wondered where he would find bones to craft his side quest''s bone needle. Now, he had an answer. Ace was impressed by Rino''s resourcefulness once more. However, he was also bing increasingly worried about the lich''s mental health. This kind of torture was considered inhuman even during wars. It was less thinkable that anyone would willingly volunteer for this sort of experiment. When Rino fell and hit himself on a sharp rock, hisst finger came flying off, and a ghostly fire enveloped his entire hand. The painsted only for a while, but very soon, Rino had a new bony pinky. The high-speed regeneration worked very well, and Rino could not tell that his finger broke just moments ago. If it wasn''t for the calciumposite lying on the y beside the sharp rock, Rino would have written it off as a hallucination. Picking his broken pinky up, Rino yed with it a little, curious about the movements of the joint parts. This bone was a little too unsuitable for filing into a bone needle. For that, he required something longer and straighter without moving joints. Rino looked at his body, and the Gods suddenly had a terrible feeling as Rino ran his fingers over his exposed ribcage, listening to the sounds it made upon contact. Heaving a sigh of relief in unison when Rino moved on from the rib cage, the Gods wondered what the lich would do now that he discovered a renewable resource. ording to Phil and the system''s tutorial, bone needles were normally made from animal horns or teeth. However, the more they listened to the lich''s thoughts, the more terrified they became. Even Ace could not believe such a person existed. While he waszy, he waszy within reason. Appreciating efficiency was an art. However, there was a fine line between art and insanity. Rino was very close to crossing that line now with his thoughts. "No, not the forearm bone, although it looks very useful for some other things. The rib cage also looks very cool because of its curved shape. Maybe I can find a purpose for them in future. My spine looks flexible, but I don''t know if ripping it out whole will make me regenerate in two pieces or one. I might have to rip it out slowly to minimise the risks. Let''s see... what other bone can I use that''s the right size to file down into a needle." As his eyes moved lower, Rino discovered many tiny bones in his body that he wasn''t aware of when he was still alive. The human body was extremely self-sufficient, and Rino found just what he needed on his foot. When he was still alive, Rino hated the feeling of stubbing hisst toe on the side of his bedpost. That kind of pain was almost as bad as getting kicked in the groin. Thankfully, Rino had one less thing to worry about now that his pelvic area came without a package. It was aplicated feeling to have, but Rino decided that appearing gender-neutral wasn''t necessarily a bad thing. The most important thing is his charismatic voice. At least he still sounded intimidating enough to haggle, although much of that intimidation factor came from his baldness. Up above, Ace was speechless. Was this lich going to go with it? Rino was studying his feet and deciding the best toe to remove for his bone needles. Even with his disturbing thoughts, the shadow tendrils never stopped moving. Ping! The timely update distracted Rino from his contemtion. === Daily Quest #4 Objective: Build a Farmhouse [Chain Quest] 1. Build 8,000 bricks (done) 2. Make Cement (done) 3. Lay bricks ording to the schematic Time Limit: 58 Hours Tutorial here. Reward: Sleep Reward Wallet. === Even Ark was surprised by the system''s update. Did Rino really finish making 8,000 bricks? The kiln was only halfway done. Phil studied the kiln. Now that the main body was created, Rino would have a little trouble with the kiln''s roof. The curved design in the tutorial was tricky to replicate, and it required a huge amount of skill. The elderly God wondered if Rino had a different idea for the roof when Rino did something that surprised everyone. Instead of crafting the next bricks using the same mould, Rino crafted the next batch of bricks using arger mould. The brick size was longer in breadth and resembled a square instead of a rectangle now. The Gods held their breath once Rino decided on the bone he wanted to use for his needle. The third join of hisst toe was selected, and Rino decided to sacrifice his left foot. The water slicer magic cut the bone Rino needed cleanly at the ankle joint, and the lich cussed in multiplenguages as his foot was enveloped in purple soul fire as his immortal body worked hard to regrow his severed toe. The severed bonended on the y ground and Rino groaned. The painsted for hardly a minute, but Rino was starting to think if it was wise to use his body as a bone harvesting ground. The finger did not hurt as much. Why did hisst toe hurt more than breaking a finger? It was so strange. Not even the Gods could understand that strange pain tolerance. They were not responsible for Rino''s decision. The high-speed regeneration ability was not given for this kind of abuse. It was meant as insurance. With the precious piece of bone, Rino continued to make odd-shaped bricks and cement as he pierced the bone with a very thin water jetstream at high speed. The eye of the needle was created. All Rino had to do now was cut the bone into a thin cylinder and file it carefully. He did not want to screw this up now that he understood how much pain it would cost him for a subsequent attempt. Phil and Ark watched how Rino focussed on filing the bone very carefully. The shadow tendrils continued to work but at a slower pace now that Rino focussed most of his concentration on the bone needle. Chapter 30 - Kilning Business The toe bone needle was finished very quickly. Rino was so happy that he almost cried in joy seeing how polished and smooth his first bone needle was. He could finally put the textile crafting skills to use and make his much-needed cape! "Maybe I will make my boxer underwear first," Rino thought. "Noir coulde back anytime, and it isn''t appropriate for a cat to see me in such a scandalous state. Their pure eyes must not be defiled." From above, Ace blushed and looked away. Rino''s level of thoughtfulness was sometimes surprising. The lich was a very confusing person. For someone who wasn''t willing to work unless they were able toze in luxury after all that work, Rino was surprisingly hardworking and considerate when it came to cats. Did his love for feline creatures ovee the hatred for work? The kiln was almostpleted. Phil could finally see the roof take shape. He finally understood the reason for those squarish bricks now. Rino was definitely not a newbie when it came to constructing. He knew his materials and architectural designs. Instead of following the half brick design method for a curved roof in the tutorial, Rino improvised and yed with the size of bricks to create an effective staircase roof structure. Each brick was supported by the brick below that was firmly cemented to the bottomyer on half its length. The gravity did not put too much pressure on the bricks with a broader base, and Rino stacked them carefully in a zig-zag manner so that more cement could hold onto two different bricks at any one time should a brick break. Eventually, thest few bricks were made, and the hole at the top of the kiln was sealed with a specially craftedrge brick, pped with ample cement mix. Rino''s work did not end here. He reinforced the kiln with more cement before using magic to dehydrate the structurepletely. Just like that, the kiln was done. The sun was starting to descend, but Rino''s ambition did not end here. Building thisrge kiln was only the beginning. Apart from bricks, Rino had to make more terracotta to smash for cement, some y tiles for the roofing of his new farmhouse, as well as 40,000 more bricks for the farmhouse and luxurious bathhouse. Therge kiln was able to fire up at least 10,000 bricks at any one time, and Rino had faith that he would finish all the bricks he needed by tonight if he worked quickly. Time was ticking, and he did not know if he had enough time toy those bricks for the farmhouse and decorate the interior before Noir returned. The shadow tendrils picked up speed, scooping y, moulding bricks, and arranging dehydrated bricks in the new huge kiln. Rino saw how he was already running low on wood and sighed. He had to visit the hemp forest quickly for a few more trees. While therge kiln baked his bricks. Rino could make enough wood ash in the smaller kiln. There would be no time wasted while waiting for his bricks to cook. The Gods watched and yawned as Rino collected the materials he needed. The side quest waspleted a few hours ago, but Rino refused to im his sleep reward. The lich wanted toplete the chain quest to receive his sleep reward wallet before iming it. Ace wondered how fast Rino would be able toplete the daily chain quest. He had a feeling the lich was going toplete the actual daily quest before the time limit. The hemp forest looked a little bald at Rino''s teleportation pad area, and Rino felt slightly bad about deforesting such a wonderful forest. He made a mental note to repair the environment once he was done with the major quests. It did not ur to him that nature did not grow as quickly as he could cut it down. Thankfully, he could use nature magic to fix this fairly quickly. Phil felt a little touched when he heard how Rino was thankful and sorry for the resources nature provided. Landscaping was aplicated business, and Phil''s powers were limited to designing. He had no real control over the speed of growth nature had. The most he could do was rearrange certain resources to make it inconvenient enough so that the resources would not be depleted as quickly and have sufficient time to replenish themselves. The kilns were fired up at full power when Rino had his hemp wood. The kilning business was booming, and Rino estimated that he would have all the materials he needed for the building before the sun was up. Rino took a look at the loom and fed it more silk. The spools he coiled were running low, so he decided to finish using what he had before making another trip to replenish the silk he needed for the cape. On the other hand, linen production was going very well. The fresh batch of ck dye he made to dye linen worked like a charm. Rino didn''t know if he should invest in another weaving machine to speed up the production of his interior design ns. He wanted ckout curtains so that the morning sun would not disturb him. Ark watched as Rino clumsily held the bone thread, piercing the cloth with it. Despite the textile crafting skill, the lich still struggled to hold something as small as a needle with his bony fingers. The needles often slipped from his grip, and Rino sighed. Thankfully, the shadow tendrils were very flexible, so Rino spent a lot of time staring at just where he wanted the needle to go. The painstaking effort Rino put into making his boxer underwear caused his production speed to drop at the kilns. Thankfully, the lich did not need too long to sew a decent pair of underwear, only to realise that he sewed the seams on the wrong side of his fabric. The inner drawstring holes were now visible on the outside, and Rino groaned. Thankfully, this was underwear. Nobody apart from him was going to know. Up above, the Gods snickered. Chapter 31 - A Grand Farmhouse Slogging the night away, Rino was finally done with the preparations he needed. With his hooded cape, pants and underwear, the lich was fully prepared for the dangers of the day. The improved mud hut was demolished swiftly, and Rino thanked it for being such a good shelter for the past week. It was finally time for a decent shelter that he could be proud of, something Noir woulde to like too. The schematic was easy to understand even without the tutorial, so Rino put his best foot forward and raised the shadow tendrils from the ground. The farmhouse wasn''t close to any farms at the moment, but the Gods did not specify where he should be building it. Compared to a tacky townhouse or a stuffy castle, a farmhouse sounded nice. Rinoid out bricks for the flooring and created a fenced area fashioned from carved hemp wood. A neat little pathway leading to there, his tentative door was created using roughly cut rocks embedded into the ground. Rino could remember when he used earth and water magic to build things, but they made the process a lot easier. Marking out his building plot, Rino brought the carved hemp wood over using shadow tendrils and hammered them into the ground with evenly spaced intervals. All that was done in a jiffy without lifting a single finger. Rino had a good feeling about this. The sun was up, and the hooded cape worked wonders. As long as he continued to hide in this oversized fabric without moving from his spot, the sun would not be able to get him. Rino was very prepared. He did not need to refer to the schematic as much as he built the fences, crossing the carved wood and tying them in ce with thick vines. With so many shadow tendrils, the fencing and pathway wereplete in record time. Stephanie felt her jaw cken when every fence was hammered in ce and tied. It was starting to look like a very homey ce with the fencing, and suddenly, the Gods could not wait to see what else Rino would do. Levelling thend, Rino startedying the ground foundation for his farmhouse. The bricks wereid close to each other, and cement was thered on the brick flooring before thin wood bs were ced above them. More impressively, Rino took measures to coat them in resin as a form of varnish to prevent the wood from absorbing humidity in the air and spoiling too quickly. On closer inspection, he did something simr for the fences as well, even if the varnish wasn''t as glossy as the flooring. Once the flooring was finished, there was still a little edge around the perimeter that wasn''t covered in flooring wood bs. Rino got to bricying at once with the help of many shadow tendrils. Stacks by stack, the bricks were utilised, and Rino found himself hopping through the teleportation pads more frequently to resupply his stash of bricks and cement. This was the inner wall, and Rino hoped he made enough bricks for the outer wall and tiles for the roof. After several resource runs, the shape of Rino''s farmhouse was starting to appear. Even a non-builder like Stephanie was able to tell which was the door and which were the windows. A lovely firece was incorporated into the design. Ace approved the open space concept between the guest receiving area in front of the firece and the kitchen at the back with a door leading to the backyard where the outhouse was located. Although Rino did not build a space for the well that Phil included as optional, the Gods had no issues with it. The lich was very resourceful, and any water he needed, he could use a magic circle to transfer his clean water supply from the private underground reservoir below the farmhouse. Layer byyer, the walls were built, and Rino looked proudly at his iplete farmhouse. Things were slowlying together as he envisioned. It was time to build the outer wall before he stuffed the insides of the wall with dried x and hemp waste product. Over the next few hours, Rino calcted the size of bricks he required whileying them and refilling his cement mixture. The corner bricks had to be sliced to fit the measurements, but everything else progressed smoothly. Phil looked proud when the outer wall was finallyplete. Digging into his storage pit, Rino retrieved all the dried waste products from processing so much material for fabric. It was finally time for them to shine! Apart from the strange leaks from the window and door holes when Rino tried to stuff the space with dried products, everything else went smoothly. To fill the gaps in thepacted dried waste products between the walls, Rino used a lot of cement mixture, pouring it until it filled the ces he wanted. Some of the cement spilt out of the window and door holes despite Rino''s attempt to keep everything in with some earth magic barriers. However, they were quickly filed off and sliced to pieces with water magic. When the walls were ready, Rino used shadow tendrils and constantly refilled cement to spread a thinyer over the ugly bricks. The cement was mixed with some ck dye, and Rino loved the results when a thick consistent cement mixture smeared all over the orange bricks. This was more like it. While the shadow tendrils busied themselves over the wall, Rino took a look at the unbuilt roof. He had the tiles neatly stacked to one side. The wood beams, treated nks and straw packing sat beside the stacked tiles, but the cement mixture for glueing everything together needed refilling again. Amazed by how everything wasing together beautifully, the Gods could not call this a farmhouse anymore. It was a very gothic cottage befitting of a humble lich. As Rinoid his roof tiles, he could not help but sulk over the colour of these tiles. He did not have enough time to paint everything ck, so they were a shade of brownish-orange for now. The contrast between the roof tiles and the ck cement stered walls made Rino wonder if Noir would mind. He still had about half a day to finish decorating, but first, the outhouse and luxurious bath needed building. All eyes were on Ace when the Gods heard Rino''s thoughts. "Do you mind orange roof tiles?" Ark asked yfully, and Ace huffed. "Nobody looks at the roof tiles when they''re inside. He better not mess up with that chimney." Phil looked back and chuckled. INdeed. RIno might struggle a little with that. Chapter 32 - Home Sleep Home The chimney was tricky as Ace expected. Rino took a good part of the evening fixing the chimney and working around it for the roof. In the end, the lich pped some good old cement in between the tiles and chimney bricks to seal any possible leaks. The farmhouse was finallypleted after a long time, and the luxurious outhouse cum bath spa building in the backyard was quickly assembled. Cement mixture had to be the one thing Rino wished didn''t need as much refilling. Once that was done, Rino took a look at his handiwork. The cottage was starting to look very homey, but it was far from finished. Rino had no windows or doors. Even so, that did not stop the daily quest system from considering thispleted. Ping! === Daily Quest #4 (Complete) Objective: Build a Farmhouse [Chain Quest] 1. Build 8,000 bricks (done) 2. Make Cement (done) 3. Lay bricks ording to the schematic (done) Time Limit: - Tutorial here. Reward: Sleep Reward Wallet. im your reward here. Penalty: NA === This was the moment Rino had been waiting for! Without hesitation, he imed his reward and saw a new tab appear beside his daily quest and side quest panel on the floating screen. The system prompted Rino that there was still one more quest pending reward collection. === Side Quest #7 Objective: Craft a Bone Needle Tutorial here. Reward: 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. im your reward here. === The bone needle was stored very carefully, and Rino double-checked it sitting on the exact spot he left it on the weaving machine. After experiencing the pain of chopping a toe bone off, Rino doubted he wanted a repeat unless he absolutely needed more needles. Maybe the next time he did it, he would use a different toe bone. Maybe it would hurt less than thest toe bone. The moment Rino imed his sleep reward, he received a new automated system message. [8 hours of sleep sessfully deposited into the Sleep Wallet. Please check your sleep wallet for avable sleep reward bnce.] Rino didn''t need to be told twice. He was already checking it out before the automated system message finished its announcement. The level of excitement made his hands shake as he looked at the new sleep reward tab. === Sleep Reward Wallet: Daily Sleep Withdrawal Limit: 8 hours (reset at midnight) Avable Sleep: 8 hours === If he had a beating heart, it would have stammered, blushed and killed itself from joy. Rino had to thank the system administrator for listening to his demands. Even if there was a daily withdrawal limit, Rino was still happy that sleep was a thing he could now do whenever he wanted. No more boring long nights of staring at the sky and doing nothing. No more burning his hollow eye sockets in the ring sun. The quests did not update automatically, so Rino rxed. He had his rewards and his unfurnished house. The chain quest might bepleted ahead of time, but Noir''s arrival would be due soon. Just a skeleton of a farmhouse would not do. The adorable cat deserved the best, and by that, Rino meantplete furniture and interior decorations. The firece was a functional one. Rino might not have fancy materials like metal or ss, but Rino created a barrier using some spare bricks and tiles he had lying around. They did the job of keeping ashes in the firece and sparks from flying out while the fire burned. The door was made from many nks tied together. It wasn''t the sturdiest as there were gaps between the nks, and wind could pass through those gaps a little. However, Rino was rather proud of this design, for he attached a small piece of cloth that he could unfold to cover the small hole at the bottom of the door. It was made with Noir in mind. The backdoor was designed exactly the same, and Rino installed them with pride. Moving wood parts weren''t the easiest to carve, but with some water magic and cement, it worked. From above, Ace could not help but turn scarlet when he heard Rino''s thoughts and saw the kitty doors he made. Last night, he had to leave early to deal with some urgent prayers and Ark was left to monitor Rino''s progress. Hence, he just returned to witness the instation of these handcrafted doors. "Isn''t it precious?" Stephanie cooed at the cute kitty door. Rino put in a lot of effort cutting and filing the wood around the door while coating it with varnish. The door was also the right size for Noir to enter and leave freely. The wood piece behind that fabric could be used to permanently keep the p closed if Noir was around and lifted up if Noir was outside. The woodentch that Rino made clicked in ce as the lich lifted the wooden panel while unfurling the ck fabric. The windows were also nks tied together, and Ace watched Rino install them in a simr manner. The bathhouse was also fitted with windows and a door just before the sun rose. Rino quickly retreated indoors as the sun rose higher in the sky. He quickly took out his linen curtains and hung them on the pole he prepared above the window. The odd-shaped brackets he created using cement above the windows came in handy. The dyed linen curtains did their jobs of keeping the sun out even when the windows were open. Rino tied some pebbles heavy enough to press on the ends of these long curtains so that the wind wouldn''t blow them open. Thanks to his newly acquired textile crafting skills and needle, Rino created a rather decent bed after sewing the two huge fabric sheets. The cotton stuffing inside the two sheets was also fuller, and Rino learned a trick to keep the cotton fluffier for a longer time. He sewed the fabric together at even spacing, creating some kind of indent that held the cotton in ce from moving too much to a side when hey on the mattress. The same thing was done to the pillow, and Rino marvelled at the softness of his first pillow. The mattress made him feel as if he was floating on a cloud when hey down. The oversized cape now doubled as a nket because Rino had no time to make a nket. He was exhausted from working so much without a break. Rino looked at his sleep reward wallet and submitted a request to im all eight hours of sleep now that the sun was fully up in the sky. Ping! [8 hours of sleep sessfully withdrawn. You have withdrawn the maximum hours of sleep for the daily limit. Sleepmencing in five minutes. Your current avable sleep bnce is 0 hours. Sweet dreams.] Rino yawned silently and dismissed the system announcement. He could feel his vision getting blurrier, and eventually, Rino stilled. It was home sleep home atst. Chapter 33 - Minimalist Design Nothing beats a solid sleep, and Rino thought hisplexion felt rosier even if he was a skeleton. His bones felt lighter and looked slightly glossier, although it might all be his imagination. Today, Rino had no quests. Both the Daily Quest and Side Quest were updating. Hence, he decided to work on his little interior decorating project. If it were just an abode for Rino, he wouldn''t be bothered about aesthetics. However, he had a very important guest arriving tonight. Noir deserved only the best! Up above, "Noir" blushed. He didn''t think Rino would be such a romantic cat person. If they knew about his source of motivation, they might send a furball over right from the beginning. Thiszy lich was a ve to the feline species, and Ace didn''t know if he should continue supporting this passion or not. Rino took a look around his humble farmhouse. The furnishing indoors was sparse. He did not need to eat, so there were no tables or chairs, even if there was a kitchen. That wasn''t very hospitable. Cats needed a high ce to nap and a warm one to curl up next to. He knew what was missing at once. When it came to weaving, the Gods were mesmerised by just how deft Rino''s fingers were. He did not make any mistakes as he wove the basket quickly. Initially, they could not understand why Rino started weaving a wooden basket, but everyone looked over to "Noir" with a smug grin after it took shape. Rino was so into it that he made a small pillow with cotton stuffing and sewed it twice to prevent the cotton from popping if the cat scratched it up. The pillow was ced at the bottom of this small basket. It came with a small linen nket with Noir''s name embroidered on it. At this point, Ace didn''t know if he could still reject Rino''s offer to live with him. However, he was a God with duties to do. He couldn''t always be there all the time in his incarnate. There was simply not enough divinity for it. "Why don''t you act like a whimsical stray?" Stephanie suggested off-handedly, taking Ace by surprise. Everyone looked at the Goddess strangely, and Stephanie quickly defended herself, afraid that she would get med again. "W-what? Cats are whimsical by nature! Theye and go as they please. That would solve Ace''s problems, and if Rino isn''t motivated, at least we have someone down there to whip thezy lich! Or I could use the punishment system. Either way works, in my opinion." There wasn''t a need topare which method was more effective. Sending an incarnate was more practical and less hateful than the punishment system. Besides, it wasn''t as if Rino could not be reasoned with. There was no need to resort to using ultimatums. "We''ll do that then," Ark coughed after seeing Ace''s awkwardness. This was one of the rare instances Stephanie''s ideas worked, but nobody wanted to admit it. The Goddess of Life Cycle would simply let it get to her head if they recognised it. Hence, everyone agreed and continued to resume what they were doing earlier. Stephanie felt somewhat ignored when nobody said anything. Even if they agreed, it felt as though she was mistreated again, but the Goddess could not pinpoint why she felt that way. After loitering around the reflecting pond, she left. The three other Gods heaved a sigh of relief. Rino was really going all out to make his minimalist farmhouse afortable ce to rest and chill in. Despite the darkness in the house because of the dark curtains, Rino added somenterns fuelled by fire magic. It gave a cosy glow as the lich added the finishing touches to the cat tree indoors. It was funny how Rino did not even have a proper nket, but he made sure Noir had everything the cat would possibly want or need. His love for cats was the real thing, and Ark told Ace to visit Rino regrly. "He might stop working if he misses you too much. You should arrange some time to see him at least once a week." Phil agreed. "After today, the agricultural developments will begin. Rino needs all the rest and de-stressing he wants. It''s almost eight in the evening, you should get ready. The new quests will beunched at midnight." Unaware of what the Gods were scheming, Rino was enjoying his interior decorating spree. By the time he woke up and decorated Noir''s room, it was already dark. Rino took the chance to make a few cooking utensils in case Noir needed to eat. His pottery skills improved the more he crafted, and Rino thought it might be due to all the bricks he made. Working with y was very easy, and Rino fired everything in the huge kiln. Once the difficult part of building the huge kiln was over, Rino started to enjoy pottery a little more. The lich had a lot of spare time, so he focussed a little more on his carving details to make the bowls look a little fancier. Ace did not have an issue with the fine details at first. However, he started bing a little concerned when Rino included cat designs and his feline name into some smaller dishes. One by one, the farmhouse started to look more like something someone would live in with a tiny table, grass mat, little stump stools and cutlery by the clumsily made sink. There were poorly made shelves that were not very steady or even. Rino did not have much time to make good wooden nks, so they were pped together using y and fired in the kiln for the sake of making something functional for all his items. If there was one thing Rino appreciated now that he did not previously, it was how useful y was. Using this material, Rino managed to make himself almost everything from a knife to a spoon. Even chairs could be made from y, but Rino decided against that because he wanted to make something nicerter. For now, he looked at his sparse furnishings and nodded. This was satisfactory. He really hoped Noir would like it enough to stay for a while. Chapter 34 - Mutt As it got closer to midnight, Rino wondered if Noir would appear. There were only two more hours now. Did something terrible happen to the ck cat? The lich started to pace around in his farmhouse. While Rino second-guessed himself, Ace found himselfnding in the forest not too far from where Rino''s newly built farmhouse was. Ark did a better job of sending his incarnate over. For that, Ace was thankful. He did not want to alert Rino about his appearance and activities. The God of Prayers teleported quite a distance from Rino''s base, where a recently killed monster''s corpsey decaying. It was a small mountain goblin vige, and many creatures died. ording to Stephanie, the invading monster was in by the hobgoblin chief, who was severely injured, so the remaining goblin survivors chose to relocate now that their home was destroyed. It was the perfect opportunity to teach Rino some dark magic and its basics. The magician proved to be very resourceful with his talent, and the next stage required several pairs of hands to pull off. The sabre-toothed wolf monster rose from the ground as shadows poured into it, covering every inch of decaying fur. It was coated so full of darkness that only a pair of glowing red eyes could be seen after it was revived. Ace took a look at his handiwork and nodded. Although the revived sabre-toothed wolf monster was as strong as ten trained foot soldiers with its superior strength and speed, it was still a very predictable beast that could be taken down easily with excellent teamwork. Against Rino, it did not really stand a chance. The only difference between the sabre-toothed wolf monster and the one Ace brought back from the dead was the regeneration abilities. Without holy magic to dispel the curse Ace ced on this wolf monster, it would not die even if Rino shredded it to ribbons. As long as darkness reigned, this shadow wolf monster would never die. It was a test of Rino''s ability to understand the root of dark magic. Once the shadow wolf monster was freed from its revival shackles, Rino watched it let out a howl, running towards Rino''s base. From his farmhouse, Rino did not understand why he suddenly felt lethargic. It was as if the air was denser and Rino decided to stop waiting. Noir might be in the area, and it would be faster to search for the talking cat. As Rino ran towards the forest, he became more alert. The air was definitely getting denser, and his movements felt heavy even with the shadow tendrils acting as free-flying transport. They were the only reason why he still had his speed. Out of instinct, Rino called out more shadows and wrapped them around him, much like how he once wrapped himself in shadow tendrils as a way to protect himself from the sun. Now that it was night, there were plenty of shadows to borrow. Ping! === Side Quest #8 [Urgent Event] Objective: Kill the shadow wolf monster. Time Limit: 5 hours. Reward: Fundamentals of Dark Magic. === When Rino saw the side quest window updating itself with a bizarre format, he raised a brow. Urgent event side quest? That never happened before. Yet, he wanted that reward. Ever since his arrival in this world, the lich could not make heads or tails about his new ability. Dark magic was a very different kind of magic. It could not bepared with elemental magic, spatial magic, or holy magic. It was simply too unique to learn without any guidance. There was no time to waste. Rino now knew where he had to go. Noir should be able to find its way to Rino''s farmhouse and, if wanted to wrap this side quest quickly before the cat visits. He did not want to bete. If anything, killing this shadow wolf monster might provide Rino with some charming tribute to persuade the cat to stay with him permanently. Before the lich saw the monster he was meant to hunt, he heard it howling. What a dumb dog! This is the reason why Rino preferred cats. They knew how to be discreet and were highly independent creatures with pride and grace like royalty. As the shadow wolf monster came to view, Rino could not help but feel a shiver from his soul as they locked eyes. The shadow wolf''s eyes were red, drawing him in like staring into the abyss. There was a moment of silence as both parties sized each other. The lich could feel an immense hatred from this shadow wolf after looking into its eyes. That amount of hate rivalled how Rino felt about the world in hisst life. The shadow wolf was an extremely worthy opponent. Without a word, they lunged at each other. Rino could feel the sharp ws of this dumb dog snagging parts of his cape, but he returned a well-timed spell, skewering the shadow wolf with earth spikes. This should put an end to everything. Cool people did not look back after a finishing move. Rino smirked inwardly at the easy ending, expecting to im his quest reward. However, he heard a loud cracking sound and the vision tilted in front of him. When Rino turned to look at the source of the sound, one arm was already gone, and his cape was ripped to the point of no return. The dumb dog was gnawing at his arm like some kind of chew toy. The sight of his torn silk cape fabric clinging onto that severed arm stirred all sorts of emotions in Rino. The emotions became more turbulent when the shadow wolf monster spat the arm out like something disgusting, and that was when it happened. Like a broken dam, all that anger, hatred, pain and sorrow tumbled from Rino in the form of shadows. The perpetual tiredness, loneliness, sense of betrayal and utter boredom transformed into a huge aura that overpowered the shadow wolf''s instincts. It tried to run, but Rino showed no mercy. He wanted this stupid dog dead. Unlike cutting hisst toe bone, the ce where his arm severed barely itched. His lich''s high-speed regeneration was working, and Rino saw the tickles of purple undead fire to his right as the bone slowly regrew from where it was torn off. The thing that made Rino the maddest was how his silk cape was so easily ripped by this low life. How dare it? All those hours Rino spent over thest week and all his effort just to make something that could protect him from the annoying sun, gone in just a moment. "You should have stayed dead when you had the chance," Rino growled using his thought projection magic, and the shadow wolf monster trembled. The huge wolf struggled and whined in fear as Rino''s shadows grabbed its legs, pulling him into that mass of never-ending darkness. The lich wasn''t going to allow it to beg for mercy and a shadow tendril choked the wolf monster''s mouth so that it could no longer make any sounds. "Repent your sins in hell," Rino''s voice was cold and menacing, just the way he sounded back when he was a court magician. The only difference was who he was saying it to now. The shadow wolf monster suffered for less than a minute as Rino devoured everything the shadow wolf monster had to offer from his bones and decaying flesh to his soul. The side quest waspleted at that very moment, and Rino felt something automatically click in his head. Ace observed from a distance as the reward was automatically activated after the shadow wolf monster was subdued. Even for a genius, this was too fast! He expected the shadow wolf monster to take at least an hour to trigger Rino''s darkest feelings. Now, Ace did not know who the true monster was. Rinoughed heartily and freely after the fight was over. Heughed till he couldugh no more from the bottom of his soul. So this was what dark magic was... he should have known. "Pay your respects to this dark monarch," Rino dered. "Kneel!" The shadows that disappeared after the end of the short but exhrating battle reappeared. The ce where Rino devoured the shadow wolf monster was now upied by the very shadow wolf monster he devoured earlier. There was only one difference now. Those eyes weren''t red. They were purple, just like the colour of the soul fire that regenerated his arm. Summoning magic was one of the easiest spells to perform for dark mages. It was also an extremely useful ability. Rino looked at his first summoned ve and wondered what he should name this dumb dog. "Nah," Rino decided against it. He was toozy for this. Only cats deserved proper names. "From today onwards, you are Mutt. When I call for you, you respond without questions." The poor enved wolf monster could not go against his summoner and lowered its head to the ground as a sign of submission. Satisfied at the attitude of this dumb dog, Rino still felt a little angry at the destruction of his cape. Hence, he told the wolf to find him more bodies and bring them all back in one piece to his farmhouse. He was simply toozy to find new ves, but the extra hands would be helpful. Chapter 35 - Noir鈥檚 Present When Rino returned to his hut with his shredded cape, he could not help but feel gloomy. He did not notice a pair of glowing eyes watching him from his roof, waiting for the right moment to pounce. The lich was so lost in his thoughts that when a ck blur fell on top of his head and covered his eye sockets, he thought it was an ambush all over again. The panicked lichunched an area fire attack in retaliation that Ace quickly negated using some divine powers. "Easy there, kitten. You could have singed my fur." Hearing thezy voice, Rino gasped mentally. There was only one cat who spoke so ssily! Noir was finally here! "Noir!" Rino projected his thoughts and tried to grab the cat for a hug but was rewarded with a swift kick in the skull. Ace put some distance between himself and Rino now that the item he requested from Ark to reward Rino was delivered. "Shut up. Who are you calling Noir?" Rino removed therge fabric from his face and dropped his jaw when he found out what that was. "Noir... this is...?" Looking away, Ace made up a story quickly to avoid suspicion. "Just something I found. If you don''t like it, then you can throw it into the firece." Turning away and entering from the kitty door, Ace let Rino take time to admire the new cape. The needlework was good, as expected from Phil. It was also given some enchants using some divine points. Ark thought that Rino might need a sturdier cape. The new monarch could not be seen going around with a torn cloak. He could go around without pants and underwear beneath the mantle if he wanted. That was entirely up to choice, but a cape represented status. "I will treasure this!" Rino projected his thoughts to the ck cat and hugged it close to him. "What a precious gift from Noir!" Ace wanted to protest at the name, but when his eyesnded on the nket in his cat basket that was embroidered messily with his ''name'', the God of Prayers paused. He felt slightly bad for ruining Rino''s original cape, even if it was necessary to awaken the darkness within the lich. His initial n was worse. Ace wanted to lead the wolf monster all the way to Rino''s farmhouse and wreck his cosy abode. It would have woken the dark magician in Rino but at a hefty cost. Thankfully, Rino headed to the forest after sensing something amiss. He hated feeling too guilty, so the God of Prayers reluctantly epted his new name. Apart from sounding like a girl''s name, he had to admit Rino had a good naming sense when he actually tried. Noir was a thousand times better than Mutt. Rino examined the cape that Noir gave him. The talking cat was definitely not ordinary. This cape was enchanted with magic. While Rino had questions about its origins, he did not want to expose Noir''s secrets. It was better to pretend to be oblivious to them for now and make the cat feel safe with him. Now that he thought about it, Noir used the kitty door he made. That alone sent Rino into giggles. Thankfully, he had no voice, or the ck cat would be judging him. Rino shut the kitty door with his wooden panel after he entered. The ck ball of fur was already making itselffortable by the firece that Rino kept going constantly. Noir was already yawning in the basket, curled up beneath the nket. The cat''s half-lidded eyes made Rino coo inwardly. It was such a shame he did not have painting materials here. The ex court magician would have painted to capture the tranquil moment. As it was, Rino decided to make do with the second options and stared intensely to burn the sight into the back of his eye sockets. Ping! It was midnight, and the daily quest finally updated itself. === Daily Quest #5 Objective: Acquire 10 more helping hands Time Limit: 24 Hours Tutorial here. Reward: Soul Splitting Magic. Penalty: NA === Curious by what helping hands meant, Rino checked the tutorial. It was currently midnight, and Noir was asleep near his firece. He assumed that the cat was fond of his new abode and decided to focus on reading the daily quest''s requirements. The task wasn''t difficult. If anything, this was exactly what Rino intended to do. Mutt was still searching for corpses that Rino could devour and summon as ves. He hoped that his dumb dog could work quickly. There wasn''t a lot of time to get ten new ves. If this wolf monster could not find a single corpse, it should start hunting before Rino used it as a live target for his newly learned dark magic. At the same time, Rino looked at the reward for his daily quest. Soul Splitting magic sounded like a lich speciality. Initially, he wanted to find spare bodies for this. However, the little grey rat became his bone knife. The knife was very worn out by now after cutting so many hemp stalks. It was about time for Rino to toss it away and repurpose it. Besides, there was an organic bone farm that would never run out if he ever needed bones. The method of acquirement was morally questionable, but it provided splendid results so Rino wouldn''tin. After locking the doors, Rino left the farmhouse while it was still dark. This wolf monster was revived by someone near his area. There was no coincidence involved, and the danger wasn''t truly over. To keep Noir safe, Rino decided to venture further from his territory. Mutt must know a thing or two. That rage in his eyes when they first met told Rino what he had to know. The wolf monster was hunted and manipted before he became undead. Assuming that the wolf faced his enemies, Rino should have at least one more corpse to devour if he could find it. Thankfully, the bond between the summoned and the summoner was not affected by distance. "Where are you?" Rino asked the Mutt through their link. Although the wolf monster was not intelligent enough to form words or hold a conversation, it gave Rino urate responses to his questions. As Mutt guided his master to his present location at the goblin grave, Rino told him to stay put. It was easier for him to witness it with his own eyes and get to the body than entrust his dumb dog to bring it to him without destroying the corpse. Rino still didn''t trust dogs, and Mutt whined in sadness when he read his master''s feelings. Chapter 36 - A Whole Village Of Free Slaves Seeing how obediently Mutt was sitting when he arrived, Rino nodded. At the very least, this beast was trainable. He might not be the smartest, but he was useful. Mutt wagged its tail when he heard his owner''s praise. Rino frowned. This summoner and summoned bond was a little inconvenient. He wished there was a way to restrict the thoughts and feelings from his end from reaching his minions. Maybe it was possible. Rino just didn''t know how to do it yet. At first, it was too dark to see anything more than just a cave. However, once Rino brought up a fireball big enough to light the area, he understood what a gem this was. "Goblins?" Rino mused. These creatures were usually weak, but they were numerous. If the entire den of goblins was wiped out, Rino could only imagine how many free ves he could have with this vige massacre. "Are there more inside?" he asked Mutt, who howled in acknowledgement. Thrilled, Rino wasted no time. He focussed on the same feelings of domination and desire to unite everything under his shadows, sweeping up the dead goblin guards. Almost at once, Rino saw his daily quest mark itself aspleted. Ping! === Daily Quest #5 Objective: Acquire 10 more helping hands Time Limit: 24 Hours Tutorial here. Reward: Soul Splitting Magic. im your reward here. Penalty: NA === Rino did not wait. He wanted the Soul Splitting Magic. An influx of information assaulted Rino''s head, and the lich groaned, throwing his back backwards in an unusual angle that made Mutt worried for a while. Then, the lich slowlyughed a soundlessugh. His teeth ttered disturbingly, and Mutt shivered. It was a horribly sinister sight as those empty eye sockets were now filled with purple soul fire, boring right into his. Something did not feel right. Mutt wanted to run, but he was bound by the summoning magic. Rino owned his soul and, now, his body too. "A worthy first sacrifice," Rino mused as he looked at the shadow wolf monster. Casting a and chanting something that sounded dangerous, Rino let the magic take its course. The ancient soul splitting spell activated, and now, Rino had a part of his soul nted in his first ve''s body. Compared to these goblins, the shadow wolf was a lot stronger. Rino did not need to empty this summon''s body to infuse arger piece of his soul. This was sufficient for now. As this dumb dog grew stronger, that fragment of soul would also be more significant. At the same time, the ve with a part of his soul was gifted with a fraction of Rino''s power. Mutt felt his intelligence evolving and was finally able to attempt human speech for the first time. "Thank you, master. This humble one will take care of your soul fragment." Rino was pleasantly surprised by the evolution of the dumb dog. He did not know imparting a fragment of his soul into his summons would trigger a power-up ability. Yet, it wasn''t a bad thing. ording to the Soul Splitting Magic, a dark magician can only use this spell a limited number of times, depending on their mana capacity. Each fragment of soul would require the caster to be able to hold a divine tier ritual. In his previous world, there were only a handful of magicians who could host divine tier rituals single-handedly. Dark cultists usually offered living sacrifices and formed ritual circles consisting of ten or more magicians. Even Rino needed a long time to recover after holding a single divine tier ritual in his previous life. The number of times he did that could be counted on one hand, and Rino swore never to use that sort of magic recklessly after the first time he tried it. A mage''s mana was their life force. There was simply too much risk involved in performing one. However, Rino was now a lich with magic several folds more powerful than his human body in the previous world. Mana recovery for liches was not the same as humans. He could easily recover a huge bulk of his mana reserves in a few hours by wallowing in self-hatred. Splitting a fragment of his soul was something Rino could do once a day at ease. In fact, Rino thought it would be good to do it once a day from now on. The more soul fragments he had, the faster he could grow as a magician in terms of mana capacity. At the same time, it would make his minions a little less irritating to talk to. No matter how he saw it, Rino didn''t think there was any loss in doing so. "Are there more inside that cave?" Rino asked after he checked the number of souls he had in his shadow. Mutt nodded and stood up to lead the way. Rino followed with a fireball in his hand. This cape from Noir was very fireproof, and Rino did not have to worry about it burning. Corpses lined the cave''s entrance, and Rino slowed his pace, allowing his hungry shadow to devour everyone. The goblin vige was not very big, but the cave made a very good fortress. Rino wondered if he could make this his private dungeon in the future. If he ever needed rocks, this would be a great inconspicuous spot. All he had to do was set up another teleportation pad in the lower parts of the cave so that his minions could work more efficiently. After rounding up the number of vigers and harvesting their souls in his shadow, Rino counted a total of forty-eight goblin shadow minions. "Kneel," Rinomanded, summoning all forty-right new ves when the strangest thing happened. His vision doubled, and the world tilted on an axis before the fireball in his hand fizzed out, leaving behindplete darkness. Yet, thest thing he heard was the annoying yapping from his dumb dog. How noisy! Chapter 37 - Lich Limits Apparently, liches had limits too. When Rino woke up, it was still pitch dark. His bones felt heavy, and the lich could barely move. Thankfully, it wasn''t time for daily quest reset yet. He should not have passed out for too long. The cave was quiet, and Rino tried to remember what he did before this. Ah, yes. He summoned forty-eight goblins and felt a sudden mana drop. Did summoning goblins take up so much mana? Rino was unsure. However, he was very thankful that he was a lich in a cave full of lingering resentment energy from the murdered goblin tribe. If he wasn''t here when he fainted, Rino might not have recovered any of his depleted mana. Thanks to the severe mana depletion, all his summons were cancelled even if he could still feel their soul bonds in his shadow. The lich could only remain motionless on the cave ground while meditating and thinking of the most negative thoughts he could. As ridiculous as it sounded, Rino might soon run out of depressing thoughts. His uses for mana severely outweighed the miseries he suffered in his previous life. Rino needed a mana farm badly. He finally understood why dark mages were such despicable people. It was like a gambler being dealt a shitty hand of cards in a poker game. The only way to win was to cheat. Even if Rino had to cheat, he wanted to do it in the least annoying way. Humans and animals required feeding. Rino was not that diligent at keeping living creatures living for too long, even if it was for the sake of creating torture farms. Hence, there was only one solution. He had to sacrifice a few free ves and embed soul fragments in them to boost his mana capacity. He needed to make a pit of continuous suffering beneath his farmhouse so that he could still wake up and recover his mana if something simr to this happened in the future. It took Rino many hours to finally recover his manas to a safe level before he trudged his way back. He was still too weak to summon any of his minions, so Rino walked with his tattered grass woven sandals. It was hardly a week, but already, these sandals look like they were hanging by thest weave. Unsurprisingly, it was daytime when Rino reached the cave''s entrance. Luckily for him, Noir''s present was very good at deflecting deadly sun rays. Rino did not want to know what would happen if he were to catch on fire and trigger his high-speed regeneration abilities now when he was low on mana. The soul splitting spell should activate itself if Rino''s main body vaporised, but Rino really did not want to take any chances. He was so close to death in only the first week of his revival. This new world should not be underestimated. When Rino finally closed the door of his humble farmhouse, he threw himself onto bed immediately and waited. It was very dark in here without enough magic to power the fireballs. The fire in the firece also died out with nobody to feed it wood over the night. The only light that filtered into his farmhouse was through the poorly made doors. Rino eyed the kitty door. The wood was still there. However, his feline friend was no longer in his basket. "Noir?" Rino projected his thoughts just loud enough for anyone within thepounds of his house to hear. There was no reply. A sinking feeling settled in Rino''s non-existent gut. Where did Noir go? How did Noir leave his farmhouse? The door should be too heavy for a cat to open. Rino felt perfectly miserable. Without Noir, his new chance at life was nothing but an empty shell. All he wanted was for the ck cat to greet him and allow him to nuzzle his face in that furry underbelly. It would be better if he could cuddle with the talking cat forfort after his mana depletion, but the little creature was nowhere to be found. Sulking,ining and brooding, Rino remained that way until a new side quest popped up. Ping! === Side Quest #9 Objective: Craft a pair of durable shoes. Reward: 8 hours of sleep. === Rino did not have to look at his feet to know that those grass woven sandals had fallen off. The long walk back pushed the breaking sandals to their limit. Thinking about it, Rino could really use a bath. His feet and mantle were muddy from the long hike. He should not have flopped onto the bed so quickly. As Rino got up to fill the bath manually, he started thinking about the side quest. What kind of materials would he need to craft a pair of durable shoes. On that note, what was considered durable? In his previous world, the poor used hemp fibre to make shoes. Rino could do that. However, those shoes didn''tst for too long. Perhaps two months at most if they travelled as much as Rino did on a daily basis. The richer people, like merchants and nobility, wore shoes made from animal skin. Leatherwork was a messy job, and Rino did not know how tanning leather worked. What he did know was the grossness of the process. No leather. Rino decided to stick to the basics. He would make the shoe sole out of wood to prevent fast wearing out from walking too much. At the same time, he will dye the linen and double the fabric to make a stronger cloth for his shoes. He onlycked the glue to hold everything strongly together. Without enough mana, Rino could not use the teleportation pad to the trees with resin. Sighing silently, Rino looked at the reward longingly. Eight more hours of sleep. If only he was able to use magic, he would finish his work in a jiffy. The water he carried to the y bathtub was cold, and Rino sighed. Everything he automated using magic stopped working after he copsed. The heat circles in his reservoir stopped working for a while, and Rino''s clean water supply was looking a little low. What a disaster! Rino scrubbed his muddy toes with the torn cape he turned into a cleaning rag. Once he had his mana back, he was going to start mass-producing everything again. Now that he had a lot of time, Rino recalled how he could have summoned a few goblins to pack up and carry over useful items from their goblin cave to his farmhouse. It was a case of finders keepers, so these goblins should have noints. There was no need to summon all forty-eight of them at once. Chapter 38 - Sweet Feet Rino did not need to go too far for materials to craft those shoes for his sweet feet. Everything was in that storage pit, so he decided to rx a little in his bath. Carrying the water from the reservoir took a bit of work, but Rino managed. However, washing the dirtied clothes and letting them dry was a pain. Rino had to risk getting burned by the sun a little to toss them onto a drying line he tied between two earth pirs. If there was something Rino understood from that quickundry run, it was how soul fire wasn''t a real fire. Unlike fire magic, soul fire did not burn physical objects. In fact, other life forms were not affected. It was a curse for undead like him, and that became annoying. He needed to learn a little more about liches and their dark arts to work around this stupid restriction. It was getting very annoying, especially when Rino was low on mana. For a moment, he thought the soul fire might kill him for real if his regeneration ability was reliant on mana. Thankfully, the purple fire stopped the moment he got out of the sun. As Rino soaked in his tub, he thought about the design he wanted for these shoes. It would be durable enough tost him for a while, so Rino wanted something practical but befitting of the dark lord. What would his shadow subordinates say if they saw their lord wearing stupid flip flops? It was unbing even if flip flops werefortable and very durable. The sound that came with wearing flip flops did not feel intimidating enough. "I actually have nice feet," Rino mused. The ivory white bones floated a little above the water''s surface, and Rino wriggled each toe individually, marvelling at how graceful they were. He briefly wondered if they could move independently like fingers and became impressed when his toes moved in a familiar motion like what his fingers would have done for a piano piece he yed in his previous life. The Gods above became speechless as Rino wondered what else he could make his feet do. If Rino''s underlings knew about his odd character, they might lose all fear and respect they had for this man. Phil turned to Ace and asked why he was back so quickly without even telling Rino goodbye. "I had to restore his mana, using prayers to change the odds, didn''t I?" the God of Prayers quickly defended himself. Stephanie merely smirked knowingly. Nobody pointed out how Ace was blushing, but it was obvious the God turned very worried about the chosen one when Rino went past his limits. It wasn''t really the goblin cave that helped Rino recover his mana to a safe level. It was ''Noir'' who did that and left after Ace exhausted his incarnate''s body. The resentment energy left in the cave did not alle from the goblins. Most of that was remnants of Noir''s dark magic transfer. To redirect everyone''s focus, Ace looked at Stephanie and asked if she should start preparing for a fated meeting event. "What?" the Goddess wasn''t expecting to be the centre of the discussion and blinked. What did she miss? "We did not just pull his soul over to this world," Ace reminded. "Apart from building a kingdom, he has to repopte it and grow our prayers for divinity promotion. Where''s your candidate?" Ark told his sister to quickly prepare a few candidates to propose to them during the next meeting and thanked Ace for the reminder. Seeing how she was finally able to perform her task, Stephanie became visibly excited as she excused herself to prepare the best candidates for Rino. In fact, she didn''t think she should stop at one. Polygamy was all in the rage now. Down in his bath, Rino sneezed. That was funny. He didn''t think that skeletons and undead would be susceptible to catching colds. However, he wasn''t going to take the risk of finding out. It was better to get out and check on how the clothes were doing now that he was clean. He might just test to see if he could sew with his sweet feet. These toes were very flexible, and Rino could not wait to gain an extra pair of hands the unusual way. His clothes were still damp, but the strong sun worked in his favour, so Rino decided there was no harm in walking nude for a few more hours while making his shoes. Noir left like a whimsical cat, and the lich finally figured out how it did that. The cat knew teleportation magic. He felt slightly silly for thinking that barricaded kitty doors would prevent it from leaving when it wanted. Still, Rino had faith that Noir woulde back again. The cat did not look like it hated his ce. It must have been hungry because RIno had nothing to feed it. The lich went to retrieve some smaller pieces of wood that he treated previously when making the farmhouse. Everything wasing in handy now. He did not have to go resource collecting. Rino would hate to burn in the sun while walking an unknown distance without being able to use his teleportation pads just to get some hemp nts. Rino carved the wood pieces at an impressive speed, and soon, two thick heeled soles were ready. The next process of manually weaving his linen in a double weave to make the fabric hold stronger was boring to watch. Hence, only Phil remained by the reflecting pond on duty while the other Gods left to attend to their outstanding matters. Life without magic was difficult, and even at his fastest pace, Rino only managed toplete weaving the piece of cloth he needed for that durable footwear after the sun went down. By then, his clothes were dry, and Rino put them on before deciding if he should use a little magic to cut the cloth with precision. He did not want to ruin this by using his rather blunt bone and y tools. Thankfully, Rino thought of enough depressing things over the day while he was weaving. His feet were also getting better at coordinating coiling the empty spools with dyed linen. With a few quick spells, the cloth was neatly cut and ready for glueing onto the wooden soles. As Rino did not have enough tree sap for the job, he decided to use cement. Surely, that was sturdy enough. After he pped some cement between the upper sole where the fabric would be attached, he fitted it nicely to the carved thick heeled sole and removed the excess cement away. Phil watched how much effort and detail Rino put into making a durable shoe when the lich painted and varnished it. The heeled boot was then fitted withces, and even Stephanie had to admit that was something she would wear too if it came in a different colour. "We should reward him properly for outdoing himself with this creation," Ark said. "Steph, can you somehow spread the idea to some of the more influential humans? With a shoe like that, civilisation will start to see a hierarchy. It''s progress towards something greater." Stephanie grinned. Dream whispering was right up her alley and the Goddess feeling important to the team''s n. Ace only shook his head. There was more to just a shoe design. Boots will help vigers venture into different professions, and soon, war will begin. Chapter 39 - Penalty Introduction Ping! It was midnight, and Rino''s daily quest was updated. The lich checked itzily now that there was nothing much to do apart from wait for the cement to dry. === Daily Quest #6 Objective: Create the following Farming Tools 1. Rake 2. Hoe 3. Shovel Time Limit: 24 Hours Tutorial here. Reward: Potato Seeds. im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 2 hours of sleep per 24 hours dy. === When he saw the reward, Rino paused. Were the Gods actually giving him an item? At the same time, he was speechless when he saw that they finally became serious about the penalty section. For some reason, Rino wanted to see what they would do to him if he had zero sleep hours umted but still refused to turn the quest in. First, they wanted him to be a builder. Now, they wanted him to be a farmer. Was this really building a kingdom? The ex court magician felt insulted that they thought he would do this back-breaking work of farming by himself. He was a magician, and physicalbour was his nemesis! Seeing that it was still dark, Rino sighed. He really did not want to start on this tedious quest after he knew what the Gods wanted him to do. Agriculture wasn''t his area of expertise without magic, and there were very few things magic could do when it came to ploughing the fields and growing nts. Unlike building a house, Rino could not hasten the growth process of nts. This was a routine thing that only happened with consistency. Rino was the least consistent existence in any universe. He and agriculture would be a terrible match. All the nts would never make it past a seedling if Rino was their caretaker unless they were grown using nature magic. In that case, those nts would not be fit for consumption. "What if I left the actual farming to my minions?" Rino wondered. Among the forty-something goblins he enved with his shadow, there should at least be one or two useful people. Goblins might not be the best farmers or hunters, but anyone would do a better job than Rino. This time, he wasn''t going to make that same mistake of summoning every single ve he had. Mutt wasn''t going to be much use now, so Rino looked at his shadows. He might need more than one set of farming tools if he were hiring freebour to tend to the fields. He only hoped that he could receive more than just one miserable packet of seeds for each farming tool set he made. Ark nodded in agreement and updated the daily quest system. For the first time since Rino''s arrival into the new world, he received a repeatable quest. Ping! Rino checked his tab once more and was pleasantly surprised to see a new tab and system message. [System has updated. Kindly visit the Repeatable Quest tab to check your daily turn in limit and rewards.] === Repeatable Quest #1 Objective: Create the following Farming Tools 1. Rake 2. Hoe 3. Shovel Cooldown: 8 Hours Tutorial here. Reward: 100 Potato Seeds === Rino looked at the number of seeds he could im from crafting one set of farming tools and nodded. He wondered if wooden tools would suffice. They might not be as sturdy orsting as metal tools, but he did not have many options. Making bone tools would simply be too painful and barbaric of a process. He was too low on mana to ensureplete survival if he ripped his spine out. Thankfully, Rino was able to save enough mana to gather more hemp trees to restock his storage. There weren''t enough tree sap either for glue and, most certainly, not enough strong fibre to hold everything together. There were so many ces he had to be, and Rino wondered if his ves could be more useful than waiting in his shadows to be called upon. "Why don''t the rest of you start thinking about your painful past and depressing thoughts?" he suggested. Mutt, his most loyal ve, replied positively and started reminiscing his hatred for human hunters. Rino shared the memories from his connection with his most loyal ve and shuddered. The pain was so raw and strong that Rino thought it was his imagination when the shadow beneath his mantle grew. The goblins recalled the painful war against this stupid wolf, and Rino confirmed that it was not an optical illusion. The shadow beneath his cape was growing stronger, darker and bigger. At the same time, their despair only served to fuel his magical powers. They recovered a fraction of what Rino managed to do for hours in just a few minutes, and the lich felt his jaw drop. He was so stunned at the efficiency of this portable mana battery that he had the lower jaw bone start to regenerate before he could pick the fallen half up. With so much mana recovering, Rino threw all caution to the wind. For the first set of farming tools, it might be better to go for quality instead of quantity. He would make the tools heads out of bones. It was probably stronger than rock if he fashioned it out of his thigh bone. Once again, the Gods were speechless at Rino''s strange determination. Why did this lich not read the tutorial? They would not fault him for using wood or stone even if bone was stronger. Besides, didn''t he want to use his shadow summons to farm on his behalf? Was there a real need to use such good materials? It was toote. Rino was already inciting the despair and grief of his shadow ves while pulling out leg after leg. He did not know what else he would use the other bones in his detached legs for, but he would have plenty of good bones left after this. Ace cringed when he saw Rino rip both legs out the moment his thigh bone was fully regenerated. The lich was too impatient and high on mana that pain no longer bothered him. If anything, he was determined to use this self-torture as a method to refuel his depleted mana supply. As crazy as it sounded, Ark thought that this was the exact kind of person they needed in the small world. Rino knew just how to stir up changes. Maybe the punishment system wasn''t really necessary. All they needed to do was give Rino really good incentives to go all out to witness major progress. "We should get him to build a temple and turn in some of the things he makes for rewards," Phil suggested. "These tools, if people ignored the material, would be better than anything else anyone in the small world has attempted to make. Those who have harder soils might need them because metals of this small world rust easily." Ark agreed. However, he doubted that Rino would build them a temple. If anything, the lich would do it if the system allowed a sacrificial offering in exchange for sleep hours. Chapter 40 - Farming In Style If Rino had to point out the most challenging part about crafting a bone rake, shovel and hoe, it would be the grinding of bones into that one perfect sized part and binding bones together to form something sturdy. The rake was probably the easiest of all three tools to create. Rino simply had to choose a good rib bone to break at the same point then repeat the process until he had enough rake teeth to put together. Finding the right bone to use for the shovel was a pain. Eventually, Rino decided to cleave the top half of his skull to use the curved part to cut and sharpen into a scoop for dirt. The process was so tedious, and Rino wasn''tpletely satisfied with the results. The shovel turned out way smaller than he wanted, and it would only be good for goblins to use. The hoe was slightly easier to find a match, but Rino struggled to harvest it because it was stuck to the back of his arm at an angle he could not quite reach. Removing just the shoulder de was tricky because that bone was connected to so many things. It took RIno a while to figure out all he needed to do was break his connecting corbone for the arm to fall out nicely. Once that was done, the rest progressed smoothly. As Rino looked at the three bone tool heads, he sighed. They were definitely not good enough for someone his size to use. However, it would be a different story if he invented this for goblins instead of using wood as he originally intended for. Thankfully, it matched the size of his femur handles, and all Rino had to do was bind them together with some strong rope. ording to Mutt, some spider monsters lived in caves not too far from the goblins''ir. If Rino could collect some spider monster silk, they wouldst very long, holding things even better than silk ever would. Tempted, Rino sent the wolf out to gather some. In the meantime, Rino figured there was no harm in preparing farming tools for the daily repeatable task. Sure, it meant that he had to sacrifice tools but who said it had to be made from bones? Rino would reserve these special bone tools for his undead farmers. The Gods can have regr stone tools bound using linen. He wasn''t going to waste perfectly good silk on sloppy tools. While waiting for his shoes to dry and for Mutt to return with spider silk, Rino started working on his wardrobe project. There wasn''t enough cloth, and now that he had a good mana farm within his shadows, Rino abused it thoroughly. The first thing he did was reactivate the reservoir below so he could continue to dye threads. Afterwhich, Rino mass gathered resources through several teleportation jumps. He needed a lot more cotton, hemp and x. Phil watched as Rino abused his speedy mana regeneration and restored the environment with what he harvested using nature magic maniption. The new nts Rino grew held the soil structure around the teleportation pad, even if it was a different species. The lich was rather fond of oak trees that provided him with oak galls for dye, among other useful items. It was the only tree besides pine that offered him sticky tree sap glue and hemp, which was generally useful, that Rino liked enough to not want them deforested. The night passed quickly, with Rino gathering what he needed and brought back rocks from the goblins'' cave. It had be a stone mining outpost for Rino, who was rather fond of the little cave. The lich thought about converting it to his second hideout if something happened to him and the farmhouse but decided that it could wait. No immediate enemies were threatening his safety, so Rino would do itter. Mutt returned with a lot of spider silk, much to Rino''s delight. He patted the sabre-tooth wolf monster on the head before dismissing him back into his shadows, entrusting it with the duty of regenerating his mana. The loyal wolf slunk away with a wagging tail, happy to receive praise and worked hard at recalling all the crappy things that it experienced while it was alive. Rino did not waste more time and worked on binding his bone tools. He now had enough raw materials sitting in his storage pit just as the sun started to peek across the mountains. Working fast, it did not take long before all three tools were ready for questpletion. Ark manually marked the quest aspleted when he saw the high-quality bone tools, even if they were too small for humans to use. Ping! === Daily Quest #6 (Complete) Objective: Create the following Farming Tools 1. Rake 2. Hoe 3. Shovel Time Limit: 24 Hours Tutorial here. Reward: Potato Seeds. im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 2 hours of sleep per 24 hours dy. === Rino did not hesitate to im his daily reward well before the sun rose fully. A packet of potato seeds wrapped in a paper package fell to Rino''s feet from the system screen when he failed to catch it. Ping! Another notification came, and Rino grinned. This was what he was talking about. === Side Quest #9 (Complete) Objective: Craft a pair of durable shoes. Reward: 8 hours of sleep. im your reward here. === There was no need to think twice. Rino smacked the im option and looked at his sleep wallet. Ping! The system notified him after iming his reward. [8 hours of sleep sessfully deposited into the Sleep Wallet. Please check your sleep wallet for avable sleep reward bnce.] He now had eight hours to sleep the day through, but honestly, Rino wanted to make enough tools for his goblin farmers and turn the sloppier ones for the redeemable quest. After all, it never really hurts to have too many potato seeds. As for the new pair of bots, Rino quickly tried them on. They fit snugly, and while Rino could not really feel cold or warmth, he feltplete with them. It was said that a man''s social status and self-worth lies in the footwear he invests in. Rino would have preferred leather, but these worked as well. Without the ability to sweat or feel difort when walking, these shoes were actually a good option. Now, he could farm in style if he really wanted to, and nobody can fault him for being a slob even if he waszy. Chapter 41 - Ground Beans After putting on his newly made boots, Rino found himself examining the potato seeds. He''d never seen them before, even in his previous world. "Is he serious?" Stephanie scoffed. "They ate potatoes daily for just about every meal in his previous world!" Phil sighed. Rino''s previous world relied heavily on two staple food sources, namely potato and wheat. Rino was a wheat kind of person and often ate bread because it was easier to consume on the go. The ex court magician had little opportunity to be acquainted with potato that is normally served in stews and mashed on the side with meat. "Let''s give him the benefit of the doubt," Ark told his sister. "They know potatoes differently in Rino''s previous world. If I recall, it was called a ground bean or something simr. Not many people know that potatoes have seeds either. Most people put a potato in the ground to grow a potato." Indeed, not many people knew how the original potatoes were grown. Some did not know that potatoes were flowering nts capable of producing berries either. Growing potatoes from actual seeds took way longer than it would by sticking a potato into the ground. Rino looked confused at the packet of seeds in his hands. The Gods did not have much divinity so sending him a pack of about fifty seeds was what they could afford for now. If Rino wanted more, he had to make offerings. It didn''t matter if they were wooden rakes or stone ones. Any of those would be better than the things farmers of this small world used. Presently, the humans of this small world were still mostly hunters. They only foraged and hunted for food. The concept of hunting was still foreign, even if a few have started exploring how it worked. For Rino, agriculture was very far from what he wasfortable with. The things he did as a court magician did not reach the farmers or the kitchen. Thinking about it, Rino found it weird how he was so involved with the cksmiths, adventurers, doctors and schrs as a court magician. Before his life as a magician, Rino remembered growing up in bad parts of the country where he mingled among rogues. His first use of magic prompted him to master fire first. It was useful as a distraction and helped to erase traces of their crimes. The second element he mastered was air, but by then, the magician tower had discovered him and took him under their wing. Everything else was history when they found out he had an affinity with almost every element of magic. Thankfully, he did not need to wait for a long time before the sun was fully visible. The lich took one tiny seed between his bony fingers and decided to keep the rest safe for now. There weren''t many seeds here, and if he wanted to experiment, he had to be wise about it. Rino decided to elerate its growth using the sunlight and nature magic to see what a potato was. Even Phil had to admit, he was very impressed with Rino''s control of magic. The lich was able to forcefully make the seed germinate with the help of magic. It took a lot of effort and concentration to provide the seed with the correct environment required to grow. On top of that, Rino used raw mana as a form of fertiliser to elerate its growth, unlocking the locked potential within that seed to be a nt in the shortest period it could. Unfortunately, this sort of thing could only be done as an experiment. It would be nearly impossible to replicate it in this small world without enough mana density in the air. The potato nt grew from a seed to a young nt. The leaves grew bigger, but Rino still saw nothing that could be harvested at this stage. Hence, he persevered and continued to feed it with mana until it grew almost as tall as him. Still, the nt grew no flowers. Was this not a flowering nt? "What''s that moron doing?" Stephanie questioned. At such a size, the potatoes must be enormous! Yet, Rino wasn''t stopping. He continued to feed the nt mana, trying to make it grow bigger. Was he trying to evolve this into a monster? The Gods watched helplessly from the reflecting pond as Rino continued to feed the nt with mana. Thankfully, he experimented on this near the forest and not near his farmhouse just in case something happened. "That''s odd," Rino thought to himself as the potato nt towered over him. Was this really a nt for farming? On the bright side, he was starting to see some flowers and fruits forming as the nt started to keel over. Desperate to save it from dying, Rino added more mana, but the poor potato nt seemed to droop further with the excessive amount of nature magic. Phil remained thoughtful as Rino mourned the death of his first potato nt. The lich harvested some of the berries and wondered if these were edible. It looked too tiny to be filling at all, and Rino wondered why the Gods gave him such a useless seed. "We might see a potato forest after a while," Phil mentioned in the passing. The potato nt might have fallen over, but it was not dead. In fact, the lingering effects of Rino''s mana was only going to serve as fertiliser for a long while. Ark nodded. Thanks to Rino''s intervention, over thirty potato tubers were hiding beneath the ground, spread out on the forest grounds. It should not take long for some animals toe along and steal them, spreading them around in the vicinity and pollinating the flowers for more fruits that would be eaten by birds. In turn, these birds will fly and poop the undigested berry seeds in some other ces. If anything, Rino''s failed experiment was doing more good than harm. Phil was very happy about the unexpected development, but Ace remained concerned. If Rino did not know a thing about nts and agriculture, how would heplete the uing quests? Hence, there was only one logical thing to do. He had to go back as Noir to assist this helpless lich from the shadows. === IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: Dear esteemed readers, I would like to announce that the story is going premium (locked) from the next chapter. You can unlock the chapters with coins or fast passes. If you are new to the site, this is how the chapters will be priced: 200 words = 1 coin, and 1 coin is worth $0.02 So, the longer the chapters, the more coins needed to unlock them. For 1200 word-chapters, the price will be 6 coins, 2000 word chapters are worth 10 coins, and so on. HOW MUCH AN AUTHOR ACTUALLY EARNS? An author gets around 30% of what their novels earn. From a chapter that costs 6 coins, only 2 coins will go to the author. It''s not really much, considering 1 chapter takes 1-4 hours to write (depending on the author''s health, inspiration, research, etc). But the more readers unlock the chapters using coins, the more money an author could make. So.. please open the locked chapters with coins if you wish to support me and this novel. So, if you see a chapter with 1200 words (around 8-9 pages) and priced 6 coins. It means the cost to unlock the chapter is: 6 coins x $0.02 = $0.12 Out of that $0.12 (twelve cents), the author earns 30% or around $0.036 FYI, I have a few contracted books on Web.no.vel, but I still have to do my day job (I''m a piano teacher and English Home Tutor) because those books don''t earn enough to live (especially in Singapore). So, you can tell that my books don''t make much as of today. However, I do hope that will change as I write more with more people discovering my books. I really hope that I can pursue writing as a full-time career. It has been the dream and my reason for living. In exchange for your support, I can promise you my dedication and hard work to see this book written until the end. I have never and will never drop a book in my life no matter how disappointing the financial results and will not leave you hanging. I hope this book can bring you a sense of belonging in the Tiny Army (Official Destiny Aitsuji fandom name)munity. If you are new, don''t be shy. My discord and social media DMs are always open to freshies who want to talk to me and not just stalk me! FAST PASSES & OTHER SUPPORT If you cannot afford to unlock the chapters with coins, and can only use fast passes, don''t feel bad about it. I love you too! I know how it feels to be poor and crave books. I understand. I was there. Before Webnowel happened, I use to eat only one meal a day to save pocket money so that I can splurge at the BookFest sale at the end of the year. Perhaps not now but in the future, when you have been blessed abundantly, you can have the luxury to support the content creators that you love. Might be me, might not be me. Still, I would like you to keep that in mind and create an impact on content creators'' lives. Content creation is a lonely road to walk alone. Without support, I might have given up five years ago permanently. That said, there are also other ways to support the content creator you love without paying for the things they do if you do not have the means. You can support this book by voting your power stone so it will go up in ranking and be noticed by other readers who can pay them on your behalf. Writing your thoughts about the book in thements or reviews will give other readers a chance to give the book a try. You are my best promoters that I cannot afford to hire. At the same time, I would like to thank the silent readers who are reading this book. Even though I don''t know you exist, I see your existence in the backend of my statistics for the number of reads, votes and unlocks. Lastly, if you think this long-ass author note appears familiar that''s because MissRealityBites gave this for me to use. It ain''t giarism cuz this ain''t content. Anyone trying toe for me on this is a dipsheet. Period. Her message is the same as what I want to say but she phrases things way nicer for y''all. Only thest two paragraphs were written word for word by yours truly. Everything else is edited or remained the same as I got it. Typos for certain things here are INTENTIONAL cuz censorship. That said, do your reader side quests as much as possible and I hope you stay as fukking long as you can with this hell of a nonsense ride. So long! === Chapter 42 - Speed Of Darkness For the rest of the day, Rino did not have much to do. He still had no idea what a potato was, and that nt growing experiment ended up in aplete disaster. Apart from growing too big, the potato nt was really useless. Ping! Rino blinked at the new notification as he considered how many hours of sleep he wanted to withdraw. The side quest window updated itself, and Rino checked it out quickly. === Side Quest #10 Objective: Discover the speed of darkness. Reward: Master the teleporting skill. === While the lich had no idea what the speed of darkness was, he didn''t really care. All he knew after looking at this quest was how badly he needed that reward. Teleporting was a skill that Rino always envied about dark mages. Sure, the ability to fly was also very useful, but nothing beats the power of teleporting. That surprise and ambush factor from teleporting could be handy in so many ways. me it on his childhood upbringing, but Rino preferred to start with an upper hand in any situation. The element of surprise was always a good thing to have. It was why Rino loved air and fire magic. He could corner his prey with fire and distract them from knowing where he actually was. Having a bird''s eye view was fun as well. He enjoyed watching them walk into his traps. Back to the question about the speed of darkness, Rino retreated from the forest to his farmhouse. His mind worked better when he felt alone. There were too many things going on outside, and Rino needed to think. Inside the farmhouse, Rino decided to put out all the candles and draw all the curtains closed. To find the speed of light, people measured how long it took to be detected over a distance. The speed of sound was measured simrly, and Rino discovered it while travelling through the air using wind magic. He found out that he was flying faster than the magician tower could send him messages with voice projection. It was an idental discovery that broke many new barriers. In the dark interior of his farmhouse, Rino attempted to be one with darkness to no avail. It was simply too noisy within his shadows, and the lich wondered if there was a way to stop listening to the souls he now owned. The terrible memories did not affect him mentally, but they were still very distracting for Rino, who wanted nothing more than to meditate and discover a neww of this world. As Rino''s irritation at the inefficient system grew, the shadow beneath him became darker in the darkness. The noises became more than just background noise without Rino realising, but all hopes of a peaceful meditation session went out of the window. Thrilled by Rino''s progress as his irritation broke through the roof, Ace watched and wondered if the lich would cave to his annoyance. The key to finding out the true speed of darkness was to submerge fully into it and swim in the shadows. It wasn''t simply living in a ce without light. It was understanding how to be dragged along by the shadows but not losing sight of the light. Rino felt something strange developing as his annoyance climbed. He was tempted to tell his ves to pause, but the magician in him became thrilled as mana built up from his core. The lich might not have blood now, but he could feel this energy cirction strongly in his bones. There was no mistaking this sensation. It was the kind of feeling he had whenever he was building up a chantless spell. The only difference between this experience and the mana build up before a chantless spell was the intensity. For a regr chantless spell, Rino used the triggers such as a focal point where he wanted the spell to go and channelled all this energy within him to the direction he wanted it to go. As the shadow grew bigger and darker, it started to take a form. Rino had only witnessed this happening when he was making an offering prayer for a holy spell''s divine blessing. This phenomenon was said to be the work of the Gods and outside of the sphere of magic. Rino did not think that dark magic would be simr. He was unable to control this strange shape that took over, but there was no fear. He was now one of them. The rate that Rino allowed the shadows to grow was slow, but the progression and understanding were steady. Many magicians with poor control would find themselves getting swept away by the sea of darkness. The creatures of the dark loved to prey on the weak-willed. It was the reason why there were many sacrifices used in dark magic. Ace was concerned about RIino learning how to teleport using dark magic without proper guidance. This spell wasn''t as simple as wrapping shadow tendrils around his body or projecting them. It required the caster to fully lose themselves to the feeling of darkness, allowing shadows to temporarily im ownership of their bodies. In a way, dark magic still required a sacrifice. If Rino could relinquish control of his body to allow the shadows to bring him to a different realm, he would be able to move with a slower time flow in that shadow realm to reach a ce in the material world with much less time. Of course, the price of this power was one''s control and sanity on top of mana. Rino could almost feel it. These shadows were trying to consume him the same way they consumed the souls of his summons. The goblins were weak-willed and bent ording to his wishes that the shadow conveyed. However, when Rino was no longer inmand of the shadows, they tried tomand him. As a proud lich, Rino refused to give in to the temptation of these shadows. They battled long and hard for direction in darkness, with the shadow losing. Eventually, Rino felt something simr to the taming of a high-grade fire spirit. The shadows that tried to consume him earlier now wrapped around him like satin sheets. It was at this moment that Rino understood what it was. He consumed the shadows, and now, they were one. This part of the darkness that his summons once owned nowpletely belonged to him. The voices stopped, and Rino looked up at a strange monochrome mirrored world. Where was he? Chapter 43 - Shadow Realm Ace was on the edge of his seat when he lost sight of Rino. The reflecting pond could only reflect what happened in the material world. As Rino epted the shadows, he was brought into the shadow realm with his magic. The farmhouse was empty, and nobody knew how Rino was faring in the shadow realm. Three minutes passed, and yet, Rino was nowhere to be found. The God of Prayers considered going down in person to examine the farmhouse for traces of Rino to pull the lich out. The bond between Gods and their chosen apostles wasn''t weak. However, Ace was a worrywart, and Rino was a reckless person. In the shadow realm, Rino felt as if he was walking upside down on the frozen surface of ake. Yet, he understood what he was looking at. Compared to the process of getting engulfed by darkness, the shadow realm was devoid of sensation. Rino moved around but felt no gravity or friction as he moved. It felt almost as if he was floating in outer space, watching a replicate of the world on the other side of this ss. There was no noise, no pain, no hunger, no feeling. If anything, Rino noticed how eerie this was. His eyes looked at how slowly the grass des swayed with the breeze outside his house. He could feel his mana depleting at a steady rate but more rapidly than he could replenish. He had no shadow in this realm and could not sense any of his ves. If he had to describe this, it was like exploring the ocean with limited air. Rino knew he had to get out of here quickly. The more he travelled in this strange ce, the more dangerous it was for him. However, Rino also knew just how much would be too much for him. He wanted to find a safe spot to surface from, and while he had no idea how to do it yet, the lich was not in a rush. Thankfully, he knew this area well enough. Rino did not want to go too far from the farmhouse, but there was one ce he needed to be in a jiffy. Ace waited for five minutes and wondered if he should intervene. Sadly, he did not have enough divinity to meddle with Rino''s activity. The lich''s soul was still strongly connected to the small world, and Ace hoped that Rino wouldn''t do anything so reckless while he was in the shadow realm. As if Rino heard his plea, the lich reappeared in the small world, and the reflecting pond blurred to update itself to the target''s most recent location. "Why the graveyard?" Ace wondered as he watched Rino pull his hood up a little more to avoid getting burned by the sun. Then, it made sense. Rino returned to the graveyard he first awoke at because it was the only other ce he knew corpses were. Was the lich here to do what he failed to aplish initially? It took a lot of mana to teleport him from the farmhouse all the way to this graveyard. Yet, almost no time had passed since he entered the shadow realm. His connection with his summons was back, and Rino pressured them to work harder while reaping their generated mana. It should not be long until Rino could break a new barrier with so much mana. There was only one thing Rino wanted to do now that he was back at this graveyard. Most of these coffins have been opened and robbed but the one thing that lingered other than half intact corpses. He wanted the souls and scent of death resting in this grave toe with him. He needed them to join his army of shadows so that he could be stronger. When the summoning ritual started, Ace did not know to be impressed by Rino''s savageness or resourcefulness. Who would have thought that the first ce Rino wanted to teleport to was to a graveyard for the sake of mass recruitment? Even Gods were less shameless than him. The dead deserved their peace. Rino rejoiced when he found the jackpot. The souls here were more resentful than the sabre-tooth wolf monster or the goblins. It could be because their graves had been dug up and ransacked multiple times or the poor state of their resting grounds that made these souls unhappy. Whatever. They can take theirints to the Gods after Rino dies. However, before that, he would make them work a little longer. If he wasn''t allowed to rest in peace after death, these souls shouldn''tin. It was only fair that they suffered the same fate. Hearing Rino''s thoughts andints about the working conditions, Ace decided that he would stay a little longer as Noir for the next visit as some form of reward. They couldn''t have him boycotting the kingdom building project now that things were starting to get interesting. Human souls were more hideous whenpared to the goblins and the wolf monster. Rino had to say they made excellent mana producers even if they were difficult to tame and negotiate. Ultimately, he could only use intimidation to pressure these weakened souls into servitude. The shadow beneath him constantly shed, and Rino could feel their resentment for him despite having their souls bound. He wasn''t sorry for them. If anything, he was d that they hated him this much. It was better to have workers with initiative than workers without initiative when it came to mana production. Rino scouted around on foot after enving all the souls in this graveyard. There really wasn''t much in the area apart from some animals that Rino mercilessly killed. He did not enve their souls, for they were too weak to be of any use. However, he did carry them with him because they had meat that he could cure for Noir''s next visit, as well as lovely fur that was soft and would make excellent quilts. These rabbits might not be very big, but if Rino hunted enough of them, he would have a coat by the time winter rolls by. Up above, Ace tried not to turn pink, but the knowing look from Phil beside him made the God of Prayers look away. Seriously, that lich would be ady charmer if he turned his infatuation with cats into one for women. The world cannot repopte itself with just Rino''s love for cats. Chapter 44 - Job Segregation It was still afternoon and the heat became terrible enough for Rino to live indoors permanently. He looked at his system window and imed the reward for that side quest. === Side Quest #10 (Complete) Objective: Discover the speed of darkness. Reward: Master the teleporting skill. im your reward here. === The moment he imed the reward, Rino could feel his understanding about teleporting and the shadow realm increase. The profound concept paved the road to more new ideas that Rino could not wait to test out. The possibility of crossing over to a different realm made Rino excited. Perhaps more could be done within that mirror world of silence. Now, there was a problem. As Rinoy on his bed in the farmhouse, he could feel the tension between his shadow ves. The humans were not as epting as the goblins and Mutt was. There were two factions within his shadow ves and even if Rino couldmand them, it was difficult to make them coexist peacefully. Thankfully, the human souls he captured were able to talk, and Rino decided to summon the most outspoken one who seemed like the ringleader instigating everything. The man should be a warrior orbatant of some sort while he was alive because of how quickly he was threatening to pummel others who disagreed with him. "You," Rino pointed at him. "Tell me your skills." The ring leader kneeled on the ground as he appeared before his summoner. Looking into those hollow eyes and listening to the telepathic voice made him shiver. As an undead now, the man could not defy his master''smand. "I''m a hunter with the best archery skills of my vige." Rino wasn''t too surprised at the im. He did find some kind of quiver buried along with this man, even if his bow rotted away over the years. That arrogance told Rino what he had to work with. However, he was hoping for more than just this. "Anything else?" he asked, and the hunter felt a chill listening to that voice shoved into his head. "I-I can dance really well?" Rino rolled his non-existent eyes and dismissed this man, mentally ssifying him as unimportant for now. This man should continue to serve as his mana replenisher. "Next," Rino summoned a meek and quiet boy who looked like he was only fourteen when he died. "What are you good at?" The teen was humble and did not dare meet his summoner''s eyes. "M-my lord, I''m not good at anything." Rino wanted to sigh. Of course, what would a fourteen-year-oldd know about the world? Instead, he rephrased his question. "Can you farm?" The teen hesitated a little before nodding slightly. His skull wobbled, and Rino felt a spark of hope at his reply. "A little, my lord. My father taught me some before he died. I was sent to work as a stablehand by my mother when the drought came." A stablehand and a farm boy, Rino found the perfect candidate. Not to mention, this boy had a pleasing personality. Surely, he could get along with the goblins that Rino left under hismand, right? Compared to the swollen-headed hunter, this boy was someone Rino saw potential in. "Do you know how to nt potatoes?" The boy nodded without hesitation this time, and Rino queried how potatoes would be grown from seeds. He did not want to seem like a fool, but the potato nt he grew earlier was a failure. Honestly, he did not know what potatoes were or how they were meant to look like. The farm boy paused oddly when Rino asked him how they were grown from seeds. In theory, he knew how they worked. However, in practice, most people never grew potato nts from seeds. It was inefficient, so unless there was a drought and the fields were wiped, nobody used seeds to nt potatoes. "M-my lord, pardon me, but must we start from a seed?" Rino cocked his head to one side. "What do you mean?" Stuttering, the farm boy exined that the best way to grow a potato was from a potato. Rino felt like he was told a long, tedious argument between the chicken and the egg''s origin at that vague exnation. "Can you repeat that one more time? You grow a potato from... a potato?" The farm boy trembled at the master''s tone. If he was still alive, he might have soiled his pants from just that voice alone, never mind the dark aura threatening to suffocate him. Rino looked at the small skeleton and sighed. There was no use terrorising the farm boy who was only doing what he was told. Instead, Rino got up and checked the sun. It was a good thing that Rino spent so much time trying to sort out the nonsense of his shadows that the sun was going down. "Here," he tossed his newly woven nket at the little skeleton. "Wrap yourself in this. Show me how to grow a potato from a potato. There must be some left. Also, grab those tools from the shed outside near the bathhouse. You might need them." Hearing his master''s newest orders, the skeleton bolted upright and scurried to find the tools while draping the nket over himself. They made their way over to the edge of the forest where Rino grew that huge potato nt. For some reason, the lich wondered if he could divide his summons into different sections. He needed some for generalbour, some for hunting in case Noir dropped by, some for farming and some for weaving. As of now, there were about a hundred different shadows under hismand. More souls were lingering in the grave than he originally thought there were, and Rino was happy that not everything needed to be summoned with a body. The souls whose bodies werepletely destroyed could be summoned as wisps. They were very mana savvy, although they could not do much. Still, Rino could borrow them as scouts or telekic movers if he needed them. They turned out to make good weavers and reservoir maintainers. There was only a small problem of summoning everyone at once. Rino''s mana capacity was not as big as he hoped it would be, and depending on who he summoned, his mana regeneration ability could not keep up. As such, he had to prioritise, much like how any ordinary sane person would prioritise their chores. Today, Rino decided today was officially farming day until he figured out how potatoes worked. He did not notice how the farm boy''s jaw ckened when they stopped at the fallen potato nt. No, it could no longer be called a nt. If anything, it resembled some sort of ground vine with berries and leaves. "No," Rino turned to the farm boy. "Show me how to grow a potato from a potato. You may use those tools at your disposal." Chapter 45 - Potato From A Potato The tools were unfamiliar to the poor undead teen. He had no idea how to use any of these strange-looking objects, but he knew what he must do to obtain potatoes, even if this was a giant potato nt. He''d never witnessed such arge potato nt with flowers or fruits, but there was no mistaking what it was. He knew the shape of those leaves too well to be mistaken. However, it was starting to get very dark, and even Rino was having difficulty seeing what was what as the boy searched for something on the ground. With a whoosh, Rino conjured several fireballs in ce of torches that he should really be making now that he had an army of shadows to serve him. It was more efficient to use charcoal or something as fuel than mana for torches if he needed the entire field lit. Rino made a mental note to get to it sometime soon. The teen dug at the ground and thanked Rino for the light before using his bare bones to scrape at the dirt. The lich frowned. Were those tools for decoration? Why wasn''t he using them? "Use the hoe or a shovel to get through more dirt," Rino jerked his chin over to the tools, but the boy only stared at him dumbly. Reluctantly, Rino picked up the tool he made from his shoulder de and demonstrated how a hoe could be used. "Alternatively, you can use the shovel. It does just about the same thing flicking dirt away." He held the tools to the teen, who only looked between them in confusion. On Rino''s silent insistence that he stopped using his hands to dig, the boy nodded and epted the hoe, marvelling at how easily he could dig the ground. Rino was puzzled. The boy was a farmer, but he did not know about tools. Where and how did thisd learn farming from? Did they have different tools in this world? Was he too primitive? However, that was exactly what the tutorial mentioned. He simply substituted the material for something more durable. "Found one!" The cheerful report snapped Rino out of his thoughts as he looked at that chunky lump in the teen''s hand. It was almost too huge to be held in one hand, but the teen found a way to bnce it within his bony fingers. The potato looked heavy, and it was longer than it was rounder. "This is a potato?" Rino asked and looked at the hole in the ground. "Yes," the boy reported excitedly and dusted as much dirt as he could from this brown ground tumour. Rino epted it hesitantly and inspected it closely. This strange thing resembled something he saw in his previous life. Were potatoes also known as ground beans? It was strange. The teen watched as his master took the potato from him, looking at it as some form of rarity. Rino did not know what potatoes did, but if he could grow one potato nt from one potato, he might be able to get a whole field of it. Yet, Rino could not find any use for these ground beans. They were undead. The dead do not need sustenance. "M-my lord?" Rino pointed at the nt. "Harvest every single potato in there. Leave not a single one behind. I want it done before sun up." Hearing that he had a new task, the teen no longer dallied. Digging up potatoes would be easy. During the harvesting period, he did this enough times and assured the lich that it would be done even before the sun was up. Rino left the task to his enthusiastic farmer and returned to his farmhouse using his newly acquired teleportation skill. It consumed lesser mana than it did when he made his trip to the spawn graveyard. Thankfully, he could easily recover this small use of mana. In future, he should stick to using the teleportation pad to conserve energy. If one potato nt could give him at least five potatoes, Rino''s efforts would not be in vain. For now, he had to think of a good location for the farms. Rino knew that most farming work happened during the day. However, his army consisted of undead who was only active from sundown. How could Rino maintain the farm with the help of his minions without facing the wrath of the sun? He could make them wrap themselves in fabric like how he offered his nket for his farmerd. However, he did not have enough fabric to pass around as it was. Using magic was also not an option because farming was very delicate work. It was near midnight when Rino came to check on the potato harvesting. The farmd did a good job, but Rino was stunned by the mountain of potatoes he dug up. "All these came from one potato nt?" he asked in disbelief. The farm boy nodded. "I double-checked to make sure I haven''t missed anything," he exined. Rino could now see the holes in the ground and surrounding area. He wasn''t lying, but Rino still found this hard to believe. The mountain of potatoes tallied to thirty-six tubers. Even that one basket Rino brought would not fit everything inside. The potato that the farmd first dug up turned out to be a young potato that did not reach maturity. The really mature potatoes were the size of Rino''s torso, and even the farmhand was stunned. He''d never seen such monstrous potatoes in his entire life, although he should have expected it after seeing the fallen potato nt. "How many potato nts can we grow from this?" Rino gestured to the pile. At the very least, he should be able to sow an entire plot from this harvest. The farmhand looked over to the potatoes and wondered. "My lord, I''m not good at counting. However, one regr potato, a third the size of the first that we found, would yield about five nts alone. We might be able to nt an entire field with everything here if done correctly." When Rino heard that, he wondered what he needed those seeds for now that he had this. Maybe it was better for him to grow those seeds with magic and have his farmhand collect the potatoes to multiply them. Now, the only question remains. Would the potatoes grown from his magic produce equallyrge potatoes? Chapter 46 - Stupid Spuds Midnight came quickly while Rino and his farmhand were moving potatoes to the teleportation pad. Ping! The familiar sound made Rino pause. He looked at the chaotic mess and told the farmhand to takemand of this unholy operation of multiplying potatoes before calling a few goblins to assist. The goblins chattered angrily at the sight of a human skeleton but a harsh eyeballess re made them cooperate. While the goblins worked with his farmhand in the background, Rino turned to leave. If anything happened here, he would punish all of them. He headed back to the farmhouse hastily, ready for the next daily quest. Whatever it was going to be, Rino knew that his reliable farmhand knew what to do. === Daily Quest #7 [Chain Quest] Objective: Prepare the field for a potato farm 1. Weed the field 2. Plough the field Time Limit: 2 Days. Tutorial here. Reward: Shadow Sack Inventory Skill im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 8 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Rino looked at the quest again. Another chain quest? He was slightly confused. It was simply preparing the field for farming potatoes. ording to the tutorial, he only needed to prepare one acre ofnd. Would weeding and ploughing take that long? Then again, he wasn''t the expert. Once the farmhand was done with moving the potatoes, he would consult him. In the meantime, Rino had to worry about a good potato storage solution. Unlike wood and nt fibre, potatoes were edible, and thest thing Rino wanted was for his hard grown potatoes to rot. At the same time, he wondered if he could use magic over the next two days to grow more potato nts from the seed he had. After all, he might not have enough potato seeds to sow an acre full of these things yet. The cross-pollination thing that he read from the tutorial also sounded fairly interesting. Could he grow bigger potatoes if he cross-bred it? The field was decided to be far from the edge of the forest. Rino did not want any wild animals barraging and trampling on his precious crops. In fact, he wanted to build some sort of barricade around the potato fields to deter any trespassers. The tutorial mentioned that potatoes were susceptible to many external threats, including temperature, climate, disease and bugs. These spuds were a handful now that Rino thought about it. They weren''t easy to grow or harvest. In fact, the more he read, the more headache he had. Potato seeds took about a month to grow on potatoes, and not all of them will grow into potato nts. Those that did would turn into five to eight nts if they were given the right condition. The right conditions were a slightly warm but damp dark location that Rino currently did not really have. Too much water would cause these spuds to rot, and Rino did not want to risk it. The tutorial mentioned that he should see ''potato eyes'' sprout in a week to know which are good potatoes capable of bing seeds and which potatoes are just not going to turn into nts. However, it still took these eyes about two weeks more to be small nts that can be ced into the soil. This process was simply too lengthy, and Rino wondered how the Gods were going to assign him this quest. From growing the potato to harvesting them without the aid of magic, Rino had a feeling it was going to be a very long chain quest. Up above, Ark sighed. He agreed. Phil suggested something to help with this lengthy chain quest that made a lot of sense. A repetitive quest was a thing now after they wanted Rino to turn in more tools. However, if Rino failed to water for a single day, the spuds would die and suffer. They couldn''t really risk the growth of Rino''s first harvest using such a system. There had to be something more efficient before they introduced a quota quest. That was something the Gods were still discussing over. It was why they gave Rino two days for the weeding and ploughing for an acre of field. Ultimately, Rino decided to cut corners on his potato storage and made a mud shack beside his bathhouse. The ce should be rtively warm with heating from the house and water from the bath. It was the perfect ce for growing potato eyes. It took the farmhand a while to transfer all the massive potatoes to the makeshift mud shack with the help of the goblins. Rino felt proud seeing how the potatoes fit nicely in the mud shack. There was enough space for them to be spread on the floor for now, and Rino praised the hardworking summons for doing such a good job. "Rest for now," he told them. "The next part of the job is weeding and ploughing the field. I don''t have enough tools for everyone, so I will make more now. Once you return to the shadows, ask if anyone else wants to volunteer for the farming project. I prefer willing volunteers." After dismissing them, Rino went back into his farmhouse to read the tutorial. There was so much about nting potatoes that he never knew. That potato nt near the forest would remain the way it was for a while, and Rino wondered if it would continue to grow spuds if given enough time. "Ah, there it is. They shouldn''t be nted again after a harvest as it would result in weaker nts and less bountiful harvest in the next round. I guess we should just go back to get the seeds from those fruits instead," Rino sighed as he read the lengthy tutorial. There were several stages to potato farming. Rino groaned as he read the first of four important processes when ites to farming potatoes. The preparation part alone already took a month. He could not imagine keeping up the constant effort for the next part that was nting. Apparently, one doesn''t simply stick a growing potato ''seed'' into the spoil and cover it, expecting splendour results. He had to cut the seeds into a good size before doing it. In addition, there was some mention about letting them rest for a day or so after cutting to make them more rot resistant. Rino wanted to bury himself and ignore all the details. This has got to be the mostplex tutorial ever, even for a chain quest, and Rino hasn''t even gotten to that part of it. Not to mention, these spuds were very picky about the kind of soil they grew in. First, it had to be cold. Rino figured that it should be a good time for these spuds to be nted because Noir imed it was cold outside. Then, these spuds wanted acidic soil, and Rino had no clue if his soil was acidic enough for potatoes to grow. The potato nt he grew using magic didn''t count. If the soil was not acidic enough, it would not form potatoes. Rino had to ''treat'' the soil before nting, which would happen in the next two days. Yet, the lich had no idea where he was going to find ''mulch''. As his farmhand kindly exined, growing potatoes came with several pitfalls, but Rino ignored all the diseases and pests for now. He had enough on his te to worry about before even the ten-week long rowing process could begin. After ten weeks, potatoes should be fully grown, although Rino had no idea if they would be as big as the potato tree that he grew with magic. However, there came the tedious part if they did not all perish from everything in those long ten weeks. The harvesting. Rino had no idea if this third crucial process was more tiring than the preparation stage. When potatoes needed to be harvested, they weren''t simply dug from the ground like what the farmhand did earlier to his magically grown potato nt. These crops had to first be cut down, and the potatoes should be left in the ground for about two weeks to toughen and mature with no watering. Rino could not control the weather, and if rain decided to pay him a visit when it was harvest time, he would just give up on this farming thing entirely. The Gods can use the [Curse of Overtime] on him because he wasn''t going to do anything. It would be a waste of his efforts. Assuming he got past everything till the harvesting point and managed to dig the spuds without any difficulties, Rino would have to ''cure'' the potatoes before they were ''ready'' for anything. Curing the potatoes involved making them a special storage ce that was cool, dry and dark for two whole weeks. The potatoes should not be washed at all so that they can mature and toughen their skins to prevent rotting or something. At this point, Rino could only wonder why he bothered reading the entire tutorial. nting potatoes sounded like such a pain. This chain quest was going to be worse than the kiln and y one. Rino looked at the reward and wondered what would happen if he passed this quest up. Would the Gods be nice enough to ce this as a reward for any other quests? After consideration, Rino decided to tough out this first part of the chain quest. He wanted the inventory skill. It would be very useful for many things in the future, increasing his efficiency to bezy. Chapter 47 - Cheap Farming Tools After RIno received the report from his farmhand about the number of interested farming ves, Rino decided to source a cheaper production alternative. Bone tools might be good, but they were painful to mass produce. With over twenty volunteers, Rino had to find a cheaper material to make farming tools. While he made twenty new sets of farming tools for weeding and ploughing, he would receive any potato seeds. It might be good for him to start sowing this first acre ofnd using potato seeds he earned from the Gods. === Repeatable Quest #1 Objective: Create the following Farming Tools 1. Rake 2. Hoe 3. Shovel Cooldown: 8 Hours Tutorial here. Reward: 100 Potato Seeds === If Rino''s math did not fail him, he should obtain at least 500 seeds before the actual nting started. An acre of field would give him about 1,200 potato nts if he spaced them out sufficiently. Rino did not need very long to turn this quest in twelve times. In fact, it only took him four days to get all the seeds he needed to fill one acre of field. nting wasn''t going to be as big of a problem aspared to preparing the field. The soil''s acidity had to be correct, and the only way to do so was to introduce the mulch. Rino did some reading up on what that was. Basically, they were a bunch of dposing leaves. There were many of these in the forest, but the lich had a problem. He did not know if he was able to bring enough of that stuff to the fields. Thankfully, he was close to the forest. His minions could just work tirelessly, carrying mulch to where they needed to be after the ground was weeded and ploughed. The only logical solution was to return to the goblin cave for stone and forest for wood. Rino sighed. He did not have a lot of time to prepare twenty sets of farming tools, even if he collected everything he needed before the sun rose. His nket was still muddy, and rino was leaving it to dry for now. If he wanted more shadow minions to work during the day, he had to make more clothes. "No point in worrying too much," Rino shrugged. "One thing at a time." This was something he learned after his death. There was no real need to struggle so much for things beyond his control. If he did his best and things didn''t work out, it was not his fault. Simrly, two days was too tight of a deadline after discovering what sort of preparations were required. If the Gods wanted quality, they should expect less quantity and speed. Rino was not going to treat the field if he did not have the time. There was no time to make clothes for his minions to gather mulch. He also did not have any capable crafters within his shadow army. Rino could only rely on himself to hammer out twenty sets of farming stone tools. "Let''s start with one set every eight hours," Rino reasoned. It made no sense for him to rush all twenty sets when there was an eight-hour cooldown limit for the reward. He could use the time waiting for the cooldown to do other more productive things, such as making fabric for his minions or preparing the materials for the other farming tools. As long as he did not piece the parts together, they would not be counted asplete tools. Rino was going to exploit this and milk the reward system given to him by the Gods. Up above, Ace looked at the lich with a smug look on his face while Stephanie rolled her eyes. Phil was too busy monitoring the magic potato nt''s spread throughout thend after he sent some birds to eat the berries before Rino could get to them. Ark was updating the system to prepare for the offering tab, so the Goddess stared at Ace. "Why are you so happy that he''s exploiting the system? Doesn''t it make you feel like a loser? You need to spend divinities to give him the reward." At that, Ace only smirked. "In the long run, you will understand what this lich is capable of aplishing. This kingdom that he intends to build isn''t just an empty stone castle. He isn''t just a kingdom builder. He is the sole monarch who would build his kingdom from dust." Indeed, that was exactly what Rino intended to do. Who said that he had to build this kingdom for someone else? He might not have a crown or a throne yet. However, he had an army and the power of knowledge to thwart anyone else. As the ruler of darkness, it was only fitting for this Kingdom to be named after him. As Rino cut rocks and shaped them into tool heads, his mind wondered. What would be a good name for him? King sounded too stiff and grand. He did not want to be a king who had to consider the opinions of his subjects. If anything, these shadow minions were his ves. They were not subjects. He had an absolute say in everything. Monarch sounds nice," Rino nodded. He liked the sound of it and could not help but wonder if Noir found it too tacky. Then again, every kingdom had a name. Rino did not want to name the kingdom after himself. Rino was such amon name. It wasn''t grand enough to intimidate others to stay away. His only aim after building this kingdom was to spend his days idle and alone. He wanted toze to his heart''s content and rest in peace even if he could not die. "To spend the rest of my days in solitude when the kingdom is up and running. I guess it is only befitting to call myself the Monarch of Solitude. Imagine the faces of other kingdoms when they discover how this kingdom only has one actual citizen - me! I will thwart them with my army of corpses, and nobody can advise me otherwise. Maybe these spud fields will start evolving after drinking the blood of my enemies and turn into something more demonic." The thought of demonic potatoes made Rino cackle madly, and Ace had to look away at howme that sounded. Thankfully, Stephanie wasn''t around to witness how Rino flicked his cape, pretending to give a speech to non-existent enemies before he slew them on the non-existent potato fields,plete with theatrical sound effects of epic magic. Chapter 48 - Raking Treasures The next time Rino summoned his farmhand, he had a splendid stone set of farming tools ready. The bone tools were a little too short for his long limbs, so Rino would give that to a worthy goblin when he found the most talented of his lot. For now, he looked at his stone and wood rake. It wasn''t easy making his first rake, considering how many ''teeth'' it had. The rake, Rino read from the previous tutorial, was a tool to help with weeding, even if he did not truly understand it. However, the lich knew that the teeth must be firm and not fall out in action. The wooden rake he tested failed the test miserably, and Rino decided that wooden stakes just weren''t doing it. He needed something more solid and explored the possibility of tight-fitting a hole and stabbing it with stone spikes instead. The idea worked, and while the backside of the rake looked slightly terrible, the front end worked well. The space between teeth was smaller than the failed wooden creation, and Rino tested it on some leaf piles in the forest. The rake cleared up thend nicely, and now, he found himself teaching the farming minions how to use a rake for when they were summoned. "Any questions?" he asked. Twenty volunteers shook their heads, and Rino passed this first stone rake to the farmhand. He also chose a goblin at random and tossed her a bone rake. "The field needs to be weeded and ploughed. Once you have the weeds out of the way, toss them into the kiln. It will make good fuel. The other lot of you go to the forest to collect mulch in those baskets. Once the field is weeded and ploughed, you have to dig even rows for potato nting. The mulch goes into those mini trenches." It was difficult for his summons to understand him and Rino had little patience. He might be the best magician and a great student, but he was a horrible teacher. Patience was a virtue he did not have. Hence, he ordered the two ves with rakes to get working while barking instructions for the remaining volunteers to grab a basket each to follow him to the forest. Nobody disobeyed, and Rino lined them up to whisk them to the heart of the forest with baskets. It wasn''t very difficult to find rotting leaves in this forest. Rino red at his minions, who he thought were brainless in more than just the literal sense when they put dry leaves into the basket after exining that he was looking for wet and dposing ones. The dry leaves were no harm. However, it would take a longer time for them to dpose, and Rino did not have the luxury of time with the daily quest on his back. He needed the mulch to increase the soil acidity so the dainty potatoes can start to grow. After smacking the skull of a dumb goblin off on ident with too much force, Rino came to realise something astonishing. He ever wondered what would happen to his shadow summons if they were under attack. Would he have to visit the site of their corpse to resurrect them or tame their souls all over again? The idental murder answered his questions as the lich watched how the goblin simplybusted in purple soul mes where his skull was. The skull was also on soul fire as its body bent down to reattach the disconnected part. High-speed regeneration was an ability that Rino had. It never urred to him that it was a skill all undead had. Watching a leg regrow was one thing. Watching someone else reattach their head was another. It was a terrifying but exhrating experience that drained his mana. Wait. Drain his mana?! Rino checked his mana and quickly noticed that while the goblin reattached its head, it was using the summoner''s mana to do it. No wonder that little grunt was able to use high-speed regeneration too! Shadows were an extension of the magician, and as its master, Rino was responsible for the regeneration. Dammit! With fewer shadows regenerating mana now that he had twenty summons, Rino had to be careful with how he used it. No more smacking off skulls. It was a waste of precious mana. "Only wet and dposing leaves, you hear me?" Rino growled menacingly to the volunteers, who quickly got to work. Rino decided to stay and supervise for one round how these volunteers would fill their baskets and bring them back to the fields, piling the mulch in one corner so that the farmers could fill the ploughed trenches once they reached that stage. Everything progressed as it should but at a slow rate. Rino checked the time. There would be a good number of hours before the sun rose, so he should make some decent progress ahead of time. "Keep it up," he told the farming volunteers and returned to the hut. There was something he had to do if he wanted more hands on deck. There were still over four hours until the repeatable quest reset itself, so Rino did not bother making the other stone tools. He already had all the pieces he needed, from tool heads to handles. The only thing left for him was to pummel the tool heads onto the handles and tie them tightly with some x ropes. "Master, we found something." The report from his farmhand came while Rino was winding the thread spools. Curious, he teleported over, startling the poor goblin who dropped his bone rake. "What did you find?" Instead of replying, the farmhand simply showed what his stone rake hit. Rino eyed the uncovered object closely and realised that the object was glowing and pulsing. The farmhand did not dare to move it or dig it up after his rake struck it once while weeding the untended field. More areas needed weeding, so Rino waved them off to continue raking other areas while he dealt with this new discovery. Not many people knew what this was but Rino did. In his previous life, he spent a good amount of time collecting strange rocks like this from all over thend. This was not an ordinary rock or gem. It was something that fell from space. However, after manyb tests, Rino discovered that they were the key to a mana bomb in his previous world with their mysterious energy source that was unstable and highly reactive. It took him many years of experimenting to create the right amplification device for these stones to blow up the world. Now, he wondered if there was a different way to use these space mana stones. If anything, his immediate concern was not the annihtion of all species. It was theck of mana to automate everything. He looked at the trustworthy and sensible farmhand with satisfaction. As a summoner, naming a summon would consume a significant amount of his mana, but it would give his chosen minion more power. Instead of naming that powerful but annoying hunter, he would rather name this youth who died too early to understand the joys of life. Chapter 49 - Worm Power If there were one thing farmers and gardeners loved, it would be worms. They made great gardening assistants, and Rino learned this the hard way after using magic to forcefully plough thend. "Stop!" Fronzo, his newly named farmhand and spare body cried. Rino was startled. The youth had a terribly shy and timid character who was kind and gentle. He never did anything that made Rino angry, but when Rino mass ploughed the field by causing a small earthquake, the farmer in charge quickly stood in between him and the field. "The worms will die if you do this. We need the worms to help the nts grow better." After a long exnation of how the earthquake would startle the earthworms out of hiding and into the sun, Rino relented and gave in to Fronzo. He did not want dead earthworms attracting flocks of ravens, although he did want a raven or two as a spare body. The soul splitting magic worked marvellously on Fronzo, who generally remained unchanged in personality. One thing Rino noticed was different about Mutt and Fronzo, who were both his spare bodies and named subordinates, were their growth potentials. Mutt had a better raw growth potential in powers and grew stronger as a monster of the dark. His growth was proportional to Rino''s strength and was now a menace to most people. Rino had his very own guard dog who kept everyone on their toes and asionally brought back trinkets in the form of hunted corpses for Rino to add to his shadow army. On the other hand, Fronzo was like the nurturing mother of his army, often seen sorting out differences and ying the mediator for arguments. Thanks to his tactful nature and gentle manner of speaking, the different races were starting to work well together. Half of the field was already weeded and ploughed under Fronzo''s careful coordination. The goblins and humans started taking the initiative and alternated between collecting mulch to spreading it on the ploughednd. In fact, the experienced farmhand was taking matters into his own hands by checking on the resting potatoes. Rino had no issues with anything Fronzo did. Thed knew more than him, and the lich only dropped by ever so often to smooth out any issues he came across with magic to meet the deadline. A day had passed, and Rino felt slightly restless, hence the situation where he forcefully ploughed the newly weeded field using magic. Looking at the mess of overturned soil and ruined trenches, the lich felt guilty. He should have consulted Fronzo first, but he was too prideful to apologise as the ruler. "Is that so?" he asked when Fronzo exined the importance of worms. Rino took a look at the soil by his feet. Already, there was one squirmy thing struggling to find its way around. The sun was not up yet, and Rino wondered if there was a way to rectify this. He only had twelve more hours before he received a quest penalty. Fronzo looked at the worms and sighed. With the neat trenches for nting ruined, he could only manually dig them again. Thankfully, the back aching work of ploughing was done in a split moment. The undead youth could not help but feel in awe of the magician''s power. It took him with thebined strength of six other farmers to plough half a field in a day without pause, but it only took their master less than five minutes toplete everything. "Yes. Worms are powerful gardeners, more so than us. They help to loosen the soil beneath and provide the soil with nutrients that the nts require. However, they''re not as powerful as Master, who could loosen the surface soil in less than five minutes with a single spell. Thank you for making our task easier. I will gather more volunteers to dig the trenches and spread the mulch now." Rino pretended to be generous and dismissed Fronzo, but internally, he felt sorry for what he did. Who would have thought that these squirmy existences would be so important behind the farming scene? Thankfully, the sun was not up, and much of their farming work was done in the dark. Rino decided that these farmers needed torches to work in the night. It wasn''t very wise to use wisps as lights because Rino''s mana regenerating factory was getting very close to running in deficit whenever so many minions were summoned. On the bright note, his daily chain quest waspleted before the time, and Rino could now explore the benefits of his new skill. "View Shadow Sack." Almost at once, the familiar quest window popped up and automatically showed him what was in his new skill''s inventory. Shadow Sack was a hybrid skill created by the system using the power of his shadow count to determine the number of items he could store in it. For now, Rino stored all his potato seeds in the shadow sack. It was not essible by his minions, and Rino preferred to keep it that way. If anything, he preferred if his minions also had a shadow sack skill of their own, but he supposed the Gods would not grant them that ability. Only he was chosen to have a daily quest system and a task to build a kingdom. His minions were merely his extra hands and legs, so they did not deserve such incentives in the eyes of the Gods, even if it was an extremely useful feature. For now, he did not receive any new quest, but Rino had a feeling it would be rted to nting potatoes. If the Gods did not mention how he should nt his potatoes, he would nt the seeds first. The seed potatoes would take a week to grow, and he doubted they were that patient to wait for it to happen. Although the lich was not a farming expert, he knew that watering was something that many farmers spent a lot of time doing. Due to the limited manpower he had, Rino thought about creating something to assist Fronzo''s team with their farming project. He heard about water pipes, and those were often used within the pce to transfer water from the well to all parts of the pce for various needs. If possible, Rino wanted to link water pipes all over his farm to water the nts for him without needing to carry buckets after buckets of water. He did not have that many buckets, to begin with. Ping! Rino checked his quest log and discovered that the side quest updated itself. === Side Quest #11 Objective: Craft Runes of the following elements. - Fire - Earth - Water - Wind - Light - Dark Reward: Increased affinity with spirits. im your reward here. === That''s right! He could get the help of faes during the day. Rino rejoiced at the existence of fairies in this new world. They might be a pain to talk to most times, but Rino would rather deal with them than handle the repercussions of mana drain by forcing his undead farmers out to maintain the nts during the day. Chapter 50 - Magic Tree Rino did not need to look at the tutorial to know how runes were crafted. While he wasn''t an Elementalist, it was still something the magician tower made sure to cover. Rino drew a few runes and circles for some jobs, but mostly, he was familiar with archaic runenguages because of alchemy. Rino invented runes of his own in the previous world, but they were of no use in this new world. Rino had no idea if this new world followed the samews as his old world. The runes he invented used the core of the''s energy to fuel his mana bomb. They were homing target markers for a timed explosion. He plotted the destruction of his world for many years carefully, but this time, there was no need to destroy this world. As long as Rino did not have to put up with crappy human existence getting in his way of greatness, he would let them live. Besides, it wasn''t as if the Gods were going to let him get away with it more than once. Up above, Ark shuddered. They were finally beginning to see how Rino was able to blow up a without them knowing. The space rock he found in the field was something that they had no control over. It was literally space debris, but one man''s trash turned into a crazy magician''s treasure. They could not stop space rocks from falling onto any, but he was thankful he told this team to keep a constant eye on this highly dangerous individual. The rune crafting side quest was rted to what they had in mind for this talented magician. After Rino thought about the irrigation system using pipes, Phil suggested introducing the fairy contract as a catalyst for automation. If Rino managed to build the small world''s first functioning irrigation system, he could also be the first person to grow magical nts. Potatoes were merely a test crop to see what Rino was capable of. Increasing his affinity with spirits would make his working rtionship with fairies and other mythical creatures easier. As an undead, Rino had it tough. He was not allowed to freely exist during the day, and most people associated the undead with evil, even if it wasn''t always the case. Rino took a look at the side quest again. There were a few things he needed to craft runes, mainly wood and morning dew for low-level runes that the quest requested. The sun isn''t up yet, and Rino left Fronzo in charge of the fields. He hopped onto the teleportation pad to find a suitable wood that could absorb mana. Not every tree was capable of absorbing mana, and it was up to RIno to locate it. The hike through the forest in the night was refreshing. Rino liked the feeling of having only stars above him as he examined the trees. There were several good trees in the area and several old trees, but none with the ability to absorb mana. Trees that could absorb mana could be immortals and influence life forms around them. The Yggdrasil was a perfect example of it. Lizards could be dragons, Eagles would turn into phoenixes, and even stags could turn into unicorns just by living near that magic tree and eating the nts around it. Rino highly doubted that he would find such an ancient magic tree in this world, but he hoped to find something with the potential for it. He did not know where he was walking, but he could tell that morning was here as the sky became lighter. Thankfully, Rino did not have to worry about the daily chain quest now that the field was weeded and ploughed. Fronzo was already preparing it for the nting stage, and Rino should have enough time to get that done. The magic tree Rino was looking for appeared after three hours of walking. By now, the sun was in full view, and Rino felt sluggish despite wearing Noir''s mantle. The undead really hated the sun. Thankfully, most of his ves were already unsummoned and waiting for night to fall again to resume their work. On the other hand, the wisps took shelter in his farmhouse and continued weaving clothes that Rino worked on before receiving the side quest. Before RIno found the tree, he felt the change in the air. It was easier to breathe, and he felt rejuvenated just by being in the area. It had to be close. There was no mistaking this feeling. If Rino had to describe, this was how he felt like whenever he entered the cathedral or the magician''s tower in his previous life. Mana was the energy that all life forms required, so walking into an area so fully charged with life was always refreshing. Rino could not understand why this young tree was the only one capable of absorbing mana, but he quickly took note of the location. It was a shame he did not have his amber, or he would have made a teleportation pad here. The young tree wasn''t too much taller than Rino, and it had fewer leaves than the other older trees around it. Yet, it stood out in the centre of the forest surrounding it with a parted canopy above, resembling a halo when the sunnded on it. Rino hesitated. If he cut a branch from this young tree toplete his quest, would he be able to grow the unused parts of the branch to grow another magic tree nearer to his base of operations? He must have been too influenced by the concept of multiplying potatoes because there was no way it would happen, right? Yet, Rino could not let go of the idea. He would try it regardless. If it failed, he would use the rest of its branch to make more runes. Runes were fairy summoning portals as well as a mana converting tool. Most people only used it to make mana weapons, but not many people understood its true potential. After all, the chances of summoning a fairy using a rune were very low. A rune also had limited uses and would turn into ordinary wood after a while. This was the reason why mana weapons and rune inscribers were highly sought after, not that Rino cared. He used runes for apletely different reason. As Rino cut the smallest branch he could find on this young magic tree, hundreds of eyes watched him from the forest. They were curious about this lich and what it was doing to their home tree. Chapter 51 - Foreign Language Rino sneezed with the ttering of his teeth from the force. He felt uneasy as he cut the smallest branch from the magic tree. It felt as if he was being watched, but the lich could not tell where the enemy was spying on him from. For now, he would ignore them. There was no point in thinking about what could not be helped. As long as they left him in peace, Rino would let them watch. Basic elemental rune inscriptions were not difficult. Rino knew them at the back of his hand, so he did not check the tutorial. Magic was magic, after all. There was no need to read that tutorial. The good thing about runes was how they were not biased towards the undead. Rino could finally find a way to use light magic, even if it were to a limited extent. It was still heartening to know there was a future possibility. The branch was harvested quickly, and Rino tested to see if it would grow if Rino used nature magic on it. The lich almost whooped in joy when he saw how the branch sprouted some new leaves. Growing his very own magic tree sapling was now a possibility, and without dy, he stored the precious branch in his shadow sack before teleporting back to the farmhouse. He knew just the spot for it! As the farmhouse was built closer to Rino''s storage pit and above that reservoir, he could not nt the magic tree near him. In fact, he wanted this magic tree to be somewhere safer. There was no ce safer than his secret stone quarry. Unlike normal trees that needed sunlight and water to thrive, magic trees only needed a steady mana supply to grow. Rino had no problem nurturing the tree with mana. In fact, he now knew the perfect way to use the space rock Fronzo discovered while hoeing the ground. Despite such inexhaustible and unstable mana energy, it created the best battery for mana this magic sapling needed. All he had to do was tweak the way he made the array. The Gods watched as Rino used nature magic to grow the branch a little more, chopping at the new branches growing from his sapling. They had a brief idea about what Rino wanted to do but were slightly afraid when that glowing space rock was brought into the picture. Rino''s unique rune inscriptions from the previous world were what caused the world''s destruction. Nobody knew how to read his rune inscriptions or thought it was important to check it out. This time, they were more critical of his every action. With the glowing space rock ced at the base of the newly nted magic tree sapling in the middle of the goblin''s cave that Rino now turned into his stone quarry, the lich started his true work. Thankfully, doing this wouldplete his current quest for crafting elemental runes of every type. Rino did not mind adding more vour into the mana generated around the magic tree. After all, if he lived for long enough, Rino might see the birth of the very first six elemental magic tree. It was only a myth and theory that a magic tree could bless mana-less humans with magical abilities from their fruits if given the right conditions. However, it was difficult enough to find a magic tree with elemental magic properties imbued. Even so, the blessing in their fruits was not enough to fully awaken the dormant abilities of magic in a mana-less person. The most that those fruits did was awaken the magical talent within a beast and turn it into a monster that the ex-court magician had to put down. The tree might not turn lizards into dragons, but it could turn amon fox into an elemental fox monster that razed farms for miles. The level of damage that menace caused was severe enough to be a threat when the king had to order the granary to be opened and food to be distributed for these unfortunate farmers. Rino remembered being tasked to set magical barriers around these trees to prevent others from exploiting them for evil uses. At the same time, it was a subtle way for the kingdom to expand their territory and conquer thends that belonged to nobles. Normally, Rino would use blood to strengthen the bond of the rune inscriptionnguage used to convince the spirits of his sincerity. However, as an undead, he did not have blood. Breaking bones to shape it in the form of thenguage wouldn''t work even if he tried. Hence, there was only one alternative to creating a very powerful rune. None of the Gods was magic experts, even though they only knew the basics of magic taught from the Academy. Hence, when RIno started carvingplicated patterns on the rocky ground around the magic tree and glowing space rock, they panicked. "Quick, stop him!" Stephanie gripped Ark so tightly that her brother almost stopped breathing. Even Ace, who was usually collected, stood up. He leaned forward to get a better look at the rune inscriptions Rino was making on the ground. It looked simr to the ex-court magician used in hisb, but nobody knew what it was. After all, this was a foreignnguage that was probably invented by Rino. "Wait," Phil stopped the younger Gods from acting recklessly. He spotted something that might clear Rino''s suspicions of destroying the world. "Look at that. It''s an archaguage mixed into the rest of the gibberish. I can understand it as ''contain element''. It''s probably not made to destroy the world." True enough, more of the foreignnguage started to make sense as Rino''s rune inscriptions spanned over the floor almost two meters from where the centre of the tree sapling was. The lich looked like he still had a lot to draw before it was ready for activation. Calming down, the Gods stared and tried to study the foreignnguage. Truly, it was astounding that they only understood a few words used in the most ancientnguages forgotten by most humans. Once more, they could not help but be astounded by just how brilliant Rino was as a magician. That inventednguage wasplicated to look at, but the effects were not to be underestimated. When RIno finished thest carving, he stood up and looked at the impressive rune circle. All that was missing now were a few runes to put in the ceholders he created. Chapter 52 - Hexa-Elemental Ignoring thepleted rune circle carving that spread all over the cave''s floor, Rino looked at the tree in the centre and the branches he harvested. They would make a good rune te base, but hecked the dew needed for it. Sighing, Rino decided to get one of his shadow summons to collect dew for him instead. He wasn''t going to go out under this ridiculous afternoon sun to find dew. Heck, would morning dew even be around in the afternoon with the sun as hot as this? He spent so long carving the rune circle that he missed his chance to collect what he needed for the runes. Then, Rino paused. He checked his side quest once more. Nowhere did it state that Rino had to create low-levelled runes. Low-level runes were drawn by mana-less people as a medium to borrow the power of elements. For magicians, most of them used medium-level runes that were imbued with mana. Rino considered making medium-level runes instead. He did not have the rarer materials required to craft any higher level runes at this moment. It did not really matter as the runes served as an elemental sample and ceholder for this rune circle. From above, the Gods watched Rino slice the magic branches with water magic, fashioning them into a hexagonal rune. This was a very familiar step, and the Gods rxed when they saw themon runenguage appear on these wooden tes. It was a universal symbol for air, water, earth, wind, light, and dark. For now, these were simply carved wood with rune symbols. It did nothing, and Rino left them this way, carrying the rune tes over to the spot he created for them within hisplicated rune circle. The Gods observed curiously as the lich ced them in their smaller circles within therger rune circle around the tree. Rino walked back to the centre of the space near the magic tree and cancelled his nature magic supplement. The magic tree sapling sparkled weakly when the magic was cut. It also stopped growing new branches and leaves, twinkling feebly in the dark cave as Rino chanted. The spell that Rino was chanting was very long. Although it was anguage that the Gods could understand, they still could not identify what it was. Rino switched from onenguage to another, confusing even the oldest God by the reflecting pond. Was there a mage who chanted in more than one spellnguage? Then again, this rune circle was written in more than onenguage. Perhaps this was the right way to prepare the activation. "Wasser!" The water rune lit up and pulsed with life at the activationmand. The section of carvings that Rino created slowly glowed as ifing to life as mana poured into the circle, trickling from the centre to the end of the circle following a single path drawn like a maze towards the water rune te. "Ather!" The second part of this circle lit up slowly as the second elemental rune te pulsed to life. Rino continued pouring mana and forcing his shadows to create more. He finally understood why this was only possible in theory in his previous life. No mage could handle this alone. He needed an entire convent of magicians to perform this ritual. "Erde!" As the third elemental rune te awakened, Rino felt the ground tremble a little beneath him. This was only half the circle activated, but already, the pressure in the atmosphere was starting to get a little too heavy for weaker monsters to approach. Rino hoped that he could hold on until the end of this spell. "Feuer!" His best element surged from his bones, and Rino bit back a groan to maintain the mana this hungry elemental rune drew. Now that the four basic elemental runes were active, Rino took a deep breath to hold the mana supply to this circle steady. Thest thing he wanted was for the elements to sh and cause the spell to fail. Nothing happened for three minutes, and the Gods watching RIno from above started rooting for him as Rino struggled to control the conflicting elements in the circle. Only light and dark elemental rune tes were unactivated, and the Gods wondered which element Rino would attempt to awaken first. Having all six elements to harmonise was something unheard of for mortals. Even for Gods, only a few have true mastery over every element. Stephanie grimaced when Rino awakened the light elemental rune first. The circle shed wildly, and Rino stumbled under the pressure of holding the circle up. He did not wait for the circle to stabilise itself before he called for darkness toe forth. "Dunkelheit!" The circle lit up fully, and now, it was clearer to see how RIno did not stick to the boring shape. There was a hexagonal pattern on the floor now that every element was activated. The pressure in the cave was so thick that Rino struggled to stand tall. His knees were bent in an effort to stand while his elbows were bowed, unable to support the weight of his boney arms. With light and dark elements introduced to the circle, the two elements battled fiercely for control despite the magician''s summons. Their fight inspired the other elements to follow their example, and Rino felt like he was going crazy in this hexa-elemental battle. With so much mana stored in this array and still demanding more, Rino wondered if he miscalcted something somewhere. The shadow army was producing more mana now out of fear from this insane pressure, but it was nowhere near enough to keep up with the demands of this special array. Rino looked at the space rock by the magic tree sapling as it pulsed calmly. This mana battery was a terribly greedy little thing! The magic tree started losing its leaves, and Rino became worried. Why was this tree withering?! Was it simr to the concept of withering under too much fertiliser? Fronzo told him about it briefly before, but Rino paid little attention to those words until now. Were all his efforts in vain? Then, something strange happened. Rino saw how the tree that lost its leaves started to glow as new branches grew in every direction. The branches were alive, and although they moved slowly, they managed to embrace that space rock and grow around it protectively like a cradle. In no time at all, Rino saw how the space rock became part of this magic tree. His magic circle was draining him dry, and Rino thought about his depressing memories to press on. He could see now how the magic tree was beginning to grow new leaves. It looked less like a sapling and more like a young tree now with the space rock embedded in its trunk. He needed just a little more! As the magic tree slowed its growth, Rino felt the battle between the six elements reaching a conclusion as if they were exhausted. He had no idea how long he had been standing here, maintaining the circle, but when the circle finally stopped demanding mana from him, Rino fell to the ground. The birth of the world''s very first hexa-elemental mana tree was beautiful in all its glory. Too bad, rino was not able to admire it for longer as his vision nked on him. Chapter 53 - Legendary Spare Body Ace was about to make a trip down to the small world as Noir again when he saw how the lich fell unconscious. Ark was preparing the spell needed when Phil told them to wait. "He''s waking up now," he told them. None of the Gods could believe their eyes when they saw how fast the lich recovered. Actually, the rate that Rino was recovering could be considered terrifying. It surpassed any human limits and logical exnation until Stephanie noticed something. "Dammit! He made that tree his spare body!" Stephanie hissed in a spiteful tone, although her eyes sparkled with excitement at the incredulous feat. The aura around the lich was very different now. If he was like the walking embodiment of someone who murdered hundreds before, he was now emitting an aura of the grim reaper who harvested the souls of every fallen warrior. Rino looked like someone right out from the legends, and even the Gods felt awed by what he achieved. No wonder Rino was writing such a strange rune circle! Phil initially thought Rino wanted to use that space stone to feed the magic tree mana using the six elemental runes as a shackle and elemental mana converter. He was only half right with that guess. Nobody thought that Rino would bind his soul to this tree using the soul splitting spell given to him by the Gods. It was unheard of for liches to split their souls and take over the body of a different living creature. This was no simple soul fusion between two creatures using the master and ve magic bond. Unlike Mutt and Fronzo''s soul splitting spell, Rino was now mutually bound to the well-being of the hexa-elemental magic tree. In other words, Rino now had two true bodies as the tree''s mana and lifespan were bound to Rino''s. He did not simply split part of his soul to be infused into the tree. Rino also tied his fate to the tree using that strange foreignnguage. Their souls were fused together, and it wasn''t just a fraction of Rino''s original soul. He used his present soul and sacrificed all his mana to do that. In other words, this tree was now Rino as well. The only difference was how it was immobile despite being a powerhouse. The recovery for his depleted mana was slow, but Rino the tree worked hard to transfer mana to the exhausted lich''s body that asionally twitched in response to the trickle of mana into that parched mana reservoir. The Gods were able to hear Rino''s thoughts again when he regained consciousness as the legendary tree. "Oh gosh! Is that how I really look from another person''s eyes?" the magician gushed, and his leaves rustled in shock at how ugly his lich body appeared from this view. The skeleton wasn''t very majestic looking, and if it wasn''t for the clothes on him, Rino would think of it as a low-levelled undead. Clothes really do make a man, and Rino decided that he needed a tailor to make him good clothes once this farming nonsense was resolved. He had abour and poption crisis here. Without the means to work during the day, Rino was unable to speedrun his quests. Thankfully, with the acquisition of this legendary spare body as the world''s very first hexa-elemental magic tree, Rino knew how to get freebour. Fairies were very cautious creatures, but they were very loyal to mother nature. If this new legendary tree could recruit some fairies of its own, Rino could put them to work in the fields during the day. He simply had to make the fields fairy friendly and provide his winged workers with working incentives. The first of tree Rino''s first curious customers flew into the cave with high-pitched bickering. The lich body was only beginning to absorb mana in the surrounding on its own when three clumsy fairies tumbled in. Tree Rino noticed that his first fairies were very young. They must have just been born from the area near this new magic tree and were attracted to the aura by instinct. "There it is!" the first fairy pointed and took the lead, flying past her bickering sisters to get closer to the magic tree in this dark and ominous cave. "Wait for us!" the smallest fairy cried and broke free from her other sister''s grip to fly over. Tree Rino waited patiently to observe the fairies who fluttered over his lich body with curiosity. "Why is there a dead human here?" The leader of the fairy trio folded her arms in thought. "He looks like a magician who practised the dark arts. Perhaps he was trying to harm this tree and was sucked dry off his mana." The second fairy sister raised a brow and flew closer. No matter how she looked at this corpse, it was too creepy. Why would a magician who practised the dark arts seek out a magic tree alone? That was a fool''s errand. Most dark magicians were cautious and not this reckless. Perhaps this magician was not here to harm the tree. They might be here by mistake. Also, the lingering aura around this magician did not feel human. "Stay away from the corpse," the oldest fairy warned her sisters. "Even the dead should be respected. Let''s do what we came for. The magic tree looks like it was newly born. We could be its very first fae protectors." Hearing that they had dibs, the two sisters rushed to snatch the position of the tree''s first protector, only to m face-first into a powerful barrier closer to the tree. Rino could not help but snicker at the fairy''s impatience. He did not know much about fairies and magic trees or their rtionship in this world. Even in the previous world, there were very few records about how they worked. "Foolish young ones," Tree Rino interjected before the fairies could start arguing again. "Did you think you were worthy of bing my protectors without passing a trial?" Hearing the voice of the great magic tree, the three young fairies quickly lowered their heads. They did not think the newly awakened magic tree would gain wisdom so quickly. "Apologies, magnificent one. My sisters and I were too impatient," the clever oldest fairy replied before her sisters could worsen the situation. "How can we prove our worth as your protectors?" Rino grinned. This was exactly what he wanted. He couldn''t wait to introduce these three new managers to their roles in his kingdom building project after fooling them into binding their loyalties to him. Chapter 54 - Spirit Tamer Ping! Rino checked his quest manager and cackled inwardly at the timely reward. With these three fairy sisters none the wiser, he could charm the hats off them easily without trying. === Side Quest #11 (Complete) Objective: Craft Runes of the following elements. - Fire - Earth - Water - Wind - Light - Dark Reward: Increased affinity with spirits. im your reward here. === The increased affinity with spirits meant that Rino could gather a spirit army from wisps to dryads to work for or with him. The lower levelled faes could be convinced to form a servitude pact with him. Magic trees and faes often shared a mutually beneficial rtionship of having the faes protect the territory of the magic trees from beasts and humans. In return, the magic tree will enrich the environment with its cultivation progress and speed up the maturity of these faes for evolution. He had many wisps in his shadow army but not wisps that could evolve into faes born from condensed mana. This was something Rino wanted to see. He wanted to try and grow his own great sprites from wisps or even dryads from flower fairies if possible. "Great tree, what kind of task do you have in mind for my sisters and me?" the fairy asked, bringing Rino back to reality. Rino thought for a while. There wasn''t a lot that flower fairies could do. However, as gardening fairies, they could at least water nts, right? "There is a field that the lich there will take you to once he awakens. He is destined to be the new Monarch in this world, and you will assist me in supporting him under my leadership. The Gods have tasked this lich to create a potato farm. However, his undead farmers cannot work during the day. Please help him to water the ploughed fields twice a day." The fairy sisters beamed with joy at their first task and hovered around the fallen skeleton that they now knew was an apostle chosen by the Gods. Tree RIno pretended to be asleep once more as the fairies chattered endlessly. There were still many hours until the daily quest was updated. He spent enough timeying the foundation to prepare himself for the next part of the daily quest. Honestly, Rino wished that it would not be another chain quest. He hated chain quests the most because of how unclear they were. Now that the fields were well weeded and thoroughly ploughed, Rino had a feeling the Gods would entrust him with sowing next. Fronzo would be able to do that with the help of the farming volunteers. However, Rino did not have enough clothes or farming tools to go around for that. He wondered if nting with bare hands during the night was a good idea. Two hourster, Rino could feel his consciousness extend back to his lich body. Being in control of two bodies at once was an odd feeling. However, it was somewhat simr to listening to the thoughts and feelings of his shadow army. As long as the lich could focus on one perspective or voice, the other would fade out into the background until he needed it. The fairy sisters rejoiced when Rino sat up. "How are you feeling?" the youngest fairy asked, and Rino checked his mana reserves. They were currently filled to the brim, and Rino could not help but want to spam spells. Compared to a few hours ago, Rino could only describe this difference in power as heaven and earth. All the mana he sacrificed to create this legendary tree only amounted to a fifth of his current mana capacity. Rino wasn''t sure if he could summon all his shadow army now with this much mana. He did not want to be reckless, but the curiosity was there. He had no idea if this magic tree could passively grow in strength to add to his lich''s power. There was only one way to find out if the same theory of enving souls worked. This time, he was on the lookout for spirits to tame instead. "I''ve never felt more alive," Rino mused and wondered if the fairies could follow his method of travelling. He never tried to teleport anyone else using his spell, but they could be his first test subjects now that he had enough mana to make the trip more than ten times. Surely transporting himself and three other fairies will use less mana than that. The three sisters did not object when Rino told them he would teleport them to his farmhouse. They were thrilled to have a guide and were eager to prove their worth to the great magic tree. Rino activated the spell and expanded the area to include the three fairy sisters for a short trip to the shadow realm. It was a very interesting experience teleporting three other individuals. The fairy sisters were unfazed by the shadow realm and stuck close to Rino as he walked and showed them the way, exining to them where several of his bases were located in the absolute silentndscape. "We understand," the oldest fairy smiled and tapped her chest twice. "Leave the farm maintenance to us! You will have the biggest and healthiest potatoes by harvest under our care." They left the shadow realm, and Rino noticed how the sun was starting to set. What great timing! "The farms are a little further from the farmhouse, but it is close to the forest and can be seen from here if you fly in this direction," Rino exined. Then, he summoned Fronzo and introduced him to the new helpers. The farmhand was not fazed by the new farming volunteers, but he was more shocked when Rino summoned all twenty farming volunteers. "Master! The six of us canplete tilling the next acre in a few days. There is no need to go to this extent! Please beware of your health!" Rino wanted tough. Compared to Mutt, thisd was more thoughtful. "Do not worry," he told Fronzo and patted the farmhand''s skull. "Do as you are told and teach them what they have to do. Night will fall soon. I will summon more wisps to light the way and weave more clothes for everyone." After sending the farming party away with the eager fairies, Rino summoned more wisps and gave them instructions to weave more linen cloth. He needed more clothes for the runners to transport things from the y and stone mines. Now that things were progressing smoothly with his mana depleting slowly, Rino knew the limits of his new abilities. It was finally time to tame some stray spirits. He knew just the ce for it. Chapter 55 - Artificial Sprite Rino wasted no time and returned to the location where he first found the magic tree he cut a branch from. There was no mistaking what the hundreds of eyes were. If Rino wanted a fairy army, he was going to poach and recruit these weaker faes in the area that the magic tree rejected. Compared to fairies, sprites were more powerful. The young magic tree that Rino found was contracted with many sprites and fairies who were on the verge of evolution and had been lingering around in its territory for long enough. However, newly born fairies and wisps were found lingering outside of the area. Rino was targeting the loitering wisps and fairies outside of the other magic tree''s protected area. They might be in the same business, but Rino wasn''t someone who would shamelessly approach and convince his rival''s clients to jump ship. After all, fickle clients would jump ships just as easily when they discovered that the grass was greener on the other side. What Rino wanted were loyal customers who would stay with him in bad times and celebrate with him in good times. Building a kingdom was always difficult, but those who founded the kingdom alongside its future ruler were often greatly rewarded for generations. The smarter faes shoulde to understand this. When Rino exited the shadow realm and startled several fairies minding their own business, he quickly apologised. As if he rehearsed this a thousand times, Rino introduced himself as the Monarch of an unfound kingdom called Solitude and exined his purpose of visit to the curious fairies. "There is currently a newly born magic tree in my stone quarry, and I require more fae assistants to lend me their strength to build a kingdom without humans. If anyone here is interested in my offer, please help me spread the word to every fairy and wisp in this forest. Take this as a token of my sincerity." With the mana he had, Rino chose the weakest looking wisp in the area to empower. The weak wisp absorbed the mana steroid and rapidly ballooned in size. Some fairies shrieked and ran away in rm at the transformation, while others remained on-site to witness the special event. Rino controlled the amount of mana to feed this weak wisp. He had to admit that this was also something he thought about and wrote in a special research journal but never had the chance to test it out. Artificial evolution using mana was a theory he founded after realising mana could act as a power source for ghosts. It was an idental discovery when he was sleeping in a graveyard overnight for inspiration. There was no undead around to disturb him, but the ghosts of the dead kept bothering him, seeking somepany because they were lonely. Rino did not feel like dealing with them, so he sted them with light magic, thinking it would work the same way it did on the undead. However, the ghosts were not of dark nature. The light magic attack was ineffective against them. Instead of exorcising them, Rino charged them with energy, turning them into more annoying poltergeists for a few hours until the mana supplement ran out. The lich wondered if it could transform this weak wisp and force it to evolve into a sprite with injected mana. Rino did not stop the mana transfer even as the wisp swelled threateningly. If it wanted to survive, it should start forcing an evolution now before it burst. The weak wisp turned out to be a fighter instead of a quitter. It held on even as it swelled into an unthinkable size. Thanks to its strong will, the weak wisp, full of Rino''s mana, shone and evolved into a clumsy but beautiful fire pixie. Satisfied with the birth of this artificial fire pixie, Rino wrapped himself in shadows and left. His work here was done. Fronzo gave him steady updates about the progress at the farm, and Rino must say, he was d things were moving smoothly after the sun went down. He felt the drain in his mana, but it was nowhere near dangerous levels, so Rino let it be for now. He needed a bath after all the work. Word spread quickly among the fairies and faes who could not get epted by the magic tree. Rino''s reputation as the Monarch of Solitude also became widely known as flocks of faes made their way over to the stone cave. Tree Rino felt the presence of many faes around midnight and preened at the attention he was getting. Their numbers only grew, and the legendary tree wondered what he should call himself. Hexa-elemental magic tree was toome and wordy. He needed something more marketable. "Thank you for gathering here," Tree Rino thanked the excited fairies who discovered that the Monarch of Solitude did not lie. This was a new magic tree with no fae contracts yet and was way more powerful than the other magic tree in the forest. "As you can see, I have a barrier. Only those who proved themselves worthy may form a contract with me." Hearing that there was a way to be epted by the tree as a fae helper, the fairies quickly quieted down and told the neers to hush. Rino examined the crowd to see if there were any promising individuals among these fairies that he wanted to forcefully evolve after they became his ves. It was always nice to have a few dryad managers to keep the mischief-prone fairies in line. In addition, Rino wanted some nymphs to assist him with tailoring. In the crowd, Tree Rino spotted the artificial sprite and approved. The wisp he chose might be weak, but they were tenacious enough to desire sess. He already had in mind his first candidate. "We will undergo a trial of character," Tree Rino announced. "Everyone gets a chance to prove their worth with their actions. My chosen master, the Monarch of Solitude, demonstrated how easily he could help you evolve. It does not matter if you are a wisp or a dryad. There is no limit to growth. Be cautioned. If you are not ready to put your existence on the line, you should leave now. My chosen master does not require unloyal servants." The deration made many of the previously eager faes freeze. A group of faes quickly excused themself when hearing this. It was no secret that those who failed to evolve under pressure would die. They would rather not take such risks and slowly wait it out over the next hundred years to evolve by siphoning on the other magic tree''s mana. The indecisive group decided to stay and observe a little more before making their decision. Tree Rino did not chase them away. Instead, he was waiting for the first brave volunteer. "I am not afraid," the artificial sprite imed. "If I can be stronger, I will use this power to serve the Monarch of Solitude. As long as you keep your promise to me that there will be no humans to threaten us and exploit us for their greed." Tree Rino liked this pixie. It just went through a life and death ordeal not too long ago, but already, it was ready to challenge death once more. Chapter 56 - World Tree Rino The only true way to evolve a servant was to give them names. A servant bound by a magical contract to their master will share their master''s growth, but servants who were named by their masters were given arger percentage of power boost. Therger the sacrifice in the contract, the greater the power a servant has. After all, when the master dies, the servant may perish alongside the master they pledged their lives to. For this wisp, it was all or nothing. Ever since its miserable birth to this world, nobody gave it an opportunity to be something more. The first person to give him that chance was the Monarch of Solitude. Even if it was a chance encounter, the little pixie was thankful for the opportunity. For her, it was better to die knowing the sweet taste of sess than live a life of unanswered questions without knowing how sess felt like. "Are you sure?" Tree Rino asked when he saw who that first brave volunteer was. The other fairies and wisps had different levels of shock when they found out who this pixie was. Just a few hours ago, she was an unnamed wisp. Some fairies thought that she was overly confident of her abilities andbelled her as a greedy fae. Other kinder faes worried for this pixie''s well-being and even tried to stop her. However, the pixie was resolved. Even if she died, she would die trying to climb to the top. It was better than living a meaningless life for the next hundred years and missing the opportunity to be part of this new era. Even if she did not know who the Monarch of Solitude was, she was willing to bet that the lich would bring about a huge wave of change to their world. Humans have been bullying other species, and it was time they learned their ce. If the new magic tree could give them his word that the lich would not side with humans and would protect the weaker residents of the forest, she wouldy her life down without regret. Born from the growing fear and anger of creatures in the forest, this wisp turned into a fire pixie. She would never forget how families and ns of weaker animals were decimated and turned into coats and ground rugs. Those filthy human feet stepped all over the skin of deadrades, and the fire pixie could not forget the rage these animals felt after their death. "You''ve already evolved once," Rino informed the fore pixie. "You might die from this if you try it the second time." Instead of backing off, the fire pixie became more resolute. "I am not afraid of death. If I have to be tested again to prove my worth, I will dly undergo another evolution even if my soul bes ripped to shreds." Impressed, Rino decided that he would offer this bold little one a contract. It was a soul-binding contract that offered great benefits at the cost of one''s existence, but he had a feeling there would be no objections. Hearing that there was a way to be part of the monarch''s subordinates, the fire pixie did not hesitate. "I ept," she announced, shocking the other faes gathered in the cave. With her approval, the soul binding contract tied the pixie to Rino, who decided he would keep his name as it was. It was too difficult to separate his identity as a lich and a world tree so they would both be Rino. The only difference would be in their titles. He would no longer introduce his name as a lich. Instead, one would be known as the Monarch of Solitude, and the other would be known as World Tree Rino. Everyone watched as the fire pixie burst into purple soul mes after epting the soul-binding contract with World Tree Rino. Nobody moved, entranced by the power of this contract. Just what was this tree, and who was the Monarch of Solitude? How could they be more powerful than the only magic tree in this poor forest? Like moths flocking to a me, World Tree Rino received many pledges and soul-binding contracts. He wasted no time or spent too much effort naming his fairy subordinates. He doubted that he would remember them anyway. Getting fae ves was only the first part of his n. He would have to put them to work soon after he received his new daily quest, but for now, the ex-court magician could confirm that his magic powers were greatly increased by the number of faes he had under the soul-binding contract. As they fed on the mana produced by the world tree, they contributed it back to the world tree and Rino''s kingdom by doing work. The first batch of faes was tasked with weaving clothing for Rino''s undead army. The second batch of contracted faes was tasked with patrolling Rino''s massive territory that he hasn''t fully explored himself. The fairy scouts made the bulk of his newbour force. Thest batch of contracted fairies was chosen based on their elemental affinity to assist him with the farms, y kiln and rock quarry. In other words, Rino made them resource production workers and gatherers. Appointing a leader among these faes, Rino left them to organise themselves and switched his consciousness perspective to the one who had juste out of the bath. It was close to midnight now, and the weaving fairies would take some time to arrive without teleportation. As of now, the mana recovery rate was more than his mana consumption rate. Rino reached his maximum mana capacity, hadn''t fully explored, and the lich decided that now might be a good time for a little experiment. One by one, Rino summoned his shadow ves and monitored his mana reserves. So far, there was no change in his mana even after summoning fifteen new ves. Could it be? The Monarch of Solitude could not help but feel a little excited by the possibility of finally being able to summon an entire vige of ves to assist with his production needs. There was no time better than the present to test that out, and Rino removed all reservations, calling out the rest of the lurkers in his shadows. Chapter 57 - Weave Squad By the time the weaving faes arrived, Rino knew the break-even point. He could summon one hundred and two shadow ves before the mana regeneration could not keep up with his mana consumption. That was a lot more than he expected. Only five shadow ves were lurking within his shadows to conserve mana, but even so, Rino had more hands than he knew what to do with them. As it turned out, the more sprites he had under the World Tree''s contract, the greater his mana capacity and faster his mana regeneration. It was truly a legendary tree, and that was not all it could do. Through his soul bond with that legendary tree, Rino was now capable of borrowing the different elemental spells his undead body previously could not control. This included his very weak affinity with wind and poorpatibility with light magic. That rune circle wasn''t just an amplifier for magic, a shackle for the space rock and a power cell for mana storage. It was also an elemental magic converter and a spare body for the lich. Before this, he was close to an immortal. Now, Rino could be considered a demi-god existence. That World Tree could not be easily destroyed or harmed by regr monsters or magicians. It took someone on the same level as Rino''s pre-tree fusion skill to cause a scratch. From above, the Gods of the small world started to rethink their choices. They allowed Rino to proceed with his rune circle because Phil deemed that it wasn''t created to destroy the world. However, this was still quite the predicament. How could a mortal surpass a God in terms of power? Rino wasing very close to being able to fight a God. Even with the system, it was scary to think about going against such a magician. Ace was very silent as his team started to have second thoughts about this rapidly growing threat to their existence. Even Phil regretted his judgement to allow Rino to continue with his spell. If they prevented the lich from seeding, Rino would not be this powerful. "Great Monarch! We are here to assist you on the World Tree''s orders!" the leader of the weaving fairy squadron shouted as she knocked on Rino''s front door. Inside, Rino looked around. The shadow soldiers were currently made to run resource collection errands. He might have weavers now but not enough threads for them to work with. Opening the door, Rino stood at the entrance and told them to follow him to the weaving machine. He did not have many weaving machines or spools, but he could demonstrate how it worked to the fairies for now. Perhaps, they could help him build more weaving machines after seeing how they worked. The exnation was kept short, and Rino only showed them what they needed to know before turning to the weaving fairies. "Any questions?" The squadron leader took a look at the unprocessed x, hemp and cotton that Rino''s shadow ves were slowly bringing in. "Would you like us to create threads as well? We have enough fairies to coordinate thread production and cloth weaving. The brownies are good tailors. They helped mend human clothes for a while until they were chased out. Rino was pleasantly surprised to hear that there were experienced tailors and nodded happily. The two brownies stepped forward and bowed to the tall lich. They were very tiny on the ground, barely the height of his hand, so Rino lifted them up. "You''re very tiny. Can you really sew?" The brownies puffed their chest proudly, much to Rino''s amusement. As it turned out, they were siblings. The brownies had experience sewing everything from shoes to curtains, although they like to split their jobs when doing it. Rino listened to the brownies exin how the older brother was in charge of measurements and cutting while the younger sister was a speedy stitcher. "We can produce up to eight pairs of shoes in one night if all the materials are ready. However, we need some kind of way to get to your crafting table to reach the sewing materials because we don''t have wings to fly. Fairy dust magic only works for a while, and it isn''t very reliable." Offended, the fairies who lent the brownie siblings spluttered in indignation at the ungrateful siblings until Rino put a stop to it. He gave a chiding look at the older brother, who pulled at an eye and stuck a tongue out at the fairies yfully. "The crafting station for tailoring can be arranged easily, but I would prefer if you got along when you work. There''s nothing wrong with preferring not to fly, but these fairies mean well when they lend you some of their flight magic." Cheeks turning red at the lecture, the older brother bowed his head and hid his ears under with his hands while his younger sister apologised on her brother''s behalf to the fluttering fairies. Rino moved on from the topic so that nobody continued to dwell on it now that the feelings were resolved. He split the fairy group into two so that those with water and wind elements could help to process the raw materials and spin them into threads. The other group of fairies were in charge of keeping the current weaving machines smooth running. In the weaving squad, eight tiny bearded men tagged along. They introduced themselves as gnomes who were the equivalent of fae handymen. Rino quickly left the task of building more weaving machines and wood treatment to them. "If you require tree sap or amber, you can use the teleportation pad and set it to the following coordinates for wood treatment." The gnomes waved their hands and shook their heads when RIno wanted to show them where they could get the materials they required. "No, my liege. Gnomes have special bodily fluids that can be used as varnish to treat wood. Our beards are also the roughest sandpaper file you can find. There is no need to use the precious resource from the forest for this." Hearing how convenient these gnomes were, Rinomented he did not meet them earlier. His farmhouse could use some sprucing up too from his shoddy craftsmanship. "In that case, I shall leave it to you. Look around my territory and improve on what you see. I would like a proper storage house and a proper granny for harvest before the end of next month." Beaming in happiness that they were entrusted with such a huge responsibility, the gnomes bowed and thanked Rino for the opportunity to do what they did best. It was a little odd to the lich to think that such actions made these little creatures so happy. Just how badly were they mistreated? For now, he shelved that question and turned his focus back to the familiar sound he had been waiting for since he turned the fields upside down. Ping! It was time to check out his new daily quest. Chapter 58 - Irregular Irrigation Rino checked his new daily quest and immediately felt his mood dampen when he saw that it was another chain quest. This time, the duration was even longer than thest! === Daily Quest #8 [Chain Quest] Objective: nting Potatoes 1. Sow the potato seeds 2. Water the field daily Time Limit: 7 Days. Tutorial here. Reward: Fertiliser Recipe. im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === He should have seen thising. He really should. However, Rino was too sidetracked with his other personal projects and their progress that he failed to do what he said he would. The runes he wanted to make to help him light up his potato field and water them at regr intervals was simply empty talk at this point. Rino felt ashamed of himself for putting off such an important task. Thankfully, he had enough hands to help him do that manually and enough seeds to sow. There weren''t enough farming tools, but Rino decided he could do that over the next few days. Those who did not own farming tools could either do other tasks like building a fence for the potato fields or carrying mulch over. As Rino dished orders left and right to both faes and shadow summons, he wondered if it would be worth creating an irrigation system. He read about that in the tutorial the Gods provided and thought it would be wonderful to save future manpower when the kingdom expanded. Surely the fields would not be just one acre. Even if he had three thousand fairies helping him with farming, it was still going to be a lot of work for his little helpers. On the other hand, it would be easier to maintain a system built to water all the nts that needed watering without sending fairies to fly all over the ce. For now, Rino supervised the potato sowing process. The shadow farmers were working in the dark with only wisps to guide them. The fairies might not be of huge help when it came to manualbour like covering the soil, but they were very good at following up with watering them. Rino left through his backdoor to check on the reservoir below his farmhouse. So far, there was nobody assigned to take care of this ce. It ran without a hitch, even without anyone actively managing it. This should be the way things worked. Rino loved automation and wished that every task could be done to this level of perfection. Irrigation was a very tricky thing to implement as different crops require different amounts of water. Rino had no idea which nts need more watering and which nts need less. This was something he entrusted Fronzo with. He was not interested in agriculture when he had capable subordinates to manage it for him. However, he was interested in automating the watering process. If irrigation was not ideal, would irregr irrigation work? It might not be fully automated, but Rino thought even a partially automated watering system was better than not having a system at all. Ace decided that now would be an appropriate time to visit Rino again as Noir. The lich worked hard and needed his encouragement. If Rino could create a good watering system, the God of Prayers could foresee a huge new road paved for them. Rino would be able to grow more than simple potatoes. With this many faes working alongside his shadow summons, Rino would be able to mass-produce crops and offer them to the Gods. It would solve many of the small world''s food shortage and starvation issues. Rino was thinking very hard as hey on the bed, appearing as if he was sleeping. The reservoir system was very efficient, but Rino did not know if there was a better way of transporting water. The water in the reservoir might not be enough to water all his crops if he ever expanded his fields. In fact, Rino was told that the nts needed nutrients in the water to promote a bountiful harvest. Rino had no idea what that meant, but he understood Fronzo disapproved of regr distilled water. Strangely, Fronzo was alright when the farming fairies watered the nts using their magic. Mana produced water was eptable but not mana transferred water. What was the difference? Rino could not understand. Ace teleported into Rino''s farmhouse with a silent whoosh directly and leapt onto the cat tree gracefully before taking aim and pouncing onto the lich''s face with his ws out. The magician was in such deep thoughts that he failed to register an intruder in his home. This was uneptable. "Just because you learned a few new spells and became a little more powerful doesn''t mean you can afford to let your guard down," Noir hissed. "Foolish man!" The ck furry creature''s appearance made Rino throw away all his priorities and troubles. His hands moved faster than his mind registered, and Rino cuddled the cat to his chest, rubbing his protruding cheekbones ino the soft underbelly. "You came back!" he half-sobbed. "You actually returned. I thought you were never going to return after you left so suddenly." Ace felt bad for visiting only now, but the Gods really did not have it easy thest few days. In a way, he was busy because of Rino. The way the magician sent them on an emotional roller coaster made the ck cat feel tired. Rino realised how quiet and docile Noir was. The ck cat seemed to have gone through a lot in the few days they were apart. He could not help but wonder if there was something he could do to cheer this beautiful feline up. From his previous life''s knowledge, cats liked it when they were lightly scratched under their chins. Rino gently tickled Noir''s chin and watched as those eyes became half-lidded. It was magical when the cat started to purr lightly, and Rino kept it up for a while, finding the purring sound very soothing. With the therapeutic activity, Rino found himself diving deeper into his mind. The irregr irrigation system should still use runes as a transfer medium. However, as runes only face one direction, it was not very effective to use only one rune. Rino needed something to help it turn like a weathervane so that the surrounding crops in a fixed radius will receive the same water. Maybe he could use a wind rune to activate at the same time when the watering runes were activated? Ace was on cloud nine under Rino''s skilful ministrations. It just felt sofortable that when those fingers stopped, he felt a dissatisfied growl rip from his throat. His tiny pawstched onto those boney fingers, demanding attention, but Rino froze like a statue. Rain clouds. He could create artificial rain clouds over the acre of field that he wanted using rune circles. Rino looked at Noir and patted the cat now that he had a solution. Chapter 59 - Rain Ritual "Where are you going?" Noir asked when Rino got up. Wasn''t this a little too soon to be leaving him after their long separation? Thest time he was here, Rino was extremely clingy. The lich patted him and scratched him behind the ears before searching for something on his shelf. Whatever the magician was looking for, Noir did not expect it to be a small sling bag. Rino opened the bag and looked at the cat expectantly. It took the ck cat a few seconds to understand what it was for. "I can walk," Noir insisted, but Rino was faster. He scooped the feline in his arms and put him in the sling bag. Disoriented from getting dropped into a bag, Noir wanted to protest and popped his head from the ck sling bag that Rino tied over his right shoulder. However, all Noir''s whining fell on deaf ears. Rino knew that if the ck cat wanted to, he could easily teleport away. Together, they travelled to the fields. Fronzo was directing the fairies and checking if the potato seeds were properly sown. There was still plenty of time before the sun came up, and Rino was not worried that they could not finish sowing one acre of fields before that. He was simply here to observe the space and think of a good way to draw a magic circle without ruining thend. "What are you thinking?" the cat made himselffortable in the sling bag, and Rino hummed. For now, they only had one acre of field. It wasn''t very big, but it also wasn''t very small. He could create artificial rain clouds that will trigger upon a spell activation to water the crops within a barrier. However, he wasn''t too sure about the nutrients that different crops needed. Rino honestly thought that mulch was all that was required when it came to soil conditioning. "I want to make artificial rain to water the crops, but the magic circle should be drawn in a way that does not destroy the fields. Also, there might be different crops in the future. It is not easy deciding the perimeters of this automated watering system." Surprised that this was what the powerful magician struggled with, Noir hopped out of the bag and walked along the field. Rino protested to that, iming that those beautiful paws would be dirtied, but Noir paid him no attention. At least, the usual Rino he knew was back. There were a few ways to create weather spells. Most magicians drew them on thend over the area that they point the spell''s coordinates to. Dark magicians often did this to bring cmity over targeted towns for their sacrifices. However, there was one disadvantage in doing so. The coordinate points did not guarantee every inch of the location getting affected by the spell. If Rino wanted a very thorough automated watering system, it was still better to affix individual runes with a smaller targeted area effect. Phil mentioned that sprinklers were a thing that used pressure to shoot water over a distance. If Rino could find a way to use that, they could fix water runes along the rows of the crops. He did not need to go as far as making a magic circle big enough to cover an entire field. "What about using individual runes written with a timed spell to activate on conditions triggered spaced evenly throughout the field? You can cover the area more thoroughly without fear of it not covering every square meter." Noir''s suggestion was something Rino thought about before. However, the problem wasn''t the design of his watering system. It was the water. "Fronzo said that different nts needed different nutrients in the water. I don''t know what works, and not everything is going to be potatoes in the future. Crop rotation is a thing, and different crops grow during different seasons." Ace was impressed that Rino thought that far ahead. He was right. They would ask him to grow different nts if the potato quest waspleted with huge sess. Perhaps he should give the lich a hint. "Why not use mana imbued water? It should work for anything." Rino paused. Mana imbued water? Was that possible? The God of Prayer paused and looked back when Rino did not follow. The lich stood rooted to the spot, and Noir flicked its tail in annoyance when there was no response. "Cat got your tongue?" the snarky remark brought Rino back to reality. He shook his head and quickly caught up in a few strides. "No. I''m just thinking about what you said. How can you imbue water? It does not store magic." Indeed, most magicians only knew that certain objects like gems could store magic. However, the truth was that everything can be charged with magic. Some items were more receptive and can contain the mana energy inside them for a long time, while others cannot contain mana for long, and it dissipates back into the environment. "Think about it," Noir twitched its nose. "Why can air contain mana if a powerful mana emitter is constantly in the area?" Rino followed the ck cat as Noir inspected the potato fields and asionally swiped at a wisp that flew too close. It made a lot of sense, and Rino never actually thought about it before. All his life, he thought that mana was something born in certain creatures. It was a talent by the Gods or a curse by the Devil that determined which affinity you had. The concept of karma and past life contributions came into y to exin the kind of elemental affinity a magician had. Now that he was living his second life, Rino did not question that concept. He destroyed his previous world, and even if he did not, he must have caused a lot of destruction and deaths. His crimes in his past life made him an undead, or so he thought. Was Noir hinting at something else? Was there perhaps a different reason for why mana and magic existed? "I''ve been meaning to ask this for a while now," Rino mused when Noir lost his bnce and fell into the mud. "Where have you been this past week? I was waiting for you. Even that farmhouse was constructed specially for you because you did not like the mud hut. Was there something you didn''t like? I know I don''t have proper windows yet, but there are some very helpful gnomes. They can fix that soon." Speechless, Noir curled its tail around itself. He coordinated a backstory with Ark beforeing down to keep his identity a secret. He could not stay in the mortal world for too long and needed a good excuse to leave often and visit asionally. "It''s veryfortable," the feline averted its gaze. "I like it." Puzzled, Rino continued to press for a reason. He wanted this little guy to stay now that everything was finally on the move. They could live happily infort together. "Then why?" Noir couldn''t look at Rino in the eye sockets. Instead, the cat turned its back on Rino. "A cat has its secrets that cannot always be shared. I''lle back from time to time, so you better keep the ce clean. In any case, I came back this time to check on your progress. You look like you''re able to understand dark magic a little more." Rino nodded. Thanks to the system, he was now able to use two very useful skills. The shadow sack and teleportation skills had to be his favourite. Noir hopped onto the lich''s shoulder, startling Rino. "Now that you know the basics, shall I teach you something more advanced?" Chapter 60 - Noir鈥檚 Enchantment Class Hearing that a cat was going to teach him magic, Rino did not know if he should be honoured or highly amused. He settled for both, much to Noir''s annoyance. The cat pped its tail on his face and wed his skull lightly while nipping on his cape. They returned to the farmhouse, and Rino lit the ce up and tidied the space a little so that Noir could use the space for whatever magic the cat wanted to teach him. Rino wasn''t going to im that he knew everything about magic. However, there was very little that he could learn after bing the best in his previous world. Unless magicws worked differently in this world, Rino did not think Noir''s lessons would be very effective. However, he wouldn''t turn this golden opportunity to spend time with the cute cat together. It has been about a week since hest saw Noir. Thest time Noir left, he did not leave Rino any note or trace. It was unbearably lonely after that despite being surrounded by so many shadow summons. "What are we going to learn today?" Rino yed along. Ace huffed. Even as a cat, he could still read the amusement and inner thoughts of Rino. He might not hear them directly, but the lich''s actions told him everything he needed to know. The powerful magician did not think a mere cat would be able to teach him anything new. Ace vowed to make Rino change his mind by the end of the lesson. Rino might be an inventor, schr and a great magician who invented his very own runenguage. However, when it came to the origin of magic, this human was still as clueless as every other mortal. "Listen well, twerp. I will not repeat myself." Assuming the personality of a strict mentor, Noir hopped onto the table and waited for Rino to sit so that they were near eye level. Rino took a seat and showed the cat the same respect he would show to a magic teacher. This reminded him of his past when he was first picked up by the magician tower. He spent many years of his childhood attending lectures after lectures until the old magicians could teach him no more. He had a few teachers in his life, but none of them was as adorable as Noir, so Rino found himself struggling to pay attention. "Do you know the origin of mana?" Noir pped its tail on the table when he saw Rino''s hands creeping to pat him. Rino snapped out of it and assumed an upright position like a model student. He tried to recall the simplest exnation of where mana originated that he knew from his previous life. However, he wasn''t so sure if it was the most urate exnation now. Noir''s earlier question made him question many of the fundamentals he once knew. "ording to the texts, mana is the gift that the Gods gave for those who umted good deeds in their previous life to bless those who could wield magic. In some cases, like dark magic, mana is also known as lifespan. It could be used to exchange for magical power." "Superficial exnation. How did you even be a lich? That is only the tip of the iceberg. Young ones like you are getting worse by the generation. How infuriating!" Hearing Noirin about his exnation made Rino blink. Sometimes, he felt like this cat wasn''t just a grouchy ck cat. It wasn''t anyone''s pet either from how free-spirited it behaved,ing and going whenever it pleased. The lich only heard Noir speak once about its master but nothing more. He wondered what happened to Noir''s actual owner and what this cat actually was. It was more intelligent than Mutt, and it was no surprise. Everyone knew that cats were superior. However, knowing more than the ex-court magician was something not everybody can im. "What do you think mana is then?" he asked neutrally. Noir rubbed a paw to his head almost in a facepaw gesture. "Mana is the source of life. That much is urate. However, your exnation of its uses is wrong. Also, mana is not a gift to those who could use magic. It mighte from Gods, but that''s not why it exists. I thought you would have a better idea after enving so many souls, but I guess you''re as empty as what''s in your skull." Noir''s hints pointed Rino in the right direction, and after a while, Rino formed several new theories about mana. Could mana not be a gift caused by a repayment cycle of good and evil but the actual soul itself? Was that why air could be charged with mana like how some gemstones could store mana? Now that he thought about this more seriously, Rino could see the possibility of imbuing mana in water. However, he had no idea if the effects of infusing the water with mana would be the same as inspiring the nt to reach its maximum potential using nature magic. Noir was pleased that Rino learned fast. He did not believe in spoon-feeding information, so Rino had to figure the rest out by himself to find the answer now that he was on the right track. Instead, the ck cat yawned and cast a magic circle, sting that on Rino as a demonstration for the actual lesson. Startled that he would be attacked in his own home, Rino could not put up a shield or dodge that yawn attack. However, it did not hurt. The lich examined himself in confusion, and Noir blinkedzily. "That''s an enchantment. You don''t see or feel a difference because it''s not directed at you. Check the cape again. See how that is just an ordinary piece of fabric that cannot store mana? however, it is still possible to imbue it with magic." Rino stopped counting his ribs and looked up. Then, he inspected the mantle and noticed that Noir added an additional spell to his existing spell. It was now waterproof. "It works for anything that cannot retain mana within. What do you think?" Noir asked smugly and took off, jumping from the table now that lessons were over. Rino sat there dumbly and looked at his multi-enchanted mantle. They could only enchant stones and precious gems in his previous world, affixing them on sceptres to make powerful wands. He never knew enchantment magic could be used so diversely. What was it about Noir''s magic that made it possible to charge objects with zero mana retaining capacity? Chapter 61 - Origin Of Magic Noir stayed that night and left again that morning, making Rino miss him more. As the lich cleaned his house, he found a few short ck strands of fur and kept those in a little pouch he asked the brownies to make for him. On the days he missed Noir, he would turn to the little patch of ck fur he collected to y with it. Just like that, four days passed with the farmers and fairies diligently tending to the field. "My lord," Fronzo knocked on his door one night. "Pleasee out to take a look!" Rino knew that the farmhand was a very diligent person who would not trouble him with small matters. The only other time Fronzo spoke out of line was when Rino interfered with farming work. Fronzo only looked for him when things out of his control happened, like finding a strange glowing rock while ploughing. "What is it?" Rino asked and opened the door. The skeleton was looking a little better with the clothes the brownie siblings made. Clothes really did make a man, and Fronzo looked less like a poor beggar and more like a decent farm manager. Fronzo bowed and saluted clumsily. His imitation of high noble etiquette was still sloppy, but Rino overlooked it. Even if he was the king, he did not want to be bothered by these useless socialisations as long as everyone did their job to make his idle life dreame true. "The potato seeds have grown tremendously overnight even though they were mere seedlings yesterday! I checked if any of the fairies did anything special, but they imed to only use normal water magic to water them. The farming volunteers also collected the same mulch as usual. I rushed to inform my lord at once when I found out." Hearing that the potato seeds would normally take a few months to grow from seed, Rino was thrilled to hear that a change in his watering routine provided such a great result. Over thest few days, Rino tested out several new theories to enchant water. He also did a little something in the underground reservoir. The fairies continued using water magic to water the potatoes, but Rino gave them runes to carry around while doing so. They no longer conjured water using magic. His idling did not prove in vain, and the ich really had to thank the elusive cat for pointing him in the right direction. It wasn''t nutrients that helped the nts achieve miraculous growth. If there was amon form for all living creatures, they needed life energy to sustain. Each day after the first, the fairies were watering the fields with a different kind of water that Rino ''imbued'' with mana. The first two attempts were a dud, and Rino had to find a different way to ''charge'' the water with magic. The first batch of water was simply forcing mana to mingle with the water he separated out for watering purposes. Needless to say, it ended in a failure because most of the charged mana in the water escaped to the environment. The second batch of water was done slightly differently. Instead of forcing the water to ept mana, Rino tried to do what Noir did with his cape and ''enchanted'' the water usingyers of mana to wrap them around the water. Of course, that failed. Mana could not be galvanised. Theyer that Rino formed simply became a barrier around the remaining water after the fairies used what they needed for the field. That night, Rino did some very deep thinking. He could not understand the link between enchantment and the origin of magic. If magic was a life source, how would it interact with things that were dead? Technically, Rino was a dead body. Going by that logic, he should not be able to use magic or still remain alive. That was all it took to give Rino the breakthrough moment he needed. The idea of living or dead did note from the beating of the heart, the pumping of blood or the act of breathing. There was a difference between the living, the living dead and the undead. Noir did not lie. The origin of magic dide from life. However, how life was determined had to be redefined before Rino found his answer. Instead of identifying life as something that lying creatures had, Rino looked deeper and finally understood that life magic was synonymous with souls. The existence of the soul was the answer for life and mana. Once he understood this, everything else fell into ce. The air around the magic tree was charged with mana, not because the air conducted mana. More urately, he should say that souls were attracted to the energy around the magic tree and over time, more souls gathered in the area, giving a more concentrated amount of ''mana'' in the air. However, as not all souls were powerful enough to materialise, they have to spend a long time together in the area, feeding on the mana of other living things with physical bodies. Physical bodies die over time because they continue to disperse mana into the surroundings like leaking tap. It was the natural process of life to maintain creation, a system probably designed by Gods. Once Rino understood this, ''enchantment'' was a lot easier. Simr to rune writing, ''enchantment'' magic made use of a set of rules to deter certain elements like a barrier or divert ''mana'' in the environment to behave differently. Waterproof enchantment was merely cancelling water from making contact with the cape. The spell was easy to deconstruct, and Rino recast it by himself after understanding how to code the spell. He was right about it being ayer coating the object in his second experiment, but he missed out on the important concept behind how mana worked to make it really stick in the water when he applied it. With a better understanding of magic''s origin and the method of enchanting objects that could not retain mana, Rino tried it one more time. The third time was the charm. Rino rewrote the new set of rules on the water holding area to continuously tempt souls to flock to the area using a constant stream of mana to hold these souls within the area. The water automatically became ''imbued'' with mana and remained that way until the water was summoned by runes that the fairies carried to spread all across the potato field. The souls that were living in the water were summoned along, and without a source to feed them with mana, they started losing that mana to the surroundings in the field. That mana was taken in by the potato seeds and grew exponentially after receiving the mana boost. Rino followed Fronzo to the fields and saw many bushes. Although these shrubs were not at their full height, Rino had a feeling that by the end of the week, if he continued with his efforts, they could see a very huge harvest even without the aid of nature magic. "Very good," he praised Fronzo. "Call the farming volunteers, gnomes, and gardening fairies. I want to hold a meeting in an hour." Thrilled that the Monarch of Solitude was holding his first formal meeting, the fairies hurried to finish their watering duties to take a shower. They had to pretty themselves up before meeting with the king! Chapter 62 - Automated Watering System Looking their best, the fairies gathered inside the Monarch of Solitude''s little farmhouse. There might be many creatures gathered, but Rino amodated them indoors cosily. He did not have a castle or a huge town hall for these things, but it did not really bother him. This farmhouse was functional, and as long as everyone kept their hands to themselves, he did not see a need to immediately start building any new structures. "Thank you for gathering here on short notice," Rino cut to the chase. "I organised a meeting to exin about the sudden growth of potato nts in the field that you might notice." His statement grabbed everyone''s attention, and Rino slowly exined his future ns to expand the fields with the possibility of growing more variety of crops. The gardeners listened and agreed in unison when Rino shared his goals with them. Their leader was far-sighted and wise. Solitude was in good hands. "However, I always believe that there is a more efficient way of doing things. Therefore, I would like to share with everyone my design for an automated watering system that will cover every field. This way, the fairies can put their abilities to better uses." Sharing a hand-drawn diagram of his sprinkler design with a room full of people wasn''t easy. Many of those lingering at the back squinted to get a closer look, so Rino decided against it. Only those who were involved in building the automated watering system will remain behind for a closer look. The lich still had to talk it over with the gnomes and ask for their opinions. Rino''s idea was fairly simple. There were no advanced magic arrays that allowed a chain magic circle to activate from one point yet. Even in the previous world, Rino nned the city revamping project to light up the streets with magic and transfer water for every household within the royal capital to enjoy clean water and lights. If he could do that back then, he could do it again in this world, starting from nothing. His arrival wasn''t the most morous. There were no red carpets and orchestras to announce his presence. Instead, Rino remembered waking up to the taste of mud in his mouth. What a start! Compared to that, this project would really propel the age of magic in this primitive world to unimaginable heights. Rino looked forward to bing the first kingdom devoid of humans and full of magical advancements. "We need a lot of runes," Rino stated. Thankfully, he knew a renewable rune resource. Since he was sharing a soul with the World Tree, the World Tree should be able to tap onto his high regeneration abilities too. "The fairies will assist me in building this manawork in the fields during the day. The gnomes will build the sprinkler posts after testing the sprinkler''s effective distance with me. Fronzo, you and the shadow minions are in charge of weeding and maintaining the potato nts. Keep the pests away and prepare to harvest them when they are ready." His speech was short but effective. There wasn''t a single person in this farmhouse who did not understand their role in the massive project. "If there are no questions, please continue what you were doing before I disturbed you. The gnomes should remain behind. We will start with the prototype testing. I need your help." Thrilled that the king would be joining them, the gnomes gave each other hi-fives and ran after Rino once the farmhouse was empty again. Not rushing, the lich took his time to rearrange the furniture in the house and even prepared some water for the gnomes. It was a pity he did not have food around, only potatoes and clean water to entertain guests with. No wonder Noir left so hurriedly! He was a terrible host. The eight little men epted the y mugs happily, notmenting on the uneven shape or surface. The king must have made this himself, and they were honoured to use what the king used. "Here is my design of the automated watering system," he showed them the design. The concept was simple. Rino wanted to use some sort of chamber or pipe to contain all the water inside and make a very small opening at the end of that pipe. The water rune will be affixed to the bottom of that pipe so that when it is activated, the amount of watering from that rune will rapidly fill the pipe and build pressure within that chamber to force a thin jet of water to shoot further than it normally would. Using that, Rino wanted to measure the maximum effective distance that the water could shoot and decide how many ''sprinklers'' he needed to make to cover one acre of field. "Will it turn?" one gnome asked after looking at the design of that water pipe. The wind rune used to turn the pipe in one direction at a slow speed was the most interesting part of this water chamber design. Rino nodded and exined how the sprinkler should work to the gnomes, who were amazed. "My king, you are very talented! We''ve seen something like this that humans use to get clean water. However, it uses the force of the world to drip water downwards. We have never seen anything defying the force of the world before that does not have wings!" Rino blinked. What were they talking about? This wasn''t even magic. It was just physics. Pressure was built up if there was more force behind what the output allowed. Could it be that this new world he was brought to lived in an age ofplete ignorance for mathematics and science too? Discovering that the world was behind in arts, science, technology, and magic, Rino decided. He wasn''t simply going to build a kingdom for an idle life. He was going to build a kingdom that individuals were free to build upon his founding knowledge. He was going to create a creator''s paradise where automation and advancement of technology ruled. But first, he had to y teacher to these ignorant citizens. Chapter 63 - Groundwork Thankfully, the gnomes learned fast. Rino did not need to tell them what to do. They sorted the building responsibilities among themselves, although Rino summoned a few shadow ves to assist with the grunt work. Resource gathering should be left to the ones with more muscles and lesser brains. Luckily for him, his undead army never tired. The sun was almost up, and Rino checked on the fairies. Those working on the farm looked positively exhausted as they switched working shifts with the other fairy team. This was something new that Rino learned. Some sprites were nocturnal, while others were diurnal. Then again, there were some who simply never slept like the gnomes and brownies. Fairies also hibernated at certain times of the year for some species. Finding out all their different biological schedules became such a pain that Rino delegated talent welfare to ady with a good head from his shadow ves. The lich did not know details, but she knew a little about counting while she was alive, making him think she was slightly more intelligent than the other servants he had. Among the faes who pledged their lives to the World Tree, there were a few sylphs. Rino made them leaders in charge of the fairymunity for now, and thankfully, they were intelligent and reliable. Their personalities made them very suitable for mediating fights that often happened between fairies, and Rino did not know what he would do if it wasn''t for them. "Come, make yourselvesfortable," Rino invited the four sylphs he appointed as leaders of therge fairymunity. Each sylph was an elemental specialist, and Rino entrusted them with discussing how many fairies within theirmunity they should send for each project. The fire sylph decided to settle in the firece where it was toasty. Rino watched the water sylph make herself cosy in his sink while the earth sylph simply camped near the door in his garden. The wind sylph was the only one considerably normal as she made herselffortable inside his farmhouse, floating near Noir''s cat tree. Right, he should have known they would do this instead of gathering at one spot in his house. Then again, it did not matter. Today''s meeting was a project briefing aboutying the necessary groundwork all over his kingdom. "Do you have a rough outline of my kingdom''s territory?" he asked the wind sylph. She giggled and ryed what the patrolling fairies saw. There wasn''t much to take note of in Rino''s territory. It could be said that the area the Gods marked out for this kingdom-building project was the most ideal. "We spotted mountains, mines, caves, monster dungeons, grasnds, frozen tundras and a little opening to the sea at one corner of thend." Hearing the summary of where these importantndmarks were, Rino sketched them on the newly made hemp waste recycled paper. The fire fairies working at the kiln made enough charcoal for torches, and Rino borrowed some as pencils. He was d the writing materials came on time. Presently, the farm was located very close to the forest, and everything that Rino built did not even take up a tenth of the kingdom building space. However, he was too far from where the most ideal plot for the kingdom''s capital was. It was a shame, but Rino knew that he would have to relocate again once he had the basic resource production running. "For now, we willy the groundwork to test my theory about a chain magic trigger array web. The preparations must be done very carefully so that the crops and buildings are not affected." The four sylphs paid close attention as Rino exined how the web would work. Much like a spider''s web, the web''s centre would be where the power source was. Then, it would branch out in various directions for various purposes, only crossing when there was a necessity. Nobody was surprised to know that Rino intended to use the World Tree as his main power source for this test. However, the confusing part came in when Rino told them there were three main things he needed this mana web to power. "The first is light. I need this ce to be brightly lit even at night. The second thing is a defence barrier. To keep the secret of those who live here, I need a strong illusionary and defensive barrier. Thest is a water system for the fields. The gnomes are currently in charge of the sprinkler prototype." The concept of automatic watering was strange for the sylphs. Rino spent a lot of time trying to exin how the mana webwork functioned. He could not even exin to the sylphs how it would be activated because they could not visualise it until Rino chased the water sylph from his sink to demonstrate how runes worked. "It''s a rune in a circle!" the fire sylph hissed, ring at the sink like something threatening. The other sylphs reacted less dramatically towards the small water stream trickling from the activated magic circle above the fixed rune. However, they were equally fascinated that a rune could contain such aplex magic circle. The scribble on that huge rune was also something they did not recognise. "What''s that?" the sylphs asked. However, Rino only put a finger to his lips. "A great magician never reveals all his secrets. However, you should be able to understand the concept now toy the groundwork for that mana web." Indeed, it was easier to understand what a chain magic circle spell was after watching Rino activate one. He simply pulsed mana into that one rune, and it triggered several other runes in the underground reservoir to bring water up to the sink as the rune below the y sink opened a portal to throw that water that flowed down the y basin to a different location. This trigger of chain spells soundedplicated, but when Rino exined how they knew what to do when sensing a mana flow for activation, the sylphs nodded excitedly. It was exactly like how the spider spun its web. If one thread breaks, others would still hold the wholework together while it gets repaired. "We understand now," the water sylph spoke on behalf of the others and asked if they should approach the World Tree to start there. "No," Rino replied. He had something else in mind. "Please start from the perimeter of this small farm town that I want to build." He pulled out a map he drew roughly with markings for future building projects that the Gods from above could not see clearly. Rino pointed at the different ces within this territory that he wanted the four sylphs to affix his specially made runes. "There are different types of runes in there. Please do not get them mixed up. At some points, there might be a need for two runes. When that happens, please follow their sequence ording to this chart." Nodding, the four sylphs headed off in four different directions to get started with the webying. In the meantime, Rino decided to tend to more pressing matters andy on his bed, switching consciousness with the World Tree. Chapter 64 - Mashed Potatoes A week passed by quickly and Rino witnessed the magic of his new watering methods. Even Fronzo, the farming expert, could not adapt to this new growth speed. Using the new water Rino stocked to water the potato nts, the shrubs kept growing taller and taller until some fell over. At the end of seven days, Rino had an entire field of flimsy potato nts ready for harvesting. Although these potato nts were not as impressive as the one he grew using nature magic, it was stillrger than a normal harvest. Fronzo was so touched that he couldn''t stop trembling from excitement at the sight on the seventh day. Rino was simply waiting for his daily quest to update and gave the hardworking ves a day off to do whatever they wanted. The fairies patrolling the borders discovered an underground hot spring, and almost everyone left to check it out. As Rino could afford it, he summoned all his shadow ves to apany the fairies to enjoy themselves in the newly discovered hot springs. Meow! It was close to midnight when Rino heard that sound. He quickly jumped from the bed to check the door, but Noir was faster than him, teleporting right into his cat bed by the crackling fire. "You''re back!" Rino gushed andy on his exposed ribs with an elbow propping his skull up as he patted the ck cat, revelling in how soft the fur felt. Ace had to admit, Rino was quick on the uptake. All he did was give the lich a hint, and in less than a week, there was so much advancement. "I see that you figured it out," the cat said haughtily while fighting back a purr as Rino gently scratched behind its ears. Rino nodded. "Thanks to you, I did. Do you like what you see? It''s a little quieter tonight because I gave everyone a night off and a day off, depending on which shift they worked. The spuds are ready for harvesting at any moment thanks to the mana imbued water." "Where did they go?" "The hot springs that some patrolling fairy discovered." Noir made a face. Hot water bath full of smelly sulphur. Ace did not like it, and the cat''s body he was in hated it. The hissing sounds made Rino chuckle silently. Of course, Noir would hate it. Cats were not fond of water. They would rather give themselves a tongue bath than ever touching water with their fur. Ping! The sound made Rino pull away reluctantly. He wanted to pat Noir a little more and maybeb that soft fur with the newb the gnomes made when he requested it. Noir didn''t really mind that Rino had to stop. He was feeling toofortable by the fire in this soft bed. === Daily Quest #8 [Chain Quest] (Complete) Objective: nting Potatoes 1. Sow the potato seeds 2. Water the field daily Time Limit: 7 Days. Tutorial here. Reward: Fertiliser Recipe. im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Fertiliser recipe. It was something that Fronzo might find more useful than Rino. Yet, RIno wasn''t going toin. He didn''t lift a single finger toplete this quest even though he was incredibly busy for thest week. epting the reward, Rino was expecting some dy before his system updated the new quest. Ping! There was hardly any time to blink before RIno received another system notification. Ping! Two notifications. Rino wondered if the Gods were now eager to push more work on him now that they understood his abilities. It was usually what happened to talented and capable individuals who did not know how to lie low. The higher-ups will turn into assholes and milk their workers dry. It was the reason why he destroyed the previous world. From above, Ark shivered. Rino had the ability to kill a God after assimting with the hexa-elemental tree. It was no joke, and Ark quickly told Ace to pacify and distract the lich from dark thoughts. "I''m hungry," Noir yawned before Rino could check his quest screen. Effectively distracted, Rino apologised for not having much in his kitchen. The ck cat flicked its tail, unimpressed. "Is your farm for decoration?" Speechless, Rino wondered if cats usually ate potatoes. Then again, Noir was a special kind of cat who knew magic. Perhaps he would eat ground beans. "How do you want them cooked?" he asked, and Ace had to think. He never ate as a God. He didn''t need to eat in an incarnation''s body either, even if he could. "I don''t know," Noir confessed. "I just wanted to try it. Make it soft." Rino grinned. There were potatoes sitting in the storage room that had not sprouted ''eyes'' yet so he could take one to cook. Thankfully, he already had all the cooking utensils he needed to prepare a meal over a stove with an affixed fire rune. Ark heaved a sigh at the effective distraction. Ace was turning out to be a very good Rino tamer. He made the right decision to send the God of Prayers down to the small world. It took a genius to understand another genius. Rino chose the smallest potato from the potato hut and started peeling. He was clumsy with the y kitchen knife, and thankfully, he had no flesh on his fingers, or they would be bleeding profusely by now. The inexperienced cook stumbled around, trying to determine if the potato pieces were cut small enough for boiling. Eventually, he decided to cube them into cat bite sizes for Noir''s easier consumption. Then, the clumsy y pot was filled with water to the brim and set on the stove. The fire rune was activated to the maximum output, just enough to cover the whole base of the y pot but not enough to burn anything else. Rino added the diced potatoes into the pot and watched the water overflow onto the fire, drenching everything. If it was a gas stove, there would be a gas leak or an explosion. Thankfully, Rino''s stove was controlled by magic. From his cat basket, Ace cringed. It was painfully obvious from how Rino held the knife that he never cooked before. Sure, the ex-court magician might have a humble upbringing. However, he must have survived his days by eating things that did not need cooking, such as bread and fruits. The mess in the kitchen was so bad that he wanted to take his request back. "Do you need help?" the ck cat asked, but Rino stubbornly declined. A pet should just sit there and be loved. He could handle this. It''s just boiled ground beans. If he failed, he could turn it into mashed ground beans. As long as it was soft enough, it would be cooked. This shouldn''t be too difficult. From the reflecting pond, Stephanie could not bear to look. Even though she was no culinary expert, her job required her to spy on humans and their families. She saw enoughdies cook to know that Rino was doing it all wrong. "Is it toote to stop him?" the Goddess asked, and Ace nodded. For someone like Rino, the more daunting the task, the more fired up he will be. Failure did not deter geniuses. It only motivated them to try harder. Chapter 65 - Wife Talk As it turned out, Rino had to admit he was a huge culinary failure. Noir coughed up the first mouthful of mashed potatoes he ate. It was difficult to stomach the taste of nd and earthy potatoes. "We''re never doing this again," Noir swore with his tail raised high and bristled. Rino could only hang his head low and admit defeat. With nobody willing to eat this failed attempt of cooking mashed potatoes, Rino could only bury the evidence of his failure in the soil in his backyard. Nobody would find out he tried to cook today. Putting that horrible creation behind them, Rino decided to check on the two new quests he received. === Daily Quest #9 Objective: Harvest Potatoes 0/500 Potatoes Time Limit: 2 Days. Tutorial here. Reward: Offering Reward Shop. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === After looking at the requirements and rejoicing that this was finally not a chain quest, Rino decided that there was no need to start harvesting immediately. He had enough hands to help with that, and Rino had a feeling they could fully dig up all the potatoes, clear thend and recondition the soil for a new batch of potatoes within a night. This much, he already expected. Fronzo exined that they would have close to ten thousand potatoes in this one acre of field, so five hundred wasn''t much. If there was an immediate problem, Rino needed to think of a ce to store these potatoes. The current potato hut by his bathhouse was too small for ten thousand potatoes. The gnomes were also too busy with the sprinkler project to build his granary. With drooping shoulders, Rino checked his side quest out. He had no idea if the side quest would allow him to use the Offering Reward Shop, but Rino hoped it was somewhat rted. He did not want to start a new building project when his current agricultural infrastructure was still iplete. === Side Quest #12 Objective: Make an offering to the Offering Reward Shop Reward: 8 hours of sleep. === Seeing that the side quest was linked to thepletion of his main quest, Rino rxed. The Gods were still reasonable bosses, so he decided to put up with them for a little while. The Curse of Overtime sounded terrible. Rino did not have a good reason to want to boycott either. Harvesting potatoes in two days was easy, and he did not have to do anything himself. Everything could be left in the hands of his ve army. "Wipe that look off your face," Noir snapped. "You look positively evil." Rino pped his skull with his hands and apologised. He was just enjoying the moment a little too much, knowing that the next quest was simple. Without the shadow summons or faes around, Rino had nothing much to do. He did not want to spend his rewards sleeping now that Noir was here, but the ck cat did not look like he was interested in anything else apart from snoozingfortably by the fire. How odd! Weren''t cats nocturnal hunters? "I''m bored," Rino whined to Noir while poking his tail yfully. Noir flicked his tail gently while his eyes were still closed. It was simply toofortable now to stay awake even if he had something important to tell Rino. It concerned the next phase of this massive kingdom-building project. "Go find a wife," he told the lich. Shocked, Rino sat up abruptly. "Why? Do you not like me anymore? Isn''t life with just me fine? Why do you want me to find a wife? Is it because I''m a terrible cook?" Noir was very tempted to say yes, but he held his tongue. Stephanie would kill him if Rino refused to assist with procreation. Even if he was undead, there were still ways around it. They simply had to increase the small world''s poption to farm more prayers through education. "That''s not it," Noir opened one eye and looked at the devastated lich who was on his hands and knees. Honestly, how could a future monarch behave in such a manner? If Rino''s subordinates saw this, they might skin him alive for bullying their monarch. "I''m just thinking of your future," the ck cat said. "It''s only natural for every king to have offspring." Rino deadpanned and looked at his hollow pelvic bones. "I''m undead. I live forever if I''m not killed. Besides, I don''t have the right equipment to spawn brats. I would also rather not introduce a human to this kingdom because of the promise I made with the faes." Even without Rino exining his situation, Ace understood. He saw how Rino bought over the faes with his promise to create a kingdom without humans. Even if he brought in a human, it would be impossible to make babies with her. "I''m not talking about a human wife. This forest is full of magical beasts and creatures. Surely, there will be one who could bear our children. Have you never wondered how magical creatures reproduce?" Rino shuddered at that. "No. I don''t think I want to know either. Building a family has never been my dream. I would rather remain alone forever, tinkering with new inventions and discovering new concepts." Troubled, Noir asked if there was no way Rino could reconsider. Sensing that there was more to just finding a wife, Rino asked if something was troubling Noir. It wasn''t like the cat to be so insistent on something. The ck cat did not answer immediately. If he failed to convince Rino or find an alternative solution, Stephanie would smite him. He wouldn''t die from that, but it would be very painful for a God. If mortals were topare it, that would be the act of willingly opening his legs and epting a kick in theher regions for a man. "Poption. This world requires a legend to sustain its existence. You were born to be a king to revive this dying world. It''s a prophecy that you were made to fulfil." Hearing that there was a deeper reason for his rebirth, Rino stared at Noir. Just who was this cat? Why did he know so many things that even Rino did not? "Are you sure you''re just an ordinary cat who knows magic?" Noir''s eyes twinkled. "What do you think? Now that you know the reason, what will you do?" Rino thought about it. No matter what, he wasn''t willing to start a family. He enjoyed his solitude too much to be concerned with domestic bliss. However, he could now understand why Noir brought the topic up. "If it was just to increase the world''s poption, I''m sure you can leave that to the humans." The ck cat sighed and rested its head on its paws. "Humans are too weak to survive in this harsh world. They are killed faster than they could reproduce." Even without exnation, Rino caught the gist of it. Everywhere that he went, humans were always waging wars and fighting. It was not surprising that they were close to extinction after falling out with each other and making too many enemies. "Weapons. Food. Knowledge. I can provide these for humans to help themselves. After that, the fate of this world rests entirely on them." Indeed, this was the conclusion Ace thought they would arrive at. It was why he suggested introducing an offering reward shop as part of the system''s updates for the lich. Chapter 66 - Spud Speedrun It was nice to send Noir off at the door as the ck cat insisted not to be followed. Rino took that opportunity to catch some sleep. The harvesting project could wait until tonight, and it was the diurnal subordinate''s turn to enjoy the hot springs. [8 hours of sleep sessfully withdrawn. You have withdrawn the maximum hours of sleep for the daily limit. Sleepmencing in five minutes. Your current avable sleep bnce is 0 hours. Sweet dreams.] With that, Rino felt the lull of something pleasant and drifted off to another dimension, unreachable by magic, Gods or potatoes. Sadly, that kind of peace did notst for long. Rino hated how quickly time passed when he was finally starting to enjoy it. There was still no dreaming during his forced sleep, but the feeling of doing nothing was fulfilling. It felt less like a time skip and more like a reward, refreshing his very cluttered mind. [You received a temporary mental buff [Sharper Focus] from the Gods for sleeping a daily rmended of 8 hours. Wisdom +10% for 4 hours.] That would probably exin why he felt so clear-headed all of a sudden. The Gods updated the system in his sleep, and now, there was a reward for using a reward. How suspicious! Up above, Ace grinned. Ark sulked. After discussion, the Gods took a vote to see if the new system update to encourage using the Offering Reward Shop should be implemented now while Rino was still asleep or after the reward shop was avable to the lich. There were three against one, and Ace let them do whatever they pleased. Stephanie was ''absolutely sure'' that Rino would be thankful for the free buff in the update, but Ace assured her otherwise. If anything, the lich would hate the idea of more future work from that freebie and be in a foul mood for the whole time. The other gods didn''t believe him and Ace remained silent. Sometimes, it was better to let others fall than prevent them from jumping over a ditch. Fools never learned until they were taught the harsh way by circumstances. For the magician, there was no mistaking what this new update meant. The Gods were attempting to be diplomatic and acting like generous bosses to cate him before working him hard like a horse. Nothing good came from receiving rewards that came with strings attached. Even the blind could see how this buff was rted to reward spending and earning. It was true that the sleep reward was something Rino desperately desired. However, this monopoly over the ability to sleep was like a noose around his neck. He did not want to be the donkey that forever chased the carrot or risk getting whipped. The Gods were really pushing his limits here. "I''ll see what else you want to make me do," Rino growled in warning, projecting his thoughts as loud and menacingly as he could to the ones constantly listening above. Ace trembled withughter when he heard the threat. Ark and his sister backpedalled from the reflecting pond, and Phil jumped, almost suffering a cardiac arrest. Thankfully, the daily quest was very simple, and Rino noted how most of his servants were already back and ready to be given their next orders. The lich checked his task again to ensure that he would be given the reward he wanted. Buff or no buff, Rino would never turn down the chance to im his sleep reward. If harvesting potatoes was what it took to unlock the offering reward shop to offer 500 potatoes to earn that miserable 8 hours of sleep, he would do it. Correction, he was going to make his ves do it for him on the double. Nobody was going to do anything else. Everybody would just farm potatoes until their hands fell off. Even if their hands fell off, Rino would regrow new ones and ask them to continue digging. Undead rights did not matter. The moment the sun dipped below the mountains, Rino summoned the full shadow army of a whooping 136 ves. He had no idea where some new shadow ves came from, but that wasn''t very important for now. "Fronzo, tonight, you are in charge of a very sacred mission." The farmhand stood stiffly, and Rino ced a hand on thed''s shoulder. "We''re going to speedrun the farming of spuds. Every single ground bean that is in that field must be dug up. Not a single one of them should be missed. We''re running against time here for it. There is no granary, so we will split the shadow army into two teams." Mutt stood proudly when he was called upon, and Rino assigned him to oversee the granary construction workers with the help of gnomes. The eight tiny bearded men hopped onto the sabre-tooth wolf''s back and left thepounds to get started. Thankfully, there were enough treated wood and bricks to start building the granary in the location that Rino exined to them previously. Fronzo ordered the farmers to pick up their tools. Some carried shovels and hoes, while those who did not have tools carried baskets and rakes. The farming team was split effectively into subdivisions, and Rino witnessed a new side to Fronzo he never knew the timid farm boy had in him. With the farmhand barking orders left and right, even the slow goblins picked up their ce and scurried on their little legs. Those who had a hoe or a spade started digging at the ground. Those who did not have tools grabbed baskets and started collecting the potatoes to transport them to a designated spot away from the farms in a neat pile that rapidly grew. Another group without baskets or tools started heaping potato nts off the field to pluck their berries before leaving the rest of the nt by the teleportation pads. These discarded nts would be taken to the kiln to be turned into ashes for future fertiliser uses. The fairies took care of bringing them to the kiln, and Rino stood by to monitor the harvesting process. The fertiliser recipe that he received from the Gods turned out to be more effective when charged with mana, so only the fairies could oversee that process for now. In the future, Rino wanted to think of a way to automate that fertiliser process too. Imagine if he couldbine that mana imbued water and mana fertiliser¡­ there would be no other mortal who could produce better potatoes than his empire. Chapter 67 - Offering Reward Shop Ping! Not even fifteen minutes into the harvesting program, Rino alreadypleted his daily quest. === Daily Quest #9 (Complete) Objective: Harvest Potatoes 0/500 Potatoes Time Limit: 2 Days. Tutorial here. Reward: Offering Reward Shop. im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === He smashed on the im reward option and never looked back on his decision. He wanted to see what sort of game these gods were ying. Sleep reward buff? It only made him more suspicious of their intentions. [Offering Reward Shop obtained. Please check your new tab.] Giving it a chance, Rino explored the new tab in his Daily Quest System. By now, the side tabs were collecting in numbers. He had a main quest tab, a side quest tab, a sleep reward wallet tab and now, this. From above, Ark looked away. Indeed, he might be a little inefficient and messy when nning the tabs and optimising the system. However, for something that they scraped together, functionality was the most important. If it worked, he wasn''t going to change it. The user interface and satisfaction was of least priority for now. They still had several updates to roll out that had not beenpletely thought out. The Offering Reward Tab was very ssic, and Rino was reminded of the daily mail he received about the trade prices for royal bonds sold to the citizens. Nobles often spend their time buying and selling these papers to turn their money into more money, but Rino never bought any. After all, everything goes back to the King in the form of taxes. He never desired money as long as he had enough to pay his expenses and fund his projects. Now, it was different. Unlike royal bonds, there was something that Rino wanted from this system. He could turn potatoes in for a God''s Favour Credit that acted like those bonds. While it could not be used elsewhere for any other purposes for anyone else, Rino liked that he could im 8 hours of sleep daily from this reward shop in case the gods gave him a dry spell of boring rewards that did not consist of sleep hours. In some way, Rino liked the idea of a repeatable quest with a cooldown time. In some ways, he hated that idea when they ced a limit on the rewards he could earn. Then again, these gods were controlling everything, including how many hours of sleep a day he could withdraw from his sleep wallet and how many hours he could sleep for in one day. They were definitely not siding for a monarchy or a diplomatic nation. It was closer towardsmunism and dictatorship in this kingdom. If the king could not even enjoy his freedom, how could his subjects? It wasn''t fair, and Rino never said he was a gracious loser. He would act as salty as he wanted because he could not sleep for a decade straight. Scrolling through the very pathetic Offering Reward Shop, Rino grimaced inwardly. There wasn''t much he was interested in because there wasn''t much to see either. Apart from the sleep reward, Rino was given a choice for iming some recipes that he currently did not need or want. There were some items as well, like those stupid potato seeds and magical crops that Rino did not want to grow because it was more work. However, there was something else that he liked a little more than the sleep reward. It was just so fucking expensive that Rino wanted to break a rib and use it to stab the system. "10 God''s Favour Credits for a day off?! How many potatoes would that take?!" Even if he counted 8 hours of sleep in a day, Rino only needed three of those to make a full day or not work if he was allowed to do so. This reward was a clear rip-off, and Rino wanted toin to the customer service manager about it. Except, nobody was working in that department. Everything was decided by the system that the detestable gods designed. He checked the currency exchange and deadpanned. Five hundred potatoes for one credit. Was this even fair? Potatoes did not grow unlimitedly, even if he worked his ves without a break. nts were not broken ribs. They did not have high-speed regeneration magic to aid them. Rino calmed down and decided to maximise the use of this useless wisdom perk. If he were 10% wiser than he was yesterday, calcting the number of potatoes he needed to grow would be easy. For now, potatoes were thepulsory crop to grow all year round. There would be no need to consider a crop rotation at this rate. Rino found no other use for the nts that the system offered for purchase. Potatoes were the right way to do things, and he would stick with what worked because this wasn''t an experiment he was willing to invest time in. As he calcted, Fronzo and the farming team were making quick progress. The pile of potatoes towered so high that they could no longer pile them any higher. It simply overflowed into a huge mess, so the farm manager ordered for a second potato mountain to be made. These tubers were massive, and they only changed the watering recipe. With the king''s special fertiliser recipe, could the new batch even be considered potatoes? Regr potatoes that Fronzo knew were only as big as two hands. They hardly grew anyrger. The potatoes they were digging now were sometimes as huge as a rock that took four goblins to carry it. Baskets were no longer sufficient after three broke. They needed an upgrade, and Fronzo wondered if the king had a better idea. At this rate of harvesting, they might not be able toplete everything before dawn. After all, everything in that potato mountain was merely the ones they could reach from the top and were rtively smaller. The true gems were hidden deeper than a foot into the soil and needed to be excavated. Chapter 68 - Ten Thousand Potatoes With the daily quest done ahead of time, Rino now had other things to do while potatoes were getting dug up. The first thing on his checklist was to turn in five hundred spuds and im his daily sleep before the timer reset. More sleep was better than less sleep, and sleep hours did not expire in his wallet. Walking to the fields, Rino was greeted by the sight of Fronzo looking like a very imposing farm manager. Thed deserved a raise. He should think of a good time to officially recognise Fronzo and bestow him a title like the dark lord he became. His subordinates were able to be stronger and undergo evolution in proportion to the strength of their bond with him. Fronzo definitely proved that he deserved this, and Rino would rely on him heavily in the future. That much, he knew for sure. After all, there was a kingdom to build, and Rino could not possibly live on the farm forever. It would not be too long before he looked for a new location and expanded on what he had. When that happened, Rino needed someone reliable to manage this territory on his behalf. Presently, there was no better candidate than Fronzo. Thed was humble, reliable, resourceful and loyal. It was still a mystery why he was buried in that grave, but Rino refused to dig up the past. Now that they had a new life, it was better to adapt to the lifestyle changes. It was just sad how some people couldn''t get used to the fact that they were no longer at the top of the food chain. Rino did not know a better hunter for the job, but the candidate he had was annoying to no end. You could fix a person''s fashion sense with clothes and status with power. But you would never be able to change their character, even after death. "My lord!" Fronzo hurried over when he spotted Rino approaching them. It has been two hours since they started and everyone was giving it their best. However, those potatoes buried too deeply needed more time to excavate. "At ease," the lich told Fronzo when the farmhand stumbled in his step and almost fell into a huge hole. If Rino still had facial muscles, he would be frowning now. Was there a giant mole in the fields? These holes were big enough to bury someone in. The neat trenches were also ruined, and thendscape looked more like the aftermath of a battlefield during a war. "What happened here?" he gestured to the mini craters in the soil. The undead teen looked slightly squirmish, and Rino sighed inwardly. Despite having so many redeeming qualities, Fronzo needed a little more courage and a tougher spine to speak up and stop being so afraid of everything. It would be incredibly hard for many of those from the lower social sses to step out of that servant mentality. Rino only learned about this when he was at the magician''s tower, and he had to relearn his etiquettes after bing a noble. Smacking Fronzo''s back to make him straighten, Rino used his other hand to hold that skull upwards. "Stand straight and look people in the eyes when talking." Embarrassed and feeling shy at the attention he was getting from the monarch in person, Fronzo did his best but still appeared stiff as he exined the ground situation. Rino''s eyes followed Fronzo''s fingers as his unofficial farm manager pointed to the shadows heaping at the side of the fields. "All those are potatoes?" he asked in disbelief. Mini-mountains were reaching up to his shoulder level and spanning more than his height. Two potato mountains already reached their peak, and the third was on its way. "What are these boulders?" he asked as they walked over for a closer look. He knew that the potatoes they harvested from that experimental nt were huge. However, to see so many of these unearthly tuber tumours was a whole new experience, and he had a whole field of it. Fronzo didn''t answer as Rino went around with a fireball in one hand to light the ce. The number of potatoes was astonishing, and Rino did not think it would be this many. Fronzo estimated that the yield of potatoes for an acre of farm would be almost ten thousand spuds, but he did not believe it until he saw just how many there were. "Careful!" the fairy cautioned the goblins carrying the newest spud. It was too big for the little goblins to carry alone, so four of them worked together with the tiny fairy acting as a navigator through the portholes where potatoes were previously dug up. Depending on perspective, this would be extremely amazing or disastrous. The fields did not look like they could ever grow anything again from how destroyed thendscape was. However, the harvest meant that Rino could expand his fields to at least five times the current size. "Fronzo, how many potatoes would it take to rent five acres?" The diligent farm manager paused. "My lord, I don''t know how to count. But I think potatoes from a fifth of that growing pile would be more than sufficient." Humming, Rino told him to set aside what they needed for renting. He would offer the rest to the system and hold onto his GF credits until there was something good to buy from it. Fronzo got to work immediately and wasn''t expecting to see the two mountains of potatoes disappear when he turned around. His jaw ckened, and Rino praised the shadow ves nonchntly, ignoring how gobsmacked Fronzo was feeling at the moment. "Keep up the good work, farm manager Fronzo." At those words, the teen felt a huge surge of mana injected into him, and Rino watched as those simple words of recognition triggered an evolution. Weren''t appointing ranks meant to be some sort of sacred and fancy ceremony? Fronzo grew taller as everyone nearby watched, and even Rino was impressed by how fast children grew up. Now a proper adult with all 206 bones, Fronzo quickly got onto one knee in the middle of the field to give his gratitude for the evolution. "Don''t disappoint me," the monarch of solitude left those final words and returned to his farmhouse. Ping! He quickly checked the new notification. With his side questpleted, eight hours of sleep in his wallet and ten GF credits, Rino could not wait to tackle the next task. Chapter 69 - Shitty Shopping Just like any other good person with a sense of foresight, Rino decided to redeem his limited daily reward and save the remaining nine GF credits he had for other things. He absolutely refused to buy that day off reward because it was such a rip-off. There were a few more things he would like to aplish at the edge of his kingdom before he moved to fulfil a moreplicated role. Despite implementing so many new things on this farm, Rino knew that this was far from his ideal kingdom. It had to be fully automated in all ways possible so that when he took the crown officially, the kingdom would run by itself. He did not really need a luxurious castle or fawning subjects. All he wanted was peace and quiet to do what he loved and be who he was without those false pretences that made him sick in his previous life. The Gods would also probably want him to resolve some of this world''s crisis, and Rino had yet to explore out of this area, too preupied with daily quests. Maybe he would save up enough GF for a splurge somewhere down the road. Even he needed holidays from time to time. As his ves worked hard, Rino decided to browse the shop in detail to look for what he wanted. There were still many hours before he could buy the next sleep reward. In the meantime, he could get a clue or two from the items in the Offering Reward Shop. One thing clear from this offering exchange was that the Gods needed potatoes. If Rino was not mistaken, somewhere in this world, there was a famine, and the Gods could not produce enough miracles to provide them with relief. However, he was curious if the Gods could transfer items from one part of the world to another at a lower cost than him. If they could do it without much consequence, why couldn''t they give him more items as rewards? Those potato seeds had to bemon enough and cheap enough for them to make it a redeemable reward in exchange for tools. Thinking about it, the lich found it more puzzling. His farming tools were very basic. Why did the Gods want them? Surely they could not be more advanced than the inventions of this world, right? He took a look at the reward shop screen before him, and the items in there made Rino very confused. Potatoes weremon crops. He could understand the need for it to stop a famine. However, why would the Gods offer him seeds for magical nts? He had no interest in growing magical nts when he could harvest mana on his own using the World Tree. His powers were constantly growing even when he did nothing. Take this item, for instance. === Item: Water Bell Flower Cost: 1 GF Qty: 100 seeds Effect: Produces mana charged water. Consumes carcasses once every three days to produce mana charged water. === Rino did not know if he should call this a rip off. He had to exchange five hundred potatoes for this faulty flower that could only produce a trickle of what he could do with the World Tree''s help once he had the mana web array created. There was no sense in sacrificing carcasses so carelessly for a few drops of mana charged water. Rino could put those carcasses to better use. He was always in need of more shadow ves. The Gods must be joking when they added this to the shopping catalogue. The other items were simr. For instance, why would Rino need an axe made from mana steel when they were doing very well with stone axes and magic? Ever since Noir taught him how to enchant, Rino experimented with it on the side. There was an enchantment that could make things sharper. Coatingmon items so that their durability is preserved, they never lose their edges. This tool with magical enchantment by Rino was more effective than a very expensive mana steel item that would wear and tear in time. Rino could make a cheap wooden spear with magic enchantments into a deadly one that could break mithril. The material did not matter when the magician casting the enchantment was this powerful. Some other interesting things the Gods thought Rino might appreciate only made the lich feel mocked. There was a special night vision eye mask selling for five GF credits, and Rino wondered why they thought he would buy something that he could manufacture. Besides, the shop did not have any other colour variation. The eye mask was orange, and if Rino did not know better by now, he would find a way to make it rain blood to heaven. The eye mask was stupid looking on top of that, and if it were up to Rino, the magician would have made that into an eyepatch instead. That way, he could see with one eye in the dark and one withplete rity for faster reaction time with nobody wiser about its ability. It also gave him a very badass vibe, adding to his mystery. There was no doubt that his coolness factor would level up if he wore such an essory, but Rino refused to spend five GF credits on something like that. It really was not worth two and a half thousand potatoes. The only thing Rino wanted was the sleep reward, but the Gods were really cruel to make that an item with limited purchase and cooldown. What did they think he could possibly do with the extra sleep hours imed with the daily sleep limit? Rino did not understand that. Couldn''t they give him that satisfaction of hoarding sleep hours? The second best thing in the shop was also the most expensive thing. Now that Rino spent one GF credit, he did not have enough to buy the day off token that would be immediately consumed upon failure toplete his daily quest within the stipted time. It wasn''t very much a day off. It was more urate to say that this was insurance against punishment, and Rino wished it never came to this. He deserved his holidays but not in this manner. It was simply too cruel to ask Rino to farm five thousand potatoes for one day off. That was as good as half the field he had now. Hence, Rino concluded he could apply for an eternity of day offs that if he wanted unlimited GF credits to ck forever, the true way to do this was by farming more potatoes. Maybe if he converted the entire territory into a huge potato field, he could apply for an eternity of day offs. The Gods should not protest if they allowed him to do something like that. Up above, Ark paled. He turned to Ace and asked if there should be an offering limit. Ace smirked. He figured something like this would happen and shrugged. "If you do, you''re not giving him any space to breathe. He is not too far off from destroying this world with his powers if he knows how to use them correctly. I doubt even Noir could change his mind if you pull the noose too tightly." Ark shuddered. Ever since Rino fused with the World Tree, they were very nervous. Should they make this dangerous lich angry, it might be the end of their Godhoods. Chapter 70 - Right People In The Right Positions With daybreak marking the end of a work shift, Rino unsummoned all his shadow ves to rest in his shadows while making his inspection rounds. He needed to walk around and clear his mind. As a leader, he had many worries that he could not share with anyone else. Well, if Noir was around, he would have tossed ideas with the mysterious cat, but the little ball of joy wasn''t present. Although he had never been a king before, Rino was once in charge of the magician''s tower. As the court magician, he had the strongest influence over the tower even though he was, in name, one of the council members. In reality, he was the one making huge future decisions for the tower. Rino recalled how his radical policies incurred the objections of many nobles even though he managed to convince the old mages. His teachers understood and respected his ideals, but it was difficult to get the self-centred nobles to agree that education should be made free to everyone so that they could spot and groom the talents the nation needed. Needless to say, Rino had a falling out with the nobles in court and ced the king in a spot because of it. That incident went down in history as the most dramatic social and trade war between nobles and magicians. The civilians under the duchy suffered tremendously, while the refugees the magicians took in became more than the tower''s resources could handle. Both sides lost, and the king had to step in, calling for a long meeting that dragged on for months as both sides refused to give in. The kingdom''s treasury funds were running low from the sanction of resources on both sides, and Rino was eventually forced to give in to the nobles as an order by the king topromise his ideals. Education was given free to everyone interested in it but only for basic literacy. They could not learn more for free even if they wanted to. In anger and sorrow, Rino secluded himself for two years and refused to attend to any court summons. He even told the king that he could remove the title he was bestowed upon Rino if he didn''t like it. Helpless, the king could only pay him personal visits to try and justify his actions for doing so. Rino''s world becamecklustre after that. Without talent, there was no hope. He might be talented, but talent without power was useless. He couldn''t change anything even if he was right. It was something that sparked the fire of hatred in him. Back then, Rino was just seventeen. Now, he wondered if he would walk the same path the king he served and hated walked as a monarch. There was nobody to tell him if he was right or wrong. The shadow ves and faes who formed a contract with him did not have free wills. Rino needed their skills but not necessarily them. Back then, his policy had ws. He was looking for talent, but that was not the only thing people in high positions needed. They needed nerves, individuality and charisma to bring everything together. As a king, he should have the most nerves, individuality, talent and charisma. However, Rino knew that he was too wed to lead anyone. Hence, he should find others to run the show on his behalf. The first cog in thisplex n was already secured. He had Fronzo managing his farms. The second cog was a work in progress. Rino wanted thatdy who managed the social welfare of everyone working here to be his provincial secretary. That way, he could leave this ce with peace of mind and visit when he was needed. He needed more time away from this ce to set up something bigger and better for the kingdom he wanted to build. Mutt was a very loyal hound. However, Rino did not know if the lone wolf was able to fit in any position. It was very obvious that Mutt was not a good team yer. He was strong and bowed to one master but he worked alone. Rino wasn''t someone keen on changing someone else''s personality. He simply put them to work, where he knew they performed best. Maybe he would keep Mutt by his side for a little longer. Speaking of talents, Rino knew a few inspiring individuals. The gnomes and brownies made amazing crafters. The wisp that evolved into a pixie had the drive for greater things. Rino sensed ambition in that little girl. However, she was still too young and weak. The fire sylph he appointed as one of the four elemental leaders gave him updates on her progress. Despite being a little clumsy, she was the most hardworking pixie at the kiln. Maybe Rino could leave her in charge of managing the kilns. He would suggest that to the fire sylph but not make the decision as he wanted to still respect the judgement of the elemental sylphs he appointed as representatives of the faes. Speaking of talent, Rino had a very troublesome character he refused to summon unless absolutely necessary. The arrogant archer who imed to be the best hunter might be as skilled as he imed to be. However, Rino disliked those with swollen heads and prides. He preferred the humble and willing to learn characters because they were malleable and amodating to changes. Those who think they know it all are difficult to correct because they resist change. Rino hated those who think that they have learned everything there is to learn and that everyone else''s thoughts were beneath their experience. He had a few of those teachers before, so Rino made sure to have them all reced and demoted in the magician''s tower when he became a court magician. Those were the people preventing progression. Learning was a journey without a destination. On the topic of individuals who were hungry to learn, Rio was pleasantly surprised that the goblins adapted very quickly and wanted to learn more. They were not afraid to put aside their past differences or grievances to work with other species. Perhaps it was because they were very simple-minded that they could sort through things that more intelligent people overthought. Either way, Rino saw potential in these goblins, who also happened to know the terrain here very well. He wondered how good they were at teamwork and couldn''t wait to test their abilities out. Chapter 71 - Hunting Games With the day fairies working in the field, Rino found that the harvesting work went much smoother as the fairies used earth magic to dig thoserger spuds from deep down. Granary construction was also progressing smoothly as the gnomes switched shifts. Rino saw how the general structure was alreadyid out. All the gnomes had to do now was gather rough bricks that the fairies were producing toy them. This was the morebour intensive part that everyone else could help out to make things go faster as the gnomes treated wood nks for the flooring. Rino checked with his elemental sylphs about the mana webying progress. They did not need much help but needed more time to finish covering the area thoroughly. The small area testing within the stone quarry worked, and now they had to replicate it everywhere. Rino thought he would rx a little more before the new daily quest came tonight, but his fun was cut short by a notification sound. Ping! Rino groaned silently. The side quest tab updated itself as a reminder that the Gods were watching. There was no other exnation. It had to be deliberate. === Side Quest #13 Objective: Harvest King Toad Paralysis Poison Reward: Paralysis Poison Cure Recipe === Ok, this was new. Rino was expecting them to go full into the farming phase of growing other crops or submitting other items but still remain within the agricultural phase. He had no idea what King Toads were or where to find them, so the side quest''s prompt was very useful. They were finally moving on to thest stage that Rino wanted to deal with. The undead does not need to eat, but the living has to. Rino had no idea if he would ever have living subjects in his kingdom, but one thing was for sure. If he found any of Mutt''s family alive, they wouldn''t be eating potatoes. Not to mention, leather could be useful for many other things. Presently, Rino had nothing much to do. It was day, and the sun was only bing hotter. The shadow ves could only work in the stone quarry, and Rino tried to recall what else he needed to prepare for the new onught of quests. Now that they were moving into the hunting phase, Rino had a feeling the Gods would task him with making weapons of some sort. Considering how primitive tools were considered a scarcity, much like potatoes, the lich would not be too surprised to know weapons were in demand. There was only one problem. Despite having so many shadow ves and fae folks under his leadership, Rino did not know many who werebat fit or capable. Hunting and fighting were very different skills, and Rino could not entrust those who knew how to wield a bow to fight against invaders. Teamwork was a very crucial part of forming a militia. The person in charge must have a decent level of leadership tomand the rest of the basic fighters to form groups and deflect waves after waves of attacks from the enemy. Skill mattered less in a group fight. Numbers mattered more. Many faes who contracted with the World Tree were still wisps. Even if they were given an artificial evolution, the true transformation would still take a long time to stabilise. Rino could not count on them to defend his vige should they be under attack. There was no need to worry for now because he was here. Once the defence array was set up after the sylphs finished creating the mana web, Rino had one less problem to worry about. His people would be safe with the power of the World Tree guarding them. What to do about King Toads? Rino could hunt them himself, but he wanted to use this as an opportunity to pick out a hunter who was good enough to lead the team so that they could hunt without Rino''s help. Honestly, there were not many candidates to choose from. He did not like the ones with skills, but the ones he preferred based on personalitycked the other qualities. Whatever. As a king, Rino had to make decisions. No decision was usually the worst decision. Given his circumstances, he could only choose the one that would cause the least damage. In future, if he found more capable candidates, he would slowly rece the less capable individuals with them. Summoning the wind sylph, Rino tasked her to find the location of King Toads in the vicinity. Rino wanted to make a trip to examine their abilities before he held what would be known as the hunting games. It took approximately an hour for the wind sylph to return with news, and Rino was amazed that these monsters were residents within his kingdom. He knew that there was a marsh, but the area was not really good for developing anything. Rino did not consider developing that troublesome area until the wind sylph informed him that there was an unusual concentration of mana in the area where animals were forcefully evolved into terrifying monsters. "I will check it out personally," Rino thanked the wind sylph and dismissed her to resume her other assignments. Hearing that there was a possibility of a magic tree in the swamp, Rino knew he had to acquire that as part of hiswork. A new magic tree meant that there will be more faes to recruit! With that, the lich pulled up his hood. The sun was strong, and he did not like the idea of burning up. As he passed by the fields, Rino was impressed by the earth fairies. Huge potatoes were piling up along the field''s perimeter, and the ground with many craters fromst night was slowly starting to resemble a normal, even surfaced field once more. He was right to assign some fairies to assist the goblin farmers. Farming really could not be done efficiently without the help of magic. At the same time, Rino saw a new creation that the gnomes made. The wheel still appeared clumsy, but Rino was familiar with that concept as he watched fairies heaprger potatoes onto the wooden tform with wheels attached. The wind fairies rolled them into the granary that was starting to put itself together. The gnomes wiped the sweat from their brows, pping cement while the pixies lifted bricks to stack them. Fire fairies sted the wet walls to dry them quicker and the granary that was only twice as tall as him yesterday was now five times as tall as the lich. The base wasn''t small at all as more potatoes were rolled in. Rino took a peek at their progress and was amazed by just how quickly things wereing together on this side. The fences around his farm were not done, but they would get to it soon enough. With so many helping hands, Rino was positive that he could expand his farm and have it run by itself even when he left. Now, it was time to visit the swamp. Rino borrowed some wind elemental magic from his World Tree and lifted himself off the ground. It has been a while since he took flight, and Rino groaned in agony when his hood came off from the rush of wind beneath it, setting his bald skull on purple soul mes. Chapter 72 - Unroyal Toad Travelling in an unmorous fashion, Rino finally saw the edges of the swamp that the wind sylph reported. It wasn''t too big to be a threat, but there was a strange atmosphere surrounding it. The air was thick with mana but not simr to the magic tree he found in the forest that he cut a branch to create the World Tree. This magic tree and marsnd had a rather sinister vibe. Rino did not understand this as he was also a creature born from darkness. Why did this darkness smell of festering flesh? It was morbid, and Rino did not like it. Sending his ves for a hunting game in this area might not be the best idea with such a threat lingering in this swamp. However, Rino was still curious to know the true potential of his undead army. If they were mortals, Rino might reconsider sending them on a suicide mission. However, they were undead. The candidates that he wanted to test could regenerate infinitely on Rino''s mana. Hence, they could make very good area scouts. The swamp wasn''t too far from Rino''s vige if they flew or teleported. However, it was several days on foot for mortals who also needed to take breaks and rest at regr intervals. This terrain would be difficult for mounts, and Rino did not know if marsh lizardmen lived here. They dominated the murky marshes in his previous world, and nobody could win against them in their territory. It would be nice to know if lizardmen also existed in this world. Rino would love to befriend them for benefits. If he had lizardmen as allies, there would be a very strong defence on this side of his kingdom. Those swamp dwellers were masters at shaman arts that were a branch away from regr magic. They were also expert healers with a knowledge greater than magicians about poisons and cures. They were trantors of nature''s will, and Rino had the opportunity to be taught a few divination spells by the lizardmen when he visited them as an emissary for the kingdom in his past life. Thump! Rino paused in the air and hovered above the dense forestation. He heard something even though the swamp was still rather far from his current position. Whatever that was, Rino knew it was huge. The shaking of several trees in the distance was a dead giveaway. He waited to observe the situation a little more. For whatever reason, the creature was approaching him, and Rino prepared to flee if they attacked. With so many leaves in the way, Rino could not tell what was going on. He only knew that he was here to observe King Toads and bring one back to start the hunting game tonight. RIBBIT! Rino quickly wrapped himself in shadows and disappeared into the shadow realm. There was a good show to follow, and he did not want to get front row seats, risking coteral damage in the crossfire between monsters. With two huge bulging eyes, a body full of blue and bumpy skin that reminded the lich of warts, the yellow-striped giant toad stuck its purple tongue out and pped its pursuer. It crawled and mowed down trees like a rampaging rhinosaur chimaera, but even its sturdily built body could not help it escape the inevitable fate to be someone else''s lunch. From the shadow realm, Rino observed everything in slow motion. For such a huge toad, he did not think there were other creatures capable of eating it. Toads have poisonous skin, and that tongue was coated in a deadly type of paralysis poison. However, when he saw who was chasing the king toad, Rino thought it looked very unroyal. In a desperate attempt to put more distance between them, the king toadunched itself into the air, bursting through the trees and towards the sky. The huge snake monster dodged that tongue-whip and coiled itself tounch into the air after its hunt. Despite having such a huge body that could only wriggle on its belly, the huge serpent managed to reach a decent height with only the tip of its tail connected to the ground. The shadow overcasting the king toad was the final warning it had before the snakeunched itself at the toad with fangs bared and jaws wide open. RIBBIT! Thatst cry of rm echoed as they crashed back down into the forest. Rino quickly moved to catch up with the action. Leaves and dust covering most of his vision cleared a little, and the lich saw only the two hind legs kicking weakly as the huge serpent tried to swallow more of that king toad. Well, it was not Rino''s position to interfere with how mother nature wanted to work. If he saved this toad, it would only be toad kebab when he returned to the vige. A prolonged existence made no difference for those predestined to die. This king toad was lucky. If it were up to Rino, he would take his time experimenting on the effects of that paralysis poison. Strangely, the serpent was not affected by it. Instead, it flicked its tongue as if licking its lips after the toad was swallowed whole. With arge bulge in its belly, the serpent slitheredzily away, uncaring for the trail of destruction they caused in this part of the forest. Rino rejoiced. At least these king toads were not found only in the marsh. The giant serpent might be terrifying, but Rino had faith his hunting squad leader candidates were more than capable of hunting these ugly king toads and avoiding the giant serpent. There might be many more other monsters in this area, but Rino would not know. For now, he was happy that his subordinates did not need to challenge the final boss on their first hunting expedition. It would be counter-effective to terrorise them before the games began. For now, Rino looked around the area in the shadow realm. Surely, there would be more than one king toad around. That could not have been the only king toad in the area, right? Rino would be severely disappointed if the serpent ate the only king toad in this forest. He did not like getting down and messy, but he would gut that snake if it meant digging the carcass of that king toad if he did not find any. Chapter 73 - Toad Specimen Using the shadow realm to scout, Rino discovered many toad species and variants in this forest. Perhaps it was because he was near the marsh, but the forest was a very popr spot for all kinds of toads. Some toads hid under rocks, and others lived on trees. However, the king toads did neither. They simply rest under the shade of trees in the open. Rino thought it would be easy to spot them with their blue and yellow-striped skin, but when they had their eyes closed, the lich missed them very easily. He hated to admit it, but these toads were skilful masters of disguise. When prey came close, they would strike with their purple tongue and wait for the poison to take effect before crawling over to devour them. RIno hid behind a tall bush to watch the king toads in their natural habitat. His initial guess about them was right. They were too big to have any threats. Most other creatures avoided them, and they loved to camouge near ponds or rivers where many animals woulde to drink. The king toad that got devoured must have been unlucky to run into a serpent monster. Rino had to choose a king toad to kill as the sun was going down. As this was going to be Rino''s first king toad, he wanted to choose the biggest to have more materials to work with. Running experiments required a lot of resources, and Rino did not have that luxury at the moment. Of the five king toads Rino found throughout the day, he knew just the unlucky toad to choose. It was bigger than the rest and unlike the other toads hiding behind rocks, and under trees, this toad was half-submerged in the water. Teleporting back to the pond where he found that fat toad, Rino approached it carefully. He did not want to damage this specimen too badly, and the easiest way to preserve the corpse entirely was to either suffocate or drown it. Rino chose thetter as suffocating the toad would require borrowing magic from the World Tree again. The process was a little moreplicated, so Rino opted for the path of least resistance. The chosen toad specimen struggled valiantly for nearly twenty minutes before it finally croaked. Rino thanked the system for giving him the shadow sack skill. Without it, the lich had no way of transporting this big boy back. The evening was approaching, and Rino decided to appreciate the rare view of the setting sun from high above, choosing to fly back with his haul. As Rino flew, he checked the countdown timer for the daily quest to be updated. The nocturnal workers should be waking up now, and Rino wondered who he should entrust dismantling this huge toad''s corpse. The fairies were not immune to poison like the undead. He would call for them to assist otherwise. However, Rino did not know any suitable candidate who was skilled with the knife among his shadow army. In fact, the lich had no experience with the knife. He wondered if any of those viger skeletons he summoned and enved were butchers before their deaths. Speaking of which, maybe the arrogant hunter had some experience. After all, hunting and corpse dismantling had toe as a set. Rino did not know any hunters who only killed animals but not cut the useful parts out for processing. Back in his previous world. Rino often apanied the king''s sons on hunting trips as an emergency healer. There were archers and guards on the royal hunting ground who would protect the princes if a wild animal decided to go berserk. The professional hunters were usually somewhere within the royal hunting grounds chasing prey in the princes'' direction to make the game more fun and reduce the sport''s difficulty. However, Rino knew that whenever the princes shot a pheasant or a hare, these professional hunters would take care of the dead animal, removing arrows, fur, feathers and slicing open their bodies on the spot to preserve the freshness of the catch. For royalty, hunting was merely a sport. Formoners, hunting was for survival. He remembered asking these hunters why they had to drain the blood and dismantle the animal once they were killed quickly. It was gory and not a pretty sight. Mostdies would faint seeing such brutality. The hunters merely replied that it was easiest to work with a warm carcass than a cold one. Working with a cold corpse would mean that it had a higher chance of getting infected or spoiling. Their efforts would be a waste, and parts would not be as good as they could have been. Rigour Mortis was also a pain to deal with, so the best method of not wasting a hunt was to dismantle the corpse at once. Thankfully, the shadow sack existed in a different dimension. Time flows differently there, and it does not have things like bacteria. Rino didn''t know if air existed in that realm, but he was willing to bet that it didn''t. It was dark when Rino returned, and already, the granary was looking seventy percentplete on its walls. The gnomes were busy designing the roof structures and waved to their monarch when they saw him. The fields looked like they were ready for a new batch to be nted, but Rino did not know what Fronzo had in mind. Hence, he swooped down to hold a brief meeting to find out more. Fronzo bowed humbly and kept his back straight, remembering what Rino told him. He looked at the monarch stiffly and tried to be formal but failed clumsily, much to the lich''s amusement. "At ease," he told the capable farm manager, who was only half a head shorter than him now. "What are your ns after the potatoes are fully harvested?" Fronzo nodded and looked over to the hardworking goblins. With the help of fairies during the day, all they had to do was recondition the soil for a new batch of potatoes to be nted while expanding new farming plots. "My lord, we are currently reconditioning the soil with mulch after harvesting while waiting for the potatoes to sprout eyes for renting. At the same time, I will be arranging for new farming plots to be marked out for weeding. The night shift will handle the weeding and ploughing work, while the day shift handles the sowing and watering. I understand that my lord has an urgent need for spuds, so we will keep the harvesting rate constant and space the nting of each acre one week apart." Satisfied that he chose apetent farm manager, Rino patted the skeleton on his shoulder and told thed to keep up the good work. "Don''t forget to let thedy know the numbers. When the granary is built, you need to be involved with the inventory checks. Do you have enough tools?" Fronzo blushed and nodded. They had enough tools made, but some of them were brand new and needed Rino''s help to enchant them. "Bring them to the farmhouse. I will do themter. Also, find some time to build fences around the farms so that the crops will not be trampled on carelessly." "Yes, my lord!" Satisfied, Rino left towards the forest. A toad was waiting to be dissected. Chapter 74 - King Toad Poison As a magician educated in the tower, Rino knew his basic herbs and poisons. However, he did not im to be an expert. Moreover, this was poison in a different world. Apart from knowing that it had a paralysis effect, Rino did not know how potent it was. Naturally, he would find a few test subjects to experiment on. In a dark and secluded spot in the forest, Rino summoned the vigers from his shadow and asked for hunting volunteers. As expected, there were no more than five volunteers, and Rino sighed. Even if he had the experts, there were no weapons for them to use. How awful. "Do you know how to use knives?" he asked the arrogant archer. "I want you to hunt me living creatures for an experiment." The archer was silent. Hunters killed. They did not capture live prey. "I''m sorry, my liege. It''s not within my expertise to capture live prey. I only know some knife basics for dismantling corpses, but they are not useful in actualbat. Would you like to ask the guards or warriors instead?" Rino thought about it and agreed. He might not have good weapons for the warriors, but surely, they know how to find something useful in this forest. The warriors he had in mind were different from the ones the archer spoke about, and the skeleton gaped when Rino summoned the goblins. "You," he singled out the goblin with the most unusual garment. Every other goblin wore simple tattered cloth clothing. Rino easily differentiated their upations from how they dressed, and only the goblin chief had a headgear made from bones. The other goblin that appeared slightly more special was their shaman, who wore headgear made from bird feathers. The goblin chief got on one knee, and his n followed. "Bring those who can fight and hunt to capture me some live animals. I want to experiment on them." The goblin chief bowed and turned around, raising his arm to hype hisrades and marched into the thick undergrowth. The archer remained silent, but Rino could feel that sick gleeing from his bond with this arrogant prick. For petty revenge, Rino withdrew the king toad from his inventory and tossed the archer a knife. "The rest of you, go back to grab some vats. We will be collecting King Toad poison for the test." The unfortunate archer looked at the enchanted knife in his hand, tossed by Rino and wanted to cry. What could a bone knife possibly do against this monster? The King Toad that Rino dumped onto the ground was at least as wide as five men and taller than him. It weighed at least a ton and looked foul. "What are you waiting for?" Rino scowled. "An invitation to start dismantling?" Hurriedly, the archer apologised and got to work, stabbing the bone dagger into that thick bumpy blue and yellow-striped skin. The knife went in about an inch deep but stopped there, going no further. After withdrawing the knife, the archermented inwardly. He wasn''t able to cut it deep enough at the throat to drain the toad. How many more stabs would he need before he pierced through the skin? Also, that was just one small stab. He had to cut open this fat toad, and suddenly, the night felt very long. Rino enjoyed the taste of this braggart''s misery and watched as the boastful skeleton got to work. He had to admit, there were better knives and enchantments that he could use to make the dismantling process easier. However, this fool had to learn his position, and Rino wanted to show him who the master was. If a dog did not learn how to sit, it was the owner''s fault for not educating it right. Even if Rino had to be a little rough, this was his dog to train. There was nowherefortable to sit in this forest, so Rino summoned Mutt, who had grown a lot since thest time Rino saw him. Just as a flex, he told Mutt to kneel so that he could climb on the sabre tooth wolf in front of the frightened archer. Mutt read Rino''s mind and growled menacingly at the terrified skeleton, instilling fear as Rino casually treated this monster as his mount. "Hurry up, I don''t have all night." Rino''s words reminded the archer of his task, and he worked twice as efficiently as before with Mutt leaning in close and skulking behind him. Rino made himselffortable on top of the shadow wolf. Mutt was a good dog even though the lich preferred cats more. There was a difference between patting Mutt and patting Noir. The other vigers arrived quickly with vats and some spare tools that they could help with. Even though the archer had an obnoxious personality, he had quite a group of loyal followers who cheered him up and helped him with their shabby y knives without enchantments. The teamwork here did not pale inparison to the goblin chief. Suddenly, Rino felt as if there might be a dark horse in the hunting games he intended to hold. With two candidates present and one uncertainpetitor in the forest looking for living creatures to capture, Rino wondered who would emerge victorious and deserving of the Hunting Squad''s Commander position. Would it be Mutt or this nameless archer with his jolly gang? The experienced hunters worked deftly, slicing open skin and removing innards while draining the blood that they collected in vats. Rino wondered why they did it but decided to lend them a hand by fetching more vats. The goblins returned with their captures just as the hunters were ready to remove the King Toad''s innards. Rino thought it would be a good time to test the effects of the paralysis poison and made the goblins help out. In the smaller y pots he brought along, Rino added water conjured from magic with different quantities. "Dilute the smaller cuts of the parotoid nds in the pots and spray it on the captured animals starting from the weakest dilution." The goblins and hunters got to work quickly, cutting small pieces of the toad''s poison nd and watched as the first captured squirrel got sprayed with the poison. Rino observed how long it took for the squirrel to stop struggling and stiffen. The paralysis poison was not very fast-acting, ording to observations earlier in the afternoon. The King Toad would wait for a minute or so before its prey, usually the size of an adult deer, sumbed to it before gobbling up. The petrified squirrel did not lose consciousness despite the poison it inhaled, and Rino could see the thumping of its heart quickly as he approached. The amount of poisonous nd Rino mixed in one pot of water for this first experiment was barely the surface area of a fingernail, but already, it was so potent for small creatures. Rino mentally recorded the observation. "Try the next," he told the goblins. "Keep an eye on this one. Let me know when the poison wears off." They had the whole night to learn about the King Toad''s poison and how much was too much before it started killing. Chapter 75 - Toad Kebab In the middle of his experiments, Rino heard a familiar sound from the system. Ping! He ignored it for now. There was a more important task at hand. Ping! A second notification made Rino reconsider his decision. "You," he pointed at the goblin shaman. "Take over." With that, Rino excused himself to check the updates. Naturally, the first thing Rino did was to im the reward for his side quest swiftlypleted. === Side Quest #13 Objective: Harvest King Toad Paralysis Poison Reward: Paralysis Poison Cure Recipe im your reward here. === Rino quickly browsed through the cure recipe to see if he had the ingredients needed if anyone became poisoned by the toads. The recipe was so strange, and Rino wondered if it truly worked. "Only one way to find out," he told himself and stared at the paralysed squirrels. Thankfully, he knew where most of the ingredients were within the forest. Teleporting all over the ce, Rino gathered the required ingredients, including potato berries. Without a mortar and pestle, Rino could only use some rocks to smash it against the t surface of some other rock to create a paste that he tossed into a pot and boiled it using magic until the water turned green. Then, he looked at the paralysed squirrels and gently pried their mouths open. Strangely, the paralysis poison did not make them stiff. It was closer to a muscle rxant, and Rino force-fed the ''cure'' potion to the poisoned squirrels who were still alive to test the effectiveness. It took almost two hours for the cure to work, but Rino was satisfied with the results. While he waited for the results, Rino took a look at his updated daily quest. === Daily Quest #10 Objective: Hunt King Toads 0/15 King Toads Time Limit: 5 Days. Tutorial here. Reward: Basic Culinary Skill im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === This was it! Rino did not care about the time limit. There was plenty of time to turn the quest in. However, this skill was something better than earning sleep hours, in his opinion. Ever since the mashed potato fiasco, Rino had a phobia of cooking anything because he had no idea what he should be doing. Making food was more difficult than casting a deca-tier spell without chanting. This was his most favourite daily quest to date. Rino could not express how happy he was to get this survival skill that he failed to learn in his previous life. Despite his superior intelligence, Rino tried several times in the past to make food for himself, but there was too much destruction that he decided it was better to leave this to someone more capable. After all, in this world, there were things people were good at and bad at. Rino''s talent was simply not meant for the kitchen, and he epted it. He also used to believe that God made everyone fair, even if people were often treated unfairly in life. Thinking of ways to kill more than one bird with a single shot for the newest daily quest, Rino nned the itinerary of his hunting game. At the same time, he wondered if this basic culinary skill will let him make mouth-watering toad kebabs. Noir was a cat, and cats love chicken. Some people imed that frogs tasted like chicken. Hence, Rino would test it out on someone who still had a sense of taste to give him feedback on the toad kebab before serving it to Noir. Up above, Ace shivered. He did not want any part of that huge ugly frog in his mouth! It looked slimy, deadly and disgusting. Besides, he doubted anything living would taste good. Potatoes tasted like mud, so going by this logic, toad kebabs should taste like slime and blood. That was a terriblebination to imagine. Rino remained blissfully unaware of Ace''s preferences and made it his goal to turn the toads he received from the hunting game into fine cuisine. Nobles back in the old world often enjoyed weird food. From raw fish to snail eggs, those overly wealthy, bored people tried them all. Heck, Rino even saw some people paying for edible gold. If it were up to him, Rino would have saved those gold kes from their stomachs and used them for his transmutation experiments. Behind him, Rino could hear the archer groan as they lifted the heavy toad''s stomach. Someone made a slip somewhere, and the guts came spilling, giving off an unbearable stench. Thankfully, Rino was dead, and it barely affected him. On the other hand, Mutt whined and begged to hide in Rino''s shadows for a while. Even dead, the sabre tooth wolf had an incredible sense of smell that never dulled. Pitying his hound, Rino allowed Mutt to disappear, but he returned swiftly to remedy the situation. These guts and innards were too gross. Rino used magic to cut everything out and bury them using earth magic. "There," he told them and looked at the toad skin. While it was not the smoothest and pleasing material to touch, Rino did not think there were any other monsters he had at his disposal for making rugs. Too bad he did not kill the serpent monster he saw earlier in the day. That skin would have covered miles of floor space. Rino might even have enough leftovers to make clothing and bags. "Remove and clean the toad skin. I want to make leather out of it at ater date when we have the ability. Do not damage it." Nodding obediently, the hunters did their best of separating the flesh and bones from the skin now that the awful innards were removed. They cleaned and washed the skin using water that Rino conjured as the lich supervised their progress. If it took this long to process one kin toad, Rino could not estimate how long it would take to dismantle all fifteen king toads. The night was almost over, and the hunters were still trying to cut the meat from the bone. At least the skin was sessfully separated in one piece, even if it was still very slimy. Rino had no idea if it was still coated with poison, but he would try to soak when they returned to the farmhouse. If that doesn''t work, Rino has to make his own soap. Thankfully, he knew just how to do it, but that would mean saving those toad fats. Chapter 76 - Toad Fat Soap As the morning approached, Rino decided to get down and dirty to speed the dismantling process up. He did not know much about animal anatomy so he asked the hunters for directions and assisted in cutting where they needed to separate the bones from the flesh. It was quite a pity that Rino could not summon this king toad as a living corpse because of how mutted it was. However, he believed that such a monster would add no value to his buddingmunity, so it was no loss. The dismantled king toad flesh, fats, bones and skin were stored in Rino''s shadow sack. He knew that it would notst for too long even in the shadow realm, so he quickly returned to his farmhouse just before dawn broke. In the farmhouse, Rino summoned all the vige womenfolk he could and asked if they knew how to make soap. Sure enough, the womenfolk knew what to do, and Rino left them the heap of toad fats, wood ash and charcoal he collected from the kiln. The back of his farmhouse was shady, and they were not affected by the sunlight. By now, Rino noticed how more than sixty percent of his shadow army were wearing clothes. The wisps and fairies worked hard to weave enough for his army, and Rino felt bad how he did not have enough time to enchant those clothes for them. It provided the bare protection from deadly sun rays, but it was still very draining for the undead to be moving about under sunlight. Therge toad skin was dumped into a spare section of the reservoir that Rino reserved for dying and set up a barrier so that the clean water from the opposite side would not be contaminated by whatever the toad skin had. "I need a copious amount of soap to clean this skin. The skin is fragile so, please treat it with care during the wash," he told thedies. Of thedies present, he saw the talent manager and singled her out. "You,e with me." Heeding hismand, thedy followed Rino into his farmhouse while the otherdies got to making soap as Rino filled the dye tub with water to soak the newly dismantled toad skin. Once inside, Rino cast a sound barrier and turned to thedy. "From today onwards, your name will be Erika. Your job is to ensure the smooth running of this provincial production vige and periodically report the situation to me. Today, we begin your education to be my secretary." The moment Rino gave her a name, he felt a strong surge in mana within his farmhouse. Erika was taking on a lot more mana from him to evolvepared to Mutt and Fronzo. Was this due to her status and position as the overall area manager? Rino did not know how the hierarchy within his shadow army worked, but he was deeply impressed by just how much Erika was continuing to demand mana from him. Even if it hardly ced a dent in his mana reserves, it was still a considerable amount of mana for a regr magician. The skeleton started growing skin, and Rino saw his first human-like undead. Her skin might be a little on the greyish side, but that was minorpared to the number of details he was looking at, from her nails to her hair. She could pass off as a human with this appearance if she touched up her skin colour to look less pallid. Erika was a youngdy in her twenties with copper hair. If she was still alive, she would have freckles on her sin with her light hazel eyes pulling men in left and right. However, as an undead, those eyes were dull and ck as night. Her youthful skin was dry and grey despite her pristine white teeth and solid nails. Rino took a look at this new evolution and tried to determine what kind of monster he created. Skeletons were amon kind of undead. Surely this was not a zombie because Erika moved with grace and dexterity, almost like the living. "Do you feel thirst or hunger?" Rino asked, and Erika blinked. "I feel hunger, my lord. There is an insatiable hunger and craving for raw meat." Ah, so that was what she became after evolution. Erika wasn''t that powerful as an undead despite her upgraded appearance. He initially thought she became a vampire, but as it turned out, she was only a level above zombies. She was now a ghoul, and while they had more intelligence than those mindless minions, Erika needed to eat from time to time to prevent physical deterioration. "Will toad meat work for you?" he asked and withdrew some from his shadow sack. Thankfully, they were already cut into manageable sizes by the hunters. Seized by hunger, Erika pounced onto the raw flesh and ate messily, dirtying her dress and face. Now, Rino could see clearly why ghouls were considered a threat that required a group of adventurers to kill in his previous world. Despite looking so demure, Erika''s nails were as strong as metal. She tore at the meat and ate without reservations as if possessed by instinct to inhale flesh. The more she ate, the better her skinplexion became. By the time she finished the messy meal, Rino didn''t think that she looked like an undead. "Go clean yourself at the sink before we begin. Wash those clothes as well." Erika did not fuss and undressed on the spot, not caring if Rino looked at her naked body. The undead had no sense of modesty, and thankfully, Rino was not interested in the pleasures of the flesh. Once Erika was clean again, and the clothes were washed, Rino dried them using magic so she could wear them. Then, the lessons began. "Tell me what you know about ounting and numbers. Are you literate?" Erika nodded slowly and recited what she knew as a vige chief''s daughter. Rino soon found out that there were no actual writtennguages in this world, and each vige created symbols of their own. The concept of counting also came from looking at physical objects. Every unit of measurement was different, and the vigers often used the length of someone''s forearm to measure things. Hearing this, Rino groaned silently. There was no way he could assign her any major roles without teaching her everything from the start. Thankfully, Rino had nomunication ornguage barriers in this world with his shadow army. Things were understood instinctively with the bond they shared, and for that, Rino was grateful. "Let''s start with the basics, shall we?" Rino went to Noir''s litter box that he cleaned dutifully daily, not that the cat used it. He used his finger to write the first character and told Erika to repeat after him. From here, Rino found himself spending many hours teaching Erika the fundamentals of reading and counting. Chapter 77 - Hunting Game Evening came quickly, and Rino would not have known if it wasn''t for the soap makingdies knocking at the door to inform him that they finished making the soap and washing the slime off the frog skin that they managed to hang for drying. "We will stop here for today," he told Erika. "Please revise what I taught and practice by yourself until I see you the next time to test you on what you learned." The female ghoul bowed and thanked Rino before returning to his shadows. Rino had to say, her learning speed was impressive. He managed to teach her all the alphabets, how to read them and write. Then, he taught her how to count to a hundred and exined how written numbers are formed. Even though Erika did not understand what thousands and millions were, she wrote them out when asked in chronology sequence. Night was finally here, and Rino gathered everyone in the fields. Too much work and no y made Rino a dull boy. If the Gods wanted him to work, they should know better than to put him on a tight deadline. Rino needed time to have fun and enjoy what he was doing because he wasn''t getting paid enough. Who was he kidding? Even if he was paid all the gold in this world, he would still not work for something he did not believe in. As a supreme leader, Rino must not only produce results. He had to learn how to manage his people, resources and n for the future. If the gods wanted him to hunt fifteen King Toads, there were several ways to do it. It wasn''t difficult to hunt fifteen of them over five days even though one day was gone. These toads weren''t very smart, and the sylphs could easily take care of them. However, Rino was a person who did not believe in wasting opportunities. He still had four days but the next three days were a vacation for him. He wasn''t going to do any work during the next three days after the hunt was over tonight. Hence, the best decision was to createpetition to inspire his people and produce the best results. "Greetings, my citizens. As the kingdom is still in its developmental stages, there are plenty of things that will require your utmost support. I will be entrusting certain jobs to outstanding individuals like I have entrusted farming to Fronzo so that I can work on more important things. Tonight, I will exin the rules for the hunting game to select an outstanding individual to act as my Hunting Squad''s Commander." Hearing how there would be a newmander elected, everyone cheered, and Rino winced at the pain that erupted in his head. He was hearing everyone''s mentalmunication through his bond even if there was only silence, in reality, apanied by the singing crickets of the forest. The scene of over a hundred undead and a few hundred faes gathering in a potato field struck the gods above as odd. Although Rino was a king, he did not feel like one. Even if he wore a crown, he did not act like one. This magician was through and through a schr andmoner at heart. It wasn''t dislikeable, but Ark wondered if Rino would run into problems as his kingdom expanded. "It was nice of you to give him five days," Ace mused, and Ark looked away. He did some reflecting after thest system update incident. Ace was right about Rino, and the kingdom was not going anywhere. Pulling the noose too tightly might backfire on them. The lich already found ways to destroy one world. It wasn''t impossible to do it again, ever since he became more powerful. Ark thought that it would be better to work with Rino and get on his good side for once instead of trying to force him to work against his will. The magician might bezy, but he had the incredible foresight to know what had to be done after receiving some hints about what the Gods required from him. The tutorials were merely informational guides for Rino if he needed them. His innovation and ability to think ahead made Phil''s task of guiding him very simple. In fact, if they were honest, Rino''s desire to maximise efficiency in every production cycle worked in their favour. "I just thought that he deserved those five days," Ark admitted. "The level of advancement he made in less than a month in this new world is astounding!" Feeling slightly proud, Ace excused himself to listen to the prayers. Ever since Rino offered the first batch of potatoes, Phil and Ace were busy delivering them in various ways to the starving vigers from all over. It wouldn''t be long before the potatoes became a staple for this world, thanks to Rino. Down in the field, Rino exined how he needed volunteers to form hunting groups. They could work together or individually, but Rino only gave them a deadline until dawn to return with their hauls. They could use any method they liked, but Rino preferred the corpse to be intact because they are celebrating the hunting game with toad kebabs, among other things they could make. The women volunteered to work in the makeshift outdoor kitchen near the kiln that the sylphs would help to build. The goblins and fairies formed a team quickly under the goblin chief''s leadership, much to Rino''s surprise. Fronzo and the farmers offered to forage for other ingredients that the women needed. Rino watched the arrogant archer and his loyalckeys form a team quickly and refuse anyone else. Mutt bowed and told his master that he would go alone to bring back as many as he could. "I require fifteen King Toad sacrifices in this hunting game. Any other smaller hunts are bonuses for the feast that will take ce in the stone quarry. We will party till noon, and for the next three days, you can take a day off." Cheers erupted in Rino''s mind again, and the lich had to distance himself for a while to regain his sanity. His people were too lively. "One more thing. Erika is my secretary." The ghoul stood up from the crowd and walked beside her master to bow. "She is in charge of reporting everything to me and will assist in the judging for thispetition. You have fifteen minutes to get what you need for the hunt. For everyone else who is not participating in the hunt, line up and get your item enchants from me." Nobody objected to it, and Rino took it as a good sign. The groups quickly organised themselves, and Rino found himself doing group clothing enchantment spells for the warriors ready to depart. He might be spoiling them a little with overpowered enchantments such as waterproof, projectile deflection and self-cleaning. However, he really did not want them to start getting in too much trouble and depleting his mana pool by reviving and regenerating infinitely. It was better to prevent than to revive. "Let it rip!" Rino announced, and the hunters roared with adrenaline before Rino mass teleported them to the edge of the swamp. Chapter 78 - Hunting Toads (1) As all the involved parties knew how a king toad looked, Rino did not need to give them any other exnation. "I will set up a temporary teleportation pad here. When you find something, you can return to the vige with your kill. All the best, and try not to get hurt." The hunters took off in different directions, and Rino started work. He cleared the trees to create space for a teleportation pad bigger than the others he made. It was temporary for now, but honestly, it might be permanent if nothing was interesting enough in the swamps to make him want to relocate this. Mutt was the first to take off. He dodged trees and hid in shadows, smelling the prey out. There were many creatures in this forest, but none of them was king toads. He was determined to bring his king all fifteen toads by the end of the night. Thankfully, it was a full moon, and Mutt was brimming with energy. He would not lose to humans or goblins! The archer and his team spread out andbed the forest systematically. Theymunicated using calls and strange bird whistles and quickly found the first king toad. From here, Rino left them to hash out a battle strategy. The giant toad might be sleeping now, but these hunters had first-hand experience to know that it would not be easily killed even if they had the advantage of surprise. The skin was simply too tough to cut through, and none of them had proper weapons. Unlike Mutt of the archers, the goblin chief and his small army made plodding progress. Rino watched how the chief and shaman stood in the middle of the formation, giving goblins instructions to travel in groups of two or three to scout the area. Each hunting team had a different method of locating their prey, and Rino was curious if it was possible to hunt king toads to an extinction. Was hunting these toads and culling their numbers something the gods wanted? Or was this yet another test of skills? Whichever the case, Rino thought it might be better to exercise moderation. Overhunting anything will lead to an ecosystem imbnce, and Rino wanted no part of that. He told the pixies to continue keeping a close eye on all three hunting groups while he finished thendscaping he had to do. It did not take long for Mutt to find a king toad and the goblins found one with the help of fairies. All three groups finally made contact with their first king toad. The show had finally started, and Rino checked the time. Everyone found their first king toad in less than forty minutes. This was good. Mutt had no ns. When he saw a king toad, he circled it twice from a distance to choose the best vantage point before jumping down on the giant amphibian, snapping its teeth and wrestling with the big oaf. The pixie watching Mutt''s battle with the king toad reported that they were both equally matched for now. The king toad might not be very fast, but it had a very strong defence against Mutt, who was still smaller than it. The sabre tooth wolf growled and dodged that purple tongue. For such a stupid looking creature, it was quite scheming. Mutt knew better than to underestimate the poisonous monster. On the other hand, the experienced human hunters used a different approach. They knew that they were not strong. Hence, teamwork was of great importance. The pixie reported that these men knew what they were doing even without activemunication, as if they did this many times before. Rino could finally understand why the arrogant fool had such loyal followers despite his major personality ws. He was a man who kept his word and proved his abilities in battle. The huge king toad was snoozing soundly as the small group of hunters circled it with their makeshift weapons. Rino was impressed by their rough crafting of wooden spears, staff, and stone slingshots fashioned from their clothes. Even though the archer had no bow, he still appeared confident with the stone slingshot and waited for the right moment to surprise the king toad with an attack. Their strategy was simple. They would provoke the toad into a chase and chip away at its tough defence. That skin was too difficult to sh, so the only way they could get to it was to continuously stab at the same spot near its heart to kill it once the spears pierce through the skin, hopefully. Rino was impressed with their strategy when the pixie reported. The chase was less noisy than the all-out battle on Mutt''s side that was still not concluded. He was almost done with setting up the teleportation pad when the first kill had been made. Instead of seeing Mutt or the archer, Rino was surprised to see a huge group of goblins and fairies. The goblin chief and shaman had never moved from their spot near Rino, but the first king toad was already taken down. "How in the world¡­?" Rino found it hard to believe, but from the number of goblins cheering and the fairies looking smug, he had to admit. They might be small, but when put together, they were fierce like ants. The dead frog had all four legs sprawled carelessly open, and its tongue flopped. The goblins were carrying it upside down, and they marched towards Rino''s gate, wanting to bring it back. Unfortunately, the gate was still unfinished, and Rino apologised. "I will take it back for you," he told them and praised them for the good work. The pixie watching the group apologised profusely to Rino after the energetic bunch left. "They were all over the ce and so numerous that I did not know which group to keep an eye on. Before I knew it, they managed to kill one." Rino forgave the poor thing. It must be difficult to observe such aplex operation. This was something he had to oversee personally when the teleportation pad wasplete. "Just keep an eye on the chief and shaman for me. I will watch the goblins myself." With that, Rino turned his back to the pixie and focussed on drawing therge magic array beneath the amber imbued with his magic. Should anything go wrong, at least this teleportation pad would not be destroyed so easily. He had to take more precautions out here in the wild. Chapter 79 - Hunting Toads (2) With so many subdivision groups in the goblin hunting faction, Rino had to employ more pixies from the farm to act as his eyes. He wanted to know everything going on in this hunting game. Thedies were doing very well in the makeshift outdoor kitchen. Rino did not know if undead could taste or eat, but he never tried. He might try some of the food they madeter. Even if he had a dull sense of smell, they still looked extremely appetising. Mutt was still fighting with the king toad. His tenacity was proving to be his strong point, and the king toad was starting to show signs of stress, pulling big moves while the sabre tooth wolf continued to dodge swiftly. The pixie reporting the battle sounded bored at how long this fight was dragging out. On the other hand, Rino listened to the enthusiastic livementary from the pixie following the human hunter group, noting how many tricks they were employing to lure that toad off a ravine. Rino did not know there was a forest ravine there, but he trusted them to bring the toad back somehow. It wasn''t just about killing prey. It was also about getting the corpse back for the hunting game. Rino was keener to listen and borrow the eyes of the pixies who shadowed the goblin army. The fairies made very good scouts, informing the goblin chief about the whereabouts of king toads they spotted. The kingmanded that they remain near those ''marked'' toads and coordinated a series of attacks using goblin warriors and earth fairies as distractions while the fire fairies slowly dried the toad out with the help of water fairies removing moisture in the area. The idea was extremely brutal but effective. Rino couldn''t believe he did not think about drying a toad out to death. However, it made more sense that they were ying a drawn-out battle with their size disadvantage. What theycked in power, they made up with sheer numbers. That wasn''t to imply that the goblin king was not wise. In fact, Rino liked how he made full use of everyone''s strengths to create this advantage against his stronger opponents. In the scriptures, the God of War mentioned that understanding the five elements and situations will result in victory every single time. There was no miracle in wars, only understanding. That would exin why the toad had its tongue hanging out when they carried the first corpse to Rino. It would also exin how they could take it down so quickly, even if it wasn''t anywhere near Rino''s record. This goblin chief was a talent that Rino wanted to groom. He had the knowledge that he might not have before when fighting against the sabre tooth wolf that outmatched thempletely. The goblins did not really have weapons when they fought. Most of them simply collected stones using their clothes and hurled them at the enraged toad to catch its attention. Rino decided that his good warrior needed some weapons and perhaps armour. Thankfully, the enchantment on their clothes was better than any chain, metal or leather protection. Rino only needed to make weapons. The fairies were the silent MVPs of the decisive battle between the goblins and the king toad. They stayed way above the skies and hid behind trees at intervals along the ''path'' that the goblin chief wanted. The finishing blow would be by the goblin shaman if the king toad made it past the fairies. Rino did not know why the shaman wasn''t moving. In fact, the goblin magician just stood beside the goblin chief, doing nothing. Curious, Rino observed the shaman a little more. Was the shaman a final trump card to win the battle if all the other measures in ce failed? Thankfully, Rino was lucky. This king toad that the goblin army lured was tenacious and made it past all the fairies. It was hellbent on eating some goblin skeletons, and one poor sap was snatched by that long purple tongue. The poor goblin screamed in panic as itsrades threw rocks at the king toad, trying to save it. Unfortunately, the king toad was not easily distracted. Of all the toads that Rino saw getting hunted, this had to be the most aggressive king toad tonight. The king toad did not stop at one goblin skeleton. It turned itsrge head towards the other goblins spread out among the trees and refused to give chase. This king toad was not as dumb as the rest of the king toads that trotted on the same path down the forest where the fairies attacked it. The goblins quickly reported the unusual situation to the king, who ordered a retreat. One by one, the goblins slunk away, but when thest goblin was about to leave the area, the king toad struck. Rino held his breath as he watched that one brave goblin warrior ran for his life down the path where fairies attacked the king toad. It was so nimble, and Rino wondered if this was deliberate. Thest goblin to leave was a bait to lure it into the path of doom, but most of the fairies missed their mark from the erratic movements of this toad. The lich had to admit, this young goblin was very nimble and quick-witted as it dodged branches and hopped over roots. The young thing zig-zag through trees that the king toad could not follow, and the clumsy oaf crashed into them. The pace slowed significantly enough for the fairies to rain spells on it from above, and Rino realised that this brave young goblin purposely avoided the trees that his fairyrades were hiding in. Was this the goblin''s ace warrior? Rino couldn''t tell. However, he was rooting for this little goblin. The king toad was severely dehydrated, but he would not relent in his pursuit. After suffering so much humiliation from his prey, the king toad wanted this annoying skeleton dead. He was so focused that he failed to realise where he was going. The goblin chief and shaman stood their ground and were ready to intercept this huge toad. The goblin warrior sprinted thest few stretches and jumped onto the teleportation pad with the angry giant right at his heel. The goblin chief shouted, and on his mark, the shaman activated a huge spell that they prepared while the army was fighting. The huge toad was not expecting to fall into a pit in the middle of nowhere and wanted to climb out of it when it saw something raining from the heavens. Rino was impressed that the shaman was capable of conjuring an intermediate level spell like earth spikes. Naturally, the king toad stood no chance after getting impaled by so many sharp earth spikes. The corpse was gruesome as the shaman undid the spell and raised the ground back to normal levels. Rino grimaced at the skewered corpse. Could they still turn this into frog leather? The skin was so riddled with puncture wounds. It might be better to dismantle this particr frog immediately when it arrived. Rino did not want the poison spreading everywhere. Chapter 80 - Basic Culinary Miracle Before dawn, Rino heard the familiar system notification. Ping! === Daily Quest #10 plete) Objective: Hunt King Toads 15/15 King Toads Time Limit: 5 Days. Tutorial here. Reward: Basic Culinary Skill im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === There were still at least two more hours before dawn and Rino wondered if this was a good idea. He had a feeling that before dawn, half of the king toad poption in that forest would be erased at the rate his loyal warriors were working. Thankfully, things in the kitchen were doing well. Thedies cooked the frog meat after helping to cut and wash them. He had to say that thesedies knew their way with a knife better than the hunters did. Then again, Rino did not give the hunters any knives with magical enchantments. These y sculpted kitchen knives were probably sharper than anything the hunting team used. It sliced through sinew and tendons like butter. Only the bones were left intact, and Rino saw eight neatly lined up king toad skeletons surrounding the huge kiln. The farming team brought back many interesting herbs, and already, Rino could not wait for the feast in the stone quarry cave. It smelled divine! The lich smashed the option to im his reward. Those who do not work do not get to eat. Even if he was the king, he had a feeling nobody would give him seconds if he simply stood around without helping. Armed with his very basic culinary skills now crammed into his empty skull, Rino picked up a knife and let his body do the work. He still could not understand how these skills worked. Ever since he imed the rewards for sessful questpletion, Rino never questioned how he could skillfully aplish a task if it was a skill. Then again, textile crafting came almost naturally to him because Rino simply applied that knowledge of operating a loom to magic automation. It did not count as a physical skill. If anything, that felt like a consultation guide for Rino. Cooking was a different matter. There was a before and afterparison for this. When Rino first attempted to cook mashed potatoes for Noir, he remembered how he held the knife. It was clumsy, awkward and ineffective for peeling. Now, he was moving the de with small but fluid motions using his wrist and fingers to peel potatoes with thedies. He still had no idea how he was doing this. The basic culinary skill made him aware of the right things he should be doing as if there was an invisible string controlling his movements and preventing him from making amateur mistakes. Impressed by their king''s ability to help in the kitchen, the women became less timid and more chatty. As Rino worked, he listened to them talk about more interesting things he never knew about in this world. Despite having many simrities to his previous world, Rino learned that there were some differences. For starters, magicians were notmon. Those that existed were usually outcast instead of honoured. Secondly, lizardmen did not exist. Religion did not exist either. Instead, the vigers prayed to monsters and magic trees. Rino did not know why they would pray to monsters but sacrificing an old person or a ''cursed'' child in the vige every few months was how these vigers chose to worship their monster gods. In the same way, vigers would abandon their kin at the magic trees to act as ''fertiliser'' for their nt gods. "What about kings? How many kings are there in thisnd?" At that, the women shook their heads. "Everyone wants to be the king, but there is nobody worthier than the king of the legends. Only those who can bring back the dead can be king. That''s why everyone else tries to be skilful enough to be the king''s servants." Hearing that, Rino was intrigued. There was a legend in this world about a king, but there was no king. In that case, this king who could bring back the dead had to be a necromancer! Was this why his summons did not resist following him and joined his shadow army? It was all thanks to the legends going around in the world. The huge pot containing all the toad fats, bones and meat boiled. Rino stirred it and watched as the women added chopped greens. He sniffed the pot and felt his soul quaking. This smelled too good not to try eating! He wasn''t even mad at how the women used king toad bones to make soup stock. If anything, Rino was beginning to wonder if regenerated lich bones made good stock too. He definitely needed a king toad minion now to get infinite toad bones. It was definitely not for the sake of turning it into soup stock. Ok, maybe that''s half the reason. The other half of the reason was that these king toads had bones bigger than his. It would make good building structures. As the dishes werepleted, Rino helped thedies carry them to the stone quarry. He had to admit. The fairies were very good at decorating the stone cave for a celebration. Thanks to the constant mining activities, there was enough room for everyone. He decided that this should be the new gathering spot forrge meetings from now on. The farmhouse was getting too crowded as his army expanded. In an hour, it would be dawn. Rino informed all the hunters that they should wrap up and bring theirst prey back for submission. Any hunted prey that remained in the forest would not be counted towards their score or the game. Hearing that, the goblin chief stopped all hunting activities. They had too many corpses to haul back, given the short time frame. The farmers who were now idle offered to help them, and Rino did not stop them when Fronzo asked for permission to assist the goblin chief. Apparently, the goblin chief and Fronzo were close friends after seeing how Fronzo treated the goblin farming volunteers fairly. They could put aside their differences and see past each other''s species to form a harmonious working rtionship. The same could not be said with Mutt and the human archer. The goblin chief hated them from the bottom of his heart and would never forget the grudge. The food smelled so good that Rino was now tempted. He stuck a finger in the mashed potato dish that the women prepared and stuck it in his mouth. Surprisingly, even without a digestive system, Rino was able to consume that. He felt the food turn into mana. It wasn''t much, but it was still mana. What a surprise! Most interestingly, he was able to taste something faintly even if he couldn''t smell too well. With this new discovery, Rino wondered if Noir would try the dishes the women cooked. They were not only safe for consumption but also tasty. Chapter 81 - Hunting Game Winners (1) With the help of the elemental sylphs, the huntingpetition came to a sessful conclusion. The body count tallied, and even if some of the hunted bodies were already cooked, Erika kept a tally of who hunted which frog. The food smelled delicious, and almost everyone could not wait to dig in, even though Rino had no idea how undead could eat. Seeing how the women taste-tested, he supposed there was no risk if they were not poisoned or dead yet. They definitely ate more than him while cooking. With everyone feeling impatient, including himself, Rino cut the winning speech short and dispensed with the anticipation of knowing the winners. Instead, he was going to appoint the talents he needed and call dibs on that king frog thigh he had been eyeing ever since it was stewing in therge y pot. "The hunting game was a resounding sess, and I cannot thank our hunters enough for participating in the hunting game. Before we start the feast, let me congratte themander of the hunting team." Everyone held their breaths, and Rino scanned the three teams. Most people were rooting for the goblin chief who raked in a whopping twelve king toads. Mutt only dragged back four, but he worked alone, proving his superior strength to everyone. The human hunters brought back twice the amount that Mutt brought back, but they worked as a team. Moreover, they borrowed work tools from the farmers to bring the bodies back, dismantling them with knives they stole from the cooks in the outdoor kitchen. Unsurprisingly, nobody really liked them despite their amazing results. The cheers each hunting squad received from the crowd spoke of their poprity, not that Rino did not know how well-liked they were already. The goblins maintained a very close rtionship with the farmers and humans, who were generally not siding with the arrogant archer. Even Erika got along with them swimmingly. However, Rino had another ce in mind to put this goblin chief and shaman. He needed someone capable of thinking on his feet, adaptable to change and loyal to his followers to protect this territory when Rino was gone. There was no doubting the goblin chief''s loyalty to Rino either, so instead of picking him as the obvious winner, Rino looked over and pointed at the arrogant archer. "You have proven your skills as a hunter with or without a bow. Your experience is needed for the founding of this kingdom. After you receive your name from me, you will take a vow of eternal loyalty as my subject to never betray me and always serve the Kingdom of Solitude for as long as your soul is mine." The archer''s friends pushed him forward, and he fell onto his knees to receive his title and name. There was discontentment going around about Rino''s decision, but nobody voiced it out of respect for their king. Rino knew. However, he wanted them to also know that he was a fair monarch who ruled with fairness. The archer might have a dislikeable personality, but his actions and skills earned him his position as themander of the royal hunting squad. "From this moment forth, your name is Fowler, my royal hunting squadmander. Serve me and my kingdom well until the day you return to the darkness you were born from." Receiving a name and a position was a huge thing for any undead. Rino watched as Fowler and his friends burned in purple soul mes that did not hurt them. Instead, like Erika, flesh started to cover their bare bones, and Rino saw what they looked like before their deaths. Lesser Vampires! Rino almost could not believe his eye sockets when Fowler stopped transforming. Unsurprisingly, the hunter had tinum blond hair that was slicked backwards. Apart from that, his square chin and broad shoulders were probably the only things he retained from his appearance when he was alive. No wonder he was such an arrogant little shit! RIno hated to admit it, but this man was rather good-looking despite looking close to his middle age. From his countenance, there was no doubt that he was ady-killer in his prime before he died. Women would fall at his feet left and right if he shed them a toothy grin. Unfortunately for him, he has walrus-like fangs that could not be retracted and long nails that looked like a hawk''s talons that also remained in their true form. Unless he found a way to be a full-blooded vampire, he was going to remain like this for a long time. Those blood-red eyes and elvish ears gave him a dangerous but mysterious charm, and Rino clicked his non-existent tongue in disdain. They defeated the purpose of blessing this arrogant prick with ugly teeth and nails now. Rino hated how he was giving Fowler more reasons to act like a windbag. He felt a little sorry for the person he would put in charge of this loser now. "This is not to say that efforts and talent in other areas will not be rewarded. Know that I, the Monarch of Solitude, am a fair king who rewards based on merits." Hearing that the king was not finished with his ceremony, the shadow army could not help but be curious. For now, food was forgotten as hope rekindled in their hearts. Could it be¡­? Could it be that there was not only one winner in this hunting game? The king was too generous! Rino did not know what they were thinking, but he found the perfect candidate to fill in one of the most troublesome spots when he was gone. Erika might be good at managing the housekeeping affairs and reporting numbers to Rino. However, he needed another reliable person who knew how to manage the ground situation that Erika could not personally manage. The magic web array was still a work in progress, but Rino had fewer worries about defences once that was up. Instead, what did not threaten hismunity from the outside would begin to fester on the inside. Call it a public service officer or a disciplinary regtor, but Rino needed someone to keep these fools on a leash. A dog would forget discipline as soon as its master is away for an extended time. That wouldn''t do. He smirked and walked to the goblin chief, who bowed. All his nsmen bowed, and Rino ced his bony hand on the goblin chief''s head. If Erika turned into a ghoul and Fowler turned into a lesser vampire, what would naming a goblin do? Suddenly, Rino couldn''t wait to find out. He had just the perfect name for this little monster too. Chapter 82 - Hunting Game Winners (2) Gnut. Rino decided that this goblin chief should be named Gnut and was given the rank that nobody else could understand. If Erika was the Royal Secretary and Fowler was the Royal Hunting Squad Commander, the goblin chief that everyone liked and followed was now a Baron. What is a Baron? Gnut''s transformation wasn''t as impressive as Fronzo''s, Erika''s or Fowler''s. If anything, he looked more human-like after his transformation. The evolution from a goblin chief to a goblin lord was a huge jump and took a long time. First, the skeleton structure was stretched, and Gnut grew taller. He wasn''t as tall as Fronzo now, but if Fronzo was still a teenager, they would be about the same height. Then, he filled in nicely with denser muscles and bones. The ssic green goblin skin remained, and Rino wondered if that would ever change. Like a ssic warrior, the goblin chief was muscr with almost zero fat percentage. His body was built like a seasoned fighter, and Rino was amazed by just how much a person could glow up from just a name. Goblin Lord Gnut was a powerful monster by himself. If he was still alive and had his own will, Gnut would not hesitate to terrorise viges, plunder fields andmit many other heinous crimes with his advanced intelligence, management skills and superior leadership. However, serving under a more powerful ruler meant that his area of influence was contained to the territory he received. As a Baron, Goblin Lord Gnut had control over the internal matters and people within this vige and province. That included the obnoxious Fowler that most people disliked. What surprised Rino more was Gnut''s followers, who were not given names. They did not remain as weak goblin skeletons. Everyone in the goblin n who pledged loyalty to Gnut received some of the naming benefits as his subordinates. This had never happened before. Even Fowler transformed without his friends showing any signs of evolution. The lich thought that naming only applied to the individual and not the people around them. The goblin shaman still remained the shaman he was. However, Rino sensed that there was an explosive increase of mana within his small body. Ok, maybe he was a little wartier in outward appearance now that he had his green skin back. His hair was white, and Rino could not tell how old the shaman was because he looked like he was over a hundred with that many wrinkles. Looking at the subordinates, Rino found that all these goblins were now covered in green skin. That was a huge level up from the other farmhands that remained as skeletons. Even Fronzo was still a skeleton even if he grew taller. The only difference was how the farming goblins and crafters did not look any bulkier than they did before. They only looked more alive. The warriors and hunter goblins had an upgrade. They were now hobgoblins and looked like Gnut without the fancy chieftain tattoos all over their bodies. What an army! Rino was d that he chose the right person as the Baron of thisnd. "From henceforth, Goblin Lord Gnut, you are entrusted to make this province flourish under your care." The highest position of this vige belonged to the favourite goblin chief. Although nobody really knew what a Baron was yet, they cheered. How could they not rejoice? The only people looking a little dispirited were Fowler and possibly Mutt. Was it not good enough that Mutt brought only four king toads back? Just as the sabre tooth wolf was sulking. Rino turned to his very first spare body and loyal hound. "Mutt did well too. However, he is still young and has much to learn. You are strong alone, but together, you can be stronger. Learn from Gnut and Fowler. For now, you shall serve by my side as my mount and retainer." With that, the winners were named, and the celebration officially began. Rino sneakily snatched that king toad leg in the stew pot he had been eyeing and teleported away. The cave was too rowdy for him, and he wanted some peace in his farmhouse. Oh, yes. On that topic, Rino decided that the next three days should be spent on exploring that swamp. He was interested in the rumoured magic tree in the swamp. There was also the possibility of recruiting arge number of wisps, and Rino couldn''t pass up that opportunity for another powerful spare body even if it was not as powerful as the World Tree. At the same time, Rino decided that it was not wise for the undead to loiter or cluster in the cave all day when there was the sun. He should start looking into making dwellings for them with some tasks for them to work on during the day. Seeing how this will be an undead civilisation from now on, building aplex sheltered walkway or underground passage for travelling was not too over the top. However, this was going to be a very huge project, and Rino simply did not know if they had any engineers in his army with the expertise to design those. Honestly, the best kinds of people to ask about obstructingplex architectural structures would be the dwarves. He just did not know where to find some dwarves or if they existed. Dead dwarves were the best. The food was great, and these king toads made tasty morsels. However, something else still felt missing to Rino in his farmhouse. The stew that Rino stole was getting cold, so he quickly dug in. The cat basket in the corner near the firece reminded Rino about who he wanted to build this empire for. Unfortunately, Noir wasn''t always around, and Rino found him missing his cat friend terribly. Food usually tasted better withpany, and while the lich had no idea how awful his mashed potatoes were, he would prefer eating that with Noir than this tasty toad leg stew alone in this empty farmhouse. Chapter 83 - Fairy Circle The celebration went almost literally from dawn to dusk, and Rino spent most of his time in the farmhouse, only asionally returning to bring back the empty dishes or get new food. For the rest of his time, Rino remained in his farmhouse to look over the map he drew with the help of the sylph''s information. Some of the fairies who were tired of the rowdy party offered to help Rino scout the swamp area so that the lich could have a more detailed map. Rino told them to scout for wisps or faes in the area and tell them to head to the World Tree for a contract if they were interested. Honestly, he wasn''t expecting much. He only wanted to know if there was a magic tree within the swamp where the strange activities were and if there were any useful resources worth his time to create a teleportation pad in the marshes. The atmosphere in the swamp was humid, and Rino did not like the gloomy scenery, even if it was very befitting for the undead. From the bond the fairies shared with World Tree Rino, they reported many refugees seeking a new home after they were terrorised by king toads. Talking to these terrorised faes, Rino pierced the information together and finally understood why the gods gave him a quest to hunt these big creatures. King toads were powerful predators, but they were also forest menaces. The king toads they found took over territories that belonged to the homes of many other creatures. Thanks to their oozing poison contaminating the water supplies, many animals had few clean water sources to drink from or shower in. The spread of diseases and dehydration became so bad that the distressed guardians of the forest and faes were at their wit''s end. Those king toads hogged ponds,kes and rivers. Thanks to the abundant food supply in the forest and theck of natural predators, they multiplied very quickly. Rino thought back about the huge monster snake. He was d he did not kill that huge serpent for its skin now because it was helping to keep the king toad numbers in check. Unfortunately, the king toads were still multiplying too quickly with only a few giant serpents who slept for a long time after eating a king toad. The paralysis poison these king toads gave might not kill the snakes, but the snake monsters needed a lot of time to sleep the poison off. In that time that could be months, the king toads would have multiplied by a few hundred. With this much information from the fairies, Rino decided that they should be his private information gatherers. The fairy circle should not be underestimated, given how social these winged creatures really were. For humans who had never seen a fairy, they would think that these creatures were shy and elusive. If they were in thepany of only one fairy, they would think that fairies were friendly with a little bit of spice to their personalities. However, the real game-changer was when you put two or more fairies together. These winged faes thrived on creating drama. One day, they were sisters and the next day, they were mortal enemies. For a while, these fairies were amusing to watch. They were talented actors and actresses with never a dull moment, For Rino, a lover of peace and tranquillity, they can get on his nerves a lot. Thankfully, the World Tree and the lich body could separate their identities for a while, and the disassociation provided lich Rino with the silence in his mind that he needed from time to time. There was no denying that when a cluster of fairies worked together and put their drama aside, they were extremely efficient. Their peer pressure techniques that consisted of gaslighting, emotional ckmailing, encouragement and toxic positivity pulled the poor terrorised swamp faes over to make a contract with World Tree Rino. As a boss, Rino was proud of the results they achieved. If he were a consumer, he would be worried about this ck business and scary sales technique. The poor faes that were approached hardly had room to think or a chance to deny before they were pulled along to Rino''s stone cave. His mana capacity increased steadily, and Rino would not be surprised that there would be very few faes left in that forest by the time he visited it tonight. "Breaking news!" a fairy reported, and World Tree Rino gave it an apathetic response until he heard that the existence of a magic tree in the swamp was found. World Tree Rino quickly sent this discovery to lich Rino who was still mapping out the swamp in greater detail. "Really?" lich Rino asked the World Tree. "Where is it located?" It was time to prepare for a new teleportation pad. Rino noted down the magic tree''s location and drew a circle around it. That circle represented the effective radius of this new magic tree. For now, nobody was able to get close enough, but the fairies reported very sinister magic energy in the area that Rino drew a circle around. From the local faes living in the area, they talked about a bog monster. The swamp was home to a terrifying creature that would lure living things into it with powerful illusions. Once trapped in an illusion, these creatures would act as sacrifices to the magic tree and swamp monster, burying themselves in the murky waters and offering their bodies as puppets. Rino paused. That magic tree was a cypress. It was different from the magic oak tree he found in the forest. Oaks were trees of nurturing. Rino left it alone because it helped to purify thend. However, a cypress tree represented greed. Anything that came close to it would be its fertiliser for its personal growth and cultivation. The cypress tree by itself was not very dangerous. It would lure one or two creatures every month and suck its vitality after it traps it. Some people call it the Bloody Willow because of its human eating behaviours in Rino''s previous world. Rino knew that someone else was working behind the scenes to manipte the magic cypress tree with such a high death toll. Excited to finally meet someone else in this world that could possibly be his opponent, Rino prepared for battle. Chapter 84 - Swamp Expedition Deciding that he should set up a teleportation pad just outside of the magic tree''s influence to make his return trip easier, Rino gathered the required materials, including the amber. There were a few things Rino wanted to get before he confronted the master behind the strange events in the swamp. If his guess was right on the money, the master behind those strange events in the marsnd was a magician like him. Not just any magician either. He had to be someone who practised the dark arts. Rino might not know a lot about the dark arts, but there was no mistaking the nature of the sacrifice needed for the powerful magical aura. The evil and sinister setting surrounding the marsh was a perfect honeypot for lost souls addicted to the suffering they feel. Those wisps lingering in the area were not possessed or enved. They were simply takingfort in the familiarity of pain. The magic tree was good at using illusions to entice its prey because it wasn''t able to move from its spot. Illusion magic worked the same way as any emotional maniption would. It targeted memories of the prey that would affect them the most and continue to feed them stimtion to hook those onto those feelings. The prey would react instinctively or predictably, marching to the illusionist''s tune and walk into the trap willingly. Someone who could manipte the bodies of the dead like a puppet could only be a necromancer. Unless they were also an awakened lich like him, Rino did not have to worry too much about fighting them directly. A necromancer''s weakness was the same as every other undead and magician. Once Rino destroyed its body by exposing it to holy elements or sunlight, it would be severely weakened and die. The necromancer in the swamp should be powerful enough if it could summon twenty bodies at once. However, Rino was superior in terms of mana capacity. If he avoided direct confrontation and drew the battle out, he would win. It sounded dirty, but Rino never said he was going to y fair. The only concern he had was if the magic tree was already bound to that necromancer''s soul. Like all practitioners of the dark arts, soul magic was a very basic spell used as insurance against a more powerful opponent. This was why hunting dark mages was one of Rino''s most hated jobs when he was still a court magician. Those witches and wizards could have hundreds of weak spare bodies or disgusting nests full of halfpleted puppets. He only hoped that this swamp magician did not have a base outside of the swamp. He did not want to make an enemy that woulde to bite him in the backter if he did not finish the job cleanly. Presently, the sun was going down, and Rino called for his newly appointed Baron, the four elemental sylphs and Erika. His loyal servants bowed in respect when they arrived at Rino''s farmhouse. The impatient lich dismissed the need for etiquette. There was an important mission that he had to assign them in case things blow out of proportion in the worst-case scenario. As the magic web array was still notpleted, he could not leave his base camp at ease. Fighting against a necromancer who established such a strong fortress in the middle of the swamp was not going to be easy. Rino might fail to catch him in one swoop because the fairies could not provide him with enough information. Attacking the master of the marsh was like attacking an enemy''s castle with a toothpick after giving them three years worth of notice. Rino also did not have enough manpower to lock the necromancer in a siege. They could only win in a miserable war of attrition if Rino failed to strike at the heart of this swamp and slowly force the magician to submit. Peace would never be an option. There could not be two kings under one sky, and Rino was destined to be the best. Even if the empire of Solitude did not have a castle, it had a rather impressive farmhouse that most vige chiefs couldn''t even dream of, not to mention the crappy living conditions in a bog. "Gnut, you are in charge of protecting the borders of my territory while I am gone. Erika, you are in charge of maintaining order when I am gone. As for the sylphs, speed up with the magic web array. Keep the idle fairies on standby watch duty. I need as many eyes as possible tonight while I go on a swamp expedition." The goblin lord bowed and asked if Rino was going to conquer newnds. The lich nodded once. He did not know if this could be conquering newnds because the swamp was within his assigned territory marked by the gods when he first arrived. It just happened that there were already local inhabitants in the area that Rino had to ''negotiate'' with. Hearing that the conquest had begun, the goblin lord puffed his chest out with pride and tapped it proudly. "My king! If you require our assistance, my n will always be ready to respond to your summons." Thankful for the reassurance, Rino dismissed them and checked the items in his shadow sack. He had everything he needed now, and all that was left would be to wait until the sun dipped below the horizon to start his journey. A few agonisingly long minutester, the burning ball in the sky disappeared entirely, and darkness covered the world like a nket. Farmers returned to the fields with the wisppanions, lighting up the area like magical torches and fairies zipped around, leaving trails of sparkling dust wherever they flew. Rino walked past all the busy workers and hopped onto the teleportation pad. He arrived at the king toad hunting ground quickly and decided to leave this here for Fowler and his friends. Even if there wasn''t much in this part of the forest, there were still many delicious king toads in the area waiting to be found. He also needed the hunters to start thinking of ways to secure a steady supply of animal byproducts such as feathers, skin and bones. From this teleportation pad forth, Rino chose to teleport all the way to the new site where he would build that new temporary teleportation pad. For this new teleportation pad, Rino wasn''t taking any chances. He prepared three different levels of defence spells and traps to protect it. If he ever needed an artillery squad, the fairies and sylphs coulde quickly. Or at least, that was the n. Chapter 85 - Bog Master After setting up his temporary teleportation pad at the edge of the marsh, Rino could recognise this foul stench of death. This was definitely the work of the necromancer! Rino followed the smell of rotting flesh and death further into the marsh territory. The number of wisps loitering in the air became more, and many of them were close to invisible. Rino wondered vaguely how long this necromancer had been cultivating his army of undead because the number of the wisps in the air was more than anything Rino had in his army. Thankfully, these wisps were not staying here under a soul contract. They were simply lost souls attracted to false light. Rino would soon change that. For now, he had a necromancer to locate. As Rino strolled leisurely through the forest, borrowing some air elemental magic so that he did not dirty his well-made boots, he heard a groan from behind him. Looking back, Rino saw a half dposed body ambling towards him with uneven steps. This had to be one of the necromancer''s minions on patrol duty. If he destroyed this weak foot soldier, the necromancer would know of an intruder. However, Rino could not just let this poor sod be. He was stinking everything up badly, and Rino hated how it was ruining his clothes with the rotting smell, coating everything in its surrounding like a perfume. Hence, the lich killed the zombie on a whim. Its only mistake was not taking a proper bath and maintaining proper hygiene. It was slightly funny watching the zombie try to crawl even as its innards and brain was falling out. Rino did not kill it in one strike. He forgot that zombies were rather different from skeletons. His water slicer cut it into vertical halves, and while that would kill regr skeletons, zombies wouldn''t die from that. The clumsy undead creature simply tried to continue moving even as its organs were falling out. There were only two real ways to kill a zombie, even if they were slow, stupid and not very powerful because their bodies were constantly breaking down. Rino liked to think of them as high expense liabilities. You used one for a few weeks and discarded them because they couldn''t even lift a spoon after a week when their arms started to fall off. The first way to kill a zombie was using holy magic or sunlight. It was a generic undead ying method that Rino wouldn''t use now that he was one. The second method was a little messier. Zombies will only die when they have their brains scrambled. Bashing a zombie over the head with a blunt object was usually a good idea, and Rino looked at the zombie struggling to hop while holding onto its brain on each severed half body. Alternatively, if Rino set fire on this poor scout, the zombie will eventually die. The choice was obvious. With a snap of his fingers, the zombie burst into purple mes, groaning in agony as Rino''s fire ate away at its body, leaving only ashes as it tried to reach for the lich miserably. Rino watched thest of the zombie''s body crumble in ash two steps away from where he hovered. It died valiantly but pointlessly, and Rino decided to spend the rest of his time strolling around in the marsh. The necromancer who owned this zombie would be alerted to his arrival by now, and Rino did not feel like entertaining them in a chase now that his element of surprise was ruined. He would wait for the bog master toe for his skull instead of expending so much energy to find them. Soon after he thought about it, Rino heard more disturbing groans from all directions, with the permeating pong of rotting meating closer. Rino chuckled to himself. Did the master of this swamp think that he had an advantage in numbers? Seeing how this necromancer only had zombie puppets, Rino summoned his private army of shadow warriors. Goblin Lord Gnut did note personally. However, his shaman responded to Rino''s summons and brought a few strong hobgoblin warriors. "My king, you summoned us?" Rino looked at the warty shaman goblin and nodded. "Take care of the small fries," he told the aged goblin and flew upwards to get a better view from the top. There were a little more than eight goblins that he thought there were initially. More zombies were slowly making their way over, and Rino wondered if these goblins would be enough to take care of them. He told Mutt to work with them for insurance and provide assistance if it looked like the zombies were too much for these hobgoblins to handle. Rino was flying towards the centre of the swamp where the fairies reported seeing a magic cypress tree. He was still a few kilometres away when a powerful st of arcane magic forced him to change his trajectory mid-air. The true boss of the bog finally decided to intercept, and Rino smirked victoriously even if the expression could not be seen on his skull. "Come out," he taunted with his telepathic projection skill, casting it over a few kilometres in radius to unt his power. Instead of cowering away, the master of the bog returned Rino''s challenge with a message of his own in a murderous fashion. Rino did not dodge the three furious waves of arcane st imbued with blood sacrifices. He met them head-on and deflected each wave breezily with his wall of mes. The mes of hell danced to hismand and devoured everything without leaving any scraps behind. Fire was still his best servant, and Rino relished in how exciting this battle was bing. "Is that all you have?" he asked and projected his voice, pressuring his intent onto the whole swamp under this necromancer''smand. The weaker creatures pissed on themselves and fell unconscious while the stronger monsters buckled to their knees andid on their bellies. Rino did not feel sorry for them. In fact, he wasn''t going to feel sorry for anyone who chose to reside in this dumpster when he set the whole marsh in purple mes if the sneaky bog boss did not wish to show his ugly mug. Sensing his intent, the magician behind the shadows replied using telepathy, and Rino had tough at the pretentious choice of words. "You dare challenge me, young one?" Chapter 86 - Zombie Vs Shadows The powerful voice that shook the swamp boosted the hobgoblin''s confidence. The zombies faltered when they heard their king''s voice, and morale for the shadow army was at an all-time high. Mutt watched from the shadows and picked off zombies from a distance to aid the small number of goblin fighters. The old shaman stood in the centre of the battle and offered support to slow the massive horde of zombies. Already, the number of bodies started to pile like a wall around them. Yet, there was no end to the zombie wave. Mutt noticed the issue and tried to think of a way to clear a path for the hobgoblins. If they continued fighting like this, they would trap themselves in, and the endless wave of zombies would eventually get to them. His master told him to work with the hobgoblins, but Mutt did not know how to do that. He was no alpha even when he was in a pack. He thought he was strong, and honestly, Mutt knew that he was probably the strongest wolf monster there was in the forest. However, nobody respected him even though he won every fight andpetition. In his life, Mutt never lost to anyone or anything until he met those goblins. If it wasn''t for the shaman''s tricks, he would not be blinded and have lost so miserably to these green creatures. As individuals, those goblins were weak. Before he died, Mut could not understand how weak creatures could best him. After the hunting games, Mutt had some time to think about it again. The way the goblin chief worked with others gave him a kind of strength different from Mutt. When one goblin fell, another was there to help him take over his job until the fallen goblin could pick himself back up to continue his work and provide assistance to another goblin who fell. The reason why they were strong as a group was not because they had more people. Watching these zombies, Mutt understood that they would never win this battle against the goblins, who were able to work together to cover each other''s weaknesses and enhance each other''s strengths. The warriors kept the zombies away from their shaman, and the shaman slowed the zombies in waves so that the outnumbered hobgoblins could take out the plodding zombie army. Mutt watched as they were forced to fight in a smaller circle with so many zombies piling up. He quickly thought of a way that he could help them regain the ground that they needed to cut down the zombie numbers. With his speed and keen senses, Mutt ran like the wind through the shadows of this swamp to look for a suitable location that the goblins needed to create a battle advantage. These zombies had no teamwork. They attacked the enemies as individuals and would climb over the bodies of their disabledrades. The ground in the marsh was soft and unstable. Without experience walking through it, the speed would be incredibly slow. The zombies were clearly not experts in navigating through the swamp, and Mut noticed how the zombies further behind were way slower than their counterparts near the goblins who were able to walk on the bodies of their fallenrades, serving as paths. That''s it! "Follow me! I know a better ce to fight these idiots, Mutt howled to the hobgoblins struggling to take down the new wave of zombies that managed to break through their defences. The shaman goblin simply looked at the shadow wolf monster and nodded. He urged the hobgoblins to get on Mutt''s back before he cast a huge spell to slow the zombies and got onto therge wolf''s back. Mutt ran and told the hobgoblins to hold on tight as he climbed up the tall swamp trees to run on the canopy as a shortcut. From above, the hobgoblins could finally see what they were dealing with. There was no end to the waves of zombies. "Where are you going?" the shaman asked through the bond. "The king told us to take care of the zombies. If you leave now, the teleportation pad will be unguarded!" Mutt howled and activated his taunting abilities to gather the zombies'' attention on him as he ran to the perfect location. "Don''t worry," he told the goblin shaman. "They will not get past me at the teleportation pad. Besides, our king made a powerful spell to guard it." The new ground that Mutt brought the zombies to was a dry spot in the marshes that looked like an ind surrounded by murky water. Muttnded and let the hobgoblins down. The zombies ordered to chase them changed their direction, and started marching over to the new location as the goblins prepared for battle. Here, the swamp acted like a moat to slow the zombies down. It was also easier for the shaman goblin to use the natural swampynd to trap zombies. Even if these zombies died, they could not be solid paths for their otherrades because the swamp waters were rather deep. The location was perfect for battling against a horde, and the goblin shaman praised Mutt for the great find. "I will return to guard the teleportation pad and call reinforcements." From above, they heard powerful sts and their master''s voice once more, more powerful this time. Some zombies who could not withstand the pressure copsed as their brains exploded internally. Mutt quickly hid in the shadows to run back to the temporary teleportation pad when he heard the bog master''s reply. As a loyal servant, Mutt wanted to rip the arrogant magician to shreds. However, his master did not seem offended by the insult but was rather amused. Without a proper way or ce to vent his frustration, Mutt ripped the heads off a few zombies he passed by, leaving their bodies behind to stumble more of their zombie pals making their way to the swamp isle where his goblin friends would take care of them. With the terrain advantage, the hobgoblins had no problems sinking bodies quite literally. The goblin shaman no longer hid behind the warriors and took charge in attacking from a range actively. The hobgoblins used long branches and even smaller tree trunks from uprooted trees to smash several zombies in a row, dropping their numbers faster than they could arrive. The zombie defence game was strong and every zombie that was destroyed contributed to weakening the bog master''s strength a little more. This battle could not be drawn out for too long. With the shadow army chopping down the zombie army he built painstakingly over the years, the bog master could no longer afford to sit back and y the defence game. He had to strike before the ignorant lich did. Chapter 87 - Necromancer Vs Lich (1) Rino smirked to himself. The bog boss could not keep running and hiding forever. In a war of attrition, he would not lose. Even if this necromancer had been borrowing the power of the magic cypress tree to grow his zombie army, they were no match for his infinitely regenerating shadow army. Besides, these hobgoblins were only a small part of his army. He still had another half of the goblin army in the vige, preparing to go to war if the swamp master attacked his base. Fighting a necromancer was like smoking ants from a nest. He had no idea how many zombies his hobgoblins destroyed, but with Mutt running for reinforcements and fiercely guarding the teleportation pad, it should not be long for this old fart toe out of seclusion. They would note out of hiding willingly until their homes were on fire or flooded beyond saving. The bog master came out of hiding, and while he could not fly like Rino, he used telepathy to tell Rino toe down if he wanted a fight. It was a tant bait and a trap, but Rino had confidence that he could easily win even in this necromancer''s terrain. Moreover, with a powerhouse mana nt like the World Tree, Rino had nothing to worry about. The necromancer tutted silently when Rino came down from his aerial advantage to meet him on the murky swamps. This young magician was talented, but he was simply too naive as a dark sorcerer. His aura was too clean and pure to be a dark magician, even if he was talented in his control of magic. From how Rino used his magic, the bog magician could tell that he had exceptional magicmand but a poor understanding. Even if the necromancer had a weak magic capacity, his research was not for nought over the centuries. He was able to build an army thisrge single-handedly despite his inability to summon any undead creature more powerful than zombies. The sheer number of his rotten army was enough to take down ten viges easily, but the necromancer waited. It was not time yet to im his rightful throne. Then, this pompous lich came along and ruined his ns for world domination in just a few hours. The sheer amount of hatred he had could not be so easily appeased. Liches were half-gods with the power of immortality, but the necromancer wasn''t afraid. He had a trump card up his sleeves. Even if his powerful zombie army wasn''t able to take down the lich''s shadow minions, he could still trap the lich in this swamp to act as his fuel. In the swamp, Rino found no lizardmen in the area. He rxed a little at that knowledge. Although this necromancer was crafty, Rino didn''t think he was too troublesome to deal with. The hobgoblins are doing a good job, and everything he did thus far hardly put a dent in his massive mana reserves. Hended on some mossy ground and looked at the necromancer. The man was mortal, but he had longevity. The hair, beard and brows werepletely white. Rino could not tell if the braiding of that beard was done deliberately so that it would hover just above the ground, but he did not think it was fashionable. His opponent also used a wooden staff that was discoloured in some ces, especially the handle. He could not help but feel slightly superior, knowing that this magician still required a medium. He was too weak to be a threat! The wooden staff struck the ground with a dull thud, and Rino watched as the swamp shook. Trees curved inwards, and branches created a barricade where Rino stood. The area around the magic tree became pitch ck from some kind of coloured fog that thickened until there was no visibility. Rino conjured his fire spell, but no amount of mes could prate through this darkness. Was this what true darkness felt like? Rino wasn''t sure what was going on, but he had some guesses. This old necromancer must be triggering a very meticulously prepared trap using the swamp''s natural terrain and the magic tree''s power to his advantage. In that case, Rino would retaliate in kind by borrowing the six elements from his World Tree. Ordinarily, the best way to counter one magic element was with another opposing element. However, they were both dark mages. It was ridiculous for Rino to use holy magic on the necromancer when he would also suffer damage. Another way to counter a spell was by deconstructing it. Unfortunately, Rino wasn''t very knowledgeable about dark magic or its nature to interfere with the casting. Hence, the only way he could think about was to overpower this array. Every magic array will have a weakness. There will always be a power source, a medium, and a pattern. Rino knew the power source. He knew the medium from the stench in the swamp. He also knew the pattern. Did the necromancer really think that illusions andbination magic will fool the greatest magician of all times? Naive! Chanting his spell with deep concentration, the bearded necromancer thought that the lich was sessfully trapped within his earth tomb. The entire swamp was his castle, and once a body was pulled into the mud, it would never resurface. Countless tough warriors died here, and their vengeful souls were ves for his puppets. If one body was destroyed, he would simply find another to transfer those souls. The young lich cannot escape his spell. The ground continued to shake as water and earth parted to drag Rino deeper into them. The lich looked like an ordinary skeleton now. Once he is fully buried, the necromancer will borrow the magic tree as a medium to host the battle of their souls. He had enough hatred stored in his swamp to overwhelm the lich''s mind. Every known weakness of humankind was here. Their terrors, greed, lies and regrets stored individually as a wisp in this fog gathered like a tornado around the magic cypress as Rino''s head disappeared under the water. The bog master cackled. It was time to create the greatest puppet of all times! Chapter 88 - Necromancer Vs Lich (2) In the sea of darkness, Rino allowed himself to be assaulted by third rate magic spells. It was good to wait it out to see if the other magician had any other tricks up his sleeve. As someone who was a former quinti-elemental mage, Rino knew these two elements very well. Earth and waterplemented each other, and depending on the mage''s mastery, they could be used to nurture or destroy. Rino liked to use it with a little light magic to produce nature magic, otherwise known as life magic. It could help to maximise the growth potential of nts or heal them when they are hurt. Druids were great users of thisbination magic. However, this necromancer used it with a hint of dark magic, turning thebination into a rotting spell. With too much water, the earth starts to rot and takes everything along with it. Rino was sinking into the swamp. He could feel it. Yet, he did not make any attempts to break free. Thankfully, his clothes were enchanted with self-cleaning. He hated to wash the mud out of them or appear covered in gunk from head to toe once this was over. However, the feeling of mud sliding down his pelvic bones felt gross, and Rino was going to make the necromancer pay when he became his ve. The spell stopped, but Rino was still sinking. He could feel the gravity magic enchantment within the defence array, and it was working against Rino. He might be able to deconstruct the earth and waterbination magic, but the gravity magic was going to be a pain. Thankfully, he knew that the caster wasn''t too far from him in radius. If he used a powerful area attack, it would hit the caster and disrupt the spell. However, right before Rino could get to deconstructing his muddy prison, the lich felt a familiar tug at his soul. He fought quickly against the mental attacks by the cypress magic tree and kept himself anchored using the voices of his shadow army to remember what he was. The illusion magic did not work as Rino was simply far too used to pain and was a master at being emotionally numb. He desired nothing that simple mortals wanted. Richness, fame or power was on the bottom of the list of things he wanted. If there was one mental attack that Rino almost fell for, it was the lull of azy rest. However, the feeling of stuff in his pants was too ufortable for Rino to be happy about his resting grounds. If he were to rest forever, it would be on a veryfortable silk sheet cotton stuffed mattress with a warm cat by his side. Not this! Snapping out of the illusion, Rino countered the necromancer''s soul spell. This link went both ways, and the lich had no intention of bing anyone''s puppet. If anything, this old fart should serve under him. This swamp might be dreary at first nce, but Rino discovered that it had a precious resource that could not be replicated elsewhere. Reeds! With reeds, Rino was able to process paper and eventually bind a book. His research dreams are all dependent on his sess at enving this old magician, and failure was not an option! Soul splitting magic and spare bodies weremon for dark magicians. It helped them escape enemies and dangers easily, but there was a risk of losing their minds when used as a gambling chip to acquire a more powerful ve. Rino had more spare bodies and soul splits, so the bacsh was stronger. Not to mention, he had many named ves who responded to his call when the swamp master linked their consciousness, trapping them in an invisible battle of wills. Rino did not push or defend. He simply allowed the bog master to attack his mental state while watching his other soul fragments defend him valiantly. With so many parties keeping the swamp master busy, Rino searched for the other magician''s other soul - the magic cypress tree. That was his true motive when he allowed the bog magician to hold him hostage in this soul-stealing spell. The magic cypress tree had a horrible soul colour. Rino''s soul was dark violet, very close to ck, but it wasn''t there yet. The bog necromancer''s soul was dark grey, but the magic cypress tree''s soul was pitch ck. The lich had to pause and wonder just how many evil things this tree did on its own ord. When Rino looked at the colour of his split souls, he noticed how different the colour spectrum was. Depending on the weight of his split soul, the colour for each spare body''s soul would appear differently. Mutt, who received the least of his split soul, was light blue. The World Tree Rino, who received almost half of his split soul, was a vibrant amethyst. Fronzo did not receive too much of his soul, so he was a very light pink soul hovering beside Mutt in the background, not knowing what to do. When Rino looked over to the necromancer and his magic tree, he suddenly came to understand why the magician''s soul was only a dark grey while the tree''s soul was ck. His main body was not the necromancer. It was the cypress tree! Whatever the magician did, he was now more tree than human and Rino could not help but want to mock him for abandoning humanity. No wonder that tree was able to do things other magic trees did not do. The bog master was controlling its actions tomit evil acts. Rino went up to the pitch-ck soul behind the preupied necromancer and rushed into it headfirst. For an enemy that could not be defeated from the outside, Rino found it most effective to destroy it from the inside. It was no secret that the ex court magician took down terrifying monsters in the same manner. Only this time, he was doing it in the mental arena. Souls shed and collided while Rino defended valiantly using psyche spells. The necromancer kept using dark magic to manipte the soul''s emotions by recreating traumas in illusions, but World Tree Rino protected Mutt and Fronzo as they ran circles to block the bog master''s escape route when he discovered how the lich''s main soul was approaching his magic tree. "Stop!" the bog magician called out desperately and tried to connect with his more powerful half when Rino collided headfirst into the magic tree''s ck soul. A powerful sh destroyed the bog master''s mental spell, and souls were expelled from the mental battle arena back to their respective bodies. From where he stood, the bog master could only desperately chant his spells to undo the damage Rino was causing to his tree. The pain caused by Rino''s attack on the cypress tree made the defence array copse. The swamp master''s control weakened gradually, giving the fairies and hobgoblins the advantage they needed to tear through the remaining walking dead army. In the mental battle arena, Rino rejoiced. Finally, a worthy opponent. Chapter 89 - Necromancer Vs Lich (3) Confronting this soul as dark as the abyss that demons climbed out from, Rino finally understood why the necromancer called him young. He was simply too inexperienced in dark arts. The magic tree''s soul was a cauldron for stomaching many souls and absorbing suffering from charmed souls. Using the knowledge, memory and experience of these poor, unfortunate souls, the magic tree fed on their darkness to be a sinister existence that craved carnage. Rino should take a leaf out of this mean existence to learn how to be a better lich. He thought that dark magic was used to manipte shadows and consume souls. He did not think that it could do much more than simply torturing them for mana regeneration and increasing his mana capacity. Those soul contracts he made the fairies enter into were work contracts with their souls bonded to World Tree Rino for mutual benefits. Rino had no idea soul contracts could be used without mutual benefits. These enved souls were merely food for this evil magic tree, and Rino shuddered, looking at the monstrosity it became for the sake of power. How unsightly! The magic cypress tree was also a tree with a title. Anything that earned a title was a recognised global threat for its abilities, and Rino read the title that the magic tree had on its soul. "Cypress Ghost?" The tree shook with fury when Rino read its title. For magicians, their titles and true names were sacred. Reading it aloud will either strike fear into the hearts of their enemies or receive huge mentalshbacks. The stronger a magician''s will, the higher the chances of causing damage to their enemy. The Cypress Ghost Tree was strong. However, it was dumb. Living in the swamp for thest few centuries, the tree could not understand much about the outside world. The bits and pieces of information it devoured from trapped souls wasn''t enough to educate it about humans. All it saw was miserable food. In this aspect, Rino won. Isting the necromancer from the tree was the right decision. Now, he could take his time to pry open the tree''s weaknesses and own itpletely. Rino yed on the Ghost Tree''s ignorance to tear its illusion down, starting with its understanding of its identity. Without an identity, the tree could only spiral into depression about the purpose of its existence and what it was doing. Then, Rino crushed it by feeding it twisted information about life cycles and morality. With an awakened sense of righteousness, the tree was made to review all the lives it took and the souls it ate. Like a house of cards, the magic tree''s mental defences crumble to dust, and Rino waltzed into it like a kid in a candy shop without the storekeeper. He took his sweet time browsing through the magic tree''s past to understand how the bog magician convinced it to join branches. It was such a stupid reason, but the magic tree did not know any better. The necromancer fed it lies, convincing the magic tree that its precious home would be destroyed if they did not work together to protect the swamp. Rino felt jealous that he did not find the Cypress Ghost Tree first. Such a good tree, tainted by the darkness of a twisted magician. Unforgivable! If it were up to Rino, he would make this tree a nurturer instead of a demolisher. This swamp needed a new master, so Rino showered the tree withpliments as well as a peek into the kingdom he wished to create. "What do you think?" he asked the Cypress tree. "Equal work benefits. You get to grow together with the wisps under yourmand in this area. Whatever you want, you can get. I have cooks who know how to make meals more delicious than rotting meat in the bottom of this muddyke." Tempted by the promise of a better working condition, freedom and rewards, the tree gave in and acknowledged Rino as its new master. World Tree Rino did not hesitate and quickly pulled the Ghost Tree into its ranks once Lich Rino secured a deal. The soul from World Tree Rino was split, and half of it was fused with the cypress magic tree. Rino watched as the colour turned from pitch ck into a glowing orange. Contrary to the green and brown scheme in the swamp, the cypress tree had an orange soul when it was purged of that disgusting ck. Without a ce to go, the darkness attacked Rino''s soul. Thankfully, the lich was ready for them. For a ball of negativity this strong, Rino knew that he could mould it into an artificial soul and use one very ancient forbidden spell he read about in a grimoire in the previous world to trap it. Demons were born from this negativity in a different dimension, separated by life and death. It was challenging for such negativity to be found in the material world as it would easily be overpowered by the overflowing life energy naturally present. However, if there was enough resentment deliberately collected, something simr to a demon could be born. That creature born from pure darkness was called a wraith. Normally, wraiths were simr to ghosts, but they feed on the fears, exhaustion and negative emotions of a host like a parasite before killing them and taking over a new body to be stronger. The church was in charge of exorcising them. Rino was only invited for exorcisms when the wraiths overpowered the priest''s holy magic and could not be sent away through conventional means. With so much negativity, Rino chuckled. He would not only have a wraith from this mass of darkness. Rino was going to create something only from legends and theories he formted. Screeching, the darkness fused together and turned into a wisp that slowly took form. It had no face, hands or legs. Instead, Rino noticed how there was that signature wraith appearance with the hood. Instead of the usual colour of blood that regr wraiths had, this wraith''s hood was pitch ck, and it was at least three times bigger than a regr wraith. Excited, Rino looked at his beautiful summon struggling in the cage of Rino''s ancient spell. This was a Wraith King, rumoured to kill hundreds with just one cry. Wraith Kings were national-level disasters on par with the ck gue. If one appeared, cities had to be evacuated, and infected viges were banned from fleeing to stall the Wraith King until help arrived. Looking at the newly born Wraith King, Rino wondered what he should name it. Born from nature, fear and everything revolting, this creature was like a dumpster. That''s right! He knew the perfect name for his newest minion. "Serve me well, Wraith King Ubel. Kneel!" Even without legs, the shadowy wraith lowered itself in the mental arena, and Rino felt the necromancer''s spell weakened tremendously without the support of its power source. Smirking to himself, Rino let his soul get pulled back to his body. It was time to teach that old fart a lesson and recruit himself an adequate dark magic teacher since he wasn''t interested in paying hefty school fees. Chapter 90 - Necromancer Vs Lich (4) Something was wrong. He no longer felt the connection between his soul and the cypress tree. The swamp master could not help but look at the three-quarter buried lich. That bas- Before he could finish his thoughts, the elderly magician was sted off his feet by a tremendous shockwaveing from the magic tree. His shabbily built hut was blown into debris, and the magician saw his array cracking. The price for using magic over his limits started to take a toll on his body. The cypress tree was no longer under his control, andmanding the zombie horde became impossible. Vomiting ck blood, the necromancer felt his mana draining at a rate faster than he could cut the connection between him and the undead army. "No! This cannot be!" he struggled to cancel the mass summoning but even focusing was difficult with blood in his eyes as they started pouring out from every orifice. Rino''s soul was finally settled into his body and the magic blinding his vision finally dispersed now that the Cypress Ghost Tree and Wraith King belonged to his shadow army. The necromancer, who acted very arrogantly from the beginning, was in a sorry state as Rino dug himself out of his pit using earth magic. It wasn''t sightly to be seen crawling out from the ground like somemon undead, so Rino took some time to use water magic discreetly as he slowly emerged from the swampynd. He needed to get rid of those mud stuck between his bones for a proper intimidation session. The bog magician red at Rino with hatred even though he looked much older and was starting to appear sallow from mana drain. Mutt reported to him about the zombie army''s mysterious copse, and Rino told them to retreat now that they no longer needed to stall for time. He looked up at the sky. The colour was starting to look lighter, and Rino sighed. He spent the entire night here just fighting over a swamp territory with a lesser mage. Thankfully, the battle could be concluded before dawn broke. The undead warriors returned to start constructing the sheltered walkway and underground resting stations that Rino entrusted Erika to assign duties in his absence. There was still a little unfinished business with the dying necromancer whose regeneration ability no longer functioned. "You''ve lost. If you concede and serve me well, I will treat you with respect as I would with my teacher." The necromancer tried tough but ended up choking on his blood. Teacher? Who did this brat think he was talking to? Even if he became a puppet, he would never teach this monster his secrets! This was his research that he spent over a few centuries. He was destined to be the ruler of thisnd, but now, this lich wants to snatch what he worked so hard for? "In your dreams!" the necromancer spat and choked on more blood. Rino paused. Old men were usually stubborn, and he had his fair share of dealing with them. He could forcefully recruit this man into his shadow army, but he did not want to put up with another problematic character like Fowler. It was easier to convince this dying magician to join him willingly so that Rino could immediately entrust the necromancer with the more troublesome matters such as guarding the swamnd that he was very familiar with and managing his dream paper factory. Seeing that the stubborn necromancer did not have long to live, Rino sighed inwardly and cast a simple mana recovery spell so that the basic regeneration abilities would work. The charity and flex of his abilities made the old magician protest furiously. His face turned so red that Rino swore he burst some blood vessels from his temper. However, he refused to stop until the old man stopped hacking blood. "I''m not saving you," Rino told the stubborn old man honestly. "I''m just extending your life enough to convince you to work for me. I''m a very fair employer, and I like to idle my time away doing things I enjoy, like sleeping. You seem like a very diligent individual that I need in my shadow empire. Also, I need a magic teacher as I have no idea how dark magic worked when I woke up as a lich." Hearing this ridiculous reason but not sensing a lie, the necromancer narrowed his eyes in suspicion. He knew that the lich was not good at dark magic. However, he had no idea why this magician, who was clearly stronger than him, asked for a magic teacher. Rino''s exnation about amnesia piqued his curiosity as well. If there was one thing magicians are drawn to like moths to a me, it would be an unsolved mystery. Rino knew that look. He often saw it in himself whenever something sparked his interest. There was not a single magician who wasn''t curious. It was also the reason why most magicians preferred cats as their bonded partners. They were fickle, independent, disinterested in many things, but highly curious when they wanted to be. There was simply no betterpanion than cats, but Rino digressed. "I have my conditions," the swamp necromancer stated as he struggled to stand. His wooden staff was already broken, and most of his body was battered by that strong st. Rino nodded and remained where he was. He simply watched the necromancer struggle to straighten himself without emotion. Depending on the terms, Rino might have to kill and resummon his soul to enve him. "Speak." The bog master wiped the blood at the side of his lips, tasting metal on it, but he kept his eyes steady on those hollow eye sockets. There wasn''t much time till dawn broke as the sky was getting lighter. "I want to retain my free will even as I serve you. In other words, I do not wish to be part of your immortal army." Rino paused. He could not understand why the necromancer would reject such a good offer. Most people would rather sell their souls for power as long as they were treated right. Then again, those people he referred to had smaller brains. The faes did not care who they served as long as they could evolve quickly and have fun. "You wish to reject immortality?" The necromancer nodded, and Rino fell silent. How envious! However, that also meant he could not turn this swamp magician into his spare body. He could only make a magical contract with stakes. The swamp master nodded. "Immortality is a curse I do not wish to bear. I can form a blood contract to prove my loyalty to your cause, but please allow me to retain my mortality." There was no risk or loss in this arrangement, so Rino agreed. It didn''t matter if this magician was mortal or not as long as he got himself a free dark magic teacher. Swamp management duties could be entrusted to other individuals such as the Cypress Ghost Tree or King Wraith Ubel. Chapter 91 - Kragami The Decayer After puking so much blood, Rino was amazed that the old magician still had some blood left in him to form that blood magic contract with him. As daybreak was approaching, they had to finish the contract quickly. Rino helped with drafting the contract and the swamp magician marvelled at the weird contract circle scratched onto a mossy rock using water pressure. This young lich had a very interesting way of using magic that even the old necromancer did not know about. It was creative yet highly efficient. Teaching such a promising magician was no loss at all. He might not be able to rule the world, but there was no doubt that this lich could. The title of the monarch''s tutor could not be worse than the title of the ruler himself. In fact, it was a great honour to be a royal tutor. "Whatnguage is that?" the necromancer asked and squinted at thepleted magic circle. "It''s Deutsche, themonnguage of magic from where I came from." Although the necromancer could not read what it said, he understood some of the symbols used. It might look slightly different from the signs he used, but he recognised the format. "I understand," he told Rino. "I will swear upon my blood and true name." Expecting nothing less, Rino nodded and took a few steps back so that the necromancer couldplete the ritual. He might not make the swamp master an immortal, but Rino wanted this magician to live for a very long time, so he added a little something in the blood contract circle to ensure that the man would live for long enough to see his empire built. "I swear upon my blood and true name, Kragami the Decayer, to serve the Monarch of Solitude and never betray him." Clenching his fist and piercing his palm with his jagged nails, Kragami let the blood flow and drip onto the moss-covered rock. The magic circle activated with an ominous red glow, demanding more blood as rune patterns flew into the air and wrapped around Kragami like a chain before disappearing into his body and coiling around his heart. With that, the mossy rock disintegrated, and Kragami felt his powers increasing tremendously, surpassing what he knew previously. It went past his previous limits even when his soul was bound to the magic tree, and the old necromancer gasped. His skin tightened, and the wrinkles smoothened. The hunch in his back and stiff joints straightened with ease, making him feel ten times lighter as his injuries healed. The overflowing mana in his veins gave him strength and vigour he never experienced even in his youth. With surprised eyes, Kragami turned to look at the lich. Who exactly was this magician? How could any individual possess such overwhelming power? Whatever Kragami felt, he knew this was just a fraction of what Rino felt. How could a magician like him be the future king''s teacher? Rino wasn''t interested in what Kragami thought. Now that he knew his true name, the contract was like a ticking time bomb. If Kragami betrayed him, it would ce a horrible curse on the necromancer and erase his existencepletely. He did not have to hesitate to lend some of his powers to the old man now that he was a pawn in his palm. "Come," he held the old magician by his shoulder and pulled them both into the sky back to the portal. The sun was already starting to rise, and Rino shielded his teacher with his mantle. The temporary portal was still where it was, and Rino made a quick dive. Kragami was not prepared to be teleported. His swamp hut was still a mess, and he wanted to fix it, but Rino already grabbed them both. When they reappeared at the other teleportation pad, Kragami''s jaw fell. Was this a farm managed by an army of undead? He saw a human skeleton farm manager and many undead goblins working in the fields wearing clothing that looked like they protected them from the sun. How did this lich manage to find so many legendary artefacts for his shadow army? Even with those tools, the necromancer had never seen such neat craftsmanship for farmers. They might be made from basic materials like stone and wood, but theyers of enchantments on them were extraordinary. It was obvious who enchanted them, but this only puzzled the forcefully recruited magic teacher. Not to mention, there were hundreds of fairies and various magical creatures bumbling about in the field. From what it appeared, they were changing shifts. Kragami had so many questions to ask, but Rino dragged him away quickly while returning greetings with azy wave to the undead and faes who could only be described as fanatics of their summoner. Who and what exactly was this lich doing out here cultivating potatoes using aplex irrigation system with hundreds of undeads and faes? With this power, Kragami didn''t think he stood a chance to defend his swamp. His zombie army might be able to take down viges, but Rino''s army should be able to take over the world with how well equipped they were. Before the old magician could ask questions, Rino sted opened the door to his farmhouse and threw the necromancer inside before shutting the door and giving orders to some sylphs that he should not be disturbed. Kragmi noticed how well furnished the interior of this well-built farmhouse was. He never knew that a peasant''s hut could look and feel so luxurious but more curiously, it was full of more cat furniture than actual furniture for humans. The farmhouse was not too warm on the inside nor too cold. There was an unlit firece and a small kitchen area with fire and water rune symbols. Rino must have too much magic to waste on menial tasks like chopping firewood and carrying water. What a waste of mana! Then again, this level of flex only meant that Rino thought nothing about using mana for chores like this. Kragami was starting to understand his student''s character a little more. He wasn''t just a talented lich. He was also a bag ofzy bones. Chapter 92 - Cramming Rino cut to the chase. With his shadow army busy with the farm and shelter construction, he decided to ask his dark magic teacher to start the first ss. "I want to know the basics of dark magic," he told Kragami, who settled on the little stool because Rino was sitting on the mattress. There really wasn''t much in the hut, and this was the only abode in the farm they were in. He was slightly curious how Rino managed the rest of his undead army. Did he un-summon them when it was daytime? Instead, he kept those questions to himself for now. "What do you understand about dark magic?" Kragami asked. It was better to check Rino''s progress than to assume this lich knew nothing. Rino only listed the dark magic spells he knew and exined the theory of mana he recently discovered thanks to Noir''s hint, although he did not reveal who he learned his magic from. Impressed with his profound understanding of mana and its origins that Kragami did not know, the necromancer asked if Rino researched or studied any other types of magic. Hearing the ex court magician list the things he studied in his previous life, Kragami became more puzzled. Why in the world would a lich study light magic and holy magic? Also, his student appeared to be closer to an elemental magician and an alchemist more than a summoner. His character was aplete mismatch with what he turned out to be. "C-can I stop you here and ask you one question?" Rino paused. He was still reciting the number of magguages he knew when the old man stopped him. "What is it?" Kragami thought of the best way to phrase his question without offending the overwhelmingly talented magician before him. "Why did you study everything else but dark magic when you''re going to be a lich?" Rino paused. How should he exin to his teacher that bing a lich wasn''t his choice? In fact, getting reborn into a new world wasn''t his decision either. "I was cursed," Rino exined in one line. "None of this is my choice. I just want to research peacefully, but something went wrong, and now I have to build a kingdom with the blessing of gods and the curse of immortality. Does that answer your question?" While it made little sense, Kragami figured that this was the most his student was willing to share. He nodded and listened to Rino list off the rest of what he knew about magic. If this was still the magician tower in his previous world, Rino would receive a standing ovation just for stating his knowledge. People would worship his existence, and every new young witch or wizard would ask for a handshake from him like some kind of over poprised idol. Not even the king would receive such a heartwarming wee with adoring attention. However, his new magic teacher remained unmoved by his impressive ocean of knowledge. He only concluded one thing that made Rino''s heart and self-confidence plummet. "So you don''t really know anything about dark magic, not even the basics?" Unable to deny or refute the statement, Rino looked away. He was a court magician and not a cult leader in his previous life. Besides, there were not many books about dark magic in the royal library. Seeing Rino''s silence, Kragami took it as a sign to start from the beginning. Given Rino''s vast knowledge about magic in general, his student should have no problems grasping the fundamentals. "Let''s start from the basic theory," the necromancer suggested. Rino did not protest and sat upright, listening intently. After understanding the source of dark magic that was simple enough, Kragami broke down dark magic into three sub-branches. "The most basic uses of dark magic can be ssified into three types. Unlike elemental mages who can only use spells ording to the elements their mana ispatible with, dark magic is universal, much like light magic." Rino understood this quickly and realised that unlike light magic and elemental magic produced within a magician, dark magic was moulded by the magician but stored and created from an external source. "Dark magic is not a source from within, it is a source from outside, and the magician is merely a trantor of that energy into different uses. Hence, there are three ways to convert the dark and negative energy." The first was an emission that Rino was rather familiar with. His shadow tendrils were the basic form of dark magic emission. However, Rino soon realised why he found it difficult to maintain control of the tendrils and why they snapped after a certain distance. "Emission is dependent on the spellcaster''s field of control. Unlike elemental mages who use the environment as their field of control, dark magicians often have a fixed field of control. The only way to extend this field of control is toy an array linked to the spellcaster." That would exin why Rino could never get his shadow tendrils to go further than a certain distance unless more shadow tendrils were present to extend the overall reach. The next use of dark magic was also something Rino discovered from the skills given by his quest system. Kragami called them portals, but Rino preferred to refer to them as passing through realms. "Knowing how to create portals, you can travel long distances in short amounts of time, slow down time, manipte the field of gravity, store items in a separate space and many more. Portals are limitless, but the size and ability of any portal are directly proportional to your control of magic and avable mana." Rino had exceptional magic control and a veryrge pool of mana. That would exin his shadow sack ability and why he could chuck just about anything into it. Chucking things into the shadow realm and only opening it to retrieve the items when he wanted has a shorter portal summoning time than travelling through the shadow realm to teleport. The portal gates for teleportation remained open until the spellcaster emerged from the shadow realm to close it. Time flow within the shadow realm was slower than the material ne, and Rino learned that by keeping the portal closed and only opening when he needed it, he could do many interesting things. Thest category of dark magic manifestation was soul magic. This was slightly simr to how holy magic was a special ability even among light magic users. Only a few dark magicians could use this sub-branch of magic. "Soul magic is the highest tier of dark magic that only the mentally strong may challenge. When a dark magician stares into the abyss, the abyss stares back at them. It isn''t the same as summoning a demon or a mass sacrifice for gue curses. Those are tricks for elementary ults who think they are on the same level as dark magicians who know how to manipte a soul." Kragami knew that Rino had it in him to perform soul magic level spells from their fight earlier. Soul splitting wasmon for those who could summon the undead. Many would use this basic spell to create puppets and spare bodies as a form of insurance. This was nothing new to Rino. However, when Kragami exined that life maniption, curses and advanced summoning rituals were part of the soul magic category, he was interested. "For now, you will practise some basic dark magic spells," Kragami told his eager student with a chuckle at Rino''s obvious disappointment when he refused to borate what an advanced summoning ritual could do. The lich grumbled when Kragami crammed over a hundred basic spells into his head and excused himself for the rest of the day. The necromancer simply wanted to have a look around, and Rino could not stop his teacher. Instead, he summoned Erika over to be his studypanion until the sun went down. Students shouldn''t suffer alone. After all, sharing was caring. Chapter 93 - Swamped (1) The day was spent testing out basic dark magic spells and memorising their chants, with Erika revising her writing and counting. Rino found that time passed quickly with somepany. The sylphs never stopped dropping by to ask for directions regarding the underground tunnel construction. Unfortunately, without dwarves or architects, Rino could only make a basic design. Thankfully, the undead did not need to breathe, so Rino did not need to design any breathing points in his underground tunnels, even if he needed to design some kind of support structure simr to those in the stone quarry mine. The magic web array was seventy percentpleted, and the barn was finished. The gnomes were painting it with the help of fairies who insisted that it was too ugly to be left as it was without colour. Rino did notment on that and hoped they painted it ck. Thedies were treating Kragami very well. Rino was surprised how his teacher somehow got along with the lesser vampire who offered to hunt him something good for the wee feast they decided to throw without Rino''s permission. The lich simply pretended not to know what they were doing. It was better to keep the necromancer preupied while Rino returned to the swamp for some major reconstructing. For once, Rino did not dislike what Fowler was doing. He wanted his paper factory and he hoped his dark magic teacher would not be too mad at the massive make-over. The fairies were thoroughly briefed on what they had to do, and even the newly recruited faes from the swamp were thrilled to start the reed farming and paper factory construction. Mutt told Rino that the trees from the swamp were a lot sturdier than the hemp nts they normally used for construction. The gnomes also confirmed it, and Rino had a new goal to build a sawmill there. He left lumberjack arrangements to Fronzo, who got another upgrade from the farm manager to the resource production manager who oversaw Rino''s production process. The farm management was left in the hands of three fairy sisters who were Rino''s first customers. They worked withoutints even though World Tree Rino neglected them for the longest time after a huge influx of faes came asking for the soul contract. Needless to say, the newly born fairy sisters evolved into light, water and earth sylphs after the appointment. Even Fronzo made a huge jump in evolution and turned into a fine lesser ghoul who was a lot more expressive than Erika with dirty blonde hair and tan skin, much to Rino''s surprise. He was still scrawny, but he didn''t look too bony now, and Rino felt satisfied knowing that the lesser ghoul was better than a regr zombie. Among all the subordinates who owned names, Rino had to admit that Fronzo was the weakest despite being one of the most likeable individuals. The preciousd should be protected, and thankfully, he had Goblin Lord Gnut for that. The first thing Rino did was tear down the temporary teleportation pad when he arrived. Someone else can clear this mess at ater date, but now, he wanted to shift this portal to the most ideal location in the middle of the swamp by the Cypress Ghost Tree that was his new spare body. The process of tearing the temporary teleportation pad did not take long, and Rino managed to salvage the amber. The lich flew towards the magic tree in the swamp and noticed how filthy the grounds were, littered with dead bodies everywhere. It was unsightly. "Mutt," he summoned. "Gather those bodies into one heap by the temporary teleportation pad site. If they are too far buried into the swamp, leave them for now. This marsh needs some spring cleaning before I move in. Gather some hands to help you if you require. Don''t burn the bodies yet. I want to use themter if they are not too badly damaged." Obeying his master''smands, the sabre tooth alpha wolf dashed away into the shadows to do Rino''s biddings. Thousands of zombie bodies littered all over the swamp, and cleaning the mess will take some time. Meanwhile, Rino found his magic tree and used earth magic to establish a temporary tform while evening the ground for building new propertiester. The new teleportation pad was established and connected quickly before Rino returned to the farm. Now that there was an easy ess route to the swamp, Rino had a few things in mind. Firstly, he wanted the fairies to start a reed farm. Then, he needed to create a paper production factory. Lastly, he wanted a sawmill for processing wood and cutting trees for construction. He owed his teacher a new house as a token of appreciation after destroying his original hut. With experience building the farmhouse, Rino assigned these tasks to his minions. Fronzo was very efficient in gathering a team fornd clearing. At the same time, Rino almost forgot that he had a fertiliser recipe. Thankfully, Fronzo had been dutifully making fertilisers without him telling the very capable lesser ghoul. The mulch that the goblins collected came in handy, and while the hobgoblins had to carry vats of mana imbued water because of theck of mana infused water supply there, it gave Rino some idea. Heading to the barn. Rino offered as many potatoes as he could without interfering with the number of potatoes the farm needed fornd expansion. Then, he looked at the offering reward shop and hit purchase for that one flower he thought he would never buy. === Item: Water Bell Flower Cost: 1 GF Qty: 100 seeds Effect: Produces mana charged water. Consumes carcasses once every three days to produce mana charged water. === He did not really need that many GF credits, but more was better than less if a hundred seeds were not enough to convert the entire swamp area near the magic cypress into a magically charged pond. Rino needed fast production with his rapidly expanding empire, so he did not consider this a waste of investment, even if the cost of raising these flowers were high. Besides, that was what those zombie corpses were for, right? Waste not, want not. Chapter 94 - Swamped (2) Renovating the swamp wasn''t easy. Even when the best gnomes and hobgoblins were gathered at the magic cypress tree, they could not make quick progress. After scouting the terrain, the gnomes and Rino agreed that levelling the entire swamp was too difficult and counter useful. Filling the swamp with artificial tforms would hinder the ecosystem too much, and the least they could do was make bridges and docks for boats to arrive at the stations they needed. There was a lovely spot for chopping trees that Rino marked out as a tree farm. He wanted to build the sawmill a little further from that plot ofnd, extended towards the water because it was easier to create a section for wood treatment tanks in the pond than onnd. The gnomes said they would prepare some new wood using the cypress trees in the swamp, and Rino told them to proceed while he figured out how to nt his hundred Water Bell Flowers in the pond within the cypress tree radius. The fairies apanying Rino were the three newly promoted farm manager sisters. Rino had no clue about nting these flowers and handed them the bag of seeds while manually testing if the water in this stale swamp could be purified and transformed into mana imbued water for tree nting. The short answer after two hours of rigorous testing was yes. The long answer after his trial and errors was that it would be a very long project that required the help of elemental sylphs and the magic cypress tree. Rino needed another mana web array in the swamp territory to support the design he had in mind. The sawmill, docks, lights, reed farm, paper factory and even mana water producing flowers relied heavily on mana production. Not to mention, Rino wanted to feed those starved wisps in the area into bing capable helpers. One could never have too many free ves. The Water Bell Flowers bloomed quickly with the nature magic boost, and soon, the entire swamp was covered with those flowers. Rino bought two more seed packets to thoroughly cover the area, watching the flowers do their work, filling the area with mana imbued water. He called Mutt over to help distribute corpses to the three hundred flowers. It would be too gory to dump whole carcasses at every flower''s nting spot. Hence, Rino ordered the hunters to help the distributors by cutting the zombie corpses into smaller pieces no bigger than a rock he found by the murky waters as a gauge. The rock was the size of Rino''s palm, and Mutt took it upon himself to inspect every chunk of rotting flesh before giving the hobgoblin deliverers the green light to distribute the flesh. At least the flower issue was resolved for now. They had spare corpses lying around, and Rino refused to deliberately kill more living creatures every three days to sacrifice them to the Water Bell Flowers. Thankfully, there was another alternative, but that would include the mana web array. Rino tested it with one flower that absorbed dark magic like a hungry infant. The output of this particr flower was faster than its peers, giving Rino the idea of borrowing a simr magic circle that he used for the World Tree on the cypress tree. Only this time, he wasn''t creating a new magic tree. He simply used the existing magic tree with its own connection of faes and wisps to power the mana conversion circle to power the Water Bell Flowers after the zombie corpse bank was depleted. Rino checked on the reeds in the area, and the fairies working on a small patch were starting to witness miraculous results using Fronzo''s premade fertiliser. "My king, where should we nt the reeds?" the fairies asked. Rino looked around the swamp and stroked his jawline in thought. There were reeds everywhere, but reeds do not grow well in clusters. The best ce to row it would be near a paper factory, but Rino was having a hard time deciding on a good paper factory spot. It should not be too far from the magic tree but not too close that it would disrupt the tree farm or his teacher''s cottage. "Leave it for now," he told them. "Help the gnomes process the wood. We need to start making the docks for the sawmill and alighting tform near the magic cypress." Fluttering away to get things done, the fairies coordinated the job segregation among themselves as Rino scouted for a good location within the radius of his three hundred flowers. These mana water producing flowers were absolutely everywhere, and Rino looked up. If only he could build something up in the trees like how birds build their nests. Then, the lich paused. Who said that a house must be built onnd? Rino looked at the cypress tree and made his decision. This was where his teacher''s house was going to be. It was a prime location with a great view of the entire swamp territory. Not to mention, it was easy to connect the mana web array to the cypress tree with a magician monitoring it. He needed a reliable manager in the swamp, and there really wasn''t anyone more capable than the long-time resident of these swamps. Kragami should have nothing toin about, and Rino decided that the necromancer should build his own house without any assistance from Rino''s shadow army if he hated it. "Alright," he grinned. It was finally time to decide on a good spot for the reed farm and paper factory. All around the magic cypress tree were murky water. The fastest way to grow nts was using man imbued water, nature magic and Fronzo''s fertiliser. In that case, Rino decided that the reeds should be nted near the Water Bell Flowers. He wouldmission a reed collection boat to be built when he returned in the morning so that the hobgoblins or farmers could collectrge batches of ready reeds for the paper factory to process. Speaking of a paper factory, Rino liked the sight of that slightly raised isle on the opposite end of the sawmill and tree farm. Making paper was easy, and with the fairies'' magic, Rino expected hundreds of sheets to be made in a day. With his ns moving forward, Rino checked on the gnomes'' progress and helped out wherever possible so that the hobgoblins could start with the manualbour work, building the dock and building foundation. Chapter 95 - Swamped (3) Up above, a certain goddess stretched and yawned. She was stuck managing the new influx of souls waiting for reincarnation after Rino defeated Kragami. Most of the souls that escaped bing a zombie for eternity rushed for reincarnation. Thankfully, there was an abundance of new bodies among humans thanks to the flood of potatoes they received from the offering system. "I saw that he made some purchases. How rare," she smirked and looked at Phil, who was monitoring the reflecting pond. "What did he buy?" The calm god pointed at the little blue flowers in the swamp that Rino was renovating. Stephanie raised a brow. She knew that those flowers were ced in the shop by Phil, but she did not think Rino would buy them becauseparing these mana flowers to the potato trade-in, there really was no real use for them. Yet, here Rino was, insisting that every flower had a piece of zombie flesh. No wonder the souls jumped at reincarnation! They had nowhere to return to or remain now that they were free from the necromancer''s grasp. They watched how the lich pitched in to help wherever his subordinates needed the most. The wood nks treatment went smoothly after Rino sliced the trees with his precise shadow cutter magic. Then, he used his shadow whip to distribute the cut chunks of meat to every Water Bell Flower within the area. No matter how the goddess tried to view it, she could only think of it as ridiculous. Weren''t those basic dark magic spells? Why was Rino deliberately finding a use for basic dark magic spells that were better off forbat? Teleporting was a better skill than shadow skiing, but Rino was trying to dip only his feet into the shadow realm to ski across the water surface like some kind of unholy boat. In her opinion, he was fooling around too much. For Rino, he was having the time of his life, discovering new uses for basic dark magic spells that his teacher told him to memorise. As a student, Rino was always a more hands-on learner. He remembered best by applying the concepts he learned. This was the perfect opportunity to test his mastery over dark magic. Seeing that the fairies needed help carrying the treated wooden nks over to the small isle that Rino designated for his paper factory, he opened a short portal to toss the nks in and skied over to the isle to open the portal for the nks to fall out on. Renovating works never seemed this much fun, and even Phil was slightly envious at how many ways Rino was discovering to simplify taxing tasks. By the time dawn rolled by, the swamp was semi-functional. Rino dismissed the tired fairies and gnomes while sending the hobgoblins back to the farm to assist with tunnel digging. He sent Mutt back to inform the day shift gnomes that he wanted a boatmissioned for harvesting reeds and distributing fertiliser. Then, the lich took it upon himself to head over to the kiln to ce an order for cement mix materials. As he was building a treehouse, it would not be possible to build it out of bricks. That would be too heavy. Instead, Rino decided to use enchantment magic to strengthen the house and regte the temperature. He would also create a sound barrieryer so that the works outside of the treehouse would not disturb his teacher. The necromancer was a researcher too. Rino designated another smaller hut built separately from the main treehouse for researching and studying purposes. He had all his materials, and now, Rino looked at the huge magic cypress tree. Construction works progressed smoothly in the swamp even if the sun was up. Rino had to admit, it was easier to work in the gloomy marsh during the day than in the farms. The sun was blocked by the thick foliage above, and even if the sunlight filtered through their leaves, the weakening effect was not as horrible. Rino constructed the treehouse with care, much to Phil''s pride when he saw how much Rino''s architecture and building skills improved. Thendscaping god was very proud of their chosen saviour, but Stephanie scowled. Not wanting to remain by the reflecting pond any longer, she went to find her brother toin about Rino''s off-track activities. Ark discussed some strategies with Phil when his sister barged into the office with a huge scowl on her face. The expression only darkened when she saw Ace. The God in charge of listening to prayers had too much free time while she worked her butt off and their obvious favouritism for Rino put Stephanie in a bad mood. "How can I help you?" Ark started, trying to be diplomatic as tension escted. Whenever these two were in the same area, he had to y the mediator to avoid any team conflicts. It was tiring, but Ark was used to it. Ace and Stephanie''s views were pr opposites. It was only natural that they would sh. However, as the leader of this project team, Ark was responsible for hearing everyone out and finding the best solution based on results. He had to be unbiased and impartial when taking in suggestions. "Rino''s doing something out of the quest guide again!" sheined. Ark sighed, and Ace rolled his eyes. "Is there a problem that hepleted his daily quest faster than the stipted time? I don''t see anything wrong with what he is doing. In fact, he''s value-adding to what we never asked him to do. Working more is always better than working less." Ace''s curt reply made Stephanie turn red in anger and embarrassment. She never got along with the obnoxious ''genius'' god and hated how he found fault with her every time. However, she did not snap back this time. Instead, she looked her brother in the eye. "Why aren''t we giving him more side quests then? Must the side quest be given together with the daily quest? He''s wasting time building treehouses for birds in the swamp!" Ark highly doubted that his sister meant what she said. However, he still followed her to the reflecting pond to see if Rino was truly building treehouses for birds in the swamp. When they arrived, Rino was hammering the wood for the treehouse''s tform base together and pping cement mix to hold the structure. However, it looked a little too spacious for birds to live in. If anything, it looked like a vacation home for Rino. "What is he doing?" Ace asked Phil, who grinned. "A groundbreaking architecture to savendscape in the marsnd. You were all busy, so you missed the battle between Rino and the swamp necromancer. This is a house for the swamp necromancer, who is now Rino''s dark magic teacher. As you can see, he is practising basic dark magic spells that his teacher taught him yesterday." All four gods stared at Rino, who was now a master at manipting shadows and abusing portals to construct the strange house. Two pairs of eyes bore into the back of Stephanie''s head, but the goddess refused to apologise. If anything, she continued to insist that Rino should be given a side quest to ''stop cking'' despite how hard the lich was working on the treehouse. In the end, nobody entertained theining goddess. Stephanie huffed and stomped back to her office to deal with more reincarnation requests in anger that once more, nobody paid her any attention. Ark closed his eyes. It was just another regr day in heaven. Honestly, he was tempted to ask for a department transfer to hell if he had to deal with this for the whole time until RIno built his kingdom. It simply wasn''t worth the death of his many brain cells. Chapter 96 - Paper Paradise With the gnomes'' help, Rino was finally able to start his reed farming. Although the paper factory building was not built and the plot or the sawmill was still just an empty dock, Rino gathered the fairies for the night shift. He spent the whole day building the treehouse, and now, it is finallypleted. Dark magic was convenient, and Rino did not know how he survived this long without knowing its joys. Using gravity maniption, Rino tossed nks after nks into his shadow sack effortlessly to carry up to the cypress tree. In fact, he did none of the nkying or cement pping with his two bony hands. Everything was done purely using shadow tendrils, and the process was sped up with other elemental magic. Rino was proud to be a one-man factory capable of doing just about anything in the process line. If there was a spot that needed filling, RIno could jump in and continue the fallen fairy''s task if required. Now, it was finally time to teach these young ones the true art of paper manufacturing. For a magician, papers and books were like food. It was a necessity even if it was considered a luxury formoners and something optional for nobles. Grabbing a bunch of harvested reeds, Rino told them to listen up, and he grabbed an enchanted y knife. "First, cut the stem open until the inner stalk is left. The rest of the nts can go to the Water Bell Flowers. I don''t know if they consume nt carcasses because it would feel like cannibalism but try anyway. If they don''t eat dead nt bodies, toss them to thepost pile at the farm." The fairies nodded, and Rino sliced the thick inner stem into thin sheets with great precision. One reed stalk made fifteen strips, and Rino emphasised that the strips should be cut with even thickness. "If it is too thin, the strips will break when it is woven and dried. Keep it consistent around this thickness, the height of the edge of this knife but no higher than that." Rino peeled another reed stem to demonstrate the even width. This time, he only cut twelve strips from the inner stem, but when all the strips were ced side by side, they formed a uniform height, impressing the audience. Next, Rino took a y basin and filled it with water using water magic. He threw the reed strips into the water and told the fairies to let it soak. "Normally, it will take three days. However, with dark magic and some time eleration, it can be done in no time at all." This time, it was the goblin shaman who demonstrated the soaking process. In less than a minute, the firm nt fibre strips turned wriggly and soft when Rino scooped them out. The flexible nt fibre strips were pressed dry so that they no longer dripped but were still slightly damp. Some fairies wondered why their king wasn''t using fire magic to heat them fully dry, but they soon got their answer when Rino left them on a rock surface he cut into a t tabletop for demonstration purposes. "Weave them into a rectangr shape like this. All the strips should be about the same length, so weave them alternatively with approximately fifteen strips vertically and twenty strips horizontally. There might be excess ends, but it doesn''t matter." As Rino did not have enough strips to demonstrate the full size of paper sheets, he cut the damp fibre sheets in half and wove a smaller rectangle. Once done, Rino pressed the sheet with the sliced upper half of the rock and used heat magic to dry the woven sheet in between the two rock faces. When he was done, the upper half of the sliced rock was removed carefully without dragging the fragile pressed sheet. Amazed that the nt fibres no longer seem like separate strips woven into one rectangr shape, the fairies pped. The nt fibres looked like they were grown together into a white rectangr piece of paper, and Rino trimmed the edges using shadow slicer magic. The little pressed sheet of reed fibre strips amazed the fairies so much, and Rino told them that he expected hundreds of these sheets to be produced once the paper factory was up. "We need more reeds than what is currently avable in the swamp. However, there aren''t enough hands to assist around this area with the potato field expanding." Hearing that their king was shorthanded once again, the fairies tried to think of a solution. Everyone had a task already, and even with Erika''s efficientbour management, only a handful of them could help with this new reed farm. The newly contracted faes were still learning the ropes at the potato farm. It was a crucial period for everyone. Rino had to admit, his empire was expanding a little too quickly. However, he had a solution for this. Once the mana web array was established on his farm, Rino could pull some farmers over to help with reed farming. Besides, there wasn''t too much sun during the day in the swamp. Some of the tunnel and shelter way construction hands coulde over to manage the production here by shifts. Rino shared his n with the sylphs and gnomes present for the meeting, and nobody objected. "Let''s work hard to produce wood and paper next. The farm project was a resounding sess. I have faith that you can make this new swamp territory as sessful as the farm." Rino praised himself silently for giving such a sappy appreciation speech. Thankfully, his subordinates loved it, and the reaction was genuinely hyped for the new project. If they pulled faces or filled it with awkward silence, Rino might have to kill them all or wipe their memories to save his pride. Dismissing the group so that he could concentrate on setting up theplex mana web array for the swamp territory, Rino wondered why the gods were not sending him any side quests yet. It was alreadying to the dawn of the fourth day, but the system was silent apart from Rino''s daily renewable quest. He constantly bought his sleep reward and turned in whatever potatoes Fronzo set aside for him in the granary. Rino had forty-eight hours worth of sleep hours, but he had too many things to do before the new daily quest appeared. Not knowing what it was made Rino nervous. Could he finish his swamp project and paper paradise before his hellish quest marathon resumed? Chapter 97 - Crafting Manager Stress was anyone''s worst enemy, and Rino admitted that he had terrible stress management skills. In his previous world, even the king refused to talk to Rino when the messenger informed him that the ex court magician was in one of those dark ages. The magician tower will be dered as a temporary state disaster zone. Nobody was allowed in a two hundred kilometre radius, and many adventurers were employed on patrol duty to ensure that no unsolicited visitors entered the magician tower. Apart from magicians who lived in the tower, contact with the outside world was forbidden when Rino was stressed. The magician council insisted on this after the first time Rino experienced a mental meltdown. Thinking about it, the incident felt so long ago, even if it was something that happened only two decades back. Rino was working on a new theory. He was so close to finding the breakthrough he needed to prove the theory of mana acting like a dust particle. However, thatst push he needed just never came. In a moment of pent up stress and anger, Rino did not know what he did. After recovering his sanity, Rino found himself standing thousands of kilometres away from where his room was. The massacre around him was unpleasant, and Rino wondered what prompted him to take his anger out on a swarm of deadly gue crawlers. He was at the very edge of the empire, and when the patrolling border guards found him, they sent an emergency back to the kingdom for S-ss knights to be sent as reinforcements. Overnight, Rino was mistaken as the gue lord born from gue crawlers. He was put under quarantine for a month and given meticulous mental health care under the watchful eyes of his previous teachers. The magician tower was assigned to ensure that Rino never hits that kind of mental meltdown ever again after discovering Rino had no recollection of what he did. The level of destruction caused by one man due to stress terrified the king so much that thew was passed quickly, ssifying their court magician''s state of mind as a national emergency when Rino started showing signs. They weren''t wrong about it. However, Rino hated how they kept his stress in constant check just because they needed him to work more. His feelings don''t matter, and Rino felt like some kind of expensive machine that was made to work constantly without a break or a breakdown. Thankfully, that horrible world was no more. Now, he was stressing a little more than he was allowed to in the previous world because of anticipation. His minions might not mind seeing their king ck off. In fact, his shadow army were pro party supporters. When it came to rxing, Rino could seek advice from the fairies who knew the best way to enjoy a hot spring, host a feast or just kick back for two hours while watching potatoes grow. It wasn''t a bad kind of feeling. Rino wasn''t close to wanting suicide or world destruction. However, it kept him on his toes, trying to anticipate and counter whatever those shitty gods wanted to toss his way. He did not know who the god or gods were, but Rino had a feeling there were at least two. How else could he exin their mixed motives and methods? Rino had little issues with the quest assigner now simply because the deadline was reasonable. The tutorial exnation was also well put together for his understanding, although the information was better for his crafter faes to follow than for him. Rino hardly did anything by himself now apart from the foundation work like setting up the mana web array in the swamp now. As Rinoid his swamp mana web array, he recalled that there was still someone he forgot to appoint. Back then, he was too preupied with wanting to eat that toad leg stew, so he shelved it. Now, he could not help but feel that it was important. That''s right! Rino wanted to p himself when he recalled who he forgot to appoint. Crafting was the most important sector for his kingdom development once he started expanding the territories aggressively. Taking over the swamp was just the first step for his conquest. Rino felt like a moron for not remembering this earlier. It was evening now, and Rino looked at his work. The treehouse waspleted, his first boat was delivered, and the mana web array was finalised. The best part about working in the swamp was how it did not feel tiring. Rino was still full of vigour, but he was stillzy even after hooking the teleportation pad''s mana power to the web array linked to the Cypress Ghost Tree. Hence, there was only one solution. "Mutt!" The dutiful sabre tooth alpha wolf materialised and bowed. He shrank his size to take up less space in his master''s newly built treehouse. "Summon the gnomes and brownies here for me," Rino told the overgrown dog and watched as Mutt wagged its tail before disappearing in the shadows to do his bidding. The eight gnomes who were about to change shift arrived with the brownie siblings on Mutt''s back. Rino felt slightly sorry for them when he saw their trembling bodies and traumatised faces. Mutt must have travelled too quickly with the little faes clinging onto the shadow fur on his back while the overgrown dog sprinted. Mutt looked like he was expecting praise for delivering the crafters in record time, but Rino only bopped his head in reprimand. "Look at these terrified creatures," Rino chastised, and Mutt''s ears drooped. "Treat weakerrades with more consideration. Not everyone is as strong as you." Hearing that his master thought of him as strong, Mutt felt a conflicted sense of pride and duty. He might not be praised this time for a job well done, but he wasn''t too depressed. Knowing that his master acknowledged his strength made the wolf in him proud. The high expectation motivated him, and Mutt howled in response before bowing his head low and thanking Rino for the lesson. The lich blinked invisibly at his hound''s reaction. Was Mutt a masochist? He looked somewhat happy even after getting scolded. Whatever. Rino never imed to understand dogs very well. "Tonight, I will appoint a crafting manager. This person will manage all crafting projects and meet the production demands from all over the kingdom as it expands. I want to ask all my crafters to nominate someone fit for the position." Rino''s abrupt and direct request stumped the ten little crafters as they looked at each other, unsure if they should nominate themselves or each other. The lich simply waited and dismissed his shadow hound. This will be interesting. Chapter 98 - Pushing Responsibilities Unsurprisingly, the little sabotage games started the moment someone decided that the cons outweigh the pros. Of course, nobody wanted more responsibilities and less hot spring time. The brownie siblings quickly declined, passing this baton to the gnomes to decide who they wanted to nominate among themselves. "Brownies only know how to stitch," they imed. "Crafting is a wide skill that we aren''t very good at." Rino listened to the polite arguments between the eight gnomes who split themselves into day and night teams. "The night team spends more time on maintenance work. I think that the crafting manager shoulde from someone in the day team." One bearded gnome from the day team imed that they were on rotation for the day and night teams to counter that statement. Hearing that, the gnomes quickly agreed that the representative should not be chosen based on the current rotation. For some reason, Rino was listening to the private evaluation of each crafting member, from what projects they undertook to how many hoes they crafted. "The boat crafted in the afternoon was done by you," one gnome pointed at his friend. "I think you should be the crafting manager. To counter the merit he just received, the gnome pretended to sigh and apologise while refuting the credit. "However, it was you who came up with the boat''s design. My initial t base strategy did not work. Not to mention, didn''t someone else propose waterproof coating to prevent wood rot?" The argument surrounding the reed collecting boat went in circles. Everyone pointed fingers at who did what, from material processing, design to finishing touches. Nobody wanted to take credit, too afraid of bing the crafting manager. For a while, it was amusing to Rino. As a busy ruler, Rino hardly had time to get to know his minions individually. He only chose people based on their capabilities and by first impressions, like how he liked Fronzo more than Fowler initially. Even Erika was appointed after talking to several women once. He did not bother to understand the individual named Erika and felt no need to do so as long as the job was done properly. Every gnome and brownie had a unique personality, but for Rino, he was looking at eight different pawns to use. All he heard so far was the skills these crafters had to offer. Honestly, the crafting manager need not have good crafting skills. They needed good management skills to ensure that every worker had the tools they needed to do their jobs. Rino mentally streamlined the crafting manager''s duties into three categories. The most important duty was production management. The manager was in charge of creating production schedules and monitoring the production workers to meet the deadlines. If they were behind the deadline, it was the crafting manager''s responsibility to create measures to meet the production requirements. The second duty was to help Rino create new items based on his system''s tutorials or brainstorm better systems with the lich. As an inventor, Rino enjoyed this process the most, so it would be nice to talk to someone with a curiosity that matched his own. Inquisitive minds and creative ideas made Rino open up quickly. He got along well with people who did not hesitate to speak their minds regardless of status. When in theb, every brain was equal unless they were stupid. Then again, Rino would never allow an idiot to participate in meetings that involved the kingdom''s welfare. Thest duty for his ideal crafting manager was generally a personality trait. Unlike Mutt, Erika and Rino, the crafting manager must be someone like Fronzo and Gnut who could talk to people effectively and had a high tolerance of idiots. Rino had to admit, the crafting manager''s job fulfilment criteria were stringent. Unlike appointing a hunting squadmander, the crafting manager would work directly with Rino for projects. In some ways, the crafting manager had authorities almost on par with Erika''s. This individual was someone Rino had to rely on a lot, and looking at these crafters, he narrowed his focus to two promising candidates. The brownie siblings were out of the question. They did not have the patience in dealing with people and were onlyfortable doing what they did best. Rino did not dislike such personalities. However, they would not make good managers. He decided to leave them where they would be their happiest. If there was a tanning workshop in the future, Rino would seek their expertise again to work with leather products. The two gnomes Rino liked wereplete opposites in their views and personalities. One of the gnomes had a fiery personality and gathered others under his thumb as he defended fiercely. The other gnome that Rino was interested in had a deep and pensive look in his eyes as he listened and observed. Whenever he spoke, he was full of calmness and did not like to waste many words getting his point across. Either gnome would fit the position like a glove, and Rino was torn. He couldn''t decide. It was best if both candidates could be his crafting managers, but Rino knew from experience how putting two queen bees in one hive would not make the bees more productive. If anything, the queens would constantly try to kill each other, resulting in a messy hive and inefficient production. Then, an idea struck him. Like how two teams were working, Rino now had a new territory with many new positions that required filling. The quieter gnome would get along better with his magic teacher. That way, both gnomes can be part of his kingdom development team, and if one gnome starts to prove to be a pain, he can simply rece him with the other crafting manager. A little rivalry never hurt, and Rino had high expectations from two very capable gnomes with very different methods. "I''ve decided," he told the gnomes who were starting to show a little less professionalism now. "You," he pointed to the charismatic gnome who puffed his cheeks in anger at the other gnomes who used him of crazy ideas. "From today onwards, you are Griffith, the Crafting Manager of Spudville. Serve me well. Your direct reporting manager is Fronzo, the production manager, but you will also work with Erika and Baron Goblin Lord Gnut of Noir Province." He just made the names up, but nobody questioned the bizarre naming sense. The gnome, newly named Griffith, bowed and epted his fate. Behind him, the other crafting faes tried not to appear too delighted should Rino changed his mind. The naming ceremony made the gnome evolve into a pygmy dwarf. His fiery personality materialised into red hair and beard even if everything else remained unchanged about his features. He was a third the height of a regr dwarf but almost twice as tall as his gnomerades. Spuville was the territory dedicated to the mana web array World Tree Rino controlled. The poption density there was enormous, so Rino needed someone more outspoken to manage things there. He turned to the more pensive gnome and pointed at him. "You will be called Aiden. Henceforth, you are also a crafting manager, but you will be responsible for Cypress County''s crafting needs. Your direct reporting manager is the Mayor of this county, Kragami, my teacher. You will also work with Erika and Baron Goblin Lord Gnut of Noir Province." Naming the other gnome as a crafting manager, Rino watched him transform into a pygmy dwarf. His calm personality materialised into turquoise hair and beard while his other features remained unchanged. Although faint, the lich sensed a small affinity with fire magic in Griffith and affinity with water magic in Aiden. Two was better than one, and Rino dismissed the crafters after assigning them their teams for future projects. Satisfied that he had capable individuals working under him, Rino decided to call it a night and return to the farmhouse. He had a daily quest to prepare for. Chapter 99 - Penmanship Practice Rino returned to the farmhouse and saw his magic teacher huddled over the small kitchen countertop with a little y cup and some linen cloth. "What are you doing?" There was a sharp smell in the air that Rino was unfamiliar with. "Your food was insipid. Apart from the natural forest herbs, there wasn''t anything else. I''m just experimenting with some vour enhancing ingredients. At the same time, I thought you might appreciate some ink to apany the paper production house you''re making." The vour enhancing ingredient turned out to be vinegar. From his knowledge, it takes a long time to create vinegar because vinegar was the end product of the long fermentation process. Most people only made vinegar out of wine in his previous world only when the wine or beer was left out for too long. He spent a day away putting his newly learned dark magic to use, but Kragami already fitted right in with the crowd. "Who told you about it?" Rino nced over the necromancer''s shoulder. No wonder he was able to create vinegar in just a few hours! Living as a necromancer in a dreary swamp gave Kragami the knowledge he needed about dposition. Fermentation was a process simr to that. His teacher was using dark magic to create a time eleration chamber that Rino wanted to learn. Imagine using that time eleration chamber to finish his daily quests with extra time to ck and nap! Kragami did not answer Rino immediately. If anything, he was utterly focused on the task. Rino watched the yellowish liquid bubble and change in colour as the smell became stronger. The liquid sample looked like beer in a y cup, but Rino did not remember having anything that made beer. "What is this? I don''t recall seeing any brewery in the area for beer." Kragami smirked. "You have plenty of it lying around in your granary. Fronzo said I could have as many as I wanted, so I took one to make some beer. It tasted strange, but Fowler liked it. It''s not difficult to get that lesser vampire talking when he gets drunk. The rest of it, I''m making an experimental batch of vinegar for ink." That would exin a lot. Rino made a mental note to forbid drinking. At the very least, those on duty shouldn''t drink. It would be terrible to see many of his subordinates act like Fowler if they drank and sold the empire''s secrets. The vinegar waspleted, and Rino saw how his magic teacher poured the liquid into a little ss bottle. Rino did not remember having the expertise to create ss yet, and while the ss bottle was clumsily crafted, it was very useful for storing spices. The vinegar bottle was sealed and set aside with the other seasoning ss bottles on the shelf that Rino made. It was finally out to good use, but Rino could not help but wonder what those seasonings were. "That''s salt. I cannot believe you did not have salt! Humans need salt to survive, and while the majority of the people here don''t need this stuff, it''s a different story for those who are still alive." It turned out that the food Rino thought was tasty was still consideredcking to Kragami. Even thedies who cooked had a lot to learn from this fussy old magician. Noir would get along with his teacher. Rino was sure of it. "Did you practise the basic spells?" Kragami asked as he walked out to admire the magical night scenery of wisps and undead working in the fields. Rino nodded. "Would you like to take a short trip to see the renovations in the swamp?" Kragami chuckled. He knew that Rino was busy, so he did not bother the lich. Fowler was greatpany, even if he was slightly dumb with a mountain of useless pride. If Fowler did not offer to help him hunt a bird for his quill, Kragami would have left the hunter''spany a lot sooner to check on his student. Rino''s ambition to make paper only told Kragami that his student had to be some kind of schr before bing a lich. In this world, only schrs and cartographers liked papers. For everyone else, that thing is a uselessmodity that does nothing. Most folks don''t read, and even magicians use parchments because it was cheaper and more easily avable. With his teacher leading the way, Rino did not know why they were here at the kiln. The hardworking fire pixie that Rino recognised as that determined wisp greeted them enthusiastically. "Hello again," Kragami smiled. "Do you have what I asked for earlier?" The pixie blushed, and Rino could not help but feel that something was up between this young fae and old necromancer. However, he didn''t care. It was none of his business, and neither was it hindering his goals. The fire pixie handed over a ss bottle full of wood ash and quickly fluttered away. Kragami smiled, and Rino regretted making his teacher appear younger. He wasn''t young butpared to the haggard elderly man from their first meeting, this version of the necromancer could be called a dignified silver gentleman. With his bottle of wood ash, Kragami returned to the farmhouse. Rino had absolutely no clue what his teacher was going to do. Didn''t he say he was going to make ink? In Rino''s previous world, ink was made from leftover tea leaves. Kragami worked quickly, mixing the wood ash with some water he helped himself to from Rino''s sink. The clumpy mixture looked iffy and was nothing like ink until it smoothened into a thick ck consistency. Rino swiped it with a finger and noticed how perfect it was. Unlike ink in his previous world that dripped everywhere if he wasn''t careful, this ink resembled paste but was also smooth enough to write with. "It''s not done yet," the necromancer said and retrieved the bottle of newly made vinegar from the shelf, adding a single drop to the mix before stirring it well with the spoon covered in ck gooey mix. Then, more water was added to make the ink a little less sticky so that he could transfer it into the ss bottle that previously contained the wood ash. Rino watched his teacher sealing it and nodded. "It''s done?" Kragami smirked. "The ink is. Your lesson isn''t. We''re learning how to draw rune symbols today." No wonder this necromancer went all the way out to make these strange things! Rino should have seen thising. Kragami only did this so that he could give Rino homework. Now, he looked at the stack of wooden chips and back at Kragami. His teacher only shrugged. "It can''t be helped. You don''t have blood, so writing in ink was the best alternative I could think of." Rino shuddered a little when he heard that. Was Kragami going to make him use blood to write rune symbols if he had some? Unbeknown to Rino, the necromancer chuckled. The lich was sometimes gullible. Of course, nobody wrote using blood unless it was for a sacrifice. Even so, they would use the blood of a dead animal. Rino could be funny sometimes. Chapter 100 - Bigger Kragami spent less time with Rino in the farmhouse. Compared to the gloomy lich who preferred staying indoors, Kragami was quite the outgoing person. It might be due to theck of intelligentpany or many decades in the marsh that made him crave conversation. Rino did not stop his magic teacher from going where he wished. He even offered his teacher a tour guide in the form of a shy fire pixie. Kragami was also rather surprised that he was now the mayor of Cypress County, which was still a work in progress project. Giving the necromancer an excuse that he was busy practising dark magic and unable to manage such a huge territory, Rino handed all the responsibilities of managing the swamp to the original owner. Needless to say, that was the first ce Kragami explored. He wasn''t sure what a mana web array was, but Rino told him the Cypress Ghost Tree will manage that. All his teacher had to do was start furnishing his treehouse and research hut. The rest would be taken care of by his newly appointed crafting manager Aiden. The blue-haired pygmy dwarf was very helpful, and Kragami got along well with his first assigned intelligent subordinate even though Aiden technically pledged loyalties to Rino. The swamp looked very different with so muchndscaping effort. Those blue water bell flowers lining the edges of the swamp river banks created a very pretty contrast against the dull brown and mossy green. The water looked less muddy as if they had been purified, but Aiden quickly exined to the mayor that it was water with mana imbued in them. This was important for helping the cypress tree farm and reed farm grow faster. Looking at his student''s mana web array, Kragami felt slightly inferior. It was a very different kind of magic. Despite Rino''sck of basic knowledge about dark magic, his control in magic and mana maniption ability were many tiers above Kragami''s. Rino''s ability to create and maintain such aplex array went beyond Kragami''s imagination. Even among magicians, Rino had to be a grandmaster or sage. No wonder he was able to be a lich at such a young age! The student would soon surpass the master. Back in the farmhouse, Rino left everything in the hands of his trusty subordinates. Now that a system for work was in ce, Rino felt a huge load off his shoulder. It was time to focus on learning the writingnguage of this world. Rino was working on a tricky rune character when the system notification made him drop the quill pen. Ink sttered everywhere, and Rino could only thank himself for the ck dye he insisted on for clothes. At least it wasn''t obvious now that he had ck ink stters on them. Still, he would clean itter. Ping! === Side Quest #14 [Chain Quest] Objective: Shoot 10 arrows daily for a week 0/7 Days Reward: Basic Archery Skills === Rino read it twice to check if he misread it after confusing thenguages he was learning. Nope, he did not misread his new side quest. It was a chain quest in the side quest with an extremely unappealing reward. Didn''t the gods know how useless archery was for magicians? Rino could shoot fireballs faster than an archer could nock his bow. Still, this side quest gave Rino a rather good idea about what the gods wanted him to do. After that hunting quest, this much should be obvious. The only thing that annoyed Rino was how he had to be the one firing those ten arrows daily now to clear this quest. Thankfully, it wasn''t something renewable like creating farming tools. In any case, it was time to make a bow and some arrows or gather the materials needed to craft them. "Fowler," Rino summoned. He had no idea what the hunting squadmander was doing before he summoned the lesser vampire but Fowler was in a state of undress too vulgar for the lich''s taste that he momentarily considered making Fowler a skeleton again. "M-my lord!" the hunter stammered as he covered his exposed lower half, wondering if he should still kneel to greet the lich. Rino only stared at the lesser vampire, who appeared to be having some adult fun before he was summoned. Fowler averted his gaze as Rino scrutinised him with hollow eye sockets. His erection withered, and Rino thought that the hunter looked too pathetic despite his superior breed. He hoped that the lesser vampire wasn''t getting frisky with Erika but who was he to judge anyone else''s romance? For Rino, he didn''t know if any undead could reproduce, but he tried not to think about it. Thankfully, Fowler''s state of undress meant that the lesser vampire failed to realise the ink blotch on Rino''s clothes. "Fowler," Rino started with a deadly edge to his voice just to drive fear into this numbskull. "I don''t care who you fool around with, but don''t ever let me see you in such a sorry state. It hurts my eyes." Stammering with fear and embarrassment, Fowler bowed humbly and knelt on one knee to apologise. Rino rolled his non-existent eyes at the crotch shot and took a small peak at the size. It was slightly bigger than what he had when he was alive, so Rino decided to be meaner to this ve. "I have a new task for you and your squad." The archer listened closely, and Rino dered his interest in learning archery. He demanded a bow and ten arrows to be made by tomorrow night and dismissed the eyesore. The hunting team did not have much to do. Rino thought that they should know a thing or two about making traps and bows. The deadline he set was slightly tight, seeing how they did not have any ready materials. In all honesty, it would not be difficult if Fowler was on good terms with the gnomes or goblins. However, the prideful lesser vampire was constantly stepping on everyone''s foot, so now, it was his problem to resolve. If Fowler could not give him the bow and ten arrows he demanded by the deadline, Rino would have all the reason in the world to demote him and rece another more capable hunter from within Fowler''s team to take up the role. Chapter 101 - Archery Abomination Rino did not know much about archery, but he had faith that the hunters would know what they were doing. Hence, he paid little attention to what they did and focussed on his rune writing practice. The small bottle of ink was only enough to finish painting the few hundred nk runes that Kragami dumped on him. Rino wondered if he should make a new batch of ink as day broke. The lich looked at his sleep wallet and decided that he had more than enough GF credits and sleep hours. He should sleep the worst parts of the day to resume whatever he needed to do at night. Besides, it wasn''t as if he could do anything now until the hunters gave him his bow and arrows. With that, Rino cleaned his dirtied pants with the ink spill and made a new batch of ink. The sun was up high in the sky, and Rino was finally done with his minor chores. He could hear the day shift faes working hard at watering his new field. When they caught him at the teleportation pad, the three fairy sisters informed him that the new five acres of the field were ploughed and sowed by the night shift. In a few days, Rino looked forward to mass harvesting potatoes and converting them into GF credits. As for the potato beer, Rino could consider setting up a brewery in Cypress County if Kragami wanted to drink more frequently. Everyone liked beer, and there should be noints about how it tasted. With that, Rino removed his shoes and ced them by the side of his bed. Tucking himself in, Rino hit the yes option to withdraw his daily maximum limit of sleep and stared at his ceiling until everything turned pitch ck. As usual, Rino woke up feeling like some time passed but not by a lot. He sighed and got off the bed. There was no difference in how his body felt, but his mental buff made his mind a lot clearer as it jumped into overdrive, prioritising what Rino needed to do right away even if the lich wanted to indulge in the idleness a little longer. The first thing Rino did was to check the newly ploughed and watered potato fields. The fairies and goblins greeted Rino, who nodded courteously at them. The field was muchrger than what he anticipated. Thankfully, the mana web array that he entrusted the four elemental sylphs with was almostplete. The light and water system was installed in the first field. Rino checked the semi-automated irrigation system in awe at the efficiency. Compared to the potatoes growing in the field without this system, the difference in their growth rate could be seen. The regr fields that his minions managed would need at least three days to a week to be ready for harvesting. However, with the help of this semi-automated system powered by the mana web array, that time was halved, and Rino expected that there would be a full harvest for the first field by tomorrow night even if some of the potato nts looked like they would be ready for picking by morning. The busy lich told a passing fairy to deliver his message to Kragami about opening a potato beer brewery in the swamp under his teacher''s management. Then, he left in search of the archers to check on their progress. As expected, the lesser vampire and his hunter friends knew how to craft bows and arrows even if the arrows appeared to look a little different from how he remembered them in his previous world. The bow was a piece of wood with sinew tied on both ends, making it arch. The wood was not carved very well, and it was obvious from the skill that Fowler did not manage to get the gnomes to help with his task. The arrows weren''t very straight either. Rino could tell that they tried their best to craft the wooden arrow shafts using the hunting knives Rino helped them enchant. Can arrows that weren''t straight fly? Rino was curious to test this out. They had no arrows and were only a long stick that wasn''t entirely straight with a sharpened end. Rino was thankful he had no flesh, or he would be bleeding by now for grabbing the wrong end of the ''arrow''. The bow was not equipped with a rest for the arrow. The ends of the arrows were also not shaped to rest nicely on the sinew string of the bow. Rino never held a bow in his previous life, but attending hunting parties was a must as a noble. He saw how the hired hunters for hunting parties nocked their bows and had a close-up view of the equipment. How did Fowler and his hunter friends wield a bow without an arrow rest and a nock at the end of the arrow? He could understand if these arrow shafts weren''t straight and if they did note with feathers. However, shouldn''t the basic bow have those two other things? Not one to put up with such design failures, Rino tossed the bow and the ground and kicked the quiver of arrows. "This is garbage!" he dered. "How can anyone shoot with this?" Startled, Fowler and his hunter skeleton friends kneeled to beg for forgiveness. "B-but my lord, this is how the archers shoot." Rino raised an invisible brow and pointed at the bow. He doesn''t believe that the archers can shoot anything urately when the bow was this crappily made. Not to mention, those arrows were more crooked than his teeth. The lich doubted that those wooden arrows would hit their targets. "Then show me how it is done. You im to be the best. Surely this bow you use would be able to hit anything I ask you to target." The lesser vampire trembled a little as he picked up the shabby bow and featherless arrow. Rino watched him like a hawk from behind and pointed to a particr tree in the distance. With a target that big, the self-proimed best archer should be able to hit it, right? Fowler swallowed hard and loaded the bow with difficulty as he drew the string. The arrow rested on his finger, and Rino marvelled at how dangerous that looked. Didn''t archers suffer from friction burn if this was how they shot without arrow rests? The arrow flew with a twang, boosted by the taut bowstring, and Rino almost could not believe how the lesser vampire hit the target without difficulty. However, he found it strange that Fowler aimed for the sky rather than straight ahead. The trajectory would send any regr arrows off charts. How did Fowler do it? Amazed, Rino couldn''t find a reason to demote his hunting squadmander. Instead, he asked for a second demonstration. Chapter 102 - Fletching Failure (1) Rino could not even fire ten arrows sessfully. Heck! He was so bad at cing that arrow on the bowstring that the hunters stopped trying to help him after a while. It was close to midnight, and Rino prayed his new daily quest would save him from this embarrassing side quest activity. Ping! Ah, that familiar sound he missed. Rino excused himself for a break and let the hunters take turns with the bow to check what was wrong with it. === Daily Quest #11 Objective: Craft Basic Hunting Tools 0/10 Longbows 0/10 Shortbows 0/300 Arrows 0/20 Quivers Time Limit: 10 Days. Tutorial here. Reward: Basic Fletching Skills Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Ten days?! Rino almost keeled over in shock. The side quest was a week-long, but this bow crafting quest was the longest he had so far. The Gods must be super generous to grant him this luxury. He wondered if it was because of all the potatoes he offered. Were they too busy to bother with him counting the potatoes and distributing them? Either way, this was great news for Rino. He could use the extra time to focus on the other areas that needed his attention before leaving the vige for a new area to set up something else. Rino took the time to read the tutorial. He had no idea if bows and arrows were crafted this way, but the level of proficiency required to fire one arrow was too much for thezy lich. He needed something with minimal effort and high uracy. The tutorial did not help much. Apart from suggesting different wood types, sizes and designs, Rino did not learn anything useful. Sure, the tutorial included optional essories that could help an archer pull a bow better, like a wrist and finger guard, but Rino looked at his bare bones and decided they would be useless. Instead, he wondered if he could replicate what he saw to modify the current bow before producing better bows and arrows toplete the daily quest and distribute it between the hunters and goblin guards. "Fowler," Rino called out after reading through the requirements of the quest again. He would be damned if he entrusted crafting the bows to this fool. Instead, there was a better task more suited for this lesser vampire that Rino wanted. "Yes, my liege?" Rino thought for a while and then wondered how appropriate it was to ask the hunters to gather a fewrge birds or their feathers and sinews. He needed enough for three hundred arrows, and honestly, Rino did not know much about the birds in his territory. Did the forest even have turkeys or geese? "What kind ofrge birds are there in this hunting ground?" For a moment, Fowler did not understand the question. Large something that differed from person to person. Did his king want him to hunt a phoenix or a hawk? Sensing Fowler''s hesitation, Rino rephrased his question to ask for the names of the birds in the forest and swamp that these hunters normally saw. At that, Fowler beamed and listed over twenty bird species that weremon in this area. He wasn''t an expert about the wildlife over at the swamp or forest where king toads were found. However, he knew a few that he saw previously during the huntingpetition. Rino had no idea how the birds that Fowler listed looked like. Maybe they looked different in another world. However, Rino was also confident that there were at least some birds simr to the size of turkeys and geese. He hated to think about what he would do if the hawks and pheasants were hunted to extinction for feathers. Hence, the lich ordered them to trap birds and collect their feathers instead of killing them. He only needed feathers to attach to the arrow ends. As for sinews, killing a few more king toads would not harm the ecosystem. They reproduced way too quickly, and Rino felt no remorse culling the poption. Only this time, they were keeping the sinew for crafting purposes. Fowler obeyed Rino''s instructions and gathered his team to start searching for bird nests. Rino exined that the feathers had to be of somewhat uniform sizes to be attached to the ends of the arrows. The hunters used a twig snapped to the approximate size that Rino wanted, and left swiftly. Remembering that his teacher asked Fowler for help to huntrge birds for a quill pen, Rino asked Fronzo if he knew where the other feathers were stored. The helpful lesser ghoul led Rino to the underground storage cave that the lich did not know was constructed. They had more things here than the exposed storage pit. The items were well cared for, and the condition was perfect for keeping mould away. Thanks to the mana web array in the area, it was well lit too. "Here," Fronzo took out a wooden box that contained washed and dried feathers. "Do you require more?" Rino looked around the underground storage vault. There was silk, spare woven fabric, extra thread spools, spare farming tools and even processed wooden nks. Rino saw a section barricaded by wooden fences that stored slightly more fragile items such as y pottery and ss. He spotted a shelf with many vials and could not help his curiosity. "Those?" the lesser ghoul blinked. "Those are coloured dyes that thedies are experimenting with. Also, they tried to make soap bars that we store separately on the lower shelves because they are heavier. Is my lord interested in any of those?" Rino shook his head. "You did very well. If thedies have some time, they can ask Kragami for advice about making spices and salt for cooking. See that separate storage space is made for processed food. Beer, cured meat and even dry spices can be kept for a long time under specific conditions." Fronzo bowed, and Rino chose a few nicely sized feathers before leaving with a spool of linen thread. He did not have sinew, but threads should do the same trick that sinews did, right? Chapter 103 - Fletching Failure (2) With the feathers sitting safely within his shadow sack, Rino decided on a few experiments. The tutorial for crafting bows and arrows was no help. Rino did not know much about archery, so he could only improve the creation through a series of trials and errors. He knew very little about archery, but Rino knew the basics. The bow''s wood, ording to the tutorial, should be hard but flexible. There were a few parts to a bow that was self-exnatory, but the grip was the mostplex to craft. Unlike the overly simple bow spine that Fowler crafted from a bendy branch, Rino was going to start from the basics. The tutorial suggested using hardwoods like oak or maple. Thankfully, the forest was full of oak trees that Rino could choose from. A branch that wasn''t too thick was ideal, but Rino knew he had to look for a particrly long one for the experimental longbow. The average longbow was as tall as a man, and a shortbow was half of that. Honestly, Rino did not know the difference between the two bows, but he supposed the shortbows would be easier for the less muscr archers to carry along whilst running. On the other hand, longbows were better for stationary shooting and defences. Maybe the hobgoblins could use the longbows while the hunting squad could use the shortbows after everything was crafted. Rino still had no clue, but the bows should not be too difficult to create once he had the right branches to work with. The oak trees in the area were rather gnarly, so Rino had to look for a younger tree than those ancient oaks full of galls and acorns. It took the lich a while to find what he was looking for. When he came across a young oak, Rino did not hesitate to cut off the growing branches that matched the length he needed. Happily, Rino stored the wood away and headed back. Without sinew for the bowstring, Rino could only rece it using linen that he twined many times. Crafting the bow''s main piece was tricky because the branch he chose was straight and covered in barks. Rino used magic to dehydrate the wood and sought Griffith out to borrow the crafter''s workshop space in the stone quarry cave. The pygmy dwarf helped to sand the wood as Rino helped to press on the longbow so that they found which parts of that wood needed more filing to bend in a beautifully even arch. Once they had the right arch and bnce for both bow pieces. Rino referred to the tutorial once more. With their bendy bow bodies, Rino drilled careful holes onto both ends of the bows just enough to pass the linen woven bowstring through. The bow body was hung and bnced on an empty loom and slowly drawn. Rino held the bowstring down and adjusted the bowstring''s tension on both ends using shadow tendrils while the gnomes helped to carve the bow''s body where tension was seen. Rino did not know how much a bow could be drawn back before it snapped, but he used his arm length as a guide on how far it could be pulled. Archers do not draw a bow longer than a straightened arm''s length, so Rino stopped when his arm could pull no more. Once the tilling process for the longbow was done, Rino quickly castyers of enchantment spells on the prototype bow. He did not want this bow to break, not when it was so beautifully made. "Is there a way to carve the grip of this bow where the arrow can sit nicely for firing in a straight line?" he asked the red-bearded pygmy dwarf. Griffith flipped the longbow twice as the other gnomes started carving and preparing the shortbow for tilling. The crafting manager hummed with a deep frown. "It is possible. However, once it is carved, the archer can no longer decide where they want to aim except for straight ahead. Multiple shots will also not be possible." Multiple shots? Rino was interested now. Was there a reason why Fowler crafted his bow so simply? Maybe there was more to what Rino thought about archery. This world''s skill in archery might be more advanced than the archery experts back in his previous world. Griffith tried to exin it to Rino in simple terms. Although umon, multiple shots was a skill that very good archers used to fire more than one arrow at the same time. Archers who ran out of arrows can also use stones as ammunition, but Rino''s bulkier bow design would make any of these impossible. Hearing that, Rino took more interest in the designs of bows in this world. Griffith imed to not be an expert in weapons, but he knew a fair bit that helped Rinoe up with design variations. Honestly, he wanted to build a basic bow that anyone can use if they could draw the bowstring. Bows that could shoot in a straight line without much control were best for amateurs like him. "If so, why don''t we make a few kinds of bows ording to the bow user''s skill level?" Griffith suggested. Very quickly, a design was sketched using charcoal on paper. Griffith exined that he could carve slightly more delicate arrow rest ceholders that could be attached to the bow''s body or beginner bow users instead of carving a permanent arrow rest ceholder. "However, this requires more precision crafting. The longbow in your hand is too bulky." Rino agreed. "I will leave the adjustments to you. Let me know as soon as you have the arrow rest ceholder ready. I want to test them." Leaving the crafting workshop, Rino headed back to the forest to search for branches that he could craft arrow shafts out of. He found what he was looking for with ease but decided to only craft five using shadow slicer magic. The shafts were a lot straighter than the arrows Fowler made, and the tips were made with slightly rounded edges because Rino did not want the arrows to hurt anyone if it flew off its course when Rino fired. Now, the lich looked at his arrow andpared it to Fowler''s crafted arrows. He made a little indent at the back of the arrow he made so that they would sit nicely when he nocked them on his bow. Satisfied with the little modification, Rino wondered how many feathers he should attach to the arrow. He could not recall if there were three or four feathers on the arrow ends. So, Rino created two arrows with three feathers and two arrows with four feathers tied tightly using linen threads. Now, he was ready to fire some test shots when Griffith informed him to collect his trial bows. Chapter 104 - Fletching Failure (3) As Rino waited for Griffith''s good news, he reasoned that nothing stopped him from working on those twenty quivers. The weaving wisps and skeletondies were startled when Rino visited the weaving workshop. There, a fairy in charge of maintaining the magic looms fluttered over hurriedly to greet Rino. "What brings you here, my lord?" Rino looked around. Everyone looked busy, and he felt slightly bad for piling on more work, but he absolutely refused to weave twenty quiver baskets on his own. His duty was to turn them in for the daily quest and manage an empire, not do menial tasks that others could do. "I want a quickmission for twenty quiver baskets," he told the fairy who beamed as if she was bestowed an expensive gift. Now that Rino observed closely, the other weavingdies gushed in excitement when Rino assigned them a new task. Was the job here too dull? He couldn''t understand his servants sometimes. They were happy when he troubled them with jobs he didn''t want to do and took pride in them as their top priority. Even though he did not specify a timeline for the quiver baskets, the fairy in charge of weaving promised to deliver all twenty baskets by tomorrow. Rino was pleasantly surprised by their diligence and thanked the fairy, praising thedies and told them to keep up the excellent work. With this praise, the mood in the weaving room became cheerful, withdies excitedly bustling around to gather weaving materials for the quiver baskets. Rino did not know how quivers were made in this world, but he left it to the vige folk who knew what it looked like. In his previous world, quivers were often crafted out of leather covering wood and worn over the back like a strap. Archers would search for arrows over their heads to reload their bows after firing. Horseback archery was a verymon spot that made this style of carrying arrows popr. It started from nobles but made its way to the cavalry units that brought the kingdom many victories. Rino wondered if they had horses in this world too. It would be cool to see some undead archers on mounts. He could only imagine how much fear this would instil in his enemies. Returning to the forest with his different arrows and Fowler''s crappy bow, Rino tried to fire the arrows with three feathers first. The result wasn''t good as the arrow spun crazily, but it did travel in a somewhat straight line before gravity brought it to the ground a few meters away from reaching the tree. Fowler''s shortbow was somehow too powerful for the arrow to fly in a perfectly straight line even when Rino was able to nock it easily with the indent at the end of the arrow and a finger acting as an arrow rest. Was it his bow drawing method that caused the arrow to go crazy? Rino could not understand until he picked up the arrow. The feathers were now all frayed. Even with the linen string holding it in ce, the feathers looked torn and could no longer be used. Confused, Rino looked closely to analyse the reason for this horrible destruction. He wasn''t an expert, but he could tell that these feathers had to be the reason why the arrow spun crazily when it was released. As Rino had no experience with archery, he could only do his best to replicate the incident again with the other arrow to check if three feathers weren''t enough. Hsi time, he prepared to enter the shadow realm immediately after the arrow was released to slow time down and observe the arrow in greater detail. His n worked, and now, Rino saw the reason why the arrow spun crazily after it was released. The wind was pushing against the feathers that slowed its speed down while helping the arrow bnce in the air. If the arrow did not have feathers, it would simply go in a different direction from what Rino wanted. That happened previously with Fowler, and Rino solved half the mystery now that he knew better. The poor feathers could no longer be salvaged from the damage, but Rino knew what he should be doing. With the arrows containing four feathers, Rino checked the direction of these feathers. He wanted the feathers to be pointed in the direction of the arrow''s trajectory, much like how wind gets cut by birds when they fly. Going against the wind would slow the arrow down, making the reach much shorter than what it could be. At the same time, Rino fixed three new feathers to rece the damaged feathers on his two three-vaned arrows. He had an experiment to understand if he should be using three or four feathers in his arrows. The feathers helped an arrow travel smoother in theory if it could counter wind resistance. For the moment of truth, Rino loaded his four-vaned arrow and pulled the bowstring taut, aiming at the tree using one finger as a guide and stilling himself. Archery was a sport of the mind, or so he was told. Only a disciplined and calm mind would be able to hit the target. Rino couldn''t remember which general told him that, but the magician remembered rolling his eyes and telling him that was what chantless spells were for. Now, he wished he asked for more tips from that general when he could. It was a little toote for regrets, so Rino did his best to focus on the tree before him as he released the arrow before slipping into the shadow realm to witness the moment of truth. The four-vaned arrow with corrected feather direction did not spin crazily. Instead, it travelled in such a smooth line after the initial shaking from getting fired. The power of that bowstring tension was no joke. Rino saw how the blunt arrowhead pierced the tough tree bark and embedded itself deeply. For a moment, Rino did not know what to think about his first sessful shot. He almost could not believe how easy this was. In his previous life, he could never fully draw a bow because magicians had weak bodies. They spent so much time polishing their minds that the most exercise they did was walking from the library to the study with an armful of books. The lich never realised it before, but now, he could appreciate just how strong this new undead body was. A wide invisible grin spread across his face, and Rino never felt more thrilled about his slightly superior physical build. Maybe he could finally try that very cool thing those guards often did on the ground called p push ups. Chapter 105 - Renewable Arrow Researching arrows and the science behind them was more fun than Rino thought it would be. The feathers created very cool effects, and after many shotster, Rinopleted the chain side quest''s quota for the day with several takeaways. By spacing the feathers differently, an arrow''s flight efficiency differed. Four feathers were better for stabilising an arrow''s trajectory immediately after release, but it wasn''t as important to use four feathers. After all, they were only used to help stabilise an arrow''s flight. When using three feathers, Rino tried tying them in different angles and concluded that even the slightest change in spacing for those three feathers and the direction of the nock for the arrow''s release could make it a tornado spinner or a light beam when fired straight. At the same time, Rino learned the maximum distance an arrow could travel with varying degrees of drawing tension. When a bow was half drawn, Rino could only reach past the huge rock before the weight of gravity started to pull it back down to the ground. If Rino fired freely, a fully drawn bow could reach almost seventy percent more than the arrow that Rino shot at a half-drawn stance. Out of boredom, Rino shot a closer target just to see the impact the arrow would make based on the draw strength and found that while the tip was blunt, the speed it flew from the power of the draw allowed it to pierce through objects deeper when the bow was fully drawn. For instance, the wooden arrow was able to pierce through the thick oak barks when fully drawn without suffering much damage to the pointed arrow tips. However, when only half-drawn, the wooden arrow tips were dulled a little. The arrow was also unable to embed itself into the gnarly tree trunk as deeply as the arrow that was fired when the bow was fully drawn. As Rino resharpened the dulled arrow tip after his experiment, he wondered if adding enchantment spells to them would make these cheaply crafted wooden arrows deadlier than steel-tipped ones. It was worth a shot, and Rino thought of several enchants to add to the arrow. The first spell he thought about at once was a tracing spell. This would be handy for amateurs like him, although it was also a double-edged weapon that can be used against them if someone picked it up. Homing magic was simr to a curse, and the arrow would not stop chasing a marked target until it made contact or got destroyed. The only problem with such an enchantment was the activation. A homing marker must be ced beforehand for the enchantment to work, and Rino highly doubted any of his shadow ves were capable of magic. The fairies could help, and this enchantment could make very powerful artillery if Rino ever needed it. Hence, he shelved the idea for now. There was no need to go to such lengths as if he was preparing for war. Instead, Rino addedyers of enchantments to boost an arrows speed and prevent dulling of the tip from impact, simr to the enchantments he added to all the farming tools his minions used. When that was done, Rino fired the arrow again but drew the bow only halfway. He wanted to see if it would match the power of a fully drawn bow with this enchantment, and the results blew his mind. The arrow whistled through the air and made contact with the tree that Rino used for target practice. However, it did not stop there and let itself get embedded into the trunk. Instead, it shattered a good part of the trunk because of its boost in speed. The magician was stunned for a moment. He added simple enchantments, expecting regr results with minimal efforts. However, this enchantment was like propelling the worst student in ss to bing a valedictorian. Speechless, Rino looked at the small hole in the tree and apologised to the oak tree, healing it with nature magic. Searching for the enchanted arrow took some time, and Rino found it after fifteen minutes. Deciding that it was too troublesome to look for arrows each time they were fired, Rino decided to carve some rune writings on the arrow shaft, putting what he just learned from Kragami to good use. Curses were handy at times, and Rino wondered why dark magicians did not use their craft more smartly? In his previous world, the same curse wasmonly used on ve cors. It was a spell of forced returning that made running away useless for ves. However, Rino was using this for a different purpose. His enchanted arrows were too dangerous to be lying around for a random person to find and use. Hence. The curse of forced returning carved into them would ensure that they were always bound to the right people. For now, Rino bound this arrow to himself and decided to test the limits of this arrow by shooting directly upwards instead of forward. The lich prepared himself for flight to follow the arrow after its release and tensed his shoulder with the bowstring pulled tautly. Twang! Rino dropped the bow and used shadow magic to propel him forward to match the arrow''s speed. Even as the trees beneath him grew smaller, this arrow had no intention of stopping. Rino was almost as high as the clouds when the arrow finally slowed. Then, gravity did its magic after passing through the lowestyer of clouds as the arrow started to fall back to the ground. Rino caught it and teleported back to the ground now that he had his answer. When the arrow was fired on a full drawn regr bow with no enchantments, it could fly darn far and would probably be closer to a battering ram for bodies in battle, piercing through multiple skulls before it stopped. Heck! Given how fast this missile arrow was, Rino would not be surprised if skulls exploded in a trail behind this monster of a weapon. He shuddered. There were ways to transform that ordinary bow into something stronger. For instance, Rino could enchant gravity maniption on the bow, and it would turn absolutely anything shot from it into deadly ammunition. Thinking about this, there was one more thing Rino was dying to find out. If enchanted arrows on a regr bow were this overpowered, what would happen if Rino used a renewable arrow created from shadows? Kragami taught him the basics of dark magic, and materialising dark magic was part of emission. Transforming dark magic into something solid, the dark magic emission took various forms from mage to mage. Rino''s emission form was shadow tendrils, while Kragami''s emission form was a shadow pool. It took more effort for a dark magician to convert their natural emission form into something else and more focus, but Rino was determined to shape it into an arrow. Nocking his shadow arrow on the regr bow, Rino aimed at the same tree and wondered how effective this would be. Swoosh! The shadow arrow disappeared the moment Rino released it from the bow, and for a moment, nothing happened. Rino was about to call this a failure when a huge gust of wind split everything in the direction of that arrow apart with varying forces of destruction. The lich looked at the path before him created by that one shadow arrow and back to the broken linen bowstring. He didn''t think that mana created arrows could be this destructive. Apart from dark magic, Rino did not borrow any other elements. Yet, the sheer force of this shadow arrow ripped apart trees, earth and decimated any source of life in its path. The tree from before could no longer be saved. It was dead now, and Rino numbly walked up to the huge oak, split apart to pieces. The tree crumbled to dust when Rino touched what was left of that mighty trunk. Decay. Death. If Rino did not realise what the dark element did before, he understood it now. The grass that the shadow arrow passed was now a horrible patch of brown or ck. Rino thought the brown dehydrated and dead grass were slightly better than the corroded ck grass patch. The healthy oak tree brimming with life was now withered and decayed. It was so brittle that the wind would take parts of it away like dust. This patch ofnd would take a very long time to recover as the shadow arrow sucked every sign of life from it. Rino tried to sense mana where he stood, but there was very little of it around. The shadow arrow also never returned, as if it was neutralised by all the life it took from the environment. Rino followed the path that his shadow arrow took and marvelled at all the destruction. If he ran out of arrows to use, a mana arrow was always a good idea, but Rino decided never to use a shadow arrow unless the situation was dire. Now, Rino thought about the big question as he reached the end of the destructive trail before a mushroom that survived. Should he enchant bows? Chapter 106 - Combat Magician A week passed quickly, and Rino found a new use for archery despite not liking it very much. He had to admit that this tool, after all the enchantments, was better than using a staff. Firstly, the bow allowed him to fire missiles rapidly. It was something staffs could not do because they needed time to convert a mage''s mana and amplify using a spell before it could be fired. The spell usually covered arge area and did not target specific regions. However, mana arrows with the help of an enchanted bow could shape raw mana into a basic projectile that erased everything in one direction depending on the mana output. Rino spent the week firing test shots for his side quest while understanding how an enchanted bow could be used. His bow was fitted with a permanent arrow rest ceholder, and all his arrows were affixed with four feathers because Rino wasn''t a fancy archer. The lich also found that he preferred a shortbow to a longbow as it was easier to fire while in mid-air. For years, Rino never used any magical tools to assist him. He was the only magician back in the previous world who flew around without a grimoire or a staff. The ex court magician''s control of magic was better than the guidance of any tool. One of Rino''s nicknames was Silent Saint simply because it was impossible to escape when he appeared. The spells he cast were quicker than anyone else in the kingdom, and Rino was a special human weapon the empire used to subdue powerful threats that wiped out whole toons. Thinking about it now, the lich found it funny. That world was eventually destroyed by the one they dubbed as a saint but treated like a ve. Even his shadow ves had it better than him. How detestable! From all the elements Rino tried imbuing into magic arrows, he found that several elemental magic was simply too dangerous to use. Of course, the most ideal mana arrow would be light elemental, but Rino was now a lich. It did him more harm than good firing that one experimental shot, and he swore never to try it a second time. Water, wind and earth were less destructive than fire and dark magic arrows. Thankfully, the part of the forest Rino tested his magic shooting was connected to the mana web array. The small forest fire was quickly put out in half a day with the help of every water and earth fae, but the damage could not be undone. A huge patch of the forest was bald because of Rino''s destructive testing. Eventually, Rino could only dere the destroyed forest as the new site to build actual housing for faes so that there was more space for the undead underground. Nobody objected to that project of converting the wastnd into a housing estate, even if it meant that Griffith had more things to do. The pygmy dwarf did not seem to mind and was rather enthusiastic, collecting everyone''s opinions about their ideal amodation. Rino left that to his capable minions to sort out. With Erika helping with the logistic arrangements and nning for the poption, the lich had faith nobody would be dissatisfied. As Rino imed his side quest reward, he could finally understand the basics of archery and wondered if he could create an epic weapon suitable for a monarch as an icon. Sure, he was a magician. However, hecked the need for a powerful wand. Even if Kragami was a fan of staffs, Rino found that old fashioned and redundant. Maybe if he was older, he would find that handy as a walking stick. Thinking over it long and hard, Rino concluded that he did not mind using a bow as his primary weapon. It was powerful, andbined with his magic, the bow he wielded full of custom enchantments would be something close to god-hurting. He wouldn''t im it as god-killing, but his weapon was close to legendary with the amount of destructive power it had. No living thing in this world woulde close to his bow''s power. The termbat magician was forbidden in his previous world as the ss between adventurers must be strictly adhered to. Combat magicians mainly were ssed as healers, or they had to choose between warriors or magicians. Rino often found that rule stupid because pdins were ssed as warriors even when they were healers and magicians. Heck, some of those pdins up in the hierarchy y the role of a party tank in crusades too. If Rino was a one-man army, those pdins were one-man toons. Now that he was given a second chance, albeit through forceful means, Rino decided to coin the termbat magician. He might not be good atbat, but as long as he wielded a weapon that wasn''t a stick for casting spells, he counted as abatant. The daily quest progress was moving very smoothly. Rino checked the window to see what else was still missing. He had approximately three more days to craft everything the quest demanded, and so far, the challenging materials to gather was the wood needed for the longbow. There simply weren''t enough trees with young and supple wood of the same height as a man. Rino was also rather fussy with the bows to be crafted. He wanted each of those twenty bows to be crafted to suit the height of their intended wielder. The shortbows were easier to craft. Fowler''s team happily used them for hunting king toads. The stack of cleaned toad skin sitting in the underground storage room was piling up. Rino should use them to create something luxuriouster, but he had more important things to focus on for now. Summoning the four elemental sylphs, Rino tasked them to assist Griffith with his bow and arrow crafting. Even if they had to use nature magic to cheat a little, it was eptable. Rino had a deadline to meet, and he could do the enchantmentster for the bows and arrows. The elemental sylphs vanished as soon as they received their orders, and Rino looked at his specially crafted shortbow. Aiden wasn''t less skilful than Griffith, and Rino liked this artfully carved bow made from willow wood instead of oak. The night was spent enchanting his bow and testing its new abilities above the clouds. Nobody questioned why there was sudden hail or even lightning that night as they continued to work tirelessly. Chapter 107 - King鈥檚 Bow Ping! Rino quickly checked the progress of his daily quest and smirked invisibly. It was finally done. === Daily Quest #11 (Complete) Objective: Craft Basic Hunting Tools 10/10 Long Bows 15/10 Short Bows 300/300 Arrows 25/20 Quivers Time Limit: 10 Days. Tutorial here. Reward: Basic Fletching Skills im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Rino did not hesitate to im his new skill as a reward. He had one more day to spare but thankfully, the daily quest counter did not force him toplete a new quest. He still had one more day from this chain quest event. The gods must be in a really good moodtely. With one extra day and night, Rino decided to spend it enchanting everyone''s bows and carving rune writings onto the arrows to bind them to the archers who owned the respective bows. The bows were bound to the archer''s souls, and Rino knew that his minion''s soul would be decimated if the weapon was destroyed. He let the archers know the risks of carrying an enchanted bow but also promised them that the enchantments Rino was casting on every bow will protect them as long as they remain faithful to Rino and do not pick a fight with a god. Needless to say, Rino''s subordinates jumped at the chance to own a powerful weapon. It didn''t really matter if their souls died. It already belonged to Rino, so they were doomed for an eternity of servitude. Having a weapon from the kin was an official recognition and reward for their efforts. It could also be seen as a form of status in the ever-growingmunity of minions and faes. Just for precaution, Rino also enchanted those quivers, so that arrow theft was impossible, and an arrow that was fired would automatically return to the quiver that was paired with the bow. At the same time, Rino took this chance to address some new security arrangements. He wanted to pair fairies or sylphs with patrolling guards. The two will form one unit, and Rino exined the necessity. "Undead shadow minions cannot die. However, fairies are vulnerable to many things. Most of my shadow army cannot use magic, and the bow has a unique tracking function." Hearing that the powerful bow had a special ace move that required teamwork to pull off, Fowler put aside his pride and tried to get along with his assigned fairypanion. Secretly amused, Rino wondered if this forced arrangement would do this lesser vampire good or bad. He had to say, Fowler was taking this quite well. The night passed quickly, and it was day again, prompting Rino to dismiss the sluggish shadow summons and undead to retreat underground where it was closer to the underworld. He drew the curtains closepletely and took a long nap to avoid the powerful sun. When he woke up, it was finally time to work on his bow. Aiden made this bow well, and Rino ced the same enchantments he did with the other bows. Now, the bow was strong enough to parry steel without a scratch. The bowstring was extremely durable and reinforced, packed with enough force to kill that monster serpent that ate a king toad. Rino made sure they could take down such a threat in a single hit just in case there were more terrifying monsters lurking. He wanted his small militia to be well prepared to guard the base before he returned. However, for a king, this level of enchanting wasn''t enough. He did not need returning arrows or a quiver, but Rino needed a bow strong enough to st through a mountain. Only such a weapon was worthy of having a name. It wasn''t legendary yet, but Rino had a feeling it came close. That trick shot where a skilled archer fired multiple arrows simultaneously, Rino wanted that shy move. However, he did not want to remove the aiming guide he had on his bow. Instead, he thought of another method to match such a move. Regr archers who drew their arrows from the quiver on their backs could reload a new arrow to fire three shots in a second. Rino witnessed that himself. However, three per second was still a little too underwhelming for Rino. He wanted ten or twenty just to scare his opponents even if they had reduced power. The volley of arrows raining from the sky would surely take out small fries and offer protection for his subordinates through suppressive fire. It might not kill his enemies spamming mana arrows, but it would most certainly wound them enough for them to want to reconsider attacking head-on. With such a stormy personality in mind, Rino added his additional enchantments and carved his rune spells on the bow. Normally, spells were written in grimoires for a magician to easily ess and replicateplicated spells on the battlefield. Rino never needed it because of his superior magic control. However, he had to admit that this time, his magic control would not be sufficient. He needed his bow to act as a grimoire so that he could fire arrow after arrow without needing to think. Rino managed to squeeze all his spells onto the bow''s body in carving from lightning bolts to forest-fire ming arrows. Now, all that was left to convert this magical weapon into an artefact was a name. Honestly, Rino never named any of his creations in the previous world simply because he did not want the items he created to serve as weapons for the empire. Artefacts have a very special property from magical tools and items. Artefacts possess souls and consciences of their own. These items often choose their owners, and depending on their uses, it could save the world in disastrous times or cause thousands of deaths when they were angered. Artefacts were whimsical children gifted with tremendous power, and Rino was slightly afraid of naming his bow. Yet, it had to be done. This was the only way he could ever call his bow the King''s bow, setting it apart from everyone else''s that was cheaply produced. Thinking until the sun rose, Rino looked at the weapon in his hand. A weapon was also simr to a wife. Having onested for a long time until death did the weapon and owner part. For Rino, who was immortal, this was more important than anything else. "Libitina is your name," Rino decided. "Protectress of the dead, please serve Solitude well." Back in his previous world, Libitina was a goddess who protected the peace of the dead. Her statue was often seen in graveyards and many stories about the statueing to life at night kept grave disturbances away. Back then, Rino thought nothing of this legend. Now, there wasn''t a more suitable name for his weapon. Libitina glowed and epted her role, greeted Rino warmly with a pulse. The artefact was safely tucked away in Rino''s Shadow Sack not long after its awakening. The lich looked at the approaching day and sighed. He could already feel Libitina''s bond tugging at him in curiosity about the world. Thankfully, he had all day to do this. Chapter 108 - Potato Beer Ping! Rino wasn''t expecting the daily quest to update itself on the dot of midnight. He thought he had more time to deal with the things he wanted to do before checking it out. As it turned out, Rino now had a new daily quest and side quest. === Daily Quest #12 Objective: Craft Basic Spears 0/10 Basic Spears Time Limit: 3 Days. Tutorial here. Reward: Basic Spear Skills Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Three days to make ten simple spears? Rino could do that tomorrow. Griffith might be swamped with the new fae estate construction works, but Rino still had Aiden. Thankfully, the sawmill construction and paper factory were already finished. Even if it was temporary, they were good enough for the lich. As Rino checked his newly updated side quest, he knew where he was going for the night. Thankfully, Kragami made the brewery a priority, and the first batch was ready. === Side Quest #15 Objective: Offer Potato Beer 0/1 Barrel Potato Beer Reward: 1 Packet Brewer''s Yeast im your reward here. === The side quest did not hold a tutorial, and Rino was very certain that the gods above must be watching the overall progress of his kingdom. How else would they know he had beer manufactured from potatoes? In any case, Rino hopped onto the teleportation pad for a short trip to Cypress County. After arriving at the marsh, Rino could not help but be impressed by how magical everything appeared. The mana web array was put to good use, and those Water Bell Flowers glowed in the night, acting like littlemps. There were also many new wisps ever since the water was gradually reced by mana imbued water. These wisps asionally glowed, reminding Rino of fireflies. The Cypress Ghost Tree also seemed to have grown a little bigger. Rino did not remember the treehouse he built to look so small from down here. There were definitely more branches around the tree houses now, acting like little bridges. Aiden added small bridges between the branches and a spiral stair for easier ess. The lich felt slightly guilty for not factoring that into his design. His elderly teacher would have found it difficult to ess his new home without these amenities. Thankfully, he had thoughtful subordinates. "It''s rare to see you here," Kragami mused after sensing a huge mana fluctuation in the air. "Aren''t you busy demolishing the forest and creating light shows in the sky?" Rino chuckled silently. "I''m done," he told his teacher. "I even put the advanced rune writing knowledge to good use. Meet my artefact weapon, Libitina." Swiftly, Rino withdrew his bow from the shadow sack, and Libitina shook in his hands, excited to give his teacher her greetings. When one lived for long enough, they would see all sorts of strange things. However, Kragami never imagined the day woulde when he would see a bow-wielding magician. Was his student pulling his leg? Then again, the number ofplicated enchantmentsyered on Libitina proved that it wasn''t a joke. Rino was 100% serious. "Are you any good with a bow? I didn''t think you were good at physical activities." Rino shook his head shyly. "I have a handicap for that. Besides, Libitina isn''t used for regr spells. I will only use her when there is an enemy too powerful for the guards to handle. Most of them would be able to take down the monster serpent in a few strikes. I have nothing to worry about leaving them in charge of my kingdom''s defences." Indeed, Kragami witnessed first-hand what those archers and hobgoblins could do. Aiden was helping them fine-tune some of their bows because Griffith was too busy crafting the arrows and fletching them ording to Rino''s specific orders. Fletching arrows was a new concept in this world, and honestly, Kragami sometimes wondered where Rino got all his strange ideas from. Rino carefully tucked Libitina away and followed his teacher upstairs, where he saw two more new treehouses. The Cypress Ghost Tree was starting to grow into something simr to the World Tree with how massive it was covering. The teleportation pad Rino created at the foot of the tree was now inside the tree as it grew around what Rino built, leaving a very courteous exit as if it knew what the teleportation pad was for. Then again, the magic tree was now part of Rino''s soul. Perhaps it was a good idea to leave his consciousness separated so that every individual could focus on what they needed to do best. World Tree Rino was doing a very good job overseeing certain construction and expansions in Spudville. The Cypress Ghost Tree also made good work of turning the murky swamp into something more habitable in just a little under two weeks. Kragami brewed some herbal tea and served Rino some before they talked a little about the swamp''s major construction process. "I was thinking of making more than just paper products now that we have the means. Aiden is still working on perfecting the sawmill''s system as the output for treated wood is still unable to keep up with our construction demands. On the bright side, the swamp can continuously regrow what it used, unlike the forest site that you demolished." Rino looked away and sipped at his tea. "Have you considered exploring spice and salt production? The swamp has minerals that the forest doesn''t have. I''m notining about the taste of the food thedies make, but you''re particrly nitpicky." His teacher blew on the hot tea and looked out of the window. "Not yet, but let''s not delve into it too deeply. What are you here for?" Draining his cup, Rino exined how he was here for a barrel of potato beer. He did not disclose why he needed it, but he did let Kragami know that there was an easier way of brewing potato juice into beer. Uninterested in the process, Kragami quickly ordered a few fairies to prepare a barrel of potato beer. This was the first sessful batch they brewed, and while it was a shame that the necromancer wasn''t able to taste it first, he had faith that his student would find them a better beer brewing solution. Fermenting wasn''t an easy process. More often than not, food will rot before it could ferment into the product wanted. Kragami and Aiden were working hard to understand it, but Rino appeared to have a solution so the first barrel of potato beer was downpayment for finding a positive solution to ensure future brew sess chances increase. Rino epted the barrel gratefully and tucked it away in his shadow sack for now. He did not want to expose his special quest system and would turn it in once he returned to the farmhouse. For now, he epted the tour of Cypress County from the proud mayor and got onto the boat. Chapter 109 - How To Use A Spear? Crafting ten spears was too easy for someone who had hundreds of helpers. Besides, spears were easy to make. Even without a tutorial, Rino haphazardly hacked a fine wooden branch into a spear. The key to making a good spear was enchantments, after all. In no time at all, Rino had ten spears of varying lengths. The quest system was not very picky about the quality of his spears, so Rino didn''t bother putting in much effort. He still had one more day to clear this quest anyway, and the side quest was alreadypleted. Kragami quickly put the brewer''s yeast to use for the newest batch of beer and cultivated those bacteria that he imed were the miracle workers behind good alcohol. Rino let the necromancer be. His enthusiasm for creating good craft beer rivalled Aiden''s, and they got along swimmingly. Rino took a look at the spears he made in the farmhouse and imed his quest reward. As basic spear skills flooded his mind, Rino was now convinced that the spear was mightier than a sword, even if it paled inparison to a bow. The wooden spear was better than a wooden staff because it could stab the opponent to death instead of pummelling them to submission. Efficiency was the key to everything. The hobgoblin warriors used stone axes and doubled as lumberjacks with their tools when they were not on patrol duty. Rino thought that it was a shame they only knew how to use axes. Hence, he decided to introduce spears. The small group of hobgoblin warriors not on duty, including Goblin Lord Gnut, gathered behind Rino''s farmhouse and grabbed the spears Rino clumsily made. Feeling confident with basic knowledge in his head, Rino decided to teach these uncultured goblins what truebat was like. The spear was an extremely versatile weapon that can even rece joustingnces on horseback. "Take your positions," he told the newly recruited spearman as they shuffled into formation. ording to some basic war strategy books Rino browsed through in his previous life, he knew some basic formation for small squads. Of course, it did not really work when he implemented this with magicians because magicians simply did not need to fall in line for spells to work. In fact, putting a group of chanters together only distracted their focus and reduced their casting efficiency. Once the hobgoblins were in position, Rino bent his knees and held the spear in front of him to demonstrate how to hold it properly. His arms were holding the spear not too widely apart, but one hand was grasping the base of the spear firmly as support. The warriors learned quickly and followed Rino''s example, spreading their feet and anchoring low to avoid getting thrown off bnce as they copied Rino''s example. Then, Rino lunged forward with a sharp twist of his body, thrusting the spear forward beforeing back to his initial position. His back leg straightened as his front leg bent at ny degrees as he did that, creating a nice pattern in the ground. This was the first movement, and it took the hobgoblins some tries to find their bnce while doing so. Rino felt pride swell in him at how quickly he took to this like a fish to the water as the hobgoblins struggled to determine if they were holding the spear with the correct hand. Eventually, Rino went through all the basic movements, from blocking to sweeping. Goblin Lord Gnut was the only one who could keep up with Rino''s lesson pace, so Rino asked the baron he appointed to be his sparring partner. As they took their positions, Rino and Gnut got into their basic stance. A hobgoblin started the sparring match, and Gnut came fast with a powerful sweeping swing toward Rino, who only blocked it briefly to redirect the swing''s course. Then, Rino ducked low and twisted the spear in his hand, using the sharp tip to cause a scratch at the back of Gnut''s thigh. The pleasure of first blood went to him even though the undead didn''t bleed. Gnut was a seasoned warrior. Such a minor wound did not faze him. If anything, it only fuelled him toe back with a forceful spear m that split the ground. Rino bet that the poorly crafted weapon would have been smashed to smithereens by that force if the spear wasn''t reinforced with enchantments. Thankfully, he dodged before Gnut could turn his bones to powder. The sparring match continued with Rino dancing like a butterfly around Gnut, who was more direct with his attacks. Rino did not take any of Gnut''s attacks head-on. He simply deflected them and moved out of the way before twisting around to find the goblin lord''s blind spot for an attack. Rino was prepared to end the sparring match when he felt that enough destruction to his backyard was done. Hence, he tossed the spear upwards to divert Gnut''s attention before kicking the warrior in the chest and using it as a springboard to jump and retrieve his spear. Nobody blinked as Rino grabbed his spear like a javelin, tossing the weapon that went right through Gnut''s chest. If anything, their jaws fell in unison at the unpredictablebat style. Rino did not know where the idea of throwing a spear came from either. He shocked himself when it happened but quickly moved on from it. It wasn''t umon for fishermen to use spears for fishing. Surely, this was a recognised move. Despite the shocking finish, the referee dered the sparring match over with Rino the victor. Goblin Lord Gnut had noints as he regenerated with purple soul mes. Instead of feeling discouraged, he thanked Rino enthusiastically for the learning opportunity and promised to train his hobgoblins to be decent spearmen. In fact, the spear was such a versatile weapon that Goblin Lord Gnut thought it would be no loss to teach the farmer and crafter goblins the basics. However, the move of throwing a spear might be too advanced for them. Rino happily dismissed the goblin guards and decided to look for a different y buddy. Mutt might not be able to wield a spear, but he was definitely stronger than Gnut. Rino was curious to see how far he could go without the aid of magic in his tireless body. Chapter 110 - Weak Warrior Mutt wagged its tail in excitement at its master''s summon. The wolf was itching to be of assistance, but nobody seemed to require his expertise until now. "No need to hold back," Rino told the sabre tooth alpha wolf, who howled a little from happiness. Thankfully, the lich had enough sense to teleport into the distance to a ce that they could battle without holding back. The backyard of his farmhouse required some repair work, and Rino took care of that using earth magic. He had no idea if spears could split grounds and rocks like magic, but he knew Mutt would be capable of mass demolishment if given a chance. The wolf grew to such a sizeparable to the king toads now, and Rino did not like the idea of mutt rampaging near his farmhouse. So, they were currently deciding the boundaries for their all-out sparring match in a different part of the forest near a creek. The rules of this sparring match were simple. Rino wanted to test his physical abilities and limitations. The hound could not hurt his master because of a contract, so Rino told Mutt not to hold back. Any deadly attacks would be forcefully neutralised by the soul contract anyway. The only condition was that Mut could only use his physical abilities and no magic. The sparring match would end when Rino concluded it. As selfish as it sounded, the magician was convinced that this was for the best. Mutt could go on forever, and Rino doubted he had that energy to keep up with his summon in terms of stamina even if he was technically undead, whose lungs no longer held him back. Rino was highly convinced thatbat talent was heavily dependent on a person''s natural body in his previous life. Many magicians did not have strong bodies and were scrawny. Naturally, they were not fit to train in physicalbat. Rino tried to run and train like the knights. He even hired a fitness tutor who was an ex garrison captain when he became a noble. The dream of bing the first magician who wielded a sword charmed him so much when he was still a teen, but by the time life started to snowball into his young adulthood, Rino gave up all hope. He was unable to keep up with the strenuous training routine of what his fitness tutor called basic. Everything hurt too much, and even with recovery magic, Rino could not keep up. His legs iled, his arms flopped, and his coordination was first from the bottom despite his immacte control over magic. It was at this point that Rino was told something he did not think was possible. "There are things that people do better than others. Combat isn''t for you." Those words hit Rino hard. From that day onwards, Rino refused to touch a weapon or entertain thoughts about bing the first magician to be knighted. He went into a slump, and it took months for Rino''s fragile heart to ept reality. Rino med his weak body for failing him in his previous life. That fragile health only became worse as his responsibilities became heavier. Theck of physical exercise meant that Rino relied a lot on healing magic and recovery potions to ease his bodily pains. Yet, none of those did his mental health any good. It was like a caged rat drowning slowly, but Rino brushed those thoughts aside. He was finally given a new chance to test his teenage dream with a new body. Fate might not be kind to him, shackling him to something different. He was simply a caged canary getting a more luxurious cage, but for someone who experienced captivity their whole life, it did not stop RIno from having the fun he wanted. Getting into a ready position with his enchanted spear, Rino summoned a pixie to be their referee for the match. He wanted to start on a fair foot, and Mutt lowered his front paws in a crouching position as the countdown started. The moment the pixie dered the sparring match''s beginning, she was blown back unceremoniously by a strong gust of wind trailing behind Mutt as he lunged forward with snapping jaws to rip Rino''s spear out of his hands. Rino reacted equally quickly. He wasn''t going to give in to his hound so quickly. Thankfully, his body was able to keep up with his mind this time. Rino never had reflexes this fast. It was always his mind running ahead and his body struggling to keep up. However, Mutt was not done when Rino avoided his first move. Without even looking back, he swiped his tail and jumped on his front paws so that his hind legs kicked out. Rino was not expecting such an attack and did not manage to block in time. His reflex screamed at him to put up a magic barrier, but Rino held himself back, remembering his rules. He wanted to prove that he had the makings of a warrior. Hence, those powerful hind legs broke a few of Rino''s ribs as the lich was sent flying across the creek. Mutt did not wait for Rino to fully crash into a tree tond his next attack. If anything, the wolf monster turned around to follow through with his first hit. The adrenaline took overpletely, and the sabre tooth wolf could feel his hunter instinct screaming for blood, no longer remembering who it was that they were fighting against. The alpha wolf sprung into the air and howled while gnashing his sharp teeth. Rino took one look at the ugly mug and held his spear firmly despite the broken bones. His mind anticipated several scenarios while in battle, and he was in an extremely unfavourable position without his magic. He refused to throw his spear like a javelin because he might not get it back, and there was a high chance of Mutt being able to dodge it, unlike Gnut, who was inflexible in thinking. Acting on instinct, Rino used his spear to dig into the ground and jolted to a sudden halt so that Mutt, who was in the air, would not be able to get him. Changing direction mid-air was impossible without external interference. It was something Rino heard the royal knights talking about in their sparring tournament when they were up against pdins. Needless to say, they only justified their loss for that reason, and it took Rino two lives to finally understand what they meant. It wasn''t an excuse. It was a fact. Without anything to change his direction after he took the leap, Mutt could only watch as Rino got away when the lich used his spear as an anchor and ran to the opposite side of the creek and behind the rocks. However, Mutt was a warrior through and through. He was a hunter who never let his prey escape. Quick as lightning, the sabre tooth wolfnded horizontally on a tree to use it as a jumpingunch pad to propel himself towards those rocks. His master ordered him not to use magic in this battle, but Mutt had other abilities that were not magic attacks. It came as a package with his monster DNA, so Mutt sucked in a deep breath before releasing a boulder shattering howl. Rino wasn''t ready for such an attack. Sonic waves! He didn''t know Mutt had this skill. No wonder those goblins died so miserably! In fact, Rino had to apud them for wounding this monster despite their distinct power gap. Goblin Lord Gnut and his shaman were excellent tacticians to be able to bring such a terrifying foe like Mutt down even if they perished trying. Then again, Rino did not recall Mutt being this powerful when he first fought him. Maybe Mutt simply grew stronger after bing his mount. Whichever the case, Rino no longer had a cover to hide behind. He spent too long thinking when he should have been preparing to attack. Mutt wasn''t going to back off no matter what kind of attacks Rino tossed his way. The spear came down swift and quick, piercing at shadow fur and body all the same, but the high-speed regeneration ability worked on them both. Mutt smashed a few more rib bones with a tail swipe, and Rino made a few more holes in Mutt''s side with his spear. Neither of them felt pain, and the battle was getting more ridiculous with the damages piling faster than it could be healed. In ast-ditch effort, Rino spun his spear using both hands andnded a hard smack on Mutt''s head, making the shadow minion blur for a second. He cursed silently and tried to back off, but Mutt was faster, twisting his spine to smack Rino away with one paw. The lich flew upon impact and felt half his bones shatter from that front paw swipe. Mutt shook his head and was about to end itpletely when Rino dered the sparring match over. "You won," he groaned, unable to feel his arms as they no longer moved. The bones were broken in many pieces and fell to the ground as purple soul mes covered almost all of Rino. Mutt wasn''t looking much better, with purple soul mes glowing around him where there were holes. If they were alive, they would have died from all the injuries. "I''m a weak warrior," Rino sighed as theyy on the ground, waiting for the injuries to recover. The wounds did not hurt, but his pride certainly did. Mutt stuck his tongue out to give his master an affectionate lick. "Do not say so, master. You were human. Humans seldom win monsters like me or hold out this long. Besides, I''ve gotten a lot stronger thanks to your growth as a lich. This match was unfair from the very start. I believe you would make a great warrior with time." Rino did not know to feelforted by those words of ttery or hold onto hope that he could be a truebat magician in this life. Chapter 111 - Unrequited Affection When Rino returned, an unexpected but weed guest was waiting for him. The sun was rising, so he dismissed the loyal hound and ran to scoop his furry friend into his arms, but Noir dodged it and aimed a kick to his skull beforending gracefully on the cat tree as Rino face-nted onto the wooden floor. "Noir!" The lich was too happy at the cat''s return to be mad at the treatment even if Mutt was growling in anger in his shadow. Cats always had special treatment, and Rino would be a simp for their existence if he could. Then again, maybe it was just Noir who was special. This cat always knew when to appear. Licking his paws, the ck cat looked at Rino. The shadow beneath his feet had grown again, and Ace was very sure that if the lich went all out, tearing down the weakest link in their team would be no problem. Stephanie should watch out from now on. "It''s been a while," he greeted as Rino enthusiastically pulled out some new cat toys he made in his spare time from feathers and string. Ace wasn''t sure when Rino found the time between quests and managing his expanding territory to make cat toys, but his feline body twitched excitedly. It did not take long for the cat instincts of this incarnate body to run around, chasing this offending feather on a string like a fool high on catnip. Rino chuckled when Noir chased the feather toy like an ordinary cat, yowling in frustration when it slipped its paws. Even if the lich never yed with cats like this in his previous life, he often saw the princess ying with her fat cat. The only difference was how the fat cat raised in the pce walked instead of ran for the prey. Compared to that overweight fluffball, Noir was a hundred times more adorable. Ace did not know what he did, but he was panting for air and half dying when Rino finally showed him mercy and let him ''kill'' the prey. His cat instincts dwindled, and he came back to reality with a huge wave of embarrassment, attempting to drown his pride. Sparing the cat some dignity, Rino changed the topic. "Where have you been?" Noir cleaned his paws and eyed Rino suspiciously, keeping close to his personality. "Why does that concern you?" Under ordinary circumstances, Rino would be d to be the pitiful wife waiting for the busy husband to return. However, he knew that he might not have the next time because of his quest''s direction. He had no idea how much time he had left and how long Noir''s errand wouldst before he returned again. "It doesn''t," he approached the subject as calmly as he could. Rino did not want to give Noir the wrong impression that he was abandoning the cat and this ce for good. In fact, he did not know how this wild cat would react if he knew the cat toy was not the only thing Rino prepared while it was away. A midnight blue pet cor sat snuggly in Rino''s inventory with Noir''s embroidered into the cloth. Ordinarily, cors were made out of leather. However, Rino had no suitable material to make a leather corfortable enough for Noir in such a short time. Hence, he could only weave a cor with Noir''s name embroidered into it with various enchantments to make the cor less scruffy. "I''m relocating." The words echoed in the dark farmhouse, and Noir froze. His tail stiffened, and Rino quickly corrected himself, exining in lengthy detail that Noir was not abandoned. "I just wish that you will ept this," he said and retrieved the cor he imbued with his magic as a tracking device. Noir sniffed at the cor and frowned, pawing it curiously before batting it twice. He red at Rino, who stiffened at the hostile look. "What''s the cor for? I''m not going to be anyone else''s pet. There is already an owner I serve." The lich felt his heart fall at the rejection, even if he guessed as much. A talking cat who knew magic must have a wonderful owner who was at least as powerful as Rino, if not more. The lich could not forcefully ask Noir to ept him as its new master. He wasn''t worthy. However, he wished that Noir would consider this gift as a friend. There had to be a reason why Noir never spoke about the master he served, so Rino never questioned it. The cat must have reasons to disappear so often, but the fact that he returned to the farmhouse from time to time meant that he must still like Rino''spany. The lich had a few theories about Noir''s master. If Noir''s master was human, they might be too old and sickly now if they were still alive. Noir was simply going around to run errands on its master''s behalf like a loyal cat. However, there was also a high possibility that the cat''s master was dead, but its loyalty kept the magical cat around in this area. Whichever the reason, Rino still hoped that he could still be friends with Noir even if he had to leave. Seeing that Rino was depressed, Ace cringed inwardly. Maybe he was too harsh on Rino. However, this was still a good chance to maintain contact with Rino without using a different incarnate body to approach the lich. After all, the magician was quite taken with the cat called Noir now. "I cannot ept it if you cor me to be a pet. I won''t respond to your summons and won''t travel with you." Rino shook his head quickly and exined how the cor worked. He would never bind the cat, and the freedom Noir has unwillingly. He might do this for his shadow minions but never to Noir, not even in death. "It does the opposite," Rino swore. "It has my magic imbued into the cor so that you will be able to find me if you wish. I will not be returning to Spudville as often, so I thought it would be nice if you knew when I did, even if only briefly." Hearing that Rino put a lot of thought into making this cor, Noir finally epted but swore that he wasn''t Rino''s pet even as the cor was fastened on him. The lich promised that he wouldn''t treat Noir like a pet, and the cat was free to roam wherever he pleased. "Do make this farmhouse your home if you like. Erika will be using this as an office to manage this territory and the logistic arrangements. If you require anything when you drop by, please let her know." A free house and a free servant to serve him? Ace was secretly impressed at the lengths Rino was willing to go for Noir. Thankfully, he finished his work in heaven quickly and was able to stay for the next few days during this visit. When Rino heard that his favourite cat in the world was here to stay for a few days to make up for thest few weeks of absence, he dered that there would be a party and a feast tonight to wee his most esteemed pal. Chapter 112 - Master Hunter Noir Ping! It was a sound that Rino was used to by now, but he only grew irritated at the timing. Noir and Rino were snuggling by the firece and talking about the things Rino did when the system updated some new quests. Reluctantly, Rino pulled one arm away from the snoozing cat and checked his notification. === Side Quest #16 Objective: Catch Birds 0/5 Birds Reward: Dream Catcher Blessing === There was still about a day before the daily quest could update, so Rino was waiting to know what else the daily quest wanted him to do. He expected another weapon crafting quest, but this cycle back to animal hunting made Rino curious. Still, there was a master of hunting birds in hisp, and Rino knew how he wanted to spend his limited time with Noir before he left. Initially, he thought he would give Noir the grand tour of the province he named after the lovely cat. However, that could wait for now. Even without him acting as a tour guide, Erika would be able to give his friend a satisfying introduction to everything Rino did here. However, bonding time with an activity that Noir might enjoy did note so easily. Whoever was in charge of handing out the side quest this time deserves a raise in Rino''s opinion. They were almost ying cupid for his rtionship troubles with Noir even though it was a tonic one. As an awkward socialiser, Rino was thankful for the opportunity. Ordinarily, he would entrust this to Fowler and his friends. However, Rino wanted an excuse to go out with Noir to hunt for fowls. With the cat''s abilities, Rino wouldplete the side quest in a few hours. Unless Noir suddenly decides to hunt a phoenix, Rino had faith that this wasn''t a difficult quest toplete. Besides, they could roast a few delicious birds and share them with Kragami in the swamp when they were done. Rino wasn''t sure if cats could drink beer, but he wanted to let the finicky cat know that there was good food now. By the time Noir woke up, it was night again. Rino counted down the hours before his daily quest updated and asked if Noir was ready for a hunt together. Bored of staying indoors now that he could roam around with his incarnate body, Ace automatically agreed to go for a hunt. Ark could not me the god of prayers for offering to help Rino with his assigned side quest. It might be cheating, but this might be a good way for Noir to earn Rino''s trust and cast any suspicions of Noir''s background away. Stephanie watched them race through the forest and mock king toads from above with her brother. Phil was busy makingst-minutendscaping arrangements for the new site that Ark wanted Rino to travel to. Honestly, the goddess thought that it would be easier to simply remain in this quadrant and expand the kingdom from the home base than establish the basics all over again for further development. She simply could not understand why raising animals, and farming crops had to be done in separate regions. As the sibling gods watched Rino and Noir work wlessly in a wordless team to take down their prey, the side quest updated punctually. Yet, Rino ignored the quest notification and hunted for more. The pair ended up with five fire pheasants, three brown quails and two pseudo hawks that they took over to Cypress County. It was at that point that Noir questioned Rino''s naming sense. "Spudville, Cypress County and Noir province. I won''t even get started on the names you gave your subordinates." Rino did not look abashed at all as he sauntered out of the little tree tunnel to holler at his magic teacher. "Master hunter Noir brought some gifts for the housewarming party! Can we have some beer to enjoy with the roasted pheasants?" That naming sense¡­ Ace shuddered and thanked his luck that Rino named him Noir instead of Gatto. That would be ten times more embarrassing, and he did not even want to get started on names like Mutt, Gnut and Fowler. The necromancer hobbled down the stairs to greet them and saw the ck cat on Rino''s shoulder. It looked sofortable as it yawned as if it belonged there. Amused, Kragami introduced himself, and Noir made a face. "What kind of name is that? Did this kid name you too?" Stunned, the necromancer raised a brow. "It''s the magician name I chose before walking down the path of a necromancer." At that, there was an awkward silence between Noir and Kragami. The cat swore that if he was not covered in ck fur, the red blush would spread all the way to its tail from that assumption. Honestly, he should have asked Phil about what happened in thest two weeks when he was busy attending to the spike in prayer requests. Even Stephanie barely left her workstation to attend to the soul matching system. Rino enved many souls, and the goddess was stuck updating her outdated archive. Only Ark monitored Rino''s quest progress, with Phil keeping an active eye on the lich''s real-time activities. He really should have asked Phil for a summary of what Rino did than make assumptions to save himself from shame. It took Aiden''s appearance with a pitcher of potato beer to break the awkward tension. While Kragami and Noir reacquainted themselves after that awkward introduction, Rino stealthily checked hispleted side quest and imed his reward. [You received a permanent Blessing [Dream Catcher]. You can now dream in your sleep.] Rino read that automated message once, then twice to make sure he wasn''t hallucinating. Then, heughed in a very disturbing teeth-cking manner that made everyone in Kragami''s outdoor kitchen pause. Raising his mug of potato beer, Rino grinned widely, although nobody could tell. "Cheers!" he called out. Not knowing why Rino was in such a creepily good mood, Kragami and Aiden humoured him. Only Ace smirked to himself as he pawed at the roasting pheasant before licking his dirtied fur to taste it. It was a good thing Rino liked the reward. Even if he could no longer hear Rino''s inner thoughts as Noir, he could still guess what Rino was thinking and looking at based on his reactions. "You''re wee," Ace whispered and continued to watch the meat roasting with predatory eyes. Chapter 113 - Birb Trapper To trap a bird, one must first think like a bird. Rino was never one to delve into such cliche philosophical verses, but he was trying his best thanks to Noir''s ssy influence. They did not look too good lying in the shrub to spy on the feathery creatures who appeared very carefree as they flew, sang, hopped and picked at berries from trees. If anything, Rino''s subordinates would tell him that he looked ridiculous. How could the lord of darkness stoop to spying on birds lying on the ground on his exposed ribs?! Not to mention, there were stray strands of grass covering his ck cape. Noir''s pupils were widely dted as he stared at the birds, entranced by their movements. The usuallyzy cat was now tense like a spring ready to shoot. Rino could only follow his reliable master hunter''s lead and lie low. Yes, he was finally dealing with his daily quest of crafting a bird trap so that Noir did not have to do the honours, not that the cat looked like he minded. === Daily Quest #13 Objective: Build a Bird Trap 0/1 Simple Bird Trap Time Limit: 2 Days. Tutorial here. Reward: Trapping Skill Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === The simple bird trap design wasn''t finalised yet because Noir imed that birds were not as stupid as people thought. Hence, they observed the birds for a whole day to determine which trap was more suitable for catching these fluttering creatures. Rino spent the whole day from dawn to dusk hiding in bushes in the forest and bird watching with Noir. He was positive that the cat took a nap in between secretly while Rino yed corpse, but he did not point it out. Noir would be embarrassed, and he did not want to put the cat on the spot. In a nutshell, birds were smart and had fast reflexes. However, their flighty instincts were something that the hunters could use for their downfall. Programmed to seek food, twigs, shelter and other friends, these birds did not have any inhibitions about going for what they wanted. They also have poor eyesight because of how their eyes are located at the side of their heads and not the front. The lich witnessed their innate clumsiness to bump into objects right in front of them from time to time. It was amusing and frustrating. Why trap a bird when they were easily shot? Then again, it would make sense to build those bird traps. Rino did not need to send his hunters out to hunt for small game like birds if it worked. Instead, they could work on bigger games like king toads. Rino read through the tutorial as he trekked back to the farmhouse with Noir perched on his shoulder. Honestly, he doubted that was afortable spot for the cat, but Noir imed it was better than dirtying his paws when he could hitch a ride. There was no way RIno could refute a cat''s logic, so he became Noir''s personal lich chauffeur without receiving a single dime. He was more than content at having a cat on his shoulder, perching like a parrot. The bird traps in the tutorial ranged from simple to needlesslyplicated, and Rino had no idea what their catch rate sess was. Some traps were for all birds, while other traps were specific. Rino did not know if he had much use for the smaller birds if he caught them. Honestly, their feathers would be too tiny to be of use, and they would have more bones than meat for a meal. Noir might appreciate the asional small bird as a treat, but those birds were not going to contribute to the things Rino wanted in the long run. He wanted feathers for fletching and various luxury items such as a pillow, some quills and maybe even fishing lures. Rino had no idea if there were fishes in the swamp that could be baited using feather lures, but he heard that there were fishes in his previous world that were bigger and would go after those types of fake baits. Honestly, Rino thought that it would be a good investment to use the feathers to catch fishes as an alternative form of food. The undead army and faes might not need food to survive, but it was different for Kragami, who was still mortal. After deliberating his options, Rino decided on the most basic of bird traps he could find. The bird trap worked in a very subtle manner that made use of the bird''s natural clumsiness. Birds weren''t able to see in front of them very well, and with their poor vision range, the trap worked perfectly to catch them unaware. At the same time, Rino did not have to worry about the birds breaking free from the trap or getting hurt. Some traps killed on the spot, but this basic trap did not. Rino could arm it with different treats to entice different birds, and if the wrong bird fell for the trap, the hunters could easily release the poor fool and reset the trap. It was brilliant! All Rino needed was a small rock with a decent weight and some woven linen thread strong enough to hold the weight of the rock. Then, he scouted some regr bird perching ces, especially for the bigger birds like hawks and storks, to set the trap up. Nothing much looked out of ce, and he covered the linen rope with some vines. Nothing should give it away, and there was even a convenient bird treat hammered on the side of the tree where the bird could perch in the spot Rino wanted. Unlike the conventional trap in Rino''s tutorial, he did not make an effort to set the whole borate mechanism of having a weighted perch. Instead, he used some of his harvested paralysing poison from the king toads heavily diluted to act as a spray. When the birdnded on the spot, the magic circle would activate and trigger two things. First, it would spray a mist of diluted paralysis poison. Then, a st of air will knock away the stick holding the rock in ce so that the ropes can catch the unsuspecting and paralysed bird''s feet. With this newly devised trap, Rinoy in wait for a whole night while iming his new trapping skill. He had high hopes for it, even if Noir thought it was an overkill and utter waste of magic. The lich had a feeling Noir would be saying a different thing when he finally ate some of Kragami''s special herb-roasted bird. Chapter 114 - Making Rounds Five sparrows, one pseudo hawk and two death magpiester, Rino discovered a fatal w in this bird trap. He might have skills in crafting traps and a general better sess at catching things in traps he crafted personally than the traps the other hunters made. However, he could not decide what gets caught. Moreover, Rino spent half his time healing the broken legs of smaller birds that got caught in his trap. The trap did not reset automatically, and the poor terrified shrieks of the sparrows who were caught made Rinoe out of hiding to free them after the paralysis poison wore off. Seriously, Rino had no qualifications to be a hunter. He hated seeing the smaller and weaker animals be victims to his traps. It was also ridiculous for a hunter to nurse the trapped animals back to health. Such foolishness¡­ Rino could not decide between the little birds and himself, who was sillier. Eventually, Rino decided to leave patrolling and trap resetting to Fowler and the hobgoblins. Ignorance was bliss, although now that he thought about it, they reallycked healers in their ranks. The only people with medical knowledge in Noir Province were the shaman and his teacher, Kragami. What a disaster! Then again, Rino doubted they needed more doctors and healers when high-speed regeneration was a thing. Besides, one healer in each town was plenty for a vige of undead. The faes could take care of themselves. After dropping off the one pseudo hawk he caught at the hunter''s lodging, Rino decided to make his rounds. There was still a few hours before morning, and it should be time for him to make his move. It might feel sudden for everyone else, but Rino nned his departure for a long time now. His heart felt a lot lighter even if it didn''t exist physically now that Noir had his cor. There really wasn''t anything left to hold him back, and Rino wondered when the next daily quest prompting his departure would arrive. Perhaps tonight. Rino had uncanny luck, and that seemed highly likely. If the gods gave him some quest involving livestock rearing or a little moreplicated way of living through creating processed goods that did not already exist in Noir Province, Rino had to relocate. He did not want to risk the good harmonious vibes that the vigers here found. Besides, there were very capable people, and his kingdom was mostly undeveloped even with their aid in this small corner of it. The mana web array stretched from World Tree Rino to the edges of where Goblin Lord Gnut sent his patrol squads and was fully functional now. The four elemental faes halted all fae productions temporarily to a minimal output to focus on creating lights drawing on the mana array. At the same time, the gnomes worked hard under Griffith''s instructions to install the newly created sprinkler system that taped onto the mana array. The fields were looking a lot healthier, and manpower was reduced by more than half as crops grew at an exponential rate, receiving mana imbued water from Cypress County. The three farm managing sisters continued heaping Fronzo''s unique fertiliser mix, and Rino estimated that harvest would be ready by the morning. Another amazing discovery Rino made on his rounds was how the granary for spuds was close to exploding. Erika reported that the efficiency of this new farming system would fill the granary within a week with more potatoes than they needed for renting, even if Kragami took whatever he needed for the potato beer brewery. The surprise made Rino happy as he quickly emptied the granary stash for his subordinates, offering over a hundred thousand potatoes to the system. With this many GF credits, Rino had no problem buying whatever he wanted, even if it was at a rip-off price. He had ns to use the currency and did not care if the gods were overflooded with this new heap of spuds. Making his way out of the farm, Rino passed by his y mine to see that everything was running smoothly. The little wisp that transformed into a fire pixie was now in charge of keeping the mes in the kiln alive. She was doing a good job too, and Rino had a feeling it wouldn''t be long until she became a full-fledged fairy. The stone quarry that his World Tree spare body resided in was looking more magical than he remembered it thest time they held the feast here. With the mana web activated, World Tree Rino sparkled whenever someone used mana. The array on the ground was constantly lit as mana was converted from one form to another. Seeing this light show felt oddly satisfying, and Rino took a tour around the expanded stone mines that were now also the living quarters of some undead workers. Everything underground was so brightly lit that it gave off a cheerful and warm homely vibe. Rino was going to miss this ce badly when he travelled without thefort of lights, magic, duvets and fireces with ck cats. If there was one issue that bothered Rino, it was his luck finding a suitable mana power source where he wanted to set up his next vige. Heck, depending on the location and the creatures nearby, it could even turn into a town. Thinking over it for a long time as Rino reinforced Spudville''s defence array, he decided that he should bring something from the existing magic trees under his control to grow in a new environment just in case he could not find a suitable magic tree in the area for it. After all, not every magic tree was capable of bing Rino''s mana array stabiliser and power source. The defence spell around Spudville was ready, and all that was left was to care for Cypress County. Rino used the strongest magic barrier spell he knew from his previous life. It was a shield that could withstand three roars from a dragon in its prime before copsing. He had no idea if Kragami was good at fighting threats as strong as dragons, but if the shield did fall, Rino''s backup trap trigger was to call on the necromancer to hold the fort before he could arrive to take down the menace to his kingdom. Kingdom borders were important, so Rino did not think his defence array was overkill. In fact, he would make the hobgoblin and fairies test the strength of his barrier tomorrow. The lich headed over to Cypress County to set up the second defence barrier for the night and wondered if there was a way to crossbreed both magic trees. If he recalled correctly, there was a way to cross-pollinate flowers from two different nts. If Rino seeded, he could have a new magic tree sapling in his shadow sack before leaving. The only problem was how Rino knew he had no green thumb. There was only one solution, and Rino summoned the best farmer he knew. Fronzo appeared startled when he was summoned by the lich out of the blue. The lesser ghoul looked like he was inspecting the construction of the new fae estate when Rino pulled him over. "M-my lord!" Rino smirked invisibly. "I have a special task for you." All ears, Fronzo listened closely. Chapter 115 - Total Defence Exercise As a good ruler concerned for the wellbeing of his citizens, Rino decided tounch a sudden attack on his territory to see how they would react. This was probably thest thing he wanted to do before leaving Noir Province for an indefinite period. His new daily quest arrived, and Rino had all the reasons to leave this vige in search of a new territory space. He did not want to break the barrier he painstakingly set up, but there was a need to scare his army. The strength of a kingdom''s defence depended on how ready for an attack the army at the border was. Distant water cannot put out a near fire, and Rino hoped that his shadow army was prepared for the worst in his absence. Just a few hours earlier, Fronzo presented Rino with the sapling of a magic tree from cross-breeding World Tree Rino and the Cypress Ghost Tree. There was no longer a reason for Rino to remain lingering in Noir Province once the vigers passed this test. Conjuring an image of a young wyvern, Rino took his position in the illusion to cause mayhem a few mountains from where Noir Province was. The wyvern''s howls echoed far enough to reach the watchtower of Noir Province''s borders, and the pixie on duty shrieked when he heard it. Fast as a teleportation spell, the pixie on watch triggered the warning rm spell and reported back to the elemental syph in charge that day. Yes, Rino chose to attack his vige during the day when it would be at its weakest. He felt slightly sluggish, but this wasn''t something he couldn''t deal with. His shadow army was a lot stronger than before, and a little sunlight shouldn''t kill them. Besides, it was more likely that their enemies would choose the strongest sun at noon to attack them when they found out how the vige was inhabited by undead. The rm sent everyone into action like a fallen house of cards as one thing led to another. Rino observed with pride how the emergency magical barrier defence was boosted and activated by the four elemental sylphs within seconds. At the same time, the Cypress Ghost Tree''s shared conscience told him how Kragami reacted in less than a minute to do the same and take overmand of the situation, prioritising evacuation of the weaker non-battle faes from his territory before supporting his appointed territory baron. Fronzo might be a nonbatant, but he did not back away from participating in the war against the young wyvern approaching their vige. The lesser ghoul was busy organising the storemen and faes to carry kegs from their underground storage, redirecting farming faes and helping hands into logistic carriers to assist the warriors in gearing up for the battle. With less than five minutes before the young wyvern reached their territory, the vige scampered into full alert, and Rino recognised with pride that all the hobgoblin guards with longbows stood at their respective watchtowers, waiting for a coordinated signal from Goblin Lord Gnut. The shaman stood beside the baron and buffed the warriors prepared to fight. More importantly, Rino could see a sense of unity between Fowler and his friends with the other members of the vige for once. The lesser vampire was geared up and taking his stance at the forefront with the faes. His job was to guard the world tree cave while the four elemental sylphs reinforced the defence barrier. Rino felt proud that he was not wrong in entrusting this duty to the dislikeable archer. He might have a disagreeable personality, but he was loyal when duty called for it. Rino did not go easy on his vigers. The young wyvern spewed a powerful tier-five spell right off the bat, razing the surrounding forest into ash and turning the peaceful scene into a sea of mes. Hell fire. Rino used the spell to terrorise his vigers. Nobody knew where he was, and Mutt was missing from the action. However, nobody had time to question it. They had a more pressing emergency to deal with as the wyvern struck the magic barrier once. The barrier withheld the wing m, and Rino retreated a little, making the illusion howl in rage at the failed attempt to destroy the vige. The wyvern pped around in the air, trying to find an angle to break into the vige, spewing fire everywhere without much sess. "Fire!" Lord Goblin Gnut announced, and Rino watched the fairy-archer pairs work together to form a terrifying artillery rain on his illusion wyvern. The attack was more powerful than Rino thought it was. Even as he flew and twisted through the air trying to evade them all, he only managed to escape half of those arrows. The other artillery arrows embedded themselves in Rino''s exposed ribs. The wyvern used freeze magic to stop the arrows mid-air, startling the shaman, who urgently reported the situation to the goblin lord. Young wyverns were powerful, but a wyvern who could use more than one elemental type of magic was far more dangerous than anything they prepared for. Their lich king was still missing, and it was a dire situation. Lord Goblin Gnut gritted his teeth and grabbed his spear, raising it above his head. Over thest few weeks, the goblin warriors and some farmhands practised what they learned from Rino. They might not be as good as their king, but certainly, they would be better than ordinary swordsmen. Not to mention, they were undead born from shadows with high regeneration magic. "Our King entrusted us to protect thisnd. Our souls belong to him. Even if you have to burn ten thousand times, protect thisnd with everything you have!" Rino heard this from the sky and witnessed what a true Goblin Lord could do for the first time. He knew that Gnut''s charisma was important in uniting everyone. However, he did not know that his Baron was capable of buffing everyone in his territory. The battle aura of nonbatants rose, and even Fronzo looked more like a greater ghoul than a lesser ghoul with that unknown ferocity in his eyes as he grabbed a spear and yelled. The archers and fairies stood their ground to fire a new round of artillery while those who had spears rushed out of the protective barrier with the help of fairies to participate in an aerial battle. The sight of flying goblins and skeletons was so unreal that Rino had to ask himself if this wyvern would survive in an actual situation. The fairies who gave their souls to World Tree Rino were not infinitely regenerating like his shadow army. Yet, they were here, risking their existence and evolution to assist his warriors in a war they knew they might not return from. The lich had to admit, he was touched beyond words. It was more amazing to see how the three farm manager sisters geared up and put their differences aside. They lead the fairies in three different groups to battle. Knowing that the wyvern could conjure fire and ice, the fairies grouped themselves ordingly to deflect fire and ice. A new group of wind fairies battled with the wyvern in the air to make it lose its aerial advantage. Spells rained on Rino from every direction, and even he found it hard to deflect both physical and spell attacks from the all-out effort from his vigers to defend their territory. The fairies were relentless, and Rino was hit with more artillery arrows now than before. The illusion wyvern twisted awkwardly in the sky, trapped by the onught of spells, and Goblin Lord Gnut charged towards the creature when he spotted an opening. "Now!" he ordered as spearmen threw their spears. Rino was not prepared for so many enchanted spears to be aimed at him. Desperate times called for desperate measures, so he used another card up his sleeve and blew everything away using wind magic. Thoroughly terrified that it was a tri-elemental wyvern, the vigers became more desperate. Rino wanted to drop the illusion ande clean, but the two magicians in his vige did not allow him any break to do so. Kragami arrived on the scene to see the wyvern neutralise all the warriors'' attacks. Where did such a powerful opponente from? In his long life, he never saw a wyvern who could cast two different types of magic, much less three. Something nagged at the back of his mind that this was simply too strange. Yet, he had little time to think as he coordinated a spell to immobilise the wyvern with the goblin shaman. Rino hardly had time to react when he felt a dangerous catastrophe spell build up. Even if he did not recognise the spell, the sheer amount of mana it was gathering would put it up in the forbidden tier. The sky changed, and the sun was covered by looming dark clouds within seconds. Rino watched how his Baron ordered for a hasty retreat as the fist lightning shed. Boom! Rino recognised this ritual now as blood rained down upon them. This was a forbidden spell that would eat at the caster''s lifespan. Kragami was staking his lifespan to call upon the darkest hour, sacrificing his life to the Cypress Ghost, and Rino could not allow it. "Cease at once!" he boomed and unsummoned Kragami''s magician partner to forcefully end the ritual. The ritual was not fully initialised, so there would be no bacsh on Kragami. Rino was thankful he wasn''t toote to end this. The vigers marvelled in shock, confusion and surprise when the wyvern illusion disappeared, and their king hovered in the air, pulling arrows from his exposed ribs. Proud of them, Rino smiled warmly. "You passed the test." Chapter 116 - His Legend Begins Despite the shock, nobody questioned their king for pulling such a prank. The sea of fire returned to the peaceful forest they knew and loved. The demolishednds remained untouched, and the skies were clear once again, with the sun taking its toll on the sluggish undead. Rino gathered everyone in the cave once more to give his farewell speech for a while. Goblin Lord Gnut organised the meeting and silenced everyone so that Rino could give the speech he came to give. While the monarch waited, he thought back to the coordinated attacks. Don''t mention a tri-elemental wyvern. Rino doubted an actual dragon would be able to escape their fierce defence unscathed. Rino might be able to take a dragon down alone, but he did not think his minions were capable of bringing it down to its knees with such a relentlessbination of attacks like a storm. Many factors contributed to their defence''s sess, and Rino prided how much his subordinates had improved. These enchanted tools were the right decision. Rino often wondered if creating them woulde to bite him in the back one day, but for now, Rino knew that equipping his subordinates with tools to help and save themselves was the right decision. It was a true pity a certain ck cat had to leavest night. Rino would have loved to pat Noir onest time before he left for good. He already emptied out the potato storage and bought ten days worth of day-offs from the offering reward shop. Ten days was more than enough for Rino to find a new spot for his new town and rebuild whatever he needed with the existing resources. Mutt bounced eagerly in his shadows to set off on an adventure, but Rino had to let his loyal subordinates know his n first. "Silence." The cave fell eerily silent in a moment after Rino made his thoughts known. Despite the vast cavern, it started to feel a little cramped with the increasing number of faes he contracted from Cypress County. Their numbers only grew by the day, but Rino wasn''tining about having a few extra pairs of hands in his growing kingdom. All eyesnded on the lich, and Rino felt nervous. He gave speeches before in his previous life as well as lectures as a guest lecturer and researcher. However, he never thought that he would be giving speeches that involved political concerns and flowery words to inspire his followers, like what the king and ministers did from time to time at important festivals to hype the public. Rino often dubbed their speeches as brainwashing propaganda to win the favours of dumb civilians, but now, he found himself doing the same. Oh, to heck with it! He was toozy to think of nice words, so he would cut to the chase. Telling lies was simply too tiring and totally not Rino''s style, so he rattled off what he needed them to know. "My kingdom is only beginning. You''ve all worked hard despite the grievances at the beginning ande a long way as a vige." Acknowledging efforts and giving credit when it was due was something Rino strongly believed in. He wouldn''t take the credit from someone else''s research, and the list of names was lengthy as he thanked the individuals who helped him the most to create Noir Province. Then, Rino moved on to exin his actions earlier. They passed the test for teamwork to see if they could work together to defend his most treasured vige with flying colours, and Rino told the Baron how he was now reassured that his first founded vige and Noir Province would also be thest territory Rino knew would hold even if the rest of his kingdom fell apart. No matter what, this was a precious new beginning for Rino. He wanted this ce to be home to his soul even if he might not be here very often once the new daily quests started to pour in. There was a honey feeling to this vige that he founded, and nothing couldpare to the farmhouse he built brick by brick. It was the ce he first met Noir and everything that happened here, Rino was involved in. Should he perish one day, he would like this to be his resting ground, but he did not say that aloud. It was too early for such things. His new legacy was only beginning. The speech was long as Rino ended up disclosing to his subordinates the dreams he had for thisnd and the world. Nobodyined about how long his speech was. Instead, everyone had thoughtful looks. The ideas that Rino spoke about seemed rather far-fetched, but Rino''s belief inspired them. The legends went around in this small world whispering to them about a king who could make the dead rise. At first, nobody was sure if Rino was the king from the prophecy told for generations. However, there was no room for doubt now that Rino gave his grand speech. Their king had newnds to conquer and was leaving this established territory in their hands. There was no room for failure, and Baron Gnut felt the most responsibility as Rino wrapped his speech up. The lich did not know how long he would be gone from Noir Province, but he did remember to tell his minions to treat a certain ck cat as they would treat him if the magical cat decided to visit the vige in his absence. At the same time, Rino reminded Erika and Fronzo to keep him updated about the granary arrangements. After several misceneous announcements and duty delegations to his small council, Rino said his goodbyes quickly and summoned Mutt. The shorter a goodbye was, the lesser tears there would be. However, he forbade any tears even if some undead were now capable of them. In his absence, he ordered arge feast to be thrown tomemorate how amazing they were as a vige to push a tri-elemental wyvern to a corner. "Let''s go," he told Mutt as the sabre tooth wolf howled and took to the winds. Chapter 117 - [Bonus] A Day In Cypress County Author note: Some of you might have noticed how this chapter has changed tremendously. Long story short, I actually scheduled a chapter 1 month in advance wronglyst night cuz I was too tired. This is a cooked up recement chapter for those who have privilege because WN is dumb and does not allow deleting. The editors cannot do anything either, so I made a stand in to upload the actual one in the actual sequence. Sorry for the inconvenience! Now back to the story! Also, it will be nice if some of yall privileged readers canment in advance on the peasants who fast pass to foster a more positive readingmunity in my book. I have been getting too many haters, and honestly, I don''t really want to write anymore because of it. It gets harder every day. >>Xxx Destiny Aitsuji xxX<< The morning always set a chill in his bones. Kragami wasn''t getting any younger, even if the quality of life in hister years improved tremendously. Who would have thought that yesterday''s enemy could be today''s student? Rino left to start a new town somewhere, and as the mayor of Cypress County, Kragami had many matters to attend to. While most things ran independently because Rino''s minions were better trained than his zombie army, sometimes his opinion as the mayor is still required. The one thing he looked forward to every morning was a cup of hot tea. "Good morning!" a fairy greeted when she saw the necromancer walking out of his sleeping quarters still in his nightgown. Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Kragami nodded a greeting in return and climbed up the steps to his separate kitchen. Why did he separate the kitchen from the bedroom? It hurt his knees having to climb it every morning for his tea. Then again, it was Aiden''s proposal to get him walking more since he was starting to put on weight from all that good food. Curse that good-natured pygmy dwarf! Sometimes Kragami wondered if he loved that ex gnome more than he hated him. The little morning exercise did Kragami good, and tea always tastes better after a small workout. As the water boiled on the magic stove, Kragami wondered which tea leaf he should use. There were a few things that he needed to tend to before he could get on with his research. Erika informed himst night that the paper production had dropped and Rino needed a new batch as soon as possible. He had to investigate it, and investigating was a time-consuming chore. Furthermore, something happened to the brewery, turning theirtest batch of potato beer sour. Aiden was so depressed when he heard that they wouldn''t be drinking for a while. Cypress County''s overall mood plummeted because of it, and it was up to Kragami to manage the people under his district. "Water Bell tea it is," he decided and tossed some dried flower petals into a cup before filling it with boiling water. Thirteen minutester, Kragami was dressed and ready to check on Cypress County. The fairies were changing shifts and the night shift gnomes gave the mayor their daily report on the things they worked on. "So what happened in the brewery?" he asked. The question brought a metaphorical grey cloud over everyone''s head. "It turned into vinegar. We just confirmed it. The bacteria is still in there. What should we do about it? There are five barrels of vinegar now. We won''t be needing vinegar for many more years." Hearing that, Kragami chuckled. It wasn''t a bad thing. Vinegar could be used to do many things, and maybe it was time to start pickling things. Rino might also find vinegar helpful when ites to treating animal hide. "Don''t worry," he reassured them. "Although we might not be drinking for a while, there is a use for vinegar inrge quantities. It is good for cleaning difficult things, especially moss. Didn''t Fronzoin about the moss invasion in the reservoir?" Lighting up, the gnomes made ns to contact the goblins for help to move the heavy vinegar barrels. Kragami made sure that they kept the mother vinegar bacteria so that they could mass-produce vinegar again if needed. With one issue resolved, Kragami listened to theints from the sawmill about the weakening trees. Cypress trees used to be strong, but after mass growing them on the tree farm using magic water, they''ve grown to be flimsier and can withstand lesser weight when made into furniture. "The new living quarters broke, and three fairies were hurt when the roof copsed on them. Goblin Lord Gnut is unhappy about it." Stroking his long braided beard, Kragami asked if they could get some fertiliser from Fronzo to test if reconditioning the soil would bring back the quality of cypress wood on the tree farm. A few fairies left to act as messengers, and Kragami followed Aiden to the gnome workshop. "This is the new invention that you requested. Do you think they are better than spears?" Kragami took a look at the weapon he designed for fairies. They had plenty of fairies around Noir Province, and the poption of fairies increased constantly. He thought about training a squad of fairies in aerialbat fit for assassination and reconnaissance to boost the patrol team''s defences. It was better to get rid of potential enemies than wait for them to strike. Lately, several monsters were prowling around Cypress County even though they don''t know what it is. Even the king toads are frightened of them. "Get a few fairiespatible with fire magic to test it out. I might need to ask the little pixie from the kiln for a favour. Find me in two hours. I will write her a letter. Deliver it directly when it is her shift. Also, let the fire sylph know that I''m borrowing some of her girls for this." Nodding, a few more fairies left. It was finally time to check out the problem at the reed factory. As usual, the reed factory looked busy. There was pulp mixture in woven baskets everywhere, and fairies were still busy harvesting reeds grown in magic-imbued water. Kragami did not sense anything out of the ordinary. Things were progressing as they should be. Why did Erika inform him about a decline in paper production? "Excuse me, can I check if there are any problems with paper production? Erika told me that we were giving them less paper than they required." The fairy in charge flew over to Kragami and apologised. "It''s because you''ve been teaching the fairies how to read and writetely that we''ve been using more paper than normal. I will ask for overtime work to meet the production requirements! I''m sorry I overlooked it!" Tearfully, the fairy in charge apologised over and over again as if shemitted a grave sin. Kragami took twenty minutes to assure her that it was not a problem. He shared me in it for not noticing earlier too. They might have to pause literacy lessons for a while due to theck of paper for lessons to meet the production deadline. He thanked the fairy in charge and told the fairies in the paper factory to ask for help if they needed it. After Kragami left the reed farm, he wondered if there was a way to teach his sses without using so much paper. In fact, he wondered if there was another use for the paper that had already been written on. The pile of used papers, even if they used both sides, was starting to umte. Fronzo assured them that the paper would dpose into fertiliser, but Kragami wondered if that was truly the best way to use papers. He thought back about the meeting with Erika. The ghoul was usually quiet andposed. She spoke little about herself and only talked when it was necessary. Rino did not make the wrong decision when choosing her to be the secretary to carry out his biddings. She managed everything with calcted proficiency and gained respect from everyone. More interestingly, everyone knew that the rtionship between Erika and Fowler wasn''t as simple. The lesser vampire only ever listened to Erika and, even to some extent, feared her. However, Erika had interesting things to tell him about his student from time to time. "How did Rino teach her how to write and count without the use of paper?" Kragami wondered. With that, the necromancer packaged his newly dried experimental tea blend and hopped onto the teleportation pad. He had a secretary to see and a goblin lord to apologise to. Chapter 118 - Vacation (1) The skies were blue, and Rino was purple. In all honesty, he didn''t care about roasting in soul fire under the harmful sun. He was simply d to have a vacation away from the busy vige. As ofte, Rino found it increasingly hard to have some alone time, and this was a good opportunity for him to pretend that Mutt wasn''t here and enjoy the breeze hellbent on blowing his hood off so that the sun could burn him while they travelled. Mutt wasn''t on purple mes despite the sun, and Rino quickly learned that the sabre tooth wolf was exempted from the deadly sun rays when he was sitting under Rino''s shadow protection. From afar, it would look as if a lich in weird garb with his head on mes was gliding through the prairie at an incredible speed. In reality, Rino''s feet were dug into the side of Mutt, who was hiding in his shadows and only peeking a little out of the ground so that his master could sit on hisrge head under that cape that Rino held shut as they travelled. Rino tried his best not to think about how his pelvic was resting on the top of the wolf''s head with his legs tucked right behind those ears. Mutt was massive when he wanted to be, and the magician had no idea when Mutt became this powerful because the sabre tooth monster always appeared in apact size below Rino''s waist when he was summoned. There was no real destination in mind. Rino simply looked at the overview of his map to decide where he wanted to go. Noir Province was on the very edge of his kingdom in the southeast. There was a mountainous region past the swamps that Rino wanted to visit in the west because he thought about mines when he thought about mountains. When he thought about mines, Rino imagined there to be dwarves. In his previous world, Rino was a close friend of dwarves, even if those money-grubbing stout fellows hated humans in general. Rino was considered a human oddball they weed because he had a curious mind for innovation. One of Rino''s closest researchers was a half-dwarf. He had a dwarven father but an elven mother. Thinking about the different species from his old world and this, Rino started to miss certain things. The fact that paper was a luxury there and utterly unheard of here made the magician sad. He could do without his favourite beverages like coffee and tea because he did not have a digestive system. However, the absence of books really drove him insane. Thankfully, Rino''s new daily quest gave him a glimmer of hope to remedy it. If the books he wanted to read, hold and protect did not exist, he would just have to create them. It wouldn''t be the first time Rino wrote and published a book. It certainly wouldn''t be thest time he authored something either. After all, there can never be too many books in the world. Books and knowledge were synonymous with joy for the magician in his previous world, and he swore that hard leather-bound books were the best things to happen after roasted coffee and cats. ording to the elemental sylphs, there was a river further up from Spudville that Rino could follow upwards to get to the mountain ranges. There were fields and small patches of forests between Noir Province and the mines that Rino wanted to check out. It was quite an obstacle course to navigate onnd, so Rino listened to their advice and tried to find that river they mentioned. Rino had no idea how far the river was from Spudville, but after travelling for half a day and seeing no signs of the river except for empty fields and forests in the distance, he decided they were lost. "Stop," he told Mutt, who listened. "We''re lost. Hide in my shadows for a little while until I find the right direction." The wolf obeyed, and Rino pulled his hood back up. It was nearing noon, and he felt sluggish. He might take a nap in that dense woodter once he located a river to follow. Without apass or markers to determine where Noir Province was, Rino could only pick a direction using the sun as a reference. He really hoped that the burning ball of fire in the sky followed the same sense in his previous world and rose from the east. Honestly, he should have asked the fairies before leaving in such haste. Noir would roll his eyes if he learned what Rino did to appear cool and tease him for it. Thankfully, the ck cat left before he did. Rino''s empire territory was huge. He did not know much about whaty beyond the seas, but there was a lot of undevelopednd waiting for him to work with. The fields were good for farming, and Rino didn''t really care if thend was fertile. Everything could be solved using magic. The forests were brimming with resources Rino had no idea how to use yet, but he had an eternity to figure out. The clouds got into his eyes, and Rino lowered his flying altitude as he travelled in the opposite direction of the rising sun. If he missed the river, the sylphs told him he would meet the sea. Rino hoped it would note to that because tracing his way back to Spudville would be a massive pain without bearings. Thankfully, Rino found the river he missed. However, there was something strange about the river''s appearance as he recognised the rocky ridges of the mountain range. There should be only one mountain range on thisnd with mines, right? The sylphs did not report a second mountain range even if there were hills. Also, these mountain ranges were not topped with snowy caps. The rocky terrain devoid of green and life matched the description he was given, and Rino felt his heart race even if the mountains looked as tiny as hisst finger joint bone now. "Mutt!" he summoned the lone wolf when he saw his destination in the distance. The wolf obeyed and materialised beneath his master''s feet as Rino climbed on, making himselffortable. There were many fields and forests between him and those mountains, but Rino now had more confidence after finding the river. Together, master and summon followed the water at a more leisurely pace, enjoying the first vacation Rino had ever since he was dropped into his new life. Chapter 119 - Vacation (2) Passing through the forests in this region was an interesting experience. The trees were a lot closer, and Rino swore he never saw such a wide variety in his previous life. The air was denser, and although there were not many mana particles, it felt heavy. More interestingly, there were at least a few hundred species of wildlife that Rino never saw before. He wasn''t familiar with anything here, although many of them looked interesting. If Kragami was here, Rino would have interrogated the old man for details about the strange animals. He knew what lizards were, and honestly, they should be a lot smaller than wyverns or dragons. Most lizards should fit in the palm of his hand, but the ones Mutt avoided were at least until Rino''s knee and walked on two legs. The poor fellow did not run for long because Rino and Mutt saw how it was picked off by a seemingly innocent flower as quick as a sh. Staring at the murder scene with disbelief, Rino urged Mutt to travel by the river banks instead of trying to cut through the dense jungle. There was simply too much at stake, and Rino did not want to end up getting dyed by trying a dangerous shortcut. Ten days of vacation wasn''t very long. Rino had a lot ofnd and maybe even sea to cover before his vacation ended. Or he could just urge for more spuds to be grown for extending his vacation. In fact, Rino had just enough to extend his vacation by a day or two with the remaining GF credits he had in the wallet. This loophole made Rino very proud of himself. He did not have to work on day-offs, and if the gods kept this price constant, it would be a battle against time to grow and turn in spuds for unlimited vacation time. He could spend his eternity farming potatoes and not doing those dumb daily quests, but Rino had a feeling abuse of the system''s good nature will result in an ugly punishment of some sort. He did not want to plot another world destruction because nning one for over two decades was quite enough for a lifetime''s aplishment. However, the gods should not take him for granted, running their useless errands for the sake of gaining power. Yes, Rino figured it out eventually why these Gods were insistent on kingdom building. His scouts reported many settlements on hisnd, but none of them was doing well. Someone needed to unite these people, but everyone was too unintelligent and weak to aplish anything. It wouldn''t be long before humanity became extinct, so the legend of a king who could make the dead rise again was to give themon folk hope. It was all a huge y of words. Rino wanted to smack the god who came up with this legend. It took him a while to understand the origins of the legend and the intention behind it because even Kragami was fooled into studying necromancy because of the story. The act of making the dead rise again wasn''t literal. It was metaphorical, and all that meant was to bring humanity''s former glory back. Rino wasn''t too sure what counted as humanity''s former glory in a world with such backward technology, but he hoped to find out a little more about this strange world in his ten-day trip. Mutt enjoyed hopping from stone to stone in the river. The river that they followed twisted and bent a lot. It flowed and ebbed while the current fluctuated, from trying to drown them to lulling them to a peaceful nap. The sabre tooth wolf tried to snatch a few fish along the way, and Rino merely sat back to watch. His mount made a terrible boat, but the scenery made up for the bumpy experience as Mutt pawed at another school of carps with razor-sharp teeth. This ce was teeming with dangerous creatures, deadlier than king toads, and Rino wondered why the animals here evolved to such hostility. In his previous world, the most dangerous nt he knew was a mandrake, and while it could cause a person to faint from the sheer volume of its screams, it did not eat anyone. Here, an innocent poppy-like flower grew thorny vines that would whip unsuspecting fishes from the river for lunch. Mutt barely dodged that thorny vine whip and quickly jumped further down the river. River horses that have bloated bellies swam beside Mutt, who trod carefully by the banks. Rino tried to determine if they were friend or foe when the school of carps from earlier jumped on them, reducing them to bones in less than a minute. The only thing Rino saw was the colour of the water turning red before it faded into pink from the constant flow of water behind them and the sinking bones of what used to be a fat river horse. As the sun went down, Rino decided to let Mutt rest. He would walk the rest of his journey in search of a ce to rest for the night. The mountains were slightly closer than before, with the range peeking past the treetops about the size of his pinky now. They travelled rather quickly but were still nowhere near where Rino wanted to be. At night, this deadly jungle became somewhat magical. There were no wisps to light the way, but the hundreds of flying silk-like web creatures that invaded the air space reminded Rino of jellyfishes in the air. They were so numerous as they swayed in the wind whilending on glowing flowers that bloomed only at night. Rino had no idea what thesend jellyfishnterns were, but he tried not to get in their way. There was no way to tell if they were deadly or friendly. Going by the experiences during the day, Rino was more inclined to think they were after his life. He kept his distance and trudged a little deeper into the cover of trees, keeping an eye on where the mountains were so that he would not stray too far from the river. After many close calls, a few water slicer magic spells and a lot of stumbling on tripping roots, Rino found a cave that looked rtively safe to spend the night in. It was simply too dangerous to travel during the nightpared to the day, with too many dangers lurking at every step. Rino would love to travel without the sun beating down on him, but for the sake of convenience and safety, he would travel during the day when things were easier to spot and avoid. Setting up a temporary earth wall to block the entrance of this shallow cave, Rino checked his sleep wallet and withdrew eight hours of sleep. Hopefully, he would still be in one piece by the time morning arrived. Chapter 120 - Vacation (3) When Rino woke up, there were still a few more hours to sunrise. Hence, he withdrew the map from his shadow sack and congratted himself for remaining in one piece over the night. The map wasn''t very urate, and Rino could tell that the scale was wrong after travelling the distance between Spudville to the mountain ranges. Even if they took a wrong turn at the start if the sylphs were right about the time required to travel to the mountain ranges from Cypress County, the distance from Spudville to the mountains were much further. When Rino found the swamp, it was already a few hours away by flying and several days on foot for those without magic powers. He could not imagine the number of days those who could not fly or teleport needed to get this far. Maybe they would have died in an attempt to make it to where Rino was because everything in this jungle following the path of the meandering river will try to kill. He still had no idea about those air jellyfishes if they were friend or foe because he had no idea what they did. However, it was better to err on the safe side than assume mortals will escape them unscathed. Although nothing could be done now that the map was already drawn, Rino could still use it as a rough guide for his present location to plot the rest of his journey. In one day, he travelled from the southeast of his territory to the southwest, following the river. At this rate, he should reach the mountains in two more days if he did not be sidetracked. There was another intersecting river on the map close to the mountain range, and honestly, Rino wanted to find civilisation at some point. In his previous world, most settlements were found near drinkable water sources. Water was synonymous with life for the longest time. Although the fairies did not mention much about whaty beyond the rocky mountain range, Rino suspected there should be something interesting on the other side of this mountain barrier. After all, they informed him that the mountain was covered full of salt rocks, unique to the terrain. Rino had a guess about what was waiting for him past those mountains, although he knew that the river would start to thin out a little to a tter grasnd that spanned more than a week''s travel on foot. Ideally, that nd was good for farming and small peaceful civilisation. It was most ideal for rearing livestock and building a huge residential estate for a growing poption. The location was free from natural threats on the map, and Rino wondered if the hilly area was full of shepherds. Rino could pretend that it was paradise in a mortal world that hecked ever since his death for a little while. On a more serious note, the sylphs warned him about a miasma fillednd past the peaceful meadows that Rino should stay clear from. It was a cesspit full of negative energy that they dare not venture into. However, as a lich born from darkness, Rino was tempted to make that contaminatednd his kingdom''s capital for the undead citizens. For now, he marked that out on the map and pondered over the easternnd past the hilly meadows. Rino could understand a swamp near theke he found close to Spudville. He could understand a slightly dead and sparsely grownnd devoid of greenery except for the asional low shrubs and needle-like trees. The ground was also covered with more rocks than soil past the swamps, ording to the scouts. However, the same terrain was found close to the eastern side of his territory, close to the sea. Rino could not understand that. In his world, it was usually sandy near seas and oceans. Was that notmon in this world? Studying the map in greater detail, Rino traced a finger across the river from the mountains splitting and running through the ins to meet the sea. The fairies told him that there were two seas and two oceans surrounding his territory, but only one interested him. Towards the south, past Cypress County, was a white ocean where the water was white from many seafoam crashing onto the rocky shoreline. The water there was bitter, and it was freezing, ording to the fairies who were there. Rino did not question how they knew this, but he wasn''t against holidaying on a business trip. After all, he was guilty of such activities in his past life when acting as a delegate for official negotiations. On the opposite side of his territory, the Blue Ocean was sweet-tasting but also very cold. The Blue Ocean was brimming with life forms underneath that were rumoured to be delicious, although the sweet-tasting ocean water could cause mortals to hallucinate. In small doses, it was considered recreational. Inrge amounts, it could cause death. Not all hallucinations were good, and Rino had no idea if the same thing would happen to undead who drank it. The sea that contained salt was the sea on the opposite side of the rocky mountain ranges where the breeze carrying Death Sea salt would stop by. Nobody knew what was beyond the Death Sea, but the fairies on scouting duties reported stretches of sandy beaches on the opposite side of the mountain range after peeking. They weren''t able to explore more because they were on a tight timeline, so Rino did not me them. He could explore it himself. Thest sea was the one Rino was most interested in on the opposite side of the Death Sea. Rino did not know why the locals called it the ck sea because the water wasn''t ck. In fact, it had many shades of blue in different parts of the sea. The most ominous parts of the ck Sea had to be that strange mist cloud that never dispersed from across the edge of the rocky shoreline. It was very far from Rino and the fairies who observed it for several weeks imed that the mist sometimes thinned out but never moved. A few water sprites tried to explore the mist but returned empty-handed. Nobody knew what was there, but Rino told them to return and stop exploring just in case something terrible happened. Yet, it did not deter Rino from putting the strange mist location in the ck Sea as part of his exploration checkpoints. Then again, he might have figured out why it was called the ck Sea. While the water was salty there, much like the Death Sea, the water within the mist was ck. Nobody knew if it was ck from theck of sunlight passing through the mist or the natural colour of the water. However, the name stuck, and Rino tucked his map away. The sun was finally up. It was time to resume their journey through this dangerous forest. Chapter 121 - Hole In The Ground Travelling to the mountains took a long detour downwards in one step. Rino and Mutt were running away from the angry group of six-armed monkeys who were addicted to bones. Rino simply looked like a tasty treat and easy prey, so they had to escape when the monkeys started walking towards them on water. Mutt carried his master dutifully, not minding the burning sun and purple mes burning his shadow body. He dodged and snarled when the monkeys came too close to his master, and Rino held onto his mount tightly in fear of getting thrown off. He could use magic to ward these creatures off, but Rino wasn''t here to create trouble or make enemies. Killing the monkeys might attract a more troublesome foe before arriving at their destination, so Rino refrained from doing so and urged Mutt to go even faster. Looking back, that was his mistake. Thanks to the poor lighting in the jungle caused by the thick foliage, Mutt could not see where he was going, and they ended up plummeting into a hole in the ground. Why was there a hole in the ground in the middle of the jungle? Even the six-armed monkey tribe could not understand what happened. As soon as Rino and Mutt fell in, the ground copsed and covered the small entrance they fell from, sealing it from any light sources above. Despite the terrible situation, the silver lining remained that they no longer had angry monkeys chasing them. Rino would deal with this detour any day over confronting the dangers of the jungle above. Then again, he had no idea if it was safer underground. Going by the logic that most living creatures in this world preferred to live above ground, Rino would take his chances in this ce. Summoning fire magic in this ce was a mistake. Rino quickly threw up a magic barrier to protect himself from the powerful explosion. Mutt hid in his master''s shadow on instinct at that smell. He knew this smell a little too well but failed to warn Rino before the lich lit a fireball. "That''s exploding gas from the earth leaks," Mutt exined to Rino, who was trying to make out where the ground was in the dark. "You could have told me earlier," Rino scowled but righted himself after a minute, dusting the dirt that collected in his hood. The lich walked around in the dark and felt the edges of the wall he was blown into. This mine was huge! He couldn''t believe his luck at finding such a gem in the middle of the jungle, but Rino wasn''t going to question how this world worked. He just hoped to find some dwarfs around even if he was frustrated at not being able to see. Rino thought about it as he walked through the cave without sight. He could feel the solid ground changing into something mushier. The sludge-like ground made progress slow, and Rino did not want to think about the dull smells invading his senses. Mutt was cringing so hard in his shadows that the lich took pity on the wolf and let him remain in there until Rino found a way out of here. He considered risking burning his body by borrowing light magic from his world tree self when there was a faint light from up ahead. There was a familiar tingling in his bones as he approached the light, and Rino recognised what the feeling was. It was something he missed a lot by travelling in this jungle and by the river. The air was very stale to a magician like him. It was devoid of mana and life everywhere he went after the night he spent holed up sleeping in a shallow cave. Mana! Excited, Rino ignored how the sludge-like liquid was reaching his exposed waist. He marched onward to the glowing green light and rejoiced when his efforts paid off. Like a diver in need of oxygen, Rino ran. He could summon Mutt to reach the end of this dark road quicker, but he wasn''t thinking as his feet carried him. Finally meeting the source of the green glow, Rino marvelled at the crystal he found. It was huge and reminded Rino of mithril back in the royal mines. However, Mithril was dark blue and not turquoise green. There was no denying that this crystal was the source of the mana. It glowed and pulsed lightly as if it was breathing, making Rino believe that the rock had to be simr to the space rock he found. He never knew that there were mana-emitting rocks and crystals in this world or why they existed. ording to Noir, the origin of mana was the very base form of life. It contains a soul and fragments of it that would condense into a soul. He couldn''t understand theck of mana presence above ground and the ovepensation of it underground. What were these crystals, and why did the jungle above create such hostile creatures? The more Rino discovered about this world, the less he seemed to understand. However, he was now certain that this was a valuable cave and hoped he could somehow remember where this cave was after finding a way out. Nevertheless, Rino used dark magic to hack a smaller piece of thisrge green glowing crystal from the main body. The little piece broken off from the big crystal body continued to glow lightly in Rino''s hand, so the lich stored it away safely in his shadow sack. He still had about eight days left to find a suitable location for his town. That should be plenty of time, even if there was no longer enough time for the recreational activities he had in mind. He should find a way to get out of here now and pick a ce close enough for him to return to this cave. This curious mana-emitting crystal would require a little more studying, and Rino did not want to let this cave exploring opportunity go, not when he had more questions than answers. Chapter 122 - Dungeon Discovery Running through the cave and marvelling at the crystals that emitted mana, Rino came to understand a few things. Each crystal emitted a different kind of mana. While mana had no elements, these crystals emitted mana as a form of by-product as if it were a nt. It sucked up elements that it grew on to produce mana. The green turquoise crystal lived on moss that Rino backtracked to confirm. Apart from that turquoise crystal, Rino found several other crystals that fed on different things. Some fed on the rocks and soil in the cave, while others grew in water. However, there was one red crystal that Rino found and what it fed on bothered him. "Master, the carcasses are fresh." Rino nodded. Indeed, these monsters were still bleeding, and the blood that seeped into the pit where the red crystal grew glowed warmly, pulsing quickly as if it were excited. The pile of corpses and bones in the pit that the red crystal grew in was very disturbing. It was not a recent activity, and someone was feeding this magic crystal blood on purpose to grow it. "We should leave for now," Rino told his loyal summon. There was no use in disturbing a sleeping lion. They walked for several hours, and Rino did not know how long they were lingering in this cave that felt more like a maze underground. There were monster trails all over the ce, even if some of the cave dwellers scuttled out of their way as Rino and Mutt approached. At least now, Mutt smelled water and fresh air in the cave, indicating that they should be heading nearer to an exit. Things were never as smooth as Rino wanted them to be, and the magician found himself facing off with his very first enemy. Mutt growled protectively, but Rino observed the surroundings in the dim light as he held the glowing crystal in his hand. His hound was too big to be fighting in such an enclosed area. If he went crazy, the roof would copse on them, and Rino did not want to be buried again. The taste of dirt from his memory made the lich nch. It was a horrible experience that Rino would rather not repeat. The monster before them was a very fat and blind worm with thousands of spiked teeth in its mouth, threatening to grind them to dust if it ever got hold of them. Rino did not like the idea of those teeth threatening to poke holes into his enchanted clothing. He had no idea where such a big worm came from, but he hoped that this huge worm didn''t like bones the way the six-armed monkeys did. "Mutt, get back in my shadow. You''re in the way." The crudement made the wolf whimper in shock at his master''s meanmand, but an order was an order. Sadly, the hound obeyed, and Rino suddenly felt like there was a lot more room in the dark cave. The worm monster wasn''t willing to let Rino go even if he was only a bag of bones and not a tasty treat without his fat mount. The lich did not let this discourage him. After all, this worm looked like a very lovely bait that the deadly river fishes would chew up. Instead of spending half a day digging for worms, he could kill this fat boy here and solve his future problems when he had the time to fish during this vacation. The fight was concluded without much fuss, although Rino hated the smell of the worm''s blood as it oozed all over the cave floor. Thankfully, his clothes were protected from potential grime, even if the same could not be said about his exposed bones as Rino cleaned the goo from his cheekbone. The discovery of such arge monster in the cave made Rino wonder if he stumbled upon something more than just a cave. He did not think this bald worm was capable of dragging carcasses to the red crystal. Something more sinister and crafty was at work behind the scenes and suddenly, uncovering the mystery was more important than finding a way out. He hoped this detour would not eat too much into his vacation time. Turning back, Rino retraced all the monster trails they ignored along the way. The cave had many branches, and Rino chose the trail with the least amount of disturbance. Ordinarily, the lesser the trail was used, the more dangerous the threat. It was thew of survival, and Rino wanted to know if this cave had more secrets than these mana-emitting crystals. His efforts paid off when Rino found what he was looking for. Compared to the other areas in the cave, this ce was better lit, and Rino rejoiced at the sight of many small growing mana crystals. However, something else caught his eye in this cavern with multiple split paths. The ground was solid, and the air was generally fresher. These mana crystals did not have colours even if they emitted mana. They were mostly transparent in colour, but Rino soon realised that not all these crystals were the same as what he thought they were. Honestly, he did not think he would find them in this world in such a manner. Since the start of his new life, Rino always wondered why the gods did not point him to a mine with ores. Now, he understood a little better. Some of those crystals were gemstones. Rino might not be an expert in identifying gems, but he had experience knowing what kind of gems they were when he needed to craft magical apparatuses. Most of these exposed gems in the cave walls were low-grade gems. Still, their existence gave Rino some hope. If he could refine them, these gems would open up many new possibilities. In addition, Rino saw some peculiar rocks embedded in the wall. In his previous life, he was given many mine tours by the dwarves. Hence, he could identify the mostmon mineral that they mined easily - iron. He found iron! Excited, Rino failed to register a dangerous presence watching him until they struck his head. One moment, Rino was marvelling at the wonders of this resourceful cave and the next, he was viewing his decapitated body glowing in purple mes at the neck. Behind his body was a creature he did not think existed. Rino cursed silently. He''d walked right into a dungeon full of monsters. No wonder this cave was full of resources! Even in his previous world, precious minerals, gems and rocks were guarded by dungeon guardians. He should have known when he saw those carcasses. Chapter 123 - Womanticore With the face of a pretty ghost, the body of a lioness, the tail of a scorpion and the breath of rotting meat, Rino took a while to understand what kind of monster he was looking at. From his memory, Rino only knew of something close to this hybrid monster. However, he wasn''t certain if they were the same creature. After all, there were some differences in their appearance. Rino did not want to be sexist, but this creature''s face was a woman''s. He did not know if manticores had genders, but he did not want to offend. Womanticore? Maybe if he referred to the creature that decapitated him as such, Rino would be forgiven for the mistaken identity. The womanticore roared, and Rino had to hold his breath. Liches do not need to breathe, but he practised breathing out of habit and regretted every second of it. Weren''t females more particr about hygiene? This womanticore was a disgrace to her kind! As his skull made contact with the ufortable ground, Rino groaned at not being able to see anymore with his face nted into the ground. He had no idea how he would see and react like this, but he felt his body flop over in dizziness. The womanticore took one nce at the strange skeleton in her den and huffed before kicking Rino''s body away and walking over his skull to disappear deeper into herir. For a moment, nothing happened. Rino listened carefully to the sounds in the cave to ensure that the womanticore was really gone before he willed his body to move. It took him too long to find his disced skull that was still glowing in purple soul mes, so Rino summoned Mutt to fetch his skull and affix it on his body. The sabre tooth wolf dutifully tried not to slobber on his master''s skull as he trotted back to Rino''s main body and deposited the skull into the lich''s waiting hand. The skull was reattached quickly, and Rino told Mutt to remain in his shadows. This womanticore was barbarically strong, and he did not wish to alert her of his presence. Mutt whined in protest out of concern, but Rino patted the huge wolf on the nose before forcing his mount back into the shadows at his feet. Following the womanticore''s tracks, Rino practised stealth and was more prepared to fight if the mythical creature should attack again. His curiosity towards this dungeon did not diminish, but he had to get rid of this creature before exploring further. Most legendary creatures had intelligence and weren''t easy to handle. Rino fought with dragons in his previous world, and the battle was tough. Normally, Rino would be able to kill wyverns without assistance. However, the dragon was a different kind of boss game that constantly outsmarted and outpowered Rino. No matter how powerful RIno was, he was only mortal. Now, the lich wondered if he could take on a different legendary creature without assistance from the magical ballista and tower magicians. Compared to a dragon, Rino thought that the womanticore was slightly weaker. He should be able to manage this. Mutt whimpered as Rino got closer from Rino''s shadow. The tremendous killing intent radiating from the woman-faced lioness would send any weak-willed creature into aa. This cave was bing increasingly dangerous, but his master had no intention of backing down. Even if Rino was going to be king of this world, fighting a mythical creature was a little too much. "Master, do you want to reconsider? The guardian of this dungeon has many subordinates in her territory¡­ we should get reinforcements before-" Rino snorted mentally. For a sabre tooth wolf that evolved several times, Mutt was a coward. The womanticore was only strong because of her territory. If Rino wasn''t caught off guard, she would never be able to decapitate him. However, it made him curious now. Mutt mentioned a dungeon guardian. Does this mean that there were more dungeons? Were dungeons even considered rare in this world? Thinking about it, Rino finally understood why the jungle was so full of deadly creatures. With such a powerful legendary creature protecting the dungeon, her presence inspired many evolutions for survival. The weak would group together to increase their chances of survival. Betrayal was amon story, and creatures adapted to increase their food choices when thepetition became stiff. The womanticore was sitting in her favourite corner snacking on something she stored in the corner. A huge pile of bones on a different corner told Rino that this was her dining hall. The scratch marks and puncture wounds on the bodies in the carcass hill did not look like they were made by this womanticore. He stood by the cave wall to study the cave a little better. The lights here were much dimmer than the huge cavern outside this little cave pocket. Rino could not see much, but he could see the smaller side entrance with different monster tracks. Recalling that some of these tracks were seen at a cross-section before Rino found this cave, he started to form some theories about how the dungeons in this world workedpared to the dungeons in his previous world. Dungeons in the previous world were infested with beasts driven insane by the powerful dungeon core that was often the deceased remains of powerful mythical or legendary creatures, causing corruption. Ideally, a magician should be present in a dungeon expedition to try to contain the dungeon core. However, if the dungeon core could not be contained, the only other way to resolve the dungeon crisis was to destroy the dungeon''s core. Here, there was no such dungeon core. The master of this cave was a living womanticore, and much like an ant colony, the weaker monsters yed different roles. Some hunted food for her and brought it to this cave, while others, like the fat bald worm earlier, were dposers and took away waste products like the bones of carcasses. The red crystal wasn''t a deliberate creation by intelligent creatures. It was merely formed in a dungeon ecological system determined by this womanticore. The cave had many chambers because there were many secret passages that different monsters used for different purposes. The maze-like structure served two purposes. The first was to lure unsuspecting prey into it with the promise of resources. The mana crystals were baits like the light from minerals in the wall. The minerals were formed over a long time from this ecological system. The more the monsters killed and contributed their resources to this cave system, the more the cave flourished. Blood contained iron. Bones contained carbon. Magic crystals feasted on life energy and the souls of the deceased prey lingering in the cave. ntlife depended on the light emitted by crystals and reflected by gems. The womanticore finished eating and decided to take a nap by the time Rino pieced everything together. The lich simply stared at the sleeping womanticore and wondered what he should do now. The resources in this cave were priceless, but he did not want tomit a massacre and ruin the ecology that the womanticore created with so much care. Without the leader, these monsters would run amok. Without monsters, this cave would wither. What a dilemma! Couldn''t he find a regr cave full of minerals to exploit without such concerns? Rino hated life. Chapter 124 - Town Marker When in doubt, procrastinate. That was Rino''s rule of thumb for difficult problems in life. He was a pro in the art of procrastination that even the king could not make him do anything in such a state of idleness. There was no use thinking too hard about the dungeon or the womanticore. Rino decided that he would sit on it and think while fishing. However, he had to first find a ce to set up his new town. Hopefully, it would be somewhere close enough to this dungeon but not too close. He did not want the womanticore and her monster minions to steal his livestock and destroy his fields. Weekly fights against monster invasions did not sound like fun, even if Rino hadplete faith in his magical defence array. Yes, Rino was going to do the exact same thing he did with Cypress County and Spudville. Except, it was going to be bigger. Noir Province was big but not big enough for Rino. After all, animals tend to need a lot more space than farms did. Fattening up meat wasn''t easy, and to enjoy high-ss meat, the livestock needed to practice healthy living that included a lot of exercise for the juiciest of muscles and the perfect amount of fats. Getting out of the dungeon took Rino one whole day, and he was a little d that they made it out during the night. There was only one problem with where they exited. The jungle was so far in the distance with the trees, and Rino saw the mountains in a different direction from what he remembered when they fell into the hole in the ground. Needless to say, Rino gave thanks to the lucky stars for bringing them away from the disastrous zone. The mountains that were in front of him were now facing his left. The river was also very far behind, and Rino quickly took to the skies, marvelling at the flower field by the river. Compared to the chaotic jungle, the hills brought a peaceful vibe even if the cave Rino exited from reeked of death. The monsters did not use this entrance too often, as seen by the tracks. It might be a side entrance that Rino found by luck following the wind. Then again, this entrance might be too small for the monster residents of the cave. It was enough to squeeze Rino through, but Mutt would have gotten stuck in the cave mouth if he tried to squeeze through in his regr size. To make matters stranger, Rino came across many horned rabbits with fangs and red glowing eyes. They came in many colours but constantly hopped around Rino as he neared the cave exit. Honestly, shouldn''t rabbits be small, fluffy and grumpy? These rabbits were aggressive, fought each other and practised kickboxing, jumping almost as high as Rino''s head and ricocheting off cave walls. Nothing about the cave residents was normal, and Rino doubted that those were regr rabbits. Yet, he relished the cool night air and flew past the flower fields, searching for a good spot far enough from the cave. He had no idea howrge that cave was, but Rino figured that the best ce to situated his new town was near to the mountains. At the very least, the mountains will protect his new town from one direction. He thought about building a town inside the rocky mountains but decided against it. That was simply too much work for him, even with magic. Besides, it was easier to hide in in sight in the valley between mountains where the wind felt great. The river that passed through the valley also made a great peaceful fishing spot. Here, he should be quite safe from the creepy dungeon and also away from the jungle that could no longer be seen in the distance. Lowering his speed and altitude, Rino decided on the spot he wanted to act as his town''s centre. A typical town in his previous world was at least five times bigger than the whole of Spudville, so Rino estimated the distance between the mountain to his vige. He really liked the rocky mountains. It could be used as a stone mine, and Rino liked the idea of creating a second stone mine better than making a transportation system travelling to and fro from Spudville''s stone quarry. Besides, he was interested in a new resource that these mountains had. Kragami oftenined about theck of vour in food. With heaps of rock salt to mine from the mountains, that should resolve the culinary concerns his teacher had. Rino estimated the distance from the mountain and river, giving some buffer or building a decent residential area for a small town before marking out a huge spot using earth magic. This would be the town''s centre, and Rino searched his shadow sack for the magic tree sapling, eager to know what kind of magic tree this will turn out to be. Thankfully, Rino had natural tree fertilisers in the form of mana-emitting crystals. He was slightly concerned about growing a new magic tree without assistance and needing to go through with theplicated magic circle that World Tree Rino stood in. Maybe his dungeon diving adventures were not in vain as Rino dug up dirt and ced his town marker in the spot before covering it up and watering the sapling with mana imbued water. The lich considered redeeming more water bell flowers from the offering reward shop but shook his head. Unless he made an artificial pond to collect that water, the running river was going to wash it all away. For now, Rino worked on nning the crystals around the tree and finding the right resources to feed them. He collected a total of five different mana-emitting crystal types, excluding the red crystal that fed on blood. The magic tree sapling adapted well to the new soil and Rino''s nature magic, growing rapidly into a young shrub as it glistened with a golden sheen, taking in the small mana particles from the five crystals. Satisfied, Rino turned around to find a good ce to set up his teleportation pad. Chapter 125 - Alone Time (1) After setting up the teleportation pad, Rino looked at the little magic tree shrub behind him. There was still not enough mana to power the teleportation pad from this little magic nt. The distance between Cypress County and Spudville wasn''t too far. His minions could travel between them freely and Rino set up the coordinates in a rather foolproof manner. The distance between his new town to the two viges was considerable, and Rino wondered how much mana it would take for him to make one teleportation jump using the coordinates he input with his mana reserves. The amber that he used to set up this teleportation pad was merely a decorative tool now because it wouldn''t contain enough mana to cover even half the distance Rino wanted. He definitely needed an array with a powerful future mana power source. The magic tree was growing steadily, and Rino thanked the night for providing him with somefort. Now that he was out of that darned dungeon, the lich could finally summon fire to see a little better. After setting up the mana array for Cypress County, Rino did not need to think much or n the array for his town. He could always add on to the existing array in more sections after the main array was up. The teleportation pad was hooked up to the main array''s hexagonal diagram, and Rino looped the five crystals into the array to test if these mana generators would explode if overloaded. For now, Rino let the mana circte within the main mana web frame while he busied himself, marking out different areas with earth walls for future building projects. The town was huge, and Rino sighed. As of now, he only had a few hundred minions under hismand, with two-thirds being faes. Rino did not think that faes were useless. However, he needed more capable hands and legs to assist him with manualbour. The new town wouldn''t build itself, and while Rino could do it alone with the help of his shadow tendrils to rece the hundreds of workers he needed, it would be a waste of GF credits to do this. He had a tannery to create, after all. Checking his assigned daily quest marked with only 1 day remaining, Rino estimated that his vacation credits would be consumed very soon. === Daily Quest #14 Objective: Tan leather 0/1 Tanned Leather Time Limit: 5 Days. Tutorial here. Reward: Tanning Skill Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === The leather tanning process really varied from two days to a few months, ording to the tutorial. Rino had never felt so confused reading a tutorial before this, and it was another thing adding to his worries. Without a way to travel freely back to Spudville, Rino had to work on managing his time properly. He couldn''t fail this daily quest, and Rino did not want to give the crazy god in charge of watching him the pleasure of exploiting hisbour with the Curse of Overtime. He spent too many GF credits dutifully to redeem his sleep hours. Deducting three day''s worth of sleep was simply too painful for Rino. Now that the main mana web array wasplete, Rino decided to pick a new spot that would be his temporary shelter as he worked. He did not want a farmhouse. However, he still wanted something fancy and homey in case Noir decided to visit. The town was in the middle of a beautiful valley near a river and backed by rocky mountains. What better resource was there than stone from the mountain? Rino tried to recall the kind of building designs that he liked back in his previous world. He should try to replicate those stone cottages that looked cosy and felt homey. The farmhouse was too woody, and Rino decided that an upgrade was required. The spot that Rino liked a little further from the teleportation pad and magic tree. In fact, it was closer to the mountain because Rino was simply toozy to carry the rocks he cut over. At the same time, the lich had enough of the underground, so he was going to build his cottage above ground, slightly elevatedpared to the rest of the town. Working quickly using dark magic, Rino carved out a neat little digging site full of stones from the mountainside. He did not have cement to b the rocks together, but he had earth and water magic. If there was one trick he learned from Kragami, who managed Cypress County, it was the power of the bog. Even if the swamp was less stinky and more magical, the muddy magic was still Cypress County''s trademark. Mud was used for many things, even if they had a sawmill for wood and stone from the quarry. For some reason, Kragami imed that mud was very useful and proved to Rino that water and earth magic could make more than wood and nature elements. The bog element that Kragami dubbed it could create quicksand, makeshift cement and even pseudo y. Water softened earth and helped mould it with dark magic. Thisbination was interesting enough for Rino to attempt it. The mud did not hold up very well as an adhesive, but it did fill in the small cracks between cut stone bs that Rino made. In fact, Rino used fire magic to dry them quickly and discovered that mud, when hardened, was as hard as cement. The only downside was how crumbly it became, and some parts of the mud would crack. Seeing how this wasn''t going to work, Rino tried to think of something else, looking around for resources he could exploit. A dandelion fluff flew past Rino and lodged itself into Rino''s pants, giving the lich a strange idea. He summoned Mutt and borrowed his wolf mount''s nose to hunt for twisting vine seeds in the valley, much to Mutt''s confusion. Yet, the loyal hound did not question his master''s antics. It was easier to ept it and move along. The mind of a genius can sometimes be strange, and it was better not to question. Chapter 126 - Alone Time (2) Whatever Rino did, Mutt swore that no other human would attempt it. Even the necromancer would im it was a madman''s work. Yet, his master looked pleased with himself, inspecting his handiwork. The new cottage was built out of stone bricks cut from the mountainside, covered in tough nt vines that grew from mud between the stone bs. The roof was made from a needlesslyrge and thick b of rock that Rino carefully cut with measurements bigger than the total cottage wall size. Mutt held his breath when his master ced therge stone b on top of his cottage walls, wondering if the building would crumble under the weight. Thankfully, his master had simr concerns, so the walls were reinforced with enchantments before the roof b was pped on. With a roof protecting him from sunlight, Rino hacked out a hole to create a chimney after the roof andpleted the chimney structure with more stone and mud. The vines grew and twisted around the structure protectively, and Rino took a step back to admire the bare structure of his handiwork. The cottage looked peculiar, but it served its purpose as a shelter. Mud flooring was uneptable, and Rino did not feel like treating wood, so he chiselled smooth stone carefully andyered the ground with it. It would be cold to those who wore no shoes, but Rino would fix that with carpetster once everything else in the town was running. The day was approaching, and Rino knew he had to work fast. There were currently still no doors or windows to his building. Stone was uneptable, and Rino was forced to use haphazardly chopped wood to block the sun out. The wood pieces covering his window and door holes were not fixed with hinges due to the rushed job, but they worked well, keeping the sun out of his cottage. Rino dismissed Mutt once the bare cottage was built and sighed as hey on the cold ground. It was ufortable, and Rino wished he thought of bringing hisfortable bedding along in his shadow sack. Making the best of what he had, Rinoid out the king toad skin and rolled the end,, so it served as a pillow. Making himself asfortable as he could be, Rino imed his daily sleep and allowed the dreamcatcher ability to weave him a beautiful escape from reality. When Rino woke up in the evening, he received a new system prompt. === Side Quest #17 Objective: Craft Tanned Leather 0/1 Leather Product Reward: Leather Crafting Skill === The magician groaned silently. The gods really wanted him to get dirty and stinky for the next part of his kingdom building project. Rino dreaded tanning leather for several reasons. In his previous world, leather tanneries smelled worse than waste disposal grounds and recycling dumps. In fact, many people shunned leather tanner even if leather tanning paid well. Urine, animal faeces and ground raw innards were used in leather production. The higher the leather quality, the longer the treatment process. Nobles often paid a fine dime for the softest leather that could take months to prepare. Rino hated the smell of tanneries and often gagged when he had to pass the area. This was a project meant for others and not him. Rino decided to procrastinate for as long as possible before he found willing sacrifices for a nobler cause. Kingdom building wasn''t a single person''s responsibility and Rino reasoned that it was only fair some people yed bigger roles than others. Settling in a new neighbourhood meant visiting the neighbours. Rino looked around and sighed. There was a lovely river, but he had no rod, hook or bait to enjoy fishing yet. He remembered seeing huge spiders in the jungle and wondered if he should return to grab a few useful crafting resources but decided against it for now. Instead, Rino craned his neck and looked at the mountains. There was another ce that should be rich in various resources that Rino wanted to explore today. His main quest was pestering him with system notification reminders that Rino tuned out. It was strange that quest reminder prompts never happened before this. The gods really were watching his every action and prompting him to hurry with his task even after he bought day-offs with GF credits he worked hard for. How cruel. Pulling his hood up, Rino decided to climb up the mountain with the help of shadow tendrils, stopping every now and then to enjoy the view from above. He could image the town he wanted to build already with the earth wall markers. The higher he climbed, the smaller his cottage looked. Rino could only see the faint earth wall sections as he climbed. From the ground, his town felt big. From above, Rino could afford to expand his territory across the river if he ever needed to. He reached the top of the mountain fairly quickly, and the slope was less steep towards the top. Feelingzy to walk or fly, Rino summoned Mutt to carry him now that the sun had retired for the day. The salty breeze tickled the sabre tooth wolf''s nose, and Rino let the wind sweep his hood backwards as the wolf ran. The rock salts were everywhere on this mountain teau, and Rino stopped to collect some smaller rocks to store away in his shadow sack. The night was beautiful, and Rino decided to walk while taking in the view of the vast starry sky. The wind was stronger here as Mutt disappeared into his master''s shadow, leaving Rino to enjoy his alone time. So much transpired in just a few months. Rino thought back to his nostalgic dream that afternoon and wondered why the dreamcatcher created such a dream for him. It felt too real, and Rino almost believed that he was back in the tower, having a heated debate with his teachers about the right way to use a magic pipette. Those were the good days when he had not been appointed as a noble or a court magician. Rino missed his innocent youth, engrossed in only finding out the truth and making advanced magical discoveries, breaking new boundaries. "Halt!" a gruff voice shouted from behind Rino, and the lich paused. Was that a human''s voice? Chapter 127 - Karma "Give me everything you have," the human bandit demanded. Rino did not know why he was a robbery target, but he bet the man had no idea who and what he was. From behind, in the dark, he could look like a bald adventurer. It wasn''t the bandit''s fault that he thought Rino was an easy target. However, the bandit could only me his luck for the karma he brought upon himself because Rino desperately needed tannery workers. Slowly, Rino turned around to face the bold bandit, who turned pale when there was no face. He stared into Rino''s empty eye sockets, and his knees started knocking against each other. "M-monster!" the man screamed and tried to run. Rino did not give chase immediately. He simply summoned Mutt and ordered the sabre tooth wolf to follow leisurely, giving the cornered prey time to run to his friends. In a chase like this, Rino knew that the push and pull of fear were important to inspire his targets. He would not consider himself crafty. However, the innate desire to find out the truth made Rino exercise patience strategically with maximum effectiveness. The generals in his previous world should learn a little more from him in this aspect, and Rinomented theck of an intelligence-gathering group in his previous world. The espionage missions were often left to the magician tower for some reason, and Rino was the closest the empire had to a spy. Of course, that was excluding the fact that the tower could use spells to see parts of the future on par with the church''s irvoyance blessing. Rino did not need irvoyance for this. He simply shot a few fireball spells to motivate the bandit to run faster as Mutt chased, making snarling noises behind him. The bandit wasn''t too dumb. He did not run straight to the den and made several twists and turns in an attempt to lose Rino. The lich did not let this man have it easy and followed closely, pretending to be lost for a while as the bandit tried to sneak around before returning like a persistent cold. When the bandit slipped into a hole in the rocky mountain too big for Mutt to get into, the shadow wolf pawed at it fiercely, and Rino told his mount to keep up at it. He knew that if he cancelled Mutt''s summoning to hide in his shadow, Rino could squeeze into that crevice with little issues. However, to throw the clever bandit''s suspicions aside, they needed to put up a show. Rino tossed several fireballs into the hole for good measure and listened for any signs of the bandit before telling the sabre-toothed wolf to stop. It was time to follow the rat to its hideout. True to Rino''s prediction, the bandit who nearly lost his mind and life from that chase made a few circles in the territory to confirm that he lost his evil pursuers. Who would expect to meet a powerful warlock in the middle of these deserted mountains? Tonight was his unlucky night, and the bandit held his breath from the shadows of the rock as he listened to the howl of the wolf in the distance, running in the wrong direction. Serves it right! The stupid wolf might have a dangerous nose, but against the changing winds from the sea and the salt in the air, the bandit thought he had a better chance of escaping now that the danger had passed. He should warn hisrades. Rino watched the bandit convince himself that he was safe within the shadows and followed the human soundlessly. Having Mutt act as a decoy was a really good strategy. The bandit did not suspect anything, and Rino was slightly disappointed. He thought that this human would be a little smarter than those he found. He was wrong. Then again, intelligence wasn''t the most important criteria when scouting for future leather tanning workers. Rino only needed them to be detail-oriented and diligent for the tannery. This bandit looked like he would make a fine future tanning worker even if he did not have a say for his afterlife''s future career. Those who lived by evil deeds should pay for them eventually. Karma was a persistent bitch, and not even the ex court magician escaped her ws. His curse as a lich to work eternally was definitely punishment for ditching the work he was meant to do using his talents in his previous life. Rino followed the man all the way to what appeared to be a regr boulder as the bandit looked around nervously and whispered what sounded like a password. "Open says me," the bandit whispered, and the boulder shifted slightly just enough to let the man slip inside. After a while, the boulder rolled back into ce, and Rino could not help but be a little surprised by the password. In his previous world, there was a story about a group of bandits who did something simr. However, the password wasn''t "says me" but "sesame". He often wondered why food was the key to opening a high-security vault, but now he knew slightly better. Those uneducated fools with their thick southern ents made "says me" sound like "sesame" and the story passed on the way it did with nobody questioning the choice of the password. How strange that he discovered the answer to one of his unanswered questions in a different world. Rino had to say, the work ofdy karma wasn''t entirely terrible. She might punish evil horribly, but she made sure to reward the hardworking too. Rino walked out from the shadows and pulled his hood up. He wanted to make sure that the deed was clean. Tonight, not a single bandit was walking out of the vault alive. They might walk out of it as undead, but Rino could not confirm what type of undead they would turn into. Mutt returned to his master''s shadow, and Rino stood before the boulder, wondering if he should try the password or st it open. Deciding that the vault might still be handy in the future, Rino tried the password he was more familiar with out of curiosity, putting as little mana as possible into his thought projection. "Open sesame." Sure enough, the boulder recognised the password and simply assumed it was an ent. Rino could not believe how ridiculous coincidences were, but he wasn''tining. On top of getting free tanning workers, Rino was going to get a free vault to use. It was a reap one and get one free deal. What was there to not love? Chapter 128 - Dullamen Author Warning: Murder. "What''s gotten your undies in a bunch? You look like you saw your dead mother," the bandit who was downing his ale guffawed at the patrolling guard. The group inside the vault simply assumed that it was time for someone else''s shift. Why else would theirrade return? Exasperated at their carefree attitude when there was a monster wolf and a warlock on the loose in the mountains, the bandit tried to exin when he suddenly saw the world spin sideways and downwards. He could not understand why he was watching hisrades making merry upside down or understand why he was on the floor now when he was standing previously. However, the other bandits who were previouslyughing and counting the loot froze. Scarlet liquid covered the precious stolen goods and sttered all over the dusty ground. Rino did not appear immediately. He gave these fools time to arm themselves. Outraged that there was an intruder in their hideout, the bandits lost all mood tough at their haul. Instead, they geared up for battle as trepidation settled in their bones. For some reason, they knew that this would be theirst battle and nobody was prepared to die. Their unluckyrade was first but anyone could be next. With only shabby iron sabres and wooden shields, the bandits prepared to take on whatever decapitated their friend in one silent move. The bandit chief shoutedmands to huddle together on all sides and Rino took that as a sign to make his grand entrance. Whatever monster these bandits were expecting, they were not expecting to see a skeleton. The undead monster had no weapons but that only instilled the fear into their bones deeper. Whatever this monster was, it did not need weapons to kill cleanly and quickly. Realisation dawned on them that they had no chance against Rino and the magician offered them a chance to struggle before he snuffed the light from their eyes. With thest courageous charge, the bandits leapt towards Rino all at the same time only to see the exact thing that theirrade did before he died. Their worlds spun and the sight of decapitated bodies in the vault transformed the screams of false bravado into one of true terror before silence reigned the vault. Rino counted eight heads as they dropped onto the floor like deted rubber balls. The sound was apanied by bodies flopping and blood fountains. Rino simply used his cape as a shield for the blood as a rusty odour filled his nose. Too much blood but only nine bodies in total. He expected a little more for hisbour-intensive productions. With a slightly disappointed sigh and heavily mixed feelings, Rino wondered if he should be happy that there were lesser crooks in this world or sad that he was still rather short-handed. Settling with happiness, for now, Rino gathered tier shadows and enforced his will upon these souls. "Kneel." Themand brought the fresh corpses back to life without light in their eyes. Initially, the lich was slightly concerned about summoning the dead who had been decapitated. Must a corpse be whole before he could summon them? Technically, he could affix the head back to the bodies because all the pieces were still here, right? Thankfully, magic didn''t work that way. The decapitated heads were registered as part of the corpse, but healing magic did not join the heads back to their original bodies. If anything, The bodies carried their heads under one arm and kneeled as Rinomanded. It was slightly creepy, and the closest thing to what Rino was looking at had to be a Duhan monster. The headless horseman legend back in his old world was famous amongmoners as mothers often tell the story to their children. There were several versions, but the one Rino knew was how the horseman would look for heads at night once the sun goes down and cut the heads off victims found travellingte at night. Originally, the story was meant to discourage people from travelling at night. Many wild beasts, bandits and terrible crimes happened at night. The witching hour was also a tale created by the kingdom to scaremoners into remaining indoors at night. It made underground dealings easier among syndicates and for dirty businesses that the kingdom needed to take ce. In some ways, Rino saw the rumour as a necessary evil. Ignorance was bliss, and themoners who were brought up to be superstitious remained pious to the ways of the church and listened to the magicians'' advice. Now, Rino looked at the nine headless bandit undead. He had no idea what they were, but it would be inconvenient for them to work in the tannery with one arm upied and loose heads. Hence, the lich thought long and hard for a solution. The Duhan, in a variation of the story Rino knew, carried its head under one arm when riding a ck horse made from shadows. It would decapitate anyone it saw out of jealousy for those with attached heads. However, the powerful monster had a terrible w and could be immobilised if its head was stolen and locked away. Without the head, the Duhan''s body did not know where to go and would leave wanderers alone. Likewise, these decapitated bandits that Rino would refer to as Dumen for easier references had simr weaknesses. Sewing their severed heads onto their body took skill, and Rino did not have any threads suitable for stitching heads back on. However, he couldn''t possibly let them carry their heads under their arms,,,,. It was too distracting. The glowing purple soul mes in the decapitated heads gave the lich an idea. The body was now part of his shadow, but the soul of Dumen resided in their heads. Technically, their bodies could not be harmed physically because shadows cannot be pierced by normal means. However, that also meant the bodies were malleable, just like how Rino could shape his shadow tendrils differently. "Stop carrying your heads under your arms. Use the shadows to wrap around them and leave the eyes for seeing," he told them, and the Dumen paused, wrapping the shadows around their heads differently. One man wrapped it where his torso was, leaving two glowing purple eyes. Another bandit tried to hold his head in ce using shadows where it once was and left two glowing eyes, looking like a bandit with a headscarf. However, there were some more creative individuals that Rino couldn''t fathom. Why would anyone wrap their heads at their groins or at one side of their waist? Heck, one of the bandits wrapped it backwards, and Rino had no idea what they were thinking. Thankfully, this new arrangement solved the immediate concerns about not having enough hands to work with. In fact, seeing that these shapeshifters could grow new limbs and control them, the magician decided nine workers could handle the tannery without additional help. Making himselffortable on the creaky wooden chair, Rino decided to interrogate his new subordinates for information about this region. It was time for answers. Chapter 129 - Human Village (1) To make these bandit shadow shapeshifters more empowered, Rino decided to name all nine of them. However, he wasn''t going to put in the effort to name these undeserving bastards. If anything, he would give them sloppy names like criminals who were assigned numbers for easy identification. Except, it was easier to pretend that he thought about those names if he assigned them numbers using thenguage of giants from his previous world. Rino hoped thenguage of giants did not exist here because he wouldn''t sound too original if it did. "You are Een," he told the leader of the bandits. The Dumen evolved after receiving a name and was now less human-like. Rino recognised thisrge hooded shadow shape. It looked like him without bones, and honestly, he had no idea if he should be happy that grim reapers were now working in the tannery. The next few bandits were named in order - Twee, Drie, Vier, Vijf, Zes, Zeven, Acht and Negen. Nobodyined as everyone evolved into a new type of spectre. Rino briefly wondered if the birth of grim reapers came from decapitated farmers after seeing nine hooded spectres in the vault. With their evolved intelligence, the shapeshifting spectres could now participate in a conversation, thanking their new lord for the names. Rino dismissed it and demanded to know if there were any interesting civilisation or structures in this area that he would build his town. As expected of the bandits, they told him about the rocky mountains and whaty beyond. Rino listened with interest at how they referred to the jungle he came from as the Woods of No Return. It was a ce nobody dared to explore for good reasons. No survivors made it out of there. Also, the sea thaty beyond the rocky mountain range was at least fifty kilometres, a little closer than what Rino was expecting. However, there were no fields from the rocky mountains to the sea. Everything was sandy beaches, and depending on the time of the year, the seawater could reach the southern ranges of the rocky mountains. "Thus, humans have relocated several times, and theirtest settlement is up ahead, closer ind where the waters will not destroy their homes." Hearing that there was a human vige on the beach, Rino demanded to know the exact location. He wasn''t very surprised to learn that the human vige was a regr victim of these bandits while they were alive. Nine bandits could terrorise a vige of forty people, and ording to his new subordinates, the vigers did not know how to farm. "They often head to sea to catch fish or spend time climbing trees for tropical fruits. Sometimes, they rear animals that wander from the rocky mountains to raise for ughter." Shepherds! Or animal farmers¡­ either way, they were the experts Rino needed. Acht looked slightly ufortable when he sensed Rino''s thrill. His shadow wavered a little as he nced at his brothers in death. "M-my lord?" Rino extracted himself from his daydream and nodded. Acht was an interesting bandit. He had non-existent ballspared to the other ex-bandits. Maybe Rino would put him in charge of coordinating the tannery instead of the bandit leader. Fidgeting in a way that only a spectre could, Acht informed Rino that the vige was currently undergoing a cmity that the lich should avoid. "Cmity?" Acht nodded. "There is a gue spreading. Thest time we went to collect our dues, half their poption were infected and bedridden. Without the medical help of the travelling witch doctor, they will not survive. The travelling witch doctor will only arrive in two more moon cycles. They won''t survive." gue? Intrigued, Rino asked for details. The gue''s symptoms were nothing like Rino knew about in the previous world. People simply acted like zombies, forgetting how to eat, move and feel. They had all their intelligence and basic human functions removed, making them living shells awaiting death. "Does it only affect the grown-up?" Rino asked after hearing how the gue only affected certain vigers. Acht shook his head. It was hard to exin, but the easiest way to describe the gue''s victims were wisened. "It targeted the vigers who were smarter than others or lived longer than others. Vigers who travelled out of the vige more often to sea or for foraging were targeted more than those who remained only in the vige." As such, children were mostly unaffected. However, with the adults acting like living zombies, Rino had a feeling the vige would perish without the children knowing better how to survive. Was that what happened to Fronzo and that vige? Hearing that there was something big going on in this world, Rino started to find pieces of a huge puzzle, inciting his desire to know more. The kingdom building project, the gods'' desire for repoption, the legend of bringing the dead back and a king to unite civilisations tied in with the story of a mysterious gue. Was this an apocalyptic world that Rino was transported into? Somehow, he wasn''t surprised. If anything, he was curious to know if he could stop the apocalypse from wiping the rest of humanity out before everyone turned into an undead. Then again, turning everyone into an undead might be the ultimate goal of the gods, even if Rino had no clue if the undead could repopte this. He wasn''t willing to consider that possibility. Rino disliked brats. He disliked clingy women who demanded his attention away from his research more. From how Acht described the gue, it only targeted those who were more intelligent. If the cycle continues, the amount of knowledge amassed by humans will be erased over generations, with their offsprings none the wiser about what was created before them. No wonder the world was so behind on technology. Rino was finally starting to see parts of this giant puzzleing together. He had a vige of humans to visit and, hopefully, add to his undead town''s poption. Chapter 130 - Human Village (2) The human vige that Rino saw from a distance looked like there was a cloud of death over it. Normally, every vige would have a firekeeper standing watch at night just in case the vige was under attack. However, the vige was deadly silent without a single light source. Unsummoning the other eight Dumen, Rino only took Acht to lead him to the vige, down the rocky mountain. Mutt was busy getting acquainted with the neers, giving them the briefing about the dos and don''ts of joining Rino''s shadow army. None of the shapeshifting spectres voiced theirints when Mutt started his long lecture about how Rino founded Noir Province. The lich wisely tuned out to everything in the background and floated down the mountain. The human vige did not look as well built as the farmhouse back in Spudville. It looked slightly worse than what Rino managed on his own at the base of the mountain in his new town, and the lich wondered if these vigers were worth saving. Despite ending his previous world and reincarnating into a lich, Rino still found a sliver of pity for the creatures called humans. He could understand how they thought sometimes, and not all humans were bad. If there was one human in that vige who was as likeable, if not more, than Fronzo, Rino would consider saving them. Honestly, Kragami could do with some mortalpany from time to time. Rino was thinking about his teacher. It definitely wasn''t pity that he felt for orphans reminding him of his humble beginnings. Rino wasn''t sentimental, not lopped off the heads of nine bandits. His private tour guide cautioned Rino about moving too quickly over the sand even if Rino was powerful and knew magic. "The sand during the night tide can sometimes cave into the ground if the waves push a huge bed of ms ashore. They can dig very fast, and some bigger ms eat animals that fall into the sandpit." Intrigued by the strange shellfish, Rino hoped that he fell into one such pit tonight. There was a long stretch of beach to transverse under the stars, not that Rino minded. He could summon Mutt, but the sabre tooth wolf sounded busy. "We''re flying," he told Acht, who nodded and followed after his new master as quickly as he could. Rino arrived at the vige in a few minutes and hovered within the shadows to observe the buildings. Excluding the hut that looked like amunity gathering building, the rest of the huts were tiny and slightly ustrophobic. These vigers probably only used the huts to hide from wind and rain. It was impossible to spend the whole day in these tiny huts. The vige''s structure was unique, and Rino had never seen anyone building round huts yet. The walls were not made solid, and wind could pass through them. Rino wasn''t sure if the temperature here was warmer or colder than Noir Province but judging from the clothing he saw hanging on theundry line outside the hut, the climate here had to be warmer. The vigers wore little clothing and slept in wovens that they hung from pir to pir. The huts were built by stocking strong wood into the ground and weaving giant dried leaves between the wooden poles until it was mostly covered. The little gaps in the walls provided venttion and wind, so there were no windows, only a gap in the hut facing away from the sea that acted as a door. Rino listened carefully for sound and scanned the area twice before re-materialising. Acht followed closely behind Rino without a sound. His eyes glowed dimly as he attempted to conceal his presence. Rino pulled his hood up and quietly invited himself into the closest hut. He had no idea what kind of gue this was, but there should be something Rino should be able to learn by observing. Thedy in the hut that Rino snuck into was staring nkly at the ceiling, even if it was night. A few tears were rolling down her eye, but she did not wipe them away. If anything, the dried streaks on her other cheek told Rino that she had been doing this for a while now. ording to her bone structure, thedy was in her mid-twenties, but her skin was sunken and sallow as if she had not seen the sun in years. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she reeked. It took Rino a while to understand that she defecated on herself. She was breathing, and her heart was beating, but that was it. She was alive without living life. It was such a strange disease that Rino found himself visiting a new hut, recording his observations mentally. What kind of disease would erase a person''s natural desire to live? These vigers did not seem to be depressed like Rino was. They did not look as if they wanted the world to end. If anything, they looked as if they did not know how to live. Everything that made a human what they were was erased, and these humans should be nts from how they were behaving. They simply breathed and took everything that was done to them without retaliation. They had no questions, no misgivings, no desires and certainly no will of their own. The magician used healing magic on one of the sick vigers, but strangely, the healing magic had no effect. What kind of illness was this? Shouldn''t healing magic heal something if it was weak or broken physically? If the illness affected internal organs, Rino should get some indication too. However, these vigers were healthy enough that healing magic had no effect on them. Apart from the obvious malnutrition andck of exercise, the vigers appeared in the pink of health. Shaken, Rino decided to retreat. Acht followed his master in silence and wondered if he should give his master more information about this strange gue. Honestly, it was nothing new. This vige isn''t the first victim and will not be thest either. Nobody was safe from them, and it was why he decided to be a bandit with the remaining orphaned survivors in his old vige. Those ambitionless eyes scared Rino more than dying and helplessness. The fact that there was such a powerful disease capable of de-humanising a person existed¡­ he only hoped it would not affect the undead. The pleasures of life were discovery and learning. Rino would rather die ten thousand times than be a living dead. Inparison to what the vigers have be, Rino was suddenly thankful for his situation. At least, he could still keep his will and formte thoughts of his own. Shuddering, Rino decided toe back after a while when the vige had turned into a ce full of corpses. Judging from the condition the vigers were in, it wouldn''t be too long. "We will return another day," he told Acht. "Show me where the caves you mentioned earlier are." d to be away from the vige, Acht quicklyplied. Chapter 131 - Rich Mountain (1) The rocky mountains hid many secrets. Without a reliable guide, Rino might not find everything. If he thought the mountain was barren at first nce because of theck of nt life, he was wrong. The mountain made up for itsck of appealing appearance with minerals inside the earth. Apart from salt rocks on the surface, Rino found out that he did not need to travel to that deadly monsterir with the womanticore guarding it for regr ores. The rocky mountains had every basic mineral Rino needed, from iron to coal. This was a promising start. Strangely, many ravines were hiding in pockets of these mountains that stretched deep within the mountain as if the rocky appearance was merely paper mache. Although nts did not grow on the outside of the mountain, some smaller nts like moss, fern and fungi made these abandoned ravines their homes. Rino was currently exploring one such ravine, and even if there was a bit of light seening from above, the ravine was too deep for the light to reach the bottom level. Thankfully, unlike the mines, there was no danger in using fire magic to light the ce up. He descended gracefully to the bottom of the ravine and found himself standing in the middle of a small stream, much to his protest. The feeling of water collecting in his cloth boots made him queasy, but he maintained hisposed dignity in front of Acht, subtly moving off to a ground that wasn''t wet to dry off. "This is a ravine? Do minerse here?" he asked. Acht lowered his shadow humbly, and his glowing purple eyes dimmed. "It is too dangerous for regr miners to venture into a ravine. Many have fallen to their deaths trying to get their hands on riches. Now, only vultures and bats make this their home." Ah, that might exin the piles of bones lying around from time to time. As they made their way deeper into the ravine upstream, the bones were nowhere to be found. People must have fallen through the ravine in the parts that were open to see, but the ravine stretched further than just that crack above. It spanned for so long that Rino lost track of when the stream disappeared. He was too focused on analysing the ores that could be found here, and honestly, he wasn''t expecting to find too much. He did find a lot of mushrooms and various fungi. The bats hanging from the ceiling and rocks rustled in reaction to the light that should not prate this deeply. Rino felt slightly apologetic for the bats. He hated it when someone interrupted his nap, and surely, these bats did not deserve poor sleep quality. All apologies flew out of the window when Rino saw how creepy one of those flying furry creatures looked up close. They weren''t adorable like what he remembered them to be. If anything, these bats had glowing red eyes, bony ws that could rip out someone''s heart and very sharp teeth. They were not fruit bats, and Rino swore if Acht was still human, he would be just a pile of bones by now. Why was everything in this world so hostile?! The ravine had a forked path, and Rino decided to take the left route simply because he was left-handed and favoured this side more. He thought that the ravine would get narrower, but it only spanned wider even if the ceiling became shorter. It took the lich a while to realise he was walking into a cave within the ravine and the thought about exploring an unfound cave made him excited. Acht noticed his master''s quickened pace as Rino walked further into the cave without caution. Apprehension filled the shapeshifting spectre, and while he knew Rino was strong without a doubt, he could not help but worry. His master was the ignorant type despite his monstrous abilities. He knew little about this part of the world and was probably the first person to willingly walk into the Woods of No Return and emerge unscathed. "M-master?" Acht hesitated. However, as a loyal subject, he should still y advisor to caution the magician about the dangers lurking in such ces. Acht might not explore caves or ravines in these rocky mountains, but he was a bandit and lived here for a good number of years to know the dangers. There were monsters living within the mountains, and not all of them were easy to spot. "What is it?" Acht mustered his courage and met the lich''s eyes, illuminated by the fireball. He did not doubt Rino''s strength. However, there were famous mana draining monsters residing in caves like this. Any living cave had guardians. That much wasmon knowledge. The vault that they found was a living cave with a weak guardian that he and his sworn brothers defeated after many tries and sneaky nning. "Please proceed more carefully. I have a bad feeling that the guardian is watching us." Guardian? If Acht was referring to the prickly stares he was receiving ever since they broke off from the stream''s path, he was aware of it. However, he wasn''t sure if the guardian of this cave was also a womanticore. That might be troublesome. He was able to escape the womanticore because she was careless, but this time, he came prepared. He would kill before he was killed. "How do you know there''s a cave guardian?" the magician tested the shapeshifter. Acht blinked owlishly. "Every living cave has a cave guardian?" Living cave? Instead of receiving answers, Rino had more questions now. What did that mean? He would have to take some time to have a short chat with Acht, who looked more willing to work under hismand. Although it was a bummer Rino did not find someone like Fronzo at the strange seaside vige, he was d to have someone simr to the helpful production manager from the nine bandits he killed. Acht was mature and also cautious. He spoke politely and understood his ce. It must have taken the shapeshifter a lot of courage to speak up, and Rino''s respect for this spectre grew. Yes, he would make a good tannery manager. If everything went well, he might make Acht in charge of certain important production in his town if the spectre continued to prove himself worthy of such responsibilities. Rino liked intelligent people, and Acht was a refreshingpany ever since he left Noir Province. Without Kragami or Noir to keep himpany, Rino was starting to grow bored without a good conversation partner. Mutt''s responses were overly predictable, and Rino took no joy in talking to the shadow wolf. Chapter 132 - Rich Mountain (2) Living caves, Rino learned, were caves with ores and minerals. They were constantly growing for some reason, and every living cave had aplete ecosystem, home to monsters. Each living cave had a powerful monster that ruled over this society of monsters called a guardian. That would exin a lot, and Rino finally understood where he went wrong back in the jungle. That womanticore was the guardian of the cave. One did not simply walk right into the guardian''sir and expect to escape unharmed. Miners did not visit living caves because it was simply too dangerous. Normally, vigers would leave the living caves alone and protect the peace of their vige. They would send sacrifices for the monsters at the cave''s entrance as an offering for peace. More dangerous monsters do not leave the caves. They were more or less bound to the cave and their treasures. Living caves reward their guardians well by producing various minerals to the guardian''s liking. In the case of the womanticore, the living cave produced mana crystals. In the case of this ravine living cave, Acht theorised that the guardian preferred something strong and was most likely abat boss, much like the sabre tooth wolf. Rino hummed. He could deal with abat guardian better than a mythical boss like the womanticore, who had both physical and magical abilities. Once he understood the ecology of living caves a little better, Rino started to see signs of it within the cave. The markings on the walls that he thought were regr rock fissures were actually not the creation of nature or water. They were monster trails left behind as a marking of territory, much like the footprints back in the other cave. There were all types of monsters, but Acht was right about this living cave likingbat monsters a little more than the magic type. There were different sses of monsters, and the bats they saw at the mouth of this cave, at the ravine by the stream, were known as critters, the scouts of the cave and the only ones who left the cave to source food from outside. In a way, they were sentry guards. Rino already alerted the guardian of his presence when he woke the bats up. Now, he had bigger things to worry about while exploring their territory. He could hear the asional fluttering of something big in the dark beyond the vision range of his fireball, and Rino slowed down. The ores in this cave appeared more frequently as Rino went deeper. After critters, Acht exined to his master using the telepathic bond that feeders also act as ecological dumpsters. In this cave, they were the vultures that Rino did not see. Their nests could be found by the side of the ravine wall, sticking out from uncanny branches of bushes that grew into the side of the rock surface. The lich vaguely recalled seeing those nests now that Acht mentioned it. He didn''t pay attention to them earlier, but he really should have. Unlike the monsters and bats, vultures weren''t nocturnal. The monsters fluttering in the dark circled Rino as he walked, admiring the huge ore pockets filled with glowing green minerals. The lich did not sense any manaing from them, but there was a strange smell in the air. Deciding that it was better to leave this peculiar mineral alone, for now, Rino focussed on sensing the monster protectors that Acht told him were the main defence force. Their job was to kill all threats to the living cave''s resources and hunt for the cave guardian. The monster ecology system in a living cave wasplicated as Acht rattled on. Food could be grown and harvested in caves, and Rino marvelled at the gigantic mushrooms he stumbled across in one of the caverns. This had to be a food farm. The mushrooms towered above Rino, and the lich backed away slowly after seeing how one of the protectors flying too close to him copsed onto the ground and sizzled when therge mushroom rained spores on it. In a few minutes, the huge leather-winged gargoyle turned into a spore bed for new mushrooms to grow. Acht shrunk fearfully and hid behind Rino. The magician found that reaction slightly amusing. Despite turning into a powerful spectre after his death, Acht still retained some of his human instincts. Itforted Rino a little to know that human nature remained the same even in death,pared to those living dead in the vige affected by the gue. Gargoyles were low-level mythical creatures, and Rino wondered if all living cave guardians were mythical creatures. He could only guess what kind of creature the boss of this rock cave was. "M-master!" Rino turned around just in time to evade a swift but lethal strike. The blownded on the cave wall behind him, and Rino hurled three fireballs in session in the direction of the attack only to see what appeared to be the living cave''s boss. The guardian was a beautifuldy of ethereal beauty on the top half covered in green scales. Her glowing yellow iris screamed danger as she hissed, flicking her forked tongue at Rino while dodging his attacks. The lich understood those tracks on the ground now, but he was surprised to see leathery wings behind this half woman half snake guardian. He knew whatmias were but did they usually have wings? It was absurd enough to see a half serpent beauty who could kill in cold blood with her suffocating embrace. It was more ridiculous to see such arge monster take up the space of this cavern with her huge wingspan. It wasn''t as if she would be doing much flying around in this cramped cave, but Rino digressed. He quickly dodged a venomous spit that melted a nearby iron ore rock. Themia was fast and followed up quickly, using her tail as a spring, coiling and propelling herself in Rino''s direction. Those ugly teeth glistened with venomous saliva as themia prepared to bite Rino. Unsure if venom would take effect on a pile of bones like him, Rino yed it safe and dodged beforending a fire-coated fist on the white underbelly of the flying snakedy. Nothing much happened when his fist made contact. Themia did not scream in agony. Instead, she used her hand totch onto Rino and her tail wrapped around Rino in a deadly hug. The lich felt some of his bones shatter under the killer affection, and to his horror, the venomous saliva melted parts of his mantle that Noir gifted him. Enraged, Rino red at the snakedy. He was going to make her his first leather product. Chapter 133 - Premium Snake Leather Acht hid in his master''s shadow and watched as Rinopletely annihted the snakedy with his shadow magic. His previous fear about meeting the living cave guardian vanished, and for once, he was happy to be under the powerful lich''s protection even if Rino was his murderer. He never had a decent life when he was alive. However, as strange as it sounded, Acht felt that he could appreciate the new chance at living after his death under the leadership of this magician. Rino was merciless. He did not waste time killing themia. All he needed was this snake''s skin for premium leather to make himself better shoes and maybe a new mantle. Who was he kidding? He wasn''t going to make a new mantle. Rino was simply going to repair this to the best of his abilities. A gift from Noir should not be so easily reced. Without even chanting, Rino conjured a sharp shadow slicer and hacked themia''s head off. He had no idea ifmias regenerated and grew new heads like their cousin hydras, but the lich used fire to burn the spot that he decapitated the guardian for safe measure. The snakedy did not have time to scream or react as her body went ck. Rino couldn''t move even after themia boss was dead. In the distance, he could hear the panicked fluttering of gargoyle wings as themia died. What would happen to the ecology in this living cave now? Rino wasn''t sure, but first, he had to dismantle the fresh corpse. "Mutt," he summoned, and the sabre tooth wolf appeared from his shadow, casting his injured master a nce of worry and a small whine. Rino grimaced at the damage he suffered. Even with high-speed regeneration, healing so many broken bones would take a while. Not to mention the hole in his mantle where the bitch bit was still there. His shoulder joint was still melted, and Rino couldn''t move an inch without assistance. It was more urate to say that every other bone was broken or smashed apart from his skull. He would rather deal with a severed head than a smashed body like this again. It was faster to reattach his head than piece the thousands of broken pieces all over. It took Rino nearly ten minutes before he was fully healed. By that time, the gargoyles were busy fighting among each other, and some attacked Rino. Mutt did his job and tore them apart, but not without suffering some damage when the school of gargoyles ganged on the sabre tooth wolf. In a confined space, Mutt could not unleash his full power, and Rino had to reward the loyal hound for putting up a good fight until the lich was ready to face them on his own. Without warning, the gargoyles picking on Mutt crashed to the ground as Mutt braced himself for one more round of sneak attack. The gargoyles had very sharp ws that dug into his shadow body painfully, but for the sake of buying his master time, Mutt persevered. Their deaths apanied by stab holes through their chests made therge wolf wag his tail happily. "Master!" Rino nodded and patted the wolf, who shrank in size, trotting up to the lich''s side. The remaining gargoyles who saw how easily theirrades died wisely fled. It was obvious from the reaction of the protectors that the cave ecology would fall apart with a boss. Hence, the first thing Rino did was convert those dead gargoyles into shadow minions. Even if these monsters weren''t very intelligent, they would make good cave guards. Rino called dibs on the resources of this cave, and he was the guardian of this living cave. He would hunt the other creatures in the cave to convert them into ves, but first, there was amia to skin. He might not be a professional at skinning animals, but Rino worked fluidly using magic to separate the scaly skin from the flesh. Themia blood was a strange shade of green, but Rino ignored that. Decapitatedmia would not make good shadow minions. Rino learned that bodies should remain intact after the mistake he made with the bandits. There was no way to make her his cave manager now. He did not want to deal with a skinless spectremia. That was a nightmarish image even for him. In no time at all, Rino had hismia skin. It wasn''t a lot, considering how the guardian was only half a snake. However, the snakeskin was definitely a lot stronger than regr monster skin. If it could not be damaged by fire magic, Rino had very high hopes for this piece of leather. Leaving themia corpse behind, Rino summoned Mutt and the nine bandit spectres. They had collecting and hunting to do before Rino returned to his lousy hut and started his tannery construction. "Bring all the loose ores you can find and kill anything that moves. I''m taking over this cave." His ten minions spread out to carry out different tasks. Acht took half of his sworn brothers to scout and gather loose ores while Mutt led the more bloodthirsty ex-bandits to ughter gargoyles and bats. In less than two hours before the sun rose, Rino looked at his newly recruited shadow minions. Unlike human undead, monsters simply became shadow monsters or a zombified versions of themselves while they were alive. The bats were ghoul bats now, befitting of their aggressive nature. They looked almost the same as how they did when they were alive, except for glowing purple eyes instead of red. At the same time, they seem to develop teleporting abilities as an undead with a knack for using dark magic slicers with their wings. The gargoyles remained mostly the same as they did, but Rino saw their immunity to mushroom spores now. They were stronger physically, and their eyes glowed purple, but nothing much changed. They were still creepy to look at. Before Rino left the cave for good, he chipped some strange green glowing ore with a funny smell and stored everything he wanted in the shadow sack. That was everything he wanted from the cave. It was time to head back and start the tannery construction. Chapter 134 - Tannery Construction (1) When Rino returned to his temporary hut in his unbuilt town with the nine ex-bandits, he quickly tested if they were weak to sunlight. Unlike ghouls, skeletons, zombies and vampires, ghost-type undead should have some resistance to the sun even if they were more transparent and terrible against salt. It did not help that Rino had salt in his shadow sack, but whatever. It''s not like they were capable of eating anyway. The sun appeared in a few minutes, and Rino watched how Mutt shrank in size before retreating into his shadow. The same happened for the shapeshifting spectres, and Rino watched how they became child-sized, reaching his waist under the sunlight. It was a strange feeling watching fully grown spectres that were almost as tall as him shrink to a child''s height, but Rino didn''t feel bad for them. He made gnomes and goblins, who were smaller than them, work hard under the sun too. The ex-bandits could work overtime gathering materials he needed to construct his tannery. Acht could only summon up to four shadow tendrils, and the reach was weak. Rino felt his skull burn under the sun, and the hole in his mantle made his shoulder burn with purple soul mes as he conducted his experiments before dering that the spectres were fit to work in the day and night. His quest timer marked itself aste, and already, Rino was going to start consuming his purchased day-offs. Thankfully, with the increase in minions from the ravine cave exploration, Rino was confident that he could make a trip back to Noir province. His newly nted magic tree also grew into a young tree from a shrub. Strangely, this tree was budding, and Rino looked forward to seeing the tree grow fully. First, he had to worry about securing expertise in designing a tannery. Rino needed to consult with his crafting managers and tell Fronzo to prepare several vats for soaking the leather. There was no y in this region, and Rino never realised how important it was for early developments. At the same time, he did not feel like revisiting the jungle for wood when he had a perfectly functional cypress tree farm and sawmill in Cypress County. Rino only hoped that there was enough space in his shadow sack to store the wood he needed for building. Honestly, Rino needed a better way of transporting things from one province to the next. His kingdom wasn''t that big, but already he was facing a logistic bottleneck. It was hard to imagine howplex this kingdom was going to look in a few more months. A ruler should not be carting building materials by himself. Then again, there really isn''t a more efficient way currently. Rino suddenly realised how poor he was. He should recruit more people to transport building materials the regr way merchants did in the previous world using carriages and wagons. The only thing stopping Rino from implementing this immediately was the jungle standing between Noir Province and his unbuilt town. Apart from him, Rino doubted his shadow minions and goods would remain unharmed during the journey. He had to think of something better. Activating his teleportation pad and telling Mutt to keep an eye on the tannery workers, Rino made his return trip and felt a huge dip in his mana levels. Thirty percent. It was not too much of a dip for concern, but Rino wondered if that meant he could only afford to make one round trip per day with this much mana consumed just travelling using the teleportation pad. If he flew, he could save mana on the return trip, but it would take longer. Maybe just for the first trip, Rino reasoned that splurging a little on teleporting was worth it. It was not a viable long term solution. The gnomes were getting ready to change work shifts in Cypress County when Rino appeared from the ghost tree. Kragami was about to head to bed when he heard themotion. "Good morning," Rino greeted, and his magic teacher rubbed his eyes. "You''re back so soon? I thought you''d be gone for weeks!" The lich chuckled inwardly. He thought so too. Not much time passed since his departure, and from the looks of it, the managers were doing a great job keeping the ce together. Rino was proud of them. Settling in the treehouse for a cup of actual tea that Kragami experimented with, the lich told his magic teacher about his discovery, much to Kragami''s surprise. "Where were you from? I thought the soul-stealing disease wasmon knowledge to everyone who lived on this continent. While I have no clue if people from across the sea knew about this disease, it is the reason why everyone hoped to meet the king who could bring the dead back. Many of us believe that when the king appears, humanity will be free from the curse of extinction." Taken aback, Rino had no idea how to tell his magic teacher that he wasn''t from this world. Hence, he quickly diverted the topic to what he did to the bandits and discovered in the rocky mountain range. Horror reflected in the necromancer''s eyes when Rino described what he saw during his travels in the Woods of No Return. Kragami was unexpectedly silent when Rino said he encountered the strangest flying jellyfishes when the night fell. From then on, there was a distant look in his teacher''s eyes even when he recounted how he escaped the womanticore. If Kragami had his opinions, he withheld them. Instead, the necromancer only checked if Rino was physically, mentally and emotionally well after his journey. Visibly shaken but also confused, Kragami examined Rino from top to toe. Nothing much looked out of ce except for that hole in his cape. "Oh, that was made by the snakedy. I have her skin ready to be made into a new bag, shoes and armour. You should wear the armour, it is really good against fire attacks, but I have not tested what else it is resistant to." "Snakedy?" Rino took a sip of his tea and continued his story about what he found with Acht acting as a tour guide. The story about finding another living cave, new minerals, ores and killing the cave guardian stumped Kragami. He knew that Rino was a powerful magician in his own league when they fought, even if hismon sense and understanding of dark magic were poor. However, listening to the clueless lich''s adventures, Kragami felt ashamed to be called a teacher of this monstrous magician. There was no doubting it now. Rino was the true king from the legends sent to them by gods to save humanity from extinction. Chapter 135 - Tannery Construction (2) Feeling like he aged twenty years just listening to Rino''s story, Kragami brought the potato beer out. He needed stronger alcohol to deal with his student''s problems. Knowing that there was a power gap between their abilities as magicians was one thing. Acknowledging that no amount of hard work would bring him anywhere close to what Rino could aplish was another. Depression hit the hardest in times that Kragami least expected. He knew that his student would be someone significant in the future, but this kind of progress was still too fast for the necromancer to believe. "Let me get this straight," Kragami downed a mug of potato beer. "You want to build a tannery in the town and ce an order for a lot of wooden nks that you will carry in your shadow sack to fly back. At the same time, you want to bring back a stack of paper for creating a grimoire, y vats, silk, linen, cotton and hemp seeds." Rino nodded and added, "ck dye products and concrete powder too." Rino wanted to bring back this much in just a single trip to develop his town because travelling cost too much time and mana. Kragami was looking at him as if Rio grew a second head. Sure, flying back would take him a few days if he flew non-stop. However, the necromancer believed that it was more ridiculous for his student to stash everything away in his shadow sack. The shadow sack skill consumed a lot of mana and more so than teleporting in short sprints while alternating riding on a shadow mount. "You realise that this is an impossible request, right?" Rino averted his gaze. He did not want to hear it. In thest few days, production speed went back to normal, and Rino understood that he was driving the vigers here a little too hard to cope with his ridiculous town expansion demands. However, he did not have infinite day-offs to use. Time was money! In this scenario, it was potatoes and GF credits, but Rino wasn''t going to sweat over details. "I''ll dere workpensation for the extended working hours to cope with the production demands," he told Kragami firmly. "I cannot remain for long, there is a town that requires building, and I don''t exactly trust all the shapeshifting spectres to do their jobs well without supervision." Rubbing his temple, Kragami wondered if Rino was hit in the head as a baby. Common sense was such a foreign concept that his teacher wondered if it was even worth exining the problem. "We have the materials," he told Rino slowly and carefully. "However, I don''t think it is wise to carry so many things in the shadow sack on top of using the teleportation pad to return. You could exhaust your manapletely with no means to defend yourself if you''re attacked." Hearing that Kragami was concerned over his safety more than the production deadline, Rino shook his head. He couldn''t remember thest time someone was this concerned about his safety and health. All people wanted from him was to know when a certain project waspleted or if he could help them on a task. There was little to no appreciation for the work he did in his previous life, and Rino almost made the same mistake of not recognising the people around him more. "Don''t worry," he told the necromancer. "I don''t intend to do this very often. As soon as I think of a proper way to transport goods from one province to another, I will stop risky decisions like this. On the bright side, the mana web array for Noir Province is working very well." Rino was trying to change the subject, and they both knew it. In some ways, Kragami felt that geniuses often died early because they were reckless with no sense of danger, fear or self-preservation in their pursuit of the unknown. Rino reminded him of those suicidal workaholics. However, the world needed suicidal geniuses like him. "Very well," the Mayor of Cypress County sighed. "I will ask Aiden to prepare what you need from Cypress County. Pleased, Rino drained the rest of his tea and was about to leave when he remembered he had a souvenir from the mountains for his teacher. Kragami took a look at the strange white clump that fell apart when he touched it. "You might want to store this somewhere safe," Rino informed the necromancer, who raised a brow. "What''s this?" Smirking inwardly, Rino told Kragami to lick it. The suggestion made Kragami freeze, uncertain if his student was serious or joking. Then, he swiped a finger to pinch a crumbling bit of the white rock and put it in his mouth. Surprised by the overwhelming taste of salt, Kragami coughed and downed the rest of his tea, emptying the y teapot to get rid of the aftertaste. "Salt?!" Rino grinned mischievously, and even if Kragami could not see his expression from just a skull, he had a feeling Rino wasughing at him. "You said that your food was tasteless, so I hope you have enough vour from now on. Let me know if you ever run out. There''s a whole mountain of this where it came from." Swatting at Rino, Kragami dismissed his trouble-making student. Yet, he could not force the small smile away from his face. It was difficult to hate Rino or remain mad at him when he was like this. Rino left Cypress County and hopped back onto the teleportation pad to stop by Spudville. He had potatoes to sacrifice for a nobler cause in case he needed to extend his work vacation. At the same time, Rino had a whole list of things to get from Spudville before he visited the y kiln. Fronzo and Erika were startled to see their master return so quickly, but nobody questioned him when Rino fired off a list of things he needed to gather by the end of a few hours. The secretary and production manager gathered all the hands they could get as soon as Rino left to visit the granary. In a few hours, Rino would be making his way back to his town plot with his new inventory. He hoped that the mana reserves he had wouldst the teleportation. Chapter 136 - Tannery Construction (3) Armed with new tools to work with, the nine spectres gathered in Rino''s little stone cottage for a briefing. Aiden and Griffith put together a simple design for the tannery after Rino told them it was located furthest from the town''s centre. Without a need to design underground tunnels and venttion shafts, the tannery''s concept was fairly simple. There were five main stations and one storage building. Rino never felt prouder of the pygmy dwarfs foring up with an idiot-proof design. Unlike the barn that was split into different floors for different purposes, the tannery''s storehouse was for finished products only. "Een, Twee and Drie will mine for salt. Bring as much salt as you can back using these sacks." Passing the three shapeshifters cloth sacks that the fairies spun quickly for him, Rino exined the tanning process briefly. On average, leather would take anywhere from two days to two months to process from start to finish. Rino broke the lengthy process into a few steps. The first and most time-consuming part that could not be hastened with magic was the salt bath. The animal hide or skin has to be soaked in a y vat for a day in very intense saltwater as preparation for the rest of the leather tanning work. Seawater could not be used because of the impurities. Otherwise, Rino would have created a teleportation pad by the sea to toss his leather preparation workshop there. After soaking in salt water for one night, the leather should be rinsed and soaked in bone ash water. ording to the tutorial, this was called liming. It helped to remove the grease from the skin of the leather and hair more easily. Unlike the salt bath, liming took less time, but it would still take half a day of soaking that could not be shortened using magic. The part that could be shortened with magic was the separation and cleaning of the leather by hand. Normally, leather workers used a knife to scrape off all the stuck hair and meat. The process was known as scudding, and depending on the skill level of each worker, speed could vary. Rino estimated that the spectres would not take longer than ten minutes to scud the leather with their multiple tendrils. Then, the bating bath came. Rino didn''t want to know why leather tanning had so many baths involved. However, there was a way to make the bating process faster using magic. Traditionally, bating was done using nts, and the process could take weeks. To make leather soft and protect its quality for longer, tannin was required. An alternative provided by Rino''s tutorial included boiling the treated leather with animal liver, brains and fats for a few hours with salt. This reduced the lengthy tanning process to something that could bepleted in under a day. Needless to say, the boiling mixture would smell revolting, but it was a small price to pay when Rino could save a lot of time. Then, the treated leather should be rinsed clean and left to dry properly before storing away or crafting into something useful. Dyeing was optional, but Rino knew that most tanners would add dye colours to the treated leather after the bating bath. The dyeing process varied greatly, and Rino did not factor that into the time taken to produce one piece of leather. From start to finish, Rino would estimate about two days for one piece of leather. There really wasn''t much magic could do to shorten the time needed for nature to do what it has to. If Rino used time eleration magic, he might see miraculous results. However, with his limited and depleted mana supply, the lich should be mana savvy for a while. Nobody had any questions about the leather tanning process. Even if they had questions, they knew better than to ask now. It was wiser to move along and cross the bridge when they got to it. For now, Rino assigned the nine bandits their tasks, splitting them into three teams. Een was already leading his team out to gather salt with the hoes Rino passed them. Acht, Negen and Zeven were in charge of digging six pits for the different leather baths. Rino handed them reinforced shovels that should make the job a lot simpler. He would mark the space outter for them to work on. Hopefully, they wouldplete digging up everything before night. Thest team led by Vier was in charge of constructing the storage house. Vier looked a little dense, and Rino was worried about this team. Vijf and Zes did not look any brighter, so Rino would work with them during the day, instructing what needs to be done while he conserved his mana to recover what he used in two teleportation trips. As the group split up, Rino looked at the fireball in the sky. It waste afternoon now, and he hoped they could start the salt bath tonight. He could not wait to see themia skin in his shadow sack transform into a beautiful pair of boots. Rino unloaded the cargo and instructed the two teams staying in the town to help him carry them all the way to the building site. It wasn''t easy transporting all the wooden nks, but the spectres somehow managed to find a way to pile everything they needed on the wooden nks, carrying the wooden tform carefully so that they did not have to make too many trips. Rino knew that Acht was the brightest of the lot and made up his mind. Acht was going to be the tannery manager after everything was operational. These ex-bandits should be duly rewarded once the tannery waspleted as the first residents of his new town. Unwilling to risk burning in the sunlight, Rino held a strange device that Aiden designed in one hand, known as an umbre. It was one of the prototypes for products that could be made from paper. While it wasn''t very water-resistant, it created a good portable shelter. Rino had to thank the pygmy dwarf for such a handy creation as he walked behind the spectres holding a ck paper umbre behind them. Chapter 137 - Suede Shoes In two days, the tannery''s rough structure wasplete. Rino thanked the cement mixture powder for filling in the gaps between stone bricks in his soaking tanks. He also used runes to resolve the water filling and draining issues. It might not be the smartest use of mana, but it was what Rino was ustomed to. His snakedy skin was already soaking in the salt bath, and Rino fashioned a hasty lid out of a stone b. The spectres were busy building his storage house, and Rino busied himself creating the details of the mana web array, expanding from the main web so that it would reach the edges of his town''s territory. He could not deal with an attack from monsters during his town-building phase, and Rino felt he would be low on mana for a while teleporting between Cypress County and his unbuilt town. A basic defence barrier will do a lot of wonders. Four dayster, Rino looked at the beautiful ck leather made from the snakedy''s skin. Ping! === Daily Quest #14 plete) Objective: Tan leather 1/1 Tanned Leather Time Limit: 5 Days. te) Tutorial here. Reward: Tanning Skill im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Rino did not need to consider. He simply epted the quest''spletion and collected yet another skill he would probably not use because he had tannery workers to do it for him. With threads, bone needles, and leather syed in front of him on the floor, Rino decided that it was time to craft a new pair of shoes. He had a new house, heavily improved, a tannery far from the town centre, a magic tree growing fruits as strange as that sounded, and a living cave to start with. Although the logistic arrangements for transporting things from Noir Province was still a work in progress, Rino had enough building materials. His mana reserves were also recovered to almost seventy percent after some more strenuous uses over the past few days. No, Rino did not use time eleration magic to get his leather, even if it was a tempting idea. Instead, the lich spent his magic on building a better cottage so that it would befortable when Noir visited if the cat decided to drop by. At the same time, he put the ecology system in the living cave in ce while taking advantage of the gargoyles he owned to farm mushrooms and mine resources. Thest few days had been non-stop working, and Rino even forgot to im some of his daily sleep reward from the shop, much to his chagrin. However, the results paid off, and Rino could boast of a functional town without needing too much support from Noir Province for the time being. He found some y by the river a little distance away from the town''s location, and Rino decided to assign one spectre to gather y and build a little kiln. He also repurposed the vault into something akin to his personal study and linked the mana web array all the way up to that vault so that he could have lights when he wanted. The important things were stored here, such as glowing ore, paper, ink, and some of Kragami''s tea leaves. Rino also made himselffortable by adding a table and some chairs made from stone because wood was hard toe by with the hemp seeds still growing into trees. Honestly, cypress wood was better to build with, but it was difficult to grow them in the valley. Hemp was considerably easier and multi-purposed. He made the right decision asking for hemp seeds. At the same time, Rino wondered if potatoes could be grown here and took a few potatoes to test in the field. So far, nothing was happening, but it was too soon to tell. Rino could only hope that they would show promising results with nature magic. On that topic, he found it odd that he did not encounter a single fae in this area. It was odd because Rino was used to seeing them everywhere. Armed with a paper cutout of the boot design, Rino looked at themia leather nervously. This was more precious than the cloth he could mess around with. There really wasn''t anothermia he could skin for precious leather. Hence, Rino made sure to mark out what he needed with charcoal before he got to cutting, ensuring that the spaces in between leather pieces were as close together as possible to minimise wastage. The portion for Kragami was already set aside, and Rino wanted to make more than just shoes. He really wanted to make that grimoire too. The wooden shoe soles sat at the corner as Rino carefully exerted force at his fingertip to cut the leather into the shape with an enchanted bone knife. Although themia skin still retained its magic resistant properties, it was still leather in the end and sliced nicely. The enchanted bone knife went through themia leather like a hot knife through butter, and Rino controlled his speed, going slow so that he wouldn''t make a mistake. Ten nerve-wracking minutester, Rino had his cutouts. Now, all he had to do was stitch them together and nail them into his shoe soles. He did this for his cloth boots, so he could do the same for this leather. The stitching was hard, Rino had to admit. Working with leather was very different from working with linen. If he made a wrong stitch in the cloth, he could undo the stitch with little consequence. However, with leather, that hole would remain. It was heartbreaking, so Rino simply left the crooked stitch there. One crooked stitch became two, and eventually, he looked at the seams of the finished product. The magician only thanked his luck that the threads were ck on ck leather. It wasn''t too obvious if nobody scrutinised. However, the poor craftsmanship on premium leather pained him. He should have troubled the brownies for help instead of trying to do it by himself. Whatever. There was no use in crying over spilt milk. At least, Rino was a self-made king. He didn''t need to rely on his subjects like some sort of invalid. As he slotted the suede leather in between wooden soles, Rino checked the insoles and pondered if he should glue them to the wood. Leather shoes should not be washed, and suede leather was a pain to care for even if they werefortable. When he was still a teenager, the magician boots he wore often moulded because he did not have time to care for them. Even if Rino had no idea ifmia leather is the same, he did not want to take any chances. He had no sweat as a lich, so socks mattered little as long as his pants covered his naked shin bone. The bootces also pulled tightly to secure the boot around his ankles, so there should be no requirement to remove the insoles for airing the boots out. Hence, Rino used tree sap to glue the spongy insoles onto the wood and attached the leather to the base. Then, he used magic to speed up the sap drying process beforeyering cement onto the bottom of the wooden sole to attach it to his bulkier heel piece like a puzzle. Satisfied with his creation, Rino checked the system smugly. He might be a few dayste in turning the quest in. However, Rino was d that he still had a few more days of vacation time to enjoy. Moreover, he brought back the important things so that he could do what he came to do. Nothing beats a rxing day by the river fishing. The shoes were drying at the moment, so Rino padded around his cottage barefooted for a while, gathering the remainingmia leather. He would leave the suede shoes under the sun while it was still day and head over to the vault by hopping onto the teleportation pad. He had a grimoire to make. Ping! The system''ste notification came promptly as Rino found himself in the dark secret vault turned into his personal study. "Lights!" Onmand, the vault lit up, and Rino checked his reward. === Side Quest #17 plete) Objective: Craft Tanned Leather 1/1 Leather Product Reward: Leather Crafting Skill im your reward here. === It was about time too! Rino imed his new skill would help increase his sess working with leather. Screwing up a pair of boots was a lot better than screwing up a grimoire. Rino could live with poorly sewn shoes but not a shabby looking grimoire. He had no excuse for a poorly made grimoire as a magician, and honestly, it did not look good if pages of his grimoire fell loose during a battle. Even if he waszy, he still had standards to keep up with as a powerful magician, and a crappy book was uneptable. With renewed vigour and a few days of idle time, Rino cracked his knuckles before starting his new project. As an apprentice in the tower many years ago, the art of bookbinding was already in his blood. There was no way Rino would mess this up. After all, this just might be the very first book in the world. Chapter 138 - [Bonus - Mutt鈥檚 Diary] Master Observation Dear Dumb Diary Master gave everyone some pocket journals yesterday and told us to record what we liked as a form of creating the kingdom''s very first literature pieces to fill his desired library. The role of a diary documenter is very precious, and as his mount, I take this very seriously. It is hard for a monster with paws to write, so I''m using shadow tendrils to help me. In fact, they aren''t even my shadow tendrils. Acht is helping me to record what I wish to write. The spectre learns how to write very quickly. Master likes him. As Master is giving everyone a day off in this new barrennd he calls a town, I decided to spend mine with Acht observing Master''s routine on a day he does not have to work to record the moment of greatness from our future king in his private time. Master has built a pole and attached a string to it with magic to reinforce its strength. I do not see the joy of this manly sport called fishing, and it is incredibly difficult to stay awake with the horrible afternoon sun. So far, Master has failed to catch any fish at all, even if I counted twenty-three passing by what Master refers to as bait. Honestly, I don''t think the fish here like potatoes very much, but Master seemed to think otherwise. Maybe if he changed it to a chopped leg of some beast, he would find better luck. Fishing has been a waste of time. Acht kept watch and wrote this while I fell asleep in Master''s shadow, waiting for something to happen. It is evening now, but I won''t know what Acht wrote. I most certainly did not drool in my sleep because I am a shadow monster, but Acht imed otherwise. I might have made some embarrassing noises in my sleep too, but Acht did not tell me that. Master works hard even if heins a lot about what he has to do. I have never seen Master fail toplete what he has to do. Yesterday, he was excited to make shoes and books. The book Master made fromdy snake skin doesn''t smell good. However, it emits a powerful aura that even I do not dare approach. He calls it a grimoire, and only the stinky old man from the swamp looks happy about it. At night, Master sometimes looks at the air and thinks a lot by himself. Sometimes, he would poke at the air andugh crazily. Me thinks that is the stress of not taking more vacations. Building Noir Province from nothing and now expanding his influence to a new area takes a lot of work. I hope Master does not overwork. Something that Master likes to dotely is collect strange stones and look at the new magic tree. I have never seen stones grow before, but the ones around the tree grew quickly. They are very sparkly, and Master likes them a lot. When one of the spectres tried to touch it, I snapped at them. Master hates people touching his things, after all. With a few days of no work, Master is still a very busy person. He visited the creepy cave where the snakedy ruled and talked to her ugly minions. Now, we have more stones of different colours piling up in the new territory. Master wants to use them for something but ims that he is toozy to do anything now, so it is still in the cave near the teleportation pad. If I had to describe Master''s personality, he is kind but strict. Sometimes he rewards us, but he also demands a lot from the farmers. Poor Fronzo and Erika have no time for a break. They even eat while working. Life is hard for those ghouls. The only person I think Master should be stricter on is the lesser vampire. He doesn''t do much but talks a lot. I don''t like him. Compared to these bandit spectres, Fowler should not be a vampire. I have no idea why he is more powerful than Fronzo or even the Goblin Lord. I like them better, they are nice. Oh, the sun is setting. Master is going on his nightly patrol again. He says that the town''s defences should be created little by little because after jumping through the teleportation pad from the town to the swamp, his mana was severely depleted. In just one day, Master brought back everything he needed to build a tannery. I don''t understand why a tannery was so important, but Master looks very happy with his new shoes and book. I guess it is alright if Master is satisfied even if he worked himself sick from using too much mana. It''s still hard to believe he carried a mountain of building materials in his shadow sack. Even the stinky old man was worried about Master. It took Master a few days to get his usualziness back, and as his faithful protector, I remained hiding in his shadow until he needed me. It hurts a little to know that Master would refuse to summon me often enough. The other shadow minions are summoned once and are never unsummoned. Only I am special, getting summoned when Master needs a sparring partner or going on night patrol walks. Maybe this is my privilege as a mount? I feel conflicted, but if this is what Master wants, I will be happy with it. Speaking of Master''s happiness, I will write this down as a very important note before ending the first observation record. Not many people know it, but there is a cat who can make Master turn into an utter fool. No, not a big cat but a small and snarky one who can speak and is not Master''s summons. His name is Noir, and he is a ck cat whoes once a while for a few days or hours before disappearing again. Without Noir around for close to two weeks now, Master is experiencing withdrawal symptoms. I don''t like Noir, but I prefer putting up with the cat than seeing Master gloomy. Hopefully, Noir returns soon so that Master can cheer up before his vacation is over. Acht is going to stop writing here because we should not waste precious paper on idle talks. Goodbye, dumb diary. I hope people who read it in future will learn a little more about the great Monarch of Solitude. Chapter 139 - Ranch Life When Rino woke up from his nap, he saw that the daily quest updated itself. He groaned. There were still two more days before his vacation ended. What did the gods want? Ping! === Daily Quest #15 Objective: Build an animal pen Time Limit: 3 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Herding Skill Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Oh, he was expecting this but an animal pen? Rino looked over at his town nning map draft in his vault study. It was still evening, and there wasn''t much to do around here now that the tannery was working. Hence, he gave the spectres and Mutt a break. To make matters a little more interesting, Rino saw how his side quest updated too. === Side Quest #18 Objective: Craft fish trap Reward: Intermediate Trapping Skill === The rewards this time weren''t bad. However, Rino wondered how useful the herding skill was. He had a wolf here who should be able to herd sheep. Why was it part of his package of useless skill? The gods were really cheapskates. Then again, he didn''t mind. This was an easy daily quest, so he could save those day-offs for now bypleting the animal pen within one night. The side quest should not take too long either, as Rino was talented at weaving. The ranch life was a new phase of Rino''s life. Originally, he moved to a new town because he knew the gods would eventually make him focus on animal breeding eventually. Humans did not survive on only potatoes. There was a need for variety before malnutrition kicked in. Hence, the new town was chosen in a fertile spot for nts and a huge space for animal grazing. This couldn''t be a better spot, even if it was rather far from where he originally started. Thankfully, it was still within teleporting range. Rino still couldn''t think of a way to transport goods from one province to another. Even by flight, the journey would take Rino almost five days for a round trip. There was no safe ce to stop in between either. The jungle was too unpredictable, and Rino did not want to put any of his minions or precious cargo in danger. The hemp trees were not growing too well in the valley. Rino could not understand why. Perhaps it was theck of mana in the new environment, but there was hardly anything the lich could do about it at the moment. He thought about spending some GF credits to purchase Water Bell Flower seeds to resolve the issue but thinking about how many of those flowers he needed to nt to cover the entire town, Rino decided to shelve that idea. He was too poor to afford them. Using stone for ranch walls was out of the idea. Rino did not have enough manpower to carry heavy stone bs to create the ranch perimeter. Even if he did, relocating was going to be a pain. Not to mention, the animal pens had to allow animals in and out. Rino couldn''t make the gate out of stone. It was too inefficient. Thus, Rino decided to settle for basic material with the help of magic now that he was almost fully recovered from the mana depletion. He used earth walls to mark out areas in his town for future building projects. Why couldn''t he do the same for animal pens? The ranch life chose Rino. Rino did not choose the ranch life. Hence, it would have to suffer a little. There was absolutely zero effort in making animal pens. Besides, why did farm animals need good living standards when they were going to be food by the end of their lifespan? It made little sense to Rino. Once the sun dipped below the mountains, Rino quickly teleported to the building site and started work. It was on the opposite side of the tannery, closer to the jungle because that was where the juiciest grass andziest of meadows were. There were no lights in the area, so Rino spent a good amount of time extending the mana web array so that he could at least see what he was doing at night.'' The lights lit up beautifully under the stars, and Rino built himself a temporary tform to get a good overview of the animal pen. He wanted to build a huge barn in his grand n that he modelled after the royal stables. Animals should not be left out in the open, especially when the climate changes. Rino also did not know if the vultures lurking in the area would steal his livestock. Honestly, in the past, shepherds oftenined about wyverns stealing their sheep. Rino did not have the time or energy toplete the mana web array set up in his new town, and setting up a basic defence barrier did not deter any beasts from visiting. He had to modify the barrier for this section of his town, but Rino was toozy to do it now. He was a professional procrastinator and hoped that he would not forget what he wanted to doter when he wasn''t so preupied with bookbinding and writing research archives. There was much to learn about this world in the few months that Rino was here. There simply wasn''t enough time to record everything, and Rino did not want to waste more time than he already did on stupid kingdom-building projects. In the past, he often wished that he had a body that required no sustenance or sleep so he could lock himself up and work for years at a time on his projects. Now that his wish came true, they were interrupted by stupid daily quests. Life was difficult, even in death. How ironic! Section by section, Rino raised the level of earth from the ground to act as walls. Thendscape slowly changed, and Rino made a huge animal pen with several subdividers. Knowing the gods, they wouldn''t stop at sheep. Even so, the pregnant sheep, young sheep and regr sheep must have space of their own. Rino did not know much about ranch life, but he knew enough to create at least four sections in the pen, one reserved for the birds and the bees. With that, he triumphantly dered the quest asplete and collected his herding skill. With two days left before the quest timer ran out, Rino happily returned to his study, forgetting all about that temporary tform he made. Chapter 140 - Mana Saver For the next few days, Rino found himself pouring over papers and drafting countless spells. Not everything should be added to the grimoire. Some of his best magic circles were also useless in this world because Rino realised the town wasn''t built with enough magic circuits forplex spells. Themia leather grimoire had limited pages and while Rino could rebind a grimoire to add pages, carrying such a thick tome around was inconvenient. In his previous life, Rino did not use grimoires. Instead, he stitched spells into his clothes and wore manyyers because of it. Some of his more borate essories were engraved with spells that gave him conveniences such as flight, dark vision and underwater breathing. People often thought of him as a great mana maniptor, but Rino had limitations too. He doubted anyone was physically and mentally capable of using secondary spells while chanting catastrophic level destruction missiles. Building aplex spell took a lot of concentration without a team of magicians splitting the burden of the spell. Rino wouldn''t be able to maintain a secondary spell without the aid of his portable grimoire. If he could, he would stitch spells into his garments too. However, Rino simply wasn''t sure that his clothes were good enough for weaving spells into. Noir''s gift was damaged by the viciousmia, and the lich needed something more durable before he wove spells into it. The thought of bing handicapped mid-fight from wardrobe malfunctions and torn clothes made him shudder. Grimoires and pre-written magic circles served two purposes. The first was faster casting time and theck of need to chant. Pre-written spells can be activated on the spot. Depending on the rune crafting proficiency, the spells could be permanently activated based on the caster''s unique mana or used by anyone as a disposable spell circle. Rino always wrote his magic circles with a special activation requirement so nobody else could use them. Even if they knew the code, not everyone was capable of activating four elemental magic at once. His glove was stolen once, and Rino was d he had such a strict usage requirement. He would hate having to exin how the city was raided by lightning storms after a glove theft. The second reason why magicians often used grimoires was because of the mana saving functions. Unlike Rino, most magicians don''t have huge mana reserves. Many magicians can only cast intermediate spells without the aid of grimoires. Even those who could cast advanced spells couldn''t achieve that in session. It was exhausting on the magician, and mana circles took time to draw. However, depending on how a magic circle was drawn, the magician could channel mana more efficiently, using less with better results. The discovery made grimoires very popr, and many intermediate magicians could cast advanced spells when using a grimoire and wand. This invention gave rise to the era of magicians, who were popr additions to the adventuring guilds. Anyone with magical aptitude could learn to be a magician. Even the weakest magician with one element affinity could register to be a beginner magician with the guild after buying a good staff and grimoire. Many wealthy merchants and nobles sponsored poor magicians with the items needed in return for rare resources. It was a good business model that Rino wished did not exist. Grimoires made casting spells easier and were a good mana saver, but he still wished more people understood the magic they were using instead of treating them like tools toplete a chore. To cast a fireball, most beginner magicians flip to the right page and pour mana into a grimoire while directing the output with a staff. Nobody knew how to correctly call upon the mana into their body with the poprity of grimoires. Magician deaths in his previous world were high, and adventuring magicians were disposable with the rise of grimoires. Rino shook his head. It was a disaster, and the lich wanted to avoid that in this world. Grimoires should be used to assist the magician and not be the magician''s master. Thinking long and hard about the secondary spells he wanted to use with the advantage of saving mana, Rino knew a few. The shadow sack, shadow tendrils and teleportation spell he learned from Kragami and the quest reward were very useful in kingdom building. However, they were mana thirsty, depending on the distance, intensity and number of items. Kingdom building¡­ Rino needed spells for construction. In case he did not have any link to a mana web array, the magician needed a way to scout new locations. He needed the ability to level grounds, build footholds and establish safe zones. Determined, Rino crushed the paper in his hands and sharpened the charcoal pencil. The piece of charcoal crumbled a little, and Rino looked at the ck powder on his stone table. He should look into a way to produce better charcoal pencils after he finalised his magic circle designs. Time passed quickly as Rino edited the magic circle while testing its mana conversion rate. Teleporting small items over a long distance barely made a dent in his mana reserves. So far, Rino used his temporary magic circle to send rocks from his study to themia''s cave that his shadow gargoyles retrieved. Hence, he experimented on summoning and teleporting his shadow minions using the smaller carnivorous bats, the shadow gargoyles, shapeshifting spectres and Mutt. If there was one thing Rino learned from teleporting his shadow minions using a magic circle, it was how inurate their destination marking was. One gargoyle was thrown to the sea when Rino''s teleportation spell opened above the salty waters. It was fortunate that shadow minions couldn''t drown, or Rino would have lost one good test subject. Bigger summons need not necessarily cost more mana to teleport. However, intelligent summons cost more. Rino tested this theory on two shapeshifters. Honestly, he knew that Acht was smarter than his buddies, but Rino wasn''t expecting much difference. He had no idea if it was because he appointed the shapeshifter as his tannery manager, but aspared to Drie, Acht cost more mana to teleport in the same distance. Without a teleportation marker, Rino was unsure of how to perfect the spell in his grimoire. It was good for emergency getaways but not very useful for logistic transportation. The mana usage for this random teleportation spell was five times lesser than the original teleportation spell, and Rino sighed inwardly. Without a marker, this mana saving circle wasn''t useful. If he could see where he was going, the magic circle teleported urately. However, if he could not see where it was going, the destination would be random in a direction Rino looked at. "What about using scouts to determine the teleportation location or an existing summon to pinpoint the teleportation appearance?" Mutt suggested after the number of paper balls in his master''s study covered a small corner of the room. The sabre tooth wolf whined as another paper ball bounced on the stone ground. He materialised from the shadows and collected it within his jaw to add to the pile. Rino listened to his summon and thought about it. Indeed, it could work. However, he didn''t really have control over his summons. Minions who did not have his split soul worked under his orders even if they had free wills. Rino could only summon and umon them but not control their bodies. It was a huge disadvantage. After listening to his master''s counter argument about his body control difficulties, Mutt raised an invisible brow. "But Master could do a swapping summoning technique, right?" Rino paused. Swapping? He remembered Kragmi talking about the concept before, but he thought it only applied to himself and his summons. Did it work on inanimate objects too? He thought that only creatures born from darkness could travel through the shadow realm. Was he wrong? In any case, it was still worth a shot. There wasn''t anything to lose, so Rino and Mutt worked on testing the new teleportation trick. Lo and behold! The trick worked, and Mutt helped Rino to fine-tune the swap teleportation coordinates. For now, this was a better idea than randomly teleporting minions and items into the ocean. The first swapping spell was added to Rino''s grimoire after it was finalised. At the same time, Rino added some of his regr supporting spells like flight, stealth and dark vision that could be useful for night building in areas without the mana web array. He could use the night vision spell for his dark mushroom farm in the cave managed by gargoyles. At the same time, Rino worked on a storage spell to minimise his mana consumption for big and bulky items in his shadow sack. He looked at themia leather he wanted to reserve for Kragami and wondered if he should use some for an inventory bag with a constant magic circle instead to save mana. The few days of ''vacation'' passed quickly as Rino put his tannery to work on a new piece of leather using king toad skin. The grimoire secondary spells were finalised, and before he left for Noir Province to discuss his new findings with Kragami, Rino received a new system notification. Toozy to check it yet, Rino opened his grimoire and used the World Tree as his teleportation marker. Hopefully, he wouldn''t shock anyone to death with his sudden appearance. Chapter 141 - Grimoire Express It was Fowler''s turn to be on watch duty. With Rino''s powerful defence array, there was no real need to take his watch duty seriously. The lesser vampire slouched against the World Tree and yed with some pebbles he collected. There was a rather popr game about tossing rocks circting in Spudville among the farmers that started from the goblin shaman. It was the trend now, and not even Fowler was spared from this addiction. It was a good way to kill time while improving one''s reflex and coordination. The hunter was not expecting a ck mass of shadows to appear behind him as he tried to catch all five pebbles he threw into the air with the back of his hand. When Rino arrived, he wasn''t expecting to catch his head hunter skiving with something that looked like amoner''s game. Fowler looked positively embarrassed for his unprofessionalism as he stammered a wee. Although Rino did not call him out for cking, he rewarded the lesser vampire with silence. Honestly, he didn''t expect all his shadow minions to be hardworking all the time. However, something about Fowler just displeased Rino. The archer was just one of those people Rino found hard to get along with and tolerate for some reason. It wasn''t anything personal but he couldn''t help it. "Don''t mind me, I''m just here to borrow the use of the teleportation portal to see Kragami." Fowler bowed low with a hand across his chest until Rino left the cave. Tension eased the moment the lich left, and the lesser vampire''s legs gave way. Why was Rino back so soon? Didn''t the necromancer say that he would need a long time to recover after spending so much mana moving huge quantities of items? Rino stopped by the farm and offered as many potatoes as he could. The fields were growing very well, and Rino noticed how there was now a properpost factory for fertilisers. The farm managers also started working on fencing the area and separating the crops to grow more x in newer fields. There was also a hemp row, and Rino had to apud the three sisters for their diligence. He had a feeling Fronzo and Erika had something to do with this. With more GF credits in his system wallet, Rino wondered if he could afford enough Water Bell Flowers to nt all over his new town. Perhaps not yet, but in due time, he might be able to afford them. With no further business in Spudville, Rino hopped onto the teleportation pad and found himself walking out of Cypress County''s main base. The Ghost Tree grew bigger again, and there was a literal vige in those branches. The few treehouses that Rino saw just a few weeks before now numbered in double digits. He wondered if all these houses belonged to his teacher or if some of them were actual fae housings. "Blimey!" Kragami yelped in surprise when he saw the faceless face. "What are you doing here so soon? Don''t you have a town to build?" Rino shrugged as he climbed up the spiral stairs. "I finished using the materials I brought with me thest time, so I''m back for more. However, I ran into a few problems that I need your opinions on." Weing Rino into his renovated hut, the necromancer boiled water for a new blend of tea leaves. The salt rock that Rino gave his teacher was put to good use as they were stored in severalrge ss jars on the bottom of the new spice rack in the kitchen. The cypress furniture started to look cosy with cotton stuffed cushions and linen tablecloths. It began to look like a mayor''s home now, and Rino felt happy for the progress. "Water Bell Flower tea," Kragami smirked, and Rino gaped. "Do you know how many potatoes those flowers cost? You made them into tea?!" Raising a white brow, the necromancer snorted. "It''s easy to grow and harvest them. We have a whole field of them now in Spudville. In fact, I think that vige needs a new name. They don''t just grow potatoes now. It has a little bit of everything." Surprised, they chatted a little as Kragami filled his student up with thetest news and gossip. It was amazing how Noir Province prospered and progressed even without Rino''s supervision. He didn''t have to be here in person. With the gnomes, the goblin lord, the goblin shaman and his teacher holding weekly meetings to decide on the next building project, Fronzo and Erika had their schedules packed to the max. "So, what brings you here?" Rino grinned and retrieved the tannedmia skin he promised he would deliver. "This is for you," he told the necromancer, who caressed it tenderly like how one would lick a gold bar. Themia skin was magic resistant, and Kragami spied Rino using the valuable leather for his new fancy boots. "I can''t believe you dyed this to make new shoes. I thought you would use it to repair your mantle." Rino shook his head and sipped on the Water Bell Flower tea. It tasted oddly like mint and blood. "I thought about making an inventory bag with an embroidered magic circle but decided against it because I didn''t have enough leather. Also, I was trying to decide on some spells for my grimoire, but there were some difficulties." Exining his dilemma about precision teleporting for his logistic solution, Rino asked if Kragami knew how to set urate teleportation markers. He shared his experience with drenched gargoyles, and Kragamiughed. "Typically, I would set coordinates for my teleportation in the shadow realm. It''s easier to determine your appearance location without a marker if you''re in the shadow realm. You could set some minions to travel in the shadow realm or hide there as teleportation markers to teleport items without making the trip yourself. Alternatively, you can set up a teleportation pad like what you did." The lich made a face that Kragami couldn''t see. Making a teleportation pad was urate, but it consumed too much mana. He wanted an express delivery. What good was a grimoire if it could not provide premium speed service? Sensing his student''s sullen thoughts, Kragami wondered if he should let the lich know his ambitious but highly risky solution. As a magician with weaker control of magic and lesser mana reserves, he could never attempt such a thing. However, Rino was powerful. Maybe he could pull this off with the help of a grimoire. "Have you ever thought about storing excess collected mana in your grimoire?" Rino blinked. You could do that? Seeing how his student was clueless, Kragami once again wondered how such a person became a lich. "By turning your grimoire into a cursed artefact, you can share your soul with it. It applies to any artefacts, but most dark magicians do this to exchange their lifespan for power." Thinking about it, Rino was able to use his World Tree as a teleportation marker. If he used his grimoire as a soul marker, would that mean he could control and weave spells more efficiently with a different conscience? "That sounds like a cheating ability," the lich confessed. Kragami onlyughed at his student''sments. Indeed, it was a cheating ability. However, the more powerful an ability, the higher the price was. Grimoires were not known as the devil''s book for no reason. "There''s a catch," he informed Rino. Grimoires that were turned into cursed artefacts were known to be mana hungry beasts. Depending on the number of spells written in a grimoire, the grimoire will constantly demand mana from the owner, like how a campfire would constantly demand firewood to avoid getting snuffed out. "All your spells will be activated at all times, even when you''re asleep. On the whole, more mana will be consumed in exchange for instant casting and better efficiency." Rino listened to it with a frown. His grimoire did not contain cmity spells. It was more like a book full of useful buff spells for housekeeping and inventory management. In some ways, his grimoire was like his mana butler if it became his cursed artefact. "I can teleport objects with uracy if I turn the book into a cursed artefact?" Kragami nodded. "It is something that could happen but only in theory. Nobody I know tried it, and even I have no faith this would work because it could suck my mana dry faster than I can recover." Indeed, Rino could see the risk posed to ordinary magicians who tried to use grimoires as amplifiers, borrowing powers above their natural abilities. However, Rino was different. He was doing the opposite by optimising spells within his mana capacity with surplus. If anything, the creation of his cursed artefact will give Rino a better advantage. A different split conscience could act as a support mage. Theoretically, Rino could create a battalion of magicians by splitting his souls multiple times and wielding multiple grimoires. He wasn''t going to do something this ridiculous yet, but the idea remained. "I understand," he finished his tea and got up. "Let me think about it. In the meantime, do you know why it is taking nts such a long time to grow in the new soil?" Kragami chuckled. "I think you should ask Fronzo or the farming faes for advice. I''m only good at cultivating corpses." Sighing in defeat, Rino thanked his teacher and left to find the farming experts. Maybe he should bring a few experts with him to the new town. He had no idea what the new quest wanted him to do, but Rino refused to do his quests alone when he had cursed artefact to think about. Chapter 142 - Fish Food After hauling back a huge shopping list and kidnapping several fae experts in farming, crafting and sewing, Rino teleported back to the town and groaned at the huge zap of mana it took from his reserves. There would be no out of town travelling for a while again. The female brownie, gnome from Aiden''s team and farming fairy, arrived at Rino''s barren town and was given a grand tour by Mutt. Rino excused himself to return to his secret study. He had some quests toplete, and Rino wasn''t looking forward to them. Husbandry was a difficult phase and took a lot of time. If it took Rino almost two months to set Noir Province up, he expected to linger in this new area for at least three times as long because animals needed time to fatten for ughter. He expected many chain quests and was not looking forward to them. === Daily Quest #16 Objective: Collect Animals 0/3 Unique animal couples Time Limit: 10 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Increased Animal Affinity Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Ah, so this was it. The unique reward from thest quest was used for this. He should have seen thising. Thankfully, it wasn''t a difficult quest. Ten days to find three unique animal couples with no specification of the creatures made the quest a lot easier. Unlike the king toad hunting quest, Rino knew a few creatures in mind he wanted to raise to kill them for materials. Hunting hawks all the time wasn''t viable. Rino must have birds of some kind for feathers and eggs. Not to mention, birds tasted delicious when roasted. He had no idea if there were wild turkeys in this world, but Rino hoped to find huge flightless birds to raise in captivity. The second animal Rino wanted to raise should produce milk because he missed his dairy products, especially butter. It wasn''t a necessity, but it would be nice to eat cheese again. More importantly, he should find an animal capable of producing good leather for his tannery to work with. Premium products were not only a sign of status in civilisation. It was also a lifestyle upgrade that benefited civilians. Leather was more durable even if Rino had no idea if the undead needed this luxury. However, the idea of finally having leather bagspared to y vats and woven wooden baskets thrilled him. It made transporting certain materials such as paper easier. Thest on his list but not a priority was akin to an ecology dumpster in the living caves. Back in his world, many farmers raised pigs to turn crop waste into food for free meat to ughter. Pigs ate anything and were easy to fatten. Their fats were made into cheap soap and, honesty made good oil always in demand. Rino had his idea of farm animals, but the only problem was finding animals that weren''tpletely hostile in this strange new world. He definitely did not want to capture any of his domesticated livestock from the Woods of No Return. He thought about the skiving archer and smirked inwardly. Maybe he did not have to do this himself. Why get down and dirty when he could push the job to another more suited individual? Summoning Mutt to act as his messenger, Rino sent the sabre tooth wolf on a journey to run back to Noir Province to oversee his new task. They had ten days to find three pairs of unique animals to bring back to the animal pen. Rino would modify the penter, and hopefully, the farming fairy would find a way to grow the hemp trees, water bell flowers and potatoes in his town. For now, there was one more pending task on his quest list. === Side Quest #18 Objective: Craft fish trap Reward: Intermediate Trapping Skill === Trapping was a redundant skill to Rino, but he knew if the quest wasn''tpleted, the fussy gods might be unhappy. Personally, fishing should be done with a pole and not with traps ors. Rino had no idea why the gods wanted to create something to destroy a man''s romance with nature. In any case, Rino looked through the tutorial quickly and discovered that fish traps were useful against ferocious fishes who snuck away with his baits. Wanting revenge for his empty haul a few days earlier with the potato bait, Rino decided to head back to his town toplete this side quest. The farming fairy who followed Rino was tending to the soil when the lich appeared behind her. The fairy lost control of her magic with a scream, and the potato sprouts shrank back into the soil shyly. Rino apologised, feeling bad for scaring people constantly with his unannounced arrival. However, he wasn''t truly sorry for his fashionable travelling methods. Getting to business right away, Rino asked if the soil in this valley was suitable for growing crops and nting hemp trees. He needed wood to weave that fish trap and could do with some speedrunning. The farming fairy nodded nervously and exined that the soil was a little too rich in minerals. While it usually entailed a good harvest, the natural growth process was slow in the beginning. "I was adjusting the soil acidity level using water magic and inspiring the potato seeds'' growth using nature magic," the fairy exined. Rino patted her with one finger and told her to take a break while he took over. He needed a few more potatoes in the farms of his new town to feed his future animals. However, before he fed any animals, he had to make some fish food to tempt the evasive carps he wanted to catch. The farming fairy left Rino with the spuds and tended to the hemp trees, adjusting the soil acidity so that the nts would grow a little faster. The trees were half wilting from too much nutrients and too little water, not that Rino knew. He just wanted wood to weave his fish trap, and the treated cypress nks would not work. The fish trap design was simple. The woven wooden fish trap would float automatically, so Rino would use that to his advantage of keeping it near the water''s surface. If he needed it to sink lower into the water, he could always add rocks as weight and tie the trap to some wooden stakes to hold it in ce facing the opposite flow of the water. The idea of the trap was to tempt passing fishes swimming downstream with yummy salted potato. It was a one entrance type of design with the exit blocked by a smaller woven cone funnel to invite fishes but prevent them from leaving the trap. Rino studied the fish trap basket design. It appeared rather straightforward and could be woven out of reeds. Honestly, the magician wondered if the primitive fish trap basket would work against carnivorous carps if the river fishes here turned out to be anything like the ones he saw in the Woods of No Return. Nothing would stop those fishes from eating their way out of his wooden basket trap. Shrugging, Rino decided to ignore the efficiency of this simple trap. It wasn''t his fault that the gods designing his quests did not have foresight. If they wanted a fish trap, he would craft one. It was better if the trap didn''t work so that Rino had reasons to go back to his pole and hooks. Finding some bendy twigs from the hemp trees that refused to grow straight, Rino used them as the fish trap''s outline. There were plenty of reeds by the river, and Rino gathered some to help tie the sticks together, forming the basic skeletal structure of the main body. Then, with the help of shadow tendrils, Rino wove the reeds into the structure fine enough to keep the fishes in but with sufficient gaps for the water to flow inside. Once the main trap''s body took shape, he tested the buoyancy and added a few small rocks to keep it down in the river. After Rino was satisfied with the depth it submerged, he tossed it to one side. He started working on the inner conical basket to invite fish in and deter them from leaving, thanks to the hinge mechanism that would pull the wooden spikes together once a fish enters the basket. The spikes were not made to stab fishes who tried to leave. However, they acted like reedy trapdoors. Testing the reedy trapdoor with his hand, Rino thanked his horoscope stars that he was all bones and no flesh. Really, he should have known that the reverse trap door mechanism was going to catch his wrist bone when he tried to remove his hand from the darned thing. It was working a little too well, but exactly the way it was intended. Satisfied that the trap was functional despite the overly simple design, Rino studied thest part of his trap crafting tutorial. It really couldn''t be simpler as Rino tied the two pieces together with reed and loaded it with salty potato bait before dumping the thing into a river. Ping! Rino smirked. With his side questpleted and the main quest delegated to the cking hunter, he imed his useless reward and headed back to the vault study. Chapter 143 - Two Of Each Kind Mutt took his duty with pride. Ever since his master sent him on a mission to oversee the capture of three unfortunate animal couples for the starting of a barn a few days ago, the sabre tooth wolf travelled without a break to return to Noir Province. He needed to catch azy lesser vampire for the special mission. He had no idea how to bring the captive animals back to his master''s town alive, but Mutt did not question orders. Maybe his Master would recover his mana entirely to teleport the captured animals back to the town, or he would build something fantastic that could sail in the sea of clouds above, safely away from the dangerous jungle. Rino assured Mutt that all the sabre tooth wolf and hunting squadmander needed to find him one feathered couple, one furred couple and one meaty couple. Honestly, Mutt asked if king toads counted using the telepathic bond between master and shadow summon. Rino thought for a while before ruling out amphibians. They had to be warm-blooded animals that did not evolve into magic spewing monsters. As a monster, this was hard to understand. Was there a difference between animals and beasts? They were from the same family, and anything weak could be eaten. Perhaps his master wanted the weakest to domesticate because the strong should be given a chance to fight for their kins'' survival and repopte in the wilderness. If Mutt interpreted his Master''s orders to get the weaker animals to domesticate for ughtering, the sabre tooth wolf could ept this wisdom. Finally, Mutt saw the edges of Cypress County. He followed the river and stuck close to the shadows, opting for a different path from when they first came. The Woods of No Return was too dangerous for Mutt to travel through alone. He took a longer detour by following the mountain range and a different river that led to the marsnds. From here, it was easy for Mutt to locate the necromancer''s vige and borrow the teleportation pad to Spudville. The stone tossing game was still very popr, and even after getting caught for ying it while on duty by Rino, Fowler found himself unable to stop. Mutt found the lesser vampire bragging about his stone catching reflexes and raising the stakes to his bet when he arrived. Without courtesy, the sabre tooth wolf leapt andnded on the unprepared archer with one paw squishing the braggart. "Master sent me on official duties. You and your team are toe with me and assist with the sacred quest." The low growl sent shivers down the hunters'' spines literally as they watched Mutt maul their leader with his deadly jaws to remind him that gambling during official duty was uneptable. Nobody questioned the monster wolf''s authority as they grabbed their cloth armour, quiver and shortbows. Lined up and in full hunting gear, the hunting squad awaited instructions. Mutt inspected every single skeleton with a critical eye and scrutinised their leader for twice as long. When he found that not a single bone was out of ce, the wolf divulged his mission details. "Master wants to capture wild animals to be domesticated in the new town. We need to find one male and one female of three unique animals with the following requirements. Master wishes for one couple with feathers, one couple with fur and one meaty couple if there are no milky couples." The description made the hunters pause. The description was very vague, but Mutt insisted they were Rino''s words, and they couldn''t fail. Fowler thought about the cryptic requirements and tried to rationalise them before they captured the wrong animals. Raising wild animals for their feathers, fur, and meat was a novel idea. Why did they not think of it before? Then again, Fowler had reservations. If animals were domesticated, a trainer was required, and the caregiver must be familiar with the habits of the animals. Even as a hunter, he barely knew the diet, behaviour and mating habits of animals he hunted. Would wild animals survive under the care of undead and faes? "Two of each kind," Mutt stressed and insisted that they checked the genders of the animals they captured. "Only the strongest male and the most fertile females should be chosen. They rest to be killed for feasting or freed for breeding in the wild." His words made Fowler wonder if the wolf monster had a brain. Strongest male and most fertile female? What were they? Baby factories? It didn''t work that way! Animals needed time to breed, and even so, the coupling act only happened during the mating season. The Monarch of Solitude couldn''t make them procreate against the course of nature even if he was an overly powerful lich. Leading the hunting squad to the forest that king toads resided in, Mutt told them to gather all animals that the hunters thought fit their master''s description and tossed them into the pit he would dig. Honestly, Fowler would havee prepared with hemp fibre ropes and some earth faes for the hunt to prepare better fences. How were they going to recover the animals they hunted if Mutt was going to toss everything in one pit? Also, the experienced archer foresaw the deaths of some weaker animals if they put everyone together. "Boss, what should we find? A feathered animal can be any type of bird. Birds fly easily. They cannot be domesticated in cages for long." Indeed, the birds that Fowler and his team hunted for fletching and quills tend to be fiercer, and the lesser vampire doubted they could be domesticated. Hunter birds were out of the question. That left the smaller birds like swallows and woodpeckers on the bottom of the food chain. Bigger spiders and medium-sized hunters ate these smaller birds, but Fowler had a feeling their king wasn''t interested in these useless birds. There were only two reasons why anyone would keep a bird. The first was forpanionship, which was not the case here. The second would be for eggs. Eggs were a good source of protein, and baby chicks were delicacies that only the rich could afford. As a talented archer and the best of his trade, Fowler had the chance to eat boiled unhatched chicks in their shells once. It was bony, crunchy and salty but way better than the insipid bitter grass that most other vigers ate. He hated the nd sweetness of corn too and the earthy smell of potatoes. Eggs were neutral and went well with just about anything, in Fowler''s opinion. The king must be looking for hens more than male cocks. The forest was bustling with life even at night. The sound of frogs, insects and the asional rustling of bushes made the hunters proceed with caution. They did not want to wake monsters up or run into any dangerous predators. At the same time, they wanted to avoid confrontation with a king toad. Taking king toads down took a lot of time, and Fowler did not know if they had that luxury. Mutt sounded rather serious and impatient after all. The first bird that the hunting team came across was a pigeon, and Fowler circled the bird before using some arrows coated in paralysing poison to graze the pigeon''s wing, dropping it to the ground. "Hold it well and tie it up. We need rope," he told his skeleton friend, who agreed before returning to Spudville. Without Mutt wasn''t breathing down their necks, Fowler stepped up to take the leader''s position, shooting at three more birds in the next twenty minutes. His arrow never missed, and Fowler wondered if Rino was serious about raising these birds. They were noisy, difficult to feed and flighty, and some of the captured birds were migratory. "Boss, do you think a bush bird would be better than those that live on trees?" one of the archers asked. Fowler paused and looked at his loyal friend. Bush birds were often overlooked because they were dull and not asmon as birds that lived in trees. Rock birds were also a different type of bird that most hunters did not bother with. However, they might be perfect for what the ruler of darkness wanted. "Maybe they will work. Let''s try to find some first. Keep your eyes peeled. They hide well." Chuckling at theck of eyelids to peel back, the huntersbed the forest of every shrub and bush they saw. It was challenging to find bush birds, but they found many rabbits that Fowler released after he found sixteen. They were running out of ropes for furry animals, and honestly, these rabbits made fine pelts. Mutt should not have a problem with them. An hour ofbing through bushester, Fowler and his team found two sleeping bush birds they plucked from hidden nests. The birds were tied and tossed into the pit with other animals paralysed from king toad diluted poison. The helpless creatures trembled under Mutt''s gaze. The hunting party was going well until a skeleton screamed. Fowler turned around only to hear grunting noises and some of his friends quickly climbed trees while others yed dead. Shit! Chapter 144 - Hogwash With madness in its red eyes, two long tusks protruding from its mouth and heavy hooves scrapping the dirt in preparation for a deadly charge, the wild spiny hog grunted. Air from its huge nostrils blew fallen leaves on the ground as it lowered its centre of gravity, locking its sight of Fowler. Even though he was now a powerful lesser vampire, the hunting squadmander still froze with fear at the sight of the wild spiny hog. He would rather hunt a stag than deal with this wild hog. Thankfully, it wasn''t an armoured wild hog, even if the defences of hogs, in general, were crazy. When they were enraged, wild hogs had monstrous stamina, high defence and brutal tusks that could impale anything. When wild hogs set their sight on a target, they would not relent until they were dead or the target was dead. Even if Fowler had regeneration abilities, he did not want to suffer the fate of getting impaled by those tusks and getting bashed into a tree until the hog was out of his frenzy. ncing at the other skeletons, who might fare better against the hog, Fowler cursed his friends for ditching him to his devices. The meaty animal that Rino wanted was right before them, but honestly, the paralysing poison wasn''t strong enough to take the hog down, even if the arrows managed to pierce through the sprint armour on its back. Both parties took their fighting stance, and Fowler nocked three arrows, releasing them in time to the wild hog''s charge at him. The lesser vampire wasted no time. He didn''t want to be meat paste, so he dodged. The good thing about bing a lesser vampire was his increased agility. If Fowler was still human, he would not be able to get out of the hog''s way. Behind him, the wild hog demolished a tree. Wood splinters fell everywhere and showered the forest ground. Fowler looked back and saw that the tree trunk was riddled with two holes where those strong tusks were and shuddered. That had to hurt if he did not dodge. It might not be fatal, but it would make him immobile. The wild hog grunted as he struggled to free his stuck tusks from the tree. It was working, but the hog wasn''t fast enough. Fowler took the opportunity tounch two more arrows in the hog''s direction, aiming for the animal''s behind because that was the only ce uncovered by spiky thorns. The arrows met their mark, and the wild hog squealed in pain as it dislodged itself from the tree. Fowler felt fear trickling from the top of his head as he fired rapidly more arrows aiming at any exposed part of this darned pig he could see. They were not going to take this pig back alive. It was too dangerous even if wild hogs were delicious! Fowler fought valiantly, but the arrows in his quiver were limited. Even with enchantments, arrows could not return to their archers without a spellmand. Fowler certainly did not have time to focus on calling back the arrows with some stuck onto the hog. "A little help here!" the lesser vampire yelled at his friends ying dead. Thest of his arrows were used up. The two hunters fired arrows from the tree, but none of themnded on their target as the Fowler danced with the hog, running around trees. "I can''t hit him, boss! You''re moving around too much!" Fowler cussed. What was this hogwash?! He couldn''t take such a violent animal back. There was no hope for domestication. It was kill or be killed for this fellow. The hunting squad struggled with the wild hog, and just when they thought things couldn''t get any worse, a new hog appeared. This time, it was a wild hog without tusks. A male hog and a female hog¡­ if Fowler wasn''t in such a dire situation, he would call it his lucky day to find the meaty couple Rino wanted. However, they were out of arrows and ideas. Half the trees in this area were damaged thanks to the wild hog''s continuous assault. Female hogs were less deadly because they did not have tusks. However,pared to the male hogs, they were at least three times bigger than their partners. "Abandon mission!" Fowler decided. They had to make a run for it. Too much time was wasted dealing with these pigs, and honestly, Fowler did not care about his arrows anymore. The skeletons ran in different directions as the wild hogs chased them down. Fowler tried to distract therge sow from going after hisrades. If anything, they should make a sessful escape and call for Mutt to help. The sabre tooth wolf could tear these dumb pigs in seconds, and Fowler was the best option to stall for time. The male hog charged from Fowler''s blindspot as the lesser vampire dealt with the female hog and finally seeded in burying its tusks into the archer''s side. Fowler yelled as pain tore through him, and the hog charged towards the nearest tree to bash Fowler into it. "Boss!" Even as he was getting turned into meat paste, Fowler still stuck to his priorities. "Get the wolf!" Unable to free himself from the hog, Fowler could only use his sharp nails to poke the wild hog. Even blind, the stupid pig did not seem deterred by his handicap. In his rage, he felt no pain, and Fowler groaned, turning paler when the damage incurred became more than what his regenerative ability could handle. He was going to be meat paste, and blood covered the roots of the tree the hog was trying to pound him into. The sight was gory when Mutt arrived. The skeletons came running so fast with empty quivers that there was no need to question what happened. Something went wrong with the hunt, and with only two more hours till sunrise, Fowler might be dead with further dys. "Where?" he demanded. "East forest," the skeleton replied, and the sabre tooth wolf took off like the wind. Without holding back, the shadow monster leapt from branch to branch, taking to the canopies and bending trees with the force of his jumps. He paid no attention to the other creatures of the forest scurrying out of his way as he sniffed the air. There was a scent of blood even from this distance, and Mutt picked up his pace. Nobody liked Fowler a lot, but he couldn''t let one of theirrades die. The lesser vampire might bezy and obnoxious, but any loyal servant of the Monarch was someone deserving of rescue. Besides, Fowler let those under him escape first while he bought time. He might not be a likeable fellow, but he was a good guy during desperate situations. The scent of blood became stronger as Mutt came closer towards the east of the forest. This was a popr hunting ground that king frogs did not terrorise. It made sense why the hunting squad came here, but there should not be any beasts capable of harming a lesser vampire in the area. What happened? Mutt''s questions were answered when he saw how two wild hogs, one male and onerger female, took turns stomping on Fowler''s bloody and broken body. The vampire tried to put up a fight, but most of his bones were broken, and the male hog looked worse than his femalepanion. Without hesitation, the sabre tooth wolf howled and pounced on the fat sow. Mutt broke her spine with a paw m with a precision worthy of a monster, and the wild hog dropped to the ground with a thump. Fowler could no longer see, but he heard the howl and knew that the situation would turn around. He saved his energy and focussed on healing, leaving the hogs to the capable wolf monster. Mutt saw the state that the male hog was in. One tusk was broken, and both eyes were scratched out by something sharp. Fowler put up one heck of a fight, and Mutt respected the royal huntingmander for his valiant efforts. More curiously, the male hog looked a little paler and was bleeding profusely from his forehead. It took the shadow wolf a moment to realise that the lesser vampire tried to drain the animal during their fight before getting turned into meat paste. There was no pity in Mutt''s eyes as he broke the hog''s neck with a powerful chomp. The weak would die, and unluckily for them, Mutt was stronger. Fowler felt the bones join themselves back together after a few minutes as Mutt scouted the area. Some trees had fallen, and others had holes in them. There was blood everywhere and two dead hogs in the middle of the forest that he couldn''t carry back even with the help of his team. "Stay and heal up," Mutt told the lesser vampire who struggled to sit up. "I will bring the carcasses back to the vige. Hunting ends here for tonight. We will try again tomorrow. Get your friends to dismantle the hogs. I will update Master about the hunt." Nodding weakly, Fowler groaned when his body stitched the gaping hole in his side. Mutt took pity and helped to tuck the fallen organs inside as the lesser vampire closed the wound. Fowler would be very weak for a while, and Mutt decided that the blood drained from these hogs should be reserved for him. Chapter 145 - Sky Palanquin The hunt concluded in a few days, and Mutt waited for Rino''s surprise gift to transport all the animals they captured for the new farm. There were more than three animal couples, but none of them fit the milky criteria, much to Rino''s disappointment. Then again, it couldn''t be helped. He didn''t expect to find cows in the forest. The main quest wouldn''t bepleted until Rino brought the captured animal couples to his pens, so he had to find a way to transport them safely without risking any deaths of his precious livestock. With Mutt and Fowler working hard on the actual quest, Rino spent a lot of time designing his first transport between provinces for long distances. He used a lot of paper to calcte the weight his new pnquin could hold and tested the strength of shadow rope tendrils the shapeshifter spectres could summon. Flying was the only way to bring those animals over to the new town because Rino did not trust Mutt to guide those animals past the swamp and through the rocky mountainous terrain without difficulty. Even an expert sheepdog would lose a few sheep along the way, and it would take too long. Surprisingly, the hunting party secured some hogs. They were not the spiky hogs that turned Fowler into meat pulp from the first night but were pygmy boars. The tiny tusks were only a mating attraction feature for measles, and females were dull in colour but not much bigger than their male partners. These pygmy boars were quickly captured to fulfil Rino''s desire for a meaty type of animal. Believe it or not, it was actually the hobgoblin patrol guards who found them. These gluttons were caught going through the unguarded granary and helped themselves to over two hundred kilograms of potato before anyone discovered them. At least now, there was no doubt about their food source, and Rino had faith that once the spud field grew in his new town, these boars would fatten quickly and multiply like no tomorrow. The farm animals were in cages. Some of them chirped while others grunted. Mutt ignored everything and counted down until his Master appeared. It was almost dusk, and Rino told them that the surprise woulde from the sky. The hour came, and something from a distance was approaching at a rapid speed. The darkness that spread across the sky just before the sun disappearedpletely took everyone by surprise. Some imed that it was a cmity while the warriors raised their spears. It wasn''t a bird or a wyvern. Instead, there was a cloud made of ck squirming snakes. Nobody knew what to think about it, but there was no mistaking where that monstrosity''s destination was. Goblin Lord Gnut growled, but Mutt stopped the Baron from takingmand. He could smell it, and for some reason, Mutt found those ck squirming snakes familiar. "They are not a threat," he reassured the panicked vigers. The ck cloud approached closer just as the sun disappeared, and finally, the bolder vigers dashed out from their hiding to get a better look. The dark cloud lowered its altitude as it came closer to the meeting point, and finally, they caught sight of something sitting on top of the dark clouds. Mutt howled in recognition. He knew those hooded figures! Instead of gracing them with his presence, Rino sent four shapeshifters as escorts for the big present. Those ck snakes were actually shadow tendrils, and Mutt wondered why they had to do that. It looked ridiculous, but the size of that wooden box they carried looked heavy. The pnquin was big enough to provide ample shadows. It had windows that open upwards sideways so that animal cages could fit inside. The pnquin was made from wood and cement but was enchanted with magic that Mutt did not recognise. The teleportation pad glowed, and Kragami stepped off the tform, squinting at the sight of his student''s surprise. The old magician was surprised that the pnquin was enchanted with many of Rino''s best spells. There were rune writings all over the wooden structure, from space maniption to structural reinforcements. It wasn''t just a transport box. This could be a battle box if they were under attack. Only Kragami understood just what his students built. If anything, he finally saw a glimpse of the future under this magician''s rule. For centuries, humans were at the mercy of harvesters. In fact, humans were not the only ones who suffered. Several other more intelligent life forms became extinct, but Kragami did not know how many were victims of harvesters. He isted himself in the swamp because everyone knew harvesters followed the wind. The swamp was probably thest ce they would pass by, and even if they did, Kragami was prepared to hide under the bog or use the dead as his shield before Rino turned everything upside down. Honestly, he had no idea if the powerful defence barrier created that thwarted a wyvern could hold against the swarm of harvesters. The rest of Rino''s shadow summons might be unaffected, but the faes and Kragami were very vulnerable. Unlike the battle box pnquin, they had few escape options. The wooden boxnded, and the shadow tendrils disappeared. Four spectres alighted, and Mutt recognised the leader of the tannery, who introduced himself to the goblin lord and Kragami. Rino must have informed Acht about the people in charge of Noir Province. What a smart move to use the surprise to establish friendly rtionships between the two territories! Mutt''s respect for Rino increased. In the vault study, Rino shivered. Someone was talking about him far away, and he pegged it as the gossip of the gods ying peeping toms. He spent a good amount of time thinking of a logistic solution while the sabre tooth wolf and Fowler hunted for animal couples. The story of a great ship saving humanity from extinction in his previous world inspired Rino to finally develop the logistic solution he needed. While the wooden floating pnquin wasn''t a ship, it came close. Using the idea of a portable grimoire, Rino spent a long time carving rune spells and drawing magic circles. The pnquin drawn by spectres and powered by his mana could transport at least a hundred vigers. It was hisst resort and evacuation n if a catastrophe threatened to wipe his poption out. Rino wasn''t worried about the undead like Mutt and the shadow spectres. If anything, he was concerned for the brownies, pixies, fairies and gnomes. Kragami was also painfully mortal, and Rino had to create some disaster shelter for the worst-case scenario. While there was only one such pnquin, Rino decided to increase their number in future so that there would be at least one pnquin in every vige or town on standby. What a genius n to tackle logistic and defence measures! Rino praised himself for designing the sky pnquin and imed a sixteen-hour nap after the transport waspleted. Yes, it was possible because of the system loophole at midnight. Rino might have woken up for a total of six seconds before he knocked out for the next eight hours, enjoying his dreams of the previous world. As Acht exined how the pnquin should be used, the hobgoblins were already helping to load the animal cages. Kragami greeted the leader of the pnquin escorts and asked if they could bring a few more materials over to Rino while they were here if there was extra space. "Of course," Acht nodded and revealed just how much the sky pnquin could store. Fronzo and Erika got to work at once, giving directions to every avable farmhand to bring out the potatoes, woven cloth and cleaned pelts. Kragami told the spectres to hold on while he made a trip back to Cypress County. He had new alcohol, more treated wooden nks and extra water bell flower seeds that he managed to harvest. Rino was going to need everything he could carry on this trip. Kragami looked forward to visiting the new town because his student informed him there were living caves with metal ores. cksmithing was a lost craft for mankind. Only dwarves knew how to work with metal ores. asionally, someone would find a tool made from metal by dwarves buried or hidden somewhere. The necromancer never thought that the knowledge of working with metal could be revived after the dwarves vanished from existence. Rino was definitely a walking wealth of new discoveries the mayor gave up on. There was a reason why humanity never progressed further from stone and wooden tools. Even their agriculture research was insufficient, and many skills were lost between generations. It was difficult to build a world hellbent on walking the path of destruction. It was more difficult for newer generations to develop curiosity. Those who did often did not live long. Humans were such cowardly creatures, and Kragami was no different. However, Rino''s desire to build a kingdom and the constant invention of things they once could never imagine relit the dying spark in the old magician. He wanted to see the birth of a new way of life with his eyes before he died. As the fairies and undead loaded up the pnquin, Kragami wondered if there was anything he could do to contribute. Chapter 146 - Noise Pollution Terrible! The pnquin might be a powerful floating vige for evacuation emergencies, but Rino did not consider how transporting animals would contribute to noise pollution. Acht did his best to meditate and find inner peace, but he was close to losing it with all the squawking. Flying the pnquin took a copious amount of concentration, and the four spectres had to stop several times to recondition their mental state before the pnquin crashed into anything. Mutt, who tagged along, pitied them and decided to lend a hand by howling and growling above the cacophony. The fight or dominance among animals only caused the spectres to request a ten-minute break and some distance from the noise pollution while Mutt thought of a way to silence them. The sabre tooth wolf agreed, and the sky pnquin descended onto the fields nearing the rocky mountains ahead. Acht led his brothers in death out of the pnquin after the wooden box docked and flew towards the sky, hovering above so that they were still within sight of the transportation. Mutt circled the animals and navigated around the cramped interior, crawling beneath wooden nks and side-stepping barrels of flower wine. Inhaling deeply as the animals continued to protest, Mutt let the mana flow into his chest before he let out a devastating howl that could be heard for miles. The deafening sound overpowered the animals, knocking them unconscious. Really, the hunters should have stabbed these creatures with paralysing poison to save the spectres so much pain. After confirming that every single animal was knocked unconscious by his howl and intimidation, Mutt hopped off the pnquin and wagged his tail at them. It was safe to continue their journey back to the town and finallyplete their master''s bidding. The reset of the journey remained uneventful as Acht navigated wlessly. Mutt stuck his head out of the gap as hey on his belly and enjoyed the cold wind on his nose. The night air always smelled fresher, and the dizzying speed of trees passing beneath them soon changed into stretches of rocky mountains. This had to be the most dangerous part of the journey. There was no stopping midway, or they would find themselves plummeting down, impaling on sharp rocks. The pnquin might be created with many enchantments, but Mutt wasn''t willing to test out how durable it was. He was sure that the fall from this height would destroy a few precious cargo and weak animals. The spectres better do a good job of transporting them safely. Just before sunrise, Mutt spotted the glowing crystals and young magic tree that Rino grew in the centre of the town in the distance. The mana web array lit up prettily, and from the sky, it was a breathtaking sight. The pnquin descended once more in the field just before the animal pens. Rino briefed Acht on what he wanted to be done before sunrise, and the spectres got to work quickly, unloading the cages and cing them in the huge animal pen with no organisational skills. Mutt took it upon himself to gather the rest of the spectres to help unload the other materials Noir Province packed for them. The wooden nks were tossed outside of Rino''s stone cottage, and the wine barrel was carefully rolled into Rino''s cosy cottage. "Where''s Master?" Mutt sniffed the air. He couldn''t smell fresh traces of his Master. The scent was stale. Een pulled a new barrel of wine and shrugged. "He''s been working in the study for days now. You should be able to find him in the mountain vault, although he told us to let you know that you have a new task." Perking his ears at that, Mutt demanded to know his new order. Een was oddly joyful when he told the sabre tooth wolf that Mutt was in charge of hunting food for the livestock. "We''ll help you gather them with the new toad skin storage bags once you sniff them out. There should be enough food around in the fields and mountains. If all else fails, we can raid the vige. There''s already a small farm growing so we can nt more crops." Indeed, there was a small potato farm growing a distance from Rino''s stone cottage. The field was nothingpared to what Spudville boasted, but that would resolve the greedy pygmy boars'' appetite. Hunting for the birds meant looking for insects, fruits and seeds. Mutt had no idea if there were any of those in this valley. The rocky mountain only had salt and minerals. Unless the birds did not mind mushrooms that grew on gargoyle flesh, Mutt did not think there was any use scouring the rocky terrain. The rabbits that Fowler caught were very quiet and different from the ones Rino saw in the living cave. These rabbits ate barks, wild roots and leafy vegetables. Mutt saw Fronzo feeding them and wondered if he could find something simr here. Rino was in his study, thinking about his next n. He needed a barn because they had more animals than intended. Although the lich wasn''t nning to keep all the birds that Fowler and his squad captured, it did not hurt to introduce new species in this area. All he wanted from the animals captured were the pygmy boars that loved spuds, the ground birds that couldn''t fly and lived in bushes, and the fluffy bunny with soft fur. Rabbit fur was very expensive in the previous world because it was difficult to acquire a good batch with simr texture and colours. However, it was very soft andfortable to snuggle in with a cup of coffee on a cold winter afternoon. It was a shame that they did not find any animals capable of producing dairy. However, Rino did not want to give up hope. Talking with the spectres over thest few days in the brief moment he exited his vault study to check on the fish trap proved informative. Een and Acht knew what the rocky mountains had to offer apart from many pockets of living caves, rich ore minerals and deadly monsters. There was a rumoured dwarven treasury that nobody found from legends, rare animals that loved the salt rocks and a rumoured pit of fire that could not be extinguished. He didn''t know if everything they said were true, but Rino was willing to take time out of his busy schedule to explore the mountains. He really wanted dairy animals, but he was at the mercy of creation this time. Nevertheless, the lich looked at his barn building design. He might not have the means to teleport freely between provinces, but themunication channel between his split souls was always avable. He wanted to arrange a meeting with Aiden by taking over the Cypress Ghost Tree''s consciousness when the system notification rang in his head. Ping! === Daily Quest #16 (done) Objective: Collect Animals 8/3 Unique animal couples Time Limit: 10 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Increased Animal Affinity im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Eight unique animal couples? Fowler and Mutt outdid themselves this time. He was informed that the lesser vampire almost died when he bought time for his friends to escape the wild hog. The injuries were severe, but Mutt came to the rescue in time. They failed to capture the spiny wild hogs, but Rino didn''t want them anyway. Such violent animals would be close to impossible to domesticate even with his increased animal affinity and herding skills. Rino imed his reward and looked at the timer function. There were still two days before the main quest updated itself. The side quest was alsopleted, and nothing was pending. This was the perfect time for Rino to hold that meeting and build that barn. Mutt informed him that the vigers insisted on stocking up on building resources when they found out the pnquin had more than enough space after loading the captured animal cages. Rino couldn''t be more thankful for their thoughtfulness. The treated nks, water bell flower seeds and potato inventory wille in very handy. Leaving the study for the first time in four days, Rino teleported to the base of his town. He came to a ridiculous sight of spectres working asbourers. Their shadow tendril ability was too helpful even if the sun was rising. His face burned in purple soul mes, and Rino pulled the hood up as he made his inspection rounds. The flower wine barrels were sitting in the middle of his stone cottage. Kragami also sent him a new batch of paper that Rino sorely needed after turning a good stack of them into paper balls over thest few days from scratching out old designs. The treated nks piled as tall as Rino''s stone cottage, but he knew it wouldn''t be enough to build a barn. Maybe the nks could be used as flooring. He should continue sticking to stone bricks and cement for the theme of this town because it was so hard for him to grow anything in this valley. Despite the farming fairy''s best efforts to terraform the empty fields into lively spud plots, the potatoes grew painfully slow, and the hemp trees were not making much progress either. That said, things might change after he sowed the water bell flower seeds. Rino couldn''t wait to try it out. Chapter 147 - Barn It "How are you going to get the animals up? Would the floor break?" Rino listened to Aiden and Griffith y devil''s advocate from the Ghost Cypress. He had to make many subtle changes that were important if he didn''t want the barn to copse. He knew that magic was a good way to smooth over most ws, but the structural design wasn''t something magic could fix. It was like trying to use sent to mend a wrongly built vase instead of stopping a leak. "The easiest way is to have one of us there to monitor the building," Aiden concluded, and Rino agreed. "I have a brownie here with me but no gnomes yet. Do you think you could spare one person to assist with the barn building? Not just barn building, several other projects areing up as well." Looking at the duty roster, Aiden and Griffith decided that they could take turns to visit the new town while the other pygmy dwarf oversaw both viges and their projects. Most of the projects were ongoing, and there was nothing new happening apart from Kragami''s research and thedies'' experimenting with new ingredients. The meeting concluded swiftly, and Rino assured them that he would send the sky pnquin over again in a few days. In other words, the gnomes only had a few days to gather all the building materials required for their approved barn design. When the meeting ended, Rino wanted to cuss. What was he going to do about all these animals without proper barns or pens? He couldn''t leave them in the cages, could he? Barn it all! From above, Stephanieughed. Rino should have thought ahead. So much for being a genius, his half-assed attempts ofpleting the questnded him in this predicament, and she was going to savour every second of it. Beside the goddess, her brother sighed at her sister. Really, was she that stressed over needing to create a new magic tree seed? It was part of her job, so the goddess of fertility and life cycle should not beining about additional work. In fact, Rino''s progress when given more time proved to be better than when he was given no time. Ark thought that establishing a new town was a great idea and deliberately gave Rino more time than required for simple projects like crafting a fish trap and capturing some animals for the farm. He did not know what a barn was but therge animal building that Rino thought of building was a huge project that could benefit the town. Ordinarily, animals raised in farms were left to their devices andcked care. The farmers only ensured that they did not starve, and if they were sick, the animals were killed before the illness spread. It was a very ineffective method that made livestock rearing difficult. Rino''s initial n to make several holding pens for separate uses was already considered an advancement in livestock rearing methods used in the small world. However, despite the lich''s ims that he had no clue about agriculture and livestock rearing, he wanted to build a more efficient system that would care for his animals and increase their poption in the least amount of time. Hence, the barn project was developed, with the only w being Rino''s inexperience. He had no idea that weight was a limiting factor to the unlimited poption growth he intended. The barn''s design was rather simple. It was meant to serve as a shelter for animals and a home for healthy development. None of the gods understood why Rino only split the barn into four sections. However, Rino was adamant that the upper floor was reserved for rabbit raising and bird breeding. Ordinarily, birds were bred outside in artificial nests. Phil was writing a tutorial for individual animal breeding projects when Rino''s n thwarted their quest progress. Even Ace had to ask himself why Rino insisted on having no light filtering through the barn. He only asked for venttion ducts to be added but insisted that there should be no natural light from the outside entering the barn''s upper level. Instead, he wanted to link the mana web array into the barn''s upper floors to control the lighting inside manually. The barn''s bottom floor design was easier to understand. Rino reserved one half for milk-producing animals even though nobody knew the machinery that Rino designed for them did. It involved some churns, barrels and even an active water supply source. They decided to wait and observe Rino''s wacky innovation as the lich currently focussed on building a salt store with the wood nks he had. There were still two days before the next quest, and the gods held a meeting. With Rino''s new direction, should they continue with the quests they nned or adapt ordingly to give Rino a hand from behind the scenes? "I think we could give him a hand in terms of time to dy the next phase," Ace voted. Phil agreed, but Ark sat on the fence. This phase was decided between Stephanie and Phil. Even as the leader, he had little sway in what they decided. Stephanie pursed her lips, displeased. Rino was making everyone dance to his tune. Why couldn''t they see it? As gods, they were superior. Why did they have to let a mere mortal ruin their ns and projects? She saw no issues in proceeding with what Phil originally had in mind. Her brother was already extending the time frame required for each project. This dumb barn could be done on Rino''s own time afterpleting their projects. Phil listened to the female god''s reasoning without saying anything. While the young goddess had a valid point, he still thought that nobody should becent when learning new things. Rino was a genius, and while he wasn''t always right, his ideas were very much needed in a dying world. Should they fail to make the small world prosperous, it would be the end of their godhood careers. When Stephanie heard that, she was forced to take a step back and reflect. Indeed, Phil''s quest was designed based on the small world''s current knowledge because nobody had any archives left of Rino''s old and more prosperous world. Even the best design in this small world could notpare to the superior findings and wisdom of Rino''s more developed world. The lich might not have a perfect design, but he had a brilliant concept. Together with the gnomes and experts in the small world, they could piece together something better than a manual that Phil wrote based on sessful models of the current world. The chances of sess for proven models were much lesser than what Rino''s half-baked design could aplish, and Ace emphasised how Rino was learning alongside them in this new world. "As the goddess in charge of life cycles, shouldn''t you spend more time looking into the Harvesters and Rocs?" Ace''s sudden attack caught Stephanie off guard, and Ark swallowed when tensions rose around the reflecting pond. The harvesters and rocs were the main concerns of this world and the decline in poption in general. Ideally, the god team who designed this small world saw promise in the cycle created. The intention was to inspire faster evolution from fear. However, they never expected the destruction cycle to run faster than the creation cycle. In other words, the small world Ark''s team was assigned after losing a profitable world was an apocalyptic one. Rino was their only hope in reviving the dying system, and he was doing a good job so far, even if the pace was slightly slow for their liking. "You can''t expect me to change the basic design of the world!" Stephanie defended herself hotly. "Besides, there is still some time before the next mating season. As long as Rino increases this town''s poption and develops it properly, we should be good even as the next raid wipes out sixty percent of the remaining external poption on this continent." Indeed, ncing at the small world''s map, Ark could see the poption ratio decreasing drastically as more native species found themselves on the extinction list. However, there was a good thing from all that. Most of these corpses could join the undead poption and increase Rino''s overall power if the lich knew just where to look. "If there are no further concerns, we could alter the quests a little to focus on the end product instead of the process. What does everyone think?" Phil and Stephanie agreed. Ark was a good diplomat and knew just how to appease everyone. Ace smirked from his spot. Things were going exactly as he nned. As long as these gods agreed, Ark would make this result-oriented main quest a chain event. In fact, Ace was the one who proposed this earlier when he visited Ark''s office. For the first time since Rino''s reincarnation, they would make the event a timeless quest because nobody could determine the results of creation. Birthing new animals shouldn''t be tough, but they took a long time. However, this should give Rino enough time toplete his barn, build his town andplete a series of side quests that may or may not assist him with preparing against the invasion of harvesters in a few months. Chapter 148 - Not As Planned Ace couldn''t believe it. Didn''t he say that the main quest should be timeless? Why did the new finalised draft reverse what he had in mind? If Stephanie was an annoying bitch, Ark had to be a crafty fox. Phil was a good old neutral golem, but Ace felt utterly betrayed by the time the presentation was over. Grabbing Ark by the arm and leaving the office once the meeting was over, Ace red at his team leader. "This wasn''t what we agreed on!" Ark was calm. He expected as much. However, as the leader of this team, he had to weigh the pros and cons. Ace might be a very capable god, but he was too involved with this mortal. Favouritism was eptable but rigging the trials was not eptable. As the team leader, Ark needed to ensure fairness as much as possible and reduce the risks of system abuse. Rino was too smart for them to allow him such leeway. "Trust me, this is fair as well. By stalling his side quest progress and offering more main quests in small steps, Rino can still do what he has to without much pressure. The side quest does not have a time limit originally. There is less risk putting this as a side quest than the main quest that he could manipte and drag on infinitely. We want to keep it professional for as long as possible." In addition, the gods had more time to n and prepare for the harvester raids. Monitoring Rino wasn''t their only duty, and Ark could see the eyebags beneath Ace''s eyes. "Take this time to clear your work. Rino is in good hands. Phil took the agriculture stage to the next level while Rino works on his improved ecology system within his new town. I just saw how he talked with the gnomes about using waste crops to feed the boars and using their dung as fertiliser. They''re slightly sceptical, but he managed to convince them that if pee could be used to treat leather, dung can be useful too." Ace felt a hand on his shoulder as Ark thanked him for thinking of Rino''s interest all the time. Then, the god left, and Ace stared at the reflecting pond. Rino seemed busy foraging in the fields and even plucking petals off a flower to help him decide if it was worth visiting the Woods of No Return. As much as the god of prayers hated to admit it, Ark was right. It was more logical to put a timeless quest as a side quest instead of the main quest. He should remain objective and not assume that Rino would not take the chance to abuse the system just because he liked Noir. It was not what he nned, but it was eptable. He let his emotions get the better of himself, and the bted embarrassment heated the god''s cheeks. How could he forget that if Rino failed to improve the small world''s conditions, their godhood would be forfeit? There were no such things as kindred souls or friends. Walking the path of an immortal was a lonely one. He''d forgotten it when he experienced the unadulterated warmth and affection as a cat. He should stop looking for Rino for a while to get everything under control. It wasn''t as if Rino needed him around, right? The memory of the cloth cor around his incarnate''s neck spoke otherwise, but Ace shoved that to the back of his mind. He had work to do. >>Xxx Destiny Aitsuji xxX<< Rino checked his quest window again. There was one day till his main quest reset. However, the new side quest was easy toplete, so Rino took a break from designing the barn to finish it. The reward was tempting, after all. === Side Quest #19 Objective: Craft animal feed 0/10 Rabbit Feed 0/10 Bird Feed 0/10 Boar Feed Tutorial here. Reward: Breeding Grass Purchase Option in Offering Reward Shop === Mutt was handling the ingredient scouting with ease. The hog pelts were finally left to dry in the tannery so Rino summoned all the spectres to help him hunt for animal feed ingredients. Everything required salt mushrooms added to the vour. They had everything they needed under their nose. "Found another!" Mutt wagged his tail as the huge wolf bounded over to his master with the catch in his mouth, waiting for praise. Rino looked at the wild root vegetable that Mutt plucked and patted therge shadow snout. Mutt was bing more reliable as time passed, something the magician appreciated. They had enough root vegetables for the rabbit feed now, and Rino wondered why the side quest wanted him to make ten feeding cubes for each type of animal. ording to the tutorial, the feeding cubes should be packed with the daily amount of nutrients and dried until solidified. The science behind it wasn''t exined, but Mutt assured his master that it was better to make domesticated animals eat dry and hard food because it was more difficult to bite. The sense of satisfaction that they normally found through hunting or foraging could be satisfied by a difficult meal. It made little sense to Rino, but the magician didn''t question animal logic. He could see how much hunting appealed to Mutt even though he was an undead that did not need to eat. Animal instincts were very different from human desires, and the thought went back to the living zombies with no desire to learn, live or think. Luckily, animals weren''t like those humans. Or, at the very least, he hoped their strong survival instincts would save them from the strange gue. There wasn''t anything Rino needed to do for the boar feed because the farm was growing well with the newly nted water bell flowers in the area. He had to thank Kragami for the foresight, and there were still some potatoes that Rino did not sacrifice for GF credits. There should be plenty of spuds to feed those gluttons. The problem now was the bird feed. There were several options, and Rino wished he knew just what those birds ate. Some birds preferred seeds while others preferred insects. The most troublesome type of bird feed was leafy vegetables. Honestly, the rocky mountains wouldn''t have leafy vegetables. The fields and river banks had none of those either. Rino''s only option was the forest in the distance, and he was a little reluctant. "Bring these back and start working on the animal feed cubes," he told Acht, who obeyed. Mutt looked at his master, who had slumped shoulders. Those hollow eyes were fixed on the jungle in the distance, and Mutt wondered if his master wanted to return to that hellish ce. "Master?" Rino smacked his skull with his hand. What was he deliberating for? There was still time, and he was wasting precious cooldown time between main quests thinking about it. Didn''t he gather everyone at dusk to find the ingredients needed? It was stupid to even consider if he should return to the jungle. "Let''s go," Rino told Mutt and climbed onto the wolf''s back. "Where to?" the sabre tooth shadow mount asked. Rino looked at the looming jungle in the distance. Ever since he made his grimoire, the secondary spells activated automatically when Rino needed them. Night vision was useful, and the lich felt fully prepared to take on the jungle nowpared to the first time he walked through it and into the ground. "Be careful of cracks in the ground," he told Mutt. "We''re going to find leafy vegetables. Use your nose well." Mutt tensed. They were returning to that ce? Some of the monsters residing in that jungle still gave Mutt nightmares. He couldn''t help but run stiffly, but Rino reassured him that things would be different this time. He had night vision, a grimoire, and a mantle with additional enchantments that he mended after themia put a hole in it. The stitch work done by the brownie he brought along was so good that Rino doubted Noir would know he identally let harm get to the cloak. The moon shimmered as the shadows of the jungle loomed. For Rino, he could already see some of the more interesting nt life in this jungle. Not everything was edible, and not everything was harmless. However, the tough survivalpetition also meant that everyone had plenty of opportunities if they knew just where to look. The leafy vegetables that Rino wanted weren''t found on the ground. Those were mostly carnivorous and deceiving. Mutt almost lost his nose when he sniffed too close to a flower. Rino thought his mount would learn after their first trip together but apparently not. The Mutt was wiser from the time they first met, but there was still a lot of room for improvement. "Can you get into the trees? I think the leafy vegetables we want are there." Seeing how not every animal in the forest climbed trees, Rino reasoned that the more harmless nts would take refuge and adapt ordingly. He wasn''t wrong when Mutt found the first genuine edible nt in a tree. The fruits in the tree were poisonous, but the leafy vegetable that was home to some tadpoles was exactly what they needed. Over the next hour, they found a huge variety of edible nts and some fruits that Rino tucked away in his shadow sack. He didn''t know which nts were good for making bird feed, but it didn''t hurt to collect them and replicate them on his small farm. Chapter 149 - Breeding Grass The sun finally went down, and Rino checked his side quest. He spent enough hours sleeping after returning with Mutt. The lich vaguely remembered tossing all the ingredients they harvested to his minions and left them to decide what they wanted to use. Anything else that could not be used to produce animal feed should be nted to see if multiplying them were possible. It was a good dream, and good sleep should be rewarded by good results. === Side Quest #19 (done) Objective: Craft animal feed 20/10 Rabbit Feed 30/10 Bird Feed 50/10 Boar Feed Tutorial here. Reward: Breeding Grass Purchase Option in Offering Reward Shop im your reward here. === Slightly surprised by the number of animal feed his minions made, Rino wondered what motivated them. Then again, this was something Rino appreciated about his minions. They were more hardworking than he was, and the effort was greatly appreciated. Rino imed his reward and eagerly checked the Offering Reward Shop. The new item was unlocked, and there were several new purchases that Rino never saw in the earlier update. === Item: Breeding Grass Seeds Cost: 1 GF Qty: 100 seeds Effect: Guarantees fertility and induces heat after consumption. Requires mana imbued water to grow. === Rino read the effect description and smirked. No wonder the gods were so confident that the animals he captured were sufficient to increase its poption. They had a secret up their sleeves all this time. The batch of breeding grass seeds was free, and Rino did not hesitate, storing it away in his shadow sack quickly. In the meantime, he decided to check the other newly added items to the shop to see if they interested him. If Mutt could improve over time, surely the gods must have developed a better gifting sense. === Item: Hormone Honeybee Cost: 1 GF Qty: 10 worker bees Effect: Produces a little hormone honey from water bell flower to reduce growth time required to adulthood by 30%. Dies after two weeks. === Hormone honeybees¡­ who would have thought that the gods were bing better salespeople? They were thinking about selling him a whole package from potato to castle paint. Yet, he could not feel angry. The offer was strangely tempting. However, Rino did not want to buy the bees just yet. He needed an apiary before those bees could be useful. Thinking about the lengthy preparation process he needed before any of his honeybee purchases could be maximised pained Rino. He did not have enough gnomes to build this town. Maybe he should have stayed in Spudville and expanded on Noir Province''s territory instead of establishing a new area independent from where he started. Before Rino could leave his stone cottage, he heard a new system notification sound that prevented him from doing anything else. It was a little too soon for his main quest to be updated, but Rino wouldn''t be surprised if it was updated early. Ping! === Side Quest #20 Objective: Breed Animals 0/1 Rabbits 0/1 Birds 0/1 Boars Reward: Animal Taming Skill im your reward here. === Oh, that was something that would take a while even with his newly imed breeding grass seeds. ording to the extra information provided with the quest, the average time for birthing a rabbit was a month. Giant quails took half that time, and pygmy boars took three months, if not more. Well, there was no use in wondering if the gods knew what they were doing at this point. Rino was only d that this was a side quest and not the main quest. Without a time limit, Rino could do more things like building his barn and setting up his town. He wondered if there would be anyone who would apply to live in his town as residents if he advertised it. There was doubt because of the world''s literacy rate, but the gossipmonger fairies did a good job thest time. Perhaps he should enlist their help to spread the word again once the magic tree he nted matured a little more. On the topic of the magic tree, Rino remembered that there was an important question. Did magic trees normally flower and bear fruits? He saw flowers on the World Tree and Cypress Ghost tree, but they never turned into fruits. The fruits on this young magic tree grew bigger by the week and changed colour as if ripening. The lich was both curious and worried about the unusual progress. Whatever. Rino would deal with it when he rememberedter. Although he told the farming fairy to keep an eye on his tree and inform him if something changed, it wasn''t so important for now. Rino left his study and headed to the shabby animal pens. The spectres finally found a way to let the animals out of their cages without risking their escape. Of course, he should have realised that building a bigger cage was a logical solution before he had a functional barn. The only design change to this big cage from the smaller one was the introduction of double doors so that they could wrestle any attempted escapees back into the pen. "Good evening!" the newly arrived pygmy dwarf greeted enthusiastically. It was Griffith''s turn to visit, and Rino vaguely recalled Aiden sulking and downing more mugs of potato beer than they could brew, much to Kragami''s chagrin. "Good evening," he greeted the master crafter, who looked proud of his work with the animal pens. At least the pens were functional and not flimsy enough to be knocked down, as Rino feared. Thank magic for gnomes and their resourcefulness. The pygmy boars were sleeping, and so were most of the birds. Only the rabbits could be seen hopping around and frolicking on a new bed of straw. Bits of half-chewed rabbit feed cubes were scattered in their pen, and Rino was reminded of a petting zoo meant for rxation. "How are the animals?" he asked. The pygmy dwarf looked at the lively rabbits and shrugged. "None of them dying, everyone eating well. Nothing to worry about for now. Did you want something, my lord?" Rino nodded, then shook his head. "Not yet. I need to grow breeding grass first to encourage them to reproduce, but I also need you toe up with a design for artificial beehives." Hearing that there was a new interesting project, Griffith pried for details. All Rino could tell the enthusiastic builder was that he had some special honeybeesing that would stay for a limited time to produce some special honey that could expedite the growth of young animals. When Griffith heard that, his eyes sparkled, and the pygmy dwarf swore that he woulde up with a better apiary design than Aiden could. Honestly, Rino didn''t care who came up with the design as long as it was functional and efficient. He left the master crafter alone and walked over to check on his magic tree. The fruits were swollen by now, and some sparkled with mana. This was a strange phenomenon, and Rino knew he could not dy this matter any further. He had to consult with his teacher about it before the fruits fell from the tree. Maybe he should find a disposable living subject to forcefully feed them the strange fruits to study the side effects. Then again, nting these fruits might be better, although he had no idea if the nts that grew from these fruits would be magical trees too. Marching to the farms to find the farming fairy, Rino held the bag of seeds tightly. Water bell flowers were crucial for growing breeding grass, and Rino only prayed the grass spread by itself. He passed them the water bell flower seeds a few days ago. Surely it would not take too long to grow water bell flowers and create an artificial pond to collect mana imbued water, right? His questions were answered when he saw a small and very miserable amount of mana imbued water trickling from the newly bloomed water bell flowers. There were bits of carcasses from cave bats that the gargoyles hunted strewn all over for nourishments, but the system worked. "My lord!" the farmer fairy greeted and flew over quickly, leaving a trail of glowing fairy dust. "What brings you here?" Rino nodded and looked at the pond. He was reminded of a swimming hole dug in some noble''s backyard for the purpose of water recreation in his previous world. The pond''s base was made of y, and Rino wondered what would happen if the mana imbued water supply overflowed. Then again, they would probably just empty it into the farms using the sprinkler system that wasn''t set up yet. "I have a bag of new grass seeds that will help with animal breeding. Please grow these well. They must be watered using mana imbued water, so choose an appropriate time to start growing them. It''s best to fill a whole patch with them, but don''t let them spread too much. I don''t want the grazing fields to be full of breeding grass. We don''t have enough farmhands to deal with animals going in heat constantly." Receiving the precious bag of grass seeds, the farming fairy bowed and told Rino that she would start working on an isted grass growing patch. Things were starting to be busy, and Rino checked the timer. Ten more minutes till his main quest updated. It better be something good. Chapter 150 - Fairy Birthing "It looks ripe." "It is." "How is your mana holding up?" Rino sighed at the question. After activating the teleportation pad to bring his teacher over urgently, the necromancer insisted that Rino remainedying down or sitting to recover his mana. "I''m fine," Rino reassured him. "I''ve dealt with worse." That wasn''t a lie. After knocking himself cold from over summoning the newly acquired goblin undead, Rino''s current mana reserves were considerably better. However, it was still far from ideal, just barely above what the lich would consider safe levels. The town''s mana web array was not fully set up, and Rino had no idea what he would do if the monster horde from the Woods of No Return decided tounch a coordinated attack on his undeveloped town. Kragami told his student that he would think of this as a work vacation. He was excited to check out the new town space and listen to what Rino had in mind for it. However, there was a pressing matter that Rino summoned him over for. The magic tree was bearing fruits, and this phenomenon wasn''t heard of before. ording to magicmon sense, magic trees were like widoweddies who would care for other species like their own children in return for power. They weren''t actually capable of siring or birthing anything. Flowers were there for decoration, but they didn''t turn into fruits. Then again, this observation was for one magic tree. Rino crossbred two magic trees, and the result of that crossbred magic tree was producing fruits, ready to fall. "They look like mangoes." Rino blinked. "What are mangoes?" Kragami chuckled. "Very delicious fruit with thick sweet juice but has an annoyinglyrge seed in the middle that could crack your teeth if you didn''t know it was there." It wasn''t answering Rino''s question, but the lich didn''t have the extra energy to argue. He was sitting on a chair carried out from his stone cottage and watching the magic tree with his teacher in the middle of the night. There was no mistaking that pulse from the fruit. It was alive, and whatever that was inside it wanted to get out. Kragami watched as the mana concentrated around the fruit, ready to explode. There were several fruits ripe enough to fall from the magic tree that grew to a respectable size. "Did you name this tree?" Rino slowly turned to look at his teacher. "Must I name it?" Kragami snapped his neck so fast with round eyes. "It isn''t your soul bonded tree, right?" Rino shook his head slowly, and Kragami shook the lich taller than him by the shoulders, rattling teeth. "What are you thinking? Name it now before the fruits fall! Magic trees, like monsters, aren''t loyal to anyone unless they are named by a more powerful existence!" Hearing this for the first time, Rino''s mind nked. He sucked at naming. Why was this a thing now? "I don''t care, just name it something¡­ Genesis sounds good." Rino took his teacher''s suggestion as he wasn''t fussy. "Genesis it is." With that, the magic tree glowed in eptance of its new name, and the fruits burst open in small shes of light. Kragami shielded his eyes while Rino tried to see past the stabbing rays. What could it be? The crossbred magic tree between World Tree Rino and the Cypress Ghost Tree should have both its parent trees'' traits. Did the fruit give birth to some monsters or mini magic trees? The creature born from the fruit that exploded in light looked familiar. In fact, Rino knew those fluttering wings and humanoid figures that fitted in his palm. The only exception was the unusual aura around them. If they did not look like those gossip mongers, Rino would have thought they were dryads! "Fairies?" Kragami breathed as the newly birthed magic tree fairies circled Rino. It was the first time he witnessed the birth of a fairy from a magic tree fruit. The normal process of evolution for faes started with a wisp of stray soul fragments that umted enough mana. Everything about these fairies made no sense, from their calm personalities to their amplified magical powers. "Are you really fairies?" Rino asked after studying the five new faes. The firstborn fairy nodded. "We''re fairies but won''t be able to evolve. Master, your strength is our strength in return. My sisters and I received the family name of Genesis to serve under you." It was a strange exnation, but Rino was sure of it now. The fairies were different from the others who sold their souls to the World Tree. If anything, an easier exnation was that the fairies born from the Genesis Tree were extensions of it. "Can you wield elemental magic?" As if asking for a magic demonstration show, the five fairies disyed their level of proficiency with magic. Rino and Kragami felt their jaws fall open when the fourth fairy turned out to be a quad-elemental magic user. The least proficient was a dual-elemental magic user, and Rino wondered how much stronger these Genesis fairies could be. Both master and student learned a lot about the Genesis fairies. They were intelligent, less social, more productive and had a colony mindset where the Genesis tree gives them orders based on Rino''smand. "Could you tend to the farnd? Crop harvest hasn''t been greattely because we''re severely shorthanded." The Genesis fairy squad leader bowed and told Rino that she would see to it with her team. The five newly-born fairies flew away in a V formation, reminding Rino of wild migratory ducks. "That was unexpected," Kragami slumped to the ground, holding onto his wooden staff, and Rino was d he was sitting on a chair when all that happened. He was still reeling from the shock of learning how magic trees could birth overpowered fairies. There went his ns of using fairies to recruit other fae creatures to serve his new town. On the bright side, the tree''s fairy birthing methods meant Rino could slowly increase the number ofbourers as he grew stronger. It was a small price to pay inparison. Moving their conversation indoors, Kragami made himselffortable in Rino''s cottage, tossing firewood into the firece and lighting it with fire magic. It wasn''t very cold here aspared to Spudville, but wee mornings were always chilly. "Why don''t you give this town a name too while you''re at it," the necromancer suggested. Rino thought about it. He might as well get this over and done with. Knowing his naming sense, he should get help from his teacher. "Do you have any ideas?" Kragami grinned. "Genesis town? You have the town''s centrepiece already. Might as well make it a theme." Rino grimaced. It was unoriginal. The town was the starting point for introducing luxury to the world. Leather was a premium good. Animal barns were novel ideas. The ns for a cksmith workshop and living cave mineral mines wasn''t a starting point. It was the start of the consumer revolution. Then again, the methods employed here were only slightly better than what was going on in Spudville. Maybe Rino should take a step back. He started with practically nothing in Noir Province. Here, Rino had at least one seed to work with. "Zera. Town Zera." That name held both the meaning of seeds and beginning, making Kragami''s lips curl into a smile. Yes, it was a good name. Despite what Rino imed, he had a decent naming sense. The town was named, the magic tree was named, the fruit mystery was resolved. Rino looked at the number of things crossed out from his to-do list and marvelled at how productive he was despite getting forced to rest. This should happen daily. "I guess I should start looking intopleting Town Zera''s mana web array," Kragami mused, and Rino agreed. His teacher offered to help with the tedious process, so there was no reason to refuse. If anything, Rino helpfully supplied the old man with diagrams of his intended but unfinished magic circuit. "There''s too much to do, so I think the farm is a good starting point," Rino pointed to the detailed diagram of the mana web array, and Kragami agreed. The sooner the farm was up and running, the more they could focus on the perimeters and other aspects. "Focus on recovering. Zera is in good hands. Also, your breeding grass is growing well. You can watch a show when dawnes. I heard that your minions wanted to test it on the rabbits because they were the most active, although the birds would be subjected to it immediately after." Rino blinked then growled. "I''m not going to watch my livestock get horny with each other. As long as they give me babies, that''s all that mattered. I don''t kink shame, so you can watch if you want. I''ll provide the fried potato snacks." Laughing as he left the stone cottage, Kragami gave Rino his peace. Mentally exhausted, Rino waited for dawn toe and the sun to rise before getting up to stretch his limbs. No, he wasn''t there to peek at the animals getting together. He was simply there to check on the effectiveness of the breeding grass. Anyone who thought otherwise should have their tongues cut out. Chapter 151 - Seedy Situation Ping! Rino''s daily quest updated itselfte, and the lich looked at the new requirements. Thankfully, it wasn''t anything difficult. === Daily Quest #17 Objective: Collect seeds 0/1 Wheat Seed 0/1 Rice Seed 0/1 Corn Seed 0/1 Soy Bean Seed Time Limit: 5 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Foraging Skill im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === ording to the tutorial, these seeds were usually found in specific locations fulfilling certain criteria. Honestly, Rino had no idea about seeds and nts. Most of them looked the same to him, and he had experts to handle this tedious quest. All he had to do was let them know where to look and draw an image on a piece of paper for what they should be looking for. On the other hand, when in doubt, hoard everything. That never failed before, and Rino made toad skin bags for that very purpose. After the fairies set off to locate the seeds Rino needed, the lich decided to invite Kragami over for some tea in his study. The barn design was progressing well, but hecked manpower. Some of the spectres were already carrying the sky pnquin over to Spudville to bring back more materials and send Griffith back. Aiden was getting ready to visit Town Zera. Yes, word about the new town''s name already reached some of their ears. Rino wasn''t very surprised about it. However, he did not expect Erika to ask if he needed assistance coordinating the building projects in the new town. Rino thanked her for offering but decided that he could have better peace of mind if she assisted Goblin Lord Gnut while Kragami was away from his post. There were no spare fairies or gnomes in Noir Province so building the barn was going painfully slow. Rino half expected it to be done at the pace of the granary, but to date, the spectres were still struggling to set up the skeletal structure of the building. Rino couldn''t me them. Unlike Fronzo and the farmers who had experience building some other things with the gnomes showing them the ropes, these ex-bandits were like babies, and their progress reflected it. Rino''s mana was still low, so Kragami only allowed his student to help himy some of the less intensive mana circuits at the perimeters. It was what the lich found himself doing as the Genesis fairies reported their findings by the river, in the jungle and in the meadow. Why was a single fairy venturing the Woods of No Return? Rino had no idea. However, he was also talking about a fairy capable of wielding four types of elemental magic. So far, that was the only fairy excited about finding anything in her assigned location. He did not know why wild corn would grow in the jungle because Rino was expecting them to be found in fields. Leave it to the creation of this world to ce corn in a dangerous ce. Not wanting to lose his Genesis fairy, Rino told the fairy leader to recall the powerful fae back once they retrieved what they set out for. The quad-elemental fairy decided to take a scenic path, not that Rino was worried about. With someone exploring the rocky terrain for any signs of edible nt life, Rino did not have to cover that ground after receiving the foraging skill. Instead, he concentrated onyering the mana web circuits. The borders closer to the living cave meadow and Woods of No Return must be reinforced. He had lesser worries about the side facing the rocky mountains because Rino intended to fully explore the mountain range and take over every living cave in the area. Theck of manpower was seriously starting to bother him, and even as Rino finished his part of the mana circuitying, Kragami told him to retire for the night. With a few hours to kill and not much to do around Town Zera, Rino excused himself and summoned Mutt to take a trip to that human vige they found the previous time. He needed more ves, and they were the most convenient ves he could find. If they weren''t dead yet, he would just end their miseries and resummon them for work. Mercy killing did not count as murder. Rino was sure of it. He might not be a good guy, but he sure as heck didn''t want to be a bad guy. Irritating? Yes, but not evil. The human vige was in worse shape than Rino first found it and the lich quickly surveyed the area. Decaying bodiesy everywhere, and the stench of more than just rotting carcasses from the huts made Mutt want to empty his insides. Rino took pity on the wolf and told him to remain in his shadow while he cleaned this vige out. Back in his world, the dead were buried if they were poor and cremated if they were rich enough to afford a fancy family urn. Here, Rino was going to raze everything once he got what he came for. There were more dead than alive people in the vige. In fact, Rino also spotted one human child who was all skin and bones who barely breathed. His skin was full of sores, and his skin was yellow from malnutrition. There was no saving this kid even if Rino wanted to. The able-bodied vigers had chosen to abandon those infected and ill. They took everything they could from the vige, including food, poorly made tools, barely sewn together clothes and medicine before leaving. There really wasn''t anything much to steal, and Rino had to admit, only a necromancer could benefit from this seedy situation. Mercy killing, Rino told himself as he cast a calming spell on the barely breathing child and gave him the best dream he could using illusions. Then, Rino killed him swiftly with a stab through the heart using a shadow tendril. This child would be his first shadow summon from the vige. One by one, the dead rose, feeling better than they did in weeks. Rino made them watch as he drowned their home in a sea of mes that lit the night sky as brightly as a zing afternoon. From henceforth, he introduced himself using telepathy with the fire in his background as their new master. "You need not fear to starve, feel cold or pain under my care. As long as you work hard, I will treat you well as your master. Kneel!" Themand struck fear and respect in every soul as they bent down on one knee to lower their heads before Rino. Without inspiration for names, Rino asked the vigers for their original names before death. He would be using those instead. However, there was one child he felt bad for. It was the only viger who wasn''t dead when he arrived, and Rino took responsibility. "Your name is Zerg." Zerg, the little boy, evolved after receiving his name and assumed his healthier appearance as a human. However, his pointed teeth and red eyes told Rino the child was dead. He never saw a tanned vampire before, but he supposed this was how they were created. No use in overthinking about it. He assigned them their first task. "Once you return to Town Zera, ask the farming fairy in charge for farming tools. Your job is to plough thend assigned at night and work in the caves during the day. The gargoyles will show you around, mine for ores and tend to the mushrooms." Instead of receiving an enthusiastic reply, Rino saw how the vigers only looked at each other cluelessly as if they had no idea what the lich was talking about. Was he taking things too fast? Did they need to get acquainted with the job or train in Noir Province for a while to get used to the work assigned? Sometimes Rino wondered if he was managing his talents correctly. He had a feeling that as progress picked up, he had less patience with the newer ves, expecting them to know what to do. With a sigh, he unsummoned them for the time being and called Mutt out. "Bring me back to Town Zera, and tell the spectres to prepare for a trip immediately after the sky pnquin returns." Puzzled, Mutt settled into a gentle jog leisurely and asked why they needed a second trip so soon. "The new vigers are liabilities. They knew nothing. It might be better for them to pick up the ropes of their tasks in Noir Province before theye over." Honestly, Mutt did not think that was the main issue. Any creature who was attacked by harvesters lost its identity. Didn''t Rino know that? Relearning how to do a job wasn''t as important as understanding the desire to do or want something. Harvesters stole memories and emotions. Without the will to move or do anything, these new ves were not just liabilities. They were deadweights. Chapter 152 - Tuber Family Unsurprisingly, the quad-elemental Genesis fairy stumbled upon a new find on her way back. Taking the scenic path wasn''t in vain as she tugged at a leafy nt wedged between rocks. Whatever nt this was, it had to be useful because she found a goat munching away at it. Sure, that goat might be a little too odd-looking with three eyes, but it was a mountain goat. Evolution made creatures tougher than they had to be, and this nt should not be poisonous if goats ate it. Everyone knew that goats were like mountain hogs. They ate anything edible, including the excretion of other animals if there wasn''t anything around. While they were considered herbivores, they asionally ate meat if they had to. Cannibalism was their middle name when times got tough.?? "Come on!" she struggled. Despite all the magic powers she had, the fairy was still a tiny creature with only enough physical strength to wrestle a mosquito. Pulling out this strange edible nt was proving to be a task harder than finding the corn Rino wanted. In the end, the little fairy gave up and thought of a n to use the goat she chased off earlier to pull it for her. Fortunately, she had a little bit of magic and a lot of wits to make up for herck of physical strength. Once she dug the nt out and put it in the toad skin bag her master enchanted, it would be an easy trip back. She could only imagine her master''s surprise if she managed to stuff the dumb goat into her bag too. Oh, maybe they would need two goats. Curly horned goats were males, so she had to find a female goat to kidnap. The trap was set, and honestly, the goat could only me itself for falling into such an obvious trap. No half-eaten nt would beced with so much salt, but she knew for a fact that goats were a fan of salt rocks from how they slobber their tongue all over salt rocks they find around low enough for a goat to lick. On that trail of thought, would the milk they produce taste salty too? Getting into position quickly as soon as she saw the shadow of an unsuspecting goat just as the sun started to rise. The three-eyed creature sniffed at the saltced nt before approaching it with bared teeth. The moment the goat bit on the leafy nt, the fairy hiding behind the rocks used nature magic to inspire rapid nt growth and tangled the goat into the nt. The newly grown leaves and branches curled around the startled goat on the fairy''smand, and the simple beast struggled, pulling the nt along with it. Everything went ording to n, and the fairy smirked. However, the more the nt grew in leaves, she failed to consider how massive it would grow downwards too until rocks started cracking and roots started bursting from beneath. The monstrosity of this new nt reminded the fairy of the potato nts in Town Zera that they were trying to grow. Instead of growing spuds, this new type of tuber nt was easier to foster in the rocky mountain terrain, and the fairy did not understand why the growth explosion happened. Was it the salt or the soil? Either way, they now had a few things to test out that might help the farming fairy in charge understand the ground situation a little better. The quad-elemental fairy watched as the goat pulled up a whole row of purple potatoes and blinked. It was a strange tuber root, but she wasn''tining. It looked more edible. With the help of paralysing poison darts, the fairy shot the struggling goat with a dose and waited for the panicked creature to flop onto the ground tangled in nt vines and tuber. Painstakingly, the tubers and nt vines were stuffed into her toad skin bag inch by inch. Thankfully, Rino had enough sense to create the dimensional bags as big as a wagon so that the fairies could go on a collecting spree if they came across anything good. He had no idea how big the new nts were, but in case something turned out to be as big as the hemp tree, the fairies could still find a way to bring it back to town. Stuffing a paralysed goat into her dimensional space wasn''t easy, but the fairy had to be quick. She did not know if goats could survive long enough in the dimensional space. She did not know if air existed in her toad skin bag. However, she did not want to spend too much time finding a female goat and risk losing this male goat. Without dy, the quad-elemental fairy flew back at top speed, startling everyone when she arrived, emptying her bag''s contents onto the ground right in front of the magic tree. Rino was busy examining the breeding grass patch when he heard themotion. Intrigued, the lich walked over to check on the ambitious fairy and realised that he was looking at a creature he wanted to find from the very beginning. "Is that a goat?" The quad-elemental fairy was still catching her breath and could not reply. However, she nodded and took a look at her find. The goat was still paralysed, but thankfully, he was breathing. Excited, Rino took the goat and created an earth magic animal pen. Griffith just arrived at Spudville. It should take about half a day for Aiden to arrive. He had no other means of building an animal pen without the help of gnomes. He had more important things to attend to at the moment. The quad-elemental fairy looked at Rino marvelling over the potato tubers and smiled. The scenic route was worth it. Rino couldn''t believe what he was seeing. Apart from the goat and the wild corn, this tuber fruit reminded him of sweet potatoes from the east back in his old world. It wasn''tmon on the grounds of the empire because these nts needed a warmer climate to prosper. On the other hand, ground beans needed colder soil to sprout. Could this be the reason why potatoes were growing poorly here, even with magic? The discovery got him thinking as he cut a fewrger purple spuds from the roots to try renting them. Given the same amount of magic nourishments in the same soil conditions, if these purple potatoes grew better, Rino would order the remaining potatoes to be dug up and sent back to Spudville on the next trip on the sky pnquin. There was no point in trying to grow fish on drynd. Ground beans were only one type of tuber fruit. In his previous world, there were many types of edible roots that grew underground. Rino did not think the same would be so in this world. In fact, the purple root was something he never saw before. In his previous world, the root from the eastern regions was bluish, and the fleshy insides were orange. He wondered if the fleshy insides of these purple potatoes were orange as well. Enlisting the help of the quad-elemental fairy and the farming fairy, Rino prepared a small testing plot away from the main farm and nted a small cut of both potatoes. Then, he told the fairies to pour a simr amount of nature magic for both test plots to observe the growth of nts. The soil was not treated with special fertiliser, so it was a fair experiment. Unsurprisingly, the purple potato started to grow first and even after fifteen minutes, the regr potato from Spudville did not show any signs of growing. This was something RIno already knew about the spud, but he still had to record observations for the fairness of an experiment. "We should add salt," the quad-elemental fairy said. "There is a lot of salt on the mountains, and I saw this nt growing in between rock gaps. There are goats in the area too, and they love to lick on salt rocks. I caught the goat bycing the nt with lots of salt." The new information was interesting, and Rino did as the quad-elemental fairy suggested. The next experimental plot was quickly prepared with a new batch of spuds. The purple potato grew faster this time and confirmed the quad-elemental fairy''s theory of salt acting as fertiliser for the purple tubers. On the other hand, the regr brown spuds remained unresponsive. The decision was clear now. There was no point in growing regr spuds here when their purple cousins did so much better. Different strokes are used for different folks, and obviously, spuds should remain in Spudville. "Dig up all these regr spuds before the sky pnquin arrives. We''re sending them back to where they belong. On the other hand, try to start a new plot for these purple potatoes. Get someone to turn these purple spuds into animal feed to see if there is any way for us to use it." At the back of Rino''s mind, he wondered if the gods would count purple potatoes as potatoes too. The idea of a double harvest did not sound bad. Chapter 153 - Foraging Frenzy Aiden arrived in Zera Town expecting to continue Griffith''s work after the pygmy dwarf updated him on the building projects required in the undeveloped town. However, he wasn''t expecting to be thrown in charge of building the barn, goat pen, dairy farm, apiary and irrigation system for the various crops found. Rino apologised for his hasty leave as he loaded the sky pnquin with dug up spuds that wouldn''t grow on this soil. At the same time, the spectres were helping him sort out new foraged items that Rino wanted to bring to Noir Province and test the farming theory. Large amounts of salt rocks were loaded, and the lich exined the situation as best as he could.?? "We found some new types of seeds, and a recent discovery that salt was a natural fertiliser changed the whole farming n. I''m sorry to leave you in charge of Zera''s construction projects for a few days. Don''t worry if you cannot finish everything. Get the spectres to assist you in anything. They don''t have much to do now in the tannery." The pygmy dwarf barely nodded before Mutt came running to inform his master they were ready to depart. Everything happened so quickly that by the time the sky pnquin took to the sky, Aiden was still trying to wrap his head around the things Rino told him. Up in the sky in the pnquin, Rino checked his quest. The previous quest waspleted within a night as the fairies turned in their findings. The seeds were not difficult to get after they found the correct nts. With a little nature magic and some mana imbued water, these nts grew endlessly. They had a surplus supply to share with Noir Province to see if it could be duplicated in the swampy or cold soils. The rice would definitely appreciate a wetter condition in the swamp to grow in, or so Rino thought. There was another reason why Rino was so hasty to leave Zera even when his mana wasn''tpletely recovered. He had a few days left before the main quest reset, and Rino needed to be back when the gods gave him a new quest. Scouring the area near Town Zera, Rino already identified a huge heap of edible crops they could try nting. However, he realised that he never once found more edible crops within Noir Province. With the new foraging skill, Rino was excited to see if he could find some of his favourite things from the previous world near the swamp and forest around Spudville. One of those things had to be coffee - the best beverage ever invented. Rino missed that bitter-tasting liquid full of adrenaline-pumping effects. He remembered how he used to drink sixteen cups when he had research to conduct over three nights without a wink of sleep. Of course, he fell immensely sick after that from having a hole in his stomach lining drinking that stuff without eating much or sleeping. The doctors gave him an earful, and the magicians in the tower put his coffee supply under strict monitoring. Poor Rino could only have two cups a day after that incident, but there was no stomach lining or restrictions to coffee that the magician needed to worry about in this new world. He could drink himself into a caffeine-induced dance, and nobody could stop him. Even as they flew across thendscape, if Rino activated his foraging skill under a new passive skill tab, he could hear the information in his mind assisted by the system''s voice about the type of nt life found in the area. The foraging skill was basically a walking encyclopaedia about this world''s nt life, and Rino was amazed when it told him the uses of nts. Some were poisonous. Others were carnivorous. For those that were edible, the foraging skill would include a small suggestion on edible parts. Rino only wished that it would let him know the best way to cook it. However, there wasn''t a need to concern himself with that. Kragami and thedies in Spudville would be more than happy to help with this concern. Boosted by Rino''s magic, they arrived in Noir Province in half the time four spectres would require to fly the sky pnquin. Rino noted how the magic consumption of travelling in such a manner was significantly lesser than if he teleported. After he built a few more sky pnquins, Rino wouldmission one specifically for his use. It was morefortable than flying, especially during the day and used less mana than he wasfortable with, even if it did take a while to fly to and fro. For non-emergency travelling, this was a very ideal method. When the sky pnquin docked in Spudville, Rino left the unloading to Fronzo and quickly told Erika what he wanted to be done. The secretary listened and wrote everything down, assuring Rino that the vigers would see to the agricultural experiments. He did not know if crossbreeding potatoes would make the new hybrid more durable, but he wanted to see if there was something called an ultimate spud. It was totally not for the sake of finding the best way to grow them so that he could turn everything in for more GF credits! Yet, Rino walked over to the granary and emptied out whatever the farmers harvested for more GF credits. He reasoned that it was needed. The new honeybee purchases needed GF credits, and while the apiary was a work in progress, Rino wanted to save up enough in case a new sale or item was introduced. Excited to test his new foraging skill, Rino did not stay long. Instead, he summoned Mutt and ran towards the direction of the forest that Fowler and his team often hunted in. Rino did not want to teleport there because he would miss out on many sights along the way. Compared to the speed of running in the jungle to get to the new town, Mutt was going at a very slow jog so that his master could slowly take in all the nt life that he never noticed before. The forest offered many interesting nt life, and asionally, Rino would tell Mutt to stop so he could harvest them and add them in the toad skin dimensional storage bag. Apart from many oak trees, ferns, berry bushes and wild potatoes, Rino discovered that tomatoes, carrots and onions were hiding in this forest so close to his farm. How did nobody notice them? Then again, without the help of his foraging skill, he would not notice it either. They were not very noticeable and often hid the delicious parts under soils or in leaves. The tomatoes were not red. Even when ripe, they were green. This puzzled Rino, who was used to seeing a mushy paste of red in some of his meals. Tomato fruits were very popr in the empire, and they used tomatoes for everything from soup to sauce. As they reached the king toad forest territory, the nt life started to change a little. Here, there were more leafy vegetables and fruits. Rinocollected one or two of everything new he found. However, the most interesting discovery was this long pod-like fruit from the tree that resembled nothing like coffee. Yet, the description his foraging skill told him matched what he was looking for. The brown pods held bitter nut-like seeds that tasted bitter but had an invigorating effect. Rino did not stop at one. He harvested almost half the tree for these brown pod fruits, leaving only a few greenish pods hanging. He wanted these pods, and if they proved to be coffee, he would demand a cup of it. Kragami might not be a coffee lover, but Rino knew he appreciated tea. Fortunately for his magic teacher, there were several bushes of what looked like suitable wild tea leaves. The flowers were small, but there was no mistaking the jasmine flower from the east in his previous world. They even smelled the same, and without the foraging skill to prompt him that there was a nt hiding behind boulders, Rino would miss itpletely. The bag had some space left even after Rino found the coffee that this world had to offer. Hence, he decided to run with Mutt all the way to Cypress County. He wanted to know what the swamp had to offer. Sure enough, as they got closer to the swamp, the leafy vegetables became scarcer. Instead, there were many strange weed-like grasses and flowers on trees. Some vines and creeping parasitic nts were considered edible by the foraging expert in his head. In fact, most of these nts were herbs that contained medicinal properties Rino never knew about. He harvested everything and was amazed that what he thought looked like a poisonous mushroom was a longevity herb that helps in anti-ageing even though it was useless to the undead. The only person who might find this strange mushroom''s effect useful had to be Kragami. Rino looked forward to seeing his teacher''s reaction when he told him what this mushroom did. Chapter 154 - Mountain Mysteries Not one to refuse gifts of food, Kragami epted the new foraged items and invited Rino into his ever-growing tree vige. The lich looked very satisfied despite the awkward twigs in his clothing and a toad skin bag full of foraged materials. "I never knew that there were so many different kinds of herbs in the swamp area. Do you happen to use any of these?" Rino asked over tea.?? Kragami raised a brow. "What for? I don''t need medicine when there is healing magic. The same cannot be said for other creatures and vigers. I''m sure the shaman might have used some of these herbs to treat his vigers while he was still alive." Hearing that, Rino wondered if humans or monsters were more advanced in medicine in this world. As strange as it sounded, Rino only knew the basics. The magician tower in his previous world tried to make him study more about magical herbs and their uses inmon medicine, but Rino imed that potion making should be left to those who did not have talent in elemental magic. He wasn''t wrong to say that potion making was for those who did not have a huge mana reserve. However, their efforts could reach more people in a pandemic than a single healer could. Potions could be brewed in batches, but a magician''s mana reserves are limited. Rino wished he thought about that earlier and paid more attention to herbology in his previous life. "I see. I''ll ask the shaman about these herbs then. Also, I found something that would make good tea." Kragami smelled the fragrant small white flowers that RIno plucked and raised a brow. "Are you sure? These flowers usually grow on moss that eats dead animals." Hearing that, Rino froze. Then again, Kragami was the kind of magician who would make tea out of water bell flowers that ate carcasses. It wasn''t very different as long as it wasn''t poisonous and tasted good. They settled into small talk as Kragami asked about Town Zera''s progress since he left. Rino exined the new findings and the birth of Genesis fairies. So far, the new fairies were very helpful and did more work than the spectres did under Griffith''s leadership. The outline of the barn waspleted, and the fairies started working on the new farms, working on his maa array design to add water runes at spaced intervals. "They grow ording to your power, don''t they?" Kragami smiled. "I guess you can say the same about the World Tree and this Cypress Ghost Tree. Look at how big they''ve gotten. I doubt the growth would slow even if the Cypress Ghost Tree touches the limits of your mana web array barrier." Chuckling, Rino had to admit, seeing a physical representation of his growth was satisfying. He hoped that the day woulde when the entire swamp was covered under the leaves of this Cypress Ghost Tree. "You did not travel over in haste just to indulge in idle chat," the necromancermented. "What''s troubling you?" Indeed, he came here in haste for two reasons. The first was to see if he could discover any other crops he could grow while leaving the agricultural research to more experienced hands. The second reason was to ask about the rocky mountains. No matter how Rino thought about it, there were still things he could not understand. Kragami listened to Rino''s ns to develop Town Zera and hisbour concerns. Even if the Genesis Tree could birth fairies, the rate of recing the required poption was too slow. Not to mention, Rino needed more physicalbourers and building experts. Having Aiden and Griffith take turns to manage the new town''s piling list of building projects wasn''t a long term solution. Things at Noir Province also required their attention. Despite Rino''s best attempts, he couldn''t find a single fae outside of the area. There were only monsters and the asional creature like the three-eyed goat who were residents of the huge rocky mountain range. Initially, Rino thought that the faes were simply hiding from him. However, as the weeks passed with no faes showing up at his doorstep, Rino wondered if they did not exist in that area. "That''s not possible. The rocky mountains are ideal for earth elemental faes. You might be looking in the wrong area." Confused, Rino frowned and nursed his tea. What was he doing wrong? The fairies in the forest flocked to magic trees. He already had the Genesis Tree there. Why didn''t more faes be attracted to it? Silently, Kragami observed his student''s reactions. He knew a thing or two about other magical creatures as a necromancer, but he never saw many of them around until meeting Rino. Fairies are elusive creatures. There were usually not this many around. Not finding them was normal and he had no idea how to tell Rino this. "You might want to try looking for them using the legends." Legends? Rino didn''t know any legends of this world. Seeing how his student mped up, Kragami''s suspicions started to deepen. It wasn''t possible for a lich who had so much knowledge about magic to not know about the magical creatures and their legends. Before this, it was only a thought that maybe Rino lost part of his memories. However, with more and more incidents pointing that his student actually did not have amnesia, Kragami started to wonder if Rino was truly someone from this world. He couldn''t be a god. That''s not possible. Rino might be powerful, but he wasn''t powerful enough to be a god yet. His knowledge of certain fields proved to becking too. Kragami tried to sound his student out by asking about various legends, but all of Rino''s responses only confirmed his theory. Rino wasn''t a magician of this world. "Trolls? Don''t they live under bridges?" Kragami tried to keep a straight face. There weren''t bridges in this world built by man out of stone. If anything, bridges should naturally ur, such as a fallen log struck down by lightning or a fallen tree pushed along by the river and wedged between narrow logs. The creatures that Rino knew lived in rocky mountains were also a little different from what Kragami knew. The Jackalope that Rino described did not exist, and when Rino expressed his surprise at three-eyed goats, Kragami knew for sure that Rino was someone born from a different world or timeline. It was very possible to catch glimpses of parallel worlds using dark magic and live in a different dimension for some time. The shadow realm was only one of the ces, a border of sorts between different worlds. The demon world was a popr ce that dark magicians liked to trade in because devils could offer them power and services in exchange for vows. Contracts were a popr way, and selling one''s soul was the easiest method. Rino had to be one of those souls that crossed over. ording to the legend, this king who would save them will make the dead rise from the ground. Kragami did not doubt that Rino was truly the man from the prophecies of long ago. However, he was starting to understand why the man was chosen. Yet, this monarch could not do without the help of his loyal subjects. "Trolls don''t live under bridges," the necromancer finally corrected his student. "We also don''t know about Jackalopes. However, I know that the rocky mountain is said to be home to giants, dwarves, trolls, and gnomes. Of course, the many pockets of living caves there are homes to unique monsters, but those stories aren''t mentioned in folklore." Dwarves! When Rino heard this, he wondered if Kragami knew more about those stocky, alcohol loving, money-grubbing miners. Rino chuckled at Rino''s description of dwarves. It was mostly urate, but dwarves were not very materialistic. If anything, they were inquisitive inventors with the soul of warriors. "Where can I find dwarves?" he asked. Sighing, Kragami set his empty cup down. "That''s the thing. They once existed alongside humans, but after the great war, many dwarves died. The survivors went into hiding. We only knew they hid in the mountains, but nobody knew where exactly. The mountains are huge, and it would be impossible to locate them unless you had a clue where to look." Hearing that, the lich fell silent. Kragami tried to change the topic and told Rino more interesting anecdotes about trolls and giants. The rocky mountains often experience lightning storms, but it seldom rains. The lightning storms were said to be the shing of trolls and giants. "Legends say that the leader of giants was born from a human mother while the leader of trolls was born from a goblin mother even though they both share the same titan father. The brothers never got along and often fought whenever they saw each other on the rocky mountains." From the story, Rino learned that his best chance at recruiting trolls or giants was to wait for a lightning storm to ur, then hurry to the spot to check if there were any victims nearby to abduct for a nobler cause. Chapter 155 - Time To Troll How often did lightning storms ur? Rino was sure that the odds were low in this world. Hence, he sent some fairies as scouts to patrol the mountain range. The Genesis Tree birthed some new fairies in his absence, so Town Zera''s poption was slowly increasing. Yet, on the third day after receiving his new main quest, Rino was interrupted by Mutt''s howling. Slightly annoyed that the sabre tooth wolf''s calls disrupted his grand apiary design nning, Rino left his study to check on him.?? "What in the¡­" It was hard to believe it, but right before Rino''s empty eye sockets, there was a sh of light in the distance. Surely that couldn''t be it? "My lord!" the fairy on patrol came flying back in a hurry. There was a twinkle in her eyes. "There are trolls fighting!" Rino hurriedly mounted Mutt and ran to the location where the shes of light came from while asking for more details. Apparently, there were only trolls but no giants. What were the lightning shes caused by if the trolls were not fighting giants? Could they be fighting something else then? The thought made Rino wonder if he should remain hidden to observe the situation or lend them a helping hand. Trolls were not the most trustworthy creatures. They were usually dumb but had a lot of physical strength. More importantly, they were double-crossers and cowards. Rino pulled up his newest daily quest. === Daily Quest #18 Objective: Expand Farm 0/10 Acres Time Limit: 10 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Abandoned Dwarven Mine Location Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === With less than a week to prepare ten acres of new farnd, Rino needed all the help he could get. There wasn''t much he could do now apart from borrowing limitedbour from Noir Province. The sky pnquin was currently on its new trip to Spudville to collect the farming tool supplies. At the same time, the spectres and genesis fairies busied themselves preparing the new mana web array expansion and irrigation runes. Usually, Rino would not worry about this sort of quest. He was more than capable ofpleting it before the deadline if he were still in Spudville. However, Town Zera was still almost barren. They barely had any infrastructure, and the poption here was ten times lesser than what Rino had in Noir Province. It reminded him of the time he woke up with grave dirt in his mouth and founded Spudville. His first vigers were shadow goblins back then. However, even back then, he had more than ten goblins to assist him with tasks. He didn''t have that many here, even if the ex-bandits were more powerful than goblins. Rino could see it now. The shes of light in the sky were truly lightning. Mutt was running as fast as he could, and Rino noticed something else as they became closer. There was not a single cloud in the night sky, but he could feel water droplets falling every now and then from above. What was going on? Approaching stealthily, Mutt disappeared into his master''s shadow so that Rino could travel the rest of the journey on foot. He did not know if trolls looked the same as they did in his previous world, but Rino should be able to recognise them if they were still the same species. The trolls the ex court magician knew from memory were usually grey-skinned with warts covering almost every inch. They smelled terrible, and many had hunched backs. The trolls he knew dressed scantily in only loincloths for public decency and the mercy of human eyes, but Rino knew trolls in their natural habitat wore nothing at all. Males were bald, and females had unkempt, tangled long hair. If trolls weren''t a carrier for various gues and diseases from their lifestyle choices, Rino did not know what they were. Trolls weren''t choosy eaters. They would eat anything from decaying bodies to trash that they found in sewers beneath cities. Hiding under the bridges was a way for them to find ''fresh meat'', and often, human travellers were their favourite prey because humans were weaker than them and tasted better than animals. As he climbed behind a huge boulder to press himself against it, Rino could hear the argumentsing from below in the distance. The growls and yowls sounded diabolic, but Rino knew they were chants for a simple magical spell. The spell was to summon rain used in tribal viges. The goblin shaman once demonstrated it with the goblins forming a circle to dance for rain. Another lightning shed, but the ''rain'' did not get heavier. How were the trolls summoning rain when no rain clouds had gathered? Rino crawled closer and hid behind some broken rocks to get a better look. Unsurprisingly, there was a troll shaman who was slightly better dressed than the other trolls. The trolls were very simr to the trolls he knew in his previous world, dressed in nothing but a loincloth. Females had slightly better hair as they tied it or braided it, even adorning it with dried twigs. The males were bald, but they had tattoos on their heads that looked very painful. He knew those ''tattoo'' scars. Previously, Rino saw the tattooing process a ve merchant practised on a ve child. It was pure torture as the tattoo artist carved a pattern on the child''s back with a knife deep enough for blood to drip but not pour. Then, saltwater was poured in every inch of that pattern as the child screamed until she fainted. Then, the wound was left to heal partially before it was repeated until the scars were thick enough and would never go away, creating a tattoo. The trolls danced in a circle as lightning rained again and again. Some of them looked very tired, and Rino finally understood why they were calling for rain. ording to the spectres, it hardly rained on the rocky mountains. Farming anything was close to impossible. Yet, it made no sense. None of this rain came from the clouds above. Where was the watering from? For twenty good minutes, Rino watched as the trolls danced. Some have copsed from exhaustion, but the tribe was stubborn, unwilling to stop the ritual. He also noticed that these trolls were skin and bones. Their warriors did not look muscr. If anything, their ribcage and spines were prominent through their skin. It finally clicked about thirty minutes after finding the trolls. The water wasing from the trolls'' lifespan. The trolls who copsed weren''t just exhausted. They were dead. It amazed the lich how determined the trolls were to create rain from nothing. The water created was spread by the wind, and rain was just simple water summoning magic. There were no rain clouds to carry rain even after their summoning ritual, which exined the lightning strikes. Hence, these poor trolls made their own while continuing to summon rain, hoping that true rain would fall with enough water around. A rather counterproductive effort if they asked Rino. However, the lich was an opportunist. Trolls were not very reliable in his previous world. He did not want to enlist backstabbers into his new town. Lazy bastards like Fowler were eptable if they did what they had to do. Less intellectually capable followers like Mutt were fine as long as they continued to learn and improve themselves. Nobody was perfect. Rino did not expect them to be. Waiting for the trolls to flop like flies took a long time. Rino wasn''t sure how much longer it would take for thest three standing and hopping trolls to finally die from mana exhaustion. However, there were only two more hours until the sun rose. To amuse himself, Rino counted the bodies. So far, he had fifteen female troll bodies and only eight male troll bodies. That gender difference made him wonder who was doing the real work in the vige of trolls. Thest three ''dancing'' trolls were males, so maybe the gender gap wasn''t too big. However, without any females left in the troll dancing circle, their vige would be doomed anyway. Children trolls were not seen in this circle, and Rino had an inkling they were hiding somewhere in this mountain with more troll vigers. Those who came tonight never stopped dancing, even if they knew they would die. They must be the chosen sacrifices for the vige''s future, and knowing the nature of trolls, they woulde to collect these dead bodies to eat. Rino wasn''t going to give them that pleasure. It was a finders keepers kind of world, and he had dibs staking out an entire night for them. Even if he had to burn a little in the sun, he would wait for thest three trolls to drop. Oh, wait. Change that to thest two trolls because another one just bit the dust. Rino smirked. Dead trolls were better than living ones. At least he did not need to worry about feeding them or chide them about hygiene. Shadow trolls were also incapable of betraying him. If they have even a sliver of that thought, they can kiss goodbye to their souls. It was perfect. Now, if only thest two trolls could quickly die because he did not want to murder unnecessarily. Chapter 156 - Labour Clutch Rino was reflecting. He did not mean to get involved directly. However, when those trolls came a little too quickly at sunrise to collect their deadrades, Rino was still in the middle of waiting for thest troll to die. He couldn''t let such a good body count go to waste, so Rino made his appearance and tried to negotiate with the trolls. However, he forgot that they were monsters with little intelligence. Reasoning with them was a failure from the start. ?? Most of them were starved andcked any real threat. However, Rino was in such a desperate situation with thebour crunch he was facing that he didn''t think. He only reacted and killed those who attacked, which happened to be everyone on site. Thinking back, he should have left one or two, so they could repopte or something. Were there even enough healthy trolls in the mountains to repopte their vige? Rino probably killed too many because he was currently looking at over fifty shadow trolls. The body count under his name was a little foggy by now. Rino did not remember who he killed in self-defence and who he ughtered in cold blood, even if he knew Zerg was someone he killed in the name of mercy. s, the child was not here. With so many shadow trolls, Rino wasn''t in any shortage ofbour. Aiden was nearly in tears from joy when the trolls lifted heavy wooden beams easily. Unlike the shadow spectres who had to use many shadow tendrils just to lift one beam, these trolls could manage just fine without help. A wise ruler would know how to use his people''s strengths and talents. Hence, Rino reassigned the duties for everyone in Town Zera. The genesis fairies will continue with his mana web arrayying ns and rune crafting for the field irrigation system. The shadow spectres who had nothing to tan at the moment will assist in crop preparation with the farming fairy in charge. At the same time, they were tasked to take care and feed his livestock. Rino wanted to breed the goat too. So they needed to harvest a new batch of breeding grass. The newly recruited trolls were split into two teams. The first team consisting of male trolls will help with his very important barn constructions. The second team consisting of weaker female trolls will help him to plough the fields. He had ten acres of fields to plough, and they would not rest until it was finished. Yes, it might not be the trolls'' fault that Rino had to kill so many. However, it did not make him less mad that he had to be involved in such a matter. Thankfully for the dumb trolls, enough ''trainers'' and ''mentors'' from Noir Province arrived during the night that Rino spent on a stakeout. Fronzo came personally, and two other gnomes from Cypress County apanied the small entourage of farming hobgoblindies. Severaldies who were good at sewing also arrived. Erika was very thoughtful and packed enough fabric when she discovered there was still enough space to carry more things over in the sky pnquin. Really, he couldn''t have asked for a better secretary. Rino almost teared up when he saw the few reliable personnel. With these groomed talents here to manage on his behalf, Rino could focus more on the important things. He had less than a week to plough ten acres of farnd. "Leave it to me, my lord!" Fronzo assured him. Rino took a look at the lesser ghoul who was currently residing in his stone cottage. He looked a little more built than Rino recalled. Fronzo was probably the slowest to grow in progress physically of all his named summons. However, he had to be Rino''s favourite. Beside Fronzo, Erika was starting to look a little less pale and more human-like. His secretary took on a student from one of the fairies who contracted with the world tree. She was a very good assistant from Erika''s exnation, who often helped her manage Cypress County in Erika''s absence when she had to tend to other areas. To acknowledge the hardworking fairy assistant who was also his junior because Kragami took on the role as her mentor, Rino named her Rina. Unsurprisingly, Fronzo took a liking to Zerg and epted the kid as his direct apprentice. Rino felt that this should be fated. He couldn''t save that poor stubborn child who clung to life, but in death, he could provide the child who had the same fire in his eyes just before he died with an opportunity cruel life did not give him. The tanned vampire looked a little taller and more muscr than Rino remembered him as someone who was all skin and bones. Living in Noir Province for a while did him good, and Rino only hoped the vigers were coping better and learning just as well. Rino spent a good part of the afternoon simply talking to the gnomes, Erika, Fronzo and their respective apprentices about his town''s n. He also had a lot of questions about Nori Province''s progress and current projects. As it turned out, bringing the newly foraged crops for agricultural research to Spudville was a good idea. Fronzo informed Rino about their discoveries, and already, thedies were trying to find new ways to cook the dishes. The crossbreeding process between a regr potato and a purple potato was still in progress, and Fronzo sounded frustrated by theck of findings from what they did. "Don''t worry about it," Rino patted the lesser ghoul on the shoulder. "Take your time. Research is all about patience. If you need, I''m sure Kragami could assist in your research. My teacher is just about the only research crazy person I know apart from me." Blinking, Fronzo looked over to Zerg and smiled. "I think there are more research crazy people now, my lord. The curiosity is spreading." Rino looked at Fronzo, who grinned at the blushing tanned vampire while Rina tried to disappear from the room, hiding behind Erika''s hair. Rino paused for a while beforeughing. Of course! He should have known from the stories that they''ve been sharing with him for a while now about how Zerg couldn''t stop talking and asking questions the moment he arrived at Spudville. The farmers had their share of headaches when Zerg insisted on taking apart some runes to examine how they worked, disrupting the entire sprinkler circuit. Thanks to the curious vampire, the farm fairy managers discovered a need for a better mana web array that would minimise crop watering damage if some part of the array was disrupted. The elemental sylphs spent a while fixing and testing the new irrigation system. In a way, Rino did not think this was bad. Zerg might be disruptive and destructive, but his curiosity and hunger to conquer the unknown were endearing. He reminded Rino of his younger self in the previous world. Back then, Rino caused a lot of migraines for the old wizards in the tower. However, they were able to discover many new magical advancements thanks to his new views and ideas. The unconventional thinking provided many breakthroughs that the wizards have been stuck on for decades. Even in a kingdom full of undead, Rino thought that new blood was sometimes needed for a fresh look at life. Rina was slightly saner and tried to be a good student, containing her curiosity to a safe learning environment. Then again, that was because of Kragami. His teacher kept the fairy intellectually entertained with new findings, stories, books and tasks. Erika told him how Rina was acting as the mayor''s research assistant during her off hours, and Rino was jealous. He wanted to be part of researching too! It was unfair how Kragami and Rina could y around finding out if water bell flower seeds could be crossbred with other herbs to produce magical nts. It was an area of research in the previous world that Rino did notplete. "However, we''re slightly worried about the other vigers you sent to Noir Province," Erika reported seriously. "They don''t seem ready to learn more than what they were told." At that, even Aiden and his gnomes had to agree. They were unusually obedient and did not have opinions of their own. They had to be taught everything from how to hold a hoe instead of observing and trying it for themselves. They did notin, did not have desires, did not seem to be capable of thinking. Hearing this, Rino was puzzled. "They were your vige adults. Were they like this when they were alive?" Zerg bit his lip and looked down at his hands. "My king, the adults in my vige believe that ignorance is bliss. If you are not asked or told to do something, it is best to not know or be aware of it. Most of them were happier working inefficiently for everything the way taught by ancestors. They do not look for ways to do better and do not yearn to move outside the vige. Questions are frowned upon." Hearing that, Rino frowned. That had to change. Chapter 157 - Abandoned Dwarven Mine After that discussion, Rino cooped himself up in the study but couldn''t find any focus on the task at hand. Those apiary designs were getting more ridiculous, and he knew he was distracted. There were still many hours before night fell. Hence, Rino withdrew some sleep hours and took a nap. Maybe he would be able to think better after he woke up. Unfortunately for Rino, his sleep did nothing for him, even when it waste in the evening. The sun had gone down, but the question from earlier that afternoon still tumbled around in his head.?? Crushing yet another draft, Rino tossed it away. He needed a change of pace. Now that his trustworthy henchmen were here, he could afford to take it easy. As Rino walked over to the newly built goat pen, he checked the male goat inside. They were still missing a nanny goat, so Rino gave himself a reason to leave the town. He would find a nanny for this lonely billy goat to mate with on the mountain tonight while pondering over the odd culture. Wasn''t it human nature to be curious? Ever since the founding of humanity, curiosity has always been part of what made humans human. It coulde in many forms, and no individuals'' curiosity was alike. For magicians, their desire to learn can vary greatly. Rino might be more inclined to find out about how science could benefit themon people with the help of magical tools. However, his teacher was more interested in archaguages and decoding ancient magic, understanding how it differed from what the empire used. Another person in the kingdom, like the ve trader, might be curious about how well a new breed of ves would sell to the filthy wealthy nobles. Maybe a hybrid between an eastern ve and a blue-eyed northern ve could fetch him double the price. It was also a form of curiosity, even if that was driven by a totally different intention. Commoners who baked bread and housewives who cleaned homes also had curiosity. They often sated their curious nature in the form of gossip and socialising in the town square, listening to bards and waiting for the town crier to announce something. There was no human who wasn''t curious. Even the quietest beggar children would have questions, wondering how the bread that someone else was eating would taste. Rino couldn''t bring himself to trust Zerg''s words when he said all the adults in his vige believed ignorance was bliss. There had to be curiosity somewhere, and something was preventing them from expressing it. There was only one thing that would drive curiosity away, and in Rino''s opinion, that was fear. The nanny that Rino wanted to find never appeared even though he arrived at the area the genesis fairy ims to find it. Hence, he circled around the area for a little more. Maybe the goats were sleeping? It was ratherte in the night after all. Not expecting a notification prompt mid-flight, Rino almost plummeted face-first into the rocks when he heard it. Ping! === Daily Quest #18 plete) Objective: Expand Farm 10/10 Acres Time Limit: 10 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Abandoned Dwarven Mine Location im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Really? He still had a few more days before the quest was turned in. Those trolls worked really hard, and Rino felt slightly bad for making them work even during the day. As an apology, he passed the message along to Erika telepathically to let the farming trolls rest during the day. For now, they should assist Aiden and the gnomes in building that barn. Rino didn''t like the idea of a muddy animal pen for a growing family. If he were to rear animals, he only wanted the best of their kind. Animals might taste better when they were provided better care. Besides, they did not have animal doctors here. It would be a shame to need to kill the whole pen of animals if one fell sick just to prevent an infection. Rino wanted to avoid that the most. Hence, he would rather spend more time and resources to ensure proper hygiene practices. Settling down on some rocks, Rino looked through his newly imed reward. The location appeared quickly in the newly upgraded map function tab. Rino studied it and paused. Apart from looking for nanny goats, he had an abandoned mine to look for. Moreover, the owners of this ce were dwarves. He knew their kind had to exist no matter where! Those money-grubbing chums were probably the most stubborn creatures to exist. They wouldn''t die even if they were killed. It was something Rino respected them for. Changing his ns quickly, Rino decided to fly in the direction marked out on the map. He recalled trying to search for more mines in this rocky mountainous range. However, they did not manage to find anything much. They searched on the wrong side of the mountain range, and Rino felt embarrassed to know it was closer to the other edge of the range that they should be searching for if they wanted any sess at finding a dwarven settlement. Just opposite Town Zera, near a river flowing towards the sea, the abandoned dwarven mine was facing the ocean winds. Rino honestly did not expect the mines to be located so close to his chosen settlement. It had to be fated. There was no other exnation. Then again, maybe the dwarves needed a clean water supply, and it was one of the only ces they could establish a secret mining location and dump mining processed waste cleanly. That made a little more sense with hindsight, and Rino pretended he wasn''t embarrassed for not thinking about this possibility earlier. Apparently, living in a world full of creatures with inferior intelligence affected his brain''s functions from time to time. He found it hard to believe a genius like him forgot all about geographical advantages! He even helped the war ministers make ns for invading the northern barbarians and win that long-drawn war! Shoving that thought aside, Rino narrowed down the possible mine''s location when he found the river leading towards the sea. There were obvious traces of mining activity even if the mines had been abandoned for a while. Rino couldn''t believe he never tried toe to this side of the mountain range, too focussed on the beach and the ravines he could find. The cave''s entrance wasn''t concealed, but it wasn''t easy to ess because it was hidden behind a huge boulder covering most of it. It was easy for dwarves to enter and leave the ce because of their shorter heights. The wind flow wasn''t too strong, and the huge boulder in front blocked out most of the strong sea breeze. Rino squeezed through the narrow entrance and was met by a terrible maze of rocks and split paths. Some were naturally formed, while others were mined and supported by beams that have copsed over time and neglect. Rino decided to follow the mined routes because he supposed those would lead him to the dwarves'' main workce or hideout. However, he found himself in two dead ends, even with night vision following them that Rino had no idea where to go from here. Even tracing his previous steps and taking the other forked path option did not lead him to anything promising. The air in the dwarven cave was stale, and Rino wondered where the dwarves would hide their workshop in such a ce. He had been to the underground city of dwarves in his previous life, and it did not feel this way. Rino remembered there to be more light, more alcohol, fire, meat and boisterousughter. The most important thing for dwarves was stout and gold. They had a huge vault heavily guarded by a hundred angry-looking dwarven warriors wieldingrge steel battle axes at all times, and Rino was given a tour by their king, who exined the importance of gold metal to dwarves. When there was light and metalwork, the air had to constantly flow. Oxygen was the secret to a healthy fire, and Rino did not believe he was looking in the right area. Knowing dwarves and their way around architecture, this was a terrible design. Surely, they could do better. Thinking back on his trip to the underground city, Rino stood in front of a dead cave wall and thought about what the dwarven king said. Apart from crafting and metalwork, dwarves were also good at something else because theycked magical capabilities. They researched ways to defeat their enemies using their craftiness despite their stereotyped rashness portrayed in stories. The dwarven underground city was often built like a maze with many different chambers for different purposes, and finding a way in wasn''t easy. Dwarves might not have magic, but they were good at creating contraptions or mechanisms underground to confuse enemies. Coal powered golems was a huge project that the dwarves were working on when Rino visited. They admitted that they hoarded gold because it was the only most responsive to the coal-fuelled energy that the golem fed on. It consumed a lot of power and was not an ideal war weapon, but they assured Rino that it could wipe out the empire if the mithril the empire bought from dwarves tried to turn on them. That golem demolished an entire smelted bar of mithril in less than two seconds, just before it ran out of power, and Rino was convinced the empire should not make dwarves their enemies. Examining the dead-end at every nook and cranny, Rino started feeling for any hidden devices that would open the dead path to a secret entrance into the abandoned mines. If dwarves remained the way he knew them to be, he should find a level, button or switch somewhere. Chapter 158 - Abandoned Mine Refugees The first thing Rino noticed about the switch he found was how it automatically led to nothing happening. Was this a dud? He did not remember dwarves being this crafty in his previous world, but maybe craftiness was required to survive in a world as harsh as this. Rino went around trying to look for a second switch or level but found none. Surely, that wasn''t the only switch in the area if the first was a dud, right? ?? While looking for the second switch, Rino thought he sensed something strange about the cave''syout. The tunnel might be mined by dwarves. However, the switch he found was ced in such an odd position that made Rino wonder if it truly was ced by the dwarves. He didn''t know that their short and stock arms could reach so far into the thin crevice of these rock cracks closer to the ground and upwards. If Rino wasn''t all bones already, he would never find that switch. The next switch that Rino found was inside the wall surface. This time, the suspicions ringing in his head screamed at the lich that no dwarf, sane or otherwise, would ce the switch inside a wall. Dwarves could not use magic of any kind in his previous world. The signs of manual mining used to create this broken tunnel were exactly the same as what Rino saw in his previous world. With magic, there wasn''t a need for support beams. Magic could strengthen the internal wall structures, but traditional mining activities weakened the wall structures and increased rock fissures, threatening the chances of cave tunnels falling inwards without support beams. This hidden switch was definitely not the work of dwarves, as Rino suspected. The lich was instantly on high alert for other intruders and mine dwellers that may have settled in the abandoned mines. It wasn''t unheard of for other creatures to find abandoned minesfortable to live in, especially those that thrived on minerals like crystal crawlers. Crystal crawlers were a nightmare for the empire for the longest time because they threatened the rare minerals needed, eating everything from rubies to quartz and sometimes mithril. They ate coal, iron and sulphur, and were difficult to kill depending on their diet. Many top adventurers and heroes were forced to retire after running into crystal crawlers if they did not die on the extermination quest assigned by the kingdom. After losing too many talents, the king told the magician tower to deal with all crystal crawlers, and Rino spent a long time trying to develop something that could protect his tower mages. Crystal crawlers were like living furnaces, digesting everything they ate in the mines and turning them into polished processed armour skin, using that as a shield against attacks. Magicians could easily melt and cook crystal crawlers using intense fire magic after a heavy binding spell. However, the same trick did not work on mithril or diamond. If anything, the crystal crawler with gems on its armour could absorb magic attacks and reflect it back at magicians. The first encounter with a magic deflecting crystal crawler caused Rino his first serious injury, and the monster took out more than a third of the tower''s forces sent to subdue it. They retreated, and the mage struggled to revive his dead magicians before sending a report to the king about the predicament. Eventually, the dwarves who helped the kingdom exterminate that menace and Rino decided that magic wasn''t everything. He needed to use magic to better the lives of everyone in general, using the dwarves'' unusual mechanical gold golem as an inspiration. He founded the art of alchemy, a kind of magic science that focussed on fusing magic into objects that could be used by non-magicians. That said, the hidden switch did not look like the work of crystal crawlers. If anything, there was only one other possibility. Even though Aiden, Griffith and the gnomey pals did not show any indications of knowing how to use magic, some gnomes were capable of it. This hidden switch looked like the typical tricks of earth gnomes, and Rino grinned to himself. He finally found some faes. Most faes were elusive and lived in seclusion. When he first started Town Zera, he wondered why there were no faes in the rocky mountains, but now he understood that he simply wasn''t looking in the right ces. Everywhere else was too hostile for weak earth gnomes. While gnomes were terrific builders and crafters, theirmunity was a little bit of a mess without a capable leader to give them directions. Gnomes, like fairies, had the trickster nature of all faes and were egocentric. They spent most of their time wasting their talent by pranking each other and taking petty revenge instead of building a bettermunity for themselves. If it wasn''t for Rino uniting the gnomes, faes and brownies, they would never be able to create wonderful items at such a fast pace. Rino''s appointment of managers also helped, and a higher authority was always avable in case of a dispute. He normally tried to turn a deaf ear and blind eye to petty fae disputes because it wasmon and a needed distraction from the stressful peaceful, progressive pace. It was also why hot springs were only avable as a reward for behaving faes. Now that Rino knew the true culprit behind the cave''s mysterious entrance, he changed a technique to locate the true opening. It might not even be in this tunnel, and the gnomes might just be throwing him for a loop with the distraction. Then again, the switches that did not open the secret mine entrance could act as something else to alert them of possible intruders. Whichever the case, Rino didn''t care. Some petty cave refugees did not spoil his ns. If anything, it made things easier when he found them. One could never have too many crafters in an expanding kingdom. Gnomes were always weed, and Rino was very convincing if he wanted to be. After tapping the walls repeatedly in various spots, Rino called this cave ending a true dead end. The lich retraced his steps and tried a new tunnel, searching for hidden devices before tapping to listen for a possible cave continuation behind the rocks. Most of the spots sounded solid, and Rino was about to call it a night and return tomorrow when he heard something else moving. He was tempted to throw a powerful spell in the direction of the tiny noise to st open whatever it was, but Rino contained himself. It could be those pesky cave refugees responsible for his misleading tour in the abandoned mines. Rino created a shadow clone using tendrils and used the cover of darkness in the cave to sneak up on the little troublemaker while he pretended to tap and listen to walls. The unsuspecting earth gnome screamed when a hand rose from the ground behind him, securing him in its clutches as a shadow summon rose from beneath. The cowardly earth gnome fainted almost immediately when he saw Rino''s hollow eye sockets staring at him. Rino studied the earth gnome. He looked like a teenager, rather young for those of his kind. Even Aiden and Griffith looked like they were well into their retirement ages with pot bellies and greying beards. Thisd was scrawny and stank of inexperience. He should be less than thirty human years, and Rino wondered if the rest of the earth gnomes taking refuge in the dwarves'' abandoned mines were the same. It reminded him of beggar children cults. The leader was only twelve, but he took in abandoned children as young as infants. The twelve-year-old provided for everyone even if he was exploited by unscrupulous adults for dirty profits. Child trafficking, child prostitution, pickpocketing gangs and children scammers were not unusual to see around the capital. The kingdom''s knights and public order did not do much about the social situation as many nobles imed helping one wouldn''t make a difference, andmoners were so irresponsible to give birth and not care for them. It wasn''t fair for honest tax-paying citizens like them to contribute to such a cause. To appease both sides, the king left the church in charge of tackling the orphan situation. Of course, not every parent would turn their child to the church, and the only future for orphans raised by the church was to serve the church unless they found a way to repay the church''s debt in money to be free again. Brainwashing children wasmon in the church. After a while, Rino could not stand back and turn a blind eye. He started recruiting quick-witted orphans under his baron title for information services on behalf of the magician tower and even offered orphans wages for running magician tower errands. For the earth gnome in his palm, Rino decided to do the same. If these refugee gnomes were truly a family of orphans who valued each other, they woulde to find him in Town Zera. Rino was nice enough to leave them a sign and a way to follow them should theye. If they were selfish creatures like they proved to be, Rino need not hold back on annihting them for forced recruitment. Chapter 159 - Touching Brotherhood Rino looked at the young earth gnome in his captivity. Honestly, he felt a little sorry for what he did. However, he was really curious about the gnomes hiding in his soon to be abandoned mine. Maybe they could tell him a little more about the dwarves he looked forward to finding at some point in his kingdom building project. The young earth gnome was still snoozing away peacefully under the influence of a very strong sleeping spell. Rino did not tie him up because he didn''t want to give the other earth gnomes the idea that he would abuse his subordinates physically with such an old-fashioned method of subjugation. He was better than that and more creative with his ideas.?? It took the gnomes several hours to turn up at Rino''s town. Honestly, even the lich did not think they woulde this soon. Even if they noticed the young earth gnome''s absence and note that Rino left for them almost immediately, travelling such a distance without flying would still take at least two days. Crossing the rocky mountain range wasn''t an easy thing to do. Moreover, gnomes had much shorter strides. He was now curious about their travelling methods. "Master, there are hostile presences detained outside of the town''s barrier. What should we do?" Mutt materialised in the stone cottage. Deciding to put his visitors to the test, Rino gathered his vigers and sent a fairy to act as a messenger to ry his message to the earth gnomes outside his town''s barrier. He told the genesis fairies to deliberately leave a hole in the town''s borders so that the gnomes could sneak in if they wanted. Rina volunteered for the task and assumed the role of a very pesky messenger with an annoying fakeugh. Impressed by his junior''s acting skills, Rino left the acting to her while everyone else got moving. Acht was summoned, and the shadow spectres assumed their most terrifying forms, pretending to be prison wardens who guarded the young earth gnome. They transformed the tannery into something that looked more terrifying. All the tools they used to process pelts wereid out in the open, and dark dye was poured all over to create an illusion of something else. Rino left the young earth gnome under their care but told Acht to go easy on the intruders who were here to rescue their slumbering buddy. Then, the lich took a back seat and watched the show unfold from the safety of his vault study through the eyes of Mutt, who skulked in the shadows, following the intruder''s movements. Rina was a great actress. If she ever decided to retire from Kragami''s research assistant, she could be a star of the royal theatre in the future. Rino enjoyed the fairy''spelling performance as a viiness. "You and what army?" Rina mocked, cackling like an overrated madwoman about to end someone''s career. Despite the cliche antics, these young earth gnomes growled in displeasure and red daggers at her. The oldest of the lot appeared to be a young adult, maybe in histe twenties ording to human years, while the youngest present looked somewhere near fifteen, just slightly younger than his captured earth gnome. Truly, the brotherly bonds they shared were touching when the earth gnomes proceeded to throw themselves against the magic barrier, yelling profanities at ady and daring her to get out of the barriers for a good beating. Rina continued to taunt them until they were so red in the face with their thoughts full of murder. Then, the fairy pulled at her eye with one finger and stuck out her tongue at them before leaving the enraged gnomes outside the barrier. After such a great job antagonising them, Rina dramatically paused, almost as if she forgot to say something but the smug look in her eyes told the gnomes otherwise. "I forgot to mention it earlier because I got too distracted by the sight of stupid hermits with the intelligence of an ape. If you want your dumb brother back, it''s best to hurry. We''vecked vour in our food recently, and the butchers work very quickly." After the ominous words, she left. Dumbfounded and panic-stricken, the eight gnomes provided Rino with extremely amusing reactions. The lich could not me these young earth gnomes for theirck of nning. He was mildly impressed when the oldest gnomes, presumably their leader, urged them to stick together as a group instead of spreading out to search. At least someone in there had enough sense to ensure their survival, and Rino liked him already. The hastily hatched n was rather impressive, and Rino knew that the defences had much room for improvement. It was lucky that Noir Province did not meet any underground foe to date. Rino prepared aerial defences but not underground ones. These earth gnomes sneakily pretended to retreat while they bore a hole underground behind the mountain wall that they came from. Their strategy worked, and before long, these earth gnomes were scouting the inside of Town Zera, noting the different buildings above just by using a sound and a mysterious listening device that Mutt did not know. Their level of progress with technology made Rino excited. Initially, he thought about recruiting these earth gnomes for their useful earth magic for mining. However, their knowledge about advanced technology and inventions was far superior to anything Rino knew about. The dwarves might be the closest to knowing what the strange devices were, but they were all dead now. The lich regretted not reading up more about the dwarves'' inventions before he destroyed the world. Then again, learning was a never-ending journey. Even if he read up on them, someone else woulde up with something new that he didn''t know. Given an eternity, there would still be new things to discover and read up on. There was no reason why Rino would let these earth gnomes go. They had too much potential in them, and the magician felt amon interest with these cheeky little bastards who blew a hole in his stone cottage. He should be mad. However, it was difficult to stay mad with them when the gnomes found themselves lost and spooked by his bare interior in pitch darkness. The cat tree loomed over them like a threatening device that promised pain in the dim lights, and the earth gnomes huddled together, trying their best to borrow each other''scking courage as they felt around for an exit. Eventually, they found the window, and Rino gave telepathic orders to let the gnomes roam free. The patrolling guards should pretend not to see them and make enough noise so that the earth gnomes would be alerted as they ''sneak around'' his town to find their brother. It was difficult for the gnomes to navigate their way to the ''butchery'' in such a huge territory. Thankfully, they were able to avoid close calls with the guards. Rino was interested in how the earth gnomes used earth magic to dig quickly and hide underground temporarily using a burrowing technique. The underground shelter was very good for camouging. If Mutt did not follow them so closely, nobody would know that they''ve managed to infiltrate the town from beneath. Unlike Noir Province, the underground of Town Zera was still very undeveloped. With the earth gnomes, that should change soon. Observing them with interest, Rino ignored how the sun was rising. His shadow spectres would be severely weakened during the day, making it the best opportunity for the earth gnomes to attack and retrieve theirrade. Of course, that wasn''t going to happen. Rino had eight other future workers walking in his territory. He couldn''t let them leave this easily. Once they found their brother, they would share the same fate. The magician already instructed the genesis fairies to remain on standby, hidden high above. If earth gnomes had the advantage of burrowing, fairies had the advantage from the skies. They were also armed with projectilesced with king toad paralysis poison. After listening in on the ''gossip'' of town folks, the gnomes finally found the ''butchery'' that their brother might be held in. There was only one problem, and the eight earth gnomes found themselves shrinking back in fear with four very powerful looking ''butchers''. In all honesty, it was more urate to call them ughterers instead of butchers. Who would have thought that hooded reapers were part of this town''s residency? They should havee better prepared. It was a little toote for regrets. "What should we do?" the youngest earth gnome looked at his leader, inspiring others to do the same. From his study, Rino listened to the leader''s reply with interest. What would they do now that they knew the chances of victory were close to none? In a real situation, all eight gnomes could possibly lose their lives on top of failing to recover their brethren. They were lucky so far, but luck did notst forever. Would they call a tactical retreat to regroup with new intel or push it by ying self-sacrificing heroes? Chapter 160 - Thoroughly Toyed When it came to toying with his enemies, Rino was a master second to none. Everybody was beneath him in his previous world, and he had to bnce his mental health somehow. It was just cold efficiency when he vented his frustrations by messing his enemies up mentally while on an extermination job by the king''s order. Humans were genuinely disgusting creatures, preferring to sell family out rather than finding a way to survive together. He might not know how earth gnomes behaved, but Rino had a feeling they would not disappoint him like his enemies. If there were two kinds of idiots in this world, he had a feeling these earth gnomes would be the likeable kind. The other brand of idiot is reserved for a lifetime''s worth of overtime work without rewards.?? With steel in his eyes, the oldest earth gnome looked back at hisrades and ced a small hand on the youngest of the lot. "You''re the fastest. I''m counting on you to tell the others to start packing and relocating to the outside outposts. This new settlement is too dangerous. There is no chance of taking them out or protecting the mines either." The youngest earth gnome wanted to protest, but everyone else did not allow him to speak, telling him things that he had to do once he returned on their behalf. "Tell Martha I love her!" "Give my younger brother that antique smithing hammer he always wanted." "Please take care of my sister." One by one, the earth gnomes prepared for what would be their final battle. They would either recover their captured brother or die trying. However, they couldn''t all perish here. The gnomes had to still survive somehow, and it was best if the youngest of them lived for a little longer. "Fifty years is a good life," the oldest earth gnome smiled and sent the youngest gnome away. "There''s no looking back. We''re going to distract them while you tunnel out. Be sure to make fake loops as you escape. We''ll catch up once we get Deezer back." Ah, so the earth gnome in his captivity had a name. Rino tried to remember it as much as he could. He had a feeling he would forget it soon enough as his focus turned to the tearful parting from Mutt''s point of view. Acht and the spectres were getting ready for their part in this staged y. While these ex-bandits were not strangers to killing, it wasn''t in their nature to act as crazed serial killers. Killing was a business, not a show. They did it with efficiency, and it came with a lot fewer lines to memorise. Normally when a bandit had to kill someone, they apologised and prayed for their victims after death. The murder was done efficiently, mostly by slitting the throat when they had all the information they needed. However, in this situation, Acht had to constantly terrorise the gnomes with empty talk, big words, bigger drama and meaningless actions. "You can run, but you can''t hide! Didn''t you know? Running only fuels our excitement!" Zeven cackled madly and swept through the tannery like a dark cloud, sending the gnomes scurrying from one hiding spot to another. Well, at least someone was enjoying the role of a terrorist. Even from his study, Rino had to cringe. He knew what he told Acht and the spectres. However, he did not think that they woulde to enjoy this very much. Only Acht was slightly stiffer in his acting and more silent. However, the rest of the shadow spectres acted like low-levelled hoodlums, bullying the terrified earth gnomes who tunnelled everywhere beneath the tannery. One brave gnome tried to fight back but soon discovered just how outmatched they were when the stone bullet went right through the shadow spectre and hit the post behind. In the face of a crisis as such, any spark of hope they had was dashed. These spectres were definitely mocking and toying with them. Even if Deezer was still alive, nobody could escape this ce. The spectres had the upper hand with their cheating spectral bodies. No physical attack worked against them. However, they could easily grab gnomes with their shadow tendrils. "What should we do?" an earth gnome asked their leader, who narrowly dodged a shadow tendril. The earth gnomes were getting exhausted. These shadow spectres were tireless and did not seem to be weakened despite the strong sun. They might have the advantage of the day, but even so, they would notst long without a way to get rid of the spectres. These spectres continued to y a deadly game of hide and seek with Deezer as the stake neither side could afford to lose. Deciding that the gnomes were terrified enough, it was time to wrap this y. Rino told Mutt to grab Deezer, who was still sleeping soundly and run towards the study that he was waiting in. He also called for Rina and the genesis fairies to get into position in case negotiations with the earth gnomes broke down. The young gnomes were rather sneaky, and Rino did not want to y hide and seek in the abandoned dwarven mines. It was better to secure a hostage that they could not abandon and get their n to pledge loyalty to his magic tree. Just when the earth gnomes thought things couldn''t be worse, a huge shadow wolf jumped out from the shadows and snatched Deezer up in its jaws, running away. "Deezer!" Immediately, the shift in priorities made the earth gnomes forget aboutbating the deadly ''butchers''. They wanted their brother back, and with an admirable earth fortress defence, the leader bought some time to distract the spectres from following his brothers, who burrowed away, chasing after Mutt''s trail. The use of earth magic to create animated gnome dolls was creative. Rino had to admit, even he might have fallen for that trick on the first try. It took Acht and his spectres a while to realise that the gnomes had escaped and that they were ying with animated mud dolls. "Let them go," Rino told Acht and opened the study vault so that Mutt could run over and hand him Deezer. The fairies were already on standby inside the study, concealing themselves in corners behind the bookshelves and furniture. They were ready to cast paralysing spells on the seven earth gnomes the moment they showed up. Rino temporarily used the teleportation pad to return to his stone cottage. The floor needed some repairing, but he could do thatter. For now, he listened to Rina''s report and Mutt''s status. The earth gnomes could burrow quickly with the help of earth magic, but they were nowhere close to Mutt''s speed of short teleporting. Getting into position, Rina and the fairies waited for Mutt to burst through the study vault with Deezer. The gnome in Mutt''s jaw was shaken so much that the sleep spell started to wear off when Mutt dropped him onto the ground. "Restrain him quickly!" Rina cried and looked over to the earth gnomes tunnelling straight their way. Dumping a powerful sleeping spell on the disoriented earth gnome in their captivity, the fairies quickly got in position as Mutt bared his fangs with Deezer in between his legs in a defensive stance, daring the gnome party to proceed. Unfaltering, the gnome leader ordered his mobile earth fortress to run straight through the shadow wolf monster. Underground, nobody could win them. All they had to do was split up and distract the dumb wolf while snatching Deezer from underneath. With all four legs trapped in earth shackles, Mutt howled, trying to break free and putting on apelling show in Rino''s opinion as the gnomes tried to snatch Deezer away from underground. Thankfully, Rina acted quickly and countered their burrowing skills using the mana web array in Rino''s study to capture anyone approaching Deezer from beneath. The first gnome yelped when the trap triggered, firing him into the air, and the genesis fairies shot at him with blow dartsced with paralysing poison. Kragami''s fairy weapon invention worked very well, and Rino had to thank Rina for bringing his teacher''s newest invention over. He could now tell Kragami that the fairy blow darts should be mass-produced to arm every fairy in Noir Province. He wasn''t convinced that a thousand fairies armed with poisonous blow dart guns couldn''t take down a dragon. When all seven rogue earth gnomes were paralysed and tossed onto the ground like potatoes, Rino teleported back to look at them. The paralysing poison would wear off after a while, so he had to act fast and put a temporary obedience curse on them before they tried to escape again. It was time to negotiate after toying with them. At least now, these gnomes should know who had the upper hand. It might be annoying for Rino to deal with them in the abandoned dwarven mines but not impossible. That much, they should understand by now. The look on the earth gnomes'' faces made Rino feel slightly bad. He did not want to make them his enemies and had to kill them to make them his subordinates. Seeing how stubborn they were and how unwilling to bend their wills despite the threat of death, Rino knew that not all these gnomes could be resurrected if he killed them. Souls that did not fear death and remain strong-willed to the end cannot be brought back against their wills. "Greetings," Rino projected his thoughts and ced a subtle curse of obedience on the earth gnomes. "I hope you received my invitation. Thank you foring on such short notice, and apologies for the rough handling of my subordinates. Do you drink tea?" Chapter 161 - Adoption Negotiating with a lich had to be the most terrifying thing to ever happen to the earth gnomes. How did they end up in this position? "I''m sorry, you want us to do what?"?? Rino considered it for a while. Should he repeat what he just said, or should he try to rify his intentions? He knew that sometimes he said the most misleading things, but this much should be fine, right? It was for the best that they formed their own conclusions about his motives. "Isn''t it fine? You''re all orphans. I''ve never seen gnomes as young as your lot. Fifty is not a good time to die. You should only think about dying when you''re lying on a bed too weak to move. The abandoned mines that you live in aren''t safe enough. My town is still in development, but it is much safer than where you''re living. Initially, I would have ughtered all of you like how I ughtered the bandits who wanted to rob me. They''re the spectres that you saw earlier. However, I don''t have a habit of killing children." Correction, he did kill a child. However, Zerg''s case was slightly special. Mercy killing was a category of its own that Rino did not want to disclose for now. Honestly, Rino just had a soft spot for children with rough childhoods. They reminded him too much about himself. Seeing these stubborn gnomes with a righteous fire in their eyes made him want to protect them. There was a lot of doubt in everyone''s eyes when Rino said that. Adoption? Nobody heard of liches adopting anyone. If anything, shouldn''t he be busy eating children and terrorising everyone? "Why would you do this? We''re no longer children. Not in human years, at least. I''m also considered a gnome adult." The leader of the gnomes spoke. Rino considered it. He actually liked this stubborn fellow. "I like you guys a lot. We have a lot inmon, and if I''m going to create a kingdom, I need every talent I can have. Your concerns are valid. However, I will give you my word that I treat everyone in my kingdom fairly. You can take a tour of the vige I established beyond these mountains. I didn''t force any of them to do what they do. Most of them volunteered." Sending everyone away except for Rina and Mutt, Rino spilt some of his future ns to convince the gnomes. He needed the gnomes to trust him willingly and follow them from their free wills if he wanted them to lend him their talents. Creative individuals and inventors do not like working under very or corporate systems. Their full potential could not be recognised without a willingness to want a better future. Rino knew that from personal experience. From his vision of building a kingdom that inspires learning, educating the uneducated undead and putting everyone''s talent to the best use and breaking boundaries ofmon sense, Rino told the young earth gnomes that he was sorely missing talented people who were capable of assisting him in building what he dreamt about. He had enough people working in the farms, in the mines and in the tannery that was not a butchery. However, when it came to research and developments, there was only himself, Rina and Kragami. "I dream of a day that we can travel freely without restrictions tond, water or air to see what lies beyond this world. Aren''t you curious about what''s beyond the sun, stars and moon?" A way to conquer the skies! From the beginning of time, the stories that Gods resided beyond the clouds were passed down from one generation to the next. There was no child who wasn''t curious about how the gods looked, and if possible, nobody wanted to die to find out what thend beyond clouds looked like. Rino''s proposal was very tempting, and despite their disadvantageous situation, the leader of the earth gnomes could not help but try to envision working with this terrifying magician before him. Making a deal with Rino was akin to signing a pact with the devil. There was no way Rino would let them go once they agreed to this adoption deal. However,pared to living in fear of the harvesters, maybe this was the person who could grant them the protection they needed to satisfy their curiosity. If anything, it was more assuring to say that as long as Rino lived, they could never die. Death was only temporary. Rino was a lich who could bring the dead back to life, the king from the prophecies. Serving under this man could give them a chance to discover all the answers to their questions. "If we agree to this adoption, can you promise to never make us do anything against our belief?" Rino thought for a while. "It depends on what that is." Answering quickly, the leader of the earth gnomes wanted to know if Rino would promise to treat them with fairness and sincerity like actual adopted children and not exploit them. In addition, he refused to partake in any external affairs regarding the economic and political situations of Rino''s growing empire. "I can promise that the gnomes'' lifestyle and preference for istion will be maintained, although if that changes along the line, we can make exceptions. As a fellow inventor and researcher, I am more interested in talking about future projects we could work on while providing for your needs." Indeed, Zerg was a very attentive caretaker who learned the ropes well from Fronzo. Rino considered making him a butler for these researchers as someone had to take care of their basic needs. When Rino was in his researching mode, he neglected everything from personal hygiene to meals. Sleep only happened when his body shut down, and honestly, these earth gnomes would do the same if nobody stopped them. They did not appear to have the best lifestyle from their simple clothes and humble appearance. Satisfied, the leader of earth gnomes introduced himself as Bink. "I would like to be the only one to sign the magic pact on behalf of my brothers and the earth gnome gang. Please spare them from too severe a penalty if they rebel. I shall take the full consequence instead." Rino raised an invisible brow when the other gnomes protested behind, still stuck from the paralysis spell. "What good would that do? Every individual has the right to choose. You don''t have the right to bear responsibility for another person''s life even if you wanted to. I promised you earlier, didn''t I? I would treat all of you fairly and sincerely as my children if I adopted you. You might be the oldest and the leader of the gnome gang, but you''re only responsible for yourself as an individual. It''s non-negotiable." Hearing that, Bink was stunned into silence for a while. He looked back at the other gnomes who apanied him on the suicide mission and thought back to the other earth gnomes he told the youngest to evacuate. He only epted Rino''s adoption proposal because it was the only way to save his brothers here. Who would have thought that Rino wasn''t going to let any of them go? "What if my brothers refuse? What will happen to them?" Bink asked, slightly afraid of Rino''s answer. The lich thought for a while. While it was better to have theme to him willingly, he was no longer interested in retaining talents who did not want to work with him. He might like the earth gnomes, but he didn''t need all of them. Even Bink alone was good enough for now. The gnome leader did not have to convince everyone, but from how the seven other gnomes looked at him, Rino already knew that there would not be too many troublemakers who would choose otherwise. It was a gamble, but Rino had faith that the bond between brothers who had been through thick and thin was stronger than a family with the same blood in their veins in corrupted noble families. Unlike the bandits, these gnomes were simple and pure-hearted creatures who truly cared for one another. They did not band together simply for mutual benefits. "I''ll let them go," Rino replied. "However, staying in the abandoned mine is out of the question. That is a mine that I want. I''ve been trying to look for dwarves for the longest time, and this is the closest I have to a hint of their locations." Hearing how Rino was looking for dwarves, Bink shook his head. "You won''t find dwarves here. They used to be around about a decade back, but they''ve left since then. Some of us saw them leaving, but they should all be dead now. Only their legacy was left behind, and we''ve been trying to protect it to the best of our abilities from monsters." That would exin the strange switches and traps. Rino was more interested now that he knew. He had to have Bink no matter what. It didn''t matter if half of the other earth gnomes left or if everyone else in their hideout ran away by the time he adopted Bink. Rino finally had his walking encyclopaedia. "I won''t kill them," Rino promised. "I won''t chase them. They can go wherever they want or return to seek protection from Town Zera if they want anytime. However, they cannot live in the abandoned mines if they don''t wish to be adopted by me." The final answer ironed out all the unease in Bink, and he agreed to the adoption, much to Rino''s tion. Chapter 162 - Mine Tour Genesis epted her newest family members with no questions. Rino''s newly adopted gnome children apanied him to the abandoned mines, hitching a ride on Mutt''s back. They were startled by just how big the sabre tooth wolf could grow but Rino assured them that Mutt was just an overgrown puppy who liked head pats and belly rubs. Mutt and the gnomes became fast friends while travelling to the abandoned mines. In fact, it wasn''t Rino who suggested returning to the abandoned mines. Bink insisted that he could still convince his other siblings to stay and locate them if they hurried back. Compared to living in the wilderness, his siblings might have a higher chance of survival under Rino''s protection as his adopted children.?? The magician was deathly silent the whole journey as he listened to Mutt and the earth gnomes exchange stories and trivial talks. Rino had no idea what to feel now that he was about to discover the secrets that the dwarves left behind in their mine. ording to Bink, it was unlikely that any of those dwarves he saw left almost a decade ago would survive. However, there were more questions than answers, even asking the earth gnome who the dwarves were running and fighting against. Harvesters¡­ he heard the term before, but Rino couldn''t recall where. It sounded likemon knowledge in this world, but it was a huge missing puzzle that Rino did not have. Something about Harvesters and their role in this world affected everyone in a way that Rino didn''t like. "Nobody can win against the harvesters. Death follows them wherever they appear. If it wasn''t for the earth fortress we built in the mines, we would never survive. Unlike us, the dwarves were less fortunate." Bink wouldn''t disclose more details even when Rino asked. He only told Rino that the answers could be found when they got to the abandoned mines. The dwarves left many things behind, including their story that would answer Rino''s questions. None of the earth gnomes was literate, and dwarves created a differentnguage system of their own that gnomes could not understand. "Does anything else reside in these mountains?" Rino asked after the conversation died. Bink blinked. "What do you mean, father?" Cringing dramatically at getting called father by someone technically older than him, Rino red with glowing purple mes in his eye sockets. "You will refer to me as ''sire'' and nothing else. Never call me father again¡­ it''s disturbing even if you''re technically my adopted children." Rino never thought he would be the father of so many children and more toe. A parent''s responsibility was even heavier than a king, and the magician shuddered at the thought of bing an actual parent. He couldn''t do it. He wasn''t ready for children at all. If anything, there was zero doubt that he would be a horrible parent who would neglect his kids because he was too obsessed over doing what he wanted to do. If Kragami knew what Rino was thinking, he would chuckle. There was nobody in this world who would ever be ready to be a parent. It didn''t matter how much learning and nning one did. Parenting would never be a smooth path. One simply grew a pair and walked into the shoes of fatherhood, winging everything that came their way until the child was old enough to leave their parents. From above, Ark watched how Rino entered the abandoned mines with eight little earth gnome guides. Honestly, this was out of his expectations when he included the quest. Phil never mentioned anything about the inhabitants in the abandoned mines. He frowned deeply. Ace was the first to side with Rino. Phil might be joining that camp, and he did not know how to feel about this experimental subject. Rino was a double-edged sword for them. While the kingdom-building task was cruising smoothly, the leader of this small world''s growth project was worried. After finding out the truth of the Harvesters in this world, what would Rino do? Saving an apocalyptic world was more brutal than building a kingdom. Also, what was with that parental talk and adoption? It was weird to be adopting kids older than Rino''s actual mental age. Was it all a ploy to get the earth gnomes to work for him? Ark could not sense any lies in Rino''s promise to the gnomes, and it baffled him. Why adoption of all things? Unknown to the lich crawling through small entrances, Ark and Stephanie were working on the next phase of their repoption project. The prayers in this small world started to increase a little thanks to the influence of distributed food. However, the quality of prayers received was terrible. It wasn''t enough to replenish their depleted divinity. They could barely maintain Ace''s incarnate as Noir for more than a few days at a time. Creating that offering reward shop was a good idea, and Phil suggested opening up more offering options to gather more resources to trade with other gods for different materials to add to the shop. It was amazing how Phil managed to secure honeybees in return formon potatoes. Ark still couldn''t believe they now have a regr buyer of the potatoes grown by hobgoblins. Apparently, the spuds grown by Rino''s farmers tasted fresher and helped to replenish mana. Unaware of the internal conflict of the god watching him, Rino finally entered the main residence that the earth gnomes took up after the mine was abandoned. The earth gnomes were gone, but ording to Bink, they did not go far. "Sire, please wait here while I convince my siblings to return." Rino did not make a fuss. Instead, he insisted on having a tour of the mine. Deezer offered because he felt bad that everything started with his capture. This time, Rino lit the way properly using magic and discreetly added trails of magic as an extension of his mana web array from Town Zera. The cave''syout wasplicated, and Rino would have gotten lost after the sixth turn without a guide. It was amazing how the earth gnomes knew exactly where to go despite such aplexwork. Most of the tunnels were mined out and not naturally generated. Rino knew this because he spotted venttion holes at regr intervals. Eventually, they reached the main workshop of the once-bustling mines. Deezer looked unimpressed with all the tools lying around covered in rust, but this was exactly what Rino wanted to see. He wanted to know if dwarves of this world were good at metal foundry. He might not find dwarves, but Rino could learn a thing or two from the best if they still had tools and documents left behind. Alternatively, the gods could give him some kind of tutorial when his daily quest required him to create something out of metal. However, Rino did not have high opinions of the gods and their tutorials for most things. He couldn''t forget how inefficient some of their methods werepared to what Rino knew in the previous world. He would rather crack his brain trying to decipher the dwarves'' unique writing than use the god''s methods if he could. The rusted tools retained their shape despite the signs of corrosion. Rino picked up a tong and examined it. The nuts and bolts used at the pivot point made it difficult for the tong to be pried open, but Rino was d that he found this. If the dwarves were able to craft such smallponents, they must have already passed the metal casting and alloy smelting stage. Further inspection of the anvil gave Rino deeper insights into the type of things the dwarves tried to create. There were sword casts, hammer moulds and even broken bits of temporary y casts to create the initial metal mould. The dwarves had decorative moulds fashioned out of molten alloy. It was an indication of a very advanced smithing skill. The chisels used were small and fine. If dwarves could use a chisel this thin and fine without breaking, they must already know how to use coal as a catalyst to strengthen the metal. Deezer had no idea what his new father was looking at or why he seemed particrly interested in examining the rusted remains of this workshop. Honestly, Rino was odder than their leader, which spoke volumes. Bink was a responsible leader for their gang who took care of everyone. However, that earth gnome was more of a tinkerer than a conjurer. Deezer could never understand why his leader wanted to spend his time researching how to create objects to do something a simple magic spell could do. However, if that was what made Bink happy, he would not object. Rino was the same kind of person Bink was. Deezer could see now why Bink trusted the lich. It still scared Deezer a lot that this was the lich who kidnapped him from their cave and staged a whole traumatising experience for his sworn siblings who came to rescue him. However, the earth gnome could now confirm that their new father wasn''t actually evil. He was simply scary but not evil. Chapter 163 - Inviting Neighbours Good things happened in pairs. After acquiring trolls and earth gnomes, Rino was introduced to more creatures in the rocky mountain terrain. It was much easier to locate them with insider information. Rino even found the nanny goat he wanted so that the spectres could finally breed the goat couple. Of all the creatures he thought he would find, Rino never thought that he would meet elves so soon. To be more urate, the cousins of elves - the drows.?? Dark-skinned, red-eyed, snow-haired mysterious beauties but very lethal. This small poption of drows submitted themselves to the monarch on sight and did not refuse a sol contract. "We''ve been waiting for the lord that would appear to conquer thisnd," the leader of drows bowed on the ground, kneeling on one knee. Her name was She, and thedy warrior appeared to be very strong even without a soul contract. Drows were said to be evil, but these earth gnome neighbours weren''t. They looked menacing, but Bink assured him that they were friendly. "Hello She," Deezer grinned, and the drow swatted at him. It did not take long for Rino to learn a little more about the earth gnomes after Bink sessfully convinced all his siblings that it was safe to follow Rino. He had no idea what exactly was said, but all the earth gnomes looked at him with sparkles in their eyes when they returned. Getting Mutt to bring them back to Town Zera and asking Rina to prepare some purple roasted potatoes was a good move because it increased the trust between him and his foster children tremendously. Deezer turned out to be that one ck sheep in the earth gnome''s gang. He waszy, mischievous and uninterested in anything but magic. He hated working hard on menial tasks and was cking while he was on guard the day Rino entered the mines. Despite that, he was very much weed and loved as part of Bink''s family. The obnoxious earth gnome had a knack for music and arts, which surprised Rino. He did not think that such a thing existed here. From Deezer and She''s interactions, Rino could tell that the earth gnome was flirting with her. She might act harshly towards him outwardly, but Rino saw something else that resembled fondness in her eyes. Why was this world so full of mismatched couples? Rino wasn''t close-minded. Love could exist between species, races, religions and gender. However, he had no idea how a huge drow warrior and a tiny earth gnome could possibly do the birds and the bees. Scratch that. As Deezer''s new father, he did not want to know. "Have the drows always lived in caves?" he asked. She turned her attention back to her new master and lowered her head. "No. Long ago, we were living in the woods, but the threat of Harvesters forced us to adapt underground, and over many generations, we grew ustomed to life in caves. This used to be a living cave. Many of our ancestors'' blood was spilt to create this small piece of safe haven for us." Harvesters¡­ again. Rino found it annoying that everyone seemed to know about them except him. Why was everyone so afraid of Harvesters? "What are Harvesters? Why is everyone so afraid of them?" he asked. Deezer, She and the rest of the drows looked at Rino with fear and admiration in their eyes. "Harvesters are the bringer of death for all living creatures, my lord. Nobody is spared when they appear. Harvesters only kill the best so that the weak will die without the strongest creatures protecting them. It''s a curse to be strong and quick-witted." Again this! Zerg mentioned something about the adults not wanting to know more than what they have to. Was that truly possible? She also mentioned how it was a curse to be strong and quick-witted. However, she did not look like someone who skipped a single day of training. That body was a warrior''s ideal form. Rino looked over to all the drows and back to Deezer. "None of you seem to be afraid of Harvesters. The drows trained to be strong, and the earth gnomes trained to be quick-witted." His observation put a grave expression on their faces. In the face of danger, there were two kinds of people. Rino knew that the drows and earth gnomes must be the king who wouldugh at danger and fight because he was the same. "My lord. If we do not fight, we die. If we fight, we still die. I think it is better to die with meaning than without, and my n thinks the same. Our ancestors once said that one person might not be able to do anything. However, together if many strong warriorse together, we might see a miracle of letting even just one survivor escape the clutches of Harvesters. The drows train not to die but to let our future carry on." Deezer sighed. Indeed, the woman he loved was admirable. However, the earth gnomes were different. They were constantly thinking of ways to avoid Harvesters and hide from them. The better they were at hiding, the higher their chance of survival. It was the only reason why he remained here. He couldn''t let these brave but foolish drows march towards their deaths the same way dwarves did. "Forge a soul bond with me. The harvesters only eat the living. It''s different if you be an undead. However, by doing so, you would forfeit the mortal lifespan and die with me when I return to darkness. I have use of the strength you''ve built so far." Needless to consider, She was the first to forge a soul bond with Rino. The power of drows and the darkness in their nature boosted Rino''s power, and he could feel his affinity with shadow magic getting better. These drows were the elite that he wanted in his undead empire. Every single drow was capable of taking out a wyvern single-handedly. Maybe not a multi-elemental wyvern, but it was still an impressive feat. Deezer watched thedy he loved turn into a creature of darkness as she epted the soul contract. Her beautiful snowy hair turned as dark as night, and her ruby red eyes became amethyst. She was still beautiful, but the mortality in her died, putting her far out of his reach once more. Aggrieved, Deezer put on foot forward and begged Rino to ept his soul as a contracted creature to share the same death date as She. The drow leader looked panicked when Deezer requested a soul contract. The lich wasn''t a fool. He knew lovestruck fools when he saw them, and Deezer was making a decision hastily. There was a difference between minions and foster children. Unlike the gnomes that he promised to treat with fairness and sincerity, he had no affections for his subordinates. They only existed to do his biddings like extensions of his arms and legs. "No," Rino denied. "For that, you need to talk to your brothers first. I will only offer you a soul contract only after you have gained all their approval." Dismayed, Deezer tried to convince Rino, but the lich wasn''t listening. He gave She her first order to bring Deezer back to the gnome hideout to pack. He would meet everyone back in Town Zera tomorrow and assign them their tasks. Returning to Town Zera, Rino discovered just how popted it was now. He found several species capable ofbour, and even without the Zerg''s vige working here, he finally had enough hands forbour, research, magic development and patrolling. The trolls were working hard, and he could see the outline of the barn atst. There were only a few more hours before his daily quest was updated. Rino looked forward to moving all the animals into the barn eventually. However, he still had to find a ce for the apiary that he was still working on. The design did not seem right. Maybe he should ask Bink and his earth gnomes for ideas tomorrow. It would mean staying up in the day for it, but anything was worth trying for the breakthrough he needed. Rino only hoped that the new addition of drows to his vige would not create tension between the different races. There was a stigma surrounding drows that they were evil and nothing good came out of associating with them. She and her n were different, but not everyone would be very epting of it. The earth gnomes and trolls already did not get along, ording to Rina''s report. The trolls were unhappy that the earth gnomes were eating food they grew even when they did not contribute to it. Rino felt a headacheing up. Food was so scarce in this area that it became a trigger for conflict. Rino wondered what the trolls would think of him if they saw him sacrificing food to the gods back in Spudville. Honestly, it was better to resolve this conflict sooner thanter. Food should never be a concern under his care. Even back in the magician tower, Rino ensured that none of the magician apprentices or orphaned children errand-runners starved. He might not pay them in gold, but he promised them warm lodging, clothes, food and education if they worked hard. He would do the same here for anyone willing to contribute to this empire, and it started with a fundamental first lesson calledmunication. Chapter 164 - Yesterday鈥檚 Enemy Is Today鈥檚 Friend Communication was the very first lesson Rino''s teachers taught him when he entered the magician''s tower. It was hard to believe how he was teaching what his teachers taught him to his subordinates now. "Ahem!" Rino cleared his throat, even if that was unnecessary. Old habits die hard, and he was nervous with so many people looking at him from below his stone cottage roof.?? "I understand that there are many concerns with so many neers in Town Zera. However, know that everyone in this town has a right to shelter, food, clothing, tools and educational opportunities. The town is small and growing. We do not have many resources. Hence, resources will be shared and prioritised ordingly. Everyone is given a different role, so those who work will be rewarded ordingly." To snub out every spark of doubt and discord between races, Rino exined in a rather lengthy way how every single individual present was chosen for their strengths. It might not look like it, but through the constant progress reports he was getting, Rino knew just about every individual''s strengths and personality even if he did not know their names or if they had names. "You," he pointed at a female troll. "You''re hardworking and often pay attention to details when farming. I know that you nt every potato with care and defend them from getting eaten by bugs." The female troll was touched and bowed her head in gratitude at the acknowledgement of her efforts. "You," he pointed to another female troll farmer. "You might not be very good at cutting up the potatoes into the right sizes, but you are stronger than the rest of your tribe and plough the soil the fastest. The genesis fairies told me that you ploughed the mostnd and managed to expand the farnd by an acre just by yourself without anyone''s help." He moved to the male trolls and pointed at one who was shorter than the rest by one head. "You might be small, and some of your tribe membersugh at you. However, only you can climb and sit on the wooden beams to build the roof while the others hand you materials. You might not be strong, but you are agile." To the next male troll, Rino told him that othersughed at him for being slow in his actions. However, the lich praised his thoughtfulness when he was the only one to move the building materials into the shelter when he saw grey clouds hovering above the valley before anyone told him what to do. The trolls looked touched at how closely Rino was looking at them and their progress. Some of the less popr trolls within their tribe found themselves wanting to serve under the magician more after the lengthy observation speech. "Like trolls, the drows, gnomes, fairies and monsters under my kingdom''s name have a simr role to y. Drows might not be good at building big buildings. That''s why we''re leaving it to the trolls. Instead, drows are better at archery and fighting. That''s why they will hunt and patrol instead. Likewise, gnomes are too small to plough the farm. That''s why I''m leaving it to the trolls. Instead, gnomes are good at making things. I will ask them to help me make things like the tools you use to plough thend." Understanding settled in the troll tribe as Rino exined what everyone was doing in Town Zera. He also exined that he had big ns and might need more citizens to join the town in the future. The Genesis Tree is also birthing new fairies who are automatically part of Town Zera''s poption. Moreover, they often have visitors from Noir Province, which was another part of Rino''s vast territory. "You might look different and do different things but do not forget that everyone in my kingdom has an important role. Nobody is more or less important than anyone else. For everyone who does their best to contribute, they will be fairly treated and rewarded. For those who try to skive and pass their work to others, there will naturally be consequences." Food wasn''t a reward for earth gnomes because they were mortals. Even drows needed to eat, unlike the shadow trolls who were undead summons. Rino specified that food was given to those who needed it not as a reward but as a payment for their work. However, Rino promised that they would be rewarded with roasted meat that the drows hunted for trolls who worked hard. In other words, every town citizen was working collectively for a group benefit. The spectres will act as tanners and sky pnquin drivers to deliver goods produced here to exchange local products from Noir Province. Rino also promised them that there was a good thing getting experimented on in Cypress County called beer that he assured everyone tasted good. "Therefore, please put your differences aside. Everyone is equal in death, and this is your second life. It doesn''t have to be difficult if you work together for amon cause. Yesterday''s enemy is today''s friend. You need to help each other to defend Town Zera to the best of your abilities. I am powerful, but together, you can do more than me. In return for my protection, please work hard and build me the kingdom I need." The unspoken words that Rino left at the tip of his mental tongue were that he really didn''t care who did what as long as theypleted his daily quests for him. However, as a leader, he couldn''t be this flippant. There was no proxy to help him sugarcoat his words, and Rino hated every second of this speech. Acting like a charismatic and caring ruler was not his thing. Back in Noir Province, he did not need to do such a thing. Here, the people were a little more hostile, and a gentle touch was required. Rino could really use some cat patting therapy or a good nap now that it was closer to noon, and he felt very sluggish. Excusing himself, Rino checked on the Genesis Tree that was growing well. A new batch of fairies was already close to getting born, and Rino left it alone, hopping onto the teleportation pad. He needed a long alone time now that he was done ying the part of a kind king. Chapter 165 - Flooding Fields Eight hours and a beautiful dream of cat heaventer, Rino woke up to reality with a system sound notification. Ping!?? === Daily Quest #19 Objective: nt new crops 0/1 Rice 0/1 Wheat 0/1 Corn 0/1 Soybean Time Limit: 14 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Intermediate Culinary Skill im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === The first thing Rino did was look at the tutorial provided because he had no idea what rice was. It was a product grown in the easternnds in his previous world, but he never ate it before or knew what it looked like. From the tutorial that now came with images, Rino learned that rice was a lot like wheat when they were ripe. The only difference was how there was no grinding of rice into powder after they were de-husked. Instead, those shiny white grains were the product ready for consumption. He doubted it tasted good, but there was no denying how eastern beauties had a softer charm than thedies from his empire. It must be in the rice they ate daily, and Rino was curious to know the addiction. However, there was something very strange about the nting method of ricepared to corn, wheat and soybeans. "Thend has to be deliberately flooded and drained?" To any farmer worth his hoe, this idea was ridiculous. Everyone knew that waterlogged roots would rot, and it was easy for diseases to spread without giving the roots enough air to breathe. Too much water was as harmful as too little water. The requirements of this new daily quest weren''t unreasonable. Rino was given two weeks to get it done, and the fields were ploughed. With fertiliser and mana imbued water, the nts can grow in half that time after they were sowed. However, Rino had no idea how to grow rice with the water situation. Basically, the growing conditions of rice were very different from potatoes. Rice needed a warmer climate to grow with slightly acidic y soil. The only ce with that kind of soil was near the river. Rino did not think thend near the Genesis Tree was suitable. Thankfully, the expanded acres of farnd spanned all the way to the river. They only needed to create one closer to the river to use the yish acidic soil. Alternatively, Rino could ask Fronzo to prepare more fertiliser and mulch to treat the current soil. Preparation might take a while, so it was better to start as soon as possible. Rino wasted no time and told Acht to arrange another trip to Spudville to collect as much mulch and fertiliser as he could. He informed the logistic manager using their telepathic soul bond and read the rest of his rice nting tutorial. Rice seeds that he found and shared with Kragami should be soaked as preparation for at least twelve hours before they could be nted. He thought it was odd, but it might be better to follow the tutorial for once. Rino did not know about rice, and he doubted anyone else in this world knew more than he did. Once the trolls received instructions from him, they quickly soaked the rice in water after confirming if they should soak it in mana imbued water or ordinary water from the river. Rino decided to run a little experiment of his own and split the rice into two batches to determine if there would be a difference. At the same time, he did not allow the farming fury in charge to idle. Together with the genesis fairies, she had to try and grow the rice using nature magic to duplicate the seeds. At this point, Rino did everything he could do for the nting preparation stage for rice. He had to wait for fertiliser to be brought over before reconditioning the soil for growing rice. He did tell the fairies to create an earth wall partition between the designated rice field plot closest to the river for easier field draining during harvest. With the earth wall, flooding an acre of farnd should be fairly simple. He did not know how rice fields were designed, but he did not want the flooded field to affect other fields. Would water travel underground and affect other crops? Suddenly, Rino had no idea what was the best method to grow rice. He did not want to risk the entire farming project because of an unusual crop growing method. Maybe he should ask the trolls to create a separate plot of farnd just for rice on the opposite side of the river. It was further away from the farming spot and way out of Town Zera''s protection borders, but it was a necessary sacrifice for the sake ofpleting the daily quest and experiments. Apologising to his subordinates for the sudden change of ns, Rino exined what they needed to do before Fronzo delivered the fertiliser. The earth wall project was abandoned quickly as the trolls took up hoes to cross to the other side of the river. Thankfully, the river depth wasn''t too deep, and they could waddle across easily. The soil there was much easier to work with, so with all the female trolls working on it simultaneously, Rino knew it would be ready in a few hours. Likewise, the fairies were rapidly extending the mana web array to attach water runes and nature runes to inspire the growth of these nts. They asked if they should link the runes to the mana imbued water or the river, and Rino told them to hold that off for a while. He had no idea which was better. Only time would tell, and Rino hoped that he did not have to wait for twelve hours to know which water was better for growing rice. In fact, he called for an emergency meeting using the World Tree to ask Fronzo and the farm managers in Spudville about this strange irrigation farming method. Nobody heard of flooding fields as a farming method, but Fronzo assured Rino that water trapped in yish soil is not so easily dispersed as the soil structure traps it inside like a basin. Hearing that, Rino was relieved. However, Fronzo suggested building a huge structure beneath the rice field like a pot with proper drainage piping to prevent the water flooding other fields in the area if the rice paddy field was in the same area as the rest of Rino''s crops. "Alternatively, you can try constantly wetting the soil using the sprinklers instead of flooding the field." It made sense, and Rino promised to consider it. He wondered if it was possible to get Fronzo over to help him with his agricultural experiments in Town Zera for a while. Maybe he would do that when Zerg''s vigers became a little more independent. Chapter 166 - Sowing Discord The speech that Rino gave only helped to ease the tensions between his vigers for a while. Most of them only tolerated each other. He was starting to understand the difficulty of ruling over people who were given free wills. It wasn''t this difficult in Noir Province, mostly because the only people who were not part of his shadow summons or soul bonds was Kragami. Rino got along with Kragami well, and the gnomes in Noir Province were loyal to him because of the soul bonds.?? The earth gnomes in Town Zera might agree to be Rino''s children, but they showed no willingness to bend to Rino''s will, even after adoption. They enjoyed the privileges they were given and helped Rino with some tinkering projects like crafting the sprinklers. The earth gnomes learned from Aiden and the other gnomes from Noir Province very quickly, but they also had a lot of questions and often refused to do as told, preferring to run their experiments to find a better way until they were convinced that the way they were taught was the best. It was a handful. Not to mention, the earth gnomes have been getting on the troll tribe''s nerve by offering unsolicited advice. The trolls were tolerating, but they did not enjoy how the earth gnomes constantly told them what to do. They might be Rino''s adopted children, but the trolls did not serve them. For some reason, the earth gnomes decided to help the trolls out at farming. The fairies finallypleted the mana web array, so there was light at night for the earth gnomes to see what they were doing. Thend was well prepared a few days before, thanks to the urgent shipment of fertiliser. Unfortunately, Fronzo wasn''t able to make it, and Rino had to leave the fairy in charge as well as Zerg to monitor the sowing stage. Rice was a rather interesting kind of crop. After soaking it in water and mana imbued water for half a day, Rino found that those soaked in mana imbued water started to germinate. It was a mess trying to untangle the seedlings. He should have asked someone to monitor their progress periodically to avoid the waste of time untangling seedlings. Fortunately, thanks to that, Rino now knew that if he grew rice with mana imbued water and fertiliser, the growth rate could be reduced tremendously. He also took Fronzo''s advice to build new farnd, specially for rice, with soil that could trap and drain water. The prototype design of that new farnd was working well in Spudville, although the rice did not grow as well as it did in Town Zera. ording to Fronzo, it was due to the soil texture and temperature differences. Simrly, soybeans and corn did not grow so well in Spudville. The only crop that grew somewhat well was wheat, so Rino decided to split wheat productions. They did not have too muchnd in Town Zera with such a huge variety of crops nted. Rino looked at his crop production cycle n that Fronzo helped to draft. The resources unique to Noir Province were wood, reed, hemp, x, cotton, potato, jasmine tea and wheat. Most of those could be hastened to some extent, and Rino was happy with the province''s system. The crops that could only grow in Town Zera because of the soil quality and climate were purple potatoes, wheat, corn, soybeans, bitter pods and rice. Rino still had no idea how to grow bitter pods even though he found them from the trees in the jungle. He only knew that Kragami wasn''t a huge fan of coffee after the necromancer experimented with it. Hence, Rino had to find his own way to grow this while the seedlings were sown. "Master! The gnomes and trolls are fighting again!" She reported through the soul bond they shared. Rino sighed. What were they fighting about this time? Looking at the time, Rino decided that he should resolve it quickly before the sun rose. Honestly, they should know better than to disturb him when he is in the middle of working. Why couldn''t they see past the differences in species and ept each other like the vigers in Spudville? The drows managed to restrain the troublemakers, and Rino sighed silently. Why was it always Bink? Initially, Rino thought that he would have problems dealing with Deezer because he was the ck sheep of the earth gnomes. However, after the episode of trying to sell his soul to Rino in exchange for an eternity with She, the earth gnomes started to be less harmonious. It all started with the two camps supporting and respecting Deezer''s decision and the stubborn leader who insisted that they should not walk the path of no return. Rino couldn''t help but feel that he might have sown the seeds of discord in the earth gnome gang. In a way, Bink might be rebelling against Deezer''s desire to be part of Rino''s immortal army. It wasn''t that the lich could not understand where the gnome leader''s dissatisfaction came from. If he were the person who protected the gang for so many years without anyone else helping, he could feel betrayed that one of his brothers decided to leave the gang for another. "What happened this time?" he asked wearily. The drow staring down at the trolls exined how they were nting the rice seedlings when the gnome said that the trolls should let the gnomes pass them seedlings for sowing as they climbed onto their backs. The water was a little too high for gnomes to be waddling in it, but the trolls took this as a sign of insult because only losers get mounted on. The argument escted into name-calling and eventually a physical fight with gnomes burrowing and tossing rocks at the trolls who smashed the ground up. Looking at the damaged rice field on the other side of the river, Rino remained silent. They still had enough time to fix it and nt some f*cking rice, but that wasn''t the problem here. Instead, Rino called for all the gnomes to gather in his stone cottage while he apologised to the trolls like a responsible father for the mess his children created. "Please get the fairies to help fix the field and get back to nting the rice seedlings. I will talk to them and make sure that they give the trolls a sincere apologyter." Bink looked like he was wronged as Rino barked at the earth gnomes to fix the field with their earth magic. He felt sorry looking at the trampled rice seedlings that took so long to grow. It was a horrible thing to do in a fit of anger, but the damage was already done. Even if they managed to restore the field, there was little they could do for the rice seedlings. All the earth gnomes gathered in Rino''s stone cottage, where the lights were used for the first time. It was slightly chilly, and the new clothes had not arrived, so Rino lit the firece and told everyone to huddle closer to it for warmth. He didn''t need anyone else catching a cold now. Deezer was the only one sitting furthest from the firece. He looked sullen, and Rino suddenly realised that not all the earth gnomes were in the field helping with the farming. Has the rtionship in the earth gnome gang soured so much? "Ok, spill. What''s going on? Why must you constantly pick fights with everyone else? Is this because of Deezer''s request?" The person right at the back stiffened when Rino said that. Honestly, the one most miserable here should be Deezer because he couldn''t get what he desired. However, Bink was the one who looked closest to tears. It must have been tough on the leader of the earth gnomes. How old was he when he started assuming the role of a leader and caretaker? While listening to the live report on the field situation from Mutt, Rino paid attention to the gnomes who huddled together. Some hung their heads and those who looked away. Nobody wanted to answer, and this was the tricky part. Rino pulled a chair over and sat down. "Look, I know how some of you are feeling. I wanted to treat all of you as individuals with free wills. It''s the only reason why I did not offer you a soul bond contract, unlike the drows. You''re free to do as you please. However, I didn''t want to offer Deezer a contract without the blessings of those he called his brothers. Offering me your soul is the same as offering me your freedom. It''s something inventors hate the most." Then, Rino added that if everyone wanted to form a soul contract with him and did not mind losing their free will, Rino would wee everyone with open arms. "That way, everyone could stay together. There''s no need for sad partings. At the same time, there is no rush to make a soul contract. The Genesis Tree will always be there." Hearing this, the earth gnomes started to look up with their little faces. Hope glistened in their eyes, and one by one, they began to approach Deezer. Rino watched how they apologised and gave Deerzer their blessings. Some preferred to get the soul contract now with Deezer, while others chose to wait a little longer before they did it. There were also those like Bink who still couldn''t decide. However, nobody said that they would reject it outrightly. Maybe this was what they needed all along? Rino shook his head, watching his adopted children discuss the order of soul contracting as the mood lifted. The discord he identally sowed was starting to finally resolve itself. After this, he would make them apologise to the trolls and drows for causing them so much trouble. Chapter 167 - Baby Birds Ping! Rino grinned to himself. After much difficulty, the daily quest waspleted, and he still had a day to spare before the time was up. === Daily Quest #19 Objective: nt new crops 2/1 Rice 2/1 Wheat 2/1 Corn 2/1 Soybean Time Limit: 14 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Intermediate Culinary Skill im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Without dy, Rino imed his intermediate culinary skill reward and was about to sleep when an urgent report came in through his soul bond. There was only a moment of hesitation before Rino pulled his hood up to head outside. It was early in the morning, so the sun wasn''t too bad. Instead, the lich was now eager to meet the newborn quails that they bred almost two weeks ago. It took longer than expected for the baby quails to be born, but thetest report from the genesis fairy told him that they had five new chicks in the cage. As the poption expanded quickly, Rino wondered if there was a way to hasten the barn building process. Even with the trolls and earth gnomes helping, they were still short on building materials that had to be shipped from Noir Province. Should he prioritise the new sky pnquin productions instead? As he considered the pros and cons of doing so, Rino found himself staring at quite the crowd around the quail cage. He raised a brow. The trolls were carrying the earth gnomes that they previously could not get along with so that the earth gnomes could see the new chicks better. In fact, the drows were taking their duties seriously and ushering the crowd to form an orderly line so that everyone gets a chance to look at the chicks. "No feeding!" the farming fairy in charge shouted. "No patting either. They need time to know their parents." Slightly disappointed, the crowd groaned, but that did not dampen their excitement as a new wave of discussion about the new names surfaced. Rino decided to remain where he was to listen to what his townsfolk were talking about. The spectres proposed some really great names but the trolls decided against naming farm animals. They had reasons that made sense, and Rino had a feeling it came from experience. "Naming them will make killing them harder. They''re not here to stay for long." The reality made everyone slightly troubled, but it was the genesis fairies who assured them nothing would change even if they had names. "It would be great if they could live their short lives to the fullest before the timees. Every child born is deserving of love regardless of circumstances. Besides, there''s no reason to kill them immediately after they grow into adults. We can always wait for them to grow older before doing it." Her logical reasoning appeased everyone, and they started discussing and voting on names. "That chick has a spotted beak! We could call him Spots!" A drow raised a brow at the suggestion and craned her neck. "How do you know it''s a male?" Rino mulled over how he should make use of this event to foster a bettermunity bond from a distance. As a ruler, he had little experience dealing with so many different parties with so many different opinions. It was inevitable for arguments to happen, and Rino wasn''t keen to be an oppressive ruler. Maybe he could throw a party for this and join in on the fun to understand everyone a little better. Town Zera''s upants joined for different agendas, and it was up to RIno to give them somethingmon to talk about to rte to each other better. He recalled how parties were a thing in Spudville. That king toad huntingpetition was probably the first Noir Province event that brought everyone together despite the hate towards several individuals like Fowler. That was it. Rino needed amunity hall or space for this event. On top of building sky pnquins and a barn, he had to create space for mass gatherings and create festivals. It was typical for the farmers in the previous world to throw a festival after sowing in spring. There was also a harvest festival hosted in autumn that everyone looked forward to. Too engrossed in their discussion, nobody noticed that Rino sessfully mingled in the crowd, lining up to get his turn to see the newly hatched chicks. "Next-!" The drow who was in charge of ushering faltered when she saw who it was. "M-my king!" Rino schooled a neutral expression and yed it off coolly as if he was just passing by. "Can I see the newly hatched chicks?" Blinking twice, the drow stuttered and quickly made way for Rino. Almost at once, the noisy discussion in the background fell into pin-drop silence. Nobody was expecting to see their ruler here. Why would he line up to see the quails when he could obviously cut the line and demand priority? It was too strange! The chicks were an ugly ck and brown coat of feathers that looked damp. Some were still sitting in their shells while others were starting to tumble about clumsily. The sleepy and innocent vibes of life reminded every undead about how precious creation was. Rino was no exception. He was reminded of the previous world that he used to love until he gave up on trying to love something that didn''t love him back. The tiny chicks had a yellow underside, and Rino chuckled to himself as the mother quail helped her child find orientation on those tiny pink feet. The chick had little white toenails, and it chirped rather quietly. "Are chicks meant to cheep quietly?" he asked. There were no farming experts around, so the earth gnomes could only guess. There were some louder chicks and some quieter ones, so Rino decided it should be fine. "The feathers of this chick are duller than the others. Is it going to be alright?" a curious earth gnome child asked. Rino simply picked her up from the ground and lifted her to his shoulder so she could get a better view. "Male birds tend to have more brightly coloured feathers, and female birds have duller colours. She''s chirping fine, so it doesn''t look like she''s sick," Rino exined. It was something he learned from going on frequent hunting events arranged by various nobles. He might not know how to shoot an arrow beforeing to this world, but he learned several fascinating trivia from the hunting escorts. The crowd nodded in understanding as they learned something new. It was slightly insignificant, but it was still something interesting to know. Rino let them decide the names after everyone agreed that there were three females and two males in the new batch. He watched as the quails started to get used to pping their damp wings. The feathers were starting to dry, and already, some were hopping around just minutes after their hatching. The parent quails looked ready to find food for them, so Rino tasked the caretaker to get some quail feed. The imprinting process on baby quails was an important one, so Rino told everyone to give them space and observe only at a distance while the parent quails hunted food for their chicks. "Inmemoration of the new life in Town Zera, I dere that there will be a celebration tonight!" Rino''s decision took everyone by surprise, even himself. He did not know how to celebrate the birth of the quails, but this was a time as good as any other. With so many people present, Rino decided that it was best to leave the town tonight and hold the celebration in the living cave instead. He was already used to hosting celebrations in caves from Noir Province''s tradition. They might not have a lot of food in the granary because Rino forgot to build one here. However, they had some things that Noir Province did not have. The purple potatoes made for tasty and sweet snacks that could be harvested at any moment. Rino did not forget about the cave mushrooms. Some of those were edible, and the gargoyles constantly processed them for feeding the pygmy hogs. In addition, Rino could forage many things from the jungle to supplement theirck of food variety. "For today, the drows and earth gnomes will forage and hunt for ingredients for the celebration tonight held in the living cave. The fairies and spectres are in charge of cave decorations. Trolls are in charge of maintaining the fields and working on the barn project. We have an expanding family of livestock that need new houses. Once the new batch of materials arrives from Noir Province, I will ask the pygmy dwarves to teach you how to create sky pnquins. We need more carriages to transport materials." After Rino finished assigning tasks to every individual to prepare for tonight''s party, he turned back to look at the quails. Already, he could see just how loved they would be. In a few more months, there might be a dozen quails and more rabbits than he could manage. It was best to work on expanding the crop production. After all, there was more to just sacrificing them to the offering reward shop. Chapter 168 - Town Zera Culture In every empire, the easiest way to create a culture was through their parties. In Rino''s opinion, that was the easiest way to determine how advanced the civilisation was. Depending on the empire, a party could be extremelyplex and full of social tension or unbridled withughter with no care about formalities. As someone well-travelled in his prime, Rino saw many kinds of parties. The parties hosted by nobles and the royal family were his least favourite. He attended many magician tower functions, and it felt more like a family gathering than a party. The gathering of various schrs was always an interesting time, but Rino learned to tune out to their heated debates fuelled by alcohol over the years. Inparison, the parties held by dwarves and other less ''dignified'' races were more fun. It often involved good food, lots ofughing, dancing and sometimes crude activities. It wasn''t umon to see someone hosting a party during a festival asking strangers to flirt or kiss as a spectacle. Initially, Rino was flustered by it. However, as he grew ustomed to the weirder cultures like burping loudly topliment the chef, these things started to matter less to him. Without a festival agenda, Rino wanted to see how the townsfolk would organise their very first event. He deliberately remained out of their reach and refused to give the party organisers his opinions. None of the Noir Province individuals wanted to teach Town Zera''s new residents how to n one. Hence, the different races had toe together to discuss what they thought made a good party. Many great ideas were suggested, but they were forced to make less sophisticated and more practical decisions due to the tight deadline. "Drows are the best at hunting," the troll representative said. "You hunt meat. We will roast with special tribal spice." The genesis fairies offered to make the drinks, iming that they knew just what kind of drink Rino loved and how everyone could get high from it. It wasn''t alcohol, but it was better. Nobody argued with them, and the fairies quickly took it upon themselves to take care of the beverage menu, promising to surprise everyone with the choices. "Every celebration muste with entertainment," Bink imed. "The earth gnomes will take care of the entertainment. Behold the live demonstration for our newest inventions!" With everyone creating jobs for themselves, Acht decided that the shadow spectres could not fall behind either. He quickly dered that the shadow spectres would prepare gifts tomemorate the first festival in Town Zera. Nobody knew what it was, but it was exciting to work together. For hours, Rino worked in his study while his townsfolk prepared for the party. The newborn quails were quickly forgotten and finally given peace without so many pairs of eyes spying on them. Before his nap, Rino checked in on them to find five chicks huddled together between their parents. It was a lovely sight, and that gave Rino good dreams for the next eight hours. Nostalgia hit Rino like a truck when he woke up. Thatst dream was so vivid, hepletely forgot that he was no longer human. The conversation with his good dwarf friend reminded Rino of something he had forgotten ever since getting ustomed to this new world. That was right. For the longest time, Rino had been too focused on getting the best result in the most efficient way that he neglected enjoying the journey to the top. He kept looking for the things he already knew from the previous world, that he stopped trying to learn more about the ways of this new world. Everything that he built was through the tutorial''s guide or from his knowledge from hisst life. "Don''t forget to stop and smell the flowers when you are in the garden." Already, the face of his good dwarven friend was hazy in his memories. Rino could no longer remember many details in his previous life now that he tried to recall. Maybe it was for the better that he was starting to forget the things that tied him down, even if it meant that he could no longer use depression to regenerate his mana. "My lord, they are waiting for you in the living cave." Mutt''s report snapped the lich from reminiscing, and he quickly teleported to the nearest location. He should create more teleportation pads in this mountainous area if he intended to use the resources. The genesis fairies did a great job decorating the living cave. It was no longer the ravine that Rino knew. Instead, many nts were growing into the side of the ravine. The earth steps created using magic and vine handrails made the descent into the dimly lit caves easier. "My king, you are here atst!" She beamed and offered to act as his escort. Everyone was already inside, and the party had just begun. Many bats and vultures watched as Rino and She climbed down the stairs. The lighting was done very nicely and had a magical touch with how the lights shimmered each time they changed hues. How did the fairies manage such aplex lighting cycle? Rino had a feeling they did not do this alone. When he reached the deepest and widest cavern, Rino smelled all kinds of delicacies, different from what he had in Noir Province. There were no king toad leg stews to eye on. Instead, racks of meat bsy roasting on an open fire fuelled by coal, maintained by the gargoyles. The scene before Rino was very lively despite theck of alcohol as the earth gnomes demonstrated their newest gadgets on each other as a joke. None of those things was harmful, but it did sting a little. Even She winced when Bink was on the receiving hand of an automated string-drawn pper as part of the punishment for losing a quiz game. "What colour is our monarch''s underwear?" The question made Rino freeze, and even She stiffened, afraid for the master of ceremony tonight. While harmless, nobody knew if the monarch of solitude minded how people talked about his undergarments. "ck! The monarch wears only ck!" someone from the back shouted, and Rino recognised that troll. "Too easy! Too easy! This is not a good question!" a drow at the front protested, much to She''s dismay. It was fine if the dumb trolls participated. Why did one of her n members have to answer such a question?! Instead of flying off the handle, Rino decided to embrace this new culture and participated. "If you want to know the colour of my underwear, all you have to do is look through my hip bones. It''s not a very difficult question. The harder question is to know if I wear socks. Does anyone want to guess?" That prompt turned all heads, and those with eyes had to hold onto their eyeballs. Nobody expected the monarch to participate in such a crude discussion, but Rino seemed more amused than offended. If anything, he sat down on the ground with them and crossed his legs, looking like he belonged in their circle. "So?" Rino grinned. "Do I wear socks under these pants and boots?" The first to feel bold enough to break the ice was Deezer, and She did not know if she should feel proud or annoyed that he answered in such a bold manner. "Without!" Rino chuckled. Deezer''s answer sparked debates. Some imed that a refined gentleman like Rino would never wear shoes without socks. However, a small group agreed with Deezer that there was no need to wear socks. The logical exnation was about how socks would reduce the shoes'' grip on Rino''s shinbone. She sat on the fence, declining to state her guess. She never knew that discussing someone''s personal habits were considered eptable during an event as such. Weren''t they here to celebrate the birth of new chicks? How did it turn into a get to know your liege session? It wasn''t a bad feeling, but the drow leader thought it was slightly awkward to be doing such a thing. After all, in the drow n, hierarchy must be adhered to strictly. For a king to sit on the same level as his subjects, was it really eptable? "What are you standing there for?" Rino beckoned at She, who was still standing awkwardly at the side, watching them from a distance. She found herself sitting in the circle with a little hesitation as the trolls shuffled to make her a spot. After the group expanded by two, the master of ceremonies continued the game to start a betting pool about Rino''s socks. The bets were work shifts, and Rino realised that this was the true culture of Town Zera. Unlike Noir Province''s diligent attitude, Town Zera was full of mischief. Some people imed that children took after their parents. He had no idea that adopted children would be affected, but Rino didn''t mind. For some reason, he felt right at home in this town, sitting on the ground with everyone and joining in with their shenanigans. Chapter 169 - Offering Options To say that Town Zera''s first party was an eye-opener would be an understatement. For many, it was eyeball popping when Rino showed how open he was to mingling and having fun with them. Nobody would be able to forget how Rino removed his boots to show off his ivory white toe bones. Many people shared anecdotes about their pasts before arriving at Town Zera as a tradition of a hundred story night that Rino heard about in the east. Surprisingly, the tradition helped to foster a deeper understanding between his townsfolk. Rino shared with them something more private that not even those in Noir Province knew about, although it would soon change with Mutt yapping about it. Rino did not know what made him want to talk about the failures he experienced when he first tried to imbue magic in the water. He talked about his toe breaking episode and how he made the very first hunting knife from his bones. Instead of feeling weirded out by his innovations and experiences, Rino''s story inspired others to share their humiliating failures and insecurities. Nobody mocked anyone for their stories during the tradition, but there was an understanding by those who experienced something simr. With moremon topics to talk about, the rtionship between different races improved tremendously. New friends were made, and a more openmunication system meant that Rino received fewer reports about destructive fights. There might be arguments, but it was always resolved before it reached that very heated stage. It was a great improvement for the lich, just in time for his daily quest''s update. He heard the system notification sound in his height during the height of the party but ignored it. There was no need to ruin a good moment for work. Rino thoroughly enjoyed himself and waited until daybreak to check the newest quest. Apparently, there were two notifications. Rino left the daily quest forter. Whatever it was, he wouldn''t be surprised. After sowing, harvesting woulde next. If anything, those greedy gods would ask for dibs on the first cycle of crops as offerings even if his offering reward shop did not have that option yet. It was the only natural thing to happen, ording to their kingdom building project. Indeed, the system update message was to inform him to check out his offering reward shop tab. The gods added several new offering options, including crops he discovered. Those that Rino did not discover yet were also included, and it came with free tips about their location as part of the item''s description. Rino could only scoff at their predictability. "So the purple potato has a name? What kind of name is Taro?" Rino asked himself as he scrolled down the tab. Most of the crops the gods wanted were staple crops inrger quantities. He checked the regr spuds and blinked. Wasn''t the previous quota five hundred for one GF credit? When did it be eight hundred? Checking the prices of every crop, Rino finally understood what they did in the new update. Back in his previous world, there was something the nobles alwaysined about. It was the price for royal bonds and private banks. Simrly, the gods have decided to start something very annoying. In simpler terms, a bond was a piece of paper endorsed by a bank or the royal treasury in exchange for a fixed sum of money. It was a loan contract by banks or the royal treasury sold for huge amounts of gold and could be exchanged for gold after a certain period. In addition, the bank or royal treasury would offer nobles who bought that piece of paper an amount of money in return for buying that paper over the contract''s term. The payout wasn''t fixed, but it was an investment that drove people wild. There could be as much as four payouts from the banks or royal treasury in a good year. However, if the year was hit by a bad harvest or crisis, there would be no payouts. In fact, the bond contract would require the buyer to pay extra as part of the contract terms to retain rights to get their fixed money back. It was a risky purchase, and only the rich would dare to put money in such an unpredictable piece of paper. Many noble houses fell from grace during bad times when they staked all their property to purchase that pricey piece of paper highly valued during good times. Rino was offered the option to purchase it, but he dismissed it. It was a waste of good pure gold on paper when he could use them to test his metal transmutation experiments. Why would people buy such a risky thing? That was something attributed to the belief that good things will happen. In other words, human greed and gambling brought the downfall of many greedy individuals. Many who could not afford the bid price of the bond would buy it from someone else. Hence, increasing its value even if the deal prices fluctuate based on the economic situation. In good years when a good payout by the treasury or bank is rumoured to happen, richer nobles with more bonds would sell it to rich merchants who wish to hold onto these contracts hoping that the payouts would cover the bond purchase price. Depending on the contract terms, the prices would differ. In addition, those who were bond owners received special privileges to attend special parties. The many high ranking nobles and sometimes royal members made the value of that contract rise among rich merchants. It was aplicated thing to exin fully, but Rino knew exactly what these gods wanted. With the power to decide the prices of GF credits from the variety of crops Rino now had, they wanted to limit his power to purchase rewards infinitely while encouraging him to work harder to serve their requirements. It made GF credits harder to obtain by inting the prices of easily obtained crops. However, their intentions were very clear. After checking the prices for the easiest way to earn his GF credits, Rino decided that he could afford to refrain from turning in anything to the system as an offering. Just like how the prices and value of bonds dropped, he would wait it out. There was no need to hurry to turn the crops in just yet. From above, Ark froze. What was Rino thinking? Asking for three soybean sacks was a lot easier than fulfilling the eight hundred potato trade. Why won''t Rino turn those in? It was at a very good price too. After their system update, prices could be changed at any moment, so it made sense to want to capitalise on this opportunity, right? "I don''t understand what he is thinking," Stephanie frowned. Why was it that this mortal was even harder to deal with than Ace? It was ridiculous for gods to be strung along by him! Ace, who had an ear on their conversation from afar, only smirked. For the gods, they were going to lose if they kept trying to make unfair deals. Rino wasn''t the one in need of GF credits. They couldn''t kill him, and if they did, they would simply be granting his wish for eternal rest. Without leverage over Rino, who wasn''t even fazed if he was forced to work overtime. They should try to appeal to Rino instead of threatening him using authority. However, the siblings insisted that his methods were inappropriate, so Ace was going to mind his own business and watch the world burn. The number of prayers was increasing drastically, and they were starting to get somewhere with their divinity. The number of clients wanting unique produce from their small world increased, but if they kept acting wilfully, there would be no customers wanting to do business with them when their supplier goes on an offering strike. As the gods continued to observe Rino from above, the lich was busy checking his new assigned quest. === Daily Quest #20 Objective: Harvest new crops 0/1 Rice 0/1 Wheat 0/1 Corn 0/1 Soybean Time Limit: 5 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Windmill & Water Wheel Blueprint Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Windmill? Water wheel? If Rino was still alive, his heart would be racing a hundred miles per hour. He knew what those were! If the gods offered him these blueprints as a reward, then that thing must being up next. There were equal parts of excitement and fear when Rino saw what his reward was going to be. Never mind about the five-day deadline for harvesting his new crops. The townsfolk could handle that easily. Instead, he was more concerned about the building site. It wasn''t umon for major idents to happen in his previous world near windmills and waterwheels. It might not be very frequent, but there was real danger involved that nobody understood why. Rino did not detect any anomaly during those idents that pointed that it was naturally urring, although nobody understood what went wrong. Maybe in this world, Rino could find the answer. Chapter 170 - Harvest Song With only five days to harvest the crops, Town Zera ramped up production, and everyone pitched in for the harvesting. There was no need for duty segregation for the first time as everyone saw it as part of their responsibility to assist with the harvest. Either that or the promise of good food made from their harvest motivated everyone. Rino didn''t know, but it wasn''t important as long as they did what he needed them to do. Ownership of the territory''s tasks was important. If they were going to be this cooperative, Rino would not need to assign anyone in charge. Taking the initiative was better than obedience when there were intellectuals in the ranks. On the third day, Rino finallypleted designing space for the windmill, waterwheel and granary. He also told the genesis fairies to strengthen the defence barrier around the town, especially underground. They carried out his orders discreetly. "My king! Something terrible has happened in the soybean field!" She reported through the soul bond, startling Rino so badly that he fell off his chair. After getting up from the ground, Rino borrowed her eyes to look at the situation using their bond. What he saw both terrified him and thrilled him that Rino told her to do her best to detain all the criminals while he made haste, teleporting over. Every capable warrior was called to the soybean field for a sacred mission of apprehending the criminals running amok and eating the soybeans meant for harvest. Nobody knew where they came from, but it was clear that this level of crop destruction meant that they would be in trouble trying to meet the quota of soybeans within the next few days. Furry and cotton-tailed, these little criminals looked at their captors without remorse. They twitched their noses and thumped their feet in annoyance when the drows and trolls ced them in the temporary earth wall prison in the middle of the field without soybeans. As more long-eared criminals were caught, the prison started to feel a little cramped, and they started trying to jump over the earth wall, much to everyone''s dismay when three seeded. "How high do these walls have to be?" the farming fairy in charge asked as the earth gnomes continued raising the height of the walls until it was almost as tall as Rino''s shoulder. The rabbits were still doing their best to break from their prison by bouncing from wall sides to the other side to hop over their tall confines. Many failed and fell back into the fluffy group, but those that made it found themselves quickly caught by the ears and tossed back by vignt drows. Rino couldn''t believe his eyes, and almost immediately, he was reminded of a song he heard farmers singing at a harvest festival as they threw squishy fruits at each other to celebrate a good fall. Like a trance, Rino found himself humming to the tune from his childhood as an apprentice of the magician tower. "After springes summer After summeres fall In fall, if the harvest is not a bummer The fruits we pick and share with y''all After springes summer In summer, we plough and sow We ask for rain and good weather To give us high yields and no woe After summeres fall After falles winter We work and throw a ball For a good harvest year after year!" The wild rabbits were finally caught and confined after twenty long minutes at dawn, and She finally turned to Rino, who was lost in thoughts. "My king, what should we do with these thieves? Should we ughter them for pelt and leather?" Counting the rabbits held in the earth prison was more difficult than Rino expected. In fact, it was the earth gnomes who discovered that the smart leporids were trying to escape by burrowing under the fields. These rabbits were a lot smarter than the ones they caught in captivity. Actually, they were also a lot bigger. "Where did theye from?" Rino asked after he cast an area effect sleeping spell on the hyper hoppers. Nobody knew where the breach in security was, but the Genesis fairies imed that there were no new tunnels underground after theyid the fortified defence barrier. Rino decided to do some sleuthing alone but not before telling the shadow spectres to skin them properly. He still wanted the rabbit bone structures intact to revive this group of terrorists to his field. There was no harm in employing more shadow ves if they were this daring and resourceful when alive. Unfortunately for the leaping family, Rino liked their fur more than them. It was also the only suitable punishment for ravaging his soybean fields. Not telling anyone where he was going, Rino summoned Mutt. There was only one ce he knew where there were this many rabbits, but it was a distance away. Not to mention, these rabbits had sharper teeth that meant they ate more than just nts. They were bigger in size and had higher intelligence on top of their amazing physical abilities. "Let''s check the hole that the fairies made to let the earth gnomes in. Is it plugged yet?" Mutt nodded and broke into a sprint. In no time at all, they arrived at the scene, and Rino got down. It wasn''t difficult to see that this part of their border defence wasn''t repaired. The hole was still here, and nobody remembered to patch it up, not even Rino. Really, he couldn''t be angry at his minions or me them for not remembering when it slipped even his mind. What was done could not be undone. Rino only thanked his blessings that only monster rabbits broke through and destroyed his soybean field. No other animals were harmed, and nothing much was broken. The hole in the defence barrier wasn''t big enough for bigger monsters to enter, and Rino was thankful for that. As he fixed the hole at the border, Rino thought about those fluffy rabbit monsters. What kind of job could those intelligent rabbits do? There had to be over a hundred of them that broke through. Apart from the frightening numbers, Rino was interested in working efficiently in a group without conflict. The speed of infiltration to the destruction of his fields had to be less than an hour because Rino knew how diligent the drows were on their patrol rounds. Unlike Deezer, they remained extra vignt, never cutting corners. Fixing the hole in a jiffy, Rino climbed onto Mutt''s back and told his loyal wolf to take him to that living cave he exited from in the fields near the jungle across the river where hest saw those killer bunnies. Mutt ran quickly and sank further into the shadow under Rino''s spacious cloak as the sun rose. The burn of sunlight on his exposed skull felt familiar, and Rino groaned as purple mes flooded his vision. He hated daylight. That reminded him how he still did not make an enchantment spell of the eternal night for Town Zera. He did something for Spudville and Noir Province to protect those hardworking undead from sunlight but forgot that he could do the same here. Work tended to make people forget the simplest things, and Rino quickly sent She a message using his soul bond to ry what he said to the genesis fairies. He wanted that eternal night enchantment within his territory to be done by the time he returned from his errand. The poor shadow spectres will not be able to finish skinning the hundred killer bunnies in the sunlight, and Rino needed their help asap for reting the ruined soybeans at night. For now, Rino delegated the new tasks to his townsfolk. The earth gnomes would help repair the ruined fields while the trolls prepared to plough it for a new batch of soybeans to be sowed. They should salvage whatever they could with the fairies, but the true challenge came after that. Rino needed to get back and cast an area-wide effect of nature magic until the soybeans were fully grown. It was going to be very time consuming, but only he was capable of it. In the meantime, they should quickly harvest the other crops and load them into the sky pnquin scheduled to arrive in Noir Province by tonight. By doing so, Rino hoped that the newest batch of soybeans could be ready in two days. Missing a deadline when he was stacked with a GF credit intion phase was terrible. Rino still had about one or two day-offs that hest imed but did not consume. The gods must really be forcing his hand with the series of disasters in time with the system update. It did not matter if the killer rabbits ruined his harvest by coincidence. Rino would still me everything on them. After spending most of his day travelling, Rino came to the same living cave opening and saw how there were no rabbits where hest remembered. Indeed, these killer bunnies found their way from this ce over to his humble vige. Their choice of travelling was very simr to what the earth gnomes did when they infiltrated, and Rino was d he asked the genesis fairies to step up on fortifying underground defences. It must have taken these menaces a while to figure out how to enter and once they did, there was no stopping them. The return journey was gloomy, but the silver lining remained. Rino looked forward to the quality fur pelts they would be getting. Those killer bunnies would make lovely clothes for the earth gnomes and troll tribe. He finally had some materials to work with to reward his hardworking subordinates. Chapter 171 - Espionage Experts Ping! Rino was never happier to see that he made it on time. Turning in the soybeans and growing them in haste took a long time. Rino was exhausted from staying up for two days without sleep, just watching soybeans grow from seedlings into bushes that could be harvested from. He also learned that rabbits were addicted to them and will act crazy, like how goats loved their salt. === Daily Quest #20 plete) Objective: Harvest new crops 1/1 Rice 1/1 Wheat 1/1 Corn 1/1 Soybean Time Limit: 5 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Windmill & Water Wheel Blueprint im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Not standing on ceremony, Rino epted his reward greedily. He was d that the genesis fairies worked fast. It wasn''t that they were capable of creating the eternal night enchantment quickly. It just happened that the Genesis Tree birthed many new fairies who helped out. That timing could not be more perfect. Now that he had the schematics he needed for those two revolutionary engineering masterpieces, Rino decided to check in with the tanners. ording to Acht, who was busy delivering the full harvest with his other mates, they skinned a grand total of one-hundred and thirty-four killer rabbits. The horn of their leader rabbit was left intact even if the tanner were very tempted to use it. As promised, they left the skeletal structure untouched even though they dug up monster rabbit innards and brains to keep for future tanning uses. The meat was expertly carved out and preserved with salt, creating monster rabbit jerkies that the trolls enjoyed immensely. Rino let them do whatever they wanted to celebrate surviving a tough harvesting order. Everyone worked hard, and he would have given them a day off to enjoy the hot springs if there was one in the area. Fortunately, they were satisfied with the barrel of Taro beer Kragami sent. Rabbit monster jerky went well with Taro beer, so nobodyined about theck of hot springs even if they heard about it from Zerg and Rina. While everyone else had the day of doing what they liked, Rino was here in the courtyard of his stone cottage staring at a hundred and thirty-four pairs of eyes. Converting those monster rabbit corpses into shadow soldiers took out more mana than he expected. He failed to ount for how much mana he used to grow soybeans before he summoned them and regretted it when he summoned the souls back into the dead monster bunnies. To put it vaguely, Rino was close to keeling from mana depletion. It was worse than teleporting twice in a day to Cypress County, and Rino couldn''t understand why enving killer bunnies took more mana than enving the sabre tooth wolf and gargoyles. Were there different sses of monsters? Perhaps that was why it took so much of Rino''s mana. On the bright side, he now had a hundred and thirty-four brilliant ves to do his bidding. The first thing Rino wanted to test was their intelligence. Mutt wasn''t very smart, but he evolved to learn human speech as Rino''s power grew. He wondered if these killer bunnies were capable of speech after death. "Can you speak?" he asked. Surprising Rino a little, the horned killer rabbit who was the leader of the hopping n replied through the soul bond that they could. Unlike Mut, who only managed broken speech when he first gained his ability tomunicate, the leader of the killer bunnies spoke with eloquence and manners. He reminded Rino a little of She, and the simrity made Rino wonder if they made good warriors. Talking to a group of very serious shadow rabbits felt a little like an interview with the royal guards. When Rino had to choose a squire as his retainer when he first became a baron, he received simr dull responses. Those who were well-versed in the sword tend to be rigid in their answers. "What are you good at? I didn''t revive you to destroy my soybean field. However, I could share future harvests from the soybean field if you are useful to me." The answer that Rino received wasn''t one he was expecting. "Answering your majesty, my n excels in espionage. Even a baby can escape pursuing enemies." Spying? In times of war, this was a useful talent. However, Rino did not know why he would need over a hundred spies in times of peace. He just received the windmill and water wheel blueprints. He probably needed morebourers than spies, no matter how talented the spies were. "Useless," Rino told them, shocking the rabbit monster leader. "Can you carry stone bricks?" The rabbit leader looked at his furry paws and shook his head. "Can you mine for ores?" Again, the rabbit leader shook his head. "Can you use magic?" This time, the horned rabbit nodded. "Answering your majesty, we can use earth magic and now, dark magic." Earth and dark magic¡­ It was an interestingbination but very suitable for espionage. These rabbits have keen hearing and smell, so they could get into difficult ces by burrowing and listen in on important information. They were really useful, but for now, Rino had no need for their unique talent. Frustrated, he wondered if there was a better way to put those tiny paws to use in his kingdom building. That''s right! Rino still needed that! "Can you make underground bunkers?" Delighted that there was finally something he and his n could do to assist the dark lord, the rabbit monster leader bowed his head. "Please give us your order!" Pleased that his storage situation could be resolved quickly, Rino retrieved the building ns to create an underground storage system for various things. He could use the mines, but they were very damp and did not have good venttion. Storing things underground was better in the long run because fragile leather products will not be harmed by the sun and heat. The eternal night was only an enchantment to reduce the sun''s effects. The dry and hot climate would still affect objects regardless of the enchantment. Instead of taking upnd space above for item storage, Rino forewent the idea of building a granary beside the barn. He wanted to expand thend for more animals, machinery productions and fields. All storage should go underground, and the best part about a city of undead was theck of venttion needs. The underground bunker and storage design took Rino a long time to exin, but when he was finally down, the rabbit monster leader only answered with an assurance that he willplete the project without fail. "Please give us ten days, your majesty. My n and I will hollow the ground without fail. Burrowing is our speciality." Unsurprised but also a little amused about what the earth gnomes would say to that statement, Rino wished them the best and promised them a sack full of soybeans upon sessfulpletion. Not one to dally, the horned rabbit issued orders, splitting his n into teams without many words and assigned them areas to work on. The work distribution was so efficient that the courtyard was empty within a minute, with each excavation team hopping over to their assigned spots. Those who needed to dig tunnels and entry points started working on those first, while those who had to wait for burrowing tunnels to be made assisted in teleporting dug up dirt to the dirt dumpsite. Their teamwork was exemry, and themunication buzz he felt from his soul bond assured him that they would perform well. Even if this was a spying mission, it was something the rabbit monsters could im to be good at. Now that things were progressing smoothly, the real issue was how Rino would continue putting their skills to good use. Finding a ce for one spy was difficult enough. Finding a ce for more than a hundred spies was hard. They could not live together with the rest of his town because Rino understood how spies had very strict personal conduct. The monster bunny n was very secretive. They could live underground for now, but Rino did not want them simply taking up space. They should be given a work fit for them. After mulling over it for some time in his stone cottage on the bed, Rino knew what they could do. The travelling issues between Noir Province and Town Zera had always been on Rino''s mind. Even aftermissioning more sky pnquins to be built, it was still inconvenient because Rino had limited pnquin drivers. However, if he tasked these espionage experts to dig a safe route reinforced with his magic and tied to the mana web array, they could create a private highway from Town Zera to Cypress County. It sounded ridiculous even to Rino, but the more he considered it, the more possible it became. Kragami might scold him for doing such reckless things, but Rino would listen to his teacher''s lecturester. It would be great if the townsfolk of Town Zera could travel freely and frequently to Noir Province. After all, building a fast teleportationwork was easier than rediverting hot spring water across the dangerous jungles and over the mountain range. Chapter 172 - Hit The Highway The after-party for the harvesting project was very lively, but Rino excused himself. He had big ns to work on now that he had powerful monsters under hismand, mana depletion and new blueprints. The monster rabbit n worked very quickly, and ording to the drows sent to follow them, they worked even quicker than the gnomes. It might be due to their numbers but The genesis fairies sent toy the mana webworkgged behind so far that there was no light in the newest section of the tunnel. Thankfully, the rabbits seemed very experienced with tunnelling and added earth columns in the tunnel they dug. The excess dirt was surprisingly eaten, and the drow who had night vision suffered some mental trauma knowing that these monster rabbits ate their excretion several times to create the best dry pellet poop used to explode tough rocks in the way. Their unique way of mining and proficiency in earth magic made the highway construction so quick that Rino was forced to admit that the gnomes would soon be out of jobs in Town Zera. "What are the earth gnomes doing?" Rino asked She, who was busy coordinating checking on the mushroom cave. After a while, the drow leader reported that they were back in the abandoned mines working on something that could help the trolls plough the new rice fields faster. As expected, all gnomes were great designers, and Rino had the perfect task for them now that they were no longer needed for underground constructions. The abandoned mines remained confusing to Rino, and judging from how much work he still had left, exploring this maze had to wait. The lich waited for one of his adopted sons to appear at the cave entrance. It was evening now, and Rino felt a little dizzy from exhausted his already depleted mana supply trying to teleport over from his study. Walking under the sun in such a condition would be a disaster. Rino would easily be toppled in one hit even if nobody knew it. "Maybe I should have summoned them over to the study instead," he grumbled but brushed it aside. There was no use in pondering over what was done. Not long after, the earth gnomes weed Rino into their researchb. It was exactly how Rino imagined it to be - one organised chaos. "How many gnomes are working on that farming tool project?" Bink looked at the chaotic workshop and counted the gnomes present, excluding two who were simply looking at some type of map. "About five are working on the farming project. Three are working on the underground lighting, two are working on mapping the mushroom living cave, and the rest are tinkering with new materials, experimenting on the newly grown crops to see if we could make something out of it." From the brief exnation, Rino had a feeling everyone found themselves some kind of project to work on. How unfortunate! "What about Deezer?" If there was one idle gnome, Rino bet that Deezer''s name would be on top of that list. "Oh, he''s talking to the trolls and helping them to build that barn quicker. Who knows what that gnome is up to. After the soul bond, he must be very happy to spend his eternity with She." Bink''s grumbling reminded Rino about his agreement to create a soul bond with any gnome who desires it. Thankfully, many of Town Zera''s social problems were resolved. The harvest festival and the birth of new baby animals brought everyone together. That monster rabbit invasion gave these different species a reason to work even more closely than before. "I see. Is there any gnome I could borrow who is good at designing big machinery and buildings? I received an oracle in my dream, but this is beyond me toprehend." When Bink heard "machinery", his eyes lit up like the stars in the night sky. "Me! I''m not working on any important projects at the moment, so I could help. Actually, maybe Deezer, too, if he isn''t too busy flirting. Deezer is better at the architecture stuff, but I work better with gears and parts." That settled it. Rino had the experts he needed to create one of mankind''s greatest inventions. "Call Deezer over and meet me in the study," Rino instructed before summoning Mutt to take him back to his study. He was so low on mana that it was dizzying. Thankfully, the sun had set, and his loyal mount cost less mana than it would take to teleport back. Giving the earth gnome leader a lift back to the town partway, Mutt howled and sniffed the air. They arrived back at Rino''s study fairly quickly, and Rino was about to send Mutt back to the shadows when his hound spoke up. "Master, should I fetch Deezer with Bink?" Surprised that Mutt was now taking the initiative to offer help and make himself useful, Rino wondered if his increased intelligence was rted to Rino''s mass monster rabbit summoning. It wasn''t a bad change, but Rino wondered just how powerful the monsters in living dungeons werepared to roaming ones. "Go, bring them back hastily." Mutt left to do his bidding, and Rino settled into his study, pulling out books, sketches and organising his material as he cleared some space for the earth gnomes. There were simply too many questions about this new world, but Rino ignored it. There were more important projects to be done, and by tonight, he would soon find out what the crappy gods need him to do. It was either the windmill or waterwheel first. However, the most difficult to create had to be the grindstone and mill. As a court magician, Rino knew nothing about what the millers did. Even the royal family was at the mercy of the millers, who were hailed as possibly the most important upation among civilians. Back then, several upations such as cksmiths, tanners, and millers were paid very highly because of their skills that were not easily mastered. Other upations such as tailor, cobbler and roof tilers and bakers were only found in cities. Those in smaller towns and viges were mostly farmers, with a few exceptions. Only the capital of the empire or wealthy nobles or guilds would employ adventurers, soldiers and mercenaries. Rino did not think that Town Zera would soon see the need for more job types. With a windmill, Rino would need to gather more manpower to manage the mill. In addition, the waterwheel could be used to power the hammer for the smithing workshop. He saw a design his dwarven friend used in his previous life, but the idea remained vague. Rino doubted that any of his summons were skilful enough to smith things, and those who had the finesse did not have the power. "Master, they''ve arrived." Just as Rino put away his research journal, the shadow mount reappeared at the entrance of his study. Rino let them in and patted Mutt on the head before dismissing the sabre tooth wolf. Making Bink and Deezerfortable in the study, Rino cast an illusion at the study''s entrance. Ordinarily, he would seal it off. However, the earth gnomes would find it too stuffy if they discussed the new project for hours. "This is the design I saw and sketched out. Please take a look." Deezer and Bink poured over the rough sketch of Rino''s windmill schematic and started to discuss among themselves excitedly. The idea of harnessing wind power to move things never urred to them before, and Bink asked what this building was used for. "I was thinking of doubling it as a granary for Taro and rice. We could also store other dry grain harvests in it. However, the main purpose of this wooden panel design on the top is for this. I did not see the design clearly in my dream, but from what I know, these stones are meant to turn small grains into powdered dust." The grindstone diagram was overly simple. Rino only drew what he knew from looking at others using a smaller version of the big mill. The stone hand grinder used by the poorer vigers was a very simple design. Rino only knew how the bottom grindstone was fixed in ce while the top grindstone was fitted over it to be turned by hand. The grindstone did not make a noise when turned if nothing was poured into the centre of the top grindstone''s hole. It led Rino to think that the two stone tes were not actually touching. However, he still had no idea how turning two stone tes could transform wheat grains into wheat powder used to make bread. Bink and Deezer studied the puzzling grindstone design and asked what it was used for. "Why must we turn harvested grain into powder?" Bink asked. "So far, we tested the different ways of cooking the grains. Boiling them for about half an hour in the water cooks them." Rino hummed. Ordinarily, this was good enough. In a world like this, where food was scarce, having anything to eat at all was a gift. However, Rino couldn''t simply be satisfied with this level of gastronomy. Kragamiined about taste all the time, and if Rino was honest, he just missed the taste of freshly baked pizza. "Grains easily spoil. Powder grains store better for longer." Hearing the reason Rino just made up on the spot, Bink and Deezer becamepletely convinced that the monarch of solitude had good foresight. Rino retained his poker face and tried not to feel guilty at tricking his adopted sons into thinking of a solution to build something meant to indulge in his guilty pleasure. Chapter 173 - A Granary With Blades Deezer worked quickly, and soon, the sketch for the new granary was ready. In addition, Deezer calcted the size of those big des required to harness wind power in the valley. She checked the different spots and reported that the best spot to catch wind would be closer to the meadows instead of within Town Zera''s present border. As such, Rino troubles the genesis fairies to extend the mana web array to cover that spot. The fields he nned expanded towards the direction of the windmill so that it would be easier to harvest and store food in that windmill granary. "How big are the des?" Rino asked as he looked at the diagram. ording to the sketch that Deezer made, the windmill had to be at least three floors tall. That was taller than the barn and most other buildings. At first, Rino wondered if the height was truly necessary, but after studying the town n, he understood why it had to be located near the meadows and be taller than any other buildings they built. "Will it hold?" Bink asked, feeling sceptical about the unusual design. The wind des looked a little too big and took up nearly half the size of the windmill granary. "It is necessary," Deezer exined. "Most of the spaces in this windmill cannot be used. It is used to hold that huge grindstone and hopper system to regte the flow of grains poured for grinding." Rino studied the cross diagram that Deezer modified from his given schematics. Instead of putting the grindstone on the first floor, Deezer moved it up to the second floor so that they could collect the flour in a bin on the first floor that also served as the flour packaging centre. It was a rather space-consuming design, but Rino could understand the need for the first and second floors to be free from other materials. In the previous world, mills sometimes exploded when the miller was rushed and the production line overloaded. To avoid that in this world, Rino would leave the mill operation to the meticulous earth gnomes. "There isn''t much space above ground, so I thought we could store things underground instead. The only problem is the moisture from the ground in underground storage. Grains and grain powder might go bad." Rino already knew this and reassured them that it was fine. He had genesis fairies who were capable of weaving spells to create the correct environment for ideal storage. For now, they need not worry about creating an underground granary. Rino would ask the earth gnomes to estimate the windmill''s weight before calcting how big or deep the underground storage should be. Thest thing he wanted was for the ground beneath his windmill to cave in. The only problem they had now was the concept of grindstones. "Bink, you''re in charge of designing the grindstone. I want to replicate it in arger design but for now, get the team to build the fixed grindstone and moving grindstone te on an axis. I need to know how heavy it is going to be before we can start working on that windmill." Ping! Just like clockwork, Rino''s daily quest updated itself. === Daily Quest #21 Objective: Build a Windmill Time Limit: 14 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Complex Food Recipe Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Well, well, well¡­ if it wasn''t building a windmill. Rino rolled his non-existent eyes at how predictable the gods were. Good thing he was already working on it. By the time the highway was functional, future building projects would be a lot easier to handle. Hecked wood the most, and those killer bunnies came at the right time. "Let''s start working on the axle and rotor first," Rino concluded. "Without them, there is no use building the des or the grindstone." The two earth gnomes got to work and drew several designs that Rino checked through. He had no idea how many des there should be or if they were angled. In fact, Rino had no idea if these heavy wooden des would move in the wind. Whichever the case, a lot of testing was needed, and fourteen days might not be enough. Deezer and Bink came up with over fifteen designs in less than an hour, but only three were chosen for prototyping. Rino''s mana was still depleted, so he assigned She and her drows to gather rted materials required for their important windmill project. Twigs, leaves and small stones were quickly gathered, and Rino summoned Mutt to take the windmill designing team to the windiest spot. "Tell the trolls to bring over a huge nk used for building the barn''s walls. I want to test something." Mutt bowed in acknowledgement and disappeared in the shadows once more while Rino measured the speed of the wind and the frequency, standing at the spot they were meant to build the windmill. There weren''t obstructions around and the wind, even at night, was consistent. If a gust died, then a new gust would be born in the next minute. Rino''s hood fell off, and his bare skull was exposed for all to see under the night sky. The genesis fairies were still slowly extending the mana web array''s reach, and Rino hoped they could finish it by two days when the highway should be constructed and the prototype ready for testing. The trolls arrived with the heavy nk meant to be the barn''s wall, and Rino retrieved it using shadow tendrils before elevating himself on an earth mound. Thankfully, basic elemental spells like this did not consume too much mana. Rino stuck the wooden board on top of the earth mound and waited for a new wind toe. Holding onto Rino''s pant leg, the two earth gnomes watched as the heavy wooden board creaked in the wind but did not dislodge from the earth mound. The wind was strong, but it wasn''t strong enough to move a board of this weight. Rino frowned. If he tilted this a little more to the side, would it be inspired to move? Waiting for the wind to die down a little, Rino told the earth gnomes to move a little while he changed the position of the wooden board. He wasn''tpletely ready when a new gust picked up. This time, the wooden board was pushed violently, and the force took Rino by surprise. Yelping and screaming, Bink and Deezer found themselves spinning through the air along with Rino, who held onto the wooden wall like a surfboard. Rino could hear She''s screams from below and feel the shadow tendrils trying to reach for them. Bink, unable to hold onto Rino''s pants, cried out in rm when his hands slipped. Deezer, who was clutching onto Rino''s other pant leg, did not hesitate to let go of one hand and snatch the earth gnome leader. However, the force of the wind was too strong, sending both earth gnomes plummeting to the meadows below from a good height. Rino did not need to think twice. He summoned Mutt to save them while he wrestled with the wooden board and wind. As quickly as the sudden gust appeared, it disappeared, leaving Rino to brace for impact as gravity once again took control of the wooden board''s direction. If Rino learned from this near disaster with several casualties, it was how powerful nature was. Using a quick spell to slow his fall, Rinonded on the soft grass while the wooden wall nk crashed onto the ground, spraying loose dirt upon impact. Rino checked the wooden nk and was relieved to find that there weren''t any damages apart from the dirt on its surface. "M-my lord!" Mutt bounded over with the two earth gnomes safely in his jaws. As a shadow summon, Mutt could not disobey his summoner''s orders. He saved the two gnomes first and wanted to return to save Rino, but the lich had flown too far by the time Mutt finished his task. Thankfully, Rino was unharmed. Mutt would never forgive himself if his master was injured. "We can use wooden boards to catch the wind," Rino calmly concluded as Deezer and Bink struggled to stand on shaky feet. She and the trolls came running, and Rino apologised for the trouble, telling them to take the wooden nk back. He thought that all was well when the rolls who lifted the wooden wall nk heard a loud crack. Rino and everyone present watched how the nk snapped into three pieces as the trolls tried to carry it back. The trolls immediately kelt and grovelled for forgiveness for the ident they caused, but Rino knew better. That was not their fault. The wind and crash from earlier weakened the nk''s general structure, which was a dyed effect from earlier. "Rise, this is no fault of yours. Carry it back to be used as firewood. Come," he told Bink and Deezer. "We have our work cut out for us. The angle of the wind is important. We need to confirm the direction of the des before creating a prototype." Climbing onto Mutt''s back again, the three of them thanked She and the trolls before running back to Rino''s temporary earth mound. Chapter 174 - Noir Province Reinforcements Espionage experts or not, Rino was forced to acknowledge the prowess of those killer bunny monsters. In a different sense, they were terrifying. The highway was dug and built so quickly that Rino missed his nap time after She''s drow escort reported the deed waspleted. On top of digging fast, those monster rabbits ran fast too. Even for Rino, he needed a few days to fly from Town Zera back to Noir Province. However, these killer bunnies were able to dig their way over in one and a half days and run back in half a day. The genesis fairies working onying the mana web array were stumped when they saw the group who went forward return to report that the job was done. The drow escort found it hard to keep up with their pace, even with short teleportation magic. No wonder Rino''s mana recovery was non-existent! He only found out how much mana these monsters were consuming while they worked after they returned. With abination of earth and dark magic used by over a hundred mid-levelled monsters, the World Tree and magic trees who shared Rino''s soulbond could not keep up. On the bright side, now that the highway was built, Rino finally saw some increase in his mana reserves when he told the spies to do physicalbour instead. With so many bunnies around, they should be capable of keeping a lookout at spaced intervals around Town Zera''s borders. The speedypletion of the underground highway meant several things. Firstly, Rino could now call forth all the reinforcements he needed from Noir Province after the mana web array was linked to Cypress County. Teleporting will no longer use Rino''s mana supply. Instead, it would be supported by the magic trees. These trees were good regtors of magic and constantly produced mana, unlike Rino, who had to receive mana from external sources as an undead. A mana-saving trick that Kragami shared for long-distance travelling was to calcte the amount of time needed in the shadow realm. Although the necromancer wasn''t sure about the exact amount of mana Rino could save from such a trick, he was certain that it would help the lich save a huge amount of mana when his goons were teleporting from Noir Province to Town Zera with goods. Teleporting magic was aplex spell using the dark arts of travelling to the shadow realm and space magic topress space and slow the speed of time before opening a portal to another part in the material world for the user to exit. Rino''s teleportation gates were woven so that it took little to no time for the gate jumpers to get from one ce to the other. Kragami was surprised initially when Rino shared his secrets. Those gates were not randomly hooked to the web mana array. He did not create a hexa-elemental magic world tree for no reason. Everything was part of his n. The mana savvy trick that his teacher taught him was to space the intervals between jumper gates closer to each other so that the time it takes to travel between shadow realm and physical world is shorter. The portal itself did not use much mana. It was Rino''s additional buff magic such as speed, weightpression, space maniption and advanced time-slowing spells that cost a lot of mana. As a strong believer of quality over quantity, the suggestion to create cheaper portals in mass quantities for his underground highway made Rino ufortable. He might still be that cheap and miser peasant from the memories of his humble beginnings as a baron in his past life. But Rino never bought easily disposable things. Even his favourite leather boots were used for at least five years before his butler could tolerate those tattered boots no more and hired a cobbler to dispose of them in the name of failing to repair them. Naturally, Rino wasn''t too happy when he found out about it, but the cobbler assured him that a very good shoemaker friend made better and morefortable leather boots that could be enchanted with magic. The hide of those boots was pricier than the ones he bought himself after receiving his first paycheque from a job the magicians'' tower assigned him. He remembered the satisfaction as he parted with a sizable portion of his monthly tributes earned from his fief as a baron for that pair of glorious Wolfsbane Spider Silk and Granite Drake hide. "Must I really remove those enchantments?" Rino asked over the telepathic spell. Kragami remained unmoved by Rino''s reasoning. Instead, he only told Rino how his shadow summons could work permanently transporting goods from Noir Province to Town Zera using the highway, "Living creatures cannot remain in the shadow realm for long as the shadow realm does not have air. However, shadow summons do not require air. As long as they are provided with enough mana from a bond with their summoner, they can remain there forever. Distance is not a problem as you''ve experienced for yourself." There was truth in Kragami''s words, but Rino still had reservations. His teacher had a practical solution to station his summons in a line like some packing factory to transfer items from one ce to another, jumping through a series of portals much like a ry race. However, that meant taking away most of Noir Province''s goodbour forces. When Kragami heard Rino''s concerns, he only barked inughter at the lich''s concerns. In the time spent in Town Zera, Noir Province started to take shape and grow without the monarch''s knowledge. "My lord, ever since you brought the vigers over, the poption has been booming. It might not be enough to fill up every spot we need, but they are capable of taking over the goblin n''s post. Fronzo and his vigers are getting along very well with Zerg''s vigers." nking out on the news, Rino did not know how it was even biologically possible. One undead getting on at it with another undead to make babies¡­ he couldn''t understand how it happened. "It''s not what you think it is," Kragami warned, listening to his student''s unfiltered thoughts via telepathy. Rino was so shocked that he failed to filter his inner thoughts out. Waiting for his teacher to exin how it wasn''t what Rino was thinking about, the lich waited uneasily. If shadow summons were like his children, did that mean he was now technically a grandpa? Rino shuddered. He was still too young for this sort of torture! Amused by Rino''s reactions, Kragami deliberately dragged the time out. However, Rino''s low-key threat to shave his braided beard and long brows off made the necromancer spill. "You know how sometimes a mountain lion would breed with a deer and things like that? Undead creatures can do something simr, but it doesn''t take the birds and the bees to help. Actually, it''s rather simr to exchanging body parts but not the kind you''re thinking about with the insertion. In fact, there''s a limit to how many could be created from the original undead. Apatible host must be present before the undead could multiply." Kragami used the word multiply because it certainly was what it looked like now. Fronzo''s vigers and Zerg''s vigers were able to findpatible matches for hosts and created a new army of low-level undead clones. They''re not powerful enough to evolve from a basic skeleton, but they are good at carrying out the lessbour intensive menial chores. From Kragami''s story, the vigers took a book out of Rino''s initial bone stonk market theory and mashed their ripped out bones from the main body to throw together onto a person who was originally injured. The healing magic charm that came with Rino''s summoning worked its magic, treating the broken bones as something part of the original host, trying to reclone everything that wasn''t already there. However, there was a trick to separating the cloned body and the main host before the host started to look like a freak of nature with conjoined body parts. "You''re telling me that the offspring are mostly headless? How do they work without skulls?" Laughing nervously, Kragami exined that the new generation of undead had their ways around and worked efficiently. However, after the fourth generation of fusion undead that was literally a pair of legs attached to a moving pelvic bone, it was physically impossible to clone the next generation of undead. "If you need strong reinforcements for heavy lifting, I suggest the hobgoblins. While the skeleton army isn''t perfect, they can do the job. Those with only legs can carry buckets on their pelvis for those with only torsos. Those without heads can borrow the eyes of someone else who could see and give specific instructions. They listen to Fronzo and Erika well." Unsure if that was a sight he wanted to see or not, Rino finally agreed to start the construction of almost seventy short teleportation portals along his underground highway. Kragami sighed in relief as the telepathy spell ended. It took him a long time to reassure his student that if there was a need in future, Rino could add all those regr enchantment spells and buffs to the portals. Rino could be rather finicky about the strangest details sometimes. Chapter 175 - Nightless Underpass There was nothing more important than constructing the highway, and Rino could not do this alone. Hence, for the first time since his founding of the empire, the lich decided to summon everyone aboard to help with the project. As Noir Province, Town Zera prepared for the highway''s grand opening, other projects were put on hold. "Have you thought of a name for this legendary underground highway?" Kragami asked Rino using telepathy while he drew another array on the ground at the marked interval. It took a while to set the highway up, but thankfully, the monster rabbits were very quick. Despite Rino''s rather low mana reserves, the mana array that the genesis fairies worked hard to link up proved useful. Rino decided to ask the elemental sylphs in Spudville to start extending the mana web array from their end so that both sides of fairies could meet in the middle. Kragami and Rino did most of the leg work, drawing the teleportation array and activating them from both ends of the highway. The killer bunnies were fast even without magic as they travelled, and even Mutt could not keep up with their speed. Hence, Rino sent them out to create markers for the intervals where he and Kragami should create the teleportation arrays. In addition, the rabbits were given light runes to stick onto the mana web array''s links to light the dark tunnel up. Not everyone could see in the dark, and Kragami was immensely grateful for the lighting as he worked. "Not yet," Rino replied to his teacher after activating the newest teleportation array. He climbed onto Mutt''s back as they ran to the next marker. It wouldn''t be long before the highway waspleted. Rino only had about ten days left to build that windmill. In theory, that was enough time. However, Rino was troubled by theck of resources. Even with Acht arranging deliveries using the sky pnquin, it took too much time. Town Zera did not have ready building resources, and Rino did not want to use the resources meant for the barn to build his windmill. There weren''t enough resources to finish building the windmill, even if he did repurpose them. Kragami finished another array on his end and got onto the farming cart that Fronzo lent him. The skeleton leg clones pulled the cart as Kragami held onto the sides for dear life. Even if these leg skeletons could not do much around Spudville, they still made very handy transportation minions when the vigecked horses or mules. "Are you going to name the highway?" Kragami asked Rino as he travelled to the next marker, taking a breather. If he were to divide the teleportation array workload evenly with his student, there were still almost thirty more arrays to create. Kragami did not know how many teleportation arrays Rinopleted, but he had a feeling Rino was much faster than him. On the other side of the underground highway, Rino thought about it. Kragami was right. Even in his previous world, there was never an underground highway. The highway was also built with sufficient venttion using the cheating powers of the mana web array so that the living like Kragami could walk through it safely between arrays. "I''m terrible at naming," Rino admitted. The highway needed a name, but it deserved something grand. RIno did not want it to be written in the history books of undead that the Monarch of Solitude named the highway using the inspiration of mushrooms or something because of someme joke he had in mind and wasn''t serious. Kragami said nothing. It wouldn''t be appropriate for him to suggest a name. Rino might be his student, but he was still ultimately the ruler of this world, even if they were still at the humble beginning stage. However, he might be able to veto some overly creative names that Rino came up with. Mulling over it as he reached the next marker, Rino worked mechanically, drawing the next teleportation array in record speed without any mistakes. Mutt waged his tail as he watched his master activate yet another portal. If this was apetition, Rino would win Kragami by andslide. They started this mission only two hours ago. From hismunication with Spudville, Mutt knew that Kragami onlypleted about twenty arrays, but Rino was already a third done with what he had to do. Hopping onto the sabre tooth wolf again, Rino let his thoughts branch out. This highway was meant to bridge the logistic difficulty between the two regions of his kingdom. If he were topare this to something simr in his previous world, it was like a hanging bridge between two very remote mountain viges. Rino still did not know how the people of the past built such an impressive but primitive hanging bridge across two mountains. That historical site was preserved with magic, and even the king dered it was one of the empire''s most treasured sites. Come to think about it, Rino wondered if he could borrow the name for his underground tunnel. The pompous Minister of Rites and the church gave it a good name that made everyone in the empire believe it was a prophecy of the higher beings, even if the magical aspects were really the magician tower''s doing. "How does ''Nightless Tunnel'' sound?" Kragami hummed. His student did not have a bad naming sense. Nightless sounded great. However, "Tunnel" made them feel like rats scurrying around in what should be their territory. Why should they feel the need to travel in a fashion that could not be seen so sneakily? This was going to be the Solitude Empire in the future. Such a grand creation shouldn''t be just a tunnel. "How about changing thest part?" the necromancer suggested. "Nightless Underpass. It''s more than just an underpass with how long this thing is, but I thought it sounded better than just a crappy tunnel. We worked on this to be more than just a tunnel." When Rino heard his teacher''s suggestion, he dered that the highway should be named as such. Nightless Underpass was perfect! He thought about "Nightless" because it was a very brightly lit tunnel thanks to the light runes and air runes the killer rabbits stuck at regr intervals. If his empire was ever attacked, the Nightless Underpass could act as an emergency shelter. Such things were already within his n, even if it would take time to sort things out. For now, they were busy enough setting up the mana web array and teleportation points. Once things were smoother and they had more manpower, Rino would assign the security team to weave spells to make the Nightless Underpass a safety bunker should his first defence system fail in either province. With the name settled, Rino and Kragami moved on to other topics, discussing the best transportation method between teleportation arrays. Currently, both magicians were physically travelling from portal to portal, and it was taking a very long time to cover ground. "I designed the portals such that once they jumped out of one, they would be propelled to the next portal, so no actual transportation is required as long as the courier person carries everything in a dimensional bag." As Rino shared the details of his design n, Kragami wondered just what kind of person would volunteer for this crazy fast speed service? He wouldn''t be willing to suffer that level of trauma getting thrown over and over again at the speed of sound for kilometres for over an hour? "Is there anyone who volunteered for high-speed courier service?" Rino thought about it for a while. There was a very real possibility of death from the speed, so assigning living creatures this duty was out of the question. For now, Rino already had the names of a few volunteers. His special task force was more than willing to wear the courier service caps if the dimensional bags were something they could carry. Those furry pawed killer bunnies were physically weak, but they had the intelligence, courage and speed Rino desired. At the moment, he left the dimensional bag design to the brownie stuck in Town Zera. There was no limit to dimensional storage as long as the castor was powerful. Rino might have to enchant several items personally, but it was a low price to pay for convenient delivery. He thought about making dimensional storage rings instead of bags but left that designing decision to the brownie. As long as it was small and light enough to be worn by the killer rabbits, Rino had no concerns. However, they needed to be durable in potential crashes and not restrict the movements of the wearer. Kragami was both impressed and mildly afraid of Rino''s n. The things he made his summons do and how he treated them was very unusual for a necromancer. It was true that necromancers abuse their summons as ves with no right to decide their fate. He made his zombie army battle to their deaths, but maybe eternal rest was better than a cycle of eternal torture? "Were your special forces army alright with the repeated death? Did you exin it to them?" Chuckling, Rino only replied with a question that made Kragami shudder. "Would it make a difference if I did?" Chapter 176 - Wind Vanes And Hidden Storage It was regretful that Rino did not have time to reward the hardworking minions for helping toplete the grand Nightless Underpass. There wasn''t even an opening ceremony before Rino ordered it to be put to use. Although there were only a few dimensional storage items ready by the time the highway was operational. Rino was still low on mana reserves, but the killer rabbits made rapid trips to and from Noir Province to provide the earth gnomes with the materials they needed. The other killer rabbits were called to help Rino level and raise the windmill building ground while digging ample spaces beneath Town Zera for a gigantic storage system. There was no point in building upwards when they could go downwards. Rino hastily cast his enchantments on every piece of essory the brownie managed to create and dumped everything to the killer rabbit monsters to sort it out among themselves. Those who could fit into the enchanted essories were given the role of courier bunnies while others could only settle for patrol duties, underground storage constructionbourers or windmill foundation builders. "Kamiya," Rino summoned. The horned killer rabbit leader appeared, and Rino wondered if this human hybrid form was better now that he had a named monster minion with higher intelligence than Mutt. Kamiya was a very short male who looked like a child in his human-monster hybrid form. Those fluffy paws, cotton puff tail and long ears remained despite the more human appearance. He wasn''t any physically stronger in this new appearance, but Rino sensed an explosive power difference in his summons''s magical aura. "You called for me, my liege?" Satisfied with Kamiya''s conduct, Rino told the leader of the killer rabbits to sort it out among themselves to prepare the necessary building materials for the windmill as designed by Deezer and Bink. Bowing and melting into the shadows after receiving his royalmand, Kamiya gathered his family and assigned every rabbit a role to y. The courier rabbits could only bring limited items in Rino''s enchanted essory. Each trip took, on average, two hours toe and go. Acht and his shadow spectres worked tirelessly, bringing the bulkier custom made items such as the wind vanes from Cypress Cont overusing the sky pnquin. Even so, Rino looked at his remaining time. There was much time left before the daily quest needed to bepleted. He spent too much time preparing the needed materials while building the highway and designing the underground storage. The windmill''s external structure was ready, but there was still a problem with the grindstone. "Mutt, find Deezer and Bink. I want to see them in the study with the modified prototype. Make haste." Howling and wagging his tail, Mutt melted into the shadow to carry out his master''s order. As the sabre tooth wolf left, Rino mentally pped himself. He forgot to tell Mutt to make haste but exercise consideration for the two earth gnomes. They were definitely going to be motion sick for a while when they arrived, but the shadow monarch shrugged. There was little use in worrying now. Acht and his ex-bandit buddies were bringing the windmill vanes and massive grindstone tes that the elemental sylphs worked hard to cut and grind from the stone mine. Rino heard that Aiden and Griffith worked together to polish it and tested the weight of the new axle. Honestly, he should have consulted those pygmy dwarves earlier about the problem of axle and shaft materials. The earth gnomes proposed a veryplex design of interlocking gears to drive the grindstone''s axle. In theory, the design was simple. Once the vanes were attached to the primary windmill rotor, the gears behind the vane rotor would power a series of closely packed gears of different sizes that could move ording to the level system they designed to connect or disconnect gears, controlling the speed of the grindstone. Those gears are connected to the grindstone''s main axle attached to the moving stone te''s handle, causing it to turn continuously when there is wind. Rino struggled with finding a strong enough material for the axle holding the top grindstone above the bottom fixed stone te. Wood was too weak to hold up the moving stone te weighing over two thousand kilograms per grindstone piece. The total weight of both stone tes scared Rino when he first learned about it. The sky pnquin could only transport one stone te at a time, excluding the heavy and bulky vanes. Furthermore, Rino calcted the weight of the windmill''s structure above the underground storage and concluded that not only must the ground be fortified and raised, but his windmill''s base structure also cannot be made from flimsy wood. Stone was the best material the architects came to agree on when it came to building the windmill. In addition, after several hours of recording wind patterns, Deezer informed Rino that they needed to make the top part of the windmill rotatable to catch the various winds from different angles. As such, Rio found himself designing something far moreplex than he thought was possible. Thankfully, when Deezer and Bink met the pygmy dwarves who travelled over in the sky pnquin just for this project, they got along very quickly and crunched the numbers Rino needed. "I think the stone walls need to be made out of basalt because it is more resistant to the weather and prevents moisture." Deezer disagreed, siding with the logic that anti-dampness conditions of the mill can be taken care of using magic. "What we need is a material strong enough at the base but light enough on the top that can hold the weight of those vanes and grindstone," the earth gnome reasoned. "In that case, we could opt for te on the base. It is stronger than granite," Aiden suggested and brought out the stone samples he packed from the mines beforeing over. Griffith took out several treated nk samples he packed from the sawmill in Cypress County and ced them in front of Rino and his earth gnomes. Rino and the earth gnomes inspected the proposed materials. Aiden imed that basalt was stronger and better as a material because of its properties to prevent dampness. The material was identally discovered one day but after several tests, the pygmy dwarf ordered more to be mined to rece Rino''s y reservoir walls. In addition, the pygmy dwarf ordered ayer of cement to be covered on the basalt walls to prevent moss from growing on the stone, destroying the structure and covering tiny gaps between stone wall bs. Not long after, Kragami told Aiden to regrly coat the cement wall surfaces with vinegar as it effectively killed moss. The necromancer discovered vinegar and its usefulness after experimenting on it in Cypress County, much to Rino''s amusement. "We''ll use the treated jungle wood for the grindstone te axle because it is the only wood that could withstand the most weight. The handle and gears should be made out of treated jungle wood as well but the wind vanes were made out of cypress wood because it is much lighter but rtively strong." At the end of the discussion for materials, the design team put together a list of materials they needed. Rino gave every viger a task to gather everything they needed within two days. With only thest two days to perform a miracle and build his windmill after the lengthy preparation process, Rino wondered if he should have tasked the farmers to increase their crop output instead. Surely, buying time was a more practical solution than trying to rush the windmill building process, right? From above, Ace looked at the daily quest and the countdown. He wanted to find a loophole in the system, but there wasn''t much he could do without alerting the siblings about his intentions. Phil was mostly helpless as he did his best to assign different resources like basalt in the most convenient locations in the past week that Rino needed for his windmill. Feeling useless, Ace wondered if he could go down again as an incarnate to cheer the stressed lich. Noir wasn''t always around when Rino wanted him to be. However, the cat always showed up in front of Rino during his darkest times, offering the lonely lich solutions in a roundabout way. Looking at his divination points, Ace fumed when he realised what his team leader did. Ark actually locked his incarnate ability! That jerk knew Ace would intervene with this daily quest and locked it while Ace was busy answering prayers. Sitting in his office, Ace pulled at the roots of his hair. There was only one more day before Rino had to use his few remaining day-offs, failing the time limit. Once that was over, it was punishment time - something Ace desperately wanted to avoid. Walking over to the reflecting pond, the God of Prayers wondered if Rino had a solution. He might be able to use his remaining day-off credits, but apart from that, there wasn''t anything else to save Rino from receiving divine punishment. Everything about this daily quest was part of the siblings'' ploy to make Rino produce more offering items for them. With other god clients pestering them for goods, Ark was finally showing his true colours, and Ace wondered how long it would take before Rino plotted a revolution. If he could blow up a world once, he could do it twice. Chapter 177 - Building Zera Mill Time was not on anyone''s side. It most certainly despised Rino. When he failed the first timeline to finish constructing his windmill, he used the remaining day-offs he bought previously. It was a safety that Rino did not expect to be used in such a manner. He could ask the farmers to increase their production, but Rino didn''t want to subject them to overworking as a punishment they certainly did not deserve after that backbreaking highway construction. If anything, they deserved a break. The lich wanted to introduce the hot springs to the trolls and earth gnomes. Yet, it was difficult to let anyone go on a vacation with the deadline up against his neck. In just four more hours, he was going to experience the punishment use in all his quests. There wasn''t much Rino could do at this point. If he forced his minions to work overtime, he would lose his respect as a leader. A king who could only rule using fear and oppression wasn''t a good ruler. === Daily Quest #21 Objective: Build a Windmill Time Limit: 14 Days te) Tutorial here. Reward: Complex Food Recipe Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === That deduction of sleep hours was probably the most painful punishment. Rino wasn''t as worried about the Curse of Overtime simply because he took precautions. Technically, work would be done only within his marked out territories. Both Town Zera and all of Noir Province had the Eternal Night enchantment. Despite the beliefs of many in his previous world, Rino was no genius. He was just an ordinary person with magic abilities and a very hungry attitude towards learning. The lich strongly believed that there was a solution to every problem. People simply did not try hard enough to create it. His childhood experiences shaped his paranoid nature. In everything that Rino did, he wanted to cover every base to the best of his abilities with several action ns in case something did not go his way. Thankfully, this mindset proved extremelypatible with the research career he established. Even after receiving a new body and identity, this trait did not disappear. If anything, a Rino without any title or reditation was like a wild animal released from his cage. Everything that he did was for this moment where he awaited the worst to happen. If he was going to be a ruler, Rino did not want to be a short-sighted fool. His n wasid to rule the world he was forced to build a kingdom for and give the gods a huge surprise. The progress of the windmill building was very slow because the earth gnomes and pygmy dwarves were still trying to figure out how to fit the grindstone tes. On the bright side, while they did that, the windmill base and underground storage were picking up pace. The trolls worked together with the shadow spectres to ce the stone bs for the base while the speedy killer rabbits transported materials using Rino''s dimensional storage essories. Two more hours until divine punishment¡­ Strangely, Rino was feeling very calm. It was the kind of silence Rino remembered apanying him when he was under house arrest, awaiting his sentence when the nobles gathered together trying to frame him for plotting a coup d''¨¦tat. The magician tower fought in his name and honour while the royal family remained neutral to the conflict, refraining from passing a quick judgement for all the crimes the nobles tried to pin on a lowly baron like him. Zera Mill slowly took form. After Rina suggested using weight and reinforcement charms, the windmill stopped caving in under the weight of the four thousand kilograms of grindstone tes. The general structures were finally holding together. Deezer felt proud that their architectural design did not need to bepromised for the heavy grindstone tes. Rino did tell them to shift everything that needed to be fitted into the building and fixed upter. The shell had to be ready first while they worked on the interior. However, for thest two days, all they could do was repeatedly m against this impossible wall of reality that threatened to throw all their ns out the window. For days, with Rino, the architectural team tried to design and redesign, tweaking everything that they could tweak to the finalised design. It was easy toplete the windmill using some prototypes. However, nobody expected different factors to affect the results when they started building a full-sized windmill. With everyone getting busy, following the directions of the building coordinators, Rino took a step back to conserve his energy. Presently, his low mana reserves were continuing to deplete as they worked. The Nightless Underpass was getting put to good use for the past few days as the courier rabbits worked without a break to bring all the materials they needed. Rino simply did not have the correct expertise to build this masterpiece despite resolving the material crisis. The vanes were crafted ording to the design under Aiden and Griffith''s watchful eyes. However, when they started mounting it to the axle, the vanes would not stay in position and not even hardened cement could hold them in ce at the angle required. Rino spent a long time trying to find a solution, but new problems continued to surface. He thought designing the windmill was the hardest part. However, every stage of building Zera Mill was a hurdle. Before he had time to find a way to affix the vanes onto the axis, The base of the windmill copsed despite his previous ground treatment magic. It turned out that the windmill''s ground structure was too firm and the carved out stone bs for the base building could not bnce on the raised ground. Earth magic could raise and firm the ground beneath the windmill. However, Rino did not ount for ttening the terrain before it was built. With all his engineers busy trying to resolve the vane problem, nobody realised that the windmill''s base was nted until it copsed, breaking many precious resources that Rina and She spent trying to salvage. In the end, Zerg told Rino that it might be faster to request new materials from Noir Province instead of trying to repair the broken materials. In terms of cost-efficiency, Zerg was right. Hence, the killer rabbits were put to work once more, doubling on the number of runs they made in a day to bring the broken stone bs while the earth gnomes fixed the surface of raised ground. The trolls did their best with the help of Acht''s team, drilling the structural pirs into the reinforced ground with little sess. The methods that they used to build the barn could not be used to build the windmill. Rino had to abandon helping the other teams to help resolve their issues because it took precedence. After several experiments to find the best material to hold the structural pirs in ce. The creeping vines from the jungle worked best, and Rino spent a good part of the night taming the creeping vine and forcing it to be part of his monster undead minion. After making the creeping vine monster the windmill''s guardian, new problems surfaced again before the vane was affixed. The trolls who built the base and structure broke the stairs while transporting the first grindstone te to the second level. Eventually, Rino told the trolls to leave the tes to the shadow spectres. It took all nine shadow spectres with Rina and the genesis fairies to bring the first grindstone te up. The wood creaked and bent dangerously as they eased the fixed grindstone te, and Zerg reported the situation. Not wanting to test the strength of the treated jungle wood, Rino ordered everyone to cease bringing the next te up. They do not know how to affix the axle yet, but that wouldeter. First, he had to find a way to put everything they needed inside this windmill structure. It was easier said than done. Even with the creeping vine monster guardian''s assistance, the windmill struggled to hold itself upright. It resembled a house of cards that could topple at any moment. The vanes were not light either, and cing them right at the top, Rino had a feeling the current windmill would be blown apart by the wind. How did themoners build such a thing without the assistance of magic? Rino might never find out now that there was nobody left to ask. Everyone he knew in the previous world had to be dead. Perhaps they were in better ces now while he was stuck here in a new kind of hell. After Rina''s suggestion, things were finally starting to resemble the prototype windmill. Heavy enchantments were used, and his junior sister spared no mana when using high-level enchantments on the second grindstone te. He could not me her, but Rino had to excuse himself for a while, feeling slightly ill as his mana reserves dipped even lower. Only five minutes left toplete this windmill. They weren''t going to make it. Whatever! Rino steeled himself for the curse of overwork. A death earned by overworking didn''t sound too bad either. It wasn''t his ideal death, but death was still death. Beggars couldn''t be choosers. Chapter 178 - Divine Curse Of Overworking As the timer counted down, Rino felt his motivation to get anything done dwindle. If the gods were going to curse him and deduct his sleep hours, he should simply not do anything. After all, why put in so much effort for something they could do personally? It sounded like a good deal to Rino. As someone familiar with cases of body possession, Rino assumed it would be alright for the gods to control his body to do work like some sort of puppet. At least he no longer had to worry about resolving crisis after crisis. They would resolve it for him. After all, gods were meant to be more powerful and knowledgeablepared to mortals. Ark called everyone over to gather in his office as he observed Rino. Ever since Rino exceeded his deadline for the main quest, the gods have been keeping an eye on their chosen one. Rino did his darndest, and his actions were not unappreciated. Phil and Ace spoke up on Rino''s behalf, and even Stephanie had to admit they must have overestimated Rino''s abilities to build a windmill in two weeks. "Should we extend his deadline?" Stephanie asked after Ace pointed out how Rino was not wasting time by building the Nightless Underpass. It was a strategic move that was good in the long run. Doing so now was better than doing itter. Besides, none of the gods added transportation projects into one of their daily quests. It wasn''t meaningless, even if it took a lot of time to set it up. Ark remained unmoved despite his team members speaking up on Rino''s behalf. He wasn''t blind. However, they were also in trouble if Rino did not farm and offer crops to the reward offering shop. The other gods were fuming at the dy, and while he was a little unfair to Rino with the deadline of the quest, it was a necessary move. Ace and Phil weren''t dumb. They knew what Ark''s major concern was. However, it wasn''t fair for Rino, who gave nothing short of his best for every quest. He might bezy at times, but they had to admit. Nobody could question his actions after seeing how well Noir Province was operating even after Rino left to expand his empire. Rino was far more brilliant than they could anticipate. Even without the god''s irvoyance, his vision about the future and the empire he wanted to build exceeded all their expectations. "It''s unfortunate, but a deal is a deal. Rino could not finish his project in two weeks. He decided on his own to create the grindstone and build the highway instead of prioritising. This is his responsibility to bear. He knew the consequences when he decided to prioritise other projects. We need not feel guilty about it. I know how hardworking he is and how brilliant his mind works. However, a pawn that doesn''t do as they are told is not needed in this grand chess game. Don''t forget who we are. We''re gods." Nobody spoke after listening to Ark''s reminder about who they were. Indeed, Rino was a splendid mortal. His mind was amazing, and his ability to create what gods could not do was astounding. However, he was still a pawn to be used by gods who had far greater responsibilities to oversee. "I understand," Phil agreed, shocking Ace and Stephanie greatly. Of all the gods, Phil was the one they thought would silently disagree with Ark''s judgement. Even Stephanie felt slightly bad for Rino when she learned why her brother was doing this. Initially, she only wanted to punish and torment Rino for being such an arrogant mortal. However, after watching him and learning a little more about why he did what he did, she started to tolerate him a little more. Ace couldn''t believe what he was hearing. Phil was siding with Ark even if he knew what Ark was plotting. Why?! cing a hand on Ace''s shoulder, Phil looked at Ace in the eye. "Being kind andpassionate is your strong point. However, we cannot allow our emotions to sway the objective that must be aplished. It''s not apletely terrible thing for Rino either. The Curse of Overworking does not cause pain. The deduction of his sleep hours might wound Rino a little, but it''s not something that cannot be earned back in the future. We are gods. We can create opportunities for him and reward him ordingly as our divine powers grow. Don''t let a short-term setback ruin the view of your future." Ace hated it. How could Phil say this kind of thing? How was he different from Ark, who was all about divinity and power? Phil was literally thest person Ace thought would agree with Ark''s decision, aside from himself. Utterly betrayed, the god of prayers said nothing and simply walked away. Stephanie remained neutral. Unlike Ace, she didn''t really care what the oue was. If Rino was punished for failing the quest, she would simply carry out the punishment. After all, she designed that system. However, Phil''s support was unexpected. "What made you change your mind? I thought you and Ace were on the same page?" Ark asked. Phil looked at the team leader with an unusual intensity. Nobody knew what the old god ofndscaping did before he retired. However, his team only knew him as an easy-going and peace-loving gentle god. Ark felt slightly frightened at how much Phil seethed internally even though he gained the god''s consent for the n to punish Rino. "I hope you know what you''re doing, leader. If this ends up badly, you can only bear the consequences of your actions together with your sister, just like how you want to make Rino bear the consequences for his decisions." As Phil left, Ark felt his knees quake. Slumping into his chair in a daze, he did not hear his sister calling his name until she pped him. "So, how do you want to set the punishment?" Stephanie asked. Still reeling from the shock of that lightly veiled threat, Ark swallowed and shakily followed Stephanie to her workroom. It wasn''t easy being a team leader. Ark always believed that whatever he did was for the greater good. He was great at reading the intentions of more powerful gods. His form for sess was to always err on the side of less sin but more benefit. He did not need to get a huge slice of anyone''s pie. He was happy receiving scraps from those who fought for the pie. A little of everything would umte over time, and that was how Ark built this team to its former glory. Yet, after Rino''s existence, Ark still could not understand anything. Everything looked like it was going well. Yet, why did it all end in a moment without any signs or notice? "Don''t punish him too harshly. Just get the offerings we need from him to fulfil all those backed up orders," he told his sister, who raised her brow. "That''s all? Offerings only? Do we want to take this chance to milk him for more inventory? I know a few goddesses who would love to try Taro. A goddess friend of mine from my graduation batch imed that she has a secret recipe that would need a lot of Taro." Ark paused. "Has she ced an order?" The goddess shook her head sheepishly. "I told her that the production queue was overloaded for a while because I thought we wouldn''t be able to cope with so many unfulfilled trades." Sighing heavily, Ark wondered why his sister was the way she was. If she''d taken that order, he could use this chance towork and snatch a piece of that pie for their future developments. "It''s fine. Just take the orders next time. We''ll worry about fulfilmentter. Set Rio''s curse to mild. Give him control of his body and mana but restrict his physical territory to farming. Eliminate all other options for now and add a time extension reward at the end of his punishment quest." Stephanie got busy, taking orders from her brother, and Ark locked himself in the office to think about Phil''s warning. Down in the small world, Rino wondered what was taking the gods so long to give him his punishment. Fifteen minutes passed after he failed toplete his daily quest on time. He thought he would get smite by lightning, so he deliberately stood in an open field away from any important structures while coordinating the slow windmill constructions. Ping! The familiar system sound notification took Rino by surprise. He wasn''t cursed? Yet, when Rino opened the notification in his system''s mailbox, he found himself getting forcefully teleported to a different dimension. === Punishment Quest [Curse of Overtime] Objective: Harvest the following to be offered to the system 0/100 sacks of rice 0/100 crates of taro 0/100 crates of potato 0/100 sacks of corn 0/100 sacks of soybeans 0/100 bushels of wheat Time Limit: NA Redemption: 14 Days Time Extension for Daily Quest #21 im your redemption here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep every 24 hours quest is notpleted. === In this new dimension, Rino realised that he could not interact with his minions. The farm had a small plot of every different kind of crop. Each plot represented one sack or crate worth of crop, and the instructions in the mail made it clear that Rino must use magic or physicalbour to grow and harvest them. All harvested crops will automatically be sacrificed towards the offering shop, and he would not be let out of this ce until hepleted the requirements. Sighing at the lengths these gods would go to just to make him offer them crops, Rino wondered if he should humour them. Chapter 179 - Disobedient Child Ace wasn''t disappointed when the godsined that Rino was eating away at their divinity and ignoring the severity of the punishment quest. Ark was frustrated. Freezing time to bring Rino into a system dungeon to harvest the crops for offering while giving him free will was a test of their patience. Although Rino''s connection with his minions was severed, he still had his mana. How difficult was it to harvest the crops that Rino already grew? They made the special punishment dungeon so that harvesting was easier on Rino, and he did not need to spend time travelling between two provinces to keep up with the order requirements. Rino also made it clear that he did not feel like making his summons work overtime. His desire to shoulder all responsibilities moved Ark momentarily but now, the god was regretting it. Even Stephanie had tough at her brother''s decision. She could always increase the harshness of the punishment, but Ark refused. Phil''s smug expression and Ace''s satisfaction made the team leader continue sticking to his guns. Besides, it wasn''t as if there waspletely no progress made. It was a snail''s pace, and the systempletely deducted all of Rino''s umted sleep hours. It could not deduct what Rino did not have, so the bnce continued to maintain at zero. Once Rino found out, heughed for a good while and wondered what he could do in this special punishment dungeon. There really wasn''t much the gods could do to him here after he had no sleep hours left. They could always smite him, but the lich doubted they would do it. If magicians were limited by the amount of mana they had, gods should be limited by something simr. Rino concluded they were only doing this because they were at the mercy of something greater than the gods monitoring him. Revenge was best served cold, and Rino savoured every moment of his punishment. Honestly, it was rather peaceful in this dimension. His mana no longer depleted even if it did not increase. The manualbour was also somewhat therapeutic. It was easy to forget that it really was a punishment for him, and Rino sometimes forgot that he was meant to be building a windmill as he filled up new sacks of soybeans. When the sleep wallet was emptied, Rino expected the system to make him owe sleep hours from deduction, but nothing of that sort happened. If anything, it simply gave an error message saying that no hours were detected in the wallet, and the bnce remained at a constant null. "One potato, two potatoes, three potatoes¡­" Rino''s counting drove Ark crazy. The gods who were fed up with waiting started threatening his team and even warned Ark that the deal was off if they did not deliver soon. With the pressure from above, the team leader could not help but hate how idle Rino was inparison. "You brought this upon yourself," Ace yawned as he leisurely answered prayers, keeping an eye on Rino. Phil said nothing and remained neutral. His expression was unreadable, which made Ark very ufortable. Stephanie was worried and offered to increase the punishment difficulty by taking over Rino''s body to speed the process up, but Ark declined. Taking direct control of a chosen one''s body consumed more divinity than sending an incarnate down. "How many sacks of offerings do we have now?" the leader asked, and Stephanie counted them. "If he sends the current sack of soybeans, we''d have at least a third of whatever he submitted so far. It''s far from the quota required, but we should be able to partially deliver the more urgent orders." Hearing that they had about a third of whatever they needed, Ark felt a headache starting again. A third of the orders they needed was far from enough. The bulk orders and bigger clients who threatened everything to be delivered in the next few days made up almost seventy percent of the quota they set for Rino. "Ace, do something." Ark''s sudden order surprised Ace. However, he didn''t care if they were in the same boat now. Even if their team was demoted, he had a feeling there would be more dire consequences for the dumb siblings than for him. He had no idea what would happen to Phil but honestly, he didn''t want to be told to clean up someone else''s mess. "No." Shocked that Ace outrightly disobeyed an order, Ark gaped like a fish. Stephanie shrunk back when she saw how fury was building up in the clenched fists. Her brother rarely became angry, but when he did, it was rather scary. Phil, who remained silent from the beginning, raised a brow at Ark. "Are you asking Ace to clean up the mess you made?" The question worked like cold water over a raging boner, and Ark''s anger died down. Ever since Phil''s lightly veiled threat, the team leader did some digging into Phil''s background. The god ofndscaping was retired now, but he was no minor god in his prime. What a creator level god was doing on their team remained a mystery to Ark. Phil might not be a very important god now, but there were still those within the upper echelon who would pull favours for him if he asked. "I-I didn''t mean to do that. It''s just that at Rino''s current rate of working, we won''t be able to deliver all those orders on time." The tension was stifling, and Stephanie held her breath. On one hand, she was concerned for her brother and their status as gods if they lost the deal. However, Rino really did not deserve what he was going through now. Ace might be right the first time. If they asked nicely and negotiated instead of trying to oppress Rino, things could be very different. Unfortunately, the pride of gods got in the way of the bigger picture. Putting aside their differences temporarily, the four gods looked at Rino talking to the wheat stalk he cut down. Phil and Ace shared a look. After the incident with Phil and Ark, the god ofndscaping went to find Ace to exin himself. Ace was hurt by the initial betrayal and was very doubtful. However, something about Phil''s n made Ace wonder why the god ofndscaping never acted earlier if he knew about the corrupted situation and games that the siblings were ying. Without much of an option, Ark was willing to consider anything. He absolutely did not want to be the viin, but he still wanted results. "I have a solution," Ace announced and paused. "However, I have a condition for the both of you." Nervous, Ark and Stephanie waited for it. "Give Phil your system administration rights and limit Stephanie''s domain ess. I don''t appreciate how you locked some of my domain functions. The use of divinity in our group should not be up to your sole decision." Giving Phil rights to the system as an administrator meant that Ace no longer trusted him as a team leader. Feeling insulted and humiliated, Ark tried to negotiate, but Ace cut him off crudely. "I don''t think you have time to negotiate about power and rights. All your decisions up till now have proved nothing but a huge disappointment to everyone. I can''t say that it would be better if I was in charge. Hence, asking Phil to assist and guide us as an assistant leader isn''t such a terrible idea. The one stirring up trouble the most from the beginning till now has to be Stephanie. Her words and actions constantly antagonised our chosen one. Hence, my request for her ess to be limited isn''t unreasonable." Nothing Ace said was wrong, and the siblings couldn''t refute. "I''ll do it. Just help me to settle all the orders, will you?" Smirking, Ace nced at the disobedient child in the punishment dimension. Instead of harvesting the taro seriously, Rino took the time to practice drawing new magical arrays in the soil. "Sure. Send me down again, and I''ll talk to him." Ark looked unsure, but Ace and Phil insisted on it. Ace wasn''t sure if appearing as Noir in that strange dimension would give away his identity. However, Phil assured the god of prayers that Ace did not need to show up as Noir. He could assume the form as Noir''s previous master instead. They worked on the storyline, and Ace had to admit, he was d Phil wasn''t his enemy. The god of prayers might be smarter than those siblings, but Phil was like a crafty fox when he was serious. Those siblings and foxy trickster goddesses were no match for someone previously part of the upper echelon. His ploy to put the arrogant team leader in his ce was something Ace supported wholeheartedly. However, he declined Phil''s offer to help him move up the ranks of godhood. The weight of responsibility that came with power was something he and Rino despised. It was why, out of the four gods watching over Rino, he was the best candidate to convince Rino to stop throwing a tantrum and return to what he had to do. Chapter 180 - Meeting Noir鈥檚 Master Rino was in the middle of designing a useless array just to frustrate the gods who assigned him the punishment when someone else appeared in this dimension. Immediately, Rino threw the wheat stalk he was holding and stood on guard against the new person. She was dressed in a ck medieval dress with a ck veil covering her face. "Who are you?" Thedy did not reply quickly. She turned slowly to the lich, who caught an eyeful of cleavage spilling over the bodice of her dress. However, he wasn''t interested in her cup size. If anything, he was more intrigued by her skin colour. To be more precise, he wondered why she was a little translucent. Thedy chuckled and Rino concluded that she must be dead. That echo wasn''t something normal people could master, and the way she glided over slowly did not seem like walking. She had to be a ghost. It was the only exnation. As a magician dealing with many odd cases in his previous life, Rino had his fair share of experience with the paranormal. Spirits only linger when they have unfilled regrets. Thisdy must be no different. However, her appearance in this dungeon must mean that she died here or was looking for him specifically. Her aura was different from other spirits. It was powerful yet mysterious. The elegant dress wasn''t made ofmon materials, and Rino recognised that it was woven from wool. The veil was spun from silk, and those wooden essories were actually runes. In other words, this was the lingering soul of a powerful magician. Rino had no idea who she was, but he had an inkling they were not here to help him with his harvesting. "Rino. I''ve been watching you for a while. It''s a pity that we have to meet like this, but with such a powerful barrier and army, I couldn''t approach you." Whoever this magician was, she didn''t seem hostile. If anything, Rino was more confused about her motive now. If she watched him for a while, did that mean he had a stalker from a different dimension? How did she know him, and for how long has this been going on? Ace observed Rino''s reactions from behind the veil and listened to Phil''s feedback from above. The lich was very creeped out now, and the god of prayer quickly cut the act. The more he dragged this out, the more Rino would doubt him. "Thank you for taking care of my only disciple. He might not seem like he is fond of you, but I assure you that''s not the case." Disciple? Rino could not help but wonder what kind of meth thisdy was smoking. He did not recall taking care of anyone who wasn''t part of his undead army. Also, there weren''t that many people he knew who could be a disciple of a powerful magician¡­ "Your disciple?" Thedyughed lightly, covering her mouth with one hand. "I was slightly surprised when he allowed you to name him. I believe he now goes by the name of Noir?" Noir¡­ that name was familiar. It took Rino a while to remember that Noir Province was named after a particr ck cat who could use magic. The cat mentioned that he already had a master, but Rino did not know anything else. Could thisdy really be¡­? Following the customs of his previous world, Rino stood at attention and bowed slightly. "Sorry for the disrespect earlier, Noir''s master. It''s just not every day I see a ghost loitering in a dimension for farming created by the gods of this world." Indeed, Ace agreed wholeheartedly. The story was a little wonky, but Phil assured him that as long as he stuck to the script, Rino would buy it. "It''s not a coincidence either. You could probably tell how much power I have left. I followed Noir around in secret for a long time to see where he would go and what he would do after my passing. Then, I found you. After observing you from afar for a while, I think I can rest easy knowing that Noir has someone to look out for him when he needs it." When Noir''s master said she didn''t have much time or power left, Rino found it hard to believe. The aura and pressure she exuded as a spirit was more powerful than what Kragami could manage. She must have been both a beautiful and talented magician while she was alive. Rino''s natural capacity was nothingpared to thisdy. No wonder Noir told him that he could not ept another person as his master. When they told Rino that he was the best magician, he never believed it. Now, he understood what a truly great magician was like. It was a little unfortunate that he could not meet Noir''s master under better circumstances, but he was still happy to know that he still had a lot of room to grow as a magician. "It''s my pleasure," he told the witch. "I might not be as powerful as you were in your prime nor as knowledgeable as you were. It was Noir who gave me pointers for dark magic that I struggled with. Although my understanding is stillcking, I will do my best to be there for Noir if he needs me." In his mind, Ace couldn''t believe that Phil''s backstory worked. He had to fight the urge to celebrate and maintained the act of Noir''s master even if he felt a little fuzzy hearing how Rino thought of his fur ball incarnate. "I''m d, chosen child. It''s a shame I cannot stay to witness the birth of a glorious empire. However, I will watch them through Noir''s eyes. Be well, Monarch of Solitude. It was my pleasure meeting you." The grand and graceful exit happened as suddenly as she appeared, and Rino stared at the empty spot. Was Noir''s master just gone like this? For some reason, he found it hard to believe what just happened. Was it an apparition or an illusion? After remaining trapped in this dimension for so long, Rino started to wonder why she appeared before him in this ce. Was Noir in some kind of predicament? The ck cat was powerful, but even so, Rino was slightly worried. Noir''s master did not approach him, asking him to rescue Noir or anything of that sort. If anything, it reminded him about a grandparent checking out their grandchild''s potential marriage partner and giving them blessings. The thought warmed Rino''s hollow rib cage, and he looked at the punishment quest. It must have taken her a while to break through this barrier created by the gods to bid him goodbye. Her power was amazing even after death, and Rino couldn''t imagine how long it had been since her passing. However, the attempt must have exhausted her, and Rino felt slightly bad for taking so long in this ce. Making up his mind and feeling slightly inspired now that he met Noir''s master, Rino decided that this level of power wasn''t sufficient. He wasn''t nearly as great a magician as Noir''s master was. There was still a long road in front of him, and it started with the mysterious dwarven mines that Rino had not explored. Intel. Answers. Rino needed them now more than ever. Ace copsed as his consciousness returned to his body with a shudder. Phil steadied him so that the god of prayers would not fall off the chair. They watched as Rino picked up his working speed. "Good work," the god ofndscaping patted Ace on the back and continued to observe Rino from the reflecting pool. Ark and Stephanie were out of the office, talking to their clients to reassure them that the order would be delivered by the deadline and begging for more chances. Honestly, Ace didn''t sympathise with them. If they properly handled the situation and knew how to treat Rino better, none of this would happen. Phil told Ace to rest while he monitored the system. He purposely altered the quest rewards a little, not that Rino knew yet. Two weeks wasn''t sufficient enough to finish that grand windmill. The windmill was not known as a breakthrough creation of Rino''s world without reason. It was the product of many engineering failures and a project that seeded after the humans and dwarves settled on a war truce. The dwarves put their knowledge of gears while the humans put their carpentry skills to birth this mechanical monster, capable of removing backbreaking manualbour forever. Those with magic might not find the windmill or grindstone a big deal. After all, it was always easier to use a spell or rune to automate something. However, for themoners without magical talents, the millers were hailed as gods. Without them, there would be no bread or pasta. The stoneworkers who created grindstones, repairing and maintaining them, also kept their secrets close to their hearts, only passing them down by word of mouth from one generation to the other. Rino did not have any chance to learn it even if he saw something from his time with his dwarven friend. Phil only captured that memory and drafted a blueprint based on the tips he received from the god of smithing. It wasn''t aplete blueprint, but if Rino had a little more time to run through that concept, he would be able to figure out its secrets. The gnomes were not worse than the dwarves in Rino''s memory when it came to designing skills. Chapter 181 - Time Extension Unable to speak, when Ace and Phil informed him that Rino submitted all the goods they needed to deliver, Ark and Stephanie were forced to eat humble pie. The scathing look Ace gave them sent them out of the office quickly to deliver the backed up orders. "I think that you would have no problems if Phil and I took over redesigning the offering reward system?" With an ugly expression, Ark agreed almost unwillingly. "Would Rino turn in the crops steadily if you changed it?" Ark asked through clenched teeth. With Phil backing the arrogant young genius god, he started to understand why Stephanie was constantly trying to find faults with him. Ace shrugged. "Depends on his mood. I could only do my best to appeal to him and hope that this smooths out the bad experience you''ve both caused him from the mismanagement." Stephanie fumed but held her tongue. She simply picked up the packages and stormed out. Ark pulled himself together and donned that practised mask of calcted indifference, thanking Ace before he excused himself politely to deliver the goods. "I look forward to the increased offerings under your wisdom," Ark smiled. "It''s a good thing we have both of you on our team. Stephanie and I will start expanding our influences to gather more orders from other gods. If you have any requests for new items to introduce in the offering rewards shop, do let us know." The false sincerity made Ace shudder after the team leader left. Phil shook his head and ignored Ark''s attempt at making amends. "Don''t mind them, I extended Rino''s time by a month so that he could concentrate on the other infrastructure projects he had in mind. Feel free to visit him as Noir anytime. I''ve set aside a bigger budget of our divinity for your use." Making Phil a system administrator was probably the best thing Ace managed to do in this dumb team. Honestly, he did not need much divinity to do his task. However, he preferred not to be pulled by an overly tight leash by someone who did not know where they were going. With the generous budget allocation, Ace felt like he could finally breathe. "Thank you." Phil chuckled and ruffled Ace''s hair like an affectionate grandfather. "Don''t mention it. Now, maybe you should start working on that reward shop system. I''m clueless about currencies. If it were up to me, I would price the currencies the same as what they sold in vending machines here." Hearing that, Ace shuddered. "I think I''ll take care of the pricing. We don''t want a GF credit intion and Rino abdicating his kingdom building quest just yet. However, I think it''s only right that he earns some of those precious sleep hours back. Do you have the list of orders that are currently on hold?" As the gods busied away, Rino was finally back in Town Zera. All that monotonous farming work gave him some time to ponder about the windmill''s failure and how he could improve that for the watermill. Ping! The quest was updated once more, and Rino observed that his deadline was adjusted ordingly like a reset. However, there was something strange about the numbers. === Daily Quest #21 Objective: Build a Windmill Time Limit: 30 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Complex Food Recipe Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Wasn''t that number previously fourteen? When did the gods be so generous? They didn''t just extend his time. They doubled it! What kind of shenanigans were they ying at? This time, Rino could not help but be a little wary. Apart from this little update, there wasn''t anything else hinting at him what their intentions could be. "Whatever," he concluded. Even if it was just a small apology, he could still put it to good use. After reflecting on the possible problems he would face after finishing with the windmill, Rino decided that he needed to build a dam to control the flow of water and the speed. COnstructing that dam might take a while. "My liege?" She asked after Rino did not respond. They were still in the middle of sorting out the structural problems with the windmill when Rino zoned out. Snapping back to the present timeline, Rino looked around. The trolls were still busy trying to haul huge wooden gears up the stairs of the half-built windmill while the pygmy dwarves struggled to attach the vanes to the main axle at an angle. Time did not pass for them, even though Rino spent a good number of days in that punishment dimension. It took him a while to remember what he was doing before meeting Noir''s master and mass harvesting crops for offerings. "Oh, get the fairies to use the mana web array to power the windmill''s area. We might not be able toplete the windmill mechanically, but with some magic, I think we can smooth some physical problems." Calling the trolls and fairies to gather around, Rino gave them new orders. Before building the windmill ording to the n, the fairies would first enchant everything with a few spells. Mostly, they would enchant it with resistance, light-weight and waterproofing. Rino would draw a huge area array after the windmill was ready to remove moisture in the area for flour preservation. "Use cement to seal any gaps on the outside and inside. Pack the walls with dry straws to prevent the chill from seeping in. We cannot light any fires in a windmill, and it is not wise to let any wind inside where the power is processed for packing. I will create a heat regting spell, but the temperature cannot be too hot." He was about to dish new orders and sort the duties of his town citizens when there was a system update. Ping! Curious, Rino sent them to work and excused himself, checking thetest update. [Pricing in the Offering Reward Shop has been updated. Discounted rates are limited for a certain period. Kindly use them wisely.] Discount?! Rino had to tell his heart to be still as he reread the new system notification. He had no idea how the gods knew about this special D-word, but as amoner and a very stingy baron, Rino loved discounts! Sales were always his weakness, and even if he had nothing particr to shop for, Rino would drop his research nine out of ten times when he heard that there was a sale festival on-going. His fingers twitched, and before Rino realised what he did, he was already browsing through the updated Offering Reward Shop. The items there did not seem very different for now, but the prices were a lot more reasonable in addition to the number of things he could offer to the system in exchange for GF Credits. Under the newest section of the shop tab right at the top was a special banner indicating the three-day time limit offer. Rino tapped on the "Read more" icon and had to sit down from too much excitement. For only three days starting tomorrow at midnight, the Reward Offering Shop will ept any crops for GF Credits that could be used to turn in for unlimited sleep hours. The lich quickly checked the time as his brain worked on hyperdrive. Compared to the urgency of building a dam or fixing his windmill, Rino could not pass up this rare opportunity and generosity by the usually mean gods. He would use this discount festival for farming as many crops as he possibly could and rope in as many of his shadow minions and fairies as possible. Anyone who participated will be duly rewarded in the form of alcohol. He only hoped Kragami and the beer production would keep up. Designing a simple reason to pause every ongoing project, Rino decided to call this the Thanksgiving Festival. It was originally introduced by the church to raise funds for a crisis twenty years ago, appealing to the nobles by threatening them subtly using God''s name. The people who received donated food and survived the famine hailed the church''s effort as something to be remembered. The following year, they bought lots of food and offered it back to the church during the same period. The king decided tomemorate the spirit of gratitude, naming the day Thanksgiving and every year. It was a grand festival right after a bountiful harvest. Rino had no idea what kind of story he should spin for his Thanksgiving event. Would it be too soon? Maybe he could think along the same lines ande up with a new name. However, he soon realised that this opportunity happened because he was punished and not given reasonable time toplete his initial daily quest. Feeling a little bitter over thanking the people whonded him in this predicament, Rino decided against naming it Thanksgiving. Instead, he was going to make this apetition with beer as the reward. Farm Festival? Beer Festival? Competitive Farming Day? Rino sighed at his deplorable naming sense. He should ask Kragami for help. Chapter 182 - T.A.R.O Festival After a long call trying to dodge questions that might expose his identity as a reincarnated court magician and his rtionship to the gods, Rino finally found a good name for this harvest festival. Thankfully, Kragami had a more decent naming sense. The T.A.R.O Festival, short for [Take Advantage of Revenge Opportunities Festival], was quickly announced. The trolls started making preparations, and all the killer rabbits offered to farm soybeans when Rino promised them a soybean sack each if they helped farm as many as they could in the next three days. Acht and his team were on their way back to Noir Province to bring Zerg''s vigers over. Most of the things Rino wanted to offer the gods could only be nted in Town Zera thanks to the warmer climate. Things like wheat and rice bagged a higher yield of GF Credits. After the revamp, the pricing system was more levelled and fair. Rino prioritised the crops he wanted to work on. Surprisingly, reeds were part of the newer items the gods now epted as an offering, so the fairies became busy under Kragami''smand. At the same time, Fronzo and Erika were in charge of farming spuds as much as they could. The most popr product of all with the most attractive GF Credit yield was, ironically, the taro. There was just something about the purple potato that made it irresistible to everyone, including gods. Kragami was addicted to the fine beer it madepared to the beer made from regr spuds. Everyone liked the sweet orange flesh on the insidepared to the muddy taste of the regr potatoes. Taro has be everyone''stest obsession, and there was no need to look for volunteers for this crop harvesting. All the fairies fought to volunteer, and Rino decided to put them on a roster, promising that anyone who helped with the festival at all will be given a purple potato buffet. It could be roasted, made into beer, sun-dried, turned to crispy strips and fried or even ttened into potato cakes. The newest obsession with taro was when Kragami cut them into extremely fine and thin slices like noodles that Rino knew off in his previous life. Then, they were boiled in animal fat broth and salted. The contrasting vour of salty and sweet made everyone instantly fall in love with the new soup. In addition, it only tasted better with tea leaves, as imed by Rina. Rino did not have the chance to try it yet, but T.A.R.O Festival was a very suitable name. There was little need for everyone else to know why he was calling for a sudden harvest festival if they were blinded by the delicious food they could enjoy if they helped out for the next three days. Up above, Ace and Phil started clearing out the storage room or more space to put the future offerings. If Rino was this enthusiastic, Stephanie and Ark should work harder to clear all the stock. Discounts were almost as magical as Noir''s existence, and if Ace knew that Rino had such a weakness, he could have helped Rino avoid the disaster that Ark created. As everyone busied in preparation for the T.A.R.O Festival starting in a few hours, time slowly crept by. Ping! [You have avable discounts waiting in the Offering Reward Shop. Please im them before they expire in 2 days 23 hours and 59 minutes.] Rino was still in the middle of helping the fairies expand the new farming plot when he read the system notification. Thankfully, he did not wait for the event to happen. Everyone was already busy farming and pulling out the first batch of grown taro from across the river. His battle strategy was simple. Rino assigned two-thirds of the avable farm space to grow Taro in Town Zera. The remaining was to grow wheat and soybeans while expanding the ready farnd for a greater harvest. The soybean part of the farm was looked after by the very enthusiastic killer rabbit n. Rino trusted that they did not need any management. Once they filled their sacks, they could fill the dimensional essories they wore and dump them in the underground storage. Although the underground storage system wasn''tpleted yet, the killer rabbits not farming soybeans quickly doubled their efforts toplete the project. In the meantime, Erika wasmunicating with Rino about the harvesting process in Spudville and Cypress County. Rino was the busiest for the next three days, running to and from Noir Province and Zera. He continued to empty inventories, storages and granaries to the system and when Fowler asked in front of the whole field of hobgoblins why Rino needed so many offerings. ording to the farmer, Rino only previously needed not more than two thousand potatoes in a day. Not wanting to expose himself and how he had a system or terrible rtionships with the gods, Rino only replied it was to refuel his depleted mana reservoirs used to construct Nightless Underpass. The word started spreading, and everyone simply bought his reason without questioning why Rino was in such haste. If anything, Rino''s honest answer only invoked more concern among thedies who expressed their gratitude towards their king by whipping up good food. Rino was d for the potato cakes and tasty taro noodles. It wasn''t a bad idea to work hard and indulge hard in eating what his minions harvested. Hence, Rino ordered the shadow ves to join the feast in rotating shifts so that they would constantly be working and partying at the same time. Morale was at an all-time high, and Rino saw how quickly his territory developed. Just two days ago, the opposite side of the river was still just empty banks. Now, trolls were tilling the field as genesis fairies activated the water runes to flood them. The seeds were soaked in the mana-imbued water constantly to prepare for quicker germination, and half of theplex underground storage system waspleted. Rino took this chance to quickly cast an area spell on the windmill building materials now that he had more mana reserves. The more his shadow ves ate, the faster his mana recovered. The more he regained his mana, the more things Rino found himself doing. That windmill that was meant to take almost a month toplete was put together single-handedly by Rino while everyone else farmed. Although he still had no idea how the grindstone tes worked, everything else was built ording to the gnomes'' design. Deezer and Bink may be dragged out of their research cave by Mutt for a while when Rino needed to confirm a few details, but everything else like attaching the vanes to the main axle and the rotating top part of the windmill fitted like a puzzle. Just like this, three very busy and chaotic days passed with more progress Rino had seen in thest two weeks. For the first time ever since the opening of Nightless Underpass, Rino brought everyone from Town Zera to Noir Province to meet the others also working under him. The sess of the Taro festival was astonishing, and Rino looked at his GF wallet bnce. === GF Credits: 560 1 GF = 8 hours sleep 10 GF = 1 day off === Even better, the miserable number of sleep hours he saved up before the punishment confiscated them so harshly was now back with a surplus. Rino felt the injustice he suffered before was nothingpared to the current joy. === Sleep Reward Wallet: Daily Sleep Withdrawal Limit: 8 hours (reset at midnight) Avable Sleep: 800 hours === Hot springs. Good food. Greatpany. Rino watched as Fronzo weed the Town Zera citizens, offering hospitality by introducing the new bathhouse that Kragami suggested, and Aiden oversaw while Rino was away. Those from Cypress County also joined the after T.A.R.O Festival in Spudville. Rino took this chance to look around his domain left in the hands of his subordinates. He was surprised by just how many fairies there were. The air was fully charged with mana from the increasing number of contracted fairies with the World Tree. When Rino visited the kiln, he saw that there were now five huge kilns instead of just one that Rino built personally. This must also be a project that Aiden oversaw. No wonder his teacher imed that they had been swamped. Apart from y, the kiln also helped to smelt sand and some hybrid concrete brick for experimenting with. World Tree Rino had gotten so huge that Rino no longer had to enter that stone mine to see it. Branches were growing out of the cave''s entrance now. Hence, the miners chose to mine their stones from the bottom of the rock mountain instead. The tour was nostalgic and Rino was reminded about his humble beginnings where there wasn''t even a proper knife when he first started. However, there was just one ce that remained untouched despite the booming developments everywhere. His humble cottage was still the same as he left it. The cottage must have been maintained regrly, most likely by Erika. Noir''s cat tree and basket were still there in case the ck feline ever needed a ce to return, and the interior was still as dark and gloomy as Rino remembered it. Home. This was his very first home in a foreign world, and while everyone else partied away at the huge T.A.R.O Festival sess, Rino settled in his humble farmhouse with just a sk of taro beer. He stared at the unlit firece and reminisced about his better time with Noir, reminded of Noir''s master''sst words. "When will you be back?" Chapter 183 - Baby Boom After the T.A.R.O Festival was over, Rino and Town Zera''s folks returned to the town. Zerg''s vige decided to settle down as farmers in Town Zera because there were simply more farms that needed tending. It took Rino many days to sort out the other tasks, such as the underground storage and windmill testing. He also had to cast many spells while helping the earth gnomes teach the trolls how to use the new farming tools. After a hectic week with still not much progress on the grindstone, Rino finally had some time to check his main quest. === Daily Quest #21plete) Objective: Build a Windmill Time Limit: 30 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Complex Food Recipe im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === With over twenty days remaining before he received a new quest, Rino decided to im this reward first while he built his dam, finished his barn and underground storage. The next thing he wanted to build was the waterwheel. Thankfully, building a water wheel was a lot easier than building the vanes of a windmill. The earth gnomes were able to quickly build the water wheel design ording to Rino''s ns, and things were progressing smoothly with Rina helping out. Rino did not have to lift a shadow tendril before they finished the first prototype. Rino took a step back and walked around Town Zera to update his town nning map with some spare time. Everything wasing together, but smooth progress always worried Rino. It was usually a signal of calm before the storm. It wasn''t as if Rino was pessimistic. He tried his best to believe in the good of all things. However, experience often told him to err on the cautious side because people tend to let down their guard and overlook stuff when things are going well. The fields Rino allocatednd for were sessfully turned into productive farnd. The genesis fairies were still fixing the sprinkler systems so that the crops would not grow too quickly. Even with Zerg''s vige helping with harvesting, they were still rather shorthanded. The crops grew quicker than the farmers could harvest them, a very odd problem that Rino never saw before in his previous world. The trolls and drows were getting along, the earth gnomes were more tolerable, the killer rabbit n was making themself useful, and Rino wondered if anything could possibly go wrong at this point. Maybe he was simply overly paranoid. Then, he walked past the animal pens and heard a cacophony of sounds that made him hesitate to go near. Thest time he came around the pens was almost a month ago, perhaps longer. Rino already lost track of time. However, how did the animals in the temporary cages multiply this quickly? It made no sense. Instead of the handful of animals Rino expected to see, there was now a sizable family in each pen growing continuously. Therge quails that gave birth to the first batch of babies have given birth to six others, and those baby quails were now hopping around ying tag. They were almost as big as the initial quail parents. More disturbingly, not mentioning the quails, Rino saw how big the little rabbit n was now over double digits. Didn''t She inform him that the rabbits gave birth just a few days ago? Why were there already so many hoppers? The drow did inform him that rabbits bred fast and crazily so as they were constantly in heat. It might exin why the adult rabbits were going at it again. At the rate that they were multiplying, Rino had a feeling that he might end up with as many rabbits as he did with special force bunnies. That barn project suddenly became a priority. The dam could wait for a while. Rino could easily finish that dam in a day if he abused magic anyway. "What brings you here, my lord?" Kamiya asked. He was managing the massive underground storage building project when Rino teleported right in front of him. The killer rabbit wasn''t very startled, but it was unusual for Rino to find anyone in particr. Normally, the dark lord would send Mutt to bring them over or summon them using the bond they shared. It was a little surprising, but Kamiya was convinced it must be important or private if Rino visited personally. The lich put up a quick sound barrier and cut the message short. "Those bunnies, is there anything you can do to make them stop humping for a while?" Not expecting such a personal question, Kamiya blushed even if he was mostly made of shadows. Rino tried not to make it sound personal, but he had no idea about Leporidae biology. It was usually the most effective way to gather information from those who knew about it and most likely experienced it first hand. For Kamiya, who was the leader of his n, he must have some experience to talk about it. How else would he get such a huge n to follow him? Rino did not know if any of his n followers were his offspring, but as the leader of a monster n, the duty of creating the next n head should fall on his shoulders. For a while, the horned rabbit did not speak. He did his best to phrase his words mentally. It was not a difficult question to answer, but he was embarrassed. No wonder Rino came in person and set up a sound barrier for privacy, catching him alone. "M-my lord¡­" Kamiya tried his best to sound decent talking about this. "Why would you like to know? Is any of my n members causing a problem? I can speak to them and handle it." "Uh¡­" Rino paused. As far as he knew, the shadow rabbits were keeping it in their pants. The only thing he might have a problem with was their constant munching of harvested soybeans, but it was a small price to pay for their diligence and speedy deliveries. "No, that''s not it," Rino cleared his throat out of habit to hide his difort even if they were using thought projections tomunicate. "I just wanted to know how to slow down the breeding speed for the rabbits in the temporary pen. The barn wouldn''t be ready soon enough at the rate that they are going at it." Hearing that it was nothing to do with his n, Kamiya rxed a little. In that case, the problem was more simple. Rabbits will breed whenever they see a mate avable. All Rino had to do was physically separate the males and the females. When Rino heard that, he quickly let She and Bink know that he wanted an extra partition made in the rabbit''s temporary holding pen. They currently had the babies separated from their parents. The lich did not think that the female and male rabbit would require separating because there was only one of each. Fowler held the rest of the rabbits in Spudville and Rino wondered if they faced a simr overpoption problem. "Is there anything else I could help you with, my liege?" Rino thought for a while and looked at Kamiya. The horned rabbit was very reliable, so Rino dumped the task ofpleting the barn project to him so that he could work on the other projects. So far, Rino had the recipe forplex food but not a good chef in Town Zera. Kragami requested a recipe book for him to experiment with Rino''s newest gastronomic inspiration. That was still a project pending, among other things - like building that damned dam. Oh yes, Rino had to get busy and build his stone cottage by the river that used the water wheel to power something else. He could think of several uses for that water wheel, and honestly, there was no reason to stop at one. He could build several water wheels along the river as long as he had a steady flow of water that could be provided by the water bell flowers if there was a drought. After all, if he could not stop the rabbits from breeding like crazy, he could put them for better uses such as biologicalpost and fur coats. "No, keep up the good work. I have high expectations from you and your n." Happy to receive praise, Kamiya bowed, and Rino left in a swirl of shadows. He returned to his study and stared at the newly bound books that Kragami delivered over. The reed paper factory production was increased significantly after Erika started teaching Fronzo and the hobgoblins how to read while the goblin shaman taught those who knew magic the basics of magic circles to assist them with chores like mining and gathering mulch. Feeling the book''s bark cover texture and reed fibre strings, Rino flipped to the first page and sighed inwardly. It was always the hardest to work on a spotless page without words. Picking up the brush made from plucked goat''s tail and mixing a little water onto the bone ash pile, Rino started writing. He only hoped Kragami was already familiar with his writing system or Erika would have to act as a trantor again. Chapter 184 - Spinning Churn With the barn project managed by Kamiya, Rino quickly finished penning down all the fancy recipes he knew from the reward he imed. Writing everything down took two days. Rino included detailed instructions with basic illustrations and design ns for specific cooking utensils that had to be used. A good example of something that the culinary experts of this world did not have yet was a mortar and pestle. Nobody thought about the concept of crushing or pounding spices together. Bitter leaves could be pounded for juice and used as a vour emphasiser in soups. The paste was handy for making original sauces and improves the texture of the gravy. Ignoring theck of culinary creativity in their culture, Rino shipped all twenty-four volumes of advanced culinary recipes to Kragami. The grindstone that they still have not figured out how to automate using kic energy was the most important thing. Rino designed a regr stone press that had to be turned manually. It was easier to crush rice, wheat and corn using that stone roller even the weakest skeleton could move than think of a way to spin the two-ton stone te on top of each other without touching. Mounting the two-ton stone te wasn''t an issue now that they had magic to assist. However, the grains were simply too small, and even if Rino lowered it further, the grains that entered the stone te funnel did not often make it into the gap. Those that did never came out as powder. They were missing something, but Rino didn''t know where to begin. All he did in this world was to reinvent the wheel. However, this particr wheel simply didn''t work. Maybe he was doing this wrong trying to invent the wheel when he was given a swamp to walk on. Whichever the case, he left the research and development to more capable hands. Rino found himself racing out for a new sketchpad and drew with a carved charcoal, histest invention. There was a reason why he insisted on something with wings, something with fur, something or meat and something that produced milk. The first three were part of his side quest, but thest was something Rino wanted to indulge in. Rino suffered fromctose intolerance in his previous world, even if that never stopped him from eating his cheeses or garlic toast. He also preferred white sauce to pesto sauce for his ribbon pasta, and it was something Rino wanted to gorge himself silly now that he did not suffer fromctose intolerance. Chilled milk cream was also a delicacy that only the royal family and magicians could enjoy all year round. Themon folks and nobles had to put up with well-chilled fruits instead because ice magic was a very rare thing toe across. In addition to requiring dual elements of water and air, the magician must have impable control. Simply put, there weren''t that many in the empire. Hence, Rino was one of the magicians who could freely create ice that everyone wanted to exploit during summers. That brought back memories, and the lich looked at his paper. The rough design was nowplete! The nanny goat he kidnapped from the rocky mountains was pregnant, but she wasn''t heavily pregnant. It would still take a while before Rino could enjoy any milk or dairy at all. Apart from the basic necessities like buckets for milking, there was one rather important invention that Rino needed to make his butter. Butter was something that could be universal in thenguage of cooking. If you had no oil or animal fat? Use butter. Heck, anything cooked with butter tasted better in general. There was no such thing as too much butter. If it wasn''t so expensive, everyone would use it liberally. The concept of the churn Rino designed to make butter was fairly straightforward. In the milk that animals produced, there was the liquid and cream. Cream curdled from milk was used to make cheese and butter, while the buttermilk was for drinking, making chilled cream and cooking white sauce. Actually, Rino remembered many recipes involving buttermilk in his advanced cooking recipe. It could also be made into yoghurt, cream and even added to boring boiled potatoes and mashed for a smoother vour. The way to separate the two liquids in raw milk was to let it chill and allow the cream to rise to the top. Then, the cream was scooped out and separated from the buttermilk and added to a barrel with a plunger that the milkmaid would work to turn the cream into clumps of butter for moulding and packaging. There were many ways to churn butter, and Rino sketched every design he could think of, from a rocking chair churn to one that used manual pedalling to turn. The unusual vertical churn swing was also included, even if RIno had no idea how effective that would be when they started draining the excess water from the salted butter. Honestly, if Rino was given a choice to choose his favourite design regardless of effectiveness, it had to be the spinning top concept where a rope was wound around the barrel and pulled at a high speed so that the barrel spins on its axis without needing much physicalbour. It was also fun to watch the barrel go at top speed if they painted it with different colours. The children would most likely be impressed, and maybe the fairies might find it amusing. It tamed two cats with one fish, and RIno liked it. Now that he had his potential butter churn designs, it was time to start designing the cheese baths. Rino did not know what happened behind the scenes in cheese factories, but he knew that his chef always bought cheeses by the wheels. The chef sometimes made his own, but he imed that aged cheese was usually better. Making cheese was easier than making butter. All Rino needed was the barrel of vinegar that Kragami made in Cypress County and some salt that could be easily mined from the mountains. The tricky part was boiling the goat milk and letting it simmer at a constant temperature. The lich heard that if done wrong, the milk would spoil, and the cheese would not be sessful. Either that or it would taste awful. If possible, Rino wanted to avoid that from happening. Runes should be used to control the fire temperature output, but that design for the milk''s y tub will take some trial and error. Finalising his prototype cheese bathtub, Rino called for his earth gnome engineers. They had much to discuss before the night was over. "Soured milk? Are you sure that''s wise?" Bink made a face, and even Deezer appeared hesitant. Milk was awful as it was. Drinking sour milk might be a lot worse, and neither earth gnomes were convinced it was a good thing. "It goes well with powdered wheat baked in fire and topped with smoked meat," Rino replied. If there was one thing he missed tremendously from his previous world, it was pizza. Although Rino did not have all the different kinds of cheese in this world, cheese was still cheese, and the lich wasn''t choosey. His favourite pizza was topped with smoked sausage and paprika. A drizzle of basil leaves and modestly sprinkled parmesan made him drool. Watching how Rino was dazed as he went down the memory alley, the earth gnomes could not help but be a little more cautious and enthusiastic about designing the cheese baths and experimenting with temperature controls. On the other hand, the thing called butter sounded extremely convenient. Unlike animal fat that was difficult to store, butter could be sliced and kept in one block at a lowered temperature. When heated, it would melt into oil and fats that could prevent cooked meat from sticking and charring on the surface of the pots and pans. "Which design should we try making?" Bink pulled everyone back on track. Turning to the pages to describe the different butter churn designs, Rino let them know his favourite churn design. "I have never seen this work before, but I thought it would be fun to have something to amuse the vigers while they make butter." Not entirely convinced that Rino''s spinning top butter churn barrel was the best design but not wanting to reject their boss'' idea outrightly, Bink probed for more details with Deezer backing him up. "How will you rewind the rope?" "How far does the rope reach?" "Will the dye colours affect the taste of the butter?" "Is it going to be difficult to mount it on the axle?" After ten minutes of endless questions, Rino finally got the hint and epted that maybe the spinning top churn idea wasn''t the best. He kept quiet as the engineers looked through the rest of his sketchpad. Deezer marked several things while Bink redrew them onto a nk piece of paper until they finished looking through everything to decide. Rino watched as they drew a new design based on his initial ideas after discussing the pros and cons among themselves. "My lord, what do you think about using the waterwheel to power your spinning top butter churn design?" Lighting up like a star, Rino nodded quickly. All hail automation! Chapter 185 - Milk Master Rino and the earth gnomes surveyed the new build site for the cksmithing hut powered by water wheels for a week. At the same time, some trolls were asked to help dig trenches to redivert water from the river closer ind to the barn. A new building was added to the barn building project, and everyone tried to guess what Rino was up to this time. Compared to the windmill, Rino found the water wheels easier to use and control because they moved at a constant rate. All he had to do was construct a dam and a gate that would release water if he needed more water to power the wheels. The n was very detailed, and the pygmy dwarves travelled over to have a look. Kragami wanted a copy of the dam''s design once it was finalised to see if he could build something simr in Cypress County, although Rino wondered how he would get flowing water in a swamp. There was some manpower reshuffling as Rino was busy designing the new spot for the watermill. A new farming division now that Rino''s agricultural domain was expanding. He left Zerg''s vigers solely in charge of Town Zera''s rice, taro, corn, and wheat fields. The spies were in charge of the soybeans, and the trolls were now left in charge of carrying the harvest to the underground storage. They were also tasked with building new infrastructures under the drow''s management. Rino left some of the weaker trolls in charge of the animals. The new building beside the barn was going to be a milking station. It was why Rino was spying on the animal caretakers, searching for a suitable milkmaid. However, after observing them for three hours, Rino still found none of the female trolls good enough. They were too rough on the animals and somewhat clumsy. He hated to sound like a bigot or racist, but these female trolls were too buff for the role of a milkmaid. Yet, not all was lost. Even with so many heavy-handed female trolls in the barn who were better at building than nurturing, Rino saw several suitable candidates if he overlooked their gender. If this world could have womanticores, why cannot he appoint a milkman? Oh, that''s right. Rino remembered now. Milkman was a term used to describe the milk delivery person instead of the one massaging animal teats. He had to change the name a little, and Rino settled for Milk Master instead. He had several ideal milk master candidates after observing for three hours. However, Rino had no idea if the nanny goats would befortable enough around them. Scratch that, the farm animals looked like they were constantly bullying one of his milk master candidates. Maybe the female trolls had a reason why they were not gentle with the animals. The rabbits were an exception to the farm animal bullying case. The worst had to be from the hogs. Even if they were pygmy hogs, their little pointy tusks could still stab rather deeply. It wasn''t fatal, but if any of his subordinates were alive, they would be bandaged in several ces after that attack. To stop the giant quails from making new babies, the breeders have been collecting their eggs daily. It might exin the birds'' hostility towards their caretakers. Then again, after observing how differently therge birds acted around the milk master candidates, Rino concluded that they liked the milk master candidates better, even if they also came by to collect eggs. Was it that gentle head bob that they gave eachrge quail before they left? Or could it be the freshly caught worms from the farm that these milk master candidates snuck in as snacks for therge birds that made them friendlier? It was a small gesture, but it probably meant a lot to the encaged livestock. Rino also noticed how the goats were given lumps of salt to lick on and how the pigs were given roasted taro by the milk master candidates. The milk master candidate respected the animal''s personal space, and Rino ranked them ording to their abilities to manage the barn and milking station. Firstly, Rino needed a barn master. The barn manager must be capable of understanding every animal''s temperament. They need not tend to every livestock personally, but if the need arose, they should be able to cope ordingly. Secondly, the milking station needed a milk master who was in charge of attending to the tender teats of his mountain goats. Rino had an idea who the perfect candidate was, and there was only one person in the entire Town Zera, who was friendly enough to pat the goats without risking a headbutt from them. Lastly, Rino wanted a sheepdog or someone good at gathering animals who needed to graze or run free in vast fields. He originally thought about leaving Mutt here to fill that role, but if his sabre tooth wolf knew about his intentions, there would be a river of tears in the shadow realm. "Follow me," Rino called to the sneaky animal tamers after the female trolls left. All three candidates hung their heads in shame when Rino caught them red-handed trying to sneak food into the cages. The rock salt, earthworms and roasted taroid around, and Rino paused. "Finish feeding them and follow me." Quickly, they finished their chores, and Rino teleported them back to his study. Here, he scrutinised his candidates. The first candidate who was friendly with the pygmy hogs and stole roasted taro for them was a stunted troll. He was the troll with the hunchback that others mocked him for. His warty skin and overlyrge nose made him repulsive to the eye, but beyond the off-putting external appearance, the troll had a heart of gold. Rino knew him. The troll often shared his food with the earth gnomes and cleaned up after others at parties. If he put this troll in charge of his barn, Rino could feel a little more reassured. There was no reason for anyone to doubt this troll''s authority after he gave the hunchback a name to solidify the authority bestowed. More importantly, this stunted troll''s empathy was so high that if any animal went berserk, he could handle the situation without having to harm the precious livestock. "From tomorrow onwards, you will be the barn manager. Your role is to check on the livestock''s situation and maintain the overall quality of our animal produce. I shall bestow upon you a name befitting your status." Shock reflected itself on the hunchback troll''s face, but Rino gave him no time to process, naming him Quasimodo. "You," Rino looked over to a killer bunny with an unusual fur pattern. Rino did not think that a spy woulde to dig earthworms and feed the giant quails. Their sizes were not very different, but Rino recognised this particr calico cat fur coloured killer rabbit. He worked in the soybean fields and was probably the only killer rabbit who did not steal any soybeans that he farmed. Every bean went to the storage, and he only ate what he was paid in wages for work done at the end of the week when She distributed the soybeans to the rabbit n. Integrity was a very rare trait, and Rino appreciated it. The rabbit''s thoughtfulness of others earned him a name and a role as the ''sheepdog'' or animal herder. The killer rabbit''s impressive speed and keen eye made him perfect for the role on top of how much chemistry he shared with the livestock. "You will be known as Sch?fer." That simply tranted to sheepherder in his previous world, but the name sounded cool enough, so nobody questioned Rino''s naming sense. Instead, the killer rabbit evolved into a humanoid creature simr to Kamiya when he received a name. The bunny boy wasn''t any slower than he was in his monster form. Instead, Rino liked just how he had heterochromatic eyes with one red and one green. He would fit right in. Last but not least, Rino wondered how the milk master candidate he settled for ended up in this position. Mining rocks from the mountains to treat the goats and yfully butting heads with them wasn''t something Rino expected from a tannery worker. "Zes, was it?" Rino asked the shadow spectre, who looked ashamed of what he did. The lich grinned. "You''re in charge of taking care of the milking station and dairy requirements. I''ll teach you more about it once the butter churn and milk bath are ready. For now, you''ll help out at the tannery and familiarise yourself with the goats. They''re previous livestock, so I''m holding you ountable for the best butter and cheese." Puzzled but thrilled to be assigned a more exciting role in this kingdom, Zes bowed low and thanked Rino for not punishing him. The dark lord said nothing and dismissed them after assigning them new roles and names. Honestly, he could not me Zes for skiving. If RIno was honest, most of the developmental work was on Deezer and Bink now. His part of introducing the idea was done, and now that things were moving smoothly, Rino took a look at his sleep wallet. Smiling, Rino relished in the reward he gave himself as he rested in the dark, waiting for sleep tomence. At longst, he could have his well-deserved rest. Nobody could tell him what to do for the next sixteen hours, and Rino was determined to maximise hisziness to the fullest. Chapter 186 - Wet Entrance With nearly two more weeks and absolutely nothing to do with so many capable subordinates, Rino decided to find some answers to his questions about this world. It was finally time to explore the abandoned dwarven mines! "My lord! Please be careful," She warned, and even Deezer agreed. The earth gnomes coted all their maps for Rinos'' mine exploration, but the uneasiness on their faces told him there was more to the story. "I''ll only be gone for a week, at most two," the lich told them. "There''s no need to look so concerned." Despite his itch to linger in the mysterious mines for longer, Rino still remained clear about the possibility of a new daily quest after the deadline was over. He had almost all projects under control, and if they needed him for anything, there was that telepathic bond between him and all the leaders. Deezer looked ufortable and shook his head. The dwarves left behind some rather dangerous things, and certain traps remained active. The earth gnomes who took refuge in the abandoned mines learned early on that it was better to leave the secrets of the dwarven cave untouched and make caverns in it for their dwelling instead. "Bink explored the mines the most, and the maps aren''tplete," the earth gnome exined. "Many traps are still active, and it is easy to get lost in them. We lost a few siblings who wandered off the explored routes. They never returned." Somehow, the revtion wasn''t surprising to Rino. He learned a few things about these dwarves, the only species who tried to fight against the Harvesters. The mine that they lived in wasn''t an original dwelling. It was a fortress carved into the mountains that the dwarves used to defeat harvesters. All their secrets, technology and research were there. Although nobody has seen a dwarven weapon from the stories, Bink imed that the dwarves left a vault of upleted weapons that could be used to resist harvesters, even if it was just for a minute or two. That alone was a breakthrough that no other race has aplished. It was only sad that the dwarves could not hold out for long enough and were forced to abandon this mine to die from the harvesters who collected the souls of many brothers. As part of the dwarven tradition, they must bring fallen warriors back to their hometown. Although the dwarves and earth gnomes did not interact much, Bink mentioned that the dwarves he knew told them to freely use the mines and stay away from the deeper caverns that are more dangerous. "There is a treasury down there somewhere, but not even Bink knows what the dwarves hid there or how to ess it." Thanking She and Deezer for the warning, Rino summoned Mutt. It was finally night, and it was a great time to travel. Rino checked his shadow inventory and hopped onto the sabre tooth wolf. "I''ll find the answers when I get there," he told them. "If anything happens, contact me through the telepathic bond. I''ll be back before you know it. Don''t tell anyone else I left for now and focus on the projects. Turning with a flick of his ck cape, Rino left with Mutt speeding out of the study, following the rocky mountain path. Looking at each other, the lovers decided to keep this among themselves and maybe Bink. Rino was strong, and nobody doubted it. However, the dwarven mine was full of mysteries that worked against logic. It was easy to get lost in the fortress even if there was a map. Without a dwarf to guide Rino, She could only imagine the kind of trials Rino had to go through just to reach the actual dwarven city. Blissfully unaware of the trials awaiting him, Rino enjoyed the night view and starry sky out of his eternal night enchantment barrier. The barrier was useful, but it wasn''t as pretty as the things nature provided. The barrier simply acted like a nket of darkness, and the magical lights powered by his mana array paled inparison to actual stars in the sky. The cave entrance wasn''t difficult to locate after Rino knew where it was. However, it was very small, justrge enough for dwarves and narrow enough. Rino couldn''t crawl through even if it was bigger than the fake tunnels the earth gnomes dug. Who would have imagined that the true entrance to the abandoned mines would be hidden below a small stale pond? Thankfully, Rino knew how to swim. Or at least, he knew how to paddle in the water and sustain himself using air magic to breathe in his previous life. Thankfully, he was a lich in this life, and breathing was an option. Sadly, the perks of being undead came with several disadvantages. Rino''s clothes might be waterproof, but the holes in his eye sockets and the feeling of water going through his ribcage down to his pelvic bones made him shudder. He felt so molested by something that wasn''t even alive, and Rino tried to think positively. At least taking a shower and bathing in the breeze did not feel as invasive. The water was dark, but Rino had no problems seeing without light. Mutt hid in the shadow realm until Rino needed him again. From this point onwards, Rino was on his own. The pond was much deeper than Rino expected. After he swam past that one rock half-submerged in the water, Rino found himself rising to what looked like a small breathing pocket. Limestone. He recognised it now from the unique structures from the ceiling. Stctites, they were called. The stones were living and grew over thousands of years from the continuous dripping of water. Continuing on his journey and diving down again to find a new opening, Rino found several other breathing pockets with simr structures. Bink was right to dig into the caves for the earth gnomes instead of following the dwarves'' route. Rino had no idea those stocky fellows could swim but he was in a different world. Maybe they were really good swimmers. He finally surfaced in something that looked like a dock, and Rino dried himself off as he inspected the abandoned docks. There were no boats at the docks but instead, many metallic pods were chained to them. They looked dwarven sized, so Rino did not attempt to climb into one. These pods were also equipped withrge metal three-fingered ws and a pointed spiral drill. At the back of the pods, he noticed arge but broken tube connected further into the cave. This was it, the true dwarven mine. However, Rino still could not understand the need for a dock. Didn''t the earth gnomes say that the dwarves made this their base? The construction did not look like it was built to entertain outsiders. Having a dock inside a cave that could only be essed through swimming only deepened the mystery. Whatever, Rino would find his answers soon. He was also dry now, and the lich checked the docks for another entrance but found none. The choice was easily made as he kept himself on high alert. Unsurprised by the extravagant wee, Rino dodged the cliche pitfall of doom after stepping on a cleverly concealed pressure te. He was a victim of this in his previous world, and cheap tricks won''t stop him. Then, Rino simply stood in a hallway full of dispenser fired arrows after triggering a tripwire. His clothing was very good armour, and any arrows thatnded on his cape bounced off harmlessly. Rino had to admit, these dwarves made better fletchers than Fowler, and his hunting team did. One arrow got to his eye socket, and Rino had to pull it out to heal properly. Trap after trap, Rino found himself turning left and right in this maze-like structure. No matter where he turned, there would always be a surprise lying in wait. The lich had gotten so used to seeing traps that when he encountered none, he was slightly rmed. Upon inspection, Rino finally understood why there were no traps in some areas. The traps were triggered before, and Rino found himself standing still for a moment. ording to his movement pattern, he should not have made any loops. Yet, there was no mistaking that the traps in this corridor were triggered by him previously. Rino discovered it after leaving a mark on the wall in anguage that only he knew. Sitting down in the middle of an arrow pile, Rino started to sketch out the turns he took ever since he left the docks on the wall using magic. ording to his analysis, if he constantly picked an opposite direction to go in and counter it if there was no alternative route, Rino should find himself moving in a snake pattern. It was impossible for him to return to the same room as before. Based on his encounters of these ''triggered'' rooms and their increasing frequency of appearance, Rino suspected that something else was at y. It didn''t really matter. Rino knew how to deal with parlour tricks like this. Hence, he summoned a few clones who would duplicate each time they found a split route. Rino wanted to see how long it would take for all his clones to meet in this room and if there was a pattern to their movements. Chapter 187 - Moving Mines After nearly two hours of splitting clones and running around, Rino concluded that these mines were alive. Or, in a way, they moved. They might not actually be alive like those living caves. It was simply an engineering masterpiece, and even gnomes would not be able to match their genius invention. The rooms in the mines had no traces of spells or mana. Everything was created with the power of science. Rino had to admit, the dwarves managed to fool him well for a while when none of his clones returned after the first batch. As it turned out, the dwarves cleverly designed three levels of mazes that would stall intruders who did not know their way. There was only one true path to walk, and Rino took two hours to understand how it worked. Basically, he shouldn''t be following the path left or right. The right answer to finding a secret shaft going all the way down into the depth of the mines was back at the docks. It had something to do with the dwarven pods and broken tube. Rino found it by chance, but he had to admit, boredom inspired many things. He retraced his steps to see if there was something he missed out at the docks and tripped over the tube that pulled a lever hidden in a wall. The right passageway was revealed, and Rino found himself calling off his hardworking clones as he walked down the stairs to the actual dwelling. Nothing in the upper levels of the mines were important. Rino did not know how deep the mine was, but he started toe across more tampered grounds and walls that were clearly the work of dwarves. This was where the true adventure began! As the cavern expanded and the space widened at the bottom of the long flight of stairs, Rino found himself staring at a station full of tracks and minecarts. He knew that the dwarves often invented machines and tools to make their jobs easier. It was the main reason why Rino found himself curious about them even in this world. He wasn''t disappointed to find such aplicated transportation system even if it screamed disorganised. Rino learned from experience and did not hop onto any minecarts. In his previous world, he was subjected to some rather bad experience in the form of exhrating half-built minecart tracks with half-assed reassurance from his good friend. They ended up plummeting into a ravine in the mines, and Rino barely saved them both from death using magic after they missed the usualnding spot. Apparently, his dwarven friend forgot to consider the weight difference between a dwarf and a human when he imed that his minecart system never failed before. Rino never trusted the dwarves'' method of travelling after that and opted to fly instead. Minecart trains were out of the question, andst Rino heard, the dwarves started making ns to construct an actual steady rail path across that ravine instead of trusting the riskyunch tform to get them across. "Hopefully, they got it done and tested it before the world exploded," Rino mused, feeling nostalgic as he summoned Mutt, who ran along the side of the minecart tracks. They rode into a different section of the cave, and Rino noticed how the paths remained dimly lit even after it was abandoned. The dwarves were clever to use glow crystals instead of gasmps. They must have learned how dangerous it was to use fire in a mine. The firstmunal ce that Rino found in this abandoned mine was a canteen or what used to be a canteen. There were a lot of wooden mugs that should be used to hold ale. The dwarves loved their ale, and Rino had a feeling that would never change no matter which world they existed in. The barrels lined against the wall in a huge kitchen contained ale that had already turned bad. By now, it was more like vinegar and less like ale. Rino let it remain in the barrels. Even if the vinegar was good, he doubted anyone in his vige wanted a taste of what decade-old vinegar tasted like. Comparing the culinary progress between the dwarves and his empire, Rino had to admit that the dwarves were still a tad more advanced than him. They used fancy machines that controlled temperature without using fire runes for cooking food to a perfect temperature. In particr, their thinly curved metal des used in rusted metal containers that spun at the bottom intrigued Rino. Perhaps this was a new kind of cutting method that he did not know about? The lich picked that up and saved it in his shadow sack. He must have the earth gnomes examine itter and try to replicate whatever they could, using the dwarves as inspiration. The canteen''s interior decoration was mundane, but Rino noticed something else that piqued his interest. There were wire meshes over smaller holes in the ceiling and sometimes the floor. Rino wondered what that was for and tried to see what was inside. Unfortunately, the small tunnels were very bendy, and Rino could not tell what was inside them. He left them alone for now but promised to investigate itter when he mapped out the entire mine. The lich plotted down his journey on Mutt''s back as the shadow hound sniffed at various things in the cafeteria. The sketchpad was full of discovery notes, and Mutt growled at a particrly foul smell he came across, prompting Rino to look up from his book. "What''s wrong?" Mutt whined, and his ears flopped a little. "It smells of sickness and death even if it is faint, master." Sickness and death? Rino patted therge wolf on his head and told Mutt to leave it for now. It might exin the dwarves'' need to leave. From what Rino saw, the canteen was well equipped but not the pantry. Judging by the kind of food the dwarves made, it wasn''t a bnced diet. At this point, Rino had some guesses. The dwarves were the only species unafraid of harvesters. Their preparation for battle in this advanced mine spoke of many decades of war development. However, at one point, they were forced to abandon their imprable fortress. Rino didn''t believe that a single defeat would force the dwarves to abandon the fort and scatter. The mines were deep enough and confusing. It was well equipped to take out any intruder or stall them long enough until the dwarves could escape. Yet, they still chose to up and leave after several years. War was something nobody liked, not even the empire. If possible, they wanted to avoid going to war because not only would people die andnd destroyed, resources had to be used to fund the war, and those who did not directly participate would also starve. Without enough talent and resources, even the most powerful country would weaken. In a prolonged battle, army rationing will affect the morale of soldiers. A soldier could fight even without weapons, but a soldier could not hope to win a fight without food. An army without a general could still continue to struggle in the name of the empire, but an army without a doctor would only fester to destruction from inside out. These dwarves were like powerful soldiers who marched onward without fear. However, they were only good at fighting. Rino bet that they had no real farmers to secure food supplies or doctors around. Mutt''s earlier im about illness and death was the result of a long battle. Back in his previous world, sailors often suffered from a disease caused by improper nutrition. It took the empire a long time to understand what was going on. Healing magic did not work, and even the church imed it was a curse. Only Rino and his magician tower did not give up on trying to find a cure. Initially, nothing much appeared out of ce. A person would appear a little pale with some small skin problems such as rash spots and minor bleeding sores. After a while, the person would start losing teeth and feeling weak. Anaemia, shortness of breath and eventually evena were possible for thete stages of this illness. Eventually, the only thing the affected person''s family could do was buy a coffin and pray for easy passing. The disease was called scurvy, and Rino did not think he would be on the receiving end for such a thing until he found his gums bleeding one day. Healing magic did not work, and desperation drove Rino into extensive research as his loyal magician apprentices apanied him to visit various victims of the ''curse''. Eventually, a farmer received help from magicians who gave Rino a basket of freshly harvested strawberries that led to the discovery of scurvy''s cure. Rino''s chef made him some strawberry juice because he could no longer stomach solids, and the improvement in his health was astounding. The road to recovery was so fast that within a week, Rino was back to normal. The knowledge he gained spread across the empire quickly, and many fruit sellers set their stalls at docks so that sailors could replenish their important fruit supplies before voyage or on route to new towns. Too bad the dwarves of this world did not know about it before they sumbed to a miserable fate. Rino looked everywhere, but apart from underground root staple nts, meat and ale, there were no traces of any fresh leafy vegetables or fruits in their diet. How unfortunate. Chapter 188 - Dwarven Hospitality Without care for time, Rino explored the abandoned mines to his heart''s content. It was not just a dwarven sleeping quarter or a fortress. The dwarves took the time to make it their home before it was abandoned. Rino found out what those small tunnels with wire meshes were. They were so deep into the heart of the mountain that there wasn''t any fresh air. Without a constant air supply, the dwarves would have suffocated a long time ago. Rino failed to consider that because he was an undead and forgot all about breathing. The small tunnels in the floors were slightly different, and they worked as drainage. Rino created a small clone that found out where all the sewage went. He wasn''t sure if he should support the idea of dumping waste into the sea, but that shouldn''t make too much of a difference now because nobody was living here. He only hoped that the dwarves did not dump the more toxic materials into the sea they used in smithing. Over the next three days, Rino mapped out most of the mine. There were only a few routes left unexplored because the ceiling had caved in or it was left unfinished. Yet, the lich could not help but feel like some things are missing. Sure, he saw their sleeping quarters, storage room, mines and even their grand furnace room. However, the earth gnomes told him that the dwarves left behind great secrets in this abandoned facility. Everything that he saw in thest few days was too ordinary to be considered a great secret. Something was missing. Suppose there was something that the dwarves did differently from the monsters and other species that Rino encountered in his short time after arriving in this world that impressed him. In that case, it must be the unified writtennguage and development of mathematics. As Rino paced around in the smithing workshop, he took a look at the rusted and broken tools. Many functional casts and moulds were lying around that would be handy for future uses. He had a feeling that the gods would eventually ask him to venture into metalwork after he finished the pottery and masonry phase. Secret entrances looked like the main theme for this fortress. It was understandable why the dwarves would hide so much of their research and important things. If their enemies were as powerful as everyone imed, it was only right that the dwarves took extra measures against them. Rino only found the smithing room and grand furnace after tracing his steps back. He almost missed the signs of a secret entrance when he was busy mapping new storage rooms. However, after a while, the lich started to understand the signs he was looking out for. Mutt''s nose was convenient and could often smell when there was an active air flow in a room that did note from the vents. Rino would use that knowledge to search for hidden levers, switches or doors. The dwarves loved hiding it behind iconic things that often were missed by others. Rino found the lever to the grand furnace room behind a rusted chainmail armour disy. He found the switch to the smithing room inside what appeared to be a golden vase. The golden vase was affixed into the cave''s stone wall that acted as a disy shelf. Initially, Rino did not think much about their interior decorating tastes, but after a while, he realised that the dwarven hospitality differed from those of pompous nobles. These stocky engineers did not believe in disying useless items around. Symbolic items that boasted of history were always a dead giveaway about more secrets to discover. Rino enjoyed the rich culture, history and heritage that scattered all around thisbyrinth of a mine. The dwarves proved to be the most intelligent species so far, apart from Kragami. While they did not know magic or prove to have any capacity for it, they were on par with Rino when it came to curiosity. It was such a shame that Rino could not meet them while they were here. He imagined that they would enjoy each other''spany quite a bit. With Rino''s knowledge about alchemy and their advanced engineering discovery, the kind of things he could introduce to this insipid world was endless. Theyout of this mine was rather simple, but Rino decided that it was overly simple. He missed out on several spots, and based on his guesses, they were either undiscovered locations that he had yet to find entrances to or dull duds that the dwarves did not hollow out because of some mishap. He took the time to investigate some of the copsed entrances and unfinished building projects. The dwarves did not fix them or left it that way deliberately, even while they lived here. Rino concluded that the mines were designed to be sturdy for at least a few centuries before decay set in for the beams to copse into the mines. Probing a little further using the power of shadows and clones, Rino learned the reasons for the unfinished projects. Some roads were deliberately sealed off because of dangerous gas and poison. The area was blocked to the best of their abilities, while others were abandoned because of hard rock that broke their tools. To Rino, those rocks were easily broken using magic. However, the dwarves found it impossible to mine through those areas. The paths they constructed would either bend around the hardened areas if they did not cross into other sections of their caves, and if it did, the entire project was called off, and the dwarves would look for a new spot to start digging. The ck rock that the dwarves abandoned was actually a mana absorbing crystal that was often used to shackle dark magicians in his previous world. The stone would absorb an insane amount of mana from the magician constantly and disperse it safely into the air over time, causing the magician to be unable to cast any spells. Naturally, Rino was probably the only magician who remained unaffected by those shackles. His natural mana reserve was big enough to single-handedly take down dragons. Such crystals meant nothing in front of raw power. The pickaxes that the dwarves used were usually fashioned out of a metal alloy that Rino knew back then as steel. Steel was an important discovery back in his world that made the dwarves a race not to be underestimated. The humans often used iron or stone pickaxes that were easily dulled or shattered. The steel forged by dwarvessted almost ten times longer than the regr pickaxes. In addition, they were the only pickaxes without enchantments that could mine the mithril that the king wanted. Figuring that staying here wouldn''t help him, Rino went back to the room that spoke volumes about the dwarven history. Instead of using paper, the dwarves opted for finely sanded stone tes to record their history. They carved their story into these thin stone tes and arranged them in a huge room full of mined out shelving, creating what Rino knew as the very first library in this world he chanced upon. Unable to read dwarven tongue, Rino could only make guesses from the illustration. The good thing about the dwarves was their ability to draw urate diagrams and illustrations for their blueprints and schemas. Most of the archived stone tes were research journals and sometimes dairies. Rino wondered if anyone would be kind of enough to draw a map somewhere. He saw the sketches for flying machines with indications of the actual sizes. Rino figured out how the dwarves wrote their numbers after a while, but understanding letters and thenguage was harder. Mathematics was somewhat universal, after all. After what appeared to be an eternity of dusting stone tes, Rino found something that contained more information about the weapons the dwarves were trying to create. At the same time, he saw a very detailed illustration of those jellyfish monsters he saw when he was in the jungle. The swords that were effective against the jellyfish monsters were mentioned in that stone te with some very specific temperature indications and a furnace illustration. Rino decided to store this te in his inventory to decode leisurely when he returned to his study. In the meantime, the lich went around to look at every stone te in the library. Snippets of history were also recorded on these stone tes. Rino guessed that these stone tes in the section he was in recorded the war against the Harvesters. The numbers at the top of the stone te could represent the date, and in it, Rino saw some other numbers that increased with time. If there was a single vocabry he might have figured out in dwarven tongue after looking at so many records. The word had to be "Harvester". By the end of his library raiding session, Rino learned a few things. Those jellyfish monsters were indeed "Harvesters" who ate the living and turned them into a vegetative state that he witnessed in Zerg''s vige before he razed it. The dwarven tale gave him a better overview of what happened to this world. The illustration of winged beings that Rino assumed were gods sent these harvesters to collect something from all species. Humans and more intelligent life forms were often attacked, and the dwarves fought back by building this fortress. The harvesters were very powerful, and like ghosts, they had no weakness. Souls were reaped, and they cannot be harmed or outrun when they arrived. However, the dwarves discovered that weapons forged from the fire could hurt them, and while the weapons forged by fire did corrode after time, a harvester could be killed. The number of times a regr weapon could be used was five times before it disintegrated. However, ording to the weapon designs, the dwarves might have found a way to create weapons thatsted a little longer and dealt a lot more damage, although Rino had no idea where they were hidden. Last but not least, he confirmed the reason why the dwarves left the mines. The harvesters broke in from the small tunnels that brought in the fresh air and tossed sewage out. That was before they added wire meshes. It attacked a good number of dwarves before the dwarves finally killed them all. With an all-time high casualty rate, the dwarves found themselves unable to sustain themselves. Illness, starvation, suffocation, and all sorts of problems started when the dwarvescked the manpower to maintain this fragile underground ecosystem. Eventually, they were forced to abandon the mine and find a friendlier environment to migrate to. Nobody knew where they went, but Rino read in their library that they chose to go in different directions in various groups to increase survival chances. Now that Rino knew there was a powerful weapon somewhere in this mine capable of bringing down Harvesters, he made this his mission to find it. All he had to do was look for the correct signs. This shouldn''t be too difficult, right? Chapter 189 - Dwarven Cipher Rino wanted to eat his own words. When he thought that finding the secret dwarven treasure trove would be simple, based on logical estimations, he severely underestimated the brilliance of dwarves. Instead, he was back at the stone te library trying to understand something from anguage he couldn''t read. It was the only clue he now had, and Rino did his best to ignore the concerned feelings flooding through his bond with She and Bink. It was already ten days since hest left, but Rino refused to return empty-handed. Language was a fascinating thing. If Rino ignored the grammar syntax of the foreignnguage he never saw before, he should be able to learn a few things that were simr in everynguage - nouns and names. Rino found it easy to identify simrities in thenguage''s usage for someone as well-read and learned as him. This world''s culture andnguage were not very developed. The dwarves only had a fewnguage rules to follow, and Rino quickly spotted a pattern in thenguage. He could now identify a preposition because the dwarves wrote many directions apanied byplex diagrams for illustrative purposes. Their units of measurement were something Rino learned next. The dwarves weighed their metal using iron ingots born from a standard cast. They measured the size of their builds using the standard length of one standard rail piece. Again, they used the same moulds, and Rino was impressed by how uniform the rails were. Come to think about it, the library that Rino was in had an odd shape. The stone tes on the ''shelves'' were spaced uniformly and had categories of their own. However, some shelves could be moved around. This was the newest discovery, and Rino wondered why the shelves had to be moved. There were grooves on the stone cave floor that the library was built on. If anything, it resembled a puzzle. A puzzle that Rino did not know the rules of. No matter how Rino moved them, they still continued to block one particr fixed shelf in the corner. If Rino wanted to retrieve something from the far corner shelf, he rearranged certain mobile shelving. There was no quick way around it, and Rino found it odd that the dwarves would build something so inconvenient. The more Rino thought about it, the more he was convinced that there was a secret in the library. It had to be a ratherrge secret too, but the lich couldn''t wrap his head around this particr clue. These dwarves did not do anything without reason. They would not put a shy gold vase in the middle of nowhere or disy a chain armour in a deserted corridor if it served no purpose. Sure, they sometimes blended those items in a riff-raff of other symbolic items with lesser significance to make sure it made some sense. However, if one studied them closer, they would realise that something was off. To hide something extraordinary in a sea of ordinary knick-knacks was the motto of these dwarves. Rino did not know them personally, but their habits told the lich enough about them while they were alive. These dwarves were very down-to-earth, hardworking, loyal, honest and passionate about things they loved. It was a shame Rino did not know them earlier before they were reduced to the state they became. "They must have left it behind somewhere," Rino insisted, staring at the one bookshelf hidden behind the mobile shelves. Why was it there? Going by his knowledge of the dwarves, could they have hidden something behind that one obscured bookshelf in an attempt to redirect attention elsewhere? Rino summoned Mutt two days before and asked if the sabre tooth wolf sensed any unusual airflow in the library, but nothing stood out except for the overwhelming dust umtion. The lich sat in a corner and stared at the hidden shelf. He searched that multiple times over thest few hours, but there were no hidden switches. Rino even went through the trouble of recording every single stone te in this library to his sketchbook. He tried rearranging them ording to symbols, topics and even location but nothing made sense. Was he reading too much into it? Rino flipped through his pages, trying to make a pattern out. He recorded the position and angle of movements of the moveable shelves, but there wasn''t much sense in the grooves on the floor. Why was the floor covered in these grooves for the shelves to move in such a restricted manner? At the same time, Rino had never seen a less organised library than this. Back in the magician''s tower, books were arranged in rows and columns. Even if the library in the tower was enchanted with flying shelves and mobile book assistants, the furniture movement was designed to make the books more essible, not less. The number of stone tes here did not surpass the tomes Rino owned in the forbidden section of the magician tower''s library. Yet, it was surprisingly difficult to walk around in here when the shelves were not all simply shoved to one side. The dwarves might be shorter and slightly smaller than Rino, but even for them, manoeuvring between these aisles should not be easy. Even stranger, these stone tes hanging on the carved te edges of these shelves looked like they would make a fairly decent doorway for the dwarves to walk through if the tes were not in a way. There was one particr formation that Rino discovered by chance while shifting the shelves that allowed every mobile shelf to remain in one straight line, facing the door. However, the terrible arrangement meant that Rino could not get anywhere else if he didn''t pull one shelf out of it. Why would there be such a design? Who could possibly benefit from tightly packed shelves together in one side of the room full of grooves and no space to reach for books? Feeling that there was something he missed out on, Rino pulled all the stone tes out of those mobile shelves and stacked them to one corner while pulling all the shelves into that single file position. He had no idea why he was doing this, but he had to know if there was a use for the formation. The rearranging took a while, and Rino looked at therge stone te stacks. He hoped he still remembered the order they were ced in and did not mess it up when he had to put them all back. When every mobile shelf was in a single straight line, Rino walked to the narrow gap between the first shelf and the door. He looked right through every shelf in the way and gasped inaudibly. Initially, Rino thought it was all a huge waste of time. The shelves weren''t properly aligned, and the doorway concept did not even work properly. Some of the mobile shelves were facing sideways at an angle, blocking out up to half of the back shelf, and some angel tes were tilted. Nothing was uniform, and the construction was sloppy. However, right at the end, where the fixed shelf was, Rino finally understood what he had to do. His inkling never failed him in times like this, and the lich rejoiced at how good the dwarves were at creating puzzles! He finally found his match, and Rino had a feeling any dumb robber looking for riches after an idental discovery of this mine would only part with the superficial goodies, missing out on the true treasure right beneath their noses. It took great minds to understand each other, and Rino''s persistence finally paid off. He memorised this symbol created by the awkwardly ced shelves and stone te hooks. It wasn''t just a symbol. It was now Rino''s only clue to the real answer of this room. Once Rino copied the symbol into his sketchbook, he carefully chucked the stone tes back onto the shelves. Then, he pushed and pulled at the mobile shelf arrangements once more to follow the pattern seen earlier. He used the library entrance as a marker for the orientation, and after three tries of changing the pattern''s direction, Rino finally seeded. Click! The sound of chains unravelling from an unseen ce filled the library, and Rino held onto the nearest fixture for support as the floor started to lower itself deeper into the real dwarven mine. How Rino managed to pull this difficult dwarven cypher code off, he had no idea. However, he was more impressed with how well designed the final trial was. At longst, he was going to get a glimpse of the true dwarven history and what they were capable of. Reading about mythical weapons and seeing the designs for such things was one type of amazement. When an unobscured view of bling-bling and sharp, shiny objects filled the secret area, Rino couldn''t help but feel overwhelmed by the level of trust the dwarves showed those they deemed worthy. Kneeling on one kneecap and offering them a heartfelt prayer of gratitude, Rino promised to use their legacy only for the greater benefit of the future. He wasn''t a hero, and neither was he a saviour. However, as the first monarch in this world''s history, he promised to make all future generations remember the dwarves for what they were capable of and their contributions to his empire. Now, it was time to savour the reward. Chapter 190 - Secrets Of The Dungeons The blinding shes of light and expensive treasures rendered Rino motionless for a while, even after the library floor stopped moving. He could hardlypute the level of awesomeness he should ce the dwarves at seeing the size of this vault they spent their whole lives guarding. If Rino thought the grand furnace room was big, this treasure vault was five times bigger than that. The grand furnace room was about the size of his World Tree cavern that was currently filled with overgrown magic tree branches and leaves. The majority of the dwarven mine was here in this secret vault. Rino knew about the dwarves'' love for secret passages, but this took not just the cake but the entire bakery. Rino wasn''t unfamiliar with the concept of sneaky elevators, but those usually only took him to the dungeons where they interrogated captured dark magicians to smoke the ring leaders out. Besides, those sneaky elevators were usually small tforms powered by magic behind dumb bookshelves that parted like doors. Nobody ever made an entire library floor an elevator, and Rino could understand why Mutt did not sense any strange airflow. This vault had no vents leading in or out. The dwarves must not be able to linger here for too long, and even if they did, Rino bet they wore some breathing equipment. The vault was enormous, and weapons were not the only things Rino found here. While a fair amount of cobwebs were lying around on useless expensive-looking essories made from gold, there was a particr section in the vault dedicated to preserving the dwarven masterpieces encased in ss. ss was a recent discovery by Kragami in this world. Rino was rather proud of that until he learned that the dwarves already knew how to make them and make them better than Kragami did. Honestly, Rino simply wanted to make Noir Province the production house of many great things like ssware and pottery. The more arty and farty things they were known for, the less likely other regions will call them a countryside pooper. Now, Rino wondered if there was a need for that. If Noir Province was the art sanctuary, Rino would make Town Zera the iron stronghold in memory of the dwarves he never got to meet. Foundry and craftsmanship had to be Zera''s strong point now with the grand windmill, barn and waterwheels. As Rino walked around the vault, ignoring the mountain of gold bars and precious gems that would make very good mana refiners and spatial magic mediums, he studied the vault''s concept. The dwarves did not choose this ce to be the heart of their fortress. There was something in this ce that pulsed with life even after the fortress was abandoned. Rino could feel the faint thrumming in the air like a buzz in his ear. It was the sound of a cave breathing if he had to describe the strange sensation, and Rino was getting closer to it. Living caves often had this, but the ecosystem was the reason for the feeling. The boss of the living cave was responsible for everything that happened in the cave, from intruder killing to internal hierarchy. The dwarven cave did not have such a boss, but the feeling of domination was the same. What could it be? Stopping at the centre of the vault, Rino stared at the circle of weapons wrapped in chains and encased in ss. Compared to the other weapons Rino saw earlier, these weapons felt different. Rino could tell because he finally ced a finger on what that familiar feeling was. That glowing space rock Fronzo discovered falling onto the farm outside his farmhouse in the fields gave a simr buzz. Rino simply used that as a bncer for his World Tree in a cave, not knowing that it was the true master of every dungeon and living cave in this world. The four weapons wrapped in chains reminded Rino of the elements excluding holy and dark. The dwarves must have discovered something simr in this world through their engineering to derive at the same ancient knowledge that Rino did as an alchemist. Elements were the closest thing they could understand when it came to the origins of the world. Nobody really understood how worlds were created, but researchers have arrived at the same conclusion repeatedly across time. The spear represented the air element, the double-edged sword representing fire, the battleaxe representing earth and a strange pair of angled metal batons that Rino never saw before representing the water element. Under every weapon disy, there was a short write-up introducing the weapon''s name and crafter. Rino nevermented how he was unable to read anguage more than now. He was far from illiterate, but he felt like one when faced with such a wonderful treasure of knowledge. Initially, Rino thought that they were the mana weapons born from modern alchemy. In his previous world, Rino worked hard and seeded at helping his dwarven friend create the first mana-steel ingot that the dwarves turned into a magical bracelet for him. The weapons here vibrated and had an aura that made Rino think they were alive. These creations were alive, and the chains were meant to restrain the strong spirit living inside the weapons. Then, the lich flinched when he came too close to the metal batons. For a very brief moment, Rino sensed killing intent from the weapons. He backed off cautiously and examined it from a distance. No, these weapons were more powerful than mana-steel. They were living weapons with consciousness. Only a master crafter could create such a thing, and most of these things in his previous world had to possess a long history to umte such power. They were known as artefacts. Artefacts were simr to minor deities and gods across thend that people helped cultivate through centuries of worship or forged by the will of a powerful crafter who poured his soul into that one creation. Rino always admired the dwarves for being able to create something using sheer will that rivalled magic. These weapons were the product of a master crafter''s will and spirit, and they are alive. The lich ssed them as low levelled artefacts. No wonder there was no need for sentry guards for the dwarven treasure trove. The dwarves already had powerful guardians sleeping here. Although Rino did not know where the dwarves were now, he was determined to find them and include them in his empire''s history. If they were extinct, Rino would build them a monument in Town Zera and spread stories about them for generations toe. Every cksmith and artisan must know of the dwarves. He would introduce world history in the crafting examinations once he set up his capital and only grant the title of a crafts master to those who passed his exams. Yes, Rino had great ns for the future with or without the dwarves. They had no say in how Rino wanted to portray them now that he was convinced by their awesomeness. Even if they were dead, they still had to ept all the praises Rino would sing to them using his minions. There were four low-levelled artefacts in this treasure trove, and Rino knew what he wanted to do now. There was no way he could safely transport everything here out of the cave. In fact, he did not want anyone elseing here. It was a game of finders keepers, and the dwarves were noting back. Rino took up the duty as a cultural preserver to protect such a precious historical site and chanted a time freeze spell enveloping the whole treasury, including the library. Rino knew that he could set up a private teleporting array on the library floor that only he could ess easily. He would be back for more in the future, but now, Rino finally had some answers. It was time to make preparations for the future. The four artefact weapons were coaxed into a slumber by Rino''s powerful infinite illusion so that the lich could set up his protective spells and link this ce to his mana web array. Compared to the defensive spells Rino used to protect Noir Province, the lich expanded more effort to protect this ce. Even if someone found the location of this treasure trove, they would not be able to take anything away from here or touch them. Rino cast a very powerful illusion that fed on a person''s greed and fears. He made the illusion convince them that they seeded in their heist with a lot of realism that will trigger a memory wipe curse an hour after they left this ce. It was a little cruel to do so, but Rino didn''t feel sorry for cultural asset thieves. Normally, this level of security was used to guard the forbidden books in the magicians'' tower. Nothing else was as important enough to warrant such a time-consuming spell. The magicians also condone unnecessary murder, so this trap was designed to preserve peace. The price to pay was a little hefty for petty theft, and Rino knew how those people under a memory-erasing curse lived an uneasy life gued by uncertainties and not knowing who they were. Some were driven insane by the insecurity andmitted suicide, but Rino did not feel responsible for that. If anything, they could take it up with karma. In Rino''s opinion, they had iting. The world could use a little fewer idiots. Chapter 191 - Luxury Ranch By the time Rino returned, She and Bink were almost on the brink of tears. Initially, Rino thought that something horrible happened in his absence and nobody told him right away. However, he soon found out it waspletely opposite. "My liege! You''ve returned atst." She bowed humbly as Rino dismounted Mutt. "Why the fuss? Who died?" The joke wasn''t funny, and Rino almost thought someone died until the drow revealed it was quite the opposite. "We''re moving up the schedule for the animal pen migration. The barn is finally done. There''s only a little problem¡­" Oh? The barn project was finished at longst, and Rino couldn''t wait to see the results. However, the mention of a problem concerned him. Did the animals really die? Perhaps they suffered some illness in his time away, unable to adapt to the new home. "I think it''s easier if my lord sees it for himself. The situation is a little absurd." Hardly a personcking words, Rino found it strange that She found herself tongue-tied about the subject. This only made Rino more curious about what was going on. He had a new daily questing tonight, and Rino hoped there were no other problems while he was gone. The dike he asked to be dug, and water wheels by the river stone hut he wanted should be making good progress. The only project Rino foresaw that might have some issues would be the grindstone one. Even from afar, the barn was very impressive now that it waspleted. The shiny ck stone roof and reddish jungle wood walls were very eye-catching. The windmill that stood in the distance behind the barn only added to the countryside vibes. This was the farm life that Rino always envisioned himself living after his retirement. However, it never happened in his previous world. The borders around the barn and milking station were fenced up and sectioned properly. Rino recognised that sprinkler system tapping into the town''s magic web array. He was slightly surprised that the automated grass watering system used mana-imbued water instead of water from the river. "Whose idea was it to use mana-imbued water?" Rino asked as he inspected the fence. Even the border was reinforced with magic that could only be done by Rina. "It was Miss Rina, my king." Ah, as expected of his disciple sister. Rina had a great mind, and Rino was thankful that someone else managed the projects in town while he was absent. He had to thank that little fairy when he dropped by Cypress County again. Thanks to the magic water, the grass was growing very quickly. They looked plump and lush enough for any animal to go crazy over it. He wasn''t mad that they did this without consulting him. However, he still could not understand why She was concerned. Everything was working out great. As they walked into what Rino now dubbed a ranch due to the sheer size of the grazing field surrounding the barn and milking house, he could hear it now. The cacophony of noisesing from the barn made him pause. There weren''t this many animals when he left. What happened in two weeks? Turning to give She a questioning look, the drow merely lowered her head and offered no advice. Rino took it upon himself to find out why she was so distressed. The barn had two levels, all ording to Rino''s grand design. The upper level was meant for the rabbits and quails because they were smaller and easier to manage. There was also a small ce for storing animal feed in the barn to make things easier for the caretakers. Things like feeding troughs and bathing holes were properly built as Rino walked into the barn. However, the mountain goats and pygmy hogs on the lower floor looked slightly strange to him. "She," Rino called out. "Is it my imagination, or are there twenty goats and hogs in here? Last I checked, there were only two of each." Swallowing hard, the leader of the drows tried to exin it in the simplest manner. When this happened, Rina was smart enough to run back to Cypress County, leaving her to exin the mess, and Bink was too afraid toe out, iming that all he did was build the darn barn. "M-magic water and grass in their diet made them reproduce crazily, and the babies grew up within a few days, producing more heirs, and now we''re worried that interbreeding might cause some deformities in the next batch of children. For now, we''ve stopped letting them graze in the fields." In-breeding was a thing that caused gic failure and deformities. Rino nced at the twenty animals and praised She for the damage control. At first, he didn''t think too much about the in-breeding problem because he wasn''t expecting a magical growth spurt. However, the problem they were facing could be considered a happy one. "Gather the drows and Kamiya''s n. You''re all going on an animal hunting spree. Sort the goats out to give some to Noir Province. After several generations of different diet and breeding groups, it might be possible to exchange some of the new generations for future farming sess." Heeding his instructions, She summoned her n members and gave orders to find new mountain goats and bring them back to the ranch. The goat and pygmy hogs were given foraged food and none grown from the farms in Town Zera. Less magic influence would be better for these magically induced animals. The milking house was full, and Rino could hear Zes, his newly appointed milk master, struggling to coax the new nanny goat. He could see traces of shadow tendrils snapping, but Zes was very capable, so Rino left him to his task. After all, there were already two full barrels of milk sitting outside of the milking house. He couldn''t wait to turn them into butter and cheese and share it with Kragami. Heading upstairs, Rino was greeted by sleeping quails and bunnies. At least this side of the barn was still rtively sane. It was oddly quiet, and Rino guessed Rina must have included some sound barriers so that the false environment could convince the quails toy more eggs by cheating their sense of time using magic. The troll that Rino appointed as the barn manager hobbled out to greet Rino. He just finished his round of cleaning the quail''s pen when Rino arrived. Quasimodo appeared a little buffer than Rino remembered him to be two weeks ago, but the troll''s gentle nature still shone through those biceps. "How is everything?" he asked. The hunchback troll grinned toothily. "They like the new barn a lot. It took no coaxing to have everyone move over. The quails and rabbits love the new ypen they share during exercise time, and the chicks are almost ready for their first mating season." So soon? Rino stopped questioning these things now that he knew what kind of effect his animal feed grown with the help of magic had on regr animals. At this rate, they might evolve into low-levelled monsters. The pygmy hogs were already showing minor signs of evolution, not that Rino told his barn workers. It didn''t really matter if this was going to be a barn full of fat animals or magically cultivated monsters. Rino could only think of them as food and future resources. It was both a good and bad thing that they were growing so quickly. Rino had more food than he knew what to do with them. Meat wasn''t something that the gods epted as an offering for some reason. There were only a few ghouls who needed to eat raw meat from time to time. Rino inspected the new barn and checked the magic perimeters for the next hour. Rina did a great job of putting everything together, and the lich found no issues. The barn project turned out to be such a resounding sess that it could no longer be called a barn. Instead, Rino decided that this was a luxurious ranch. As Rino strolled in the fields, Rino spotted different colours between grass patches and wondered if it was part of his imagination or a trick of the lighting. However, as he spent the next fifteen minutes walking around in the grazing pasture, Rino finally understood why many of his animals were pregnant. That junior disciple sister of his mixed in some breeding grass into the magically grown regr grass. How sneaky! She must have done so secretly because not even Sch?fer knew about it. The killer rabbit was in charge of letting the animals out for grazing, but even he did not notice the difference. Maybe he needed to have a little tea session with Rina after all. Rino took onest sweep across the vast grazing field and wondered if he should tell his farmers to remove the breeding grass. Then, he decided against it. More animals were better than fewer animals. They could always kill the adults if the poption spilt over and feed the children magic grass if they needed new adults for breeding urgently. Chapter 192 - Delicious Dairy (1) A few days passed without fuss and Rino checked on the new stone hut by the river. Deezer and Bink managed to get the waterwheel prototype functioning, so they started working on the actual waterwheel just in time for Rino''s new daily quest. Checking his quests, Rino looked at the side quest and wondered if he wanted to im the reward now. Maybe not quite yet. He wasn''t in the mood to look at more side quests, in all honesty. Eventually, Rino decided to im it. === Side Quest #20 plete) Objective: Breed Animals 1/1 Rabbits 1/1 Birds 1/1 Boars Reward: Animal Taming Skill im your reward here. === The animal taming skill wasn''t anything impressive. Quasimodo could tame them even without this skill, and Rino wondered why the gods thought he would want such a thing. Sheer domination was a way to deal with many things, and if all failed, Rino could always kill them and make them his shadow army. Taming was such an unnecessary skill by his standards. His new daily questcked creativity, but Rino found the new deadline somewhat manageablepared to the windmill project now that he already established the Nightless Underpass. === Daily Quest #22 Objective: Build a Water Wheel Time Limit: 14 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Pickaxe Crafting Recipe Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === More importantly, Rino liked how the next reward was going to be very useful. The earth gnomes and pygmy dwarves were taking a while to study the goodies Rino took back from the dwarven caves. It didn''t matter what they did. None of them could figure out how to properly smelt ores and shape them. The detailed instructions on the thin stone tes remained a mystery and offered no help because nobody could read dwarven tongue. Kragami took it upon himself to make sense of thenguage, and Rino wished his teacher luck. While Bink led the water wheel building project, Deezer was working with the trolls to dig out a river and construct the dam Rino wanted by the river. At the same time, the shadow spectres helped out with building Rino''s stone cottage by the riverside. Referring to the windmill''s model, the earth gnomes quickly figured out how to connect and disconnect the waterwheel to the main axle inside the stone cottage that Rino wanted. They still had no idea how to make the grindstones work, but at the very least, they knew how to connect it. In the meantime, Rino was down at the luxurious ranch. To be more precise, he was at the milking house with Zes. With so many barrels of milk, Rino decided to turn them into delectable dairy goodies. After he got his butter and cheese, he might make a speedy trip to Cypress County and have a chat with Rina. That conversation was long overdue, but thezy lich couldn''t find enough motivation or reason to travel over. Even with the underpass built, Rino would still take over an hour to get there. He was simply toozy to go there for a talk that mightst twenty minutes at most. There had to be better incentives than that. "Observe," he told Zes as he set the butter churn up. The earth gnomes decided to modify that spinning top churn design into something simr that would use inertia and gravity to constantly turn the barrel. The waterwheel wasn''t ready yet. So, they had to do this the manual way. Fortunately, Zes was a supernatural existence, and Rino did not need to worry about him breaking his spine doing this. Butter preparation took a while, and Rino instructed the fairies to help over thest few days while he shut himself in the study. The prior preparation to store the milk barrel intended to make butter in the chilled underground storage overnight helped them shorten the butter-making process. Then, the cream at the top of the barrel was scooped out and ced in special churn vats. The process to let the cream mixture rest at regr temperature took about half a day, and when that was done, the cream had to be transferred out again. This time, it went back to the underground chilled storage for an hour before they were taken out for actual butter churning. Rino loaded the special vats onto the machine and started the demonstration. He had no idea how to exin the concept of centrifugal force to Zes, but he convinced the spectre that by the time they were done, there would be something called butter that was solid and a whole bunch of liquid called buttermilk. Both things were useful in different ways. Following Rino''s lead at spinning that three-sitter milk vat merry-go-round, Zes worked without a break for about fifteen minutes, stopping every five minutes or so for RIno to check the inside of the vats to see if they were done. Honestly, the preparation process for making butter took longer than the actual butter churning. Rino prepared the salt in the meanwhile as Zes worked. Salted butter went well with most things, but unsalted butter was required when making sweets. Rino decided to make both kinds of butter with this batch. He would give them to Kragami for experimenting while thest vat of butter remained in Town Zera. He wanted to make thinly fried taro chips because it went very well with the taro beer Kragami sent him thest time. Once Rino confirmed that the butter and buttermilk werepletely separated inside the special vats, he ordered a fairy to bring over the special bucket covered byrge pieces of cotton cloth. Following Rino''s example, as the lich slowly poured the contents of the special vat over the cotton cloths, Zes repeated it for the next two vats. The solid butter remained on the cloth while the slightly transparent white liquid Rino called buttermilk fell through the cloth, dripping into the clean bucket below. Once the buttermilk stopped dripping, Rino bundled the cotton cloth together and ordered a basin of chilled fresh water to be brought over. Zes observed how Rino rinsed the butter solids in the bundled cloth over and over in chilled water until the water was no longer cloudy after the wash. "Remember, it has to be chilled water like bathing in a river during winter. Butter melts easily, so never use warm water. Keep it chilled at all times." The amount of ''butter'' Zes saw from all that cream in that barrel of milk was extremely little! So much work for such a little portion, he wondered why the lich went through the trouble of doing it. Then again, his lord was brilliant, and there were many things that Rino did the normal folks wouldn''t understand. Rino dumped the butter clumps onto a smaller y mixing bowl and showed Zes how to mix them. A few curious genesis fairies stuck around watching Rino spread the butter clumps andbined them repeatedly with a wooden spoon. He continued to pour away excess water squeezed from the butter clumps until there was none left, and the butter appeared to be a very smooth mixture. "Get me the butter boxes," Rino told a fairy as he split the butter mixture into two portions. Dumping the first half of the butter mixture into the specially designed butter boxes, Rino told the fairies to put one away in the chilled underground storage while he kept the other in his shadow sack. For the remaining half of the butter in the bowl, Rino added some salt to it. He mixed the butter well until no salt crystals were left. Then, it was split into two portions and dumped into the butter boxes. One of the butter boxes was to remain in the underground storage while the other was to be delivered to Kragami. Butter boxes were actually magically enchanted portable refrigerators. Like the dimensional storage essories that the courier rabbits wore, the butter boxes could constantly keep the butter chilled. The runes that Rino used remained activated as long as the butter boxes remained in the vicinity of the mana web array. It wasn''t very difficult to design, but the butter boxes couldn''t work once they left Rino''s territory. Although Rino doubted anyone would try to steal his butter boxes, he was toozy to maintain the runes himself. There should not be any issues as long as the butter boxes remained in Town Zera and Noir Province. Ping! Oh, Rino knew this sound. Packing the butter boxes and giving Zes instructions to make more butter with the milk, the lich excused himself. He might have to make cheeseter, but he should check what the gods are up to first. === Side Quest #21 Objective: Craft statute of God 0/1 Statue Reward: Offering Station === Freezing, Rino read the description of what an offering station did. Then, a huge grin erupted on his face. Now, he had more reason to return to Noir Province. This was going to be huge, and he just knew it! The Gods will probably regret making the offering process so convenient for him. Chapter 193 - Delicious Dairy (2) When Kragami sent RIno a barrel of vinegar along with three barrels of beer to Town Zera, Rio did not know if he would ever finish using the vinegar. Now, he knew exactly how he was going to use them. Although it was potato vinegar, Rino had a feeling it would still do the job of changing the goat milk into goat cheese. He had the salt ready and the huge y pot on the temperature regting stove. Cheesemaking was a delicate process, and Rino called Zes over with some of the genesis fairies. As this was Rino''s first time putting his cheesemaking knowledge to practical use, many things could still go wrong. The cheese tub he ordered to be custom made almost two weeks ago proved to be the right decision. Now, he looked at the markings at the side of the pot as Zes helped to pour the barrel of goat''s milk. Rino was looking at a proportion of one part vinegar and four parts milk. With one barrel of goat''s milk in the cheese tub, Rino activated the fire rune on the stove on medium intensity. He could not tell the milk''s temperature, but from the enthusiastic sharing of his chef in the previous world, Rino knew that milk boiled very quickly. He wanted to avoid that all cost and told Zes to stir the milk slowly without stopping in the cheese tub as he watched with hawk vision. As soon as the first bubble escaped the white liquid surface, Rino lowered the intensity of the heat to low. He continued monitoring it and adjusted the fire output ordingly, exining the importance of heat control to the genesis fairies on duty. "Slowly stir in the vinegar, don''t stop stirring the pot. You should start seeing solids form and keep the heat on low always. Warm the milk, but don''t let it boil." The fairies did as Rinomanded, and Zes kept stirring the pot as the vinegar drizzled into the pot until the total amount of liquid inside reached the pot''s marking at the side. Rinomanded them to stop when it reached the marking and told Zes to continue stirring it for a few more minutes as Rino deactivated the fire rune on the stove beneath. Everyone held their breaths as Rino inspected the pot. The cheese bits looked good, and Rino had a feeling this was a sess. Now, all they had to do was strain it using cotton cloths and shape it into something easy to slice. A new barrel was rolled over as the genesis fairies tied the cotton cloths over the top of the barrel. Once all the cheese bits were separated from the soured milk, Rino was determined to squeeze them dry by twisting the cotton cloth. The rest of the liquid was disposed of and poured into the field as extra water. Rino only wanted these cheese bits and set them into arge mixing bowl, sprinkling a generous handful of salt while mixing the bits. The genesis fairies took a sneak taste of the mixed cheese bits while Rino looked for a suitable paper wrapper for the cheese cube he was going to make. It was delicious, and Zes gave in to temptation, stealing a small piece for a taste when Rino caught him red-handed. Instead of getting angry, Rino smirked. "Is it good?" Nodding, Zes and the genesis fairies blushed. Rinoughed and convinced them that more delicious food wille in the future. "We still need to resolve the in-breeding problem if we don''t want strange cheese and milk," he told them. She and Kamiya were working on finding new animals around the vicinity, and Rino had no problems waiting for them to find new animals. Zes still had plenty of nanny goats to milk, so there would be more cheese. The only real problem was their dead-end with the grindstone research. Without it, they could not make the flour that was needed to bake a pizza. Rino already had a schematic for a mana operated oven now that he knew how to design temperature regting fire runes. The spell was slightly moreplex, but it wasn''t anything Rino couldn''t manage. The oven wasn''t very different from a furnace that he also included in his river stone cottage design. That was going to be his personal cksmithing workshop. Rino looked forward to the automatic water wheel system to help him with grinding, churning, smithing and more. Now that Rino had his cheese wheel and butter boxes, he encouraged Zes to make more for Town Zera''s consumption. To motivate them, Rino let them in on a secret that cheese went really well when stuffed into minced meat patties that they could fry over a hot stone te. Rino mounted on Mutt with his goodies as they set off for Cypress County with the delicious dairy products. He couldn''t wait to see how he couldplete the newest side quest while he was there. The gods did not specify what kind of statue they wanted, and Rino had the perfect location for such a statue worthy of offering. The location was too perfect, and the model was nothing short of perfection. Rino only wondered what the model would say when they returned to see it. Rino reached Cypress County in an hour and was weed by Kragami and a very scared fairy hiding in his teacher''s robes. "Good to see you again, teacher and Rina." The fairy squeaked and apologised profusely, but Kragami shushed her. "You were faster than I thought you would be. Come, this is no ce to talk. The milk the delivery rabbits sent yesterday goes surprisingly well with the bitter roasted coffee seeds and strong tea vours from roasted leaves. I think many people will start loving this." Rino chuckled. If his teacher thought that milk was a great discovery, he might have a heart attack to know just how heavenly it is. Dairy products that could be made from milk alone were more precious than the drink itself. As Kragami poured his students some coffee and tea, Rina dared not meet Rino''s eyes. The lich did not break the silence to entertain the topic first. He enjoyed watching Rina''s suffering and amused himself with her difort until Kragami set the y cups down. "Stop bullying her. You were away. Who would have known mana-water grown grass would cause rapid growth in the animals you captured?" Rina quickly took refuge behind the necromancer''s sleeve and nodded furiously. "I stopped after the first five goats grew, but the hogs took a lot of effort to contain! You can ask She and Zes if you don''t believe me. Quasimodo helped too, and he was even injured. The fence we built was already broken and the fields ruined. I spent a long time reinforcing everything before we finally got the situation under control." Rino did not me her. The summary Rina gave him was chaotic enough. He did not need to go into details about the traumatic experience his farmers suffered because of it. However, he wouldn''t let her go without exining why she thought sneaking in breeding grass into the grazing field was a good idea. When Kragami heard that Rina snuck some breeding grass into the grazing field, he raised a brow, and Rina blushed. "I-I just thought that it would be nice to have a constant supply of milk all year round. Besides, the only animals who should be eating that grass are the goats. The rabbits and quails are upstairs. They wouldn''t be affected. Who would have thought that the pygmy hogs ate grass as well. I thought they only ate potatoes." Indeed, he didn''t know that pygmy hogs ate grass as well. He thought they only ate root nts and corn. It was a new discovery that nobody was expecting. "The milk supply, you will have. Just don''t do things like this again without first informing me. In-breeding is a scary thing. That''s why I came today. It''s not just to chat with Rina but to propose a few things." All ears, Kragami and Rina leaned in to listen to the things Rino wanted to introduce. When Rino told them about the statue he wanted to build in every region, they agreed. Rino need not travel to and fro so frequently, and they need not worry about storage issues for surplus harvests with the offering stations. "This," Rino said before he left. "Is something Zes and the fairies made today with me. It''s something that we made out of milk. Let me know if you like it. Be careful with the butter. It needs to be close to the magic array for the rune in the box to constantly keep it chill. Butter melts easily, but it is a good recement for animal fat. You can use it to give the mashed potatoes a better vour and add in chunks of meat." Although Rina and Kragami did not know what butter and cheese were, they were thrilled to know that these new dairy products were very versatile in use. Cooking with them would be a game-changer, and the excitement only elevated when Rino dropped the design for an oven on the table, requesting for them to build one with a better temperature control system. Leaving his teacher and junior sister to work on the culinary advancements, Rino teleported to the y mine. It was time to test his artistic skills. Chapter 194 - Artistic Failure The first attempt ended up a monstrosity, and Rino demolished it with a stomp of his boots. Nobody should see this atrociousness! It was exceedingly hard for Rino to form the right shape that he had in mind. This lump of y just wouldn''t work with him, and the lich was close to giving up when his saviour appeared. "You appear troubled," the voice spoke from his shadows, and for a while, RIno wondered who it was. The shadows rippled, and Rino blinked, trying to refresh his memory of where he saw this wraith before. "You are¡­?" King Wraith Ubel was rather saddened. For the longest time, he worked silently behind the scenes in the dreary swamp, forgotten by everyone. If there was someone he thought would remember his existence as the guardian of Noir Province, he thought it would be the powerful lich who named him. "I am Wraith King Ubel. You named me after winning the Ghost Cypress Tree over." That was a memory from one of the first battles Rino had ever sinceing to this world. After so many things, such as moving to set up Town Zera and constructing his Nightless Underpass, this powerful wraith''s existence waspletely forgotten until now. "A-ah¡­ of course, I remember. What do you want?" The dismissive tone and obvious lie made Wraith King Ubel feel utterly depressed. The gloomy air around him only increased, and Rino sighed. This was the problem with having too many shadow soldiers. He simply couldn''t remember them all. "Look, I''m sorry about what happened. Don''t sulk now. Why are you here?" Wraith King Ubel epted the apology and looked at the destroyed y mound. For a while now, he had been observing what Rino did. From those pointy things on what should be a head and something long at the back, he could tell that Rino wanted to build a sculpture and not a pot. He could guess who this sculpture was about, and if Ubel was honest, Rino was an artistic failure. "Would you like me to help with sculpting? I''ve been practising pottery for a while now with the fairies and have gotten quite good at it." Not one to refuse help, Rino stepped back to see what Ubel would do. The Wraith King did not disappoint, and with gentle tendrils, he wrapped the y and shaped them like how a mother would coax a crying child. After repeated strokes and nudges towards the correct direction, the y slowly but surely took a semnce of shape. The first thing Rino saw was the general shape of a feline, and Rino gaped. He didn''t tell Ubel what he wanted. How did the wraith figure out? Sure enough, Ubel was sculpting Noir, and Rino recognised that unique feature that he didn''t think many people knew about. Noir had a missing side w on its front paws and often used its back ws more. In Rino''s presence, sometimes the ck cat would even walk on his hind legs like a human. Rino always found it odd, but he didn''t mind. Noir was still adorable. He was so cute that Rino wanted to make a statue modelled after him for worship so that his people would not forget Noir when he decided to return to the farmhouse. "Stop," Rino told Ubel after noticing how good the wraith king was. The only problem Rino had with the current y model was the size and the pose. Rino knew the ce he wanted to make the statue for the offering station. Honestly, there was no better ce for it than right outside his farmhouse. Of course, he would put it a distance away and order for a border to be made around his farmhouse for privacy. However, that was the best location in many ways. Near to the farm and overwatching the granary, this offering statue could also act as a good luck guardian. Cats were symbolic creatures. In his previous world, they were known to be both good and evil. Businessmen loved cats because they kept rodents away. The farmers loved cats, the fishermen loved cats, sailors loved cats. Generally, most people loved cats. However, there was a minority that believed cats were evil and brought bad luck. Most people associated cats and their fur colour with dark magic. There was a time when the dark guilds used cats to act as gue carriers. They would also possess stray cats to attack people and sacrifice them to their evil god. Then, Rino remembered how fear spread throughout the capital when dead cats were found hanging outside nobles'' houses a day before being assassinated. After these incidents, people started to have mixed feelings about cats. It did not help that most of the cats involved in negative incidents had ck fur coats like Noir. However, in this world, Rino was determined to make ck the colour of worship and respect. His mantle was ck, his soul was probably ck, and Noir''s silky fur was also ck. It should not be feared and must be loved by the shadow servants. Retrieving his sketchpad, Rino noticed how he only had a few nk pages left. He should stop by Cypress County after this to stock up on new sketchpads. Working quickly, Rino noticed just how disfigured his drawing was. Noir''s intended paw was as big as its face, and that tail was a tad too short for the body that was too ovalish. Noir''s athletic and lithe build was now a terribly obese one, and Rino apologised. Ubel was right to offer assistance, and Rino was d that pride did not stop him from stepping aside to let Ubel take the lead. Despite his many talents, Rino understood a limitation when he saw one. It didn''t matter which world he was in. The fact that he wasn''t gifted in artistic work was something he came to acknowledge. He didn''t really mind drafting alchemy designs or working with his dwarven pal on the moreplicated systems in a robot. However, those things had technical measurements and consisted of basic shapes that Rino could manage using tools, like his triangr ruler. However, the art teacher who was part of his noble education could only sigh whenever Rino drew. Rino remembered how he was told to draw a portrait of a very lovely young maid who volunteered to be his model. She sat there without moving for nearly four hours, and by the end of the lesson, nothing about her reflected in his work. His art teacher was so stunned at his basics that he questioned the praises he gave Rino at the end. There wasn''t a right or wrong in art, but Rino''s art teacher told him that it was ugly in the most polite and roundabout manner. After tenpulsory lessons, the art teacher quit, and Rino''s butler finally stopped nagging at him to continue. There was no improvement whatsoever, even under the guidance of an art teacher. Even a child could draw better than Rino, and the ex court magician left it as it was. Now, he had slight regrets for not working harder when he showed his shameful draft to Ubel, who scrutinised it without another word. "How big do you want this to be? Any additional essories? Should we put the main statue on top of a stand so that the offerings can be put below, or are we going to build a pavilion to shelter the statue?" The wraith king''s questions made Rino thankful that he had a ratherpetent, understanding and enthusiastic subordinate. He only felt slightly guilty for forgetting all about this person when he was busy setting up the swamp into a good wood and paper farm. Back then, too many things happened, and before Rino could properly get to know his citizens in Noir Province, he left to set up Town Zera. Instead of answering, Rino asked what Ubel thought. He wanted to know the opinions of someone more artistically gifted. Ubel looked like he received an early birthday present when Rino asked for his opinion and gushed over what he thought was best about the statue, including his opinions about the pose, location of worship and size. In the end, Rino told the excited wraith that he intended to build Noir''s statue right outside his farmhouse so they could not carve it into the mountainside, although Rino found that idea very refreshing. "You can carve Noir''s head in the mountain big enough so that even those in Cypress County can see it. That should be a symbol of Noir Province. In fact, I want to leave the decorations to you. Feel free to make the town a little more lively with your artistic creations. We live a little too simple. It could be boring after a long time. I heard that the fairy quarters are ready. You can start from there after you finish crafting Noir''s statue." The moment Rino gave Ubel carte nche to work on the vige decorations, Ubel sank to the ground humbly with an emotionally choked thanks. He swore to build the best Noir statue in front of Rino''s humble farmhouse and ensure that nobody forgot about the ck cat. Rino had a strange feeling he might soon regret this. However, forck of better options, Rino agreed and left to replenish his sketchpad. Ubel could handle this. Chapter 195 - Frozen Time Ping! Rino was stunned. He was still replenishing his sketchpad supply when he saw the system notification. Thankfully, nobody was around so Rino quickly checked his quest and noticed that the daily quest waspleted way ahead of time. === Daily Quest #22 plete) Objective: Build a Water Wheel Time Limit: 14 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Pickaxe Crafting Recipe im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Not one to hesitate, Rino imed his reward and decided to take this time to share the recipes he had in his arsenal with the crafters. He might not be good at drawing or sculpting, but Rino was good at technical drawings, which was a whole new set of skills. Aftering to this world, Rino received so many rewards frompleting the daily quests but nothing that stood out in particr. Theplex culinary recipe books were probably the one thing Rino appreciated because they enriched lifestyle and culture. Making somethingplicated to achieve also meant that Rino could divvy the responsibilities and create more jobs. Rarity increased the value of things, and those who worked well should be rewarded ordingly. As of now, motivation and initiative are sorelycking in the lower-levelled undead subordinates. In his absence, the number of people Rino could count on to hold the fort was less than a handful. That certainly wasn''t going to be enough in the future when Rino expanded. There were some promising individuals, but they were not ready to assist Rino at their current capabilities. Lack of experience and knowledge was a daunting limiting factor. Rino needed time, and while time was on his side as an immortal, he wasn''t willing to spend an eternity managing this empire. The pickaxe recipe that Rino received was rather simple. Pickaxes were tools with a sharpened point that helped shatter hard surfaces, usually rocks, using the least effort. Pressure was a concept Rino was familiar with. He often heard his dwarven partner talk about it as they tested how much abuse a new material could withstand before deciding if it could be used for production. The pickaxe came in several designs from the reward Rino imed. The designs that Rino fashioned for his subordinates in the early days were very primitive and could be easily recreated using sharp stones impaled through thick wooden branches long enough for them to do a full swing. Using gravity as an assistant, the stone pickaxe that Rino designed and reinforced with enchantments could chip away at the mountain rocks. Originally, Rino did not have a need for a better pickaxe designed because the one he had worked as intended. However, there was a very rich mineral mine back in Town Zera that Rino wanted to exploit. Stone wasn''t the only material Rino needed. If he were to venture into smithing and learning the secrets left behind by the dwarves, Rino needed better tools to work with. The current pickaxes his minions used were too clumsy. Rino needed a tool with more precision, and the pickaxe design that he received from the gods was a bridge to the mining tools the dwarves created. Rino''s pickaxe was single-sided, but the pickaxe recipe design Rino saw in his rewards was double-sided. The pickaxe served two purposes with one end sharp and pointed to crack stubborn and hard rocks. The other side was a ttened surface much like a stamp. Along with the pickaxe, the design included stakes and wedges that could be used to split rocks more precisely. The mining method proposed by the gods was a little unorthodox, but Rino did not doubt it. This method of breaking a huge structure cleanly was a scientifically proven technique. By creating fissures along a sturdy surface, targeting repeated weak points created, the huge structure under its own weight would eventually copse because of gravity. Writing down the new pickaxe design and all the analysed dwarven weapon inventions took half a day. Rino spent a few more hours making a copy of what he wrote into a new sketchbook, borrowing one of Kragami''s guest rooms to do so before he decided to return to Town Zera. "Leaving so soon?" the necromancer asked. Even Rina appeared slightly reluctant to let him go so soon. "Why don''t you stay for dinner first?" Rino wanted to refuse, but they were very insistent, so he stayed. Little did he know about the things they nned for him. After downing three jugs of taro beer, Rino wondered why Kragami and Rina would try to get him drunk. Didn''t they know that liches are literally immune to every other effect except for sunlight and anything holy rted? Kragami was flushed and unsteady even in his chair. Rina was already sleeping on the table, and the necromancer looked at his student. "You know," the old man slurred. "Ever since you attacked my swamp, I always found it weird¡­" Ok, Rino backtracked mentally to try and keep up with the change in conversation. Not too long ago, they were still talking about the possibility of introducing art to society and metalwork. Rina was also talking about future education ns now that they had stable paper production. "What do you mean?" Kragami huped and took another swig at his wooden ale mug. Rino wondered if he should stop his teacher. Whatever, it was probably toote for that now. He would just have to leave some hangover medicine for the necromancer to take the next morning. They only had themselves to me for trying to get him drunk. Rino refused to baby them in this state when he could be returning to Town Zera and checking on the water wheels. Admittedly, Kragami mentioned his observations about Rino that the lich could not refute. He thought he hid it well enough but knowing how his teacher and Rina were some of the only capable people he could entrust territories for management, it came as no surprise that Kragami found out some of his secrets. "You''re not actually a dark magician even though you are a lich. If anything, I bet you were a very good elementalist. Your control of fire and your natural tendency to borrow air magic subconsciously even if you mostly use earth magic tells me that." He took another wig, and Rino did not confirm or deny the usations. What could he say? The necromancer hit the nail on the head. "I won''t ask about your past or why you''re doing so much to build amunity of undead. However, I ask that when the timees when you have to do what you must, you will ask for help and not shoulder everything alone. It doesn''t matter if we only knew each other for a short time and that our meeting did not start on a good foot. Rina, this child¡­ she sees you as her older brother. And I might see you as a son." Hearing Kragami''s drunken confession, Rino''s non-existent heart softened. Back in his previous world, there were people who reminded Rino of these two snoring drunkards. Although he said he wouldn''t baby them, Rino still found a nket to drape across his teacher''s old bones. Remembering those who were no longer here with him only made Rino wish he could experience the effects of alcohol. It didn''t matter how many barrels he emptied at this point. Everything would just turn into mana, and Rino would still be as sober as ever. Back in those days at the magicians'' tower, Rino distinctly remembered one very old teacher. He was Rino''s favourite teacher because that man never judged him for anything he did or did not do. In fact, the only thing he did was put a warm hand over RIno''s head with a wisened smile on his face. Rino remembered the feeling of the heavy hand ruffling his hair and the crinkles at the corner of his teacher''s eyes whenever he smiled. The old magician died from old age and pneumonia. Rino did not cry during his funeral, but he definitely remembered stealing an expensive bottle of wine from the royal cer and downing it alone under the moonlight in his room surrounded by the books his teacher rmended for his reading that he put off checking out. That night, he read everything his teacher rmended and suffered from insomnia for weeks before he finally gathered the courage to visit his teacher''s memorial stone. For magicians, they could not be buried. Even after death, they still possessed powerful mana channels that dark magicians could exploit. Hence, they must be cremated and the ashes ced in an urn at the memorial hall with only the magician''s name on the tablet for those who still remember them. Rino also remembered a mute child servant who cared for his daily needs at the magician''s tower many years after his beloved teacher''s death. That child served him for many years until she took her own life at sixteen. Rino made the son of a noble who deflowered her against her will and forced her tomit suicide pay the price along with his family. However, he could not forget the contents of herst letter to the world, thanking him for everything he did for her while apologising for her early work dismissal. He ignored her nagging about his bad bedtime routines and irregr meal cycles, but Rino distanced himself from everyone else after these two incidents. Looking at Kragami and Rina, Rino wondered when the time frozen for him in the previous world started to tick again. Chapter 196 - Big Splash Rino finally left Cypress County and returned to town Zera. The earth gnomes were sleeping by the time he arrived in the wee hours of the morning. Only those on patrol and third shift were still around and greeted Rino. The lich headed straight to the river where his stone hut was constructed. He saw how brightly lit the area was and how beautiful the three huge mounted water wheels looked. The dam was constructed exactly how Rino wanted. The genesis fairies must have worked together toplete theplicated set of earth and water rune seals Rino passed to them. He checked the array twice and nodded in approval that everything was exactly how it was meant to be. Unlike normal dam designs that require a draining area and catchment area, Rino''s dam designs borrowed the power of dark magic and extra space. Based on the measurement of water on the dam wall full of magical spells, the water would either enter a storage catchment area created using spatial magic powered by the magic tree in Town Zera, or it would be released back into the flowing river to help move the three big waterwheels. If the water in his spatial dimension overflowed, the second set of spells would send that water to theke Rino''s reservoir beneath Spudville got its water from. He already told Kragami to set a spell in his reservoir in Spudville to redirect its water to the swamp in Cypress County if the limits overflowed. That was the third preventive measure. If even Cypress County flooded, Rino told them to redirect everything towards the sea. He still hasn''t set up the marker for the water to flow out to the sea, but Rino thought of putting those dwarven sewer systems to use. The systematic sshing of water sounds brought an unusual sense of tranquillity as Rino inspected his unfurnished stone house. The stone cottage by the river was raised a good distance from the ground as part of the earth gnomes'' consideration for raising river water levels during rainy seasons, and Rino didn''t mind it too much. They were located in a valley, and sh floods could happen. Maybe he should hasten with that sewage system link as soon as possible. From outside, Rino did not realise just how long his stone cottage was. However, once he was inside, he realised that this stone cottage was much longer than he thought it would be. More importantly, Rino liked how Deezer and Bink incorporated his stone furnace idea at one end of the house and a kitchen at the other corner,plete with storage arrangements. They must have heard about the butter churn process from Zes and made adjustments to the build ordingly. Rino loved a good initiative. If he was still a professor, these boys were getting distinctions from him! The middle part of his stone cottage waspletely barren, and Rino wondered what he would do with this third water wheel. If the first was for smithing hammer and the second for grindstone, the third wheel¡­ Rino could think of some uses for it going down the road. Maybe he would find something useful for it. The water wheel design was simple, and Rino decided to rx by taking a dip in the river. He removed his boots and let the water flow between his toes, kicking lightly and listening to the ssh it made while the water wheels slowly turned. The earth gnomes chose to follow the water wheel design followed an angled wooden te that would cause the giant wooden wheel to turn when the water pressure built up and pushed it along. Although Rino wasn''t around during the testing stage because he was in the dwarven mine, the earth gnomes periodically sent him updates via She, who ryed the message using the master and ve bond. The gnomes worked hard and tested many types of wood during the prototype building stage. Bink even took the initiative to make a trip down to the sawmill in Cypress County to mill some wood samples. Eventually, they decided on cypress wood because it was lighter than jungle wood and more water-resistant. Now that things were starting to stabilise, Rino found himself not having too much to do. He could use this time to rx a little more and unwind instead of chasing the deadline. In all honesty, after experiencing the divine punishment once, Rino had a feeling nothing else would faze him in the future. There was no need to work so hard if the gods were the ones who were desperate. Their urgency wasn''t his urgency. Ssh! A sudden wave of water covered Rino in water from skull to tailbone. Even if his clothes were waterproof, the shock still made him activate some defensive spells out of reflex. The lich only rxed a little when he heard giggling from the perpetrators hiding behind some rocks by the river. Rino narrowed the suspects down to only a few people in Town Zera who would dare do such a thing. She and the trolls were simply not daring enough to y pranks on him. It simply wasn''t in their nature. The earth gnomes were too tired to try, and the killer rabbits did not have water magic. Nobody else in this Town had water elemental magic apart from the fairies, and Rino prepared some water pellets to return fire. If these bored genesis fairies dared to y a prank on him, they should prepare to be pranked back. Not one to let something go easily, Rino returned fire with a volley of water bullets. The fairies giggling behind the rock shrieked when the rock exploded and quickly returned fire while conjuring a shield. Sometimes the catalyst for a major war did not need to be a big one. In this case, all it took was one big ssh before Rino dered it an all-out water war between him and the genesis fairies. Nobody yed fair, and Rino scowled when they called for reinforcements. Rino left Town Zera for quite a while, but the Genesis tree did not stop producing new fairies every few days. As Rino''s powers grew, the speed of multiplying also increased. Although the number of genesis fairies did note anywhere near the number of contracted fairies Rino had in Noir Province, it was still daunting enough that Rino was forced to go on the defensive. Not all the genesis fairies who came to support their sisters were able to use water magic. It soon became a four-elemental magic assault on Rino, who was forced closer towards his stone river cottage. Using the most familiar spells from his past life, Rino held the arcane shields steady to prevent his new cottage from getting damaged under the coordinated fireballs hurled from the sky. He also used nature magic to grow vines, imprisoning as many fairies as he could. The genesis fairies fought valiantly even as Rino took them down quickly. Chanting an area-wide sleep spell and casting a mid-level illusion simultaneously, Rino dodged ten water bolts aimed for his head. His spell took the fairies by surprise, and more than half of the remaining forces dropped out of the air with snores or in a trance. Rino carefully cushioned the impact with vines he grew from nature magic. The leader of this war was no other than the four-elemental genesis fairy that Rino remembered from the first batch. She might not be able to evolve into a sylph, but she was the strongest among all the genesis fairies. Rino must admit, her battle strategy was rather clever. They had the element of surprise and the advantage in numbers. She knew just how to draw out the maximum potential of her sisters. Sadly, she was up against a twisted ex court magician who knew the dirtiest tricks in the book. Rino did not go all out on them the way he did when testing Noir Province if they could defend themselves. He did not turn into a wyvern, but he did not let the fairies think it would be an easy victory. "Use the magic array!" the four-elemental fairy shouted, and the remaining fairies quickly dispersed. This time, Rino wasn''t quick enough to catch them. He did not know what she meant by ''use the array'', but he had a feeling it was going to be bad. As the designer of the array, he knew what it could do. As the installers of the array, these fairies knew how to unwire it. "Stop!" Rinomanded, but it was toote. The fairies quickly activated it, and Rino heard the dam rumbling before he saw it. Gurgle! Gurgle! Blub! Blub! Everything downstream was covered in unnecessary water, and things that were not properly secured were swept away in the huge wave. It was so huge that not even the four-elemental fairy was prepared for it. Rino tried to swim, but the bones did not provide any buoyancy, and he sank while watching the hundreds of genesis fairies get swept away by the huge current. The river turned into white rapids, and Rino had to use shadow tendrils to secure the genesis fairies, forcefully teleporting them to safety while he manipted the water around him to prevent himself from getting swept awaypletely. Coughing and spluttering, the genesis fairies and Rinoy by the river bankpletely exhausted, as Kamiya and his n hurried over to check on themotion. "We-we lost¡­'''' the genesis fairy leader panted, but Rino disagreed. "We''ll call it a draw for tonight. You''re wee tounch a sneak attack on me anytime, but I expect the damage to be fixed tomorrow." Groaning when she assessed the damage caused by the untimely release of the dam gates, the fairy let her head fall back onto the moist river bank and yed dead. Rino onlyughed and shook the water out of his skull.. He needed a bath now. Chapter 197 - Hungry Cat God The first thing Rino did after that water fight was to set up the drainage system and link it to the dwarves'' sewer tunnels. He wasn''t taking any other chances in case the genesis fairies wanted a new rematch. Rino spent his time helping out a little around his territory for the next few days while making his new riverbank cottage cosier. He took the time to order some furniture and interior decorations from Noir Province. As a kind, his amodations were often too humble for his status. It was unbing. He could almost hear his dead butler''s voice nagging at him to act his status. Ubel did a great job sculpting Noir ording to what Rino wanted. The statue was small, but the level of detail that the wraith king put into creating it spoke volumes about his effort into this piece of art. After confirming that this was exactly what he wanted, Rino gave Ubel the green light to continue the sculpture baking. As the kiln masters took utmost care when firing the statue, Ubel visited the sawmill and asked for everyone''s help to gather the materials he needed. In the end, the wraith king still thought that a shrine was grander when it came to gods. It was uneptable to leave the statue out in the open to be bullied by rain even though they had no sun. Oak galls were collected, bone ashes were gathered, ss bottles were prepared, and paintbrushes made from the hair of mountain goats were delivered from the luxurious ranch. Everyone was excited to see the first sculpture of god and offered it things that they farmed. Fronzo panicked when the granary overflowed, so Rino sent the courier bunnies and Acht''s team to bring back some of the spuds. Town Zera''s farmers seemed to be fired up when they heard that the vigers of Noir Province were getting ready to make a mass offering. Zerg''s vige farmed twice their daily output in the rice field. The killer rabbits stopped munching on their soybeans and took their harvesting seriously. Zes was dismayed when Rino told him cheese and butter or even milk would not be epted as offerings just yet. The mood waspetitive even as the genesis fairies had to help clean up the mess they made after failing their sneak attack on Rino. The lich was most nervous about this offering session. He wanted to make more offering stations to put one in every region if the first cat god statue seeded. Remote offering that fed GF credits to his system was one of the most brilliant moves the gods came up with. Rino liked how they thought, and it was mutually beneficial. He only hoped they were ready because his subordinates were very enthusiastic about feeding the hungry cat god. From up above, Ace avoided the reflecting pond like gue and sent Stephanie over to monitor it instead. He refused to watch how they fawned over his incarnate and likened it to gods even if that wasn''t very far off the mark. It was too embarrassing! "We need a bigger storage," Philmented off-handedly when Ark passed by the reflecting pond. Ace, who was hiding in his office, failed to hear that, but Stephanie felt her eyes bulging when Phil said that. "Are you serious? We cannot afford it!" Ark said nothing as his sister fumed about spending unnecessary divinity on bigger storage when the one they had was currently in a miserable state. With the discount stunt he pulled, Ace might have saved them from falling out of good graces with the other god clients. However, the number of offerings that came after that event trickled in so slowly that they could not receive any big or recurring orders. Without a steady offering ie, it wasn''t wise to expand the storage. Phil did not exin much. He simply used the administrator''s authority to remove Stephanie from the picture. Ark and Phil stared at each other for a long time, and the team leader sighed. He knew that he could not afford to offend Phil, but the retired god was really not giving him the time of day. "Take a loan if you don''t want to spend. We need bigger storage, or you''ll be sleeping in the milky way once they finish the side quest. I''m not going to reject any offerings they send. In fact, Ace and I have been wondering if we should open up the offering to more variety of produce. They haveplex food recipes now." The ultimatum that Phil gave made Ark wonder where Ace and Phil got their confidence from. ording to past history, Rino would never work without merits. Why would he suddenly be such a pious child and make huge offerings? Phil did not feel like exining to Ark. He went off to busy himself with the next phase that Rino was soon entering. With his new administrator rights, the god ofndscaping discussed the sequence of events to unfold with Ace. Rino was very close topleting his town building project. They should work on preparing him for the harsher environments and, eventually, the dystopian ending. Meanwhile, Rino decided to join in the hype of preparing for the offering ceremony. The cat god statue was currently in painting, and as the leader, he needed to create a legend that could entertain his subordinates. Kragami and others who worked closely with him knew that sometimes he spaced out on them because he was checking his system. Rino also had knowledge that did not originate from this world, and his wisdom was uncanny. The lich sometimes skipped exining difficult concepts and called it a revtion as the chosen one, and while some people believed him, Rino knew there were still lingering doubts. Noir''s statue was also familiar to many in Spudville who had seen the ck cat. Some even talked with him before and yed with him. Hence, Rino could not spin a tale too far from the truth. If anything, he might create something called an urban legend in memory of Noir''s teacher, whom he met in a different dimension. Yes, that''s what he would do. He would borrow Noir''s appearance and Noir''s teacher as the god''s identity and perhaps origin. Not all gods were born gods. Back in Rino''s world, some gods could be created. This stone statue could be one of it, and although Noir''s master had passed on, as long as he honoured her in memory using the collective thoughts of his subordinates, she might be able to find her way back as a fragment of her past soul and reborn into a myth-level god. Of course, that kind of thing would take a very long time, and Rino had no idea if he would still be around to see the birth of a myth god he created. Liches were immortal, but they were not invincible. Anything could happen, and Rino could always disappear like he was meant to in the previous world. With the next few days flying by, Rino found himself giving a speech he absolutely did not prepare for in front of the farmhouse with Noir''s statue behind him in a tasteful shrine. "With one lucky paw beckoning luck and prosperity overlooking the fields, I call this the hungry cat god modelled after my beloved Noir! Remember to feed this cat god like you would feed Noir. He is and will always be weed as one of us. Naturally, your faithfulness will not go unrewarded. As more cat god statues are introduced throughout my empire, the vige with the most contributions by the time T.A.R.O. Festivales again and will be given very rare and delicious food items as a reward." Everyone who heard of butter and cheese drooled when Rino mentioned rare and delicious food items. Initially, they thought that roasted purple potato and taro beer was the best thing that ever happened. However, after Rino gave Kragami a block of cheese and a box of butter, everyone unanimously agreed that dairy products were the best. However, the necromancer reassured them that Rino was still working on something even better. He just needed more time to figure out how to make grindstones work, and it was going to take a while. Unsure of why he was met with hundreds of expectant eyes at the mention of edible rewards, Rino wondered if someone was using his name to pre-sell hype for this offering event. It must have been very good marketing because the responses he received made his head ache. "Pipe down! Practice manners when presenting your offering to the hungry cat god," Rino lectured and demonstrated how to make a proper offering with a made-up procedure. Honestly, all he had to do was activate the spell circle that the tutorial taught him to draw and offering would go through. Noir''s statue wasn''t actually needed because they were cing it in front of Noir''s statue on the collection step that was big enough to hold a crate. Rino took one potato and ced it on the offering step. It looked a little ridiculous to offer just one potato, even if that spud was huge. The offering tform was simply too big, but Rino ignored it. This was only for the sake of demonstration. Raising both hands and crossing one palm over the back of his other bony hand, Rino raised it to his forehead and bowed lightly. "I humbly offer my daily thanks to the gods of this world." With just this line that Rino set as a passcode of sorts to activate the spell, the potato glowed white and disappeared mysteriously, entering godly realms. Then, Rino turned around and looked at his subordinates, who were extremely impressed. "Be polite, no jumping queue and wait for your turn. Understood?" Eager to begin, the crowd reorganised themselves, jostling when someone tried to jump ahead, and Rino turned a blind eye to the subtle elbows as everyone got in line. Erika was on standby as Rino left and counted the offerings made to the hungry cat god who - true to his name - epted offerings without rejecting any. Rino watched at the side for a while as the gods epted the offerings. Likewise, his GF credits rose steadily. It didn''t take long before the first sound was rejected but really, who could me the cat god? That spud had fourteen eyes on it! On the bright side, it made a good potato seed. As the offering ceremony continued, the queue never shortened, so Rino left.. It was time to decide how to use his GF credits smartly. Chapter 198 - Secrets Of Grinding Under the superb management, the offerings steadily increased, and Ark was forced to spend divinity on expanding the storage room while Stephanie struggled toe to terms with Ace and Rino''s brilliance. Phil took the opportunity to take over the office while the siblings handled the business and status side. Meanwhile, back in the small world, Rino finally received his new daily quest. Ping! === Daily Quest #23 Objective: Build a Grindstone Time Limit: 5 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Ore Appraisal Skill im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Tutorial! For the first time since he came to this world, Rino was excited to see a tutorial. He ignored the surprisingly short deadlinepared to the time given for the previous two projects. Phil observed Rino''s reactions from the reflecting pond above. It took him much string pulling and pressuring of the dumb siblings to find out more information about the grindstone that theycked knowledge about. Thankfully, it was a rathermon development in almost every world that humans popted, so they were given that information for nearly free. The new tutorial guide put together by Phil was rather detailed with the different ways a grindstone could be built. Several kinds of designs worked differently, and not all of them produced powder. Of course, the god ofndscaping made sure to include the possible risks and mention themon constructing mistakes in his tutorial so that Rino would not identally set his windmill on fire. There was no guarantee that the buildings were fireproof. For the next four hours, Rino poured through the surprisingly detailed tutorial guide. No wonder the gods only gave him five days toplete this daily quest. There wasn''t a need for more than two days because Rino had all the materials ready. In fact, he managed to figure out half the things in this tutorial by himself without aid. Thest step that remained a mystery was fairly simple after he understood the logic behind the design mentioned in this guide. Honestly, he could not understand why nobody thought about this earlier, although he supposed that if the pygmy dwarves and earth gnomes were given more time, they would eventually figure this out too. From the guide alone, Rino learned that grindstones were not only cutting machines to turn grains into powder. They were also able to squeeze liquid from seeds and beans. The process was somewhat simr, and a lot of crushing action was required for oil and soy milk grinding, but the grindstones worked the same. Who would have thought that the trick to getting the stone tes to work was to reduce the distance between both tes by a fraction and add grooves to them in a pattern that bes shallower at the end? As someone without artistic talents, Rino had to call on for an expert''s help. Thankfully, the side quest for making that offering station waspleted, and the other projects requiring the wraith king''s expertise weren''t urgent. Rina told him that the newly appointed artisan was going around making himself useful by renovating the hot spring baths. There were new cat sculptures all along the path to the hot spring baths and even worship statues of Rino in progress at the side of the mountain that stood over thirty metres tall. While that sounded ttering, Rino had no idea if it was a good idea. Sculptures of that scale were normally the target of disgrace because it was difficult to aplish and harder to maintain. Carving a statue into the mountain will also cause some structural damage. Rino had no idea which part of that grand statue would meet erosion and decay first. Heck, he wondered if the World Tree would start growing out of his exposed eye sockets in the mountainside after a few years. While waiting for Ubel to arrive, Rino told Bink to quickly get some smaller stone tes for experimenting with the grindstone carved designs. The earth gnomes got to work at once to prepare fifteen pairs of smaller grindstone tes while Rino sketched the designs from his tutorial onto his sketchpad. The patterns were simple, but most of them never travelled in a straight line from the eye to the edges. Instead, many ridges travelled in cross-crossing patterns. The top stone and bottom stone patterns were usually contrasting and never travelled in the same direction, and it took Rino a while to understand why that was so. In the simpler looking design, the tutorial exined the concept ofnds and furrows. Lands were the original part of the t grindstone surface without grooves carved into them. They were the breathing space of air between the grooves called furrows. It was important to have sufficientnd spaces between the furrows to preventbustion and explosions when milling. ording to the informative tutorial, dust explosion happens when the dry crushed grains turn into powder. When charged with the heat caused by the cutting action between grindstones, the powder could set other dry powder particles on fire, causing an explosion fuelled by air rushing through the grindstone. The explosion can sometimes be powerful enough to decimate the windmill and several acres ofnd around it. If a windmill was located near a dry field, the field might also burn. After reading this, Rino finally understood why windmills were also located very out of the way from cities and farms. People had to ride on mules to carry their wheat for grinding at the millers daily, and bakers limited the number of bread they could sell in a day. It was very inconvenient, but the distance was required for safety. "My king, I have arrived," Ubel reported for duty after reaching Town Zera. Rino grabbed his finished sketches and left his study to meet Ubel. ording to Bink, they managed to prepare four sets of grindstones roughly the size of Rino''s forearm for testing. The remaining sets would take more time. It wasn''t a terrible start, and Rino led Ubel to his stone cottage by the river, where they would test the new grindstones and the effectiveness of the carving designs using the water wheel as freebour. "Do we have a tray around the grindstone?" Rino asked after Bink demonstrated how the grindstone tes could be fitted on the new automated hand grinder. Grinning, the earth gnome ordered his younger siblings to bring in the collection bin and funnel. The wooden device came in two parts, held together by a mechanical sp and held up by a stone stand. The collection basin resembled a moat around the grindstone, and the basin was slightly angled downwards towards where the funnel was. Rino praised the design, and whatever the grindstone collected would enter a collection bin or bucket, depending on the output product. "Will we start with soybean or rice?" Deezer asked as he locked the final sp in ce, double-checking on the device. Rino looked at his patterns and figured that he wanted to test the powder designs first. Besides, it was easier to clean after powder. However, he told the earth gnomes to leave for safety measures as he added st and fire safety enchantment to the stone cottage. Ubel started working on the four designs that Rino shortlisted. They looked very different from each other, and ording to the wraith king, designs with straight lines were easier to work with than those with curved lines. Rino watched as Ubel carved the most straightforward lines angling outwards from the eye to the side at thirty degrees with almost equal spacings throughout. The design only had twenty furrows, and the wraith king took care to decrease the furrow depth as he approached the edges ording to Rino''s instructions. The next design was slightly harder as it contains curves. The bottom grindstone pieces contained sixteen curved lines in a simr fashion, going clockwise from the eye to the edges, getting shallower as they progressed outwards. The top grindstone was designed the opposite, with the same sixteen curved lines from the grindstone eye progressing outwards and getting shallower in the grooves as they reached the edges. However, the direction of these curves went anti-clockwise. The next two designs were very different. One contained a simple star-shaped pattern with eight sides and branching grooves with an inverted pattern for the other grindstone. The next design was a hypnotising sectioned out city-map pattern. The grindstone was divided into eight equal portions with grooves partitioning it. Within each portion, smaller rivers at thirty-degree angles were carved onto thends, and Ubel took the longest to finish this design. The partner grindstone te had a simr design with the direction of the rivers going the opposite direction. Rino chose thisplicated and hypnotising design as the fourth to test because the tutorial imed that it was the mostmon kind to exist for powder mills. When the four grindstone designs were carved, Rino enchanted them. Weight adjustments, temperature regting enchantments and durability enchantments were added. The tutorial mentioned the need for grindstone maintenance. While Ubel was an excellent crafter who could help maintain all these grindstones, Rino did not want to overburden his only artisan. Really, the next thing Rino should look into is job delegations and talent grooming. For now, they fitted the first grindstone tes.. It was the moment of truth. Chapter 199 - Grandiose Granulars Rino did not hesitate to collect thepleted daily quest reward. It might just be a testing grindstone to decide on the best pattern but the gods were very lenient and counted that towards a proper grindstone fixture. Ping! === Daily Quest #23 plete) Objective: Build a Grindstone Time Limit: 5 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Ore Appraisal Skill im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Without any quests from the system to bother him for a while, Rino focused on testing all the shortlisted grindstone designs. Ubel worked hard and came up with carving designs using the spare stone pairs that the earth gnomes prepared. Rino could not be more thankful for their initiatives. The experimental phase took almost three days to confirm the effectiveness of grindstone designs and the sizes. Eventually, Rino brought together the council of engineers and builders to discuss the most efficient engravings. "I think the twelve partitioned design for the two-ton stone tes in the windmill is best. Thend might look small on this prototype wheel, but something of that size might need more grooves to grind the dust finer," Aiden spoke up, and Griffith agreed, proving their take on theplex crafting using a big and small model fashioned from spare wood. The pygmy dwarves made a valid point, but Rino was still unsure about maintaining such a difficult design in the windmill. Although Rina helped add many enchantments to the structure and Rino enforced a spatial barrier to prevent explosions and fire from spreading, they could not be sure that having more furrows and lessnd space in a big wheel would minimise grinding risk. Deezer and Bink, who confirmed the scale and risk of dust explosion on a smaller scale, were traumatised. The model they tested was made out of stone that was barely the size of Rino''s palm. However, the ratio of damage causedpared to the size of their model was too terrifying to imagine. "We cannot agree to it despite the precautions taken," Bink spoke out as the voice of opposition to theplex design. "Even if there is damage containment, the explosion range is five times the size of the grindstone. There''s no saying that it wouldn''t be bigger with a two-ton stone model. I suggest reducing the number of sections to eight." From twelve sections to eight¡­ that was about a thirty person decrease. Rino and Ubel tested many variations of this poprnd and furrow design and found the quality of grounded granules varied. "I understand the concerns of both sides," Rino finally spoke up after ten minutes of heated debates between his engineers. "Let''s look at the testing results, shall we?" She presented Rino''s datasheet, and everyone blinked. Not all of them were literate, so Rino exined what the table with many numbers meant. "This is the number of rotations performed in the length of how fast it takes for a firewood chip to burn. This is the number that represents the number of sections of a simr design in the grindstone. The grindstone pairs are all about the size of my forearms when Ubel and I tested this out. In this column, we recorded the sachets of powder that each grindstone pattern produced." The sachets were ced in order at the side of the huge datasheet. There were a total of ten sachets. The least number of sections started at three and the most was twelve. The sachets were opened, and Rino told everyone to look at the rice granules'' quality. For the sake of fairness in his experiment, Rino used the same batch of rice harvested. The results for this pattern of grindstone was only for the windmill grindstones. He already had his decision when it came to the pattern for soybean milk grinding and seed oil. Squeezing liquid and crushing seeds needed a different pattern from the cutting action used to turn grains into powder. The team of engineers and builders took turns examining the fineness of powder crushed by the grindstones with different patterns. It was obvious now that the more furrows and sections a grindstone has, the finer the powder it became. However, the numbers at the side of the section were slightly disturbing. "My lord, why does the number of rotations stop at 1,125 rounds per woodchip?" Turning his head slowly over to the pygmy dwarves, Rino almost smiled eerily. Then, he nudged his head towards the earth gnomes for an exnation. "That was the speed that caused an explosion. We couldn''t go any faster without risking a new explosion." The answer silenced the curious pygmy dwarves, and nobody questioned if a grindstone could be turned faster. However, someone noticed that the different grindstones were turned at different speeds recorded in a side column in the datasheet. "What are those numbers for?" She asked. d that someone asked, Rino exined how he experimented with turning the grindstone at different speeds to see if there was a difference in the product. At the same time, most of these experiments were not fully conducted because Rino wanted to know if there was a difference between the speed, pattern and type of grains. As the difference wasn''t very significant, Rino skipped the tedious process of finding out for now. "Milling is a moreplicated skill than I initially thought," Rino admitted. "There is still a lot that I do not know, but for now, we should settle on one design. If the design and speed need adjustments, we can make arrangements for itter. The most important thing is deciding the best pattern for grinding all grains." His pizza was on the line, and Rino did not tolerate funny business. He wanted a more fine powder with the least risk of explosion. Unlike the water wheels, the windmill''s speed could not be directly controlled because the wind wasn''t something easily diverted. They could increase its speed using gears or slow it down to some extent by removing certain gear ratios, but if there was no wind, the mill would not work. Solutions were discussed as everyone cast their anonymous votes, writing the number they thought was best and folding their voting slips that She collected. Rino tallied the results as the pygmy dwarves, and earth gnomes tossed ideas about creating a semi-automated windmill that can still mill grains without wind. The votes between five key personnel leaned towards more sections and Rino was d that he did not need to interfere as a tie-breaker because Ubel was wise. The earth gnomes decided on a ten section grindstone design after seeing how the eight section grindstone design wasn''t too good at making fine powder. Likewise, the pygmy dwarves decided to back off from their demand for twelve sections as they initially demanded. The ten section grindstone design and twelve section grindstone design produced almost the same consistency of flour. If they could increase the speed a little, it might be possible to make up for the quality. Ubel solidified the ten section design vote and stated how he could create modifications to reduce or increase the furrows if required. Ten was the number everyone agreed on after hashing out their differences, and Rino was pleased that everyone proposed solutions to the issues they thought would be a problem despite their initial disagreement. "She, read the votes out and thements." The drowpiled, and Rino schooled his expression as he observed the faces of his subordinates. The pygmy dwarves who thought that the earth gnomes would reduce their section numbers were surprised that they increased it. The earth gnomes who thought that the pygmy dwarves would stick to their guns were satisfied that their point was sessfully made. However, the person who was dered the MVP of this meeting was Ubel, who had been silent throughout. The wraith king who listened attentively throughout understood the concerns of both parties and created solutions to suit their needs. "I don''t think anyone has any objections about creating a ten-section design for our windmill now. These grains will speak for themselves, and I trust that the experts here tonight can work together to ovee any other trials. Ubel is very capable, so please put his skills to good use. We have all the resources we need, material and talent-wise. I expect great things in theing weeks." She stood at a corner with pride in her eyes as her master talked about grand ns for more innovative andplicated inventions such as a furnace for baking food. The powder they made from the windmill could be turned into biscuits, dough, and desserts that even the gods might envy. Nobody questioned the usefulness of grindstones after Rino shared with them how they could get oil from seeds and soy milk from soybeans that could be used to make different cold dishes. Nobody knew what tofu was, but Rino imed that it was nt-grown meat for those who could not eat meat. Eager to start on the grand project, the meeting adjourned quickly as the engineers called a private meeting of their own in two hours to discuss the possible ways to semi-automate the windmill. Chapter 200 - Food Fiesta (1) While the engineering team and Ubel left to modify the windmill into something that would work even without wind, Rino took the chance to invite culinary experts from Noir Province to partake in his new experiment. Using the grindstone prototype, Rino mounted the most efficient grindstone pattern and used the waterwheel to grind several types of grains into powder that he stored in sacks woven tightly out of linen. Lined up against the wall after an hour were sacks of wheat, rice and corn flours. Rino was grinding some milk from the soybeans when the genesis fairy on patrol informed him that Kragami and his entourage of culinary experts had arrived. Thrilled, Rino let the water wheel do its thing and told the fairy to keep watch and fill the bucket with soy milk. Tidying his appearance quickly, Rino teleported to the Nightless Underpass entrance to meet his guests. "I see that Rina tagged along?" Rino mused. It wasn''t too long ago since he berated her for the stunt with the breeding grass, but his junior disciple sister looked like she had forgotten all about it. The fairy was back to her chirpy self, and Rino let the past remain in the past. Rina brought a gift that Rino honestly did not think was possible. "Tadah! Check out what we brought! It''s not in mass production yet because we still have not designed an efficient farming method to collect them, but I thought your sour expressions could use a little sweetness from time to time." That cheeky little thing¡­ Rino found himself epting the small jar of honey and sachet of sugar. Kragami looked rather proud of himself and exined to Rino that the sugar tasted better than the rock salt did with tea. The little white crystals brought immense joy to Rino. Previously, he wondered how he would make desserts without them. Now, that dream could be a possibility. "I think we know just how to use them," Rino told his teacher and gave him a tour of Town Zera. Although it wasn''t Rina''s first time in Town Zera, she was amazed by the changes around the area in just a few days. "Is it me, or did the number of genesis fairies increase again? I also see more bunny people around now." Rino looked around and nodded. He didn''t notice it because he was always in seclusion working on things. The scene was also something that he subconsciously epted before even Rina pointed it out. Indeed, the number of killer bunnies evolving into hybrids increased. It must be due to Rino''s increase in magical power that caused a huge increase in fruits on the genesis tree. Many of them looked ripe, but Rino ignored it. The fairies had senior fairies to learn the ropes from, and there were plenty of holes that needed filling in his budding town. Kragami brought along in his entourage thedies Rino recognised from the feast preparations before he left for Town Zera''s founding. They were no longer skeletons now and looked like low-levelled ghouls. "Is there a mass poption evolution in Noir Province?" Rino asked. Thesedies looked a little weaker than Erika, but the fact that they came a long way from just skeletons spoke volumes. Kragami chuckled. "You only noticed it now? Everyone''s been eating almost daily, not to mention the World Tree is undergoing a crazy growth spurt. I''d be more surprised if none of your subordinates evolved. To be honest, I didn''t think it was possible to have more than a hundred undead summons. You have more than a hundred, and they''re always summoned. Just how much mana do you have?" Hearing his teacher''sments, Rino started to understand the kind of monster he has be in this life. In his previous life, he was an overpowered magician. Such a thing came naturally. However, after experiencing that mana drain several times in this world, Rino thought he was actually weak. The killer bunny n almost sucked him dry of mana building the Nightless Underpass. Rino thought it would always be that way until the constructions werepleted. Perhaps the introduction of a new subjugated monster n with higher intelligence increased his powers as a lich? Rino wasn''t sure how it worked, but he knew that this was good for his kingdom in the long run. From above, Ace sighed. Even Phil wondered how this man was a genius in his previous life. The answer was so obvious, but Rino remained oblivious to it. Perhaps to a genius, such a quality was as natural as breathing that he failed to notice it. "Do you think he will understand why he was given such a duty to build an empire?" Ace asked Phil, who hummed. "Perhaps. However, I don''t think that''s of any importance. He''s doing a great job even without knowing the reason. At this rate, I believe that change will sweep across the continent. How is the quality of prayersing along?" Ace thought for a while. Famine was far from over in unreached parts of this small world. However, Ace was now able to introduce new smaller miracles and faith outside of Rino''s empire. The prayers increased drastically, enough for them to fund Stephanie''s new project. "It''s going well thanks to Rino''s influence. How much time did you give Rino for the next development phase?" Phil didn''t answer. Instead, he smiled mysteriously and walked away. Left to watch the reflecting pond alone, Ace wondered what that smile meant. Did Rino need to hurry? He hoped that the lich could quickly get over his food obsession phase and make that darn pizza already. It sucks that the offering system cannot ept any processed food because the gods did not have the right storage abilities to preserve its lifespan. He would have loved to try the butter cookies that Rino intended to make. After a grand tour of the developing town, Rino ushered everyone to his new stone cottage and exined how the water wheels worked. "The grindstone is our newest invention. No manualbour is required, most things are automated, and I''ve prepared the ingredients we need. There is a modified furnace at this corner of the stone cottage that I''ve requested to be made into a central cookhouse. I dub this the ''Oven''." Rino wasn''t joking when he mentioned that the ingredients were all prepared. Stacks of baking tools, baskets of eggs, sacks of powdered grains were all lined neatly against the wall and on the wooden preparation bench. Rino had every kind of cooking utensil. Kragami saw that Rino designed a t-based wide pan and a y bowl for mixing. There were also several ss jars with marked measurement lines painted on the outside. If the necromancer was honest, it looked more like ab for experiments more than a cookhouse. "This is where the culinary magic will happen, but I need all the experienced hands and professional tongues on board to help me. Kragami retrieved the recipe book volumes Rino passed him for studying, and the ghouldies put on their aprons. Everyone geared up without needing to be told as Rino exined the different stations and their goal for today. Rina was the temperature regtor, and Kragami was the taste tester. Rino was the kitchen line manager, and thedies were chef assistants for the day helping Kragami and Rino. Their goal was to create pastry dough, and Rino was in charge of pizza toppings. ording to Rino, pizza was the staple food for group bonding, and they were going to share it over lunch while figuring out if it was possible to create dry rations and desserts using the new ingredients. As the cooks cracked eggs, weighed and mixed flour, chopped foraged vegetables and sliced meat, Rino helped Zes bring the milk, butter and cheese over. In no time at all, they had all the ingredients and various types of dough. Feeling ambitious, Rino decided to make pasta when he realised a very obvious problem. "I need oil from seeds. Butter won''t work." Seeing how the mood suddenly plummeted, Rina came in to save the day. "We can use xseeds to squeeze for oil using the grindstone! I''ll get the xseeds now while you work on the other projects. How much oil do we need?" Originally, Rino was about to give up on his projects, but when he heard they had the means to do so, he quickly changed his mind and told Rina to take the sky pnquin instead. The oil squeezed from seeds must be a lot less than the milk squeezed from soybeans. Seeing how he wanted to make many crispy potato snacks, Rino needed more than just a sachet of seeds. "As many as you can spare or fit in the sky pnquin. Oh, get me more sugar if you can. We''re going to need it." "Aye aye!" Rinaplied and went to search for Acht for a free lift back to Cypress County. Rino watched her go then returned to his task list. Now that oil and sugar are on the way, maybe he could start with soup stock on rice flour products.. It has been a while since he''d eaten noodles. Chapter 201 - Food Fiesta (2) Cutting up a huge leaf that Rino had someone foraged from the jungle of doom, Rino cut it into strips while waiting for the pot of water to boil. The slides watched as those nimble bone fingers wove the leaf strips into something like a cocoon before Rino added washed grains of wet rice into the leaf container. Then, he added some meat and nuts before filling it up with even more wet rice grains until it was half full before weaving the leaf cocoon shut. "What is that?" Kragami finally asked, unsure of this cooking method. Rino busied his fingers weaving the next leaf cocoon and shrugged. He simply saw this in the recipe book and imed that it was a novel way of cooking rice so that it wouldn''t get stuck onto the bottom of pots when it cooked. The vigers in Town Zera had plenty of opportunities to experiment with the crops they grew. Soybeans made good soup stock and snacks for rabbits. Wheat was just in awful when boiled, so everything simply collected it and stored it away. Corn was sweet when boiled and roasted. It added vour to the soup, and it was a quick favourite. In fact, dried corn kernels became a popr snack. Someone identally left the dried kernels on a heated stone, and it exploded into a small corn cloud. Popcorn with some salt became a new trend, and the trolls offered to farm more corn than they previously did with the increase in demand. Rino found it hard to me them when the offerings for corn sent to Noir Province decreased significantly. The snack was rather addictive. After making about ten of these rice leaf containers, Rino tied them together and tossed the bunch of ten into the pot of boiling water. "Check on them after thirty minutes," he told Kragami and left to look at the noodle production. Making noodle dough was easy. The recipe needed a few adjustments, but Rino figured that two giant quail eggs made one regr-sized egg, as mentioned in the recipe. The flour that they were using was rice and wheat. The cooks followed Rino''s demonstration with his equally measured mixed flour. First, the flour was piled, and a hole was made in the centre so that the flour pile resembled a volcano and its crater. Then, the eggs were cracked into the centre and sprinkles of salt were added to the mix. Rino added a little water to his mixture, and thedies followed his lead. After that, things started bing messy as powder went through Rino''s exposed bones as he mixed it into a dough. Eventually, Kragami offered to do the mixing while Rino cleaned his messy hands. The dough mixtures had slightly different colours ording to the blend of flours, and Rino inspected them. They looked good, and the wooden rolling pins were brought out. He gave thedies a pin each and showed them how to tten the dough. "This is going to be a crucial skill when making other things such as pizza, cookies and cakes. The thickness of the dough matters, and for noodles, we''re looking at two mm thick. In other words, as thinly as possible." As it turned out, thedies did a better job at dough consistency than Kragami with his shaky hands. Even with his beard and eyebrows all neatly tied up and out of his face, the necromancer still needed help seeing how thick the dough should be. Rino told him to check on the dumplings boiling in the pot instead as thedies took over. Once the noodle preparations were ready, Rino told them to set it aside for now and measure out the ingredients for the rice pancakes and buns. Knock! Knock! Knock! Rino left the kitchen warzone temporarily to check on the visitor. "My lord, Rina sent these by courier," a drow bowed and passed the packaged items to Rino, who received them with surprise. What did Rina send him using the express courier service? Didn''t he tell her to use the sky pnquin? Inside the packages, there were hemp seeds, x seeds and more honey, just enough to create his trial products. Thrilled, Rino got back to working on the grindstone to get his seed oil while everyone else worked on something. It took them hours, but slowly and surely, Rino''s dream of making pizza wasing true. xseed oil was a little better than hemp oil, but Rino still used both oils to try making pasta and bread. Naturally, Rino was toozy to cook pasta strands, so he made thedies create shell-shaped pasta that they pinched by hand. The rest of the drying process was sped up with magic. In between making seed oil, Rino pranced to and from the milking station to borrow the cheese tub. The barrel of vinegar was rolled over as Rino prepared his tofu block from the collected soymilk. Tofu went well with soup and corn, so Rino prepared those, as the bread dough to be baked in his oven. Rino stared at the oven without a break, monitoring the temperature and adjusting it ordingly so that the dough would not burn as he dried pasta dough. The smell of bread was so heavenly that Rino wished he could store this in a bottle to sniff when he was stressed. There was just something about the smell of freshly baked bread that soothed his soul. "Remove the steamer!" "Lower the heat!" "Get the pot! I hear it boiling now!" His head was hurting from all the orders barked around by the busy cooks. Kragami ran from station to station for hours until the necromancer had to call for a break and tap out. His old body simply wasn''t fit enough to keep up with the enthusiastic undead. Without another choice, Rino called for reinforcements in the form of genesis fairies to take over the magic management. Peeling the potatoes using several knives and the help of his shadow tendrils, Rino monitored the cooks with sharp eyes, offering guidance when they could not understand the recipe and presenting solutions in unusual but effective manners. The tofu blocks were ready just in time as the bread was baked. The pasta shells were dried, and the soup stock wafted through the air enticingly. It was finally time to put everything together, and Rino eagerly added his favourite pizza toppings with an extremely generous amount of cheese while everyone boiled and deep-fried things. Unable to withstand the temptation, Ace decided to grace Rino with his feline presence and left a note on Phil''s table that he would be gone for a while. If the god ofndscaping needed him to nudge Rino towards the correct direction for their new phase, he could let him know using themunication channels. Rino just ced the pizza into the oven when he sensed a familiar energy. "Report! There''s an intruder at our borders!" one of Kamiya''s henchmen mmed at the stone cottage''s door urgently. Instead of gearing up for battle, Rino calmly told everyone to return to work and ced Kragami in charge. "Do you need assistance?" his teacher asked, and Rino shook his head. "It''s a long-time friend that we both know. The new citizens in Town Zera won''t know who it is but those who have seen the worship statue would know better than to call him an intruder." With a nod of understanding, Kragami waved at Rino and told him not to keep their esteemed guest waiting for too long. Cats were known for their fickle temper, after all. However, Noir came just in time for the tasting party. Although Kragami did not know how everything here would taste, he was fairly confident that it would be better than king toad stew. Abandoning his escort, Rino teleported right to where Noir was. The ck cat was licking its paws when Rino arrived and the lich almost hyperventted at the sight of the adorable fluffball. "Noir! You''re here!" Feigning disinterest, Noir simply tapped at the barrier gently and raised a brow. "Are you not going to let me in?" Apologising quickly, Rino added Noir''s magic signature to the new mana web array so that the ck cat could easily pass through. "You came just in time," he told the ck cat, picking it up and cradling it against his ribcage. "I was just making dinner. It will be ready in a bit. Would you like to have a tour of the new town?" Seeing no reason to refuse, Ace agreed and pawed at Rino''s jaw when the lich tried to sneakily nt a toothful kiss on his head. Kisses were disgusting even with lips. It was simply downright freaky without lips. Even though Ace watched Rino build his town from above, it looked more impressive in person now that he was here in the small world. "What''s that?" the ck cat asked, transfixed by the movements of the wind vanes that turned consistently. Rino chuckled at the hypnotised gaze. Even if Noir was a powerful magic cat, he still couldn''t defy those natural animal instincts calling to him. "That''s a windmill. It is used to make flour that is used to make pizza." "Pizza?" Rino grinned, but it did not show on his skull. "Yes, pizza. One of the most wonderful things in the world. You''d get to try itter. I loaded it with a lot of meat and cheese." Tempted by food, Ace let Rino cuddle him as the lich gave him a VVIP grand tour of the town. Chapter 202 - Taste Of Success When it came to taste testing and feasting, there were no rules or ranks. Everyone snatched for the best and Noir was forced to fend for himself when Rino challenged Kragami to a game of elements for thest slice of mushroom pizza. "Cat! Take this. I will secure roasted taro next. Don''t let them steal the buns. We can shareter." An unknown lesser-ghouldy shoved her buns towards Noir, who dodged someone else''s hand at the table. He did not have time to think when someone else tried to challenge him for those buns. Dissatisfied, Noir let them know that he wasn''t a doormat and pped the hands away using his tail while creating a barrier from shadow tendrils while hissing. His fur bristled, and the challenger backed off in haste, dropping their sliced toast with baked cheese. Noir quickly secured that and heard Kragami cry foul y when Rino won his game of elements. Thest slice of mushroom pizza was quickly gobbled, and Ace wondered what kind of empire Rino was going to rule in the future if the subordinates and king had the same kind of manners. The mess caused by spilt food, drinks and unsteady grapples meant that it did not take long for a minor food fight to break out. People were mostly throwing garnish, crumbs and strands of noodles at each other in revenge for the food stolen from them. The lesser-ghouldy returned in defeat when someone else won the roasted taro. However, she managed to get some biscuit and cheese slices that they shared. Ace had to admit that eating like this was fun. People openly talked andughed while sharing food andpeting with each other. Nobody was actually starving because they were undead. However, they were greedy for taste, and the ck cat wondered if this was a sess. With just a grindstone, so many new kinds of food were introduced. It was a huge pity that they could not ept these dumplings, buns and bread as offerings because the gods were too poor to afford better storage that was not affected by time. Ark should put more work into expanding their business contacts if he wanted to enjoy the delicious meals that Rino''s talented kitchen team could produce. Nobody knew why Rino took to weaving the uncooked rice in leaves to boil them at first. However, Kragami soon understood that the leaves were very good at preventing the rice from sticking to the bottom of the pots as they cooked, as Rino imed. In addition, the leaves provided a refreshing aroma that killed the pungent smell of meat and added to the sweetness of earthy nuts. The buns were stuffed with different fillings, and the cooks were quick to notice a problem when someone identally knocked the tray over. Although they caught and picked up the buns in time, nobody knew what was inside, and it soon turned into a game of roulette where the unluckiest person in the game was made to choose one bun until all the ''dangerous'' vours were out of the way, then it evolved into a snatching game. Ace had to admit that he did not expect to have this much fun when he saw Rino. If anything, the grand town tour at the start made him think it would be a proper ceremony. However, when Rino mentioned dinner, he literally meant just dinner with a crazy spread of food and a few invited people who pitched in. "Do you think Rina will be mad at us for eating everything and not leaving any for her?" Kragami asked and took a swig of taro beer. Rino looked at the mess that some of the lesser-ghouldies had started to clean. He hummed. "Not if we create a better recipe for some of the food we made tonight and remove the awful ones. I really don''t know why salt rocks was a filling in one of the buns. The cheese one was also equally odd. Meat and bean paste stuffings were surprisingly good, so we should leave that on the menu." Kragami agreed. The rice pancakes went better with grounded nuts paste than with tofu blocks. Honey was a good option too, but they didn''t have enough of that now. Sugar was overly used on the butter biscuits, even if they were really good. Kragamiined that it made his old teeth hurt, and Rino decided that they might need to regte his teacher''s diet if they had too much rich food. The necromancer was immune to injuries but not diet-rted illnesses. He was still very much mortal, and Rino often kept forgetting. "Does Rina like sweet things?" Rino asked, and Kragami nodded. The discovery of sugar and honey was thanks to Rina, whoined that the salt was numbing her tongue. She was searching for sweet fruits and tasting literally everything without care if it was poisonous or not. The fairy was so determined to find a change of vour that she discovered a whole pantry of spices that could be used if Kragami bothered to experiment with them. "So she found fruits that made sour paste, seeds that were spicy and reeds that were sweet. Sugar is made from the juice of those reeds. We simply dried the water to make a more concentrated syrup for easy storage, but after realising it could crystallise, we turned it into this. On the other hand, honey was very crudely stolen from a hive that Rina smoked out." Smoked out? Rino knew that beekeepers normally ced a fire beneath hives to chase the bees away and collect their honey to prevent getting stung. How did Rina know that it would work? "Oh, that was an idental discovery. Rina was trying to set the bees on fire with her magic barrier, and she definitely tried drowning them before she realised they were terrible with heat. When it started getting hot, the bees fainted." Ah, so that was how it happened. Slightly amused but equally amazed by his junior disciple sister''s discovery, Rino decided to put together a special treat just for her when she returned with his goods in the sky pnquin. For now, he deemed that the party was a sess. Noir seemed to enjoy it too. The ck cat curled up on the floor near the oven yawned as if listening to Rino''s thoughts. As a host, he wasn''t very generous tonight. Rino left Noir to fend for himself and fight for his food. He watched how Noir interacted with his subordinates. The ck cat had no difficulty letting them know where they stood in his presence. Valiantly defending his food and using his skills to punish challengers, Noir''s ce in thismunity was very well-established. Rino hoped that the ck cat would stay for longer this time and get to know the other subordinates in the town. After the meeting with Noir''s teacher, Rino felt a greater need to take care of Noir and integrate Noir into the empire he was building. The cat''s history and background were still mysterious, but Rino wasn''t someone fixated on a person''s past. He came from humble beginnings, and anyone with the ability and aptitude to seed should be given a chance. "Are you heading back to Cypress County tonight?" Rino asked his teacher, whose eyelids were heavy at this point. "Not so soon," Kragami drawled. "I still want to understand how the grindstone works. The water wheel design is also something we could use back in the sawmill and paper factory. I need to free up some hands for more delicate tasks. Those in Cypress County could spend more time studying and less time working. There''s just too much researching for Rina and myself to do alone, and I''m not getting any younger." Education was something at the back of Rino''s mind, and he felt slightly guilty that he wasn''t doing much to help the literacy rate of his ever-growing subordinates. The only person Rino ever taught was Erika and the secretary studied everything else under his teacher. Rino did not know what Kragami was teaching the vigers, but he was happy to know that Kragami was using his counting and writing system that he taught Erika to standardisemon lessons. Magic lessons were a little more different, and it was taught verbally with practical examples to pixies who were on the verge of evolving into fairies. Kragami did not always know everything because he did not have many elemental affinities. However, he was a good basic magic teacher who taught the pixies how to cast basic spells and utilise them practically. Rino really owed Rina and Kragami for taking such good care of Noir Province. Without them, the goblin lord and shaman could only hold the fort and wait until Rino returned to give them instructions. Savouring the taste of sess in a mug, Rino took out his sketchpad. He had a lot to do before tomorrow arrived. The gods would certainly not hesitate to dump new responsibilities on him once his daily quest''s deadline was up.. Although he did not know what tasks they would assign him, Rino bet that he was going back to the abandoned mines. Chapter 203 - Ore Sniffer Ping! Somehow, Rino was getting more familiar with this sound. Kragami took charge of the kitchen and made the good stuff that Rina liked to reward her for the business trip that went smoothly. The windmill project was almost finished so the earth gnomes offered to leave Town Zera for a while to build the waterwheel and fit the grindstones for Kragami. Ubel also left after carving the patterns into the windmill''s grindstone to resume his mountainside statue project. Rino promised to regrly send food to Noir Province and gave Erika orders to let him know who deserved the reward at the end of the month when the moon was the fullest. Checking his updated quest, Rino was only expecting the daily quest to update. However, he was surprised to see that he now had a new side quest. === Side Quest #23 Objective: Increase Town Zera''s Poption 3,000/10,000 Poption Reward: Harvester Information === Harvester information! The mentions of harvesters in the dwarven library were vague, but Rino only managed to figure out how they looked. Those air jellyfish creatures were called harvesters, but apart from what Rino saw, he did not know much about them and their significance in this world, even though everyone feared them. The town''s poption was huge, but the goal that the gods wanted was much higher. Where would Rino find ten thousand citizens to reside in his town? Also, thinking about arrangements to amodate that many people made Rino''s head hurt. Shoving this out of sight and mind, Rino decided to check on the other quest that was updated. === Daily Quest #24 Objective: Mine some ores Time Limit: 3 Days 0/1 Coal ore 0/1 Copper ore 0/1 Tin ore 0/1 Iron ore Tutorial here. Reward: Smelting Recipe Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Oh, yes. Rino knew where this was going now. That ore appraisal was just a start for a whole new broken down chain quest. From mining to smelting, Rino confirmed that they were moving to metalworks now. Metalworks was a rather advanced craft in his previous world that only the dwarves were good at. The cksmiths in the empire could only make blunt weapons that were heavy and so ridiculously priced that only adventurers would buy them. Nobody else could lift them or use them in their daily lives. However, there were only three days toplete the quest. Rino knew how smelted ingots of these metals looked like, but he never toured mines when the dwarves were working. His friend imed that it was too dangerous and many idents happen even for the most experienced miners. Hence, Rino had zero idea how natural ores looked like. From what he was told, they looked like normal rocks but smelled different. Yawning after a great nap, Noir looked over to Rino, who was staring at the firece in his stone cottage. The ck cat stretched and gracefully walked over to the lich, who appeared deep in thoughts. "What''s on your mind?" Normally, Rino would drop everything to give Noir his undivided attention. It wasn''t often that the ck cat visited or paid him any attention. However, he was now a responsible lord of many undead. Duty was a priority, and Rino was still somewhat awkward about seeing Noir around. He did not know how to tell the ck cat he saw his master in a different dimension while harvesting crops as part of his punishment for failing to meet a deadline. ording to Noir''s master, the ck cat must still be grieving for her passing and roaming around trying to find a direction in life. Noir was strong. Rino didn''t doubt that. He learned from a magician far more powerful than Rino. It was only natural that Noir didn''t want Rino as his new master. In the ck cat''s eyes, there was no better master than the magician Rino met. He promised to take good care of Noir, but the ck cat was a wanderer who did not wish to settle in one area. "Hey, what do you think about staying in this town for a while? I know you''re a very busy cat, but there are still a lot of things that I have not shown you." Whatever Rino was going to say, Ace didn''t think it would be trying to persuade a ck cat to stay in his town. "Why do you want me to stay? I''ve seen everything there is to be seen here. It might be bigger than the potato farm, but it''s easy to travel everywhere within a day. Besides, there are still many areas in development. I''lle back when it''s done in a few months." Sulking, Rino turned away. Finding it odd, Ace leapt into Rino''sp, but the lich refused to meet his eyes. Indeed, Noir had a point. There wasn''t a reason for the ck cat to stick around. Rino simply wanted Noir around more. It was a very long time since the ck cat came by, and he just wanted to monopolise this furball. His possessiveness wasn''t warranted or reasonable, so Rino could only sulk. Noir wasn''t his, and the ck cat had the freedom to choose where he wanted to go. Ace initially came down to enjoy the premium food that Rino and his town members made because the offering system was too broke to ept them. However, seeing how sad Rino was when he thought about Noir''s departure, the god of prayers felt slightly bad about it. Ever since Phil became a system administrator, he received more divinity than when Ark was solely in charge of the system. Snuggling beside the lich, Ace yed it coy. It wouldn''t hurt if he remained here for a while. The next phase was metalwork, and Noir supposed he could remain here until it waspleted. Stephanie and Phil were in charge of this phase anyway. He had plenty of time to rx. If prayers needed answering, he could always disappear for a few hours to attend to them before returning. His presence here can only be a good influence on Rino so the other gods should not haveints. "I want to eat crispy giant quails." After the deration, Rino stilled. Then, he slowly turned to look at the cat snuggled beside him. A huge grin grew invisibly, and he felt his heart warm at the implied meaning behind the whimsical demand. Patting the ck cat gently on the head, Rino listened to the feline purr and drift off to sleep again under his touch. He wasn''t sure if bony fingers werefortable, but Noir did not seem to have a problem with it. Going back to his tutorial, Rino scrolled down to read the methods of mining for ores. He knew the cave he would be visiting to search for ores. In fact, the tutorial gave him a map of the ore sites. How useful! With his ore appraisal skill obtained as a reward from thest quest, Rino deemed the mission easilypleted. It wasn''t bing for a king to mine for ores personally, but everyone else in his town and territory had assigned jobs. Nobody else had enough talent to help him with this, and there was a very tight deadline to fulfil. The first thing Rino needed was a pickaxe or mining tool to harvest those ores. At the same time, he should start preparing the mana web array linking to the abandoned dwarven caves. The basics array was already established because he needed to tap into their sewage tunnels for his flood contingency ns. Noir took a peek through half-closed eyelids as Rino pulled out his sketchpad to start making ns. The lich worked quickly and efficiently as Noir remained curled up beside him. Rino had no idea when the ck cat crawled into hisp, but the weight was ratherforting and inspired him to work better. By the time Rino finished mapping out the main mana webworks and strategic teleportation points in the abandoned dwarven mine, the sun outside his barrier had already gone down. Feeling refreshed, Noir stretched and demanded food. Not one to deny his favourite cat''s request, Rino got to it, and they settled for some bunny skewers. The magically grown grass was finally proving useful, and Rino liked how Quasimodo scheduled the animals for breeding and grazing ording to the newly implemented cookhouse menu. "What are you going to do tonight?" Noir asked in between bites of rabbit meat. Rino tore out a page from his sketchpad and showed the cat. There was nobody else in the kitchen at this hour, so Rino felt no need to conceal his ns. "Ore hunting. I need to locate several ore veins and set up a magic arraywork for easier ess in the future. It getsplicated inside, so I''m adding restrictive barriers to prevent miners from straying into territories they shouldn''t be in. Do you know anything about the dwarven mines?" Smirking, Noir cleaned behind his ears and licked his lips. "A little. However, I''ve never been to it before. I could, however, act as your ore sniffer. What kind of metals are you looking for?" Thrilled that someone was saying the same thing that the dwarves in his previous world did, Rino listed the ores from his quest, and Ace pretended to memorise them. Truth be told, he already knew where Phil hid them in the mine. He saw the finalised design and helped the god ofndscaping hide some of the more precious minerals for theter part of this mining quest phase. Rino was in for a huge surprise, and Ace looked forward to telling Phil about the lich''s reaction. Chapter 204 - Ore Detector (1) Going on a trip with just Noir and himself made Rino feel all kinds of giddy on the inside. He was so excited and could hardly contain his cool even as they sat together on Mutt''s back. Noir wasn''t protesting when Rino offered to keep him in his arms as they rode to the secret cave entrance. Ace wondered why Rino was so jittery and stuttered around him. The power of cats on Rino was dreadful, and the god of prayers tried to remember if there were any domesticated cat races in this small world that could severely derail the monarch of solitude from his quests in the future. Thankfully, this world was rather hostile, and even if there were feline creatures, they would end up looking like the womanticore that decapitated Rino once. As they neared the secret entrance, Rino realised another problem. Cats and water do not get along. The only way into the secret cave was by swimming. Even if Noir agreed to swim and ovee his fear of water, Rino still had to use magic to help him breathe. Could they even ovee this ordeal? "What''s wrong?" Ace asked when Rino dismissed Mutt and looked at the small pool of water in the dark. "Can you swim?" the lich sounded hesitant and a tad regretful, but Ace chalked it up to his imagination. Could he swim? As a god who relied too much on magic, swimming wasn''t a skill he had the chance to acquire. However, he knew magic that could make him move underwater. "No. However, I can teleport." Ace disappeared into the shadow realm shortly and reappeared on Rino''s head, sitting on the bald skull to demonstrate his abilities. Teleportation magic was limited to markers, and Rino wasn''t sure if Noir could teleport to his location inside the dwarven mine without one. Then again, the ck cat was able to always find where he was using some mysterious ability. Perhaps Noir didn''t have to swim to get inside. Only Rino had to get drenched. He wondered why he thought it was a terrible idea to set up a teleportation point inside the dwarven mine after he left it. He even returned to extend the mana web array to connect the flood channels to the dwarven sewage tunnels. Now that he needed a convenient way to get inside, Rino wanted to beat his past self for acting paranoid about random intruders waltzing in and out of that dwarven vault that he protected using many powerful spells. Common bandits wouldn''t even get that far. He should have made a teleportation point somewhere easier so that Noir didn''t have to swim! Oh wait, he had one, but that led directly to the heart of the artefact vault. Bringing Noir in there was akin to executing him. The array attacked anyone that wasn''t Rino, and even Kragmi wasn''t spared. Rino trusted nobody else with the secrets of these dwarves because artefacts were probably the only hope in this world against Harvesters. Rino couldn''t risk his ace against the threats of this world. "Can you teleport to me if I get inside first? I don''t think you want to swim and get wet." Noir flicked his tail and batted Rino twice on the head. "You''re twenty years too early to take that tone with me! Of course, I can. The scent of death clinging onto you can be smelled from halfway across this continent." Oh? Now that was interesting. Noir had a good nose, but to think he could smell something like this from so far away must mean that the ck cat was always within a certain range that he could sense Rino and look for him. The scent of death must be the mana aura that surrounded Rino, although he couldn''t tell himself how horrible it smelled like. In any case, it was assuring to know that Noir was able to teleport directly to Rino just by following his ''scent of death'', so Rino prepared for a dip in the water while Noir watched him go. "It won''t be long," he told Noir. "I''ll let you know using telepathy when I''m dry again, and we can mark out the areas inside where the ores are." Rolling his eyes, Noir pushed Rino lightly towards the pond and jumped back as the lich fell forward with a big ssh. Shaking his head, Ace waited patiently as Rino swam into the mines. He was slightly thankful that the lich wanted to protect the dwarven secrets by not making convenient entrances. Phil was right to trust this man with the fate of the small world. The gambles that he plotted with Ace should pay off because Rino wasn''t the kind of character to build things solely for self-interest. He might bezy, but he had a good heart that cared for the less fortunate. Rino swam quickly, using water and air magic to propel himself quickly so that Noir didn''t have to wait for long. At the same time, he found the mana web array''s main channel at the docks and created the first teleportation pad there as a checkpoint for the miners in future. The secret entrance to the mine was hidden using a powerful illusion and warding magic for now, and only those permitted by Rino could pass through the barrier. "I''m in," he told the ck cat and waited for Noir to teleport over once the teleportation pad and secret entrance barrier waspleted. Noir came quickly like he said he would and sat on Rino''s shoulder, toozy to walk. Rino did not mind bing Noir''s private transportation. If anything, he appeared a little happy that the ck cat was relying on him as they walked into the actual mine. Rino remembered theyout, and Noir was impressed when Rino entered the actual mine shafts. "Some of these shafts are iplete. I don''t know the exact location of the ores or where to get them, but I think it might be better to startying the mana web array down to the mines and create area barriers for mining activities. Mines can be dangerous, and even if my subordinates are undead, I don''t want them getting caught in dangerous activities." He didn''t mention the priceless vault of artefacts beneath the mines, and Rino did not want them identally discovering it. However, Noir agreed that it was safer to set a mining area and a barrier. Torching up mines can be tedious, and it was easier to use magic to handle it as the mines developed. "I think we can start looking for coal ores first. That''s the simplest to mine, and a stone pick or shadow cutter spell will work. How much coal do you need?" Noir asked. "Enough to fire up the furnace near the water wheel. I read that regr magic cannot be used to heat metal. It has to be fire burned with coal fuel." Noir wasn''t very sure about this part. He might have to ask Phil what Rino meant and where he got this knowledge from. Metal should melt when the heat was high enough. Ace never knew about the difference between burning materials and metal casting. However, he pretended to agree with Rino for now and sniffed the air as an act before using his tail to point out where the coal vein was. Coal was a very easy material to spot in the walls after the light was up. Ace leapt off Rino''s shoulder and exined that coal rocks in the wall had a different colour from the mountain rocks. They came in pockets and were sometimes sandwiched in betweenyers of other rocks. "It is basically deceased life forms trapped in rocks and turning into fuel. They''re quite rare and can appear sporadically. You should grab a piece and use divination magic to locate more in this area." Divination magic was something that magicians used to track people or peer into the future. Things that carried a tracing magic mark could be located using divination, but Rino never knew it could detect different ores. Noir certainly learned from the best, and Rino wished he met the ck cat''s master earlier. There was simply so much that he could learn from her before she passed. Ace watched as Rino failed his first attempt trying to use divination magic to find a new coal vein. The magic circle''s search perimeter shed with Rino''s current discovery, so the divination spell pointed to the closest coal vein. "You should add moreyers of instructions to seek other possible coal veins if you want to know all the possible undepleted coal veins in your search area." Listening to Noir''s advice, Rino modified his next magic circle and cast the divination spell again. This time, he managed to locate a new coal vein hidden about five meters beneath him and forty footsteps away. "It doesn''t tell me how big the coal vein is, but I found it." Noir smirked and flicked its tail. "Good work. Now you can figure the rest out by using the genius inside this empty skull. I''m going to look around for any exposed copper, tin or iron ores." Noir was a strict teacher, but Rino didn''t mind.. Any attention from the ck furball was better than nothing at all, so Rino intended to enjoy every second of their time together. Chapter 205 - Ore Detector (2) Copper turned out to be very easy to find. There was plenty of copper, and Rino decided they did not need to find a new copper vein until the copper bank Noir stumbled upon was depleted. Under the light, it was easy to find copper because of that orangey tinge on the walls. "Be careful not to mine up y. Copper has a more solid feel and is less smooth. Sometimes, it will look diseased with bumps on the rocks instead of just a smooth surface. At the same time, copper can sometimes be green. The colours vary. This bit of copper is fresh, so it is still mostly orangey." Green? "Why will it sometimes be green?" Rino asked. Noir shrugged. In all honesty, this was more of Phil''s alley than his. Ace was only good at understanding economy and psychology. The god ofndscaping would know more, and all the information he now knew was purely through observations. Seeing that Noir did not answer, Rino did not press on. However, he was still curious why the metal would change colour. Was it a permanent or a temporary change? Did copper have variants as well? In any case, Rino would be recording his cksmithing journey to see if he could find a match in the dwarven archives and understand more. Maybe they would exin why copper was sometimes green and if there was a different use for green copper than orange copper. Next on the quest list was tin. This metal ore was slightly harder to locate, and Noir walked down the mine shaft twice while sniffing before dering that this shaft was no good for tin. They found coal and copper easily but no tin. "Tin is slightly moreplicated to mine," Noir exined. "The metal ore is not in its purest form, and often, it is found with impurities." Rino had no idea what impurities in an ore meant. However, he supposed that might be the case between the orange and green copper ores. Maybe one type of colour meant that it was more metallic than the other? Noir sniffed and made rounds, walking to the next mining shaft, pawing at random locations, and making minor scratches. Sometimes, he would leave scratch marks on the walls and other times, the stone would dull its ws. Not knowing any better, Rino could only follow Noir''s lead in the mines as they went from shaft to shaft. "There''s a dead-end right ahead," Rino exined as they were heading towards the forked roads of their sixth mine shaft. The roads here were bing less established, and the rail tracks were iplete. Thestid track was several hundred meters back, but Noir remained stubborn. It should be somewhere around here. Noir wasn''t so sure how rare this tin ore was, but ording to Phil, it was rather rare and was often found around iron sometimes. The ore was silvery grey without impurities, but those were hard to spot. They often do not exist naturally and had to be extracted from mixed ores that contained iron clumps. Honestly, there were too many brown and ck stones in this mine, and each time Noir thought that was tin, it turned out to be something else. Why was this so hard? With his paws feeling sore from treading on the rough ground, Noir gave up on walking and hopped onto Rino''s shoulder to hitch a hike. However, he remained adamant about the direction they were going. It was close. Noir could sense it! Despite the excited tail flicks batting on the back of his skull, Rino wasn''t sure if this was wise. The mine here wasn''tpleted for good reasons. Even if tin was located here, they should find another deposit and leave mining this vein to a professional. The upleted mine shaft got narrower, and Rino found himself having to widen the road if he wanted to fit. Crouching and hunching over to walk in these smaller tunnels was no longer viable. He''d reached his limits, and even Noir was forced to walk in the narrow passages. There wasn''t any light this deep into the cave either because it was too cramped for Rino to properly connect the mana web arrays. "Come on," Noir urged as Rino crawled into another hole and hit his skull on the protruding rock. "It''s close. I can smell it!" Even with Noir''s tiny body, there was still a limit to where he could go in this poorly dug tunnel. Rino followed with great difficulty as the ck cat went ahead. sting open a road with dark magic, Ace checked the rocks in the area. It was hard to tell which rocks were what in the dark, even with dark vision enabled. However, Phil''s appraisal skill gift to his incarnate proved very useful. At one nce, the god of prayers could tell what kind of ore he was looking at. The tin deposit location was near, but Noir had no idea how to get to it. The vein was buried about fifty metres deep, and no roads were going down. Pawing at the ground when dark magic could not st through these tough stones, Ace wondered if this was the end of their ore searching journey. The dy allowed Rino to widen the tunnel sufficiently to catch up to Noir, who sat there looking at the dead wall ahead. "What''s wrong?" he asked. The cat''s ears were turned back slightly, and the tail was twitchy, asionally swishing from side to side as he sat there. As a cat lover and stalker for many years in his previous life, Rino understood that Noir was annoyed. That low subconscious meow and half growling sounds was a warning. Unaware of his incarnate body''s instinctive behaviour, Ace simply tapped the stone in front of him with a paw. "It won''t cut this stone blocking my way to the tin." Rino stopped in front of the stone and pulsed some magic through it. The stone simply absorbed it and remained stubbornly in ce. Ah, this was going to be a pain. Rino had no idea what stones these were, but if there were mana emitting crystals, there would be mana absorbing stones. "I think we have to go around these," he told Noir. "They absorb mana." Using an area detecting magic to scan the size of this mana absorbing mineral, Noir groaned. It was at least fifteen meters long. They did not really have time to be mining without proper tools. When Rino heard that it was almost fifteen meters long, he paused. It wasn''t convenient to mine this without the help of magic. If anything, he wanted to backtrack thest few hundred meters to properly connect the mana web array. Without proper lighting, it was difficult to mine out sections of this tunnel. "How far is the tin vein?" From Noir''s current position, it was a steep fall to find the tin vein. Rino calcted the angle of descent he wanted to make to get to the tin deposit. It had to be travel friendly for the miners and spatial minecarts. There was currently no way to build moving tforms like the ones the dwarves built in their library. Moreover, he needed to be careful to not mine too close to the other tunnels. Miscalcting the amount of space needed will result in the tunnels copsing into each other. "Can wee back to thister and find iron first?" he asked, hoping to cheer the irritated ck cat. Ace pped his tail onto the ground twice. "It''s also there." Ah, no wonder the ck cat was so irritated. Both iron and tin deposits were in an area that wasn''t easy to ess. Throughout their mineshaft explorations, Rino never saw any iron ores. The walls were properly mined in many areas, leaving gaping holes sometimes, and he never once questioned what the dwarves were mining. Now, it made more sense. Many things that the dwarves crafted would require iron. It was used to forge things like steel, after all. There was no questioning it now. They simply had to find a way to get down. "Let''s retrace our steps," Rino offered and carried the grumpy cat in his arms while crawling out. Noir couldn''tin when he was scooped up, and Rino decided to call their cave exploration activities a day to better prepare for the tin and iron mining session. He might have to ask for special courier delivery. The stone pickaxes that hobgoblins used in Noir Province cut through stone like butter. It worked better than earth magic, and Rino could use a few hundred paws to help him with the tunnel digging. The only concern he had was if his mana could sustain the mining activities of Kamiya''s n. The killer rabbits built the Nightless Underpass in under a week. Digging a tunnel several meters deep towards the tin and iron deposit should be a breeze for them with proper tools. Ace sulked.. His paw pads were sore, and they had to return empty-handed because of an unexpected roadblock. With only three days toplete this quest, how could Rino be so rxed? Chapter 206 - Power Drilling One hundred and eight pickaxes, one hundred and eight miner hats and one hundred and eight eager killer rabbits ready for some mining action were stationed at the entrance of the dwarven mines. The other killer bunnies who couldn''t join were ''too big'', ording to Noir. Rino felt slightly bad for the killer bunnies who evolved into the superior human-monster hybrids. Kamiya begged the ck cat for a chance, but Noir remained unmoved, and Rino let the ck cat do whatever it wanted. As Rino was unable to fully set up the mana web array in the unexplored parts of the mines, he decided to ce an urgent order with the weavers back in Spudville to sew together one hundred and eight miner hats that he could sew light-emitting runes into. Dark vision was useful if one did not need to differentiate colours. Rino wouldn''t put in so much effort preparing for this excavation expedition if dark vision worked. Sadly, these killer rabbits could only see outlines of objects in the dark with their dark vision, and Rino needed them to see more than just the outline when mining. Thankfully, the ores that mattered most when digging with magic were colours that the killer rabbits could see and avoid. Rino did not realise that some monsters and animals could not see the full spectrum of colours. Noir pointed out that smelling ores might be easier than looking for them because the rocks looked the same to the rabbits who had not evolved yet. New arrangements were made, and Noir would spearhead the mining operation to tell the monster rabbits where to dig while Rino and some of the genesis fairies extended the mana web array and created the lighting they needed. Knowing that the monster rabbits would work very quickly and efficiently, Rino estimated that he would only need an hour at most before they found their first bit of tin and iron ores. Noir did not understand why those miner hats were necessary, but he soon will. "Remember to reinforce the tunnels with earth magic. Thest thing we need is for the tunnel to copse in itself. Wait for Noir to give you the go-ahead to dig and listen to his instructions," Rino told the leader of the rabbit squad. Saluting, the hundred and eight rabbits split themselves into teams of nine and spread out. Noir led the team to follow him through the small tunnel that he dug using magic as the others started to widen the passage so that even the hobgoblins couldfortably walk through it. Steps and slopes were created by the teams who were not expanding the path, and a team was reinforcing the tunnel structure with earth beams as if they had done this before. The coordination of these espionage experts never failed to impress Rino. He still could not understand how they were able to work so seamlessly without verbalmunication. They reminded him of a colony of ants when they worked. Everyone knew what to do and filled in any holes that needed filling without getting told. Leaving the path-building to the rabbit n and Noir, Rino checked his quest. There was still almost a day before the deadline, so they should be able to make it. The genesis fairies spread out to take an unlit mineshaft each to extend the mana web array from the main teleportation circle that Rino created. It was slightly sneaky, but Rino used a trick he learned from the earth gnomes andid the mana web circuits beneath the mountains using the small air cracks. Rino used this chance to tie the mana web array to the secret vault when everyone was busy. The lich checked his surroundings frequently while setting rm spells that would alert him if someone strayed from where they were meant to be. At the same time, he created multiple barriers to restrict mining activities and exploration. The dwarven facilities such as the grand furnace room and cafeteria could be repurposed after Rino found someone to take on the huge renovation project. Slowly but surely, Rino could feel the zapping of his mana reserves as everyone worked. It was only ten minutes into the mining project, but already, Rino could see a significant dip in his mana reserves that were usually very full. There was no doubt now that the mana depletion he experienced after contracting Kamiya''s n was due to his subordinates'' mass use of magic. The more intelligent the monster, the more mana it took to summon them and support their activities. Still, it was a small price to pay for efficiency. He could rely on the killer rabbits to finish his tunnel and for Noir to get to the tin and iron ores before dusk today. On the other hand, he wasn''t so sure about his personal progress with this private project. The dwarven caves were huge, and Rino had so much ground to cover, even with the genesis fairies helping him light up the mineshafts. Thankfully, thesemunal spaces had wider passageways and higher ceilings. Ignoring etiquette about riding mounts indoors, Rino summoned Mutt and told the sabre tooth wolf where to go so that he could connect the mana web array quicker. While Rino worked, Noir watched the crazy rabbit monster drill through rocks. Even if these monsters were gifted in dark and earth magic, they shouldn''t be able to tear through rocks like paper. Rino and Noir struggled so much just to get to where they were yesterday. What kind of pickaxes were they wielding that made mining so easy?! Using his appraisal skill, Ace studied the stone pickaxes that the rabbit monsters wielded and almost fell off his rock. What kind of insane magician added national-level enchantments on a regr old stone pickaxe?! After recovering his rationality, he calmed down and finally understood a few things. Firstly, Rino was crazier than he thought. The lich spent so much mana creating godly tiered regr items such as this improved stone pickaxe design that Ace hated to admit worked very well in those tiny paws. Secondly, Ace learned that when umted, Rino''s mana was capable of casting several catastrophe spells at least ten times in a row before it was depleted. Looking at the multiple enchantments on these stone pickaxes and confirming that every single stone pickaxe had the same level of enchantments as thest, Ace deduced that Rino did not take ten days to enchant one stone pickaxe. It was more realistic to assume that he enchanted ten pickaxes in one day. No wonder the lich took so long to finish his windmill quest! He must have been too busy making preparations like these for the Nightless Underpass. Then again, if Ace recalled correctly, these killer rabbit monsters did not use pickaxes to build that impressive structure. They used magic to power through. Rino only received his improved pickaxe recipetely after he finished the water wheel construction quest. When did the lich find time to enchant so many items in between then and now? As Noir was thinking, Rino sneezed on his end. That was odd. Liches do not sneeze. They have no functioning noses to get irritated by. The dwarven library was so dusty, but Rino never once sneezed while he was there. However, that violent shudder through his skull and pressure travelling through the non-existent nasal canal told him otherwise. That was definitely a sneeze. How very odd! Phil, who was monitoring the reflecting pond from above, wondered if he should let Ace know that Rino did it all in just a few hours while Ace was napping in his incarnate''s body to return briefly to his office for a rushed prayer-answering session. The god ofndscaping decided to withhold the information for now. It did Noir no good to act out of character when tin and iron ores were waiting to be found. It took almost no time at all for the killer rabbit''s exploration team to reach the ck mana absorbing rock, and Noir snapped out of his thoughts. He had a job toplete. "Stop, fill up the ground around the rock and back out. We are heading in a different direction but make the passage wide enough for future carts to pass through. Dig a bigger bend to the left to avoid the ck rock." Listening to the ck cat without questions, the monster rabbits mined carefully as a new team took care of the exposed ck rock. Their use of earth magic was very skilful, and Noir did not need to remain behind to monitor their work. If anything, these monsters were very meticulous. Rino probably left him in charge of directing them because he had faith in their abilities. Within the next hour, under Noir''s direction, they found the first deposit of iron ores. The iron ore deposit had a reddish tinge to it, and Noir rejoiced, telling the rabbits to dig around this deposit instead of through it. The tin vein should not be too far from this huge iron pocket that they could emptyter. At the first sh of a silverypound, Noir halted the mining crew. "That''s the stuff we need," Ace told them. "Don''t mine anymore. Focus on making the passageway down to this resource pocketfortable for travelling. Inform you master that we found both iron and tin ores." The team leaderplied and quickly ryed the message while the rest of his team took a breather, looking around at the strange stuff called iron and tin.. Rocks were rocks to them. Why was the ck cat so excited? Chapter 207 - Cheese Cubes Ping! === Daily Quest #24 plete) Objective: Mine some ores Time Limit: 3 Days 1/1 Coal ore 1/1 Copper ore 1/1 Tin ore 1/1 Iron ore Tutorial here. Reward: Smelting Recipe im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Rino was still extending the mana web array when he heard the system notification sound in his head. Slightly surprised that his subordinates found tin and iron ore so quickly, Rino paused his work and listened to the report. The system registered their discovery as Rino''s personal achievement because they were his summons. Thankful that he did not have to go over right now, Rino told the killer rabbit team leader to hold onto the tin and iron ores. At the same time, he told them to listen to Noir''s instructions and work a safe travelling route to the new ore deposits. iming his smelting recipe, Rino let that sit in his system archive tab for a while. He would check that after he finished extending the mana web array to the secret vault. As the mana web array was very obvious, Rino had to find sneakier ways to leave waypoints. Eventually, he did it by borrowing the underutilised air vents and sewer tunnels. Having a tiny summon such as a random rat that could crawl through small holes was very useful. Rino forgot when he killed and turned such a creature into his shadow summon, but he never really called on it. It was Mutt who informed his master that there were still some useful shadow summons in the shadow realm that might prove useful. "Who else is residing in the shadow realm?" Rino asked, and the sabre tooth wolf took a sweeping nce. "Not many," the hound admitted. "Just maybe a few birds and insects. They''re not monster birds and insects, although we have a monster bat and maybe some kind of monster nt. It''s quite peaceful here, but nobody else can talk, so it can get a little boring." Hearing Mutt talking about the summons that Rino never knew he had or how they turned into his shadow soldiers, the lich felt slightly guilty that he neglected them. Then again, any father of so many children would probably forget one or two. He tried his best not to feel guilty but patted the mouse on its head with a finger, silently promising to get some cheese cubes for its effort. Maybe he should assign Mutt the secondary duty of caring for his forgotten children. Yes, that would be more responsible of him. Not delving too deeply over the idental discovery of his other shadow summons, Rino spent the next few hours finishing his job while Noir tookmand over the expert miners. By the end of the day, Rino returned to Town Zera with Noir using the newly installed teleportation pad. The hundred and eight bunnies were unsummoned for a while and resummoned once Rino was back in town. Sending the miner bunnies off for a good soybean reward collection, Rino and Noir returned to the stone cottage where the three installed water wheels spun casually. Inside, Rino saw how the weavingdies helped themselves with one of the water wheel axles, connecting it to the weaving machine as they threaded linen and cut the woven cloth sizes ordingly. That''s right, Rino had forgotten that they came over to weave his urgent order for miner hats and more miner gear for future mining works. Standing up to bow at the sight of the lord''s return, the weavingdies quickly tidied the workspace and excused themselves. The cooks in the cookhouse weed Rino back with his requested pizza. Noir hopped off Rino''s shoulder, lured by the scent of freshly caught fish. The lich did not me him. However, there was a matter that took precedence before he ate. Preparing a small bowl of cheese cubes, meat jerky and smoked fish, Rino went outside to summon Mutt. "Master!" Mutt wagged his tail enthusiastically in greeting. The first thing he saw was all the treats in Rino''s arm, and the biological reaction betrayed his loyalty when Mutt drooled without actual drool. Rino chuckled. Yes, he might be a tad too mean to those who were not summoned often. Mutt looked at the meat longingly as he struggled to maintain professionalism in front of the food. It had been too long since Mutt ate, and thest time he ate anything had to be the feast after the huntingpetition back in Noir Province. The king toads were tasty, but they could not bepared to what they could make now. "Here, take these back to the shadow realm for the others to enjoy. The meat jerky is for you. From now on, you''re in charge of collecting food for them to enjoy once a week. You can ask the cookhouse staff for food anytime and help with the hunting when I don''t need to travel." Hearing that he was entrusted with more responsibilities instead of just acting as Rino''s mount, Mutt rejoiced and lowered his head to the ground as a sign of respect. Then, he grabbed the cloth bundle of treats and returned to the shadow realm to share it with Rino''s other summons. After Mutt disappeared, Rino went back inside the stone cottage. There was still a lot of work to do, and Rino finished his dinner quickly. The pizza was delicious, but there were simply too many slices, so Rino let the cooks share it among themselves after snatching three from the huge bake. There was a reason why pizza wasfort food for the busy lich. It could be eaten on the go without fuss as he worked, and Rino abused his new dark magic powers to have shadow tendrils feed him as he rearranged the firewood pile around the furnace area. At the moment, there was no requirement to use that water wheel device for any smelting activities. Rino looked at the cksmithing area and sighed. This was not a conducive workshop environment. Having the grindstone and cookhouse at one end, and the cksmith workshop on the other, with a weaving station between, reminded Rino of the worst kind of industrial factories. The first thing Rino needed to do was section the stone cottage into three smaller workrooms. He didn''t want the heat from the smithing workshop to affect the weavers and their refined work. Come to think about it, only the section in the centre of this long stone cottage needed soundproofing and an anti-disturbance barrier. The cookhouse was full of heat, fire, sounds and smells. The smithing workshop was full of heat and sounds. Thinking of it this way made things a lot easier for Rino. The lich made a nice area for raw metal ores to be ced in crates away from the furnace. Firewood and a crate for coal ores remained closer to the furnace side opening that had a neat little trapdoor covering the entrance when not in use so that sparks wouldn''t fly out of it and set the whole supply on fire. The trap door was made out of a stone b that had to be manually lifted and propped open with a wooden stick when fuel was shovelled into the furnace. It was mounted on a ledge with holes and locked into ce with some carved stone bolts. This design must have been inspired by the windmill''s two-ton grindstone tes and their axle problems. Rino smiled with pride. His subordinates were learning. Apart from a ce to store smelting items, Rino remembered that he needed an anvil to work melted metal on, a ce for casts and a water source to cool off heated metal. He still had no idea how a proper cksmithing workshop should look like. However, he could start making the necessary preparations for the spaces he needed. After they finished cleaning the ce up, the cooks left the cookhouse, and Noir watched Rino remodel the stone cottage from his corner. The lich paid no attention to the ck cat who made himselffortable on the food preparation countertop. Calling upon the trolls for help, Rino ced orders for stone bricks to be carried out from the underground storage. At the same time, he assigned someone to prepare enough cement to construct two thin wall partitions between the three spaces in his long stone cottage, leaving a doorway between them so that anyone who needed to pass through could do so. The construction would take all night, but Ace did not leave to return to his office. Those prayers could wait. If anything, he wanted to see Rino''s reaction to the new daily quest and the reward. Phil told him that Rino might work harder and faster to im theing quest''s reward, but he never told the god of prayers what it was specifically. Curiosity won over the ck cat, and Ace decided to help with the partition building as an excuse to remain around instead of returning to Rino''s stone cottage for rest like the lich proposed. Rino found it odd that the ck cat offered menial tasks that normally wouldn''t interest him. However, he brushed it aside. Maybe Noir was bored. As the time drew closer to midnight, Noir''s behaviour went from helpful to just in creepy.. Rino felt those eyes follow him everywhere as he worked. Seriously, was Noir secretly plotting his demise or something? Chapter 208 - Cave Makeover The new quest that came was something Rino felt like a windfall. What did he do to result in such a good turn of fortune? It has to be some kind of colossal joke that the gods decided to y on him for his refusal to behave. === Daily Quest #25 Objective: Repair the Dwarven Mines Time Limit: 15 Days 0/100 Broken Tracks 0/5 Minecarts 0/2 Lifts Tutorial here. Reward: Dwarven Language Interpreter Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Dwarven. Language. Interpreter. Whatever the hell that meant, Rino wanted it. The only thing stopping him from understanding that treasure trove of recorded blueprints and design journals was the stupidnguage! Even if Kragami was making progress, Rino was too impatient to wait for his teacher to finish decoding everything for the next twenty years. He wanted that skill NOW! Given fifteen days and a paltry number of tracks to fix, Rino could do it in under a day. Scratch that! He could do it in a few hours. He needed the rest of that time to pour through those stone tes to understand everything. Harvesters. Civilisation. Technology. Artefacts. If he wanted to understand why he was sent to this new world after his death, it might have to do with those stone bs he couldn''t read. For the first time since the founding of this empire, excluding when he only had goblins to work with, Rino cancelled all his summons and brought everyone to Town Zera forcefully. Noir wasn''t expecting that huge threatening surge of mana while he was busy scratching the new scratching post that Rino customised for him using an unusuallyrge piece of firewood. Like a looming cloud of cmity, the mana aura that engulfed Town Zera made all the other monsters in the next hundred kilometres run for their lives. Nearby living caves that Rino did not already own were thrown into chaos by the overwhelming authority enforced over their area. The living cave bosses fought and killed anyone indiscriminately with their instincts forcefully triggered to defend. Unaware of his power over thisnd, Rino simply groaned when the fields overflowed with summoned subordinates. Everyone from Cypress County, Spudville and even those on errands, with the exception of the Magic Trees and Kragami, were pulled to Town Zera. Once again, Rino questioned why his hunting team leader was caught in a state of indecency. The lesser vampire had his pants down again, but thankfully, he wasn''t the only one. The other hunters in the team were also naked, but unlike Fowler, they had the decency to wrap a small white towel around theirher regions. p! The cries of outraged women rained on Fowler and his team members, who evolved to lesser ghouls. They cried out pathetically and imed that they were in the hot springs when this happened, but Rino found no pity for them in his heart. Seeing the torment Fowler and his friends suffered brought a kind of sadistic satisfaction and a brief reprieve from what he meant to do. "Silence!" The moment he spoke, silence washed over everything like a nket of darkness - suddenly and all at once. Nobody spoke, and all eyes were on the monarch of solitude. Seeing almost all his subordinates gathered in one area andparing it to thest time he held such a gathering, Rino finally realised just how much his influence had grown in thest few months. With the feeble looking goblins that he summoned and Mutt the only monster by his side while they struggled to farm potatoes, Rino looked back at those days with nostalgia. Standing before him was an army of trolls, killer bunnies, lesser ghouls, skeletons, faes and other creatures like spectres. Some were familiar faces that Rino knew, starting with humble beginnings, while others were a new addition to his empire. Looking at his adopted sons, Rino was reminded that he had a responsibility to carry out now that he wasn''t truly alone. A king without his people is just a cheap crown wearer. If there were one thing Rino swore he would never be, it was an empty vessel. "I''ve gathered everyone here for a purpose," he started his speech and, in the most serious tone, looked at Noir, who walked right up to him. "We need all hands on deck for a cave makeover. The abandoned dwarven mine has been discovered, but many precious treasures that could help us win the fight against harvesters remain undiscovered." The word ''harvester'' created a ripple of reactions of varying intensity. It inspired fear, anger and hatred in some. However, for Rino, the word only ignited an ember of curiosity about the world in him. Who were they, where did theye from, and what was their purpose for massacres? He might not have the answer, but the dwarves might know a thing or two more than anyone else. Not asking for their opinion but only demanding their participation, Rino appointed project leaders and dedicated tasks to each team with a deadline. It didn''t matter how much mana they had to use. Rino needed it done before the moon appeared. None of his summons had seen Rino behave in such a manner before. His state of urgency and seriousness made them step up and put on their best game face. As his shadow workers, if their king wanted something, they must see that he had it delivered. "Drows and spectres on track realignment." She and Acht received their orders. "Rabbit n on creating better paths, work with the earth gnomes." Bink gathered his group, and Kamiya''s n saluted. Rino did not need to know what they were doing. He already knew that they would take care of it. "Trolls and hobgoblins, mine the ores needed to repair the tracks and minecarts." The hobgoblin chief and appointed troll representative nodded. "Pygmy dwarves, lead your team and, if necessary, discuss with the earth gnomes how to fix the lifts." Griffith and Aiden fist-bumped each other and waved to Deezer, who wove back from She''s shoulder. Looking over to the others that he summoned, Rino assigned the farmers and hunters mineral transporting duties. Whatever ores that the trolls and hobgoblins mined, they would store them in crates and carry them over to the designated ces within the dwarven mine. Rino wanted to bring the grand furnace room back and possibly the smithing room. They were better equippedpared to anything Rino had in his stone cottage. The stone cottage''s cksmithing workshop was for experiments and not mass production. The fairies were assigned to assist different teams with their tasks, especially those without magic. Rino also let the elemental sylphs decide the roles among themselves. There were plenty of jobs for magic casters. A good example was the amount of cleaning the cave needed. Some mana web arrays needed extending and working on. Not to mention, someone could help to keep the furnace fire consistent. There was no ready water supply in that cave either. After everyone had a role to y, Rino told Mutt to go on ahead through the portal. He needed a familiar guide to the abandoned mines to lead them to their workce. Rino remained in Town Zera to give more detailed instructions to the project leaders and Noir watched silently from where he stood. Nobody paid him any attention, not that the ck cat minded. It was simply too different watching Rino getting serious. If Ark and Stephanie saw this side of Rino, maybe they would understand why he and Phil decided to ce their trust in this mortal. He wasn''t just a brilliant magician. He was everything that they wanted in a saviour for a dying world. At first nce, Rino''s enthusiasm appeared like dying embers. However, only those who looked closer would understand that it wasn''t just a dying spark. It was a spark that had yet to develop into a raging fire. If given the right conditions, this dying ember would rise and take over the world like hellfire, raining down mercilessly on everything in its way, razing it to the ground to be rebuilt by those two bony hands. Rino wasn''t a king that the world might like. He wasn''t very appreciated back in his previous world, and perhaps he was right to destroy it. The level of filth back in that prosperous world was sickening underneath the overwhelming light of sess. It was good for the gods. Whenever there was a need for salvation and general unhappiness, more people would reach out to them, giving them their much-needed divinity. It was also why worlds were oftenunched into a bloody battlefield in a fight for faith during the war between gods. The gods benefited, but the mortals suffered. Rino wasn''t like the others. Unwilling to be a pawn in the game between gods fighting for divinity, he took matters into his own hands to even the ying field and ended the vicious cycle, only to be pulled back into this rat race in a different world. Ace and Phil knew this even if Rino did not. Nothing would change for the mortals and gods. This game of divinity and faith is an endless one with neither mortals nor gods dered as victors. However, it could be more meaningful if a wise leader was in charge of this faith game. They did not need to harvest dirty divinity stained in blood. Instead, wouldn''t it be better to collect divinity free from suffering? Divinity like this was rare toe by, but with Rino, it might be possible. Ark and Stephanie did not know it because they were too concerned over material gains in the god realm. However, Ace saw the difference it made, and so did Phil. With Rino''s leadership, it might be possible to create a utopia within this dysfunctional world. After all, the most sessful of people weren''t bound to fickle things like rules.. They simply made their own and set the standard for others to follow. Chapter 209 - Dwarven Technology Contrary to what Rino thought, the minecarts and rails used by dwarves were considered rather primitive. Back in his previous world, Rino knew that dwarves loved their metals to an unhealthy extent. Metal was considered stronger than stone because it was toughened by fire that could melt faces. They used something called ''steel'' that was far superior to iron, and Rino swore they polished that metal daily because of its shiny appearance. Here, the minecarts were not made out of steel. The body for transporting was made from wooden nks, while the wheels were carved out of stone. Thankfully, the dwarves did not fashion itpletely out of wood and stone, or Rino would start questioning why they were even ying around with ores without using them. The bolts and moving parts were crafted from metal that had long rusted. Some still functioned, but others had crumbled away over the years of salt air running through the mines from venttion shafts. Metal needed to be properly oiled if they were to remain strong. Salt and water were metal''s biggest enemy, and Rino looked at the damage they had to fix. Most of the bolts and hooks used in these minecarts were rusted badly and in need of recements.. The wood was also cracked in some areas and could not withstand the weight of ores that should be poured into it. Some of the stone wheels were chipped or no longer round. Basically, it was easier to build five new minecarts than salvage the carts present. "Look around for suitable stone mining areas and start recing the wheels. There should be a grinding stone in the workshop. Ask the fairies to find it." Mutt howled in acknowledgement and left to find the fairies while the hobgoblin chief instructed his tribe to spread out in search of a good stone mining location. The mine was very huge andplicated, with so many mining tunnels branching into each other. Deezer told three of the earth gnomes to follow the hobgoblin team. They did not want to identally mine into another shaft. Rino and the pygmy dwarves quickly worked on a new minecart design using wood and stone for the time being. They had to rece the moving parts with metalter, but stone was a rather good ceholder for the bolts for now. Those wheels also had to be made from iron. The main body of the cart was fashioned from wood that Rino would enchant. There would be enchantments to make the cart lighter and resistant to damages. However, metal belts were designed to wrap around the wooden cart that had a special function. Rino had to admit, he was rather inspired by the side door to his furnace in the stone cottage that the earth gnomes built. It was easier to unload ores from the cart using a side door than tipping the whole cart. The metal belts were to hold that side door in ce and release it for unloading. Moreover, Rino disliked the current track and wheel design. The tracks were created from stone railings at the centre to guide the cart, while the wheel grooves created by rolling the cart over the singr track for years guided the cart''s movements. Honestly, it was not very precise, and Rino could see why the carts would sometimes topple. He found traces of spilt ores along the tracks that the dwarves did not clean up entirely. It wasn''t the best design, so Rino passed down orders to have the track system demolished. If they were going to rebuild the minecarts and design them, they should develop better track designs, preferably one that wouldn''t derail a high-speed mine cart. Using the concept of dams and barriers, Rino and the pygmy dwarves came up with a side barrier track design with grooves to support the wheels. Waiting for the ruts to be formed from repeated uses took too long. Hence, the test cart would be inked on the wheels and rolled over the new rail system. The earth gnomes could help to dig the grooves and reinforce them with cement for easy future maintenance. Initially, the design idea was simple enough to support regr pushing action. Rino intended to employ some muscles in the mines to transfer mined ores from one ce to another, but when Rina offered azier solution using gravity, the lich reworked his ideas. "Why don''t we build lifts to carry those empty minecarts back up for another rolling session? We only need to create stations for the carts to stop so that ores can be loaded into them. This way, nobody has to push the carts." The idea was too tempting not to try, and Rino decided that since they needed to fix two lifts, they could also afford to build new lifts. The only problem was designing the stopping stations, but the fairy assured him that would be simple. They just needed to run a few tests and calcte the angle of elevation required to slow a cart enough to stop at the station without destroying the pitstop. "We might need drivers," Griffith spoke up eventually after several crash tests using models. "Do you think brakes will work?" In the existing dwarven technology, brakes did not exist. Even back in Rino''s previous world, the minecart brakes were only possible because the tracks were made from metal. The brakes basically mped the wheels locked within the metal tracks and made them unable to turn. It caused many high-pitched spine curling screeching noises and sparks when that happened, but the cart would lose speed and eventually stop. In this mine, Rino wasn''t sure the same idea would work. They were using stone and wood with cement for the tracks. The wheels weren''t locked in ce either. Brakes will only damage the carefully calcted grooves and stone guide barriers. It wasn''t a good idea to use a mp brake on the wheels. Thinking from the angle of a magic user, Rina proposed using an opposing magic force to slow the moving carts. If they could use runes to elevate the cart and stop the wheels, the cart would eventually halt. Rino listened to both parties and agreed that he could not stick to the dwarven technology in this cave makeover project. The dwarves might have been the best in technology a few decades ago. However, Rino was the representative of a growingmunity that was possibly more advanced than the dwarves. Out with the old and in with the new, yesterday''s founders are building blocks for today''s rulers. "We can use air magic to kill the momentum of a rolling cart," Rino agreed with Rina''s suggestion. "However, we still need a driver to determine these things. I still need the lifts to bring the carts back up to the start of the track. It''s a little unfortunate that we couldn''t automate everything, but we definitely reduced the manpower required for operating the mines by a lot." Even so, Rino knew that this was far from enough. Such a huge mining operation would require at least a few hundred miners and managers. He still had to factor in those in charge of logistics and other areas of the mines such as recreational facilities, cksmithing and even mine maintenance workers. To put it simply, he was severely shorthanded if he wanted a fully operational mine. The mine makeover project needed all his avable summons, and not everyone could carry out their tasks efficiently. Rino needed more apt talents for mining and smithing. Those with deft hands did not have the power to lift a hammer. Those with the power to lift a hammer were clumsy. It was difficult to find the right candidate to fill in the positions required. Ideally, humans were good for this. However, Zerg''s vige wasn''t exactly a promising bunch. Rino preferred talents like Fronzo, but capable people had to hold the fort down in his absence in Noir Province. Kragami might have known this would be happening. Hence, the necromancer created a small school of sorts to teach those residing in Noir Province, primarily in Cypress County. Rino understood that education was something that took time. Results did not show overnight. Erika did not be immediately capable after she knew how to read and write. It took her experience working with Kragami as a secretary to understand how to put her knowledge to better use. Seeing how Rino fell uncharacteristically silent, his subordinates excused themselves to start working on the huge makeover project as their king brooded about the future. Rino hardly realised that everyone left and dismissed them casually, not fully aware of what he did. His mind lingered on how to bring the stone age into the metal ages while he stared at the daily quest screen intensely. Noir climbed up the cooking preparation table that Rino and his project managers used as the round table. The cookhouse was unusually silent, although there were bustling activities outside. Rino tuned everything out until he felt something smacking his face and covering his vision. Annoyed that Rino ignored his meowing twice, Ace decided to p Rino back to reality, but his tiny paws missed and ended up in Rino''s hollow eye sockets. Feeling slightly amused but mostly creeped out by how the lich slowly turned his head with paws in his eye sockets, the god of prayers tried to free himself but ended up failing spectacrly when he lost his footing. Noir''s clumsy behaviour made Rino chuckle as he caught the ck cat, stroking the silky fur and collecting his thoughts. Chapter 210 - Speaking Dwarven Tongue It took Rino and his shadow army two days toplete the cave renovations. It was two days too long for Rino, but he was finally able to im his reward and understand the secrets left behind by the dwarves. === Daily Quest #25 plete) Objective: Repair the Dwarven Mines Time Limit: 15 Days 600/100 Broken Tracks 10/5 Minecarts 5/2 Lifts Tutorial here. Reward: Dwarven Language Interpreter im your reward here.. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === The number of things they fixed up in two days far exceeded the expectations for gods, and for the first time in a while, Rino did not mind the extra work. Noir felt proud of the new look in the abandoned dwarven mines. The cave was well lit, smelled better with improved venttion systems and was bustling with activity wherever he went. The new vibes reminded him about how they moved their god''s office to a bigger one after their team''s first promotion. The god of prayers only hoped that Rino and his subordinates wouldn''t lose this festive spirit after the novelty. [Come back. Ark and Stephanie are holding a meeting. Your divinity is almost used up. We haven''t gotten any offerings in thest two days, so you have to do some exining. - Phil.] Blinking at the sudden message, Ace looked at the busy earth gnomes and decided to teleport to Rino, who was locked up in his study. Ever since the lich imed his reward, his time with Noir became lesser, although the ck cat''s voluntarypany was always weed. "Meow!" Rino heard the cat''s meow before he saw it appear in his study. Quickly, the lich opened the door so that there was fresh air in this area. He''d been so busy for thest two days that he did not have much time to fawn over Noir. Feeling slightly guilty, Rino patted the cat on its head and scratched behind its ears apologetically. "What brings you here? Were you feeling lonely?" Batting Rino''s bony fingers away, Noir sniffed and pushed his head against Rino''s shin and nuzzled the lich. "I''ve got to go, just here to tell you not to ck with food. I saw that cat statue in front of that pathetic farmhouse. If you''re going to feed me, it better be consistent. I don''t care if that''s just my replica. I want to be fed daily." Hearing Noir''sints and news of departure, Rino could only sadly promise that he would make the cat offerings daily even if he had to drop by personally. "When will you being again?" Rino asked sadly. Ace couldn''t answer. He liked being here, but he had a duty to carry out beyond this small world. "Maybe soon, maybeter. I''m wearing this choker of yours, so I''ll return someday when I feel like it. You better live in a morefortable house when I drop by the next time. The stone cottage you have here is still uneptable. I want afortable rug to sleep on. If it wasn''t for the food here, I wouldn''t have stayed this long." Blurting out inughter, Rino wasn''t expecting such a bipr deration. Noir actually loved living here. That was great. "Mm," he agreed and nuzzled the cat with his forehead. "I''ll work harder so that the next time you visit, there will be a firece, a lovely rug and delicious food for you. I might have to move houses to afford those kinds of luxury." Rolling his eyes, Ace ced a soft paw on Rino''s exposed teeth and snorted. "Teleportation magic makes travelling simple. Don''t spend time thinking useless things, and remember to feed me. I''ll be going now." Sad that Noir was leaving so soon but grateful that the ck cat stayed in Town Zera for longer than he did in Spudville, Rino offered to escort the cat to the borders of his town. Ace allowed Rino that privilege and wondered if he should caution Rino about the possibility that Ark and Stephanie might make him do something ridiculous soon. After all, Stephanie''s project was already halfway done. Shaking his head, Ace decided that it was best not to add to Rino''s current concerns for now. Besides, the lich wasn''t alone. He had reliable buddies to help him out if he was ever in a pinch. Rino waved goodbye to Noir and watched as the ck cat teleported away after leaving Town Zera''s defensive barrier. Noir was always Rino''s easiest hello but also the hardest goodbye. Deciding not to wave goodbye, Rino turned around and headed back to his study. There were only two times when Rino would pour himself into the endless ocean of research. The first was when someone''s life was on the line, and the second was when he wanted to distract himself from reality. If he worked hard enough and kept himself needlessly busy, he might forget all about Noir until the ck cat returned. With the new skill, interpreting the dwarvennguage made it easier for Rino to read the stone tablets. However, the lich had other ns. He couldn''t be the only one fluent in dwarven tongue. It was better if more people knew it. In fact, he might make the writtennguage of dwarves a regionalnguage for Town Zera''s citizens. Rino returned to his study and looked at the scattered papers. The ex court magician wrote many things from letters, books, and even decrees in his previous life. However, he had no experience writing dictionaries before. Even if he understood the letters used in the dwarvennguage, it was still difficult to categorise everything. He wanted to group the words into categories, but the syntax of theirnguage did not alignpletely with Rino''s spoken and writtennguage from the empire of his previous world. If anything, the dwarvennguage was iplete in many ways. Grammar was unique to everynguage, and words were formed with unique origins over a long time. The dwarvennguage was probably in its beginning stages of creation thatcked many things. Rino poured through the words he managed to trante and categorise. Eventually, it was better to ditch half of the dwarven system and rece it with something he was more familiar with. He would still keep the dwarven writing method but introduce vocabry from his previous world to make the flow and message smoother. Instead of simply tranting the dwarven tongue to themonnguage Rino wanted to standardise in his empire, Rino thought about inventing a dialect as a mix between the twonguages. Dialects werenguages that branched from an original system, customised for the locals. It suited Town Zera perfectly. While the dwarven tongue was advanced for the standard of civilisations in this new world, Rino thought it could use some vour and spent the whole time creating a new writtennguage. He did not know what the dwarvennguage sounded like, but inventing new sounds to suit the writing shouldn''t be difficult. When chanting spells, there were a total of a hundred and forty-three unique sybles. There was nock of unique sounds required to match the dwarven characters. Just like this, Rinopleted his new basic dwarven tongue textbook. The dictionary wasn''tpleted, but it wasn''t too important for now. After deciding that he would spend his leisure time transcribing all the dwarven stone tes into proper journals for documentation, Rino no longer felt the need to create a dictionary. There would be no loss for anyone not to learn their dwarven tongue when there was a better dialect tomunicate with. So far, Rino was able tomunicate effectively with his summons because of the soul bond. Soul bonds surpassed the need fornguages and brought all species together in death. Rino and Kragami were able tomunicate because magic was a universalnguage. The lich did not have a need to create an officialnguage until now. Might as well build upon what the dwarves had done, like how he modified their mines to make it better now that he was the new owner. Returning to the mines after the first stone te was urately transcribed, Rino took a look at the renovated interiors. The tunnels were definitely well lit and more spacious than before. He could smell food as he passed by the canteen. Half of the cookhouse''s operations had relocated to this canteen when they learned about the advanced alcohol production. Kragami told some fairies from Cypress County to remain here and teach Town Zera''s citizens how to brew taro beer. In fact, they tried experimenting with other food sources such as rine, corn and even soybeans. Rino let them do whatever they wanted. As long as the facilities were used wisely, he had noints. Besides, their cooking activities would only help him satisfy Noir''s wish to be fed. Noir''s statue might not ept food offerings like pizza, but they could always let him smell it before they ate. Chapter 211 - Dwarven Relics Crumble! The wall gave way and a cloud of dust covered the miners, who shouted in rm at the destruction. "Evacuate!" Panicked footsteps and squawks filled the dwarven mines as the cave structure started to give way. Nothing out of the ordinary prompted thisndslide. When this happened, the adeptbourers were mining at a new section for stone andying new rail tracks for the improved minecarts. Nobody was expecting it, least of all, Rino. From above, Phil cringed as thepromised structure copsed onto Rino''s minions. Some of the weaker and slowerbourers were trapped beneath the stones, while others stepped over them. There were casualties as Rino''s mana kept trying to heal their physical wounds while they groaned in agony at being consistently impaled by sharp rocks and broken pieces of metal. Rino was in the secret library when he heard a low rumble in the distance. All of a sudden, there was a very disturbing sense of foreboding when the spike in chaotic feelings invaded his mind through his subordinates'' soul bonds.. If it was merely one or two individuals, Rino would filter that out. However, hearing over thirty distressed calls for help and some in increasing agony made the lich drop what he was doing. Were they under attack? Watching his mana level, Rino concluded that something big was happening but not big enough for the more importantbatants to be mobilised. She was already at the site, giving Rino a detailed report of what she saw while the other drows and even earth gnomes who came with them started helping to evacuate the trapped shadow workers. When Rino finally arrived at the sight on Mutt''s back, the sabre tooth wolf quickly helped with the rescue mission. The drows and earth gnomes were doing well to clear the path, but they were not fast enough. Looking at the hole in the ground and the pile of dirt that fell through, Rino tried to see what caused the ground structure to fall through. ording to the site surveyors, this area was safe to dig and build on. There was enough stone and solid ground spaces beneath them that Kamiya''s n helped to reinforce. They evenid the mana web array through, but whatever was underneath this stretch of new mine appeared unnatural. Jumping down, Rino''s dark vision kicked in. Even without light, he could still make out several shapes in the darkness while the rescue party busied away. Looking up, Rino could see why they fell through the hole. It was simply this one spot that wasn''t reinforced with rocks. The flimsy wooden trapdoor buried beneath the guise of stone flooring could not hold up the weight of several trollsying the new rails. The hole in the ceiling turned out to be a trapdoor with some brokendder that led upwards. His subordinates managed to stumble upon a new section of the mine from a secret entrance that nobody knew existed until now. Previously when Rino sent Bink and one of the espionage experts to re the area, they told Rino that it was a half-abandoned tunnel project. The dwarves stopped digging the tunnel for some unknown reason, and it was left undeveloped because there were no mineral veins detected in the vicinity. Thinking back, he should have found it suspicious. The more odd a creation, the more suspicious it should be in the dwarven mines. Rino experienced it many times while he was exploring it in those two weeks. However, he was too focused on transcribing the dwarven stone tes that he overlooked how there could be a trap hidden in in sight. He felt slightly apologetic to those who were injured, but not all that happened was bad. The fact that his subordinates stumbled onto an unexplored dwarven secret that Rino did not find was exciting. As the rescue party pulled out all the trapped members underneath the huge rubble pile, Rino took a quick gander around the new secret area. The new area had many crates and strange creations. There were bars of metal stacked on pallets that remained intact despite the years. Initially, Rino thought that this was a secret storage room. It was full of dust in corners and knick-knacks. However, the number of proper equipment for working with metal made him question what kind of ce this was. The tools were nothing like the bulkier hammers and anvils in the grand furnace room or smithing workshop. Workbenches were lying around, and chairs that told Rino this was more than just a storage room. What kind of work would the dwarves use this ce for if this wasn''t a regr storage area or smithing room? There were no fireces or water sources around. The room was very dry, and the venttion here was poor. The air was stale, and the well-preserved wood condition told Rino they were doing something delicate here. The size of the tools used here lying around the workbenches was also small and fragile looking. What Rino thought was a small lockpick at first nce turned out to be a very tiny chisel. There was also a miniature hammer and some very small and thin knives in a set. It took Rino a long time to understand how these tools were used. After waking thrice around this new workshop, Rino finally spotted a difference between the bars and weapons hidden in the room. Those bars were so covered in dust that without light, Rino thought they were copper bars. However, when he summoned a small light spell using a pre-carved rune, Rino saw that the metal bar wasn''t brownish or reddish. If anything, it was closer to yellow. Could this be¡­? ncing back to ensure that his subordinates were still busy with the cleaning up duty, he turned back to the mountain of yellow metal bars. In his previous world, just a nugget of this yellow metal would make neighbours kill each other. A wife would plot her husband''s murder if a rich man tossed them a coin made from this precious metal. Yet, in this world, the dwarves stacked them up in the open like nothing. Maybe it wasn''t stacked up in the open. This workshop was hidden under a trapdoor in what appeared to be an abandoned mineshaft. If Rino wasn''t looking for new stone mining sites, they might not discover this untilter. Gold! This metal was gold, and Rino could finally understand why the tools in this workshop looked very different. Dwarves loved their metals. That was almost universal lore. However, their love for metals varied from world to world. Back in Rino''s previous world, their love branched into something that bridged magic and technology. In this world, the dwarves'' love for metal branched into something closer to art. Art might seem useless at first nce. Back in his old world, Rino always scorned jesters, singers, dancers and painters. However, as a noble, he was forced to learn a thing or two from established teachers as part of his etiquette lesson. Art was thenguage of gods and a way of the upper ss that Rino thought of as an utter waste of time. However, he was beginning to see why art was important in this world. With art, Ubel created the offering station statue. With art, they created a highly efficient grindstone. With art, the dwarves created low-levelled artefacts to breathe life into their creations. Yes, that''s right. On these workshop benches were tools for crafting. They were the tools that Ubel did not know he needed. Every line that was carved spoke of immense concentration. Every little chiselled curve engraved a tiny piece of the crafter''s soul. In this workshop, the tools of man were given a chance to be tools blessed by gods. The carvings on the small dagger handles and dagger sheathe were iplete. However, Rino could see how different it was from a regr in wooden scabbard for the de. The metal on the de also had a small signature carving near its hilt. This must be the name of the smither engraved into the sword collection. Back in his previous world, Rino often heard stories of god smiths who only forged a limited number of weapons in their life and never more. Those weapons were said to possess their owners and had a will of their own. If someone unworthy tried to steal or use them, the weapons would ce a curse and kill their owners until a worthy weapons master came along. It was such a strange tradition that eastern warriors must be buried with their weapons after death to prevent them from turning into vengeful corpses after death possessed by their weapons. Rino almost tried to defy the tradition just to see if they would really turn into zombies. Needless to say, the magician''s tower did everything it could to stop their crazy court magician from dismembering a dead eastern swordmaster just to confirm the rumours. Now, there were no magicians or empires to stop him from testing the tale out. Rino wondered if he could groom a swordmaster with the special sword collection created by dwarves. If they were good, he would invite them to join his shadow empire and offer them the position of a royal bodyguard just for kicks. Oh, who was he kidding? Rino shook his head at how crazy his thoughts were bing ever since he came to this world. He was so crazy that it almost sounded sane. These dwarven relics should not be so easily given away. As a matter of fact, Rino turned around and chased everyone else out of this workshop. He called dibs on everything here, and anyone who disagreed would simply just have to agree with him. Having absolute authority felt good, and Rino wasn''t beneath abusing it. Chapter 212 - Cave Graffiti The fifteen days passed too quickly, and Rinomented how many more stone bs needed transcribing. He learned a fair bit about what the dwarves were doing from transcribing the stone bs. However, it still wasn''t enough to understand anything about the harvesters. Whatever he knew about harvesters remained limited to what the dwarves knew. Maybe he should think about how to expand his town''s poption andplete that side quest just to know more about harvesters. Why do they exist? What makes them select some species over other species as prey? Where do theye from? Why do only weapons forged from fire hurt them? Ping! There it was, the dreaded quest notification system sound. There was no point in pretending he did not hear it. Rino decided that maybe it was better to check it out now. Since they were in a mining phase, the next quest might be rted to the gold bars he discovered not too long ago. The gods were always watching. Naturally, they would not let such a discovery go.. === Daily Quest #26 Objective: Mine the following ores Time Limit: 3 Days 0/1 Silver ore 0/1 Gold ore 0/1 Graphite ore Tutorial here. Reward: Metal Crafting Skill Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === There it was, the shiny grey metal and shiny yellow metal. Rino knew that the gods would never pass up on these luxuries. Unfortunately for them, Rino had no use for these precious ores apart frompleting the system''s quest requirements. Gold and silver were only useful when he was able to do advanced alchemy experiments. They were materials that could contain dangerous poisons and strange concoctions from hisb. There was no currency for exchanging goods in this undeveloped world. Gold, silver and copper had little value to these vigers. Even the ex-bandits stole food more than they stole belongings. Rino remembered his meeting with Acht''s gang. They weren''t considered real baddies in the previous world. However, as this was Rino''s world, trash should be put in its right ces, no matter how big or small. Now that they were in the right ces, this region was more pleasant to live in. Silver and gold ores were easy to locate. Rino had some silver and gold bars in that crafting workshop room that he extended the mana web array for lighting. The broken trapdoor was now fixed, and the mining route took a detour so that there was a new flight of stairs leading to the secret crafting workshop. Graphite was the real problem, and Rino looked through the tutorial guide, hoping to understand more about what that was. ording to the tutorial, graphite and coal were rather simr. They were found underyers ofpressed rocks formed after many years. However, there was one distinct difference in their uses despite simr appearances. Coal was ck as night but graphite, under light, had a shiny sheen to it. Apart from the differences in appearance, Rino discovered that graphite was stronger than coal, even if it was quite fragile. Coal and charcoal were used as writing materials to substitute ink made from bone ash and water. Ink was troublesome to handle and could not be prepared readily on the go. Rino only used ink to write his journals when he was in the study. Whenever he had to jot down some thoughts on the move in his sketchpad, he often used a piece of sharpened coal or shaped charcoalpacted into a hollowed slender wooden tube. Either way, writing was tedious with these methods, but beggars could not be choosers. As Rino read the tutorial describing graphite and where it could be found, something intrigued him. Graphite did not burn easily, unlike coal. Moreover, it was stronger than coal and resistant to bending. It was not brittle and was waterproof. Unlike ink, it does not smudge when used to write on surfaces. In other words, Rino might have found his new writing material to substitute ink and charcoal. Graphite can easily be eroded by friction, but the powder stuck onto surfaces very well and could only be removed by heated friction. Rino did not know how that worked yet, but he would soon find out. Noir wasn''t around anymore to help Rino sniff graphite out, but the lich was confident that he would locate it easily if he followed the coal pockets. ording to the tutorial, graphite can sometimes be found around coal as it merges with other minerals over the years as the animal or nts decay. Hence, the first thing Rino did was to use a divination spell to locate new undiscovered coal pockets and borrow several pickaxes to start mining towards them. If there was one thing Rino learned quickly about mining and seeking new ore pockets, it was how to perform a swab test to know if it was worth creating a new mining shaft for that new ore vein. The first few divinations he did without Noir''s help ended in embarrassment when the miners mined out beautiful tunnels to the promised ore pocket to find only half a rock''s size worth of ores. Rino wasn''t experienced enough to understand the sizes of detected ores using his divination spell. Noir did not teach him how to do it, and Rino never asked. Hence, he had to design a new method of locating promising mining sites. The method turned out to be probing. Rino would personally send site inspectors to mine a small feeler tunnel and stick a different spell talisman when they see an exposed ore surface. The talisman will transform into an area map indicating the ore and other minerals in the surrounding area, thus giving them an estimate of the ore pocket''s size. Of course, such a spell could only be used once, and Rino should think of a better method to do this, but he simply wasn''t a divination expert. As an ex-elemental mage, Rino never bothered to study the light arts. Divination was something that the church practised more than him, and it wasn''t urate. It took many priests to narrow down the vision to something the cardinals could understand. Rino believed it was faster to send a troupe of magicians over to the disaster site to investigate than waste time on divination gatherings. He wished he learned a little more about the light arts because the dark arts were very simr to them. Noir knew just what to do to weave that multi-level spell in such a short time without chanting to locate his ores. Just by tapping on that mana absorbing rock, Noir knew how long it was and guided the killer rabbits to dig around it safely. Rino wasn''t there when it happened, but he heard it from Kamiya, who heard it from his henchmen. Tossing the first few talisman spells onto the exposed ore, Rino continued to use his shadow tendrils to dig in different directions. Several ore pockets within this mineshaft were not exposed yet. Normally, the miners would mine several metres outwards from the main shaft to see if they managed to hit any ore veins along the way in a systematic manner. Rino''s haphazard snake-like pattern of mining and pping talismans was confusing inparison, but the lich couldn''t care. After hitting eight different ore veins that proved to be coal in the area, Rino retrieved all the talismans and quickly tossed four spots away. They were too small to be beneficial. One of the remaining ideal locations was a little too deep to retrieve, so Rino left that for the excavation team to settle. He eyed the three ideal locations and hoped that there would be graphite somewhere at the edges of this coal pocket. The first location proved to be a dud, but there was iron nearby that Rino conveniently mined towards so that the team looking for iron when they mined knew what to do. At the same time, Rino scanned the area for any deposits of gold or silver. So far, there were no responses for any of those ores. Going to the next coal pile, Rino dug around it and found what he needed. Graphite looked so simr to coal when they were together that Rino almost moved on without registering it. Thanks to the system, Rino was able to determine that he found what he wanted. A small graphite ore was chipped from the original coalyer, and Rino tested it out on a nearby rocky surface. The smoothest surface he could find was the mineshaft floor, so Rino scribbled some dwarven letters on it to practice his transcribing skills. The texture of graphite on stone could not be said to be awful. In fact, there was a therapeutic rhythm to the sounds, and before Rino knew it, the whole floor from the pocket he came from to the cave entrance was full of scribbles. Ashamed that he identally created graffiti on the cave floor, Rino tried to remove the stains, but the graphite stuck stubbornly onto the floor and only smudged slightly. Remembering how graphite would not be easily washed away even by water, Rino stared at his handiwork and contemted how he should hide the evidence of his vandalism before someone else found out. Chapter 213 - Silver Threads And Golden Needles The remaining two ores proved to be troublesome to locate. No matter where Rino probed in this mine, he could not find where the dwarves found their gold and silver supply. Maybe he was looking at this wrongly. The existing mineshafts might not be everything this mine had to offer. With only two days or less to locate them, Rino started to go crazy with his graphite pencil. Recing the crumbly charcoal in his wooden tube with graphite proved to be Rino''s best decision so far as the search for silver and gold proved futile. After recruiting assistants to help with his mine probing, Rino sat back and waited for the results. Half a dayter, Kamiya came back with negative findings of silver and gold. Rino even tried to use divination for silver and gold in the mines, walking around and repeating the spell a few hundred times, but there were no reactions. Bored, Rino flipped through his tutorial, hoping to learn something new about the ores he had to find. At this moment, Rino realised how dumb he was to assume he knew ores had to be found in the mountains.. The first thing he found out was how different the ores looked from their smelted form. Silver was grey, and gold was yellow when smelted and extracted. However, in their natural ore form, they were unrecognisable. Gold was often white and hidden in quartz that came in surprisingly many colours. Rino knew what quarts were. Some crystals and magic amplifying gadgets were made from that crystal. He just did not know that gold came with quarts in their natural formation. Silver wasn''t grey or shiny as an ore. In fact, it waspletely opposite and extremely dull in colour. The ore could be found as brown or ck in some cases as silver is often mixed with other minerals and has to be extracted before it turns grey. When polished, silver can sparkle. However, without coating in oil, silver will turn a dull grey very quickly. No wonder the silver utensils that he ate with had to be galvanised with chrome, and the real silver coins were always murky in colour. Ignoring their appearance, Rino finally understood why probing the mountain did not work. Silver and gold could not be found in natural mountains. If anything, they could only be found near volcanic activities, much like other priceless gems like diamonds. The dwarves did not get their silver and gold from this mine. There had to be another way to obtain them, and Rino made it his mission to find out what they were hiding. Humming an old song he once heard in a tavern, Rino wondered if it was truly possible to make silver threads and golden needles. The fanciful embroidered royal vests were rumoured to be stitched using golden threads and silver needles, but Rino had his doubts. Metal could not bend so easily, and pure gold was dreadfully soft. It would change shape at the slightest force and is highly malleable without alloys mixtures. Volcanoes were usually easy to spot from above, but Rino did not remember seeing any volcanoes in this mountain range. He remembered the hot spring back in Noir province, which made him wonder where the source was from. The dwarves could not have travelled that far to find gold and silver ores. In fact, they did not look like they left the mines at all for years. Pond. Water. Entrance. The memory of the abandoned docks made Rino freeze. He wasn''t able to feel the temperature, but Noir could. Unfortunately, Noir did not swim, so Noir could not tell him if the water was hot or cold. Maybe the water wasn''t actually cold. It might be warm, or at least some parts of it could be warm. The number of people who could swim and tell him if the water was hot or cold was numbered. None of the undead could tell him that, and Rino wasn''t sure if he should trouble his elderly teacher to take a dip in the water. "Whatever," Rino shrugged. He shouldn''t think about that just yet until he exhausted every other option. At the moment, the lich still had another n. He might have tested divination magic in the mines, but he did not test divination magic outside of the mining area. If he took the silver and gold ore samples and tried it near the dock, maybe he would find something there. Even if he couldn''t tell if the water was warm or cold, he could still use divination magic to confirm the existence of those elusive ores. Nobody questioned why Rino brought silver and gold ores with him and enchanting a leather bag to store his divination spell circles. The number of trees killed to make the paper Rino used could only be replenished by using magic. If he were still a court magician, the empire wouldn''t have done anything about the deforested areas and let that umte into an environmental problem. At least in this world, Rino felt slightly better about consuming so much paper for the sake of development. The dock was an area that Rino added barriers to. Not all his subordinates could readily visit the teleportation circle he left here. In fact, Rino wondered if there was a reason why the initial threeyered maze trap existed. Would he find more dwarven secrets if he cleared that, or was it a grand distraction and a dead end? Regardless, Rino made up his mind. He might not be able to repair the diving suits that the dwarves used, but he could borrow their tube''s path in the water. He did not register it when he came the first few times, but there were tubesid into the water that Rino did not think too much about. He simply assumed that they were water pipes to bring water into the caves for cooking and washing purposes. Thinking about it now, the dwarves could have gotten water from a better source. The water he swam in to get here was murky, looked stale, and had pieces of debris. Taking the plunge, Rino dove deeply and followed the water pipe in the water. The more he studied it, the less of a pipe it appeared. This design looked more like a guiding path in the depths of this water for the strange diving machines to follow. The dwarves added glowing crystals along the way, and Rino had a feeling he was on to something. Deciding that he was deep enough in this water pool, Rino activated a divination spell to look for silver. This time, he wasn''t disappointed when he received a generic direction of where silver ores were. He did not know if these ores were in abundance or just a tiny speck. However,pared to the failure to detect any silver within the mines, Rino considered this an astounding sess. Paddling over and using the pipes as a rope to pull himself along through the water, Rino cast another divination spell to check if gold was in the same direction, and he wasn''t disappointed. Both ore spots were in the same direction, following these pipes lit by glowing crystals in the water even if silver ores were slightly further than gold. The current started to pick up, and Rino found himself sticking close to the pipes and glowing crystals, afraid to be swept away by the underwater pull. It was strange how the water was still above in the cave but so violent here. When he swam in from the entrance, the water was so still and stale. There was also only one path, but now, Rino saw many branching paths. If it wasn''t for the glowing crystals and pipes guiding him, Rino would be swimming in here for a long time before he understood where he was going. It appeared to be a submerged part of the cave beneath the dwarven mines. The underwater cave was full of unique minerals exposed in the walls, but Rino wasn''t here to admire it. The crystals that glowed only showed part of this underwater cavern''s beauty, but with dark vision, Rino could see many priceless gems growing in this cave. He recognised some of them like emerald, amethyst andpiszuli. For some reason, the current was getting stronger and faster as Rino followed the pipe. He could no longer return now that he was here without the aid of magic, so the lich simply floated along like driftwood, with dark visionRino could see getting pushed by the waves to wherever he needed to go. The water became rougher, and Rino suddenly had a bad feeling about it when he saw the pipe but slipped. The glowing crystals were also getting fewer and further in the distance as the current dragged him under. The lich tried to back pedal, but before he registered what was happening, he was caught in the rapids and sent on a long ride down what felt like a tunnel. The ground beneath him became closer, but the water speed was much faster than when he first reached the gemstone cavern. As Rino''s head broke through the water''s surface, he finally figured out what was happening, and he shrieked mentally when he was thrown off what looked like a cliff that stood fifty metres tall and into agoon that looked like the abyss at the bottom. Chapter 214 - Nugget Collector Rino fell right into thegoon like a rock and had to use magic to get out of it. As soon as he got out of the water, he felt his exposed skull catching fire. Dammit! Why did it have to be daytime now? Moreover, Rino had no idea where he was as the water pushed him down the river to shallower bends. He could see the mountain and where he fell off from, but it was very covered by trees. Thankfully, this wasn''t the jungle of doom, and Rino wondered how big the dwarven mine was for him to travel this far. Town Zera wasn''t anywhere near here, and Rino quickly got out of the water to dry off and hide under the shade to avoidbusting into purple mes. Once he was safely out of the sun''s way, Rino removed his shoe to empty out the water trapped inside and stones that made their way into it. It was funny how his boots weren''t wet because of the waterproof enchantment. However, the stones that fell out still puzzled Rino. He was sure that there were no possible holes for them to get into after he tightened theces on his shin bones.. Then again, there was always that problem without muscles around his bones. There was a gap between his tibia and fib even after fastening theces. Maybe the stones fell into his boots from there. Barefooted and tidying his appearance, Rino sat on the grass and redid his bootces. A piece of small rock fell out, and Rino made a face at it. Why were there so many rocks? However, after a while, Rino noticed something different about the rock that fell out. Picking it up again, Rino examined it against the light and wondered why the rock was a different colour. Sure, rocks in the river often came in various colours, but yellow rocks were a little rarer. Most pebbles found in rivers were green, grey, white, blue, red, brown and even orange. asionally he could find ck stones and all the pebbles washed to the river bed were normally chipped off ores or stones from further up where the water came from. Sand was a verymon sediment found but it wasn''t present in this river for some reason. Curious about the different types of rocks and ore pieces that could be found in this river, Rino quickly fashioned a huge leaf hat so that his face would not burn while he was walking in the river. Feeling the pain of getting burned alive was something Rino could tolerate. However, having the annoying flickering of purple mes in his vision was something he hated about bing a lich. The hood did not always cover everything, even if it was huge. Rino spent the next ten minutes collecting handfuls of pebbles and noticed some small bits of crystals in the mix, with most of them being different kinds of quartz. He set the crystals aside and counted that he had bits of citrine, topaz, rose quartz, clear quartz, onyx and even red jaspers. They were numerous, and the variety continued to increase as he spent more time sifting through the riverbed. However, these crystals alone were too small to be of any real use. Rino still kept them in his shadow sack. Crystals were often said to be good luck charms. Maybe he could make some sort of essory using them and put minor enchantments on them to act as a lucky charm for gifts. It was currently a possibility he did not want to omit. Afterbing the river bed thoroughly for all different kinds of rocks and crystals, Rino gathered them and spread them out on a huge leaf mat that he made under the shade. Although he did not know all their names, he could recognise a few. One particr ore stood out to Rino, and he grouped them together. Yellow irregr shaped rocks that were pure yellow. They were slightly dull, and when Rino applied pressure on them, they would change shapes. For some reason, it eluded him until Rino recalled a scene from his previous world. By the river, hundreds of workers would line up and sift through sand collected from the river in sifting pans for hours under the hot sun and sometimes even through the night. It was a tough game of finders and keepers. Some spend their whole lives finding nothing but little scraps, while others can make a living based on pure luck alone. River panning was an activity that was popr after someone found a huge diamond in a river by ident. Since then, the empire faced a boom inpanies purchasingbour ves to pan for precious ores like gold and silver while others would find gemstones and purchase rights to upy a certain stretch of the river that the public could not enter. It posed several issues to the vigers nearby these reserved stretches of river that they often did their washing in. However, there wasn''t anything thosemoners could do when the kingdom passed new legition allowing it after imposing hefty taxes for rich businessmen. Taking out his divination spell sheets, Rino ced his raw gold ore from his bag onto the paper and cast the spell. If everything was correct, the yellow bits on the leaf mat should be pure gold nuggets! As soon as the spell waspleted, Rino could only interpret its results as positive. The river was full of gold nuggets with the scattered dotted location feedback. At the same time, Rino took this chance to find out if silver was also present. He could not tell which were silver ores simply because silver looked very different in its natural form. Once again, Rino wasn''t disappointed when the divination spell gave him scattered dots. Although these were not ores, Rino was happy to know that the actual mineral ore veins should be somewhere in the mountain he fell from. He still had no idea where the volcanoes were, but maybe the mountain range in this area were volcanoes many years ago. Rino could not be sure. Yet, it made him happy to know that it wasn''t hopeless. Rino spent the day sifting through the river to hunt for nuggets and crystals. He had no idea how many of that he found, but time flew by very quickly when he was having fun. It was the daily quest system that prompted him to leave and locate the actual ores. Travelling upstream, Rino looked at the forest and noticed that it was quieter than the jungle of doom. For some reason, it felt tranquil and for the first time in a while, Rino felt refreshed. He was truly alone here in the middle of nowhere if he ignored his soul bonds. Flying past the rushing and roaring water, Rino found himself standing at the ledge of thegoon that he fell into earlier that day. With less than twenty-four hours toplete his daily quest, Rino briefly entertained thoughts about his punishment for failing to find the ores. From above, Phil wondered how Rino could overlook the obvious and skip several stages in the quest they prepared for him. Gold panning was something that should happen muchter after his kingdom was developed. The mining industry was a sign of industrialisation, and they weren''t even there yet. In the meantime, Rino started probing into the walls of the mountain near the waterfall. It was far too tedious to try and get back inside the dwarven mine against the flow of water. Hence, Rino decided to just check the lower levels of these walls to see his luck. In reality, Rino was only trying to see if there were caves within the location that he could break into from all the way down here. The cave opening Rino was looking for finally appeared, but the entrance was only a small crack that the wind could pass through, so Rino helped himself and smashed it open using earth magic. It was dark inside, but Rino could see the pitfall of doom for unsuspecting cave explorers. A few feet in front of him, the cave ledge disappeared, and there was a good thirty feet drop to the cave floor below. It was closer to call this a side opening into an underground ravine than a cave entrance, but it was exactly what Rino needed now. Using shadow tendrils as a rope to lower himself to the ravine floor, Rino listened to the eerie sounds of water dripping and cave animals moving in the dark. Now that the roaring river was out of earshot, Rino decided he was far enough for his divination magic to work again. Rino cast divination several times for the next hour to locate a gold pocket and a silver vein in the ravine cave. They were very deep down and not easily essible, but Rino understood that this was what he was looking for. Not willing toe back here or extend the existing mines in the dwarven caves to get gold and silver, Rino decided to think of an easier gold and silver mining method when he got back. The most important thing now waspleting his daily quest before the deadline and returning to Town Zera. With the help of his pickaxes and shadow tendrils, Rino spent the next few hours mining up as much gold ore and silver ores from the two veins as he could. He only stopped when he saw how much mana it took to store them in his shadow sack and stopped trying to empty the two ore veins. "This should be enough to make a few bars of shiny metal," he concluded and retraced his steps out of the cave before taking off into the night sky to locate his secluded town. Chapter 215 - Ore, Ore, Crystal Ping! === Daily Quest #26 plete) Objective: Mine the following ores Time Limit: 3 Days 1/1 Silver ore 1/1 Gold ore 1/1 Graphite ore Tutorial here. Reward: Metal Crafting Skill im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted.. === Exhausted, Rino imed his reward and prayed that this was thest time he got so lost. After he left the gold and silver cave, Rino flew in the wrong direction until he left the mountain range to realise that it was the opposite side he should be flying in. That mistake cost him a few precious hours, and after following the mountain range in the correct direction, Rino realised that the whole mountain range was connected on the inside. He finally understood why probing the dwarven mines did not give him any gold and silver ores results. He had to go a lot deeper than he already was. Rino guessed that the dwarves must have hidden a mining passage somewhere specifically for gold and silver, judging from how deep he had fallen into the underground ravine. He just had to find out where they hid it. Then again, he might already have an idea. Those traps he thought were grand decoys, distracting everyone from the true entrance to the dwarven mines, might lead him somewhere. Rino should really explore all options before getting swept away by new activities. He never really learned this in his previous life, but the lich hoped that he would learn it in this new world. A small misstep and detour in ns couldnd him back in the punishment dimension of overwork all over again. Thankfully, he found his way back to the barrier of eternal night before day came again. Rino had a new quest, but there wasn''t enough time to check it out. He also did not know what his new skill did, but he urgently needed to do something. Carrying so much gold and silver ore in his shadow sack while flying took up so much mana, and Rino promptly hopped onto the closest teleportation pad by the Genesis tree heading for the dwarven mines. The moment he reached the mines, Rino hitched a hike on a minecart, startling the driver and dropped off at the grand furnace room where he unloaded his ores from the shadow sack onto the floor, startling everyone. Fronzo, his temporary mine manager, snapped out of it when he saw the ores piling up with no signs of ceasing. The lesser ghoul was quick to act and told the startled trolls to quickly fetch crates and shovels. Rino did not know which were silver ores or gold ores. They were mixed up, but for now, Fronzo''s judgement was right. If they do not start clearing space, the ores will flood the grand furnace room. With the ores pouring out of Rino''s shadow sack faster than Fronzo''s team could clear it, the lich decided to have mercy on them and momentarily pause when seventy percent of the grand furnace room''s floor was covered in ores. There was still about a third of the ores left in his inventory, and Rino was positive there were some crystals mixed into the pile, but he could get the reliabled to sort them outter. Appointing Fronzo as the cave logistic manager was the right decision. Erika came together with Fronzo, and they worked seamlessly, taking care of things before they became a problem for Rino. Kragami and Rina were taking care of matters back in Noir Province, and Rino knew who the first essory gifts should go to after they sorted out this mess and gave him his river crystal pieces. The cleaning up of Rino''s ore dump took a while, and Fronzo nced at his master several times while the trolls and some extra hands came to expedite the cleaning process. The storage within the mines was too full, so they left the field crates lying around stacked neatly against the wall in the grand furnace room and even smithing room. "M-my lord, may I know what these ores are for?" Thinking that it was a good time to introduce gold and silver to them, Rino gathered the miners and possibly future metal workers to introduce them. Curious about the ores Rino brought back, the miners gathered round in the grand furnace room. Rino did a quick headcount and noticed that he had less than a hundred miners working in the mines. Semi-automating the mine was a good idea, and only twenty of his subordinates were actual miners. The rest of them belonged to logistics, rail builders and mine cart drivers. "This," Rino held up an ore that was slightly white in colour from one of the lined up crates. "This is gold." He rummaged the crate a little and found another dark grey ore, holding it up for everyone to see. "This is silver. They are two different ores. If you see something that isn''t gold or silver, set it aside in a different pile. Those could be crystals. I need everyone to sort it out." Before the crowd could dismiss themselves to get sorting under Fronzo''s instructions, Rino pulled a fairy and an earth gnome aside. "I need both of you to work together and help me search for gold and silver ores in the lower levels of this cave. You can dig new probing routes to check for them, be careful of caving floors and ceilings, and listen for water too." Passing the earth gnome and fairy his bag with the sample ores and stacks of divination spell papers, Rino told them to let him know the results if they found any. Then, the lich monitored the sorting progress for a while and helped the confused trolls identify the right ores. It took the dumb trolls a little while to understand the differences between unrefined gold ores and silver ores. For anything else that wasn''t gold or silver, they learned to categorise them correctly. Confident that the trolls could work independently now, Rino left them to sort the massive pile of ores and crystals. He retreated to theforts of the stone b library and checked out the new skill received as a reward forpleting his daily quest just in time. Metal crafting was slightly different from smelting. Smelting was knowledge about separating impurities from a mined ore and turning that into a metal bar by melting the purified metal at high heat and cooled in a cast. Metal crafting was the work on an anvil. Sure, it was rted to smelting but not entirely. Smelting required the use of casts but not metalwork. To be more precise, Rino read through the description, and metalwork was the art of shaping metal into something useful. It was slightly different from tool smithing and cksmithing, although they were branches of advanced metal works. Rino simply knew how to turn metal bars into things like metal sheets, metal strips, metal wires and hooks with this skill. He wondered if there would be an upgrade to this skill in future or if he had to experiment a little more with it to find out if he could make weapons andplicated machines with the skill. At the same time, Rino did not forget to check his new quest. === Daily Quest #27 Objective: Mine 16 types of unique gems Time Limit: 16 Days 0/16 unique gemstones Tutorial here. Reward: Master Crafter Skill im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === No gemstone names were specified here, and Rino wondered if this was because the gods were gettingzier or if the gemstones were known by different names in this world. Not all gemstones might have spawned in this world. The creation of crystals was unique and different environments will inspire different crystal formations. Sixteen crystals, huh? Rino saw some in that huge underwater cavern, but he wasn''t sure how to mine them up. Was it even possible to mine them with such a violent underwater current in the first ce? Rino knew that the dwarfs added those bronze pipes and glowing crystals as a guide, but he had no idea if they could mine those crystals even with the help of their mechanical diving suit. Rino nced at the deadline. He had sixteen days for this new quest, and honestly, Rino shouldn''t take that long to mine crystals because the hardest part of locating them was already done. The process was simply tedious, and Rino just had to wait for his mana to recover before he attempted the crystal mining operation. Recently, it seemed as if these quests were made specifically for him because they weren''t tasks that his unskilledbourers could help with. Shrugging it off, Rino left to investigate if there were any secrets behind clearing that needlesslyplicated dwarven death trap maze. He cleared most of the traps on the lower levels, and some of his shadow clones cleared the higher floors, but Rino knew that there were still unexplored rooms and untriggered traps. Hence, that was his mission for a little while. Chapter 216 - Dwarven Trials Revisiting the trap room might be one of Rino''s worst ideas. He dodged another fall pit and saw the sharp metal spikes beneath. However, that was all he had to deal with. The dwarves were more brutal with their traps on the second level. Rino used magic to avoid getting turned into a pin cushion by the falling spike ceiling dropping from above. As cliche as these traps were, the level of difficulty dealing with them rose several bars. Rino was d that he did not get the earth gnomes to help with this. Instead, he heard a muffled screech from several rooms to the side as yet another drow fell prey to the dwarven traps. If he kept a death counter for the drow and killer rabbit teams, the drows would have incurred three times more deaths than his espionage experts. The rabbit monsters were doing surprisingly well and Rino wondered how they knew what to expect. Sometimes, Rino thought that the trap woulde from the walls after he identally stepped on a pressure te but working with the killer rabbits, he learned to trust them more than he trusted himself.. In contrast, the stealthy and agile drows were suffering from theirck of flexible thinking. The drows were graceful but they were simply too rigid to think out of the box. That might exin why Rino spent more mana summoning the killer rabbits than it took to summon the drows. There was a significant gap in their intelligence and abilities. The squad of twenty drows and killer rabbits spread out to conquer different trap rooms while Rino mapped down the area and recorded the movement patterns of rooms. Thanks to the mass production of graphite pencils, Rino and Erika''s working speed increased tremendously. The new wooden pencils with stuffed graphite worked wonders, and Rino tasked some crafters training under Ubel with the responsibility of producing writing tools. With pencils, Rino''s dream of making education avable to everyone could be a reality. He had paper, pencils, and even some teachers who could teach the basic wordsAvoiding the water like the gue. The next big thing Rino wanted to do was implement apulsory education sybus for those within his empire. No summon of his, beast or human should be unable to read and count. Of course, there were exceptions, like the animals that identally joined his shadow army, like the rat. "Watch out!" Rino heard a drow scream followed by the awful sound of a shadow summon dying. The lich''s mana dipped again when he had to resummon a dead drow who looked like she was starting to get used to the death experiences. The trap that she fell victim to was brutal. If it was Rino, the magician might not escapepletely unscathed either. Why did the dwarves think releasing mmable gas in the chamber and igniting it was a good idea? To ensure that the intruder was dead and not just charred, they added a mesh of des that would cut the intruder into neat evenly sized cubes of flesh that fell from the ceiling. The dwarves meant business when they built this death maze, and Rino only patted the unfortunate drow on the shoulder before recording the type of trap in the disarmed trap room. Fortunately for Rino and his reconnaissance team, these traps could not be reset once they were triggered. As awful as it sounded, Rino wanted to disarm every room. If they couldn''t disarm the ancient traps sessfully, then they would simply have to trigger them and try not to die in the process. A perk about being undead meant that respawning was possible to some extent, although the same could not be said about mental trauma. Thankfully, the warriors he had were made of sterner stuff, and dying was just another day at work after a while. The novelty wore out, and they epted death with professionalism and no drama, just the way Rino liked it. The scouts who went forward reported that the next few rooms were clear to proceed, and Rino rounded his crew to forge onward. They might have cleared almost seventy rooms, but there was still a whole level above them to figure out. The death figures would only rise with the new difficulty, but no traps are too daunting for Rino, who wanted to know what these dwarves were guarding. Making his rounds to confirm the position of the disarmed rooms, Rino flipped to a new page on his sketchpad and continued his mapping. After what felt like two eternities, Rino and his team finally reached thest level of this death maze. For some reason, the higher they went, the deeper they found themselves inside the cave. The walls felt different, and there was less lighting. The cave felt more natural, but the traps were deadlier. None of Rino''s clones made it this far before, and the lich could not believe what he saw here. After all the doom and gloom from before, Rino was expecting a little more intense in a different way. Something like red wall paint to represent the blood of victims that they killed in their traps from before, or maybe a disy of skulls on stakes as a warning to trespassers would be befitting to the theme. Nobody was prepared to see a glistening pool of water that bubbled and had steam rising from the surface. One look at the pool, and Rino knew what it was. However, it was scarier knowing that there was such a luxurious ce hidden after all the death traps. A hot spring was probably thest thing Rino expected in such a ce. He could not help but be suspicious about it. Maybe it was really a toxic dump disguised as a hot spring waiting for them to take a lethal dip. These dwarves were rather cunning. "My king, what should we do now?" the drows asked, and everyone shuffled uneasily behind Rino. "What else?" Rino asked. "Take a dip and see if it kills us as usual. However, the presence of a hot spring isn''t a terrible thing. At least I have a clue where the gold and silver ores could possibly be in this mine. At the same time, there is no longer a need to build a hot spring channel all the way back to Town Zera." Looking at the exploration squad, Rino waited for a brave volunteer. The drows and killer rabbit monsters looked at each other until one brave soul stepped forward. Rino recognised this rabbit monster as the only person in the team who hadn''t died ever since they entered the death maze. Giving the volunteer a round of apuse for a morale boost, the drows and rabbit monsters took several steps back and cleared the way for his takeoff. The volunteer rabbit monster bent low and sprinted so fast on an unheard count of three that Rino couldn''t even see his tiny legs. They heard a loud ssh as the rabbit curled into a mini cannonball. Avoiding the water like gue, the exploration team shrieked and scattered while Rino simply lifted the edges of his cape to shield himself from the potentially toxic water. For a few heart-stopping moments, the rabbit monster did not resurface from the bubbling water that glowed ominously. Rino checked his mana, but there were no signs of depletion, indicating that his summon was not hurt or dead. "Phwa! The water feels great!" the rabbit monster dered after resurfaced. Grinning, Rino was the next to jump in, not caring if his boots would collect water again. It had been way too long since he had a soak in hot spring water. Thest time he had such a luxury was when he still bathed in the farmhouse at Spudville. Showers, baths and even naps now felt like things of the past. However, the new deadline for the crystal mining quest might give Rino his much-needed breather. Seeing that Rino was enjoying himself in the hot spring water, the rest of the exploration team members followed after their monarch. Some were more hesitant and only dipped their tails or toes in, while others jumped right in without second thoughts. Rino observed their reactions and took note of those who were more apprehensive. These were the individuals that might go further in their careers as his empire grew. Yet, he did not overthink. The traumatising experience from before must be the dwarven trials to see if they were worthy of visiting this sacred hot spring. Soaking in a hot spring was as magical as it felt. The fatigue was washed away, and the bad experiences in the death maze melted like a terrible dream. Nobody felt like moving, too content with the soft bubbling of water and the warm steam rising from the water''s surface as the warmth filled their tired souls. Unlike his subordinates, who were experiencing their very first hot spring, Rino decided to find out what was lying at the bottom of the hot spring. There should be a good reason why there was a hot spring bath after those deadly traps. From his experience with the dwarves, something obvious was hiding just around the corner because of how odd this hot spring pool felt. He was proven right when he saw a small passageway underneath the hot spring pool. Swimming through it, Rino found himself in a new secret passage just big enough for dwarves. Crawling his way through the narrow tunnel, Rino knew what he had to do now. There was no way the dwarves would simply build a hot spring pool after a terrible death maze. They must be hiding something important after all. The hot spring pool was just a very good and weed distraction. Chapter 217 - Heart Of The Mine Swimming in that narrow tunnel took Rino a long while and his flowy cape often got stuck on some rocks. Thankfully, it was tear-resistant. Like how he ended up in thegoon, Rino fell headfirst at the sudden drop and iled ungantly beforending with a huge ssh. The water here was much shallower than thegoon, and the height of the fall was a lot shorter than that cliff. Rino paddled out of the small pool and dragged himself up to the cave floor while trying to get the water out of his skull''s cavity. He opened his jaw, and the water came flowing out effortlessly, although that feeling was still very odd. The squelching sound of water in his boots again made Rino sigh internally. He would resolve thatter. For now, Rino took a look around with the help of dark vision. There was no longer any lighting here. However, Rino could tell that there was heat in this area. . It was a no-brainer where he should be heading to now that there was only one path. Rino wasn''t afraid of traps in this ce because it should be a ce that the dwarves frequented with the signs of mining activities. The old tracks that the minecarts created could be seen on the floor, and Rino followed them deeper into the cave. As he followed the ruts, Rino noticed the interesting patterns on the cave wall. Unlike other cave structures that were mined out of naturally forming, there was ack of limestone, and the wall''s surface was very smooth. There were lines along the wall that remained consistent as if there was water running through this tunnel for many years. The shape of this tunnel was also inconsistent, like a worm had dug it. At first, Rino thought this was just the marks created by mining. However, he soon came to realise this was naturally urring. It might not be in recent years, but the tunnel he stood in was definitely full ofva many years ago. He read about it once but did not think it was important to know until now. Rino thanked his boredom in the previous life as he devoured books of all kinds during his home imprisonment period. Lava caves were pockets created after theva flowed through it and cooled along the sides of the ground, forming part of the tunnel''s walls and ceilings. They were often fragile and could cave in at any part. The heat here was probably fromva activityying dormant. The hot spring water was also originating from sleepingva activity underneath the mountains. This would exin more things now. Rino stopped for a while to admire nature''s creation. The dwarves did not do much to this structure except to support it with beams so that it would not copse inwards, but the lich had a feeling he knew where they were going with this. As soon as the rut trails ended, Rino looked up to find himself in a cavern bigger than anything in his imaginations. They were so deep underground, but Rino could see even without his dark vision ability. The ceiling stretched as tall as five hemp trees and could fit all of the world tree inside here if Rino grew one. Unfortunately, that space was taken up by an enormous crystal that pulsed lightly as if it were breathing quietly in a deep slumber. The crystal would slowly change colours as it throbbed, and Rino walked closer towards it in a trance. It stretched all the way from the broad base on the ground to the ceiling of the cavern. Rino squinted and concluded that it was still growing even if it grew only a few centimetres in a year. A living crystal within this mine would exin the need for those deadly traps and obvious distractions. The dwarves were guarding the guardian of their mines. The pulsing crystal did not just emit mana. Rino would consider this closer to an unawakened fae. Living crystals were often depicted in myths, but Rino never found any in his previous world. Any living crystals his previous world had must have been destroyed by greedy profit hunters. These crystals have been around for thousands of years and umted spiritual energy that was different from mana energy stemming from life. It was a soul of its own creation over many years of cultivation as a crystal. Huge living crystals like this were unheard of. Small living crystals could sell for a fortune because they were protectors of the owner''s family for generations, warding evil and bringing good fortune. Their powers would die eventually if they were not charged sufficiently or used too often. Rino never saw one or knew anybody who owned a living crystal, big or small, in his previous life. Now, he could not help but wonder why anyone would want to destroy such a beautiful thing. The living crystal in this dwarven mine was the owner of every rock, mineral, ore and crystal. The dwarves must have worshipped it like a god and went through so much to keep it safe. The peace that this volcanic mountain had must be the crystal''s doing. Rino had no idea if living crystals could actually suppress a volcano or calm its rage. However, he did not want to test the theory and risk having everything in Town Zera blown up when he was just getting started. Surrounding the living crystal was a litter of crystals, rocks and ores. Rino recognised some of them, and the shiniest of them all had to be quartz. They sparkled in tune with the living crystal''s colour change. Examining the walls, Rino was quick to notice a familiar colour. Walking over and brushing the white surface, Rino confirmed that this was quartz and the little yellow sparkles were gold! Sections of the wall had been mined previously, but there was plenty of where that came from. Rino marvelled at the cave for the next fifteen minutes before doing the logical thing. Although he wasn''t going to mine the living crystal, the same could not be said for the other crystals conveniently located in the same cavern as it. He had a daily quest toplete, and Rino did not wish to mine crystals underwater while fighting against the impossible current. Hence, he apologised to the crystals in this area and retrieved the pickaxes from his shadow sack. Clink! nk! While working quickly and shopping for the best quality crystals in the cave, Rino quickly harvested sixteen different types of crystals and saw his daily quest mark itselfpleted in record speed. Ping! === Daily Quest #27 plete) Objective: Mine 16 types of unique gems Time Limit: 16 Days 16/16 unique gemstones Tutorial here. Reward: Master Crafter Skill im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Before Rino knew it, he had mined amethyst, sapphire, jade, opal, tourmaline, ruby, emerald, diamond, quartz, topaz, tiger eye, mchite, onyx, citrine, jasper and moonstone. These were the crystals he often used in his alchemy experiments in his previous life because of how durable they were. iming his reward, Rino looked at the living crystal and made up his mind. Initially, he thought of adding them to the powerful array in the dwarves'' secret artefact vault. However, this living crystal was more precious and needed better protection than those weapons. Laying the crystals in order, something Rino was very familiar with, the lich used coal to draw out aplex magic circle on the floor around the fat living crystal. The circle took almost an hour to bepleted because of the level of details Rino wanted. However, by the end of it, he was satisfied. The rune circle glowed as Rino chanted his long spell, pouring mana into it and gently weaving the living crystal into the circle''s protection while feeling out for the established mana web array in this cave using the living crystal''s consciousness. They made a connection to the mana web array, and once Rino introduced it to the Genesis Tree, who introduced it to the Ghost Cypress and World Tree, a brilliant sh of white glowed from the living crystal. Outside of the cave, Acht looked up at the sky and noticed that the eternal night barrier only became darker, and the town was shrouded in a light mist, obscuring vision. Outside, a thick fog covered Town Zera''s location, and the borders expanded for the next few miles all the way to the forest that Rino found himself in just yesterday. Rino continued to mutter his spell and ignored the stabbing pain in his eyes caused by the bright light from the living crystal. There was one area that he needed to fortify, and that was the artefact vault. There was no greater mana amplifier than a living crystal, and Rino was amazed by just how much stronger Town Zera''s defences had be. The border he wanted to create was established. The enchantment spells andyers he wanted to cast over his town were now made possible thanks to the living crystal in the heart of this mine. Rino bowed humbly and thanked the living crystal for its assistance. Pulsing in response with a warm colour, the living crystal replied, and Rino took his leave. He finally had a reliable guardian watching over Town Zera and protecting it from the silence. Chapter 218 - Proper Blacksmith For almost two weeks, Rino spent his time as idly as he could. He mined out the mana emitting rocks and mana absorbing rocks to experiment with them and transcribed the dwarven stone tes while finalising his first officialnguage. At the same time, Rino made sure he cashed out every single sleeping moment he could get before the new daily quest. Something told him that the gods would be working him very hard soon. As promised, Rino told Erika to put Noir''s cat statue offering as a priority task for the vigers in Spudville. At the same time, Ubel started crafting more cat god statues to put around other areas, such as in Cypress County, and there was even one in Town Zera by the Genesis Tree. With so many offering stations, Noir should never have anyck of food upon his return. It didn''t matter where he ended up. The vigers would automatically know to give the ck cat VVIP treatment with the statues in every vige. The rest of Rino''s idle days were spent in joy creating new food, tasting new products and weirdbinations that the cooks swore tasted good even if Rino''s non-existent tongue disagreed. Nothing much of importance happened.. Ping! Rino was considering a sixteen-hour sleep marathon when that system notification sound made him check thetest update. Forck of a better word, thest few days were dull, albeit peaceful. The lich wanted to quickly get over this mining phase and possibly metalwork to roam the rest of his vast empire. Ever since Rino lost his way in the forest after he fell from the waterfall, he wanted to know what kind of terrainy beyond the mountains. There was a possibility for snow, even if Rino highly doubted he would find it. === Daily Quest #28 Objective: Create cksmith Workshop Time Limit: 7 Days 0/1 Stone Forge 0/1 Stone Quenching Basin 0/1 Stone Hammer 0/1 Stone Anvil 0/1 Wooden Tongs 0/1 Ceramic Metal Bar Cast Tutorial here. Reward: Alloy Smelting Recipe Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Looking at the materials, Rino wondered why most of the cksmith''s workshop consisted of stone and even wooden tools. Could this setup even be considered a proper cksmith''s workshop? He felt conflicted. Back in the abandoned mines, Rino saw how grand the smeltery and smithing workshops were. The grand furnace room was more spectacr than his kilns. Rino did not see any automation devices for smithing in the dwarves'' smithing room. It was the only thing they were more advanced in than the dwarves. However, everything else that a cksmith needed, the dwarves were more advanced despite their rusted tools and abandoned workshop. Rino had little idea what any of those things in his quest list meant or what they did. He didn''t feel like reading the tutorial yet. If anything, it might be better to learn from observations. Thankfully, the stone bs that Rino transcribed mentioned a few things about how smithing worked. It was a little too specific with strange jargon that Rino ignored in favour of his sanity. He had a basic idea of the sequence of order when it came to smelting and smithing. However, nobody was around to tell Rino the best position to ce the equipment so that the smiths in his significantly tinier cksmithing workshop wouldn''t crash into each other while carrying heated and pointy objects. Sighing deeply, Rino settled onto the chair in his stone cottage with a tter of bones. Retrieving his fourth sketchpad, Rino scrolled through the tutorial. If there were no exnations of the bestyout, the lich had to start reading the tutorial that became useful recently. Compared to when he first started, the recent tutorials were more informational and told Rino things he needed to know. Could it be that there was a new god in charge of his sacred mission to save this stupid world? Well, whoever it was, Rino had a feeling they could get along better than he did with the previous dumb gods. Up above, the sibling gods sneezed simultaneously as they cleared the storage room. Ever since Ace and Phil took charge of the administrative matters for the small world, their department started to have some semnce to their previous glory. The offerings were generous, and the number of items they could trade with other departments became more. Ark and Stephanie managed to win their trust back and double their sales despite their rocky start and strained business rtionships with other gods and goddesses. Things were going well for everyone. Ark decided that sometimes old was gold. Phil was a veteran, so leaving Rino and the small world in his hands was probably a good idea if it gave Ark more time to mingle in the social circles of gods and goddesses to sniff out better scraps. Maybe if they did well enough, they did not need to ask for hand-outs and could establish something of their own. Taro beer was something that nobody else had in their seed worlds, and he smelled an opportunity to make divinity from it. Arranging the items in order based on their uses and understanding from the tutorial, Rino divided the cksmithing items into three categories. The fixed category consisted of fixed items such as the forge and anvil. The forge has to be fixed because of the fuel replenishing system, airflow calctions and fireproofing measures. Forges typicallye with bellows to fan the mes and control the airflow required for metals to merge harmoniously. The anvil came muchter after the metal was heated into liquid and poured into moulds. Rino did not worry about it for now. On the other hand, the second category was for items that are optional for movements. They were semi fixtures, and Rino included one that wasn''t in his quest for the sake of convenience. The quenching basin or cooling tank was normally ced close to the hearth so that heated metal could easily be cooled off if required. The other thing that Rino thought might be needed was a tool rack and possibly a weapon rack. He did not want to scrabble on the ground to find the right tools while holding a heated metal in his other hand. Thest category was for Rino''s tools and knick-knacks in general. Things like tongs, hammers and moulds go into this category. Those were easily receable and could be rearranged to fit conveniently in the cksmith''s workshop when Rino figured out where to ce the more permanent fixtures. In Rino''s case, he had a waterwheel that allowed him to attach an automated hammer. Hence, the most logical thing was to build around that fixture. The furnace forge built into the end of his stone cottage by the river was also fixed. Thankfully, there wasn''t a huge distance between the two, and Rino could ce his hammering station bench beneath the automated hammer. He thought about the space for a while and decided that the cooling tank and water source could not be too far from the anvil ced close to the forge. However, for the sake of convenience, the lich decided to use water runes for water supply and possibly mana imbued water to fill his quenching basin. The dirtied water would be drained into the dwarven sewage tunnels using magic. That should take care of his waste disposal efficiently. Now that he had almost everything he needed in the area, Rino measured the space he would have left after fitting all those things in the small cksmithing hut. The tool racks could not be too long, but thankfully, Rino had some space in height. Tongs and hammers should not be too heavy. Rino could fashion the racks out of wood and stone if necessary. As for the moulds, Rino needed some space toy them out while they cooled. Some moulds were very long and took up too much floor space. Rino wanted to make more than just a bar mould. He wanted to make moulds for weapons, armour pieces, bolts and nuts, maybe even gears. The variety of these moulds was a lot, and Rino flipped to a new page on his sketchpad to list the moulds he wanted. It took the lich some time to categories the moulds he wanted Ubel to help with. By the time he was done, half a night was gone. There were over sixty basic moulds that Rino wanted and too little space. Even if he built the mould rack vertically, there would not be enough space to store them all. Rino could build a vertical mould cooling rack, but storage seemed to be the main issue. With only seven days to establish a working model, Rino had a feeling he wouldn''t make it in time if he called for a renovation team to extend his cksmithing workshop now. Looking towards the window, Rino gazed at the Genesis Tree and gained inspiration. Spatial magic was mana hungry, and if Rino were to store them in his shadow sack, it would drain his mana at a constant speed. However, if he could create a spatial object using runes recharged by the mana web array, the problem became something that he didn''t have to deal with directly. Chapter 219 - Building A Blacksmith (1) The first step to building a good cksmith workshop was to secure a reliable forge. Rino had no problems with building a forge. He only had a problem building a stone forge that the daily quest system insisted. In fact, he also had problems with the stone quenching basin because Rino could easily build a brick cooling trough by the furnace in his wall. Hence, he decided to get these useless builds out of the way just for the sake ofpleting the quest. Nobody questioned why Rino was back down in the dwarven mines when he came stomping in. Although there were no travelling restrictions for miners to go to the grand furnace room or cksmithing workshop, nobody went there unless they needed to retrieve stored items. Met by a mountain of sorted gold and silver ores when he entered the grand furnace room, Rino wondered if he should ask the renovation team to work on expanding storage within the dwarven caves. However, he was here for an entirely different reason. Passing the storage mess, Rino turned left into the dwarven smithing workshop. They had good structures avable, but more importantly, Rino needed their tools.. Specifically, he needed a bellow to improve his current furnace. As for the forge, Rino decided it could go outside the stone cottage for now. It was easier to knock a hole in the existing wall and build a thatched hut as an extension than restructuring his cottage. After observing the difference between a forge and a furnace, Rino decided that the temperature control and airflow made them different. A forge had an endless supply of airflow that helped heat the metal up but not melt them. Forges and furnaces were used interchangeably, but a foundry was different. The grand furnace room that Rino dubbed before was a great foundry room meant to melt metals down into liquid so they could be poured into moulds for cooling. Seeing how the gods probably had no idea about the differences, Rino decided to make the stone forge a foundry outside his cksmith workshop. That way, he could create a little area to cool his metals while migrating his mould storage issues. Studying the insides of this grand foundry, Rino learned that, unlike the forge or furnace, the foundry had little openings and a very controlled air supply. It was simr to his oven, and the metal bars were baked inside until they turned into liquid, ready to be poured into moulds. Several racks inside the foundry and some dish-like material were used to contain the molten metal liquid. ording to the tutorial, the casts were made from ceramic, and Rino didn''t understand why. The dwarves also used a simr material that Rino recognised as y from the river banks. Although they were rather brittle and could shatter when dropped, y and ceramic had higher melting points than metals. They could still contain the molten metals and retain their shape in the fire, making them perfect for cast moulds and foundry racks. ss also has a very high melting point, but unlike ceramic, it gets bendy and stretchy when heated even if it has not turned into liquid. They cooled quickly, and Rino decided against using it as a building material. Compared to ceramic and y, ss was significantly more brittle. Stealing the design to modify it, Rino copied it into his sketchpad and moved to the next obstacle. He had to learn how to build an anvil. Surprisingly, making an anvil wasn''t hard at all. Just like making a sword or a bolt, the anvil was formed by using a breakable cast. The dwarves kept a carved wooden replica of an anvil around in the storage room full of tools and misceneous items that Rino found. From there, it wasn''t difficult to put two and two together. There was only one thing bothering Rino. ording to the stone anvil tutorial, it only had two major thighs to note. The stone anvil had a t face that Rino assumed was used for striking heated metal. In addition, there was a horn at the side that the lich had no idea what it was used for. However, he assumed that the sharped shape might be used for bending metals into softer shapes used in armour pieces. The wooden anvil design created by the dwarves was slightly moreplicated. In addition to the rectangr t surface for hammering and the horn shape at the front, there was also a step down before the horn shape and two holes at the other end of the anvil. Rino scrutinised the holes and noticed that one was rectangr while the other was round. He could not understand why these minor additions were made, but he could imagine how the dwarves made their hooks using the step to bend metal at a sharp angle before cooling and twisting them into a curve using the holes at the other end. In reality, Rino wasn''t too far off from the truth. Sketching the dwarves'' anvil design on his sketchpad and stealing a wooden model, Rino decided to create two anvils. The stone anvil was for making simple things such as bowls, steel tes and maybe shovels. The detailed dwarven anvil would be used to create things that required more details, such as armour, hooks, angle tes and possibly weapons. With category one of his cksmith workshop settled, Rino teleported back to the Genesis Tree and looked for Kamiya. He had a message for Ubel in Spudville and a list of things he wanted the wraith king to craft. "Make haste with this order," he told the rabbit monster. "I need it in two days, three days at most. The sketches for all the moulds are inside this spatial ring and a wooden model for the anvil is in this bag." At the same time, Rino left the crafting of the stone anvil to the wraith king, who should being personally to deliver the items. Rino sent Kamiya away to make arrangements for the speedy delivery whilemunicating his needs to Ubel telepathically. Reassured that someone more capable was taking care of the crafting portion required for the quest, Rino caught an earth gnome who was just getting off his work shift to find Bink. In less than ten minutes, Rino heard a knock on the door outside the cksmithing workshop. He was still studying how he could modify the existing furnace when Bink entered. "You summoned?" Nodding, Rino invited the little man to the kitchen. There was nobody in the cookhouse at this hour, making it perfect for their discussion. Bink took a look at the various sketches in Rino''s notebook while the lich made them coffee. As Rino set the steaming mugs in front of them, Bink could not help but ask why Rino was suddenly interested in reviving the dwarven culture. The earth gnome leader was both excited but also apprehensive about this new development. Rino was a powerful lich, and the undead empire would flourish even without researching technological developments. The dwarves and earth gnomes developed science and mechanical technology because they believed it would save their declining race from the harvesters. Every race had a unique way of trying to survive doomsday. Some races preferred to breed crazily, while others avoided improving themselves so that the harvesters would not target them. Monsters hid in living caves and formed a society of their own away from the harvester''s reach, and those who were not weed in living caves trained themselves to outrun, swim or fly from the harvesters. Rino had no requirement to battle them. Yet, his progress seemed to point towards war with the omnipotent bringers of extinction. Nobody has sessfully won against the harvesters yet, and it scared Bink to know that the lord he served was trying to be the first to rebel against fate. "What do you think of these designs?" Rino asked after they both took a sip of the bitter beverage. Bink made a face at the bitterness of the scalding liquid, and Rino chuckled. Despite being much younger than his adopted son, Rino felt that he had a more mature pte than the earth gnome did. The earth gnome leader hesitated to answer at once. These designs were splendid! Nothing could beat the inventions of dwarves, and the lost dwarven technology was salvaged thanks to Rino''s ability to recover the abandoned mine. However, his happiness was hanging on the line with the promise of war soon. "The designs are nothing less than brilliant, my lord. The dwarves were the best, and even after they left, we still could not beat them. However, may I ask why we are trying to bring back the lost technology of dwarves? Will there be war soon?" The earth gnome''s question surprised Rino. War? He wouldn''t want to do anything so tedious. War benefitted nobody. Yet, he could understand the gnome''s concern. The dwarves were obsessed with finding a way to kill harvesters that they dedicated their whole lives to that research. However, even as they faced inevitable extinction, they failed. "No," Rino reassured Bink. "There will be no war if I can prevent it. I just want to bring the dwarven science back because there is great merit in their creations. Not everyone can use magic, and with their metalwork, we could make tools to take the load of manualbour. ces that could not be reached before like under the water, in the skies and through the mountains could be a possibility if we study their works well." Surprised that Rino wasn''t looking at bringing back forged weapons to arm up against the harvesters, Bink''s enthusiasm returned as he shared his thoughts with Rino about the sketches. Truthfully, Rino never thought that far about fighting the harvesters. He barely knew anything about them, but if they proved to be a threat to his empire, he might have to get rid of them. For the time being, he was more focused onpleting all his daily quests by the deadline to avoid another punishment. Chapter 220 - Building A Blacksmith (2) Rino looked at his checklist. Just like that, a day passed. Ubel was working on the moulds, and Bink was taking care of the stone foundry constructions. Rino gathered a few trollbourers to help with the heavy lifting while putting She and Bink in charge of the cksmith workshop extension construction. Now, he had to build non-permanent furniture such as tool racks and cooling racks. Rino visited the sawmill in Cypress County with an inventory full of chopped jungle wood from the jungle of doom. At the same time, he cut down some trees from the forest near the waterfall at the edge of the mountain range. It took Rino nearly an entire day of flying to gather logs and some saplings so that the fairies could grow them on the tree farm. "You''re here faster than we expected," Kragami greeted Rino. Rino tossed a leather sling bag enchanted with spatial magic at the old man, nodding to his teacher.. "Everything is inside. See if you can grow the saplings and ask Griffith to treat the logs. I need good nks, lots of them. The cksmith workshop project has to bepleted within the next few days, so this takes priority. I''m going to check on Rina in Spudville and drop by the y mines to get more cement mix." Knowing that his student was in a rush, Kragami did not stop him for tea. Sometimes, he wondered if Rino was trulyzy. There were moments when all Rino did were sleep and roll around, trying not to do anything. However, there were also times when the lich was burning with passion for getting things done. Everyone grew to understand how to read the lich''s mood after a while. On days that Rino did not feel likeing out to work or answer calls, they left him alone and reported to the district managers instead. If it wasn''t world-shattering problems, the capable district managers would take care of the issues. However, when Rino got off his bed and started firing orders left and right, it was time for the district managers to pile all the pressing matters in front of the lich. Rino might not be the sort of worker that reported to work in the office daily. However, he was the kind who would easily finish up work that was piled up for thest few months in just a few hours. It was his efficiency over quantitative results that left everyone in awe. Teleporting over to Spudville briefly to check on Rina, Rino made a quick offering to the Noir statue there before rushing over to the y kiln to check on Ubel''s newest mould models and grab his sack of cement mix. The lich was so busy that he lost track of the day and night cycle by the time he returned to Town Zera. With the treated wood, moulds, stone casts and cement mix ready, Rino checked Bink''s progress with the stone forge. "How is everything going?" Rino asked and eyed the extended shelter built using bricks and wood. Instead of a gaping hole beside the stone cottage, Rino realised that the earth gnomes found a way to build an extended shelter outside the window, with the forge facing a different direction than initially nned. They resolved the falling ashes and smoke issue by building a chimney and underground air vent into the foundry. The ceramic rack design was improved as the earth gnomes modified the rack tes with holes into ceramic bars. Impressed by their resourcefulness, Rino praised the workers, who beamed with happiness at his casual acknowledgement. The lich went inside the cksmith workshop to set his tool and mould rack when he noticed something else was added inside. "I thought that you might want to build a cooling tank on the inside as well, so I set it up and had the genesis fairies to help with the runes. The bricks wereid, and we used cement to fill the gaps. The bottom is slightly sloped so that all the water drains at the centre, but nobody knows how to link the rune at the base of the tank to the sewer system in your design." Thanking the hardworking crew, Rino assured them that they did a good job. He would link those runes himself, seeing that there were still some administration rights that required him to handle personally. Bink was proving to be a more and more reliable leader in Town Zera, much like Aiden and Giffith are. === Daily Quest #28 Objective: Create cksmith Workshop Time Limit: 7 Days 1/1 Stone Forge 1/1 Stone Quenching Basin 1/1 Stone Hammer 1/1 Stone Anvil 0/1 Wooden Tongs 1/1 Ceramic Metal Bar Cast Tutorial here. Reward: Alloy Smelting Recipe Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Thanks to Bink''s initiative, Rino did not have many things left to do before his humble cksmith workshop was consideredpleted. Setting the stone anvil near the foundry oven, Rino checked on the coal supply pile and noticed that basic fire safety enchantments were already in ce. It must be the work of those genesis fairies. Rino felt proud of how well Town Zera''s members were working together. He still remembered how many fights there were initially. Now, everyone knew exactly what to do without him monitoring them. Adding onto the existing enchantments for the furnace and foundry, Rino checked the flooring and reinforced it so it would not cave inwards from all the weight put on top of it. At the same time, Rino checked the air vents leading into the bellow and foundry. He wanted to add air runes to them, but the genesis fairies were one step ahead. They already added the air runes and linked them to the mana web array. All Rino had to do now was configure the settings for activating the air runes. Inside the cksmith workshop, Rino discovered a pile of tools that the trolls helped to make. He could recognise their handicraft because of how they tied the rope around the hammer. It wasn''t an actual smithing hammer, but it was good enough. The earth gnomes must have sanded the surface of the stone hammer head t, and once again, Rino inspected it to find some basic enchantments on the stone hammer. Unfortunately, nobody made the wooden tongs yet. From observation, the earth gnomes must have tried to replicate the tongs using the rusted examples lying around in the grand furnace room but failed. Rino didn''t me them. He would give them an A for effort. Those tongs were made from wrought iron and could be bent easily with a little force in the right ces. Wood and stone were not malleable materials that could bend in such a manner. Fortunately for Rino, he knew a kind of tongs fashioned from wood that would work. It wasn''t conventional, but it should do the job. The only thing he feared was the wood catching fire and turning into cinders. Hence, that was where magic came in handy. The concept of the wooden tongs Rino had in mind was very different from the tutorial''s design. In the tutorial, those tongs were disposable and could only be used once. They were literally thick sticks tied together to withstand the weight and heat used to lift the ceramic containers containing molten metals and tilt the liquid into waiting casts. Rino''s design was a little simpler to use. He learned a few things from the earth gnomes and pygmy dwarves while they were building the windmill. Interlocking gears were tight, but they sometimes needed something called a track to keep them from grinding into each other continuously and wearing out the edges. That gear track inspired Rino to create a wooden tong with a clipping grip method from the top. Rino did not want straight wooden sticks. He wanted those at an angle sharp enough to grab onto the side of the y cast. At the same time, Rino would secure the weaker bound edge with an adjustable band so that the mould would be gripped securely between the wooden tongs before it was transferred to a moving trolley with a stone surface that could be tilted for the molten metal to be poured neatly into the cast without spilling. It might not be the most original design, but it minimised workce injuries. Rino decided to sketch the moveable trolley designs and let Bink finish it at his own pace tomorrow. For now, Rino flew towards the jungle of doom to search for suitable tong sticks. He still had a few days left before he needed toplete the quest. Time management wasn''t Rino''s strongest suit, but he had to learn a trick or two with such a huge poption under hismand. Finding the sticks he wanted easily, Rino cut them off the trees they were growing on and quickly swaddled them in enchantments. Now, all that was left was finding a suitable material for the adjustable band. Chapter 221 - Blast It All Sessfullypleting his daily quest a few hours before the deadline, Rino imed his reward without checking the skill. There was still some work to be done. === Daily Quest #28 plete) Objective: Create cksmith Workshop Time Limit: 7 Days 1/1 Stone Forge 1/1 Stone Quenching Basin 1/1 Stone Hammer 1/1 Stone Anvil 1/1 Wooden Tongs 1/1 Ceramic Metal Bar Cast Tutorial here.. Reward: Alloy Smelting Recipe im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === "Put this over there," Rino told the trolls who fitted the detachable hammerhead from the waterwheel''s axle. Rino tested the runes and the activationmands to ensure everything in this small workshop worked as intended. The wooden tongs he crafted did not work as well as he intended for them to work because the adjustable bend material he chose the first time was too fragile. Rino thought that using sinews would work. His bows were crafted from sinews, and those things could pull back a lot. When they twined together, they were very strong. However, under the weight of ceramic moulds and molten metal, the sinew gave way. Rino had no idea why but Deezer thought it might be due to the heat. Eventually, Rino was forced toe up with a new design with the help of pygmy dwarves. The new wooden tongs design was simpler but no less efficient. Rino found it heavy on the wrist when lifting the mould from the foundry up using tongs. It did not matter what kind of design they used. They were things that could be easily scooped from the oven like a pizza. Rino still found the use of shadow tendrils most effective, but for the sake of those who could not use magic, the earth gnomes were working on a design that would push the ceramic racks out of the foundry when a lever was pulled so that the moulds could be removed more easily. While the trolls worked on the finishing touches to the extended foundry for the cksmith and the waterwheel powered hammer, Rino enchanted a hastily crafted wooden cab with spatial magic, tying the spell to the mana web array. They needed to resolve the space shortage, and Rino intended to have the trolls build more huts along the river to double as storage and living quarters. They could even use the space underground once the rabbit monster tribepleted their section of storage constructions near the windmill. The workshop was almostpleted, and Rino finalised the testing when he heard the familiar system notification. Ping! === Daily Quest #29 Objective: Smelt some Ores Time Limit: 5 Days 0/1 Bronze Bar 0/1 Iron Bar 0/1 Steel Bar 0/1 Silver Bar 0/1 Gold Bar Tutorial here. Reward: Smithing Skill Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Rolling his non-existent eyes, Rino skimmed through the tutorial. Knowing nothing about smithing, the lich could only assume it was difficult. He might have some smithing skills from the previous quest rewards but knowing how to smelt and actually getting to smelting was very different. Skills were only a type of blessing received from the gods to increase the chances of sess. Rino still had to do the correct things ording to the tutorial for the skill to increase his sess rate. It wasn''t an automated work process. Reading the tutorial was a huge headache. After fifty good minutes, Rino flopped onto the bed and called it a night. Whatever a st furnace was, Rino wasn''t interested in building yet another damned furnace to get what he needed. He already had a lovely cksmithing workshop design and a whole dwarven mine full of equipment to use. Building something new for a one-time use was thest thing Rino wanted. Sometimes he really could not understand the concept of this new world. Why must a potato grow from a potato? Why can metal only be smelted effectively using metal? Hovering on the sleep wallet withdrawal button, Rino wondered if he should sleep it off for now. He still did not understand a lot because the exnation was so detailed, it seemedplicated. Every ore had a different smelting process, but the concept was rather simr. Basically, there were two very special things that Rino needed to make that smelting happen. Thankfully, he already knew how to find those materials and mass-produce them. Charcoal and marble were the magical items that could turn raw ores full of impurities such as sand and dirt into pure metal. The real problem was the time it took for the impure ores to smelt into bars. The one-use st furnace design made from y irritated Rino a lot when he found out that iron created from the st furnace only amounted to less than one percent of everything that went into it. They came in small pellets if the charcoal was hot enough and the ores mixed with crushed marble powder well enough. ording to the tutorial, raw ore, charcoal and marble stone must be crushed and mixed thoroughly. Then, the st furnace column must be built, and the charcoal was to be constantly burned at the pit of the st furnace column while constant air was supplied to it. The bigger the fire, the better. Eventually, after six hours, when theyers andyers of mixed iron ore, charcoal and crushed marble stone were thoroughly burned into a melty mess, the bottom part that hardened into a lump was where the real iron resided. There were two ways to tell if the iron obtained after a st session was good or bad. Crumbling after it was pounded when it got removed from the broken open st furnace was a sign that most of the iron was impure and could not be used. The second was by colour. If iron wasn''t shiny and grey, it was impure. Signs of red would indicate that the iron was weak from exposure to air, and it should be sent back into a new st furnace for recycling, hoping that it would birth a purer iron from the new batch. Rino read all of this using iron ore as an example and noticed that of the metals he was required to smelt, iron was probably the biggest pain to handle because of how insanely difficult it was to obtain in its unrusted form. Initially, he thought bronze would be harder to create because it was formed using 90% copper and 10% tin mixed together. st it all! His ns for a semi-automated smeltery were going into smoke the more he read the tutorial. Terms like quicklime, g and pig iron made him more confused. Rino had no idea what a reducing agent was. Why couldn''t they call charcoal for what it was? That darn thing came with so many different names that Rino had to trante into simpler terms for his personal referencing. The process did not seem difficult, and the st furnace had a very simple structure. The only thing his current stone forge was missing might be thatyered build-up to burn all three materials to extract the pure metal under the influence of heat. Despite reading the tutorial multiple times, Rino still had no idea how the molten iron and g substance would separate even if they managed to settle to the bottom of the charcoal fire without killing the me. In Rino''s notes, g and quicklime were synonymous with rubbish by-products made from the fire after burning the raw ore with charcoal and marble stone. If done correctly, there should not be any charcoal or marble stone powder left by the time everything in the st furnace was melted. There should only be two kinds of liquid and only one that Rino wanted. Density wasn''t a concept that many people understood, even in his old world. Most people think that wood floats on water because it is lighter. However, nobody truly understood the meaning of lighter. When a rock of the same weight as the wood was ced in the water, it sank. People often imed the rock was heavy, but Rino had his doubts. After testing both materials, Rino invented the concept of density that was defined as the mass of an object in the same space. g and molten metal were simr. Rino did not know if the rule of density could apply to liquids that were hot but ording to the tutorial, nothing was different from how oil and water would naturally separate. However, all these things buzzing around at the back of his mind made little sense now as Rino hit the confirm button. It did not take long for his reward to pull him into thend of dreams where g, quicklime and coke did not exist. Yet, the mind of a genius worked overtime even as Rino''s body rested. There, he found the simplest way to smelt the bars he needed. Chapter 222 - Magical Furnace If there was something Rino learned during his alchemy research in his previous life, it would be how density was affected by atmospheric pressure. It was yet another idental discovery when Rino tried to make coffee on the mountains during one of his trips to investigate an odd incident of disappearing vigers. The coffee took less time toe to a furious boil high up in the mountains when the altitude was high and the oxygen low. After returning from his investigations, Rino formted certain theories about it but could not prove them because he could not replicate them in his alchemyb. Now, things were different. Dark magic came with several unique properties on top of the gory stuff like sacrificial hexes and soul very. It was rather useful because it bridged the gap between magic and science in Rino''s eyes. Things like spatial control, time influence and even object maniption were extremely useful for creating an effective system. Dark magicians were not often credited for their abilities, and Rino supposed it was due to the stigma around them worshipping evil. Many dark magician guilds bring cmity with their disaster campaign. However, Rino knew that there were more dark magicians who refused to join their faction. Instead, these dark magicians live in istion and practise medicine, bing witch doctors instead. Vigers who did not know better referred to them as witches, although really, they were just dark magicians who put their abilities to better uses.. With this inspiration after his nap, Rino decided to start working on a magical furnace that would improve the smelting process by a hundred times. He did not have the knowledge and skill of dwarves, but he had something better - an innovative spirit that rivalled them. The tutorial wasn''t wrong. However, Rino disliked the idea of having to burn something for over six hours just to get one percent of loot that was usable with a significantly high failure rate of not getting anything good. The effort of building a st furnace that could be destroyed after a few rounds of burning did not sit well with him. When Rino invested in something, he was in it for the long haul. Nobody, not even his dead teachers, could convince him otherwise. Even if he spent his entire fortune on an experiment, Rino would still insist on getting quality materials for the sake of his research. His butler could bitch about it, but that wasn''t Rino''s concern. He was alright not having any servants in the huge mansion, and if he really had to, Rino would auction the house away and eat only one meal a day if that meant he could get enough funding toplete his research. Thankfully, things never came to such a drastic extent in his previous world. There were always nobles looking for entertainment and investors with ulterior motives who would offer obscene loans to Rino if he asked for it. Granted, the king was usually his guarantor for such loans, and the royal treasury was often the coteral, but that was beside the point. Without the best equipment, it was impossible to make astounding breakthroughs. Rino failed more than he seeded, but with the best of tools, it brought him one step closer to understanding how to touch that line of sess on the road full of unknowns. It was one of the joys that came with research. Ah, such bittersweet chemistry! Combining what Rino knew about st furnaces from the tutorial and his understanding of various metal melting points, Rino decided that there should be an easier method to extract pure metal if there was a controlled environment for the change to ur. The risk of failing to obtain pure metals primarily came from theck of consistency in heat and airflow in a st furnace. Additional obstacles included unwanted particlesing into the molten liquid mixture without a proper collection method. Rino gave it some thought. It was possible to eliminate the external obstacles getting in the way and keep the conditions constant for the chemical reaction to ur. Although he could not control how the three materials would interact, Rino could reduce the unpredictability factors that caused failing to a minimum and increase the interactivity rate using spatial magic. At the same time, Rino thought about including gravitation maniption to change the movement speed of the three materials in his close spatial magic chamber holding them. External fire magic could be used to heat the air pumped through and constantly removed from the spatial chamber as the three materials reacted, as Rino used gravitational magic to bring the ground materials together and apart. It was rather simr to the butter churn concept, where the mixture was turned continuously to get the best of everything inside. That was the best Rino could do. As for the collection of the different materials, metals and g had different melting points and densities. He could easily pick out the g as they melted into liquid at the bottom and drain them away using the same teleportation magic he used to drain the quenching basin. g wasn''t very useful for much, so Rino couldpress them into cheap bricks as they formed. Eventually, all that should be left in the magical furnace''s spatial chamber should be pure molten metal. The bright side of using a magical furnace meant that Rino could control where the molten metal went. Instead of designing a crucible and tongs to pour it out that could end up getting messy, Rino could set it to drain into a precise tap that falls directly onto whatever mould ced beneath it. He could also control the flow of molten liquid with some mechanical levers to trigger the runes. That part, he would let the experts handle. For now, the most important thing was to test if this design would work and how long it would take for Rino to get his first bit of pure metal. The hardest metal to smelt was iron, and steel was its cousin, with more fused carbon inside to make it stronger. Rino had no idea what would happen during the testing stage, but it was best to experiment with it away from where everything was built. Town Zera wasn''t ident-proof. His alchemyb had to be remodelled. The magician''s tower was fixed several times before the magicians had faith that their safety would not bepromised in the vicinity of Rino''sir. Rino remembered the luxury of having an entire tower dedicated to him. There were several towers on the ind known as the Magician''s Tower. To be precise, there were five. One of them was dedicated to criminals, one was dedicated to students and learning. The grand library was there, including the forbidden library that fewer people knew about. Then, there was the tower of storage and amodations that were very small. Nobody minded the prison-sized rooms because hardly anyone needed the space for anything apart from a shower and a bed. The rest of the time was spent studying, reading books or practising new spells. Thest tower was simply not a tower at all. It looked like one, but it was empty inside and had many strong protection spells to ward curious trespassers away. The other magicians did not know what was in it, and there were rumours that the tower kept a dragon or something simr. In reality, it wasn''t anything as cool. When Rino became the director of the magician''s tower, he came to understand why there was a need for secrecy there. It was forbidden for anyone else to find out, and only a few within the magician council knew about it. The tower guarded the ind''s most important secret, which was a huge disappointment for anyone who truly knew what it was. Simply put, thest tower was a tomb. Every magician to be part of the ind wasid to rest here in a unique way. Their mana registration tablet that all official magicians of the tower must submit upon their eptance and graduation were kept in this tower. It was a vault of mana signatures for dead magicians to ever be recognised, and Rino could understand why it must be protected so securely. Dark magicians with the mana signature of a dead magician could summon their soul back from thend of the dead as a ve even if the magician''s body was burned to ashes and lost in the wind. Nobody, dead or alive, wanted to be a servant of evil. Hence, the tower took on the duty of a protector for those who swore to serve it with their lives. Getting out of hisfortable bed, atst, Rino grabbed his sketchpad to write down the ideas he had after a quality sleep. The gods wanted him to smelt metal, but they never limited his methods. Sure, the tutorial was helpful. However, Rino was toozy to follow it step by step. If there were no shortcuts, he would help them create one. After all, a magician would never do things normally. Magic was the way of life and thezy. Chapter 223 - Alluring Alloys (1) "Connect this to here, and we''re done!" Rino took a few steps back to admire his magical furnace''s first prototype. For some reason, the first ce that Rino did not mind risking an explosion was where Zerg''s old vige used to be. The charred remains on the ground told Rino that there could be no further damage done to this already ruined vige. It was perfect for his experiments. The materials he needed were all in his shadow inventory. The magical furnace used very little materials to construct. Rino used the most basic of materials fashioned out of good old earth magic, strengthened by fire. His setup was simple. Following the example of a st furnace, Rino had three chambers and two air outlets. The main chamber was where the mixed materials would get heated and tossed like a butter churn. The top chamber was for more charcoal to be poured into, and the bottom chamber was to drain out molten g and metal. The two air outlets were for pumping in the fresh air and removing stale heated air.. He might not know the time intervals to pump fresh air and remove stale air, nor the amounts of coke and limestone added to fully process a cup of raw ores he was putting into the main chamber. However, that was exactly why this was an experiment. Zerg was slightly nervous. He was initially thrilled when his master summoned him for a task more than just managing the farm works in Town Zera. Although he did his assigned job with pride to ensure that the operations went smoothly, the lesser vampire still felt dissatisfied about his role. He knew that he was young and inexperienced. It was why he studied hard and worked even harder to get acknowledged under Kragami''s care. Rino barely gave him a nce ever since he came to town Zera. He never missed a deadline to send crops to Noir Province. Neither did he forget to make offerings daily to the cat god statue. In fact, if Noir Province and Town Zera were topare their offering amount, Zerg was confident they were winning because the lesser vampire made sure the cat statue was fed thrice a day. His new job thanks to his diligence in studying reading, counting and writing was to help Rino record down numbers for his magical furnace experiment. The lesser vampire was told that the job could be traumatising because of possible death even if undead could regenerate infinitely as long as their summoner was around to help them. Zerg had his natural regenerative abilities too, so it wasn''t a real danger. Compared to the unlucky scouting team who cleared the dwarven death maze with Rino, this job could be considered mild in insanity. "Experiment Magical Furnace, take one. Record down the experiment number. I''m going to add one cup of ground metal ore, one cup of crushed charcoal and one cup of pounded marble stone all at once. Count the number of wax candles burned and the markings of thest candle when the experiment ends." Rino''s instructions were clear, and Zerg readied his pencil, scribbling notes on the new sketchpad dedicated to recording observations. Rino slowly started activating the runes manually and watched as the spatial magic chamber fashioned out of mana imbued ss started to vibrate in its ceramic casing. The first cup of ingredients was added, and Rino sealed the upper chamber while increasing the intensity of the me rune beneath. The me turned from red to blue and finally an almost invisible violet. Slowly, Rino opened the air channel to steadily pump in air using the air rune at a constant rate set at medium. Already, he could see some changes even though the gravitational magic was not adjusted. He also constantly pumped air out of the chamber and recorded the time for air topletely react with the materials inside. When everything was running, Rino lit the first wax candle and let the setup do its thing inside. He wanted to leave gravitational magic forter after he determined the air vent intervals. Presently, everything looked like it was going well. Even though the mixture of ore and rocks did not swirl like milk in a butter churn, Rino could see it starting to move and change colour. Over time, a slightly runny liquid was pulled to the bottom of the still mixture as more started to join. Rino observed with interest how the liquid flowed downwards after the bits melted. He could not see any iron yet, but maybe it was because of all that confusing charcoal powder hiding them for now. By the time the fifth candle finished burning, Rino had to stop the experiment. It did not seem like the amount of liquid pooling at the bottom was increasing. Rino drained the liquid out several times and hoped that more would form, but the amount decreased each time, leaving a huge lump of brown substance on the inside of the main spatial chamber. "Record the time," he told Zerg, who did so without questions. Curiously, both summoner and summoner stared at the unmelted lump that Rino used his shadow tendril to remove from the ss chamber. ording to the tutorial, this should be pig iron, full of impurities but mostly iron that needed refinement. While it was still hot, it was best to lightly pound it with wood on a t surface like an anvil to test if it would crumble or remain malleable. Rino had the stone anvil face ready on the ground and shadow tendrils to gently pound on the lump for that very purpose. It was still on mes when Rino removed it, and the lich learned something new. Ores could stillbust even if they were not previously in direct contact with fire. The mes were caused by heat energy trapped within. The first strike by the shadow tendrils gave Rino hope when the lump did note apart. Maybe this was a genuine ugly piece of iron! Rino could hardly believe his luck when the lump only mildly changed shape under huge pressure on the stone anvil face as it cooled. Hence, Rino felt braver and summoned water magic to cool the metal lump rapidly. The lump was a lot smaller than the total volume of crushed ores, charcoal and marble stone he added earlier. If he had three cups of dry mix at the start, the g that collected in his other chamber formed almost two and three-quarter cups of it. Thest quarter cup remained in this lumpy pig iron ore, so RIno would count this as a sess. Still, it took Rino five candles long to finish smelting this little amount of raw iron. Each candle took from twenty minutes to half an hour topletely burn through. It was definitely shorter than using a traditional st furnace, but it still took too long for such a small quantity of metal. "Regr magical furnace extraction is a sess. Let''s move to phase two, regr metal refinement." Refinement of the extracted metal was simpler than extracting the metal. Rino had to repeat the same thing but only add limestone and coke to the pig iron ore to remove embedded impurities. This time, he could opt for a slightly higher temperature while keeping the airflow constant. Preparing for the refining process, Zerg noticed that the molten g was now a very dolly shaped rock after it cooled. "What to do with the g?" he asked. Rino took a nce at the trash by-product and shrugged. "Toss it aside for now. Help me to clear the candles and set new ones. Refining should not take as long." True to Rino''s words, the small lump started to transform when they started adding charcoal and pounded marble stone bits slowly into the spatial chamber with higher heat and regr airflow. Once again, there was g, but the amount was lesser, and the lump shrank as the g dripped into a different chamber. Rino was slightly worried that his quarter cup of lump from the extraction process would be left with nothing. However, after the third candle, he started to see a semnce of the iron he once knew. By now, the iron lump was only asrge as hisst finger, but it was the iron that Rino wanted. Unfortunately, he was faced with a new problem after it cooled. The shiny surface started to brown rather quickly as it reacted with oxygen. Rusting usually did not ur this quickly, and it took Rino a good while to understand why it was happening. "We''re too near the sea," he told Zerg with a frown. "This is a terrible test site." The experiment to extract and refine iron took so long that dawn was already approaching by the time Rino and Zerg finished recording the first round of the experiment. "Let''s shift this to a different location without salt air," he told the lesser vampire as they packed up to relocate. Chapter 224 - Alluring Alloys (2) The new location wasn''t too far, and Rino could teleport himself over after he unsummoned Zerg. The lesser vampire had no idea where they were, but he knew they were definitely underground. "Where are we?" Zerg asked. Wouldn''t conducting experiments that could potentially explode underground be more dangerous than experimenting with them above ground? The dripping of water in the background of this new test site told the lesser vampire that there was humidity in the air and poor airflow. Should they still be here? As if sensing Zerg''s concerns, Rino reassured the lesser vampire that it was alright. "External physical factors do not affect the process on the inside. Besides, there''s hardly a ce that we could potentially destroy when the sun is up. The most logical thing to do is conduct this activity in a cave nearby that does not face the sea." With their options limited, Zerg tried his best to be near the candlelight to record his observation from a rtively safe distance from the experiments. Rino added the lump back into the spatial chamber and reduced it further with charcoal until it was silverish despite glowing hot.. The small amount of g was drained, and the most magical thing happened soon after. Silvery white thick goo started to pool below the main spatial chamber, and RIno felt excited. ording to the tutorial, only pure extracted metal will turn into molten liquid at a fixed temperature. This meant that there were no more impurities within and anything that happened inside this controlled chamber was pure metal. However, that excitement fell short when the liquid constantly had brown flecks at the top that slowly increased. Rino could not understand what was happening and referred back to the tutorial to find out what went wrong. His refining process was going so well, and even if this iron was only a little in quantity, it was still better than crude iron with tons of impurities, right? As Rino read through the tutorial diligently, cancelling the experiment temporarily, Zerg wondered what was wrong. The curious lesser vampire went up to look at the cooling molten iron that started forming a nasty colour. It had a pretty colour when it was melted, but now, there were more brown spots than silver, reminding him of what happened in the vige. "Master, do you think this is the same thing as what happened earlier when we took it out in the sea breeze?" Pausing and looking up for a moment, Rino took a look at the cooling iron piece. He looked back to Zerg and patted the boy fondly. "You''re right! It''s rusting! That''s what it was! Rust!" Pure iron free of other impurities could not retain its original colour for long, much like gold and silver because of the air. The science behind this wasn''t fully understood, but Rino was told metals were weak to water and air. They must be protected by oil from air and strengthened by heated forging and mixing with other metals or impurities such as charcoal over high fire. The alloy was a mixed breed of metals. Bronze was an excellent example of alloy mostmonly used with nine parts copper and one part tin. Steel was made from iron strengthened by adding a dash of charcoal into the mix. Not a lot is required. Just even a sprinkle could strengthen the metal astonishingly. The dwarves in his previous world told Rino that steel was a smelter''s soup. Almost anything could be added into a pure iron mixture to create steel. Rino was slightly curious about creating the fabled mana steel from legends that his alchemy failed to create. Back then, they used mithril that was a difficult material to obtain. If mana steel could be manufactured from iron found in rocks and sand readily, they could rapidly improve the technology used and give non-magicians a chance to experience the convenience of magic. Creating magical tools for themon folk to use was one of Rino''s unfulfilled dreams. The glowing rock and mana absorbing rocks he mined from the dwarven cave gave Rino some ideas about the type of steel he wanted to produce in future. However, for now, he should be satisfied with making regr steel. Mana steel was still a possibility that he would experiment with afterpleting his quest. Adding a pinch of charcoal after bringing the iron to a molten state again made things very clear. The brown flecks from earlier started to disappear, and instead of seeing g after the addition of charcoal, Rino saw that the substance thickened steadily and glowed a warm yellow instead. With this, Rino confirmed that his smelting process using his magical furnace prototype worked. All he had to do now was make it ident and possibly explosion proof. Zerg appeared nervous when Rino poured the little bit of molten steel into a tiny y mould Ubel made. Unfortunately for the y and ceramic moulds, these items were one-time use and break cases. Rino chose a simple mould that had a tiny curved de and handle. The mould came in a set, so one faced the left, and one faced the right. Zerg had no idea what that was, but he watched Rino pour the molten steel into them, and there was just enough to fill both casts. After that was done, Zerg and Rino went through the observation recording to find out how long a regr smelting process would take without the aid of gravitational magic. Also, Rino decided that once there was no more g produced in the refinery stage, the air supply should be cut off until charcoal was added to create a strong metal alloy. The total time for this process took half the time it would take a traditional st furnace to get the raw iron clump concentrate. Three hours wasn''t short, but it wasn''t needlessly long either. However, the bottleneck of the process Rino faced was the amount that could be produced at one time. Even with the help of gravitational maniption, he doubted that the process could be shortened to under half an hour. Eventually, Rino concluded that he needed a bigger magical furnace, especially in the spatial chamber. The problem was how he was short on time toplete his quest. Even if he started now, there wasn''t enough time toplete the request of the gods. The bar was too big, and with one cup of raw iron, Rino could only produce a pair of delicate sewing scissors. A bar was worth at least twelve sewing scissors. "My lord, what''s troubling you?" Seeing how Rino wasn''t reacting positively to their experiment''s sess, Zerg deduced that something was wrong. Rino studied the intelligent lesser vampire. Zerg wasn''t very educated, but this was the only viger he found promising enough to rescue back then. Zerg was younger than Fronzo, but he was hungry for knowledge and was always open to new perspectives. "What would you do if you needed to make bars of this metal but have limited time to produce huge quantities of it?" Tilting his head to the side, Zerg looked at the furnace. "Get a bigger furnace?" Rino nodded. That was what he thought too. Maybe he should invest those GF credits to get some time extension toplete this project. It was made to be impossible after all. However, Zerg wasn''t done with his answer. He looked over to the molten steel cooling in the moulds that Rino poured it into. "Or make smaller bars." That answer made Rino snap his neck back at Zerg, who wondered if he said something wrong when bony hands gripped his shoulders. "That''s it! Zerg, you''re a genius!" Not knowing what a genius was but liking how it sounded like a praise, Zerg simply nodded, incitingughter from Rino, who rummaged through his inventory to find if Ubel made any mini bar moulds. The wraith king did not make a mini bar mould as he followed Rino''s designs strictly. However, making a mould would not be difficult. In fact, Rino ryed the message back to his faithful servant to make tiny bar moulds for about fifty grams of metal. If this did the trick, he needed to reward Zerg handsomely. From above, Phil closed an eye and overrode the system''s perimeters to ept anything that looked like a bar of metal, ignoring the size input. Ark and Stephanie were too busy attending social functions and soliciting business to care. Besides, why fault the lich when he would build something bigger and better with the time he bought himself? Once Ubel returned an affirmative reply to deliver the moulds by nightfall, Rino started packing up. He gave the miners an order to dig out a new space in the dwarven mines for a huge magic furnace. In the meantime, Rino could borrow one of those abandoned caverns to put his small magic furnace and hook it up to the main mana web array for power. The runes were adjusted for output, and Rino unsummoned Zerg for a while to teleport back. They had work to do. Chapter 225 - Baby Bars For creative individuals, their ideas were usually a hit or a miss. In Zerg''s case, he had Rino to rely on to always make them a hit. Ubel created several tiny bar moulds that Rino found too good to dispose of after their uses. He could think of ways to make these mini bars work. Currently, nobody used money for anything even when the poption is booming. Rino only thought about making something reliable as a valuable currency to reward his workers with that could be exchanged for other benefits such as an entry fee for the hot spring baths or even collectable items. Rino only feared that the moment these coins were made, they would be spent on limited but highly sought after items such as taro beer. The economy would crash before it began, and Rino didn''t want that. Leaving it as an idea for the future, Rino concentrated on hisrge-scaled version of the magical furnace. The most important part was mana imbued ss for the mixing chamber where all the chemical magic happens. Rino spent the time while waiting for his new moulds and mana imbued ss toe preparing the room with all the ident-proof spells he needed. The location he chose to build this magical furnace was inside the abandoned dwarven mine.. Nobody was allowed near the new forge room while Rino constructed it with the help of Kamiya''s n. A huge underground cavern was dug, and Rino extended the mana web array into the new room as the killer rabbit monsters solidified the ground and strengthened the walls. Rino enlisted the help of a few senior Genesis fairies to assist with his magic setup. The ores he requested were rolled in using carts on wheels because the rails did not reach his new room. Rino left that task to the trolls as he installed the other runes he needed for the magical furnace. From above, Phil watched as Rino multitasked between setting up his new furnace room and running several experiments to find the optimum gravity to bring the raw elements into the huge spatial chamber. It took Rino several tries to understand the best gravitational maniption intensity for the most reactivity between his charcoal and marble stone and the reaction between charcoal and extracted iron ore from the raw mixture. Rino also found a use for Ubel''s original bar casts thanks to Zerg, who thought that g could be made into bricks instead of useless rocks. Unlike y and terracotta, these bricks might not be very uniform in material, but they were easy construction materials to acquire for the expanding town. In half a day, the materials were ready, and Rino even evacuated the site to test it for advanced explosion magic resistance. The barrier did its job even if the same could not be said about the items on the inside of the new forge room. Seeing how the ore stash left behind in the roombusted into nothing after Rino''s test spell, the lich made a rule and limited all entry into this magical forge to only shadow summons. The other townsfolk who were not contracted with him as an ''immortal'' summon were barred from entering. The genesis fairies who helped Rino set this up were also banned after the rule was implemented for safety reasons. "If anything rting to magic requires tuning, inform the goblin shaman to resolve it if I''m indisposed," Rino instructed the newly appointed earth gnome who was made to oversee the magical furnace from the outside. Trolls and shadow spectres were the main workers in the magic furnace room. Acht reviewed the tannery''s manpower and decided that he could spare two shadow spectres to work in the furnace room on rotation if they did not have any sky pnquin orders. Rino decided that the shadow spectres were rather short-handed and wondered if there was a way he could recruit more. He had no idea why the bandits turned into shadow spectres while the vigers who died turned into lesser undead like skeletons and lesser ghouls upon evolution. There was still so much about dark magic he did not understand. Kragami''s summons turned into zombies, and not even the old magician knew why. Once the huge magical furnace and custom ordered parts were installed, Rino did his first test with a wagon full of hematite, crushed charcoal and ground marble stone. He did not want to overburden his new spatial chamber with too many things, so Rino told the trolls to add them into the funnel chute on the second floor''s loading tform, one shovel at a time while he watched from the control room. The new furnace room''s structure was slightly different as Rino designed several partitioned rooms for safety purposes. In short, the huge cavern was divided into three, with the bottom as a material collection and heat control room. The middle level that Rino was currently on was a small viewing tform with a magic control station to control the heat intensity, airflow and gravitational effects in the spatial chamber. The top room was for ore storage and for miners to add materials into the chute to bring new ores, coke and limestone into the main spatial chamber for smelting. Watching shovel after shovel of raw materials getting thrown into therge smelting pot, Rino ordered the trolls in the lower level to change out the casts to the regr bar casts for the g. His operation had just begun, but Rino was already starting to see the three materials reacting as they were sted in circles by his air pipe at the bottom of the spatial chamber. Reducing the gravity in the spatial chamber, Rino watched the limestone and coke reacting with raw iron. While the smaller bits of solids flew in the vicious air current caused by Rino''s air runes, the molten liquid of g started to stter at the side of the spatial chamber and slid downwards to the bottom of the ss prison, forming a small puddle. The heat was just nice, and Rino waited to see if more would happen. He called for the trolls on the upper floor to stop pouring raw iron ores. Instead, they were told to add more charcoal and marble stone to the furnace. Not one to question their intelligent lord, the trolls did as they were told. As more coke and limestone were loaded, the trolls in the collection chamber emptied out molten g into the bar casts to reduce the volume inside the spatial chamber. Rino did the math previously. As a proud father of alchemy, he knew that he needed at least three shovelfuls of raw iron ore to form one baby bar. A baby bar was roughly a fifth of a regr bar, but it was heavy enough to create useful items for household use. It might not be enough to make any weapons, tools or armour, but things like kitchen knives and hooks could be smithed from those smaller bars. The gods should not discount their utility, and if they epted baby bars as a type of bar, Rino need not spend GF credits to buy more day-offs for this daily quest. The time to process the raw ore into a pig iron baby bar was about two hours under gravitational maniption. As iron and steel are born from the same ore, Rino calcted that he should use about seven to eight shovelfuls of raw ore apanied by a heck ton of coke and limestone for extraction and even more charcoal for the refinement. ording to the tutorial, he needed coke and limestone to remove big impurities within the raw ores to extract iron from them. The solid enough product at the end of the first sting session was known as pig iron, a very impure form of iron consisting of up to four percent of coal inside it. Pig iron was very brittle and rusted very quickly. It was what he saw with Zerg at the vige. After changing locations to test the smelting process, the iron they obtained rusted just as quickly in the cave as it did near the sea. After refining the pig iron, Rino found the extracted metal to be a little tougher for smithing. After the first round of refining, the birth of iron came at two percent of carbon content within the metal. Just a reduction of two percent in carbon content could transform brittle pig iron into stronger cast iron. It wasn''t very useful for now, but Rino only needed to make one baby bar of cast iron to fulfil the daily quest requirement. At the same time, further refining of that iron mixture would give birth to steel. Steel was basically iron with a very low percentage of carbon mixture in it. Anything less than one percent of carbon mixed into the molten iron would be considered steel. In terms of toughness and useability, steel was better than cast iron and pig iron because it did not rust easily and was much stronger. It also took a higher temperature to be melted down, making them great for armour and important tools. Rino looked at the remaining little bit of solid in his spatial chamber as the g finally lessened. At this point, that lump should be pig iron. Feeling confident enough to not check on it, Rino told the trolls to toss more charcoal in on the upper floor. He was going to refine iron and steel at the same time. "Crank the heat intensity," Rino instructed the collection workers on the floor below as he adjusted the gravitational magic from the control room. There was a limit to how hot the fire magic could go before he started melting the rocks in the cave. Rino moved to the second phase and decreased the gravity inside his furnace chamber. It did not take long before he started to see new things happening as the pig iron turned to a mixture of g before showing signs of melting. Eagerly, Rino instructed the trolls to stop tossing charcoal while the helpers emptied the g. He kept the temperature inside the chamber constant to prevent the iron from meltingpletely while keeping the g molten enough to be drained. Then, he cranked the heat up to watch that red hot stone turn into a molten puddle of grey. This was the iron he needed and wanted. Blowing air through it for a while longer, Rino watched for the signs that it was ready to be poured out as cast iron. ording to the tutorial, having a steady supply of air going through the molten iron would help to remove the excess carbon stuck in it. Rino had no idea how that worked, but he had few options. cing his faith with the improved tutorial given by the system, Rino did as told and watched for the signs. Chapter 226 - Bronze, Silver And Gold Afterpleting the iron and steel baby bars, RIno checked his daily quest quickly to see if the system epted such bar sizes. === Daily Quest #29 Objective: Smelt some Ores Time Limit: 5 Days 0/1 Bronze Bar 1/1 Iron Bar 1/1 Steel Bar 0/1 Silver Bar. 0/1 Gold Bar Tutorial here. Reward: Smithing Skill Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Yes! Pumping his arms out in joy in the control room, Rino ordered the next materials to be shovelled into the magical furnace. This time, he was reminded of an old tale about a bronze axe, a silver axe and a golden axe. Back in his previous world, there were many folk tales that nobody knew were true or false. Most times, nobody cared. After all, folk tales were told to teach children certain things, and it was a convenient way for adults to reason what they did without understanding why they practised such a culture. Superstition was strong in the vige folks and lessmon within the cities or capital when there was more diversity and people from all sorts of ces sharing what they believed to be right. The story of the bronze, silver and golden axe was the same. Rino heard it from one of the viges he stopped by for a night on his way back from a tiring mission. It was the vige of truth, and the story spoke about a nymph from the forest and a poor woodcutter. Basically, the woodcutter lost his bronze axe in the forest in a river, and a nymph who was watching him for a long while had a crush on him. To test if this man was worthy of bing her husband, the nymph fished out an axe made of silver and ced it in the woodcutter''s path when he was not looking. The humble man saw the silver axe but left it alone instead of iming it as his property and continued searching for his bronze axe. Unconvinced that the man was truly righteous, the nymph once again ced another axe in his way secretly to observe his reactions. This time, it was an axe made of pure gold. If the man took the golden axe, he would be a rich man who could afford many acres ofnd and marry five wives without a problem for the rest of his life. However, the poor woodcutter saw the golden axe and left it there. He continued to search for his dull bronze axe, and that was when the nymph gave him her heart entirely. She presented him with the bronze axe he was looking for and asked why he did not take the first two axes as a recement. The woodcutter simply replied that he would not take what did not belong to him. His earnest attitude won him the nymph, and they spent the rest of his human life peacefully at the edge of the forest in the humble log cabin. Of course, the second part of this story said that the woodcutter did exactly what he did, not because he had no greed but because he knew about the nymph and staged the show for her. Nobody knew if it was true or false, but most parents only told their children the first part when they were young to encourage honesty and integrity. Only after the children reached adulthood did they learn from the older adults about the second part of that story just before they left the vige to visit bigger towns. The second part of the story was to teach them cautiousness against evil which could be lurking behind good acts. To cast bronze, Rino took a look at the tutorial. There were two metals that he had to extract and refine before bronze could be made. The two metals were namely tin and copper. The weightage of these metals required was nine parts copper and one part tin. Rino tried to imagine the amount of ores he would use to cast a bronze baby bar and decided it might be easier to make a load of excess instead. He did not feel like adding too many raw materials into the huge spatial chamber as it would take too long. Left with less than a hundred hours to finish thest three bars, Rino decided it would be wiser to keep to the same amounts he used earlier. Even after making the baby iron and steel bar, there was still enough molten steel to pour into a tool mould. Rino told the trolls working in the collection chamber to decide what was suitable. Keeping to that volume of five shovelfuls or raw ore for copper, Rino noted that one shovelful of tin would be more than enough to form that bronze bar. The only thing he wasn''t sure about was how he could control the weightage of metals to melt together into a bronze bar. Perhaps he had to refine both copper and tin separately and transform them into baby bars first before he could determine how much tin and copper he should remelt into bronze. Thinking about it gave Rino a headache. Unlike his advanced alchemyb in the previous world, Rino did not have sufficient measuring instruments to help him determine the right proportions of spices, metals and even liquids in this world. It was rather tricky. Agonising over this for a while, Rino decided that he would have to make more copper and tin baby bars than he initially wanted to. It was probably toote to ask Ubel to start making new moulds or measuring the volume of tin collectable in other types of moulds. If he could not decrease the quantity, Rino could only increase it to find out. Thankfully, he made the baby bar moulds. If they did not exist, Rino would have to make nine full bars of copper and one full bar of tin. In baby bar measurements, that would be forty-five baby bars of copper and five baby bars of tin. In Rino''s dictionary, that was too much work, and he didn''t want to do that. Luckily, making nine baby bars of copper meant he wasn''t even casting two regr bars of copper. Honestly, if this did not help him save time, Rino would give up and purchase a time extension. They might not be able to make it for casting gold and silver if this failed. Working against the clock, Rino yelled orders from the control room to start pouring in more shovelfuls of copper. They needed more copper than tin and at this stage, more was probably better than less. Roasting the crushed copper for a while, Rino read that extracting tin in a st furnace was slightly different from extracting iron. Instead of adding crushed charcoal and limestone, extracting copper used charcoal but also sand instead. Rino did not know much about where to get his sand, but he supposed if sand were crushed rocks, he could just reuse the plenty of g bricks he had. They might not all be sand, but there was plenty of that to make things happen. After the initial extraction was down and a new kind of g drained, Rino looked at his copper matte liquid and wondered what he should do to purify it. As he read the tutorial, the magic slowly happened, and Rino looked up to see a rather lovely orangey molten metal in the chamber. All it took was a little more air and time to bring the matte copper to a boil. Rino quickly told the trolls in the collection chamber to pour the copper liquid out. They might make slightly more than what he wanted, but more was better than less. With such a surplus of copper, Rino wondered what he could do after the quest waspleted. There were not many uses of copper in his previous world. Copper was not used for many things because iron was more favoured, although the empire made all their arrowheads from copper. It was possibly the cheapest metal to acquire and process, so not many people mined it. Copper wasn''t profitable,, and Rino remembered that the only big consumer of copper was the magicians'' tower. He used a lot of copper for his alchemy simply because they did not rust easily and had a high heat conductivity. Many of Rino''s sks were made out of copper because ss was simply too expensive and fragile. As the refined copper was turned into baby bars, Rino checked his time. He could make it as long as bronze was a sess. Extracting gold and silver was slightly simpler. They did not require mixing like bronze either. Gold and silver might dull over when in the air,, but they certainly did not rust like iron. Rino could deal with that. Tin was easier to extract and refine because Rino did not add as many materials inside the spatial chamber. Done in less than half the time it took copper, tin melted rather easily. ording to the tutorial, he only needed to use charcoal to extract it from the ore. When tin was extracted, Rino realised a new problem. Unlike copper that took a long time and extremely high heat to melt, tin melted quickly. Rino did not even need to use the gravitational maniption magic in the spatial chamber when tin turned into a silvery-white liquid that floated mostly at the top of all the other solids stuck at the bottom. Faced with a new issue, Rino told the trolls to ready the moulds for pouring out the molten tin. It might be a good thing Rino built his magical furnace by parts. This trick would have been impossible to pull off if the ss chamber could not be detached from the main funnel. Using shadow tendrils, Rino carefully poured the molten liquid into the baby bar moulds and considered the toughest part of this mission a sess. All that was left to do was get the right amount of tin and copper remelted into this huge ss forge and turn that into bronze. He could still make it before the deadline. Chapter 227 - Bold Gamble Ideally, extracting gold and silver should take over a week to process both ores. Even with gravity maniption, Rino found himself at a dead end. He read the tutorial several times but found out that he did not have the materials required to extract gold properly. Gold was more problematic than silver that could be extracted easily by crushing, heating, and cupelling over grounded bone ash. Rino worked on the silver and within fourteen hours, the first silver baby bar was ready. Naturally, Rino wasn''t inhumane enough to require the bone ash of his subordinates or hunt animals for them. He simply plucked his ribs and ground them into the necessary material. Thankfully, nobody saw him break his own bones for the sake of smelting silver. The subordinates he worked more closely with would have offered their bones instead. The bone ash sessfully removed all the impurities from the silver ore harvested. Instead of receiving g, Rino found out that the impurities fell into the bone ash pile and formed a new waste material. All that was left buried in the exhausted waste was a very pure silver metal.. It wasn''t wholly silver, but it was close. Rino could tell because it sparkled. Sadly, the same could not be said with gold. The tutorial wasn''t very helpful in exining the extraction process. Rino also did not have most of the materials required for easy extraction. He did not have the right environment either. Things like mercury and cyanide were things that Rino knew posed huge dangers to the living. They are both poisonous and toxic substances that also do great harm to the environment. Rino saw how no nt life could ever grow on thatnd ever again for any mining site that used mercury. Cyanide in the soil meant that the nts that grew there became poisonous, and animals that ate them quickly perished, toppling the delicate ecosystem. The other method he could extract gold from its ore was by cupelling, simr to the silver extraction and refinement method. However, when Rino tried, he found that there was a problem. The gold he extracted was mixed with silver, so the colour was closer to silver than gold, even if there were gold flecks inside. The new alloy formed naturally by the mixture of silver and gold could be stronger than pure silver or gold. The metal was stronger than bronze and steel in some ways, but more importantly, Rino knew they could act as lightning mediums. He tested both metals in his previous life and decided that while they were good lightning mediums, they melted after one strike. Maybe this new alloy could be the material he needed to make that breakthrough. Rino decided to name it electrum for now but left the alloy aside. He still had to find a way to obtain pure gold for that baby bar because the electrum extracted after cupelling did not count. As he retreated to his gloomy corner to reflect on what went wrong and how he could rectify it, Rino left the magical furnace''s operation to Kamiya to take over in his control room. The killer rabbit monsters learned the art of smelting very quickly and coordinated the new batch of gold ores to be smelted. As it was, they might be better panning for gold at the river and smelting the nuggets into a bar instead. That might be quicker. Exploring his other options, Rino eyed the GF credits in his virtual wallet. There was no shortage in GF credits because his subordinates dutifully fulfilled the offering quota, even exceeding it. Not watching where he was going, Rino bumped into a miner scurrying to one of the newer shafts. The little killer rabbit dropped the bag, and Rino apologised absent-mindedly, helping them to pick up the things he scattered. Rino picked up a locating talisman that he made for the miners to locate specific ores among the scattered objects. It was a simple deviation spell that Noir taught him and the item made Rino''s mind work on overdrive even after the little miner went along on his way after gathering the items. Even if the talisman could locate ores, it was still full of ws that Rino had not tweaked. If only there was a way for Rino to create something simr to the talisman that worked in the magic furnace to locate specific metals to be extracted from the conglomerate mess. That''s it! Deciding on this direction, Rino decided that if he could not figure out a way to replicate his alchemic sess using dark magic from what he learned in the previous world over the next five hours, he would buy a time extension from the reward shop. With haste, Rino returned to his study and got crafting. The concept that he created was that every metal was unique with something like a specialposition code that would reject other metals, like how unrted blood would repel each other. Rino could not prove that his idea was right for the longest time because metals, when molten, could mix with one another to form a new metal with different properties. He could not test the difference between them during the huge coin forgery case where lead and copper coins circted in the capital to rece actual silver and bronze coins. Many people used fire to test the authenticity of coins, even biting on them to determine if they were pure silver and gold. If there were teeth marks on the coins, they were pure silver and gold. Unfortunately, it was a little harder to test bronze and copper. Ideally, copper was mixed with tin to form bronze. However, other cheap metals like lead were sometimes added to copper, and the copper amount might be reduced to save cost for fake coins circting in the market. Now that Rino learned how versatile the divination spell was, he had ideas to modify it to do a lot more than simply searching. Normally, it wasn''t possible for divination spells birthed from holy magic to work alongside shadow magic born from the opposite nature. However, Noir was able to sessfully create a version of divination magic without adding any elements. The theory was simple, and even as Rino copied the talismans for his subordinates a few hundred times, he could not understand Noir''s trick to locating and understanding so much depth about the located ore pockets. The ck cat was able to determine the size and location urately with just one spell. Rino was still trying to figure out how that happened. Divination without elemental help was like an area search using mana particles in the environment as a radar to reflect its location based on search perimeters. Rino already added a concentration or searchable element within a certain size specifics to help his miners locate the desired ores for mining. Apart from size, was it possible for Rino to add a follow-up spell trigger on such talismans? Deciding that this might be worth a shot, Rino attempted to add a sorting spell. If the talisman could detect, it could also attempt to contain or move certain objects to the focal point before the spell expired. The first attempt ended miserably as Rino''s shadow tendrils failed to grab the overly tiny grounded dust full of metals that he wanted. Hence, the second attempt to modify the grabbing action urred. Using gravitational maniption, Rino hoped that moving the right dust particles over in the right direction was easier. However, the spell proved disappointing when nothing much changed from the first experiment. Rino was back to square one as he looked at the dust particles. He couldn''t draw all of them over to the baby iron bar either because crushed hematite ore contained other fused elements with the iron. Maybe he had to melt them first? Thinking back to his discovery about density, Rino wondered if this would work on metals as well. Anything was worth a shot at this point. Rino wondered if he needed to extract the ores from the other things like sand before he tried fractional distition of molten metals ording to their density. The talisman would be useful in identifying the metal Rino wanted, but how should he convert the molten metal into a solid without issues? Molten metals became solids when cooled. Instead of risking oxidation and even idental alloy mixtures, Rino could implement heat magic maniption to instantly cool the chosen area of identified molten metals. Then, using dark magic to teleport it into temporary storage, the metal can be retrieved safely. The idea sounded decent to Rino, who liked it better than using harmful substances to remove the gold. For the other metals, he could continue using charcoal, sand and crushed marble. Silver and gold were a little more tedious to process, and Rino did not want anyone to volunteer for ribcage extracting duties. With this, the lich modified the divination spell and made a trip back to the mines to get his test ores. That prototype magic furnace should still be functioning, so he went to the storage to retrieve it as well. It might be a bold gamble, but with high stakes, the returns should be sweeter. From up above, Ace was impressed by what Rino managed to think about just from his sloppy divination spell. Rino wasn''t wrong about him using only mana particle maniption to identify the ores. Divination was originally called a holy spell because of its guidance from a blessing whenever it was used. The prayer chants gave them their element, but no magical elements were required for those who knew how to cast it. All the caster needed was good mana sensitivity and control. Eager to see how Rino''s new spell turned out, Ace skipped his prayer listening duties for a while to observe. They never know when this crazy genius'' ideas could be the next breakthrough for alchemy and mana smithing. Many other gods have tried, and only a few seeded. If Rino seeded, Ark had to treat Rino better for giving their department the leverage they needed to gain their former glorious positions in this god realm. Chapter 228 - Early Alchemy When science met magic, alchemy was born. Rino never once gave up on making alchemy advancements. However, he wasn''t expecting an alchemic development to ur at the beginning of aplex civilisation. Extracting gold from the ores and refining them was a difficult process, enough to make Rino turn to magic and away from the tutorial for help. His first few attempts could only be ssified as pathetic. Not understanding the reasons for metal merging or the uses of dark magic, Rino fumbled for a long time. The time extension was purchased but the promise was long forgotten. By the time Rino seeded, he had spent a huge amount of GF credits with only a fraction of what he had in his wallet. Yet, the amount of satisfaction he felt from understanding the concept of material reactivity, a new concept, told Rino that he regretted none of his decisions. Everything he did for thest fifteen days led up to this point as he stared at the beautiful mess of molten liquids with various colour differences. The idea of using fractional distition on metals was something Rino wasn''t sure would work. However, seeing as he was already working on inventing a new type of talisman to help with ore extraction, he might as well do something simr. The extraction process for various metals took Rino several good hours, and he made huge batches of them for several tests. The process of grinding up stone and charcoal was further simplified when Rino put his automated hammer and grindstones in the stone cottage to use. The waterwheels needed a little more force to keep up with the workload, but Rino''s subordinates learned quickly how to adjust the dam''s flow. With wagon after wagon of pulverised ores were transported back to the mines and handed over to the smeltery workers, Rino watched Kamiya take over operations smoothly, extracting metals from the ores as he designed new variations of the spell. If there was one other thing RIno learned about dark magic, it would be the ability tomand unsummoned subordinates hiding in his shadow to do things for him from the shadow realm. That did not cost mana, but it did take up mental stamina to listen to theirmunication and sustain the new space in his shadow sack for them to move inside and do what he needed. Mutt offered to help Rino ther seed oil in the shadow realm on teleported metal that would be forcefully cooled using temperature maniption magic ording to Rino''s theory. The concern about metals reacting with air immediately after being exposed to air and rusting or oxidising was so quickly resolved that Rino felt ashamed for agonising over it for so long. Hence, the order to produce seed oil was passed down to the cookhouse. Thedies in the kitchen did not disappoint when they delivered a barrel of that stuff in two days. Once preparations were ready, RIno started testing the concept of fractional distition. He had no idea how dense the different metals were or why they reacted with each other. Hence, Rino could only experiment with the metals he knew would react with each other to understand the temperature differences. The easiest metals to test that out with were copper and tin due to their great difference in melting points. The first experiment ended in failure when the tinpletely dissolved into the molten copper. Rino had to put that bronze away and try with a new batch of different quantities when he realised that the copper no longer merged with the tin after a certain amount of tin. This discovery made Rinoe up with a new theory. Perhaps metals were like salt and water. After a certain amount of salt was stirred into a cup of water, no more salt would dissolve as the water could no longer hold any more salt. Metals might be the same. However, a new discovery threw Rino off track quickly. He wanted to test the density of molten metals and chucked a handful of extracted metals into the forge to wait for them to melt, not caring if they merged with each other. However, the strangest thing happened inside, and Rino realised that not all metals merged with each other. In fact, some metals preferred merging with some metals in particr. Other metals like gold, silver and copper were not as reactive. They only changed under the intense heat after melting to mingle with other metals. Otherwise, even in their molten state, they remained undisturbed. It also exined why Rino found it very difficult to break the silver and gold bonds. Even after heating the metals to an unimaginable degree, causing the silver to evaporate and turn back into a liquid form upon touching the cool sides of the ss, Rino could not break apart electrum, which was both a good and bad thing. Needless to say, Rino modified the mana ss spatial chamber to tilt it in a manner that metals could drip into the casting outlet for pure metals. Almost all metals had a unique melting point that Rino learned to identify with brief estimations. For metals with very close melting points, Rino would use gravitational magic to alter their conditions to create more buffer in between. As for the alloys that formed thanks to Rino''s crazy pot of molten ores, He learned that seawater and air were great ways to help certain metals break apart into more natural forms. Using air burned with charcoal and pushed through the spatial chamber was also an excellent way of separating stubborn alloys. Yet, none of what he did helped Rino fully iste the gold he needed for smelting a baby bar. The divination spell was also tweaked many times for the distition furnace''s use. This experiment was the first true alchemic experience ever since his awakening in the world. Rino designed more familiarb tools to understand alloys and spent most of his time identifying the behaviours of metals. In Rino''s darkest moment, he left the study and furnace room to brood temporarily in the ce he often sought sce in. The stone te library was full of undiscovered and untranscribed secrets. By some sort of fate, the stone te that Rino had yet to transcribe cracked while he was brooding in the library. Investigating the loud disturbance, Rino discovered that there were records of how the dwarves processed their gold bars even without the aid of magic. Wasting no time at all, the first thing Rino did was look for Quasimodo and instructed him to collect animal pee in barrels. If there was one thing the undead could not dopared to the dwarves, it was producing biological waste that was somehow used in important processes such as tanning leather and now, gold extraction. The concept was simple, and everything else could be found in this rocky mountain terrain. Rino knew that salt was good for many things apart from cooking. However, he had no idea it was the secret ingredient used to separate gold from silver. Another major key yer was burnt y. Rino read that again to make sure they did not mean dried or fired y. They literally meant burnt y for some reason, and not one to doubt the professionals, Rino ryed his orders to the kiln in Noir Province. Once the materials were gathered, the true gold separation chore began. ording to Rino''s understanding, the three least reactive metals in his mix of ores were copper, gold and silver. Unsurprisingly, they are the three metals with the highest melting points. Copper was easily removed, but the bronze alloy that remained proved a pain in Rino''s neck when the copper and tin mixture refused to be separated like the electrum. The best he could do was drain them for now and scour the stone te library for more information about undoing alloy mixtures and reverting them back to their base metals. With a sealed boiling chamber, Rino ensured that nothing could escape. Adding the electrum mixture and bringing that to a molten state, Rino carefully added his crushed burnt y, heaps of salt and barrel of animal pee. Then, he manipted the gravitational field inside the sealed spatial chamber and watched alchemy magic happen. The dwarves were right about the process, and Rino could barely restrain his excitement when two very distinctyers of molten liquid separated. The topyer was definitely silver, even if the colour was duller, but the bottomyer was exactly what Rino wanted. After nearly two weeks, he finally seeded at smelting gold! Once that mixture cooled enough, Rino let the gases escape and carefully tapped the metal, chiselling the gold from the silver portion and washing it. The gold''s purity was close to perfect, and Rino left the resmelting of extracted gold to his subordinates while he did thest step required for silver. Unlike the other undead, Rino could regenerate indefinitely using mana under sunlight. He waited for day to arrive before tossing the block of silver chloride under the deadly rays and watched as the colour changed to a shiny sheen. Quickly, Rino wasted no time after the silver stopped reacting under the sunlight and grabbed it using shadow tendrils, storing it safely in his shadow sack.. All that was left to do was wait for the baby bar of gold to be smelted, and his daily quest would bepleted. Chapter 229 - Hoe Please Ping! === Daily Quest #29 plete) Objective: Smelt some Ores Time Limit: 5 Days te) 1/1 Bronze Bar 1/1 Iron Bar 1/1 Steel Bar 1/1 Silver Bar 1/1 Gold Bar Tutorial here. Reward: Smithing Skill im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Rino wasn''t surprised to see that he waste to turn the quest in. It would be more surprising if the gods did not realise it. Nevertheless, it was time well spent. He felt aplished doing something he could never have done in the previous world. While it wasn''t perfect alchemy, Rino had a feeling he was starting to understand it better. Dark magic really was the missingponent to making alchemy flourish. Ping! Without rest, the daily quest system pushed the newest quest to Rino who had no choice but to start looking through the requirements. === Daily Quest #30 Objective: Smith Some Metal Tools Time Limit: 5 Days 0/1 Pickaxe 0/1 Axe 0/1 Shovel 0/1 Hoe Tutorial here. Reward: cksmithing Mastery Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === cksmithing mastery? Was that a skill he even wanted? Rino had to question the motives of these gods. Once again, the deadline was five days. If he had the bars, this should be simple. Rino understood the properties of various metals better now to decide what kind of material he wanted to smith the new tools out of. Honestly, at the end of it all, the material mattered less because Rino was going to pile the same enchantments on these tools like how he did with the basic stone tools. It was just for the sake of formality. However, this gave Rino a good chance to explore making new tools of different sizes to equip the newer vigers. Those tiny rabbit paws might not be able to hold the heavier stone pickaxes and the trolls could definitely carry a bigger shovel. Most importantly, Rino just wanted to make some good hoes for the farmers of Zerg''s vige who used stone tools or even their hands to dig. That wasn''t eptable. Rino wasn''t the kind of monarch who would mistreat his people. Summoning Erika and Zerg to him, Rino exined the newest mission and told his trustworthy managers to do an inventory investigation and give him a list of tools needed by the end of the day so he could start producing the tools needed for every viger. Every miner should have a pickaxe. Every lumberjack should have an axe. Every farmer should have a hoe. And shovels were assigned to those working in the y mine and fields. Heck, Rino wondered if he should equip everyone with a hoe instead because it was multifunctional. Now that he thought about it, the hoe was rather powerful. It had a sharp edge that could break tough ground and serve as a terrifying weapon. The blunt edges could function as a shovel to push and pull loosened dirt or scrap them to fill a hole. At the same time, the shovel with enchantments was capable of smashing rocks as a pickaxe would. Not to mention, a good swing of the enchanted hoe could wedge itself in between logs. Rino saw the hobgoblins using it to split firewood for the cookhousedies. As odd as it sounded, Rino didn''t feel like making specific metal tools. Instead, the idea of giving every citizen an enchanted hoe sounded very tempting. "What do you think?" he asked Erika and Zerg who looked speechless at theirzy lord''s justification for the hoe. Unable to refute Rino''s im about what the hoe could do, they tried to reason with him. A hoe wasn''t a one-stop solution and should not be made as such. However, the more reasons they gave, the more Rino was convinced that it was a fantastic solution. "The hoe does not have enough surface area," Zerg reasoned when RIno wanted to rece the shovel with it. "I''ll just expand the head," Rino countered. Wringing her hands, Erika reminded the lich that the hoe might be too heavy for fairies. Instead of agreeing, Rino thought about it. Seeing a fairy with a hoe instead of a wand could be made into a normal urrence in this world. Besides, a hoe did not need to be made out of metal entirely, parts of it could be wood. If anything, the head of the hoe could be carved from wood too. Feeling lost, Erika looked back at Zerg in a silent plea for help before Rino decided to make everyone carry hoes at their hips. In ast attempt to change Rino''s mind, Zerg went all out and cast all politeness aside. "The hoe isn''t fashionable or intimidating enough for an undead civilisation." His bluntment made Rino pause for three seconds, then five. After a minute, Zerg started to regret saying those words when Rino failed to react. It was as if someone stole Rino''s soul and left an empty skeleton behind. His glowing purple eyes swirled consistently as Rino thought about it, staring at Zerg. If such a young viger felt that the hoe was not fashionable, it must be true. "But a hoe is practical even if it is unfashionable¡­ is it really that bad to be seen carrying a hoe around?" Zerg and Erika shared a nce at Rino''s concerns. Truthfully, it was just embarrassing to be seen with a hoe. However, if everyone was made to do it, maybe it would be a little less shameful to wear a peasant''s tool by their side. Erika and Zerg did not mind the low-status symbol as they were from humble birth. However, not everyone would agree. "What''s wrong?" Stepping up to exin the unique social status situation to Rino, Erika tried to put it nicely that there would be some who might be against the hoe as a work tool. Carrying a weapon or a staff was a symbol of importance. Carrying a hoe was the lowest kind of status abourer could have. "Oh? Then what kind of status would an axe, pickaxe and shovel represent?" Stone workers were often associated with pickaxes, and ording to his secretary, they were well respected. Stone was often required for building new ces, and masons were paid decently. The shovel was a little more shunned because they were often associated with grave diggers. Someone in the town was chosen to be that person everyone hated because he dug graves for a living, but he was also respected because the deceased in everyone''s family was put to rest by him. It wasn''t that bad because it yed an important role. Axes were associated with lumberjacks and woodcutters. They are well-liked because everyone needs wood from building and repairing to cooking and heating during cold winters. Town Zera might not have a need for firewood because the location did not allow snow to form even if the temperature falls. Hunters were associated with bows, and nobody carried a sword because there was no war. In fact, Rino learned that nobody knew what a sword was. Only the dwarves had records about them, indicating that war and a weapon for killing was a foreign concept to these people. Erika associated daggers with hunting, and so did Zerg. Hearing both their opinions out, Rino decided that it was time for a change in perspectives. He wanted the pen to be a symbol far superior to a sword. The hoe was also a tool that should be seen in a new light. Anyone who was awarded a hoe should be seen as a valuable member of society who contributed just as much to the sess of Rino''s kingdompared to the ones who wielded a staff. If there was a symbol of shame, Rino would think of that as walking around empty-handed. A non-contributor was the worst kind of person there was, and they should be ashamed of themselves. Every trade has its special tool. A seamstress had a needle. A cook had a spat. A baker had a rolling pin. Only a bum would not have any tool. "Anyone who works should be treated fairly in my kingdom. There is no such thing as a more important job. Every role is crucial for the sess of this empire. Make the hoes and make them look good. We have silver and gold, don''t let them lie around." Eyes widening at Rino''s conclusion, Erika and Zerg wondered why their lord would use the two most difficult metals to smelt to craft hoes. They were shiny and pretty, but there really wasn''t a need to go so far as to poprise the hoes, right? Rino did not bend, and the two district managers wisely retreated. If Rino wanted to make the hoes popr, they would find a way to make it a novelty item everyone wanted, no matter the prejudice. Unfortunately, neither of them were experts at swaying popr consensus. "We need to find Rina for help," Zergmented after they left Rino''s study. Wordlessly, Erika agreed.. When she returned to Noir province, she had to talk to the extremely sociable fairy and ask for advice. Chapter 230 - Fast Smith Smithing has never been easier. There were two methods to get the same job done, and Rino picked thezier alternative. Fashioning the waterwheel into an automated hammer, Rino abused all the magic he could abuse and transformed the baby bars into different tool heads. Smithing was ten times easier than smelting because Rino only had to smelt the baby bars and pour them into y moulds prepared by Ubel. Any fine-tuning could be hammered out manually on an anvil or by using the automated hammer. Needless to say, Rino''s choice was instant. The only thing Rino had to note when using the automated hammer for smithing was the speed and intensity of each hammer. Rino could not exactly control them, and he made the costly mistake of trying to let the automated hammer tten a jutted edge that only required a little pat. The shovel head was shoved back into the magical furnace for resmelting and casting because that hard smack from the automated hammer bent everything out of shape. Haste made waste, and the phrase never rang truer. Thankfully, Rino wasn''t short on baby bars for the mini set of tools. He eventually settled on using copper because there was plenty of that. He could use bronze, but the thought of smelting tin into copper made his brain hurt. For now, copper was good enough to test the smithing process. Ting! Ting! Ting! After learning how to judge if a metal required minor attunements on the anvil or could be left to the automated hammer for major hammering, Rino figured out that smithing was a game of patience. It was as if he was ying a patience game, timing the strikes when the metal turned from yellow to red hot before it whitened and cold into the regr copper he knew. Maybe this was why people often said to strike while the iron was hot. Metals that were too hot were not easy to work with because they changed shapes too easily. It was good for ttening and curving them into shape. However, if Rino only wanted to make small changes, he needed to wait for them to cool slightly more to a red zone when the metal was still hot enough to change shape but not be utterly bent. When the metal cooled, it formed a greater resistance, making it impossible for Rino to alter its form without creating ugly cracks or dents in the t surface. The smithing process was full of trials and errors even after Rino read the basics. Smithing was very much like cooking, and both skills shared simrities with heat control, precision and timing. Rino started clumsily, but by the end of the day, he was a proud smith who made five different sets of basic tools. Wait, after recounting, Rino realised he made more than five sets. In addition to the basic baby bars that the gods wanted, Rino also threw in the other ores like copper, tin and electrum. Heck, there were even different types of steel that Rino explored with. Iron was a very easy going metal that would form bonds with almost any other metal, including silver and gold. It was most receptive to forming an alliance with copper, and thebination proved more interesting than the fusion with charcoal. Ping! === Daily Quest #30 plete) Objective: Smith Some Metal Tools Time Limit: 5 Days 7/1 Pickaxe 7/1 Axe 7/1 Shovel 7/1 Hoe Tutorial here. Reward: cksmithing Mastery im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Methodologically enchanting his newly made tools with the same overpowered magic, Rino wondered if carrying a hoe around would truly be bad. Looking at these basic tools, he wondered if his people would be unhappy by the level of discrimination when distributing tools to them based on their jobs. He remembered giving a speech about how everyone had their strengths. It wasn''t a lie. However, not everyone had the same strengths to do moreplicated and glorious jobs. Not everyone was intellectually advanced enough to assist Rino with the high-level nning he required. At the same time, even if everyone could do that, Rino still needed hands and legs to keep the routine chores going. The farmers were as important as the courier runners to keep operations smooth. Miners were as important as millers, and even if there could only be one town manager, Rino did not treasure anyone less. How could he exin this to his subordinates without making them feel discouraged or underappreciated? Bing a ruler was hard, and Rino never really bothered about these things, even as the master of the magicians'' tower. Magicians weren''t people who looked at riches and status too much. If anything, they were content with sharing knowledge and spreading it to those willing to listen. Looking at the tools he made, Rino wondered if adding essories to these tools would be a good thing. Sure, every tool had a specific purpose, and there was a stigma surrounding the hoe. He could not change that perspective overnight. Yet, glorifying it did not feel appropriate either. There had to be an educated understanding and eptance among his people for this n to work. Although he still thought that the hoe was a multi-purpose tool, it could not rece everything else. A tool was created for a specific purpose. Rino might have jokingly brushed Erika and Zerg''s concerns about getting everyone to wield a hoe as a symbol of his undead empire, but a hoe could never mine as cleanly as a pickaxe or fall a tree as effectively as an axe. It could not dig the ground as quickly as a shovel and was definitely a poor choice as a weapon. What Rino wanted was a tool that could suit multiple purposes at the same time. Hence, Rino thought about how to redesign his new tool''s head. He had a few days to spare afterpleting this daily quest assignment earlier than expected. In his previous world, multi-purpose tools existed. For instance, someone smart invented an eating utensil for the poorbourers who could not afford to buy silverware or copperware. The chopsticks that they used quickly became popr, although it took some skills to grasp objects firmly with only two sticks. The chopsticks were made from wood, and people decided to make wooden eating utensils that served many purposes. A fascinating design had to be the spork. Rino remembered how his butler fainted in shock when he caught his master eating with a spork. His protests about a tool for every use, and Rino proved him wrong by drinking soup with a spork and shovelling pasta with it. The only thing he couldn''t do with the mighty spork was cut a steak, but everything else was done with ease, including eating desserts. Rino wanted to eliminate the noble dining etiquette and unnecessary silverware like butter knives, sugar tongs, soup spoons, teaspoons and dessert forks. Why spend so much money and time maintaining them when almost everything could be eaten with a spork? Like that spork, Rino wanted to make a tool that could chop, till, mine and maybe dig. Problems were aplenty, but finding a way would not be difficult for a magician like Rino, who enjoyed creating solutions. First, he studied the existing designs of these tools and understood several principles. Much like the spork, certain tool heads could bebined formon use with some minor alterations. The key point of the designy in the details. For instance, the spork was mostly a spoon with teeth at the end that fell within its circr shape, indented a little to hold small amounts of liquid as a real spoon would. Simrly, Rino could see that the hoe for tilling could be modified into a shovel-like structure by bending the metals at an angle to meet the groove in the centre while retaining its t edges to plough the soil. Unfortunately, that design meant that Rino could no longer make further adjustments to that new tool head to add a chopping and mining function. However, thanks to the design of a pickaxe that consisted of two sides, Rino gathered some inspiration to create a new tool head on the other side of this multi-purpose tool. Pickles were unique because of the small but sharped surface used tond a great impact on a small area to crack into rocks. Rino retained that design but removed the other side of the pickaxe closer to a hammer surface. He could install that at the top of the new tool''s handle if pounding action was required. At the same time, Rino wondered if he could somehow install the axe into this tool. The axe head was actually a solid wedge that could be sharpened. It had to be fixed in a vertical direction to the tool handle for easy swinging action. Rino thought about it for a long time and decided that if a tool could have two sides, why couldn''t it have three or more? With that, two new tool heads were added to the tool handle. Rino looked at the t hammer, and sharpened axe mounted temporarily on a wooden stick with the hoe-shovel design and pointed pickaxe at opposite sides.. Satisfied with his solution, it was time to make a prototype. Chapter 231 - Mighty Mattock Several forges and fine-tuningter, the first Mattock was born. Rino wasn''t sure if the mattocks of his old world looked like this. He heard that farmers who were tired of constantly carrying a heavy hoe and axe made this. They simply bought two tools and removed the tool heads to reattach them to the pole length they wanted. The practise became popr, and nobody knew how mattocks got their names. All that mattered was the double usefulness of the tool. The idea spread all the way to the capital, and from that moment forth, toolsmiths sold their tool handles separately from their tool heads. The empire came up with a uniform size for poles and casting holes to refit tool heads on those poles. Likewise, Rino borrowed the name and practice of size standardisation. He did not let anyone else see the newest tool yet. It was a little heavy without magical enchantments, but Rino was a magician. Naturally, things that could be made easier with magic should be simplified. After the tool was enchanted, Rino had to test it for all the intended functions. The first ce Rino visited was the jungle of doom. It was currently night, so Rino did not need to worry too much about burning under the sun. The soil in the jungle was soft but still fairly hard. It was a good chance to test the new mattock''s hoe function. Finding a clear area full of weeds, Rino lifted the mattock high above his head and brought it down without using any force. His arms were literally bones. There was no way for him to apply more physical pressure on the ground. The oddly shaped hoe made a V-shaped dent in the soil, cutting through grass des and weed stems. It weighed close to nothing in Rino''s hands, thanks to the weight-reducing enchantments. Rino made the tool heads out of a copper alloy with iron and tin. The metal was cast from mostly iron and copper, making the tool heads very durable but heavy. Lifting the mattock up from the ground took more effort than ploughing it. Rino decided that physicalbour like this was better left to the trolls who carried heavy loads regrly. Instead, Rino tested the intended shovel function and dragged the loosened dirt across the ground, curious to find out how easy this would be. In his previous life, Rino knew some tricks about using a shove. He frequented the forestry garden grounds in the magicians'' tower whenever he needed a change of pace, frustrated from his repeated experiment failures. The gardeners there were very old, and Rino helped them out from time to time. The action of stepping on the shovel and tossing over heaps of loose soil or fertiliser came to Rino easily. However, Rino quickly realised he could not do what he was so used to with a shovel with the modified four-headed mattock. The mattock must be pointed downwards and dragged towards him instead of away from him. The difference made Rino struggle to find afortable way of digging holes in the ground. Eventually, he found his pace and deemed the easiest method to dig holes using the ''shoevel'' head was to smack it into the ground and walk the other way so that the soil would loosen as he walked. Then, he could use the side of the ''shoevel'' to carry the dirt and toss it elsewhere. The sess of his first tool gave Rino the confidence he needed. Conveniently enough, there were plenty of trees in the vicinity that he could test the axe head on. Unsure of how many swings it would take to fall a tree, Rino decided to look for a branch to chop instead. He did not want to destroy the environment too much, and these trees could be homes to some deadlier monsters that he did not want to antagonise. At the same time, Rino listened to Mutt''s warning whenever he approached something that he thought looked harmless. The sabre tooth wolf''s senses have improved again, and now, Mutt can distinguish monsters in disguise. "Master, be careful of that vine! It''s actually the hair of a sleeping monster." Rino stilled and retraced his steps. Even though there were many trees in the area, it wasn''t easy to find a branch to cut. With some difficulty, Rino navigated around the lurking dangers and climbed up what Mutt assured him was a safe tree to test the axe on. Rino used his shadow tendrils to help him get on the tree and settled on a higher branch. He wasn''t going to start chopping the branch right beneath his feet. Instead, he was looking at chopping the thinner branches above him within reach of the axe''s swing. With the help of shadow tendrils, Rino steadied himself on the branch and swung the mattock, aiming the axe head at the thinner branch. Thwack! Thwack! Boom! Sleeping birds in the area flew away, startled by the sound. Rino cringed and remained motionless for a moment while Mutt scanned the area from his master''s shadow for any approaching dangers. A minute passed, and Mutt deemed the coast safe to proceed. Rino put a hand to his chest. That was a little nerve-wracking, but thankfully, the axe head did what it was meant to do. The branch fell in two swings, but Rino had a feeling the trolls and hobgoblins would be able to cut the branch within one swing. The only thing left to test out was the pickaxe. For that, Rino took to the skies and flew to the rocky mountain range. He did not know if the mattock was a good idea for miners who needed to break sterner metals without the hassle of having multiple tool heads. However, Rino thought that adding a pickaxe could be good for farmers tilling new farnds and might need to clear rocks in the way. Hence, the test was to break stone and perhaps hammer in poles for the construction of fences. Rino did not have fences to hammer, but he had faith in the hammer surface. If the hammer surface could create a crack in the stone surface, it would surely be strong enough to pound stakes into the ground. After flying to the mountain range, Rino didn''t even bother finding a t surface to stand on. If anything, he only elerated and swung the hammer surface of the mattock in time to his crash. BOOM! Right in the middle of the mountainside, Rino emerged from the dust cloud and looked at how much damage the hammer could do. The wall cracked outwards from his initial impact, much like a spider''s web, and Rino dusted pieces of shattered rocks from his hood and studied the mattock. Everything on the mattock seemed in ce, the metal remained strong, and the enchantments brought out their full potential. Satisfied at the sight of a demolished rock surface, Rino deemed the hammer part of the mattock sturdy enough to handle any other crisis. At this point, it could even serve as an emergency weapon during an invasion. Thest thing that Rino needed to test was the ability to break rocks into smaller pieces using the pickaxe head on his mattock. Finding the biggest boulder he could on the rocky mountain took Rino and Mutt almost the rest of the night. Yet, it was rather anticlimactic to smash it apart in just five swings of the mighty mattock. "That''s all," Rino told Mutt, who howled in celebration as the huge boulder shattered and cracked into almost perfect half-spheres. Concluding the experiment on a positive note, Rino told the smeltery workers to start producing these mattocks. The hoe might not be well-liked by everyone, but the mattock was more than a hoe. It was a symbol of unity and resourcefulness. Anyone with skill could wield it, and it wasn''t very difficult to learn how this tool worked. It looked unorthodox and slightly bulky, but once Rino demonstrated how the different tool heads could be used, he had a feeling nobody would think of the mattock as degrading. The only thing Rino needed to do now was to summon Zerg and Erika once more after he returned to Town Zera for another meeting. Before introducing the mighty mattock to his townsfolk and vigers, Rino wanted to do a poption survey and determine how many subordinates required this unique tool. Not everyone needed a mattock. Rino decided that courier rabbits, cookhousedies and seamstresses have their unique tools for their jobs. The miners and smelters also do not require mattocks for pickaxes, and hammers were more appropriate. The tool handles were also not as long as this mattock, making movements easier within the enclosed space of the abandoned mines. The more Rino thought about it, the more convinced he was about the idea of introducing currency. Money might be the root of all evil, but only because of the value people ced on it. If anything, Rino did not want to make this currency divide the unity of his subordinates. It should be a sign of reward and recognition used to inspire friendly rivalry and respect. Anyone who did their jobs dutifully will be rewarded with the same token that could be exchanged for certain benefits within his growing empire and returned to the treasury that Rino had to build to be redistributed on "payday" again. The jobs are not measured by quantity, speed or quality across the board. Rino had to create personal milestones for every individual to determine if they would receive more or fewer tokens for exchange purposes. To prevent the concept of rich and poor, Rino considered implementing an expiry period for tokens so that they could not be kept for long. The expiry period rule would also resolve his rare material issues. By the time Rino had the n in his head, Erika and Zerg were already waiting outside his study. "My liege," they greeted with a bow. Rino nodded and beckoned them inside.. There was much to discuss. Chapter 232 - Town Restructuring After introducing the mattock to his poption, Rino started to see small but significant changes in his subordinate''s mindset. The hoe was no longer despised, and some farmers opted to remove the other tool heads, customising their mattocks to their specific needs. This was exactly what he wanted. People started to understand that the hoe was simply a tool for those who needed it. Farmers were not any less important than seamstresses, miners or secretaries. Without them, there would be no offerings for the cat statue gods. Without farmers, there would be no taro beers or fried potatoes. Without them, there would be nothing for the cookhouse to work with, no wheat for the millers to grind and no festivals to look forward to. Little by little, the mindset shifted, and everyone started taking pride in their assigned duties. Yet, the tool was still called a mattock even if more of those started looking likemon axes, pickaxes, shovels and hoes. Ping! === Daily Quest #31 Objective: Build Pathways Time Limit: 30 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Town Speed Buff im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Ok, the new quest was pretty dope. Rino had to admit, the gods knew what they were doing. Building a pathway wasn''t difficult. In fact, Rino already had all the materials required for it. Pathways were built from stone bricks or any kind of brick, cement and maybe fences. However, he had a feeling that the gods were starting to understand him better as an individual when they gave him such a generous timeline. This wasn''t a simple transportation enhancement project. It was more than that, and the gods knew it. Rino had most of the things he needed up and running in the operation sense. However, there were still things that were missing from the full picture of a prosperous town. The first was theck of order in the town, and his subordinates often rested wherever they found cosy. It was uneptable. Even if the undead did not require sleep, Rino could not deny them a ce to rx. The Nightless Underpass gave townsfolk a chance to visit Noir Province for short holidays, but it wasn''t enough. Rino wanted them to have a way to unwind after a huge project. Ever since his discovery of that hot spring bath, Rino had an idea. Noir Province had its own hot springs, and perhaps it was only fair that Rino built something for the hardworking subordinates in Town Zera. At the back of his mind, the concept of currency exchange returned as Rino sat down in his cosy stone cottage to n. Putting together a list of building projects for the town renovation and potential pathways, Rino noticed that arge part of what he aspired for this town was already aplished thanks to the chain of daily quests. === Town Zera''s Building Project List: Leather tannery (done) Farm (partially done) Mines renovation (done) Living quarters for workers (not started) Hot spring (not started) cksmithing house (done) Crafting guild (not started) Marketce (not started) Windmill (done) Animal Barn (done) Compost area (done) Magic Tree (done) Town outposts and roads (not started) Defence array (done) === Looking at that list, Rino could safely assume that most of his work could be finished in two weeks if Rino paused the other ongoing production cycles. The offerings could be kept to a minimum, and the miners could help with constructions instead. He wanted to prioritise the living quarters for workers and the hot spring bathhouse to bepleted within the first two weeks. These two amenities were probably the more exciting ones on the list. Originally, Rino had ns to create the crafting guild near the y mine because of Ubel''s base of operations. However, most of the crafting skills are required in Town Zera, where the forge was. Compared to transferring wet y, it was harder to transportpleted ceramics and moulds that could be fragile and took up more space. Rino looked at Town Zera''s updated map and picked a spot that would serve as a good crafting guild location. Ideally, he should put it near the river. Thankfully, the stone cottage that Rino was in could be extended. He thought it would be wiser for the new crafting guild and pottery shenanigans to be shoved beside the cookhouse. Thankfully, there was no need for the crafters to use any waterwheels. The pottery spinning te could be powered by foot and the speed controlled by the potter. Rino had no idea how things were made from y, but Ubel''s new culinary tools and actual pots looked a lot better than the clumsy y bowls the hobgoblins made when Rino was still living in his humble farmhouse. The farm project was progressing smoothly, and the farmers were keeping to the nting, harvesting andnd expansion schedule allocated to them. Rino only had one issue. The crops he had in Town Zera were still too few in variety, and the number of nt life found around Noir Province far exceeded what they could cope with. If Rino was honest, that small spud field he started within Spudville outside his farmhouse wasn''t enough to feed his growing poption. To reach ten thousand upants in Town Zera, Rino wondered if these fields would be enough. In fact, he already knew the answer. He always wanted to do a side mission but had few opportunities because of the tight deadline in between difficult quests. He sent the genesis fairies for a gathering mission in the jungle of dread once before. There, they discovered many species of edible nts but could not bring everything back. This time, Rino knew that he had many capable fairies and townsfolk who could go on that foraging mission. The food sources they had should not be limited to staples. As a growingmunity with a diverse palette, it was time to introduce other things into their diet. Rino wanted to see vegetables, herbs, spices and fruits in their meals more. Even without the offering to the gods, his townsfolk should at least enjoy more vour in their consumed meals. The undead might not need food to survive, but this was a luxury they could afford with the plus side of not gaining any weight because everything turned into mana for Rino. Rino only had one small worry. Delicious food can give birth to gluttony, and while Rino did not mind, it might impede productivity. Indulgence in anything could never be a good thing. He knew this from first-hand experience in his previous life. Yet, he also understood how difficult it was to climb out of that rabbit hole. Rino never seeded in bringing himself out of that hole he fell into. None of the magicians in his tower did. In fact, they only encouraged each other to jump into that abyss of thirst for knowledge. Like moths drawn to a me, it ended up destroying everything. Sure, Rino might be the catalyst for world destruction, but he couldn''t be med entirely for what happened. If he never found out the truth behind those space rocks and looked at the future of humanity, he might have been content ying the role of a bright genius. For this very reason, Rino wanted to properly prepare this world for what was toe. Knowledge was a double-edged sword that could be used to kill and heal. Rino did not want to inspire a never-ending cycle of hatred and stupidity. In his years as a court magician, Rino often witnessed how stupid parents gave birth and raised even more stupid children who thought they were better than their parents. This was amon misunderstanding. Instead, he wanted to let everyone be fully aware of their shorings when they happened and recognise their aplishments when they achieved a personal breakthrough. Rewards were important for that. Punishments weren''t needed because failure was a punishment in itself. The idea of a marketce sat firmly in Rino''s mind as he circled an area far from the fields, magic tree centre, river, windmill and tannery. It was the perfect spot for social activities to happen and a party venue for festivals. More importantly, Rino wanted to build a bank in this area to issue tokens for his town folks to reward their efforts. The bank should also collect tokens to regte currency cirction. Rino was still thinking about the best way to introduce the concept of y alongside work. He did not want his townsfolk to turn into pleasure-seeking idlers or materialistic whores. The idea of working hard and ying hard was difficult to teach without the concept of moderation. Perhaps it was a little too early to be introducing these things. Judging from the situation in Noir Province, Rino knew that Fowler and his party belonged to the pleasure-seeking gang who could not be trusted to get the job done without a proper whip. Erika was the whip there to ensure thosezy bums got to work. However, Rino was slightly concerned about She and Kamiya''s gang because these leaders were very strict. The discipline in these two teams made Rino feel like a slob inparison. He wanted them to learn how to loosen up a little. Eventually, Rino ced the marketce construction on hold for now. He reserved the site for building argemunity space just by the space reserved for residential purposes.. It should not be difficult to develop the area at a future date when he thought through things properly to decide on the economic system. Chapter 233 - Hit The Road Dividing thebour force that he gathered into three groups, Rino left the manpower distribution to Kamiya and Zerg to manage. Deezer and Bink were in charge of material logistics, and Rino would lead the foraging team to the jungle of doom. The n was simple. For the next two weeks, Town Zera was going to undergo a transformation. Pavements would be built based on traffic demands, new building sites would be in progress as Zerg assigned rooms to everyone. The hot spring would be rechanneled to these living quarters for everyone''s enjoyment in a public bath space, and the trolls will help prepare thend for farming expansion. Rino wanted to introduce new shrubs and trees with a greater variety of fruits, herbs and vegetables. The only thing that Rino put on hold was the crafting guilds extension at the stone cottage by the river and marketce. He was still wondering how he could improve on the existing design. It wasn''t a terrible idea to ce the crafting guild right beside the cookhouse and cksmithing workshop. However, Rino was thinking about the foreseeable future and how difficult it would be if the guild expanded. Most of the earth gnomes were in charge of creating bricks with Ubel''s crafting team. The less powerful fairies under the soul contract with the magic trees remained behind while the more powerful genesis fairies followed Rino out of the town. cing his faith in Zerg and Kamiya''s ability to organise thebour forces, Rino led the genesis fairies apanied by a small but powerful team of killer rabbits with him. Surprisingly, these monsters in their hybrid forms were able to keep up in speed with Mutt. The sabre tooth wolf was not holding back as he ran through the night. The sun had disappeared behind the rocky mountain range only a few minutes before they left the safety barrier of eternal night. Leaving Town Zera behind them, Rino''s elite foraging team approached the dangerous jungle. The night was a time for hunting and hiding. Many dangers lurked, but Rino''s expert team remained undeterred. The few killer rabbits who followed him were experienced from the horrifying death trap maze in the dwarven mine. They were used to dying and resurrecting, so Rino chose them specifically as shields for the genesis fairies if things went south. Although the genesis fairies were powerful and couldmand superior magic spells, they were physically powerless against other things. Unlike Kamiya and his n, these fairies could suffer physical harm. They were not undead and could not regenerate infinitely using Rino''s mana. "If you see something that looks edible, grab the fruit or find the seed. Leave as little traces of yourselves as possible in this jungle." Rino''s stern reminder sank into the team as they went in different directions. The strategy that Rino had was fairly simple. He would remain at the edge of the forest with Mutt while sending the five teams with clones of himself using shadow magic. Mutt would guard him while he focused on assisting the teams with identifying what was good and what wasn''t. Kamiya''s n members assigned to each team had two duties. The first duty was to spot dangers and tell the fairies to avoid them before something happened. The second was to be a shield for the fairies in case things went south. Monsters had a better sense of danger than non-monsters. Fairies who were not native to the jungle could fall prey easily to any seemingly harmless vine. Rino knew how easy it was to mistake the hair of a sleeping monster as a vine from his previous experience. The five teams filled their first spatial inventory ring with various seeds, fruits, and shrubs in two hours. Rino taste-tested over three hundred different fruits to decide what was poisonous and what was edible. He found certain vours familiar, but most of the other ingredients they collected were strange on his palette. It felt like abination of things he knew from his previous world, which could be convenient and frustrating. The one ingredient Rino really wanted but found it hard to obtain was honey. There was plenty of honey in the jungle, and they were much tastier than the honey collected in Cypress County''s vicinity. However, honey wasn''t produced by nts. They were produced by monster bees in the jungle. Even if Rino could take the bees away from the jungle and create a new hive for them in his town, the honey would not taste the same. The flowers and nectar that they made honey from in the jungle of doom were not the same as the flowers that grew in the meadows around Town Zera. It was a huge loss, but Rino tried to look at the bright side. After returning to town, Rino and the fairies did an inventory count. From that brief trip to the jungle of doom, the town was able to obtain over two hundred new species of edible nt life. For a trip with zero casualties, it was an overwhelming sess. Thanking the crew for apanying him on such a harrowing foraging trip, Rino remembered to note down additional tokens for their efforts. He gave them half a day off from work to rest up and enjoy the freedom as he sorted through the new findings to categorise them. There were over a hundred herbs that Rino thought would grow better in a dedicated greenhouse vertically instead of openly in the field. The idea of building a greenhouse immediately went into the top priority as Rino looked at the fruits and vegetable variety the fairies gathered. Fruit trees did not need a dedicated area for nting. He wasn''t making a ntation to collect fruits in bulk. If anything, Rino simply enjoyed seeing a variety of them for casual harvest. Seasonal surprises were great for kitchen creativity. Instead, Rino wondered if he could introduce them throughout his town. A little greenery in a ce full of stone would be nice. Rino could also line the other shrubs around the borders of his town as a perimeter. The grazing field could do without eye-catching fences. If Rino nted shrubs before the fences, it might give the animals in the barn a sense of grazing in the open fields more. That said, Rino checked on the brick production. There were no kilns in Town Zera, so Rino decided to put the grand furnace room to good use and let Ubel takemand. The wraith king already produced more than an eighth of the required bricks for building while he was gone. The trolls and earth gnomes were struggling to keep up with the wraith king''s speed of production. Rino decided to stroll around to the living quarter site to see how far they hade along. Buckets of cement mixes, sacks of bone ashes and piles ofpleted bricks made from g, rocks and y were strewn all over the building site. There were no houses made, but Rino could see the scaffolding in ce with a general outline of the building''s structure in the ground. When Rino first suggested building a multi-levelled apartment tower structure to host all of the town''s poption, Bink objected vehemently, iming it was impossible to build more than two floors, much less fifteen floors without the building copsing on itself. It took the lich a long time to convince the earth gnome how it was structurally possible with proper nning and careful material consideration. Moreover, Rino had genesis fairies around to help reinforce the buildings with magic. Eventually, Bink gave in. Now, he was issuing instructions to the trolls to stack bricks and scaffoldings for these towers while Deezer oversaw the hot spring water rechannel project with some of Kamiya''s fastest miners. Rino''s mana remained steady with no signs of rapid decline. It would mean he was powerful enough to keep up with mana regeneration at the rate of his subordinate''s usage or that his subordinates were going easy on him. Either way, it was great news for him. There was no need to assign other summons to gorge themselves silly in the name of mana regeneration. As they worked, Rino walked to the reserved site for the marketce and bank. He thought about the token exchange system and decided that a ticket exchange policy was perhaps the best way to inspire motivation and prevent gluttony. Tokens could be assigned as part of a reward system, but Rino would not give them actual objects with values. Instead, the tokens would serve as a unique form of identification for every individual with records of how many credits they earned in the bank''s ledgers. These points could be umted indefinitely but not exchanged with others. It could be umted until the next festival when everyone''s credits were levelled again. However, they could spend the points on ticket rewards such as an entrance pass to the hot spring, a priority queue ticket to Noir Province or even a ticket to ask Ubel to create better-looking designs for their existing mattocks. Services like house designing, special meal ticket requests for the cookhouse and even better clothing quality from the tailors or premium leather products from the tannery would slowly be introduced over time. Using this method, Rino could control the number of credits in cirction without splitting hairs over the manufacturing of precious metals as a form of currency.. The token could be imbued with identification magic to prevent theft, making it an almost wless economic system that could be used all over his kingdom. Chapter 234 - Bustling Town In less than three weeks, Rino could see everything finallying together. Although the marketce and bank might take longer to construct, the first living quarter apartment was ready. Not to mention, the bath house'' promotional opening free for anyone to use for a week was a big hit. The bathhouse addiction wasn''t limited to just the undead subordinates. Rino found out that the genesis fairies enjoyed it a fair bit too. Hot spring sessions became a huge socialising opportunity as they strengthened the bonds between different species and upations. It didn''t matter if they worked as a patrol officer, a courier runner or a miner. Everyone loved it, and unsurprisingly, the nextmon topic was food. Rino considered it an overwhelmingly positive reaction, so he deemed that one week a holiday break for the hardworking projectbourers whopleted most of their objectives ahead of time. Checking the daily quest that was longpleted, RIno finally imed it. === Daily Quest #31 plete) Objective: Build Pathways Time Limit: 30 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Town Speed Buff im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === The town speed buff was applied automatically to his town''s barrier, and Rino discovered what that actually meant. At first, the lich thought the buff was faulty because nothing happened when it was first applied. However, the moment he ced a boot on the pavement, Rino felt the difference in speed. The speed buff only applied to those who travelled along the built pavements. Hence, the animals in his barn and workers in other ces were unaffected. Travelling became more fun, and the fairies tested the speed buff by flying through the air along the built pavements. The speed buff worked on everyone who travelled along that path regardless of how they did it. Rino could be crawling on all fours, and the buff would still work. It worked on any race, making it an experience everyone could talk about. Yet, Rino found himself needing to implement rules about racing on the streets after the first wagon crash urred, injuring five who could not regenerate automatically. The destruction of newly built property was also a bummer, but thankfully, it wasn''t anything permanent. Apart from a few hups, Rino found himself wanting to expand the town''s paths to his other outposts. The first ce he thought of creating paved roads towards was to the abandoned mines and his personal study. The pavements were not as well madepared to the ones in Town Zera. However, they were practical. Building rough travelling paths from the mines back to Town Zera made transporting salt rock and fired bricks easier. At the same time, Rino decided that it made more sense to build the crafting guild inside the dwarven mine with all the materials there. The crafting guild was in charge of mining, smelting, smithing and crafting. The other activities that the crafting guild oversees from afar were the tailoring and tannery operations, but Rino trusted the local management to handle their departments independently, even without Ubel''s interference. With Town Zera bustling full of activities even in its downtime, Rino decided to finalise the credit earning system based on various inputs by managers of every department in his town. He also wondered if the same benefits should be given to those in Noir Province. Back in his world, vigers did not concern themselves much with money because they were self-sufficient with their farms feeding their families. Money was only used to exchange for things like candles, firewood and clothes for the winter in towns with other vigers of different professions. Here, Rino knew that the vigers in Spudville, Cypress County and his other outposts did not face any resource shortage. The credits would not be very useful either because there was limited entertainment and desire for material benefit. The people there were different from those in Town Zera. They were more simple-minded and easily content with what they were given. Their earnest nature made Rino wonder why the subordinates in Town Zera were sopetitive. As a ruler, Rino wanted to treat everyone fairly. He wrote a letter to Kragami and asked for several suggestions about what the vigers in Noir Province would desire in exchange for credits earned from their work. The reply came quickly, and there were only a few things these vigers wanted. Their demands greatly surprised Rino because of how different it was to the desires of those in Town Zera. === Noir Province''s most wanted benefits: 1. Personal book and writing supply 2. Weapons 3. Useable runes 4. Spatial enchanted items 5. Alcohol and fried potato 6. Tea Blend 7. Spa / Hot Spring packages === Compared to the list of wanted items in Town Zera, those from Noir Province appeared hardworking. Rino had no idea why a personal book and writing supply was at the top of the list until Kragami exined that they had a severe shortage of leather-bound books or parchment. Loose sheets that became soaked in the rain or damaged by the humid weather dampened the spirits of hardworking students. Kragami had no idea how it happened, but there was a sudden novelty of writing stories. Many wrote stories about Noir for fun, but it soon evolved into something else. Some vigers wrote diaries, while others wrote fantasies about their romances. The goblins wrote stories about their lives before the massacre, and eventually, they ran out of paper for everyone. Hence, it was currently an object for rationing. Hearing that Noir Province birthed many hungry writers, Rino decided that this hobby must be supported. The scribe was not an upation many could afford to apply for in his previous world because education opportunities were unequal. Hence, he was happy to hear that the hunger for knowledge was there. Even though libraries did not exist in this world, Rino thought it might be possible to create one with the help of so many writers. The demand for weapons in Noir Province came from the tournaments held weekly among the fighters who wouldpete for the position of defence chief. The hobgoblin vige leader defended his position thirty-eight times in a row until he was defeated by Fowler in one week, thanks to the lesser vampire''s odd weapon of choice. After his demotion, the rage to find a better weapon ensued, leading to this situation. Unlike the vigers in Town Zera, who could mostly use magic, many vigers in Noir Province were incapable of using magic. The use of runes, spatial magic items were understandable. The other items on their list looked somewhat simr to the top demands of those living in Town Zera. Nodding in understanding, Rino decided to task some of the builders to create a small bank branch just before the Nightless Underpass for the vigers in Noir Province to visit. As the jobs in Nir Province were lessplicated than some of the tasks in Town Zera, Rino wrote a letter to Erika, assigning her the task ofparing the differences in job scope and responsibilities between the two provinces. Rino wanted to adjust rates for iming rewards between the two provinces to give locals in the province a greater benefit to trade for their desired rewards ording to their respective ''ie ss''. Naturally, these rates should be kept confidential, and Rino told the secretary to suggest some reliable names to work in the Noir Province bank branch when it was ready. Rino took advantage of this speed bonus to test the time it took to travel from Town Zera to Noir Province to deliver his letter personally. It was also a good time for him to take a break and catch up with the events in Noir Province for a week before the new daily quest appeared. Unsurprisingly, it took Rino only two-thirds the usual time he would have taken to reach Noir Province using the Nightless Underpass with the speed buff. He wasn''t sure if anyone in Noir Province realised it yet, but he couldn''t wait to share the good news with Kragami. When he reached his teacher''s hut, Kragami was already preparing tea for his student, who gave him short notice for the arrival. Rina could not leave her post in Spudville, but she sent her greetings through Kragami. "I assume that you''ve been very busy in the past month," Kragami poured a steaming cup of green tea that Rino enjoyed. The Ghost Cypress Tree had grown big enough to envelop all of Cypress County''s magical swamp scenery under its leaves. The mana in the air was much denser, and Rino noticed a few new types of trees growing in the tree farm. He did not question what they were because he could sense that faint mana emitted from them. If there were mana mutated flowers, surely there could be mana mutated trees. The tea washed down all of Rino''s mental fatigue, and the lich sighed. "Indeed. So many things have happened, but just when I''m starting to getfortable, I think it is time for me to move again." The teacher and student spent a few minutes in silence to enjoy the peaceful scenery and tea. "Are you travelling further from this swamp?" Rino did not answer. He had no idea yet, but it was highly likely. This time, he wanted to create a ce at the other edge of his empire as a strategic fortress against the harvesters. He learned a little about harvesters and their travelling pattern from the dwarves'' stone tes, but he needed more information. "A little," Rino nodded. "I was thinking of leaving Zerg in charge of Town Zera, but I feel like he might still need guidance despite having a brilliant mind. Could you take him as another of your students?" cing the cup down with a soft clink, Kragami turned back to Rino. "What if I don''t wish to? I''m not getting any younger. I wish to retire soon." Rinoughed. Retire? That was for the regr folks. For magicians like him and Kragami, it was a pipe dream. "What are you talking about? I''m still waiting for you to be the head of magical research once I set up my empire with fully functioning researchb facilities." They shared a long look before bursting out intoughter simultaneously.. Retire? Not by a long shot. Chapter 235 - Primitive Cars For any civilisation, the car, short for carriage, has to be the Industrial Revolution mark. Rino did not think that the gods wanted him to push the timeline for technological progress so quickly when he saw the newest daily quest. Ping! === Daily Quest #32 Objective: Build a Carriage Time Limit: 10 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Mass Grave Locations Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Thankfully, he was thinking about making glowstone powered minecarts before the gods tasked him with building a carriage. The initial efforts paid off when the mine carts could be operated even by non-magic wielders. Rino allowed more people into the mines to experience driving carts, and eventually, that design was used as a reference for the new cars meant to be driven on the streets. Owning a car meant a great deal in the upper society of the upper ss in his previous world. Carriages were designed extravagantly with house crest symbols painted on them. The cars were also bigger as the noble ranking increased, with the royal carriage taking up an entire double street''s space. The lower-ranked nobles like himself could only make carriages that fitted only two people. At the same time, he recalled the colours that a carriage could be painted with. There were so many rules about them that Rino decided to build one using magic that did not stay on the ground. Why take the congested streets when he could monopolise the air space instead? Of course, there were many objections about a mere baron acting arrogant and using a carriage that not even the royal family owned. The ban on Rino''s baron status and flying carriages simply made Rino change the carriage''s colour and crest to the magicians'' tower. Unsurprisingly, the objections snuffed out almost immediately as nobles quickly found ways to make their cars appear fancier to step up on thepetition. Rino didn''t really care. Why would hepete with them at useless games when the king tasked him to create cars that could fly to transport tributes. His memory was a little hazier now, and Rino could not remember what happened to that assignment. He might not havepleted it before the world exploded, but there was a chance he alsopleted it with the help of dwarves. Whatever. None of those was important. Pulling out his design sheet for the mine cart powered by glowstone, Rino realised several limitations for creating mana powered cars. The mine carts were easier to control because there was no need to determine the levels of output from the glowstone. The moment it connects to the mechanisms inside the cart, it turns the axle that turns the wheels. The minecart was simple in design because the rails held it in ce. There were only two directions that the wheels could spin to take the cart forward or backwards. Also, there was a disengage from the power function to slow the cart and a brake system that helps to avoid idents. Rino did not set any speed limits to the carts because the mine drivers knew what they were doing. Things would be very different on the streets. Regtions must be introduced to make the streets a safe ce for cars and people. Rino wondered if the streets he nned were wide enough to amodate them. In the end, the lich decided that it was better to do a trial run with other forms of carriages. Not all carriages onnd were made to carry passengers. Those who could walk should use their feet. The carriages were used to help transport objects from one ce to another. A good route to n for would include the farms and the windmill. It was a fairly travelled path, and Rino knew that the windmill could help transport sacks of ground powder over to the cookhouse. Hence, he started observing what his townsfolks did daily. The paths that they took depended greatly on their jobs. Most of the people in his domain worked as farmers in the field, and thebourers only moved ording to their assigned project. This made for a very unreliable data collection. Sulking, Rino wondered what path would be the safest for testing if he could not predict what kind of routes his people needed. If that was the case, perhaps he should do just the opposite and pick the path that was least travelled on so that if anything went wrong, only Rino would know. That wasn''t very difficult, and Rino soon found out that the path to the barn was actually the least travelled and the ones going to the tannery. Both paths were least travelled simply because nobody liked the atmosphere there. Simply put, the smell was too strong. Sometimes Rino wondered why his people were okay with drinking milk and eating dairy products or animal products from the same location that produces biologicalpost. Quasimodo was a meticulous person who heaped the dung and urine vats far from the milking station and butter churn. However, there should still be that mental image of eating what was produced in a ce full of biological waste to deter some. Deciding that the tannery was less travelled than the path to the barn, Rino passed the message to the construction team to finish that least travelled path first so that he could test the effects of glowstone cars on stone paths. The glowstone powered carriage design should be fairly simple. Rino knew that Spudville knew how to produce wagons. Even without the initial buff of speed, the weak skeleton farmers there learned how to attach wheels to the bottom of a simple nk after seeing Rino''s example. The wagon was greatly improved to carry more potatoes and use less manpower to move it. Wheels had to be the breakthrough for transportation developments. The Spudville vigers used stone for the wheels because they were sturdier than wooden wheels and easier to reshape when they were ttened on one side. However, it was also rather heavy that made them less ideal for travelling in the swamp. Thankfully, cargo boats were a thing in Cypress County, and wheels didn''t matter there. Taking thetest wagon''s example from Spudville as a reference, Rinopared the schematic of the glowstone mine cart and started drafting. The first thing he wanted to change about the carriage was the material of the wheels. With stone paths in Town Zera making travelling a smoother experience, Rino could remove the weight of stone wheels for the carriage. At the same time, there was no need to add a pulling handle on the wagon because it would be powered by the glowstone. However, there was a need for a glowstonepartment and a driver''s seat with various controls. The controls had to be kept simple for the speed, and Rino wondered how he would create the braking system on the pavements. Unlike the wheels on a minecart that could be jammed with a brake pedal because the rails held the path of the minecart consistent, the carriage on the stone path could not do the same without skidding or toppling. Braking so suddenly was only going to cause everything inside the car to fall as well, and Rino really did not want to listen to reports of idents involving vats of spilt urine from the barn to the tannery. There were several ways to slow the speed of an object. Rino knew that gravity and friction were some ways an object would stop in its motion. Friction was used in the minecart example to slow the cart into a stop. However, Rino did not want a sudden stop in a car on the road that could throw everything inside it off. He needed it to be gradual but fast stopping. In the case of a sudden stop, Rino might need to implement levitation as a braking mechanism. Flying cars were his invention in the previous world. Simrly, Rino wondered if he could borrow that idea for this world. If cars could fly, the streets should be fairly ident-free. The only thing he had to take note of was the air traffic regtions and carriage weight limits. Both of these requirements could be easily taken care of with proper nning. Starting from scratch, Rino drew a cuboid with dimensions specifications for his intended car. It might be slightly primitive in design, but functionality was more important than aesthetics. It did not need a roof because Rino was fairly certain that rain wasn''tmon in his territory, especially with that barrier around his town. Not designing a roof made transporting bulky items easier if Rino could stack them up. However, the carriage sides were raised with foldable fences that could be locked into ce to secure the goods when travelling. They could be unhinged and lowered to act as a ramp for loading and unloading purposes. The more Rino added details to his design, the more convinced he was that the first car in his empire would be used as a recement for the spectre powered sky pnquin. Didn''t his ridiculous speed buff work in the Nightless Underpass too? Maybe he should start from there. Chapter 236 - Increasing Migrants Unsurprisingly, the first car that Rino made was a modified sky pnquin. The experiment was sessful, and Rino recruited minecart drivers who were not afraid of heights to operate the first sky car. Glowstones were mysterious objects, and Rino wondered how long the mana in there wouldst. For prevention, Rino made a secret second engine circuit in the form of runes engraved to the bottom of the car. As long as the carriage was within the range of the mana web array, it would not crash. Once a low mana output was detected, the carriage would automatically connect to the mana web array and continue its operation while sending the driver a notification in the form of a blinking light rune signalling it was time for a maintenance check. The test drive monitored by Achtnded sessfully in Noir Province and made its way back, carrying logs from the sawmill without issues. Ping! === Daily Quest #32 plete) Objective: Build a Carriage Time Limit: 10 Days Tutorial here. Reward: Mass Grave Locations im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === Rino''s quest was markedpleted three days before the intended deadline, thanks to the sessful test drive. The lich might have spent more time building the new car from scratch instead of modifying it if it wasn''t for his existing sky pnquin carriages. Fate worked in funny ways, and he was starting to see his efforts returning with interest now. He collected the reward and wondered if pilfering mass graves would increase Town Zera''s overall poption to the number he needed for that side quest. === Side Quest #23 Objective: Increase Town Zera''s Poption 3,252/10,000 Poption Reward: Harvester Information === Yes, there might be a slight increase in his poption from receiving this side quest. However, Rino thought that the poption growth was still too slow for his liking. At this rate, he might have to wait five hundred years before he could see ten thousand undead in Town Zera. Sure, he was still constructing facilities to house that many people. However, Rino refused to put the cart before the horse. What was the use of making preparations for a bustling town when he could not fill its capacity? More importantly, Rino eyed that reward. He had the intention to relocate to find some harvesters and observe them more. The dwarves studied the harvesters for years but still only knew so little. Yet, it was more than what Kragami could tell him and what Zerg''s vige could share. Everyone only saw them as bringers of death, but Rino was more curious about their targeting habits. Why only target certain species or individuals in a species? If harvesters were like locusts, they should attack anything that resembled food indiscriminately, leaving nothing behind. Yet, Zerg was a survivor in his vige, and those Rino resurrected lived less interestingly than zombies even if they learned things quickly. Speaking of that habit, Rino could not understand why only Zerg recalled everything from his previous life before he died. The other vigers did not seem to remember their previous lives or how they lived before they died. They had no idea how to do the simplest tasks, and Rino remembered Fronzo telling him how they had to teach them everything from getting dressed to using a hoe. The vigers were slow to respond initially, but after living in Spudville and following the farm manager for a while, they started to mimic the hobgoblins and learned things exceptionally fast. When Kragami taught everyone how to read and write, Zerg and his vigers were probably the fastest to grasp it. Erika was fast when Rino taught her, but ording to his secretary, her learning speed could not bepared to them. Putting that mystery aside, Rino looked at his newly imed reward. It was a map function in his system''s tab that showed him arrows pointing to the direction and the estimated distance to those mass graves. Rino liked the new navigation user menu as it was easily understood and almost instinctive to use. The gods must have put more effort into making this new function''s design, and the magician found himself looking forward to the information they could provide him about the harvesters. From above, Stephanie huffed. Since Phil and Ace took over the office''smand and small world management, their business has been booming. The number of offerings they received daily helped her brother strike better deals, and they were starting to gain their fair share of regr customers among the lower levelled gods. The recent explosion of earnings was quickly reinvested to a better office and storage space. Ace and Phil were working to increase the number of epting offerings while they left Stephanie in charge of creating the newest reward for the final daily quest for this tedious long chain quest. Their mismanagement provided her with an opportunity to show Rino what she was truly capable of. Not everyone was capable of bing the goddess of life cycles and fertility. Stephanie knew that Rino''s undead empire would face a poption crisis without her help. Unlike the living, undead creatures were incapable of reproduction through conventional means. Even if the magic trees could birth faes, Rino''s poption grew too slowly to counter the danger of extinction in the small world. From the legends of world trees, legendary creatures blessed with the power of gods could be created. Likewise, Stephanie spent a huge portion of her earned divinity to create a magic tree sapling that Phil would include in the final daily quest as a reward to help Rino increase his poption. Naturally, Ace exined that if Stephanie did well, she would be greatly rewarded in divinity with more people praying to her magic tree for her blessings of a child. Easily convinced, it was the only reason why she shells out over seventy percent of her divinity allowance to create this miraculous sapling. Rino wasted no time and summoned Mutt to scout for the mass grave locations. He wanted to increase Town Zera''s poption as soon as he could to find out more about the harvesters and braved the damaging sunlight, taking purple soul mes to his face as they left the safety of his town barrier. Mass graves were different from regr graves. ording to the exnation provided, they were graves urring due to a battle between two opposing ns. Sometimes they were humans, and other times they were monsters. Rino did not care what species they were as long as the graves were full ofplete corpses that he could summon back to this world. Corpses with fully intact skeletal structures were the best. Rino did not want to deal with mutted corpses because he needed healthybourers to fill in the manpower crunch of his town. As much as he hated to admit it, not everything in Town Zera was automated. A lot of his subordinates worked without rest to meet the deadline for his construction projects. The managers were often overworked, and there was still so much that Rino put on the back burner because of shifted priorities. The marketce and bank system needed more capable workers who were literate, and while Rino knew that most of his existing farmers were literate to certain degrees, he could not free them from their assigned tasks. It would be a different story if he had more migrants who were physically fit but unskilled for the intellectual task. Rino did not want to deprive anyone of the chance of education, but society could not function properly if everyone was a leader with no workers on the ground to oversee that operations went smoothly. Hence, Rino''s main aim was to bring back humanoid creatures, even if they were monsters. Creatures like goblins and trolls were great because they could carry bigger things. However, Kamiya''s n proved to be a little more challenging due to their smaller bodies. Rino had to find jobs suitable for their agile but weak physical builds. The first mass grave Rino arrived at was slightly disappointing. No matter how Rino tried to think of how these creatures could be useful, he found that they might be better suited to work in Cypress County instead. There was no mistaking this bone structure with traces of dried up scales stuck to decayed skin. These creatures had to be human-fish or human-snakes. Both cases sucked because Rino did not think tailed creatures fitted in with his walking theme in Town Zera. He had plenty of stone pavements but little waterway for the tailed creatures to travel by. Still, a body count would add to his poption. Bing a magician meant that Rino was automatically converted into a hoarder. If he had the space, he would never pass up on anything that proved even the slightest bit useful. It was a habit that drove his butler mad in the previous world, but Rino did not change. Like this, over sixty new migrants were introduced to his empire, but Rino let them apany Mutt in the shadowscape.. He had more mass graves to raid, and Rino refused to stop until he was convinced there were no more corpses to summon within this area. Chapter 237 - Second Class Citizens After pilfering mass graves for thest three days before his new daily quest updated, Rino saw a drastic increase in his poption. He had almost two thousand new members of his shadow society, and while thebour crunch problem was resolved, new issues arose. However, that new addition to his poption wasn''t enough toplete that side quest. On top of that, Rino wondered what gave his current townsfolk the arrogance to feel superior to the neers. Sure, the neers were very unfamiliar with the system of Town Zera. However, they must have forgotten how everything began. Rino started this town without any support. Every viger that existed here was slowly introduced to the growing territory and integrated along the way. Nobody here was a native resident, so why was there discrimination against the newer townsfolk? Ping! Like clockwork, Rino''s daily quest updated on the stroke of midnight. === Daily Quest #33 Objective: Craft a Legendary Artefact Time Limit: NA Tutorial here. Reward: Magic Tree of Fertility Sapling Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === NA? The first thing Rino''s eyes gravitated to was the numbers in the deadline. He wanted to know what kind of attitude the gods were giving him for this quest''s difficulty but was shocked to see that there was none. What did this mean? Was this the end of his journey? After securing a steady supply of offerings for their faith, did the gods not need his expertise in this world anymore? Theck of numbers in a daily quest had never happened before. Rino was starting to get used to the extremely vtile timeline for various projects, some more unreasonable than others, but he never thought that the gods would have a change of heart and provide him with a timeless deadline. One part of the magician wanted to abuse this special privilege, but another part of him knew that trust was a two way street. Initially, he did not trust the gods, and they did not treat him well. While he was not a fool to think that they were giving him better treatment because they were afraid of him, Rino appreciated the space they were giving him for creation. Presently, the more pressing issue was not thinking of a way to craft an artefact. Although Rino had never crafted an artefact in his previous life, he understood how it could be created. It wasn''t difficult, but it was tedious. Hence, the easiest way to tackle procrastination was to upy himself with less important matters now that time was on his side. He had to find a way to settle the social problems in Town Zera before introducing a new influx of poption. Based on this quest''s reward, the gods must want Rino to quickly expand his empire, and he could only think of two reasons why they needed more undead. The first reason was probably more short-term. The gods stillcked faith and needed to increase Rino''s poption because there was education to teach his vigers the concept of offering sacrifices and thanks to the gods for what they have even though Rino should really be the one they worship for what they had. The second reason was something that remained uncertain as it was only a guess. Based on the side quest''s reward, Rino had a feeling this world was heading towards certain doom. The rapid poption boom wasn''t a happy thing. Children or undead were born to participate in thest war to save it. Even if Rino wasn''t a saviour, he was shoved into the role of a king to fulfil the gods'' prophecy. There wasn''t a choice in this war''s participation. Rino had a feeling this was simply the prelude to something grander after he learned what he needed to know about Harvesters that not even the dwarves knew. Either case, that was a problem for his future self. Rino did not feel like dealing with it now. This world wasn''t his problem. He took care of the previous world already. His job should have been done, so this was just a retirement game. Studying the social interactions between the newly summoned subordinates and those summoned earlier, Rino noticed how the discrimination urred more strongly in monsters than humanoid creatures like the drows. Kamiya''s n and the trolls outrightly did not want to ept themia race. Zerg''s vigers were less hostile, but they mostly kept to themselves, not wanting to associate with the neers. The earth gnomes and drows were probably the only ones who were willing to teach the neers anything. Acht and his gang might do it too, but the shadow spectres were far too busy with other projects to assist. The divided sentiments within Town Zera did not sit right with Rino. He did not build this town only to have it destroyed on the inside. The bathhouse rights were for everyone. Yet, those who were in charge of maintaining the bathhouse denied the neers ess. Even if they allowed the neers ess, there was obvious mistreatment in the duration they were allowed to use the hot springs and the priority of their entrance. Not to mention, the cookhouse preferred to serve orders of their regrs first, even if the neers ced their orders first. This wouldn''t do. At this rate, the mistreatment will breed unhappiness that would fester into hatred. Rino could not afford to have his subordinates act divided in self-interest. The soul contract only stated that the shadow summon could not betray its master. The contract could not control how his summons interacted with each other. Feeling a new headache building up, Rino summoned all the leaders of Town Zera to investigate the mistreatment and reason for doing so. Not everyone was guilty, but Rino had to educate them collectively so that nobody would think of doing anything funny behind his back when he left. Zerg, Bink, She, Kamiya, Acht, Quasimodo and the troll chief found themselves gathered in Rino''s private cottage. The door was shut, and a soundproof barrier surrounded it, making the insides eerily silent. Rino appeared solemn, more so than they usually saw him. The lich was sitting on his wooden stool by the firece, watching the mes crackle. There was no light in the small ce, and only those with dark vision could make out his outline. Making no indication to offer them a seat, Rino waited. He thought of a way to best break the subject and make them squirm in their skin for a while. The silence and stillness started to creep into their hearts as minutes passed without Rino speaking or making any motion in the dark. She considered speaking up to ask why Rino summoned them, but the oppressing atmosphere made her hold her tongue. They must have done something poorly, or something terrible has happened, enough to make their usually carefree lord behave so grave. Apart from She, the other leaders started to reflect on their recent actions, figuring out what they did to anger their lord. Quasimodo wondered if Rino was angry when he failed to milk one goat one time, causing the goat to dribble milk all over the barn''s floor that he cleanedter. Was the waste of precious milk what made Rino angry? Kamiya wondered if any of his n members offended Rinotely. Thest time there was trouble, it involved his n members fighting with the drows over whose territory it was to patrol. Ever since his n members were assigned to do different duties, the argument between the monster rabbits and drows lessened. In fact, they were happier with the arrangement. The troll chief had no idea what he had done or not done to make Rino angry. However, Acht and Zerg had an inkling they knew what was bothering their lord. After all, Zerg had been trying with the help of his vigers to show the neers the rope. However, there were simply too many neers and too few teachers. He could barely cope with his workload on top of guiding so many clueless helpers. Acht felt guilty for not being able to do more. He was busy nning logistic runs for the courier rabbits and overseeing the new sky pnquin car''s testing while maintaining the tannery productions. The shadow spectre really tried to help as many neers as he could, but apart from giving them a town tour and exining where they could approach others for assistance and assigning them their tasks with Zerg, the spectre didn''t do much. "Do you know why I''ve gathered everyone here tonight?" Rino finally broke the silence. His voice worked like a ma, grabbing all their attention at once. The purple soul mes dancing in his empty eye sockets burned hauntingly bright, reflecting the seriousness of his tone. Almost at once, they fell to their knees and lowered their heads. Whatever they did must have been insufficient if their lord was disappointed. It was better to ask for forgiveness and question their wrongdoings after appeasing their lord''s temper. Seeing how afraid his subordinates were, Rino huffed. If they knew how to fear him, they should have learned how to serve him better. "I said before that all my summons are equal.. I treat all my children fairly the same way I treat those who have sworn their loyalty to me. Yet, why is there a difference of treatment between those who belong to me? Do you think you''re superior just because you were trusted with heavier responsibilities? Who gave you the arrogance to decide the worth of another individual when not even I have done so?" Chapter 238 - Paradigm Shift Stiffening, nobody dared to move as Rino continued to pin them with his intense presence. Slowly, the lich listed the incidents he witnessed happening in his town. The tant mistreatment of newer townsfolkpared to older townsfolk made Kamiya and the troll chief feel ashamed. Zerg and Acht did not dare speak up even though they had no part in it. She felt regretful that this happened under her watch, and Quasimodo was simply lost. What this had to do with animals in the barn, he had no idea. If anything, he got along rather well with the new assistants, who were hardworking and cheerful. By the end of his speech, Rino looked at every leader in the room and told them to get off the floor. He made his point clear, and while the bank was still not constructed, he gave these subordinates a chance to redeem themselves. "Find an appropriate job for each new talent without discrimination. Offer rewards based on ability and not familiarity. Forge a bond as part of my shadows to die for each other. Our enemy lies beyond the barrier of this town. We should not be fighting against each other. Give more than you would take and toil in the glory of the monarch''s name." The meaning was clear. Even if Rino''s orders sounded a little more towards dictatorship and brainwashing, he needed them to understand their ces in his empire. When Rino left, he wanted them to always remember what they were doing, who they belonged to and why they existed. A dog who could not obey the orders of its master wasn''t a good dog. Rino did not have uses for such disobedient animals who thought they could get ahead of themselves. If Rino could summon them easily, he could just as easily dismiss them. The threat of a greater enemy outside the safety of his town''s barrier reminded Zerg about the tragedy his vige experienced. In fact, everyone started to see the severity of the situation. Kamiya was ashamed of allowing his n members to bully the neers instead of weing them and helping them ease into the town they built. A part in the monster''s heart couldn''t fully ept Rino''s new subordinates because these people were benefiting from what everyone else built in the town. The monster rabbits remembered the days when hot springs and the Nightless Underpass did not exist. However, these neers could enjoy both these benefits without much contribution to their name. A part of him thought it was unfair. However, Rino''s speech made the killer rabbit monster shove aside allints. In such a situation when their lord was preparing to go up against such a powerful enemy, how could he dwell over such trivialities? As a leader of the espionage n, he should set aside differences and look at the bigger picture. A small short term loss was considered a great investment for the foreseeable future. "My lord, I was wrong." Rino nodded. Honestly, it wasn''t as if he could not understand what the monsters were feeling. Mutt alreadyined to him about the unfairness of the situation when they had to pamper the newbies who did not contribute to anything they did. In an organisation, Rino knew that there was an order of superiority and seniority. The ranks of nobles, the position of managers, career promotions and even ess rights of long-time employees in smaller businesses were some ways that the leaders used to control the people beneath them. Recognition was important, and nobody liked to be ignored for their efforts. However, Rino really did not give a damn about these things. He was in their position for the longest time and could understand the grievances they must be feeling. Rino never imed to be a particrly fair or responsible leader. He just needed reliable subordinates to work for him with their lives on the line as he did whatever the gods wanted for a mutually beneficial arrangement. Rino wanted to rest eternally. If he could work for that without needing the approval of gods, he would have done so a long time ago after the world exploded. However, the gods dragged him back into a different world and worked him the same way the empire did in his previous life. There was no escaping the clutches of divine beings, and Rino had to admit, there wasn''t a better option out of this tedious life. Rino could only negotiate with the gods to create a kingdom capable of managing itself even without his experience. For that to happen, he needed leaders under him to see the vision he saw. "Did you feel that it was unfair or that you were treated badly?" Rino directed the question to the troll chieftain and Kamiya. Compared to other species, the monsters had a stronger sense of territory and would feel mistreated if Rino told them to give the things that they worked for and thought belonged to them to others. Mutt''s feelings weremunicated very clearly to Rino, and it took the lich a while to exin to Mutt why this was necessary. To appease the sabre tooth wolf, Rino had to convince Mutt that he wasn''t favouring the new summons. He was simply offering them tools to better society at a quicker pace. Mutt''s position was irreceable, and that statement was all it took to win him back. Kamiya and the chief troll did not answer. Rino could tell from their expressions how they felt. Yet, he continued to ask for a reason. "It was unfair," Kamiya finally broke the silence, and She stiffened. Of all the leaders gathered, it was amon understanding that they should not speak up against their lord. Yet, the rabbit monster was challenging Rino''s ideas openly. Bink weighed his options. The earth gnomes were faes, and he shared simr feelings with the fairies that worked closely with him. As the spokesperson for the faes, he supported Kamiya''s statement. "My lord, we do not have issues following your orders. If you wish for us to hand over what we''ve worked so hard to achieve to the hands of strangers, we would dly do so without reason. However, it isn''t easy to feel happy about it when they treat what we''ve worked so hard to aplish so lightly as if they were deserving of what we did." Jealousy was universal. Rino could understand it. The case of someone else stealing the credit of another person''s research was verymon in the magicians'' tower. While he tried to prevent giarism, it was almost impossible to deter greedy schrs from stealing information from one another to prove that they were the greatest. Rino hated those kinds of people the most, but there wasn''t much he could do. The most he did back then was get nicely rid of those losers. After giving them an award of some sort for their ''contribution'', Rino sent them out of the tower. Instead, he told the magicians to retain the true talent as a lowly ''assistant researcher'' but treasured all their contributions, providing them with the resources to contribute collectively towards the great library. Initially, the victims of the giarism incidents did not understand why the tower did not serve justice even though it was very obvious what was happening. However, it was after several years that they came to understand why the tower managed matters differently. Simrly, Rino needed time to sort these matters out. They could not understand him now, but they mightter. "Do you trust me if I said that all my subordinates are receable?" The questions floored everyone. Some reacted with hurt in their eyes, while others felt betrayed. The simple-minded ones like Quasimodo blinked nkly, and Rino chuckled. Of course, that wasn''t what they were expecting to hear after they brought up their grievances, hoping that he could be their beacon of light in this darkness. "Did you think I was a kind ruler?" Rino followed up, and this time, nobody answered. The light in their eyes dimmed as they struggled to ept what they were to this cruel king. There was no happiness without the knowledge of sadness. No sweetness without the taste of bitterness. Rino wouldn''t lie to them and give them false hopes. However, he wasn''t an utterly cold-hearted bastard who would leave them to die on their own. "I am neither a fair lord nor an understanding one. However, I can say this now. Those who contributed the most to this kingdom will inherit portions of it by their contributions when I retire. All of you gathered here today, except for a few I did not summon, are forerunners for this kingdom''s territory inheritance. I do not need or want unwilling followers in my empire. Those who do not work do not get to eat. Those who work more than what they eat must be rewarded in the same way that those who eat more than they work do. Do you understand what I''m saying?" Initially, nobody moved. Rino''s words were very encrypted, and it took She several moments to understand them. Zerg was too young toprehend the message, but Kamiya gratefully bowed until his head touched the floor. "My lord! This soul, heart, mind and body are yours from the moment we answered your summoning. Till the end of time, my n and I will devote it entirely to your cause. Please give my n and me a chance to atone for doubting you!" Even though Zerg and Bink still could not understand what was going on, they followed Kamiya and bowed, urging the troll chieftain and Quasimodo to follow. With this matter settled and convinced that they could now see things his way, Rino booted them out of his private space to take a nap.. They could sort the difference in understanding among themselves. Chapter 239 - Artificial Souls After the chit-chat session with key personnel of Town Zera, the changes across his town became more significant. The neers were no longer mistreated, and general cohesion increased. The efficiency of production and quantity of offerings went up. Everything was looking great, including the new options for offerings. The gods must have decided that they were sick of eating raw produce. Hence, they added more offering options with greeted GF credit ratios. These items were also coincidentally highly sought aftermodities in Rino''s empire. Taro beer, flour, butter and cheese were some of the new options that paid the highest GF credits, but Rino decided to let his vigers determine what they wanted to offer to the gods. It was the nature of the living to be greedy. Everyone wanted the best for themselves, and Rino wondered how many would actually sacrifice their weekly limit of the good stuff for the gods who gave them nothing in return. Surprisingly, many people did this. Rino wasn''t expecting more than one person to do this, but there were quite a few. In fact, they made a pact to offer premium goods to the statues while sharing the good food with their friends. Rino knew that Quasimodo and those on the farm might offer their cheese and butter. However, he was not expected for the beer-loving earth gnomes to offer one barrel of beer every week. After further investigations, Rino heard from the grapevine that the drows and monster rabbits made a pact to give the earth gnomes half of their beer rations because they weren''t allowed to drink on duty. In return, the earth gnomes would help them offer to the statue what they did not drink for ''collective contribution''. It was a smart move, and Rino did not hate this kind of coboration. It benefitted all parties involved, including himself. Some parties benefited more than others, but it could not be considered a terrible deal when all sides were winning. He only wished that this kind of thing happened more when he was still a court magician. Greed was not necessarily bad, and rivalry did not need to be marred by toxic jealousy. It took a few weeks for things to smoothen out, and Rino did not do much about the newest daily quest received. Surprisingly, the gods were not pressuring him for progress. The deadline was still reflected as "NA", and Rino decided it was probably time to start investigating what made an artefact an artefact. Visiting the secret vault, Rino stood a good distance from the four artefacts. These weapons might be low-levelled artefacts crafted by the dwarves before they abandoned the mines, but they were powerful enough to deter Rino from messing around with them. Compared to mythical or legendary grade weapons, artefacts were considered more powerful than mana-imbued weapons made from rare materials. The one significant difference was their ability to choose their masters and influence the battle''s oue. Putting it into a different perspective, fighting with a mythical or legendary grade weapon was like adding more percentage to a warrior''s damage ability based on their skill. However, if a warrior was given an artefact, it would not simply multiply their damage ability. The warrior is also given a new set of skills in battle that do not belong to him. In other words, an artefact could act as a supporting member in a party that is wielded by its user. There were very few records about artefacts, even in Rino''s previous world. He had no idea how these artefacts were created or how they chose their masters. Some artefacts weren''t made for battle, and others were sealed away because of how many deaths they caused trying to find a worthy master. Rino read the tutorial provided by the gods. It wasn''t a very useful tutorial about artefact creations. However, it was a good information archive introducing the basics and exining what artefacts were. Rino read this in the stone te library andpared it with the dwarven tablets. After several hours of research and noteparison, Rino concluded that artefacts were indeed living objects instead of mana objects. The difference between living and mana objects was their ability to freely use the mana stored inside them. Living objects do not produce their own mana. They relied on a source that was usually the mana core of powerful creatures like dragons. From there, they develop a silver of consciousness that could affect their actions, such as casting automatic buffs on their user or even rejecting unworthy users. In simpler terms, living objects like artefacts possess a soul. It wasn''t a soul born from the condensation of mana over the years like wisps and faes. However, it wasn''t a summoned soul from the afterlife dimension either. It was a created soul using existing mana from a mana emitting source, influenced by the conditions around it. Artificial souls of living objects ''choose'' their master in a process called soul resonance. Although there was no proof of Rino''s theory in the dwarven texts or the gods'' tutorial, wavelength and resonance was a theory that Rino came up with in his previous life as the father of alchemy. Why would certain sounds cause certain reactions in animals? He could only exin that as a conditioned response using frequency. These sounds were also used to ry secret messages because only animals could hear certain sounds that humans could not. The tamers of assassin guilds were masters of this. In magic, Rino believed resonance existed in the form of mana particles. He used to believe that mana was imbued with elements that would exin why certain people could only use certain elements. However, after Noir''s enlightenment in this world, Rino knew better. Mana existed in the atmosphere and within any living creature could produce it. The elements were formed based on a person''s natural attunement or a beast''s mana core. They converted mana gathered from the environment into different elemental magic that could be used, channelled through various means. Some magicians have special attunements that manifest mana differently, giving birth to magicians with special abilities such as time control, physical buffs, bodily transformation and more. Of course, the narrow-minded people of his previous world ssified them as evil or outcasts because they did not fit into themon brackets of magic branches. They werebelled witch doctors, dark magicians, ultists and even shapeshifters. If Rino were to think about it from this angle, mana resonance was a method for the living objects to find apatible owner to siphon mana from them and replenish its depleting mana core. No two individuals had the same mana signature the same way how everyone''s fingerprint was unique. There had to be some sort ofpatibility between the user and the artefact before a contract could be formed between master and servant. It was the same reason two verypatible magicians would give birth to a more powerful magician if they had children together. Hence, to create an artefact, Rino understood that two things must happen. He needed a powerful core to forge the item with as well as a very strong will. The dwarves had intense wills, and they were probably using rare materials that emitted mana within the mines to create low-levelled artefacts. These artefacts could not bepared to the Crimson Sword forged using a master smith''s blood. The Crimson Sword was a national artefact of the blood elves that must be sealed away because of how many it killed when trying to find apatible master. The core drank blood to replenish its depleted mana source and could not be destroyed easily as it was created using mithril. Rino thought about what kind of material and purpose he wanted for the artefact he was tasked to create. Town Zera was a very important base in his empire. He had faith in the barrier he created using the mana web array. Many undead were capable ofbat, and the genesis fairies were probably stronger than the sylphs in Noir Province. What would the people in Town Zera need? Rino could not think of anything. Then, he looked at the four elemental representatives in ss casings. It made the most sense that Rino should add his artefact in the secret vault in the middle of those four low-levelled artefacts. With a spear representing air, a two-handed sword representing fire, a battleaxe representing earth and that strange baton-like weapon representing water, Rino thought it was only right to create another weapon toplete this array. These four artefacts had very strong personalities, and Rino could guess the kind of people the dwarves were when they crafted them. The oppressing atmosphere in this secret vault near the artefacts came from the shing between opposite elements. Rino did not mind creating an artefact, but he wanted something to harmonise that sh. The artefact he wanted to make must be a peacemaker or an artefact that could suppress the shing auras of the four weapons. Thinking about it for some time, Rino figured he might be better off creating an artefact with a different intention from the dwarves. All those low-levelled artefacts felt too aggressive, carrying their hatred for the harvesters within their creations. Rino did not know what they were hoping for, but he knew that he preferred peace to war. Hence, the familiar sketchpad was retrieved, and Rino started drafting ideas for a guardian artefact instead. Chapter 240 - Staff Zeraphina Deciding on the new artefact''s design was easy after Rino knew what he wanted the artefact to do. If there was a symbol of a peace-loving protector, that had to be a staff. Many things were associated with the simple wooden staff, but most of all, it was a tool used to support someone else. In old age, the staff was there to help with mobility. The staff was also used as a symbol of fashion and a statement to quell all objections by people of power. It didn''t matter if they were a vige chief or an earl, the presence of a staff brought with it power. Speaking of power, it was also a tool used by many magicians to help them channel their mana more urately and amplify the area of their spells. Staffs were usually designed with the magician specifically in mind, and Rino did not remember any staffs used as a murder weapon. In the east, the bo staff was a symbol of protectors. Monks were trained to fight with them to protect themoners seeking refuge. It was also used to defend against invasion and corruption. Monks would never kill, but they were strong and repelled pirates who came in with cannons and swords, holding the sea criminals for long enough before the reinforcement from local authorities came. Rino had a lot of respect for the staff, even if he did not use it. The staff was also a sign of discipline. Many jailers carried it around as a sign of authority andw enforcement. They marched, carrying it around and would use it to prevent crazy crowds from breaking past their human barrier whenever people of importance entered the town. In short, the staff was a very versatile creation that was worthy of overruling all the other weapons. Used in almost every industry and for many purposes, Rino could not think of a better artefact to create. In his previous world, the range of artefacts was so diverse that sometimes the artefact owners would not know it was an artefact unless a trained eye passed by. Rino witnessed a mortar and pestle passed down for generations in a family that made the best nut butter spread in the empire. It was purely by coincidence that Rino discovered that artefact. Unlike the Crimson Sword, the mortar and pestle''s requirement for an owner wasn''t too stringent. All it needed was someone passionate about making food to be a worthy owner. Rino wondered what kind of criteria he should set for the staff artefact''s owner. The creator of an artefact has the right to shape it into what it is. However, the more intense the feelings, the more difficult it bes for the artefact to find a future owner after the original creator passes on. If it was something simple like the passion for creating delicious food, Rino would be worried. After all, this artefact was meant to be the town''s guardian in his absence. It should not be easily obtained by regr people. Rino wondered how his town''s fate would be if Quasimodo was to be the artefact owner. While he did not hate the troll, Quasimodo was far too gentle to fight for everyone else. On the other hand, Rino did not want Kamiya to be left in charge of the town''s safety. Even if Kamiya and his n were loyal to Rino, the same could not be said about their views of others. From various incidents since their addition to Town Zera, Rino knew that they were more monsters than humans. Although he could trust them to fight, he could not trust them to prioritise the right things and look at the bigger picture in the heat of the moment. Zerg was a promising individual, but he was far too young and green. Kragami was brilliant, but he might not be alive when the artefact needed him. Rino went through the list of subordinates he had and realised that none of his existing summons were suitable for the task at the present moment. Perhaps a few of them might make it in a few years after some grooming, but for now, Rino could not trust any of them. He needed someone determined, wise and far-sighted to wield this staff. As the new leader of his empire, the artefact''s owner must know how to utilise everyone''s strengths and bring his army together to defeat the enemy without forgetting Rino''s philosophy. Perhaps he was asking too much. In any case, much like the stone in the sword that can only be pulled out by the true saviour of this world, Rino hoped that one of his subordinates would grow to be the hero that he could not be. Every artefact was given a name that brought it to life. Rino already knew what he wanted to name the staff. It wasn''t difficult, and this time, he had to admit the naming sense that normally failed him worked. Town Zera was definitely an inspiration, but Rino liked the name Zeraphina. It sounded very much like Seraphina, the name of the archangel who guards God''s throne. Putting the naming and design sense aside, Rino had to decide on the artificial soul. If he could reverse engineer one of the dwarves'' artefacts, he might find his answer. However, Rino had no guarantee that he would be able to put the disassembled artefact back together again. It was a risk that came with reverse engineering, so Rino decided against it for now. The stone bs in the dwarven library did not mention much about how they created their greatest masterpieces. Rino also checked through his tutorial, and nothing much about creating an artificial soul was mentioned. Maybe he had to find a powerful monster to hunt. The jungle of doom seemed like a good ce to start. Likewise, that womanticore was still alive somewhere in the living cave. If he fought seriously, he might be able to kill her. Deciding that he could try creating an artificial soul using a powerful monster''s core, Rino made arrangements to leave Town Zera for a while. "Do you still remember the hole we fell through and the living cave where the womanticore rules?" Rino asked his loyal mount. Mutt wagged his tail eagerly from within Rino''s shadow and nodded. As a monster, he had a better sense of direction than his master. Rino trusted Mutt to lead them there but more importantly, he needed to know if he was ready for battle against a boss that could decapitate him without warning. Sure, thest time that happened, he was distracted. However, he could tell how powerful the womanticore was. The only worry he had was the ecosystem of that living cave in the jungle of doom. She appeared rather important after all. If anything happened to the ecosystem underneath the jungle, would it affect those living above it? Perhaps. However, it was a risk Rino should take. Crafting an artefact took precedence. If the jungle of doom''s ecosystem went truly out of hand, he would employ the more experienced fighters to control the situation. Besides, having practical gueri warfare experience could only benefit his poption who might need to fight against Harvesters in the jungle domain where Rino first encountered them. Not very well-versed in weapons, Rino only prepared a few talismans and runes. As cowardly as it sounded, magicians never ought head-on if they could. The only exception to that rule was enhancer magicians who were weaker in magic powers but physically stronger to convert mana into physical buffs. Some people called them magic knights, but to Rino, they were still magicians. When Rino fought, he often did it solo. There was no need for tools such as a staff orbination magic to fuseplementary elements for an enhanced effect. Rino was a caster with all four elements and holy attributes. He had the aerial advantage and immacte mana control that could take out enemies faster than they could cry for their mothers. However, the same cannot be said about his capabilities in this new world as a lich. First of all, he had too many vulnerabilities. The sun was a deadly foe, and theck of elemental air magic bothered him. Rino wasn''t an expert in dark magic either, and holy magic would hurt him more than aid him. Healing depended on his mana levels that Rino was unsure would be sufficient if he fired several catastrophe-level spells. Runes and talismans were only temporary solutions for Rino to create things like a sh bomb or a quick divination spell. Rino prepared enough elemental runes to help him fly, but without the connection to his mana web array, the runes only helped him to convert pure mana into basic air maniption magic. Mutt settled into a sprint to the jungle of doom in the cover of night, and Rino wondered if it was toote to start scribbling a grimoire of his own using a spare sketchpad in his shadow sack. After a short debate with himself, Rino took out the spare sketchpad and graphite pencil.. Even if this wasn''t mana-imbued ink or blood, the magic circle patterns in the sketchpad could still be used as a medium to save him some casting time. Chapter 241 - Rematch, Womanticore! The living cave looked exactly how Rino remembered it to be. The living crystals pulsed disturbingly with various colours, and Rino decided to collect more of them this time. Mutt remained hidden in his master''s shadow but kept vignt. Ever since thest ambush attack by the boss of this living cave, he did not want a repeat. Rino was powerful and would not die even if he was decapitated. However, that did not mean he was able to fight back effectively without an attached skull. Carefully, they explored deeper, and Rino noticed how different the creatures in the cave behaved. The lower levelled monsters did not appear within Rino''s path even if he knew they were there. Most of them chose to hide and observe instead of handling the intruder. Previously, they ignored Rino and continued what they were doing. None of them bothered getting out of his way before. Drip. Drip. Drip. The water droplets dripping from the cave ceiling into puddles on the ground gave a very deceptive vibe of calmness. Rino walked slowly as he demolished crystals that he liked, asionally mining odd minerals in the walls of the cave he never saw before. The miners and smiths could investigate the rare crystals and ores when they had time. The middle level of the cave was a little more confusing than what Rino remembered. He saw the same stream from the first time he fell through that huge hole above. Coming from a different entrance confused the order of his memory about this ce, but slowly, it wasing back. The middle part of this living cave was an ever-changing one. Mutt and Rino barely escaped the fat blind cleaner worm monster the previous time as it took them by surprise. Seeing how much wider certain tunnels were now, Rino knew that other dungeon worms must be working twice as hard to make up for the murdered worm''s workload. The tracks were fresh, but the air was still. The worms were either off the clock or busy with other duties. Hence, it was a good time for RIno to travel using the widened paths instead of walking through the narrow twisting passages made by other cave dwellers. If he wasn''t trying to pick a fight with the boss of this dungeon, Rino would stick to the narrower paths because it was safer. Travelling quickly downwards the wide tunnel to reach the lower levels, Rino remembered this ce too well. That stench of carcasses and the red glowing crystal in the distance was andmark that RIno could not forget even if he wanted to. Making a turn, Rino tried to look for the cross trails in the tunnel that signified a bigger monster passing through. The worms weren''t the only ones using the wide tunnel. There should be a forked path that the womanticore would travel to and from her feeding ground. It took Rino a while to locate those tracks, even with Mutt''s help. When he found the right direction, Rino took off without looking back. The womanticore must be asleep now because there weren''t any movements from this direction. Yet, he remained on guard. This time, he would not be dazzled by the gems in herir and minerals. Whatever this living cave had would belong to him after he slew the boss. Besides, no other precious stone here couldpare to the beast core that he wanted from her. The search for the womanticore did not take long. Mutt warned Rino about the breathing sounds he hearding from the dungeon''s core, and Rino used stealth magic to conceal the sound of his footsteps. The monster boss was asleep on top of a bed of bones. She was exactly how Rino remembered her to be. Even in sleep, she was terrifying. The ghostly humanoid face looked like a peaceful maiden as she slept, even if the decaying breath with each snore made Rino wish he was somewhere else. Somehow, her lioness body looked thinner than before, and there were signs of her ribs through her skin expanding with each breath as she slept. Was she starving? Despite the number of servants and carcasses in the cave, the womanticore appear thinner than Rino remembered her to be. Wah! Wah! From a new side cave that Rino did not notice earlier, the sounds of young monsters crying echoed. Quickly hiding, the lich observed as the womanticore tiredly cracked an eye open before dragging herself to check on the cubs. Watching the womanticore feed her cubs torn shreds of fresh meat, Rino wondered if it would be alright to kill the tired mother. The father was nowhere in sight, but Rino had a feeling womanticores did not need males to create offspring. The monster could be a lion or a scorpion, but Rino knew both animals gave birth instead ofying eggs. The womanticore must have given birth to her cubs not too long ago because those cubs were as high as Rino''s knee. If they stood up, they might be as tall as Rino''s torso. Surely these monster children could fend for themselves even without the help of their mother. Watching the womanticore feed her children tiredly, Rino decided to hold off the sneak attack in her sleep. It wasn''t polite to do so. He also did not feel like murdering the mother in front of her children. However, if he passed this chance to take her down while she was weak, Rino might not be able to get the beast core as easily again. It sucked to make decisions like this, but Rino steeled his heart. This was about survival. If anything, these children would ensure that the living cave''s ecosystem remained intact even after the womanticore''s death. That much he could guarantee. Hence, Rino waited until the womanticore finished feeding her cubs and putting them to sleep. The tired monster was about to return to her bed of corpses piled in herir when she sensed an intruder. Almost at once, all signs of fatigue vanished, and she growled fiercely. A mother''s protective instinct should not be underestimated, and Rino was d he did not hold back on the runes or talisman traps. The moment she set her paw into the main chamber full of gems, Rino triggered the first set of traps, including a sh bomb and some barriers to prevent her from retreating to herir. In a way, Rino wished to secure the safety of the womanticore cubs as they battled. In this rematch, Rino had the upper hand. The womanticore was caught by surprise when she was immobilised by ice crystals trapping all four paws. However, she was not going to let Rino attack her while she tried to break free. Just when Rino thought he had her where he wanted enough tounch a stealthy shadow cutter spell aimed at her neck, The womanticore roared and unleashed a huge mana shockwave, sting everything in the area around her away with its tremendous force. Thrown back by the force but cushioned by Mutt, who jumped out of his master''s shadow just in time, Rino quickly dodged that scorpion tail aimed for his head. The wall behind him corroded with a sizzle as poison sshed on it. Mutt howled and lunged at the womanticore with his ws extended, snarling. Rino took the opportunity that Mutt created for him and quickly summoned earth walls to trap the monster in. The earth spikes that followed the nimble womanticore nevernded any hits, but that was alright. Rino needed her to dodge them with her instincts and fall into the next trap he prepared. No, he did not prepare any explosives. However, Rino might have borrowed the theory of gravitational maniption from the magical furnace to end the unsuspecting monster. The womanticore was far more powerful than a mere sabre tooth wolf. Even weakened, Mutt was quickly outmatched when she mmed him into a wall with a swipe of her paw. The barbed scorpion tail nailed Mutt right in the chest before he could escape. Despite the pain, Mutt did not beg for help. Instead, he held onto the womanticore with his jaws, not letting her break free of him. Rino thanked Mutt for the sacrifice as the loyal hound struggled to regenerate physically. The shadows and purple mes danced around the horrible looking wound, but the womanticore was retrained. Aiming the tracing spell at the womanticore, Rino activated his next trap and unsummoned Mutt back into his shadow. The lich quickly hid behind a rock pir and held onto it tightly while he watched the gravity sphere drag everything nearby into its centre like a ck hole. The womanticore screeched and struggled fiercely. Even with all her powerful muscles, Rino''s magic won out eventually. Exhausted but unwilling to give up, the boss of this living cave called for reinforcements with a yowl. Unfortunately for her, thest attempt to save herself was met with unusual silence. Even as the womanticore fell into Rino''s gravity spell, she could not understand why nobody obeyed her calling. Rino cancelled the spell quickly and waited for the womanticore to perish in his shadow realm while checking on Mutt''s injuries. The sound cancelling barrier was removed, and Rino copsed to the ground, too shaken from the rematch. The victory felt empty, but there was not much he could do. In the game of life, someone had to win, and someone had to lose. "Come on," he told Mutt.. "Let''s go home." Chapter 242 - Yin-Yang Soul Stones When Rino returned, something strange happened in his shadow realm. The womanticore he killed earlier dropped a beast core, but when he put that in his shadow sack together with the living crystals and other misceneous objects, they started to attract each other. Rino was too busy trying to avoid the deadly sun rays on his way back, and by the time he noticed what was happening in his shadow sack, it was toote to stop the crystals from merging with the beast core. Dismayed but also intrigued by the new fusion reaction, Rino wondered what they were doing. Over the next few days, Rino searched for the best wood to carve Staff Zeraphina with. Gold and silver ornaments were created to Rino''s design by the most skilful pair of tendrils. Ubel was thrilled to work with precious metals and gemstones that Rino gathered for him. The wraith king made a majestic staff, and the only thing missing from it was the ce where the beast core was supposed to fit. The womanticore''s core started to merge with the magic crystals, some gems and glowstone. The power that the monster core absorbed from these stones grew stronger, and Rino personally sourced specific gems to feed it while keeping an eye on the changes. The beast core was originally a sick greenish colour that wasn''t very vibrant. However, over the next few days, it transformed from a sick green shade to a beautiful rich emerald shade. The glowstones that Rino added in his shadow sack were quickly consumed, and the more glowstones the core assimted with, the more mana it emitted. Yet, the core showed no signs of awakening as an artificial soul. Something was still missing, and Rino did not know what it was. Maybe cultivating an artificial soul was different from forging one. Rino heard about an ancient eastern art in his previous world known as nascent soul cultivation. However, those techniques were considered forbidden in his empire. They were rted to dark arts, and Rino did not research much into that. He regretted widening his horizons and learning from other civilisations. The soul cultivation techniques that he heard of from frequent envoys sounded useful in creating an artificial soul. Instead of believing in gods, the eastern continent believed in something called karma. They had no gods who would pass judgement in the afterlife. Instead, they believed in the cycle of life known as reincarnation based on the choices made in their current life. The fight between good and evil told by the church in the empire was portrayed differently as a philosophy in the east. The angels and devils did not fight with each other in the eternal war of good versus evil. Instead, good and evil both reside within a human when they were created. The concept of yin-yang to bnce each other out was very simr to the concept of harmonic elements and dissonant elements. When there was light, there would be darkness. If there was water, there must be fire. It was the reason why magicians who wield dual elements usually had harmonising elements instead of shing ones. Those who were gifted with shing elements usually favoured one over another. If both elemental attunements were equally strong, a variant magician with unique powers would be born. The gemstones that the womanticore''s core consumed and merged with were all considered harmonic in nature. Rino did not know what kind of mana core the monster he defeated had. However, it preferred air elemental gems to water and earth. Quartz and sodalite disappeared fairly quickly as the monster core merged with them quickly. Slowly but surely, the green beast core transformed into something closer to white. The mana energy within it also started to change patterns. Rino detected a breath of mana flow within the monster core and felt excited. Perhaps this was the start of an artificial''s soul awakening. The next few days passed with Rino meditating most of the time, trying to guide the monster core''s irregr flow of mana using the help of the ck stones that absorbed mana. He called them darkstones, which were the opposite of glowstones, limiting the monster core from amassing too much mana from the consumed gems and living crystals. The character of this beast core started to take form, and while it wasn''t an artificial soul yet, Rino could sense the change. It became more obedient to the change in its environment within the shadow sack that Rino manipted. When Rino deemed that it was not at risk of exploding the moment the core left his shadow sack, he locked himself in the study to see if he could create mana pathways within the core. Core attunement and chakra attunement were very simr. In the eastern cultivation arts, a human could attune their meridians in their bodies and control it with their minds to achieve unique abilities that superseded what ordinary people could do. They could use energy consumed to create heat that would cover their body like an aura to burn enemies, smash rocks like tofu by focussing energy into a palm strike or even walk on water by channelling a condensedyer of energy at the sole of their feet just above the water''s surface. There were many miracles that could be created just by training the body meridians, and the mind. However, true masters went beyond and touched a subject that Rino was more familiar with. The spiritualwork, also known as chakra, was where mana was gathered in the body and transferred to a medium as a spell. Normally, a person''s chakra is sealed and blocked because that was how it was for humans. However, in the case of the more gifted humans, they were born with the ability to receive mana from their surroundings, making them good magicians. Depending on which chakra channel they had unsealed, the magician could only use magic limited to that chakrawork. Rino was someone with six out of seven chakra points unsealed. He had no idea how it happened, but it was not something that happened overnight. A chakra point that was sealed tightly shut could not be tampered with. However, a loose chakra seal could be pried open by attunements from a master. Rino''s master in the magicians'' tower pried four more chakra seals loose over the years, and he was a living legend when he learned what having six out of seven points open meant. Yet, nobody ever fully understood what would happen if all seven chakra points were unsealed. Some said that a human could reach godhood if that happened. The eastern continent trained both the body and mind to achieve a strangebination of meridian martial arts and chakra soul arts to frightening degrees. Rino did not know what they did, but not many who forcefully sought progress lived past the age of forty. Yet, the masters who seeded lived for over three centuries without any signs of physical deterioration. For this beast core, Rino wanted to try attuning the chakra flow using the concept of the eastern continent. Creating a chakra path in a mana core was something nobody ever attempted before. However, Rino had a feeling it was not impossible. Artificial cores could be created by intense concentration due to the continuous exposure of an energy flow on the mana storing object. Rino did not have that kind of mental stamina to forge a will in an object. Hence, he could only do it the other way and cheat with the glowstone and darkstones. Attunement for magicians was a strange thing. The teacher or attunement master would force their flow of mana into the student''s body. At times, this process could take many days and feel painful. The teacher''s mana would probe at different chakra points in a student''s body and shake the seal loose by pumping mana through the chakra circuits. The student receiving attunement must not fight against the invasion, or the bacsh could harm both master and student. For that reason, attunements are not done unless a magician apprentice has undergone tampering training for the mind and body. If there was something Rino was good at, it was his immacte control over mana. It was also why many people preferred him over other senior attunement masters in the tower. His attunements were precise, short and effective with the least amount of difort. Carving chakra paths using glowstones and darkstones should be simple. For nearly a week, Rino persevered in his chakra creation operation. The monster beast core initially rebelled against Rino, but the lich did not allow it to misbehave, removing the mana it stored up with the darkstone whenever itshed out at Rino. Then, when the core was depleted and close to exhaustion, he would pump it with mana through a controlled path, slowly making the core familiar with the flow of mana within. Two long months passed just like this, and Rino had no idea what season it was when he re-emerged from his study, holding the artificial soul in one hand. It was finally time to put everything together and im his long daily quest''s reward. Chapter 243 - Tree Of Fertility cing the womanticore''s transformed core into the hollow space of Staff Zeraphina, the weapon finally came to life. Zing! As the new artefact awakened, Rino realised that Staff Zeraphina was on a different level from the four low-levelled artefacts crafted by the dwarves. Commanding the other weapons in the secret vault with its aura, Staff Zeraphina expanded its area of influence all over Town Zera like a gentle spring breeze. The harmonising effect of an artificial soul born from a yin-yang philosophy was amazing. Rino could hardly believe what he was seeing. Staff Zeraphinayzily on its resting rack, reminding Rino of its resemnce to himself. With this, the daily quest with no deadline was finallypleted. Ping! === Daily Quest #33 Objective: Craft a Legendary Artefact Time Limit: NA Tutorial here. Reward: Magic Tree of Fertility Sapling im your reward here. Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefullypleted. === iming the magic tree sapling, Rino wondered how long it would take for the gods to assign him the next daily quest. In the meantime, it was a good opportunity to encourage rtionships in his empire. Wasting no time, Rino chose a spot to nt the magic tree of fertility. He wanted more couples to make carelessmitments and produce babies. The tree of fertility was not choosy about who the parents were. In fact, as Rino read what it could do with his appraisal skill, he was rendered speechless. Did the gods support monogamy or polygamy? Why could the same couple create children with other partners as long as there was consent andmitment to the child''s creation? Apart from taking portions of the parent''s mana as a price for child creation, the tree of fertility did not care if the parent was one person wishing for a child or twenty people wishing for one child. It would produce children ording to a sample of the wisher''s DNA after receiving payment. In other words, children with three parents or only one single parent could be born. Children between the crossbreed of impossible races were now possible. Deezer and She immediately came to mind, and Rino felt a little happy at the oue. The unlikely couple may now procreate without having to figure out how to tango within the sheets for it to happen. Nonpatibility cases between races became a needless concern with this new magic tree that answers any calling for a fair price. Rino had no idea how many of his vigers were keen on baby-making without the actual act of baby-making. However, he wanted to put a foot down and create rules. Babymakers must be responsible for the babies they produce. He did not want his town to be overrun by uncared brats with a knack for destruction. In any empire, it would be impossible to prevent orphans. As an orphan himself, Rino understood the hardships and never wished it on anyone else. Parents would die from circumstances, and children would be left alone in the world. Fate normally yed a huge part for orphans. However, nobody should ever be an orphan in the empire of undead and magical creatures who were close to immortals. Sure, the way the babies were made could be a little strange. Rino did not want to kink shame anyone or think about how uncles could be making babies with their nephews or siblings deciding to make a younger sibling together a few generationster. It was hical, but they were dead. Why would things like this apply to his city? Hence, the only rule Rino wanted to include was that a child born from the tree of fertility must have a registered caretaker responsible for their upbringing and actions. He wanted to rapidly increase his poption to the required number stipted by the gods in his side quest but judging from how he only had half the current poption required to meet the target, Rino did not have the resources needed to support five thousand new babies all at once. Sighing heavily, Rino had a feeling this could be a very long project. Children took fifteen years to reach maturity, and even if Rino expanded his production and amodations to support the new generation, these things would take time. Every five years, a new batch of children could be created to space things out a little more and lighten the load from existing parents. From above, Stephanie could not help butugh when she heard Rino''s troubled thoughts. Why did the lich think that the magic tree of fertility would give birth to wailing infants that needed to wean from their mother''s breast for a year before they could learn to walk and talk? She might have forgotten to introduce the special features of the unique magic tree, but honestly, it was more fun to let Rino figure it out himself. Stephanie spent a lot of her divinity budget on this stupid sapling, so the lich should be grateful that she was taking care of all his domestic worries. Phil and Ace were still busy working on the next phase of the kingdom building project, and they did not expect Rino toplete the artefact so soon. In all honesty, nobody thought that Rino could create an artificial soul using the method he employed. Ordinarily, an artificial soul could take years to cultivate. The tree of fertility was only something to help Rino increase his poption quickly by the time a few years passed. In fact, the tree of fertility wasn''t meant for Town Zera''s project. It was for the upleted project that Ace and Phil were still arguing about. Ark stopped by and wondered why his sister was giggling madly. She used to hate watching duties and never got along with Rino. Yet, he could not understand her gradual shift in opinions and behaviour about the mortal subject. True, Rino might be brilliant and more capable than Ark thought he would be. However, no matter how strong a pawn was, they were only pieces on the chessboard in the game of gods. A pawn that would not obey instructions was a hindrance to his grand n. That much never changed in Ark''s eyes, even if the results Phil and Ace produced after taking over the small world management improved. Taking a break from his work, Ark sat beside Stephanie to observe what Rino was doing. The lich found a spot in the grazing field that his barn animals rarely used because they were very pampered with many assistants bringing them food. Sometimes he thought that these animals were treated better than royalty. It was envious to think about it, but that wasn''t why he was here. The sapling was tossed onto the grazing field, and Rino wondered how long it would take to be a tree. Maybe he should be watering it instead of standing around. Rino turned his back and was about to leave when he felt the ground beneath him shake. The structure of his barn waspromised as it swayed dangerously, frightening the workers and animals inside. By the time Rino turned around, the sapling was already sprouting towards the sky with more leaves and more branches as it broke through the soil, digging its roots deeply into the field. The destruction of peaceful scenery was thest thing on Rino''s mind. Instead, he was more worried about the seemingly never-ending growth spurt of this magic tree. If it continued to grow at the rming rate it was doing, Rino would run out of overhead space to contain it. The barrier would be breached, and consequences would be unthinkable. Thankfully, the Tree of Fertility stopped growing the moment it reached the windmill''s height. Rino heaved a sigh of relief just as more townsfolk ran to the site ofmotion, dropping whatever they were doing. Kamiya''s n arrived the fastest and were fully armed with weapons while the farmers nearby came with their mattocks and fierce expressions. She and the earth gnomes were the next to arrive, even if they were working in the mines quite a distance away. The field quickly became crowded, and Rino reassured them that it was not an enemy attack. Many curious folks stared at the newrge tree in the middle of the animal grazing pen. Where did such arge treee from? Seeing that almost all of his town was gathered here, Rino decided it was an excellent opportunity to make his announcement. Although he did not n the revtion this way, Rino decided that there was no point in dying the news when he could let them know now and be on his way. After all, he had a feeling several couples could not wait to make babies. "Everyone settle down! I have an announcement to make." In five short seconds, themotion died, and everyone trained their eyes on Rino, who amplified his volume so that even those at the edge of his town could hear the important announcement. "This is the Tree of Fertility gifted by the gods for dutifully providing them with the offerings they needed. For a limited time, the tree will remain in Town Zera, and anyone who wishes for children could pray to it for a child. The only condition I have is that every child born from this tree will be raised responsibly with love." The announcement caused a huge wave of excitement, and Rino thought it was a good time to disappear before some of his subordinates had funny ideas to ask him to be a co-parent. With his job done for the day, Rino retreated to the safety of his study for a well-deserved nap. Chapter 244 - Marriage Nightmares "Good evening, Lord Rachel. You look as dashing as we remembered you at yourst public appearance. This is my daughter, Kristabelle. She''s not very familiar with social parties, so we thought perhaps we could get her acquainted with more familiar faces." Rino forced a smile. Ah, yes. He was forced to attend the social parties once every three months as part of his agreement with his butler. The nobles were very bored and usually threw a huge g every quarter to celebrate the end of each season. It was usually hosted by more influential nobles like Earls and up. The daughter of this esteemed noble was from the Lance house, an Earl''s daughter. Rino tried not to roll his eyes at what Countess Lance was trying to do. He was not a stranger to marriage proposals from houses offering their daughters to a talented magician like him to utilise the power of the magicians'' tower for themselves. Their tricks were too tasteless, and Rino was well-versed in the art of turning downdies. Kristabelle Lance was a charming youngdy of sixteen, and Rino was well into histe twenties. Nobody seemed fazed by the huge age gap between them as Rino exercised his rare gentlemanly etiquette to offer an arm to escort the youngdy. As they left to a more private side of this party, Rino wondered what he should do to disgust this youngdy. Kristabelle was the envy of many other young unmarrieddies at the g hosted by Earl Lance. Rino was known to never behave appropriately, and nobody could tame him, not even the royal family. Despite his low rank, the baron was a strange man who acted out of line, even during court. He did not respect hierarchy and avoided interaction with others like a gue. If not for the most capable retired royal butler who raised the current king who offered to manage Baron Rachel''s household, the entric court magician''s household might have fallen to ruins by now. When the king first decided to award amoner with a noble title, there were many objections from the noble families. While it was unheard of for wealthymoners to buy a title, nobody has ever been awarded the title of a baron. Even if it was low, it was still something that came with the importance of deciding the empire''s future politically. Sure, it was merely something convenient to assign the court magician for his services. Everyone knew that Rino would rather be holed up in his tower than entertaining the kingdom''s affairs. However, after realising that there were only certain things this genius could do, the king brought up the topic of awarding Rino an official title as a form of shackles to his duties for the empire. Rino initially refused, but when the magicians'' tower became a topic of discussion that the empire wished to ''im'', Rino stepped in and epted his new role. The rest was history, and the empire worked him like the dog they saw him as. If it wasn''t for his influence over the magicians, these nobles would not look his way. Forgetting all the proper mannerisms of the upper ss the moment he escaped that stuffy atmosphere, Rino shook Lady Lance off and slouched. Instead of grabbing a te and tongs, he walked over to the nearest tray of food and started using his hands to pick the cakes off the tray. Shocked by his rude behaviour at the g, the countess'' daughter gaped. Rino deliberately licked the chocte off his fingers and offered her a cake he swiped from the tray with his hand. "Want some? It''s good." If it were the orphaned helpers in his magic tower, they would have knelt gratefully and epted the sweet treat with big smiles. However, for pesky nobles like thisdy, it should be enough to offend them. He was nice enough to not offer her cake with the hand that he licked, but Kristabelle wouldn''t notice. As expected, thedy left to return to her mother, looking pale and a little sick at his manners. Formoners, this was not a big deal. For nobles, it was like the greatest insult ever. Rino hoped that she would be thest person to approach him tonight. Up above, Stephanie and Ace watched as Rino polished an entire tray of desserts alone in his dream. It was the first time the gods interfered with a dream, and they were curious to find out what kind ofdy or man Rino fancied. The tree of fertility could produce an heir to Rino''s empire. It was not surprising that Rino''s final request would be exactly what Ace predicted. Eternal rest wasn''t difficult to grant. However, Rino was much too useful to justy to rest in the void after his job was finished. If possible, they wished that someone like him could continue serving the cycle of life. "I can''t believe he turned her down. I made her perfect for any man!" Ace smirked as Stephanie fumed. This wasn''t the first creation, but the dream kept repeating in a simr fashion. It didn''t matter what Rino was doing or where he was. In the sixteen hours of sleep Rino redeemed from the sleep wallet, Stephanie kept trying to create an ideal partner to test his reactions. However, all her attempts ended up in failure. "I told you. This man only lives for coffee, books and cats. The females and males you sent his way aren''t even in his vision." Unwilling to admit defeat, Stephanie recreated a dream and introduced a new marriage candidate she bet Rino would like. The innocent type did not work, the sexy kind failed, and the unattainable kind was rejected. Ace was right when he suggested adding more to a person''s traits than their appearance. For the ideal types of lovers a man could want, Stephanie only seeded in having Rino nce their way once out of duty and not curiosity. When Stephanie modified these types to Ace''s personality traits of a curious mind, a non-conformist and a cat-lover, Rino started to pay a little more attention to them, but he showed no more interest in them in the romantic aspect. Even with all those good opportunities for romantic developments, Rino shot them down cleanly and walked away as if he was allergic to such scenes. It baffled Stephanie so much that she added men, children and older partners to see if Rino was truly not capable of romance or simply had weird interests. To her horror, Rino was simply unreceptive to anything rting to romance. That man might be able to form emotional bonds with others, but he could not create any sort of chemistry in a sexual manner. "Is he impotent?!" Stephanie shrieked and pulled at her hair. Even if Rino was impotent, he should be able to sire children if he had the slightest desire in procreation. Yet, the only thing Rino wanted to procreate was alchemy. Oh, Rino also supported an army of cats in his fantasies when Stephanie allowed him to create something from his deepest desire which confused her a lot. Ace refrained frommenting. He never came across a mortal with no desire for lust. As gods, many of them still continued to live in debauchery because it was probably the only entertainment they had. Ark had many flings, and Stephanie enjoyed ying with her suitors. Phil had a fair number of names in his past, and Ace was known as an oddball for not taking an interest in those games. If anything, Rino and Ace shared amon interest in discovering new concepts and experimenting with how they could make the impossible possible. They sought intellectual stimtion more than physical ones, and while Stephanie could not understand this, Ace could. For Rino, the sixteen hours of sleep that he thought he woulde to enjoy passed painfully. Each time he was thrown into a familiar and nostalgic setting, something unpleasant would happen, killing the joy he could have experienced. If he was back at the magicians'' tower, he would be interrupted by a new magician apprentice asking for advice on a subject during his lecture. Then, she would proceed to put her hands on him and undress, burning his eyes with her indecency. Why could nobody appreciate books the way they were meant to be appreciated?! Rino did not understand. If he was brought back to a ce that he enjoyed very much during one of his travels, the peace would be interrupted by a cry of help. As a kind-natured person who wouldn''t leave innocent people in the lurch, Rino would rush to offer assistance, only to be repaid by crappy third-rated erotica of having a maiden pay it back with her body. Something was terribly wrong and by the time sleep wore off, Rino felt more tired than he did before he slept. It must be the doings of the gods. There was no other exnation. Even if it wasn''t, that tree of fertility must be the cause. Rino wondered if there was a way he could get rid of it permanently after his poption reached the amount stated in his side quest. Chapter 245 - Baby Boom In his sixteen hours of sleep, Rino did not imagine that three hundred fledglings would be born. Then again, with a poption of five thousand, he should have expected it. Rino took a walk around Town Zera to find the couples involved in his baby boom. However, wherever he walked, it was strange. The trolls who have always wanted to repopte their tribe managed to do so but the future generation was not looking very much like trolls. If anything, they looked closer to giants. In fact, they were not the only tribe with confusing offspring. The drows who wished for children had beautiful dark druids instead of dark elves. Maybe it was the crossbreeding between She and Deezer, but it was a happy asion. The difference in species did not deter families from bing happy. In fact, there were many changes within the town. Instead of the usual wood and stone colours, Rino could see from here that the windmill and barn were painted bright red. He did not know what kind of dye that was from, but the colour stood out cheerfully. Those were not the only buildings that received a makeover. The living quarters were now adorned with more flowers and sshed with blue and yellow paint to liven the atmosphere. Due to the sudden increase in poption, construction for more living spaces hastened as more people volunteered after their shifts toplete the area. Yet, Rino had a feeling the tiny living district would not be able to house ten thousand people. If three hundred babies were born in just sixteen hours, Rino had to deal with a poption boom in the next two weeks at a steadily inclining rate as the word spread. Children helped to bring joy to themunity in Town Zera, and even the newly integrated citizens started to have families, sharing the experience of raising children. The one thing Rino could not understand was the speed of growth in these children. Some of them were born only for a few hours, but already, they were learning to fly and walk. Rino also swore that the baby giant he passed by just several minutes ago on his rounds grew bigger in just a few minutes, even if the change was little. "What''s going on?" he asked Zerg, who was busy issuing instructions for the construction team and volunteers. "My lord! You''re finally here. Everyone who wanted a child prayed to the tree of fertility, and we did not know who would be getting their wishes granted first when the tree started to grow fruits." Taking Zerg back to his humble stone cottage in front of the Genesis tree, Rino asked for details. Unsurprisingly, the gods were not very creative. The genesis tree was able to birth new fairies using fruits that were created by mana. The tree of fertility did something simr. However, the only difference was in the size of the fruit and the incubation period. "The tree is still growing fruits as we speak, and some might take longer than others." Curious about how the species got mixed up and how the parents knew whose child it was, Rino asked for more details. Zerg frowned. "The parents imed to hear the voice of their child calling out for them before they were born. The rightful parents who wished for a child together would hear the same child''s voice resonating in their head. I don''t know how that works, but this was confirmed by all the parents who received their children. As for the species¡­" Rino nodded in understanding. There was no telling what the species would be. Everything was decided by the tree of fertility. Unlike the Cypress Ghost Tree and World Tree that continued to grow bigger with Rino''s power, the Tree of Fertility remained the same size. It didn''t matter if four hundred fruits were growing on its branches at any one time or if a particr fruit looked heavy enough to snap the branches off. The Tree of Fertility remained dainty inparison to Rino''s other magic trees. "Do you know how many more babies are waiting to be born?" Zerg did a rough estimate, and Rino did not like what he heard. On the bright side, the target of reaching a poption of ten thousand in no time at all. As much as Rino wanted to remove the Tree of Fertility to prevent too many babies at once, the news had already travelled to Noir Province. He couldn''t deprive the others of a chance to start a family now. From Zerg''s report, Fowler and Erika were very enthusiastic when they heard about the possibilities. However, due to the overwhelming response, they had to wait for a week beforeing over with the first batch of eager vigers from Spudville and Cypress County. "Did my teacher say he was going to pray for a child too?" Rino asked out of curiosity. Zerg raised a brow. "No. He said that having you, me, and Rina are enough to deal with. He didn''t want to deal with another- ahem! Another brat." Laughing at Zerg''s candid reply, Rino pardoned him. He guessed as much but wished that Kragami could have prayed to the tree so that he could find out if the supposed human offspring would turn into something else. Rino took a look at the current town''s map and decided that they needed to expand. The currentnd in Town Zera would not be able to host ten thousand people. He had two ces to expand outwards. Going to the meadows would give them a more t area, but going into the rocky mountains could serve more secrecy. When asked, Zerg considered it for a while and asked if it was possible to go both ways. "Thend towards the meadow could be used to farm more crops. As it is, I don''t think the children would be able to afford the proper meals required. Our harvest may be quick, but the children grow up quicker. The farmers are already working overtime, but there is a limit to how much they can produce. As for living space, I think going towards the mountains or using the abandoned mines can work. We do not have enough hands to work on both projects simultaneously." Rino agreed with Zerg and praised the lesser vampire, patting him on the head. He had only been with Rina and Kragami for a few lessons, but already, he was on par with the goblin chief and She when it came to foresight. "I will leave the field expansion project to you while I oversee fixing up amodations in the abandoned mines for the growing poption," Rino informed Zerg, who beamed at the new task. Deciding to take onest look at the newly born children in his town, Rino wondered why the gods created so many different species that did not originate from the original parents. Was this a repoption project to fight against the rapid extinction elsewhere? Also, there was something strange about the growth rate of these children. Rino could have sworn they were only a quarter of their troll parent''s size when he first saw the giant child. After discussing with Zerg, the same child was now at least half as tall as his troll parents. Rino walked over and asked the couple about the remarkable speed of growth. "Is thismon for trolls?" Shaking their heads, the trolls exined that the growth of children blessed by the tree of fertility grew at an unnaturally fast pace. The giant child was already walking and eating solid food. The more he ate, the faster he grew. The trolls estimated that these children might be able to help out with farm work by the end of the week. The cycle of rice in Town Zera was two weeks. Rice could be grown from grains to stalks, ready for harvesting in two weeks under the most optimum conditions, including constant mana imbued water and regr fertiliser. These children were simr. If the trolls were right, they could seepetent individuals fit for working in his town in the next two weeks to cope with thebour shortage. Was this a case of recurring profit from nothing? Rino had no idea what it was, but he was reminded of how a potato grew from a potato. If he had even just one potato, he could have a whole field of it if he multiplied it correctly. The only difference was how this method of increasing manpower did not directlye into his control. Undead parents were giving birth to new living species of other creatures from the blessing of this magic tree. The manpower issue might be resolved, but now, these new children were at risk of getting targeted by harvesters because they needed food to live, unlike their undead parents. Feeling troubled, Rino left and headed for the abandoned mines. Zerg was settling the food shortage issue, so Rino should do his part and create an underground town in the mines to act as a safety bunker if harvesters break through his barrier. At the very least, the children would be safe in the dwarven defence. Dragging new extensions from the mana web array, Rino expanded the barrier''s protection radius all the way to the end of the mountain range where the abandoned mine was located. He checked his mana reserves and sighed. At this rate, it might be months before he could leave this area. Chapter 246 - This Means War Three long monthster, Rino wondered how they survived so many babies. By now, Town Zera was looking every bit like a town with all sorts of people. The generation gap wasn''t an issue, and anyone could request children from the gods. The border between dead and alive was erased as his people learned to co-exist. To be honest, Rino was simply toozy to offer those children soul contracts. Only those who were willing could opt for it. He wasn''t going to implement it on every new fruit created by the tree of fertility. It was much too troublesome. Besides, he trusted Zerg to be able to manage it. The lesser vampire evolved into the first true blood vampire in his shadow army. It made Rino proud and a little concerned because true blood vampires had more weaknesses than lesser vampires. Zerg could absolutely not go under the sun anymore, even with protection charms and magic enchantments on his clothes. It weakened him too much, and Rino felt slightly sorry for the tanned vampire. However, everything that he built for thest few months came to fruition at this very moment when Rino never thought he would hear this familiar sound notification in his head again. Ping! For as far as his eyes could see, all the mountains and fields in the area belonged to him. Rino extended the barrier and borders of Town Zera so much that it would require two days on a car to reach from one point to the other, even with the speed buff. === Side Quest #23 plete) Objective: Increase Town Zera''s Poption 10,923/10,000 Poption Reward: Harvester Information im your reward here. === This was it. However, Rino refrained from iming it even though every bone in his body was screaming at him to do so. The curiosity about this world and the creatures known as Harvesters that everyone feared was just one click away. Yet, Rino held back. He wanted to resolve everything before he made his decision. Those from Noir Province already made their prayers, and those who wanted to have children now had children. There were no more couples who desperately wanted children now with the drastic increase in his poption. The children did grow up at an exceptionally fast rate, and none of them was undead. Rino wasn''t a fool. The gods gave him this because they wanted to use blessing as an excuse to repopte the extinct creatures in this world. Rino was sure that most of whatever came from the tree of fertility were new species of extinct species that could not be brought back no matter what the people of this world did. That meant Rino wasn''t going to only build a kingdom for the undead. His ns must start including the unborn living and endangered species toe. The war between him and the harvesters suddenly becameplicated. Death would happen if the living were involved. His barrier remained strong but only around the marked territories of his town. The area outside of the town was a danger zone to many other species. Thinking about it this way, Rino''s job wasn''t only to protect those living within his town. The species in the jungle of doom could be targets of the Harvesters again, and like Zerg''s vige, once they were wiped out, there was no more hope. Rino needed to grow a potato from a potato. Even if it was just one, he needed to preserve the species whenever possible so that the world would not sumb to an unfortunate end. Gathering his trusted leaders, Rino took a look at them and wondered who would eventually wield Staff Zeraphina to lead the shadow army on his behalf. "I''ve gathered everyone today to bid farewell for a while. Just like how I had to leave Noir Province to build Town Zera from nothing, I will do the same to create a fortress for a waring up." Unsurprised by his announcements, the leaders merely assured Rino that all would be taken care of. Zerg was given the official title of a Baron, while the other members were given their official titles. Rino knew he should have done this earlier, but he was too busy procrastinating to do them earlier. They just had too many babies to handle and too many logistic matters that needed his attention. She was promoted to the Mines manager. Deezer and Bink were promoted to the left and right engineers. Deezer was in charge of the town''s creation and matters rted to the magic web array, while Bink remained in the mines, creating things useful for the new generation of Town Zera who do not have magic. Kamiya humbly epted his position as the special ops captain while overseeing certain defence and courier arrangements. Quasimodo remained as the farm manager even though Rino also assigned him the task of mill master and basically anything rted to food production. He worked closely with Jenna, ady in charge of the cookhouse and Kamiya''s subordinate, the store manager. Acht was still the shadow spectres'' leader, but he had a more official title as the baron''s secretary in Town Zera. The capable shadow spectre assisted from, well, the shadows. Giving his subordinates official positions used some of Rino''s mana, and he dismissed them quickly, giving an excuse that he had to pack for his solo journey. Truth be told, there was nothing he needed to pack. He simply wanted some privacy to check on the new reward. Thanking Rino and leaving, the lich watched as his capable minions shut the door behind them. Truly along now with no reason to dy further, Rino imed the reward. Beep! A visual image of the harvesters greeted Rino on a new screen, and Rino confirmed his doubts. The harvesters were indeed those weird-looking jellyfish floating in the air in the jungle of doom. === Harvesters: Appearance: Blue jelly-like creatures that travel in big groups. Diet: Knowledge and experience. Loves attaching themselves and feeding on Cannibals on Cannibal Ind the most. Habits: Travels in groups following the direction of the wind. Appears usually only at night. Known weaknesses: Is weak to intense fire and sluggish during the day. Will turn red andtch onto the nearest living object host if it is split from the group or injured. If no nearby hosts are detected, the lone Harvester will disintegrate into a water puddle and evaporate. It can be harmed by weapons made of metal but will disintegrate metals into brittle rust. Known predators: Roc. Harvesters rich in knowledge and experience are the Roc''s favourite source of food and what turns Rocs into mythical and legendary birds required to keep the bnce of this world''s lore. Rocs will hunt for Harvesters every year when they pass by the Roc''s nesting grounds on their way back to their deep underwater chasm den to reproduce. Known prey: Any living creature with enough knowledge and experience umted. Only full-blooded faes born from wisps, monsters born from legends, undead and living creatures with the protection of artefacts are unaffected. === The shocking images of Harvesters turning red, disintegrating and attaching themselves to living hosts fascinated Rino. It wasn''t what he was expecting of the most feared creatures in the world. However, he could understand why nobody wanted to be in its path when they were spotted. These things looked harmless, but they attacked indiscriminately. He could finally understand why Zerg''s vigers behaved the way they did and raised their children with as little information as possible. It also made sense why the vigers he had resurrected from Zerg''s vige and the raided ones from the graveyard were different. Erika remembered how to count, and Fronzo knew how to farm even after death because they did not die from having their knowledge and experience siphoned by harvesters. The dwarves could not win the harvesters because metal corroded and rusted unusually quickly when they contacted the harvesters. Intense fire was difficult for non-magic users to conjure, and apparently, having mana in a person or object made them safe from harvesters. He finally understood why harvesters existed. Cannibals were creatures with a special condition that allowed them to inherit the experience and knowledge of those they ate. In other words, they were specially made for the purpose of feeding harvesters by the crazy developer of this world. At the same time, the harvesters were designed to feed the Rocs, who were the managers of this world''s existence. However, something went wrong when the power bnce of Harvesters surpassed the expectations of the gods who created this world. The other species were dying out faster than they could feed the harvesters, including the cannibals. It was why Rino was tasked to save this world by building a kingdom and increasing knowledge. It was all for the sake of feeding the harvesters and raising the Rocs. He thought about the joy of his people when they found out it was possible to have children after death. Rino did not need to consider much. He already knew his decision. There was no way he was going to build a kingdom and watch those who were not under soul contracts with him be food for those birds. There was only one solution, and that meant war. Chapter 247 - Epilogue: His Final Rest It was done. Everything that they told him to do, he carried it out wlessly to his name. Rino could think of no other way to finish his long quest journey. From the very first daily quest he received, Rino never thought this day woulde. === Daily Quest #??? Objective: ??? Time Limit: NA Tutorial here. Reward: ??? im your reward here. Penalty: NA === Instead, he simply did what he had wanted to do for the longest time. After quelling the anger of cannibals, creating barriers to protect those in his empire from Harvesters and inviting the Rocs to nest in the rocky mountains where they could feast on Harvesters all year round, the lich took the opportunity toplete the dreams he had in his previous life. Schools that provided education for anyone interested, the new economic system that did not rely on money, a world where magic tools could be used by those who were not capable of sensing mana and more. Rino left behind more than he could ask for, and the gods were appeased. Naturally, it was Noir who came down as a representative. No, it should be Ace. Rino knew better now that the ck cat he fawned over was really one of the gods managing his daily quest system. Thankfully, it was this kindred soul in the team managing this small world who spoke up and fought for his behalf, making many things possible. "Is there nothing else you want?" Noir asked, and Rino nodded. Honestly, it was a long journey, and Rino was weary. Everything that he did was for this very moment. In hisst message that his leaders would find, Rino wrote only one sentence. Life was a never-ending journey full of new discoveries. If ever this world needed him again, Rino would wake up. However, until then, his rest was not to be disturbed. "I''m sure. Just let me im the sleep I deserve. After working for such a long time, surely the gods could grant me this simple wish. The divinity that you earn from this small world must have already surpassed whatever you earned from my previous world. After all, there is only one faith in this world, and everyone prays to you." What Rino said wasn''t far from the truth. Ever since the war against harvesters, Rino risked everything for the resolution they had now. Exchanging the stories of his previous life in return for a peace treaty with the cannibals whose only duty was to raise harvesters to feed Rocs, the lich exceeded everyone''s expectations. It saved the apocalyptic world from its death sentence. Knowledge and experience was a powerful thing, and cannibals were not picky. They ate even the dead. Rino''s work over the years to encourage creation and education worked in their favour. When Kragami died, he was eaten by a cannibal who fed over three hundred thousand harvesters that went straight to the Rocs, giving birth to a new world guardian from just the necromancer''s knowledge. "It''s ready," he told Noir. "I have nothing else to do or want to know." Sadly, Ace agreed. As part of their pact, Noir provided Rino with information that he needed to convince the cannibals that there was no need to kill the Rocs to end their suffering. The world needed the Rocs no matter what, and Rino assured them he would feed them with enough knowledge and experience. If he could not find enough content in a short time, he would create them. The scribes yed a crucial role in Rino''s kingdom, as did the game creators. Entertainment and art became the height of Rino''s kingdom, expanding their inspiration through various mediums. The more they created, the fuller cannibals felt. Noir had to reveal some cosmic truths about who he was and why he was helping Rino in crucial times when Rino broke the news about Noir''s master who contacted him all those years ago. Rino was ready to lose his existence to the cannibals for the sess of his n, and it was what made Noir descend to stop him from acting foolishly. As the chosen one, the gods could not let Rino die. Promising that he would not seek death, the second-best alternative was eternal slumber. That, the gods agreed uneasily. However, a deal was a deal. Rinopleted his assignments, and there was nothing more they needed him for. With a buzz, Rino watched his newest quest take form. === Daily Quest #??? plete) Objective: Preserve the peace of this world Time Limit: NA Tutorial here. Reward: Eternal Sleep im your reward here. Penalty: NA === Patting Noir gently, Rino said his goodbyes andidfortably in his four-poster bed. For a final resting ce, this was luxurious. [Unlimited hours of sleep sessfully withdrawn. Sleepmencing in five minutes. Thank you for your work. Sweet dreams.] As Rino felt thefortable lull of darkness call to him, he could swear that familiar cries were calling out to his name. However, he was toozy to reply to them. They would manage even without him. In a way, these people were finally free to do whatever they pleased. Rino only wished that he wouldn''t wake up to a kingdom full of ruins if he ever did. Noir bowed his head as a sign of respect as the loyal shadow subordinates sank to their knees, some with tears in their eyes. They''d known all along that this day woulde. Nobody lived forever, and Rino was far from dead. However, they hoped Rino would stay with them for a longer time. It might only be a spell of eternal sleep that Rino always wished for but eternal was a very long parting. For Rino, he was free. For them, they felt as if they''d lost the brightest star in the sky who paved the road of sess for them. Yet, nobody questioned his desire. What the monarch of solitude wanted, they would deliver. "Good night, my king. May your dreams be blessed aplenty." Some would say that it was a trick of the light but Noir would im that in his final moments, Rino must finally be smiling from the bottom of his heart. -The End.- The Novel will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!