Satou here. Seeing the neatly mown riverbanks overgrown with weeds in summer really speaks to the power of nature. But if that was a wilderness left untouched for decades, it would be genuinely frightening.
“Master, we’ve taken out the large monsters in the vicinity.”
“Good work. Lulu’s got refreshments over there, so take a breather.”
I’d made a tower with Stone Object and was mass-producing barracks around it with Create House.
This was the Azure Land, a monster-ridden, untamed area to the southwest of Shiga.
My friend and former member of the Shiga Eight, Gouen, should be reaching the borders soon—so I was patching up the ruined base a smidge.
I’d dismantled the existing shacks, expanded the overgrown clearing to ten times the original size, prepared enough buildings to house Gouen and the criminal slave army, Violet, added several wells and fields large enough to feed them, then made some canals for doing laundry and carrying away waste, funneling water from the river through them.
The river was a bit far away, and the piranhas were alarmingly aggressive, but they were also good eating, so we just put a stronger than usual monster ward on the gates leading into these canals.
“With you around, making settlements is as easy as a video game,” Arisa said, seeing me using Defense Wall to make fences along the canals so no one would accidentally fall in.
She was busy using Space Magic to trim the branches from some trees I’d felled.
Once that was done, Mia had Genomos carry those branches, while a little sylph cleaned up the leaves.
“Master, prey, sir!”
LYURYU!
Pochi and her White Dragon came back dragging a snake monster they’d caught.
Lyuryu had slept in the Dragon Cradle the whole time we were sightseeing but popped right out the second there was fighting to be done; it seemed to be having a great time hunting with her. Dragons really were fond of battle.
“Maîtreee!” Tama cried, coming back from scouting. “Almost tiiime?”
“Faster than I thought.”
Gouen’s company was one mountain away.
I hadn’t finished the barracks’ interiors, but I had water going to basic toilets, baths, kitchens, and enough cots for everyone, so they could make the rest from this pile of lumber we were leaving.
This was the edge of the Azure Land, and pretty far from the nearest minor magic source; the old settlement had been supplied by an old-fashioned Magic Furnace, but that was good enough for a location of this scale. The original magic barrier generator had been ancient, but we did maintenance on that along with the furnace, and it should be as good as new.
“Gather round! Time we skedaddled.”
We wrapped up our base building before their scouts topped the mountains, retreating to the ruins of a city hidden way off in the forest of the Azure Land.
“Today we’ll be tackling the Emperor Serpent nest to the north.”
“Smells like a challeeenge?”
“Pochi’s arms are ringing off the hook, sir!”
LYURYU!
The beast girls and the dragon were in full golden armor.
This was a ruined city at the heart of the Azure Land. While we were touring the southwestern region, I’d been making exoarmor for the golden gear, and this was a performance test and evaluation round.
“You’re still improving the ruins, master?”
“The base is done, so now I’m making farms.”
I figured I’d make some fields for the cassava and corn we’d acquired on our travels—mostly just for us to eat.
Magic should make short work of it, so after that I planned to check out the City Core.
With that under my control, I’d just activate the city defense functions and leave it be.
“Attention. The flying craft is ready, I report.”
Nana called to everyone from a smaller airship that looked a lot like a hovercraft.
I’d used leftover parts and monster materials to make this van-size craft to transport them to their hunting grounds.
“Got your lunches? Don’t get hurt!”
“Mm, ready.”
“Your lunch is in the warmer, so eat it later, Master.”
“Thanks, Lulu.”
My party flew off to fight a boss monster well over level 60.
The Azure Land had plenty of 50-plus-level threats, so we’d made a detour to help them train.
I was planning on releasing all six cities in the region in turn.
Thinking about that, I used the Cultivation spell to expand the fields, and had mini golems plant the cassava buds and corn kernels. They were all about palm-size, and it was fun just watching them work the fields.
They could handle planting if I was watching, but to fully hand off the farming, I’d need to make a proper core, like the devices elves used. Golems made with magic could handle combat and simple labor but weren’t great at adapting to the circumstances at hand.
“That should do it for the farm. I’d like to grow my own sugarcane, too, so maybe the next ruin we hit should be a bit warmer…to the south?”
Muttering to myself, I headed to the City Core.
When my friends weren’t around, I talked out loud a lot more often.
“Master, you’re not in the base—where’d you go?”
Arisa got in touch with World Phone.
I had a card with a rune to focus Telephone on, which let her contact me even over distances.
“Another city ruin. Just needed a thing and popped over to fetch it.”
When I’d examined the Azure Land City Core, I’d found a supply of living statues for farmwork underground in this ruin; there was even a facility for making and maintaining them. So I’d come to check it out.
I told Arisa I’d unlocked another city and was reviving the underground facilities.
“Hah? That sounds like fun! Why didn’t you call us?”
“Sorry, sorry, I only meant to grab a few and pop back.”
They were supposed to have a stock of one thousand statues, but most had been caught up in a ceiling collapse, and the Fixify spell meant for long-term storage had broken. Once I cleared the rubble and dirt, I only found seventy statues in usable condition.
The rest of them were missing pieces but seemed like they’d be usable with some repairs, or at the least I could reuse the cores. The production system was busted, but I’d checked with the elf engineers to see if it could be patched up. They’d been optimistic, so here’s hoping.
The maintenance system only took a few repairs to get up and running, so I downloaded farming programs into fifty of the surviving statues and cleaning programs into the remaining twenty—at which point Arisa called me.
“You were doing that all day?”
“Oh, is it dark out?”
I’d totally lost track of time.
“Sorry, I’ll be right back.”
Mollifying Arisa, I left the statues to the reprogramming system and used Return to go back to base.
Naturally, I’d reactivated the city defense systems so that monsters couldn’t regain control of it.
The other ruins had underground fish cultivation systems or preserved food factories—I’d have to take my party around and release each of them tomorrow.
“I’m back.”
“Welcooome!”
“Welcome home, sir!”
Tama and Pochi pounced on me the second I stepped in.
Mia and the other girls came running up behind them.
“We have lots of soup veneers, sir!”
“And dark stooones?”
Tama pulled out a big one.
“That’s huge. Where’d you find it?”
You could get other attribute stones from monsters, but we’d never found a dark stone that way.
“It was in a valley on the way.”
“The valley was very dark and obvious, I report.”
“I figured it was either a coal vein or a dark stone, and it proved to be the latter.”
“There were loooots!”
Tama was pulling a bunch out of her Fairy Pack.
“From what we saw on the way in and out, dark stones were forming in areas that remain in shadow all day long.”
That made it sound like any cave would grow them, but we’d never found any.
There must be some other condition.
“They’re good for ninjutsu, so why don’t you keep them, Tama??”
“Mew! I only need theeeese?”
She picked up ten gravel-size and one fist-size dark stones.
“You can have them all?”
“Mew? But this is plentyyyy?”
“Okay, then. I’ll hold on to the rest. Lemme know if you need more.”
“Aye-aye!”
Looking after attribute stones could be tricky, so perhaps they were best left to my Storage.
Oh, right.
I could apply the principle by which I’d turned water stones into a Water Pearl and upgrade these into a dark pearl to incorporate into Tama’s golden armor.
That would help her with Dark Magic—er, Shadow Ninjutsu.
With the idea fresh in my mind, I wound up pulling an all-nighter upgrading her armor.
This body didn’t need much sleep to refresh itself, so I tended to put my hobbies first.
“Behemoth—Disaster!”
At Mia’s order, the Behemoth split the earth and brought down a torrent of rain.
A massive boss monster and its minions were swallowed by the crack in the ground, burned by lava spewing up from it—and their lives ended.
Three days since I’d improved Tama’s armor—and we’d finished releasing the other five city ruins. I’d left the repairs on the underground facilities to the elves and was out with Mia today.
I’d planned to help with the repairs myself, but where I’d expected only Bolenan elves, the research-loving Bulainan and Beliunan contingents showed up, too, and were repairing and magically upgrading things with such merriment, there was no space for me to contribute.
While I was twiddling my thumbs, Mia had shown up, and since she required far more experience than the others and was falling behind again, she asked me to take her out so she could do some catch-up leveling. Thus, it was just the two of us.
“Victory!”
She threw a peace sign at the behemoth.
This grind was primarily her summons dominating everything.
The behemoth counted as a party member, so Mia got plenty of experience from its kills.
“Next?”
“Mm, wait.”
I’d been about to pick her up and do some “Skyrunning,” but she spotted something first.
It appeared to be a patch of tasty mushrooms.
“Satou, hand.”
Per her request, I took her hands, and we walked to the mushroom patch.
Mm?
My vision altered.
There were ruins before us that had not previously been there.
I quickly ran my eyes over the map, and we were not in the Azure Land but the Otherworld: the divided land.
“Satou?”
“Mia, let’s back slowly away.”
“Mm.”
Holding tightly to my hand, she and I reversed direction.
“We’re back.”
A single step away had been enough to put us back where we were.
✦ ✦ ✦
