Chapter 33
Magical Buildings
Emily's bedroom was on the fourth floor, but Shasa didn't want me to wake her, so I used the balcony next to her bedroom to cross over instead of knocking on the door. Every inch of the garden below me was overrun with drunk wealthy students and bards singing their hearts out despite it being after midnight. Food and drink continued to arrive from all over the city, the caterers somehow managing to fight their way through the crowded streets with their wares intact, despite the revellers outside continuing to increase. If Emily hadn't agreed to implement a guest list and I hadn't talked to Torvac's friends about providing security for the party, the mansion would be as crazy as the streets.
Random people from all over the city were showing up to join the celebration. The better bards had abilities or promotions to keep everyone happy, like my Socialite ability, so it was unlikely to turn ugly, but the cost of this shindig was going up by the hour. Emily hadn't set a limit on how much she was willing to spend, telling anyone who would help just to restock as needed.
I nodded to the young wizard sitting on Emily's balcony as I passed through her sound-dampening spell. The spell reduced the noise, which had been almost deafening, to just a little too loud for this time of night. There were dozens of other young wizards all over the place doing something similar to keep the neighbours happy and the authorities from interfering. She nodded back a second too late, eyes glazed over from hours of intense focus, and I walked over to the door and entered Emily's bedroom.
Illumination crystals placed low to the ground gave off a soft glow, allowing easy navigation through the well-furnished cavern Emily called a bedroom, as I closed the door behind me. Sasha was fast asleep on one of the couches, but even the dampened noise from outside was enough to wake her. Emily just snorted in her sleep and rolled over.
I tiptoed across the rugs to the armchair beside Sasha and took a seat, holding up the book I'd snagged from the library on my way up. "You can go to bed if you want. This will keep me busy until she wakes up."
Sasha yawned, gave me a bleary-eyed look, and a tired smile. "Whatever you were doing that was so important woke Emily up."
"Sorry about that."
"It's fine. She was still drunk and exhausted, so all she managed to do was sit upright, shout, 'he did it again', and then pass out. What happened while you were gone?"
I leaned back, resting my head against the top of the chair to stare at the ceiling. "Something unexpected."
"Do you realise that you have a tendency to understate important matters and overstate unimportant ones?"
"Those unimportant matters are usually the ones that cause the most trouble for me, like tonight."
Sasha frowned.
"Sorry, I'm still trying to make sense of everything. My mind's chasing new possibilities and how they fit into everything I already know."
Farentine's library never mentioned that magical buildings could enter the system through communicating new ideas to the king. If it had, I would have taken my research in an entirely different direction from the one I had. There was so much opportunity for advancement trapped in my head that my mind was going a little crazy with the new ideas. All I wanted to do was sit and think.
"Where did you go?" Sasha asked, changing tactics.
"The palace," I replied, focusing my thoughts elsewhere.
"Why?"
"I needed to petition the king."
Sasha was suddenly wide awake. She pushed herself up so she could turn to face me. "You spoke with the king."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I had information he needed to know."
"And that information woke Emily up."
"No. That was related to a conversation we had in private after I told him what he needed to know."
"You had a private conversation with the king." Sasha sounded like she was struggling to process the information.
I looked over. "It's not as weird as it sounds. I've been recognised as a crown's champion."
She thought for a moment and then nodded. "Private conversations with the king aren't outside the norm for a crown's champion, but private conversations which wake-up drunk nobles are. What happened?"
She was like a dog with a bone and didn't understand her interest until I remembered that she wasn't just Emily's friend, but her class advisor. Any notification that could wake Emily in this state was something she had to take seriously.
"Are you asking as Emily's class advisor, her friend, or for your own curiosity?"
"All of the above."
I gave a soft chuckle, giving her my full attention. "I accidentally introduced the king to a new concept with a deep enough understanding for the system to reward him with a new magical building and its blueprint."
Sasha couldn't see my expression in the low light, but I could see hers, and she was in the same state of shock I had been in once the king explained what I'd done. Most magical buildings were awarded to kings as they leveled their class. The king received a set of blueprints from the system, and from then on, their kingdom and others were able to create this building.
My situation was different, though.
I'd introduced the king to a concept that would help his kingdom grow with enough information for him to understand why it would be useful. The system had taken this information and created a magical building from it. It was a feature of the royal class, and one that was rarely triggered.
The Blueprint and Patent Office the system awarded him was the first magical building created through this method in over a century. It was also the first one in Radian's history.
"I don't see how that could wake her," Sasha replied.
"Oh, I forgot to mention the king had the system construct the new magical building in Blackwood.
I'd thought because I was involved in the building's creation that the system wouldn't let the king use the building as a bargaining chip, but Eric informed me that my new level for my Crown's Champion mark was my only reward for my assistance. And that without my mark, I would have received no reward at all.
I'd been a little annoyed by that until he pointed out that my assistance was no different than if the king had told me a more effective way to farm. I'd benefit, but he wouldn't.
Sasha stared at me, like I was intentionally trying to annoy her. "You forgot to mention that Blackwood received a magical building from the system. A building that does not adhere to most rules, the most important being that it does not require a building slot. A building that comes with a world-first reward."
"It's been a busy night, and it might have been something else."
"How could it be anything else?"
"I leveled my Crown's Champion mark."
Sasha stared at me for a second. "Emily doesn't have those sorts of notifications turned on. And even if she did, they wouldn't wake her up."
"Then it was probably because of the magical building."
Sasha pressed her lips together, leaned back, and then immediately leaned forward again. "I now see why she has so much faith in you."
I shrugged, feeling a little embarrassed by the change in topic. "I'm nothing special."
"That's a lie."
"There are a lot of people from my world who could do what I've done."
"That's not what I mean. Having faith in someone has nothing to do with whether they're special. It's about whether you can depend on them. You're someone she can depend on. And I don't think that faith is misplaced. It might take a few decades, but I think you'll eventually help her pass through her fourth threshold."
"Ahhh."
Sasha held up her hand and winced. "Sorry. I shouldn't have said that. Asking someone to help a noble pass through their fourth threshold is too much pressure to put on anyone."
I almost laughed. "Not if they've already set things in motion."
Sasha frowned. "What are you talking about?"
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees, trying to appear serious. "I'm speaking to you as Emily's class advisor and as the Crown's Champion of Radian. This conversation does not go beyond the three of us."
Sasha straightened her back. "You're invoking my oath of secrecy."
"And your personal integrity. Are you okay with that?"
"I am."
I told her about the dwarven weapon, skipping most of the details, but emphasising that there was now a way to create champions on demand. Nobles had the single most useful class bonus of any class, and passing through a threshold by becoming a champion offered you a boon that increased that bonus by 50%. Champions were rare, and noble champions even rarer, but Sasha immediately understood the implications.
Sasha leaned back and ran her fingers through her hair. "This is bigger than the building. It could change the entire kingdom. And you had her put at the top of the list."
"Surprise."
Sasha didn't laugh. "Emily warned me about this, you know. She told me you liked to disappear, only to suddenly return and turn everything on its head. I didn't believe her. It sounded utterly preposterous. But I left you alone for an evening. Now you're back here, having secured the best possible way for Emily to pass through her fourth threshold, with a new magical building for her village, and another level for your Crown's Champion mark, which will also help her village. Three weeks ago, you disappeared to Lunar, helped her pass through her third threshold, and then made so many discoveries that what is normally a useless boon has turned Blackwood into an intellectual hub that can compete with the capital. I'm almost terrified to imagine what you will do next week."
My conversation with the king about the new magical build had kick-started several very interesting ideas that I wanted to explore, but now wasn't the time to bring that up, so I settled for pointing out what she had missed. "It's a little worse than that. I forgot to mention that the king has decided to sponsor my research so I can expand my understanding of lore and is sending scholars and resources I need to Blackwood to help me. Champion Farentine has been reassigned as my assistant."
"Assistant," she hissed, causing Emily to snort in her sleep.
"Not so loud."
"Assistant," she hissed again, but more quietly.
"One of many."
Sasha stared at me for several seconds before throwing her hands up and huffing out a breath. "You are so weird."
"I would have gone with handsome enough to make you drool, but we each have our own way with words."
Sasha smirked but shook her head. "None of that. I have to be responsible. Emily needs us, and it is much too hard for me to think when you flirt with me."
"Fine, but stop calling me weird."
Sasha gave me a deadpan look. "What word would you prefer I use. Weird is extremely accurate."
"Eccentric."
"But you're not. You're very normal, but then you're suddenly very not normal, which is…weird."
I gave a soft chuckle, seeing her point. "Maybe I'm a little weird."
"At least, it's better than being known as the village pervert."
"I don't know. The pervert thing was kind of working for me."
"What did I say about flirting?"
"Sorry, miss."
Sasha rolled her eyes.
***
My conversation with the king about the magical building we created, and my new understanding of how the system worked, had merged into a new project. Babysitting Emily with Sasha had given me the time I needed to think, so I began looking into my idea the moment I returned to Farentine's townhouse.
Farentine was out getting food but was ready to help me the moment she returned. There was one small problem. She couldn't be directly involved in the project. Everything I'd learned since coming to this world was tied up in it, and if it worked the way I thought it would, then I was going to create new exploits. Exploits that Farentine would gobble up with all her classes if she were allowed to be involved.
Farentine took the news like a champion, leaving me to do my thing, while answering questions when I asked. Days quickly passed in a flurry of ideas and theories.
A week after I returned from the palace, I looked up from the maps of the kingdom, which I was studying in Farentine's library and turned towards the door. "Farentine. Is it possible to create a wild dungeon?"
"Not to my knowledge," she replied from the sitting room.
"Is it possible to destroy a dungeon?"
"Yes, but the requirements are strict, and you need a champion raid team to pull it off, even for the weakest ones."
"What are the requirements?"
I heard Farentine get up and walk through the house. She stopped in the doorway and leaned against the frame. "The dungeon needs to be within a settlement's aura and have been within that aura for more than a century."
"So, you can't accidentally destroy a dungeon?"
Farentine raised an eyebrow. "Your project has you worried about accidentally destroying dungeons."
I nodded.
"I'm not going to say that it's impossible, but it is extremely unlikely. There is only one known instance of a wild dungeon being accidentally destroyed. We believe an adult dragon followed a horntail rhino into a dungeon it had recently broken out from, and somehow injured the dungeon while it was feeding. When the dungeon began teleporting in waves of monsters to protect itself, the dragon fought back with enough fire to melt stone, but neither the dragon nor the dungeon survived the experience, so we can't be sure."
"So extremely difficult then."
"Extremely. When you try to destroy a dungeon, the dungeon teleports in monsters from other dungeons. There are no restrictions on the level of the monsters or type."
"What happens if you retreat before destroying the dungeon?"
"The monsters remain until the dungeon recovers, and then they're teleported back to their dungeons."
That crossed one concern off my list.
"Anything else you need to know?" Farentine asked.
"Not right now. Thanks for the help."
"Don't forget you have dinner at Orlana's. You still need to recover from your injuries in Lunar."
"I remember."
Farentine wandered off, and I went back to studying the map. There were three places in Radian where my project could potentially work, and now that I didn't need to worry about destroying the dungeons, I could safely move forward with all three.
When I was sure Farentine was back in the sitting room, I lifted the map and pulled out my notes, adding what she had told me. My goal was to create an Experience Reactor. A series of interconnected walls and trap barns surrounded wild forests with ideal environments for beasts to quickly level and reach maturity.
The basic idea was to find two forests with the right sort of dungeons, connect them by a single city, and then surround both forests with settlements so you could enclose them within palisades, connected to barns equipped with my trap method. You then culled the monsters in the forests, replacing them with beasts that bred and leveled quickly and didn't have a natural aversion to the aura of a city, town, or village.
The beasts then bred, overpopulated the area and began searching for food, which led them into trap barns that generated farmer experience. The dead beasts were then relocated to the other forest, where they were used to fatten and level the beasts there.
This was a natural evolution of my trap method. Not bigger barns and more dangerous monsters, but a controlled setting which allowed you to optimise results and mitigate risks.
I was pretty sure the system would recognise this as a new way to generate experience and reward me with exploits, because it was essentially farming wild beasts, which no one had ever done. Farm-raised monsters were hopefully an entirely different thing, because if this worked, it was going to eventually generate a lot of experience.
The transportation of carcases between forests would cause a feedback loop, allowing the experience stored in the bodies to be recycled into the other beasts, raising the average level of the beasts in both forests and how quickly they matured, while also causing them to generate more new mana when they were culled.
In time, the kingdom would even be able to butcher the beasts, drawing the excess mana from the Experience Reactor into other classes. It was an extremely lucrative structure, but the material costs and manhours required to create it meant it might never come into existence.
That would be disappointing, but the additional levels for my Wiseman title and the final level for my Crown's Champion mark were more than enough to make this worth my time and effort.
A month ago, I'd been worried that the system wanted humanity to become some sort of death cult. Now I was trying to make that happen.
I slipped my notes back under the map, spotting the textbook Farentine had given me on magical buildings. My initial assumption that I could easily introduce a dozen new magical buildings to Radian had been quashed after I read it. Magical buildings were far too specific in nature for me to simply transplant building ideas from my old world here.
They had to be integrated into the system, which was why the patent idea hadn't clicked until I mentioned adding blueprints. I'd gotten lucky. There was no other way to describe it, and getting that lucky again without additional study wasn't likely.
I was still confident I could introduce a few more buildings, but I knew it would take months of effort rather than days. The only immediate chance I had was my Experience Reactor, which was why it was getting so much attention.
The other reason it was getting so much attention was that I was still waiting for the news that it was safe for me to go home. The rest of the dwarven kings were waiting on King Grorion before stating their positions, and no one else was quite sure what he would do.
While this was helpful, it was really just a way to keep my mind off things I didn't want to think about, so I got back to work.