Chapter 321: Expanding an Empire (1/2)
”You're dismissed. I'm heading out.”
He rose his brow under his dark mask, ”Where exactly are you off to?”
Quintessence suffused my surroundings in an unbridled wave,
”I'm going to go do some hands-on expansion real quick.”
I smiled, ”We need some more cities.”
Helios furrowed his brow, ”You intend on doing so where, exactly? And what's the method you'll use? Perhaps you haven't considered the law systems each place will need or how to manage the various subcultures of each area. These are important-”
I raised a palm, ”Helios, I'm not a diplomat.” Mana seethed over me like a writhing flame, quintessence flooding out in abundance. I stated, ”I'm a fighter and a crafter. I'm sticking to that, and I'll leave the details to other people. Everything will fall in place as I go.”
He could doubt or dismiss my efforts if he liked. In the end, I'd leave that doubt shattered by results. Helios rolled his eyes while I pulled myself up with a gravity well. At a certain height, I generated an intense antigravity well beneath me. It propelled me forward while I opened up my status. An overhead, 2-dimensional map popped up, and I found the extent of Mt. Verner's domain.
It stretched out for about a dozen miles in every direction. Without a core or official verification from Schema, Springfield lacked the same legitimate plot point. Despite that, the constructor golems already worked towards filling the city out. By the time they finished, my old hometown would be a thriving metropolis.
Schema may deny the town's return for now, but that wouldn't last for long. It wouldn't last elsewhere too. Peering at those different places, the skyline shifted in my view as vast forests passed underneath me. I shot through clouds, the wind off my wake creating cylinders of mist jutting out in every direction. In a sense, I impaled the clouds I passed.
I traversed another dozen miles outside of Springfield's domain before landing amidst an unclaimed hill. This would be the next city. I pulled out enormous globs of molten dimensional fabric. With quintessence, I flashed them into the components of a golem over the next few minutes. The cipher and charging took up the majority of my time after that. Getting four assault golems ready, I toiled for a while before sending them out to clear the countryside and nearby dungeons. The juggernauts dispersed across the terrain, one honing in on a nearby, mutated wolf.
The super golem grabbed the beast, ripped it in two, and burned its remains and blood splatter. Cleaving the terrain apart, the assaulters shifted from one motion to the next in a rapid succession of hunting. In moments, they stripped the land bare of its infestation. At the same time, I disintegrated all life on the hill with Event Horizon. Covered in bare dirt, I leveled it, flattening the mini-mountain with a gravity panel.
The ground quaked and roared out across the landscape, the splintered crags of earth crushing down. After getting a suitable space, I generated a steel barrier around it, piercing the flattened portion with several steel struts in the mound of splintered soil. With the foundation established, I molded quintessence into a flat, sheening plate of granite.
It gleamed in the sun; the entire hillside changed in minutes. I pooled more of my fabric for another golem, this time a constructor. Finishing it and its details, I generated thousands of rings for it to distribute out as needed.
An average person wearing my rings turned into a bulky behemoth, at least when compared to the usual. My legacy bonuses compounded that difference, revolutionizing the benefits someone gained from joining my guild. Many people operated in Schema's universe as if made of paper mache. My guildmates enjoyed surprising bulk by comparison and extending that only benefited people.
To that end, I spoke to the constructor golem, giving him the command to hold this territory and create livable spaces for people. I handed him the rings, the constructor levitating them in a gravity well over its head. The final piece of my city involved generating cipheric inscriptions in a monolith at the city's center.
As with Springfield, this column established a protective barrier, and I made it with my own dimensional fabric. Imparting a continuous supply of mana and energy to the local populace, the center point offered a grid for power to the people here. I instructed the constructor golem to manage and protect it from being weaponized by would-be warlords as well.
Working on the final details, I sliced sigils across the metal framework surrounding the city. I connected the runes to my monolith, and it sparked to life, generating a buffing field for anyone inside the city's two-kilometer radius. This whole process took two hours, my many minds allowing me to handle several tasks at once.
By the time I finished handling all the minutiae, the assault golems had returned from their forays. Each of them carried over a dozen dungeon cores, most of them simple yellow ones but some gleamed crimson. Instead of using them for attribute points, I put them into my pocket dimension.
Schema lied about primordial mana and my dimensional space. He could be lying about these cores as well. I'd take them out of the system and see if I couldn't get more from them than Schema allowed by normal means. After pocketing the cores, I peered at the space, finding everything in order.
With the assault golems and the constructor golem on standby, I moved on. Gathering a force of people to the stronghold wasted my time. Convincing people took a lot of tenacity, and people would fear me more than they'd actually listen. I'd leave the recruiting efforts to other members of my guild while I left empty cities for them to build an infrastructure off of. Besides, anyone could work as a marketer. Only I could craft the golems and these city-states.
And that's what I did. I built cities.
I spaced them out, about twenty-five miles apart. The distance gave plenty of room for building up and out, and they all stood atop hills. This left them as beacons in the landscape, the mana auras beaming outwards above them like gleaming domes. Light refracted off of these mana pyres, raw quintessence saturating near the monolith's apex.
In a way, the visual splendor offered more than a statement about their efficacy. They reminded me of the first time I saw a Sentinel. The cyan-shaded, armored warriors stood ten feet tall with dimensional slicing spears. At the time, I was a tiny ant surrounded by mountains and hills. These golems acted the same to anyone finding them.
They left an otherworldly visage. The crimson eyes of the assault golems glowered at everyone, menacing and defiant. Their ruthless natures acted as absolutes, unable to be corrupted. They contrasted the pale eyes of the constructor golems, which calmed and gave a light sense of ease. The builders offered a hub of understanding and compliance by comparison.
They exceeded an average person's limits by enormous bounds, to the point of being outright alien. Five level 14,000 golems could ravage the entire state, let alone their city's limits. The monoliths and archaic runes dispersed across each of the reinforced hills offered further mysticism.
After establishing a dozen of these emptied, runic structures, I flew far over the clouds above them all. The monoliths dispersed dollops of light through the clouds, each a lighthouse in the encroaching forest. Wanting a better view, I revved over twenty elemental furnaces under my skin. Those artifacts generated vast energy outputs into my body, and my skin sheened a bright white from the heat alone.
I hovered over my new domain, a living star both in appearance and output. Spreading my arms, an enormous wave of gravitation molded the clouds from above my cities. For miles, the force collapsed the misty blots in my view. They fell in a spiral, condensing into water that plummetted down below in a light wave. It was a circle of falling water, a biblical feat.
And I did it to get a better view of my cities. With my structures on full display, they reminded me of what I imagined Schema's system would be like after finding my first Sentinel. I smiled at the outposts, knowing this was only the beginning. I continued establishing these domains of control, none of them recognized by Schema.
Whether the AI liked it or not, these cities stood on far firmer ground than anything he made. Blue cores defended well, but that was it. They offered no countermeasures for stopping an attacker, and inevitably, they fell over time. My cities carried dreadnoughts as protectors, the devastating assaults golems able and willing to gore enemies to pieces. The constructor golems restored any damaged areas and assisted with energy production in the meantime.
The monoliths still protected the populace, of course, but they offered a buffing aura as well. In the end, combine that with the rings and legacy bonuses, and these places acted like supply depots for city establishing. They far exceeded the utility of Schema's hubs. After getting primordial mana unlocked, I'd connect these places with warping golems. If I had my way, I'd make developed societies like the Empire appear primitive compared to my territories.