"What do you need me for again?" Asked the cloaked bunny girl wearing a black skin suit underneath.
"I don't need you. I want you to be my assasin. There's plenty of people worth killing and some that simply need taking care off. Besides, if i turn so many criminals into slaves than i will have an army of reformees that can work. I'll call you everyday before lunch, but you can contact me whenever, be it to talk or just report something." He shruged and threw a necklace with a lock at her. "Shouldn't be too hard to figure out how to use it." He smiled at her and looked back to the paperwork he'd piled for the day. It definetly wasn't as much as it should actually be with such a big city under him, but there were more than enough skeleton clerks, who were very effective in their job.
He only had to write some more inspirational quotes to write down on flags over the city. Maybe suggest some projects and direct some new personal recently enslaved.
There were lots of houses being repaired and constructed daily, shoving magic in the equation acelerated the process several times to what it would normally take on earth, and though there were currently no realstate taxes, that would change in a month or so, since most of the population was actually finding jobs quite easily, be it in the new farmlands, Aki's production of exports, the new mine that led to the underdark which needed people to establish an outpost so the mineral and rocks could be extracted, the new rubber farm or the silk production facility that ussed spiders, lots of spiders, or any of the public projects Aki raised.
Some children even ran errands, but they mostly went to the new school for basic education, maned by nobles with mild attitudes and undead, who already had a more sofisticated society and several teachers in their ranks. There was also a night school for adults where they could apply for governamental jobs after passing through the curriculum with good enough grades, but that would take more time even with system assisted learning.
The military was divided between the guard and regular army, the former manned by all the undead guards and human military power since there was no need for an actual army. Instead, there were about a hundred purple skinned people with tentacles tasked with maintining a hundred or more golens each.
Aki was still trying to roughly follow that old saying that told the military should not cross more than ten percent of the current population or so since that would not be so effective to the people/job ratio or something. Anyway, there were around 25k military personel and 210k people in the city since Aki underestimated how much the people would grow from working plus his unique skill effects, so the undead integration plan was going plenty fast.
Food was not a problem thanks to the local animal population being ginormous plus the incresed wield of all crop fields. The corn and wheat field already had their first harvest, and things were only going to grow faster as better techniques, machinery and specialized personel was generated, because the seeds can very much pass through mutations in an enviroment with such dense mana and constant stimulus to grow faster and better, so there was actually the possibility of generating too much and somehow spawning crop monsters.
If Aki hadn't helped with the harvests and made sure there wasn't any anomalous pile of grain meat or some such... There were three. After pointing out these to Arcenis she imediatly became able to somewhat find them, so there was currently no problem.
By the way, the living plant woman was actually interested in the agriculture techniques Aki and S9 suggested since even if they actually killed some trees they were actually also producing a new ecosystem, or so she had said. Aki seriously wondered what she would end up turning into with more time, but at least her hair wasn't about to turn crinsom.
Commerce was actually prospering, virtualy, since they had tons of exports and only a few inports, but Aki was trying to solve that situation with the king he'd taken the city from. Aparently he'd attacked the neutral human kingdom and the two other kingdoms the city bordered were a desert, obviously magical, but no one except the old timers seemed to agree with Aki on that, and what could only be called a nazist's paradise.
Anything that wasn't human literraly would die as they got closer to the capital of the place, depending of their magical resistance and constitution of course, and only some 'pure' humans could live in said capital.
When Aki heard only people with black hair and black eyes were considered pure, he made a very strange face, but said 'fuck it' right after. He was going to nuke the place later. Not that he actually knew how to activate uranium yet, that was an expression.
Wondering if he should go back to projecting the carbondioxid bomb he'd been planning on ussing, Aki suddenly received a call from one of his guards in the containment area and imediatly opened the floating panel only he could see, getting the video of a skeleton on a military uniform, those are pjs actually, in a place filled with 'stainless stell' walls.
"Boss, one of the captives says she wants to talk." The sharp voice of the nerdy squeleton resonated before she yawned, getting a bit of a giggle from Aki.
*****
"That's fine with me. You can go after you tell me about this procedure." Aki calmly nodded.
"Wait, really?" The forgettable looking woman asked as she reeled her chains a bit. She'd been grasping at straws for information she wouldn't imediatly be destroyed for giving, but she didn't expect the boy in front of her to actually accept!
"Hell no! I swear, this woman is so idiotic she wouldn't have this kind of job if she didn't have so many lucky encounters and blessings falling in her hands! This is what, the seventeenth time I've wiped her memory? Their pattern normally changes around the fifth time normally!" Aki moaned in frustration as he held his head with his hands.
"I'm sorry to say this isn't my subordinates fault sir, her brain activities and bodily functions have been steady since her arrival at the facility." Said the skeleton from before while tipping on a tablet.
Those were not hard to make with magic, just very boring and tedious work since it first needed a mainframe to connect to.
"Yeah, I know. That means I have to actually do more than just skim over her almost thirty years of life. Fuck..." He groaned and prepared to wipe the woman's memory again.
He'd not been trying very hard to avoid it, but her mind didn't seem to get damaged at all. He'd looked at her status through her eyes, there wasn't anything too special about her, besides having hidden her elven ancestry and knowing spirit magic, she'd not even been able to cause deep wounds to Anna during their fight.
"Any chance you know when your mind begun being tampered with? Anything you deem important but can't actually remember clearly?" He asked after sighing, not actually having much hope there would even be something. The woman became lost in thoughts and her eyes glassed a bit, but he didn't imediatly re-start her head, there was always the chance she'd break off alone or even remember something he could use to search for a flaw in the fake memory he had access to.
Her recolection of events doesn't match anyone else's after all. Small discrepancies that could be explained by people forgetting what actually happened, but Aki had checked the memory of all his human employees and wiped the memory of him doing so.
There hadn't been any trace of this girl on the city or the training facility for servants, but she somehow remembered a life that no one else ever registered. The orphanage never had a girl like her, the tortured soul of the noble that introduced her as a spy to the crown had no clue and the head of staff only remembered she was a trustworthy new member, with no other recolection of her hiring. She didn't even seen to understand she was an elf, for hell's sake!
Even a master in reading minds would have difficulties finding the clues or simply dismiss the memory she had as truthful, but he could perfectly see that when appraised she'd be registered as an elf, while when she called her status she was registered as a human!
"My mother's pendant, I can't remember it anymore." Aki didn't relent even as he didn't expect much and immediately summoned said pendant. There were several hidden enchantments on the pattern that Samal could barely identify as a mind magic construct. When the woman looked at it the thing shined and Aki stopped it from exploding by taking over control of the mana pathways and forming the full picture on it's front.
The woman suddenly passed out. Appraising her again showed that her mental stats were getting higher and higher, reaching the number previously in parentheses by their side. All skills with a '(x)' besides it imediatly became useful again and any skill not already at their original level made a break through.
"She's fine." Aki said and stuck a dagger to her thigh, waking the elf with a groan. Her pain resistance was level ten after all. "Morning sleeping beauty, you made us pass through quite the trouble to get an audience." He told her with some sarcasm.
The elf tried to free herself right away, but she only had enough mana to cast a fire ball or something on that level, while her regeneration was being drained.
"Now, do I have to torture you again or are you going to talk? I want info on the elven domains." Aki imediatly told her.
Elves weren't normally part of society, you know?
Dwarves? Reclusive bastards, but open to trade and some regularly travel around.
Beastkin are extremely common, almost as much as humans, but demons and elves didn't trade or leave their territories, at least not to human knowledge.
According to Arcenis they both traded a lot with the sea people, elves worshiped spirits and demons worshipped dragons, considered beastkin as part monster and saw humans as corrupted and lowly beings. She couldn't give more details since she didn't know them to begin with though.
"I would never betray my people. Do your worst." She said and spit at him. Again, that didn't work. He shoved it down her throat again with magic and with his face slack, turned around to face the lab overseer.
"Does my face look like something children use to spit at or something, why do women spit at me so much?" With indignation he asked.
"I have no idea sir, I don't have the respective glands for it. You do look very punchable though." She leisurely said with a shrug, making Aki sigh.
"Alright, I will try to be quick here, but prepare your brain hole, because this is gonna hurt." He told the chained elf, whose ears had grown and her features had become sharper, but was still relatively plain.
*****
As the Elf laid with the chains in her arms being the only thing stopping her from planting her face in the ground, she couldn't help but shudder as all the sweat and tears left her body.
He'd simply approached her, took the knife out, healed her thigh with a wave of his hand before pressing the other in her face.
Then came a pinprick of pain from the point of contact, followed by a blade of white hot agony, making her scream. Her whole life flashed through her eyes, her family, school, the training to serve the council, her oath, her first mission, the sacrifices she made, the times she let the fabricated memories turn her into a sleeping agent, the two times she'd made to act...
He knew it all now. All of her.
"Damn! You're stupid, brainwashed and miserable! Almost makes me feel guilt for apprehending and questioning you." He said as she felt the bile coming to her throat. His words stung worse though. Retching and vomiting over herself, she was unable to pay attention to the man's complainant, but she still felt her palm being perforated and the measly remains of her mana leaving her body.
Looking up, she saw her communication artifact piercing her palm and his. It was a plain wooden hair ornament, but he'd apparently sharpened it.
"Agent Bera Bogomolov, urgent report." She heard her own voice in front of her, speaking in her mother tongue. The surprise was immense, but seeing her captor speaking with her voice made her go very close to panic. She tried to stop his report, but her voice didn't come out if her throat. Her limbs didn't move either.
"Liutenent Kozlov speaking. What is the situation?" A rough voice resounded in her mind. It had been almost a decade since she last spoke to the head dealer, her friend Albert. She tried to free herself and inform him of the situation, but there were no flaws easily exploitable for her, nevermind that her pool was empty.
"Albert, I'll need extraction. At least two standard recovery teams. The city has a new ruler, a tyrant that deals with undead and has defiled a a driad. His protections are strong and his vigilance is beyond paranoid. He has opened a passage to the underdark and his attention is on the ground and the human armies. I will use 'that' to leave a way in for future infiltration. I need to go. Tell Alexei his big sister will be home soon, just remember to wait a bit." For someone that knew her, you could even imagine the faint smile while she said the last bit. The hairs all over her body stood in fright. It was all just like she was the one saying it. Her mannerism, tone, way of reporting, everything.
As Albert finished the call, Aki broke the artifact like it was an actual twig. With it still in her hand. The pain only woke her up though.
"Now, time to teach me some russian." He said while smiling and taking the bloody hair ornament out of her hand before doing the same to his.