Alexis knew that this was not the optimal solution but creating swords worth four liters of mana was just too expensive to mass produce.
She told them about her modification to the density of the swords as well as her solution.
After giving her father a replica with only a consumption of one liter, he could compare it with his own real replica.
He swung both around and clad them both in his fire. Even though the worse replica clearly showed signs of being worse in any way, for normal people even this boost would be great.
"I had it planned, so that my Generals would be getting the original swords and everyone else will receive the other version. It will create a kind of power hierarchy that will give angels a reason to improve."
They understood Alexis's scummy plan. But even they could not refute the fact that four thousand
angels were more useful than one thousand with better swords.
Just the presence of angels was enough for many to be peaceful.
And the one-liter blades were for sure inferior, but they were still holy swords that were better than anything the human side had to offer.
This and the fact that there would be thousands of angels wearing those things was a terrifying thought.
Alexis's family was glad that they were on the same side as her. Otherwise even with large amounts of mana, they couldn't win against an army with holy swords.
"How much mana do you need anyway? You got a large chunk of crystals from the oni didn't you?"
Elly was seriously wondering about her mana consumption. For her as a fire elemental, everything that could be burned was turned into energy for her.
Be it mana or air, but even that had its own limitations.
"Depends on what I do, and the quality of mana also plays a huge part in it."
Alexis lifted a rock from outside into the house and demonstrated what would happen if she absorbed it from the inside.
The rock frizzled for a while and after the impurities were burned away, only a little bead of pure energy remained.
"I only take the good stuff out of mana; the rest gets vaporized while purifying the remaining energies."
From what Alexis had learned about her purification ability, it seemed as if the impure elements in mana get purified by adding pure energy into the impure system.
The larger the impurities, the more energy Alexis needed to use to purify them. Therefore, she made plus minus zero when many impurities were present.
Most of the time however, even when many impurities were present, Alexis gained a little bit of energy.
"Coming to the question of the crystals, I simply underestimated how long I would need to absorb them. I do that passively while we talk. But I have too many crystals to absorb them all at once, so they will go in when the batch before gets absorbed."
She visualized that by putting and rubbing her belly like she has eaten too much food and cannot walk properly anymore.
***
After days on end of none stop working, Alexis finally could settle down and relax.
Her way of doing it meant slouching on the sofa and doing literally nothing for a change.
Everything she did usually had some deeper meaning, like getting stronger, or simply accomplishing a goal she or someone else set.
Now Alexis was laying on her fluffy tummy and rolling around of the sofa while trying to dodge Elly in her attempts to cuddle her.
Elly couldn't care less that even the wolf form of Alexis was female now. All she knew was that the fur had a divine feeling to it that couldn't be compared to other pets Elly would usually pet.
For a moment, all the accumulated stress and busyness that Alexis had build up in the last week washed away by delightfully playing with her sister.
All the strife over the new resource that was suddenly available in the world, went right over Alexis's head. It didn't concern her that various powers fought over mages in the world now.
Her only job was to ensure that no large-scale chaos was the result of a mage.
Everything else was the responsibility of the people living in the countries.
This blissful period lasted for about two days before a high-ranking angel came crashing into the living room with a panicked face.
"Goddess Alexis, we have a major problem. The Americans nuked themselves right now. A nuclear storm will ravage the rest of the country if you don't get rid of it."
With a popsicle in mouth, Alexis did not know what to say.
The Americans had fired missiles at her when she declared herself a goddess. But why would they nuke themselves? Are they dumb?
Alexis stood up quickly and grabbed the angel by his scruff before entering high speed flight.
"First why? Second how many?"
The angel named Andrew quickly explained the situation as accurate as he could.
Some companies offered really good benefits for mages with innate abilities. But the competition between those quickly became a problem.
One particular bad case was a duel between two competing mages that went beyond of what it should have.
They fought in a desert but the changes they made to the terrain was scary enough for protests to ensure afterwards.
Regulations against the usage of mana were put into place and everyone that didn't get a newly issued license wasn't allowed to use it.
At this point Alexis flew closer to the still setting mushroom cloud in the distance.
Had it been only one nuke, the angels hadn't felt the need to get involved. But nonetheless the idiots fired close to twenty on different locations that were the homes of many innocent people.
"And why exactly have they fired on innocents again? You failed to convey the reason for that young angel."
He nodded and quickly resumed the story as they flew closer to the cloud.
"Almost all of the mages were against the regulations and sort of a civil war broke out.
At first everything was ok for us angels. Nothing major mas happening. Only some small stuff.
But suddenly a crazy idiot got ahold of a military base and cracked through security to get the nuclear codes."
Alexis facepalmed so hard that it could be heard far away.
What were they thinking when causing a nuclear fallout?
Did they not know that even mages would have problems with radioactive poisoning?
"They wanted to weed out the non-magically gifted people to contribute to a nation of only mages."
So far she had a few relaxing days. Not many but the small breather was everything Alexis needed to want more of them.
"Couldn't have they waited for like a week before nuking the country?" Was everything Alexis could say to the topic.
At last, the two of them arrived before the large cloud that was forming from all the explosions.
The many nukes created many small clouds that all got sucked together.
This was better for Alexis who had to purify the entire thing. She just had to spread her aura in a large area to do so.
But she clearly needed more energy for that than she currently had to spare.
The two days she lazed around produced over 50 swords passively.
But those were passively produced by the crystals she had, not through effort.
Alexis opened a small gate towards heaven in the form of a microphone.
"I hope this works."
She coughed two times before speaking into the mic.
"I order every angel that got a sword from me, position yourselves around the cloud that the stupid Americans created by nuking themselves. The swords will act as relay points through which my aura can spread further. I give permission to create gates in the vicinity of my position. Now my angels, DECEND!!!"
Ruling was something that Alexis had still to work on. It was not bad but could be done a lot better in her opinion.
But after seeing the many gates that opened next to her, she felt relieved. At least the angels followed her command and came to help her.
The idea to use her own swords as relay points came from an old game her father played long ago.
There, the blades formed some kind of magic circle, but the principle stays the same that they relay the aura and mana.
Even before the angels were in position, Alexis spread her aura far and wide through the cloud.
This problem couldn't wait. The corrupted dust that the cloud carried was the worst part of a nuke.
It would fall down towards the earth and stay contaminated for a long time.
A cloud of this magnitude would render the whole country useless. Adding to that was only the fact that the wind spread the dust to neighboring countries and the ocean.
"This truly is unacceptable."
After spreading her aura for a while, Alexis realized that the nuclear particles took longer to purify than others, maybe it was their consistency? Or something different entirely?
"I cannot purify everything at this tempo. I need to absorb the whole thing."
Simply purifying was too taxing even for her. The best thing she could do is not to absorb too much of the air. Under normal circumstances it would regenerate, but Alexis's method brought it to another realm.
Afterwards, she had to do something about that, but for the time being, she morphed into her soul state and made her way to the center of the cloud.
Over the next 24 hours, a spectacle could be seen from the ground. The large cloud that doomed them as it appeared, slowly but surely shrunk down without there being black smoke or some kind of nuclear aftereffect.
It was only at night that the general public got some view of what was actually happening.
Over one hundred lights could be seen around the cloud holding holy swords in front of them.
The mushroom cloud looked more like a tornado at that moment. And in the eye of the storm could only be seen a bright white golden light.
Videos of the whole thing went online as the power got back and the facilities turned the internet back on for the different states.
Not only were the nukes targeting cities, but the entire infrastructure was also hit. This was mostly not done through nukes though.
Normal warheads were sufficient enough for that purpose.
Somehow these crazy madmen had gotten ahold of various military bases and not only the one that fired the nukes.
They wanted back the good old days. Of the medieval times, just like in the game world.
A strong sense of delusion would be needed for this to happen.
***
For Alexis, the videos that were posted online about her clearing the atomic cloud away brought her enough believers that for the first time the influx of faith power was noticeable enough for her.
This was good on one hand, but extremely bad on the other where the gods that still resided in heaven stood.
They also competed for the faith but at the moment, they could not interfere in the world as they pleased.
Only Alexis was allowed to perform miracles like this. The other gods had to wait in heaven for the world core to finally wake up.
In their opinion, even the demons that wanted to invade the earth long ago, didn't cause such devastating destructions.
Even dragons would fear a power like that. They could survive it, but it would be fun for them in a desolate realm to roam around.
The Americans demonstrated why some things should be left where they are and even better, forgotten.
Magic could do terrible things, large scale destruction was one such thing, but not many mages had the power to destroy a large county in only 20 spells.