After the lesson, I searched for a place that seemed to be a good place in the center of the village for a small shrine for the Elder Spirit. It's one thing to mention what the Celestial dragons had done for the races, it's another to do the same for another group of people. Although I don't sing like the elves in the Dark Elf settlement, my evocation will work just as well. Kneeling down in the dirt I began to evoke a request unto the Elder Spirits.
Behind me, the village knelt as well and clasped their hands tightly. As we sat in this position, the wind shook, the Earth moaned, trees waved with the breeze issuing a soothing chime. Although the phenomenon was not extraordinary like the last few times, pillars of fire, wind, earth, and water assembled in the center of the village. From the shadows came small specs of darkness and a wafting stream of light glided to the center of the four elemental pillars.
Soon, five altars formed from the elements as a fence of branches, stone, ice, and leaves formed a dome over the shrine. Fresh magoi filled the wind which blew from the shrine, gently enveloping the villagers here. Although they had not yet learned the celestial language, I was able to see some call up specs of fire, earth, and water. Standing to my feet I addressed the group,
"Hear me, everyone and follow what I say. The place before you now is a shrine to the Elder Spirits and the Creator. At this place, pray and make an account of the needs of your village. Do this as often as you are able, but not to the point of neglecting the needs of the village. Elder, gather you strongest and fastest men." I commanded the tribal elder. His head haggardly nodded as I continued,
"Have them call forth all the tribes of all free thinking races and bring them here. In 5 days when all have arrived, I will inscribe upon you the way to speak to the sky and it will obey, command the earth and it will move and provide for your people all they need from the forest. In Make haste, for an unknown enemy will come for these lands." Seeing everyone adhere to my command, I took to the sky but not before hearing,
"You have enlightened the people of your territory, preparation time plus 15 days. Current preparation time: 52 days, 8 hours, 40 minutes".
Good to know. I now bought myself another 15 days before the war. It seems if I empower the locals, I will gain more time; but I don't think it will work this way every time. I'm going to have to be careful moving forward. In the meantime, I flew to the stone quarry and evoked into the air, shaping the rock into bricks of equal dimensions. After collected enough bricks, I brought it all to the mountain where my base will be.
I wanted to place everything in the inventory. Sadly, I don't have access to any items from the outside world, save the uniform Elder Alamdarra gave me. I will need to craft everything by had…(sigh).
I returned to the quarry 4 times until I had enough brick for the foundation and some of the walls. Next, I headed down the mountain to clear the area. Using the spell Wind Blades, I began to fell trees near the ring of water surrounding the mountain. I continued until everything within a radius of 1km surrounding the mountain was visible.
After uprooting the stumpy remains of the trees, with wind blades I began to cut equal sized pieces of timber. Once chopped, I dry aged the freshly cut wood with fire and neutral magoi. When the wood was processed and ready for use, I placed them together with the bricks.
I continued working until the very next morning, as the sun blanketed the forest with warm waves of light. When I admired my work A large dry, leveled area surrounding the mountain came into view. The space was large enough to build a city with the mountain as the centerpiece of the city. I may not have any experience with construction work, but I at least know one must have their building supplies processed before use.
I continued gathering building supplies from the forest and quarry for the next 2 days. By now I had enough to build the foundation of the initial walls around the settlement. I plan on bringing the tribals here to live since I can't afford to have them scattered about as the invading forces come.
I have no idea if the locals will side with the enemy, so I'd rather have any potential threats under my control or snuffed out verse allowing loose ends roaming the forest. I may not like it, but this is the territory I need to protect; even if I have to eliminate some locals to do it. In 2 days, I will return to the settlement. I need to prepare for the ritual which will inscribe a simplified understanding on magoi and how to use evoke it.
To be honest, I am completely stepping out of my element when it comes to creating this kind of magic. Using an idea with the dungeon core's magic circle as foundation, I plan create an experiment spell only usable here. The spell is based on the idea of creating an essential information hub using the shrine as the center of the circle.
For this spell, I am going to need highly dense magoi crystals and other magoi infused items. With this in mind, I headed to the cave network near the stone quarry. I have yet to reach the lowest part of the cave network. As I began to delve deeper into the caves, I kept my eyes out for any ore and crystals with the magoi density I can use.
4 hours later, I finally reached the bottom of the cave network and… (Look at what I found!!) I stumbled upon an underground lake of purified magoi with sapphires the size of soccer balls all along the lakeside. Deeper down are underwater caves filled with magic metals that may just work.
Creating a bubble around myself, I dove into the water. Once at a decent enough depth, I began harvesting sapphires, magoi crystal, aquamarine, magic steel, orichalcum and all other precious magoi infused metals and stones. After gathering enough minerals, I evoked gallons of water to float up with me as I left the cave network.
Once I returned to my basecamp, I started processing the materials for the ritual. Using fire magoi, I smelted the magic steel an orichalcum making a refined ingots of both. Afterwards I patiently inscribed the sapphires, aquamarines, and magoi crystals. The spell I am attempting to create will require inputting an illusion. But not any old illusion will do.
The right illusions is one which tells the story of the Celestial dragons teaching the races. Another illusion used is one which teaches a simplified way to evoke and uses magoi. The last teaches the language of elves. Additionally, I plan to inscribe a translations effect. After experimenting with the optional magic in the ritual clauses, I reluctantly stopped working with the spell graph. No matter how many simulations and calculations I perform, I won't know how well the spell works until I use it.
Tomorrow I will see whether the spell works according to my plan. If not, then I'll have to use an unusual way. Whatever happens, I'll worry about it later. Turning my focus back to the basecamp set up. With all the bricks and timber, I started working on the foundation of my abode. After evoking the earth to form a hardened hollowed space with an area of 400m2 and 10m deep, I began to lay the foundation.
Once the bricks were laid, earth magoi fused the brickwork together, saving time and effort. Within 12 hours, a simple 2-storey brick house with a fully functional magoi kitchen, simple furniture, and bedroom on second floor, underground forge with all facilities and equipment, a 10m2 outdoor bathe with 6m tall stone wall and 50m2 Magoi greenhouse for rare herbs and crop cultivation were established.
With this all finished, I first took a refreshing bath. Although I am physically not here, it still helps to relieve the mind. Afterwards, I went straight to the forge to craft clothes, armor, weapons, alchemic supplies for the ritual and many other necessities for both myself and the workers I plan to select from the tribals. Additionally, I crafted magoi turrets and other autonomous defenses for future use.
I mean... better safe than sorry. Anyway, I don't plan on having all of the turrets set up just yet, but I still installed a few near the house for good measure. After reviewing my work, I equipped my new armor and weapons for it was time to gather the most important ingredient for my unfinished ritual formation, monster chaos cores. In order for the formation to work with nigh negligible chances of failure, chaos cores of semi to fully sentient monsters are required.
From what I gather from surveilling the area a few days ago, the giant monster cradle to the north contained just the monsters I needed. Most of the monsters where wielding spears, swords and wore crudely crafted armor; nonetheless, they had a unique awareness about them. I plan to get a closer look. If the monsters can be "domesticated," then fine, but if not, that works just as well. Barring any further delay, I took to the sky and swiftly flew to the monster cradle.
-End of Chapter