NOVEL NEXT V11: Chapter 1
V11: Chapter 1
…
The Goddess of Life's third perk line was a double-edged sword, primarily because of the fact that it was the best.
Some people in the community said that it's unbalanced, and plenty of mods make it so that only the faction with the Goddess of Life gets the benefits.
They're the kind of player that wants multiplayer matches to be restarted when they don't get optimal tile yields for their first city. They have the shitty mindset that if they're not born with an advantage, then life is unfair, and everyone else should give up along with them. It's the equivalent of being reincarnated, finding out you're a peasant, and offing yourself instead of gritting your teeth and doing something about it.
In other words, I don't associate with people like them.
None of them even play above normal difficulty.
Anyway, back to their Nature Goddess's third perk line.
It provided five new strategic resources to the map along with five new luxury resources, which also gave bonuses to your troops if you already had an excess of happiness. Each perk in the line added 1 strategic resource and 1 luxury resource at random throughout the continent, and maxing out the line improved the output of all tiles synergistically with the second perk line. While your enemies also get access to the new strategic and luxury resources, you benefit the most thanks to the 2nd perk line provided by the Goddess.
The first strategic resource and luxury resource pair were Adamant Trees and Bright Grass.
Adamant Trees converted hardwood forest tiles. While giving the same production output as before, the new trees had a bevy of amazing properties. They could be tapped, and their sap could be gathered and turned into a powerful binding agent for metal. If you carve parts and pieces from the wood and then proceed to boil the trees along with their leaves, the wood becomes 'Adamant' material, which was the best anti-ranged and anti-explosive armor in the game. Allocating supplies of harvested Adamant to your armies or to your industrial centers either improved the army's defense or gave you better industrial output.
It's a cheat code for advancing material science. Basically, the trees produced a wonder material that was easy to form and shape initially, but after treatment was lighter than aluminum and several times stronger than steel. My first intention with it was to see how I could use it to make planes more quickly. However, I'll set my alchemists and scholars on it so that they could figure out its limits and find all the ways that we could use it.
In-game, Adamant Trees just give ten percent more defense to a chosen army or ten percent more production to an industrial center.
Here, in reality, I was sure that it was going to do more.
But Adamant Trees could scarcely compare to Bright Grass.
As the name suggested, the grass in question was luminous. A few blades of grass gave off a warm glow that illuminated the darkness during the night. However, when bound together into a shape, like a ball, and given some magic… they gave off a warm, soft shine. With some dyes, they shone different colors. In-game, they had a 1 in 3 chance of replacing a Plains tile, and if you exploited it with a farm improvement, it gave five Happiness to the nearest city. But if you have positive happiness, you can get the choice to use it for your military and give them lanterns and lights that don't require fire. In-game, that means no debuffs while fighting at night.
In reality, the Bright Grass was far more incredible than the Adamant Trees. Light meant streets could be lit better during the evening. It meant that night shifts wouldn't consume so much oil and fuel. Magic was abundant enough that someone could be hired just to touch the bulbs and charge them up for a week. They didn't switch off, so instead of switch they'd just be covered up with some fabric or a shell of material that'd be removed in the evening. With large enough bundles and some glass, we could also make searchlights. Long-range communication will be easier now, too, as we'll be able to send light signals more clearly by using these guys instead of a fire.
So, with one perk into the Nature Goddess's last line, new tiles are made all over the continent for people to fight over and use. It let those who were lacking catch up, but those already with power could make better use of both resources.
And I had a little over half the continent at my disposal, meaning that I'll be getting most of the new resources.
Then, of course, there was also the fact that there were four more new strategic resources and four more luxury resources that operated along the same vein as those two.
In the game, they gave modest perks, but in this new world?
Yeah.
Like I said, with these new materials becoming ubiquitous, we're going from low fantasy with sci-fi DNA straight into high fantasy.
With the remaining sci-fi involved pretty much becoming sufficiently advanced enough to just be magic.
Yeah.
Needless to say, I wished that I had had the opportunity to prepare for the changes before they took place.
…
The first thing I did after meeting with the Life Goddess was to get to my scholars and tell them to search for anything new, write down their findings, and start investigating everything for advantages. While I had my suspicions and plans, I wanted to make sure there was nothing hidden away and no surprises. I wanted to make use of and exploit all the new assets, but at the same time, I didn't want to make any mistakes by committing to a resource before finding out that they had side effects that weren't in the game.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
After I did that, I moved back to speak with the Divine Engine.
The Children of the Elm had moved quickly to set up living quarters for their new goddess, but they were outdone by the woman herself.
She made her new living quarters herself in the form of an impossibly massive tree whose trunk held a palace/cathedral at its base.
Where did the mountain-sized, pure white tree come from?
She made it with 'excess' power.
Yeah, I really filled her up too much with faith in her 'power conservation' mode.
Anyway, the surrounding forest was now the Children of the Elm's paradise on earth. Nature was flourishing beneath the Great Elm's canopy. Animals gathered in packs and sequestered themselves in new clearings. Trees transformed and turned into different types and arranged themselves into different biomes. Fields of flowers formed, along with forest paths made of upturned soil and moved stones. Though I did my best to limit the pollution made in my cities, keeping factories and the like downwind and downstream, I could easily tell that the air was better in the new land, too.
There were multiple new lakes forming in the region, too.
They were suspiciously perfect for building resorts in, which made me think that the Goddess of Life had some form of information gathering while she slept.
But that's enough worrying about how much power she had.
She's literally called a Divine Engine, and I've been channeling faith into her the moment we found her. It was all to be expected.
So, it's time to move on.
The cathedral/palace was composed of pure white wood that had veins of a glittering gold-like substance. I had a suspicion as to what the tree was composed of, and what that gold-like sap was, but verification would have to come later. Gothic in design, if with wood rather than stone, however the spires and buttresses weren't plain. Vines and flowers grew from them, and the same went for the walls and columns inside the structure. The base of the columns had springs that provided fresh water, and ever-ripe fruits were close at hand.
Vines hung from the ceiling and created complex lattices while holding bulbs of Bright Grass. They shone light throughout the inside of the cathedral. The aisles were filled with individual seating. Banners, carpets, and even cushions were living plants. A constant breeze flowed through the large chamber, keeping everything cool. The ceiling was a dizzying array of bright flowers in perpetual bloom. Dizzying because they changed every couple of moments in waves.
And, at the end of the cathedral, instead of an altar… there was a great, pure-white throne of white and gold.
Where the Goddess of Light held audience and received prayer.
The whole place felt like an endgame level for some demented third-person masochist hack-and-slash. Surrounding levels would all be filled with enemies that were bosses in the early stages. All the flowers, statues, and praying pilgrims outside would be the background for loads of fights. The chanting and prayers would be the OST, and it'd just get louder and louder, until you get through the doors, get hit with the cutscene, and BAM:
Pinnacle Cultivator of Souls: She Who Enriches Existence through Living
Goddess of Life and Nature, the Third Divine Engine
Giant health bar appears, Pin flies in from across the map, hits you with a launcher, and all the plants turn their petals razor-sharp and shoot them at you. Then, she hits you with all sorts of AOE beams right when you land, so all that you can do is run and dodge with the pattern until you find an opening, while the choir surges all around you.
Hopefully, though, Pin can be taught to not humor enemies with patterns, and just fly and bombard the enemy with loads of long-ranged attacks.
But that's enough fun.
"Pin." My arrival had turned a few heads of the faithful, but my direct address commanded attention. She lay on her side at her large throne. Covered with a mattress at the seat and with multitudes of pillows, the arms of the thrones were more for her to lay on rather than rest her arms on as an imposing ruler. At my words, though, the goddess's eyes opened and a smile came upon her features. She rose from slumber, and the multitudes of the faithful went silent and bowed their heads as one. Hundreds went from sitting to kneeling with their foreheads against the ground. "I have questions that only you can answer."
"I will do my utmost to fulfill your desires, my honored master." Pin got up and floated before me. Pure white robes came apart. Her final form came to be in all its skimpy glory, wrapped up in floaty squares of silk, jewels, and tight cords of white-and-gold wood cords. She took a knee before me and bowed her head. One hand on her staff, while the other over her heart. Which meant it vanished into impossible depths—stop that. The lewdness is probably a trap. "Please, ask me your questions."
I gave a nod and asked.
"What do you recall of the Ancients?"
"Nothing, my honored master. I came to be when I met you." That was what I expected. I gave a nod at the answer. The crest on my hand gave off a warm feeling. Instinctively, I thought what she said was true. I might have more control over her than I did, Eminent. Or, it could be a trap. "All I know is you, and what I can do and should do."
"What should you do? Explain." I asked, and she bowed her head.
"My prime directive is to serve you and do as you command. In my dormancy, you protected me, you cared for me, and you gave me all that I required and more. Then, you trusted me, and even now you ask rather than command." She smiled and looked upon my hand. I haven't given her a single order. Some sort of hidden trust mechanic that I miraculously passed, or was it a trick? After the Death Goddess, I wasn't sure. "But to fully be yours, I had to complete a primal command embedded deep within my soul: to give this land the blessings necessary to complete the work of my creators. Now, throughout the continent, the materials exist to complete the great work."
None of this rang a bell.
"And, that is?"
Pin held out her hand, and the floor between us shifted. The plants formed a map of the continent. Then, the eight Citadels arose in the eight starting regions as flowers.
Then at the center, where the Academy used to be, another flower bud came to be.
A ninth Citadel?
No.
Something else.
From the blooming flowers crept vines through the map, which reached the central flower bud.
This must be an expansion that I was never around for.
Damn, dying sucks.
"Once the eight are under control, this great work you speak of will begin, and the materials you've created across the land will be needed to complete it." I put everything together. For a moment, Pin's eyes widened, and some of my guards muttered. "I see. Then, many plans will need to be changed. I will be requiring your assistance."
Pin bowed her head again before timidly reaching for my hand, and I did my best to pull her up to stand and give her a firm handshake.
While looking up at her eyes.
Good.
I hoped that I didn't look as awkward as I felt.
Now… let's see if I can access this new content for my favorite game without getting killed.