Mountain of the Immortals

"Finally!" I exclaimed.

"What happened?" Ares asked.

"You seriously don't know what happened?" Aphrodite scoffed. "He's been ranting about the guildhall being close to leveling up for days now."

"That’s wonderful news, Zeus," Hephaestus said.

“It is and it means that we have a lot of work to do," I replied, trying to ignore the fact that all I wanted to do at that moment was take a hot bath and rest.

"We already have a lot of work to do," Artemis said.

"This will be the final push," I said, and turned to Aphrodite.

"I think I know that look," she said, smiling at me. "You need something, don't you?"

"How well you know me! Indeed I do, and this would fall in your lap anyhow.”

“I have meetings with seven different spice merchants, and I would honestly do anything if it gives me an excuse to make these meetings as short as possible.”

“In that case, you’re in luck," I said, turning back to address everyone. "This is the last level of our guildhall."

"Truly?" Ares asked, surprised. "You’ve already reached the maximum of its power? That is really impressive considering you haven't been here for all that long."

"The place of power had been unclaimed for millennia," Artemis explained, "so billions of MP were just waiting there for someone to claim them."

"To be fair, I don't think just anyone would have been able to climb to the top and claim the place of power," Aphrodite said.

"That is true, but anyway, the point is that there was already a lot of MP we could use to instantly upgrade buildings and fulfill the leveling up requirements."

"Which brings me to the task I have for you, my beautiful goddess," I said, trying to get on her best side.

"I already told you I'd do anything to get out of those meetings," Aphrodite said, "so there's no need for flattery, though I always appreciate it."

"The first thing I'm going to upgrade is the housing," I told her. "Since this is going to be the last level, I don't see any reason to wait."

"Which means our population will double," she concluded.

"I think it will be more than that, but yeah. I'll let you know the exact number as soon as I know," I said when we reached the outskirts of our town, "so you can go ahead and start letting people in."

"Do we have enough applicants to fill the slots that will open up?" Artemis asked.

"I'm not sure, since we don't know the exact number yet but even if we don't, we'll certainly fill them in no time," Aphrodite replied. "And the overflow is going to be positioned in Dion."

"Indeed. Dion is going to be city number two," I said. "All who don't fit in here will be directed there, since it won't have a limit."

"And it's directly connected to us," Hephaestus said. "In essence, it's another district of our town, only it's connected with a portal instead of stone-paved paths."

"Which reminds me,” I said, looking at Artemis. “I wonder if we can finally start using the portal to bring ships directly from the Aegean Sea to the top of our mountain."

The divine portal had enabled us to connect our town with the port city of Dion without the need to climb the steep mountainsides of Olympus. When we upgraded the portal to level five, it gave us the option to construct an additional set of portals. A lot of thought went into where to place them.

In the end we had decided to put one in the open Aegean Sea, while the one on our end would be inside a lake that would be able to fit at least a few ships. This way, we could open direct trade routes from the seas into our town, without the need for ships to dock in Dion and have their items carried through the portal there to reach us.

This was going to have an adverse effect on Dion, but considering that they would also be seeing an influx of citizens, I didn’t expect it to be such a big problem. On the contrary, their dock would no longer be populated with ships that were there for reasons completely unrelated to them, save for the fact that they were on the way up here.

"Construction is almost done," Artemis replied. "I think we're going to need a couple more days. But we'll continue expanding the lake so that even more ships can fit on top of Olympus."

"It's a fascinating idea," Ares remarked. "I can't wait to see it in action."

"Same here," I agreed as we reached the point in the town where we usually split up. "Alright, in that case, don't let me keep you. I'll go through the upgrades and let you know when I have a concrete number, Aphrodite."

"Can't wait," she said, and blew me a kiss as she walked away.

The rest of them didn’t move to leave and I was sure I knew why that was. They all wanted to make sure the buildings they were working in would be among the first ones to be upgraded.

"Go, go," I said, shooing them away with a smile on my face. "I'll make sure your buildings are all upgraded as soon as possible."

I could see in their eyes that they were gearing up to present me with arguments for why their construction projects were more important than the rest, and what they had to offer to our community. Funny how they’d become so attached to this place so fast. But then again, so had I.

Happy to hear that I had taken their wishes into consideration, they broke off and went off to continue with the rest of their daily tasks. This left me alone to go through the upgrade I’d been itching to look into all this time. I headed back home and climbed up onto the roof to get an overview of the whole town.

It looked beautiful as it was but I guessed it was our nature to always want something better, both for ourselves and the people we cared about. With that thought in mind, I pulled up the guildhall's overview.

* * *

Place of Power: Primary Guildhall - Divine Realm

Name: Mount Olympus

Level: 6 (Maximum)

State: Idle

MP: 326,301,517,025

MP Generation: 58,000 MP/minute

Population: 10,149

Lumber: 41,187,958

Iron: 52,185,334

Food Rations: 44,849

* * *

It felt odd not to see any level-up requirements, cost, or time, but I felt an immense sense of completion for having reached this point. And we still had billions of MP stashed away for a rainy day or whatever those new perpetual projects were. Thinking of all the new goodness that might have appeared now, I pulled up the list of buildings.

* * *

Available Construction Projects:

Tent (160/1600)

Storage Shack (6/60)

Farm (32/320)

Lumberyard (1/1)

Mining Camp (1/1)

Blacksmith's Workshop (1/1)

Melee Fighting Barracks (1/1)

Ranged Fighting Barracks (1/1)

Walls (1/1)

Mana Generator (4/40)

Magic Thunder Coil Defenses (4/40)

Warmage Academy (1/1)

Academics and Research Institution (1/1)

Intelligence Agency (1/1)

Sky Harbor (1/1)

Wonder of the World (0/1)

* * *

So far, every level-up had given us double the number of houses, farms, and the likes. Sometimes, not even that. So I was stunned to see that all of the projects that weren't unique could now be multiplied tenfold instead. But knowing this was the last level our guildhall would ever reach, I supposed it made absolute sense.

But I had no idea what the new project at the end of the list would be able to do.