Mountain of the Immortals

“You did it!” Aphrodite said, and grabbed my arm, her eyes still out of focus as she went over her own notifications.

“We did it,” I said, squeezing her hand while looking at Artemis. “Together.”

The huntress didn’t reply, but she smiled with the same unfocused expression as Aphrodite.

I pulled up the massive number of prompts that were now flashing all around me and went to work.

* * *

Congratulations, you have taken control of Mount Olympus.

Since this is the first place of power under your control, it will automatically be assigned as a guildhall.

Congratulations, you have claimed the guildhall : Mount Olympus.

Being a deity means you can use the primary guildhall to establish your divine domain and grow your religion.

* * *

I took a step back from the rest of the notifications and pulled up the divine skill I had that would allow me to do that. After all, if there was ever a good time to use it, it would be right now.

* * *

Name: Establish Divine Domain

Level: 1

Type: Active - Divine

HP Consumed: 0

MP Consumed: 500

DP Consumed: 5

Power: -

Range: Melee

Precondition: This skill can only be used at the core of a place of power.

Description: Undergoing the Apotheosis quest has opened a new world of possibilities as a god walking among mortals. Using this skill, a deity can claim a place of power and transform it into their domain, upon which they would be able to build their religion.

* * *

In the beginning I’d thought that this skill would be necessary for claiming the place of power but apparently it wasn’t. After all, mortals were also able to claim places of power, so clearly this skill did something else. I was disappointed to see that whatever it was would have to wait, since I doubted I’d regenerated a single DP in the very little time that had passed since I’d last looked, much less reached five.

* * *

Divinity Level: 6 (Minimum 2)

Followers: 24,489 / 25,000

Divinity Points: 6/6

* * *

Somehow my Divinity Points pool was completely full again, which was probably the subject of one of those flashing notifications. I wasn’t sure if it from the trials—or whatever that was I’d just been through—or from my followers, but I couldn’t have cared less at that moment.

I focused my attention on the orb and used the skill. Almost instantly, bolts of lightning started falling all around us almost non-stop. Both women were visibly surprised and disturbed by the fact that the lightning was striking from the clear skies above and getting closer to them with every breath.

“Don’t be afraid,” I said, and even though I had no logical way of knowing it, I was certain we were completely safe.

The thunder and lightning finally stopped after a few moments, only to strike with much more force a couple of seconds later. The last strike hit the orb, which now looked like it had lightning trapped inside it, spinning and swirling at incredible speeds.

* * *

Congratulations, you have established your divine realm : Mount Olympus.

You have unlocked the divine realm upgrades on Mount Olympus.

* * *

Divine realm upgrades? I hadn’t even seen the normal upgrades to the guildhall yet, much less the divine realm ones. Thinking about it, I realized I hadn’t even seen the MP stored in the power core yet either. I looked through the available menus until I found what I was looking for.

* * *

Place of Power: Primary Guildhall - Divine Realm

Name: Mount Olympus

Level: 1

State: Idle

MP: 327,510,123,581

MP Generation: 1 MP/minute

Timber: 0

Iron: 0

Food Rations: 0

Buildings: -

Level-Up Requirement: 10 Tents (0)

100 Food Rations (0)

100 Lumber Units (0)

100 Iron Units (0)

Level-Up Cost: 10 MP

Level-Up Time: 10 seconds

* * *

“Three hundred twenty-seven billion!” I shouted, not believing my own eyes.

“What are you talking about?” Aphrodite asked.

“Check the guildhall’s MP,” I said.

“Holy fuck!” she said, her open mouth then slowly turning into a wide grin. “We’re rich. We are fucking rich!”

“Is that really a lot?” Artemis asked, her face not showing any signs that she was kidding.

“Is that a lot?” I repeated, my eyes wide open. “We can do pretty much anything we want with that amount of MP!”

“What use is the MP here though?” she continued. “It’s not like you can suck it up right? Do you use it to buy things, or what?”

“You’ve really never heard about how guildhalls work?” Aphrodite asked her.

Artemis simply shook her head.

“MP is the most basic of currencies for places of power,” Aphrodite explained. “The core of each place generates a certain amount of mana every hour.”

“In our case,” I continued, “the core of Mount Olympus has been sitting here for who knows how many thousands of years generating MP without being used by anyone.”

“Used for what?” Artemis asked. “And how?”

“The owners of places of power can use mana to create things,” Aphrodite said. “If, for example, Zeus wants to build a wooden shack for us to sleep in, we will need some lumber, and a few other materials.”

“Indeed,” Artemis agreed. “You would need to create a strong foundation first, then you—”

“Yes. Whatever. I don’t care,” the goddess of beauty said. “So either you find these things or you materialize them.”

She let that last statement linger for a bit, waiting for Artemis to get it.

“With mana?” Artemis said finally.

“Exactly,” Aphrodite replied. “You can materialize them with mana. But only what you need in terms of building and sustaining the guildhall and nothing more.”

“So there’s no way to materialize obsidian so I can make arrows out of it?” the huntress asked.

“We might be able to construct a building that would produce the arrows,” I offered.

“We could really do that?” she asked, and her eyes shined with joy. “Let’s start with that. I’d love to use obsidian arrows!”

“There are plenty more useful things than arrow-making facilities,” Aphrodite sighed, “but there’s also more to it than that. Even if we have all the materials needed for raising the wooden shack, we still need someone to do it. And I’m not doing it.”

“I can build a shack, no problem,” Artemis said.

“It’s not just about the shack,” I said. “You have to think bigger scale.”

“You mean like building walls and such?” she asked.

“Exactly,” Aphrodite said, and bowed to thank me for making the huntress see what she had been trying to say. “In this case, we would need people to do the work.”

“Which actually shouldn’t be too much of a problem, since we each have our own followers,” I said. “Mortals with guildhalls have it much harder. Mana can also be used to replace or even supplement working hands.”

“So, what? Phantasmal workers just come and help the mortals to carry and build things?” Artemis asked.

“Almost,” Aphrodite said. “It’s more like forces that operate alongside people, and offer the work equivalent of one worker. But even that’s not all. Workers, and even mana workers, need time to do things. If you really have enough mana, you can just materialize the finished product.”

“So just like that, I can have my obsidian arrow–making facility?” she asked.

Aphrodite groaned at the huntress’s obsession with the arrows. “I think a place like that would likely not be available right from the beginning,” she replied after taking a couple of breaths to compose herself. “We’d probably need to raise other buildings to unlock it, but yes, eventually. Of course, the cost of just raising it from nothing would include both that of the materials and the cost of all the workers, and then a big amount on top of that to skip all the time and effort needed to complete it in perfect condition.”

“That’s the good thing about buying out the construction time though,” I said, thinking of a small tip I had learned from my father. “Even if your workers aren’t the greatest, buildings created with mana are always perfect.”

“Doesn’t this whole thing sound like an overkill for a guildhall though?” Artemis said after considering what she’d just learned for a couple of moments. “I get walls to protect yourselves, but it sounds like what you’re describing would be a whole settlement.”

“That’s exactly what a guildhall is,” I told her, “or rather what it has the possibility to become… A city where all of our followers can prosper.”

“You mean the people of Dion would have to live up here?” Aphrodite asked this time.

“Not in the sense that they would sleep here, but we are going to need working hands and eventually guards and servants,” I explained. “And regardless of that, our believers have resources of their own and they might even offer us some. If we reach the point where we’re able to provide them with all that’s necessary for a good life, they will be able to pursue other things that will benefit us more.”

“Such as?” she asked.

“Such as building things on their own, researching and unlocking knowledge. So we’d better start with a connection for our people to the top of the mountain. It doesn’t make sense for them to be climbing up and down all the time.”

“You mean you can create some kind of portal?” Artemis asked, surprised.

“Probably,” I said, and nodded. “If you give me some time to go through my notifications.”

“Go ahead then,” Aphrodite said. She started moving away from us and toward the edge of the valley.

I pulled up the rest of the notifications waiting for me to go through them.

* * *

You have claimed a new place of power.

As a result your Divinity Points have been fully replenished.

* * *

As I had suspected, my DP had been refilled as a result of what I’d just done. However, the prompt didn’t say that I got back to full DP because I’d created a guildhall but because I’d claimed a place of power. That would mean that even if I turned another place of power into a dungeon or just claimed it and left it without doing anything to it, I’d still get to reap the benefits of recharging my DP.

I closed that notification and opened the last remaining one.

* * *

You are now able to build structures and turn your guildhall into a settlement.

Would you like to proceed?

Yes No

* * *

I mentally selected “Yes”, eager to see the options that would appear after I did so. To my disappointment, there was no immediate feedback that anything had changed, save for the poorest selection of buildings—if one could even call them that— that I could purchase or start setting up.

* * *

Available Construction Projects:

Tent (0/10)

Storage Shack (0/1)

* * *

Not only did I have very limited choices in what I could build just now but the amount of projects my settlement could hold was also limited. Though I had no doubt this number would rise if I raised the level of the guildhall.

If I remembered correctly, raising the level required me to build ten tents either way so I selected the tent option and another window appeared in front of me. This looked more like what would be required in order to create a tent.

* * *

Name: Tent

Resources Needed: 4x Leather Units (40 MP)

1x Lumber Unit (10 MP)

Construction Time: 10 seconds (100 MP)

Description: The most basic form of shelter from the weather. Can fit up to four humanoid individuals.

* * *

Without any resources, and without wanting to go hunting animals or chopping down trees right now, I clicked on the “Resources Needed” part of the window and was presented with another question prompt.

* * *

A total of 50 MP is needed for the materialization of 4x Leather Units and 1x Lumber Units.

Would you like to proceed?

Yes No

* * *

I selected “Yes” and the orb on the mountain top flashed for a fraction of a second before a pile of leather pelts and some planks appeared next to Artemis, who had been staring out at the last moments of the sunset.

“What the crows?” she exclaimed, surprised. “Did you just get these things with mana?”

“I sure did,” I said, and joined her to look at the materials I’d just purchased. “Places of power are terrifying if you think about it. It just materialized wood and leather out of thin air.”

“It’s the Dark Energy,” she said. “It’s always the Dark Energy… Are these supposed to be the materials to make a tent?”

“They sure are,” I said, and got down to work. “You can help if you want.”

She smiled and fell on her knees next to me. I charged my spear with lightning and used it as a precision cutting tool, quickly shaping the wood into exactly the pieces we would need for the tent. It took a little bit of thinking to determine how best to construct it, which meant, that the whole process lasted longer than the ten seconds of construction time mentioned in the description.

As soon as I finished setting it up I noticed that I had a small notification. I wiped the smile of satisfaction off my face, glanced at Artemis—who seemed impressed with the result of my work—and pulled up the prompt.

* * *

The construction project “Tent” has been successfully completed.

* * *

I could also now see the tent in my settlement menu so I focused on it and a new view popped up.

* * *

Name: Tent #1

Level: 1

Occupants: 0/4

Level-Up Requirement: Settlement Level 2

Level-Up Cost: ??

Level-Up Time: ??

Description: The most basic form of shelter from the weather. Can fit up to four humanoid individuals.

* * *

Four people in one tent might be a bit tight, but I certainly wouldn’t mind squeezing in there with Aphrodite and Artemis. And if things went well, it might also be a good stress test for the construction’s rigidity.

“What are you snickering about?” Artemis asked. “Did you find something funny in the settlement management prompts?”

“What?” I asked, momentarily confused. “No, I just thought of something funny.”

“Is this thing going to be alright for tonight?” Aphrodite asked. “I walked around the perimeter to make sure we’re safe here, but I’d love to rest soon.”

“It is ready for you,” I said, and opened the flap for her enter.

“Will you join me?” she purred, though it was obvious from her voice that she was indeed very tired.

“I’ll need to work on the settlement a bit longer,” I groaned as she looked at me. “There’s just so much to do with this place.”

“Suit yourself,” she said, and turned to Artemis. “What about you? I bet you need to relax after such a long day.”

“I think I will,” she said. Even with the low light conditions, I could see she was blushing. “But I’ll take a walk first. I want to take in the surroundings.”

“Oh, both of you are hopeless,” Aphrodite said as she ducked into the tent. “I guess it’s just me then.”

She would have to wait. I had godly matters to attend to first.

“Good night.” Artemis walked away too. The moon was almost full and its silver light reflected off her leather armor as she left the shade of the tent.

I needed to focus on the settlement. I might be out of Cronus’s reach at the moment, but it wouldn’t take long for him to find out that I’d set up a base here. And when that happened, I’d want to have prepared my defenses as well as I possibly could.

With a heavy heart I called up the building selection screen again.