Mountain of the Immortals

The next step was to check the newly available buildings in the divine section.

* * *

Available Divine Realm Construction Projects:

Divine Portal (1/1) - Divine Realm Construction

God's Watchtower (1/1) - Divine Realm Construction

Hexagonal Prismatic Ambrosia Cell Tower (1/1) - Divine Realm Construction

Wonder of Worship (0/1) - Divine Realm Construction

* * *

I tried to refrain from opening the new construction project right away and instead looked at the upgrades for the already existing constructions. I decided to work on them in the order they were listed.

First of all, I upgraded the divine portal. The cost for raising its level instantly was a bit more than nine and a half million MP, including its material costs, but considering it would otherwise take more than eleven days, I thought it was worth it.

The first thing I noticed once I'd levelled it up was how much larger the portal became. At this point it might even have fit a ship if the masts were shaved down. This idea of a vessel passing through it didn't escape my imagination, and I filed it away in the "awesome things to do" corner of my mind.

Out of mere curiosity, I pulled up its status window again to get a look at what would be needed for the next upgrade.

* * *

Name: Divine Portal

Level: 5

Level-Up Requirement: Settlement Level 6

Level-Up Cost: 1,600x Stone Units (16,000 MP)

12 Divinity Points

Level-Up Time: 32,000 minutes (19,200,000 MP)

Description: A two-way portal that can be permanently placed at a distance of up to 15 miles from the guild core. These portals allow for instantaneous teleportation between them with absolutely no limitations on size and numbers, other than the size of the portal itself. Portals of level 5 or higher can make use of a secondary set of portals. This second gateway can be permanently placed at a distance of up to 150 miles from the guild core.

* * *

My idea of having a ship pass through the portal made even more sense now. There weren't many interesting things or trading partners within a distance of a hundred and fifty miles of our core, but there was more than enough sea. Even though I did not have the necessary DP to build the secondary gate right now, I already had all sorts of ideas about how I would be able to utilize it.

If I was somehow able to build it in the open sea, trade would explode for our city. The ships would simple be able to cross through it along with their merchandise, instead of having to dock and transfer everything into carts that would then have to pulled through the gate in Dion.

This created the problem of having to keep a ship standing temporarily at the top of a mountain, but I was sure Artemis and her woodworking people would be able to think of something. If the Egyptians were able to do it, so could we.

I tried placing the secondary portal on the plan of the city and my view immediately jumped out of my body and high in the sky, giving me an overview of the surrounding region. Anything more than a hundred and fifty miles away was grayed out and I couldn't focus my eyes to zoom in on it.

Placing the portal on the water did look like it would work though. I didn't want to take this decision lightly, so I canceled constructing it for the moment and instead sent a message in the guild chat.

Aphrodite instantly said that she thought it was a great idea, though Dion might not necessarily like the fact that they'd lose some of the traffic they got through their port. I didn't really share that concern, given that their small size was already becoming kind of a bottleneck. Artemis on the other hand wasn't eager to make the call quickly. She did say she liked the idea too, but she had to consult with her best lumberjacks and woodworkers first to discuss how something like this might even work. Still, I was excited by the possibilities this might open up to us.

Easier access to the sea didn't just mean that products and resources would reach us faster but also that our city would become the strongest trade hub on mainland Greece. Having sated my hunger for economic growth and quenched my thirst for entrepreneurial breakthroughs, I picked up where I left off and tried to upgrade the God's Watchtower.

* * *

Name: God's Watchtower

Level: 4

Level-Up Requirement: Settlement Level 5

Resources Needed: 800x Stone Units (8,000 MP)

8 Divinity Points

Level-Up Time: 4,000 minutes (2,400,000MP)

Description: This watchtower was created with the single purpose of guarding the realm of the god who controls it. At the expense of 1 Divinity Point per day, said god will be notified when a creature of significant power enters a range of 100 miles.

* * *

I focused on upgrading it instantly and the resources were removed from me. What I had completely forgotten was that upgrading it also required Divinity Points, something which there was not an infinite supply of.

* * *

Divinity Level: 10 (Minimum 2)

Followers: 43,928 / 45,000

Divinity Points: 2/10

* * *

My DP were regenerating faster now as more people were praying to my name each day, but the maximum DP limit was still putting a stop to how many divine constructions I could create at any given time. I shrugged at the fact that I'd completely forgotten about that, and decided I'd just need to wait for more of them to return to me after upgrading the watchtower.

Seeing that I needed to prioritize the order in which I constructed these projects better, I opened the list and focused on the new project. I had to know what it was capable of, before deciding whether to build it yet or not.

* * *

Name: Wonder of Worship

Resources Needed: 18,000x Stone Units (180,000 MP)

6,000x Lumber Units (60,000 MP)

50,000 Followers (Not Consumed)

10DP

Construction Time: 3,600 minutes (2,160,000 MP)

Description: A place to unite all followers under one roof. This temple is the epicenter of any god's faith, as well as the holiest place to visit for their followers. Pilgrimages can be carried out with this temple as a goal. Each pilgrimage successfully completed provides both the god and the follower with XP proportionate to the distance traveled. Additionally, continuous subconscious praying is unlocked.

* * *

Upon absorbing the information, I regretted my slip-up with using my DP on the watchtower even more. But then I noticed that I needed to have fifty thousand followers. That probably wasn't going to happen for at least a few days, so I could push the construction of this project to the end of my list for now.

As comforting as it was to know that this temple wouldn't take fifty thousand mortals and consume them, the fact that the Dark Energy had included that information was also a bit alarming. Did this mean that if there was no "Not Consumed" note after the follower number, it would just take them as a sacrifice? Were there really divine buildings of that sort? If so, I really had to pay better attention to the list of resources needed.

But this wonder was finally unlocking what I'd been looking for since I started using DP for skills. Using sacrifices, mostly sapient ones, to regain your divinity points was the easiest way to go about it. Of course, the easy way was often not the safest one. Killing people to gain power usually attracted the wrong type of attention from so-called heroes or even other gods. Using followers' prayers to regain DP, like I was doing, was much safer. The problem was that it was a lot slower, at least until it reached the point where followers subconsciously prayed to you. This meant a rapid acceleration of your DP regeneration rate, and it was ultimately worth the wait.

What I didn't know was that such a building was needed to unlock it. The fact that pilgrimages were also unlocked was just an additional benefit. Having followers perform pilgrimages was a great way to gain XP passively and I knew that some gods really took advantage of this.

Building a place of worship in a far away land in order to maximize the gains from the distance traveled was a great tactic. An even greater one was making sure that the route was as safe as possible. The fewer followers that perished on the pilgrimage, the more XP would be rewarded and the more appealing and popular the whole thing would become.

I didn't have the option to design the routes of the pilgrimage here, but as long as my influence grew it did not matter. Pilgrimage routes would eventually form by themselves and I would benefit from the automatic XP coming my way for centuries to come. All I had to do in order to enjoy these benefits was gain around six thousand more worshippers. Since we had the rule that anyone living in our city needed to become our follower as well, I was sure I was going to get at least a couple thousand more from those who would soon move in.

A sudden bump of this magnitude in my number of followers was usually followed by a long tail of more incoming followers over the next few days. It was only a matter of time before my DP regeneration rate increased dramatically. I just had to make sure that I had at least ten DP ready and waiting for the upgrade.

The last part of the recently unlocked projects and buildings to look over was in the category that had become available after we'd killed the world raid boss. Since the one-hundred-headed dragon had perished right in our city and its blood had soaked the ground, our core had absorbed the beast's essence.

The core had been enhanced and an additional category had become available to us afterward, one that I suspected very few other guildhalls had access to.

* * *

Available Enhanced Guild Core Construction Projects:

Monster Slayers' Union (1/1)

Dragon Ghost Protector (1/1)

Magic Item Manifestation Altar (0/1)

* * *

Not wanting to repeat the same mistake I made with my DP, the first thing I pulled up to check was the one that had just unlocked.

* * *

Name: Magic Item Manifestation Altar

Resources Needed: 10x Stone Units (100 MP)

10,000,000 MP

Construction Time: 400 minutes (240,000 MP)

Description: Very few entities ever reach the status of a world raid boss, and their existence can become a menace to the balance of entire realms. Once such threats are eliminated, the Dark Energy acknowledges that balance has been restored and can provide material items that might prove useful to the ones responsible.

* * *

The description looked enigmatic and I normally wouldn't even have thought of spending ten million MP on something I couldn't understand and didn't know exactly how it might benefit us. There was one thing that changed my mind though.

The fact that the Dark Energy was mentioned in the description could only mean this was going to be something powerful. While the descriptions were simply our minds translating the information inherent in the world around us, Dark Energy was rarely, if ever, mentioned directly.

If I understood the description correctly, in combination with the name of the construction project, it would probably give us access to minor magic items or materials. Now, the word "manifestation" could mean that these items would appear out of thin air, but I found it hard to believe that there would be no payments of some sort involved.

Taking all these things into consideration, I decided it just might be worth building this thing, at least to see how it worked. Since I had the ten stone units already in storage, I just paid the ludicrous MP cost and chose to build it instantly.

I placed it right next to the ambrosia tower in my mansion so that it would be hidden from plain view, and then headed there to look at it.

The mansion looked even more beautiful on the inside than the outside. The marble floors were complimented by large windows with metal frames, and long corridors of rooms stretched out from each side of the entrance. This last upgrade had made quite a big improvement to the quality and optics of the place as well.

Trying not to lose my thoughts on the beauty around me and staying focused on the reason why I came back here, I reached the room and saw a glowing light was escaping from underneath the doorframe. I pushed the door open and right next to our ambrosia-creating wonder stood a small stone altar with a glowing cylinder on top of it. I moved closer and took the metal object in my hands, inspecting it.

* * *

Item: Minor Torch of Everlight

Type: Magic Device

Durability: 53/60

Grade: E Grade

Weight: 8st.

Description: A metal cylinder imbued with a single source of light at one of its ends. The gem that provides the illumination was harvested from a star, having been magically encased there for two decades. The average lifetime of the torch is three hundred years. Flare operation is not available on this design.

* * *

The torch was shedding a very powerful hard light but I was able to shut it down with a thought, just like every other magical illumination device. What was interesting about this piece was that the light it emitted was directional, something that might prove very useful in situations where discretion was needed.

What I still didn't understand was why the torch was standing on the altar already. If building the altar had created the torch, then the deal was a supremely bad one. Ten million MP for a magical light was far worse than I'd imagined.

I looked at the altar and absorbed its information to try and understand exactly what had happened.

* * *

Name: Magic Item Manifestation Altar

Level: 5

Magic Items Grade: E-Grade

Next Item: 23 hours, 58 minutes, 42 seconds

Level-Up Requirement : Settlement Level 6

Level-Up Cost: 20x Stone Units (200 MP)

100,000,000 MP

Construction Time: 800 minutes (480,000 MP)

Description: Very few entities ever reach the status of a world raid boss and their existence can become a menace to the balance of entire realms. Once such threats are eliminated, the Dark Energy acknowledges that balance has been restored and can provide material things that might prove useful to the ones responsible.

* * *

I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing. It wasn't there in so many words, but all information pointed toward the fact that this altar would generate one magic item every day. It didn't say what kind of items exactly, which I guessed meant they would be somewhat random, but they were going to be E grade.

That was the lowest grade in existence, but it was still going to be a free magic item. One that I would be able to sell, or even use to equip our people. Despite the steep cost, it looked like this project would eventually pay me back a thousandfold.

Being the greedy person that I was, my mind immediately rushed to think about what would happen if I leveled up the altar. Would it produce multiple magic items per day, or shorten the amount of time before each manifestation? Or even better, raise the grade of the items it created?

I placed the torch in my inventory and made a mental reminder to check the altar again the next day to see if another torch had been created or if it was a completely different item.

Looking at the rest of the buildings in this category, there wasn't a whole lot more I could do. The Monster Slayers' Union couldn't be upgraded and there was absolutely no way I would spend a billion MP to upgrade the Dragon Ghost Protector project. No matter how powerful and useful it would be if we were attacked, we weren't under attack at the moment and I wasn't going to throw away MP I might need for something else further down the line just in case.

This completed my overview of the recently unlocked buildings and construction projects. It was time to look at which of the normal buildings I would upgrade after I was done with the houses. I walked out of the manor and was on my way back to the hill that overlooked the whole town when I saw Aphrodite had addressed me in the guild chat.

"As expected, the people on the waiting list were more than happy to help with building the houses," she said.

"That's great news. And by the way you should see ours," I replied. "It's gotten quite big."

"Sounds like we'll have to explore it," she replied. I thought I heard a soft giggle before the end of her message.

I didn't reply and instead went back to work. I wasn't going to turn down her offer, but I wouldn't let my mind aimlessly wander off into fantasies just yet. I had work to do. I needed to see what I should build and in what order. So far, I'd prioritized buildings that were needed for our guild core to level up.

And that was exactly what I was planning to do again. I pulled up the overview window and looked at the requirements.