Mountain of the Immortals

On the last day of our trip back, when we were already deep inside Greek territory, I had one of the first long-duration notifications appear on the periphery of my vision. I pulled it up and smiled with satisfaction.

* * *

The construction project "Walls" has been successfully upgraded to level 5.

* * *

I bet that our citizens would be feeling a lot safer now, as we had established during our conversations on the topic. And the next step would need to be the rest of the defensive fortification of our guildhall. But those might have to wait a tiny bit longer.

* * *

Name: Walls

Level: 5

Level-Up Requirement: Settlement Level 6

Level-Up Cost: 100,000x Lumber Units (1,000,000 MP)

1,500,000x Iron Units (15,000,000 MP)

3,000,000x Stone Units (30,000,000 MP)

Level-Up Time: 30,720 minutes (18,432,000 MP)

Description: A thick wall of metal-reinforced concrete that surrounds the entire city. The wall is wide enough to allow dozens of people to patrol its length and it is a great defense against colossal-sized enemies. It can withstand significant non-magical damage and minimal magical damage, and it is possible to arm its edges with medium-sized artillery.

* * *

The numbers were finally starting to scale up significantly. Just this project alone would cost more than fifty million if I was to build it immediately. Otherwise, provided I had the millions of resources needed, I would have to wait more than twenty days for it to be completed.

In the grand scheme of things I guessed that wasn't such a huge amount of time. However, since every day might be the one that my father decided to stop waiting for my reply to his truce proposal, twenty days seemed like an eternity.

I would need to look into the walls once we leveled up our guild core again, but at the moment I was stuck on the last part of the description. Medium-sized artillery sounded like something that didn't belong to a construction project, and could have been something we would be able to purchase or even craft on our own.

I mentioned this to Artemis and she promised to talk to the pygmies to see if they had schematics for a war machine of this sort. Aphrodite added that she would keep an eye out for opportunities to purchase schematics for such a project or even outright buy items that were marked as medium-sized artillery--or even large-sized, since we weren't going to stay at this level forever.

Speaking of the pygmies, I opened the last of the lingering notifications, having decided to put the workers that were now freed from the construction of the walls toward this one instead.

* * *

The construction project "Blacksmith's Workshop" has been successfully upgraded to level 4.

* * *

A level four workshop would no doubt increase efficiency but I wanted to make sure that the workers didn't end up sitting around idly. After all, continuous growth was the path to victory.

* * *

Name: Blacksmith's Workshop

Level: 4

Level-Up Requirement: Settlement Level 5 (Met)

Level-Up Cost: 3,200x Lumber Units (32,000 MP)

1,600x Iron Units (16,000 MP)

800x Stone Units (8,000 MP)

Level-Up Time: 3,840 minutes (2,304,000 MP)

Description: The blacksmith's workshop is what separates hamlets from organized village communities. Tools, weapons, and armor are only the beginning of what a smithy can offer to a settlement. Owning a blacksmith's workshop unlocks weapons and armor research, as well as crafting equipment and tools. At the current level, the blacksmith's workshop is able to produce medium-sized machines of war and employ 1 spellcaster. This individual can instill minor enchantments into items or break them down with the chance of creating a core that holds an existing enchantment.

* * *

That was yet another game changer for us. Not so much because the pygmies would be able to build medium-sized war machines, but because of the enchantment options. I wasn't expecting them to craft me equipment with amazing enchantments--at least not right away--but the important thing was that the possibility was there.

If we managed to employ someone specialized in this kind of crafting, we might be able to buy minor magical items, break them down to get their enchantment core, and apply that enchantment to the weapons and armor we gave out to our citizens. A simple fire or water enchantment might not sound like much, but a whole army of people carrying weapons that would deal additional elemental damage, as well as armor that would protect them on top of its normal stats, would definitely make a difference. Not to mention that complimenting enchantments might create synergies between different fighters.

If, for example, one citizen had a fire enchantment on her bow while another was able to coat enemies with a flammable liquid, the combined benefits quickly added up to more than the sum of their individual parts. This way we would also be able to utilize all of the odd magical items that we would get each day from the magic item manifestation altar.

The realization hit me hard, and the sudden excitement had me on my feet. All these days that we'd been away, the altar was still generating items. I could only hope that there was no limitation such that we had to retrieve the item from the altar before a new one was generated.

If that was the case, I would be supremely pissed at myself for not assigning someone or something to take care of that. On the other hand, this might just need to be the time that I tested whether it was a thing or not. If I'd lost a bunch of magic items over the course of the last few days, I would never again forget to take care of it.

The same would be true for the ambrosia cells as well. In their case, though, I would never trust them to any mortal. It was too big of a secret to let fall in the hands of anyone but the members of our guild for now.

I purchased the required materials and put them toward upgrading the workshop to its maximum level--at least until we upgraded our guild. If minor enchantments could be placed on weapons in a level-four workshop, I could only hope that stronger ones would become available as I upgraded it.

That was the last of the upgrading tasks that I had in line before we reached home, so I decided to take a rest. I knew that as soon as we hit the shore, the responsibilities of running a city would hit me in the face like a cold hard wind after a relaxing bath in a hot spring.

To my satisfaction, our arrival on the shores of Dion was met by only a few, very enthusiastic fishermen who were up early enough to start another day of hard work. It was always amusing just how much happiness simply walking among them brought to their faces.

Soon enough though, the whole of Dion was buzzing with the fact that we had returned, and even more so that there was a new god with us, who had become a member of our guild. But we didn't stick around in the town too long. As soon as only those salutations that were absolutely necessary had been made with the officials there, we headed straight through the portal and back home, to the top of Mount Olympus.