Chapter 951: Messy but Delicious

Jason placed a comforting hand on Nik’s shoulder as they walked down a corridor in the cloud ship.

“I won’t say don’t be nervous, because of course you are,” Jason told him. “What I will say is that they’re going to love you.”

“You think?”

“Nik, everyone loves you. Even Neil adores you, and you know how cranky he can get. The whole Adventure Society loves you. That might just be because of your power set, but it counts.”

“You think that maybe I could find a team here on Earth? Maybe I should have joined one of the Geller teams back in Greenstone. I just wanted to see the world a bit, you know?”

“I do.”

“And I wanted to…”

“What?”

“I wanted to talk to you about it. But year after year, you didn’t come back.”

Jason grimaced, feeling the shame. He’d had his reasons for leaving, but he always did. It didn’t stop him from leaving his team behind, time and again. And now he’d done the same to Nik, who had needed him more than anyone.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I can give you all the excuses in the world, but it doesn’t change that. I could promise to do better, but what you need isn’t words. I hope that you’ll give me the chance to do better. To give me the time that I didn’t give to you.”

“You once told me that you don’t get along with your mother.”

“That’s true.”

“Would you give her the time? If she asked for it?”

Jason stopped walking, Nik pulling up as well. Jason stood, frowning for a long time.

“That’s a good question,” he said finally. “A hard question. And, if I’m being honest, I don’t know. She’s still here, on Earth. Maybe I should see if she’s ready for what I’m asking you for. Everyone’s circumstances are different. I don’t know, Nik. I don’t know.”

He pushed a smile onto his face and kept walking.

“You know, I don’t think you need a team,” he told Nik. “Your powers just work better in large groups, which is why the Adventure Society keeps setting you up with expeditions. What you need is a guild who can take full advantage of your abilities. We’re looking at setting one up when we get back to Palli. I’m not going to let someone else take care of you. It’s you and me, from here on out.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We’ve been discussing it ever since I had guild issues in Vitesse. Team Biscuit is getting big, and we have some people floating in and out, like me, Rufus and Taika. Probably Zara, too, now she’s back to princessing. It makes sense to have a guild that’s small and works like an extended team. Swapping people in and out, based on availability and need.”

“You don’t have any silver rankers, though. Doing contracts with a bunch of gold-rankers will get me killed.”

“Our guild recruitment would be focused on the lower ranks. Training people up to our standards and helping them rank up. It’s a lot easier than trying to pull in people already gold rank, who have their own ways of doing things anyway. We’d set up pools of people for each rank, base them out of zones with appropriate magic levels. Greenstone for iron rankers and initial training, but we’re looking at setting up headquarters around the world. Clive and that poor woman Lorelei have been working to reverse engineer the Builder cult portal network for almost twenty years now. Our guild houses would be a test bed, before rolling it out commercially.”

“That would cause a bigger stir than the Sky Link network Farrah and Travis built. And that was huge. An actual portal network will throw whole countries and industries into disarray.”

“It’ll be a big deal, yeah, but within reason. It’s not like it’ll be free portal travel, but it’ll be cheaper and more accessible than the current system of finding a portal specialist and paying them a bunch of money.”

Jason stopped them in front of a door to one of the ship lounges.

“You ready, bud?”

“No,” Nik said, rolling his shoulders as if limbering up for a fight. “But let’s do it anyway.”

Jason chuckled and the mist door vanished. There was a squeal, and Nik was hit by a torpedo.

***

New Water was the city Jason created in his astral kingdom for the survivors of Boko. Many had chosen to leave and find new homes on Pallimustus, especially those who didn’t like the civic policies Jason enacted, such as the abolition of both indentured servitude and aristocratic title. Further social development was the purview of the Dominion church.

The clergy in Jason’s astral kingdom had chosen to remain for his journey to Earth. The initial contingent had been from the churches of Hearth, Refuge and Dominion, but as the work expanded, others had joined when Jason took on more people in Rimaros. Members of various priesthoods joined to help establish the new city, mostly due to the logistics required for a population in the tens of thousands.

Although the gods of Pallimustus had no sway in his realm, and could not enact their power through their clergy, it mattered little. The gods had made sure that their followers were experts in their areas of influence, magic or not. The contingent of experts had their own magic, but it was their knowledge that proved more valuable.

Most of the gods represented were minor, concerned with the day to day lives of ordinary people. There was little need for the clergy of major deities like Ocean, Storm or War. The priests Jason took on were mostly those of professional gods useful to a new city, such as Farmer, Mason, and Grocer. Others were deities often overlooked but critical to a city, such as Hygiene. The results of their expertise was on full display as the city of New Water went from a refugee haven to a home and a society.

Farmer’s priests helped establish agriculture in the fertile lands around the city, removing the need for Jason to conjure up large amounts of food. A mix of clergy worked with Jason to refine the city’s design, including Mason, Architect and Gardener. Their expertise in construction and city planning guided Jason in adjusting his hastily erected metropolis.

By necessity, Jason was getting better at hastily knocking up magic cities. Details mattered, however, and professional help turned New Water into a more practical and pleasant place to live and work. The population did just that, establishing farms and businesses. Trade was the major god, alongside Dominion and Knowledge, who did have a role to play. His clergy were critical in helping establish the city’s nascent economy.

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Knowledge’s clergy set up schools, along with training programs for the kind of work available in this new city. Many people could rely on previous expertise to find work or open businesses, but others needed alternative skills to find a place in the new society. Where Boko was heavily reliant on exporting the natural resources of the desert, New Water had to find its own equilibrium.

The priests of Dominion served as overseers of the whole operation, as their task was the big-picture organisation of the city. Leadership and administrative structures needed to be put in place. The efforts of the other clergy had to be woven into a cohesive whole, to avoid them working at cross-purposes or falling into pointless redundancy.

Language skills were a critical part of the education programs in New Water, in the adult training halls as well as the schools. Essence users excelled at picking up new languages, especially as they ranked up, so the training hall classes were highly effective. In the schools, where children were yet to obtain essences, a solid foundation of language training would help them to become polyglots when they were older. The training included multiple language options from both Earth and Pallimustus, as Jason anticipated the populace interacting with both.

Jason was glad that Danielle had the foresight to include the higher-ranking priests amongst the first to train in Earth languages. This allowed them to converse with his three guests from the Australian government as they toured the city. Jason had left them with his most loquacious non-prime avatar as a guide, known as the Concierge. Many of his other avatars were rather automaton-like, their energies focused on performing specific tasks. The Concierge was designed to be Jason’s representative when he wasn’t controlling an avatar to do so himself.

While he could concentrate on multiple places at once, Jason sometimes wanted to put his undivided attention elsewhere. In this case, it was on his prime avatar, spending time with his family. There was also the advantage that the Concierge was a dialled-down version of Jason, more adept at the diplomacy that Anna and Danielle wanted from him. Danielle had even suggested bringing the Concierge out to represent Jason in other discussions.

The trio of government officials spent hours touring the city, asking the clergy about how it had come to be and Jason’s involvement. They also had the chance to speak with some of the higher-rank residents who had reached fluency in English during the trip from Pallimustus.

The stories that they heard painted Jason as something between a messiah and outright god. Destroying their old home because someone assassinated him, unleashing his apocalyptic levels of restrained power. Saving almost the entire population by evacuating them with his power, then single-handedly killing an army of angels. Bringing them to a new universe, calling up a massive oasis from the desert, complete with a new city at its heart.

It was a city of magical wonders, from floating platforms that moved between buildings, to public fountains where the water literally danced in the air, performing like a street artist. People flew overhead on flying carpets, personal flight clouds or exotic creatures. There were also larger vehicles, from car-sized right up to buses. These were revealed to be public transport when the Concierge used them to move the group from one neighbourhood to the next. On reaching each location, they walked around, to better take in the city.