19: The lives of mice

[Year 18 Month 5: 1 Month has passed]

At first, the civilians were unhappy with my presence, which I could understand. I was an unknown element that had been influencing their daily lives since the city’s founding. Astrid received some backlash from the public about it, but she quickly shut the complains down.

The biggest push back was from the councilors themselves. They understood that my presence would greatly decrease their influence on Runehold’s functioning, and while they didn’t know it yet, my runic assistants would make their job pretty much useless.

It also seemed like they understood what the consequences a high-level spirit would bring once the invasion ended for this cycle. For now, the church wouldn’t know for several more months or even years, but when they no longer were under siege of the Vexus, they would once again turn their attention to other ‘issues.’ It was the same situation with the wars between kingdoms.

Essentially, the Vexus Invasion triggered a global ‘cold war’ where nothing truly happened simply because everyone was so focused on themselves and had no time or resources to spend on attacking others.

Despite the initial push back, once a few weeks had passed and the reality of their new home kicked in, most complaints ceased or quieted.

For now, I had dedicated a huge portion of the facility, which the new inhabitants just called “Burrow”, to the living population. It would be a little cramped until the golems had a bit more time to dig out the underground layers, but every family of three or less had a dorm-sized room, while larger families had two rooms next to one another. It wasn’t optimal, but frankly, just dedicating the three-quarters of a million square feet needed to house the 8 thousand people was tricky, as I had to retrofit several empty warehouses to create underground apartments.

While these people are still worried due to the recent attack, eventually, they will want to resurface.

With me unable to ward the two settlements and Burrow, it meant that Gorn Village would probably be a temporary vacation-like space while I waited for enough mana to hide Runehold.

The biggest issue I was approaching was the continued patrolling of stalkerhounds. While they weren’t an issue by themselves, the corrupted mana barely decreased, which meant that one of the alpha hounds was still in the general vicinity.

As of now, the Vexus had yet to discover Gorn, which was good, as the village was the only place we could make large amounts of crops and food to continue feeding the population of both settlements.

Once I had gotten past the whole administration and temporary resettlement issue, I did find a few farmers of Runehold who had skills where they could grow various plants in low light levels. Surprisingly, it was the brewers who had more of these skills; I suppose it’s from their fermenting of various crops in dark areas.

I think the major turning point in citizens’ feelings for me was after I began to activate the healing fields. Many people in this world have chronic pains or diseases that go untreated, so even removing the tiniest bit of constant suffering was enough to turn the people in my favor slowly. It also helps that they understand I was the only reason they were still alive, albeit living the lives of mice deep beneath the earth.

[Year 18 Month 6: 1 Month has passed]

[Blessed: 2949 – 1 + 1230]

As people became more and more used to my presence, I had a rapid surge in Blessed. I suspected that many more would follow, but for now, I was more than happy with a 33% increase in mana production.

A side effect of thousands of people underground was that the high-density population, now desperately trying to find ways to stretch their bodies and not be so cramped, my golems could no longer run at full speed down the long tunnels, as there was now the possibility of killing a civilian simply by not noticing them in time.

During this month, I had Codex refocus on golem and material research. He did a thorough analysis of manasteel and concluded that it should be completely possible to synthesize, although it would take a tremendous amount of mana and pressure.

Curiously, mana could become pressurized, which we had learned by taking a cubic centimeter worth of space and filling it to the absolute brim. The container took another mineral that the locals called deep-cobalt. It was mined from locations deep underground, and I had actually stumbled across a small amount of it when excavating the residential and production complexes of Burrow.

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It only took a very thin layer to insulate a region of space. Since the secret of golems and my manufacturing capacity was already out to the world (although I did still hide the experimental production complex), I had Sahil help to coat a small box in the paper-thin deep-cobalt. The process reminded me of gold leaf, although gold was much more common, and decorative rather than functional for this purpose.

After I filled the box with mana, I slowly began to push more and more into it. While it was already at 100% capacity, there was a slight give, where I could essentially do a powerful shove of mana and fill in the gaps it created.

At 200% capacity, the box started to glow blue from the mana contained within.

300% capacity was when the mana itself became visible and even more volatile.

Finally, at 500% capacity, was when I felt the box buckle from the intense pressure contained. The deep-colbalt was rapidly dissolved by the intense mana, and once it hit a certain point, the box exploded with tremendous force, sending out shrapnel in all directions.