Chapter E004 – Repairing the Wall |
[Ruins of Archades Imperial Palace]
Hecate reappeared once again in her private workshop.
A few moments ago, after completing her exams and exiting the Academy's VR-Space, she took a deep breath as she removed all her rings. It had been a close call because the buff effect of the food items had expired almost at the end of the exam.
The thoughts that had been very clear and full of inspiration due to the buff suddenly broke off, returning to slightly above normal. Not to mention, the STR reduction caused her body to become lethargic. It felt extremely unpleasant, like an immortal suddenly falling to earth and becoming mortal.
Of course, she had the option to stop for a moment, return to the real world, and eat another portion of food items before continuing the exam. However, she decided not to because she had nearly solved all the exam questions, and the remaining ones were not that complicated.
And true enough, she was able to finish the exam successfully.
"Come to think of it, there was something wrong with the teacher's tone just now..."
Hecate couldn't help but notice the awkwardness in the teacher's words earlier.
Perhaps completing nearly 1000 exam questions in such a short period of time was indeed too eye-catching. The previous exam was fine because it was just a normal exam with only one subject at a time, and she did it simultaneously with many other students, so the supervision didn't focus too much on her.
'Well, it doesn't seem to be a big deal.'
A little bit of ability exposure didn't seem to affect anything important.
The exam she just took was the final exam at Kyoto Academy, serving as the entrance to university level. Every procedure was carried out systematically by the Ministry of Education, and no other party had the right to tamper with the results, not even Kyoto Academy.
Given her academic abilities that she had just demonstrated, there was no doubt that she would successfully graduate. And when she graduated, she would move to Tokyo University and would have nothing more to do with Kyoto Academy.
Little did she know that not only was her academic ability exposed, but her health status was also revealed. Fortunately, due to a certain misunderstanding, this did not have any significant influence on her, at least for now.
Anyway, that was all in the past, and the exam was over.
"Now it's time to take care of other matters!"
Hecate opened her Territory Interface and looked at the map of her territory.
Of the 108 barrier nodes, 85 were successfully activated, while the remaining 23 could not be activated. However, even though not all nodes were activated, that did not mean there were no additional perks available for the territory.
This was because the formation lines were able to work as they should, even though several lines were still disconnected. Indeed, the deepest layer of the city barrier required its formation lines to be connected, but this did not seem to be the case for the other layers.
If these formation lines could be compared to a series of electrical connections, then they were similar to a parallel circuit, where the circuit can still supply electricity even if some lines are disconnected, as long as at least one line is still functioning.
Spoiler| <big><big>Tutorial: Territory</big></big> | ||||
| <big>Managing Your Own Territory</big> | ||||
| ╭─────────────────────────༺♦༻─────────────────────────╮ | ||||
| <small>Congratulations! You have obtained your own first territory, the Archades Ruins. As a lord, you have the right to rule and manage your territory. But of course, you have to do a few things first before you can truly rule on this place. </small> | ||||
| ╰─────────────────────────༺♦༻─────────────────────────╯ | ||||
| ╭─────────────────────────༺♦༻─────────────────────────╮ | ||||
| <small>A few things you can do: • You can rename your territory. • You can partly enable the city barrier. • You can set the mana tax of your territory. • You can impart your skills into Territory Skills. </small> | ||||
| <small>A few things to do: • Get some people to populate your territory — Your territory population is 1 people... • Rebuild or repair the city barrier <small>—</small> 78.70% Complete... • Rebuild or repair the territory. • Subjugate all hostile forces in your territory — There are 251,172,344 enemies... </small> | ||||
| ╰─────────────────────────༺♦༻─────────────────────────╯ | ||||
| <big><big><big>𝕮𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝔹𝕒𝕣𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕣 𝕄𝕒𝕟𝕒𝕘𝕖𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥</big></big></big> | ||||||||||||||||
| Currently available MP: 860,425 / 42,500,000 | ||||||||||||||||
| Add Command |
| |||||||||||||||
| Remove Command | ||||||||||||||||
| Change Priority | ||||||||||||||||
| Reset Changes | ||||||||||||||||
| Discard Changes and Exit | ||||||||||||||||
| Execute and Exit | ||||||||||||||||
| There are 3 unapplied changes. | ||||||||||||||||
Each node that was successfully activated increases the upper limit of MP supply by 500000. Multiply this number by 85, which means the upper limit of MP supply becomes 42500000.
In addition, each node "area" that was successfully activated also increases the MP tax limit. Now, she could set a regional MP tax of up to 300000 MP for each of her chosen subjects including herself.
Realizing this change, Hecate immediately reassigned a series of tasks in barrier management.
She changed the MP tax target from "All Subject" to individual target, which only has herself as an option, and changed the amount of MP taxed to 300000 per hour. With the MP and INT boost from equipment, Skill and Item buffs, 300,000 MP was just under 50% of Hecate's Max MP, which was still easily covered by her MP regen.
"With this, it seems there is no longer a problem with MP supply."
Then next, she started experimenting with the repair function.
Her first attempt of using this function was to repair a certain collapsed wall in the central district. However, to use this function, the barrier in the area to be repaired must be activated first, which of course she does so without further ado.
Of course, there are costs and risks involved in activating the barrier.
There would be upkeep MP as a cost for running the barrier per day regularly in the future, not to mention that activating the barrier while there are still enemies roaming around has a high risk of being destroyed again by the enemies.
All barriers will generally form from a thin layer before gradually becoming thick and strong. This was the time when the barrier was most fragile and one slap from a monster could break the barrier. About this, <a>Hecate simply changed the function of this barrier to not block anything at all in the first place and reduced the MP upkeep to the very minimum.
'There's nothing to defend anyway, so I don't need to block anything.'
Without the blockade, the barrier was no different from a shroud of fog and mixed with the natural poisonous fog there, causing it to remain visually hidden. Anyone can pass through without any obstruction and perhaps no one even notices the existence of the barrier.
As an initial experiment, Hecate did not intend to repair the wall completely, but only the parts that had collapsed, which also did not include the parts that had been replaced with mycelium construction. Due to this, MP and material costs are reduced significantly.
"Now then, it's time to start the repair."
After finishing entering the entry tasks, <a>Hecate straightforwardly pressed the Execute button.
The moment Hecate tapped the button, the Save-Crystal in the room suddenly emitted a bright light, which then spread to the magic circle on the floor and quickly lit up all the connected formation lines.
Now the room suddenly becomes bright due to the many formation lines running. Several small earthquakes occurred for a while, indicating something big was happening outside.
And then, several notification windows appeared in front of her.
Spoiler| You have changed the tax settings in your Territory. |
| The number of target affected: 1 person. |
| List of the affected target(s): |
| <small>• Hecate: 300,000 MP | hourly</small> |
| The barrier on Wall Syllus has been successfully activated. |
| Based on your settings, the barrier will be intangible and will not have any blockade effect. |
| You have initiated Territory Repair to repair the selected target(s). |
| Target: Wall Syllus - [Part C, D, E] |
| Required Material: (Stone) - 424 blocks. |
| Please select the material that will be used for this repair from your inventory or storage. |
| The required materials have been successfully collected. |
| 223,550 MP has been deducted from the Territory's MP Supply. |
| Repair task in progress. |
| Target: Wall Syllus - [Part C, D, E] |
| <img src="https://www.scribblehub.com/wp-content/plugins/yet-another-stars-rating/img/loader.gif" alt="" width="16" height="16" /> |
| Estimated time to complete: 1 hours 4 minutes. |
Seeing the repair task in progress, Hecate let out a sigh.
It turned out the repair process was not instant, and before all tasks are completed, the barrier management menu could not be accessed. Fortunately, she didn't immediately start with the heavy task right away.
Of course, there is a cancel button, but it's better not to use it. Because if that button is pressed, the task will be canceled, but the MP deducted will not be refunded.
Her attention then turned to another tutorial icon.
Spoiler| <big><big>Tutorial: Imparting Skills to the Territory</big></big> | ||||
| <big>Impart Your Skills to the Territory</big> | ||||
| ╭─────────────────────────༺♦༻─────────────────────────╮ | ||||
| <small>Congratulations! <small> </small> You have successfully established a connection line between the formation core and Ebremus Tower. Now you can impart your skills into Territory Skills in the tower. The imparted skills can later be used by your chosen subjects, including yourself. </small> | ||||
| ╰─────────────────────────༺♦༻─────────────────────────╯ | ||||
| ╭─────────────────────────༺♦༻─────────────────────────╮ | ||||
| <small>A few things to note: • Skills that can be imparted will have a special mark on the impart window. • Imparted skills will be considered Territory skills and cannot be leveled up. • If the imparter's original skill leveled up, the imparter may re-impart the skill.</small> | ||||
| ╰─────────────────────────༺♦༻─────────────────────────╯ | ||||
She received notification of this tutorial last night when she finished replacing the Save-Crystal and activated the barrier node in a place that turned out to be called Ebremus Tower.
Of course, Hecate was curious and because at that time she was in the tower anyway, she tried to impart her skills according to the tutorial. She was somewhat surprised when she saw some of her skills from the skill tree, subclass skills, and even extra skills were actually listed as impart-able and some were not.
Skills that are considered "unimpart-able" are skills that require body parts such as Flexible Body, Improve Jump, Basic Mana Training, Avid Reader, and many more. Apart from that, skills that have prerequisite conditions outside of Jobclass and Subclass that have not been met cannot also be imparted.
This was somewhat understandable, because in this case, the "primary user" of the imparted skills did not refer to <a>Hecate, but the Territory itself. Naturally, Territory could not jump, read books, or craft items, so these skills could not be applied.
But, Extremity of Primary Elements, Precision Mana Control, Mystical Amplification...
These above skills are included in the impart-able list and can be imparted right away. And further than that, of course it is very likely that Overspell and Archwitch's Pride can also be imparted after their prerequisite skills are met.
— What will happen if these skills are imparted and become Territory Skills?
— Could she increase the damage of her spell even more than before?
Unfortunately, Hecate hadn't been able to find out that answer yesterday.
It turned out that imparting each skill would take quite a long time and she couldn't leave the place during the process, so she had no other choice but to cancel and postpone it.
'Too bad, imparting a skill would take at least 6 hours, I thought this was similar to the apprentice system but apparently not.'
Hecate couldn't help but thinking about Dalmagna.
During Hecate's apprenticeship more than a year ago, she had been imparted by Dalmagna and was able to learn many Blacksmith skills, such as Metallurgy, Crafting, Repair, Upgrade and many more. These impartment process was fast and completed in less than 10 minutes.
But of course, this type of skill impartment has a few clear drawbacks.
First, the person who imparted the skill must learn the skill to the maximum of Lv10. Second, the person who is the target of the impart skill can only learn the skill at Lv1 and raise the skill level from the start.
"I can do this later tonight, for now I should go to Dalmagna's place first."
Hecate still had not forgotten that she was on a mission to work as Dalmagna's assistant.
With that in mind, Hecate closed all open notification windows and took out a Town Scroll from her inventory. As the scroll glowed and disintegrated, her body disappeared from the bright room.