Chapter 892 - 492: The Current Situation of Greek Old Friends (2)

Right now, it’s just that awkward period: the newly reclaimed land hasn’t yielded any grain yet, and the stored food isn’t quite enough.

"I understand. Let me go see the Pope." Xue Dili had no intention of visiting that priest again.

Xue Dili saw it clearly—this wasn’t the first time he’d torn pages out of his own Holy Scripture. Maybe he’d done it before. But this time, the choice this priest made was completely different from the priest he remembered.

At the very least, the priest here seemed even more conscientious than Ame’s. Xue Dili thought so to himself.

Xue Dili met the Pope, and was surprised—he didn’t know her at all.

She was a woman he seemed to have never seen before, around twenty years old, with a temperament somewhat similar to Alola’s.

"You are..." She seemed to recognize Xue Dili in an instant, got very excited, and once again put on that "just saw my idol" posture.

Xue Dili immediately cast a simple emotional-stabilizing Technique, then just briefly talked about his academy’s enrollment, and said he planned to set up here in this Church Court a sealed, long-term, single-person Teleportation Array.

This Pope seemed very easy to talk to, with a strong "whatever Xue Dili says is right, and whatever he wants to do I’ll support" vibe. When she heard the Church Court could pick suitable children to go study knowledge there, her expression was like a Pilgrim seeing a High Tier Heaven.

Xue Dili: "..."

"Also, I want to plant a tree in this world—one that can thrive even on land polluted by Undead. A tree that can cover the entire world, at least so you’ll have enough material when you cast the Bread Technique..." Xue Dili said.

This was a spur-of-the-moment idea: to stick a Divine Tree Branch onto the volcano beside this Angel City.

But that still needed deep treatment with Blood of Hell, and that Blood of Hell processing had to suppress the Divine Tree’s instinct to absorb Spiritual Particles as much as possible. Xue Dili didn’t even know whether planting a Divine Tree here would give them a lifeline through these hard times, or saddle them with a living daddy.

There were many things whose future he just couldn’t foresee. If only the Divine Tree hadn’t been deliberately modified by the Lord of Mist...

Xue Dili thought that if that were the case, he’d probably want to plant one on every planet. At the very least, they’d never hit the point where there wasn’t enough material to cast the Bread Technique and they had to rip up books.

Unfortunately, the Divine Tree was also another unclean thing.

...

In fact, he had already wasted a lot of time in this world. Maybe it was because returning here again brought up a lot of feelings, or maybe it was simply that seeing how their lives actually were, things were nowhere near as good as he had imagined.

Xue Dili had been taking things for granted. After all, this was a civilization with only a few hundred thousand people left worldwide, and less than a hundred kilometers of land. The fact they hadn’t gone extinct was already something to thank God for; of course life was tough in the early stages of development.

They even had to purify a huge amount of land, which meant they needed to train more Holy Knights. But a Holy Knight wasn’t something you could cheap out on: at the very least they had to eat and drink well, practice Martial Arts constantly, and temper their willpower. All of that was material and resources being thrown in.

Because they were throwing in more material, the Church Court’s days were stretched very tight; that meant they needed more land to grow grain.

And to get more land, they needed more Holy Knights to purify the filth and lead those "lambs" to open up wasteland.

Thinking of this, Xue Dili couldn’t hold back in the end, and still stuck a Divine Tree Branch halfway up the volcano. At least the Divine Tree could grow lushly just eating dirt, giving them an emergency fallback plan.

Xue Dili even asked Dominic’s opinion. This Tree-man looked a bit at a loss when he heard Xue Dili’s question.

Because every Divine Tree that existed now, traced back to its source, counted as Dominic’s descendant.

But Dominic only awkwardly scratched his wooden head and said, "I don’t really mind. I can even give you information about my original body... After all, when I was little, Yi Shan often broke my branches off as snacks or toothpicks. A few branches are nothing."

Although this Tree-man seemed well-intentioned, his information was currently useless. As a Heroic Spirit in Spiritual Particle form, he was essentially no different from any other human.

Actually, Xue Dili still had a fundamental solution: cultivating grains adapted specifically to this world. That would solve the problem at its root.

Xue Dili thought about it—maybe once he had free time, he could consider these things and tackle the food issue from the ground up.

Of course, that was for later. He’d talk about it when he had time.

Xue Dili still had to hurry to the next place to borrow power.

And recruit students on the side.

At the same time, Xue Dili thought that maybe his school didn’t have to be a pure Magic Academy. Techniques like the Bread Technique and things like the Mendel pea experiments could all be taught—at least to give students from lower-level civilizations a bit of basic knowledge.

Even though Xue Dili didn’t know if it would help, he’d add it in first and decide later.

After setting up the Teleportation Gate, Xue Dili left under this Pope’s still-devout gaze.

Besides, too many people here knew who he was, and every time they saw him they wore those devout expressions. It made Xue Dili feel extremely awkward, so he bailed.

The next stop was a Parallel World’s Earth.

Although Xue Dili could directly borrow power from his mother, he was here to get power from the Giant Dragons.

Mosquito legs were still meat, so Xue Dili came to fleece a bit of power off the Giant Dragons. They were, after all, a race that had once schemed against the World Consciousness—there had to be some tricks up their sleeves.

When he arrived, things were actually much better than he’d imagined.

In barely over half a year, the world that had been shredded to bits by the Divine Tree’s rampage had come back to life.

The Sinful Creatures spawned from the Divine Tree’s distortions had gradually been wiped out by the remaining Greek Heroic Spirits and the Giant Dragons.

The Giant Dragons had even set up a plantation specifically to keep some of those things growing, since their essence had already become half-fungus, half-plant.

Though it was very Hell-like, Xue Dili managed to hold it in.

What surprised Xue Dili even more was that many of his old friends had settled down and started families here.

Which was totally normal for them; they were Ancient Greeks after all—you know the type. A bunch of humanoid walking Armstrong cannons. Once things stabilized, their favorite place to go was the bar.

Their favorite Ame activity was "eagle topping."

Xue Dili was used to this bunch. If they didn’t do this sort of thing, he’d actually be suspicious, wondering if they’d been taken over by Possession. But now they’d actually started settling down one by one, which genuinely amazed him.

For example, Hercules had found a white-haired Young Lady to be his wife. Supposedly it was congenital albinism. After shaking her hand, Xue Dili’s expression instantly turned strange.

This girl had about 3% Hercules genes, 1.8% Hector genes, and various small amounts of other Greek Heroic Spirit genes.

In other words, this girl was actually a descendant of Hercules, Hector, and the others—a very close one at that, basically direct lineage...

Oh right, Xue Dili remembered that before the Celestial Thunder set off, one of Hercules’s sons seemed quite fond of some illegitimate sister of Hector’s. Maybe this girl was from that line...

Xue Dili’s mind was already running mental gymnastics, but on the surface he smiled politely and said, "Hello, Greek young lady."

"Hey, Ah Hai, your friend is amazing. I haven’t even introduced myself and he already recognized I’m Greek." The Young Lady seemed to address the now-chubby Hercules this way.

Xue Dili saw that this old friend of his had indeed put on more weight, and was currently sporting an awkward smile.

"Well then, I wish you two a happy life." Xue Dili said. After borrowing power from this former Hercules—now just a plump middle-aged man—he hurried off to find his other old friends.