123 Changes
As a human Lord, Michael had an increased chance of summoning his own kind. This chance was increasingly high for Summons with a low star rating.
Only with the expansion of his territory, and an upgraded Summoning Gate would the probability of summoning tamed Monsters, Demi-Humans, and other races increase.
Nonetheless, Michael was quite surprised that he had yet to summon a Gogi. By installing the Gogi Lord’s Summoning Core, the probability of summoning a Gogi should have been higher than the chance of summoning Demi-Humans, tamed Monsters, and the Nature Spirit.
Now that the population of his territory expanded so quickly, Michael had to distribute tasks more carefully. He had to tend to the various needs of his new subjects, whether they were human, demi-human, or monsters.
‘With what should I start now that the arrays and traps have been installed?’ Michael murmured to himself, ‘Making most use of the 2-Star Summons is important, but I summoned many new 1-Star Summons today as well.’
He had to plan everything thoroughly and slowly. Michael didn’t want to make a big mistake just because he was impatient and hasty!
‘The monster population inside the Untamed Jungle is way too high. Even after hunting them for more than a month the reports never mentioned a lack of monsters. In fact, Tiara and the others always mentioned that they had to avoid the monster habitats because there were way too many for them to handle. That should be different now. She’ll be able to handle it with the territory’s military power.’
Now that he summoned many combat affine Summons, they could make up new battle strategies and hunt together to improve their teamwork. Once their synergy in battle was high enough, attacking the habitats of big monster groups won’t be suicidal anymore.
Fortunately, they weren’t in a rush and could slowly create unfathomable teamwork and increase their strength at the same time.
The military power in Michael’s territory would be busy for a while, which gave Michael enough time to plan the following steps of his territory development thoroughly.
The Financial Manager, the Merchants, and a group of Starless Summons formed the Economic & Logistics Department. They had to take care of the goods in the territory, organize everything in the warehouses that were about to be constructed, and the territory’s finances. Their task was to plan where the territory’s funds had to be invested, and what to sell for which price once they created a trail outside the Untamed Jungle.
After all, they could easily use the Battle Horses, Bilrox, or even the Heavy Armored Elephant to carry large carts to Xiltra once a proper trail – preferably a street – was constructed.
The Tamers in his territory didn’t have to do anything new. They raised the Bilrox and took care of the newly summoned monsters.
The Alchemy Master made a list of the potions he could produce, and the ingredients he required to concoct them, while the Weaponsmith shared in a detailed report what weapons he could create, and which ores and monster parts would be most suitable to forge them.
With the arrival of the Alchemy Master and the Weaponsmith, the production of Weapons and potions was bound to increase by many times. This decreased Michael’s expenses by a large margin and increased the possibility of earning a fortune from selling goods they didn’t need.
It was planned to construct an Alchemy House, an Enchanter’s Lair, and a Smithy. However, there was more. Michael wanted a large pub to be built, and a humongous garden to utilize the abilities of the Nature Spirit, and the Botanic Magician.
After careful consideration, Michael planted the Nature Spirit in the center of the clearing. Because the Nature Spirit was still weak, it couldn’t control the densely grown nature around the clearing yet, but that was fine. Given some time, the Nature Spirit would grow stronger in the near future.
It would become the centerpiece of his territory and turn into a ginormous Tree Nature Spirit. Now that he knew how timid and frightened the Nature Spirit was, he could only hope that the Nature Spirit would man up and develop into a Sacred Tree such as Yggdrasil.
Michael looked forward to the Nature Spirit’s development. It was exciting, just like the development of his territory.
As the Lord of a territory, Micahel had a lot of work to do. After all, his territory was still underdeveloped. It didn’t look like anything special and lacked proper infrastructure.
Nonetheless, he was proud of the things he achieved in such a short period. He overcame many hurdles already.
Of course, it was just the start of his journey. Michael was not even close to the end!
Understanding that he was just at the starting point, Michael changed his daily routine once again. He didn’t go out to hunt but trained hard using the Berserker Physique body refinement technique, and the Sun Soldier’s Breathing technique.
Even if the techniques were rather cheap compared to what he could afford, changing his breathing fundamentally was something not many techniques made possible. Michael had already proven to himself that a slight change in his breathing was very helpful in the replenishment of his Stamina. It didn’t even require origin energy to replenish his Stamina much faster!
On the other hand, the Berserker Physique first stage had to be completed before he could switch to another body refinement technique. He didn’t want to risk damaging his body by switching to a more complex body refinement technique when his body was only half-refined.
Michael focused on the foundation of his body for the next few days. He had already adapted to the changes in his body after his War Rune reached Tier-1, but he still felt a little bit uncomfortable.
He made too many gains in the past few days, fused with two new Soultraits, and he upgraded three out of four Soultraits as well. Furthermore, he obtained a new weapon; Seron Voulge. Michael had to study his body, the true limit of his Soultraits – including all changes that happened after upgrading the star rating of his Soultraits –, and he had to pay attention to the development of his territory.
It was important that he paid equal attention to all of the above and neglected neither of them. Michael didn’t want any major issues to happen.
As such, three days passed in the blink of an eye. The territory development progressed smoothly, and the citizens found joy in finding out more about their new friends and companions.
Everyone grew closer to him, which was reflected in the strengthened Links of Loyalty. They represented how loyal the subjects were to their Lord and territory, and how much they believed in him.
The Links of Loyalty also showed clearly how much they loved being in the territory. Their satisfaction was also a factor that determined the firmness of their Link of Loyalty!
That was also part of the reason why Michael worked so hard to ensure that everyone felt welcomed in his territory.
Michael was usually present to welcome two new 1-Star Summons into his territory. It was part of his routine to ensure that his subjects would get to know their Lord and that the Links of Loyalty would form properly.
But on the third day, something unexpected happened.
A 2-Star Berserker stepped out of the Summoning Gate.
Michael received a 2-Star Berserker from his daily summoning!
“That’s actually possible?!?”