Second World

Jack continued standing there on the balcony and admired the view of the Ancient Beacon Tower. The others stayed there with him.

"By the way, since you are back. I need to inform you that we have a guest," John said after a while.

"Just collect them into the monthly visit. I will meet them then," Jack said.

"This one is a bit special. He insists on staying here and demands to be notified the minute you are back."

"So pushy. Who is this guest?" Jack asked.

"The guest is a representative from Hydrurond Dominion," Isabelle said. "He might have gotten the news by now that Your Majesty is back in the palace. I'm sure he will demand an audience tomorrow morning."

"Do you know what he wants?" Jack asked. He didn't get any reply from Hydrurond, whether from the gift or the message he sent. Other countries had replied with congratulation on his ascension. Perhaps this Hydrurond diplomat wanted to congratulate him in person?

"He refused to say," Isabelle answered.

"I don't like his attitude from the first time I saw him," John said.

"I doubt you like anyone's attitude," Jack said.

"The Hydrurond representative has almost gotten into a big quarrel with our royal advisor at that time," Isabelle reported.

"Yeah. If Thaergood hadn't interfered and persuaded him to leave, I would have called the guards and put his pompous ass in jail," John said.

"Are you trying to make us an enemy to another main country?" Jack shook his head. "Anyway, I'll be leaving again tomorrow morning. If he is so urgent, then he won't mind meeting me this late. Call him over, then."

"Yes, Your Majesty," Isabelle called one of the standby guards and sent him to fetch Thaergood and the Hydrurond diplomat.

Jack took in the view a few more seconds before heading back to the throne room. He sat on his throne and checked the monarch system while waiting.

John gave him a short report about what had been built while Jack was gone. He also told Jack about his plan for the future. As he mentioned before, he would focus the towns on building their economy. For villages, he would focus on population growth. If these villages could develop into towns, they could provide the country with a better economic boost.

He would still focus on military buildings for cities and metropolises, except Thereath. For Thereath, he wanted to focus on population growth, the same as villages. The reason was that Thereath was very close to becoming a Megalopolis. If that happened, Thereath would be the first megalopolis in this world.

John had checked the other countries using Isabelle's information network, the largest cities in the other countries were behind Thereath in terms of population counts. John wanted to capitalize on this advantage.

Jack approved of his plan and told him to proceed.

For research, John said he read about the tech trees in the palace's library. It didn't have detailed information about all the techs that could be researched, but it did mention that civil path had techs that allowed them to process orichalcum ore. Once this tech was learned, they could process orichalcum ores to upgrade their soldiers, increasing their power. Since they had an orichalcum mine as one of their special resources, they could utilize these ores once they learned the tech.

Peniel informed them that it was true that the civil path had that tech, but that tech gave their blacksmiths the skill to process orichalcum ores, it did not automatically empower the troops. They needed another tech from the military path, one that allowed them to construct a special building called Arcane Forge.

Once this arcane forge was built, the country could spend a certain number of ores to create an enchantment that provided a small buff to all troops.

Peniel also added that there were three levels to the arcane forge's enchantment. Even if they had enough orichalcum ores, they couldn't use them because orichalcum ores were used for the third level of the enchantment. They had to first complete the first and second levels.

They had two choices for each level. The first level used super rare grade ores, either Titanium or Mithril. The second level used unique grade ores, adamantine or magicite. The ultimate level was using legendary-grade ores, Astral or Orichalcum.

"How many adamantine ores are needed for the arcane forge?" Jack asked Peniel.

"Don't forget you also have to learn adamantine forging from the civil path first," Peniel reminded. "To answer your question, it is three hundred adamantine ores."

"Oh… Well, I guess someone is watching over me," Jack grinned and took out one of the adamantine ores in his inventory. "I already have three hundred of this."

"That's good, but unique grade ores are not a problem. Another of Thereath's specialty resources is magicite ores. So, we have plenty of that," John reminded.

"Oh, right…," Jack remembered then.

"What you still need are titanium or mithril ores for the first level," Peniel said. "You need one thousand for either one of them. You can't mix them up to reach the quantity."

"I will talk with Four Winds about mithril ore. He recently gained access to a mithril mine," Jack said. "Of course, he will most certainly demand something for a trade, but we will negotiate with him once we get the techs and start building the arcane forge."

"In that case, we need to focus on a path that gives us those techs," John said. "Peniel, please elaborate on which techs we need to learn to get to the required techs."

Peniel described the paths to them. Jack didn't see John writing anything down. He guessed the guy could map the paths in his mind simply by hearing the explanation one time.

Based on Peniel's information, if they chose the right techs, they only needed to learn two more techs in the civil path to start learning mithril forging. From there, they could learn adamantine or magicite forging, then orichalcum forging in sequence. For the arcane forge, they needed to learn three more techs in the military path to get to that tech.

John looked at Jack after getting the information. "How about using your ruling power to hasten the research?" He asked.