Chapter 49: Sappily Ever After
I spent the next several days in a game of cat and mouse with my many concubines. It was difficult considering many of them were ghosts and could float through walls if they wanted. Fortunately, a happy distraction appeared in front of me in the form of Kaliphae and Melvin.
“Hey guys,” I said, trying to cover my surprise that they found my top secret hiding place in underground Camelot.
Melvin looked around and whistled. “This is quite a place. Why do you live in the smaller one above ground?”
I patted my stone arm lovingly. “Actually, I was thinking of letting Bori use this for her dungeon. As a primordial dungeon, she needs a lot more space that she used to. It was either this or convince Alariel to let her take over Xanadu.”
“Having a kid with a dungeon looks like fun,” Melvin said. Then, when Kaliphae punched him in the gut, he quickly amended himself. “I meant having a dungeon for a friend. I don’t want to have one of my own.”
“Smooth,” Kaliphae said dully.
I couldn’t help but smile at their playful banter. They worked together so smoothly that it almost felt surreal. My chaotic love life was the opposite.
“You okay?” Kaliphae asked, bringing me back from my thoughts.
I chuckled. “Yeah, I’m fine. Was just thinking about my concubine situation. They all want babies.”
“And that’s a problem?” Melvin asked.
Kaliphae elbowed him again. “We talked about this, babe.”
Melvin winced. “I know, but Alex is old. His situation is different from ours.”
“It’s okay if you’re not ready,” she said, offering me a reassuring smile.
I sighed. “It’s complicated. Isa isn’t ready, but all the other girls are. Isa wants to go first, so they all have to wait. Now everyone’s fighting. That’s why I was hiding down here.”
“I thought this was for Bori?” Kaliphae said, offering me a reassuring smile. “Never mind that. What do you want to do?”
I hadn’t thought about what I wanted. “Is it too much to ask that everyone be happy?”
“Usually,” Melvin replied. “All you can do is try your best to take care of everyone. In the end, they have to decide if they are happy on their own.”
“I have been agreeing to a lot lately,” I said. “Maybe it’s time to just let it be.”
Kaliphae patted me on the back before running her finger over Bori’s home on my arm. “Bori, do you want to come out?”
Bori appeared in her human form, but something was different. She looked older, more mature.
“Wait a second,” I objected. “Who said you could grow up?”
Bori giggled. “I don’t need your permission, Daddy. You heard Kalli. You can choose to be happy if you want to, but I’m growing up.”
Melvin laughed. “She’s got you there.”
“What do you think of your new home?” Kaliphae asked, taking Bori’s hand and heading toward the castle.
“I like it,” Bori chirped. “It’s big enough for my aura, and there’s plenty of places to make puzzles.”
“What do you think about people living down here with you?” I asked, wondering if dungeons allowed people to live inside their walls.
She paused for a moment to consider. “Well, I don’t mind if I trust them.”
“Good point,” I replied. “Do you have anyone in particular you’d like to have down here with you?”
Bori smiled. “I wouldn’t mind living with the other orphaned dungeons. Maybe their mommies can live here with us.”
“That might work,” I replied. “And maybe the ogres for protection as well. I’ll feed you mana from Albion if you don’t get enough visitors.”
“Aunt Ceru and Cobalt!” Bori squealed. “That will be so much fun. Like a sleepover that never ends.”
“Do you promise not to escape from this one to follow me around?” I asked, raising an eyebrow to show I was serious.
She stuck out her tongue in response. “Only if you promise to take me with you on adventures from time to time.”
I looked around. Since old Camelot was already pretty sturdy, I didn’t have to worry about it collapsing in her absence like I would a cave.
“You have a deal,” I replied. “But I think we’re going to take it easy for a while.”
Once we got Bori settled in, I took a tour of Albion with Melvin and Kaliphae. Being able to teleport made travel much easier. We visited all of the various towns that came with Albion. I was pleased to see people moved right in and cooperated with each other.
The buildings in each town, while crude, provided a central core for people to build their homes around. Still, I was aching to use the controls to help my people out.
Current Population: 156,379
Original Inhabitants: 143
Immigrants: 156,221
Humans: 147,921
Ogres: 985
Orcs: 1,222
Trolls: 719
Goblins: 656
Grimlings: 3,740
Eaglin: 257
Treants: 721
Gods: 12
Dungeons: 13
Citizens: 111,295
I whooped when I saw the numbers. “That’s a lot of humans.”
“They escaped from Dabia,” Melvin explained. “We have a lot of them in Celestea too, and even more beast men.”
“I heard they were going south,” I admitted, eager to try out the latest milestone perks.
Population Milestones
10,000: Roads Unlocked
50,000: Towns Unlocked
100,000: Walls Unlocked
250,000: Fortifications Unlocked
500,000: Alliances Unlocked
1,000,000: Special Unlocked
“I can make towns and walls,” I bragged, not wasting time and opening the menu.
Albion’s Mana: 53,220,063/173,047,919
I gaped at the number as my vision zoomed out until I could see Albion as a whole. The first thing I did was expand the roads. What use were towns if people got stuck in traffic trying to get to them on my single lane roads? I expanded to four lanes.
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Mana Cost: 92,118
I laughed. “Chump change!”
To my surprise, Melvin laughed with me. ‘You know, I think I need to expand the infrastructure in Celestea. Your roads are nicer at the moment.”
“How are you here?” I asked, seeing his and Kaliphae’s faces floating on a nearby cloud.
“You didn’t think you were the only one with the World Builder skill, did you?” he asked.
I looked over my stats. “But I don’t have a skill like that.”
“Then how are you doing this?” Melvin asked.
“Albion has country tools,” I replied. “Doesn’t Celestea?”
Melvin gasped. “I don’t know. I never checked. Be right back.”
And just like that, they were gone. Not wanting to let them get ahead, I focused on the next item on the list: Towns. It turned out Albion had thirteen towns outside of the Camelot.
Runesend
Mystglen
Wyrmholt
Ashenmoor
Drakehaven
Arcwyn
Caerwyn
Stonebarrow
Lionsreach
Vigilspire
Griffonhall
Ironford
Rosethorne
I started with Runesend, which was the one I was physically at. The system gave me a variety of options and styles, including fancy two-story homes like I owned in Exui. I selected the option and placed thirty of them down a new road I made.
Mana Cost: 562,936
“I got plenty!” I exclaimed. “You get a mansion! You get a mansion! Everyone gets mansions!”
I pressed YES, and an entire block of massive houses appeared. It was at that point that I realized there were a lot more citizens in Runesend than thirty. I quickly remedied that by adding two hundred of the smallest homes.
Mana Cost: 83,117
“Well, that’s a huge price difference,” I sighed, dropping out of the menu to inspect my handiwork.
A large group of humans had gathered on the street with the fancy houses to see what happened. An older man approached me.
“My Lord?” he asked cautiously. “Are nobles moving to the village?”
“No,” I chuckled. “These houses are for you.”
He stared at me like I’d grown a third head. “For us, my lord? We cannot afford such luxuries, even with the low taxes.”
“Taxes?” I asked aloud, wondering if he meant the mana tax.
The man smiled. “Lady Cerulean set the tax at ten percent of our annual earnings. It is more than generous. Much more generous than Dabia ever was.”
“Oh,” I was dumbfounded. “Well, consider these houses your tax dollars at work. I trust you guys to choose who gets to live here. There are smaller houses for everyone else.”
“Everyone…else?” he stammered. “My lord, there are thousands of us. Surely, you don’t mean to house all of us.”
“Uh,” I had to rethink my calculations. “Let me get to work on that.”
In actuality, there were closer to ten thousand of them. I was so excited about the mana increase that I failed to realize Albion was home to over one hundred thousand citizens. That was going to require a lot of houses. Fortunately, the system was built to automate most of the process.
I labeled the downtown area for business and the outskirts for residential and plugged in the number of houses I needed. The system did the rest. It plotted streets, built multiple tiers of houses, and even made a wall around the fledgling city.
Mana Cost: 8,337,109
“Ugh,” I groaned. “I’m not going to have enough for all the towns.”
Fortunately, mana was one of those things the kingdom regenerated naturally through taxes. Some of the towns would just have to wait. I worked my way up to the sixth town when I ran out. The villagers found me once again when I came out of the world view. Just when I was about to apologize, Melvin and Kaliphae returned.
“Not bad,” he said. “You’re slow, though. I already finished with Celestea.”
“The kingdom ran out of mana,” I explained.
“Did you now?” Kaliphae said with a malicious grin. “Why don’t you check again?”
Albion’s Mana: 1,000,000,000/173,047,919
“What the…” I gasped. “How? The kingdom shouldn’t be able to hold that much.”
Kaliphae winked. “We had to do something to reward you for winning the game, didn’t we?”
It took me a solid week before I got the kingdom just how I liked it. Thanks to Melvin and Kaliphae’s generous donation, I was able to unlock the final three kingdom perks.
Population Milestones
10,000: Roads Unlocked
50,000: Towns Unlocked
100,000: Walls Unlocked
250,000: Fortifications Unlocked
500,000: Alliances Unlocked
1,000,000: Special Unlocked
I wasn’t sure how having a billion mana equated to a million citizens, but I wasn’t looking a gift perk in the mouth. Fortifications were neat. I could place all sorts of defenses on the beaches of Albion and various checkpoints around the kingdom.
My favorite was the trebuchet. Since we had no invaders to repel, we used them to skip rocks across the ocean. They didn’t skip so much as make a big splash, but it was fun either way.
The thing Melvin was most interested in was the Alliance perk. That gave us an upgrade when it came to agreements with the other kingdoms on Gaia. The system kept track of alliances and special agreements made between them.
Kingdom: Albion
Ruler: King Alexander Krup (Alexander The Great)
Treaties with: Solitair, Dabia, Celestea, Xanadu
Import Tax: 10%
Adventurer’s Guild: Active
Scientocracy: Dabia
Ruler: Administrator Zofia
Treaties with: Albion, Solitair, Celestea, Xanadu
Import Tax: 10%
Adventurer’s Guild: Restricted
Queendom: Celestea
Ruler: Queen Celestea (Shiviria)
Treaties with: Albion, Solitair, Dabia, Xanadu
Import Tax: 10%
Adventurer’s Guild: Active
High House: Solitair
Ruler: Senator Maya
Treaties with: Albion, Dabia, Celestea, Xanadu
Adventurer’s Guild: None
Import Tax: 10%
Wildlands: Xanadu
Ruler: Princess Alariel
Treaties with: Albion, Solitair, Dabia, Celestea
Adventurer’s Guild: None
Import Tax: 10%
The simple part of the alliance was agreeing on peace. I’d had enough war to last a lifetime. The others haggled over the import tax. I hadn’t used gold in a long time, though I saw the perk of having a coffer for the nation. Melvin was involved in the negotiation, even though his empire wasn’t part of the planetary treaty.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m here to help any of you who need it. Since Kalli is from here, I won’t let anything happen to Gaia.”
It was nice meeting the leaders of the other nations when I wasn’t in a rush. My meetings with Zofia and Maya had been rushed because we were anxiously trying to save the world from Donn at the time. Zofia was from Earth and changed Dabia into a land focused on scientific cooperation. She insisted no one scientist was in charge, even though we all know she made the decisions.
Maya was a different story altogether. It turned out she was Melvin’s long-lost sister, twice removed. Several other senators from Solitair carried the M bloodline, which made them relatives of Melvin as well.
Once the alliance meeting was over, I saw Melvin and Kaliphae off.
“If there’s anything else we can do for you, let Shiv know in Celestea,” Kaliphae said. “She will get the message to us right away.”
“I have a request,” I said quietly.
Melvin perked up. “What’s that?”
“Can I meet him?” I asked.
“I don’t know about this,” Melvin grumbled as he pushed mana through the ring. “Dad’s nothing but a bad influence.”
After making sure Alex and Kalli didn’t fall and hurt themselves when they froze, he pushed himself into the ring as well. Moments later, the three of them appeared in a long hall with barred doors on either side.
Melvin walked up to the first door and knocked lightly. “Mom, Dad, are you decent?”
Merlin answered. “Hello, Son. We’re decent. Come on in.”
“I brought a guest,” Melvin said.
“Really?” his mom asked excitedly. “Is Kalli with you? Are you here to tell me I’m a grandma?”
“No!” Kalli balked. “I’m here, but not yet, Mom. I swear, you’ll be the first to know when we decided to have one.”
The moment Melvin opened the door, his mom rushed out and hugged him. Then she hugged Kalli before inviting them back into the room.
“Who’s your guest?” Merlin asked from his seat on a rocking chair next to the bed. He was wearing a blue nightgown.
“Oh, this is Alexander Krup,” Melvin announced. “But you’ll know him by his official title. He’s the new King Arthur.”
“Oh, really?” Merlin raised an eyebrow. “Is that Excalibur at your side? I was wondering when somebody would be worthy of it again. How’s the old king?”
“Still a ghost,” Alex replied. “And Guinevere is a dungeon.”
Merlin laughed. “Well, that’s a fun twist, isn’t it? Time has been unkind to everyone, it seems.”
“Shush,” Melvin’s mom said, walking over to Merlin and pressing a finger to his lips.
Kaliphae took a seat at a nearby table. “It looks like the two of you are getting along.”
Melvin’s mom nodded. “He’s actually lovable when he isn’t trying to blow up the universe.”
“That happened?” Alex asked, the shock evident on his face.
Melvin replied. “Yep. I saved the universe before you did. By the way, Dad, did you know that black armor was posessed by a primordial? This guy named Donn tried to destroy the universe last week.”
“Tried?” Merlin asked, not sounding convinced. “Did he get his hands on the heart?”
“Yeah,” Melvin replied, pointing a thumb at Alex. “This guy ate it.”
“I see,” Merlin said, ignoring Alex and staring at his son. “You need to continue your training, Melvin, or this kind of thing is going to keep happening. You’re the keeper of the universe now.”
I was still in shock from meeting Merlin when Melvin left. It had been quite a day. My kingdom, which had been mostly rural at the beginning of the day, was a sprawling metropolis with vast cities for its people. There was just one thing I hadn’t tried. A big red button floated on the virtual console in front of me.
Special
“What do you do?” I asked out loud.
A pair of hands cover my eyes from behind, and a soft feminine voice said, “Guess who?”
“Isabelle,” I smiled.
I turned, and she kissed me.
“A copper for your thoughts,” she said, sweeping the hair from my brow.
I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her close. “I was thinking about how special you are.”
She smirked. “You’re not just saying that to get in my good graces, are you? Because you already are.”
“Nope,” I booped her on the nose. “I’m saying that because I love you.”
“More than your other women?” she asked.
“What other women?” I asked.
She beamed. “Good answer. Are you ready to come to bed?”
“Not just yet,” I replied, my finger hovering over the button. “There’s just one more thing to do.”
I pushed the button. The ground quaked around us suddenly, and dust kicked up as Camelot Castle shifted. I felt a strange sensation, like I was riding in an elevator. It was impossible to tell if the castle was growing or floating from inside. The sensation went on for several minutes and sleepy people staggered into the throne room to see what was happening. I did the one thing I could think of and went out to world view to get a better look.
The castle really was floating high above the ground with nothing underneath to hold it up.
“Well, that’s impressive,” I said when I went back to the throne room.
“What is?” Isa asked. “What did you just do?”
“The castle’s floating?” I replied.
“Really?” she gasped. “I want to see.”
“Okay,” I replied. “Hold on.”
I held her close and stepped into the void, quickly selecting a spot on a nearby mountain before bringing us both back out. An icy breeze washed over us and I realized Isa was dressed in a summer dress. I quickly took off my cloak and draped it over her shoulders. She held my arm in a death grip as she observed Camelot Castle in the distance, as it hung on the horizon.
“Wow,” she whispered. “Did you do that?”
“Sort of,” I replied. “It’s one of the kingdom’s perks.”
“I think I’m ready for bed now,” she shivered in my arms.
I yawned. “Yeah. Me too.”
Another quick trip through the void, and we were in the royal bedchamber. I was about to ask if she wanted to sleep over when she let the summer dress slip to the floor and climbed into bed.
It had been a long day, and tomorrow was going to be even better!
