Mage And Wolf
Chapter 56

Chapter 56: Chapter 56

"Wow, one day really was enough to make a difference wasn’t it?"

Lelou, or formally the High Priestess Kal’Elouet enthusiastically waves a greeting at my little group. Okay, it’s just me and Lala, since Hui’Jin is doing her schoolwork, but it still counts as a group, right? The rest of the team is supposed to swing by later in the day.

"When we’ve got dragon crafted plans it’s just a matter of mana. If we had more storage, or more dragons here we could have built the entire complex in a matter of minutes."

Karl turns to look at her with a smile that promises trouble. "All you need is mana, right?"

"Well, yes. What did you have in mind?"

Karl produces a big bag from the storage he’s got hidden in his cloak. I really do need to get him to make one of those for me. I hope they don’t need mana to activate.

"These are all mana stones, from grade 2 magical beasts. I count a total of 73 in the bag so far, the entirety of Arcana’s supply. At least at this grade. How far could this get you?"

Every senior priestess is now staring at him open mouthed in awe. "How did you even get that many? And you’ll just give them all to the construction effort?"

"Our team farmed them in the portals. We can always get more, and the value of getting construction done more quickly is worth more than simple cash could ever be."

"Well, if we save 10 to serve as batteries for the complex’s internal functions, and use the other 63, we can have the Temple and University completed by tonight." The blue robed senior priestess declares in her authoritative voice. She’s got a notebook in her hand and she’s quickly making calculations on it.

"In fact, we should have enough mana there to do the furniture and essential books today as well." She produces a small leather bound tome entitled ’Cultivation techniques of the Drakor Kingdom’ and hands it to me.

"It’s been decided that this base set will be the most efficient way to begin students on a cultivation journey. The rest of the books I will copy from your base library."

"Thank you Neisa. I’ll look this over tonight and ensure there will be no translation issues or incompatibilities with our students. I’ll assume the base staff or Lord Karl has already reviewed the material?"

"Karl has, yes." Lelou announces, her enthusiasm for the day showing through "I was going to take you for a tour through the area, but now that we’ve got the mana to build everything in a day, it’s best we all get to work and you can come look it over tomorrow."

"Sounds Good Lady Lelou" I wink at her and Neisa scowl at even this minor note of informality.

Well, now that I’ve got a moment, let’s go see how the rest of the town is coming along. There’s towers and suspended structures all over above me, shining white and reflective glass over the still field fallow and grass covered ground.

The nearest tower to me is entirely empty, no stairs or anything, just a hollow tube and a single floor in sight a few stories above me where the first floor of the living quarters are to be built. Guess I’ll need to find another tower.

That proves easier than expected, the next one we check has its stairwell already finished and an elevator column installed, leading both up to the living levels and down to the loading zones, or perhaps a storage area. I grab Lala and run up to the top, looking all around at the space. I can see empty doorways evenly spaced down the hallway on my left, the right side a huge glass wall. We walk a while, looking in at unfinished suites, only the basic layout roughed in so far before we come to a hallway that leads to the other side of the suspended structure.

It seems both sides are identical. The structure is glass on both sides, with housing making 2 rows down the middle. This area is all 3 bedroom apartments, but I recall that the designs called for many 1 and 2 bedroom units as well. This must be a family neighborhood.

After walking the equivalent of 2 city blocks, we come to the point of another support tower and the uniform apartments make way for a collection of empty store fronts. There’s a builders plan tagged onto the wall, and it shows the this tower hosts a commercial district on all floors, like a shopping mall tower. There’s roughed in escalators visible to one side, with narrow alleyways housing more small shop fronts. All in all, it’s pretty cozy feeling, but I miss the breeze on my face with the entire structure enclosed in a glass cage of sorts. I can see the outside, but I can’t feel it. It’s a bit disconcerting for a Lycan, but Lala doesn’t seem bothered by it.

By lunchtime we’ve wandered through miles of the new city structure, some no more than a glass shell and main floor, some ready to receive flooring, with interior walls painted in the residential units and numbers hung on the walls.

At this rate we’ll have built an entire city in a month, using nothing more than an insane amount of magical energy and the base staff.

Finally, we reach the walls. We have to return to ground level, as they don’t connect to the city structure for security reasons, but I see a Kebab shop open in one of the interior wall shops. It’s got a handful of tables out front on the grass and a few security forces sitting around having their meal, so it’s got to be edible at the very least.

It’s beyond edible. They’re making Kebabs with the Water Buffalo meat we brought back, cooked on a rotisserie using magical fire. No wonder the werewolves working security love it here, the energy from magical beast meat can’t be beat. Though I’m told it can be a bit much for a mundane human who can’t burn it off at werewolf speed or store it as mana like a mage.

Next up is to harass, I mean, pay a professional visit to the construction headquarters for the city building teams.

I see a huge wall full of construction duties, from mages raising structural elements to mundane teams painting walls and installing flooring. The main areas are all uniform, added with magic at the last stages of a zone’s construction, but the individual units are being done as much as possible with local materials to give them a less institutional feeling. Some are dark themed, some light, some modern, some rustic. Something for everyone is what they’re hoping to achieve. Well, as much as they can in an above ground city where the biggest units available are 2 level villas.

Space for big yards and huge houses is something Arcana just doesn’t have. Hopefully, the common areas on the ground level will help make up for that. The towers too, while mostly housing food crops and such will also each hold an arboretum on the lower floors, a getaway for plant lovers.

The staff is frankly terrified of me in my ceremonial robes, even with my hood down. But they’re more than willing to go over every bit of the progress with me. It seems they’re in the same situation as the Dragons, a lack of mana is the limiting factor on their progress.

I contact Karl with this information and he promises to bring some low level mana stones over to help them along. Used sparsely they should allow us to get the city’s lower levels completed this week, along with the commercial zones. It’ll take time to get the businesses set up, a week or more for most of them, so getting people moved in isn’t the highest priority. The base still has a few rooms left for refugees.

Speaking of refugees though, we’re strangely getting very few humans coming to the city. Our patrols are out for days at a time, sweeping our zone for portals and hostiles, and they’ve kept order pretty well. The state government is held in low, but sustainable regard, so people aren’t fleeing the cities and farmers are still able to work their crops.

What we are seeing though, are demi humans from beyond the portals. Most aren’t soldiers, but civilians. I’ve heard reports of local farmers taking some in as laborers, but many others seem drawn to the city. I see a group of them in ragged clothes wandering around near where we’re finishing up our business with the site managers, so I call them over to see what I can make of their story. Perhaps there’s a reason we’re seeing so many of them?