I had a new title to add to my growing list. Farr. Unless soone had already called that and I just couldn’t rember. With how many I had been called over the year or so I had been in Zairgon, I couldn’t be blad for losing track.
“Sotis,” Revayne said. She was patrolling Ring Two with her squad and had arrived at the Kalnislaw estate a little while ago. “I can’t tell what you really want here, Ross.”
“Why is helping the farmhands pull out grapes causing a crisis of belief for you?”
She almost snorted. It was more likely that she had felt the impulse to do so before it was eaten by that strange book of hers. “A cultist at a harvest is a terribly rare sight.” She turned to her squad for backup. “Isn’t that right?”
They all dutifully echoed her sentint. I just glared at them all.
Mostly though, I was just glad that my plan with Protostar had worked. Well, Protostar had just been a prototype. Now, the Anymphea had successfully built their greenhouses and incorporated my Starlamps into the mix. The entirety of the Kalnislaw fields had been transford into a series of glass-lined dos covering the fields and regulating the environnt.
I was quite proud of the changes I had helped erect. Obviously, I couldn’t claim most of the credit. That went to Linak for the Starlamps and to Ascelkos’s enthusiasm in assisting us with their Bloomwagon technology.
Nevertheless, I had been key too. I was the one who had co up with the Starlamps, I was the one who had envisioned the greenhouses.
Most importantly, I had brought everyone together to cooperate and successfully realize this venture.
It was great.
“Here,” I said. I threw Revayne one of the grapes I had pulled off. She caught it rather easily, her arm almost a blur. “How does it taste?”
She plopped it into her mouth and chewed for a bit. “Tart.”
Did I even fully understand what tart ant? What in the Pits was wrong with my Universal Language Approximator?
Since Revayne was visiting, I excused myself from the other farmhands and gave her and her squad a tour of the place. They were all appreciative of the work that had been done.
“If you can expand the technology,” a young Scarthrall guard said. “Then you might be able to boost the city’s food supply a lot.”
Revayne nodded. “Right now, we’re vastly dependent on the Preserves for anything that isn’t mushrooms and bugs. But if you can propagate this to the rest of the city, imagine how far Zairgon will stand above everyone else in that regard.”
“Well, we had that cave-sheep farr,” I pointed out.
“Yes. And he feeds his cave-sheep bugs and mushrooms.”
“I see. It’s bugs and mushrooms all the way down.” I looked up at the sky long-sufferingly. “Why couldn’t I have been summoned to a different planet?”
Revayne just shook her head. By the ti she and squad were leaving, they were all looking at not just hopefully but expectantly too. Like they were waiting for to perform a circus trick for them.
“What?” I asked. “Why are you staring at like that?”
“Well,” Revayne said. “Now that I have subliminally planted the idea of taking your greenhouses beyond the borders of the Kalnislaw lands, I’m certain it will pop up in the rest of Zairgon before long.”
I sighed. She had a point there.
We parted with asking about her husband, to which she replied that Gushal Uralivanth was slowly starting to assu control of what was left of Uralivanth’s ventures. While many of his family still hated Ross, which was natural, Gushal himself was more pragmatic about things.
He was even wondering if it would be possible to buy shares in Ross’s booming Starlamp business. Gushal had practically filled up his estate with the Starlamps, which irked the rest of his family imnsely.
Just for that alone, I was willing to et with him, a ssage that Revayne was happy to carry off.
Admittedly, my life was settling into an easy routine. And because I had more than a few things going on at the sa ti, I was never worried about getting bored with it all.
There were all the cult duties I needed to take care of. A turning point was when we started getting mbers from Ring Three too. It was unprecedented in the history of the cults. People always saw the cults as sothing integrally tied to Ring Four, like it was only reserved for the people there. Which wasn’t true, of course.
“It’s you, Cultist Ross,” Vandre said. “You’re the one inspiring new people from even Ring Three to join up.”
I stared at his half-android state, walking in the daylight provided by my Icon with no trouble at all. “Right…”
He wasn’t wrong, of course. I understood this intellectually. There was sothing about my teoric rise in Zairgon, sothing about the way I had been at the forefront of every major incident within the last year and a half and co out victorious in every one, sothing about how I could send up a semi-permanent form of my Icon high above us all like a real sun.
Vandre wasn’t wrong. Inspiration was technically the right word here.
Besides all the cult stuff and just generally looking after Ring Four’s different sides—like the hospital and the food sources and even the school—I also tended to look after the Starlamp business when needed.
Which wasn’t often, thankfully, because Linak was already there to take care of most issues. He had transitioned from being the de facto leader of the Artificer’s Guild to the main business contact for the Starlamps. There were occasional instances where we t important clients together or certain technical issues where I could lend a different perspective, but it was rare.
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Linak was just really accomplished at conducting the majority of the business as he saw fit.
There were potential issues with this, of course. I didn’t want to surrender the entire thing to him. Keeping up a partnership was good, and we had a deal that respected the fact that he was doing far more of the daily work than I was.
But treating at as a wholeso partnership where nothing ever went wrong would be naïve. It was why a lot of the people we employed to help run the business were people I brought and recomnded. Scarthralls who had a knack for accounting, Ring Four people who were handy with tools and machinery—such that it existed on Zairgon—and the like.
People who knew and I knew well in turn.
Sreketh had returned to Xokrist academy despite her experiences earlier in the academic year. I hadn’t been fond of the move. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to be a barrier for whatever she wished to achieve, so I had let her go with certain conditions.
One was that she would need to et Ascelkos multiple tis every week. Another was that I would be doing regular checkups whenever I felt like it, and if I saw even a minor hint of bullying, I’d be lodging a complaint straight to the Council and then do to Xokrist what I had done to House Uralivanth.
Economically speaking, that was. I wasn’t threatening them with terrorism.
“You put the fear of the Banished Gods into them,” Sreketh said.
“Uh…”
Sreketh just eyed and grinned mischievously.
Speaking of which, I was also starting a new venture to make use of the Nether Vein stuff that had invaded Ring Four. Since I could more or less lt the tallic structures, I was recruiting so talworkers to help collect it and make better use of it all.
“You’re starting a talworking business now, Cultist Ross?” Aqrea asked. “Can I request a second accountant? An assistant accountant, where I’ll be the senior accountant?”
I glanced Acrypha after helping direct so of the talworkers. She looked even younger than . “Senior accountant, huh?” I shook my head. “Anyway, it’s not a business. I’m keeping so in reserve and selling off the rest.”
“Cultist, this is Nether Vein material.”
“I know. That’s why I’m selling it only to the Councillors and no one else. They’re going to conduct so experints, see where it can be useful.”
“They?”
I sighed. “Fine. It’s just one Councillor, but still. The point stands.”
“What are you going to do with it, though, Cultist?”
I thought back to when I had used the tal as a conduit to control sections of the Nether Vein itself. “I have my own experints to conduct. But at the sa ti, I can’t just leave it all lying around. If we can put it to work it in so way, then I’ll find out how.”
tal that could trap the divinity of the Old Gods surely had to be useful for sothing. A small part of was hoping that proximity to the divinity trapped in the tal would eventually start awakening the kind of Paths that Ring Four had been lacking for ages. But I wasn’t getting my hopes up without proof.
Despite things settling down into an easy routine for the ti being, there were still so unfinished business I couldn’t really do much about just yet.
Master Kostis and the older Kalnislaws were still wandering the Nether Vein, last I heard. I was surprised they were still at it, that they had lasted this long within it too. Our last communication had co when they had erged from an open gate at the distant end of Falsient continent, but they hadn’t revealed much.
Only that Kostis had grown quite a lot stronger and was getting close to breaking through to Jade. The Kalnislaws still hadn’t found their son’s soul. I didn’t have any idea, and I definitely didn’t care about Zoltan, so I just didn’t think about it, no matter how outlandish their effort looked.
Then there was the issue with Cult Leader Favoile going missing. I still hadn’t discovered a clue. Even more surprisingly, when Thefris had tried to investigate it with her threads, they went so far that they had snapped.
“My power isn’t endless, Ross,” she had said. “I’m barely Gold-ranked. One of my main limits is the distance to which I can follow my investigative threads. And for your colleague, it looks like the threads stretch out of the city…”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever call Favoile a colleague. That connotation was so odd. But I didn’t argue the point. Especially since it reminded about another sour point.
House Brasvay’s departure.
Just as the signs had indicated, just as the shift in their investnts had suggested, they had packed up and quickly moved to Claderov. It wasn’t illegal to do so, which was why the Council hadn’t raised a fuss about it. But obviously, it was incredibly suspicious.
A straight-up declaration that they were involved with the massacre that Claderov had almost caused in Zairgon. Especially on Ring Four.
After all, they were the first ones trying to take the temple from the cult. All at the behest of Zairgon, as that insane Vaunted had said. I didn’t need more proof, but it was a separate matter to prove to the Council that Brasvay had fled consequences that would have been dire for them.
“Are you sure you don’t wish to stay here?” Se-Vigilance asked. “I’ve asked them to renovate the residence to the sa level as that of the Councillors. You’d be able to enjoy a great deal of luxury and anities.”
I smiled at her kindness. “Thanks, Councillor, but I prefer the rustic air of Ring Four a lot better than Ring One. Also, it’s so cold here. I don’t know how you handle it all the ti.”
“I’m not quite certain the air of Ring Four can be correctly called rustic.”
I laughed. “You’re not wrong.”
“And as for the temperature, us Se-Targa are well adjusted to climates such as these.”
I wasn’t as surprised as I felt like I should have been. There were scant few Se-Targa in all of Zairgon in the first place, and the few I had seen had always been in Ring Two at the very least. I glanced at her angelic wings. Right. I suppose it kind of made sense they preferred climates with thinner, chillier air.
Se-Vigilance had called over to talk about so things and to also show my potential new residence. She was a little cagey about why she was inviting to live on Ring One like her, but eventually, she had caved.
“We must get the good people of Zairgon used to the idea of your eventual permanent residence here,” she said. “So why not start now?”
“Uh… that’s a big step, isn’t it?” I asked.
“You don’t sound opposed to it.”
“Well, Councillor Moreland does have a nice ring to it,” I said, rubbing my chin in thought. “And besides, I’m already involved with far too much stuff already. What’s one more?”
“That’s the spirit.”
We had passed by the statuary that held everyone who had been honoured across Zairgon’s existence. My one was at the far left. Se-Vigilance didn’t stop until we had reached a small, gardened precipice. The chill of the wind was far less here thanks to trees created here by the mini-Preserve the Councillors had erected.
At the very end of the location, we could look down at the rest of Zairgon in the distance. Buildings that looked like tiny blocks, carriages moving like toys, people scurrying like ants.
The perspective made draw in my breath harshly. Was this how the Council saw Zairgon every single day?
“Claderov isn’t done,” Se-Vigilance said.
I tutted. “I’m not surprised.”
“And they aren’t the only one. Others and sitting up and taking notice. Nether Vein Gates have opened elsewhere now that the pact is broken. More people are venturing in. Almost everyone is in awe of the changes they have seen so far.”
“Just how concerning is all of that, though?”
Se-Vigilance eyed . “Careful, Godling Moreland, lest you let your arrogance get to your head.”
I shook my head. “It’s not arrogance, Councillor. It’s determination.” I looked over the mountainside yet again, taking in the way everyone was living their lives. Once, when I had first arrived here, I had been stuck at the very bottom. At the lowest rung where the houses were still dark and the people were invisible from this high up. “Everything I have, everything I believe in, is right here in this city, Councillor. I’ll do everything in my power to keep it safe.”
Se-Vigilance considered that for a mont, then considered directly. “I believe you, Ross.”
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