Year 12 - Month 3 (continued)

“Do we really need to add scribes to our spy units?” Lily asked me.

 

“Can you read these?” I replied from my avatar, handing over the set of reports.

 

 

There were a few thousand more entries listed. All of which I couldn’t read.

 

“It’s just cursive,” Lily sighed. “I’ll need to teach you, it shouldn’t be too hard. It’s basically the same. Let’s just spend today doing that. We can look at the info tomorrow.”

Year 12 - Month 3 - Day 2

I can now read cursive. It’s quite a bit slower, but I’m managing. Back to the lists…

 

 

Looks fairly normal. Other than the didn’t pay fee. Nothing major though. Well, nothing major in what I’ve read. I’ve only skimmed the first couple hundred lines. That’s not the point though. It seems like the agents did a pretty good job setting it up.

 

They also created a log for people leaving the city. It’s nearly identical except for the title.

 

Next up, some guild reports.

 

 

 

“Thoughts?” I asked the group, which was currently Cat, Nyx, and Lily.

 

“Not bad,” Nyx replied.

 

“Could use more detail,” Cat added.

 

“I think it’s fine,” Lily said.

 

Okay. It’s fine then. Now… “What reports have we received from the other agents?”

 

“Just a minute,” Lily said, then went into concentration before pulling out some notes from her spatial ring. “It says…”

 

 

That’s a short one.

 

 

Quite disappointing. The few nobles the empire let live all decided to betray…

 

 

 

 

Assassinations aren’t considered major events? I guess it would be common in some countries that treat their people badly, but I feel like it should be a bit more than a footnote. Oh well.

 

Hopefully, we can solve the agent shortages soon, whenever our batch arrives from the Kingdom of Murrandor.

 

“Thoughts?” I asked again.

 

They all expressed their vehement interest. 

 

“Guess I should let father know about the Carabello Sultanate,” Lily said.

 

“Nothing to note, they did their jobs,” Nyx stated. Then Nyx remembered something. “Time to buy those new root skills, Tree-san.”

 

Oh yes. The Root System. Not the system, but the root system.

 

[Insufficient Destiny Points. Destiny Points needed: 100,000]

[Destiny Points: 65,811]

 

Ah. “We might need to wait a month.”

Year 12 - Month 4

[Destiny Points: 101,848]

 

I finally have enough points, but then I’d have to get rid of my avatar. So, I’m going to wait until we get our catkin agents. They should arrive soon…

Year 12 - Month 4 - Day 4

They have arrived. Once again, ten cloaked agents stood in front of me, except this time they were all catkin. To my side stood Nyx and Lily. Cat decided to go explore the city, which I find awfully odd since he’s a cat… Anyway, back to the agents.

 

Standing slightly in front of the ten agents, was one more. This agent was the designated head of the Kingdom of Murrandor’s portion of the division.

 

For starters, Nyx asked for every agent to swear fealty to me, Tree. We never ended up doing this beyond the ten elite operatives for our own forces because they were never gathered from their original posts, although we should really do it sometime… the points…

 

[Followers: 44,438]

[Destiny Points: 105,653]

 

And now that they’ve all become my loyal subjects, we turn our attention to their tasks. After some careful deliberation, we gave them the exact same task as our agents, to see what differences we find and, well, find out which team is better.

 

“Agent one, your team will monitor Twilight City. Keep a log of everyone who enters and exits. Find if there’s any corruption among the guard ranks.”

 

“Agents two and three, also in Twilight City, except you two are monitoring the various guilds. Keep track of everything.”

 

“Agent four, your job is to monitor all members of the imperial family, like the princess over here. Mark down any suspicious interactions.”

 

“Agent five, you’ll be with agents nine and ten. Just wait a moment.” Since we have already solved the situation in the Carabello Sultanate. Yay, we won the war! We had to come up with a new task so we chose to have them join up with agents nine and ten. We did the same to our current agents.

 

“Agents six and seven, check out the vassal states and investigate all valuable assets and personnel. Only defend the current head of the nation, monitor everything else.”

 

“Agent eight, same thing–excluding the defend part–but in the rest of the continent”

 

“Agents nine and ten, and five as well, do what I just said but in the eastern continent.”

 

“Complete your missions as you’ve been trained to do, then send us reports at the end of the month. We’ll give you more tasks soon. Division head, you can stay behind to talk with us a bit.”

 

“Understood,” the leader replied, then sent the agents away to complete their assignments.

 

We spoke with the leader for about an hour and explained why we sent them on those temporary tasks, it was just to compare them to our current forces, then we asked her to show her stealth skills. Nyx was still disappointed but she did admit they were better than ours so that’s something.

 

Soon after, the leader left. Then, we did some math and realized we still didn’t have enough points to purchase the Root System and keep my avatar activated.

 

Sucking up my leafy tears, I deactivated my avatar for the first time. Suddenly, everything felt so dull. It was… empty.

 

You okay Tree-chan? Lily asked.

 

So dull. So empty. So barren.

 

I’ll get Cat, he can share his sense. I’d share mine but it’ll overload you. Nyx said, then left the range of my nature senses. Or just went stealth mode.

 

Okay. Lily replied belatedly.

 

Pushing aside my feelings. I purchased the root.

 

[Root 7: The Root System selected!]

[Destiny Points: 5,653]

 

[Database Management screen unlocked.]

[Database Management screen has merged into Ruler Management Screen due to overlapping usage.]

[Your cult, Order of the Tree, has completed a milestone.]

[Ruler Management Screen has been switched from Twilight Empire - holy figure to Order of the Tree - Divine Entity.]

[Milestone Management has been added to Ruler Management Screen.]

 

---

 

Tree-san’s stats: