Year 12 - Month 4 - Day 5

Cat shared his senses with me again. I can see, it's in odd colors and from a very low perspective, but it’s better than nothing. Now… this new screen…

 

[Ruler Management Screen - Order of the Tree]

[Database Management]

[Citizen Management]

[Military Management]

[Policy Management]

[Milestones]

[Resources]

 

The main screen is the same, except for the two new tabs, [Database Management] and [Milestones] although the other tabs likely have new things as well.

 

First up, let's look at this [Database Management].

 

[Database Management - No existing databases. Create a new database?]

 

Yes, please.

 

[Please designate a name for the database.]

 

For the first one… let’s go with City Entry/Exit Logs.

 

[Database ‘City Entry/Exit Logs’ created.]

[Would you like to start Database Creation Wizard?]

 

Sure.

 

[Specify database rows.]

 

Rows… infinite? Expandable? Uh… Unspecified?

 

[Rows set to unspecified.]

[Specify database columns.]

 

City entrance logs… I think those had four columns, but we could add more info. We’d probably need… I guess name, time, fee, purpose, the guard that managed it, social status, items, whether they were part of a group, and extra notes.

 

So, nine columns...

 

[Columns set to 9.]

[Would you like to designate names for columns?]

 

Definitely.

 

[Specify column names.]

 

1. Name
2. Social Status
3. Time of Entry/Exit
4. Fee Paid
5. Purpose of Visit
6. Overseer
7. Items
8. Group
9. Other Info

 

[Names registered.]

[Would you like to grant anyone access to this database?]

 

Uh. Just, Nyx, Cat, and Lily for now.

 

[What access level would you like to grant to specified users?]

 

The highest?

 

[Users Nyx, Cat, and Lily have been granted administrator access to database ‘City Entry/Exit Logs’]

[Database registered. Display now?]

 

Okay.

 

 

Well, this should work. Now to do it for all the other charts…

 

And with that, we now have…

 

[Database Management Screen]

[1. City Entry/Exit Logs]

[2. Merchant’s Guild Logs]

[4. Mercenary’s Guild Logs]

[3. Adventurer’s Guild Logs]

[4. Agent Listing]

[5. Local Nobility and Royalty Listing]

[6. Foreign Nobility and Royalty Listing]

[7. Organization/Groups Listing]

[8. Merchant Listing]

[9. Mage Listing]

[10. Warrior Listing]

[11. Communication Test]

 

I finished up a few more logs, then a bunch of lists to store info about people. Lily filled out what she could on those, but they are very lackluster as of now. Then, number eleven. I noticed that we can access the database from anywhere. Well, Lily, Nyx, and Cat can access the database from everywhere, so we did some testing and found out we can use it for instantaneous communication! It’ll certainly provide a boon for the Order of the Tree.

 

Now for that other new screen, [Milestones]

 

[Milestones]

[1. Centralized (view details?)]

 

View details, please.

 

[Centralized]

[Awarded for creating and/or taking a knowledge base to store the culmination of your organization/cult/kingdom/nation/other’s secrets, history, methodology, religion, and/or other info.]

[Reward: You already have it.]

 

No reward? Sad. Well, that screen didn’t contain much. Back to the main menu.

 

[Ruler Management Screen - Order of the Tree]

[Database Management]

[Citizen Management]

[Military Management]

[Policy Management]

[Milestones]

[Resources]

 

[Citizen Management] is just a list of people with common actions like execute. Nothing too special.

 

[Military Management] is, likewise, a list of people who are enlisted into the military. Currently, that’s all the guards from the Twilight Empire who paid me a visit. I still can’t command them to do anything but I can request them to go on a crusade somewhere. They probably aren’t true followers or something.

 

[Resources] is a list of resources, nothing special there. I’m broke so I don’t have anything beyond the couple million gold we have in the intelligence division savings.

 

And lastly…

 

[Policy Management]

[Active Policies: 0]

 

It seems there aren’t any set policies, I can really create anything… I’m feeling pretty poor right now, maybe a larger mana tax? If I recall, Lily had a 0.2% drain from my divine tax, so let’s just bump that to 1%.

 

[Mana Tax Policy]

[Drain 0.8% mana from each registered user in your domain, netting 4 divine points per user per month toward your domain resources.]

[Confirm?]

 

Perfect. Confirm.

 

[Policy Management]

[Active Policies: 1]

[View Policies?]

 

There doesn’t seem to be any cost to creating policies, although I suppose bad policies would make people leave… Hopefully, a one percent mana drain isn’t enough to cause problems.

 

What else is there… oh. I should probably give access to my agents for those logs and lists.

 

Grant all agents write access.

 

[All intelligence network agents have been granted write access.]

 

Perfect. “What next?”

 

Oh.

 

What next?

 

Money. Nyx replied.

 

We have funding from the empire. Lily said.

 

We need more money and money that isn’t connected to political bodies. Don’t want to be indebted to them.

 

Are we not already very much in their debt considering our location? I asked.

 

The less we are the better. We can start our chain to independence here. 

 

Okay then. How are we going to make money?

 

Sell information? Cat suggested.

 

We don’t have enough information for it to be worth anything. Nyx countered.

 

Sell skills? I offered. It would be fairly simple to collect the fruit that falls.

 

Maybe some, but those are powerful enough that it’d be better to keep them to ourselves and spend them on our agents. Lily said.

 

Princess is right. Cat said. We could offer assassination or spy services.

 

That won’t go over well with many people. Lily claimed. Although it would be used.

 

How about we form a mercenary company? Nyx stated. We all thought over the idea and ended up agreeing. That would be the best way. We already have plenty of people, we could take a few from our teams or just hire a few more, load them up with skills, and have them complete missions. Easy money.

 

After our discussion, Cat and Lily went to the local Mercenary’s Guild building to, first, register our company, and two, scout some potential members. There are often small parties of unaffiliated mercenaries lounging about, much like the Adventurer’s Guild. We’ll probably form an adventuring team in the future too, but they don’t have a company system like the Mercenary’s Guild. Adventurers tend to be a bit too crazy for any large-scale organization to work out, although there are a few.

Year 12 - Month 4 - Day 6

Lily and Cat have returned. Tailing them is a small group of five mercenaries. Once again, I find my life vision rather lacking. I can’t see beyond the general shape of the mercenaries, which tells me we have two females and three males. I really need to get more divine points.

 

Cat shared his vision with me and I got a closer look at each of them.

 

First up. Girl one. She’s wearing a dark cloak with a long black witch hat and has a beautiful staff by her side. Probably a mage of some sort.

 

Girl two. She has a bow strapped to her back and is wearing some leather plate armor. Likely an archer.

 

Boy one. Some shiny heavy armor laced with scratches, and a two-handed sword sheathed by his side. Tank I presume.

 

Boy two. Leather plate armor, similar to girl two, he has some daggers and one short sword. Speed-based attacker of some sort.

 

Lastly, boy three. He’s just wearing ordinary clothes. Not too sure what his role is. Maybe something support based?

 

Cat can you share your hearing with Tree-chan? Lily asked.

 

Already did!

 

“Oh. Okay. Everyone, meet Tree-sama. Your boss,” Lily gestured to me while the five mercenaries stared, slightly confused.

 

“Uhm. A tree?” boy two asked.

 

“Yes. Introduce yourselves,” Lily added.

 

“Okay… I’m Kurt Russell. Speed-based attacker and assassinator,” boy two started.

 

“Marquess Curtis Savage. The leader and tank of our group,” boy one said with exaggerated hand signs trying to up his own greatness.

 

“Ise Heyayo. Resident mage, pleased to meet you,” girl one stated.

 

“Ise Sanekage. Beast tamer,” boy three said. Are those two related?

 

“Gina Curry. Archer,” the final girl said.

 

“Lovely. In case you didn’t know, I’m Princess Lily of the Twilight Empire. This here is Tree-sama. Beside him is Cat-dono. And hiding somewhere is Nyx-dono.”

 

“Now, you are all going to become our first official mercenary team in our organization, Order of the Tree. So pledge your fealty to Tree-sama and we can begin.”

 

One by one, they went up and did some bows or prayers or something. I don’t really know how this works. Anyway–

 

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

[Mercenary Management screen unlocked.]

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

 

That happened. So I think we successfully registered. Lily sent away the party of five to go complete some simple missions for a few gold a piece then, we sat down and spent some time thinking about what skills would benefit each of them. Resulting in a few new purchases.

 

[Branch 1.1.2: Blind with the Shade selected!]

[Branch 1.1.3: Feel with the Shade selected!]

[Branch 1.5: Permanent Skill selected!]

[Destiny Points: 4,678]

 

For Kurt Russel, the assassin dude, we figured these two would be helpful in addition to all the existing shadow magic skills. [Blind with the Shade] does what you would expect. It’s an ability that allows you to warp shadows around and block someone’s vision. Feel with the Shade is something akin to my life sense, although it’s vaguer. It can give you a sense of the general direction and distance a person is.

 

For Marquess Curtis Savage, the tank, we couldn’t decide on anything new that we wouldn’t have had to pay destiny points for so we just chose to give him the existing light magic skills.

 

[Branch 6: Fire Magic selected!]

[Branch 6.1: Explosion selected!]

[Branch 6.1.1: Shrapnel Explosion selected!]

[Branch 6.1.2: Flame Explosion selected!]

[Branch 6.2: Implosion selected!]

[Branch 6.3: Permanent Skill selected!]

[Destiny Points: 3,678]

 

For Ise Heyayo, the mage, it took some time to decide, but Lily insisted Heyayo would prefer explosion spells. So that’s what we themed it around. [Explosion] does exactly what it sounds like, creates an explosion. It’s a simple explosive that digs up the dirt around it and tosses things everywhere. [Shrapnel Explosion] is similar, but it also throws out small needles of black rock when it explodes. Painful. [Flame Explosion] doesn’t dig up dirt or throw things around, rather, it creates a large burst of flame singeing everything in the vicinity. [Implosion] was a strange one. It was like a black hole that sucked up everything around it. Lily didn’t know what a black hole was but she said it was like her father at dinner.

 

[Branch 5.4: Aura of Tranquility selected!]

[Branch 7: Nature Magic selected!]

[Branch 7.1: Everlasting Cycle selected!]

[Branch 7.1.1: Return to Nature selected!]

[Branch 7.2: Grow selected!]

[Branch 7.3: Entrance selected!]

[Branch 7.3.1: Entrance Fauna selected!]

[Branch 7.3.2: Entrance Flora selected!]

[Branch 7.4: Permanent Skill selected!]

[Destiny Points: 2,678]

 

For Ise Sanekage, the beast tamer, we just gave him some nature and beast-based skills. None of us knew too much about this, well Cat and Nyx did, but their knowledge is vastly different from Lily’s and they said it isn’t always consistent between worlds so we didn’t test it. [Aura of Tranquility] is just a peaceful calming aura that should make animals and beasts calmer around him. [Everlasting Cycle] is something that regrows dead plants. [Return to Nature] allowed anything natural, like corpses, to turn into fertilizer at a quicker rate than is natural. A bit contradictory isn’t it? Nature magic is always used to be peaceful and be one with nature, yet it completely messes up the natural cycles. [Grow] does exactly what it seems, grows plants quicker. [Entrance] is not a doorway, it instead captures the attention of humans. It’s more like mind magic, but I guess something about it has to do with nature. [Entrance Fauna] and [Entrance Flora] extend the effects to fauna and flora respectively. We haven’t figured out what entrancing flora does though.

 

[Branch 5.5: Aura of Concentration selected!]

[Branch 5.6: Aura of Focus selected!]

 

For Gina Curry, we settled on giving her a few stealth skills so she can find better places to hide and perch. We weren’t sure how magic worked with arrows, but we did know we could easily grant her some concentration boost through aura skills which should improve her aim. We thought she could also benefit from [Aura of Tranquility], for herself rather than others though. Despite how similar [Aura of Concentration] and [Aura of Focus] sound, they have a minor difference. [Aura of Concentration] removes the distractions in the environment making it easier to focus, while [Aura of Focus] uses mana to enhance your ability to complete any given task. Lily said it felt like time slowed down and she could think at an absurd rate, although the effect wouldn’t be as apparent for someone with less mana.

 

Initially, we wanted to give them all [Skill Tree Fruit] like what we tested with Lily, but then I realized I’m too poor so we're going to hold out on those and just give them the normal skills. The team should be back in a week, then Lily will pass out all the skill fruits she collects from me.

 

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