The Fifth Realm

by Michael Chatfield

  “Seems that the associations started a pissing contest—gonna go and scare them with some undead!” Yui’s smile returned.

  “Well, have fun. Don’t stay out too late and remember not to miss dinner.”

  Yui rolled his eyes.

  “See you later.”

  “Later, sir.”

  Matt gave a half wave and continued into the Castle District, feeling sorry for the poor bastards who got in Yui’s way.

  He passed through the castle gardens. Nearly a third of it, the part where the worst damage was, was filled with construction.

  It’s called the Castle District, but it’s bigger than my campus back home. Matt drank his coffee, becoming human. It wasn’t long until he passed through the administrative offices and reached the main office that ran all of Vuzgal.

  The men and women there all looked overworked and tired, but they were filled with determined energy.

  Matt felt a shiver go down his spine just looking at them. Beware of the mass of white-collar workers!

  He sped up his pace unconsciously as they looked at him with hungry eyes. He could feel the heat in their gazes before he reached the main office.

  “The acting city lord is only meeting with people with appointments. He is booked for the next three weeks,” the man said as he went through various files.

  “Dougie, it’s Matt,” Matt said.

  The man looked up from his work. He had only become a part of Vuzgal a few months ago but was a quick study and had shown his ability.

  With the needs of Vuzgal, Hiao Xen focused on running the city, while his wife was handling recruitment and screening the different people. She also ran classes for the people who entered Vuzgal. With the city’s prosperity, throngs of people from other realms applied to join Vuzgal. There were plenty of opportunities and mana stones to be made.

  For those in the Fourth Realm, if they could find security in one of the most prosperous cities in the Fourth Realm just by working, they were more than willing to do it.

  I wonder what will happen when some of them start to disappear, being recruited to Alva?

  “Sorry, Master Richardson!” Dougie nearly jumped out from behind his desk. The man routinely turned down the heads from the different associations and high Journeyman-level people, but became flustered in Matt’s presence.

  The universe is a weird, weird place. Still have no idea why the Ten Realms exist and why we’re all here.

  Erik and Rugrat might be increasing their strength so that they could protect those who followed them, to push their own limits, and chase that ever elusive pinnacle. Matt, though—he only had questions. What was the Ten Realms? Why was he here? Was it random? Did some god descend from the sky and pick him? Was he actually reincarnated?

  He shook his head with a smile and waved Dougie down. “Don’t worry about it. I just wanted to make sure that I’m on time for the meeting,” Matt said.

  Dougie checked his timepiece. Timepieces were normal for those in the higher realms and the associations. The number of hours in a day might change from one realm to the next, but the timepieces allowed the associations to run smoothly and stay on the same timeline.

  “You’re on time, just a few minutes early. I will see if he is ready.” Dougie sent a sound transmission, quickly receiving a reply.

  “He is just finishing up some work but he is ready for you.” Dougie pressed a button on his desk to disable a defensive formation.

  “Thanks,” Matt said as the door opened.

  He looked around the room and laughed to himself. I wonder if anyone has told Hiao Xen that all of the government offices are actually located in the concubine quarters of the castle. All of the rooms here were closer together and didn’t have all of the grand extras of the other rooms. Matt barely held in a snort, masking it as a cough. Or the fact that his office is actually the bedroom of the empress. I don’t even want to think what a blacklight would pull up in here.

  Hiao Xen sat at a big desk. Behind him, four sets of tall windows looked out over the city. The city was built on a rise that reached up to meet the valley where the dungeons were found. The castle’s height allowed it to look over the growing city. The emperor’s chambers looked over the valley, and the public areas offered a view of the city. The castle’s original offices had actually been destroyed by the pillar that had fallen on the castle.

  Those offices were being renovated to create Vuzgal’s own academy and all of the construction outside was geared toward this.

  The new tier-three crafting buildings in the city were taking time to build, but every resource was devoted to completing these crafting facilities.

  Matt had designed them personally, from the different pavilions, to the growing library, the internal gardens and living quarters.

  Formations had been moved around the castle complex to draw in more mana and hold it there. To anyone using mana, it was a holy land. Its mana density was only rivaled by the mana formations in the valley where the Alchemist Association raised ingredients.

  Although they were making massive profits, the cost of the materials to make tier-three buildings wasn’t small. In the dungeon, they could directly upgrade the buildings: simply pay the fee, put the materials together, and bam! Upgraded facility. In cities, it was more like building on Earth. You needed materials, craftsmen, and the kitchen sink to build the damn places. If they wanted to increase the grade of the place? They would need to tear it down and build a new one, or make a new one and then they would probably leave the first because it still served a purpose.

  Though I’ve heard that if someone is able to combine the techniques of spell scrolls with blueprint designs, then they can upgrade and change a building with a special blueprint design. It would save a lot of time and resources to just upgrade the existing structures.

  In Vuzgal, they were focusing on tier-three workshops. To build tier-four workshops in a city, they would need to ask mid- to high-level Experts or Master crafters to assist. The cost for them to work on something mundane as a workshop would cost months’ worth of Vuzgal’s income.

  Which was probably why Delilah has been asking me to buy extra materials, so that they can be funneled to Alva Dungeon for when they upgrade the workshops there.

  “Sorry, just finishing this one up.” Hiao Xen quickly finished writing on the report. He took out a stamp and slammed it on the report. The report turned into motes of light and floated out of the window.

  “Light-paper,” Matt said.

  “Useful material—once enchanted, it can act as a messenger system of sorts, going between two people. It can only be sent with a stamp and then opened with another stamp,” Hiao Xen said in approval.

  Matt nodded. It reminded him of messenger systems on Earth, but it had magical paper moving between people instead of an internet connecting them across the world. The light-paper would float across the city as motes of light. With so many communications being sent, you could see clouds of light moving across the city, or shooting off into the distance at night.

  Looks pretty, but I bet the poor bastards in the castle wished they could get some sleep instead of being stuck here all night.

  “No worries.” Matt took a seat. They’d gotten comfortable with each other over the last couple of weeks. Everything that was planning-related went through Matt before it was finalized, and he or his apprentices had designed every major building in Vuzgal.

  Work was only increasing and speeding up.

  “Through my contacts, I was able to find around three hundred people for the Sky Reaching Restaurants.” Hiao Xen pulled out a file from his storage ring and passed it over.

  “Okay, I’ll pass this off to Jo. She can sort through it and give it the final okay before sending them to the Third Realm for training. It will still be a few weeks before we’re able to open up the second Sky Reaching Restaurant location unless we can recruit more people.”

  “What about just opening up the stores?” Hiao Xen asked.

  �
��Why are you so interested in the Sky Reaching Restaurant?” Matt laughed.

  Hiao Xen sighed, leaning on his hands. “Every single conversation I have seems to come around to the Sky Reaching Restaurant—when will another location open, when will there be more food?” His eyes narrowed as a dull expression covered his face. “You know how annoying it is talking about ingredient yields with the head of the Alchemist Association and the rent, then having him segue into the Sky Reaching Restaurant? We had discussed all of that in a meeting before, so he was just using the meeting to find out about his favorite restaurant!”

  Hiao Xen had a pleading look on his face and Matt couldn’t stop himself from laughing.

  “The stores are a good idea. It is much easier to hire people to sell items than get cooks and chefs and train them up to the standards of the Sky Reaching Restaurant,” Matt said.

  “Thank you. It should keep me out of at least twenty percent of my useless meetings.”

  “Well, you’ll be pleased to know that the last Wayside Inn has been completed. I have people surveying the outer city, and there is another group that is looking at the road to repair it. I talked to the people to the east in the Chaotic lands. For some reduced taxes, they’re willing to put resources toward doing up the roads.” Matt pulled out a contract and passed it to Hiao Xen as he kept talking.

  “The defensive bunkers around the outer city are complete and manned. The undead are working on the upgrades within the castle. Primarily the academy. The facilities for admin and living quarters for the admin staff and their families should be completed within the week. The rest of the apartments, grounds, and such should be completed in two weeks. Academy should take no longer than a month.

  “I have been able to get some alchemists to replant the gardens. They will increase the mana in the area and secrete relaxing smells. Some landscapers are working with them to create small gardens to give people a place to hang out. It’ll be pretty sweet.

  “The places that are in town, they’ll take another two months to be completed. I checked with the alchemists; their walls are all completed now, so no one can get into their areas.”

  “The Blue Lotus location just finished completion. They’re going to have their first auction tonight. Are you coming?” Hiao Xen said.

  “They usually have some good items, but I’ve got a date and some beers calling my name so I’ll take a rain check.” Matt smiled. People were all looking for him but he was always on the move. Not many knew what he looked like, so the guy with the odd hat and beard was able to hang out in different bars, drinking with his buddies instead of getting trapped in asinine conversations.

  The two of them went over the main topics, before Matt hurried off, leaving Hiao Xen looking at his mountain of paperwork as two new reports made of light reconstructed themselves on his desk.

  “Why the hell did I agree to this job?” Hiao Xen muttered as Matt left the room.

  Matt waved to Dougie, but he was head down in work as well. Matt quickly headed down out of the castle and through some side streets, reaching the crafter’s district that made up the center of the city.

  “Bit lopsided right now,” Matt complained. Forces in the west were still stuck in battle while the Chaotic lands to the east were reaping the greatest rewards with trading caravans riding toward Vuzgal. The one problem was that they were going through the roads that the Blood Demon sect had been on. The army had fixed the roads, but just enough for them to pass. Performing thorough repairs was one of Matt’s projects.

  Matt took his time walking, listening to the conversations around him.

  “A capital city in the middle of the forest with no one around—just how lucky are the city lords?”

  “Lucky? I heard that this place was cursed. Those skeletons that do the work of the city? They’ve been fighting here for hundreds of years!”

  “They’re just big laborers, though!” The first laughed.

  “Laborers? Do you know how strong they are? They’re like level fifty and sixty, some of them!”

  “I hear if you join the military then they will help you level up your cultivation and overall level to level forty-five!”

  “Level forty-five? Most fighting forces start at level thirty. They don’t have many people. Must be pouring out mana stones to get people to level forty-five!”

  Matt turned the corner, passing a tailor shop.

  “Vuzgal? Should be called a paradise for crafters,” one said.

  “I heard that the associations are all thinking about opening recruiting here. If they do, not only can you get access to the dungeon with its workshops, you can join an association.”

  “The biggest fact isn’t the associations—it’s the workshops. I have a cousin working in the castle. He said that if this is a paradise, then inside the castle is a holy land. And their requirements to let people in aren’t about crafting skill, but rather one’s willingness to learn!”

  “Are they recruiting? I should go and look!”

  “I’ll come too!”

  “What are you talking about?” the tailor of the shop asked as he walked forward.

  “Uh!”

  “Going for drinks later!” the quicker-minded one blurted out.

  “Focus on your work! It’s so hard to find good workers,” the man complained.

  Matt grinned as he passed a tea house.

  “It might cost a lot to reach Vuzgal, but they have thought ahead. With the Wayside Inns, it allows a great number of people to visit for only a few days and then leave again. The taxes are low and the city is built with crafters in mind.”

  “The city lords even leveraged the associations into supporting them. I heard that they charged the later adopters more.” Another trader laughed.

  “Each of the associations have their own headquarters here, but Vuzgal has become the most powerful city not ruled by the associations,” the first said.

  “How can you say that? It is only a tenth the size of some of those headquarter cities.”

  “It is for now. It has only existed for a few months, but there is still more land for sale and there is plenty room for them to expand,” the first trader said wisely.

  Matt simply smiled to himself, looking at the construction and the buildings that were rising all over the city by the minute.

  ***

  “Commander,” a girl in the large column of people called out as she pointed to the sky.

  Bai Ping looked where she was pointing, shielding his eyes. He saw the pillar sticking into the sky.

  Finally.

  “If we pick up the pace, we should be there in an hour,” he said.

  The pillar had been covered by the tree coverage and it was only by chance that the little girl had seen the pillar.

  The men and women in the group had relieved looks on their dirt-covered faces.

  They had been living in a simple city, Ulinheim, with only a few hundred thousand people. They were the rejects from the different sects. They had neither backing nor innate abilities.

  So they had carved out a life for themselves in the inhospitable mountains away from dungeons that drove the people of the Fourth Realm crazy.

  They had focused on farming and other simple crafts, selling to passing caravans, or sending people to a nearby city as traders.

  Then war broke out in the mountains. Different groups fought one another, and Ulinheim, which was in a pass, was suddenly in the way of an advancing army.

  The city of one hundred thousand had been attacked in the night.

  Bai Ping had only escaped with his sisters, his uncle, and cousins. His uncle was badly wounded and, being the highest ranked guard, Bai Ping had taken command. They had gathered together as many people as possible and then set off to the east, toward Vuzgal. It was a neutral city. As long as they got there, they could try to find jobs, or they could teleport to other places where they had family members.

  Bai Ping’s family had all been guards. Each of them was strong, but it was incred
ibly hard for them to increase the strength of their Body or Mana Gathering Cultivation, so they were dismissed by others. They had been a community pillar in Ulinheim, but now in their group of fourteen hundred, there were just eighty members of the Bai family.

  Bai Chang, one of his cousins, jogged up from where she had been guarding.

  “Uncle isn’t looking well,” she said with a look.

  “We’ll be at Vuzgal soon. We can try to get a healer to look at him there,” Bai Ping said.

  ***

  Hiao Xen let out a heavy sigh as he looked at the Blue Lotus from within his carriage.

  The streets had been cleared and repaired; buildings had been torn down or repaired as if they had never been damaged.

  He knew that beyond the central district, roads were still being repaired. The buildings weren’t being rebuilt, just left. Only the crafting workshops were being repaired, or stripped and their materials used to build other crafting areas of Vuzgal.

  Already people are looking to buy more land within the city. Once the auction house is built, we’ll start selling off some more tracts of land. The prices have increased dramatically. People are filling up the Wayside Inns. Those who bought land before are holding onto it, preparing to build compounds and manors upon them.

  People were running back and forth. There was plenty to be done and only so much time in a day. There were plenty of jobs to be had. The military and the administration of Vuzgal were both recruiting. Even taking on odd jobs for people who were working or living in the city was enough to sustain new people entering the city.

  The Vuzgal bank had opened its doors, allowing people to invest their mana stones there and awarding large loans to others. The injection of funds allowed people to quickly create and grow business ventures. New trading houses were working out of the Wayside Inns and renting space along the main roads.

  Adventurers came through to go to the dungeons; crafters filled the streets. Each group assisted and drove the others.

  They reached the Associations’ Circle. It was down the road from the castle compound. The main street ran into a large roundabout park with small shops and secluded areas for one to get away from the busy city. There was even a large pond in the middle of the park.