Civilization Chronicles: Rise of the Divine Creator

Suffice-it-to-say, Pauline’s worries were more than quelled about what her mother’s First Disciple had been up to these past few months. While it was true that he was burning through cash and sucking up manpower and resources at an alarming rate, the results he had already produced were more than worth the cost.

During the tour today, Pauline had somewhat unexpected also gotten to hear about what Celestina’s other two Disciples were engaged in.

Lucas was a freak. A monster. A complete anomaly. That much was obvious, so by comparison, Eris and Christina definitely seemed more ’normal’, but that was only relative to their absolutely outrageous Senior Brother.

Eris and Christina’s ventures weren’t nearly as bold or grand as Lucas’, but they were certainly nothing to scoff at either.

Christina had just opened her third Princess Bakery, but despite now having 3 full-time shops in different districts of Misty City, they were all still selling out of Redwood Style Bread by early afternoon each day.

Now understanding just what the demand was like for her bread and other baked products, like cookies, pastries, and even a limited number of sponge cakes, Christina realized that these small-scale shops simply weren’t going to cut it; she needed to think bigger.

And so, the young princess decided to follow her Senior Brother’s example and open her own factory.

Purchasing a run-down warehouse on the outskirts of the southern residential district for cheap, Christina had set about renovating it, with a lot of help from Lucas’ Urban Development Team, into a kind of massive kitchen.

Here, she could have large quantities of Princess Bakery’s standard products, like bread loaves and buns, prepared in massive quantities far away from the busy marketplaces where it was expensive to buy land and difficult to bring in large quantities of raw ingredients.

Some of the items would be baked in massive ovens at the factory, while other items could be shipped out in a half-finished format to the various bakeries to finish the cooking process there, allowing them to be sold fresh.

Even half-finished, the bread factory was quite an impressive sight, with several pieces of innovative equipment having been installed right from the start, such as waterwheel driven ingredient mixers.

Eris, on the other hand, was extremely busy with her new guild/school. In order to gain a better understanding of how such organizations worked, the young red-head was currently visiting all the Cultivation Academies and adventurer guilds around Misty City, taking notes, talking to teachers and guild masters, and so on and so forth.

A location for the guild had already been chosen, more than sufficient funds had been collected from numerous sources, and full-time staff were already being recruited.

Eris wasn’t quite as in-the-weeds as her Junior Sister and Senior Brother were when it came to managing or developing things, but she was definitely a major participant and driving force behind this project designed to invigorate and uplift the poor southern residential district.

It was all incredibly impressive in Pauline’s eyes, and after impartially evaluating just how much benefit these projects would bring to the Balfour Family, she no longer had any qualms about pledging her full support to everything the three children were doing.

Everything she had seen so far today had blown Pauline away.

There had been so many different, innovative projects and products being developed in Misty City right now, things she couldn’t even have begun to imagine just days ago, that she genuinely felt nothing would surprise her anymore.

Naturally, she was utterly and completely wrong on that count.

It was now early evening, with the sun not yet starting to set but certainly getting a bit lower in the sky.

Although 10 hours of touring around Misty City hadn’t taken any physical toll on a Mid-Rank Spirit Adept like Pauline, her spirit and soul were certainly feeling a bit weary from all the stimulation they had received.

Riding a Cloud Treading Colt back to the Manor, the always dignified Great Elder even let out a small, uncharacteristic yawn, showing the extent of her mental exhaustion.

If she thought the day was over, though, she was sorely mistaken.

After passing through the main entrance of the Manor, Lucas brought Pauline to a secluded area away from the other buildings in the Balfour Family complex where a facility he simply referred to as ’The Lab’ was located.

Despite there really being no doubt about their identities, Lucas and Pauline were still stopped by the guards for a brief but thorough check before they were allowed to pass.

Pauline was naturally a bit confused by this, as aside from the main vaults, one of which was in Martin and one of which was here in Misty City, she had never seen security so strict that even she needed to confirm who she was to be granted access.

Once inside the facility’s walls, however, Pauline quickly began to understand.

This isolated, newly built, heavily guarded complex was where Lucas worked on most of his classified projects, the ones he and Celestina deemed too dangerous to allow anyone but their most trusted people to participate in or even to known about.

Lucas had originally suggested this place be named ’Area 51’, but when everyone around him just gave him a funny look, he realized that even if he did this, no one would be able to share in the joke, so he just sighed and went with ’The Lab’ instead.

He may have pouted a bit as well.

Just a bit.

Some of the things going on in this research facility were so secretive that the only written records of them outside of The Lab were held directly by Celestina and Lucas themselves. In other words, not even the Elders of the Balfour Family knew everything about what went on in here.

The only project that had a higher degree of security than the ones happening in The Lab was Project Ascension.

Now, not all work on these top-secret projects was being conducted in this one courtyard; in fact, much of the work was being carried out elsewhere like in the carpentry workshops, forges, or other more-public facilities of the Balfour Manor, but no one outside of those Lucas and his Master felt was absolutely essential knew what they were really working on, or what the purpose of the tools they were building were for.

As for the core technologies of these classified works, they were all kept under lock, key, and armed guard here.

Of course, Lucas and his Master had agreed that Great Elder Pauline, as the one in charge of almost all day-to-day activities in the Balfour Family, needed to be given a full briefing on all of their secret projects, which was exactly what she was about to get.