Chapter 154. Finally Bought The Dryad Species Template.
After the disaster, the Temple, which has always been skilled at propaganda, immediately seized the moment to spread the word about the Temple branch’s miraculous survival amid the earthquake that flattened the Starry Sea Empire’s capital city.
But this time, the Temple’s propaganda was overshadowed by more pressing news.
The newly ascended Emperor of the Starry Sea Empire has disappeared during the earthquake!
When Silvia heard the news, she sighed and returned from her mansion in one of the Starry Sea Empire’s coastal cities to resume ruling the empire and stabilize the situation.
While the Capital City’s reconstruction was underway, Silvia also devoted much of her effort to finding a suitable descendant for the power inheritance ritual.
Although she had given most of her power to Teo, Silvia still kept some energy to ensure she could live normally even after the ritual.
‘Who knows, even this excess energy can’t be kept.’ Silvia smiled wryly while ordering her subordinates to tell all of her children to have more children, and even promising to give more land to those who could have more descendants.
While working to stabilize the empire, Silvia heard many reports of other Level 4 blessed’s mysterious deaths or disappearances, especially among young Level 4 blessed with potential.
Although it’s called a mystery, most who don’t know about Lacius’s existence suspect Catherina, or an unknown Level 5 blessed. Especially since, except for Teo, the other Level 4 blessed has disappeared without much trace of resistance, which means the killer greatly outpowers those Level 4 blessed.
Eliminating the other Level 4 blessed and Elisa, who couldn’t leave her home, left only Catherina as the main suspect.
Of course, those who knew about Lacius’s existence also doubted whether he was responsible for all this.
As for those who know Lacius’s temper and history, like Elisa, they’re pretty much certain that Lacius is the one responsible for all that.
***
Inside the Divine Space, Cedric has just finished planning for the next expansion.
Because he’s still uncertain how much GP he’ll collect by the time his world advances, Cedric has created several designs of varying sizes.
Once he stored the design in case he somehow collected enough GP to expand the world five times, Cedric stretched his body and opened his status panel.
[Name: Cedric Hills
Level: Pseudo Lesser Divinity (Actual level: Peak Level 6)
Law: None.
World: Crystal Cube World
World Level: 3
World’s Average Potential: Peak Level 0
GP: 23.394
Annual GP income: 56]
Seeing how much GP he had, Cedric decided to spend 20.00 GP to buy the Basic Dryad Package he always wanted.
[Basic Dryad Package. Cost: 20.000 GP
The Dryads are plant type humanoid species born from specific species of trees called Dryad Tree. Every Dryad tree has a 0.1% of giving birth to a Dryad after 100 years. As the tree gets older, the chance of giving birth to a dryad will increase until a maximum of 2%.
A dryad and the Dryad tree are connected to one another. Upon the tree’s death or the dryad’s death, the other will be affected and die soon after.
Include 1.000 dryad with an average of 600 years maximum lifespan, forest with 100.000 Dryad trees, basic language knowledge, intermediate agriculture and husbandry knowledge, basic intelligence, basic wisdom, nature affinity…]
The dryad will be the core template for his Fairy V.2.
‘This time, I hope nothing goes wrong with the new fairies,’ Cedric hoped.
After buying it, he didn’t immediately place the dryads because his world wasn’t in the process of leveling up yet. If he added them now, god knows how much world stability would disappear.
Instead, he told the System, “Hold the dryads for now. I’ll place them later. Instead, can you give me some data on the dryad’s body to study?”
[No. But the System can send some soulless dryad bodies to your Divine Space. Do you want them?]
“Sure. Don’t forget to include dryads in both their tree and humanoid forms. Also, make them have varying levels.” Cedric reminded.
[Ding! Do you wish to consume 100 GP to buy 1.000 soulless dryad bodies of varying types?]
‘I knew it.’ Cedric already had a gut feeling it’d cost quite a bit of GP when the System readily offered its assistance.
“Alright. Also, don’t forget to prepare bodies from a few different age groups.”
After Cedric’s reminder, he heard a loud thud outside the copy of his house he created in the Divine Space.
When he went outside, there was a mountain of bodies and trees lying haphazardly
Cedric rolled his eyes and controlled the winds in the divine space to sort the Dryad bodies by level, age, and whether they were in humanoid or tree form.
After sorting them, Cedric created several copies and prepared to study the Dryad corpses.
“But before I go study the Dryad, I’d better check the Crystal Cube world.”
Cedric sent his mental energy to observe the world.
“Considering the human’s record of causing trouble, should I check on them first?” Cedric mused, then shook his head. “Nah. I’ll probably get a massive headache from watching whatever crazy thing they’re doing. If I start with them, I’ll probably lose my mood to keep checking the other races.”
He knew that wasn't exactly a wise choice, but Cedric simply couldn’t help it.
Thus, he sent his mental power to check the situation in the dwarves’ territory.
As usual, the dwarves are still busy advancing their steam-based technology.
After finding steam engines, the dwarves seem to have fallen in love with them and are continuously advancing the technology without even considering alternative energy sources.
Thanks to the academy, the dwarves’ steam machines have advanced at an incredible pace. Cedric even saw a faction trying to build a steam-based exoskeleton armor in an attempt to make non-blessed capable of fighting against blessed.
Of course, because they’re eating more than they can chew, the armor will not work at best, or cook the armor tester at worst.
The internet, which has spread throughout the world, has also helped with information exchange and storage. The dwarves have created their own internet forum to discuss engineering or to seek partners and investment.
But the rise in steam technology has also caused problems, especially pollution.
Although Elisa’s mother, Ghiana, has created plants capable of handling pollution, the sheer volume of dwarven pollutants couldn’t be handled by those plants.
The dwarves’ types of pollution have also become more varied, and not many elves are interested in creating pollution-filtering plants, so research in those areas is pretty slow.
Cedric saw all that and commented, “Honestly, the dwarves’ situation is pretty good. But why do they only have three Level 4 blessed?”
The dwarves pretty much lived under Elisa and Catherina’s protection. But Cedric feels it shouldn't be kept like this. “Perhaps I should try to strengthen them too. Afterall, they’re one of the three initial intelligent races I created in the Crystal Cube world. Perhaps I’ll find someone with a high level from Earth and reincarnate them as dwarves, hopefully an engineer or something similar so they can lead the dwarves.”
He took a look for another day to ensure the dwarves don’t play with anything dangerous before moving to check on the elves and Elisa.
Cedric saw Elisa watching her elven drama as usual.
He tried to use Past Observation on Elisa, but except for giving some advice and commands to her city’s representative, Elisa rarely made any moves.
There were only two noteworthy things she did over the past few years.
First was increasing investment in making the elves explore the sea to the east of the continent. At this point, they had pretty much mapped the entire eastern sea area, except for the southeast area under the Kraken’s rule.
The second was focusing investment on the elves’ entertainment industry.
Elisa not only started increasing the number of elven actors, actresses, directors, scriptwriters, and other movie-related jobs, but also started launching many dancers, musicians, and even elven idol groups that shook the internet.
Honestly, Cedric was extremely dumbfounded when he saw an elven idol group’s concert through the Past Observation.
The sight of nobles wearing Victoria-era-esque clothes, civilians in either medieval commoner or worker’s clothing, knights, mercenaries, adventurers, priests, priestesses, dragons, elves, dwarves, and others watching an elven idol group’s concert was simply beyond Cedric’s comprehension.
His mind crashed when he heard dragons flying around the concert stage and dwarves and even mermaids in a bathtub screaming the elven idol’s name, “Lathraelis! Latraelis!”
Cedric’s mind was blown once again when the male elf standing on stage winked at the audience, and the dragons in the sky felt their wings soften and they dropped to the ground like dead flies.
Thankfully, many blessed acted and stopped the falling dragons from hitting the spectator stands like meteors. Otherwise, the idol concert would have turned into a devastating calamity.
Through the Past Observation, Cedric watched the idol concert until the end.
“Although the spectators are too diverse and weird, but it actually added a touch of dream like quality to the show.” Cedric commented.
“What a pity, I can’t directly watch it from the spectator stand. Otherwise, the atmosphere will definitely amplify the excitement.”
After he calmed down, Cedric checked on the mermaids.
By this point, the mermaid community had consolidated into a single kingdom. Because they controlled approximately one fourth of the world’s sea, even though they appeared late, the mermaids could still barely rival the other races.
The dragons, on the other hand, also controlled part of the world’s sea, specifically the northwest area.
Not only that, but under Catherina’s leadership, many of the dragons had become members of academia, with the average academic level of the dragons far higher than that of upper-class humans, elves, and dwarves.
After he finished checking the races, Cedric finally went to check on the most troublesome member of his Crystal Cube world.
Through Past Observation, Cedric checked the empires and kingdoms, but they were only filled with the usual schemes and conspiracies, with a sprinkle of infighting and betrayal here and there.
He was already used to those things, so Cedric focused on another problem.
As time passed, the divide between the wealthy and the poor humans grew increasingly severe.
Most low-income people can barely survive, working dangerous factory jobs with almost no safety.
Meanwhile, the upper class can easily travel, even to the Elven territory, just to watch a live idol concert.
The city’s dull sky and pollution from the factories also make life even more miserable for the lower class.
Their only solace is joining the Temples to gain emotional support, a sense of community, and to help one another.
The Temple is also the largest charity group, having helped many people survive the difficult times.
Cedric fell silent before commenting, “Honestly, the Temple is actually pretty nice, especially the lower-class priests.”
“Lacius’s need for faith, the people’s need for solace and comfort, and the Temple system have somehow created a weird balance that thankfully decreases the amount of NE released by those humans living miserably in this world.”
“What a pity. Lacius is simply too good at causing trouble, which worsens my opinion. But without Lacius, who doesn’t care about much except for faith energy, the Temple will be difficult to manage and might become corrupt like before.”
Cedric was wary when he first saw human life. He feared that the NE they released would give birth to a demon king. But after so long, Cedric can vaguely sense that the NE released by the people has reached some sort of equilibrium with the NE his world expelled.