They left the tent after John had quickly pulled his equipment back into place. Aside from Lydia, everyone separated from him for the time being. Prior arrangements were being kept and the girls had other things to do. By the look of things, she would have him until around 1 PM. “Anything you want to do especially?” John asked the auburn-haired queen that he was now alone with.

“Guide me through your industrial areas,” she requested, and John smiled. It wasn’t the most romantic backdrop to a date, but it was a very expected one. “You can start with this,” she gestured at the Commercial district they were currently residing in.

Unlike other parts of the island, it was somewhat livened up. There were a lot of buildings, only two of which, the Storefront and the Guild Bank, were actually maintained by John and the Guild Hall. Well, he maintained the Guild Bank, the Storefront was rented out to various shops. Those who didn’t want to afford that rent had used the vast space that remained to set up their own buildings. They weren’t part of the Guild Hall network, not for the moment anyway, and had to power their own electricity and such things because of it. This made the buildings severely unattractive for housing, but good enough for a small storage, crafting and selling room to be built.

Most of the Commercial district could be put into one of two categories: either they were shops focused on using the cheaply acquired things out of the Production area or they cooked for the people working there and in those refining shops.

“The land is basically free,” John explained to Lydia how he had motivated people to set up around here. “They just need to fill out a form saying what they plan to do and how much room they will need. A bureaucrat then looks at it, may change things around a little bit, and designates an area to them. They get a small construction crew for help and the basic building materials are provided. Once the building stands, they are left to their own devices.”

“A scheme on the costly side for you,” Lydia pointed out. “The number of restaurants you have attracted this way would increase motivation in the workforce, however. Another however I can offer you is that you should acquire a better architect. These shops look dreadful.”

She had a point. Those freely built shops were essentially just boxes in the landscape, with a large frontal window and, sometimes, a veranda. Flat roofs and artless brick walls created a very monotonous area. “Yeah,” he agreed with her. “I am going to fancy this up over time. That I had people working here was the initial goal.”

He looked around. Like earlier, the amount of actual work getting done today was quite low, save the restaurants, who were likely making record profits. As the shops around were almost exclusively small businesses, people tended to be their own bosses, so they had likely given themselves the day off or at least took it easy. A logical decision, given the festival and the lack of fresh materials coming from the Production district for the day.

Unlike them, the workers of the Buildings in the south were contracted by Fusion, and since today was sort of a holiday, they had gotten it and tomorrow off. Paid leave, as John was a gracious man. “There is going to a pretty massive update soon,” he told her, lowering his voice to not spoil the surprise for the people that passed them. “I can upgrade the Guild Hall to Tier 3, I just haven’t yet found the time. Plus, it comes with a new mechanic that’s a tad awkward unannounced.”

“It’s best to start at a basic level and scale up. I do approve of your approach to this in general,” Lydia stated as they marched down to the Production district. “What do you intend to do with that area?” she asked, as they passed the Industry district in-between.

“Production is for raw and Industry for refined stuff. Currently, I have basically nothing there though.”

“Won’t installing a Building meant for refining the raw goods condemn half of the shops north to irrelevancy?” The queen gestured to the buildings shrinking behind them.

“Probably a few, that’s capitalism,” John shrugged. “I am pretty confident that we’ll have enough metal, wood and food to supply both areas, but some people getting complacent and not making the cut is unavoidable. I will have something in place to make the transition back into the normal workforce painless, but I am not going to prop-up failing businesses. The Industry area will focus on arms anyway. Fusion simply needs to own at least some of its own military supplies. I don’t want to be dependant on any sort of third-party when it comes to my national security. That just seems like it’ll create massive headaches.”

“Historically, states that overly relied on mercenaries or foreign supplies found themselves in precarious situation quite often,” Lydia agreed, and they stepped along in silence for a little bit. When John decided that he had enough of just walking next to her, he put an arm around her waist and gently pulled her close. That decreased their speed by a bit, but he was much happier this way. The queen in her summer dress didn’t complain with a single word either.

Just out of interest, he shot an Observe at her. It went straight through, Lydia wasn’t in the habit of wearing personal protection against scrying magic.

“You have gotten a bit stronger,” he remarked, carefully.

She noticed his hesitating tone regardless and immediately called what was making him uncomfortable. “You can address it as it is, John. I have arrived at the peak of my potential.” She looked at her hand that wasn’t holding onto him, her greyish blue eyes darkening. “I was born with not inconsequential potential, but compared to you and the rest of our circle of lovers, I am just a small campfire next to a burning house. From here on out, all improvements I may achieve will be marginal.”

John didn’t want to agree with that, but it was the truth. The level of her potential the group mechanic had told him was the same as the one she had now. He had helped her storm towards it during the tournament, allowing her to peak a few years earlier than she would have naturally. Level 90 was by no means low. Magoi had been level 79 when John first met him. Even assuming that age already had reduced his capabilities by that point, the High Fateweaver had lived almost 500 years.

That timespan was awfully long compared to their current lives and awfully short compared to immortality. Especially when taking into account that she would age quick, at least compared to the rest of them. John had to honestly say that he preferred his women in the twenty to mid-thirty range. Not that he would stop loving Lydia because of a few wrinkles. Avoiding that case was still preferable.

“If I find a way to elevate your potential, I will tell you,” he promised her.

For a few moments, she just looked at him. From the colour of lead, her eyes slowly cleared to their normal colour. “It irks me on an independently minded level to be in need of your charity. As long as it is you, my love, I will accept it quite happily, however.” She hummed to herself. “May it have anything to do with this and the mark upon Jane’s lower body?” She tipped against his left hand and the Lover’s Will mark around his middle finger.

“Maybe, it’s the theory anyway,” John told her and then sighed. “With no clear answer yet.”

“There is no need to be hasty,” she assured him. “Unlike you, I live a safe life. Nobles rise up against their superiors less frequently than you get into fights while conquering half a continent, as you may imagine.”

“Oh yeah, no doubt about that,” John agreed without much thought. “That reminds me, what’s your stance on the sentence ‘a king’s body is the tapestry of their history’?”

“A dislikeable truth, why?”

“Metra likes to say it. She is a bit more into battle scars than the rest of us.”

“There is a certain charm in some marks upon the body,” Lydia gave her more detailed thoughts on the matter. “It shows that a person has values they are willing to bleed for. Scars are also quite gruesome and I would be lying if I said I found them inherently attractive. Quite the opposite, in actuality.”

“So, no certain opinion?” John asked.

“I can state with certainty that I don’t dislike them, but that I am enjoying that you don’t gain them easily.”

That was good enough for John to be done with the topic, especially since they had arrived at their goal. “So, what do you want to look at?” he asked her, gesturing at the three Buildings currently in the area. “The Farm, the Logging or the Mine?”

Understandably, she went with the last. The first two weren’t much to look at and also less magical. Sure, the Farm had chickens and pigs appear out of nowhere on a cooldown, up to a threshold, and people didn’t even sow seeds into the fields, but aside from that it was just a normal farm that was tended to in appearance and function. The Logging, similarly, had saplings appear from nowhere, and they grew remarkably fast, but it was still just trees growing.

Compared to that, the Mine with its spawning new and fully stuffed ore deposits was supernatural and interesting. Above ground, it didn’t look like much. A miniature mountain, with a large entrance and a number of small houses in front of it. The latter were part of the actual building, used for breaks and delivering the won ores.

“There is no other place like it in the world,” Lydia said as they walked towards it. “At least not to my knowledge. The closest equivalent we may have are Natural Barriers and the materials created along with them.”

“Which, given that my power is fuelled by Gaia and Natural Barriers are some sort of stray bits of her power, are likely quite alike,” John finished her thought, and she nodded. “Well, this is more controlled and monster free. At least for the moment. I get the feeling some might spawn at later stages.”

They went inside, passing the hole in the side of the mountain, leisurely reinforced with a wooden frame. Along the walls sat numerous pick axes and large sacks. “Why would anyone use that equipment in the modern age?” Lydia asked, furrowing her eyebrows as John picked one of each up.

“Because these actually come with the Mine,” he told her, weighing the surprisingly light pickaxe in his hand. “When you try to remove them from the area, they disappear, and apparently they suck as weapons, but they can break any kind of ore you find in here, no matter how hard the metal or stone naturally is. The sacks we do provide though.”

“Isn’t there a minecart network?”

“Not one we have made and not on every floor,” he told her, and one of her furrowed eyebrows now shot up. “Come on, let’s check it out, I actually wasn’t in here since the last upgrade myself. I just know all of this stuff from reports.”

The tunnel soon opened up into a wide-open room, which must have hollowed out the majority of the very small mountain that they were inside of. The walls were lined with copper and iron ore, easily discernible by their colour, with some gold and silver sparkling about at rare intervals. In the middle of the room was a typical mining elevator.

“I would make the assumption that the metals found increase in their natural rarity the further we descend?” Lydia asked as they stepped onto one of the three constructions, more resembling cages than anything else. The floor was quite solid and had the endpoints of tracks on them.

John pushed the button standing for the deepest floor and answered, “Yup.” The elevator started moving with a few creaks. As they went down floor by floor, the amount of lightbulbs that hung along the walls decreased, as did the amount of tracks they could see winding into the growing darkness. “See, the entire thing changes its layout daily,” he continued to explain. “Upper floor only change a little day by day, so you’d be able to keep up with the changes. As it goes lower, it’s getting more intense. Although it’s apparently not that deep yet that the floors just completely change from one day to the next.”

The elevator came to a halt, resting on the floor of the currently lowest level, and the door of the cage opened by itself. Only the hall directly around them was illuminated. “Given your earlier statement, the tracks and lighting also change daily?” Lydia asked.

“Yeah, when it was tried to add some manually, it was gone the next day. Not worth the hassle,” John said and pulled a flashlight from his inventory. He handed it to Lydia, who turned it on and guided their way as they picked a tunnel at random and started spelunking. “Compared to a normal mine, it’s pretty safe,” he continued. “No cave-ins, and during the reset hour, everyone still inside is simply teleported out, so people can’t go missing even if they’re stupid enough to get lost in the darkness.”

“Convenient,” Lydia stated, then turned her flashlight and directly found an ore node. It had little to do with normal mining. The node was quite the obvious bump in the wall, and once spotted, looked almost like it didn’t belong to the mountain. Regardless, John would have marched right past it, it was just that dark. “I can feel the concentrations of metal,” she stated when he looked at her with some intrigue.

“Well, that’s convenient for me,” he laughed and took the pickaxe. The tool was made for this specific Mine and John was quite the brawny fellow at this point.

With one swing, he caused chunks of ore to splinter off and fall onto the ground. Once he got most of it out and the light blue veins that ran through the stones became less dense, he got the sack and threw the ore in there, only to then shoulder the thing.

“Normally,” he answered Lydia’s questioning eyes, “people here get paid by the hour. I don’t particularly care how they do their work. We have some overseers, but we generally get enough yield, so people don’t take disciplinary measures. We also allow freelancers that are paid by the amount and kind of metals they dig up. Those get paid less, generally; I like the reliability of employees more. Some freelancers bring in a lot of good stuff though. Of course, people get paid more the deeper they go.”

“An utterly impossible and intriguing thing you have here, as per usual,” Lydia summarised her thoughts on the matter.