Earth's Greatest Magus

Chapter 2994: Developments

With the matter of rewards and spoils settled, the meeting turned at last toward home.

The development of Neo Terra.

It was Klea who began, as vice leader and the one who had held the faction together through the long year of his seclusion.

In the span of a single year, she reported, the city had transformed almost beyond recognition. Its population had swelled from two million to nearly ten million.

Fortunately, the city had been built to bear it. The careful planning of recent years — the wide thoroughfares, the ordered districts, the housing raised faster than there were people to fill it — meant Neo Terra had been ready to absorb such an influx rather than buckle beneath it.

The refugees from Baeldum had played their part in that growth, though they were not its true cause. More than two-thirds of those immigrants had already returned to their home worlds once reconstruction made it possible.

The real reason lay elsewhere.

Reputation.

Across the planet, Neo Terra had earned a name as the safest of its cities — and more than that, the fairest. Word had spread that anyone willing to work would be welcomed within its walls, regardless of birth, bloodline, or origin. For the countless souls displaced by the turmoil in Dawnstar and beyond, that promise alone had been worth crossing a continent to reach.

Then Klea drew attention to one detail in particular.

Not all of the newcomers had arrived empty-handed.

Among them were once-prominent families, each carrying legacies of their own — cadet branches severed from greater factions, elders of sects that had withered into obscurity, scholars and artisans who had lost their patrons amid the chaos of the past year. For a young and still-growing faction like Earth, this was an influx of precisely what coin could not easily buy: inherited techniques, hard-won expertise, generations of accumulated knowledge walking willingly through his gates.

”We’ve already begun putting them to use,” Klea said.

The most capable had been folded into the faction’s existing structures — formation masters into the defense corps, displaced apothecaries into Kayelin’s overworked halls, scholars and administrators into the growing bureaucracy a city of ten million now demanded.

The faction’s training halls had been enlarged and refitted to match, expanded in both size and quality, with several of the newly arrived masters already installed as instructors. What had once been a handful of modest practice grounds was steadily growing into something closer to a true academy — one that would, in time, let Neo Terra cultivate its own talent rather than forever import it.

Emery listened with quiet satisfaction, then gestured for her to continue.

Camila rose next and activated a projection above the central table. Lines of light spread across Neo Terra City and the territories beyond it, marking roads, walls, districts, mines, farms, and construction zones.

”The development plan is progressing steadily,” she reported. ”New residential sectors and industrial districts are ahead of schedule, and the water channels and transport roads are nearing completion.”

A section of the city brightened.

”The central market districts have been rebuilt on a far grander scale — the cramped stalls replaced with proper commercial halls, built to handle the trade a city of ten million now generates. The grand defensive array has grown with the city as well. We’ve extended it to cover the new districts and reinforced its quality throughout.

Then her finger drifted toward the outer wastelands, and her tone warmed.

”The eastern expansion is the most promising of all,” she said.

That promise was no secret to anyone at the table. The eastern wastes were harsh and unforgiving — but rich. The spiritual energy ran dense through that land, and the earth beneath it lay heavy with untapped resources. It was the very reason the faction had pushed into the region despite its dangers, and the gamble was finally beginning to bear fruit.

Much of the progress belonged to the dark orcs.

The tribe had been carving out a home in the eastern wastes for some time now, their numbers growing to nearly ten thousand. True to their nature, they were born warriors and hunters, resilient enough to thrive where most others would struggle to survive.

Alongside the chizpurs, they had transformed the harsh frontier into a thriving and steadily expanding settlement. What had once been barren wilderness was now dotted with workshops, hunting camps, and fortified outposts. Given enough time, the settlement promised to become a frontier stronghold in its own right.

Camila’s tone firmed.

Tessa stepped forward to explain the financial matter.

Multiple new trade routes had been established, drawing on the city’s two greatest sources of wealth: the surrounding wilderness and its expanding mines. For now, much of that bounty was exported raw — ores, hides, beast cores, harvested herbs.

”That’s changing,” Tessa said. ”We’re shifting toward finished goods.”

Refined spirit-alloy ingots and formation components for the artificers of other cities. Beast-bone armor and treated leather goods from the wilderness hunts. Low-grade utility artifacts for ordinary households — storage pouches, communication tokens, array-stones that warmed a home through winter or cooled it through summer.

”The margins are nothing like the apothecary trade,” she admitted. ”But the volume more than makes up for it. And it does something the pills never could — it puts steady work and steady coin into the hands of our own people.”

Emery nodded slowly. That last point mattered more to him than the profit.

When the discussion turned to the apothecary itself, Tessa deferred to Kayelin.

The Merlin Apothecary Center, it seemed, was thriving — and badly overworked. The number of apothecaries in its employ had grown from forty to sixty, and its shops now numbered ten. Yet nearly all of that workforce remained tied up filling endless orders of resistance pills for the war effort.

”The new recipes couldn’t be kept exclusive,” Kayelin said, a trace of reluctance in her voice. ”The Alliance compelled us to share them with other houses. The prices are fixed as well — stable income, but the margins are thin to the bone.”

Emery understood the situation, and there was little he could do about it. After all, the new formula had been developed through a joint effort involving multiple master apothecaries, and no one was foolish enough to try profiting from a disaster that threatened the entire Alliance.

Still, even that came with its reward. The sheer scale of the work had pushed Merlin Apothecary into the ranks of the top fifty apothecary brands across the entire Alliance, with over a hundred thousand pills of every grade churned out for the front lines.

Tessa stepped in with several crystal tablets in hand, and with a flick of her fingers, the month’s account unfolded above the table in lines of pale light.

[Neo Terra — Monthly Account]

[Income]

[Apothecary — 750,000,000]

[Trade — 260,000,000]

[Taxation — 95,000,000]

[Gladiator School — 10,500,000]

[Mines & Wilderness — 135,000,000]

[Total Income — 1,250,500,000]

[Expenditure — 460,500,000]

[Net Profit — 790,000,000]

More numbers followed, detailing the faction’s income and expenditures over the past year.

The final treasury report drew particular attention.

After all revenues, expenses, investments, and operational costs were accounted for, the faction’s treasury held 14.5 billion spirit stones in liquid assets alone.

That figure did not include the enormous stockpile of materials, strategic reserves, equipment, monster cores, and other resources stored across Neo Terra’s warehouses.

Nor did it include the rewards that had only recently been distributed following the Sector 13 operation.

Taking everything into account, the Earth faction’s total wealth was approaching 20 billion spirit stones.

It was the kind of foundation expected of a proper Grade Two Faction, one capable of supporting multiple Grand Magus legions, funding large-scale development projects, and sustaining prolonged military campaigns without exhausting its reserves.

Emery read the numbers in silence.

He was pleased.

The faction had reached a point where simply accumulating wealth was no longer the priority. Growth came from investing in people.

After a moment of thought, he made a decision.

He planned to allocate five billion spirit stones toward faction development and personnel rewards. A portion would be used to recruit and expand the faction’s combat forces, while another portion would be distributed as bonuses and stipends for the Grand Magus and Magus who had served faithfully over the past year, with the amounts scaled according to rank, contribution, and achievements.

It was not merely generosity.

It was an investment in the faction’s future.

It was necessary.

Emery had already supplied them with salary and cultivation pills, but pills alone could not solve every problem. Some needed powerful techniques. Others required artifacts suited to their paths. Some needed resources to improve their homes, support their families, or establish workshops and research projects of their own.

A faction could only become stronger if its people became stronger.

Every spirit stone invested into their growth would eventually return to the faction many times over.

Satisfied with the decision, Emery made a mental note to draft the reward allocations later.

Klea continued.

”There’s one more matter,” she said.

The faction’s sudden rise in standing had carried weight. Permits that might once have taken years to obtain had been approved in a fraction of the time.

Among them was the authorization to construct a teleportation gate of their own.

For now, only a short-range gate had been sanctioned, one that would link Neo Terra directly to Dawnstar City. But it was a beginning.

Construction was scheduled to begin within the month.

A murmur of approval spread through the chamber.

The implications were enormous.

Trade would increase.

Immigration would increase.

Investment would increase.

With direct access to Dawnstar, Neo Terra’s development would accelerate far beyond anything they had previously projected.