This time, I move around the city removing old enchantments and replacing them with new ones. Some of the residents of the city give me strange looks, but they don’t look surprised. It looks like Core spread the word and I shouldn’t have to worry about anyone freaking out.

  In fact, no one disturbs me as I work for the next several hours, which is nice. This allows me to finish the city’s enchantments and then I move on to the guardians. As I am working on them I can’t help but remember when one of them almost cut me in half with a laser.

  I also remember that they were slow to activate, which I plan to fix, and that they wouldn’t target driders. That is because they are programmed not to target anyone with elven blood, but I am changing that as well. I have to, more than elves live in the city now and I can’t have them attacking my people.

  Instead I am going to set them to react to hostility against the city and its residents. That way, enemies will be targeted, but anyone who is peaceful will not be attacked. It is the only way I can think of to do it without giving the guardians some form of intelligence.

  Once the guardians are finished, I return to the palace and start connecting everything to the core. With all the enchantments connected, the core now controls a web that covers the entire city. However, I am not done, I still have to check everything and make sure there are no conflicts.

  Then I plan to program some responses to certain situations that won’t require someone to give an order. If someone or something attacks the city I don’t want to have to wait before the enchantments activate. I also don’t want the city to be defenseless if no one is here with the authority to order them to act.

  Luckily, thanks to working on the golems I have gotten very good at programming. That is going to be even more important for the next part of the plan, making the new system. The system I am planning might end up needing more complicated programming than even Jarvis did.

  It is also going to require me crafting a lot of obelisks to spread the range of the system. Before that, I need to create the system and put the formation into the mountain. Once I am sure that all of that works properly, only then will I worry about the obelisks.

  As I am finishing up checking the connections to the core, I have a thought that won’t go away. I can’t help wondering if my old world is currently being overrun with zombies. In my old life I often wished for the zombie apocalypse to come and now it actually might have.

  Even if it has, I wouldn’t want to go back, I have gone way beyond wanting to fight zombies. There are much more interesting things for me to fight in this world, not to mention my family. However, I wouldn’t mind being able to take a look at my old world and see what is going on.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  I wonder if Lin could combine the summoning spell with a scrying spell to allow us to take a look. I think that I will have to ask her, otherwise my curiosity won’t leave me alone. Besides, if there are undead then that would be just like watching a zombie movie.

  I will at least ask Lin about it, if it isn’t possible then I will just have to suffer. Next, I start working on the programming and enchantments to create the system. I quickly lose myself in my work and don’t notice that time has passed until I start feeling hungry.

  I find a good place to pause my work so I can eat, but then Sarah contacts me. She informs me that Queen Amercy has arrived in Illium and is asking permission to enter the country. I can’t think of why Mercy would be wanting to come for a visit, but I don’t have a reason to refuse.

  “Sarah, did she say why she wants to visit?”

  Sarah says “Her message said that it is in regards to the situation in the empire.”

  “Well, the kingdom does share a border with the empire, so I guess that makes sense. Alright, grant her permission to enter, or if she would prefer to save time I can meet her in Illium.”

  Sarah says “Alright. I will let you know what she says.”

  After thanking Sarah, I eat a pizza and then get back to work on programming the system. I may have underestimated just how much work it is going to take to make the system do what I want. It is probably because I want it to do too many things, but I don’t plan to give up any of them.

  The only way I am going to leave things out of the system is if they end up being impossible. I am fairly confident that I worked everything out ahead of time, but I could have missed something. Unfortunately, I won’t know for sure until I am done, or something goes wrong during the process.

  To my surprise, I don't encounter any problems at all and eventually I finish the programming. Even though I have started feeling hungry again, I ignore it and start testing the new system. Of course, there isn’t any data in it yet, but all the functions that I wanted are there.

  As soon as I am done testing the core, I move on to making the obelisk for the city. I make it out of stone, but I make it a bit bigger than the other ones I will be making will be. That is because it is also going to function as the central node of the formation.

  However, I can’t enchant it yet, first I have to move it to the center of the city. Once I start enchanting it, I won’t be able to move it at all, so I take it and leave the palace. Considering the obelisk is a little over ten feet tall, I get some weird looks while carrying it.

  With Lin’s help, I calculated the exact position that the obelisk needs to be placed. Once I reach the square at the center of the city, I use my mana sense to locate the exact spot I need. Then I place the obelisk in position and start the process of enchanting it.

  The first enchantment fuses the obelisk into the stone the city is built on and connects it to the entire mountain. That is what is going to allow the formation to work, the stone of the mountain will act as a conductor. Other than that, most of the enchantments are for mana sensing to gather the information of the city.

  Brightfire says “Hey, Ash! Haven’t seen you for a bit. What’s this?”

  “Sorry, I’ve been busy. This is a component for the upgrades I am doing to the city.”

  Brightfire says “Isn’t it kind of plain considering its location?”