Core says “Those all sound like good things. Why would I be opposed to that?”

  “Fear of change. Wanting to preserve the history of your people. Worry that I might do something that will endanger the elves. There could be any number of reasons.”

  Core says “No, I don’t have any of those worries. I trust you completely. I know that you won’t do anything that would hurt my people.”

  “No, I won’t. At least not intentionally. However, considering how erratic I am, your trust in me makes me nervous.”

  Core says “It is trust in your intentions, not on you showing up on time. Don’t worry, Stillwater and I are well aware of how you normally act. Both of us are more than willing to handle the day to day things you hate and let you do what you need to do.”

  “That sounds perfect to me! Speaking of Stillwater, there is something I want to ask you.”

  Core says “What is it?”

  “Well, I plan for one of you to be the governor and the other to be my prime minister. I am curious which job you would prefer?”

  Core says “I would definitely prefer to be the governor. Being your prime minister would be too much for me to handle. Especially since it might require me to leave the city, which I wouldn’t be able to do.”

  “Fair enough. That is pretty much what I expected you to say, but I thought it would be polite to ask. I don’t want to cause any bad blood between you and Stillwater.”

  Core says “You don’t need to worry about that. I really like Stillwater and I am not going to be jealous of him having more authority than me. Especially since I understand how much more work he is going to have to do. How do you plan to convince him to take the job?”

  “I haven’t thought about it yet, but I will probably just ask him. If that doesn’t work, I will ask his wife.”

  Core says “That’s playing dirty, but it will probably work!”

  “How have things been going in the city? Any problems?”

  Core says “Actually, things have been great! There have been a few arguments, but nothing that led to violence.”

  “That’s good. You should probably let people know what I am going to be doing. I don’t want them to get worried when they see their king running all over the city.”

  Core says “Sure, no problem.”

  “Alright. I will start in the palace so you have time to spread the word.”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Core says “You are going to start right now?”

  “Yeah, I am. I figure it will take at least a couple of days, so the sooner I start the better. I will be going back to my castle to craft some things, but most of my time will be spent here working on the enchantments.”

  Core says “Okay. Let me know if there is anything that I can help with.”

  “I will.”

  I then head down to the palace and get to work, I already have everything planned out. My first move is to remove all the enchantments on the palace that aren’t connected to something outside. I plan to redo those enchantments and tie them into everything else when I add the core.

  Speaking of the core, my next step is to modify the throne and create a place for the core. I haven’t built the core yet, but I already know how big it will be since I plan to copy the castle’s core. Since the system will be collecting a lot of data, I also plan to add storage cores like I did in the castle.

  The data will be important for determining trends over time and comparing statistics. While it won’t be used all the time, when it is needed it will make it easier on the government workers. I tried really hard to think of all the future needs of the system and plan for them.

  Creating the chamber for the cores does not take me very long and after that I gate to the castle. I immediately head to my workshop and start constructing the main core and the data cores. Once they are done, I take a break to have some food and then go over the enchantments.

  This time I am looking for common components that I can merge using the new technique. There aren’t many, but I do find a couple among the many enchantments that go into a core. However, I do not find any that have more than one component in common.

  I quickly create a second core with cheap materials and use it to test out the enchantments. The materials needed for a main core are harder to find and more expensive, so I want to test it first. It ends up being a good thing that I did, there are some problems with the enchantments.

  There are three enchantments that share a common component and I tried to merge all three. While it worked, it caused some conflicts with the other enchantments that I need to solve. Luckily, it only takes me a couple of minutes to solve them, but now there is another problem.

  Thanks to the new technique, there is now more mana capacity that has been freed up. It takes me about an hour to figure out what enchantments to add and to make sure they will work. With the new enchantments there are a few more mergers to do and some conflicts to solve.

  Once all that is done, the new core ends up much better than the old one, which means I need to redo the castle’s core. Fortunately, I can just use the new core, switch them out, and then re-enchant the old core. Since I am going to do that, I review and update the enchantments for the data core as well.

  Since they are mainly for data storage, the enchantments share a lot of common components. This means I get to experiment with merging more enchantments at once. However, I need to be careful not to go overboard and get distracted by experimenting.

  I quickly figure out that merging four enchantments is possible, but it is really difficult. It isn’t really worth the effort, so I decide to limit myself to merging three enchantments for now. I will save that for when I am making something small but important enough to make the effort.

  The data cores don’t need to be that complicated since it is easy enough to just add more cores. So, after experimenting, I enchant the new main core and make four data cores. I run into a problem when I try to move the connections for the enchantments of the castle.

  They are all tied into the old core and it isn’t as simple as just moving them to the new core. I have to disconnect them from the old core in the opposite order that they were connected. Then I have to connect them to the new core in the original order to make sure it works properly.