“That’s what I thought! She should be here today or tomorrow. It depends on how fast she is traveling. Why? Do you want to be there?”

  Lin says “No, that should be private. Although, I do want to meet her in person, but it can be after your meeting.”

  “Does that mean that you are sticking around until the meeting?”

  Lin says “Yeah, I may as well. Having summoned to help me experiment will make it easier to create the scrying spell. It will have to lock onto the world they came from, so I will need them to help me test it.”

  Bella says “You can also help me tattoo them. I am still training some apprentices, including Mulan and Asuna, you can help with that too.”

  “Don’t worry Lin, the library isn’t going anywhere.”

  Lin sticks her tongue out at me, but before I can do anything about it the kids come rushing in. They have been out with Sarah, learning about more crafts from what they tell us. They quickly grab food and join us at the table, then they tell us everything they have been up to.

  I patiently listen to them until they run out of steam and then ask who might want to help the elves. I explain about the new palace guard and how I built them a training room just like the one here. Once I have explained, surprisingly it is Albion and Haku who volunteer first.

  I quickly agree and tell them that I will let them know once Brightfire has recruited some people. Although, with how excited Brightfire was, I doubt that it will take her long to recruit the first group. She probably already had ideas about who she wanted before I even finished speaking.

  I will go back and check on her progress after I am done meeting with Amercy. Once the kids are done eating, Lin and Bella take Mulan and Asuna with them to the tattoo room. I want to spend some time with them, so I end up watching anime with the rest of the kids.

  After watching anime with them for a few hours I head to my workshop to start crafting stone obelisks. These will be placed inside the mountain to create the nodes of the formation. Each is made of stone and is about the size of a torpedo, they weigh quite a lot, but I can handle them.

  For the formation I only need to make about twenty of them, but I will need more later. I will be using similar obelisks to extend the range of the system to cover all of my lands. If I do marry Mercy, that means that I will also need to extend the system to her kingdom as well.

  That is going to require hundreds, if not thousands of obelisks, so I just keep making them. Once I have a decent amount crafted, I take a break to start enchanting them. Because of how big they are, using Divided Mind would be rather pointless.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Even if I want to work on two at a time, I don’t really have enough space to do so. I enchant twenty to be formation nodes and once they are done I put them away. Then I enchant the rest to be nodes for the system and set them aside before I start making more.

  I quickly realize that I am going to run out of stone soon and will need to go get more. I could take some from the castle, but I don’t want to do that if I can avoid it. It isn’t like stone is hard to find and it doesn’t even need to be special stone for the nodes.

  It doesn’t even need to be a solid piece of stone, I can merge pieces together with my mana. In fact, I can probably go over to the quarry that is supplying stone to the trade city and get what I need. That is probably what I will end up doing, the quarry isn’t too far from the trade city.

  Before that, I use up the rest of the stone making obelisks and then enchant them as nodes. By the time I am done I have around fifty nodes for the system as well as the twenty for the formation. The problem is that I have no idea how far each node will extend the range of the system.

  I am hoping that each one will extend it a couple of miles, but I won’t know until I test it. I do plan to make larger, more ornate ones to be the nodes for any major cities. Those should have a greater range, but again it is a theory that needs to be tested.

  Just as I am about to head to the quarry, Sarah contacts me to let me know that Mercy has arrived. So, I leave the castle and head to the palace’s throne room to officially welcome her. It has been a really long time since I last saw her, but I don’t remember her being so beautiful.

  Maybe I didn’t pay attention before, but I am now because Lin put the idea in my head. Her blonde hair is much longer than I remember it and is done in what I think are called ringlets. It somehow makes her face look both softer and more regal all at the same time.

  The green eyes that are staring back at me are still as sharp and intelligent as I remember. I quickly notice that she looks confused, but then I remember that she hasn’t seen my new form. To make it a bit easier on her I shapeshift into my usual beastman form that she is familiar with.

  Mercy says “Ash, is that really you?”

  “Yes, Queen Amercy, it is me. I have changed and evolved a bit since the last time we met. I would like to officially welcome you to my kingdom, even though I haven’t had a coronation yet.”

  Mercy says “What? Why so formal?!”

  “This is our first meeting as monarchs, it is a formal occasion.”

  Mercy says “Please stop! Go back to calling me Mercy like you used to! I get more than enough formality at home, I don’t need or want it from you!”

  “You came here as Queen Amercy of the kingdom of Revalia to meet me as the ruler of the beastmen and discuss the situation in the empire, right? I don’t see how that can be anything but formal.”

  Mercy says “What?! No! That was just an excuse! Didn’t Lin talk to you?!”

  “Lin? Why would she talk to me about you? You two have never met.”

  Mercy says “We met in her soulscape and she was supposed to talk to you about my visit!”

  “Heh! I thought for sure it would be harder to get you to admit to talking to Lin behind my back!”

  Mercy says “What?!?”

  Mercy takes a few seconds to realize what I said and then she looks angry, but her face turns bright red. She seems to struggle for a minute, alternating between being angry and embarrassed. In the end, both seem to fade, but there is still a little anger left in her eyes.

  Mercy says “Lin did talk to you!”