^^ Gentile Golem ^^

While I had ended the subject with Invictus, and I was not the type of Rash my father was to run at a problem headfirst, I hadn't given up on ending and avenging the deaths of my people; this was my original quest, from the very beginning, after all: to stop the killing of Elves, and to provide them a place where they could live happy, safe lives, doing whatever they wanted. Whether that was learning trades or hunting monsters, I didn't care; the freedom of Choice was what mattered. So Justice was on my mind, but first I needed to ensure Safety for the Elves that remained.

To that end, the construction of the Vertical Forest continued at a rapid pace, with me relenting and blaming the speed on there being Transmutation Mages amongst the Refugees, in order to not make the Masons too suspicious of my Golems; there were quite a few Conjuration Mages amongst the Wood Elves, and they did help where they could by sorting and deconstructing the wreckage of their city, so that wasn't a lie, even as dishonest as it was. Within a month, the tower was nearing completion, the canopy being built one massive metal-and-glass leaf at a time, and the 'roots' were connected, anchoring the tower to the main Cavern Ring that held my crops; this helped to hold it still while the punishing winds of the sky so high up thrashed against it with constant hurricane-force winds, powering the fans disguised as leaves all over the trees and throughout the canopy; the energy gained by these winds was massive, and had our energy needs not increased with a thousand new residents, we would have doubled our previous surplus. For security, a network of 'vines' (silver pipes covering the entire outside of the tree,) were enchanted by Aster and I with the same enchantment as the Orchard Barrier Cage and placed across the exterior, making it nearly indestructible in the event of an attack or storm. They also acted as a fire-prevention method, as they covered every inch of the tree's exterior, with the ability to spray water all over any one room or level, then absorb it to prevent flooding, and repeat as many times as necessary.

The mana Crystal in Avingrad received a similar treatment, as I had a Vertical Forest Tower started over there as well, though it would take a bit longer to complete with only two hundred of them working like mad ants, instead of the eight hundred that had built the tower in Rockwell so quickly. The barrier had been expanded to the walls, creating a hundred-meter tall cage that covered all but the main gate, where ten meters of solid stone with a gravity enchantment and barrier enchantment blocked entry and exit, and was technically invisible from the outside. Anyone approaching would see a massive cliff made of sharp and unstable rocks, clearly unfit for travel, and would hopefully steer clear. The inside, however, was made to feel like a coastal tropical paradise for the Halo Birds that quickly became the main inhabitants. The tropical fruit trees that were their main source of nutrition (when they weren't killing humans) were grown to maturity in just a few days, and the barren soil was predictably not a problem, -what with the mineral treatment I used for all of my farming removing the toxic levels of salt from the soil without pause,- and farming then with my golems was even simpler; they were made of metal, after all, and the claws and beams of the Halo Birds couldn't harm them even if they tried. Once they spent a few weeks eating the fruits and recovering from their evacuated states, the now-plump Halo Birds were summoned into the tower and cleanly, humanely killed and butchered, the waste going to feed the trees just as in nature, with a few skipped steps.

As I'd predicted, the poultry was a big hit, and the low price I was selling it at was agreeable to most everyone, with several smaller merchant guilds joining my own and making plans to set up shops in my City. The guilds from the Hall of Research, whom I had momentarily forgotten about, had apparently been handled by Mother and Father even after the way we last spoke to one another, so they meekly joined their Guilds with mine all at once, all ten of them; they were decently profitable Guilds, but their fear coupled with their greed for a piece of the pie with my visible success overcame their pride, so the situation resolved itself to my liking. In this way, within seven months of beginning my Guild, I was officially the largest Guild on the Continent, and my prices began to slowly equalize with the other guilds as they began paying their employees slightly better, then brought their prices down to a reasonable range; I met them in the middle to allow us all to equally share in the profits and customers, instead of poaching all of their customers and employees with my lower prices and higher wages.

My dealings with the other continents, however, remained frosty and very, very limited. Other Guilds had no problem working with them, but the knowledge that their ruling class were actively responsible for the plight of my people gave me no choice but to treat them as a Hostile Force; to this end, I refused to equalize prices with them, actively ordering my Guild to undersell them or go around them, selling directly to their customers wherever they could. This was of course to drain money out of their continent and into ours, slowly but surely achieving reparations for their part in our situation. It was a creeping, insidious revenge, and it would take a long time to have my desired effect, but it was less damaging to the average peasant, the innocents who didn't deserve my wrath; with this method, I would destroy their merchants, their nobles, and their Ruling Class, while providing a better quality of life for the peasants. They wouldn't even notice a difference for a while, but it would only galvanize them to shun their own merchants, even if they did notice that they had been being shilled by them before I came around.

I didn't only sell things, however; my visits to the Equatorial Continents were filled with my placing Tags around the places where rich people gathered and congregated, their homes, their castles and their towers. Careful not to be seen, I began my work: one city at a time, one castle at a time, I mapped the locations of the Master Mages and Nobles, powerful merchants whose policies and prices were blatantly exploitative. I decided, while I was working on this, that there was wisdom to Invictus' argument; Killing people who'd harmed you only perpetuated a cycle of vengeance, that was true, but where he was wrong, was that the answer to this cycle was acceptance. Allowing people to attack you because of your personal nonviolent, pacifistic stance was a mistake, but attacking them blatantly was also a mistake, because their people didn't know their crimes, they wouldn't take my side of it if they were told only that I'd attacked their people. My answer, then, was to educate them, turn them against their own Nobles and Mages, and slowly but surely destroy them from within. It would take a few decades or even a few human generations, but I had a thousand years, and (hopefully,) the requisite amounts of patience.

Some two months later, I was done with the first stage; the Towers were complete, the City was blossoming slowly but surely, and my method of accelerating a shielded object and then using it in concert with gravity and a set of portals to create an explosion worked wonders for the City's energy supply, which was understandably much higher than it otherwise would have been. Smaller towers in the shapes of tall, thin trees, (a pattern which every building in Rockwell complied with to some degree, giving the city a gorgeous look reminiscent of an Old-Growth Forest,) took root around the city, with pairs of conjuration and destruction Mages tossing lumps of carbon covered in barriers into a set of predetermined Gates that they only had to provide power to from a safe location in order to generate even more Energy. The coal, when exposed to air at those speeds, was ignited, then crushed by the pressure; over multiple uses, this succeeded in creating natural Diamonds, that were then turned into Mana Crystals of much greater efficiency than the fake diamonds I made with Transmutation. Using these around the city to make moonlight-colored street lamps and to power the Outer Wall's Barrier allowed the Mages who actually wanted to be guards to simply expend their smaller Mana Pools into the gems while they walked their rounds, further decreasing the need for drawing from Evander's Crystal, freeing up energy for other things, like the rapidly-expanding Farms and Monster-Hunting Dungeons beneath the City, or the Orchard in Avingrad, where Invictus was steadily cultivating the plants and the birds with a practiced hand.

"I don't quite understand your process here, Eric? Tagging the Mages Houses? What do you intend to do; kill them all one by one?" Evander hummed, looking at the map of the Equatorial Continents and the network of glowing tags all across it.

"No, that would be barbaric! I have something much more efficient planned!" I smiled and selected a plan I'd made for a new Vertical Forest Tower, directly opposite to the one we were currently standing in, on the Southern Continent.

"... a Prison? Really? That's your master plan? Lock them away on an icy continent for the rest of their lives? As punishment for Genocide?" He asked incredulously.

"A wise approach; Vengeance is Rot for the Soul. Being the Bigger Man will lead you to finding Greater Peace." Invictus nodded sagely, stroking his short beard and smiling like he'd won a prize.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you both, but no, it's not a prison for them, it's a Summoning Platform for the Monsters that get sent to the Northern Continent by the Equatorial Continent's' Network. They'll arrive here, the array will notice, and it'll open a second Portal, taking them all to the Southern Continent and Tagging them; when they die, they'll be summoned back to the Tower for Materials, and those materials will come here for Sale." I chuckled at their misunderstanding, and showed them the real purpose of the Tower, much the same as the current one, except that it didn't keep them in chambers and it didn't only summon females, like Rockwell; it was connected to the Array of the Middle Continents, and when they sent something away, it responded by redirecting it somewhere else on the Southern Continent, and Tagging it.

"So... your response to me telling you you couldn't destroy the Array was for you to build your own?" Invictus asked slowly, sounding unsure as to my intentions.

"Yes, I suppose so. After all, other than the Mages, the people from the continents deserve Peace, and the only way for us all to have Peace is when we all have Justice, and when the Monsters stop being sent to our Continent. If people want to Hunt Monsters in the Wild, they can go to the Southern Continent via my Gate, which will be built at the end of the Dungeons; if they can survive 'Easy Mode' and reach the end, they can go to the Southern Continent, where everything they kill will be summoned away just like in the Dungeon, except that I can't help them out there beyond summoning them back if they're badly wounded." I shrugged, and the blueprint disappeared while the Golems started marching off through a portal in the depths and getting to work.

"And how do you plan on getting Justice, then?" Invictus asked carefully.

"Well... simply by halting them from committing more crimes, for now. Eventually Justice will be had, when the people know of their governments crimes, but for now... I guess I'll have to be the type of villain who plays a long game." I shrugged, looking over the plans for my new type of Golems; with skin and bones made of thick, Layered Steel, and mostly hollow otherwise, they were as strong as the Stone Variety, but much lighter, and their layered metal structure gave off the idea of Armor, while their predominately humanoid forms, covered in very fine clothing, gave them an air of accomplished stewardship. This, accompanied by their filigreed design, (which was each different in an attempt at telling them apart, but had only served to make them look much fancier than I'd intended,) led to me deigning them 'Gentile' Golems, and I had plans for using them to replace the Glass and Stone ones for Public Relations and Policing. They were also capable of Speech, through the Voice Crystals in their throats, so Evander or Invictus or I could use them to deliver messages, which was quite useful.

"What part of fighting injustice makes you a villain?" Evander snorted, unconvinced, while Invictus nodded sagely again, apparently understanding my point.

"You plot their demise, their total destruction, but you care for their innocents, even while planning their deaths; instead of just killing them, and perpetuating the cycle of violence, you're going to attempt a paradigm shift, to send their Peasants against their Nobles... this will inevitably lead to many deaths, and even civil war, but the amount of deaths will no doubt be inferior to the amount of death with each destroyed city. You refer to yourself as a villain because you must insidiously destroy their society, and this is, -beyond any doubt,- dishonorable." Invictus sighed, but didn't voice any protests, this time.

"Correct; but, any man not prepared to damn and dishonor himself to protect his people has the spine of a worm, and while I will not allow the killing to continue, I will also not allow the consequences of my actions to spill over to my people... the only way to do this is to carefully incite a rebellion from within, and use this chaos as cover to destroy our enemies without a trace. It will take a while, but I've got a thousand years." I smiled sadly at the image of the tower and the Golems currently building it, leaning back in my seat. "I can say with certainty that I don't know everything... but I can't help but think that there's a plethora of things about this that we know nothing about. I don't think I believe that they're just jealous of our success, attacking cities because we've gained some measurement of success or progress... but it's not like it's elven settlements that get hit exclusively, so I can't say it's targeted genocide, either..."

"You will learn more as you study them, I imagine... but this Array you're making will only summon the ones that are sent here; shouldn't you also include the ones that originate here? If your goal is to stop monster attacks?" Invictus frowned as he realized something that confused him.

"And ruin thousands of people's' livelihoods?" I asked incredulously, shaking my head at him.

"Ah... that is fair; many rely on their skills in Hunting to make a living, and many others buy their goods, driving our various economies... if you wished a Monopoly on said goods and hunting, that would be... concerning. But! If there is nothing else, I will return to Avingrad, and continue to oversee the Orchard." He nodded wisely, then disappeared with a bow.

"... So do you plan on gaining a Monopoly on Hunting?" Evander asked after a few moments of silence.

"I plan on cutting the Equatorial Continents out of the equation, but I don't want my guild to have the full monopoly, no... They send their monsters here, they get killed, and then they buy the materials back and craft them into goods to sell to their people; they're using us as a Disposal Ground, or a Recycling Center, and it's beyond insulting!!! They won't profit off of our misery for a moment more, if I have anything to say about it..." I muttered irritably, setting an expense report aside and grabbing another to check it.

"So instead of going to war with soldiers, you're attacking their money? Great way to get their nobles' attention, that; it's all they care about, after all." He chuckled darkly, taking a bit too much pleasure from the thought for my tastes.

"You're not wrong... hopefully it will help strain the relationship between the nobles and peasants, if there's an economic crisis. After all, the more distrust and anger they have towards each other, the better, and nothing causes distrust more than money problems. Selling to farmers directly will also foster some ill will with the nobles and merchants, if it's done right. The peasants suddenly having a bit more cash will also mean they have more buying power, and the weak-willed amongst them will crave more; their combined jealousy and rage and greed will propel them to greater acts of chaos or violence against those would-be leaders and oppressors who stand in the way of their having more wealth and more power." I sighed, uncomfortable using such tactics to bring out the Evil in others, but steeled myself and reminded myself of the goal, the end goal of halting the needless, pointless deaths of entire cities. One or two destroyed cities on the other continents was nothing compared to the twenty-two city-states that had fallen in the past twenty years.

"Ahhhh, using their Greed against them?!? I like it!!! With that as their motivation, nothing will stop them!!!" Evander cackled happily, amusing himself with the idea, and then returned to his work with a happy, hummed tune and a spring in his illusory steps, leaving me in the control room, dreading the horrible things I would have to do to make this happen, but knowing how important it was. My heavy sigh did nothing to lift my heavy heart, but there was work to be done, so I returned to it.