He gave me a meaningful smile, then glanced over the nervous hounds and gave me a thumbs-up. Apparently, he was already in the know. Had he kept an eye on the Temple all the while?
"Ahem, Sir... O Fallen One, I wonder if I could have these stupid marks removed? I'm all covered in medals like a champagne label."
The god tapped his forehead, remembering, then snapped his fingers, materializing a bottle of champagne. "Why? Do they itch or something?" he guffawed, turning to me. "That bag of demented bones must have forgotten that a mark works both ways. The astral link that connects you is his own doing. You have a long life in front of you; you might still cross paths with the Titans and talk them into granting you a couple of skills—Rider, or even Tamer. Then the boot might be on the other foot: the dragon will be yours to ride and travel on! Okay then, got no time to chat, sorry. I've got business to attend to," he lovingly stroked the bottle as I came up with some last-minute advice,
"Don't forget some flowers for the lady, you Romeo. And a box of chocolates."
The god nodded, preoccupied, before disappearing down the portal.
"Wild nights, wild nights! Were I with thee, wild nights should be our luxury," I commented into thin air.
Chapter Thirteen
Well now! I'd done everything I could to make everybody happy. The only thing left for me to do was to prioritize the order of the Temple's regeneration. Then I could finally set off on a marathon along the castle walls in search for the dragon's eggs. Last time I checked, the three defense walls counted at least a couple dozen northbound towers. I knew I didn't have to have contact with the altar in order to control the mana flow but I couldn't very easily send mana to someone I didn't know: it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. I needed to know enough of the item's or character's stats to prevent any mixups—as my own crude way of placemarking its astral position. Even that wasn't so important as long as I could give instructions to the altar to redirect the mana flow.
I touched the stone's glossy black surface, receiving a status message of the five percent available. It looked as if the Fallen One had already redirected the mana flow overrunning my earlier obligations. I opened the utility menus. I had no idea how long it would take me to restore the entire castle and how much time I'd have to spend afterwards adding the finishing touches by hand but at the moment, the control hall regeneration was my top priority. I had to have total control over the entire castle, otherwise the Temple would become a defenseless standalone building, however pretty. Personally, I was looking forward to meeting the hordes of Light armed and prepared once my fortifications became something more serious than piles of debris.
Jesus. What a mess of options, menus, submenus and dropout lists. Had the developers outsourced the creation of this interface to some Indian sweat shop? My unfocused stare fell on a section entitled Summoning the Temple Guards. This might be interesting. I decided to check it out.
Apparently, I had 30,000 level units available, calculated as the temple's rank times ten thousand. You could cash them in, summoning the widest range of creatures, both sentient and mobs. This exchange rate wasn't linear, either: the ratio remained at 1:1 until level 100, then began rapidly growing. In the most irrational scenario you could waste your whole 30,000 on one level-900 uncategorized entity. To give you some idea, I could summon a giant Cerberus the size of a five-story house and properties to match. Wonder if the Hell Hounds would rejoice at seeing their big brother and appoint it their high canine deity? In any case, I wasn't going to hire any guards at the moment. They demanded payment on a daily basis: one gold per point spent. By doing some simple math, you could see that full-scale hiring would cost me three grand a day. In case of a guard's death the spent points returned into a common pool and became available for repurchase after twenty-four hours.
After some hesitation, I decided to hire a few status guards for the Guard of Honor who would also prevent the mobs' access to the donjon. After five minutes of fiddling with the settings, a dozen orcs in heavy armor took their posts by the Temple's doors and gates, led by a Lieutenant in a suit of armor embellished with silver. The pleasure of having them cost me fifteen hundred gold. Actually, was I supposed to keep the Temple army all on my own? Again I buried myself in the menu, finally discovering the finance section which said that the First priest had access to 1% of all donations to the Fallen One. At the moment, the sum was negligible as the sheer motivation to earn Faith points hadn't even existed until less than an hour ago: hardly enough time for anyone to have found a Dark priest and dedicated themselves to the only available deity, i.e. Macaria. I was worried, though, that the digitized community had already sussed out all the advantages involved and was now at boiling point and threatening to explode. They didn't need consecration rituals to appreciate the entire range of services offered, so quite a few people had to be ecstatically looking for a suitable priest or altar.
While I was at it, I looked into their faith point catalogue. To receive one Faith point, you had to either donate 1000 mana, 100 XP of 1 gold. Considering that the first religious rank called for 1000 Faith points, you could easily work out that it would cost the buyer exactly one hundred bucks. Of which I was getting one miserable dollar bill. Still, this was a numbers game. I multiplied one dollar by the number of potential followers, multiplied by eternity. Immortality was a good thing any way you looked at it. The resulting figures were impressive.
Finally I got to the upgrade and rebuild menu and opened the submenu tree. So! Macaria hadn't wasted her time! Apparently, she wasn't one for half-measures, having reanimated not only the Temple hall but also all of the central donjon. I was pleased to see that the First Temple's potential allowed the use of its self-restoration facilities also for rebuilding other castle structures. I could see now that the entire complex had been conceived as an organic unity whose defense and regeneration functions often overlapped or even merged with only one objective in mind: the enhancement of the Temple's defense potential.
Even on their own, both the castle and the Temple must have cost tens of millions. But their combined value was tenfold. A dream goodie, as precious as it was useless. I had to be careful not to choke on it. The only chance I could have in this new game was due to my freshly-acquired post and celestial support. Had I been just Laith, even a clan leader, I'd have already auctioned the castle's coordinates, creamed off my couple of million and washed my hands of the whole thing. But as it was now, fate had dealt me half a pack of trump cards so I'd better use them while I had the chance. Another one like that might not present itself for a long time.
As somebody said, luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Fate may keep opening doors to new opportunities, but how ready are we to jump at them? When you get a dream offer of a job abroad—is it time to regret you never got down to mastering your language skills? When you are confronted by a zombie towering over the body of a policeman who'd just emptied his AK (rather uselessly) in it, is it time to regret you don't know how to change the spent clip? Well, in that case it's no good blaming your luck: you're your own worst enemy.
I leafed through the castle plans, storing the schemes and building's statutes in my memory.
The main flight of stairs. I placemarked it on the map. Status, green: fully functional.
Arsenal. Status, yellow. Partially functional. Restoration time: 28 days using the current configuration, 6 hours if assigned top priority and all available resources.