Chapter 257

Reclaim the Elves’ Sacred Land (3)
Word arrived from Grantz: permission had been granted. He even said the Elves were deeply grateful, but the clone didn’t let it shake her. At most, she just thought, well, this is kind of a heavy responsibility.

"So, I’ll be taking this city back with me. Do you folks want to migrate to Arland? I’ve heard a few fairies live in the Elven lands too."

She tried to secure the fairies for herself, but they readily agreed to move.

"If it’s a land where our Elven kin live, we’d be the ones asking for it."

Life here seemed not to be easy. Even though the forest was shrouded in powerful illusions, there were still times when wandering humans caught the fairies.

Then, unusually, the clones grew serious and began calculating.

"Calculating the mana needed, and the protection spells for the land itself… well, that part we can substitute with other means."

"But this way, the mana cost is astronomical. Do we even have spare magic furnaces?"

"With the personnel we’ve got now, we can’t spare hands to build new furnaces. Even using the main body, production wouldn’t increase much."

A clone’s mana doesn’t recover. They exist only on the magic they’re created with, and once that runs out, they vanish.

The more mana given, the fewer clones can be made. Even though the main body’s recovery speed was far from normal, if she kept making clones with more mana than a mage, her reserves would run dry in no time. And since weapon production couldn’t be stopped without affecting the war against the Empire, manpower was even tighter.

"Also, our study of the World Tree’s ecology showed it absorbs surrounding mana. Meaning—spells for flight or defense would have part of their power drained by the Tree. That makes the mana needed to bring it back to Arland even greater."

"Should we give up on moving the city?"

"I’d rather not. It’s their homeland, after all."

The World Tree by itself wasn’t a problem. Investigations revealed it didn’t draw nourishment from the land—it lived by absorbing natural mana, and enriched the surrounding area with it. The treasury was overflowing with mana, so in theory, they could just yank it out and stash it in there. But one problem remained.

"The Spirit King’s body is still here, right?"

"Is it okay to move that?"

The Spirit King’s giant corpse still sat at the base of the World Tree, gripping the broken remains of a massive sword—likely what was left of Excalibur.

How, no one knew, but the Spirit King’s body had yet to decay.

"Can we wake it?"

"Looks impossible to move with puppetry magic. But maybe if we take the whole land with it."

Attempts at puppetry and flight magic had failed—and earned them a scolding from the fairies.

"Also, the Elves’ bodies were still here. We’ve enshrined them in the Teasury."

The corpses of the Elves who used forbidden arts to cloak the forest remained preserved by fairy seals. The fairies had borne the burden of keeping them intact, believing the Elves—or their descendants—would one day return.

So the fairies decided they should be buried by those who left, or their descendants. That much was already arranged.

Detailed surveys were conducted, and calculations for moving the city itself began. The speed of their work was astounding. Any mage of the Magic Kingdom, if they saw these calculations or the creation of these new spells, would no doubt scramble to secure Alicetia. For here she was, using countless spells and techniques she had kept secret until now, creating a magic that would let her move a whole city safely.

Magic in this world doesn’t advance. In times of war, spells are jealously guarded. Magicians are proud, and even with apprentices, they rarely share their secrets—many spells are handed down to a single heir.

Naturally, the common view across the continent was that magic existed to be learned, not created. There was no such thing as the "Spellcraft Studies" Alicetia had founded. Without research into spell structures, no new magic could be born.

It’s like computers: instead of researching ways to build a better, more powerful model, people were just mass-producing the ones they already had. So Alicetia’s idea of making a high-grade "new computer" captivated Arland’s magicians, who lauded her Spellcraft Studies.

Though risky, she abandoned the continent’s sloppy way of studying magic, instead choosing to deeply analyze each structure and build up from there—essentially programming. She understood the dangers of new magic, and built extremely durable facilities to test it safely.

Leading it all was Alicetia, and backing her the fastest with results was the Technology Development Bureau. In name and in fact, she now stood at the top of Arland’s magicians. To those few mages who had touched new magic, Arland itself was already seen as the true Magic Kingdom.

Currently, they were developing a magical device to convert the enormous energy from magic furnaces into a form usable by humans. If successful, a magician’s capacity would no longer limit their research. Large-scale experiments and precision spells, once impossible for lack of mana, could finally be attempted.

Magicians, who had always been forced to halt their work when their mana ran dry, would finally be free of that headache. Even potion-making required their own mana, but with this device, potions could be mass-produced industrially.

With all this, Alicetia sought to bring back the World Tree—but the conclusion was simple: the mana wasn’t enough.

"I’ve got a fair bit of mana myself. Couldn’t you use mine?"

Takuto, chosen by the Goddess as Hero, did indeed hold considerable mana. But compared to Alicetia’s true body, it was tiny—no more than a clone’s worth.

"Not nearly enough. And you’d have to stay here for months. Three to reach Arland, nearly four to the Elves’ lands."

"Yeah… then I’ll pass."

Takuto, unwilling to part from Alicetia’s side, gave up easily.

"What do we do then? Wake the main body?"

"That would mean the end of our freedom. I don’t want to go back to that work environment."

The main body’s treatment of clones was abysmal. They had no wish to give up their current easy life. But eventually, the main body would wake. And when she did, things would return to how they’d been.

"Maybe we should just assassinate her?"

"I wouldn’t mind, but too many people would cry. Besides, if we tried now, the people might think the Empire killed Alicetia and defect en masse."

If the main body were killed by her own clones, no one would believe it. The Empire would be blamed, and chaos would erupt. There was a plan for ending the war, but the Empire was desperate to avoid it—without any card that could stop Alicetia.

Treasures? She plundered them freely.
Slave liberation? She did that herself.
Third-party intervention? A Granzur vassal state had recently sent ten thousand troops, only for Arland’s air force to bomb them and for Rudolf to wipe out the rest—killing their king. Other vassals panicked, and intervention was now impossible.

The Magic Kingdom watched from the sidelines, trying to steal Alicetia’s tactics, but dared not intervene. She was too eerie to predict. Pointless effort. Her army moved by intuition, impossible to pin down by logic.

The Holy Empire was locked in a purge after sparking a full-scale conflict with the beastkin, with only the Pope calling for aid abroad. The rest were rabble.

Meanwhile, the Kingdom of Tranquility had landed on the eastern shore, raiding imperial vassals. In the chaos, they vented their frustrations and enriched themselves by looting.

For Tranquility, whether Arland won or not, there was nothing to gain. They hadn’t lost land, and as a maritime nation, seizing continental territory would be a nightmare to hold. So instead, they wreaked havoc on the Empire’s vassals under the guise of supporting Arland.

If mana wasn’t enough, then efficiency had to be raised. The clones began refining spell structures.

About five days after seizing the factories, Arland’s air fleet arrived.

"Princess, we’ve brought the steel you requested."

"Good work. Please handle the Dwarves’ relocation."

"If possible, may you return home…? His Highness is nearly at his limit."

Gilbert, fending off nobles, citizens, and soldiers desperate to reach Alicetia while also cleaning up after the war, was apparently collapsing from overwork.

"Ehh, no thanks♪"

Finding it a little cute, the fleet commander slumped in despair.

The steel was stored in the treasury by a clone returning from the Sacred Tree Kingdom, and the freed space was used to carry Dwarf migrants. Arland’s air force was a mixed unit of many races, so the Dwarves felt reassured—especially with non-human officers welcoming them aboard.

The Dwarves were warmly received. Like the freed slaves, they would first live in temporary housing in the capital while deciding their futures.

"Any trouble from taking them in?"

"Only small quarrels so far. But with our nation’s severe labor shortage, they’ll have no trouble finding work. Same goes for the provinces."

Hearing the provinces were thriving, the clone was satisfied. That meant even the Five Dukes’ lands were desperate for workers. Other races, scarred by slavery and wary of humans, would likely settle more easily in territories of their own kind. In fact, the Five Dukes would welcome them. With labor shortages so dire the slums were collapsing, they had to offer unprecedentedly good conditions just to recruit.

Thus workshops, merchants, and craftsmen were all hiring under generous terms—especially the Viceroy Merchant Union, whose rise had driven this shift.

Rapidly adopting direct employment, new to Arland, the Union gave workers stable lives, drawing countless applicants. Once mocked as wasteful, their system had become unavoidable as labor shortages bit. And with booming prosperity, the economy entered a reform era, training workers more highly than ever.

"I see. Anything else?"

"The former chairman of the Noble Council has been arrested… It seems his soul was tampered with by that otherworlder. Can you lift it, Princess?"

"No. He has to die."

It seemed the man had smuggled imperial agents into the capital.

But Alicetia had no way to undo that power. If caught early, she could separate Sudo Akira from his victims, but once time passed, the souls fused.

That would require artificial soul-restructuring—the pseudo-reincarnation technique that created Alicetia herself. But using it on others risked Teth’s intervention, with unknown consequences. And for this man, it wasn’t worth it. If it had been family, Alicetia would have ignored Teth’s will.

So the clone in the castle ruled it impossible, as did those fighting the war.

The man, sinful to begin with, would be executed.

Unbeknownst to the clones, the Emperor too was purging those in government who had fragments of Sudo Akira’s soul implanted. Sudo had thought his power absolute, but in truth, it was easy to detect for spirit-users. Only goddesses hid the truth, fearing disruptions in the soul cycle.

Unless specifically asked, spirits wouldn’t look into souls—so detection never happened. The Emperor had tolerated Sudo only because they shared the goal of invading Arland. Now, he would see him dead.

Sudo Akira’s power had flaws in cost and cooldown. He had mistaken an ability that could’ve led to immortality for nothing more than puppetry. Had he used his soul’s regenerative nature, he might have created perfect copies of himself, escaping death. But he never reached that point. Those bearing fragments of his soul would be eradicated.

And so Arland’s fleet returned home with the Dwarves.

"Alright, you lot—keep digging."

Waving goodbye to the airships, the clone crushed any faint hope the imperial soldiers might have felt, ordering them back to the mines. She returned to the World Tree.

There, countless clones worked on improving spell efficiency. But with the sheer scale of mana needed, it was like a drop in the ocean. They had underestimated things. At first it was just the World Tree. Now, moving the city itself would take time.

Just then, the fully armed main body came riding a carpet toward them.

"I have returned!"

"My hand burns red, crying out to smash my hated foe! Die, main bodyyy!"

One clone swung at her in fury, unwilling to let go of their freedom.

"Rebellion? This is why clones can’t be trusted. Begone."

At her word, the clone’s mana scattered, vanishing.

"The main body… has returned."

"Seems our Age is over."

"At least we had three days. Mitsuhide didn’t even last that long."

"Was it really three days? I thought the stories disagreed."

"I never researched Mitsuhide. Personally, I prefer the chaos of the Miyoshi era."

"Same."

Resigned, the clones accepted it.

And thus, Alicetia fully revived.

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