Chapter 16

Just before spring arrived, Ben had consolidated his power in the Rodara Kingdom. There was a new regent by the name of Declan Burgess governing over the Rodara region under Ben's reign.

He was voted from the local population of Rodwynne the Rodara capital city by the palace officials and military officers. Ben continued to use two examples he had read Alexander the Great used upon conquering a city.

Alexander the Great would elect a city local as a satrap to govern over the conquered city. This way the local population would not feel as oppressed from being conquered if one of their own was watching out for their interests.

Another example of Alexander's he used was to install a garrison of his own troops in every town and city. If the local population decided to revolt his soldiers would be there on sight to squash the revolt before it started. With a fortified garrison defended by trained soldiers in every town, it was enough to suppress even mere thoughts of revolting.

With these measures taken along with the improvements in trade and infrastructure, the people were currently happy with how the Rodara Kingdom was advancing.

Their towns and the surrounding wilderness were safer than they had ever been making travel and trade in the Rodara Kingdom continue to grow. This brought more money and jobs to everyone.

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Currently Ben was at the Harbor he had built on the southern coast of the Rodara Kingdom. When the cruiser warship had returned from exploring the south of the original continent without any major landmass discoveries he had them travel to the new harbor here in Rodara.

Athena had a few of her blocked memories of this landmass unlocked and there was a place she had told him about that piqued his curiosity.

Far to the northeast in the snow region where the beast-men originated there was a place where Mana and QI formed in mass. This place was the hotspot these creatures originally and still are created by this natural occurrence.

This is not to say these creatures can't reproduce now that they have a decent sized population across the northern snow region. With the help of the Mana and Qi pocket along with them reproducing they should already have a huge population. The problem is they are a savage warlike race who prefers to raid and kill to get what they want.

Their lower intelligence and being biologically forced to remain in the snow region also prevents them from farming and trade. Relying on hunting is not enough to sustain their growing population levels.

Every winter they band together to raid the southern human kingdoms after the temperatures drop. They seem to do well in their raids against the smaller human villages that are not protected, but when they decide to attack a fortified town or city this is when their numbers severely drop.

Without any tactics, they simply attack the manned walls and are shot down from the archers upon them. If they learned how to properly siege a town with ladders and shields they could become a serious threat to the human kingdoms and empires.

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For the next five days, Ben traveled along the western and northern coast. The cruiser continued forward without stopping until they had reached the northeast corner of the new continent.

They had spotted a few smaller villages of the beast-men scattered along the snowy northern coastline, but they did bother to stop and investigate them.

Ben had brought along fine hundred dismounted knights and 200 Elven archers. He chose to leave them behind to defend the ship while he went ashore with his cultivators/magi.

The plan was to sneak into the Mana and Qi rich area located inside the savage beast-men's territory without being seen. The whole purpose of this trip was to investigate this natural phenomenon. This was their first chance to see how this world created monsters and Ben wanted to witness it first hand.

By observing it first hand and allowing Athena to directly take scans of the area they might learn how to create formations that can copy this natural occurrence.

There is a beast-men settlement on either end of the mountain chain near the area they wanted to enter. This forced them to travel and climb in between the mountains to reach a partially encircled forest to the south of where they disembarked the ship to remain undiscovered.

It took them a good part of the day to cross the mountains, so they made camp on the other side. In the morning they set out under the direction Athena led Ben towards.

The QI and Mana are much richer on this continent, but as they came closer to the Mana and Qi pocket, Ben could feel the dense Qi in his dantian continue to increase along with the small squad of cultivator/magi following him.

If it wasn't such a hostile land it would be an ideal place to cultivate. Ben began to daydream of making formations that could replicate this atmosphere back at his Avalon Sect to help his cultivators increase their cultivation speeds.

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As they approached the area Ben and his squad began to run into feral beast-men who had been created by the dense pockets of Qi and Mana. They most likely are recently created beasts who were living out in the elements without any idea that others like them had created settlements not far from this location.

They fought through the packs of beasts to eventually reach a shallow valley thick in blue mist. It reminded Ben of when he began to build and the pockets of Mana and Qi would gather to create a building. The blue mist did not have any structure to it and looked more like fog that had been dyed blue.

Ben led his squad into the blue mist down to the valley floor. Even down here they ran into newly created beast-men who were hidden within the thick mist.

After a couple of close run-ins with the beast-men, they came across large deposits of blue crystals protruding from the valley floor. Ben broke off a chunk of the blue crystals and placed and used his Analyze skill.

[Origin Crystal]: These crystals can gather and store large amounts of both Qi and Mana. This crystal is not a naturally forming element. It has been specifically created and introduced to Planet Victus by an unknown entity.

Once Ben scanned the origin crystal it helped to unlock more of Athena's memories.

*Ding!* [The one who had created me and brought you to this planet had also created these Origin Crystals and introduced them to this planet to allow it to create stronger people and creatures. For some reason, my creator wishes to advance this planet which is only partially colonized by small pockets of primitive people. They thought if they could create a hostile environment for the people of this world it would force them to grow stronger and to invent new technologies.]

'So the god of this world must want to speed along the pace which the people of this planet are evolving. I have to admit this is still a primitive world for them to want to push them forward it makes me wonder how long these people have been dragging along in this primal era?'

Ben found out from Athena these Origin Crystals could be used in conjunction with formations to make QI and Mana gathering formations. It would be possible to even add Qi gathering formations with these crystals inside of the Qi gathering Chambers to vastly improve them.

With some experimenting, Athena thought it could even be possible to use these crystals and formations to create monsters. If these crystals were the source of why monsters were being spawned then Ben could one day create a set formation area where monsters could be "spawned".

After they finished studying the area Ben took out a bunch of steel picks and began chipping away at the Origin Crystals along with the members of his squad. The valley floor was covered in huge formations of these crystals so it allowed him to gather a huge amount of them to bring back.

'It took almost a full week to get here but it was worth the trip. It answered the questions I wanted to know and it turns out I can make a few cool things with the help of these Origin Crystals.'

Ben hiked back to the ship with his squad and sent them back to the Rodara Kingdom. He decided to part ways with them and teleported back to Avalon to spend some time with Mythia and to experiment with the new load of Origin Crystals he had on hand.