I was hardly surprised a High Emperor had discerned the source of the foundation energy used to create His Broom Closet.

“Energy stolen from an Undead Sage called a Pharaoh, Your Imperial Majesty. It had formed its own Pyramid and demiplane, which we destroyed and collapsed. That energy is what has formed this.

“It was formed by power drained from thousands of years of burning Essence ripped from the souls of those caught in the snares of the Undead. While it is not impossible that we may repeat the feat, it is not something we intend to rely on.

“The easiest way to gain the requisite power is to Burn a great deal of gold.”

“GOLD?” Flowing Silver High Emperor repeated. There was no Isotopic play to it. “JUST... GOLD?” He asked in mild disbelief. It was just a cold, dead glittering stone to Him.

“Yes, Your Imperial Majesty. Although platinum is better, come to think of it. Non-Energized, nothing that the Great Beasts of the Beast Realm would need or desire. Just gold.”

He considered the Pyramid in front of Him. “YOU DID NOT NEED SUCH FOR THE PYRAMID THAT SEALS THE WAY TO THE NETHER REALM,” He recalled.

“No. That was a minor Pyramid, with a very localized effect. If Your Imperial Majesty thinks on it, Your Majesty will remember that a great deal of its needed power is drained from the flow of the energy from the very Portal it caps, yet that is quite minor.

“This is a Pyramid that will Ward an entire minor Imperial Domain from the ravages of Dimensional Space. The requirements of energy are much higher, and there is no convenient ley line in the Aether to tap to take on the load.

“The amount of energy required to empower this to full size is thousands of times more than the paltry leechings of that Pharaoh... or, we Burn gold, Infuse it into the Pyramid, and allow it to draw that power from the energies of the Aether directly.

“It will take thousands of tons of gold to treat the blocks of the Pyramid so, but unlike any other methods, a great number of beings can work on the Infusion at one time, and it will not require amounts of energy that would impress even an Emperor to wield and set into place.

“Indeed, mere Warriors could aid in the task, once the Blocks are carved and in place.

“In the meantime, all there is to do now is the terraforming and landscaping, which involves bringing in a lot of earth and stone, Shaping it, and starting to build a habitat.”

“A TASK MY VASSALS WILL BE EXCELLENT AT,” He stated confidently. “EVEN IF THEY ARE STARTING FROM EMPTY STONE HERE... ALTHOUGH THE PRESENCE OF THE IMPERIAL ROSES IS A FINE START.”

Silver-blue and scarlet-gold flowers bloomed all at once over the Pyramid in proud display of the truth of that. I considered the implications if they grew large enough to cover the whole massive size of the expanded Pyramid...

My Contracted Plants would become Emperors among Flowers quickly, that was certain!

“IT WILL BE TRIVIAL TO BRING FORTH THE GOLD AND PLATINUM REQUIRED TO DO THIS TASK,” Flowing Silver went on regally. “I WAIT TO SEE YOUR STUDENTS TAKE UP YOUR BURDENS, HEALER FAE!”

“They are trying their damnedest, Your Imperial Majesty!” I assured Him with a sigh.

-----------

The first small mountains of rock were soon dropped into the Broom Closet by Void Magic, Flowing Silver High Emperor modifying His Portals to directly allow massive sections of stone to drop/be deposited in specific areas as required. It was a trick we were also pulling off, doubling up Earthshaping work on our construction projects and simply dumping the extra stone in here with the mages adept enough to make the earth move and Summon up a Portal.

Digging out tunnels and subterranean chambers and not having to transport all the earth and stone away while doing so was a money-saver, too. We had a lot of devoted Earth mages making defenses and buildings, so gathering up the extra stone came in a steady, sure stream.

The Many-Tailed Silver Foxes weren’t normally the kind to put their muzzles to the stone, but carving up the thousands, then millions of Paving Stones that literally outlined the world was an acceptable challenge for them once they understood the scale of what they needed to do, and they got a good look at the Psychic version of the massive Formations involved and the degree of skill required to do this. Void Magic could totally carve the Paving Stones we churned out for them, but they could also look right at the sample Stones I had made for them and get a little frustrated that they couldn’t equal the artistry I was displaying on them, which was rather motivational to a Tribe that was used to staying on tops in Void Magic Mastery...

Amusingly, it was a tribe of Crystal Starnose Moles who were brought in to set up the earthen foundation for the ecology and plants to be put in place here. They could grind any kind of normal stone into sand, and then encourage plant growth with magic, water, organic material, and their tunnels.

A few had the idea of nibbling at the roots of the Imperial Roses, and were promptly flash-frozen and insta-fried. After enough were turned into snacks for the Foxes, that nibbling nonsense stopped. The ‘floor’ of the Broom Closet started depressing as massive amounts of stone from the Beast Realm was broken down and distributed across the area the Emperors would meet in. Plants were brought in and put in place by the busy Moles, including some noble Bloodlines that would grow into powerful members of their species, and regular rains were set up to water everything.

With typical magical vigor, the Plants grew with impossible speed, every one of them faster than bamboo as long as they had enough Mana, water, and biomass. The Green began to spread as the sand blackened and spread out, and the center of the Broom Closet began to round out and down as the stone and earth kept coming.

Briggs actually went over to talk to the Moles about the sewage situation. Soon enough an organic sewage system was in place, the roots of countless eager Plants filtering all the organic matter out of the water, growing constantly. The Moles cut them back, ground them to mush, and helped make more soil elsewhere, while the fresh water fed back into the system.

------

My allocations of time increasingly focused on what I was capable of and others were not, as more and more of our people rose in Levels and were able to take care of the simple mass-production work I used to spend massive amounts of Mana on.

My Energizing of Isotopes was plotted out for literally months in advance now, spread out between hundreds of different specialty versions we would need or could sell for a thousand times or more the value of the mundane source ore they were derived from. The common Energizing was being done by thousands of artificers and wizards now, while the many mining operations taken over by Briggs to supply us with the mundane ores churned out the stuff for a fraction of the cost of our competitors, while our buying of their slag and useless ores continued apace. The fact we sold so little of the latter to others meant their prices still hadn’t risen for it, as we were basically disposing of their waste products for them and saving them money...

Likewise, the constant production of Vivic Braziers was unending, making solid, stable, and easy money for the lower-end Casters. Sure, I could make a Raised version that consumed more Dark Mana than the routine spell, but there were hundreds of Junior Casters earning money off those things, so unless someone was paying premium money for something from me personally, everything from Shaping of the Braziers to the Casting of the Vivic Eternal Lights was done by others, now.

The Church of Light still bought the Braziers from us, as they didn’t have Typeless mages and there was no other source of them. We still sold them to the arseholes, too.

A new line was the Vivic Eternal Flames. As a IV/Seven instead of a II/Three for Requirements, the base Flames consumed over four times the amount of ambient Dark Mana as the Lights did, and if they were parked on an active source of the stuff, that amount could literally be hundreds of times greater.

These were the things that were soon Burning all around the Dead Zones on multiple continents, eating prodigious amounts of Dark Mana and devouring Undead corpses brought to them with speed and cleanliness. The Icefire version was quite popular, as most Dead Zones were in equatorial regions, and pumping out some cold air was always appreciated. Double-duty undead destruction and air conditioning, why not?

Fine-tuning of the production methods for our computer, communication, and satellite technology, as well as munitions, was something I didn’t have lab time for, so I was basically working like Sama and Briggs in peer review and modifications, with other people providing the hands and grindwork, letting them reap the credit for the work among their peers if there were breakthroughs.

Progress on Mana Renewal items had increased all the way to the Archmage level, but as before, there was no real financial incentive on our end to make the high-end stuff for anyone but friends and family. The low-end items helping Novices gather Mana faster could take two years or more off the time a Novice took to make Adept, while the higher-grade items had virtually no effect in a fight or the advancement of Mages or Archmages.

Adepts could benefit from both aspects of Mana Renewal, however, and so the ‘special versions’ were always for Adepts. There were a rare few of our people who would charge an arm and a leg for Mage-level stuff, but higher stuff than that was generally left alone for the three main Families who did that stuff to fight over as vanity and luxury items. Essentially, we took the most of the lower market, leaving their apprentices forced to work on niche products, while keeping their Mages and Archmages very busy with all the high-end stuff now needed to support their Families.

We had also taken away most of the Awakening Stone market from the various Families that focused on those things, not being beholden to securing Soul Remnants with the Undead Element and so able to produce them far more cheaply. Of course, the Spellhouses guaranteeing an Awakening to an Element for anyone who cared to travel to them was still a huge thing for many people.

Briggs had quietly opened Awakening Houses in most of the larger cities’ suburbs as time had passed, with the seven Primary Elements in them that anyone could use for a nominal fee. Like the Spellhouses, they came complete with the Assay Chamber showing what the prospective mage would be best at. With much of the stigmata of the ‘common’ Elements now gone with their multiple spells, the overriding ambition of many kids to Awaken Fire or Lightning had also been tempered, as the other Elements were just as or more useful out of combat.

There were now seven Coralost Academies around Michigan, geared specifically to teaching Typeless mages, wizards, alchemists, and artificers. They were far larger than normal Magic Schools, and more were being built as the demand stayed high, spreading slowly into other states as we lined up instructors. Some very talented but un-Gifted mages were choosing to attend those schools, going mono-Typeless instead of multi-Element.

The Coralost College and the new Prismatic College were specifically there to train wizard-mages, the latter focusing on Elemental mages instead of Typeless. The qualifications to enter tended to mystify a whole lot of applicants who thought they were entitled and sure to get in, and were instead just refused on the face of things. We were always nice enough to give them recommendations on where else to go, however...

The same phenomenon in India was happening with the Bophal Alliance there, except India had a much greater population, and a LOT more people at the lower end of the scale. The Academies could not be built fast enough, and the first College was overwhelmed with applicants, forcing the opening of no less than three others, each with a specialization in a different path of wizard, artificer, or alchemist. Even with the Alignment-filtering, there was still a huge pool of applicants, including many later in life wanting to go back and learn magic now that they could be Awakened.

It was, as they said, a good problem to have. In most cases, given the state of war, it just meant more men and women getting magic and being urgently trained to do what they could in the fighting raging along the shorelines... fighting also being slowly affected by the increasing prevalence of firearms, True Seeking spells, and Typeless Casters with surprises up their sleeves.

I wasn’t needed for most littoral defense arrangements. We had plenty of Earth mages and Stone-Shapers now, and so if I had to Shape Stone, I could do it on Pyramids. Even an hour or two every day was going to plug away at the Broom Closet and raise the foundation of the Pyramid there.

But I had another Pyramid I had promised to complete, and another project to work on that involved a lot of Shaping, too, and was equally as important.