Chapter 363: Eternal Blue Light Communication Tower
"Ah... I’m exhausted..." Elena groaned, flopping onto her back on a large sofa in one of the palace’s many living rooms.
Soft light streamed through the tall windows, bathing the space in a warm golden glow and offering a spectacular view of the immense inner garden.
She was completely drained.
Sixty thousand people in a single morning, almost all of them terrified and starving.
Drawing on her experience as a former ruler, Elena had taken control of the situation, aided by Ethan’s other wives and the army’s First Legion—five thousand men in total.
Goldenveil’s army, extremely professional and well-trained, managed to bring the crowd under control with impressive speed. Even so, the task had been a living hell.
They had to record the name of every citizen, count the children, reunite families, and assign housing to everyone.
Seven hours of nonstop work followed, the officers under her command registering and settling each of the new arrivals into their homes.
Fortunately, the families were large and almost all of them stayed together, which ensured that Goldenveil’s twenty thousand homes would be enough for the now eighty thousand citizens, with an average of four people per household.
It was a bit cramped, yes, but her husband would build more houses in the future, especially considering that a considerable portion of Goldenveil was still empty.
None of them had bothered Ethan during that entire time; after all, no one wanted to get in the way of Seo-ah’s first time.
"Well... at least we had enough food for everyone," Ysara sighed, sinking onto the couch next to Evelyn. "The only thing worse than a frightened, desperate crowd is a frightened, desperate, and hungry crowd."
Her delicate fingers reached across the glass table in front of the sofa, wrapping around a bottle of green fairy wine resting there.
She uncorked it without hesitation, pouring herself a generous glass and already savoring the emerald liquid that glistened in the light.
Elena mimicked the gesture, letting the sweet taste slide gently down her throat, the subtle warmth of the wine unwinding every tense muscle.
She sank deeper into the sofa with a weary sigh, one hand drifting lazily along the curve of her enormous dark breasts.
Her fingers slipped past the tight neckline, burying themselves in the soft, generous flesh that spilled over the fabric.
Her eyes slowly wandered around the room, passing over each of Ethan’s wives, until they finally settled on the door leading to that room.
Her expression, previously marked by exhaustion, lit up in an instant.
There was her man, impeccably dressed, with a delicate, shy-looking woman at his side.
"Hmm... look who finally remembered he has other wives!" Arwen teased, rising from the armchair in one corner of the room. "How was your evening monopolizing hubby, darling?"
She pulled Seo-ah into a warm embrace, wrapping her elegant arms around the smaller woman.
"I-it was... nice..." Seo-ah looked away, unable to face any of Ethan’s wives, her cheeks burning a deep red.
Arwen simply let out a soft laugh, releasing her from the embrace and leaning over Ethan to steal a kiss from his lips.
He returned the beautiful high elf’s kiss with equal intensity, one hand settling naturally on the defined curve of her waist and drawing her gently against his body.
Only after lingering there for a moment did he finally pull away and turn toward the other wives.
He spent a few moments with each of them, offering affection and exchanging a few words.
Then, leaving Seo-ah in the care of the others so she could introduce herself and get to know them better, he finally departed.
With the arrival of the new citizens in Goldenveil, he now faced a new round of challenges.
The first of these, of course, was finding occupations for all those people.
For the young ones, the solution was simple: military service.
Goldenveil currently had 8,500 active-duty soldiers, along with another 3,000 militiamen ready to defend the city at any moment.
Since there was still an abundance of armor and swords—with the elven textile guild and the dwarves of the Divine Forge working nonstop—Ethan was confident he could finish forming the second legion and, subsequently, the third, bringing the number of military personnel in Goldenveil to 15,000.
There were also the 500 soldiers protecting Windmere, though they would form a separate legion as soon as the city had a large enough population to support one.
With the major military campaign Ethan planned to launch soon, he would likely increase Windmere’s population to twenty or thirty thousand—a number at which the city would already be capable of maintaining its own legion.
The same applied to Fallenwinter and Greenleaf, two cities he intended to preserve and remodel in the image of Goldenveil.
With each of them fielding a full legion, Goldenveil’s army would swell to thirty thousand soldiers, all absolute elite, trained to the highest standard by the Hell Soldier’s Portal.
With that kind of force, Ethan was confident he could easily stop even a full army of the Darkwall family, especially considering the average skill level of his soldiers and the fact that they were a true professional army.
The first thing he did that day was head straight for the center of Goldenveil, into the intermediate zone.
There, he chose one of the few empty plots of land and selected the Eternal Blue Light Communication Tower from his inventory.
Taking a step back, he watched as a massive structure rose before his eyes.
A wide, square, three-story building pushed up from the ground and filled the entire base of the lot, its walls gleaming in the morning light.
That was the base of the communication tower, housing the control systems, the signal transmission, and, of course, all the administrative infrastructure necessary for its operation.
At the top of the building, a gigantic black metal tower stretched upward, soaring more than five hundred meters into the skies, the bluish beacon at its tip pulsing a gentle signal that spread throughout Goldenveil.
Ethan could feel the mana around him gently rise, a faint smile forming on his lips.
With this, he could connect the entire county of Goldenveil, maintaining constant contact with his wives even while he was away and, of course, ensuring that any invasion of his territory would be detected immediately.