Chapter 345: The Grace of the Ancestral Goddess of Life
[NT: I know these geopolitical issues are sensitive (especially the real-world ones), but, well, this is a kingdom-building novel. Geopolitics is part of the package.
Sarah Paine is the primary source for my statements regarding the difficulty of creating a nation from scratch versus rebuilding a fallen one.]
***
In defeated Germany and Japan, modern institutions already existed. Damaged, yes, but still standing.
All it took was aligning those institutions, investing, and making sure every penny of that investment landed in the right place.
That was one of the reasons the German and Japanese reconstructions worked so well while Afghanistan failed completely, collapsing the very moment U.S. forces left the country.
Even devastated after World War II, Japan and Germany had preserved almost everything that characterized a modern state: a civil service, national security forces, an established national identity, banks, businesses, and courts.
Afghanistan, on the other hand, was a largely tribal society where almost all of those institutions had to be created from scratch.
That was Ethan’s struggle.
Founding or annexing new cities wasn’t enough.
He needed to create an entire nation from scratch—from courts and businesses to a unified national identity.
In Goldenveil, he had succeeded with ease, since the population treated his every word as the decree of a god.
But what about the rest of the Eternal Forest? And the other human settlements he would conquer in the future?
For that, he would need an absurd amount of money, manpower, and power.
Ethan had no intention of building a nation that would collapse the second he turned his back, as had happened with the Afghan government.
Leaning back on his comfortable chair, he pondered a while longer before turning his attention to the premium gacha tickets, the system’s bluish screens floating silently before him and washing the office in pale light.
Now he could select seven primary items and fourteen secondary items.
Since the quality of the fourteen secondary items was capped at Rank A, he didn’t waste much time on them.
Rank A items weren’t bad, obviously.
A Rank C sword would be a treasure for a commoner family, and a Rank A could easily become the heirloom of a noble house.
The Darkwall family’s sword, for example, was probably Rank S at best.
With that in mind, a Rank A sword was an incredible item, capable of letting a fourth-stage warrior wield their full power. To Ethan, though, it held little value.
The blacksmiths at Goldenveil’s Divine Forge were already turning out items of that caliber with considerable consistency. Even his lowest-ranking soldiers wore armor of at least Rank B, pieces classified as magical artifacts.
After a moment’s thought, Ethan settled on what he needed most right now: a trained workforce.
Housing, at least, was already handled. His wealth was enough to build another twenty thousand homes and still have money to spare, not to mention food—more than enough for everyone.
It was time for Goldenveil to experience its greatest population boom since its founding.
As for the seven main items, Ethan already had three in mind.
An artifact to guarantee that Alice’s pregnancy would proceed flawlessly and that the child would be born with the greatest possible talent.
A life-saving artifact to keep his wives and concubines from dying.
And a communication artifact, specifically to stay in touch with Goldenveil’s other cities and, of course, with Ron.
He already relied on Ophelia’s intelligence network to keep him informed of everything happening across the rest of the continent, but he still wanted more.
One could never have too much information.
Sighing, he opened the Luck System and set up the next seven cycles of one hundred items each, leaving the main slots of the last four cycles empty.
After these first three hundred premium gacha tickets, he would decide what to do with the remaining four hundred.
Ethan adjusted the system’s filters so it wouldn’t notify him of any drop below Rank A, then clicked to open the three hundred tickets.
[You used 300x Premium Gacha Tickets.
Spinning...]
The screen flickered, and a cascade of icons began to spin, blurring into streaks of blue light.
After the first ten spins, the first Rank A item appeared.
[Congratulations, you have received: 1x Slayer’s Axe (Rank A)]
[Congratulations, you have received: 200x Talent Boost Potions (Rank A)]
[Congratulations, you have received: 1x "Blue Rose" Special Building Creation Card (Rank A)]
Sixty spins passed in a single second, yielding only three Rank A items. Terrible luck.
Ethan clicked his tongue.
Fortunately, the tide turned soon after. Two of the items he had been aiming for appeared, and his luck began to climb.
[Congratulations, you have received: 1x High-Level 3,000 Pops Card (Rank A)]
[Congratulations, you have received: 1x Supreme-Level 5,000 Pops Card (Rank S)]
[Congratulations, you have received: 1x Special Military General Summoning Card (Rank S)]
A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. That was much better.
Thirty more spins flew by in the next second until, at last, Ethan received the item he’d been hoping for most.
The spinning icons froze.
An orange-gold light burst from the screen and engulfed the entire office, tinging the walls with amber.
Ethan’s eyes sparkled.
An SSS-Rank item, and a clearly very powerful one!!
[Congratulations, you have received: The Grace of the Ancestral Goddess of Life (SSS-Rank)]
[Name: Grace of the Ancestral Goddess of Life
Description: A magical artifact created by the first entity that could be called the Goddess of Life, the Mother of All, who predated the current gods of Estria.
It was a gift to her most loyal follower, created after the man lost his wife and, devastated, never married again. The item ensured he would never again lose a woman he loved.
It allows the user to bind wives, concubines, and children.
The artifact must be connected to a magical vein to function.
Whenever one of the bound targets dies, their body is automatically teleported into the artifact and revived within it.
Rank: SSS]