The following two months went by quickly for Jack.
Only three new cities had been erected in this time.
Ramises had named his new city 'Event Harbour', in remembrance of the new year lords event that had turned him into a Baron of Etal Empire.
Xena's new frontier city 'White Corr'. She had taken the name after finding a huge amount of white marble in the Icy Peaks mountain roots.
The city itself had gained assistance from Jack to erect every building schematic he had, yet the entire frontier wall at the edge of the forest territory, spanning roughly 40-45 kilometres, had been built by manual labour.
Hundreds of giants and tens of thousands of civilians had taken two whole months to erect the 30 meters tall and sturdy white walls.
100.000 common troops under Xena's direct command, was stationed and patrolled these walls and beyond.
Empharus had finalised the giants city 'Giants Summit'. A city completely manually build with houses 30 meters tall or larger. Spanning both sides of the Icy Peaks, connected by the bridge Jack had built and recently enlarged and reinforced by him too.
Every city had around 150-200.000 civilians. Proper large cities.
Eros, the capital had expanded the most.
Resources and internal trade all collided here.
From the Black Mountain in the west, from Ocean City in the north and from White Corr in the east.
Every city's exports was gathered in or around Eros.
Eros now had two layers of walls. The inner contained the civilians and industries while the outer had inns and trading markets.
250.000 civilians, at least, now resided in Eros permanently.
Making it Jack's largest city - reaching the status of Small Metropolis.
Far to the north, Brutus had a small city with 50.000 civilians, and a city with 100.000 civilians.
The small city was located on pure plains and his city was on a hill in a hills territory.
Brutus had 75.000 common troops and 150.000 trash troops and currently marched to claim the beach territory that connected to his own imperial territories.
Simultaneously, Lee had taken the imperial main army to advance to the beach territory south of the peninsula.
200.000 common troops, 250 steel-clad giant troops and 70.000 centaur trash troops in the army.
Besides Brutus and Lee's armies, Xena had 100.000 commons troops and 10.000 common troops was garrisoned in every single city.
500 Citadel Guards remained at the Citadel in Eros, always accompanying the Empress.
Angelica had agreed to the proposal.
She was white as a ghost as she agreed, and had not seen Jack since. However she retained her full lord system and Jack had completely relocated her entire city to Eros.
But that was not all.
No wedding ceremony had been held but the system has recognised the proposal and answer.
As an Empress, she could freely use Jack's resources. They had been completely shared as a unified Bank account.
Besides this she had gained the title 'Empress of Eros Empire' and gained a new ability.
'Imperialistic Logistics' was an ability that allowed her to completely utilise any and all Imperial building and resources.
With this she had even progressed the empires siege craft and many catapults had been created on every citys upgraded walls and towers.
But mainly, Jack had ordered her to stay in the capital as it's manager.
She could summon civilians and troops on Jacks behalf as he traveled the empire to improve it in every single way he could.
Jack's resources had also amassed.
New imperial orders dictated that all cities should supply a weekly amount of resources.
As such, every week the resource dumps had exploded.
5 million wood, 10 million stone, 3 million iron and almost 10 million gold was deposited weekly.
Besides the common resources, gemstones flowed from Hizz'rah City and Sulfur came from the depts of the new mine in Bloodfall Mountains, worked by dwarfs traveling from Lake-Town and Black Mountain.
[Lords common resources: 43 million wood. 82 million stone. 18 million iron. 64 million gold coins.]
Jack had spend a lot of resources in improving his empire. And a lot of gold to remake his troops. Yet he had still saved for his future plans and were currently again the most wealthy lord on Prime.
[Lords uncommon resources: Gemstones: 244.500. Sulfur: 234.000. Mithril: 0. Adamantium: 0.]
50.000 dwarves digged deeply in the Black Mountains, even crossing the wild underground river inside it, yet they still failed to find the mithril veins.
[Mission: Successfully cultivate a new Hero in the mansion. Reward: Adventurers Guild House Blueprint]
[Mission(Legendary): Find the natural mithril vein beneath the black mountain. Reward: Unknown]
[Mission(Imperialistic): Pasify and recruit a new lord to the position of Count. Reward: Imperial small drake eggs x500.]
Jack had assigned his bastard son Goran to be captain of the drake riders.
However, the epic treasure: small drake nest, only spawned drake eggs every month.
For two months Jack and Goran had gained 23 eggs.
Of these eggs 11 were about to hatch and 12 had hatched a month ago.
These drakes grew fast, and in just a month, with plenty of dimwag meat to sustain them, they had grown to a size where they could finally be mounted.
Ben, the riding instructor had nurtured many of these drakes with their chosen troop rider and had created the reigns they needed.
Also Ben, had understood that these drakes needed a bonding ceremony.
Similarly to high horses when you looked them into the eye, the horses would be loyal until death.
These drakes were almost the same.
They needed to fly with a rider to bond for life.
And Goran was the first to have done it.
He had bonded with a green and brown scaled small drake.
Flying over the capital multiple times and making the civilians and everyone else looking, extremely in awe of the sight.
His drake was now 2 meters long, 4 counting the tale, and would continue to grow to almost the double in size before it was completely matured.
Getting additional 500 eggs, was something that Jack very much wanted to acquire.
Princess Xena, Empress Angelica and many of the civilians had even gathered for a while, creating a new ranged weapon for the drake riders.
It was a semi-automatic crossbow.
However it was much smaller and attached around the arms of the rider.
10 arrows or bolts, was already ready to fire on this circular device.
All they needed to do was to point and grasp the trigger in their palms. Turn the arrow wheel, reattach the spring and you could fire again.
When properly trained, one could fire a fast and very deadly bolt every few seconds.
Combined with the mature drakes fire breath, and the drakes natural amour, teeth and claws...
These units would be the pride of Etal Empire in the future, and Jack was very much aware of this.
The new conquest mission was something that Jack had spend more than a month planning.
And was why he had made Ramises build a harbour town solely dedicated to the production of ships.
Likewise it was why he had sent Lee and the imperial army south.
He wanted to establish firm footholds on both beaches before he continued with the conquest.
When Lee succeeded, a secondary and equal great harbour could be established in the south.
Both harbours could then be protected and reinforced by Xena's army in the forest territory between them.
[Conquest Mission: Claim a territory on the rumoured isles in the sea to the north west of Etal Empire. Reward: Imperial age of fertility]
As Jack sat on his throne in the citadel and spoke with his generals on all these and more matters, something suddenly disturbed him.
In the past few months, the new year event had raged all over Prime, but had not yet come to an end.
However now, Jack knew that the last 'hostile troop' had been killed.
[Lord System: Congratulations survivors! The event have concluded and almost 75% of lords have survived!]
[All surviving lords will be rewarded 1 million gold coins and 1x Superior High Hero Token!]
[New ranking system is in place!]
[Based upon the lord's territory resources, not including already obtained resources in the lords resource tap, lords will gain points. Combined with total territories, civilian numbers, troops numbers, cities owned, personal strength and their chosen 'kingdom-type' advancements, points will be given. Rankings will be based on how many points a lord has and rewards will be yielded monthly.]
[Top 10 locally will gain rare resources. Top 10 globally will gain treasures. Everyone else will gain a fraction of these rewards, but even the lowest will gain something!]
[Global Rankings]
[Lord Jack, Human]
[Lord Guura, Enuum]
[Lord Shi'ra, Reptilian]
... The announcements came so fast that Jack had to hold his head.
[Local Ranking(Human)]
[Emperor Jack]
[Empress Angelica, Etal Empire]
[Baron Brutus, Etal Empire]
[Baron Ramises, Etal Empire]
[GeneralKanabis]
[Lord Kingslayer]
[Lord Technicality]
[Lord Diaz]
[Lord Nerfherder]
[Lord Why?]
[Rewards will be sent immediately according to rankings]
[Global reward: Spirit Core Maelstrom, (Treasure, consumables, legendary)]
[Local Reward: 50.000 of each rare lord's resource]
Jack was baffled by all this, but more announcements continued.
[Lord System: The new year is well under way, and the new opportunities will spring into life! All lords are hereby encouraged by the Lord System to pursue and develop Heroes! Their trial will appear shortly. Dungeons with floors ranging between 5 and 200, will spawn on every tenth territory on Prime!]
[Dungeon explaination for lords]
[A dungeon needs to be entered by at least 5 heroes and the maximum number can be explored at each dungeon entrance. A dungeon can be entered by a limitless number of Hero parties, who will have their progress locked to their specific parties. However, if a dungeon is not approached and the first boss not slain every week, the dungeon will be 'overflowing' and break into Prime. All hostiles within the Dungeon will be free to roam and conquer in Prime. Please be advised and prevent this from happening as it could be catastrophic for the world of Prime and it's lords]
[This is your chance lords! Dungeons is filled with material riches and sources for personal growth!]
[Good luck Lords. The world is Yours, take it!]