Second World

"You did it!" Grace was standing in front of the dragon flight portal. "Very cool wing," She added.

"Yeah. It has no duration or cooldown. I can use it anytime I want," Jack said. "I no longer need my Soar spell."

"These wings can suffer damage," Peniel informed. "They have a separate HP equal to 100% of your HP. If their HP is depleted, they will be broken. Certain skills that inflict wounds, like your Brave Slash, might break them even if they still have HP left. Don't worry, though. Given time, the wings will fix themselves. You just can't use them to fly in the meantime."

"I see. This means I can also use them as shields in a pinch. They can be a barrier with equal HP as I."

"I'm glad for you," Grace said.

"Now that I've achieved my objective, I will go back now. My gramps said there is a person he wants me to meet. Do you want to go back with me or do you want to stay?"

"I still have something to do. I will return to Thereath tomorrow morning. I will find you once I do," Grace answered.

"Okay, I will go back first," Jack said.

He heard Greed's voice then, who had appeared right next to him.

"Do you think this is a place you can come and go as you wish, punk?"

Jack turned to him with a surprised expression. 'Is this God trapping him here again like the last time?'

Greed laughed. "Look at your face! I'm just messing with you, haha! Where do you say you want to go back to again? Thereath, is it?"

"Ye… Yes…," Jack stammered.

"Bye!" Greed said and snapped his finger. Jack vanished in a flash of light.

Before he knew it, Jack found himself in the middle of Thereath's city square. The pedestrians who were walking around the place were startled when Jack just appeared out of nowhere. This was not the portal zone, after all. It was not common for people to teleport into the city at this square.

Some then noticed Jack's attire and realized he was their king. They quickly greeted Jack with a bow.

Jack was still stunned by the sudden displacement. He finally gathered himself after seeing people bowing to him. He nodded at them before summoning Pandora and made his way to the palace. It was almost evening by now.

'Damn, that Greed. Couldn't he have given me a warning first?' He complained in his mind.

He went to the throne room directly after arriving in the capital. John, Thaergood, and Isabelle were there.

"Ah… Your Majesty, you've finally graced us with your presence," John greeted.

Thaergood and Isabelle greeted Jack with a bow.

"You should learn from them how to properly greet your sovereign," Jack said to John as he took his seat on the throne.

"I don't think I will," John replied.

"Anything to report? How's it going with that incident at Verremor's border?" Jack asked as he opened the monarch system and study his kingdom's stats.

"The investigative teams just teleported to those border towns yesterday. They are still investigating. We will hear from them once they find anything," John reported. "I also send some of the teams to the towns on Verremor's side. They will coordinate with one another to match their findings."

"Armstrong has issued an order to tighten the patrols around the border zone," Isabelle reported. "I've also sent scouts around the border zone to see if there is any suspicious activity from the orcs."

"All right, but tell them to remain courteous to any passing orcs. Do not let our hard-earned peace be ruined just because of paranoia," Jack said.

"Due to the same incident, some nobles from those towns have been waiting for Your Majesty's return," Thaergood informed. "They insist on an audience with Your Majesty before they are willing to return to their towns."

"We will deal with them tomorrow morning. Let's resume building our military," Jack said. After building the World Commerce Center, the kingdom's coin reserve started to build up again. He didn't need to be afraid of continuing the heavy expenditure on their army.

Their national treasure, the Boundless Cache, also provided gold coins, mana, and ruling powers. The coin income from the Boundless Cache was nothing if compared to the World Commerce Center, but it was the ruling powers' income that was the treasure's main benefit. Peniel informed Jack that out of the seven countries' national treasures, only the Boundless Cache awarded ruling powers.

Added to the monthly ruling power income he received from his sovereign level, his stock of ruling power was 161.

He spent 80 of those ruling powers for the usual two monarch powers. The Call to Arms and Mass Drill. He then performed manual drafting on all the settlements starting from the Town level and above. With a Megalopolis and with some settlements that had increased their levels, this round of drafting gave him 478,000 recruits.

Their army within the country now totaled 3,170,000 troops. This was around the number Themisphere had before the Verremor invasion. They had returned to their original strength, but many of the recruits still needed training before they could fight.

Jack used the manual training function and sent all those recruits to the barracks for training.

He then checked the recruit's data to see if there was any mythical-grade recruit. He had again used his Runestone of Luck when he used Call to Arms. Since the number of recruits had increased, the probability should increase as well.

There was one. A man named Stewart. A mythical grade was a rare commodity in an army. Jack instructed Isabelle to tell Armstrong to give this Stewart and Ana from last month's recruit special attention. If they could quickly develop these two talents, it would be a great help for their army.

He also told Isabelle to give Kramer, who would be coming in one or two weeks, the same attention. He told her Kramer was his friend.

Now, he had to prepare the Council of Charites' new base, so that Talia and the others had a place to stay when they arrived.