Chapter 425: Blooming Roses Academy (01)

The following week in Goldenveil was a peaceful one and it didn’t take long for the giant empress bees to start producing their first drops of honey.

Ethan couldn’t hide his surprise when one of them came flying low across the garden, a small golden honeycomb clutched between its legs, heading straight for Arwen.

The comb was small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. It dripped and glistened in the sunlight as if it were made of liquid gold. Its sweet scent reached them before the bee did.

Arwen, of course, accepted it. She held out both hands with a huge smile, and the bee set the comb in her palms with care before buzzing back to work as if nothing had happened.

Her connection with nature was so strong that she didn’t even need to harvest the honey. The bees did it for her and delivered it straight into her hands.

It wasn’t much, so she and Ethan only got to taste a little before storing the rest away.

The honey was thick and creamy, melting on the tongue with a deep sweetness. A pleasant warmth spread through her chest right after, as if a thread of mana were hidden in every drop.

The remaining honey went straight to John, along with about twenty drops of the Queen Mother’s sap.

He had already trained plenty of apprentices to produce the Green Fairy Wine, and now, having advanced to the third stage, he was brimming with vitality.

His new mission was to create a wine of at least the fourth stage—perhaps even the fifth—using the high-level recipe he had at hand, his own knowledge, and the many resources Ethan had given him, the honey and sap among them.

If he could produce it with even a little consistency, a single bottle a month would already be a massive gain for Goldenveil.

While John buried himself in that work, Ethan also kept a close eye on his mother’s mages.

He showed them plenty of affection, pounding those plump, tight pussies nonstop whenever he stopped by the workshop.

In addition to banging them nonstop, Ethan also received the first batches of spatial rings they had crafted.

Over the past seven days, the hundred mages, working alongside Alice, Amelia, and her five apprentices, had produced enough rings to equip an entire legion.

The full boxes were already stacked in a corner of the workshop, waiting only for the order to begin distribution.

With all of that handled, and with the new month bringing four fresh slots for instant constructions, Ethan found himself back in his office.

Morning light streamed in through the windows, and the system screen floated before him with its usual soft glow.

His previous hundred pulls had already given him cards to summon another ten thousand people, pushing Goldenveil’s population to nearly one hundred thousand.

Counting the other cities, the county’s total population was slowly creeping toward two hundred fifty thousand.

Every city already had a basic education system in place, and the railroads were now up and running, carrying cargo and people between them.

Now anyone could travel from Fallenwinter to Goldenveil, for example, in less than thirty minutes.

It was time to start investing in advanced education and build Goldenveil’s first academies.

The Sword Academy would sit in the noble district and accept only women, with Ysara at its head. Despite its name, it wouldn’t be a purely military academy.

It would also offer courses in architecture, engineering, agriculture, management, and many other fields.

Because of this, Ysara alone wouldn’t be enough.

Ethan needed more teachers, especially since he would also be opening a second academy—one open to everyone—as well as a second magic tower.

Fortunately, he had the system for that, along with just over four hundred premium gacha tickets.

Leaning back in his chair, Ethan opened the luck menu and began setting tags for the main item and the secondary items.

With everything set, he burned through a hundred premium gacha tickets in one go.

The screen flickered, and the cards began appearing one after another, flipping over before his eyes.

Compared to his previous pulls, the results left Ethan a little disappointed.

On the one hand, he’d won three medium-quality population cards that together provided about fifteen thousand residents with Rank C and B talents, and a handful of Rank A talents mixed in.

On the other hand, nothing else really caught his eye.

Just mediocre, generic items, the kind he would hand off to the army or Goldenveil’s other public forces to make whatever use of them they could. He flicked past them without a second glance.

In the end, the only things that truly held his attention were the last three cards, all of them character summoning cards.

[Name: 1x Summoning Card for High-Level Selected Professionals (Rank A)]

[Name: 1x Summoning Card for Teaching Teams in the Sciences, Humanities, and Magic (Rank A)]

[Name: 1x Former Teaching Staff of the Lost Academy of Blooming Roses (Rank SS)]

The first two were generic, but they still left Ethan satisfied.

The third, a Rank SS item, made him even happier. He leaned forward in his chair, a grin tugging at his lips as his eyes locked onto the status screen.

[Name: Former Teaching Staff of the Lost Academy of Blooming Roses

Description: In the past, the Academy of Blooming Roses was a famous institution for talented noble girls, teaching everything from diplomacy and engineering to the arts of war and fencing.

At its peak, the academy housed up to ten thousand resident students, taught by five hundred female instructors and supported by a staff of about two thousand employees.

Each of those instructors was a great genius in her own field, with most having reached the fifth stage and a few the sixth.

When summoned, those at the sixth stage will drop to the fourth stage, and those at the fifth stage will drop to the third. Their power can be restored with time and investment.

When combined with the original Academy of Blooming Roses, their teaching rate and morale increase significantly.

Their base loyalty is 75%, rising to 85% if they consider the teaching location suitable.

Rank: SS]