Back to Matt and rift experiments.
There were even entire formation set ups dedicated to outdoor gatherings. Temperature control disks which could be used outside, and surprisingly, the largest seller in most worlds, bug repellant formations.
Lmao. Having magic in your world, and then one of the most popular uses for it is a problem as mundane as mosquito repellent. Amusing.
First and most ambitious was flooding a mana-less planet with Matt's endless mana to the point it started to create its own essence cycle. The other aperologists didn't know the mana sample was Matt's, but that idea was so out there that Matt couldn't help but laugh. Maybe when he was a Tier 50 he might do something like that, but even small moons took unfathomable amounts of mana to produce essence, let alone an essence core.
Hm. So I guess the author there is nipping the question of Matt creating his own planets in the bud. That seems like a truly ridiculous amount of mana if it would take Tier 50 Matt. I guess snapping up all the planets you can that drift by is prudent if it's so fucking ruinously expensive as to basically be impossible just to make even a Tier 1 planet from scratch.
Tiering up planets is clearly multiple orders of magnitudes cheaper if that's something people actually do.
Existing in various forms across all Great Powers, in the Empire their existence was historically a mostly informal affair having been set up by individual nobles to encourage the more indolent immortals to leave more valuable worlds. The fact this helped Tier up lower Tier planets was a mostly incidental side benefit until Agatha formalized and standardized the system.
Now they were Tier 1 or Tier 2 planets that the Empire had to incorporate to catch more valuable worlds as they drifted by in chaotic space to the greater Empire network but otherwise had little use for. Mortals could and did live there but few relished the idea of living on a world where even the most common rift was rare after all. Instead Immortals were incentivised to move there in exchange for vastly reduced taxes, with the only requirement being that they release at least 70% of their mana into the air per day, which boiled down to having a full mana pool most of the day as any excess generation leaked out naturally.
Statistically, most who went to such a world never really pulled themselves out of the rut, but Alfonso grew bored and eventually started dabbling into the various crafting professions. Eventually, he fell in love with aperology.
Ah, that's a good smart way to put to use all your useless immortals that just want to be hedonistic lazy bums.
Discussing strategy with actual enemies of the Empire had seemed a bit weird at first, but he'd gotten over it. Nominally, none of them were going to be fighting each other any time soon, but in case they did then it would be a waste to make it anything but the absolute best fights possible, with both parties having maximum cool moves to bust out.
Yeah, certainly an adjustment when stepping into the big leagues involved a war that took up like half your life by the time it ended. But also already adjusting and getting into that irreverent thrillseeking Ascender attitude I see.
Matt had Kees change their standing order for sword to any and all weapon types from rifts, but that would take time. He had spent two hundred years buying a single weapon type, and only had a few million units.
Man, what does the empire market for swords look like these days? I wonder if there are less sword users this generation due to there just not being any goddamn swords for the lower tiers to buy.
Also, 200 years spent working on these rifts at least already. Wonder what Soerilia looks like now.
With wood aura, they were able to use the Emperor's method to create a Tier 4 wood aura rift. The relief was palpable as the mental barrier was finally broken, and more and more level two mana types rifts started to get their formulas hammered out.
Ah, progress!
From what he understood of the reports, travel mana was finicky to work with at lower Tiers and the Tier 5 engine the team had created was revolutionary in quite a few ways that Matt didn't have the physics background to fully understand. He did however understand that they were doing some innovative things with their enchanting work, and so when they asked for both more space, a few more hands to help, and a larger budget he happily approved the increase in spending.
If they could solve the top speed issue without losing any of the torque to mana ratio the engine would see an almost twenty percent cost reduction for long distance trains across the Empire. Considering it was the single most ubiquitous method of travel for mortals, both in and between cities, that would have a noticeable impact in cost for any place where the trains could reach max speed which was where the savings kicked in.
And more progress!
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You know, between all the progressive reforms of the Dynasty, and now Matt throwing in his own innovations at (relatively) high speed, I do wonder how much these buffs to the Empire will stack up over even more time. Still got thousands of years before we're expecting the true realm war. That is hundreds of generations of mortals coming and going under ever increasing better conditions. I wonder if everything stacked up could actually cause a significant increase to Empire forces in the lower tiers. We have 7000+ years IIRC. Unless you're an Ascender, most people probably aren't making it to the higher tiers, like Tier 35+, but even non-Ascenders can do like Tier 25 within that time I think. Huge quantity increase in lower tiers, and then the Ascender pile in the higher tiers would make the Empire quite formidable in a true war. Also speaking of Ascenders, I wonder how long before new ones pop up.
