~ Chapter 118: The beginning of hope ~

[Illsyore's point of view]

Out of all the slaves we brought with us from the Paramanium Empire, only seven wished to be set free and left off in another country. As I had promised, I set sail for Allasn Continent, where I dropped off five of them, four from the old ones and one from the recently acquired ones. The last two were dropped off on the Northern shore of the Sorone continent, from where they headed off to their own families.

Of course, I did offer them some starting help and told them they were always welcomed to drop by my Magic Academy once I had finished building it. They were sure to hear of it sooner or later.

It was not like they were afraid of me anymore. Once we left Paramanium, I took off the slavery collars of each and every one of them. They were rather surprised at first that I had kept my word, but I found their reaction to be rather natural. After all, in this day and age, people often betrayed even their best friends if it meant to gain a bit of profit. Some of them were in chains in the first place because of someone close to them.

This entire journey from one continent to another took around one month, during which I did not modify the galleon very much, but with the help of my magic engine installed, it sailed at double the speed of a wind powered one. I could make it go faster, but I needed to change the hull of the vessel, and I found that to be a bit too troublesome.

As for the military power this ship offered, well, with me on board and Nanya throwing anvils or Ayuseya nukes, I felt like nothing could stand in our way. A few monsters did try to attack us, but once they came face to face with Tamara, they were turned into sushi.

During this time, Shanteya's belly grew bigger, and all the normal signs of pregnancy were there, including mood swings, morning sickness, a strange appetite, increased sexual urge, and the most uncommon one the overprotective behavior over her of my other wives, especially Nanya.

The last one I found a bit strange, but I was told that it was natural for her species. Once the demoness accepted Shanteya as my wife, and I Nanya's true mate, it became completely normal for her to wish to protect our offspring as well. It was the same as protecting her own child.

Speaking of my demoness wife, once we were out at sea, my other wives stopped teasing her, and the two of us finally had a night for ourselves. I would not have wanted to postpone our embrace any longer. While I did understand that they wanted to tease her a bit and maybe teach her a lesson about gambling, but those four were indirectly teasing me as well!

When Nanya was feeling the need and desire to sleep with me, her sexiness factor went through the roof! And that was not something a normal man with a perfectly functioning body could resist for too long! No to mention the fact that her armor and general allure weren't helping me fight the urge at all...

Then again, in the eyes of most men, I was probably a cheat or an idiot who craved for only one woman while being surrounded by four other beauties, but that was completely FALSE! I desired to embrace all of them. They were my wives, and I loved them very much! How was it fair towards me or them to not want to embrace them and love them and pamper them and spend hot passionate nights together?

Anyway, we were not the only ones who got a piece of action on this voyage. Among those who were together with us on the ship, there were two new couples that formed: the 17 years old boy with the 19 years old woman from the first group and the twenty years old woman with the younger blacksmith brother from the special auction. Then there was also a couple among the slaves bought by Ayuseya and those bought by Nanya.

At first, they were a bit shy with showing their feelings for one another, but Tamara and Nanya, who were the pranksters of our group, spotted the lovers from a mile away and secretly plotted to get them together. The ship was not so big, so when the two started to act, the secret was out.

It did not take long afterwards for the couple to come forth and tell us their worries. They believed that such acts were prohibited for some reason. Once we cleared the misunderstanding, they were more open about their feelings towards each other.

During these past two months, almost all the children learned to read and write in the Paramanium language, but although I was not particularly unhappy about it, the fact that I had yet to decide the official language of my academy was a given.

As a Dungeon, I was able to understand and speak with ease most of the human languages, so I did not see it as a problem. When I was together with my wives, I mostly spoke Shorayan, while Ayuseya and her maids, who were now just her friends, spoke in the Teslov language. There were a few other dialects my students spoke, but out of all of them, I didn't know which one to pick.

When I brought all the adults in for an official meeting, they were all stumped as to how to answer.

“I'm honestly surprised you haven't picked one yet.” Ayuseya told me.

“I forgot. I honestly forgot.” I lowered my head in shame.

“Does it really matter?” Ferris Rithhold, the alchemist, asked.

Him and Zertan ended up getting along quite well once they realized they had a common passion for the wonders of science and potions brewing. El'zavara tended to go play with the children when the two men began to debate on what herb was better to use in what potion.

“It should because this way a lot of foreigners will be forced to learn it. If this will by any chance become the language of trade, then the country from where it originates will only have more to gain.” I replied.

“I think you’re thinking way too far ahead, Illsy.” Nanya told me as she crossed her arms at her chest.

“Am I?” I asked tilting my head to the left.

“Yes. If anything, it shouldn't really matter as long as you don't give any special priority to the said country.” she shrugged.

“Well, that's true... I never thought about it like that.” I scratched my chin and looked up at the ceiling of the captain's room.

“I am fluent in many languages, so whatever you choose, I'll be able to teach it to my students.” Savannah said with a bright smile.

“Magic chants don't change from language to language, so you won't have a problem there.” Yung Mai told me.

“Hm, but what about cooking? Won't you have trouble teaching your skills to others if they don't know Paramanium?” I asked.

“Cooking is an art. It has its own tongue and as long as they have eyes to see, a nose to smell, and a tongue to taste, I can teach them well! Words are not needed in cooking! Just passion and courage!” she declared with a victory pose.

During our long voyage, Yung managed to recover from her previous depressed state of mind. Tamara also enjoyed her company and learned a lot from her. I would even be bold enough to declare that she became her student.

“It's the same for dancing. We just need music. The rest is like magic! Our body moves and we strive to release that bottled up emotion!” Lumia Shora declared with a graceful bow. “By the way, I can speak a bit of Shorayan, but not too much.” she told me.

“From the looks of things, I think it's alright to stick to Paramanium for now. Most of our students and even teachers know the language.” I said with a nod.

“Then its settled.” Ayuseya said with a nod.

“Yes, I agree with this as well. If Paramanium ends up becoming too bothersome, I'll just pay them a visit and reshape the landscape a little bit.” Nanya said with a devilish smirk on her lips.

“I agree as well. With the language thing not the reshaping of a continent part.” I nodded and then squinted my eyes at the demoness.

“It will just be a little bit... like a mountain or two?” she poked out her tongue.

“What are you going to do? Absorb it all?” I questioned with a raised eyebrow.

“Yup!” she nodded and smiled.

I let out a sigh. “Please spare me... We could just eliminate the imperial family and high nobles, maybe cause a revolution from inside out or spawn an army of boot humping imps of level 1000 and above. Let's leave the innocents alone if we can.”

“Under normal circumstances, I would have said that you are joking. No one talks about dethroning the imperial family or invading the Paramanium Empire with such ease but given what I witnessed ever since you bought and freed me, I fear that you weren't joking at all.” Savannah said with a wry smile.

“True, I wasn't joking. If I really get mad, I'll just decimate all lifeforms on that side of the continent, but then I'll have Melkuth and others to watch out for.” I let out a sigh.

“Since you are my husband, I would make sure that such an apocalyptic scenario would not come to pass.” Zoreya nodded.

“Don't worry, my love, I wouldn't do something as drastic as that. It would go against what I have learned and struggled for all this time. It would make my fight against the Darkness absolutely pointless!” I laughed.

“True. Besides, you will soon become a father of two. You should pay more attention to what you say and do.” Shanteya warned me.

“Yes, ma'am...” I said with a nod.

“I think you're more afraid of your lovely wife than the wrath of the gods!” Zertan laughed.

“Tell me about it...” I said with a sigh.

They all laughed, and we called this meeting over.

During this past month, I didn't just spend my days lounging on the deck and gazing at the stars, I worked on the curriculum for the students, including the classes and way the material was going to be taught to them. For this, I worked close with Savannah, Zertan, and Nanya, who all had experience in teaching.

The idea of a textbook wasn't anything new but having one for each of our students was something unheard of before. Making a printer was not that hard, the problem was that we still didn't have a basic original volume which we could print out. As such, each of the future teachers was given the task on this journey to compile a compendium with lessons for their classes.

Even I had to work on mine and make sure I got everything I wanted noted down. So far, it was just a sketch and I had yet to start writing it. According to Nanya, we were most likely going to finish the first year without textbooks, but once the Academy was running smoothly, it was going to be among our top ten priorities.

Another thing I focused on while sailing the seas was to make sure we reached our desired destination. There were a few times when we got lost and I had to run back and forth from to the nearest continent to get our bearings. Most of the other times we 'plundered' the navigator of some other ship until he told us where we were and where we were supposed to be heading.

As such, after we dropped off the last of those former slaves on Sorone, we headed for the location of where I wanted to build the academy, which was right in the middle of the sea, at an almost equal distance from all three continents, and where a single lonely uninhabited island stood.

The official name for this tiny remote island was Middle Point, but with my presence there, it was going to change completely. History books and maps alike were going to need to change if they would want to still represent reality.

“LAND AHOY!” shouted Riveran Sei, the farmer who took the temporary job of lookout in the crow's nest.

Since this boat did not have any sails, I only left the main mast still standing in the middle of the ship.

“We're finally here.” I said with a smile on my lips as I gazed ahead at the tiny island.

Although tiny from many points of view, it was still big enough to cover the surface of Paramanium's capital city. I dropped anchor at a distance of a few kilometers from it and then ran over to scout it out.

The small island had a length of around 16 kilometers and a width of 9 kilometers. It was tear shaped and had a small mountain on top of it. Beaches surrounded it on both sides, and towards the South-West there was a small cliff side.

With my Dungeon Territory expanding to encompass over 20 km around me, I ran up to the middle of the island and made sure there were no other sapient species there except those on my boat. Once I made sure of this, I did a quick scan of the island to see what sort of monster and dangerous predators were lurking on it.

To my surprise, there were no large mammals or reptiles here. There were a lot of seabirds, but no monsters as far as I could tell. I planned on sending out Nanya to scout it as well just in case I missed anything. Once this preliminary search was over, I began the construction of the academy, or to be more precise, I raised the foundation on which it was going to be built.

I first extended my Dungeon Territory until it had the diameter of 40 kilometers, then I selected the materials I wanted to build it out of, which was granite. Because there was a lot of water around, if I recklessly added the material, it would have caused some nasty waves to form, so I first built a square wall that was three meters thick and 20 kilometers long on each side around the whole island.

I didn't just pop it into existence at once, I raised it only one meter from the bottom of the sea floor, then I waited for the water to calm down and raised it again. I repeated this process until the wall was above the sea level. It was then when I added the last four meters, to keep the high tide from flooding in. Using my absorption ability, I removed all the sand, dirt, and water from the bottom of the sea within the enclosed wall. Once this was done, I selected lava as my material of choice and added a thin layer of a few centimeters all over the place, then on top of it I added a layer of granite before it managed to cool off.

With this, the first layer of the foundation had been built. As for the island in the middle, I had left it untouched to act as a big park of sorts once it was cleared out of any dangerous species.

“Now for the dirt layer.” I said to myself as I flew over to the edge of the square surface.

To prevent erosion and allow easy access for the ships for now, I began to literally pour out tons and tons of dirt, which would fill the bottom of the sea and allow it to rise high enough for me to add the layer of sand on top of it. Once this was over, there was a nice beach of about one kilometer length from the granite layer. The area within the big circle was also filled in with a two meters high layer of fertile dirt, so the farmers would have something to work with.

For now, I didn't wish to build the academy itself or the residence buildings, there was still a lot of planning I had to do for those two. So that we did not sleep under the starry sky, I pulled out the camping buildings we used on our journey back on Paramanium. They were more than enough to temporarily harbor my family and the other 65 people traveling together with us.

I was planning on giving each of them their own and then make it possible for them to practice whatever job or dream they desired to follow.

When this was all over, I built a wood pier which extended all the way to the sea, to allow ships to dock and the crew to disembark safely.

After I flew around a few times to make sure everything looked good, I landed on the deck of the galleon and began the procedures to dock.

It was already late in the evening when everyone could feel the sand and dirt under their feet.

With a smile on my face, I spread my arms wide open and told them “Welcome to our new home! It's a bit shabby, but I'll improve it in due time!”

Everyone cheered in reply. This was going to be the beginning of their new life.