There were a lot of basic building projects we were working on now, more vetting of people, every day... and now intelligence operations in reverse were starting.

There were a lot of people being sent our way from other factions trying to infiltrate us, almost twenty percent of the applicants showing up having loyalty to other powers or influences.

Most of those were mages, who tended to be astonished when we turned them away, especially the gifted ones. They didn’t appreciate it much when we told them to go home to X, Y, or Z, either. Our reputation for counterintelligence took a fearsome jump, all our rivals wondering how we had found out all that stuff, and naturally they started looking for spies in their own midst.

We had some of those, too, but always at the basic level. Being able to collect a decent wage while just watching what was going on in someone else’s base of operations was a good gig, and Allegiance Oaths + Marks made the Loyalty lines damn clear and communication quick and easy. Sure, the Marks had to be concealed, and used carefully around the stronger Mages, but that was absolutely fine.

More to the point, they could be spying, working an easy job, and taking Wizardry lessons in Markspace, increasing their Typeless cultivation, and were still beneath the notice of the mages they were doing the routine, boring stuff for.

Sometimes, although rarely, we’d ‘send away’ mages as undesired and they’d go apply someplace else, who took them in at whatever level they earned. Still, few organizations treated their people like we did ours, and just having access to Wizardry lessons was a gamechanger for most people. Competition for stuff to help cultivate was very stiff, favored for the core Family members, personal retainers, and people with Innate Gifts, and so ‘normal’ mages pretty much had to suffer and gain what power they could on their own, while still being used as cannon fodder whenever the core of the organization called.

The showing of the KIA team at the Boston Boonies, with repeated live showings of the usefulness and versatility of firearms, had started to raise great interest in them among the Hunters who’d seen them, and the military especially. Demonstrations were starting to happen, and the need for engineers and artificers who could do math and make stuff, not just wield magic, was exploding.

Military contracts in the future? More production needed? More smart folks who weren’t mages needed schooling and training? More White Zones and factories inside them?

Spellhouses going up? Wind Towers for Babe?

Expanding was a thing, and while we could definitely handle more than any normal organization given who we were and how well we could filter people, there was soon a backlog of both willing and eager applicants and a shortage of being able to make the stuff that was now coming into demand.

It was a good problem to have, and we just worked slowly and steadily at the process, day by day, week by week.

In all cases, it took a lot of money. But we had literally millions of dollars a day of revenue coming in, so that wasn’t an issue.

------

Once a month, we still rolled out another Spellhouse.

The Airhouse went in at St. Louis, Missouri, near the river, and right on Tornado Alley, winds whipping off the plains with some of the most violent weather in the country. There were a lot of mountain and hill communities who cried about that, but St. Louis wasn’t complaining as people headed out to its southern suburbs to get their six spells or Awaken to Air Magic.

The Icehouse went in near Denver. The city was the only mountain holding of the United States, and basically watched over the only east-west connection through the Rockies north of the Mexican Border. The Icehouse was built above the tunnels and causeways heading into and below the Front Range of the Rockies, right up on the slopes and snowline. It wasn’t very hospitable, everything considered, but the Ice mages who visited it didn’t complain much, and it was still in the Warded area near the road below.

It was funny how much the local hospitality industry could save on heating bills with all those Ice mages, too.

People were amazed when the Firehouse went into the Klamath region in southern Oregon, considering how desolate the area generally was.

On the other hand, having the chance to Awaken your Element to Fire directly, even as a child, meant that families rapidly started making pilgrimages there to do so for their first Element. However, there was still the limit of a hundred Awakenings a day, very much reliant on the Fire Mana from the Land around. Signing up ahead of time was very important, and we only accepted cancellations, not reassignments, so selling spots simply wasn’t possible, which shut down any traders trying to make money off their spots rather quickly.

Still, the surge of traffic to the Klamath area and the amount of exploration that soon began to take place in the lands around it as the Fire mages realized that there actually were hidden Fire and Earth bounties outside the edges of the Firelands did nothing but help the region. It was noted that soon younger members of the species in the Firelands began to spread west as the Klamath native Beasts were fought and killed, bringing them into ever more conflict with Hunters...

The purchase of Wardenclyffe Tower in New York had flown completely under the radar, the building rather ill-maintained and under-used. The person who had once made it famous, Nicola Tesla, languished in relative obscurity next to Thomas Edison, the man credited with finally ‘inventing’ the Lightning Element and bringing it into the mainstream. The building becoming the Lightninghouse, when both New Jersey and Philadelphia had sought to make huge cases for becoming the home of the Spellhouse, irritated both areas... but the refurbished Tower crackling with electricity overhead, and the subsequent dribble of Artificing knowledge that had built up from Tesla’s discoveries, not Edison’s, completely defused any public opinion problems over time.

Also, well, being able to Awaken the Lightning Element at a place fairly near a settled area, unlike the Fire Element, naturally went over pretty well. The surge of people clamoring to Awaken there was long and deep... and unlike the Fire Element, half the Awakening Slots were up for bidding!

That outraged a lot of people, of course, but the Lightning Element was by far the most high-demand Element out there, the hardest to get, and the most valued for the last century in personal combat. We did restrict the bidding to Americans for one year upon the request of the American Hunter’s Guild, and reserved half the spots for Americans, as America didn’t want to lose its advantage in natural Lightning mages.

An additional 36k Lightning Mages in America was going to be a huge uptick, if the reservation numbers we were seeing meant anything, and it wasn’t like the number of kids was going down every year...

Then there was a pause, as everyone wondered what our next step would be. Our moves to buy land and work with the locals had been remarkable in their deftness and flying under the radar, and just how quiet people could be until it became the time to put everything together and build them up.

Doing so allowed us to expand our interests and businesses into the local area and do so before other forces could seize the money-making opportunities that abounded. We had already bought out interests in several culinary institutes, real estate management companies, and more training areas to get the people needed in place to run such establishments.

There were some people who tried to exploit us for as much money for their land as possible. They were Geased to shut up and not act on the information until after the fact. They could only watch as the early-mover business went to others who agreed to work with us. Then they could try negotiating with the Families who moved in to grab the remaining pieces of the pie and see how much the elite tolerated being extorted for money...

Pretty easy to find most of those sorts, actually, based on their Alignment Auras. Greed has a fairly unique Brown-Black hue to it. Even Neutrals were generally willing to accept partnership positions and longer-term opportunities for their non-magical family members and relatives than demand extra cash up front.

Anyone could see that we didn’t need the money, but this actually wasn’t about that. It was denying the money to the Families and keeping it down lower which drove the whole process. Even the right of first purchase if they decided to sell out again was designed to prevent other Families from muscling in on what we’d done, because that was certainly the first tactic they tried to use...

We also made a point of hiring their best mundane employees out from under many Families, which they didn’t exactly appreciate... but if they decided to terrorize or extort our people, bad things started to happen to those who tried strongarm tactics...

Then the Planthouse opened in Huskertown, Illinois, and things went quietly apeshit.

To Wizardry and other paths of Valence Magic, Plants were just another basic sphere of power. To Magery, Plant Magic was one of the Advanced Spheres, only acquired before Adept if you had a special Talent or something to specifically Awaken it, or an incredible affinity for it.

A straight-up fifty percent chance of Awakening the Plant Element while still at the Novice Level, and then equal chances of Earth or Light if it failed, was completely unprecedented. No Element Awakener on the planet dared claim the same.

Plant was a powerful Element with multiple exposures and uses, in combat and outside it. A Plant Mage’s Bonded Plant was a mobile opponent of incredible toughness and versatility, while being able to draw on the entire plant kingdom, magical and otherwise, for Seeds that could be grown, special abilities, venoms, thorns, vines, barriers, and many other uses, as well as its incredible relevance for farming, gardening, and Herb-raising. All that made it a high-demand Element, especially for family-oriented people with no wish to enter combat.

There was a one hundred percent chance to Awaken it for an Adept or higher, of course. That wasn’t all that exceptional, and people could certainly go to other Awakeners to do the same. But offering it as an option to normal folks right from the start, instead of only the Talented, was literally earthshaking in its portents.

Everyone was wondering, if I could do that, could I do it for the other Advanced Elements, too?...

The other thing was the clear devolution to Earth and Light Magic, tying Plant Magic to both. Although there were loud calls on if I actually knew this, it was just a lucky guess, or I was just throwing it out there, the results quickly matched up with what I had said, so in the end it was immaterial when the numbers proved me right.

Also, failing now just meant deferring until Adept, so not a loss, only a luxury.

There were only five Plant spells this time, including the default Vines spell, which now had a much quicker effect than before, at cost of area, and was called Lashing Vines. Fertile Fields directly and far more efficiently channeled Plant Energy into an area for the benefit of plants, where before doing so was just a general summoning of Plant Mana as a foundation of growing plant life. King Tree formalized the ability to Contract with a specific Plant, just like a Summoner! Botany Boon could directly heal damage and injuries to a plant, much like Healers did, and Coming Winter was a direct anti-Plant spell that could slow or paralyze hostile Plants.

Even with fewer spells than the other Elements, it was plain the Plant Element had also received some enormously useful versatility and non-combat usefulness to accentuate its already-recognized diverse power!

I also made it known that the mighty Husker had the strength to empower the Awakening for any residents of his protected lands if he was amenable to doing so, and so residents of the Boar’s territory who wanted to learn the Plant Element were basically guaranteed to do so!

The Illini had ear-to-ear grins when that news broke. Their Totem Beast had definitely come through for them, and although it was purely elective, soon enough there were long lists of native Cornhuskers very happy to receive the Boar’s favor and making plans to be Awakened with his personal blessing!

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Zishia.

The Acropolis had several Muses, and candidates for the Divine Mother, the Head of the Acropolis. One of those had actually come to Coralost now. It was equivalent to being visited by a head of state in the magical community.

It was also a clear indicator of just how important the Acropolis was taking what I was doing.

The only problem was that I could barely stand to be in the room with her. I took one look at her, and just froze when our eyes met. Magic popped, and Briggs’ Source field bloomed when he saw my expression and the magic start to gather the instant I laid eyes on her.

“Leave, Fae,” he ordered me directly. I grit my teeth at the darkest Purple Aura of the woman in front of me. She looked rather alarmed at my reaction, and I excused myself from the room with just a nod in his direction, and no recognition of her whatsoever.