CHAPTER 41: WATER DAM

"I should have killed the emperor and given you the throne. I made a huge mistake, please forgive me," said Cilla, her seriousness and fierceness making Luke smile.

"Where did you get the idea that I wanted something like that from you?" Luke asked gently.

"I... I should have helped you... I should have restored your honour somehow," Cilla replied.

Luke’s smile suddenly grew even wider. He couldn’t take his eyes off Cilla’s ashamed face.

"My honour doesn’t matter to me. I’m no longer thinking about becoming emperor or anything else, Cilla. You might be disappointed, but my only wish is to live. To live without thinking about anything, surrounded by the people I care about." Luke said, kneeling down and standing right in front of Cilla.

"You’re one of those people, my old friend Cilla. You’re not just a servant or something to be used. If you think I’m using you or that I’ll hate you because I can’t regain the honour I need to take back, then that’s when I’ll be angry." Luke had said.

Cilla hadn’t replied; she just stared at Luke in front of her.

Meanwhile, Luke had stood up and stretched widely. It was already evening. Luke had a lot on his mind, but he needed to rest. He wouldn’t even go to his room today; he would sleep on the couch in his study and continue his work as soon as he woke up.

If what Elvis said was true, there would be a large influx of people into the city shortly, and this was a much more serious matter than it appeared.

"Go and ask Kevin to prepare something to eat for me, and be careful not to make any noise. If I could hear you, many others could as well," Luke had said to Cilla, who was still on her knees.

Upon hearing this, Cilla stood up. The young woman’s eyes sparkled with joy and pride... before disappearing miraculously from the room, she uttered these words:

"You will never disappoint me, sir."

About half an hour later, Kevin brought some food, and after Luke devoured it as if he were sweeping it off the table, he brushed his teeth, lay down on the couch, and closed his eyes.

When he opened his eyes again, he was in a completely white place. He was lying on the ground, blinking and trying to figure out what was happening.

When he got up from where he was lying, he continued to look around and realised within seconds that he was in a dream. With Cilla protecting him, there was no way Luke could be kidnapped.

This made him curious.

"Hello?"

When Luke spoke, he heard his own voice, but it remained in his mind; it did not seem to come out.

When he finally chose to take a step, his surroundings began to slowly take on colour.

With each step he took, his surroundings began to take on colour and images began to form. These images were in a place Luke did not know but could guess.

He saw a huge mountain. From a distant place, a place with heavy snowfall, he saw a massive mountain right in front of him.

His gaze was fixed on the mountain, and Luke felt a tremendous closeness to it. It was as if it were the place he had been searching for or the place he was meant to be.

In a short time, he understood why.

In the sky, he could see that the light coming through the clouds was casting something, a shadow, onto him. A large, enormous, even colossal shadow.

As the shadow receded, Luke already knew that it was a mighty being...

An Ancient Dragon.

The mountain he was looking at was ’One Mountain’ itself.

"Haha... Much more majestic than I thought..." Luke muttered to himself, and at the same time, he noticed that the colours around him were beginning to fade.

Shortly thereafter, the ground beneath him cracked, the surrounding images and colours vanished completely, and immediately after, the cracks shattered, causing Luke to begin falling.

Luke suddenly awoke.

Upon waking, he realised he had fallen from the chair he was lying on. Cilla was standing anxiously by his side.

"Are you okay, sir?" the young woman asked, helping Luke get up from the floor.

"I’m fine," Luke said, and as he got up, he went to the bathroom in the study, washed his hands and face, and then sat down at his desk.

He didn’t even bother to think about the mountain; he had work to do, after all. And even if he wanted to think about it, and it did not happen, he wouldn’t be able to anything about it at the moment anyways.

He had work to do all day long regarding property reports and similar matters. There were hundreds of documents he needed to review, and Kevin would bring more of these documents during the day.

The existence of sewer systems and similar issues had revealed many things Luke and the others had never seen before, such as toilets and the like.

Additionally, due to Luke’s emphasis on cleanliness, every single house in the city had been equipped with shower cabins and bathtubs.

Luke had added a note to the city rules stating that each member of a family must bathe at least four times a week, because the water he purchased from the shop panel was extremely cheap.

The water was indeed cheap, and strangely enough, it became even cheaper every time Luke unlocked a new level. What had once cost three gold pieces for ten thousand litres of water now cost just one gold piece.

This was not only true for water but also for many other items and necessities.

This ensured that water could be present in homes alongside the systems. Luke had done nothing about this; it was something the shop panel automatically provided him with when he purchased the blueprints.

A dozen systemic regions existed beneath the snow and soil, and each was oddly heated, meaning the presence of water that would never freeze was established, a system of water that always flowed warm.