By following the old, partially overgrown pylons down the mountain, we made it to the military research facility fairly easily. To add some extra confusion, we actually continued further down the ridge line some distance. That way, should anyone be asked where we came from, the answer would be lower down the valley, rather than higher up the mountain. It was probably a decent thing we did so, because it does seem that Elora has been more active the last few days.

While we grabbed a heat fluorite plate, we asked around about any of the goings on that happened in the last week. We had one of the guards for the facility fill us in on anything they knew. On it's face, Elora seemed to take Zaka's visit pretty well, but she's apparently been sneaking into many of the facilities over the past few days. As far as anyone is aware, she's only been visiting the active facilities, but without anyone stationed in the fluorite mine or some of the other abandoned facilities, there aren't personnel there to observe if she's also been there.

There haven't been any sabotage incidents, just seemingly observations under the cover of night. It's probably for the best that we're hiding, just in case she is attempting to target us. The more likely scenario is that she's trying to determine if we're kicking her out because we've made something so powerful that we need to be dealt with. She could decide that is the case, but we really haven't made anything that resembles a technological jump since we made the ships. Based on her behaviors in the past, I suspect she underestimates the impact that our technology represents on warfare. Perhaps her mindset is actually closer to Tiberius's mindset than I had initially evaluated.

In either case, we were in and out of the facility in 30 minutes, once again heading south before eventually climbing back up the ridge line to the abandoned cableway station. While I still believe that the odds are low that Elora actually attempts anything, I don't think they're zero. Any day now I'll be prestiging, and that will leave us more vulnerable for a time.

It would end up being another ten days before I'd finally reached level 100. In that time, Zeb finally started to run out of projects that he wanted to work on. We spent some time just catching up with each other. The sorts of projects we'd worked on, the problems we'd encountered, and the resolutions to those problems were the main topics. In some regards, it was less like conversing with an old friend, and more like conversing with a colleague who had transferred to another branch of a business. Though, since we're both workaholics, it's not that surprising that our discussion centered around our work.

Honestly, with the amount of time we'll have on hands for quite a while yet, we're probably going to run out of old work to talk about. The question that I'll pose then is whether Zeb wants to start learning some of the topics I've been copying down, work together on new project designs, or something else entirely.

My first level 100 as a Lava Demon was a little disappointing.

<LAVA DEMON> Level: 100 HP: 6369/6369 MP: 2729/2729 Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation, Improved Dexterity, Heat Resistance, Partial Sleep Magic: Improved Stone Shaping, Tectonic Sense, Improved Earth Spike, Thermal Hands, Pulverize, Thermal Regulation

Available Traits: Improved Endurance: Increases the amount of strenuous activity you can do at one time. Heightened Strength: Greatly increases muscle mass and by extension, strength. Thermal Capacitance: Creates a secondary store of Mana that can only be utilized by thermal related magics. Fixed capacity of 2500 MP.

I'm always left wondering how much of a quality of life improvement improved endurance or heightened strength might be for me. Honestly, they'd probably be pretty good. The issue, of course, is that I do like the more interesting skills. While it'd only end up being useful for either Thermal Hands or Thermal Regulation, essentially doubling my mana capacity for those two magics is hard to pass up on. Especially when it would mean I'd have more wiggle room to operate in the fluorite mine.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

<UNCOMMON LAVA DEMON> Level: 0 HP: 4469/4469 MP: 2459/2459 TC: 2500/2500 Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation, Improved Dexterity, Heat Resistance, Partial Sleep, Thermal Capacitance Magic: Improved Stone Shaping, Tectonic Sense, Improved Earth Spike, Thermal Hands, Pulverize, Thermal Regulation

According to Zeb, I was out for two days. I honestly haven't grown that much in size since my prior form, especially when compared to some prestiges in other forms. There also doesn't seem to be any surface level manifestations of Thermal Capacitance. What has remained, however, is that I was ravenously hungry when I awoke. Thankfully, Zeb had considered that, and had prepared a large, nostalgic meal for me comprised of boiled spuds and lion root.

There weren't any disturbances while I was out, which was good. The hope is that will remain to be the case until Elora is off the island, and we can return to our regular schedule. I asked Zeb what he wants to do to pass the time, and offered up those suggestions from before. While I could tell he was interested in learning some of the science knowledge that I was copying down, he said he'd rather plan out something a bit bigger with my help.

He's currently got a whole bunch of disconnected projects that he's managing, plus any new ones that I toss into the mix. For example, he's handling the resource mines under the mountain and city development plans while also juggling the request for increased iron production and the new facility for cryogenic fluids.

Each of these has their own schematics and information related to it, but they're all disconnected. Back in his main office, he has a rough map of the island, with indicators where projects are located physically as well, but in essence, he's doing the estimating and handling for a lot of these projects each time they come up. As his workforce has gotten larger, the amount of work he's had to do to keep everything running smoothly has also increased.

So, in essence, he wants help restructuring his whole department. It's not something that is easy to solve either, even if on it's face it might seem to be that way. A fairly large portion of our economy is essentially a centrally planned economy. Demons are perhaps more obedient and hive minded than other races, making that possible, but it doesn't prevent the downsides from happening. If you put someone incompetent into a position of power, that whole portion they're in charge of becomes inefficient. Without performance metrics and competition, it's hard to determine exactly who is the most effective at handling a particular task.

For example, dedicating someone to be in charge of all the mining full time would be the correct first step to make. You can even provide them with a prioritized task list of where to send workers on any given day based on how many of them you're working with, given how we currently cycle them between projects. However, we can't say that the priorities should be the same a year from now, or five years from now. You need someone competent, flexible, and with the foresight to determine what should be prioritized next.

Even if you find that person, they also need to be honest and a hard worker. Finding someone who fits all five is a near impossibility. That means that Zeb would also need to handle performance reviews, detracting him even further from the work he'd prefer to be doing. In essence, the person who is most competent ends up doing the least amount of the actual work, instead being relegated to quality control and project oversight.

However, it is necessary. Zeb's already overworked. In practice, he's at the tipping point where these changes have to happen. So, we spent six days drafting up various different ideas for the best way to partition his job out into subordinates. Mining was the biggest one by far that needs to have it's own department. City development was eventually decided to become it's own department as well, and the mechanics team is going to get it's own division with more workers.

On top of all of that, it seems silly to consider Zeb to just be head of construction anymore. It's too diverse of a work field to call it that. Instead, I'll ask Zaka that we designate him minister of the economy, since he's essentially overseeing hundreds of public sector jobs. While he'll end up doing more oversight of subordinates than jobs, it does free him up to focus more on the bigger picture of development, and merely direct the departments to execute them to the best of their abilities.

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