The empire map finally settled into stillness, its luminous borders pulsing with quiet power.
Roads gleamed.
Cities glowed.
Ports hummed with potential.
I exhaled.
Everything that could be built for now had been built.
Everything that could be reshaped through raw force of points had been reshaped.
I had burned through nearly all the wealth in my Build reservoir—tens of thousands of points converted into infrastructure, sanitation, naval capacity, and urban expansion.
And the empire looked it.
Even the System seemed satisfied, humming like a content beast that had finally been fed.
But there was one final category.
One final tool.
One final lever of power that I had never touched.
A soft golden tab shimmered into the foreground.
EDICTS
Seventy-five accumulated points.
Unused.
Untested.
Pure, untouched authority.
If technology was knowledge, and build points were labor—Then Edicts were the imperial will made manifest.
