The room let Lumine's expression run its course without comment, and Ryen redirected the conversation toward the Ender Chest sitting open on the table in front of them.
"How has the Twilight Forest expedition been going overall? Solid returns?"
Scaramouche nodded, the movement minimal. He was still somewhere inside what the memory crystal had shown him, the surface of his face had returned to its usual controlled register, but the quality behind it was different from before. He answered without delay, because the question had been asked and delay would be a dereliction.
"Per your standing instructions, strip everything on the way through. The team has treated that as the first principle of all movement. Every zone cleared gets cleared properly."
He paused, collecting the specifics.
"Even the surface soil. Dashi calculated that the Sumeru desert reclamation will need enormous quantities and prioritised extraction accordingly. Soil, special saplings, unique tree varieties, all brought back."
At this, Alhaitham's expression shifted into something quietly relieved.
The desert transformation had been proceeding faster than anyone had projected, and the reason was simple: the MC World's materials worked exactly as described, and the people deploying them needed almost no training to do so. Four or five thousand workers, each carrying a unit of soil, each watching a single demonstration of how placement worked, and then it was simply a matter of hands and time. The barrier to participation was essentially zero.
Which was precisely why the bottleneck was raw volume. They had already worked through the initial stockpile from the Twilight Forest's first cleared zones, and the area treated so far was a modest corner of Aaru Village. The desert was not Aaru Village. The desert was the desert, an expanse that dwarfed the entirety of the Guili Plains several times over, and Nahida's plan was not to transform all of it, but even a selective transformation on that scale demanded quantities of soil and saplings that could only be described as astronomical.
The Twilight Forest resetting every run suddenly felt less like a curiosity and more like a structural feature of a very good plan.
"The Timewood and Transformation Trees have also been cut and brought back," Scaramouche continued.
Naphis, who had been in a state of barely contained scientific excitement from the moment these words were first mentioned, made a sound that suggested his internal composure had reached its load limit.
"What about staves and law books? And the Tinkerers weapons?"
"No Master-tier staves. Fifteen or so Advanced-tier staves recovered, along with a collection of spell books and spell scrolls." He looked at Ryen. "The Tinkerers weapons, the main force has been running their own blades through progression in the Twilight Forest as it unlocks, and incidentally levelled several hundred additional weapons alongside their own. Sheaths, katanas, and so on. Around five hundred total."
He paused.
"I only brought the staves back with me. The weapons are stored at the Twilight Forest exit point and will come with the team when they return."
Ryen absorbed this with the mild satisfaction of someone whose plan has proceeded as expected.
"Good work. Pick yourself a staff, you've earned one. If you need the spells swapped out, the Enchanting Table is set up through the usual door."
Under other circumstances, Scaramouche would have responded to this the way someone responds to being told they have access to the thing they have been thinking about for weeks. The staff had been the reason he came on the expedition in the first place.
Now it sat in front of him as a practical tool he needed rather than something he wanted, and the distinction between those two things was very clear to him at present.
He nodded.
"Thank you."
Ryen looked at him for a moment. Said nothing. Moved on.
"Overall assessment: no major breakthroughs, but consistent steady progress. Running to plan. That's exactly what we need."
He turned his attention to Naphis, who had been vibrating at an imperceptible frequency since the words Timewood and Transformation Trees were uttered.
"Naphis. First priority, tour the world, or go straight to Albedo's research station?"
Naphis looked genuinely pained by this question, the way a person looks when they want two things that are mutually exclusive.
"If I could split myself into two people," he said, with a rueful quality, "I would do both simultaneously. As it stands, " He gave a short, decisive exhale. "Albedo's station. The scholars who arrived before me have been working, and I need to know whether they needed guidance I did not provide, and whether the Timewood and Transformation Trees have been properly accounted for in the research scope."
He looked briefly at the trees in question.
"I cannot let those sit in a box while I go sightseeing."
"You are a scholar in the truest sense," Ryen said, with the particular warmth he reserved for people who were fully themselves. He pointed toward the door. "Portal is in the same place. Go through and someone will take you to Albedo. Bring the trees with you, those are headed there anyway."
Naphis was on his feet before the sentence finished, trees in hand, moving with the urgency of someone who has identified where they need to be and has decided that anything between here and there is an inconvenience to be crossed efficiently.
He was gone in under a minute.
Alhaitham watched this departure with the expression of someone managing a low-level concern.
"There are only two Sages remaining in Sumeru now. In terms of standing, capability, and demonstrated contribution, Naphis would be the most appropriate candidate for Grand Sage."
He paused.
"Unfortunately, his primary interest is clearly not administration."
"You are also a candidate," Ryen said, reasonably.
Alhaitham shook his head.
"I am currently occupied with studying this world."
Ryen shrugged. He was not going to argue either of them into a job they did not want, and he was also not going to pretend he did not recognise the pattern: both Naphis and Alhaitham were people who had the capacity for institutional leadership and the specific preference not to exercise it. This was its own kind of competence, knowing where your attention should go.
Besides, Tighnari was still in Sumeru. Sumeru was not ungoverned.
"Travel plans," he said, moving the room along. "I want to go to Inazuma before the Lantern Rite. We have been here long enough that skipping Inazuma entirely would be a waste, and the Lantern Rite is the next fixed point on the calendar. So: Inazuma first, then back here for the Rite, then Mondstadt."
Jean's expression changed in a way she was not quite suppressing.
"The timing on Mondstadt would line up with the Windblume Festival," she said, with the careful neutrality of someone reporting a fact rather than expressing a preference, which was not entirely convincing given that the fact was one she had clearly already calculated.
"It would," Ryen confirmed, with equal neutrality.
Jean did not add anything further. She did not need to. The Windblume Festival in her own city, with Ryen present for it, the implications were clear to everyone in the room, including Jean, who was aware that the implications were clear and had decided this was not a problem.
Ningguang noted this, and the note went into the category of things she found quietly amusing, and she said nothing that would complicate Jean's evening.
She did, however, speak next.
"The Lantern Rite this year carries more weight than usual. It marks the practical beginning of governance by the people rather than by gods, not just in Liyue, but as a declaration of the Alliance's direction. All five nations will likely send formal representation. The occasion needs to be planned for properly."
She looked around the table.
"Logistics, guest arrangements, the ceremonial components, all of this needs to be in order before we leave for Inazuma."
Venti had been waiting for an opening and took it.
"And the Lantern Rite Battle Royale, "
"Yes," Ningguang said, before he could elaborate. "That too. The competitive events will run across all the MC World's major modes: Bed Wars, Parkour, Exploration, and others. Individual and team prizes. The top one thousand performers across all categories will be selected for something larger."
She looked at Ryen.
"The Mage Corps," he said. "Ningguang and I have been planning it. Elite selection from across the Alliance's best MC World performers, equipped with staves and trained as a dedicated Witchcraft unit. It becomes the Alliance's highest-tier fighting force."
"Harder than Dragon-Rider cavalry?" Alhaitham asked.
"Dragon-Riders are mass power. The Mage Corps is specialist power. The Witchcraft mod at Master-tier is something else entirely." He paused. "The two serve different functions. Both are necessary."
Alhaitham filed this under things that required more direct observation to evaluate properly, which was essentially his response to most of the MC World's capabilities until he had seen them personally.
"I want Sumeru's people in the running," he said. "We may not fill many slots in the first cohort, given how recently we arrived. But having any representation in the initial Mage Corps matters."
"Then get your fifteen hundred soldiers oriented as fast as possible," Ryen said. "They have a week before the Lantern Rite begins. That is not nothing."
He looked around the table one final time.
"One more thing before we close. The draw blade and furniture mods have been running well, production is stable, distribution is working, both are making meaningful improvements to daily life across the four nations. Good progress."
"The Witchcraft mod is the lagging piece. We have staves, we have spell books, we have a general framework. What we do not have is a clear map of the mod's full infrastructure, the Wizard Towers, the specific library ruins, the high-value spell sources on this continent. That changes now."
He leaned forward slightly.
"This week: I want teams deployed to map every Wizard Tower and Witchcraft-associated structure on the current landmass. Maintain the trading relationships with any Witches or Wizards we encounter, we need access to their knowledge, not their hostility. And advance teams into the new continent. Basic terrain survey only, nothing committed. But we need to know what we are walking into before the serious exploration begins."
He let that settle for a moment.
"After the Lantern Rite, the new continent opens. That is the next phase. We need to be ready."
~~----------------------
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