While walking down the steps, Quinn turned to Kairos.
“It seems the solution was simpler than expected. Do you still need me then?”
Kairos rubbed his chin before nodding.
“Sorry, but yes. You’re going to have to work overtime too.”
Quinn blinked a few times.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
Kairos waved his hand dismissively.
“You’ll see soon enough.”
He walked down to Tiana’s room and knocked on the door. It opened in just a second, revealing Tiana.
“So, any results?”
Kairos nodded.
“Although it isn’t a perfect solution, if the potatoes are first frozen, then boiled with a lot of water, they seem to be somewhat edible. However, if a normal person tries to eat it, then they’ll probably turn into a monster. The people that we experimented on were F rank after all.”
Tiana raised an eyebrow.
“I see. So should I let everyone down now?”
Kairos narrowed his eyes slightly.
“Do you have any good way to announce something to all of the farmers?”
Tiana gave a nod.
“Yeah, I already planned for how I would do that a while ago.”
Kairos cleared his throat.
“Alright then. This is the plan I have in mind. There was no good way to guarantee that the villagers would properly pay their taxes under normal circumstances, but this could also work. Tell them that eating the potatoes without proper treatment is very dangerous, because it is.”
He raised a finger.
“But what they can do, is turn in those potatoes, and for every ten they hand in, they can get the points for one that will be treated in return. The way we will tabulate the points is by first having people claiming their plot of land, and they will also have their picture drawn to associate them with their plot of land.”
He turned to Quinn.
“You will be handling that. And those pictures will be used to verify they are the proper person trying to claim their points.”
Quinn stared back blankly.
“That sounds like a pain, but sure.”
Tiana raised an eyebrow.
“This seems like a complicated system. Is he really going to draw every single person? And I’m not even sure if a drawing is enough to dictate whether or not it actually is the correct person.”
Quinn blinked a few times and raised his hand.
“Well, I can recreate a paper as though I had drawn it.”
After a few moments, a tough piece of paper had formed on his hand, and on top of it was a colored drawing of Tiana, with both a body shot, a close-up face view, and even a side view.
Tiana’s eyes widened when she saw this.
“Woah, you could do that?”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“Ah, now that I think about it, your ability can be used like that.”
Quinn sighed.
“Yes, but it takes quite a bit of mana. But I’m still confident that I can draw with a similar standard, though it won’t be colored.”
Tiana raised an eyebrow.
“…What if you had as much mana as you wanted?”
Quinn looked at her strangely.
“Then I suppose that would make my job a lot easier. But I don’t-”
He was about to continue, until he realized that mana was flowing into his body. Quinn cleared his throat.
“Ah. It seems it won’t be that difficult after all.”
Kairos nodded.
“Trying to replicate currency has many issues, as people can forge this currency, begin stealing it from others, and also the production of that itself. Although we can’t actually use credit cards right now, we can replicate that system by manually creating a database and using a person’s look as their identification.”
Tiana smirked.
“It looks like you really thought about this.”
Kairos shrugged.
“You did hire me for logistics, after all. Do you think that this would work?”
Tiana gave a small nod.
“I don’t see any issues. I’ll take care of it then.”
With that, Tiana left, and Quinn followed after her as his job wasn’t over yet. Kairos decided to just watch over, wondering what exactly she was going to do to announce it to everyone.
He then watched as she shot up into the air by a metal pillar, before forcefully bringing everyone on top of the walls closer by shifting the top of their platforms closer.
Kairos blinked a few times as he stared at Tiana’s display.
“…I guess that’s one way to do it.”
From there, she began shouting out the new system that Kairos had suggested and gave everyone instructions on what to do. From there, she segmented the people into groups and had them go in order to have their information documented, then told the others to harvest their crops while they waited, but also to leave a few so they could use the potato sprouts to replant.
Kairos watched as Tiana managed everything and tapped his chin a few times.
“…Seems to be working out.”
The rest of his group along with the musical trio were let down first of all, as they weren’t farmers, and went back to the center of the building and met up with Kairos. Eric, Nick, and Jenny all gave their greetings as they passed by, and went back to talking about musical notes as they continued to walk in.
Nicole directly jumped out to Kairos and grabbed onto his arm.
“Kairos!”
In response, he let out a sigh.
“Why are you acting like we haven’t seen each other in years?”
Nicole pressed her lips together.
“B-But it was a long time!”
Kairos rolled his eyes.
“It wasn’t even a full day since we last saw each other. It’s not that big of a deal, right?”
Nicole looked down at the ground.
“But… it was really hard to fall asleep.”
Kairos responded bluntly.
“Are you sure? If anything, I think it would be much easier for you to fall asleep.”
Nicole blushed.
“I-It really does make it easier to sleep!”
Kairos looked back at her, clearly indicating that he didn’t believe her in the slightest.
“Alright then.”
It was a rather slow process, but it was done more or less as efficiently as possible. Tiana created a new building next to the one in the center and funneled all the farmers into it. Quinn was inside, and responsible for creating the pictures that were required, tirelessly using the same replication spell over and over again to create profiles of people with their code next to it.
Tori scratched the side of her head as that was happening.
“Um, so are we still doing the practice thing in the morning?”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“It looks like Tiana is going to be preoccupied, so probably not. Also, the monsters seem to be quite a bit stronger now, so at least for now I believe we should pause the trips we have at night.”
Sydney let out a soft hum.
“So… we just do whatever we want then. That sounds nice.”
Without another word, she walked into the building. Kairos was a little concerned, but felt it was probably fine considering Sydney had been holding up fine for a long time now.
Nicole tilted her head to the side.
“Um, Kairos?”
Kairos turned to her.
“Yeah?”
Nicole coughed.
“Um, are you tired?”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“Realistically speaking, I don’t think I feel tired anymore. I’m pretty sure that’s the same for you too.”
Nicole puffed up her cheeks.
“B-But we can still fall asleep! And if there’s nothing else to do, we might as well…”
Kairos let out a soft sigh.
“How about this, you show me how far you’ve gotten with your stealth practice, then I’ll consider it.”
Nicole smiled.
“Ah, alright! I’ve made a lot of progress!”
The two of them went into the center building as well, leaving Tori outside twiddling her thumbs.
“…I guess I can see what Chase is up to.”
Kairos and Nicole soon got to his room. From there, Kairos walked to the center of the room and then turned to her.
“Alright, now try to sneak up on me.”
Nicole nodded.
“This time for sure!”
Her body gradually began disappearing, until there was nothing left. Though, considering that Kairos could see mana, it didn’t matter all that much. He decided not to be cheap, and closed his eyes, seeing if he could catch her without his vision.
Kairos relaxed his body, trying to make any sensation he felt clearer, while his breaths became completely silent.
For quite a while, he didn’t hear anything at all.
This went on for a minute, almost making him think that Nicole had just left, leaving him there to just stand by awkwardly. But then, he heard a floorboard creak. He opened his eyes and looked in that direction.
“…Huh.”
But when he looked that way, he did not see the mana that resembled Nicole. He turned around and suddenly leaped backwards. Nicole, who was right behind him, gradually formed into view with a pout on her face.
“How did you know that time? I thought I got you for sure!”
Kairos chuckled.
“I guess not. How did you pull it off though?”
Nicole let out a soft hum.
“I found a cool thing I can do with my ability, then I did that!”
Kairos gave a small nod.
“That’s good.”
Nicole averted her gaze.
“Is it good enough to…”
Kairos chuckled.
“Well, you didn’t exactly catch me, now did you?”
Nicole tapped the tips of her fingers together.
“W-Well, you said to sneak up on you, and I did get really close! I just… didn’t get that close.”
Kairos let out a sigh. He decided to reluctantly agree, because he was actually fooled.
“Alrig-”
“Can you come help?”
Tiana directly opened the door and called out to Kairos. In response, he looked at her strangely.
“What? Don’t you have other people to handle all the paperwork?”
Tiana shook her head.
“No. There are people approaching the city, and they are not weak by any means.”
Kairos narrowed his eyes.
“…Perhaps we should’ve been a little nicer to the scouts.”
Tiana waved her hand dismissively.
“It’s… probably not related.”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders and began moving forth.
“Anyway, do you need anyone else?”
Tiana took a deep breath.
“I would call them, but they will probably only be a burden.”
Nicole’s lip twitched.
“Does that include me?”
Tiana turned to look at her.
“Yes, sorry.”
With that, she left. Kairos gave a glance over his shoulder as he left too.
“Don’t worry too much. We’ll be fine.”
Nicole slowly nodded.
“Ok…”
Kairos and Tiana both ran until they reached the top of the wall, where the normal entrance was. When they looked down, they saw a group of five people walk up.
And one of them was Edward.
