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Serena Snape: Love of Magic - chapter 109
🕑 Added 2025-05-17 02:07:16 +0000 UTCAuthor's Notes: Chapter edited and corrected by Scott Fellman.
"So, are you ready?" I asked the others once we finished lunch. After everyone nodded, we left the mansion and began flying through the sky.
"Are we staying here?" Enid asked as we were hundreds of feet in the air. I nodded slightly.
"Yes, I should be able to work fine from here. Lucius, how much land did Lord Phenex get us?" I asked, Lucius nodded.
"Around 200 square kilometers. The circle is within the territory, so you can work without any problems," Lucius said simply. I nodded. Fun fact: the lake where the island was located was almost 20 square kilometers, of which 15 square kilometers were land, comprising my island. It wasn't quite a complete circle, but from the center to one end of the lake, it was 2.5 kilometers. Now, 200 square kilometers in all directions were completely mine; that formed a circle with a radius of almost 8 kilometers on all sides.
It didn't seem like much, not really. 8 km was something you could cover terribly fast; even by car, you could cover that distance in just a few minutes. Still, it was more than enough to create a city.
I wasn't going to use the entire area, only around 150 square kilometers, which would be a radius of just under 7 kilometers. Again, it wasn't much, but it was enough for a city. Within 150 square kilometers, housing could easily be created for 150,000 to 200,000 inhabitants, much more than what we had estimated and calculated with Lucius.
If we were lucky, we were only hoping for a fifty or so thousand, which would be more than enough to get started. I knew cities of the same size with a couple of million inhabitants. So we had more than enough space for everyone.
Finishing with the calculations.
It was time to get started. I had a city to build. I stood above my island and looked around. I pulled out a Philosopher's Stone with a dozen souls and held it in my hand. This would consume too much energy, even the marginal amount that normal alchemy sometimes uses. Something on such a large scale would be too expensive.
I'd been preparing for this for a while. Read, three days. But that had been enough. Imitating Father from Fullmetal Alchemist, I built a huge circle with underground tunnels that marked the location of the new city. Of course, it was an Alkahestry pentagram. I'd placed enormous pillars imbued with ancient magic and buried them at each point of the pentagram.
Secrecy was necessary to avoid attracting unwanted attention.
I took a deep breath and connected the circle on my shoulder with the one in the city. The ground began to shake slightly, and my arm shimmered violently as the connection emerged. I felt a slight strain behind my brain and over my magic. Doing it over a few dozen meters for a fight was one thing.
A 150km2 area was quite another. I continued to use gold to constantly heal myself and increase my mental speed. I needed it more than anything else right now. I took another deep breath, flexed the Philosopher's Stone, and began.
Pillars of ancient magic began to rise from the ground. They were enormous pillars, dozens of meters wide and hundreds of meters tall. Even from a distance, each pillar could be seen rising, each glowing with ancient magic. It had taken days to achieve this, so I had to use a great deal of time within my time bubbles to finish it in time.
Building them was a piece of cake; the hard part was imbuing them to saturation with ancient magic. That was a damn challenge. They consumed so much magic that I spent days inside a bubble just to create one of them. It was boring as hell.
But it was worth it. Once the pillars were about three-quarters of the way up, they stopped. Then, the surface began to reshape itself to my intentions, creating a huge circle connecting all the pillars, and then the star in the middle creating a second pentagram on the surface.
It was a decoy; the tunnels worked perfectly fine, so the circle on the surface wasn't essential. It was there primarily to deceive. I looked at the pentagram, and everything seemed in perfect condition. They were enormous highways that formed a pentagram, dividing the entire terrain into 11 fragments.
The center, 5 points, and 5 middle sections. The center was where my island was. I looked down and grimaced. I used the Philosopher's Stone again, reshaping the lake where my island was located. Instead of looking misshapen, it was now shaped like a smaller pentagon within the central pentagon, covering half the entire terrain with my island right in the middle.
I flexed the stone again, and five bridges were created over the water, connecting my island to the rest of the terrain. I looked thoughtfully down at the ground; this looked awfully like a large-scale city-building game.
I sighed once more and refocused. The entire area around my island was largely dryland, and partly forest. I didn't really need either. So I transmuted everything above water level relative to my island and flattened it, except for the plant life. Every imperfection was easily corrected, both above and below ground level, and now I was surrounded by a fairly flat pentagram with a forest.
Once I was finished, I started focusing on each section. I had no idea what the five middle sections and the five points of the pentagram would be or who would occupy them, but I didn't need to know. I divided all the sections into 100mx100m blocks, separating them with properly paved streets, taking a little liberty around the edges.
Also, some extras, for example, in some of the middle sections, I would leave a vast, circular space to be used as land to build a Rating Game stadium.
I looked at the Philosopher's Stone in my hand and saw that it was already worn down, and I still had a long way to go. I sighed tiredly and opened a portal. I paused over the first section. I'd been torn about what kind of buildings I wanted to build in my city. At first, I thought of just houses.
After all, I didn't expect all the available space to be occupied with the land I was working on. But I had vastly underestimated Lucius's estimated numbers. So the buildings were the main winners.
Now, I was definitely not an architect, and I certainly didn't know anything about buildings and their shape, so even attempting to begin replicating a style was bound to end horribly wrong. Obviously, my first instinct was English architecture, but it was vetoed almost immediately.
Not because it was harder to build but because I wouldn't know how to make it look right and would end up ruining it. I was going to stick with modern-style architecture. But... too bland, too minimalist, too terrible.
And then it finally occurred to me. The only other thing I could replicate with complete accuracy is the architecture of Hogwarts. I knew that place like the back of my hand. It was mostly Gothic architecture, but since it had been made by witches and wizards, it had some fusion of other styles.
Not only that, but there were also Rashek's memories, including the millennia of living in The Final Empire, whose architecture also approached Gothic architecture, so it was easy to draw on those memories to design everything. Obviously, I also enlisted the help of Korosensei; the bastard was also an excellent architect.
Besides… it seemed awfully appropriate for an underworld city. That's not to say the interiors of the houses are exactly the same; oh no, they would be quite modernized inside, so they were quite comfortable without losing their charm.
I began to fly rapidly over the entire terrain while transmuting everything in my path. Everything was being built instantly: buildings, houses, towers, sidewalks, streets. Everything was perfectly placed and well-grounded. I even used the trees I had set aside from the forest and moved them across the land, scattering them everywhere so the city would have some greenery.
I had prepared for this. I studied and built different buildings, streets, sidewalks, and everything else you can think of. I had learned everything from their composition, shapes, and structure so that I was able to replicate and build everything with my alchemy. My efforts led to the point where I could do it while asleep. It was not just the houses; everything inside was furnished, though it was pretty generic, and everyone had the same things because it was easier that way.
Unfortunately, I couldn't do everything all at once, so I had to fly around each section of the city and build them one by one. Since it was just like using a template, I copied and pasted it. It took me a split second to see where I wanted to build it and let my intention and the Philosopher's Stone do the rest before moving on to the next objective.
Alchemy was terribly tricky; creating buildings as complex as Gothic architecture should have taken a long time, years, but it took me barely a thought.
Slowly but surely, the entire city began to take shape. It took me a couple of hours, but each section fully bloomed. Houses, apartments, factories, towers, and even some empty areas that would become parks or something else.
I finally finished the entire city. Even using Philosopher's Stones to keep costs down, I was still exhausted. Sweat trickled down my face, but I looked at my work and smiled widely with pride.
I had perfectly replicated everything I had in mind. Pentagram City from Hazbin Hotel. I had taken inspiration from that city in the Pride Ring. I was really proud of the result. My island was in the center of the entire pentagram, inside the inner pentagon.
My little island was now surrounded by a pentagon-shaped lake, right in the middle of the pentagon's inner circle. There was a strip of land where important buildings were located that were to be my property.
Some fancy buildings for any pillar devils who want to come for some reason, government buildings, and most importantly, my apothecary and Enid's clinic, or the huge hospital complex where Enid's clinic would be in part.
The star points had been separated into distinct zones. An entertainment zone, a commercial zone, an educational/research zone, and two high-density residential zones. The Residential zones comprised many tall buildings, apartments, and everything else needed. One of them even had a few hotels for tourists.
Then, there were the other five sections in between. One of them contained the three brothels, so it was clearly a red-light district. Another was an industrial zone, then an area where the Rating Game stadium was located, and finally, two low-density residential areas. There were some parks and green spaces in each.
That's not to say there weren't houses or residential buildings in the other areas, but they were spread out throughout.
The only thing I couldn't accomplish was properly completing the necessary infrastructure. For example, the industrial zone was full of empty buildings, and I didn't know what to put inside until I knew what would be needed.
I was delighted with the result. Now I just had to give the order and wait for my new inhabitants to arrive. Despite being reluctant about the whole city thing, I was happy with the outcome. I opened a portal and teleported back to the group.
" So, what do you think?" I asked as I approached my family, who were in the air watching the whole process.
"That was amazing! It was like watching one of those city-building simulator games! It all happened so fast! " Enid exclaimed excitedly.
"That was really amazing, Sera. Good job," Narcissa said with a smile.
"You were wonderful," Bella purred as she pulled out a bottle of cold water and handed it to me. My eyes sparkled with appreciation. I took the bottle and began to gulp down large, refreshing gulps of ice-cold water.
"You- you really did it in a few hours! Even if many devils were working, something like this would take weeks and months! You're amazing! " Ravel squealed in surprise. I smiled widely at her.
"I'm that amazing." I said arrogantly as I strutted.
"Yeah, don't let it go to your head," Bella said teasingly, holding a piece of chocolate between her fingers. I opened my mouth immediately, and Bella placed the chocolate inside my mouth with her fingers. The taste of chocolate quickly filled my taste buds, and I began sucking on Bella's fingers.
She didn't seem to mind; she just removed her fingers from my mouth and grabbed another piece of chocolate, offering it to me again. Enid pouted and walked over, grabbing the piece of chocolate from Bella's hand and offering it to me the same way. She'd done it the night before with the chocolate, but Enid didn't seem to mind either.
Really, if I was willing to make the effort to be pampered like this, maybe I should do it more often. To my surprise, Ravel blushed and stepped forward. Bella smiled and handed her a piece of chocolate. Ravel offered it to me timidly. I opened my mouth eagerly. I expected her to drop the chocolate, but like Bella and Enid, she placed the chocolate and her fingers inside my mouth.
I slowly licked Ravel's fingers, making her blush deeply before letting go.
"I didn't expect that from you," I purred in Ravel's direction. She blushed.
"You did a good job, it's a reward!" Ravel exclaimed, I raised an eyebrow in her direction.
"What am I? A dog? " I asked dryly. Ravel blushed and looked away. Bella and Enid just smiled at me, and I rolled my eyes. They were really having more fun than I expected. Even so, I didn't shy away from the chocolates they handed me. I simply enjoyed the attention. I finally recovered from my exhaustion and looked at Lucius. I guess we had to get back to work.
Comments
TATTERWING
Thanks for the chapter 🍪
