After Cain and Luna left through the portal, chaos reigned in the Library. At first, the fear was that the Spirit Rank weapons and influx of awakened skills would cause a disruption, but after Cain had left the energy in the area had settled, and the portal had returned to normal.
"We have just been abandoned, haven't we?" Jin asked Kone, who only shrugged.
"You could go through that portal after them, but I don't think it would be a very good idea. If you don't want to study here, we could go back to the Farm and relax in the orchard?"
Jin considered that for a moment then turned to look at the Librarian. "I'm not going through a one-way portal to the gods only know where especially when it's full of humans. Could we study here a bit longer? Getting everything ready for his return seems like the best call."
Moana nodded her agreement. "He wanders away now and then, but he always comes back when he is done. At the very least, he will likely send Luna back to us when he finds an appropriate portal."
The Librarian knew that this was the only portal on the planet that led to that particular Realm, but she wouldn't try to change their minds. They were probably right, Cain would come back at some point, at least a portion of him. He had to gather his whole family together at some point to complete the last quest that the Laughing God had set him before he left, and that meant he would need to at least open a portal to collect the rest of the Lamia he had left on the Central Continent.
"Plus, now that I know where here is, it's no problem to move back and forth from the Farm, or even Long Fang Valley. We can come to visit all the time, or the Librarian can come to check out all the fun things that we have made at the Farm.
I think as an elf you would probably appreciate the variety of Mythic Fruit Juices more than most species would, and they all love them." Moana continued.
"I do like good juice. Perhaps we could work together to get things organized here in this world. It would give the Ancients less reason to come and reorganize things after they meet up with Cain. That wouldn't end well for any of the other species, and might even trigger a new war between the Gods, so avoiding that outcome should be a priority." The Librarian agreed.
"But do we try to solve the Cult of Cain that Cyrene has created within the Darklight Host, or should we just keep spreading it? Trying to change their minds now might not be possible, and they almost control a whole continent. Even the Elves of Serrah Woods have started to accept the Outreach Workers into their cities." Kone asked.
"They're just missing information. Once we give them more details, they should start to accept the Creators Pantheon again. Then we can work on getting things up to a standard that the Ancients would find to be acceptable.
The Power levels around the planet are still growing slowly, but it looks like they have stabilized in most regions of the world. We just need to do something about the Northern Continent, and the West.
The Elemental Realm Portals are a big problem, but getting the giants back on track after they lost the Gnomes to guide them shouldn't be too hard. As long as it's in their interests, the Giants are fairly easy to get along with. At least they are if you are stronger than they are."
The Librarian's suggestions gave the remaining Avatars something to plan around. It might be too simplistic to reduce their issues to only a few problems, but the Southern Continent would fall in line fairly quickly now that the General who was pretending to be Morgeth had lost his influence, and the effects of the Djinn's wish would kill him within a few months anyhow.
If they could prevent someone like him from rising up again and get all the Guardians of the major cities to at least ally together they could get the Southern Continent on track to truly civilized living again without too much work.
"We need a proper plan. You know, coordinated efforts everywhere all at once, so that we don't end up messing with each other's ideas." Jessica suggested with her ears twitching happily at the chance to make real change without violence.
Everything in the world was too violent for the disciples of the Bunny God, so having actual input into the plans to make the world better was a golden opportunity for the High Priestess of the Bunnies to shine.
If she could just convince them that peaceful transition was the answer, then she should be able to get them to do the work to make the world a bit closer to actual civilization, not a peaceful version of "Might Makes Right".
"The first thing that we need is academies in the cities. The youngsters with Systems have Guilds, Trade Alliances, and Tradesmen to teach them, but what about the commoner without a trade or system? If they were more educated, they could learn better skills and contribute more to making their neighborhoods better places to live." Jessica suggested.
"More educated populations do tend to be more peaceful and more innovative, so they would soon start making improvements on their own, without waiting for a leader to guide them through every small step simply because they lacked the knowledge to make the changes they wanted." The Librarian agreed.
Kone tapped her chin for a moment, then her eyes lit up with excitement as she got an idea. "We already offer daycare at a lot of our outposts in the cities, so that families who have lost a parent in the wars have it easier. If we hired more teachers and expanded them, we could make those into academies. The Guild could fund and staff them, that shouldn't be an issue."
Moana chuckled. "What would we even teach them though? Most of our Guild members only know fighting and crafting, in case you forgot."
The Leviathan had a point. They didn't actually have a supply of well-educated teachers to staff the academies even if they had no issue building a lot of them.
"You forget, we still have one very valuable asset left to us. The Watchers and the Echoes. They can make puppets with a wide collection of skills and knowledge. If one of them came here, they could copy the knowledge of one of the teachers here and drop a copy or three at every academy we build." Laura suggested, looking up from the book on candy making that she had found.
"Nice save. Alright, so we need to ask them really nicely, and we can get them to create teachers. What about the smaller villages? We can't make that many teachers, and we can't just ignore them either, or the problem won't get any better." Jessica pondered.
"That could be a long-term solution. But if we train more teachers, we can send them out over the next few years until we have enough to put one in each village." The Librarian suggested.
"Bunnies. Teach the Bunnies and send them out to every village. Most of them don't have a system, but if we can get one of the Watchers on board, we can make them all healers as well. Every town always needs a full-time healer, and everyone loves Bunnies, so they can teach school as well." Jin declared and Jessica sighed.
She might have just volunteered her people for something even more troublesome, but they did love to be useful, so she would likely get a huge number of volunteers if she suggested lessons to have them all be teachers.
"And then we just need the Library here to make a curriculum. What do mortals need to know to become more civilized, like me?" Laura asked, making Evangeline laugh.
"If you're the standard of civilized, we might have a very strange future ahead of us. The Seraphim Inquisitors do our teaching, so they have a good grasp on what is needed for Seraphim children to know so that they don't stray." Evangeline explained.
That was enough to get them started on larger-scale plans, pulling in everyone else who had access to the communal thought process.
The Watchers were all on board with the idea, since they would get a whole generation of test subjects out of it, so they could test the changes that education brought to the commoners. Their idea was that the academies in the cities and the Bunnies in the villages should teach different things, for different lives, with a common base, like reading and other essentials.
The only conflict they ran into was what was considered essential. The Watchers thought that some simple things like Architectural theory and Protective Rune creation should be on the list, but that seemed excessive to others. Evangeline thought that they needed the strict morality of the Seraphim, but Kone was pretty sure that the world wasn't ready for casual public nudity.
Cyrene's idea that they should be taught history so that they would know how things got so messy to begin with, was the only idea that didn't meet with resistance. Those among the group who started as transfers all understood very well that most of the world had no idea what they were doing, or even what went on more than a day away from their home. In the Beginner's Valley, they barely knew the outside world existed, and what they knew of the past was all distorted rumors.
Cyrene's intentions might be to glorify Cain, but the idea that if people knew what didn't work, they could work on things that might work was a sound one in the minds of the rest. Even if it did spread the Lamia's Cult all over the world.
