It would probably be more of an issue if I didn’t have Divided Mind to split my attention. We finish eating, but Mercy and I spend some more time hanging out with the kids before bed. When the kids finally get tired, we send them to bed and then head to bed ourselves.

  We have our fun, then I open a soulscape and invite all of my wives, except Myria, and the kids. Once everyone has arrived, I spend some time sparring with all of them and giving more pointers. It is obvious that they have been practicing, so I start teaching them more of the basics.

  I am really, really tempted to ask Lin about what Seronia said, but I manage to keep my promise. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy when I made the promise, but I may have underestimated the difficulty. Being in front of all my wives and not saying anything is a lot harder than I thought it would be.

  Unfortunately, training everyone on attacks and defenses isn’t much of a distraction. I have plenty of mental capacity left over for my curiosity to come up with possibilities. From what Seronia said, it is pretty much guaranteed that I am not sterile, so why isn’t anyone pregnant?

  We haven’t taken any precautions, so someone should have gotten pregnant by now. Maybe they asked Seronia to keep them from getting pregnant, that should be within her abilities. It would be the easiest and most sure way of not getting knocked up, so it’s possible.

  It also makes perfect sense, this wouldn’t be a good time to have newborns to take care of. Waiting until after the war is logical and something Lin would likely think of. I have never really wanted to be a father, but after adopting eight kids, that doesn’t really matter anymore.

  Once the war is done, if my wives want to bear my children, I will not argue against them. Before the war ends, it wouldn’t be safe to have children, they would become targets. Even after the war, it will still be an issue, I doubt I will ever be without enemies.

  However, it will be a lot easier to keep my kids safe if I don’t have to worry about the demons. Even now, I can’t be sure that I have taken care of all of the demons hidden among the humans. Hm, thinking of that, I wonder if I could add the counter to their shapeshift to the network.

  If demons can’t hide anywhere the network is, that would take away one of their main advantages. I fully expect them to try all sorts of sneaky tactics once the war starts, I need to make counter-plans. Taking away their ability to blend in would put a major crimp in their plans.

  What they did in the empire shows just how much the demons like sneaking around and causing trouble. They surely have plans to commit acts of sabotage once the war begins stopping that will be important. I quickly call for everyone to take a short break and discuss the idea with Lin.

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  Lin says “That’s a good idea, but the current spell is meant to be a pulse. That won’t really work with the network, will it?”

  “Why not? We can just set it to send out a small pulse from each obelisk every few minutes or so. That should be more than enough.”

  Lin says “Yes, that would work. Then we just need to add the spell to the network, but what do we do about them learning to adapt to the spell?”

  “Hm, that’s a good point. We need to add something to prevent that, or at least make it much more difficult.”

  Lin says “I agree, but how do we do that?”

  “We need to add something to make part of the spell different each time it activates. A randomizing factor so that the spell isn’t the same each time. That way they can’t adapt unless they learn all of the variations of the spell.”

  Lin says “That sounds like it would work, but I have no idea how we are going to do that. Is it even possible to have a part of a spell that changes constantly?”

  “It should be. We don’t need to alter the spell itself, just the frequency of the pulse. That should be more than enough to confuse the demons.”

  Lin says “What do you mean, frequency of the pulse?!”

  I realize that I have gone beyond Lin’s knowledge, so I sit down and do my best to explain. It would be easier if I knew more, but I am basically going off of things I learned from TV series. After I am done explaining, Lin looks confused, so I push it aside and have everyone go back to practicing.

  While I am doing that, half of my mind is already working on changing the revealing spell. I need to alter it so that it will fit in with the network, then I will worry about the frequencies. Luckily, since Lin and I revamped the spell completely, it isn’t hard for me to modify it.

  The problem I run into is that it stands now, the spell takes too much mana for the network to handle. If I add it to the network as is, it will limit the ability of the other portions of the network. The easiest way to fix that would be to increase the available mana of the network.

  However, to do that I would need to go around and modify all of the obelisks, which would be a major pain. I don’t have that kind of time, it would take weeks to visit all the current obelisks. What’s worse is that during that time Lizzy would just keep placing more obelisks.

  Wait, what if I could send changes to all of the obelisks remotely, like a firmware update? The trick would be to send some kind of signal through the network that would affect physical changes on the obelisks. They are made of stone, so I could add a stone shaping spell to the network and use it to add the needed runes to the obelisks.

  I could even set it to do the same to any obelisks added to the network, then I wouldn’t have to change the current setup. That sounds like it would work and adding the stone shaping spell to the network will be simple. Of course, I will need to return to the capital to be able to do so, but at least I have a plan now.

  The runes to add to increase the mana gathering of the obelisks is actually the easiest part. Thanks to my new understanding of mana, improving the runes for the obelisks is a simple matter. My constant use of pure mana was actually a mistake, the elements are better in some circumstances.

  Take a fireball for instance, it is more powerful if you use fire mana instead of pure mana. Pure mana converted to fire mana is actually weaker than natural fire mana is. So, using pure mana to feed natural fire mana is much better than just converting the pure mana.