As I saw the Leviathan’s corpse sag into the ground, I felt a surge of relief. I saw other Mages of the Sanctuary start to relax, especially near the back, where they didn’t even have to fight the weaker monsters on the ground anymore. 

Even though there were still a fair number of monsters on the ground left to deal with, everyone knew that the Sanctuary itself was no longer in danger. The true threat had been dealt with - all that was left was cleanup. A moment later, I felt a surge of essence, and blinked in surprise.

It seemed that the council didn’t want to let the mages on the front lines handle cleanup at all, contrary to my expectations. It would have been far more essence-efficient to have the mages finish handling the enemy - but it would also cost a few lives. Apparently, the council now valued Mages more than essence, because they activated yet another round of their strongest weapons.

This volley ripped through the remaining horde of monsters like a hot knife through butter. Nearly a tenth of the surviving monsters died on the spot, as a variety of magical attacks tore them apart. The mages on the back lines seemed to realize their help was still needed, and got back to sending spells into the enemy horde.

I still had a bit of absorption essence left, so I tossed a few lightning bolts into the fight and deflected a few magical attacks that landed somewhat near us. Oddly enough, I didn’t get any Achievement rewards for my kills. I wasn’t sure whether this was because I had previously killed monsters that were ‘similar enough’ that they were still subject to diminishing returns, or whether they were counted as some kind of off-shoot of a spell from the leviathan. Either way, helping out would definitely still contribute to my influence Achievement after the fight.

Once I was down to about 20% of my absorption reserves, I stopped contributing to the fight and decided to sit out the rest of it., I didn’t want to risk getting killed by a random monster due to being out of resources, and I wanted to have a few defensive portals left over. Just in case. So I sat back, watched over Sallia as she drifted off to sleep, and waited for the battle to end. Meanwhile, I hummed a small song to myself as I watched the sanctuary clear out the final remnants of the enemy.

Soon, the battle ended. There had been losses during the fighting - but due to the council’s willingness to spend Achievement on the fight, it was nowhere near how heavy the losses normally should have been. 

I took a moment to look over my Achievement rewards, and my smile widened.

Slaughter: Assist in Killing an Extension of the Great Hive

Influence: Contributed to the defense of the Sanctuary by a [Moderate] amount.

Achievement +5,000, Achievement +5,000

10,000 Achievement for one battle wasn’t bad at all. While it wasn’t quite as much as I had gotten from creating the artificial sun, it was still a huge amount of Achievement to get from one singular battle. I had lost around 2,000 Achievement from using {Eldritch Soul} during the battle, so I had dropped to 97,800 Achievement. This reward pushed me up to 107,800 instead.

Sadly, I didn’t get a skill from the leviathan. I probably hadn’t dealt enough damage using Extinguish to meet the conditions for stealing a skill. That was a bit of a shame, but it wasn’t a big deal. In the first place, we had still gotten a huge reward from the fight. Besides, we still hadn’t gotten most of our rewards for giving this world a real path forward. I had no doubt that when this civilization finished growing the artificial sun and adapting to it, we would get a much heftier reward. Now that we had won a battle against a ten-bell raid with only moderate casualties and one tree lost, I felt that our odds were excellent. After all, the great hive didn’t just create monsters from nothing - it had resource costs too. Now that we had killed a ten-bell raid enemy, it shouldn’t have enough resources to create a new major threat for centuries, at least - more than enough time for civilization to finish adapting to the artificial sun.

As the other Mages who had participated in the fight started to regroup and relax, Sallia, Felix, Anise and I met back up near the edge of the battlefield. A few council members and military commanders collected a few reports from us about the battle, so that they could get better understanding of how the new types of magic worked and what needed to change. After that, a few healers tossed a few healing spells at us, told me that a few people who had suffered more permanent injuries would probably start asking to see me soon, and sent us on our way. We headed home.

With the ten bell raid dealt with, the sanctuary was in even higher spirits than usual. The city threw another massive celebration, where the four of us were acknowledged throughout the entire super-sanctuary for bringing a new era to the world. Everyone celebrated being alive and witnessing a better future, and had a good night.

Time continued to pass. The next raid from the hive was downright pitiful. It was weak enough that the scouts only rang a single bell for it - and that was only a formality. The scouts themselves dealt with the raid nearly single-handedly, since there were so few enemies to deal with and none of them were very strong.

The raid after that was much the same. There was no real threat to the Sanctuary anymore - at least for the next few decades, nobody expected any of the raids to matter much. With the constant renewal of everyone’s essence reserves, these incredibly weakened raids didn’t even sap the sanctuary’s essence reserves the way they used to. Instead, they served as a good way for the new trainee mages to get a bit of combat experience under the watchful eyes of the sanctuary’s other defenders.

Apart from fending off these ‘threatening’ raids, the Sanctuary poured most of its resources into empower the sun further and further.

Years continued to pass by, and the sun grew larger and larger. Since we didn’t need to keep much essence around for emergencies, the sanctuary went all-in to invest as much essence as possible into making the sun bigger. The council had theorized that perhaps the sun would help essence crops grow as well - something the four of us hadn’t thought to check. The council turned out to be correct, so the entire sanctuary worked as hard as possible to make the sun shine on every single corner of the sanctuary.

Finally, in the year we turned eighty, I felt that the Sanctuary had started to reach a level of self-sustainability that it had never had before. The hive’s raids had started to pick back up in strength, but it still had a long way to go before it was a real threat again. Since the sanctuary had already reached a critical mass of proficiency in spellcasters and essence production,  nothing but another ten-bell raid could realistically shake up the sanctuary anymore. Even if another ten-bell raid appeared, most people believed the sanctuary could handle it now. The essence reserves of the entire sanctuary were far greater than ever before, after all.

The four of us hadn’t wasted the three decades since the ten bell raid. We spent most of that time checking the sun and scouring the sanctuary for anything that could possibly go wrong. Since we were so close to the finish line, I didn’t even bother building up my absorption runes - I wanted to spend every single second I could either watching over the sun in case of a last minute mistake.

The other big thing I did, with the council’s assistance, was to teach the next generation. We had tried our best to make sure the sanctuary could maintain and improve the artificial sun without us, but for that to happen, we needed to make sure people actually understood how the sun worked and how it could be repaired if something went wrong. Thus, I decided to spend some time teaching children in the sanctuary, to make sure this world had a sustainable supply of dimensional mages to keep everything running. I started working as a mentor for children, and sorted out kids who I felt had high potential before teaching them every single scrap of information I had gathered on dimensional terraforming.

After thirty years, most of my first batch of spellcasters had joined the spellcasters of the Sanctuary as a repair crew. Nothing had gone wrong with the sun yet, but I remained ever wary of a potential mistake or error down the line. Still, at least so far, nothing had gone wrong.

Being a teacher was never something I had envisioned for my future, but I had to admit, it fit my personality surprisingly well. I enjoyed spending time with children, and seeing my students learn and improve was surprisingly fun. I still enjoyed exploring new things and spending time with my friends to be more fun, and I didn’t think I’d focus very much on teaching in future worlds. However, after we finished our adventures and started getting older in future worlds, I might pick teaching back up as a job after retiring. It would be a second hobby I could pursue when I didn’t feel like singing.

Time continued to pass. The Sanctuary continued to grow stronger, and the seeds of our actions bore fruit, grew, and improved.

Time marched ever onward.