For example, at this moment, there are two submenus in Brand's lord system, the Trade Wind Ring and Tonyger (2/3 of the territories). He can see the income and expenditure of the two territories, their specialties, population, mining forest resources, and public security status, among others.

Additionally, there is also a personnel appointment data set. For instance, on different sub-options, you can see who the current person in charge is. For example, on the financial status panel of Tonyger, the person responsible is Roman.

If Brand were to reassign Roman from this position, he could see a series of impacts on the territory's finances in the future. This system existed in the game, but it was more powerful in the game. Players, as lords, could even use this system to complete personnel appointments and issue certain decrees.

However, in this Vorn World, the territory system cannot be practically operated; it is basically just a monitoring system. Yet even just monitoring is quite powerful. Brand can see that if he assigns Roman to be in charge of the Shafren Silver Mine, the income from the silver mine can increase by nearly one-third after three months.

The capability of this merchant lady was first intuitively realized by him only after discovering the secret of this lord system. However, even so, he still prefers to let Roman continue to hold the financial power of Tonyger.

Although Little Roman's talent in financial management is far less than her talent in business, now the trade within the territory is not just the income from the silver mine. Calculating from the total amount, keeping her in this position is much more cost-effective for him than letting her be in charge of some mine.

Of course, these are all off-topic. Brand looked at the line of ghostly green text hovering on his retina, was slightly startled, and then agreed to the request.

Soon a subsystem appeared under the lord system named Valhalla. However, this system is still grey. Brand tried touching it but immediately got a prompt:

"Valhalla in cultivation, the First Stage requires 132,000 Mana."

"132,000 units of Mana!?" Brand was taken aback. The mana units here were equivalent to mana; certainly, not anyone could provide 130,000 mana—not even wizard leaders like William and Turaman. They would likely end up drained. Such an amount of mana could only be provided through magic crystals, Brand quickly realized.

The lowest grade of magic crystal is the secondary Moonstone, followed by the Flame Pattern Agate. However, he wasn't a wizard before, nor was he a professional alchemist, so he really didn't know how many units of magic secondary Moonstone could convert into. For a moment, he was somewhat uneasy. If the conversion rate were too low, this thing named 'Valhalla' would purely be a bottomless black hole.

Thinking of this, Brand hurriedly took out a pre-prepared magical crystal from the Dimension Hole; it was a secondary Moonstone. The quality of the magic crystal mines in the Black Forest was quite good. At least the magic loaded on this secondary Moonstone was much richer than those Brand had seen on the market.

He tossed the secondary Moonstone onto the Array. Almost in the blink of an eye, the diamond-shaped magic crystal lost its color and turned transparent, like a glass-like object. Meanwhile, the prompt on Brand's retina also changed:

"Valhalla in cultivation, the First Stage requires 131,900 Mana."

"1:100." Brand breathed a sigh of relief. If even the lowest grade Moon Crystal could exchange for 100 units of mana, then the advanced magic crystals would be no problem. He also tried the Flame Pattern Agate, and indeed, the exchange rate for one Flame Pattern Agate was about 2000.

In this way, the 130,000 units of mana would require only a few hundred pieces of magic crystal. The first mining from the Rich Magic Crystal Mine in the Black Forest produced magic crystals in tons; while the territory at present needed magic crystals merely for Char and other mages, as well as for Rupert and Master Tama's forge over there. Thus, Brand almost allocated half of this mining harvest to his pocket, without worrying that Valhalla's needed magic crystals would not be enough.

But he quickly realized he was too naïve.

After throwing down a few hundred pieces of crystal and exchanging them for a pile of colorless and transparent glass, the city core finally absorbed enough mana for the First Stage. The whole crystal emitted a creaking sound, and soon numerous cracks appeared on it.

Then, with a cracking sound, this city core unexpectedly shattered in front of everyone's eyes, sprouting from the original slot a...

a small tree bud.

"What the heck!" Even with Brand's experience, he was stunned at this moment; planting the City Heart like a seed was bizarre enough, and he didn't expect it to actually sprout a tree seedling.

However, Brand also knew that this tree must be extraordinary. No one would believe that something from dumping hundreds of magic crystals would just be an ordinary tree seedling—only to see that seedling grow rapidly with the wind, reaching almost Brand's height in no time.

Brand looked up only to see that the seedling had started to thicken and lengthen, extending branches, like the holy trees of ancient elves, growing within moments to a size requiring one person to embrace and reaching several meters in height.

In just a minute, this 'seedling' grew to the standard level that ordinarily needs ten years to achieve, yet it showed no signs of stopping.

Everyone present saw the dense aerial roots beginning to grow on the trunk, while numerous roots emerged from beneath the stony Array surface overturning stone tablets, these roots growing visibly, then twisting together.

Within a few breaths, the 'seedling' had grown even larger.

It looked just like an ancient tree now.

"This... this is..." At this moment, Otarais, who had been dormant in Brand's heart all along, also awoke because of sensing the intense change of magic around. When she saw this tree, she struggled to find words.

In fact, Brand had long been speechless.

Because right in front of him, the seedling was becoming thicker and thicker, countless roots and branches extending from the trunk, expanding now to the point where it would take seven or eight people to encircle it. However, its height stayed relatively low, reaching only a few meters off the ground. At this point, Brand gradually saw the shape of this tree, remarkably forming a natural plaza between its canopy layers. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

"Holy crap!" Brand finally realized: "Isn't this the World Tree from within the Trade Wind Ring!"

...

(PS: Wind Archer (below) has been moved to later, so don't ask where (below) it went; as long as the chapter order is correct, it's fine. Uh-huh, the development of the territory will be written together...)