The Natural Empire of the Oceanic Dragon

"Hmm, the name sounds pretty good. So, what kind of story is it?"

Artilan grinned confidently.

"It's a story about a hero who slays a demon king, but eventually becomes a demon king himself and gets slain by another hero."

The wine woman's eyes showed a hint of confusion.

"The hero slays the demon king, so why would he become a demon king?"

"Because she became a queen, and then her mind and body were corrupted by power. I ask you, for a pure child, is it better to become a hero, or to become a king and be corrupted?"

The wine woman said matter-of-factly:

"Children naturally prefer to be a hero admired by everyone."

As she spoke, the wine woman dragged a wine barrel from under her desk, poured herself a flagon, and then pushed the remaining barrel in front of Artilan, asking:

"I'm just curious, how are you going to make Hana think that a calm and wise mage is better than a hero admired by thousands, or a king with great power and authority?"

Artilan grabbed the wine barrel and took a sip.

"I'll let it slide this time, but don't bring wine to the school again. As the vice-principal, how can you allow something that disrupts thinking like wine to appear in a sacred school?"

"But seriously, has your brewing skill improved again?"

The wine woman raised her head proudly and laughed heartily.

"You noticed."

Artilan glared at her, taking a big gulp and finishing the wine in the barrel.

"You weren't hiding it at all. This new wine is completely different from your previous brewing methods. It's a bit like Frostfire Wine. Have you completely deciphered the Frostfire Wine brewing method now?"

The wine woman poured herself another glass, scratching her head in slight distress, swirling the emerald green wine in her glass before drinking it all in one gulp.

"I gave my most successful batch of Frostfire Wine to Master Jaina to taste. She said it already has 30% of the original's effect, and praised my efforts over the years."

"But achieving 30% effect is all thanks to the rotation technique you researched. However, the effect of rotation is almost at its limit. The only thing left is to improve the quality of the brewing ingredients."

But this isn't a project that the Great Druid would help with.

Since using natural objects to brew wine is the wine woman's Druid path, then all knowledge related to brewing needs to be learned by the wine woman. If it's a project that the Druid cannot touch at all, then naturally she can ask for help.

A person's energy is limited. Asking for help with things you're not good at is the right thing to do, but making brewing equipment with magical wood is something the wine woman should be good at.

There are plenty of trees in the forest that have absorbed centuries of natural magic. If you really think that the strength of other woods in the forest isn't enough, then Artilan can help the wine woman find Oak Guardians.

Just give the Oak Guardian a haircut, trim some of his excess branches, and that would be enough wood for the wine woman's needs. After all, the wine woman doesn't brew too much at once.

Sometimes, the wine produced isn't even enough for Artilan the dragon to drink.

After finishing the barrel of wine, Artilan smacked his lips with lingering enjoyment.

"Pretty good. The rich tangerine aroma and natural magic are cleverly combined. Tangerine invigorates the spirit, and the natural aura restores stamina. It's the perfect replenishment after a battle."

"You used rotation to refine all the essence contained in the tangerine, and perfectly merged it with the apple wine. It's sweet and sour, a very good fruit wine."

"Promote it to the halflings, they will definitely like this mild-tasting fruit wine."

The wine woman gave him a roll of her eyes.

"Why is it that as soon as I brew a new wine, you think about whether you can sell it to the halflings and how much money you can earn from them? It's hard work for me to develop new wines too!"

Artilan bluntly drank the last of the wine.

"Aren't you just saying that because you want me to send more people to help you research new wines? Speak up, who do you want this time, a merman or a centaur?"

The wine woman was equally blunt.

"I want a snake person. If you can get Ophelia to assist me, I can even help you research how to mass-produce fruit wine!"

Ophelia won't do. These days, she has been surrounding her sister, trying to awaken more of their childhood memories. But Trina is still slowly turning into the training camp wanderer girl from the half-goat's memories.

Of course, Trina's treatment is destined to be a long process.

Ophelia's efforts are not useless. At least Trina's attending physician, Hana, said that if they wanted the young Trina to take the lead, they had to have the childhood Trina to assist her.

Moreover, her body was quite severely eroded by shadow energy. Artilan used the Water of Life as the base liquid, adding Life Acorns, Starlight Grass, Divine Berries and other materials to make a life potion for treatment.

Drinking concentrated herbal juice of life potion every day, Artilan felt that Trina's skin was a little green.

Fortunately, the shadow energy has not completely eroded Trina's soul, and her lifespan loss can still be saved. The disadvantage is that her appearance may be changed a little bit by natural magic.

When the shadow energy goes wild, Trina's appearance will also become as black as ink. Compared to the half-goat's memory of her, her fiery red hair and fair skin have become a little dull.

If you only look at Trina, it's not obvious, but when compared to Ophelia, Trina is much rougher than Ophelia. Ophelia's hair color is like a dazzling ruby, and her skin is as white as snow.

Ophelia is called a princess, not only because she is the daughter of the Snake People chieftain, but also because her appearance and temperament are no different from a real princess.

Especially after she accepted Artilan's guidance and switched from the original Elemental Shaman to a Mind Mage, the aura emanating from her heart made her even more like a noble princess.

And such a noble princess is perfect for serving a dragon.

With Ophelia by his side, Artilan finally understood why the dragons in the stories like to capture princesses, because the feeling of having a princess serve as your maid is really amazing!

"Ophelia can't be your assistant, but she can be responsible for playing the demon king defeated by the hero in this play, a queen who rules the kingdom!"

The wine woman's eyes widened instantly, filled with admiration.

"The hero defeats the queen, and then he begins to govern the kingdom. Decades later, the hero is also corrupted by power and becomes a demon. A new hero stands up and defeats him."

"Such cycles continue endlessly. I believe all the children participating in this performance will realize that the position of king is not a good one. It is indeed very educational."

"So what role did you prepare for Hana?"

Artilan flicked his tail gently.

"The wise sage of fate who guides the hero to defeat the demon king, the starlight mage who follows the guidance of the stars. She will appear in the first act to guide the first hero to understand his mission and set off to fight the demon king."

"Meanwhile, in the final scene, as the Hero transformed into the Demon King, she sought out a new Hero."

The Barmaid nodded incessantly.

"Hurry up and write the script! I can't wait to see the complete story!"

Although Attilan considered it just a simple play, for the Druids in the forest, it was a form of performance usually enjoyed only by humans and elven nobles.

For the Druids, uncivilized people living in the remote natural lands, it was indeed a novelty.

Since the Barmaid was so interested, other Druids would likely be interested as well. Attilan felt it necessary to invite everyone to participate in the creation of the play.

It would just be more hard work for Hedwig.

In the Barmaid's office, Attilan wrote a series of invitation letters on bark paper.

When Hedwig was summoned to the office and saw the thick stack of bark paper on the table, she felt her wings go weak.

"Hedwig, please deliver these letters separately to Big Horn, Taishan, the Fang Brothers, Flower Woman, and Fruit Woman. The rest will spread the word among themselves."

"You only need to take a turn around the forest and you can come back."

The Barmaid sighed for Hedwig. Meeting a master like Attilan, Hedwig was truly unlucky. Most other Druids only delivered letters to one person.

A messenger like Hedwig, who needed to deliver a whole round of letters, was truly rare. It could only be blamed on Attilan's wide circle of friends.

Even though everyone lived in the forest, there wasn't much interaction between many of the Druids. Attilan knew this was normal. Many classmates who studied in the same class every day were just as unfamiliar with each other after several years.

Moreover, it wasn't easy to make friends with Druids who were accustomed to living in seclusion.

Because Druids could talk to animals and also had spells to understand languages, you didn't have to worry about Druids becoming lonely after not interacting with people for a long time.

Hearing that Attilan was going to start a theater troupe at the Druid school, all the active Druids rushed to the school, even if they didn't want to perform on stage.

Watching the performance was also great! Moreover, Attilan also said that he would cleverly integrate the "Rainbow Feather Garment Song" into this play, which made it even more attractive to everyone.

The Barmaid, who had been watching Attilan write letters all along, curled her lips in disdain.

"I knew you weren't so kind-hearted. You talked about psychological quality education to prevent Hana from going down the wrong path, but you're just using the guise of starting a theater troupe."

"The purpose is still to trick more teachers into the school and at the same time get more Druids to contribute to your Atlantis Kingdom. Everyone has already helped you optimize a lot of wasteland."

"You can't possibly want to trick everyone into going to the wetlands to help you improve the soil environment, right?"

Attilan chuckled and waved his hand, saying:

"The soil in the wetlands is very fertile. Apart from a little too much moisture, I have a way to solve the other problems. I also plan to build a fish-farming lake in the center of the wetlands."

"By gathering all the water elements in the wetlands into the lake, I believe the water element concentration will definitely be higher than in Greenscale Town. The fish raised will definitely be more delicious. I'll treat everyone to fish then."

The Barmaid just snorted coldly and leaned back on her tall vice-principal's chair, saying:

"See, the dragon's tail is showing! What 'eating fish'? You just want everyone to be your free labor."

Although the Barmaid often seemed dizzy from drinking, she was actually the first person in the forest to see through Attilan's intentions.

However, exposing Attilan didn't do her any good. After all, after Attilan made friends with a group of Druids, she also enjoyed many benefits.

She had lived in the forest for so long, but she didn't know that there was actually a Druid who was good at cultivating herbs. The high-quality wild herbs she usually picked were actually planted by this Druid.

Of course, this high-achieving student of the School of Life didn't care about the herbs being picked. She just enjoyed the process of the seeds she planted growing strong. She was also very happy that the herbs could help others.

The Grass Woman Attilan contacted was this one. As for the original Grass Woman, her nickname had been updated to Grain Woman, because Grain Woman's goal was to cultivate foxtail grass into millet.

However, Attilan and her efforts over the past few months had used no less than Druid spells. Such seeds could not resist the power of natural degradation. The variety with the largest ear of grain had already reached ten centimeters in length.

But if there was no artificial intervention in pollination, then the second generation of grain ears would quickly degrade to seven centimeters in length, and the grains would become fewer and smaller after maturity.

By the third generation, it was completely the same as before cultivation. Of course, after careful comparison and screening, the optimized varieties would definitely improve, most likely increasing the yield by half a catty per mu.

In fact, this increase was already not low. Wild foxtail grass could not really harvest a few catties of edible grass seeds per mu.

"I can't help it if you think that way. Does Barmaid-sama need me to send people to you?"

"Of course, I need it. Although those ignorant guys still need one or two years of training to be competent in the planting process, the harvesting work can be completely handed over to them."

"At least they are better than Taishan's monkeys and won't damage the fruits and herbs."

Attilan just smiled. Look, you are mocking me for using everyone, but at the same time you are using the manpower I sent. Isn't it funny?

"Alright, stop looking at me! I'll go announce that you're going to form a theater troupe and prepare for the school's first play performance, okay?"

With slightly flushed cheeks, the Barmaid walked out of the office.

Attilan just shook his head and walked to the big tree in the school that hid the node of natural magic and began his daily practice.

Unexpectedly, the first person to arrive after he sent out so many letters was actually Leopard Woman, who ran excitedly to Attilan.

"I want to join the Forest Child Theater Troupe!"

Attilan calmly spat out a piece of natural magic crystal fragment.

"Only children can participate. Adult Druids can only become instructors of the theater troupe in the capacity of teachers, playing some roles that children cannot understand or be competent in."

"I am already a teacher at the school. Leave the work of guiding them to me! I have also turned into a little bird and watched human theater performances."

Leopard Woman took on the responsibility, but in fact, she was just joining in the fun. As for directing performances, she had no idea.

"Stay quietly on the side and wait until everyone arrives before we talk, otherwise you won't get a share."

As soon as these words came out, Leopard Woman instantly turned from a lively jaguar into a docile Persian cat.

Soon everyone arrived and showed a strong enthusiasm for this Forest Child Theater Troupe.

Taishan even slammed the table.

"We are also children of the forest, why can only children perform!"