Chapter 317: Standing Out by Taking the Unconventional Path

"I will go back and check the exact numbers right away."

Struck by a sudden thought, Diana jotted down the string of digits announced by the world's will. She turned to leave, intending to sift through their records to verify her theory.

However, Lan Qingyou waved her hand.

"Unless I miss my guess, your theory is spot on."

She gestured for the Knowledge Witch to stay, halting her departure.

"But if that is the case, the scale of the city will need to be expanded. The higher our population, the greater our defense value. I have no idea what this defense value actually does, but since it was included in the rewards from the world's will, it certainly cannot be useless."

Lan Qingyou knitted her brows, rhythmically tapping her fingers against the surface of the Magic Desk.

Sitting across from her, Diana mirrored her deep frown.

"It definitely has some use. But judging from these rewards, if our theory holds true, the major cities are soon going to enter an era of fiercely competing for population."

The Era of Races.

Initially, Lan Qingyou and everyone else assumed this simply meant the dawn of a massive explosion of new species.

In reality, a significant number of new races had indeed emerged.

However, Lan Qingyou never anticipated that it would ultimately manifest in this manner.

Races, populations, cities, and fierce competition...

Perhaps this was the true meaning behind the world's will declaring the Era of Races.

If that was the case, how were they supposed to attract a larger population?

Compared to other factions, the Witch Clan was undeniably powerful, especially with their Magic Eye that reflected their inner landscapes, but their drawbacks were equally glaring.

After all, there were very few men willing to willingly transform into young women.

Back when the Witch Clan first emerged, some might have been desperate enough to accept the condition in exchange for power.

But now, with a growing variety of races offering different aesthetics and abilities, people had plenty of options. The number of survivors willing to throw caution to the wind had drastically decreased.

It was virtually impossible to attract massive crowds using only the Witch's Potion.

"So, how are we supposed to lure permanent residents to Typhon City?"

Lost in thought, Lan Qingyou muttered softly.

"Why do we have to target people individually?"

"Huh?"

Diana's question caused Lan Qingyou's brain to completely short-circuit.

'What does she mean? Why am I not following this?'

"Races. We can simply invite entire races to settle in Typhon City. Wouldn't that be far more efficient than trying to recruit individual stragglers one by one?"

'Exactly!'

Lan Qingyou's eyes instantly lit up.

What was the point of poaching people one by one? Bringing in an entire race was where the real fun lay.

The key was to stand out by taking the unconventional path.

Although Lan Qingyou was not entirely familiar with the intricacies of other races, she had a general idea.

Based on what she knew about ancient bloodline dungeons, a single successful clear could yield anywhere from a thousand to ten thousand milliliters of blood.

The exact amount mainly depended on the difficulty of the dungeon itself.

After all, top-tier dungeons like the one she and the High Priestess had cleared were incredibly rare.

The vast majority of smaller dungeons—the ones that could be beaten just by throwing enough people at them—usually held somewhere between one to five thousand milliliters of blood.

Taking an average of roughly two thousand five hundred milliliters, that would translate to a population base of about fifty thousand people once converted into Evolution Items.

Lan Qingyou had looked into this phenomenon before.

For these smaller races, a group of survivors within a specific region would typically discover a dungeon, band together to conquer it, and then harvest the blood to craft and distribute the evolution materials.

This meant that the vast majority of minor races were concentrated in specific geographic regions, rather than being scattered all over the map like the initial core races.

If they could recruit these entire regional factions to move in, wouldn't the city thrive? They could secure massive population booms in a single swoop.

Naturally, Lan Qingyou had previously experimented with crafting Evolution Items for other races. The others in their alliance chat had even found the idea amusing and pitched in to help.

However, without exception, every attempt had ended in failure.

The consensus among the group was that the fundamental reason for their failure was simply that they were no longer Blue Star Earthlings.

According to the theories proposed by the Wheel of Fortune, this evolutionary pathway was likely an exclusive benefit granted to Blue Star Earthlings by the world's will.

Therefore, once a person had already evolved, no amount of effort would allow them to successfully craft Evolution Items for a completely different race.

After all, that would border on cheating. Considering the world's will was monitoring the entire Kalim Continent around the clock, it certainly wouldn't allow such an exploit.

This theory had been universally accepted by nearly everyone residing in the manor.

Otherwise, the constant failures were completely inexplicable.

But looking at it from this angle, if they genuinely intended to recruit those minor races en masse, their current territory was going to be woefully inadequate.

'Expansion! We absolutely must expand!'

'It is just an issue of scaling up the magic formations. A short period of secluded crafting should be enough to solve that minor hurdle.'

Besides, she practically had a natural battery pack buried directly beneath her Shelter.

If the magic formations ever suffered from a shortage of mana, she could just draw on that power source to bridge the gap.

At worst, she would just have to extract a few fewer syringes of blood from it each day.

"Then I will leave the recruitment efforts in your capable hands. I will figure out a solution for the magic formations," Lan Qingyou declared.

As she pondered the upgrades required for the formations, Lan Qingyou decided it was time to go all out and aim for something massive.

Consequently, she completely delegated the tedious task of diplomatic outreach and negotiations to Diana and her team.

It all went back to the old saying—you couldn't possibly expect a middle-school dropout to smoothly manage a city housing hundreds of thousands of people.

Such a responsibility was no longer just out of her depth; it was completely out of her universe.

"In reality, you just want an excuse to slack off, don't you?"

Diana grumbled, unimpressed by being saddled with yet another monumental task.

"How could you say that? If you truly want a middle-school dropout managing the daily operations of an entire city, then pretend I never offered to delegate."

Lan Qingyou spread her hands and shrugged with the shameless demeanor of a complete scoundrel, prompting Diana to sigh in exasperation.

"Wait! That doesn't add up! Clan Head, you look to be in your twenties at the very least. There is no way your education stopped at middle school."

Halfway through her sigh, Diana finally realized the glaring hole in Lan Qingyou's logic.

"Care to guess why I am always floating in the air?"

"To look cool?"

"Hahaha, an amusing guess, but incorrect."

Chuckling, Lan Qingyou deliberately gestured toward her legs, even playfully swinging them back and forth with a touch of dark humor.

She had been involved in a severe car accident on the day of her middle school graduation and had not set foot in a classroom since.

Lan Qingyou was truly willing to pull out all the stops just to avoid doing administrative work.

Seeing the lifeless sway of Lan Qingyou's legs, Diana instantly realized she had overstepped. Feeling a pang of guilt, she quickly agreed to shoulder the burden of city management.

Which meant that from this moment onward, aside from being the official lord of the territory, Lan Qingyou had absolved herself of all actual responsibilities. Everything was now delegated to high-ranking Witches like Diana who headed the various administrative departments.

However, there was one task Lan Qingyou couldn't escape—compiling the magical textbooks.

For one, she had already promised to do it. But more importantly, she desperately needed to organize and consolidate everything she had learned over the past half-year.

After all... the New Year was fast approaching.