Chapter 208: The Best Time to Plant a Tree

After being praised by Tina and Isabella, Lolth felt a bit shy.

“Not at all, this is the result of everyone’s hard work.”

After the City Hall election, the membership of City Hall remained largely unchanged.

Subsequently, the meeting at the central square concluded successfully.

To compensate for taking up everyone’s morning, Lolth provided each resident with meal vouchers from the cafeteria so that, on this day of work stoppage, they could enjoy meals funded by the lord.

Afterwards, she and Tina began posting three announcements on the bulletin board.

The first announcement concerned the “Notice of Resumption of Work for the Western New Development Zone.”

According to Lolth’s estimation, the Plane Magic Tide would completely subside tomorrow, so the work that had been delayed for almost a week should indeed resume.

They couldn’t allow these Superoperators to sleep on the floor of the farmers’ market indefinitely—although the nobles and elves who initially complained were no longer particularly concerned, remaining cramped on the third floor of the market for an extended period was not a viable solution.

That location also needed to train professional talents through the school to establish a research center for agricultural products and farming tools.

Next to the resumption notice was the announcement for the first batch of school enrollment registration.

In establishing the school, Knight Lolth did not plan to follow the public or private school models from her previous life.

For a small town with only two hundred residents, it was still premature to implement compulsory education.

She decided to establish a specialized education school in Hillenbrand, centered around a “course selection” system.

There would be three main categories: “Extraordinary Powers,” “Production Skills,” and “General Knowledge.”

Each main category would offer different courses, and the initial group of instructors would come from high-performing commoners in the newly developed southern area who wished to teach, along with individuals such as Kanor, Tina, Maider, and Isabella.

Each hired teacher would receive a base salary, with additional bonuses earned for every lesson taught.

Each of the three main categories would function differently.

The subjects under the “Extraordinary Powers” category were divided according to the current mainstream professions on the continent, aiming to nurture apprentice and regular-level Superoperators to provide professional talent for police stations and hospitals, though students would need to pass qualification and character assessments and pay certain fees to enroll.

The subjects under the “Production Skills” category included the daily tasks of agricultural projects currently operating in the south, cooking techniques, and construction skills, as well as advanced courses and upcoming training for municipal staff, which typically required a modest fee.

The courses focused on “General Knowledge” were entirely free, featuring two required major courses: “Safety in Production and Life” and “Literacy and Cultural Basics,” which would be taught by Tina and Isabella themselves. The advanced courses were designed to complement the other two tracks and to identify talents with professional skills, exceptional abilities, and sound research thinking, ensuring a talent pool for the Agricultural Product Research Center and other future research departments.

Lolth planned to implement a reward system after the school’s construction to ensure that every resident of Hillenbrand Town dedicated at least two hours to course study.

Once education became widespread, the certificates of completion issued by the school would also become valuable resources.

Those seeking employment in related fields would need to obtain the appropriate qualifications.

If this continued, the overall quality of life for every resident in Hillenbrand Town would improve, making the town more reliable.

Although it remained impossible to defend against legendary intrusions or the invasion of evil gods—those matters would still require her personal intervention—at least when even the high-level Superoperators were occupied, Hillenbrand Town would not descend into chaos.

Institutions such as police stations and hospitals significantly increased the survival rate of ordinary people in this world.

Though currently staffed by Superoperators from the Holy Alliance, there would surely be civilians capable of assuming these roles in the future.

Simultaneously, there would definitely emerge true high-end talent that was “homegrown” in Hillenbrand Town.

The experiences in the Divine Kingdom were indeed Lolth’s motivation for holding this meeting, but not solely due to concerns about the “invasion” of the evil god.

Lolth was somewhat unsettled by the “End of Days” warning left by the Evil God Girl.

Although she harbored no grand ambitions to resist the End of Days, she at minimum wanted to ensure that her small territory and the people she knew could survive it.

The “rune technology” ultimately provided by the Evil God Girl undoubtedly represented a path forward.

While the situation in the plague kingdom demonstrated their failure…

The “technologies” themselves were sound.

The technology recorded in the crystal ball was more sophisticated than Lolth had anticipated.

Ancient magical civilizations had indeed reached a level that could be considered as creating artificial gods.

Although Lolth still did not fully comprehend what the “End of Days” truly entailed, she recognized one thing: the Plague Kingdom may have ultimately failed, but it didn’t appear to have completely vanished.

Despite their “technology” being extremely mature and advanced, Lolth believed they had somewhat deviated from the optimal course.

From the records in the crystal ball, it wasn’t difficult for Lolth to deduce that this civilization had essentially followed an “elitist” and even “authoritarian” path.

The inhabitants of the outer space cities possessed little knowledge about the operation of the entire half-plane space.

This resulted in the group of young decision-makers only being able to force their leader onto the Divine Throne when crisis struck, hoping to utilize the still-immature “deification” technology as a desperate gamble.

Lolth disliked keeping truth and knowledge solely in her possession.

She understood well that allowing fundamental knowledge and technology to be controlled by one person or a select few, monopolizing advanced knowledge to reinforce social hierarchies, was profoundly unwise.

Even her agricultural techniques were developed based on knowledge from two worlds.

She also intended to share these rune technologies after identifying reliable talents.

“Even though she attempted to reassure herself that ‘the End of Days’ wasn’t her concern, as if someone powerful would support the sky, it was impossible for her mindset to remain unaffected…”

Lolth sighed as she posted the third notice.

“A letter to the townspeople regarding the plans for Hillenbrand Town over the next five years.”

She recognized that transforming the perspective of these small-town residents and the local society, even in a relatively isolated community, would require more than just one or two years, perhaps even multiple generations.

But as the old adage states,

“The best time to plant a tree was ten years ago; the second best time is now.”