Girl in the Box: Please tell me why I was reincarnated as a mimic monster!

"Come to think of it, isn't it the same whether I talk to you or not?"

"Hey? Me, me, me? Wait, wait, what are you guys doing?"

"Oh, I just wanted to touch it."

"Huh?! Ning?! Aren't you going to stop them?!"

"It doesn't matter, I've used it anyway."

"Aha!?"

Akihabara continues to move forward today.

Chapter 23 The Half-Completed Labyrinth Kingdom

"A toast to all the hard work we've done over the past two weeks! Cheers!!!"

"Long live Akihabara!"

Under Li's call, an incredibly loud shout rang out in the newly built central square of Akihabara. Everyone held up a cup of beverage, shouted the slogan "Long live Akihabara!", and then drank the liquid in their cups in one gulp. The square was filled with a relaxed and joyful feeling after work. Among these people were not only locals of Akihabara, but also people from outside.

The suspicion was confirmed, because not long ago, Akihabara's guards finally caught the adventurers who had escorted the outsiders here from the outskirts, and of course, they also found a large group of outsiders. These people were all brought to Akihabara and treated with great hospitality, and Rihanna also found the person in charge of escorting this group of adventurers to understand the situation.

This matter was indeed being orchestrated behind the scenes by the Adventurers' Guild. To be honest, the two of them really couldn't figure out what Guild Master Coster was thinking, but supposedly they were preparing to relocate the Adventurers' Guild over there. Well, since it hadn't caused much trouble, they decided to leave it alone, as long as they remembered to pay their dues.

Thanks to them, quite a few people have come over during this period. These are all people whose character, morality, and values ​​have been personally verified by Chairman Koster. It's really hard work for him to do such a tiring job even though he's retired. However, we won't completely trust them because the existence of the Ghosts makes many things seem suspicious. Li and Ning will still observe these people in secret.

After all, it's not impossible that the old bald man gave these ghosts spy training or something, and the possibility that some ghosts have infiltrated cannot be ruled out.

However, the construction over the past two weeks has been relatively smooth.

First, a certain connection with the outside world has been re-established. Through these adventurers, Akihabara can now communicate with the outside world to some extent through letters, and they also send groups of people over from time to time. For example, the group of adventurers who stayed behind today are now laughing and drinking ale with the people of Akihabara.

There's no need to worry about safety, as the Adventurers' Guild will assign five A-rank or higher adventurers to each group. No matter how strong the monsters outside are, these A-rank adventurers can work together without any problems. Besides, they'll be safe once they successfully reach the vicinity of the labyrinth.

However, for safety's sake, Li still arranged for two of his own guards to escort these people. With their fighting strength in Akihabara, one of them could easily handle the monsters outside. They had already gotten used to fighting these monsters over the past two weeks, and the comings and goings of people had become more frequent, including some merchants from the kingdom.

Because of the increased frequency of personnel coming and going, it is no longer possible to conduct detailed inspections. The people brought over are also becoming less and less complete. Although Akihabara now welcomes the arrival of laborers, this kind of low-quality laborer is something that no one wants to see.

Speaking of merchants, these merchants are definitely here to do business, and what kind of business? Naturally, they're eyeing the supplies in Akihabara. Right now, these necessities of life, such as food, clothing, shelter, and transportation, are in short supply in every country, so their prices will naturally rise. To be honest, I don't quite understand what these people are thinking at this point.

Needless to say, all the merchants were dealt with by Olito and Natsuki. Of course, far-sighted merchants were very welcoming. As far as we know, six merchants have already signed trade contracts with Akihabara, and they will open their shops here when the time comes. As for those uncivilized people... well, they were all dealt with by the guards.

As the number of permanent residents continues to increase, various resources are becoming scarce, especially food.

With Neki's construction team handling their accommodations, there were naturally no problems. Since the building materials issue was resolved, Neki started to get a bit more carefree and put many of the ideas that Li had proposed into practice. She had already built things like a bathhouse while using her own brain, and even the sewer system was starting to take shape, although, according to her, it was still far from complete.

Thanks to her, many of our daily needs have been met. The water supply pipeline system is also under active preparation, and we believe that prototypes will be made soon.

Clothing, food, shelter, and transportation are the four basic necessities of life. In Akihabara, clothing is currently of little importance. As for shelter, Akihabara is now more than five times the size of its former neighborhood, and with construction crews on site, there's no problem. There's no immediate need for transportation; who wants to go outside right now?

As expected, the most pressing issue now is still food. With the increase in the number of people, the daily food consumption is also increasing. Although the guards would bring back some monster corpses for dissection and to try to cook them, most of them were poisonous or harmful, so they did little to supplement the food supply.

However, after a little trial and error on the edge of time power, she was able to use her power to control the time of the Treasure Gathering skill. By accelerating the time of Treasure Gathering, she could activate the skill multiple times. In this way... well, to put it simply, it's like cheating to farm items. She could use this method to continuously farm enough food for Akihabara to get through the tense period.

Therefore, as a Mimic that can use cheat codes, it really can do whatever it wants.

Of course, this approach wouldn't work. Thanks to the efforts of Finoer and Chuchu, Akihabara finally had a decent paddy field and some crops that Chuchu had modified. These trial crops are currently growing vigorously, and all they have to do now is wait for them to mature.

Well, it's not like you can't work just because you're an outsider. These outsiders also have to take on certain tasks in the reconstruction of Akihabara. In return, the government will provide them with food, clothing, and shelter. So a consensus was quickly reached. There are also many talented people among these outsiders who can be trained. However, the training of these talents had to be postponed due to some special reasons.

While various activities were taking place inside Akihabara, the guards outside the labyrinth began investigating and restoring the exterior. Simply put, they were restoring the external ecosystem. However, the extent of their work was quite limited; at most, they used magic to recreate the terrain in a more habitable environment.

Although it doesn't have much practical use, a smooth surface is a good foundation for future road construction, so we should give them a thumbs up.

In conclusion, the construction of Akihabara is proceeding steadily and step by step. Now that it is certain that we can escape the hard times, we simply held a party. Everyone in Akihabara was invited to the party, which turned into the scene before us that looked like an electronic music festival carnival.

"Phew~ I finally did it!" Li drank the liquid in the cup in one gulp and wiped his mouth with his hand in satisfaction.

"That's way too wild," Ning said with a wry smile.

"What does it matter! Isn't everyone doing this now?" Li seemed to be excited to the point of ecstasy.

Of course, don't overthink it. She didn't drink alcohol, and the liquid in the cup wasn't alcohol either, but ordinary orange juice. So she wasn't drunk; she was just a little startled by the sight before her.

"How about it?"

Finoir swirled the wine in her glass.

How does it feel to be the master of a city?

"I'm exhausted..." Li said, revealing his true feelings. "Compared to what I used to do outside, this is really exhausting."

As the leader of Akihabara, Riri had to shoulder a lot of responsibility and deal with all sorts of messy things with Ning. But to be honest, without these two, the banquet would probably have been postponed even further.

To get these things done, Li and Ning made several trips back and forth to achieve this scene today. This was an experience Li had never had before, either in his previous life or in this one, and it was quite unfamiliar at first. However, with Ning's careful guidance, he is now able to do some ordinary work.

The workload of these two is unmatched by anyone else in Akihabara, yet they still managed to complete it. They can be considered the biggest contributors to Akihabara's success this time, as they led many things. This is why they have been running back and forth in Akihabara for some time now.

Now that all the problems have finally been solved and the city's operations are officially on track, their hard times are finally over, so it's not unreasonable for them to have a celebration now.

"Now I can finally understand the Demon King's feelings." He thought of the Demon King Xuanze, who was far away on the other side of the continent.

Demon King Xuanze was also the leader who rebuilt the demon race from scratch, but he did almost everything by himself. There were very few people who could help him, let alone those with modern knowledge. The demon race's territory was dozens of times larger than the labyrinth, so these problems naturally fell to Xuanze. Only he could handle these matters personally to achieve the desired effect.

The sheer scale of this workload was beyond Li's comprehension, let alone the fact that the Demon King was handling it all by himself. Even now, Li and Ning were struggling to manage these tasks together, let alone such a massive undertaking.

“It’s still early,” Ning said expressionlessly, taking a sip of wine. “Akihabara still has many problems, and the work ahead will likely be even more, if not less. Besides, there are still issues that we have to solve. Like this Spirit incident, we still haven’t figured out what happened.”

The Spirit Incident refers to a series of events surrounding Akihabara involving spirits. During Akihabara's reconstruction, many monsters gathered there, more than half of which were pure elemental spirits created after the cataclysmic changes in the world. A week ago, Riku and Ning organized a sweep of the area surrounding the labyrinth, primarily to eliminate monsters within a radius of several kilometers around the labyrinth and ensure a certain level of safety.

After the sweep, the two set up some exorcism barriers and electrical boxes in the surrounding area to dispel the magic or recycle it for use, thus mitigating the demonization of the area and preventing the emergence of monsters.

Their sweep had some effect; at least some monsters dared not openly approach the area. Any monster with even a shred of survival instinct wouldn't come near, because there was a group of terrifying humans here. However, those monsters like the Pangolin Boars, which have been proven to be edible and delicious, are doomed.

However, the unusual thing is that even after the monsters have been driven away, these elves will continue to approach the maze. They are clearly intelligent monsters, yet they stubbornly repeat the same thing, which is what Li and Ning can't understand.

These spirits are very difficult to deal with. It's not that they're unmanageable, but no matter what kind of attack you use, you can't kill them because there's no way to kill them. The only option is to strip them of their fighting abilities and throw them far away. But even then, they will keep coming back, creating a vicious cycle.

Of course, there's also the matter of the maze control panel. Over the past two weeks, Li and Ning have found some clues about it, but they haven't been able to locate it. The only thing they can be certain of is that the control panel definitely exists, because in Li's memories of Raelfa, there have indeed been instances where the maze suddenly recovered overnight, and more than once.

This alone is enough to confirm the existence of the console.

However, the two have now given up on pursuing those two matters, because no matter how hard they try, it won't yield any results at this stage. So, they turned their attention to the situation in Akihabara, and took the opportunity to rest for a while. The view of Akihabara under the moonlight of the two moons was soothing. Akihabara is now taking shape as a small city, so it's time to prepare for some other plans.

"So, which country should we go to first in a few days?" Li tossed out the map crystal, making it display a holographic map of the entire continent.

This map is from a version before the cataclysmic changes in the world. The only thing we know is that the distances to other countries have remained basically the same. The closest country is the New Kingdom ruled by Alice, followed by the Duchy ruled by Sevi, and finally the furthest one is the Demon Kingdom ruled by the Demon King Xuanze.

Yes, Akihabara can now establish connections with other countries. Furthermore, neither Ri and the other residents know anything about the outside world and hope to learn more. Now is the perfect time to go out and explore. However, the destination is still undecided, but Ri and Ning are probably thinking of the same place.

"Let's go to the new kingdom."

"I think so too."

Chapter 24 Travel Time

"You chose the new kingdom first..." The leader silently took a sip of ale. "Although things have basically stabilized here in Akihabara, there shouldn't be any problem if you run away."

“Hmm… the new kingdom…” Olitto said with a thoughtful expression.

“You’re going to the New Kingdom,” Finoir said after a moment’s thought. “You’re planning to go find Alice, right?”

"Yes, that's right." Li nodded.

“Because there’s no point in going to the Duchy or the Demon King right now,” Ning explained. “The Demon King certainly won’t cause trouble for no reason. Although he calls himself the Demon King, he’s actually a pretty good person. As for Sevi, the Duchy’s army won’t be defeated over such a small matter. The only unstable one right now is Alice’s new kingdom. If it’s for the sake of future development, we should at least help her stabilize the situation at home.”

Ning had mostly heard about the New Kingdom from adventurers and the outsiders they brought. He had also asked some adventurers to help him gather information about the New Kingdom and bring it back, so he knew a little about it.

In short, the situation is very bad. Although Alice is very capable, both she and the others underestimated the power of the kingdom.

In fact, the power distribution within the Kingdom of Alyas has always been quite delicate. Rather than a duchy, it's more like a kingdom forcibly established in a place already teeming with criminal elements. There are no fewer than ten powerful factions and organizations within the country, each possessing the strength to overthrow a nation.

The reason why the kingdom was able to maintain a certain degree of peace under such circumstances was due to the existence of King Aljaz.

That bald old man's strength is undeniable. Simply put, he's like a player who's played the game twice, coming back with all their previous memories, stats, items, and equipment. Why call him "bald old man"? He's practically bald from grinding the game like this; he's overpowered!

It was precisely because of the existence of this old bald man that the Alyas Kingdom regime, established around him, was so stable. No one would like to fight with such an old monster, especially since he quickly consolidated his power after establishing the regime and cultivated a group of guys known as the Ghosts. Whoever messes up will die; it's that simple.

It was precisely because of this powerful force suppressing these guys that the kingdom was able to maintain a certain degree of peace. In addition, the old bald man Serik only cared about his own plans and did not cause much damage to these forces. Since no interests were harmed, there were no conflicts, and overall it could be said to be stable.

But this won't last. Once that old bald man, Seric, is gone, these guys will probably get restless and start arguing about who's the boss. They haven't been very active recently, probably because they were too scared to do anything after witnessing the power of the ten holy swords. Now that everyone knows about the old bald man's defeat, they've definitely started causing trouble.

The new kingdom, without the old bald man's presence and with Alice's forces lacking sufficient fighting power, is probably seen as an easy target. Given Alice's personality, she certainly wouldn't fear this level of threat, but her enemies are not just one or two, but rather the entire kingdom's cunning old foxes who have been eyeing her with predatory intent.

It's not just these guys, because there's another group of self-righteous people in this kingdom: the nobles. Since the old bald man doesn't care much about these things, he won't pay much attention as long as it doesn't affect his plans. As a result, these nobles can do whatever they want. In terms of private armies, they probably have more than the group the old bald man took out back then.

It's easy to imagine the immense pressure on Alice. At this moment, it would be the perfect opportunity to do her a favor, that's what Ning thought.

However, that's not how it works.

"Haa... why do you only think about gains and losses in everything?" Li said, puffing out her cheeks in displeasure.

"What do you think?" Ning shrugged. "If it weren't for your easygoing personality, I wouldn't need to play the bad cop."

"Ugh... What are you saying? We were just going to help a friend."

"Okay, okay, whatever you say goes. Anyway, that's how it is. We're going to the New Kingdom later."

Li was quite unhappy with Ning's perfunctory attitude, but since she couldn't refute Ning's words, she remained silent. Li's actions were always driven by emotion, which often made her act foolishly. As a city leader or representative, this was clearly unacceptable. While her personal qualities were commendable, the functioning of a nation cannot be achieved solely through ideals.

Therefore, the person truly in charge of operations is actually Ning, and of course, everything is still guided by reason. This time is no exception; naturally, it's Ning who's calculating the gains and losses.

"So, how many people are you taking?" Olito asked.

"How many people should I bring..." Li thought for a moment.

This is a question worth considering, because the problems they will face next are not only the various forces within the New Kingdom, but also some messy dangers along the way.

After careful verification, it was found that the numerous teleportation gates and arrays previously deployed for the war were no longer functional. They were either destroyed, buried underground due to changes in the terrain, or risen to extremely dangerous locations. In short, they were unreliable and best avoided. Therefore, they had no choice but to venture out and update their knowledge of the geography of this world's continent in order to redeploy the teleportation gates and arrays.

“Three people,” Li said with certainty.

"Three people?" Olitto seemed somewhat surprised.

“Yes, three people are enough.” Li smiled. “After all, Akihabara still needs manpower right now, and we can’t bring too many people with us.”

That's right. For Rie and Ning, three people are enough. No matter how dangerous it is outside, even if it's just Rie or Ning alone, they can easily deal with any threat. Even the criminal gangs within the New Kingdom are no problem for them. Of course, the safety of the others has also been taken into consideration, so Rie decided that three people are sufficient.

“I understand,” the captain continued, speaking for the stunned Olito. “You and Ning will definitely be going, right? So who’s the last person left?”

"Yes, of course it's my little sister." Li smiled and pulled Xiao, who was drinking honey water and looking blank, over. "Just the three of us, that's enough."

"Are you going out?" Xiao asked blankly.

"Is that so... then so be it." The leader sighed. "While you're away, we'll keep a close watch on Akihabara. But how long do you plan to stay?"

"Hmm... soon, I think. "As soon as we arrive at the New Kingdom, we'll use time-space magic to come back directly, and then we can deal with things there."

"Then there's no problem." The captain nodded. "I hope you can come back as soon as possible, because anything strange could happen in the meantime, and it would be troublesome if we couldn't contact you then."

“You can find other Dragon Kings,” Li said. “Just tell them what you want to convey to us, and we’ll know soon enough.”

"..."

The regimental commander suddenly stared at her and fell silent.

"...What's wrong?" Li suddenly panicked.

Sometimes I really feel like your family is capable of anything...

"???"

"Are you all done packing?"

Ning was already waiting on the recliner by the door, holding a book. She had been waiting there for at least half an hour, even though it shouldn't have taken that long. After waiting for half an hour, she closed the book and went home to check on things.

"Ah, Sister Li, shall I take this?"

"Waaah... I've already said we don't need it anymore, that it's enough."

"Should we pack some snacks for Xiao to eat on the road?"

"snack!"

"Um, I think it's best not to bring too many snacks..."

Well, that's how it turned out. Rin and Akatsuki naturally wanted to leave as soon as possible, but their enthusiastic friends and family weren't going to let them go so easily. Their good intentions were commendable, but this caused a lot of trouble for the three of them, making it impossible for them to leave immediately. So, Ning had no choice but to intervene.

"what happened?"

Ning walked over to Li and Xiao, who were surrounded by their relatives and friends.

"Ha... I told you we didn't need so much stuff, but nobody listened." Li looked exhausted. "We're going on a short trip, not moving house... It's a bit strange to bring so much stuff..."

"We understand..." Xia Ling said shyly, "but we're still worried that you might encounter various situations after you go out, and we won't be able to handle them..."

“Me too,” Finoer nodded. “Although the three of you are all capable of protecting yourselves to some extent, I still can’t help but worry about you…”