While I was at it, I looked into their faith point catalogue. To receive one Faith point, you had to either donate 1000 mana, 100 XP of 1 gold. Considering that the first religious rank called for 1000 Faith points, you could easily work out that it would cost the buyer exactly one hundred bucks. Of which I was getting one miserable dollar bill. Still, this was a numbers game. I multiplied one dollar by the number of potential followers, multiplied by eternity. Immortality was a good thing any way you looked at it. The resulting figures were impressive.

Finally I got to the upgrade and rebuild menu and opened the submenu tree. So! Macaria hadn't wasted her time! Apparently, she wasn't one for half-measures, having reanimated not only the Temple hall but also all of the central donjon. I was pleased to see that the First Temple's potential allowed the use of its self-restoration facilities also for rebuilding other castle structures. I could see now that the entire complex had been conceived as an organic unity whose defense and regeneration functions often overlapped or even merged with only one objective in mind: the enhancement of the Temple's defense potential.

Even on their own, both the castle and the Temple must have cost tens of millions. But their combined value was tenfold. A dream goodie, as precious as it was useless. I had to be careful not to choke on it. The only chance I could have in this new game was due to my freshly-acquired post and celestial support. Had I been just Laith, even a clan leader, I'd have already auctioned the castle's coordinates, creamed off my couple of million and washed my hands of the whole thing. But as it was now, fate had dealt me half a pack of trump cards so I'd better use them while I had the chance. Another one like that might not present itself for a long time.

As somebody said, luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Fate may keep opening doors to new opportunities, but how ready are we to jump at them? When you get a dream offer of a job abroad—is it time to regret you never got down to mastering your language skills? When you are confronted by a zombie towering over the body of a policeman who'd just emptied his AK (rather uselessly) in it, is it time to regret you don't know how to change the spent clip? Well, in that case it's no good blaming your luck: you're your own worst enemy.

I leafed through the castle plans, storing the schemes and building's statutes in my memory.

The main flight of stairs. I placemarked it on the map. Status, green: fully functional.

Arsenal. Status, yellow. Partially functional. Restoration time: 28 days using the current configuration, 6 hours if assigned top priority and all available resources.

Underground dungeons, communications and cellars. Status, red. Decay level: 81%.

And so on and so forth. Macaria had poured her main effort into refurbishing the Temple hall and façade, restoring the rest of the facilities to their minimal functionality levels.

Finally, at the donjon's fifth level, I discovered the Control Room marker. Status, yellow: partially functional. Did it mean I could just walk in and take over the castle? My inner greedy pig was throwing a fit threatening to rip the place apart if I didn't go there now and claim control over the abandoned property. For a brief moment, he gave me the creeps as I remembered an ancient Alien movie where the monsters ripped their hosts open from inside. You hear that, porcine face? You'd better not upset me, buddy, or I'll upgrade you to a toad and pretend you'd had always been like that.

Actually, I was curious too. To stumble across an unwanted Super Nova-class castle was cooler than finding an abandoned car transporter loaded with unclaimed brand new Bentleys. I checked the map for a shortcut and had a good look around, adjusting the visuals to the freshly-digested maps. Then I closed the menus, severed contact with the altar stone and dashed under the archway above a far-off flight of stairs.

My corridor run brought me equal doses of disappointments and new discoveries. What had Macaria been thinking about? All the rooms I passed were immaculately clean, their functional granite tiles sparkling. Clean being the operative word! Whatever happened to all the technogenic debris? Where were all the spent shells, empty clips and broken ammo belts, precious mithril shrapnel and fragments of armor? Where were all the heaps of rubble I had counted on in which to unearth a couple of slightly soiled Warmechs? This wasn't cleaning, this was plain sabotage.

I felt like a husband who had unlocked his garage expecting to face the familiar mess where he could find every screw blindfolded, only to discover that his wife had given it a surprise spring clean, sweeping out all the precious bent nails, torn elastics and bits of wire creating a clean, neat and absolutely useless space. What had Macaria done with all the trash? Had she unthinkingly shoved it all away in the astral depths? It might have been worse: she might have processed mithril into energy, no wonder she'd pulled off this sixty-minute makeover single-handedly. What a bummer. I just hoped she confined herself to a surface clean which left me the hope to find a few stashes. And I still had the cellars. I just had to pray her obsession with cleanliness hadn't stretched that far.

The fifth level. A long spiraling corridor circled the windowless donjon, taking the potential attackers past rows of barracks and cutoff zones peppered with gunslots. Massive slabs of basalt stood ready to collapse creating an impenetrable barricade. All you needed was access to the control artifact or even a mere key that could open the intricate Dwarven locks.

The last corridor was angular, its sharp bends getting narrower with every turn. The last thirty feet or so could be successfully defended by just a couple of soldiers who could easily block the passage. That was clever, like everything here. Shame the restoration wasn't on a par thanks to one hasty young lady. This Macaria of Milo by an unknown sculptor deserved having her arms pulled off.

With a sigh, I examined the pale tiles lining the corridors. It looked as if a team of cowboy builders had hung cheap suspended ceilings over the Hermitage frescoes.

Shivering with anticipation, I finally heaved open the small but unmanageably thick iron-oak door, entering the castle's sancta sanctorum. I felt sorry for the castle's potential attackers who had to fit into the ever-narrowing corridors, leaving behind first their battle golems, then ogres, and finally trolls. The defenders wouldn't have any such problems, especially considering their monopoly on portals. The high ceilings—twenty feet at least—allowed the defenders to use a whole variety of AlterWorld races, including the latest in golem building. The power center was located behind the fenced-off battle grounds. The walls were lined with empty sockets meant to house accumulating crystals. How many could they hold, a hundred, two hundred? Considering each cost about a million gold, the castle builders had to have been quite ambitious.

I walked down an L-shaped passage between two fenced-off areas and found myself in the castle's heart: the control room.

Almost all of the space inside was occupied by a white U-shaped marble desk gaping with dozens of empty slots for artifacts of truly unknown purpose and nature. It looked rather like the control desk of some high tech submarine or nuclear power station with its empty mountings and ripped-out units. Some mysterious panels—once mirrored and now dented—looked suspiciously like monitors.

In the desk's center, the control panel of the castle artifact glowed a subtle green. The exact location of the artifact itself I was yet to determine; its unknown makers could have cemented it into the room's foundations for all I knew. I crossed my fingers and lay my hand on the imaginary keyboard.