"Logan? You… you…"
"Logan, what the hell is going on?"
"Silco, aren't you going to explain this?"
"Lady Janna, why do you look like you're not surprised at all?"
After hearing Jayce, Janna lifted a wing and said, "I knew about this a day earlier than you did."
Silco, meanwhile, said flatly, "Me? Explain? Explain what? The person involved is sitting right in front of you. Ask him."
Vander looked at Logan with a complicated expression. As a father, part of him wanted to storm over and punch Logan in the face—just to vent for everything Jinx had suffered this past year.
But Vander also knew he couldn't blame Logan for it.
Logan had done it for everyone. Logan had truly sacrificed himself.
And now, when everyone had already accepted that he was dead, that he was gone…
He was back.
"I know you have a lot of questions," Logan said calmly. "Like: wasn't I dead, why didn't I come back sooner if I'm alive, and what I've been doing for the past year."
"Explaining it properly is complicated. So you only need to know this: I really did die, but a god brought me back."
"For you, a year has passed. For me, it was basically the time it takes to close my eyes and open them again. I only woke up not long ago."
The moment Logan said a god revived him, everyone's eyes snapped to Janna.
"It wasn't me!" Janna shrieked.
Why are you looking at me?!
If I could resurrect Logan, would I have been mourning with you back then?!
Janna was genuinely furious. After being a god for so long, she rarely got emotional—but she was absolutely emotional right now.
Because she had clearly said it wasn't her, and yet these idiots all put on their "Yeah, yeah, we get it" faces, nodded along, and somehow believed in her even harder.
Great. More faith was technically a good thing.
But not faith gained because they thought she was some liar.
She didn't want faith that came from a misunderstanding.
Not a single bit.
"Ahem. It wasn't Janna," Logan said quickly. "It was another god."
If he let Janna take the blame again, she really would explode.
Logan honestly didn't even know how many times he'd tossed a black pot onto her head already.
"You know other gods too?!" Heimerdinger lit up like a firework. "What do they look like? Where are they? Can we meet them?"
"That's not happening," Logan said. "She's busy."
He cut Heimerdinger off before the questions could multiply. With an amused smile, Logan said, "Alright, everyone. Bottom line, I'm back. So let's hold the meeting."
The councilors sat down, energized, and the meeting began.
Jinx stayed outside the door, guarding Logan, waiting for him to come out.
She wanted to be with him every second of the day, but… meetings were so boring.
Instead of sitting in there unable to talk while they yapped, she'd rather stay outside and entertain herself.
Wait.
Did she forget someone?
Jinx lowered her head and started thinking hard.
"I'll go first," Jayce said. "First, I think we need to cut ties with Noxus and prepare for war. Because of that, developing weapons needs to be our top priority."
He looked around the room and continued.
"Jinx has created a lot of incredible weapons. Even I'm impressed. She's taken Hextech and chemtech and combined them in ways that are just… ridiculous."
"But her ideas aren't the problem, and the experiments are progressing. The problem is that there are still things we simply can't do, because we don't have the materials to make what she's envisioning."
Jayce was obviously talking about Jinx's remote-controlled killing-machine army.
It took too many materials—some of which Piltover didn't even have. Viktor had found substitutes, but those could only support small robots. Bigger ones were unstable. Move them once and they'd practically fall apart.
"So I think we should expand our foreign contacts," Jayce said. "Piltover already has connections with many nations. I can handle that."
"We could even consider opening relations with Demacia. I'm very interested in their local specialty: mithril ore."
"But isn't Demacia a closed-off nation?" someone asked. "They don't communicate with the outside world at all."
Silco shook his head. "No. Under the table, Demacia actually does plenty of business with Zaun. Demacia's so-called policies only really apply to commoners."
Logan listened with real interest.
"Business with Demacia is doable," Silco continued. "But an alliance would be hard. We're too far from the heart of Valoran, and Demacia only allies with nearby small nations. We're right next to Noxus, so they'll be wary of us."
"Still, pushing small deals through their nobles quietly… gradually… that can work."
Silco spoke as if he'd already decided. "I'll have Renata handle it. Jayce, later write up the materials you need and give the list to me. I'll pass it to her."
Jayce nodded. "Alright."
"Next, I'll speak," Marna said, standing up. She brought up several community issues.
She focused on weaknesses in Zaun's current community system. In the short term, it wouldn't break—but over time, differences between communities and differences in people's happiness would cause cliques to form, and the city would begin splitting into factions.
It was bad.
But it was also human nature, and hard to prevent.
Because once life gets comfortable, humans start doing a lot of stupid things. Marna had been watching it closely.
Logan looked at Marna as she spoke, surprised.
He remembered why she'd been made a councilor: Zaun needed someone who could truly connect with ordinary people, someone who would actually hear Zaunites. So the Spirit Blossom Gang had pushed the warm, approachable Marna forward.
Back then, she'd been timid and never voiced her own opinions.
But after a year…
Logan could only think: sometimes, people really do have endless potential.
"Noted," Silco said, nodding. "In the future, Zaun will expand our territory. The lands behind Piltover that used to belong to Noxus… those look pretty nice. Good land. More and more good places will open up."
Marna sat back down.
Heimerdinger popped up immediately. "My turn, my turn!"
He cleared his throat dramatically. "Ahem. Through my experiments, I discovered something. Hextech isn't really borrowing magic—so much as it's forcing magic to be born."
"Hextech is actually using rune power to stimulate magical usage."
"But it's very dangerous. So Viktor was right. Jayce—Viktor was right."
"Professor, I know," Jayce said, exasperated. "I know I was wrong back then."
Out of the countless Hextech gemstones Viktor had made, only one had ever produced a true Hexcore—and it was now hidden deep under Zaun.
The rest were normal Hextech gemstones.
And that mutated Hextech anomaly—there was only the one.
Even if Viktor tried to make it again, he wouldn't know how to start.
That thing had been a coincidence piled on top of a coincidence.
"I'm not only talking about that," Heimerdinger said. "I mean, after studying Jinx and Jayce's ideas about Hextech, I've developed a new branch."
Heimerdinger stood up on his chair, craning his head. When he saw everyone still looking down at him, he climbed right onto the table and shouted:
"Make Hextech magic… give birth to life!"
"What does that mean?" Logan asked him.
"It means that future Hextech could give machines life," Heimerdinger said, eyes sparkling. "Give them self-awareness. Of course, I know it's dangerous—because if machines lose control, ordinary people won't be able to stop them."
He clasped his little hands together and continued, "So we can carve their mission into the runes: protect Piltover and Zaun. That will be the future mission of Hextech life-technology."
"Wait…" Logan hesitated, then asked, "Professor, don't tell me you built a dragon."
No way.
Did Heimerdinger really develop a Hextech mech-dragon?
Because if that thing ever became real, the Twin Cities' combat power would shoot through the roof.
"In Teamfight Tactics, a fully built Hextech dragon is way stronger than a three-star four-cost."
"Eh? Logan, how did you know?" Heimerdinger blinked rapidly. "I don't think I've told anyone. Ah, well—anyway, you're right. I am researching it. But… ahem, I've only made a tiny bit of progress."
"Professor, I support your idea," Logan said. "But I don't support giving machines life and self-awareness—"
He stopped mid-sentence, thinking of Blitzcrank, then corrected himself.
"Actually… it can exist. But it can't be mass-produced."
"Once machines have self-awareness, our generation might be fine. But as time moves forward, they'll only become harder and harder to control."
"Machines are created to serve humans. But when they develop self-awareness, you can't guarantee they won't begin questioning their mission, developing other ideas… right, Professor?"
Heimerdinger stared at Logan for a moment, then frowned, then lowered his head.
Finally, he nodded. "Yes. You're right."
"I nearly forgot—because I live so long—that humans aren't immortal."
Heimerdinger sat back down and stayed silent for the rest of the meeting, clearly thinking hard about his invention.
Vander also stood up and spoke about Zaun's military structure. But Zaun's population was still too small, and so many parts of the city needed manpower that the military simply couldn't expand no matter what they did.
It couldn't be helped—Zaun used to be poor, broken, and chaotic.
But Vander's problem was actually the easiest one to solve.
Once Zaunites lived comfortably, once the environment was safe and people didn't fear the future…
They'd start having kids on their own.
Because, seriously—Zaunites had something to say about this.
Do you think we didn't want kids before? It's not that we didn't want to. It's that we couldn't.
When you can't even guarantee your own life, how are you supposed to be responsible for a child's future?
And besides, didn't Silco just say he wanted to use the land behind them to build a new Zaun homeland?
One by one, the councilors finished reporting on their areas.
Then everyone turned to Logan.
"Why are you all looking at me?" Logan said, speechless. "I just got back. I don't know anything yet."
Silco spoke up. "Logan. What do you think we should do about Noxus?"
"What do you mean, what should we do?"
Silco's voice lowered. "Whether it's Zaun or Piltover, the councilors of both cities agree we should treat Noxus as an enemy. Because wolves only learn fear when they get hit."
"And now we've summarized three workable paths."
"First: show goodwill to Noxus, buy time with money, and develop while we can."
"Second: enter the Noxus–Ionia War, hit Noxus's rear lines, cause trouble so they can't advance or retreat. That also buys us time to develop, but it'll cost us heavily."
"Third: openly and completely refuse all cooperation and trade with Noxus."
Silco pressed his lips together.
That third path was the one Jayce and the Piltover side pushed hardest.
Because Piltover sat higher up and Zaun sat lower down. Piltover feared Noxus attacking far more—if Noxus marched in, the first city-state to take the blow would be Piltover.
That was one of the reasons Piltover had started supporting Zaun wholeheartedly after Logan disappeared.
Before, Noxus and Zaun had plenty of black-market dealings—weapons, potions, chemtech, ore, all kinds of trade.
So, to be blunt…
Piltover was terrified Zaun would abandon them and side with Noxus.
As for Piltover going to "show goodwill" first?
Noxus was a pack of bandits and raiders. In front of them, Piltover would look like a rich socialite draped in gold, covered in precious jewelry.
Going there would be the same as delivering yourself.
If you didn't get swallowed down to the bone, that would be Noxus being "kind."
So Piltover understood: only if Zaun openly rejected Noxus and stood on the opposite side would Piltover be safe.
Jayce hated politics. And he genuinely liked Zaun now.
But his heart was still Piltover's.
So he looked at Logan, tense as hell.
Logan smiled like he found it funny.
"Then the third path."
"Starting today, Zaun refuses all contact with Noxus. Any Noxians currently in Zaun get three days—then they're all expelled."
"And they're not allowed into Piltover either."
"Send them back to wherever they crawled out of."
"We should be loud about it," Logan said, slapping the table. "They can't spare the manpower to fight us right now. And if they send a few small-time thugs?"
"Vander and I can handle that by ourselves."
"So what are we afraid of?"
He looked around the table.
"Everyone—when you're facing a major power, you don't need to grovel."
"In the future, the ones who should be afraid… are them."
"We'll see."
Under artillery bombardment, the age of swords and spellcasting becomes history.
Monsters and demigods excluded—Logan wasn't factoring them in.
But your average mage, your strongest warrior—if hundreds of shells come screaming in from miles away, are you living through that?
If you do, then you're unbelievably insane.
Logan wasn't exaggerating.
Maybe Valoran belonged to Demacia and Noxus right now.
But in the future, the brightest jewel on the continent would be the Twin Cities.
Piltover spent three hundred years evolving rapidly, opening the age of magitech.
Zaun spent three hundred years building steadily, creating Shimmer-based chemtech.
But all of that was only the beginning.
Just like how it took humanity a century to go from steam to electricity—then far less time to go from electricity to information.
Progress accelerates progress.
Piltover might be a small city-state, but its productivity already rivaled an entire nation like Noxus.
And Zaun was rising fast too.
Current productivity. Future potential.
Those two points alone were enough for Logan to say the Twin Cities were the best cities in the world.
Noxus or Demacia—doesn't matter.
Let's see who becomes the strongest nation on the Valoran continent in the end.
Bring it.
We'll see.
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