9) How to control the world

Guss spoke up first. "I don't really care, I doubt they would have a problem with what we come up with and if they do it won't be that hard to change."

Duke agreed with that whereas Billy thought we should wait for the girls.

In the end it ended up being 3 to 1 so we started brainstorming how to take over the world.

"The first two are obvious." Duke said, "military power and information control. That is just to start but then it gets complicated."

Billy nodded his head "afterwards you need to worry about civil wellbeing, fallout of the conflicts, stubbornness of human nature, and then the aspects of running and governing."

"Corruption, housing, healthcare, food, transportation, infrastructure, all that fun stuff. Things I hate to deal with."

Guss interrupted our train of thought with a valid point.

"Don't we need a base or something like that? I mean we can't always just be coming over here to hang out and plan our world to take over every day. That would be inconvenient."

"Good point Guss." Duke said. "Our first order is to gather enough information on the goings of the world and create as much knowledge as possible. Also we should go to the lottery tomorrow. We may not need resources but we still need money. We could just sell gold or something but that would be suspicious and I'm not down for alerting authorities on our plans this early on."

"This is true, I should create the stuff now for enhancing knowledge so you guys can brainstorm knowledge I need to learn before I can start making stuff. I will be in the basement."

I left the trio with a little bit more paper and headed down stairs.

There was an empty room that we used to use for storage before we got a storage unit, this was where I decided that I would put the servers and AI.

"Create Item: Mana Crystal Powered Artificial Intelligence.

Error, Knowledge Needed: Mana and Electricity, interfacing and interactions. AI and How to make them.

Crap, I knew this wouldn't be simple."

"Alright guys, so what does he need to know? Let's go category by category and then get into the minute things within each one."

Duke led the conversations, after all he was the most capable here from the contract stipulations he would be in charge for now.

"We need a base of operations" suggested Guss, Duke nodded and wrote it down.

"We need to know how mana works and how it affects modern technology." said Billy.

Again it was added to the list.

"We need to know about mental conditioning and how propaganda affects the brain." Guss added on.

The other two looked at each other before Duke said "I didn't know you knew how to say such big words."

Guss looked offended, "Just because I am hopeless when it comes to spelling and I like short words doesn't mean that I'm dumb."

"Finally we need to know about possible builds and methods of controlling super powered individuals." Duke wrote down the last one and suggested they start on the more specific knowledge.

"Any thoughts on the underground base? We need ideas for a location and style of building. Do we want to do something rural or something urban?"

Before Billy even had a chance to open his mouth Guss blurted out "I want a castle!"

Duke looked unsurprised but Billy asked "Why a castle?"

Guss got an all important look on his face and answered. " There are 4 reasons: first they are large and in secluded areas allowing us the peace to do what we want without being bothered. Second, the problem of not having resources for upkeep is a non issue for us. Third, there is plenty of room for expansion both above ground and below ground. Finally we are taking over the world and have fantasy powers, why the hell shouldn't we get a castle? Who wants to do all of that in a condo, bleh. Live the castlevania fantasy man."

Billy laughed and Duke wrote down 'castle' under residence "so the first one is done, I suggest we all win the lottery and see how close that gets us."

Guss just looked at them funny, "Guys, did it not cross your mind that we could ask Joey's parents? I know it's a lot but it will look a lot less suspicious for it to be under their name instead of a bunch of teenagers randomly coming across enough money to buy one."

Duke looked mortified at the suggestion. "We can't just ask someone's parents to spend tens of even hundreds of millions of dollars without a good explanation! What will they say! You're crazy, hell no! Billy, don't tell me you are thinking that might be a good idea?!"

"Well it's not a bad one." Billy had a pensive look on his face. "All they would be responsible for would be the down payment, they have the credit and assets that it wouldn't be all that unreasonable. If we add our lottery winnings then it shouldn't be that hard. Plus we have high demand resources that we could sell for money quite easily."

"I see that is indeed feasible. I guess we will do that then. So next up on the agenda is Mana and Technology. What would fall under that?" Duke led the group onto the next order of discussion.

Billy spoke first. "We should be able to skip this basically, Joey will be learning all this to make the AI and servers so he will probably make it magitech instead of relying on electricity only. We can probably move on to the next item on the list."

"Are you good with that guss?" He nodded his head at Duke's question and so he moved onto the next one.

"Next is Propaganda and Mental Conditioning. This should be pretty simple. He needs to know how to make propaganda and how to counteract it. Also how the human mind works and maybe the human condition."

"He should also learn some Psychology information, leadership tactics and the like. Something like the art of war."

"Good idea Guss, I think that should be fine with that. Or we could also add some mental conditioning information like how to build a mind palace or anything along the lines of that."

"Alright so that concludes all the serious stuff, now it is time for the fun one. Character Builds and Controlling Super Powered individuals." Jotting down information Duke moved to the final topic.

"So we can just go over the basics of magic: Spell Casting, Rune Studies and Classifications, Elemental Interactions, Materials and Magical Interactions, Incantations and Silent Casting, How Mana Works, Elemental guides for basic elements to the advanced ones, elemental combinations, Crafting, Artificing, Enchanting. That's all I got."

"WOW." Guss seemed rather impressed by how much information he prattled off without much effort. "My turn then. Combat in every form; from unarmed, to weapons, to distanced, to vertical, to machine weaponry, to magical warfare. Dangers to overburdening your Mind, Forging techniques, Stealth and assisination techniques, Robot creation, Resource harvesting-"

"Hang on. I need to get a new piece of paper." Duke interrupted and when he was ready he prompted Guss to continue.

"Troop training, Interior design, Material refinement, Military machinery and um idk my brain ran dry."

"Alright so that should be all we need so all we need now is to wait up for either the girls to arrive or Joey to finish up downstairs. We could also start looking at castle properties. We want something with lots of land and that's all really, fixing up the castle will be simple with the resources at our disposal."

When Duke finished speaking the front door could be heard opening up.