“Drew! Trouble! You need to hear this!” She yells the moment she steps inside Tree.
“Where the fucking shit in all damn damnation am I? What the flying dungeon fuck is this? What the fucking shit is that?” shouts a certain king in black clothing
Why is she hauling that foulmouthed discount ninja with her? I sigh as Lola jumps on my shoulder, having sensed trouble brewing.
chapter twenty
Brief
“Hello, mister king, how are you?”
“You.You are that guy!”
“Yes, I’m that guy. Nice to meet you.”
I can see the king’s head nearly explode as his frenzied gaze switches back and forth between me, Rhea, and our surroundings. I take the long white hat from my head and put all the floating cooking utensils down. I can see the poor guy’s mind breaking, and it’s hilarious. Let’s fuck with him some more.
“Re-Haan, thank you for bringing him. WE SHALL HAVE A ROYAL FEAST TONIGHT!” I twirl knives through my hands while I breathe out some qi, willing it to absorb the light in a radius behind me. I make sure to grin maniacally at the guy while licking my lips.
Then Rhea is by my side, slapping the knives away and blowing my special effects away. I glare at her.
“Don’t play around, Drew. Something is happening.”
I look back at the king and notice that he decided to kneel in front of me for some reason. “Why are you kneeling?”
He looks up at me, tears in his eyes. Gods, is this going to be a heartfelt sappy moment? “I thank you for showing me a different path and for allowing me the strength to walk upon it.” His servile attitude then vanishes as he pulls the black cloth from around his head, showing the circlet on his brow to everyone. “That was my personal thanks. Now, in the capacity as the First Defender and Chosen of the Flight I would like to ask you: what the fuck are you doing? Did you ever rule anything before? How the flying dungeon shits are you this incompetent at doing anything?”
I stare at his sudden shift of demeanour while gaping. The guy went from tear-filled thanks to an imposing emperor in a split second. “Rhea, am I supposed to know what he is talking about?”
“See, he doesn’t work like that. He has more smarts than the entirety of the capital combined but no common sense. What he is trying to ask you, Drew, is what the fuck your plan is? Tower city is still in shambles, half the nobles are embroiled in trade wars and feuds, thanks to a certain book being released, and all the mages have evacuated from the Shie-Eit kingdom. Would you know anything about any of these things?”
I frown. “Some stuff happened, sure, but how many people got killed?”
Rhea gives the king a meaningful glance. Are they conspiring against me? She needs more punishment, I decide. Any further lewd plans are interrupted as the king starts talking to me again, his entire persona screaming at me that he is now talking from the position of a ruler. “The loss of lives is inconsequential compared to the economic chaos and fear spreading through the populous. This qi… this power allows me to understand a bit of what is going on, and I want an explanation.”
“Nope.” I counter.
Rhea pulls a chair from her ring and sits down. She gestures at some darkly clad people who are arriving from the moon, and they scurry off. She then starts eating while enjoying the show. Tsk, irritating woman.
I can go two ways here. The honourable thing to do would be to have a long discussion, explaining my own plans, problems, fallbacks, and countermeasures. I say screw that, though. I pull a piece of jade from my ring, put some data on it, and slap it on the guy’s forehead. I sink a strand of augur through his body, from the forehead to his gut. There, I pull on his power, forcefully pouring his own qi into his brain. I then make it spin.
⁂
The king feels like his brain is exploding, and not the chaotic explosion of a fire spell or a mana cannon. No, his mind is expanding at a rapid rate while staying completely whole. Every previous worry and threat seems so small from his current mental height, and the growth isn’t showing any signs of stopping.
His fumbling mind is pulled to a new section of data, a slightly familiar haven as his will stumbles around in the alien stretches of his expanded mind. There he finds the information he previously saw, a graph depicting ways of governing. Caught in between chaos, order, centralization, and decentralization, he ponders the information with a mind cracked wide open.
Links and connections previously hidden spring to light. His consciousness then stumbles into new territory just when he thinks he saw everything there is to see. A web, so infinitely intricate and finely spun that it looks like a misty tree the size of a planet, now presents itself. The king stumbles back, half throwing, half stumbling every single spec of mental prowess into sight before him.
Infinity stares back at him.
⁂
“What did you do? It was just about to get good,” Rhea pouts as she puts her food down. The king is still staring at nothing with empty eyes. I see stars sparkle in his glassy orbs, a side effect of the qi rampaging through his skull.
I retract my augur and let the guy pull his qi back into his core. He takes a gasping breath and stumbles back, his expression shifting from awe to confusion and confounded realization. We stand there for a bit as his eyes regain their focus.
“Neither angry hero, helplessly mad at the world for its injustice andpassive agelessness, unchangingly watching the world go by.” I comment.
He nods at me. “I managed to retain some of it. Is that how all braincores see things?” His eyes fill with a haunted chill for a moment.
“That was a glimpse of insanity, so no. All braincores need to keep thinking small mortal thoughts lest they get lost in there.”
“Thank the flight and my mother that I chose diarrhoea,” he whispers to himself. He then starts glaring at me. “You’re still a fucking dungeon stain though.”
“There we go. Neither zero nor infinity. Grey all the way.” We stare into each other’s eyes in an understanding, manly way. There is this type of connection that only men can share, this deep understanding of life.
“Drew, stop seducing the king. King, my apologies for his rude behaviour. I will punish him later.” She gives the sitting monarch a slight bow while ignoring my glare.
“Mister… Drew. Pl-”
“Call me Teach.”
“Call him Drew.”
“Mister cultivator, misses cultivator, please inform me if you are going to perform any operations in my city in the future. I will be glad to be of any assistance. It was a good opportunity to test my powers but I’d rather not have fights in the capital, lest it end up like Tower City. And finally, all mages have been recalled. Every single wielder of mana under the Council’s thrall has been returned to the Isles. I also hear rumours of an entire island vanishing and other gossips of chaos among the manipulators of mana. I am needed in the city, trying to keep the nobles from eating my common folk and keeping everyone calm under the rumours of enormous beast hordes. I’d request of you to handle these matters.”
“Did you check the quests section or didn’t you retain that bit?” I ask the guy.
“That information didn’t seem relevant to me.”
“Alright. I’d warn you not to go against any suspiciously powerful new organization popping up here and there, but you couldn’t stop them even if you wanted to, I’m afraid.”
“I will take my leave now. I retained the portal location.” The king then glances at his ring, turns around and strides off. I watch him wander around for a bit. “How do I get back up?”
“Just jump.” Rhea ruins my fun by telling him. He hesitantly jumps and is startled as Database’s white glow lifts him upwards.
“Drew, you should be wary of dissenting factions; even I can sense that!” He yells at me before he speeds off towards the moon.
I wave him off while nodding placidly. “I think it’s cute he tried to warn me.”
“So, you do know that she’s been
working very hard, then?” Rhea asks with a hint of concern on her face.
“I welcome her to try. Overcoming adversity breeds strength, right? Or something. It’s just too petty for me to really care about. Now cooking, that’s a subject worthy of my considerable attention!” Unwilling to waste more mental power on useless worries, I return to my culinary duties. “I’ve got a few more beasties to cook. Want to check on the mages after this? My drones only showed me that the mages retreated to the mana dungeon. The mana is so thick over there that my drones can’t get close enough to listen in, so I want to check it out.”
She throws her hands in the air. “Sure, whatever! My mission went to total shit, and I failed to bring you the library data, but that’s not important, right?”
I look at her while covering the large pile of scaled chinchilla meat in herbs and spices. “Did you give them feedback? Did you trust any of your underlings? Did you try to be their friend? Did you take your time with them? Did you follow their process? Did-”
Rhea is looking down as she slumps against the kitchen counter. “No, no, in the beginning, no, no, shut up.” She wraps her arms around her knees and rocks back and forth. It’s a good thing the crowd has thinned out, the return of a bleeding and defeated fifty-man expedition is more interesting than my cooking show, bunch of disaster tourists.
“I don’t need to tell you this, right? Note down what went wrong, and try again.” I roll my eyes at her and stuff a piece of flatbread with meat and sauce in her mouth. Her eyes flash with anger before bliss overtakes her face.
“Delicious, but expect punishment later.” The evil glint in her eyes makes me shiver in a combination of fear and anticipation. Bring it on!
chapter twenty-one
Modify
“Where would be best, though? I think we will need a lot of space unless you know some space—bending formations that we could install?” Tess saunters through the dark streets of Tower City.
The recent turmoil and general destruction caused a lot of construction jobs to open up. Every single mage capable of construction, and even those not capable, travelled back to the sea, exacerbating the workforce shortage. Some nobles and merchants even forcefully conscripted people from the streets, rumours said.
“My shack is sufficient. Space—manipulating formations work through compression of an enclosed space. It would be easier and more cost effective to build a room in Tree and install it in a house,, as opposed to transforming an existing residence into one.”
“No, we are not staying in that hovel. You should feel ashamed for calling that stain your home. You’re lucky, ya know. I don’t know any other girl that would be going out with you after seeing where you used to live. How about this one?” Tess jabs Ket in his side as she points at a partially destroyed dark warehouse at the edge of the poor district. One side is in charred splinters,, and the small stretch of land surrounding it is rapidly becoming overgrown.
“Going out, are we? And did you choose this place because it has a garden? Other warehouses are structurally sound or have more space, but you chose this pile of splinters for some reason.”
Tess blushes and tries to take her hand back. Ket firms his grip and drags her behind him as they approach the half-ruined building. “We can’t just go in there!” Tess weakly protests. She looks around, but the streets are pretty empty.
Ket looks at her incredulously. “One, you are a sneak. That’s a synonym for burglar. Two, this is Runer’’s territory. The markings are at least two weeks old. They abandoned this place.” Ket points to a small and weathered symbol at the bottom of the surrounding fencing.
“Well, those Runer guys are small timers, so I guess it’s okay to piss them off.”
“We are cultivators. That doesn’t mean we have to go lookinging for trouble, thoughthough even the Royal’s wouldn’t be a match for us.” Ket pushes the crooked gate open and walks towards the warehouse door. He starts pulling on the planks fastened to the wood but stops when he fails to produce any movement.
Tess steps forward and starts pulling on the boards while casting a smirk in Ket’s direction, only to fall on her ass as the nails are pulled from the wood while they glow a glitteryy grey. Ket steps into the doorway, holding out a hand to her. “Ma’am, if I may?”
Tess grabs his hand without saying anything. They step into the building and see a large open space with empty crates, sacks,, and detritus scattered everywhere. Tess walks over to the door on the far side,, while Ket inspects the large sliding loading doors on the side.
SheShe looks into the piles of empty crates but only finds some stray kernels of grain or dropped small items like nails. Reaching the doors, she finds a narrow hallway and several several dark doorways.
“KET! Get over here!” Ket stops messing with the large doors and walks towards the hallway. He finds Tess looking inside a sparsely furnished room. Several small faces are peering at them from behind a dirty bench and a fallen table.
“Why are you all hiding here? Didn’t I tell you guys to not enter gang territory?”
“It’s Ketty!”
“Mister Ketty!”
“Your shack vanished, so we had to find something else, Ketty!”
“Ketty is back!”
“Ketty, so clean! Where did you steal those clothes?”
Tess gapes with open mouth as the lanky boy is swarmed by the group of small children. “Call me Ket, and who taught you that stupid name? Was it San? Did she teach you to call me that?”
The small group falls silent, allowing Tess to observe them for the first time. They are all dirty, covered in several stacked layers of soot and grime. Rags are wrapped around their dirty frames. She notices that they aren’t as skinny as street kids usually are.
“Is the old man still giving you food? He should have enough coin for a few weeks. Why are you all so silent?”
Tears appear in several of the children’s eyes, and some start sniffling. “San got recruited.”
“Who?” Ket asks with a deadpan expression.
“No, don’t tell him.”
“San went with them. She said not to come for her.”
“Force.”
“We promised not to tell him!”
“Force, thanks. Tess, please take care of these guys for a moment, I’ll be right back.”
“No, don’t go!”
“Not Ket too, no!”
“Ketty, please don’t go.”
Tess stands there, frozen by the recent developments, until the kids start running after Ket. Tess steps in front of them and smiles. “He’ll be back, I promise. Don’t cry. Do you want food?”
She pulls some random snacks from her ring in a panic. One child starts bawling and she stuffs a random piece of confectionery Teach made in his mouth. The boy shuts up and starts snacking on the morsel with big eyes. Tess is inundated with whining children, all begging her for food.
Ten minutes later the children are all sitting on the floor while stuffing their faces with all kinds of preserved delicacies. Tess has never felt more mental exhaustion in her entire life.
She takes in the room they are in for the first time. The walls are rough timber without any finishing, except for some kind of dark stain. The floors are well worn and smoothed stone slabs. The remaining pieces of furniture are made from rough but decent stock timber. The nails keeping them together are handmade and irregular, a clear indicator that the previous owners didn’t think dungeon won nails were worth their price.
Tess slips out, using her stealth skills to easily evade the children’s notice, and explores the rest of the building. The barn is fairly large for being built inside a city but not larger than a decent house. The front of the building contains a small stretch of ground connected to the loading area at the side of the big doors. The back of the building is divided into several rooms, and Tess recognises dark and light spots in the floors and wall that previously held large furniture.
The room the children hid in used to contain a kit
chen if the food and soot stains are any indication. The single room with windows must have held some kind of common room, while another room still contains a half-demolished bed frame.
She returns to the kitchen area to find half the children snoozing, while the other half are huddled into a corner.
“Ketty brought a girl along, but she is too pretty.”
“San always told us she was going to…”
“And she is too clean. I like her.”
“You’d follow a mutant too if it gave you food. What are we going to do about her?”
“But Ketty and a girl? How? Did he pay her?”
“Shh!”
The small gathering of children stares at Tess, who stares back at them. Absolutely lost and completely out of her comfort zone, Tess puts a large piece of green stone against her ring and against her forehead.
She connects to Database through her Tree-linked ring and desperately asks anyone who will listen for help. Ket and her had made some rough plans, but they had nothing prepared. Too late, Tess realizes that the food she gave the kids contains qi.
Ten more minutes later Ket re-enters the building, carrying a girl slightly bigger than the rest of the kids. He walks into the room everyone is in and freezes. “Tess, what are you doing?”
She turns to him with panic across her face, her hands full of qi crystals and chalk. The floor is covered with intricate and ominous looking formations, circles and symbols. The children are placed on what Ket recognises as junction points, each brat sitting in a small circle while happily chewing on food. Food that contains qi, Ket notices. “Tess?”
Now she is the one with tears in her eyes. “I don’t know what to do, help me, I never needed to take care of kids, why do I smell blood? Ket, why do you smell of blood?”
“Tess, I think there are bigger issues here. Why are you trying to form a soul binding contract with nine kids at once?”
“It’s the only thing I could find in Database! The connection is terribly slow, so this is the only thing I could come up with before they all started dying all over the place.”
The Dao of Magic: Book III Page 18
