Chapter 15. There’s Always a Choice
I WENT OFF IN SEARCH mounted on Storm, who easily withstood the desert heat. I could have flown myself, but the bridle from Kitty the explorer gave a serious boost to movement speed, which mattered to me.
I crossed the whole desert. I saw a forest frozen as if petrified, which awakened and flourished with life just once per year, during the rare rain in this region. I saw strange huge geysers that shot out red-hot air like breaching whales, lava that seeped out of cracks in the earth and poured all across the land, smoke-wreathed valleys covered in volcanic ash.
My acquired immunity protected me from heatstroke, staving off the worst of the desert’s heat, but it still felt like an oven. Acrid sweat poured into my eyes, my mouth kept drying out, my skin itched beneath my armor and I was forced to resort to the only drink in my inventory — elvish wine, warm and sour. I had to force it down. The drunkenness debuff stacked up and my gaze dimmed. My coordination suffered and I wasn’t steering the dragon perfectly straight. Hell, I was all over the place — Storm was thrown from side to side. The alcohol didn’t quench my thirst, but made the heat worse.
At the southwestern edge of the Lakharian Desert, I found ruins all over: wind-battered skeletons of collapses houses, fangs of shattered columns, the remnants of temples, ziggurats, collapsed pyramids and other signs of fallen civilization. Enough to keep Infect busy digging for years! The structures teemed with desert monsters, but the bard had leveled up enough that they wouldn’t stop him.
Soon the first settlement appeared — twenty houses, if that, — surrounded by a crooked wall of stones gathered from nearby. Taking on the guise of a merchant, I landed behind a dune so as not to shock the locals, then walked to the gates where a bored sentry in leather armor stood eating berries and flicking away the seeds, trying to hit the lizards sunning themselves on a stone a yard away.
Seeing me, the guard put on a fearsome expression, grabbed his halberd and raised it before him.
“Who are you and what do you want?” He frowned and his helmet visor fell down over his eyes.
Mori, human, level 366 Sentry
The village wasn’t weak. If an ordinary sentry was close in level to Dis’s top players… This had to be where Oyama lived! But I had to be careful — mistrust danced in Mori’s eyes. One wrong word and my reputation would drop to hostile. Persuasion gave me a hint:
“A traveler,” I answered. “Some water would…”
“Can’t let you pass,” the guard said smugly. “Not allowed. All sorts wandering about…”
I bounced a gold coin in my hand and the sentry’s eyes gleamed. He turned back to me, gulped noisily and started to reach out, but then a voice came from behind him:
“Who’s this?”
A solid old man in a gown appeared at the gates, his skin yellowed and dried from the sun. His eyes scanned me.
“What do you want from us?”
My gut told me this was man wasn’t simple. Persuasion gave me three dialog options, and I didn’t like their chances. The only option that gave me a small chance of an answer was to be open with him.
“I’m looking for the village of Jiri…”
The old man’s face tightened. He and the guard instantly closed and locked the gate before me.
“Full battle readiness!” I heard from behind the gate.
Then other sounds. Metal clanging, a child screaming, geese honking. What was happening? Were they fighting..? Did the people of Jiri have an bad reputation? Were they feared?
I took off and hovered over the chaos-filled village. Arrows started flying toward me. I could descend, corner the villagers at the wall and force them to talk, but I had no desire to harass innocent NPCs — I’d had enough death for one day. So I just flew on, consoling myself with the thought that this wouldn’t be the last village I found.
The next village was almost ten minutes’ flight away; like the last one, it didn’t show on the map. Then deja vu: I landed to ask the villagers about Jiri, but they either cowered in fear, answering that they’d never heard of the village Jiri, or raised the alarm and attacked me. The damn map started to display the names only after the villagers told me them.
The sleepless night was taking its toll: I was yawning constantly, starting to zone out. My friends left Bomber to stand guard and went off to sleep without waiting up for me. We had to put off the clan meeting again — at least until I found Oyama.
At dawn, almost ready to abandon my search, angry and tired, I ran into the bed of a river in drought, reduced to a tiny stream splashing between the stones. A child could have stepped across it. A fence of sharpened stakes loomed a hundred yards away, its origins unclear. I flew closer. The barrier surrounded a couple of dozen low structures that descended into the ground and melded with the sand. Trees grew sparsely beyond the fence like a reminder of a lost oasis.
My experience of contact with the locals told me I’d get a cold welcome if I flew over that fence, and they’d be no happier to see my dragon. So I recalled Storm and headed to the gates on foot. Maybe this time I’d get a reasonable conversation.
“Halt, traveler.” A tousled head as big as a cauldron appeared over the parapet. “With what do you come?”
“I seek the village of Jiri.”
“You have found it. Take off your helmet, show your face and name yourself!”
Finally! I glanced at the guard — level three hundred and ninety-nine, woah!
“Scyth,” I introduced myself, putting my armor away in my inventory — the set was one whole, I couldn’t take off the helmet without the rest. “I’m looking for Supreme Grand Master Oyama.”
“You’ve come at a bad time, gramps is sleeping.” The man yawned noisily, his mouth opening so wide that for a moment I thought I was talking to an ogre. “Go with peace, traveler.”
“A hundred gold if you wake him up and bring him here. Or take me to him…”
“Nobody would wake him up even for a hundred thousand gold! And I don’t advise you try it either!” he chortled. “Leave this place while you still can!”
“Alright. I’ll be back in the morning.”
“As you like.” The man yawned again, this time even louder and wider. “Don’t forget the hundred gold. Dzigoro is my name. If I am not here, ask for me.”
His yawn was so infectious that I did the same. Rubbing my eyes, I found the logout button and ended my session. I crawled out of the capsule, wished Maria good night, asked her to wake me, staggered to my bedroom and collapsed into bed.
As I fell asleep, it occurred to me that I could just find another master of Unarmed Combat in Darant or Shak. I was alive again, after all; I could walk around the capitals without much risk. A trainer with the rank of Unparalleled Master would be enough. Oyama was three grades above that, and I wouldn’t need that level until rank four — to confirm the title of Grand Master.
But he was the one I wanted to train with. Firstly, in order to start building up my reputation with him early, and secondly… Something told me that Oyama had returned from the astral plane because of me (and the nearby Armageddon explosions, partly), and that all this was happening for a reason.
I slept deep and would have gone on sleeping all day if Maria hadn’t woken me. In my dream, I went to the Gnoll Riverlands again for some reason and almost reached the Frozen Gorge, but was interrupted. The nightmare I had in Alaska repeated, only without the ‘extraction.’ Thankfully, a shower washed away my dark thoughts.
Hung and I had breakfast together. Crawler and Infect had relieved him in the morning, so he’d slept too, but not long enough — he yawned, reminding me of that guard from Jiri.
“I checked up on the castle. Raidohelm promised to be done in a couple of days,” Hung told me as he wolfed down an omelet of artificial eggs with soy bacon. “Some goblins turned up on Kharinza with some equipment and headed into the mountains. Looking for natural caverns for traps.”
I told him what I’d done last night
and opened my comm. Yoshi had forwarded me a message from Big Po in which he described in detail the history of his interactions with the Destroying Plague. It was similar to mine, and I had been partially responsible for Polynucleotide getting the Mark of the Destroying Plague: he’d gotten infected by killing Punisher, the undead wolf who had recently become my pet Crusher.
Wesley ended his story with a note of bitterness in his voice: And then you finished me off! You and your friends!
It was something else that interested me: both I and Big Po had seen an Emissary of the Destroying Plague — not a legate, but someone else. I remembered that nightmarish beast, its mouth stretching across its face, its tentacle stingers. Did that mean the Nucleus had servants in the wider world? After all, it was the Emissary who gave me and Big Po identical quests to capture Tristad.
In any case, Wesley had held up his end of the bargain. I wrote back that I’d invite him to the clan and make him an adept of the Sleepers as soon as I could. He’d have to wait until the second temple finished building.
I told all this to Hung and shared my thoughts:
“Two options. The Emissaries are just generated by the system, it’s just a script. Or: the Nucleus has servants, and they aren’t legates. Why would he need me and Big Po otherwise? But then the question is — how many are there and what else can we expect from them? And how did they reach Latteria?”
“You told me yourself that the Nucleus spread plague dust all over Dis. Maybe someone got infected and went into hiding. Maybe he can only take messages from the Nucleus and deliver them to others. Don’t worry,” Hung said. “Better eat, or it’ll get cold.”
It was good advice, because Hairo soon turned up to drag me off to train, but when he saw our empty plates, he just shook his head:
“Find time to log out of Dis today, Alex, and don’t eat before you work out! You said yourself, you need to be in shape for the Demonic Games!”
“Don’t know if I’ll even enter them,” I muttered, getting up from the table.
But that wasn’t really true. There was no other way to get Concentrated Life Essence, and it was a good thing I still had time to solve all our problems before I had to fly to the Games.
“By the way!” Hung said as if reading my thoughts. “Registration closes in a week. You going to sign up before it’s too late? You can back out if it comes to it, there won’t be any penalties… well, almost.”
“Just the title of Cowardly Slug and minus rep with all factions? Alright, I’ll think about it…”
After logging into Dis, I found myself outside the palisade surrounding Jiri again. The sky was already brightening in the east, but there was still time before dawn. I decided to make use of it. First I checked on Kharinza to see how the construction was going.
The dwarves were ahead of schedule.
The entire area of the former fort was now occupied by the castle, which looked more like ruins from the inside. The builders had already erected the walls, which glimmered with purple bars of Corrupted Adamantite.
Raidohelm, unhappy to be torn from his work, dryly explained that this was just the shell. The walls would get thicker, to the point that several horseman abreast could ride along it. Well, or one dragon.
That was hard to imagine for now.
“The castle itself will be ready tomorrow,” the dwarf informed me, nodding at the unfinished structure in the center. “But there’s still a lot of work to do: merchant stalls, housing, sawmill, smithy, stable… We’re going to put down a road to the mine, build a fishing pier. There’ll be three taverns — one inside the castle, another two outside. The boys are cutting down trees now, and then they’ll start reinforcing the moat and finish off the fortress walls.”
All around were huge piles of stone, adamantite, logs, makeshift materials. Builders swarmed around like ants: some moving fast and light, others with cargo. Shouts carried from all over. I couldn’t see the Tree Protector or Trixie’s gardens.
“There is a gardener in the crew,” Raidohelm reassured me. “In the meantime, he has transplanted it all beyond the build site.”
The only thing that remained unchanged was Behemoth’s temple. Now it was hidden by the castle wall; in the end, it would be in the castle’s inner courtyard, with a single passage leading in from outside. The passageway would be protected by two adamantite gates in case of attack, and the gates would let us trap enemies that broke through.
“We’re installing the most powerful mana crystals available. Any thoughts on the shield you’d like to use to protect the castle?”
I showed him the Righteous Shield, and Raidohelm nodded respectfully.
“Wow. Transforms damage into mana? I’ll tell the boys that we’re building an invincible fortress.”
Once done looking around, I said good-bye to the foreman and I left for Mengoza.
Bomber was already there, as were the others. Gyula had finished building a Small Fort, so we held our clan council meeting in the tavern, which Crawler had called the Bone and Fossil.
“Infect dragged all kinds of crap back here from his excavations,” the mage explained.
“You just don’t get it!” the archeologist said, wounded. “That crap could be anything! Even a divine artifact!”
Infect was sat at a neighboring table working on his finds, cleaning the dust off each item with a brush and scraping off clinging dirt with his fingernail. At our table were Bomb, Crawler, Irita and myself. The mage had covered both tables with a Dome of Silence. I quickly told the boys about the events of the previous night, then took a cup of black halfling coffee from Eniko and suggested we start:
“Alright, let’s go, the clan council is in session. How are our finances?”
“Almost four million gold has gone out in loans to workers,” Crawler answered. “They all got standard-class capsules. Infect and I can’t level the men up properly here, we’re too far above the mobs. So Patrick and Irita are doing it, we’re just there as backup. Anyway, the workers drew straws and we’re leveling up the first group now.”
“Once they hit one hundred, they’ll go to Auldforge, the underground dwarven city,” Irita added. “We’ll have a portal to there when the dwarves finish the castle. The cheapest Mining teachers are there. Using their services is 20% cheaper than buying the crafting books. The clan pays for tuition, but if the workers want to leave in the future, they’ll have to pay it back.”
“Makes sense, I like it,” I said.
“Rank one will allow them to mine not only copper, iron and tin, but silver and gold too,” Crawler concluded. “We haven’t taken into account higher-level gemstones yet, but even without them, the increase in crafting rank will double the miners’ contribution to the clan treasury.”
“More like triple it,” Irita argued. “Crawler is being conservative. At first he calculated only a quarter increase.”
“My mistake,” Crawler admitted. “But Scyth, it’s still nothing! We’ll increase our profit to three hundred thousand a month, which gives us three million and six hundred a year. But our expenses?! You know how much the building in Cali Bottom costs us? The insurance and taxes eat up all our income, and that’s before paychecks. Worse…” Pausing a moment, he shot a glance at Irita. “You know the situation with Diego? The security officers have a big order: weapons, equipment, other stuff. The money has already gone out, all in dark phoenixes.”
“I know about it,” I nodded. “Necessary cost, believe me. What do you suggest?”
“We need more firewood!” Infect piped up, still digging through his artifacts.
“Firewood, ore, gems, fish, herbs — everything that can be gathered on the archipelago!” Crawler pressed. “We can boost the clan’s income pretty well. But we need more workers.”
“Ed wants a magic tower too,” Irita said, throwing the gnome under the bus.
“Well, I mean…” Crawler lowered his eyes. “At some point. Wouldn’t hurt to invent some new spells. Not many make a serious try of it, it’
s too expensive, but we have piles of legendaries, so I thought…”
“Nine floors!” Infect muttered. “The first costs a million and every next one is two times the cost of the last! That’s why not many try it — they go bankrupt!”
“The guy who invented Ultima became a category-A citizen and founded his own city under a dome on the Moon!” Crawler argued, rounding on the bard. “I can invent something too!”
“There’s something to it,” Bomber allowed. “As for nine floors, Infect is exaggerating. Nobody has more than four — the floors are bound to your magic rank. Rank four has only just been unlocked. Crawler has the chance to be the first to build a fifth floor. Five rank spells don’t exist. Yet. But if our gnome wizard invents one, we’ll be rich!”
Path of Spirit (Disgardium Book #6): LitRPG Series Page 16
