by Dakota Krout
I told Dani, who mimicked an eye and rolled around.
“I don’t know; it reminds me of a basic slime.” Dani critically inspected the blob of steamy water.
There was no response, which was exactly as expected. Perfect. If it had somehow talked, I might have screamed and tried to figure out what was going on. Water wasn’t supposed to speak. Of course, who was I to get upset about typically inanimate objects talking.
I built up a Core with various Mana types and tried to match the minerals to it. I used all sorts of material, but… nothing I did worked to make a higher form of elemental. I couldn’t even replicate Bath! I even destroyed him and absorbed him, but… there was nothing that should have allowed him to be animated like he was. There must be some property of corruption that allowed it to function as it did, but it was energy. Energy was supposed to only be a tool, not a deciding factor in animation. There was only one thing to do.
So, a massive empty room that needed creatures. Creatures that needed to eat others of their kind to increase in power and complexity. This should be fun. I thought about making the room become filled with rings to battle through, but I decided to try something else that would be interesting and potentially deadly. The walls moved at my direction and closed in around the room until there was a huge conical shape created from the stone. The rim, the highest portion of the room, would be the start. The tip of the cone would be at the bottom. Was it a waste of space? Maybe, but it was only a few hundred feet deep.
My real concern was people flying. I needed a way around that, and I decided that I had figured it out.
“What are you up to, Cal? You’ve been quiet for a while now.” Dani flew to where I directed her, Grace tagging along and bounding through the stone to create oddly flowing patterns in the rock. It was cute, so I left her art wherever she made it.
“Oh, thank goodness.” She breathed a sigh of relief while I chuckled. “What are you thinking?”
I let her look over the cone,
“That sounds neat. I’m guessing the Runes are to mess with flying people?” I confirmed her guess, and she thought for a moment while Grace played around. “We could… Grace!”
The tiny wisp had made a corkscrew spike grow from the ground and giggled when she heard her name called. Dani paused and looked at the spiral. “Well, there we go. How about a ramp that spirals around the entire thing? Take it from a cone to a screw. Two ramps. Start them at opposite ends and meet at the bottom. How does that sound?”
Another interesting fact to me was that the elementals could only be earth, wind, water, or fire based. How do you give celestial or infernal to an elemental? I created the elemental cores for them anyway, assuming correctly that the basic types would eat them to expand themselves. Neat. I made swarms of elementals and forced them to wait to do anything. There were various sizes of each of them so that the… beasts? Creatures? Entities? There we go. So that the entities could change in large or subtle ways as they fought. I’m sure that the celestial and infernal Cores would be useful for growth as well.
After the final Bob had given the Runes their seal of approval, it was nearly morning. I was getting much faster at this sort of thing! When the Bobs had left, and the Silverwood tree and I were safely hidden at the bottom of the cone, I released the reins on the elementals. It. Was. Awesome. I had kept all the types separated, and most of them ignored their own kind unless they were twenty percent smaller than themselves. Then they would latch on and absorb the smaller entity. The edges of the groups began to blur as elemental combat erupted. A water elemental went over the edge, not on a ramp, and began falling.
When it reached the bottom of the slope, it was so compressed that it was basically a superfluid. The Core of it stopped rolling and shattered, spraying water and Mana everywhere. I was so glad that I had thought to reinforce this area to an extreme. It was basically a panic room that even A rank-seven Mages would have trouble destroying in a single hit. They could do it, but they would need to put extra effort into it. I highly doubted they would bother.
The battle kept raging, and some of the elementals began moving down the ramps. Upon doing so, their bodies would become somewhat more compressed. This gave them an advantage over the non-compressed versions, and they quickly defeated and ate their closest rivals. If they progressed too quickly, they would break under the pressure and be scooped up by the others or their power would return to me. By the time one of them reached the base of the cone, they would be incredibly powerful.
If I could have purred in pleasure, I totally would have done so. I tried to make a similar sound, but only got an odd look from Dani. I ignored it; I was happy. So what if I’m a little strange? You have to be a little odd to be number one.
Chapter Fifty-four
Daylight started to touch my surface which always made me a little ticklish. Or something similar, I suppose. How could I be tickled? It seemed fun…? An issue for another time. I saw the light flare from Xenocide’s Runescript as the moon breached the horizon once more. What incredible power those Runes contained. I simply had nothing that I could compare it to. A miniature version of the sun? It didn’t give off heat or light, so no, but something about that comparison tickled my mind.
Speaking of power, my ley lines had never stopped expanding, even if they had only moved downward fractions of an inch. That was over the entirety of the planet, so it was still pretty impressive. Whatever power not used by me directly or for my purposes was directed back into expanding the lines. Loose Essence continued to flood into me, but I was also starting to notice the lack of Mana storms in the area. From all the power thrown around yesterday, I would have absolutely expected the world to attempt to purge it from the atmosphere in the form of a Mana storm. That it hadn’t… I was pleased.
This was the first direct confirmation I had gained that my ley lines were ironing out the overly concentrated areas of power in the world. Now, I wasn’t absorbing all of it, but as one area of high power concentration was removed, it would stop leaking power into the surroundings. When areas with low concentrations were drained, energy would flood in from a more highly concentrated area. I had several Bobs working to take samples of the power density, and they were making a second map to set over the first.
They called it a ‘power overlay’. Pretty basic, but easy to understand. Now, the hope was that we could increase draw on ley lines in the
areas with the highest concentrations. Doing so could only be beneficial, at least to us. It was likely that powerful monsters would not appreciate their lairs weakening, but that was someone else’s problem or, at least, an issue for the future. Oh! I should extend my influence to the base of my mountain so that I can crush things and absorb their pattern! That would be my next goal after fine-tuning my elemental cone.
I was getting the warm and fuzzies from watching the rapid evolution of my new elementals. I felt like a real dungeon again and not just a ride or cash-cow for the powerful. How long had it been since I made a new monster? Made a new Rune? I had all the Runes the Spotters publicly knew about, but what had I done to seek out or create new ones? I was in a creative tizzy, and I felt like I was myself again after weeks of stress and uncertainty. Do you know what happens when you overstress a Core? Boom! I’m glad I avoided that.
The strongest of the elementals had reached the halfway point of the cone and had undergone significant changes. No longer were they blobs of basic elements. As the pressure had increased, they had been forced to branch out from their weak forms. Limbs were made, appendages, whip-like tentacles, but still no heads or other sensory organs. Why would they need them? The one I was rooting for had started out as a giant fireball and focused mainly on attacking and eating earth and infernal types. It must have killed a spider or something because, otherwise, I had no idea how it decided to make similar limbs.
It was now an infernal magma elemental and had twelve legs. It looked like a darkly glowing ball of molten stone, and it was interesting to watch. When it walked, it raised the front and back two legs - so four legs total - and used them as piercing weapons. It never had to turn: it only needed to use different legs. This gave it amazing mobility, even though I had originally thought it would be a weakness to need to change which legs you were using. What would I know about leg usage though? I called it Aranea infernum or Aranea for short. What can I say? I’m a very literal Core.
This elemental was directly across from one that I had been subtly guiding to be its opposite. This one was Bath version two: Imbrem Aureum. Strange name, but very fitting. It had started as a massive water elemental and had been eating air and celestial types like Dale ate jerky. Too fast for their own good is what I mean. Soon, water was no longer dominating, and it had turned into a Core with celestial-infused raindrops swirling around it at high speed. I was really interested to see what would happen if these two ever met and fought. Would the outcome be a chaotic lightning superfluid elemental? Want. I want it bad.
Unfortunately, their progress had stagnated. They couldn’t continue downward for fear of the pressure crushing them, and they couldn’t move upward without being overwhelmed by swarms of their brethren. They had to hold their ground and destroy challengers that came after them. I had started dropping caches of Cores along the path that matched their current progress, just so that they could continue to progress. I thought of it as a leader bonus. Everything else had to destroy to empower themselves, but the leader needed incentive to stay ahead of the rest. I loved it. Survival of the strangest! Imbrem closed in on a challenger, and the spinning droplets shredded its opponent in moments. Those drops… whew. They had the force of B-rank four Mana behind them.
Speaking of ranks, I could feel my path opening before me. I was sitting at B-rank nine right now, trying to find the key to unlocking the A-ranks. I was certain it would be an esoteric truth, an understanding of myself and my law that would drive me forward into great power. If it was something obvious, I would almost feel cheated. I wouldn’t mind, but I wanted to rise in the ranks in an awe-inspiring way, not quietly and surreptitiously. I wanted to hear the humans say: ‘Celestial feces, we should run.’ or something similar.
I just had to think of humans again, didn’t I? Almost as soon as I had, I felt footsteps on my surface. It was like a summoning spell. What the…? How many were arriving? I took a look; it appeared that the entire army of mixed races had flown here. Ew, necromancers. So many of them, too. I had gotten over my hatred of them, but having them around made me nervous. The Church tended to be less than careful when exterminating the ‘heretics’, and I had heard stories of entire cities falling. Of course, most of the Church’s most powerful had been slain…
“Go oversee the arrival of the new leaders of each race.” The Master’s voice made dozens of people start toward the portal, obviously thinking he was talking to them directly. It just had that kind of quality. I saw his lips twitch in either a grimace or laughter as the people tried to figure out who was supposed to be in charge. His next mutter was too soft to be heard, “Like herding cats.”
I could appreciate that sentiment. I was still trying to get some of my Cats to give up the special weapons and armor I had equipped them in, and I could supposedly force them to do it. Somehow, I kept finding one more Cat playing with the shiny superweapons. Dale landed with a group and walked toward The Master with Tom in tow. I also noticed that Hans and Rose were walking toward the tavern together. What had happened down there? She must have taken a blow to the head.
Dale was looking around, seemingly surprised by the lack of motion on my surface. “I guess everyone left through the portal to wait out the war?”
Wrong. The smart or lucky ones did. I wasn’t going to be the one to break it to him, though. As they got closer to The Master, Tom stepped forward, glaring at the powerful man. “Can I hit you?”
“What?” The Master seemed taken aback by this question.
Tom started pulling his Warhammer out of his bag. “One of my friends died down there to prevent your summoned creature killing all of us. I would like a free hit.”
“Ah. A Northman. I understand and will allow this in thanks for the time your people saved me from the Valkyries.” The Master nodded, pulling open his tattered robe and baring his chest. “This will end things between us?”
“As is custom,” Tom ruefully agreed. “Hans! Rose! Come over here before you do other things.”
The two that had been walking toward what they didn’t realize was an empty building stopped, looking over and slowly approached. Their walk became even slower when they saw who was standing shirtless in front of them. Tom looked at the Master, swallowing. “I understand that this will not actually hurt you, but please do not hold yourself in place.”
“I will take the blow,” The Master stated noncommittally. Tom nodded, knowing that he was getting a chance he would never have otherwise. A crowd was starting to gather, but Tom wasn’t going to wait. Taking a few deep breaths, he enhanced his body to the absolute maximum he was able, got a running start that would make him into a blur in front of an average person, and swung his hammer with all the force he could possibly put behind it. *Clang*. The Master was hit in the chest, and though the Warhammer bent and warped from the force, there was no visible damage to The Master.
He did allow the force to turn into momentum and was launched off the ground and upward several hundred meters. He slammed through a granite building, reducing the wall to rubble and a cloud of dust. As the people watched the dust mushroom into the air, The Master spoke from beside Tom. “Let this matter between us be settled. My mistakes will haunt me forever, but you have proven that my scars must remain mental.”
Tom nodded deeply. “I have proven that the strength of my arm cannot match the depth of my loss and so lose my claim against you. May we move forward in peace and prosper as we go our separate ways.” They each made a fist and tapped their forearms against the other person’s, creating an ‘X’ in the air. They stepped back, and Tom turned and strode toward Hans without another word.
The Master watched him go for a moment before turning to talk to Dale. “I spent quite some time learning from the Northmen. They are a brutal people, but their honor and traditions are the purest I have ever witnessed. If I had been able to have my way, I would have never left them. I would have adopted all of their ways and lived as they do. So… so many things I wish had gone differently.”
“Why did you need to leave them?” Dale asked the question before he could stop himself.
The Master looked over, hesitating before answering, “Their prince was assassinated, and his new bride was destroyed because of it. A faction of the Northmen used the chance to purge outsiders from amongst them, becoming even more insular than they already were. I… I was an outsider. Exile or death, those were my options. I had just started making a life there, and it crushed me to leave it behind. I left, and from there found a group of other exiles. That path led to the first great necromantic war, our desperate bid to gain a home.”
“You are not at all what I expected.” Dale reached out his hand and carefully set it on The Master’s shoulder. He was glad the man had already put his robe back on. “You sound like… just a normal guy looking to find his way. I’d love to know what happened.”
The Master snorted so hard that the air around him thrummed. “Would you believe me if I told you I was once one of the lowest in the Queendom and my greatest aspiration was to be a journeyman butcher? I was given an apprenticeship as a Butcher Boy, and… well, it is not only my story to tell. As you know Madame Chandra, it would not be fair for me to discuss her family without her permission.”
Dale wanted to shake the story out of him, but he really liked having his arms attached to his body. “I know how that goes. I was a failing shepherd when I stumbled across a dungeon on my mountain.”
