The Land: Founding (Chaos Seeds Book 1)

by Kong, Aleron

  “Huh, so be careful, everywhere I go is dangerous, and I’m now a cosmic target. Is that basically it,” Richter asked.

  The hearth mother walked closer and motioned for Richter to kneel down. He took a knee and looked her in the eye. That was when she slapped him in the side of his head. He really needed to start being careful of letting small beings within striking distance.

  “Don’t complain. It could always be worse, and nobody likes a cry baby,” Hisako said.

  Sion chuckled behind him, and said under his breath, “Rookie.”

  Flaring his nostrils, Richter exhaled a deep breath, then gave a chuckle himself. “Yes ma’am.”

  Standing back up, he turned to Sion. “Well my friend. I will miss your company.”

  The sprite smiled at him, “No you won’t. I’m coming with you.”

  With a half-smile on his face Richter asked, “Are you sure?”

  In a sweeping gesture that started at his head and moved down towards his feet, Sion replied, “A big guy like me belongs in the big city!” And the grin on his face grew wider.

  Hisako nodded in approval. “In the past the people of the Mist Village and Wood Sprites of the Hearth Tree have been friends, even allies. I hope that we can be again.”

  Richter replied, “I hope so too. I was concerned that you might not welcome me as a friend anymore. My village is on a ley line of Dark Magic.”

  “It is true that many evil creatures are drawn to Dark or Death magic, but that does not make those powers inherently evil. Night is just as natural as day, and death will be always be a part of life. Your actions will determine the character of your village, and you have earned my trust,” Hisako said. “Now is there anything else we can do to aid your journey?”

  Humbled by her faith in him, he smiled, “I could use a way to transport goods to and from the city.”

  “We can help with this, though it will take the rest of the day. Is there anything else,” she asked again.

  Sion stepped forward, “We have found an artifact of evil, Mother. I hoped that you knew how to destroy it.” Richter unwrapped the staff, showing it to Hisako.

  For the first time, Richter saw a look true anger on her face. “Drop that thing,” she commanded.

  Richter quickly complied, releasing it to tumble out of its wrappings. It fell, but did not strike the ground. The golden grasses wrapped around the staff. The grass wound so tight that Richter could hear squeaking from the pressure. Some of the gold color leached from the grasses as they tried to crush the black wood. Brighter flashes of red color could be seen coming from the staff, almost as if it tried to free itself from the golden vice. A look of serious concentration was on Hisako’s face. With a tightening of her jaw, she glared at the staff, and then there was a loud rumbling sound. A small tear opened in the ground, widening to five feet long and one foot wide. The grass bent, lowering the staff into the ground as the red pulses came faster and faster. The rent in the earth, closed over the staff and all was quiet for a moment before a boom came from beneath them, more felt than heard. Richter looked over the seemingly benign sea of golden grass that he now knew was a deadly prehensile defense. Hisako exhaled a breath of relief.

  You have completed the Quest: Destroy Evil’s Weapon. A Royal Pixie Chrysalis was recovered! This may have long reaching consequences in the future!

  Reward: 1000 XP

  “It is done,” she said. “That was an artifact of greater evil than you know. I can see why you instinctually felt it needed to be destroyed my son. It was not just a tool of evil. It was a corruption of good! At the core of the staff was a Royal Pixie chrysalis!”

  Sion inhaled in shock. “Can it be true? Can you save it?”

  “I don’t understand. What’s happening,” asked Richter.

  “Sion may have told you that goblins were our racial enemies. As such, neither of our two races can normally abide the other, and aggressive qualities are increased on both sides. That is partly because goblins are usually of a negative alignment, and wood sprites are normally of positive alignment. Pixies are the opposite side of that trait. They are our natural allies and bring a completion to our magic. It is said that every sprite born has half of a destiny, and each pixie born has the other half. Long ago, even before I was born, there was a sickness that only affected pixies. Despite all of the efforts of the races of Good, pixies were erased from the surface of The Land. Finding this chrysalis is like finding the other half our soul! Will you please relinquish the pixie into our care? We can channel our life magic into it and hopefully revive at least one of the species.” She looked at him with a pleading gaze.

  “Uhhh, yeah,” Richter said, taken aback by the depth of emotion in Hisako’s voice. He then immediately felt like a moron for not giving a better answer than ‘uhhh, yeah’ in such a pivotal moment.

  Your relationship has improved with Wood Sprites from friendly to trusted.

  The relationship of the Mist Village has improved with Wood Sprites from friendly to trusted.

  Hisako’s face shone like the sun. Her anger at seeing the staff had been replaced by pure joy. “Thank you for this precious gift. Rest with us, then start on you journey in the morning.” Their rations had run out the night before, and so Richter welcomed a good meal. The Hearth Mother turned and walked through the golden grass. As Richter, Sion and other sprites followed her, he thought hopeful thoughts for the morrow.

  CHAPTER 13

  The sky began to lighten with colors of peach and amber. Sion and Richter once again stood at the boundaries of the meadow containing the Hearth Tree. “Once you return to your village, make your way due west. After several weeks of travel you should reach the boundary of the forest. There, you will find a road. The other travelers you meet can direct you to the city of Law. Be careful! There are many dangers of in the forest. We are on the Northern side and there shouldn’t be any organized tribes between here and Yves, but sometimes the southern tribes send hunting parties up. They are not as kind as we are.” Turning to Sion, Hisako placed a cupped hand to his face. “Come back to us safely my son.”

  Closing his eyes, he bowed his head, “Yes mother.”

  Led by two sprites, a pair of ponies with saddle bags were brought to them. Checking the bags, they were full of food stuffs and other useful tools including more Sprite Arrows of Nature. It was a welcome sight because they had only been able to recover a few after the fight with the goblins. Thanking Hisako a final time, they mounted the ponies and moved off into the forest. Riding in silence for the first ten minutes, Richter then looked to Sion asking, “So you’re a prince, huh?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Sion replied curtly without turning his head.

  Chuckling under his breath, Richter replied, “Whatever you say your highness,” and rode on next to his friend.

  It took three days to get back to village. Each night they scouted for herbs, and Sion began to teach him the rudiments of potion making. The tools that Sion used were too small to be of practical use for Richter, but he did still obtain the skill by assisting Sion. Unfortunately, knowledge was not enough to increase his skill level though, as he did not advance further than level one with 0% towards the next level.

  The peace of the ride also let him focus upon an area he had been ignoring, his point allocation. He did not want everything randomly allocated and it had been almost a week since he had reached level 4. Based upon the battles he had fought so far, he would not last long in a stand up fight. Each kill he had made had been greatly aided by either surprise or poison already weakening his enemies. The large damage that just the edge of the bear’s strike had caused worried him. It was clear he needed more health. At the same time though, the power of both his Imbue Arrow and Focus skills meant his stamina and mana also needed to be higher. It served his playing style better to be well rounded anyway. He examined each characteristic carefully.

  Strength – Improves damage with melee weapons or thrown weapons. Each point increases car
rying capacity by 10 kg. Affects anything that requires brawn, ie climbing, wrestling, intimidation. Other unknown effects to be discovered.

  Agility – Improves accuracy with ranged or thrown weapons. Determines movement speed. Determines dodge. Determines balance. Affects ability to move without being detected. Other unknown effects to be discovered.

  Dexterity – Determines attack speed. Improves damage with ranged weapons. Improves reflexes. Improves accuracy of melee weapons. Other unknown effects to be discovered.

  Constitution – Determines Health. Each point increases Health by 10 points. Affects resistance to poison, illness, extreme temp, etc. Affects stamina regeneration. Other unknown effects to be discovered.

  Endurance – Determines stamina. Each point increases Stamina by 10 points. Affects ability to perform physical exertions at peak efficiency. Other unknown effects to be discovered.

  Intelligence – Determines mana. Each point increases Mana by 10 points. Affects resistance to mental attacks. Affects effectiveness of certain skills. Reasoning improved. Other unknown effects to be discovered.

  Wisdom – Determines mana regeneration. Affects magical resistance. Determines perception. Other unknown effects to be discovered.

  Charisma – Determines the likelihood others will like you or want to interact with you. A higher score may open certain quests that would otherwise be locked. Other unknown effects to be discovered.

  Luck – It will affect you in a million different ways… or not. But as the man said, “I’d rather be lucky than dead.”

  Each description was helpful save the last. Of course every game he had ever played had a crappy description for luck.

  He had twenty four points to invest. He could definitely see the bonus from being a Chaos seed coming in handy. He would theoretically be 50% more powerful than other humans at an analogous level. He decided to invest half of his points equally into Constitution, Endurance and Intelligence, raising Health, Mana and Stamina by forty points each.

  As his character seemed based on range attacks and speed, at least for now, he decided to forgo strength. Agility had already been increased. Though it pained him to put points in a “soft” area like Charisma, it was clear he could not look at his current situation as if he was playing a simple RPG. This was his life now. His upcoming interaction with a whole city meant that interpersonal interactions were going to be important. Also the advice of the hearth mother to make a community was something he took seriously. The comedy of having a four foot tall older woman dictating his life wasn’t anything new, his own mother was five feet of feisty fury.

  Hating every moment of the decision, he invested six points in Charisma. Choosing yes on the final ‘are you sure’ prompt, he felt like he had just sacrificed six children! He also invested four points in luck, because… hey, what self-respecting southerner couldn’t win a hand of Texas Holdem. At that thought, he made a mental note to invent Texas Holdem. He was sure he could make a fortune cleaning out the medieval rubes that seemed to live around here. He put his final two points in dexterity to get a bit more attack damage out his archery.

  In addition to the points from his leveling, his exertions during his quest to cleanse the forest had given him +2 Endurance, +1 Strength, +3 Dexterity. Looking at his character, he decided that despite his low level he liked how he was rounding out.

  Name: Richter

  Age: 24

  Level: 6, 15%

  Health: 140 Mana: 140 Stamina: 160

  Strength: 11

  Agility: 17

  Dexterity: 26

  Constitution: 14

  Endurance: 16

  Intelligence: 14

  Wisdom: 10

  Charisma: 16

  Luck: 14

  Abilities:

  Limitless

  Gift of Tongues

  Skills:

  Herb Lore Lvl 2; 81% to next level, 100% affinity

  Potions Lvl 1; 0% to next level, 100% affinity

  Analyze Lvl 1; 5% to next level, 100% affinity

  Stealth Lvl 3; 44% to next level, 100% affinity

  Archery Lvl 4; 23% to next level, 100% affinity

  Imbue Arrow Lvl 1; 43% to next level, 100% affinity

  Focus Lvl 1; 0% to next level, 100% affinity

  Swordsmanship Lvl 1; 28% to next level, 100% affinity

  Small Blades Lvl 1; 0% to next level, 100% affinity

  Light Armor Lvl 2; 21% to next level, 100% affinity

  Marks:

  Master of Mist Village

  Resistances:

  Mental 15%

  Spiritual 15%

  Race: Human (Chaos Seed)

  Reputation: Lvl 1 “Who are you again?”

  Alignment: Neutral

  Language: All

  The last thing he had to decide was where to put the proficiencies. He had a total of 100% to increase any skill, in groupings of 25%. His strongest asset was now Imbue Arrow making it an easy decision. He placed all 100% into the skill and was shown the prompt.

  Congratulations! You have reached skill level 2 in Imbue Arrow. +5% damage. +5% speed of mana flow.

  One curious thing was that both his Focus and Imbue Arrow skills was offset on his status page. He had seen the same thing, when examining Sion’s status. Now that he was thinking about it, Richter remembered that both had been called ‘subskills.’ Asking the sprite about it, the explanation was fairly simple. Subskills were dependent on another main skill. As such increasing the subskill would increase the main skill slightly, but the subskill could never be of a higher level than the main skill. Richter nodded understanding, and they rode on.

  Midday on the third day after leaving the Hearth Tree, they arrived back at the Mist Village. The trip was much faster now that they knew exactly where they were going. As they came upon the ruins he was now the Master of, Richter chuckled silently thinking, could my life BE any more manga? He was pleasantly surprised however, upon his first sight of the village. A trench lined the outside of the ruined wall, six feet wide and six feet deep. The dirt from the trench had been lined up and packed on top of the stone remnants creating a four foot earthen wall. Hard packed dirt led across trench in one area, leading to a break in the crumpled wall. Outside of the trench there were stacks of chopped down trees with the branches cut off and piled to the side. Three piles of stone were also present, delineated by size, presumably the loose rocks from inside the wall. All of the bodies had of course been removed, but even the stone had been scrubbed clean of some of the black blood stains. Only a trace of the previous foul odor remained. What was before him now was a plateau of grass pockmarked with freshly turned earth where the trees had been cut down and then the stumps removed. True to his instruction, Futen appeared several feet away, and glided to a stop in front of him.

  “Welcome back, my Lord.”

  Richter smiled, “You’ve done well Futen. How is our village?”

  “We have had some exciting developments in the last week, my Lord,” the remnant said. The content of his message contrasted sharply with his emotionless tone. “Though we cannot erect external buildings as I stated, we have collected raw resources as you can see. I have also explored the floor where you claimed Mastery of the village. I have found several useful rooms. If you will come with me sir.”

  Futen began gliding away at the speed of a normal walk. Climbing the hill to the cave entrance, Richter and Sion followed it inside. Grey lights cast a gentle glow over the tunnel. Periodically placed along the top of the hallway, globes of slowing mist could be seen.

  “Where did these come from,” Richter asked.

  “They are one of the improvements open to you my lord. The mana requirement for the mist lights is negligible. Once cast, and they last for a year at a time, so I took the liberty.”

  The tunnel opened into the chamber of their grand fight. The ceiling arched above their heads, this time illuminated by mist globes clearly showing vaulted ceilings. The blood had been cleaned from the floors along with
much of the grime. A massive mosaic could now be seen in the floor. Four separate spirals that met in the middle. Each spiral was a different color. One spiral was gold and the opposing spiral black. The other two were blue or clear respectively. The center of the mosaic was a dark gray diamond. Opposite from where they entered the room, a staircase could be seen leading downward. The other entrances were also well lit.

  “On this floor is a meeting hall, larder, storage room, armory, barracks and treasury, and several other empty rooms. The stairway leads to the first floor of the catacombs.”

  Richter had been walking around the mosaic examining it. He nodded along as Futen spoke, but looked up sharply at the last. Treasury did you say? Realizing he had not asked aloud, most likely because his mouth had started watering, he tried again.

  “Treasury did you say?”

  “Yes my lord, I was going to show you that…”

  “Let’s go now,” Richter said cutting the remnant off.

  The remnant changed direction, gliding to a hallway on the left. At the end the hallway was a solid door. It appeared to be made of a bluish silver metal, with a clear circle of glass set at head height.

  “What is it made of?”

  “This is elementum. Not quite as hard as mithril, but extremely durable nonetheless. It also has properties to resist almost all forms of magic to a large degree.”

  “Well open it Futen.”

  “I cannot my Lord.”

  “You said you had exciting news.”

  “Yes, my Lord. The news is that I had found the treasury.”

  Richter glared at the floating grey orb. The orb just floated impervious to his stare.

  “It would be a lot more exciting if you could open the door!”

  “That is why I was going to leave this door until the tour,” Futen said.

  Fighting the urge to create a neck for the orb so he could strangle it, Richter said, “Are you telling me that I have a treasury but I can’t get into it?!”