by Matthew Peed
Looking around my office, I thought it might be one of the nicest rooms I’d ever been in. Regan had redone the townhouse like he said he would, but he went a different route from the giant tower in the forest. It was more of a castle now. There were two towers on each side that emitted a barrier that seemed to bend space. When people walked into the area of the castle, there was a lot more space than there appeared to be outside. I just wrote it off as Regan doing his dungeon thing.
“Little lady, there is a guest for you,” Julie said as she walked into my office.
She’d at least started using “lady” when addressing me since the battle. In fact, quite a few people made sure to talk to me with care, though Wrakras still didn’t. I glanced at the small mirror on the wall. My beautiful black hair had turned a platinum blonde, the one change I wasn’t too happy with. My clothes hid most of them, but lightning marks were tattooed over most of my body. The biggest change had to be my eyes, though. The pupils had turned into a miniature night sky.
I motioned for Julie to allow the person in, and a large beastkin made his way in from behind her. He was a bearkin who looked like he’d been on a rather long trip, as he was pretty rough for wear. I tried not to be rude by covering my nose, but it was hard to resist the temptation, given the smell he was giving off.
“What . . . what can I do for you?” I asked.
“I heard you were offering slaves sanctuary,” he said as he moved to expose a part of his chest. The purple ink the slavers used for the space crest popped out even on his sunburnt skin. Regan had told me about this a while ago. His forest town was letting slaves live there like normal people if they allowed him to subvert their slave crests. He’d given me a similar device in case they came here instead.
“Indeed, I can offer you a type of freedom. The dungeon here has made a device that binds the crest to him. With this you can live as a normal mortal, and I have been assured that he doesn’t have time to do anything with the slaves he binds,” I explained.
“As long as I can be free, I don’t care!” the man almost roared.
“Very well,” I said, then pulled the device out of my desk. I walked up to him. “This will hurt a bit,” I warned. I placed the rune-marked dagger against the center of his slave crest.
“Hmph,” he scoffed.
I smiled, as this wasn’t the first time a slave had scoffed at the mention of pain. I tapped the end of the device to the center of his crest. A surge of mana entered it, and he roared as if he’d been stabbed by half a dozen swords. I hopped back quickly in case he went crazy. It had happened before, after all.
He collapsed to the ground as he writhed in pain. I frowned as I noticed Julie seeming to enjoy it. I couldn’t see her face to be sure; however, her body language said that she was having the time of her life. The process usually took roughly a minute to complete, longer for a larger body like this guy.
The process ended exactly one minute and twenty-nine seconds later. I had to hand it to the man. Most started begging for it to end, one way or another, by that point. But other than the first roar, he didn’t make a sound louder than groans of pain. After he lay on the floor for another minute or so, he sat up.
“I guess . . . freedom . . . doesn’t come pain free,” he said with a groan.
“Indeed. Now, what’s your name?” I asked as he got to his feet.
“Boris Lut, ma’am,” Boris said with a bow.
“Well, Boris, now that you’re free, want to join the town guard?”
“I’ll consider it.”
“Fair enough,” I said with a smile. “For now there is a bunkhouse set aside for freed slaves while they get back on their feet.” It was a little hard to expect someone to be able to provide for themselves right after rebinding the crest. This allowed them to feel a little indebted to the valley for all we did for them. However, I didn’t feel wronged if they decided to leave after they got more comfortable. They wanted to be free, after all.
“Thank you for everything!” Boris said, then bowed as he backed out of the room. A guard saluted from the hallway, then escorted him from the building.
After he left, I turned to Wrakras and Julie. “That’s the twelfth slave this week. The rate they are arriving is also increasing.” It wasn’t too bad to get the slaves in the valley. I just worried about the ones who had . . . less than pleasant owners before. I didn’t need a former slave attacking one of my citizens.
“Master’s other town has a whole operation set up to free slaves. They are being . . . selective at the moment so they don’t free criminal slaves. But even with that, it might reach unprecedented levels compared with the history of the war on slavery,” Wrakras explained, then added, “The number of slaves in the forest has already hit triple digits.”
“I never thought I would be near the center of history-altering events like this,” I said as I rested my head on the desk. It was just one thing after another. We’d already suffered two attacks from necromancers. Hell, there were two in the room with me.
“Only very few people are born knowing they will achieve greatness, and even fewer will know if they will fulfill that destiny. Just think about that marquis . . .” Julie said from her seat until I glared at her. Val would have been one of the strongest leaders on the continent if he had been allowed to flourish.
Wrakras glanced into the hallway, then commented, “Ezal appears to be doing a good job training the new force.” I followed his gaze and saw the hallway lined with guards. There was a pair almost every ten meters.
“She even gained a new nickname. Ezal the Fire Demon.” I wasn’t sure if it had always been a problem or if it was a recent development from her pregnancy, but she’d gained a wicked temper. Quite a few people had learned the hard way when she quite literally burned them. The new hospital that Regan had set up was getting a lot of visitors.
That was another hot topic in town. This medical center had been a very big hit with the adventurers, as they didn’t have to donate to a priest to get a healing. They only paid coppers on the silver for healings that would have been hard for a Lelune sanctioned priest. The biggest thing was that the healings were consistent. If someone went in to heal a broken arm, then the arm was healed as stated. There were issues while using the priest’s magic, which may heal an injury such as severe pain for several weeks, but later, there might come swelling or any number of “bonus” issues that people sometimes needed to deal with.
Some of the Light mages who were hesitating about joining the church had already joined Regan’s healing center as students, but there was a long training session that they had to work hard at. While it was free to join, if you quit halfway through, there were fees.
Last I’d heard, a woman wanted to be able to regenerate limbs, and an automaton head doctor, as they called themselves, had told her it would be nearly six years of learning to be able to do so. The only requirement for joining was to magically sign some type of oath about doing no harm. It was very adaptive, as it made a man who tried to learn secondhand sign it before he could actually hear what the other man was trying to teach him.
The hospital took care of any Light mages who signed the oath with a division of automata that were assigned to guard the men and women. They used light mana and were quite powerful, from the reports I got from Ezal. They were led by two automata that called themselves Apollo and Aurora. Before the obelisks were installed all through town, one of the students made their way into the sea of tents outside the town to try to help anyone who might have gotten hurt in the dungeon.
He was jumped for his coin, but Apollo happened to be with him. It managed to incapacitate all the attackers with a single weapon that fired some type of canister that exploded out with pure light. The men were unable to see for several days before they crawled to the man and begged him to help them.
It was becoming so normal for the valley to be in a state of change that I was actually dealing with all this relatively well, in my opinion. Ezal was doing a good job wi
th security, Cassie was keeping the adventurers in line, the guilds were all happy about the continued increase to their membership in the valley. Personally, I was pleased about the valley doing so well, considering that it was where I’d come to basically run away from my family.
I pulled myself from my thoughts and looked down at my desk. The downside to having a large desk was that it was able to fit more paperwork. I decided I needed a break and stood up to go on a walk. Regan had made this place nearly impenetrable, according to my understanding, so I had no worries while in the castle. Not that I was too worried about being attacked again. My comprehension of lightning had reached a new scale thanks to me quite literally fusing myself to it. While my memory of that event was spotty, I would probably break through to tier three without much difficulty as long as the universe didn’t throw a curveball.
Chapter 3
Regan
The hooded pair looked me over as I appeared in front of them. I, of course, wasn’t taking any chances and had appeared a few meters away. I’d learned the hard way that few people can be trusted in this world. Even if you thought you knew them. Magic was capable of great good, but more often than not it was used for evil by people with too much ambition for their own good.
“I have to say, I’m pleasantly surprised to see you,” I said to the person who was supposed to be dead. While I didn’t personally care, I knew someone in the valley that would have been quite happy to see him. Plus, I liked seeing people reunited.
“As I am, you. I need to ask that you not use my name,” Valamar said with a grimace.
I nodded in agreement. “Fair enough. Never know who might be listening. What can I do for you?” I asked.
“I need an edge against our common enemy,” Valamar growled.
I could almost feel the anger radiating off him. “Ah, a little revenge is always a good motivator,” I said with a knowing nod. “But are you sure? Taking this path might lead you down a road that will be hard to return from.” I wanted to know he was certain. From what I’d found through various experiments, such as with Azra, once I changed a person, it was very permanent. At least to the magic I had access to as a dungeon, which was considerable.
“I am well aware of that from my journey here. If there is to be a future for me and mine, then I have to do this.”
“Very well. Do you want low or high? Note that if I use the high, I will be binding you to me,” I warned.
“I need as much power as I can get. Do what you have to do!” he declared with force, then deflated a bit as he turned to his partner. “No matter what happens, thank you for all your help during this trying time. You’re free to do as you please.”
“Thank you, my lord, but I have as much a reason to stay as you,” the woman said with a slight bow, then turned to me. “This may be out of line, but I would like to request the high-level as well.”
“Loyal servants as always, I see,” I said with a sly grin.
“I probably wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her. She did save my life, after all.”
I laughed. “Men are supposed to protect the women, isn’t that right, V—” I started to say before I remembered he didn’t want me to use his name.
The man frowned, then sighed. “How is she?”
“Well enough, I would wager. Your friend Bruce has been keeping watch over her. Quite disturbing actually. The way he tries to do everything for her. If you didn’t know the man, you would think he was in love with her.”
“He is loyal to a fault, but I trust him to protect her. When I finish my quest, I will repay him with whatever he wants as long as I am capable of delivering it,” the man said with one of the most serious faces I thought I’d ever seen in either of my lives.
“But enough of him. I would like to hear how you survived,” I said, unable to control my curiosity.
“As for my survival, I have Urena to thank for that,” he said as he glanced over to the woman.
“Oh, I do love a good mystery, but the suspense is killing me.”
He sighed, then explained how Urena had been thrown under the building when it was bombarded with the spells. She’d survived more due to her dwarven stature than any martial skill, and quickly realized what was going on. As the dragon had attacked, she’d pulled clear the body of a servant who was roughly the same size as him.
When Neldor gave his life for them in a truly heroic moment, they made the switch with Valamar, casting an illusion over Valamar’s face, which kept it simple enough to be unnoticed with the large amount of mana in the area. She then buried them almost fifty meters underground for nearly a week to be sure there weren’t any watchers.
“And I could bore you with the happenings as we made our way here, but I have necromancers to kill!” Valamar growled.
“Alright, then, let’s have ourselves some fun!” I said with a little more excitement than I meant to.
“I leave myself in your hands,” Valamar said as he bowed, switching to a calm state unnaturally fast. Urena bowed as well.
I moved them to the north where there was more free space to work with. Then I teleported us to an open lot to one side of the fort. Hundreds of automata were working on one project or another. Just as we appeared, one team of automata was hauling a hulking creature that reminded me of a giant but with rotted patches all over it. I would have to look at the reports from that later.
Valamar looked around in awe. He’d probably never seen a place with such a uniform and smooth structure before. I pointed to the middle of the lot and told him to stand there as I tried to decide how best to go through with this. I already had a general idea but wanted to be sure it fit with his style. Unlike my automata, he wouldn’t be able to learn how to use a weapon that he’d never touched before.
As I thought through my options, I decided to let magic decide. There was a simple but effective method to increase his power that I hadn’t used in a while. It would also bind him to the dungeon so I could keep tabs on him. I planned on giving him a collar, but extra protection never hurt.
I channeled the Bind Creature spell I’d acquired so long ago. In fact, the last time I’d used it had been on Azra. A giant complex spell structure formed around Valamar with a diameter of ten meters. Thousands of runes and scripts were woven together to create a spell that was more complicated by a hundred times than the one I’d used on Azra.
Something interesting happened at that point, as mana didn’t just flow from my main core but from my three subcores as well. The Spire core seemed to be far and didn’t provide any more mana than a trickle. I’d noted this occurrence while working on the station. Distance really did play a factor on certain functions of my cores.
Valamar screamed as more mana than a human should have been capable of handling collided with him. I wasn’t positive of my analogy, but it probably felt like a million needles trying to force their way in through every spot of his body. I quickly gained control of the flow of mana and slowed it to a more manageable level. I allowed it to keep flowing until the spell stopped on its own.
With roughly two million mana coursing through his body, Valamar literally glowed at the moment. He collapsed to his knees from the pain, breathing heavily. Cracks formed over his body as the mana transformed him. Slowly, Valamar stood up with a surge of power, and his body exploded suddenly, then condensed.
A much more powerful version stood where he’d been a moment ago. Three halos floated behind his back in the form of large gears, probably an influence from my mana. Two blades, one that seemed to be formed from a sun, the other from the blackness of space, rested in his hands.
It reminded me of Asura from Hinduism. It also looked like I had pushed him over into tier three in the process. I could feel my underlying control over him, however, so I wasn’t worried. I’d learned a lot since the time with Azra and all the continuous creations that I’d been doing. Just to be safe, I materialized a collar around his neck and wrists before he came completely back to himself. It was easier to aff
ect his personage when he was “part” of the dungeon.
Valamar roared loudly enough to shake the surrounding forest as he surged to his feet. The ground cracked under him as he “flexed” his new level of mana. Something farther in the forest roared back, but I ignored that for now. Steam was released from Valamar as he calmed down from the mana high. I looked closer and saw that his skin was metal now, though it still looked like regular skin. Internally, he had completely changed. He was almost a living machine, as most of his body had changed but the parts that made him mortal had only been upgraded and optimized. I guessed you could call him a cyborg now.
Panting, he looked over to me, then said, “You’re one scary being, Sir Regan.”
“Aw, stop that, you’re making me blush,” I said as I laughed.
“Don’t tell her about me, please,” he pleaded, his eyes sincere.
I debated telling him that she had already gotten some upgrades herself but left it alone and just nodded. They could sort that out for themselves later. As they say, love can cross all boundaries.
He stared at me for another moment before he fell over backward. His eyes rolled back, and he breathed heavily, but I knew that he was quite well. His soul was still adapting to the massive change in shell and amount of energy. In Louella’s case, she’d been able to expel most of the energy. With this, however, he was forced to endure the molten fire that was locked in his veins.
I looked down at Urena next to me. “Still want to go?” I asked with an evil grin.
“Yes, Sir Regan,” she said without hesitation.
In a sense I felt she was almost braver than Valamar. It took a lot of guts to witness something like that and still want to go through with it. Especially since she was essentially giving up her freedom.