by Philip Read
“Won’t me showing my skill blow my cover? I’m supposed to be a merchant, and wounding or killing one of the locals can’t put me in good standing with the rest of the population.” I say and he snorts again shaking his head.
“I swear you people ignore all the reports I send home. Listen to me very very carefully.” He says seemingly in exasparation leaning even further forward and looking straight into my eyes.
“Do not underestimate these people or judge them by the standards of the norms of society in Sandoria. If you do not fight here you don’t get to live or do business here as a foreigner, even the dwarves and highlanders take their queues on which foreigners to respectfully do business with from the tribesman around them. If you do fight and do so not to your fullest or deafet your opponent, you die.” He pauses looking at me a moment before breaking eye contact and indicating with his hands as he speaks.
“The first fight will be against a veteran warrior that will test your limits, she will seem young and innocent. Do your very best to kill her or you will not survive the rest of your matches if she feels you were holding back. In fact you may not even survive that first fight if you don’t hold back, but she has been known to show mercy. That fight they use to gauge your level of skill and power so they can set the stage for the rest of your challenges; and there are always more challenges as everyone in this bar will attest!” He says loudly for the rest of the room to hear.
I scowl at the display but I see the far away looks I’ve seen in trauma survivors and soldiers, the solemn nods, the acknowledging ”aye’s” from a few of the other drinkers and even a look of pity from one of the slaves present with her master. There is a lot going on here that I’m not aware of but I don’t appreciate having a private conversation suddenly made public.
I watch as he leans back forward and talks about his beloved city and it’s inhabitants. The more he talks and his mannerisms the more I realise he’s gone native. The respect and reverence he gives his words for these tribes and this city the more apparent it becomes that he now sees himself more as a genuine part of this warrior culture and doesn’t even realise it, that his loyalty to the kingdom has been compromised. I do listen to his words very carefully even as I think of the termination report I will have to send, for who best to learn the city and it’s ways from than a foreign agent who doesn’t realise he’s been turned?
*
Soal
I have been learning from watching a lot of the activities these people have been taking since the big guy’s revelations. Not that he is particularly big when compared to all his other countrymen. Since he started training with Sergei in that estate I can’t seem to get too close to, he has been slipping my watch more and more frequently.
Either he has found his magic in stealth or they have been teaching him to be sneaky in there; he also seems to pay better attention to his surroundings as he walks again. Present, and aware of anyone that may be a potentially threat or following. I’m almost proud to say twice in the past 6 months I have noticed him spot me.
I have had to fight in the Arena 6 more times but apparently that is the threshold I needed to reach to receive enough respect not to be constantly challenged for occupying space in this beloved city. I’m even allowed into the long-houses now due to my prowess though I’m not yet permitted to live there as some of the tribesmen seem to do.
Everything seems to have been happening all at once and very quickly since that crazy speech by Sachi and already the air of preparation and excitement is in the ambience of the entire city population.
The training yards have slowly gotten busier the last few months, the women of all species seem to be perpetually pregnant through the city. There is a pickup in the pace of the construction of the buildings and estates currently outside the confides of the city walls. The tribesmen particularly seem to be in good spirits and hardly any foreigner has died in the Arena fights in months.
It’s as if the entire city knows what is coming though I haven’t even heard it spoken about openly in rumours. But if they knew of the coming of a war that could potentially end the seven worlds why would they be happy? So obviously there is something else going on and as an outsider I just can’t see it.
I’ve been put to work helping in the building effort and Sachi has me working for the unpleasant twin dwarf merchants. I’ve been training at the Arena yards and in the fighting circles at the park for sparing. Slowly I’m fitting into their society and making myself useful with my presence. I’m not yet sure what my ulterior goal is but there is just something about the man that draws me to be near. I’m conflicted by the fact that I actually like him because I may have to kill him one day.
There is a danger in someone being so naturally talented and blessed by the seven with strength, charisma, loyalty and power that he may one day reach for the heavens. A person like this could grow to be a tyrant, they could grow too powerful to be bound by something as lowly as human morality. And when that point comes I think I will be necessary to be that dagger that pierces his heart, until then I will be loyal and grow in strength under the shadow my new master.
*
Chapter 90 Interlude
Dawn Dungeon
I am firmly established in the middle of the Forest of Dawn in a part of the forest that was mostly unoccupied swampy land. Daewon, his mother and his other people negotiated with the guardians of the forest for a 50 000 acre swath of the forest as my domain for the dungeon and depending on how things go this territory may decrease or increase through the years.
The benefits to the Ancient and Ancestral beasts was fairly evident from the start. A dungeon can provide concentrated ether, it can help the local fauna get stronger quicker or reach Awakening earlier. And the stronger and more challenging the dungeon the stronger the ether and the better the rewards. So I became not just Daewon’s project as the Dungeon Keeper but I also become the beast’s project as they assisted him.
After much deliberation and speculation I was placed on the growing stem of an Elder tree and it was induced to grow over the body I inhabit, the dungeon core. As a dungeon I had initially expected to be underground because of the dangers of having a core stolen by a mage or wizard or alchemist for power.
But the forest creatures insisted I grow within the confines of one of their most revered trees in hopes of influencing my attribute growth towards benefiting the forest more than anything else. And I’m happy to say it has worked so far.
As a still fragile and growing dungeon core I am sensitive to outside influence and depending on what I use for my initial growth and the attributes I finally choose during my Awakening, I can be any kind of dungeon.
The Elder Trees like most plants feed primarily on waves of light, water and nutrition in the soil and it’s growth is founded there. But if that’s all it fed on it would be like any other tree and it wouldn’t be able to provide the many benefits it does to any forest it can be found within. Elder trees are big and tall and like territorial animals that have their own domains are never found within a 100km of each other.
There are 4 types of Elder Trees but all of them feed off of radiation from the sun, ether, mana and also flesh to a certain extent. They have been known to gain sentience and vast wisdom after many thousands of years though rarely, but there are legends of a living forest on the planet of Terra made from offshoots of Elder trees. The trees are known to be able to grow so tall as to break cloud cover using their leaves to absorb cloud moisture while better using their topical leaves as radiation absorpters for more robust growth.
Growing inside an Elder tree these past few years I have almost completely desolved my body from the crystal core it was into fully encampasing the body of the tree into which I am becoming. The druids have been using their power to help my growth along and I have turned into something that no one had ever expected nor heard of.
I am currently only 12m tall with a trunk 4m in circumference and am at the center of a clearing of over 120m in circu
mference, which indicates the spread of my root growth in the years I’ve been in the Dawn. I have been hunting, and Daewon has been working diligently as a hunter for my benefit as well when not learning druidry from the druids. Druidry I’m also learning through the bond I have with him.
Most creatures and especially spirits that become dungeons don’t realise how versatile and powerful trees are or they would all become trees instead of crystal cores that can be easily stolen. For me I know that even if a dungeon explorer where to reach my main body they wouldn’t be able to carry me away any longer, and rewarding them with the fruit I will one day bare and a branch from my already powerful body is a small thing when I know my body is ever growing.
Already as a tree dungeon core and a forest dungeon I have affinity to water, affinity to air, affinity to visible light frequencies, affinity to ultraviolet frequencies, affinity to soil/prithvi/earth, affinity to plants, affinity to beast taming, affinity to healing, affinity to growth, affinity to witchcraft and affinity to life and affinity to death. These are all attributes I can encampus within myself as a single dungeon because of the body I have chosen even before I utilize the spirit energy I have accumulated through the years to evolve myself to the next stage of dungeon development.
Because my keeper is human I have a high affinity for humans, because my keeper is a warrior I have become a warrior of sorts, because my keeper is a spiritist I have a high spiritual benefit and because my keeper is becoming a druid I am learning to become one with Gaia herself. Even as a tree I could not have achieved this for though trees are part of a whole they are also very much individuals.
Through druidry though I have become one with everything within the forest I touch and currently I’m touching a lot of things. Though I haven’t regained even a percentage of what I was and very likely never will I think I chose the correct path in becoming a dungeon as opposed to becoming a deity like my siblings have chosen.
Becoming a dungeon core was a risk but there are just too many deities and cults and religions to compete with in that path of development and only a limited number of worshipers and followers to extort the power of worship from. At least that’s been my thinking through the decision to lose my spiritual body as far as I can remember and understand my way of thinking when I was a spirit being.
*
My natural growth as I am as an Elder tree could take centuries but I am already supplementing all my natural feeding methods with modifications I have already made onto myself. I have taken a risk and driven my mana based development towards energy storage and am slowly building myself up to be the first Elder tree to have a lightning affinity.
The natural elements of Gaia are still the greatest sources of raw undiluted energy and lightning is an element very few creatures naturally tap into and there is a lot of it to go around. The main danger of dungeons is ambulatory sapient creatures and their opinions and sensibilities. So I was advised by that strange human Divina into not using death as my primary means of growth if I wanted to be nurtured and not just cultivated by the creatures that frequent my domain.
And that is essentially what a dungeons territory/body is, a domain.
Currently my domain is everything within 120m of my actual body because all these years I have been focusing my development primarily inwards. This of course is a luxury most dungeons don’t have but I have been guaranteed protection by a creature of the forest known to the beasts as Hausos.
This creature or spirit apparently has complete dominion over the entire Dawn Forest that apparently stretches from here to the edge of the continent where the dawn elves reside some 30 000km away. It’s a very big forest, the biggest on the continent followed closely by the Woodlands Forest in Sandoria. It’s hilarious sometimes how oblivious the humanoids are to the true powers silently residing in what they consider their world.
Even the fae sometimes forget that there are things beyond Ancestral beasts that still reside within Gaia still. Some even walking the land in the guise of mundane beasts or humanoids themselves. And there are still creatures old enough to have been present when the most powerful creatures in creation where exiled from the stable planets to the planes and upper planets.
*
I finish the creation of nodes on my roots that serve as organs for the storage of the energy I will harness from lightning. The rode magnetically charged to attract lighting having already formed at the tip of my apical growth.
My roots are divided into digging roots and thinner spreading roots so I have both a solid foundation and the ability to actively manipulate every planet and piece of soil, rock or water within the vicinity of my spreading roots. I have also dug low enough to reach an underground water reservoir which is slowly becoming the water affinity part of my dungeon body.
The cave isn’t very big yet but that is a project Daewon and I will work on at a later stage with the help of the water nymphs. Already I have become popular in the forest and many creatures are fighting to claim the territories just beyond my domain.
Already everything within a thousand kilometers has noticeably benefited from my presence passively. The plants are richer, more potent and provide more sustenance and are more ether rich than has been observed even in the Red Forest. The animals that frequent these parts and eat these plants are developing more exaggerated survival traits and cunning, some even Awakening to intelligence at very young ages in comparison to the norm.
Creatures that die close to my territory are brought to my domain by those that value them so they may be absorbed into my essence. The life and death that is natural to any ecosystem is supplementing my growth and power accumulation to the extent that I’m not yet sure what to do with it. The ambient ether released when a death occurs directly on the 120m I actively control is euphoric and also very potent in concentrated power, I am a dungeon and all dungeons are predators.
There have been observable changes in my Keeper as well, a necessary relationship for most young dungeons that benefit the Keeper just as much if not more so than the dungeon itself. Like a familiar, Daewon gains some of the attributes I gain and I gain some of the attributes he has. He gets miniscule amounts of the power I accumulate which for a human is enough to level a small army of mundanes currently. But he is yet to tap into that until he learns his druidry to the satisfaction of the three eyed Ancient antelope Erentil who is his current teacher.
Erentil currently has three other humans and an elf under her tutelage and a dungeon if I include myself in the assessment. One of the humans is the one with the strange eyes that comes and goes, that one sees too much and I am yet to develop a strategy to block his gifts.
*
I think I am about ready for the next stage of my development and as we’ve discussed I will spread my territory as far as I am currently able. With the added influence over a greater swath of the allocated 50 000 acres my growth will be exponential with the added deaths that will be within my domain.
The access to more soil, more water, more plants I can cannibalise and regrow into dungeon creatures, which I am yet to develop. Daewon and I have discussed how sapient creatures that choose to become dungeon creatures through a covenant become more powerful quicker than those I could raise myself.
The main disadvantage being that if they are killed by dungeon explorers they will experience true death as opposed to creatures I create and raise myself that can be rebirth time and time again. There are many great benefits to being a dungeon creature though, and I could incentivise the explorers not to kill defeated foes if they don’t have to.
But that’s something to truly focus on in another year, this year its spreading my roots I focus on and with a pull on my mana reserves I spread myself out. My roots, my body, my aura, my influence, my domain spreads out from the clearing as the thin tendrils that are my roots spread between the roots of the grass, shrubs, bushes and other trees that permeate the forest.
My influence spreads out widely in all directions and I feel the inqui
sitive nature of some of the more powerful creatures as they feel my bloated growth that seems to be happening very quickly with no apparent end. Even I underestimated the power I have accumulated and by the time my influence has spread to an area of over 10 km wide and 2km deep I have a good gauge on how much mana it takes to spread myself thus.
I become the soil, the grass, the seeds, the trees, and every other small creature that allows itself to be overtaken by me. I become the very forest for the first time. Almost everything slowly becomes an extension of me, the rocks even the open air between the trees becoming part of my body. I extend myself, I stretch myself, I grow and become a behemoth of a creature that by the end covers an area of 60 km².
Here my growth stops even as I’m in negotiations with the few creatures that refused to become part of me and decomposing and feeding off of all the recent dead and some of the ancient buried of the forest. I have many eyes and ears and nerves now as almost every sentient creature remaining within becomes a part of me. To think, I have so much more growing to do.
Chapter 91
Sachihiro
Vevina is insane I’ve gathered or else all the sidhe are this way but no one really spends enough time with them to figure it out. I again look at the tiny baby being presented to me and I could breakout with hives from stress, but I step forward and take it into my arms.
It’s small with adorable big eyes and it looks healthy, I unwrap her from the very soft and enchanted little blankie and I inspect her thoroughly. She is beautiful and seems to be happy for the attention and I smile at her as she smiles at me happily.
“What’s her name?” I ask Vevina as she watches me look at what I’m told is our baby, already a month old.