“Old fur, you know, fur like we used to wear around our junk. It means…
“No, I can take it from there,” I said. Shaking my head as I waved my hand for him to stop. “Again, though, just pick something already. I’m tired of having the same old conversation.”
“Fine, but just because I know your poor balls are so full it’s starting to cum out your ears.” He laughed at his own joke while I simply moaned at his poor attempt at humor.
“Oh, Lucky,” I said, doing a perfect imitation of Dawn’s voice, startling him and making him jump. Through my laughter, I struggled to ask, “how. Can you. Deal. With that. Voice,” I lost it again, just imagining some of the things I thought he might do to not hear her voice.
“Easy to put up with when she’s putting out, asshole.” He replied, smiling, but becoming aggravated.
“Okay. Okay, I’m sorry, man, I took it too far,” that seemed to work, easing the tension from his face. “So, you going to choose, or what,” I got us back on topic. Lucky didn’t answer. Instead, I saw his eyes focus on the system prompts, a goofy grin on his face. I looked around the training ground, content to let Lucky take his time picking his class options. It turned out the elves had always seen the prompts, but with their limited ability to express themselves were unable to do more than get them to be minimized. That was something Tabby was always asking questions about. Telling me that it was important to our overall goal, but I honestly didn’t see how. So, it wasn’t something that I tended to worry about. I pulled myself out of my thoughts as Lucky started jumping around, cheering.
Lucky
Level: 1
Sun Elf
“Congratulations, Squire, you’re now a level one noob.” I mock bowed to him. “So, what did you pick,” I asked curiously, relieved. We can finally get down to business, I let my left hand graze the pommel of my sword as I prepared to get right back to training. Rather than answer me, Lucky held his palm up. As I watched, the iron from his dagger started to flow up his body, moving like mercury. It reached his upturned palm, where Lucky levitated the metal, forming it into a solid ball as big as his fist. Smirking at me, he turned toward one of the training dummies in the yard meant for archery practice, flinging his arm toward it, he sent the metal orb flying. The ball of metal shot from him as fast as a bullet... for all of twenty feet before losing momentum, landing short of the dummy he was pointing at, and more in line with the one next to it.
I burst out laughing. After a good thirty seconds, I quipped, “nice, glad you chose metal manipulation,” I paused, wiping a tear from my eye as I stood straight once again. His face was beet red in embarrassment and he wouldn’t look me in the eye. Still, I could tell he was happy to have his class. “Don’t worry about the aim, buddy, we can work on that.”
Chapter Twenty
It took another two weeks of work for the villagers to be ready to move into the new tree houses. The work had been more involved than I first thought, this being everyone’s first time building something of this nature, well, besides Tabby, making the time estimates grossly unrealistic. Once the trees had a scheduled finish date that was confirmed by Tabby, work to deconstruct the village started. The yurts were taken down, the hides used for the coverings were then inspected. If the hide was still of good quality, the crafters would come and take it. The paths in the village were dismantled, also with the crafters taking what they could. Finally, everything was ready for the elves to move into the tree. I thought about naming them Mallorn trees. Though I thought better of it, it was just too on the nose. Instead, I asked Tabby what we should name them.
She replied… and I quote, “I don’t have the time or give a fuck to deal with your silly ass games right now.”
To be fair, I did interrupt her magic lessons with an injured Lucky who may have had a hole in his shoulder from a mistimed, yeah that’s it, plasma bolt. When I so eloquently put forward the question. “So, I might have overdone it a teeny tiny bit while sparring. Also, I didn’t want to be lame and use mallorn for the tree’s name. So, what names were you thinking?”
We decided to let the elves name the trees. By we, I mean Tabby said that is how we would do it. Which I have to say was a good idea because it was a huge deal to them. They had an enormous gathering around the central fire pit to discuss and vote on a name. The meeting lasted for hours, food and drink being provided, turning it into an impromptu holiday of sorts. Once the names had been suggested, the elders discussed them while the rest of the elves ate. Singing and dancing around the fire began as the elves finished their meals, the village leaders still discussing the names. Once the elders selected a few names, the elves quieted down to vote on the name they wanted for their trees. The winner was a rather obvious name, one I knew wouldn’t be translated later in their history when new variations of their language emerged. They simply called them ‘Home’ trees.
I was inspecting the hinges on the door as we walked up, nope. No idea. Freaking magic making things that shouldn’t work. I half-heartedly grumbled to myself as I kept moving with the crowd, eager to see what the inside looked like. The doors were folded into the entrance to the tree with the hinges made from the impossibly folded wood of the doors themselves. Tabby gasped next to me, holding my arm as the two of us decided to see the tree for the first time together, stopping as she did so, making me look over to see her staring in wonder at the interior of the tree.
Inside, it was gorgeous, mere words couldn’t truly do it justice. Every surface was a shining, white marble color, with glowing, amber-colored veins running through it. The fire-like glow of the veins were the natural grain of the wood, always shifting across the surfaces of the tree. The effect made the inside of the tree glow in a wavy pattern that reminded me of the northern lights, just the wrong color. The effect made the interior easily visible, leaving no doubt that you could see where you were going at night.
It wasn’t an issue right now, as two-story-high, teardrop-shaped windows were spaced at even intervals in a spiral going up from about thirty feet in the air, providing plenty of natural daylight. There was a beautiful, simple, ten-foot-tall, ten-yard-radius fountain in the middle of the hollowed-out Home tree. It didn’t have any decoration on it, just an unpretentious, yet elegant central pillar that blossomed out at the top with drooping flower petals, allowing the water to flow into the raised basin. I could already see elves sitting on the fountain having conversations, or just relaxing while watching the water.
On the opposite side of the Home tree there was a two-story-tall, fifteen-foot-wide staircase that led to a wraparound balcony the same width, which ended where the doors came to a stop on the inside of the tree. Sections of the balcony were raised so that they were a little taller than an elf and spaced at regular, fifteen-foot intervals. These sections looked to be at least three feet thick, with an elf ranger stationed at each, providing a guard force for the Home tree.
Even with the guards, the effect on everyone who stepped into Home was immediate. Each elf paused when they first walked in, creating a small crowd that fortunately could still move freely, thanks to the giant doors and wide-open space of the tree’s interior. Tabby softly spoke a single word, almost a whisper, “Marvelous,” she pronounced the word with reverence.
“Indeed, I think we should name this Home tree Marvel, for the wonder that it is.” She nodded at my comment but didn’t respond. We made our way up the stairs to the cleverly recessed elevator that you couldn’t see, unless you knew to look for it. The elevator also had a slab of wood that could be dropped down to seal it off from invaders, and a metal gate courtesy of Melkor who was now level five, meaning he was able to work with steel. Though, he said he had a long way to go before he could make anything of quality with adamantine. With how much the elves grew daily, I doubted it would be as long as the elf thought. The elevator car was just a wooden box with a gate and a crank that had numbers corresponding to the floor you wanted to go to.
We were now riding the elevator down to
the third of eleven floors, having taken a tour of almost every level. The first of which was one hundred yards up the tree and held the new barracks for the soldiers. The elves would still maintain the barracks out by the jungle, which would be more of a scouting outpost in the future, the main elven force being located here in Marvel from now on. Housed on the second floor were the armory and treasury, both located behind a solid vault door made to look just like the rest of the wall and always guarded by two soldiers. The vault itself took up most of the floor, separated into sections. Rare crafting goods were in one section, weapons in another. It was all extremely organized, though mostly empty right now, but I doubted it would stay that way.
The top three floors were for administration. Located on the top floor were the council chambers, complete with a central fire whose magical fire contained it in its pit. A wondrous display of magic that I hadn’t thought the elves were capable of yet. The next level down were offices for high-ranking elves, such as Dawn and Lucas. Below that were the military officers’ quarters, and where Tabby and I were staying. Neither floor was very exciting, comprised mostly of hallways that led to the different rooms and offices. We didn’t bother looking at those rooms, our thinking being that we would spend plenty of time in them soon enough. We also didn’t want to barge into someone’s office just to have a look around. So, we didn’t stay long on those floors.
The fourth floor was for crafting. Thankfully, it featured soundproof walls for the sanity of the rest of those present in the tree. The crafters were already setting up shop in the different sectioned-off areas of the open plan floor. There were at least one hundred spaces, although I didn’t take the time to count them all. I saw Celeste setting up a weaving machine, no idea what they are called. Melkor had a corner area far away from the elevator, hard at work making steel when we walked by him. Tabby and I chose to pass by without saying anything, trying not to disturb his work.
Classrooms for teaching every topic you could think of took up the fifth floor. It was a place where elves could go to learn the system, or how to operate the ovens in their new homes, and everything in between. There were about as many classrooms as there were crafting spaces, though the classrooms all had doors, allowing for an environment more conducive to learning. Magical and class skill training rooms were on the sixth floor, these were large, open rooms twice the size of the crafters’ stalls. They also had extra thick soundproof walls, to let those using them work unrestricted, and an emergency button on the wall that would alert a healer when activated. The seventh floor housed the residential units for the officials whose offices were on the ninth floor, plus open units for guests, not like they’ll have any anytime soon. Still, it was a good idea to add them to the plans. We skipped the floor entirely, as it was almost an exact copy of the floor we were staying on.
For now, though, we were headed back down to the third floor, which led to the branch walkways between the Home trees. Closing the gate while Tabby pulled the crank to the mark labeled three, the elevator started to move smoothly downward as soon as she did.
As soon as it arrived on the third floor, we stepped out into an area similar to the ground floor in that it was open in design with large, open-framed doorways leading to the branches that were used to travel to different Home trees. It reminded me of a large transport hub like Grand Central Station, with branch pathways placed between the doorways of the connected trees. In the center of this floor were tables arranged in the same weird oval that the elves’ yurts were in, with a large, circular stand that sold food in the middle of it. “They really outdid themselves, huh,” I commented to Tabby as we walked hand in hand toward the doorway closest to us.
“They did,” she agreed, sounding a little guilty. I wasn’t really sure why but could guess. It was more than likely the same thing that had been weighing on my mind. The fact that we would be leaving soon. We stopped to look out over the branch, both of us silently taking in the wondrous view. Smaller branches grew in decorative curls, creating a chest-high railing, sturdy enough to lean on without it moving in the slightest. The bark floor was rough and granted excellent traction without being uneven or painful to bare feet. The view of the hill clearing was amazing, the jungle canopy visible in the distance, the world looking so peaceful and beautiful. We just stood there, letting the cool breeze blow around us, enjoying the sight.
“They’ve worked wonders in the short time we’ve been here.” Regret noticeable in her voice. I didn’t answer, letting her continue at her own pace. “They have a long way to go, there’s no denying that, but they have the tools needed to move forward now. It’s almost time for us to move on,” she sighed, her voice trembling on the verge of tears.
I thought that was what was bothering her. “Tabby,” I squeezed her hand, turning to look at her, seeing tears in her eyes. She wouldn’t look at me, just staring out over the clearing and jungle canopy. “I understand... I’m not good at this,” I admitted, changing what I was going to say, not really knowing how to put it into words. My heart hurt for her, for me, for the elves who would carry on without us. Yet, I couldn’t put verbalize my feelings. I had been through so much pain, so much loss, so much war, and so much death the first time I lived in this body, which in many ways had numbed me to my emotions. The mental block that helped with physical and emotional pain only served to make the issue worse. I knew I would miss them, especially Lucky. Still, I found it hard to express or truly feel it for the most part, lacking the ability to express the tiny amount of emotion I had left. For me, it was just another mission completed, another base to move on from but for Tabby, it meant so much more. These elves were the first community she had been a part of, and I could tell they would always hold a special place in her heart.
“I’m changing, Rho. I’m less the system and far more Tabby each day. My emotions… Hell, my everyday experiences aren’t new to me, yet they are at the same time. I have all these memories, vague feelings of doing everything I’ve been doing more times than I can count.” She turned to me, a pained expression on her face. I wiped at the tears that threatened to roll down her face with my free hand, looking her deep in the eye as I did so. The only deep emotions I had were for this woman alone. I understood this was an issue, even if I tended to forget how new Tabby’s body was to all the emotions and sensations she was being bombarded with daily.
“They are like my children, all of them, not just the elves, and yet I feel like I’m abandoning them. Even though I know we are needed elsewhere.” She stopped, unable to express everything that was going through her mind. As she turned back to look out over the world, I was given glimpses of the host of emotions she was dealing with at that moment through the mind link. Leaning over, I hugged her, rubbing her back as I allowed the emotions to continue washing over me.
After a few minutes, she calmed down. I could tell she would struggle with every race we helped and hoped she wouldn’t harden her heart, or become numb like me. Though I had my doubts about that.
Chapter Twenty-One
Another two weeks had gone by since the conversation between Tabby and I. Standing in one of the training rooms, I decided to look at both the village stats and my skill gains as I watched Lucky train. He has got a lot better with his magic. I mused, smiling as I pulled up the information.
Village: Tigris
Population: 560
Morale: Great
Level: 3
Buildings: 4*
Defenses: River, Sealable doors, Balcony guard stations.
Middle Ages era: *Village has four Home trees consisting of multiple facilities, and residential areas. Technology on par with the Late Middle Ages.
Morale ratings: Poor, Good, Great, Excellent, and Utopia.
Morale affects productivity, loyalty, and birth rate.
Class Skills:
Manipulate gravity (N): 7 + 5 (12)
●Novice Perk: Pulse
○Pulse: Can use a spell slot to produce a wave of gravitational force. Either p
ulling or pushing affected objects toward or away from individual.
Dense star (N): 10 + 8 (18)
●Novice Perk: Bigger is better.
○Bigger is better: Doubles the radius of the star. Doubling the pull on movement speed, but halves the overall effect area.
Haste/Slow: 6 + 3 (9)
Ion control (J): 25 + 9 (34)
●Novice Perk: Shocking
○Shocking: Allows individual to use electricity. Can fire weak bolts of electricity.
○Plasma!: Can now use this spell to create a plasma stream. One-inch radius. Does not have a cone effect. If fired as a bolt, travels until resistance is met. Plasma damage type dependent on resource used. e.g.: electricity and heat damage when producing lightning. When channeled, stream travels 100 feet into the distance. Channeled spells cost double. Can be used in crafting.
Telepathy (N): 10 + 2 (12)
●Novice Perk: Legion
○Legion: Can communicate telepathically with more than one person. Costs one spell slot per extra individual. Can be used on non-Gess at one spell slot per individual.
Shapeshifting (N): 10 + 4 (14)
●Novice Perk: Going native.
○Going native: Can perfectly match any traditionally bipedal races’ appearance. Includes all sensory input/output.
Perception (N): 10 + 1 (11)
●Novice Perk: Eye for magic.
○Eye for magic: Your magical vision is now sharper, letting you see clearer, with more depth and understanding.
Precision strike (N): 4 + 9 (13)
G.E.S.S.: Genetically Engineered Super Soldier Page 16