by Matthew Peed
The runners, ten of them, reached me first. I swung my blade, and a wave of condensed flame left the edge of my sword. Two of the runners were unable or didn’t care to dodge and were sliced in half. The ones behind them shoved them out of the way and kept going. I braced my shield, and when the forerunner collided with it, I brought my sword around and sliced off its head.
The rest collided with me, and I fought tooth and nail. After a minute there was a pile of bodies around me that had formed a small wall. I breathed heavily, completely drained. But when I looked around, I saw nearly thirty more undead a couple hundred meters from me. I moved as quickly as I could and made for the forest. At that point, I’d rather have fought monsters than any more undead. I was already channeling most of my mana into fighting off the corpse poison.
I stumbled through the forest. Although I was leaving a pretty good blood trail, I was putting distance between the ghouls and myself. When I could no longer hear their moans, I stopped and quickly bandaged my wounds to stanch the bleeding. It took longer than I would have liked, but I got it done and picked up my pace through the forest.
~~~
It was early morning when I came across a camp that had been set up along a road. I called out to make them aware of my approach, and a group of people with weapons drawn had encircled the camp by the time I entered their site. It was standard procedure for most camps.
“Help!” I called wearily.
I felt a wash of light over me, and some of my wounds healed.
“What happened?! Bandits?” a man asked as he rushed toward me and grabbed my shoulder to help me into the camp.
“Undead,” I answered honestly. Undead needed to be dealt with as quickly as possible when outbreaks happened on that side of the mountain.
The man turned toward another man. “Go, warn the nearest village!”
The second man nodded and jumped on a horse.
“Please, I need a horse!” I said to the man aiding me.
“We have a spare, but you shouldn’t be moving. You’re pretty banged up,” he said as he held me down.
“I don’t have time. I need to go!” I said as I pulled several gems from my storage ring. The man took them nervously and led me to a horse they had tied up with the others.
“This is the best we got. I don’t think you should be riding, but I won’t stop you,” the man said as he handed me the reins.
“Thank you for your concern,” I said, mounting the horse. “If we ever meet again, I’ll treat you to a meal.” I cracked the reins and took off.
Chapter 8
Regan
The ground cracked as I walked from the tunnel entrance. Mana was still rushing into the hole I had “punched” through the mountain, but it wasn’t the tainted mana. As I studied the mana that flowed through and into my aura on the other side, I found that it was ambient mana that had nearly no taint. Now that I physically stood on the other side of the mountain, I could see that the tainted ambient mana seemed to resist moving. I wondered if something was controlling it after all, or if it was just because the mana didn’t align properly; like fire mana in a volcano or unholy mana in a dying forest, that sort of thing.
I’d absorbed quite a few ghouls and zombies. They had started to pile up for the miners killing them as they emerged from the forest, and the miners started sending them to the dungeon where I would consume them. Some of the bodies were relatively fresh, while others were several years old. They were in all shapes, sizes, and ages, which was a bit sad.
I walked away from the entrance, a contingent of automata around me. Anubis was also with me. He seemed to enjoy the atmosphere here quite a bit, and he breathed deeply and pulled in the unholy and dark mana in the area. We moved roughly a kilometer from the entrance. Then I tapped my staff on the ground, and a wave of gravity blasted out. Everything was ripped clean of the ground, thrown several hundred meters clear of the spot I’d chosen to place my newest subcore. Of course, my guards were protected from the spell. It was easy to make a bubble around an object.
I was going to have to use pure mana for parts of the construction, but I decided it was a small price to pay. Besides, I had quite a bit at the moment. I created an antigravity area around my avatar, then floated several hundred meters into the air. Once there, I created a sphere made out of mithril and diamond nanothread. The entire sphere cost nearly twenty-three million mana. It tore a good chunk out of my pool, but it was the only thing that was absolutely needed. I had a good amount of mithril built up, so that offset the cost a bit.
The material was impenetrable. Or, at least, everything I could think to throw at it was unable to get through it. I could create magic scripts inside the material itself, allowing for nanocircuitry for magic. I created the most substantial barrier I could, which even I couldn’t penetrate with my senses if I weren’t coded to it. Once it was ready, I placed my subcore inside. My newest aura filled the space inside the sphere, then exploded out.
It was able to expand about ten meters before the tainted mana actually struck back, which caught me totally by surprise. An arc of black energy came from several different directions and slammed into the sphere, Anubis, and me. My avatar was vaporized with no small amount of pain. When my senses came back to me, I saw that Anubis, while smoking, was alright, and the sphere was fine as well. Mana had never reacted like that before, so I was caught off guard.
I gritted my teeth in anger. I wasn’t about to take shit from static discharge of all things. Moving my ethereal body over to the sphere, I worked with some demantoid, or andorite, to make several large spike-like pillars. I scripted them to draw in all excess mana in the area and then convert it to my own. When I was satisfied, I moved back and tried to expand my aura again.
I’d reached roughly twenty meters when it seemed to trigger some kind of response. The arcs of black energy reappeared, and suction in the air seemed to echo out as the pillars altered the path of the energy. They struck the pillars, the energy coursing through it toward my core. As it moved down the pillar, it turned a cyber-looking blue before it was pulled into the sphere.
If I were a mortal, I would have burped from the deliciousness of the mana I’d just absorbed. I normally have to absorb tainted mana, or at least mana that felt slightly not right, but this mana . . . it just seemed to agree with me perfectly. I might have to consider adding these pillars to all my cores, I thought. I went ahead and changed the pillars in front of me so that all the mana absorbed by the aura there would be fed through the pillars into the core.
With that taken care of, I worked on the next part. I created another larger sphere around the small one that was made out of regular nanosteel. I wanted it to be strong, but I didn’t need it to be able to survive a nuke. From there I added three large “arms” to the structure, which could be repurposed into whatever I needed them for later. The area taken by the structure soon reached almost a kilometer.
The arms were wide enough to support several city-size blocks on it. They were bare for the most part, as I hadn’t set them to a purpose yet. Only the area near the core had a few buildings already. While I could use mana throughout my aura, that wasn’t true for many of my creations. Thus, I created powerlines that linked all the buildings and structure on each arm.
At the end of each arm, I added networks of hexagons that were enscripted to absorb the sunlight, then convert it to energy to power Shield spells. In between the individual hexagons, I added a weapon platform of some type. This felt a little random, but I wanted it to be able to handle whatever might attack, no matter from which direction.
I connected the base to the ground, then stood back. It needed a bit more work, but I felt I had a nice fortress now. I looked to the ground, frowning at how bare it seemed. I channeled my mana and waved my hand, resulting in the ground changing into reinforced concrete.
I kept at it until forty-meter walls were surrounding the base, which went all the way back to the mountain. They were multilayered with several types of
materials reinforcing them, some denser than others. They would be able to take quite a beating.
I looked over my new base and smiled. It had a completely modern feel to it. While my time on Earth had been . . . troubled, I had always loved the feel of concrete, the right angles of buildings, and the smell of cities—when I was on a clean street, anyway. I unleashed a couple hundred of my stored automata forces into the base to crew the defenses and facilities.
Near the center of one of the arms stood a large building a few stories tall. I moved inside where labs of all sorts were set up. I looked back into my main dungeon and grabbed some of the smartest goblins, Jarvis, and a few librarian automata that had shown increased interest in the things they read.
The goblins seemed surprised but calmed down when they saw me. I turned to Jarvis. “Your talents are being wasted in the dungeon watching the cameras all day. I need you up here to research the undead. I want to know everything we can find out about them. These are the best of the best in their areas. They’re your new team.” Short and sweet.
Jarvis took it all like a champ. Bowing his head, he said, “As you command. I shall instruct the drones to bring us samples.”
“Good, the goblins can move about anywhere in this building and the streets connected to it. I plan on moving a few of the families here in the future for outside projects.”
“Whatever you say, boss!” one of the males said for the group. Their Boston accents always brought a smile to my face.
“Hey! We Fuides will speak for ourselves!” another goblin said as he smacked the first over the head.
“Get along,” I said simply, and they shut their mouths quickly.
I pulled out some of the corpses that I had saved from my storage, then set them in a pile over to one side of the room. Some basic robots activated and began to distribute the bodies to various workstations. The gathered group broke up into smaller pairs and such, then moved to the stations to check over the equipment. I downloaded the instructions into the librarian models so they could explain their uses.
While knowing it might take some time, I felt this was a good investment for the future. I was sure I would be in here on and off to help and check how they were coming. I left the research team and moved to the edge of the platform on one of the arms.
Even now a small horde of ghouls and other undead monsters were pounding on the walls. One of the turrets on the wall activated as the automata brought them online. After a few moments of charging, a large arc of electricity shot from the turret. It collided at one end of the small horde, then traveled along the wall, incinerating everything along with it.
Some automata I had modeled after Natsuko moved up to high points along the wall that had several towers, which added another fifty or so meters. Then a barely audible popping sound, to even me, echoed out as they took out the more dangerous undead by destroying their heads. I glanced over toward one of the gates and saw a large group of automata, with Jarvis standing behind them. It must have been his sample acquisition team. I was impressed with how fast he worked.
I watched over the hive of machines for a while as I planned what to do next. Now that I was in the Deadlands, I wanted to focus on it, remove the problem at the source, as it were, but I was afraid to leave my back exposed. I wasn’t sure how difficult it was going to be to deal with the monster horde yet and was hesitant to throw everything I had in the Deadlands.
The sample team had left and come back twice already when I felt a message from Louella. Something wasn’t right, and her voice sounded as if she was in quite a panic. She informed me that Bruce had shown up injured to hell and that the marquis was most likely dead. They were still working the story out of the man apparently. I was about to move over to them when I heard a large boom over to the side of the fort.
I jerked my head over and saw a giant form rising out of the nearby forest. Amplifying my eyes, much like a camera zoom, I was able to make the creature out. I wouldn’t really have been sure how to describe it even if I’d been asked. It looked like a treant, a tree creature that could move around, except some parts were made from bones. The bark and bones seemed to be fused together, making it hard to describe. Green energy leaked from places along its body, and it actually looked like it was in pain.
Where a face would normally be, a skull resided. Branches, twisted and gnarled, arced from its body, huge limbs and trunks that served as arms and legs and allowed it to move like a mortal. Each step it took caused the ground to wither a bit as if it were sucking the nutrients out until not even the life force remained.
I whistled. We were only on the edges of the Deadlands, and there were already giant monsters. The sample team moved forward to block its path with machine-level precision. The improved auxiliary troops, which I started calling gunners, pressed buttons on their guns, causing them to morph into rocket launchers, and began to load the rockets. I had taken some inspiration from Natsuko’s weapon when making my improvements.
A moment later, over a dozen rockets blasted toward the gigantic creature. With an enormous boom that rivaled when the creature . . . I guessed formed, the missiles collided with the creature. Flames and shrapnel tore through it as it roared in pain. Its top half was obliterated into smoldering pieces of wood and bones. It slowly fell to its knees, then all the way to the ground.
Several more booms followed after, and I figured the battle was over, but it turned out to be over half a dozen more of the creatures rising from the forest. I noted that each was a certain distance from the other, so I reasoned that they must be forest guardians like treants, but had turned into those . . . things.
I shifted my senses and noted that each creature seemed to react to my aura reaching its spot in the forest. The ones that had arisen were only a few kilometers from the fort, after all. I was tempted to let the problem sort itself out. My forces were enough to deal with them, as they were just big and seemed to lack any kind of intelligence, at least lacked it after the transformation.
“Jarvis.”
A rune appeared next to me. Then, with a column of light, Jarvis appeared. Once the spell was over, he bowed his head and said, “Yes, sir?”
“Do you think you can capture one of those alive?”
“Alive, sir?”
“Fine, not turned into a pile of splinters,” I retorted.
“It should be possible, sir.”
“Do it, then. Also, how many samples have you gathered?” I asked. Unless I looked directly at them, they just appeared to be blobs of unholy mana to the part of my mind observing from the background.
“Nearly fifty, sir. The skeletons have been harder to capture . . . undamaged. However, we have still managed to collect a few. There is an . . . issue, I would like to report since I am already here,” Jarvis said.
“Go ahead,” I said. I needed to know everything I could about this land if I wanted to fix it.
“The ambient mana is causing our parts to corrode at accelerated rates. Without a countermeasure, a continuous supply of mana will become an increasingly bigger necessity.”
I tapped my chin as I mulled that over. “How long can you last without a mana supply?”
“If my calculations are correct from the two previous trips, then roughly four hours or so. The higher-tier automata would last longer, I wager.”
“That is concerning,” I said with a frown. I had wanted to steamroll this bloody mess of a country, but it looked like that had just gotten harder. “Alright, get back to your troops,” I finished with a pat to his shoulder.
“As you command, sir,” Jarvis said with a bow. One of his eyes lit up, then the magic rune appeared under him as he teleported back to his force.
Only a few minutes passed before Jarvis’s force surrounded one of the creatures. Harpoons with large chains fired from the gunners’ rocket launchers, digging deep into the bark and bones. I looked closely as I saw that Jarvis had snagged a few Echos. They were the ones with four hands rather than tools. A group of four had
ahold of the chains and were working to bring the creature down.
A group of the smaller automata grabbed a chain next, then proceeded to run around the legs until they were tied up. The creature tried to stomp around and even into them but was too slow. With its balance thrown off, it slowly started to collapse. The Echos began to drag it back to the fort. I had to tip my hat again to Jarvis for working so fast.
I moved my gaze over to the fort and chose a clear spot. There I erected a large cage that would be able to house the creature and inserted a post that the chains could be connected to. I drove the chains several dozen meters into the ground and added spikes that branched off to force the creature to pull up a section of ground that easily weighed several hundred tons, if it tried to escape.
Chapter 9
Izora
Regan moved toward me with a weapon much like I had seen Louella use, only it reminded me more of the ancient weapon I used when I dungeon dived. He held it out to me, and I took it gingerly, afraid to break it.
Mother? a voice asked in my head.
“Yes!” I replied excitedly. A warm feeling entered my heart as I gripped the sentient weapon to my chest. “Thank you, Regan!” I said. I would never regret coming to this valley, no matter how long I lived into the future.
Regan moved forward and grabbed my shoulder. His eyes took on a deep crimson color as parts in his chest glowed. “Now you belong to me,” he said.
“Of course,” I answered without hesitation. My eyes slowly turned red, and parts of my body started to change as lines formed along my skin. When the lines, which seemed to turn at random but always in ninety degrees, reached my heart, my body jerked.
~~~
I shot up in my futon, gasping for breath. I yanked open my shirt to look at my chest, then breathed in a sigh when I saw the two mounds that had been there for the last few years, still light tone color flesh. It was quite concerning to have had the same dream twice since I’d seen Ezal get her sentient weapon from Regan. I wasn’t sure if it was my desire, greed, or lust that was driving the dreams.