Seventh Realm Part 1: A LitRPG Fantasy series (The Ten Realms Book 8)

by Michael Chatfield

  Marco pictured them in his mind. The camps were set out in a W that faced Vuzgal with long sides and a short base. Two small bases made up each side, with his main camp taking the middle peak with two smaller camps taking positions at the base of the overall formation.

  Thirty to forty thousand fighters remained in the main camp, with ten to fifteen thousand in each of the other camps. With camp followers, the main camp swelled to one hundred thousand, and the secondary camps to forty.

  “We have been unable to find the mana draining formations at work against us. I have teams working around the clock, but we have not found any of them. They are either massively powerful and cover a large area and are few, or they are too deep for our spells to detect them.”

  Marco pursed his lips and waved for Vivaldo to continue.

  “Our mana regeneration has decreased by ten percent at this range, mana pools decreased by five percent. Based on the mana cannon performance last night, the formations must only get stronger.”

  “How much stronger?”

  “Thirty percent we guess at the walls.”

  “I sense more?” Marco’s face tightened.

  “Inside the walls, it could be more. That’s what I would do.”

  Marco sighed, his nose flaring. “It seems to be about right. I am sorry about that. This campaign has been tiring.” He waved to dismiss his outburst, continuing. “They have a mana barrier that seems to eat our cannon shots and cannons that have power that is only common in the Seventh Realm. Begin construction on the tunnels. I have a feeling Vuzgal will have more surprises, but a siege is a series of attacks and feints. Just we do not know which feint will turn into an attack and which attack we will divert into a feint.”

  “Yes, Young Master.”

  “Anything else?” Marco’s light tone returned.

  Vivaldo’s words caught in his mouth as he opened it twice, closing it as he organized his thoughts.

  “Raise your head.” Marco’s voice deepened.

  “The iron fields that Master Teacher Medina talked about. They were hard to make out in the night. With the morning sun, we were able to see them. Vuzgal is not what it was a week ago.

  “I sent up aerial riders to better understand. Lines that have been cut into the ground. They cover an area of one kilometer and ring the entire metal forest beyond. The forest covers a semi-circle of three and a half kilometers in front of the city. Under the metal forest, all the dirt has been removed, covered in stone. The low squat buildings are fused with it, creating a protrusion out toward us before running up the sides of the hills on either side of the city.”

  “Four and a half kilometers of defenses. Troublesome.”

  “It’s a monumental undertaking to complete it in under a week without outside assistance. I would guess it to take a month for them to build such defenses.”

  He needed to see this for himself. “Maids!” he yelled as he stood up. His skin dried as it touched the air, a spell wicking the water away.

  The maids rushed in, cupping their hands and bowing.

  “Help me with my armor.”

  They rushed to obey as he stood there, quickly clothing him in his layers and armor.

  Marco pulled out his sheathed sword and belt from his storage ring, pulling it around his waist as he walked out of the room, causing eddies in the foggy bathroom.

  “Take my helmet.”

  The maid bowed to Vivaldo, who accepted it and followed his young master out.

  “Lower Elder Kostic is due to arrive today with the other sect elders,” Vivaldo said as guards opened the doors to his quarters.

  Waiting guards moved to encircle him.

  “Are they not worried we could be attacked at any time?”

  “Comes from the Head.”

  Marco sucked in a breath as the door leading into the compound opened and noise flooded in.

  “If it is the Head’s wish. I guess he is looking for more to join the fight.” Marco took Vivaldo’s silence as agreement as he walked into the early morning sun. He was greeted with a courtyard that had stables on either side. They’d been spelled into existence from trees and stone and filled with mounts.

  The stable attendants quickly readied his and his guards’ mounts.

  A wall and gates circled the courtyard now, made from compressed stone and wood to create a fence of upright spears. He could see the movement beyond.

  The compound was busy with Tolentino soldiers moving between groups from one task to another. The sound of hammering came from the shimmering smithies, maintaining and fixing armor and weapons that had grown dull or uncared for in the march.

  Houses of compressed dirt and trees lie around Marco’s larger manor. Tents were corralled into lines and groups while a ten-meter-tall wooden wall had risen in the night to circle the entire Tolentino compound.

  They got on their readied mounts. The gates of his manor were opened by waiting guards.

  As he left the courtyard, Marco looked around, taking it all in. His mount kicked up dust from the hardened dirt path, heading for the gate into the rest of the camp.

  “Use stone to create new roads. Send people out to get boulders or have supplies brought in. How are our walls?”

  “The outer walls are twenty meters tall and ten thick. It has been hard to build much of anything. The mana here is so thin that our mages need much longer to recover between castings. More building supplies are coming in.”

  “Good, the wall is the priority.”

  “Yes, Young Master.”

  The other sects and powerful families had set up their own smaller compounds within the walls that ringed them all.

  Two kilometers wide with room to expand and nearly no stone left at all. Forests were being cleared of lumber and stone to speed up the process instead of just relying on their building mages.

  The sea of tents was hemmed in by main roads marked by the sects or pathways that had organically grown out of necessity.

  The command center in the middle of the camp stood at seventy meters tall. It was the only building and was made purely from stone to support its height.

  Marco dismounted, leaving his mount to be attended to by another stable hand. His guards followed him into the command center. A formation pad took them up to the highest room in the tower to the noise of voices.

  “About ten meters to the southeast it stops. Then there is a ledge of about a half meter.”

  “Ten meters to the southwest is the corner of another box, same dimen—”

  Talking slowed or stopped as the cartographers noticed Marco’s presence.

  Marco looked through the windows, seeing the forest to the north, and the opening left by the Eastern road before facing south at his target.

  Rows of cartographers created new maps while others relayed what they saw through viewing glasses.

  The cartographer watching through mounted viewing glasses was pulled to the side by his partner, the two of them bowing deeply.

  Marco stepped up to the viewing glasses and looked through them. The land was barren now, leaving bare polished stone that must have been hardened. Their whistling attacks and the formations they dropped would have a greater effect now. The lines in the ground and the iron bushes would make it impossible for mana barriers to give soldiers complete coverage.

  The room remained silent as he studied Vuzgal.

  Time passed slowly; the only noise came from the joints on his viewing glasses which squeaked as he moved them.

  Finally satisfied, he stood back up.

  “Well, let’s test it out then.”

  Kim Cheol breathed in as he rolled up through the stretch, and exhaled as he bent down again, slowly. He completed the series of moving stretches that limbered up his body, causing him to sweat and feel some heat in his muscles.

  He moved to tension and backed off before it got too painful.

  His movement was coming back, and he was stronger than before. His mana channels were still a mess, but healing took time
. Kim stood up straight and let out a breath, opening his eyes to the view of Alva beyond his window.

  He didn’t even glance at the chair which he had relied on to recover from his exertions when he had first started exercising. He hadn’t believed that he would actually recover. He thought Erik was making that up to make him feel better.

  Kim flexed his arm. He was still weak and had a long way to go. “It won’t be done in a day. Every day just a little bit more.” He recited the words Erik had repeated and again. “He was right.” Once he recovered, he would be stronger than before. Then he could start to rebuild his mana channels.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “I like to see a patient adhering to his recovery plan! Love a bit of stretching, all the right angles.” Nurse Tollins gave him a flirty wink.

  Kim couldn’t help but laugh at her outrageous behavior. The indomitable nurse had been watching over him. Her flirts were only surface level, but it built up his confidence. And her quips kept him on his toes.

  “Let’s take a good look at you.”

  Kim gave her his wrist, feeling the spell that appeared around her hand and deep in her eyes. It spread from his wrist through his body like a wave. “Okay! We’re looking pretty good! Let’s get you up on the bed. I’ll torture you a little bit and then you can have your afternoon mana cultivation session.”

  Kim got up onto his bed. “I’m holding more of the fire element in my body now.” He held out his hand. It turned red as heat emanated from it. “I can only infuse it into what I’m holding. Without mana, I can’t use it at a distance.”

  “Color me impressed! You’ll be able to enhance your weapons and armor with that still.”

  Kim smiled, proud of the praise.

  “After tomorrow, we should be able to discharge you. The other guild members you came in with have mostly left.”

  “Yeah, they came by before they headed out. Will Erik be done training before I leave?”

  Something flashed in Tollin’s eyes.

  Did something happen to Erik?

  “I don’t think he will, he’s…” Tollins paused.

  “Is something wrong?” Kim asked calmly, too calmly. If someone…

  She sighed in exasperation. “He’s being the dungeon lord.”

  Kim released the tightness in his muscles.

  “He’s cultivating his mana and bleeding himself dry. Say someone from the First Realm could only give five hundred milliliters of blood at most, in a three-month period. Erik has pumped out a liter every ten minutes for the last two days, nearly three hundred liters of blood.”

  “How is he still alive?”

  “He is Lord West. Some might know more in the medical field than him, but none of them can draw on as much power as he can. Add to that his Body Like Diamond and the fact he’s basically using his body as an alchemy cauldron, turning his blood into a highly potent revival potion that one can use on the worst wounded.”

  “Is he in pain?” Kim asked as Nurse Tollins applied her applicators to his feet, making him wince.

  “Nope, just lying there, cultivating and being a human blood machine. Now all the soldiers are donating their blood. We haven’t used blood in the past. With the blood, it deals with blood loss right from the start, and it has stamina properties, and healing effects if it comes from someone with a higher body cultivation.”

  She found a problem area on his foot he didn’t know about until the flare of pain forced him to not clench his jaw.

  “I’ve been wanting to work on that one. Breaking up nicely.”

  “Yeah, feels good,” Kim said, stretching it out.

  Tollins laughed at his pained expression.

  She worked him over good, leaving him sinking into his sheets.

  “Eat this. Got some time before your mana cultivation.” She put down lunch in front of him and cleared up her gear.

  The meats, vegetables, and gravy made Kim take a deep breath in.

  “I’ll be around later to grab the dishes and take you down.”

  “Okay, thanks!”

  “No problem It’s my job.”

  Kim dug into the heaping plate of food with gusto. He woke up several hours later to Nurse Collins again.

  “Training time.”

  “Yup, yup.” Kim smacked his lips together and pulled himself out of his half comatose state, blinking his eyes around the blurry room as he got his feet over the side, resting on the edge of the bed.

  He took a deep breath and stretched out, feeling things pop, crack and move into place before he slid his feet into his shoes and slowly stood up.

  “Okay,” he said.

  She led him through the hospital. There were more staff than patients. Most of them were showing and teaching members of the Alva military basic first aid courses, how to use their medical supplies, and—for the more advanced medics---battlefield medicine.

  They passed them and went through a corridor into the adjacent mana gathering center.

  “The body cultivation center is located down the hall. They’re hooked up to the hospital for recovery. If anyone has any injuries from cultivating, we can help them right away.”

  Kim nodded with approving noises.

  “We redesigned the room from the standard mana training rooms to the mana cultivation pods. Easier to monitor, takes up less space, and less wasteful in creating a highly mana dense area.”

  She led him past a lobby and into what looked like an open warehouse. Sheets of formations covered the floor. Long and wide boxes sat on one another, covered in runes, with stairs bolted to their sides to reach up to the second and third stacked container. Windows provided a view into the rooms, which were filled with cultivation pods; some were filled with mist, while others pivoted backward, laying those inside on their back.

  There were several in a row in each container.

  “They were made specifically for the military to help them train faster. Lord Rodriguez was the first tester. That’s why they look like stacked bricks, with as many pods stuffed into them as possible and with windows. I certainly wouldn’t want people staring at me while I’m cultivating!”

  She pointed at a room where a few men were standing outside. “There’s Lord West.”

  Through the window, Kim could see men and women inside the pods. Tubes disappeared into the mist-filled pods. Others gave them food or were taking blood.

  Medics unhooked the bags and added new ones as they filled up.

  A courier put the full bags in his storage ring. Two guards accompanied him as he left the room and headed past Kim toward the hospital.

  “Now alchemists will check the blood and add active ingredients. Then it will be stored in blood packs, waiting to be put into people. The strongest will go into revival needles.” Tollin’s face turned grim as she led Kim toward a specific cultivation room. “Army types joke that they’ll bring you back from the brink. They’re extremely powerful Expert concoctions with the single purpose to keep one alive, no matter the damage. This is you.” She waved to the room.

  Kim opened the door.

  Medics were watching panels and wandering between the pods three rows deep and ten across. They helped people out of the pod, checking them. Several pods were empty, but the majority were occupied.

  So many.

  “Medic Tollins.” A man with a smile came over and smiled at Kim. “Branch head Kim Cheol. I hear you will be in my care this afternoon. My name is Researcher Xun Jun.”

  Xun Jun was as strong as Kim but he wasn’t talking down to him. This place is weird compared to the rest of realms. He expected him to be weaker based on how the man was speaking to him.

  “Yes, he’s all yours,” Tollins answered for him.

  “Sorry, my mind wandered. It is good to meet you researcher Xun Jun.” Kim smiled.

  “No worries! So, I’ve seen your medical records and we’ve been thinking about your recovery. I’ll be watching the entire time. We increase the mana density in the pod to see what will
happen. Then we will increase the fire element, just to test it. We won’t go too fast. Today is about discovering what your limits are.”

  “He has been able to maintain and draw more fire mana into his body,” Tollins offered.

  “Good, good!” Xun Jun wrote down some quick notes. “Any increased ability to hold mana?”

  “No.”

  “Is there a stationary amount you can hold when relaxed?”

  “A small amount.”

  “Half of your original total, less?”

  “Uhh, about...” Kim thought of the numbers he had learned with his training in Alva. “Ten percent?”

  “Okay, okay, we can work with that. I’m excited to get started!”

  “What do you do?”

  “I am primarily a researcher into body cultivation techniques. I study how people temper their bodies. I do tests and studies to see if there are ways that I can improve the process. I second in mana cultivation. Tollins came to me once she saw Lord West’s notes on your recovery.”

  Such a person would be a guarded secret in a sect!

  “All right. I think I should be good. Thank you, Miss Tollins.”

  “No problem.” Tollins left as Xun Jun waved him to follow.

  “Okay, so this is like normal cultivating, but we’re controlling the environment a little bit more. No need to take off clothes. We only do that for extended periods of cultivation. We clean the pods after every use so don’t worry about putting your head where someone’s boots were. Now you’re thinking about it, right?”

  Kim nodded and smiled at the bubbly and energetic Xun Jun.

  “Don’t worry! You’ll be fine. I’ve done this hundreds of times. I have more than thirty patients training right now!” He grinned and indicated to the rest of the room then leaned in to Kim and hissed behind his hand. “Very captive audience.” Xun Jun winked and smiled as he hit a button on the panel beside him. The pod rotated backward.

  The pod locked into place.

  “Everything good? Any questions?”

  “Will this help with my mana channels?”

  Xun Jun’s voice slowed as he held his clipboard against his stomach. “I make no guarantees. Today is the day that we find out what we’re working with. We can figure out treatment from there. If I don’t know how to help, I will find someone that does. The only goal I have is to make sure that you leave my doors in peak condition, physically and mentally.”