by Dakota Krout
Perhaps all I should do was cover her in Inscriptions and give her armor and maybe a few weapons? She knew how to fight, and her body never tired. I sighed gently; it was becoming harder to create creatures uniquely suited to destroying my enemies. Perhaps… perhaps I should be focusing on empowering myself instead of my creatures? Should I meditate on my law, Acme, the concept of perfection itself for a few decades?
Nah. I decided to go make my traps more deadly instead.
Chapter Four
“Well, I now know why we are going the wrong way,” Dale mentioned to the councilors at the morning’s pre-conference meeting. Hopefully this information would be beneficial for the morning’s post-conference meeting and perhaps even inspire people to be polite at the luncheon for the afternoon’s pre-afternoon forum. Dale was sick to his stomach as he realized how many meetings he was forced to attend on a daily basis. “As I understand it, there is a dungeon that we are moving toward. If we take the Core from this dungeon and feed it to ours, we can expect a thirty percent increase in unaligned Essence on the surface of Mountaindale.”
Madame Chandra rolled her eyes and spoke in an uncharacteristically sharp tone, “Now we are going to be doing the dungeon’s dirty work? How will this help our goals? Were you able to get the dungeon to make any concessions for our assistance in this matter?”
Dale thought about the incredible armor that he had gained for himself and felt a bit guilty that he had something that he wouldn’t be sharing with the people that were relying on him. “I felt that having an understanding of what was happening coupled with the benefit that we will see from increased Essence would be enough. Realistically, what can we do right now? Can we fight this ‘Master’ directly? Can we fight any portion of his forces on equal footing? The answer to all of these questions is ‘no’. Why not focus on something that we can do? Why not grow stronger and prepare for the day when we can fight back?”
“Well said, Dale, but there are facts you are not considering.” Father Richard ambled toward his chair. He had been wounded multiple times in the last few months, and though he recovered quickly… it still took time and energy. “One of the most important being that The Master did not kill the people of the cities. In fact, from all reports, it appears that they are being treated well. This is concerning for many reasons but especially because we do not know what he intends to do with them. We know that human sacrifice is not off the table. If that is the case, we need to save the tens of thousands of lives that might be sacrificed for power due to our inaction.”
“So you are saying human sacrifice is on the table? Or on the altar?” Dale looked around the solemn faces, his coy smile slipping. “I’m very tired.”
Madame Chandra glanced around the room with bloodshot eyes. “Or it could be that The Master does not intend to hurt them in any way. For goodness sake, in his own mind he could be trying to help those people!”
“By murdering our families and destroying the armies?” Prince… no, King Henry stalked into the room, his footsteps clinking against the ground with each step. “I refuse to make concessions to this monster. We will be fighting a war against him, and he will pay for his crimes. Even if I need to spend eternity hunting him and empowering myself, I will eventually bring him down like the beast he is.”
Madame Chandra could find no argument to refute him and just shook her head sadly. “I know that your loss was shocking, but at this point, there is nothing we can do against them. Pursuing peace may truly be our only option.”
“I will have war!” Henry bellowed into the now-silent room, crashing his metal-clad fist against the table. Thanks to its recent enhancement, the table weathered the blow admirably, not even chipping.
“Your Majesty!” Dale loudly disrupted the shouting. “With all due respect, we will be doing whatever we can to save lives. If that means that we find a peaceful option, we need to consider it. Otherwise, it is the people that you were sworn to protect that will suffer. Your. People. The ones counting on you to rescue them from the predation of the infernal. Please, think on that… Your Majesty.”
“You… you people don’t…” Fuming and trying to surreptitiously wipe his eyes, Henry turned on his heel and marched out of the room, exuding a bloodlust that caused the ordinary people in his path to freeze in place.
“War isn’t off the table, and neither is a peaceful option,” Princess Brianna bit into an apple with a wet crunch, swallowing before finishing her sentence, “but have you thought of a third option? The one where you ask the Elvish Assassins you live with to intercede?”
There were many glances thrown around the table, and it was surprisingly the merchant Tyler who spoke, “Are… are you offering? Do you even have anyone who could take out an above S-ranked necromancer?”
“He isn’t a necromancer.” Madame Chandra rubbed at her eyes once again. “At least… he never was one. The law he is bound to is far too strange for it to be so simple.”
“Then what is he, Madame? Where does his specialty lie?” Father Richard seemed excited to finally have a starting point; surely they could find a counterpoint to his law and use it to weaken the S-ranked ‘Master’.
Chandra shook her head hard, “I don’t know. He has always just been good at… knowing things. I do know that he has access to the void, but I am uncertain how or what that means for him… or for us.”
“Sorry to say, but assassinating The Master is off the table. Simply put, none of you could afford the cost, as it would involve sending my mother after him. No, what I am thinking is more to the effect of a war of attrition. We can go after his generals, his leaders, and strike them down. Without competent leadership, his plans may fail.” Princess Brianna only started to get serious near the end, her flippancy giving way to strategy.
“Assassins? I cannot condone…” Father Richard looked around at all the faces that were turned toward Brianna. “Surely this cannot actually be up for debate!”
Tyler turned his intense stare upon the priest. “Father Richard, I know that this issue is serious for you, but I don’t think you understand quite where some of us are standing on this issue. The necromancers had my neighbors and myself trapped in a basement as the building above us crumbled. We did everything we could to keep ourselves alive, not only because we wanted to stay living but because of what happened to our dead.”
Heaving a few deep breaths to calm down, Tyler continued speaking, “Two of my new employees were struck by falling rubble and were slain. They turned into jelly and oozed out of my building to join into an abomination. We were afraid of dying for more than the normal reasons at that point. We were afraid that our souls would be used as ammunition against our people. That is the reason I am here right now, and I will push for anything that allows me to sleep without waking up in terror. If that means a distant necromancer dies without getting anywhere near me, then I say so be it; send in the Assassins. I believe I can and do speak the will of the people.”
The room was quiet again, so after a few tense moments Dale cleared his throat and moved the conversation along. “We will discuss this later, in a closed session. For now, we have another issue to think on. The academy is full, but the classes are becoming a bit sporadic. We need a Headmaster to run things there and rein in the instructors. We have had dozens of applicants, but after background checks, knowledge tests, and determining general amiability, we have narrowed it down to these three.” Dale handed out a packet of information to each person, who scanned through each and determined who they wanted to offer the position to.
“We can rule out the High Elf off the bat, can’t we?” Brianna tossed a small booklet of information into the fire. Dale watched it burn with resignation; that had cost quite a bit of money in terms of paper and research.
“Please don’t burn things that I give you. It’s… rude.” He stopped himself from shrieking but only just barely. It wouldn’t be a good idea to yell; Brianna had guards in the room that might react poorly. Dale had gained a few benefi
ts from the dungeon that he didn’t think even Cal knew about. One of those was the ability to connect to the dungeon’s senses and use them as his own. It had a very limited range, but he could sense the disturbances in the areas’ Essence as the invisible folk continually scanned the room for threats.
“This one is promising. Emilia Nerys… A-ranked blood cultivator.” Tyler shook his head in wonder. “She is far and away more than qualified. A healer, a background in taking on F-rankers to mentor…”
“There are complications, unfortunately,” Father Richard spoke up as Tyler trailed off. “My order has been working to recruit her, as she specializes not in healing, but in hunting necromancers. She holds a deep grudge against them, and I feel that if you are serious about opening an infernal wing, she would slay any applicant. Either way, I cannot say she is suited to the position.”
“She applied for a professor position, as an instructor of water and healing,” Tyler pressed onward. “Can we consider her for the dean of one of those wings?”
The others agreed to his proposition and decided to offer her a pick of the two availabilities.
“That leaves this man… Artorian?” Amber flicked the paper, and it lifted into the air and hung there with a picture of a man on it. “Why is he even being considered? He is in the C-ranks.”
“These people aren’t necessarily being considered for their cultivation bases; they are being considered for their ability to run an academy.” Dale knew it would come to an argument; typically, cultivators didn’t respect others that were at lower ranks.
Amber’s eyelids fluttered as she thought. “How is he supposed to keep the students in line? Let the other teachers do it? Who would keep them under control?”
Dale slapped the table, much less impressively than the others had been able to do. “By being an administrator. I don’t want a school to be run only by those that can use force on others; that will lead to a corrupt faculty nigh instantly! Look at the treatise by the Scholar D. Coda; his study done on the Amazonian Queendom clearly lays this out. If they hadn’t only given authority to people with the physical power to back it up, their capital would not have fallen, and they wouldn’t have lost half their population in a cataclysmic uprising. Let’s learn from the past, not dive into their mistakes in the present.”
“A scholar! That’s a good one! You are citing history that I was there for, Dale. It is the history of The Master as well. In any case, I think you have used enough memory stones if you are able to learn about esoteric case studies and find a way to use them in general conversation.” Madame Chandra chortled, then read some more of the information from the document. “It says here that Artorian developed his own cultivation technique when he was in his fifties. Goodness. I can’t even imagine how corrupt his center was at that point. He was a philosopher and bedridden for three years until he suddenly decided to become a cultivator…”
“I like him,” Tyler stated as the others silently read.
Brianna shrugged, “At least he isn’t the High Elf. I say go for it.”
“We’ll give him a three month probationary period then,” Dale stated with relief. “We’re finally done. Thank goodness. I’m going to go do other things, no more full meetings for at least a week.” He left the room, searching for his team to prepare them for the upcoming raid on a new dungeon.
Chapter Five
“Where are we? The dungeon has stopped moving forward and is sinking toward the waves. Is it going to drown us?” Hans was lying flat on the ground, looking over the edge of Mountaindale’s cliff at the ocean below and speaking in a conversational tone. “At least that would be a novel experience. It’s been nothing but blue for days. Blue sky, blue water, blue feelings…”
Rose was oiling her beast-sinew bowstring but glanced up when Hans spoke. “We must be above the dungeon that Dale wants us to fight in. Is it so surprising to you that a dungeon in the ocean is surrounded by water, Hans?”
“No, I’m more worried that this place doesn’t exist, and Dale is having a strange fantasy… oh, hey, look! There is a teeny-tiny island down there. Must be the entrance. Neat.” Hans smiled up at the party, trying to dazzle them with a brilliant smile.
“The ‘Dale is crazy’ routine is getting really old.” Dale had his arms crossed and was staring the Assassin down. “We have seen definitive proof that I am not making this stuff up.”
Hans ignored him and looked over the edge once more. “I’d say that we have about ten minutes before we get close enough to survive the fall. Not sure why we are going to jump off the cliff instead of going down the path to the flat area. Sure, we save time, but is it really time that we would rather use this way?”
Dale shrugged and gestured at a raft they were going to be sitting on. “I have a plan; I’ve done something similar to this before.”
“That’s wonderful, but I think I’ll just go ahead and drop under my own power. You know, since I can just float down on the wind. Your suicide raft over there would sure be fun to get on…” Hans started making motions like he was getting to his feet, but extra slowly.
“Dale, what are you doing?” Rose lunged at Dale as she saw him begin to equip a familiar item. “Why in the world would you put on those cursed gauntlets again?”
“No, these are different.” Dale attempted to soothe her. “New and improved version.”
“Not cursed gear? You sure? Those symbols look… pretty similar.” Adam leaned in for a closer inspection, squinting at the intricate runes.
“I see lots of corruption in the Cores, but nothing in the gloves themselves. Might be fine, might be cursed. You should get them looked at,” Hans nonchalantly added, flopping back down to the ground instead of standing as he had planned.
Dale looked at the gauntlets that he was just about to empower. “They better not be cursed.” Sending Essence through the Inscriptions, his heart fell as the gauntlets tightened and latched onto his wrists. “Oh, come on!”
“Really, Dale? Really?” Hans slipped to his feet in a whirl of flesh and loose clothes. “What did I just say?”
Fuming, Dale did as instructed. His knuckles lit up in various colors, and he was hit by a wave of fatigue as a large amount of Essence was drained through him and into his armor. The gauntlets wove themselves into his ‘shirt’, and his shirt wove into his pants, shoes, and balaclava. The previously dull colors of his outfit changed, becoming vibrant and showing various Inscriptions placed throughout the entire material. After a moment, the color in the Runes faded, but the hue of the outfit remained. Dale punched the ground and shouted, “Seriously! This entire set is cursed gear?”
“Cal. What if I need to use the latrine?” Dale growled softly, already getting shifty looks from his team. He didn’t need to be shouting into the air for the dungeon to hear him.
“No.”
“What about if you instruct it?” Dale’s eyes were narrowed so tightly that he m
ay as well have his eyes closed.
“Dale, stop being strange and let’s get going. Nice outfit by the way; bright reds and purples are great for maintaining stealth.” Hans’ eyes were rolling hard. When Dale didn’t budge, just continuing to stand in the same spot mumbling, Hans grabbed him and put him on the raft with the others. “Hope you’re ready!”
Hans shoved the raft off the edge, jumping after them only a moment later. As the wind rushed past him, he chuckled at the screams coming from the lower ranked cultivators. “I’m sure they’ll be fine.”
Dale was forced to snap out of his funk, and he reached into his bag and pulled out a Core. Focusing on sending out tendrils of Essence with air corruption in them, Dale waited for the right moment and shattered the Core in his fist. *Bamph* He directed the explosive influx of Essence into the tendrils he had created, thickening them and doubling their length in an instant. The invisible tendrils caught at the air around them, slowing their fall from ‘deadly’ all the way to ‘uncomfortable’ just before the raft slapped into the water.
The group was drenched as the raft sank a few feet into the water before springing back upward. As the water ran off the now-damaged craft, Hans landed lightly and looked around at the sputtering group. “That looked fun!”
Rose formed her hand into a scoop and splashed water all over the Assassin. Hans looked shocked as she burst into laughter. “It actually was fun, and you deserve to be dunked for not joining us.”