Beyond All Expectations (Emerilia Book 8)
Page 29
With new energy, he once again pressured another reever. With two or more of the orcs and gnomes pressuring a reever, their ability to resist fell even faster. How could they, just one creature, hope to fight against two other minds, one of which had already brought one of its brothers or sisters under their will?
Contracts were thrown into the air as lights descended over the soul-bound beast and the soul binding master.
As more were free from their own soul binding, they turned to help others. Contracts were created faster and faster.
Ursk watched with growing hope as less than a fifth of the blood reevers were left trying to resist. Every couple of seconds, another contract would be formed and a reever would leave the magical circle around the spawn point.
Still, even seeing this sight, he once more focused on helping out the others who were still trying to form their soul binding contracts. Slowly and completely, the blood reevers were brought under the control of Ursk and his people.
Only when the last blood reever had submitted did Ursk let out a ragged laugh. His body was covered in sweat as he collapsed to the ground, his whole body shaking from muscle spasms.
“These fights of Willpower are much harder than fights of sword and shield,” Ursk’s brother said from beside Ursk, also on his hands and knees.
The two brothers laughed together. They had fought a battle harder than anything they had faced in the past and they had come out the victors.
The fight for control over the blood reevers had gone on for three days. Time held no bearing on those who were focused on soul binding the blood reevers.
Ursk looked behind him, where a large blood reever lay down. It looked at Ursk lazily with one eye. Seeing that Ursk was looking at it, it snorted and laid its head down to sleep.
Ursk felt a smile grow across his face as he looked at his blood reever. They had come back to kill and destroy, growing in strength and power, ravaging the swamplands. Instead, Ursk and his tribe had turned them into their soul-bound beasts.
Together they would defend the homes of their tribe.
He looked to the various mages, summoners, and beast tamers who were walking around. In his heart, Ursk knew that the debt he had with the Terra Alliance was great.
These blood reevers did not only mean that they would not be attacked today. It had made them stronger. The blood reevers could mate and create litters of more blood reevers for later generations.
Ursk had always dreamed of riding on something more than the great blue snakes of the swampland. Beasts were power and a symbol of strength; now he would face the world with a companion beside him at all times.
Maybe it’s time to leave the swamplands, to move to the plains where we can ride, to learn how to fight with our blood reevers? Maybe we could unite the swamplands and the plains of the orc and gnome lands? This thought formed within Ursk’s mind. A smile appeared on his face. He had once again faced a great challenge and now he thought of a greater one to aim toward.
“First I will pay my debt with the Terra Alliance and keep my word,” Ursk vowed. He shakily got to his feet.
Quing, who was moving toward him, pulled out a potion and passed it to Ursk.
He took it, drinking it without a thought. Strength came back to his body as he smiled to Quing.
“It seems that the reevers were only a small obstacle to your tribe,” Quing said.
Ursk heard the smile in her voice. “As you have helped my people, I will in turn honor my side of the agreement.”
“Rest and recover first. The ono that is nearby will be placed in your village. With access to Terra, your people will grow stronger and you can be assured that your people will be safe as we fight for all of Emerilia.” Quing sounded tense.
Although Ursk couldn’t see her face, he had worked with Quing closely for a number of days and could easily read her emotions from her words or her eyes. “Something bothering you?”
“This is but the beginning of the event but no one has been able to find out where the next spawn point is, or what is coming,” Quing explained.
Ursk nodded. “I feel that we will find out what is to come soon enough.”
BAE Chapter 21: Machinations
Dave opened up his interface to check out the notifications he’d ignored when he’d been fighting.
Quest: Weapons Master Level 3
One handed and shield 1000/1000
Two handed 218/1000
Dual wielding 61/1000
Archery 681/1000
Rewards: Unlock Level 4 Quest
Increase to stats
Passive skills from other weapons increase from 25% to 50% when designated weapon is not equipped. (Example: While using Dual wield blades, one is able to gain 50% of the archery skill’s abilities.)
“Not bad. It’s getting hard to fight people with the close-range melee weapons now.” Dave sighed and moved to the next notification.
Level 240
You have reached Level 240; you have 10 stat points to use.
Dave grinned as he looked at the stat points at his disposal. He opened up his character sheet.
Character Sheet
Name:
David Grahslagg
Gender:
Male
Level:
238
Class:
Dwarven Master Smith, Friend of the Grey God, Bleeder, Librarian, Aleph Engineer, Weapons Master, Champion Slayer, Skill Creator, Mine Manager, Master of Space and Time, Master of Gravitational Anomalies
Race:
Human/Dwarf
Alignment:
Chaotic Neutral
Unspent points: 10
Health:
48,100
Regen:
24.02 /s
Mana:
15,780
Regen:
57.95 /s
Stamina:
5,320
Regen:
50.15 /s
Vitality:
481
Endurance:
1,201
Intelligence:
1,578
Willpower:
1,159
Strength:
532
Agility:
1,003
“I could put more into Vitality. Hell, I was damn close to losing all my hit points. I’ve gone all Mana- and barrier-based defenses. If those are gone, then I’m screwed. I’ve already dedicated myself to a max/min mage pretty much—I should keep that up. Either I kill the people before they get me, or they get me. If I start going back on what I have right now, then I’m just going to completely mess up the build that I’ve already got.” Dave put in his new stat points and confirmed them.
Character Sheet
Name:
David Grahslagg
Gender:
Male
Level:
240
Class:
Dwarven Master Smith, Friend of the Grey God, Bleeder, Librarian, Aleph Engineer, Weapons Master, Champion Slayer, Skill Creator, Mine Manager, Master of Space and Time, Master of Gravitational Anomalies
Race:
Human/Dwarf
Alignment:
Chaotic Neutral
Unspent points: 0
Health:
48,100
Regen:
24.02 /s
Mana:
15,830
Regen:
57.95 /s
Stamina:
5,320
Regen:
50.40 /s
Vitality:
481
Endurance:
1,201
Intelligence:
1,583
Willpower:
1,159
Strength:
532
Agility:
1,008
“Still squishy and badass as hell,” Dave mocked. Just having ten stat points to use felt underwhelming as he put five into Intelligence and Agility.
“Are you insane yet?” Steve’s
voice carried through Pandora’s box. Steve was in his room while Dave was out in the open laboratory.
“No?” Dave said.
“You’re talking to yourself and I saw your plans for those citadels!” Steve retorted.
“Just because they’re a bit ambitious doesn’t make me insane!”
“Using five of our Mana wells for each citadel does!” Steve rolled out of his office on a chair.
“I wondered where that went,” Dave muttered to himself.
“What? It was just laying around one day!” Steve defended, rubbing the armrest of the chair affectionately.
“It wasn’t just laying around! I was working on shipyard one for five minutes and you took it and hid it in your workshop that you banned everyone from entering!” Dave yelled back.
“Ehh, semantics. So about that citadel. You’re crazy.”
“Changing the subject?” Dave accused Steve, who simply raised his hands and shrugged.
Dave rubbed his face. There was no winning with Steve and he had already made a replacement chair long ago. “So, what do you have a problem with?” Dave flopped into his own rolling spinny chair.
“I never said that I had a problem with it. I just said that it was bat shit crazy. Also, why is bat shit crazy?”
“I have no idea why bat shit is crazy.” Dave looked to the ceiling as if asking some power in the universe to allow him to give him patience or strike him down.
As usual, nothing happened and Steve continued to open his mouth.
“It’s indeed a rather complex question,” Steve said seriously.
When he wants to know why bat shit is crazy, he’s serious; when we’re talking about a massive project that could help defend Emerilia, he has the attention of a five-year-old in a toy store.
“Back to the citadels. So you want to take these castles, slap a whole bunch of Mana wells to them as well as really complex soul gem constructs that will allow the castles to float. Taking the idea of the Per’Ush islands then applying it to the castles, filling them up with all the baddest and best weapons that we’ve thought up and fly them around Emerilia like they’re bumper cars. It’s brilliant, crazy as hell, but awesome!” Steve said with a smile that made Dave actually question his own sanity.
After all, if Steve’s agreeing with it, I’ve probably taken a left turn into the land of crazy.
“The power consumption is going to be a pain in the ass. We damaged a few areas and then consumed the conquest points to repair them. The soul gem constructs in the walls and the magical formations we added were fixed as well. Using points, we can repair walls and the castle when in battle. They’ll be the perfect launch platforms to deal with any large threats that we have to deal with. We simply move them across Emerilia, put them down where we want to defend or want to stage ourselves. Then we can use the onos to move people and resources around, giving us a base of operations with a ready fighting force anywhere in Emerilia,” Dave said.
“Have you heard of his plans for the planet Nal yet?” Malsour entered Pandora’s box.
“How did the trip go?” Dave looked to Malsour in his human form.
“It looks like they were really telling the truth. When they visited Densaou Ring of Fire, the two generals broke down. We are traveling to Nal in just an hour. I thought that you two would be interested in coming?” Malsour asked.
Dave and Steve jumped out of their chairs, sending them backward as they moved to Malsour.
“After you!” Steve pushed them both through the secret door that exited into the power station that kept Terra running.
They walked quickly through the power station.
“I heard that we’re connecting up the first and second section of Terra soon,” Malsour said.
“The runners are being inspected. We should start spinning the second section within a day or two. Once it’s matched up in speed, we’ll fuse the two sections together. In just a week, we’ll double the size of Terra,” Dave said with some pride.
“What about Nal?” Steve asked, interested now that Malsour had talked about it.
“Well, Nal right now is going through an ice age. It is also a planet that the Jukal Empire watches but they don’t really care about. The Nalheim occupy the surface of the planet and they’re dying off. The Jukal Empire are using the slow death of the Nalheim to create a bidding war between the races. None of them want to deal with an aggressive species on the planet. However, once they’re all dead, it wouldn’t be hard to change the planet’s ecosystem to suit most of the sentient races.
“Right now, the only things that the Jukal Empire have watching over Nalheim are a few satellites used to check the weather of the planet, scan for resources and materials as well as record the number of Nalheim on the planet.
“These same satellites would have been used to record and send out imagery of the battles on the ground, as well as transmit the data from our interfaces back to the empire for their viewing pleasure. However, these satellites are spotty and there’s not many of them. Compared to the measures that were taken here in Emerilia, it’s not even worth commenting on their observation methods,” Dave said.
“Okay, so the Jukal aren’t watching as closely. So what?” Steve asked.
“There are seven planets in the system and thirteen moons. Many are resource rich. While the Jukal are watching the planet, they’re not watching the rest of the system,” Dave said. “We have a planet which is about to be devoid of life and a star system that has no one watching it. While we move the Nalheim out from Nal, we’re going to dig deep into Nal. We’re going to bury a portal in there and create a base under the planet’s surface. From there, we can make a base for the star system. We can move in more portals, link to the different planets that have a bunch of resources; we funnel those resources into our projects. Already we’ve eaten through our resources that Bob had. We’re also burning through the mining manager stuff at a massive rate with this event. We can’t take out more resources from our stocks. The Jukal are going to start asking where the resources are coming from. The moonbase is pretty awesome but the fact is that there are nearly no resources there. Everything that we mine out for shipyard one, two, and the moonbase, all has to be covered by stealth runes to make sure that we’re not discovered. With Nal, we get a step up.” Dave’s eyes shone. The faster their various projects could be completed, the faster that they could look to possibly getting out from under the Jukal.
They stepped through the power station’s ono and stepped into Terra. The city was filled with people moving back and forth. The atmosphere was weird as the event had now descended. POEs were worried of what was to come while the players were excited for what was to come.
“You don’t like to think small.” Steve laughed.
Malsour smiled as well, looking to Dave.
“Got to get outside of the box once in a while,” Dave said.
From Terra, they took a teleport pad connected to an ono, stepping out in Goblin Mountain where the Nalheim had first emerged and cleared the mountain of the original goblin inhabitants.
Now the Nalheim were wearing the clothes that usually rested under their armor. Malsour moved from the ono with confidence. The generals riding the gryphons inclined their heads slightly to Malsour. Only if someone was looking for it would they notice it.
Waiting was the rest of Party Zero, as well as an elite warclan of five thousand dwarves.
Ahead of them lay a portal.
Dave slowly stopped walking and looked at this portal.
For most of his adult life, he had built rockets to mine Sol, or at least what he thought of as Sol. He had wanted to build a spacefaring empire that would reach outward to touch other star systems. He had never dreamed that he would ever go to a system beyond Sol. He might reach Mars and he’d be happy with that.
Now, he stood on a planet that was thousands of light-years away from where Sol had been. A prison meant to entertain an alien empire and destroy the aggressive species that they ran into.
He faced a portal that would allow him to cross over the vastness of space, to reach another planet in another star system. A planet that few humans had ever stepped on—if any.
It felt as if his soul made him stop to take this moment in.
“Ready?” Steve asked, his voice gentle as he sensed Dave’s mood.
“Yeah.” Dave nodded, looking from the portal to Steve and the rest of Party Zero behind him. He smiled to them all and moved to meet with Party Zero.
The group moved forward. The Nalheim generals, now indentured servants, passed through the portal first.
The dwarves marched forward, their shields up and ready as they moved through the portal.
Overseers as well as the Stone Raiders’ leadership followed behind.
Party Zero followed afterward.
The portal showed a cold landscape. On the other side was a desolate plain with winds that cut at those who had stepped through the portal and at the ground. The wind and the temperature had scoured the ground free of any vegetation long ago.
Dave took a deep breath. Deia’s fingers found his, holding his hand. He looked to her and the smile on her face. His heart was at ease as he smiled at her.
“Seems that I owe you a date.” Dave stepped through the portal and pulled her with him. “How about another planet?”
Deia laughed at his antics before the wind cut through.
“Shit, that’s cold!” Dave said.
“This is why your fiancée is a Fire mage.” Deia created an area of warmth around the party.
“She’s also one hot momma.” Dave winked and squeezed her hand.
The others of Party Zero chuckled as Deia sighed. “You’re going to pay for that one,” she muttered.
Dave didn’t say anything, smiling as they continued through the cold wasteland that was Nal.