The Land: Swarm: A LitRPG Saga (Chaos Seeds Book 5)

by Aleron Kong

  The last thing he did was to stop by the area where the quarried stone was brought for the builders to use. He scavenged around and found dozens of small bits of marbled quartz. Each was turned into an amber soul stone of basic level and went into his bag. Then, moving like a wraith in the night, he made his way to the village gate, crossed out of his village and went hunting.

  CHAPTER 14 -- Day 112 -- Kuborn 2, 15368 EBG

  The first ruin he was going to check was about six miles to the south. He drank a Potion of Clarity and gave one to Alma as well. He considered trying to force feed one to the adder, but seeing as how that would involve him either putting his hand near the mouth of a twenty-foot snake or pouring the solution on the ground in the hopes that the monster would lap it up, he decided, meh, maybe not so much. If he wanted to tame it permanently, it would also happen faster if its level stayed where it was.

  With that done, he considered his options. Out alone in the darkened forest, he decided to opt for stealth over speed. Richter pulled the hood of his Cloak of Concealment up and melded into the forest around him. His Stealth skill was only up to initiate rank and moving too quickly would make him visible, so he had to take his time. Luckily that afforded other opportunities.

  Like learning the level one spell that Beyan had given him, for instance. He started reading, and the pages turned faster and faster until it slammed shut and fell to dust. As had happened with every other book of magic he had consumed, suddenly, he knew!

  Congratulations! You have learned the skill: Death Magic. Increasing your skill will allow you to cast more advanced spells.

  Congratulations! You have learned the spell: Summon Weak Bile Rats! Summons a small nest of bile rats. The bites of these creatures can cause nausea. This is a spell of Death, level 1. Cost: 27 mana. Duration: 6 minutes. Range: 3 feet. Cast Time: 2 seconds. Cooldown: 14 minutes.

  Once he had learned the spell, he moved out. Richter cast Nightvision, and his vision shifted to a spectrum of green and black. With the moonlight of three moons filtering down, he could see as easily as if it was noon. When he was a short distance from the village, he tested his new Death spell. He removed his new Summoner’s Ring and cast the spell one-handed. A disc of purple-black energy appeared on the ground, two feet across. Five rats, each a foot long, rose out of the disc. When they were fully formed, the circle disappeared. The rats were a sickly brown-yellow in color, and they had beady black eyes. The wretched things squeaked and crawled over each other while looking up at him. Analyze showed that each was either level one or two.

  “Run that way,” he commanded. All five rats took off. Richter nodded to himself. At least he knew that the creatures would follow his directions. He started moving forward. After the cool down period had expired, he cast the spell again, this time with his Summoner’s Ring on. The disc appeared again, and five rats appeared, but this time they were larger. Each of the rats were now level six or seven. Again he sent them off. Fifteen minutes later, he dual cast the spell. The purple-black disc was larger than before, and this time, thirteen rats stood awaiting his orders, each level six or seven. Richter smiled; his new ring was a massive win. He sent the rats off and kept moving. While the spell wouldn’t conquer powerful foes, it felt good to finally be able to cast a spell in each of the eight Basic Elements.

  In the dark, his Herb Lore and Tracking skills still filled his world with light. The faint glow from significant plants and the tracks of animals and monsters blazed in his vision. By the time Richter had made his way two miles from the village walls, he had collected more than a dozen herbs. He had also found it was easier to move through the thick sections of the forest than it should have been. Thorns barely pulled at him, and his footing seemed sure somehow. Looking at his new Bracelet of Smooth Movement, he silently thanked whatever poor bastard had left it behind in the cave of the dark aberration.

  More important than anything else, though, Alma solo-killed several monsters.

  You have been awarded 2,156 (base 57,476 x 0.06 x 1.25 x 0.5) experience from Brain Drain against Level 11 Tree Wyrm.

  You have been awarded 990 (base 26,395 x 0.06 x 1.25 x 0.5) experience from Brain Drain against Level 7 Screechling.

  You have been awarded 1,312 (base 34,981 x 0.06 x 1.25 x 0.5) experience from Brain Drain against Level 8 Wolf.

  Richter was surprised when he got the first prompt. He was even more surprised because right before he saw the prompt, there was a swirl of rainbow light that snaked out of the forest and into his bag! The light blinded his night vision-enhanced eyes for a second before he shut them tight. Prior to the soul being captured, he had been moving slowly through the forest with Alma ranging ahead. Richter immediately sent out a mental call to make sure she was okay. In response, he just received a satisfied feeling reminiscent of someone enjoying a great meal. Then she had sent him the image of a three-foot long creature with a mouth like a lamprey. It lay dead on the ground. Richter started to make his way towards her, telling her that he was going to summon a mist worker when he received a massive shock. Mist started coalescing around her, and soon a grey, humanoid figure stood in front of her. It picked up the body of the tree wyrm and started running back towards the village.

  *What did you do?* he asked her.

  *I summoned a worker and told it to take the wyrm to the hunters. Is that not what you wanted, master?* she asked back.

  *It is,* he assured her. *I meant how long have you been able to summon mist workers?*

  She flew towards him and landed on his shoulder. A bit of green ichor dripped off of her claws. *What I can do comes from you, master. I think that I may always have been able to do this, but it is only since our bond has increased that new thoughts have been occurring to me. I have always hunted, but this is the first time that I have used Brain Drain on my own or thought to capture souls for you. Now that I have, though, I cannot understand why it did not occur to me before.*

  Richter smiled and thought, my little girl is all growns up! He had mostly been increasing Psi Bond to improve her self-awareness, but her new initiative was a wonderful and unexpected benefit. The other kills brought him souls as well, giving him two more basic souls and one weak. He was somewhat concerned about the rainbow swirls giving away his position, but the light moved faster than any predator could follow. He also didn’t want to inhibit his familiar’s new industriousness.

  Thinking about the increased bond he had with her, Richter checked her status page and saw that she had almost leveled. More than that, he realized that he hadn’t checked her stats since she had killed the assengai queen. There were points to distribute!

  Name: Alma

  Level: 27, 83%

  Health: 370 Mana: 592 Stamina: 370

  (Unused level points: 7)

  Abilities:

  Psi Bond – Lvl 5, points to next level: 4

  Psi Blast – Lvl 2, points to next level: 2

  Brain Drain – Lvl 6, points to next level: 6

  Psi Channeling – Lvl 1, points to next level: 1

  Can use:

  Air Magic

  Life Magic

  Resistances:

  Mental: 100%

  Air: 50%

  Life: 50%

  Race: Psi Dragonling

  Richter was so excited by his discovery that he almost dropped Stealth. He caught himself in time, though. He devoted the minimal amount of attention to keep going and devoted the rest to Alma’s development. He sent the adder to scout ahead and asked Alma to keep watch overhead.

  With seven points to spend, he could invest in any one of her abilities. The obvious question was which one. Psi Bond had continually shown itself to be a clutch ability, as shown by her new initiative. Psi Blast was a wonderful offensive ability, and it seemed to gain properties as it advanced. Brain Drain had been the secret to his fast increase in level. It didn’t have any extra properties, but it was also the easiest way to increase Alma’s level. Richter’s eyes fell onto her last ability.

  Psi C
hanneling was the newest addition to her abilities and offered extremely interesting possibilities. One of the biggest problems with his spells was that he had to be almost within striking distance to use them. When Alma could swoop past an opponent while unleashing a spell, though, it drastically increased his range. The greatly increased mana cost made the skill prohibitive, though. Richter asked Alma if she had an opinion about it, but she just responded that she trusted her master. He decided to invest a point and see what happened.

  You have chosen to increase your familiar’s ability: Psi Channeling to level 2. At level 2, the range of Psi Channeling has increased from one hundred to two hundred yards. Using the ability now requires 250% greater mana usage rather than 300%. Any other spell requirements will remain unchanged. You and your familiar may now also share mana at a loss of 3:1.

  The increase in distance and decrease in mana usage was pretty much what he expected. The ability to share mana was a welcome bonus, though. Of course, what he really needed to know was how quickly her mana regenerated. Her status page didn’t show her individual stats like his did. Reviewing his Life and Air spells, he decided the easiest one to test her regen rate would be…

  *Alma, my love. Come here.*

  The dragonling swooped down and landed on his shoulder again. Richter told her to cast Summon Weak Life Wisp, but he waited until just before the turn of the minute. The sixty point mana cost would make the math easy. She cast the spell, and Richter watched her regen closely. It took one hundred and one seconds for it to refill. He stopped a moment to do a quick calculation and figured out that her mana was refilling at a rate of around six points every ten seconds. That was faster than his own regen rate!

  He turned his head to look at Alma who promptly licked his face and then jumped into the air mentally laughing. Richter shook his head. The dragonling was still the size of a cat, albeit a large cat now and not a small one like when he had first summoned her. Despite her small size, though, the level twenty-seven creature was a force to be reckoned with.

  That still left the question of what to do with her remaining six ability points. The light coming off of the light wisp was interfering with his Stealth, so he had Alma dismiss the spell. Once he was again cloaked in darkness, he examined the bonuses of each area to invest in, but in the back of his mind, he knew that he already had his answer. Even though Brain Drain didn’t come with a lot of sexy bells and whistles like the other abilities, each new level potentially brought a lot of experience with it. If Alma were able to kill a level fourteen monster, for instance, the upgrade would bring at least another thousand XP. He invested the six points and upgraded her skill. Alma gave a trill as she swooped through the air.

  *I am going to hunt, master,* she thought to Richter happily. *I will stay nearby.*

  Richter sent her thoughts of love and encouragement. He began a cursory read of the prompt that had appeared, and his mouth dropped open in shock.

  You have chosen to increase your familiar’s ability: Brain Drain to level 7. Successful kills will now give 7% of total experience to both you and your familiar. Drain occurs faster. Stun can occur on enemies level 31 and below. Drain now gives you a greater understanding of Alma’s victims. There is a chance to relive the most poignant memory of the target’s life.

  He had never thought Brain Drain would ever be more than an expedient way to gain XP. More than anything else he needed the experience to buy talent points. Now the ability had become potentially so much more. What memory could he have received from Sonirae or the assengai queen? What insights could he gain if Alma were to drain a bugbear captain? For a moment he considered the possible danger of reliving someone else’s memories, but he decided the benefits were worth the potential risk. Richter sent another message to Alma telling her happy hunting. He was eager to see if she could trigger the new facet of her ability.

  Nothing else of serious note happened for the next few miles. Alma drained several more creatures and then summoned mist workers to carry the remains back to the village. With her high mana regeneration rate, she always had more than enough magic for the summonings. Each kill earned Richter another swirl of rainbow light and several hundred experience. He was especially delighted when she killed a level sixteen carnasid. He had no idea what a carnasid was, but since it gave him almost eight thousand experience, he didn’t especially care! Alma told him there was something for him to see though, so she led him back towards the beast.

  Alma quickly brought him back to the carcass. He continued to tell Futen to scout around him while remaining invisible. The last thing Richter wanted was a monster up his ass while he was looking at Alma’s latest kill. The animal--or monster, Richter thought, realizing he didn’t really know how to distinguish between the two if there even was an appreciable difference--was about the size of a large boar. It had spots like a leopard, orange skin and was powerfully muscled. The large fangs in its mouth and its hooked claws left no doubt that it was a hunter. A small black scorch mark marred one side of it and, upon checking, Richter found another, smaller scorch mark on the bottom of one foot where the lightning had exited the body.

  *I did not think you would need to shock it first, my love,* Richter thought to his familiar curiously.

  *It was with a larger pack, master. Stunning it first also allows me to cast Soul Trap before draining it,* she answered.

  *A larger pack? How large? Which way did they go?* His questions came fast, one after the other. Richter suddenly had a vision of being overwhelmed by twenty of these creatures. One of his hands was already on the hilt of his new short sword as he looked around.

  Alma sent him a memory of a group of carnasids, seven strong rushing off into the woods. Overlaying the information with what he was seeing, he figured out that the pack had run off more or less to the south. Even more interesting to him was the fact that there were three small carnasids running with the adults. A slow smile grew on his face. If those oversexed twins could train skaths, why not angry little piggies? Besides, the pack was roughly going in the same direction as the ruins he was heading towards.

  He sent Alma ahead to find the pack and summoned a mist worker to take the carnasid’s body back to the village. His people would be eating good today! Then his mind started flirting with the idea of how to invent barbeque sauce, or at the very least figure out a local equivalent of KFC’s seven secret spices. A dry sliding noise brought him back to the present moment, the shale adder slithering through the grass near him. Richter sent it a mental message to follow him, and he moved south as quickly as he could.

  Richter checked his clock and saw that he still had at least an hour before dawn. He wouldn’t have time to scout other ruins before dawn, but if everything went well, he would be able to be home not long after daybreak. Before too long, Alma sent him a mental picture of the carnasids resting together in a pack. She had flown above the pack unseen and was now perched in a tree looking down at them. The animals were sheltering together for warmth and security, but it just made them easy pickings for the chaos seed and his reptile band.

  Richter sent the adder forward--towards the pack--and he followed, stealthed, making sure that both of them stayed downwind. When he was only twenty feet from the slumbering creatures, he stopped behind a tree and quietly summoned two mist workers. Then he ordered Alma to Psi Blast the entire group, holding his freeze short sword at the ready.

  Alma sent back a happy assent and launched silently into the air. She flew off a few yards and then tipped into a steep dive. Timing it perfectly, she fired the narrowed beam of her psychic attack, catching all members of the pack at once. The animals fell to the ground en masse, only a twitching leg here and there showing that they weren’t dead.

  Richter and the adder rushed forward while Alma immediately latched onto the head of the largest carnasid and began draining it. Richter ordered the two mist workers forward to grab the young and then started culling the herd. He cast Soul Trap on the animal that Alma was attacking and plunged h
is blade into its breast. Frost-rimmed the edges of the wound as it slid inside, causing massive internal damage. The animal died almost instantly, and a ribbon of light swirled around the chaos seed before disappearing into his bag.

  The adder had wrapped its length around one of the carnasids and had latched its fangs into the neck of another. Blood flowed freely from the puncture wounds. The mist workers grabbed the three carnasid piglets and were holding their limp bodies aloft. Richter made a quick assessment and knew that he didn’t have time to kill the monsters one at a time. He also didn’t want to waste the experience, though. His lips tightened against what he was about to do, but he didn’t hesitate to draw his second blade and then lay into the still forms of the pack. At most, he had another three to four seconds before the animals roused. Then they would either attack together or scatter to the wind. Neither option worked for him, so he systematically cut their hamstrings.

  One blade stabbed down and then another. Richter repeated the process with the remaining two. He had just finished when the animals came out of their psychic shock and started braying in pain and anger. They all tried to get to their feet, but each and every one fell back down as they found one of their legs did not work. Richter carefully approached each again and stabbed them in another leg to ensure they couldn’t escape.

  Though they were just animals, hearing their cries of pain pulled on his heart. He had no love of needless suffering, but he also wasn’t willing to waste the experience they could give him and Alma. He had done something very similar when he had first encountered the eaters, removing their legs and letting Alma feed on them one by one. He hadn’t had a moment’s hesitation. Alma finished with the animal she was draining and hopped into the air towards one of the injured ones. The hapless predator snapped at her, but she easily maneuvered over the bite and then clamped onto its body at the base of the neck. The carnasid’s body began to spasm. Richter cast Soul Trap and quickly ended its life. As Alma moved onto the next, he repeated the pattern, reminding himself that the ends justified the means.