“Joseph, I heard you were this year’s winner of the largest watermelon contest,” Erik said.
“Yes! And the juiciest, by Rugrat’s opinion.” Joseph chuckled. “That redneck was always complaining about never having watermelon. He was like a book on watermelons, knew everything about them. We held the contest last week with just four days to grow them. He about collapsed from a watermelon coma. I didn’t think it was possible!”
They laughed as Amelia got them inside and closed the door behind them.
The Ryan family was spread around the house—some in the kitchen, others playing with kids or preparing the table. Delilah was recruited into the kitchen as her mother organized others and picked up the latest addition to the family, showing her off proudly. Joseph found a bottle he had been holding onto for a special occasion.
They talked about Alva, what they were doing at their own jobs, and the latest gossip from the dungeon. Erik talked to Jamie, Zhiwei, and John about the military. Joanna, the last Ryan in the army, was serving in Vuzgal and wouldn’t get leave for the next two weeks.
“So, there will really be three new units?” Zhiwei said.
“Just two: Alva Army and Alva Air Force. Captain Kanoa’s air force will provide transport in and out of battle and will close support during it. It will be a company-sized force to start.”
“Where are the people going to come from?” Jamie asked.
“Transfers and new trainees. People who have a good record with beasts will have a higher chance of getting the positions. They’ll have to have completed sharpshooter training to be part of the transport crews and all your artillery courses if you want to be fighters and bombers, at a minimum,” Erik said.
“Do you have to do an extra course?”
“Door gunners will be good with the sharpshooter course, now that the course has machine guns covered, though everyone else will need to take flight combat courses that go over tactics, care for the gear, and care for the beast. Anything and everything related to their job. Trust me, it’ll be much easier than the courses back on Earth where you’re working with machines instead of animals.”
Kyle emerged from the kitchen with dishes in each hand. “Hot dishes coming through!”
“All right, everyone to the table!”
“Come on, put it right here. No one needs any, right?” John looked up from where he was sitting with a wide grin.
“I think your daughter will have something to say about that!” Zhiwei passed John their daughter before she sat down.
“You know I couldn’t take food from you, baby. Your momma is making things up!”
Jamie and Rachel helped Kyle put the food out while Delilah poured the wine.
Suzy stared at Erik as if he were the most interesting thing she had ever seen. Erik winked at her, causing her to turn beet red, raising Joseph’s laughter.
“Stop staring at people, Suzy Ryan. It’s rude to stare like that!” Amelia chastised half-heartedly.
“Here, try these potato scallops! Teacher!”
“Do you want some meat?”
“Gravy over here, please!”
“Excuse my reach!”
“You’ve already got three bread buns!”
They distributed food around the table, talking and laughing. Erik passed food, served others, and was served.
Drink flowed, and they enjoyed the food. Erik forgot about his research and his training for the night as he was taken in by the Ryan household, and he felt his heart open.
Rugrat stared at his plans, rubbing his face and yawning.
“You’re still here?” Taran asked from the workshop’s doorway.
“Just making some last-minute changes. I’ll catch up with you later.” Rugrat checked the blueprint, looking for the flaws that were creating issues with his new weapon system.
“All work and no play makes a smith a dull nail.”
“That is a terrible saying.”
Taran grinned. “I didn’t make it up. I’m just using it.”
“I’ve just got some alterations to make.”
“Come on, there are chicken wings to eat and beers to drink.”
Rugrat sighed. “All right, all right. I won’t say just one beer because I have a feeling that will be a lie!”
“Good man!”
They left the workshop and found a nearby tavern. Different shops, restaurants, and pubs appeared in Alva as more people came. Just having one place to eat and devoting the rest of the space to work was sure to make people bored.
Taran talked to the owner and got them a table inside. There was a band playing, but their table wasn’t getting blasted by the music, thankfully.
“Pretty packed in here.” Rugrat looked around.
“Yeah, if you’re single, it’s nice to go out somewhere with people from work or meet up with friends,” Taran said.
“You ever thought about marrying?” Rugrat asked.
“I was once. Had a kiddo too.” Taran pulled his chain out from his shirt, showing a simple, worn gold ring. It was at odds with the works Taran was capable of making.
“I made both of our rings, spent four months of my wages. Worked in the gold with an enhanced iron that shone like silver and looked like a sunset over time,” Taran spoke softly.
The waitress came over and dropped off their drinks.
“What happened?” Rugrat asked as Taran took a big gulp.
He spat and wiped his beard with the back of his arm. “Raiders. Fucking scum.”
Rugrat drank his beer. He could see Taran needed to get it out and off his chest; he waited as Taran pulled himself together.
“I was working for Lord Salyn. We were fixing the hinges, bars, and other metal bits of his city. My wife worked in the fields outside the city. She looked after our little boy as loud noises would wake him up and send him bawling. We were hoping to save enough money so she could stay home and look after the little one while I smithed. She was slower—having the baby, sleeping less.
“She and the other farm hands were bringing in the harvest. They loaded it onto carts and were wheeling it toward the gates. Raiders attacked from the forests. They cut down everyone in their way, captured several carts, and fled.” Taran gritted his teeth, his fist turning white from the pressure.
“There was no need for it. No need to kill those folks. Just take the cart and run. None of them would have fought.” Taran took another drink from his mug. “Killed my boy and my wife. I stopped smithing. I stopped doing anything. When Blaze asked if I would like to help him make a village, it was my last hope. Everything I did was touched by her or my boy. I couldn’t talk to people without thinking of or seeing her.
“With Alva, I was able to work as a smith again. I let my days slide by. When you and Erik arrived, it lit a fire under my ass. I could finally do something to help others. I’ve been able to get over my past, become a teacher, and push into the Expert realm of smithing. Not something I thought possible,” Taran said.
“Takes a lot for you to stand back up again and keep going,” Rugrat said.
“I see that same loss, that same drive in you, Rugrat.”
Taran’s words caught him off-balance.
Rugrat saw those who hadn’t come back from patrol. The moments when he didn’t know it already, but his friends had died. Those moments when he knew they weren’t making it back. The countless hours he had spent thinking of just what their family was going through, the part of him that thought of what might happen if he didn’t make it back. How would it hit his mother?
“We all have our weight to carry.” Rugrat tapped his beer on the table and drank from it deeply.
“The thing is, we can’t shut people out, just focus on the work, on the next thing that needs to be done. If we did that, then are we really alive or just someone imitating being alive?” Taran said.
“I like working on different projects. I get a satisfaction from it.”
“I know, man. I do too. But if you don’t have people to share
that satisfaction with? Is it really worth doing?”
Rugrat frowned before drinking his beer.
Taran patted his shoulder. “When I saw how broken up you were about not making it into Expert, I wanted to do everything I could to help you. Now look at you! You found another path. Remember that you can go around obstacles, not just crash into them again and again. Your head isn’t that hard. It’s pretty hard, but not by that much.”
“Thanks.” Rugrat flipped him the bird.
“So, how about that Racquel girl?” Taran asked as the waitress arrived with their wings, and Rugrat stared daggers into Taran.
“Want anything with that?” she asked.
“I think we should be good. Oh, actually, do you have that ketchup?”
“Yeah, one second!” She disappeared.
“She’s in the higher realms. There ain’t nothing to talk about,” Rugrat said.
“Oh, who knows? There are a few women in your life who might make you feel that way.”
Rugrat rolled his eyes as the waitress returned with Taran’s ketchup.
“All I am saying is that you don’t need to be some weird, celibate, short-short-wearing hobo.”
“Good to know how you feel, Taran.” Rugrat snorted with a smile as he bit into the wings. “Mmm. Damn, I missed you, wings.”
“You don’t seem the hang-around kind of bachelor guy,” Taran said.
“Appearances can be deceiving. I like to flirt with girls, don’t get me wrong, but any more or being in a relationship, that’s a big leap. My momma taught me to treat women with respect. Always make sure that both parties know what the other wants and that they’re okay with it. Communication is key. Just because you’re nervous or anxious is not a good reason to keep something from a person you care for. You should care for them too. People are people; they are no less than or more than you. They shouldn’t be your highest priority or your lowest. You know what I never believed in?”
“What?”
“Two parts of the whole. You are your own whole. Another person is their own whole. There shouldn’t be some weird symbiotic relationship going on. You bring yourself, and they bring themselves. Together, you’re not one plus one but one times one.”
“I understand what you mean. Once you find that one and you devote yourself to them and they devote themselves to you, that is powerful. Damn powerful and hard to replicate,” Taran said. “So, why aren’t you going on dates and seeing more people?”
“I’m tired, and I have too many damn issues right now. I need to work on me, get me sorted out, and then I can look into a relationship. Also, with this dungeon lord/city lord shtick, it’s hard to meet people who aren’t freaked out by your position.”
“I can get that. I’m just saying, don’t shut yourself in. You feel the weight of all this on your shoulders, and it will lead to an early grave if you don’t share it.”
“I share it with Erik.” Rugrat shrugged.
“You two do well to make sure the other is okay. You two are closer than brothers with the same blood in their veins. It is one thing to share it with a brother and another to share it with a lover.”
Rugrat ate his wings, feeling lighter than he had in a while and thinking about possibilities he hadn’t considered before. “You know what, Taran? You might have a point. Though damn if I wouldn’t like to take Racquel out on a real date.” Rugrat chuckled.
Taran laughed. “Well, what was she like?”
“A redneck dream. She could destroy beers as if they were nothing but pop. And that body—damn! Her mind was fierce, too! One-liners here and there—I was under fire, man! She could string together a series of jabs so well I was honored to receive them!”
Erik walked through the streets of Alva. Night had arrived inside the dungeon. People were headed home or out to some event with friends and family.
With his Stamina so high, he wouldn’t need to sleep for a few days. He kind of missed sleep, but he would hardly have the time for it anyway.
It didn’t take him long to reach the teleportation array.
Gilly, where you at, girl?
He felt a response to his link with Gilly. Smiling, Erik pulled out a fresh slab of meat. He threw it casually into the sky. It reached fifty meters high and started to descend. It had just about reached Erik again when a brown-and-blue streak appeared, snapping it from the air.
Erik’s smile widened as Gilly chewed on the meat and threw it back before she rubbed her head on her master’s shoulder.
“You are getting big from all of the beast meat and monster cores.” Erik scratched her head as she stayed there, happy for the attention.
He spent a few minutes giving her scratches before he patted her side. “Come on now. Down to the Earth floor.” He walked forward to the teleportation array. Gilly followed him as Erik nodded to the guard.
Light enveloped them. The smell of freshly churned earth reached his nose as the light dissipated.
“Welcome to the Earth floor,” the guard on duty said.
“Thank you.”
It looked a lot better than the last time he’d seen it—not so much of an apocalyptic-looking wasteland anymore. Fields had grown in, there was a small settlement, and they were raising beasts.
Erik exited the teleportation array and the small-walled settlement outside it; some people were living on the Earth floor. Most of the buildings were related to growing crops and raising assorted plants or nursing beasts with an Earth Affinity. There was one building that focused on Body Cultivation.
Erik jumped up onto Gilly’s back. “Let’s head to the center.”
Gilly quickly took him out of the settlement and toward the true Earth Body Cultivation facility. She picked up speed, following the road through the Earth floor. On either side, orchards and fields spanned for kilometers in each direction. Buildings lay here and there, places for the farmers to rest and work on developing their crops.
Erik gripped hold of his saddle as she quickly surpassed the speed of a sports car back on Earth.
“Woohoo!” Erik yelled, feeling the rush of air as Gilly pushed harder, increasing her speed once again.
Erik saw a few of the Gnome Automatons-nicknamed Crawlers. The old gnomes’ assistants were few in number With old versions on the different floors the blueprint office had been able to replicate their plans.
They worked through the night to turn the dirt path into a road to the center of the Earth floor.
The modified crawlers for the artillery units were as scary as hell. They’d doubled in size adding mounted heavy mortar tubes. A crew of four could manage six mortar tubes at the same time. Giving them a serious firepower increase.
Gilly jumped over the mortar crawlers and rushed down the unfinished dirt road, leaving a trail of dirt behind. Gilly showed off all her speed, excited by the open space.
It still took a few minutes to reach the center of the Earth floor. Gilly dug her talons in and raced up the hill. A pillar of light shot out from the hill and into the roof above. Runes could be faintly seen around where the pillar of light reached. There were more runes across the hill.
As Erik and Gilly climbed higher, reaching a flat plateau that broke the hill in two, Erik looked out, seeing vast areas of the floor that were unused.
“Egbert, have you been increasing the size of the floor?” Erik asked.
“Yes. With the dungeon cores, it is much easier to do so. The living floor is slowly increasing at a rate of one meter deeper a week and ten meters wider each day. The floors that are not so populated and have complicated infrastructure are increasing to eighty percent of their limits as fast as possible.”
“So, it is going to be massive,” Erik said.
“Yes. The individual dungeon cores greatly aid the expansion of each floor, so I don’t need to keep moving other dungeon cores around.”
“How are things on the Water floor going?”
“Slowly, but it is a massive floor, and there is a lot to be done. I hope it will
be complete a month or so after the Second Annual Fighter’s Competition at Vuzgal. Though my motivation is somewhat lacking.”
“I’ll get you some more romance books to read. You’re just sitting down there in the freezing cold, reading books, aren’t you?”
“I move every so often.”
“Flipping the page and opening the menus don’t really count as moving.”
“What do I need to move for? Not like I’m going to get back spasms or lose my figure. I’m about as slim as one can get!”
“Talk to you later, Egbert. Have fun reading.”
“Thank you!” A noise filled the air, and Egbert disappeared.
The plateau cut into the hill.
Erik reached a building that had been built into the side of the hill.
“Sir!” The guards snapped to attention at the doorway.
“At ease.” Erik dismounted from Gilly. “You want to come in, or do you want to go off and play?”
Gilly glanced over to the fields and orchards that looked like forests.
“I’ll let you know when I’m done.” Erik patted her side.
She nudged him with her snout and ran off to stretch her legs and terrify the local residents.
Erik turned to the building and guards. “When I was here last, this was just a cave. Is the new Body Cultivation area set up?”
“Body Cultivation training areas were set up on each floor with the help of construction crews, people from the blueprint department, and formation masters. The most powerful and pure Affinity energies are contained within each training facility. They just finished putting in the new testing and training equipment earlier today,” one of the guards said.
“That came together quickly. Construction in Alva was always fast as hell!”
“Now it’s spread to Vuzgal as well. That place has more buildings every time I see it.” The other guard fell quiet, nervous by his outburst.
“Yeah, it’s growing at an alarming rate. I heard we will reach the old borders of the city in just a year and a half.” Erik shook his head. “Keep up the good work.”
Sixth Realm Part 2: A litRPG Fantasy series (The Ten Realms Book 7) Page 25