Sixth Realm

by Michael Chatfield

  “The Beast Mountain Trial?”

  “It is complete, it will start in two months, people will no longer face the beasts from within Alva’s dungeon, I am using the same testing areas from before, so people will need to fight in different environments. Then there are different tests to see one’s character. Illusion spells to be used on them to bring out their inner demons and reveal who they truly are.”

  “Where are these all positioned?” Rugrat asked.

  “Well, Alva’s current area of control has greatly expanded, using the teleportation array these dungeons are actually seeded throughout the Beast Mountain Range. All of them are deep so that no one will find them unless they dig for months and there are formations to sense around the dungeons, it has effectively increased how much we can see in the Beast Mountain Range at any given time,” Egbert said.

  “Good work, have Elan meet us in the dungeon headquarters,” Erik said.

  “Can do!” Egbert freed himself and turned into a flying streak again.

  “You know you can go to the barracks, relax a bit?” Erik said to Storbon and his Special team without moving.

  “The job isn’t done until someone else is here to make sure you two don’t get into trouble,” Storbon said.

  “I thought we were respected Dungeon Lords or City Lords?” Rugrat complained.

  The members of Special team one kept scanning the area.

  “Headquarters?” Storbon asked.

  “Lead the way, I know you won’t let me,” Erik said.

  “I wonder if this is how people felt when we were protecting them,” Rugrat asked.

  “Probably, though we also know how freaking annoying the package could be if they started to get their own plans and do their own thing,” Erik said.

  “Yeah, nice and slow, take your time, better to get there than end up dead,” Rugrat agreed.

  “You’re always the happiest little rays of sunshine, aren’t you?” Yuli asked.

  “I think if they were laughing and joking all the time then someone is seriously screwed,” Yao Meng chipped in.

  “Maybe their just sadists?” Tian Cui asked.

  “Hey!” Rugrat finally got out.

  “Sadists where did that come from?” Erik asked as they left the totem and its defenses and headed towards the center of the floor.

  “Well, you were the two to train us and I’ve seen how you train,” Tain Cui said.

  “Masochist is what you’re thinking about when they’re training themselves. Thrive off of pain,” Storbon said.

  “Tough crowd,” Rugrat muttered. “Erik is the one that likes breaking his bones and that mess, I just take the pills!”

  “And you burst your mana channels when training and now you train harder than before. You reached what, the Mist Core stage and you’re waiting for the impetus to form your liquid core?” Lucinda said.

  “She knows too much!” Rugrat said in a hurried whisper as the others all started to laugh, the tension from the last half-year starting to drain away.

  They had become closer in that time. They had gone out as polished blades and come back like they were blood-covered blades hidden in a sheath They hid their killing intent and their power incredibly well. All of their fighting techniques had been modified and altered to increase their lethality.

  They reached the dungeon headquarters, the guards saluted them as they passed. People stopped what they were doing as a nervous-looking assistant led them forward.

  “Is she in?” Erik asked as they passed the door to the council leader’s office.

  “She should be,”the assistant said, looking at Delilah’s assistant.

  “She’s in, would you like for me to announce you?”

  “Does she know that I’m in the dungeon?”

  “No, she only knows that you have returned to Vuzgal.”

  “What’s the use of being a dungeon lord if you can’t bug your student?” Rugrat asked.

  Erik laughed and walked over to the door.

  The assistant unlocked the door.

  He opened it, finding Delilah rubbing her eyes.

  “Have you been staying up and reading books all night again!?!” Erik said in a chastising voice.

  “No, I mean yes-uh teacher?” Delilah nearly jumped out of her desk, taken back to when the two of them had worked together for months with her learning the art of alchemy while he tested out his theories and ideas.

  Her tired brain snapped together as she saw Erik standing there.

  “Teacher!” Her face nearly split with her smile as she ran over and hugged Erik.

  He took the impact smiling as he hugged her back.

  They hugged for a few moments before pulling apart.

  “So, just how strong have you got now?” Erik smiled.

  “I am still in the early stages of Expert in alchemy. There has been a lot to do and each level is hard to gain,” Delilah complained and then her eyes darted back to Erik.

  “Did you, you made it into the expert level of healing?”

  Erik smiled and nodded. “I made it into the Expert level, I’ll be chasing after you now!”

  Delilah smiled happily and then seemed to remember something.

  “Oh, Grand Teacher has gone to the Seventh Realm. He reached the level of Master and the Alchemist Association has made him a professor. He gave me these to pass onto you and Rugrat,” Delilah pulled out the master level pills and a letter.

  “I feel that the second wasn’t meant for Rugrat,” Erik said dryly, seeing through her.

  “Well you two are in the most danger, I have plenty of resources and I am in the safety of Alva all the time. You two are out there fighting so,” Delilah shrugged and pressed it all into his hands.

  “The letter tells where he will be and how to reach him. The master level pills can be ingested and they will rest in your bones until you are gravely wounded and then they will allow you to recover enough to run away and increase your power,” she put them into Erik’s hands.

  Erik looked at the two items and stored them away.

  “I always knew that he would achieve his dreams with the Alchemist Association,” Erik smiled, filled with memories. thinking of the time he and Old Hei had spent days working on their alchemy skills, where Old Hei had poured out his knowledge and the two of them had become closer than blood relations.

  “I have a meeting with Elan shortly, but are you free for lunch or dinner?”

  “I’m free for dinner over at my parents if you’re interested? Bring Rugrat, too.”

  “Yes! Free food!” Rugrat said from the doorway.

  Erik shook his head as Delilah laughed and hugged Rugrat.

  Seeing her doing so well it makes me proud, makes me think that I’m some kind of Uncle.

  “Alright off you two go I know you’ll mess around here and distract everyone otherwise!” She shooed them forward, people who hadn’t seen the lords or the Council leader interact before were surprised as she organized them and got them moving.

  Makes me think of some officers I met when I just joined up, I thought that they were always the hardasses that they showed when we were training or when we were in the field. It was only later that I discovered that everyone had their own personal life and what they were like at work might be completely different from how they were at home. A hardass commander on the battlefield and a loving husband and father when at home.

  Erik and Rugrat bid their goodbyes and headed off to the conference room like two good Dungeon lords.

  “Its kind of weird our position in all of this,” Rugrat said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know like the lord bit. Like we found these places and we started off things, though now everything can run without us.”

  “And we wander off to other realms and come back and people still defer to us,” Erik said.

  “Yeah, feels weird,” Rugrat looked at Erik with his brows pinched together.

  “Well, I think that is our upbringing. In th
e United States, our leaders change all the time, the person at the top isn’t always changing. It is kind of like the royalty in the UK where someone holds the highest position and then there are people that come in underneath them. The difference is that while most royalty on Earth is just figureheads, royalty is real in the Ten Realms. The leaders tell everyone the direction they want to go, they are the guiding light and then the people under them just need to create and walk the path that they set.”

  “Don’t really want to be like royalty,” Rugrat said.

  “Yeah me either, but at this point we have our fingers into so much of Vuzgal, Alva and the rest that we basically own eighty percent of everything. Look at it this way. We created the system and we’re the guardians of it. We hope people will do better because of what we’ve done. We give people information and see what path that they can come up with. We can use what we know and have seen in other places to create a path for others. It is weird because we’re not used to it, but do we have another choice? If we change things then we might feel better but it could destabilize everything,” Erik said.

  Rugrat let out a breath. “Yeah, it just feels weird you know?”

  “Yeah I get that, too. It works, so why mess with it?” Erik shrugged as Tian Cui opened the door to the meeting room, she swept it with her eyes before she gestured it was clear.

  They walked into the room, finding Elan was there and waiting. Beside him there were Four people, two women and two men, they looked plain and simple people which made Erik raise his guard.

  Elan’s spies.

  Elan rose with the others and they all bowed deeply, cupping their fists.

  “Lords,” Elan said.

  “Come on Elan, you know that we’re not bowing kind of people,” Erik said.

  Yuli closed the door as she and Yao Meng took up guard outside while Lucinda, Tian Cui and Storbon moved to seats along the wall.

  Elan smiled as he rose up with his intelligence agents. They might be heavyweights in their information gathering circles but they were nervous when meeting their true masters.

  “Qin and Domonos send their love. The two of them are working like crazy, I met up with Qin and Julilah in Vuzgal. They had classes to teach but they’ll be back down soon to complete work on the armor,” Rugrat said.

  “Armor?” Erik asked.

  “Oh, the Conquerer armor, don’t worry there is a demonstration this afternoon I’ll take you.”

  “More things to do. Alright Elan, how are things shaping up?” Erik asked as he and Rugrat grabbed seats, Elan and his group dropped into their seats as well.

  “This is Miss Evernight, she is my agent on the ground dealing with the Beast Mountain Range and all things in the First Realm, who you’ve met before. This is Mister Liu he deals with the Second Realm. Mister Yi operates in the Third Realm and Miss Wen deals with the Fourth Realm,” Elan said indicating to the people in the room. “I am operating agents in the fourth realm and I will be setting up new departments for the fifth, sixth and seventh realm. We have people operating in just the fifth and sixth at this time.”

  Erik nodded to Elan and examined the others once again, on the outside they looked simple, easy-going low-level folk. If they were running the agents and operations across an entire realm they were anything but simple.

  “It is good to meet you all, shall we go over what is happening in each realm?” Erik asked.

  ***

  Evernight looked up as Erik and Rugrat walked into the room, both of them were supporting beards, they wore simple pants and shirts identical to the rest of the Alvan Army. On their arms, Erik wore a patch that marked him as part of the Special teams, Rugrat wore the same. As someone completed a new course, they were re-badged, with their new qualification patch.

  Now training had been going on for so long, being constantly refined. People had to go through the training step by step and couldn’t jump ahead based on open slots in different advanced courses.

  She had only seen them briefly as they appeared in front of Aditya once before with Erik healing the man’s leg. Aditya knew he was talking to people higher up in Evernight’s organization but he didn’t know he was dealing with one of the leaders.

  The two men were relaxed and laid back, their beards softened their appearance but there was a predatory look in their eyes as they assessed the people in the room. Evernight had seen mercenaries and fighters enough in her life to feel the chill on the back of her neck as her back straightened. These were wolves.

  The air in the room seemed to come to a standstill, falling under their control as they smiled, dispersing some of the tension.

  Elan introduced them all, while Erik and Rugrat sat down.

  If Evernight didn’t know who they were, she wouldn’t have noticed the small changes that hinted at their hidden power, she would have forgotten that they were in the room as the briefing started.

  She talked by rote response, her attention remaining completely on the two men at the end of the table.

  Rugrat was rubbing his tattoos while Erik was scratching his beard. Their eyes flickered as they absorbed everything. While they looked lazy and uncaring, nothing made it past them. Rugrat was even working on a blueprint at the same time. Erik was writing out alchemical formulas and looking at diagrams of different beast’s biological structure.

  The realms were not calm. In the First Realm Lord Aditya was quickly turning the alliance of outposts into the Beast Mountain Range Nation. King’s Hill was rising to prominence, people were launching attacks from different kingdoms and groups. They were trying to undermine them but it wasn’t working out.

  Alva operated in the dark and the Beast Mountain Range Nation operated in the light. With the Adventurer’s Guild, Traders Guild and crafters, they were rapidly accelerating how fast the nation developed. The military and Adventurer's Guild trained up selected experts, turning them into Alva’s people, first and foremost.

  The Beast Mountain Sect was being organized and formed in secret. It would unify all of the outposts together and create a central power which would be the spiritual backbone of the new nation.

  Over time the situation would stabilize.

  In the Second Realm, the Adventurer’s Guild and Trader’s Guild forged new paths into different regions, one supporting the other as they expanded. Most of Alva’s trade occurred in the Second Realm. The Willful Institute that could be found in the Second Realm was being systematically cut off from their allies, other kingdoms sects and groups that the Willful Institute had stepped on had been enabled and assisted. Using their informants, they had only exacerbated the tensions between the two groups, putting them at one another’s throats.

  The Intelligence Department, run by Elan, were the nerves of Alva, the Council the brain, and in this operation, the Traders and Adventurer Guilds were the hands.

  Focused on their old enemies as tensions had been flared up, the Willful Institute didn’t pay attention to the small ‘mice’ that were slowly destroying their supports.

  The same thing was happening in the Third Realm, there were hundreds of Alvans that were in the Third Realm as members of the Alchemist Association. Sky Reaching Restaurants were located in every Division Headquarters and proliferated throughout the Regional headquarters. Creating bases for Alva in each city. Some were only manned with a few members from Alva and the rest hired externally. Using the restaurants and a few Wandering Inns, traders and adventurers blossomed. The First Realm was their headquarters, but the Fourth Realm was where they had the greatest strength.

  The Blue Lotus’ endorsement of Vuzgal meant that while many sects coveted the city, there were few that were willing to act on their desires, pissing off them and the Alchemist’s Association didn’t seem like a wise choice. The Fighter’s and Crafter’s Associations had also come over to their side. If someone wanted to take the city, they would have to offer incredible terms to the associations.

  “The noose has fallen around the Willful Institute and is tightening d
ay by day as we remove their resources and motivate other groups to act against them,” Elan said.

  I thought that how we had infiltrated the nations and groups in the First Realm was advanced, but it is nothing compared to what has happened to the Willful Institute. The lower nations should be happy that we don’t have any designs on them and only care about the Beast Mountain Range. Evernight thought to herself.

  “When will it all kick-off?” Erik asked.

  Rugrat looked up from his tattoos, his eyes cold as the sense of ease evaporated around him.

  “That depends, it will take a spark, there are two things that might happen, others start a fight with them, or we start the fight,” Elan said.

  “What about the nations in the First Realm?” Rugrat asked.

  Elan looked to Evernight.

  “They have sent out groups of their fighters and assassins to attack traders that are moving through the Beast Mountain Range. The military is growing in strength, with their training in Alva they can reach the level of adventurers that live in the Third Realm. Those with good potential have the option to be directly recruited into the Alva Army.”

  “That would be a good way for them to have some experience, we should see about having those that pass initial training in the army serve in the Beast Mountain Range to get some experience,” Rugrat said, looking to Erik who nodded.