Blood Shaper

Book 4: Chapter 14

As Avalon expanded out into the wilderness that was “behind” the city of Avalon, a road network began to develop, driven by the Earth Mages and Earth Manipulators who were drawn to any place that needed lots of construction. Combined with programs that incentivized the training of more of those Classes, the expansion of the burgeoning country continued at a quick pace, and since they’d managed to recruit experienced Mages and Manipulators who worked as teachers for the people learning the Classes for the first time and as project leaders the things that were built were of high quality.

Compared to Kay’s vague memories of history classes, the roads reminded him of Roman-style roads, with flat paving stones supported by layers of gravel. The addition of magic made everything more uniform and easier to produce, so it looked a lot like someone trying to recreate Roman roads with modern manufacturing. Each stone was level with every other stone, and all of them were perfect squares that fit together with only the tiniest gap between each one. The roads easily followed the shape of the natural terrain, and where that wasn’t possible, magic made it easy to make smaller modifications to the area that let the road continue without having to spend time taking down swathes of trees or removing entire hills.

Besides the port that Kay had led his forces to free from the pirates, which had been growing into a large town over the last few months, one of the main places to stretch a road out to had been the camp outside the dungeons that had been located during Avalon’s first major expedition into the wilds. There were three dungeons that had been located in the same spot, with only one of them open the last time Kay had been there. The dungeon that had been open was an interesting one that stood out compared to others because it had two entrances that served as exits for each other. The only way out of the dungeon was to complete a run, and you had to exit out the other side, landing you miles away from where you entered. Neither entrance was close to any other notable location in Avalon, but the side that had two other Dungeon entrances was close enough to Avalon City that it wasn’t a hardship to stretch a road there, especially since it was a notable location. Kay was sure that small towns would pop up along the way just to take advantage of the flow of traffic, but it hadn’t occurred yet.

Kay had given the location of the dungeons to the Adventurer’s Guild in order to start drumming up interest and drawing in higher-level adventurers that wouldn’t come to Avalon for the dungeon closer to the capital. The rock-based dungeon there was more of a training dungeon, perfect for people just starting out as adventurers or other kinds of combatants, but not strong enough to interest higher tier fighters. When the guild had sent out their first group to start learning about the dungeon that could be accessed and to set up a base camp, Kay had sent some of his own people with them. They’d sent back regular reports that had let him know that a few ambitious fools had needed to be smacked down when their desires to take over a soon-to-be profitable location for themselves had become actual problems, but other than that the camp had been set up smoothly and was growing well.

When Kay finally arrived, taking days to travel there instead of multiple weeks in the wilderness thanks to the roads, it looked like the camp had started evolving into a town, ignoring the fields of tents set up in a cleared area near the more permanent buildings. Not that they could see the tents from outside the town, but Meten had updated him on the status of the outpost as they’d gotten closer. They approached the wooden palisade that wrapped around the town early in the morning, with the squad of guards standing sentry by the entrance, noticing them as they drew closer.

One guard stepped into the opening in the wall and held up an arm, “Halt for inspection!”

The group slowed from the ground-eating jog they’d been maintaining for most of the journey, with Kay’s detachment of Blood Guard moving slightly to cover him. The Sentinels that had accompanied Meten there hung back as they approached.

“Name and business?” The guard asked. The way he looked at Meten showed that he knew who he was talking to, but his demeanor said that he was going to follow procedure properly, which Kay appreciated.

“Meten, head of the Sentinels here on duty.” He held up a small pendant that served as his identification, “Also escorting Lord Kay here.” He turned and gestured behind him.

The guard’s gaze snapped to Kay, and he jumped to attention, “Sir! Pleasure to have you here, sir!”

Kay nodded back at him, “Happy to hear that. Carry on with your duties.”

“Of course, sir.” He took a step back and did a visual inspection of everyone in the group, “Anything to declare before entering, sirs?”

Kay glanced over at Meten, who shook his head, “No, we aren’t transporting contraband. Not that you’re expecting me to answer with anything else.”

“That’s true,” The guard chuckled, “But we can always hope that someone will turn themselves in.” He stepped completely out of the wave and waved the group forward, “Nothing out of place; go ahead and enter. And welcome to Vibrant, lord Kay!”

“I read that they named the place that in one of the reports I got back, but why choose that for a name?” Kay muttered to Meten as they passed the guards and headed inside.

“You’ll see,” Meten replied with a small smirk, “It’s quite the view.”

They passed a series of earthen berms that had been set up to be defensible in both directions in case a rare dungeon break occurred, and they needed to contain the rampaging monsters and soon started passing rows of tents. Many were smaller tents for individuals that were lined up neatly to give a modicum of space to each occupant, but there were also larger tents or clusters that were presumably for parties or larger groups to share. Kay could also see where tents were being removed as work teams were building permanent buildings near the outskirts of the town proper, displacing the adventurers or fortune seekers that had been camping closest to the stone and wooden buildings.

“Construction is moving out in rings centered around the dungeon entrances,” Meten explained, “As expansion continues, there’s less and less space for people to camp, but there’s been a focus on inns and other places to sleep so that we aren’t totally kicking people out, and once the most necessary infrastructure goes up there’ll be space and time for people to have private homes built for themselves. The town council’s also been debating on using some of the budget to have a few apartment buildings set up that would be owned by the town and serve as extra revenue generation.”

“You’ve been meeting with the town council when you’re here, right?”

“I’ve pretty much stopped attending entirely at this point. I’ve got one of my deputies posted here full-time, and he handles almost everything with the council now. The Wardens are having trouble expanding this quickly into the new towns we’re building, as you know, and since there are so many adventurers and Sentinels here, I’ve been having my people help out the Wardens. Once things settle down a bit more, we’ll transition back to only doing our normal jobs, but until then, we’re chipping in.” He turned his head to look at someone shouting at a work team that was trying to remove some tents. “Speaking of.” He gestured at the argument, “Ru’enn, deal with that.”

One of the Sentinels jogged off to deal with the altercation.

“She’ll catch up with us, so let’s keep going; I want to see the look on your face when you see why they settled on the name for the town.”

It only took a couple of minutes to get to where Meten was talking about, and Kay was sure the look on his face at that moment had been worth seeing. The town of Vibrant was indeed vibrant, with a roaring sea of clashing colors everywhere. Buildings were painted neon pink, bright green, sea blue, and even more colors, with roofs and accents almost always a different, equally as bright color. The people who walked through the streets were often just as colorful, with clothing, armor, and even shields and weapons that were vibrantly colored.

“What the fuck?” Kay stared at the kaleidoscopic swirl of colors with his mouth open.

Meten laughed at him for a bit before taking pity on Kay. “Remember the monsters you fought in the one dungeon? In the beginning, it wasn’t quite what it is now, but they were pretty colorful, right? Well, as more and more people started delving into it, the colors became a big deal. All of the monsters are like that now, and a lot of the scenery, too. When the loot started coming out looking like a color-blind toddler finger painted all over it, people decided to just roll with it and be incredibly colorful anywhere they could. So now, it’s the town of Vibrant, which has the Color Path dungeon.”

“I think my eyes are bleeding.”

“Well, make them stop then; isn’t that your whole deal?”

Kay forced himself to stop looking from one eye-rending color combination to another and turned to look directly at Meten. “That’s… something. I don’t want to be mean, but… You know what? It's whatever; I’m certainly not going to start trying to ban horrible color combos, even if I hate looking at them. Where are the researchers we’re supposed to meet?”

“They’re probably at the dungeon entrance. They’ve been chomping at the bit to open the next dungeon and send some teams in, but the council’s been holding them back at my recommendation. I thought it would be better if we had you on hand to make the final decision, and there’s no way we’re sending the researchers into a dungeon as our first team. We might not even send them at all if it's too dangerous.”

Kay latched on to one particular thing Meten said, “You said they’ve been wanting to open the ‘next dungeon’, that sounds like one’s already been opened.”

“Yeah, the Color Path that you traveled through. According to them, it was locked like the others, and you opened it. Now they want to go ahead and open the second one.”

“How did we open the first one?”

Meten shrugged, “I don’t know. The researcher I asked tried explaining it, but he’s one of the ones that won’t even think about using shorter words that most people understand, so it went right over my head.”

“Well, since we’re going to meet them already, I can always ask them then. They’re sure they can unlock the second dungeon?”

“According to them, with enough time and effort, we’ll be able to open all five.”

Kay stopped in his tracks, some of his Blood Guard detachment having to step to the side to avoid running into him, “What do you mean ‘all five’?”

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