Path of Dragons

Elijah let out a deep breath as he slowly opened the Ethera-bolstered partition in his mind. For the first few seconds, he only let a trickle of sensory input through while forcing the rest to remain sequestered away, but over the next couple of hours, he gradually released the rest. And to his surprise, it wasn’t nearly as overwhelming as it had been before he’d cultivated his Opal Mind. At most, it was moderately distracting, though even that was manageable.

As far as Elijah could tell, the Locus gave him hyper-awareness of everything within a hundred yards of his Grove. That didn’t seem like much until he realized that it constituted over hundreds of thousands of square feet of dense vegetation and copious animal life. But it was more than just knowing things were there. He also felt a connection that hinted at something far deeper than mere awareness.

Nerthus had called it an undeveloped Domain, but that didn’t really mean much to Elijah, save that he expected the connection to grow progressively stronger as he gained power. In addition, the tree spirit had claimed that the area would eventually grow to encompass the entire island. But not until he was far stronger and infinitely more capable of handling such a thing.

For now, though, Elijah needed to harness the awareness he did have. Eventually, over the next week, he learned to push all but the most basic information behind the partition. Certainly, if anything went wrong – or if there were intruders – he would feel it. But beyond a simple alarm, the connection was very much diluted – which allowed Elijah to function normally. Even so, that awareness in the back of his mind would definitely take some getting used to.

So it happened that he pushed himself to his feet and looked around. He’d been meditating for a few days, during which his basic needs were met by an influx of nature-attuned Ethera; that was one of the side benefits of the Grove. It didn’t remove the need for sustenance – not entirely – but it did decrease his reliance on food and water. For instance, instead of being able to go without food for a week or two, he felt sure that he could abstain for at least a month, so long as he didn’t leave the Grove during that time. With water, a week seemed to be his comfortable limit. After that, he suspected he would quickly become dehydrated.

Thankfully, Elijah didn’t need to push those limits, because, by acclimating himself to the Locus, he’d accomplished his most immediate task.

As he cast his gaze across the Grove, he couldn’t help but marvel at the changes. Three new saplings grew nearby. They were only days old, but already, they had grown to a height of nearly ten feet. More than that, they didn’t extend directly toward the sky; instead, they twisted in on one another, their thin branches intertwining until Elijah lost track of which one belonged to which tree. According to Nerthus, those three trees would grow into his new abode, and the spirit assured him that it would be a grand home indeed.

But it would take another month or two before it was finished. Until then, Elijah would continue to live in the decrepit old cabin.

With that in mind, Elijah trekked back to the stream, gathering mushrooms and berries along the way. Even though there was still a chill in the air, spring had begun to supplant winter, so there was a slightly larger selection than in weeks past. It was still sparse, but that would soon change along with the weather.

When he reached the stream, Elijah drank his fill and washed himself in the cold water before heading back to the cabin. The place reeked of rotten crab.

No surprise there – Elijah’s enforced cultivation hadn’t been planned, and as a result, his stores of crab meat had gone bad. Very, very bad, judging by the smell.

Even after he gathered the basket and dumped it into the ocean, the smell remained. And he suspected it would for some time. So, with that in mind, he made an executive decision to gather his things and prematurely move to the Grove. Fortunately, he didn’t have much to gather – just the Staff of Natural Harmony, his various baskets, the rabbit fur blanket, and a few tools. All in all, it only took one trip to transfer his belongings to the Grove.

When he arrived, Nerthus was waiting for him. The tree spirit still spent most of its time in its tree, but now that the ambient Ethera had thickened, it had a little more freedom of movement.

“Your home is not ready,” it said.

“I know,” Elijah replied. “But the cabin where I’ve been living isn’t really…suitable for habitation anymore. So, with the weather turning, I think I’ll be okay here until the house is done.”

It probably wouldn’t be pleasant if it started raining, but it was still better than smelling rotten crab for the next few weeks. On top of that, he was afraid that the smell would attract predators. So, it wasn’t just a matter of comfort, but one of safety.

“I was wondering,” Elijah said. “In my head, I’ve been using generic pronouns. Like ‘it’. But it occurs to me that I should ask if you’re male, female, or agender.”

Nerthus raised a hand of twisted branches, then said, “Your concept of ‘male’ is the closest to reality. You may think of me in those terms.”

“Good. Okay. So, I’m going to set my stuff up under your tree, okay? And just remember – this is temporary,” he pointed out. “Oh, and is it okay if I build a fire? What with you being wood and all, I didn’t want to offend you or anything.”

“My people have been using fire for millions of years,” said Nerthus. “No fire you could create on this world could burn the Ancestral Tree.”

“Oh. Okay, then,” Elijah said.

With that, Nerthus retreated back inside his tree, merging with it in only a second or two as Elijah set himself up beneath its expansive boughs. The tree’s canopy wouldn’t provide perfect protection from the elements, but it would be better than nothing. First, he deposited his meager belongings, then he set off back into the forest to gather rocks for a suitable fire pit. As it turned out, the labor was quite a bit easier now that he had the benefit of a properly healthy body. He was sure that the Body of Wood contributed as well, considering that he was far stronger than he’d ever been before. If he had to gauge it, he expected that his cultivation gave him at least a fifty-percent boost to his physical capability, which put him firmly in the range of peak humanity. Probably even exceeding it, if ten really was the human limit without the interference of the System, as he suspected.

Once he finished the arduous labor involved in toting heavy rocks into the Grove, he arranged them in a circle around a pit he’d dug, then went back to his cabin where he gathered the firewood he’d already stockpiled. After that, it wasn’t difficult to get the fire started – after all, he had plenty of experience by that point – and settled in for a meal of mushrooms and underripe berries.

As he ate, he also took some time to think about his future. With his fate intertwined with the island’s – and Nerthus’ – he knew he needed to get stronger. But the problem was that his neighbor, the panther, had already killed everything on the island higher-leveled than the crabs. In most ways, he was grateful for his protector, but when it came to getting stronger, it was clear that the panther’s presence had stunted his growth. Some familiar names on the ladder had dropped off, either dead or having hit some kind of wall in their leveling, but the ones that had remained continued to get stronger, with the leader, Oscar Ramirez, having reached level twenty-nine.

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And there Elijah was, stuck at level seven.

He needed to get stronger, and the only way he was likely to reach any of his goals involved exploring the rest of the island. He still didn’t even know how big it was, much less whether or not it was home to any viable threats. The panther couldn’t be everywhere, after all. Surely, it had left something alive.

By the time he’d finished eating, night had already fallen. So, he resolved to begin his exploration of the island when the sun came up, which, the next morning, was exactly what happened. For the next week, Elijah charted the island, and he discovered a few things along the way.

First, it was a bit bigger than he’d first suspected. He couldn’t be completely sure, but he judged it to be about six miles long, running from northwest to southeast and about half as wide. The biome remained consistent, and the area was as densely packed with vegetation as anything Elijah had ever encountered.

And thankfully, after about a mile, he started to encounter more wildlife as well. The place was lousy with rabbits, marmots, and moles. He also saw a wide variety of birds, a few lizards that were quite a bit larger than they should have been, and a frog as big as a cocker spaniel. But none of them exuded an aura stronger than the crabs, so he left them alone.

That changed when, a few miles away from the Grove, Elijah heard a rustle in the bushes. He wheeled around, his staff in one hand and the stone-bladed hatchet he’d been using to cut a path through the vegetation in the other. It was just in time, too, because only a second later, a huge black bear burst through the underbrush. Elijah only had a brief moment to notice its unusual size and slavering jaws before he was forced to react.

The bear crashed into him, raking its claws across his shoulders. Elijah screamed in pain, swinging his hatchet instinctively. Despite his panic, his aim was true, and the hatchet found its way to the bear’s snout. However, the small axe wasn’t a real weapon, and under the influence of Elijah’s enhanced Strength – after all, he was already operating a peak human level, and that was further augmented by One With Nature – the hatchet’s stone blade shattered into pieces.

But it served the purpose of startling his attacker, and the creature reared back in pain and surprise. Elijah used that opportunity to kick out, his bare feet barely capable of pushing the bear off balance.

By that point, he’d managed to regain some of his wits, and he used them to guide Ethera into Grasping Roots, binding the off-balance bear into place. Elijah scrambled back in a panicked crab walk made even more awkward than normal by the death grip he had on his staff.

Once he was a few feet away, he channeled more Ethera into Storm’s Fury, pushing it through the Staff of Natural Harmony. When he released the spell, a thick, blue bolt of lightning arced out, hitting the struggling black bear in the chest. The smell of charred flesh and burned hair filled the air as the bear let out a roar of furious agony. Elijah ignored it, dragging Ethera from his core and pushing it through his soul until the spell was charged once again. He let it loose, and another bolt of lightning hit the monstrous bear.

Then, he did it again.

And again.

Over and over until, by the tenth cast, the animal had been reduced to a twisting mass of dead flesh and charred fur.

Elijah sat there, panting in that curious exhaustion that seemed to come after every life-or-death experience. His muscles shook, and his heart was beating out of control – a feeling that he’d only experienced twice before. Once, when he’d first learned that the cancer he’d been told was completely treatable was, in fact, terminal. And then once again after the death of the Voxx monster that had nearly killed him and the panther.

Slowly, Elijah got his thoughts back under control, and he studied his vanquished foe. The bear was far larger than a black bear should have been, but that didn’t explain its aggressive behavior. Bear attacks weren’t completely unheard-of, but this was different from a creature protecting its cubs or territory. For one, the thing was male, so the first excuse didn’t seem applicable. And second, Elijah had found that, with One With Nature, most animals would simply ignore him unless he attacked them first. But this bear had instigated the encounter. That, coupled with its unrestrained aggression suggested that something was wrong.

That suspicion was further supported when Elijah drew the stone-bladed knife that he’d secured to his waist via a makeshift belt woven from his homemade cordage and sliced into the bear’s flesh. When he did, he saw that the expected red muscle was laced with black tendrils of what could only be called corruption.

It reminded Elijah of the Voxx, though he wasn’t sure why he was so certain that it was related. It was just a feeling, but one he couldn’t ignore.

After a little more inspection, he saw that the bear’s eyes were clouded and milky white, and its saliva was flecked with fresh blood, almost as if it had been rabid. But even though his specialty had been marine life, Elijah had enough experience with land mammals to know that whatever had afflicted the bear hadn’t been something as mundane as rabies. It was corruption, and given what he’d seen of the Voxx, it wasn’t difficult to make the intuitive leap that they were the cause.

Still, he didn’t even know if such a thing was possible. For all Elijah knew, it was just another strange mutation foisted upon the world by the touch of the World Tree. After all, if crabs could suddenly grow hundreds of times larger, then an aggressive black bear wasn’t so far outside the realm of possibility that it could be completely discounted, regardless of Elijah’s suspicions regarding corruption by the Voxx.

He needed confirmation, and the only way he was going to get it was to ask Nerthus. But first, he needed to heal the gashes in his chest. So, he channeled Ethera through his soul and into Touch of Nature. The wounds weren’t too deep, so it only took two casts to mend his flesh. However, that ended up draining his core dry, so he had no choice but to wait a few minutes before he’d gathered enough Ethera to fuel the teleportation portion of Ancestral Circle.

When he finally cast the spell, it was as if one moment, he was in the forest, and after a blink, he was back in the Grove. He’d used it a few times of late – without the ability to return to the Grove at will, his exploration would have been much slower – but Elijah didn’t think he’d ever get used to the feeling.

Once he’d reoriented himself, he approached the Ancestral Tree where he called out to Nerthis, who grew out of the trunk only a few moments later. Once he was fully present, Elijah explained the situation, then asked, “What do you think it is? I thought it felt like the Voxx, but I figured I’d ask before I jumped to any definitive conclusions.”

Nerthus nodded. “Your instincts were correct,” he said. “There must be a portal nearby. I knew there had to be at least one in the surrounding waters, but this is troubling.”

Then, Nerthus explained how the existence of portals – dimensional rifts through which the Voxx could invade – had a corrupting influence on non-sentient life. Then, he said, “Fortunately, it seems to be a small one.”

“How do you know?”

“If it was of significant size, the System would have contained it with a Tower. If that were the case, we would know,” Nerthus stated. “Because it is small, you should be able to take care of it.”

“What? How? And why me?” Elijah asked.

“Because you are the Protector of the Grove,” Nerthus answered. “It is a simple process. You must find the dimensional tear, enter it, and defeat the guardian. Once you have done so, you will gain a boon from the System.”

“And…and you think I’m capable of that? I’m only level seven,” Elijah stated.

“With your cultivation, you are much more powerful than your level,” Nerthus said. “In any case, you wish to get stronger, correct? This is how you will do so.”

Elijah sighed. That much was true, and the existence of these portals – or Towers, if they were larger – suggested a reason for why the others on the ladder had grown so powerful. It was also gratifying to know that his cultivation meant that he was stronger than he might appear.

But in the end, Elijah knew he didn’t have much choice. This was his island, and according to Nerthus’s explanation, if the portal was left unchecked, its influence would grow until it enveloped the entire area. So, unless he wanted to run away – an impossibility because he didn’t think crossing the strait was a good idea and because doing so would mean abandoning his Grove – he was stuck with dealing with it.

“Fine,” he said. “Any advice?”

Nerthus cocked his head to the side, then said, “Try not to die. Your protection is needed if the Grove is meant to reach its potential.”

Elijah shook his head, then said, “Thanks, I guess. I’ll try to find it tomorrow, then.”

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