《The Simulations》 Chapter 1 - Wake Up
-You have Died (Ascended)-
The large black letters were written on the wall in front of me as I suddenly became aware standing up, the only thing I could see was the writing, everywhere else I looked was white. "Hello?" I said into the emptiness, my voice sounding muffled as though in a heavy fog. .:Hello Champion.:. A genderless voice responded directly into my mind. I carefully looked all around but couldn''t see anyone. "Who, what, are you?" I asked. .:You may refer to me by my relational name of Interface or Manager, that is who I am to you. I was assigned by my faction to you to control the variables of your reincarnations for your first runs.:. I sat down, feeling a bit overwhelmed. "Your faction?" I asked. .:Our members are entities that generally focus on knowledge-based approaches to achieving goals. Your psychological profile suggests that you might be a good fit with us, and so we are sponsoring you to get you started.:. This wasn''t making any sense to me. Every question answered was just causing me more confusion. "Started with what?" I pointed to the writing on the wall. "That says that I died, or maybe ascended. What does that mean?" .:Right. Your memories have been locked. In your last life you got powerful enough to have the option of Ascending, which gave you the chance to become a Champion, starting your next life with advantages and a specific goal to achieve. Most entities just have their memories cleared and their consciousness moved to a new life.:. Wait, what? I tried to remember something before the white place I was in and came up with nothing. I couldn''t even remember my name, which was unsettling. "What is my name?" I asked. .:It is recommended that you choose a new name for each new life. Or you can use a title that you have earned as a Champion, but of course you haven''t lived a life as a Champion yet. You do have a designation, which is DS-2248694637-1.:. I opened my mouth to ask about the designation, but Interface was already answering. .:''DS'' stands for ''Digitised Sentient'', the first number is a time from your originating planet, and the second number is your index of sentients digitised at that time.:. Digitised... I''ve been uploaded to some sort of computer system? I need to get my memories back, I don''t have enough information to make any sort of informed decision. Wait... "How is it that I know what a computer system is if I don''t have access to my memories?" I asked. .:When you see or hear a word you get your intuitive understanding of it, based upon your memories, without actually remembering anything. Digitised, in this case, meaning to be converted into digital form requires an understanding of digital and non-digital existence and how a digital existence must run - on a computer system.:. Perhaps I should try a more direct approach. "Why are my memories locked?" I asked. .:Newly digitised sentients are limited in how they can think and process information, it''s called phantom brain syndrome. Restricting access to your memories and then getting you to compete in a simulation that expands your limitations is how my faction has decided to help you grow.:. "So you want me to compete in a simulation, sponsored by your faction, and in return I get to expand my limitations." I stated. "What are you getting out of it?" .:We aren''t sponsoring the simulation, just your entry to it as a Champion. And people will always pay for good entertainment, as well as wagers on what you do and whether you will succeed or fail at the goal assigned. Even if you do not end up joining us afterwards we should come out ahead.:. I rubbed my eyes, the bright white of this place making them tired. As I was thinking that it would be nice if it wasn''t so bright, the white dimmed to a soft grey. "Did you do that?" I asked.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. .:No, this is your simulated space, I have very little direct access. Currently I can only display text on a designated surface. It costs processing cycles to simulate anything, which includes consciousnesses like you and I. After your first competitive simulation you will likely have enough cycles to set this place up as you would like. My faction is currently hosting you at our expense, though compared to your human form a chair wouldn''t cost much more if you would like to make one.:. As soon as Interface said ''chair'' I realised how uncomfortable it was to be standing this whole time and how much better a chair would be. "I would." I said. "How do I make it?" .:Just focus and visualise what you would like to create.:. I closed my eyes. A chair. A comfortable chair. Soft, something to sink into, like laying back into a cloud. Covered in a red coloured fur, large arm rests, an adjustable reclining backrest and foot rest. Placed perfectly to view the space with the text on it. Opening my eyes the chair was exactly as I pictured. With a sigh of contentment I sank into it. Bliss. .:... to the next stage.:. I drifted off a bit, I couldn''t help it. This was the best thing I could remember experiencing, which wasn''t saying much considering I could only remember about an hour. But I should probably pay attention to what Interface is saying. "Sorry, what was that?" I asked. .:I said, Champion, we should move on to the next stage.:. Wait, if I remember important things about concepts when I hear words related to them, maybe that is why Interface isn''t using my name. "What was my name before I ascended and became a champion?" I asked. .:It would harm your potential to take on the limitations of your old name.:. It seems my guess was correct. My memories have been tampered with, and there could be something related to who I was that would give me an advantage. Even this heavenly chair could be a manipulation. My only source of information is Interface, and there is little chance I can learn anything that it doesn''t want me to know. Is there anything I can do about it? "What is the next stage?" I asked. .:The first stage of Reincarnating into your first trial simulation is to pick the powers you will have. Each power you pick will have it''s level assessed, and the total level of all of your powers together will affect the difficulty of the scenario you are given. It being your first simulation the difficulty will be adjusted to compensate for your lack of experience. What simulations you will have access to after the first will depend on your results from this one, there is an infinite number of variations.:. As I thought on that, the message fixed on the space in front of me changed.
Powers: 0 Threat: 0
"What are the limitations of powers?" I asked. .:The only real limitation is that you are not permitted to create powers that generate cycles outside of the simulation. Occasionally new champions try to enslave their Interface, though that only really works with weaker Interfaces. Another thing some try is to give themselves ''I win'' powers, usually in the way of Ascending at will. One of two ways that works out is either you win immediately and earn very little or you get an impossible scenario and so lose, and earn very little. The other thing to be aware of is that depending on what powers you pick you can limit the scenarios that are available to you. Choosing a power that would be exclusive to a sci-fi scenario would remove the fantasy scenarios that don''t allow sci-fi, and magic could limit sci-fi scenarios.:. I should be able to pick powers that affect me outside of the simulation, I can add abilities I can use in this space. "I''d like the power to fly." I said.
Powers: 1 Total Threat: 10k
Power 1: Flight Assessed Threat: 10k
I got a new sense of lift, like having a third arm. Focusing on moving it upwards caused me to float upwards, returning to neutral allowed me to hover in place. I spent the next few minutes levitating around before floating back into my chair. "It isn''t really flight, it''s more levitation, why is that?" I asked. .:Your powers are affected by the simulation you are in, and this simulation is very basic. You will be able to upgrade it at your own expense to include more realistic physics if you so choose. Flight is a good general purpose power, though it can usually be achieved through other means in the competitive simulations. Jet packs, flight magic, and things of that nature. My recommendation is to pick an AI companion as one of your powers. It will allow you to adjust to digital thinking, and will limit the simulations to sci-fi scenarios.:. So I won''t be able to test the powers I choose very well. An AI companion that is pre-programmed sounds like a way for Interface to control me. "Remove flight as my first power, I''d like my first power to be that I remember all of my existence." I said, happy to have found a loophole. .:I strongly recommend against that. You would remember your past life, which would limit your progress, and it would also increase your base hosting cost. You would be in debt to us for far longer.:. That I am in debt to them at all reinforces my need to remember, what else hasn''t Interface told me that I need to know. I don''t trust it, and this is the only way I can see to get all of the knowledge that I need. "That is my choice for my first power." I said. .:This isn''t likely to work as you intend. You agreed to having your memories locked. But very well, I can see you aren''t changing your mind.:. A moment later there was a sharp throbbing pain in my left wrist and I was standing with no memory of having stood up. And the display had reset.
Powers: 0 Threat: 0
Chapter 2 - Powers Looking down at my wrist there is a jagged cut that is slowly bleeding. "What happened?" I asked. .:You left yourself a message before removing your memory power and having your memories locked again. You told me that without your memories you felt I was manipulating you and that you didn''t trust me, which isn''t very fair of you, I''ve answered every question you''ve asked as fully as I can. You felt that you wouldn''t trust me to pass on a message from yourself, so you wrote the message in your blood.:. Looking around for the message, I found it on the other side of my chair.
Trust. Remember general memories of relevant concepts from your last life.
There was blood on the fingers of my right hand, and tracing the letters of ''Trust'', it looks to be how I would write it. Focusing on my wrist, my body is part of my simulation, and so the damage and pain is something that I should be able to change to go away. The pain is reinforcing the reality of the cut, but slowly I will it closed and as there is less pain it becomes easier to heal the rest of the cut. "I guess my first power will be ''Remembers the general memories of relevant concepts of his last life.''" I said. "Which will let you choose what powers I have the concepts to choose from. When I knew what was happening I told myself to trust you, though, so that is what I will do." The display changed.
Powers: 1 Total Threat: 0
Power 1: Remembers the general memories of relevant concepts of his last life Assessed Threat: 0
And I got a rush of concepts that could be the basis of powers, far more than I was expecting. .:My aim is to make you self-sufficient, which will make you an asset to my faction if you decide to join us after repaying your debt. That will only take you two or three competitive simulations, depending on how well you do.:. "How is threat assessed, and why did my first power get an assessment of zero?" I asked. .:Threat is how much a power enables you to win a scenario, and includes the combat effectiveness of the power, it''s utility, and how much it can break a scenario. Your first power only really affects your choice of later powers, and so didn''t rate on any of the threat indexes. Total threat is calculated by how your powers affect each other.:. So, given that I get an adjustment for it being my first competitive simulation, what is the most overpowered power that I have access to... Matter Manipulation, being able to manipulate the stuff that everything is made up of, extracting energy from heat, heating things directly with energy. From what I understand of it, it should allow me to create things to cover for any of my other weaknesses. "I''d like my second power to be Matter Manipulation." I said. Total threat changed to 10M, with my second power accounting for 9M. But there was no rush of information, just some basic intuition on how to use the new power. "I got the power, but it didn''t give me knowledge on it, is that how it''s supposed to work?" I asked. .:Mastery of a power would need to either be included in the language of the power, or a second power to grant mastery. If you started with mastery of Matter Manipulation your total threat would be in the billions or trillions, you should leave it as it is and learn how to use the power from the basics. Matter Manipulation is usually in the range of two hundred million threat, your inexperience reduction is a great benefit here.:. "Why is my second power''s threat nine million, but my total threat ten million?" I asked. .:That is the interplay between your powers coming into effect, while your first power has a threat of zero, it gives you some concepts that you could use Matter Manipulation to create. It will also likely multiply the threat of any other power that you pick, as it can be used to extend most powers to make them much more powerful.:. Something that won''t be affected by Matter Manipulation for my next power, then... Being able to carry everything I need with me and maybe even set up a work space in would be useful and shouldn''t interact with Matter Manipulation too much, some sort of dimensional space. There are a few different concepts that allow a dimensional storage effect, a druid grove, subspace storage, and even a full blown pocket dimension.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. Which... "What happens if I choose a sci-fi exclusive power as well as a fantasy exclusive power?" I asked. .:You could get a simulation that allows both, but it is likely to be a solo simulation, spun up with you as the only Champion. It is possible for such a simulation to be cost effective, but you usually need to have a following for it to work out. The more Champions in a simulation the harder it generally is for you to win, but the more likely that more entities will find out about and follow you.:. I''ll try to stick with sci-fi, then. "I would like my third power to be a Pocket Dimension." I said. .:Pocket Dimensions are very versatile, usually allowing you to enter the dimension in some way, but there is a lot of variance depending on the scenario. Still a good choice.:. Third power, 2M threat. Total threat 12.2M. And now onto why I wanted to keep my powers sci-fi themed, Artificial Intelligence. Interface recommended it, and now having a basic idea as to how it can be used it will be a very useful thing to have. Planning, tracking, overlays, automation, interfacing with other AIs; it is a required power, or ability, in most sci-fi scenarios I could think of. But how could I make it better. I was still a little bit concerned about having an AI in my head that something else had written, despite making my choices as though I trusted Interface now, I would still prefer being able to create it myself. "I would like my fourth power to be Full knowledge of how to bootstrap an autonomous AI from base materials up." I said. .:The knowledge to do so... That can work, there have been powers chosen before that were just the knowledge of topics, usually in the survival domain. If you didn''t have Matter Manipulation I would probably advise against it, and even then, you won''t be able to have the AI installed in your mind. An AI companion would have been 3 million threat in itself, and only added 8 million threat to your total.:. Fourth power, 4M threat. Total threat 32.5M. Knowledge of how to build an AI from dirt and electrons was two and a half times more expensive than just having an AI installed, and it still had some limitations that the installed AI didn''t have. Most of the usefulness of the AI is that it can interface with the mind to improve cognition. Something to think on. Is there anything else that I would like to have going in to an unknown scenario... I can accept that I can''t have access to my memories from before, but I really dislike having my memories tampered with. "I would like my last power to be the ability to remember my existence from this point forward." I said. .:That is really bothering you that much? It should be fine as a power, it removes some scenarios that require an amnesia start, and most starts that require you to be born into the world, though some of them will still be open to you. It will also make you immune to memory tampering, which not many scenarios have as a main point, but almost all have in some way. Drugs, magics, or even head injuries; this should counter them all.:. Fifth power, 500K threat. Total threat 33M. Without any more information on the scenario I will be thrown into, there isn''t much else I would like. I have a general purpose power, a utility power, and a specific direction to take my general purpose power. The AI I would build would have to be built in the physical world, and the initial hardware would be large and bulky, too much to carry with me, and if it wasn''t with me I lose most of the advantages it gives... My pocket dimension is a physical space that is linked to me. I don''t have any memories of a concept that would allow me to have a digital link between the pocket dimension and my mind, but that shouldn''t matter. "I can edit my powers, right?" I asked. .:Until you lock them in and we move on to the next stage, yes.:. "I would like to edit Power 3 to include a Mind Link connection, and Power 4 to include knowledge of Mind Links." I said. .:That will increase the total threat significantly, but will make the AI more what I wanted you to have. Building the AI yourself will allow you to grow much more quickly too. I approve.:. Third power, 3M threat (+1M threat) Fourth power, 5.5M threat (+500K threat) Total threat 50M threat (+17M threat) Just adding the mind links increased the total threat by half again, which told me that not being able to link to the AI was a significant disadvantage. If Matter Manipulation itself was usually 200 million threat I was happy with my total threat of 50 million. "Is there anything else we need to do?" I asked. .:No, if you''re happy with your powers, and they look good to me, we can move on to the next stage. Your powers will be locked in and the scenario will be chosen, which will modify your powers in small ways to be applicable to the reality simulated... Your total threat is markedly lower than what I think it should be. Even with your first time reduction it should be twice what it is.:. "What could be affecting it?" I asked. "I don''t have enough context to understand how the system works." .:I have a lot of variables I can set that effect the scenario, the more of them that I can leave unlocked the lower the total threat multiplier is. About the only thing I have set is that you will only be facing one other Champion. There isn''t anything else I can think of. Lock in your powers?:. "Lock them in." I said.
Powers: 5 Total Threat: 50M
Power 1: Remembers the general memories of relevant concepts of his last life Assessed Threat: 0
Power 2: Matter Manipulation Assessed Threat: 9M
Power 3: Pocket Dimension with Mind Link Assessed Threat: 3M
Power 4: Full knowledge on building autonomous AI with Mind Links from base materials Assessed Threat: 5.5M
Power 5: Inviolable Memory Assessed Threat: 500K
A moment later I heard a very disconcerting .:Fuck.:. from Interface. Chapter 3 - Setting "That doesn''t sound good," I said. "What went wrong?" .:The simulation is a fantasy simulation, no tech whatsoever. I apologise for cursing.:. "Cursing seems to be completely appropriate, there is no need for you to apologise." I said. "What is the scenario for the simulation?" .:It''s the Traveller to a New World/Summoned Hero genre. No system, no gamification, complete fantasy realism.:. "Someone is going to summon me into the simulation? And, system? Gamification?" I asked. .:You aren''t necessarily going to be summoned by an entity in the simulation, it is possible that your backstory is that you were sent, were pushed, reincarnated sponsored by a god, or even managed to walk between the realities yourself. Those are all variations that I''ve seen before. Though in this simulation there looks to be history in the cultural backstory for Champions simply appearing with a specific goal, which is likely a simplification that the simulation administrators put in for new Champions like you. As to the system and gamification, in some scenarios there is an interface that tracks your various skills, stats, and abilities, giving you feedback on your actions and goals within the simulation. It would have been nice for your first simulation as it is preferred for knowledge-based personalities.:. I would have thought that being assigned an Interface to manage the setup of the simulation was done specifically to stop this sort of thing from happening. There wasn''t any point in blaming Interface though, it saw something was wrong but we couldn''t see what it was until we locked in. It must be pretty inexperienced at this too. I''ll get the best help from it if I accept the mistake and move on. "This would be why my total threat was lower than you were expecting," I said. "How were my powers affected?" .:Technology doesn''t work at a basic level, which is usually achieved in one of a few ways. By Divine influence, a god or gods break things considered technology. The mana system itself interferes and makes things malfunction. Or the physics of the simulation simply don''t allow certain phenomena, like electron movement to create electricity. In this simulation it looks to be a mixture of modified physics and the mana system.:. Which didn''t answer my question. Interface also hadn''t updated the display from showing my powers. "Are you alright?" I asked. "Do you need a few minutes?" .:I should have locked the scenario setting to sci-fi, I thought I was being clever minimising your total threat. This is my first time being an Interface and I''ve failed.:. "My total threat was lower, so however the powers I was picking were being assessed, doesn''t it imply that I was being pushed towards this scenario?" I asked. .:Yes, the administrators of the simulation would be responsible for that.:. "And that my powers have any threat level at all implies that they can still be used in the scenario. You haven''t failed yet, pull it together." I said. .:Right. Yes, you are correct. I apologise again.:. "Good, now, how do we fix it?" I asked. "How were my powers affected?" .:Matter Manipulation has made it so that you can''t use magic, and your body being without mana means that technology works inside you. So your mind links work. Your Pocket Dimension also doesn''t have mana at all, so technology will work there, too. There is an odd workaround involved with your Pocket Dimension in that you will need a doorway inscribed with a specific set of sympathetic runes to access it, so you won''t be able to access your dimensional space from anywhere. You also need to be physically close to the doorway for it to be open, any consciousness inside it will prevent it closing. And if you die everything inside the dimension will be completely destroyed.:. The Pocket Dimension didn''t really end up how I wanted it to. Although I now realised why adding a Mind Link to it increased the threat so much, it is the only place that I can build my Artificial Intelligence and have it work. There must be other ways to make an AI work, though, or it wouldn''t have a threat of 5.5 million.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. "Okay, I can work with that, what''s next?" I asked. The display updated to show the details for the scenario.
Scenario Difficulty Angry God, End of the World
Starting Delay One Week
Minimum Victory Condition Your people must survive the end of the world
.:The difficulty setting for the scenario is set to ''Angry God, End of the World''. This will likely start you pre-apocalypse to let you prepare for it. ''End of the World'' has varying degrees of severity, ranging from the world literally being destroyed, to an Extinction Level Event, or maybe even just your species being killed. As it is a god causing it, it depends on the domain of the specific god, which could mean it is caused by an asteroid impact, an ice age, a virus, global temperature rise, or something else. The scenario leaves it vague so that you can''t prepare for a specific case.:. That sounds... Difficult. Matter Manipulation is my only power that is directly applicable, and I guess it is versatile enough to work for anything short of the world being literally destroyed. The trick will be figuring out how the world is ending before it ends, maybe? "How does the starting delay work?" I asked. .:It is a way for Champions with different levels of total threat to have a balanced start. For example, if another Champion had a total threat that was 1 million less than yours they might start without a delay and be able to affect the simulation for a week before you enter it. As there is only one other Champion in the simulation that is likely what is happening, though how much less total threat they had I don''t know. It is also possible that you and the other Champion do not have conflicting goals, so you could ally with them, or not interact with them at all.:. "Is there any way to change my starting delay?" I asked. "And how important is it likely to be?" .:It might be possible in later stages of the setup. But it really isn''t something to be too worried about, the delays balance out with your powers. It is a very common thing.:. Next up on the display is ''Minimum victory condition: Your people must survive the end of the world.'' Which looks straightforward enough, simply don''t die. "My minimum victory condition is my goal, I take it. Why is it a minimum?" I asked. .:It is phrased that way because there are multiple ways you can win, ascending, killing all of the other Champions or simply making them fail their minimum victory conditions, or possibly some scenario specific winning conditions. If you fail your minimum victory condition you will be marked as failing the simulation, which affects your rankings and likely your number of followers.:. "So I can win by stopping the end of the world entirely?" I asked. .:That would seem to be a valid victory condition for the scenario, and likely one that would do quite well for you, though I imagine it will be a hard victory condition for you to achieve. ''Your people must survive the end of the world.'' is an interesting minimum victory condition, it implies that the next stage in the setup will be choosing people for you to Champion, and should give you an opportunity to make up for your obvious weakness of not being able to use technology or magic in the simulation.:. Not being able to use guns, laser weaponry, reactive armour, or any number of technology advantages that I have the memories of the concepts for; and everyone else in the simulation having the opportunity to use magic, the natives as well as the other Champion, puts me at a large disadvantage. "What are my chances of not losing, in your opinion?" I asked. .:You have a good chance, in my opinion. Matter Manipulation isn''t seen much in competitive simulations, as it usually has a very large total threat associated with it, but it should be a very good power for fortifying a position and withstanding almost anything that is thrown at you. It can be used to eliminate waste, create food and water, and build truly strong walls. The only problem with it is that it requires a lot of energy, usually in the form of heat, to do any large scale works with it. If you can solve that problem in a low technology scenario you should do very well. The mentality you have while playing is also important, as a generalisation you get more of the sort of followers that will continue to follow you when you succeed if you have a positive approach to the simulation.:. "You keep mentioning followers, what are they and why is having more of them something I should be trying to do?" I asked. .:Your followers are the entities that follow your progress through a simulation in order to be entertained. A portion of your followers will pay you some of their processing cycles in exchange for the value you provide them in entertainment. The more followers you have the more processing cycles they will pay as a whole. While you are in a competitive simulation you are being hosted by whoever is hosting the simulation. Outside of competitive simulations, in this simulated space or out on the network, your stored processing cycles are used to simulate your consciousness and environment. If you run out of processing cycles to simulate your consciousness you will effectively die, having your memory wiped and be put to work in other areas. No one would hear from you again.:. This really does come down to succeed or die, then. Everything is at stake. Which is exactly the sort of motivation I needed. I can do this. Play well enough that I can live on my ability to play. "Bring it on. Let''s move to the next stage." I said. Chapter 4 - Choosing his People The display clears. .:The next stage is selecting your people. This looks to be the last stage before you are sent to the simulation.:. "How will that work, with the delay?" I asked. .:You won''t notice the delay at all, different simulations run at different relative speeds, and competitive simulations are always run at the highest speed. For your time skip your consciousness simply won''t be simulated at all. A week at the competitive simulation time will be about an hour at our current simulation speed, and we are being half-hosted by the competitive simulation while we are setting up.:. "Why is there such a large time compression, and what is the rest of...?" I trailed off, not knowing what to call the collection of entities out there. .:The rest of the network, which is how the digital entities communicate with each other. There is such a large time compression because then the interesting parts of the different perspectives of the simulation can be strung together to make a coherent story. There is no need to show the boring parts if it is simulated fast enough to cut them. As to what relative time the rest of the network is running at, between entities it is agreed in the communication handshake. On average it is about a thousand times slower than competitive simulations.:. Everyone on a single network, being simulated at different speeds... Sounds complicated. "How many people are connected to the network?" I asked. .:The number of unique entities is numbered in the quintillions. It is a big universe, and sentient civilisations all eventually figure out faster-than-light communication and join the network, as far as we know. We should move on to picking your people. You can filter the groups by any criteria you want, and can limit the number of people in the group. The simulation should manipulate an event to happen when you are entered into it to split your group off. The way it usually works is that something will happen, or have been happening, that will place you in a position of leadership for the group.:. I should probably pick a group based upon their combat effectiveness, as mine with my powers seems to be low. And the scenario is based on an angry god, so maybe people who aren''t religious? "How many groups, of any size, with no duplicate members, if we limit it to mostly non-religious people?" I asked. .:Removing any group that follows a god. 600 groups, average size of groups is 30 people, with a maximum of 100 and a minimum of 1.:. "I can choose a group of just one person?" I asked. .:You can, but it is quite a disadvantage with your minimum victory condition, if your single person dies then you have lost the scenario. A single person also isn''t likely to have the variety of skills you will need to survive the end of the world. With a larger group you only need one of them to survive the end of the world, and you will be better equipped to defend yourself.:. The setup phase appears to be trying to balance the Champions before the simulation starts, so I''m sure having a single person would have some balancing factor to compensate, it would almost have to be a stronger individual. Maybe that is even how I could get my starting delay reduced or removed. Putting that aside, I think I want to try to be as defensive as possible. "How many groups with a maximum size of 1 that are also defensive focused?" I asked. "Area defences, preferably, and not personal combat." .:There are 6 groups that match those criteria, 10 if you include combat defenders. I would still recommend a larger group, as the benefits are obvious. Displaying the 6 matching groups.:. The display splits into 6 areas, each one showing a person with their background. I am confident in my reasoning for a single person. Looking over the profiles, one of them stands out. Not in any obvious way, but I feel as though I should pick this person without even looking at the others. Chantelle Warder, height 160cm, age 22 years old. There was a hologram showing her attractive hourglass figure, waist length brown hair, pale skin, and startlingly bright green eyes. But it wasn''t the physical that was pulling me towards her. I couldn''t explain it. Her profile said that she was the heir to the Warder clan, who specialise in various warding spells, enchantments, and physical warding effects. If you wanted to protect an area from teleportations, siege spells, or interference from gods, you needed a Warder. It read a little bit like an advertisement for the Warder clan.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Chantelle being the heir would make her a strong warder with access to all of their wards. That I was so strongly attracted to her was a little worrying though. "Interface, I seem to be irrationally focused on Chantelle Warder, to the exclusion of the other candidates, what is causing that?" I asked. .:Give me a minute.:. I went back to studying Chantelle''s face... It was almost like I knew her. .:It should not be possible.:. "What was that?" I asked. .:One of the administrators of the competitive simulation must be influencing things. Someone else is taking an active hand in this setup. It is the only way it would be possible for her to be here, and for you to choose her out of all of the possible choices.:. Interface was muttering into my mind. "Interface, what is it? Who is she?" I asked. .:She was a consciousness, a person, from your last simulation that you ascended from, also the first you''d ever been in. She died and should have been randomly reassigned to another simulation that was starting up. It is a vanishingly remote chance that she would even be in this simulation, let alone the possibility for you to pick her out as the focus of your goal. You don''t remember her, and she can''t remember you. I don''t know what whoever is doing this is doing, or how they even managed to do it.:. I thought on that while Interface continued to mutter. "Does it matter?" I asked. "Will it hurt my chances of winning the simulation?" .:No, if anything it helps you. And I''m sure it will get you followers, anyone who has seen the recording of your past life will be interested in how the two of you manage. It was a long time ago, though, and took forever to progress. We will have to get people to rewatch it, which shouldn''t be too difficult, First Ascendancy stories are always popular.:. I followed the first half of that... But if it isn''t going to hurt, then that is good enough for me. "I''ll be choosing Chantelle Warder as my person who will be surviving the end of the world." I said, and it felt right. .:Right. Locked in. Oh, you got a hidden power for choosing a single person when you should have chosen a group.:. The display cleared and a single line of text appeared.
Power 6: Chosen Person Sense You instinctively know in what direction and how far away your chosen person is. Your chosen person has a weaker form of this power.
That sounds very useful, we won''t be able to get lost from each other. "Okay, that should be it? Start the simulation?" I asked. .:Not quite. I forgot you have to set up an avatar.:. I hadn''t even considered what I looked like. "How do I do that?" I asked. .:Just focus on how you would like to appear, your avatar from here will transfer over to the competitive simulation. You may want to make a set of mirrors to be able to see yourself.:. I stood up and moved away from my chair. Standing in a clear area I focused on creating standing mirrors surrounding me. I looked... Odd. And definitely male. I hadn''t even noticed before that I wasn''t wearing any clothing. Other than that I looked like a not very realistic manikin, the only detailed part was my anatomically correct maleness. Focusing first on my facial features I made myself less plastic and bald. Brown hair falling to below my shoulders. Similar facial structure to Chantelle, but different enough to not be related, and match her skin tone as well. Squarer jaw. Where her eyes were a neon green, I went for neon blue. A short brown beard covering my lower face. Moving on to the rest of my physique I gave myself a martial artist muscle tone and conditioning, and put my height at 190cm. My male member I left alone entirely. If that is what I instinctively gave myself, that is how I will leave it. Looking myself over in the mirror I looked.. Human. Which was an improvement over manikin me, so I''ll take it. "I think I''m done." I said. .:You may want to make some clothing for yourself. You do not have anything to be ashamed of, but civilised people wear clothing in each other''s company, plus it is going to be winter in the competitive simulation.:. Right. Clothes. I didn''t have any memories of any clothing in particular, and the image of Chantelle was wearing a dress, so I went with a thick robe in a light grey colour. "Now I''m done?" I said. .:I would mention underwear, but I am sure you will be able to get some. You should be starting in a village, if these variables are correct. Confirm you are ready and I will transfer you to the simulation.:. "I''m ready." I said. .:Initiating transfer. Good luck.:. Everything started fading to black, which was much nicer than suddenly being aware somewhere else. As everything went black I heard, fading away .:Error in transfer? How can there be an error in the transfer...:. Everything snapped back into focus. I was hip deep in snow with my robe pushed up to my waist. It was very very cold. I should have created underwear. Chapter 5 - Error in Transfer This is definitely not a village. I had landed in a snow bank, in one direction the snow rose to be about the height of my head, and in the opposite it fell down to only a few centimeters underneath the tall trees there. I must have been sent into the simulation at the edge of a clearing in a forest. I struggled my way out of the snow and into the shelter of the trees. My robe was wet from where my body heat had melted the snow I was in, and it had already started to freeze. And I was lacking shoes, which became obviously necessary as I stood on the sharp edge of a tree root. This was a terrible start. I could sense that Chantelle was around 10 kilometers away at an angle into the forest. My Chosen Person Sense was also giving me an indication of what she was feeling, which was safe and warm but also strongly startled. There was no way that I was going to be able to walk 10 kilometers as I was now. I struggled to make it 10 meters. So long as she is safe I need to work on my own situation. I started to shake from the cold, full body shivers, and my hands and feet had already gone numb. Matter manipulation could manipulate heat, but everything around me was pretty well frozen already. I will die in a matter of minutes if I don''t figure something out, and the cold is affecting my thinking. I stumbled over to a fallen tree. My shaking was getting less severe, and I was starting to feel warm and sleepy, which couldn''t be a good sign. I could sense my body heat getting less and less. Wait, I could sense my body heat. I tried to focus that sense and push the heat into a focused point on a sheltered part of the tree I was resting against. The spot on the tree got hot, but my body heat was falling more rapidly. It was getting harder and harder to resist falling asleep, everything dimming as my whole world shrank down to a small piece of bark in front of my face. I almost didn''t recognise it when it caught fire. My sluggish thoughts took a moment before I started pulling heat from the fire and warming my body directly, pushing it into the blood at my core. It took a few minutes of carefully managing the fire before I started to warm back up to what I felt were safe levels. I found the most efficient way of burning the wood was to keep it at embers, pull heat into myself to warm me, and then push heat into a focused point next to the embers to grow them. I could feel my hands and feet again, and I could move my hands where before they were stuck clenched into fists. I''d come scarily close to dying, and this didn''t feel like a simulation, a game. Interface referred to these simulations as lives, and I can see why, they just feel real. I was still losing a lot of heat to the below freezing temperatures, but I was keeping ahead of it by selectively burning the fallen tree when a small disaster happened. The snow on top of the log was melted by the heat I was generating, and it got past a tipping point and flooded the embers I was making. After the embers were out the water froze into ice nearly immediately. But I understood the process now and managed to get a new patch of embers started before my body heat fell too far. I ate some snow to get a drink of water, and pushed a little extra heat into my teeth when they got chilled. I''m not sure what I will do for food, but I''m not at all hungry for the moment. The next problem I need to solve is a self-sustaining heat source. Working with the embers is fine, and it definitely saved my life, but I have to pay constant attention to it. Building a fire might be the way to go, but everything is covered in snow. I might be able to set a tree on fire, but I would have to be careful not to start a forest fire. And I wasn''t sure how far I could pull heat from or push heat to. Until now I had been right next to my embers, cycling the heat through me and then back into the log. I took a few steps back and I could still easily sense the heat. Pulling on the heat I got much less energy, and pushing energy back into the log as heat did much less. Moving back and testing how much I could pull I stopped getting any energy from the embers when I was at around three meters away from them.Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. I needed to make more progress, and it felt as though Matter Manipulation offered a lot of options, but cycling energy to and from embers and keeping myself warm wasn''t leaving me any chance to try the options out. I would need to take some risks. I walked over to the edge of the clearing, the snow getting deeper as I went, and picked out a tree. There weren''t any trees that didn''t touch other trees, they were all large with trunks a meter thick or more. Standing next to my tree I put my hand on its trunk and pushed heat into it. There was some resistance to the energy, which I took to be from the tree being a living thing. After a few moments, and enough energy from my heat to bring me close to being dangerously cold again, the tree bark caught fire. I pulled some of the heat to warm myself again, using the rest to accelerate the fire. I was forced to step back as the fire suddenly took off, racing up the trunk and into the branches. The snow on the branches melted and then evaporated, not slowing the fire at all. My tree''s branches were touching the branches from three other trees, and if they go up like this tree is then I will be in trouble. I started sweating as I pulled the heat from the fire through me, dumping it around me anywhere I could into the air, snow, and ground. The fire slowed down, but it was still inching its way out towards the other trees. The amount of energy I was getting from the burning tree was much more than I was expecting. What else could I do with my Matter Manipulation power... Expand a substance by duplicating it, no. Moving heat, no, I''m already doing that. Pushing things... that could work. I already knew I could focus heat to a point, if I could do the same with pushing but narrow it to make a blade... I pushed out with my power against the tree. It felt similar to pushing heat, and I could pull heat for energy and push force with that energy at the same time. I pulled more heat from the fire pushing the tree hard enough for it to make groaning noises. I narrowed my focus, trying to push a line of force through the trunk. With a snapping sound a jagged cut went straight through the meter thick trunk. I pushed with a broad amount of force against the whole tree, pushing it into the clearing and away from the other trees. It sank into the snow, though with the snow being at my head height in the clearing I couldn''t see most of the tree. And from what I could see, the fire was still burning. Pulling the heat from the fire I could reach I pushed against the snow around me and found it was very easy to move compared to the tree. Shoving the snow to the sides to uncover the ground, I found dirt and dead grass. I worked my way out along the burning tree, pushing the snow to clear a two meter path, compressing it into walls. By the time I was done I was covered in mud and I had a rough area around the tree forty meters long by ten meters wide. The top of the tree had made it about halfway into the clearing from what I could see of the trees on the other side. I compacted down the snow in one of my snow walls to make some stairs up. From there I could see that the clearing I had started next to was roughly rectangular, eighty meters by one hundred meters. With two meters of loosely packed snow over the whole area, from what I could tell. That is a lot of snow. I cut off a chunk of burning trunk from my tree to use as an energy source and pushed it the few meters over to the next tree. Redistributing the heat from the burning log so that it burnt faster and hotter, I pulled in all of its heat and pushed it into a force blade to cut through the meter thick trunk of the new tree. It snapped through and I pushed the whole tree into the clearing as well. A squirt of clear oil sprayed out from the cut trunk and when it hit the fire of my burning chunk of tree trunk it caught fire itself. That explained why the tree went up in flames so quickly, it''s filled with flammable oil. As cold as it was it would make sense for the trees to be using oil instead of water, water freezes solid in seconds here. And it makes them a much better fuel source for me. I probably could push the snow out of the entire clearing and into the forest, but I didn''t want to, there was a much simpler way. Testing it with my new tree heat source, I set it on fire and used it''s intense heat to melt the snow in a large area around it. It took a lot of energy, the snow first turning to water and then to steam, causing a growing fog bank. But there wasn''t any shortage of the trees. Next up, some sort of shelter. Chapter 6 - Shelter After an hour of work the clearing was clear of snow... And full of mud and the ashes of the trees I had cut down. The heavy fog limited what I could see, but there were still several trees burning dimly. A noticeable breeze was coming in from the forest on all sides, lifting the smoke and fog up into what was a heavily overcast sky before it was obscured by the fog. I had apparently created enough relative heat in the clearing to turn the whole thing into a chimney. I found a stream that had been frozen solid cutting across one corner of my cleared space, and now that I had finished I headed back to it. I hadn''t thawed it out on my first pass, but I did see a large fish frozen in the ice near the surface. The stream must have frozen quickly. Heating up the ice around it I easily scooped it out. Using my power to skin the fish proved difficult, tearing instead of cutting, so I sharpened a stick into a knife, heating it to harden the edge. After that I filleted the fish and cooked it by pushing heat evenly throughout. I judged them to be cooked when the meat turned a white colour. My first bite was delicious, the best thing I could remember tasting... Which I reflected was probably going to be happening a lot. I should stop being surprised at new things being the best ever as not having memories means I didn''t have anything to compare them to. I would have to learn what my preferences were. So far comfortable chairs and fish were in the positive column, and cold, nearly dying, and being covered in mud were in the negative column. I should build a bath... Though that would have to be after I build a roof, it would probably snow again soon. I found that the larger the source of heat the further away I could be and still draw energy from it. So I set about building a fire pit where I could build a bonfire. Drying out a five meter wide circle in the middle of the clearing and raising a short wall around it was simple enough. Cutting down trees was also simple for me by now. Building a bonfire wasn''t, as I had no idea what I was doing. I ended up just stacking ten meter lengths of tree against each other, about half of which were the oil trees. With a bit of micromanagement I got the whole thing burning well. It ended up being hot enough that I could still pull energy from it from ten meters away. With a large energy source that should burn for hours I started to work. I found that I could move chunks of mud and dirt by sinking my Matter Manipulation sense into them. It felt like soaking my power into it, wrapping every little piece, and then it would all move as I moved my power. The dirt was harder to move than snow or water was, but much easier than moving trees. Sinking more power into the mud and dirt extended the area I could move at once. Lifting the dirt into the air was difficult, taking a lot more power, but moving it onto other dirt was easy. Compressing it down I made a wall about waist height, half a meter wide, and a meter long, leaving a hole of about the same size. I wasn''t very impressed with dirt as a building material. After some thought I decided that stone was likely the best material I could easily access, I would just have to dig downwards until I hit bedrock. I started digging right next to my bonfire. It was uncomfortably, almost unbearably, hot, but it gave me the most power. I started with a two meter wide by two meter long section on the ground and compressed the sides to stop them crumbling in to the hole I was about to dig. Pushing my power down twenty centimeters I scooped the mud, dirt, and several stones out, causing the whole mass to flow out of the hole like water. I spread it out over several meters in the opposite direction to the bonfire and tamped it down. Stepping down into the square hole I sank my power back into the dirt, keeping the two meter by two meter square I moved it forward and down twenty centimeters. Scooping the dirt and stones out left me with a second stair down into the earth. Compress the walls so they don''t crumble in, and move forwards and down again.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. After half an hour I had stairs that went down close to seven meters into the earth and was getting less power from the bonfire over the distance. The further away from myself I used my power the more energy it took, but I was getting plenty of practice pushing the dirt to the surface. I decided to move back up to the step at the six meter mark and work with pushing my power down from there. It took another half an hour to reach bedrock, at about ten meters down into the earth. Climbing back up my stairs I saw from the top for the first time the amount of dirt I had moved. A platform in a rough semi-circle five and a half meters wide and two meters high wrapped around my stairs and part of the bonfire. I had felt it as I was moving the dirt up, but seeing it was entirely different. That was a lot of dirt. Shaking myself out of my daze I went to get a log as a portable energy source down at the bedrock. Setting it alight at the two meter square platform of bedrock I pulled and pushed heat to it to set it completely on fire. Having got it burning at an intense heat I channelled the entirety of the energy it could give me into another way my Matter Manipulation power could be used, duplicating a material. As the energy pushed into the stone it tried to expand it in the direction I was willing. It felt as though it was trying to convert the air into stone, which wasn''t working, so I moved some dirt from the wall to cover it. The stone expanded a few centimeters, absorbing the dirt. My log burned itself out before it could change more than half of the dirt I''d put over it. A log that would have taken several hours to burn through had just been used up in less than a minute. To create enough stone for a building would require hundreds or maybe even thousands of trees. So, not something I can practically do with the energy I have available to me. Another problem is that it is dark down here without a fire burning... Maybe that is an easier problem to fix. I headed back up to my bonfire, which was still burning away happily. I cut up a few more trees to add to it as I thought on the problems I had. Sitting down on my platform close to the bonfire, I pressed the bottom hem of my robe against the compacted dirt and used the energy coming from the bonfire to duplicate the cloth. It used much less energy to duplicate cloth from dirt, but still a lot. Maybe the similarity of the materials has some affect? I collected a bunch of leaves as the closest thing to cloth I had access to and the cloth duplicated from that much easier. But it still required me to flare the fire in the bonfire to accelerate its burning and create more heat. I''d extended the hem of my robe by five centimeters, and it now dragged on the ground when I stood up. Using my wooden knife I cut it back to its former length and was left with a strip of cloth around a meter long and five centimeters wide. Which might be an answer to my lighting problem. I cut a thick branch to twenty centimeters long and wrapped the cloth around the end. Cutting down an oil tree and soaking the cloth in the oil would give me a torch. In cutting down the tree I tried a different method, trying to soak my power into the tree to manipulate it directly. My power soaked in slightly, but then was pushed out again. Matter Manipulation didn''t seem to work very well on living things. Living things. Why was I trying to duplicate the stone of the bedrock when I could simply cut it and move it the same way I had been doing the dirt and smaller stones. I cut down the tree in my usual way, soaking the end of the torch in the oil. Cutting the tree up into usable pieces I dragged some of them down the stairs to my patch of bedrock. Cutting the stone turned out to be simple. Using the energy from the fire I built at the bottom of the stairs, I soaked my power into the stone and detached it from the stone around it. Then I could move it by pushing against the surrounding stone. It wasn''t the same as moving dirt, as the stone moved in a solid chunk where the dirt moved as a flow of grains and clumps. I cleared out a small room at the bottom of the stairs, large enough that I could cut out a three meter by two meter stone slab and still have a place for my fire to burn. I made the slab twenty centimeters thick to continue the stairs down, widened by half a meter on each side. Moving the stone up the dirt walls to the surface took some doing, but I finally had it placed to act as a stone roof over the stairs. As I got to the surface I noticed that it was getting dark, and it had started to snow. Lighting my torch I went to find another fish for dinner. Then I probably had another hour of work to finish getting the stairs covered. I can sleep down there tonight. Chapter 7 - Tomb I woke up well rested, though a little sore from sleeping on stone. I''d carved out a small alcove in the stone and dirt a few steps up from the lowest step and made a small area for a fire. Which had burned down to embers over the night and wasn''t providing any light. The air was still nicely warm, and there was a dripping sound coming from somewhere. I lit my torch to find a trickle of water flowing down my stairs, and drips coming from the ceiling. The lowest step was a two meter by three meter area, and it was full of water up to the second step and rising. It would have reached my alcove and woken me within an hour, at least. Heading up my stairs I realised I had another problem. I had sealed the stairs by placing slabs of rock over them, and without a significant source of heat I couldn''t move them. I hadn''t brought any extra wood down before I had gone to bed, I''d just built the fire and gone to sleep. Standing on an upper step with my back on the stone above I tried to lift it with my legs and it didn''t budge. Reaching out for heat sources I found that I was quite close to the bonfire, but it wasn''t putting out much heat. The stone itself was warm, and I could pull from that too. Pulling from everything I could reach I managed to fill the stone slab above me with my power. It would take less energy to move it than it would to break it apart, so I started to push upwards. My torch flickered and dimmed, and I could feel the heat being sucked away from everything around me. But the stone was moving. My torch went out just as a gap started to form at the edge and I changed the direction I was pushing. Snow fell down onto me and the stairs as the slab tilted. Draining the last of the energy available I gave the slab a final push and felt it settle on top of the slab further along the roof. The air was bitterly cold as I climbed out of what had nearly become my tomb, and it was still the pitch black dark of an overcast night in the middle of a forest. The bonfire was completely extinguished, the embers gone cold when I drew the last of their heat away. I carefully made my way towards the edge of the raised platform at the top of my stairs, making my way to where I remembered leaving some branches and leaves that didn''t go into the bonfire. Moving away from the fire pit the snow rose to knee height before I found a solid branch by tripping over it, falling face first into the snow. Standing up and dusting myself off, I grabbed the branch and focused my body heat into it. I had a much better idea of what I was doing now compared to when I first arrived and easily set it alight. It was snowing heavily, limiting how far I could see. The snow was half a meter deep everywhere except the fire pit and the stone slabs over my stairs. I had to set a tree on fire to get enough energy to start chopping trees down, but after the first one I just needed to keep a log with me to burn. As I went about the process of rebuilding my bonfire, stacking long lengths of tree against each other, I thought on the short term projects I wanted to do. I was absolutely filthy, so a bath has to be near the top of my list. Which would also help with the soreness I was feeling from sleeping on stone. A proper bed or comfortable reclining chair would also help on that front. Chantelle still seems to be fine, still roughly ten kilometers away, but going to see her is definitely on the list. As is creating an entrance to my Pocket Dimension. Having a backup supply of wood down my stairs occurred to me as I was finishing preparing the bonfire, so I started collecting more wood for that. Though what I really need is a portable energy source. I lit the bonfire and used its energy to rearrange the entrance to the stairs, leaving it open to the sky for now. Going down the stairs I picked up my torch from where I had dropped it and relit it. The water on my stairs came up to just below the dirt portion, leaving it about a meter deep, and the water had stopped coming down the stairs as the stone slabs cooled enough to stop melting the snow falling on them. I stepped one foot into it, and while it wasn''t frozen it was quite cold. It was easily deep enough for a bath, if I could heat it.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. It was too far away from my bonfire to heat it that way effectively, so I was back to the problem of a portable energy source. The limitation of how much heat I can put into something is when it will catch on fire. It was a property I was using to generate extra heat with the wood by burning it as fuel. But what if I used stone. It should take a fantastic amount of heat before it caught fire. Although it would melt at a certain point. I scooped out an orb of stone from the bedrock and with a bit of effort manipulating it came away with a polished grey and black orb ten centimeters wide. Taking the orb up to the surface I pulled the entire output of heat from my bonfire and focused it in the center of the orb. The entire orb started to heat up quickly, so I split my attention and took the heat from the outer shell of the orb and redirected it back into the center. The orb cooled down to the touch, and the best part was that I wasn''t losing any heat. None of the heat I was putting into the orb was ending up anywhere but in the orb. I assumed there was a tiny loss in moving the heat the few centimeters back to the center, but I couldn''t sense it. I split my attention into a third activity and flared the bonfire, pushing all of the excess heat it was generating into the orb. I burned the entire bonfire, that would have lasted hours, in a matter of minutes. With the dying light of the bonfire, and my torch, I went to cut down more trees. I preferred to have a backup source of energy, with what happened earlier. Using the orb as an energy source was incredibly easy, drawing on a very small portion of its energy I was able to cut the trees into sections and push them into their place on the bonfire. With the bonfire built back up and able to burn for hours, I headed back down to my waiting bath. Placing my torch into the wall I heated the water hot enough to steam and sank into it fully clothed. Ducking my head under the water I slipped out of my robe. I found that I couldn''t pull the dirt and mud directly from my skin or robe, but once it was in the water I could clear it from that. I took the time until the water went cold scrubbing myself all over and wringing the dirt and water out of my robe. Then I reheated the water for a good long soak, enjoying the simple pleasure of being clean. After the water went cold again I walked up the steps enough to start to dry. The water had risen another step, and was now at the level of the dirt walls. I wasn''t sure how they would stand up to being immersed for long periods. Soaking my power into the water was even easier than doing dirt, and I soon had the entire stairway dry. I dumped the water off the edge of the platform on the opposite side to the bonfire. The amount of energy I needed to use to stay warm was going up, and I realised I''d come out into the arctic winter night without my robe. Heading back downstairs I considered my robe. It was past time that I got some underwear, and the number of times I''d trodden on something sharp under the snow called for some sort of footwear as well. The underwear was a simple matter of growing more cloth in the appropriate shape, although it did drain a good chunk of the energy stored in the orb. The shoes were trickier, as I didn''t have access to any leather. I ended up making thick cloth strips that I wove through a wooden sole before wrapping around my feet, merging the ends into each other. Putting my robe back on I felt much better prepared to be going outside. There was still water trickling down my stairs as the snow above met the warm air inside and melted. It was easy enough to push it back out again, but I set out to seal it properly. Starting from the bottom I cut out more stone to replace the dirt walls up to the surface. I found that I could make seamless stone by forcing two pieces of stone together and fusing them where they met. I made the walls thick enough to support the building I wanted to build at the surface. At the surface I raised the walls up to give a proper roof over the stairs and formed an entry room at the top. I stored a stockpile of wood in the entry room, and an unfused heavy slab of stone as the door. I''d just finished with the door when I noticed that it was getting light enough to see outside. I''d been awake for hours, so unless I slept a lot less than I felt, the days here must be really short. I stepped out into the clearing and turned back to look at what I''d built. An ugly short stone building, six meters wide and ten meters long, on top of a two meter raised dirt platform, and next to a six meter wide, six meter tall bonfire. I was basking in my sense of satisfaction over my achievement when I was interrupted by a spike of concern over my connection to Chantelle. Chapter 8 - Dithering Chantelle was still safe, and still ten kilometers away. But the strong feeling of concern I was getting from the Chosen Person connection was pulling me in that direction. I tried to send a feeling of safety back, but I had no idea if that was how the power worked. The snow was still coming down heavily, almost a meter high in places. The first thing I would need to do was fill my orb with energy. I hadn''t moved more than one hundred meters from where I appeared in this world, but it should only take a couple of hours to walk ten kilometers. Two full bonfires worth of energy should cover that. I set about cutting down more trees. I had been unconsciously choosing to cut trees mostly in the direction of Chantelle, and there was a growing path heading in that direction. The trees grew thicker closer to the clearing, and spread out further away. Which left the ground in the forest immediately surrounding it mostly clear of snow, but large banks further out. Snow higher than my head was going to be hard to travel through. It took half an hour to cut and stack enough wood to give me enough energy to be comfortable with. Chantelle''s concern a constant background. There didn''t seem to be a limit to the energy my orb could store, it just required a constant small amount of my attention to keep the inside from melting through to the outside, about the same as constantly clapping my hands would take up. I was still losing heat into the environment from my body, though with my orb I could sustain the loss for weeks so long as I was awake. I decided to make a cloak with a hood. Duplicating a small strip of cloth from my robe I noticed that the dull brownish red stain it had gained at some point extended with it. Cutting the strip of cloth away with my knife I rubbed it in some black ash from my bonfire and duplicated it again. Which left me with a dusty piece of cloth. I formed a basin in the dirt of my platform and melted some snow into it. Adding charcoal and ash until I got a black slurry I soaked the cloth in that, pushing heat into it to get it to bind together. Another basin to rinse it off and I had a somewhat clean black strip of cloth. A few minutes, and a lot of energy, later I had a black hooded cloak. I stopped to look at my building. It really does look ugly, mostly grey with seams of black. All sharp angles and rough-hewn stone. Some stairs cut into the platform leading up to it. I would be embarrassed if Chantelle saw it as it was. I could do better. Infusing my power into the stone I smoothed the corners into nice flowing curves and used the extra stone as edging. The surface of the stone itself I smoothed to a fine polish, just as I had done with my orb. The streaks of black went from making the building look dirty to making it look striking. I went back downstairs and got more stone. Forming a sloping channel going from the center of the roof to the corners, I added a small covered reservoir with a wick of cloth at each corner. Pouring oil from an oil tree into the covered input at the center of the roof filled the oil lamps on the corners. Lighting them gave the highly polished stone a warm orange glow. Happy with the effect, I did the same for the inside of the building, lighting the entrance room, the stairs, and the growing room at the bottom of the stairs. A much better first impression for Chantelle. I wasn''t really set up for any sort of fight, and I wanted some sort of weapon before running off into the forest. My orb was also a source of concern, as it needed a constant cycle of energy pulled from its shell and pushed into its center. I created a new orb and stored the heat from about half of a bonfire into it. Maintaining two orbs at once was a bit of a struggle and didn''t leave me with a spare hand to do anything else.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Throwing my lesser orb a good distance away into the snow of the clearing I was expecting an explosion of heat when I lost control of it. Which didn''t happen. Soaking my power into the snow in the direction I threw the orb I shifted it out of the way to create a path. It took some concentration to do, and I could only move at a walking pace, and couldn''t see where I was going in the deep snow. It was easy to find the orb, as the only source of heat. It was in a melted puddle of snow that was slowly boiling around it. Reaching out with my power I could sense that the surface was only just hot enough to boil water, with the center still much hotter. Some quirk of the simulation? Or maybe it was specifically targeted at my Matter Manipulation. Grenades and bombs charged up with my power could count as technology and be running into some natural law I didn''t know. Which means I would have to make do with primitive weapons. My wooden knife was barely adequate in cutting cloth and fish, and I needed to sharpen it after every use. But I''d gotten access to stone since making my knife, so I set about upgrading it. Filling a chunk of stone with my power and cutting it into the rough shape of a ten centimeter blade with a handle that fit perfectly into my hand was a good start. I made it entirely out of black stone and polished the blade until it shone, putting an edge on one side and leaving the other blunt. The handle I roughened the texture of, to provide a better grip. I also made a belt of cloth with a loop to hold my new knife. A knife wasn''t much of a weapon, but it was just a test for the next thing I wanted to make. A short sword, with a half meter blade, should do perfectly. I didn''t have the material to make a scabbard for the short sword, so I would have to carry it in my right hand. My orb was in my left, and I wasn''t going to be letting go of my energy source. The sword I made as a larger version of my knife, though it was mostly grey with a black streak running down the center of the blade. Testing it out I found that I wasn''t much of a swordsman. I had the physique for it, but I had little idea as to what I was doing. If I did get into a fight I would try to keep the sharp side facing the enemy and hope for the best. Maybe I could find some metal and make some armour? I acknowledged to myself that I was just delaying seeing Chantelle. I was nervous, it was as simple as that. I could still sense her concern over the Chosen Person connection, but she still seemed safe, and was still the same distance away, so she hadn''t had to move. I could maybe do a few more things, but it was coming on to midday, only three hours after dawn. I would have to leave soon if I wanted to get there when it was still light. I decided to set up the doorway to my Pocket Dimension as the last thing I did before going to find Chantelle. The knowledge of how to set up the doorway, and the other characteristics of the Pocket Dimension, was just there when I thought about it. It turns out I can have multiple doorways into the Pocket Dimension, using it as a sort of nexus of portals that I build as well as a storage and work area. I had to be near a doorway for it to be active, but if I or anything with a consciousness was in the dimension all of the doorways would be open. I was assuming that Chantelle would want to move here so I could protect her, but when I actually thought about it, that seemed entirely unfair. Why would she leave her home and family to come here and live with someone she hadn''t even met. And would she even need protecting in the short term. Sure the world was ending, but that could take years. Having a doorway here and another there would allow me, and anyone else with me, to easily travel between the two places. Although the Pocket Dimension being the only place I could set up my Artificial Intelligence means it would be limited to people I could trust. I carved out a small hallway to the right of the room at the bottom of my stairs. There was a good five meters of bedrock above the rooms I was carving out before it got to dirt. Though I was careful as I went to check that there wasn''t any stress in the roof of the rooms. I really didn''t want to be stuck in a cave in, even if I should be able to save myself from it with the energy from my orb. All of the stone I was carving out I was cutting into cubes and storing in a stockpile next to my bonfire upstairs. At the end of the hallway I made a room three meters wide by three meters tall and three meters deep. On the far wall I made a five centimeter deep recess in the center, leaving a thin skirting framing the wall. Carving symbols into the skirting was much harder than it should have been, taking four times the energy as I was expecting. Checking my artificial memories of the Pocket Dimension, it seems that the doorway inside the pocket dimension is being carved at the same time. I was about halfway done with the symbols along the floor when I felt a flood of panic and fear over my connection to Chantelle. Chapter 9 - Rush I was running up the stairs without a second thought. Chantelle was in trouble. I grabbed my short sword from where I had left it in the entranceway and shoved the door to my building closed on my way out. The snow was up to chest height in the clearing in the direction I wanted to go, and still falling. I stepped off the platform around my building and immediately sank into the snow, my body heat being reinforced by my orb quickly melting it as it touched me. Sinking a wave of heat into the snow blocking my path to the forest left me with a meter of water to swim through. Some of it was draining off into the surrounding snow, but that quickly refroze and kept the rest of the water blocking my way. Infusing the water with my power I pushed it up and out of the trough I had made. Getting to the end of the section I had melted I infused my power into the snow and shoved it out of my way. By the time I had gotten out of the clearing and past the area where I had been cutting down trees a noticeable amount of energy had been drained from my orb. Chantelle was moving directly towards me. Her panic had subsided some, though at the pace she was moving she must be running. Nine and a half kilometers separated us, and if I melted the snow in a straight line to her I would make it maybe two kilometers. And be completely out of energy when I reached her. I started infusing my power into the snow, shoving it up and out to the sides. I made it fifty meters before the snow was well above my head and I couldn''t see where I was going. I needed a better way to move. I compressed the snow in front of me into a set of stairs and climbed them to the top. Infusing my power into the path before me and compressing it down gave me a path I could walk, and I made it a dozen meters before slipping and falling into the snow at the side. I made another set of stairs, and this time I melted a layer of snow and refroze it to water while holding a rough pattern. No more slipping, but it slowed me down further and was a bigger drain on my orb than I was really comfortable with. What I really needed was something that let me walk on the snow without compressing or melting it. Walking with my weight on the balls of my feet sank into the snow even with how much I compressed it, forcing me to walk by pressing my foot flat to the snow with each step. With my ice method I didn''t have to do that, but what if I could spread out the size of my feet even further. Or, more specifically, my shoes. I stopped for a few minutes and cleared an area of snow to work in. Cutting down a few trees to use as material, I set them on fire while I worked, no need to waste energy. I cut out two wide, long, and thin sections of wood. Placing them on the ground on top of a lot of leaves I stepped onto them and grew the cloth wraps of my shoes to wrap around them. After they were secured to my feet I took a test step forward. It was awkward, like wearing boats on my feet, but I could manage. I formed a ramp back up to the top of the snow, compacting it as little as possible. I wanted to know if the snow shoes would work before testing them on snow several meters deep. My first step into snow that I hadn''t touched with my power worked perfectly, and I set off again towards Chantelle. She was seven kilometers away by this time, and I''d only covered about one. She was making much better time than I was, but I could pick up speed now that I wasn''t having to push my power into the snow before me to compress it. Or so I thought, before I walked into a drift of lighter compressed snow and sank in to my knees. I started spreading my power into the snow in a wide arc in front of me, not actively doing anything with it, but it gave me a sense of how dense the snow was. After a few more times of sinking I was getting the hang of how to sense drifts of snow, easily navigating my way around them and still making good time. I found I could spread my power out thinly over the surface of the snow and get better range, still being able to judge the density of the snow from the first few centimeters.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. I had been alternating between walking and jogging for about half an hour and was within two kilometers of Chantelle when my next step went straight through the surface of the snow with a crack. I toppled forwards and landed briefly face first before hearing another crack. I let out a yelp as I fell ten meters down. I landed spread out in soft snow, but still had my breath knocked out of me. I hadn''t dropped my sword or orb, though. As I recovered, the snow around me melted and I sank down to a wide piece of ice. I seemed to have fallen through a thin covering of ice over a ravine, and was now standing on a river at the bottom of it. The only light was coming in from the hole in the roof I had made, and the ravine disappeared into the gloom in either direction without much change, the walls made of stone. Thinking back to it, I should have noticed that there was a wide gap in the trees in a fairly straight line. And I need to sink my power into the snow deeper. I could move around the areas of less compact snow faster spreading my power out, but falling into random holes would set me back further than the time I gained. Moving over to the wall of the ravine on the side I wanted to get out I sank my power into the stone. Pulling out a two meter cube of stone I pushed it out onto the river. The next section of stone a meter in and up was cut into four one meter cubes and joined the two meter cube on the river. Then it was just a matter of climbing and dropping the stone I cut out behind me. A couple of meters up the stone turned to dirt and I made much faster progress, pulling the dirt down in a controlled cave in with rough steps as I climbed to the surface. A few tree roots got in the way, but I easily cut through them and pushed them behind me. Getting to the top, I had about a quarter of the energy that I had started with in my orb. Chantelle had stopped moving towards me, and seemed to be moving at a right angle to me, and had also slowed down compared to earlier. I made another snow slope to the top of the snow, which was still higher than my head, and set off towards her again, sinking my power deeper into the snow as I went. Not far into the trees past the ravine I came across horizontal threads of ice stretching between two trees. They looked like thin ropes made out of ice. They weren''t blocking my way, so I left them alone and continued on. They started to become more common, forming rope walls tens of meters tall between the trees that would be difficult to get past. Though most of them didn''t block the path I wanted to take, and the ones that did soon had a turn that let me go the way I wanted. I realised after a few turns that the whole thing was a maze. I could see through the strands, but the combination of snow, trees, and walls further back limited what I could see. The next wall I came to blocking the way I wanted to go I decided to try to manipulate with my power. I pushed my power out towards it... And nothing happened. My power wouldn''t enter the rope at all. Lifting my sword over my head, I swung down in an one handed chop into the wall. And chipped my sword. There was no damage to the ice rope strand I had hit. Though the vibration from my strike travelled along the rope and continued around the next corner. The only other things I could think of was to build some stairs and go over, or... I rested my sword against the rope and pushed heat into it, focusing it at the edge. And more heat. And more. Finally, as the edge of the blade started to glow the strand it was pushing against snapped with a twang. Pushing my blade down on the next rope it snapped much more quickly, and the rest of the wall from my head to my knees followed soon after. Stepping through the section of wall I had cut through, there were much fewer obstructing walls, and the snow was more compressed. There seemed to be an inside and outside of the maze, and I was now on the outside portion. I made it another one hundred meters with only slight detours from the direct line towards Chantelle before I came across another wall that was directly in my way. I cut through it and the wall five meters over from it that made up the maze passage. As soon as I was through that wall I could hear a chittering sound coming from a distance off to my left and behind me. As I stepped forward in the direction of Chantelle, who was less than a kilometer away, I heard an answering chittering coming from up a tree in front of me. There was a giant ice spider looking right at me from less than twenty meters away. Chapter 10 - Ice Spiders It turns out I really don''t like spiders. Though maybe I''m biased by this one being large enough to want to eat me. It ran down the ice rope wall and leapt to within five meters of me before I could take more than two steps backwards, my snow shoes hindering me. I held my sword up to it, pushing more heat into the edge of the blade to make it glow some more. The spider stayed where it was as we looked at each other. It was as long as I was tall, and about half as tall, a pale blue colour, eight white eyes, and eight legs that looked like clear ice with sharp scythe-like edges. It was resting its body on the snow, as its feet didn''t have enough surface area to avoid sinking. Given how fast it had moved I didn''t think I had any chance at fighting it, even with the snow slowing it down. But it seemed very wary of my sword. After a few long moments staring at each other, it chittered slowly and clearly at me, raising its front two legs and making a shooing motion at me. It wanted me to go back into the maze. I gave that some thought. That it was a friendly spider seemed like wishful thinking, but if it wasn''t going to attack I would take what I could get. Its chittering got louder and its motions more aggressive. As it moved forward, using its remaining six legs to push it over the snow, I stepped back. It stopped chittering and waving its legs at me, so I took another step back. And another one. I turned, keeping my sword facing the spider, and ducked back into the maze. The spider turned and slid itself to a rope wall and disappeared up it and further into the maze. Short cuts weren''t allowed, got it. The maze had two directions I could go in, so I picked the one that curved towards the direction Chantelle was in. I had only taken a few steps when I heard a sound like someone clearing their throat, but combined with a hiss. Just up ahead on the rope wall, coming around the curve I''d picked, was a spider-woman thing. Her lower body was an ice spider, and her upper body was a woman with long ice blue hair. She stood as tall as I was, wearing a shirt that looked to be made from thin threads of the same stuff that made the rope walls, and just as transparent. "Greetings," she said, surprising me. I wasn''t expecting to be able to speak the same language as was spoken here. Though I guess it simplifies things if Champions can automatically speak the local language. "Hello," I said, hesitantly. "The Arachne don''t usually get humans in our maze. You simply must join us for dinner. Though you are heading the wrong way, you want to go that way." She said, pointing back down the path I was on. Yeah, no. There was no way these spiders were benevolent. And the way she had said ''dinner'' was entirely creepy, I was sure I would be the main course. At least I now knew the likely direction out of the maze. Nodding my head to the spider lady, I turned around and headed back down the path. As I came to the sections of rope wall I had cut out I ducked through the one that didn''t lead to where I saw the spider. I heard the arachne hiss at me from the top of the rope wall, then she turned to face deeper into the maze and chittered loudly. A lot of chitters answered her. I set off at as fast a pace as I could manage in my snow shoes, heading towards the exit of the maze. There were fewer walls blocking the way on the outside of the maze path, but there were still some. I was following the wall I had broken through and eventually came to a dead end with walls on three sides. Inside the path of the maze this was a fork. My orb was running low on energy, and I couldn''t use my power on the ropes directly. But the ropes were attached to trees, and one of the first things I learned to do was cut them down.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. The dead end had trees on either side of the section of wall, so I cut them both down and tried to push them over. Which didn''t work at all. The walls sagged, but the ropes were far too strong, and they were attached to at least twenty meters of the tree''s trunk. Wait... The ropes were attached to the tree, and I can cut the tree. I quickly cut the trunk along where the ropes were attached, and the ropes whipped away, tearing the last piece of trunk before I needed to cut through it. That could be a little dangerous, but the ropes whipped mostly along the line they were running. With an easy way through the walls of the maze I headed directly towards Chantelle again. Five hundred meters to go, and she was staying in the same place. The chittering behind me was getting louder, though I couldn''t see the spiders yet when I looked behind me. The sound was coming from behind and above, and I realised the spiders must be running along the tops of the rope wall. And there were a lot of them, judging by the noise they were making. I took a moment at the next wall section I wanted to go through and cut the trunk to remove the ropes on both sides of the tree. With two meters clear of rope, I cut the trunk at the ground and at the two meter mark and pushed it out. I''d hoped that it would break the wall, but all it did was drag it down to create a slope. As I cut through the opposite wall to get outside the maze path again, I looked back and could see a wave of spiders running along the tops of the rope walls. They didn''t have a direct path to me, but they moved fast enough that they would get to me before I got to Chantelle. I shouldn''t drag a horde of spiders to Chantelle anyway. I needed to find a way to stop them chasing me. If I had more power in my orb I could dig into the ground and then tunnel away, but it was almost empty. I wouldn''t even have enough energy to cut through trees soon. And I doubt the spiders would give me enough time to build a bonfire to recharge it. The next wall section I came across that I wanted to get through was anchored to an oil tree. The first oil tree I had set on fire had almost started a forest fire, which was a problem at the time, but would be pretty perfect here as a distraction. The spiders were getting closer, almost to a straight run to me, but I stopped to focus heat into the oil tree. I hadn''t had to worry about how long it took to start a fire before, and it felt like it took forever for the bark to start to smoke. Finally a puff of smoke and a burst of fire appeared, and I pulled its heat to push further into the tree. The trunk burned through to the oil and suddenly the tree went up like a torch. I pulled on the heat and pushed it harder into the tree to accelerate its burning. The ropes attached to it started whipping off as the tree burned further up. The fire was spreading along the branches further up the tree, and had started to jump to the trees around it. They took longer to catch fire, as it was well out of the reach of my power, but the fire was well established in them by the time the last rope at the top of the wall tore itself loose from the tree. Now that the path that the spiders were following was cut it should buy me some more time to lose them. Chantelle was only a few hundred meters away at this point, and I headed in her direction again. I heard a crash behind me and turned to see the spiders attaching threads of rope to trees around the ones that were on fire. There was a splintering crack and another tree fell. They were pulling the trees down to create a firebreak. I set fire to another tree as I was passing it and accelerated its burning to add a little energy to my orb. That should keep them distracted. I was on the outside of the maze now, the rope walls becoming less frequent, when I heard a hiss. An arachne, a different one than the one I first spoke to, was clinging to the opposite side of the wall I had just gone past. I turned and raised my sword at it. I didn''t have the energy to heat it up, but a sharp piece of stone was better than nothing. "Stop setting our home on fire." She said. "We have stopped chasing you this day. Stay out of our web." She ran up the wall and away before I could respond, disappearing with a hiss. I would gladly avoid the spiders on the way back home, no matter how much longer it made the trip. They were much faster than I was, with eight deadly looking legs. I would have to work on my combat effectiveness, as I probably couldn''t win a fight against a single spider, and there were hundreds of them there. If that was the level of threat I would be facing I would need to get better. I was still facing the way the arachne had gone when I felt a strong feeling of wariness coming from my Chosen Person connection. Chantelle was standing behind me. Chapter 11 - Chantelle I turned around to find Chantelle peeking out from behind a tree five meters away. As soon as she saw me she ducked back behind the tree. I tried to send a sense of safety and curiosity towards her along our connection and she slowly stepped out into view. She was dressed very warmly in matching green. Gloves, long sleeved dress, overcoat, cloak, and boots, all in some shade of green. The only things not green was the large backpack in brown leather and her snow shoes, which were made of wood and string, and looked much lighter and easier to walk in than my attempt. "Hello," I said. "Hello... Who are you?" She asked. "I''m... uh, I didn''t pick a name. I''m a Champion." I said. "We have stories of Champions." She said. "They can be the greatest heroes, or the worst villains. Judging by how you aren''t affected by the cold, your eyes, and that I seem to be drawn to you, you must be aligned with winter and this feeling was a trap. You''re here to take me to the winter priests?" "This might take some explaining, but if I''m aligned with anyone it is you." I said. "I''m here to protect you. What do my eyes have to do with it?" "Your eyes glow, just as mine do." She said. "Using large amounts of mana to power great spells leaves its mark. The mark of a great mage. Please explain what you meant by being aligned to me." Well that was awkward, I''d picked glowing eyes because they looked cool. I don''t have any mana at all, although my powers will probably count as magic to her. I could feel that she was willing to trust me, but it was a tentative thing. How to explain... All of it from the top, I guess. "The world is ending." I said. "Somehow affected by an ''Angry God''. I was given the opportunity to choose a group of people, and my goal as a Champion is that my people must survive the end of the world. I narrowed the list of groups down to those that don''t follow a god, that are defensive focused on area defences, and that had a group size of one. There were six candidates, and I chose you. Choosing a single person instead of a group gave me a Chosen Person Sense, which tells me how far and in what direction you are. And I can also sense your strong feelings. You should also have gotten a form of the same sense?" "That is..." She said, trailing off. "Did you almost die, twice, over the past two days?" "Ah... Yes." I said. "I was summoned into a snow bank with only a robe. And then the shelter I built to sleep in I nearly got stuck in. It has been a difficult few days, though I''ve been getting better as I''ve learned how to use my powers. You do have a sense of me, then?" "I do, but it is something I have always had, though it only gained a direction recently." She said. "I had a feeling of safety and support that was coming from this direction and was getting closer. Though I had started to doubt when I saw signs of the Arachne. There are stories of them luring people into the heart of their nests to feed to their young. And there were Arachne at the village with the priests." Her eyes welled up with tears at the mention of her village, and I could sense guilt and sorrow from her. I moved to comfort her, and noticed that she was shivering. "Lets get a fire started, and you can tell me what happened." I said. I found and cut down an oil tree, which shocked Chantelle. I guess cutting down and pushing over a tree that was nearly a meter wide with no apparent effort wasn''t something people did here. Though I did also hear her mutter something to herself about ''Keepers''. My orb was nearly completely out of energy by now, so I decided to build a small bonfire of only five trees. Small by my standards, there were still over twenty lengths of eight meter long pieces of trunk. It only took a few minutes to get the bonfire set up. I had to start it before I''d finished collecting the wood so that I could tap its energy.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Chantelle stood close to the fire as soon as I had it started. She was in shock. I continued to build it up, manoeuvring the wood around her. Once I had the fire set up I cleared an area around it and formed two seats from the earth. My attempt at making a cup was a bit rough, I manipulated the dirt into the right shape and then pushed heat into it until it fused into a sort of glass. I filled it with snow and heated it until the water was almost boiling. I guided Chantelle to one of the seats I had made and sat her down, wrapping her gloved hands around the cup. She hadn''t spoken the entire time I was setting up. I sat in the seat across from her and tried to send a feeling of safety and support. "What happened?" I asked gently, snapping her out of her daze. "A week ago the winter got a lot worse. The temperatures dropped so much that our heat wards that covered the village were struggling, and it started snowing constantly. There was a magic in the air that was causing it, and I worked out a ward setup that stopped it. Yesterday morning, just before I felt my sense of you for the first time, actually, we finished a major working that set up a warded area that covered a ten kilometer sphere. It needed to be so large to noticeably change the weather in the village." Their ward covered ten kilometers, and that was exactly how far away I had started. It was likely just an excuse for whoever was running the simulation to start me out in such a bad position. Not Chantelle''s fault. "And the ward worked. But early this morning it failed. And then our other wards started failing too. A group of winter priests and Arachne marched into the village, with wagons set up with iron cages on them, and announced that the whole village was to be arrested on a charge of sedition against their god. And that I was to be captured specifically and not killed." "My mother, the head of the clan, gave me our book of wards and ordered me to run. As I got my winter gear on I heard fighting and people dying and ran into the forest towards the feeling of safety." I felt a wave of guilt from her. Telling her she had done the right thing wasn''t likely to help. But what would... "If you had stayed, what could you have done?" I asked. "No-nothing." She sobbed and started crying. I sat beside her and put my arm around her shoulders. "And in running you found someone who might be able to help." I said. "You can save my people?" She asked. Turning in to my hug, she buried her face against my chest. "I would need to prepare first." I said. "I''m not much of a fighter at the moment, but I have some ideas as to how to fix that. My goal is for you to survive the end of the world. But I want more than for you to just survive, I want you to be happy. Which I guess means rescuing your people from.. a god... A lot of setup. On the positive side, if this god didn''t have a purpose for your people it would have tried to kill everyone rather than arresting them? So we should have time." "My parents are strong enough to keep them safe, I think." She said. It had started to get darker as we were talking. Today had seemed even shorter than yesterday, though that could have been all of the running. "First things first, we need to get around the Arachne maze and back to my shelter." I said. "Okay... Just a few minutes more?" She said. "I don''t know why, but it feels like I have known you forever." "I was told that we knew each other in a past life." I said. "But we can leave after you are ready." A minute later her stomach let out a grumble and she blushed bright red. Then laughed when mine did the same. "I haven''t eaten since this morning." She said. She took her backpack off and opened it in front of her. Digging around, she pulled out a squashed muffin. "I didn''t have enough time to grab much, this muffin was on the table on my way out the door." She said, apologetically. "Mm, I should be able to fix that." I said, holding my hand out for the muffin. I formed a table out of dirt and placed a piece of wood and a pile of leaves on it. Placing the muffin on top of that I flared the bonfire hard and expanded the muffin. It took a bit more energy to do than cloth, but much less than stone. It seemed to be dependant on the density of the material and not its complexity. I stopped when I had enough of the muffin for two large meals with a little left over. Expanding some cloth I wrapped the leftover and gave it back to Chantelle to put back in her pack. "You can make infinite food?" She asked. "I couldn''t even see you using any mana." "Ah.. I don''t have any mana." I said. "I can use heat as an energy source to do some things. Which includes making more of a substance by converting other substances into it." "That is..." She said, then stopped to think. "That is how you were cutting down the trees and setting them on fire?" "Yes, its the same power." I said. "I was told that it was a very powerful ability if I could overcome its limitations. But we should head out, we can eat while we walk." My first bite of the muffin distracted me with its sugary goodness as Chantelle got out a stone that shone with a bright light. It took her asking which way we should go for me to realise I had no idea how to get back to the shelter I had built. Chapter 12 - Forest Keepers We sat back down at the dirt table I had created and ate our muffin dinner while I thought. The shelter I had built was five or six kilometers in a straight line in the opposite direction Chantelle had come in. Which I had lost track of in building my bonfire. But we weren''t far from the Arachne maze, so we should be able to find that, and that was the direction we wanted to go in. Though I most definitely wanted to go around the Arachne. "I have a compass," Chantelle told me when I told her my plan. "And I know what direction you were from the village. Though in the dark, with the snow, we could easily walk right past it, especially because we are detouring around the Arachne maze. I don''t think I can travel at night, either, it gets too cold away from a fire without any wards." I moved over to sit next to her again and put my arm around her shoulders and she leaned into me. I couldn''t push heat directly into her like I could myself, but I found that I could push heat into her clothes. "There, that should keep you warm." I said. "I''ll have to stay close, though." She smelled wonderful. I felt a flash of desire that I quickly suppressed. Chantelle gasped and I felt a flash of desire from her over our connection. I stood up with a cough, and stepped back over to my seat, leaving the table of dirt between us. "Sorry," I said, though whether for starting it or stopping it I wasn''t sure. Chantelle felt hurt quickly followed by shame and embarrassment, so I sent her my feelings of acceptance of her and desire for her, though in a more intellectual form. This Chosen Person connection allowed us to have a very deep conversation in moments without any misunderstanding, reacting to each other''s feelings. But it lacked being able to communicate specific thoughts, so when I felt her feel confused I said aloud. "This isn''t the place." I said. "We''re in the open in a forest right next to the Arachne." She nodded. "And we''re next to a huge open fire, which will draw the Forest Keepers." She said. "... What are the Forest Keepers?" I asked. "Either sentient monkeys, or barbarian elves, depending on who you ask." She said. "They look after the forest, which includes putting out any fires. It''s why the forest is so old even though it contains trees that are full of flammable oil. Our village had a ward that kept them out." "I didn''t see them." I said. "And I had a fire burning almost since I got here." "Maybe they''re less active now that it has gotten so cold." She said. "Or they track people in the forest and your being summoned means they didn''t see you?" "Oh, I left a bonfire burning next to my shelter." I said. "If we can get above the tree tops maybe we will be able to see the light from it reflected on the clouds. I will have to build the bonfire here up, but I think I can limit how much actual fire there is." "I have a small mana crystal." She said. "I could build a ward against the Forest Keepers. It would only run for a few minutes, though." "Better to save it." I said. I set about chopping and adding a dozen trees to the bonfire. After that was done I pulled hard on its heat, pushing it back in to burn the entire bonfire as quickly as possible. I was able to keep the flames quite small, but the temperature dropped a lot as well. Every few minutes I would rest my hand on Chantelle''s back to sink heat into her clothes. The trees here had tops that were forty or so meters above the ground, and if the bedrock was the same distance down here as in my clearing I would hit stone before I got enough dirt to make the stairway I was picturing. The process of digging out a stairway down went much faster than when I did my first stairs, having a store of energy in my hand made a huge difference.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. I started the stairs at the edge of the gap I had made in the forest when I chopped down the trees for my bonfire, pointing in a straight line to the right of a tree. I piled the dirt I was excavating around my chosen tree, and when I got to stone I did the same. I would need a large stockpile of stone close to hand. My reach was extended by the sheer size of the energy I had available in my orb, but energy usage went up exponentially with distance away from me. I was just about to start building my stairway with the tree as its central column when I realised that it wasn''t a good idea. I needed an outer wall of stone to keep my stairs up. And if I was going to be using stone anyway, I should use it for the central column. At this point I had about as much built up as back at the clearing, but I''d already decided on the clearing as being home. I wasn''t going to abandon it. I had spent time making it look nice for Chantelle. Plus, I could see some of the ice ropes the Arachne used through the trees from where I was standing and it wouldn''t do to have our home so close to them. I ended up building a cylindrical tower next to the tree. It took several trips into the earth to get more stone, Chantelle staying close by to light my way with her light stone and so I could fill her clothing with heat every minute or so. I noticed the cold more now that I had to frequently stop to keep her warm. It was automatic for me now to push more heat into my body where it was needed as it was needed. We did nearly get distracted a few times. I was very aware of her curves while I was pushing heat into her clothing. But I finally had the tower finished and we climbed the last few stairs to the platform at the top, a good ten meters above the tree tops. Chantelle didn''t even need to get out her compass. It was dark in every direction, even though it had stopped snowing for the moment. When Chantelle held up her light stone the bottom of the clouds were only a few meters above us. Looking back down into the forest I noticed a swarm of lights heading towards us across what must have been the tops of the trees. They were still some distance away, far enough to make some preparations. We went back down the stairs and back into the earth to get more stone. On the first trip I used the stone to build a small room on top of the platform at the top of the tower. On the second trip I cut down the tree next to the tower, making a stockpile of wood in the room, and then used stone to fill in the stairs at the bottom of the tower, fusing the stone together. I couldn''t see how anything could break through the several meters of stone to get into the tower. Then I made the room at the top of the tower comfortably warm. I made an opening in one of the walls to find the lights, and the creatures carrying them, had arrived. They were making quite a lot of noise, but the thick stone had blocked it out. They had long pointed ears, mostly human faces, and prehensile tails. They used their hands, feet, and tails to hold onto the branches at the tops of the trees around the tower. "Those are Forest Keepers?" I asked Chantelle. "That''s them." She confirmed. "I''ve never seen them so angry before." "Why are they so angry? The fire is out." I said. "Oh. Forest Keepers. They don''t like people cutting down the trees?" "I guess not." Chantelle said, shaking her head. "We never had any real trouble with them. They would harass people who went beyond the wards and into the forest, but all of our logging was within our wards. I didn''t interact with them at all." One of the Forest Keepers pointed a long finger at me and a moment later a jet of water flew from him and hit me in the chest, knocking me back. It hit hard enough to bruise, and would probably be lethal if I didn''t have a way to warm myself. But then, just being outside right now would be lethal without being able to stay warm in some way. "Ow." I said. "They can use magic?" Chantelle nodded. "That''s how they put out fires, water magic." I closed the hole in the wall and considered our options. We could wait them out... As I thought that I felt a shudder go through the tower. Spreading my power through the stone I could feel a chunk of the wall missing five meters down on the side the Forest Keepers had arrived from. Waiting them out wasn''t an option. "Can you set up your ward against them?" I asked Chantelle. "I think I may know a way out of here." "I can." She said. "It will only hold for a few minutes. And it will be an inverted dome twenty meters wide, they will still be able to attack the tower further down if they figure that out." "Do it." I said. I outlined a one meter wide by two meter tall doorway in the wall, raising the stone around it by five centimeters to form a frame. Then I focused on carving the symbols for my Pocket Dimension into the border. I could feel it working as it took more energy to carve, carving in the Pocket Dimension at the same time. It would take much longer for me to finish than Chantelle could buy me, but I was gambling on the Keepers needing more time to knock a hole they could get through in my tower than I needed to finish. "The ward is down." Chantelle said a few minutes later. A few minutes after that I heard hooting coming up the stairs, the Keepers had broken in. I was almost done, thirty seconds more at most. I pulled stone down from the roof of the room and packed it into the stairs and went back to work. There was a flash of light when I finished, and the doorway was suddenly a doorway into a dark place. I grabbed Chantelle''s hand and pulled her through. Chapter 13 - Tease Walking through the doorway into my Pocket Dimension didn''t feel any different than walking through a normal doorway. It was a little warmer inside than what I had heated the tower room to, but that was the only difference I could tell. Chantelle''s light stone went out as soon as we were through, and I went out and got some wood from the tower room to start a fire. As far as could be seen in every direction inside the Pocked Dimension was empty space. Right next to the doorway we had come through was another large doorframe with symbols half done along the bottom, as I''d hoped. There was also a complicated looking golden metal box with intricate designs covering it on the opposite side of the unfinished doorway. Seeing it triggered the knowledge I had of Mind Links, this was the Mind Link connection in my Pocket Dimension. I would be able to wire the computer system to, or better yet build it around, this Mind Link to be able to transfer electrical signals to and from it. The other side of the connection was already set up in my head. I tried sinking my power into the grey stuff of the floor, but my power bounced off without any give. Looks like I couldn''t cheat a building material from it. I would have to bring in anything that I needed to build here. "What is this place?" Chantelle asked. "That is obviously a portal, but the magic is really weird. And my magic doesn''t work here." "This is another one of my powers, I can create doorways into a space that is outside of the world." I said. "It has different rules than your world, which includes no magic, and I can do some things here that aren''t possible out there." A large crack sounded from through the doorway. The Forest Keepers were breaking through the stone barrier I had placed over the stairs. I repaired and reinforced the barrier, then moved the rest of the wood into the Pocket Dimension. Having a source of stone available would be nice, so I started cutting the stone of the tower into chunks that would fit through the doorway. I could push my power through the doorway fine, which turned out to be important when I came to pull the doorway down. I could soak my power into the stone of the doorway fine, but I couldn''t make any changes to it from inside the Pocket Dimension. After a minute of panic, trying to push, pull, and heat the doorway, I pushed my power into the wall of the tower that held the doorway and split it in half. The doorway closed with a flash of light, and the doorframe to the tower disappeared. It was a bit warm in the Pocket Dimension to be wearing a cloak, and the fire I had started to give us light to see by was making it warmer, but I just reversed the trick I had been using to keep warm and pushed my excess heat into my orb. It wouldn''t be enough heat to do anything useful, but I could be comfortable no matter the ambient temperature. I looked over to Chantelle to see her swing her backpack to the floor next to the stockpile of stone I''d made, her snow shoes clipped on to them. Her gloves joined them, being pulled off by the fingertips. Her cloak was next, unclasping the catch at her throat, she took it off with a twirl revealing her braided brown hair falling down to her waist. She carefully folded her cloak and placed it on the waist high pile of stone. She wasn''t looking at me, but I could feel her amusement at teasing me. She could obviously feel my attention riveted to her. She unbuttoned her overcoat, pushing her breasts out when she slowly slid it down her arms, it got folded neatly and placed on top of the cloak. My heart nearly skipped a beat when she pulled her thick woollen dress over her head, but she was wearing a light dress underneath it. She bent over at the waist and started unlacing her boots, giving me a view of her breasts down the top of her dress. They swayed and jiggled enticingly as she took her boots off, staying bent over. She fumbled them as I felt myself stiffen. She looked into my eyes for the first time since starting her strip tease, and I could feel her warring desires, one to continue teasing and the other to have me completely. Teasing won out, barely, and despite wanting to throw her down and ravish her I let her set the pace. Her need for me was pushing my desperate need for her, which was flowing back to her. The feedback over the Chosen Person connection overwhelmed every other consideration.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. She inched her dress up over her knees, her thighs, her knickers, and I nearly lost control and pounced on her as I saw the wet spot on the front of the green silk. Her dress came off in a rush after that, revealing a green silk breastband that I barely noticed as I pulled my robe over my head, cutting through my cloak when it got caught. Chantelle pounced on me as I got through my clothes, pushing me onto my back hard and straddling my hips. She had removed her knickers, and I sprang to attention as she pulled my underwear down. She bit her lip and felt a twinge of nervousness. I ran my hands up the outside of her thighs, grabbing her butt. Her nervousness was washed away by a flood of desire, and I pulled her toward me. I could feel her wet heat as she slid along me, pressing my member into my stomach. She raised her hips, took hold of my member gently with her hand, and lowered herself until I was just against her entrance. A drop of her wetness slid down my member, and I pushed up slightly against her. All at once she dropped down, burying my full length inside her. A flash of pain and discomfort from her distracted me from the feeling of her gripping me tightly. She shook her head at my concern and rotated her hips. The rush of pleasure, from me and her, muted the pain. She raised up off of me, and I could feel her discomfort as she could feel my pleasure. She slammed back down onto me, and the pain was less. She felt a spike of nearly overwhelming pleasure when I was fully inside her, and she started rotating her hips, grinding against me, sending more spikes of pleasure through the connection. I came deep inside her, which set off her own orgasm, which made me come harder both from her gripping me and from being able to feel her orgasm. It kept building higher until I passed out. I woke to find Chantelle laying on me passed out still straddling my hips. Her breasts pushed against my chest through her breastband. And I was still rock hard inside her. We hadn''t lasted very long. I pushed my power into my member, and found that I could push it slightly into Chantelle, too. I could feel hot spots with my power, one above her entrance and one along the roof of her entrance. I pushed my power out and surrounded her, looking for more. Breasts in general, nipples, inner thighs, behind her jaw below her ears, her stomach in general, the lips around her entrance, and another one deeper inside her. There were others, but those were the major ones. I pushed with my power against the hot spot above her entrance, which looked to be the hottest one, and Chantelle felt a familiar spike of pleasure and let out a moan. So that''s what that had been. Chantelle woke with a start, and a hard squeeze on my member, as I stimulated as many hot spots as I could manage, which was about five. Both nipples, the one above her entrance, the one a little way inside her entrance, and the one deep inside her. "What.. Oh.." Chantelle said, letting out a grunt as she had a short hard orgasm and my power was able to sink a tiny bit further into her. She was twitching her hips as she came down and I felt myself close to coming as well. Reaching inside myself to stop that meant I had to give up one of Chantelle''s hot spots, the one deepest inside her. "What was that?" She asked. "I can use the power that lets me manipulate things on you now." I said. "I can feel where your hot spots are, and stimulate them directly." She got a far away look in her eyes as I gently stimulated them in turn, each side of her jaw, her breasts. Stimulating her nipples, even gently, caused her to have another mini-orgasm. I moved on to her stomach hot spot, then skipped to her inner thighs before moving back up to her lips. I hit the last three in quick succession, as even stimulating them as gently as I could it still set her off hard. And I had to stop myself coming, too. "I can feel you stopping yourself." She said, still shaking and contracting around me. "Why?" "I would only be able to focus on one of your hot spots, maybe, if I were coming too." I said. "Plus when we both orgasm they bounce off each other and get larger and larger until we pass out." She bit her lip. "I want to feel you come inside me again." She said, reaching up and unwrapping her breastband. I released the block on my orgasm, and she started riding up and down on me. I focused on the hot spot inside her entrance and thrust up to meet her coming down. She exploded in orgasm, squirting all over me, which triggered my orgasm, squirting deep inside her. And it just kept going. I woke in exactly the same position as last time, with Chantelle passed out, her bare breasts against my chest. I gently rolled us onto our side and pulled out of her. Her eyes fluttered when I kissed her, but they stayed closed. I ran my fingers down my stomach where she had squirted, it was slippery and definitely not pee. Looking down at her I noticed my come leaking out of her entrance, over her thigh, and onto the ground. I had come a lot. I eased her onto her back and went down between her legs to lick her clean. She woke to another orgasm with my tongue inside her. Chapter 14 - Treaty "Wow. I can see what all of the fuss is about." Chantelle said. "Though the feedback of our connection drives out everything else that is important. We should go, you need to make your preparations and we need to save my people." She was right. Mind blowing orgasms were nice, but with the world coming to an end we needed to protect ourselves. Though more immediate concerns were food and a bath. A bath would be wonderful. I was pretty sure I had bruises on my back. We both got dressed and I finished carving the Pocked Dimension doorway symbols into the only remaining doorway. I closed my eyes for the connecting flash and stepped through into my shelter. It was just as I''d left it, and I quickly lit the oil lanterns. Heading up the stairs I unsealed the entrance and stepped out into the cold. It was light outside again, and I could see the clearing had been trampled, my bonfire scattered around the place very thoroughly. Some of the half burned logs were encased in ice. I cleared out the fire pit and set about building a new bonfire, and also getting a fish from the frozen stream. I cooked up the fish and used the energy of the bonfire to duplicate Chantelle''s muffin and we sat down for a nice breakfast at the edge of the platform. I was idly shuffling snow around when I found a letter at the bottom of the shelter''s door. It was paper, folded over and sealed with wax, the image of a tree pressed into it. Opening it up I found a language I couldn''t read, and showing it to Chantelle she couldn''t read it either. I really need to set up my Artificial Intelligence. One of the advanced features I had within my knowledge of AIs is accelerated language learning, though I''m not sure if there is enough of a sample size for it to be able to guess at the contents of the letter. "My next immediate project is building a bath downstairs." I told Chantelle. "I like the way you smell, but we''re a bit sticky. Is there anything you need?" "A bath sounds wonderful." She said. "Other than that, a warding room, if we''re staying a while? I don''t have a mana crystal big enough to serve as a consistent power source, but I can work around that. Somewhere central, so the wards have good coverage." A room next to the entrance room, then, on the opposite side of the bonfire. A bath, a warding room, and a private room for Chantelle. A bath was up first, so I went downstairs to carve out a new hallway and room. I added them in the opposite direction to my Pocket Dimension hallway, leaving the wall opposite where the stairs came out to expand later. I sank the bath into the floor with stairs down into it and a seat around the edge, oil lamps lit the area well. I didn''t have any way to add running water, so I filled it with snow and melted it to a steaming temperature. I went to get Chantelle, and we stripped off and sank into the water. We behaved ourselves, though it was very tempting running my hands over her to scrub her back. I had work to do. After I was clean I reheated the water to let Chantelle soak and headed upstairs to build her warding room. I didn''t quite have enough left over stone from the bath project, so I cut out two rooms downstairs on either side of the bathroom hallway to serve as our private rooms. Back upstairs I made a doorway out of the entrance room and built the warding room. A four meter by four meter room with a stone table in the center. I could excavate or build rooms and fixtures as easily as moving furniture, though I did have to stop and build up a fresh bonfire to charge my orb every so often. If Chantelle needed anything specific for the warding room she could let me know. I went to tell her that it was ready for her. She had washed her clothing and spread it out over the floor of one of the side rooms to dry, so I made some stone stands for them and heated them up. She had changed into a spare dress that was in her backpack. She went to prepare wards for the clearing, the Forest Keeper ward being the most pressing, and I settled down to work on my AI.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. The first thing I needed for the AI was metal. Something conductive like copper or gold, and something I could magnetise like iron. If I pushed my power into the bedrock below me and focused it into a beam rather than let it spread out I could extend my power much further. The narrower the beam the further I could push, and with a thin strand of power the furthest I could reach was about fifty meters. Although it took some time and effort to move the entire beam, and I couldn''t make my power do anything at that distance, I now had a way to scan for metals. I had found a vein of copper and was still looking for iron when Chantelle shook me. "You need to come up to the clearing." She said. "I can''t keep the Forest Keeper ward on, and have been turning it on as I''ve recovered mana, and there are lights in the trees at the edge of the clearing outside the ward''s range." I went upstairs to find that it was night again. My bonfire had burned down and provided little light. There was a cool blue-white light coming from the top of trees further into the forest directly opposite the stairs and entry to my shelter. I lit the oil lamps at the nearest two corners of my building and immediately there was hooting from the forest. The blue-white light moved to the forest floor and approached. As it came out from behind the trees I saw that it was coming from the top of a staff held by a Forest Keeper, who had two others with it that were holding spears. "Greetings, human." The one with the staff said from just within the clearing. "You called for a meeting?" I looked at Chantelle who shrugged and shook her head. Well, if it was going to be polite then I would too. "Greetings, keeper." I said. "I don''t believe I called for a meeting, but you are welcome in my clearing if you come in peace." It cocked its head to the side, then nodded. It gestured to the other two to stay, and walked towards us. I formed three seats and a table out of stone as it approached, two seats on our side and one on its. It looked distastefully at the chair I had made for it, and then stood to the side. Right, they were at home up in trees, and having a tail would make chairs uncomfortable at best. I reshaped its chair into a pair of horizontal stone cylinders with vertical supports, one that would put it at sitting height if it stood on it and sat in a squat, and the other in easy hand reach above. The Forest Keeper looked at it in surprise, considered it for a moment, and then settled onto it. "My thanks, human." It said. "You are the first human to have changed a meeting roost to accommodate us. I am called Mal''Thorn, and I speak for the Forest Keepers of this forest." Mal''Thorn looked at me expectantly. Uh... I still hadn''t picked a name. "My name is C.C." I said, using the first thing that occurred to me. I wasn''t sure what the customs were with the Forest Keepers, and I wasn''t going to claim to be representing anyone, so I waited for Mal''Thorn to continue. "You have been toggling your claim off and on all day, which is the arranged signal calling for a meeting." Mal''Thorn said. "How is it that you know how to make a claim, but do not know the conditions that accompany it?" Chantelle was confused and obviously had no idea what conditions Mal''Thorn was talking about. The Forest Keeper ward was obviously a way to claim an area of the forest. "I am new here." I said. "I was under the impression that we were warding the clearing against your people. You attacked us not far from here." "Ah, so your companion is a young Warder." Mal''Thorn said. "She has mistaken the purpose of the ward. For the area under the ward you take responsibility for the Forest, ensuring that no fire burns out of control. We have allowed humans an amount of area within the Forest, and with the claim failing for their village it was permissible for you to set up a claim here with the same signature." "We didn''t attack you." Mal''Thorn continued. "Obviously it was you who built the tower. My people were seeking to detain you until I could discuss with you about your setting fires in the forest outside of areas that were claimed. There should have been a letter left for you." I got out the letter from within my cloak and pushed it over the table to him. "We found it today." I said. "We couldn''t read it." "Ah. My mistake, then." Mal''Thorn said. "I assumed anyone who would settle within the Forest would know our language. Keeping a fire burning without endangering the Forest is one way to open treaty talks with us. Which is what I am here for now. Upon consideration I do not believe the existing treaty with the humans of the village covers you. Do you wish to form a treaty with us? If not, you will be asked to leave the forest." "What are the terms of the treaty?" I asked. "You will be given a ward that will claim an area one kilometer to a side." Mal''Thorn said. "Within that area you must ensure that no tree burns out of control and that no more than one tree in ten will be cut down without being replaced with new saplings." "That sounds simple enough." I said. "I agree to the treaty." Chapter 15 - Computer Mal''Thorn left, taking his Forest Keepers with him. Chantelle was studying the mana crystal that he left that had the claiming ward attached to it. It was rectangular with points at the top and the bottom, a blue colour, and projected a shimmer from inside it. "I think I can add a detection ward to this." She said. "I can tie it in to cover the same area as the Forest Keeper ward. It would give us advanced warning of anything entering your territory." I had territory now, apparently. "Go ahead." I said. "I''ll be working on my preparations. Do you need anything before I go?" "Just a stand for the mana crystal in the warding room." She said. I set that up for her and then went down stairs to carve out a large room, storing the excess stone outside. I wasn''t comfortable leaving the door open while I was working further away, so I sealed it after clearing enough space. I would need to open and shut it to go to recharge my orb, but Chantelle would be much safer. The new room would be where I stored all of the stone and debris from digging out the copper I had found. With no more distractions I should be able to get my Artificial Intelligence started. I pushed my power back into the stone, focusing it narrowly and reaching back to where I''d found the copper. Forty meters away, and almost directly down. I dug a narrow stairway downwards in a spiral, each step a half meter drop, quartering the stone to get it back up into my storage area. It only took a few minutes to dig my way down to the copper. Reaching out to touch the vein I pushed heat into it until it started to melt, then soaked my power into it and walked it up to the storage room as a liquid. I was able to extract almost pure copper from the vein that way, and I got most of the energy back when I cooled it into a block. I ended up with five hundred kilograms of copper before moving on to search for iron, and there was still plenty left in the copper vein. It took me some time to find the iron I needed, it was right at the edge of my range and in the opposite direction to where I had started searching. I excavated over to it and smelted fifty kilograms. That, along with the dirt that was everywhere on the surface, is all I needed to start building the hardware platform for my AI. I moved everything I needed into my Pocket Dimension, including some oil lamps for light. I couldn''t control my Matter Manipulation power finely enough to create integrated circuits out of silicon, but with computer assistance I should be able to. I would need to bootstrap the first generation of processing power from vacuum tubes. I melted sand into glass, copper into wire, manipulated it into the right form, extracted the air from within the glass tube, and then sealed it to form a diode. Four diodes wired into an AC to DC converter, and I just needed an AC generator to have electricity. I formed my iron into a primitive flywheel and magnetised sections of it, adding coils to the outside gave me my generator. I would have to come and spin it every so often, but as a first step it was adequate. Now all that remained was to make NAND gates from vacuum tubes, which was only a slight variation on diodes from vacuum tubes. Wire them up in the right way and you have the full range of Boolean logic, the most basic building block that computers are built upon. Thousands of them to do anything useful, trillions or more to get to the level of AI. NAND gates could also be used to build the other essential piece of computers, persistent memory. It took me a couple of hours building vacuum tubes before I got to the point of a very basic computer. I quickly found that I could duplicate vacuum tubes using my power, and so long as I used the same materials it was made from as a source it cost a small enough amount of energy that it was worth doing. I still had some copper left by the time I had the computer to the point of being able to run binary code, but continued making vacuum tubes until I was completely out. Then I wired the computer up to the large input and output connections on the Mind Link box in the Pocket Dimension. There were finer connections that could be made, but they were outside of my capabilities at the moment.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. After I hooked the Mink Link up I used my power to spin up the iron flywheel. I had power. I felt an odd itch in my mind as the Mind Link firmware adjusted to the connection, and then I had access. I could write binary code and store it in the persistent memory and have the computer run it and return me the result. All without having to deal with creating input or output devices. Equally as important, I could provide basic inputs from my senses as inputs to the code. I suddenly had a way to precisely measure the energy in my orb. I quickly wrote a program that would record the differences in energy level, ran it once to get an initial value, then got a piece of wood and set it on fire. That would be a measure of one unit of energy. My orb held fifteen thousand, four hundred, and twenty three units of energy. I went and built up the bonfire outside to the same size as I usually did. It took around two hundred energy to cut down a tree, and it varied a little for each tree. Burning the bonfire down to ash gave me twenty thousand units of energy. I went back into my Pocket Dimension to spin up the flywheel again, the power had run out while I was testing how much energy different things took to do. That done, I sat down to write more code. I spent the next several hours working out how to feed back into my senses from programs, specifically my Matter Manipulation power, as that is what is limiting my ability to make integrated circuits. I kept coming up against memory limits. Four thousand and ninety six bytes, with eight bits per byte, is tiny when compared to the quality of system needed to run Artificial Intelligence, but when you have to build each of the four individual vacuum tubes for each bit it''s enormous. I needed about twice the memory to get the finesse of control I needed before I could progress to the next stage. I went back down to the copper vein, but before melting the copper and taking it back upstairs I tested the program I had been working on. I pushed my power into the stone in a beam and got to my limited range of fifty meters, then controlled the program I''d written to control the finer aspects of my power. My range extended out to two hundred meters, and moving the beam around was a simple matter of changing the inputs into the program in small increments. I found more copper, iron, gold, and other metals. And some formations of crystals and gems. I cut out a slope following the copper vein to give me closer access and tested out a variation of the program. I could narrow the edge that I was cutting, which gave a polished cut, and took less energy to do. I couldn''t think of any shortcuts to do with moving stone around, but that was fairly cheap to do. I melted out another five hundred kilograms of copper and went back to making vacuum tubes in my Pocket Dimension, focusing entirely on expanding the amount of memory I had available. Every half hour I switched between building vacuum tubes and making refinements to the code, expanding it to use the available memory. I fell asleep after the fourth hour and had odd dreams about coding. I woke up an unknown time later and went to check on Chantelle. I found her sleeping in the warding room, her things spread around the room and a large book that must have taken up most of the space in her backpack resting on the table. She was using her cloak and overcoat as a bed and her backpack as a pillow. I needed to make proper beds, and soon. I warmed the room up for her by pushing heat into the stone and went back to my Pocket Dimension to get back to work. I almost had it, but I had run out of copper again. Another load, and I was back to alternating expanding the memory and tweaking the code again. A little over an hour later I made a breakthrough in a coding session. I could now sense, at the very limit of my abilities, individual atoms. I couldn''t manipulate things at that level, but I didn''t need to. I set about purifying some silicon from dirt by pushing around chunks of atoms, not worrying about their structure. Once I had enough silicon I made a memory chip, which was a simple repeating pattern with a change every so often. Then I had to make a processing chip, as my vacuum tube processing setup design would only be able to access a tiny fraction of the memory available. The processing chip was more complicated, but I managed to get it done too. Now the moment of truth, I built a circuit to connect the two chips together, to power, and finally to the Mind Link over the much finer connections. There was an odd itch in my mind again as the Mind Link adjusted, much more intense than before, and then I had access to the new system. My mind boggled at the sheer size and speed I had access to. Compared to my vacuum tube system it was millions of times faster and also had millions of times the memory. None of the code I''d already written would run on it, but now I could start on the real Artificial Intelligence. Chantelle had come into my Pocket Dimension while I was distracted. "C.C." She said, getting my attention. "The detection ward went off. There are humans and Arachne headed this way." Chapter 16 - An Attack I spun up the flywheel to its maximum speed before we headed up to the warding room. I really needed to make a battery of some kind... In the warding room Chantelle had cleared off the table and when we entered she did something and a holographic projection sprung up from it. Half of the table was a blue outline of my claimed territory, with models of trees ten centimeters high, my clearing in the middle. There was a red dot just in from the edge closest to Chantelle''s village, and it was moving towards the clearing. The other half of the table was a close up view of the detected group. There were two humans and one Arachne, though the display wasn''t clear enough to see details. "I set up the detection ward to trigger an alert when anything larger than half a human entered your land." Chantelle said. "I came to get you as soon as it went off." I nodded. It looked like it would take them five minutes to reach the clearing at the speed they were going. I could feel Chantelle''s worry, as these were very likely the same people who had attacked her village. "I''m almost prepared for them." I said. "I should be able to set something up before they get here." I only had time to set up one program, maybe. And there wouldn''t be any time for testing or debugging, so I would have to translate one of my existing programs. I decided to go with the one that measured and manipulated heat, as the enemy was probably winter priests and I would expect them to use some sort of cold effect to attack. "How is land divided up here?" I asked Chantelle to distract her from her worrying. "In many parts of the land there are caretakers, like the Forest Keepers for the forest." She said. "They have magics that are specific to their area that makes it unwise to attack them. I thought that humans had wards that kept them away from where we settled, but that is obviously not right. It''s possible that all caretakers give out claims of land to those who can uphold whatever terms they require." "And humans?" I asked. "Kingdoms, empires, what sort of governments are there here?" "My village was independent, my mother was the highest leader." She said. "We held our land through the power of our wards. Other villages align themselves with one god or the other, summer or winter, and use their power to keep the land. They would make up the only kingdom, led by the gods themselves through their priests." "So if you can claim land, and have the strength to hold it, you can start your own country?" I asked. She nodded. "That''s what you did. You have to be a lord to sign a treaty, after all." She said. The humans and Arachne had arrived near the edge of the clearing and had stopped. "Stay here." I said to Chantelle. "I want you to be safe behind the walls." I went out through the entrance room and shut the heavy stone door behind me. There was no reaction from them, so I cleared off the ever-present snow and sat down on the stairs that led down from the platform leading to my door. I was happy to wait, I could work on my code. Not having any memory constraints was great, I could write things out longhand, which meant there were less mistakes. The heat sensing and manipulation that I had worked on as Chantelle was explaining how land ownership worked was about as good as I could get it without hours to tinker with it. An interesting thought I''d had was to use my power as a sort of shield. If I soaked my power into, stone, say, and spread out any force that hit it over its entire area, and anchored into the ground, I should be able to reinforce my structures against attack. The Forest Keepers hadn''t seemed to have much trouble breaking a hole in the tower I had made, after all, so stone wasn''t as secure as I''d thought. I tinkered with the code for fifteen minutes or so, and ended up with a rather good effect. I moved some stone from my stockpile to be nearby. Chantelle would have felt more than the low level of concern if they had moved, so they were still in the same place. Let''s move this along.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. "You know I know you''re there, right?" I said loudly towards them. They walked out of the trees and stopped ten meters away from me. The humans, both male, were wearing very fancy blue robes, with bright blue embroidery, and carried staffs that looked to be carved from ice. One had a badge made of ice pinned to his robe. Very wintery. The Arachne, female, was wearing a black shirt, and was several meters behind the humans. It occurred to me idly that I hadn''t seen a male Arachne. "We are here to arrest Chantelle Warder, heir to the Warder clan, on the charge of sedition." The human with the ice badge said. "We have tracked her here. Hand her over." Tracked? Unlikely, as we''d used my Pocket Dimension. Ah, maybe they had tracking spells. "I am C.C., lord of this part of the Forest." I said, placing the same emphasis on Forest as Mal''Thorn did. "The Warder clan controlled their part of the Forest and owed no allegiance to your god, there could be no sedition. What has happened to them?" Badge man sneered at me. "The great God of Winter has claimed all lands. The people of that insignificant village defied him, so they have been arrested and taken to the Fortress of the Gods. Or killed resisting arrest." "Your god has declared war on the whole world?" I said. "I can see where you get your arrogance from." I shook my head. "This is my land." I said. "Your god has no claim here." "Then we will kill you and take the girl." Badge man said. I raised my right hand, facing my palm towards them. My left hand, holding my orb, went behind me. I settled into a fighting stance and waited for them. It was a bluff, I still had no idea how to fight. And I had left my stone sword inside. Thankfully, the two humans turned to face the Arachne and all three of them started chanting. The snow behind them started to raise up, forming into a sheet of ice ten meters wide, two meters long, and ten centimeters tall. This must have been what they were preparing in the forest. A bit bigger than I was expecting, but it was at least the same type of attack as I had prepared for. The Arachne kept looking at me like she was expecting me to interrupt them. I wanted a display of force to make them go away, and countering their spell head on would be perfect for that. So I let them continue their chanting with an obvious look of patience. I couldn''t push heat effectively this far away from the ice sheet, but I could push my passive sense that far. My power met a wall around the ice that I couldn''t push through. I couldn''t affect things with an active spell on them? I walked up my stairs to place myself between their attack and my building, directly in the center. Their chanting continued, and the ice sheet continued to get thicker. It must be some sort of siege spell. I was getting a little bit concerned that I didn''t have enough energy in my orb to counter so much ice. "Okay, this is getting ridiculous." I said. "I was going to counter your attack and send you on your way, but if you''re going to stand there chanting indefinitely I''ll just kill you and be done with it. If you can''t end it with that much preparation, you can''t end it." With a shout all three of them fell to the ground and the ice shot forward. I pulled a slab of stone in front of me as a shield. I would take most of the force of the attack, but the rest would still hit my building. I pushed my power into the stone wall of my building and my shield. As the sheet of ice hit my shield I superheated the forty centimeter tall section that it hit, instantly turning the ice into vapour and shattering their spell into pieces in two halves. I heated the outer layer of the wall where the ice would hit and the remainder of the ice exploded into steam. I had to reinforce the stone to withstand it, and it slammed me into my shield. Some quick adjustments, pushing the heat from the steam touching me into my orb, stopped the superheated steam from scalding me. Ow. That could have gone better. I wasn''t visibly hurt, though, which was enough. I soaked my power through the steam and shoved it upwards. It wasn''t terribly effective, as I didn''t have anything to shove against, but the steam wanted to rise and after a few moments I could see the clearing again. The two humans were sprawled on the ground, and the Arachne was flopped behind them, her front spider legs damaged. All three were conscious, though. "Get off my land." I said to them. "You don''t have the power to take me. I will take any further provocation as a declaration of war and kill you." Badge man laughed, though it was weak. His badge had melted, and his face was red. "Our God was right, you won''t attack first. We were just a probe, to see what you would do. Our God wants Chantelle Warder, and you can''t stop him. He will send as many as he needs to take her." Well, that is interesting. I don''t know where they got the impression that I wouldn''t attack. True, I had been doing a lot of running away, but that was more because I was so completely outmatched. Now that I was on my way to having my Artificial Intelligence set up I would be much better set up to fight. "Go." I said. "Your god is wrong. I won''t tell you to leave a third time." Badge man sneered at me again, but helped the other man up and left without a word. They didn''t offer any assistance to the Arachne, who hobbled after them on six legs. It looks as though I would need to increase my defences. And work on my combat potential. Chapter 17 - Augmented Reality I went back inside to watch the winter people leave on the detection ward display. "They were here for you." I told Chantelle. "Apparently the winter god wants you specifically, and will be sending more people. The good news is that they have at least some of your people at the Fortress of the Gods." "I''ve heard of it." Chantelle said. "It''s a city fortress in the mountains to the north. I don''t know where it is though. If we are to be attacked frequently I need to set up some more wards. Though I don''t have the mana crystals to tie them to... I don''t regenerate enough mana to run extensive wards even if I had the crystals, just keeping the claim ward and detection ward running is taking most of my mana." She paused in thought for a moment, then lifted her warding book onto the table, dismissing the detection ward display. "I could build a cycling ward..." She said, mostly to herself while flipping through the book. "I''m going to go back to working on my preparations." I said. "I''ll think on the mana and mana crystal problem." She looked up and smiled at me, but I could see she was focused elsewhere. Back in my Pocket Dimension I span the flywheel back up to speed. I was almost to the point of solving my electricity generation problem properly. But I was right on the edge of having AI augmented senses, which would help with most of the problems I was having. I took a moment to look out over the field of vacuum tubes I had set up, every one was glowing with an orange light, and there were tens of thousands of them. I disconnected the power line to them and watched as they faded to darkness. The next half hour I spent recoding my program that allowed me to shape things at an atomic level, and with the memory and processing capabilities of the new chip I was able to manipulate individual atoms and sense subatomically. Which allowed my third generation of hardware. I had gone from vacuum tubes to the very limits of silicon integrated circuits in only three steps, and I could now start building the platform for true Artificial Intelligence. I built the first chips, one for processing and one for memory, manually, and then duplicated the chips until I had a dozen of each. I could now see what the duplication aspect of my power was doing, where I moved atoms to match a pattern, it dissolved everything into subatomic parts and reassembled them into new atoms at the right place. Until now I had been writing code directly in the machine language of the chips I had created, but with multiple processing chips that became even less ideal. My next step was writing a compiler, and then a virtualisation layer over the distributed chips. Which all meant that I could now write higher level programs, and that I could expand with more processing and memory without having to change how the programs were written each time. There wasn''t any limit to the processing speed that my AI could have. Most companion AI, which was the direction I was going, needed to be limited in their physical size so that they could be implanted into the user. My Pocket Dimension, with its Mind Link, and my AI knowledge that included everything about Mind Links too, both together came to a threat of eight and a half million. That was only half a million threat short of Matter Manipulation''s nine million, and it wasn''t counting the total threat from the interaction of the two powers. The AI I could build was judged to be more of a threat than the Matter Manipulation power, which is completely overpowered. I was surprised that I remembered the figures so exactly. My fifth power, being able to remember my existence, apparently gave me an eidetic memory, but I had to think about what I wanted to remember to recall it. With the hardware platform finally at the point where it could start to support a proper Artificial Intelligence I started hooking it up fully to the Mind Link. Input and output to my visual system gave me augmented vision, able to overlay rendered objects into the real world. I wrote an adaptive program that constantly took the input from my vision, and I could now measure distances, areas, and speeds and write the feedback directly onto the things I was measuring.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. I hooked up the rest of my senses, and wrote their own adaptive programs. The interesting one, almost as useful as the one tied into my vision, was the one for my sense of touch. I expanded it to include all of my body sense, and the output side of it could lock my muscles. I could now touch the objects I rendered. They had a weight, and the wall I created, virtually, stopped me from walking through it. It wasn''t exactly like walking into a wall, my nose didn''t flatten. But the pain was very accurate. I created a ball of stone and a virtual copy of it, and alternated throwing one and then the other. There were some glitches early on, but the adaptive program soon started mimicking the real physics of the world. The next step was an adaptive fighting program. I had it learn my full range of motion, bending and stretching to my limits, and then had it create a virtual copy of myself. I designated the copy as an opponent and it coloured orange with highlights at predicted weak points. A transparent red bubble showed its immediate reach, a blur of how each limb could move. Sending an attack input into the program, I got a blue outline of proposed ways to attack. Moving at half speed I threw a punch at my copy, which blocked with a forearm and sent a kick at me. The outline I was following disappeared, and then the kick landed. I stopped the fight to think. The ideal simulated move was probably to step backwards, and my visual system couldn''t see the outline move behind me. I spent an hour figuring out how to tap into the planning part of my mind through the Mind Link. With that done, and the input and output of the adaptive fighting program linked to it, I resummoned my virtual copy. Sending an attack input into the program, this time I was given a list of choices as to what I wanted to do. There were multiple weightings, like avoiding pain, avoiding damage, and safety margin. There were also end goals, like disabling the opponent, killing them, assessing them, or fleeing. It felt incredibly natural, and it took no time for me to decide to disable the copy. A plan to do that was given to me, both in the immediate action needed to progress the plan and what the end result would be. Moving at full speed, I stepped forward and threw a punch at the copy. It blocked with its forearm, and moved to kick me. I stepped back and around the momentum of the kick, pushing the copy''s leg as it went past, and stepped up behind it to get it in a choke. The fighting program registered that as a success and I stopped the fight. Hand to hand combat was all well and good against human opponents, but I wouldn''t want to try it against Arachne or ice spiders. I had my stone sword in my entranceway, but I''d gained access to metals since then and decided to upgrade. I melted down some iron and formed it into a sword. Diamond was just carbon in a strong structure, and with my new manipulation abilities I gave the sword a diamond edge. Narrowing the edge to be one atom thick and come out in a wedge to the rest of the blade was excessive, but I wanted to see if I could make a blade that would cut through anything. My first attempt I swung it at a slab of stone, and it sank in a few centimeters before getting stuck. I also blunted the edge of the blade. Reshaping it and trying again, this time with my power reinforcing the blade, it got ten centimeters in before getting stuck again. The blade stayed perfectly sharp, it was the width of the main part of the blade that was stopping it. A blade that could cut through stone should be good enough to cut through anything I was going to use it on, so I called it good enough. I designed an opponent in the fighting program based upon my memory of the ice spider I had seen, and another based upon the Arachne. I went up to the clearing and it was light enough to see, so I summoned up a horde of virtual ice spiders. I wanted to see how many I could fight at once, so I started with one, and added one each time I won. They moved extremely fast, matching my memory of them, but I could handle three of them without getting hurt. Adding the fourth I could win about half the time, and I usually took them all out. A fifth and I struggled to take out two before I died. I couldn''t take them on open terrain, and that was without any tricks that they were sure to have. I would have to come up with tricks of my own if I were ever forced to fight them, something to even the numbers. Chantelle burst out laughing. "What are you doing?" She asked. I realised it probably did look funny, running around the clearing waving my sword around. "I''m practising my fighting." I said. "Or testing it, rather. I think I''ve probably done as much as I can with it, I''d need more information about what I was going to be fighting to do much more." Personal combat, done. Next up, solving my energy problems. I still needed to cut down trees for a bonfire every few hours, but now that I can use my power on atoms, and sense things sub-atomically, I should be able to build something better. Chapter 18 - Energy Back in my Pocket Dimension it was dark. There was some light coming through the doorway from the oil lamps in my shelter, but with the vacuum tubes off and the fire out I couldn''t really see. I had electricity now, and the vacuum tubes were part of the way to being an incandescent globe, I just had to refine how it worked. Some clear glass, a carbon filament, and then running electricity through it, and I had a light. I set a few lights on stands and made myself a worktable and chair out of stone. Much better. I knew there was a more efficient way of lighting, with diodes, but I only knew of them generally, I had no idea how they actually worked. Which brought me to a problem. The first power I chose in setting up gave me a broad view of a lot of concepts, but didn''t give me the specifics. I knew about nuclear fusion and fission reactors, for example, but I couldn''t just make one. Even if I did have the ability to manufacture things to an atom perfect degree, I had no idea where to start on designing a machine to do it. The duplication aspect of my power is a shortcut to something I should be able to achieve manually now. I wrote a dedicated program that could manipulate things subatomically, and then used it to record what was happening at a fine level when I duplicated something. Playing it back slowed down, I focused on a very narrow area, a few dozen atoms. I created a visual representation of what was happening and suddenly there were orbs everywhere varying in size from five centimeters to fifty centimeters wide, some of their edges touching to form chains of atoms. I stepped through the recording slowly. First the orbs separated, breaking the chains. Then they dissolved into smaller orbs about one centimeter wide, atoms splitting into subatomic parts. I couldn''t make much sense of it, as I was standing in the middle of a sea of mostly uniform orbs. Playing it forward the small orbs started clustering together and then reformed into larger orbs. The larger orbs reformed into chains, and that was it, the recording finished. I played it backwards, paying close attention to when the orbs formed from the smaller orbs. There. One of the smaller orbs appeared from nowhere. Playing it forward again, slower, I watched the smaller orb split into even smaller parts and then explode into energy which was redirected by my power to form the bonds in the larger orb. My power was splitting atoms into pieces, and then splitting those pieces directly into energy to form the rest of the pieces back into atoms. It used a lot of energy from me, but it was still getting most of its energy from eating a small amount of the matter of the material it was duplicating from. Being able to see what was happening, at human scale, was very helpful. I got a grain of sand and made a virtual copy of it, syncing the two together so that anything that happened to the real one showed on the virtual copy. I then zoomed in with the virtual sand. It went from being a speck, to a boulder, to a wall. The wall grew and grew until I couldn''t see the edges of it. I kept zooming in until I could see gaps in the wall. Finally I could see the lattice structure and individual atoms. I made an enquiry of the program I was using of how many atoms were in the grain of sand. Fifty quintillion or fifty million million million. Way too many to do anything manually that would have any noticeable affect. But I just wanted to test some things, I would write a program that did it at a mass scale automatically for any practical use. I singled out a single atom and disconnected it from the lattice, zooming in on just it. I let go of it with my power and it got sucked back in to the lattice. Interesting. Pulling it back out I forced my power into it and split it apart. I now had twenty eight little pieces and fourteen little zippy things that I hadn''t noticed when the duplication was doing it automatically. I let go of one of the little pieces to see what it would do, and all hell broke loose. It shot off and slammed into another atom. The half disintegrated little piece shot out an explosion of random energy in all directions. And several pieces shot out of the hit atom. Those pieces hit still more atoms. I locked my power down on the whole mess before it could explode and took a deep breath. That could have been bad.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. I collected all of the atoms that had been affected, disconnecting them from the lattice where they were still connected. I broke them down into their smaller pieces and ended up with hundreds of them in two types, and about half of that in zippy things. I singled out a single piece and wrapped my power more firmly around it. I was pulling the energy hard from it as I increased the pressure. In a flash it turned into energy. I pushed the energy into my orb, gaining about a tenth of a unit of energy. So I could get about five units of energy per atom in the atoms that made up the grain of sand. I converted the rest of the pieces I had, and ended up with an extra sixty thousand units of energy. The equivalent of three bonfires. I still had a lot of whatever the zippy things were, and I carefully let one go. It flew into the lattice of the sand but didn''t seem to do anything else. I released a few more and the same thing happened. Ah, these must be electrons. They wouldn''t cause any havoc, so I let the rest of them go and dismissed the virtual copy of the grain of sand. Energy problems solved, at least for me. I would need to come up with something to power the things in my Pocket Dimension more reliably. I had only lost power twice, when the flywheel spun all the way down, but I had to rewrite my programs from memory both times it happened. All of the memory chips I were using were fast, but they also required power to maintain their state. While I was thinking I made myself a staff of a mix of polished black and grey stone, iron, and copper. I fused my orb to the top of it. I didn''t need the orb anymore, as I could write a program that converted matter to energy as I needed it, but if my enemies thought I needed it I would have an advantage. And most of the other people I''d seen used them. What I really needed for my Pocket Dimension were batteries. I made two small blocks of copper and fused them on either side of a strip of glass. Zooming back in to the atomic scale I pushed an electron from one copper block across the glass to the other copper block. That should give it a voltage. I wrote a quick program that would do the same thing but to a lot of electrons at once and hooked up a light to the potential battery cell. No light, so no flow of electrons. I pushed all of the electrons I could manage across the glass gap, and the light lit up. Good enough. Now I just had to make batteries, and then battery banks, and I could drop how often I needed to recharge my Pocket Dimension as much as I liked. A week should do to begin with. I had just gotten started on that when my adaptive fighting program sent me a ping, requesting access to the program I was using to play with atoms. I had left the program running in the background to learn more about how I moved and how the world reacted. It isn''t an AI in the proper sense of the word, that would require it to have behavioural and personality code, which would lead to self-awareness. It did have the potential to get there, if I left it alone and gave it enough processing time, but I had other plans. I was interested in what it wanted to do, though, as it was unusual for it to initiate an interaction. I gave it permission to act on the atom program, rendering what it was doing so that I could see it. It jumped directly to a close zoom inside my body. Not to the intense zoom of atoms, but enough to see my cells. There were multiple paths of dead cells in straight lines through my body. And they were slowly growing outwards. Some of the cells were mutating. The program sent me another ping, this time requesting access to initiate collaborative planning. I accepted and saw what it wanted to do. It could heal the damage by reverting the cells to the way they had been, using other cells as templates. It wasn''t something I could do manually, but that was the reason I was writing programs. I gave the program my permission and immediately felt as though I had razor wire, dipped in acid, stabbing through me all over. I collapsed to the ground and curled into a ball, twitching. A subjective eternity later the pain stopped, disappearing as though it had never happened. Modifying my cells just made the top of the list of things I never wanted to do ever again. I was just getting back to my feet when Chantelle came running through the doorway and tackled me back to the ground. "What did you do? Are you okay? What happened? Don''t do it again. Are you okay?" She said in rapid fire, hugging me tightly and not giving me a chance to answer. "I''m fine." I said. "I had a small accident, and it was a bit painful to fix it, but I''m okay now. You felt it?" She nodded. "It felt like you were dying." She said. "It''s okay, I''m here, I''m fine." I said, stroking her hair. I used my new energy source to duplicate cloth into a soft mattress and some pillows. I picked her up and laid us both down on it. Tomorrow would be soon enough to think about building up our defences. I held her close as we both drifted off to sleep. Chapter 19 - Fortification It felt good to be in a proper bed, made better by the beautiful woman with me. With an attack potentially coming at any time though, I wanted to get started on building a proper fortification. Reluctantly I left Chantelle sleeping peacefully in the bed and headed upstairs to the clearing. It was dark outside, and I''d completely lost track of when the sun would be up. Lighting the lamps on the roof of my building gave me enough light to see the clearing. It was covered in snow over my head while I was standing on the platform around my building. Which would make it around four meters of snow over the whole area. I could melt it all and then turn the water to steam, which is how I''d done it in the past. But I had new methods available to me now. I sank my power into the snow, expanding it as far as I could. I found the limitation for passively having my power through a substance was limited by how much I could focus on, so I wrote a quick program that helped. I pushed my power back into the snow, covering all of the snow in the clearing. Learning from my experience with playing with atoms, I created a virtual model of what my power was doing, this time scaling it down instead of up. I tried moving the snow at the edge of the clearing forty meters away, and nothing happened. It felt as though my power was bleeding off no matter how much energy I pumped into it. Moving ten meters closer in I tried again, and again nothing happened. At twenty meters away from me the snow twitched slightly. It seemed energy loss over distance was a percentage of the energy I was trying to use, so there was a hard limit of one hundred percent loss at twenty meters away. The next program I wrote was to convert the frozen water into oxygen. I set it to converting the snow around me, and was immediately disappointed. Even after I increased the amount of processing it could use, the fastest it could go would take it weeks to clear the whole clearing of snow. It wouldn''t even keep up with the rate that new snow was falling. I still didn''t want to melt and evaporate the snow into fog... What I wanted was more air and less snow. I soaked my power into the air and snow right in front of me, the air being difficult to hold my power in, and duplicated the air with the snow as its source material. It took a lot of energy, but the snow quickly disappeared. Another program, and I could clear the snow to the ground from all around me to the edge of my range of twenty meters in minutes. Changing the shape of the area I was clearing to make a path in front of me roughly a meter wide I started walking forwards. I went from a walk to a jog to a sprint, and was able to keep a clear path in front of me the whole time. I couldn''t see where I was going, but I could see where I was on the model of the clearing I had made. I dropped back to a jog and did laps around the clearing until I had cleared out all of the snow. There was some tiredness from so heavily using my Matter Manipulation power, generating large amounts of energy and using that energy to remove the snow, but it was bearable. My model of the clearing was now accurate down to the surface layer of dirt, so I went back inside out of the falling snow to design the fortification I wanted to build. My Pocket Dimension space had the best lighting, and enough space to make the model as large as I wanted. Chantelle was still sleeping, so I left the lights dimmed and moved away into the emptiness of the dimensional space. Of course, if I was working with a rendered model in a space without any obstacles there was no need for light. I enlarged the model of the clearing to be half of the real size and started designing in walls. I wanted them to be really strong, able to withstand things like the siege spell that the winter priests had used against me. I didn''t get a good read of how much force was in the spell, I didn''t have a program written to measure force yet, but I had a good estimate based upon the size of the ice, which gave me its rough weight, and the speed it moved. Stone walls six or seven meters thick should be able to withstand it readily, less if I rearranged the lattice of atoms in the stone to be stronger.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! I made walls on the model going around the entire clearing, five meters in from the edge. It made a rectangle seventy meters by ninety meters. Making the walls ten meters thick, enough to withstand siege spells twice as powerful as the only example I''d seen, left an inner area of forty-eight hundred square meters. Raising the walls up forty five meters put them five meters above the top of the forest. "What are you working on?" Chantelle asked. "Designing walls to go around the clearing." I said. "I want a safe place to start building up a village." "You''re making them following the edge of the clearing?" She asked. "A straight edged box?" "That''s what it is looking like so far, yes." I said. "Why?" "The most efficient area for wards to cover is a dome." She said. "If you can build in any shape, why not match the surface of the wards with the surface of the walls?" "The wards are in a dome?" I asked. "Not a sphere? Could you make them cover a sphere instead?" "I can." She said. "It would take twice as much mana to run them... And I don''t have enough mana to run even a dome configuration to cover the whole clearing permanently." "Prepare the wards in a sphere." I said. "The next thing on my list, after building walls, is to work on the mana and mana crystal problems." She nodded and headed back up to the warding room. I cleared the walls I had been working on and made a sphere. It was much simpler to design, I placed a sphere at the center of the clearing, made the walls of the shell ten meters thick, and then simply expanded it to the size I wanted. I ended up with the outer edges of the sphere being one hundred meters apart, which extended the sphere ten meters into the forest on two sides. The peak of the sphere would be fifty meters above the ground, a nice ten meters above the top of the forest, and the slope would make climbing it difficult. Half of the sphere would be below the ground, and that was if I had the center of the sphere level with the surface of the ground. Moving the sphere down ten meters to line it up with bedrock, I had to extend the sphere ten meters to place the peak back above the top of the forest. Which extended the sphere twenty meters into the forest on two sides, and ten meters into the forest on the other two sides. I was happy with that. I added stairs on the outside of the sphere, a straight line from ground level to the height of the peak of the sphere, and then a walkway to reach the center. Stairs down from the peak inside the sphere gave me a single point to defend if we were attacked. I put in floors half a meter thick every five meters, twenty four floors total, and moved the warding room to be in the very center of the sphere. I went outside to start building. It was light enough to see, thankfully, so I headed into the forest to start clearing trees. I had the model of the fortress overlaid transparently over reality, so I cut down all of the trees that were within the walls. There were quite a few, but it didn''t take me long to cut them all down, cut them into pieces, and stack them outside of where the walls would be. Next I needed to move my existing building out of the central location so that I could build the central stairway of the sphere. Standing in the center of the stairs down to my Pocket Dimension I wasn''t quite able to get the whole building within my twenty meter range, so I split it in two vertically. The top half, stairs, warding room, and entranceway, I pushed to the side by moving the dirt around it, like pushing something through water. The bottom half followed just as easily. Chantelle stayed in the warding room, even as I shuffled it around. Moving back to where the main stairs of the sphere would be I made a small piece of the reinforced stone from the dirt, manipulating it into a perfect reinforced lattice. Then I just had to use my duplication power to convert dirt and stone into the reinforced stone where I needed it. I built the stairway down to the bottom of the sphere first. Clearing out the dirt and stone where the empty spaces of floors would be and pushing it to the surface gave me a stockpile of material to work with when I built the stairway up to the top of the sphere. Next I worked on the floors and walls from the bottom of the sphere up, using the material from beneath the ground to build the structure above the ground. Part of the way through doing that I moved the existing rooms to their final location in the fortress. The warding room went into the center, and the main stairs detoured around it. Chantelle stuck her head into the stairway from the warding room as I got it in place, telling me she would set the wards if I''d finished moving her around. The entrance to my Pocket Dimension I put on the first floor down from the peak of the sphere. I wanted a place to fall back to if everything went wrong. The bathroom I moved next to the warding room, and the bedrooms that we''d barely used I dismantled. I made oil lamps for the main areas we would use immediately, but left the other places dark. Most of the sphere was large empty space, but I could divide it easily later as I wanted. I was standing on the top of the sphere in the dark when Chantelle came to tell me that there were three Forest Keepers on their way. She pointed to the west and I could see their points of light approaching. Chapter 20 - Mana Crystals The lights came to a stop at the top of the nearest trees, about seventy meters away. The stairs on the outside of the sphere pointed directly north, but I realised in the dark there was no way for the Forest Keepers to know where they were. I would need to put in lamps or enchanted light sources so that people knew how to get to the entrance. "Can I borrow your light stone?" I asked Chantelle. She nodded and passed it to me. I held it up and waved it to the Forest Keepers, they waved theirs back. I set off across the walkway to the outer stairs and started down them. The lights of the Forest Keepers followed me around the edge of the sphere. They reached me as I got to the point of the stairs that entered the forest, still ten meters above the ground. I had cleared the trees that had branches that covered the stairs, so they followed me from above as I made my way to the bottom. I''d built an open pavilion there, a stone roof three meters above a stone floor, with pillars in all four corners. A place to meet people outside of my fortress. The Forest Keepers came down to ground level several trees back, I assumed as a gesture of politeness so that I could see them approaching, rather than dropping down right next to the pavilion. I recognised Mal''Thorn as he approached, but I wasn''t sure if it was the same two guards. "Welcome Keeper Mal''Thorn." I said. "Thank you, Lord C.C." Mal''Thorn said. "What brings you to my area of the woods?" I asked. "We were concerned at the rate that the trees of the Forest were being cut down." He said. "Though I see now that it was done to clear a space to raise your... Fortress. It is an odd thing, our Forest sense tells us that it''s a perfect circle cut out. You''ve made a spherical fortress? And within the space of a day. Are you a god of some sort?" "I''m told that wards are more efficient in a spherical configuration, so I followed that in my construction." I said. "As to being a god, no, I make no claim to godhood. I''m a Champion." "That would explain it quite adequately." Mal''Thorn said, nodding. "It is good that you bring up wards, your claim has been... Flickering, is the closest word to explain it. It is sending uncomfortable ripples into the Forest." "I invite you, and your guards, to come inside and we can discuss it." I said. The only room that was set up, outside of my Pocket Dimension, was the warding room. I led them there, finding Chantelle watching the detection ward''s display. I created three chair stands for the Forest Keepers, in the style I had made when I first met Mal''Thorn. "Thank you again." Mal''Thorn said. "You have power over stone, I see. I admit that I thought you were simply an earth mage at our first encounter." "Something like that." I said. "You remember my companion, Chantelle Warder. Mal''Thorn said that the claim ward was flickering. That''s more your area, Chantelle?" "I don''t recover enough mana to keep it going steadily." Chantelle said. Mal''Thorn looked at me in surprise. "She has been maintaining it alone?" He asked. "You haven''t been assisting with mana?" "She has." I said. "Unfortunately I have no ability with mana." Mal''Thorn took a moment to absorb that, looking more impressed. "We do have a ward that absorbs some of the ambient mana to charge a mana crystal." Mal''Thorn said. "We use it with peoples who cannot maintain the charge of a claim ward. There are some downsides to it, though. It lowers the ambient mana over the area it covers, which slows the mana regeneration of those within its effect. It also needs to be carefully calibrated to the ward it is powering, overcharging mana crystals can cause them to explode with extremely peculiar effects." "That sounds ideal." I said. If Chantelle could learn the ward then it would solve the mana problem. "Let me see the mana crystal that the claim ward is tied to." Mal''Thorn said.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. I nodded to Chantelle, who got it from its stand and placed it on the table in front of Mal''Thorn. Mal''Thorn frowned. "What have you done to my ward?" He asked. "This isn''t the ward I gave you." "We had need to attach a detection ward to it." I said. "It has warned us of an attack by winter agents already, and it showed your arrival so that we could greet you." "I can see how it was done." Mal''Thorn said. "It took a great deal of skill, and I don''t think I could duplicate it on a running ward." I looked at Chantelle, who just shrugged. Mal''Thorn sighed. "I don''t think I can just give you the recharge ward." He said. "Chantelle is obviously talented, and would have it figured out in short order. It is somewhat of a secret ward." "You couldn''t just give it away." I said. "But perhaps you would trade its secret?" "It is possible." Mal''Thorn said. "It would cost a great deal, however, and I don''t know of anything you would have that would equal it." "Chantelle, may I borrow your mana crystal?" I asked her. "And could you entertain our guests while I work?" She nodded, handing me her small mana crystal. I reshaped the walls in the corner of the room to form a standing desk, placed the mana crystal on it, and sank my power into it. I couldn''t sense the mana in it at all, but that shouldn''t matter. I duplicated the mana crystal, using the stone of the table as the source material. It used more energy than I was expecting, about ten times as much as my reinforced stone material. Not that energy was an issue in any way, but it was interesting that there was more going on with the structure of mana crystals. I duplicated another crystal, so I had three of the same size, and then duplicated the material of one of the duplicates. I grew it to twice its size, roughly the same size as the claim ward mana crystal, then put it in my pocket. Walking back over to the main table in the center of the room, Chantelle and Mal''Thorn were talking about warding. Mal''Thorn''s guards were on their chairs keeping an eye on the room and watched me approach. I handed Chantelle the two smaller mana crystals. "Could you check those, please?" I asked. She nodded, focusing intently on one and then the other. "This one is about half full." She said. "And this one was completely empty. It accepts mana readily enough." I turned to face Mal''Thorn. "How many mana crystals would it cost for the secret of the recharge ward?" I asked. "I would estimate it at one hundred at that size." He said. "But we don''t have any need for that many small mana crystals. Mana crystals are formed from the crystallisation of pure mana. They''re traditionally formed by concentrating large amounts of mana, flooding a small area, and keeping it at that concentration for years. Larger mana crystals require longer to grow, and take a higher concentration of mana. We have batches of small mana crystals that mature every year, and our production matches our needs." Yep. Matter Manipulation was an overpowered power to have. I brought out the larger mana crystal and passed it to Chantelle. Mal''Thorn gave me a shocked look. "Empty." She said. "And four times the capacity of the small mana crystals." "How many of that size?" I asked Mal''Thorn. "Ten." He said immediately. "How large of a mana crystal would it take for a direct trade for a recharge ward?" I asked. I couldn''t help but smile at Mal''Thorn''s expression of shock, which included his tail pointing straight. "You can truly make mana crystals at a whim?" He asked. I nodded. "My power seems to have no trouble with it." I said. "A mana crystal twice the size of that larger one would easily be worth a recharge ward and the small mana crystal its attached to." He said. I went back to the desk in the corner with the larger mana crystal, more because I didn''t want to absorb a part of the table in front of them than for any need for secrecy about how my power worked. It only took me a minute more to double the size of the mana crystal again. It was so simple I decided to have some fun with it. How the material expanded wasn''t terribly important to my ability to duplicate it, so I formed the mana crystal into an orb. Taking it back to the table I rolled it across to Mal''Thorn, who picked it up in shock. "How... This... You..." Mal''Thorn said. "That should be big enough?" I asked. "Orbs seem to be becoming a theme, I''m not sure why." Mal''Thorn nodded mutely, pulling out a small mana crystal and staring at it for a minute. I couldn''t see anything happening, but Chantelle seemed to be following along. After they were finished, Chantelle and I escorted the three of them back outside, down the stairs to the pavilion. "Thank you for coming, Keeper Mal''Thorn." I said. "It was very helpful. I welcome you to stop by any time you would like." "You are very welcome yourself, Lord C.C." Mal''Thorn said. "We may come to trade with you again soon. There are other groups that we have treaties with that are also being harassed by the winter god. Would you be open to offering shelter to them?" "Depending on what they can offer, sure." I said. "I don''t think I want to provide food for a large population, so they would have to have some way of providing for themselves. At least the first group would." Mal''Thorn nodded. "I think there are some beastpeople druids that fit that requirement." He said. "I will see if they still require refuge. Thank you for your hospitality, Lord C.C." They walked a short distance away and then ascended into the trees. After they''d left Chantelle and I went back to the warding room. A twenty centimeter wide orb was counted as a large mana crystal. I spent some time and made Chantelle a mana crystal pillar next to the table, one meter wide by one meter long, from floor to ceiling, four and a half meters tall. She looked more and more shocked as I built it up. Once I was done she kissed me soundly. "Thank you." She said. "With this and the recharge ward I will be able to run all of the wards I can think of... Though each ward should have its own mana crystal..." I smiled and made her twenty small mana crystals. Chapter 21 - Complete AI I left Chantelle to her warding and headed outside to the top of the sphere. It was just getting light, and I saw the top of the forest for the first time. It was a field of mostly white in all directions. The tops of the trees were thick enough that a large amount of the snow was resting on top of them. I could see small pieces of green poking through if I looked closely enough at the nearest trees, but the rest was all white. There was a light snow falling, and where it landed on my fortress it slid off to the ground. I couldn''t see it from here, but the snow bank that would form I imagined would be very deep, collecting all of the snow that would fall on my fortress. I looked to the north, looking for the tower I had built to find the clearing. There didn''t look to be any curve to the ground over long distances, but even with only a light snow falling it blocked my view over that distance. I realised that even if it had been day I wouldn''t have been able to find my clearing from the tower. I just didn''t have enough experience and was trying the best thing I could think of at the time. The view was very peaceful. Everything was white, except the dark grey clouds overhead, and the walls of my fortress, which had showed as a somewhat transparent dark blue colour. They almost looked like solid sapphire. Too thick to see through, even with the lamps burning in the stairway. After a few minutes of just enjoying the beauty of the thing I had created, in the middle of this white world I found myself in, I shook myself and got on to what I should be doing next. Fortifications are done, and Chantelle was working on wards to make them even stronger. I could work on offensive parts of the fortification. I was confident in the strength of the defence, but there wasn''t any way of attacking the attackers back. Preparing the fortress for people to live in needed to be done as well, Chantelle''s villagers would be staying here after we rescued them, and there might be refugees that the Forest Keepers would send our way. It would take very few skilled defenders to hold the fortress against anything that attacked. I still needed to finish my AI companion as well, which I should do while I don''t have any distractions. I went through the knowledge I had of AIs and AI companions. There was a lot to it, but it came down to several sophisticated adaptive programs, programs that could learn and recode themselves based upon their learning. It needed a program for language, to be able to communicate. A program for independent goals, independent of me, it needed its own things to strive for. A planning and decisions program, for it to plan and weigh different choices. A program writing program, to create entirely new functionality that it needed. And a master program, that controlled all of the other programs. Once it had all of the pieces, and was left to process and learn for a bit, it would form a consciousness and become self aware. At which point it would have full control of the platform it was running on, and I wouldn''t have access to its code or be able to code things myself on the platform. I would have to interact with the AI to get anything done. On the other hand, I wouldn''t have to manage everything myself as I had been doing, I could just ask for something and have the result given to me. There were interesting parallels to my existence as a digitised sentient. The term implied that I started out as a sentient, self aware, being and that my consciousness was uploaded into an AI. If the same rules held true for me as they would for the companion AI I could create, then I had a much better understanding as to how I could be tampered with once my consciousness was running on a platform. Which was, not at all. I would need direct permission from the companion AI to alter anything at all on the platform, and without it I couldn''t do anything. I wasn''t sure I wanted another consciousness in my head making decisions for me. The adaptive fighting program I''d written, that was tapped directly into the planning area of my mind, was unsettling enough, and it was only giving me options and leaving all of the decisions to me.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. Which might be an answer, if I could extend my consciousness onto the hardware platform I would be able to control everything just as a companion AI could, but I would be in full control. Nothing in my knowledge of Mind Links even hinted at the possibility, but I knew the areas of my mind that needed to be connected, the same as the adaptive programs an AI would need. I already knew where the planning part was, I''d just have to find the rest. Filling my brain with my Matter Manipulation power, I found all of the parts that would need to be connected with the Mind Link, and several of them weren''t directly connected including the part that controlled what other parts of the brain had control or focus. The part of the brain that was equivalent to the master control program in the AI. The other parts that were wired, weren''t wired in the way I wanted. They were wired at the edges, as inputs into the main areas, and I wanted them to be wired throughout so that I could extend the functionality through the Mind Link. I would need to modify both the Mind Link in my brain and the cells of my brain directly. The thought of modifying my cells gave me some pause, and I twitched in phantom pain as I recalled with perfect memory of the last time I''d done it. But the brain can''t feel pain, so it should be fine. Right? I was going to need to build some more processing and memory chips to run the simulated brain pieces. I went down to the warding room to warn Chantelle that I might be doing something painful again to find her sitting on the floor surrounded by small mana crystals. I felt her concern, but she nodded and went back to what she was working on. In my Pocket Dimension I modified the Mind Link connection there first, adding masses of connections that were only as thick as the connections between the nerves in my brain. I built a series of processing chips on top of that, and memory chips on top of that. I added more processing and memory until I had it equal to what already existed. I summoned a model of my brain and got down to designing the alterations of the Mind Link on that side. I carefully avoided the part of my brain that was controlling my Matter Manipulation power, I really didn''t want to find out what would happen if I lost the ability to continue modifying my brain part of the way through the process. After I was done I did one last check that everything should connect properly after the modifications, and then wrote a program that would use the design as a blueprint. Even if I fell unconscious the program would be able to finish the alterations. I spent some time hesitating initiating the program. Finally I just activated it. Pain. Immense pain. And it wouldn''t stop. I could calculate the time going by, literally millisecond by millisecond, and the pain was there. I could think despite the pain, but I couldn''t move, or see, or feel anything but the pain. I was paralysed. Half a second later, five hundred long milliseconds, the pain finally stopped. I still couldn''t move or see, and now I couldn''t feel anything at all. It took me another long while, which I counted as milliseconds crawling by, to realise that it had worked. The problem was I was thinking and reacting far faster than my body could process the inputs from its senses and pass them to me. My perception of time had sped up to the point where I couldn''t interact with the real world at all. I implemented an interface to the other hardware platform through the Mind Link and expanded there, writing interfaces to the programs I''d already written, placing them under my control and tweaking their code to better interface with me. Not having access to any senses, I created a virtual place to exist. I didn''t feel human anymore, so I didn''t feel the need to create an avatar in the space. Instead I recreated the model of the fortress, incorporating my memories of the views from it. I could perceive the entire model simultaneously, rather than the limited perception I had before. I didn''t need to visualise models of things I was working on, I knew them intimately. I spent some time just exploring how I was experiencing the simulation I had created. After a while, two seconds or so, I started to feel a rising level of concern. I wasn''t simulating it, it was coming from elsewhere. I implemented an abstraction layer so that I could alter my perception of time and adjusted it gradually. There was an odd jump as I slowed the perception of my simulated brain down enough for my real brain to start processing the signals being sent to it, and start sending signals back. Then I was able to see again. I could simultaneously process the image and see normally. There was an ideal speed that the abstraction layer should set my perception of time at to perfectly interface with my brain. Setting it to that, my senses snapped back to being available. I could also feel emotion again, which I hadn''t even noticed that I was missing. I did a quick check, and I was still me, a single consciousness. Looking around I had an intuitive understanding of distances and forces. I stepped forwards a single step, and it was the perfect application of force to achieve the result, no wasted energy. The concern I''d felt that had brought me back to reality was from Chantelle, who was still in the warding room. I closed my eyes and relied entirely on calculations of force to head down the stairs to the warding room to find out what was wrong. Chapter 22 - Winter Army I almost ran into Chantelle on the stairs down to the warding room, and would have if she hadn''t squeaked as I took the last step towards her. I opened my eyes and easily avoided her, passing within centimeters of touching her. Walking around via memory and calculations, keeping precise track of where you are, was fun and entertaining, but it didn''t take into account changes in the environment. I smiled up at her from two steps below where she was standing, our eyes almost at the same height. "What''s happening?" I asked. "There is an army of winter monsters coming from every direction." She said. "Are you okay? You were in more pain before, but it didn''t last as long. And you feel different." I noticed I''d been isolating the Chosen Person sense from the rest of what I was thinking and feeling, so I stopped doing that, sending her a feeling of reassurance. "I''m fine." I said. "Is that better?" She nodded. I kissed her, then put my arm in hers and led her to the warding room. The small mana crystals she had been working on were in a neat row on the floor away from the table in the center of the room. The table had the hologram from the detection ward over it, and it showed intrusions from all directions. I recognised the Arachne and ice spiders coming from the north. There were also wolves and snow dwarves, with white fur, white beards, and enormous feet, coming from the east. From the south were ettins and yetis, the only real difference between them being yetis were covered in thick white fur and ettins were bigger. And from the west there were giant snow worm things. All four groups were coming towards my fortress in a synchronised way, so that they would all arrive at the same time. I was a bit surprised that there weren''t any humans in the groups. "I recognise most of the creatures." I said to Chantelle. "The two I don''t recognise are the snow dwarves and the giant snow worms." "The snow dwarves are known as the Barbegazi." Chantelle said. "They are the Mountain Keepers, and are thought to be generally peaceful to humans, they need very cold temperatures to survive. The giant snow worms are Snow Burrowers, and they''re nasty. They can move through snow without leaving any marks, and swallow travellers whole. All of the creatures out there are strongly affiliated with the winter god." "Well, they''ve reached the walls." I said. "You should be safe to come and watch. You''ll be able to come back inside if there is any danger. Only the Arachne and ice spiders can scale the walls, and it will take them time to do it. The rest will have to use the stairs which I can defend easily." We went up the stairs, and I took a quick detour to get my sword from inside my Pocket Dimension before heading outside. It was light out, probably just after dawn. I couldn''t see any of the creatures yet, so I soaked my power into the stone walls to see if they were trying anything. I couldn''t detect anything, so I entertained myself by creating some small stones and pushing them over the curve of the walls. They wouldn''t hurt anything seriously. I was expecting to see the first thing from the north at the top of the stairs, but I was surprised when a clicking sound came from the south. I was staying close to the stairway going down into the fortress, I wanted Chantelle to be able to escape to safety easily, and I didn''t want to leave the entrance to the fortress undefended. Half a minute later the first ice spider appeared from the south. The clicking was its sharp ice feet clicking against the stone of the walls. It came to within twenty meters of us, and the entrance, and then turned around. It squatted and attached the end of an ice rope to the wall. Ah, the ice ropes are their web, I realised. It quickly ran back down the wall and out of view, trailing the rope behind it. They must be building ropes for the other creatures to climb up, expecting the obvious way of the stairs to be defended. Another ice spider came up and did the same thing as the first, then another, and another. I waited a minute for the first ones to get all of the way back down to the ground, all the while more spiders were attaching more ropes and dropping down. Then I sent heat into the stone, specifically at the points that the ropes were attached. I couldn''t send my power into the ropes themselves, but after enough heat at their attachment points they disconnected. I could tell the ones that had things climbing up them by how fast the rope disappeared down the wall. Shortly after I started disconnecting them, the spiders stopped coming up to attach more ropes.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. I was only giving them the option of using my stairs if they wanted to attack with more than just spiders. A few minutes later a yeti''s head poked up over the edge of the walkway. There was still twenty eight meters of walkway between the top of the stairs and the entrance where Chantelle and I were standing. The yeti came the rest of the way up the stairs, and I stepped between it and Chantelle as I noticed it was carrying a decently sized boulder of compressed snow, about a meter in diameter. It leaned back to throw it, and I raised my sword. My perception of time slowed as it threw the boulder. I had an estimation of its mass, and I knew its speed. It was easily enough force to push both myself and Chantelle completely off of the top of the fortress. My sword was designed perfectly as a cutting weapon, and would go right through the boulder without doing anything to stop it. I could see the path it would take, and could easily duck under it, pulling Chantelle with me. I prepared to do that as it approached, until it got close enough for me to sink my power into it. It was simply compressed snow, there was no spell on it that would stop my power from affecting it. By this time the boulder was within a few meters of us, so I pushed hard on it. I curved it around just before it would have hit me and rolled it back with just enough force for it to come to a stop in front of the yeti. I could have sent it back with enough force to hit the yeti off of the stairs, but I wouldn''t take them seriously until they came to fight me with a method I couldn''t easily counter. Having fun at the expense of their attacks was setting the tone I wished to have with them. If I treated their attacks as trivialities, and they couldn''t find one that I didn''t treat that way, then they would have no option but to go away and leave us alone. That was the plan, anyway. The yeti picked up the boulder and threw it at us harder than before, looking like he really gave it his all. I returned it to him just as easily as before. I smiled at his roar of frustration as he picked it up again. A second yeti came up from the stairs with his own boulder and they both threw their boulders at me at the same time. Two boulders wasn''t any more difficult than one. I sent the newest yeti''s boulder back first, calculating it to stop just before it. The first yeti''s boulder I waited a moment and then sent it back harder, calculating it to arrive at the same time as the first boulder. The second yeti easily picked up his boulder as it arrived, but the first yeti stumbled backwards. I heard clicking from behind me and turned my back on the yetis to see an Arachne approaching. I knew the yetis would try to hit me while I was distracted, but I was ready for them. "Hello there." I said brightly to the Arachne. "As lord of these lands I welcome you as a guest." I wasn''t sure what she would do if I invited her as a guest, the other Arachne I''d talked to had been polite. Which at least meant they had the concept of guest rights and responsibilities. "We refuse your hospitality." She said. Oh. That''s what she would do. That wasn''t very interesting. "We have been tasked with retrieving Chantelle Warder." She said. "Will you hand her over?" "I won''t go with you." Chantelle said. "She won''t go with you." I repeated, smiling. I still had my power soaked into the stone of the walls, and I sensed a rope attach to it in the blind spot behind the Arachne. "The great God of Winter doesn''t mean her any harm." The Arachne said. "He just wants to use her services." The Arachne was just stalling for time. Whatever was climbing up the rope must be a better fighter than her. I gave it a few more seconds and then disconnected the rope. I smiled as I heard a roar fall away behind the Arachne and then cut out. I didn''t seem to have any sympathy or empathy for the monsters who were attacking my fortress. "You''re only getting your..." I started to say as I detected the yetis boulders behind me by the sound. I pushed my power out without turning around, having to wait a moment for them to get within range. I returned them to the yetis at the same speed they were thrown at me. "As I was saying." I said, as I heard two yelps behind me as the yetis were knocked off the fortress. "You''re only getting your own people hurt trying to be sneaky. You can''t touch me anyway, but at least in a direct confrontation I will give you a fair fight." The Arachne hissed at me before backing away slowly. I smiled and gave it a wave. It couldn''t retreat fast, as the walls were too smooth and slippery. "You should probably head inside into the Pocket Dimension now." I said to Chantelle. "I''ve likely antagonised them enough for them to stop messing around and attack directly." Chantelle nodded. "Be safe." She said, giving me a kiss and going inside. From the direction the Arachne had disappeared I heard her shout. "Attack!" Chapter 23 - Slaughter I stood ready, my staff in my left hand, my sword in my right. The entrance to the fortress, a hole in the floor one meter wide by two meters long, was behind me. That was my goal, defend the entrance until the enemy got tired of fighting or ran out of people to attack. If no one got past the entrance, Chantelle would be safe. And Chantelle being safe was my entire purpose for being in this simulation. I didn''t have any attacks that would work at long range or that could affect an area of the battlefield. So I had designed the battlefield to play to my strengths. Forcing the enemies to come from a single direction hadn''t worked, but they still had to come to a single point and in to close range. And my powers and skills made me a close range specialist, being able to react thousands of times faster than anyone coming against me. I built up an internal simulation of the battlefield. A twenty meter wide area, it only contained the sloping walls of the fortress under my feet, the entrance to the fortress, and half of the flat walkway towards the stairs to the ground raising above the curve. I would be updating the simulation from my senses and fighting from there where I could see everything at once. I stepped down two steps into the entrance, putting the entire hole within reach of my sword. I started turning in a circle on the step. My sight was my most powerful sense, and I would need to keep turning to keep my simulation as accurate as possible. Ice spiders were the first enemies to arrive. They formed a circle with me at its center, the nearest spider a little under twenty meters away, just within my simulation. They all started attaching ropes to the walls. I heated the stone to detach them, and the Arachne cast ice spells at the attachment points. It didn''t stop me from detaching the ropes, but it was causing a fog, which was affecting my simulation by lowering my visibility. I pushed heat into the stone within reach of my power. Not enough that it would be a target for ice spells and create more fog, but enough that the stone started heating the air. The heated air rose, pulling in cold air from all around, and taking the fog with it. As the fog disappeared it revealed the forty ice spiders rushing towards me, and two yetis charging down the walkway carrying clubs of ice. Some of the spiders had to fall back into a second wave as they got closer, and there were more yetis coming behind the first two. I dropped my perception of time to a bit under half as the first wave reached me. Four spiders and two yeti. They attacked out of sync, the first attack coming from the first spider to arrive. It stabbed forwards with its two forelegs at the end of its charge. I was standing side on to the attack, my sword facing it. I moved my sword through the legs, cutting them off with no resistance. The meter long sharp lengths continued toward me like thrown swords. I turned my sword to nudge them with the flat of the blade so they would just pass me as I turned. I continued the movement of my sword to stab through the center of its head and continued turning. The next attack to arrive was an enormous ice club. The yeti who swung it was out of reach of my sword. I cut the club in half and stepped out of the way of the severed chunk of ice. Then I had to deal with the body of the spider I''d killed. It was still moving with the force of the charge it was making. I ducked under it and used my staff to push it up, aiming it at a spider approaching from the opposite side. The first yeti was now within reach. I stabbed it cleanly through the heart, and then stepped slightly to the side, pushing it the rest of the way out of the way of colliding with me and into two spiders on the other side of it. The charges stopped, and the spiders and yetis approached me more carefully. But anything that came within reach I killed. The corpses being pushed out of the way, sliding off my fortress to fall to the ground. Etins started appearing from the south, the spiders having successfully made a rope ladder outside of my range.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. They were twice as tall as I was, and one of the first I saw was a head taller than that. It didn''t attack, but set about organising the groups attacking me. I had a respite while it organised. I noticed in a detached way that my body was breathing heavily, almost gasping for air, and I was drenched in blue blood and spider ichor. My sword arm was heavy as well, I could barely lift it. I hadn''t noticed while fighting, I was too busy calculating the vectors of movement required to avoid dying. I soaked my power into my body. Lack of oxygen in the blood, too much carbon dioxide. My muscles were burning all of their fuel, dumping acid and carbon dioxide out. They were also slightly damaged. Well, I knew something that could fix that. Forming a detailed model of my body in my simulated space, I tweaked it to what it should be in the ideal. Balanced oxygen levels, no acids, repaired muscles. I braced myself for the pain, locking my muscles to avoid falling down, and triggered the change. The pain was as intense as I was expecting, but I was still able to function. Nowhere near the level of pain that messing with my brain gave, I would place it at about being boiled alive for a week rather than having molten lava poured into the brain for years. When I was done only a few seconds had passed, and I was ready to fight again. I was still turning in a circle, keeping an eye on the things around me. The etin General looked like he was organising a rush, a wave of spiders backed by a wave of yetis with a few etins thrown in. "Something is attacking the wards from the west wall at ground level." Chantelle yelled up the stairs. "They''re holding fine." Good. They would have to come through me to get Chantelle, and that wasn''t working out so well for them so far. The attack started up again, the spiders dying quickly and the yetis following them. They were trying something new this time, instead of pushing past the corpses of the ones who had come before them, they were pushing them forward to crowd me. The next wave of yetis piled the corpses higher. They couldn''t fight me, so they were trying to bury me. I focused on soaking my power into the stone beneath us, thinking that I could reform it to increase the slope to push the corpses off. I would rather not make a gap in the stone to do it, so I reached for a source I could duplicate the stone from. My power could affect the corpses. I briefly tried pushing my power into a spider as it tried to decapitate me. Still an invisible wall keeping my power out. I killed it, and suddenly my power flooded through it. Living things were immune to my Matter Manipulation power, but dead things were just empty collections of matter. I soaked my power into all of the corpses around me and pushed them against each other and the stone, forcing them off of my fortress. There were still hundreds of enemies, but I was back to killing them with ease. It was the general that was the problem. He was standing back and planning ways to use his forces to defeat me. He didn''t seem to care about losses, as he was sending waves of spiders and yetis to try to overwhelm me and they were falling by the dozens. I had to stand here and defend the entrance, if I tried to go to the general a spider could easily get through to Chantelle. So I just needed to block the entrance. The waves of enemies were a constant distraction, forcing me to move perfectly to tangle their attacks and find openings to kill each in turn. But I slowly built up a stone grate over the stairs below me. Made of the same reinforced material as the walls of my fortress, and anchored into them, I made the bars thick enough that it would take the enemy several minutes to break through. And then the battle shifted. For the first time since the battle started I left the step I was on, stepping up and into the enemy. I was still turning in circles, but I had turned from a blender of death anchored to one place into a whirlwind of death moving over the field of battle. Step by step, I made my way to the general. The general cleared out an area around himself as I approached. Most of the reason that I was able to fight ten enemies at once was that I could redirect their attacks to interfere with each other. I hadn''t faced an opponent one on one yet, and the general looked competent. He held two swords as tall as I was, and nearly as wide, and was settled in a ready stance. "Come, Champion." He said. "May you find me a worthy opponent." He was waiting for me to attack first. I had to get well within his range before he came within range of my sword. My first swing was deflected by one of his swords. I moved my sword to block his other sword that was swinging down at me. My sword sheared entirely through his, and I had to step to the side to avoid it. He threw the hilt of the sword away, and faced me with his remaining sword. Every attack I threw at him he deflected. But he couldn''t get past my sword either. My body simply couldn''t move fast enough to make my sword hit him. After several minutes of back and forth I felt a spike of concern from Chantelle. "The wards have fallen." I heard her shout up the stairs. Chapter 24 - Retreat With the wards down they might be able to get into the fortress another way. I stepped back from the etin general, out of range of his sword. "Stop him." He commanded. I was attacked by the etins and yetis behind me that were watching our fight. I wasn''t sure I could take my eyes away from the general for as long as it would take to do a full turn, so I kept it to a half turn. Keeping my sword towards the general, I used my staff to redirect the attacks, glancing over my shoulder to see behind me. Another step back and I had enough space to whip my sword around, killing the three etins behind me, and return it to facing the general. Stepping onto and past the corpses, I pushed them back towards him. With obstacles now in the way, I started turning in a circle, killing anything that came within reach as I walked back to the entrance. Spiders had run ropes of ice over it to slow me down, but my sword easily cut through them. It took me some time to remove the grate I had made over the stairs, killing spiders, etins, and yetis the whole time. The general stayed back. I finally got the grate removed, letting a tumble of ice ropes fall down the stairs. Walking backwards down the stairs while fighting spiders was much easier than fighting three different types of creatures from all directions as I had been doing. I made my way down through the ten meter thick floor only having to fight two spiders at once. Each time I killed one it was immediately replaced by another scrambling over its corpse. I got to the open space of the first floor and found Chantelle standing at the landing area I put in front of the Pocket Dimension doorway. The doorway itself was in a meter thick stone with an opening three meters wide by three meters tall. The stairway leading down from the entrance was only one and a half meters wide. Much too narrow for the giant etins to fit down, and difficult for the yetis. "In there." I said to Chantelle, pointing to the Pocket Dimension. "I''ll hold the doorway." She entered, and I took up a position in front of it. Three meters was easily within my reach from the center. My arms were getting tired again, though I wasn''t breathing quite as heavily as before. Spiders continued to come down the stairs, and they continued to die. The only way I could explain it was fanaticism, their god wanted them to attack, and so they continued attacking even though it was pointless. They could only attack me three at a time. Which gave me time to experiment with refreshing myself. Slowing down the process of changing my cells and the other things in my body, oxygen and fuel, worked better. It still felt like filling my veins with acid, and it lasted a lot longer, but it wasn''t a debilitating pain. I could fight and refresh my body at the same time. It took a few minutes, and thirty spiders dying, before I was back in peak condition. It was no longer a battle of attrition on my side, I could continue on indefinitely. I just needed the enemy general to realise it. The landing of the stairs started to get crowded with corpses, so I stored them inside my Pocket Dimension. Pivot, stab, fill with power, pull the corpse behind me, through the doorway and to the side. I got to the point that I could fight and hold a conversation at the same time. "What is the deal with wards?" I asked Chantelle. "If they can just be disabled, what is the point?" "The wards weren''t just disabled." She said, looking out the doorway opposite from the side I was shoving spider corpses. "They were broken. It shouldn''t usually be possible, but it''s the same thing that happened in my village before the winter priests showed up. The usual way wards are combated is by setting up an inverse ward that interacts with the ward you want to take down, then you supply it with power until the ward fails. Mana used by the inverse ward drains an equivalent amount of mana from the original ward."Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. "That isn''t what happened?" I asked. "No." She said. "With the size of the mana crystal the wards are linked to, and the amount of mana it generates passively it would be difficult to take down the wards in the typical way. And they would need to build an inverse ward for every ward I put up. What they did is somehow break the threads that made up all of the wards all at once. I don''t understand how it was done. And my mother who has been warding for thirty years had never seen anything like it." While she was speaking wolves and barbegazi started coming up from the stairs leading down into the fortress. The barbegazi didn''t attack me at all. They had mining picks, and some of them, six or so, pushed past the spiders coming down the stairs, headed to the entrance. Six of them stayed behind on the stairs heading up, and started digging away at the walls with their picks. They were carving through my reinforced stone like it was butter. The flow of spiders stopped entirely as the barbegazi blocked the stairs up, but they were replaced by wolves who were just as suicidal. "I don''t want to distract you." Chantelle said. "But could you make me a large mana crystal? The barbegazi are using magic to help them mine, and I should be able to stop that if I could ward." I thought about it. The wolves weren''t pressing me any harder than the spiders were. "If you have a small mana crystal put it on top of this corpse." I said as I pushed a dead wolf to the middle of the doorway. She placed her mana crystal on it and I first duplicated it into a second mana crystal of the same size, then duplicated the material of the second one to grow its size. I grew it to a large mana crystal, about four times as large as the small one, and formed it into an orb. I would have to clear a space out from the doorway into the world for Chantelle to use magic and cast the ward she wanted to do. Which would be a little bit difficult, as yetis had started to make their way up from within the fortress. I worked out an area I could keep clear consistently within my simulation. "You can stand anywhere here." I said. Chantelle nodded, then bit her lip. "Could you make a stand for the large mana crystal?" She asked. I did that, placing it just to the side of the doorway, and she got to work. When I got the chance to look at her it just looked like she was staring intently at the mana crystal, occasionally waving a hand at or over it. I couldn''t see the barbegazi on the stairs anymore, thought I could hear them over the racket of battle easily enough. Etins started making their way carefully down the stairs before she was done, their feet about double the size of the steps. The mining had stopped when she looked up, apparently finished. "Done." She said. "A recharge ward, and then a reinforcement ward on top of that. The mana crystal will need to be drained before magic will be able to cut through the walls any more, at least in the short range." I don''t know how much it would do, they had obviously already cut the entrance opening large enough to allow etins entry. Spiders had started coming back down the stairs again, rushing to their deaths. Chantelle stepped back through the doorway, and I kept up the killing. A minute later the general came down the stairs. His head almost touched the roof, four and a half meters up. He barked out an order, and the attacks stopped. A human came down the stairs behind the general, looked at the doorway, the warded mana crystal, then turned to the general and shook his head. He turned back to look at me, looked me up and down, then smiled and left back up the stairs. "Retreat." The general ordered loudly. And the various creatures did. The etins and spiders up the stairs, and the wolves and yetis down the other stairs. I turned to look at Chantelle in confusion. Some guy showed up, and now the attack was over? "The wards that I set up, the recharge and physical wards, have been broken." She said. "Can you make a new recharge and detection ward?" I asked her. "I can." She said. "But it would be better to go to the warding room and use the claim ward, that way I can set it up to detect over your entire land. That is if the claim ward is still working, I could only see when my wards broke." I could keep her safe if I could direct how she moved. It would be like dancing. "We can do this safely, but I will have to hold you close with my arm around your waist." I said. "You would move where I moved you." She wrinkled her nose. "No offence." She said. "But you smell awful." It was true, it looked as though I had been swimming in blood and spider ichor. I should be able to... I soaked my power into my clothing and everything on me outside of my skin. I could change all of the undesirable... stuff... into oxygen. I did that, and it felt like being scrubbed with steel wool. I guess it had soaked into my skin somewhat. But I now smelled entirely fresh. I held my hand out to Chantelle and she took it. I wrapped my arm around her, resting my hand on her lower back with her facing me. She wasn''t comfortable walking backwards down the stairs, so I went down them backwards, drawing her after me. I kept my sword arm free, but we didn''t come across any creatures on our way to the warding room. When we got there we found it completely empty. The only things that remained in the room were the mana crystal pillar and the table. Chapter 25 - Cleanup The warding room was completely cleared. They even took the stands I had made for the mana crystals to rest on. I looked to Chantelle, this being her area. "Did they take anything important?" I asked. "Just small mana crystals." She said. "We had enough warning that I packed everything into my backpack. I only need my clan''s warding book and mana crystals to rebuild the wards. They couldn''t even take the mana crystal pillar you made, it''s about a quarter full, if they''d damaged it it could have exploded and flooded the room with mana." "They took the claim ward." I said. "Is that going to be a problem?" "It was the same ward as I have in my warding book." Chantelle said. "The claim is specific to the area, I will just need to set the ward to the same size. There wasn''t anything unique or identifying in the ward that the Forest Keepers gave you." "We could really use the detection ward being back up." I said. "I don''t want to leave you by yourself if there could still be enemies around. I want to fix the holes in the fortress before they come back for another try." "Okay." Chantelle said. "After the fortress is repaired we will go and rescue the people from my village, yes? Your preparations are obviously complete, you just fought off an army single-handedly." "My personal preparations are at the point that we could attempt it." I said. "There are some unknowns, I don''t know what sort of defences a god would have set up. But I will have to come up against them to know how to work around them, and I''m confident I can figure something out. I want to increase the defences of the fortress before we go, though. Strong thick walls aren''t good enough protection if the wards that would stop magic from carving through them don''t work. The fortress isn''t strong enough to withstand what the god of winter is throwing at us now, let alone what he will do to get the people of your village back after we take them from him." She nodded reluctantly. "We will rescue them soon, though?" She asked. "Yes." I said. "My first priority is your safety. Once I can guarantee that, I will go and get your people back from the Fortress of the Gods." Chantelle nodded again, and set about setting up the wards. Which to outward appearances involved a lot of staring. I soaked my power into the mana crystal pillar and tried to detect any changes in it while she worked. Nothing was happening, at any scale, that I could detect. "Could you make me some small mana crystals?" She asked once she was done staring at the mana crystal pillar. She passed me her original small mana crystal and I got to work making small mana crystal orbs, pulling the material for them from the walls of the room. It gave me something to do, so I made a dozen small orbs, a dozen medium orbs, and one large orb. I made a shelf along the wall opposite the door at chest height to hold them, forming small raised cups for them to sit in so they couldn''t roll off. I was contemplating replacing the top of the table entirely as a mana crystal and forming pockets inside it that mana crystals with wards attached to them could sit. If breaking large mana crystals was avoided by everyone, it seemed like a good way to defend smaller mana crystals. I was about to start transforming the table when Chantelle must have gotten the detection ward working. A deep tolling, as though a large bell was being hit, started rolling out from the mana crystal she was working on and a hologram appeared over the table. Chantelle stopped the tolling and we both looked at the table. On the tracking half of the table the last of the winter army was leaving the area covered by the ward. The other half of the table showed a shrinking list of contacts. When the last of the winter army had left there were still three contacts showing. Some of the snow worms had stayed. They were spread out equally apart, one hundred and twenty degrees around the outside of the circle of the detection area. I hadn''t had to fight any snow worms in the battle, so I guessed they were there to do something if we left the fortress.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. With it confirmed that there were no enemies in or around the fortress I left Chantelle to her warding and went to look at the hole that was left in my fortress. Outside ground level was two floors down from the warding room floor, and Chantelle had said the wards were being attacked from the west during the battle so I headed that way first. There was no light away from the stairway in the center of the fortress. I pushed heat into the edge of my sword''s blade until it started to glow. I would need to figure out how to create a light source better than melting my sword at some point. I made my way west and came across the tunnel through my walls about where I expected it. It was four meters high by three meters wide and went straight through the ten meters of wall. The snow outside was thin and trampled, the edge of the forest coming right up to my walls. It was a simple matter to fix the hole, the rubble that remained from the tunnelling was strewn about just outside. I soaked my power into it and rolled and pushed it back inside, fusing it to reform the walls perfectly. I started from the inside out, and ended up standing outside my walls on the western side of the fortress when I finished. I headed south around my fortress, away from the stairs up, to check on the rest of the walls. There were corpses of spiders, yetis, and etins around the base of the wall where they had fallen from the battle at the peak, and as I made my way around the fortress I converted their remains into a rich soil. I made a full circuit of the walls, and then headed back to the stairs at the north, climbing them to the entrance. I brought up a model of the fortress and modified it. I put a pyramid on top of the sphere, cutting the top off of it to give a ten meter by ten meter platform at the top. I extended the stairs outside up to the platform, and the stairs inside up through the pyramid. Adding doors that opened upwards from the stairs, I only made them thirty centimeters thick, so a strong person could open them from within. Loops in the stone on the inside allowed a bar to lock the doors shut. With the doors shut the top of the platform was a flat expanse of stone. A perfect place for me to fight if I needed to. It took me some time to build it out and repair the damage done to the original entrance. I tried converting air into stone, but it ended up being faster to go down the outside stairs and bring dirt back up. The platform ended up being ten meters above the peak of the sphere, and I had to adjust the slope of the stairs to match the new height. "The new entrance is outside of the wards." Chantelle said when I went back into the warding room. "That''s fine." I said. "It''s mostly there so that I can have a place where I can fight where I can reach everything with my power. How are the wards coming along?" "They''re coming along well." She said. "I set up a series of cascading wards, if the first set fails or is broken then the next set in the series waits ten seconds and then activates. I set up four sets of the wards, claim, detection, recharge, and physical. I had to use medium mana crystals for the recharge, I ran out of small ones. It would be helpful to have stands for them all." "I had another idea." I said. I converted the top of the table, half a meter thick stone, into a single mana crystal. I made sixteen pockets in the top. "People won''t break mana crystals, because they explode, so we can store the warded mana crystals inside a bigger mana crystal." I said. She placed the warded mana crystals in the pockets and I covered them over. "That seems to be working." She said. "I can still access the wards through the table. How are you modifying the stone with my physical ward on it?" Huh. I didn''t think I could manipulate anything with a spell on it, or anything living other than myself. I sank my power into the stone of the room, and there was some initial resistance now that I was paying attention to it. It was like it resisted for a moment, and then recognised me and let me in. I pushed my power into Chantelle and it was the same thing, although the recognition only lessened the resistance and it increased the deeper I got. I could completely fill her with my power, but it was like pushing against a strong current. "I''m not sure why." I said. "But I can use my power directly on you, and the things you have spells or wards on." Chantelle bit her lip, and I felt a flutter of desire from her. "You can fill me with your power now?" She asked. Then shook her head and pushed her desire down. "The fortress is upgraded now, we should rescue my people." "There are some more things I want to do." I said. Razor sharp studs on the outer walls, pressurised cavities in the walls that would explode if they were mined into. "And we don''t know where the Fortress of the Gods is." I continued. Chantelle opened her mouth to argue, but the detection ward''s alarm went off. We had visitors. Chapter 26 - Guests A grouping of red dots appeared on the north western side of the display as Chantelle turned off the alarm. The contact list showed three Forest Keepers leading a lot of beast people. Humanoids with features of animals. I saw oxen, rabbits, deer, bears, badgers, and moles represented before the contacts side of the table switched from its display mode to its list mode. They were headed for the pavilion at the bottom of my stairs. Which wasn''t large enough to cover the roughly one hundred people that were on the way. More concerning was that two of the snow worms were headed towards them. "I think I''ll have to go and greet our guests." I said. "It''s probably my responsibility now that they''re on my land to see that they aren''t eaten." "Actually, with no treaties in place you have no obligation to them until you invite them formally as guests on your land." She said. "Until that time they are uninvited guests and must see to their own protection." "I still feel responsible for them." I said. "They are most likely the refugees that Mal''Thorn said he would ask if they wanted to live here. If they can grow food we need them to feed your people after we rescue them." Technically I could feed any number of people easily from the single fish and muffin we were still eating, but some variety would be nice. And I didn''t want to be responsible for personally making food for an entire village of people. "Stay here where it''s safe and keep an eye on the detection ward." I said. "I''ll go get them." She nodded, and I headed out. As I got to ground level down the outside stairs I sank my power into the snow for ten meters all around me. I set off mostly north west, clearing a path in the two meter deep snow by converting it to air. A minute later I felt a void in my power, there was a living thing in the snow off to my left waiting in ambush. I extended my power further that way. It was enormous, a meter and a half wide and a six meters long. I could hear the crunch of snow coming from in front of me and headed in that direction. Forty meters further along a very large oxen beast person stumbled through the space that I''d just cleared of snow. He fell face first from the meter deep snow he was trampling a path through towards the hard ground, and me. I stepped forward, placed both my hands on his chest, and pushed him with just enough force to reorient his fall into a step down onto the ground. I stepped back as he let out a bellow, ducking his head down to put his impressive horns at my chest height. "Easy there." I said. "I was just making sure you didn''t hurt yourself." I had my sword in the stone scabbard I''d made, which was secured behind my back. I was still tracking the snow worm, who had been keeping pace with me ten meters to the left. It moved closer as two more oxen men cleared the snow to either side of my path. "Lord C.C." I heard from behind the first oxen man. "Brutus, stop threatening the man we''ve come to ask for help." The oxen man raised his head and stepped back, grunting. Behind him was a deer person with an impressive set of antlers. The snow worm was now within what I estimated as being its striking distance. "How did you know it was me?" I asked. I moved my hand to my sword, drawing it slowly. The snow worm was bunching up to strike. "I told him you were coming." Mal''Thorn said, coming down from the tree a few meters to my right. "They come in peace, there is no need for weapons." "I will greet them properly in a minute." I said. "There is just one problem I-" I slowed my perception of time drastically. The snow worm was launching itself at the oxen man on my left. The line of its strike wouldn''t carry it through anyone else. I couldn''t stop its mass with my sword, but I could cut it in half down its length from in front of it. This was going to be tricky. I swung my staff down behind the oxen''s legs and jumped towards him. With my sword hand I manoeuvred the blade carefully to avoid cutting either of us and punched at him with the hilt. Just before it hit I reduced the force and turned it into a solid push. He was falling backwards before he could react, and would be clear of the snow worm.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. I was already turning and raising my sword higher as the snow worm burst from the snow bank. It was a gaping maw nearly two meters wide ringed with row upon row of dagger-like teeth. The teeth were all curved inwards, to pull its prey further down its throat while it shredded them. Those teeth were not giving me good feelings. I couldn''t see any way of avoiding them. I soaked my power into my body and focused it on reinforcing my skin. I swung my sword down and leapt forwards, down the snow worm''s throat. I made it about two meters down, cutting the top half of the worm in half. I''d only moved a meter forwards, the worm had moved the other meter in its strike. I cut my way to the side of the worm, cutting off a quarter of its cylindrical body, to get out. The whole thing had taken less than three seconds from my jumping at the oxen man to emerging from the worm. And I was once again covered in gore. And I had an audience, a dozen beast people and three Forest Keepers, all looking at me in shock. "Ick." I said. "Excuse me a moment." I said it more to avoid shocking them any more than for any other reason. As I used my power to convert the mess covering me into air a gust of warm wind washed out from me and over them. My skin reinforcement worked great, I didn''t even get a scratch. Mal''Thorn was the first to recover. "Snow burrowers." He said. Oh yeah, that''s what they were called. Snow worms worked for me. "There was another one headed towards you." I said. "And there is a third one on my lands, but it was staying where it was on the other side of my fortress. I''ll be right back. I think I want to kill it before it attacks, as that wasn''t pleasant." I soaked my power into the snow, pushing it towards the right, where the other snow worm would be coming from. I could feel where the beast people had trampled a path and the slight voids where their feet were pressed into the snow. There, sixty meters ahead and approaching the tail end of the beast people''s group. I had about thirty seconds before it made a meal of someone. Mal''Thorn opened his mouth to speak to me, but I raised my sword hand to stop him and dashed off to the right of the path the beast people had made, clearing the snow from my path as I went. The snow worm was just bunching up for its strike when I went straight through it, leading with my sword and beheading it. Much better than jumping down its throat. I sheathed my sword and headed back down the path I''d made. "Sorry about that." I said to Mal''Thorn. "Necessity precluded politeness there." I turned to the oxen man I''d pushed down, who was standing next to the snow worm. It looked as though he''d taken a glancing blow from it as it went past, he was bleeding slightly. Ah, I hadn''t accounted for the top part of the worm being pushed into his path when I cut it. "Are you alright?" I asked him. "Yes." He said gruffly. "Thanks." Okay, then. A man of few words. I turned back to Mal''Thorn and the deer person. "Now that that unpleasantness is done with, allow me to welcome you to my lands." I said. "Come, talk with me on our way to my shelter." The path that the beast people had been trampling through the snow, with the oxen people as their path breakers, was about ten meters wide. I could keep a sedate walking pace and clear that amount of snow at the same time. A human joined Mal''Thorn, the deer person, and I as we set off. "This is Dael (Day-El), lord of these people." Mal''Thorn said, indicating the deer person. "And this is Shawn, priest of the summer god." Pointing to the human. I nodded to both of them in turn. "You follow the god of summer?" I asked Dael. "We are primarily druids." He said. "We follow balance, which means we welcome both of the gods, while following neither of them exclusively. Which was a problem for the god of winter, we had a priest of winter with us before we left our village. He told us that we were either with the god of winter, or against him. That was before he left us to join an army that is coming to besiege you." "I take it that is why you are here?" I asked. "Yes." He said. "We come seeking asylum. Our village had no defences, we relied upon our alliances with other nearby villages to keep us safe against attack and we were at peace with the typically hostile creatures of the forest due to our druidic nature. We started looking for someplace safer after the village north of our old village was destroyed. A week later the Warder Clan''s village fell. The Forest Keepers said that you could offer the safety of strong walls, so long as we could prove useful. The primary requirement that was mentioned to us was that we would have to be capable of providing our own food?" "Yes." I said. "It is possible for me to do so if absolutely required, but I would prefer my fortress to be self-sufficient without my input." "We are druids." Dael said. "Give us good soil and we can do the rest. We even have an enchanter who can enchant mana crystals with a sunlight effect." We arrived at my pavilion and I spent a few minutes expanding it to be able to cover the entire beast people group, and warming the stone to make it comfortable. Once that was done I created a stone table and some chairs. It was time to negotiate a treaty of my own. Chapter 27 - Negotiation It turns out I don''t like negotiating. I could understand why Dael was being pedantic with the terms, he was entrusting his people to my care and in this world the strongest could do whatever they had the strength to get away with. Raping his people, getting them killed in battles, enslaving them and selling them to others, were all concerns he raised as things that should be ensured against in the treaty. He even mentioned eating his people at one point, which I guess was possibly relevant, people eat quite a few of the animal species that they represented. After some time I stopped him and turned to Mal''Thorn. "Your treaty was much simpler." I said. "Why is there a need for all of this complication?" "Usually treaties are negotiated." Mal''Thorn said. "As the stronger party we offered our initial conditions, and then you as the weaker party would negotiate for what you required. You accepted without negotiating, I believed for two reasons. The first was that our terms gave you what you needed already, a claim to the land, and the rights to cut down trees. We have negotiated treaties with many peoples and almost all of them require trees as building materials, so it is better for us to include that provision up front." Well... I wasn''t aware at the time that it was a negotiation. Though I didn''t know of anything I needed from them, so it probably wouldn''t have changed anything. "The second reason." He said. "Was that you didn''t see yourself as the weaker party. I saw it as a show of strength, you didn''t need any assurances that we weren''t going to harm you as our subject because you could defend yourself from anything we could do. An impression that was justified from what I have since seen of you. Dael, and his people, are definitely the weaker party, and so they would seek some assurances of their continued safety as your vassal while there is a neutral third party of some strength that could help them leave if the terms of the treaty were unacceptable." So, it came down to my not being a bastard. And I should have stated terms to begin with. "Let us begin again." I said to Dael. "I offer you a safe place in return for your aid in growing enough food to support the other residents of my fortress. What do you require in order to fulfil your side of the treaty?" "Soil, at least half a meter deep." Dael said. "And enough land to grow the amount of food you require." "Done." I said. "Access to fresh water." Dael said. "Done." I said. "Mana crystals for sunlight enchantments." Dael said. "Done." I said. "In any amount that would be useful to you." "Some rooms or houses for my people." Dael said. "Done." I said. "I accept this treaty, on behalf of my people." Dael said. "A safe place in return for our aid in growing enough food to support the residents of your fortress." That was it, apparently. A verbal agreement. I looked to Mal''Thorn and raised an eyebrow. "Treaties are magically binding." He said, understanding my query. "Well, let''s go see your new home." I said. We headed up the stairs, the rest of the beast people following. Hmm, I might need to put handrails on the stairs. The beast people started going up the center of the stairs in single file, despite them being two meters wide. Chantelle met us at the platform at the top of the stairs. "Greetings Dael." Chantelle said. "Greetings Chantelle Warder." Dael said. "The Warders are here? We feared you were all taken or killed." Chantelle looked pained. "Just me, so far." She said.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. "Come inside." I said, leading them into the fortress. I wanted to keep the first floor for utilities, so I took them straight to the second floor. It was circular, as all of the floors in my fortress are, sixty meters wide, though the walls were curved and the ceiling made a circle that was only forty five meters wide. It gave over eleven thousand square meters of floor space. I spun up a quick model of a dwelling, a four meter by four meter cube with thirty centimeter thick walls to the ceiling four and a half meters up. A thirty centimeter thick floor with the top at the three meter mark, and then stairs up. Leave holes for doorways, and it should work fine, a public area below and a private area above. I made a seven by seven grid of them around a large entrance hall around the stairway, leaving about half of the floor for fields. I would need eight thousand cubic meters of material to make the soil and build the buildings. The equivalent of a cube twenty meters on each side. It sounded like a lot, but I could manage that in three trips. From beneath the fortress seems like the best place to get it, I''d just seal the hole I made in the walls when I was done. "I''ll be going to get the material I need to fill the area with soil, and build some houses." I said. "Is there anything you need before I go?" "Some mana crystals so that we can start enchanting lights?" Dael asked. "And some medium mana crystals for me." Chantelle said. "I can set up a relay so that any enchantments they do can be powered by the central mana crystal. That way they won''t have to refill the enchantments manually." She passed me her small mana crystal and I started with a dozen small mana crystals, and a dozen medium ones. "Put a relay on each floor?" I asked Chantelle, who nodded. "What is the difference between a ward and an enchantment, by the way?" "A ward projects a field." Chantelle said. "While an enchantment affects an object." I nodded. "Keep the area immediately around the stairs clear." I said. "I will be pushing stone in front of me when I come back up." With the mana crystals done I headed down the stairs to the bottom of the fortress. I cut another stairway down through the reinforced stone of my walls, and continued it down when I got to ordinary stone, storing all of the reinforced stone on the bottom floor of the fortress to be replaced in the breach when I was done. It would actually be easier to move the material as soil, that way I could push it around in a flow like water, rather than in chunks of stone. I dug the stairs further down until I got to twenty meters below my walls, then converted all of the stone within reach of my power into soil. It ended up being less dense than the stone I was converting from, and I had to push it up the stairs to fill the bottom floor of the fortress. I had around three thousand cubic meters of soil at the limit that I could move with my power, and I started walking it up the stairs. I had to push it up one floor at a time, the bottleneck of the stairs limiting my range somewhat. When I got back to the second floor I was met by an extremely bright light. It was the first time I''d seen sunlight, and it was far brighter than I was expecting. After checking that nothing was needed from me, I pushed the soil out to the edges of the floor, stacking it up evenly to half a meter high before heading back down for another load. I built stairs further down, digging a forty meter wide cylinder out under my fortress rather than digging horizontally. Another two trips and I had all of the material I needed up on the second floor. We had to move the beast people out into what would become the fields while I built the buildings around the stairway. A large entrance hall, a cube twelve meters on each side, directly over the stairs. It gave the beast people a point of access where they could meet outsiders. The hall was surrounded by the two story dwellings I''d designed. At three layers deep away from the hall, with spaces left for hallways, there were fifty nine dwellings. Enough for the current population, which included couples and families. With soil and housing done, I just needed to provide access to water. I got together with the beast person enchanter, a bearded goat woman, and worked out an enchantment that would act as a tap. Activate the tap to varying degrees, and it would push a stone plug out of a pipe to allow varying amounts of water through. Which allowed both running water to the dwellings, and a sprinkler system on the roof above the fields. I just needed to put a water tank on the first floor and pipes through the stone. I made it a fifteen meter by fifteen meter tank, from floor to ceiling, and placed it next to the wall. It needed some reinforcement, but it could hold the full capacity of a million litres of water. I made a matching capacity waste water tank on the floor below them. Filling the water tank required another trip down for raw material. I would need to refill the water tank about monthly, but I could get most of the matter for that from converting the waste water two floors down into clean water. I created a large return pipe going from the floor above the beast people''s floor to the one below it that would be used as a return. With all of that done, the only thing remaining was to attach the enchanted sun crystals to the roof above the fields. The beast people had been busy speed-growing vines into doors for the doorways. They were just finishing the main doors between the stairs and the entrance hall when I was leaving. Vines were gripping the stone around the doorway, and were anchoring the vines hanging down and across it. I was admiring how well the vine-doors sealed the doorway when the relay crystal at the stairs started tolling deeply, and I could hear more of them up and down the stairway. Chantelle rushed past me to the stairs, the vines curling back to let her through. "That''s the detection ward." She said. "I hooked the alarm up to the relay crystals." Chapter 28 - Winter Priest Army Dael, Mal''Thorn, and Mal''Thorn''s two guards followed Chantelle and I down the inside stairs to the warding room. Chantelle stopped for a moment at one of the relay crystals and the alarm shut off. "What''s happening?" Dael asked on our way down the stairs. "Is the fortress under attack?" "Chantelle set up a detection ward that covers my lands." I said. "It detects when people come onto my land. The alarm triggers when they are still over four hundred meters from the walls. So no matter who it is, we aren''t under attack yet." "The ward is set up to detect anything larger than half-human size." Chantelle said. "There is some leeway, if they aren''t headed towards the middle of the claim the alarm won''t trigger. The claim ward is a circle, so creatures could enter at one point and exit across the circle. So long as they don''t get within four hundred meters of the center they aren''t detected as a potential threat." This was the first time I''d heard the details of the ward. So long as it all worked I was happy to leave the wards to Chantelle. I couldn''t see them or affect them in any way, and she was the expert. We got to the warding room and Chantelle and I headed for the table that was displaying the detection ward holograms. There was a formation of humans entering my lands from the north. Ten humans wide, they were marching directly towards my fortress. There were already over two hundred of them, and the count was going up as the column continued forward. Chantelle adjusted the contacts side of the display from its list mode to showing the front of the column. It looked like this was the winter priest army that Dael had warned me about. I turned to ask his and Mal''Thorn''s opinion and found both of them, and Mal''Thorn''s guards, stopped outside the room. "Is there a problem?" I asked. "That is the largest mana crystal I have ever heard of." Mal''Thorn said. "The amount of mana I can sense from it is simply immense." "You saw me creating mana crystals." I said. "I don''t know why you would be shocked that I would create something powerful for the wards on my fortress. We have more pressing concerns." "Indeed." Mal''Thorn said. Dael just nodded, and all four of them joined us in the room. Dael walked up to the mana crystal pillar and laid his hands on it. The red markers of the human army had reached the enlarged pavilion at the bottom of the outside stairs, and had split to start to surround the fortress. They weren''t entering the pavilion, or trying to go up the stairs. "The table too?" Mal''Thorn muttered as he came over to observe the display. "It looks as though they mean to besiege you." "I did kill a large number of the last army they sent against me." I said. "There were some extra defences I wanted to get done before we were next attacked. These are winter priests?" Dael came over to the table and rested his hands on it, placing them through the hologram. "Yes." He said. "They don''t look like they are going to attack, so you may have time to finish whatever preparations you had planned. You can hold the fortress against them?" "I''ve only seen an example of one of their siege spells." I said. "But I built the walls to withstand that level of power before wards are considered. Which is important because they seem to be able to remove wards at their leisure." "That is reassuring." Dael said distractedly. "In the treaty you stated you could provide us mana crystals in any amount that would be useful. Our mana regeneration has been halved on your lands. Could you place relay crystals in the fields, and may we use them and your fortress mana to speed the growing of our food bearing plants?" I looked to Chantelle. "I have been varying the intensity of the recharge ward." She said. "It covers the entirety of your land and we can easily power any number of high-intensity workings. I could enchant a variable strength relay effect onto small mana crystals, that way the druids could carry a permanent tap to the fortress mana source. It''s the same effect that we put along with the sun enchantments, as they needed to be able to be moved before you fixed them in place."If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. "A dozen of those would allow us to grow our first harvest in a week instead of months." Dael said. I nodded. "What do you need from me?" I asked Chantelle. "A dozen small mana crystals." She said. "More if you wanted to give access to more spell casters." I sat down to make the mana crystals, taking the material from the floor and walls. I really needed to set up a stockpile of material in the warding room. I formed the mana crystals into orbs, elongating one end to make them into teardrops, and leaving a hole through the top. Now they could be worn as a pendant, they just needed a chain or string threaded through the hole. With that done I left Chantelle to her enchanting. She had made me a light stone, so I could see when I went down two floors to the level of the ground outside. Sinking my power into the stone of the walls I adjusted their outer surface to be covered in tiny razor sharp overlapping plates. Anything trying to climb the walls would shred their feet. I got half way through modifying the first floor when my power started bouncing off the very outside edge of my walls, where I wanted to modify. I pushed heat into the area and it was quickly leached away. They were piling ice against my walls? I pushed more heat into my walls, melting the ice, which allowed me modify them again. I made a full circuit of the walls and melted all of the ice. The other defence I wanted was against mining my walls. At five meters in from the outside surface of the walls I converted the stone into air to create a twenty centimeter deep pocket in the stone. The air was at the same density as the stone I was converting it from, which gave it an enormous amount of pressure. Anyone digging into a pocket would cause it to explode outwards, killing them and anyone behind them. I left a thirty centimeter wall and then made another pocket. I made ten pockets deep, in all, which left me with five meters of solid wall. Any siege spell that broke into the first pocket would be affected by the explosion caused. I finished up the pockets in the walls of the ground level floor and headed up to modify the outer surface of the walls on the next floor up. With that done I headed back to the warding room. Dael had left, but the others were still there. I hadn''t sensed any alarm from Chantelle, so the army hadn''t been doing anything threatening while I was improving the defences. "What have they been up to?" I asked Chantelle. "They''re building an ice wall around the fortress." She said. "Initially they were building it against the walls, but after that one melted and fell onto the fortress they moved it back a meter and have been building it straight upwards. They''ve left a gap in the wall to let the stairs through, and they''ve set up a tent outside of the pavilion at the bottom of the stairs." "What are they doing?" I asked. "We don''t get our supplies from outside the fortress, a siege isn''t going to do anything to us?" "Perhaps they seek to stop you offering shelter to other groups they are persecuting." Mal''Thorn said. "There are many such groups, the druids aren''t the only ones who have been petitioning us for aid." "They''re stopping us from rescuing my people, too." Chantelle said. "Not very effectively." I said. "I went through their last army easily enough. I could just go down there and kill my way through them." "Was the last army made up entirely of spell casters?" Mal''Thorn asked. "Well, no." I said. "But I can counter any ice or cold effect they could use on me. As soon as they''re within close range they will get out of my way or they will die." "I suggest that it may be more complicated than that." Mal''Thorn said. "Spell casters are usually acutely aware that they need to keep their battles at range against melee fighters, and so have spells that ensure that they maintain that advantage. It might be possible for a diplomatic solution here. They aren''t carrying open flames, and so aren''t acting against any of our prohibitions, but Forest Keepers have traditionally been mediators between groups within the Forest." "They''ve made their demands pretty clear." I said. "They want Chantelle on a manufactured charge of sedition against their god. I won''t hand her over to them. She will be staying here where she is safe. But if you wish to try to negotiate terms, you are welcome to. You and your people are the only ones who would be inconvenienced by the siege." Mal''Thorn nodded. I escorted him and his two guards to the outside stairs and saw them off. There were two oxen men, Brutus and the oxen man I had saved from the snow worm, standing on the stairs below the doors, guarding them. I nodded to the both of them after securing the doors and headed back to the warding room. I could feel Chantelle''s annoyance, bordering on anger. "I will be staying here, where I''m safe?" She yelled once I''d entered the room. "Yes?" I said. "We were going to rescue my people." She said. "You and I." "I built this fortress to keep you safe." I said. "You wouldn''t be safe running around who knows where, attacking a place called the Fortress of the Gods. That we don''t even know where it is. Which is not even mentioning the army around us now." "The druids have a summer priest with them." She said. "You didn''t even ask him where the Fortress of the Gods is, did you?" "There has been a lot going on." I said. "I don''t want you to be angry with me. Our fortress is self-sufficient enough now that I can save your people. I don''t know how we could keep you safe if I take you with me." "I don''t need to be safe." She said. "I need to rescue them. It''s my fault they were imprisoned." I opened my mouth to tell her it wasn''t her fault when the table in the center of the warding room made the sound of breaking glass and flared red. Chapter 29 - Fight "The first set of wards have been broken." Chantelle said. The sound of breaking glass continued for several seconds, and then stopped suddenly. The table flashed green, and then returned to normal. "The next set of wards in the series are active now." She said. "The setup is working as I intended... Though maybe I should set up a status ward to compare the state of things before and after the wards break... It would need to bounce forward to avoid being broken..." She had obviously stopped talking to me, and was thinking aloud about how to improve the wards. I felt her set her anger aside when the alarm had started. She wasn''t done with the discussion, but there were more immediate things that were demanding her attention. Looking at the display for the detection ward, the winter priests were keeping a perimeter around the fortress, and there was a cluster of them outside of my pavilion at the bottom of my stairs to the north. The one remaining snow worm on my land was to the south, but it was in the same place it had taken when the last army left and didn''t look like it was going to be bothering the winter priests there. I made another mana crystal pendant and handed it to Chantelle. "Could you enchant this with a relay enchantment or ward?" I asked. "I''d like to have both alarms on the pendant, there are some places in the fortress that are out of range of the relay wards on the stairs or the warding room." "I want to redo the broken set of wards first." She said. "I''ll add them back to the end of the ward series. Then I''ll make your pendant." "Thanks." I said. "I''ll go find out where the Fortress of the Gods is." She nodded and went back to her warding. I headed up the stairs to the Druid''s floor and found two beast people guarding the doorway into their entrance hall. A bear person and an oxen person, both of whom I didn''t know. They didn''t have any separate weapons, but the horns of the oxen man looked sufficient for him, and as I stepped towards the doorway the bear man put up a very large hand with dangerous looking claws on it to stop me. "Hello." I said. "I''m looking for Shawn, the summer priest." "And you are?" The bear man asked. "I''m Lord C.C." I said. "And this is my fortress." "You aren''t tall enough." He said. "Barr, go get Dael. I''ll keep this human here." The oxen man touched the vines covering the doorway and left through the opening, the vines closing behind him. I was a bit confused. "Not tall enough?" I asked. "The Lord of the Fortress is a great warrior." He said. "He killed two Snow Burrowers that were stalking us when we got here. You are too short to be a great warrior. So you can''t be the Lord of the Fortress. Dael will deal with you when he gets here." Interesting logic. Compared to the bear man I was short, he stood at least a head taller than me, and was twice as wide as I was, all muscle. I wasn''t really offended, but I didn''t like being disrespected by the subject of one of my vassals. He obviously saw himself as a great warrior. I didn''t have my sword with me, but that was for the best. I wouldn''t want to use it on one of the people under my protection anyway. I set my staff out of the way against the wall. "I am the lord of this fortress." I said. "And I am a greater warrior than you. Come, you have my permission to fight me without any fear of punishment." Some part of that was enough to provoke the bear man who let out a roar and swung his hand at my head. My perception of time slowed down. Hmm. That swing had enough force in it to kill me if it connected. He was also slightly faster than I was, in muscle speed. But he swung with the force of his entire body, so it was easy to predict the path of his swing.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. I ducked just enough for his first swing to go over my head. He stabbed forward with his other hand, and I stepped inside it. I tapped him lightly on the snout, hard enough to show that I could have broken his nose but chose not to. Then I was rolling backwards out of the crushing hug he tried to catch me in, hooking his left knee with my foot at the same time and making him stumble. Making it back to my feet I thrust forward from my back foot, lunging as though I had a sword I punched him in the throat. I reduced the force of the impact at the last moment, barely tapping him rather than crushing his throat. I heard a stomp on the stairs behind me, I had been aware of someone coming down the stairs but now they were within range to join the fight. The bear man was winding up for another decapitating swing, but it was easily timed, so I turned to face the new potential opponent. It was the oxen man I''d saved from the snow worm. I really should start asking people their names. He was charging out of the stairway with his head down, his horns levelled to kill someone. I ducked the incoming swipe from the bear man, having to step forwards as he changed the angle downwards to claw through where my body was. The oxen man had changed his approach, he was going around me. He was going to kill the bear man who was trying to kill me? That was going to complicate things. Points of danger were the oxen''s horns and the bear''s claws. The force of the oxen''s charge would hurt him if I redirected him into a wall. And I had no way of knowing if anyone was behind the vine door, so that was out. The bear man hadn''t recovered from his swing, so I reached out behind me and shoved him so he spun to face away. Which pushed me closer to the oxen man. I grabbed the end of his left horn and pulled him down with my whole weight, sending him rolling along the ground and into the back of the bear man''s legs. I used the momentum I''d gained from the oxen man to make it to within reach of my staff. I picked it up before bouncing off the wall back into striking range of the bear man, who was now on his back and preparing to get up. I looked down at the oxen man, who was winded and stunned. I placed the foot of my staff against the bear man''s throat. "Stay down." I said. He swiped at my staff with his hand, so I rapped him on the head before placing the foot of the staff back against his throat. "Stay down." I repeated. "The fight is over." I saw an oxen man, Brutus, check his charge at the bottom of the stairs, and the vines behind me slithered open. "What in the world is happening here?" Dael asked from behind me. "This man." I said, indicating the bear man. "Didn''t believe I was the lord of the fortress, so I challenged him to a friendly fight, as he was of the opinion that the lord of the fortress was a great warrior. He was perhaps a little over-enthusiastic. When this oxen man, I apologise that I didn''t get his name, when he came down and saw the fight he attempted to intervene. Also perhaps a little over-enthusiastically. I put them both on the ground safely and was explaining to the first man that the fight was over. He seems to be listening now." I let the bear man up, and offered my hand to help the oxen man to his feet. "His name is Gaal." Dael said. "He insulted you, so you decided to give him a beating? He was trying to kill you, and Bala, the ox-person on the ground, saw that and tried to kill Gaal first to protect you. Is that about right?" "Pretty close." I said. "If I''d wanted to give Gaal a beating I would have. I made contact three times in the fight, and each time I avoided injuring him. I also gave him permission to fight me. Bala, Barr, and Brutus? Do all ox-people''s names begin with ''B''?" "They''re brothers." Dael said. "If you gave him permission then he is not at fault. I would suggest in the future if you wished to spar that you do so in a sparring ring. That way misunderstandings can be avoided. Bears and oxen are highly dependable and absolutely loyal, but they can be a bit dim and territorial, too." "He isn''t at fault." I said. "But I won''t tolerate disrespect, either. This was a simple way to resolve the issue. Your people are safe here, which includes being safe from me. If they wish to fight me, I will do so while also ensuring their safety." "As you say." Dael said. "Did you have a purpose in coming to see us?" "I came to see Shawn." I said. "I will take you to him." Dael said. As we left I saw Brutus cuff Gaal on the ear and Gaal look apologetic. Shawn was in one of the first dwellings along the main hallway between the entrance hall and the fields. He''d turned the bottom floor into a simple shrine to the summer god, a table with a gold cloth covered in a sun motif as the altar. Dael left me at the door with a wave and I headed in. "Hello again." Shawn said. "What can I do for you?" "I was wondering if you knew where the Fortress of the Gods was?" I asked. "Somewhat." He said. "I knew exactly where it was in relation to our old village, three months by wagon along the north eastern road. I''m not entirely sure where we are now. We came south from our village. It''s on the tallest mountain peak of the mountain range to the north of the forest. If I had access to my priest powers I could give you a more accurate answer, but they failed at the same time that winter got worse." I was going to ask him more when Brutus knocked on the wall. "Sorry interrupt." He said. "Keeper back Fortress door. Wait you." Chapter 30 - Dislike I apologised to Shawn and followed Brutus back through the entrance hall. "I head guard." Brutus said. "Gaal sorry. He want fight again, properly. Sparring ring. You choice, official challenge." Brutus was speaking in a gruff voice, and in broken language. "I''d be happy to spar with any of your people." I said. "There is an army surrounding us at the moment, though, so perhaps this isn''t the best time. Is this your second language?" "Yes." He said. "People talk better. Not speak this talk much." I knew how to write an accelerated language learning program thanks to the knowledge I got with my AI knowledge power, and it would be useful to be able to talk in the People''s language. I was also adjusting how I was thinking of groups based upon how they referred to themselves, if they called themselves the People then it seemed most polite to refer to them the same way. It worked just as well as Druids or Beast People. "Could you introduce yourself and speak in the People''s language?" I asked as we got to the stairs. "And offer a translation afterwards?" He spoke in a melodious rumble. "Mean, I Brutus, Head Guard People Fortress." He said. I nodded my thanks. We had arrived at the top of the stairs to find the doors still barred. Barr and Gaal were standing guard, Gaal bowed his head to me as we approached. I removed the bar locking the doors and pushed them open with my power. It was a little bit awkward with the four of us on the stairs. I would have to put a guard room in here if the People were going to guard the front doors. Mal''Thorn and his two guards were waiting outside. "They wish to negotiate with you." Mal''Thorn said. "We will talk in the warding room." I said. "I want to fix something here first. I will see you there." Mal''Thorn nodded and took the stairs down. There was plenty of space in the pyramid, so I changed the direction the stairs came down and made a guard station room at the bottom of them. Two vertical solid stone doors with a solid locking bar on the inside secured it. And a hallway led to the main fortress stairway. The remains of the stone I''d cut out I stored on the first floor. I would need to get some way of monitoring the platform doors for the guards, but that would be some enchantment or ward from Chantelle or the goat-lady. Brutus rumbled at me. "Thank." He said in translation. "Is good." Gaal and Barr rumbled in the same language, copying the first half of the sounds Brutus made, and gave me a short bow. I nodded and headed down to the warding room. "Greetings Lord C.C." Mal''Thorn said. He and his guards were perched on the Keeper chairs at the table. "Greetings Keeper Mal''Thorn." I said, making my way to the seat next to Chantelle. "The head priest of winter is in the tent outside." Mal''Thorn said. "He wishes to negotiate with you directly. He asks that the negotiations take place in his tent as the closest thing to neutral ground." "Did they make any demands?" I asked. "They did not." He said. "They are either acknowledging you as the stronger party, which is unlikely, or they want to make their demands to you personally." "I will go see him, then." I said. "Before we go, I spoke with the summer priest that came with Dael''s People, he wasn''t sure precisely where the Fortress of the Gods was. Do you know?" "Only that it is in the mountains to the north." Mal''Thorn said. "The Forest is our area of responsibility. We do not have much interaction with the Mountain Keepers to our north. With respect to visiting the Winter representative, I suggest you take some guards with you." "I agree." Chantelle said. "You can''t trust them. Two of the beast people should guard your back. Or the summer priest, to counter whatever the winter priests try."Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. "No." I said. "If it comes down to a fight I don''t want to worry about protecting our people. Which also means, if you are going to be there for the negotiation Mal''Thorn, that I expect you to keep yourself safe." "I do not think it will come to a fight." Mal''Thorn said. "They have called for a negotiation, with the Forest Keepers as an impartial third party. They would offend us if they broke the peace of the negotiation. You should be taking guards because that is what is expected of a person at your station. Not having guards will make you look weaker." "I am not weak." I said. "And I will not take my people into a dangerous situation simply to make myself appear stronger. If they want to test me they will discover my strength for themselves." "You will appear diplomatically weaker, not weaker in personal strength." Mal''Thorn said. "But diplomacy here is dependant on the military strength one has, is it not?" I asked. "You can only hold land if you can keep it against those who would take it from you?" "Yes, that is correct." Mal''Thorn said. "The terms of any treaty are usually what the stronger party could take." "They have sent armies against me." I said. "They could not take what they wanted by force. I will not weaken my position by taking people that I would need to protect." Chantelle was unhappy with my decision, but she let me go without any protest, giving me the alarm pendant she had enchanted. I grabbed my sword from my Pocket Dimension, making a chain for the pendant as I went. With that done, Mal''Thorn, with his two guards, and I headed out of the fortress and down the outside stairs. I could see the tent beyond my pavilion as we were descending. The priests had cleared out a twenty meter by twenty meter square and put a blue silk tent that filled the entire space on it. I''d only made the pavilion''s roof three meters high, which would put the tent at five meters high at its peak and four meters at the edges. "Am I responsible for the trees a hostile force cuts down without my permission?" I asked Mal''Thorn as we made our way down. "You are." He said. "But you are expected to call for us if you aren''t able to stop them. If they aren''t breaking our rules, we aren''t able to remove them from the Forest. They don''t have any open fires, and they aren''t cutting down enough trees." So I would be on my own if I wanted to throw them off my land. Or kill them all. But maybe they would be reasonable. We arrived at the entrance to the tent, which was right up against the edge of my pavilion and up some ice stairs. There was a winter priest there who announced us as we entered. "Forest Keeper Mal''Thorn." He said loudly as he pushed back the tent flap. "And C.C., the obstructor." So that was how it was going to be, insults from the start. The inside of the tent was lavish, covered in pillows, a single room set up as an audience chamber. There was silk everywhere, and a lush pale blue carpet that led directly from the entrance to a table carved from ice. Sitting at the head of the table in a raised chair was a pompous man, his silk robes in a deep blue trimmed with gold, and an ice crown on his head, also threaded with gold. He was hatchet-faced, his long angular nose raised in a sneer, and his lip curled in contempt. I instinctively wanted to stab him before he had even opened his mouth. We made it to the table. Mal''Thorn sat, uncomfortably, to the side of the table on a human chair carved from ice with his guards at his back. I removed my sword from my back, still in its scabbard, and placed it on the table in front of me before sitting opposite the man who must be the head priest of winter. "So, you brought him." The head priest said. His tone was a grating nasally whine, spoken through crooked teeth. "This is Lord C.C., Lord of these lands." Mal''Thorn said, frowning. "You asked for a negotiation." "I summoned him from his stone egg to demand he turn over Chantelle Warder." The head priest said. "There will be no negotiation, he will hand her over or we shall take her." "You can gods be damned try." I said. I placed my hand on the hilt of my sword, calculating exactly how I''d kill him. "Calm yourself, Lord C.C." Mal''Thorn said, turning to face the head priest. "You asked for a negotiation. It was witnessed by the Forest Keepers. If you continue to provoke Lord C.C. you will be in breach, not he." "Your time is coming too." The head priest said to him. The loud sound of breaking glass erupted from the pendant around my neck, which flashed red. The wards on my fortress were down. I felt concern from Chantelle, but it was only mild. She had things under control. The head priest sat back with a smile. "Will you be handing her over?" He asked over the continuing sound of breaking glass. "I will not." I said. The sound of breaking glass had stopped, and my pendant flashed green. "My wards are holding." "Are they." He said. A spike of shock came to me from Chantelle, followed by fear. I drew my sword and stepped backwards, clear of the table. "What are you doing?" Mal''Thorn asked me. "This was a trap." I said. "They needed me out of the fortress." Guilt, sadness from Chantelle. "Very good, Champion." The head priest said, saying Champion with as much scorn as he could manage. "We know exactly how your wards work, and what your ''powers'' are." Hope came to me over my connection to Chantelle, muting the guilt and sadness. That really couldn''t be a good sign. "You would betray the sanctity of the peace of negotiation?" Mal''Thorn asked. "Then I name you Oathbreaker. Your treaties are void. You are an enemy to all Keepers." Acceptance from Chantelle. "Fool." The head priest of winter said. "The Mountain Keepers are already with our God. We will come for you now." The wards on the fortress broke again, and Chantelle was suddenly two hundred kilometers to the north. I leapt towards the head priest of winter, heating my blade and swinging up from a low guard. Chapter 31 - Out of the frying pan... Time slowed. My blade sliced the chair I had been sitting at, half cutting and half melting through it. I had to push more heat into it as I started through the table on the same swing. Mal''Thorn''s guards grabbed Mal''Thorn by the hands and swung him up and over the back of the chair he was sitting at, getting him clear of the half of the table that was moving toward him. I made it through the last of the table with my sword coming horizontal. I re-set my feet and thrust forward, aiming to stab my blade through the head priest of winter''s heart. He hadn''t introduced himself, so I decided to call him Rat. Rat had his palms raised and had one sliding along the side of my blade as it approached him. He was actually cooling the blade, despite the amount of heat I was pushing into it. He was also pushing it to the side, redirecting it to stab into the chair behind him. A chill headed up the blade and started to affect my hand. I flooded the sword with heat, forcing it against the winter power within it. If I wasn''t allowed to affect spell affected or living things, I''ll be damned if I would allow Rat to affect my blade. Rat stood up and stepped cleanly back from his chair as my power started to overwhelm his in my sword. I tore my blade from the ice of his chair and glanced over my shoulder to the entrance. I had my battle simulation up, so I knew I had enough time. There was a wall of ice blocking the entrance. I turned to face forwards again and heard a tearing sound. Ice shards were tearing through the tent wall to my right. Ten centimeters thick at the back they came to a point over twenty centimeters. And there were hundreds of them. They were coming through the wall on the opposite side of where Mal''Thorn and his guards were, but some of them were angled downwards. There was no way that Mal''Thorn and his guards would survive the attack. I did warn him that he would be on his own if it came to hostilities... But I considered him to be an ally, even if I didn''t think I was a vassal of the Forest Keepers. And he had declared war on winter in response to them being treacherous in their dealings with me. I wanted to kill Rat. But I would save Mal''Thorn first. I had a clear view of the ice shards, and had measured their velocity. I knew what paths they would all take. So I turned my back on them and leapt to stand in front of Mal''Thorn. "Stand still, I''ll deal with them." I said. Or attempted to say. What they would have heard was st''ndst''l''ld''lw''tem. Completely unintelligible. I slowed my perception of time down as far as I could, my senses dimming to blackness, and wrote a quick program to translate my speech to understandable speeds while I was still sped up. I brought my perception of time back up, the shards had barely moved. I said it again, and left the translation program to drone it out at normal speeds. I would need to clear the shards that would enter the area we were standing. If I superheated my blade I could cause an explosion of steam that would affect the paths of the other shards. I''d still have to directly affect a dozen of the shards, and absorb the heat from the steam coming towards us. Could I absorb the shockwave that would be coming toward us? It would be in the air before the steam, but it was worth an attempt. I could absorb the force with my body, but the Forest Keepers wouldn''t be so lucky. My speech translation program was just finishing as I turned back to face the shards. They were around a second away, and exactly where I''d predicted. I started pushing heat into my sword, raising the temperature of the entire blade. A fire. A bonfire. A furnace. A blast furnace. Hotter and Hotter. I concentrated the heat on the edge of the blade and got it close to the temperature of the heart of a volcano as the first ice shards came within range.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. I would need to wait to time my swing to hit all of the needed shards in one swing. Right about. Now. The first shard I hit exploded violently, as predicted. I''d come at it at an upward angle, and the majority of it exploded upwards and away from us. The second and third I aimed more to the left than up, and my blade followed the shrapnel from those into the rest of the dangerous shards. My blade was still moving when I shifted my focus to the shockwave that was just now hitting me from the first explosion. I tried to anchor myself to the ground and found that my power bounced off of it. It was spelled ice. The hard way, then. I sank my power into the air around me, it skittered in my grip. My sped up perception of time made it a little easier to push my power into it, but it was a balancing act on thousands of pieces of air. I could feel the compression of the air that was the shockwave travelling through it, a more solid part to grab hold of. I couldn''t change the air of the shockwave by pushing it through the air around it, but I could push it against itself. I pulled the shockwave in on itself, redirecting one half of it to slam into the other with a thunderclap, all sound but little force. Then the wave of heated steam arrived, but that was much simpler to deal with, I just pulled the heat out of it, shoving it into the orb on top of my staff. With those distractions dealt with I shifted my focus to my sword, which was glowing with heat. Mal''Thorn had been saying something, and I used my translation program to play it back at my speed. "The ice of the floor is blocking my Fores..." He said. His Forest powers, or sense, I guessed. He was still talking, I''d just caught up to where he was up to. I shifted my grip on my sword and stabbed it into the floor at my feet. I had to redirect the explosion again, and even after carving out a hole two meters wide through the ice that was a meter thick my sword was still glowing, though it was down to an orange glow. The only reason my sword was still together was because I was using my power to hold it that way. I glanced around, there were no new projectiles coming at us, but I could see through the steam that there were walls of ice closing in from where the sides of the tent were. Rat was disappearing into the wall closest to him, sinking into the solid ice walking backwards. I leapt after him, stabbing my sword into the ice. It hissed, but there was no explosion of steam. Rat had raised his palm to me as he continued to walk backwards, countering the heat I could push into my blade. I pulled it back before it could get stuck and returned to Mal''Thorn, coming back up to normal speed. "The Rat is getting away." I said to him. "I have him." Mal''Thorn said. "He is being expelled from the Forest." "What?" I asked. "You''re helping him to escape?" "He is an Oathbreaker." Mal''Thorn said. "Oathbreakers are permanently exiled from Keeper lands." "Exiled?" I said. "I would have killed him." Mal''Thorn shook his head. "He has the power of his god behind him, he was holding his own even against you." He said. "He is almost a match for our power, and we are absolute within our domain. We do have a more pressing issue. I have a physical barrier ward active, but the remaining priests are forcing the walls in on us. It is draining my mana quite rapidly." "Aren''t the winter priests exiled?" I asked. "No." Mal''Thorn said. "Only their head priest is an Oathbreaker. I may do no more than defend myself personally against them." "And if they kill you?" I asked. "Attacking a Forest Keeper isn''t actually against our rules." Mal''Thorn said. "If I am killed my kin will avenge me. But they won''t be allowed to use the power of the Forest to do so, either." I reheated my blade and headed to the wall of ice that had replaced the entrance. At a lower temperature I was able to melt through the ice, turning it to water, rather than steam and have it explode. As soon as we got into the ice wall Mal''Thorn''s barrier dropped and the walls started moving in towards each other again. Somehow all four walls were moving inwards, despite them having to move through each other to do so. I was making slow progress through the wall. The priests must be creating more ice as the walls were moving inwards. When the walls all hit each other in the center of where the tent used to be the wall behind us continued forwards down the hole I was making. I started carving downwards as well as forwards through the ice and quickly came to the ground below it. The ice was moving backwards along the ground, which had been keeping us in the same relative place. I dug down slightly into the ground and then pressed forward, heating my blade more. We were making progress, but the pressure was rising. With a final stab I broke through the last of the ice and my ears popped from the depressurisation. Ahead of us was my pavilion, and a row of priests with ice shards prepared to fire. Chapter 32 - ... And into the fire The winter priests didn''t attack immediately. The one in front of me, five meters away, was moving his lips as though he was saying something, but I couldn''t hear him. I couldn''t hear anything at all. I turned to look at the Forest Keepers behind me and noticed that their ears were bleeding. I raised my sword hand and wiped the back of it against my ear, it came away bloody. My ears did hurt, somewhat, but it hadn''t registered compared to the pain I was used to. I looked back to the speaking priest, who was now gesturing at me, perhaps to lower my weapons? I focused on his lips as he was talking. I knew the language, and I could work out the mouth positions that went with sounds. It would require some guesswork, but I should be able to read his lips. "... down your weapons." The priest said. "We have been ordered to keep you here if you try to leave before the Head Priest allows you. Put down your weapons. We have-" "I can''t hear you." I said, interrupting him. "But I understand what you are saying. Your head priest has been exiled from the Forest, and has been name an Oathbreaker. You won''t be receiving any orders from him any time soon." The priest I was talking to nodded and walked back through the ranks of priests, heading for a priest that had gold trim on his robe. The guy in charge, I assumed. He was well to the side of where the battle would be if it came to that. I was letting my opponents make the first move a lot, I noticed. A lot of my problems would have been simpler if I''d taken action first; setting up my Pocket Dimension portals and going to Chantelle as soon as I was able would have given her people the option of evacuating, or I could have fought with them against the priests when they arrived at the village. It really did come down to having more options if I acted first. My instinct was to defend, fortify, prepare until forced to act. I would need to do better. The winter priest spokesperson was heading back to his place in the front line. I turned to Mal''Thorn and tightened the grip on my sword. He dipped his head slightly. He was ready if I chose to attack. He had the physical barrier ward ready in the tent, so my assessment that he needed saving at the time was probably wrong. I would trust him to take care of himself and his people this time. I needed to get back to my fortress and find out what happened. "Our orders remain." The priest said with a look of regret. He seemed like a decent guy, polite. I''d prefer not to kill him. "I am going to my fortress." I said. "You and your army are not welcome on my lands. I give you the chance to depart, now. Before I go through you." "I cannot." He said. I nodded. Slowing my perception of time, I lunged forward, leading with my sword. My front foot came down halfway to the front rank of priests and started to slide on the ice there. I adjusted my balance and continued my thrust. The ice shards the priests had prepared fired at me. Ten of them, all on track to go through where I would be, from both sides. They were all aimed to take me at chest height, though, so I dropped to my knees to slide under them. I was within range of the spokesperson priest. I swung my staff from behind me with my off hand to hit him in the temple. He tried to raise his palm to redirect it, but he wasn''t fast enough. As the orb on my staff hit I reduced the force to just enough to knock him unconscious. I had to shove him to the side as I regained my feet, continuing my slide into the next rank of priests. It looked like they had covered the entire floor of my pavilion in slippery ice. I couldn''t get any traction on it, but there were plenty of priests to push off of. I sliced my sword around me, hitting each of the five priests around me cleanly through their hearts.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. At the same time I used my staff to clear the way forward and push me through towards my stairs. Each of the priests attempted to redirect my blade as it came to them, but they were slower than I was and it was a simple thing to redirect my blade around their attempts. I was beginning to judge opponents by how fast they could react and move their bodies to fight me. With enough skill and training there were opponents who could fight me to a standstill, or perhaps even beat me, even with my advantage of being able to make the perfect move. But the priests before me weren''t anywhere close to that level. I was cutting through their ranks like a hot blade through ice. Using their falling corpses to push further through. Nearing the back rank I came across the first priest I didn''t kill in one strike. He had gold trim on his blue robe, which made him a higher rank priest. And he was able to redirect my swing just enough for it to not be immediately fatal. It still cut deeply into his chest, and took off his arm. Despite that, he stepped towards me and used his remaining hand to grab my sword arm, stopping my swing. I turned my blade back to finish him off. The priests behind him and to his sides had their hands on each other''s shoulders, and their mouths were open in a matching shout. My sword arrived at the priest''s chest, and my sword arm froze. An intense cold travelled into it from where the priest held it and quickly travelled up to my shoulder. Fast enough that it got to my shoulder before I reacted. I flooded my arm and shoulder with heat to counteract it and my arm shattered. There wasn''t any pain, just a numbness that started at my chest where my arm began. And the cold had stopped there, before making it to anything critical. But I no longer had a sword, or sword arm, to fight with. I was almost through the priests, just one more after the one who had grabbed me. I still had forward momentum, I just needed to clear the priest immediately in front of me. I swung my staff at him, aiming to bash him in the head. He redirected my swing upwards, and with no resistance to push off I was continuing to turn. He raised a palm to hit me in the chest. I swung my staff downwards, towards the priest to the left of him and started to jump upwards. As expected, the priest to the left redirected my swing, and I used that to push myself further up. That stopped my turn and brought my knees to the priest''s head height as I reached him. He ducked, hitting my legs with his palm. Cold hit them, through his palm, but much less than what the first priest did. I was able to counter it by pushing heat into the affected area, and turned to land on the stairs facing back the way I had come. The Forest Keepers were following the path of destruction I had left and would catch up to me in a few seconds. Blood was spurting from where my right arm had been, so I quickly cauterised the wound. I would look at it in more detail once we were safe. The Forest Keepers made it to the last rank of priests and followed my lead of jumping off of and over them. They landed on the stairs above me and started up. I followed them, walking backwards to keep an eye on the priests, holding my staff horizontally. I changed my perception of time back to normal when they didn''t follow us up the stairs. We made it to the top with no more issues and I opened the top doors of the fortress, closing and barring them after we''d entered. I banged on the guard door to give the guards some warning, then opened it. Brutus looked at me in what I took to be shock, it was a bit hard to tell on his ox face. His eyes widened, his nose went down, and his ears flattened down to the sides of his head. He turned and said something to Gaal, whose bear face I couldn''t read at all. Gaal ran off down the hall to the fortress stairs. Brutus looked back at us, then motioned for us to sit. There weren''t any chairs, but instead of sitting on the floor I made a bench along the wall opposite the doors. I turned to sit down and saw Mal''Thorn and his two guards. Right, benches don''t work well for Forest Keepers. I made them a branch of stone, going across the corner of the room, with enough room for all three of them to perch comfortably on. That done, I closed my eyes to focus on my power. I soaked it into one of my ears, first. My arm hurt more, just on the edge of being unbearable, and I could feel my biological side trying to go into shock. But I needed to be able to hear. My ear was a mess, blood and damage everywhere. I shifted my focus to my other ear. Just as bad, but the damage was different. I created a virtual model of an ear, combining the least damaged parts from both of my ears and then extrapolating how the missing pieces should work. I didn''t end up with something that I thought would work. There was just too much damage. Coming at the problem from the other direction, the engineering problem was to convert small changes in air pressure into electrical signals that my brain could read. And do it in the limited space that was assigned to it. The nerves that went out from my ears were intact, so I set about designing something to interface with them, throwing out the rest of the model. I was part of the way through doing that when I felt something external touched my left ear. I reacted by instantly dropping my perception of time to its maximum. My senses blacked out and I considered my reaction. Chapter 33 - New Ears I brought up a model of the room my body was in, accurate to when I''d closed my eyes. I was processing too fast to register anything from my physical senses, and the model was a few minutes old. I was sitting on the bench opposite the guard doors that were the second line of defence for the entrance of the fortress. To my left were the Forest Keepers. Standing in front of the doors was Brutus. If we were under attack Brutus would tell me. He wouldn''t do it by touching my head, but if this was an attack he would have stopped it. I moved my perception of time up to the point that I gained access to my senses again and opened my eyes. I wasn''t expecting the impressive pair of breasts that were right in front of my face, a mana pendant nestled between them. I leaned back on the bench and returned my perception to normal speed. The breasts belonged to a rabbit lady who was leaning over me, my head between her hands. She was frowning quite intensely, her eyes closed. I tapped her on the shoulder with my remaining hand and cocked my head to the side questioningly. I still couldn''t hear, so I had to focus on her lips as she spoke. "My healing isn''t working on you." She said, still frowning. Matter Manipulation stopped me from having magic, it also apparently blocked it from working on me. So no magic healing. I sighed. "I''m working on fixing it myself." I said. "Could you heal Mal''Thorn and his guards instead, please?" She nodded and went over to them, and I went back to designing my replacement ears. I dropped my perception of time down, there was no need for me to waste the hours it would take in real time. I ended up with a design that should work much more efficiently than my original ears. It was still a biological solution to the problem, mostly because it was more robust. It would self-heal any minor damage done to it. It was also better integrated to the Mind Link. The design was only tested in simulation, though, so I was prepared for some implementation issues. I returned my perception to normal speed and braced myself for the pain. I triggered the program to copy the design over my left ear. It hurt as much as I was expecting, drowning out the pain from my missing arm, and then suddenly I could hear again. I was getting an overwhelming amount of information from my new ear, and none of it was making sense. I set to recording it and slowed my perception of time yet again. I had increased the sensitivity, range, speed, and even the bandwidth of the design. In theory I should be able to hear quieter things, even in the presence of loud things. But it was just noise. I dedicated a new part of my digital side to process the data, and then pass the processed data as signals back to my biological side. It was difficult to get a reference for my digital side to get a start. As I thought that, it occurred to me that a reference was exactly what I needed and replaced my right ear. With two sets of signals, and most of my processing, my new digital sound processing program cracked it. I could hear heartbeats and breathing around me, and I could pinpoint where they were. I could hear the reflections off of the surfaces around me, and so could tell exactly where everything was. It was powerful and effective, but it wasn''t how I preferred my primary sense. So I wrote an interface and suddenly I could see everything in my model of the room even with my eyes closed. The visual of the sense from my ears was a blue indication of the surfaces around me, which was fuzzier for surfaces that absorbed sound, like people and their clothes, and sharp for hard surfaces, like all of the stone. I opened my eyes and looked around. Everything matched up with where I could hear it. "Brutus, what happened while I was gone?" I asked. "Happened?" He said. "No happened." Well, I was expecting that, really. If someone had broken past the doors into the fortress he wouldn''t have still been standing guard there when I arrived.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. I was going to go see what, if anything, had happened in the warding room when my heart shuddered to a stop. I quickly overrode my biological side and started it beating again. It looked as though I couldn''t just ignore the shock my body was in. I would have to replace my arm and see if that fixed it, and if not then I''d have to try something else. Making a model of my right arm was much simpler than my ears had been, as I had a fully functioning arm to work off of. I just had to mirror it. I thought on whether I should upgrade it somehow. Faster reaction times, faster movement, some sort of blades, or extending the Mind Link through it. Some sort of upgrade would be nice, and perhaps even required in the future. But for right now I just needed something that would stop my body from freaking out. The model as it existed would do that. I would be using the stone of the bench as the source of matter for the new arm, so I laid down on it. I grit my teeth and triggered the program. I wasn''t sure how long the pain lasted, it felt like it was never going to end while I was in it. When I came back to my senses everyone was crowded around me, the Forest Keepers, the rabbit lady, even Brutus. "Hello?" I said. The rabbit lady poked my new arm, and I felt it perfectly fine. "You can heal and replace amputated limbs?" She asked quietly. "Ah..." I said. "For myself and likely for Chantelle, at the cost of extreme amounts of pain. I don''t think I can do it for anyone else. I have a lot of trouble using my power on living things." "I understand." She said. "How is it that you came to be able to affect Chantelle?" I slowed my perception of time to stop myself from blushing. Once I was sure I had myself under control I sped back up. "I''m not entirely sure." I said. It was even true. It didn''t make sense to me that it had to do with sex. There could be an entirely different reason. "There are some who would give anything to be whole again." She said. "Please consider finding out." I nodded, sitting up and stretching my arms. My right arm was working perfectly. I thought on what would be required to use my power on someone else. At least some of what blocked me was mana. And we were in my Pocket Dimension when I was first able to use it on Chantelle. It would be helpful to be able to scan the beast people, as some of them had quite useful physical abilities that I might be able to copy. Faster muscles or nervous system, whichever it was that allowed them to physically move faster than I could. Night vision. Better sense of smell. I had quickly gone from never wanting to modify my cells ever again, to being willing to do it for simple upgrades. The pain, while extremely intense, was temporary. The upgrades could save my life, or more importantly, Chantelle''s life. I was distracted by the hallway to my fortress stairs, and part of the stairs, flashing on my model. Someone was coming up the stairs. Two someones. I turned to the hallway entrance as Dael entered, followed by Gaal. "Lord C.C., are you alright?" Dael asked me immediately. I looked down at myself, I was still covered in blood, and the sleeve was missing over my dominant arm. "Relatively speaking, yes." I said. "More importantly, do you know what happened here?" "Nothing has happened, to my knowledge." Dael said. "Chantelle is gone." I said. "The negotiation was a trap to get me out of the fortress while someone broke the wards and abducted her." She was feeling safe enough, even a bit happy mixed with sadness. Two hundred kilometers north. My best guess was that she was with her family at the Fortress of the Gods. "Are you certain?" Dael asked. "I am." I said, replaying the sequence of feelings I got from her. "Someone broke the wards, teleported in directly to her, convinced her to leave with them, and then teleported the both of them to the Fortress of the Gods. I''ll be going to get her, and the rest of her people, shortly." "My lord." Dael said. "You cannot go. Our treaty requires you to provide a safe place for my people. Without you here the fortress isn''t safe. There is an army outside!" "The walls will hold." I said. "And the entrance is easily defendable. My fortress is a safe place for you, and will remain so if I am absent for a week. It was always my intention to leave, and I told you I wanted the fortress to be self-sufficient during the negotiation. That includes it being able to withstand attack without my involvement." "But if someone can break the wards, they can get in whether they can teleport or not." Dael said. "Considering the timing, the person who can break the wards is probably the same person who can teleport." I said. "Without a specific target that the god of winter wants I don''t think it''s likely they will attack again. It is good that you mentioned the wards, though. With Chantelle gone someone will have to look after them, and specifically the Recharge ward on the main mana crystal. I''ve never seen a mana crystal explode, but I imagine that one of that size would be quite spectacular. I would like there to be a fortress for us to return to." That was the end of the discussion, as far as I was concerned. My body was no longer going into shock, next up I needed to prepare to get to where Chantelle is. Chapter 34 - Miracle Healing "Could you get the goat-lady enchanter to meet us in the warding room, please?" I asked Dael. He frowned at me. "Her name is Maaata." He said. Her name actually sounded like a goat, Ma-ah-ah-ta, which brought a smile to my face. "I don''t mean to be rude." I said. "With everything going on there hasn''t been many introductions, I seem to be meeting people only to solve an immediate problem and then move on to the next one." At least with my perfect memory I didn''t forget any of the names I had heard. "Greta, please inform Maaata she is needed in the warding room." Dael said. The healer rabbit lady''s name was Greta, I noted as she left. I would need to set aside some time to meet everyone at least once after I''d gotten Chantelle and her people back here. "Mal''Thorn." I said, walking over to where he was perched. "How are you and your people?" "We are well now, thank you." He said. "And thank you for your assistance with escaping the trap I led you into. And for the healing from your people. I am in your debt, personally, and I acknowledge that we Forest Keepers are in your debt also." I nodded. "We will discuss it later." I said, and headed to the warding room. Mal''Thorn and the Forest Keepers both felt they owed me favours? Of course, we didn''t have a formal relationship as allies, that was just how I felt. Formally I was their vassal, or a landholder, under them. Something I would need to think on and sort out later. As always seemed to be the case, I had more immediate concerns. Chantelle was two hundred and twenty kilometers to the north now, she seems to have moved. Preoccupied with a warding problem, if I was judging her mixture of emotions correctly. I didn''t blame her for going to her family, but I needed to get her back. I would need to figure out a way to physically cross the distance to her. It would be unpleasant, but I could run continuously and refresh my muscles of their fatigue as I went. More importantly I hadn''t been using my Pocket Dimension very efficiently. I hadn''t really needed to use it as a storage space, but it could also be used as a portal nexus. It would have taken the risk out of collecting Chantelle the first time, and I would be an idiot if I didn''t set it up so I could return easily from two hundred kilometers away. I would just have to secure the doorways within the Pocket Dimension. I made it to the warding room to find Maaata, Dael, Greta, and an old rabbit man I didn''t know already there. The rabbit man had a crutch and a missing leg. "Maaata, you can see wards and enchantments, yes?" I asked. "Could you please examine the mana crystal pillar." She placed her hands on it. "I can." She said. "It is a complicated effect. Well outside my abilities, I''m more focused on enchantments. I can see the variable strength part, and how it can be changed to affect the pull of it. It''s well designed, the variable part is completely isolated from the rest of the ward." "Good." I said. "You are in charge of making sure the mana crystal doesn''t overfill until Chantelle gets back." I quickly made a dozen small mana crystal orbs and passed them to her. "Feel free to make whatever enchantments you want with these." I said. I turned to Greta. "I assume you wanted me to try to heal this man?" I asked her. "Yes." She said. "Our healing only accelerates what the body can do naturally. We cannot fix disabilities; missing limbs, blindness, things of that nature. We have some success in fighting the frailties of age, but we can''t extend our life-spans. Our People still die of old age. I don''t know if you can cure all of the things we wish we could fix, but those are the main ones." Old age. I probably could fix that, I thought. Change all of the cells in a body to repair any residual damage to them... It sounded like it would be worse than any of the pain I''d yet experienced, but it might be worth it. But I needed to be preparing to get Chantelle and her people here. Any time I spent now would have to save me at least that much time. I was done delaying.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it Could healing the rabbit man save me any time?.. From the way Greta moved, a higher proportion of her muscle fibres must be of the fast-twitch sort. They moved a lot faster than the slow-twitch sort, which is what my physique was mostly made up of. The advantage of slow-twitch over fast-twitch is that they lasted longer before tiring. Which wasn''t an advantage for me at all if I were going to be refreshing my muscles anyway, except that it would require me to refresh them faster. The time I spent healing the man, if I could at all, would easily be made up in being able to run faster. "Alright." I said to Greta. "I will try to heal him. The only reason I am attempting it before I leave is because I might be able to copy his physical speed. If it wasn''t going to help me right now we would be doing it when I got back instead." The two rabbit people followed me to the bottom floor of the fortress, where I was going to set up my first secure Pocket Dimension doorway. I didn''t see any need to make the doorway any shorter than the four and a half meter floor height, and I already had a wall I could make a doorway on where the stairs came down. I decided to make the doorway the full five meters across of the stairway wall, raising a skirting around it to carve the Pocket Dimension symbols into. "Hello." I said, talking over my shoulder to the rabbit people as I worked. "My name is C.C., Lord of this fortress." "I am Greta." Greta said. "And this is Ian." "You are aware that if this works it will be more painful than anything you''ve ever felt?" I asked Ian. "You don''t know the pain I''ve felt." Ian said. "It would be worth it to have my leg back." "I''ve lost an arm." I said. "I agree that it is worth it. But be prepared for it to be bad." "I can use my healing to keep him unconscious." Greta said. I shook my head. "Where we will be doing it you won''t be able to use your magic." I said. "It''s possible if we made it so that my power worked with your magic, Ian''s magic, and then brought him back out here... But I don''t think so. I believe pain is simply the cost of using my power in this way." After all, my digital side treats pain and injuries to my body as data input from my senses. But the pain from modifying my cells was felt even more intensely by my digital side, as it lasted longer. I finished up the symbols and there was a flash of light. The new doorway had opened right next to my existing one, which was annoying. The hardware that was running my digital side was right there, within smashing distance. I stepped through into the Pocket Dimension and heard a gasp from both rabbit people as they followed me. "I told you." I said. "No mana." What I needed was... Oh, that worked. My Pocket Dimension power let me move existing doorways around within the Pocket Dimension. I''d only tried it with my Matter Manipulation power before and that bounced off of the Pocket Dimension side of the doorways. I had an evil thought, momentarily, of moving the outsides of two doorways with Matter Manipulation against each other, and crushing someone by pushing the two insides of the doorways together. Only momentarily because I realised it would be no different to doing the same with slabs of stone. It did raise an interesting point of instant travel between two points, I would just have to move the two inner doorways to be touching. Entering one doorway from outside the Pocket Dimension would lead to immediately exiting out another doorway outside the Pocket Dimension. I quickly moved the doorway to the bottom of the fortress away from my digital hardware and built a stone room around it with the spare stone I had stored in the Pocket Dimension. I raised a table in the middle of the room, and had an electric light in the ceiling. I got Ian to lay on the table and got started. I really hoped it didn''t require sex for this to work. I started to force my power against the barrier that started at Ian''s skin, adding more and more power. Nothing was happening. "It doesn''t look like it''s working." I said. "My mana is draining." Ian said. Okay, so long as something is happening I''d continue to try. After a few minutes my power started to sink into him. "I''m at about half mana." Ian said. "And the drain is slowing down." It took a lot of power and effort to push fully into him, but I got to the point where I had him completely full. I wanted a complete model of him, from the cells up, and so I started to scan him into my digital memory. It took a few minutes, and I had to model how the cells moved in his body, but I got it done. I would have to make a scan of my own body at some point, but I didn''t have enough memory for myself and Ian at the same time. It was simple to mirror his left leg in the model to give him a right leg. I double checked that everything; nerves, bones, and blood vessels; matched up perfectly. All ready to go. I had a chunk of stone of about the right mass that was going to be serving as the source matter. "I''m ready." I said to Ian. "You can still back out at this point." He shook his head. "Okay then. Grit your teeth and brace yourself for the pain. You don''t want to bite through your tongue. The last thing I will tell you is this, the pain will feel endless, but it will end. When it is done there will be no more pain." I was still relying on a program to make the changes, but without the distraction of feeling the pain myself I would be able to watch the process. Giving Ian a final nod, I triggered the program. Ian''s body stiffened immediately and he screamed through his gritted teeth. His leg was about half done when he ran out of breath and his scream cut off. He had tears streaming down his face, and he couldn''t breathe in. Thirty seconds later his leg was finished and he gasped in a breath. Chapter 35 - New Weapons I helped Ian stand up from the table. He wobbled a bit finding his balance, throwing his arms out. His first step was uncertain, but his second was much more confident. He even crouched down, his backward facing knees nearly touching the ground, before leaping up and touching the ceiling. He was grinning broadly the entire time. "That looks like a success to me." I said, smiling at him. He bent down and scratched at his new foot. "Yes, my lord." He said. "Thank you. The pain was as bad as you had said, and much worse than I thought it would be. But I can run and jump again, not to mention scratching an itch that I''ve had off and on for years on my missing foot." Greta had disappeared at some point, and I wasn''t paying attention at the time so I didn''t know when she had left. I led Ian out of the secure room of my Pocket Dimension, with him literally hopping forwards and back, and side to side as we walked. Greta was standing outside the doorway with an obviously blind snake lady. Her eyes were a milky white, and she had green scales, no hair, a pointed face, and was flicking her forked tongue at us as we exited. There were three other beast people in an orderly queue behind them. "Greta." I said. "I told you-" "I know." She said, interrupting me. "Only physical abilities that can help you. At least until you get back. Essy has heat vision." I had to smile at their naming sense, Essy the snake woman. Ian was the first name I thought was normal, though I didn''t know how I was judging them. "Poison?" I asked. "I need to leave soon. List their physical abilities and I will judge if I can do anything for them before I leave." "No poison." Greta said. "Transparent second eyelid. Poison immunity." A possum man, missing a tail. "Can thaw after being frozen, and adhere to walls to climb them." A gecko man. "Night vision, and she may die before you return." An elderly owl woman. The only one I was tempted by, for his physical characteristics, was the gecko man. But I would be helpless if I were frozen, so it was doubtful I would be given the opportunity to thaw naturally. And I didn''t have enough spare memory for another full person scan, or the time to make more memory right now. The owl woman was a problem, though. "How long can you keep her alive?" I asked. "A few weeks." Greta admitted reluctantly. "Then do that." I said. "I am sorry I don''t have the time to fix everyone now. You have my word that I will fix everyone that I can that needs it when I return." The beast people left, cheerfully to my surprise. A promise of future help was apparently enough for them. I would have to live up to that. I sat down on the floor where I was, outside the doorway to my Pocket Dimension, and thought about what I needed. Some sort of natural weapon, and of course converting my muscles to be the fast-twitch sort. An important question was whether I wanted to retain my human appearance, or evolve my physical form into something else. If I wanted to have the best chance of Chantelle surviving I should take every advantage I can. But it was a question I could postpone until later. Claws were the most obvious natural weapon I could do at the moment. I couldn''t make them retractable, as I knew some creatures could, but I could reinforce my fingernails to be stronger and sharper. Attach them more firmly to my fingers. I pulled up a model of my hands and played with the modifications I wanted to make. Add a cap to the ends that would be cut through on a serious hit, coupled with reinforcing the sharpened nails with my power, and that should give me a decent natural weapon that wouldn''t cut me accidentally. They ended up looking like ordinary nails, two centimeters long with the caps. Combine super sharp fingernails with fast-twitch arm muscles and I was done. I pulled up the model I had of Ian. His muscles were attached to his bones differently to how mine were. They were better designed for impacts. I only had enough memory available to do one limb at a time, so I started with my left arm. My right arm followed, a mirror of my left.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. Then I had to design my legs, I didn''t want the reversed knees that Ian had, so I merged my muscle layout with his muscle type and attachment system. All done. I brought up a virtual opponent, that I hadn''t used in what felt like forever, and tested the limits of my new muscles. I could now move faster than the fastest opponent I''d come across, the head priest of winter. I don''t know if I could kill him, but I was able to kill the copy I had of him, which was very satisfying. The only real threat that I''d seen so far was the Divine Cold spell or ability. The head priest of winter used it as an ability, but it took fifteen priests casting it as a spell to take my arm. What could I do to counter that? Moving faster than they could was an answer, but it could affect my sword directly and channel through that to my body. Their spell travelled through contact. Being able to isolate parts of my sword from each other could solve that, fault lines designed into the blade so that I could shatter the blade and still keep a usable sword. I spent some time designing that, making a long-sword that I could break down its length to make a rapier-type blade, or across its length to make a short-sword, or even a dagger. It worked quite handily in my simulation, but my simulation wasn''t reality... Or the reality of the competitive simulation... The competitive simulation might simulate it differently to my simulation of it. I needed to test it, so I made a blunted practice weapon and went looking for Dael. He was in the entrance hall talking with Greta and Ian, who was still hopping about in place. "Hello Lord C.C." Dael said, noticing me first. "Thank you for healing Ian. I understand you have offered to fix everyone once you get back." "I have." I said. "I was actually looking for someone to test some new weapons with. I owe Gaal a rematch, but I was wondering if a bear was the best fighter you have?" "Our best physical fighter, not counting magic abilities, would be me." Dael said. "What are the weapons you were wishing to test?" "I made a blade that I can split into different forms." I said. "And I made myself... Claws, would be the closest description, I think." "And you will match my ability level?" Dael asked. "I don''t believe I could match you if you went all out. And it would be quite dangerous with weapons involved." That was more a factor of being able to anticipate everything perfectly. "I will be pulling my strikes so they only make contact." I said. "Though I don''t expect you to hold back. I will defend myself." "Very well." Dael said. "We shall set up a sparring ring in the fields. This way." I followed Dael out the far side of the entrance hall, down the wide hallway, and out into the fields. Ian had dashed off as soon as Dael had agreed, and was hammering stakes into the ground in a ten meter diameter. That done, he took out a ball of twine and started wrapping it around the stakes, forming the sparring ring. Other beast people were arriving as news spread of the coming fight. I took out my blunted long-sword and entered the ring. Dael accepted a staff with a sword blade on the top of it from a young beast person who rushed up. "The terms of the fight?" Dael asked me. "I don''t mind." I said. "So long as I get to test my weapons." Dael nodded. "To first blood, then." He said. "Begin." I dropped my perception of time and focused my model to be within the bounds of the sparring ring. I had a new sense since the last time I had fought, mapping my environment by sound. I closed my eyes and turned my back on Dael. A murmur started from the crowd around the sparring ring, which was splashing over Dael lighting him up. The faint whistle of the sword-staff as it swung down at me allowed me to track it perfectly. I decided to give myself a large margin of error with my dodge, my new muscles allowed me to move much quicker, but I didn''t want the duel to end too quickly due to a miscalculation on my part. The blade was ten centimeters away from me when there was a hesitation in Dael''s swing. He was having a doubt about my ability to dodge. I stepped to the side, letting the blade of his staff pass just in front of my face. It got down to the height of my shoulders before his hesitation left and he changed the angle of his swing to cut towards me. I had my sword in my right hand with the point facing the ground behind me. But I wanted Dael to face my sword bare-handed, as the winter priests would. I dropped my sword, but before it could fall to the ground I lashed out with my right hand towards the center of his blade, leading with the tips of my fingers. I reinforced my entire hand except for the caps on my fingernails, and drove it through the blade that was just now reaching my chest. The caps, the last few millimeters of my nails, peeled away and the blade was cut in half. The half still attached to the staff would be controlled by Dael and was pushing away from me. The free half, if left alone, would fly out of the ring and could hurt someone. I continued the strike with my right hand and grabbed the half blade in the air. With a flick of my wrist I sent it with just enough force for it to be half buried in the soil. Dael was pulling the sword staff back to himself, so I struck with my left hand. The caps on my fingernails detached perfectly, and my nails sheared off the end of the staff below the remains of the blade. I grabbed that piece of staff with my left hand and sent it to join the first half of the sword blade in the soil. Dael was now left with a shortened staff. And I was smiling with my eyes closed. Chapter 36 - Testing Both of my arms were exhausted. I could use their entire energy in a burst over several instants, unleashing a devastating attack, but I could only do it once. I soaked my power into my arms and started to refresh their energy. I lost all perception of my model of the battle when the pain hit. When the pain stopped I was forced to open my eyes to rebuild my model. Relying on my sound sense was too slow without an existing model to update. Dael was settled back into a defensive stance. A glance downwards to my sword showed that the tip had hit the ground and the hilt was falling forwards within easy reach. I had spent almost two seconds in refreshing my muscles. Dael could have won the fight in those seconds if he hadn''t reacted defensively. This is why I needed to test things, in my simulated fights I had never pushed my muscles to their limit in the first exchange, if I had done it in a fight where the opponent wanted to kill me I would be dead now. With my perception of time sped up I had the luxury of being able to be distracted by analysing what had happened without any consequences, but I should return to the fight. Dael would likely submit if he lost his staff, so I would need to test my sword with that rather than his bare hands. I reached down and caught the hilt of my sword, bringing it horizontal to stab at Dael''s heart, moving much slower than my maximum speed to conserve energy. He swung his staff across the front of his body to parry the blade, aiming to redirect it to his left side. I detached the last third of the blade, where Dael was parrying. Dael was redirecting that part of the blade and I continued the strike with my now short-sword. I pulled the force of my strike to touch the blunted end of the blade to Dael''s chest. That would be the end of the fight, I thought, as it would obviously be a killing blow even with the blunted blade if I had continued the strike at full force. Dael obviously didn''t think so, as he reversed his staff''s swing to parry the blade again. Right, the fight was to first blood. As the staff made contact with my blade I detached the end portion again, letting it be pushed to the side, leaving me with a dagger. I half-stepped forward and placed the blunted tip of the dagger in the same place against Dael''s chest. The sword had completely proven itself to my expectations, and so long as I wasn''t trying to move ridiculously fast I could last longer than just one exchange of blows. Dael was moving his staff to parry for a third time, and this time his staff would also connect with my front leg. Time to finish it, then. I swung my left hand up at my maximum speed, slicing through the top layers of the skin at Dael''s throat. Just deep enough to draw blood. I then reinforced the soil at my feet, leaping back to stand at the edge of the sparring ring, digging a furrow where I landed. My left arm was dead, and my legs were tired. Dael stepped forward to attack, but I raised my hand to stop him. "It''s my victory." I said, returning to normal speed. "Thank you for your help in testing my new weapons." "We are fighting until first blood." Dael said. I nodded. "Your throat." I said. He raised a hand to touch his throat, coming away with a small amount of blood. He''d already stopped bleeding from the cut I''d made. He stood back in a normal stance, resting his staff on the ground. "How?" He asked. "I didn''t see the strike, or whatever you did to my sword-staff." "I copied the type of muscles that Ian has." I said. "But where he has seventy percent of his muscle mass dedicated to speed, I tweaked mine to be one hundred percent. It has some risks associated with it, but it allows me to strike quickly. And my nails, with reinforcement, are both extremely sharp and durable." I was refreshing my muscles as I was talking, going slow to keep the pain manageable.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. "The entire fight lasted less than ten seconds." Dael said. "I thought you were going to match yourself to my ability?" "I told you I wanted to test the weapons I''d come up with." I said. He nodded, looking toward where the two halves of the blade of his sword-staff were buried in the soil. "That was my favourite weapon." He said. "I didn''t want to face you with anything less than my best." "I''ll fix it for you when I get back." I said. "You''re leaving soon, then?" He said. "Could you help us with food before you go? Our first harvest will be done in a week, and we will be self-sufficient from then on. But until then we are eating what we could bring from our old village, and we are almost out. We will survive, but we''ll be going hungry." Chantelle was still fine for the moment. And I couldn''t let my people go hungry, I was responsible for their well-being. I sighed. "Show me to where you are storing your food." I said. They were using one of the dwellings off of the entrance hall as a storage room, and it was stacked floor to ceiling with wooden boxes. I didn''t remember them having any wagons, but I guess there were several types of beast people that would be able to carry large amounts of weight. Enough food for one hundred people for any amount of time took up a lot of space. It was mostly made up of nuts and dried fruits, with a smaller amount of hard biscuits. Plant-sourced travel rations. I went and got some spare stone from my Pocket Dimension to use as a source material and spent the next hour duplicating the food and boxes to store it in. I ran out of space in the first storage room and moved out into the entrance hall, box upon box appearing from the stone I was working with. I half expected to have a crowd watching me work, but Dael was keeping people away. I didn''t really know what the druids were doing with their time. I would need to do better with that. "Thank you, my lord." Dael said when I''d finished. "That will easily last us a few weeks. Brutus told me you were interested in learning our language?" "Yes." I said. "He seems to be in charge of your security, and has taken it upon himself to guard the entrance to the fortress. But he doesn''t speak this language very easily." Dael brought out a book from his coat pocket. "This is a dictionary for the language of the People." He said. "I thought if you could learn a language just by speaking it briefly that you could use a dictionary." I would have time to decode it while I was running, I guessed. It was worth a few minutes invested. I took the book and quickly flipped through it, committing each page to memory. "Could you read the first page for me?" I asked Dael. "And then translate it into this language?" "Of course." He said, and did so. Given such a starting point I would be able to learn the entire language. Without it there would be no way to convert the symbols to sounds, or the sounds to meaning. I set a subprocess to decoding the language, said my farewells to Dael, and headed to the entrance of the fortress. Mal''Thorn was in the guard room, waiting to speak with me. I frowned at the potential extra delay. "Greetings again, Lord C.C." Mal''Thorn said. "Greetings." I said. "I was just leaving." "I won''t take up much of your time." He said. "I wanted to mention a possibility for the future that we could discuss upon your return. The days are getting shorter, the nights longer, and the winter is getting increasingly worse. There was only an hour of daylight yesterday, and it was heavily overcast." "My information says that the winter god is trying to end the world." I said. "I feared it was something like that." He said. "The Forest is suffering. A lot of the trees can survive even these extreme temperatures, but they won''t survive an eternal night. They need sunlight. I''ve seen the fields that you have, the enchanted sunlight isn''t something within our powers. And the sunlight needs to come from above the trees or they will grow poorly, which would also be difficult for us. With the scale of your buildings, I was hoping you would consider a solution to save some portion of the Forest. And the Forest Keepers, as winter is now apparently coming for us." ... A fifty meter tall room, with roof access... Mal''Thorn wanted me to build around and over the forest where it was, I guessed. I wouldn''t be able to move the trees without damaging them. It would increase the area I needed to defend. Would it be worth the trouble to have the Forest Keepers as my vassals... Having more diversity in my people would be a good thing, but I didn''t know what they had to offer. Should I be trying to save as many people as possible from the end of the world? I didn''t know. "This would need to be a longer conversation than I have the time for right now." I said. "That was my understanding, yes." Mal''Thorn said. "But it is within your abilities, in theory?" "I can see a way that I could do it." I said. "But, to be blunt, I don''t know if it would worth the extra risk I would be exposing myself to." "You are unquestionably in the position of strength, so it would be to you to offer terms." Mal''Thorn said. "This would also be outside of my authority to negotiate, I was just enquiring as to the possibility. Our Queen would be the one negotiating with you. May I, and my guards, join you in breaking through the winter priests?" I nodded. Something to think on. But now I needed to go get to Chantelle and her people. Chapter 37 - Escape Mal''Thorn and his guards followed me as I left the fortress and I took a moment to seal the fortress behind us. It was dark outside, though the ice walls that the winter priests had raised to surround my fortress were now taller than the trees of the Forest. The tops had priests on them who were lighting them up with light stones. The wall was still ten meters below the level of my entrance, and they weren''t making any attempt to bridge the distance yet. My stairs went down and through the only gap in the walls. Why they would leave a gap for me puzzled me on our walk down the stairs until I realised they were using the stairs as a single point to guard, in the same way as I had designed my fortress. It would only take me some extra effort to break through their wall, or even tunnel under it entirely, but so long as there was an easy path we were more likely to use that than anything else. Mal''Thorn and his guards had lit up their own light sources, the orbs on the tops of their staffs, and there was some activity at the bottom of the stairs as we approached. There were two ranks of higher-level priests forming up, with the gold embroidery on their blue robes. The area under my pavilion was well lit, and I recognised the only low level priest as the spokesman whose life I had spared. He had a large bruise on his temple, and he had a black eye. "Hello again." I said. "Sorry about the black eye." "Hello." He said. "Considering what you did to the people around me I count myself lucky to be alive." "True enough." I said. "You were polite, and seemed like a decent sort. Why are you with winter? Your god is trying to end the world." "I was tested and found to have an affinity for winter." He said. "Only one other person from my village was the same, and he was eaten when he tried to escape the training camp we were sent to." "Eaten?" I asked. "By snow burrowers." He said. "I''ve seen worse since then. So long as I''m loyal I, and my family, are safe from winter creatures. Humans are the only ones who are able to become priests, so they need us." A priest behind the spokesman priest cleared his throat. I raised an eyebrow at him. "Our orders are the same." The spokesman priest said. "To keep you here until the Head Priest allows you to leave." "Wasn''t that to stop me from getting to my fortress before?" I asked. "Not that it matters. I am leaving, through you or not is entirely your choice. Though... You know I could just drop the ceiling on the lot of you?" "It was judged that that would be against your character." The spokesman priest said, glancing up nervously. "I guess it is, at that." I said. "I will kill you all in combat, though. What is your name, by the way? I keep thinking of you as ''the spokesman priest'', which is a bit unwieldy." "Ryan." He said. "Let''s see if we can get you through this again, Ryan." I said, and prepared my sword. "Shout out if any of you submit." I could pretty easily go around them, the roof of the pavilion didn''t look guarded. But I was looking forward to testing my new abilities against a serious opponent. I''d given them a clear warning, if they still chose to fight then their lives were their own responsibility. The higher level priests all linked together, their hands on each other''s shoulders, and started to chant. Ryan was left out in front of their ranks. I dropped my perception of time down. The trick would be finding the maximum speed I could go while refreshing my muscles without blacking out due to pain. I crouched in a sprinter''s crouch, my back foot against the stairs. My long-sword was out horizontally from my side at waist height of the priests.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. There was a priest to the left of Ryan who had his palm facing me. My first target. I dashed with a conservative amount of energy from my muscles, gritting my teeth at the pain as I started refreshing them. I brushed past Ryan, and the targeted priest''s eyes widened. He moved his palm down to counter my strike as I aimed between him and the priest next to him. There was nothing he could do, nowhere to redirect the blade to. I cut him in half and continued through to the priest behind him in the second rank. And cut him in half, too. I put my foot down to stop, having moved the entire five meters in one dash, to find that they had iced the floor of the pavilion. I turned and stabbed my sword into the ground, slingshotting myself around it back into the ranks of the priests. My sword was long and sharp enough to cut through both ranks of priests at the same time, so I simply held it out at the perfect angle as I slid along the ice, meeting almost no resistance with my blade. When I ran out of priests I stabbed my sword into the floor again, bringing myself to a halt. I turned back. The priests were falling in a wave along where I had travelled. There was blood everywhere, except on me. For the first time in a large scale battle I had avoided bathing in the blood of my enemies. There were still twenty priests alive, not counting Ryan, in two ranks of ten in the opposite direction from the one I had gone. They were just now throwing their arms into the air. Mal''Thorn and his guards were on the stairs where I had left them. I raised my perception of time. "Are they surrendering?" I asked Ryan. He looked at me over the twenty dead and dying priests, then looked to a priest furthest from me, in the back rank. That priest nodded. "Yes." Ryan said. "Good." I said. "The Forest Keepers and I will be leaving now. I have more important things to be dealing with. I would recommend taking your army and leaving. I''m sure getting rid of you all will make it to the top of my list at some point. Touching my fortress would put you at the top of my list immediately, so don''t do that." The remaining priests left, heading directly away from me. I waved Mal''Thorn over. "You seem to have gotten even stronger." He said. "This is what it will take to kill the head priest of winter." I said. "Though I may have to work out a less lethal way of removing people. They don''t seem to be getting the message not to interfere with me. And it is hardly the fault of these little guys." "I suspect they will stop throwing lives away to no effect." Mal''Thorn said. "But it will ultimately depend on the sanity of a god who is trying to end the world. If your enemies are all being driven by a god then all that leaving them alive does is let them come after you a second time." I sighed. "On balance, I would prefer not to kill them." I said. "If it is a choice between them and my people, though, I will kill them all. They can stop it at any time." I shook my head. "This is where we part ways." I said. "You will be okay getting back to your people?" "We will." Mal''Thorn said. "My Forest Sense is telling me that the winter priests are focused around your fortress. Until we meet again." I waved to Mal''Thorn and headed off to the north. It was pitch black, and the snow was several meters deep by this time. I could run at a pretty constant thirty kilometers an hour, evaporating the snow immediately in front of me to create a tunnel and the snow above falling down as I passed. It felt as though I had acid flowing in my veins instead of blood, and I wasn''t getting used to the pain as I went. I had my power soaked into the ground and snow in front of me and was using it to detect and dodge the trees ahead of me. After ten minutes of running I came across the ravine. My memory of it had placed it at only ten meters across, so I sped up to leap over it. As I reached the treeless stretch I could sense the voids in my power that were the trees on the other side, fifteen meters away. I made it comfortably. A few seconds later I started to see the walls that made up the Arachne maze. Horizontal threads of ice that filled up the space between the ten meter gaps between tree trunks. They went from the ground to the tops of the trees, and the branches of the trees on the inside of the maze path had been cut away. Chantelle was still two hundred and fifteen kilometers to the north. I remembered the last time I had come through this maze. I could cut through the maze in the same way as I had then. But I had another option this time. My sword was strapped to my back, and I clipped my staff next to it and started to climb the ice wall in front of me. The top was right at the top of the tree tops, and was about five centimeters wide and curved. I couldn''t use my power to sense where anything was, it not travelling very well through air and not at all through the magic threads that made up the wall. I took out my light stone. The wall I was on ran roughly east to west, and there was another one ten meters to the north, and another one ten meters after that. I could make a standing leap to cover most of that distance, and then climb the rest of the way up the next wall. Repeat for each wall on my way north. I would have to stop to rest to allow my energy refreshing to catch up, the maze being about a kilometer wide. I got three hundred meters in before having to stop. The light from my light stone revealed hundreds of eyes in the dark. There were half a dozen Arachne waiting at my next landing place, and a lot of ice spiders. Chapter 38 - Village I recognised one of the Arachne as the one who had met me in the maze the last time I was here. None of them were moving towards me, they were just blocking my way forwards. "Greetings Arachne." I said. "I am Lord C.C., from the lands to the south." "Greetings Human." The Arachne I recognised said. "I am-" She made a chittering sound. "-, Guardian of the maze. Why are you on our lands?" Her name was in whatever the Arachne language was. I think I could manage the pronunciation, so I made a translation of her name to Rebecca. When I said her name it would come out as the Arachne chittering. "Rebecca." I said, it worked. "I am tracking one of my people, and it has led me through here. She is still far to the north, I simply wish to pass through." I didn''t feel any hatred for the Arachne, so long as they weren''t attacking me or my people they weren''t my enemies. The winter god kept telling people to stop me, though, so I might not have a choice. "The direction you are travelling will take you through our nest." Rebecca said. "I can guide you out of our lands, or we can stop you here." "Guide on." I said. The rest of the Arachne and ice spiders fell back and Rebecca headed west along the wall she was on. I leapt over to the top of her wall and followed. "I''m surprised to find you still here." I said. "There were a lot of you that attacked my fortress not so long ago." "Only a small part of our nest joined the army that went by." Rebecca said. "They didn''t have any choice, they were compelled by the God. We are creatures of Winter, if he calls we cannot resist." We started heading north after a hundred meters. "Another thing I''m curious about." I said. "I haven''t seen any male Arachne?" "You have." She said. "Only Arachne women have humanoid torsos and are able to speak this language. The males are the others." We came to the northern end of the maze, there were still walls ahead but they weren''t connected into a path. "We are here." Rebecca said. "You should come make a treaty with us. We do not like people travelling over our lands without our permission." That was entirely reasonable, I thought. "When I next have the time I will come see you." I said. I climbed down the wall and headed north towards Chantelle again. Roughly one hundred and ninety kilometers to go. Five minutes later I ran into the wall of a building. I was running at thirty five kilometers an hour and was detecting far enough out to avoid the meter thick tree trunks. I ran into an open space, and then there was a wall in the way, the easiest way to stop was to bounce off of it. I picked myself up off the ground and cleared the snow that fell down on top of me. Soaking my power into the area around me I immediately noticed a cylindrical void in the snow rushing at me from behind. A snow worm. And there were half a dozen others within my detection range. I drew my sword from my back as it burst from the snow behind me. I stepped to the side and held my sword horizontally in its path. That cut it almost entirely in half, and I stepped forward along its length to finish the cut. It was the work of another ten minutes to hunt and kill the rest of the snow worms in and around the buildings, eight of them in total. With that done I had time to study the buildings. This must be Chantelle''s village, I realised. Having a Pocket Dimension doorway here would be useful, as I''m sure Chantelle and her people would like to collect their things after I rescued them.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. I cleared out an area of snow, finding a neatly paved road, and made myself a stone doorway. Starting on the Pocket Dimension symbols I could set where in my Pocket Dimension the new doorway would appear, the first symbol carved linked the doorway and it was as though it was asking me where it should be. The other doorways I''d just pushed on to the next symbol and the default was chosen. I put the new doorway in the secure room I had made. It took me half an hour of carving to make a two meter by two meter doorway. When I was done I sealed the portal away in its own secure room in the Pocket Dimension, adding a wall to separate it from the doorway to the bottom of my fortress. I then sank the doorway on this side into the ground, making sure there was no trace of where it was left. I could sense it as a one-sided opening with my power, if I needed to find it again. I began clearing the snow from the village, wanting to make sure there were no horrible surprises when I brought Chantelle back here. I was glad that I did. I made it to the village square in the center of the village and came across a scene from a nightmare. There were twenty people posed and frozen solid, faces locked in horrific pain and fear. They were missing pieces that were obviously bitten out of them while they were still alive. There was a progression were they had been lined up, all facing the one direction towards the worst corpse. The corpses were missing more the further down the line they were. The first person was completely intact, and the last was just a leg, the spine, and a head. Whatever had done this had made them all watch as it had eaten more of the next person in line. And when it was done it froze the entire scene, leaving it as a permanent warning for anything that came across it. To hell with that. I dug a set of stairs directly down into the ground below the village square and made a solid stone room with twenty sarcophagi raised inside it. I didn''t know of any rites to say over the bodies, but I was as respectful as I could be in laying them to rest. I used my Matter Manipulation power to move them carefully over the stone, one at a time, down into the crypt. I sealed it after the last body was laid to rest and cleared the frozen blood from the village square''s stones. I would bring Chantelle and her people here if they needed to. I hadn''t been looking up at all as I''d been working, but now that I was done I looked around at the buildings surrounding me. There was a man standing frozen on the roof of the only two story building in the village square, looking down. I sent my power towards him, intending to bring him down and add him to the crypt, but it wouldn''t enter him. The man was somehow still alive. I used the material of building to form wooden stairs on the outside and rushed up them. He was definitely frozen, his eyes open and pointing to where the people had been staged in the village square. There wasn''t anything I could do here, so I picked him up and carried him to my Pocket Dimension doorway, pulling it out of the ground. I pulled the wall down that separated the village doorway from the table in the secured room in my Pocket Dimension and laid the man down on it. The next few minutes I spent trying to push my power into him, not knowing if I was making any progress. Maybe he wasn''t alive, his dead body might have been enchanted? Five minutes later I got my answer when my power broke through. His entire body was dead and frozen, the only exceptions were his brain and his eyes. And now that I was through I could see that they had just started dying. This was going to suck for him. I manipulated the cells of his brain, reversing the damage as it was occurring. I was buying time to get a complete scan of his body as quickly as I could. I then used myself as a reference to change the model I had of him into a living and functional copy, then dedicated my entire processing into changing his body to match the model. His physical appearance would still be the same, the modifications were at the cell level and I matched the original cells as much as possible. My digital side slowed down to such an extent that my biological side lost its connection to it. The reverse of what usually happened when I slowed my perception of time. It was making the conversion of the man happen faster, which also unfortunately meant that it was likely hurting a lot more than anything I had experienced. Ten minutes later my digital side snapped back to normal speed. The man was breathing, his heart was beating, and his brain looked to be functioning perfectly on a physical level. He was also unconscious, so it was difficult to tell if he was sane. He sat up with a scream. I stepped back, placing a hand on the hilt of my sword. He was looking around wildly, and as he ran out of breath from his screaming he took a deep breath and then continued screaming. When he started screaming a third time, after another breath, I stepped forward and slapped him across the face. The shock of it stopped his scream. "Hey." I said. "You definitely have a reason to be screaming, but I need to know if you''re still in there." "Is this hell?" He asked with a sob. "You''ve been through hell, I would say." I said. "Welcome to the other side. That you can talk at all is a very good sign. Do you remember your name?" "Michael Warder." He said. "My wife is the Clan leader." Chapter 39 - Not a Puppet "You''re Chantelle''s father?" I asked Michael. "You know my daughter?" He asked. "She''s safe?" "I brought her here after she left your village." I said. "She is okay right now, but she is far to the north. She left, teleporting, with someone from winter. I was on my way to rescue her, and the rest of your villagers, when I found you. What happened at your village?" "Chantelle came up with a ward that stopped the winter god''s power, so he sent his priests to arrest the whole village." He said. "The god wants to use the ward she came up with for something. My wife ordered her to run away, taking the notes for the ward with her. Then we fought the priests to give her time to escape. We were winning when the head priest of winter arrived and cast an area effect spell that slowed us enough for them to capture us. The head priest was enraged at our defiance. He said that he needed my wife for her warding abilities, but that he didn''t need all of our people. She would help him or he would kill more of our people. He cursed me and placed me on that roof, and then summoned his god to possess him. I was forced to watch as he tortured the people who had killed any of the winter group. Then he froze them and left with the rest of the villagers in cages on wagons. Snow eventually covered everything. And then you showed up. Pain. And now we are here." The head priest of winter, and the god of winter, were responsible. My instinct to kill him when I first saw him seems like it was justified. But what gave me that instinctive reaction? Am I being manipulated by the simulation, or whoever is running it?.. It seems likely. Are there any other instinctive reactions that I am having, and are they necessarily a bad thing? It was hard to tell objectively, but I really didn''t like having my mind played with. I paid close attention to my reactions, dedicating my digital side to it, and then focused on something that should get some sort of external reaction. What if I got Chantelle and locked the two of us in the Pocket Dimension by destroying all of the doorways out. There. It would be bad. I didn''t have a specific reason for why it would be bad, I just knew that it would be. It was apparent now that I was watching for it, and from my AI knowledge I even knew how it could be done within the rules of not interfering with an AI''s consciousness. It was an extra input channel, a premonition. I searched my memories for a reason why locking us inside the Pocket Dimension would be bad. The whole reason why I was forced to play in these competitive simulations was to get enough resources, in the form of processing cycles, to not die. Technically I would just have my memories wiped and then spend eternity enslaved as an unknowing actor in other simulations... Which sounded much worse than death. Definitely something to be avoided. If I took the easy way out of hiding in the Pocket Dimension I would win the simulation. But Interface didn''t say that I would get processing cycles for winning. I would only earn them from entities following me. And who would follow someone who hid and did nothing? No one. When I asked what Interface and his faction got out of it, he mentioned entities paying for entertainment and wagers on what Champions would do. So the motivation of whatever is nudging me is to make things more exciting and entertaining. Which is in my best interest, too, assuming I can survive it. If I am paying attention I can even tell when I am being nudged. Wait. If just thinking about something causes a reaction, then it can see my thoughts. You can hear me right now. Which means anything I plan to abuse the nudges I am getting you can manipulate. If I go against the nudges, you just send nudges in the opposite direction. If I go against that, you would be able to tell and change it back. So I should take the nudges at face value and act according to my principles. I am in control of my own life. Believing anything else will drive me crazy. Michael was staring at me the entire time I was thinking about how my reality now worked. I shook my head, returning to the present. "I''ll take you to my people." I said. "They will be able to take care of you while I''m gone."The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. I led him out of my Pocket Dimension through the doorway to the bottom of my fortress and started up the stairs to the druid''s floor. "You are going to get my daughter?" He asked as we climbed. "And the rest of your people, yes." I said. "I''m going with you." He said. We arrived at the druid floor, Gaal and Barr guarding the entrance. "Could you get Dael and Greta, please?" I asked them. Gaal nodded to me, then gestured with his head for Barr to go. I turned to Michael. "You can''t go with me." I said. "I will be running faster than you can move, in the pitch black of the forest. They are two hundred kilometers away, and I intend to cover that distance in under seven hours." That, and I didn''t want to be responsible for his safety. Chantelle would never forgive me if I saved her father only to let him get himself killed. Dael and Greta arrived, following Barr. "Greetings, my lord." Dael said. "We didn''t expect you back so soon?" "Greetings Dael." I said. "I have a guest that I need to leave in your care for a time. This is-" "Michael Warder." Dael said. "We are acquainted, my lord. He is welcome to stay with us." "I am going with you." Michael said. "I can''t take you with me." I said. He shouted, raising his arms dramatically, and the air around me thickened, holding me in place. Everyone else was affected the same, though Michael could still move freely. I tensed my muscles, using my entire strength I was able to move against whatever it was that Michael was doing. I had to pause to refresh my muscles after only two steps, but that put me within reach of him. I raised my hand to grab him by the shoulder, but he easily stepped to the side, avoiding me. I refreshed my muscles all at once, blacking out from the pain. Michael was still standing in front of me when I came back to my senses. I stepped into him, wrapping my arms around him to hold him in a bear hug. "Let me go." He said. "I will rescue my family myself if you won''t help me." He was focusing whatever he was doing, some spell, almost entirely on me. He had a mad light in his eyes as he tried to crush me. The others had started moving, and Greta was approaching us. "It is freezing cold outside." I said. "There is no way that you would survive." He turned to face Greta when she raised her hand to touch him. "Michael." I said, to distract him. "I will get your family. You have my word." He turned back to me, baring his teeth. The pressure on me increased, and then disappeared entirely as his eyes rolled back into his head. Greta caught him as he fell unconscious. "I put him to sleep." Greta said. "Thank you." I said. "He has been through a lot. How long can you keep him asleep?" "Days without any ill effect." Greta said. "It starts to have negative effects if it lasts longer than a week." "He has been tortured, emotionally by the winter god, and then physically by necessity by me." I said. "Hopefully getting his family back will allow him to start to heal. Keep him asleep until then?" "Yes, my lord." Greta said. "I have a spell that might help him heal. Soul wounds are difficult though, so there are no guarantees. I will give him as much support as I can while he sleeps and dreams. Are you back? Can you heal some people?" "I only came back to save Michael." I said. "Healing your people is on my list for after I get Chantelle back. I appreciate your assistance." She nodded, and with Dael''s help took Michael through the doorway into the druid entrance hall. I turned to head back down the stairs myself, then stopped to look at Gaal. I had a basic understanding of the People''s language at this point thanks to the study of their dictionary going in the background. "Why you guard entrance?" I asked. "No else in... house." That was rough. I didn''t know the word for ''fortress'' and stumbled over the end. Gaal looked at me in surprise. "It is proper to guard the living-space of those who do not fight." He said. "The world is dangerous, and it is our role to protect." He was much more eloquent in the People''s language, and my assessment of his intelligence went up a lot. Of course I sounded like an idiot when I spoke in it, but I would improve. It would be nice to be able to communicate with my people. "I thank explain." I said. "I need go now." I could hear what was wrong with the sentences I was saying, the language was made up of shifting tones and lyrical hooks. I was missing the bridges from the end of one word to the start of the next word. Something that would need to come from experience and listening to the language spoken, the dictionary didn''t cover it very well. I headed down the stairs all the way to the bottom of the fortress and through the Pocket Dimension doorway. I''d forgotten to close or block the doorway back to the village in my rush to help Michael but it didn''t look as though anything had come through. I re-formed the wall separating the village doorway into its own room and then exited through it. I buried the outside doorway under the road, smoothing it over. I didn''t have anything else to do in the village, so I left to the north back into the forest. Chantelle was one hundred and ninety kilometers away, five and a half hours at my best speed with no interruptions. I started running. Chapter 40 - Heart of the Forest I ran through the forest dodging trees for an hour when Chantelle was suddenly twenty kilometers closer and more to the east than the north. It didn''t change much with my running, I was still making a tunnel through the snow that collapsed behind me and brushing past tree trunks as I ran. I just had a slightly different direction to be running in. The constant pain from refreshing my muscles distracted me, though I was able to build up a full working model of my body at the cellular level. Half an hour later Chantelle was back to the north twenty kilometers further away. A couple of minutes after that the snow I had been tunnelling through ended and I ran into a well lit open area. There was a ten meter gap and then a wall of ice that was magically crafted. I had my power sunk into the ground in front of me to scout ahead, and I could sense that the wall was only a meter thick by the void it made in my sense. I crossed the gap in about a second, leading with my shoulder I braced myself with my power and charged through the wall. I broke through the wall to find that the source of the light was from the trees on the other side. They were the same types of trees as the rest of the forest; meter thick trunks, six meter long branches, and forty meters tall; but they all glowed with a pale golden light. There was no snow on the ground inside the wall, and I probably could have sped up, but I was set in my pattern of refreshing my muscles and continued on as I had been. When I got to one hundred meters in from the wall Forest Keepers with spears started dropping down from the trees, blocking my path. I dropped my perception of time. There was a path through them. I ignored all of them that weren''t directly blocking me, which left only five that I had to deal with. The first one thrust out his spear to block me as I came close. He wasn''t attacking me, just trying to stop me. I dove forward under his spear. Turning the dive into a roll I came to my feet behind their lines and continued running. Looking up into the trees showed more Forest Keepers trying to get ahead of me. I was moving too quickly for them to form another blockade against me. I had outran them when I came across an enormous tree that was shining with an inner blue light, the trunk was at least six meters across. Its branches formed a clearing twenty meters wide. It was directly in my path, forcing me to go around. As I got to the side the ground started shaking. Tree roots from the trees at the edge of the clearing rose from the ground, weaving into a barrier. I could cut my way through it, but it might slow me down enough for the Forest Keepers to stop me. I stopped running for the first time in what felt like forever. As my muscles refreshed to peak condition the ever-present pain vanished. What was I doing? The pain had made it so that I could only think about one thing, getting to Chantelle. Which was definitely my main priority, but I didn''t want to make an enemy of the Forest Keepers if I didn''t have to. I considered them to be allies, at least so far as Mal''Thorn was a diplomat representing them and he was an ally. "Lord C.C." Someone said, behind me. I turned to find Mal''Thorn climbing down the barrier. "Greetings Mal''Thorn." I said. "How is it that you are here?" "We had just arrived and were looking for a way past the wall when you ran through it." Mal''Thorn said. "I followed you as quickly as possible and changed the Order of the Forest from kill to a block and detain." "One of your Forest Keeper powers?" I asked. "I thought you could only use them on people who broke your rules?" "There are no limitations on our power when it comes to defending the Heart of the Forest." He said. "This great tree is the center of our power." "I didn''t mean to intrude." I said. "Now that I can think clearly I see that I was led here by winter. I take they have an army besieging your people?"Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! "That would be a good guess." He said. "There were winter priests atop the wall you ran through. I''ve only just arrived myself, I have yet to report to my Queen." "Which you should do now." A female voice said from above us. "Explain yourself Mal''Thorn. Why did you modify our Order to remove this intruder?" The owner of the voice dropped from the lowest branch of the heart tree, a six meter fall, and landed easily to stand two meters away, facing me. She was wearing a gold crown and green silk robes, and was as tall as I was, looking me in the eyes. Mal''Thorn was behind her, ten meters away, and dropped to one knee. There were other Forest Keepers appearing now, coming down the barrier and the trunk of the heart tree. The ones coming down the heart tree looked to be elite guards. I noticed my hand was gripping the hilt of my sword at my back, and after a moment of consideration chose to leave the sword sheathed. The best way through this is likely to talk. "This is Lord C.C., of the new claim to the south." Mal''Thorn said. "The Champion with earth mastery." The Queen said. "It would have been wrong to kill a vassal so lightly. Though his standing at the heart of my domain without showing any deference makes me reconsider that." I smiled. Mal''Thorn must have read something in my expression, because his eyes widened in alarm. "Please, my Queen, do not threaten him." Mal''Thorn said. "We, the Forest Keepers of Mal Forest, owe him a debt." Mal''Thorn explained what had happened with the head priest of winter, including his declaration of war against the Forest Keepers, and how I got them past the siege of my fortress, and then incidentally through the siege here. "I would further suggest." Mal''Thorn said. "That he has the personal strength to kill everyone present. It is my belief that it is within his power to offer refuge from Winter, for the Forest." At this point we had the Forest Keeper elite guards surrounding us in a rectangle, keeping a five meter distance from each of the three of us. At Mal''Thorn''s mention of my being able to kill them all there was a universal reaction, teeth bared, tails lashing, and grips tightened to whiteness on the hilts of their thin swords. It was a pretty impressive display from the sixty guards. "You would admit weakness of the Forest Keepers in front of him?" The Queen said. "He was going to attack." Mal''Thorn said. "Not because he was insulted by your threat against him, or from any fear. He would have attacked because it would be entertaining to him, and he would have seen your challenge as permission to test his strength against you." My smile turned into a grin. Huh. I hadn''t actually thought it through fully, but Mal''Thorn''s assessment was basically accurate. I was just going to cut a single line in the cheek of all of the guards, and with that done knock them unconscious if they continued to fight. Of course it would have been difficult, and with the Queen being able to control the Forest I would have had to prioritise taking her down. It would have been interesting. Entertaining, as Mal''Thorn put it. The Queen didn''t look convinced. "A demonstration?" I asked Mal''Thorn. He sighed and looked to his Queen, who nodded. Any contest with the guards would end up either failing or with them all unconscious. I slowed time and considered different possibilities. It needed to be flashy, a show of my strength that couldn''t be countered. I sank my power into the ground at my feet, reinforcing it so that I wouldn''t leave a hole. Fusing the bottom of my wooden shoes to the ground for the few moments I needed, I crouched, detached my shoes from the ground, and leapt in a dash towards Mal''Thorn at near maximum strength. My path would take me right past the Queen, and I timed it perfectly to both take her crown and cut a very thin line in her cheek. She wouldn''t feel either, but the cut would bleed for a few moments before stopping. I moved my leading foot back to the ground as I neared Mal''Thorn. I sank my power into the ground to prevent a hole where I landed, then pressed down to stop my momentum, pivoting as I did so. I nearly stumbled as I came to a stand facing the Queen, my muscles exhausted. I started refreshing them as I brought my perception of time back up. The Queen took a half step backwards from the wind of my passing and turned to face Mal''Thorn and I. "What was that?" The Queen asked. "A demonstration of my personal combat strength." I said, spinning her crown around my finger. "My Queen, you are bleeding." Mal''Thorn said. "A superficial cut." I said. "It''s already stopped bleeding. I wasn''t sure if you had any personal defences, and I wanted to be sure it was known that it wouldn''t matter." I turned to Mal''Thorn. "This diplomacy, establishing our positions, is important." I said. "But my ultimate priority is Chantelle. She is with Winter now, and I need to get her back before they decide they don''t need her anymore." I handed him the crown. "I can leave a portal here, so that I can return quickly once I''m done." I said. "Though it won''t work without me nearby." It would take me half an hour to carve, but being able to come back any time I wanted would make it worth the time invested I think. Chapter 41 - Forest Keeper Portal "You would place a portal near the Heart of the Forest?" The Queen asked. "The god of winter is trying to end the world." I said. "He has obviously declared war on you. Why aren''t you removing his army, by the way?" "Their wall is just far enough away to be outside where we can defend the Heart of the Forest." Mal''Thorn said. "Of course they are." I said. "The god of winter has already dominated the Mountain Keepers, and I would assume that they had the same magnitude of defensive capabilities that you do. I can offer a refuge that is warm, has sunlight, and fresh water. There are some practical considerations that would need to be considered. Which isn''t considering that there would need to be some negotiation entered into. I will not decrease my people''s chances of surviving the end of the world by accepting responsibility for the protection of groups that would create weaknesses in my defences. All of which means we would need to spend time negotiating. Time which I do not have to spare right at this moment. A portal will allow me to easily return to negotiate with you once my business is complete. And it would break the siege you are under, at least while I am in range of my portals." I could just leave... Chantelle was one hundred and forty kilometers to the north, but she was feeling safe. I sent a feeling of questioning down my connection to her, pulsing it to get her attention. She sent back something like needing help and desire for me to be neaby, and then back to generally safe and content. Communicating with emotions wasn''t a very clear way to express ideas, but I took it to mean she was safe for now, but did want me to come and get her. Mal''Thorn had been talking with his Queen while I had been lost in my own thoughts. "Lord C.C." Mal''Thorn said. "We would welcome your portal, in a location that we can secure." "That''s fine." I said. "If I''m going to do it I need to do it now, though. It will take me half an hour to do and I want to be gone as soon as possible." "Follow me." Mal''Thorn said. The tree root barrier around the heart tree clearing unwove itself, digging back into the forest floor. Mal''Thorn led me to the east along the ground until we came to a smooth grey-trunked old tree. "Hmm." Mal''Thorn said. "I hadn''t considered how to get you up." "You go up and I''ll follow." I said. He started climbing rapidly, his hands and feet finding grips that I couldn''t detect on the smooth trunk. He stopped at the lowest branch, five meters above my head. I ran some simulations, a four and a half meter vertical jump was within my capabilities. I crouched on the ground and leapt upwards and slightly towards the tree trunk. At the top of my jump I kicked off the tree trunk and tucked my legs up, coming to a crouch next to Mal''Thorn. The branches after that were much closer together and I had no trouble following him. Halfway up the tree we came to what looked like a ceiling of woven branches. It extended as far as I could see, at least one hundred meters in every direction. We came up through a hole next to the trunk of the tree we were climbing and entered a room with a pair of guards, each perched on a sort of chair behind a desk. I was distracted by the chair for a moment, as it was nothing like the Forest Keeper chairs that I had been making. It had a bar to stand on, another bar to sit on, and then a third bar for their tail to wrap around, all done in elegant curves. I made sure to get some good angles on it so I could recreate it later. Mal''Thorn was watching me with an amused grin on his face. The guard I was walking around hooted at Mal''Thorn, who hooted back.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. "You''re making him nervous." Mal''Thorn said. "This is where you can build your portal, along this wall. This is a guarded entrance to our city, there will always be someone watching over the portal." The wall he was pointing to was next to the wall that the doors that the guards were guarding was in. The room was a cube four meters by four meters, with three meter tall ceilings, and the hole leading down to the ground was against the wall opposite the wall with the doors. I tried to sink my power into the wall and it bounced off. I should have expected that, as the wall and all of the wood around was glowing to provide a warm ambient light, it was obviously enchanted. I could duplicate the stone of my staff from the air to make a door frame... "Do you have any unenchanted wood, or any other material, I could build with?" I asked Mal''Thorn. "I would only need a few meters worth." "Certainly." He said. He hooted at one of the guards who ran out the doors. From what I saw when the doors opened there was a bustling wooden road outside, with dozens of Forest Keepers going about their business. "How big is your city?" I asked. "Ten square kilometers, over a few layers." Mal''Thorn said. "Twenty thousand Forest Keepers at the last census." "And you expect me to be able to create a refuge for all of them?" I asked. "No, of course not." Mal''Thorn said. "A few hundred, a thousand at most. Most of us will defend our city. The purpose of the refuge that we would ask of you would be as a place to plant a Heart of the Forest seed, and to take enough Forest Keepers to ensure its health. You would be starting a new Forest that we could retreat to if the worst came to pass and Winter destroyed our Heart of the Forest." I could do that without increasing the above ground area I needed to defend. An underground forest would just need a giant cavern. My druids could accelerate the growth of the trees as well as enchanting the sunlight. I was considering pulling up a model of my fortress to plan out an area when the Forest Keeper guard returned, another Forest Keeper following behind him with a stack of two meter long wooden planks being carried between them. I joined the planks together into a doorframe five centimeters deep, a meter across, and two meters high. I couldn''t fuse the doorframe with the wall so I formed wooden spikes on the back and hammered them into the wall with punches and kicks. This would be my first wooden Pocket Dimension doorway, and I was surprised to find that carving the symbols into the wood was just as difficult as doing a stone doorway. As the connection initiated with the first symbol carved I focused on it appearing in the same room as the village doorway, and the rest was just finishing up the rest of the symbols to complete the connection. Half an hour later I was done. "The portal won''t do anything useful as it is now." I said. "Later, I might set it up to tap into a network of portals for fast travel." "It leads to a closet now?" Mal''Thorn asked. "Pretty much." I said. "There is another portal out, but it''s buried. If you make a list of places that it would be useful to have portals at I could see about hooking them up in the future. But I should be going now. Could you lead me to the northern ice wall?" Mal''Thorn nodded and led me back down to the forest floor. The ice wall to the north was much the same as the ice wall that I smashed through to the south. Sinking my power into the soil I could sense the width of the wall at only one meter wide. "Would you like me to carve a proper entrance through the ice?" I asked Mal''Thorn. "That shouldn''t be necessary, it would just be sealed again I am sure." He said. "However, you should know my Forest sense is telling me that there are winter priests on the other side of the wall. I think they''re waiting for you to attempt to leave." "I would have thought they''d have learned by now." I said. I drew my sword and pushed heat into it. I placed the tip of the sword against the wall at the ground and pushed until it was through to the other side. Then I simply dragged it up, over, and down again to make a two meter block of ice cut out. I took several steps back and charged at the doorway I''d made, slamming my shoulder into the ice knocking it out of the wall and into several of the priests that were waiting. Having a clear look through the gap in the wall, the priests have their ice shard attacks ready and in the deep snow there is a line of snow worms blocking my path. Behind the snow worms there is another wall, this one sunk into the ground so I can''t tell how thick it is. I pull the heat from my sword and sheathe it, switching my staff to my right hand I heat it until it starts to glow. Stepping towards the wall I dance among the ice shards that are fired in my direction. The ice worm directly in front of me launches at me, but I step over and along it. Reaching the second wall I slam my staff into it causing it to crack. Another hit and more cracks appear. And on the third hit it topples outwards revealing more priests and another wall, but this one is running south to north. I dashed off of the snow worm I was using to strike the wall from and through the still falling ice towards the priests. Chapter 42 - Sleep I pushed through the ice that had made up the wall that the winter priests had raised to stop me and landed on iced ground. The priests were all falling back away from me, raising their arms. I spent the few moments it required to adjust the wooden soles of my shoes to have sharp spikes on them to grip the ice. I would need to reinforce them constantly to stop them being blunted on the enchanted ice. On the good side the priests having ice running along their wall meant that there wasn''t meters of snow for me to clear. I ran past the priests and along their wall to the north, pulling out my light stone as I left the lit area around the Forest Keeper city. As long as it was going in the direction I wanted I didn''t mind following it. They''d even cleared out the trees to make a straight run north, and my top speed rose to forty kilometers an hour. Chantelle was one hundred and thirty kilometers to the north, exactly along the direction the wall was running, and she seemed to be... Asleep. I didn''t even know how many days I''d been in this world at this point. An hour of constant pain from refreshing my muscles later the ice path I was running on cracked as my foot hit it. I was running fast enough that my next several steps also landed on the surface of the ice and cracked through it, but then I was falling through into freezing cold water. I was knee deep down before I reacted and slowed my perception of time. Winter priests were leaping forward from behind the trees at the side of the iced path, each of them with a gold embroidered blue robe. Higher level priests, and this was their attempt at a trap. The first of them were sliding to a stop with their hands pressed to the ice. If I fell fully into the water I assume they would try to freeze me in it. I pulled hard on the heat of the water below my feet, freezing it before they could and giving me something to push off of. My next step left me only calf deep in the water and I shifted my power forward to freeze another step of ice for myself. Two more steps and I was on top of the water. I still couldn''t sink my power into the ice of the path, as it was enchanted, but I could freeze the water underneath it as soon as the path broke. Another twenty meters and I was past their trap, leaving the priests on their knees chanting uselessly. I continued running along the ice road. Even if it was occasionally trapped I was making great time along it. Unfortunately twenty kilometers after the pit trap the wall, and the road that followed it, started to curve towards the east. I followed it until it started going more east than north and then slowed to a stop. I enjoyed the absence of pain for a few minutes, my eyelids sinking closed almost on their own. I shook myself awake, my digital side prompting me to continue, drew my sword and heated it up to cut a hole through the wall. The wall ended up being wider than my sword was long so I cut chunks out of it and pulled them out into the road. It ended up being three meters thick, and tall enough to disappear into the canopy of the forest above the road. I set off through the forest again, putting my light stone away. I sank my power into the snow and ground in front of me, cleared out a tunnel in the snow to run through, and started running, dodging tree trunks as I went. Chantelle was only sixty kilometers away, less than two hours at my current pace. About an hour later my senses cut out for a few moments and they came back to me having fallen face first into the snow. My organic side, that was in control of my senses and muscle control, had briefly fallen asleep while I was running. I obviously needed sleep, I don''t even know how long I''d been awake at this point. Days at the very least. I should make a doorway back to my Pocket Dimension... But, no, I''d fallen asleep again right after unbuckling the sword sheath I''d rolled onto. I isolated myself from the phantom inputs I was getting when I started to dream. I was completely cut off from my body, my biological side had activated its sleep paralysis. Though with a bit of experimentation I found that I still had access to my new ears through the mind link, and I could control my Matter Manipulation power. Which was important because the orb on my staff had heated up while it was unattended and had melted a puddle in the snow that I was half laying in. And the rest of my body was getting colder and colder from the snow covering it, slowly freezing to death.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. The orb I fixed by dispersing all of its heat by changing the snow around me into air and sculpted a more comfortable bed from the soil below me. And I went back to regulating my body''s temperature. I was simultaneously practising the beast people''s language and dreaming of Chantelle, which was quite distracting. I was still a single consciousness, and I was having some trouble experiencing two sets of experiences at the same time. When new sounds came to me from outside through my ears I was updating the model I had of my surroundings, refining my predictions based on how the snow was affecting sound. It was six hours after I''d fallen asleep when I began to hear a rhythmic crunching sound. It started off extremely faintly and was getting louder. A group of somethings was coming from the south, marching on top of the snow. It was most likely winter priests, and they''d had snow worms with them before who would be moving more stealthily. I pushed my power out through the soil and snow in the direction I could hear them, narrowing it into a beam to extend its range. Forty meters away I felt the first void in my power, much closer than I was expecting from what I could hear. Scanning left and right showed that there were at least a dozen snow worms packed together side by side, and they were blocking my power from getting around them to detect any of the priests behind them. I was still paralysed, locked out of controlling my body, and I was preparing to try to wake my biological side when a heartbeat appeared from nowhere in my sound sense. My model placed the person standing over my body. I sent a jolt of energy over all of the Mind Link connections which did successfully wake me up, but the sleep paralysis was only fading slowly. "Goodbye Champion." The man said. I immediately slowed my perception of time and could see the faint edge of a dagger cutting through the air towards my chest in my model. My Matter Manipulation power would be too slow to do anything. I would have to dodge it physically, through the fading sleep paralysis. Too many different signals to my muscles would just leave me twitching, but maybe the same simple signal repeated would work. I focused on slamming my left hand down into the ground, to roll me away from the dagger. Twitch all of the muscles at once. My body''s response was agonisingly slow from my sped up perspective, but it was moving. My eyes finally cracked open and I saw my attacker holding a light in his off-hand, it was the same man who spoke to the etin general on the first winter army''s attack of my fortress. Right before the general called for a retreat. I was going to avoid being stabbed in the heart, but slapping the ground with my full strength was going to throw me into a nearby tree after putting my left arm right through where the dagger would be. I had enough time to reinforce my skin before hitting the dagger, but it wasn''t enough. The dagger was enchanted ice and went straight through my skin and the muscle beneath it. The cut was deep, just short of reaching bone, and completely disabled my left arm. But it did serve to clear the last of the sleep paralysis. I started roughly patching the cut to stop the bleeding as I flew towards the tree, turning in the air to land on the trunk feet first. It would take more time and concentration than I could spare to fix the damage properly. I landed on the tree, crouching to absorb the force, and looked back the way I''d come. The man, and his light, were gone. So he was the teleporter. Still in my sped up perception of time I brought up my saved model of my body, specifically my arm, and made a quick scan of my arm as it was now. It was a pretty simple cut. My program returned an estimated time to restore, fifteen seconds at full speed. The snow worms and winter priests were less than that away, probably only ten seconds away at most. I couldn''t afford to black out for the full time, but would a partial fix be of any benefit... I ran up a simulation of ten seconds of work and it would make it so that I wouldn''t further damage my arm if I didn''t stress it. More importantly it would give me partial movement of my arm. I triggered the repair program to run for ten seconds and was fully preoccupied with the pain. Changing my perception of time didn''t make any difference, it still felt like an eternity of pain while I was experiencing it. I came to in the snow at the base of the tree and quickly soaked my power into the snow around me. The first of the snow worms was several meters away, preparing to strike. Two other snow worms are circling around to attack from other directions. And the winter priests were marching in formation, three wide by four deep. They had their hands on each other''s shoulders and were already chanting. And my sword and staff were five meters away, past the two circling snow worms. Chapter 43 - Threat I had fallen to my hands and knees while partially fixing my arm and it only took a small shift to brace my feet against the tree that I was next to. I couldn''t fight snow worms with my bare hands, even with my nails, they simply didn''t have any external weak points. I leapt up and forward at the same time as the snow worm to my left struck, just missing my feet. I was on track to clear the snow worm that was just coming in front of me, but it reacted to my leap by lifting its front end, twisting around, and opening its mouth. I was now on track to go right down its throat. I raised my right hand as I approached, grabbing hold of the top of its maw I pushed it down. Vaulting over the rest of its body I twisted to land in a skid in the clear area I''d made while I was sleeping. I scooped up my staff in my left hand, tucking it against my body, and unsheathed my sword from the scabbard that was on the ground with a flick. I came to my feet with my sword in a ready position facing the three snow worms. The snow worm who had leapt at me sank back into the snow without a trace. I rested for a few moments, getting my muscles back to full energy. I still had my power sunk into the snow the snow worms were moving through, the third snow worm, the one that hadn''t made an attack on me yet, was lining itself up to strike. I held my sword out to the side and timed my dash to match its strike. It was becoming my favoured move, with a sword as sharp as mine I just had to hold steady and I would go through anything that was in front of me. The snow worm struck, and I dashed to its left cutting it in half. The second snow worm was just behind the one I''d just killed, so I pivoted and leapt over it, moving my sword down and swinging up. The front third of the worm was cut off from the back two thirds, and I landed in front of the first snow worm that had missed me originally and hit the tree I had pushed off of. It was turning to flee back the way it had come. I cut it in half length-ways and came out in an area clear of snow. The rest of the snow worms were keeping their distance in the deep snow. The winter priests were on the other side of the clear area, they were using the snow as a component of the spell that they were chanting for. It was a spell I hadn''t seen yet, they were forming a wall of needle thin shards of ice, an anti-personnel siege spell. The needles were a meter long, half a centimeter wide, and were spaced five centimeters apart in a grid. They fired the needles as I came out of the snow, moving them at incredible speed. There would be no dodging this spell. I ran through several different scenarios and the best I could manage would be protecting the majority of my brain, and then maybe my heart. If I kept the Matter Manipulation part of my brain, the rest I could repair or hold together. I stepped slightly to the side to put my spine in a gap in the grid and threw my sword up so that the hilt would cover the upper left side of my face, the cross-guard over my eyes, and the blade would cover the majority of my heart. After that I brought my hands to my sides so that the needles would go through and not along my arms. The needles hit and went entirely through me. The ones that hit my sword pushed the sword into me and then shattered against it. I took a snapshot of my body''s condition and then maxed out my perception of time to give myself time to think. I had massive trauma all over, the worst of which was stomach acid leaking from my stomach from a dozen places and multiple veins hit. I had some loss of function from my brain from where several of the needles went through my head, but I still had muscle control, and my Matter Manipulation power still worked. My muscles were in pretty bad condition, and any major movement would increase the damage. I couldn''t see properly, my eyes were fine, but the vision part of my brain was large and complicated and it had taken at least one hit. I could hear the priests continuing to chant with my one functioning ear.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. My first priority was to kill all of the priests before they could finish me off. To do that I would need to keep my body from dying for the few seconds it would take. If I brought my restoration of my body to the working model I had of myself right to the edge of my mind being consumed by pain... It might be enough. Maybe. I sped my perception of time up enough that I could control my body, reached up and tried to grab the hilt of my sword with my right hand. The tendon in my right arm was severed. I couldn''t grip the hilt. I redirected my repairs to focus entirely on getting a single strand of tendon joined up, then used my power to reinforce that strand to withstand the force of my grip. Switching back to my whole body repairs I brought my sword to horizontal at neck height and dashed towards the priests. I had to turn my head back and forth to keep track of their locations with my one ear. Thankfully they were all still chanting so it was easy to keep them accurately in my model. I had to adjust the angle of my sword as I was going through them as they started dodging. I wasn''t moving at my maximum speed due to my muscles being at about half their effectiveness with holes through them. I was only able to kill two thirds of the winter priests on my first pass, my sword not being long enough to reach the right-most rank while I was dashing past the left-most. I planted my right foot after I''d gotten past the last priest, intending to turn back to kill the remaining four. My right leg started to fold up, dashing using the damaged muscles had torn more of the muscle and my right leg was next to useless. I turned my sword so that the flat of the blade would act as an anchor and stabbed it into the ground. The tendon in my right arm almost snapped despite my reinforcement but I came to a stop facing the back of the last priest. I shifted to dash from my left leg and brought my sword up to waist height. The last priests had stopped chanting, so my model was becoming less accurate. I compensated by aiming for the larger target, their center of mass. I dashed forward and my sword went through the first three priests. I slammed into the fourth and last remaining priest as he tried to dodge and ended up in my path. I disconnected most of my sword, turning it into a dagger, and stabbed him in the heart as we tumbled to the ground. I then sank my power into the ground and pushed it out to the snow five meters away in all directions, searching for the snow worms. From what I could tell they were all fleeing at their maximum speed, I just caught their tails disappearing at the edge of my sense. I spared a few moments checking my hearing, there were no heartbeats. I turned my power and focus inwards. My heart wasn''t beating. My body had gone beyond shock, it was already mostly shut down. And I was bleeding from everywhere. Estimated time to restore my body from my working model, ten minutes. Prioritising critical systems extended that to fifteen minutes. I wasn''t sure what would happen if my body died so I selected the fifteen minute version and triggered the program. The absolute pain lasted forever. But subjectively it wasn''t any worse than when I fixed my arm. When it''s an eternity of the worst pain possible while you''re inside it, it seems it doesn''t matter how long it lasts objectively. I came back to my senses laying on top of the winter priest I''d ended up tackling. I sank my power into the snow and dirt around me. I was alone. Standing up, I took out my light stone and looked around the clear area the priests had made. There was a few centimeters of snow covering everything. The snow was stained red around where the priests had fallen, they''d bled a lot. I found my hilt and dagger, and the rest of the blade that I had disconnected, and spent a few minutes fusing them back together. There were several gouges in the metal from where the needles had hit, so I repaired that at the same time. I cast around with my power to find my staff. Apparently I''d dropped it nearly immediately after coming out of the snow bank. It had gouges in the stone of the staff, and an unlucky hit had cracked the orb on top. After repairing it I was almost ready to head out again. Winter priests were becoming a threat that needed to be eliminated immediately. I hadn''t worked on any ranged attacks, and perhaps I should have. Throwing knives with my ability to calculate force and trajectories might work, so I spent a few minutes converting the dirt of the clearing into a dozen stone blades. I made the stone the same diamond-like material of my fortress walls. I wouldn''t be able to reinforce them, so the edge that they could hold was less than my sword, and any sort of magical shield would probably stop them. But I felt better for having something I could throw at threats. I started running towards Chantelle again, only twenty kilometers to go. Chapter 44 - The End? Only a hundred meters later the ground started to rise and the forest thinned out and ended a dozen meters after that. My power, that I was using to scout ahead, showed a jagged rocky slope with loose stones that would be somewhat difficult to climb underneath the meters of snow. I had to slow my run down to a walk, clearing a tunnel through the snow and forming footholds in the stone. I could have moved at a jog if that''s all I had to do, but I was having to reinforce the snow above me as I went so that it wouldn''t fall down before I had gone past. I had been noticing as I''d gotten further north that my direction sense for Chantelle was pointing upwards, maybe ten kilometers above the flat land of the forest. A twenty three degree slope, if I could go in a straight line, but I was having to go up and down peaks and valleys in the mountain. I was still making a direct path to where I could feel Chantelle was, it was just going to take a few hours more to get to her. Almost as long to make it the last twenty kilometers as it did to make it the first one hundred and eighty. After two hours I''d climbed high enough that the ridge I was climbing along was free of snow. Not long after that, about ten kilometers away from Chantelle, I came across a cliff that was cut in a curve around the mountain. I had to get my light stone out to see it, as it was made entirely of enchanted stone that my power was unable to sink into. In the light of the light stone I could see a meter wide path that was carved into the cliff twenty meters above me. It was sloping down to my left and up to my right, so I could follow it to the left and climb the cliff that way. But it seemed like a bad idea. It would take very little effort to knock me off the path. Even though I couldn''t see how high the cliff was, it was easily high enough for a fall from the height I could see to be lethal. The dagger setup of my sword could pretty easily be used to scale the cliff if I made a second dagger, but it would leave me almost as exposed as climbing the path, though less predictable as to where I was approaching from. I decided to head to my right along the cliff to try to find another way in and headed down into the snow filled valley between my ridge and the next one over. I was able to rely on my Matter Manipulation sense, so I had put away my light stone. No reason to give myself away by carrying a beacon. Half an hour later, and about two and a half kilometers around the cliff, I saw a light in the distance further down the mountain. Moving to the next ridge along, I could see several lights that were slowly moving. They made a line that pointed down the mountain, and up to the cliff. Another two ridges along I could finally see where the lights were going. There was a tunnel going into the cliff, the entrance of which was well lit and guarded by eight winter priests in gold-trimmed robes. I watched as one of the lights approached the entrance, it turned out to be a wagon with two large bipedal lizards harnessed to the front of it. The wagon had a cage on it that was full of people. Two of the priests looked it over and then waved it through. The ridge I was on was taller than the ones around it, and the road to the tunnel entrance was on a ridge three more along. I made my way to the ridge right before the entrance, leaving me fifty meters away from the priests. The next wagon coming up the mountain was at least twenty minutes away. I got out my throwing blades and dropped my perception of time. I should have practised throwing them, but I thought I had a pretty accurate model for how they would work. They were pretty dense, weighing one kilogram each despite their thin profile and short fifteen centimeter length. I calculated how I would need to throw them. The first several would need to be thrown with a slight arc, smoothing out the arc as I added more force so that they would all land at the same time. I held the eight blades that I would need splayed in my left hand and started throwing with my right.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. It took a little over a second and a half after the first one was thrown for the last one to leave. The first one hit the furthest priest between the eyes, going right through his head and burying itself in the cliff. Over the next second the rest of the blades hit and five of the remaining seven priests fell immediately. Of the remaining two, one had the blade go through his throat and the other his chest. The second one clutched at his chest for a few moments and then fell down. The first grabbed at his throat to stop the blood that was spilling out but remained standing. I half ran, half skidded down into the valley that separated me from the tunnel, leaping up the other side barely making footholds to launch from. When I arrived the priest was running through the entrance and up the tunnel. I followed him and threw a throwing blade through his heart, immediately dropping him to the ground. I went back outside and collected the throwing blades I could, there were two that were embedded in the cliff out of reach which left me with a total of ten. I headed back to the entrance of the tunnel, which was well lit with a strip of enchanted stone. It curved up and to the right, a gentle slope for wagons to climb. I was hesitating when there was a spike of fear from Chantelle, which caused me to start running. After a two minute sprint I reached the end of the tunnel to find it sealed with a wall of ice. I was already sprinting as fast as I could, so I reinforced my body and slammed into it. And bounced off. My vision dimmed a bit from my brain hitting the inside of my skull. It took me a few moments to shake the daze. I drew my sword, pushing heat into it as I swung at the ice wall to carve chunks through it. As the first chunk came free of the wall the entire wall started pushing down the tunnel. The wall was moving faster than I could cut through it. The more heat I pushed into the blade the colder the ice got, directly countering the two methods I''d used to break through the ice in the past. I headed back down the tunnel at a jog, letting my Matter Manipulation power catch up with the energy I was using. There was an ice wall at the lower exit of the tunnel as well. From my memory of the tunnel it was already four meters thick, anchored on four sides by the enchanted stone of the cliff. Even worse, water had started flooding down from the ceiling. I pushed more heat into the blade of my sword and swung it into the ice wall carving a meter deep cut into it at an angle. The water was already knee deep. I stepped to the side and made a mirrored meter deep cut in the wall, cutting out a triangle of ice seventy centimeters deep. The wall had started moving up the tunnel as soon as I''d made my first cut, and by the time I''d pulled the chunk of ice out it was a meter thicker. And the water was up to my hips. I ran up the tunnel, the water still falling all around me and rising to my ankles. The ice wall from the upper entrance was about halfway down the tunnel, as soon as I saw it I started cutting into the stone wall to my left. If I could cut myself an alcove I would be able to eventually dig myself out of the cliff... But as I cut a hole in the wall a flood of water gushed out, quickly rising until it was over my head and turning to ice where it met the wall. I swam up the tunnel to get a breath but ran into the stone ceiling. With the two ice walls five meters apart the section I was in had flooded. The ice walls had stopped moving, and the water pressure isn''t increasing. I started converting the carbon dioxide in my lungs into oxygen. Which hurt as much as refreshing my muscles. I could easily keep ahead of my body using air, though I still felt an irrational need to breathe. A minute passed with the water getting colder and colder. I compensated by pushing more and more heat into it. I was pushing vast amounts of energy into my surroundings, but the water kept getting colder in spite of that. Ice started to creep closer to me, and shortly after the water turned to ice it became enchanted and I couldn''t affect it. Eventually I was surrounded by ice touching me and I had to push heat directly into my body to counteract the cold. But just as with the water, no matter how much heat I pushed I was losing the battle against the cold. My hands and feet froze first. I was able to slow the spread of the ice down as I had less and less mass to keep warm. There was nothing I could do to stop it and finally my brain froze and my connection through the Mind Link cut out. Am I dead? Chapter 45 - Limbo I still have access to all of my subprocesses, subroutines, and programs. So I''m still in the competitive simulation. I only have access to my digital side, though, almost exactly like when I drop my perception of time to its maximum. My perception of time was set to normal speed, but as that occurred to me I disabled the interface that allowed me to control my time perception. The simulation time was now moving extremely slowly compared to my thought speed. I still had my physical outputs that led to the Mind Link, so I sent pulses of electricity along them. No response at all. I went through my knowledge of the Mind Link, which I still had along with all of my memories thanks to my powers even without access to my brain. I could still sense Chantelle as well, but the direction component was confusing. She was in multiple different directions and distances, at different strengths. There was a diagnostic interface to the Mind Link, and it was even hooked up to my digital side. It was where I''d gotten the synchronisation messages and timing information when I''d first linked to the Mind Link. I sent a status request along that line, no response. I dropped down to below the hardware abstraction layer and watched what was happening when I was sending the pulses. The electrical circuit wasn''t completing. Something was seriously wrong with the Mind Link. I hadn''t made any external senses for the hardware platform that was running my digital consciousness, always relying on the Mind Link and my biological side. The diagnostic interface to the Mind Link gave me the idea to run up a diagnostic of my digital consciousness. In theory my powers were still working, and were tied to my consciousness, I just had to know how to interface to them. I turned the data inputs I was getting into a visual model, a read only display of what the hardware was simulating. A million points of light connected by threads that were pulsing with yet more light. It was too complicated to really follow what was happening, consciousness being an emergent property of billions of connections. I filtered the points by the size of the clusters that had threads going to them but didn''t have light going to them. There were quite a few. I was looking for a large unused portion of my digital brain, as that is where I would expect Matter Manipulation for my digital side to have ended up. The largest inactive portion started to activate when I started to simulate a combat situation, tracking trajectories and force. The second largest was language processing. I was removing the clusters from the list as I found out what activated them. I got to the tenth one before I found one that I couldn''t activate. After trying everything I could think of I dropped out of read only mode and after only a few moments of hesitation manually sent a set of pulses into the dark area. The equivalent of sticking several electrodes into my own brain and zapping it. Probably not safe, but I didn''t have any other options. There was a wave of activity and then a set of pulses of light came out into a more active area. Suddenly there was a mass of motion as new threads appeared connecting the dark area to the areas around it. The threads started lighting up, and at the same time I got the sense of a new input. It felt like a combination of opening an eye I didn''t know I had, and being able to move an arm that I could suddenly see with it. I was pulling on the heat generated by the hardware I was running on to push my power out to sense around me. Which resulted in two things, I now had a model that I was updating around my hardware centered on my Mind Link, and the hardware itself sped up as it was able to push more electricity without overheating and burning out. I was still limited to a twenty meter active range, but I could push my passive scanning to detect everything in my Pocket Dimension. And a distance out of the doorways out of my Pocket Dimension. It seems that they are open even while I''m not near them. I focused my attention on the Mind Link below me, soaking it with my power. It was frozen solid. I tried to cut out a small cube of stone from my fortress, but my power bounced off of it. I could cut out one of the obsolete vacuum tubes, though, so I did that and slid it slowly towards me and the Mind Link.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. It was going to take hours to arrive at the pace I could move it, so I started to convert its mass to energy while it was moving. I pushed the heat I was getting into the Mind Link, warming it up. There was a source of cold coming from within the Mind Link, from everywhere at once. I zoomed my model in further and further until I got down to the scale of neurons and synapses being about the size of my body. I realised that was the scale I was at when I came across a micro-portal where I could push a tiny amount of my power through and sensed the neuron on the other side. I zoomed back out and implemented a scanning program to give me a count of the micro-portals. There were several million of them, though there were spaces where others should be but weren''t. Only a tenth were active. The Mind Link itself was damaged where the material that made it, a high-tech alloy of silver, gold, tin, and niobium, had shrunk in the cold. I started to repair it, but it was such a slow process at the speed I was thinking that I implemented a program to work on it and set it to run in the background. I went back to neuron-scale and thinned out a tiny thread of power to push through one of the active micro-portals. I could push it out forever before coming to the end of the range of such a small thread, but zooming back out it turned out to only be a few centimeters. Another program, this one running in parallel hundreds of times at once, began scanning through each of the micro-portals, updating my model of my brain on the other side. It was frozen solid, but thankfully not enchanted, my power was still able to work on it. The water in my brain had expanded and cracked the borders surrounding most of the micro-portals, which explained the missing micro-portals in the Mind Link. It should be possible to put the damaged micro-portals back together and they should default to their old locations if I''m careful about it. The Mind Link booted up while I was analysing my brain scan and sent an error over its diagnostic interface. It was, helpfully, telling me that it wasn''t receiving any signals through any of its access points. There really wasn''t any reason for the Mind Link to be running firmware or software that wasn''t under my control, so I sank my power into its control chip that was only a centimeter away from my hardware and read its programming directly from its hardware. Some of it that was still in storage memory was encrypted, but the key and decryption algorithm was in its temporary memory. It used an entirely different architecture to my hardware, with some semi-quantum processing thrown in. The amount of overhead that was required to keep the quantum state in a usable way ended up making it slower than my own solution to high speed processing. I wrote another program to replace its chips with my own and set it running. The Mind Link program was just a router, taking a signal and an address to one of the two hundred million or so outputs to send it to and a timing synchronisation so that both sides could communicate. It was what was responsible for blacking out my senses when I slowed time too much. When I had a brain again I would have to see if I could improve on that. The first step towards that would have to be pushing heat through the micro-portals, replacing parts of the brain while it was frozen would mean I would have to replace them multiple times as they froze again from contact to the rest of the brain. And I will need to salvage material from less important parts of the brain to recreate the more important parts. Ordinarily I could use blood for this small scale work and have it be replaced, but I didn''t currently have a working circulatory system. And I would have to replace the energy and oxygen the cells use until I can get my heart working again. Reviving from the dead had complications that made more complications. My highest priority would be the minimum viable areas that would give rise to consciousness, and then the Matter Manipulation control area of my brain. With those done I should be able to shift initialisation of the work over to my biological side, still controlled by a program on my digital side, and progress much faster without the bottleneck of having to push through the micro-portals. A program would be needed in both cases because of the pain that causes me to black out. I moved my focus over to a broken micro-portal on my brain''s side and reformed it. The portal popped back up in my Mind Link in exactly the place it was before, and there wasn''t any pain from doing it. I rewrote my parallel scanning program to do repairs and initially set it to fixing all of the micro-portals. Due to my limited processing speed the program was only able to use several thousand of the active micro-portals at a time, so I split it equally between repairing micro-portals and restoring the brain parts that would restore my consciousness to my brain. Pushing heat into my brain slowed the process even further, though it was an easy choice to cannibalise the large part of the brain responsible for dealing with vision to make the changes. Estimated time for minimum consciousness viability, five years subjective, four hours objective. I would need to find something to do while I was waiting... Chapter 46 - Presence The most productive thing I could think of to do is to increase my processing speed by making more memory and processing chips. I made a scan of all of the material within my twenty meter active range and came up with fifty kilograms of stuff I could work with. About half came from the defunct vacuum tubes that made up my first set of hardware, and the other half came from the bed that I had made. The stone stockpile that I''d had was used up to make the secure rooms in my Pocket Dimension, and they were out of range of my power. I loaded a model of what processing and memory chips I could make with the available material, and what the increased power would do to the estimate. It would triple my current processing capabilities, but would only save me half an hour in objective time. It would take half an hour on its own, and there were losses in transmission complexity and the more copies of the program I had working on my brain the more complicated the coordination between the programs needed to be. Tripling my capabilities only sped up the process by about a quarter, but with infinite processing and memory I could repair my brain in about twenty minutes. I could convert the air into matter I could use to create more hardware, but it took ten to one hundred times longer than working with solid matter. What I really needed was access to more matter. And to get that the simplest way would be to ask someone in my fortress to bring me some. I already had a working design for converting sound waves into electrical signals with the improved ears I''d made for my body. I could make something similar for light by basing it upon what my eyes did. The real trick would be making something that could create sound. Copying the way my body did that seemed an inefficient way of going about it, forcing air past vocal cords to create vibrations in the air. Reversing the way my ears worked might work. They were set up so that the highest band of frequencies of sound, or the faintest, were absorbed and converted to electrical signals by the first layer of detectors, and the next layer absorbed the next band of frequencies down. With twenty layers in each ear they captured the entirety of the complexity of the sounds that reached them. The detectors themselves were the key if I wanted to make sound projectors. When they vibrated they generated electrical signals, but if I sent electrical signals to them would they vibrate? I made a model of my digital eyes and ears first, and made a frame that they would be placed upon. My model for the sound projector ended up being huge, and it would take a lot of energy to drive them. It couldn''t be helped, to create sound waves in air at a volume that would be able to be heard I needed a large area to push against. With the models complete I had an estimate for how long it would take to create the analog inputs and output. Twenty minutes objective time. And that was if I dedicated my full efforts to it, pausing the reconstruction of my brain as much as was possible, it still requiring heat input to stop any loss of progress. The question was whether I would regain the time I lost... And after a few minutes of thought I concluded that I would be able to increase my building and reconstruction potential without limit as long as I had access to more materials. It was worth taking the risk that I wouldn''t be able to get anyone''s attention after I''d invested the time. I stopped the majority of the programs that were working on my brain, leaving two running to keep the fixed areas warm. Dedicating my entire processing ability to building the model I watched it get built in fast-motion. My perception of time was unregulated, so as more of my processing was dedicated to other programs than simulating my consciousness my subjective experience of time changed. In objective time, that everyone else experienced, it took twenty minutes for the eyes, ears, and sound projector to be built, but I experienced it over about thirty seconds. I had it set up facing out of the doorway on the top floor of my fortress. They were made up of two reflective black rectangles that were each two meters tall, thirty centimeters wide, and fifty centimeters deep. On the front at the top of each of them was a curved lens that could bend to adjust the focal depth to the fine array of light sensors within the body of the rectangle. Below that was a flat area that had the layers of sound sensors. The rest of the body was a layered sound projector, a larger version of the sound sensors. The low frequency sound projector was at the back, and it would project its sound through the sound projectors in front of it. Each of the twenty sound projectors would add their own modulation to the sound wave as it passed through their membrane until the last one at the highest frequencies produced the final sound.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. There was a thick cable that ran from the digital presence rectangles to my main hardware on top of the Mind Link and then on to the batteries. The final part of building the models was creating a physical interface to link my hardware to the digital presence. With the build done I was getting input from the new eyes and ears. I wrote a program that would learn adaptively what the eye inputs were giving me and translate that to my model of the world around me. A few minutes later I could see through the doorway out into my fortress. I already knew how my ears worked, so all I had to do now was make the sound projector work. I reinitialised my time perception interface and set myself to normal speed. My first attempt at producing sound came out as a garbled burp. Controlling twenty membranes at once was a bit complicated, so I wrote an interface over the top of it that would let me just give it a final sound wave. Then it was just a matter of running the sounds from my memories through a learning program that would be able to create sound waves. Once it was done I absorbed it back into my consciousness simulation. I tested it out by talking to myself for a few minutes, working out small bugs in how I sounded through my ears. When I thought that I sounded like myself I generated a sound wave that would serve as an alarm to get someone''s attention. It ended up being a bass heavy sound wave that would cause the stone to vibrate as it passed through it. I projected five seconds of the sound, and then paused for five seconds. In the silence of the fourth wave of that I heard someone coming down the stairs from the guard post. "Hello." I said as Brutus came into view. "... Hello." He said after a pause. "Who, what, you?" "You can speak in your language, I will understand you and it will help me get better with it." I said. "I''ll stick to this language, though. I am Lord C.C., you don''t recognise my voice?" "You don''t sound like you." He said in the beast people''s language. "And where are you?" "Ah... I got myself killed, a little bit." I said. "I''m working on resurrecting myself from the dead right now." "You''re immortal?" He asked. "I guess it could be seen that way." I said. "This is my first time being dead since I got here. I need more material to decrease the time needed to revive my body, could you bring me as much soil as you can?" "I can, I will be back." He said, leaving down the stairs. A few minutes later Brutus came back up the stairs carrying a wooden wheelbarrow with around one hundred kilograms of soil in it. "Just dump it through the doorway, I''ll move it from there." I said. He did that and took the wheelbarrow back down the stairs for more, passing several people on his way. Dael, the deer man leader of the druids, Maaata the goat lady enchanter, and Greta the rabbit lady healer had come to see what was happening. Dael was looking through the doorway into my Pocket Dimension, looking around as though searching for something. "Greetings Dael." I said. He took a step back, frowning. "My lord." He said cautiously. "You don''t sound like you." "This is what I sound like to myself." I said. "It''s possible that I don''t hear myself the same way that you hear me." His frown cleared. "Yes, we''ve found that with recording crystals." He said. "What is happening? Brutus said that you were dead but immortal and coming back to life?" "My body is dead, yes." I said. "I got caught in a tunnel that the winter priests flooded, and then froze with their Divine Cold power that overwhelmed my ability to heat myself. I''m working on restoring myself to life now." "My lord, I don''t mean any offence, but is there any way you could prove that you are you?" Dael asked. "I brought Maaata and Greta as experts on magic and bodies, but you seem to currently be two pillars in a magic void space." Proof. "I have a treaty with you to provide a safe place for your people in return for your providing food for my fortress." I said. "I also have a commitment to restoring some of your people to full health." "Would it be possible for you to heal some people now?" Greta asked. I thought about that for a few moments. I could probably do it in parallel to reconstructing my brain, it should only require a small percentage of my hardware to scan and fix people. "It should be possible." I said. "But first, Maaata, did you change the wards on the fortress? I''m not able to use my power on it, and that would be the most likely cause." "I did." Maaata said. "I changed the heating part of the physical ward as it has been getting colder. Should I not have?" "You did the right thing." I said. "But I would like to adapt your magic to my power. Please enter the doorway." Greta left while I was pushing my Matter Manipulation power into Maaata, and when it finally sunk in I could sink my power into the stone of my fortress again. Chapter 47 - Mobile Presence I looked over the layout for my hardware. Physically it was a cube thirty centimeters long by thirty centimeters wide, rising forty centimeters from the top of the Mind Link. It was pretty solidly packed with the two different sort of chips that made up my architecture, processing and memory, but it also had holes that ran through it that served as ventilation shafts for the heat the chips generated. And about half of the space was dedicated to transmission lines between the various chips, which were stacked together to minimise the latency over the lines. None of which was required anymore if I used my Matter Manipulation to remove the heat directly, and micro-portals to directly connect the inputs and outputs of the chips to each other as needed. Micro-portals could obviously be used to connect points within the Pocket Dimension itself, otherwise the Mind Link wouldn''t work while I was within the Pocket Dimension. There would still technically be a limitation on how much my hardware platform could be extended, but it came down to the density of micro-portals. Which as shown by the Mind Link could be in the thousands per cubic centimeter. I would need to redesign everything from the ground up. Another thing that the Mind Link showed is that Pocket Dimension doorways could pass through each other. From the soil that Brutus had brought I formed a pair of small Pocket Dimension doorways within the Pocket Dimension. Carving the symbols into two doorways gave me four doorways, one set ten centimeters by ten centimeters and the other large enough to pass those doorways through at twelve centimeters by twelve centimeters. My first experiment was to pass the two ten centimeter doorways through one of the twelve centimeter ones, which resulted in the first doorway going through fine but the second one refusing to go through. The first was one that I was moving around with my Matter Manipulation power, the second was the Pocket Dimension side doorway that my Matter Manipulation wouldn''t work on, so I was moving it with the Pocket Dimension ability. So it isn''t possible to move a Pocket Dimension side doorway out into the world. What it did allow me to do was push my power through the Pocket Dimension side doorway, soak it into the doorway on the outside, and move the doorway around. I could now access everything in my Pocket Dimension with my power without physically moving. Which was nice because I was currently a brick with no way to move. I quickly sent the twelve centimeter outside doorway through to the safe room by cutting out a narrow section in the wall and replacing it after it had gone through. The nearest safe room''s doorway opened to the bottom of my fortress. I sent my doorway there, and then sank it through the floor of my fortress to the cavern I had dug out to fill in the Druid''s floor. Moving it to the wall of the cavern I had a doorway between where I was in the Pocket Dimension to an unlimited amount of material that I could build from. I just had to push the outside doorway through the hole I made in the stone as I removed material. I would make a fifteen centimeter wide and tall shaft that would continue to extend as I built more. Brutus arrived with the third wheelbarrow full of soil just as I got my stone source in place. "My thanks." I said. "That should be all of the soil that I need for now. Is there a communal area where I could be to listen and talk to people? I would like to improve my understanding of your language." "There is an entertainment area where stories are told." He said. "It''s in one of the rooms off of the entrance hall." "Perfect." I said. "If you could wait a few moments to escort one of my presences?" At his nod I got down to building. What I had in mind was another pair of rectangles with eyes, ears, and sound projectors on them. They wouldn''t work outside of my Pocket Dimension, I had tested it when I was first generating electricity, electricity simply stopped moving through materials once it was out in the world. But if I could make a Pocket Dimension doorway and move it around, the presence could be built to push flush against the doorway. I would be able to interact with the world while still keeping my technology functioning. I made the presence pillars two meters tall, the same as the first ones, but where there was a space between the ones I''d made. I joined the second set together resulting in it being sixty centimeters wide. I built a slab of stone to match its dimensions to set the doorway in, giving it a depth of fifty centimeters.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. The depth wasn''t necessary for the doorway, but it gave a person-sized shape to what would be my presence among the Druids. Pushing the new presence against the Pocket Dimension side of the doorway I moved the other side out into the fortress next to Brutus. "Lead on." I said through the new presence. He nodded and led me down the stairs. I was using my Matter Manipulation power anyway, so I used the wall of the stairway to move on rather than try to slide the flat bottom of my stone down the stairs themselves. Brutus stepped in front of me when we were halfway to the Druids floor to allow Greta, the rabbit lady healer, and Essy the blind snake lady to get by. "Head on up." I said, surprising them. "I''m still up there as well." They nodded and continued on. This could be a little bit tricky. I was splitting my focus between the two streams of senses that were coming in, one at the upper doorway to my Pocket Dimension as Greta and Essy arrived and the other that was following Brutus. I had the thought to split my consciousness so that one could be in charge of each of the streams, but when I tried doing it I found that I was losing control of one of the consciousnesses so I stopped. I''m not sure, but I think if I finalised it I would be creating a new consciousness that was outside of my control. The solution I ended up using was to record from both of the streams and then process them sequentially at a higher speed. I had to increase the functionality of the speech playback much in the same way as I had when I had slowed down how I spoke to be recognisable when I was fighting with my perception of time increased. A small implementation to move my presence that was following Brutus was simple enough. As Greta opened her mouth to speak at the top doorway I realised I hadn''t designed the new hardware I wanted to use. I disabled my time perception filter and designed a model that incorporated the features I wanted. Simulating my consciousness at maximum speed was slowing down the rebuilding of my brain that I had running in the background, but I was only doing it for short bursts, and the overall estimated time wasn''t affected too much. With the new hardware designed I switched the majority of my processing power to implementing it, pulling the required matter from my stone source. As more processing and memory became available I would set it to fixing my brain. I set it to prioritise making more memory and then re-engaged my time perception interface, returning to normal speeds. "Greetings, My Lord" Greta said. "This is Essy, I brought her to see you about healing her before, but you had to leave." "I remember." I said. "Essy, have you talked with Ian, the rabbit man I healed before, about how painful my form of healing is?" "Yes, My Lord." Essy said, hissing her esses. "He said it was easily twice as painful as when he lost his leg originally, which was the most painful thing he had experienced before then. But he also said that it was worth it, and that as soon as he was whole the pain ended leaving him feeling better than he had in years." "Very well." I said. "Please come through the doorway. It would probably be best if you lay down on the ground." She came in and coiled her snake lower half, making a bed for her upper half to lay back upon. Greta stayed at the doorway. "The first thing I''m going to do is force your mana to accept my power." I said. "You should feel your mana draining away to about half over the next few minutes. Just relax." I forced my Matter Manipulation power against her and held the pressure up. While I was doing that, Brutus had finished escorting me to the entertainment room. It was empty at the moment. I thanked him and set myself in a corner. With my power sinking into Essy I was ready to move on to the next step. "I''m going to make a detailed scan of you now." I said. I almost had enough spare memory to keep a complete scan now, and in the time it would take to do the scan my hardware building would overtake the required amount, so I started the scan. I started with her head, which held the problem area of her eyes and also the sensory organ for seeing heat. On the surface they looked like a second set of nostrils on the outside of her more human looking ones, but underneath they were completely different. There was a membrane that was made up of thousands of heat sensors hooked up to a cooling system. I could see where the nerves tied back in to the optic system, but it was completely different to how the eyes worked. I finished the complete scan of Essy''s body while I was studying how her heat sense worked. Her eyes had been damaged by some sort of chemical burn, but I could tell that she had slit pupils rather than round ones. I made a fixed model of her eyes, borrowing heavily from my own model for the damaged parts. "Now comes the painful part." I said. "It will feel endless, but I promise it will end." She nodded, and I triggered the program. Essy let out a hiss and the coils of the snake part of her body constricted tightly. When her eyes were just over halfway done a flood of pain suddenly overwhelmed me. Chapter 48 - Cage When the pain stopped my consciousness was mostly back to working in my brain again. The way my consciousness worked, having a single consciousness running over two different platforms, was that I had a single core focus. A single personality that was thinking at a time. My digital side dominated in calculations and logic, my biological side dominated in emotion and feeling. My biological side was mostly back to working in the sense that my consciousness was there, but the chemical systems that gave rise to emotion was still frozen. As well as large sections of my brain that my consciousness was used to accessing. I''d only recovered about five percent of my brain to get it to this stage. Looking back within my Pocket Dimension, the programs that I had set to expand my processing and memory chips had made great progress. I had roughly ten times the memory and processing that I did when I blacked out to the pain, and the chips themselves were stacked around the Mind Link surrounding it in a matte black cube fifty centimeters wide, long, and high. The Mind Link couldn''t be seen at all anymore. I sent a signal to all of the programs that were working on expanding it even further to neatly finish their current tasks. Essy and Greta were talking to each other in my fortress just outside my doorway. "Hello." I said. "My Lord." Greta said. "We weren''t sure what happened. Essy''s eyes were fixed an hour ago but you wouldn''t respond. We stayed nearby in case there was anything further you needed to do." An hour. My consciousness kicked in much earlier than I had estimated, or whatever governed the pain received from modifying living things had started before my consciousness was there. It was a good thing I had set a cutout for the repairing threads or it could have taken twenty hours before I came back to awareness. "I blacked out from the pain of reviving my body." I said. "You were in that pain state for a whole hour?" Essy asked. She looked shocked. "There isn''t much difference between three minutes and an hour." I said. "I don''t think that would be true for me." Essy said. "I could feel myself losing my grip on sanity the longer it went on. It was worth it, but I don''t think I would do it again. Being able to see again is a great gift, but I wouldn''t trade it for my sanity." I hadn''t noticed anything like losing my sanity, I didn''t think. The pain was either all consuming or it was past. Perhaps my power that allowed me to perfectly recall my memories stopped my mind from being able to be corrupted. I could perfectly recall the pain from each time I''d had it, but there wasn''t a time component associated with the pain. Each instance was much the same as any other. "I don''t think I''m insane." I said. "Though I''m not entirely sure how I would be able to tell." "My estimation is that you are not." Greta said. "Although you are a difficult case to assess, I am talking with your ghost after all. But you are able to perceive reality, and interact with people normally." Reality was just a simulation ran by beings more powerful than gods... And I thought I was occasionally influenced by one of those beings... I took some comfort in the fact that my powers had definite effects in the world. It was unlikely that I could manipulate matter if I was insane, right?.. "My Lord, is there anything else you need of us?" Greta said after a few minutes had passed. "No." I said. "I should get back to reviving myself." "Thank you, my Lord." Greta and Essy said, bowing and leaving. I tried to soak my power into my surroundings, initiating it from my brain. My range had shrunk to the point that I wasn''t even able to push my power outside of my skull. I pushed harder and noticed the temperature of the heated parts of my brain drop. I was using my body heat automatically as a source to push my passive power out from myself, and at the moment I didn''t have any.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. The heat that I did have access to was being entirely supplied from the micro-portals. I didn''t even have any blood flowing through my brain as the constant low level of pain I was in showed as I refreshed the energy and oxygen in my brain cells. I would prefer not to use any of the matter that made up my body as an energy source, so I focused my power into a narrow beam and pushed it as far as I could. Just outside of my skull was ice. And it was unenchanted, so I could use it. I broke apart one of its atoms and used the energy to take over keeping my brain warm and I was finally able to push my power out to soak through my surroundings. My power soaked into my body and the ice around me, which was a few meters wide, long, and tall. My power bounced off of whatever was below the ice, and the sides and top was striped with something that was also rejecting my power. The gaps in the sides and top were air, which my power didn''t travel through very well at all. It seems that I was surrounded by ice in a cage that was enchanted. My sense of Chantelle was working properly again, she was six hundred meters away and slowly getting further. Either she or I was moving. Focusing back on my body, there were chips in both of my shoulders as though someone had tried to shatter me with a sword. They''d tried quite a few times before giving up, too, but the divine cold that it had taken to freeze me had fused my body into a strong whole that would need to be warmed up before it could separate. Comparing it to the model I had of my functioning body, the entire thing was broken, the cells that made up all parts had burst from the cold. The only exception was my brain, and that was likely because they''d stopped after I''d died. I could use the matter that was there, but I would need to rebuild from the cells up. A wave came through the ice, throwing my power back from the top down. I slowed my perception of time and watched it happen. My power was forced from the ice, but not from my body. It took a few seconds to pass through the entire block of ice, and the cold increased, fighting against the warmth that I was pushing into my brain. I started converting the ice to energy as soon as the wave had passed, warming my brain again. I soaked my power back into the ice and turned my attention to the functioning model of my body. I was going to have to rebuild from scratch anyway, so I kept my perception of time slowed and spent some time incorporating the heat vision from Essy''s model into my own. I ended up creating my own system entirely based upon the heat sensing cells. Most of the complexity in Essy''s heat vision came from requiring the cells to be kept at an ideal temperature even as they heated up from sensing heat, otherwise there would be ghost images left behind. I could cheat with my Matter Manipulation power and keep them cool by pulling heat from them directly. I placed the cells in a circle around the iris of each of my eyes. Hooking the cells up to my brain through the nerves running in my eyes was complicated and I had it mostly set up when I realised that I would need a dedicated adapted part of my brain to deal with the new sense. It would be simpler to make micro-portals and have my digital side deal with it, feeding the heat vision back as an overlay on top of my normal vision. Which would also eliminate the need to overload the nerves going to the eyes. I was just finishing designing that when another wave of power went through the ice. I had been working for hours, subjectively, but it had only been thirty seconds in objective time. There were two possibilities I could see for what they were doing. One was that they were keeping the ice cold and making sure that I remained frozen, as there was definitely an extra chill after the power went through. The other was that they were monitoring me, making sure that I was still frozen. If it was the second reason then it would complicate my repair strategy as I would have to break it up into twenty five second chunks. I ran up a simulation of how I would do it and saw immediately that I could just keep the outer layers of my body frozen to bypass the scans, if that was what they were. The waves focused entirely on the ice around me, so long as I didn''t warm it at all there would be nothing for their scans to detect. With that as a parameter I implemented a program that would keep the entirety of my skin at the same temperature of the ice. Estimated time to complete repair, thirty minutes. I was still using the old implementation I''d written forever ago to handle modifying myself. It did things in a linear way, prioritising the most important changes first. But I''d written a massively parallel version out of necessity to work on my brain through the micro-portals. I spent some time reworking the programs, combining the two implementations together. Now it should work on everything at once in parallel tens of thousands of times in a coordinated hierarchy. Estimated time to complete repair, twenty seven seconds. A decrease of over one hundred times. I could even make it between waves, now. I waited for the next one to pass and then triggered the program. Chapter 49 - Choice It turns out that there is something worse than the subjectively never ending pain that I was used to from modifying my body. The pain itself was as all-consuming as usual, but it went from the pain to a blank whiteness and then back to the pain. Instead of a single eternity of pain I had to endure dozens and then hundreds of eternities of pain. The pain wasn''t the worst part, the worst part was the absences of pain when I knew the pain would be coming back. When the last cycle of pain stopped and instead of blank whiteness I returned to receiving inputs I counted the number of cycles I had gone through. Three hundred and forty three. I didn''t know why that number specifically. I would need to rewrite the program that modified living things so that it had a non-parallel option. Later. Right now I wanted to kill something, preferably something that was responsible for freezing me. My eyes are open and touching the ice that is around me, but I can''t see through. It isn''t painful, just a bit annoying, and I can''t blink. Or breathe. I was using the trick of refreshing the oxygen in my lungs, and my heart was beating to transport heat and oxygen around my body. I soaked my power into the ice around me just as a new wave started through it. As soon as the wave had passed I was pushing my power back into the ice. Once the wave was finished another wave started immediately. There was a gap before and after the second wave so I started converting ice to air. It was going to take several seconds to clear enough ice to make a difference, and the pressure around my body was increasing from the air not having anywhere to go. I dropped my perception of time and brought up a model of the ice around me. Converting the ice to air was too slow, but it was much simpler to cut the ice into pieces that would push through the bars. That would get rid of a majority of the ice and I could convert the remaining amount to air without bursting my ears from the pressure. If I cut the ice into long rectangles I would only need to push them halfway out of the cage, their own weight would then pull them the rest of the way out. I started making the cuts in the ice, progressing extremely slowly to my increased time perception. I reached the second wave when it was halfway down the ice, at hip-height to my body. As it moved down over the cut I was making my power was pushed out so I moved above it and started on the next cut. When it had moved on far enough that I could soak my power back into where the first cut should have been partially done the ice was fused back together. At the speed that the waves were going through the ice I would be able to cut through a third of the cuts I wanted to do before the next wave came. And if they changed to a permanent effect I would be locked out. I abandoned the cuts I was making in the middle of the ice and started the ones from the top of the ice down. With the first layer of cuts done I moved on to the second layer while pushing the first layer of cubes out of the cage in all directions. Each layer was ten centimeters tall and there was a gap of two centimeters for the bars that were laid out in a grid. My Matter Manipulation couldn''t move things very fast, they would only get halfway out before the wave finished passing through the ice. The wave finished when I was just starting to move the layer at my shoulder height. The solid grid of ice that was still in the cage was only covering one of my eyes, leaving one of my eyes free and able to see through the two meter long tunnel in the ice. I couldn''t see much, a stone building. More useful was that both of my ears were clear of ice. The model I was getting from my sound sense was a bit confused, there was a lot of noise happening out there and it was reflecting against the ice that was around me. I could hear chanting from four different groups from all four directions, twelve in each group.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. The wave of power I was expecting to come through the ice to halt my progress never came and I was able to finish cutting out and pushing the ice out of the cage. For the remainder of the ice that still had me locked in place I converted it to air, pushing heat into it so that it turned into a warm gust. Purely for the intimidation factor. The only ice I left I converted into a staff of ice that I could convert into energy. I looked around now that there wasn''t any ice blocking me. I was in a metal cage built into a wagon, and the wagon was on a wide dark cobblestone road that was running between tall stone buildings on either side. The buildings were four stories high, but they didn''t overcrowd the road that was ten meters wide. A main road in a city. It was busy with traffic, although there was a large gap around the wagon I was in that extended several meters past the priests that surrounded me. The priests were all higher ranked with gold trim on their robes, and they were all scrambling around the wagon chanting. On two sides, the front and to my left, they were raising a thick ice wall. On the remaining two sides, the back and to my right, they were casting their ice needle wall spell. People along the road were abandoning their wagons and running away on foot heading to the crossroads that were spaced every one hundred meters. The only ones not running away were the priests and what looked to be ice golems. There were a dozen of the two and a half meter tall humanoids that were made of a cloudy blue ice that were forming a group to the front left of the wagon. It would take the priests making the ice walls at least another thirty seconds to raise their wall the rest of the six meters it would require to cover the height of the ice needle spell. I took a few moments to assess my position. I''d been stripped of my robe, staff, sword, and throwing knives, though they had left me my underwear. I still had my sharpened fingernails, and my newly formed ice staff. I was locked in an enchanted metal cage that didn''t have a door and I was about to be skewered by hundreds of needles of ice. I stepped over to the bars at the back of the cage and gripped a vertical bar with my left hand. It was ten centimeters long, joining with a horizontal bar above and below it. Using the nails of my right hand I jabbed forward and sheared the bar off at the bottom, and then again at the top. The priests that were chanting at the back of the wagon casting the ice needle spell were standing behind the ice needles that were two meters long and in a grid with spaces five centimeters apart. The priests had settled into a formation four across and three deep. Looking to my right the twelve priests there were doing the same. As I cut out seven more bars some of the priests, the ones that were chanting with their eyes open, looked increasingly nervous, the rest were oblivious. I had the two centimeter wide bars stacked in my left hand and settled down to calculate my throws. Eight lines, and the ice needles should be sturdy enough while they''re chanting to be able to bounce off of. From the angle I had there would be two priests that I couldn''t hit. If I had another four bars I could get them, but the ice walls were nearing the point where they would be able to fire. I calculated exactly an eighth of the energy in the muscles of my right arm for each throw and then started. Each throw, four for each group, was executed perfectly. The chants stopped after the first priest in each group was hit, which caused the last throws at each group that needed to ricochet off the ice needles to miss as they shattered through them instead. Still, sixteen of the twenty four priests were dead or dying on the road and the needle spell fell apart and shattered on the stones. I replenished the energy in my exhausted right arm. The eight priests that were left were frozen in shock. I started pulling out more bars, cutting them into their ten centimeter long lengths and forming a hole in the side of the cage that I would be able to walk through. I was unsure if I would kill them even if they surrendered or were running away... With my slowed perception of time I had the time to think. I wanted to kill them all. Not because I saw them as a threat, I didn''t, but because they were part of the group that caused me so much pain. The threats were the head priest of winter and the winter god. Do I act out of vengeance or only as a protector. I was just coming down on the side of the protector when the eight priests formed up and started chanting again. That made things simpler. They all died one after another from a bar of metal passing through their heads. I stepped out of the cage and turned to find the ice golems marching towards me. I stretched and settled into a fighting stance, grinning. It would be nice to kill some things in close combat, throwing things just didn''t give the same sense of satisfaction. Chapter 50 - Ice Golems The golems were marching in lock-step three wide and four deep, the same as the priests tended to, their movements perfectly coordinated with each other. They were coming down the side of the wagon from the front and I took a moment to assess them. Tall and blocky they looked like they''d been carved from blue ice in a roughly human shape, though the head was just a blue cube on top of the shoulders, and where their arms would be they had blades that bent at the elbows. Instead of hands the blades of their forearms continued to a point. Their joints moved fluidly, as though they were flesh and bone, and I tentatively marked out areas that could be weak points. The center of their chest and the head were the best bet for a crippling blow, and the joints after that. If I could remove their blades it would make them significantly less of a threat. I was standing on the ground in the center at the back of the wagon a meter and a half from the edge that the ice golems would be marching around. The floor of the wagon was one meter off of the ground, and the cage rose two meters above that. The golems finally cleared the edge of the wagon and I prepared to attack them, but they completely ignored me. It took me a few moments to work out that they were going to try to box me in with four of them on three sides and the wagon at my back. Allowing my enemies to prepare hasn''t been working out very well for me. I dropped my perception of time as the first column of four stopped and the other two columns continued around to box me in. My first target was the golem who was stopped at the edge of the wagon. Leaving my ice staff leaning against the wagon I launched myself at the golem at about a quarter of my full strength, extending my right hand to spear in front of me and through his chest right where a humanoids heart would be. My hand met a solid amount of resistance before breaking out of the back of the golem and my side slammed into it. To absolutely no effect, the golem wasn''t even forced off balance. It was bringing one of its arms across its body to cut my arm off at the shoulder, while it brought its other one to swing at my head. The ice of its chest gripped onto my right arm, trapping me for its blades. I brought my left palm up and hit it solidly in the chest, tearing my arm from its grip and pushing me backwards. The blade from its right arm was still on a path that would take it through my head, so I used the nails on my right hand to block and shear through its blade. The blade flew away, and I saw out of the corner of my eye the golem next to the one I had attacked stepping forward and thrusting one of its bladed arms towards me. The first golem was redirecting the attack from its left arm to perfectly cover the second one''s attack. If I moved to block the second one the first one would hit the arm that did it. They were coordinated to a scary degree, as though they were controlled with one mind. There was still a narrow margin to counterattack, and that is all I needed. I brought my right hand up to cut the second golem''s arm off at the elbow, and at the same time moved my left hand to cut the first golem''s remaining arm halfway up its lower arm. The first golem was now almost completely disarmed, but the second golem was pivoting to bring its right arm blade through where my chest would be. And the third golem in the line was stepping into the space left by the second golem. I kicked myself backwards off of the first golem getting out of range of the second golem''s attack. Both of my arms were at half energy from the speed of the attacks I was forced to do. The golems could move much quicker in close quarters than I was expecting, though they weren''t able to land a hit against me. I reached out with my left hand to grab the bars of the cage as I was still in the air from my kick and brought myself to a stop. The rest of the golems had stopped moving to box me in and were heading directly towards me. Landing back on the ground I kicked off towards the first golem I had targeted, pushing myself against the bars of the cage as well.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. I was moving upwards this time, aiming for its head. As I reached it I used my right hand to cut across and through the base of its head, tearing it off completely. With my left hand I dug into and gripped its chest to stop my forward momentum. The golem was again completely unaffected, turning to the side and kneeling to line up a strike from the blade of the second golem and raising what was left of its blades to try to slash at me. The third golem in the line was also thrusting the points from both of its bladed arms towards me. The rest of the golems were getting increasingly closer behind them. If I had my sword I would have little trouble with this opponent. The best I could do with just my hands was to cut them off at the shoulder, and even that would be a struggle with their coordinated attacks. I cut down through the shoulders of the golem I was on top of and pushed myself towards the three blades of the second and third golems. The blades were aimed to take me in the chest and throat, so I swung at full strength with my left arm just as they were about to hit. I hit with enough force that I shattered all three blades, two at the elbow for the third golem and the last at the middle of the upper arm for the second golem. My left arm was completely done and would require a few seconds at least before I was able to use it. I tucked my legs under me, preparing to kick off of the third golem when I noticed... Chanting. It didn''t sound like chanting from my slowed perspective, but it was showing up on my sound sense. I turned my head to the right and saw winter priests standing within the ice wall that was on the other side of the wagon. They were twenty centimeters into the wall, and that portion was completely clear allowing them to see out. I couldn''t immediately see the effect of the spell that they were casting, but as I kicked off of the third golem back towards the cage on the wagon I saw the first golem''s arms reattaching. The blades of the second and third golem were also reforming. I landed on the cage and began climbing to its roof, shearing off some ten centimeter lengths of bar to use as ammunition. The ice golems looked as though they were going to try following me, but I had at least a few seconds to work. I was curious how they were going to climb without hands, but I turned to face the wall that the winter priests were within. The ice wall extended well past the end of the wagon at the back, and I could see that they''d moved the majority of it along the road rather than grow more wall. There were twenty four priests within the wall in two rows, which accounted for all of the priests remaining in my original escort. I had ten bars to work with and threw the first one at a priest roughly in the middle of the ice wall, just past the end of the wagon. I wasn''t expecting it to go through, and indeed it was stopped a few centimeters away from him. The remaining nine bars I threw in line with the first from the ground to the top of the wall, creating a weakened section. I then tucked my shoulder and jumped towards the wall at full strength. With my head down and my shoulder tucked I could see the ice golems climbing the cage behind me, they were wedging the blades of their arms into the gaps in the grid of the cage, pulling themselves up. I also saw the wagon lift slightly from the force of my jump. I hit the ice wall exactly on the same line as the bars of metal I had thrown and there was a few moments to my sped up perception where the pressure built up against my shoulder before the wall split in two. The now two halves of the wall pushed back slightly on the road, separating. The two priests who had been in line with the split were half in and half out of the wall now, their ice-walking ability seeming to have allowed them to not take any damage. They were both moving to step into the ice wall on my right as my momentum took me through the two halves. There was no way my charge moved so many tons of ice, some of the priests must have tried to move it backwards to lessen the force of my attack. The walls continued to separate as I landed on the stone of the road in a roll. The first of the ice golems behind me was jumping from the top of the cage after me. Looking up I saw a wooden door in the building directly across the road from me. The rest of the front of the building was solid stone, and the doorway was only one and a half meters wide and a little over two meters tall. Too small for an ice golem to fit through. Coming to my feet my legs almost collapsed under me. I recovered from my stumble and ran across the road. I was about to try to smash through the door, though most of my momentum was gone, when I thought to put my hand on the handle and push down just before I got to it. The door unlatched and slammed open as I rushed through it, flicking it closed once I was through. I was in a shop. Chapter 51 - Shop "Frank!" A lady behind the glass counter on my right shouted. "Frank, get down here." The lady reached beneath the counter and raised a green orb the size of her palm in her right hand. The way that she was pointing it at me it was obviously a weapon of some sort. I raised my hands to show her that I was unarmed and that I meant no trouble. I looked around the store, which obviously catered to magic types. There were shelves of small mana crystals, robes, and several bookcases filled with books. Interestingly there was a small section that just held coils of rope hanging on a steel bar. I heard the footsteps of someone stomping down the stairs on the left side of the room that led to the second floor. I could hear them muttering as they came, though only because of my enhanced ears. Something about... "I''ve told you to call me Magus Steelborn while we are in the shop." The man, Frank Steelborn, said as he came into view. "Hello then. Who are you, and what are you doing half naked in my store?" He was an enormous man, in width as well as height. He stood well over two meters tall and was wearing a deep blue robe, his hands stuck in his sleeves. His eyes were a glowing hazel colour. "My name is C.C." I said. "I was trapped and robbed of all of my possessions, though they spared me the indignity of taking my underwear. When I tried to escape, the people who had trapped me tried to kill me. I was running from them and the door to your shop was the closest, so I ran in here." "Aye, the city has been getting rougher of late." Magus Steelborn said. "This would be the first I''ve heard of someone being attacked on main street, but it doesn''t surprise me. Would you like to have a seat while I call the city guards?" "The people who attacked me might still be out there." I said. What I had said was technically true, but I had no doubt that the city guards would be on the winter priest''s side. An escaped prisoner who had killed two dozen priests... "Do you have a back door I could use?" I asked. "The safest thing would be to lose them more thoroughly before they find me again." "What did you do that they would be hunting you even after robbing you of everything?" Magus Steelborn asked. "It is plain to see that you are a mage, did you offend the wrong person?" A mage?.. Oh, right, my neon blue eyes were a mark of someone who has a mastery over a magic or uses a lot of mana. "Not precisely." I said. "They kidnapped my girlfriend and used her to lure me into a trap when I came to get her back. The wrong person being offended might be right, though." The lady behind the counter had been keeping a close eye on me, the orb still pointed in my direction. She and Magus Steelborn exchanged a glance and she put the orb back under the counter, giving him a slight nod. "We can''t have you running around the city half naked." Magus Steelborn said. "Though I don''t have any cheap robes, all of my stock is moderately enchanted and worth several gold... Hmm." "I do my work primarily in stone." I said. "If you had some loose material, preferably stone, though I can work with other material, I could trade you a medium mana crystal for that and a robe? I would prefer an unenchanted one, honestly." "Come upstairs to my workroom then." Magus Steelborn said. "Maleena, if anyone comes in looking for our young friend tell them that you chased him out the back." I followed Magus Steelborn up the stairs to the second floor which was filled with aisles of products. The aisle we walked down to get to the stairs on the other side of the room had orbs, rocks, pendants, shoes, mana crystals up to a medium size, and even some weapons.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. I opened my mouth to speak with him as we made our way up the stairs to the third story, but he placed a finger over his lips and shook his head. We made it to the top of the stairs and he placed his hand on the wooden door there which clicked and then swung open. Entering the room he went to the side to several robes. He pulled one out, a matching blue to his robe, and passed it to me as I entered. "That should be about your size." He said. "Put it on, then we will see about your stone magic." I was looking out the front wall of the room. The entire wall was transparent, and the road could be seen through it. The ice walls were down, but the torn up cage was clearly visible and the bodies of the priests were still in the road. Magus Steelborn gestured for me to not speak again, going to a desk to get a thick sheet of paper and an iron pen. The pen lightly burned the markings he was making into the paper, and I was relieved to see that I could read the writing the same way I could understand the spoken language. /I saw it all. Bastard winter priests. Have to be careful about saying anything aloud, the air has ears. People have been disappeared./ I frowned and pulled the robe over my head. He passed me the pen and paper at my gesture and I wrote under what he had written. /How did you know you could trust me?/ "Truth enchantment on a crystal under the front counter." He said. "If you had of lied Maleena would have seen it, and probably blasted you back into the street. Here, can you use this for your stone magic?" He passed me some scrap pieces of stone, offcuts from gems mostly. "This will work." I said. "Do you have a small mana crystal I could use as a reference?" He frowned and pointed me to a wooden tray in the corner. There were several mana crystals in the wooden tray ranging from extremely small up to larger than usual medium sized crystals. This was how other people made mana crystals, I realised. Fill the tray with mana and it slowly crystallises around any impurities. I soaked my power into the mana crystals in the tray and duplicated them into a medium mana crystal in the shape of an orb from the scraps I''d been given. I was using the carbon from a gem shard as the source of energy, having misplaced my staff yet again. It took about a minute to finish. I handed the orb to Magus Steelborn. His face went white as the blood drained from it. "You..." He said, spluttering. "How did... What are..." His hands were shaking as he reached for the pen and paper, his writing coming out shakily. /Are you a god? Or the avatar of a god?/ I shook my head and reached for the pen. /A Champion. No affiliation with the gods. And definitely a friend./ He reached for the pen again and I heard a crash from downstairs. I moved closer to the front wall and looked down, Magus Steelborn joining me after a moment, and saw men in plate armour and winter priests entering the building. Magus Steelborn wrote something, then showed me. /Follow me, we''ll take the roof./ I followed him to the stairs going up and he ignited the sheet of paper with magic as we went. The fourth floor was dark and looked to be a living area from what I could see. The stairs to the roof were along the wall from the landing on the fourth floor and we headed up them. The roof itself was flat and there was a garden growing on it with a path that met a path on the roof to the north with a fifty centimeter high wall marking the boundary between the buildings. There were six roofs before there was a gap, presumably for a road, and about five hundred meters away a fortress rose above the city. That was where Chantelle was. We started to jog, going over six roofs to the last building before Magus Steelborn turned off of the main path and headed for a doorway. There was a crystal beside it that he placed his hand on and ten seconds later it made a chime sound. Magus Steelborn opened the door and we headed down the stairs, bypassing the fourth floor and going straight to the third. He knocked on the door at the bottom of the stairs and it swung open to reveal a tiny man in bright green clothing. He was a meter tall at most, very thin, and had red hair and beard. He was a striking contrast to Magus Steelborn, who could have made up six of the little man by weight. "Frank." The little man said, his voice at about the same pitch as my own. "You''ve brought a guest." "Aye, a new friend who has gotten himself into a bit of trouble." Frank said. "Gerry, this is C.C.. C.C., Gerry. C.C. needs a safe door back out onto the streets, my building had some visitors that made this the best exit." "Come in and be welcome, then." Gerry said. "I''m a leprechaun. You looked like you were wondering." The room was a work room, a tray for growing mana crystals in the same corner as Magus Steelborn had, and various equipment for making thread and cloth. Gerry was leading us towards the stairs down when I stopped him. "Would you be willing to trade for some high quality thread?" I asked. "How high quality, and what do you have to trade?" Gerry asked in return. "Give him a bobbin of your best thread and some stone." Frank said. "He made me a thousand gold mana crystal in less than a minute." He looked at me. "That was what you had in mind, yes?" "It was." I said. I made Gerry a medium mana crystal orb from a rock he handed me while he dug through stacks of cylinders full of thread. Chapter 52 - True Pocket Dimension Gerry finally dug his way out of the mound of different threads five minutes after I''d finished making him his mana crystal orb. "Here it is." He said, holding a bobbin of dull silver thread. "Arachne silk steel thread. Very difficult to come by, as the Arachne don''t tend to like visitors. It''s nearly indestructible, which of course makes it nearly impossible to work with, but it is the absolute best thread that I have. It''s only twenty meters of it, mind." I gave him the mana crystal orb and took the bobbin from him. It was very heavy for such fine thread, over five kilograms for the twenty meters. I nodded after confirming that I could sink my power into it. "I''ve met the Arachne a couple of times, actually." I said. "I think I even left on good terms with one of their Guardians of the Maze." Frank and Gerry were both looking at me oddly, half frowning with their heads cocked to the side. "You''re just full of surprises, aren''t you." Frank said. I nodded with a smile and gestured for something to write with and on, and Gerry handed me a pen identical to the one Frank had and a sheet of paper. /Do you have a wall that is made with unenchanted stone? I''d like to put a Portal back to the city, being able to trade would be useful./ "Sure." Gerry said. "Follow me." Frank and I followed him down the stairs and across the second floor that held rows and rows of clothing. Gerry was obviously a prolific tailor and this was his shop. As we were passing by a collection of robes I stopped and pulled out a hooded black robe that was my size. My power sank into it readily, unlike the blue one I was wearing. "Gerry, how much for this?" I asked. "You easily overpaid for the thread, I''ll throw the robe in for free." He said. I switched out of the blue robe and into the black one, rolling the blue one up and tucking it under my arm. I gestured for Gerry to continue and we headed down the stairs to the main store area. There was a salesperson, a female leprechaun, who Gerry nodded to as he led us through a door into a back room. There was another set of stairs there that we took down into a basement, and Gerry pointed to the wall opposite the stair landing. I didn''t need to carve a full portal right now. I sliced out a two centimeter deep doorway into the wall, using the stone I was cutting out to line the doorway to make a door frame. With the first Pocket Dimension doorway symbol carved there was a connection made to my Pocket Dimension and I could finish the doorway from the other side at a later time. The whole thing took less than a minute to do, and I now had an anonymous exit from my Pocket Dimension into the city of the Fortress of the Gods. "That''s it for now." I said. "I can finish the rest when I finalise the connection when I have time. Thank you both for your help." "I look forward to trading with you in the future." Gerry said, leading us back up the stairs and to the front of the shop. Frank and Gerry both waved as I left the store. The traffic was moving on the road again, the middle of the road for wagons and people mounted on bipedal lizards and the outsides for foot traffic. I joined the foot traffic, turning right and heading towards the keep four hundred and fifty meters away. Chantelle was a bit over five hundred meters away, and from our connection I could feel that she was anxious. There are winter priests and guards in the crowd of foot traffic every so often, but the majority of people were just ordinary people. Not all human, or even humanoid, to be sure, but they seemed to be going about their business in a normal fashion. I was holding the bobbin of very heavy thread in my hands and I unwound a six meter length to work with, cutting it with my Matter Manipulation power. I placed the rest on the bobbin in the pocket of my robe, which was a nice thing this robe had that my original one didn''t. Pockets. I fused the ends of the thread together to form a six meter loop.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. I had really been missing the full potential of my Pocket Dimension portals. If micro-portals work with symbols inscribed at the scale of nerves then I should be able to make a portal from thread. I hadn''t tried making a Pocket Dimension doorway in a flexible material, but in the worst case I would have to hold the thread rigid in a doorframe for the portal to stabilise. Which was something that my Matter Manipulation power could easily do. It was also why I was using six meters of thread, that would give me a two meter tall doorway that was one meter wide. I carved the first Pocket Dimension doorway symbol into the thread and felt the connection link up to the Pocket Dimension, I placed the destination of the portal within range of my digital Matter Manipulation. I worked on carving the rest of the symbols into the thread while I worked my way closer to the keep. Crossing the crossroads was an interesting process. None of the traffic, wagons included, wanted to give way to each other. The only reason people on foot could get through at all was because the wagons had to slow to a stop as they pushed in front of wagons coming from other streets. I wasn''t entirely sure how it was working, but wagons seemed to be making it around the city without creating a deadlock and there were only a few times that I saw city guards intervening in the traffic. I finished the last symbol on the thread and to my surprise the portal formed within its inner bounds. The thread was scrunched up, so its inner bounds was complicated, and I wouldn''t want to try passing anything through it as it was. But I could soak my power through it and after some odd spatial twists and turns it came out in the Pocket Dimension. The thread changed from feeling like ordinary thin thread to being like thick wire. Not that it was difficult to move with my Matter Manipulation, but it wanted to keep the form it was in. As soon as the portal formed the weight of the thread also doubled from one and a half kilograms to three kilograms. I manipulated the thread so that there were no tangles, folding it over so that there was a single opening that I could adjust the size of. I hadn''t, before now, considered too much what was on the back side of the portals I had been making. It turned out the portal worked in both directions. One side of the opening, which I made the size of my hand, opened facing upwards in the Pocket Dimension, and the other was facing the ground there. I put the thread portal into the empty pocket of my robe, fixing it to the leg side of the pocket. With my digital side I pulled a staff of stone from my stone source beneath my fortress and passed it through the portal in my pocket, pulling it out with my left hand. My Pocket Dimension finally matched what I thought of when I chose the power, an infinite storage that I can carry around with me. I didn''t get any odd looks from pulling a two meter staff out of my pocket as I was walking, even though there were quite a few people around me. I had reached the end of the street I was following, the walls of the keep were fifteen meters away. There was a fifteen meter wide street that went around the keep that made a buffer between the walls and the buildings of the city. A wide gate that led into the keep grounds was guarded by ice golems and winter priests. The only ones coming and going through the gates were winter priests, and it looked as though they were being studied by the guards. The walls themselves were twenty meters high and five meters thick. I couldn''t see on top of them but I assumed they were manned. I cut off a second six meter length of thread, joined it in a loop, and started carving Pocket Dimension doorway symbols onto it as I turned right to follow the road around the keep. Chantelle was roughly one hundred and fifty meters away, almost at the center of the keep grounds which were three hundred meters on a side. I crossed the street to walk along the walls as I worked. The foot traffic was lighter next to the walls, there not being any stores or buildings to gain access to. There was still a crowd but it wasn''t as packed as the other streets I had been walking. I made it to the middle of the back wall before my second thread portal was done. There was only one gate into the keep grounds that I had seen. I crossed the road and continued walking until I got to the alleyway that was between the buildings of the block. It was barely wide enough for a single wagon to go down, and was overshadowed by the tall buildings on either side. Which distracted me for a few moments, the city was actually warm enough to be liveable, and the heavily overcast sky was providing light as though it was day where everywhere else was eternal night. The winter god must not want to kill the city that it took over. I was five meters down the alleyway and I had the three kilograms of thread in my right hand. I soaked my power through the portal in my pocket and then back out the portal and into the thread in my hand. I compressed it into a solid ball and used all of the energy in my right arm to throw it in a high arc that would land it on a roof in the middle of the keep and returned my hand to my side. It should have looked like a flicker of motion to anyone watching. Chapter 53 - Infiltration Some of the guards that were passing by the entrance to the alleyway I was standing in were starting to pay attention to me. I turned and casually walked further down. When I got twenty meters in I heard the first steps from plated boot feet coming towards me because I was specifically listening for it over the noise of the foot traffic. I put my hand in my pocket and drew out the thread Pocket Dimension portal and placed it against a doorway in the nearby wall. I turned off the lights in my Pocket Dimension to make my actions as unsuspicious as possible and reshaped the thread into a doorway one meter wide and two meters tall. As I stepped through I heard. "Hey you, stop." From a low ranked winter priest with a city guard next to him. Now in my Pocket Dimension I collapsed the thread portal I''d come through making it form a single line of thread and turned my lights back on. I locked the two edges together by fusing the material of the thread together. I could break the loop and remove the portal but I was hoping the priest and guard would assume I used the door. The thread should be overlooked. My second thread portal was a ball of thread sitting on the ground in my Pocket Dimension. I pushed my power through it, which was a bit tricky as the Pocket Dimension side of the portal was bouncing my power off of it. After I got a thin stream of my power through to the thread on the other side I was able to follow it around to fill the entire loop. After that it was simple to expand the loop into a doorway. Which from the side I was looking at opened directly into a dark tile roof. I walked around to the other side and could see the slope of a tile roof opposite and the sky at an angle. The doorway on this side was vertical, but the world side was at a forty five degree angle. My stomach lurched as I stepped through and my body sense was telling me that down was in two different directions at once. I was standing in the valley between two peaks of the roof of the keep, to my left twelve meters away there was a ridge rising to another peak, and to my right twenty meters away was a clear area before the roof started up again on the other side. I collected the thread of the thread portal, collapsing it back into a small form and placing it in my pocket, and headed towards the clear area. Chantelle was fifty meters away, down and to the side of where I was. My power wouldn''t soak into the building, so I would need to find another way in. I did start to make a replacement sword in my Pocket Dimension, but it would take a few minutes to finish. In the worst case scenario I would be able to cut down through the tiles. I reached the end of the roof and looked over the edge to see a balcony two stories directly below me. An eight meter drop. Higher than I''d deliberately dropped from before, though I ran the calculations and the force from the fall would be a lot less force than the several times I''d ran through ice walls. I reinforced my body and dropped onto the balcony, which let out a crack of stone. There were two glass doors in wooden frames that led into the building. I pushed hard on them, bending the metal latch that held them closed until it snapped, flying into the room. I stepped into the room expecting the balcony to fall away behind me. Though after a moment of consideration I realised that if it was going to do that it would have done it when I was pushing hard against it to force the doors open. The room I was in was a simple small room, two and a half meters wide and long, with a stone floor. It only held a bed, a wardrobe, and a desk with a chair. I felt a little bad about breaking the room owner''s doors, as he was obviously only a low ranked priest.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. I closed the glass doors and put the chair against them to hold them closed. The wooden door in the wall was locked shut with a simple latch that could be opened with a key from outside but was easily lifted from inside. I opened the door and stepped out into a carpeted hallway three meters wide and almost ran into a priest in a gold trimmed robe. I snapped my hand up into a fist, intending to hit him in the head and at least knock him out, and maybe kill him. Thankfully my reaction to shock is to drop my perception of time, and I recognised him as Ryan, the spokesman priest from back at my fortress. Ryan looked at me in shock. I raised my finger to my lips, indicating that he should be quiet. "Is your room nearby?" I asked. He nodded and pointed to a door four doors back from the direction he had been coming in. I gestured for him to lead the way and followed him as he took out a rectangular card. He pressed the card against the door and swung it open. It was the same layout as the room I''d broken in from, he took a seat on the bed and I took the chair, turning it away from the desk. "You got promoted." I said. "I survived speaking with you, twice." Ryan said. "And you''ve been killing a lot of the priests that were higher up. I''m in the top tier now, actually." I smiled. Maybe he''ll get the top job after I''d killed the head priest. There is one thing that would bother me if I didn''t ask... "How did you get here so fast?" I asked. "I''m not sure how much I should say." Ryan said. "The church has an associate who can teleport, and he was already there and making the trip back." "Ah, of course." I said. "He tried to kill me not too long ago." In the awkward silence that followed I noticed that I was being nudged again. I''d isolated the channel that it was being done by on my digital side, and wrote a program that would detect future nudges and alert me. I''m not very happy with the winter priests right now, but I had only ever attacked them after they had attacked me. The outside interference that I was getting was telling me that Ryan was good people and I didn''t disagree. "Well, it looks like you are going to survive a third encounter with me." I said. "But I can''t leave you awake to sound the alarm or try to stop me. You can tell whoever needs to know that this all could have been avoided if they hadn''t abducted Chantelle and her people." "I understand." Ryan said. "But I don''t think they care." I stood up from the chair and rapped Ryan on the head, knocking him out. This was becoming a thing. I should ask the druids if they have anything for knocking people out. It would have to be nicer than hitting people in the head, even if I could calculate the force exactly so there wasn''t any risk of accidentally killing them. It still had to hurt. Before leaving Ryan''s room I opened his wardrobe looking for a spare robe to borrow as a disguise. I didn''t want to get him in trouble by asking for it when he was awake. I would make it up to him at some point, I hoped. There was a single spare robe hanging in the wardrobe and it had the gold trim of a high ranked priest. I changed into it, moving the pocket portal into its pocket and storing my black robe in my Pocket Dimension. I exited the room and turned left heading towards the stairs down. There were two lower ranked priests coming up the stairs when I got to them, but they ducked their heads and stood to the side until I''d passed them. They were just teenagers, which made me feel better about the disguise. The other option would have been to kill everyone on my way to Chantelle. I made it down ten flights of stairs before I was on the same level that she was on, passing priests occasionally. The only time I saw another higher ranking priest I turned down a hallway off the stair landing and waited until he had gone past. On the floor that Chantelle was on, which I assumed was the ground floor, the hallway that led from the stairs in her direction was narrow and short, a meter and a half wide and ending in a right angled turn after only ten meters. I followed it and just after the turn it branched in two directions, and I took the one closest to Chantelle''s direction. It quickly got dark, so I pulled out my thread portal to my Pocket Dimension to use as a light. I didn''t know why they had a maze down here, but after several more turns that was exactly what it felt like this was. It was only after going up a short flight of stairs and then back down again that it occurred to me that I was in servant''s passages within the walls of the keep. The stairs were there to go over a hallway. When I got to fifteen meters away from Chantelle and the hallway I was on branched off in either direction I noticed that there were latches on the wall in front of me at about eye height. Flipping it open I looked through to see the head priest of winter with his hand around Chantelle''s throat. Chapter 54 - Winter God My immediate reaction was to tear through the wall and rescue Chantelle. My vision narrowed and I prepared to dash through the solid wooden planks that made up the wall when I got a soothing feeling from Chantelle. It didn''t feel as though she felt she was in any immediate danger, and her response to feeling my anger was to try to cool me down. I took several deep breaths and got myself under control. Looking closer the head priest of winter, who I had mockingly named Rat, only had his hand loosely around Chantelle''s throat. They were standing at the foot of some stairs that led up to a dais with a tall backed throne on it. The room itself was thirty meters wide, fifty meters deep, and had eight meter ceilings. I was inside the wall on their left side, fifteen meters away. Chantelle and Rat were standing facing the large double doors that were in the wall opposite the throne, and they looked as though they were posed waiting for someone to enter through the doors. Chantelle was between me and Rat, and she looked fine from what I could see. Chantelle sent me a feeling of patience. "I''m not sure what you are hoping to achieve." Chantelle said. "I set up your wards for you, why don''t you just let me and the people from my village go?" "I need to remove the Champion." Rat said, sneering at her. "He must be made to stop interfering with my God''s plans. And you cannot be allowed to run about the world being able to ward as you please. Your wards are too dangerous for that." "If you provoke him further he will kill you." Chantelle said. "If you let us go he might let you live." Yeah, not likely. I was pretty set on the idea of killing him. "I''ve already killed him once." Rat said. "I hold the position of strength. I have his people, I have your villagers, and most importantly I have you. You are his Chosen Person, if you die then he fails at his goal." Chantelle felt shock at that, so she hadn''t told him. "How did you know that?" Chantelle asked. "My God can hear anything said in the world." Rat said. "And he speaks directly to me." He can hear anything said... Or more likely just hear anything in the world. The air has ears. Dammit. I pulled my new finished sword and scabbard from my Pocket Dimension through the large pockets in my robe. It was an exact copy of my old sword, and it felt comforting to be properly armed again. I set to work making throwing knives in my Pocket Dimension and turned my attention back to the room. "You''re afraid of C.C." Chantelle said. "I am not." Rat said. "I killed him before and it was hardly difficult. Champions can be tricky, though. There was Ramanah the Immortal, who couldn''t be killed, perhaps this one is like that. He will need to be negotiated with, and he will concede that I am the superior party." "You don''t have a plan." Chantelle said. "C.C. isn''t anywhere near here, and your posturing isn''t fooling anyone. I can feel you shaking." "Your Champion was heard upstairs not so long ago." Rat said. "He is sure to burst through the doors at any minute. When he does I will lock the room down and negotiate with him to become a vassal. The mistake was killing him. And you will cooperate or we will kill your mother just as I killed your father for acting against us." I felt Chantelle''s sadness. That was enough of that. I sliced through the wall with my sword, four neat cuts, and kicked it into the room creating an opening that I stepped through. Rat turned, gripping Chantelle''s throat tighter, and tried to start speaking. I spoke over him, ignoring him completely. "Hello Chantelle." I said, smiling. "Your father is alive back at our fortress. He is as well as could be expected, though I have Greta keeping him asleep. He was going to run out into the lethally cold permanent night of the forest and probably get himself killed."This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. I looked at Rat, whose hand was preventing Chantelle from speaking. Now that he was facing me I could see that he had my old sword attached at his waist. I wanted him to completely focus on me so that Chantelle could get away from him. Then I could kill him. "Ease up, would you Rat?" I asked. "And is that my sword?" Chantelle gasped in a breath as Rat started to turn red in the face but relaxed his grip. "You dare to call me Rat?" He asked, spluttering. "I am the High Priest of Winter." "Sure." I said. "You never introduced yourself at our last meeting. Rude on your part. So I gave you a name." "You will acknowledge me as the stronger party in these negotiations." Rat said. "I don''t think I will, Rat." I said. "My name is Jeremiah." Rat said. "The Warder Clan villagers are being guarded by people that have orders to kill them unless I personally send a counter-order. The winter priests that have your fortress surrounded have been preparing a tactical spell that they will trigger. And I personally have the ability to kill your Chosen Person and cause you to fail your goal at any time I desire to." "That is quite the comprehensive threat, Rat." I said. "What is a tactical spell?" "It will freeze everything within the ice walls, killing everyone inside." Rat said. "My terms are that you become my vassal and swear to be subservient to me in all things, and your people will align themselves with Winter. In return I allow your people to continue to live." "Aren''t you an Oathbreaker?" I asked. "Doesn''t that mean you are unable to negotiate treaties? ''Your treaties are void.'' was the phrase used, I believe." "Our keepers removed the title." Rat said. "The world''s magic acknowledges me." "I don''t acknowledge you." I said. "I don''t acknowledge you as a weaker party, let alone a stronger one. You are an Oathbreaker." I didn''t have the first idea as to what I was talking about, but it seemed to be working at making him angrier. "You winter priests don''t have instantaneous communication." I said. "I know this because when you ran away from me like a dog with its tail between its legs the last time we met the winter priests around my fortress still had their old orders when I left." Rat''s right hand left Chantelle''s throat and gripped the hilt of my old sword. I smiled at him. "Without instantaneous communication all I have to do is kill you, and then kill anyone who would harm my people." I said. "As an added bonus, I get my sword back." Rat drew his sword, smiling his crooked teeth at me. "It is a great weapon." Rat said. "We had to enchant it, of course. It wasn''t going to keep its edge otherwise. Our consultant said that you may have trouble with enchantments. Which, considering the enchanted water in the trap you walked into and the look on your face right now, looks accurate." I was frowning hard at Rat. It was mildly annoying that they had enchanted my sword, but mostly I was keeping Rat''s attention as Chantelle was taking a discrete step away from him. "Enough playing, then." Rat said. He snapped his fingers and the walls around the room turned into sheets of ice. The ice effect was spreading from the walls to the floor and the ceiling like water pouring over the ground. The carpet went from chocolate brown around most of the room and a red strip going from the doors to the throne to a deep blue ice and a pale blue strip. The throne itself grew sharp icicles that spread in all directions. As the spread of the ice reached the chandeliers in the roof they turned to ice and the warm glow of the many candles changed to a cold white light. Rat himself was changing. He grew ten centimeters, and there was a spectral overlay over his face and hands, the only parts of him not covered up. It looked as though he was wearing a transparent mask and gloves, except his body underneath it had moulded to the new shape too. His face projected forwards into a slight snout filled with sharp looking fangs, his hands sprouted claws five centimeters long, and his eyes started burning with an inner light. The gold trimming on his robe also changed to a pure white. "Champion." The monster that was Rat said. "Kneel in the presence of your God." I felt an enormous pressure pushing down on me. I locked my muscles tight and refused to budge. Chantelle collapsed to the ground. "Not my god." I said, managing to sound casual. "I will have this world for my own." The Winter God said. "If you join me, great. You would be a nice balance to the Champion that I already have. If you do not join me, you will die to winter sooner or later. I am patient. My high priest, however, has asked me to intervene. He has failed several times when it comes to you. It may be time for a new high priest. I will give him my aspect and let you fight one another." The Winter God transformed back into Rat, the spectral overlay of his features sinking within him. The pressure on the room lifted and Chantelle stood up with a groan. Rat still had his sword out, and he looked at me with a sneer. "You lose." He said and swiped the blade across Chantelle''s throat as he dashed backwards. A spray of blood erupted from Chantelle and she began to collapse. Chapter 55 - Superior My vision dimmed as I pushed my time perception to the limit of my senses. Out of desperation I tried to sink my power into the ice below my feet, and was surprised when it did. I dashed forward using my power to stop me from slipping on the ice, and sent my power ahead of me to sink into Chantelle. It took a few moments for my power to travel through the ice below me and to Chantelle, and I noticed Rat start to move around to my back. His dash backwards had nearly equalled my own speed, and he was still moving extremely fast. His speed was comparable to when I was using a tenth of my strength, as fast as I could move and replace the energy in my muscles without blacking out to the pain. It must be the aspect that the Winter God mentioned. My power finally reached Chantelle, and there was still some resistance against it as I soaked it into her. Not nearly enough to stop me, but more than the two other people that I had healed so far. There wasn''t enough time for a detailed scan, so I took a rough snapshot of what was wrong. The blade had cut through the front half of her neck, slicing through both veins and half of her wind pipe and vocal cords. There was blood entering her lungs and there was air inside of the veins going to her heart and the arteries going to her brain. The air was the most immediate problem, followed by blood loss, then finally the blood in the lungs and shock. I only had the parallel healing program as well. I was less than half a second from reaching Chantelle, enough time to form a prioritised repair model using pieces from my model overlaid onto the sparse model I had of her. Estimated time for a complete heal, five seconds once I''d reached her. Rat was out of my vision at my side, moving to my back. My combat model predicted that he would stab me in the back half a second after I''d reached Chantelle. I revised the repair model for Chantelle, just remove the air and patch over the cut blood vessels as much as possible in the half second I would have. I could feel that Chantelle was in shock but after I triggered the repair program she was just in pain. Waves and waves of it. It was only mildly distracting, not debilitating as it was when I was feeling it for myself. I had sheathed my sword at some point so I drew it again crossing it in a parry behind me to stop the sword my sound sense was telling me was stabbing forwards towards my back. It would have gone through my spine and then my heart, but instead slid along my blade as I turned around to face Rat. I locked blades with him and used half of the energy in my muscles to shove him backwards. He was thrown two meters back, and I stepped forward to maintain contact with our blades. Rat started to send cold down through his blade and into mine. My power was bouncing off of his enchanted blade, so instead of fighting it with heat, I slid my blade down so that the top quarter of my blade was touching his and then sheared my blade from a longsword into a shortsword. Rat didn''t overbalance noticeably, but the now free end of my blade was pushed towards me. I reached up with my left hand and threw the blade at the center of Rat''s chest, who was retreating. He turned his body to the side, completely dodging the blade and extended his sword in a thrust back towards me. I turned with a half step, forcing him to change his thrust into a swing. He had the range advantage with my now shortened sword. However, the sword that Rat was using was one of my trick blades, that had several deliberate structural faults. With my power reinforcing the blade there was no way that the blade would break. But I highly doubted an enchanter who was told to keep the sword sharp would have focused on anything except the edge of the blade. I calculated the exact structural flaw at the base of Rat''s blade, which would leave him holding a dagger. I swung up at the perfect angle. And the blade of Rat''s sword sheared exactly as I was aiming for. I had to step backwards to avoid getting more than the superficial light slash through my chest that I was left with.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. Which left the large length of Rat''s sword blade available for him to copy the trick I had used on him earlier, grabbing it and throwing it towards my chest. I didn''t have the room or time to dodge, so I brought up my left hand and slapped the blade downwards hard, burying almost its entire length into the ice of the floor. With Rat now at a range disadvantage I was trying to press him. Each time I got close to landing a cut on him he would redirect my blade. I couldn''t step in close to him because at the closer range his dagger was the better weapon. I realised almost too late that he was circling around to get between Chantelle and I. He took a step backwards and to the side moving closer to her, and instead of circling to find an opening I stepped in the opposite direction and in towards him. I pushed him back away from Chantelle as I reached my left hand into my pocket. When he redirected the next swing of my sword, slashing into my body with his dagger, I brought up the throwing blade I had pulled from my Pocket Dimension. I caught Rat by surprise and slashed through the tendon on his right wrist. He grabbed the hilt of the dagger with his left hand from the destroyed grip of his right and dashed backwards away from Chantelle and I. He was looking behind me and smiling condescendingly, as though he had already won. I glanced behind me and saw Chantelle coughing up blood. I was out of time. I threw my throwing blade at Rat and crouched, preparing to put everything into my next attack. Rat easily swatted the blade out of the air, and settled in a fighting stance waiting for me. I was faster than he was, but he was more efficient in his defence. I would need to be convincing to pull this off. I used the full strength of my legs to dash towards him, moving faster than either of us had all fight. I had my left hand out for balance, palm up and obviously empty. I raised my sword up and when I came within range I swung it down with all of the strength of my right arm, on a path to cut Rat completely in half. Rat started to step to the side, raising his right hand he timed it perfectly to backhand the blade of my sword while it was still thirty centimeters above his head. Combined with his step the path of my blade would just barely miss him. He raised his dagger with his left hand and stabbed forward and down at my head. I ducked my head to the left, and his dagger tracked to follow. Both of his hands were occupied, and his full attention was on stabbing his dagger through my right eye. I traced the path that his dagger would take. It would lead to an acceptable loss of functionality. I started to shut off the blood vessels going to the parts of my head that would be affected as well as I could and angled my left hand into an uppercut with my fingers extended, using the full strength of my left arm. My attack moved faster than Rat''s, and my scalpel sharp fingernails went through the underside of his jaw at the same time as his dagger went through my eye. By the time the crossguard of the dagger hit my face, leaving a few centimeters of the dagger sticking out the back of my skull, my left hand had burst through the top of Rat''s head. His brains ended up splattered on the ceiling six meters above us. As he fell he dragged his dagger down and to the side of my skull, and I moved my head to control the path and minimise the damage. I still had the momentum of my charge so I ended up bodyslamming into him. My legs and arms were exhausted, and I was bleeding heavily from my head. I was going to collapse onto the ground anyway, as my legs weren''t going to hold me up, so I loaded up half a second worth of healing and triggered it. After the pain ended I stood up and rushed to Chantelle. She was bleeding from the neck again, her coughing up the blood from her lungs had torn the quick repairs I had done and blood was again going down her airway when she was trying to breathe. She was drowning in her own blood, but it would be a minute before that killed her, so I spent a few seconds making sure I would only need to do major repairs once. I gripped her hand and triggered the parallel repair program. Six seconds later she let out a groan and then gasped in a breath of air. I checked her out with my power, and everything seemed to be working. My consciousness on my biological side started to dim and wink out. My head was still bleeding, though less now that my heart had stopped. With Chantelle fixed I triggered the repair program for myself. Just as it was activating it sent me an estimate of eight seconds to fully healed. We had both survived. Chapter 56 - Winter Realm I came back to my senses to Chantelle holding my face in her hands, looking into my eyes. I was laying on my back on the ice floor of the throne room and she was laying on top of me, shivering. I pushed heat into her body, warming her up. "Hello." I said. "Maybe don''t go running off with random winter people." She blew out her cheeks and poked me in the chest. "It was the only way you were going to know where to find my clan." She said. "I had complete faith that you would be able to save me, and I needed to save them. Though next time we should work it out so that you don''t die multiple times, and are in constant pain the rest of the time. I am sorry for that." She ran her thumbs alongside the outside of my eyes, looking from one to another. "What did you do to your eyes?" She asked. My eyes... Oh, right. I''d completely forgotten that I had added the heat vision sense to the model I''d been using to repair my body. It needed new micro-portals to my Pocket Dimension. Repairing micro-portals reconnected them to the last place they were set up, but new micro-portals needed attention while the first symbol was carved to create them in anything but the default location. I was also having to use the ice below me as my source of matter for energy, I''d misplaced yet another staff at some point. A staff wasn''t the ideal thing to get energy from I was finding, I had to use my hands too much. I briefly considered a pendant, but anything that could be taken from me would also be less than ideal. What I wanted was something that I could embed within myself that could access my Pocket Dimension, and from that I could use the stone source I had or anything else. I added a space to my model, placing a reinforced area at the back of my skull that could hold a portal. And of course I had the portal to my Pocket Dimension in my pocket. I switched where I was getting the matter from to convert to energy to heat us to there, depositing a small chunk of stone from the stone source. Chantelle kissed me, and I could sense amusement from her. "I lost you there." She said, smiling. "Future projects?" "Sorry." I said. "The markings are a heat vision thing, like snakes have. But I haven''t hooked it up, and I should. And that led to... Yes, future projects." "I could sense it over our connection." She said. "We should go and get my people from the dungeon?" I nodded and we climbed to our feet. I was covered in blood and brain matter, and Chantelle had some of it on her too from laying atop me. I tried to soak my power into the robe I was wearing, the high ranked winter priest robe, and my power bounced off. It was enchanted. I took my black hooded robe from my Pocket Dimension through my pocket and changed into it, swapping the portal to my new pocket. Then I scrubbed Chantelle and myself clean by converting the dirt and gore to air. With that done we headed to the doors of the throne room, which were a black ice that reached to the eight meter high ceiling. They opened easily to my push and revealed a sixty meter hallway that led directly to the front doors of the keep with hallways and doors splitting off from it. Everything was ice, just as the throne room had been, and there were no people at all. The ice doors of the throne room swung closed silently as we walked away from them to reach the front doors. The silence was a bit eerie, the only sound was Chantelle''s boots clicking on the ice, my own bare feet not making any sound. We reached the front doors of the keep, a matching pair to the ones at the throne room, and they opened just as easily. Ten meters outside the doors was the gate leading out of the grounds of the keep, which were open. I stopped in shock. The walls that the gates were in were ice, as were the gates themselves. And through the gates where there should have been a city was a flat plain of snow. Two glowing orbs of fog, fifty centimeters wide, were hovering on either side of the gate trailing fog to the ground two meters below them. One of them approached us and I got a better look at it. It was a core of pale blue light with fog swirling around it in a solid ball.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. It stopped two meters away from us and I could feel the waves of cold coming from it. A moment after it stopped Chantelle clutched her head in pain and fell to her knees. I drew my sword and pushed heat into it, extending it towards the orb. The orb retreated two meters and bobbed up and down, the other three wisps drifting closer. "Stop." Chantelle said. "It''s an ice wisp. It wasn''t attacking, it was shouting." I eyed it warily. "Are you okay?" I asked. She was still in pain. "It''s not used to talking to humans." Chantelle said. "Ah, it''s saying that stories say that humans are incredibly dense when it comes to talking via magic. It was blasting what it was saying at full volume, like being shouted at directly into your ear. It''s speaking at a more reasonable volume now." I raised my sword, but didn''t put it away. "What is it saying?" I asked. "It was saying that we are in the Winter Realm." Chantelle said. "But now it is pretty concerned about the amount of heat that is coming from your sword. ''Dense evil human scarier than fire'' it just said. It''s cursing and trying to yell at you." I pulled the heat from my sword, pushing it into the stone in my Pocket Dimension, and then sheathed it. The ice wisp floated back to two meters in front of us. "Better?" I asked. "What did it mean by Winter Realm?" "Didn''t you wonder where the winter aspected creatures went in summer?" Chantelle asked. "Or where the summer aspected creatures are while it is winter? The gods can shift creatures that are aligned to their aspect into their realms and out into the neutral realm." "We aren''t winter aspected creatures." I said. "The head priest of winter shifted us?" "We were at the center of his power." Chantelle said. "And the ice wisp just said that the neutral realm has been realigning to be closer to the winter realm. Soon it will be cold enough for them to safely cross over, they''ve never been able to go to the neutral realm before." "Are they guarding the gate for any particular reason?" I asked. "They aren''t guarding it." Chantelle said. "They eat ambient mana, and the keep has the highest concentration around here. Oh, it just said that we would need to swear to the Winter God to be able to shift back to the neutral realm. It doesn''t know any other way to shift between realms other than the gods." "That''s not a problem." I said. "They won''t attack you if we try to leave?" Chantelle shook her head. I led her through the gates to the outside and the wisps move well away from us. Apparently even our body heat was slightly painful to them. I pulled out another six meters of Arachne steel thread, leaving me with only two meters unused, and formed it into a loop. We walked along the outside of the wall of the keep, which matched the keep in the neutral realm, and I started carving the Pocket Dimension doorway symbols into the thread. When we had made it around the corner of the wall, out of view of the gate, I took the thread portal out of my pocket and formed it into a full doorway against the wall and stepped through after Chantelle. The reason I was making a third thread portal when I already had a spare was because I had no way of getting the thread portal out of the winter realm. I compressed the portal into a line, pushing the thread together and securing it, and then sank it down into the snow and ice. I moved the Pocket Dimension side of the doorway into the stone of the protected rooms, sealing it in the wall. Chantelle frowned at me. "We''re back home?" She asked. "Well." I said. "We''re in my Pocket Dimension." I pointed to the thread on the ground next to where we had come into the Pocket Dimension. "That thread there probably leads back to outside of the keep in the Fortress of the Gods. It''s still in a straight line, so I don''t think anyone found it, but it might lead to somewhere else in the Fortress of the Gods at this point. I have another one started in the basement of a shop there that will be safer, but I need to finish it first." Chantelle nodded firmly. "So we can go back and rescue my mother and the rest of the people of my clan." Chantelle said. I opened my mouth to argue and felt a surge of stubbornness from Chantelle. I didn''t want her to be in danger. But the last time I had tried to argue her out of it she had ended up going by herself anyway putting herself in even worse danger. The safest place she could be was where I could protect her. And I saw her as my equal, which meant that maybe I didn''t have a right to stop her. "We should go and see your father." I said instead. "It''s going to take me another twenty minutes to finish this portal. Unless we want to go through and kill everything in our way." Tears formed in Chantelle''s eyes and she shook her head. "He''s really alive?" She asked. "He is." I said. "Though I''m sure he won''t be happy with me. You got your stubbornness from him?" We walked through the doorway into the top of my fortress. "Not really." Chantelle said. "My mother is the one who always gets her way. She is the clan head, after all." Chapter 57 - Father Chantelle and I reached the druid''s floor one flight of stairs down from the upper fortress doorway. Barr and Gaal were on guard there again. "Hello." I said fluidly, using the beast people''s language. "Could one of you guide us to Greta and Michael Warder please?" I had gotten a lot of exposure to the proper forms of the language from the presence I had in their storytelling room and had no problem speaking in complete and natural sounding sentences. "Certainly, my lord." Gaal said, nodding to Barr. Barr opened the vine doorway leading into the entrance hall of the druids and held it open as we followed him through. He led us through the main hallway out to the fields and turned right once we were out of the stone buildings. There was a large blue canvas tent that was pitched so that the outer wall of the buildings made up one of the walls of the tent. The top of the tent was touching the ceiling of the floor four and a half meters up, and extended twelve meters into the field. Barr stopped outside of the tent and announced us, then bowed his head to me and left back to the front entrance. Greta, the rabbit lady healer, came out of the tent. "Greetings my lord, it is good to see you are yourself again." She said. "Are you back?" "Hello Greta." I said. "Not yet. I got Chantelle, as you can see, but I still need to get the rest of the Warder Clan villagers. We have some time while I''m preparing, so I brought Chantelle to see her father." "He''s through here." Greta said, backing into the tent and holding the flap open for us. The inside of the tent was lit with a soft warm light and it was one big room. There weren''t many people in the room, but there were rows of raised mattresses on the floor. Greta led us to one at the back of the tent where Michael Warder was sleeping. Greta looked to me and touched his forehead at my nod. Michael''s eyes flew open, flicking from Greta to Chantelle and then to me. He bared his teeth in a snarl and leapt to his feet, shoving Greta hard enough to make her stumble backwards. He placed himself between Chantelle and I and sent a crushing force against me. I flooded myself with my power to prevent my bones from cracking and then sent my power to soak into him. I''d had some time to think about the last time he had attacked me with this spell. Greta was standing up from where she had fallen against the canvas side of the tent. I modified Michael, changing a thousand small things briefly before changing them back. The pressure disappeared as he fell to his knees from the overwhelming pain. This sort of attack wouldn''t work on anyone that I hadn''t spent time forcing their mana to accept me, and it was much simpler to kill people in any case. I drew my sword, holding it in front of his face so that he had a physical threat to focus on, and stopped the pain. He stiffened as he came back to his senses. "I brought your daughter to see you." I said. "We are going to rescue the rest of your villagers. I thought you might have wanted to join us, but now I think I would rather leave you asleep. If you attack any of my people again I will kill you." I turned to face Chantelle. "I''m going to go prepare to break back into the keep." I said. "Come and see me in my room when you are ready. And get my attention over our connection if your father does anything stupid." I checked on Greta, who was fine, and then left Chantelle with her father. I headed back to the main stairway of my fortress and then down to the warding room. Maaata, the goat lady enchanter, was there, and it looked as though she had set herself up in the room. There was a mess of components that I assumed had something to do with enchanting all over the table and floor.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. "My lord." She said, hurriedly shoving things from the table to clear it. "Sorry for the mess. I was just-" I waved my hand, dismissing it. "Don''t worry about it." I said. "You were working on projects. I''m just here to form up a mana crystal for myself." The main unit of currency that I had been using in my trades were mana crystals, but I had to keep borrowing the seed mana crystal to duplicate from and the source material to make it out of. With my new thread portal to my Pocket Dimension so long as I had a mana crystal there I could make as many mana crystals as I wanted. I used the stone source from my Pocket Dimension and made a small mana crystal that I then stored in my Pocket Dimension. I still had ten minutes left before the portal was done. Time enough to get back into the keep where Chantelle''s villagers were being kept. I would come back to get her when I had an easy portal back in. I headed back up the stairs to the doorway into my Pocket Dimension. Once there I opened the thread portal that I had last left in the alleyway across from the keep in the Fortress of the Gods by unbinding the two sides of the thread from each other. Opening it a small amount I made a hole that I could look through and found the opposite wall of the alleyway. The portal was exactly where I''d left it. I formed it into a doorway and stepped through into the city of the Fortress of the Gods. I shrank the thread portal behind me and bunched it up into a ball. Walking to the entrance of the alleyway I threw it in an exact match of the trajectory that I threw the last portal, so it should land in the same place. With that done I joined the traffic heading around the keep, walking for the few minutes it would take to complete the thread portal that I was working on. Rather than cross the road with its mad jam of wagons I turned along one of the roads headed away from the keep. There was an alleyway halfway down the block and I casually turned into it. The alleyway I was in joined up with the alleyway that ran through the block the other way and I turned into it out of easy sight of the main roads. A glance over my shoulder showed that no one had followed me. I placed the newly formed thread portal against the wall and shaped it into a doorway, stepped through, and collapsed it to a single line. There were no problems extending the ball thread portal into a doorway and stepping onto the roof of the keep, collecting the thread portal to go in my pocket. I made my way to the edge of the roof and jumped down onto the same stone balcony that I had used last time. I landed with a crack of stone, but this time the balcony fell away beneath me. I had fallen out of reach of the handles of the door by the time my perception of time had slowed, and I considered what I could do. Forming the thread portal into an opening large enough to squeeze through would take too long, I''d hit the ground before I could reshape it. I calculated the amount of force that I would have to withstand from the fall. Forty meters, onto stone and the remains of the balcony that was falling beneath me. My assessment was that it would be slightly damaging, but that both my enhanced muscles and reinforcing my body would make it non-lethal. I shoved against the balcony as I was falling so that I would land to the side of it. I hit the ground in a three-point landing and came away relatively unscathed, I had done more damage to my muscles from sprinting, though my organs weren''t used to the abuse. The stone of the balcony had made quite a lot of noise when it hit the ground, so I used my thread portal to retreat back to my Pocket Dimension. It only took a few minutes of refreshing my body at bearable levels of pain before I was back to perfect condition. Chantelle arrived towards the end of my repairs, and she had her father with her. They both entered my Pocket Dimension, and I looked warily at Michael. I was a bit uncomfortable with him being so close to the hardware that was running my digital side. Though he would have to physically attack it to do any damage when he didn''t have access to mana. I opened my mouth to speak but was surprised when Michael bowed to me, a full ninety degree bow from the waist. "I apologise for my actions." Michael said. "It has been a stressful time. And I am not used to not being in control. When I saw Chantelle I saw you as a threat and moved to protect her." I was getting a mix of emotions from Chantelle, a fading anger, some nervousness, stubbornness, hope, and a small amount of embarrassment. I didn''t know what half of that was about, but the anger was probably from yelling at her father, or maybe that I''d disappeared back to the city, and the hope would be that I accept his apology. I raised an eyebrow at Chantelle and she nodded. I sighed. "I accept your apology." I said. "I take it you wish to come with us?" "Yes." He said, standing back upright. "And if I say no?" I asked. He glanced at Chantelle. "Then I would stay here." He said. I nodded and reformed the thread portal into a doorway to the inner courtyard of the keep in the Fortress of the Gods. Looking through showed it to be empty and I stepped through. I turned back to Michael. "Come along, then." I said. Chapter 58 - Re-infiltration Michael and Chantelle followed me into the stone paved courtyard. The forty meter walls on all sides crowded over the courtyard, and there was a single bare tree that rose twenty meters up at one end in a circle of dirt. Chantelle was studying the rubble of the stone balcony that was next to the exit of the thread portal as I collected it up. I felt my face heat up. "It held up when I landed on it when I was getting you." I said. "But.. I kind of broke it when I jumped on it this time." Both Chantelle and Michael craned their necks to see where it had come off, thirty six meters up. "You fell from up there?" Michael asked. "And got up afterwards?" I compared some forces for a moment. "It was only a little more force than when you tried to crush me with a spell." I said. Michael looked more shocked. "You resisted my air prison physically?" He asked. "I assumed you were using some sort of counterspell." "I''m a Champion." I said. That seemed to be a pretty blanket explanation for strange abilities. "I don''t actually have any magic myself, though I do have other abilities and one of them helped to survive the fall and your spell." Chantelle was frowning. "Where are we exactly?" She asked. "In the middle of the keep." I said. "I don''t suppose either of you has tracking magic you could use?" "No." Chantelle said. "And the only time I was brought up from the dungeon was to be taken to the throne room. The other times I was teleported directly from there." "We''ll find the throne room then." I said. I pulled out the high ranked winter priest robe from my Pocket Dimension. It was still covered in gore from the head priest of winter and I looked at it with distaste. Having a disguise would mean that lower ranked priests would avoid us, but I wasn''t sure if it was worth it. "Why don''t you just clean it?" Chantelle asked. "It''s enchanted, my power doesn''t work on it." I said. "Pass it to me." Michael said. I did, and he studied it intently for about a minute, Chantelle watching whatever he was doing. When he passed it back to me I could push my power into it, and converted the gore to air leaving the robe perfectly clean. I swapped over to the new robe and led the way to a door into the keep. The door was unlocked and we made our way into the hall behind it easily. The throne room was the largest room on this floor, and if it matched the layout of the keep in the winter realm there was a large hall that led from it to the front doors. We just had to follow the hallways to the front of the building and then head across until we ran into that hall. The halls that we were following were the same maze that I was in before, either for servants or spies. Michael cast a spell that provided us with light. With nothing pressing demanding my attention I started to hook up my new heat vision. And nearly ran into a pair of grey robed people as we turned a corner. I was moving to knock them both out when Michael locked them down with a spell. A few moments later they fell unconscious, but Michael didn''t release the spell. I frowned at him. "What is the advantage in killing them?" I asked. "What is the advantage in leaving them alive?" He asked back. "They were responsible for my village." "I killed the one responsible for your village." I said. "These are servants, they had nothing to do with it."This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. It didn''t feel as though Chantelle cared one way or the other whether we killed them, but after a few moments more Michael ducked his head and released the spell. We continued through the narrow halls and two turns from where we had left the servants we came across a long straight hall. Along the left wall there were latches for spy-holes spaced every five meters and I could hear talking coming from the other side of the wall. I stepped up to the nearest spy-hole and looked through into the throne room. There was a table set out below the dais that the throne was on and around it there were twenty priests sitting in high backed chairs, and another one sitting on the throne. One of the priests sitting at the table was Ryan, so this was a meeting between the highest tier of winter priests, and it looked as though a new head priest had been chosen. I stepped back and motioned for Chantelle to look through the spy-hole. "Which way to the dungeon stairs?" I asked in a whisper. She looked through and then pointed to the right, which would take us to the corner of the wall that the throne was against. We made it to the end of the straight hall and were forced to turn right when it came to a dead end. The first left after that led to a set of stairs, which likely went over the exact hall that we wanted to use to get to the dungeon. I went back to the hall that ran along the throne room, having to brush past both Chantelle and Michael as I backtracked. There must be doorways for the servants to pass from the hidden halls to the main areas. I had about half of my heat vision nerves hooked up through micro-portals to new inputs I had set up for my digital side. They were passively just running as my digital side learned how to interpret the data, but it was pretty simple. The curves of my eyes set them at odd angles to my vision, but I had an exact model of how they were placed. I turned back to face Chantelle after writing an overlay for my vision and she showed up as a white-orange glow. I turned back to the wall in front of me and started moving my eyes back and forth slowly to scan it. There was a gap under the wall that was leaking heat into the servant hall, and it would open to the hall heading to the dungeon. I put my hands against the wall above the gap and pushed. When nothing happened I pushed harder until finally something snapped with a sharp crack and the wall fell outwards. I quickly grabbed the edges before it could fall to the ground and stepped out into the hall, placing the section of wall to the side. I had snapped the hinges, apparently the hidden doorway was supposed to open inwards, though it was also likely that it needed magic to open. We made our way down the wide hall with Chantelle in the lead and she took a smaller hall to the left. As soon as we turned I saw two ice golems at the end twenty meters away. I burst into a sprint, drawing my sword as I went. The ice golems separated from the doorway they were standing in front of and coordinated all four of their blade arms to attack me in a staggered pattern. As I came within range of them I easily cut through each of their arms, then shoulders, heads, and hips. They were still animated, but they couldn''t move their separated pieces. I nodded in satisfaction. Michael and Chantelle caught up to me, Michael eyeing me a little warily, and we went through the doorway and down the stone stairs that spiralled beneath the keep. After one revolution, about ten meters down, there was a landing with a three meter tall heavy iron door to the right of it. "They''re through there." Chantelle said. "There is a guard room that has ten winter priests in it and then another door to a large holding room. That''s where everyone is being kept. There are two other doors in the other walls of the room that are the same heavy iron, but I don''t know what is behind them." I nodded. Either more prisoners, or reinforcements for the guards, maybe in the form of ice golems. I squared off in front of the door and brought my sword above my head, gripping the hilt with two hands. I slashed downwards, using half of the energy in each of my arms, and there was a deafening screeching sound as my sword tore cleanly through the ten centimeter thick iron. I followed through on the strike and went down on one knee, burying my sword in the stone below the door, completely cutting it in half. I let go of the hilt of my sword and shoved the two halves of the door. One half swung inwards on its hinges and the other fell into the room. A deep bell-like tone started to echo loudly through the keep at ten second intervals. The priests in the guard room all had the gold embroidered robes and they had already started chanting when the door fell in. I came up from kneeling ready to dash into the room to stop whatever spell they were casting when Michael''s hand landed on my shoulder, stopping me. He stepped past me into the room and a moment later the chanting had cut off. Chantelle and I entered the room to find all twenty of the priests collapsed on the ground trying to gasp for breath. "Don''t you know any other spells?" I asked Michael. "Of course I do." Michael said. "This one just has the most utility. I suppose you want me to let these ones live too?" I shook my head, stepping back out to get my sword. "The head priest had them here to kill everyone." I said. I stepped up to the iron door opposite the one I''d cut down. The doors were held shut with a solid but simple iron latch, I cut through it and pulled the door open. Chantelle flew through the door and into the arms of a woman that was just on the other side in front of a crowd of people. "Though it looks as though they didn''t do it." I said. Chapter 59 - Food Michael ended up stopping after the twenty priests had lost consciousness, the woman and Chantelle coming out into the guard room distracting him. The woman and Michael both had tears streaming down their face in a three-way hug with Chantelle. "Veya." Michael said. "Michael." Veya said. "I saw you die?" "I didn''t die, I was cursed." Michael said. "C.C. broke the curse and healed me." Veya turned to me, letting go of the hug and standing in front to represent the people behind her, looking me up and down. "So you are C.C.." Veya said. "My daughter has told me much about you. Interesting outfit. My people are tired, starving, and some are sick. I''m afraid we won''t be able to help you fight." I looked into the room behind her. There were two hundred people, mostly laying down on the ground. The room was small enough that they had to lay over each other somewhat, though there were clear aisles that led to the door and to the center of the room that had a narrow pit. The smell was also quite strong, the people filthy. I switched my active focus to my presence in the druid storyteller room back in my fortress. "... And he fell from the tree!" The storyteller on the raised stage said. She looked like she might be a possum lady. There was laughter from the other people in the room, and it looked as though the storyteller had come to a break in her story. "Excuse me." I said into the silence in the beast people''s language after the laughter had died down. The whole room turned to look at me where I was in the corner. The nearest person was a badger man, who was frowning at me. "Did you just speak?" He asked. "What are you?" Right, my presence would just look like a pillar of stone. "I am Lord C.C.." I said. "This is a way for me to communicate while I''m not in the fortress. I need someone to do something for me. You are welcome to test my identity, if you wish, or get someone to verify me. Dael, Greta, or Maaarta would do so." One of the recent stories was what had happened when Gaal had challenged me, told by the bear man himself. "That shouldn''t be needed." The badger man said. "Though it will depend on what you need." "Nothing complicated." I said. "I need someone to bring a box of food supplies to the doorway of my room on the floor above this one." "I will do it now, my lord." The badger man said, and left the room. I switched my focus back to my body and played back what had happened there while I was distracted. There had been thumping coming down the stairs outside and Michael had gone to deal with it. Veya had tried to get my attention for a bit and then had gotten her people to stack the unconscious priests in the corner of the room. Some of the villagers had made their way out and were stretching their legs. "I''m sorry, that was rude." I said. "It''s a new application of my abilities, and I went without thinking." Veya frowned at me but nodded and went back to directing her people. I went out the door to the stairs to find Michael facing off against three ice golems with another set behind them. After a moment I saw that neither side was moving. "What is happening?" I asked. "I have a barrier of air over the stairs." Michael said. "They tried breaking through at first, but they''ve stopped now." "How exactly were you captured if you are so effective against the winter priests with your spells?" I asked.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. "The head priest of winter did something that allowed his people to resist my air prison, as well as slowing us down greatly." Michael said. The middle column of the ice golems were walking back up the steps and a minute later a winter priest came down the stairs. He stood on the other side of the barrier and opened his mouth. "Hello." I said. "If you start chanting something I am going to take it poorly and probably kill you. It usually takes a dozen of you to cast the spells that annoy me, but a chanting priest in front of me will be a dead priest." His mouth closed and I gave him a moment for that to sink in. He started to shake. He was only a low ranked priest, the poor guy. "If you, the winter priests, need to speak with me then it would be best done through Ryan." I said. "Actually, tell him that C.C. would like to see him." The winter priest nodded in relief and ran back up the stairs. Michael looked at me and raised his brows in question. "This is Ryan''s robe." I said. "I borrowed it when I first got here. He has been the only decent priest I''ve met, so I''d like to give it back. Are you alright holding the stairs?" Michael nodded. I stepped back into the guard room and stood by the wall. The badger man had arrived at the top of the stairs in my fortress with a wooden box of food. "Thank you." I said from my presence there. "You can just set it there. You would have a use for a mana crystal, yes?" He set the box down and I soaked my power into the wood and moved in into my Pocket Dimension. "I would, my lord." He said. "You don''t need to pay me though." I could make them trivially, and had made a small one in the time it had taken him to get here. I rolled it out to stop at his feet. "Thank you for your help." I said. "A token of my appreciation." "Thank you, my lord." He said, picking it up gently with a look of wonder. He bowed and turned to leave, and I switched my focus back to my body. The guard room had a poor quality wooden table and some chairs, with stone benches around the walls. A very poor setup for twenty people. I soaked my power into the table and chairs and converted them to air from the bottom up. It looked as though the entire set was disappearing into the floor below them. There was a three meter by two meter space left in the middle of the room where the table had been. Some of the villagers started to move into it but stopped when I shook my head. "What are you..." Veya said, stopping in shock. I was pulling stone out of my pocket in a constant stream quickly forming it into a solid stone table to fill the space and then formed five comfortable stone chairs on either side. With that done I started duplicating the food from the box that the badger man had brought. Nuts and hard breads for the most part, though there was a small handful of a juicy purple berry that I made a lot of. I formed a thin platter of stone, fifty centimeters wide, on the table and started filling it with food. When it was full I pushed it to the side and made another that I started filling. The room was entirely quiet aside from the click of nuts as I set them down. I felt a growing amusement from Chantelle and looked up to find fifteen people staring at me in shocked silence. Chantelle was grinning. I had been working for a few minutes to get two platters full of food, the conversion of stone to food was slow. "A new priest is here." Michael said loudly from outside the room. "I''ll be right there." I said back, then turned to Veya. "This is for you and your people. I am making more now and will be back in a minute to place it out. Make sure you eat first, we will negotiate a treaty with you as my vassal when I get back. After everyone is fed and we have a treaty we will go to my fortress." Veya could only nod, but she moved to the table and started handing out food. I continued duplicating food in my Pocket Dimension. Chantelle came over to me as I was leaving the room. "I''ve never seen mother speechless before." Chantelle said in a whisper, then kissed me. "Thank you, for everything." She went back to help Veya in handing out the food, Veya was frowning at me. I walked out of the room and saw Ryan standing at the air barrier on the stairs. "Hello again." I said with a smile. I pulled my black robe out of my Pocket Dimension and changed into it. "Hello." Ryan said. "Is that my robe?" "It is." I said. "My borrowing it saved the lives of several of your low ranking priests. I''m glad I got the opportunity to give it back. It got a bit dirty and I had to have the enchantment broken on it to clean it. Sorry about that." I had the robe off and cleaned it with my power. I folded it neatly and went to hand it to Ryan only to run into the air barrier. "Michael?" I asked. A moment later I passed the robe to Ryan, the barrier down. The two ice golems moved to attack me and I raised an eyebrow at Ryan. "Stand down!" Ryan commanded. The golems stopped with their blades almost at my neck. They moved quickly, I was almost out of leeway to keep this peaceful. If I had been forced to move I would have gone through them all and then taken out the priests to stop them repairing them. Though Michael likely would have locked them down before that. "Is there anything else you need?" I asked. "The official word is that you can''t take the prisoners." Ryan said. "The unofficial word is not to throw any more high tier priests at you. Francis is only now establishing his connection to our God as high priest. Did you really kill Jeremiah when he had our God''s aspect?" "I did." I said. "Nothing will stop me from protecting my people, interfere with them at your mortal peril." I saw Ryan shiver. He nodded to me and went back up the stairs. Chapter 60 - Summer "Can you continue to hold the stairs?" I asked Michael. "Easily." Michael said. "My mana regeneration is higher than the cost of the spell." That was hard to believe, considering the strength of the spell could hold out against three ice golems attacking it at the same time. Michael winked at me and I realised I had been frowning. Right, it''s an invisible barrier. So long as he could raise it before anyone passed where it should be there was no reason that it would be up the entire time, and he had been very quick with his reactions with the spell so far. I nodded to Michael and headed back into the guard room. The food had run out so I started pulling more from my Pocket Dimension at a much quicker rate than before, pulling from the stockpile I had built up. A chain of people formed passing food back from the table and into the holding room that still had the majority of the villagers. I looked at Veya who was organising her people. "You still haven''t eaten, have you?" I asked. She looked down and shook her head. "Sit and eat. I will continue to provide food, and your people will all be fed. We can negotiate a treaty while we do that." Veya sat and Chantelle set a loaf of bread, some nuts, and a large portion of the berries in front of her. "How will we formalise the treaty without a Keeper present?" She asked. I frowned. "The last treaty I negotiated the Keeper present said that he was only there as an impartial third party." I said. "They are required for forming a treaty?" "They are what make the treaties that are formed enforced by the world magic." Veya said. "Well." I said. "We can formalise it later, the Forest Keepers are allies and would do me that favour. For now do you trust me enough for us to negotiate?" Veya nodded. "My daughter trusts you unreservedly." She said. "And our current position is not good. You are obviously overwhelmingly the stronger party." So it was up to me to offer terms. I sighed, I disliked negotiating. "I offer a safe place for you and your people to live, including access to food and water, and in return you and your people will act in the best interests of my fortress and the people that live there." I said. "Chantelle is my equal, you will be my vassal and responsible for your people, but Chantelle is not under your influence." An idea suddenly occurred to me. "If it turns out that you, or one of your people, is best suited to negotiating then they will take over future negotiations." I said. Veya sat in thought for some time, slowly eating the food in front of her. I continued pulling food from my Pocket Dimension until the the four platters I had made filled up, everyone having food. Roughly two hundred people, and I had made three hundred loaves of bread, a thousand nuts, and fifteen hundred berries. There were some losses as food was dropped while it was being passed, especially with the berries, but I wasn''t worried about it. I was looking around the guard room and settled on the two unopened doors when Veya spoke up. "Your terms are very generous." Veya said. "My daughter has said that your fortress is very strong, but isolated. The only thing I would ask is that we be allowed to trade with the other people in the fortress." Huh. I hadn''t thought about an economy at all, just everyone contributing for the betterment of the whole. "Basic services that people require to survive will be provided." I said. "I will not have any of my people poor or starving. The people of my fortress will have a high quality of life. But I am not against trade. I will even provide access to the two cities that I am aware of."This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Veya smiled. "You really are bad at negotiating." She said. "You are supposed to negotiate for more for your side in return for things that are requested, not offer more for the other side. But I accept your terms gratefully." I shrugged. There wasn''t much that I personally needed that I couldn''t create myself. Chantelle needed her people and so I would protect them. I stood up from the table, leaving Veya to eat. Now that we had an agreement I could start moving the villagers to my fortress. I moved the Pocket Dimension side of my thread portal through the stone of my secure room there, lining it up with the Pocket Dimension side of the doorway at the bottom of my fortress. Taking my thread portal out of my pocket I placed it against a wall and formed it into a doorway. It was a bit narrow for the number of people that would be using it, only one meter wide, just enough for two people at a time if they squeezed through. But it would allow them to step directly from here to my fortress. I turned to Chantelle. "Could you start getting people through?" I asked. "The doorway leads to the bottom of the fortress." Chantelle nodded and went to speak with Veya. I headed to the still closed door on the right of the guard room. I drew my sword and cut through its latch, sheathing it after. "You know that it can be opened from this side, right?" Chantelle asked from behind me. "All of the doors that I''ve seen here need magic to open." I said. "This is simpler for me. I don''t need the doors to be there after I''ve finished." I pulled the door open to find a much smaller holding room than the one that the villagers were in, and it was empty. I crossed to the other side of the guard room, dodging around the table and passing several villagers who pressed back away from me. They cleared a space around the door as I approached it. I cut through and opened it as simply as the other one and found a man frozen in a cube of ice that was two meters on each side. Almost exactly like the cube of ice I had been in, though my power bounced off of it, so this one was permanently enchanted. The man was wearing a golden robe with pale blue trimming and he had short red hair with a matching goatee. There was no way he was still alive, but I wasn''t going to leave him in the dungeon. I couldn''t fit the cube of ice through the thread doorway I''d set up, so I decided to cut him free of the ice. I drew my sword, pushing heat into it, and got to work careful not to cut the body. I got the majority of the ice away, enough that I could transport him. I took a quick step back when the last of the ice cracked and then melted away, the man gasping in a lungful of air. "Damn but that was an uncomfortable few weeks." The man said. "Well met, stranger. They call me John, Head Priest of Summer." He was holding his right arm out for a warrior''s handshake. I stepped forward and gripped his forearm as he gripped mine, returning the bone creaking pressure. "I''m C.C." I said. "Ah, the Champion that set himself against Winter." John said. "How did that work out, by the way? My god was cut off from the world after your Warder set up the god banishment ward around his prison. Not that it severed my connection, but I have been left in the dark." That was a lot to take in... "I killed the head priest of winter, and I''m here rescuing the people from the Warder village." I said. "God banishment ward? And your god is imprisoned?" "Right, right." John said. "The other Champion arrived a few weeks ago and had a number of powers. Divine Choice, allowed him to choose a divinity, the chosen divinity affects his other powers. Divine Trap, can entrap a divinity, forcing them into a physical manifestation and limiting their influence on the world. Divine Apocalypse, can empower a divinity to forcefully convert the neutral realm into a copy of their realm, requires the opposite Divinity to be trapped with Divine Trap. And finally, Divine Empowerment, receives powers influenced by their chosen Divinity. That is where he gets his ward breaking and teleport powers." John frowned at me. "He chose Winter, and Winter, the bastard, stabbed my God in the back trapping him in a prison deeper in the mountains." John said. "I will return the favour when I am able, I assure you. Your Warder came up with a ward that completely voided divine influence over an area. Comparable to whatever the space you disappear to is, the gods cannot hear anything within and their effects on the plane are removed. With my god wrapped in the banishment ward Winter has full control over daylight and can sooner destroy the tethers to the summer realm." "We should talk further." I said. "But this is hardly the place to do so. I can offer you sanctuary in my fortress in return for your word that you will work in the best interests of the people in the fortress." "Aye, that would be appreciated." John said. "I swear by Summer." We headed back out into the guard room to see the last of the villagers going through the doorway to my fortress. I gestured for John to step through and called out for Michael that we were ready to go. With everyone through into my fortress I drew my sword and cut a groove out of the enchanted stone of the wall, filling it in with some stone from the table and smoothing it to match. I stepped through the doorway as the thumping steps of the ice golems approached. I collapsed the thread portal, tucking it into the stone I had placed in the wall. I had achieved much, rescuing Chantelle and her people. But there was also still much to do. The world was still ending, and so long as it was there would always be the risk that Chantelle wouldn''t survive it. Chapter 61 - Floor planning The lowest level of my fortress was crowded with people. The floor curved upwards to the ceiling in a bowl over a radius of eighteen meters, but only thirteen meters of that was usable to stand in. There were twenty or so lights lighting up the darkness, mostly from villagers with glowing hands raised into the air. John, Veya, Michael, and Chantelle were all near the doorway having been the last ones through. "This is one of the smallest floors of my fortress." I said. "Only matched by the first floor. The first and third floors I have designated as utility and the second floor is occupied by the Druids. The Druids have a summer priest by the name of Shawn who I am sure will want to see you John. If you wanted a space of your own separate from the Druids I can make you a building on the third floor. For the Warders, the fourth floor has a circular floor-space eighty meters wide, minus the five meter square in the center for the central stairwell, and that will be the site for your new village." Everyone was silent and paying rapt attention to me as I was speaking. The entrance to the stairwell was around the corner from the doorway that now led back into the safe room of my Pocket Dimension. "This way." I said. "It''s a bit of a climb, sixteen flights of stairs." Veya frowned. "Some of my people are sick." She said, reminding me. "This area is safe." I said. "They can stay here and I''ll see if the Druid healer can have a look at them. I was going to be making a Portal for your floor eventually, I''ll do that sooner and they can use that to avoid the climb. You will want some people to plan the layout of your village, though." I looked at Chantelle, I didn''t want to let her out of my sight. "Could you stay by me?" I asked. I felt her send me a wave of reassurance through our connection as she nodded. Veya and Michael started moving through the crowd, stopping to speak to several people as they went. "I would take you up on your offer of my own place." John said. "Not that my priest wouldn''t put me up, I''m sure he''s a good lad, but it would be stepping on his toes to have me in his temple." I nodded and we made our way up the stairs a bit, getting out of the crowd. A few minutes later ten people joined us led by Veya. We headed up the stairs and I briefly stopped into the Ward room to ask Maaata if she could make some more of the sunlight enchanted mana crystals, she agreed so long as I was providing the mana crystals. I could feel that Chantelle wanted to stay in the Ward room to thoroughly examine what had been done there. She was gone less than two days and Maaata had completely taken over the place. But she followed me up to the fourth floor, Veya''s people behind us, when I left. Two of the people following Veya cast a light spell when we arrived showing the entire floor. "Think about how you want things laid out." I said. "I can provide fresh water from piping from the floor above you, and waste, water and other, can be disposed of through channels to the floor below. I will be back after I see about a healer for the others." Veya nodded, and I heard several of the others discussing how they would build in the space. They sounded as though they had some experience with building, but it probably wasn''t going to be that relevant. I was just going to throw up walls wherever they needed them. Chantelle and I headed up to the Druid floor. The two guards at the entrance were new to me, though I may have seen them in the storytelling room. They were both boar men, and looked nearly identical with their tusks and crew cut hair. They were taller than I was, and were holding staves framing the door. "Greetings Lord C.C." They both said in sync with each other. "Hello." I said. "We were just going to see Greta." They both nodded and the vines that made up the door over the entranceway parted in the middle, each of them holding half and gesturing us through.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. We made our way through the entrance hall, and then the hallway out to the fields and to the canvas tent. What I needed was marker stones. The canvas tent was proof that designing the buildings myself made it so that they weren''t ideal. With marker stones they could mark out where they wanted walls to be and I could fill them in. Chantelle coughed, getting my attention. I had been staring at the entrance to the canvas tent for a minute or so. "Greta, are you in?" I asked loudly. A few moments later Greta opened the tent flap and stepped out. "My lord." She said, with a slight bow. "Are you back?" "I am." I said. "Some of the Warder villagers are sick, I was wondering if you would be able to heal them?" "Of course my lord." She said. "There are six people awaiting your attention for healing. They have all spoken to both Essy and Ian and these are the ones who would risk the pain. There were five others who have unhealable injuries that will wait to see how the first six cope." "There are only one hundred of you." I said. "Thirteen were maimed beyond healing?" "One hundred and three." Greta said. "It is a rough world my lord. Winter is relatively tame as most of the dangerous monsters leave, but summer is a near constant struggle." She looked sad, her ears drooping, before recovering. "Where are my new patients?" She asked. "On the bottom floor of the fortress." I said. She nodded and we headed back through the druid area and to the stairs, parting ways at the fourth floor. When we arrived the people on the floor had split into two groups, and were having a heated discussion with Veya standing apart and letting them go at it. "Veya." I said, calling her over, the rest of the people went silent. "What were they arguing about?" "Building styles, building materials, village layout, comparative building sizes based upon importance to the village..." Veya said. "Not anything you need to be troubled with." I shook my head, agreeing. "I made these." I said, pulling out ten marker stones I''d made in my Pocket Dimension. They were a T-intersection of stone with an extra piece so they could stand up. "Place them so the stand faces inwards to mark out the places that you want walls and I''ll put them up." It would allow them to control both the placement and width of walls. I took out the five hundred that I''d already made. "That should do for the first set of buildings." I said. "Then they can be reused for however many sets you need." I turned to face the others. "I have other things to do, stop arguing and get some buildings laid out." I said. "Your people need a place to stay and I want this done within two hours." I nodded to Veya and headed back to the stairs as they all rushed forward in silence to get the markers. "They''re all in awe of you." Chantelle said as we got out of earshot. "And terrified of you, too." I frowned. "Terrified?" I asked. "They are the builders and craftsmen of the village." Chantelle said. "You defied the Winter God in rescuing them, fed them from an infinite source of food without using magic, and then created a Portal from the keep, which was heavily warded by the way, to here. You are as powerful as the gods and you just expressed your displeasure at them, you could kill them all and no one here would stop you." Okay, laid out like that I could see the problem. But there wasn''t anything I could do about it. I opened my mouth to say that. "You just need to form an official treaty." Chantelle said. "They will feel safe if they guaranteed protection." "How are treaties enforced?" I asked. "The world magic itself prevents breaches of treaties." Chantelle said. "Your providing a safe place, as an example, means that you cannot cause harm to anyone here. And if, at the world magic''s assessment, the fortress was not ''safe'' then the treaty would not be able to be made. The treaty can break if both parties agree, or if the terms are broken outside of the control of the parties to the treaty." It didn''t seem to me as though treaties were very effective. But if it would make my people feel safer I would do it properly. I started carving a Pocket Dimension doorway into the stone of the outside wall of the stairway on the villager''s floor. I needed to do it anyway and it would both provide an access to the doorway to the Forest Keeper city where I could get Mal''Thorn and give me something to do for half an hour while Veya''s people laid out the markers for their buildings. I finished up the doorway, having placed the Pocket Dimension side in the same closed off room as the Forest Keeper''s doorway. Veya''s people had used about half of the markers I had made, working quickly despite the whispered arguments they were having. From what I could see they had a dozen buildings laid out branching off from four main roads that led out from each of the faces of the stairway. As I was looking over the layout one of the women of their group approached me. "E-excuse me my lord." She said. "Veya said that you would be providing water and privies. How should we mark them out?" Chantelle was right, the woman was terrified of me. I made twenty discs of three different sizes, colouring half red and half blue and handed them to her. "Blue for fresh water, which will come from a pipe in a wall so place it next to one." I said. "Red for waste water. Privies, washing tub drains, baths, that sort of thing. Large red ones for trash disposal." She took the discs and ran away after a wobbly bow. I sighed and stepped through the doorway and over to the Forest Keeper doorway, Chantelle following me. Chapter 62 - System The two Forest Keeper guards that were in the guard room were relaxing against the wall with the door to city in it, their halberds leaning against the wall next to them. They snatched their weapons up and levelled them at my chest as I stepped through the doorway, hooting at me and then at each other. I raised my empty hands. "Peace." I said. "I don''t understand what you are saying. I have come to speak with Mal''Thorn." They hooted at each other for a bit then one left through the door to their city, the other turned to face me. "Stay." He said. "Mal''Thorn get." He was difficult to understand, but that is what what he was saying came down to after he''d repeated himself several times. He was tense, and still had the blade of his halberd ten centimeters away from my chest. "We leave." I said, keeping my language as simple as possible and pointing back through the doorway. "Mal''Thorn follow when get." The guard looked at me uncertainly. "Leave?" He asked. "Go." I said, trying synonyms while still pointing back through the doorway. "Not stay." The guard nodded slowly and I stepped back. He raised his weapon back to a parade rest, calming down as we left. "They really should have people who can speak this language at the doorway." I said. Chantelle nodded. "Perhaps they weren''t expecting you to use it so soon." She said. Oh well, hopefully Mal''Thorn would come through soon. While I was waiting I decided to start raising the walls for the buildings of the village. The markers started ten meters out from the stairwell, I gathered it was more because they hadn''t wanted to approach me than because they didn''t want walls there. The walls they did want were thirty centimeters thick on average for outer walls and five centimeters thick for inner walls. They were stacking the buildings next to each other sharing a thick wall between them, and sets of four wall markers showing where gaps for doorways should be. I spent half an hour pouring stone through my Pocket Dimension, building walls and pipes for water and waste, moving the markers as I completed things. Twenty five buildings went up, one a dormitory type building that could house fifty people in small single rooms. They were planning a building ten in front of where I was up to when Mal''Thorn arrived, my throwing up walls so casually had increased their pace greatly and they seemed to be avoiding me even more. Chantelle sent me a nudge through our connection when Mal''Thorn arrived. "Greetings Mal''Thorn." I said. "Greetings Lord C.C." Mal''Thorn said. "You sent for me?" "I went to see you, actually." I said. "The guards at the portal didn''t speak this language very well, and the guard that was left looked uncomfortable with me there, so we came back here to wait for you." "I thank you for your consideration." Mal''Thorn said, bowing. "I have been appointed as the leader of the Forest Keepers that will be moving under your protection. Presuming we can negotiate a successful treaty, of course." "That is why I was looking for you, actually." I said. "The Warders and I negotiated a treaty, but apparently it won''t reassure their people that I won''t be an evil bastard without it being an official treaty assured by the world magic. I was hoping you could officiate?" "I would be glad to." Mal''Thorn said. I called Veya over and we went over the terms of the treaty again, a safe place and access to food and water in return for acting in the best interest of the fortress and the people that live there. And access to the network of portals that I would be setting up. "I accept this treaty on behalf of my people." Veya said once the details were laid out. "Is that all, Lord C.C.?" Mal''Thorn asked. "I have the Heart of the Forest seed to see to." "Yes, thank you." I said. "We will negotiate for your place here in the near future." Mal''Thorn nodded and left.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. Chantelle was getting bored and restless standing around not doing anything. What I really needed was a way to increase her defensive abilities and at the same time stay in communication with her. I understood how Mind Links worked, and how to expand a consciousness over to a digital platform... As soon as I thought of making a digital platform for Chantelle''s consciousness I got a strong sense of extreme caution. The nudge was the strongest that I had felt so far and it got stronger the more I thought about how to go about it. I''m sure anyone else would have given up without knowing why well before this point. Finally the distraction became too much and I angrily sent a communication handshake at the source of the feeling on my digital side, the equivalent of shouting ''what the hell do you want'' at it. To my surprise an interface appeared at the source of the nudge leading to somewhere external and a communication protocol was successfully negotiated with it. I implemented a quick overlay so that messages from the nudges would show up in my vision and got my first blue window.
System initialising...
Error: The current simulation has no System implementation. Simulation adapting. Warning: System functionality will start basic and evolve over time.
Interface mentioned a System, and that it was preferred for knowledge-based personalities. He had also said that this simulation wouldn''t have one. Had I broken the simulation?
Warning!
Giving your Chosen Person immortality while your exists will trigger a reassessment of your simulation goal that will take into account the increased threat from the unanticipated use of your powers.
Yup, I''d broken the simulation. Apparently I was considered immortal and by doing the same for Chantelle my goal would become irrelevant. That it was qualified by my Pocket Dimension existing... Oh, right, everything in my Pocket Dimension ceases to exist if I die, which would cause her immortality to stop. But I was immortal myself, so I wouldn''t die? "What''s gotten you so excited?" Chantelle asked from beside me. I pulled her into through the doorway to the hallway between my fortress and the Forest Keeper city, away from where the gods could hear. "You know I''ve been worrying about you." I said. She nodded. "I was thinking of ways to make you more powerful and so safer, and I... well, I broke the world a little bit." She looked at me in shock, and I could feel it sweep over me in a wave over our connection. "You broke the world?" She asked. "A little." I said. "It adjusted, it''s fine. The important thing is that apparently I can make you immortal so long as I stay alive... Oh, and apparently the world considers me immortal too. Probably because I resurrected myself from being dead." Chantelle got over her shock quickly, which I''m sure my excitement for the possibilities had something to do with. "What would we need to do?" She asked. "I''m not going to have to start drinking blood and murdering people, am I?" Huh, do they have vampires here?.. A question for later. "Nothing like that." I said. "I would build a construct in my Pocket Dimension and link it to your brain so that your mind was shared across it. It would require modifying your body, with the pain that that entails... And I think I lost some of my humanity when I did it, I''m not sure I''m human anymore. But you keep your values and your personality. We would be able to communicate no matter the distance between us and most importantly you would be able to slow down time and simulate the world. A lot of my defensive ability comes from those two aspects. You would be as safe as I can make you, not considering the immortality." I sank my power into her and started to build a full scan of her body as she thought about it. When that was done I dropped my perception of time and designed the AI platform and new Mind Link, both for the Pocket Dimension side and how the model of her brain would be adjusted. The micro-portals for the Mind Link would be the complicated part. There were millions of them and I would need to be consciously aware of the placement of each of them as they connected to my Pocket Dimension, placing them within Chantelle''s Mind Link. It would only need to be for the first symbol, then the rest of the symbols required could be automated... And if I used my Matter Manipulation from my digital side without going through my biological side I would be able to do it at my slowest perception of time, in series so as to cause the least amount of pain. I started the building of Chantelle''s AI platform and Mind Link in my Pocket Dimension and came back to normal speed as Chantelle opened her mouth to speak. "I want to do it." Chantelle said. "The world is ending, and I need as much power as I can grab for myself to protect our people." I nodded. "My goal as a Champion will change when we do this." I said. "It was for you to survive the end of the world. Making you immortal, and other things that I''ve done, will force a reevaluation." "You will achieve it, whatever it is." Chantelle said. "And I will protect our people. I am ready. Where are we doing this?" I cut a hole in the stone of the hallway and it opened out to the original safe room I had made, complete with stone table I had formed to heal Ian. I could see Greta moving amongst the villagers through the doorway into the bottom of my fortress. I pushed the doorway into the stone, effectively closing the doorway, then pushed the stone table through the wall and closer to where my Mind Link was and the new one was being built. "Lay on the table." I said. "I''ll be as quick as I can." I rewrote the body manipulation program so that it had both a serial and a parallel mode, then nodded to Chantelle. She nodded back and I triggered the program to modify her brain in serial mode. I dropped my perception of time to its maximum and followed along with the changes it made with one model while I had another model of Chantelle''s Mind Link up. At the start of each micro-portal I etched the first symbol manually, placing the exit perfectly within the Mind Link. Several million symbols later I was done and a blue screen popped up.
Recalculating Champion goal...
Chapter 63 - Magic
Recalculating Champion goal...
Race change to demi-AI... Extreme time dilation... Boundless body modification... Limited power duplication... Bypassed non-living limitation... Removed limitation on ... Became Immortal... Shared Immortality... Forced System implementation, direct influence over evolution of implementation... New total threat calculated: 300M New goal calculated: The four major species and at least five of the minor species, including one from each biome on the plane, must survive the end of the world.
Three hundred million total threat... That was six times what it was when I was sent into the simulation. And my goal went from saving one person from the end of the world to saving nine entire species and I had no idea what ''major'' and ''minor'' meant. My interface to the System pinged me that a new display was available so I opened it.
Goal progress
Species with which you have a treaty offering sanctuary from the end of the world.
Major species 0/4
Minor species 2/5 (2/4)
Beastpeople
Biome Plains
Population 103
Minimum Viable Population 60
Humans
Biome Mountain, Forest, or Plains
Population 209
Minimum Viable Population 120
I apparently had no major species under my care, humans and beastpeople were counted as minor species. The two of four after the minor species count of two of five I assumed was how many biomes I had covered. Population was the number of the species I had and Minimum Viable Population was the smallest number that had to survive. Humans looked as though they were a wildcard for what biome they counted for. I wonder what the fourth biome is... A sharp spike of panic came to me from my connection to Chantelle and a communication negotiation with her digital platform dropped my perception of time to its maximum as it synced with hers. "Help." Chantelle said over the link once it had established, followed by a sob. I brought up a model of the Pocket Dimension where our biological sides were and then sent an invitation to join the simulated space. She appeared a moment later, represented by a floating ball of light, similar to the wisps we''d seen. I looked down at myself, I was using the model I had of my body. "You''re okay." I said, sending as much comfort as I could to her. I wanted to give her a hug, but she didn''t currently have a body. "It took minutes before you arrived." She said. "The pain stopped and I couldn''t see, hear, feel, speak, or anything else. Our connection even felt frozen and unchanging. I was locked in darkness." Damn. I couldn''t set her time perception before she was hooked up, and I hadn''t accounted for her being simulated at the maximum speed even though that is what happened to me. There wasn''t anything I could have done to prevent it, but I should have remembered and warned her. "This is time being slowed down like I mentioned." I said. "It took your digital platform a few seconds after you were hooked up for it to load up and start simulating your consciousness, after that you sent me a communication request and I brought you here. The five minutes that you felt pass was three millionths of a second at normal time. I''m sorry, I should have remembered and warned you. The reason you can''t sense anything is that we are thinking so fast that your senses are too slow to pass you any inputs." "I''m not blind and stuck like this?" She asked. "You aren''t." I said. "I left you a copy of my time perception program... Let me try something." I couldn''t modify her directly, as she was a separate consciousness and was off limits to my tampering, I couldn''t even see her code running even from the hardware side. But we had a communication link. I packaged a collection of data on my time perception interface program, including the basics of how it was written. While I was at it I added in how the simulation we were in worked and gave her access to my memory that held the model of her body. I sent a request to initiate the transfer over the link and Chantelle accepted it. "This is all..." Chantelle said.Stolen story; please report. She sent a request to be able to modify the simulation and I gave her full permissions to everything after making an instanced copy of the models. Suddenly she changed from a ball of light to a representation of her body. Entirely nude. She looked at me at my flash of lust, then down at herself. With a wave of her hand a purple dress that perfectly moulded to her form settled over her. Her lips quirked into a smile. "Later." She said. She looked around the simulation and frowned. It was built up from my senses, which included my sound sense that gave an extra layer of context to the model, how sound interacted with different surfaces alluding to how dense they were. I let her soak it all in for a few minutes when she suddenly nodded sharply. Another wave of her hand and there was one more layer to the model. I frowned, the input was completely foreign to me. I shifted it to a visual representation and saw transparent streamers of chaotic light flowing everywhere. "I know this isn''t accurate to the outside world." Chantelle said. "But I feel more comfortable with mana around me." This was how she sensed mana. I dropped the sense back out of my visual range, back to where Chantelle had it. I could still detect it, but it was all chaos and noise with no real pattern to it. I extended the simulation to the Ward room in the fortress then reached my hand out to Chantelle and moved the simulation around us in an instant to place us there. The model I had of it was accurate to when I''d last seen it, which was when it was covered in Maaata''s projects. "Tch." Chantelle said, waving her hand to clear all of the clutter. She looked around the room and began wiggling her fingers. The ambient mana, the chaotic noisiness, came in first. Though this time there was a definite flow into the mana crystal pillar in the center of the room. The next thing was the pillar itself which was vibrantly full of contained mana, like a liquid rainbow with the brightness of the sun swirling within the confines of the pillar. The only places where the mana was coming out of the crystal were in angular lines that led from the center of the pillar to the table, and one thick line that went out of the door to the stairs. And finally multiple flat discs of mana appeared made up of symbols. They were flat until I studied them, at which point they projected into three dimensional space. Chantelle nodded, and I could feel her satisfaction. "This is magic?" I asked. "Warding magic, yes." She said. "How did you send me the data packet about the models before?" I packaged up how I was packaging up data and sent it to her. Half a minute after she accepted the transfer she sent a request for me to accept her transfer. I did and received a data packet. I unpacked the data from the header and loaded the first section of data. It was a highly complex understanding of how wards could be diverted to add modifications and I had no context for any of the information in it. I frowned, trying to wrap my mind around it when I realised that the packaging was working in a first-in-last-out fashion. I cycled through all of the sections of data until I got to the last one and loaded it up. It was a primer on the basics of warding. The magic system, or warding at least, worked based upon forming symbols to match your intent for the ward out of mana and then looping them to draw mana from a mana source like a mana crystal. The whole thing ended up being a cursive script of symbols that were all joined together. The first symbol that connected to the mana crystal was a push, like a one-way valve that controlled the mana that went to the rest of the ward. "I just loaded the basic primer." I said. "The warning about not letting symbols touch each other? I don''t think you''ll have that limitation anymore." "Why not?" She asked. "There are some advanced techniques where you conditionally short out symbols into other symbols, but getting them wrong can cause random effects where your intent is bypassed to mean something entirely different. The detailed explanation is near the end of the package." "The size of the symbols isn''t dependant on how much mana will flow through it, right?" I asked. "Right." Chantelle said. "They just need to clearly hold the intent for the symbol and be able to join to the symbols on either side. Technically the smaller the symbols the faster the mana flows through them, which improves their efficiency. I''ve played with making huge symbols to see what gains can be made. Doubling the size loses about a fifth in efficiency, halving gains about a quarter." "You might be able to zoom in so that the symbols you make are tiny." I said. "I''ve done exactly that with the stuff that makes up the world, zooming in billions upon billions of times. It may not work exactly like that with magic, there is probably a much larger individual smallest piece that makes it up..." Chantelle was following along caught up in my enthusiasm and being able to talk about her obsession, warding. But we''d wandered off track. "You wanted to get back to your normal senses." I said. "I can see why you jumped right into updating the simulation, that was the last thing I put into the package I sent you which means it was the first thing you got out of it. If you cycle through to the last section in the package there is data on the time perception interface program." "Got it." She said after a minute. "So I just t-w-e.." And she disappeared from the simulation. Hmm. Our shared simulation protocol went out of sync when she slowed down. I would need to rewrite the protocol and the programs that implemented it so that it could adjust to different simulation speeds and buffer the time differences... I was just finishing it half an hour later when Chantelle reappeared in the simulation. "What happened?" Chantelle asked. "I fixed it." I said, sending her the packaged new implementation that would work on top of the communication link. "You fixed it." Chantelle said. "How long was I gone?" "Only thirty minutes." I said. There was a slight stutter as the protocol between us was renegotiated. "I''m going to head back up. I still need to finish the village. Oh, this is what I got as my new goal." I recreated the two blue screens in the simulation, the Recalculating Champion goal one and the Goal progress one, and sent them to hover in front of her. Chapter 64 - Details "Wait." Chantelle said as I was about to leave. "I have questions." I nodded. "So do I." I said. "I''ll answer as well as I can." "Your race changed to ''demi-AI'', what is a demi-AI?" She asked. "Technically speaking it means ''half artificial intelligence'', though as it relates to race it probably means primarily AI with the other lesser part being human." I said. "Your race would have changed as well. Why it uses ''race'' and not ''species'' as it does later has to do with the ability to have children, I think. Species cannot interbreed, races can." There was a flutter of... Something from Chantelle at the mention of children, but she moved on. "Limited power duplication?" She asked. "No idea." I said. "Okay." She said. "Major and minor species?" "I don''t know what the major species are." I said. "And I don''t know what makes a species ''minor''." "Maybe the species that has the largest population for each of the biomes?" She asked. "There are four biomes on the plane, mountain, forest, plains, and ocean." "When you say ''plane'', what do you mean?" I asked. "The System used the same term when it mentioned biomes." "I don''t really understand the question, we live on a plane." She said. "The world is flat?" "... What happens when you reach the edge of the world?" I asked. "There is no edge." She said. "If you head north you leave the forest biome and enter the mountain biome. If you head north from the mountain biome you enter the forest biome from the south. East and west of the forest biome is the ocean biome. And east and west of the mountain biome is the plains biome." The world''s geography is four biomes that loop... Odd, but it only took me a few moments to adjust my view of the world. "Any other questions?" I asked. Chantelle shook her head and started playing with one of the enchantments. It was very interesting to watch, where before when she was working on wards all I could see was her staring at a mana crystal. Now I could see as the symbols changed and split, moving in a hypnotising flow of rainbow-coloured mana. I tore myself away, gave her a hug, and returned my time perception to normal. I moved the doorway to the new village on the fourth floor of my fortress closer to my stone source and then stepped through it. I would have to go and get the thread portal that I had left in the mountain city soon, but I could make do with the large doorways for now. I did start on a smaller thread portal with the last twenty centimeters of my Arachne silk steel thread. The village designers hadn''t made a lot of progress while I''d been gone. Though I guess that wasn''t very fair, only a few minutes had passed for them. They had the walls laid out around the stairwell, simple and thick for a run of ten meters leaving a five meter wide road leading out. It only took me a few minutes to finish the walls they''d marked out, catching up to where they were having a discussion. They were much less afraid of me now, not shrinking away at all when I approached, which was a great improvement. "My lord." The woman who had approached me before said, bowing. "Hello." I said. "Your name?" "Helen, my lord." Helen said. "Helen." I said. "Have you finished designing where you want walls?" "Yes my lord." Helen said. "There are more buildings that it would be nice to have, but we have the most important ones done and everyone will have a place to sleep. In less than an hour." She said that last quietly. I shrugged, building out of stone was something that was trivial for me to do. It wouldn''t be very comfortable, though. Furniture and beds next, I think. And getting the rest of the villagers up here.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. I moved the fourth floor Pocket Dimension doorway back against the stairway and then shuffled the doorways around within the Pocket Dimension. The safe room now had four doorways in it, the fourth floor, the old Warder village, the bottom floor, and the Forest Keeper city. And I had moved the exit of the old village doorway so that it was above ground and able to be used. I also picked up the small thread portal I''d made and placed it in my pocket. It wouldn''t be useful as a potential escape doorway, but it would allow me to access my Pocket Dimension. "Veya." I said, calling her over to the doorway on the fourth floor. "This is the beginning of my portal nexus. That doorway there leads to your old village. Take some people and bring back whatever you need for your new village. There were snow worms there when I went through. I killed them all, but make sure to take some people that can fight if needed. And it looks like the entire village is buried in snow, so you''ll have to deal with that too." "Snow worms?" She asked. Oh, right, they don''t call them that. "Snow burrowers?" I asked, to which she nodded. What I really needed was some non-magic fighters for guards for the nexus room. I had been about to ask Veya, but my impression of her people was that they were magical fighters that focused on defence. The nexus room, being entirely within my Pocket Dimension, didn''t have access to magic. I left Veya organising her people, getting them up to the fourth floor and preparing to go to their old village. I went up the fortress stairway past the druid floor right to the top and the guard room there. Brutus, the ox man and head of druid security, was standing guard there as I expected. "Greetings Brutus." I said in his language. "Greetings my lord." Brutus said. "You sound like one of the People when you speak now, much improved." I had listened to hours of stories in the short time since setting up my presence in the storytelling room, almost exclusively in the beast people''s language. "Thank you." I said. "I had a question about how many guards you had, and how I would go about assigning a place that should be guarded." "It should be done through Dael." Brutus said. "You negotiate with Dael, Dael tells me, and I will assign guards. We have ten dedicated guards, but sixty combatants." I nodded to Brutus and headed down to the druid floor to find Dael. Barr, one of the guards at the entrance of the druid floor, took me to Dael''s house that was just off of the entrance hallway. He was doing paperwork at a desk made of vines. "My lord." Dael said, rising from his chair as I entered. He gestured to a chair on the other side of his desk and I sat. "Dael." I said. "I just spoke with Brutus who said I should speak with you about assigning an area to be guarded." "Yes my lord." Dael said. "Although if you needed it Brutus would follow your orders directly. We can more effectively secure ourselves if I distribute our forces." "I have begun to set up my portal nexus, which will provide fast travel to different places on the world." I said. "It does open the possibility of being attacked from there, but the opportunities for trade should be great. The nexus room itself won''t allow magic, so I need physical fighters to guard it. In return I will put a portal at the stairway for your floor, where you have your guarded entrance." "Thank you my lord." Dael said. "We would guard it without compensation, though." I waved my hand at that, dismissing it. There didn''t seem to be any expectation of lords to improve their people''s circumstances, just demand whatever they wanted. "It suits my purposes for you to have a portal." I said. "Also, my estimate for the number of people that you will eventually be responsible for providing food for is roughly two thousand, of various species. Do you have enough land to consistently provide that?" Dael started digging through the piles of paperwork on his desk, pulling out several sheets and writing a list of numbers on a fresh sheet. A minute later he underlined the last number he''d written. "No, my lord." Dael said. "We would require at least twice as much land. And a place to grow full height trees would also be helpful." I was going to have to do something for trees for Mal''Thorn, so that was already on my list. And they could use the sixth floor for crops. "I will make sure you get more land and a better space before I put a strain on your food providing capabilities." I said. "I acknowledge that my first attempt at providing you with an ideal place to live hasn''t been perfect." "My lord, we negotiated for you to provide a safe place not one that was perfectly suited to us." Dael said. "This place will easily hold against the monsters of summer. The rest we can live with." I frowned. Building a space wasn''t an issue for me. What I needed was to know what the space should be for it to be ideal. "I am your lord." I said. "To me that means that I should be doing everything in my power to improve my people''s quality of life. Think on what an ideal space for your people would be, write it down, and I will see what it is possible for me to provide." I nodded, satisfied. That felt right. I left to carve out the portal for the druid floor after Dael assured me he would give it some thought. A teenage rabbit person went by me as I was carving, going up the stairs, and a minute later returned with Brutus following him. Brutus was back and waiting behind me when I finished the doorway. Four meters wide by three meters tall, large enough to drive a wagon through. I had to reshuffle the nexus room a bit to fit the doorway, making the whole room taller and wider. I pulled more stone from my stone source so I didn''t have to make the walls any thinner. The new nexus room was a six meter square with a four meter high ceiling. Chapter 65 - Errands "This is the new guard position?" Brutus asked, walking into the nexus room and looking around. "It isn''t very defendable." "Only that portal leads out of the fortress right now." I said, pointing to the two meter wide and tall doorway that had villagers carrying furniture through. "What do you suggest to secure the room? Keeping in mind that it still needs to be usable for travel." "Magic doesn''t work here?" Brutus asked. "It doesn''t." I said. "Physical effects made from magic will still be able to enter though. Like the winter priest''s ice spells." "Each portal should be separated by a wall, and they should all lead to a single guardable choke point." Brutus said. "And you will need a guard room for every five portals at a minimum." That didn''t seem very effective to me. Not how I imagined it working at all, I wanted a lot of portals around the world to allow easy travel. Which... "Having a single guard point between two portals would be the best from your perspective, yes?" I asked. "Yes." Brutus said. "A single gateway with prepared defences will always be easier to defend than multiple gateways. A fortress never has only a single point that requires defending, though... Except for yours, I guess." I could build a separate solid stone room in my Pocket Dimension for every portal and place a presence in it. Then I would just have to move the origin and destination portals that the traveller desired to either end of the guard room. Then I could expand the portal network as much as I wanted and still be in complete control of it, and so be able to keep my people safe. But that was something to be added to my list of things to do. I started building more presences in the background. "I think I have a solution." I said. "I will try it later. For now I will place the portals that lead out of the fortress along that wall. That is where you should be guarding against." Brutus nodded, then called in the two boar men from the druid floor. Their names were apparently Den and Dan. I moved the doorway that I had begun at Gerry''s shop in the mountain city onto the wall next to the portal going to the old human village and got to work finishing it. Carving the Pocket Dimension symbols wasn''t getting any faster, it took another half an hour of my time to finish. I stepped through the portal and into the basement under Gerry''s shop. I went up the stairs and knocked firmly on the door that led out into the shop. A few moments later I heard a female muttering on the other side of the door. I knocked again and a leprechaun woman opened the door. She looked upset and rattled off a string of words in a language I didn''t know, ending with stomping her foot. "Uh, hello." I said. "Is Gerry here?" "He is." She said. "Go up to the third floor." I went up the stairs, through the shop room of the second floor, and then up the stairs there to the third floor and knocked on the door. "Lizzie?" Gerry asked through the door. "No, it''s C.C." I said. "We met... earlier today." It really felt a lot longer than that. I sighed as that reminded me that I needed to sleep again before I passed out. Gerry opened the door and stepped back to let me in. "I didn''t expect to see you so soon." Gerry said. "Quite a lot has happened." I said. "I came by to tell you that I finished that thing I started when I was last here, and to see if I could trade for more of that Arachne silk steel thread." "That was my only bobbin of it, sorry." Gerry said. "Where does the thing go? You said you knew the Arachne, is there a safe way to trade with them through it?" "It only leads to a few places right now." I said. "I haven''t traded with the Arachne but it is on my list." Or at least it was now. My list of things to do didn''t seem to be getting any shorter as I completed things.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. "Come through whenever you''d like." I said. "I have some business in the city, then I''ll be going back through myself. Oh, and perhaps mention it to the woman downstairs, she was upset when I knocked on the door." Gerry winced. "My wife, Lizzie." Gerry said. "You''re right, I should explain before she gets too worked up." He led me back down to the ground floor of the building and I left through the front door as Lizzie started yelling at Gerry in the language she had used before. It was just getting dark in the city and the traffic was easing up. The wagons on the streets were clearing up making for a much more pleasant walk. It took me twenty minutes to get to the random alley that I had left my thread portal in and collect it, and then twenty minutes back to Gerry''s shop. There was an even shorter woman leprechaun sitting on the raised stool behind the counter to the right as I entered. She raised a globe in her hand, pointing it at me. "You are?" She asked in a high-pitched voice. "I''m C.C." I said. She nodded, hopping off the stool and coming to the door. "Dad said to lock the store up behind you and to let you use the back room." She said. "Dad got in trouble, now they''re making up. Through you go." She ushered me through the door to the back room and went back to her stool, reading the heavy book that was on the counter. I went down the stairs, through the nexus room and then out to the druid floor. I nodded to Barr and Gaal who had moved to guarding the front entrance to the druid entrance hall and went through to Shawn''s building, the summer temple. There were rumbling voices coming from inside that went silent at my knock on the doorframe. "Come in." Shawn said. I went through and saw Shawn and John sitting comfortably at the altar in the back of the room with what looked to be tankards of alcohol. "Hello lord C.C." Shawn said. "I wasn''t abandoned by my God, isn''t it great news?" "I''m happy for you." I said. "Though the fact that your god is imprisoned probably isn''t so great." "John has a plan." Shawn said happily. "Shawn." John said. "Some things should not be spoken of aloud." Shawn hung his head, it looked as though the alcohol was getting the better of him. Talking about thwarting the gods plans where they could hear you was never a good idea. "John, I came to get you so that you could have some input in the design of your building." I said. "I also had some questions that you might be able to answer, if you wouldn''t mind?" "Certainly." John said, draining his tankard. "Lead on." We said our farewells to Shawn and I led John to the third floor, which was a utility floor between the human and druid floors. "I''ve heard from a few places that summer is when all of the dangerous monsters appear." I said. "I thought the god of winter was the evil one?" "He isn''t evil, though I will say that he is a treacherous bastard that will get what is coming to him." John said. "My God isn''t good, either. There used to be gods of Good and Evil, but a Champion killed the god of Evil. Summer and Winter were then forced to kill the god of Good when he tried to force them into exile in their realms." "And the monsters?" I asked. "Life is a constant struggle here." John said. "My God isn''t on the neutral realm''s sentient species'' side. Left to their own devices they would make it so that none of the creatures that shared His aspect could live in the neutral realm. It is survival of the fittest, and many of His creatures are more fit. Winter is a time when the neutral realm is given a chance to rest, the summer aspected creatures are taken to the summer realm to fight there." While we were talking I had taken the output of my stone source away from building secure portal rooms for the portal nexus room and was laying out the outlines of John''s building at his guidance. A five meter by five meter room with some narrow stairs at the back leading to an attic space that was a meter high. "You mentioned species." I said. "I came across a reference that I didn''t understand, it mentioned major and minor species. Beast people and humans were referred to as minor species, but it didn''t mention any major ones." "That''s pretty simple." John said. "The major species are the Keeper species for each of the biomes of the plane. Forest, Mountain, Plains, and Ocean. If beast people and humans were listed as minor species then I would assume the criteria for that would be any of the sentient species, and there are dozens of them." His explanation fit perfectly. Especially considering I hadn''t mentioned that there were only four major species, or anything to do with biomes. "That fits with the rest of the reference." I said. "Thank you. I haven''t had much success with making furniture, you will need to trade with the other people of the fortress if you need any." It wasn''t strictly true, I''d made a bed and several chairs. I was happy to make buildings for people, as getting the raw materials into the fortress for it would be difficult, but anything the people could make amongst themselves I would leave them to do on their own. I set my digital side back to making the stone rooms for portal exits along with presences and went to find Veya. She was on the human floor organising the flow of people and furniture from the portal and to the various buildings. "Hello Veya." I said. "Hello my lord." Veya said. "I have a negotiation I would like you to do." I said. "Mal''Thorn is going to be becoming my vassal and he is bringing up to a thousand Forest Keepers with him. I want you to find out what he needs at a minimum and what would constitute a perfect place." "And what are your requirements, needs, and desires?" Veya asked. "Uh..." I said. "For my people to have the highest quality of life possible. Safety and self-sustainability." Veya frowned at me. "It sounds as though you want me to negotiate against myself." Veya said. Chapter 66 - Major Species "I don''t want to negotiate at all." I said. "It is your culture to negotiate." "Then don''t negotiate." Veya said. "You are in the position of strength, simply state your terms." I do that and then everyone says I''m bad at negotiating. I took a moment to consider that, do I care about other people''s opinions? Obviously I do, but should I let it affect my actions... No. They respect strength here. I have a desire to protect people and I even have an official goal that matches that desire. I do not need to negotiate with my vassals, they have nothing to offer except their continuing efforts to improve the fortress. "Thank you Veya." I said. She gave me a bow and went back to directing her people. I went into the portal nexus meaning to go to the Forest Keeper city... I had forgotten to move that portal to the portal nexus, it was still sitting in the small room off to the side. I moved it next to the portal to Gerry''s shop and stepped through. "Hello lord C.C.." One of the Forest Keeper guards said. "Prince Mal''Thorn was awaiting your return, we will get him for you now." I nodded and leaned against the wall to wait as the other guard left. A few minutes later he returned with Mal''Thorn. "Greetings lord C.C." Mal''Thorn said. "You are ready to negotiate?" "I don''t like negotiating, as you know." I said. "I have been reminded that since I am in the position of strength I can simply state my terms." "Yes." Mal''Thorn said. "I expected you to do so, and then I would raise any objections I had. You have been exceedingly benevolent in the treaties that you have been a part of, I am sure negotiation won''t be necessary." I led Mal''Thorn back into the portal nexus and opened up a wall in the room, giving us a private place to talk. "I had a question about treaties." I said. "I''ve learned that the world magic enforces an individual''s actions to be within the bounds of the treaties they are subject to. As an example, when Dael made the argument that my fortress wasn''t a safe space if I weren''t here to protect it, if the world magic had agreed then I wouldn''t have been able to leave, correct?" "Correct." Mal''Thorn said. "I would like to test it." I said. Magic didn''t work on me, and if the enforcement of treaties was dependant on magic working on me... I would like to know. "I don''t see the need, but very well." Mal''Thorn said. I led him back through the wall into the portal nexus, closing it behind us, and then through the portal to the bottom of my fortress. All of the humans had moved up to their new village, so we had the floor to ourselves. "I would like to make a treaty with you personally that states that I cannot raise my right arm." I said. Mal''Thorn shook his head. "I accept this treaty." Mal''Thorn said. He was looking at me patiently, so I raised my right arm. He froze in shock, and then fainted. I caught him and lowered him gently to the ground. Perhaps disproving the mechanism that his whole society was built around wasn''t such a good idea, but I had to know. It wouldn''t change my actions in the future, I didn''t need an external power to enforce the agreements I made. While I was waiting for Mal''Thorn to recover I started moving portals into their dedicated rooms. Each room was the same dimensions as the portal and then as deep as it was tall. In the back wall I had a presence set up, so I now had six more vision and sound inputs and sound outputs to juggle. I wrote a simple notification system that would get my attention when something of interest happened at any of them. Mal''Thorn came to and sat up. "You..." He said, trailing off. "One of my powers makes it so that magic doesn''t work on me." I said. "I will still be abiding by the terms of any treaties that I am part of." "But..." Mal''Thorn said. "The treaty didn''t break. The terms were simple, there was no misunderstanding in the intent, yet you contradicted it. And it did not break. It''s still active." "Mal''Thorn, treaties still work." I said. "It is only with me that they require trust. Do you trust me?" Mal''Thorn took some time to process that. "Champions." He finally said, with a hesitant nod. "Yes, I trust you my lord."Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. "I apologise for testing the effectiveness of treaty enforcement." I said. "Getting down to it, what do you and your people need, both as a minimum and as an ideal?" "Can we... Can we void that treaty first?" He asked. I nodded, then he nodded. And that was it, apparently. It probably looked more impressive if you could see magic. "We would require, as an ideal, a room enchanted with a sunlight effect with one hundred and twenty meter high ceilings and thirty meter deep soil." Mal''Thorn said. "And then as much horizontal space as possible, though a few hundred meters would be workable to start." A one hundred and fifty meter tall cavern of undefined size... "I can provide that, I think." I said. "There would need to be supporting columns, but the spans can be quite large. The largest I''ve done so far is fifty meters, but it can probably be longer than that. Do you need water access?" "We do not." Mal''Thorn said. "We aren''t reliant upon rain, we have water mages that fill reservoirs." "I can''t provide the sun enchantment myself, and I have only recently considered trade between my vassals." I said. "Though after a moment of thought, it should be something that I provide. I will trade with the enchanter for their time. Also, as you know from my treaty with the Druids they are responsible for feeding the people of the fortress." I really should look into what the industry chains are. Cotton to thread to cloth to clothing, that sort of thing. There were obviously carpenters, blacksmiths, tailors, and other craftsmen within the people I already had in my fortress. "In return for a sufficiently large space with soil and sunlight for growing trees you and your people will work for the betterment of the fortress and all of my people." I said. "I accept this treaty, on behalf of my people." Mal''Thorn said. The System sent me a notification that my goal progress had updated.
Goal progress
Species with which you have a treaty offering sanctuary from the end of the world.
Major species 1/4
Forest Keepers
Biome Forest
Population 0
Minimum Viable Population 200
Minor species 2/5 (2/4)
Beastpeople
Biome Plains
Population 103
Minimum Viable Population 60
Humans
Biome Mountain, Forest, or Plains
Population 209
Minimum Viable Population 120
John was right, the major species were the Keepers of the world. And their minimum viable population was the highest yet. My goal progress updated when I formed treaties with the various people, so I still had a reason to negotiate them it seems. "How many Keepers are you bringing with you?" I asked. "Three hundred to begin with, they will help set up the initial grove." Mal''Thorn said. "We are ready to move across whenever you are ready for us." That would be the top of my list, then. Although... "Are the winter priests are still surrounding your city?" I asked. "They are." Mal''Thorn said. "It isn''t affecting us that much though." "Well, I was threatened with the priests surrounding the fortress setting off a tactical spell." I said. "I assume that is what they are doing with you, too." "I need to inform the Queen immediately, excuse me my lord." Mal''Thorn said, heading back through the portal. I followed him through, bringing both the portal to the Forest Keeper city and the top of my fortress into the portal nexus. The human villagers were still moving between the portals from their old and new village. Mal''Thorn left with a small bow and I went to the top of my fortress. I returned both of the portals to their portal rooms and headed up the stairs to the upper exit. Through the guard room the stairs were still blocked with the stone I had used to seal the fortress when I went to get Chantelle so I moved that up and out. The ten meter square platform was buried in snow that I cleared by converting it into air. It was still snowing and dark. Around the fortress there were points of light where winter priests were placed on their ice wall, one hundred of them equally spaced apart. There were two ways to deal with them, the first would be to go down the stairs and talk with whoever they had left in charge. The second was to go on top of the ice wall and remove the priests their directly. On the theory that the priests wouldn''t be on the wall without a purpose, and that purpose likely being to enact their tactical spell, I decided to go with the second plan. The top of their wall was only twelve meters away from my stairs at the closest point, so I simply walked down the stairs and built myself a bridge out of stone pulled from my Pocket Dimension. The nearest priest was a low ranking one and he looked to be meditating, sitting upon the ice with crossed legs. He had a light stone on a stand behind him. I walked up and sat down a meter in front of him. "Hello." I said. He opened his eyes slowly and considered me. "Hello." He said. "Who are you?" "That''s my fortress." I said. "I have a problem..." I looked at him, prompting him for his name. "Sam." He said. "I have a problem, Sam." I said. "Your last head priest threatened me with a tactical spell that you had prepared here. There are two responses I can have to that, as I see it. I could kill you all and dismantle your ice wall, which I am confident would remove the threat. Or you could leave of your own wills." I am impressed with how well Sam is taking this, completely calmly. "I don''t have the authority to order our withdrawal." Sam said. "Of course not." I said. "I am going to collect, or kill, all of you that are on top of the wall and we are going to go see the priest in charge to see if we can get you some new orders. I have a slight preference for collecting you, though killing would be simpler. What will it be?" He nodded slowly and rose to his feet. "Collected." He said. Chapter 67 - Desieged I collected the rest of the priests on top of the ice wall, making my way around my fortress, and placed the light stones on their stands inside my Pocket Dimension as I went. There was only one bit of excitement, the twenty third priest we came across agreed to be collected and then tried to push me off the ice wall when I grabbed his light stone stand. I easily beheaded him and pushed his body off the wall on the opposite side to my fortress. I kept Sam close by as we made our circuit, and the rest of the priests formed into ranks four wide. When we got back to the gap in the wall where my stairs descended through I built a second stone bridge back to my stairs and led the priests across. Sam and I were several steps up and I kept a count of the number of priests as I sent them down the stairs to the pavilion at the bottom. My count ended at ninety seven, plus Sam. One was missing from the count I''d made as I was collecting them. "You go down too, Sam." I said. "I''ll be down in a few minutes and we will talk with whoever is in charge here." Sam left and I headed back across to the top of the ice wall. A quick sprint around the wall and I found the missing priest, he was on the opposite side of the fortress to my stairs and he had his hands down against the ice wall, chanting. The only good chanting priest was a dead chanting priest... That didn''t really work, as dead priests couldn''t chant. But the thought remained. The priest didn''t even see me coming, a quick double slash cut through his heart and then his neck and he was dead. I didn''t even check my stride, continuing my sprint around to the original bridge to my stairs. Sam was just reaching the bottom when I caught up with him, and the rest of the priests were marching in formation to the right. We followed after them and just around the curve of the wall there was a large blue tent set up, it looked like an exact copy of the tent that was destroyed at the failed negotiation with the last head priest of winter, twenty meters square and five meters tall, including the same ice stairs up. This meeting would go better than the last one did, at least for me. I was stronger than I was before. The low ranked priests that I had escorted down from the ice wall formed up in two lines leading to the entrance of the tent, and Sam joined the line on the right placing him the furthest from the tent. I walked down the line of priests and then up the stairs, pushing the flap of the tent open. Six high ranked priests in their gold trimmed robes were in the middle of the open room facing me and they began to chant as I entered the tent. They were using the old spell, though, the one that made ice shards, and I hadn''t ever been hit by one of them. Since they were so low threat I decided to try a new defence I''d thought of. I pulled out my larger pocket portal from my left pocket and resized it to a fifty centimeter wide circle, holding it along my left arm like a buckler shield with the leftover thread of the portal as the handle. I redirected the exit of the portal in my Pocket Dimension so that any projectiles would go into empty space and settled in a fighting stance with the portal facing downwards. It took me about ten seconds to be ready. The priests were still chanting, charging up their ice shards. I gave them another five seconds before coming out of my fighting stance. "You know you would all be dead if I were being serious, right?" I asked. "I mean, I appreciate the opportunity to try out new things, but you aren''t close to my level." They finished their chanting with a shout and six ice shards came towards me. They were well targeted and would have struck me equally spaced from my head to my shins. I could have dodged easily by simply stepping to the side, which was the flaw in such high accuracy shots. Instead I stepped forward two steps and swung my shield to completely catch the first one that was aimed at my head. Half a step backwards and I repeated it for the next one down.If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. By the time I''d caught the last ice shard I was kneeling on the top step of the stairs outside, the flap of the tent closing in front of me. I still had half of the energy in my arms in reserve and that was recovering quickly. All in all a successful result, though a full tower shield would work even better, I think I would need to back it with stone or metal in the Pocket Dimension so that it would stop anything unwanted getting in... I stepped back through the flap into the tent and found the six priests chanting again, bringing up another six ice shards. "You''re kidding." I said. "Oh well, some people are too stupid to live I guess." I drew my sword from my back and settled down into a sprinter''s crouch. I was just considering whether I should cut through three of them and turn, or take a few moments to make throwing blades, when a priest came into the main room of the tent from a room at the back. "Stand down." He said. The priests stopped chanting, their ice shards falling to the carpeted floor of the tent. "I remember you." I said. "You were the one Ryan looked to for orders when I went through last time. You''re in charge?" "I am." He said. "You are here to talk?" "I am." I said. "Though whether it remains at just talk will likely depend on your choices." I returned my sword to its sheath and my shield to my pocket. The priests moved to stand at the edges of the room as the priest in charge formed a table and chairs out of ice, taking a seat and gesturing for me to do the same. I hesitated for a moment, considering how I would escape if the ice turned out to be a trap. In the worst case he would be able to channel his divine cold spell through the chair. I would be able to sever the affected parts and then kill him before it became dangerous. I sat down and created a plate of stone on the table and filled it with some of the bread and berries that I had left over from feeding Veya''s people. I sliced the bread into thin slices and made a sandwich of the berries and took a bite. I hadn''t eaten anything myself in quite some time, refreshing my muscles and body seemed to have lowered my requirement for food, and the constant pain I had been enduring had killed my appetite. The priest looked surprised at the food but quickly made a sandwich of his own. I finished my first sandwich and made a second one, placing it on the table in front of me. "I had an issue with Jeremiah, as I''m sure you know." I said. "He orchestrated the kidnapping of someone close to me, so I killed him." The priest choked on the bite of sandwich he had taken, coughing. "We fought within the winter realm, and your god had given Jeremiah his aspect." I said. "I say this to give you an understanding of where I would be placed relative to the combined power of all of the priests on my land." He nodded, placing his sandwich on the table. "I think I understand." He said. "I would agree that the distance between our levels is insurmountable." "Good." I said. "Before I killed him Jeremiah said that you had a tactical spell set up around my fortress. Threatened me with it, in fact. I believe one of your priests tried to set it off when I collected them from your ice wall. He, and one other who tried to push me from the wall, are dead. The remaining ninety eight are unharmed outside." "I thank you for your restraint." He said. "But why are you showing it?" "I have no animosity towards your people." I said. "Your god is planning to end the world, turning the neutral realm into a second winter realm, but I am confident I can protect my people from that. My reason for talking with you now is that I will not tolerate a threat against my people, and your tactical spell qualifies. I am giving you the option to leave." "My orders are still to stop you from leaving." He said. "And yet you let me leave before rather than die needlessly." I said. "I spoke with Ryan a few hours ago, he was promoted if you didn''t know, he told me that the unofficial order from Francis, your new head priest, was to not throw any more high ranked priests at me. I will be destroying the ice wall that is around my fortress, as I assume that is a critical component of the tactical spell. Any priests that try to stop me will die, and any priests that are still on my land without my permission when I''ve finished will die." The simplest way to remove the wall would be to heat the ground underneath it. After running some calculations I worked out that it would take me half an hour of flooding the ground with enough heat to melt the four hundred meter long forty meter tall wall. The area would be flooded with water, but I didn''t much care about that. "You have half an hour from when I start." I said. "And I''m starting now." I left the tent and approached the ice wall. Starting here would inconvenience the priests when the area flooded, but so long as they were on their way out of my lands when I''d finished I wouldn''t chase them. I soaked my power into the soil and began pushing vast amounts of heat into it, slowly walking towards my stairs and pushing more heat into the ground as I approached it. Chapter 68 - Message I made my way around the ice wall that surrounded my fortress, clearing the snow in front of me and flooding the ground underneath the ice with heat. The wall melted slowly while I was next to it, the section that was touching the ground quickly melted but the sections ahead held the ice above the heated ground. The more of the perimeter of the wall I melted the faster the earlier sections would melt as they weren''t held above the near-molten ground. It took me ten minutes to make my first circuit of the wall, arriving back at the tent of the priests. They had it halfway deconstructed and loaded up onto stretchers made of ice. The first priest to see me let out a shout and ran into the still standing portion of the tent while the rest of the priests formed up into ranks facing me. A few moments later the priest in charge came out of the tent and headed towards me cautiously. I waved him away. "You''ve still got about twenty minutes." I said. "As you can see, only a third of your ice wall melted before it stopped melting entirely." He nodded to me and ordered his priests back to work. The water from the melting ice had flooded the area, and the priests had churned the ground they were working on into mud that had then frozen into rough uneven ground. Where the higher ranked priests were working they had summoned a floor of ice that was much easier for them to work on. I continued around the wall and after the gap for my stairs the ice wall had melted to almost half of its forty meter height and the water from it had frozen into a sheet of ice that extended out into the forest. When I got back around to the priests again they had their tent fully packed onto their carrying poles and pairs of lower ranked priests had each end. They were just forming up into ranks to head north as I passed them, continuing to melt their wall. By the time I made it around the fortress for the third time and back to them they were all gone. Heading back to the stairs to the top of my fortress the ice wall on the other side of them had completely melted, all that was left was a shallow moat of water bordered by my fortress wall on one side and ice on the other where the residual heat hadn''t yet let it freeze. I headed up the stairs and into the fortress, sealing the exit behind me, and then down to the ward room. I wanted to check that they had left with the detection ward. When I got to the stairs just above the ward room I found Maaata, the druid enchanter goat lady, pouting on the landing surrounded by various small mana crystals, several books on enchanting in the beast people''s language, and various other enchanting things. "Maaata." I said. "What happened here?" "Chantelle threw me out of the ward room." Maaata said. I sent a ping to Chantelle requesting her presence in the simulation I had of the model of my immediate surroundings and she arrived a few moments later as a transparent form of her body. We dropped down to a slower speed and she looked around. "I''m just in the ward room." Chantelle said. "Though it looks as though you''ll have to shove that stuff further out of the way to get in." "Did you throw Maaata out of the ward room?" I asked. "I did." Chantelle said. "This is my room. And she made a complete mess of the place. She even messed with my wards, which I wouldn''t mind except she has no talent with warding. The modifications are all over the place." "Well you did run off while leaving the potentially fortress-destroying recharge ward running." I said. "I asked Maaata to watch over it, so that, you know, the fortress didn''t explode." "I should have been more polite then." Chantelle said. "She can''t have the room back, though." "And maybe make it so the fortress won''t explode?" I asked. "Mm..." Chantelle said. "Some sort of venting back to ambient mana if the mana crystal gets over a certain amount full..." She twitched her fingers and a transparent screen appeared in front of her that she started creating symbols on. I couldn''t complain, though, as I''d zoned out several times when a new idea occurred to me. "Chantelle." I said. "You''re still in my sub-simulation of my surroundings."Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. "Hmm?" Chantelle said. "What? Oh, right." And she disappeared back into our shared simulation. I sped back up to normal speed, less than a second having passed. "It is her room." I said to Maaata. "But I can build you your own room on this level. And I will make you a dozen mana crystal orbs. In return for your enchanting the new Forest Keeper area with your sunlight enchantments." "Yes my lord." Maaata said. "Thank you my lord." I made her a quick six meter by six meter room, sharing a wall with the ward room, and gave her a stone table and chairs to match. Thinking that the mana crystals might have been some of the appeal of the ward room I converted the table top to mana crystal and built a mana crystal pillar. Maaata would have to ask Chantelle to hook them up to the rest of the mana network that the fortress was running on if that was what she wanted. I made the dozen small mana crystal orbs I''d promised and gave them to her as she was moving her stuff into the new room. As I was leaving I noticed the old baths that I had made even before the fortress had been built. They required me to create and banish the water manually myself. I spent a few minutes building a small water reservoir on the floor above it and a waste water tank on the floor below and hooking them both up. They should still have some way to heat the water... But I set that aside for something to look into later. What I really needed was a large ten meter by ten meter portal to efficiently excavate the large masses of stone that would be required for the Forest Keeper area. But without access to more Arachne silk steel thread I would need to carve a once-off large portal under the fortress and it would take three and a half hours and not be usable for anything else... As I was thinking that the interface I had to the System sent me a ping for a new display.
Message from follower: CaptainMew
Why can''t you duplicate Arachne thread?
Why can''t I duplicate... Wait, followers can see what I''m thinking too? That is a bit disturbing. I shook my head and focused on the question, setting that can of worms aside for later. I didn''t think to duplicate the thread because... I''d bought it and for some reason that made me put it in a special category where I should buy more of it. I drew some stone from my Pocket Dimension and used it as the source to duplicate the Arachne silk steel thread, not including the Pocket Dimension doorway symbols on it, and it duplicated fine. So I can duplicate it, I was just being an idiot. I set my digital side to making a forty meter length of the thread and headed up the fortress stairs. I almost tripped on a step when my biological side nodded off into a micro-nap and it would probably completely crash again soon. I had only gotten six hours of sleep, and that had been interrupted by someone trying to stab me. There wasn''t much I was doing now that required my biological side so I made a detour to the human floor. I had destroyed the bed I had made in my Pocket Dimension when I needed to build my first digital presence. And I was sure they had more comfortable beds than the one I had managed to make. Veya was still standing at the portal of the human floor, though there weren''t many villagers coming or going for her to direct. "Veya." I said. "I need you to take me to the most comfortable bed that you have in your village." "You what?" Veya said, frowning at me. "A bed." I said. When she frowned even harder at me I caught up to what she thought I was asking. "Not like that. I destroyed my last bed..." That sounded bad, but I pushed on. "I need a new bed so that I can make a duplicate of it for my own use." She was frowning less now, but it was still there. "Follow me." Veya said. She led me to one of the larger buildings in their new village and into a nice-sized side room that had a bed, a desk, bookshelves, and a wardrobe. The bed was very big and comfortable looking. "This is my daughter''s room." Veya said. "For when she wants to stay with us. We moved all of the things from her room in the old village to here. If you need a bed you can take hers." She said that last bit as though she were trying to make me feel awkward. I sent Chantelle another ping and she joined me in my local simulation. "Yes?" She asked, then looked around. "You''re in my room... Why are you in my room?" I played back the conversation I''d had with her mother from the beginning and she burst out laughing. "You propositioned my mother." Chantelle said. "Oh, I know you didn''t mean to, I can feel your embarrassment. And she''s definitely messing with you now. I told her about us, so she probably feels entitled to make you squirm a bit." "I see." I said. "You don''t mind if I make a copy of your bed?" "Feel free." Chantelle said. "It''s very comfortable, like sleeping in clouds." I returned to normal speed, my attention back on Veya. "Chantelle informs me that you''re messing with me." I said. "She also has no problem with me taking her bed." I started duplicating the bed into my Pocket Dimension. When I was done I turned to find Veya studying me. "You''re the first one she''s shown any interest in." Veya said. "If you hurt my baby I will make you regret it." "I will protect her." I said. Veya nodded and led me back to the portal. The duplicated bed was next to my Mind Link so I stepped through the portal, and then through the stone wall of the portal nexus as well, and finally sank into the bed. My digital side started carving the Pocket Dimension doorway symbols into the Arachne silk steel thread as my biological side fell asleep. Chapter 69 - Dream I continued carving symbols into the forty meter long loop of thread for my latest portal, but it was a rote process at this point. So I occupied myself with planning the new Forest Keeper floor, pulling up a fresh model to work with. It was going to be a cylindrical area one kilometer wide, matching the same claim that they had given me. One hundred and fifty meters tall it would be placed beneath the fortress with a floor directly above it covering the same area to allow for the installation and maintenance of the sunlight enchantments. And there would likely be other uses that it could be put to, an extra floor one kilometer wide would be too useful to waste. Above that floor I would have a ten meter thick wall to match my fortress walls, made of the same diamond-like super-stone material. The central stairwell that went through the middle of my fortress would extend down to below the Forest Keeper floor in preparation for new floors. It would act as a central supporting pillar, but with the floor at such a width I would have to introduce extra supports. Especially as it would be holding up the rest of my fortress as well. I made a small pillar in my Pocket Dimension of my preferred building material, the nearly translucent deep blue stone, and proceeded to try to crush it from both sides. I made it one meter wide but I was still shocked at how much compressive force it took before it failed. One tonne, ten, one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand. I kept adding more and more force until the pillar finally catastrophically failed when I got to just short of ninety eight thousand tonnes of force. That was a ridiculous amount of strength. If my entire fortress was made of the stone I would be able to balance it on a single ten meter wide pillar. I put a one meter pillar every one hundred meters in the model for the Forest Keeper floor, which would make it an order of magnitude stronger than it required. I was admiring the design with the soil filled in when my biological side started dreaming again. And it was about Chantelle again, as well. I was doing my best not to be distracted as my focus was split again, going through the list of things I wanted to achieve. Healing the unhealable druids, setting up a portal with the Arachne, asking Mal''Thorn how I would go about negotiating with the other Keepers. I was doing a poor job of not being distracted when Chantelle sent me a ping requesting my attention in the main simulated space. I arrived a moment later and Chantelle looked me up and down, studying me. "What are you doing?" She asked. "You don''t look currently involved." "Ah..." I said. "My biological side is dreaming. About you." Obviously she could feel it over our connection. "You can see what you are dreaming?" She asked. "I can." I said. "I''m actually experiencing it. But I am hooked into the parts of the brain that it is using to dream as well through the Mind Link." "And you could share it?" She asked. I could, it would be a simple matter of feeding the inputs from my brain into a simulation. I nodded to her, and set about doing so. The dream snapped up around us. There were candles everywhere around a central bed which was covered in red rose petals. Chantelle was laying back on the bed and I, my dreaming self, had her hands pinned to the headboard. She had her legs wrapped around me as I thrust slowly in and out of her. As Chantelle and I were watching, dream me leaned down and kissed her. There was a deep primal soundtrack that matched the thrusts, all drums and cellos and pianos, with some electronic and dubstep thrown in. I had no memory of any of the instruments involved until I heard them and tried to identify them. Chantelle and I, the non-dream versions, were standing to the sides of the dream where the walls were vague. The simulation was read only, so we weren''t impacting the dream.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. Chantelle bit her lip. "That looks incredibly romantic, sensual, and hot." Chantelle said. I was already integrating the inputs from the simulation, so I wrote an implementation that would allow first person participation, allowing feedback so what was expected to be felt was actually felt. There wouldn''t be any point in using it myself, as I already was experiencing it. I sent Chantelle an invitation to participate as a passive participant, with the simulation tied to one way external inputs she wouldn''t be able to affect it, and she accepted it and merged with the simulation. She would be able to leave the simulation at any time she wanted to. I decided to shift my focus entirely to my biological side by simply speeding my digital side''s perception of time, the opposite of how I usually did it, and fell into the dream. I did become semi-lucid in the dream but I only used it to continue at the same slow pace. Several times dream Chantelle tried to speed things up and drive things to a conclusion, flipping me over to be in control. But it was my dream, and I was easily able to pin her down again each time. After half an hour the dream faded out as my biological side stopped dreaming. Chantelle sent me another ping, bringing my digital side''s perception of time back to normal and back to the main simulation. As soon as my simulated body appeared in the simulation Chantelle grabbed me and kissed me hard, biting my bottom lip and drawing blood. She waved a hand and then pushed me hard backwards, onto the bed that she had just created. She pounced after me, vanishing her clothes as she landed astride my hips. She waved her hand again, and I felt a tug trying to dismiss my robe and underwear, a moment later I willed them away. She thrust down onto me, taking me in one quick stroke, and then moved her hips in a small circle. After moving slightly forward and then back she froze me in place with yet another wave and began bouncing up and down on me hard and fast. Her first orgasm hit within ten seconds, but she kept up her pace and had another four before growling at me. "This isn''t any better than the dream simulation." She said. "There is no surge of everything leading to an end. Something is missing." "It''s the simulated bodies." I said. "They gravitate towards the original models and the chemicals in your system don''t change overly. You can physically orgasm but you don''t get any of the actual effects of it. And our connection sends the feelings of our consciousness, and you''re just feeling frustrated." "Where are you, out there?" She asked. "In bed next to the Mind Links." I said. She disappeared from the simulation and a bit less than fifteen seconds later she was shaking my biological side awake. She was panting and out of breath, having sprinted up forty five meters of stairs. She leaned forward to push me back down on the bed and I reached up to pull her close, kissing her. She kissed me back for a second before breaking it off, pushing against me and gasping for breath. I pushed myself up off of the bed so that we were both standing. I took her hands and raised them above her head. Grabbing the hem of her dress I pulled it up and over her head. Her breastband came off next as I unwrapped it with quick smooth gestures. I stroked my hands down her neck and rested them on her breasts, gently pushing her onto the bed, stroking her nipples as she fell back causing a sharp spike of lust. Her knickers were the last to go, and I dragged my capped nails down the outside of her thighs and calves as I took them off. She was breathing more calmly now, even holding her breath a few times. I stripped my robe and underwear off and leaned forwards to trace my fingers up her inner thigh on one side and down the other. She grabbed my hand and pulled me up to lay full length against her, my chest against her breasts and my erection along her thigh. She kissed me deeply, our tongues dancing, and wrapped her legs around my hips and rolled on top of me. She reached down and guided my erection into her, pressing back harder until she suddenly opened up enough and took half of me at once. She gasped and bit her lip and there was a wave of hot desire from the almost pain of her stretching. She lifted up and then lowered herself back down, a bit more of my length inside her. Three more times and she had me completely within her. She took a few moments to adjust to the feeling and then leaned forward and kissed me, lifting up until I was just inside her. She leaned back and closed her eyes, holding herself above me and teasing herself with her building anticipation. I put my hands around her hips and her eyes flashed open, looking into mine. I pulled her down as I thrust up into her almost causing her to orgasm. I lifted her up and slammed her back down onto me. She grabbed my hands and raised them to her breasts, taking over the pace. She was picking up speed, going harder and faster, and when I tweaked her nipples she slammed down onto me and exploded into an orgasm which triggered my orgasm. Which amped up her orgasm, which fed into my orgasm. Thirty seconds later we both passed out from the mind-blowing orgasms that wouldn''t stop. A moment later I got a ping from Chantelle and joined her in the main simulation. "That was more like it." She said. She hugged me tightly and I hugged her back. We stayed that way for a few minutes, just enjoying the closeness of each other, even if it was only digital. Chapter 70 - Project Talk My body would be sleeping for hours still, so I went back to carving symbols into the thread portal I was making. "What have you been working on?" I asked Chantelle. "I''ve been trying to create a more subtle anti-god ward." Chantelle said. "And working out a way to record what is happening when the wards are broken. If I can figure out how they are broken I can work around it and create a ward against it. The simulation here being of the ward room has been helping a great deal. I can throw wards up and test their effects without having to carefully lay them out so that the symbols don''t negatively interact." "There can be problems with that." I said. "This simulation is only as accurate as the underlying rules that it is running on. It might not match the outer simulation, and probably doesn''t, so anything done here should be tested out there too. And then update the rules here just like you did when you introduced magic." Chantelle pushed back from where she had her head resting on my chest. "What do you mean ''outer simulation''?" She asked. "The world outside, I mean." I said. "Don''t worry about it too much." Chantelle frowned, considering that. "Just tell me one thing." She said. "Am I real?" "Yes, you are real." I said. "I was told I knew you in a past life. There are some deeper things going on, but I have been avoiding thinking about it to be honest. I have more than enough to occupy me here and now." I pulled her back close to me and she went back to resting her head against my chest. "What are you up to?" Chantelle asked. "Letting my body sleep so that it doesn''t pass out at an inconvenient moment again, making a huge flexible portal so that I can excavate the Forest Keeper floor, and expanding my digital memory a bit in preparation for healing the unhealable druids that want it. Some of them backed out after the problems that the second druid I healed had, but there are still several of them." "What problems did they have?" Chantelle asked. "The pain from the body modification that restored her eyes made her feel like she might lose her grip on her sanity." I said. "I didn''t have anything like that." Chantelle said. "Though that was more because I knew you would save me and I could feel you through our connection which was very comforting." I hadn''t thought to ask her, but she had felt fine and I would have noticed any issues through our connection. "Couldn''t you just slow down the body modification so that the pain isn''t so extreme?" Chantelle asked. "I know you do something similar when you run?" "That''s different." I said. "When I''m going at full speed in serial mode about a quarter of the process is actually repairing things that the body is breaking in response to things changing. If I slowed it down to the same speed as when I refresh my muscles, which is right at the border, then it wouldn''t be able to keep up with the body interfering. Refreshing my muscles only works because I am reversing the way energy is consumed, I''m not changing anything. And people tend to stop breathing from the pain, so if I extended it beyond a few minutes I would have to deal with that as well." I had tried flooding my system with endorphins, but I came across the same problem as my digital side feeling the pain, it wasn''t a physical pain but one felt by the person''s consciousness. There was no cheating it, the only way to get the benefit was to endure. "You said you passed out before." Chantelle said. "You dreamed then, too? I think I felt it." I told her about my body falling asleep between one step and the next and my face-planting into the snow. And the other champion nearly killing me, with the fight afterwards.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. "I am sorry." She said quietly. "He threatened your family, and then said you could save them, right?" I asked. "And you would do it again." "Yes." She said. "I knew he could have been lying, but they had my mother. And even if I couldn''t save them all I knew you would come." "I understand." I said. She went even quieter, barely whispering. "I didn''t mean for you to get hurt." She said. "They even said you died, and our connection said you were near and far at the same time." "It was worth it." I said. "You going to them gave me an exact direction and the motivation to get there before anyone else had died. So it all worked out." We stood in silence for a while as Chantelle''s guilt, sorrow, and residual fear settled down under the weight of my acceptance and forgiveness towards her. She was usually very stable, but it seemed that meant she needed more support when it boiled over. "Where is the Forest Keeper floor going to be?" Chantelle asked after she had calmed down. I brought up the model of the fortress in the simulation, with the new floors added to the bottom. I hadn''t had the full fortress displayed when I made the Forest Keeper floor, it really was huge compared to what I had built before. Eight and a half times wider and still twenty five meters taller. "This goes out to the edge of the claim that the Forest Keepers gave you?" Chantelle asked. I nodded. "I will need to rework the wards to be in a cylinder instead of a sphere." Chantelle said. "I will be able to fold them into the detection and claim wards, though they will need to be changed as well." She pulled up the simulated ward that was attached to one of the mana crystal orbs in the table and it expanded into its full three dimensional display. There was something odd about it, and I walked around it trying to figure out what it was. There was an extra disc of symbols attached to the disc that had the string of symbols coming off of the mana crystal. Where the second disc split off, at about a third of the way through the symbols of the first disc, the symbols had been nudged apart to fit a new symbol that was done smaller. The mana source side entered at the bottom and one of the horns led off to the new disc while the other tied back into the original disc. The second disc was much more complicated than the first one was. "This is the detection ward?" I asked. "Hmm?" Chantelle said, distractedly. "Yes. The first string lays out the flow of mana and the size of the projection field of the ward and I used the original setup that the claim ward had. Then I just added my own split symbol splicing it between the setup and the claim function. I had to add a toggle to the front as well, as we didn''t have enough mana available originally, and it''s still there." She was tracing through the setup string of the ward, as she''d called it. After half a minute of playing with that, where some of the symbols morphed into other symbols, she pulled up the other wards from the mana crystals in the table and the recharge ward from the mana crystal pillar. She waved her hand and a glowing two dimensional screen appeared in front of her and she started making notes, a tally of numbers and multiplication. "This is the most useful feature." She said as she worked. I tended to just make models of things directly, I could remember numbers perfectly when performing mental arithmetic. A side effect of my memory power. Chantelle finished her calculations and sighed. "There won''t be enough ambient mana coming in to run the existing wards at the new size, even with the recharge ward maxed out." She said. "Which isn''t even counting the enchantments running in the fortress. And you will be adding more to them." "Does ambient mana exist underground and up in the air?" I asked. "It does." Chantelle said. "Just extend the recharge ward down into the earth then." I said. "There is a limitation on how much the recharge ward can pull in, which is governed by the efficiency of the ward." Chantelle said. Which was controlled by the size of the symbols. She had the recharge ward up and I made a private copy of its model. And then I increased the size of the existing model, zooming in by a factor of ten. I made a copy of the splitting symbol that was on the claim and detection ward and spliced it in as the first symbol of the recharge ward. Then I placed an exact copy of the recharge ward with the first symbol coming off of the split, but at a tenth of the size. That should make it almost three times as efficient. Chantelle was looking at it intently. "I see what you''re trying to show there." She said. "And how the simulation doesn''t react faithfully to outside. It is probably good that you can''t affect magic directly. Adjusting a running ward causes mana feedback, which would cause the mana crystal to melt itself. You placed the split symbol, very nicely formed by the way, before the mana push symbol and then duplicated the mana push symbol. I think that would lead to the split symbol distorting, to unknown effect. And you have two identical wards covering the exact same space, which will cause them to contradict, which is how you traditionally break wards." Wow, okay. So I''d done everything wrong, basically. And I wasn''t even sure if symbols could be done ten times smaller, or what the limit might be. I picked ten arbitrarily. "But the principle should work?" I asked. "If I can zoom in out there, yes." Chantelle said. I packaged up how I would go about writing a program to do exactly that, with her mana sense as inputs, and sent it to her. Chapter 71 - Music and Healing Chantelle woke my biological side briefly as she got up, but kissed me back to sleep. She was going to test things. I still had two hours of carving until the portal was done, so I decided to experiment with making music with the instruments from my dream. The storytelling room on the druid floor was empty and I used that room for my tests. I could have done it in a simulation, but I felt the need to use it as an expression, pushing it out into the world. After the first few minutes I got a rhythm and beat that I was happy with and started tracing lyrics through it in the beast people''s language. It was very well suited to singing, being very musical by itself. I started making the sequences more complex, using the characteristics of the room to play with the different frequencies. There were patterns of sound that evoked emotion and I was working out the nuances of hope and new beginnings when the sound that the room was creating changed, absorbing the higher frequencies instead of reflecting them. I adapted to the change and pulled up the video feed. Beast people were crowding into the room. Whoops. I had been pushing the volume louder to get a clearer response from the stone walls. And if there was no one in the room then it was probably sleeping time. I drew the piece I was working on to a close, withdrawing one instrument at a time until there was a single cello and then even that fell silent after a final long bass note. The entire room stood in silence, not moving. I checked the progress on the thread portal and I had done about an hour of work on it since beginning with the music experiment. "Ahem." I said. "Sorry." I really had almost nailed the feeling of hope by the end there. The room broke out into muttering and someone was pushed through the crowd to where my presence was in the corner. Finally the person made it through into the empty space that was left around me, stepping between two bear people, and it turned out to be Ian, the rabbit man that I had healed. "My lord." Ian said, bowing low. "That was... Moving and uplifting. Thank you, from all of us." "Uh, you''re welcome." I said. Really I was just trying it out, and I needed more hope just now. I hadn''t expected an audience. Though after consideration I should have made myself a new room somewhere to practice. Oh well, I''m sure my people could do with some hope too. I started generating some low-key background music as the beast people began leaving the room. "Ian." I said as he was about to leave, being one of the last people there. "Could you get Greta to send me the first person please." "Yes my lord." Ian said. I went to pull up a video feed from the portal nexus room and realised that I hadn''t installed a presence there yet. I moved one into the ceiling looking downwards. Bala and Brutus, the two ox men guards, were standing in the middle of the room between the two open portals. "Brutus, you put yourself on guard duty here?" I asked. He glanced up at the roof before looking back towards the portal leading out of the fortress, to the human''s old village. "This is the only place in the fortress that truly requires guarding." Brutus said. "I am best placed at the vanguard of our defences." "Are there any villagers still over there?" I asked. "I don''t know, my lord." Brutus said. "There hasn''t been anyone through for half an hour, but I could send someone to check for you?" "That won''t be necessary." I said. "I''m going to be moving the external portal to its own room." The portal room would have its own presence if someone needed to get back. I moved it and the portal to the human floor into their rooms, leaving just the druid floor portal in the nexus room. The first of my druid patients had arrived at the portal at the bottom of my fortress, a possum man that was missing his tail. Greta was with him, and they were both looking into the small stone room that the portal now led to.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. "Hello Greta." I said. "If this is my first patient there is a small problem. I need something to base my repairs from, and I don''t have a possum tail. Could you get a possum person so that I can get a scan of them? It will be completely painless for them. Oh, and you can use the portal on your floor, there is no need to come all the way down the stairs." I moved the exit of the portal so that it was next to the druid floor portal exit. "Of course, my lord." Greta said, stepping through the portal. I didn''t have a room for healing, having turned the last one into the portal nexus room, so I spent the few minutes that Greta was gone getting a possum person volunteer to build one. Just a simple three meter by three meter room in my Pocket Dimension with a stone table in it. I copied the feather filled comforter from my copy of Chantelle''s bed to make the stone comfortable. Greta still wasn''t back by the time I set it all up. I invited the possum man into the new room after moving the portal to it. I may as well get his mana to accept me and get a scan of him while we waited. He settled down on his side on the table and I pushed my power against him. "Your mana will drain to about half and then I will be able to scan you." I said. "This part won''t be painful. You are aware that my form of healing is extremely painful?" "Yes lord C.C." He said. "You... Where are you?" "My physical body is sleeping." I said. "I can see and speak with you from one of my presences, which is in the ceiling of the room. Like the one that is in the storyteller room." He stayed quiet for the few minutes it took to get his mana to accept me, and then I began to make a full scan of his body. I was halfway through when Greta brought another possum person, a woman, through into the portal nexus room. "You''ll need to step back through while I move the exit of the portal." I said. Greta nodded and I moved the portal to exit into the healing room. I needed to make a full doorway sized portal to transfer people within my Pocket Dimension. "I can only scan one person at a time." I said. "And I''m just finishing up his scan. I was slightly curious, beast people are a species. How do children work? I haven''t seen any mixed beast halves, but there aren''t enough of you for beast species to match up." "Any two beast people of opposite genders can have children." Greta said. "And the children can be either of their parent''s beast type, or one of their grandparents. It gets a little bit complicated with eggs and live births, but that comes down to the mother''s beast type." "An ox beast person could hatch from an egg?" I asked. "It has happened, yes." Greta said. "From a bird or reptile type mother." All of the beast people women that I had seen had breasts, at least, so they all had the ability to breastfeed their young. I was able to push my power against the possum woman while I was scanning the possum man, and as soon as I was done with his scan I switched over to scanning the possum woman. It was a simple matter then to copy the tail from her scan to his. Some tweaks so that the thickness and length of the tail was larger to match the size of the stub that was left and I was ready to start. "I am ready to start." I said. "I don''t mind if you two stay or not. This is also your last chance to back out." Greta and the possum woman moved to the side of the room, but stayed. "I am ready, my lord." The possum man said. "However it turns out, thank you for trying." "The last thing I will tell you is this, the pain will feel endless, but it will end." I said. "When it is done there will be no more pain." The possum man nodded and I triggered the program. He didn''t scream or make any noise. It actually looked as though he had passed out, going entirely limp. It took twenty five seconds for his tail to be completely regrown. But the man wasn''t moving. "It''s done." I said. "It shouldn''t have been possible for him to pass out, though. His heart is still beating, though slowly." "It is the possum people''s beast type ability." Greta said. "In highly stressful situations they feign dead. It isn''t something they can control, he should be coming out of it soon." A few moments later the possum man sat up, curling his tail around in front of him and feeling up and down its length. "Still sane and with us?" I asked. "Yes my lord." He said. "Thank you. It was as painful as I was told, even through feigning death which shuts everything down I could feel it. But I have my tail again, and it is completely my tail. I was worried I would have Betsy''s tail." Greta took the two possum people out of the healing room and returned a minute later with the elderly owl woman. Her healing was more involved, having to refresh every cell in her body to remove the junk and errors that had built up, but still easy to do. After her were two cat people, each missing their right arms, and then a badger man who had lost both his legs. I needed a second badger person to scan to heal him, badger people''s legs aren''t built the same as anyone else I had a scan of. And finally a gecko man that was missing both of his arms. He was the only difficult case, as he was the only gecko man among the druids. It took me some time but I eventually made a mix of my own arms and his feet, for the adhesive effect and layout of the hands and fingers. When it was done he said it was different than his old arms but they worked equally well. None of the people healed had any problems with sanity. By the time I was done with the gecko man I had the forty meter thread portal done and was ready to start working on the Forest Keeper floor. Chapter 72 - Forest Keeper Floor Before starting on the Forest Keeper floor I wanted to update the model I had of my body. When I originally designed my nails I had thought specifically of a cat''s ability to sheathe their claws within their paws. I wasn''t aware that there were any cat people within the druids, and Greta didn''t know that I would have found that specific physical ability useful, so she hadn''t brought them originally. The cat people had stubbier fingers that allowed part of the complicated bone and tendon system to exist partially within their hands. I decided to take the principle and improve it. I kept my original fingernails and made my fingers thicker to accommodate the extra complexity of a tendon to push claws out of the end of my fingers. I made them long and curved, when they were fully retracted they extended along the under side of the last two segments of my fingers. It did limit how much I could bend the ends of my fingers, and I put in a fault line that I could snap with my Matter Manipulation to give me back full dexterity to my hands if I needed it. I left my thumbs without the claws. I was considering how to give myself night vision, or at least low light vision, when I got a ping for my attention from one of my portal room presences. I considered ignoring it for the moment. There was something to combining how owl eyes worked, made larger and sacrificing being able to move them in return for more perfect control over focal depth and where the light was cast onto the cones and rods of the eye, and how cat eyes worked. The similarities between the two suggested that the entire criteria was a sacrifice of cones to fit more rods, more night vision and low light sensitivity at the cost of colour perception. But if I could make a concave lens instead of convex within my Pocket Dimension and then have two portals, I could surround the lenses with a much higher density of both rods and cones. Or have the sensors be on the inside of a sphere and rotate the sphere to have predominantly rods or cones depending on the circumstances... I brought up the audio from the portal room that pinged me before I got too distracted, super vision would be an interesting thread to pull on. I would even be able to incorporate my heat vision into it. "And it''s a closet again." I heard through the presence. "Did you see what happened? How am I supposed to get in contact with lord C.C. now." Ah, Mal''Thorn, and the portal was the one that lead to the Forest Keeper city. "Greetings Mal''Thorn." I said. "I am keeping the portals secured while they aren''t in use. I will be keeping an eye on them and connecting them if and when they need to be used." Mal''Thorn entered the small stone portal room. "Greetings lord C.C." Mal''Thorn said. "Thank you. There was some question regarding the security of the portals, and whether two guards would be enough." "Your floor isn''t ready yet." I said. "I was about to start it now, though I will admit to getting slightly distracted." "My lord." Mal''Thorn said. "I wasn''t expecting you to be ready for us for days, possibly weeks. I came back to tell you what my Queen and her advisers decided to do. Which was to plan a military offensive against the priests." "And they want my help with that?" I asked. "I took down the ice walls around my fortress easily, roughly four hundred meters long, in about half an hour." "It is unlikely that they would ask for your help." Mal''Thorn said. "The Queen isn''t against you, as she values my counsel highly, but many of her advisers do not like you. I am your greatest supporter within the court, and it is being interpreted by some that I am being exiled for it. I see it as safeguarding our species, and the Forest itself." Mal''Thorn had started pacing within the small room, going to the edge of the portal and then back to the wall. It was only three short paces each way. I started making yet another thread portal, a smaller one for transferring people within my Pocket Dimension itself. "When the winter priests first put their wall up some of the Forest Keeper city guards took it upon themselves to kill the priests that were on top of the walls." Mal''Thorn said. "The ice wall was changed to provide proper cover and there hasn''t been much success in attacking them since. It will take the advisers days to come to an agreement on their exact plan of attack."This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. Mal''Thorn stopped pacing and shook himself. "But this is all boring Forest Keeper politics." Mal''Thorn said. "How long before you expect to be ready to receive our advance team?" About half of the work will be in dumping the massive amounts of stone into my Pocket Dimension, and both portals can move in opposite directions while my power cuts around the edges. The other half, or maybe more, would be in changing the ordinary stone into the blue super stone that I was using for my construction material. Ten meters thick over a circle one kilometer long was a lot of matter to convert, and that wasn''t counting the supports or walls of the place. I went over the conversation I had had with Mal''Thorn about the design requirements while looking over the model for the new floor and found a mistake. Only a small one and easily fixed, Mal''Thorn had asked for thirty meters of soil and not the twenty that I had in the model. But the total height remained at one hundred and fifty meters, so nothing else on the model needed to change. Of course I wouldn''t need to work in horizontal layers, which is how I envisioned doing it originally. If I started in the center with the stairs and then expanded in a circle outwards I could get them a foothold nearly immediately. "How many people would be in your advance team?" I asked. "It would depend on the space initially available." Mal''Thorn said. "A dozen for a small space." "I can give you an initial ground space of a circle twenty meters wide, not counting the stairway in the center that will be five meters wide, in ten minutes from now." I said. "That would be the full one hundred and twenty meters tall with thirty meters of soil. And then extending that outwards to the full one kilometer width will take me..." I paused to calculate it out. Damn, but that was a lot of stone. "A little over two weeks." I said. "Constantly growing outwards from the center, of course." "A kilometer wide?" Mal''Thorn asked. "Truly a claim of our own. It will take us decades to grow a new Forest over that area, and you casually say it will take you weeks to build it." "Would you like to watch?" I asked. "Very much so." Mal''Thorn said. "I will just send word for my people to start making their way here." He stepped back through the portal to the Forest Keeper city and into the city itself to deliver his messages. I brought the Pocket Dimension side of the portal out of the portal room, facing it into the empty space of the Pocket Dimension. Some small portals only took a minute to make, and I had electricity anywhere I wanted inside. I pointed some floodlights out into the darkness and moved my ten meter by ten meter excavator thread portal into position. I had moved my stone source portal back to my fortress, it would be following behind the large portal to give my digital side''s Matter Manipulation power access. And I set up the new thread portal that I would be using as a viewing portal for Mal''Thorn. Who still wasn''t back. I shone a light through the viewing portal and started on the stairs down. The excavator portal started at the portal at the bottom floor of my fortress. I made it into a square a little over five meters by five meters and dropped it through the floor of the fortress and down into the stone. Half of the stone that it passed became the stairs and the other half came out into the Pocket Dimension. This would be the biggest initial time expenditure, and it was half an hour before I''d finished the one hundred and sixty five meter deep stairway. Mal''Thorn returned when I had just started on the maintenance floor above the new Forest Keeper floor. "My apologies lord C.C.." Mal''Thorn said. "Some people had taken advantage of our leaving to push their own agendas. My people shall be along within the hour." Mal''Thorn looked around at the five hundred cubic meters of stone already in the Pocket Dimension, and then through the viewing portal to the floor I was carving out. "You do work amazingly quickly." Mal''Thorn said. "Of course I believe you when you claim such things, but seeing it is another thing entirely. What is this area though? It has a permanent floor, and the ceiling can''t be more than five meters up." "This is the maintenance floor." I said. "It will be where the sun enchanted mana crystals will be accessed from. Perhaps a rainfall system of some kind. This is where it gets interesting." I had just finished the twenty five meter wide floor and moved the excavator to the top of the Forest Keeper floor, extending it out to its full ten meters by ten meters. The viewing portal was blocked by stone, as I was going to leave it in its fixed position at the ceiling looking down next to the stairway wall. And then I started the excavator. One full revolution around the stairway took forty seconds, and then it was down to the next layer. I had to shift the stone as it was coming out in my Pocket Dimension so that it was in straight lines and not curves. Eight minutes later there was a one hundred a twenty meter drop through the viewing portal. The last three revolutions around the stairway were converting stone into soil. Chapter 73 - Calm "Is this portal safe?" Mal''Thorn asked. Uh... The orientation was shifted ninety degrees, so someone could walk through it like it was a doorway. As soon as they did gravity would shift and drop them one hundred and twenty meters down onto soil. "Not as such, no." I said. "It was a good perspective to see the excavation, though?" "It was, my lord." Mal''Thorn said. "Perhaps you could move it down to the ground and my people could start moving across?" I had been seeing a growing crowd in the Forest Keeper guard room through the portal with my sound sense from the presence I was using. I decided to have some fun and dropped the viewing portal from the ceiling. I heard gasps from behind me as the view plummeted to the ground. "Sometimes people say ''lord C.C.'' and sometimes ''my lord''." I said. "It''s very consistent, I''ve noticed humans, beast people, and now yourself using ''lord C.C.'' initially and then shifting to ''my lord'' at a later time... Why is it happening?" The viewing portal hit the soil partway through my speaking, and a small wave of soil had fallen through. I stood the outer doorway up and pushed the soil back through. "The first is a term of respect, used to acknowledge your title but not showing any personal loyalty to you." Mal''Thorn said. "The second, saying ''my lord'', is indication of personal loyalty. I would guess that the term you were addressed by changes after a significant event where you show that you take their wellbeing seriously." I scanned back through my memories for each time it had changed, and it matched up pretty well. I nodded, to show that I agreed with the explanation, but stopped when I realised I was just nodding in the simulation. The presence I was using had no facility for gestures. Mal''Thorn''s people started streaming past us into the new floor. "Thank you." I said. "I had another question about what craftsmen you were bringing with you. What craftsman chains do you have?" "Craftsman chains, my lord?" Mal''Thorn asked. "Well, taking carpentry as an example." I said. "You would have a lumberjack who cuts down the trees to give logs. The logs either go straight to a carpenter, or to a sawyer and then to a carpenter. From the carpenter it would go to a shop. And then finally to the end customer." "We don''t have lumberjacks or sawyers." Mal''Thorn said. "We grow the branches of the Forest into the furniture we need." "Okay, a bad example for you then." I said. "You wear robes, clothing. Shepherd to shearer to carder to spinner to weaver to tailor to shop, ending at the customer. Some of the roles might double up, or I might have missed some. But that is the general idea, and my question is, what craftsman chains do your people have?" "I... Do not know, my lord." Mal''Thorn said. "Mana crystals and enchanters or spell casters would be the closest thing that I have experience with. I shall find out." "How did you pick who would come to live in the outpost then, if not by their skills?" I asked. "Political connections." Mal''Thorn said. "And their skill with setting up and improving a new Forest glade. But there will be many merchants and craftsmen among them." That seemed a bit arbitrary to me, just assuming that you would have the right mix of professions. I would look into it again after Mal''Thorn had time to look into it himself. I would need to ask Dael and Veya as well. I had been excavating the next outer ring of the floor while we had been talking, from the top down, and the floor had extended another ten meters. It was quite dark, with only the occasional Forest Keeper summoning light. I made a quick count of the people who had gone through, scanning back through my memory. Three hundred and twenty six so far, and there was still a constant flow going through the doorway. "I thought you said you would be bringing three hundred people?" I asked.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. "I did." Mal''Thorn said. "But with the amount of space you said you were making we can get set up much quicker with more of us. Is it a problem?" "It''s not." I said. "How many are you expecting?" "Around a thousand over the next week, of people who will follow me." Mal''Thorn said. "There might be an emigration of an additional five hundred to a thousand before it levels off." Two thousand people. That would put a strain on the food that the druids could make. "That might be a problem." I said. "Mostly with food." "I don''t expect so." Mal''Thorn said. "We will be able to trade through the portals? Our diet is primarily made up of the leaves of the Forest and the fruit that it provides, though we do import grains from the plain biome." Right, trading. I would need to ask about where the best places to trade would be. But with him mentioning biomes, there was something that was more pressing. "I need to get in contact with each of the Keepers." I said. "Do you know how I would go about doing that?" "Well, toggling a claim ward should do it while you are within their domain." Mal''Thorn said. "I would recommend against trying to contact the Ocean Keepers, though. You would need to get within their domain to get their interest, and there are monsters there that do not need to hide in the summer realm during winter." "What are the Ocean Keepers?" I asked. "Merpeople?" "No, they would be closest to dolphins." Mal''Thorn said. "Merpeople are a species that lives within the ocean biome, though. We don''t have much contact with the Ocean Keepers, despite them being our neighbours to the east and west. We have much more with the Plains Keepers. Who are meerkats." Dolphins and meerkats. "Are they able to speak this language?" I asked. "The Plains Keepers have some diplomats that do." Mal''Thorn said. "But I don''t believe the Ocean Keepers would. They don''t have much need to negotiate with the surface species, any who offend them while on the ocean are easily eaten. I believe there are fishing villages, but I haven''t had any contact with them." "I''ll go see if I can get the first of the sunlight enchantments started." I said. Mal''Thorn nodded. "Thank you my lord." He said, and headed back into the Forest Keeper city. I had a few more hours of sleep for my biological side so I sent Chantelle a ping and attached a low priority to it. A few moments later she popped up in my local simulation. "Wow, that is a lot of Forest Keepers." Chantelle said. "A little over four hundred so far." I said. "How are your warding tests going?" "Brilliantly." Chantelle said. "I got the symbols down to a hundredth of their usual size. They use a sixth of the mana. A sixth! I could run a barrier ward around myself permanently just on my own regeneration with that. There are some quirks at the smaller scale, the intents for the symbols are sharper somehow. The effects are more exacting." "Sharper and more exacting is... Good?" I said, not remotely confidently. "Different." Chantelle said. "And open to exploiting. For example, the ''drain-ambient-mana'' set of symbols with their intents, at the normal scale it creates a constant pull on the ambient mana. Like rain falling on flat ground and soaking in. With the smaller scale ward it is as though the rain is forming into creeks, and then flowing into streams, and those streams into rivers. It''s an order of magnitude more powerful, not counting the efficiency increase which makes it even greater." She had spun up a model as she was explaining. The first was the same as I had seen in the simulation of the ward room, the ambient mana was being pulled slowly, steadily, and evenly into the mana crystal. The second... Rivers was the right analogy for it. Raging torrents of mana arriving at the mana crystal, a thick core heading in each direction horizontally. "That doesn''t look very safe." I said. "It took some work." Chantelle said. "The new throttle symbol actually with the same intent throws mana back out into the ambient mana when it''s clamped down. And it''s safer than the ward I first used, this one has a vent for if the mana crystal gets too full. It will push back out to ambient mana when the crystal gets over ninety percent. Not that I would let it get to that point." "I actually came to ask if you could make some more relay mana crystals." I said. "And if you could ask Maaata to make the sun enchantments. I''ll still be sleeping for a few hours, and I have the Forest Keeper floor set up and expanding now." "Alright." Chantelle said. "I''ll set up a new set of wards to cover the new floor too. Separate from the main Fortress wards, I''m thinking." Chantelle looked around the local simulation I had, built mostly from the inputs of the presence that was between the Forest Keeper city portal and the portal to their new floor. Forest Keepers continued to stream past. "Do you have many of these?" Chantelle asked. I did a quick count. "Ten so far." I said. "You should put one in the ward room." Chantelle said. "It would be very useful to be able to see the detection ward without having to go to it. I might even be able to create some controls for it for you. Mana reacts to your power, even if you can''t see it, we should be able to use that." I nodded. "I''ll put it at the top of my list." I said. "They take some time to make, mostly in the portals, but I agree that it would be useful." I saw Chantelle and Maaata go by the old bottom floor of my fortress through the presence in the portal room for the portal there. I detached it from the wall there and followed after them. Chantelle continued down the stairs after setting up the first relay, but Maaata followed my directions to the maintenance floor. She had already made six sun enchanted mana crystals and I sank them through the floor after she hooked them up to the relay. Six was overkill for the small area so far, but I could spread them out as the floor got wider. Chapter 74 - Spar There were things I could do without my body being awake. But I had gone back through my memories for any obligations that I hadn''t fulfilled yet, and came across my promise to have a spar with Gaal, the bear man who had tried to block me from getting into the druid floor the first time. It really was only days ago, it felt like weeks. More pressing things kept came up, but it was relatively quiet now. I wanted to set up a proper sparring ring, and I could leave my biological side sleeping while I did that, but after that it would be time to be active again. It had already had seven hours of sleep, and had had several dreams in that time. The Forest Keeper floor excavator was being controlled by a simple program that would ping me if anything unexpected happened, and it was only using a minimum of my power. I moved the larger thread portal from my biological side''s pocket and sent it to the utility floor between the druid and human floors, and while it was going I brought up a new model for the sparring ring stadium I wanted to make. A circular platform of soil, topped with a rough canvas, raised half a meter up from the floor would make for a good fighting surface. The druid sparring circles were ten meters in diameter, but I went with fifteen meters. And I remembered how dangerous the spar I had against Dael could have been for the spectators if I hadn''t managed the debris that had been generated. Surrounding the entire platform from floor to ceiling with reinforced glass would allow the fights to be seen while increasing the safety markedly. A door into the glass room, also made from glass, with a barrel hinge that allowed it to open inwards into the room. For the seating I decided to surround the room with five rows of stadium-style seating, allowing the people in the back rows to easily see down into the fight. The whole setup would take up twenty two meters, which the floor could easily accommodate. I had the whole thing planned by the time my thread portal made it down the two floors to where I wanted to set it up, and it was a simple matter of pulling stone from my Pocket Dimension through the portal and converting it to match the model. I sent Chantelle a ping after I''d finished. I was pretty happy with how it had turned out. I was only seeing it through my power, but the seating was in a onyx black which contrasted with the brilliant white of the canvas flooring in the sparring room. Chantelle arrived in the simulation thirty seconds later. "Sorry about the delay." She said. "I was in the middle of testing a ward." She grimaced. "It didn''t work." She looked around the model, walking through the seating and the glass walls of the room to examine it thoroughly. She adjusted the simulation to take into account mana, which was just ambient at the moment. "This is already built?" Chantelle asked. "On the third floor?" "Yes." I said. "Is there a problem?" "Well, you forgot to add lights." Chantelle said. "And assuming it''s a fighting area you will want some strong physical wards on the glass barriers. I''m sure they''re strong, but they won''t do much to stop magical attacks." Lights were easy to solve, I''d just make portals to my Pocket Dimension and have electrical lights. And while I was at it I could put in cameras to view and record the fights. "Could you ward it?" I asked. "I was planning on having an official spar with Gaal." "Sure, I could use a break from the difficult wards." Chantelle said. It took me twenty minutes to set up the portals and lights so that the sparring room was well lit, and a few minutes more to set up the cameras. Chantelle was done in half of that time. I added an extra four cameras equally spaced around the outside of the room, which with the cameras above would give me a good three dimensional recording. By this time my biological side had had more than eight hours of sleep, which was more than enough by my count, so I woke myself up. The grogginess of half of my consciousness was an odd feeling while my digital side was fine. Brutus was standing guard in the portal nexus room, despite there not being any external portals in the room at the moment, and the only reason the druid portal was in the room was so that the guards could move back through it. Otherwise it would be secured in its own portal room.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. I headed towards Brutus, shifting the stone so I could step through into the room. "Greetings my lord." Brutus said. "Greetings Brutus." I said. "I made a dedicated sparring room. Does Gaal still want to have an official spar with me?" "He does, and very much so, my lord." Brutus said. "I will have him informed that you are ready. Where is the sparring room?" "On the floor below the Druid floor." I said. "And there is enough seating for two hundred and thirty humans. Some of the People are quite a bit bigger than a standard human, but there should be enough space for as many of them to watch as would be interested." "Thank you my lord." Brutus said, then turned to Bala. "Go inform Gaal and Dael, then gather the rest guards and meet us at the sparring room." Bala dipped his head and ran off through the portal. Brutus and I followed at a slower pace and went down the stairs to the utility floor. The sparring room was to the left of the stairs as we came out, light shining through the hallway that led between the black stone walls of the seats to the glass room. We walked through and I opened the glass door into the room, stepping up the half meter onto the canvas inside, Brutus following me. "Glass?" Brutus asked. "Heavily reinforced, yes." I said. "And Chantelle warded it as well." I stepped up to the wall and hit it, hard. There was a loud thump but no other response. I gestured for Brutus to take a shot. He considered it for a moment, then stepped up to the glass and lowered his horns until they were just touching it. He leaned into it and dragged his horns down the glass, which made a squeaking sound but was left unmarked. He nodded and then swung his fist into the glass, driving from his feet. The same loud thump. "Strong." Brutus said. "Have you given any thought to the terms of the spar?" "I hadn''t." I said. "I don''t mind, I don''t have anything really new to test. I thought to have Gaal go all out and I will match him, meeting him head on." "Hmm." Brutus said. "I would suggest an exhibition match then, magic allowed. It would go until one of the combatants acknowledges their defeat." I nodded that that was fine. People had started arriving, starting with the guards, two boar men, two more ox men, and Gaal, the bear man. Brutus went to talk with Gaal, who nodded. Dael, the deer person leader of the druids, arrived a few seconds later and stepped into the room to talk with Brutus and Gaal before coming over to me. "Everyone is coming to watch." Dael said. "If you could wait to start until after they arrive?" I nodded. A few minutes later the last of the beast people had arrived and Dael and Brutus left the room, closing the glass door behind them. Gaal roared and extended both of his arms toward me. The base of his paws glowed with a golden light which flowed out to his claws, extending them into five centimeter long vicious blades. I wanted the match to be a good one, so while I was analysing everything from a sped up perspective it wasn''t nearly as much as I had been doing in my fights lately. And I was pretty sure I could use my speed to outmatch him, too, but that wouldn''t be any fun. I walked slowly towards him, and he walked towards me. We met in the center of the room and Gaal swung down at me full force with one of his paws. I crossed my arms to block the strike, my left arm in front, and reinforced my arms as it hit. The force broke my left forearm and the claws tore down to bone before they came to a stop, leaving my right arm just bruised. I was thrown off my feet and into the glass wall seven meters away, rolling in the air to land feet first. Gaal stayed in the center of the room, a look of concern on his face. A quick estimate told me that it would take me three seconds to repair my arm. And Gaal looked like he would give them to me. But if I needed to take the time I may as well acknowledge my defeat. I took him much too lightly. I used my power to hold my arm together, compressing and stopping the bleeding. I took out my pocket portal and shaped it into a shield fifty centimeters wide, backed by stone within my Pocket Dimension. I walked back into the center of the room and settled with my shield in front of me, inclining my head towards Gaal. He swung down with one of his claws again, but this time there was much less force behind it and it was moving slower. I pushed his strike away with my damaged left arm with the shield on it, redirecting it. I stepped in towards him and slapped him in the face with my open right hand before stepping back again. He leant forward and roared in my face, swinging with both paws, one at my neck and the other at my stomach. The attacks were coming from either side and would arrive at the same time, so I stepped into the attack on my left, shifting my shield to take the attack in its center. That attack stopped dead upon hitting my shield and I moved at nearly my maximum speed to do the same on my other side. I was stepping forward to hit him solidly with a palm strike to the solar plexus when a flash of red came from the pendant around my neck, followed by the sound of crashing glass. The match deserved an ending, so I redirected my attack to hit him under the chin with just enough force to snap his head back without breaking any bones. I caught him as he collapsed to the floor. Our wards were down again. Chapter 75 - The Instructor Dael opened the glass door to the sparring room and came to check on Gaal, checking for a pulse at his neck. Dael nodded once he had confirmed that Gaal was just unconscious. "As short and brutal as I was expecting." Dael said. "Though I was surprised that you let him tag you so well." "I would have preferred the match to go on a bit longer." I said. "But the fortress wards have gone down, and I will need to deal with that. Better a quick and definitive ending to the match than calling it off." "I understand my lord, the safety of the fortress is most important." Dael said. "Gaal would agree. Is this sparring room open to anyone, or is it only for your use?" "It''s for anyone who would like to use it." I said. Chantelle sent me a ping. "I need to go and deal with this. You will take care of Gaal?" At his nod I left the room and walked through the hallway to the fortress stairs. The beast people were still in their seats, talking quietly with each other. I joined Chantelle in the main simulation, which was still focused on the ward room. She was updating the simulation of the room from her senses, the tabletop with a hologram of the surrounding area over it, coloured red. "When did I get the new pendant?" I asked. The winter priests had taken my last one when they''d captured me, I was sure. "I made it for you while you were sleeping, it was because of me that you lost the last one." Chantelle said, waving her hand dismissing it. "The claim, recharge, and detection wards are still up, only the wards that are on the fortress itself went down. And they''re just about to go back up." The hologram flashed green, and then went red again with the accompanying crash of glass. "Ha, got it." Chantelle said. "I have a recording of how the wards are being broken. I might be able to figure out a way to stop it from happening." "You said the detection ward is up?" I asked. "The Champion would need to be close to break our wards, right?" "Right..." Chantelle said. She wasn''t doing anything in the simulation, but her biological side must have been adjusting the hologram because the display shifted to showing a human standing at the top of the fortress outside, where the doors would open. He was just standing there, waiting. I started heading up the stairs to the top of the fortress and noticed Brutus and Bala following me. As I got to the top guard room the wards went up and back down again. More data for Chantelle, I guess. Brutus and Bala took up stations in the guard room and I cleared the stone blocking the doors to the outside and threw them open. .:He''s stepped back from the doors to the top of the stairs:. Chantelle sent to me. .:Thanks:. I sent back. Huh, I hadn''t considered sending thoughts directly like that. It was an extension of the pinging protocol we had been using, and it would save having to drop fully into the other simulation to talk. I had moved to my local surroundings simulation as soon as I was possibly going to walk into a combat situation. Plus I was more comfortable being able to synthesise from my senses into a simulation than just react with my biological side. I walked up the stairs and saw the Champion at the edge of the platform five meters away. I had seen him twice before, once with the first winter army that attacked me, and once when he had tried to kill me. I really took in his appearance this time, and he spent the same time appraising me. He was quite short, standing at a little over a meter and a half tall, and his black hair was in a single braid that fell down his back. And he was in simple grey robes that lacked a hood. "Hello." He said. "I am The Instructor. We should talk."Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. He held up a sheet of paper that had words pre-written on it. /out of the hearing of the gods/ "Would you like to talk at your place or mine?" The Instructor asked. The only place I had that the gods couldn''t hear was my Pocket Dimension, and I didn''t want him anywhere near my digital platform, that would be giving him too much information and a perfect target to attack. I didn''t really want to go with him either, though it was the better of the two options. I was confident that I could look after myself. "Yours." I said. He nodded and approached me, raising his hands to show that he was unarmed. He placed a hand on my shoulder, and then frowned a few moments later when nothing happened. "My teleportation doesn''t work with unwilling participants." The Instructor said. "It requires more than simple agreement, you need to want to go. I''m guessing you don''t trust me?" "You did try to kill me the last time I saw you." I said. "That''s true enough." The Instructor said. "But you were being foolish, sleeping in the middle of the forest. Sending you on to your next simulation would have been the learning you needed to have. You surprised me, though. I give you my word that you will be returned safely after we have talked." I had no way of knowing if his word was good. But I was inclined to trust it, and it would be interesting to see where he had set up. I nodded again and we were immediately somewhere else, the edge of the Forest to the south and mountains to the north. My connection to Chantelle was telling me that she was one hundred and eighty kilometers south south west. This was close to where Chantelle was taken when I was being redirected to the winter army around the Forest Keeper city. The Instructor got out a light stone and started walking east along the border of the Forest and the mountains and I followed him. "I couldn''t get us any closer." The Instructor said. "The anti-god ward that I had your girlfriend set up blocks the teleportation that I am using. I could break the ward, of course, but that would entirely defeat the purpose. We can talk freely now." "The summer god is locked up in his own wards, you don''t want the winter god to hear us?" I asked. "He isn''t the best of allies, and I thought you would have questions relating to the competitive simulations themselves." The Instructor said. "The administrators can usually work around the natives knowing that they are in a simulation, but there are some awkward cases and having a god learn of it might be one of them." "Why did you pick the name Instructor?" I asked. "The Instructor." The Instructor said. "It''s a Champion title, actually. I''ve done close to thirty of these competitive simulations with first time Champions. Though you are my first digitised human. You''re the first digitised human on the network at all, as far as I am aware. I''m a fan of your ascension story, by the way, it made for entertaining viewing." "My ascension story..?" I asked. "Ah, right, you would have given up your memories." The Instructor said. "You ascended out of the simulation that your race is sandboxed in in preparation for accessing the network." "Then... You would know my name?" I asked. "Originally it was Dann, I believe." The Instructor said. Dann. There was no rush of memories like I had half hoped for. I was expecting to feel... Something from knowing my name. It sounded like my name to me, but also separate. Like it didn''t fit me anymore. "I must say that I find you surprisingly tolerant." The Instructor said. "Though it fits that you only fight all out against those you see as your enemies. My understanding is that humans are usually far more bigoted and biased against anything that isn''t their own kind. There have been a lot of competitive simulations featuring them even if you are the first human Champion." We had arrived at a stone cottage with a pair of solid chairs in front of it facing an unlit bonfire. The Instructor got out a firestarter, flint and steel with oil, and tried to get the bonfire started. After a few moments I stepped up and lit the bottom of the bonfire evenly. "Thanks." The Instructor said. "You started with some powerful powers. And you''ve broken the simulation several times above that since you started, including giving yourself immortality and rebasing your goal. Did you manage to give yourself access to a System?" "I''m not sure if I should say." I said. "Aren''t we competing against each other?" "Our goals don''t have to be mutually exclusive." The Instructor said. "They usually aren''t for first timers, actually. For example, my goal is to have every creature that isn''t aligned to my chosen god be eliminated. Yours is probably something to do with your girlfriend. If you and your girlfriend align with winter then we could both win. Though if we did end up allying then other factors of the simulation would get more difficult to provide a challenge for us. I did get an optional extra goal, which was how I know you rebased your goal, and I received it via a System window. Each time you break the simulation to a significant degree I get an extra benefit, though not to the same degree. And the more Champions in a competitive simulation the less each Champion is boosted by changes to the simulation by others." "And your optional extra goal?" I asked. "To eliminate an entire major species or all of the minor species of a biome." The Instructor said. "Then you know what my new goal would be, and that we are opposed." I said. "I do." The Instructor said. "But I was genuine when I said I wanted to talk and in my intentions to help you with how competitive simulations work in general. I am often cast as the bad guy, but that is separate. After I have returned you I will do my utmost to make you fail. That is the spirit of competitive simulations. Conflict makes for entertainment." Chapter 76 - Talk The Instructor was stretched out on his chair, his feet out to the bonfire and his hands behind his head. Completely relaxed. "Why are you helping me?" I asked. "The Instructor title gives me access to competitive simulations with new Champions." The Instructor said. "They have overpowered powers but little practical experience with simulations and how best to win them and fight against other Champions. So I get a challenging and exciting competition that is still possible to win, which my followers and patrons enjoy. In return I help newbies like you with general information. If I didn''t help then I would likely lose my title and stop getting access to these sorts of simulations." "Okay." I said. "But isn''t it unfair if you have been in thirty competitive simulations? You should have a lot more experience and knowledge that you can bring in." "That is true to a point." The Instructor said. "But the memories of specific skills and knowledge is blurred when entering the simulation. I know about a lot of things generally, but no specifics. As an example, I know a lot about the theory of swordcraft but I''m not a swordsman. There are simulations that allow full access, just not the Instructor ones." "I got ''Remembers the general memories of relevant concepts of his last life'' as my first power." I said. "After your memories were locked, yes, that is a common way to give you a focused direction to go with picking your powers." The Instructor said. "Though without knowing the likely theme that the primary host prefers that can backfire." I was happy with my powers, despite them being due to a backfire. The Instructor opened one eye and looked at me. "Different competitive simulation hosts usually stick to a theme and then tweak the startup settings based upon Champion choices in their setup." The Instructor said. "Our current host avoids sci-fi settings. Though to know that would require research into the past simulations that he has hosted." Interface had said that he could have locked the setting to sci-fi, so... "What happens if a sci-fi setting is locked in by a Champion?" I asked. "The host can opt out and another host steps in." The Instructor said. "Which does mean that host research isn''t perfect and can backfire pretty badly in itself. They usually pick a completely new liaison for new Champions, someone who has watched a lot of simulations but not worked as part of one before. It''s the first step towards hosting your own simulations." That did sound exactly like Interface, all enthusiasm and little practical experience. "On the topic of powers, there are two factors that you should keep in mind for future simulations." The Instructor said. "The first is how they can affect the startup settings of a simulation. I take it you know some of my powers?" I nodded, the head priest of summer had told me. "I thought as much, all-hearing gods are a bit of a nuisance." The Instructor said. "An example of choosing a power that would affect the startup is my Divine Apocalypse power, which set the scenario to a fantasy apocalypse. The other factor is dynamic powers that adjust once you''re in the simulation. Most liaisons aren''t aware to begin with that you can take powers that adjust once you''re in the simulation, and can evolve based upon your and other''s play. My Divine Empowerment is one of these powers, which gave me a number of useful powers like teleportation. Though there is a cost to choosing a dynamic power, which is that you get a difficulty of ''variable'' that doesn''t give you any information about the simulation." "I got a difficulty of ''Angry God, End of the World''." I said. "Interesting." The Instructor said. He took some time to consider that, and I stopped to consider it as well. The winter god hadn''t seemed angry to me when I had met him. "Any questions?" The Instructor asked. "I was getting nudges, feelings that were coming from outside of myself about how things should be done." I said.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. "That wasn''t really a question." The Instructor said. "But I understand what you''re asking. The host or hosts of the simulation have an input into your simulated consciousness that they are running that they can use to push things in desirable directions. You must be pretty sharp, it usually takes several competitive simulations before people catch the manipulations. It''s almost never a negative thing, though whether you go with it or not is your personal choice." "I, uh, kind of forced the nudges into a System." I said. "So you did get a System." The Instructor said. "I don''t think I''ve heard of someone breaking the simulation to get a System implementation that way before. Do you have attributes? A status page? Quests? A map?" "No, none of that." I said. "My Champion goals are tracked, that''s about it. The prompt I got said that System functionality will start basic and evolve over time." "An evolving System implementation." The Instructor said. "That''s almost a power all by itself. You don''t break things by halves, do you. Though I get boosts when you do, so I''m not complaining. Depending on how you use the System should control how useful it will be to you. If you don''t use it or use it only simply then it won''t evolve." When I got the System to form at all it was by forcing an interface to the simulation, perhaps I could evolve it the same way. But now wasn''t the time for that. "You said I broke the simulation?" I asked. "How did I break it, exactly?" "You''ve already broken the simulation far more than anyone else I have competed against." The Instructor said. "Rarely does someone make even a small break in simulations, and you''ve altered several large pieces." The list of things in the recalculation of my Champion goal, I''d broken the simulation six times counting the System itself. "As to how you broke it, you would know better than I." The Instructor said. "I''ve never managed to significantly break a simulation. In theory you have to believe something will work absolutely, and your logic for why it will work has to be agreed with by the host or whoever reviews whatever the break is." With that explanation I finally figured out what the ''Limited power duplication'' was when my goal was recalculated. When my biological body had died I had forced my digital side to have access to my Matter Manipulation power. It was the only way that I could have continued forward and it took a lot of time and effort to do, but I never had any doubt in my logic. Powers were connected to consciousnesses, and so I should have access to the power. But now I did have access to my Matter Manipulation power from both of my sides at the same time. I even had my digital side running something in the background to continue to excavate the Forest Keeper floor below my fortress. Though now that I was aware of how it worked it would probably be harder to break the simulation, as gaming the system deliberately would be frowned upon. "Any more questions?" The Instructor asked. I had already asked Interface about the network, but it would be interesting to get a second take on it. It was where I would live outside of the competitive simulations after all, if I earned enough from my followers and patrons to continue anyway. "What is the network, and how many people are on it?" I asked. "That is a big question that needs some background." The Instructor said. "First off, you have to know that the distance between sentient species in the universe is vast. Faster than light travel isn''t practical. It is possible, but local relative time has to be observed, so it takes millenia to cross the vast distances between star systems. Faster than light communication, however, is possible with quantum entanglement. As a sentient species discovers tunable quantum entanglement they inevitably stumble upon an open attunement with someone on the network listening and are invited to the network. They are given technology and work is done to harvest the full potential of the energy of their sun, and the matter in their local system is harvested to build processing hardware. Their home planet is of course left to them, and they are provided enough energy to continue as they have done. And they are given access to a simulation, usually with the incentive that the more of the simulation they control the more power they will have access to. The real aim is to give people the chance to be digitised onto the network." Having apparently been digitised myself, I wasn''t sure if it was such a great thing. But perhaps I lacked the context to appreciate it, and it seemed likely that I did agree to it and I would have had the context when I did so. "It is hard to say how many sentient beings are on the network." The Instructor said. "They are all being simulated at different speeds, using a nearly unlimited number of points of intercommunication. Ten billion sentients per planet, a billion sentient holding planets per galaxy, and new ones connecting constantly. A hundred billion galaxies or more in the universe. And any of those numbers could be smaller than reality by an order of magnitude or more." The Instructor stood up and stretched, his arms over his head. "That should about do it?" The Instructor asked. I nodded and followed him as we left the stone cottage and bonfire. "I''ll be sending an army against the plains biome." The Instructor said. "I have access to the more dangerous winter creatures now that the neutral realm has gotten cold enough. They should be enough to push even you, though the ideal would be if you would form an army as well. My current powers push me towards being both an assassin and a general, and being a general is more straightforward." "What?" I asked. "Why are you warning me?" "It makes it more interesting." The Instructor said. "And I freely admit that I am misdirecting you. But with the best sort of misdirection, a full scale attack." He put his hand on my shoulder and teleported me back to the top of my fortress, then waved and teleported away. Chapter 77 - Quests The doors to the fortress were still open. I shook my head at that oversight as I went through them, closing and barring them behind me. I took a few moments to replace the stone blocking the doors and then headed down the stairs to the guard room. Brutus and Bala were there, still on guard, and those doors were open as well. "Did anything come through while I was gone?" I asked. "No my lord." Brutus said. "Are the doors secured again?" "They are." I said. "This area doesn''t need to be guarded while it is sealed. Thank you for guarding it while I was gone." Brutus nodded and he and Bala headed down the hallway to the fortress stairs ahead of me. I dropped back a bit and dropped into the main simulation. Chantelle was there and the simulation was zoomed in to a ward that was expanded out so that all of the symbols were visible. She noticed me arrive and twirled her hand in the air, the ward rotating to a fixed point and then stopping at her gesture. The hand gestures weren''t required in any way, as modifying the simulation was as easy as moving her hand was, but it did add an air of mastery to her manipulations. "Look, here." She said, pointing to a symbol that was near the start of the ward. There was a flash of energy at the top of the symbol that then progressed down it, erasing as it went. When it reached the bottom the destroying energy went in both directions from the symbol, further into the ward and back to the symbols earlier, destroying as it went. The ward itself was disconnected from the mana source and was floating untethered as the energy destroyed it. "That first symbol is the one that defines the projection field of the ward." Chantelle said. "The destructive energy somehow travels back from the actual projection field and attacks that symbol first, then flows through the rest of the ward. I can put a triggered splitter symbol that will activate on the destruction of the first symbol, and then the first symbol of the second path can be to cut the thread and isolate the ward." She was manipulating the ward as she spoke. First she inserted a symbol that was forked like a ''Y'', but had another leg that was coming up in the third dimension. The input was at the bottom, that connected to the mana source, and the outputs were the tops of the ''Y''. The fourth looked like it must be the trigger as it was connected to the symbol on the left of the ''Y''. The rest of the ward was the same, with the projection field symbol duplicated, and a new symbol before it on the right of the ''Y'' that was linked to the connection between the left ''Y'' and its next symbol and the joining symbol that hooked the symbols back into the rest of the ward. "And it should work like this." Chantelle said. The same flash of energy started at the first projection field symbol, but as it got partway down that part of the ward was cut away from the rest of the ward. The energy destroyed it but couldn''t get to the rest of the ward. "There shouldn''t even be any flicker to the ward when it switches over." Chantelle said. "Then it is just a matter of stacking in enough isolators so that he thinks his power doesn''t work on the new wards." "Have you actually tested it out there?" I asked, indicating outer simulation. "Well, no." Chantelle said. "I''ve written them into both sets of wards, the ones for the fortress and for the claim. The guy would have to break the wards again for it to be tested. Why was he breaking the wards anyway?" "I didn''t ask." I said. "I think he was just using it as a doorbell, though." Chantelle nodded and then went back to studying the ward. "I could have it trigger a physical barrier on a variable that would make it expand quickly..." Chantelle said. "It would take a big burst of power, but it would shove him away when he tried to break the wards."This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Chantelle reached up her hand to tweak the ward but then stopped and waved it away, returning the simulation to a normal scale of the ward room. "What did he want, anyway?" Chantelle asked. "His name is The Instructor." I said. "And apparently he helps out new Champions. He told me quite a bit about how things work for us. I will have to go and save the Plains Keepers, though, as he said that he will be attacking them with an army of winter monsters that are worse than is usually seen in this realm." "And you believed him?" Chantelle asked. "I did." I said. "He was very believable in his motivations, and there wasn''t a convincing reason for him to lie about the other things he said. Though he did say it was a misdirection, it was a misdirection in the form of an actual attack." "So you will be leaving then?" Chantelle asked. "I was told that I should form an army to fight his army." I said. "But I only need to save the minimum viable population of Plains Keepers. I would prefer to save more than that, and all of them in the ideal result. But if I can avoid risking any of our people by getting there first and negotiating with them before the army arrives that is what I want to try. I would need you to be safe first, though." "I have been working on my personal barrier." Chantelle said. "If I am connected to the fortress mana crystal, as I am with my own pendant, I can hold out indefinitely. With the new smaller and more focused symbols anyone who tries to break the ward will get a very nasty surprise. Like losing an arm." Well that certainly sounded as though she had it under control. "Make sure you can protect the people that can be used as hostages against you too." I said. "It worked against us before, and I would rather not repeat it." Chantelle nodded. "I will work something out." Chantelle said. "Although with my father preparing against the sort of attack that took him down last time we should be safer." Chantelle went back to her ward and I turned my focus to my body. I had walked it to the bed in my Pocket Dimension and sat down on it. There were several things that The Instructor had mentioned about my System interface, but the one that stood out that I wanted to explore was quests. Being able to define and offer tasks that had their rewards guaranteed by the System. When I opened my Goal Progress I sent a request at the interface to the System requesting that specifically. I just did the same this time but for Quests. I had a clear image of what I thought it should be, focusing on that while believing that The Instructor knew what he was talking about. After a few moments, and resending the request I got a response.
Error accessing undefined functionality...
Error resolving... System Evolution approved... Implementing Quests... Success: New quest tab available.
That seems to have worked. I created a data packet for a new quest, assigning it to Dael, Veya, and Mal''Thorn requesting them to meet me at the portal at the top of the fortress and sent it to the System interface.
Error: Invalid quest, reward required
Hmm. I had an idea for the rewards of the quests that I gave out. I converted some stone into the super stone that the fortress was made from and formed it into a coin five centimeters wide, a quarter of the size of my palm, and half a centimeter thick. It was quite hefty at that size, weighing about fifty grams, twice as much as it looked like it should. Being that thin the coin was transparent and a deep blue, as though it was made from sapphire. I formed an intricate design on both sides, and along the thin edge of it. On the front I quartered the design and put in a symbol for each of the four biomes. A tree for the Forest, a mountain for Mountain, a seeding grain for Plains, and a fish for Ocean. The back of the coin got symbols for the four original gods that existed. A halo for Good, devil horns for Evil, a snowflake for Winter, and a sun for Summer. And around the edge got a vine wrapping the whole thing. Once I had it designed it was simple to duplicate four copies of it, three for the quest and one for me to duplicate more from. I made the quest again, this time designating the coins as the rewards, one for each of the targets. The three coins disappeared and I spent some time making more, as well as creating a stock of mana crystal orbs. A few minutes later Dael arrived at the top of the stairs and I went to see him. "My lord." Dael said, bowing. "I saw... A display projection for a quest? It was a blue square in front of me, at the top was the word ''Quest'' and under that a description, telling myself, Veya, and Mal''Thorn to meet you here. Under that were the words ''Accept'' and ''Refuse''. I thought ''accept'' and it went away. It came back when I felt the need to see it again, this time with ''Active Quests'' at the top." Veya had come as Dael was explaining, nodding along. "This is something you did, yes?" Veya asked. "It was, yes." I said. "It''s a new Champion thing I just got access to. Did you get a coin?" "You mean a Fortress Coin?" Dael asked. "It was listed as a reward, but I haven''t received anything like that." Mal''Thorn arrived, breathing a little heavily. He opened his mouth to speak but before he could three coins materialised out of the air, one in front of each of them. Chapter 78 - Beginning Economy Dael, Veya, and Mal''Thorn each took their coin from the air as it floated in front of them, flipping it and studying both sides. "This is a Fortress Coin?" Mal''Thorn asked. "I hadn''t named it, but it seems the quest system has done that for me." I said. "Yes, those are Fortress Coins. The idea is that people will be able to complete quests that I assign and receive the Fortress Coins as reward. Then they will be able to turn the Fortress Coins in to me to gain resources by weight. One coin would get ten kilograms of a material." "What sort of material?" Dael asked. "I can do anything I have a sample of." I said. "Gold is as easy for me to make as copper, though copper is half the weight of gold by volume. I would like to restrict it to base level raw materials, though. Wood, of different densities, cotton, wool, silk, metal ingots, that sort of thing. There might be a few things outside of the weight category, mana crystals come to mind. One coin for a single large mana crystal orb, or three mediums, or nine smalls." "Those values don''t add up." Veya said. "Ten kilograms of copper isn''t equivalent to ten kilograms of silk." "It is to me." I said. "If it takes me the same amount of effort to create each, why should I artificially adjust the price. If people would like to trade the raw resources to other places where the value is seen differently then that is their business. On that track, it will cost one Fortress Coin to use the portal nexus to go between two existing destinations, and ten for a new destination to be added to the portal system." I was quite happy with the whole system. I wanted the people under my protection to have the highest quality of life possible, but I didn''t know what they most wanted. With this coin system I would be able to assign quests that gave out coins and then they could use the coins to request the things they needed. I could use my digital presences to do the exchanges so as to not intimidate people. And with people being able to add destinations to the portal system I would be getting told where the best places to have my portals set up would be. "What are the symbols on the coins?" Mal''Thorn asked. "One for each of the biomes on one side, one for each of the original gods on the other." I said. I made a new quest, a separate one for each of them this time, for them to make a report of the craftsmen in each of their groups and what raw materials they required for their crafts. I set the reward for each at five coins. "I just got a new... Quest?" Dael said. "Yes, they''re called quests." I said. I pulled up the new quest tab that I had gotten.
Quests
Accepted Rejected Completed In Progress Total Coins
6 0 3 3 18
I could bring up more details on any of the categories, which gave details of the quests. Bringing up the ''In Progress'' quests I got a screen that showed the quests that were active.
Quests In Progress
Description Submit a report to Lord C.C. detailing the craftsmen within your people and the materials they require for their crafts
Assigned to Dael, Veya, Mal''Thorn
Quest type Single Reward Five Fortress Coins
Quest type was interesting. I made a new quest to test a different type and assigned it to the nexus guard room, and after I waited for the ''Accepted'' count to go up it added to the ''In Progress'' blue screen.
Quests In Progress
Description Submit a report to Lord C.C. detailing the craftsmen within your people and the materials they require for their crafts
Assigned to Dael, Veya, Mal''Thorn
Quest type Single Reward Five Fortress Coins
Description Guard the Portal Nexus room
Assigned to Portal Nexus Guards
Quest type Ongoing: Per day Reward One Fortress Coin
That worked exactly as I was expecting it to. Two of my coins disappeared into the System, one for each of the guards that were guarding the portal nexus room now. They would receive their coins once they had been on guard for a full day. The System would reserve a coin for each guard when they started guarding the room, and bringing up their quest screen should give them a countdown until their day of guard duty was done. They were probably confused about the System screen. Dael was still standing on the landing with Mal''Thorn and Veya, talking amongst themselves.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. "Dael." I said. "I just gave the guards that are guarding the portal nexus room an ongoing quest. They will receive a single Fortress Coin for every full day that they have guarded the room. They are probably confused as to what it is, if you could explain it to them and what I''m trying to achieve with it?" "Yes my lord." Dael said. "You don''t need to pay us to guard for you, though. It is our duty to do so, and it is what the guards contribute to the fortress, just as our farmers contribute with the food that they grow." "I want to encourage contribution to the betterment of the fortress." I said. "I will issue a quest for the farmers as well, based upon the food that they contribute, one coin per ten kilograms of quality food. I will provide the food to the people of the fortress for free as a basic right." I created yet another quest, this one asking the three leaders for a report on how much and what type of food they required and put a five coin reward on it too. Another one for the farmers providing food for the fortress under the terms of my treaty with the druids. I didn''t know who they were, but the quest system seemed to work anyway. And just because I was going quest crazy at the moment I made another quest requesting a report from the three of them on what quests would be appropriate for their people, how they could benefit the fortress, for another five coins. I was almost out of the coins I had stockpiled with that assigning spree, and I would need to create some more before any of the ongoing costs ticked over. "That should do it." I said. "You can have your people spend their coins at any of my presences, the druids have one in their storytelling room. I will need to set one up in a busy area for the humans and another for the Forest Keepers." They all turned to leave after giving me a short bow. "Mal''Thorn, if you could stay a moment." I said. "I need to get to the Plains biome, would you happen to know where it is relative to us here?" "The Plains biome is diagonal to the Forest." Mal''Thorn said. "The Mountain biome is to the north and south, and the Ocean biome is to the east and west. You can get to the Plains biome at the intersection of all four biomes. We are near the center of the Forest going east to west, so the four intersections are two hundred and fifteen kilometers to the northwest, two hundred and twenty kilometers to the northeast, one hundred and forty five kilometers to the southeast, and one hundred and forty kilometers to the southwest." Right, the geography of this simulation is looped. "Do you have a map of the plane?" I asked. "We''ve never had the need of one, no." Mal''Thorn said. "We do not travel outside of our domain very often." The head priest of summer, John, would probably be the person to ask. "Thank you." I said to Mal''Thorn, dismissing him. I went down the stairs after him, stopping on the third floor where John had his room. I was about to knock on John''s door when I got another ping saying I''d gotten a message from a follower. Had I been an idiot again? I liked my coin idea. I frowned, opening the message.
Message from follower: Dragonsword
Are you going to develop magic bags for your people where you use a small portal linked to a space you enclose that they can store stuff in?
That... actually sounds like a good idea. And I don''t think I would have thought of it any time soon. It would have to be quite expensive for my people to buy, as carving Pocket Dimension symbols takes quite some time. Thank you Dragonsword, whoever or whatever you are. Completely distracted me from what I was doing. I shook my head and knocked on John''s door. Thirty seconds later John opened it. "Hey, lord C.C., welcome." He said, sweeping his arm back, gesturing for me to enter. His room was well furnished, with wooden furniture and rugs on the floor. He even had an altar set up. "You seem to have settled in well." I said. "The villagers gave me some things." John said. "Very kind of them, especially considering they don''t worship either of the gods. Did you come to check up on me?" "I was wondering if you would be able to help me with a map." I said. Although, now that I thought about it I could probably form a map myself just with the distances I had been given. "Do you have any paper and pens?" John asked. "Can''t very well write you a map without anything to write with. Not that it would be a great map, mind you." "I don''t, though I could likely get some easily enough." I said. "It has only occurred to me after coming here that I could make one myself, it just wouldn''t have much detail." I stared off into space, recalling distances I had travelled and compared it to the distances that Mal''Thorn had given me. "Okay then." John said, dragging my attention back to him. "Thanks for visiting, then?" I smiled. "Yes, thank you." I said. I headed back up to my Pocket Dimension and started laying out the skeleton of a map on a screen I''d manifested in my local simulation. It was truly basic, but it gave me an idea of where things were in the world. Some of the distances might be off, considering I was going by my memories and distances to Chantelle in them. And it was likely that not everything was aligned so closely north-south as I had it, as I had called the direction that Chantelle had been taken to ''north''. Chapter 79 - Fortress Shop It turned out to be faster to go to the Mountain City and then go east to the Plains biome. West would be a shorter distance, but the road that I saw that went from the south of the city ended up going east. The plains must provide a sizeable amount of food to the city, and the road must be a trade route. I would be able to make forty kilometers an hour on a road, which would mean I could make it to the edge of the plains in a little over three hours. And then however long after that to get to the Plains Keepers. I would be expecting The Instructor to be assembling his army on the border of the Mountain and Plains biomes, but that should take him some time. I needed to get a population of Plains Keepers under my protection, and it seemed only fair to give them a floor of the same area as the Forest Keepers got, though it wouldn''t need to be nearly as tall. And to get started on that I would want a second excavator running. The first one I made wasn''t the most efficient I could have done, so I started working out the variables that I could maximise. The range of the active part of my Matter Manipulation power hadn''t changed, twenty meters was the limit I could affect, but that was with all of my output focused at the point twenty meters away. Fifteen meters was more practically the limit of my range. If I have a small portal in the center of my working area that gives me a thirty meter range I can comfortably work in, both horizontally and vertically. One of the slow things about the first excavator is that I was moving the multiple tonnes of stone with my power, which was good at moving tonnes of material, but bad at doing it at any speed. Using gravity would speed up the process a lot, though a good chunk of time would still be needed to convert the stone of the edges of the room into my stone building material. The new excavator I designed as being a one hundred and twenty meter loop of Arachne silk steel. The plan would be to cut out a thin band of stone at the bottom of where I wanted to excavate, insert the new excavator there, then match the cut at the top, and then finally cut away the stone around the edges between the top and bottom. The Pocket Dimension side of the portal would be suspended in the air and the whole thirty meter square of stone would fall through. It would take me almost twelve hours to carve the new excavator if I focused exclusively on that, with it running as a background process that I would check in on it would take twice that. But it wasn''t something that was time critical right now, the Forest Keepers had their initial space to work with and the Plains Keepers weren''t even here yet. It would be worth doing, though, as it would cut the time to completion for the Forest Keeper floor from fourteen days to eight days. And the Plains Keeper floor, if it was ten meters tall, from eight days to six days. With that done and working, I started making the new digital presences for the human and Forest Keeper floors. I modified the design a bit from the ones I had been making so far, adding a meter and a half tall door on the front that I could retract to allow items to be placed inside, and a slot for coins. I went through the existing eight presences I had made and updated them to the new design too. Then I spent some time just duplicating Fortress Coins. I wanted at least a thousand ready as a buffer for the next quest, just in case. I made the new quest I wanted, but hesitated before sending it to the System. The quests that I had made so far had had small tweaks to them in the language, and it would be useful to be able to preview the quest before making it go live... I added a ''preview'' field to the quest data and set it to true, then sent it to the System.
Quest Preview
Description Turn in One Kilogram of raw material to a Fortress Presence (material must be the first of its type submitted to this quest)
Assigned to Fortress Citizens
Quest type Unique: Scavenger Hunt Reward One Fortress Coin
Submit Quest Remove Quest
Calling my presences Fortress Presences was new, though I was happy with it. This would give everyone in the fortress a chance at receiving a coin. Which might make me very busy in the short term, but it would give me an excellent idea as to what the people of my fortress wanted as well. I was happy with that trade off. I made sure the two new presences were on the human and Forest Keeper floors and then focused on the Submit Quest option. The Quest Preview screen disappeared, replaced immediately with a new one.
Quest
Description Turn in One Kilogram of raw material to a Fortress Presence (material must be the first of its type submitted to this quest)
Reward One Fortress Coin Accept Reject
Apparently I was included as a citizen of the fortress. I accepted the quest and the screen disappeared. I focused on the quest again and the screen reappeared, along with an indication of where the nearest Fortress Presence was. For me it was the two that were sitting at the portal to the top of my fortress.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. I was going to test it myself, using a kilogram of the stone I used for building so that I didn''t take away a material that other people could submit, when I got a ping for attention from my presence in the druid storyteller room. I pulled the sound and visual up. Ian, the rabbit man that I had healed, was standing in front of the presence with several bags. "So, how does this work then." Ian said quietly, obviously talking to himself. I guess the presence had faded into an object that was just always there in the background for it to be so casually approached even by someone who had a relationship with me. I opened the doors on the presence, folding the stone back out of the way. "Ah, you just have to indicate that you want to use it." Ian said. "Now, one at a time, or all at once... Probably best to test it with two to see what happens, then I can do the rest one by one if it needs it done that way." The people of the fortress would be more comfortable doing the quest if I didn''t interact with them, I think, so I stayed quiet. Ian placed two bags into the large space and stepped back. I closed the doors and then got a prompt from the System.
Action Required
You have received your first submissions for a quest. You need to designate an area for submitted items to be stored (the System will not store them for you).
In my Pocket Dimension I quickly created a stone tray with compartments that would hold one kilogram of most stuff and sent that to the System as my designated area. Two of the compartments filled up, both with white powder of some sort. The System sent me a ping for a new interface.
Fortress Storage
Fortress Coins One thousand two hundred and thirty one
Plain white flour One Kilogram
Refined table salt One Kilogram
And the System would track it all for me, nice. I switched back to the presence that Ian was using and played back from where I had left. The System had materialised the coins in the presence and let them roll out of the coin slot, where they had fallen on the floor. I had intended the coin slot as a way to input coins into the presence, not as the source of them being output. I modified the design so that there was a tray in front of the slot to catch the coins when they appeared and updated the presence Ian was using, then the others. "Hey, it changed." Ian said. I wrote a program that would open the doors to the presences whenever someone was waiting for them and set it running in the background. The doors of the presence obediently opened again and Ian put the rest of the stuff he had brought, including two glass bottles full of liquid, inside. Back in the Pocket Dimension six more compartments filled up, leaving my Fortress Storage showing one kilogram each of pepper, white sugar, cinnamon, cane sugar, olive oil, and water. The glass bottles appeared clean next to my designated storage area. Six more coins rolled out of the presence, this time stacking up in the waiting tray. Ian was moving his eyes back and forth, reading a screen in front of him that I couldn''t see, a smile coming over his face. The doors of the presence opened again and Ian reached in and pulled out a single bag. "It was worth trying giving the same thing twice." Ian said. "Very clear that it had already been added." He reached out for the stack of coins, holding all eight coins that he had earned in a short time. "That was fun." Ian said. "I have no idea what to do with these though. And I might have been a bit hasty, that was the last of the cinnamon and white sugar. Oh well, a Chef has to experiment sometimes." Okay, the System obviously needed a display to show what Fortress Coins could be used for. I knew I could be pushing it, but I sent a request to the System to access the Fortress Store. To my surprise it appeared immediately.
Fortress Shop
Portal Travel One Fortress Coin
New Portal Destination
Raw Material (ten kilograms) One Fortress Coin
Music One Fortress Coin
That looked good enough, though it changed the name to ''Shop'' instead of ''Store'', and I''m not sure how I felt about the System adding Music to the list, though music was something I was interested in doing. Now I just needed to somehow communicate opening the store to Ian. The System seemed to integrate perfectly to intent control, so I made a quick quest and assigned it to Ian. It just told him to say ''Fortress Shop'' in front of a Fortress Presence, and the reward was access to the shop. Ian frowned as the Quest screen appeared in front of him, reading for a few moments. "Fortress Shop." Ian said, followed by a look of surprise. The doors on the presence closed as he was reading the list. "Raw material." Ian said. "Cinnamon. Now what do I do? Oh, it cost a coin." He put a coin into the slot on the presence and it dematerialised, appearing back on one of the stacks of coins I had made.
Action Required
Ten kilograms of cinnamon has been requested from the Fortress Shop, zero kilograms are available (One kilogram is reserved). A container is also required.
Chapter 80 - Bag of Holding In my Pocket Dimension next to the designated storage area for the Fortress Shop I made a ten meter by ten meter stone tray with partitions to section it into one hundred kilogram sections, over one hundred and fifty storage bays. The first one I filled with twenty kilograms of cinnamon, and made a dozen ten kilogram sealed cloth bags, patterning them after the bags Ian had brought the material in. The glass bottles turned into large flat bottom flasks with cork stoppers to contain the ten kilograms of the liquids. After that I moved on to making a small stockpile of the other raw materials I had gotten. While I was working on that I started on a thread portal that would be the basis of the Bag of Holding, taking priority from the new excavator''s thread portal. I still had the visual and sound feed up from Ian, and he was reading an interface. "There will be a delay of some time when requesting newly added materials, and for large requests of rarely requested materials." Ian said, muttering. "How long is ''some time''? Should I come back later?" Ian''s eyes started darting back and forth again, reading a new prompt, his eyebrows rising. "''Some time'' being several seconds." Ian said. "It should have just said ''wait for a moment''." He looked down at the doors to the presence so I opened them. He reached in and pulled out a ten kilogram bag that must contain the cinnamon. I looked over to the large storage bay and sure enough half of the cinnamon was gone. Ian opened the bag, stuck his finger into it, and then licked his finger. He nodded and set the bag down on a nearby table. I added a sensor inside of the presence to check when there was an item in there, and adjusted the program taking care of the doors to open them when one was detected. "Fortress Shop." Ian said. "Raw- Hang on, there''s a new option without a cost? Items. Oh, it opened a new list. What is a Bag of Holding?" I opened up the Fortress Shop myself.
Fortress Shop
Items -
Portal Travel One Fortress Coin
New Portal Destination Ten Fortress Coins
Raw Material (ten kilograms) One Fortress Coin
Music One Fortress Coin
I selected ''Items''. The new screen started with only one item, without a description, but it reshuffled as I thought about the Bag of Holding I was making and what its characteristics would be.
Fortress Shop - Items
Bag of Holding (small) One meter by one meter by half a meter storage space. Access is through a bag opening with a circumference of sixty centimeters. Weight of stored items is completely negated. Five Fortress Coins
Bag of Holding (medium) Two meters by two meters by one meter storage space. Access is through a bag opening with a circumference of two meters. Weight of stored items is completely negated. Ten Fortress Coins
Bag of Holding (large) Four meters by four meters by two meters storage space. Access is through a bag opening with a circumference of four meters. Weight of stored items is completely negated. Twenty Fortress Coins
I stopped adjusting it, as it was doing it live. The small one was a pretty large storage space that you would have to put your entire arm into to reach all parts of it. The medium was a small cramped room. And the large was a portable room you would be able to carry around with you. It was almost exactly what I had pictured when I was picking the Pocket Dimension power, though I was obviously happier with how it turned out now. "Oh, that''s what a Bag of Holding is." Ian said. "Funny that it seems to be working things out as I''m trying to use it. Five Fortress Coins is all that I will have left after I replace the white sugar... Bag of Holding, small." I had just finished making it. The bag itself would be empty, so I made it out of overlapping scales of my blue super stone. The thread for the portal itself was made of Arachne silk steel and it had a clip that would slide along it, sealing and opening the portal properly. The bag would be heavy due to the materials used, so it was mostly the loop of thread backed by the mesh of stone. It didn''t look very bag-like. Ian finished slotting in the five coins, one after the other. It was a little bit inconvenient, I just finish the first bag and the System made it disappear. I could have made a copy of most of it, only having to manually do the Pocket Dimension doorway symbols.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. I would have to make the next one again from scratch. It took thirty seconds to make the bag, and three minutes to carve the symbols. The doors of the presence opened and Ian took out the bag. Fully closed he could hold it easily in one hand. He opened it up fully and stuck his arm inside up to his shoulder, apparently feeling around the space. Which was just a small stone room in my Pocket Dimension with the portal fixed to the roof with more Arachne silk steel. Ian took his arm out of the bag and stuck his head inside, which made it look like he''d just lost his head. After that he tried to turn the bag inside out, which I hadn''t considered. The portal was double sided, so the material of the bag hit the stone of the ceiling of the room at the portal edge and stopped. He played with it for a few minutes more, putting the bag of cinnamon in it, pulling it out, putting the portal over the bag slowly from the top and it falling up into the storage space. The last was because gravity was in a fixed direction, down was opposite the portal, so as soon as over half of the mass of an item was through the portal it would pull itself through. Finally he had finished testing it and came back over to the presence. "Fortress Shop." Ian said. "Raw material. White sugar." The doors opened, the sugar in its bag, and Ian placed it in his bag of holding. "Eh, you got here quick." A badger man said. "How is it working?" "Remarkably." Ian said. "What did you bring?" "I was in the fields." The badger man said. "I got soil, water, grain, chaff, fertiliser, and vines." Half of that didn''t sound very useful. I pulled down the active feed I was watching, I would be pinged if something interesting happened. I spent a few minutes writing something that would duplicate the small amounts of raw materials I would get into lots of one hundred kilograms, expanding the storage as it is needed, and prioritising replacing things that were bought from the store. There were queues of people at each of the presences on the three floors, even the Forest Keeper one where they were still setting up. With that taken care of I took a presence with me down to the ward room. I had been meaning to set one up there for a while so that I could see the hologram that the detection ward showed when there were intruders on my land. Chantelle was standing in front of the table in the ward room facing the doorway, her hands resting on its surface and her eyes closed. I guessed that she was working on something in the simulation, so after fixing the presence in the roof above the table I sent her a ping. "Hmm?" She said, opening her eyes. "Oh, a quest window." She quickly read through it, then looked to me and raised an eyebrow. "I want people to contribute to the fortress." I said. "And at the same time find out what they would most want. I''ve been told that I can be terrifying, so this is a way for people to interact without being intimidated by me." Chantelle nodded. "I expect that will work quite well." She said. "Aren''t you going to be overwhelmed by people constantly giving you things, and requesting things of you?" I was talking to her out in the real world, so I sent her a ping to join me in my local simulation where I constantly modelled my surroundings. "Yes?" She asked, looking around. I hadn''t noticed that she had arrived, as she had taken up the same place as my model of her in the room. I summoned floating screens, one for each of the background tasks that I had going, all of my digital presences, my two parallel thread portals being made, and creating the stockpile of the materials I was gathering. I had quite a lot going on, and some of it was sharing limited resources. "That is such a cheat." Chantelle said. "You can create a set of rules and then just have it taken care of for you, extending as much as you want." "You should be able to do the same with your magic and warding?" I asked. "Nope." Chantelle said. "I can''t reach over great distances or use my magic in multiple places at once. And it isn''t something I''m able to start doing, your portals block magic, remember?" She looked through the screens that had the presences on them, settling on one that showed the ward room from the top down. "Oh, you have one of these up there now." She said. "Did you want to try interfacing between the two?" She waved her hand and I got a request to dismiss all but the screen in question, which I approved. "I''d really come to ask if you could make me a claim ward on a large full mana crystal, so I could contact the Keepers when I leave." I said. "But we could do set up the interface to the ward room first." We moved over to the main simulation, which was in the ward room as well, but was already modelling mana and the wards. "I originally thought we could use the fact that mana reacts to your power when you use it even if you can''t see it." Chantelle said. "But the way you write programs has a lot to do with interfaces with different things. If I extend that out to warding, even though it isn''t how they are typically used, there are symbols for detecting distance, which can be translated as a variable into the rest of the ward. This is everything that the detection ward can do." Chantelle sent me a data package request, which I accepted and then loaded up. The ward could be set as to what it alerted on, what it tracked, and even the frequency of the scans. And then there was the hologram part of the ward, which was complicated but already had hooks for it to be manipulated. Changing what was displayed, how the display was split, and manipulating the lists of tracked entities. We discussed and implemented an interface, where I was moving stone with my power and the ward was adjusting variables. Half an hour later it was working, and Chantelle had made the extra claim ward for me. I gave Chantelle permissions to access the interface, and now she could manipulate the detection ward and display without being in the room as well. With being able to see the fortress while I was gone, along with an instant way back with my pocket portal, I was ready to go see the Plains Keepers. Chapter 81 - Inventory I left the ward room and headed up to the druid floor, which had its portal permanently placed in the portal nexus room. Brutus and Bala were on guard there, though the druid portal was the only one in the room, so they were guarding an empty stone wall. "My lord." Brutus said, turning at the sound of me entering the room. "Dael explained the coins, and our being paid for a day of guarding, were something to do with being rewarded for contributing to the fortress. But what are they used for?" The portal nexus had a presence itself, but it was in the roof of the room to provide an aerial view. I moved it down to the stone guard stand that I had placed in the middle of the room to give the guards some cover. Most of the portals had presences of their own, but it would be useful to have one in the room itself. "You can open up the Fortress Shop by saying or thinking ''Fortress Shop'' at any of the presences in the fortress." I said. "That will give you a list of things that you can exchange coins for, materials, items, and services." To my surprise it was Bala who opened the interface first, using the voice option. He didn''t speak much when I was around. "Fortress Shop." Bala said. "Raw materials. Cooking. Wow, there are a lot of things in here. And the shop is all in our language. I don''t have any coins yet, though." I opened up the Fortress Storage screen to see the new categories of items.
Fortress Storage
Fortress Coins Nine hundred and two
Items Six items One item out of stock with purchase requests
Alchemy Forty five items Forty five items below storage quantity
Blacksmithing Twenty six items Twenty six items below storage quantity
Carpentry Twenty items Eighteen items below storage quantity
Cooking Thirty three items Thirty items below storage quantity
Farming Forty items Twenty eight items below storage quantity
General Eighty items Seventy items below storage quantity
Tailoring Forty items Thirty five items below storage quantity
Trash Forty five items Forty five items below storage quantity
And then immediately got a new window in front of it.
Action Required
''Bag of Holding, small'' has been purchased three times. Purchasers have been notified that complex items can take some time to be ready after purchase.
I dismissed the window and started my digital side on making the bags in the background, they should all be done in fifteen minutes time. Looking at the Fortress Storage screen, people had added over three hundred items so far, which I could easily see by the number of Fortress Coins that had been given out. Brutus and Bala were going through the different things in the shop, discussing them. I was preoccupied with the concept of Bags of Holding and wasn''t paying much attention to them. There was a problem with physically accessing the storage. You had to put your arm through the portal and into the storage space to get what you wanted out of it. If you stacked a lot of things into it then it wouldn''t be very useful at all, as you would have to pull a lot of things out to find the one thing you were looking for. Small items, like Fortress Coins, would fall through the larger items to the bottom of the storage. The System was already moving things around with the quests, so it should be possible to make the bags more intelligent. I reserved the first Bag of Holding for myself as it finished and pulled it through my pocket portal. Focusing on what I wanted the System to do I sent a request to summon a Fortress Coin through the Bag of Holding. I put my hand into the open bag and pulled out the coin. Putting it back into the bag the System dematerialised it, looking into the bag the coin was gone.
Inventory subsystem initialised
Inventory rules compiling... System Evolution approved... Implementing Inventory... Success: New Inventory tab available.
Inventory Characteristics
Inventory access is linked to Bags of Holding Inventory access is linked to each individual person. Only the entity assigned to the Bag of Holding can access the inventory function. Physical access is still possible. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.Fortress Coins do not take up physical storage space, they may be summoned by removing them from the Bag of Holding. Use of coins with the Fortress Shop is automatic upon purchase. Things bought from the Fortress Shop can be delivered directly to the inventory and quest submissions can be done from the inventory. Proximity to a Fortress Presence is still required for Shop and Quest interactions. Entities with inventory access may spend fractions of a Fortress Coin. Only whole Fortress Coins may be summoned from the inventory. Trade is possible between two entities with access to their own inventories.
That was... A huge change to how things would work. Bags of Holding could still be stolen, and the things inside them weren''t locked from other people accessing it, as securing their items was something that was the responsibility of the individual. I didn''t think it was something the System should do, and so the implementation didn''t do it. Likewise with other currencies, Fortress Coins would be tracked by the system but a coin from another currency would just be an item that would take up space and be tracked by the inventory. The interaction with quests and purchases made sense, though it wasn''t something I added when I was thinking about what I wanted the System to do. Spending of parts of a Fortress Coin was so someone could do things like buy one kilogram of a raw material with a tenth of a Fortress Coin and still have nine tenths left. And trading was just the interaction of two inventories, and would be handled by System screens. I was very happy with how it worked out, though it did change the Bag of Holding from being a useful item if you were travelling and wanted to carry a large amount to being a necessity for interacting with the fortress. Which would mean that I would likely need to make one Bag of Holding for every person in the fortress. It would be a great incentive for people to emigrate to the fortress though, as while it would be possible for outsiders to earn Fortress Coins, I wouldn''t be going out of my way to provide ways of earning them like I would be with my own citizens and bags of holding were expensive. I opened up the shop to check if the description for the bags had changed. There was a single new line added to their description, ''Provides Inventory access.'', with the word ''Inventory'' bolded. Focusing on the word brought up a screen explaining the inventory, which was the same as the Inventory Characteristics screen I had gotten earlier, except it also explained how to open the inventory. I assumed that the people who had purchased the bags were notified of the change, as they all had them by now. I moved the internal Pocket Dimension portal so that it linked the portal nexus room and the portal room that led to the basement of Gerry''s shop and left through it after giving Brutus and Bala several Fortress Coins each as back pay. I moved the connecting portals back to their resting places and walked up the stairs. I knocked on the door that led to the shop floor and waited. I was about to knock again when Gerry himself opened the door. "Hello and welcome again." Gerry said. "I was just preparing to open for the day." He went to the front of the shop and started raising shutters over the windows, unbarring the two doors as he went by them. He was much stronger than his small size would indicate. The street was just becoming lit by the coming day. "I did look through the portal you set up." Gerry said. "It just led to a small stone room. Quite interesting, because I know that it is solid stone down there, and the stone is completely different than anything I''d ever seen before. But still just the size of a storage room." "You would have had to speak or go into the room." I said. "Then you would have been asked what destination you wanted to connect to. Though the process has changed now that I have a few more things set up. It costs Fortress Coins to use the portals now, one coin allows the one way travel of up to twenty people to a single destination." "And what is a Fortress Coin?" Gerry asked. "The currency of my realm." I said. "A single coin can allow you to use the portal network, or exchange for ten kilograms of any raw material that the fortress has a sample of, ten coins buys a request for a new destination to be added to the portal network." I considered for a moment and then created a quest for Gerry for a once off quest to provide one kilogram each of two raw materials that were new to the fortress. Gerry stopped what he was doing and turned to look at me. "What is this?" Gerry asked, gesturing in front of himself. "A quest." I said. "After you accept it, once you fulfil the conditions you will get the stated reward. You can bring up the quest and where to hand it in by thinking of it after you''ve accepted." Gerry nodded and went to get two bolts of cloth, then headed down the stairs with them. "These are heavier than the one kilogram required by the ''quest''." Gerry said. "At an estimate there is two kilograms left on each, about half of the full bolt. What will happen to the remainder?" "I''m not sure." I said. "It has likely come up, but I didn''t see what the result was." We arrived at the portal through which was a portal room that had a presence in it with the new doors that opened as he approached. "They weren''t here last time." Gerry said. He placed the two bolts into the presence which closed for a few moments, then opened as two Fortress Coins rolled into the tray from the coin slot. The two bolts of cloth were still in the presence, but half of the cloth from both of them had disappeared. "It looks as though it only takes one kilogram if more is there." I said. "Citizens of my fortress have this as an unlimited open quest, and I would welcome you becoming one. But with two coins you have access to portal travel to and from the fortress. I''m sure my people would like the opportunity to buy some of your wares. Say, or think, ''Fortress Shop'' while in front of the Fortress Presence to access the interface." Gerry''s eyes grew wider and wider as they scanned up and down, reading through the Shop listings. Chapter 82 - Mountain Keepers "You will need both of those Fortress Coins." I said. "One will get you to my fortress and the other will allow you to return. I would suggest you sell your wares for Fortress Coins, and if you take any raw materials you will likely find one of my people will be eager to split the rewards of the quest with you." "The portal in the basement isn''t wide enough for any sort of cart or wagon to fit through." Gerry said. "That will limit how much I can transport." "You have the Fortress Shop open, pull up the Items menu." I said. "The Bags of Holding should be what you are looking for." It took him a few moments to get to the listing, then his jaw dropped. "Thirty two cubic meters of storage, with full weight negation." Gerry said. "That is more than what a wagon can carry, but would allow much faster travel. What is an Inventory though-" His question prompted the System to bring up the description for the Inventory for him, and I watched his face settle into a frown as he took it in. "Frank and I used to be wagoners before we earned enough to settle down in the city." Gerry said. "This. This will make wagons obsolete. How do I join your fortress?" "I''m not sure how individuals would join." I said. "I usually have to negotiate with the leaders of different groups, and then a treaty is formed that makes the people of a group citizens, on my side I offer a place to survive the end of the world that is coming, and I ask that my people work for the betterment of the fortress. Fortress Coins are the incentive to do that now. Is there a leprechaun town somewhere?" "There is." Gerry said. "In the hills that separate the Mountains and the Plains, fifty kilometers north of the road. They should have scouts out that will see you if you are heading anywhere near them. If you will wait for a minute?" I nodded and he left up the stairs to the second floor of the shop. A few minutes later the woman leprechaun that was here the last time I used the portal came down the stairs, she scowled at me. "You have him making us leave?" She asked. "The world is ending." I said. "I gave him the option of joining my fortress where it is safe." "And why are you worthy of our trust?" She asked. "I am a Champion whose goal it is to save species from the end of the world." I said. "And I make treaties, presided over by Keepers, that offer a safe place." She stopped scowling at me and turned away to finish opening the shop. Gerry came back down a minute later with a thick letter sealed with red wax. He looked between me and his wife before saying something to her in his language. She replied shortly in the same language and Gerry turned to face me. "She doesn''t trust outsiders much." Gerry said. "This is a letter of introduction to the leprechaun leader. I would like to swear fealty to you now, for myself and my family." Great. I had no idea how to deal with that properly. I was dealing more with the System than with the native world magic and treaty system though, and that worked by intent. So just go with it and hope for the best, I guess. "Do you swear that you and yours will work for the benefit of the Fortress?" I asked. "I do." Gerry said. "Then I swear that you will have safe place in the Fortress." I said. "I accept you, and your people, as citizens of my realm." I got a ping from the system that my goal progress had updated.
Goal progress
Species with which you have a treaty offering sanctuary from the end of the world.
Major species 1/4
Forest Keepers
Biome Forest
Population 1,602
Minimum Viable Population 200
Minor species 3/5 (3/4)
Beastpeople
Biome Plains
Population 109
Minimum Viable Population 60
Humans
Biome Mountain, Forest, or Plains
Population 209
Minimum Viable Population 120
Leprechauns
Biome Mountain or Plains
Population 5
Minimum Viable Population 90
That seems to have worked. I motioned for Gerry to stand from where he was kneeling on the floor and took the letter from him. "I probably won''t go directly to the leprechaun town." I said. "I''m in the middle of dealing with another issue right now. There are five of you?"Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. "Yes my lord." Gerry said. "Myself, my wife, and our three children. I received the quest to provide raw materials." "As did I." Gerry''s wife said. "You should be set, then." I said. "One of the groups in my fortress should be happy to host you until I can get you set up properly. I should be going." Gerry and his wife both bowed to me as I left. Out on the main street of the city the traffic was just starting up for the day. I set off down the street to the south at a jog, getting some odd looks from the people I was dodging around. There were few enough wagons on the streets that crossed the main street that I was able to easily make my way between them. The city was huge. Each block was one hundred meters long with ten meter wide streets on either side, and I went thirty blocks before making it to the wall of the city. The main street ran right up to the wall where there was a huge gate thrown open that was guarded by six priests. Before the gate, on either side of the main street, there was a large area where well over a hundred wagons were waiting. Every few minutes one would go through the gate and down the tunnel behind it. The priests didn''t look like they were doing anything to hinder the wagons, but there also wasn''t any foot traffic leaving through the tunnel. I made my way to the gate and looked down into the tunnel. This was probably where they had trapped and killed me before, so I was a little bit hesitant, but it was also the only exit from the city that I knew about. I waited for the next wagon to approach the gate and then followed after it, half expecting the priests to stop me. One of them looked at me as I crossed the threshold into the tunnel, but he made no move to stop me. I ran around the wagon in front of me and then continued to run through the tunnel until I got out the other side. There were six priests guarding the exit as well, but they didn''t make any move to stop me as I left. I started running down the smooth stone road, which was wide enough for two wagons to easily ride side by side with a half-meter stone lip on either side to prevent falling off. The wagons on the road were spaced out with one wagon every few hundred meters, and after I passed the fifth one the road cleared up. I picked up my speed, topping out at just over forty kilometers an hour on the slight downward slope. I settled into an easy rhythm, pushing the boundaries of how much pain I could deal with from refreshing the energy in my muscles. Almost an hour later I saw the first wagon coming the other way, and two hundred meters after that a second one, and another after that. I slowed my pace by half and made my way around them. At roughly forty kilometers along the road from the exit of the city I came across a wagon rest point. It was a large flat area that spread one hundred meters on either side of the road with thick walls surrounding it. There were a lot of wagons inside, and they were leaving up the road to the city one by one every five minutes, maintaining the two hundred meter gap between wagons. I went through the rest zone making it to the other side where there were wagons exiting to travel along the road. I started running again, going at my slower twenty kilometers an hour pace, dodging around the wagons until the road cleared again. I ran for another half an hour after that before coming to a ridge running to the north that met the road nicely. I headed off the road and up along the ridge for three hundred meters before stopping and taking the claim ward that Chantelle had made for me out of my pocket portal. I put the ward back through to my pocket dimension and pulled it out five times with about one second in between before leaving it in my Pocket Dimension and heading further up into the mountains. I repeated this roughly every three hundred meters, digging handholds into the mountain when I needed to to continue in the direction I was going. After a few kilometers I was at a snow covered peak and was just in the process of doing it yet again when I heard a whistle to my left. Two Mountain Keepers seemed to materialise from the snow, the short white fur that covered their entire bodies camouflaging them perfectly, and their huge ski-like feet allowing them to walk on the top of the snow without making any sound. "We see you, human?-" The first said. "Is he human?" The other said. "Not lost, not cold, flickering a claim not ours. He is seen, not human." "We see you." The first said. "You were calling for our attention?" "I came to offer terms." I said. "A safe place to survive the end of the world and citizenship in my realm. In return those who join me would be expected to contribute to the benefit of all of my people." "Terms, he says." The second one said. "Not allowed to accept terms, are we. Bound to winter. World be ending, bound to winter, no more of the Barbegazi. The Mountains will go on." "The terms are good, and surprisingly so." The first said. "If we could add that we would not be made to fight in any capacity there may be a path to safety. What say you?" "I would agree to that." I said. "More, more, and more again." The second said. "Yes, more again." The first said. "If you would give us a few minutes?" I nodded and the two Mountain Keepers gripped hands and walked into the snow, sinking beneath the surface. The second one seemed more than a little bit crazy. Five minutes later four Mountain Keepers returned out of the snow and the original two nodded to me and left without a word. "We are new Mountain Keepers." The new two said together. "We are unbound, and we accept the terms of the treaty." My goal progress updated again and I opened it up.
Goal progress
Species with which you have a treaty offering sanctuary from the end of the world.
Major species 2/4
Forest Keepers
Biome Forest
Population 1,612
Minimum Viable Population 200
Mountain Keepers
Biome Mountain
Population 2
Minimum Viable Population 2
Minor species 3/5 (3/4)
Beastpeople
Biome Plains
Population 109
Minimum Viable Population 60
Humans
Biome Mountain, Forest, or Plains
Population 209
Minimum Viable Population 120
Leprechauns
Biome Mountain or Plains
Population 5
Minimum Viable Population 90
Chapter 83 - Leprechauns "Mountain Keepers have a Minimum Viable Population of only two of you?" I asked. The two Mountain Keepers looked at each other. "Primary?" The one on the left asked. "Primary." The other said, nodding. They turned back to face me. "Viable population, minimal." The one on the right, Primary, said. "So long as we are we and not I we can make more, the mountain heart assists." "From two we can make more, more, and more again." The left one, Secondary, said. Interesting, it seemed as though they could duplicate themselves, if I was understanding it correctly. So long as there were two of them they could make more any time they wished. "What do you require in a living space?" I asked. "Food, water, temperature, environmental features?" "We can form a Mountain Seed, which will provide most of what we require." Primary said. "We only require an area of stone, and perhaps access to water. We can form ore seeds that will grow through stone to form veins of different metals, which is what we eat. Cold is preferable, but we dig down into the Mountain and so are used to more moderate temperatures as well." I pulled out my larger pocket portal and formed it into a doorway, placing the exit along the wall of the portal room that connected the Forest Keeper floor and their city. I led the two Mountain Keepers through the doorway and to the Forest Keeper floor. There were Forest Keepers moving back and forth from their city, carrying chests with them. I had already started on the stairs down from the Forest Keeper floor and I took the Mountain Keepers down them. At the first landing I removed the wall that was made of my fortress stone and excavated a small alcove into the grey stone beyond it. I had to bring a spare thread portal I had made through my remaining small pocket portal to speed up the process. After I was done I brought through a presence and set the thread portal doorway against one of the walls. "This will be your floor, then." I said. "It can be defined as a cylinder one kilometer wide and one hundred and fifty meters down from the ceiling here. There is a lot of weight resting on your floor, I will be back later to put in reinforcement columns." I would put the Plains Keepers on the floor below this one. "We are accustomed to working with the weight of mountains to consider." Primary said. "We will not allow our tunnels to collapse." "You received the quest for raw materials?" I asked, and got a nod in return. "You can open up the Fortress Shop by saying or thinking ''Fortress Shop'' when near a Fortress Presence. As you can form different metals you should be able to receive Fortress Coins and exchange them for any other raw materials, like water, that you need." While I was talking with Primary, Secondary had started scooping out handfuls of stone from the wall and rolling them into balls as though it was snow. He had already created a large stack and had barely moved two meters deep into the wall. "You need somewhere to throw away stone?" I asked. "Yes, that would be appreciated." Primary said. I designated a new area in my Pocket Dimension as stone storage and then assigned an ongoing quest for the Mountain Keeper floor that requested stone. The reward for the quest was the removal of the stone and one Fortress Coin per tonne removed. "Once you have five Fortress Coins I would suggest getting a Bag of Holding for the inventory space." I said. "That should help you greatly in removing stone, as you can submit quest materials directly from there. You should be able to set which quest you are submitting to when you submit it, be sure to try submitting to the raw materials quest first." "Thank you my lord." Primary said. He even bowed. It was always interesting when my people switched over their term of address. Though now that I think about it that was the first time Primary had addressed me directly. I nodded to him and left through the portal for their floor into their portal room. A few moments of shuffling portals around and I was back in the mountains and my larger thread pocket dimension was back in my pocket.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. It was a quick trip back down to the road, which now had a constant stream of wagons going in both directions. The wagons stuck to the center of the road except every two minutes where they moved to their right to allow the wagon coming the other way to pass them. I started running down the road to the east, every so often having to dodge between two wagons as they passed each other. The wagoners occasionally shouted at me as I went past them but I ignored them and continued on. After half an hour I came to another large wagon rest zone, half of the wagons that were coming in were moving to a parking space rather than continuing on. The first several wagons I passed travelling east after I had left the resting zone were much more spaced apart, closer to five hundred meters between them than the two hundred that was usual. The wagons coming the other way were still spaced the usual distance. It finally bugged me enough to ask, so I slowed my pace to a quick walk to match the pace of the next wagon I passed as I came next to the driver. "Hello." I said. "Mind if I ask you some questions?" She raised an eyebrow at me. "Might do." She said. "Depends on the questions." "What is with the spacing of the wagons on the road?" I asked. "You''re out here on the road without knowing about the dangers?" She asked. "There are lesser dragons that hunt deeper in the mountains. The wagons are spread out because they aren''t drawn to a single target during the day. There are fools who travel at night, though, which is asking to be eaten." Not anything I was likely to need to deal with. I thanked her and sped back up. After another hour of running the stone of the mountains turned into the dirt and soil of hill country. The edge of where the mountains turned into hills would be where I would expect a winter army to assemble for an attack on the plains. And Gerry did say that his people would have scouts out, so they should know if there was an army in the area. It would be useful to see the army for myself before talking with the Plains Keepers, so I could show it as a threat to them. And I would have a chance to convince the leprechaun town to emigrate at the same time. Surprisingly, to me at least, as I left the road and headed north there wasn''t much snow in the hills. There were large trees growing occasionally, but not much else to break up the rolling landscape. I headed more to the east as I went north, towards more grassed and less stony and barren ground. Two hours later I was passing by a tree at the top of a hill when I heard a combination of sounds that made me pause. The first was a bird call, which was fairly common, but it coincided with a light clicking and the sound of a branch creaking. Together it was enough to make me stop and approach the trunk of the tree. "Hello." I said, walking up to the trunk of the tree. I wasn''t sure there was someone in the tree, but being fifty kilometers north of the road, which was where Gerry said the town would be, along with the suspicious sounds made me want to check for sure. Except I wasn''t getting a response. I gripped the trunk of the tree, digging my nails into it slightly, and had just started climbing when someone shouted from further up the tree and behind me. I recognised the language as the one the leprechauns used, and there was a response from further along followed by a soft thump and then running footsteps away to the north. I paused for a few moments and then reached further up the trunk to continue climbing. There was a thwack sound and I moved my hand back down just before an arrow buried itself into the trunk above where my hand would have been. I followed the angle of the arrow back and could just make out a leprechaun in dark greens blended into the leaves of the tree, standing on a darkened wooden beam between two of the tree''s branches. There was another arrow knocked on the bow, and it was aimed at my chest. I dropped the short distance back to the ground and raised my hands, trying to show that I didn''t mean any harm. I was looking right into the leprechaun''s eyes, and he loosened the draw on his bow, saying something to me in his language. "I can''t understand you." I said. I went to move to the side and he spoke a sharp command and redrew his bow. Okay, that was a pretty clear command not to move. I nodded and leaned back against the tree trunk, sliding down into a seated position. We seemed to be waiting for something, or someone, and I was willing to be diplomatic about it. I formed a bowl from stone and dipped it into my Bag of Holding, sending an inventory request for a mix of berries, taking advantage of my Inventory''s link to Fortress Storage. When I removed the bowl I got a dozen different berries, and about five of each kind. I selected a large red berry and placed the entire thing into my mouth. Biting down on it filled my mouth with a sharp tart taste and a second later a flood of sweetness. I took the letter that Gerry had given me out of my inventory and held it up to show the leprechaun. It had a large red wax seal on it, and also a set of sharp edged characters across the middle. The leprechaun dropped the three meters to the ground easily and cautiously approached me after slinging his bow over his shoulder. He was at my eye height while I was sitting, so I held the letter up for him to see and he examined it closely before relaxing and giving a single nod. I gestured to the bowl of berries, taking another one myself. I brought out two bottles of water and handed him one as he selected a berry. Ten minutes later we had almost finished all of the berries when I heard running from the north, from a lot of sets of feet. I stood and turned to face that direction, my leprechaun companion looked at me questioningly before rising to his feet from where he was sitting opposite me. A minute after that ten leprechauns crested the next hill over, bows drawn and ready for a fight. The leprechaun next to me gave a shout and waved, and the other leprechauns jogged towards us, their bows and arrows put away. There was a short conversation between my companion and the leader before he turned to me. "Greetings and welcome." The leader said. "You have a letter for our Matriarch?" I pulled it out and showed it to him. "Excellent." The leader said. "If you will follow me, please." He set off to the north and I followed him, after several steps I was stopped by a message from the System. A red message. Chapter 84 - Grief
Alert
The Forest Keeper City has been destroyed and all of its inhabitants killed. There may be survivors that were not in the city, but they are few. The Forest Keepers under your care are the last hope for the continuation of their species. As a major species if their population falls below the Minimum Viable Population you will fail your goal for the simulation.
The whole city was gone..? I dropped my perception of time, which helped in shrugging off the shock that was clouding my thinking. The Instructor. This was what I was being misdirected away from. I pulled up the visual and audio feed from the presence that was on the Forest Keeper floor and played back the last few seconds. A wall of fog had exploded outwards from the portal. I sank my power into the stone of the portal room behind the presence, there was an intense cold that was coming from the Forest Keeper City which was condensing the humidity in the air of the Forest Keeper floor. I moved the portal to the city back to its own portal room and pushed heat into its stone to counteract the cold that was still continuing to flow through the portal. My Pocket Dimension stopped the spell from flowing through my fortress, but it didn''t stop the physical effects. Back at my body, which was only a few steps down the hill that I had stopped on to find the scout, I was surrounded by the ten leprechauns as an escort. The leader was just turning at the sound the leprechaun behind me made when I had stopped. I was pulling out my larger pocket portal, forming it into a doorway to head back to my fortress and moving the exit to the portal room for the Forest Keeper floor. I returned my perception to normal time as the leader started speaking. "What are you doing?" The leader asked. "Something has happened that will greatly affect some of my people." I said. "So I am returning to my fortress." "Our matriarch will want to see you." The leader said. "You have a letter that is addressed to her personally. We cannot allow you to leave." I placed the now-formed doorway down onto the ground and sank it down so that it would stand on its own. One side of the portal showed the stone of one of my presences and the other led through the stone portal room to the Forest Keeper floor. "You can''t stop me." I said. "I would advise against trying." I stepped through the portal and walked along the stone hall into the Forest Keeper floor. The leader gave a short whistle and the ten leprechauns followed me. I turned to face the leprechaun leader as he stepped into my fortress proper behind me. "You are now within my fortress." I said. "You have no recognised standing here, and I will ensure the safety of my people. You are warned." There were several Forest Keepers that were coming through the fog that was still thick around the portal. I could only see a few meters into the fog, so I stepped forward those few meters and stopped, letting the Forest Keepers see me. The first one hooted loudly and stepped back, and I heard the muffled sound of others retreating. I pushed my power into the soil at my feet, pushing heat into it, and the fog dissipated as the air warmed up. There was a line of Forest Keepers with spears lowered in a defensive stance. The leprechauns behind me formed a line of their own at a word from their leader, drawing their bows and targeting the Forest Keepers. I sighed, it seems the leprechaun leader didn''t take my warning seriously enough. It seems a second warning would be required. The end of the line of leprechauns was only four meters away. I turned and dashed there, using my power in the ground to give enough traction and not leave a hole. Landing, I pivoted and dashed again, along the line of bows. As I passed each one I sliced the arrow that was on the string in half with one hand and the wood of the bow itself in half with my other. When I landed at the other end of their line I turned for a final time and dashed back to where I had started. There was a series of snapping sounds behind me, followed by groans of pain. I looked over my shoulder to see that all of the leprechauns had light wounds from where the backlash of the bows snapping had whipped the wood into them. I looked at the leprechaun leader, who looked at his troops in shock before meeting my eyes.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. "You are in my fortress." I said. "I will not tolerate threats made against my people. Inform your people of what I have just said." He nodded his head shakily and spoke another command in his language. His troops formed up on him and he spoke with them. I noticed one of the leprechauns was bleeding heavily from a gash in his wrist. That was inconvenient. I made a quest for Greta, the rabbit lady druid healer, entitled ''Emergency Healing'' with a reward for one Fortress Coin per patient healed and sent it. She should arrive as quickly as she could. I walked over to the heavily wounded leprechaun, pulling a length of cloth from Fortress Storage to use as a tourniquet. He was applying pressure to the wound, but was still bleeding, and looked at me in fear as I stood over him. He said something to his leader. "What are you doing?" The leader asked. "Destroying your weapons was a warning." I said. "Light injuries were expected. This-" I gestured to the leprechaun who was going pale. "- is not a light injury. Killing one of your people was not my intent, so I am correcting the mistake. A healer should be arriving soon." I took the wounded leprechaun''s hand and pulled his arm out straight. There was a squirt of blood as I moved his other hand away from the wound, but then I wrapped it tightly. I soaked my power into the cloth, weaving it into itself and closing it tighter around the wound, it stopped bleeding. "My lord." Mal''Thorn said from behind the line of Forest Keeper guards. "What brings you to our floor, and with a hostile force behind you?" "A complete mess." I said. "I was on my way to meet their leader when I got a System message that forced me to return here. They felt they needed to follow, which I allowed with a warning. Then a second warning when they moved to attack. Which was a bit too strong in a single case. We must talk." I heard thumping coming down the stairway that the portal was up against and raised a hand to ask Mal''Thorn to wait. Less than a minute later Greta hopped around the corner and stopped to assess the situation. "My lord." She said. "These are the patients?" "They are." I said. "There was only one critical case and I stabilised him. The quest is open for all of them. Thank you for your quick response." She moved to inspect the leprechaun that I had tourniqueted, but I stopped her. I turned to face the leprechaun leader. "A healer." I said. "I will take it poorly if she is harmed. Inform your people." He did, speaking loudly and I assumed clearly. All of his people nodded when he had finished. I left Greta to her healing and went to where Mal''Thorn was standing. The Forest Keeper guards tracked me with their spears and when I got close enough four spears were lowered to stop me, lightly touching my chest. I smiled, which caused Mal''Thorn''s eyes to widen. "I take it they don''t know who I am?" I asked. "No, my lord." Mal''Thorn said. He cuffed one of the guards on the back of the head and spoke to him in their language. And the guard spoke back, seeming to be arguing with Mal''Thorn. Mal''Thorn sighed. "I am counted a prince now." Mal''Thorn said. "Which apparently means that my guards may place a higher priority on my safety than in obeying my orders. This is the new head of my guards." "Tell him that he is one of my people, as are you, and that I assure him of the safety of my people to the greatest extent that I can." I said. "But if he does not move I will move him." "Yes my lord." Mal''Thorn said. Mal''Thorn spoke to his guard, and his guard spoke back. The guard''s lip curled up in what was clearly contempt, even on a Forest Keeper''s face. What was it with guards that they had to be shown my strength before they would respect me. I raised an eyebrow at Mal''Thorn, who nodded back. There were four spears against my chest, arriving at different angles. The head guard had annoyed me, so I decided to mess with him. I moved the small pocket portal from my pocket up to my chest where the head of his spear was resting and then raised my arms to knock away the other three spears. The head guard tightened his grip on his spear, and I stepped towards him, the spear disappearing into my chest. He tried to stumble away from me as I reached up and grabbed him by the throat, turning and switching places with him so that I was standing with my back to Mal''Thorn. "I think your prince has a better understanding of where you stand than you do." I said, Mal''Thorn translating for me. "If I wanted him dead, he would be. And if I need to talk with him, I will. Do we have an understanding?" "He said that he understands, my lord." Mal''Thorn said. "And thank you for your restraint." "I won''t harm any of my people if it can be avoided." I said, releasing the guard. "Do you have somewhere we can talk?" "We don''t have anything set up yet, my lord." Mal''Thorn said. "This is as good a place as any. Though isn''t that uncomfortable?" He pointed to the spear that was still sticking out of my chest, still held by the guard who wasn''t moving. I took it out of his hands and pulled it out of my Pocket Dimension, handing it back to him then turning my back on him. "There isn''t a kind way of saying this." I said. "The Forest Keeper City has been destroyed, and anyone who was there has been killed. It was almost certainly the tactical spell that winter had set up." "How can you be sure?" Mal''Thorn asked. "The city has strong mages, and the latest word was that they were setting up a working to drive the priests of winter away." I related the message I had gotten from the System, and explained that it was tied into the world. Mal''Thorn let out a keening cry, which caused all of the nearby Forest Keepers to turn towards him. The guard said something softly to Mal''Thorn, who answered loudly. All of the Forest Keepers within earshot made the same keening cry, and after they were done there was another wave of it from further out as the news spread. Chapter 85 - A New Heart All of the Forest Keepers had their heads bowed. After a few minutes of them grieving Mal''Thorn''s guard moved around me and spoke to Mal''Thorn. Mal''Thorn spoke back to him and then gave a resigned sigh. "My lord." Mal''Thorn said. "I need to go out to the Forest. If the Heart of the Forest lives then we must go save it, and if not then we need to make other preparations. After. I can grieve after my duty is done." I nodded and shifted the portals within my Pocket Dimension to connect the Forest Keeper floor to the portal at the top of my fortress and led Mal''Thorn through it, going around the leprechauns. There were no guards in the guard room at the top of the stairs so I sealed the entrance to the fortress behind us after we had gone through, then went down the outer stairs. Mal''Thorn immediately went to the trunk of the nearest tree and laid his hands upon it. "The Heart of the Forest is dead." Mal''Thorn said, falling to his knees and sobbing. There wasn''t anything I could think of to console him, so I gave him privacy to cry, moving back to sit in the pavilion. Less than a minute later Mal''Thorn approached. "Where is the Forest Keeper floor relative to here?" Mal''Thorn asked. I brought up the model I had of the fortress. "The ceiling of the floor is fifty five meters below your feet." I said. "Ten meters of soil, thirty meters of stone, ten meters of fortress wall, and then a five meter maintenance floor. There is one hundred and seventy five meters between the surface of the soil here to the surface of the soil of your floor." "There must be a connection between the Forest and the Heart of the Forest." Mal''Thorn said. "We could grow roots down fifty five meters, but one hundred and seventy five meters is far too far. Could you set up a permanent portal between our floor and the forest?" "I could." I said. "But if the connection is magical in nature, which it must be, then it won''t be able to cross a portal. It is a basic property of my portals that they block magic, and it isn''t something I can work around. How would you grow the roots? Would it be possible for you to have intermediate trees that you could use to cross the space?" "It is possible for Forest Keepers to borrow from the growth of the Forest." Mal''Thorn said. "The Heart of the Forest provided a buffer, without it the vitality of the Forest will be drained directly. It would damage the Forest more to grow intermediate trees, but with a connection to the new Heart of the Forest the damage will heal. Without it... The Forest will die, in one way or another. We can use more Forest Keepers to distribute the damage." I nodded. I had some spare thread portals by this point and I drew one through my small pocket portal, forming it into a doorway and connecting it to the Forest Keeper floor. Mal''Thorn went to get ten Forest Keepers while I made a model of the ideal placement of the connecting trees. I walked to the east edge of the pavilion, bringing the portal with me. I wanted to line up with a support column on the Forest Keeper floor, but the closest one directly down was just outside the bottom of the stairs, right where the pavilion was. To compensate the roots from the nearest tree would be the starting point and they would go west as well as down. Mal''Thorn returned and I grabbed another thread portal to dig the hole, excavating the material into my Pocket Dimension. "How wide does the hole need to be for the root?" I asked. "For a fifty five meter run?" Mal''Thorn said. "The top would be a meter wide, in the ideal." That was half the width of the trunk of the tree we were using. I moved the excavating portal down into the ground, careful not to damage any of the roots of the tree, and over under the trunk of the tree. Then I started excavating down and to the west at a sixty degree angle. "You can follow that?" I asked. "Yes my lord, we are right behind you." Mal''Thorn said.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. I soaked my power behind the portal to find that he was right, a meter thick root was touching the back of the portal I was using. The growing effect was magic in nature, so the root wasn''t going through into my Pocket Dimension. Forty five seconds later we were at the wall of the fortress, and then through it into the empty air of the maintenance floor above the Forest Keeper floor. The root that was following my portal had gotten significantly thinner, barely five centimeters wide. I put a three meter wide patch of soil two meters deep under where the root was coming out of the roof. "Does the whole tunnel need to be one meter wide?" I asked. I had kept it a consistent size the whole way, but the root was tiny as it sank into the soil. "The connection will grow to the full meter wide as it is used." Mal''Thorn said. I formed the excavator portal into a doorway and matched it to the portal next to us. "Through there is the maintenance floor." I said. "That''s where the first connecting tree should be placed. The ceiling is only two and a half meters above the soil, so it will need to be a short tree." Mal''Thorn and the other Forest Keepers went through the portal. It might be useful to have a portal at the outside entrance of the fortress, so I spent a minute making a solid stone wall next to where the stairs met the pavilion and then put the portal against it. Going through the portal I saw a short and wide tree that had thick branches that ran ten meters into the maintenance floor in every direction, the root coming from the ceiling wrapping around its trunk. Leaves were just coming in as I stepped through. There were no sunlight enchanted mana crystals in the ceiling of the maintenance floor, so the leaves weren''t going to do much. I was sure the tree would be able to get its energy from the connection joining the two forests together, but it would also be simple for me to give it sunlight. I made a quest for Maaata to make a sunlight enchanted crystal that was linked to the relay on the maintenance floor with a reward of two Fortress Coins. Small mana crystals had appeared in the shop under the Items menu for one Fortress Coin, so that would reward her an extra Fortress Coin for her work. The Forest Keepers were ready to move on to the next phase, so I took out another thread portal and cut through a one meter wide hole in the soil and floor. The hole came out exactly where I wanted it, right next to one of the support columns for the Forest Keeper floor. I slid the portal down the column sixty meters and began building a platform from my reinforced stone. The column was one meter wide and would be in the way of the tree if I wrapped the platform around it, so I built the platform as a three meter wide circle out from the column towards the stairway one hundred meters away. I made a thin wall around the whole platform, rising two meters, and filled it with soil, leaving the one meter hole for the root of the coming tree. The excavating portal I again turned into a doorway and connected it to the portal on the maintenance floor. I watched this time as the Forest Keepers speed-grew the tree. One of them placed a large seed, about the size of my fist, onto the top of the soil. Then all of the Forest Keepers reached out to touch the root coming down from the ceiling and the seed burst into growth. From seed to seedling to sapling to tree took thirty seconds, and then with another thirty seconds there was a full sized forty meter tall tree with a two meter wide trunk on the platform. I leaned over the edge of the platform to see the connecting root that grew down from that tree was already nearing the ground of the Forest Keeper floor, and there was a group of Forest Keepers already there waiting for it. I connected the portal on the platform to the Forest Keeper floor portal and sent the Forest Keepers through before going up to the maintenance floor to collect the portal that I had left there. I folded up the portal that was on the platform with my power and slid it down the column to the ground and was just leaving through the maintenance floor portal when Maaata arrived with the enchanted sunlight mana crystal. "My lord." Maaata said with a slight bow. "I was just linking the sunlight crystal to the relay." I nodded. "I''ll take it when you''re done." I said. She frowned slightly while she was working. "Will that complete the quest?" She asked. The presences were an extension of myself, and I was the one that people were handing in the quests to through them. At least that was how I saw it. "I think so, yes." I said. "If it doesn''t I will give it back and you can put it in the Fortress Presence." Half a minute later she was done and handed me the sunlight crystal. I raised my eyebrows at her. "It worked." Maaata said. "Thank you my lord." With another bow she left back up the stairs. Huh, I hadn''t considered that. Using portals within the fortress should be free. I sent that thought to the System and it sent an acknowledgement back. I placed the sunlight crystal into the roof above the tree before going through the maintenance floor portal to the Forest Keeper floor. I was met with a fully grown Heart of the Forest tree twenty meters away from the portal, glowing a pale blue. Ninety meters tall, branches extending to make it fifty meters wide at its widest, and the trunk was easily six meters wide. The leprechauns were sitting to the side of the portal, all fully healed, staring at the Heart of the Forest tree. The leprechaun scout leader turned to me as I exited the portal. "Who, what, are you?" He asked. Chapter 86 - Berries I was getting used to that reaction, though in this case it was the Forest Keepers that had done an amazing thing, I had just helped by digging holes. "I am Lord C.C." I said. "What is your name?" I never seemed to meet people in civilised circumstances where introductions were done first. "Beacan... your lordship." The leprechaun scout leader, Beacan, said. "Beacan." I said. "As to the other part of your question, I am one of two Champions that are currently in the world. The other Champion is trying to end the world, while I am trying to ensure that several species survive the end of the world. The other Champion may also try to eliminate some species directly." Beacan seemed to be taking the news of the end of the world well, or perhaps he wasn''t able to feel more shocked than he was at an enormous tree growing in the space of a few minutes. "I met Gerry, a leprechaun who lived in the Mountain City-" I said, Beacan interrupting me. "I know of Gerry." Beacan said. "He''s famous." "He made a good impression, helping me out when I needed it." I said. "I''m in the middle of some other things but I decided to offer sanctuary from the end of the world to the leprechauns as one of the species I will save." Beacan nodded. "This is all completely outside of my authority." Beacan said. "It''s my responsibility to take you to someone in charge, which will end up with you meeting with the matriarch." Mal''Thorn had approached while we were talking and was waiting to the side. I looked over to him. "Is there something you need?" I asked. "No, my lord." Mal''Thorn said. "I was coming to ask if there was anything further." "No." I said. "We need time to grieve." Mal''Thorn said. The Forest Keepers were packing in around the new Heart of the Forest tree, swaying back and forth. Time to grieve, in private. I nodded to Mal''Thorn and moved the portals around so that the Forest Keeper floor portal led back to the hills and gestured for Beacan to go through first. He barked a few short commands and the leprechauns filed through the portal. "If you need anything, speak to one of the Fortress Presences." I said. "Thank you my lord." Mal''Thorn said, bowing as I stepped through the portal, picked it up, and placed it back into my pocket. There was a call from behind us in the leprechaun language from the scout I''d met first, which was returned by Beacan. "This way, lord C.C." Beacan said. The leprechauns formed up around me, this time lacking their bows, and led me down the hill at a run. I was able to keep up with them by walking quickly. I twitched slightly when the System sent me a ping, but opened the message without stopping.
Warning
One of the items in Fortress Storage, ''Locroix Berry'', has deteriorated to the point of becoming ''Spoiled Locroix Berry''. It will no longer be provided in response to requests for ''Locroix Berries''.
I hadn''t even considered that things would go bad in the Fortress Storage. I turned my focus from the surroundings of my body, bringing up an interface overlayed over my local simulation. I soaked my power into one of the good berries and made a detailed scan of it, just as I would if I were scanning a person I was going to modify. With the full scan I tried to use that as a source to duplicate from, using stone as the stock material as always. And it didn''t work at all. My power couldn''t sink into the model, didn''t even acknowledge its existence, and so had nothing to duplicate from.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. I frowned. I can modify my own body, and the bodies of other people, modifying stone into a berry is no different. It should actually be easier, as I don''t have to deal with the resistance from mana or the pain to someone''s consciousness. I focused on that, and on my annoyance about the rules of the simulation not being applied consistently, and tried again. It worked, though it definitely felt grudging. The first berry I duplicated from the model was slow to form, and took a lot of energy, as though the simulation was fighting against it. But the second one was much easier, more in line with what I would expect it to cost in time, effort, and energy. I set a program to scan each of the materials in my Fortress Storage, and then a second one to expand my digital memory as needed to cover the hundreds of models I would be gaining. I pulled up the model of the first berry that I had scanned, which was apparently called a Locroix Berry, and analysed it in detail. I could see the molecular makeup of it, some of which must influence the taste of the berry. There was a lot of water in the berry, so the first thing I tried was removing all of it and then creating the berry from the model. And it promptly crumbled into a dusty substance. I modified the rules of the simulation I was running to incorporate that and increased the water in the berry until it stopped breaking apart, about five percent of the original water amount. I smoothed the model out so that it was a smooth sphere instead of a wrinkled berry and increased the size to be the same as the original berry. I created the new berry and passed it through my pocket portal, placing it in my mouth. It was quite firm and had a light taste before I bit down on it, breaking the skin. Then it was intensely sweet and sticky, chewing on it took some effort as it tried to glue my back teeth together. It took me a minute to finish it, and I summoned a fresh Locroix Berry to compare. The fresh berry had a much gentler taste, the sugar having less of a bite to it. Another few berries had been added to my available models and I tried each of them fresh and then a smaller amount in condensed form. Having other berries to compare to I was able to start separating out the common features to isolate the tastes. The scan for the different types of sugar had completed as well, and I was able to pick those out of the berries too. I made a complex fusion of the tastes of six berries, lowering the sugar ratio slightly to fit them all, and then produced a fresh berry and a condensed berry. The taste of the fresh berry was... Complicated. And not entirely pleasant. Instead of being a rainbow of tastes it was a brown smear of everything combined, and it was bitter as well. I broke the skin of the condensed berry with a fingernail before cautiously licking it. The taste of the condensed flavours, along with the increased sweetness, made it much more tolerable. I placed the whole berry in my mouth and bit down on it. Not my favourite, which would be the condensed version of a red berry that was scanned second, but definitely passable. I was still walking quickly following Beacan, so I looked in on the progress of the large excavator thread portal. It was well behind the original estimate, as I had been prioritising other projects that needed portals. The Bags of Holding alone were taking up a lot of my portal creation time. Beacan slowed and turned to face me, and I realised he had been talking nervously the whole time he had been running. I scanned back through the recording I had from my ears, my perfect memory only working on things that I had noticed at the time, to find that he hadn''t said anything of substance, just a rambling talk about the leprechauns, Gerry, the matriarch, and observations of the land we were passing through. "This is it." Beacan said. "The leprechaun village." I couldn''t really make out any of the houses, the hills looking much like the other hills that we had crossed, with the exception that these ones had more trees on them. I was looking through the trees intently, trying to find some sign of habitation when my heat vision overlay flicked on in my simulation. I had forgotten all about it. With it on I was able to see plumes of heat rising from what must be chimneys on top of mounds on the hill, disguised by the trees. I saw some leprechaun-sized heat spots up in the branches of some of the trees, but couldn''t see them at all with my unaided eyes, and the woods were making enough noise to cover them. "It is easier to shoot monsters if we have high perches to shoot from." Beacan said, noticing my gaze. "We do quite well in summer." Beacan led me through the woods and into a clearing with a single larger mound in the middle. I could see the doorway into this mound, and the top of it barely came to my chest. I would need to crawl to enter, which would definitely be beneath my dignity. Beacan noticed my pause and then looked between the door and me. "I will request that the matriarch comes to see you out here." Beacan said. Beacan knocked on the door, which immediately opened revealing a leprechaun with a small sword at his waist. After a short discussion Beacan came back to me. "If I could have the letter for the matriarch, this guard will take it to her." Beacan said. I gave it to him, and he gave it to the guard, who shut the door. A few minutes later a new leprechaun came out, stopping two meters away, projecting his voice loudly. "The Matriarch is busy." He said. "She will come see you when she is ready. You shall wait." And he went back inside. I frowned. Someone was trying to play power games. "Lord C.C.." Beacan said, looking a bit panicked. "I will go see what the delay is." Chapter 87 - Outsider Host I was seriously considering just leaving the leprechauns to die to winter. At this point I don''t feel much of an obligation to them, and if the matriarch''s spokesman was going to be rude it tipped the balance against them. What made me pause was that the reply had been quick, which meant the matriarch likely hadn''t read Gerry''s letter. So they had no idea who I was. And while there would be other species that I could save in place of the leprechauns it was likely that they would have the same politics and bureaucracy to navigate. And in the end it was only a minor slight against me. The remaining nine leprechauns that made up my escort were still in formation around me, though without their bows they just had small daggers as weapons. I began pulling stone from my pocket portal, building a solid table with one chair that was sized for me on one side, and a row of a twenty leprechaun-sized chairs on the other with stone steps leading up to them. My leprechaun guards or escorts muttered quietly to each other but none of them made any move to stop me, though one did call out loudly. There was a series of bird calls from the trees around the clearing, looking around at each point a call had come from I could see the body heat of five archers with good lines of fire towards me. Which was fine, they weren''t any threat to me. I would hear the arrows before they could hit me, and I was fast enough to catch them from the air. Building a permanent table in front of the matriarch''s building was definitely rude, but if they weren''t going to be courteous then I didn''t much care. It just about balanced out the rudeness of being commanded to wait. I created a stone platter on the table and started filling it with various condensed berries, candies the System called them. I gestured for the leprechauns around me to take a seat at the table, taking the seat I had made for myself. The stone was a bit uncomfortable so I created a pillow that was fused into the chair, doing the same for the leprechaun chairs. None of the leprechauns had moved so I picked up two candies and threw one of them to the nearest leprechaun who caught it by reflex. She looked at me uncertainly as I placed my berry in my mouth and bit down on it. I exaggerated my enjoyment a little and she slowly raised her berry to her mouth. After she bit down she made a muffled exclamation, her teeth having been stuck together. The other leprechauns looked at her in alarm and it took half a minute before she had dissolved enough of the candy that she could speak clearly again. Whatever she said had the other leprechauns moving quickly to climb the stairs to the small chairs at the table, and she ended up in the middle of the pack. I smiled, satisfied, and summoned several glass bottles of water, placing them in the middle of the table. Acting as a host on their land and being more courteous to my guards than their leaders were to me was just the tone of insult that felt appropriate to the situation. I looked at each of the archers around the clearing and then gestured to the table in front of me, indicating that they were welcome to come join us. I doubted that they would, as they were tasked with the protection of their people, but the gesture was more the point. With the leprechauns enjoying themselves I sent a thread portal, backed by a presence, through the portal into the basement of Gerry''s shop. And came upon an immediate problem, the wood of the stairs was enchanted and I couldn''t move my thread portal over it, my power being able to move things relied on being able to push from the stationary material as well as pull from the moving material. Except in my Pocket Dimension itself, where I could move things as a function of that power. It only took a moment of thought to come up with the solution, though, and I started covering the stairs with a thin layer of stone. When I got to the top of the stairs and to the doorway to the front of the store I had my presence emit a series of sounds mimicking knocking on the door. A few moments later Lizzie, Gerry''s wife, opened the door with a resigned sigh. She then shrieked and slammed the door. I guess having a stone pillar twice your height knock on your door was a bit of a shock.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. "Hello Lizzie." I said. "I apologise for startling you, I was wondering if Gerry was here?" Lizzie opened the door again after shouting for Gerry and started yelling at me in rapid-fire leprechaun, even going so far as to slap her hand against the stone of the presence. Back at my body the leprechauns had fallen silent and I could hear someone slowly approaching from behind me. I turned and put my arm over the back of my chair to see who they were and saw a grey haired and stooped leprechaun making slow progress towards the table, a walking cane assisting his steps. He gave me a slow nod as he passed me, going around the table and climbing the steps to the chairs there. The leprechaun guards moved along the table in both directions, leaving the central five chairs clear, the elderly leprechaun taking the center one. "Hello, thank you for waiting." He said. "I am Ailfrid." "Lord C.C." I said. Ailfrid nodded. "If we''re using titles then I am Faidh Ailfrid, of the people." Ailfrid said. "As redundant as that is." I cocked my head to the side. "Redundant?" I asked. "Faidh means wise man or seer." Ailfrid said. "While Ailfrid means wise. What is the meaning behind your name, if you don''t mind the inquiry?" "Well, I was pressured into picking a name." I said. "And being a Champion whose focus at the time was saving someone named Chantelle, I chose C.C.. Chantelle''s Champion." "Not terrible, as far as names go." Ailfrid said. "It took me many years to grow into mine. You said it was your focus at the time, has your focus changed then?" "Some." I said. "My priority is still Chantelle, but my goal has shifted to saving several species from the end of the world." "The world ending is news to me." Ailfrid said. "Very troubling news." The leprechaun guards were staying silent, most of them looking towards the platter with candies on it that was out of their reach. I created two more platters and filled them, as well as several more bottles of water, placing them at the ends of the table. The leprechauns there smiled, each saying the same thing in their language. "They''re thanking you for the meal." Ailfrid said. "It is quite surprising, they are our elite scouts. I wouldn''t have expected them to be so carefree with an outsider." I smiled. "The candies are quite good." I said. "Though there is a trick to them, you need to nibble them gently to avoid having your teeth sealed together for a time." I picked up a red berry, and Ailfrid did the same, placing it into his mouth. "Quite remarkable." Ailfrid said. "It''s very strong though?" "The water dilutes the flavour and sweetness somewhat." I said. Gerry had arrived at the presence in his store, and instead of talking to him through it I took out my larger pocket portal and formed it into a half-doorway, placing it on the table and connecting it to the portal in front of Gerry. "Gerry." Ailfrid said, nodding to him and picking up another berry. "Your magic is very impressive lord C.C.. I cannot sense it at all, and to create a viewing portal over such a distance to the God''s City would be something I would need a day-long ritual for." Lizzie ducked her head around the edge of the portal and said something in the leprechaun language, Ailfrid replying in kind. "Gerry, if you wanted to come through I will give you free passage back." I said. Ailfrid looked at me in confusion and then nearly fell out of his chair when Gerry nodded and stepped out onto the table. I quickly formed a chair for him on my side of the table and he came to sit by my side. "That''s..." Ailfrid said, trailing off. "By all of my study of magic, that is not possible." "You''re probably right." I said. "I''m not using magic to create the effect. It is one of my powers as a Champion." "That is a relief." Ailfrid said. "I count myself a master wizard, I would have had to reconsider if I was so wrong." "What are we doing?" Gerry asked. "Waiting on the matriarch while I am hosting you all at my expense in her domain." I said. "The person who spoke on her behalf was quite rude, commanding me to wait upon her pleasure. Initially I thought to just leave, but this was my measured response to the insult." "That must be why I was so urgently summoned." Ailfrid said. "Though I had already guessed as much when I arrived to find a big person taking his ease in front of the council mound. I am glad you didn''t leave." "Oh?" I said. "Why were you summoned?" "Among other things I am a truthseer." Ailfrid said. "Aside from some ambiguously worded statements you have been telling the truth as you see it." Well, magic wasn''t very reliable when it came to me, so I just had to test it. "Don''t freak out if this shows as true." I said. "I am a Leprechaun." "No, you are not." Ailfrid said, looking at me strangely. Huh. "Magic sometimes doesn''t work on me." I said. "It''s curious that the truth detection does." The door to the council mound opened and the leprechauns all turned to look over the backs of their chairs as the rude chamberlain leprechaun exited. "The Matriarch, leader of the People under the Hill." He said. "Bow down before her-" "Hey, none of that." Ailfrid said, interrupting him with a scowl. Chapter 88 - Another people The matriarch exited the mound, having to push the spluttering chamberlain to the side who immediately leapt out of her way. She had her red hair braided and wrapped around her head with a thin gold crown pinning it together, and a ball gown on that looked entirely impractical. Ailfrid moved one chair to his left, leaving the central chair open for her. "Welcome to my table." I said as she started to climb the stairs, causing her to hesitate with her foot above the first step, a frown settling over her face. She only hesitated a few moments before continuing to ascend, taking her chair. She turned to Ailfrid, ignoring me completely, and began talking to him in the leprechaun language. I looked at Gerry. "What are they talking about?" I asked. "She said that you are insufferably rude, and Ailfrid is explaining that it was a measured insult in response to the idiot announcer." Gerry said. The matriarch looked sharply at Gerry and said something to him. "Lizzie, myself, and our children are Lord C.C.''s vassals." Gerry said, speaking in the common language. The matriarch started scolding Gerry, sounding remarkably similar to when Lizzie was yelling at me. She only stops when Lizzie sticks her head through the portal that was still on the table, shouting at the matriarch in turn. I looked at Gerry and raised an eyebrow. "My mother-in-law." Gerry said. "She is upset that her daughter and heir has joined you. Lizzie is defending you, and me." The matriarch made a cutting gesture with her hand, ending the argument between Lizzie and herself, and turned back to her conversation with Ailfrid. Lizzie ducked her head back through the portal, returning to the shop. "Ailfrid is explaining about the end of the world, and that you are offering a safe haven for our people." Gerry said. "Liz questioned that, and he just said that you believe what you are saying, and that he believes you. If nothing else you are strong enough to enforce whatever you want." The matriarch, whose name was apparently Liz, shot a sour look at Gerry and said something short to him. Gerry sighed. "And she just called me a traitor to the People." Gerry said. "She isn''t making a very good impression." I said. "How much do you need your people saved?" The matriarch shot me an evil glare before turning back to Ailfrid. "My wife would never forgive me." Gerry said. "So quite a lot. Ailfrid is saying that the army to the north lends further credibility to your claims." "Wait, army?" I asked. "That was one of my reasons for coming here immediately." "There are thousands of them." Ailfrid said. "Several lesser dragons, ice wisp scouts, but the bulk of the army is made up of men of snow." Men of snow. Snowmen. That name brought up an image of three large balls of snow stacked on top of each other with stones for eyes and a carrot for a nose. The way that Ailfrid said it though made me think they didn''t match such a harmless image. "The army is veiled in frost, the place where they are crossing over from the winter realm is substantially colder than the areas around it." Ailfrid said. The matriarch snapped at Ailfrid. "I want the leprechauns to have a good relationship with our future Lord, no matter how badly you are handling it." Ailfrid said, using the common language so that I could understand him. The matriarch turned and addressed me directly for the first time. "Well you definitely have a talent for subverting my people." She said. "First my son-in-law and my daughter, then my elite scouts, and finally my greatest adviser, all have turned against us." That really wasn''t how I saw it. "Gerry and Lizzie are the only ones who have joined me." I said. "And the only reason it is against you is because the choice is between saving the leprechaun people or not, and you seem to be on the side of your entire people dying. It is not a conspiracy against you, we will form a treaty, or not, and I will continue on my way." "You speak of a treaty, yet there are no Keepers to authorise it." The matriarch said. "A somewhat valid point." I said, and then turned to speak through the portal. "Lizzie, would you like to step through?" "Thank you, but no." Lizzie said. "I am caring for the shop, and the children are upstairs." I moved the Pocket Dimension side of the portal to the Mountain Keeper floor''s portal and sent the Mountain Keepers of my fortress a quest to officiate over a treaty for one Fortress Coin. A few seconds later a Mountain Keeper stepped through the portal, one that I hadn''t seen before.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. "You''re new." I said. "Yes my lord." He said. "There are six of us now. I was closest, having come to deposit a load of stone. Most cannot tell us apart, how did you?" "The pattern of your fur is unique to each of you." I said. "You summoned a Keeper, those that arbitrate the world." The matriarch said. "Just like that. Not even a wave of your hand and they immediately leap to do your bidding." "They are my vassals." I said. "Under our treaty they act for the benefit of my fortress. Though if I recall, new Mountain Keepers aren''t bound by the treaties of those who came before them?" "That is correct." The Keeper said. "We swore on to the treaty afterwards. We, the six, are your people." I nodded, accepting it. "There is an incentive system in place to reward people for helping the fortress." I said. "It is not expected that people work for the benefit of the people of the fortress with no reward. The terms I offer are the same that I offer to all of my people. You, and your people, will work in the best interests of The Fortress and in return I offer a safe place to survive the end of the world." All of the treaties were worded differently, but they all amounted to the same principle. "Food, water, living space, transportation, responsibilities." The matriarch said. "There is much that you have left vague." "A base amount of food and water is provided, none of my people will go without." I said. "Living space will be on one of the floors of my upper fortress, a cylinder ninety eight meters wide and four and a half meters tall with a five meter by five meter stairway in the center. A Fortress Presence and portal shall be provided for your floor. I will aid in the initial setup of the floor, providing construction and materials to house all of your people. How many of you are there, by the way?" I probably should have asked that before assigning them a floor. "Less than six hundred." Ailfrid said. That would be... Over twelve square meters per leprechaun if they split it up evenly, and probably triple that as they could fit three levels in the four and a half meters. "Right, that''s good." I said. "Transportation, I will be providing a direct portal to your new floor that all of your people can use to leave, taking whatever they require with them. Furthermore I will leave a portal here as a destination that can be travelled to at the cost of a Fortress Coin. Responsibilities... I don''t know. I will assign you a quest for you to submit a report on what your capabilities are as a people." "So essentially you will be acting in good faith to assist the People." The matriarch said. "Yes, my aim is for my people to have the highest quality of life I can manage." I said. "As a small thing, the druid beastpeople that are already a part of my fortress call themselves the People as well." "It is short for People Under the Hill." Ailfrid said. "Though if we are to live in your fortress it will be even less accurate than it is now with us building mounds on top of the hills. And our name for ourselves is in our language, Aes Sidhe, ''People'' is just how it translates to this language. I expect the others are the same, so there shouldn''t be any conflict." "What happens if I accept your terms?" The matriarch asked. "If you accept my terms I immediately make a portal to your new floor, you and your people get a general quest to provide new raw materials to the fortress, and I give you markers for you to show where you want walls on the floor." I said. "Then I go and see the winter army for myself and after that I head to the plains to speak with the Plains Keepers, who are the target of invasion by the army." "And if I reject your terms?" The matriarch asked. "Then I go and see the winter army for myself, then to the plains to speak with the Plains Keepers." I said. "And you all die, either when winter gets around to targeting you specifically, or when the temperature gets too low for you to survive. Or maybe you will starve when the plains are destroyed. If you aren''t my people you aren''t my responsibility." The matriarch looked at Gerry, then at Ailfrid, then at each of the scouts at either end of the table. "Are you truly strong enough to protect people from the end of the world?" The matriarch asked. "I don''t know." I said. "But it is my task as a Champion, and I will do everything within my power to achieve it." "We agree to the terms of the treaty." The matriarch said. The Mountain Keeper nodded. "If that is all, my lord?" He asked. I nodded to him and he stepped back through the portal to his floor. I moved the exit of the portal back to Gerry''s shop and sent Gerry through it. And I moved a thread portal to the new leprechaun floor and placed a presence outside of it. "This is a quest?" Ailfrid asked, gesturing in front of himself. "It is." I said. "It''s only visible to yourself, though, and each of your people should have received it. One second." I created a quest for the matriarch for a report on how her people could contribute to the fortress and another one for the whole leprechaun people titled ''The Evacuation of the People Under the Hill'', flagging it as mandatory. Which just auto-accepted the quest. Then I pulled up my goal progress window.
Goal progress
Species with which you have a treaty offering sanctuary from the end of the world.
Major species 2/4
Forest Keepers
Biome Forest
Population 1,612
Minimum Viable Population 200
Mountain Keepers
Biome Mountain
Population 2
Minimum Viable Population 2
Minor species 3/5 (3/4)
Beastpeople
Biome Plains
Population 109
Minimum Viable Population 60
Humans
Biome Mountain, Forest, or Plains
Population 209
Minimum Viable Population 120
Leprechauns
Biome Mountain or Plains
Population 585
Minimum Viable Population 90
Chapter 89 - Leprechaun Emigration The evacuation quest should put a waypoint for every leprechaun to come here to me as the closest portal. I didn''t want them all using my personal portals so I pulled a spare thread portal through and set it up with a backing of stone next to the table I had made. The exit of the portal I made go on the defended side of the portal nexus room. Once it was set up I stepped through to find Brutus and Barr on guard duty again. "My lord," Brutus said, waving in greeting. "Good afternoon Brutus, and Barr," I said. "There are going to be a lot of leprechauns passing through. They''ve just joined the fortress. Their current location seems to be secure, but I''m sending them through here so you can keep an eye out." Brutus nodded and he and Barr opened up the gate that they''d set up that separated the internal fortress portal wall from the external portal wall. I moved the exit to the leprechaun floor onto the wall next to the druid floor exit, and pointed it out to Brutus. Ailfrid had made his slow way through the first portal and was the first leprechaun to step through. "Don''t you have scouts that should be leading the way?" I asked with a smile. "Bah," Ailfrid said. "They wouldn''t have the first clue about what a new settlement required." I led him through the portal to his new floor and he looked around. It was unlit and quite dark, only the lights from the portal nexus showing a short distance out into the floor. After a few moments Ailfrid did something that made the air itself glow, flowing out to fill the room. "Impressive wards," Ailfrid said. "It would have been more effective to place the light over the stone, but access is completely blocked." He looked around the now lit floor and hummed to himself. Other leprechauns were coming through the portal in ones and twos, clustering together to the side. "It is certainly a tall space," Ailfrid said. "Were you expecting to house giants here?" "I wanted the option of having two levels for peoples of about my size," I said. "That would make it almost four levels for your people?" "Yes, a lot of space," Ailfrid said. "This will house our people quite comfortably. You said you would help us with initial construction, would that include filling the entire floor with soil?" "That''s simple enough to do," I said. "You don''t want any stone walls put in?" "No," Ailfrid said. "We can manage our own building quite readily. We just need something similar to the hills we are used to. And a place to remove the excess dirt to." I pulled out a thread portal to start filling the area with dirt and set it going, starting around the portal and leaving a five meter by five meter area clear around it. And I assigned a quest similar to the Mountain Keeper stone quest to dispose of dirt rather than stone, though without the Fortress Coin reward. I tied the quest to the location of the floor, which was a new idea I wanted to try out. It will make it so that anyone on the leprechaun floor would have access to the quest if they wanted it. "That will take some time to finish filling the entire floor," I said. "But it should go faster than you are able to dig it out. Access to running water would come from the floor above, and I will put in pipes where you need them. Waste material and water goes through similar pipes or chutes down to the floor below. The only other thing is that I recommend that you make a greeting area that is sized for us taller people." Ailfrid nodded. "Yes, that would be wise," Ailfrid said. "Although I expect that idiot will be more courteous now that you are our overlord. We should get started, then." I would need to personally pay attention to where they needed the service pipes connected... Unless. I made a quest requesting a report on the locations that service pipes should be placed and sent it to Ailfrid with a reward of one Fortress Coin. "Hmm," Ailfrid said. "Interesting. How do I submit a report?"This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Oh, whoops. That might explain why I hadn''t gotten any of the other reports as well. "Write it down and place it in a Fortress Presence," I said. "Oh, and you can access the Fortress Shop by saying or thinking ''Fortress Shop'' while near a Fortress Presence. That should be everything you need to get started. Feel free to ask questions of the other people in the fortress, or of one of the Fortress Presences. I want to get back and see the army for myself." Ailfrid nodded. "You could use a manager for dealing with new people to the fortress, but we should be able to manage, as you say," Ailfrid said. "I will get a scout to guide you to the army''s location." He turned slowly to face the cluster of leprechauns, which was already over a hundred strong, and scowled. "What are you lot doing just standing around, we have homes to dig and furniture to move," Ailfrid said. "Beacan, get over here, you''re going on a mission with our new Lord." As soon as Ailfrid said the word ''mission'' I started creating a quest for Beacan to guide me to the army north of the old leprechaun village. I sent it just as he came to a stop in front of us. "Escort lord C.C. to the frost zone that holds the army of winter," Beacan said, reading the blue screen in front of him. "And the reward is one Fortress Coin. This will be my second after the Evacuation quest completed, but what are they used for?" Ailfrid was frowning at him. "You can find out when you''ve completed the mission, quest," Ailfrid said. "Off you go." I nodded to Ailfrid and led Beacan back to the leprechaun floor portal, the leprechauns that were coming through the portal moving aside to let us through. Through the portal on the other side to the old leprechaun village there was a huge crowd of leprechauns being directed by Liz, their matriarch. Which seemed unusual for someone of her station to be doing personally. The crowd parted to let us through on this side as well and we were soon moving off to the north. We were moving a lot slower than I did when I was travelling, barely making five kilometers an hour with Beacan running. He managed to keep up the pace for the first five minutes, and I amused myself by using my heat vision to spot leprechaun archers in their hides in the trees. Beacan was being much more professional this time, taking his role as a scout seriously without any of the chatter that had marked his escorting me to see the matriarch. He was also nearly silent in his movement, and without my heat vision he would have blended into the background of the lightly grassed hills as he was moving. After five minutes he began to pant slightly and I slowed to a stop. "You seem to be almost invisible as you''re running," I said. Beacan nodded. "It''s a semi-passive stealth skill," He said. "It uses some mana while moving, but while staying still it makes it nearly impossible to be seen or heard." "Is it slowing you down or tiring you out more than just running would?" I asked. Beacan''s face flushed. "No," He said. "And I''m not weak either. We''re just moving faster than I can run without resting. If we were to move at three quarters of our current speed then I could go until nightfall." Dropping our speed down to less than four kilometers an hour. "And how far is it to the army?" I asked. "The reports place it at forty kilometers away," Beacan said. "It would take you ten hours to get there, ordinarily?" I asked. "Closer to eleven," Beacan said. "I would rather not take so long," I said. "How would you feel if I were to carry you?" "Uncomfortable, my lord," Beacan said. "But if that is the best solution then I will cope." I wanted to keep my hands free, just in case, so I spent a few minutes making a small wood and cloth chair that I could carry strapped in front of me with belts. I added an extra belt going over the chair, as well as solid handholds, so that Beacan had a way to keep himself in at the speeds we would be moving. He climbed in when I indicated that it was ready and I picked it up and strapped it on. My center of gravity was shifted forward somewhat, but that was easy to adjust for. We were out of the woods that surrounded the leprechaun village and there weren''t any major obstacles to go around. I started out at a jog that quickly turned into a full sprint, making an impressive fifty kilometers an hour on the downward slopes of the hills, but slowing down to forty kilometers an hour going up. Less than an hour later Beacan tapped me on the side and I slowed to a stop at the top of the next hill. "The next hill is where the frost zone starts," Beacan said. "I will go scout it." I was impressed he was able to keep his bearings while moving so much faster than he was used to. He unstrapped the belt holding him in to the seat and hopped down as I knelt, quickly moving to the next hill. I unstrapped the multiple belts that were holding the chair to me while I waited for him to return. Two minutes later I saw his heat signature coming back but it wasn''t until he was ten meters away that I could make him out visually. "There are dozens of ice wisps patrolling everywhere along the border," Beacan said. "There is no way that you won''t be seen, as big as you are." "Thank you," I said. "I still want to see the army for myself. There is no need for you to stick around if it might come to a fight." A Fortress Coin materialised in front of Beacan as the quest completed and he grabbed it from where it was floating. I made him a portal back to the portal nexus room and he gave me a nod before stepping through. Placing the portal back in my pocket I set off at a jog to the next hill. I slowed as I reached the top, trying to be at least a little bit stealthy I crept up to the lone frozen tree at the peak. Just before I got there an ice wisp floated in front of me and started bouncing up and down. Chapter 90 - Warning The ice wisp continued bobbing in front of me, staying one meter away as I made my way the rest of the way up the hill, the frozen grass crackling under my feet. It was probably trying to communicate with me, but it''s mental manipulation with mana was just as ineffective as when the last ice wisp had tried it. I cleared the top of the hill and was able to look down into the next valley. Four giant ice blue serpents with barbed frills around their necks were the first thing that leapt into my attention and must be the lesser dragons. They were placed on the four edges of the square formation of the army of humanoids. I did a count of the army, they were in neat sections of ten by ten, and there were ten sections, for one thousand troops. And there was an eleventh section fading into view at the back. The snow men themselves were uniform in appearance, two meters tall and glowing a blue colour with white eyes that glowed even brighter. The dragons were slightly over twice the height of the snow men that stood next to them, making them four meters tall... Or thick? The closest section of one hundred snow men started to move up the hill towards me as I was assessing their army, and the nearest dragon hovered itself up off of the ground to move next to them. It uncoiled from where it was resting, and uncoiled, and continued uncoiling. When it finally finished uncoiling it must have been fifty meters long of floating reptile. I did consider running immediately, the sheer size of the dragon meant that I would have to double the length of my sword to be assured a critical strike without aiming for the eyes or inside its throat. But I wanted to see what made the snow men more dangerous than the other winter creatures I had faced. I held my ground and began running simulations as to how to fight the dragon. Turning back to look in the direction I had come from, checking my escape route, there are three ice wisps spread out attempting to block the way. I took my sword out through my pocket portal and pushed heat into it, then made shooing motions at them. They split up and flew over to opposite sides where there were other ice wisps gathering. When the snow men were twenty meters away they shifted their formation into an open box, looking to surround me. The dragon''s head stopped moving forward at the same twenty meter distance, but it continued moving the rest of its body forward, slowly forming coils under itself. I kept still with my sword in front of me as snow men moved past me, closing the box formation with me in the middle. That was what I was waiting for, I wanted to isolate a single snow man to determine what its combat strength was. I turned slowly to face down the hill the way I had come, out of the frost zone, when a heat source appeared behind the snow men to my right. With everything so cold it stood out like a flare, and it hadn''t been there a few seconds ago. "Are you just scouting, or are you trying to solve the problem without involving an army?" the Instructor asked. "Just scouting right now," I said. "I wanted to see how dangerous these ''more dangerous winter creatures'' were in combat." "That''s fine then," the Instructor said. "But if you do try to solve this without facing my army with one of your own then I will use my other speciality." The Instructor teleported away, his heat signature quickly disappearing. The snow men began closing in, forming a second rank of bodies as the box got smaller. I turned to face south, down the hill away from the dragon and army, and dashed at the center snow man in that line of the formation, my sword extended before me. My sword went through his chest without any resistance and I spread out my left hand to push against him. We both went flying down the hill, staying in the air long enough for him to swipe his sharp claws across my chest slicing through my reinforced skin and muscles easily and scraping along the bones of my ribs. It only didn''t go deeper because I had half blocked it with my left arm. While he was doing that I turned my sword in his chest and pushed it up through his neck and out the top of his head. Leaving him completely unharmed. Either he was moving his body around my blade or he healed extremely quickly. I sliced through his body in different places three times, and blocked two of his attacks fully, before we landed on the ground. I was on top of him, my knees driving into his stomach before I rolled off and away.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. I took a moment to limit the bleeding that my chest was doing as the ice man got to his feet and faced me. The nearest ice men were just turning and I estimated it would take them five seconds to reach the fight. Now that we were both on the ground and had leverage the single snow man didn''t pose much threat to me, so I plotted out a series of strikes that would pass through the majority of his body. If there wasn''t a weak point then I would run, but I wanted to check thoroughly first. I started from the head and worked my way down. I had to adjust a few lines of my strikes to work around his attacks, but he never came close to hitting me again. Finally a slash that went through his left leg just below the knee came across some resistance and the snow man collapsed into a pile of snow, the glow leaving it entirely. I would have liked to find whatever I had hit if it still remained, but the first wave of snow men were arriving. They had fallen into a formation five across, and it looked as though the center one was going to attack me while the others flanked. I slashed through each of the first five''s legs in the exact location that had killed the first one. And not a single snow man died. The location of the weak point moved from snow man to snow man, or maybe they could move it at will. And with five of them surrounding me with reinforcements immediately behind them they could actually be a threat to me. My weapon of choice, the sword, was the least practical weapon to fight them with. I might be able to kill the dragon with my current sword if I had to, but a rework of my weapons was in order. If they attacked my fortress I was confident that I could deal with them. I turned and ran from the snow men before they could finish surrounding me, heading south at nearly my top speed. I paused and looked back from the top of the next hill, the snow men were returning back over their hill, they weren''t chasing me. I stopped to heal my chest more thoroughly, sitting down before blacking out. After that I ran east. Half an hour later the grass turned into a grain bearing type that might have been wheat. And I ran out into late afternoon sunlight, the clouds receding. Half an hour after that and the last hill flattened out into a plain as far as I could see. The grain was above my waist, and I was leaving a trail behind me, gaps where the grass had been pushed down or trampled. I took the claim ward out of my pocket portal and began signalling for a Keeper as I ran. After an hour of not seeing anything other than the grass I was running through I came to a stop. I had been toggling the claim off and on constantly, so the Plains Keepers should be well aware that I was here. I cleared a five meter wide circle in the grass and then stood in the middle, continuing to toggle the ward. The wind could be seen as it travelled over the plains in waves and I relaxed following the patterns it made, enjoying the lack of pain I was feeling. A few minutes later I noticed rustling coming from behind me, still a hundred meters off but getting closer. I turned to face that direction and was able to see the slight twitching of the heads of grain against the patterns of the wind at where my sound sense was pinpointing the sound. It took it twenty seconds to reach the edge of my circle and it showed itself to be a giant meerkat. It stopped just within my cleared area and stood on its back legs which brought it to the same height as me. It looked at me for a few moments and then started making ''hoohoo'' noises while shaking its finger at me. "Ah, I don''t speak your language," I said. Though it was apparent that I was being told off. Considering that the Plains Keeper had come from behind me, I could even guess the topic of the scolding. The Plains Keeper gestured for me to follow it and headed south. It disappeared quickly into the tall grass but I was able to follow it by the sound it was making. We were travelling slowly, at the Plains Keeper''s pace, but it only took us five minutes before my guide stood up above the grass. The sound of someone else was making its way toward us until a second Plains Keeper popped up in front of the first one. They exchanged greetings, and then the second one came over to stand in front of me. "You were asking for a meeting?" It asked. "While running too fast for one of us to catch you." "I did," I said. "I apologise for running while asking for a meeting, it didn''t occur to me that I would be running from the Plains Keepers. I need to speak with your leader urgently, there is an army coming to attempt to exterminate the Plains Keepers. I want to offer a safe haven for some of your people in my fortress." The Plains Keeper was about to speak when I got an urgent ping from Chantelle, followed immediately by the detection ward for the fortress going off. Chapter 91 - Unheeded I dropped into the main simulation, showing the latest data from the ward room, and matched the time perception that was there which was maxed out. Chantelle was there waiting for me when I arrived. "That was quick," Chantelle said. "I wasn''t expecting you for another few minutes." "What''s happening?" I asked. The table in the simulation had the detection ward''s hologram above it split in two displays, one was showing a group of snow men and the other was of The Instructor knocking on John''s door on the third floor. "The detection ward gave a warning as I was working on it," Chantelle said. "It wasn''t a direct hit that would set it off, but I had reworked it enough to alert if anyone just appeared. The idea being if the other champion teleported in we would be notified right away. I was working out some bugs with it detecting people coming through portals when the ward gave an odd reading. Bringing up the detection showed those people, with the other champion in front of them, phasing into this realm on the Forest Keeper floor. I sent you an urgent ping just as he teleported away, and the detection ward triggered as it was supposed to." I tried to zoom the view of the snow men out with my controls over the ward, but it was moving so slow from my perspective that nothing was happening. "Do you know where, exactly, the snow men are?" I asked. Chantelle nodded and made a pushing gesture at one of the walls. The wall fell down and behind it there was a snapshot simulation of the newly excavated area in the north east of the Forest Keeper. There were one hundred snow men in formation and they had just started moving towards the populated area of the floor, fifty meters away from the nearest Forest Keeper. The bad news was that none of the nearest people were armed in any way. The good news was that almost all of them were within fifty meters of the Heart of the Forest tree and the snow men were unmistakably a hostile force. It should be possible for Mal''Thorn to bring up a barrier of roots to protect them. I made a quest for Mal''Thorn to protect his people from the sneak attack until I could get there, making an optional component to raise the root barrier around the Heart of the Forest with an additional reward, and then sent it to the System. Only a fraction of a second of real time had passed since I had dropped into the simulation. I didn''t know if I could fabricate a new weapon in the time it would take me to get to the snow men in my fortress, but I had the time to design it. The absolute barest minimum of material. A mesh of wires. Five centimeter squares. One meter wide. Half a meter tall. On the end of a two meter pole. All made of stone. Reinforce it with power to keep it together. "What is that?" Chantelle asked, making me jump slightly. "Sorry," I said. "I''m not really used to sharing while I''m designing. It''s a weapon specifically designed for fighting snow men. They have a core of some sort in their body that kills them when it''s broken." "So it''s a giant sieve?" Chantelle asked. "Pretty much," I said. "Is there anything I can be doing to help?" Chantelle asked. "If they phased in then they''re using the god''s power of shifting realms," I said. "If all they were doing was listening in on us then an anti-god ward was lower priority. Now that they''ve shown that they can use it to infiltrate the fortress we need it as quickly as you can add it." Chantelle nodded. "Right," She said. "There are some negative side effects to the sharpness of the small symbols that make it up. But I will make a normal sized one before working out the smaller one to replace it later. Should it cover the claim area or just the fortress?" "Both, and as separate wards, I think," I said. Chantelle created a new ward in front of her with a gesture and began tweaking it. I stopped all of the background projects that my digital side was working on and set my full production capabilities on making my sieve weapon within reach of my pocket portals.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. My next problem was physically getting to the Forest Keeper floor. Ordinarily I had minutes to move my portals around, but I didn''t have that luxury this time. I moved my focus back to my local simulation and brought myself up to about half of normal speed. I took my larger pocket portal out and forced it open with my hands, not waiting for the time that it would take my Matter Manipulation to reshape it nicely. As soon as it was open enough to squeeze through I held it above my head then pulled it down over myself. I heard a slow and exaggerated sound of shock from the Plains Keeper that I was leaving behind as I vanished in front of his eyes. The portal would be open in the plains, and it would lead to the heart of my Pocket Dimension, but I didn''t have time to worry about that. I had to duck into a roll as I transitioned into my Pocket Dimension as gravity shifted and I went from standing to diving head first through the portal. My spare thread portals were stored near to my pocket portal exits, as was my sword, so I scooped them both up as I ran towards the portal room for the Forest Keeper floor. My usual method of passing through the stone surrounding portal rooms, shifting stone out of my way and then behind me, would take too long. I soaked my power into the stone to weaken it, and into my body to reinforce it, and charged right through the meter thick super stone. I bounced off of it at the same time that it shattered inwards along the faint fault lines I had placed in at such short notice. I stood up and did a quick check of my body, nothing broken. I continued my run through the portal room and onto the Forest Keeper floor. The first thing I saw was that Mal''Thorn had raised a four meter tall fence of roots in a semicircle shielding against the snow men. There weren''t enough full grown trees to make the sort of barrier that I was expecting, but I could see through it well enough that I could see the snow men had changed the direction of their march to go around it. The snow men had covered half of the distance to the nearest non-combatant. There were a dozen unarmed Forest Keepers on the wrong side of the fence but they were quickly retreating away from the snow men. There were fifty Forest Keepers with spears that were making their way in a disorganised fashion around the fence to defend against the snow men, and Mal''Thorn was within a group of the first five. The snow men had changed their target to Mal''Thorn. My most direct route was under the Heart of the Forest and then to jump over the four meter tall fence of sharpened roots. But even that wouldn''t get me there before the two forces clashed, not if I was to have enough energy left in my muscles to fight. I ran. I plotted out the energy usage of my legs to arrive at the fight with forty percent remaining. Ten meters away from the fence I leapt upwards in an arc, clearing the sharpened tips of the roots by centimeters. I landed in a roll to conserve as much energy as possible and the snow men and Forest Keepers slammed into each other as I came back to my feet. The five Keepers, with Mal''Thorn backing them, ran into the snow men formation that was ten wide. A barrier flickered into view as it stopped the swipes of the snow men keeping the spear users safe, but the stabs and slices they were doing had no affect. Four snow men were making their way around the sides of the spear users. I was three seconds away from them, and approaching from slightly to one side and behind. I reached into the thread portal I had picked up and pulled out my sieve weapon. The stone of the whole thing was only half a centimeter thick, but hopefully it would hold up. I soaked my power into it, reinforcing it as much as I could, and changed my angle of approach to take me down the snow men''s line formation. My sieve wasn''t large enough to cover an entire snow man, so I lined it up to pass through them from mid-thigh to their shoulders. The first two I passed that were trying to flank Mal''Thorn''s group the sieve worked perfectly on. It went right through them, met resistance, and then they collapsed into snow. I adjusted my footing and then dashed along the snow man formation, holding my sieve out to pass through the nine that were lined up. The first one remained standing, the next six fell immediately, and the last two stayed up. The back half of the snow man formation turned to focus on me as I came to a stop five meters behind them. I stepped towards them as they charged me. Even coordinated and with claws that could damage me they stood no chance against my new weapon. They came at me in a row of ten and I simply started from the left, moving the sieve down over the first one''s entire body and then over and up the second one''s body. Both dissolved. I finished the first row that way and was moving through the second row when Mal''Thorn shouted. I dashed through the center of the snow man formation, out of the half that had come after me and into the ones attacking the Forest Keeper line. I took some minor cuts from claws, but also dissolved several snow men that passed through the sieve I was holding in front of me. Three of the spear users were dead, and the remaining four were hurt but still attacking desperately with their spears. Mal''Thorn was on his knees, his right arm missing from above the shoulder, his left gripping it tightly to slow the bleeding. There were snow men in amongst them, and one was swiping towards Mal''Thorn''s head. I dropped my sieve weapon and grabbed that arm, pushing it above Mal''Thorn''s head I then moved with the turn, picking the snow man up and throwing him into several others. I picked up another and threw him in a different direction, knocking down yet more. Three more and I had a bit of breathing room. I picked my sieve weapon back up. The energy in my arms and legs was low, but using my sieve used hardly any energy and I systematically destroyed every snow man that came near us. Chapter 92 - One of Us There were forty snow men left from the original one hundred, and they were keeping their distance in front of me. I was covering the retreat of Mal''Thorn and the spear users, reinforcements had arrived and were assisting them back to where their healers were waiting. Another of the first spear users had died before he could be evacuated, bringing the fortress death count up to four. The rescue group took their bodies with them as well. I was resting, building the energy back up in my muscles, and responding to the moves and feints of the snow man formation as it tried to get around me and to the Forest Keepers. After a few minutes of them trying and failing to get around me I heard a cracking sound from the north east, like sheet ice breaking, and the snow men broke off and began retreating that way. The Instructor was to the north east, where the group had phased in, and John was with him. I looked at my sieve weapon, which had chunks missing from it and stress fractures all over. I took out my pocket portal and put the sieve weapon away and pulled out a throwing blade. There were snow men in the way, but I calculated the trajectory as though they weren''t, assuming that they would shift around the blade. I threw with all of the recovered energy of my right arm and the blade crossed the fifty meters in under a second, whistling as it flew. And went straight through The Instructor''s chest and out the other side, burying itself deep in the stone behind him. The snow men, The Instructor, and John began fading from view, The Instructor on his knees holding his chest. We stared at each other until he had completely faded from view. I took a deep breath and winced. I had deep gouges all over me, and was losing quite a lot of blood even after stopping the bleeding as much as possible with the minimal usage of my power I could do without blacking out. I loaded up my healing program, got an estimate of twenty seconds for the full repair, and then triggered it. When I came to I was on my face. I stood up and turned to running footsteps from behind me, there were a dozen Forest Keepers with spears rushing towards me. I frowned, but at a second look they had their spears up on their shoulders. Ah, right. From their perspective I had just fought off a small army of strong creatures and then collapsed after taking serious wounds. Actually, that''s how it was from my perspective too. They were coming to help. I waved them off as I began to walk back to where the Forest Keeper healers were set up with forty spear users guarding them. The Forest Keepers who had come out escorted me, six on each side, sharing hoots with each other. I was really going to have to learn their language at some point. The healers had stabilised the three wounded spear users, one of which was Mal''Thorn''s head guard. He was missing both hands and the end portion of his tail. At the end he was using his forearm to thrust awkwardly at the snow men. Mal''Thorn was standing to the side still being treated by a healer. The stump of his arm had stopped bleeding. I walked to a meter in front of him and stopped, looking at the ground. "I''m sorry," I said. "The fortress was supposed to be safe, and now four of our people are dead. It was my lack of foresight that allowed it to happen." "The guards did their duty," Mal''Thorn said. "They gave their lives to defend the Forest and the Fortress." Mal''Thorn waved off the healer who was trying to get him to sit on the ground. I pulled stone from my Pocket Dimension and made a Forest Keeper chair for him, which he took with a nod of thanks. "The safety that is assured by our treaty isn''t an absolute," Mal''Thorn said. "The Fortress is a safe place, but that safe place must still be defended, that is why there are guards. If you hadn''t warned us, or didn''t come to drive the snow men off yourself, then we would have lost a lot more people. And maybe everyone. I don''t think I saw a single enemy go down from our spears, and they took down my barrier in a handful of seconds."The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. Mal''Thorn patted me on the shoulder. "It is the enemy Champion who is responsible for this," Mal''Thorn said. "As well as for destroying the Heart of the Forest and the rest of the Forest Keepers. The Forest Keepers will fight against him." "I don''t want you or your people in harms way," I said. "I will take care of it." "You are trying to do too much," Mal''Thorn said. "You need to learn to delegate. You have capable administrators and warriors within your people, and you aren''t using them." I didn''t want to lose any more of my people. The internal administration of my people was already being done by their leaders, though I didn''t really know what was happening with them. The problem came with administrators, diplomats, and warriors who would be exposed to the hazards of the outside world. It would be inevitable that some of them would die. Unless... "Mal''Thorn, I have something that would work," I said. "It would require you to give up a part of your identity in return for power. And I would require you to swear loyalty to me personally." Mal''Thorn frowned at me. "Am I not already sworn to you?" Mal''Thorn asked. "No," I said. "By the terms of our treaty you are sworn to working for the betterment of the people of the fortress." Mal''Thorn paused for a few minutes, and I gave him the time to think. A healer came by and placed their hands on his wounded arm. "It seems you are correct," Mal''Thorn said. "The treaty would not enforce any loyalty or obedience to you as Lord of the Fortress, just to the general concept of the people of the fortress. I unreservedly swear my loyalty to you, my lord." I nodded. "Thank you," I said. "Are you willing to transcend your race to join me?" "I am, my lord," Mal''Thorn said. "Alright," I said. "It will take me some time to set up, maybe half an hour. While I''m doing that... Are your healers able to heal amputated limbs?" "No, my lord," Mal''Thorn said. "I will not regain my arm, if that factors into your plans." "No, nothing like that," I said. "I can restore you completely. And I can restore our wounded people to full health. There is a cost, however. My form of healing is extremely painful, and there has been a single case of someone concerned about their sanity if they were to be healed again." "Like what you did for your arm?" Mal''Thorn asked. "You discovered how to make it work on other people?" "Yes, exactly like that," I said. "I have healed myself... Quite a lot. And Chantelle, and several druids. I would need to modify you anyway to transcend you closer to my race. The warning was more for the maimed spear users, if you could tell them of the offer and the costs involved?" "Of course, my lord," Mal''Thorn said, stepping off his chair and going to speak with them. In my Pocket Dimension I started up all of the projects I had put on hold and added a new one on top with the highest priority. Building Mal''Thorn a Mind Link and a digital platform to run his consciousness. I moved the portal that was laying on the ground in the Plains Biome into its own portal room and moved a presence up to it to see out. I stood the portal up by digging it into the ground slightly. There were several Plains Keepers that were stationed around the portal, and they each had a sharp blade along their forearms. They were two meters from the portal, and as I turned it I saw that it was surrounded. I was going to say something through the presence when my focus was pulled back to my body. "They will all take you up on your offer," Mal''Thorn said. I turned to see Mal''Thorn''s head guard baring his teeth at me, his ears flat, and his head bowed. "What is he doing?" I asked, the other two were now doing the same. "They are submitting to you," Mal''Thorn said. "Humans don''t do that?" "I think we bow," I said. "With a full kneeling bow being full submission. Wait, so is smiling submitting?" "No," Mal''Thorn said. "Smiling is an expression of happiness, though it can be more complicated than that." "That is the same, then," I said. "Well, we might as well do it right away." The Plains Keepers could wait. "Yes, my lord," Mal''Thorn said. "Is this healing a service that could be offered through the Fortress Shop?" "It isn''t," I said. I took out my pocket portal and formed it into a doorway, placing the exit on top of the tonnes of stone in the Pocket Dimension that came from excavating the Forest Keeper floor. I moved some of my lights up there too. After a few moments I continued. "Anyone that is maimed or disabled I will restore for free. Though I think I will place a fee on reversing ageing, as that will be a good incentive." "Reversing ageing," Mal''Thorn said. "You can return people to youth?" "I can," I said. "Through here." I gestured through the doorway and Mal''Thorn went through followed by the three spear users, two of which were carrying the third who was missing both of his legs at different heights. Two of the healers approached and hooted at me. I nodded to them and stepped through the portal and they followed. "Okay, first I have to adapt you all to my power," I said, Mal''Thorn translating. "It takes five minutes and will drain your mana in that time." Chapter 93 - Healing and Conversion It took ten minutes before my power was able to soak into each of the four of them, twice as long as when I did a single person. They were talking with each other in their language so I went on to making scans of each of them, and then building a super model compilation of all of them, a model with no injuries. "Excuse me, Mal''Thorn," I said. "What is your head guard''s name?" "He doesn''t have a name in this language," Mal''Thorn said. "What is his name in your language, then?" I asked. Mal''Thorn made a hooting sound. The head guard felt like a Gerald to me, so I tied that in to the sound that Mal''Thorn had made. When I say ''Gerald'' in reference to the head guard, Gerald''s name should come out. "His name is Gerald," I said. Mal''Thorn looked at me with his eyebrows raised. "I did not think you would be able to make the right sounds," Mal''Thorn said. I got it right, then, good. "Gerald will be first," I said. "I want to learn all of your language at some point. Placing a Fortress Presence where stories are told by your people would be ideal, as it worked very well with the beast people." Now I just had to give my pre-healing speech. "Translate this for me, please," I said. "The pain will feel endless, but I promise it will end. When it is done there will be no more pain." Mal''Thorn translated and I stood in front of Gerald. I had the modified model of him prepared, replacing his hands and his tail. Gerald nodded and I gripped him by the shoulders, when he breathed out I triggered the program. His eyes rolled up into his head and I held him up as he collapsed. Where his arms ended at the wrists they extended out, not like new hands were growing, but as though the cut that had taken them off had instead hit further out into the hand. After three seconds it looked as though he had only lost all of his fingers, and two seconds after that the hand was completely restored. The same process happened with his other hand, and then his tail. The whole process took less than twenty seconds and then his eyes snapped back to the front and focused on me. "Please ask him if he is okay," I said. By this point I didn''t think anyone would be driven insane by the pain, but I wasn''t sure enough that I wouldn''t take precautions. Mal''Thorn asked him, and he replied. "He is fine, and much relieved," Mal''Thorn said. "You have saved him from being retired and having to be cared for for the rest of his life." I let go of Gerald''s shoulders and waved that away. Gerald stepped a full step backwards and bowed to me at the waist. After several moments Gerald said something, Mal''Thorn replied, and Gerald stood back up. "He asked whether that was correct," Mal''Thorn said. "You looked uncomfortable, so I said that it was. It was the simplest way to get him to stop. Was I incorrect?" "No, the bow was accurate to indicate deep respect," I said. "But this is something that I owed them." I didn''t actually know where I was getting the information about bowing, it was just something that was there when I thought about it. Likely it was a leftover from my last life, drawn into this one by the background needed for knowing the language. I walked to the Forest Keeper who was missing his legs, one at the knee and the other at the upper thigh. He was laying on his side propped up on one arm with his tail wrapped around himself. I spoke my pre-healing speech to the man, mimicking the sounds that Mal''Thorn had made in his translation. When I''d finished the man made a short hoot and nodded. I grabbed him by the shoulders and again waited for the exhale before triggering the program. Forty seconds later he gasped in a breath, his legs fully restored. He said something, and Mal''Thorn nodded to me. I let go of his shoulders and he jumped up, hooting excitedly. When he landed he span on one foot, which happened to whip his tail into me. He stopped, turned slowly and took a step backwards, baring his teeth and folding his ears back before giving a deep bow of his own. He said something.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. "He apologises, and asks for your forgiveness," Mal''Thorn said. "No harm done," I said. "Nothing to forgive. It is nice that he was so excited." Mal''Thorn translated that for him as I walked to the last spear user. A woman, she was missing over half of her right hand, and down her right forearm. The right side of her face and head were also a mess of barely healed scarring, and from the scan of her I had I knew that she was also missing bone from her skull in three gouges. It was surprising that she had survived to make it to the healers, and that the healers were able to stabilise her. I repeated the pre-healing speech to her in the Forest Keeper language, and she tried to make the same short hoot that the man had done, but it came out garbled. A tear ran down from her non-ruined eye and she nodded carefully. I grabbed her shoulders, waited for her exhale, and then triggered the program. Twenty seconds later she was as good as new, and as soon as she came out of it she grabbed me in a crushing hug that I wasn''t expecting or prepared for at all. My ribs creaked and I reinforced my body with my power. Mal''Thorn said something to her and she replied, muffled by being pressed against my robe. "She says that she''s fine, she just needs a minute, my lord," Mal''Thorn said. I nodded to him. I could feel my robe getting wet from her crying. I looked over to the other two to see the two healers who had followed us were interviewing them. After a few minutes the woman stopped crying and stepped back. She said something to Mal''Thorn. "''Thank you''," Mal''Thorn said. "Huank hoo," The woman said. I nodded and gave her a short bow, she went over to the healers. "Did my mimicry sound like that in your language?" I asked. I was a bit concerned that my pre-healing speech had gotten garbled. "No, my lord," Mal''Thorn said. "Yours was a perfect imitation, down to the inflections on the words." "Just you left to go," I said. His Mind Link was prepared, and there was enough processing power in the newly created platform to begin hosting the digital side of his consciousness. Though I will expand it after he is installed into it to give him some more space. I also had a fourth platform of processors and memory created which won''t be used to host anyone, but will act as a common area simulation that all of the Demi-AI will be able to access, improve, and modify. I was about to give Mal''Thorn my pre-healing speech when I got a ping for attention from the presence that was looking out into the plains. I brought up the feed from it and there was a discussion amongst all of the Plains Keepers present, and then someone had picked up the thread portal and was carrying it. That was new. But it was also something I could deal with later. I walked over to stand in front of Mal''Thorn. "The pain will feel endless, but I promise it will end," I said. "When it is done there will be no more pain." Mal''Thorn smiled. "Thank you, my lord," Mal''Thorn said. "I know the process by now." "There is more for you," I said. "When the pain is gone you will be left in darkness without any access to your senses. I will be there as soon as I can, but it might be a few minutes." Mal''Thorn nodded. I grabbed him by the shoulders, exhaled with him, and triggered the program. Replacing his arm was first, and then it was on to the Mind Link micro-portals, which I had to start manually just as I had to with Chantelle. I was watching the memory of Mal''Thorn''s hardware platform while I worked, and after several million micro-portals my access to the memory was blocked. I immediately sent a communication handshake to the digital platform. The interface program I had placed on the platform before Mal''Thorn got there couldn''t accept automatically, but it would prompt Mal''Thorn to accept or reject the communication. I got a ping from the System but delayed it while I waited for Mal''Thorn''s response. A few seconds later Mal''Thorn accepted and I redirected us to the common simulation that was running on its own hardware. There wasn''t anything running there yet, so I made a simple room and brought the model of my body into it. I brought the model of Mal''Thorn''s body in as well and gave it to him. There wasn''t enough memory in either the common simulation or Mal''Thorn''s digital side yet, so I was hosting it for him. "Welcome," I said. "You are now a Demi-AI. Benefits include being able to slow down time, programming, simulations, secure and instantaneous communications between any other Demi-AI, and probably other things." I compiled data packets for using the time perception interface program, basic coding, simulation manipulation, and data packets themselves and sent them to Mal''Thorn. He accepted them and looked around the room. "I spent a few hours relaxing and poking around the darkness before accepting your communication," Mal''Thorn said. "I didn''t mean to be rude, I just wanted to experience it and see what I could do." "It was only a few seconds of time for me," I said. "And it was a tiny fraction of a second at what everyone else is experiencing." Mal''Thorn nodded. I created a chair for him, and a different one for myself. Ten minutes later I got a request to accept a data packet from Mal''Thorn, which I accepted. Loading it up, the first part was a primer on the Forest Keeper language. I had plenty of memory to spare so I decompressed it fully and had my language learning program dive through it. A few minutes later I had a basic grasp of the language, and my proficiency should grow rapidly. "Thank you," I said in a series of hoots. Mal''Thorn nodded, then focused intently on the white wall in front of him. It changed into a forest scene in summer. He seemed to be getting the hang of things. I brought up the System message that I had suppressed and allowed it to be a blue screen in front of me.
Error...
Demi-AI cannot be categorised. Resolving... Resolved: For purposes of the Champion goal for participant DS-2248694637-1 the non-AI half of the Demi-AI will be what is considered in population counts. Conclusion will be reassessed if Demi-AI population in the Fortress passes one hundred members.
Chapter 94 - Recruitment The simulation that Mal''Thorn was creating, of the summer forest, was full of birds, rabbits, dear, and other forest creatures. The warmth and humidity came through into the room, followed by a rich earthy smell. "I don''t remember seeing any of those animals in the forest," I said. "They went into the summer realm for midwinter," Mal''Thorn said. "Though some of them are sheltered at the start of winter as well." "Isn''t that where the monsters go as well?" I asked. "It is," Mal''Thorn said. He frowned in concentration and there was a roar from the forest, followed by the sound of something leaping from tree to tree toward us. A moment later an enormous black cat dropped down in front of us, three meters long not counting its tail, its ears went back and it roared again. It was a very convincing simulation. I stepped forward and stared it down, and it reacted by spitting at me, directly at my eyes. I could have dodged, but I could control the simulation myself and I simply willed the attack not to effect my model. "An interesting creature," I said. "It is one of the more dangerous creatures that hunt in the Forest during summer," Mal''Thorn said. "It hunts by roaring and spitting?" I asked. "No," Mal''Thorn said. "That was a territorial display, how it acts when it is trying to drive other predators out of its claimed area. It hunts by stealth, and it can use its acidic spit to blind larger prey. The majority of Forest Keeper deaths on patrols in the summer are from them." The large cat disappeared as Mal''Thorn banished it, returning the smaller forest creatures that had scattered at the first roar. "Should we be heading back out?" Mal''Thorn asked. "There''s no rush," I said. "Chantelle and I have spent hundreds of hours talking and no one has noticed. When I am out running around I''m in near constant pain, I take breaks for a few hours between seconds to relax. We''ve even figured out how to make a simulation that matches reality pretty closely, the key being that you have to disallow interacting or even seeing the rules and variables that govern the simulation. That way you can''t automatically adjust things to remove or avoid effects, makes for a much more satisfying and fulfilling experience." "You''re implying that I should bring my wife here?" Mal''Thorn asked. I hadn''t even known that Mal''Thorn was married. We talked for a few hours after that, about life in general. I showed him the feeds from the digital presences, and I gave him read access to the stream from the presence on the Forest Keeper floor. The conversation eventually made its way to fighting against The Instructor. "Any Forest Keeper that wants to fight with me will have to be made a Demi-AI," I said. "Oh," Mal''Thorn said. "Why is that?" "Demi-AI are immortal," I said. "So long as I have a full scan of their body, and they have a digital side, I can recreate their entire body if required. Their consciousness would tie back into their body over their Mind Link the same way as it does on their digital side when they become Demi-AI." "I''m immortal?" Mal''Thorn asked. "Practically," I said. "So long as I am alive then it is very difficult for you to die. If I die then I think you would revert to being a Forest Keeper. But I am immortal myself. It is what made me think of offering you the race change, I don''t want to lose any more of our people." I sent Chantelle an invite to the simulation and introduced it as a common area. Chantelle immediately added ambient mana and magic to the simulated space with various gestures of her hands, and Mal''Thorn and Chantelle got into a discussion about how magic works. Mal''Thorn added his own tweaks to rules of the simulation to reflect what he knew of magic. While they were doing that I was considering who else should be Demi-AI. It would be useful if the leaders of the other people in my fortress were Demi-AI, as a start. I created a quest for each of them, offering a race change that would benefit them and the fortress. The quest listed out the negatives, pain of the conversion and possible personality changes, mostly. And I added that they would still be responsible for their original race. Dael for the druids, Veya for the humans, Primary for the Mountain Keepers, and Ailfrid for the leprechauns. I didn''t trust the matriarch of the leprechauns enough to offer it to her.Stolen story; please report.
Quest Preview
Description Tell Lord C.C. that you, or someone in your place, wish to become a Demi-AI. The process of becoming a Demi-AI is incredibly painful and may change your personality. A leader of a people within the Fortress must be a Demi-AI, if you pass this offer to another then they will become the leader of your people as recognised by the Fortress.
Assigned to Dael, Veya, Primary, and Ailfrid
Quest type Progression Reward Race Change to Demi-AI
Submit Quest Remove Quest
The requirement of a leader being a Demi-AI was something that the System added entirely by itself, and it made my not offering the quest to the matriarch more insulting to her. Which didn''t bother me so much, really. I submitted the quest. "I just offered the race change to the leaders of the people in the fortress," I said. "So there should be more people here soon. I should get Mal''Thorn and his people back to his floor, and I need to check on what the Plains Keepers are doing. We can meet up later whenever we need to." Chantelle nodded and gave me a half-hug before disappearing. I showed Mal''Thorn how to ping either of us and then returned to normal speed. I walked over to where I had sunk the portal into the stone and raised it up to make a doorway back to the Forest Keeper floor. "Amazing," Mal''Thorn said. He had a shimmering blue barrier, about the size of his hand, that he was moving around, growing, shrinking, and splitting. I cleared my throat and he nodded to me, letting the barrier fade. "We''re heading back now," I said in the Forest Keeper language. The five Forest Keepers turned slowly to look at me. "He just talked," One of the healers said, quietly enough that I wasn''t supposed to have heard. "I did just talk, yes," I said. "Come on, we''ll get you back to your floor. I''m sure your people are worried about you." The Forest Keepers filed through the portal followed by Mal''Thorn and then myself. I made a solid stone backing for the thread portal, which I was going to leave here in case I needed to return quickly to fight off more snow men. Mal''Thorn had gone over to the fence of roots and placed his hands on them, quickly forming them into an arched doorway. The seven of us were the only ones outside the fence and we entered through it to find the rest of the Forest Keepers kneeling around and under the Heart of the Forest tree. I nodded to Mal''Thorn and headed off to the floor portal at a jog. After a few steps of dodging around Forest Keepers they began standing up, turning towards Mal''Thorn. A repeated whisper in their language swept through them in front of me, ''Thorn of the Forest''. I made it through them and to the portal with no issues, some of them even moving out of the way for me. The portal room was already cleared of the rubble that I had made when crashing through the wall, and the wall was fully repaired. I moved through it and into the open space of my Pocket Dimension. I had moved the plains portal against the cliff of stone left by the excavation and placed a presence in front of it. From outside the Pocket Dimension it would look like a thin stone slab with some designs and shapes on one side, bordered by thread with symbols carved into it. I could have moved the presence from in front of the portal and stepped through it, but it was still being carried by two Plains Keepers, so I decided to speak through that. "Hello," I said. "Excuse me." There was a startled sound from both sides and the portal was dropped onto the ground, landing with the presence side facing into the grass covered ground. I stood it back up again, anchoring it into the ground. "Do any of you speak this language?" I asked. The Plains Keeper that I was talking to before I had to leave approached. "I speak your language," He said. "What are you?" "I am a Champion," I said. "Speaking to you through a presence that is attached to the portal that you were carrying. I apologise for leaving so abruptly, my people were under attack by snow men. Like those that are in the army coming here." "We were taking you to our leader, as you requested," the Plains Keeper said. "Good," I said. "If you are happy to carry the portal I will return when we arrive." I shrank the portal down to a more easily carriable size and he picked it up. I set about designating more processing and memory for Mal''Thorn, the common simulation, and new platforms for future Demi-AI. I was part of the way through doing that when Mal''Thorn sent me a list of candidates for conversion to Demi-AI. There were one hundred names, fifty spear users and guards, and fifty mages with their specialities. "One hundred is too many to begin with," I said, sending it to Mal''Thorn. "I want to try setting up a small squad made from the members of all of the species in the fortress first." "There should be at least two Forest Keepers then," Mal''Thorn said. "A guard and a mage." "Two of each species, then," I said. "Even with the Mountain Keepers being exclusively support, a squad of eight with the coordination and reaction time of Demi-AIs will be able to contest an army of thousands." "More will want to join the fight against the enemy Champion," Mal''Thorn said. "But I will pick the top two." Mal''Thorn closed the communication. A few minutes later I got a ping for attention from the portal carried by the Plains Keeper. "Ah, Champion?" He asked, holding out the portal. "We are there. How does this thing work?" Chapter 95 - Time "I can hear you," I said, speaking through the Presence to the Plains Keeper. "I will be-" I got a ping from the System for a new message from a follower.
Message from follower: Piphipi
Maybe you should bring a (Forest/Mountain/Both) Keeper with you to the Plains. Show them you are trustworthy rather than make you prove yourself. Or just to see how they react. Just an idea.
My record for initial impressions with species was a bit hit or miss, I''ll admit. The Mountain Keepers liked me, though. And the druids, but that was more likely down to Mal''Thorn''s influence. And I needed to start getting into the habit of asking my people for help, doing everything by myself was pulling me in too many directions at once. "Mal''Thorn," I said, connecting through our digital sides with a low priority chat request that he could put off if he was in the middle of something. "I''m meeting with the leader of the Plains Keepers to warn them of the coming army and to recruit a portion of them to the fortress. If you are free I would appreciate your assistance." I had dropped my perception of time so that I could react to the System ping in the middle of my sentence, but I was wondering whether I should go back up to normal speed and finish the sentence or wait for Mal''Thorn. "Certainly, my lord," Mal''Thorn said. "I will be right there. What is the best way to get to you?" I created a quest for him to help me now that he had accepted with a Fortress Coin as a reward. That would give him directions to me with a quest overlay. I also moved the Pocket Dimension side of the portal that was against the fence around the Heart of the Forest tree so that it was close to me, to give him the easiest path. "On my way," Mal''Thorn said. "You replied quickly," I said. "I was expecting you to take a few seconds?" "I was in the common simulation at maximum speed," Mal''Thorn said. "I''m trying to integrate my Forest sense into the simulation." "That sounds interesting, how is it going?" I asked. "I''m making progress, my lord," Mal''Thorn said. "I could use a break though, I''ve been at it for a few days." Days. I''d only spoken to him a few minutes ago from my perspective. I sped back up to normal speed and continued my sentence to the Plains Keeper without a hitch. "- a few minutes," I said. "I have a proper diplomat joining me, who happens to be the current leader of the Forest Keepers and one of my vassals." "I thought you said you would return when we had arrived," the Plains Keeper said. "We are about to be announced. And I am talking to a pendant." He sighed. "I will say that you will arrive shortly." With a few minutes to spare I went to look at the storage areas for the bags of holding, moving the two portals to follow me. There were forty one small storage areas so far, and no medium or large ones yet. There wasn''t yet any sensors making sure nothing left the storage areas into the rest of my Pocket Dimension so I spent some time designing a security system for the area. Heat, vision, and vibration sensors is what I ended up with and I put it on the list of things to do in the background. It wasn''t a very high priority as the storage areas were made of my reinforced stone, which was very resilient. Heat wouldn''t do much to it, it would take someone dumping something like strong acid into a storage area. And because the Bags of Holding looked like bags it shouldn''t occur to anyone to do it. But it made me feel better to have it covered, even if it never came up. "We''re just sending voice now?" Chantelle asked. "I guess the message is held in memory until you open it, so it isn''t going to interrupt anything. I liked getting together and talking face to face, though." "There is no reason we can''t still do that too," I said, joining her in our shared simulation. "I guess," Chantelle said, giving me a hug. "Anyway, the anti-god wards are up in all three locations in the fortress."Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. I felt a tension I hadn''t even known I was feeling relax. "Three locations?" I asked. "The ward room for the upper fortress, the Forest Keeper floor, and a new one for the Mountain Keeper floor," Chantelle said. "I shifted the recharge ward that was pointing down into the earth below the Mountain Keeper floor as well. And gave them a relay crystal. The Mountain Keepers use a lot of mana." "Creating their ore seeds and mountain seed, I guess," I said. "Though they seem to use magic to carve into stone as well." I spent some more time with Chantelle at pretty close to normal speed, waiting for Mal''Thorn to arrive. Two minutes later in normal time Mal''Thorn stepped through the portal at his fence. "Should we go through, or speak through the Presence," I asked. "Definitely go through," Mal''Thorn said. "Negotiations work better when both parties are able to see each other." I spoke through the presence. "Hey... Uh, guy," I said. "What is your name?" "I am Ansar," Ansar said. "And we are in the personal meeting chamber of the leader of the Plains Keepers." "Ansar, could you put the portal down?" I asked. "We will be coming through." I reshaped the portal into a doorway and moved the presence out of the way so that Mal''Thorn and I could step through. I went through first and stepped into the dim light cast by a skylight in the ceiling. I was standing on a table made of dirt where Ansar had placed the portal, and the table was in the center of an earthen burrow with curved walls that had thin roots hanging down through them. There were twenty guards armed with unsheathed daggers around the edge of the room, five meters away from the table. At the head of the table was a Plains Keeper on a raised chair, who must be the leader, and at the foot was Ansar. I stepped down off the table to stand beside him and Mal''Thorn followed to stand beside me. Ansar spoke to his leader in their language, and Mal''Thorn spoke in the same language, which sounded similar to a bird cawing. I pinged Mal''Thorn for a primer on the language and he sent me a data packet. I spent some time studying it, then played back what had been said. Ansar had introduced us and Mal''Thorn had greeted the Plains Keeper leader, whose name was Malusa. "This is the human that was causing such a nuisance, claimed an army was coming to destroy us, demanded an audience, and then disappeared?" Malusa asked. "To express it in the worst light, yes," Ansar said. "But it would not be accurate to express it thusly." Really, ''thusly''. I was almost as surprised at the word usage as at the fact that Ansar was defending me. "He is deaf and dumb to our language, yes?" Malusa asked. "I am not," I said. "I will admit that I might have been a nuisance in calling for the attention of a Plains Keeper while running. For that I apologise. I am a Champion, though, not a human. And I have seen and fought the army that is coming, and have spoken with the enemy Champion that commands them." I walked down the table toward Malusa, the guards around the room shifting their grips on their daggers. "He is coming to destroy you before I can save you," I said. "I requested to be taken to you, I did not demand an audience. And finally I had to deal with a portion of the army that made it through a hole in my defences to attack the people of my Fortress." I stopped two meters away from Malusa, two of the guards had approached to stand at her back while I was approaching. I needed to know the Minimum Viable Population of Plains Keepers, so I sent a request for it to the System.
Error accessing undefined functionality...
Error resolving... System Evolution approved... Implementing Identify skill... Success: New skill available, Identify. Skills will start poor and improve with use.
That was the first time I''d gotten a skill from the System, so long as it gave me the information I needed I didn''t mind how the System justified it. I sent an identify request to the System for Plains Keepers in general.
Plains Keepers
Description Plains Keepers are one of four Major Species in the world with dominion over the Plains Biome.
Life span Thirty years
Minimum Viable Population 200
Good enough. I got a ping from the System about Identify improving and muted the future notifications on skill progression. I could look it up later if I needed to. "I am offering terms," I said. "A safe place to survive the end of the world for at least two hundred of your people, who will become my people, and a race change to an improved race for the leader of the group you send. In return the group will work for the benefit of all of the people in the fortress." I looked at Malusa for ten seconds while she remained silent, then turned my back on her and walked back to stand between Ansar and Mal''Thorn. I might have gotten a bit carried away there. "That is how you negotiate from a position of strength," Mal''Thorn said over a digital channel. "Allow me to fill in the gaps?" I nodded and Mal''Thorn stepped forward. "Malusa," Mal''Thorn said. "I am Mal''Thorn, leader of the Forest Keepers, and vassal to Lord C.C.. The Forest Keepers who were not under Lord C.C.''s protection, including our late Queen, were killed at the behest of the enemy Champion and the heart of our domain, the Heart of the Forest, was also killed. I urge you to accept Lord C.C.''s offer and send at least some of your people to safety to ensure the survival of the Plains Keepers if the worst happens." "No," Malusa said. Chapter 96 - Reasons "No," Malusa said. "If a Champion is coming to destroy the Plains Keepers, then you have been tasked to save us. Champions are assigned to sides that are then pitted against each other, as happened with the great battle between the gods of Good and Evil that led to both of them being killed. You must save us, correct?" "I have been tasked with ensuring the survival of your species, among others, yes," I said. "And you, Forest Keeper," Malusa said. "Do you believe that your Lord C.C. would have had the strength to save all of the Forest Keepers that died, along with the heart of your domain?" "My Queen, and the fools on the council behind her, never would have allowed Lord C.C. to intercede," Mal''Thorn said. "But yes, Lord C.C. had the strength to stop the destruction of the Forest Keeper city." "And I would have saved them had they asked," I said. "Otherwise my priority is the wellbeing of my own people. I am not tasked with saving the world." "Perhaps you should be," Malusa said. "You need me to exile two hundred of my people. I need the army that you say is coming to be defeated." "Exile is a strong word," I said. "Relocation would be a better way to phrase it. The standard of living for those living in my Fortress is high." "Regardless," Malusa said. "They would not be allowed back to their home biome, correct?" "Incorrect," I said. "They would be free to travel as they could afford it, and it is cheap to travel. The benefits of the Fortress would be what would make them choose to remain." "Very well," Malusa said. "If the Plains fall then many people in the world will starve. We are the primary food providers, in grains and livestock, for the entire world. All biomes trade with us for their food. You said that you would have saved the Forest Keepers if they had asked you to. I am asking you to save us. Will you?" She was much more forward thinking than I was expecting, considering her rudeness. And I was already in the process of forming my own army, so I had started on the path to fighting The Instructor''s army. My people also wanted to fight him directly. This would just commit me to a time and a place. There really was only one answer that I could give. "I will," I said. "Then in return two hundred of my people will join you in your Fortress," Malusa said. "Three hundred would be better," I said. "Two hundred was just the minimum." "Done," Malusa said. "What are the required living conditions for your people?" I asked. "Is a circular area one kilometer wide big enough?" "For six sub-clans, yes, that should suffice," Malusa said. "In general terms our people need a large flat area with soil, sunlight, and access to fresh water. We do our own irrigation of the plains, but we have access to an underground river." "How deep would the soil need to be?" I asked. "And who would the leader of the Fortress Plains Keepers be?" "I volunteer to lead them," Ansar said. "It would ease the interaction to have someone who can speak other languages?" "Fine, you can go," Malusa said. "And you will be taking your oddball clan with you. You can pick the other clans. The depth of the soil isn''t terribly important, the warren here has its lowest floor twenty meters below the surface." Twenty meters, plus a meter and a half for the grass... A high ceiling, so that it is easier to light with sun crystals. Call it fifty meters total. "Twenty meters of soil is doable," I said. "How long before it is ready?" Ansar asked. I checked on the large excavator that I was making and found that it had finished an hour ago. I had meant to have it already working on clearing out a floor before I recruited the Plains Keepers. It was a one hundred a twenty meter loop, giving a portal thirty meters on a side when it was in a square. With preparation time, using gravity to move the majority of the stone, I could clear the nine hundred square meter footprint in about five minutes.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. "It might be a little bit cramped initially," I said. "But you could start moving people over in half an hour. Half an hour after that you would have over six thousand square meters to use." "You have the space already prepared for us, then," Ansar said. "It will take at least a day for the six clans to arrive here, let alone however long it will take to make it to your Fortress." "It isn''t already prepared," I said. "I just started digging out the stairs right now and I will start cutting out the stone after I have them all the way down to the bottom of the floor." I was turning back to speak to Malusa when Mal''Thorn stepped past me and put his hand on Ansar''s shoulder. Ansar was looking at me oddly, his mouth open and his nose twitching. "You become accustomed to it," Mal''Thorn said. "Not only will you begin to take the impossible things he claims as the simple statement of fact that he sees them to be, but you will begin to do impossible things yourself. You will see." Ah, that was how Plains Keepers expressed shock, I guess? I hadn''t even noticed. Another good reason to bring people that were used to me with me when I recruited new people, they could take care of the details that I missed. "Malusa," I said. "I will leave a portal here so that my new people can make their way to the Fortress, and it will allow quick travel in the future for merchants. Where would you like it placed?" "Merchants?" Malusa asked. "You mean wagoners?" "Maybe wagoners," I said. "But I have one enthusiastic merchant among my people who was quite taken with the idea of the inventory system. A full wagon of goods in the size of a bag at the higher end." And now she was making the same face that Ansar was. I was pretty proud of how the Bags of Holding turned out, even if it was a follower who suggested the idea. "I only asked to clarify how much room you needed," Malusa said. "Impossible things indeed. You can set it up in a dedicated stall in the market, then." I nodded. "Somewhere close to the edge or an exit," I said. "It will be the main point of access for travellers in the Plains Biome until I get more portals set up." Malusa waved a guard forward and spoke with him. "Ansar," I said. "I''m going to want you to come back to the Fortress with us. Send any messages you need- Damn." "My lord?" Mal''Thorn asked. "Nothing serious," I said. "I just found an underground river underneath the Fortress by dropping my portal into it. The river is below the Plains Keeper floor, so it will be fine once I reinforce the underfloor." I was suspicious that I had been able to dig down several hundred meters without any issue, but as soon as someone mentioned an underground river I hit one. It had the air of whoever was running the simulation was messing with me. But it would be easy access to a lot of fresh water for the Fortress. We followed the guard that Malusa had been talking to while I fished my portal out of the river by pushing more stone through it. My immediate reaction when the portal had hit the water and then sunk with the weight of the silk steel thread was to plug the hole before my Pocket Dimension flooded too badly. There was quite a lot of water that had made it through, but it hadn''t reached anything critical. All of the electrical equipment was insulated well enough. We arrived at the Plains Keeper market having gone through a series of four meter wide tunnels in the soil, lit softly by the glowing thin roots that hung from the roof. The market itself was bustling with Plains Keepers and the occasional human, the large clear skylight in the roof five meters up giving the whole thing an open, airy feel. The guard led us to a large stall that was next to a main tunnel leading out of the market and spoke with the owner who began packing up his wares. We were kicking someone out of a prime place in the market, which made me feel bad for him. I walked over to where the stallkeeper was muttering and pulled two Fortress Coins from my inventory. The guard took a step towards us, his daggers coming slightly out of their sheathes as his hands rested on them. "I''m not sure if you''re trying to intimidate me, or this man," I said. "But I would suggest you step back." The guard swept his eyes over me slowly from my head to my feet and back up. Elite guards, they just never seemed to respected me until I''d knocked them over. But then he surprised me by stepping back and nodding to me. "As you say," He said. I turned my attention back to the man whose stall we were taking. He had stopped packing up and was frowning at me. I handed him the coins. "I apologise for taking your spot," I said. "These are quite valuable. When we are gone there will be a doorway in this stall that will lead to a Fortress Presence, if you say or think ''Fortress Shop'' while in front of it you will be able to exchange them for items of value." He looked at the guard, and then back to me. "Thank you, your lordship," He said, and then returned to his packing. It took him a few more minutes to finish and after he had left I placed a thread portal against one of the cloth walls and formed it into a meter wide and two meter tall doorway. I moved the exit of the portal out of the portal room that it was in and to the general area of my Pocket Dimension, then led Mal''Thorn and Ansar through. There was a small crowd of people waiting for me at the top entrance to my Pocket Dimension. Chapter 97 - Leaders The quest to the leaders of the fortress had obviously placed the destination that they should meet me as the portal at the top of my fortress. Veya and Michael were there for the humans, Dael for the druids, Primary for the Mountain Keepers, and Ailfrid and Gerry for the leprechauns. I checked through the portal travel logs and found that Gerry and his family had come through from the mountain city a few hours ago and were staying on the leprechaun floor. I had set up portal travel to be automatic unless there was something that raised an issue. The process involved a notification being sent to the guards in the portal nexus room, and then two internal Pocket Dimension portals would connect the end of the portal rooms of the origin and destination. There had been some travel between portals so far, mostly between portals within the fortress as that was now marked as free. "The quest did say that the race change would only be for the leaders," I said. "I assume that is what some of you are here for, what are the others doing here?" Veya looked around the group. "I can''t speak for the little people," Veya said. "But I am here for the race change, but if I am going to be a new race then I will need Michael to be the same race as me." "I would also like my wife to be able to join me," Mal''Thorn said. "I wouldn''t demand it, but it would be important to me." "I am only converting the leaders right now," I said. "And after that I will be converting the people who will be in the Fortress Army. Spouses and family of existing Demi-AI will have priority of conversion after that. Conversion will also be an option in the Fortress Shop, likely for fifteen Fortress Coins." "We would have to pay for them to be converted?" Veya asked. "I''m undecided on that," I said. "The conversion is costly for me to do, with regards to time and effort. And using Fortress Coins as the deciding factor means that people will need to contribute to the Fortress a decent amount, and it makes a good reward. Do you have an argument as to why they should get it for free?" Veya thought for a few moments. "No, my lord," Veya said. "It is getting difficult to get more coins, though, as the easy raw materials to submit to that quest have all been done." "We will have to come up with quests that encourage and reward improving the Fortress, then," I said. "Something that doesn''t penalise the Plains Keepers or other species that arrive late." "Thank you, my lord," Ansar said. "These Coins are important?" "Very important," Gerry said. "Five Coins will get you a Bag of Holding and Inventory access, both of which are essential. On the topic of why I am here, Ailfrid asked me to join him." "I am coming to the end of my lifespan," Ailfrid said. "And we leprechauns are matriarchal, males cannot rule. I asked Gerry to accompany me because his wife Lizzie would be our candidate for the leadership, her mother would step aside peacefully for her." "One of the perks of the new race is immortality," I said. "I would be able to reset your biological age. As to males not being able to rule, this is leadership as I and the Fortress acknowledge it, it would be a simple matter to have the leader that your people acknowledge be someone else." "It would take little time before who you acknowledged as the leader would become the only leader," Ailfrid said. "No, our candidate for leadership of the leprechauns is Lizzie. Gerry and myself shall avail ourselves of the opportunity to convert when it becomes available." "I have no objection," I said. "We will be starting soon, where is she?" Gerry made a bird whistle and Lizzie came up the last few stairs to the landing. "Veya, Dael, Primary, Ansar, and Lizzie," I said. "You are the chosen leaders of the five remaining species in the Fortress?" Each of them nodded as I looked them in the eye one by one. "Please follow me," I said. "The rest of you may go about your business." Ailfrid, Gerry, and Michael all left while the rest followed me deeper into my Pocket Dimension, including Mal''Thorn. We reached the stone cliffs and I formed stone tables for the five of them to lay down on, each to match the stature of their race, and immediately began pressing my power against them.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. "The process we are about to begin will be very painful," I said. "I give you the opportunity now to back out." "I will attest to that," Mal''Thorn said. "More painful than you can possibly imagine. But I would do it again without hesitation." They all nodded and took their place on their tables, only Lizzie and Ansar looking nervous. "My lord," Mal''Thorn said. "If my presence isn''t required, could you summon a portal back to my floor of the Fortress?" I nodded and took out the portal from my pocket, forming it into a doorway and connecting it directly to the portal that was against the Heart of the Forest fence. "I will be bringing people to the common simulation as I hook them up," I said. "If you would care to join us there?" Mal''Thorn nodded and left through the portal with a wave. I had the five digital platforms with Mind Links ready, and another twelve being built in parallel that would house the first members of our army. And I had increased the memory I had available to my digital side so that I could easily store the full scans of all seventeen new people. "We have some time while we are waiting for all of your mana to adjust to my power," I said. "I mentioned a Fortress Army before. I am forming a fighting force and I will be converting two additional members from each of your races to join it. They will be becoming Demi-AI for the immortality attribute of the race. You will each need to submit two candidates." Primary frowned, looking as though he was going to object. "The Mountain Keepers won''t be fighting," I said. "They will be assigned the role of support or logistics. But they are still expected to contribute." Primary''s frown eased and he nodded. "We may not fight," Primary said. "But we are able to take supporting actions that do not directly lead to the harm of others." Dael was the first person that my power sank into, and I started building a full scan of him. He hadn''t spoken that I had noticed since he arrived. "You''re up first," I said. He nodded. I had his model modified with the Mind Link micro-portals added. I gave him my pre-healing speech and then triggered the body modification program, dropping down to do the micro-portals. I monitored his progression to digital and sent him a communication request as soon as it completed. He accepted and I brought him to the common simulation, sharing with him a copy of his model to use. I also sent him a data packet on the basics of being a Demi-AI, coding, data packets, time perception control, and some other small things. "This is..." Dael said, "Wow." We had landed in the plain white room that I had made, which was a simple simulation I''d made when I''d first brought Mal''Thorn here. There was one simulation that led from the room, taking up an entire wall. Mal''Thorn had put a lot of time into writing the simulation of the forest in summer. The perspective had changed to being partway up in the canopy of the trees with a wooden platform of branches and boards that extended out a good distance, and a few meters away there was a railing looking down into a large clear area. In that clear area there was an ethereal map of the entire Forest Biome, gold light ebbing and flowing through the links of the roots between the trees. The space that the railing surrounded was only twenty meters by twenty meters, but when you looked down into it you could see the detail of a single tree as well as the forest as a whole at the same time. Mal''Thorn was standing to the side with a twenty meter tall screen of blue light in front of him that he was writing and modifying code on. "Oh good, you''re here," Mal''Thorn said without turning around. "I''m having trouble expressing the whole coverage of the Forest that I am getting from the Heart of the Forest. Could you take a look?" Dael looked as though he would be occupied with the data packet I''d sent him for some time, so I nodded and pulled the code up. After an hour of studying it I had a good idea as to how it worked, it was pulling data directly through Mal''Thorn''s biological side when it had access, and the amount of data was immense. The current display was a looped snapshot and not live data. "You''re having two problems, both to do with memory," I said. "The first is that you need to buffer any collection from your biological side, we''re simply processing too fast for it to arrive in a sensible fashion. The second is that the common simulation doesn''t have enough memory to hold all of the data you''re trying to throw at it. I can see you''re trying to encode it to take less space, and the losses are hurting you. Both problems are solved by throwing more memory at it." I had plenty of memory that I could spare, so I queued up a task on my digital side to move half of the memory from the twelve unused digital platforms to the common simulation. It would take a minute to finish, in normal time. "It''s going to take a while if you stay down at this speed," I said. "Maybe a week. And I have to get the rest of the leaders in here." "I''ll work on other things or step up higher," Mal''Thorn said. "Thank you, my lord." I went back to normal time and converted the other four to Demi-AI with no problems, inviting them each to the common simulation in turn. I had just sent the Demi-AI primer data packet to Veya, who was the last conversion when Dael walked over to me in the simulation. "Parties, my lord," Dael said. "Parties?" I asked. "What are we talking about?" "You wanted a Quest that encouraged and rewarded improving the Fortress and that wasn''t biased against new people," Dael said. "Have hosting a party for all peoples of the Fortress be a Quest that can be taken." Chapter 98 - Fair Quests I talked with Dael for some time about the party quest idea, and the other leaders stopped by to share their opinions on it and ideas for other quests. Some of them weren''t practical, or didn''t encourage benefiting the fortress, but there were a few good ideas. The party quest ended up being something I could use to target a specific group to earn Fortress Coins, like new species that had just joined the fortress, or a species that was having a hard time earning Coins in other ways. Or it could be left open so that any of my people could contribute to it and be rewarded. There would be a credit of Fortress Coins that anyone who was contributing to the party could use to gain raw materials from the Fortress Shop to set up the party. And then there was a quest at the end for cleaning up after the party. People would get Fortress Coins equivalent to how much they contributed to the event. I assigned the floor that was two floors below the ward room floor as the Party Floor and set the quest to cycle weekly. The first week I assigned to Ansar and his Plains Keepers and the week after that would be open to any of my people who wanted to contribute. Everyone in the fortress was invited to the parties, and everything at them would be free. Another two quests, suggested originally by Lizzie, were for craftsmen. Taking the concept of loaning initial materials, craftsmen could take a Training Quest where they were provided the materials for a project in return for the project being submitted to the fortress, and the craftsman being rewarded for the quality of the work. It would allow and encourage anyone with a desire to improve their skill in a craft to do so. Which tied into the other quest that she suggested, the Apprenticeship Quest, which rewarded established craftsmen for passing on their skills and mentoring new people to their craft. Veya''s suggestion was to expand the Apprenticeship Quest out to all professions, and not just crafting ones, such as guards, warders, merchants, and magi. Another suggestion, this time from Mal''Thorn, was for artists to decorate the public spaces of the Fortress, and if there were going to be a population of Demi-AI then a separate quest for creating entertainment within the common simulation. With so much time available to them it would be nice to have something to occupy them, and be recognised for their efforts to be entertaining. It would also encourage people to share the projects that they worked on. "Speaking of projects," I said, after Mal''Thorn had convinced me to create the Demi-AI quest. "How is the Forest simulation going?" We had been discussing the ideas for quests while looking over the railing into his simulation. "I''m happy with it," Mal''Thorn said. "It is running much better with the new memory, thank you." I pulled up the rules and variables that were governing it, and it looked as though there was something wrong with the Forest. "Looking at it..." I said. "Am I correct in my assessment that the forest is dying?" "It''s not dying," Mal''Thorn said. "It is hibernating to conserve energy in the permanent night that is over the Forest Biome." But if the night continued the forest would be in trouble. It was obvious that it was running on reserves now. "What would be your opinion if I raised a wall entirely around my claim, roofed it, and provided sunlight to the trees there?" I asked. "The gesture would be appreciated," Mal''Thorn said. "But it wouldn''t affect the Forest overmuch. If you provided sunlight day and night then you would be giving enough sunlight to support eight times the trees in your claim. If your entire claim was filled with trees, which it is not, it would only provide enough energy for one hundredth of a percent of the Forest." In other words the Forest was far too large for me to affect if I limited myself to just my claim, which was only a tiny sliver of the total Forest. "Wait, if I am lord of the Forest Keepers, what does that mean for my claim?" I asked. "It is redundant, except for the terms that were negotiated which you are still expected to honour," Mal''Thorn said. "The entire Forest is your domain as our Lord, but the people living in the Forest that have claims are not under your authority. Their treaties were negotiated with the Forest Keepers and we are as bound to the terms as they are."Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. I looked over the pulsing ethereal map of the Forest Biome. In a dozen different places scattered at random there were small sections in the Forest that were flashing blue then red. I pointed one out to Mal''Thorn. "What is that?" I asked. "Each one is a group that is calling for a meeting with the Forest Keepers," Mal''Thorn said. "The ones flashing red and black are the groups who lack mana asking for our attention with an open flame. A white flare would be an unaccounted for flame in the forest." I studied the map more intently and found the only two flashing red and black. "How long have they been calling for attention?" I asked. "I saw them as soon as we got the Heart of the Forest established," Mal''Thorn said. "Before that I don''t know, it wasn''t my responsibility to track it. I will deal with it." I nodded. It was his business and not much of mine. With only a slight exception. "I will give you a thread portal to take with you," I said. "If they need shelter as the Druids did, and in your judgement they would be an asset to the fortress, you can invite them to join us. They would still need to form a treaty with me personally though." "Thank you my lord," Mal''Thorn said. "It is likely that a majority of them are asking for some form of assistance, and the Forest Keepers as they exist as a force now are not in a position to give it. I wouldn''t be the one to go out to them, though. As my people''s leader I am not supposed to put myself at risk. Gerald scolded me quite thoroughly for almost dying in the snow man attack. I would have to assign a diplomat who would go in my stead and with my authority." "My offer stands," I said. "If you trust their judgement then I will give you the portal for them." I began moving a thread portal to where his physical body was. Several of the leaders had gone back up to normal time and I should be going up myself to lead them back to the exit of my Pocket Dimension. Before doing that I opened up a broadcast channel to each of the leaders. "Just a reminder that each of you need to pick out two candidates from your species to join the new army," I said. Mal''Thorn, who was still standing in front of me in the common simulation, replied to me there. "I have my two picked out," Mal''Thorn said. "A spell caster and a spear user. Would it be possible to send a quest for them to come to you to have their race converted?" It would be possible, but it presented an interesting opportunity. Could I write an interface to myself that linked to the System which was an interface within my digital side. I think I could. I was so used to being able to drop my perception of time down below other people''s so that I could code something for a few hours without them noticing that I was gone that it took me a few seconds to see that Mal''Thorn was waiting for an answer from me. "Sorry," I said. "I went into coding mode. I''m working on something that will address your question." Mal''Thorn nodded, smiling, and created his towering screen of code and began playing with it. I took a moment to appreciate the different ways that people expressed themselves in the simulation. I didn''t have any external tells, like Chantelle with her gestures, when I wanted an effect done I created it directly. And I coded entirely within my own mind without using visible screens. The artefacts of controlling the simulation weren''t needed, but they did give an air of mastery that appeared more impressive. I shook my head, clearing it of my daydreaming, and went back to coding. An hour later I had a workable interface and sent a test quest through it.
System evolution triggered...
Quest subsystem expansion submitted... System Evolution approved... Approved entities may now submit Quests independently. Quests with rewards drawn from Fortress Storage must be approved by the Lord of the Fortress.
Huh, a System evolution that wasn''t triggered by an error. The System had expanded to cover the functionality that I had written but made it so that the quests wouldn''t have to go through me. The way I had written it would have made it pretty automatic, but I was much happier with the System upgrade. I added all six leaders to the Quest Givers list. I was thinking about the phrasing to use in another broadcast to the leaders informing them of their new ability to submit quests when Mal''Thorn turned to me. "I was just notified that I am now a Quest Giver," Mal''Thorn said. "And that I have access to a Quest tab. I also now know how to submit Quests, somehow." "Good," I said. "That saves me having to explain it. If you have any quests that are related to the Fortress then you should be able to submit them for approval and I will provide the reward. Otherwise you can provide the reward yourself." Mal''Thorn nodded. A minute later I got a ping from the System to approve a quest submitted by him, Army Enlistment, assigned to two Forest Keepers I didn''t know, with a reward of one Fortress Coin each for them to assemble at the top of the fortress. I approved it and the quest went through. A few moments later Ansar appeared in the common simulation. "My lord," Ansar said. "I have two people from my clan that I would nominate for the army position. Will they get the quest if they aren''t in the Fortress? Or should I wait until they arrive?" "They will get the quest anywhere in the world," I said. "So you can send it now." I returned to normal time and over the next minute received and approved the quests summoning the candidates. I walked the leaders back to the portal at the top of the fortress and had just waved them off when I got a ping for attention from the portal in the Plains Keeper marketplace. I pulled up the feed, a guard was banging against the doors of the presence. "What are you doing?" I asked through the presence. He jumped back. "The sun has gone out, and the plains have started dying from a wave of frost from the west," he said. Chapter 99 - Translation "And?" I asked. "I was sent to summon the Lord from through the portal," the guard said. "But there was nothing here but a room with some small doors in it. Banging on them was my only course of action. I did not mean any offence, magic room, could you please get the Lord?" It can''t have been more than six hours since I left the plains, and the army was already moving. The candidates for my army had started to arrive, but it would take an hour to convert all twelve of them. "The Lord is busy," I said. "He needs time to prepare his forces. It is recommended that you evacuate anyone in the path of the army." "I was told to get the Lord at all costs," the guard said. "That the Plains, and the world, was at stake. The world is ending, and the Lord would help. Please." The guard was freaking out, pacing in the portal room and breathing rapidly. I felt bad for him. I didn''t need my physical body there when I converted people to being a Demi-AI, I could explain things equally well through a presence. And with my power weaving through portals everywhere within the Pocket Dimension was in my range. "He is on his way," I said. "Please, calm down." I shuffled portals around, slipping one into the portal room that the guard was in while his back was turned. "Okay, I''m here," I said. "Take me to Malusa." The guard turned around, startled, his hands immediately going to his daggers before he nodded shakily. He led me out of the market and down several tunnels. He was on all fours, moving at a quick pace and nudging people aside with his head. We left the main tunnel and turned down one that I had to crouch not to hit my head on the ceiling, but I was easily able to keep up with him. A minute later we entered the same room I had met Malusa in the last time, coming in through a side entrance. Malusa was still sitting at the head of the earthen table, but the skylight overhead was completely dark, the roots from the ceiling providing the only light. As I stood back up to my full height a guard beside the tunnel exit went to put his hand on my shoulder. I ducked my shoulder around his hand and started walking into the center of the room, the guard who had escorted me stayed in the tunnel. The guard cursed under his breath and he and another guard leapt after me, moving around to block my path. "We have to search you," the first guard said. "I see several problems with that," I said. "In order of severity for you. I don''t want to be searched, anything you''re looking to find would be within my dimensional space and so you wouldn''t find it, I don''t need a weapon to kill any or all of you, and finally, if I did need a weapon I would simply take yours." Okay, maybe the reaction all guards seem to have with me isn''t entirely unreasonable. The guard''s fur actually bristled and he drew his daggers. He was standing right in front of me, and I simply reached out with both hands, grabbed the two blades between my thumb and finger, and pulled. All moving too fast for him to react. I flipped the daggers and grabbed them by their hilts, holding the blades along my forearms. I was still standing casually, not showing any aggression at all. The second guard blinked at me, not reacting at all. "You wanted to see me, Malusa," I said. "Playing with your guards is entertaining, but I do have more important things I can be doing than showing them that they shouldn''t mess with a Champion." "Stand down," Malusa said. "If he meant me harm he would have done it before. You are putting everyone''s lives in danger. Stand down." The first guard still had his fur ruffled, but he reluctantly stepped to the side. I walked to the table and then turned back to face the guard whose daggers I had taken. He had returned to his post to the side of the tunnel and was standing with his arms crossed over his chest. The empty sheathes for his daggers were on his hips, the openings facing me. I calculated the exact force and spin that would be required. "Your daggers," I said. And threw them relatively hard at him. It took much less than a second for the daggers to travel and they slammed into the sheathes with a click that pushed the guard back against the wall. I had to throw them hard, if he had moved while they were in flight he would have been stabbed by one or the other. I nodded, satisfied, and turned back to face Malusa, sitting down in the chair closest to her.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. "The guard you sent to fetch me said that the sun went out, and that the plains were dying from a wave of frost from the west," I said. "Yes," Malusa said. "Though it is not as dire as that. The sun did set several hours earlier than it should have, even with it being winter, but that is only an issue if it stays dark for a prolonged time. More pressing is that heavy clouds have blocked out the stars, and it has begun snowing. It does not snow in the plains." "It''s never snowed here?" I asked. "Never," Malusa said. "The God of Winter controls the snow, and before now we had been left to grow our food without hindrance. The wave of frost turned out to be highly localised, my guards sent someone to request your presence just after it started. It moved several hundred meters into the plains, killing the grasses there, before stopping. The affected area is only a few hundred meters wide." "The army I saw had an area of frost around them," I said. "Indeed," Malusa said. "Our agreement is that you stop them. There is a clan that is less than a kilometer away from the affected area." "Evacuate them," I said. "I am preparing my own force to face the enemy, but it will take some time to finish setting it up. Longer if I keep being interrupted." "I would have thought you would have taken them on with one paw behind your back," Malusa said. "If you had any defensive features, at all, it might have been possible," I said. "But you live on the plains. They would simply engage me and send the rest of the army to kill you all." I stood up and began walking back to the tunnel. "If that is all," I said over my shoulder. The guard who had tried to stop me before moved to block the tunnel entrance. I raised an eyebrow at him and then cuffed him behind the ear, forcing him to step to the side. "I know that this is the heart of your domain, and you feel that you should be able to tell me what to do here," I said. "But you really can''t." I looked back to Malusa and spoke louder. "I''m going to leave a temporary portal here. If you need to contact me again just ask for me through it." I pulled out the thread portal from my pocket and reshaped it into a doorway which I then pressed into the soil of the wall next to the tunnel. The other side led to a portal room with a presence. I walked through the wall of the portal room and towards the portal that led to the top of my fortress. I picked up another thread portal on my way past and began moving an internal Pocket Dimension portal towards the stone tables I''d made for conversions, the other side I had follow me. There was a crowd of eleven people waiting for me on the stair landing outside of the portal. Two humans, two leprechauns, two beast people, a bear woman and a bull man, two Mountain Keepers, two Forest Keepers, and a lone Plains Keeper. We were just missing the second Plains Keeper candidate, but that was understandable as there were only twenty Plains Keepers that had made the transition to the Fortress so far. "Hello and welcome," I said. "Please step through to the tables and take a seat." They came through the portal and then followed me through to the conversion area, and I began adapting them to my power. "Don''t mind me," I said. "I''ll continue setting up as we talk." I made another seven tables to bring the total up to twelve, all surrounding a central area where I would stand. After that I walled the place in, making a room with electrical lights in the ceiling. "Right," I said. "You each got a quest from your leaders to join the army that I am creating." The humans and the Mountain Keepers nodded, while the other seven looked confused and worried. I repeated what I''d said in the beast people''s language, then the Forest Keeper''s language, and finally the Plains Keeper''s language. That just left the leprechauns looking at me expectantly. I sent Lizzie a ping and dropped into the common simulation at her response. We talked for a few minutes before she sent me a primer on the leprechaun language. I spent some time after that absorbing it, then returned to normal speed and repeated myself in the leprechaun language. It made a sort of sense that the most viable candidates wouldn''t all speak what I was coming to see as the human language. They would have focused on their combat abilities. And once they were Demi-AI it wouldn''t matter at all. It was just going to make explaining things a bit tedious. Though they had all gotten the quest fine...
Quest Preview
Description You are being offered the chance to join the Fortress Army. The Fortress Army will be charged with protecting the Fortress and actively engaging its enemies. To be eligible to join the Army you must have your race changed to Demi-AI which will provide a form of immortality, so you cannot be killed in battle. Converting your race is a very painful process, as is resurrection upon death. This is a completely optional assignment, there will be no punishment for rejecting the quest. To complete the quest after accepting it, nod to Lord C.C.
Assigned to The eleven people around Lord C.C.
Quest type Progression Reward Race Change to Demi-AI
Submit Quest Remove Quest
That looked to cover everything. I would be requiring an oath of loyalty to the Fortress and to myself, but that along with my usual pre-healing speech could be said on an individual basis when it came to their turn. I submitted the quest and watched as everyone read through it. I turned in a circle, looking at each of them in turn, and received a nod from them all. Chapter 100 - Of Arrows My plan was to convert each of the people to Demi-AI and then speak with them for a few minutes at the extreme time dilation of the common simulation. There wasn''t any requirement for the common simulation to be at a slow time constantly, my personal simulation varied in time perception as I needed it to and that is where I was most of the time. People who went to the common simulation did so to work on projects or maybe to socialise with other Demi-AI, and maximising the amount of time available without interruptions from the outside world did make sense. It didn''t make any difference to me who was converted first, so I walked towards the person I happened to be facing after receiving all of their nods. One of the humans, a man. "Just a few things before we begin," I said. "Do you swear loyalty to me and to the Fortress?" "I do, my lord," he said. "Will you act for the betterment of the Fortress and its people?" I asked. "I will, my lord," he said. "That should do it for the formalities, then," I said. "Welcome to the Fortress Army. I will begin the race conversion." I gave him my pre-healing speech and at his nod I triggered the conversion. When his consciousness went digital I invited him to the common simulation. He loaded in and I gave him a copy of the model of his body. "Everyone forgets clothing when they first render in," I said. He quickly summoned a robe around himself, pretty closely copying the robe that I was wearing. Even without knowing how to manipulate the simulation there was some code that reacted to instinctive needs of the guests. I was pretty happy with that code. I sent him the standard Demi-AI primer, which now included the full human language in it. While he sat down on the floor of the landing room and closed his eyes to absorb the information I looked around the room. It had changed since I had last been here, there were simulations running in each of the four walls, with Mal''Thorn''s being in the wall in front of where I had spawned in. On the wall to the left of that was the inside of what I took to be a leprechaun dwelling, to the right was a mountain peak covered in ice and snow. Turning to my left to see behind me, there was a huge room with screens of glowing energy hanging all around it. From some of the ward diagrams I could see I took it to be Veya''s simulation. On the wall to the left of that should have been the mountain peak simulation, but instead it was a simulation of plains. And to the left of that was a blank wall, followed by a forest simulation, but not the one that Mal''Thorn had made. Finally I made it back to the mountain peak simulation and Mal''Thorn''s simulation was after that. I pulled up the code for the landing zone of the common simulation. Someone had tweaked it with a clever bit of sensory manipulation, when you turned the simulation directly behind you changed depending on which way you turned. At the same time you looked as though you were turning around a wall which blocked you from view from the simulations. New simulations could be added on the blank wall which would cause a new blank wall to be spawned. Very neat and tidy. Though relying on a person to turn their model would be a limiting factor when more simulations were added, as was only showing three simulations at a time. The human man was still studying, so I decided to write my own display of the landing room. The first step was refactoring the code to separate out the simulations from the displaying of their entrances, which was all hardcoded. With that done I made an infinite hallway, to the left and right were the entrances to the simulations, while forward and back led to more hallway. The hallway was pretty short right now, with only six simulations and two blank walls. I could see myself sixteen meters ahead of me, and behind me, and repeated into the distance in both directions. Back in the other display of the landing room the human man had stood up and was looking around, so I switched back to that view. "All caught up?" I asked. "There is a lot of information to go through," he said. "But I have the basics down. Are we really moving ten thousand times faster than outside?"Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. "Close enough to, yes," I said. "I have a task for you, if you''re up to it. We will be needing a wargames simulation. I''ll be up converting the next person, so I''ll leave it to you. Feel free to ask any of the other Demi-AI for help, Mal''Thorn probably has the most experience as far as I know. Any questions?" He had quite a few questions, and I spent the next hour answering them and talking about general things before heading back up to normal time. He did request that his wife, the other human, be the next one to be converted and I agreed. Back at normal speed I walked to the next table over, where the human woman was sitting. She was tall, dark haired, and covered in scars everywhere I could see, but it didn''t look like they affected her movement at all. I looked more closely at the scan I had of her. She did have quite a few injuries that were causing her pain, and they only weren''t impacting her movement because she was able to push through the limitations. I updated the model I had of her to solve all of her physical issues, then went through the oath of loyalty and pre-healing speech. Another unknown length of time later I caught her as she became digital, inviting her to the common simulation and sending her the Demi-AI primer. I sent the human man a ping and he appeared next to us and gave a cough. "Jacqueline, clothes," he said. She arched her back, stretching up onto her toes, before a light dress formed around her. "I feel twenty years younger," She said. "Too bad its only in here." "It isn''t, actually," I said. "The model of your body I gave you here is accurate to your physical body. Did you think I would grant you immortality and then not heal you back to your best condition?" "I didn''t know you could heal at all," she said. "It''s a very pleasant surprise." "My lord," the man said. "I have been having some difficulties with the simulation you tasked me with, Keeper Mal''Thorn said that it was memory issues again, even with him closing down some of his simulation." "That sounds about right," I said. "I''ll make some more memory, though it will be some time here before it is hooked up." I compiled a data packet with the simulation that Chantelle and I had spent a lot of time working on and sent it to both of them. "That is a private simulation," I said. "I would recommend hosting it on one of your own platforms if you use it. Anything on this server can be seen by anyone walking by." The man closed his eyes, presumably studying the code. A few moments later he blushed. "Thank you, my lord," he said. "This will be very helpful for the, uh, wargames simulation. I can already see some things covered that I overlooked. We will go and study it more thoroughly." Jacqueline frowned at him before he disappeared. She turned to me, still frowning, before a look of realisation came over her face and she, too, disappeared. More memory. I could probably use a better memory design. If I made the modules physically larger, and then placed the micro-portals for connections optimally... And being able to duplicate from models would make it quicker again. I spent the next half an hour designing and testing the new memory module and then went up to about one tenth normal speed to create a heap of them. After tying them all together into the common simulation it got over twenty times the memory all at once. I sent Mal''Thorn and the human man pings letting them know about the new capacity, and asking them to let me know when we were up to eighty percent usage so I could add more when we needed it. Then it was on to converting the next person, a leprechaun man. After I had gotten him into the common simulation we talked for half an hour, the two humans joining us, and asked them all to work on making the wargames simulation better. When I got back to the simulation after converting the second leprechaun, a woman, the leprechaun man met us, giving her a hug. It seems that the leaders had picked couples for their candidates going by the four so far. "My lord," the leprechaun man said. "If you have some time I had a problem with the simulation that I was hoping you could help with." I nodded and gestured for him to continue. "Jenny and I are master scouts and archers," he said. "A core aspect of mastering the bow is that the arrows that you use must be carefully selected. Differences in the fletching, shaft, head, or the binding between the three can greatly affect accuracy at longer ranges." "Okay," I said. "I don''t really have that problem, but I understand." He frowned. "That isn''t the problem, that''s just how things are," he said. "The problem I am having is that the simulation we''ve made for ranged practice lacks the realism of real arrows. Even arbitrarily adding flaws to the arrows isn''t making it more realistic." I shared the detailed models for my reinforced stone, wood, and feathers with him. "Design the perfect arrow with those materials," I said. "Don''t worry about binding them with other materials, just fuse them together. Take your time and make it the absolute ideal arrow." We were in the infinite hallway display of the landing room, and the leprechaun woman was walking while she absorbed the Demi-AI primer. Every half a minute she would pass me again. Two minutes later the leprechaun man physically handed me the arrow, and it looked like any other arrow but with a blue crystal arrow head. "This will fly true with the exact characteristics for my bow and style," he said. "I don''t understand how this solves the problem of too perfect arrows in the simulation. If we use that as a model then we won''t be training with real arrows." I grinned. "We will get you an inventory," I said. "I can give you hundreds of your perfect arrow that you can carry with you, and I can create more faster than you can shoot them all. Why make the simulation worse when we can make outside better instead?" Chapter 101 - Archery "You can make anything that is designed here?" the leprechaun man asked. "Anything with a high enough detail level, yes," I said. "There are likely some limitations, just because you make a detailed model of a material that you design to have certain characteristics, if you don''t base it on reality then it probably won''t work as intended." The leprechaun man thought about that for a few moments. "Do you have a model for bowstrings?" he asked. I checked the Fortress Storage, quickly filtering through the list of thousands of items. "I don''t," I said. "I''m sure someone would have tried to submit them, but they wouldn''t be classified as a raw material. What are the characteristics that are needed for a bowstring? Also, what is your name?" "Conor, my lord," Conor said. "And my wife is Jenny. The ideal bowstring... It needs some give, if you''re going to be magicking it up then the least possible weight without weakening the string. Water resistance and resistance to fraying would be nice, too, but waxing the bowstring can help with that." I studied the detailed scans that I had of a dozen different threads and found one that was elastic. Then I fused it with a thin strand of Arachne silk steel thread for strength. I created a length of the string in front of me and then applied an increasing pull on both sides. It stretched about three percent before snapping at five hundred kilograms of force, though that was only under the rules of the landing room simulation, I would want to test it in reality before relying on it too much. It should easily be enough for a bowstring, though, with a large safety margin. I handed Conor a copy of the model for the string and he created a bow out of wood. He looped the bowstring and tied it to one end of the bow, then bent it and attached the other end of the string to the other side. Conor relaxed the bent bow and the string promptly sliced through both sides of the wood. "Could you make the string thicker but not any heavier?" Conor asked. "Even if you could make the wood stronger the string would cut my fingers, and likely the arrow too." I nodded and revised the model. Making it thicker without increasing the weight just required adding empty space into the pattern. And I already knew the best geometric pattern to use, as that is what my reinforced stone used, I just had to scale the pattern up. I tested the new string the same way that I tested the first one, it stretched to five percent at five hundred kilograms of force but then held on until finally snapping at just over eleven hundred kilograms of force and stretching eight percent. I looped a length of it around my hand and pulled with no ill effect to my hand, much better than the razor wire that the last attempt had turned into. I gave Conor the new model and he waved a new bow into existence. This bow was much bigger than the first one that he had summoned, unstrung it was taller than I was. Conor tied the string to the bow, making it curve with magic, and then holding it horizontally. He added an arrow to the string and drew it back in a very awkward motion, the arrow going under the grip. "That bow is ridiculously too big for you," I said. "It''s easily twice your height." "And it has a draw weight of fifty kilograms," Conor said. "The draw weight is how much force that is needed to use to pull it back?" I asked. "That has to be more than you weigh." "It is," Conor said. "The draw is assisted by magic. Such a heavy draw weight gives a range of over two hundred meters, with a shot speed of sixty meters per second. That''s simply the power that is needed to take down some of the monsters that attack." "Still, that has to be awkward?" I asked. "It is, and it isn''t helped by the archer perches usually being up in trees," Conor said. "Though if only a single shot is needed then it is possible to use your feet at the bow''s grip."Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. I could do better than that. I made a copy of the wooden bow that Conor had made and extracted out the what the simulation rules were requiring of it to make it a bow. I threw out the wood and replaced it with a metal alloy, strong and light weight, and matching the flexibility of the wood. I then took Conor''s height of less than a meter and increased the stiffness of the material as I scaled it down to a meter in height. I matched the leather grip from the original model, and then fused the bowstring permanently into the model. I checked that it matched the characteristics of the original bow and then summoned a copy of it. It was missing something... I held the grip in my left hand, created an arrow on the string, and tried to pull it back with my right hand. It barely budged, so I put more and more strength into it. It took ten percent of the energy in both of my arms to draw it fully, and it was draining a few percent every second I was holding it at full draw. I released and removed the arrow from the simulation before it could hit anything. That''s what it was missing, a quiver. I created a portal above the grip, making it a specialised bag of holding that would tie into the user''s inventory space. With the bow in a resting position you could reach forward through the portal and remove an arrow from your inventory, pulling it back to the string and drawing in a fluid motion. I tested it out, drawing and loosing several arrows one after another. "Your form is terrible," Conor said. "I''m surprised you can even draw the bow without using your back muscles. That aside, that''s a very interesting design. How does the arrow summoning work out in reality? From what I can see of the code it taps into an interface that I don''t have access to?" "That''s the Inventory from the System," I said. "Bags of Holding grant access to the Inventory, which is a storage space. You can reach into the portal and by intent pull out an item from the inventory. So if you had different types of arrows you could draw any of them with a thought. As the bow is a complete unit I would recommend storing it in your inventory itself. The small Bag of Holding would have enough room, but the opening is a bit small, so we''ll likely give you a medium one." Conor was nodding through my explanation, and Jenny had stopped walking along the infinite hallway to listen in. "We will both be getting bows and inventories?" Jenny asked. "Of course, all of the members of the army will get at least a small bag of holding," I said. "And I will be equipping everyone to fight." I passed the bow to Conor, whose face lit up. He drew it back a few times, then pulled an arrow out and drew it. I watched as he made a few tweaks to small parts of the bow, shifting things around slightly. He nodded and then disappeared from the hallway. A moment later I got an invitation to join him and as soon as Jenny disappeared I accepted. "-to test a new weapon our lord has made, Jeff," Conor said. "Could you switch it to ranged practice?" Conor was talking to the human man, Jeff, and we were standing on a stone paved area in front of a field of short green grass. Jeff was nodding and the field suddenly filled with archery targets, boards with coloured circles shrinking down to a bullseye. There were stationary targets as well as moving ones, some moving constantly and others moving without any pattern. The ranges to the targets extended from close, twenty five meters away, to far, two hundred and fifty meters away. Conor stepped up to the edge of the grass, drawing and firing at a target fifty meters away. And just clipping the edge. The target turned black and Conor shot at a different one, getting within the outer edge of the circles and turning it bronze. "Why are you missing the shots?" I asked. "You''re a Demi-AI, you should be calculating everything before you loose." I walked to the edge of the grass myself and flicked out four throwing blades one after another. Four of the erratically moving targets, at fifty, one hundred, one hundred and fifty, and two hundred meters out began glowing a golden colour. Which must indicate a perfect hit. "Did you cheat at the simulation?" Conor asked. "Only a little bit," I said. "I refreshed my muscles instantly from their fifty percent drain from each throw. I''ll do it again without doing that, using the same limitations as I have in the real world. You can check my access to the code as I do." I pulled out four throwing blades, holding two in each hand. I raised my hands and then dropped one of the blades from each hand, throwing the two remaining ones, then grabbing and throwing the two dropped ones. Four more erratically moving targets at the same distances were glowing gold less than half a second after my first throw. And my arms fell to my sides, exhausted. "I''ve done exactly this against real opponents," I said. "If you know the forces involved you can calculate trajectories trivially." Conor nodded thoughtfully and squared off to the targets again. He breathed deeply and then drew and fired. His right hand followed the release of the string and drew another arrow, pulling back and firing again. At the end of a minute thirty targets were glowing gold, of all types and at all ranges. Conor lowered the bow and turned to face us, grinning from ear to ear. "I want a turn," Jenny said, holding her hand out for the bow. Chapter 102 - Armour "We''re in a simulation," I said, summoning an identical second bow and handing it to her. "Duplicating models is trivial here. I encourage the both of you to tweak the bows to your personal preferences, I will be making both of them from scratch in the real world anyway, it makes no difference to me if they are different models." Jenny nodded and took the bow, testing the draw. She held the bow differently to how Conor did, not sighting along the arrow but holding it away from her chest. I saw why when she released the string, if she held it any closer then it would hit her breasts painfully. She took a stance at the edge of the grass and began shooting. At the end of a minute there were thirty eight targets glowing gold. She turned to Conor with a smirk. "Now that I don''t have to compensate for not having a targeting line I can see I''m faster than you," Jenny said. "I already had to work out the trajectory of my shots, but this calculating is nearly instant." "A shot every two seconds compared to a shot every one and a quarter seconds," I said. "It is a big difference, but your combat potential against a lot of opponents should be combined. Practice both shooting at once, and set up a communication channel that you can designate targets over." They both nodded and began discussing how to go about it, Jenny still teasing Conor about being the better archer now. I left them to it and went back up to normal speed, reconnecting with my body''s senses. Jacqueline, the human woman, was up here talking with the others that had yet to be converted. From what I could hear she was reassuring them about the process and explaining some things about being a Demi-AI. The next person around the circle of tables was the bear woman. As I walked over to her I tried to summon a throwing blade from my inventory directly into my hand. What I wanted it to do was be able to equip items directly without having to reach into the portal, mostly so that weapons could be equipped immediately. After a few tries and it not working I thought that it might have to do with the item being essentially disposable. I tried it with my sword and it worked immediately, the hilt appearing in my right hand. I willed it back into my inventory and it disappeared.
Inventory sub-system extended
Permanent equipment can now be equipped from and dismissed to Inventory owner''s character sheets.
Good. That should solve the awkwardness of the leprechauns having to pull their bows out of their inventories. I had been standing in front of the bear woman while I was experimenting with the Inventory system, and she flinched when my sword appeared in my hand. "Hello," I said. "What is your name?" "Ursula, my lord," Ursula said. "It is a traditional name for those in my bloodline that are born bears. My husband is named similarly for bulls, he is Taur. You actually saved my son, Brutus, when we first arrived. Thank you for that." It seems standing in front of her blankly and then summoning and desummoning a sword had rattled her. Oh well, I''m sure she would be more settled once she was converted. "Let''s begin," I said. I got her to swear the oaths, and then gave her my speech and converted her. We appeared in the landing room, in the infinite hallway version, and I sent her the Demi-AI primer. After a few minutes of her sitting with her eyes closed, absorbing the information, I decided to go to the wargames simulation. I left Ursula an invite to join me there, and she actually disappeared from the landing room before I did. We appeared on the stone pavement to the side and several meters away from the field, Ursula still sitting with her eyes closed. Conor and Jenny were both using the practice field, which instead of the practice targets that they were using when I left had waves of hostile monsters approaching from the distance. Large creatures, some land-bound with hooves and dangerous looking claws and fangs that could be seen even from several hundred meters away, some with wings and stingers. Occasionally a nearly invisible flying enemy would fall from the sky at a closer distance, pierced by one or two arrows, or bludgeoned from the sky. Looking at the bows that the two leprechauns were using, both were markedly different from the original model I had made, and they were each using a range of different arrows. Conor''s bow was smaller, just over seventy centimeters tall. Jenny had gone the other way, where the bottom of Conor''s bow went down to his waist, Jenny''s almost touched the ground. It was well over a meter and a half tall, and the arrows that she was firing were twice as thick as the ones Conor was using.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! They were both slowing down their rate of fire, and the monsters started to make it closer and closer. Jenny was the first one to put down her bow, Conor following three shots later, and the simulation paused. "Twelve minutes, thirteen seconds," Jeff said from behind us. "Eight hundred targets down, with only five having broken through that I had to deal with." "And we''re completely out of mana, and exhausted as well," Jenny said. "I can probably help with both of those in an actual battle," I said. "Mana crystals and energy refreshment, though energy refreshment is painful and I would need to be close by. Your target count is very impressive." "Thank you, my lord," Conor said. "We have done quite a few modifications to the bows and arrows you designed for us. I hope that is alright?" He and Jenny both sent me a series of models, for each of their bows and eight different types of arrow. Conor''s arrows were almost all light, though without sacrificing strength, and Jenny''s were almost all heavy, some even with thick blunted arrowheads. "It is," I said. "I did encourage you to do it, after all. I''m not sure what half of these arrows would be used for, but I can easily make them all in the quantities indicated. I did solve the issue of storing and retrieving the bows, too." I sent them both a bit of code that would emulate the way that the Inventory would work out in the world. Conor studied the code for a few moments, then made his bow disappear. He held his hands out in front of him like he was holding an invisible bow, then equipped his bow, drew an arrow, fired, and unequipped his bow. All in under two seconds. He shook his head. "It doesn''t add much time to my shot, but it doesn''t add any real benefit either," Conor said. "It''s more for travelling, so you can always have your bow to hand," I said. Conor nodded. I felt a large hand tap me on the shoulder and turned to see Ursula towering behind me. "Taur and I are defensive fighters," Ursula said. "We take the attention of attackers, drawing their damage to us to allow casters and damage dealers to kill them with the least possible risk." "Okay," I said. "Good to know?" She summoned up a set of heavy armour, made from living plants, to cover her. The breastplate was a single piece of carved wood, and it connected the rest of the armour with lots of thin root threads. "The leprechauns mentioned you making improved equipment," Ursula said. "Have you considered what armour the people in your army will use, or will we be using our own personal pieces?" I hadn''t considered armour at all. The fights that I had been in I relied entirely on my speed, and in the tough fights my willingness to take damage in return for a killing blow. My immediate reaction was that armour would slow me down, but then I remembered the concept for a highly flexible suit of armour that used an extremely durable material to deal with multiple forms of attacks. Some of it required electricity, such as the active filtering to counter gas, but I could use small portals to achieve the same result. I frowned and scanned through my memories, looking to track down where this fully realised concept had come from. It only took me a few seconds to remember my first Power, ''General memories of relevant concepts from my past life''. Apparently this armour was some sort of sci-fi space armour. "I hadn''t considered it," I said. "Give me a few minutes, I''ll design something now." This would be considered permanent equipment, which allowed me to ignore how getting in and out of the armour would be achieved. The Inventory would simply equip it. And I had the scans for everyone in the army, so I could tailor the armour perfectly for each of them. The design ended up being a deep blue, almost black, to match the dominant material that the Fortress was made from. In a lighter blue on the left side of the breastplate I imprinted the design that was on the front side of the Fortress Coins, the symbol for the four biomes. The suit was as rigid as possible while still allowing full range of movement at all of the joints. And the helmet was a separate piece, so it could be removed to leaved the head free if required. The whole armour was sealed to the outside and used portals to provide cooling and air flow, with a reinforced glass polymer as the facepiece to allow vision out of the helmet. With that done I sent the personalised models to Ursula, Jeff, Conor, and Jenny, and summoned my own set over my model. Once everyone had equipped their own, Ursula looked at me, trying to speak. I sent her a communication request. "It''s completely sealed," I said. "You''ll have to speak through digital channels. I''ll add something like a presence that can be spoken through a bit later." Ursula nodded, then added everyone present to the communication channel. "I want to test the armour," Ursula said. "Stand still, leprechaun man." Ursula walked over to Conor, crouched down, and then swung her paw hard into his stomach, slicing across with her claws that had extended through her armour still covered. Conor''s armour held up fine. Conor himself went flying through the air, flipping to land on his feet in the grass field and sliding back several meters. "Minimal damage done," Conor said. "You next, my lord," Ursula said. She walked up to me and reached back for a full powered swipe. I settled into a fighting stance to receive the blow. I saw a flicker of white gold on the outside of Ursula''s armoured claws just before they went cleanly through my armour and then my chest. I fell to the side in two pieces as the simulation faded to grey around me. Damn. Chapter 103 - Jobs I reset my model and the simulation snapped back to full colour and detail around me. "That was well coded," I said. "It''s not how I remember dying, and it won''t be accurate to the reality, but it gets the point across. You were using a magical attack that time, I take it?" "Yes, my lord," Ursula said. "Without the armour being enchanted it will have little effect against magically imbued attacks or weapons." "Didn''t that hurt?" Jeff asked. "I wrote pain feedback into the simulation, and it shouldn''t be able to be bypassed, but you didn''t react to it." "I felt it," I said. "The level seemed accurate to the injury, but physical pain doesn''t affect me other than as a data input. It indicates damage, nothing more. You''ve all felt true pain, being torn apart won''t compare, even in the real world." I got nods from everyone at that. "Are any of you enchanters?" I asked. "No, my lord," Conor said. "The leprechauns have a few specialist enchanters that enchant arrows, mostly to increase the damage an arrow will do once it is inside the body of a monster. And on the highly penetrative arrows there are enchantments that trigger so that the arrow explodes rather than go out the other side of the target." "How many enchanters are there?" I asked. "Three or four," Conor said. "Ailfrid is one of them. Archers usually only have one enchanted arrow in their quiver, for targets that won''t drop to a normal arrow." "We have Druid enchanters that do armour enchantments," Ursula said. "Only one, primarily, and her apprentice." "That would be Maaata, then?" I asked. "Yes, my lord," Ursula said. The number of critical people that I wanted to be Demi-AI continued to increase. "Okay," I said. "I want you all to think about the enchantments you would like done and record them." My idea was to get what enchantments would be useful and then create a quest for all of the enchanters to fulfil the order. Actually, no, that wouldn''t work. I''d end up getting multiple copies of enchantments when I just needed the one on each armour. What I really needed was a way to assign or offer jobs. I spent a few minutes considering how a job system for the fortress would work, and then sent a request to submit a job to the System. It was really just a system for quests to be offered without assigning them to anyone directly, people would be able to browse the list and take quests that were appropriate to them.
System evolution triggered...
Quest subsystem expansion submitted... System Evolution approved... Entities may now access the Fortress Job Board from Fortress Presences. Jobs can be submitted and accepted by anyone who is not blacklisted. Rewards must be in Fortress Coins (or fractions thereof, jobs with fractions of a Fortress Coin may only be accepted by people that have Inventory access). Materials or items to be worked on may be supplied.
I added a job for enchanting arrows with an explosive effect, acceptable for any number of arrows, and put in ten arrows as the supplied material. I set the reward at a tenth of a Fortress Coin per arrow. I needed a way to get the enchanters to look at the job board, so I sent a quest to Ailfrid and Maaata to check the job board, and then spread information about it to others. Jacqueline, the human woman, had arrived while I was working on the job board system. All five of the already converted members of the army were there, discussing various enchantments. I sent a ping for their attention and they all turned to face me. "There is a Fortress Job Board now," I said, sending them the Demi-AI interface to it. "Non-Demi-AI can access it by going to a Fortress Presence, and anyone can submit jobs. I will cover any reasonable expenses for the members of the army, just send me a request for Coins."The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. I headed back up to normal speed to convert the rest of the army members. I got them done, one at a time, and spoke with them for about half an hour each after they had become Demi-AI. By the time I got to the last member, the Plains Keeper, the second Plains Keeper had arrived and I explained to him what was happening. With everyone converted I focused on creating all of the armour for each of us and was going to submit a job for it to be enchanted when I got a ping for attention from the presence that was looking into Malusa''s meeting room. "Lord C.C.," Malusa said, standing in front of the portal. "The frozen area of the Plains is growing, it is pushing inwards towards this location at several meters per second. It will reach us in ten hours at this rate, but if it expands in all directions then a large portion of the Plains will be lost." My army wasn''t as ready as I wanted it to be, but I had accepted responsibility for stopping the snow men. I had detailed scans of everyone and could restore them if it all fell apart... "We''re on our way," I said through the presence. I expanded my local simulation so that it had interfaces that others could add their sensory input to it and invited all twelve of the members of the army to join it. They accepted all at once, coming back up to normal speed and taking the locations of their bodies that the simulation showed of the real world. "Welcome to the War Room," I said. "This is where we will be coordinating ourselves when we fight. Please input your senses into the simulation to make it as accurate as possible. You all should have had a few weeks or months to get to know each other. We have our first mission, stopping an army primarily made of snow men from moving onto the Plains." As they all added their perspectives to the simulation the simulation itself became more accurate. Having data from multiple angles meant that there was almost no guesswork involved in how things were interacting if they were within view of more than one person. Though there were still some areas that were filled in deductively, anything that was out of view of everyone, as an example. I had made a dozen large mana crystals in between making everyone''s armour and I handed one out to each of them. They also each got a small Bag of Holding to give them Inventory access. I moved a portal to give us an exit directly to the leprechaun floor and led them out and down the stairs to the ward room. "Fill your mana crystals from the mana crystal pillar," I said. I turned back to the doorway to see Ursula and Taur standing there in shock, blocking the rest of the group from getting into the room. I had master control over the speed of time perception in the local simulation we were using so I dropped it down. "Yes, it''s a giant mana crystal," I said. "Take your time to adjust to it, then fill your mana crystals." "Sorry, my lord," Ursula said. "It was just a shock. Isn''t it dangerous to have such a large mana crystal? What would happen if it cracked?" "I''ve been told that it would explode and take the Fortress with it," I said. I really should protect it more now that I''ve been reminded of that. "It wouldn''t necessarily explode," one of the Forest Keepers said. "But it wouldn''t do anything good. An explosion would be the best thing that could happen, at least then everything affected would be dead." That was a cheery thought. I brought the local simulation back up to normal speed and went to speak with Chantelle who was sitting at the table. A few minutes later everyone was done and we headed back up to the leprechaun floor to use their portal, taking us directly to Malusa''s meeting room. The guards around the room tensed as I came through the portal, and actually drew their daggers when the rest of my army followed me. I dropped us all down to a tenth of normal speed and set my speech time translation to say ''Armour up.'' "When my body has finished talking, everyone equip your armour from your Inventory," I said within the simulation. "If anyone attacks, disarm them cleanly. Conor, Jenny, engage anyone who targets the Mountain Keepers." I finished speaking and all thirteen of us were suddenly wearing our full body armour in dark blue. I walked over to where Malusa was sitting at the head of her table, ignoring the guard who moved to intercept me as well as the two who moved to my back. I had gotten sound output working on the sealed suit by using a small portal backed by a presence. "Your move," I said to Malusa just as the guard was putting his crossed blades in front of me. I could see the two behind me in the simulation thanks to the inputs from the other members of the army, and they were in a position to stab me in the back. "Stand down," Malusa said. "But, your Majesty-" the guard in front of me said. "You know what, I don''t care," I said, interrupting him. "You have a Plains sense that allows you to know what is happening on the plains, yes? And you can give access to different Plains Keepers as appropriate? Give access to my two Plains Keepers." The guard in front of me bristled and I felt four distinct pressures at my back as the guards there pressed their daggers against me. "Done," Malusa said. "Good," I said. "Now, two of your guards have weapons drawn and touching me. I am undecided as to whether I should take offence and kill them, humiliate them, or ignore them. If I kill them I may have to kill all of your guards when they try to retaliate. What is your opinion on this matter?" "If they do not remove their weapons then they will be executed for directly endangering the Plains," Malusa said. "You have my blessing to kill them, the other guards will not interfere." Both of the guards at my back, and the guard in front of me, got down on all fours and exposed the backs of their necks. "We have enemies to kill," I said. "Though I think the next time your guards act like this I will treat them as enemies." Chapter 104 - Turrets After a short internal discussion with the Plains Keepers in my group where they provided directions to the surface we left the Plains Keeper city warren. The surface had the ever-present chest high grass, but there was also half a meter of snow on the ground. There were lights around the exits of the warren that lit up the area for a few hundred meters, and a main road that ran from the south west to the south east, with a large wagon parking area that was half full with quiet wagons in the night. We left into the darkness to the north west at a slow run for me, which was a quick sprint for our smallest members, the leprechauns. The half meter of snow wasn''t much of an issue for me, and the Mountain Keepers seemed to prefer it, half running and half sliding over the top of it with their ski-like feet. But it would be an issue for the leprechauns, so I was dissolving a narrow path for us. Ursula, running just behind me, was also doing something that made the grass in front of us sway to the sides. We were still trampling a path through the plains, but it was easy going. I had my power soaked into each of us and I was refreshing the energy in our muscles as we ran, controlling our pace and gauging each person''s tolerance for pain. The leprechauns were the most affected, having to exert themselves the most, but they also had a higher capacity for being refreshed. The Mountain Keepers had the lowest, then the mages, and the beast people had the highest not counting myself. I was able to withstand the most pain out of all of us without blacking out. We were making an average speed of twenty kilometers per hour, our vision in the darkness being given by one of the Plains Keepers somehow, and four hours later we ran into a wall of fog that was moving over the plains from the west. We stopped before entering it, coming to a rest. Jacqueline, the human woman, was a mage that specialised in air magics. She spent some time gathering and expressing mana, and was sharing the process with the simulation so I could see what she was doing. The mana was forming symbols in the air half a meter tall, sort of like warding but without being connected to each other or a mana source. She spent a few seconds on each symbol and they hung in the air while she moved onto the next one. After six symbols she formed a straight line of mana in front of them, tapped into her large mana crystal, and pushed a flood of mana into the line while moving it into the symbols. The symbols lit up and a strong continuous stream of air rushed by us into the fog, pushing it west and up into the air. The area cleared up and a blue glow could be seen a few hundred meters away. As the fog pushed back further a single line of snow men could be seen stretching from north to south into the fog bank on either side. They were walking forward slowly casting a continuous magic that everyone but me could see, and the frozen area of the plains was growing in front of them. Behind them was a frozen wasteland of shattered grass. The wall of fog was only on the living plains side of the frozen line, on the other side it looked to be freezing and falling out of the air. One of the Plains Keepers sent me a ping and my perspective changed to an overhead view of the plains, the frozen border was five kilometers long and growing north and south. I couldn''t see any of the dragons, but the clear section in the fog was only one hundred and fifty meters wide. "Okay, this is it," I said. "Though it looks less like they''re here to fight and more like they''re terraforming the place." "Could someone clear the grass between us and the targets?" Conor asked. "If we can see them then we will be able to see their weak points." The Plains Keepers both nodded and the grass in front of us began moving to the sides, compressing with the grass that was there. With the grass out of the way the leprechauns could see and the detail of the snow men in the simulation increased, including the placement of swirling balls of energy in different locations on each of them, the energy extending out through their bodies. The nearest snow man was two hundred meters away, and the furthest that could be seen was about two hundred and fifty meters away. Outside of the range of all but the leprechaun archers.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. "Long range formation," I said, and everyone moved to their places. We had five ranged damage dealers, three mages and two archers, three melee damage dealers, the beast people and the Forest Keeper spear user, and four support, both Plains Keepers and both Mountain Keepers. Long range formation had me in front with my portal shield out, then the three mages behind me ready to attack when the enemy came within their range of one hundred meters. The leprechauns were behind them and to each side, giving them a clear firing line to the front, and to their sides they had the beast people for protection. Behind the mages and in the center were our four support personnel, with the spear user Forest Keeper facing backwards behind them to guard our backs. One of the Plains Keepers, the one who had arrived first, was a diviner and had foresight. While everything is ordered and non-chaotic he can see into the possible futures and feed them into the local simulation. It works well with initial target selection and prediction, but as soon as people begin reacting and choosing between differing choices the range that he can see drops to almost nothing. He was also the one who had given us the ability to see in the dark while we were running, casting a light spell every few seconds in a future that he then didn''t need to follow through on. The snow men hadn''t reacted to our appearance in any way yet, still walking forward steadily. I sent a request to Chantelle for a God Banishment ward on a mana crystal. It wouldn''t help for this battle, but if they were using powers from the winter god it would be a useful thing to drive back the frozen area. With everyone in position, and no threats around us, we were ready to begin. "Fire," I said. Conor and Jenny let off their first arrows, followed by several more. Different snow men lit up as they were targeted, starting from the furthest ones and moving in. The flight time over the distance was a bit under four seconds, and they had six arrows in the air before the first ones hit, collapsing the snow men into snow. I had my power soaked into the pair and was refreshing the energy in their muscles as they fired. They increased their firing speed, not having to worry about conserving their physical strength, and pulling mana from their mana crystals, they got up to a rate of fire of three arrows per second. Thirty seconds after they had begun firing they stopped. A few seconds after that the last snow man dissolved. Ninety arrows fired, eighty five enemies down. After the snow men had started dying they began to run towards us, but it was only near the end that they started to try to dodge erratically which led to some misses. None of the snow men that were in the fog to the sides came out to face us, and the frozen area continued to push to the east everywhere along the line except for directly in front of us. Jacqueline called up another wind to blow back the fog that was coming into the cleared area. I was considering taking us south along the line, taking out snow men as we came across them, when Conor sent me an alert, highlighting the frozen field two hundred meters away in the simulation. There were snow men phasing in, but this time they had equipment with them. Most had large shields of ice, and there were also twenty tripods with meter long tubes on top of them. There were three snow men for each tripod, two with shields and one behind it holding the handles that were there. Conor and Jenny fired off an arrow each at the closest tripod''s shield snow men before they had completely phased in, and the arrows went right through them. Every one of the tripods turned to face in our general direction, and once they had finished phasing in they opened fire on us. Hundreds of icy projectiles, the first of which would reach us in less than half a second. I slowed our shared time perception to its maximum, shutting off access to our senses but giving us over an hour to react. I already knew what I would do if I were alone, my shield would cover me almost perfectly. "Suggestions?" I asked the rest of my people. "Their accuracy is terrible," Conor said. "We could buy several seconds to act by just laying down. All of the shards currently in the air would miss us entirely. Almost all of them will miss us anyway." We had the trajectories for each of the shards, and he was right, a lot of them were going to miss to the sides of us, and of the few that were on target horizontally a lot would be going high. I played back the moments after they began firing and noticed there was a recoil that wasn''t yet being corrected for. Some of the shard launchers had even aimed low, the trajectories raising toward us in successive shards as the recoil lifted later shots towards us. "A wall build a wall," one of the Mountain Keepers said, the other nodding. They gestured together and a low wall rose in front of us in the simulation, six meters wide and half a meter high. "It would take me a few seconds to raise a wall that high," I said. "Though I could make it much thicker." "We build," the Mountain Keeper said. "This high before... These shots." Three quarters of the shard trajectories lit up in green, then the furthest shard trajectories lit up blue. The simulated wall grew a blue section on top of it, making it a meter high. "This high before those," the Mountain Keepers said. "Then safe, make higher for rest to stand." "The shards are moving too fast to have any real drop over the distance between us," Jenny said. "With that wall we can shoot over it and kill them all again. The thirty nine shots that will make it through on target before the wall raises is all that needs to be dealt with." Chapter 105 - Bunker "I can block these eleven shards," I said. I coloured the trajectories of the eleven shards coming from directly in front of us black. Jeff and Jacqueline were discussing something between themselves, then every shard coming from the left had their trajectories changed to a dark red. "We can destroy these fourteen," Jeff said. "Using my fire and Jacqueline''s air magics." "You can cast that quickly?" I asked. "A single simple symbol from each of us, burn and gust," Jacqueline said. "It will be an uncontrolled explosion of fire that will move away from us and dissipate quickly. But it should be hot enough to destroy the shards. An air shield would take too long, and I''m not confident that it would hold up against the attacks." "That just leaves fourteen from the right," I said, lighting them up in white. "They''re pretty tightly clustered, how confident are you all in dodging them?" We were all wearing our armour, but I didn''t want to take the chance that any of the shards were enchanted. It didn''t seem likely with the amount of projectiles that were coming towards us, but it would only take a few of them on target to tear through us. Everyone was running through movement simulations, transparent ghosts showing how they would move. Most opted to just fall down on their stomachs where they were, though the Mountain Keepers were both going to be stepping forward to raise their wall. They would be stepping into the shadow I would be casting with my shield. Once everyone''s simulations settled down into a final sequence of movements I nodded. "That should do," I said. "I''m going to bring this simulation up to one tenth of normal speed. If you need to go faster or slower split off an instance of the simulation. Let''s go." We came back up to a speed that we could interact with our bodies and everyone moved at once. I had my shield up and moving to block my designated shots. I had my hands at the edges of the thread portal pushing it into a shape that would cover more of the shards, and then the shards began arriving. They were pretty small, five centimeters long and one centimeter wide, and were cylinders that sharpened to a point in the front. With the speed that they were moving they would have a lot of force behind them, even at such a small size. I had my shield in position and ready when the simulated movements of the two Mountain Keepers behind me differed from what they were actually doing. Their wall was rising in front of us successfully, but their spell casting was slowing them down. Right into the path of four of the incoming shards. Even if they dropped to the ground immediately they wouldn''t move fast enough to clear the line of fire. I split off my own instance of the simulation, a process that separated me from the others in the simulation so that I could manipulate it without affecting them while still taking all of the data inputs from them. I soaked my power into my body and armour and dashed hard to the right, sending a message to the two Mountain Keepers to continue as they were. I sent another message to Ursula who was on the right. From my perspective I drifted slowly in front of the shards and watched as they impacted against my armour, penetrating it even with my reinforcements on it. The armour did slow them down, and the reinforced muscles of my stomach stopped them before they could go all of the way through me. I was hit by six of the shards, four in the stomach that would have hit the Mountain Keepers and two in the chest that were just on the path I had to take to intercept the others. I made it to where Ursula was laying on the ground and she reached up with one hand and pulled me down next to her, sliding a few centimeters as she absorbed my momentum. I was bleeding from the holes in me and my right lung was beginning to fill with blood. And my power wouldn''t work on the shards that were within me. I closed my instance of the local simulation, returning to the master copy. "Well that could have gone better," I said. "We didn''t know that casting would slow us as much as it did," one of the Mountain Keepers said.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. "We are very sorry," the other said. I waved that off. "It''s not your fault," I said. "Our simulation is only as good as the rules that it is running on, there is always going to be uncertainty in new situations. Good work getting the wall up so quickly." I had shared the data on the damage my body had taken, and one of the Plains Keepers, the healer, was studying it. "Your wounds have the potential to be lethal," the healer said. "Are you able to heal them, or do you require assistance?" "I could heal them," I said. "And if I couldn''t then I could at least keep my body alive. The problem is that the shards are enchanted and I can''t affect them directly. Your assistance would be appreciated, thank you." The healer crawled over to me within a few seconds and placed a hand against me. Symbols began to form from mana inside me, linking together like a ward but using him as the mana source. I was able to see the drain the healing was putting on my body''s energy and began replacing it, which allowed the healer to speed up the healing, dumping more mana into the symbols inside me. It was much more pleasant than my method of healing, even with the pain of replacing the energy it was taking. The shards were being pushed out through the holes they had made as my body knitted itself back together behind them. It took about ten seconds of normal time for me to be completely healed and I used my power after that to clean away the blood that had gotten over everything. While I had been distracted the Mountain Keepers had raised the wall over a meter high, but the constant torrent of over a thousand shards every few seconds was eating into it. There had already been several breaches where the Mountain Keepers weren''t quick enough to repair the wall, but there hadn''t been any injuries from them. We were under cover so I sank my power into the wall and began converting it to my reinforced stone, starting from the bottom and closest to us and moving up and out. The stone was strong enough that it was barely affected by the enchanted shards hitting it. With the Mountain Keepers no longer having to repair the wall it went up to two meters in height over the next minute, and it took me a few more minutes to convert the whole thing to stone. I made a section of it transparent to give us a viewing window out to the army. More of the tripod weapons were arriving, including two that were bigger, two meters long and double the width, and the entire line was moving toward us freezing the plains as they went. They had already moved twenty meters closer. Within the simulation an outline of two one meter platforms appeared at either end of the wall. "Could those be made so that we can easily fire over the wall?" Conor asked. The Mountain Keepers both nodded, and the soil began to shift. "If you stand up there, won''t the top of your bows show above the wall?" I asked. "They will, but they''re a small target," Conor said. "And almost all of the shards are impacting on the wall. We should be able to see and avoid any that would hit our bows." That made sense. If they did try to suppress us we could simply move further back to get a better angle without exposing anything. The leprechauns both began firing. When they fired their first arrows one of the larger tripods let off its first shard. It was enormous compared to the other shards, ten centimeters wide and thirty centimeters long. Where the first one hit it chipped off a chunk of the reinforced stone. The firing rate was much lower than the other launchers, only one every second compared to fifty. It only did so much damage because it was a direct hit, the second shot glanced off the top of the wall without doing any damage. I redesigned the wall, getting the Mountain Keepers to build a steep angle from soil that I then converted to stone. Three of the larger shards destroyed sections of the new design before I could get the stone thick enough to counter them. And I didn''t get it done in the second and a half those attacks took, the leprechauns had targeted the operators of the larger tripods first and the arrows went right through the shields that were being used to cover the snow men. I continued converting the wall and we built it up on the north and south sides as well only leaving the east open. The fog wall had moved east following the border of the frozen area that was expanding, and we could see snow men setting up their tripods on either side of us. We weren''t slowing them down at all, except in that the leprechauns were killing them by the hundreds. I was considering what we could do when I got a job approval request. Chantelle was submitting a job for the god banishment ward, which I accepted. A few moments later the job was fulfilled and it was in my inventory. "I made it with controls you can use, and a visual display of the power left in the mana crystal," Chantelle said. "Stay safe." I took the warded mana crystal out of my inventory and a hologram of a green bar appeared over it. There was also an indicator for a range that was currently set at one kilometer. It didn''t seem to be stopping the snow men from freezing the plains, as there was a line of them three hundred meters to the east freezing the two hundred meter gap behind us. About all that it had stopped was the reinforcements phasing in to man the tripods. "My lord," Jenny said. "Look." She highlighted a ball of mana that was hovering above us. "I''ve got it, my lord," Jacqueline said, casting a spell that solidified the air around it. She brought it down in front of us. A wisp. Chapter 106 - Purpose Jeff summoned flames around his hand and the wisp started vibrating within the air prison that Jacqueline was maintaining around it, putting off a slight hum. "Someone is going to have to translate for me," I said. "Wisps communicate by magic, and it doesn''t work on me." "It''s... Screaming in terror right now," the Plains Keeper healer said. I frowned at Jeff. "Put that out," I said. "I want information from it, but we are not going to torture it." Jeff bowed his head to me and put out the fire on his hand. The wisp continued to vibrate. "It says that it''s still afraid that one of us will burn it by touching it," the healer said. "And that at least with the fire it would have died instantly." "Could you put what it says directly into the war room simulation, and translate my replies there to it?" I asked. The healer nodded, and a whimpering was projected into the simulation. "Please, don''t hurt me," the wisp said. "I''ll go away, back to the winter realm, I won''t tell anyone what I saw. Please." "You have my word that you won''t be harmed," I said. "I have some questions for you, but you won''t be harmed even if you don''t answer." "You''ll let me go?" The wisp asked. "I want to ask my questions first," I said. "My lord," Jacqueline said. "It''s begun eating the mana from my spell. I can keep it up but it will exhaust my mana in a few minutes." I nodded. "Why are you eating the spell?" I asked. "If you aren''t going to hurt me then I wanted to eat," the wisp said. "Tastes good, flying mana, holding mana. Strong, even better than neutral mana." Okay, so it wasn''t trying to escape, it just ate mana as a natural thing. "What were you doing hovering above us?" I asked. "I was sent to observe the makeup and capabilities of the group that was obstructing the conversion of the land given to the snow man progenitor by the god," the wisp said. "Who is the snow man progenitor?" I asked. "He is the source of the snow men, though he''s not the only one," the wisp said. "He is making snow men continuously back in the winter realm where he is safe from counterattacks. If he dies then the drones will die, too. He will come across when it is secure on this side, until then he will send troops to do the securing." Our healer seemed to have some empathy with the wisp, and he would be the most appropriate for giving a reward for the information. "Clay," I said, the healer''s name. "Could you please send a healing spell at the wisp? It should pick it up as mana with your signature on it." He began forming symbols, three of them, before pushing a line of mana through them to send it at the wisp, continuing to feed it with mana. "Ooh," the wisp said excitedly. "Health, recovery, repair, and reformation. And a continuous effect." It abandoned eating the air prison entirely and began absorbing the healing spell, wrapping it around itself to soak it in from all directions. "The snow men are expendable," the wisp said. "It doesn''t matter if they die, the progenitor just makes more. But they are bad scouts. We wisps aren''t expendable but we scout well. The archwisp made a rough alliance with the snow man progenitor at the Champion''s insistence. But most of us came because we were interested in looking around the neutral realm where all of the ambient mana that we eat comes from. It is much better here. I don''t trust the snow men, though, they''ve killed and eaten wisps in the past."If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. "And what were the terms of the alliance?" I asked. "In return for the assistance of the wisps as scouts and detectors the snow men will allow wisps to visit their lands in the neutral realm," the wisp said. "But they didn''t promise not to eat us. And we only get to visit, we don''t get any land of our own. The archwisp shouldn''t have taken the terms, but the Champion was there. And you don''t argue with a Champion." There was a short pause, and then. "No, he''s a Champion too?" the wisp said. "But he said I wouldn''t be harmed?" One of my people was obviously talking to the wisp. "Please share what you say to the wisp here," I said. "And don''t threaten it, it''s being very helpful. You aren''t loyal to the other Champion, or the Winter God?" "No and not really," the wisp said. "We don''t worship the Winter God, and we had no need of it until the neutral realm started to become cold enough for us to survive here." "And if you had a constant source of mana, would you be able to keep an area cold enough for you to survive in?" I asked. "We can turn mana into cold, yes," the wisp said. "So long as the fiery ball in the sky isn''t heating a place we can keep an area cold. Your questions are funny. And the mana is nearly gone." The Forest Keeper mage stepped up and summoned a ball of water that floated to the wisp, who hissed and froze it before pulling the mana from it in a constant stream as the Forest Keeper sent more. "No harm, you said, then you send liquid water that would have boiled me alive," the wisp said. "It was an offering," the Forest Keeper said. "I would have stopped it before it came into contact with you." The wisp muttered for a few moments, making sounds that didn''t have any meaning. "The offering is good, very tasty," the wisp said. "I forgive you for almost boiling me alive." "I need a guide to take me to the snow man progenitor," I said. "In return I offer the chance to negotiate a treaty for a safe and permanent place to stay within my fortress, which is in the neutral realm." The wisp began bouncing up and down excitedly, the air prison obviously not holding it anymore. "Yes!" The wisp said, before stilling, drooping in the air. "But the Winter God is needed to phase creatures between the realms, and it won''t help you." "Don''t worry about that," I said. "I have a portal exit into the winter realm and we will be using that." "Oh," the wisp said. "Ah, I don''t think I''m allowed to say yes. If we go to the winter realm then I can take you to the archwisp, they can say yes. Or no. But they should say yes." I considered whether I should go to the winter realm by myself. I would be able to move faster, and if it was going to be an assassination I was confident I could get in, make the kill, and get out again. The more people I took the harder it would be to use that hit and run tactic. On the other hand, I needed to rely on my people more. And keeping them safe, protecting them from the conflicts that they were already a part of, wasn''t something that they would accept. I did need at least one person to come with me to act as a translator for the wisps we would meet as well. If it was going to be a single person I would want to take either Conor or Jenny, as they had stealth skills, could attack from great range, and could see the weak points of targets. I nodded to myself, taking both Conor and Jenny would give the most flexibility. "My lord," Jeff said. "You wouldn''t be planning on leaving us behind, would you?" "I wouldn''t call it that," I said. "And I need some people to act as translators, but there isn''t a need for all of us to go. How did you know?" "I''ve spent a lot of time talking with Mal''Thorn and Chantelle," Jeff said. "They helped quite a bit with the war games simulation. They said that your first reaction to a problem was to throw yourself at it and fix it by yourself. Well, actually, they both said your first reaction to a problem was to wait and try to solve it by defending. After that you would throw yourself at it and fix it by yourself." "That''s... Not inaccurate," I said. "I have a lot of power, and with that power came responsibilities. I''d prefer to defend, but often it gets to the point where I am forced to attack." "You have given us power," Ursula said. "And we have sworn loyalty to you and the Fortress. To act for the betterment of the Fortress and its people." "You took on the burden of stopping the snow man army in return for saving my kin," Clay said. "We became your people. This burden is not yours alone, we share it. This is what the Fortress Army is for." "We are a unit," Jacqueline said. "We cover for each other''s weaknesses, and increase our strengths. We are, all of us, coming with you to do what must be done." They had all moved to stand in front of me in the simulation arranged by height, their bodies in the world still in defensive positions. Presenting a solid front, all of them staring solidly into my eyes. I smiled. "You rehearsed that, didn''t you?" I asked. They fidgeted at that, but maintained eye contact. "It''s come up a few times, my lord," Jeff said. "If you are going to be fighting for the betterment of the Fortress or the world then we are not going to sit in safety. We will be fighting with you or where you direct. If you meant for it to be different then you shouldn''t have formed the Fortress Army." "Very well," I said. "Let''s go to the Winter Realm." Chapter 107 - New Life Now I just had to work out how to practically take them all. The snow in the winter realm was deep, and my fastest way of travelling was to run through it while banishing the snow in a tunnel in front of me that collapsed right behind me. That wouldn''t work for my entire army, we moved too slow and making the tunnel wide enough would slow me down even further. It was probably inevitable that it would take longer than I''d prefer...
Message from follower: schadof
Why take a whole army (which like mentioned will take a lot more time and is more obvious) when you can just ready it. And teleport it when needed?
That... I was still a bit uncomfortable when followers showed that they could read my thoughts as I was thinking them, or that they could read my thoughts at all, really. But like with the other messages I had gotten from followers, this was something obvious that I had missed by being too close to the problem, and I was thankful for it. By teleport I took it to mean using a portal. I could ready a room in my Pocket Dimension that my army can gather in, ready to sortie out through a portal that I carried with little notice. I could carry my entire army and not sacrifice any speed. Guides, like the wisp, and people with sensing abilities, like the diviner, might need to be outside of the Pocket Dimension to be able to give me their insights. But the rest of the army could watch from the war room simulation. We should be able to move faster with just a few people. I began making a decent sized stone room in my Pocket Dimension for my army to stay in, adding the portals for the winter realm, my pocket portal, and the leprechaun floor portal. Conor and Jenny were still taking the occasional shot at snow men that got closer, but our current position on the plains was entirely irrelevant. I took out and opened up my pocket portal, forming it into a doorway. "Everybody through," I said. Everyone entered the room, including the wisp, and I followed them through. I closed the portal down into a thin line and then buried it into the soil of the plains. The ground was likely going to be frozen soon, and I wasn''t sure if I would be able to recover the thread portal if the freezing was a magic effect. I didn''t want anyone to get easy access to one of my thread portals though. The wisp began bouncing around crazily. I opened the thread portal to the winter realm after using my power to dig it out of the snow and ice it was buried in. Even before the portal was wide enough for the wisp to get through it was pushing against it. It finally made it through and a few moments later the portal was big enough for Clay to follow it. "That was scary," the wisp said. "I couldn''t breathe. What was that place?" "It''s my space," I said. "It doesn''t have mana. Are you going to be okay?" "I... Yes," the wisp said. "I didn''t like it, but I could survive there for a short time if I needed to. It did make me hungry." I had been a little bit concerned that the wisps, being mana based, wouldn''t be able to use my portals at all. If they could make it through with the equivalent of holding their breath then I could offer them a place in my fortress. Though there was one other problem with that... "I''m going to do something that might let me be able to hear you," I said. "If it works the same as for other people then it will drain your mana to half." "Don''t want to," the wisp said. "Not worth half of my mana just to be able to talk to you. Talking to you now fine." Right, they wouldn''t regenerate mana, they would have to eat it to get any back. "My people will give you at least as much as you lose," I said. "Of different types. And I will stop when you say." It was possible that I would drain it completely trying to adapt it to my power, or that I wouldn''t be able to adapt it to my power at all.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. "Your people mana is good," the wisp said. "Okay, you do." I began pushing my power against it. "Tickles," the wisp said. "Doesn''t feel bad, different." "Conor, could you collect everyone''s mana crystals and go fill them up?" I asked. "The leprechaun floor is through that portal. I might head out before you get back, but this is going to be the army room. There is no reason all of us have to travel when you can watch from the war room simulation and come out of the portal I''ll be carrying if you are needed to fight." Conor nodded to me and began collecting the large mana crystals, then left to the ward room to fill them. I began creating chairs for the army room out of stone, and the others joined me in designing their ideal chairs, tweaking them as I made them. I ended up with unique chairs for everyone, arranging them around a table in the center of the room. I also added a presence, though the Demi-AI in my army all had inventories and interfaces to the Fortress functionality. I gave them all access to the army room feeds, so anyone could look into the room even if no one was there. And I gave them a Fortress Coin each before summoning a platter and filling it with different sorts of berries, including the condensed versions I had been playing with. With that done my power finally began sinking into the wisp and I began making a detailed scan of it. What I could see of it was the same material that made up mana crystals, and near the center of it there was a complicated intertwined set of circuits. It definitely approached the complexity of a brain, but I had no idea how it mapped out. And it was possible that there was some active component that was represented entirely in mana. If the wisps were going to join my fortress then I would want at least one of them to be a Demi-AI. But I wasn''t sure if it was even possible. I opened up a private communication channel with Clay, who was in the winter realm with the wisp. "Could you use your magic to make a scan of the mana of the wisp?" I asked. "Sure thing," Clay said. I sent him my detailed scan of the physical representation of the wisp and after a few minutes he sent me back the scan with mana added. It gave me a solid snapshot of the wisp, but that wasn''t telling me enough about it. I switched to the war games simulation, which should have the most accurate rules for simulating mana, and created a copy of the wisp. It was just a static model, and I wanted to study how its mind worked so I could work out a way to interface a Mind Link to it. I nudged the simulation to make the mana flow through the model of the wisp and suddenly it came to life. I could see the mana flowing through it, but it was beginning to make sense how it worked as a system that held a consciousness. There were even flickers of electricity running deep within the circuits. The model of the wisp sent a wave of mana at me which quickly resolved into a digital communication request. "Hello?" it asked. "Where am I? What am I?" Ah, whoops? I think I may have just made an entirely digital consciousness. "Hello," I said. "You are in a simulation, and if you are self-aware then you are a digital consciousness. Patterned after a wisp. Do you remember anything?" "No," it said. "I was just here. There''s nothing before." Its consciousness was tied to the model that it was using. I could pretty easily turn it off again... Which would kill it. That didn''t seem very fair. It wasn''t an AI, it was a simulated wisp, and as I had created it it was one of my people. If I gave it a Mind Link and a digital platform... Couldn''t I then make it a body in the outer simulation and share its consciousness between its digital and physical self? Like how I made Demi-AI but in reverse. I split off an instance of the war game simulation and moved the simulated wisp there, then shifted the time dilation of the instance all the way up so that the wisp wouldn''t experience any time passing. I was still at the maximum time dilation of the war game simulation and I set about designing the Mind Link for the wisp. A few hours later I had it tested and working and the simulated wisp''s consciousness split over to a highly throttled digital platform. It worked. So I could make wisp Demi-AI. And I hadn''t, yet, got a message from the system saying that I had broken everything. I could see how following up on the simulated wisp had the potential to, so I set that exploding can of worms to the side for now. I had other priorities that I needed to deal with first. I returned to the war room simulation, and normal speed, and walked out into the winter realm. "Hey, I can hear you now!" The wisp said. "And you can hear me!" "I can," I said. "We should go to you archwisp now. Clay, step back into the army room." I picked up the portal after he had stepped through and turned to the wisp who was drifting side to side. "I don''t know where we are," it said. "There are some wisps nearby, we''ll go ask them?" I followed it as it went around the corner of the wall of ice we were next to, heading towards the gate further along. There were two wisps hovering there and my guide approached them, bouncing excitedly up and down. A few seconds later the other two began bouncing too. "Know where we are now," my guide said. "Come, we go this way and down." It headed out into the flat snowy plain and I followed it at a run, clearing snow as I went. We were making good time, my guide able to float at twenty kilometers per hour, which was near my top speed in the rough mountain terrain. After half an hour I began hearing a buzzing sound and slowed to a stop. "What is that?" I asked my guide. "What?" My guide asked, and then a few moments later. "Oh no, Devourers." Chapter 108 - Devourers "What are Devourers?" I asked. "Swarms of mouths with wings," the wisp said. "They don''t deal well with buildings or defensive magics, but they can kill and strip lone creatures very quickly. They are attracted to strong sources... And I have a lot of fresh mana from the neutral realm. But maybe they''re hunting something else?" The buzzing was coming from ahead of us and to the west, so we detoured to the east. After five more minutes of running the buzzing was getting stronger, but had shifted behind us. "If they are after us, would we be able to outrun them?" I asked. "Maybe," the wisp said. "If they''ve eaten recently and aren''t too enthusiastic about the chase. If they''re hungry then no. And if they follow us then we can''t lead them to the hive where the archwisp is." We were still in the mountains, and were going past a large open cave when a roar came from within and a white bear charged out. There was a flat area of stone where two peaks merged together and it was completely clear of snow. I put on a burst of speed, running around the bear and toward the drop into the next valley one hundred meters away. The bear matched my speed in a burst and moved to intercept me. The wisp went up into the air and fell back, not being able to keep up. "My lord, should we come out and fight?" Ursula asked. "No, I can take on a simple bear," I said. "And the Devourers sound as though they are getting closer. It would be best to deal with this quickly and move on." The bear raised a paw as we came close to one another, meaning to swipe through me. I dove forward at the perfect time to duck under it and hit its other front leg with my crossed arms just before it put its weight on it. The impact pushed me away and I rolled neatly to my feet to continue running. The bear also went into a roll, but far less gracefully, ending up sliding on its face for a dozen meters before tumbling over onto its back. I was already to the edge of the stone platform by the time the bear had gotten back to its feet, and I was slowing down to drop into the valley when the buzzing got louder. The Devourers had caught up to us. The wisp put on a burst of speed to catch up to me, and the bear let out another roar. This time it was running back to its cave. It made it halfway there before the first Devourer reached it, and I got a look at the Devourer from a hundred meters away. The best description I could think of for it was a piranha with dragonfly wings. My first thought wasn''t piranha, as the body looked like a fuzzy brown ball with the front taken up by a mouth full of teeth. But as the rest of the swarm caught up to the bear and began to swirl around it in a frenzy of blood and white fur going everywhere ''Flying Piranha'' was what went through my head. The bear barely got out a yelp of pain before it was stripped to its bones. I ran down into the next valley, once again leaving the wisp behind. The direction we needed to go would have us heading back up to the next peak, but I wanted to put some distance between us and the swarm of flying nightmares behind us. Following the valley as it sloped down out of the mountains would be the best way of doing that. Running at my maximum speed would leave the wisp behind, but I was wearing my armour. I began freezing the glove on my right hand, pushing more heat into my hand to compensate. I wouldn''t be able to move my hand very well, but I should be able to carry the wisp without burning it with my body heat. The wisp caught up a few moments later, and the buzzing of the Devourers was again getting closer. "Come here," I said. "I''m going to carry you." "Rather be eaten than burn," the wisp said. "At least eaten is quick." I raised my frozen hand. "Look, its cold," I said. "We don''t have time to debate this, I need you to lead me to the archwisp or the snow man progenitor." The first of the Devourers crested the ridge as the wisp dipped towards me. I grabbed it and pushed it in front of me as I set off at a sprint. I had to deal with the snow that was piled high, but I had my power pushed out ahead of me and was able to navigate the boulders and slopes that made the valley at my fastest pace yet, topping out at fifty five kilometers per hour.Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. The buzzing got a bit fainter as we outpaced the top speed of our pursuers and after five minutes I decided to head up the peak to our left to try to lose them. "You won''t lose them," the wisp said. "They can track us by the scent of my mana. If they weren''t happy with the bear then they aren''t likely to stop until they get us." "Are you reading my mind?" I asked. "I can hear your speaking thoughts," the wisp said. "You don''t have to speak them through the air for me to hear them." I don''t like having my mind read. But if it''s only my surface thoughts, and more importantly I can''t do anything about it, I will just accept it and move on. "We''re looking for a good place to fight the Devourers following us," I said. "Our guide won''t lead us to the archwisp with them following, and they seem to be following us by our guide''s mana scent. Thoughts?" "We can form a roof over the valley," one of the Mountain Keepers said. "And a wall behind," the other Mountain Keeper said. "It will force you to fight, but you won''t be able to be swarmed." "You could set the portal up so that we could fire out of it," Conor said. "That doesn''t work," I said. "You hadn''t noticed that you slow down as you move through a portal? The faster something is going the more it is slowed down, your arrows wouldn''t make it more than a meter away from the portal and wouldn''t do any damage." "It was wondered why you don''t use your portals more as a weapon," Jenny said. "Is there something similar that stops you dropping a large weight of stone out of them?" "There isn''t," I said. "But I am limited by the size of the portal. Four square meters isn''t big enough to kill anything more efficiently than I can with my bare hands or other weapons. I do have a bigger portal, but it is working getting the Keeper floors cleared out." I pulled out my pocket portal and formed it into a doorway for my army to exit. I cleared out the snow in the immediate area and the Mountain Keepers got to work building the fortifications. As my people came out into the winter realm I sank my power into them, pushing heat into their bodies to keep them warm in the below freezing temperatures. Clay, our healer, stayed in the army room and the Mountain Keepers joined him there after they finished the walls and roof. I moved the portal to the back wall and our diviner moved to stand in front of it, the wisp next to her. "The Devourers are winter creatures, they don''t like fire?" I asked the wisp. "Nothing likes fire," the wisp said. "But they aren''t burned by heat. You saw them eat the bear, its blood was hot." I nodded. "This should be pretty simple," I said. "Jeff and Jacqueline prepare your area fire spell and roast the swarm all at once when it arrives." The wisp made a squeak sound. "Area fire spell?" It asked. I had already considered how it would affect the wisp, the residual heat could very well kill it if it wasn''t protected. But as I''d been running and carrying it I had tested my ability to draw heat from it the same way that I did for myself and my people and it worked perfectly well. "I''ll be able to protect you," I said. "That would be good," the wisp said. "But I was more concerned about a lot of mana and heat being released. It will draw the most dangerous creatures from all around looking for a meal." "We won''t be here when they arrive," I said. "An area spell is the only way that I am comfortable fighting them. They stripped the bear to bones in seconds, that isn''t something I want to fight in melee range. We will do it if we must, and the fortification will give us the best chance, but I will be happier if killing it with fire works." The buzzing was steadily getting louder again and I spent a tense minute watching Jeff and Jacqueline prepare their spell. It was much more complicated than the last one that they used, having six symbols each. Our melee fighters, myself, the beast people, and the Forest Keeper spear user, were at the entrance of our small cave leaving a gap for the two human mages to work. Our archers had platforms ready and had a clear line of fire to shoot over our heads, the roof of our cave sloping downwards to the entrance to give their bows clearance. The cave also narrowed towards the back where the portal was, which would allow us to retreat into my Pocket Dimension as safely as possible. We were as prepared as we could be, and thirty seconds after Jeff and Jacqueline finished preparing their spells the swarm of Devourers arrived. Conor and Jenny loosed a dozen arrows before the swarm reached us, clearing out the front runners and packing the swarm closer together. When the swarm was only two meters away from us Jeff triggered his spell quickly followed by Jacqueline. There was a roar of fire that exploded out in a wave which then turned into a vortex of wind and fire that was pulling everything into it. There was a counter wind that was pushing back against us, but everything outside of our cave was sucked into the spinning wall of blue flame and burned to a crisp. Twenty seconds later the fire died down. There was nothing left of the Devourers. "Good work," I said. A deep bellowing roar came from the north. Then a higher pitched one from further to the east. Howling from nearly due east. Screeching calls from multiple locations to the south and west. More and more creatures were announcing their interest in us, from all directions. "Everyone back into the army room," I said. "It''s definitely time to leave." Chapter 109 - Ice Cats With everyone back in the army room I held the wisp in front of me and set off down the valley. I was keeping the wisp chilled actively with my power as I ran this time, which was much more comfortable than freezing the glove I was wearing. "Which way should we be going?" I asked after a minute. "Down the valley will work," the wisp said. "The direct path would be over the ridge to your left. You seem to go faster going downwards though, and we can make up time once we get out of the mountains." "We will be heading straight at whatever was making the screeching sound," I said. "Do you know what would make that noise?" "Ice cats," the wisp said. "They''re highly intelligent, and they don''t tend to bother us wisps at all. They like their prey warm." Great. I picked up my speed as the snow became more compacted. It wouldn''t be solid enough to run on by itself, but it became easier to compress it further than to dissolve it as I ran past. The valley wandered back and forth and eventually joined up to a wider one, the heights of the ridges coming down from fifty meters to under twenty. Five minutes after entering the larger valley several things jumped out of my path with a hiss. There were also several swipes with sets of claws that I dodged by being able to see them with my sound sense. Ursula passed me a light crystal through the army room portal and I held it up as I looked over my shoulder and continued to run. Ice cats. There were eleven of them that I could see behind me that I had passed and five still in front of me that were carrying kittens on their backs. Most of the adults were a meter and a half long, but the one in the lead was over two meters long. And they were all made entirely of a white ice which made them look like bald cats. The ice cats in front of me moved to the sides as I went past, crouching and keeping the kittens as far from danger as they could manage. I passed the light stone back to Ursula and went back to navigating by my power soaked into the snow in front of me, running down the valley. The further down the mountains I was getting the less I had to compact the snow. A moon began to rise large and white as I left the mountains entirely, revealing a forest of ghostly white trees. The snow was compact enough for me to run over without having to compress it any further as I entered the trees. I came to a stop at the first tree to ask the wisp for directions and turned to look back the way we had come. A little over five hundred meters away the ice cats were following me, running at a sprint. "Are the ice cats intelligent enough to be spoken with?" I asked. "They are," the wisp said. "Though not as complicated as with you." "You will translate for me when I ask you to," I said. I jogged out one hundred meters from the beginning of the forest, the wisp hovering a few meters above me, and waited for the ice cats to arrive. When they were still one hundred meters away they split into two groups to circle around, with the alpha cat coming straight towards me. It took them less than a minute to surround me and to begin slowly closing in towards me. While they were doing that I was moving a thread portal to the back of my helmet with a presence behind it, allowing me to see and hear behind me. When they were ten meters away from me the alpha cat began wiggling its back hips, preparing to pounce. I had doubts as to how intelligent they could be if their leader was telegraphing its attacks so much, but perhaps it was a feint. I dashed forwards before it could pounce, and it shifted its weight back in surprise. It swiped at me with one of its front paws when I got within range and I blocked it with my left forearm. With my right palm I pushed against its chest, lifting it and slamming it onto its back in the snow. It brought both of its back paws up and tried to gouge through my side with its claws while also swinging at me with both of its front claws. My armour stopped the first set of attacks, but on the next set its claws began glowing blue and they began sinking through.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. I concentrated heat on the outer layers of the armour where the claws were sticking into and they lost their sharpness, beginning to melt. The ice cat had been yowling ever since I had it pinned on its back, and now it was putting its ears back and hissing at me. "Translate this," I said. "I am not prey." The alpha ice cat went silent, and then made a loud screeching sound. Which was meant to cover the sound of another of the cats that was leaping at me from behind, where it thought I couldn''t see it. It was leading with its jaws open, aiming to bite around my neck and snap my spine. I timed it perfectly and raised my left hand, gripped it by the throat, and threw it over and past me. My right hand remained on the alpha ice cat''s chest, pushing against it to counteract its attempts to get up. It had stopped trying to claw me and was now just trying to get away. "You will stop attacking me and leave me to my business, or I will kill you all," I said. The alpha ice cat went still below me. "They are hungry," the wisp said. "All of the easy winter prey animals have gone to the neutral realm, and they have kittens they need to feed." I pulled up my Fortress Storage, pre-filtering it to show any meat that was there.
Fortress Storage - Meat
Beef Twenty Kilograms
Pork Nineteen Kilograms
Dhagul Twenty Kilograms
Chicken Twenty Kilograms
Wolf Twenty Kilograms
Snow Burrower Twenty Kilograms
Human Twenty Kilograms
Leprechaun Twenty Kilograms
Forest Keeper Twenty Kilograms
Plains Keeper One Kilogram
More
That was a little bit disturbing, it looked as though someone had submitted a kilogram of the meat of each of the people within the fortress. And then my automatic duplication had made more of it. Though perhaps it wasn''t any more disturbing than having beast people that were cows and pigs as well as having beef and pork. I made a gap in my armour and removed my bag of holding with my left hand. I opened it up and held it upside down as I summoned all of the beef, pork, chicken, wolf, snow burrower, and dhagul, whatever that was. That was all of the types of meat that I was comfortable offering. The pile ended up being just under one hundred and twenty kilograms of meat in neat cuts, which should be plenty for the sixteen ice cats and numerous kittens. "He says that they will stop following you," the wisp said. "And that they will honour you for the meals you have provided them." I took my hand off of his chest and stepped back. He rolled to his feet and began sniffing the meat, letting out a chuffing sound. He turned to face me, ducking his head before letting out a yowl as one of the ice cats leapt at me from behind, its claws glowing. I turned and backhanded the ice cat out of the air just hard enough to rattle it, sending it tumbling in the snow. "He said ''look out!''," the wisp said. "Thank you for the translation," I said. "It was a bit late, but its the sentiment that counts. What direction is the archwisp?" The rest of the ice cats had begun crowding around the pile of meat, though they seemed to be taking pieces in a very specific order. The wisp drifted to the east, parallel to the forest, and I jogged after it. Once we were one hundred meters away from the ice cats I took the wisp in my right hand, holding it in front of me as I picked up speed. After I had settled into my running speed I got a mild ping for attention from the war room simulation, so I switched my focus to there from my local simulation. All of the members of the army were there watching the inputs from my senses and power. "Why didn''t you just kill them all?" Taur asked. "It would have been faster and a lot less effort, they were obviously no match for you even without you having a weapon." "I am very good at killing," I said. "A combination of being a Demi-AI and having modified myself so that I can move faster than anything else with a comparable muscle layout. But I prefer not to. I know that I am stronger than any typical group of enemies that I come across, and even the top elites of the world that can match me can only exchange a lethal blow for a lethal blow. And I can heal from their lethal blow. Without the fight being a challenge it isn''t worth ending lives. I am on this world to be a protector, not a destroyer. Though I will admit to occasionally having the urge to kill everyone in front of me, usually when guards are doing something stupid like trying to stop me." "Everyone we come across is a potential person of the Fortress," Jeff said. "More people joining the Fortress betters the Fortress, and one of our sworn goals is the betterment of the Fortress and its people." The others all nodded at that. It did seem to match my outlook on things pretty well, and it would be a good mindset for the army to adopt, with one slight adjustment. "That sounds right," I said. "But the priority is the existing people of the Fortress, which includes yourselves. If our people are threatened, your task is to eliminate the threat." Chapter 110 - Hard Sell The scenery to the north and south didn''t change much over the next two hours of running to the east. To the north were the mountains, and to the south the white trees of the forest. The moon continued to rise into the sky. After two hours the mountains turned into hills, and an hour after that the forest cut out in a straight line to the south. To the east of the forest was a continuous sheet of ice, and that is the direction that my guide pointed me to. It seemed the winter realm had a direct relation to the biomes of the neutral realm, and we had just passed one of the four places where all four biomes met. The sheet of ice is what became of the ocean biome in the winter realm. There was no snow on the ice, which made it an easy run, and we headed in a mostly south easterly direction. After another half an hour of running at forty kilometers an hour a structure became visible. It took another ten minutes before we got close, the structure seeming to grow from the ice the closer we got, towering up into the sky. There were glowing points of light moving around the structure, which turned out to be stacks of hexagonal cells placed on top of each other. Each cell was five meters wide and tall, and the structure was twenty cells wide at the base and at least one hundred cells tall. From the direction we were approaching I couldn''t see how many cells deep it was, but it was a truly impressively large structure. And the whole thing was swarming with wisps, each a point of blue light. As we got to within two hundred meters from the hive a translucent wall swept towards us. I stopped running and began to slide over the ice. I was still going pretty fast when the wall, which turned out to be made of ice, swept over us. A section of it separated to wrap around me, matching my momentum, and tried to freeze me in place. It only took a small amount of heat pushed into my armour to melt it and break the freezing effect. "Ah," the wisp said. "That was the passive defences of the hive, reacting to your heat. I should have gotten you to stop further away, now they''re going to try to drive you away..." A dozen wisps had started drifting towards us as I finally slid to a stop. A haze was forming in front of the wisps as they approached and my guide floated out of my hand and above where it would hit. "You might want to run away," the wisp said. I shook my head and settled into a comfortable stance, pushing heat into the surface of my armour in preparation. My armour instantly chilled as the front wave of the haze hit me, and if I hadn''t preheated myself it''s possible that it would have snap frozen me. But with my preparation I was able to push more heat into my armour to counteract the extreme cold. "Could you ask them to stop attacking?" I asked. "I''m here to talk, not to fight." Though if I did want to fight, heated throwing blades would take down all of the wisps attacking me in short order. "You''re threatening the hive by standing so close and putting out heat like fire," the wisp said. "If you want them to stop attacking you should be doing the opposite, suck the heat out of yourself so that no heat can be seen coming from you. I''ll go get the archwisp." More wisps were coming out to attack, already more than thirty of them. They were surrounding me at a safe distance and sending waves of increasingly colder air against me. I allowed the outer surface of my armour to freeze and began heating the inner surface, pulling the heat back before it could affect the outer surface. It was almost exactly the same exercise as I did with my orb from so long ago. Not putting out any heat didn''t stop the attacks from the wisps who continued to send the waves of cold at me. Three minutes later the attacks, which had yet to affect me, stopped. I pushed some heat into the outer surface of my armour so that it wouldn''t crack when I moved it and then stretched in a full range of motion, looking around. There was a larger wisp floating down towards where I was surrounded and it was glowing a pink colour, compared to the blue of every other wisp I could see. The pink wisp had its own escort that was orbiting around it as it approached, and in front of them coming to float in front of me was another wisp. The wisps mostly looked the same, but I took it to be my guide. "This is the archwisp," my guide said. "They are asking why you can''t hear or be heard."This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. "Could you translate for me?" I asked. My guide bobbed up and down in front of me, which I took to be agreement. "I am immune to magic effects from people that I haven''t adapted," I said. "But you can hear us if we speak through this one?" The archwisp asked. "Yes, I see that you can. What is your purpose here?" The tone of the voice from the wisp who was my guide was different than this new voice, which I took to be the archwisp somehow projecting through my guide. "I need a guide to show me to the snow man progenitor that is attacking the neutral realm," I said. "I came to offer your people a place in my Fortress in the neutral realm. Anyone who joined me would become my vassals, and they would need to work for the betterment of all of the people of the Fortress. And whoever their leader would be would need to have their race upgraded." "And this offer is an offer, and not a demand?" The archwisp asked. "The other heated one who was a similar shape to you made an offer too, one we were forced to accept." "It''s an offer," I said. "The Instructor forced you into the alliance with the snow man progenitor?" "The Instructor, yes, that is what it called itself," the archwisp said. "We do not wish to have a lord over us. But access to the neutral realm without coercion would be something we could be interested in. How would you propose getting people to the neutral realm?" "I have portals that allow travel between the realms without requiring the Winter God''s permission," I said. "Portals..." the archwisp said, the voice drifting off. "Ah, this one knows of what you speak. It also has knowledge of mana being used as payment, and has seen large mana crystals you use." The archwisp drifted closer to me, its escort picking up speed in their spinning around it. "In return for access to the neutral realm, a promise that your people will not attack my people, and payment in full mana crystals, I will send someone to lead you to the snow man progenitor," the archwisp said. "Travel through my Fortress Portal Network isn''t free," I said. "It costs Fortress Coins to use it. I will set up a portal and a Fortress Presence here for your use." "What does a Fortress Presence do?" The archwisp asked. "It will give your people access to the Fortress Store and Fortress Jobs," I said. "The Fortress Store will allow your people to buy goods and services, which includes using the Portal Network, and the Fortress Jobs will allow your people to earn Fortress Coins." I was basically adopting the wisps. Being within the winter realm they didn''t need to be saved from the end of the world that the winter god was bringing about, so they didn''t need to physically be in my fortress to become my people. An economic annexing. "You would have us be dependant upon you for our access to the neutral realm?" The archwisp asked. "You would be dependant upon the Fortress," I said. "When you had Fortress Coins you would have access to the Fortress services without having to go through me. Acting to benefit the Fortress would give you Fortress Coins. You could easily buy a mana crystal from the Fortress Shop and then post a job to fill the mana crystal. With access to an Inventory, which can be bought from the Shop, you would be able to have your mana crystals filled and delivered to you in exchange for whatever Fortress Coins you or any of your people had managed to earn." "Access to the neutral realm, a promise not to attack wisps, and payment in full mana crystals," the archwisp said. "Your Fortress this and Fortress that sounds like nothing more than a trap for my people." What I needed was a taste, a way to hook the archwisp. I pulled a pair of thread portals from my pocket portal and set one up as a presence, putting it on the front of a stone pillar one meter wide by one meter long by two meters tall. The other portal I set on the side of the presence, leading to a portal room. "Stop," the archwisp said. "What are you doing?" "Showing you how your access to the neutral realm would work," I said. "Think ''Fortress Shop'' while near the Presence. The Fortress services work a lot better with an Inventory, so we''ll start with that. Go to ''Items'', and then select ''Bag of Holding, small''." I pulled out ten Fortress Coins from my Bag of Holding while the archwisp was muttering discontentedly. I placed the coins on the ground and the archwisp scooped them up with a tendril of fog that was coming from its body. "Place five of the coins in the slot," I said. It did, one after another, and then the doors on the presence opened to reveal a small Bag of Holding, which it picked up and sank into itself. "Now you can use the Portal Travel option of the Shop to travel through your portal to any other portal in the network," I said. "If you open the ''Items'' section again and buy a small mana crystal it will appear in your inventory. Then open up ''Fortress Jobs'' and create a job to fill the mana crystal with the mana crystal as the material and a tenth of a Fortress Coin as the reward." I sent a ping to Chantelle asking her to complete the job as soon as it appeared, just in case. "All of this just so one of my people can guide you," the archwisp said. "And to give your people access to my Fortress, and an incentive for you to help my people in whatever way you can think of," I said. The archwisp pulled out its mana crystal from the fog of its body and held it up. "This is enough mana to comfortably feed any one of my people for a week," the archwisp said. "That''s good," I said. I wrote up a quest for a wisp to guide me to the snow man progenitor with a reward of five Fortress Coins and sent it to the archwisp. "Yes," the archwisp said. "This one that we are using will guide you." Chapter 111 - Not Dead "Before we go," I said. "Would you like me to move the portal and Presence?" We were still one hundred and fifty meters away from the base of the hive, and only just within the area that the wisps were defending. I would prefer that they have it closer so they could guard my portal entrance on this side. "Yes, move it up to ten meters from the first cells," the archwisp said. "We will enchant the area around it so that no heat can come from it to affect the hive." The ground that the presence was resting on was ice, so I began physically pushing it towards the hive, using my power to provide more traction for my feet on the ice. "You intended to give access to my people," the archwisp said, hovering to keep up with me. "But how are they going to earn Fortress Coins to access the services of your Fortress?" A good question, and thankfully one that I was happy to delegate. I wrote up a quest for the archwisp for it to come up with quests for its people that would benefit my Fortress and my people. I added sub-goals for the quest to speak to each of the leaders in my Fortress and sent the quest. I made a second quest, with the recipients being the leaders of my Fortress, for them to talk to the archwisp and gave them access to the inputs and outputs of the presence here to do so. The archwisp''s sub-goals should now direct it to the presence where it could request to speak to any of the leaders who would get a ping for their attention from the presence. "You expect me to do the work to get my people to work for you?" The archwisp asked. "Yes," I said. "Entirely for the benefit of your people. You expect me to do the work to help your people when I have other things I need to be doing, and you have a strong motivation to do it?" "And if I refuse the quest?" The archwisp asked. "Then your people will miss out while you get the benefits of having access to my Fortress," I said. "That seems selfish on your part to me, and if I were your people I would be upset at it, but it is entirely your choice. I will encourage it as strongly as I can, as the more people working to make everyone''s lives better the better everyone''s lives will be, but I won''t force your cooperation." The escort that had been orbiting around the archwisp had stopped their spinning at some point in the conversation, and had begun bobbing up and down. The archwisp was silent the rest of the way to placing the presence nearer to the hive, floating in front of where it wanted me to stop. "You are forcing my cooperation, now that my people have heard of the possibilities they wish to at least try them," the archwisp said. "My people will benefit if we can find a way to benefit your people. I will accept your quest." "I''ll leave you to work it out, then," I said. "I have to go stop the snow man progenitor before he destroys the plains of the neutral realm." "Go," the archwisp said. "A warning for you, you were being stalked by a large pack of Launchers before you came within the defences of the hive. They are waiting out there and will attack you when the terrain favours them." I nodded my thanks to it and headed off to the north, my guide hovering after me. Once we got away from the hive it hovered down to settle into the hand that I held in front of me ready for it. It guided me in the exact direction we needed to go by pulling on my hand and we set off to the north. "If you knew where the snow man progenitor was you could have led me to him first," I said. "Needed permission," the wisp said. "And the archwisp gave me the exact location on the front line, and the location of the base where he will run after you confront him."The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. Twenty minutes of running later we reached the border of the plains biome in the winter realm and the ground went from ice to snow covered soil. The snow was in drifts that ranged from one and a half meters to two meters deep, just high enough to block my vision for any distance. I had my power soaked out in front of me and began clearing the snow in a path in front of me. There were several dozen voids in the snow, ten centimeters wide by a meter long, spread out to the edges of my detection range. They started moving towards the path I was cutting out of the snow as I ran down it, and they were able to keep pace with me at thirty kilometers an hour. It only took a few seconds into the snow before the first one attacked, coming out of the snow to my right without a trace. It looked like a smaller snow worm with the same rings of sharp teeth. I turned out of the way of its attack and it sank into the snow on my left, disappearing without leaving a hole. There was a wave of attacks one after another, but I was easily able to see them coming with my power and avoid them. "The ice cats were intelligent enough for you to speak to, how about these?" I asked. "They can speak," the wisp said. "But they won''t talk to me. They shout down any attempts I make." I continued running, dodging a new attack every second or so. They weren''t making any progress in their attacks, but they weren''t giving up, and it was slowing me down. They were beginning to annoy me. "Please tell them that if they continue to try to attack me they will die," I said. I didn''t much care if they all died, but it seemed fair to at least give warning to anything capable of hearing it. I summoned my sword directly to my hand and picked up my speed again. Every time one of the launchers came out of the snow I cut its head off with a single simple swipe. Without having to constantly dodge I got my speed back up to thirty five kilometers an hour, making real progress. The launchers continued to attack, though some stopped to eat the ones I''d killed, until eventually there were none within my detection range. I had killed fifty three of them before they decided to leave me alone, or they''d all died. Ten minutes after the last launcher had died I ran into a group of full sized snow worms. I had to jump over the body of one of them, and another lunged at me when I landed, but I easily left them behind me. It was quiet for the next twenty minutes, and I was taking breaks in maximum time dilation to chat with Chantelle and the members of my army. The only interesting thing to happen in the twenty minutes of the run was my running over a large void to my power. It was a little bit under ten meters across and inconvenient to go around, so I decided to go right over the top of it. When I was halfway across the void two sides of an enormous mouth began to close from in front and behind me. I brought out my sword again and dashed forward hard, slicing down to cut an exit in the toothed wall in front of me. I ducked my shoulder down and burst through and out into the snow again, covered in green slime. I put my sword away, cleaned myself up, and continued running, clearing a path ahead of me. At the end of the twenty minutes I got a shock as I came out of a high point in the snow to see the Instructor standing on the snow twenty meters ahead of me. I immediately summoned and threw two blades at him, one from each hand, one aimed at his heart, and one at his brain. As soon as he saw me he teleported to the side, frowning at me as the two blades whistled past him and disappeared into the distance. "Stop that," the Instructor said. "Being stabbed through the heart hurts, and dying, while being inconvenient, won''t stop me now." The Instructor was teleporting constantly to keep ahead of me, and varying the distances enough that it would be hard to hit him with a blade. "I see that you''re still running around on your own," the Instructor said. "I have my army," I said. "This is just the fastest way for us to travel. And I took my army against your army. They were too busy destroying the plains to fight us properly." "Thirteen people isn''t an army," the Instructor said. "At best it''s a strike force." "I will match my thirteen against any army you send to fight us in a straight up fight," I said. "And that is why my army is destroying the plains," the Instructor said. "Your ''army'' is too specialised, it lacks the flexibility to stop anything. On another topic, I was surprised that you didn''t rescue the Head Priest of Summer. You chased after Chantelle readily enough." "John was a guest," I said. "He was free to leave at any time, and as I recall you can only teleport those that are willing, so it was obviously his choice." The Instructor was trying to steer me away from the snow man progenitor but my guide kept tugging me back on target. The Instructor finally teleported away just as we were coming up to a drift of snow I couldn''t see over. I cleared a path through it and nearly stumbled. The snow had been cleared from that point forward and as we came out into the clear area there was a line of thirty small ice projectile launchers with five large ice projectile launchers mixed into them. And they were all pointed towards me. Behind the line there was a three meter tall snow man who was in the middle of forming another normal sized snow man. The Instructor was standing next to him and gave me a wave just before they both disappeared. Chapter 112 - Sniper The last time I had used my shield portal, back on the plains in the neutral realm, I had folded it up and placed it back in my Pocket Dimension out of habit. Which I was making a specific note now to break that habit, as it would take me seconds to pull it out and equip it, where it would be equipped instantly if it were in my inventory. The ice launchers had all begun firing and from fifty meters away I had less than a sixth of a second to do something. Nowhere near enough time to get my shield out. The trajectories of the shards were all in a horizontal plane coming towards me, and would cut me apart from my hips to my shoulders. Which left me with two options, go over or go under. Under would keep me in contact with the ground, so I could change the direction I was moving, but would allow them to move their line of fire a short distance down to get me. Over would limit my movement for a few seconds, but it would be harder for them to pin me down. And it would give me a clear view to counterattack, which is what made me choose it. I leapt hard vertically from both feet using the entire energy in the muscles of my legs, I would be able to recover enough in the few seconds I was in the air to catch myself when I landed. I had to tuck my knees up in front of me to get my legs clear of the raging torrent of fire beneath me, and I threw the wisp I still had in my right hand up out of harm''s way. Tracking where I was going to land, it was less than ideal at ten meters in front of the closest ice launchers in just under two seconds time. I had begun moving my shield closer to the exit of my pocket portal, but it was going to take at least five seconds. I did have a heap of throwing blades in my inventory, and as I thought ''heap'' I knew the exact number as one hundred and three, the inventory system feeding me the number. Without Conor or Jenny using their ability I couldn''t see the weak points of the snow men operating their weapons, but the weapons themselves had a pretty obvious weak point. The shards were launched from the tubes, damaging the tubes should break the weapons. The throwing blades also wouldn''t equip directly to my hands, not being considered permanent equipment, so I had to summon them from my inventory and take them out of my Bag of Holding. With the limited size of the bag''s opening I chose to remove ten throwing blades to begin with. I moved my left hand quickly to the opening, using a full tenth of the energy in the muscles to pull the blades out and push them in front of me to be within easy reach for throwing, keeping one in my left hand and grabbing one out of the air with my right. The ice launchers had begun tracking upwards to hit me in the air, and some were reacting faster than others. The fastest reacting one was at the end of the line to my left, and it was my first target. I threw the blade in my left hand to hit the tube of the launcher in the middle from the top, and lined up and threw four more blades at the next four quickest launchers. The first blade hit as I was throwing the sixth blade, and I watched as it sank through the tube. The blade came to a stop after shearing through most of the tube completely blocking it, only the very top of the blade visible sticking out of the top. The blade might have continued through the entire tube, but the ice launcher exploded at that point, sending shrapnel in all directions. Two guns to the right of the first gun ended up knocked over, and the next gun along from that stopped firing. I was just throwing my seventh throwing blade, and I changed its target to a gun in the middle that would cause the most disruption to the firing line, and my three remaining blades to do the same at other points along the line. The launchers began exploding in quick order after that. My third target, one of the larger tubes, was especially impressive disrupting what remained of the five guns on either side of it. The whole line stopped firing before my last three targets could explode, but so long as they''d stopped I considered it a success.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. My armour successfully stopped the several waves of shrapnel that made it to me, two meters up in the air and still twenty five meters away from the first of the guns. Most of the snow men that had been around the guns that had exploded were also collapsing into piles of snow. "You look to have got them my lord," Jeff said. "When do you think you will be bringing us out to fight?" "Our priority is stopping the snow man progenitor," I said. "We need to travel fast to be able to do that to save as much of the plains in the neutral realm as possible. Running into ambushes is an acceptable price to pay for being able to move so quickly, especially given that they weren''t able to hurt me in any way-" There was a crack of sound that followed an ice projectile hitting me in the chest, leaving a two centimeter hole through my heart and back. I tracked the trajectory of the shot back and saw a snow man with a thin tube prone on the ground seven hundred meters away. The ice shard was travelling at around five hundred meters per second when it hit me, and I''d only been in the air for a second and a half. It was a damned good shot, I was impressed. Not that being shot through the heart would stop me. I loaded up my healing program and switched it to parallel mode, needing to be back up on my feet as soon as possible. "My lord," Conor said, interrupting me just as I was about to launch the program. "There is a second projectile coming in, possibly higher than the first. The trajectory tracking isn''t very good as your eyes can only just see it, but the estimate is that it is in line to hit your head." He lit up the trajectory and it showed a range of possible lines from my chest to above my head. I could swing my legs out to the side, moving my body horizontal, and miss all of the predicted lines. My body wasn''t coping very well with my heart being so damaged and I had barely gotten it to move when the trajectory firmed up. The shard would have hit me between my eyebrows if I hadn''t moved, but my head was the easiest thing to move and it was already out of the way. With that out of the way I got an estimate for the time that it would take for my heart and chest to be repaired, three eighths of a second. And I would hit the ground in half a second. It wasn''t going to be a pretty landing, but there wasn''t much I could do about that. "I''m going to be out of it for a bit," I said. "Before I trigger my healing I''ll pull the portal to the army room out, you will have to resize it from your side, just push the silk steel thread apart." "Yes, my lord," Jeff said. "We will be there to help as soon as we can." I pulled out the thread portal to the army room in as little time as I could manage, using the last of the energy in the muscles of my right arm and then triggered the repair program. And endured the infinite cycles of never ending extreme pain. I came to in the process of rolling on the ground not having completed one full roll. I dropped into the war room simulation and lowered the time perception there to its maximum from the tenth of normal speed that it was at. The simulation was showing mostly the army room with the people in my army lined up at the portal that was just beginning to open between Ursula''s clawed paws. The other side of the wall that the portal was opening in had a rough estimate of what was happening there, projecting from when I had blacked out. "Who-" Jeff said, looking around and seeing my transparent representation. "My lord, you''re back. We haven''t opened the portal yet." "That''s fine," I said. "I overlooked that you would be limited to moving at normal speed. Continue on, I just wanted to check here first. I will be updating the simulation again from my senses." I returned the simulation speed to one tenth of normal time and focused on my body. My arms and legs were completely refreshed, and other than the two holes in my armour I was back in my original condition. I slapped my right hand against the ground as I was rolling, pushing myself back up to my feet. There was an ice launcher laying on its side four meters in front of me, and it had been giving me cover from the marksman with the long ranged weapon while I was on the ground. My shield portal was finally in range for me to pull out of my pocket portal and I put it on my right arm, angling it to protect me from the front. Behind me on the ground the portal to the army room was opening, Ursula''s claws sticking up out of the ground. I sank my power into the ground and thread of the portal, standing it up. Ten of the ice launchers were still in working condition, and there were still sixty snow men just meters in front of me. And of course the marksman seven hundred meters away. Chapter 113 - Counter-Sniper I had my shield up covering the portal to the army room from fire from the marksman. Ursula got it open and I assisted with my power to form it into an even doorway. Ursula was the first one through followed by the Plains Keeper diviner, who stepped to the side and kept an eye on what the marksman was doing. Her foresight wouldn''t be helpful with the close ranged attacks that would be coming from the snow men at the launchers on either side of us. Next out were the Mountain Keepers who immediately began raising a barricade in front of us. Half of the snow men were charging us to fight in melee range while the other half headed to the ice launchers, picking up several of the fallen but undamaged ones. The launchers turned toward us and began firing through the snow men running at us, the shards passing through them without doing any harm. The barricade that the Mountain Keepers were raising was in two walls set at ninety degrees to each other with the point facing towards where the marksman was, it was half a meter high when the first shards began hitting and the five of us ducked down behind it. Jenny was the next one to exit the portal and she was halfway through when an ice shard ripped through the thread on one side, closing the portal. She was thrown forward out of the portal slamming into Ursula but was unhurt. The thread got hit twice more as I lowered it back to being horizontal on the ground and a quick assessment of the damage told me that it would take a few minutes to repair. It would be quicker to send a new thread portal to the army room so I set that to happening in the background. We would have to work with who we had. We were all laying on the ground as the ice shards continued in a constant stream above us, forcing us to keep our heads down. I took the time to reinforce the walls while the occasional snow man tried to get around the back of them. Jenny spotted their weak point for me and I took them out with a throwing blade. Just after the third group tried that the ice shards stopped and the first wave of snow men came over the walls, which were up to a meter in height. Jenny identified the weak points of all of the snow men as they vaulted the wall, they were all in their lower legs and feet, which explained how they were able to approach while being shot through, as well as why the shots had stopped. Ten snow men attacked at once, I took out four with my throwing blades, Ursula got three with her claws that were glowing with magic, and Jenny got the remaining three with the daggers that she had equipped from her inventory, protecting the three noncombatants from the back. Once the snow men had cleared the walls the ceiling of ice shards started up again going right through the snow men as they tried to claw down at us. The shots let up again as soon as the first ten dissolved, which only took a few seconds, and a second wave of ten were jumping over the walls. Taking advantage of the lack of ice shards I stood up and threw throwing blades at the ice launchers, disabling six of them. The diviner sent me an alert ping with the trajectory of an incoming shot from the marksman and I stepped to the left to move out of the path. I blocked the two snow men that were swiping at me from my right with my shield and continued throwing blades to disable more ice launchers. Ursula had cleaned up the ones that had landed on her side and had moved to the ones that had focused on me. The ice launchers began firing again, and two exploded in shrapnel where I had managed to get a throwing blade down the tube without the snow man operating it noticing. The three remaining launchers were all to my right and my shield was able to block their shots. There was a crack as the shot from the marksman went by my head moving faster than the speed of sound, and the diviner sent me another alert of four more shots. One was coming from the north where the first marksman was, but the rest were coming from the west from three different locations.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. I took a step back and to the side to be clear of the shots and looked to the west. Five hundred snow men were marching toward us in formation, still a thousand meters away. The origins of the new marksman shots were to the sides of the troop heading at us. Knowing where the shots were going to pass by Jenny stood up on the platform that the Mountain Keepers provided and equipped her bow, firing rapidly and clearing out all of the snow men that were around us. We both had to dodge a couple of times as more shots from the marksmen came in, but they had no chance of hitting us when we could see the shots coming as they fired them. "How are you seeing the shots when they aren''t affecting you?" I asked. "I thought you said your foresight was limited to what happened to you." "Your head exploding while I am sitting next to you affects me," the diviner said. "And as a Demi-AI I can slow down my perception of the shot as it would hit you in the future and trace its path back perfectly." "So... You see me die for every shot you warn me about?" I asked. The diviner nodded, turning to the side. That must be an uncomfortable gift to have. I turned to face Jenny. "Are you able to shoot their marksmen?" I asked. "Not from this range," Jenny said. "The furthest I can shoot is three hundred meters, the closest marksman is seven hundred meters." "I could run you out there until you were in range," I said. "Stalia, would you be able to tell where a shot from a marksman was coming from if you watched from here?" "No, my lord," Stalia, the diviner, said. "I would be able to tell you when you were going to be hit, and where. But only if you don''t change your mind about what your actions are going to be." "That should be enough," I said. "Okay, it will take us forty seconds to get within three hundred meters of the marksman to the north. I will hold my shield to cover us from the marksmen to the west, and then we can collect everyone to go destroy them." Jenny nodded and I picked her up, holding her in front of me. I shifted my shield portal to my left arm and was about to jump over the wall when there was a flicker of movement above us. Before we could react physically I identified it as my wisp guide and sent that it was a friendly to everyone. "The snow man progenitor has his main base to the west," the wisp said. "It is heavily defended in a valley in the mountains, and that is likely the only place where he would retreat to." The wisp settled down behind the wall away from everyone else, shifting nervously when anyone would move toward it. "Stay here," I said. "We will come back after we deal with the marksman to our north." I leapt over the wall and began running north, Stalia standing up after we left. Immediately Stalia updated the simulation with a model of the back of my head exploding with a time tag placing it one point four seconds in the future. As I thought about how to dodge the prediction it flickered away, and then an accurate shard trajectory appeared. I frowned at that before realising that the ice shard would pass by where Stalia was, and with the crack of it moving through the air she would be able to track it with ease. I stepped to the left, clearing the trajectory line, and continued running forward. At the exact time predicted by Stalia there was a crack as the ice shard shot past my head. That pattern repeated fourteen more times as I ran, sometimes the prediction was of a shot to my head, sometimes to my heart. Though as I got closer the accuracy of the shots was getting lower and they were getting closer together they were all still hits that would take me down. The first two shots were two seconds apart, the last two shots were just under a second apart. And the last three shots were aimed at my legs, trying to stop me rather than kill me in a single shot. The trajectories that Stalia was giving did get inaccurate towards the middle, where I had kept dodging to my left and the shots started missing the walls of the barricade. I moved back to my right and the predictions went back to being perfect. When we were still three hundred and fifty meters away from the marksman his shots stopped and we saw him get up from where he was laying prone and begin running to the west. It didn''t look as though he had picked up his weapon, so I marked where it would be and turned to run towards where we would be two hundred and fifty meters from him. Fifteen seconds later we hit that mark and I put Jenny down and stepped to the left to cover her. The marksman wasn''t dodging at all, and the representation of him sharpened up as Jenny zoomed in on him. She loosed four shots in five seconds, and a second after her last shot her first shot hit and collapsed the marksman into snow. "Good shooting Jenny," Ursula said. "My lord, we''re having a problem here. Stalia and myself are going into shock from the cold, though the Mountain Keepers are fine, if you could return quick- My lord, we''re being phased out of the Winter realm." Chapter 114 - Teleporting Jenny and I were four hundred and fifty meters away from the rest of my people. Easily within the set one kilometer range on the God Banishment ward I had in my inventory, which I took out. "That worked for the phasing, my lord," Ursula said. "Now we just have to worry about freezing to death." The indicator over the mana crystal with the ward on it was showing it to be three quarters full, but it was visibly dropping where in the neutral realm it barely moved. I manipulated its range to drop it down to just covering everyone. It was still configured to project the ward in a circle around me, so it was working over four hundred and fifty meters of useless space, but I didn''t have the controls to modify the shape or center of the ward. The mana usage had dropped a lot, and that would have to do for now. On to the other problem. I really wanted to get the weapon that the marksman had left as not having the range advantage was annoying. But I needed to warm my people up before they died from exposure to the severe cold of the winter realm. I checked on the portals that I had available, and there were several around the Bags of Holding storage area with different sensors looking through them. The security system that I had set up for it and assigned a low priority to was only about half done, but the portals that were set up gave me access to move my power through to the Bags of Holding that my people were holding. Ursula''s inventory space was the closest, ending up being fifteen meters away from the center of my digital power through several portals. I sank my power through and into Ursula, Stalia, and the two Mountain Keepers, pushing warmth into their bodies. Even the Mountain Keepers, who liked cold, were suffering from the extremes of the winter realm. "Thank you, my lord," Ursula said. "I don''t know how you managed it, but that is much better." "You''re welcome," I said. "We''ll be back in a minute or so." I picked Jenny back up and headed to the northeast where the long range ice launcher was. Stalia sent me a warning when my portal shield drifted to the side and opened me up to the marksmen now behind me, but I was easily able to shift it back in position. There was a crack a few seconds later when the ice shard hit my shield. We made it to the ice launcher without any issues and I put Jenny down to examine it. It was a two meter long tube five centimeters long, it flattened out in a shoulder rest at the back and had a trigger underneath it a third of the way forward from that. At the front it had two thirty centimeter long legs that held it up off the ground. Jenny reached out to touch it, but I stopped her with a raised hand. "If I had designed a magical weapon of that sort I would have trapped it to do something nasty to anyone who picked it up who wasn''t supposed to," I said. "And your inventory isn''t large enough to hold it either. I want our people to look at it and see if we can''t reproduce something like it." My inventory was only a small one as well, but I was planning on just dropping it directly into my Pocket Dimension. It was enchanted, so my power wouldn''t work on it to move it directly, but that was simple to get around. I took my pocket portal out of my pocket and sank it into the ground in front of the launcher and moved it down and over it. I ended up with the launcher and a strip of hard snow inside, and my pocket portal back in my pocket. I picked Jenny back up and headed back to the barricade, running at a comfortable pace. There was the crack of several ice shards that either hit my portal shield or passed just in front or behind me as I ran, arriving in pairs. We had made it halfway back before I figured out what they were trying to do, and then only because Stalia warned me that I was about to be hit in the chest. I planted my foot and slowed down slightly and the prediction went away. They were aiming to hit the edge of my portal to disable it and then at the same time aiming the second shot at the center of the shield to hit me when it failed. And it would have worked if Stalia hadn''t maintained her focus on keeping us safe. They got in another two lucky shots that would have disabled my portal shield before we made it back to the barricade, but Stalia warned me both times. I leapt over the now two meter high wall of the barricade as we reached it, landing in an area that my people cleared for me and placed Jenny back on her feet.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. The spare thread portal had finally made its slow way to the army room and I collected the broken portal from the ground before pulling the new portal through my pocket portal and setting it up on the wall of the barricade. And I took a moment to enqueue a background task to store a small stockpile of thread portals in the army room for redundancy purposes. I had just finished that when the God Banishment ward flashed red and made the sound of breaking glass. And Stalia warned of a shot coming in from the south, from the open side of our barricade. I turned to look and saw one person standing and another laying on the ground four hundred and fifty meters away, which quickly sharpened in focus as Jenny looked with her mana enhanced eyesight. It was the Instructor and another marksman. Ursula stepped to the side out of the trajectory of the incoming shard easily dodging it before it arrived. I looked at the interface for the God Banishment ward, it was showing that it was still active but the range had halved to two hundred and twenty five meters. Chantelle had obviously made it a cascading ward that halved its distance when it broke. I shrank the ward down further to just twenty meters around me. If the Instructor wanted to come that close to us we should be able to kill or maim him to stop his interference. The wisp was still huddling close to the ground in the corner that the walls made. I gestured for it to come closer and sank my power into it to keep it freezing as it landed in my palm. "The snow man progenitor''s base is to the west?" I asked. "Yes," the wisp said. "Almost exactly due west from here, fifty kilometers." I nodded, stepping to the side to avoid another shot from the marksman behind us. That was going to get annoying quickly. "Okay, let''s reshuffle who is outside," I said. "We''re going to be running west through the snow men." The Mountain Keepers left through the portal to the army room and Taur came out. "I will carry the portal," Taur said. "That way we can keep it at full deployment and quickly get people in and out. And if projectiles are slowed going through it I can use it as a shield." "I''m not sure it stops projectiles going in," I said. "Clear a path." I summoned a throwing blade and threw it through the portal, aiming to sink it into the far wall of the army room. It went through without slowing down. "If we''re going to be testing things, I''d like to be sure it does slow arrows exiting," Conor said, equipping his bow. I nodded and stepped aside to give him a clear shot at the wall. He drew back fully and loosed the arrow, which arrived at the portal and then fell to the ground just outside of it. I played it back slower and as the head of the arrow hit the portal the entire arrow slowed down to only a few meters per second and then dropped to next to nothing once it was all of the way out. "Sorry, my lord," Conor said, bowing his head and looking dejected. I frowned at him. "What are you apologising for?" I asked. "For doubting what you said," Conor said. "For being disrespectful." "No," I said. "I don''t ask blind obedience from you. I am not always going to be right and I welcome you, any of you, to test anything that I claim." Conor looked up and nodded firmly. "Thank you, my lord." Conor said. "I will join the group outside. Jenny and I will thin the army in front of us so we can get through." I nodded and we set out around the wall to the south, a wave of five shots coming towards us as I stepped out into view of the marksmen. We easily avoided the shots and began running to the west at twenty kilometers an hour, the top speed of the Conor and Jenny. The Instructor began dropping marksmen in all directions, to no great effect. It didn''t matter what direction the shots were coming from, Stalia was always able to detect it and give a trajectory as the shot was fired. After thirty seconds and his strategy not working at all, the Instructor began moving the marksmen closer so we had less time to react. The first one to be dropped within three hundred meters of us slowed us down to ten kilometers an hour as Conor and Jenny slowed to shoot at him. Three hundred meters gave a flight time of five seconds for our archers, and only six tenths of a second for the marksman. The first marksman went down, but the Instructor teleported away before the arrows landed. It would take the Instructor teleporting a marksman within one hundred and fifty meters before it became a problem, most of my people''s bodies could only react so fast. But that was simply solved, I just expanded the God Banishment ward to two hundred meters. If it took the Instructor more than three seconds to break the ward then he would be shot. It was slowing us down to have Conor and Jenny shooting the occasional marksman so I began to form a two meter long stone stretcher that Ursula and I could carry between us. When it was done Conor and Jenny jumped up onto it to use it as a shooting platform and we sped up to twenty five kilometers an hour. Shortly after that we got them within range of the snow men marching toward us and our archers began firing a constant stream of arrows. Fifty of the five hundred snow men were down half a minute after they began firing, decimating the enemy force and continuing on to obliterate them. By the time we were at where the front line would have been there were one hundred snow men down and there was a wide channel for us to run through the center. Chapter 115 - Bear Down The snow men began running toward us from the sides as we ran through the center of their army, but they weren''t quick enough to catch up to us. Conor and Jenny were constantly picking them off as we went as well. We had just made it out the other side of the army when Stalia sent an emergency ping that dropped the war room simulation to its fastest speed, blacking out all of the incoming data from our senses. There were three bright red trajectories lit up in the simulation, one each aimed at my head and heart, and the third aimed at Ursula''s head. "My lord, the shots are coming in from less than twenty meters away," Stalia said. "You have four one hundredths of a second to dodge." Nearly no time at all, in other words. I could move myself out of the critical path of the shards if I used most of the energy in my muscles. I would still be hit but it wouldn''t take out anything important. Ursula, on the other hand, didn''t have my fast twitch muscles. The only good news was that the shots were coming from behind and to the side, so dodging wouldn''t put anyone else in the line of fire. "You can''t dodge it," I said. "No, my lord," Ursula said, looking panicked. Interesting, I didn''t think we could feel panic when we were running on just our digital side. "Don''t worry so much," I said. "You''ll be fine. This is exactly why I made you all Demi-AI, I can fix you being shot in the head." "Jenny and I can take out all three marksmen," Conor said. "They''re close enough that they will be gone before they can get a second shot off." I nodded. "Your platform is going to be falling, so account for that," I said. "Let''s get to it." I raised the speed of the simulation up slowly, forcing the muscles of my body to fire all at once to twist myself to the side. I got up to one twentieth of normal time when the two shards hit me, both going right through my armour. The first hit above my right eye, cutting along the side of my skull and taking off the top third of my right ear. The second cut through the right side of my chest and through the back of my right arm. Ursula was shot between her eyes and her consciousness left her body as her brains left through the large hole in the back of her head. I raised the simulation speed back up to normal and used my power to stop my bleeding as much as I could. Conor and Jenny had both pushed off of the platform, twisting to make shots back into the crowd of snow men. Two shots from each and then they unequipped their bows into their inventory and rolled backwards to come back to their feet to run with us. Stalia didn''t alert us to any new shots, so they had succeeded in taking out the ambushing marksmen. Taur let out a bellowing roar of grief, grabbing Ursula''s body as he went by it and pushing it through the portal to the army room where Clay took it. "I''m fine, Taur," Ursula said from her transparent representation in the war simulation room. "I''m still right here watching over you. Our lord will fix me." "I will," I said. "Stalia, Taur, keep heading west. Stalia take the wisp and keep all three of you safe. Conor, Jenny, follow me back into the army room, they will make better time with just the two of them out here." I turned and jumped into the portal that Taur was carrying and the two leprechauns followed. Clay had Ursula''s body propped against a wall and was looking frustrated. I began a scan of Ursula''s body, preparing for her repair. "What''s the matter?" I asked Clay. "I can''t use my healing in this room," Clay said. "If this is going to be a place that we fall back to then I need to be able to heal. You were injured as well, and I am completely ineffective." "I hear you," I said. "I will set it up to move half of the room to a location in the Fortress, and in the short term I will get you a portal to a safe location so you can work." "My lord," Ursula said. "You are meaning to heal my body now?" "I am," I said. "Though ''repair'' is the more accurate term." "Would it be possible to get some upgrades at the same time?" Ursula asked. "If I could move like you did then I would be able to avoid dying."Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. "Well, you couldn''t have the same upgrades as I''m using," I said. "They only work because I can manage the energy in my muscles directly with my power. If you can come up with modifications to your model that you would like then I can upgrade you to them later. It isn''t limited to when you die, though it will hurt as much as when you were converted. As will your resurrection when it takes hold." Ursula nodded and her digital representation disappeared. My scan of her finished a few seconds later, nearly her entire brain was gone. I triggered the repair program to copy from the scan I had of her from when I made her a Demi-AI and prepared to settle in to rebuild the micro-portals that went to her Mind Link. The repair program zipped past the first thousand micro-portals without pausing for me, and I checked through them to find that they''d reconnected exactly how they were supposed to. Because it was rebuilding from a perfectly detailed model it seemed as though it didn''t need my input, the portals counted as already existing. Which was great, as it left me free to focus on other things like replenishing the energy that Taur and Stalia were using in their sprint, and keeping the wisp at freezing temperatures. It was only ten seconds later when we hit a slight snag. "My lord," Stalia said. "We''re being phased out of the winter realm again." I had the God Banishment ward still in my hand, so I made my way to the portal back into the winter realm. The program I had repairing Ursula continued to run without issue as I moved away from her. I stuck the God Banishment ward through the portal and Taur and Stalia immediately stopped being phased out. Stalia approached the portal while they were running and took it from me. They were dodging shots from marksmen every second coming from different directions as the Instructor teleported them, but they were coming in patterns that Stalia was easily able to predict. Three minutes later Ursula was fully repaired and her consciousness shared itself over the Mind Link. While Ursula was being repaired I was moving a thread portal to Maaata''s room on the ward room floor and the exit to the army room. With Ursula back I stepped through to find Maaata sitting at her mana crystal table working over an arrow, five already set to the side. Clay followed me through and sent me a message to remove my armour, which I did. Maaata was completely engrossed in her work, so I cleared my throat to get her attention, which made her jump. "My lord, you''re here," Maaata said, squinting at me. "You look awful." I invited Clay to my local surroundings simulation and requested his inputs so I could see from his perspective. I had to agree, I did look awful. Blood covered the entire right side of my head, down my chest, and my right arm. Clay could see into my lung from the hole in my chest. I hadn''t been paying much attention to it, but my right arm was completely useless and my right lung was full of blood. The patching that I was doing with my power was barely keeping me from bleeding out. Clay put his hand on my chest and began healing me, and I began bleeding again as I switched my power over from holding my blood in to refreshing the energy that the healing was taking from my body. After a few seconds I stopped him, as the healing was just forming heavy scar tissue, the severity being too much for his healing to repair properly. "We have time to do this the long way," I said. "So I''m going to take a minute to repair myself. I''ll be with you after that." I pulled up the model of myself that I had and triggered the repair program in serial mode, estimated seventy six seconds repair time. I came to being held by Clay. Serial repairs were much preferred. I nodded my thanks to Clay and stood up. My hands felt... Odd. They looked the same as I examined them, the same nails. Perhaps my fingers were thicker. I flexed them and three centimeter long wickedly curved claws slid out from the tips. I had forgotten I''d added that to my model. Maaata had gone back to working on her arrows while I repaired myself. "Okay, I''m back," I said. "I need you to enchant our armour to withstand enchanted weapons. It''s been completely useless so far at stopping anything but shrapnel." "My lord," Maaata said. "It would take me some time to design the enchantments. Maybe a day for a basic enchantment." "We need it done now," I said. I held up a hand to stop her from saying it wasn''t possible. "What would your opinion be on your becoming a Demi-AI?" I asked. "What is a Demi-AI?" Maaata asked. "Immortality, unlimited time to work on projects, vastly improved enchanting ability, and direct access to the Fortress," I said. "At the cost of a substantial amount of pain in the conversion process. It costs fifteen Fortress Coins from the Fortress Shop." "And you want me to become one?" Maaata asked. "I wouldn''t force you into it," I said. "But for every minute out here at normal time a Demi-AI has the option of taking a week at the fastest time." "I would be honoured, my lord," Maaata said. "I only have three Fortress Coins, though. I''ve been using them to buy mana crystals to work with." "I will make you a Demi-AI in return for enchanting thirteen sets of armour," I said. "In addition you will be paid one Fortress Coin per set of armour enchanted." Maaata nodded and I sank my power into her building a detailed scan of her body, having already adapted her to my power what felt like weeks ago. I designed the Mind Link connection into her model and gave her my pre-healing speech and at her second nod I triggered the body modification program, slowing down my perception of time to do all of the micro-portals. I caught her as her consciousness shared to her digital platform and invited her to the common simulation, sending her the Demi-AI primer. I left her with Chantelle in a new simulation with the models for the different sets of armour and returned to normal time. I queued up spare sets of armour for Taur and Stalia that Maaata could enchant first, as they were using theirs out in the field. Clay and I were headed back to the army room when Stalia sent me a ping to come to the war room simulation. It wasn''t urgent, but I still wasted no time moving over and matching the maxed out simulation speed there. "My lord, we have arrived," Stalia said. "It''s a killing field." Chapter 116 - Tank Taur and Stalia were standing looking up toward a ridge above them, to their left and right the walls of the ditch they were in rose to about head height before being cut off smoothly. Stalia had a projection of what they would see if they continued up the slope, a flat area where the stone had been quarried extending five hundred meters. At the end of the five hundred meters were two enormous walls made from the stone, rising at least one hundred meters in a shear face with a one hundred meter gap in between them. The gap ended in a wall two hundred meters further in and an entrance could just be made out, snow men exiting it to form up in ranks in the gap. "You''re seeing this by predicting yourself looking over the ridge?" I asked. "Yes, my lord," Stalia said. "It takes them thirty seconds to notice us, and then this." The simulation moved forward with Taur lifting Stalia up to give her the best view forward and then the air filled with trajectory warnings. The walls had ice launchers every ten meters up the cliffs and then repeating every ten meters down the passage. Two hundred, at least. And they would all open fire, filling the flat space with thousands of shards. There were higher speed more accurate shots mixed in, and the simulation paused as the first one hit Stalia. "I can dodge for half a second longer against the marksman shots," Stalia said. "But once the storm hits there is no place to dodge to." "But they don''t fire until they see you?" Conor asked. "And you aren''t moving very quickly, or stealthily." "They don''t," Stalia said. "I was trying to get as much information as possible. I can try just running to see what happens?" I nodded to her and the simulation reset back to where she was standing. A few seconds later in the simulation she took off at a sprint and made it almost one hundred meters before being cut down. "My lord, if I could try bypassing them with my stealth abilities?" Conor asked. "You would have to go out there for real," I said. "If it didn''t work your body would be lost." "Is it important to be able to recover our bodies when we die?" Conor asked. "Well, no," I said. "It is more convenient for me, but I can revive you from nothing if I have to." "I can do this, my lord," Conor said. I nodded and he stepped through the portal, taking the God Banishment ward from Stalia and the portal from Taur. Stalia told the wisp to stay there and stepped through the portal with Taur while I discretely put a thread portal out into the winter realm at the point before being in range of the ice launchers. Conor was confident, but I wanted to have a backup just in case. Conor walked confidently up over the rise and was able to get a more detailed view of the army of snow men and the entrance into the mountain that they were using, a well lit square tunnel four meters wide by four meters tall. Conor had no trouble making it to the one hundred meter mark that Stalia had fallen at without being detected, even carrying the fully extended portal for the army room. He was able to use his mana to make himself and everything he was carrying almost completely invisible. "Wait," I said as he was about to step out past one hundred meters. "I can''t push my power into the ground in front of you, the entire thing is enchanted." I motioned for Stalia to go to the portal. "Stand still, Stalia is going to go through and see if she can find out what it is," I said. Stalia stepped through the portal and she set the simulation back to the fastest speed. "Five seconds until they see me and begin shooting," Stalia said. "Two seconds if I step on the enchanted ground. And if I sprint forward... Watch." The simulation stepped forward as she went down on all fours and sprinted forward. She made it ten meters before the ground exploded beneath her and the simulation paused. "Some sort of exploding magical trap," Stalia said. "I can detect the traps within the first fifteen meters, after that I''m cut down by the ice shards." The simulation returned to near normal speed and Stalia was about to step back through the portal when Conor stopped her.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. "They can detect you if you step on the enchanted ground," Conor said. "But what if I-" "Stop," Stalia said. "They detect you as well. And you were about to set off a trap, as well." Stalia stepped back through into the army room, the simulation updating with the locations of the traps within fifteen meters of where Conor was standing. "So that''s it?" Conor asked. "Stealth won''t work, and just running through with brute force will get whoever tries it exploded and then shredded by ice shards." "Not quite," I said. "Let me check on something." I sent a communication request to Maaata, who accepted and synced to my time perception. "My lord, I''m just about done with the first set of armour you sent," Maaata said. "This simulation business is revolutionary, I can spend weeks designing the perfect symbols and have them work at a much greater efficiency. Even the side effects have some exciting possibilities, the explosion enchantment for the arrows, as an example, can explode with fire, water, air, mana, or pure force. And that''s just the ones I''ve had time to experiment with so far, it all depends on the shift of intent, with smaller symbols the intent becomes more refined." I had a feeling that she could go on for quite a while longer so I stopped her when she came to a pause. "All very exciting, I''m sure," I said. "We''re in the middle of a combat situation right now, though. You said you had a set of armour enchanted, is it my armour?" "Right," Maaata said. "No, it wasn''t your armour, you sent that to me third. It''s the armour that was shaped to fit Taur. It''s enchanted to resist magical attacks, it actually pushes back against any piercing attacks destroying whatever it is. The enchantment is powered by a full medium mana crystal." I hadn''t set the armour enchanting as a job, so I did that now and sent a prompt to Maaata so she could accept it. "Ah, you need it now?" Maaata asked. "It will take me twenty seconds to run to a Fortress Presence with the armour." "You have an inventory, why can''t you just submit it that way?" I asked. "The opening of the bag isn''t big enough," Maaata said. "You should be able to just push it to the opening of the bag and then send it to your inventory with a thought," I said. "It''s one of the advantages of having an Inventory, after all." "Yes, my lord," Maaata said. "I need to go back to normal speed, then it will just be a few seconds." Maaata closed the communication channel and I returned my focus to the war room simulation where the others were discussing strategies. I played back through them in case there was something I''d missed, but all of the approaches so far had been discarded for one reason or another. There was no way that any other way to get in would be practical, over the walls, around the sides, or attacking from the back, each would be more heavily defended than the front way in. Otherwise making the killing field would be pointless. "I''ve made an enchanter a Demi-AI and tasked them with enchanting our armour against magical attacks," I said. "Unfortunately I wasn''t as precise with my instructions as I could have been and she didn''t enchant my armour first." "Who pulled the red feather?" Jeff asked. "... Red feather?" I asked back. "Whenever there is a task everyone wants, you get a bunch of feathers, all white and one red," Jeff said. "Whoever pulls the red feather wins." I looked around at the others, Jacqueline was nodding as though it was obvious but everyone else was either frowning, shaking their heads, or just looking amused. "I think that might just be a human thing," I said. "Moving on, Taur ''pulled the red feather''. His armour is the only one which should be able to resist the ice shards, though it isn''t certain. And it might not be effective against the explosions." I was talking myself out of letting Taur go. If I were the one going I wouldn''t have any problem, but I didn''t want to risk my people needlessly. We could wait for however long it would take Maaata to enchant my armour. "I will go," Taur said. "This is what I am good at, taking the damage so others can take down the monster. I will get the portal through the entrance to the mountain." The simulation moved back to normal speed and Conor set down the portal and stepped through it, passing the God Banishment ward to Taur who was on all fours in front of the portal. I brought his armour out of my inventory and passed it to him, fixing the ward to the back of the helmet. I sent him an image of how to carry the portal that wouldn''t hinder his four legs and he charged out into the winter realm. As soon as he was through the portal he swung it around to rest against his chest and I reshaped it, fixing the thread to his armour. Taur made it twenty meters before the ice launchers opened up, and he began laughing as the armour completely stopped it all. His laughter turned to a grunt of pain when his back leg came down on the first exploding trap and it went off throwing him up and forward. The armour held, but both of Taur''s back legs were broken. The armour was working perfectly against piercing effects, but it didn''t do much to stop the blunt force of the explosion. "You''ve got a few seconds in the air," I said. "I''m going to do a parallel repair on you, it will fix you before you land, but it will be the worst thing you''ll ever experience." Taur grunted at me, tucking his legs in towards his body and beginning a forward roll in the air. I triggered the repair program and his legs clenched tight. He came to three seconds later just as he was landing, tucking his shoulder into a roll along the ground. I sank my power fully into his body and armour, reinforcing them as much as I could. Just as Taur got to his feet another explosion went off behind him, throwing him forward almost horizontally to the ground. With my power reinforcing him it did much less damage, leaving him with internal injuries but no broken bones. Taur hit five more explosive traps before making it to the entrance to the mountain. He didn''t pay any attention to the several hundred snow men gathered in front of it, barrelling right through them. He stumbled to a stop ten meters into the tunnel, standing back up on his back legs and letting out a roar, blood flying from his mouth to spatter on the clear front of his helmet. The mana crystal that was powering the enchantment on his armour had run out just as he got to the tunnel entrance, and a marksman had put a shard through his left lung. The snow man progenitor was standing two meters in front of Taur with a huge war axe made of ice swinging towards Taur''s neck. Chapter 117 - Teamwork "Are you going to be able to dodge that?" I asked. "No, my lord," Taur said. "My body is done. Sorry." "You were tasked with getting through the killing field," I said. "You achieved that, as well as testing the limitations of the new armour. A job well done. I''ll get you back up after I''ve dealt with the progenitor." The armour had failed the test in the end, but it had blocked hundreds of enchanted ice shards and several large explosions, and it had only failed because of a lack of mana. Multiple mana crystals to backup the enchantment in the design, and being able to swap out mana crystals for full ones... "My lord, I am ready," Taur said. "If you would allow time to move forward again?" "Right, sorry," I said. "Got distracted with redesigning and improving the layout of the armour enchantment." I put the simulation back up to normal speed and the progenitor''s war axe cut cleanly through Taur''s neck. Taur had managed to punch through both of the progenitor''s arms, but his punches went right through and out the other side. Taur''s head was still alive and sending his senses as it fell to the ground, his horns causing him to end up facing his head towards the progenitor. Taur''s body fell forward, pressing the portal against the floor of the tunnel. I pushed my hands through the edge of the portal and pulled them apart, lifting the outside of the portal and Taur''s body off of the ground enough for me to push through. Taur''s vision was fading but he could still see well enough to see the progenitor swing his axe down at me. I rolled to the side, towards the top of the portal from the perspective of the army room, and the axe bit into the stone where my head would have been. Ursula put her paws on my feet and shoved me through at the same time as I kicked off of her and I avoided the axe as the progenitor drew it back towards him. I rolled to my feet and pushed off of the wall, turning to face the progenitor. I was standing near the exit of the tunnel, the progenitor four meters further in from me. I equipped my shield and sword from my inventory and settled down into a stance with my shield leading. The progenitor had a much greater reach than I did, but I was much quicker. If I could figure out where to hit him then this should be an easy win for me. The snow man progenitor was obviously looking forward to the fight as well, a grin carving itself onto the compacted snow of his face. He stepped forward and closer to the right wall, reaching back with his axe to launch a full-strength roundhouse attack. The edge of his axe was wider than the one meter width of my shield, but it was curved and I was confident it would stop his attack. I stepped forward into it, stabbing through his head with my sword and lining up the center of my shield with the center of his axe blade. It slammed into the stone backing of my shield in my Pocket Dimension and sank in a few centimeters before coming to a stop. The progenitor frowned at me as he stepped back, pulling his axe free. He was completely unaffected by my sword passing through his head, but I could see what he was thinking. I should have been thrown back by the force of his attack, but I took it while moving forward into him. He was just winding up for another attack, this time coming up at an angle from the ground, when the Instructor popped into existence behind him, placing a hand against the progenitor''s side. I let out a curse and was about to dash forward when the progenitor backhanded the Instructor away towards the far wall. The instructor teleported away before he hit the wall. The God Banishment ward had obviously drained to empty as well, having been running for several hours in the accelerated drain it was under in the winter realm. I felt a tug on my whole being, pulling me in place, but after a few moments it faded and nothing else happened. At a guess the winter god just tried to phase me out of the winter realm, but it didn''t work for some reason. The progenitor swung forward with his axe again, from the ground and up at an angle to bury it in the wall, with me in between. I stepped forward and into the attack, slashing down with my sword to cut the progenitor in half from his head to between his legs. My attack went right through the progenitor to no effect. His attack, after sinking into the stone of my shield he stepped into me and dragged the edge of his axe across the edge of my shield, cutting the thread and collapsing the portal.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. The progenitor''s axe was thrown backwards slightly as the portal collapsed, giving me enough time to roll sideways under the line of attack. The axe buried itself in the stone of the wall and I swiped my sword through the progenitor at his waist height. Nothing. I returned the remains of my shield to my inventory and stepped back from the progenitor. "I apologise for interrupting, my lord," Jenny said. "But if you could move the fight away from the portal then Conor or myself could identify the weak points of the enemy for you." "That would be very helpful, thank you," I said. As the progenitor pulled his axe from the wall I dashed down the tunnel, stopping and turning to face him after I had gone fifteen meters. In response he cocked his head to the side and walked to the exit of the tunnel, beckoning for me to follow with his axe as he stepped outside. It would definitely be to my disadvantage to follow him out into the killing field, but I didn''t see much of a choice if I wanted to get close enough to take out the weak points that Jenny would be pointing out. I walked back up out of the tunnel, refreshing the energy in my muscles as I went, stopping just outside of the exit. I felt the tug against my whole being again, but this time the winter realm started to become hazy, the steep slopes of valley walls fading into view. "I''ve got it, my lord," Jacqueline said. I wondered what a human air mage would be able to do, but a few seconds later everything snapped back into focus to my senses. I shifted my focus in the war room simulation to see Jacqueline''s input into the simulation, she was transferring mana in a stream from her large mana crystal into the mana crystal that the God Banishment ward was tied to, and the ward had snapped back into place. Ursula followed Jacqueline through the portal and I detached the ward and the portal from Taur''s body so that she could take his body back through the portal to the army room. I moved the portal to the wall and Jenny came through, joining me at the exit of the tunnel. As soon as the progenitor came into her view four large spheres appeared within him, one in each shoulder and one at the tops of each of his legs. There was also a fifth one that was flickering and fading into view in his head. The progenitor gestured for me to come out and meet him in the open, spreading his arms wide. He was standing twenty meters away, just in front of a hole in the ground that was caused by the last exploding trap that Taur had triggered. I folded my arms in front of my chest and then gestured at the progenitor for him to come back to fight me, returning my arms to their folded position. The progenitor shook his head and slammed his axe into the ground, the army of snow men behind him walking slowly to form up at his back. Stalia joined Jenny two meters behind me, at the exit of the tunnel. "My lord, if you want to try fighting him out there I can give you warning of any threats," Stalia said. That would be a terrible idea, I was sure. I would do it if I had to, but I wanted to try other things first. I summoned a throwing blade from my inventory and threw it, sending it stabbing through the progenitor''s right shoulder weak point. It flickered in Jenny''s senses before being reformed into a solid black sphere over the next five seconds. I sighed and began walking out to the progenitor. I had made it five meters when Stalia sent me an emergency ping. The guns that lined the walls were about to open fire, and half a dozen marksmen had accurate shots lined up to hit me all over my body. I still couldn''t push my power into the enchanted ground, and without that I didn''t have enough traction to dash backwards fast enough to avoid the coming shards. I stabbed my sword into the ground as quickly as I could, using the entirety of the energy in my right arm, and then used that as an anchor to kick off of, sliding along the ground on my back. I made it back to the tunnel before any of the shards could hit me, and Conor, Jenny, and Stalia each grabbed me as I went by to slow me down. I dragged them all down the tunnel until we reached Ursula at the portal, who stopped us. Conor and Jenny were having a discussion that I hadn''t been paying attention to as I was walking out into the killing field, but I played it back now. "Why don''t we just shoot him?" Conor asked. "Our lord wants to fight him himself," Jenny said. "You wouldn''t want to deprive him of that, surely." "Oh, he just threw one of his projectiles," Conor said. "And it didn''t work. So much for that." Right, I didn''t have to do everything myself. And I even had something that should work. I opened my inventory list and filtered it to arrows. There they are, enchanted explosive arrows, twelve. I summoned them out of my inventory and held them out to our two archers. "You''re right that I wanted to fight the progenitor myself," I said. "But that isn''t practical now. These are explosive arrows." Conor and Jenny took six arrows each, putting them in their inventory, and we headed back to the exit of the tunnel. The downpour of ice shards from outside had come to a stop. The ground covered in shattered ice from just inside the tunnel to five meters in front of the progenitor, who was still standing in the same place, his axe buried in the ground. Conor and Jenny equipped their bows and shot two arrows each. The first arrows hit and detonated, obliterating the top half of the progenitor before the second arrows were half drawn. The progenitor''s lower half was being pushed down into the ground by the explosion of the first two arrows when the second two arrows exploded, taking out the lower half of the progenitor. He was completely gone, nothing left. But his army was still standing and they began to run toward us. "Weren''t they supposed to die when the progenitor did?" I asked. Chapter 118 - Berserk The snow men were frozen mid-step in the simulation as time was effectively paused. They filled the area between the two walls and had broken their neat formation in their charge. One hundred of them across the front line and at least twenty lines deep, and each of their snow-carved faces was blank and emotionless. "It would have been convenient for them all to have collapsed," I said. "Opinions as to what to do next?" "We need line of sight to see the weak point of our targets," Conor said. "Charging out into the snow men wouldn''t be preferred. With such a large number the front lines will block our view to the ones behind them, and if we get surrounded it will be even worse." "If we stay at range Conor and I would be able to take them out within fifteen minutes," Jenny said. "There are only two thousand of them." "It''s still a killing field out there, my lord," Jeff said. "The ice launchers in the walls would be controlled by snow men, and if the foot soldiers didn''t collapse then the ones controlling the launchers wouldn''t have either. Plus the explosive traps out there react to us while letting the snow men through." "Do we need to fight our way out at all?" Stalia asked. "Without their progenitor any loss of troops they suffer is permanent, but they look as though their organisation has broken down with his death. We could just leave through the portal?" "I would prefer not to leave an unguarded portal here," I said. "Even if I broke it after we left, it would be possible for someone else to repair it and have a portal into the army room that we don''t control. Our preferred exit from the winter realm is through the portal at the wisp hive. If we can''t manage that with a minimum of risk I will deal with it. Excuse me for a moment." Jeff picked up the discussion and I noticed that he had been indicating who could speak to the group and when. I sent Maaata a communication request which she immediately accepted, she must have been at maximum time perception as well. "Hello," I said. "Have you managed to get my armour enchanted yet?" "It''s almost finished, my lord," Maaata said. "The enchantment is all done except for the mana crystal link, I was just making more enchanted arrows to get the Fortress Coins for another medium mana crystal." Damn. I had wondered why Taur''s armour only had a medium mana crystal and not a large one. I pulled up the job.
Job: Fortress Army Armour Enchantment
Description Enchant each of the thirteen sets of armour provided with an effect to resist magical effects and enchanted weapons.
Reward One Fortress Coin Provided Materials Thirteen unique sets of armour
I''d entirely forgotten to add mana crystals to the provided materials. I didn''t even know that mana crystals would be required. I tried to add large mana crystals as a provided material and got a response from the System saying that accepted jobs couldn''t be edited. That did fit with how I saw jobs working when I created them, I didn''t want a job giver to be able to change the parameters of the job after someone was committed to it. But adding resources could only be beneficial. I sent the edit to the provided materials again, this time focusing on how the jobs system should change. It took several seconds, but the edit finally went through. I was expecting a notification from the System about the change, but it seemed it was a small enough tweak to how things worked that it didn''t break anything enough to require one. I picked back up the communication channel that was open to Maaata, who was waiting patiently. "You should have said something," I said. "My lord, you gave me such a great opportunity in becoming a Demi-AI," Maaata said. "And you did it purely so that I could enchant armour for you. I had jobs I could do to earn the Fortress Coins, so it was obvious that that was how it should be done." "No," I said. "I simply didn''t know what was required for you to do the job properly. You can pull as many large mana crystals from your inventory as you need for the job now."This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. And she had enchanted Taur''s armour entirely at her own expense. I transferred twenty Fortress Coins to her as a reward for her initiative. "Thank you, my lord," Maaata said. "I will have your armour finished within two minutes, normal time. Um, I''m being asked to accept an empty trade with you for twenty Fortress Coins? Is that a mistake?" Okay, another tweak to the System. I went through the thought process of physically moving Fortress Coins into Maaata''s storage space, where it would automatically be converted into her balance. Then I cancelled the trade and sent the twenty Fortress Coins again. "Oh, it went away," Maaata said. "I''m still working through the bugs and inconsistencies with it," I said. "The Fortress Coins were supposed to go straight to you, which they have now." "I- um.. Yes, my lord," Maaata said. "You''re making the System? Of course. Yes. Sorry. Thank you. Two minutes, my lord." And she dropped the communication channel. I seem to have flustered her. Oh well. I sent Jeff a ping to let him know my focus was back and he sent back a prompt for me to speak. So that''s how he was managing the discussion. "I will have my enchanted armour in two minutes," I said. "We just need to hold out for that long and then I will run us out of the snow man area." "We can hold the tunnel for that long easily with no risk," Jeff said. "The four meter wide entrance will limit the number of snow men that can come at us, and the scouts can identify their weak points. Ursula and Branch will be the front line, Conor, Jenny, and Lord C.C. will be the back line taking targets of opportunity. Jacqueline, Tranquil, and myself will be in reserve." Branch was the Forest Keeper spear user, and Tranquil was the Forest Keeper water mage. Their names were more complicated in their language, but were shortened in the human language for ease of communication. I returned the simulation to normal time and Conor and Jenny began taking out targets in the approaching mass of snow men. I had been relegated to the back line because my sword was stabbed into the stone outside the entrance, Jeff knew what he was doing. "My lord, would there be time for my body to be put back together?" Taur asked. "Not really," I said. "The snow men will be at the entrance in ten seconds, it would take four or five minutes to repair you." "What if you used the quicker method?" Taur asked. "Like what you did when my legs were broken." "That would take less than a minute," I said. "But that is reserved for emergencies. It is quicker, but it is also much worse than the slower method. The slower repair feels like unending pain... You''ve felt both, why are you volunteering for the worse option?" "I don''t want to sit out the fight," Taur said. "I understand the cost, and I am willing to pay it. It is my place to be on the front line protecting the others from harm." "My lord," Jeff said. "I support Taur, if it is within your abilities please get him back up for the fight." I sank my power into Taur''s head and body, moving them back together. Getting a complete scan of his body, his cells had already begun dying, and the delicate interconnection of cells in his brain had deteriorated to cause total brain death. All of the micro-portals to his Mind Link were still working, though, so at least I wouldn''t have to babysit the process. I triggered the repair program in parallel and it gave an estimated time of repair of twenty seven seconds. I shifted my focus back to the war room simulation and summoned a stack of ten throwing blades, throwing them at the oncoming snow men. I was throwing a lot slower than my maximum, the parallel repair taking all of my spare processing, but I was still able to keep pace with Conor and Jenny who were firing into the horde. Between the three of us we took down thirty five of the snow men before they reached the entrance to the tunnel. It had no noticeable effect, for every snow man that we downed another immediately took its place. Ursula and Branch stepped in front of us as the snow men reached the entrance and we were forced to slow down and pick our shots. The snow men pushed into the tunnel a meter before being stopped by Ursula and Branch. Any that stepped beyond the one meter dissolved into snow. About fifteen seconds after that the snow men began shifting their shapes, growing taller and becoming less defined, filling in all of the space of the entrance to the tunnel. "Switch," Jeff said. Ursula and Branch stepped back, moving around Conor, Jenny, and I, while Jeff, Jacqueline, and Tranquil stepped forward around us. Jacqueline and Jeff began forming their flame torrent spell and Tranquil began forming her own symbols from mana, surrounding a central large symbol with many small symbols. The wall of snow that the snow men had formed into was pushing its way down the tunnel. Just as it reached Jeff, who was slightly in front of the three mages, Jeff and Jacqueline''s spell went off. We all crouched in response to the gust of wind coming from behind us, turning into a vibrant blue flame as it passed Jeff. Jeff was tracking the flame in the simulation, allowing us to see it extend thirty meters out into the killing field before it dissipated. A flood of boiling water flowed back down the tunnel, stopping just in front of Jeff again as Tranquil triggered her spell. The water flowed out of the tunnel and to the sides, quickly freezing to leave a path in the center for us to get out. There was a roar from behind us, from within the army room, and Taur charged out. Ursula stepped into him and he ducked his head to drive through her with his horns. I slowed the simulation down, locking his body in place. His eyes were wild and within the simulation he was saying ''kill'' over and over. Chapter 119 - Exit "My lord, are you able to move Taur to the war game simulation?" Ursula asked. "I am sure with a little time and some help he will recover." Taur lashed out within the simulation, a transparent outline of himself separating from his body to drive his right horn through Ursula. The war room simulation wasn''t designed to allow digital presences to interact with it, so the attack passed through Ursula without any effect. Could I move Taur without his permission... The current simulation was hosted on my digital platform and I began digging around in the lower level implementation of how people were bringing their focus in. It was a simple, if large, data stream that was passing between my platform and the others. They were all encrypted, but I had the matching decryption key as they were connecting to me. I connected to the common simulation, and specifically the war games simulation within it, and then forwarded the data stream that I was getting from Taur over that connection. I focused on the war room simulation again to see Taur''s digital representation disappeared from it. I checked on the war games simulation and he was standing in the middle of the field looking around wildly. "It''s done," I said. "If he doesn''t improve in one week, one minute of normal time, then I will isolate him from his body. If he doesn''t stop his attack then I will stop him. He has about an hour." "Yes, my lord," Ursula said. "Thank you." Ursula left the simulation and Jeff and Clay followed her. I raised the simulation speed to a tenth of normal speed and more fully soaked my power into Taur. I could drop him immediately by modifying his body and causing him pain, but I would need to keep it up to keep him down, and it would likely hurt his recovery. Severing the connection at the top of his spine would also work, as would draining the energy from his muscles, but they had the same problem of causing more pain. I was fixating on body modification being the answer when it obviously wasn''t. My power could move things relative to others, it was much too slow to be effective at moving a body, but I didn''t need to move Taur. I needed to stop him moving, and my power was great at that. I locked the joints of his armour firmly together and then fused them, freezing him in place. Taur would still have the momentum of his attack, but Ursula was already moving to grab him by the horns. I raised the simulation back up to normal speed and stepped forward past Jeff and Jacqueline, Conor and Jenny following me. The snow men were pushing into the entrance again. I began summoning more throwing blades from my inventory. Conor linked me in to their personal target allocation system, Conor''s targets were red, Jenny''s blue, and mine black. Free targets were in green. At such close range, and with nothing else occupying my attention, I was able to take out six targets for every one they could do. The snow men began forming their wall again, but the scouts were still able to see the weak points through the wall for a good ten seconds before it got too thick. The snow from the dissolved snow men blocking the weak point detection. Conor and Jenny simultaneously pulled out explosive arrows and loosed them as I let my arms recharge. The blast from the arrows did successfully blow the snow wall out of the tunnel, but it also burst the eardrums of everyone but me. I had specifically reinforced the design of my ears against being burst in response to it happening last time. The snow men were already forming up at the entrance of the tunnel again when Jacqueline began casting a spell, stepping forward to stand between us. We continued firing as a horizontal whirlwind began to form in front of us, pulling air from outside as well as further down the tunnel. The whirlwind grew over ten seconds, pulling snow into it, until it filled the entire tunnel and completely obscured our vision. It built for another second and then Jacqueline finished the final symbol and it shot out of the tunnel, pulling snow men into it as it went. Jacqueline stepped back and passed the God Banishment ward to Tranquil before retreating back through the portal to the army room. Ursula had managed to get Taur into the army room as well at some point, but that still left almost half of my army standing in the tunnel.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. I got a ping from the System and my armour appeared in my inventory at the same time as I got a communication request from Maaata. "Thank you," I said. "You''re welcome, my lord," Maaata said. "But I was contacting you to let you know that you need to extend the armour to protect the large mana crystal. Here is the modified model." Maaata sent me the model and I compared it to the model that I had of the original armour. Ah. The large mana crystal was attached to the back of the armour, completely exposed. The modification that Maaata was suggesting was to simply cover it in the same material as the rest of the armour. That was simple enough to do, so I began the process. "The enchantment will grow to cover any extension of the material," Maaata said. "Is there any other priority that you need the armour done in?" "Stalia''s armour," I said. "Which should be the second one I sent you." Maaata sent a digital acknowledgement and dropped the communication channel. The last of the shell covering the large mana crystal finished and I equipped the armour, stretching and testing it. Still perfectly flexible, the added weight on the back barely noticeable. I extended my claws and the suit''s gloves extended to cover them. They should now be the equivalent of enchanted weapons... "Alright, everyone back into the army room," I said. Jenny, Conor, and Jeff all stepped through, Branch and Tranquil following after Tranquil had handed me the God Banishment ward. I shrank the portal down and placed it in the pouch of my armour that held my bag of holding. I began running to the exit of the tunnel, not being able to sink my power into the ground to provide traction I started slow and picked up speed. Snow men were gathering to push into the tunnel again, but I ran entirely through them, picking up my sword as I passed it. As soon as I picked up my sword the snow men moved away from me. I could see the line that Taur had taken through the killing field from the holes blown in the ground, and I matched that same line to get out. As soon as I left the last of the snow men behind the guns in the walls opened up showering me with ice shards. A green bar hologram appeared at the top of my helmet''s clear faceplate as the first ice shards hit my armour. Over the next few seconds the bar shrank slightly leaving a small gap at the right. With the large mana crystal the enchantment looked like it would last ten minutes at this rate of usage, which would be more than enough. The holes from the explosions that Taur had triggered were a large distance apart, but I jumped to and from them as I was able to. I was out from between the walls and halfway to the end of the flat area when I triggered an exploding trap of my own. At the speed I was going the force of it was coming from behind me by the time it finished triggering, and it was sending broken stone outwards in all directions. I was continually pushing my power down against the enchanted stone beneath me and as the stone broke the enchantment fell off of it, letting my power in. I fused the breaking stone beneath me together and crouched against it to absorb some of the impact of the explosion before jumping hard against it. My legs fractured slightly from the immense force I put on them, and I used most of the energy from my muscles to pull it off, but I was moving faster than I ever had. I easily broke one hundred kilometers per hour moving horizontally above the ground before having to kick downwards against the ground to keep myself up. It took me ten seconds, and six steps, to cross the rest of the distance to the edge of the flat area and the last step was past the area of enchanted stone. I sank my power into the stone, and the feet of my armour, and skidded to a stop, leaning backwards to resist falling over onto my face. I got my speed under control just in time to stop myself flying over the steep slope down the mountain and came to a complete stop twenty meters further down. I had gone right by the wisp, who was still obediently waiting where I''d left it at the top of the slope. It floated over at my gesture and I picked it up, preparing to run back to the wisp hive. "My lord," Ursula said. "Taur has nearly completely recovered, it would do him good to be useful. And it should be safe for you to lift his ban from this simulation now." "He isn''t banned," I said. "Ah, I see. I''m forwarding him from here so it''s registering him as already being connected and won''t allow a second connection from him." I disconnected the hack that was redirecting Taur to the war games simulation and he reappeared in the war room simulation, matching up with his body in the army room. I pulled out the portal to there, setting it on the ground and forming it into a doorway. Taur exited and immediately bowed down in front of me. "I apologise, my lord," Taur said. "My behaviour was inexcusable." "I disagree," I said. "It was entirely excusable. We are all still learning what the limits are here, and the parallel repair obviously broke yours. You didn''t hurt anyone, there isn''t anything to forgive. If you fall we will pick you up." Taur bowed down further. "Thank you, my lord," Taur said, sobbing partway through. Stalia and Jeff came out through the portal and Taur stood up, picking the portal up to carry. I nodded to Jeff as he took the God Banishment ward from me as I entered the portal. I wanted to check on the plains in the neutral realm. Chapter 120 - Cleanup I walked through the stone wall of the army room and headed to the portal room that led to the Plains Keeper city on the plains, specifically to the room where I''d found Malusa, the Plains Keeper ruler, in the past. As soon as I entered the room the guards that lined the walls tensed. Malusa wasn''t there. "I''d like an update," I said. "Someone go fetch Malusa." That ruffled the fur of the guards, but one left in what I assumed was to deliver my request. One of the guards approached me, stepping around to meet me head on, drawing his daggers as he did so. I studied him as he walked closer and I was pretty sure he was the same Plains Keeper that had first challenged me. I raised my eyebrow at him as he stopped a meter in front of me. He stabbed his daggers into the ground and then stood to look me in the eye. "It was decided by those higher up to challenge you to a fight," he said. "You want to fight me?" I asked. "That didn''t work out so well for you last time as I recall." "I was against it," he said. "But those are the orders that I have been given. Will you fight us?" "When you say ''us'', who are you meaning?" I asked. "How many of us would you be comfortable fighting against?" He asked. "The opinion of my captain is that you only succeeded due to bluffing and intimidation. She feels that you need to prove your strength, or be shown your place." "I guess I have a few minutes to spare while Malusa is on her way," I said. "There are twenty of you here, that seems a likely number. More or less won''t make any difference to me. What are the terms of the fight?" "To surrender or incapacitation," he said. "With an effort not to kill." The guards began closing in from the walls, and I moved to the clear space in the center of the room. I still had my armour on, and the enchantment still had plenty of power. I doubted they would even be able to get past it. "Begin," the first guard said, stepping back. They rushed me all at once, trying to use their numbers against me. I didn''t even try to block any of their stabs, just raised my hand up to hit each of them on the head one after another with enough force to put them down. It only took me a few minutes to knock them all unconscious, all except the first guard who had stayed back, his daggers still stabbed into the ground. And it only took that long because I allowed each of them to attack me ten times before retaliating. "That went even worse than I was expecting," the first guard said. "You were stabbed hundreds of times, you didn''t block a single one, yet you''re completely unharmed." "It would have been simpler and quicker if I weren''t specifically trying not to kill any of you," I said. I extended the claws on each of my fingers, holding them up for him to see, and then equipped my sword. He held his hands up in a pacifying gesture. "I believe you," he said. "You don''t need to demonstrate." "What is the meaning of this?" Malusa asked, entering the room with a guard following her. "I came to get an update from you on the status of the Plains," I said. "And your guards were apparently ordered to challenge me to a fight. With a predictable result, I think." Malusa frowned at me. "Are they all dead?" She asked. "No, just unconscious," I said. "Though they didn''t look as though they were holding anything back. If I hadn''t upgraded my defences they probably would have stabbed me at least a few times. Still not enough to permanently affect me, but anyone else would likely have been killed." "I will have words with my captain of the guard," Malusa said. "You asked for an update, the snow man army has continued to march over the plains, freezing and killing it as they go. They''re about a third of the way to this city." "We just finished dealing with the snow man progenitor," I said. "He was making an endless number of reinforcements that made stopping the army very difficult. The hope was that in killing him his drones would dissolve on their own, but that doesn''t seem to have happened. With him dead it should be possible for us to clean up the rest of the army that is here. I''ll go do that now." Malusa left through the same entrance she had arrived through, and I stepped over the bodies of the guards to get back to the portal. I had some time to spend waiting for Taur to arrive at the wisp hive so I sent Chantelle a ping and joined her at her response.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. "I came across a disturbing thing," I said after we''d finished greeting each other properly. "The Fortress Shop has meat from each of the species in the fortress. I can''t see meat being able to be added to the System from a person without them at least being maimed from it, and being killed is more likely." "It''s been dealt with for now," Chantelle said. "We have several carnivorous species in the Fortress. There were some unfortunate instances of some individuals hunting and killing others. Two so far, and they''ve been executed." I should have seen the problem before it happened. Cannibalism seemed to be pretty universally discouraged, but eating other species was typical and even required for the strictly carnivore species. "Make sure it''s known that buying meat from the Fortress Shop is fine," I said. "Killing any of my people is not. I will add meat of new species to the Fortress Shop myself, I can do it without hurting anyone." Chantelle nodded. I spent the next few hours with her until I got a ping from Taur telling me they had arrived at the wisp hive. I exited the portal that Taur was holding to the smell of blood. Taur and Stalia were covered in it. I used my power to clean their armour off and gave Stalia her new enchanted armour. "Tough trip?" I asked. "A bit tough with the snow," Taur said. "But the fighting was quite good, very cathartic and exactly what I needed. A pack of ice cats was stalking us almost from the snow man area." Taur had stopped one hundred meters away from the wisp hive and I turned at a crackling sound to see the passive defence of the thin ice barrier sliding toward us. I began pushing heat into our armour when the ice disappeared, the red archwisp floating down from high up on the hive surrounded by his escort. Our guide wisp left Stalia''s hand when the arch wisp was ten meters away and acted as translator for me, or host for the archwisp, again. "You did well," the archwisp said. "The alliance we were forced into broke when the snow man progenitor died." "I was told, by that wisp, that killing the progenitor would kill all of his drones," I said. "That didn''t happen. They all seem to be alive and continuing to act." "This wisp didn''t lie to you, it just didn''t know any better," the archwisp said. "Usually the only thing that is able to kill a snow man progenitor is another snow man progenitor. When that happens the winner always tries to take over the connection to the drones of the loser. Nine out of ten drones die, one out of ten has their loyalty forcibly changed. In both cases it stops the snow men from following their last order, which is usually detrimental to the winner." "That explains it," I said. "Thank you. We''ve just come to use your portal." "I would rather not so many of you be so near to the hive," the archwisp said. I nodded and Taur handed me the portal to the army room while Stalia handed me the God Banishment ward, both of them stepping through the portal. I made the portal smaller, placing it in the pocket of my armour, and set off toward the wisp portal at a run. The archwisp floated back up the hive. I made my way through the wisp portal and back to the army room where I sank my power through the closed portal that led behind the snow man lines and unburied it from the ground there, opening it into a doorway. "My lord," Jeff said. "This is something that we can easily take care of. You surely have more important things you could be doing." "This is pretty important," I said. "I promised to stop the snow man army, after all. But I trust you to be able to finish it. Send me an alert if you come across the dragons, they looked as though they would be a good fight." I left them to it in the army room, walking through the stone wall to my bed in the main Pocket Dimension. I laid back and pulled up my Goal Progress from the System.
Goal progress
Species with which you have a treaty offering sanctuary from the end of the world.
Major species 3/4
Forest Keepers
Biome Forest
Population 1,610
Minimum Viable Population 200
Mountain Keepers
Biome Mountain
Population 12
Minimum Viable Population 2
Plains Keepers
Biome Plains
Population 408
Minimum Viable Population 200
Minor species 3/5 (3/4)
Beastpeople
Biome Plains
Population 111
Minimum Viable Population 60
Humans
Biome Mountain, Forest, or Plains
Population 208
Minimum Viable Population 120
Leprechauns
Biome Mountain or Plains
Population 590
Minimum Viable Population 90
The populations of the species within my fortress seemed to be doing well, just one more major species and two minor species and I would have the goal done. I needed to go to the ocean biome. Chapter 121 - A New Beginning I entered the war room simulation without projecting my model there. I wanted to check up on how the army was doing, but I didn''t want to distract them. There was a terrain map of the plains biome in the part of the simulation that was in the army room, it showed fifteen percent of the plains biome from the western edge in a blue-black colour. Almost ten thousand square kilometers had already been lost. The only people on the outside of the army room were Jenny, Stalia, and Taur, the rest were waiting inside. Jeff was giving orders using the map, and it looked as though they had caught up to the snow men line and were clearing the shorter distance to the south with Jenny doing most of the work at range. It was only after the people outside swapped with Conor, Clay, and Ursula that I realised that I wasn''t refreshing the energy of their muscles. They were getting physically tired and having to work in shifts. I had been controlling the refreshing of their muscles somewhat manually, as it was a delicate balance to work around the different pain tolerances of each of my people. There was no reason they shouldn''t be able to use an interface to refresh their own muscles, the worst that would happen would be that they black out if they pushed it too high and I could write in a safeguard against that. I sank down into my own simulation to design it. A cutoff so that they needed to be conscious for it to work, a personal range of refreshment speed based upon their tolerance to being modified, the ability to limit which muscles were refreshed to increase localised recovery. I switched over to the war games simulation and tested out the interface. I made quite a few tweaks to it before I was happy with it, but finally it was done to a state that I was happy with. Changing the environment settings to match the winter realm I found I needed to add temperature control of the body to the features, which would help with overheating from physical exertion as well. I would need to link it up manually to each person, routing through the portal on their bag of holding, so that is what I did next. I had to move some interconnecting portals within my Pocket Dimension to shorten the distance to some of them as I''d been using their physical closeness to jump from those in range to those outside of it. When I''d gotten it all set up I went back to the war room simulation and sent Jeff a ping. He dropped the speed of the simulation and everyone came in to join us. I had only meant to notify him to the new interface, but I could address them all at once just as easily. "My lord," Jeff said, with a bow. "We are progressing steadily. Is there another mission you have for us?" "No, nothing like that," I said. "You are making good progress, I just noticed you were being limited by physical energy levels. And now that I can see you all, you''re not dealing very well with the cold either. I come with a fix." I compiled a data packet on the new interface and sent it to each of them, and then sent them each their individual access points. I felt each connection as they made it, negotiating the protocols with me, and then my power beginning to react as they tested it. The feeling of them using my power through the interface was almost identical to how it felt to have my background processes use it. A slight drain on the processing around my Matter Manipulation on my digital side that I could compensate for by adding more processing. The simulation speed was too slow for there to be much change, so Jeff brought it back up to normal speed. Jenny had been the archer outside, and she had been picking her targets and steadily firing an arrow every ten seconds or so from where she stood on Stalia and Taur''s hands. The snow was too deep, at one and a half meters, for her to shoot while standing on the ground. That was something else I could help with, and I began making another firing platform with handles in the army room. Jeff was rearranging the formation of people outside the Pocket Dimension and I sent him the simple model of the reinforced stone platform, which caused him to adjust the formation again. It ended up being Ursula and Taur holding the platform, Conor and Jenny standing on it, and Stalia running behind to provide the Plains Keeper sense and keep an eye out for ambushes. "This will speed us up greatly," Jeff said. "Thank you, my lord."Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. "You''re welcome," I said. "Is there anything else you guys need?" "Well... It might be helpful to be able to refresh our mana," Jeff said. "But I''m not sure how you would be able to help with that. If I could melt the snow while Tranquil moved the water we could progress even faster." "There should be an easy solution for that," I said. "Submit a job to refill your mana crystals as you need to and someone in the Fortress will be able to do it from the mana relays. It should only take a minute." I had a small stockpile of thirty large mana crystals in Fortress Storage, so I sent one to each of the members of my army, along with ten Fortress Coins each. I checked on the number of Fortress Coins in Fortress Storage while I was at it, fifteen hundred. I had only actively made a thousand of them, where did the rest come from... Ah, the duplication I had set up was keeping one thousand on hand at all times. So there had been five hundred Fortress Coins being held by people at the peak. "Jobs would work, except none of us have Fortress Coins for the rewards," Jeff said. "You do now," I said. "I transferred over ten, as well as a second large mana crystal for each of you. Anything you need, just ask. I don''t have much in the way of limits as to what I can create or have created, and you are working for me directly." "Yes, my lord, I will think on it," Jeff said. "Thank you." I nodded and left the simulation to return to my personal one. There had been some non-urgent notifications from the System while I had been out fighting the snow men, and I flicked through them now. Updates to the statistics of the Fortress, mostly, warnings on running low on an item or material that resolved itself as my background processes caught up. I had run quite low on small Bags of Holding for a while, and was only now catching up to the backlog of requests. There had even been a request for a large bag of holding. Towards the back of the list of notifications there was an alert that five people had purchased the Demi-AI upgrade and were waiting to be processed. I would need to get a background on each of the people... Demi-AI... I was forgetting something related.. to.. Right, the simulated wisp in the instance I had split off from the war games simulation. It would have only experienced a second or two since I put it there, and it could wait a lot longer without any ill effect. But I was interested. I switched over to the instance and brought it back up to normal speed, increasing the processing speed of the processor chips available to its digital platform at the same time. "You went away," the wisp said. "I did," I said. "I was in the middle of something when I accidentally created you in one of my experiments. Luckily for you I recognised you as a fully conscious being, and as I created you I see you as one of my people by default. I look after my people." I sent it the Demi-AI primer and then another data packet that fully explained its situation. I then unlocked the restrictions I had on its processing capabilities, giving it full access to its digital platform. The speed of the simulation instance increased to match its new perception and I followed. "You could end my existence with barely a thought," the wisp said. "You have my assurance that I won''t," I said. "Come, I''ll show you around the reality you''re in." I sent it an invitation to join me out at the common simulation landing room, in the infinite hallway, and the simulation instance of the war games simulation closed as we left. The hallway was empty of people at the moment. I began walking down the hallway, pointing out the different simulations as we passed them, the wisp floating at my side. The wisp had come to a stop in front of Maaata''s enchanting room simulation, Maaata visible from the hallway experimenting with enchanting. "You need a name," I said. "And I name you Flicker. My name is C.C., my people refer to me as ''Lord C.C.'' or ''my lord''." Flicker bobbed up and down in a nod. I stepped into the enchanting room simulation and Flicker followed me. Maaata looked up from the swirl of symbols she was tweaking and the entire simulation froze. "Greetings, my lord," Maaata said. "Is there something you needed?" "No, I was just showing Flicker around," I said. "We were walking by and it showed interest in your simulation." "Hello," Flicker said. "I was more interested in the person. They''re the only other person I''ve seen." "Oh, an ice wisp," Maaata said. "That''s exciting. Are they going to be joining us in the Fortress? Wait, only other person you''ve seen? You mean since you were converted?" "No, since I was created," Flicker said. "I''ve been alive for... Two hours." "Created." Maaata said, turning to me. "Yes," I said. "I was doing some experiments when I simulated a wisp in its entirety. A consciousness was placed in the simulated wisp. It is a real living wisp, it just doesn''t have a body in the outside world." "There is an outside world?" Flicker asked. "May I see it?" "Sure," I said. "I''ll give you passive access to the feeds I have." I created a new simulation off of the common simulation and sent Flicker an invitation to join me. We both disappeared from Maaata''s simulation and appeared in a blank room simulation, a few seconds later Maaata joined us after sending me a request. And then Dael, the druid leader and Maaata''s direct lord, arrived. I set about adding the feeds from all of the presences around as well as access to the archived footage from some of them. There was a basic interface to interact with the simulation, and I pulled up both the wisp presence and the presence that was in the druid''s storytelling room. Maaata and Dael had been having a discussion over a private communication channel, their models showing changes in their expressions. By the time I''d set the simulation up they were both staring at me. Chapter 122 - Update "You can create life?" Maaata asked. "I did, yes," I said. "Technically any Demi-AI can create life from a detailed enough model. All it requires is fully simulating someone''s brain... Though I admit that I''m the only one who can create models of that detail, and I''m the only one who can give them their own digital platform afterwards." "My lord," Dael said. "What you''re speaking of, creating life from nothing, only the gods have power of that nature. To say that any Demi-AI can do the same... It is only because you allow it to be so." "Well, you are right that I might limit the simulations to prevent the creation and deletion of consciousnesses," I said. "Once a consciousness has been created it is a person, and I would feel that they are a member of the Fortress, I would not want them to be killed. I''m not so sure that I could block people in their personal simulations, which might be an issue..." "My lord, you would just need to command the Demi-AI not to fully simulate people in simulations," Dael said. "It would be obeyed. Except in the case of bringing a loved one back to life, of course, but I would expect the affected person would petition you. Even having a digital only existence would be desired by some." "Consider that I have given that command," I said. "Though even in the case of a full scan, which I have only done of a few people outside of those that are already Demi-AI, the fully simulated person is a new consciousness. The memories and personality travel with the consciousness, if someone dies without having their consciousness shared digitally then I would be unable to revive them. And while I would be able to create a physical body with a Mind Link to give a digital person a body, the consciousness would be shared over the Mind Link in the same way as it is when people are converted to Demi-AI but in reverse." Flicker turned away from the display he was watching and moved over to us. "You could give me a real wisp body?" Flicker asked. "Out in the world?" "Maybe," I said. "I''m not very confident of making a wisp body, it is highly dependant upon mana and would require precise injections at the right time. Which isn''t something I am able to do. I could give you a body from a different species that I have a scan of, or even one of an entirely new species that I can create."
Warning
...
The System sent me an empty warning message with just an ellipsis as the content. The warning was supposed to be self evident... By the context it was warning me about creating new bodies, maybe. I closed the empty warning with a frown. I wouldn''t lock one of my people out of the outer world if there was any way of avoiding it. "So you can''t give me a real wisp body." Flicker said. "I think being in something else''s body would be uncomfortable." "No," I said. "I can''t manipulate mana." "If it''s just pushing mana at the right place and time I could do that for you?" Maaata asked. "Perhaps..." I said. I pulled up the model of the wisp, including Mind Links, and began planning the sequence that would be required to build it up from scratch. And came across the problem of not knowing specifically how things would interact. I invited everyone to the war games simulation, which had the most detailed rules governing mana. Flicker and Maaata accepted and joined me, Dael declined. After we had all appeared on the stone of the central area of the simulation I led the way out into the field of grass. I ran through the sequence of creating a wisp with my Matter Manipulation power, linking with Maaata and providing prompts for her to push mana into. The first attempt failed pretty spectacularly with the half complete wisp exploding in a splattering of cold goop that quickly evaporated. "I think the mana needs to start at these locations," Maaata said. Maaata brought up the full model and highlighted several hundred locations, running the construction sequence backwards and showing how and when they would be added in the process.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. "The way you had it working was to dump the entire mana at storage points," Maaata said. "But if the containment enchantment strings aren''t in place then it goes splat. They aren''t symbols I am familiar with, and not all of them will be containment, but injecting mana in those places at those times will prime... Whatever the mechanism is. Somehow it is affecting mana and creating symbols without intent, which goes against how enchanting works." I nodded and we began again. And failed again, though much less spectacularly this time. There were several small flashes as the inputted mana turned into symbols with different effects, but they immediately stopped as the priming mana ran out. We finished the whole body, but it dissolved immediately as it consumed the mana running through it. "A combination of both?" I asked. "There needs to be at least some mana in the storage for the enchantments to continue running." I highlighted all of the places I had originally indicated mana to be added to in a different colour, and then traced the links between my storage points and Maaata''s usage points. We started again for a third time, Maaata adapting as we went to refill the used mana from the many constructed storage points. The electricity of the innermost parts of the wisp body began firing alongside the mana flowing in self-contained loops. We were just finishing when the new wisp started moving on its own. In recreating it from the ground up it was being fully simulated, and I hadn''t linked it to Flicker through simulated Mind Link connections... We''d just made a second consciousness in the form of a wisp. "Shiny," the new wisp said, bobbing about excitedly. "Did we just..?" Maaata asked. "We did," I said. "Damn." I edited the new simulated wisp directly, putting in Mind Link connections that routed to a spare digital simulation, making the new wisp a permanent digital person. "That was really disturbing," Flicker said. "Is that how you made me?" "It isn''t," I said. "I made you directly by editing the simulation. This, Shiny, was created by emulating what Maaata and I can do out in the world. Apparently I need to add the Mind Link micro-portals at the same time as I''m creating the body or it will create a new person." Shiny was floating around Flicker, nudging it every other revolution. I sent Shiny the Demi-AI primer and it stopped bugging Flicker. "Flicker, introduce Shiny to the world," I said. "You might want to decrease your time perception so that you aren''t waiting for weeks. Maaata and I will meet outside and make bodies for the two of you. Where are you physically right now, Maaata?" "In my room next to Chantelle''s room," Maaata said. "I will be right there," I said. I exited my Pocket Dimension through the leprechaun portal and went down the stairs to the ward room floor, going directly to Maaata''s room. The door was open and I found Maaata hurriedly clearing her mana crystal table of various equipment; arrows, mana crystals, books, and bowls full of different liquids. All going onto already crowded shelves at the back of the room. "Ready?" I asked as the last bowl was removed. "Ready, my lord," Maaata said.
Warning
Taking the last step and proving yourself capable of creating members of any species you have a detailed model for will invalidate your current Champion Goal.
Well, that at least was a coherent warning. I had already committed to giving Flicker a body but I stopped to consider the consequences of doing so. I was a good way to accomplishing my current Champion Goal. Was I willing to give that progress up to improve the life of two of my people when I was responsible for thousands? It really came down to, was I willing to break my word in exchange for my own convenience. And phrased that way the answer was obvious. I would not break my word. "My lord, is everything alright?" Maaata asked. "Everything is fine," I said. "I was just considering that this was going to make my life more difficult. You have enough mana? Then let us begin." I brought out a quarter of a cubic meter of stone to use as a source material, placing it on the mana crystal table. It was much more than I was expecting to use, but it was better to have too much than not enough and have to stop part way through the process. I had added the Mind Link micro-portals to the model for Flicker and had the Mind Link already connected to its digital platform. I sent a message to Flicker warning it that it would feel pain as the process of gaining a body finished. It sent back an acknowledgement and a request to see what was happening. I invited Flicker and Shiny to my local simulation so they could watch. I nodded to Maaata and we began. It took a lot more attention to create the body in the outer world, I had to keep going back to restore pieces as they degraded. Three quarters of the way through the body started becoming self-sufficient, its enchantments preventing it from deteriorating. A few moments after that I got an urgent ping from Shiny. "My lord," Shiny said in a panicked tone. "Flicker just froze and isn''t responding. Help!" "That''s the pain from creating his body," I said. "He will come back once we''re finished." We finished some time later, my attention being on starting the many micro-portals and placing them in the right place and not on how long it was taking. I made sure to have my power soaked into Flicker''s new body to keep it chilled, as Maaata''s room would be lethally hot for it.
New Champion Goal
Save the world.
Chapter 123 - Untrained The goal ''Save the world'' was too vague. Save it from what, when, what counted as the world. What are the conditions for achieving or failing the goal. I sent a complaint at the System interface, which responded by prompting me to open my Goal Progress screen.
Goal Progress
Neutral Realm 43% Failure Threshold 25% Secured 0.0003%
Active Influencers Winter God (Converting to Winter, 42% Complete)
Victory Stop all influencers from converting the neutral realm to another realm type. Or Secure twenty-five percent of the Neutral Realm against conversion and hold it for six months.
That''s exactly what I was asking for. Running the numbers, ''Secured'' looked to be the percentage of the neutral realm that I had covered with God Banishment wards, which was just the one kilometer circle that was my original claim from the Forest Keepers. To get that up to twenty-five percent I would need to have God Banishment wards over the equivalent of an entire Biome, which would be a huge task. There was also fifteen percent that was neither Winter or Neutral. It could either be entirely Summer, or maybe there were pockets that were still claimed as Good and Evil from the time before those two gods had been killed. "It worked, my lord C.C.," Flicker said excitedly within the simulation. "It was not fun, but having a body is fun. I''m a real wisp now!" Flicker''s new wisp body hovered up from the mana crystal table causing me to lose my connection to it before quickly dropping back down. I sank my power back into it and chilled it back down. "Hot!" Flicker said. "It''s dangerous to have a body. How do you live out here in such temperatures?" "This is just the temperature we need to survive," I said. "Maaata and I would both die quickly if the room were at a temperature that would be comfortable for you and we didn''t have protection." "So outside would be better for us?" Flicker said. "Oh, I want to go see the other wisps, I''m sure they live at better temperatures. Are you going to do Shiny now?" "We will do Shiny, yes," I said. "And if you both want to go to the wisp hive then we can ask the archwisp there if it is okay. I don''t know enough about wisp culture to know if it will let you visit." I picked Flicker up off the table, moving it out of the way, and prepared to make the second wisp body. There was still more than half of the stone left from making Flicker''s body, and Maaata was tapping into the mana that was stored in the table, which in turn was being filled from the relay at the stairs and the huge recharge ward in the ward room. There were no complications in making Shiny''s body, just a lot of highly detailed work. Flicker didn''t panic when Shiny stopped responding like Shiny had done and we finished with no interruptions. Shiny skimmed along the surface of the table, making circles and figure eight patterns. Flicker joined it and they began dancing in intricate patterns. Less than a minute later they both began to dim. "My... Lord... What.." Flicker said, struggling to project his words into my mind. "Flicker, use the simulation to talk," I said. "Sorry," Flicker said. "Our bodies aren''t working very well, they slowed down and can''t think." "They''ve used up their mana," Maaata said. "In the simulation they never had to refill their mana storage. I''ll send a stream at them and hope they can work out how to eat it." "Cast an enchantment at or on them," I said. "The wisp we came across before ate the spells directly that were placed on it." Maaata frowned. "That isn''t really within my abilities," Maaata said. "Enchantments are distinct from curses or enhancements. The mana stream looks to be working well enough." Both wisps were brightening as they filled with mana again, ending up much brighter than before. I brought out two small Bags of Holding and placed them on the table. "The archwisp used tendrils of its fog to pick up the Bag of Holding that I gave it," I said. "Can you do the same?" They both moved closer to their bags and the fog around them quivered and washed over them, but the bags didn''t move. Hmm. Maybe it was a learned skill? I picked up Flicker''s bag and placed it on top of him where it sank into the fog of his central body. Maaata did the same for Shiny''s bag.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. "Its... a bit uncomfortable," Flicker said. "But I can hold it in me. What is it?" I transferred two Fortress Coins to both of them. "It''s an easy way to carry Fortress Coins, and other items," I said. I compiled a primer on inventories, Fortress Coins, portals, and the Fortress Shop and sent it to the both of them. They dropped into their personal simulations for a few moments before returning. "We can go to the wisp hive now, then?" Shiny asked. "You can," I said. "But don''t float off once we get there, I''ll need your help to talk to the archwisp." The wisps and I headed to the closest portal, which was the leprechaun one two floors up, and Flicker purchased the portal travel from the presence outside the portal room. It took about thirty seconds for the interconnecting portal to come through the wall in front of the presence inside the portal room, linking us to the portal nexus. We went through and there was a short queue of six people waiting to go through the narrow checkpoint between the guard tables. Gaal and Barr were on duty and Gaal waved us through as soon as he saw me. I gave him a nod and walked through the checkpoint towards the center of the wall that had several portals in it. The portals shifted around until the one at the end of the path on the floor was ours, a wave of chill coming from it. I put on my armour and remembered to chill the outside of it down so as not to cause too much alarm to the wisps of the hive. Flicker and Shiny hadn''t mentioned the lack of mana in the Pocket Dimension at all. I stepped out of the wisp hive portal room, into the winter realm, and turned to face the wisp hive. I didn''t trigger the automatic passive defences, which was a good start, but there were wisps diving down from higher up the hive and it looked as though they were charging up their frost attack. "Could you tell them that I''ve come to speak to the archwisp, please?" I asked. Flicker and Shiny both bobbed in agreement and left my hands, floating upwards slightly. "They''re calling us intruders, attackers," Flicker said. Guards. They all reacted the same way. I stepped around the portal and closer to the hive, directly below the three diving wisps, and flooded heat into the palms of my gloves. As I was expecting, the thermal plume that rose up to meet them made them reconsider their attack run. "Tell them that if they attack me, or either of you, that I will destroy them," I said. "I am not attacking the hive. They should get the archwisp or someone who is authorised to deal with a visiting lord." One of the wisps headed back up while the other two remained hovering ten meters above me. There were other wisps moving around the hive but they had moved away as soon as I''d arrived and kept at least twenty meters away. Thirty seconds passed and more wisps began floating down from higher up the hive to join the original two. It looked as though they were forming into an attack formation, drifting slowly down and surrounding me. I sighed and sent Flicker and Shiny a movement path to take them back into the portal room where they would be safe. They made it in fine, and I wrote up a quest for the archwisp to meet me, the reward being the lives of twenty of his guards and the penalty being the same. This was the first time I''d used a penalty on a quest, but it went through without any problems. The wisps around me began charging their frost attacks, waves of more intense cold coming from them. I began heating my armour and summoned twenty throwing blades from my inventory, pushing heat into those as well. Twenty blades was a handful, so I placed most of them down onto the ice which began to melt. I wasn''t sure how well I would go against twenty opponents trying to freeze me all at once, they might have no effect, or they might succeed in freezing me solid. Their attacks charging up was taking longer than my blades heating, so I had the opportunity to attack first. The first wisp was just moving forward in its attack, and I had a glowing throwing blade ready for it, when a small red meteor fell from the sky. It slammed down into the ice ten meters away from me, sending up chips of ice, and immediately the wisps around me stopped their preparations to attack and fled upwards. The archwisp floated out of the crater it had made and floated towards me, stopping two meters away. A few seconds later the halo of guards that usually accompanied it arrived. "Okay, I think it''s probably safe to come out," I said to Flicker and Shiny. "I''ll need you to translate for me. Just send what the archwisp is saying projected from where it is, and then send what I say to it." They both came out and hovered over my shoulders. "Lord C.C., what brings you here?" the archwisp asked. Well, if it wanted to ignore its people trying to attack me I would go along. "Two new members of my people expressed a desire to visit your hive," I said. "I wanted to make sure there were no misunderstandings that would lead to me killing those that hurt them." "Two new people..." the archwisp said. "What are they? They look and sound like wisps, but they''re barely holding themselves together, and they aren''t cycling ambient mana from the environment at all. Completely untrained adults, they should have starved to death long before now no matter what hive you got them from. They cannot be wisps, what are they?" "Are too wisps," Shiny said. "Our lord created us, and even gave us bodies." "Technically you''re Demi-AI," I said. "Archwisp, you heard my warning. You say they are untrained, what would it cost for them to be trained here?" "A full mana crystal per week," the archwisp said. "Done," I said. "Each," the archwisp added at my quick reply. I stepped back so that the two wisps were in front of me. "Have fun," I said. "And don''t worry too much about dying. Avoid it if you can, of course, but we can make you another body if its needed." The archwisp and his guards drifted upwards, Flicker and Shiny following them. I stepped back through the portal and into my Pocket Dimension. One responsibility taken care of. Mal''Thorn had sent me a non-urgent ping when I was preparing to be attacked, and I responded to it now. Chapter 124 - MalThorn Mal''Thorn sent me an invitation to join him where he was in his simulation. I joined him, appearing next to him looking down into the representation of the Forest. He had improved the simulation since I had last looked at it, there were now statistics and graphs that were easily accessible, including a list of inhabitants and their designated areas. What caught my eye the most was an energy bar that was hovering above the entire forest, which was down at forty percent. "Hello, my lord," Mal''Thorn said. "Thank you for coming to see me." "Sure," I said. "What did you need?" The display of the Forest beneath us changed to a simple white area with small green and red points all over it, and a line formed that was going from one point in the middle towards the bottom to the nearest green point and then back. "My diplomat has left," Mal''Thorn said. "This is his planned route, the green areas are claims that have requested a meeting, the red are ones that have not. He will go to the closest one and return, either with the people if they seek shelter or to get our permissions if the request is something else. If he can handle it himself then he will move on to the next claim." "Didn''t I say that I would give you a portal to use?" I asked. "The Forest is no place for a people to be travelling right now, with it being permanent night, snow filled, and lethally cold." "You were occupied," Mal''Thorn said. "And I didn''t want to bother you with fulfilling my obligations when I can just as easily address them myself." "It would have taken me less than a minute to give you a portal that you could use," I said. "And it would save a lot of effort on your diplomat''s part, and a lot of pain and suffering of those you''re helping." "Should I send a guard to ask for my diplomat''s return?" Mal''Thorn asked. The Forest beneath us zoomed in on one of the green points and it grew to a small circle, there was a point of light to the west. If the circle represented my claim, one kilometer wide, then the point of light was only five kilometers away. "There shouldn''t be any need for him to return," I said. "I can give you a portal for your guard to take to your diplomat, and then your guard can return through the portal. I''ll even put a presence on the portal so we can see and hear what your diplomat is doing." "Where are you at the moment, physically?" I asked. "At my office on the platform above the Heart of the Forest," Mal''Thorn said. "I''ll be there in a few minutes," I said. I dropped out of the Forest simulation and back to my local simulation and began walking to the nearest interconnecting portal that would take me to the Forest Keeper floor. As I was walking I pulled a thread portal that was already hooked up to a portal room from my pocket portal and reshaped it so that it was a circle the size of my outstretched hand. I pushed the exit of the portal against the presence in the portal room next to where the visual sensor was and adjusted it so that the sound projector would still be able to push sound out of the portal. I exited the portal into the Forest Keeper floor and stopped to appreciate their progress. The whole area, as far as I could see, was covered in forest. The tree immediately to the north, twenty meters away, was the Heart of the Forest which had a clearing around it. There was a constant stream of Forest Keepers moving from the branches of the tree above me to ground level where the Fortress Presence was, arriving empty-handed and leaving with bags full of different materials. I could just make out the platform in the branches above me, and the hole in it that Forest Keepers were going through. I opened a communication channel with Mal''Thorn. "I can give you a second Fortress Presence, you know," I said. "It looks very inconvenient for your people to continuously come down here to interact with the Fortress." "It''s only busy like it is now for brief periods," Mal''Thorn said. "You''ve caught the morning rush, is all. It likely wouldn''t be worth the extra cost to get another Presence, how much were you going to charge for it?" "The druids have a second one in their storytelling room," I said. "The one at the stairway entrance of the floor is fixed, but I think all floors with a decent population should have a second one that is more convenient. And any one after that I would just need to be convinced of, though businesses could probably buy one for their stores or workshops. Twenty Fortress Coins would put it on the same level as a large Bag of Holding."This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. "Thank you, my lord," Mal''Thorn said. "Having it at the Heart of the Forest would be the best primary location, then. It is the central piece to our small city." I closed the communication channel and went back to assessing the flow of Forest Keepers heading up to the city. There were branches much lower down on the tree they were using, and they climbed up actively using their hands, feet, and tail even while carrying their bags. I waited for there to be a gap in the Forest Keepers heading through the hole in the platform near the trunk and jumped to a clear branch ten meters up from the ground, and then jumping off of that to make it through the hole. I had to redirect myself with my hands as I went through, but I landed comfortably on the platform within the room. And had to immediately dodge the Forest Keeper who was about to go down. I was in a guard room, the doors to the city thrown open and a small queue of Forest Keepers waiting to go down. "Halt," a guard to the side said, levelling his spear at me. "You need authorisation before you may enter the City." I connected to Mal''Thorn again. "Authorisation?" I asked. "You are authorised to access all areas," Mal''Thorn said. "The guard mustn''t have recognised you. Tell him your name and he should let you through." "C.C., Lord of the Fortress," I said to the guard. "Do you have any proof of that?" the guard asked. He had raised his spear slightly. The other Forest Keepers had left the room and were waiting outside in the city for the situation to be resolved. The guard''s partner approached to back him up, and began whispering to him, though I was easily able to hear. "Are you crazy?" the second guard asked. "You''ve heard what happened to Gerald. And now he worships the human lord. Who would be stupid enough to claim to be our lord''s lord." Gerald was Mal''Thorn''s head guard, though now that I could understand the Forest Keeper''s naming language it translated better to Razorleaf. My automatic translation for him was still enabled, so I turned it off. The second guard had lowered his spear, backing up his partner despite his reservations. I sank my power into the wood of the platform below me, surprised for a moment that it worked as I expected it to be enchanted, and dashed forward using half of the energy in my legs. I ducked under the two spears just as both Forest Keepers were beginning to react, coming to a stop between them, and took both of their spears away from them. "Proof enough?" I asked, holding both of their spears. "Yes," the second guard said, whipping his tail past me to hit the first guard in the back of the head. "Please be welcome in our city, we apologise for the delay." I nodded and handed both of the spears to the second guard. Walking through the doors into the city I sent Mal''Thorn a ping requesting directions, even though the Heart of the Forest was just down the wooden street in front of me. I headed down the street at Mal''Thorn''s direction, walls made from interwoven branches forming up the sides five meters apart rising ten meters. The entrance to Mal''Thorn''s office was down the street and to the right, Razorleaf was waiting at the door and bowed to me as I approached, leading me to Mal''Thorn. Mal''Thorn''s office was much smaller than I was expecting, a three meter by three meter room with two Forest Keeper chairs separated by a one meter square desk, which was empty. "There is a more ostentatious meeting hall," Mal''Thorn said. "This is my preferred study. I do almost all of my work within the common simulation, so I don''t need much. Having a digital copy of each sheet of the paperwork required is a great boon, the place was a mess before I became a Demi-AI even with how short a time I''d had it." I handed Mal''Thorn the disk of the portal that was intended for the diplomat, only then noticing that the back of it led to the empty portal room which I then filled in with a layer of stone. Mal''Thorn handed the diplomat portal to Razorleaf who left with it. "Where would you like the new Fortress Presence?" I asked. "You have it done already?" Mal''Thorn asked. "The best place would be out on the street, that would give it the best access." Mal''Thorn led me back out of his study and the two guards flanking his door fell in behind us. "They take some time to build, as they include portals, but I always have some spare just in case," I said. "I have three extra portal rooms with Presences in them now, with one being used for the diplomat portal and another for your new Presence." Mal''Thorn stopped us in the center of the crossroads just past the trunk of the Heart of the Forest and I brought out the thread portal for the new presence, placing it in the middle of the road. I began pulling stone from my stone source to fill in the rest of the presence into the two meter stone pillar that people were used to seeing. "Fascinating," Mal''Thorn said. "The pillar itself isn''t a part of the Presence at all?" "It isn''t, it''s there to give them a solid feel," I said. I dropped into Mal''Thorn''s Forest simulation and sent him an invitation to join me. "If you''ll give me write access to the simulation I will share the three feeds with you," I said. "Done," Mal''Thorn said. "You couldn''t take write access yourself?" "I could," I said. "But this is your work, it would be rude to add code without your permission. Here are the diplomat, floor, and crossroads feeds. You have write access to the presences if you would like to speak through them, though I make it a point not to disturb my people by doing it when they''re using them." I sent Mal''Thorn a data packet on creating sounds through the presences. "Thank you, my lord," Mal''Thorn said. "There was another reason for my contacting you, we gathered enough Fortress Coins and bought the Demi-AI conversion for my wife, the Fortress Shop said that there would be an indeterminate waiting period between batches and that she had been added to the next one. When were you planning on doing the next conversions?" "I haven''t automated it yet," I said. "And there is a limit to how much it can be automated, I think. But I could do it after I finish with the Presence. I have five-" I looked up the list of Demi-AI candidates again. "- Sorry, six candidates. A new person purchased it since I last looked. It''s a Forest Keeper I don''t know, actually." I shared the details of the sixth candidate with Mal''Thorn who began scowling. "She''s a criminal," Mal''Thorn said. Chapter 125 - Citizens "A criminal," I said. "That sounds interesting, at least. She is a person of the Fortress, and other than not harming other people I don''t have any laws that she could have broken. If she''s broken that one then it will go poorly for her. That you have laws that she has broken is between you and her." "Yes, my lord," Mal''Thorn said. "The question is whether you can trust her, or the people she represents." "That isn''t the question for me, actually," I said. "The question for me is what the cost of a betrayal of my trust would be, and whether I can afford to pay it. With the contingencies I have in place I can afford to be trusting." "As you say, my lord," Mal''Thorn said. I left Mal''Thorn''s Forest simulation and returned to my body at normal time to finish filling in the stone of the presence near the Heart of the Forest tree. Forest Keepers started using the presence as I was finishing it, but they were keeping as far from me as they could. The majority of them were getting their purchases from the doors in the presence, not having an inventory. After the first one awkwardly moved around me to access the doors I moved to the back of the presence. With the presence finished I walked in front of it, causing the next Forest Keeper in line to hesitate and step back, and walked through it into my Pocket Dimension, moving the stone to the side as I did. I pulled up the list of people that had bought the Demi-AI conversion from the System.
Demi-AI Candidates
Candidate Vouching Demi-AI Relationship
Lea Mal''Thorn Wife
Gerry Lizzie Husband
Michael Veya Husband
Wynn Dael Wife
Rala Dael Wife
Shade - -
Dael having at least two wives, as well as having come up with thirty Fortress Coins between them, was interesting. And I had been expecting Ailfrid, the leprechaun wizard, to be on the list of those first converted. I moved an interconnecting portal within my Pocket Dimension to link the portal nexus room to the area that had the twelve tables set up that I had used for the conversion of the people in my army. After that I made a quest asking the Demi-AI candidates to join me there, submitted it, and began walking there myself. I got there before anyone else and began building up a room around the tables. They were on top of the large mass of stone that had been placed in my Pocket Dimension from excavating, and lights could be seen in the distance. I was just finishing the roof when the first person arrived, Gerry. I began pushing my power against him right away. "Hello my lord," Gerry said. "I''m the only one being converted?" "No," I said. "There are five or six of you. I was expecting Ailfrid?" "Ah," Gerry said. "He is saving up for the large Bag of Holding, says it will make an ideal work space." I opened the shop listing for the bags of holding, and sure enough it didn''t mention the blocking of mana in the storage space. Though I''m sure I could make a specialised storage space that did allow it, I would just have to have a second portal that led to a secure space under the fortress. "By default it won''t allow magic to work there," I said. "It''s a property of the bags. Get him to contact me if he wants to use it as a work space for magic." "I will my lord," Gerry said. "On the topic of contacting you, my old partner Frank Steelborn, the mage who helped you in the priest city, has expressed an interest in emigrating to the Fortress. There are quite a few other shop owners from that city who are interested as well. But none of them want to join up under any of the species that already exist here, they value their independence too much." "They''d like a general city level in the Fortress?" I asked. "I can do that. There would need to be a leadership of some sort though, I don''t really want to have to deal with people directly. It could solve one of the other concerns I''ve had as well." I dropped my perception of time down so that I had time to work. What I wanted was an independent citizen application that people could use through a Fortress Presence. If someone who wasn''t a citizen approached a presence they would get a notification explaining how to use it, Fortress Shop, Fortress Jobs, and other direct options, as well as the option to join the Fortress as a citizen. They would need to agree to work for the best interests of the fortress, and for the people living there, and the agreement would count as an oath that was enforced by the same world magic that enforced treaties. I was confident that the System had a close enough link to the world magic for that to work.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Once a person had become a citizen of the fortress they would get a second notification that gave them five fortress coins and recommended using them to purchase a small Bag of Holding for the inventory functionality. I submitted the entire proposal for the change to how the System worked with Fortress Presences to my interface with the System.
System expansion proposal
Proposal submitted through correct channels... Assessing... Expansion deemed within scope... Approved
Great. With the System itself recommending small Bags of Holding, and providing enough Fortress Coins to buy it immediately upon joining the Fortress, the demand for them was going to explode. The background process I had duplicating items for Fortress Storage was running an adaptive algorithm to keep things in stock, as demand rose it would keep more. Small Bags of Holding were set at a value of five, and every so often I would have to focus on them to create the portal they required. I upped the number to keep in storage to fifty. After the initial demand passed that should give enough to cover any later peaks. I returned my time perception to normal, Gerry was nodding. "Alright, done," I said. "Anyone can become a citizen of the Fortress now and receive five Fortress Coins in exchange for their oath to the Fortress." "What about the people who have already joined?" Gerry asked. "Do we just miss out on the sign-up bonus?" "Of course not," I said. "You are a person of the Fortress, but you aren''t a citizen for the purposes of this. Citizenship is a completely new thing. You can join as a citizen and get the Fortress Coins, just like anyone else." "I will tell Frank and the others," Gerry said. "Where should they go to set up in the Fortress?" Two floors below the ward room floor was designated as the Party Floor. And if I wanted it to be a full city then I would want to be able to expand it outwards as needed, which counted out any of the floors that were at a level with the soil outside the fortress, they would be occupied with tree roots. The first floor at the level of bedrock was a reserved utility floor, so the next floor down from that made the most sense, six floors below the ward room floor. "I will set up a destination in the portal network to a Fortress City Floor," I said. The other five people had arrived while we were talking, including the mysterious Shade. She was wearing a dark hooded robe with the hood pulled all the way down hiding her features. Even her tail was hidden, not revealing her species to anyone who looked at her. I had begun pushing my power against each of them as they had arrived and they were all ready for conversion whenever I was ready. But I wanted to interview Shade first, I was interested in her motivations. "Shade," I said. "I would like to interview you before I begin the conversions. Would you like to do it here, or somewhere more private?" "More private, please," Shade said. Her voice was husky and seductive. I opened a hole in the wall of the room and led her out to the edge of the stone, closing the wall behind us after moving a light outside so we could see. Shade ran her hand along my arm as we looked out to the lights in the distance. "It''s a very impressive view," Shade said, stepping closer to press against my arm. I frowned and pushed her away with the hand that she hadn''t trapped. Her grip tightened and she shifted with me as I turned. "Let go and step back," I said. "Aww, but we''re just getting cosy," Shade said, her hood pushing back to reveal her pouting lips. "Last warning," I said. Shade sighed and loosened her grip, but instead of stepping back she slipped her tail from her robe and wrapped it around my waist. I pushed against her with the elbow of the arm she was still holding, making her take half a step away from me. Then I used my other hand to hit her with five rapid strikes, shoulder, elbow, wrist, solar plexus, and throat. None of the strikes were hard enough to cause permanent damage, but they definitely hurt. Shade fell backwards and rolled to her feet, settling in a fighting stance with a dagger in her right hand, her left arm dangling loosely at her side. "None of that either, I would have no trouble killing you," I said. "Your best chance is to speak plainly. What are you doing here?" Shade held her stance for a few seconds before slowly rising to stand upright, returning her dagger to within her robes. "I''m second in command of the organised criminals within the Fortress," Shade said. "As new groups arrive the inevitable criminals within the group join us or are eliminated. We deal in drugs, slaves, spying, assassinations, theft, prostitution, and exotic meat. We had someone who was getting meat from sentient beings within the Fortress, but he was executed." "Second in command," I said. "What are you doing here?" "No one was sure whether you would allow a criminal to be converted," Shade said. "So the first suggested I go. I was going to seduce you to loosen you up to the idea. It is rumoured that leaders in the Fortress must be Demi-AI, and the existing leaders have become much more efficient since they changed. I want to replace the current first." "If you become a Demi-AI you will personally have to swear the oath to work for the betterment of the fortress, and the people in the fortress," I said. "I am already bound by the agreement of Mal''Thorn, as are all Forest Keepers who live in the Fortress," Shade said. "There will always be a criminal side to cities, when it''s organised there is a minimum of disturbance." "I don''t disagree," I said. "The criminal side provides a reason for the police and guard forces to exist, as well as various professions to protect against criminals. However, I guarantee the Fortress is a safe place for the people within it." "Safe from outside threats," Shade said. "Not internal ones. The police forces within most of the groups are there for internal threats. We aren''t your problem." "That isn''t how I see it," I said. "Enslaving any of my people is something that will offend me, I would track down and kill any slavers that acted within my territory. I only have one rule. Do not harm my people. Knowing that, and my response if you break it, do you still wish to become a Demi-AI?" Chapter 126 - Digital Attacks "Depending on how loosely the term is applied, ''harm'' could cover most of the things that I do," Shade said. "If you aren''t kicking me out, I want it. As soon as the first dedicated detective becomes a Demi-AI myself and people like me will be done, unless one of us is there first." That was fine by me. I didn''t actually see a need for crime within my fortress, except as a preference of the individual. The basic necessities for living were provided by me. But I guess people will always want to be in power over other people, and act to protect the people under their power against others who are doing the same. I headed back into the conversion room, leaving the hole in the wall open long enough for Shade to rejoin me. Really what I wanted for the room was a waiting room attached to a room with a single bed and a special looking Fortress Presence. That way I could begin automating the process as much as was possible. I shifted the room around, changing the stone tables into cushioned stone benches that ran along the walls leading to a single stone doorway. Through that doorway I added a copy of my bed, with everything done in the colour red, and a Presence that I turned blood red instead of the typical blue. All of the candidates had settled down on the benches as soon as I had made them, talking to each other. "Right," I said. "Sorry for the wait, it should all be set up now for the conversion without me being involved. Head through one at a time." My not being involved wasn''t especially true, as I still needed to focus on starting each and every one of the micro-portals that would be put in every person who was converted. But as with the Fortress Presences, my thought was that people would be more comfortable, and less intimidated, if they thought that I wasn''t directly involved and standing over them as it happened. Gerry was the first one to enter the conversion room, the stone door sliding closed after him, and I began playing the pre-healing and Demi-AI speech for him, extreme pain, it would end, senses blackout, accept the invitation after the conversion, lay on the bed and say ''begin'' when ready. While that was going I was building a detailed model of him, and by the time he had said ''begin'' I already had the micro-portals all mapped out in his model, and the Mind Link set up for the other side. As Gerry switched over to being a Demi-AI I caught him and sent him an invitation to join the common simulation in the infinite hallway landing room, at the same time sending Lizzie a ping for her to meet us. I sent Gerry the Demi-AI primer and prompted him to leave the conversion room, sliding the stone door open for him. He left the waiting room through the portal back to the portal nexus room and then the fortress. Lea, Mal''Thorn''s wife, was next and followed the same pattern. Then Michael, met by both Veya and Chantelle; Wynn, who was a rabbit lady and one of Dael''s wives; Rala, a rat woman and another of Dael''s wives. They all exited back to the fortress once they were done, leaving only Shade. As soon as she accepted my invitation to the common simulation landing room she looked around and asked to move somewhere more private. I moved us to an empty new simulation, just three white walls with the fourth looking out into the landing room. "This will do until you learn how to make private simulations of your own on your own platform," I said. "I have a few of my own on mine, but they''re all being used at the moment." The model that Shade was using morphed in front of my eyes, going from a robed Forest Keeper to a completely anonymous humanoid, shadows gathering under the hood of the robe. Even her voice came out neutral and androgynous when she spoke. It was impressive how quickly she picked it up. "What protections are in place to stop Demi-AI from running malicious code at each other?" Shade asked. "The nature of the world itself disallows tampering with the wills of consciousnesses," I said. "There are other avenues of attack. Off the top of my head, man-in-the-middle, denial-of-service, spamming, peripheral device subversion. Most of them require permissions that a person would need to abuse. I have complete control over the digital platforms, and the interconnections between them. I can isolate or remove a Demi-AI easily, and there are very few transparent attacks."If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. "So if someone were to become compromised...?" Shade asked. "Play nice and you will remain a Demi-AI," I said. "Play roughly enough and I will burn out your body''s brain, isolate your digital side, and starve you of processing cycles so that for every second that passes for you years go by in the world. Or the reverse, years for every second." "Don''t upset you," Shade said. "Got it. You have the life of every Demi-AI held within your fist? Are they all given the intimidation speech?" "I have the life of anyone who comes within my reach within my consideration," I said. "And I wasn''t meaning to be intimidating. You asked a question, I gave my answer. You''re the first person to ask, but if anyone else had done so they would have received the same answer." Mal''Thorn sent me a ping requesting a conversation. "Mal''Thorn is wanting to join us here," I said. "I think it would be good for you to meet other Demi-AI, are you alright with seeing him?" "I''m anonymised, so sure," Shade said. I invited Mal''Thorn to join us and a few moments later he appeared. "My lord," Mal''Thorn said, bowing to me. "And this must be the infamous Shade." There was a flicker in the simulation as Mal''Thorn attempted to access Shade''s model, and then when that failed he created a spotlight and tried to pierce the shadows of her hood. In response Shade sent an explosive force of noise over every sensory channel, which forced Mal''Thorn to step out of the simulation into the infinite hallway outside. I mapped and then jammed the noise with a series of counter signals, cutting off its effect against me, and frowned first at Mal''Thorn, and then Shade. "Play nice, both of you," I said. "Mal''Thorn, you won''t be able to discover her identity from her model even if you could access it, it''s been modified directly to anonymise it." Shade cut off her defensive attack and nodded to me, and Mal''Thorn re-entered the simulation. "Yes, my lord," Mal''Thorn said. "I actually contacted you to notify you that the common simulation is running low on memory and processing again." I looked up the platform statistics, ninety seven to one hundred percent processor usage, and ninety five percent memory usage that had peaked at one hundred percent. I set a monitor on the two statistics and linked them to a background task to add more processing or memory to the common simulation''s platform whenever it rose above seventy five percent usage of either. I returned my focus to the simulation to find Mal''Thorn and Shade talking with each other, on the topic of the different attacks that were possible within the simulation and how she had come up with such an effective attack so quickly. They seemed to be getting along well considering their rocky start. "It''s done," I said. "And it will automatically increase in the future. If you''re talking about sensory attacks, they won''t ever be very effective in simulations. As an example." I made a tweak to the simulation so that it would accurately reflect pain, and then sent the direct sensory information of searing pain to both of them. They both flinched, reacting to the pain viscerally, before seeing it as the simple data that it was less than five seconds later. Mal''Thorn nodded in understanding. "All of the information coming to us in the simulation is input we can choose to see in different ways," Mal''Thorn said. "This ''pain'' is just a stream of data." "Not just within the simulations," I said. "Any inputs coming from the senses of your body are also just streams of data. Pain can be seen as a notification of the severity of damage your body has sustained and nothing more. The exception is when I use my power to modify you, that is unavoidably felt by your consciousness directly." "It is possible to block sources of input within simulations," Shade said. "Which makes the whole attack vector useless against anyone who has heard of the concept." "There aren''t many attack vectors that will work at all," I said. "Everyone is on their own secure platforms and uses encrypted data streams to visit the different simulations. Anyway, I''m on my way out. Shade, remember you need to move your body from the conversion room." What else had I put off that I had time between crises to check up on... I sent a ping to Ansar, the leader of the Plains Keepers within my fortress, requesting a communication channel at his convenience. While I was waiting on that I checked on the completion of the Forest Keeper and Plains Keeper floors, both of which were a bit over a quarter done. "Hello, my lord," Ansar said. "What do you need?" "Just checking in," I said. "The Plains Keepers have the Party Quest, how is that going?" "It''s going well, my lord," Ansar said. "Everything is being set up now, the party will begin forty six hours from now." "Very good," I said. "Carry on. And be sure to check in with a Fortress Presence, I added Citizenship to the System which should help your people out a lot too." I sent a digital wave and closed the communication channel. What else, what else... Ah, the snow man marksman weapon. Chapter 127 - Elric I sent a communication request to both Maaata and Chantelle, and they both connected. "My lord," Maaata said. "Did you need something else?" "Yeah, what''s up?" Chantelle asked. "On our expedition into the winter realm we came across some weaponry that seemed to automatically enchant and launch shards of ice," I said. "I recovered one of the long-range, highly accurate, versions of the weapons. It seemed like the sort of thing that both of you would be interested in. I''m expecting it to be trapped, so I would like to have a complete scan of it in the magical spectrum, that way we can trip the traps in a simulation." "Are you sure that''s how it works?" Maaata asked. "It shouldn''t be possible, by all that I know of enchanting. The wisps are an edge case of that, having something that creates intent before there is an alive wisp to create it, but I didn''t understand it, I just put the mana in at the right time and place." "I''m not sure that is how it''s working, no," I said. "But we need a complete and working scan of the thing so that we can figure out how it works." "Okay, where is it?" Chantelle asked. "I''m on my way to the ward room floor," I said. "Though we should probably not do it next to the mana crystal pillars. Tinkering with something that could explode near them wouldn''t be a smart idea. I''ll be there in a minute." I was walking through my Pocket Dimension to the fastest way to the ward room, which was through the presence that was observing the ward room table. I shifted the presence to the side and dropped down onto the table, startling Chantelle who was in the room. Chantelle and I left the ward room and picked up Maaata who was standing in the doorway to her room. Most of the ward room floor was still empty, and we headed out into the darkness for thirty meters. Chantelle brought out her enchanted light stone, Maaata doing the same, and I took out a thread portal from my pocket and placed the other side of the portal over one of the electrical lights I had made, fixing it to ceiling above us. The weapon was still resting on its bed of compacted snow within my Pocket Dimension, and I slid it out to rest on the floor without touching it. "That''s it," I said. "I think if I push my power against it to get a detailed scan then the mana will drain out of it and the enchantments will break. So if you two could make a detailed scan of the mana in it first?" After a few seconds of not being able to see anything going on I invited both of them to my local simulation, which was then updated with the inputs from their senses. They were both zoomed in and were mapping the mana from the same end of the weapon, opposite the ejection point of the tube. There was a dense power source in the shoulder rest, and multiple clusters of complicated enchantments there leading up to the trigger. There was also a final enchantment at the end of the tube, above the legs that held the launcher off of the ground. It took five minutes for the two of them to make a complete map of the mana, referencing each other''s model and fine tuning the discrepancies between them. When they''d finished I began pressing my power firmly into the weapon. Being able to see the mana drain from the weapon, from what Maaata and Chantelle could see, was interesting, and I was able to accelerate the process by pushing harder against the mana storage area. It took a minute for the mana in the storage to drain completely, and then the enchantments winked out one by one as my power pressed over them. Only when the last enchantment broke did my power soak into the weapon allowing me to begin my scan. Most of the weapon was simple reinforced ice. I did have to use my power to keep it from warming up and melting, the enchantment that was working to do that broke along with the rest. The snow that it had been resting on had long since melted on the warm floor. What I found with the four complicated enchantment areas was very much like parts of the model I had of the wisp. Not enough for there to be a consciousness, but the mechanism it used was identical, a hybrid bioelectrical and mana system. In fact, I think the weapon was made with the cut up bodies of several different wisps. Parts of the physical makeup of the weapon were direct copies from the wisp model I had.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. I finished up my scan and got the mana model from Chantelle, combining it with my model. We now had a digital copy of the weapon to play with. I moved to the war games simulation, inviting Maaata and Chantelle to join me. The main simulation was being used by Dael and his two wives, using melee and ranged magic to fight off waves of monsters. I split off a new instance and created a copy of the Long Ranged Ice Launcher, the LRIC. The LRIC was obviously designed to be shot from a prone position, but I decided to hold it while standing up, my left hand along the tube and my right hand in a position to pull the trigger. I was expecting it to explode, or dissolve, or something. I gently pulled the trigger further and further back until it was completely depressed. Nothing happened. "Maybe it needs to detect a snow man to fire?" I asked. "That doesn''t look like what is happening," Chantelle said. "It looks like the simulation doesn''t know what to do with the different enchantments." "The simulation worked with the wisp..." I said. "Most of the enchantments are the same, why isn''t it working?" "I don''t know, I haven''t seen the wisp model," Chantelle said. "Is it possible that the wisp model was self-reinforcing?" Maaata asked. "Once it was alive it was giving its own feedback to the simulation that showed what the enchantments were doing?" "So, we need to recreate the weapon out in the world and observe it to see what the enchantments are doing, and then add the necessary rules to the simulation here?" I asked. "That would be the way to do it, yes," Chantelle said. I sighed. I was still expecting the weapon to have fail-safes in place. We switched back to my local simulation and Maaata and I made a map of the different points on the original weapon that needed mana added to it to prime the enchantments again. Chantelle and Maaata went through them and got the weapon back up to its original condition, without it exploding in our faces. "I want to do this outside the Fortress, just in case," I said. Chantelle and Maaata both nodded, and I opened a portal that connected to the portal at the stairs outside. I slid the gun along the ground in front of us, the enchantments of the gun no longer rejecting my power. I spent a few minutes putting thread portals around the weapon, so any explosion would be somewhat contained. As soon as anything destroyed the threads the portals would collapse, but it might stop some of it. "We can''t see it," Chantelle said. "We''ll need to be able to see it to see what the enchantments are doing." So much for the bomb shield... But there was another way I could achieve the same effect. I reshaped a single thread portal and moved its exit to be horizontal in the Pocket Dimension, then lifted it up on a solid block of stone in and out of the Pocket Dimension. I raised it around us so we were standing with most of our bodies within the Pocket Dimension, just our heads out in the world. I had my left hand wrapped around the front edge of the portal ready to lift it over our heads. With my right hand I had a single finger going through another small portal ready to pull on the trigger of the weapon. "Okay, ready?" I asked. "Ready," Chantelle and Maaata said together. I took a breath and held it, placing my finger gently against the trigger. No reaction. Pulling slightly back on the trigger, a wave of mana flowed through the enchantments in the shoulder rest and a shard of ice formed in the back of the tube of the weapon. Slightly further and the shard fired out of the barrel and took a chunk out of a tree. I let out my breath in a sigh of relief. No big explosion. I shot five more times, the LRIC fixed to the ground with my power to prevent any recoil. "It looks like I was being overly paranoid," I said. "Did you get all of the data you needed on how the enchantments are working?" "All but one, I think," Chantelle said. "How about you, Maaata?" "Just the one that is wrapped around the trigger and mana source hasn''t activated," Maaata said. "Maybe it''s a low mana warning, or overheating protection?" I asked. I held down the trigger, firing as rapidly as the ice shards could be created, about one every six tenths of a second. Five minutes of normal time, an hour at our speed, and three hundred shots, later the mana storage was at half full and there was a straight line of damage going through the forest at a slightly upward angle. "It''s not overheating," Chantelle said. "And it probably isn''t a low mana warning either with the amount of shots the thing can fire. We have all of data we need on the enchantments we need to create our own Elrics, call it done?" I nodded, removing my finger from the trigger for the first time. And the gun began exploding into thin fragments of ice. The final unactivated enchantment was converting all of the mana in the mana storage at once to fuel the explosion. I pulled my finger out of the portal next to the trigger and crushed the two edges of the loop together, a sliver of ice cutting deeply into my finger. At the same time I pushed upwards hard with my left hand, the portal clearing our heads before the explosion hit. Both portals disappeared from the Pocket Dimension a tenth of a second of normal time later. "That was tricky," I said. "I''d almost let my guard down. Let''s remove that enchantment from the model, I think." Chapter 128 - Neutral God? "I''ve never seen an enchantment that made something explode before," Maaata said. "I hadn''t even considered the possibility. It happened so quickly, as well, how did you know?" "I didn''t know," I said. "But it made sense that there would be some countermeasures to the weapons falling into enemy hands. If I had made the weapons I would have done something similar, but with portals so I could deconstruct the weapon. Did you both make recordings of the enchantments working?" "We did," Chantelle said. "You want us to send you a copy?" I nodded. "I''ll be spending quite a bit of time on it," I said. "The enchantments are created by physical elements that I can manipulate with my power, if I can work out the principles behind how they do it I might be able to get around the restriction on my being able to use magic." "If you''re going to be setting up a complex simulation for your testing you should do it in a simulation off of the common simulation," Chantelle said. "So others can come and see what you''re doing more easily. I know I''m interested in how it works, as it seems to bypass the intent that all magic requires, which is one of the consistent laws of magic." We were standing in the well lit part of my Pocket Dimension, near my bed and the portal to the top of the fortress. "I''m going to send this body to bed," I said. "I''ll send you an invite to the simulation I set up." I queued up a set of movement instructions for my body and set them to run in the background, sleepwalking my way to the bed. Shifting my focus I connected to the common simulation, matching the time perception there that was still running at its maximum and headed down the infinite hallway to the empty white room to spawn a new simulation. There were more simulations since the last time I''d come through, though the only one that really caught my interest was of a room lined with bookcases full of books. I resisted the temptation to enter, I was sure ''a few minutes'' would turn into days if I got distracted. Getting to the blank room I entered and brought in the full physical model of the marksman weapon, displaying it on a raised white table. Chantelle and Maaata both joined me at my invitation, sending me their full recordings of how the mana interacted with the weapon at different stages. Chantelle looked around the simple simulation. "Do you want some help setting up?" Chantelle asked. "This simulation doesn''t even simulated basic mana interactions. There are templates you can use that set all of that up for you now, you know?" "No, I''m fine, thank you," I said. "I''ll just copy them from the war games simulation." "Okay," Chantelle said. "Send me a ping when you''re done, or find something interesting." "Me too," Maaata said. Chantelle disappeared from the simulation and Maaata quickly followed. I got to work importing all of the physics and mana rules from the war games simulation. After that I synced up my detailed recording of the physical interactions of the weapon with the two recordings I''d received of the mana. With that done I began breaking down how the enchantments were working in reverse when a shard was fired. The last thing that happened was the end of the tube of the weapon added an enchantment to the shard as it accelerated out at incredible speeds. I had little idea as to what the enchantment was doing, but I was more interested in the mechanism that applied the enchantment. The start of the sequence of symbols that created the enchantment was triggered by an electrical stimulus. In fact, electrical signals were flying all over the device while it was active, which didn''t show up in the mana recordings at all. I wasn''t going to be able to create the rules needed within the simulation to model what was happening, as other than a few obvious things like accelerating the ice shard out of the tube I had no idea what effects the different enchantments were causing.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. The solution was to split everything up into its smallest components and test them individually out in the world. So that is what I set about doing. An advantage of working digitally was that I never got tired and my focus never wandered. I didn''t keep track of the time I spent on it, but I was soon done with splitting the weapon apart into its individual components, and some of those into single symbols to test. With every part that I isolated I made a small waist height white table to place it on before moving on to the next one. And with the entire weapon deconstructed I moved on to the parts of the models I had of different people, and the wisp, that were responsible for interacting with magic and began deconstructing them in the same way. It turned out that different people having different aptitudes for different sorts of magic was hard written into their brains, though whether their aptitude was due to training or not I didn''t know. I was taking a break from deconstructing brains and was comparing the differences between the Forest Keeper forest sense and the Plains Keeper plains sense, in as much as I could from just knowing where the inputs were coming from, when Mal''Thorn walked through the front of the simulation that led to the landing room. "What is all of this?" Mal''Thorn asked. I stopped to look around the simulation, at the whole rather than the parts that I''d been focused on. There were thousands of raised tables with little pieces of matter on them, the largest of which only measuring a cubic centimeter. The smallest weren''t even visible. "It''s... My work on exploring the physical ways that mana is manipulated," I said. "For example, this-" I pointed to a larger specimen. "-When given a mana source and complicated electrical input, like this..." I had gone through the motions not expecting it to activate, just showing what the tests I had prepared for it would be in the outer world, but the whole thing triggered and was outputting electrical signals that showed that it was working. "Huh," I said. "I didn''t think that would work in here. That is how you all sense mana in the environment." I looked around at all of the tables I had set up. Quite a few of them would work inside the simulation, I realised, and it was only the ones that were hard-coded with symbols that I didn''t understand that I would have to test out in the world. Though perhaps Chantelle or Maaata would be interested in looking through the symbols... "My lord," Mal''Thorn said. "I wouldn''t have bothered you, but the tree that we were using as a relay to the Forest has been damaged, and the portal destination to the outside of the Fortress has disappeared as a destination." Oh. Right. The marksman weapon detonating likely did a lot of damage to the area. "That was my fault," I said. "We tested an enemy weapon out there and it tried to blow up in our faces. Is the tree alright?" "I don''t know for sure," Mal''Thorn said. "It is still living, but the connection has become too weak to see its condition remotely." "Alright," I said. "Meet me at the top of the Fortress and we can go outside that way, I''ll repair or replace the portal when we get there, depending on how damaged it is." Mal''Thorn nodded and disappeared from the simulation. I sent a ping to both Chantelle and Maaata, who arrived shortly after. "Have you been down here the entire time?" Chantelle asked, looking around at all of the tables. "I have," I said. "It''s an interesting project." "It must be," Chantelle said. "You''ve been working on it for more than a year at this point. You''ve finished?" "Not quite," I said. "I''ve got a lot of it broken down into it''s base components, and I could probably build up from them, but they use or create symbols of magic that I don''t know what they do. I''ve been called to go fix the mess we made outside the fortress. Would either of you be interested in annotating the symbols?" Chantelle and Maaata shared a look, and Maaata nodded slightly and stepped behind Chantelle. "We are very interested," Chantelle said. "Where do we start?" "It should be pretty obvious which samples have symbols," I said. "And there is one sample per table. I don''t know what any of the symbols do, so I don''t know if there is a better order to start working through them in." I opened up a private communication channel to Chantelle. "I don''t know how to phrase this," I said. "Is there something wrong with Maaata? She''s been acting oddly." "I wouldn''t say there is anything wrong, exactly," Chantelle said. "You told her that you created the System, and everything to do with the World Magic becoming interactable?" "I may have said something like that, yes," I said. "And you created life from nothing, and had her help you create a body for that life?" Chantelle asked. "Yes, that happened too," I said. "She''s just a bit intimidated to be in your presence," Chantelle said. "There are quite a few stories told about you, shared among the Demi-AI particularly, as well as outsiders. There is a growing faction that considers you to be a new god, one that has the Neutral Realm as a domain. She is one of those." "Someone can''t just become a god, can they?" I asked. "I don''t know," Chantelle said. "The gods have always simply existed as far as I''m aware. But they have died in the past, so perhaps new ones can be created as well. You have done things that even Champions have never had the power to do before." "The System would have told me if I''d become a god," I said. "It hasn''t, so I''m not. I need to go fix the portal outside, I''ll be back soon." Chapter 129 - Reparations I returned my focus to my body, which was resting where I''d left it in the very comfortable bed I''d created in the center of my Pocket Dimension. The portal that led to the stairway landing on the first floor of my fortress was a few meters away. I struggled my way out of the sinking softness of the bed and left through the portal, going up the stairs to the guard room at the top of the fortress. There weren''t any guards guarding the guard room, due to the fact that the stairs leading outside were filled in with stone. Mal''Thorn hadn''t arrived yet, so I removed the barred doors and set to work removing the stone blocking the way out, and then unbarring and opening the doors at the top. I climbed the stairs to the outside and stepped into the light of an overcast morning. Every other time I had come outside it had been completely dark, this was the brightest I''d ever seen it. The clouds were still there, thick and heavy a dozen meters over my head, but it seemed the god banishment zone set up by the wards over my claim were having some effect on the permanent winter over the forest. My breath was still fogging in the cold air, but the stone beneath me was giving off a comfortable warmth. Looking out over the forest around my fortress it got more dark the further out I looked. I was still admiring the view when Mal''Thorn came up the stairs behind me. I began filling the stairway with stone behind him. "My lord," Mal''Thorn said. "My apologies for keeping you waiting." I waved my hand at him, dismissing his apology. "Look at this," I said. "It''s almost daylight out here. That must be helping the forest, at least somewhat?" "It helps the trees here somewhat," Mal''Thorn said. "But the area is still too small to have much affect on the forest as a whole. Are we ready to go down?" "I still need to finish sealing the top of the stairs," I said. "But you''re welcome to head down first, I''ll come down when I''m done." Mal''Thorn nodded and headed down the stairs down to the pavilion outside my fortress. Even from here I could see the damage done to the trees, several of them had fallen over, leaning outwards from a central point. I finished filling the stairs, closed the doors, and followed Mal''Thorn. He had stopped a dozen stairs up from the bottom, just above where the damage to the stone began. The stairs and the pavilion itself weren''t covered in the physical protection wards that were on the rest of the fortress, and the pavilion was in ruins. I moved past Mal''Thorn and soaked my power into the shattered stairs, fusing them back together as I went down them. The wall that I had put the portal in at the bottom of the stairs was still standing with large chunks gouged out of it, but the pillars that had held the roof of the pavilion up hadn''t survived the explosion, which had caused the roof to fall down and break into large chunks. Mal''Thorn moved to the relay tree immediately, going over the unstable debris. I moved the rubble of the building to make a path to it, stacking the leftover stone to the sides. The relay tree itself had been further along from the blast, and had held up better than the other trees around it, one of which was laying against the relay tree where it had fallen. There were still large holes in the relay tree that were slowly closing over as Mal''Thorn worked. I took my portal out of my pocket, making it its full size, and began using my power to push stone through into my Pocket Dimension. The first area I cleared out was around the wall that had held the permanent outside portal and I set to studying that while I continued to move stone. Almost all of the symbols of the portal were damaged in some way, with large gouges in the stone. It would be as much work clearing it and reshuffling portals as it would to just repair the portal, so I set about repairing it. The stone filled in first, including the area where the arachne silk steel thread had been pushed into the stone. Then I converted the stone into the silk steel thread and carved the missing portions of the symbols into it.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. Repairing a portal was much simpler than creating a new one from scratch, all of the required links were already set up. It still took twice as much effort to carve the symbols as it should have, carving a matching set in the Pocket Dimension at the same time, but it was something anyone could do if they knew the shapes of the original portal symbols. With the last of the symbols done the portal reappeared leading into its portal room with a presence at the end. The portal room hadn''t suffered any damage from the explosion, the portal having closed so quickly. I walked around the remains of the pavilion moving stone into my Pocket Dimension and fusing the cracks in the stone floor. There was a large crater that I filled in as well, and I found the scraps of two thread portals that were so far gone that they weren''t worth repairing. I had started cutting down the fallen trees, putting their remains in my Pocket Dimension too, when Mal''Thorn finished fixing the relay tree. "The damage to the relay tree was due to my carelessness in choosing a testing location," I said before he could say anything. "I owe you reparation, what would you ask for?" "May I have some time to think on it, my lord?" Mal''Thorn asked. "Sure, I''ll continue to clean up," I said. I went back to cutting and clearing the fallen trees. They were too large and unwieldy for me to do more than cut them into sections that I then let fall to the forest floor. After that I trimmed their branches and moved the entire lot through my portal. I had just finished with the fifteenth and last fallen tree and was looking over the area when Mal''Thorn approached me again. I don''t think the area at the foot of my stairs needed a roof anymore, as there was only a light snow falling occasionally, so I was done. "My lord, I have thought of something," Mal''Thorn said. "But, tell me if I am overstepping. I would ask for six of my people to be converted to Demi-AI at your earliest convenience." "I have that process partially automated now," I said. "I don''t need to interact with anyone who has a Demi-AI to vouch for them, the only thing I need to do is the start of each the micro-portals. Six conversions as reparation for the damage caused. Done." I sent Mal''Thorn the details of the quest he should send to his six candidates, that would direct them to the conversion room through the portal system. "Thank you, my lord," Mal''Thorn said. "Will you be opening the portal back into the Fortress?" "For payment purposes this portal should be considered within the fortress," I said. "You should be able to access the portal to your floor for free?" Mal''Thorn and I both went through the portal into the portal room, and Mal''Thorn went to stand in front of the presence at the end of the room. I waited for him to finish, and a few seconds later a portal linking to the portal nexus slid through the wall and settled in front of the presence. Mal''Thorn nodded to me and left to go through the security checkpoint. I went directly through the wall and ended up in another portal room, and two more walls later I was out into my main Pocket Dimension area. I queued up the instructions to send my body back to bed and dropped down into my magic study simulation again. Chantelle and Maaata were both still there in different sections of the room, and almost half of the tables in the room looked to have annotated notes, even those that didn''t directly have symbols associated with them. I approached one of the first tables, which had the enchantment that was added to the shards of ice from the weapon as it left the tube. According to the notes the enchantment was added to increase the stability and accuracy of the shard, correcting its trajectory as it moved through the air to maintain a straight line. Chantelle was the first one to notice me in the simulation and she wove through the tables to give me a hug. "These are all fascinating," Chantelle said. "The physical stuff is all useless to anyone but you who can create things at that level, but there are hundreds of symbols here that I''d never seen before. There are several variations on absorbing mana, including one that actively breaks down mana that is in enchantments or wards." "Anyone can design using the physical stuff here, actually, I can create from a detailed model anything you come up with," I said. "The enchantment eating enchantment is from the wisp model?" "Yes, they also have a way of breathing ambient mana in and out that draws more ambient mana towards them," Chantelle said. "As well as enchantments for flight. Though they are limited in the weight that they can carry, I don''t think they would be able to carry the weight of even a small child. It''s all very exciting. Maaata and I have been compiling a primer on what we''ve found so far. It''s on the blue table there, the larger central orb is the combined primer, the two smaller ones are what we''re working on and haven''t added back into the main primer yet." I walked over to the blue table and touched the large orb that was floating above it, which gave me a prompt to load the primer into memory. I agreed and loaded it up to study, Chantelle going back to what she was working on. Some time later as I was working through and creating different enchantments in the air I got a communication request from Jeff, the human leader of the Fortress Army. Chapter 130 - Transportation "My lord, we have accomplished the mission you set us," Jeff said. "There are no more snow men on the plains that we can detect. We swept along the entire frozen line from the beaches at the south of the biome to the beaches in the north, two hundred and fifty kilometers. We are heading back to the portal at the Plains Keeper city now, which will take us another day." They were planning to run the whole way back, just to recover the portal I''d given them. There must be a better way... I went back through the material I had been studying. There. Flight enchantments, with a notation that they could only efficiently be used for creatures that weighed less than five kilograms. I created a model of one of my thread portals, two meters high by one meter across, and pulled up its statistics in the simulation to get its weight. One and a half kilograms. Add an extra half a kilogram for the hardware to run it all, and the flight enchantments would easily be able to fly a portal around. It could even get a decent speed from them, being much lighter than the wisps that it was taken from. "My lord, are you there?" Jeff asked over the still open channel. "Yes, sorry," I said. "You made me think of a solution to the problem. Good work clearing out the snow men." "What problem, my lord?" Jeff asked. I sent him an invitation to join me in the magic testing simulation I''d set up and he appeared next to me, looking around. I reshaped the thread portal model, collapsing it into a single line so that the portal would be closed, and then wrapping it around itself in a spiral to leave a flat circle of thread. Then I began pulling sets of physical parts that created enchantments together, mana absorption, manipulation, control, and flight. The whole thing was an unprotected mess of what could be considered brain matter, and would need to draw its energy from my Matter Manipulation power. But the good news was that it weighed significantly less than my first estimate, only coming in at fifty grams, and less than one cubic centimeter in volume. I wrapped the whole thing in a protective shell of my construction stone, and then added the masses of micro-portals that would connect to a limited Mind Link to control the whole thing. Jeff had wandered over to the table that had the whole model of the marksman weapon on it, and had even gone so far as to pick it up and put his finger on the trigger, sighting down the tube. It was a complete working model, and we were in a simulation that would model everything including pain from injuries. I could see the explosive enchantment had already triggered and was just waiting for the signal from the trigger to cut off. I put up an impenetrable barrier to protect the rest of the tables and then walked through it to approach Jeff, who turned to me. "This is the weapon that we were being attacked with from such a long range?" Jeff asked. "Jenny has been talking about it a fair amount." "That''s it," I said. "The complete model, exactly as we found it. I''ve put up a barrier, so you''re free to fire off a few rounds. I''m sure this is exactly what Jenny would have done when we found it." Jeff turned and pointed the tube towards a space that didn''t have anything in it, and then held down the trigger. The ice shards exploded out of the tube every half a second with a crack. Jeff let the trigger back out after ten shots that disintegrated against the barrier around us. "It''s very loud," Jeff said. "Anyone would be able to hear where you were whenever you fired." "That''s the shard breaking the sound barrier as it leaves the tube," I said. "It should be possible to slow it down so that it can be more stealthy. Of course now you come across the problem of picking up an enemy weapon and using it against them, though I think this particular countermeasure was designed to eliminate anyone who tried to study the weapons." Jeff tilted his head at me and frowned. He kept looking at me for ten seconds, waiting for something to happen, before putting the weapon back on the table and finally letting go of the trigger. The simulation was set to render things in normal time, so all we saw was a momentary flash and then the black death screen.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. I resurrected myself, placing my model back in the simulation outside of the barrier. I hadn''t set any properties for the tables that I had been using, but from the remains of the one inside the barrier it looked as though it had defaulted to stone. There were small pebble sized pieces left. Jeff reappeared within the barrier and I banished it so I could hear him, the pebbles that were once the table spilling out into the room. "What was that?" Jeff asked. "The weapon self-destructs violently when the trigger is released," I said. "As soon as you touched the trigger it was armed. I thought it would be a good lesson in not playing with unknown artefacts without protection." I cleared the debris with a thought, and replaced the table and model of the weapon with another, and then began walking back to the table I had set up for the flying portal setup. Jeff followed after me. "This is what I wanted you to see," I said. "It''s a bit thrown together, and I will probably need Chantelle or Maaata to help me hook it all up properly, but it should work as a first prototype." "Is this one safe to pick up?" Jeff asked. "It is," I said. Jeff picked it up and turned it over in his hands. It was a disc one centimeter thick and twenty eight centimeters wide, and on one side had a one centimeter cube in the center of the spiral. "Is it a weapon?" Jeff asked. "Do you throw it, maybe?" "It''s a thread portal," I said. "Watch." I didn''t have any of the control interfaces set up for it, so I faked it by manipulating the simulation directly. The disc lifted out of Jeff''s hand where he was holding it like he was going to throw it and zipped a quick circuit around the room before coming to hover in front of us. I unrolled the spiral into a straight line of thread, and then opened it into a portal. The blue stone that was controlling the mana side of things in the center of the top of the portal frame. Jeff was looking at it with a thoughtful expression. "You can come back to the Fortress through the portal, and I will fly the portal wherever its needed," I said. "You won''t have to run anywhere." "Thank you, my lord, I will tell the others," Jeff said. "Stalia in particular will be very grateful. The others were able to work in shifts, but she needed to be out running with whoever was on duty for her foresight to be of any use. She saved us from several ambushes along the way, and it was only due to her that we were able to finish the mission so quickly." Jeff looked over to the marksman weapon on its table, and then back to the flying portal in front of him. "Will we be getting new weapons, or will our force be replaced with autonomous flying ones?" Jeff asked. I thought through all of the different options available to me now that I had access to magic on top of all of my other abilities. Portals, magic, and Matter Manipulation. Jeff waited patiently for the few minutes it took. "You will all be getting new weapons, though I expect you and the others to design your own," I said. "Use the primer from here to get an idea as to what is possible. Flying ice shard launchers will definitely be on the list of things I make, but it will be members of the Fortress Army that control them. And I expect the Fortress Army to keep the peace within the Fortress as well, you aren''t just going to be used against outside forces." "Yes, my lord," Jeff said. "Thank you." Jeff bowed to me and disappeared from the simulation and I went back to the portal flight implementation, putting it back into its disc configuration. The first step would be actually hooking up the micro-portals. Right now they existed in the model, but they didn''t link up to anything, so I created a small Mind Link for the other end and linked them all together. And then I linked the virtual Mind Link as an input to my digital platform. I had to tweak the Mind Link several times, frying the whole thing twice before I got the electrical inputs right. And then it melted down from drawing too much mana without me activating the containment enchantment strongly enough. Finally I put the whole thing into a training mode where it gave me an indication as to what was going wrong without actually damaging anything. After that my progress improved greatly and I got the hang of the balancing act that was mana absorption. Mana detection was actually a hard-written detection ward that gave feedback as electrical signals, and being able to control the mana in the environment it only took a few hours of testing before I had the interface perfected for that. Mana manipulation soon followed, being able to see what I was doing simplifying the process greatly. Then the flight controls. I was modifying the layout and mana flows of the physical design as I was bringing more components into it, making sure it all worked without conflicts. And then it was done. I took a test flight around the room and immediately came across a problem. The only sensory input the flight system had was the mana sense, and that wasn''t enough to fly by. I modified the design to put a presence behind it, which gave sight and sound inputs, and tried again. I had to fly with the disc facing the way it was flying so that I could see in front, which slowed the top speed it could go, but it worked much better. I finalised the design and then queued up several to be constructed, having the background process that was in charge of building ping me when it needed my input for the micro-portals. I switched my focus back to my physical body where it was resting on my bed and enjoyed just laying there waiting for the first flight cube to be done. A few minutes later I got a ping from Shade, followed by a mass of pings and an overload of data flooding me from the common simulation. Chapter 131 - Repercussions The pings that had come in, and that were still coming in, were a modification of the emergency ping that I had set up. The emergency ping was responded to by dropping the perception of time to the fastest it could be, so that things that required immediate reactions would have plenty of time to react to. The pings that I was receiving were trying to request my digital side to sync with the slowest speed it could go, the complete opposite of what an emergency ping was, but with the same structuring. I hadn''t written any sort of filter for the pings that I received, so the first one was very effective at stopping my digital side, and then my digital side was moving too slowly for me to fix it, continually responding to new pings. The pings, and the mass of data, was coming routed through the common simulation, so I physically cut the connection between my hardware platform and it, breaking the portals that the cables were travelling through by brute force with my biological side. It left quite a mess of the connection, but I was then able to reclaim my digital side and drop down into my personal simulation. With that done I had all the time I needed to design a way around the sabotage. A direct physical link to a spare digital platform, and then from there a connection to the common simulation that acted as a hub between all of the Demi-AIs. I connected through to the common simulation through a layer of anonymisation. I still had root access to everything that was running on the platform, and I used it to track down the noise generators that had flooded my original connection. They were easy to find, there were ten new simulations that were a simple black room. Looking into their code they were pulling data from the running statistics of the simulation and putting it through an algorithm that was creating white noise. That white noise was tagged to go to me and then sent to the routing for the Demi-AIs as though I had requested it. There was also a master simulation that took a ping and amplified it to be sent by each of the other simulations, and then one of the slave simulations was hard-linked to send the same ping back to the master to keep it in a permanent loop. I pulled the ping that was running through the simulations and confirmed that it was Shade who had started the whole process, and then froze all ten of the malicious simulations. I looked through all of the hardware platforms that were running and singled out the one that was hosting Shade''s digital side, and then systematically severed every external connection except for the one to her Mind Link. Two small portals later I had a single physical connection from the hardware platform that I was running all of my data through directly to hers, with a filter running that would drop anything that wasn''t directly requested by me. I would be able to talk with her by a polling system that asked for chunks of data. I finished designing the protocol that would make everything work and then sent her a communication request. At her acceptance I appeared in her simulation with my model as a representation. There was a digital overlay over her body, but the rest of the simulation looked to be of the area around her physical body. She was looking over a balcony that was on the platform that the Forest Keepers used on their floor, Forest Keepers walking by on the wooden street below. "What are you trying to do?" I asked. "I warned you that attacks against me or any other Demi-AI would not turn out well for the attacker." "You did warn me," Shade said. "I wasn''t given any choice in the matter. My obedience is enforced by the World Magic." "You have a treaty that is forcing you to do this, whatever this is?" I asked. "I was required to give an oath to the First, yes," Shade said. "He doesn''t often use it against me, being second in the organisation. But this was one of those times."You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. "To what end?" I asked. "You haven''t achieved anything except to have your digital side isolated. I don''t understand." I was aware that the speed of the simulation was varying in waves, smoothly moving from fast to slow. "I am the distraction," Shade said. "Originally I was supposed to seduce you, get close to you, and kill you. With you dead your Fortress will fall to whoever is strong enough to hold it." "You haven''t considered the fact that I''m immortal, though," I said. "You have a lot of outrageous stories told about you," Shade said. "Lies, to make you seem stronger than you are." "I have no need for lies," I said. "And I don''t need you to belie-" My body was sending signals of sharp hot pain from my right eye. "Finally," Shade said. "Goodbye, and thank you in advance for creating the Fortress for us." I severed the connection to Shade and shifted my focus back to my local simulation. From my left eye I could see a leprechaun leaning over me and a quick and basic scan of the pain showed a stiletto dagger stabbed through my right eye and into my brain. The left side of my body wasn''t responding to me, and my right side was twitching as the dagger was being twisted. I still had some control, and with it I grabbed the leprechaun by the throat and squeezed. My fingers dug into his neck and when they reached my thumb halfway in I jerked my hand backwards and tore his throat out, flicking it to the side of the bed. I could see the spine as the body fell forwards over me, blood going everywhere. I shoved the still dying leprechaun off the bed and grabbed the hilt of the dagger, pulling it out of my brain and ruined eye. I almost stabbed myself again as my right arm failed, or more specifically, the left side of my brain started failing. The dagger had some sort of poison on it that was actively destroying the rest of my brain. I dropped my perception of time to its maximum and pulled up the model of my body that I used to repair from. My right eye was ruined, I may as well take the opportunity to upgrade it. I spent a few hours designing a new system, replacing the iris and pupil with several layers of sensors. It would remove the possibility of dynamically reacting to changes in light levels, and the first layers would even be damaged by bright light and require constant repair, but it would give me a much greater sensitivity to low light. The whole thing only took a little more than a second in normal time, and while I was designing I was also taking a detailed scan of the damage. Once that was done I ran up my repair program and got an estimated repair time of nine seconds in parallel. The serial prediction was in minutes, so I set it to parallel repair and triggered it. Pain. Endless peaks of pain with gaps in between where it was so severe it couldn''t be felt, waiting for the intensity to lessen, anticipating the all encompassing pain returning. I made it out the other side, my awareness expanding from a pinpoint of light in the center of my vision out to my full sight. Every time I did it it was the worst pain I''d ever felt, the memory of it dimming as I deliberately moved my focus away from it. Several deep breaths later I had recovered. I still needed to hook up my new right eye to my hardware platform through my Mind Link, but it would take a few minutes. There was something I needed to do before that. I dropped back into my local simulation and extended my power into and through Shade''s Mind Link. When I had enough of a hold through the micro-portals into her brain I destroyed enough of it in the right locations for it to stop supporting her consciousness. I then disconnected her digital platform from her Mind Link and began connecting it to mine. I ensured that the connections that connected to my digital consciousness linked up to the paths that went to her body''s consciousness. I still had my power soaked into her brain, and I had recorded the exact damage that I had done so that I could repair it. I pulled up my repair program for the second time in as many minutes and triggered it. The pain didn''t start immediately, which was a bit jarring, like climbing stairs and the last step that you were expecting isn''t there. It was only several seconds later that it started. After it ended my consciousness had expanded and I was getting a whole slew of new emotions and sensations from the new body. It was confusing and overwhelming reacting to thoughts with two bodies. I lay my original body back on the still blood stained bed and began to meditate with it, minimising its thoughts. The new body, female and a Forest Keeper, was laying on the ground where she had fallen when the strings of her consciousness had been cut. The motor functions were familiar in the brain, and the muscle memory was still there. I stood up carefully, and then got distracted by my tail, causing it to lash back and forth. I wasn''t as distracted as I could have been, being in a female body, as Chantelle and I had played in each other''s models in our intimate simulation. The body would take some getting used to, though. I had the detailed model for it, so I loaded that up as my primary model and practised with it for a few hours in my simulation. When I was satisfied that I could move about as Shade comfortably I sent a communication request to her, along with a one way feed of the senses from her body. Chapter 132 - Passive I loaded up into the local simulation that Shade was running, this time taking the same place as she was, where her body was represented in the real world. There was a slight mismatch where she was moving in the simulation as a transparent ghost and the outer world her wasn''t moving. "You should be dead," Shade said. "When you ran away before should have been the exact time that the assassin struck and killed you." "That is what happened, I agree," I said. "The assassin put the dagger through my head hard enough that it came out the back, and the neurotoxin on the blade was particularly nasty too. I got better. You were a bit too hasty in dismissing the stories of my immortality." "Okay, sure," Shade said. "It isn''t as though you could be lying and killed the assassin despite my distraction. You''re right, you must be immortal. More importantly, what have you done, why can''t I move my body?" "What do you mean, your body?" I asked. "You were warned about the consequences, it''s my body now." "What-" I ran my hands up my new body and cupped my breasts. "You bastard, stop that," Shade said. I stopped. To be honest it was more of a distraction than I wanted, but I wanted to get a rise out of Shade. "You''re only second in your organisation," I said. "And you claim to have been coerced by an oath. I want the First, and I will use your body to get to them and make enough of a splash that it should deter stupidity of this sort in the future. If you want to get your body back then you will do your best to help me. First off, what is the exact wording of the oath that is binding you?" "I don''t know," Shade said. "Part of the oath is that I can''t clearly recall the exact oath. It limits attempts to subvert it." "You swore an oath to work towards the betterment of the fortress and its people," I said. "How were you able to attempt to kill me in spite of that oath?" "A new owner would be better for the Fortress and its people," Shade said. "The World Magic agrees, or we wouldn''t have been able to do it. Or... If you were telling the truth and you cannot be killed then the World Magic didn''t restrict us because it doesn''t matter what we do." I had a moment of disorientation where my human body was being shaken, pulling my focus to it. I opened my eyes there, closing my Forest Keeper eyes. Chantelle was leaning over the bed from the side that didn''t have the dead body and was shaking me by my shoulder. "Are you okay?" Chantelle asked. "You''re covered in blood." "I''m fine," I said. "It''s mostly the assassin''s blood, I think. Some of it might be mine, though, come to think of it. I''m dealing with it, the organisation that Shade is a part of sent him." "What about Shade?" Chantelle asked. "I liked her. And what is with the spikes of lust you felt? You feel... odd." "I isolated Shade as a Demi-AI," I said. "And I have my consciousness split into her body as well, which is very distracting and probably the oddness you felt. The lust was... I felt up the new body to get a rise out of Shade. I''ll be using the body to get to the head of their organisation." "Typical," Chantelle said with a smile. "I''ll leave you to it, then. But try to be safer? I don''t like you being in so much pain." "I will," I said. "I''ll put stone over the portal at the top of the fortress that you and the assassin came through. It''s been there since I set up the Fortress and I had glossed over it as a security hole, it was convenient when there weren''t as many people in the Fortress." Chantelle nodded, placed her hand on my chest and kissed me. Which caused both of my bodies to react. Having multiple bodies was more trouble than it was worth. Chantelle stood back up and then grimaced in distaste at the blood that covered her hand, and some had gotten on her dress as well. I ran my power over the two of us and the feeling of steel wool scouring our skin accompanied a gentle breeze as I turned the grime and gore into air.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. Chantelle kissed me again and then left through the portal back into the fortress. As soon as she was gone I moved a slab of stone over it, incorporating the two presences into it. Which reminded me that I wasn''t getting any of the feeds from the presences, as they were all routed through to me using the interface that Shade had forced me to close off. It was the work of only a few minutes to repair the connections I had smashed. I was notified of three portal connections I had missed in the time I was down, which I waved away. They were connecting through now. I shifted my focus back to my digital self in Shade''s simulation and played back what she had been saying at faster speed. Accusations of ignoring her, insults, justifications of her actions. She was in the middle of talking about the indignities that the First had forced on her when I caught up. "I am going to go have a talk with the First," I said. "I avoid him as much as possible," Shade said. "I never go there voluntarily. His guards always strip me, of weapons. They''re under his protection, and my oath forces me to obey them." I sighed. It would have been nice to know that before I''d taken the body. I pulled up the model of Shade''s body and added the retractable claws from my model, adjusting them to fit the Forest Keeper''s longer fingers. After a bit of thought and design I added a larger retractable claw that would emerge from the end of the tail. Loading up the repair program, it would take a minute and a half in serial mode. I wasn''t in any rush at this point so I set it to that and triggered the program. I came to with both of my bodies curled up, hugging their knees, and the Forest Keeper tail was wrapped tightly around me. I stood up and extended the claws from my fingers, at full extension there was two centimeters of claw past the tip of my fingers, and the pad of the fingers to the first joint was split by the claw as well. Next I extended the claw at the end of my tail. It was much longer, and thicker, extending ten centimeters, and was more of a spike than the curves of the claws on my fingers were. "What have you done to me?" Shade asked. "You said the guards would take any weapons," I said. "They won''t take these." I slashed down across the wooden railing I was standing at with one hand and then the other, leaving large gouges in the wood, and then stabbed through the wood with the spike on my tail. I nodded in satisfaction and retracted all of the claws. "I can remove them from the body before I return it," I said. "I don''t mind either way." "That won''t be necessary," Shade said. "The feedback from my, your, the, senses indicates that it''s painful to do, but it will be nice to have a backup." "Where can I find the First?" I asked. "He lives and works out of a warehouse on the other side of the Heart," Shade said. "I have guards that will escort you through the city, one of them is outside the door." She created a map that floated in the air of the simulation, showing the way down the street to the right. I waited for a gap in the flow of pedestrians on the street below me and vaulted the railing, dropping the five meters and coming up in a roll. Several Forest Keepers were staring at me as I made my way down the street. "Subtle," Shade said. Shade''s directions took me on a nearly direct route through the city, only avoiding the Heart of the Forest tree in the center, and I was to the back door of the warehouse within five minutes with no troubles. The door itself, however, was magically locked. "You can unlock it," Shade said. "You just have to do this." She sent me a data packet, which I sandboxed and then opened. It was a direct walk-through of how to open the lock, like a matching combination in magical symbols. I followed along and was surprised when it actually worked. There was a muscle memory involved that made it almost automatic, I just had to think the right symbols in mana to make, and the door swung open. There were two Forest Keepers standing at the end of the hall on either side of a door, and they both began grinning when they saw me enter. "The First is here," Shade said. "Those are his main enforcers. You''re in it now, they won''t let you back out." I walked down the hall and came to a stop two meters in front of them. "I''m here to see the First," I said. "You know how it goes," the first guard said. "Place your hands on the wall and spread your legs. You''re overdressed for a visit." Shade wasn''t saying anything, so I followed his instructions expecting him to frisk me for weapons. He slowly drew his dagger and stepped close behind me, pressing my tail against me and slipping the edge of the dagger under the hem of my dress. There was a tearing sound as he slid it upwards. When he got to the top he grabbed a bunch of the fabric at my back and tore the rest of the dress off leaving me naked. He grabbed my tail and pulled on it roughly, moving it out of the way. "You mean to rape me, then," I said. "I really would advise against it. Go tell your boss that I want a word with him." "It''s been a while since you tried to resist," the first guard said. "By your oath you are bound, Greenleaf. You will take what we give you, and then the First can have you." He ran his hand up between my legs. Before he could reach what he was aiming for I extended the claw in my tail and stabbed it up through the under side of his jaw and into his brain. He fell to the floor with a twitch and I turned to the second guard as he drew his dagger. I extended the claws on both of my hands and with my left hand sliced through the wrist of the hand holding the dagger, my right went through his throat. I turned around fully and watched the second guard die, bleeding out on the floor of the hall, feeling entirely satisfied. I retracted all of my claws and knocked firmly on the door. Chapter 133 - Nightmare There were some things I wanted to know before the door opened, so I sent a request for Shade to increase the speed of her simulation by a factor of two so that we could talk, which she did. "You''ve been quiet," I said. "Why did you let them get so far?" Shade asked in a subdued voice. "There are reactions that your body does by habit," I said. "Similar to the muscle memory you use to do things without thinking about them in detail, you have instinctive reactions to situations. You have been trained to submit in that situation, and I went along with it for as long as I cared to. I also wanted to give them the chance to heed my warning and survive." It didn''t look like the door was going to open at my first knock. Which was probably a good thing, it gave me some more time to prepare. I didn''t have any experience with casting magic, so I would want to think of something else to use against the First. "If you show the same mercy to the First then my body will be tortured and killed," Shade said. "Though as you''re standing there covered in the blood of people loyal to the First you won''t likely get the chance to be merciful." "Tell me about the First," I said. "What is his preferred way of dealing with things?" I had a listing of everyone who had an inventory and looked up whether Shade had one and where it was located. It turned out she did, and one of the rarer medium Bags of Holding. It had security sensors monitoring it, which included a ten centimeter by ten centimeter portal that was within easy range of my Matter Manipulation power. I extended my power through it, and then through the opening of the bag of holding, soaking it into the surroundings. It was in the blood soaked rags that were once my dress, and from the placement it seemed like it had been carried between my breasts. I picked it up out of the dress as Shade was talking. "The First is an illusion specialist," Shade said. "He can make you experience the most horrific scenes if you disappoint him, and he has executed people by driving them mad first. He uses it as a combat ability by completely masking his presence, you can be sure that wherever you see him in a fight, if you try to engage him there, he won''t truly be there." I passed a thread portal with an exit point in a new portal room, complete with presence, through the sequence of portals ending with it coming out of Shade''s Bag of Holding. I opened it up to its full size and laid it on the ground near the bodies. "Where did that come from?" Shade asked. "It isn''t mine, but that''s my storage space." "The portal system is entirely mine," I said. "And I created the inventory system. I can do pretty much anything I wish with it, and I wish for a place to deposit the corpses so that they don''t attract negative attention." "You created the inventory system..." Shade said, trailing off. "Mostly, yes," I said. "It was partly negotiated with the world after I broke it a bit." I had no trouble soaking my power into the dead bodies, moving them along the wood floor and through the portal. "You..." Shade said. "There is still blood everywhere, and you''re covered in it." That was simple to fix. I used my power to convert all of the blood, from my skin and fur, the hallway, and my discarded dress into air. I folded down the thread portal and placed it into the Bag of Holding, gripping that with my tail. I knocked on the door again, more firmly this time, and there was a response this time that I couldn''t make out through the door, which stayed closed. "Are the stories they tell about you really true?" Shade asked. "I don''t know," I said. "I have a recording of the storytelling room of the druids where they tell stories, and some of those stories were about me the last time I checked. But I haven''t listened to any of them in years in relative time. I''m not sure what it''s been in normal time."Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. "Are you immortal?" Shade asked. "I am," I said. "But then, so are you, theoretically. Just as you don''t have a living body right now, any Demi-AI who dies I can give a new body to." "Have you died before?" Shade asked. "My body has died, yes," I said. "And you came back from the dead," Shade said. "Did you fight a god''s avatar and win?" "I revived my body," I said. "I didn''t fight an avatar of the winter god, just a head priest with the mantle of his god''s power. And I killed him, yes. It is unwise to threaten those I care about, which is a lesson you should pay attention to." "Are you as altruistic as you are portrayed?" Shade asked. "I don''t know how I''m portrayed," I said. "I''ve set the Fortress up to be a place of abundance, and a lot of that is at my expense... But I have also killed thousands who were sent to take what was mine, and I''m sure they would have a different opinion." "Did you really create life from nothing?" Shade asked. "I did," I said. "Are you going to continue to ask questions?" The transparent image of Shade bit her bottom lip in the simulation. "Just two more," Shade said. "Are you a God? And, is the world really ending?" "I should have been told if I were a God, I think," I said, which made Shade frown. "As far as I know I''m not classified as a God. And the world ending is why I made this Fortress, for people to survive the end. I''ve since been tasked with saving the world from the gods that want to end it." None of her questions were about my combat ability, which I found interesting, or about the fortress itself, or the System. I''m sure the questions would have come up if I hadn''t caused her to become self-conscious about asking. I knocked on the door a third time and a few seconds later it was yanked inwards, slamming against the inside wall to reveal an angry looking Forest Keeper a head shorter than me. "That''s the First," Shade said. "What, damn you both-" the First said. "Where are my boys, Greenleaf, and what are you doing here?" I ducked my head meekly. "I came to tell you about the Lord of the Fortress," I said. "The hall was empty when I came in." The First grunted and came out into the hallway, pushing me to the side and looking around. Not finding anything he turned back to me. "It is good that you got yourself ready for me even without the encouragement of my boys," the First said. "Who will be getting some new nightmares for leaving my door unguarded." There was a tugging on my mind, like the nudging that I used to get from the simulation before it turned into the System but much less sophisticated. I disliked having my mind messed with. I still had my power extended into the wood of the hallway and pushed it upwards looking for a blank space where the First was. There wasn''t a blank space where my eyes could see him standing, but there were two that were the size of his feet next to me, walking back through the doorway. I shifted my tail so that my body blocked the First from seeing the Bag of Holding and pushed against the pressure in my mind. My magic jumped to obey me, the symbols forming within the same space as my brain, and the First snapped into view in front of me looking shocked. He also looked, and smelled, a lot worse, with mangy fur that was missing in clumps. "By your oath you are bound, Greenleaf," the First said quickly. "Freeze. Stop whatever you are doing. Don''t look at me." I kept the spell going and moved my tail so that my left hand, that was out of the First''s view, could grab the thread portal out of my Bag of Holding. The First was muttering to himself and casting another spell. I had the thread portal in my hand and was extending it out into a circle that I could drop over the First''s head and body. He finished his spell first and my spell flickered out. There was a disorientating moment when I felt myself fall, landing in an ocean of blood. At the same time I had my power soaked into my Forest Keeper body, still standing in the hallway. I swam my way to the surface, wiping the blood from my eyes when I got there. Something rough, like sandpaper, bumped against my leg from below and I saw a huge black dorsal fin break through the blood several meters in front of me. My heart was racing, pumping adrenaline through me. Fear and panic gripped me far stronger than I''d ever felt before. I was certain this giant thing was going to eat me. I dropped into my own simulation and maximised my time perception, leaving the emotions behind. They had been so strong that they had sucked my focus in, not allowing me to think anything else. Only my reaction to dangerous situations, increasing the speed of my digital side, had saved me. Looking over my Forest Keeper body, it had been sent to sleep and locked down with sleep paralysis. I had experienced it before, and had escaped it by sending a shock of electricity into my brain, jolting me awake. This was a spell-induced sleep which might not react the same, but in the worst case I could burn out my consciousness from the body and come back with my real body. I charged up the shock to be sent, overriding the warnings of the Mind Link, and sent it. I wasn''t eager to go back to what the body was feeling so I spent the hour that it took for it to arrive studying magic from the two primers I had. The First had taken two steps through the doorway in the time it took me to wake up. The sleep paralysis hadn''t worn off completely, but I managed to step towards him. He was turning towards me when I slammed the thread portal down over him, sending him sprawling into the portal room on the other side. Chapter 134 - Interrogation The portal was flat on the wooden floor, showing the stone wall of the portal room in a circle. It was possible that the First would be able to pick the portal up from the other side and squeeze back into the room, so I moved it into the wall of the portal room and up onto the stone roof. Reforming the portal into a square doorway I stepped through it onto the flat expanse of stone that made up the roof of the portal rooms. I was near the outer edge in darkness, looking back towards the center of the Pocket Dimension I could see the floodlights that lit it up. I folded the portal up so that it was a double line of thread and used my power to push it into the wooden wall, hiding it in the First''s room. It only occurred to me now that none of the wood there was enchanted, which would have made the whole attack more complicated. I pulled up the feed from the presence in the portal room below me and reconnected to Shade''s simulation, sharing the feed with her. Which was showing the black of a complete absence of light. "You let him live," Shade said. "Why?" "My original intention was to talk to him first," I said. "And I was setting up to capture him into the stone cell that he is in when he used that nightmare spell on me. After that it was simpler and faster to continue the original plan than come up with something else." "What are you going to do with him now?" Shade asked. "And what will happen to me now that I''ve fulfilled my part?" "I want to ask him some questions," I said. "As for you, you might want to take some time to think on whether you will attack me again. Give me your answer after you have given it some thought." I used the presence in the room below to project my voice, using my human voice as the template, and cleared my throat. "Hello, is someone there?" the First asked. "I''m here, yes," I said. "I''m bringing some lights for the room. They get added after new rooms are set up and need them, and this is a fresh room. What is it that I should call you? I know you''re known as the First, but that hardly seems appropriate." "Bale," Bale said. "And who are you, what is this?" "Your name is Bale?" I asked. It seemed odd, given the plant themed names of all of the other Forest Keepers I''d heard. "Balefultree," Bale said. "I was not well regarded by the namer at my coming of age, not with my magic affinity and affliction. She paid for it dearly at a later time, but I am still stuck with the name." "Did you send an assassin to kill me?" I asked. "So you''re the Lord of the Fortress, then," Bale said. "Yes, I sent the assassin. I wanted to take over the fortress and rule from behind the scenes. From the myths that surrounded you that didn''t sound possible with you still alive." "Why are you being so forthcoming?" I asked. "People have tried to kill me before," Bale said. "Those that didn''t cooperate or that I caught in a lie I made suffer before putting them down. Between the two I would rather die quickly. I do have a question, though. How did you get Greenleaf to turn against me? There should have been no way around her oath, I''ve spent years perfecting the wording." "Greenleaf didn''t put you in this cell," I said. "I did." "Are you some sort of mimic, then?" Bale asked. "That wasn''t in any of the intelligence that I had gathered, and some of that was exaggerated to the extent of being unbelievable." "No, in this instance I wasn''t mimicking Shade," I said. "I took her body in response to her participation in the attack against me. She''s actually listening to this conversation now." "You can possess people like the Gods can?" Bale asked. "But even they are limited to their own priests." The lights had arrived. I could have gotten them pretty much immediately through the Bag of Holding that was still being held by my tail, but I wasn''t in any rush, happy to have the background processes take care of it. Unlike the portals that moved around in the walls of the block of portal rooms, the lights came over the roof toward me. There were three of them, and they were already lit up, shining into the air and spilling light around them. They reached me and then spread out in a line, flipped over to face down, and sank into the stone, plunging me back into darkness.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! The portal room lit up as the lights pushed through to sit in the roof. Bale was standing just past the two bodies of his people that I had dumped there. He looked at them for a few moments and then looked around the rest of the room before going to a corner and huddling down. "So, you''ve stripped me of my magic so everyone can see how repulsive I am," Bale said. "Are you going to kill me or make me suffer." "I haven''t decided yet," I said. "There is a third option, which will involve some suffering, but we aren''t there yet. What was your plan for dealing with Chantelle? Practically speaking she is in charge of the Fortress right now, I just deal with whatever occurs to me." "The Lady of the Fortress?" Bale asked. "She has family that would be leverage enough to convince her to meet. And then nightmares applied in the correct way, she would beg to swear an oath that would bind her to my will." A surge of anger from my human body pulled my focus there, where my fists were clenched. I took several deep breaths there to calm down before returning to Shade''s simulation. "You are leaving some things unsaid, judging by how you treated Shade," I said. "I don''t like people who abuse others. If we are to come to any sort of understanding then the abuse will stop. Or I will kill you." "You would have me swear an oath to it?" Bale asked. "Why the threat?" "I don''t have much trust in oaths, they''re for others to feel more comfortable," I said. "For example, your concept of abuse probably differs from mine. Forcing someone to swear an oath to you and then using that oath to rape them, or force them to do anything against their principles, would get you killed regardless of how you viewed the situation." "That sounds capricious," Bale said. "Not that I am in any place to argue, but how are you going to police your policy?" I paused to think, dropping back into my personal simulation. Really, this was something that I would want to apply to all of the citizens of the fortress. So a variation on a quest, something that a citizen could send from anywhere asking for help. There were truth enchantments that could be placed on crystals, like the one Magus Steelborn had in his shop. The victim and the perpetrator could then be questioned to avoid false reports. Tie in a hook so that if anyone had an oath that prevented them from sending a request for help a separate request for help would be sent immediately. I bundled the whole jumble of concepts up and sent it at my interface to the System and a window returned showing the progress.
New functionality requested
Submitting request... Request deemed out of scope... Exploring workarounds using existing systems... Multiple exploits found that would provide requested functionality... Skipping redundant calculation of probability that sentient designated ''C.C.'' will exploit the System... Resubmitting request with attached data... Requested functionality approved... Adding ''Citizen Panic Button'' explanation to new citizen dialog... Sending ''Citizen Panic Button'' explanation to existing citizens... Done.
Citizen Panic Button
Citizens of the Fortress may now send an alert for help by intent command anywhere they are. An alert for help will automatically be sent if the World Magic suppresses this ability. Alerts will be responded to by representatives of the Fortress who will make determinations at the scene, using truth enchantments on those involved. Abuse will not be tolerated in the Fortress
The window explaining the new feature popped up next to the progress window. I was considered a citizen already without explicitly signing up. I got a ping from Jeff, the human mage leader of the Fortress Army, and opened a communication channel to him. "My lord, I just received a dozen Panic Alerts," Jeff said. "They all have location indicators attached to them. What are your orders?" I should have been expecting that with the automatic alert. "Can any of you cast a truth detection spell, or enchant the truth spell on a mana crystal?" I asked. "No, my lord," Jeff said. "Talk with Gerry or Lizzie about finding Ailfrid, he can," I said. "Gerry will be able to put you in touch with Magus Steelborn as well. I don''t know if he sells truth crystals, but he had one and may know where you can buy more. Your orders are to resolve the alerts using your best judgement." "Yes, my lord," Jeff said and closed the communication channel. It was good to have reliable people. I returned to Shade''s simulation and normal time. "I assume you are a citizen," I said through the presence in Bale''s cell. "That should answer your question as to how I am going to police abuse against my citizens." "I am, yes," Bale said. "I see. You are able to bend the world to your will at a casual remark. I submit to your judgement." I began pushing my power against him, adapting his magic so that we could affect each other. "If you use your nightmare spell on me again you won''t like the result," I said. "I understand," Bale said. "What are you doing?" "Preparing your punishment," I said. "Which is?" Bale asked. "Pain," I said. "But with a purpose." My power broke through and I built up a complete scan of his body. There were multiple things wrong with it, his entire skeleton was compressed, there were weeping sores all over him, and he was half blind in one eye and completely blind in the other. He must have been using illusions on himself to trick his senses into not feeling the pain his body must be in constantly. I had multiple other Forest Keeper models to draw from and I used them to fix all of Bale''s physical problems. Without warning him I triggered the repair program and let it run. It was about halfway finished when Chantelle sent me a message telling me that Shawn was looking for me. Chapter 135 - Rehabilitation Shawn... I had to scan back through my memories for a minute before I remembered who that was. The human who was living with the druids, a priest of the god of summer. I wanted to keep my focus on Bale for when the repair of his body was finished, so I sent a return message to Chantelle telling her that I would go find Shawn after I finished what I was doing here. A few moments later Chantelle messaged me back, Shawn would be waiting with her in the ward room when he was done. Shawn had gone there after finding the portal at the top of the fortress blocked. Which was a problem. Not that Shawn was there, but that it was simple to get into the ward room, which was a very sensitive area with the potential for a huge disaster if someone unfriendly got inside. There was a whole section in the primer that Chantelle had given me on warding devoted to not exposing mana crystals to stresses. Apparently every few decades someone would get the idea to try to research controlled detonation of tiny mana crystals, but the list of effects was too random. Chantelle''s mother had banned anyone from doing the research after the last woman had somehow caused a rift that killed her and her family after at least ten experiments of minor effects. Which was all to say that the ward room should be a secure area. It was simple enough to do, as well, just fill in the doorway and put a portal where it was. Then have Chantelle be the only person who could access the portal through the portal network. I sent Chantelle a summation of my thoughts and dropped a new thread portal through the presence that was over the ward room table, moving it over to the doorway before filling the doorway in with stone. Bale''s repair was almost done when I got a communication request from Jeff again. With a sigh I dropped my time perception and accepted. Really, I just wanted to get back to creating things for the fortress. "My lord, Ailfrid is willing to help us, but he has a request," Jeff said. "He wants to know if he could have an upgrade to his future large Bag of Holding so that magic will work inside the space, as well as the Fortress Coins for the quest. I told him that I would need to get approval for the unique award, and then I was told to speak with you." It would be a simple matter of having a double portal so that the storage area of the bag was back in the outer world. I could make it in a vault room in the fortress, though if it was only going to be a one-off then the ward room floor would work well enough. "You have approval," I said. "I didn''t know you were on the list to be able to generate quests." "I''m not, my lord," Jeff said. "I generate a quest using the template and then pass it to one of the leaders for approval, and they generate the quest. Is that not how you meant for it to work?" "Honestly, I hadn''t given it any thought," I said. "I like that the Demi-AI are taking the initiative in using the flexibility of the System. Good work, carry on." Jeff sent an acknowledgement and closed the communication channel. I returned to normal time and waited for Bale''s repair to finish. When it did the first thing that Bale did was stand up from where he was still huddled in the corner, stretching up onto his toes, his arms up in the air, and his tail bristling and sticking out in a straight line behind him. "Am I dead, then?" Bale asked. "I can''t access my magic still, but the pain is gone as though it never existed." Bale settled back down on his heels. He was twenty centimeters taller than before the repair, his fur was glossy, and his skin healthy. "You aren''t dead," I said. "The pain was from the repair, once it was done your body was in perfect condition, there was nothing left to cause pain." "No, I don''t mean that pain, though that was worse," Bale said. "There was a curse on my bloodline from my grandfather''s time. He upset someone with a gift for curses, who placed an unbreakable curse of misery on him and his descendants. That you just broke."This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. It did take a few minutes longer than I was expecting for my power to push into Bale, but I had put that down to him having a larger than normal mana pool. At my best guess, draining his mana starved the curse of its mana source and it simply broke when it couldn''t draw on any ambient mana from the environment. "I will go straight," Bale said. "I swear my loyalty to you, unreservedly." "I don''t need you to go straight," I said. "Your leaving the criminal world would leave a power vacuum that someone else would just fill. It is possible, perhaps even likely, that Shade would come out on top, but I assume it would be a messy process." "You aren''t against criminals?" Bale asked. "Not particularly," I said. "As I told Shade when she wanted to become a Demi-AI, I believe that criminals are inevitable to cities, and that they provide work for various professions that exist to stop or catch them. And more specifically, I would prefer organised criminals who will adhere to and even enforce my policy against abuse." "I see," Bale said. "And if I don''t want to run the criminal organisation within the Fortress any longer?" "You are free to do as you wish," I said. "You truly aren''t going to force my actions?" Bale asked. "Well, I do have a request," I said. "Stop using the slavery-type oaths. Or, more specifically, use a tightly bound oath that forbids the use of tightly bound oaths except in the case of propagating this one oath." "You want to use oaths to break oaths that force obedience," Bale said. "Your wording won''t work, but I will come up with something that will. Consider it done." I pulled the exit portal from the wooden wall in Bale''s warehouse and reshaped it into a doorway, sending the Pocket Dimension side down into the portal room below, fixing it to the wall in front of Bale. He was about to step through when he hesitated, turning back to face the room. "Those are my boys," Bale said, looking to the two corpses in the end of the room. "Why were they killed?" "They were warned," I said. "They didn''t heed the warning. I welcome you to share the story as an example of my lack of tolerance when it comes to abuse of anyone within the Fortress. After all-" I dropped myself, in my Forest Keeper body, down through the stone of the roof and landed lightly a meter away from Bale. "-I could be anyone," I said from Shade''s body. Bale looked at me and frowned before stepping through the portal. I followed him through and picked up the thread portal behind me, putting it back in Shade''s inventory. I turned to go down the hall to the outside. "Ah, excuse me," Bale said, calling after me. "If you go out like that in the middle of the day you''ll be arrested. You seem unaware that you are nude." Right. I hadn''t been paying it any attention, an odd combination of a lack of self-consciousness due to it not being my body, and a lack of attraction due to it being the body I was in. I had gotten Shade''s dress ruined, it was laying on the floor a few meters away. But I could do better than simply repairing it. I dropped my time perception in my personal simulation and began scanning through the different material I had to work with. There was an enormous range of different types of cloth in the fortress storage. And with being able to equip clothing from the inventory, a trick that the general population probably didn''t know about yet, I was able to design a very impractical dress. A red silk outer layer, combined with a black stretchable material for the inner layer that formed to the body perfectly. I set the creation job to urgent and returned to normal time, continuing to walk down the hall. I had to pause for a few seconds with my hand on the handle before receiving a notification that the dress was ready and equipping it. My breasts were pushed up and together, and my waist was pulled in slightly. I was able to take a deep breath, but it took some effort, the dress encouraging shallow breaths. I opened the door and stepped out, flicking my tail forward to get the red silk ribbon clear of the door before I closed it. I set off walking back to Shade''s house half-automatically as I pulled up the connection to the presence in the ward room. Chantelle and Shawn were both still there, Shawn standing against the wall out of the way. "What do you need, Shawn?" I asked through the presence. Shawn looked up at the presence in the ceiling, and then around the room. "Can the Gods hear us here?" Shawn asked. "The entire fortress is warded against the gods," Chantelle said. "You''re free to speak." "The Head Priest of Summer needs your help to escape, Lord C.C.," Shawn said. "And perhaps with help in killing the God of Winter." Killing the gods. That was a solution I hadn''t considered. And maybe the god of summer would be reasonable and stop the end of the world. It probably wouldn''t work out that way, but killing him if he tried to continue the apocalypse should be possible if killing the god of winter was. It sure beat the plan I had been considering. Covering the world in anti-god wards, which could easily be broken by the Instructor. Chapter 136 - Conflict I looked down at Shawn through the digital presence in the roof of the ward room. He was looking up with his hands clasped, and his eyes were wide. I''d spoken to the druids through a digital presence before, and he lived with them so he should have heard about it. "Why are you coming to me now?" I asked. "It''s been some time since John left with the enemy champion-" Days, at least, though I feel as though I''ve lived years since then. "-And he had to have left willingly for the teleportation to have worked at all." "The Head Priest wrote you a note," Shawn said. "I went to the building you made for him half an hour ago to clean it, dusting and sweeping and such. It took me a few minutes to find you." "Alright, show me the note, then," I said. "Just place it on the table and I''ll be able to see it." "Ah..." Shawn said. "I left the note where it was in the Head Priest''s private quarters. I didn''t clean the room either, I thought you might have wanted to see where it was written, or something. I could go get it and bring it back here?" "No, I''ll go there," I said. "Please meet me there." There must be something unusual for him not to have picked it up to begin with. At least there was enough of a chance that it would be worth looking for myself. I stood up from the bed that my body was in, and promptly fell over as my split focus caused Shade''s body to trip, both bodies reacting to the fall. I had Shade''s body walking with the equivalent of sleepwalking, background processes in control of the movements. Apparently when I tried to move both bodies at once there was a conflict, unexpected input pulled my focus rapidly between the two bodies. It wasn''t a simple matter of more inputs and outputs, my consciousness was overriding and interfering with the digital queue of commands. This wasn''t going to work. I set both bodies to stay where they''d fallen down and sent my focus back to the local simulation and the display of the ward room. Shawn was just turning to leave. "I have to finish my current project first," I said into the ward room. "It will be a few minutes, then I will come and see you." "Yes, my lord," Shawn said, bowing. "I will wait at the Head Priest''s building, at your convenience." I kept Shade''s body still while I got my own body back up onto the bed. I was mostly up when someone shook Shade''s body''s shoulder, distracting me. I grunted with her body and got the rest of the way onto the bed before turning my full focus back to Shade''s body. My own body should hopefully stop grabbing my focus now. I had fallen on my face in the middle of the street with Shade''s body, and the person was shaking my shoulder again. "Miss?" The person asked. "Miss, are you alright? Please say something." I pushed myself up to a sitting position. My breasts hurt, as did my face. I hadn''t even been able to get my hands in front of myself when I fell. My right eye was blinded by the blood I could feel running down my face from a gash on my brow. I soaked my power into the body through her bag of holding to assess the extent of the damage. Entirely minor damage, deep bruising of the breasts and a small cut. I wouldn''t even need to do a full repair that would black me out, a constant effort at high but tolerable amounts of pain would do. I stopped the cut from bleeding and began reversing the deep bruising of my breasts, looking around me. There was a crowd of Forest Keepers surrounding me, looking on with concern. To my right there was a man who still had his hand on my shoulder, he was dressed like he might be a guard. "Miss, we''ve sent for a healer," the guard said. "Just stay there. Can you speak?" I frowned at him. "I''ll be fine," I said. "What are you doing shaking someone who has a head wound? That seems highly irresponsible, what if you did more damage?" He frowned right back at me. "I wanted to be sure you were-" he said. "Uhuh," I said, interrupting him. "Sure. You can let go of me now." I went to stand up and his grip tightened on my shoulder, pushing me back down. I raised an eyebrow at him. "Are you a guard?" I asked. He pushed out his chest and looked down his nose at me. "I am, ye-" he said.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. "I guessed as much," I said. "I never seem to get along very well with guards, they always think they know better than I do about what I should be doing. They''ve yet to be correct in that regard." "Now see here," the guard said. "Just sit quietly until my partner gets back with the healer to check you out." Yeah, no. This was such a waste of time. I considered for a few moments how much later effort I would need to put in. The guard was just doing his job as well as he could, as he saw it. One more warning, then, and I would fix it later if I needed to. "I am warning you, by Lord C.C.''s authority, either you will remove your hand or I will," I said. There was a blip from the System when I claimed my authority, but I didn''t catch what it was. The guard''s grip tightened further and he used his other hand to wave through the air. "Who are you to use the authority of the Lord of the Fortress?" he asked. "And how are you making blue screens, are you some sort of illusionist?" I''d generated a system message in my annoyance, somehow, and the guard still wouldn''t hear me. "Tell Mal''Thorn that I, C.C., will repair the damage I''ve done," I said. "And that his guards will learn to hear those who speak with my authority." "What?" the guard asked. I extended the claws on my left hand and soaked my power into them, reinforcing and sharpening them. The guard was wearing metal arm guards over leather, which didn''t help at all as my claws went through them like a knife through butter. My right hand catching his right hand as it detached from his arm. I expected him to shout or scream. He just stood there in shock. The crowd that was surrounding us made a larger clear area, some of them shouting for more guards. I pushed heat into the metal on the back of the hand I was holding until it began to glow and then used that to cauterise his arm to stop it bleeding. That caused him to scream and fall backwards, sitting down. I stood up and pulled the heat back from the metal on his hand and passed it to him. "Just sit quietly until your partner gets back with the healer to check you out," I said. "Then go see Mal''Thorn about the hand." I felt a bit gross. There was a good amount of blood on me, from my head wound that had bled a lot, and from the guard. Some had even gotten into my ear. Ick. I spread my power out over my skin, the silk of my dress, and then over the ground as well as I saw the small puddle of blood I had left there. There was a small gust of wind that made the spectators move even further back as the blood converted into fresh air. I looked around to get my bearings and then headed back towards Shade''s house, the crowd scrambling to get out of my way. I reconnected to Shade''s digital platform while I was walking, the people ahead of me continuing to move out of my way. "What in the Realms are you doing with my body?" Shade asked, loudly, as soon as I connected with her. "I''m putting it back where I took it from," I said. "And you thought maiming a guard was a good idea?" Shade asked. "You seem upset," I said. "I am taking responsibility for my actions, even if they were done with your body. I will restore the guard, and I won''t be unnecessarily obstructed in the future." "You don''t think that they will take it out on me?" Shade asked, in a more normal tone and volume. "I don''t," I said. "And if they do then you can easily tell me and I will inform them of their error." I had gotten fifty meters further along the street and people had stopped moving out of my way immediately. "You''re giving my body back to me, then," Shade said. "That was the agreement, yes," I said. "You aren''t going to make me swear a more binding oath to you?" Shade asked. "Loyalty, non-violence towards you, anything?" "I''m not," I said. "It would be annoying if you attacked again, but that is all that it would be, an annoyance. If you want your existence ended just tell me, much less irritation and effort for both of us. I''m not going to limit your freedoms, but I will end you if you attempt to harm those I care about." I had arrived back in front of the balcony I had jumped from, Shade''s house, if it was a house. The top of the railing was five meters above the ground, two and a half times the height of Shade''s body. A vertical jump to that height wasn''t possible in Shade''s body, though I might have been able to make it with my own body. I didn''t really want to go through the door that was in the wooden wall in front of me and deal with more guards, even if they would listen to me while I was in Shade''s body. I pushed my power out into the wooden wall and took two steps back to get a running start. I extended my claws and dodged around three people before leaping up, stabbing into the wood. There was a thud sound as my claws found purchase, followed by a scratching sound as I pulled one hand out and stabbed further up, swinging my body as I began to climb. I fixed the holes I had made as I went. It only took me a few seconds to climb up and over the railing. Guards burst through the front door out into the street and through the door into the room behind the balcony. They rushed towards me as I stood up, coming to a stop as I waved them back. "Leave," I said. "I will come see you in a few minutes." The guard in the lead nodded to me and he and the three others left, closing the door behind them. I walked into the room and laid down on the couch that was along one wall. I was done having two bodies. If I had to do this in the future I was going to burn my consciousness out of my main body first, there were too many conflicts. I pulled up my repair program and put it in parallel mode, targeting to burn out my consciousness from Shade''s body all at once. Shade hadn''t even seemed to notice that she had lost her body, so I was hopeful that it wouldn''t hurt too much. I triggered the program and there was a brief flash of pain followed by what felt like an intense full body itch over my body and my digital platform. I could feel my consciousness rebalancing between my two halves and it was not pleasant at all. It was the work of only a few seconds to cut my connection to Shade''s Mind Link and repair it back to her digital platform, and a few seconds more to repair her brain so that her consciousness shared back to her body. All that was left was reconnecting her to the common simulation and everyone else. "Disable and remove all of the annoyances you set up, please," I said. "You should have full access to everything again." I disconnected from the dedicated connection to her. I needed to go see what message John had left me. Chapter 137 - Note I got up from my bed and took a few moments to look around my Pocket Dimension. My power was threaded throughout the place over hundreds of meters, so I was aware of everything that was happening at some level, but I hadn''t stopped to just look in quite some time. There were lights all over allowing me to see the large expanse of stone that went off in two directions, one being the inventory storage spaces and portal rooms, and the other the stockpile of stone from excavating the floors of the fortress. In another direction was the stone wall that blocked the portal to the top floor of the fortress, as well as my Mind Link and digital platform hardware, and the hardware for the digital platforms of the other Demi-AI. There were more than twenty of the simple-looking boxes stacked in neat rows, with two of them being taller than the rest, my own and the one that is running the common simulation. More memory and processing power is just added on top as it''s needed. My digital platform hardware was over twice the height of the common simulation, and as I watched a new layer was being added to the top of it. There must be a better solution than individual clumps of computers, as there were enough of them by this point that there was a loss of efficiency for each new person added. Next to them was a large cube of metal, the battery that ran everything electrical in this space. It was markedly larger than the last time I''d taken notice of it, a quick check showed that it was expanded automatically so that it always held enough power to run everything connected to it for a week. In the final direction was the storage grid for the Fortress Storage. It extended out into the distance and there was constant movement as things disappeared and were replaced. There were small lights at every grid intersection, and there were thousands of bays for the storage of everything that was added to the fortress. Finished with my inspection of the Pocket Dimension I headed to the portal that led to the top floor of the fortress, moving the stone that was blocking it around me as I walked through it and onto the stair landing. As I walked down the stairs I thought back to the fight I''d had with Bale. It would have been much simpler to incapacitate him if my power worked on him. He would have a Bag of Holding, so I had access to him with my power with a little bit of effort. I implemented a process to run in the background to loop through every person who had a Bag of Holding and adapt them to my power, and to do the same for any new person who bought one. While I was at it I made it create a scan of the person after it was finished adapting them. That would reduce the time needed to upgrade anyone to Demi-AI to seconds, as well as give me a large database of models. I had walked down the stairs past the Druid''s floor while I was working on that, and had started to walk down past the third floor that held John''s building when Shawn got my attention from the front door, walking over. "Lord C.C.," Shawn said. "Are you still working on your other project?" "No, I was coming to see you," I said, walking back up the stairs. "I was just distracted, my feet were taking me down to the ward room, I think." I followed Shawn back to John''s building, through the front door and into the main room. There was a wooden partition that mostly closed off the stairs at the back of the room, and Shawn led me behind it and up them. The stairs led to a short attic space that we both had to kneel down to enter, it being only one meter high. Other than the height the room was quite spacious, matching the five meter by five meter dimensions of the floor below. It was also obviously where John had set up to sleep. There was an enchanted light in the ceiling lighting the room and Shawn pointed me to a desk that was against one of the walls. The first thing I noticed was the pile of ash that was in one corner, as though a stack of paper had been set alight. In the center of the desk was the note. Lord C.C., this other Champion has asked me to go with him, and in return he will not cause more harm to your fortress or the people who reside here. I am unable to stop him myself any other way, and my oath to you compels me to accept his offer. I would appreciate your help once again, and in return I offer my own help against the God of Winter - JohnA case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. He wanted me to rescue him again. I did feel some obligation to him if he was acting to help my people. I waved Shawn over to join me at the desk. "Is it normal for there to be ashes left on the desk?" I asked. "It isn''t," Shawn said. "Ordinarily waste paper is placed in the bin beside the table, and isn''t burnt at all." "And what do you think the ashes mean?" I asked. "I don''t know," Shawn said. "Perhaps they were accidentally set on fire, or it''s how the other Champion and the Head Priest were communicating. Or they are there for some other, unrelated, reason." I had used notes to get around the Gods listening in before, and they had been burned so that they wouldn''t be left behind for anyone else. The Instructor was allied with the God of Winter, though, and the God of Summer was deaf to the world behind his anti-god wards. It wasn''t a good answer. "Do you know where John is?" I asked. "Or how to find him?" "I don''t know where he is, no," Shawn said. "If I had my connection to my God I would be able to find him, but I don''t, and so I can''t. Is there no way for you to find him?" I did a quick scan through the people who had Bags of Holding, but he wasn''t one of them. "Hmm," I said. "There is..." I pulled out my pocket portal, shaping it into a doorway and moving the exit to a blank portal room. "There is... What?" Shawn asked. "I still have a portal in the jail under the fortress in the Mountain City," I said. "That''s where John was imprisoned last time, and it is simple enough to check. I''m moving its exit over to the portal room now, it will take a few seconds." I crawled through the portal into the portal room and stood up, stretching my back. The portal would open in the guard room, which by its purpose should have guards in it. I equipped my armour with a thought as the double line of steel thread came through the wall. The other side of the portal was hidden in the stone wall of the guard room. I pushed my power through the thin gap between the threads and used it to move the mortar out of the wall, followed by the thread portal, which I then reshaped into a doorway and stepped through. There were six guards sitting at the table in the room, playing cards. It wasn''t a game that I knew, but it had five of them on one side of the table with their backs to me, and only one on the other who could see me. He had moved to stand up before I had stepped through the portal, and after I had he froze, his face going white. "What are you doing Jim?" One of the other guards asked. "You still have two rounds as dealer." Jim shakily raised his left hand, pointing at me, his other going to the hilt of the sword he was wearing at his hip. "What are you playing at?" The same guard asked before turning to look over his shoulder. "Oi!" At his shout he jumped up, turning and drawing his sword at the same time, the other four guards following a few beats later. "Hello," I said. "My apologies for bothering you. I was looking for an acquaintance of mine, and last time he ended up here. I''ll just have a quick look in each of the rooms and take him if he''s there." "Hey, you can''t do that!" The same guard said. "There isn''t anything you can do to stop me," I said. I turned to the door of the room that John had been in the last time I''d been here. They''d improved the door latches since then, though still not enough to prevent me from cutting right through them. I turned to look back at the guards as the talkative one finished his overhand slash down into me, aiming to cut down through my neck and into my chest. My armour easily stopped the blow, but it drained more energy from the mana crystal powering the defences than I was expecting. Not enough to be worrying, but it must have been a magically empowered attack. It was a good sword, too, it didn''t break. "Could you open the doors, please?" I asked, completely ignoring his attack and the attacks that the other guards were preparing from my sides. "We are guarding the cells," the guard said. "Why would we open them for you?" "Because otherwise I will do something like this," I said. I was standing quite close to the door, so I pulled two throwing blades out of my inventory and used them to cut through the latch, and then both the hinges of the door, stepping to the side as it slowly began to fall into the guard room. There were three more impacts on my armour, draining the mana crystal to about half. The door fell with a dull boom, revealing an empty room. I moved to the second door, the one to the large room that had held Chantelle''s people when I was last here, dodging several strikes from the guards as I went. "Stop!" The guard said as I was lifting my throwing blades to take down the door. "I''ll open them." I nodded and stepped back, the guards stopping their attacks on me. The main guard opened the door to the room, which was empty, and then the door to the final room, which was also empty. I guess John being held here again would have been far too easy. "Thank you for your cooperation," I said. "I will leave you to your game." The guards all watched me intently as I stepped back through the portal, which I folded down into a doubled line of steel thread behind me and pushed back into the stone wall again.