Chapter Thirteen

As soon as the words left John’s lips the gem felt a deep revulsion. Its first instinct was to immediately reject the offer and cut off negotiations with John. The only thing that stopped it from doing that was the fact that it was communicating through Mav. When she felt the emotions and thoughts the gem was projecting Mav asked

“Why Holy Tree mad? Holy Tree level up many creatures.”

That stopped the gem in its tracks. Why was it mad? Why did it nearly cut off a useful resource over a fairly standard request? It tried to think if there was any reason it might feel that way, but couldn’t think of any. The final result that it came to was that its instinct was warning it against helping John. That wasn’t enough to stop it though. When it had first expanded outside of its caves its instinct had given it the same feeling of revulsion, but that decision was one of the key factors in its territory flourishing. That meant it could be wrong. Once it had that thought the gem directed Mav to start speaking to John again.

“The Holy Tree will negotiate. What you offer?”

“I was thinking that I could do some more tasks for you. If that isn’t enough then I could also try and order some resources for you that aren’t available here.” John said with a wide smile on his face.

That set the gem to thinking again. Were there enough tasks to pay for the level up? Making John stronger would increase the risk to its territory, take up a lot of effort, and probably leave the territory guarded only by its assistants for a few days. On top of that the revulsion was probably there for a reason. If it was going to make John stronger than it would have to come with a lot of strings attached. To see if the negotiation could continue the gem had Mav tell them the conditions it wasn’t willing to change.

“Holy Tree says two conditions on top of normal tasks. John no raid territory till bloodmages gone, and John bring back powerful creature for helping with defense. You agree?”

That made John hesitate a bit, but eventually he said “I can agree to that as long as you promise there will be a way for me to get blood river flowers. I’ll need them to fight the bloodmages.”

“Holy Tree agrees. Now we talk other tasks?” Mav said

John nodded and then they started talking. It took a while to eventually come to an agreement, but after some awkward back and forths they eventually met in the middle. The terms ended up being that John would bring back a creature that could fight a tier two adventurer once it was fully grown and he would bring more weeping willows. Next he would bring farming tools, recipes for fertilizer, and crop seeds. The final task they came to an agreement on was that John would bring a core or rune for an element that the gem does not have yet. Once John completed all those tasks the gem would do everything in its power to help him get to tier two safely. With negotiations done John and Sam left, and the gem started to work on its normal improvements to its territory.

First mundane improvements were made. Irrigation channels were made to help the drybolds farming and drainage ditches were made to prevent flooding. Next more light emitting gemstones were added to the farms. The amount that was already there helped with farming, but the plants were still growing a bit slowly and had droopy leaves so hopefully that would help.

With that done the gem started to work on its defenses. The last time that the blood mages had invaded they managed to hack their way straight through the undergrowth without losing any men. That wasn’t going to happen again. The first thing done to prevent that was adding new traps. The first of which was a swinging log trap. Where the branches were thick enough braided vines held fallen tree trunks aloft. Those logs were covered with the most poisonous plants that could survive up there, and could be triggered by the tripvines, the drybolds, or the gem itself.

The next traps it added were something it decided to use only as a last resort. After the last invasion there was a massive amount of fire and water attribute cores that the invaders hadn’t had time to harvest. While experimenting with them some of them had gotten so supercharged with mana that they couldn’t maintain their physical form any longer. Just like the drybolds that failed to level up to tier two, they exploded quite suddenly. Unlike the drybolds, blowing these up could be useful. When they exploded they liquified before sending a burst of sticky flaming hot liquid in all directions. Cores charged with enough mana to be on the verge of exploding were placed all over its territories. In the forest they were underground, ready to blow for anyone walking above, and in the caves they were placed in the ceilings to rain fire from above. They were sure to be problematic for any invaders.

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The only problem with them was that they were a bit too indiscriminate. When they went off they were sure to damage the invaders, but they were also going to light its plants, defenders, and anything else in the area on fire. Hence the only used as a last resort. The explosive aspect did inspire the gem to try and use explosions in other ways. Currently it was trying to breed exploding ticks. To do this it was taking its mana sucking ticks and breeding them to suck mana as fast as possible. The end goal was to have ticks that sucked mana so fast that they weren’t able to handle the amount and would explode like creatures failing to level up.

The next task was something the gem had been delaying for a while. Making use of the two blood magic cores that it had. When it first got them it had tried to use blood magic without any success. That had temporarily stopped any progress there. But now things were a bit different. The gem has seen that Medi and Venti were both able to use some magics much more easily than itself. Since that was the case an assistant made with blood magic should be able to use magic even though the gem couldn’t.

The two cores were brought up to the main island, and one was placed in front of the Holy Tree. mana flowed towards it from the entire territory and the process of creating an assistant started. Once enough mana was gathered it was embedded into the bloodcore along with the ideas of consciousness needed to make an assistant. Once that was well on its way the bloodcore started to reach out for material to build its body just like Medi had. A quick signal to waiting drybolds made it so a pile of fish-flesh and bone was placed around the core. The gem kept pushing in mana and waiting, but no body formed. Impatient, the gem started to shove the mana in, and then there was a sharp crack before the entire process failed.

What went wrong? The entire process went completely fine, the material for the body was there, and there was certainly plenty of mana. After considering that for a while the gem decided that the failure must be because of the material of the body. The process was started again, but this time instead of using flesh and bones as the material for the body the drybolds poured buckets of blood drained from all kinds of creatures across the dungeon. The flowers and the ground were soaked with blood and soon it started to condense. The body was getting close to completion when the blood forming it suddenly started to lose cohesion. This was the last bloodcore so instead of pushing forward with the process all the mana was pulled back and the process was allowed to fail.

Everything in the area was observed to try and figure out what went wrong. The blood itself seemed fine, the amount of mana was good, it was already starting to gain consciousness. That meant the failure had to be due to the surroundings. There was nothing in the air, and the ground seemed fine. Then the gem examined the bloodsoaked flowers. They were the ones it used to prevent the invaders from using blood magic. The bloodcore was moved away from the flowers, and the process to create an assistant went smoothly. The blood gathered up into the shape of a human and soon there was what looked like a roughly featured doll made out of blood talking to the gem.

“Why did you make me?”

“You are here to help me grow and protect my territory. What are you able to do?”

“I can control blood.”

“Can you do anything else?”

“No”

There was a brief silence before the bloody assistant spoke again “What should I do now?”

“You don’t know any tactics?” the blood little man nodded so the gem continued “In that case you should probably just help Medi. Controlling blood should be useful for medical care.”

The little man started to go off when the gem thought of one more thing “What do you want your name to be?”

Just like the rest of the assistant, this one didn’t have any idea what they wanted to be called, so the gem thought quickly and asked “How about we just call you Bloody? We can change it if you want, but that's the best I can think of for now.”

The little man nodded and then ran off to find Medi. Just as it was about to start working again, the gem decided that all its projects left were a bit long term and decided to see how well Medi and Bloody got along instead. It focused on the small clinic the drybolds had built for Medi and saw that the two of them were already working together. It was pleased that they were getting along well until it listened to them talking while they worked.

“Why did the Holy Tree send you here? I can heal just fine on my own.” Medi asked

“You can’t even stop bleeding and claim you can heal on your own?” Bloody responded

“I can stop bleeding. I just need a few bandages and herbs.” Medi said. He paused for a second before continuing “Why are you here anyways? you can’t even heal any wounds.”

As they kept arguing it had to wonder: Do other territories assistants act like this too?