Chapter seven

                          John

  It had been two days since the assault on the demi-human tribe and the whole camp was better for it. The walls were still up, but the settlers were more comfortable. Moms were back to letting kids play on their own and cooks no longer brought cookware weaponry wherever they went. John just hoped that this change was maintained after his mission today. His job for the day is to go out and figure out how far away the demi-human tribe moved. If they only moved a few miles away then the adventurers would need to gather up again and drive them even farther away. If they were farther away than that then the camp could probably ignore them for now. Before he left John dropped by the supply station for an away kit, and then went to Olivia to confirm that he wasn’t needed for the day.

  When he got there she was directing the farmers to go gather timber and start preparing the nearby land for farming. John was worried that something might happen to them, but he reminded himself that they had just finished driving out the demi-humans and every adventurer had triple checked each other's work when looking for weeping willows to mark. Once she was done directing the farmers he went up to her and started talking.

“Finally got those farmers working huh?”

She responded “Yep. If I didn’t know that I’d starve next winter if I did it I would have wrung all their necks for the trouble they caused while waiting around camp.”

John smiled at her and said “Don’t talk too loudly or they might hear you. If they knew how angry you are they might choose to just stay in the wilderness instead of coming back here and getting worked to death.”

Olivia chuckled and then said “if they try that I’ll just tell them the demi-humans are coming back and they’ll be begging to be put in a yoke.”

  The conversation paused as John tried to think of a witty response, so Olivia continued “What are you dropping by for anyways? I’m a busy woman you know.”

John sighed internally at the fun part of the conversation ending, but went straight to business “I know we still have three down so I just wanted to make sure I was good to leave camp and track down the demi-humans. Even if people are doing better now they will probably start to worry if we can’t find them for too long.”

Olivia nodded as she said “You are still good to go. Chase, Mike, and Sarah are recovering nicely and the rest of the adventurers are staying close to camp so we should have enough protection. Just make sure that you get back early so we don’t have to worry about you all night.”

John nodded and said “sure thing boss” while making a lazy salute and then he went off to track the demi-humans.

  To start his hunt for the missing demi-humans John went back to their original settlement. Now that he had traversed the area multiple times and all the weeping willows were marked he was able to get to the demi-human’s old village surprisingly quickly. Once there he checked his surroundings and did not see any signs that they had come back. Since there were no more recent tracks John followed the ones the demi-humans made on the day of the battle. The weather had been good so he was able to follow the tracks fairly easily. Their path led him on a winding route through about ten miles of forest. He wasn’t sure how far they had moved from the settlement, because the path was anything but straight, but he was sure that it was at least going in the right direction.

  He kept following their path, until the tracks reached a river. He could still see tracks on the other side, but the problem was they went everywhere. The demi-humans had obviously been split up when they attempted to cross the river. John wanted to backtrack as little as possible, so he followed the trail that went up river first, and planned to check the downriver trails later. Before he got far upriver the water he was hearing started to change from the rushing of a river, to the sound of falling water. He kept following the tracks, and before long he was at the base of an impressive waterfall.

  He saw that the tracks started to head back inland and down river, but just as he was about to leave something caught his eye. There was a flower he recognized right beside the waterfall. He couldn’t put a name to it, so he thought back thinking where he could have learned about it, and then it hit him. That was a mist lily. He had learned about it in those stupid classes they made all the adventurers take before the expedition. The classes where they only taught them about rare and expensive ingredients. The class where you expected to never use any of the information they give you in real life. He started to get giddy, but then he restrained his excitement. Before he started freaking out he needed to go and confirm that they were actually mist lilies.

  John walked up to the rock wall and then started to carefully sidle his way along a thin ledge while keeping his back to the wall until he was under the waterfall. As he got closer he felt his heart start to pound. They still looked like mist lilies, and there were even more of them than he first thought. Once he managed to get behind the waterfall he got a closer look and realized the flowers seemed a bit strange. There were far more flowers than he was expecting and not all of them growing there were mist lilies. Not only were there way more flowers than there should be behind a waterfall, but there was no wasted space. It was almost like a person had come along and planned out the planting to grow as many flowers as they possibly could. John looked around to see if that was the case, but saw no signs of anyone ever being there. He shrugged thinking it must be coincidence and bent down to harvest a mist lily to bring back to camp, but as soon as he cut it everything changed.

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  An overbearing mana pressure started trying to enter his body. It was strong enough to freeze him up, so he channeled both his earth and fire runes to circulate as much of his own mana as possible. That was enough to free him from the mana pressure, but he had other problems as well. The previously calm pool of water was now roiling with fish, and he had to walk right above it to get out. A single slip of the foot and he would probably be eaten down to the bone. He made sure that nothing was coming at him from behind, and started to sidle along the wall away from the waterfall. The strain of exerting both runes was getting to him, so he was going faster than he liked, but he felt he should still have plenty of time to get away. Unfortunately, misinformation can be the ruin of any plan. John thought he only had to worry about the fish if he fell in the water, but as soon as he stepped out from behind the waterfall the fish started to attack.

   They propelled themselves out of the water with astounding force, and flew straight at him head first. At first he planned to just tank the fish since he was channeling his earth rune at full power, but then he saw them hit the rock next to him. Instead of bursting open their own heads the rock they hit cracked and the fish just fell back into the pool. John thought the slim slippery pathway be damned, and started to sprint despite the risk of falling. He was hit by fish twice while he made the run, but managed to stay on since they hit him towards the wall. Once he was near the end of the path he dove off and laid on the ground. For a few seconds the fish continued to fly over him, but then they seemed to realize there was no angle where they could hit him and stopped.

  From there John started to crawl away and only stood up when he was behind the cover of trees. Once there John took stock of his situation. The first thing he noticed was that he was pretty sure those fish managed to fracture his ribs despite him channeling his earth rune. The second thing was that he found a goddamned dungeon. Not one of those tamed kiddie dungeons they had back on the continent, but one that was unpredictable, dangerous, and packed full of valuable materials judging by the mist lily he was still clutching in his hand. He wanted to examine the dungeon a bit more, but then he realized that if he didn’t leave now he would probably be making the trek back in the dark. He started walking back and despite the pain in his side John couldn’t help but smile as he realized that the settlement just got a whole lot more exciting.

                        Gem

  The gem was working on expanding its territory back past the valley when its attention was suddenly drawn to the front of its territory. Somehow an invader had managed to sneak into the entrance of its territory without it noticing. The only reason the gem even realized that something was in its territory was because the intruder had destroyed one of its better mana producers. The gem quickly shifted its focus to the intruder and tried to claim it as its own. To its surprise, the invader was able to resist its claiming. All the mana it had used was blown into the air without any significant effect. The gem was surprised, but it didn’t have time to think about why that happened. It directed the fish that were nearby to start attacking as soon as they had a clean shot, and called for the wolves and the moose to start heading there from the valley.

As the fish prepared themselves the intruder made a break for it. A few of the fish managed to get a clean hit in as the intruder ran, but that was not enough to take them down. Before more fish had a chance to attack, the intruder dove out of the gem's territory and dropped out of sight. The gem maintained its focus on that entrance for quite a while after that, but the intruder did not return. Since the intruder was gone, the gem shifted its focus, and tried to figure out why the intruder was able to enter its territory undetected. The gem focused on the far reaches of its territory, and then had its creatures act in other areas to see what it could sense. Using this method, the gem found out the problem was very simple. Its territory had grown too large. Using its roots to claim new territory had allowed it to grow quickly, but its ability to monitor new areas still only grew at normal speed. The gem knew of no way to make its perception grow more quickly, so it reluctantly abandoned some of the outer portions of its territory.

  This left the gem with a problem. If it didn’t keep expanding its territory, what is it supposed to do with its excess mana? Its first thought was just to add it to the mana it was using to evolve its creatures, but that was already starting to give diminishing returns. That left the gem with a few options. It could find a new way to use mana to strengthen its creatures, it could use the mana to improve the territory it already controlled, or it could use its mana to enhance plants. The gem decided to ignore the first option. It had no idea where to start and did not want to waste any mana. The second option was similar. The gem could use its mana to strengthen the stone in its territory, but it didn’t see how that would help protect it so it also considered that a waste of mana. The third option seemed like its only real choice.

  The gem had never tried to enhance its plants before because they were only used for mana production. Enhancing them would not help with the defense of its territory, so it always focused on strengthening its creatures. Now that the gem's creatures were starting to see less benefits from its strengthening method the gem had nothing to lose in trying to strengthen its plants with mana. Maybe they would become able to help in the defense of the territory, or maybe they would produce more mana. The gem did not know, but it would rather try than let its mana go to waste.