Xavier stood at the side of a clearing in the middle of a giant forest. A cool breeze rolled in through the trees, fluttering the leaves. Here there were breaks in the thick canopy above, where sunlight spilled through and illuminated the space in its golden light.
That light shone on a sapling sprouting from a small patch of freshly turned soul.
The sapling was deceptive, however. This was no mere plant. It had just had enough power to push Xavier one hundred feet away. He’s eyes were wide in slight awe as the sapling grew at an immense pace.
He had just completed a quest and planted the Sanctuary Seed. His first fortress—perhaps Earth’s first fortress post-integration. He hadn’t known what to expect and couldn’t wait to find out what it would look like.
The sapling grew upward and outward, but it wasn’t the only one. Near Xavier’s feet, another sapling pushed itself out of the earth. In fact, around the clearing, five other saplings began to emerge. The Sanctuary Seed’s roots must have burrowed through the ground.
He took a step backward. The other members of his party and the gathered survivors followed suit. Siobhan and Justin had excited looks on their faces, while Howard simply looked like his normal, serious self. No doubt the man’s mind was elsewhere.
The saplings rapidly expanded. The sapling in the middle was soon as tall as Xavier, then it was as tall as a single-storey house. When it finally stopped growing, it must have been at least four storeys high. The other saplings grew up to about half the height, each as thick as the guard towers he remembered from Queen Alastea’s castle. Xavier tilted his head to the side as he took in the trees growing.
Something about them was beginning to look…. eerily familiar.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
More trees grew, shooting straight up from the ground. These were long and thin and covered in vines. They grew right beside each other, their vines intertwining, until they formed a wall connecting the outer trees that had grown into guard towers.
When the fortress had said it would resemble the place it was planted in, Xavier hadn’t realised just how literal it had been.
“This is amazing,” Siobhan whispered to his left. He glanced over at her. The woman had a bright smile on her face.
Xavier grinned.
The fortress took half an hour before it finally stopped growing. It turned out to be larger than he’d expected. Before it had finished growing, he’d realised what it was that it reminded him of—the forest city on the seventh floor, with the buildings wrapped around tall, thick trees.
This was like that, but… more.-
When it was done, he took it all in.
The guard-tower-like trees actually were guard towers, with places to stand at their tops. The wall that had grown had a battlement as well—somewhere for the defenders to stand and look down upon their attackers. There were slits in the walls for arrows and spells to be loosed through, and though the fortress was made from wood, Xavier somehow knew it would be stronger than stone.
At the front of the fortress was a large gate, with wide open double doors. Xavier, with his party behind him, walked through the doors, looking up at the main part of the fortress in the middle. The ground had been smoothed and flattened, yet still had grass. Except this grass almost looked fake in how uniform and pristine it was.
System-grown grass?
With the fortress now there, somehow the clearing looked even bigger than it had before. Previously, it had housed a hundred invaders and twenty-two of their captives. Now, with all the buildings and guard towers, he imagined it could house five times that number.
And he was sure he would be able to make it grow even larger than it already was.
The centre tower was absolutely huge. The building still looked much like the tree it had grown from, its wall made from a bark-like material. There was an archway built into it that didn’t appear to have a door.
That was where Xavier gravitated toward. It was as though something was pulling him to the door, beckoning him to enter. No notifications had appeared since he’d planted the Sanctuary Seed, and he was wondering about how it would interact with his soul.
When he got closer to the archway, he noticed there was some sort of transparent barrier. It was his first hint that this place had some kind of inherent magic or defences, other than the fact that it had grown from basically nothing.
He reached out and touched the transparent barrier—a barrier that didn’t take on any colour, instead simply looking like an incredibly thin film had been stretched to cover the archway.
The moment his finger touched it, a notification popped up.
You meet the necessary requirements to bond with this Sanctuary Seed as you have a claim to this area.
Do you with to bond your soul with this fortress and become a Base Leader?
Xavier willed the System to give him more information. When it didn’t, he released a sigh. He was used to being kept in the dark. A part of him remembered that there was in fact someone out there who he could ask for more information about something like this, someone who would no doubt have access to far more information than he could even fathom—far more information than the internet even held—yet he still didn’t know how he should feel about Adranial, so he wasn’t about to turn to her for these important decisions.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Considering how long he’d been looking forward to doing this, Xavier continued, willing his answer.
Yes.
A bright blue light engulfed him. It tugged at his cores—
No. Not at his cores. It tugged at his soul.
The strength of it was immeasurable. He knew there was nothing that he could do to fight it; it was a good thing he didn’t want to fight it . He’d felt something like this before, when he’d first been integrated.
This was the System, working on behalf of the Sanctuary Seed, bonding his soul to the base he’d just created.
As this process happened, time seemed to lose all meaning. It passed, he was certain of that, as he could feel the other members of his party somewhere behind him, and the survivors even farther back, chattering away to each other with worry.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The blue light faded away.
Congratulations XAVIER COLLINS!
You have become a Base Leader in designated area Alpha 288.
If you wish to name your base and the area in which it inhabits, you may do this at your Sanctuary’s central interface.
Xavier smiled as he read the notification. Though despite having been a writer before the System came down, he had to admit that he’d never been very good at naming things. In fact, he’d often resorted to random name generators when he’d had to come up with character names, or he’d created lists of names he kept in a notebook for whenever he needed a new one.
He was about to finally step into the tower of his new base when another notification appeared. Xavier had been expecting a title for what he’d just achieved. What he saw, however, was something else entirely.
Earth-Wide System Announcement:
Earth’s first official base has been established, and Earth’s first Base Leader has emerged.
Official bases have benefits other dwellings do not possess. As this is Earth’s first base, its inhabitants and allies will gain a 100% Mastery Point boost within the area the Base Leader has lain claim to, including any dungeons residing within the area’s border.
This benefit will not come into effect for 72 of Earth’s hours. Until then, the Base Leader may be challenged for Authority over their domain.
The next ten most worthy Denizens upon the planet Earth will be given the opportunity to be teleported by the System to the base to either challenge the Base Leader’s authority in ritual combat, to propose an alliance with them, or to swear fealty if they so wish.
Xavier blinked as he read the notification. This didn’t seem good at all. He wasn’t worried about being challenged—far from it. He knew he would be able to defeat anyone on this world who stepped inside his domain, but the fact that notification had been given to every citizen on Earth…
His party, standing outside of the main tower, had their eyes glazed over. Howard looked the most worried out of them. Xavier could tell they were each working through the possible consequences of this.
All right, it’s time to ask Adranial a few questions.
He would have to bring her here sooner or later. Though he wanted to get things more established, the deal was to give her Earth’s coordinates within the first twenty-four hours of him returning to his world.
We’ve been here for less than five hours.
That fact alone was a little shocking, considering how much they’d already accomplished.
[Adranial, are you there?]
[Finally ready to let me come to your world are you, Xavier Collins?]
[Not yet. But I do have a question for you, assuming you’re willing to answer.]
[That is entirely dependent upon the question.]
Xavier took a moment to collect his thoughts before asking. [I have just established Earth’s first base, becoming a Base Leader.]
[I would expect nothing less, considering the Sanctuary Seed I saw you were granted by the System’s loot box.]
Xavier bit his tongue. He’d been about to ask how she could know that, but of course she knew—she’d had access to Howard’s memories. She’d rooted around in the man’s brain, forced him to sign a contract…
For some reason, he’d been finding his conversations with this woman rather pleasant, despite how they become acquainted.
He shouldn’t, for one moment, forget what she was capable of.
It’s certainly going to be interesting, having her on Earth.
Xavier figured there was no point hiding his current predicament from this woman, considering all she already knew, and the contract she’d signed that didn’t allow her to share information about him.
[I will have to dig into the records,] Adranial replied. [It has been a very long time since anyone in this sector has been in a similar situation. More time than you or I could possibly imagine.]
[It is strange to think that long before even dinosaurs roamed the Earth, there were humans out there, gaining levels, and doing exactly what I’m doing right now.]
There was a pause, then Adranial asked, [What is a dyno-saw?]
It took only five minutes for Adranial to chase up the necessary information.
[It looks like the challengers will come once a day, at the end of each twenty-four-hour period. You will have to fight those who arrive one after the other, and you must fight by yourself. Though that’s nothing you can’t manage, Xavier Collins. They will not have the ability to communicate with others outside of your base area, nor will their mini-maps work—assuming they even have them.] She sounded doubtful of that. Xavier supposed he couldn’t blame her.
[So if an invader appears?]
[They won’t have any idea where they are, and you can take their life before they ever get a chance to tell anyone. Authority over an area is a valuable commodity—especially first authority, as you possess. Those who know what it means may very well risk their life trying to take it from you.]
Xavier breathed a sigh of relief. He’d worried the System had been setting him up. That his identity and location on Earth would be revealed because of what he’d done.
He supposed, in a way, the System was setting him up. But this situation could only work to his advantage. It had the potential of bringing his strongest enemies and allies straight to him. Then again, as the System didn’t announce who the Base Leader was or what their priorities were, it made him wonder if anyone would show up.
Only someone arrogant enough to believe that they could defeat any Denizen currently on Earth would show up.
He chuckled to himself, as he fit that description. Though, considering what Adranial had said, he could easily imagine challengers coming in, if first authority was as valuable as she’d made it out to be.
Xavier still had a base to explore. As every person within the base had seen the notification, he reassured them that they would be in no danger here. Looking at all the survivors, he couldn’t wait to have each and every one of them trained up in some way. He didn’t know how he was going to handle that.
He couldn’t simply ask them to fight for him, just because he’d saved them, could he?
They wouldn’t be fighting for me; they would be fighting for Earth.
Either way, if they died, he would still have their blood on his hands.
Xavier explored the main tower. A spiralling staircase climbed the side of the tree inside its walls—or was it a trunk? The steps were smooth and each one looked unique with different patterns grown into the wood. Though Xavier had originally imagined having a stone castle as his first fortress, he had to say he wasn’t disappointed by what the Sanctuary Seed had come up with for him.
There was more to this building than he’d realised. The stairs didn’t only go up, they went down as well, to a basement area. This was where he went first, and what he found astounded him.
It felt like being on the bridge of a spaceship.