Chapter 65 - Aftermath

Kara woke me a little before noon with—gasp!—a cup of hot coffee. It was instant, but that was fine, as far as I was concerned.

“How?” I asked, taking the steaming cup from her hands. “I mean, thank you! But how?”

“Break room at the library annex had a coffee station. We scooped everything—mugs, sugar, a bag of actual grounds, plus some of this crappy instant shit. Figured you could use something to help you wake up after a night like that.”

I sniffed, the smell of the hot coffee itself helping wake me up, and then sipped. It was trash coffee, but it was still coffee. I wasn’t about to be a snob. “I passed right out. How’s everyone doing?”

“Your undead are still patrolling around the fort, but nobody came anywhere near us. We haven’t seen any sign of the goblins since they fled. My guess is, they’re gonna keep running until they find someplace new to settle down.”

“Hopefully far from here,” I added, and Kara nodded. “We should start toward the Guard base soon. Get these people somewhere safer.”

“Are you sure?” Kara asked.

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. You told me that the colonel there was sketch, right?”

“Maybe. I mean, he’s got a tier five Charisma, and he clearly knows what it does. He’s able to get his people to do pretty much whatever he wants,” I said. “But you’re the military woman. You told me they could be trusted.”

“Yeah, and I’d love to think so. Mind control shit worries is, is all.”

I sipped some more coffee, thinking before replying. “It’s not really mind control, just…influence. Still, I feel the same, but we’re short on options for these people. Even if we took down this group of goblins, there will be others. Then there’s the rat-people we ran into, and the avians near the base. Alfred told me last night that the refugees he picked up yesterday brought a nasty rumor with them, that there’s another necromancer in town. One who maybe doesn’t care as much about keeping people alive.”

That last bit had worried me, when I heard about it. I’d managed to scale my power levels fast by hitting just one graveyard, but then I’d gotten distracted. I’d come riding to Alfred’s rescue, then scouted the path to the Guard base, and fought back through the goblins to reach Alfred’s people. Days of time spent, and I didn’t regret it for a moment. But how much stronger would someone have become if they’d just power-leveled the entire time, instead? There were a bunch of cemeteries around the city, after all. The one where I’d fought all those undead was hardly the largest. Not even close.

“Yeah, short on options, but not without them,” Kara replied. “What are you planning to do, Selena?”

I took another sip to buy myself time to answer. I’d been fairly sure what I planned next when I went to sleep earlier, and now I was certain. Colonel Turner might have all of the best intentions in the world in mind; using his Charisma to keep people working together for the good of all was a noble thing, at least on the surface. It still left a bad taste in my mouth.

I’d popped out the tier four Will the night before and added in the tier five, instead. After that, I’d moved the Agility so it was in the outer ring, giving me another space on my interior ring. Now that my Will was tier five, I had little to worry about from Turner’s power, at least not until he hit tier six in Charisma, and I figured that might take him a while.

But that might create its own issues. If I was the only person who could resist his Charisma, then I was the only threat to Turner having absolute power over the Guard base. He’d shown no sign that he felt that way, when we met—but would I have even seen it if he had, back when my Will was lower? I couldn’t be sure, and after the betrayal by Bradley I wanted to be more cautious.

“I’m coming back here,” I said at last. “This fort, this place? It’s don’t know exactly how it works yet, but it’s a special location now. The goblin mage was some sort of boss creature, and he dropped a control stone. With it, I own this place. I control it. I gather that means I’ll get some special new abilities or magic related to the location, but I’ll need time to figure all of that out. I plan to turn this spot into my own fortress of solitude, I guess.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Fortress of solitude, huh?” Kara replied. “Don’t suppose you’d care to have a plus one? I know you have sleepless guards and all, but another person to talk to couldn’t be bad?”

I flashed her a wry smile. “So much for the solitude aspect, I guess.”

“I can come too, then?”

“Yeah, if you’re okay with having a lot of undead around, I suppose so.”

“Awesome! No, undead don’t bother me. I think Hope is cool and Sue is amazeballs.” Kara fished around in her bag and pulled out about a dozen crystals. “By the way, these are from all the fighting last night. The highway battle, some of them, but a few from the fort fight, too.”

“Keep them,” I told her. “If you’re going to stay out here with me, then I want you strong. We’ll get you in to see Maura at the Guard base, and trade some in for other crystals. Maybe some better gear, too.”

I had a heaping pile of the things already from the goblins Sue slaughtered inside the fort, plus the ones I’d looted outside. By a rough count I’d hit about fifty more crystals last night—a massive haul. Maybe enough to rank up another stat, even, since a ton of them were clear. Kara left me to talk to Alfred, so the two of them could begin encouraging the people Alfred had collected to rouse themselves and get ready to go.

That gave me time to examine the findings. It turned out there were fifty-two tier one stones in the loot. Interestingly, four of them were red—and all of those were Fireball spells! Was the goblin mage somehow teaching others the spell? Or was Fireball just something that goblins sometimes had available? Impossible to tell, but those four stones plus the tier three one from their leader would make a tier four Fireball spell. I wasn’t sure if I wanted it for myself, or maybe to add to Sue with the Minion Augmentation.

I had a feeling I was going to go with option b. What’s better than a skeleton tyrannosaur I could ride into battle? A fireball-casting one, that’s what.

That was for later, though. I still wanted to assess the rest of these crystals. Of the remaining forty-eight, thirteen were brown crystals. Those included: Archery, Tracking, Weapon Making (x3), Armor Making (x2), Farming, Alchemy (x2), Carpentry, and First Aid (x2). I thought the Archery one might be interesting for Kara, so I set it aside, along with the Alchemy ones—I wanted to maybe keep those for myself. The rest were basically trade bait for the Guard.

That left thirty-five more crystals, all of them clear. I’d found six Strength stones, seven Agility stones, eight Stamina stones, six Intellect stones, and five Charisma stones. There were only three Will stones, but after finding a tier five on the boss goblin, I supposed that made some sort of sense. I merged the clear stones down as best I could, and then took a look at what I had.

The extra Agility threw me over the top to tier five. I was faster than ever, and best of all, as soon as I added the stones to bring Agility up to tier five, a third ring unlocked! I promptly merged all the Stamina crystals I had together and put them in that slot. From all I’d seen, that ought to vastly boost both the amount of damage I could take and how quickly I healed. With my Drain Life spell, healing wasn’t a major issue—but staying alive long enough to cast it and heal myself was.

I needed stones for Samson, Alfred, Henry, and Kara, and I considered what to give them for a bit. I ended up deciding to pass Henry the First Aid crystals. If he was low on mana, he could always use that as a backup. Kara got the Archery and my spare tier two Agility stones. For Samson and Alfred, I gave them each three tier one Strength stones.

Magical Stones

Point 1: Black Stone (Tier 5) - Control Undead

Point 1, Outer Ring: Black Stone (Tier 3) - Augment Undead

Point 2: Black Stone (Tier 5) - Animate Dead

Point 2, Outer Ring: Black Stone (Tier 3) - Heal Undead

Point 3: Black Stone (Tier 4) - Drain Life

Point 4: Clear Stone (Tier 5) - Will

Point 4, Outer Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 5) - Agility

Point 4, Third Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 4) - Stamina

Point 5:

Spare Stones

Black: Animate Dead (Tier 3), Animate Dead, Augment Undead, Control Undead (Tier 3), Curse (Tier 2), Drain Life (Tier 2), Harm (Tier 2), Harm, Health to Mana, Heal Undead

Clear: Strength (Tier 3), Stamina (Tier 3), Intellect (Tier 3), Intellect (x2), Charisma (Tier 4), Will (Tier 3), Will (Tier 4), Will

Gray: Minion Augmentation

Brown: Tracking, Weapon Making (x3), Armor Making (x2), Farming, Alchemy (x2), Carpentry

Red: Fireball (Tier 4)

Control Stone (x1)

With all that taken care of, I joined the others in preparing to leave. It didn’t take us long to pack up what little folks had. I took a last look around the battle-worn fort, considering what I wanted to do with the place. It was mine, now. I could set it up however I wanted. I’d need to explore that in detail when I returned, but for the time being I’d just let the place take care of itself.

If anything tried to move in while I was off escorting Alfred’s people to their new home, well… I’d deal with it the same way I had the goblins.

Mounting up on Sue, I rode to the front of our formation, and we set off east toward the airport.