Chapter 68 - Eminent Domain

We reached the old goblin fort in the late afternoon, before dusk. I went in first, riding Sue, because I figured if anything nasty had taken up residence while I was away, we’d be able to deal with it together without too much trouble.

Sue let out a massive roar as we stepped in through the gap she’d torn when we attacked, but there was nothing inside. No waiting horde of goblins, no new monsters to face us. Apparently either we hadn’t been gone long enough for something else to try taking up residence, or the blood and carnage left from the fighting had been enough to deter would-be campers.

Either way, it was good enough for me. We did a quick loop of the interior before returning to the gap where Kara and my other undead waited.

“All clear!” I called out. “Come on in.”

I slid down from Sue’s back as Kara joined me, and the other undead took up guard posts around us, waiting for more instructions. We had a lot of work ahead, and first on the list of things that needed doing—I had to learn more about this control stone thingie.

“You seem distracted,” Kara said.

“I am, a bit,” I replied. “Picking up that tower stone, it did the same thing as absorbing a crystal. Dumped a ton of information into my head. Way more than the crystals do, in fact. It’s…all in there, but it’s like it’s flopping around. There was so much information that I haven’t parsed it all.”

It was a weird sensation. The info was all there. I knew it all; I had the memories. But they were random, unsorted, and chaotic. I needed time to sit and understand them all fully.

“Sounds like a pain,” Kara replied. “What do you need from me?”

“Right now, just some quiet, I think,” I replied. “Not that I don’t love chatting, but I need some alone time to go over all these memories. Maybe see if any of those goblin huts are habitable? I don’t know if we can live in them, or if we need to burn them as biohazards.”

“I’m on it.”

“Bring Hope with you,” I suggested. “Just in case you run into any surprises.”

“I love puppies! I’d be glad to.”

I passed Hope the order to follow Kara and keep her safe. The skeleton dog hesitated a moment, like she really didn’t want to leave me. I sent the mental command again, reminding her that Sue was guarding me, so I was probably fine. Hope wagged her tail at that and took off after Kara.

That left me with some time to sit and contemplate the control stone. I pulled the thing from my pouch and examined it. It had changed since I first picked it up, taking on the colors of my major crystals, instead of the goblin mage’s. But since that initial change, it hadn’t altered its appearance at all.

I figured there had to be a way for me to absorb the thing somehow, like I did for the spell and stat crystals. After all, the goblin who’d carried it hadn’t kept it around in a pouch. It had appeared in my hands when I touched the mage’s body after Sue killed him, same as his stat and spell crystals had. The double crystal drop was new, too—before this even higher tier monsters had only dropped a single stone. I figured that was probably because this was some sort of ‘boss’ monster, so he gave extra, but I’d need to experiment a lot more to find out.

The stone felt heavy in my hands as I focused on it and worked my way through the information it had given me. It was a control stone—it granted me the ability to control land, to own a domain. That word, domain, seemed to be special because it popped in my memories multiple times.

With more control stones under my power, I would control more territory. Given enough of them, I could control large swathes of land, if I wanted to. Personally, I wasn’t especially interested in becoming Queen Selena, but it sounded like that’s sort of what these things were all about. They were a way for high-tier people to fight over land.

“Like we needed new ways to do that,” I muttered. Humanity had been fighting over turf since we lived in caves.

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But I had to admit this was different. The stone would literally connect me to the terrain I controlled. I would be the master of that land in a much deeper, more magically-tied manner than anyone alive had seen. I’d feel it if someone attacked the sanctum at the center of my domain, for example. The domain would also attract beings, serving as a focal point for monsters or people who could be useful to me.

That’s how the goblin mage had apprentice mages with him, I realized. I’d found four tier one Fireball spells. Those apprentices were a bonus he’d gotten from the control stone and his link to the fort. If I took over the fort, I wouldn’t get goblin mage apprentices; something else would appear for me. Judging from the way my crystals colored the control stone, my best guess is the fort would start spawning some undead for me.

“They need to be burned,” Kara said, holding her nose as she came back over. “A lot.”

“What?”

“The huts,” she explained. “They’re a wreck. Biohazard. Whatever you want to call it. They’re trash. Goblins are disgusting.”

“Ah. Well, that sucks. I was hoping we’d have someplace nice to sleep tonight. I traded for a couple of tents, because I was afraid of that, but even so, that’s not ideal.”

“I’ll leave you be so you can keep working on that thing,” Kara said, nodding toward the stone I still held. “I should get those tents set up, anyway. You doing all right?”

“Yeah. There’s a lot, but I’m getting through it.”

There—the piece I was looking for, at last. I found the memories about how to activate the damned thing! The control stone was easy to use, it turned out. All it needed was for someone tier five or higher to hold it and focus their mana on it, sort of the same way I channeled magical force into one of my spells. Instead of channeling it into the spell, I’d pour it into the stone, which would activate.

Wherever I was standing when I used it, that would become the focal point of my new domain. The center of my lands, basically. I could use it here at this fort, or someplace else. The only thing I couldn’t do was use the control stone too close to another domain. If I tried, it just wouldn’t work. The domain centers had to be far enough apart that the lands they controlled didn’t overlap.

Once it was live, I’d absorb the stone into me. I could take it out after, but doing that abdicated my control of the area I’d ‘conquered.’ It would be up for grabs again. Short of me taking it out, the only way to take it from me was to kill me.

That news didn’t thrill me. Crystals already turned people into walking piggy banks, ready for anyone to shatter and take the contents. It was something I’d found out the hard way when Bradley and his friends tried to kill me, and something I’d worked to avoid spreading around. The more people who knew that other people were a quick way to gain power, the worse things would be for everyone.

Anyone with a control stone inside them just had one more thing to loot when they died. If I took this on, I’d be even more of a target than I already was. How much was too much? I mean, I already carried multiple tier five stones inside me. I was a loot box from hell. This would make me even more of one.

On the other hand, I was already a super tempting target. Anyone out there killing humans was probably already tier five and could see that I was, too. They’d know that much just by looking at me. Hmmm—that made me wonder how visible the control stone was, once absorbed? I dug into my memories for the answer.

I wasn’t thrilled with what I found. The answer was yes. First off, anyone who saw me would sense something ‘extra’ about me, once I used the control stone. I’d feel different, special, even to a tier one person or monster. People tier five and up would be able to sense the control stone. I realized I probably had sensed it on the goblin mage, I just hadn’t known what I was feeling. He’d given off the sense of being their leader right away, and once Sue took him down, the remaining goblins just crumbled and fled.

That wasn’t so bad. The more complex part was that I’d gain a sense for other nearby territories as well. The more control stones I had, the wider the area I could sense other leaders. With just one stone, I’d probably be able to feel the area around the city. With a few, I might be able to sense leaders across half the state or more.

And they’d be able to sense me, too.

I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to play in that arena. We were only a week into this mess, but I was sure there were some humans out there who’d pushed harder than I’d been able to. They would be stronger than me, possibly with a heap of followers they could command. Telling them precisely where I was living felt like a super bad plan.

Some of my undead were on the walls, keeping a lookout. One of them on the southern wall had spotted something; I felt that there was danger approaching. Grateful for the break, because I had no idea what I wanted to do with that control stone, I tucked it back into my pouch and rose, heading swiftly to the ladder leaning against the south wall.

The walls were simple rows of tree-trunks planted into the ground, their tops carved to sharp points. The goblins hadn’t built proper battlements, but they had lookout posts on each wall. One of my goblin archers was up there waiting for me.

Peering over the edge, I spotted what it had immediately. We still had enough sunlight that I could see a good distance through the woods, although the trees made that tougher than I’d have liked. Mostly, I just saw a bunch of movement in the distance. I swore under my breath as I tried to move side to side so I could get a better idea what I was looking at. Then I wished I hadn’t seen it at all.

It was the rat-people, the ones I’d seen down on Route Two, or a bunch just like them. They were making their way up the hill toward the fort, and they were coming in force!