Zeke felt himself progress closer to level ninety-nine, but as he stepped out of the dungeon, he knew he was still a long way from reaching that mark.
“Don’t be upset. For most people, it takes years to make any appreciable gains at that level,” Eveline pointed out. “Decades in some cases. Your leveling speed is absolutely ridiculous.”
He knew she was right, but still, Zeke couldn’t help but feel a little impatient for meaningful progression. Part of that was because he’d become addicted to the steady climb of power that his levels – and to a lesser degree, his stats – represented, but mostly, he was excited about what level one hundred represented. Not only was it the peak of the realm and a threshold very few people managed to reach, but it would also result in a new skill.
“Focus on fully incorporating your existing skills into your fighting style before you start looking for new ones,” Eveline advised. “Plus, you still need to upgrade a couple of the old ones. And you need to evolve your race. Not to mention that it would be best if you reached the next tier in your path before you descend. C-Grade is good, especially with as powerful a path as yours, but I would be much more comfortable if you managed to reach B-Grade.”
“Your comfort is obviously my priority,” he deadpanned in his own mind.
“Don’t be like that. Your fate is mine, so I’m obviously invested in your survival.”
“What if it wasn’t?” he asked as Adara appeared next to him.
“What?”
“I mean, what if you could survive outside of my head?” he asked. He’d thought about it often enough, but he didn’t know how possible such a thing was. In a lot of ways, Eveline was like a parasite. She was powerful in her own right, but without a host, she would wither and die. Likely, that process would happen very quickly, too.
“I’m perfectly content where I am,” she said.
“Really?”
“Of course. I know it sounds odd to you, but that’s because you’re limited by the idea of your physical self. Even before I lost my body, I was more a creature of the mind than most. And since then, I have come to terms with who and what I am. I have more than enough freedom to suit me, especially now that I have the run of the tower. And I will tell you now – there’s almost no chance I would have descended without your help. I had reached the peak, but my journey was long and difficult enough that I wouldn’t have abandoned my place unless forced to do so,” Eveline explained. “Now, that decision is out of my hands, and I think I’m better for it.”
“I see,” Zeke said. In a lot of ways, it made sense. Fear – of failure, mostly – kept people from achieving many of the goals they professed to possess. Even to their detriment, as was often the case. Now that Eveline wasn’t in charge of her own fate, she only had to go along for the ride.
“You make me sound like some pathetic follower,” she complained.
“I don’t think of you like that, and you know it,” he said. Sure, he wasn’t happy when she first latched onto him, and at times, he became incredibly frustrated with her, but at the end of the day, he had difficulty imagining his life without Eveline in it. It was only then that he realized that he loved her. Not as a romantic partner – obviously. But rather, like she was his sister.
“Gross.”
“What?” he asked. “People can –”
“I’m still a succubus at heart, and the idea that anyone would love me like a sister is just…well, gross. So, thank you for that,” she said. Then, she pulled away, quarantining herself in the back of his mind. It was her way of telling him that she wanted privacy, and Zeke was more than happy to accommodate that desire.
Regardless, Zeke quickly moved on to the next item on his to-do list. Each time he completed a dungeon, he was given a reward. In some cases, said reward was game-changing, as had been the case with the first dungeon he’d ever completed. The Mirror King’s house of horrors had given him the ability to open a gate separate from summoning the tower itself.
But even before that, he’d received the bond with the Crimson Tower itself. At the time, he hadn’t known that the troll caves were a pseudo-dungeon – in Oberon’s words – but in retrospect, it seemed obvious. In any case, those two rewards had been instrumental in his life so far.
However, there were other times when the rewards weren’t terribly useful, so he couldn’t help but hope for the former rather than the latter. With that in mind, he took a look at the Potion of Evolution he had received upon completion of the dungeon. The name was identical to the one attached to the potion he’d gotten from the Mirror King’s dungeon, so he had high hopes. However, he wouldn’t know for certain how useful it would be until he used it.
“You could use it on yourself,” Adara said, guessing what he was thinking. “I’ve heard stories about potions like that. They can evolve a skill. Or an attunement. Or sometimes, even a race. That you’ve gotten two of them is…I don’t know what to call it. But it definitely isn’t normal.”
“I gathered,” he said. “But I can do those other things myself, can’t I? I have no idea how to evolve the tower, though.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
She shook her head. “The idea that you can just evolve skills is so alien to me,” she admitted. “Most people can’t do that.”
He gave her a grin. “I’m not most people.”
“That’s definitely true,” she admitted with a smile of her own.
After that, the pair descended from the mountain and passed through the ruined forest. This time, there were no angry dragons barring their way, so they traveled quickly and efficiently. Still, they were hundreds of miles from where they had left the army encamped, so it still took an entire day before they arrived. Fortunately, no great crises had best the kobolds during his absence, and in fact, they’d actually won a decisive battle only the day before. Very few kobolds had been injured during the fighting, and even fewer died from their wounds. By any measure, it was a great victory.
But Zeke still forced himself to put things into context. Every dead kobold weighed on his conscience, and he spent over an hour listening to Kianma reciting their names. Some were juveniles who had yet to earn a moniker, which Zeke found even sadder. Of course, the kobolds accepted that many of their young would die. In the past, that was because they lived as scavengers and were far from the most powerful creatures in their natural environment.
“That’s not how it is anymore,” Zeke told her. “You need to adjust your thinking. Those juveniles are children, and as such, every death is a great tragedy. Internalize that.”
She nodded, though he could see that she struggled to understand what he meant. Perhaps as they continued to evolve, that would change.
By then, Eveline had left her self-imposed isolation behind, so as he headed back to the Lord’s Manor, she said, “You know there’s no guarantee that will happen, right?”
“What?”
“That they’ll learn to value their young,” she said. “I once encountered a civilization of sapient wasps. They were incredibly intelligent, and they were quite adept at creating all forms of art. Cultured, you would say.”
“And?”
“And they couldn’t have cared less about their children,” she said. “They cared about the collective and advancing as a group, but they reproduced so rapidly that the loss of a single wasp larva was nothing to them. There have been other cases –”
“You’re forgetting one thing, Eveline,” he said, stepping onto the teleporter and selecting his destination. Once he was transported to the Lord’s Manor, he continued, “Me. I won’t let them downplay the importance of their children. They will value and protect their young.”
In his eyes, there was no other way, and for a variety of reasons. Not only would that ensure the prosperity of the clutch as a whole, but there was value in treasuring one’s children.
“So, you would change them. Enforce a culture they neither want nor need?” she asked.
“If it proves necessary, yes. I will.”
“Doesn’t that make you a tyrant?” she asked.
Zeke was about to answer, but then he narrowed his eyes. “Maybe a benevolent tyrant,” he said.
“Do you know why dictatorships fail?” Eveline asked.
“Because they are unjust?”
“Because you can’t predict what will come once you’re gone,” she said. “You have the best intentions, right? Let’s assume that you do. You want the kobolds to prosper. You want them to grow. And you intend to push that agenda going forward, correct?”
“I do,” Zeke admitted. Indeed, he cared more about their fate than he ever would’ve thought possible. The relationship between him and his chosen people had been all but forced upon him by the wyrm Mykaena, but he had embraced it with everything he had. And that showed in his actions. Even his skills had been chosen with them in mind.
“What about when you’re gone?” she asked.
“I’m not about to die, Eveline. In fact, I’m pretty sure my lifespan is in the thousands of years at this point.”
“You’re functionally immortal, at least in terms of the ravages of time,” she said. “However, you also lead a life of extreme danger. In recent months, you have picked fights with two beings that could squash you like a bug. You consistently attack challenges meant for more powerful people, and you often do it alone. The chances of you dying are much higher than you think.”
“Okay? I’m aware of my own mortality. I’m not an all-powerful god.”
“So, who takes over when you’re gone?” she asked. But before Zeke could answer the question, she said, “I’m not telling you to name a successor. I’m asking you what happens when all the authority and adoration you’ve worked for gets transferred to someone else? What happens when that person has other priorities in mind than the good of your people? What happens when they want to exploit these kobolds? Enslave them? What happens when, suddenly, they start creating castes within the population and telling some of the kobolds that they’re better than the others? The problem with dictatorship doesn’t lie with the first ruler. It’s with all the tyrants who can come later.”
“I see,” Zeke said, but he didn’t think his situation could turn out like that. In the even that he died, then someone like Kianma or Silik would take over.
“And after them?”
“I assume they would choose someone.”
She sighed. “The moment it’s not you in charge, the greater the chances of tyranny. I saw it before I died,” she explained. “My people were supposedly enlightened. We employed a perfect system to choose rulers based on their suitability, and we trained them accordingly. But then the tyrant came. He wasn’t evil. Not at first. He was just flawed, the same as everyone else. He had blind spots. Prejudices born of life experience. And less than reputable people manipulated him into embracing those flaws and calling them virtues. By the next generation, those prejudices had been ingrained into the government, and the next saw mass genocide against those deemed lesser. It doesn’t happen all at once, Ezekiel. It’s a slow and methodical fall.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you need to be wary of the consequences of your choices,” she said. “Especially with a people as potentially powerful as these kobolds.”
Zeke wasn’t sure that he would fall down the slippery slope she described, but he could admit to the value of caution. And ultimately, that was what Eveline wanted. So, he agreed to be careful with his decision-making processes and approached the red gem at the center of his manor. Once there, he retrieved the Evolution Potion from his spatial storage, uncorked it, then poured the glimmering contents over the ruby.
The Crimson Tower has evolved, expanding on an existing ability. Use it well.
The moment he received the notification, Zeke gained an awareness of what had changed. And when he did, he couldn’t keep a smile from spreading across his face. Suddenly, Eveline’s morose lecture on philosophy was forgotten, and he focused on how the expanded ability would change his approach to everything.
It was simple. Instead of his ability to create a gate that led to the tower being limited to a single portal, he could now summon five. It was a simple change, but the implications were profound.
“That worked out better than expected,” Eveline said.
“It really did,” he agreed.