CHAPTER 109

After dinner, Tom considered where to place their bunker. The surrounding land was sloped shallowly, so there was no obvious location. Wherever he chose, he would dig down into the ground rather than hollowing out via the side of the hill.

He engaged Earth Sense and sent it straight down into the rock. The spell was sensitive, and soon enough he could see what was below him. Worms, Mice, something larger running along a tunnel about ten metres down.

Not what he was after.

With the ability active, he paced along the base of the wall his fingers trailing the almost invisible joints between stone blocks while his focus remained beneath the ground. The spell let him sense if anything moved and he was looking for was void of activity that could represent solid stone, then he would check with Remote Earth Manipulation to confirm it was what he was after. His magic, because of the title could easily move rock and he wanted genuine stone to delve into. Despite being in a rocky area, Tom discovered that finding a single piece large enough to fit eight beds was ambitious. The space below him was surprising in its inconsistency. It was not the image that Tom had of what the ground should be like. For him, it was supposed to be soil, followed by a solid rock with an occasional hidden cave. That was his earth expectations speaking. Whether it was Existentia as a whole or only the current local area what he senses was a series of boulders that were stacked together. It was like the entire landscape had been formed when a giant dumped a wheel burrow of gravel upon it. Gravel where the typical rock was car sized and then that same giant had jumped on it to compact it down and to shatter some of those rocks into smaller pieces. Dirt had then been poured and then over the following thousand of so years animals had got involved, leaving an ecosystem between the gaps left by the chaotic placement of the larger stones.

While he doubted he was likely to find what he wanted for the sake of his perfectionist side Tom kept going. The healing tent was pressed against the last wall and was the final area for him to search.

Tom paused.

It had been a subconscious decision, but he knew there was a reason this was last. He had started next to it and moved away because he had no desire to face his failure and to check the base of the wall he needed to go back into the tent.

The killer might still be free because of his mistake. When they had got back from the challenge trial, he shouldn’t have let himself be distracted. He should have finished his investigation and then maybe they wouldn’t have this axe hanging over their head. To have left with that ritual untested had been a colossal blunder.

Tom pressed himself right against the edge of the tent where it meant the wall. He focused and extended his Earth Sense spell, sending it in the correct direction. There were no people to worry about so he could push it further than what he could do in most place. His awareness explored the space under the healing tent and confirmed what was there.

Tom frowned. “Damn it.”

That was definitely a void of movement.

He switched spells, and Remote Earth Manipulation sunk into the ground. It was a different experience to Earth Sense. The manipulation spell highlighted stuff that he could move, infusing the large slab of rock. It was exactly what he needed. There was an iceberg effect. From the surface it was another car volume boulder but underneath the ground it was huge, house sized.

It was within the healing tent.

Tom did not want to enter, but he was not a wimp and was happy to face his failures. He pushed through the flap and it was empty, as expected.

Mac his corpse at least had thankfully already been moved to prepare for a funeral service just before dusk. The rest of the place had not been changed. That area of incredibly soft soil was still there, now scuffed by the people who had taken the body and Harry burrowing in to see if the underlying slab had any rituals on it.

For a moment, he paused and let his mind flick over the crime scene. The lines that he had sensed under the body were gone, the ritual completely erased. There was nothing left to indicate that it had ever existed. Even the fate had settled down. The shaped stone, however, remained. The bottom Tom noted, but not the sides was perfectly flat and comprised of fused rock and by perfect he meant perfect. Artificial in the precision and obvious to his manipulation because of the changed nature of the stone. It was a fused soil and rock and different types of rocks, all blended to create something new. It had been created deliberately and clearly for a purpose.

Yet now he felt nothing.

If he had explored it while the ritual lines were there who knows how much he might have uncovered. Now all he could say was that someone with a dedicated Spell or high levelled Earth Manipulation had made it.

Tom’s eyes flicked over the rest of the crime scene. One side was taken up by the stone wall they had built. It too was perfectly smooth because of the magic used in its construction to seal the stone blocks together. Nothing stuck out as suspicious. The tent flap had been created from a single piece of fur with the remainder mainly canvas with sections of leather included probably because of material shortage rather than design. The stitching was well done and nowhere had signs of being disturbed. The canvas sides did not fit flush against the ground and there were gaps where walls hit the eves of the roof. It was more than possible someone could have slid underneath them or slipped in between the roof and the top of the walls. He walked around the inside of the tent, but there was no specific spot, which was more scuffed in a way that might have suggested that it had been a covert point of entry.

The gaps above meant that if you had a floating skill you could float, vault or fly up and then wiggle through there and be near on invisible once you made the initial leap.

Basically, if someone wanted to get in… then they could and from any side and at least for this murder they had not required any stealth skills to gain access to the body.

Tom did not know why he was bothering playing detective. Bob had experience with this and he would already have gone over the crime scene with a fine-tooth comb. With a grunt, he went over to a spot directly over the boulder he was going to use for his sleeping quarters and then started focusing on what he wanted. The earth friend title activated and rock flowed outwards to create a pathway down into the stone without him hardly needing to exert any effort. He pushed to widen the opening further and more rock flowed out of the hole.

“Damn it,” he cursed, and stopped his magic.

He paced backwards and glanced at what he had done. It was like a toddler creating a hole in the sand. His magic had scooped the rock out from the tunnel and dumped it in a pile which already up to his waist. He sighed. “Tom, it’s not going to work.” He could build the secret barracks, but by the time he finished the healing tent would be filled with stone. It would be like painting a target on their backs. ‘Killer, come see what these people are doing in secret.’

He walked out of the hole and then focused, and the earth that he had scooped out. In moments, it liquified and flowed back from where it had come. Thirty seconds later the tunnel that he had partially created had vanished.

Tom considered the problem and felt like smacking himself in the forehead.

“Idiot!”

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He did not want a perfectly solid rock as a starting point instead he wanted almost the polar opposite. He needed a space to store the rock he didn’t want. Rather than hollowing something out he needed to find an existing cavity and convert it into the barracks, he was after. He could even repurpose tunnels because Earth Manipulation could plug the tunnels completely and strengthen the plugs to be a metre thick of solid stone to complete mitigate their strength.

Tom sighed. He was an idiot.

Luckily, there was no need to scout again, as he already knew the perfect location. When he walked out of the healing tent, he was aware of multiple eyes following his movements. Tom had sort of got used to having notoriety or celebrity or whatever the correct term was. His passage was rarely unmarked and usually he ignored it, but usually he didn’t want to create a secret entrance.

He kept walking with eyes boring into his back. There was nothing he could do about it. If he tried to avoid them or asked them to stop looking, it would paint him as interesting and people would only switch to watching him more intently, admittedly covertly. He lacked a single trick that could let him fade into obscurity, no illusion ability or anything like that. Once he created the tunnel to an underground space, everyone would know.

He reached his target, and Earth Manipulation confirmed the structure was the same as he remembered. The rock shards were porous and there was even a large vacant space only two metres down and below that further tunnels and cavities.

“Tom,” Michael said jovially while he was studying the wall moving up to stand next to him.

“What?”

“Is this where you’re building our sleeping area?”

“Yes.”

“Can I watch?”

Tom shrugged. “Don’t care. It’s going to be boring, but first.” He reached out and linked to his golem. The elemental was long since gone, but he connected easy enough to the new control orb. He had been planning on remote piloting it, but as he explored the changes, the elemental had completed, he was impressed. There was no need for him to puppet; the control orb was more than capable of following simple instructions.

Come to me. Do not hurt any humans.

“What’s first?”

“Summoned the golem.”

“Why?” Michael asked.

“To help with the construction and to guard us when we use it.”

Michael nodded. “It might be better used defending over night but we’ll discuss with the team.”

Tom focused on his magic, and beneath their feet rock started moving.

“Tom,” Michael’s hand landed on his shoulder, pulling him out of his trance. “We’re having a funeral in about an hour. If you’re in the zone do you want to be broken out to attend it?”

He thought about it for a moment. The polite answer was yes, but Tom didn’t really know the man and he remembered rebuilding that leg and that he was the last to see him alive. “No.”

The healer nodded. “You don’t need to blame yourself for any of it.”

Tom ignored what to him was merely a platitude and went back to work. To his surprise, his memories of working in the golem’s workshop came in handy. Those false memories included a significant number of hours creating golem shells, which was basically manipulating stone, which was what he needed to do.

He threw himself into the intricacies of the construction. An entry way with steps because it was a steep drop. Then he carved out the overall space he was after before taking care to close the tunnels in case something nasty occasionally traversed them. He kept working and improving what he was building. His mind slid along every centimetre of the wall, fusing the gaps. He had sensed how many bugs and small rodents made their homes within and around the numerous boulders, and he didn’t want them sneaking in while they were asleep. Who knew what could happen if they were poisonous?

His title swelled with power and the stone almost leapt like it was alive to do what he needed it to do. The basic shell came together, and he stopped and wiped the sweat off his forehead. It took a lot of concentration to manipulate that much rock. Tom glanced around the fortifications. No one was nearby and the quality of light had changed. The sky was becoming filled with red shades.

Sunset.

Everyone else was at the funeral. He thought about going to find them but he didn’t want to deal with the sadness that Mac’s death represented. He was better off here.

Tom swiped away a tear running down his cheek angrily. That was a weakness he would not indulge in. His golem stood guard over him and when he looked down one of Harry’s mana regeneration rituals was in place around him. The ritualist must have carved it out when he was in his trance.

“How long?” He whispered.

Of course no one was available to answer him but based on how close to the night they were it had been the better part of an hour.

The basic structure was complete, but he still needed to smooth over the insides and the work would distract him from thoughts about the poor fighter. Fifteen years alone and then when he had got here Mac had run into bad luck. First the location, then the lizard and losing his legs and then he had been killed. All that suffering he must have gone through in the tutorial for nothing.

Tom really wanted to hit something and briefly he considered finding the funeral. It had to be close, but if he joined now, it would be conspicuous. Better to keep going and pretend he had been caught in the zone and hadn’t noticed the departure. It wasn’t even a lie.

He stamped down the narrow steps. The entrance was tight, and the golem that followed him almost filled the space but by angling its shoulders and adjusting the position of its arms it slid through. Despite its weight, it was only slightly larger than Thor and just as flexible even if a human’s ability to twist was easier than briefly moving an arm to a new location.

“Help me dig.” he ordered when he was down. His emotions were roiling every which way, and he didn’t want to contact a potentially deadly construction in that state of mind.

The shell was constructed, but they still needed to put in the internal fittings. As annoying as dirt was, resting the thin sleeping mats they were using on soil instead of stone would give them a more comfortable rest.

Tom had a vision of the mini sunken barracks he was making.

A single main room with bunk beds on the walls. Four on one side and three on the other. A toilet with a manual flushing mechanism. There was a stream that trickled into the room that filled a reservoir up high. When you were ready to flush, you would manually lift a stone plug that would release a flood of water to wash away your business. When the reservoir was full, the stream just leaked over the top. It would work perfectly and wasn’t any miracle of engineering. The waterway had been available, and all he had done was exploit it.

Then there was the last space, which was a changing room, with the same water source delivering fresh water where you could bathe if anyone wanted too, through the temperature was frigid. They all had clean spells, but given they were going to be here for a week he would probably construct a shower in there, but that was a problem for another day.

“Golem,” Tom said and decided he really needed to name the thing, but maybe later. “I want you to move the dirt stone from the floor to where I’m constructing.” It got to work with its limbs altering into massive shovels and with a couple of scoops dirt went flying. Tom continued to order it around with curt commands to improve its efficiency. The control orb worked better than he expected, and it had no issues following his simple orders.

There was a rock it could not move. The golem’s arm changed to end in a point and it crashed it down on the stubborn stone which immediately cracked down the middle.

“No.” Tom ordered with a bored voice while assessing his emotional state. It was not as stable as he would have liked, so he decided if he could avoid connecting mentally he would as he didn’t want to contaminate the construction with his fluctuating emotions. Once it was older and grown a bit, that wouldn’t be a problem, but for now he should be careful. The problem was that he was not sure it would understand his intention with this one. ‘Move rock’, ‘lower,’ ‘over here’ were all simple commands to follow but the work method was more complicated. He took a deep breath and tried, anyway. “Instead of breaking the large rocks you want to briefly make the mass part of you in order to move to the new location.”

The golem bobbed to communicate that it had heard his orders and understood it.

Tom internally sighed in relief.

That level of complexity was beyond the tier one control zone, but the work by the elemental was apparently exquisite and was getting performance out of the orb that shouldn’t have been possible. Tom could barely wait to examine it, but he would. He would not allow impatience to get the better of him.

Nevertheless, as he continued with his work, he kept a watchful eye on it. Its huge shovel struck another rock. This time instead of pounding it till it broke the stone fused to the golem, and it lifted it out and placed it in the position Tom was forming the first bunk.

“Good job.”

The golem, the non-sapient animated piece of rock it currently was, ignored him and went back to its job. It was almost pitch black in the room, but there was sufficient light for his low light vision to function. It left the room brightly lit to him, if a little washed out. As the golem moved the bulk of the loose rock and stone to the right spot, his own magic fused it together and created the furniture they needed. Even with his title helping the benefit of the golem shifting, the rock was significant.

The last bed was smoothed into place. The golem gathered the remaining dust, absorbing it into itself and then depositing a small pebble in the room’s corner; it was much better than a vacuum cleaner. With a flick of his mind, the pebble sunk into the wall and vanished.

The room was spotless but Tom felt like his head had been put through a meat grinder and with a headache threatening to break out at any moment he walked up the steps ready to see how everyone else was going after the funeral and whether there was going to be any blow back at him missing it.