It’s the next morning, after the paladin joined me in my proto chorus. He was awed by my reconstruction of the ten commandments, for he could tell they were holy. He was awed when I told him that the originals were purportedly written by God. It was commandment three however that scared him the most, as many actions taken in God’s name instead should not have been done. The other commandment that had a curious effect was the fifth, as it states honoring your parents encourages prosperity in the lands assigned to you. Apparently he’s seen too many rebellious children end up ruining their parent’s realms.
Once that was done I opened up my control module and started looking for my setting up a subordinate code. Once I find it and review it, I ask, “Arthur, who else will be coming out here?”
“They refuse to spare anyone due to the dragon, who is now sitting outside the entrance, and cannot hear me here. Tim test if you can set up a dragonslayer.” Timothy tests and fails at the paladin’s request.
“Whatever mechanism is running the anti-dragon properties is not controllable by me.” I show the three of them my vengeance for what happened to my father.
“When did you turn it on,” asks Jerome
“When I heard there was a dragon about, in the lord’s chatter. I just kind of assumed there would be a lot of gloating when one of the others slew the monster.” I finish up the modification, and start to look for an opening in the conversion.
“Dragon’s interdicting out teleporter for supplies, grumbles the mage.” and there is my opening.
“I had an idea for that. I could set up Arthur and Tim as temporary vassals, and have Jerome give them enough energy to lean on the Lord’s immunities.” Timothy looks at Arthur while said paladin looks pensive.
Jerome walks over to look at it, and whistles, “Don’t have the soul for infighting, and you are not entirely sure the other two will be stable as dungeon masters.”
Timothy perks up and reads the contract, “Well, that is why the control system is locked, isn’t it.” Arthur gives the contract a once over as well.
“I can also see why he picked me to be the delver for the other two, I’m already a delver and as we are expected to work together after this we can Iron out any problems either group has. Wait, I can use the…” Jerome just left and disabled the protections to start delving again. I soon feel him prodding the yellow gate in cycles to give me spikes for traps. In the end both of the other two sign the contract and I start using their energies to generate their respective subcores. Then I put the area where their core resides before the boss chamber, and then after that I push parts of their realms outside of the yellow gate. This in turn caused the indentations to stop receding as far after being grabbed by our resident delver.
This all comes to a head when Timothy’s section summons a blue slime, as compared to Blobby’s yellow coloration. I end up intercepting Jerome when he goes to abuse Timothy, saying that he can use my knife if he can slay the slime in one hit. He ends up accepting the challenge, so I end up surreptitiously pocketing a blue slime card, that I bind in soon after. Jerome ends up grabbing several more before he realizes something is up and fails to pocket my knife. Then Jerome runs into his first shade, and he immediately realizes that the shade was hiding from my knife.
I start walking up when the shades from outside arrive, which causes the shade harassing Jerome to start ignoring him. Following the shade, Jerome meets up with me in the dungeons first floor landing. The shade from the dungeon is pulled into the collective and then turns to me and my knife. It starts singing about its flesh being delicious before throwing itself on my knife and into my inventory. No essence in this batch, but in addition to making all future shades under my command more powerful, I got a small amount of power from an attribute card. The shade reassembles a moment later, and I remember to remove the name hider from Inky. Inky waves to Jerome who gives me the stop having overpowered bosses look.
I go back down the stairs to my boss chamber and pull out my card pack. First card was a bit of paladin essence which I use to make our resident paladin's expenditure easier, and the second was a healing spell that trades mana for trace amounts of health. Then there are the minor assorted resources like water, potionweed, and corite, and the monster cards, of which I get a basic zombie, and a gid. I set both of my new monster cards as interim Monster lords, and restrict their access to the areas behind the barrier. Of the miscellaneous items I get a pencil, an empty iron locket, a set of lockpicks, and a tier one spear, of which the pencil and lockpicks get bound in successfully while the locket and spear, give me a minor bonus to metal, and the physicals respectively. The two items that do not get bound in also get placed similarly to the monsters. The remainder beyond the carrier class essence, was a hyper limited skill bonus that merged into my armor and another bonus for the fighting monsters.
After setting the new territory card into the same place I put the items and monsters, except I leave it in the sealed state. I see inky has encouraged the other three persons to join in with his summoning skill. “As you have already encountered Blobby’s summoning skill I’ll only touch it in passing here, lets just say that Blobby generates a lot of attention when he goes all out with his skill and the anti-infection features trigger to stop blobby. The maximum value it will ignore is Blobby’s level times my durability. But we are here today for Inky’s summoning skill. Due to Inky having no mechanism to control his own summoned shadows, the only thing I found it’s good for is revealing all the demonic corruption still in me and processing part of it.”
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“So you are using it as a diagnostic, I have a purification skill too, so this should be the last time you need to use it for this in a while.” Inky looks sad at Arthur’s words.
“Inky’s summoning skill creates a spiritual light,” I continue, “and anything the light touches can generate a shadow version. The light generating the shadows follows the inverse square law, which means we do not have to worry about the summons wandering off and causing trouble elsewhere just where we are. Inky usually stays relatively still while using the skill, as its output will doppler as he moves.”
“Oh,” says Timothy, who pulls out his journal and writes down doppler and imbues it with his memory of me using the word.
“So for each thing that generates a shadow, that shadow will animate and will act like a hazard trying to inconvenience its source.” Inky prepares to cast the ability.
“Meaning mine will try to stop me from removing your demonic corruption?”
From behind Arthur a voice calls out, “Of course.”
A pair of clanking Dark knight forms from behind Arthur, while I modulate my aura. “This has got to be the first time where your aura turned out to be a detriment.”
Two more cloaked figures arrive as one of the dark knights vanish when the paladin’s aura deactivates. Then the final two cloaked figures arrive; one has horns. ”Neither your upgraded armor nor the aid of these fools will give you no succor. Submit, for this corruption is inevitable.”
The paladin breathes out, and a moment later the remaining black knight becomes insubstantial. “Inky this is a great challenge, I’ll have to recommend it to my college.”
Jerome, who can instantly tell what Arthur did, begins attempting to copy him immediately, only to have his copy gang up on Timothy. Author intercepts all of that while I take on my two as I would have done before they arrived.
“Look, squabbling fools, even virtuous souls whose aid is rendered impotent.” Horned shadow charges me. Mage’s shadow mutates under the strain. I grab on a leg belonging to the delver's shadow and use that shadow to knock my shadow away. It is only when Arthur can focus on my shadow do I make any headway. Horned shadow roars. Corruption is purged. Demon is sealed. It’s over.
“We won, but how?” asks Timothy.
“An angel of death is here.” the paladin says quietly.
I take that as my queue to walk up the stairs to the area beyond the yellow door. I look at the demon’s card; sealed by the fight. It unlike every other card is tarot sized instead of the more standard playing card size of the regular packs. I hold out the card. The angel takes it. The angel leaves with an escort of fire.
As I walk down the stairs I hear, “I haven’t been so badly mauled by this requirement since I was last at the school.”
I pause and feel a reference to my entrance, and discover that my boundary has expanded outward and formed a fractal boundary. I walk back down and discover a fourth person, an elf.
“What are your designs for our village?” My father’s comment on elves not wanting to be in places with bonuses for elves not by other elves, rings true.
“To be honest I kind of assumed I’d get a random affinity for elves before I ever had a chance to get one, so I didn’t even check what was in your land card. Just Blew Two common packs the last time I had any while a demon was present and therefore decided that I’m just going to crack the pack now without doing my due diligence.” The elf’s ears droop as I continue as it’s increasingly apparent that I have authority over their village over sheer dumb luck.
“Nah, we are men so we don’t have that problem,” instigates Jerome.
“Inky please don’t make things worse here.” The other four turn to look at the shade.
The elf after a moment asks “May I borrow your knife?”
I give her my knife and she teleports away, and after I confirm it remained within my realm, I dump an alarm on it and turn back to the other two. “What do you think the elf wanted your knife for?”
The paladin’s question hangs over the air before Jerome answers, “It’s almost certainly setting terms for their ‘enslavement’. Elves are defined by their environment, they cannot leave due to the dragon, but conversely staying gives Jack authority over them. This authority compounds over time which is why they move around more aggressively as adventurers.”
“If we stay we are claimed by Lord Walker and if we go we are dominated by the dragon. I suppose some congratulations are on order Milord Walker; My name is Elder Apocynum, and this is my unmarried daughter Colic. She was previously betrothed to another elf who died in the event that encapsulated our collective. Since our commune needed an ambassador to you she was chosen before you brought your knife back and revealed your true nature. As Jerome already surmised, the dealings were to determine the terms of our enslavement; any elf that enters your realm will forfeit their souls to be yours alone. In return for our eternal devotion, we get to continue to exist for as long as you do not need to snuff out our souls. In addition, while we would like you not to play with the elf template too much, Colic is yours to use as you see fit.” The elder pulls out an elf racial card for me to absorb.
I absorb the card and Colic cries out; “Thank you for sparing us!”
Then the paladin gets the message on the binding from my paladin class, and as such starts crying. Then it picks up on the lord’s chatter, including one orcish lord who promises to campaign against me. While the other lords are mixed between asking me to share and asking me to be virtuous to them. I watch as the elves pull their enclave behind the yellow gate, and prepare for the arrival of the orcs.