Mike exited his workshop, having finished upgrading Stags Bane to heroic rarity. It had barely been enough to push it over the edge into heroic rarity, as all he had added was some durability enchantments and sharpened the edge slightly, but it had been enough. He didn't even get a profession level due to just how little work it had required. He had also taken the time to add a few conductivity enchantments to his hammer, which would make it quicker to add and take away weight from the weapon.
He walked over to the entrance to the village, and on his way he noted many of the things that had changed from before he had been gone for a month. The first and most obvious was the now 100 foot wall that loomed over the entire village. Mike had already thought it to be quite big, but he had been informed that it wasn't even at its full planned height yet. The second thing he noticed was that the average height of each building was quite a bit higher than it had been before. Due to the outer walls not being complete, the buildings within the old walls had nowhere to expand outwards, so they had all built up.
The last thing that was of note was that many of the buildings he saw had some kind of sculpture or carving decorating them. When he identified them, he saw that each one was of at least rare rarity. He assumed that either sculpting had become a trend or Lucas was a rich man now.
When he made it to the gate, he saw that his second guess was probably the case. There was a group of people present, nine in total, but the very first person his eyes fell on were Lucas. Part of it was because he hadn't seen his friend in some time, but mostly it was because of the bright golden fur coat he wore, the same one he had been wearing in the meeting a week ago.
“What the hell is up with that?” Mike said before he greeted anybody. “I didn't want to interrupt our planning last week, but I can’t ignore that forever.”
“What's up with what?” Lucas asked, clearly trying to mess with Mike.
“The fur coat. I thought rouge’s were supposed to be sneaky.”
“I can be both sneaky and dazzling.” Lucas said, before doing a spin. As he spun, golden glitter surrounded him like a cloud before he vanished. Mike’s aura alerted him that something was right behind him. Bending his arm, he forced his elbow to jam into Lucas’ side, which caused the man to keel over.
“Not very subtle though.” Mike muttered. He looked at the group around him, which was the group they had put together to infiltrate Gratsden. They stood in several groups, talking to one another while they waited to begin the journey to the tree settlement. In one small group was Lila, John, and the captain of the guard. In another was Raj along with two of the grand chiefs.
The last group was just two people, being Aaron and Vladimir. During the meeting he had been surprised to find out that Vladimir was the highest level support mage in the entire village, having shifted his focus from damage based spells to support spells. The last person in the group was the rogue that was on the floor behind Mike.
“Is everyone ready to head out now?” Raj asked. After getting nods from everyone he handed out small bags to everybody present. Mike already knew what was in the bags, but took a glance in just to double check everything was there. He saw everything he had been expecting, that being the desert core, two mana potions, two health potions, and two small green bottles of poison.
The first poison was made specifically for killing trees, and everybody had one. The second was one that only Mike had, and it was the mana sapping poison that he had helped the alchemists make. The reason he was the only one that had it was that he was the only one that could dispel it if it became necessary. If anyone else used it when he wasn't around, it could put them in critical condition. If Lila inhaled any of it, she would likely die extremely quickly due to being made of mana.
They headed out, and after just under two hours made it within sight of the massive tree. They stopped two miles away from the walls, and waited while Lucas scouted the walls with his high agility and perception. When he made it back, he reported two potential spots where they could leap the wall unnoticed if there was a distraction. After everyone went over the plan once more and they were confident nobody would forget their roles, Mike split from the group and approached the front gate.
He was immediately recognized by the guards and let through, as he was sure Roots had instructed them to wait for his return. He was pretty impressed they remembered his face after so long. He made his way to the central tree, where he found Roots already waiting at the bottom for him, standing on his leaf lift. The druid motioned to the leaf, and Mike stepped on.
“I see you have fallen behind a bit in levels.” The druid noted.
“I have, but I have been busy making your sword.” Mike responded, lying right through his teeth.
“It better have been worth the wait.”
When they reached the top, they sat once more at the top of the tree, which Mike noticed was significantly taller than it had been before. He wasn't sure that he could survive a fall to the bottom if it came to that, but he wasn't worried since he had his wings. Mike shifted uncomfortably in his chair, trying not to show how nervous he was. If he was showing it, he at least hoped it would be passed off as being around somebody stronger than himself, or at least who Roots thought was stronger than Mike.
“Show me the sword.” The leader of the settlement said, sounding impatient.
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Mike pulled out the heroic ranked sword and placed it on the table. The druid reached for it, but Mike stopped him. “Wait. Before we continue you need to soul bind the sword.”
“How do I do that?”
“You don’t have any skill to do that?”
“I am supposed to?”
“It would be more convenient, but don't worry. I have a way to bind it to you without a skill. Step back please.” After the druid had stepped back, leaving room between the two of them, Mike summoned forth the ritual that he had been storing within his soul. Mike didn't think the druid would be able to identify it, since it was such a high rarity that you would need at least a rare rarity identifying skill to do so. Mike himself wouldn't have been able to identify the ritual if it wasn't for his legendary ranked enchanting skill that augmented his identify. “This is going to take a minute to do.”
He placed the sword in the middle of the ritual and placed the desert core next to it. He directed the core to start funneling mana into the ritual, powering it and feeding the many enchantments. Mike also began infusing his own mana into the ritual, trying to get it fully powered. He never put in more than his regeneration could support, as he didn't want to have an empty mana pool when a fight was surely inevitable.
Roots watched on in curiosity as Mana fed into the ritual from the core and Mike. “Would you like me to help?” He asked.
“That would be great. Just infuse your mana into that spot over there.” He pointed to the connection runes which would distribute the mana through the enchantments. He felt the power flowing into the ritual increase, but not at as high of a rate that he had expected. Clearly the druid wasn't going past what his own regeneration could support either. It took a few minutes, but soon the ritual was fully powered and ready for activation. This was the point where Mike began to sweat a bit.
From the intel they had gotten from people within the settlement, Gratsden had a total population of about thirty thousand now. Mike had experimented and discovered that every bracelet would require two points of mana from him to break the enchantment within. That meant he would need to infuse roughly sixty thousand mana total if he wanted to get to every bracelet. His total mana pool was only about twenty seven thousand, which meant the rest would require him to use his mana regeneration to fuel it. He began infusing his mana at the rate his regeneration could keep up with as he started talking.
“Great, it’s done. Now you should be able to pull it into your soul.” He said.
“How did that bind it to me?” Roots asked, looking confused but also bewildered by the ritual which was still glowing in front of him.
“It connected your mana to it thanks to you helping power this. If you hadn't helped then we would have needed you to hold the sword and channel mana while on top of the ritual.”
The druid walked to the center and picked up the sword. A look of intense concentration crossed his face as he looked like he was trying to pull the sword into his soul.
“You need some pointers?” Mike asked. He had infused 5000 mana into the ritual now, having subtly drank a mana potion to boost his regeneration. He was now pumping 4500 mana a minute into the ritual instead of the 3700 his mana regen usually would be at.
“I got this.” The druid said, his scowl growing more intense. Mike internally cheered that the man was being so stubborn and trying to get it done himself. It gave him more time to infuse the ritual. After five minutes, Roots finally got outwardly frustrated. “Alright, how do I do this!”
“Think of it like you are trying to close your system menu, but that menu is the sword.” Mike said. It was how he had imagined it whenever he used it on his hammer, so he thought it sounded real enough to be believable. Even more time passed, and Mike just needed to infuse ten thousand more mana into the ritual before a wrench was thrown into the plan.
The leaf lift, which Mike hadn't realized had lowered, came into view as two other druids rushed into the room. Mike identified them, seeing that the identify blocking effects Roots had did not affect them.
Human (level 49)
Human (level 48)
Mike frowned a bit at their levels, but recovered quickly. What he did not recover as quickly from was the paleness that overcame him as the higher level druid spoke.
“Sir! The mana receivers are getting a far lower input than they should be receiving. It has been dropping for the past 12 minutes, and we are unable to fix it!”
Roots ran over to a spot on the wall, and a screen of mana not unlike the ones Martin used appeared on the wooden wall. “Damn it!” The man yelled. “The bracelets are losing their connections to the tree!” He turned to Mike. “What did you do?”
Mike panicked a bit, and dumped the remaining ten thousand mana needed into the ritual. The last bits of mana left the ritual as all of its power was used up, and it stopped glowing. At the same time, the readings on Roots screen dropped to zero. The druid may be evil, but he wasn't dumb. When he saw the ritual stop glowing at the same time the mana intake of the tree bottomed out, he had an idea of what was going on. He lunged for Mike, swinging the sword he was holding. This prompted the two druids to also go on the attack.
Mike dodged around their attacks, using blast step to run away as attack after attack came at him. Suddenly roots swung the sword sideways right as Mike was next to the exit to the tree. A pillar of wood shot out of the ground, throwing Mike out of the tree and sending him tumbling into a free fall. He stabilized his fall in seconds, looking and seeing Roots followed him out. The man was jumping from branch to branch and leaf to leaf as they sprouted out from the tree. Mike summoned his wings and stopped his descent, hastily knocking away a blast of mana that was sent his way.
“Do you know what you’ve done!” Roots screamed at him. Mike didn't respond, instead flying circles around the tree in an effort to avoid the attacks of the druid. It only took a few minutes for nine other druids to join him, making ten total druids that were attacking him. He knew he had absolutely zero chance of fighting every single one of them at once, so he evaded as best he could, using blast step and his wings to keep himself airborne.
Branches shot out from the tree in almost countless quantities, with Mike needing to smash through several with his hammer as he flew. He was forced to drink his other mana potion to keep his reserves from depleting any further, and he was beginning to get worried at how long his teammates were taking.
Just then, he saw a huge bolt of mana rise into the air in the distance, exploding like a firework when it got to the top of the tree. That was the signal they had come up with to signify that the settlement had been evacuated, and Mike began heading lower to the ground so his teammates could assist in the fight.
When he was no closer than 500 feet from the ground, he saw a shower of yellow glitter appear behind Roots, and Lucas hitting the druid in the back of the head with a perfectly executed drop kick. The druid was sent tumbling for a moment, and Lucas cried out in joy. “The time for stealth is over, it’s time to be dazzled!”