Fortunately for Kairen, he was only unconscious for a few minutes. With the ritual complete and with Kairen spending upgrade points to drop below his maximum the painful pressure on the ghost had vanished, and he rapidly recovered, just in time to catch the last part of a conversation between Zar and Mr. Mage.
“You’re sure?” Zar asked skeptically.
“You saw what I did. You read screen too.” Mr. Mage shrugged, his bare skin rippling. “Just need time now. I come back in few months, maybe buy slave if you have pretty one for me.”
“Is there any way to speed up the process?” Zar prodded the ritualist.
“Maybe. Kill more slaves? Hard to say. Rules not understood fully.” The mage answered after a few seconds of thought. “Otherwise more people is good. Bigger Zaros is better Oasis gets. I go now. My master will want report in person.”
“Right.” Zar drawled, a hint of frustration entering his voice. “He always gets what he wants, doesn’t he?”
Mr. Mage shook a finger at the smaller adventurer. “Do not disrespect my master. Without his wealth and resources neither of us would be here today.”
Before Zar could either apologize or throw additional insults Mr. Mage had opened the tent and left. By the time Zar got up and left the tent himself the ritualist's long stride and a bit of minor magic had carried him all the way across the arena. Seeing this, Zar simply sighed and left the arena himself at a slower pace, making his way back to his office. The adventurer still hadn’t formed any governmental positions for the Oasis, and for the moment was the only person taking care of administrative issues. The slave raid had been successful, but now Zar as the person in charge had to create and organize a system to keep track of the various slaves and their condition even as he tried to reshape them into a more useful form.
Kairen had no interest in learning about the mundanities of evil, and left at that point, finding a quiet spot on the pond where he could sit and think for a while. The sun overhead made him tingle lightly, and it was easy for the boy to simply passively enjoy his environment as his mind focused on other things.
Mr. Mage’s magic had been a brutal vile thing. Kairen fixed that fact firmly in his mind. No matter how much benefit he or anyone else derived from it, it simply could not make it worth the cost. Kairen did his best to fix the image of the sacrificed man in his memory. He owed a lot to that near stranger, and it wouldn’t do to forget him. The boy made a mental note to head over to the slave pens later, in hopes of learning the man’s name through overheard conversation.
Kairen truly did owe a lot to him. What had happened today had given Kairen key pieces of information that he needed to start piecing together a better picture of how Oases function. Despite his initial hopes, Kairen no longer believed that ghosts were responsible for running the other Oases. That wasn’t to say that ghosts couldn’t be present there, and given how many people lived in or near an Oasis it wouldn’t surprise Kairen if there were quite a few ghosts left wandering around the cities they had inhabited during their time amongst the living. What Kairen now knew was that the system didn’t need someone like him to function. The randomizer function by itself would ensure that a ghostless Oasis would experience continuous growth, and while the upgrades chosen there might not be as efficient as if someone with intelligence was hand picking each one in order, that mattered little when enough time would balance all things out.
The other piece of the puzzle was the ability for humans to select a purpose for the Oasis. Not only did it fix the overly broad approach of the simple randomizer, but it also introduced new fourth tier upgrades. No matter what Kairen had tried he had been unable to have the system show him any fourth-tier upgrades, or even something like the specializations that Zar and Mr. Mage had browsed through. Now that he had a better idea of what was hidden the young boy was hopeful of getting the system to show him more of it, but the fact that it was hidden at all was significant. Even if he could view or interact with them, it was obvious that specialization choice was meant to be handled by a regular person., someone using magic to direct and control the Oasis, as opposed to Kairen, who had somehow inserted himself into the middle of the process in what was looking more and more like a cosmic fluke. In a way, the unlikeliness of his current situation relieved Kairen. While it meant that it was unlikely there was anyone else like him out there in the Sands, it also meant that Mr. Mage wasn’t expecting him, or anything like him. The ritualist had been content to enact his magic, giving control of the Oasis to Zar, before heading on his way, without ever considering the possibility or implications of a ghost meddling with that control.
Sure, Kairen had written messages in the sand, so Zar knew there was some sort of spirit present but writing omens in the sand was hardly indicative of control over the Oasis, no matter how coincidental some of the upgrades might have been. It was a sensible justification that Kairen intended to take full advantage of, hindering the slavers as much as possible without them ever having any hint as to his existence. The main thing he had to account for was the ‘control’ that Zar now expected to have over the Oasis.
The primary issue that Kairen foresaw was with his rats. They had not been present for the ritual, and didn’t understand the power that Mr. Mage represented, or the even more subtle power of wealth that was the ritualists master and Zar’s backer. Alpha and his kin were only interested in inconveniencing Zar and his minions, and fully utilized the Blessings Kairen had given them in pursuit of their goal. Trying to convince the rats to back down or switch things up was going to be difficult.
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It was also necessary. One of the main promises that Mr. Mage had made to Zar was that the ritual would make the rats normal rats again, without any of the benefits that Kairen’s Blessings conferred. While it was tempting to consider simply not changing anything and leaving the spooky ritualist to deal with the fallout of not being correct, Kairen knew that doing so was asking for trouble. The ritual Mr. Mage had created had been quickly designed and roughly implemented, and had still pushed Kairen to his limits in his attempt to work around it. Giving the ritualist another chance to correct things once he knew that Kairen was working against him was a recipe for disaster, or at least an exorcism.
Cautiously, Kairen felt out those connections that the sightless sage had mentioned. When he thought of the rats or the various humans present in the Oasis he could recall his impression of them all, but it was deeper than just his memories and recollections. There was an extra dimensionality that was both utterly alien and completely natural, and Kairen shifted his focus towards parsing it out into something that made sense to his human mind.
The key relationship that helped Kairen begin to put that extra sense into perspective was his hatred of Zar. None of Kairen’s Blessings were active on the man, and it was easy to see why. The thought of doing anything to directly benefit the slaver was met with an instinctive swell of fury, one that drowned out even idle thoughts on the matter and left no room for argument. Zar was an enemy, no matter what position he claimed to have.
Things got trickier after that. Given his general hate for slavers and murderers, Kairen had been surprised to discover that most of Zar’s minions were benefitting to some degree from his Blessings. Even though Kairen himself didn’t like those men, it seemed that was only part of the equation. The rats didn’t like the humans either, but the rats couldn’t simply overwhelm the humans and drive them out. The slavers were here to stay, and their own view of themselves as residents of the Oasis of Zaros weighed against Kairen’s desire to evict them. Much like an emotion, that bond was something he could work to fuel or diminish, but doing so took time and effort. Given the fact that most of the slavers weren’t fully utilizing those Blessings, Kairen turned his attention towards his rats as he tried to figure out a good solution for his various problems.
Those same bonds were present, both towards the rats as a whole, but Kairen could feel stronger bonds when thinking of certain rats. The named rats were simply more, whatever connection they had to Kairen giving them a stronger Blessing. They could learn more, work harder, and fight better than the other rats, and Kairen could feel those differences through their connection. Each Blessing felt like a new emotion directed towards the recipient, feelings that didn’t have names and didn’t strike the same chords that normal emotions did, but were somehow felt the same way. Miner and Scarlett stood out in Kairen’s mind as well, tinged with a strong feeling that Kairen was able to associate with his Blessing of Skill. The other Blessings were harder to tease apart, but Kairen did his best to try and understand all seven of the Blessings he was providing.
It didn’t take long for Kairen to realize that while the rats benefitted from his blessings, they didn’t have the same impetus tying them to the Oasis that the humans did. Kairen couldn’t point to any single cause as the answer. Perhaps the ritual had worked to some degree, and Zar’s view of the rats as invaders was now in effect, and just happened to be counteracted by Kairen’s affection for the small mammals. Perhaps it was simply that the rats weren’t human, with the associated range of emotions and attachments. If the strength of the bond was based on the depth of the connection, how would that apply to a species that might not regularly experience such abstract concepts? While it was distasteful, Kairen felt that he could easily remove the blessing from some or all of the rats. Trying it on Epsilon who was on the surface at the time led to an immediate reaction as the rat turned to look at Kairen in shock, and the ghost quickly restored the Blessings, before apologizing.
“Sorry, Epsilon. I’m trying to figure some things out.”
The rat squeaked affirmatively before scampering on its way, leaving Kairen to continue his thinking. It would take some explaining, but he figured he could talk with Alpha and try and get the smarter rats to understand what was happening. For the rest, Kairen kept coming back to pulling his blessings away. Doing so felt like a betrayal, but letting Zar and Mr. Mage eventually take full control of the Oasis was also a betrayal, if a slower one.
What finally convinced Kairen to go ahead with his idea of pretending to be controlled was the fact that the rats weren’t chained to the Oasis as he was. They definitely had easier access to resources here than they would out in the Sands, but other than that there was nothing stopping them from simply heading off and starting a new life elsewhere, much like Alpha had done before the Oasis was founded. From that perspective, removing his Blessings was not lining his rats up to be slaughtered but simply another way of kicking them out of the nest, of encouraging them to head elsewhere and make a life for themselves. It wasn’t like they would benefit from the Blessings after they left the Oasis anyways.
It would take time to experiment with controlling the Blessings and to get Alpha and the other rats to understand his plan, but Kairen felt good about his odds of making it succeed. It would give him the time he needed to figure out the next stages of his growth where he could hopefully find something to turn the tides.
Not that doing so would be easy. Zar would be watching for specific upgrades, and Kairen would have to oblige him occasionally, he could probably sneak in a few unrelated choices every now and again, but if the Oasis didn’t grow to become more like the plantation that Zar wanted then Kairen knew there would be problems. Fortunately, while Kairen hated the idea of being forced down a specific path of growth he didn’t have any problem with grabbing the upgrades in question. He just wished he could do so only because he wanted to, and not because of the threat looming over him.