Flurries of snow blanketed the overgrown field next to the devastated field. Piles of greant corpses dotted the growing snow mounds while Herbert stalked forward with his hands stuck firmly in the pockets of some shorts Adelaide had given him after he met up with them that morning. Since it had been Eli's, it was a bit too short and snug for him, but it was better than nothing. Too bad she didn't have the same powers as Herbert's mom. Her Kaleidoscopic Vogue let her design and create perfectly tailored clothes with ease.
"Where are the stronger ones?" Herbert asked when he rejoined Adelaide and Rick, who had watched him kill the field full of greants with a small amount of pride. It echoed his own memories of proving himself to his grandparents in high school when he'd finally improved and evolved Hydro Authority enough to slot it into Body of Water.
"Farther North-west. Greants grow fast, though, so they need to be culled on every patrol." Rick said, as he floated with an influx of kinetic energy. "We believe they have a den or something along the coast, the woods, and then in the hills leading to the mountains about six hours north."
"Vic is worried that they might have overtaken New Faram too or another strain of monsters. Their traders are a week late now." Adelaide added.
"And where is that?" Herbert asked while he stretched out with Mind of Icewraith to see if he sensed the paradoxical spiral of life and death of any more spawn nearby. Pincers of tension squeezed the sides of his head, but it was good practice. Normally, he'd rely on Nora or Les to use their own powers to scout, so he was happy to finally get the chance to push Icewraith more.
"South of Farbrook. It's a couple hours of driving, but it's not too far if you fly." Rick said while he lifted his hand as he used his Aerovolt power to launch a lance of electricity up toward the clouds. A few moments later, an eagle-feathered harpy woman tumbled out of the sky trailing smoke and fluttering feathers. "Most people are fine fighting or defending their home, but the current reality has worn thin on a lot of people. Monster attacks have been constant in general, but the greants seem to have a personal vendetta against us. They lurk in the perimeter of Farbrook, prowl our streets at night, and kill as many as they can, no matter how many times we destroy their forces."
"Hm." Herbert hummed noncommittally while he continued to search for more threats.
"So. What do you do back home?" Adelaide asked after he and Rick let the conversation fade.
"I'm in my first year at Anchora University."
"What's your major?"
"Do you have a girlfriend?"
Rick and Adelaide immediately asked two questions at the same time. They really were almost like his parents.
"Undeclared. I'm interested in Delving, but my parents say that I should branch out a bit more with my studies. My older sister, Maeve, freelances with the Delve Regulation Committee to solve various spawn and dungeon problems while also working as a Power Consultant, but it's unstable work." Herbert chuckled wryly, "And I kind of have a girlfriend? I've been seeing someone for a bit and I really like her, but... I don't know. She'll probably think I ghosted her or something when I disappear."
"Spawn... You mean the monsters? We haven't seen anything about dungeons, but if they're anything like video game dungeons, I have a fair idea of what that would be like." Rick said with a furrowed brow. "It sounds dangerous, but... it wouldn't be too different from what we're doing now, would it? You're certainly capable and I feel you'd do well with it, but I don't know what options you really have in your world."
"Too many." Herbert chuckled. "Powers have been around for almost 200 years, so anything above entry-level requires a power or build designed around that job. I thought about following in your... my dad's footsteps and becoming a licensed Meteormancer, or maybe do something in the sea or oceans, but... I don't know. That doesn't sound thrilling to me."
Unlike Delving, which made his hands tremble and his heart race with excitement.
"Careers rarely are." Adelaide chuckled. "It's a long road, so it's important to pick something both enjoyable and stable, in my opinion. Whatever industry you work in will be it for roughly forty years until retirement."
"Why forty years?" Herbert glanced over at her with a frown. That was an oddly specific number. Why would people work for such a short period of time?
"So people can retire and enjoy some time with their families and spend time on their hobbies when they get old?"
Herbert mused on that for a few seconds while they walked. It felt like one of those enchanted puzzles that Romulus and Jane had worked on for fun a month or two ago. It didn't really make sense with its various perspectives, but he hoped it'd line up while he thought about it. People worked for most of their lives with frequent breaks or vacations. Retirement was pretty rare, too.
It took months or more likely even years to level up and improve powers after evo-2. Especially after whatever mysterious milestone occurred when someone slotted their final stat in. Maeve and his parents had warned him repeatedly to make sure he had his auxiliary powers where he wanted them before he put Winter's Tempest in his Will slot. So why would people drop out of their careers only forty years into them?
"Do people not retire back home when they reach their late sixties?" Adelaide asked with visible concern. "It's important to have a proper work-life balance, especially for the work culture."
"No?" Herbert glanced at them with rising confusion at their expressions of horror. "Why would people retire at sixty?"
"Because they're old?" Rick said, as if it were obvious.
"Sixty is old? Really? People don't live to two or even three hundred on average?" Herbert glanced at the two of them expectantly while he waited for them to laugh after catching them in their fib.
"Two or three hundred years old?" Adelaide ogled at him as if he'd said that he knew someone who'd deleted their System profile and started over.
"Yeah, at least. It seems to matter what someone has in their Body stat, whether they have access to good healing powers or medical care, and then there are specialized Vitality and Longevity powers. Some people can probably live longer, but the System has only been around since the 1800s. Some people die younger, but it's pretty rare, unless if they die from improper power use or due to a spawn related incident."
"So there are people alive from the 1800s in your world?" Adelaide asked incredulously.
"Oh yeah, definitely. We had one of them as a speaker in elementary school. She said it was a difficult time. Everyone getting powers escalated fights between neighbors. Land disputes and other wars rapidly blew up due to the sheer level of power. Travel became easier on top of healing and damage. Soldiers could be fatally wounded, put back together, then sent out to fight again all in the same day. She was alive when Biomancer John Stanley created the first spawn, the Chimeric Cow to revolutionize farming. It was capable of regenerating after cuts of meat were harvested from it and was incapable of feeling pain. Unfortunately, it gained the necessary amount of sentience to Initialize with the System."
While he talked, Adelaide and Rick listened to him with rapt horror. Stalks of grass crunched beneath their every step while they wound around their patrol path toward the woods where the greants and trolls were estimated to have a large den. Or hopefully a dungeon.
"Spawn always have limited powersets based on their physiology and temperament, but they're far more powerful for it. The Chimeric Cow had the ability to change its traits at will while healing itself from massive amounts of damage. But it also transformed other cows and livestock animals into spawn as they went on a rampage. It only took days or weeks for it to become too large of a problem. Apparently, the United States thought they were alone on that issue, but Biomancers in other countries created their own spawn, first of all, but the System also created dungeons full of any spawn created to push them out into the world."
"That's pretty much what happened here." Rick admitted after a brief pause. "A lot of states went martial law after riots or outright rebellion, so the President declared national martial law. Every state was at the mercy of the military. Strict curfews were set, harsher policies concerning power governance, heavy prison sentences if powers were used in a crime, on and on it went for about two to three months. Then the greants started popping up all over the west. Shortly after that, they appeared all over the country along with the trolls and ferroents. Then the other monsters came and the military left."
"We've been on our own since." Adelaide said while she turned her head as he felt the life of something approach. Before he could react, she swept her hand out toward the life signature as she sent out a wave of disintegration that chewed its way through the grass. Bestial screams fell short as the greant decayed into a withering husk as beads of sap poured out of its bark. Herbert glanced at her horrified.
Mom couldn't do that.
"What? It's my Putramancer's Blight. I picked it up and customized it a bit from one of the goblins before we managed to wipe them out in this area." She shrugged in nearly the same way Mom did when something was matter-of-fact.
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"Oh, I remember that one. That was when you managed to evolve Winter's Flurry into Winter's Wrath." Rick chimed in as he smiled at her with literal warmth as sparks of electricity flashed across his skin. Herbert wondered whether he had a lightning-body hybrid power or if he had one of his storm powers in his Body stat. "We were out with the Anders by the abandoned national guard base when we stumbled on a goblin camp. Addy was a menace of frost as she unleashed her cooking enchantment prowess on them!"
"It's pretty easy if you consider monsters to be ingredients. Meat and garnish to be cooked or chilled." She shrugged with far more casual bloodlust than Mom had ever displayed. He wondered what the fuck they meant by a cooking power, but if it let her literally cook spawn alive, then that was horrific and metal as fuck.
Icewraith Mind pinged as he felt multiple life signatures approach from beneath the ground.
Vines burst upward like writhing spears as hordes of trolls charged with briar armor and thorned weapons. He grinned wolfishly as he noticed the mess of bristling bramble that grew out of the necrotic trollflesh of each spawn. Greants had murdered trolls and taken over their more durable corpses.
"Stay back." Herbert commanded while he stepped forward.
Ice cowled Herbert as he withdrew his armor and frosted enchanted sword from Arctic Armory. Body of Water synergized as he transformed into his Icewraith form turning his hungry smile menacing as he became a spirit of ice and water. Winter's Tempest howled around him as subzero winds froze exploded the plant matter in blasts of steam. Icicles tapered around him while thermal plasma shimmered through his glacial form and armor while he took a step forward. Frost crunched beneath his feet, but Body of Water and Icewraith Mind smoothed the motion until it was fluid.
Lumbering trolls slowed him as they struggled to move through the sheets of ice.
Herbert phased through the ice and air in a blizzard of hail as he scythed straight through dead trollflesh like tissue paper to freeze the greants inside one after another. He turned solid again on top of a snowy mound of corpses frozen solid. Life whispered below as something tried to retreat.
"They're underground." Herbert's voice rasped like the scrape of cold steel on ice. He phased through the ground as he left layers of hoarfrost in his wake. A network of roots spanned in a gnarled tangle in every direction in a mess of living and dead, dry organic matter.
Echoes of haunting life called to him.
Glacial hunger gnawed at him while he flushed through the root network while he left a trail of growing ice crystals. Twists and turns whipped him around as he followed that tantalizing siren song of life. Icewraith Mind and Body of Water let him zip through miles of land at a rapid pace. Hunger sharpened to gluttony while his fractal points of ice warped as they darkened.
Herbert burst out and up into a massive sprawling cavern full of arching winding roots that led to a gigantic tree above them. Tiny verdant greants chattered with high pitched screams while they scurried away from him in their rush. Several were knocked down and stomped into pulp from the crowd. A greant at the back of the cavern rushed toward Herbert, her leafy canopy laden with ripe red fruit similar to apples.
Stone creaked and shattered behind him with a dry snap from the cold as he floated down.
Death wafted around him as he breathed it in with a wide smile as euphoria darkened his ice further. Wooden corpses rippled before clusters of ice crunched from their bodies.
Apple Greant ushered the small horde of spawn behind them into a side passage that closed behind them, but Herbert barely paid them any mind. The life force he sensed hadn't been in this room. He glanced upward to where he felt a decadent feast of life and power. He floated on spectral mist as he prepared to phase through the trunk of the tree when a red blur splattered across his chest.
Herbert glared at Apple Greant who ripped another apple out of their canopy before hurling it at him. He let it phase through him while pulling on the numerous clusters of ice with Body of Water, Icewraith Mind, Arctic Armory, and Winter's Tempest. Spears of ice nocked around him as each smooth, translucent block of ice darkened to cruel jagged slivers. He unleashed his salvo with an uproar of splintering wood. Streams of mist obscured that side of the cavern.
Pain sawed through his chest as he dropped to the uneven floor of the cave. Wriggling growths squirmed as it chipped through his ice as each pulped bit of apple grew. If he lost concentration and reverted to his human form... Horror bent the fog of Icewraith Mind as he used every power to freeze the tendrils of growth out.
Greant (x 289) With the powers: Sapling's Growth Ev. 0 (x 289) Your powers surpass the evolution rank of the available powers> He ignored the rest as a looming shape stepped out of the fog. Apple Greant shaped its branchlike arms into massive clubs that whipped into him with a crash of shattered wood and ice. Herbert tumbled through the air as the tiny network of roots in his chest squirmed while they thickened. Ice armor wrapped around him while he fused it back to his body, but he felt his vitality leech into those roots. Herbert hated fighting spawn like this. "I've always hated apple sauce. Hopefully, this will be cathartic." Herbert cracked his neck while veins of white-blue plasma flashed through his frozen body and into the gleaming axe made out of ice that appeared in his right hand. Les's short sword glittered from the grip of his left hand. A swarm of whipping branches lashed at him while he bobbed and weaved under and around the blows. Portions of his armor crumpled under the impact coating the keen twigs with frosty snow. He pivoted with each dodge as he lopped off branches with swings of his axe and sword. Apples dripped glowing seeds that whirled around Apple Greant before they shot toward him with a pop of air and a crack as they burrowed into his armor. Sheets of ice armor sloughed off him with shoots of growth while he dashed forward with a roar of wintry wind. Apple Greant's beady chlorophyll filled eyes widened as he smashed his spiked glacial feet into its trunk. It wobbled with a screech of pain, but it didn't fall. He phased his legs farther into its trunk while he hacked and chopped with savage swings of his ice axe. Branches scratched against his armor. Herbert's spectral ice creaked as the roots thrashed with a sudden fury. Strips and slivers of wood sprayed while sap trickled over the deep frozen gash he'd carved into it. Herbert's blade bit into the trunk's bark with a loud crack as it split down the middle revealing thick clumps of ice saturating its innards. "Timber!" Herbert grinned while he hefted the short sword in his left hand and stabbed the blade into its trunk with a crunch of pulped wood before he used Thermal Ionomancer to switch the deep frigid chill of ice into searing heat. Enchantments nearly yanked the blade out of his grip as it cleaved the trunk in half. Apple Greant howled as subzero ice turned into crackling plasma as pockets of frozen sap and water exploded with pops of steam. Only a devastated husk of wood charred down the middle remained with a heap of ashen apples surrounding it. Steam and smoke billowed off its corpse while Herbert breathed the necrotic energy in with Icewraith Mind. He kicked the trunk with a crumbling snap to reassure himself it was really dead. Herbert glanced from the updated status notification to the tunnel, with its opening revealed from the blasts of ice and plasma. Should he pursue them or... He looked above to where the towering trunk of the main tree speared toward the heavens. A powerful life force beckoned up there. One he couldn't wait to kill. He ascended as a spirit of ice while sheets of fresh armor froze around him. Words scrolled across his vision while he vanished into the trunk. His passage left a crust of hoarfrost and biting ice crystals. Greant (x 290) With the powers: Sapling's Growth Ev. 0 (x 289) Blooming Blossom Ev. 2 (x 1) Springtide Growth Ev. 0 (x 1) Your powers surpass the evolution rank of the available powers> Herbert canceled it while he felt something in the tree respond to his climb. Life flickered all around him as small to medium sized greants slipped through the bark into the rings of the tree. Ionized clouds of plasma crackled around him with a sharp cold snap. Radiant blue icicles speared through the tree with a thunderclap from Winter's Tempest and Thermal Ionomancer unleashing a nova of boreal light and sharp winds. Hundreds of greants died in his wake. Yet, he continued to climb until he burst out of the trunk on a wooden plateau surrounded by the domed canopy of golden branches that gripped each other in a cage of rustling leaves and lumber. A throne twelve feet high with a plush cushion of moss cradled a monolithic greant with emerald eyes and a crown of wood twisted into their canopy. Leaves twitched with a squelching inhale as it breathed. Then it spoke with a rumble of bark. "Interesting... You... you smell like the Companion of our Creator. How did you come here to Botania?" "I found the root system and followed it." He shrugged while he idly wondered what it meant by the first part of what it said. It was hard to think past the rising tide of bloodlust that plagued him. He had to kill it. The greant nodded laboriously while it scratched at the scaled bark of its trunk. "Have you come to sacrifice yourself for our bounty or to needlessly kill more of our kind?" "Neither." Herbert's smile curled into a smirk at the overpowering tug of life and power that emanated from this greant. "I've come for you only." "I see. Moss, wake up." It said with a scrape of its jagged twigfingers. Branches swayed as they unfurled from the throne while it dragged itself upright. The monarch greant balanced easily as the giant greant beneath it stood until it stood sixteen feet tall. "Yes, Sapblood?" asked the greant, presumably named Moss. "Capture this winter smelling human that doesn't look like one." Sapblood hopped down while it crept over to bask in a dazzling sunbeam that shone through the canopy above. "Right away." Branches sprouted from Moss's trunk before they launched through the air in an unceasing volley. Herbert dove in a skid as he iced the ringed plateau beneath him. Wooden lances pierced into the plateau all around him with a thud as they rapidly grew. He tried to slip into the trunk but the wood resisted him. Herbert's eyes widened at the unyielding oppressiveness of a domain power. Fractures cracked all over his armor as a volley of branch spears pulverized themselves on his armor. Spores fluttered all around him in the debris. Vines whipped from the forest of stray shots with a thunderous impact as his armor exploded. He tumbled through the air before a new volley pinned him against the floor. Ice armor thawed as spores infected his wounds and filled his lungs as he became a flesh and blood human again . Two greants lurched above him. Adrenaline mixed with the electric thrill of fear as sparks of plasma consumed the spears riddling his body. Arctic gales snapped beneath him as he rocketed into the waiting embrace of Moss. Branches wrapped around his body as they squeezed until his bones broke with a crunching pop. Blood dribbled down his chin while he coughed. Icewraith Mind flickered around him, but he couldn't freeze his body around the deposits of wriggling growths infecting his wounds, bloodstream, and lungs. Plasma blazed around him in a blast of light leaving nothing but a smoldering mess of moss coated in embers. Still, the vise grip of Moss's branches tightened while he flooded Herbert's body with more spores and toxins. He flopped his head to the side limply as he looked out into the darkness outside the domed canopy in hopes of seeing the sun. Instead, he only saw thunderclouds dark with rain and thunder as bolts of lightning ignited the dome. Three familiar figures landed on the plateau as sleet flourished around one, vibrant electricity another, and the third was shrouded in a mechsuit. Herbert tried to speak, but couldn't force a word out over the crushing pressure of his infected lungs and snapped ribs. Help me, Mom and Dad...