Chapter 62 – plans afoot

Back at the village, it was a hive of activity as everyone got on with their assigned tasks – there were lots to do. The children would head into the village proper and take up their duties, but this was not where the real work lay – they each had to practice at the least the rudimentary of their chosen professions. The plan was for them to take up schooling in Weihou after the Winter when schooling started again in the spring – this would require them to all have caught up with quite a few years of education, both general and specific. As they had received no proper education as Relites up to this point – as Relites, they had been educated in their ways and traditions, but this was of no use in the wider world.

How were they to catch up with all this basic education? Well, Libby, Hubba, Trey, Meca, and Echo were going to split the tasks up among themselves – each being a basic tutor for one profession or area. This was one purpose of Libby metaphorically ransacking the local prefectures archives for anything of use for now or later on down the line. It was not to be denied that she also wanted to find anything of use to their group as a whole, as her knowledge of just about everything was sorely lacking. You make think this strange, but if you remember, she had specific details on her ship, and none of this involved self-study – purely retrieval for the crew.

Ok, that still does not answer the question of how they were to magically absorb years of basic education over the winter months – although there would be little else to do once the snow set in, as the village would be cut off from the rest of the world for a time. Of course, you know the answer – Pocket dimensions. The new pocket dimensions had been set up for crop and herb production – all the seeds from town had been planted already, even the ones that Libby was not totally sure what they were. She wanted to fully utilize any resources they had while they had SP plenty – as one thing they did not have a lot of was money, so these would hopefully be good cash crops if not for Weihou then farther afield. The other pocket dimensions were for general habitation, storage, and, lastly, training. With the time dilation within this last PD, it would give them the equivalent of years to train over the season.

There still remain a couple of obstacles to overcome for this all to work – they would need a cover story for the kids as Frieda, Toki, Seria, and Cai were all too young yet, for the classes they wanted to take - and having four prodigies would be hard to explain. Instead, their chosen cover story was that they had received four more refugees from the wars, and these were of the Obodo race – the Obodo race was very diminutive in stature. Echo had wanted to just genetically engineer them larger and older looking, but Libby and the others were against this – however, they might need to do the opposite down the line as the children would age faster from periods spent in the training PD.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

It was fortunate that currently, they only had to teach the basics of reading, writing, mathematics, and history to the children – as none of them except Sela, Ash, and Shuga seemed to be decided on their chosen professions. Sela wished still to follow in Relite tradition and be a spear wielder; Ash wanted to study alchemy and the healing arts – he had decided that would be essential in a world that was so violent. Shuga wanted to learn merchant craft and politics.

While they had been away, the villagers – Che Gonghui particularly had complained that the dark energy had continued to ravage the forest, and its direction, though much slowed, seemed to still be steady. This was very worrying, and Adam determined to look into it that very day, and so it was with this intent that he set off with sufficient supplies of beast orbs to set up the necessary arrays as before – to rid the lands of what he assumed was the remnants of the Wendigo dark energies.

***

Mi Quo had assumed he would be dead, a zombie, or possibly if he was lucky, a minion of the mysterious lich king – but no, instead, he was still lying prone on the ground where he had fallen, ash and scared black earth all around him. He hazily remembered that the dark energies had greatly increased, causing him to collapse, but now, looking around, he could make out that there was a layer – like a mist hanging above the ground. As he watched – for he could do little else, his body as weak as a zombie kitten – he saw that the mist was descending as it swirled around, seemingly being absorbed into the earth. This would indeed have been a strange phenomenon – for this to occur at such a fast rate. It was probably the Lich King doing some kind of ritual to absorb the energy – in which case, he had been saved.

Then there was a thrum, and a large wave of dark energy came out of the earth from all around. Shit!

He scrambled to his feet – he knew it seemed counterintuitive for a trainee necromancer not to want to become undead, but he couldn’t help himself – he ran, stumbling through the forest, aiming to get away, to anywhere at all that was not here.

***

Adam found Che Gonghui’s assessment had not been wrong. The dark energies were still encroaching on the forest – spreading death in a wider and wider circle. So Adam went to use his tried and tested practice of finding and climbing the tallest tree nearby to gain a good view of the surrounding land. But Adam thought now he had sufficient SP reserves, and Echo had, after all, wanted him to test out his healing abilities – Adam thought it a good time for some “live testing,” as it was a good hundred kilometers to the lightest epicenter. So he, shadow, jumped diagonally upwards, allowing the momentum to keep him arcing up into the sky – he needed to use slo-mo at this point as things were going way too fast. Below him, the land was just one large ash pile as though a meteor had hit, leaving the ground charred and smoking – he wished they’d upgrade his senses a bit more as even with his energy sense, he couldn’t make out from this distance where the highest concentrations were. So the question remained higher? Or just further to his presumed destination.