The Ruuavarian Mountains are one of the largest mountain ranges on the eastern continent. There are only two passes through the mountains, both of them over fifty miles long, despite being at the thinnest parts of the range.
The Ruuvarian Mountains were once the home of the dwarven Ivalice Federation, but after the ancient dragon, Grasarvia rose from the depths of the mountains, the entirety of the dwarven population, save for a few refugees that happened to be near the gates of the dying cities when the dragon arrived, was wiped out.
Grasarvia has since wreaked havoc on any and all settlements near the mountain range, including the destruction of the fortresses at the mouth of the passes. The only exceptions are the dragonnewts, who are the bastard children of Grasarvia and humanoid males she found pleasing, and the kobolds, who traditionally serve dragon-kind.
The ruins of cities can be found in the hidden valleys of the mountain ranges, and these places are both treasure troves for those aiming for fame and riches, as well as death traps for those unfortunate enough to draw the attention of the current denizens.
Trade through the passes has mostly vanished in the century since the dragon took over, but adventurers and desperate people still sometimes make the attempt…
Excerpt from Details of the Geography and History of the Eastern Continent
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The first day of making our way through the pass was about as bad as we had anticipated. The dragon had knocked entire cliffsides off into the road, and so we had to climb over numerous rockfalls and make our way past jagged-edged boulders.
As such, we were less than a mile down the long road when night fell. We camped out in the lee of a rockfall, using my tent to keep the light snow that was falling off of us.
In the morning, we came out to see that there were a few inches of snow built up on the road, making our travels even more difficult than before. Nonetheless, we quietly took down the tent and stuffed it in my storage before moving on, chewing on salted meat and hard bread as we went.
The next stretch of road was free of rockfalls, but in exchange, a century of neglect had left it full of cracks and worn away by time. We had to be careful of where we put our feet, lest we slip and break an ankle or knee.
Ris and the twins’ expressions were grim as we slowly made our way down the road, and I wasn’t very happy with things, either. Snow was falling constantly – if slowly – from the skies, and the scent of a storm was in the air. It was all too likely a blizzard would hit before dark, and before then we needed to reach the old waystation marked on the outdated map I’d found in the castle ruins.
Hopefully, the waystation would still have enough of a roof to let us withstand the blizzard that was coming.
The storm began right as we found the waystation.
Thankfully, the waystation was built out of stone with a solid angled slate roof, and it looked to be intact save for the fact that the wooden door at the front was missing. The only windows were small, so it wouldn’t be difficult to block them off with something from my storage. The door we could seal with a few heavy layers of furs to keep the chill out.
We hurried inside, and I quickly formed a wind barrier at the entrance to give me time to block the door. With some effort, I managed to magically seal two heavy furs to the door, and the girls used a similar setup for the windows.
The inside of the waystation was strewn with ancient trash and covered in dust, but we paid little attention to that as we slumped against the walls, hearing the wind begin to shriek increasingly loudly outside.
Ris sighed, “That… was close.”
“Yes, any longer out there and we would have been buried alive,” The older sister said.
“Let’s get a fire started,” I stated, using sage arts to send a wave of heat out around us to warm up the stone. That would buy us time to get a fire started in the fireplace. I pulled a barrel out of storage and removed the salted meat from inside, tossing it back into my storage. The girls helped me break it down, and we quickly used it to build a fire.
The other barrels in my storage were a few wine and beer barrels, but it would take some time to empty their contents, even given the girls’ fondness for drink. I cast a fire spark spell into the fireplace, and slowly, the flames began to crackle, spreading warmth through the waystation.
“Well, we didn’t manage to avoid getting caught in a blizzard,” Ris commented.
“Did you really think we would, Ris?” The younger sister asked curiously.
“No, Neid, I didn’t think we would. I just wanted things to go our way for once,” Ris grumbled.
So her name is Neid… I wonder what the older sister’s name is? I wondered.
Neid shook her head wearily, “The local spirits tell me that the storm will last for three days. My sage arts can’t tell me how bad it will be, though.”
“Are you getting anything more out of them, Naia?” Ris queried the older sister, incidentally revealing her name.
“No, Neid is better at Spirit Summoning than I’ll ever be. I hate talking to dead people and nature spirits who just want to talk about water quality or how they wish the soil was richer,” She replied sourly.
Spirit Summoning was a sage arts technique only taught to pureblood elves… mostly because the spirits ignore everyone else. I honestly thought it sounded useful, but Neid was pretty clear that spirits were limited by their own interests and nature.
“We should probably huddle together for warmth. No point in risking freezing to death by sleeping alone,” Ris suggested an hour later, after we finished consuming the thin soup I made in the kettle over the fire.
The twins grinned in a predatory manner as they stared at me, licking their lips in unison. I rolled my eyes and said dryly, “If I was going to get embarrassed about that, I wouldn’t have survived being a probationer for so long.”
The girls looked disappointed, but they shrugged and got under the furs and quilts with me and Ris. That they immediately stripped out of their clothes and clung to me and Ris was probably their sense of humor getting out of control, yet again.
Ris flushed, the twins playful sexuality touching a nerve. Unlike me, the girls all had experience, as horrible as it was. It was a miracle they could joke about it, but I had a feeling they had more scars than I’d seen yet.
The first night passed as we slept by the fire.
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When we awoke the next morning, the fire had turned to warm coals, so I carefully slipped out of the furs and put a few more boards from the barrel over them, and briefly increased the heat with magic, making them catch fire. I then set the kettle near the coals, so the soup from last night could warm up.
I brought out a barrel of the sour wine the twins liked and four cups, filling each before setting them in front of the fire. I dropped some spices I’d purchased months ago into them and stirred them with a wooden spoon as the heat from the fire slowly warmed the wine. I then added a dollop of honey to each, along with a few slices of dried orange.
It took around half an hour, but at the end, I had four cups of mulled wine. The girls stirred at the scent of the soup and wine, and the twins squealed with glee, running toward me without bothering to cover their nude bodies.
They grabbed a cup each and sipped at it happily before shivering in unison and returning to the covers, where they quickly dressed. They returned to the fireside, looking somewhat sheepish. They once again settled down and sipped at the wine.
I sipped at mine appreciatively, enjoying the spicy-sweet flavors that erased some of the sourness from the wine. I wasn’t much of a drinker, but Tajiri had been, so I knew how to improvise a sort-of mulled wine when I had the ingredients.
The girls quickly finished theirs and looked at me pleadingly, their eyes shining with desire that was most definitely not directed at me personally.
I shook my head, “I don’t have a lot of the spices on hand. I want to make it last, so one a day.”
They looked disappointed, but I held my will firm as Ris blearily stumbled over to the fireplace and grabbed her cup before settling down under the covers. She sipped at the wine, but it was obvious she wanted to go back to sleep.
I sighed and pulled out two shougi boards and boxes with the pieces. Tajiri read a lot of light novels in his previous life, and as a result, Iryun plotted to spread shougi around (even though he wasn’t very good at it) before their souls fused into me. As a result, I had a dozen or so sets floating in my storage.
“What’s that, Iryun?” The Naia asked, her eyes gleaming with curiosity.
I smiled slyly, “Shougi.”
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Hours later, the sisters were playing against each other while Ris and I looked on, bemused. The girls picked up the game ridiculously quickly, and they quickly grew bored with playing against me and Ris (I won the first time and lost the second handily).
Ris didn’t seem to have much talent for the game, though we were still playing, if slowly, while we watched the twins fiercely move their pieces, their eyes gleaming with an unholy fascination.
“I think you’ve created a monster,” Ris commented.
I shrugged, “Better this than having them flirting with me. If I was a few years older, I’d probably enjoy it, but right now, it is just annoying.”
This was one of the disconnects between me and my body I had to deal with. I had Tajiri’s experiences in addition to what I’d seen in the mercenary camp to help me understand that kind of thing. However, my body didn’t respond, even if my mind recognized what they were doing, and I appreciated their beauty aesthetically.
“They really do like you, you know,” She whispered in my ear, embracing my arm softly.
“Oh?” I asked, quirking my brow, my ear twitching in response to her breath hitting the sensitive organ.
“Those two normally won’t go near a man, even if they are apparently friendly with him. Last night, they willingly got under the blankets with you. If you were old enough to respond…” She said suggestively.
“I’m honored, but I’m afraid I’m not ready for that sort of thing yet,” I said with a wry smile as she quietly moved one of my pieces while she thought I wasn’t looking. I chose not to respond.
“You won’t always get a chance to be ready, when it comes to… that,” She said, her eyes darkening. She was probably remembering her experiences with Diandra.
I was silent, not wanting to say anything when I didn’t have any way to understand what she went through. Instead, I caressed her ears, like I did back in the barracks, gently as possible. She squirmed a bit, then she buried her face in my collarbone, forgetting about the game entirely.
I moved my piece back to where it was without looking.
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The second day of our stay in the waystation was marked by the sound of wolves howling in the storm… most likely mountain dire wolves, given the location. Those creatures could survive off of very little meat and went into magical hibernation when there was no prey. Something must have been moving around in the middle of the blizzard, or they wouldn’t have awakened.
Ris was clinging to me, as usual. I was pretty sure she was becoming emotionally dependent on me, which probably wasn’t healthy. However, I was also certain that she was far more fragile than she liked to present herself. Weaning someone of their dependence wasn’t always a good thing.
The sisters lay with their heads on my lap, their arms embracing my hips and their legs wrapped around mine, making it impossible for me to rise without waking them. Getting them to stop playing shougi long enough to realize they were sleepy had been a challenge, but once the sleepiness hit them, they dropped in seconds.
The fire had gone out sometime during the night, but the twins had managed to finish the wine barrel (something I wouldn’t have believed until I actually saw it), so I had the materials necessary to create a new one. The kettle beside the fireplace was empty, as we had finished the soup the previous night.
I created a wave of warmth and heat that spread through the waystation with my sage arts. It would work until I could get the girls off of me.
The twins stirred, looking up at me sleepily before smiling and kissing me on opposite cheeks. They then got up, showing off their bodies while giving me sly looks out of the corner of their eyes.
I rolled my eyes and shooed them away, summoning a bag of flour, a pound of salted pork, a barrel of water, and two loaves of bread, “Your turn to make breakfast. I’m going to wait for Ris to wake up on her own.”
They rolled their eyes and got to work, breaking down the wine barrel and making a new fire while I lay there, gently rubbing Ris’s back as I practiced my sage arts.
Four dire wolves sleeping in the snow outside. The snow itself is over the roof, but the shield I’ve been maintaining is keeping an air tunnel open. My spiritual energy and mana are a bit strained, so I’ll need to tell the girls about it at some point today. Thankfully the structure of the waystation is holding up.
I assessed the situation quietly and sighed. If this went on for more than two more days, I would collapse and it was likely we would suffocate. I was pretty advanced along the paths for someone my age, so I had more mana and spiritual energy than the other three, but keeping the foot-wide air tunnel clear was consuming it at a rate that was faster than it was restored by food, meditation, and sleep.
The technique was halfway between magic and sage arts, using the sage arts as a base to allow me to maintain it with minimal attention, even doing so in my sleep. The magic part transformed ambient essence into mana to create the moving parts, the flow of magically-warmed air blowing up the tunnel to the surface. It also served to melt the snow of the walls and force it to form ice, making it structurally stronger than one might expect.
Combining the three powers in various ways was a shortcut to power, or so Iryun's mother, Vianara had once said. Any child could use any individual power by itself, but those who wanted to become a Master had to learn to utilize at least two of the powers in combination or it was hopeless.
The twins could both combine sage arts and qigong to some extent, and Ris had displayed some facility with body enchantment and weapon enchantment, which required a combination of qigong and magic.
Me? I can use all of it. Grandfather beat it into me over the course of the few years we lived with him. Not that I had much use for something that put so much strain on my body up until now.
The problem was that the technique required a 3 in both sage arts and magic to use. I was unsure if the twins or Ris could manage it.
I carefully shifted Ris so she would remain within the furs when I rose and slowly got up, feeling an ache in my body that spoke of how much I was straining myself to keep us alive.
I went over to the sisters and explained the situation. Upon hearing what I had been doing all this time, they promptly scolded me for not telling them.
“Iryun, you can’t just keep this kind of thing from us! If you asked earlier, we could have found some way to help!” Naia scolded.
“Sis is right! Don’t hide stuff like that from us!” Neid said, puffing up her cheeks to express her anger.
I rubbed my ears and felt my tail droop as I realized I hadn’t acted like we were comrades, despite the situation, “I’m sorry. I didn’t even realize I was trying to solve everything on my own again.”
Incidentally, Ris was still fast asleep, drool oozing from the corner of her mouth as she snored softly under the furs, her ears occasionally twitching in response to whatever she was dreaming about.
“Do either of you have a high enough skill to use this technique?” I asked both of them.
Neid shook her head, “My sage arts are at 4, but my magic is only at 2. I’m pretty sure Ris has magic at 4 and sage arts at 2. Her tribe apparently didn’t teach sage arts very much beyond the basics.”
“I have sage arts at 4 and magic at 3… but I only reached 3 a few weeks ago. My third-tier spells aren’t entirely stable yet, so I’m not sure I can manage something like this,” Naia said, slowly shaking her head.
I frowned, considering… using qigong wasn’t an option, as vital energy dispersed when it got too far from an individual’s body, unless it was highly compressed. Magic was the only power that was good at altering phenomena at a distance from a person’s body with precision. Spiritual energy had a natural tendency to spread itself as widely as it could could based on the caster's mental and spiritual capacity. The technique involved using sage arts to birth the wind and magic to concentrate it where it was needed and control it precisely.
It was at 3 where individuals finally gained the necessary precision to properly combine sage arts and magic into a technique that could be continuously activated beyond one’s physical sight.
I had already created the technique, so all they had to do was maintain it in my stead… but without that particular ability, it was probably impossible.
“If you can’t handle it, we are going to die in this waystation,” I stated flatly.
Naia looked startled, “Why? Is our situation that bad?”
“The waystation is currently buried under the snow. My technique is maintaining an air hole to the top, but if that fails, we will suffocate within a matter of hours,” I replied wearily, deliberately revealing my weakness in my expression so she would understand how bad things were. I needed at least twelve hours of sleep or meditation without the burden of maintaining the technique to restore my spiritual energy. Unfortunately, I could sense the amount of spiritual energy Naia possessed was barely enough to hold it for seven hours.
I could maintain it for forty-eight hours because of the training techniques I’d been given. There was a huge gap between 3 and 4, and I was at the upper end of 4 with sage arts. Another few weeks of training, and I would hit 5, where sage arts could be used continuously without remaining still.
I closed my eyes, considering our situation. There were no good options, under the circumstances, but I knew that when we’d entered the waystation. I had simply hoped that one of the others would be able to take up the slack while I recovered.
Unfortunately, it looked like that wasn’t going to be an option.
That meant that our only option was to wait for a break in the storm, hoping I didn’t drain myself to death in the meantime. If a break in the storm hit, I’d have the girls widen the air tunnel so we could get out, then we would head for the other side of the pass as fast as possible.
“Girls, I need you to make some things for me,” I said wearily, drawing a number of things out of my inventory. There was a need to prepare for what was to come.
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Three hours later, we’d managed to put together four sets of snowshoes made out of leather straps on a wooden frame made from barrel slats. They were crude and rough around the edges, but we weren’t going to be able to make anything better without proper tools.
Ris, after she woke up, had taken up the task of modifying some of the warmer furs into proper winter coats based on my descriptions. They’d turned out more like a poncho than anything else, but that was the best we could do, with our limited resources.
Last of all, I slept while maintaining a mental view of the world outside, to conserve my spiritual energy.
Late in the afternoon, the storm cleared, and my I eyes snapped open, “Let’s go. The storm has cleared… for the moment. I’m not going to last much longer at this rate.”
The others nodded grimly, and we ripped the fur covering the doorway off, revealing a solid wall of snow save for a foot-wide hole near the top. Naia and Neid came forward and cast a series of wind and fire spells, melting the snow beneath the hole until there was enough space for us to pass. At the same time, Ris used water spells to force the water into the waystation before solidifying them into blocks of ice.
It took us almost an hour, but we eventually emerged on the surface… to see a sky full of clouds and an endless expanse of white filling the pass halfway up to the top of the nearest cliff.
We strapped our makeshift snow shoes on over our boots and began slowly making our way down the pass. Released from the need to maintain my sage arts, I felt myself slowly recovering, albeit at a slower rate than normal.
Snow continued to fall intermittently, sometimes in heavy flurries, but mostly just flake by flake. Naia used sage arts to detect the places where the snow was loose and helped us avoid them, while Neid and Ris took turns using magic to solidify spots at points where there was no way forward.
I didn’t have enough spiritual energy or internal mana left to allow me to do anything, so I just kept circulating my qi to keep myself upright, despite my dulled mind.
Dire wolves rushed us three times before dark, but Ris was able to kill them easily, their bodies not being particularly resistant to magic. Once it got dark, however, things became problematic.
The dire wolves stopped trying after they lost a few members of the pack, but the ice serpents sleeping beneath the snowfall sensed our heat and rose up. Thankfully, there were no mature ones, only the small ones the size of a large man’s arm. From what I’d read on them, the mature ones could be as thick as burly human man and over fifty feet long, constantly radiating ice-aspected mana to the point where people with weak constitutions would die within seconds.
The serpents were dealt with with fire darts, as the small ones were vulnerable to fire to a ridiculous degree.
The problem was the numbers. Usually, we got hit by four or five at once, but several times we came across nests of dozens of the creatures, resulting in us wasting mana to wipe them out.
I dropped all the monster corpses into my storage, as their cores, meat, and skins would have value once we managed to reach civilization.
It was almost morning when we stumbled upon the top of a watchtower, poking out of the snow. With some effort, we were able to climb into it, as a window covered with a wooden panel lay only a few feet above our heads. Once inside, we curled around each other under blankets for warmth, the others practically wrapped around me.
For the first time in days, I slept in truth, my dulled mind and body finding the rest it needed so badly.
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I awoke the next morning to find Ris roasting a snow serpent over a small magical fire, drool oozing out the corner of her mouth at the fragrant smells coming from the roasting monster flesh. The other two girls had also impaled snow serpents on knives and were roasting their own.
My mind still dulled with sleep, I nonetheless summoned a serpent corpse from my storage, skinning it with my dagger and removing the bones before impaling it on the tip and roasting it over the magical fire.
We ate in silence, too focused on the food to bother with small talk. Ris in particular went through four snake fillets before she seemed satisfied, while the sisters and I devoured two each.
“Iryun, we are almost out of the pass, aren’t we? I don’t think I can take much more of this,” The older sister queried me.
I pulled out my map pinpointing the point on it that I thought represented the watchtower we were using, “Only about halfway through, I’m afraid. However…”
I hesitated, my finger tapping the symbol of a city positioned in a ruined valley accessible through a side path directly to the west of the watchtower, “The ruins of this city probably has some proper shelter remaining, and the explanation I read said that the volcanic vents in the area around it keep snow from building up. We could probably set up by a hot spring or vent and wait out the storm.”
I still had food, of course. The ice serpents and dire wolves were both edible, so we weren’t likely to run out of meat anytime soon. If we could find someplace to stay warm, we could probably wait out the winter storms and make our way out of the mountains.
“I don’t like it. I’ve heard stories about what happens to adventurers that try to explore the dead cities…” Naia said, her lips twisted in an uneasy frown.
Ris’s ears flattened against her head and he expression matched Naia’s, “I agree. My parents used to tell me that you can still hear the screams of dwarven ghosts in the ruins.”
Most of the cities’ original denizens had been surface dwarves or half-dwarves, so it was a plausible story. The entire mountain range and the adjacent underground had belonged to the dwarven nation in question, and now that they were gone, kobolds and dragonnewts were the only humanoids in the area.
Dragonnewts preferred the extreme heights of the peaks, as their bodies require very little in the way of sustenance, and kobolds preferred the cavernous underground. As such, it was rare to see either outside of the mountains… but that meant there was a good chance one could encounter either if they went too deep into the mountain range.
“We have no real choice… it’s almost guaranteed another storm will hit before we can get out of the pass. The city… I think it was Voki, is only half a day from here using a side trail, at least if the map is reasonably accurate. Whether there are undead or kobolds, I think we can deal with them, if we are careful,” I said after a few minutes of consideration.
Kobolds were weaker than goblins in close combat most of the time, with the caveat that they had a wider range of evolved types than most monster races. They were a race of diggers and miners more than fighters, and they were physically weaker than most of the humanoid races.
The undead… were more of a problem. Zombies and skeletons were easily dealt with, but phantasmal types often required magic to defeat, which meant every fight would expend mana if the enemy were ghosts or wraiths. On the other hand, phantasmal undead tended to be bound to a small area around where they died, so it was generally safe once one cleared an area in most cases.
Ris was decent with qi, but the sisters were abysmal at using it for anything beyond basic generalized body enhancement. As such, in close combat, they were highly reliant on defensive magic to overcome their disadvantages.
Their status pages were as such.
Name: Risaria
Age: 14
Race: Spirit Fox
Common Skills: Qigong 3, Magic 4, Sage Arts 1, Swords 3, Spears 2, Shield 2, Evasion 1, Farming 1, Weaving 2
Passive Skills: Pain Tolerance 3, Disease Resistance 1, Magic Resistance 3
Unique Skills: N/A
Name: Naia
Age: 21
Race: Elf
Common Skills: Qigong 1, Magic 3, Sage Arts 4, Archery 5, Swords 2, Spears 2, Hunting 1
Passive Skills: Mana Well 2, Spiritual Energy Regeneration 2, Magic Resistance 1, Disease Resistance 1
Unique Skills: Mark of the Gods: Trul’enea
Name: Neid
Age: 21
Race: Elf
Common Skills: Qigong 2, Magic 2, Sage Arts 4, Archery 4, Swords 3, Spears 3, Hunting 2
Passive Skills: Pain Tolerance 2, Disease Resistance 1, Magic Resistance 1, Poison Resistance 2, Spiritual Energy Regeneration 1
Unique Skills: Mark of the Gods: Trul’enea
The twins were both blessed by the God of the Elves, Trul’enea, a blessing that gave them a unique skill and Spiritual Energy Regeneration, which accelerated the rate at which the spirit recovered after abusing sage arts. In addition, they both displayed a high affinity with archery (common in forest-dwelling elves in general), with Neid having a slight advantage in close combat and Naia being better with magic.
Both Ris and need had the Pain Tolerance skill, which was generally only seen in people who had suffered torture or were plagued by a long-lasting illness. It bothered me a bit that all three had Disease Resistance, which was a rare skill that could only be acquired by surviving a normally fatal disease (though its growth afterward was steady, increasing with any and all exposures to disease), and the fact that Neid had Poison Resistance told me a story I really didn’t want to think about.
The fact that they all had Magic Resistance was unsurprising, as elves, spirit foxes, and dragonnewts were usually born with the skill at 1. Like most resistance skills, once you awakened to it, it would grow steadily with any and all exposure to the effect it resisted after.
My current status was as such.
Name: Iryun Liodosia
Age: 10
Race: Spirit Fox (elven bloodline)
Common Skills: Qigong 4, Sage Arts 5, Magic 5, Farming 1, Barehanded 3, Acrobatics 3, Athletics 4, Staff Weapons 4, Bladed Weapons 3, Bows 1, Axes 1, Shield 3
Passive Skills: Fused Soul (concealed), Mental Resistance 5, Magic Resistance 2, Blunt Resistance 2, Pierce Resistance 2, Pain Resistance 5
Unique Skills: Divine Contract: Artifact Steed 1, Infinite Growth, World Inventory 3
The effects of my Infinite Growth skill were obvious in how my skills had increased in the short period of time since I last read in detail. In particular, the growth in sage arts and magic, which became notoriously slow once one passed 4, was much faster than I had anticipated. Of course, my abuse of both when keeping us alive in the waystation had accelerated that, but not as much as one might think.
World Inventory had most likely increased due to the number of monster corpses and random bits and ends I’d picked up over the past few weeks. I sensed that there was something extra needed to increase the level of Artifact Steed other than using it, so I was unsurprised to see that it hadn’t increased.
The girls tended to have more specialized skills than I did, as most of my weapon skills had combined into one another as I learned them. Spears and staffs had combined into Staff Weapons, whereas Crossbows and Archery had combined into Bows. If I gained another weapon skill, all of them would combine into the Martial Arts Skill, which counted as a higher tier one that strengthened the possessor more than all the others combined per level. Unfortunately, it also would average out the levels, probably ending up at 2 or 3.
I had a number of odd resistances that probably came from a combination of Infinite Growth and my wounds in training and on the battlefield. Others I’d had from the beginning, and Tajiri and Iryun hadn’t considered it odd. They should have, though… in particular, Mental Contamination (now Fused Soul) and Mental Resistance were signs of influence from a being capable of influencing the mind.
I reflected on this briefly before deciding our formation.
I was accustomed to being teamed up with children that had no skills above 2. As such, this time I had the luxury of planning around actually having people that could fight around me. It was just unfortunate that none of us had a talent for the healing aspects of magic or sage arts. Healers always had a Unique Skill that provided them the talent necessary to wield healing powers, and none of us had anything like that, so we would all be reliant on qigong to keep us together.
That was the biggest problem with dealing with the undead, as zombies tended to carry plague on their flesh, the twisted life and death aspected energy surrounding them naturally enhancing any diseases that existed in their bodies when they were alive.
However, staying in the watchtower wasn’t an option. The level of the snow would only rise, and it was clear the tower would be as buried as the waystation within days. Making their way out of the pass before the next storm hit wasn’t realistic, either. One look out of the window was enough to tell me that another storm was destined to hit sometime soon.
As such, the nearest city, which was placed over the top of volcanic vents and had numerous hot springs to keep the temperature high enough to melt the snow, was our best option.
The next morning, we set out, our faces grim as we walked carefully in the direction of the trail marked on the map. The girls were gripping their weapons harder than they had when we left the waystation, and Ris kept glancing at me with concern, obviously worried about whether I had really recovered.
I kept myself from showing it, but I wasn’t. My mana and spiritual energy had recovered, but abusing the combination technique to keep us alive had damaged my spiritual channels, causing every movement of spiritual energy to come with pain, though it wasn’t intense. It did mean, however, that it would be some time before I could use sage arts without being distracted by the needle-pricks on my nerves.
My ability to use magic was unharmed, but that wasn’t a surprise. The body only produced a minimal amount of mana, which was expelled to refine the surrounding essence in the air to use magic. It was far more difficult to harm the channels that held mana than it was to harm those that held qi or spiritual energy.
My body was also getting stronger with every day, muscles strengthening even as they grew more supple, my vision growing sharper, clearer, and I was pretty sure I required less oxygen to function.
It was only noticeable because I’d been testing it regularly over the last six months. From what my grandfather said, my body and mind would match my skill levels by the time I turned fifteen.
Spirit foxes apparently matured at the same rate as humans, then remained young until they neared the end of their lifespan, when they would begin to age rapidly. Elves, on the other hand, matured slowly, reaching physical adulthood in their late twenties to early thirties. As such, the twins were likely in the same position I was in when it came to enhancement from skills.
Why was this relevant? Well, it was simple… the member of our party closest to maturity, Ris, was obviously having an easier time of our trek through the snow. The twins and I were breathing hard, our muscles burning with effort as we made our way to the side path leading to the city ruins against the wind. Ris, on the other hand, wasn’t even sweating under her furs, her body easily cutting through the high winds and snow.
Qigong could enhance the body, but none of us was good enough to enhance our bodies constantly. That was something you usually only saw at the late stages of level 5 or 6. As such, the difference in our physical maturity was showing rather obviously.
We found the trail almost two hours after setting out, but the twins were already looking exhausted. A large part of the reason was that we had been forced to take the snow shoes off to get over several rockfalls, similar to when we first entered the pass. Another reason was that, even with snowshoes, we had to proceed with care across the snowfield, testing the snow carefully to make sure it would hold our weight.
The trail itself was much narrower than the main pass, wide enough for perhaps two people to walk abreast. It appeared like someone had chopped a giant axe through the cliffside at first, but upon closer examination, it was possible to find bits and pieces of sculpture in the stone on the sides.
I called it a trail, but it was actually closer to a tunnel, with large sections completely covered by overhangs. In these areas, we were forced to carefully climb down from piles of snow to bare stone, often ten or fifteen feet below. Worse, when we hit another area buried by snow, we had to climb, making progress even more exhausting and slow. As such, when it began to get really dark, I called for a stop in one of the areas protected by an overhang, building a small dome out of ice using magic. The girls looked at me questioningly, but I just gestured for them to crawl inside.
Once inside, I took a small orange gemstone out of my storage, an object I’d looted around three months before from a noble estate. I sighed internally at the waste of an object that probably would have sold for ten gold coins, but I surged mana and spiritual energy into it regardless. A moment later, a smokeless flame appeared atop the stone, and I set it on the ground.
The gem was an object known as a firestone, an enchanted device generally only owned by noble houses for use during the winter. Unfortunately, it was also a ‘bound’ artifact, meaning that once someone used it, no one else could until the user died. This meant I couldn’t sell it, which is why I didn’t use it earlier.
Soon we were enveloped in warmth, and we bundled up under furs to sleep until morning. I quietly sealed the entrance, leaving only a few small air holes along the sides that wouldn’t be visible at night.
I gently ran my fingers through the girls’ hair as they slept, my body exhausted but my mind awake and clear as a mountain lake. That was the problem with advancing one’s sage arts… you became all-too-aware of your surroundings.
Far above us, a gigantic creature, roughly a kilometer in length, was circling, and I could feel its attention on us. There was no malice in it, so I hadn’t bothered to tell the girls, but there was curiosity. That curiosity had spiked when I made the makeshift igloo, and it was now observing us as the girls slept.
I was pretty sure it was the dragon. That was the only explanation, though it made my head hurt to consider. The last thing I wanted was the attention of a creature so high on the food chain.
The spiritual energy I sensed from the creature was roughly one million times my own, and the only reason the twins hadn’t sensed it was because their senses were dulled by their exhaustion. I, on the other hand, was regretting advancing so far in such a short period of time, as it meant I knew exactly how much danger we were in.
As the night went on, I decided I had to get some sleep and drifted off, the worry over the dragon ever-present.
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Tathais’al’tragichar was intrigued by the insects making their way into her mother’s territory. It had been decades since the last time the insects known as adventurers had entered the region in search of wealth and fame. As such, the young dragon was often left with nothing to do but sleep.
Though she was ‘young’ by the standards of her kind, she was unnaturally large due to the amount of mana stones and spirit stones her mother consumed before the mating that produced her (most of them part of enchanted dwarven armor). As such, she couldn’t fit in the lair anymore in her true form and was forced to either sleep outside or take on a humanoid form to sleep at home.
She was still only slightly past her first century, so she was unable to leave her mother’s lair as yet. Such was the tradition of dragonkind, that required draconic ‘children’ remain under the supervision of an adult until they passed their third century of life. This was a product of the fact that, for thousands of years, draconic children were hunted by the humanoid races for their hard scales and nearly-indestructible fangs that could penetrate any barrier.
The decision of the Grand Convention, to create the child-rearing tradition, had resulted in an explosive increase in the draconic and dragonnewt population, but it also meant that young dragons often stewed in their own frustration and boredom for a long time before they were unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. Her mother’s destruction of the dwarven kingdom was a case in point, as the dwarven idiocy had provided the excuse she needed to steal the mana stone and spirit stone mines to provide sustenance for her eggs and the caverns to provide a home for her hatchlings.
The dragon was born roughly two centuries after the fall of the dwarven kingdom, and the dwarves that remained were essentially slaves producing shinies for her mother to add to her horde, so she generally considered the humanoid races to be insects. The dragonnewts were different, since they were her half-siblings and their descendants, though she still considered them to be ‘lesser cousins’. If Tajiri were still around, he would have assessed her as ‘your typical self-centered teenager who thinks she is the only real person in existence’.
That insect smells really interesting… but Mother told me not to associate with the insect races from outside of the mountains… She thought. She didn’t have any point of reference to realize that the ‘smell’ wafting from the party of four inside the igloo was the influence of Chaos, detected quite naturally by the advanced spiritual senses all higher races possessed at birth.
If her mother had been present, she would have breathed fire on the four, eliminating whatever plans the Chaos Pantheon might have in play in advance. However, the young dragon only found the smell curious and interesting, so the four were still alive.
Thus, as was common with situations where Chaos had a bet on the table, curiosity won out and she continued to observe them, instead of eating them like she’d originally thought to do.
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When I awoke, the dragon’s spiritual energy was right outside the igloo. However, it was compressed into a humanoid shape, telling me it had disguised itself. It still seemed curious rather than hostile, so I carefully slipped out of the pile of arms and legs, careful to cover them back up once I was out. I then used magic and sage arts to create an exit briefly while keeping the frigid air out before stepping outside and sealing the opening behind me.
“That’s really impressive. The insects I met in the past had a lot more trouble combining the powers like that,” The young woman – definitely a woman by the impressive physical… assets she possessed – said, her serpent-like lavender eyes glittering with eager curiosity. Purple-black scales were present along her grows and encrusting her arms, ivory skin present near the elbows and wrists. Two sharp and straight horns emerged from just behind her pointed ears, and her hair was the same color as her scales, falling to just below her hips. Two leathery scaled wings were furled behind her back.
She was dressed in a scanty costume made out of thin, intricate gold chains that left her soft belly unprotected and only barely covered the important bits, and a green jade diadem was present on her forehead. Her feet were fully draconic three-toed limbs with black claws, and her hands, though having four fingers and a thumb, were scaled with claws at the end of each.
“So what did you want to know, almighty dragon?” I said, faintly mockingly.
This time there was amusement, even as she pushed me down with the pressure of her spiritual energy, “Now now, while I do enjoy good banter, you are still an insect. Please refrain from getting excessively familiar before I decide whether I want to eat you.”
“I definitely would prefer to remain undigested,” I said, keeping my tone light. I wasn’t nervous, though I let my spiritual energy show that I acknowledged the obvious threat in her words.
There was no malice in the threat. It was simply a statement of the difference between our standing in the world. I accepted that, knowing that she could squish me like the bug she thought I was with as little effort as it took her to blink.
“You smell really nice,” She said as she suddenly appeared beside me, sniffing at my collarbone and around my ears.
“Umm… thank you?” I said, confused at her actions.
“Hmm… normally I’m supposed to eat any insects that try to enter Mother’s lands without permission, but she wouldn’t mind if I keep one for myself, would she?” She asked, obviously thinking aloud.
“Umm… if you want to keep me, could you possibly see your way to keeping my friends too?” I asked weakly as she continued sniffing me from every direction she could, always going back to my collarbone, for some reason.
“Hmmm? I suppose. They smell pretty good for female insects, though you smell the best,” She said, more focused on smelling me than the conversation.
I immediately saw the advantage in being owned by this dragon. Considering our current situation, the likelihood we would survive even if we arrived in Gaveria safely was low. It was all too likely we would end up on the block, like those we left behind. Without a parent or guardian to protect us, it was too easy for slave hunters to collar us and sell us off to the highest bidder.
The fact was, the easiest way to save us would be for me to get us to my homeland, where my mother and grandfather would likely be willing to take them in along with me. Unfortunately, I was deadly certain that my ‘patron’ wouldn’t allow that to happen. He wanted me to be a certain type of person, and I seriously doubted he would fail to utilize one of the remaining two favors I owed him if it came to that.
He couldn’t make me harm my family or friends, but that was the only real limitation on the geas, as I remembered it.
Of course, there was a good chance that I didn’t remember everything… but I knew that that memory was most likely true. I didn’t feel any of the sudden apathy or loss of curiosity that Tajiri and Iryun felt when they tried to access memories of their patron and their time between worlds.
“Where would you want us to be, then, milady dragon?” I said, bowing as extravagantly as I could (based on elven etiquette, which was the only type I’d learned).
She smiled (a real one, full of amusement) and caressed my head, fondling my ears in a way that made my spine tingle and my tail lash back and forth. It wasn’t lust, but rather the intimacy inherent in allowing someone else to touch my ears or tail. The feeling was impossible to describe to anyone other than another spirit fox or werewolf.
While I’d treated Ris with that kind of intimacy, and the twins, to a lesser extent, I’d never extended the same privilege to them. For better or worse, our relationship wasn’t even. I liked the girls, but I was only protecting them because it was within my power without severely increasing the risk to myself. I could probably fall for Ris in time, and the same went for the twins. However, Ris’s dependency made that impossible. It wasn’t as simple as not wanting to take advantage of her, though that was part of it. It was that I didn’t trust her feelings toward me.
However, I was fairly sure this woman, despite her disregard for ‘insects’ knew exactly what she was doing. Allowing it to happen without resistance meant that I’d submitted to her entirely, which was exactly the reaction she wanted.
“Don’t worry. I take good care of my pets, even when they are insects,” She said fondly as she continued to caress my ears.
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Ris’s reaction to the dragon’s presence was predictable in a way. She showed jealousy just for a moment, before her rather sharp instincts told her that the being standing before her wasn’t something she could do anything about. The twins took their cues from her, and silently followed as the dragon melted the snow in her way as she directed us along the trail.
I knew from some of the books I’d read (as Tajiri) that dragons only allowed their mates to ride them, so I didn’t feel a need to ask why she was leading us on foot, but I was curious as to why she hadn’t let us make our own way to her territory. My impression of her was that she was about as arrogant as the worst of the nobility I’d encountered in the lowlands, with the fact that her arrogance was justified in every respect making it worse on our end.
Incidentally, if I asked her if I could ride her, that would be presenting myself as a mate, whereupon she would decide between one of two outcomes… eating me or accepting the proposal. Dragons took humanoid mates regularly, as was evidenced by the fact that there were enough dragonnewts in the world to make them a race of their own. However, the main reason for this was that their own males were considered untrustworthy, as they were too likely to either eat the eggs or their mates. As such, most dragons chose to mate with humanoids, producing one dragon for every twenty dragonnewts.
I was pretty sure she wasn’t interested in me as a mate… so far. I couldn’t be sure though, as her curiosity and occasional hunger were too strong for me to get a better read on her spiritual energy. It’s hard to concentrate when you can feel someone wants to eat you as clearly as you would feel your own belly rumble.
At some point, she picked me up and held me with one arm under my rear, tickling my ears as she walked. Ris’s eyes flamed with the fires of jealousy for a moment before rationality took over, while the twins were obviously trying to suppress the giggles.
It wasn’t like they weren’t afraid. Both of them had enough control over their own spiritual energy to understand she was a threat… but they could neither see what I saw nor could they smell what Ris did.
The more I was held by her, the more I realized just how out of my depth I was. It wasn’t just the massive well of spiritual energy she possessed… it was her qi, her vital energy. It was so dense that it might has well have been flowing concrete, telling me she was at the equivalent of level 10 in qigong (though dragons didn’t have access to the same system as humanoids did, as they naturally grew stronger as they aged).
When the level of qigong went up, it didn’t increase the amount you could use (in fact, increasing the amount you could use required regular straining of the channels within your body and couldn’t be measured by one’s status). It increased the density of your qi. Moreover, the density of one’s qi determined the pace at which one aged (within their racial limits). A human at level 10 could live for a thousand years even if they had no other skills, but an elf who was at the same level might live to see ten or fifteen thousand years.
Considering the impression I got from her, I was pretty sure she was young for a dragon, and yet she was already the equivalent of a Master amongst the humanoid races in relative terms. She could probably be considered a supreme genius, even amongst her kind, and I felt another desire rise within me as a result.
… I wanted to learn from her. The power she possessed and the mastery I felt she had meant she was someone I could learn from, in time.
I just needed to figure out how to make her want to teach me.
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Kavaiak, God of Mischief looked down on his pawn’s current situation with interest, “It looks like I won’t need to use points after all… dragons inevitably influence those that they take under their wing. His heart will inevitably become more twisted by his time with her, and when things fall apart…”
He cackled, stroking his long beard with a glint of stars in his abyssal eyes.
“The same as always, I see, old friend,” A figure with a constantly shifting appearance and aura appeared in the soft leather recliner across from Mischief, amusement filling the constantly shifting voice.
“Ah, Change. I’m surprised. You usually avoid me like the plague,” Mischief said, raising a brow, honestly startled that his fellow creature of Chaos had come for a visit.
“Ah yes, I’m afraid I need to give you a warning. Please don’t interfere in Ris’s life any further, or I’ll be forced to Intervene and take your pawn into my hand,” Change, the most powerful of the gods of Chaos, said coldly.
Mischief’s expression froze, “That scarred girl is one of yours?”
“Yes. I Intervened to make sure she survived what your other pawn did to her, but I won’t allow another of your pawns to twist her further. She has a purpose in my current game, and your most recent moves threaten my position in ways I’m afraid I can’t tolerate,” Change said, its voice commanding. Change was worshiped in secret by more people than any other god outside the Earth Mother, and his power was greater than the current Kings of the Dark and Light pantheons.
All those who wanted to escape their current situation, who wanted to change how things were, who hated stagnancy and the current order of their homes worshiped him in secret. He had no shrines, but he didn’t need them. Even the twin gods of Luck had fewer worshipers.
As such, it was clear which of them had the higher position. It wasn’t a power balance that could be reversed through scheming or games, so Mischief literally had no chance if his interests came into contact with Change’s.
“In truth, I would like to take your toy away anyway, but you have invested a significant number of points into creating him, so I’ve instead chosen to create a situation where they both have a chance for growth. You will get your toy back after he and Ris have learned all they can from being under the dragons, not before. I’ve already cleared this with the Queen of Dragons, so know that I won’t be your only opponent if you interfere,” He said coldly.
Suddenly Mischief realized who his opponent had to be. Change’s most hated enemy, the Dark god of Stagnancy, was the most likely culprit. Surprisingly, Change had a good relationship with Stability, the other half of Stagnancy’s coin. He even made an effort to keep her happy when it didn’t interfere with his own plays. However, Stagnancy and Change had an adversarial relationship on a grand scale, their most recent game having been the War, which had grown massively out of proportion due to their reckless moves bringing the rest of the pantheons in.
“I don’t know what you are planning, my friend, but I would prefer if you didn’t delay my plans for the boy too much. I invested a great deal of points and artifacts from my personal collection to create him, after all,” Mischief said, careful not to indicate any of the malice that was integral to his nature was directed at Change’s pawn. Mischief’s predecessor was killed by Change when Change decided he’d gone too far in one of their games, a rare occurrence (once every five hundred years or so) to say the least.
Change often wondered why every Mischief became so corrupt so fast. A mere seventeen centuries shouldn’t have been enough to turn the curious and mischievous spirit fox Mischief had once been into the malevolent creature before him. Mischief’s mantle wasn’t even inherently evil, just Chaotic. Nonetheless, Change and his predecessor had had to kill over a dozen Mischiefs over the ages.
It was enough to make him think that particular aegis was cursed.
“That ‘boy’ of yours has a Unique Skill that threatens to infringe upon the Rules of the Game,” Change said flatly, “The only reason I didn’t kill him the second I saw his status is because of that ploy of yours that merged two souls into one. That made it barely within the Rules. I do need to tell you though…”
He smiled coldly, “The Arbiter has already decided to punish you by stripping you of half your current stock of Intervention Points. He doesn’t like it when we try to edge around the more important Rules.”
The Rules of the Game were a set of absolute laws put into place after the first Apocalypse. It restricted the actions of the gods, required the creation of the system by which skills were given, and it restricted how much power gods could give their champions. One of those rules was that growth-type skills that had no limits were forbidden to individual champions. Mischief had gotten around that by placing two souls in the same body and causing them to merge, thus creating a semi-gestalt that technically was outside of that particular Rule.
Mischief paled. He had stocked Intervention Points to prepare for the final stages of his current game, and losing those would cripple his moves for decades. He would only have the geas and his other pawns as levers to move the boy for some time.
In addition, he wouldn’t be able to afford to use points on the boy for even longer. He would need all his remaining points to keep certain balls in the air long enough for his plans to stay in place.
He ground his teeth in frustration, but he bowed his head to his superior nonetheless, “I… accept my punishment.”
There was nothing else he could say. All his plans for the near future were ruined, and he had lost one of the levers he was planning to use to manipulate his toy. He would be forced to use the two remaining orders from the geas much earlier than he wanted to.
It was on this day that the chains binding the young fox who was once Iryun and Tajiri began to loosen, and the plans of the God of Mischief began to collapse. For the God of Mischief had forgotten the first rule of Chaos… nothing is constant.