“What do I do now, Boi?”

“…” he sighed, rubbing his face for the twentieth time in the last couple of minutes. “Imagine pushing yourself outwards, as though you are a toad rapidly filling with gas.”

“How dare you! That’s how my cousin died!”

“…Just do it. Before the sun sets, preferably…”

Though it was a bit hard to get started, I eventually managed to concentrate on the task and imagined my form pushing as far outwards as it could. Physically nothing happened to my core, but meta-physically, a sphere began forming around my little shiny pebble body and pushed outwards, past the ‘cave’ in the tree, down the trunk and along its branches and leaves, past the foot of the tall tree and over the grass, continuing through the forest for at least several metres on either side of the trunk. In terms of size that I was now spread across, it was something akin to my childhood pond where I’d been spawned.

“Good,” Boi encouraged me. “Is that as far as you can go?”

I sucked my spirit into the core again, and beheld the dimly-lit, and getting dimmer by the minute, cave, where Boi sat in the opening, dangling his chubby legs out over the edge as the setting sun slowly withdrew its light from the forest. His right hand was held in front of his eye, with his fingers forming a circle and around which a bubble seemed to have formed. He moved his head ever so slightly around as he scanned the surroundings with the weird bubble in front of his eyes.

“Seems so,” I replied. “I feel very sleepy.”

“That’s normal. It appears that this is all we have to work with for now. According to the Encyclopaedia, you have to start off with a single farm, but even then, this seems rather small an area to build a farm, let alone grow anything.”

“I still don’t really follow all of that,” I replied. “What is it I’m meant to do.”

“Normally, you would spread your influence through a cave and inhabit it with creatures, monsters, and so on, but, seeing as this is anything but normal, you’re supposed to make a settlement and house it with… humans.”

“I’ll be able to create whomens!?”

“That appears to be the case, yes. But before we get anywhere close to making a settlement, we have to start small, with a farm. When you get stronger, you’ll be able to create a hamlet and such.”

“So how does it work, this process?”

“According to the Encyclopaedia, the progression ladder for a Settlement Core goes like this: You start off as a single farm > that becomes a hamlet, i.e., a collection of farmhouses > from there you grow into a village > then a town > then a castle town > then a capital, and after that, it all gets rather complicated.”

“That sounds complicated enough already.”

“Get some rest for now. When the sun rises, we’ll begin constructing the farmhouse.”

The following dawn, as sunlight started sneaking into the tree-cave, I seemed to have recovered all the energy I expended the previous day.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Sensing this, somehow, Boi opened his eyes and looked at me.

“Let’s get to work.” He crawled forward, towards my core, the cave trembling as he moved, making my vision vibrate uncomfortably.

“I want to set one thing straight. My name is not ‘Boi’.”

“It isn’t?”

“Of course it isn’t,” he replied with a frustrated sigh. “I am officially known as Imuxikwiht, the Squire-Lord of Guilty Pleasures and Minor Vices, but I will allow you to address me as Imu.”

“Emu?”

“I-M-U!”

“Imu.”

“Yes!”

“Emo Boi?”

“…”

“Boimu??”

“No… that’s not—”

“Emu the Boi!”

“Oh for Hell’s sake…”

“What is a Squire-Lord?”

“Listen, I want to settle this so you don’t get stuck on the wrong name. We’ll be working together, and this sort of thing makes me want to lead you off a cliff, rather than down a gentle slope.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Pray you don’t find out.”

“Imu..?”

“Yes…” Boi replied.

“What’s a Squire-Lord?”

“We Sluagh of Lord Deathheim are arranged into a hierarchy that the mortal kings decided to adopt for some reason: fashion is my guess, but you never know with humans. Anyway, at the top you have the Lords, who may speak directly with Deathheim. Below them are the Aristocracy, who are spread across many titles, these are, in order of power: Archduke, Duke, Marquess, Count, Viscount, and Baron. After the Aristocracy comes Knight-Lords; Knights; Squire-Lords; Squires; Men-at-Arms; Footmen; Lowborn; and the Unmentionables at the bottom.”

“I’m confused.”

“Of course you are. You’re a toad, after all.”

“I’m Toad!”

“…Yep.” Boi replied, pinching the bridge of his tiny nose. “Alright, enough chatter, it’s time for you to get to work. Every day wasted before you’ve secured yourself is a day spent courting Fate. And Fate is an asshole, I seriously hate that guy.”

“What do I do?”

“Like any Core,” Boi flicked through his Encyclopaedia, even though he didn’t look at the pages, “You have the ability to Spirit-Roam your demesne.”

If I had the ability to tilt my bulbous eyes and narrow my glistening rubbery eyelids in confusion, I would have, but alas, I was an inanimate pebble.

With his preternatural instincts, Boi picked up on my unspoken question. “You can basically fly and move through objects, like a Landvættir.”

“I have wings?”

“If that helps you imagine it, sure…”

I imagined that I had wings and could soar, and then it was as if I grew stalks below my eyes, like a snail, and my vision moved up through the ceiling of the cave, and into the mushy bug-infested wood of the tree. My vision kept moving straight through, and, more than once, I wished I still had my amazing tongue, so that I could sample the delectable treats that hid within. I was once the fastest tongue-shooter in my childhood pond and the bane of all mosquitoes of the forest, but, alas, I was now a tongueless misbegotten pebble.

When I grew bored of seeing the inside of the tree, I moved through the bark and found myself suspended in the air, far above the tiny cave within which my Core resided. I saw Boi start to climb out of the opening, one hand cupped and covered in a bubble that he looked through to see me.

“Hey Boi!”

“You’re doing great! Have a look at how far you can extend yourself, but be careful not to overexert your limited essence.”

I rotated my vision, so that I could look out over the nearby trees and the forest beyond. Wanting to see what the birds saw, I went even higher, until I suddenly could go no further. Far below stood my tree, and a strange smoke-like trail tethered me to it like the string of a spider’s web.

As I looked around some more, I suddenly exclaimed, “I can see my childhood pond from here!”

Then a loud snap brought me back into the cave.

“Alright, enough playing around.”

“Aww.”

“Creatures and humans are naturally drawn to Cores, so the longer we take to get situated here and mount some sort of defence, the worse off we’ll be.”

“Are we going to be under attack!?”

Boi flicked through the Encyclopaedia quickly, then, upon not finding what he was searching for, said, in a defeated voice, “I… have no idea… But! It never hurt to be prepared!”

“How do we prepare?” I asked, eagerly. Lack of a proper defence had after all seen me brutally murdered by the Honking Menace, whose ululating voice could still be heard nearby at times.

“You have to be the one to prepare, I’m merely the Advisor. But it’s simple. We follow the rough guidelines marked out in my tome and improvise the rest.”