The next day, we officially headed for our new territory. Well, Celine’s new territory. She was the one officially marked to be the noble in charge of this place. Since she’d be getting the renown from the Empire for its operation, and since Callie would be making the wishes, I should be able to grant the wishes for upgrading the territory itself.
With that decided, we just had to figure out exactly where we were going to begin work. Highgrave’s territory did contain a city, as well as a manor, but both belonged to Highgrave and the latter was not only probably full of traps, but also pretty damaged.
Besides that, since we were building from the ground up, we decided we needed to find a location with a lot of natural defenses, somewhere that would make our job easier.
Which brought us…here. As I stared out over the valley, I couldn’t help but whistle at the sight before me. “Damn.” I said quietly. “That’s amazing.” I put an arm around Callie as we stared down into the idyllic landscape of what was going to be our first real home since leaving Callus. Sure, we’d be off and heading for the conclave in a few months, but it would be waiting for us to come back.
“It IS amazing.” She murmured. “I can’t believe the cats found this place. Thanks for the assist Bethy.”
The vampire giggled. “Um, duh. Of course I found somewhere awesome. I have the best taste ever, right Gabe?” She shot a slightly strained smile at the big blonde man, and he nodded solemnly. Ever since her outburst in the healing tent, she’d been acting incredibly guilty whenever she was around Gabe. For his part, he didn’t seem to care about her shoving him away, but I could tell he was concerned about her new demeanor.
I forced myself to focus on the valley itself though, smiling at the beautiful scenery. Stretched out below us, a deep depression in the ground cut out a huge section of the forest. Inside was a large idyllic meadow filled with lush green grass and the occasional patch of wildflowers. A few trees dotted the landscape, but only in the singular, and they were all large sturdy fruit bearing behemoths.
At the far end of the valley was a huge clear lake. The lake was backed up against a sheer cliff face, and a waterfall tumbled from the rocks at the top. I could see a deep stone cave at the back of the waterfall, allowing the lake to drain out without overflowing its peaceful banks, and peaceful fish and frogs and turtles enjoyed both the shore and the glasslike water nearest to it.
Benny, who was escorting Celine, took a long deep breath, smiled pleasantly and said aloud what we were all thinking. “So…this is a trap right?”
“Oh, gods yes.” I said immediately. “I’m surprised someone didn’t build a candy house in the middle of that meadow. It’s super pretty though. And unfortunately for whoever or whatever is expecting to ensnare us, we have other means of securing our territory.” Kneeling down, I pressed a hand to the grass, and called on Song of the Soil.
Earth. For miles in every direction I felt myself spread through the earth. My Perception was miles ahead of where it had been last time I used this skill outside of a Pit of Despair I made myself, but I had an easy fix for that. I triggered Piece of Mind twice, letting each of my three selves take a portion of the information load to sift through.
“Ok, let’s see.” I said as I sorted through stimuli. “Small settlement of giant moles, but they’re pretty deep and don’t seem hostile. Den of river otters, judging by the piles of suspiciously human bones in their cave they ARE hostile, but there’s only like ten of them and they’re just F-rank. And, oh, that’d be the one. Ouch, that’s nasty.”
Benny cleared his throat. “We can’t see what you’re talking about, mind filling us in on what you’re looking at?”
“Ambush predator.” Said Callie in my stead. She could access my skills through our bond, and was looking at it right alongside me. “It’s disguised as a one square mile section of meadow. Basically a giant mouth waiting to snap shut on anything that steps…there.” She pointed to a particularly sunny and inviting stretch of grass, one with no trees or flowers but that looked lush and soft.”
Benny hissed. “A square mile. Someone needs to cut back on carbs.”
“No monster shaming.” I said with a snicker. “It’s tacky. Don’t worry though, I’ve got this. Gabe, feel like hammering in a nail for me?”
He shrugged. “Not sure what you mean by that, but I can go with the flow. What did you have in mind.” I headed down the hill opposite the cliff, the alternate and much more inviting entrance to the valley, and he followed me.
“Ok. I’m going to set up an attack, and I want you to use your Path to make sure it does the job. Can you get up there?” I pointed up to a spot maybe twenty feet above the ground.
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In answer, he conjured his starlight charger and swung onto its back. To my surprise, it stepped on air as easily as the ground, charging up into the sky and then stopping where I’d pointed. I gave him a thumbs up, then took a deep breath, triggering Afterburner, Mercy Kill and Mephistopheles.
I was careful about it, because the ambush predator felt strong. It was E-rank, but HIGH E-rank, and if it decided to attack it could almost definitely kill us.
To make sure that didn’t happen, I called up Moonlit Night, and empowered with Afterburner, the stealth aspect of the ability was even stronger. I made sure Gabe could see through the fog, then walked over to the VERY edge of the ambush predator’s range, and knelt down, putting a hand on the grass. With the stealth covering me, I triggered Pit of Despair, and then I started letting black flame seep into the dust. I controlled both meticulously, using my two still active parallels to manipulate both the dust and the flame.
Once the flame had permeated the dust, I used Dust Construction to lift it all up. The ambush predator noticed, but it couldn’t sense the cause and froze up. Hammering the Dust with my willpower, I slammed it together into a twenty foot long spike of black stone roiling with black flame energy. “Now!” I called to Gabe.
Being able to see the flat platform under him at the top, he dismissed his charger and landed on it just as I released the spike and it began to fall. I saw the world shift slightly as Gabe channeled his Path of the Adamant into the falling spike, and the rod of black stone plummeted into the still open and now exposed mouth of the ambush predator.
The spike slammed into flesh at high speeds, driven by Gabe’s path alongside my black flame as an explosion of powerful damaging energy, enhanced by multiple effects and channeled along the length of the dense stone slammed into it and blasted the spike into the depths of the creature.
Gabe himself leapt off at the last second, backflipping up to land on his suddenly coalescing charger as the monster screamed its death throes, fountains of rancid blood shooting up from the hole we’d left as it died.
Swinging by, Gabe caught me with a high five as he went by, and I whooped with joy as I let the fog fade away. The others hurried over to us, and whistled as they saw the results. Callie looked particularly impressed. “That’s amazing. Think of how much damage an attack like that could do from higher up.”
“I call it the rod from the gods.” I said proudly. “But realistically that’s the best I can do. Lifting that much dust is a huge strain. The higher it goes the more stress it puts on my soul. Twenty feet is about my limit, and only because I was in the process of compacting it.”
She grimaced. “Ah, yeah that might be a problem. Maybe I could teleport it? We’d need something up there casting a shadow. Good idea using Gabe’s Path to charge up the momentum.”
“Wouldn’t have done much otherwise.” I said with a shrug. I offered the Adamant a grin, not that he could see it. “Damned impressive job there man.”
He hopped off his horse, letting it dissolve in silver shimmers. “Hell of a payload, I just delivered it.” it felt good, knowing that despite being extremely weak amongst the throngs of E-rankers, we could still get shit done, especially working together. Our Paths really were an extreme advantage at this juncture, though I suspected we’d be meeting more and more people who had them already as we approached D-rank.
“Not to rain on anyone’s parade.” Said Benny as he looked at the huge corpse. “But what the hell are we supposed to do with this big bastard? Killing it means we can start work right? But like…don’t we need to move the body?”
I glanced at Callie, who would be making the wishes for this place. “I’m going to say no.” She said after some deliberation. “We can work around it. We’ll figure out something to do with it when we have time, but it’s not like it’ll attack. Worst case after its gone we’ll fill the hole with water and make a pond or something.”
“Sure, because that’s not weird at all.” I said with a laugh. “I can just imagine including that in the tour for prospective citizens. ‘And here we have Predator Pond, which used to be the grave of a giant super predator that called this valley its lair’. That’ll bring in the investors.”
She just shrugged, mostly ignoring me. “Now, to get started, I think we need to take the same steps you did with the walls. Namely, we need foundations. Seven buildings as a start. The question is what we need first.” She turned to Celine. “This is going to be your territory, and you have more experience with this kind of thing. What’s our first building?”
The elf looked thoughtful. “I think…we need an inn. We’ll need city planners, workmen, and plenty of other dedicated craftsmen. Shipping them here every day isn’t cost effective. An inn would let us keep our workers close.”
“That’s a good idea.” Callie said cheerfully. “Actually, it makes a lot of sense to consult a professional about placement. In that case, how about we focus on getting the inn up today and we can save the other foundations for once the planner arrives?” Once Celine agreed, my girlfriend clapped her hands together and rubbed them vigorously. “Alright. Let’s do this. Shane, I wish for the nicest and sturdiest inn foundation we can afford. Celine will be paying for all of today’s wishes with a D-ranked chit."
Wish detected. Grant wish?
The elf smiled, tossing me a particularly dense looking coin, which I caught with a surprised grunt and slipped into my ring. Heavier than it looked. I felt the power start to build and grinned as it charged to absurd levels. ‘Best we could afford’ meant lots of Impact. With an explosion of purple sparks a sea of light covered the entire area…where the monster body was.
When it vanished, there was a big empty hole in the shape of a well structured basement, with beams and supports that looked suspiciously like bone.
I blinked, staring down in shock. Apparently the best she could afford meant using all resources. We had a giant hole filled with powerful monster parts, and apparently the wish decided to count them as assets. I stared down at the sturdy looking foundation and then turned to Callie who looked as shocked as I did. “Well.” I said cheerfully. “That solves that problem. Next wish I guess.”