Path of Dragons

Elijah rowed across the strait, his strokes straining the integrity of the paddles as he crested one rolling wave after another. Normally, the strait was fairly calm, but as was the case far more often than not, a storm had rolled in overnight, and it had brought some rougher seas with it.

As always, Elijah could feel what could only be called sea monsters swimming around beneath him. He’d seen a few during his time transplanting sea flora to the cave, and he was still in awe of those creatures. There were massive eels, sea snakes, and turtles aplenty, but there had also been monsters that defied any attempt at identification as well. One in particular looked like a cross between a shrimp the size of a Honda Civic and an octopus, which was unlike any sea creature Elijah had ever studied.

Fortunately, they’d all been uninterested in him, which he reasoned was due to his archetype. After seeing the violent war between the wildlife that seemed commonplace on the seafloor, Elijah felt certain that most people would quickly find themselves targeted if they were to enter the ocean.

It was one more reason to be grateful that the system had chosen the Druid archetype for him. If it hadn’t, he might’ve made the mistake of choosing something like the Ranger archetype, which would have surely ended with his death.

Those thoughts occupied Elijah’s mind as he crossed the strait and, eventually arrived at the dock. When he had done so in the past, he’d been beset by hostility, but now, the general vibe that greeted him was one of borderline indifference. People were still wary of him. However, they weren’t outright terrified, which he counted as a win.

Probably.

In one facet of his mind, Elijah could easily imagine that that lack of fear might one day bite him in the backside. Hopefully, he would be able to counter it when that came to pass.

After docking and tying off the rowboat – which he intended to take back to the island, because his collection was beginning to grow quite slim – Elijah traversed the pier and headed toward his first stop. However, when he entered Mari’s shop, he was a little surprised to see Rosabella there alongside a gnome who must’ve been her mother.

He gave a little wave, and the girl just rolled her eyes in annoyance. That certainly told Elijah where he stood in the little gnomish girl’s estimation. So, he busied himself by perusing Mari’s wares while she dealt with her other customers. Out of the corner of his eye, Elijah noticed that the two gnomes were buying a fancy dress.

Finally, they finished, and when Rosabella’s mother noticed him, she was quick to usher her child out of the shop.

Mari said, “You’re bad for business.”

“Sorry,” Elijah apologized. “I guess I’m still not that popular around here.”

“They’ll come around. Just keep spending money, and they’ll all welcome you with open arms,” Mari advised. “Now, what do you want? I can’t stand around her chit-chatting all day, you know.”

Elijah held up a finger, then dove into his pack to retrieve the tanned bear pelt, and he was more than a little satisfied when Mari’s eyes widened the moment she saw it.

“I’m guessing I did an okay job?” he asked.

Mari didn’t verbalize an answer. Instead, she reached into her pocket and retrieved a six-inch rectangle of glass. She held it up and let out a small gasp, but she quickly marshalled her control. Then, the dwarven tailor said, “It’ll do. Peak Simple. There’s a chance I can push it to Complex-Grade. I’m not guaranteeing anything, mind you, but with the right materials, I think I can manage.”

“What right materials?” Elijah asked, thinking she was angling for either more money or for him to cough up some other resources. He hadn’t brought anything with him, but his island was a treasure trove of ethera, so Elijah felt certain that he could find something appropriate.

“Oh, this and that. You don’t have to worry about it. Everything’s covered by the deposit. Now, let’s get you measured and out of my shop. Bad for business, like I said,” she went on.

After that, Mari took plenty of measurements. For some, she used a tape measure, though with odd and irregular units that Elijah didn’t understand. For others, the tailor utilized various instruments that she claimed were meant to test his attunement as well as ethera density. When she did that, she went briefly wide-eyed, once again, though she hid it quickly.

All in all, it took about twenty minutes before she’d finished, and once she had, she said, “It’s going to be at least two weeks before I complete the item. Perhaps as much as a month. Don’t bother me until then, or I’ll add a penalty fee.”

“But –”

“No buts. Out with you, then!”

Elijah let himself be shooed into the street, and once Mari had retreated into her shop, he let out a sigh. Someone chuckled behind him, but when Elijah turned around, he couldn’t find the culprit amidst the other pedestrians.

Either way, he next headed to Druid’s Park, where he spent a couple of hours flaring Nature’s Bounty. The effect was minimal at this point in the tree’s life cycle, but he found the process calming. And besides, it couldn’t hurt. One thing he did notice was that the ethera density in the area had already begun to rise. He didn’t expect that it would ever rival the island, let alone the underwater cultivation cave he’d begun to build, but it would be quite an improvement over what he’d felt the first time he had visited the city.

Hopefully, that would help them.

In any case, once Elijah was finished, he strolled through the city in search of a proper meal. Inevitably, he ended up at the Stuck Pig, which wasn’t the only restaurant in town, but it was his favorite. So, he went inside, found a place at one of the long, communal tables in the center of the large main dining room, and before long, was tearing his way through a plate of boar ribs.

That was how Ramik found him, with sweet and tangy sauce all over his face and staining his beard as he tried to get every last morsel of meat from the bone.

“Oh, hey,” Elijah said, gesturing with the almost completely clean rib. “I was going to stop by your office later.”

“Is there an issue?” asked the goblin, sitting across from Elijah.

“No,” he answered. “Well, there is. You’re too weak. Like, laughably so.”

The little green man went pale. “I see.”

“Oh – not you specifically,” Elijah clarified. “I’m talking about the collective you, as in all of Ironshore. A city this size should have been able to handle that orc invasion. But the problem is that you haven’t had any opportunities to fight or earn experience.”

“Experience?”

“Kill energy. Whatever. My point is that I have a solution,” Elijah said, nibbling the last bit of meat from the bone. “This is amazing, by the way.”

“Indeed. Orc is difficult to prepare properly, but –”

It was Elijah’s turn to go pale. “Orc?”

“Yes. They must dilute the ethera before serving it. Not for you, obviously, but they would quickly run out of business if they catered to people of your stature,” Ramik said.

“So, you’re telling me I’m eating orc.”

“Yes?”

“As in the creatures we spent all that time killing a few weeks back.”

“Ah – I see the issue. Rest assured that the Stuck Pig is well-versed in all the latest innovations and spells associated with food preservation. It is well-known that dry aging the orc is key to –”

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“I feel like I’m going to be sick.”

In truth, Elijah recognized that his reticence to eat orc was a little ridiculous. Despite the fact that the monsters were bipedal, they were no more sapient than apes. However, he had well-explored reservations regarding consumption of those creatures, too. Sure, he would do it if the choice was between that and starvation, but even then, he would investigate every other option before going down that road.

Except he’d just eaten an entire plate full of juicy, meaty ribs that said otherwise. And the worst part was that he’d enjoyed it quite a lot.

“Are you ill? Do you need a Healer? I think –”

“I’m fine,” Elijah insisted, washing the taste out of his mouth with some sort of fruit punch the restaurant had served. “Just a crisis of conscience. I’ll be okay, though. Onward and upward, I always say.” He hesitated. “I don’t actually say that.”

“I see. You had a point you intended to make?”

“Oh. Right. Sorry. I want to put together a team,” Elijah said. “Your strongest people.”

“Why?”

“I want to run them through my tower.”

“Your tower?”

“Oh – I never told you about that, did I? So, there’s a tower just off the coast of my island,” Elijah said. When Ramik’s eyes widened in alarm, he went on, “Don’t worry. It’s not about to surge. It did once, but I took care of it. Now, I’m keeping it in check. The point is that I can take your people in there, they can get the rewards – and the levels – and that’ll help you defend the city if something like that orc horde comes again. I’ll teach them how to beat it, then they can lead others to do the same thing. And soon enough, you’ll have all your combat-capable people getting all the experience you could ever want.”

“Huh,” Ramik said, knuckling his chin. “You have access to a tower? Do you know what grade?”

“I don’t,” Elijah admitted. He had gotten some estimates from Nerthus, but none of it was certain. “Pretty difficult, though. Took me months. But part of that was when I was swallowed by a whale, which wasn’t as pleasant as Jonah made it out to be. Lots of acid. It should be a lot quicker this time, now that I know what I’m doing. Not the whale digestion. I sort of just experienced that. Didn’t require a lot of thought. The tower, though – I know it like the back of my hand.”

“I see.”

Elijah shrugged. “It’s just a thought,” he said. “No worries if you don’t want to do it. I’ll just head back to my island. I’ve got a couple of projects to tend to anyway.”

“No. Don’t. I think the idea has merit. I simply need to speak to the others about it before I send anyone into such a dangerous situation,” Ramik said. “No matter if the tower is well-documented, it will still be potentially deadly. And we cannot afford to lose any more people.”

“I get that,” Elijah said. “If it matters, I’ll do everything I can to keep them alive.”

“Yes, of course. Give me a few hours, and I will have an answer.”

After that Ramik excused himself, leaving Elijah to ruminate on the fact that he’d been eating orc ribs. That didn’t leave him in the best of moods, so he paid his bill by transferring a few copper ethereum from his folio, then headed out to wander the city. He knew that Ramik would find him when the time came, and if not, Elijah was more than capable of hunting the goblin down.

The city was doing well, as far as he could see. Most of the buildings that had been damaged during the orcish invasion had been repaired, and there were efforts underway to improve everything. In addition, he caught sight of the site meant for the wall, and he was impressed to see that the foundation for a large portion had already been laid. In a couple of months, it would be complete.

Eventually, his feet took him to Biggle’s alchemy shop, which was situated on a hill on the edge of town. Once there, he pushed through the low gate and passed the curiously writhing plants to knock on the door. When he did, he called out for the Alchemist, which elicited a startled yelp and, predictably, a small explosion.

“What?” demanded the white-haired gnome as he slung open the door. Then, recognition dawned on his face, and his expression softened. “Oh. You. Come in, come in. Don’t mind the smoke.”

When Elijah stepped inside, he caught a breath of the caustic smoke, which burned its way through his lungs, requiring him to pulse Touch of Nature to undo the damage.

“What is it that you want?” the gnome asked. “Not that I mind a visit from a dear friend. Obviously. Just wasn’t expecting company is all.”

“I wanted to ask you about those body cultivation potions,” Elijah said. “What do they do?”

“You don’t know?” Biggle asked.

“Only a few years ago, my world was completely different. No ethera. No magical spells or cultivation. So, no. I don’t. That’s why I asked,” Elijah said, letting a little of his annoyance peek through. He wasn’t angry – not precisely – but he didn’t like the implication that he was somehow at fault for not knowing the ins and outs of something that hadn’t even existed on Earth before a few years ago.

Biggle swallowed hard. “Oh. Right. I sometimes forget about you natives,” the gnome said. “So, body cultivation. Two ways you can do get past the first stage. You can –”

“I don’t need to know about that. I want to know about the second one,” Elijah interrupted.

“You’ve already passed the first stage, have you? Interesting. Well, whatever lucky encounter you experienced, just know that the second stage will be much more difficult,” Biggle said. “The first step is to inoculate yourself with increasingly powerful ethera. Most use potions, but I’ve heard that there are those who use specially prepared foods as well. Baths, too, but those are usually fueled by some sort of aquatic natural treasure. The point is that you’ll need to prepare yourself for the real test.”

“Which is?”

“Surrounding yourself with incredibly dense ethera and torturing yourself,” Biggle said. “Or that’s the gist of it. The official explanation is that you’re doing damage to yourself that’s so extensive that it forces your body to react. If it’s properly prepared, you will enter a chrysalis whereby your body will progress from one stage to another. Sometimes, these can last a week, but for some, it can last as much as a year.”

“Is that common?”

“Depends on how prepared your body is,” Biggle stated.

“So, those potions – what do they do?”

“That’s the torture part. Lots of pain. Breaking down muscle tissue. It’s designed specifically to elicit the proper reactions for cultivation,” Biggle explained. “Though most people can’t handle it all at once. You break it down, inject a bunch of ethera, then use another potion to keep yourself from dying. Then, a year or so later, you do it again once you’ve fully recovered. On and on it goes until you tip over the edge.”

“Ah,” Elijah said. “And the effects of gaining the second tier?”

“Around the same as the first,” was the gnome’s answer noncommittally. Elijah got the impression that the vagueness was due to ignorance.

“Can you make the potions stronger?”

“I can if you think you can handle it. Don’t go overstepping though. Lots of promising cultivators have killed themselves by doing that,” he said.

Elijah said, “Stronger. Strongest you can make. That’s what I want.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am,” Elijah stated. His reasoning was based on two things. First, Biggle’s potions were almost assuredly designed to take someone to the first stage, rather than the second. As such, Elijah expected that he would need a much stronger push to send his body into the proper state. That meant a more potent potion. The second reason Elijah decided to go stronger was because of his ability to continuously heal himself. He’d been through something similar in the whale’s stomach, so he knew he could take quite a lot of punishment.

And in the back of his mind, Elijah also had no interest in slowly progressing over the course of years. He wanted it done quickly, which meant putting his body through a lot more punishment. Though he was hesitant to acknowledge that facet of his reasoning because he knew it made him seem a bit naïve and a lot impatient.

“Alright – the next thing I want to know – is there anything you can do with these?” Elijah asked, reaching into his pack and retrieving a berry. He handed it to the alchemist, who took it eagerly.

“This is a low Simple-Grade natural treasure!”

“Is that a yes?” Elijah asked, a little embarrassed that he’d been eating the things like candy.

“Of course it’s a yes!” the alchemist said. “I can make restoration potions! Yes! Strong ones, too! How many of these berries do you have? Did you find an entire bush during your travels? How did you defeat the guardian?”

“Yeah. I found a bush. Someone else had…ah…injured the guardian, so I helped myself. So, I have about twenty of them,” Elijah said. “Same deal as with the mushroom?”

“Of course, of course. Gimme!”

Elijah did, and he had to stifle a bit of a chuckle when he saw how carefully the gnome handled the little berries. If he found out that Elijah had a few dozen bushes filled with the things back on his island, Biggle might’ve had a heart attack.

After that, Elijah asked when his potions would be ready, and Biggle said that they’d be finished in about three weeks. That lined up with Elijah’s other deadlines, so that information was well-received. So, after only a little more conversation – during which Biggle tried to acquire some more information as to the location of the fictional bush Elijah had plundered – Elijah left.

And he found Ramik in his office only a little while later.

“So?” Elijah asked.

“I agree with your plan,” the goblin said, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “But we can’t pay you. It’s not in the budget.”

“Pay me?” Elijah asked, a little confused. Then, he realized that what he was offering was extremely valuable. Still, he said, “That’s fine. We’re in this together, right? My only requirement is that Kurik comes.”

“That was always going to be the case. He’s the highest-level combatant in the city, and he just so happens to be back in town for the night. I’ve already informed him that he’s going.”

“Oh. Cool. When can I meet the others?”

“Tomorrow. I assumed you want to do this as soon as possible,” Ramik guessed.

“Yeah. We’ll head over to my island in the morning, spend the night there, and then hit the tower first thing,” Elijah stated. He knew he was extending quite a lot of trust by taking the others to his island, but that was by design. He hadn’t been lying when he said that he and the people of Ironshore were in it together. But still, he said, “Oh, and Ramik – if anyone messes with my island at any time, I will destroy this town and kill everyone in it. I like you. I want to work together. But my priorities haven’t changed. Do you understand?”

Ramik swallowed hard. “I do.”

“Good. That’s good,” Elijah said with a smile. “If you need me before the morning, I’ll be in the Imperium trying to sleep. Oh – you need to find something that’ll let your people breathe underwater. I have something, and they might get a reward before it’s necessary, but yeah – if they don’t have that, they’re probably not going to make it.”

With that, he left the goblin behind and headed to the ultra-expensive hotel. As he did, he muttered to himself that he needed to find a cheaper place to sleep. But even as he grumbled about it, he made a beeline to the luxurious hotel.

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