Chapter 62 - The Price Of Power

Eric flashed a tight, hard smile. "Finishing this quest is suicide. We already risked our lives, and we took out one Spider Queen already. I can't help but think that if I were to reshape my Undead Bulwark covered in lizard hide that not even that titan could smash through, not for awhile at least, around that gate, there would be no chance in hell any spiders breaking through. Ever. It will cost me my bulwark… and all I will charge for it is the mayor's keys and codes."

Eric folded his arms, almost challenging them with his gaze. "It might not show as quest complete, but damn if it won't be just as good as."

Morlekai quirked an eyebrow. “And if our dear mayor sees it differently?”

Eric’s icy grin was all teeth. “Then we will bring his sorry, self-righteous ass right here. To witness for himself everything we had to do, just to survive this death trap. To remind him that our lives aren’t worthless chips to be used and thrown away with nothing to show for it. Besides. He’ll see for himself the strength and size of the bulwark plugging this gate. And if he still refuses to budge? We make it clear we’re done with the town, and we’re walking away from those ungrateful bastards and never looking back.”

Alice’s gaze held Eric’s for long moments. “And we’re just leaving Mayor Stibbs here?”

Eric nodded. “Until he screams for us to return, he can walk his sorry self back. In the dark.”

Drake and Louie flashed hard smiles that were nothing like the cheeky grins they normally shared. These were the smiles of professional thieves who might have their own code of honor, but they sure as hell weren’t going to let themselves be taken advantage of by anyone.

Nor were they above a little blood to grease the sticky wheel that refused to turn.

And Eric was beginning to realize that he was much the same.

“I think our boy scout is finally getting it,” said Drake.

Louie just nodded, even as he held his girl and stroked her hair, soothing like a wild doe the fragile beauty who always put on such a tough front.

Alice was the only one whose eyes were filled with something close to regret. But all she did was light up and give Eric a sad smile, blowing out a fresh ring of smoke. “You know we adore you, Eric. And if you walk this path, we’ll be walking it right by your side. It’s a path we know all too well. But you sure as hell won’t be a boy scout any longer. You do know that, right?”

Eric gave the tiniest of nods. It was a truth he knew all too well.

He then did his best to tune out the intent gazes of his friends, all his focus now on the shimmering obsidian portal before them.

A dungeon portal connecting directly to a realm of arachnoid horrors that Eric could all but sense was just a single step away, albeit at right angles to all others.

Eric furrowed his brow in thought, before Morlekai caught his gaze, slowly shaking his head. “It’s nothing like the lich’s gate, Eric. This is no path of blood and spirit connecting one nearby locale to another. This is an actual dimensional gate. Even if it attaches to nothing more than a tiny pocket realm adjoining our own.”

Alice nodded. “That’s the nature of wild dungeons like this one, Eric, unlike the stable Delves near Freetown and elsewhere. Wild ones are like pustules of mana saturation given sentience and form. And like any pustule, it can either be safely drained, flooding the territory with potency in the form of adventurer levels and mana-infused treasures and monster parts that can be useful for arcane construction… or it can be allowed to build and build, slowly growing more lethal, until a monster eruption occurs. And that is bad. Real bad.”

Eric absently nodded, still circling the gate, planning how to best sacrifice his two and a half lizard's worth of bone, sinew, and meat that had become such an impressive, and, according to Morlekai and Alice, necromantically enhanced bulwark. "Any first-timer bonus if we come back and clear this dungeon out, twenty levels from now?"

“You mean when we actually get an advanced class it's worth maximizing our levels on? Now that we finally have a sense of just how steep the playing field is stacked in favor of those with an inside track?" said Morlekai with a bitter smile.

Eric turned and nodded. “Exactly that.”

His friend shrugged, a thoughtful look upon his perfect features. “It makes sense to think so. But unfortunately, I have no idea. It’s an interesting query, however. Would it count as claiming fresh territory? I’ll have to bring it to my master's attention, assuming he hasn't found out already. We left Freetown long before our master found answers to half the questions he was putting out there. And paying good gold for what he could find, too."

Eric flashed a satisfied smile as an idea finally clicked into place. "I think we just might be able to complete this nightmare of a mission after all."

You have successfully visualized a 3-dimensional bulwark surrounding target from all sides!

You are unable to surround Delve Portal with 3-D bulwark!

Eric blinked, feeling a discomfiting chill as the gate seemed to pulse, and his bulwark slammed back into his ES Space so hard he winced. “What the hell?”

Morlekai frowned. “Eric?”

Eric shook his head. "Just… let me try something." Struck by sudden inspiration, he stepped several feet back from his friends and visualized a defensive formation in the shape of a pyramid-shaped 4-sided die, or tetrahedron with slits that he could shoot a hypothetical crossbow out of, and a hole just large enough for his feet.

He swallowed, fearing he was pushing his limits even attempting using it that way, already fearing the pain of another bounce-back, so it was several slow seconds before he summoned the shape into being.

ESS Manipulation skillcheck: Success!

He was surprised by how effortlessly it flowed around him. Effortless and obvious, even if distinctly different from any application before then. Much as if he had just discovered how to use his hands to scratch his back as well as his front.

Drake whistled. “Damn, did you just summon a magic bone and scale pill box? Look at those teeth jutting out of it! What level spell is that, Morlekai?”

Morlekai was gazing at Eric with a curious intensity through one of the arrow slits Eric had visualized, before turning to his sister. “Have you ever seen...”

“No. Never.” She flashed Eric a cheeky smile. “Master Grim will definitely want to meet with you, Eric. It’s clear you have a gift." Her bemused gaze hardened. "Now let's just put that cute little 4-sider around the rift and get out of here, shall we?"

Eric swallowed and nodded. “That’s the plan,” he said, taking some comfort in his newfound knowledge of just how far he could go with his gift… if not even further, dispelling and re-summoning it well over a dozen times. Long enough for his friends' looks of awe or admiration to turn to looks of faint boredom.

Drake turned to Morlekai. “Boss?”

"Leave him alone. He's becoming one with his craft. Only a fool disturbs a necromancer when he's perfecting a summons."

Eric frowned at that, more than ready to tell his friends he was no sort of necromantic bone raiser… or might have, if his tetrahedron wasn’t, in fact, made of sinew and bone as well as muscle meat, and a hell of a lot of absurdly strong lizard hide.

"It's not animated, so it doesn't actually count," he declared, earning a smirk from Alice.

“You just keep telling yourself that, boy scout, while summoning more bizarre shapes and creations on the fly.”

Eric sighed and shook his head. Half of him wanted to argue, the other half realizing he was just hesitating out of fear.

And fear was one thing he refused to let run his life anymore.

With that thought firmly in mind, he slowly but deliberately surrounded the gate with a fresh tetrahedron.

Only to lurch back with a cry, his head suddenly pounding.

You have failed to contain Delve Portal! You have suffered a temporary backlash!

You have lost 30 temporary health and are stunned!

Eric groaned and lurched back.

“Eric, what’s wrong?” asked Louie.

Eric flashed a hard smile. “It seems this portal is in no mood to be contained. But I’m not quite out of ideas yet.”

Morlekai couldn’t quite hide the relief in his nod as Eric got to work, trying to figure out ideal ways to contain the gate without crossing whatever metaphoric line was being put in the sand before them.

When 3 large pillars of lizard meat and hide were placed around the gate, it appeared that a solution had finally been found.

Before Eric flinched with the sudden crash of all three pillars collapsing… the moment they had moved a short distance away.

This, of course, had inspired him to try visualizing three curved pieces of a cylinder tube as well as a circular hoop of bone sealing all three curved bars into one complete prison over a careful handful of seconds.

This attempt had actually inspired a couple hi-fives, and Eric was grinning like he had actually gotten one over on the System before he found himself on the ground, groaning, with the entire 4 piece construct having popped back into his ES Space. And there the gate of crackling darkness was, innocently humming away, completely beyond Eric's ability to stop it.

Drake groaned, sounding utterly defeated. "So this is it, right? This gate is absolutely beyond us. Did Stibbs know? Was that bastard setting us up for a fall the whole time, having us run all those extra missions for him? Getting what use he could out of us, knowing he’d never have to pay out?”

Morlekai’s gaze had grown hard and cold, eyes flashing like rubies. “He had been desperate when the undead incursion hit, promising us everything without a single concrete oath-binding.” He shook his head and cursed. “I was a fool to give in to my own better nature, treating his terror as genuine, and act in good faith. An absolute fool!”

“We all were, trying to play the hero,” Alice spat. “Too many damned hours playing Skydragon, and the minute we find out we can actually level up, we’re treating this like a game where nobility, virtue, and justice actually mean something. After being forced into pods with a 90% mortality rate. How fucking stupid can we be, Morlekai? Of course the mayor is a little self-serving sycophantic lick-boot! Of course he’ll squeeze us for every favor he can, then use our checkered pasts as an excuse to say, ‘thanks for the half-year internship, you did brilliant work! But you refused to suck my cock and you do have a criminal record, so fuck you. You don’t get the job after all.’”

She shook her head with a bitter chuckle. "Even back before the world was so fucking saturated with magic that we're now forced to surrender to our darker natures, we knew better. We knew all too well what the world is really like, Morlekai. So of course this quest chain ends with a 150 total basic level requirement. And how much do you want to fucking bet that Stibbs has connections in Freetown that can line him up with a party of elites who will have no problem at all picking up where we left off, after doing all the grunt work?"

Her eyes let up with sudden heat. “Hell, I’ll bet he’s even getting a cut of the action! That’s it. It has to be! That fucker is selling out his codes! Now that he knows that we know, he’s just playing us along until someone better positioned than us can give him serious connections and a piece of the pie!”

Louie shook his head, stroking her brow. “Come on, love. It ain’t that bad. I’ve never not seen Stibbs in a flustered panic about something or other. And as far as I can tell, our refugee runs into fuckin’ orc town are the only human contact he or anyone else has had since the handful of doomed adventurers that somehow wandered into our neck of the woods with a lich’s curse hot on their trail, which nearly spelled our end. Stibbs is hardly the conniving mastermind, even if this final quest is seriously fucked up. And from what I saw, most of the adventurers in Freetown were counting their lucky stars just getting the Conscript class, same as us. Very few ever got anything more advanced before reaching fifteenth level, and almost no one even got that high a level before we had to leave anyway.”

But Alice gave an angry shake of her head. “Bullshit. It IS that bad. Stibbs was thrown off because of the undead incursion that came from fucking nowhere. And even when he was blubbering about us earning the town's eternal gratitude, he carefully did NOT offer the one thing we needed! And you know as well as I that he seemed just a bit too smug the day he made a deal with my brother, once Morlekai made it damned clear he knew that the mayor was holding on to what we needed. And instead of rolling his ass and taking it, we're somehow working for that asshole! And no matter how much Stibbs is always begging for our help and filling our fucking heads with praise every time we take out another threat, have you ever noticed that not once have we gotten a single dime in payback that we didn't hustle ourselves? Not once!"

Drake frowned. “Was he gloating that first day after Morlekai had ‘the talk?’ I thought it was more like a grimace of terror. Not that I give a shit one way or another, if he keeps holding out on us.” Eric could feel Drake's furrowed brow focusing intently on his back as he continued studying the portal. "You ready for what comes next, kid? Whether he's just a foolish old man or a conniving prick, and my money's on conniving prick, either way, things are going to get real serious real fast, when we head back to town. You ready for that?" The powerfully built man furrowed his brows. "Eric?"

But Eric was only peripherally aware of his friend, all his attention on the obsidian gate emanating a constant steady pulse of power that, if his sense of things was right, was both stabilizing the gate and anchoring it to this realm. To the Earth itself.

He furrowed his brow, deliberately tuning out Alice's husky voice of concern, and Morlekai's increasingly impatient one. Instead, he let his mind drift, doing his best to recall the oddly fragile cords of spirit and shadow that had linked the lich's gate to these caverns.

Fragile and easily dispelled. Anchored only by bloodsoaked artifacts.

Whereas this gate…

Insight check made!

Eric felt a sudden jolt of excitement.

This gate operated on much the same principles!

Save for the fact that it was anchored much more tightly to their realm, far beyond what any student of the arts of Domination could hope to abjure.

Or so it would seem, at first.

Perception check made! Infravision has successfully interfaced with Magesight!

Congratulations, you have learned a new skill!

His eyes bulged. He gasped with unabashed wonder as an entire network of brilliantly shimmering patterns originally disguised as the faintest traces of heat suddenly became visible to him.

Yet they were more than pretty colors sparkling in the obsidian void before him.

So much more.

His heart skipped a beat when he finally began to sense their secrets, and he couldn't help but wonder if they just might be the key to unlocking the puzzle before him, and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

“Eric...”

Eric knew what his friend was going to say, so he tuned it out entirely.

Because it was one thing to dare the impossible, when nothing but desperation drove you.

Quite another when you could finally sense the foundational lynchpin holding an entire realm in place.

And all it needed to be knocked askew was the slightest push at just the right angle, from a very special key.

“Eric, what are you doing? To enter is madness!”

“Eric!”

His friend’s surprised voices faded into the ether as he closed his eyes and dove deep, deep into the core of his soul. Where a moment’s flight of fancy became endless cold darkness… before blazing into a brilliant corona of Fiery Gold, Crimson, and Silver, the strands twisting and whipping about each other in an inconceivable frenzy of power. Like massive solar flares soaring endlesly above the blazing light at the very center of his still mostly dark Core.

And somehow, after only gleaning the barest flicker of comprehension as to how his essences worked, he found himself able to braid them in a complex knot of power and potential that near perfectly mirrored his bone arrow, complete with a wickedly sharp shaft dipped in his own lifeblood.

An arrow he knocked and spanned up to the back of his jaw, hooking the string back with the fingers of his soul.

Ignoring its screams of torment as his mind and body were twisted and stretched in inconceivable ways under the hideous spiritual pressure ripping open the hourglass of his soul… and all his attention was still utterly focused on making the perfect shot.

Holding his breath as one year became two.

Then twenty.

His friend's worried shouts a world away were no more real than the etherial winds screaming past his world, and the tiny pocket of shadow held in place by the slimmest of silver strands.

Until the instant Eric released his shot, and the arrow of his soul streaked forth to hit a target that was an entire world away, Wrath knocking a single precious lynchpin free of alignment, Fire cleaving through the fibers of Eternity itself, Dominion abjuring an entire realm, sending it spinning free in directions he couldn’t even begin to understand.

Congratulations! You have successfully struck World Gate with Metaphoric Arrow of Abjuration!

Portal between Mundus and Lesser Spider Realm 763 has been SEVERED!

You have successfully threaded THREE (3) essences in a cycle of Absolute Conflict!

World Barrier has been shattered!

Soul reserves have been Fully Depleted!

You have successfully saved versus DEATH!

You have lost MAXIMUM experience! (1000 needed to achieve level 10)

You have lost 20 YEARS OF YOUR LIFESPAN!

- NOTE! Inhuman Vitality and a Delver's virtue has successfully preserved your youth! Your final day will be 20, years, 228 days, and 14 hours before you would otherwise have succumbed to natural causes!

No Abjurer below Adept tier could possibly do what you have done!

You have fed upon the shrieking souls of an entire realm sentenced to oblivion!

Infravision is now Rank 9!

Infravision is now Rank 10! Journeyman Status achieved!

Infravision has automatically evolved to incorporate Magesight! You now enjoy +3 to Perception!

Heat Surge is now Rank 8!

Heat Surge is now Rank 9!

Blood Mastery is now Rank 15!

Blood Mastery is now Rank 16!

Rituals of Summoning and Binding is now Rank 13!

Rituals of Summoning and Binding is now Rank 14!

Spirit Mastery is now Rank 12!

Spirit Mastery is now Rank 13!

Spirit Mastery is now Rank 14!

UNORTHODOX ABJURATION SPELL IS NOW AT ADEPT RANK!

Your mind has grown in ways vast and profound as you survive a feat that should have destroyed you! (Journeyman and Adept tier stat bonuses are now in effect!) You now enjoy a +4 to Willpower, and +8 to Soul Reserves!

You have gained the HIDDEN TITLE: REALM BREAKER!

You are the first (and hopefully only!) human who has managed to severe the links between adjoining realms!

Title Perks: (Master Tier) OBLIVION’S MAW. - So long as you forsake the Path of Rulers, any territory you claim, you may claim utterly! - Synergistic links found between NECROMANTIC PATH and PATH OF ESSENCE! This synergism will allow you to consume the essence and potency of any territory you claim! (Dungeon Realms and Underworld territories WILL be completely obliviated! Surface territories will remain intact with pre-established background magic and affinities, but will lose whatever magnificent potential they almost had. The lingering sense of magic and wonder on those lands catalized by your claimance will become no more real than a dream.)

Title Bane: You are now considered a VESSEL OF OBLIVION! - YOUR ELITE TITLE HAS BEEN HIDDEN! Let no one know what you are truly capable of! Should your secret be revealed to any party that neither loves nor feels that they can manipulate you, elite forces from multiple worlds will be unleashed and sent hunting for you head!

The words washed over Eric in a flood of horrific understanding as he collapsed into the gaping maw of oblivion, crying out with the agony of twenty years torn from the hourglass of his soul, even as furiously working regeneration restored his withered old from within minutes to the eighteen year old Alice was for some reason sobbing over even now.

Looking the same as he ever had, save for the handful of silvery locks in what had otherwise been a fiery red mane of hair.

“Morlekai! For fuck’s sake, what happened? What did he do? He shriveled up like an old man, Morlekai. Like an old man!” Alice’s husky voice sent shivers through his soul, and there was nothing Eric wanted to do more than give in to the luxurious ennui of exhaustion, aching for it even more than Sue’s sensual embrace.

But before he could slip into that long goodnight, a brilliant light blared upon his interface screen, forcing him to artificial clarity as he was forced to read the prompts and make a choice that would shape the tiny realm they were in for all time.

Congratulations! You have successfully cleared Gilton Undercity Domain!

You possess the essence of Dominion!

You have uncontested Rites over this Domain!

The endless potential of an entire realm is at your fingertips!

How do you wish to shape this realm?

And Eric shuddered with awe, even though his grief and agony. Even with his soul violated and 20 years of his life stolen for all time.

For he had a precious seed realm in his spiritual hands. A seed that, like a story, like a child… he could shape however he wished.

On the one hand, he saw the seed for the juicy harvest of potency it was, even as it cried out at its imminent peril. For to sup upon that fruit would revitalize his body to a magnificent degree, repairing at least some of the endless potential he had lost.

Necromantic affinities + Oblivion’s Maw Perk allow you to consume newly forged realm potency for +5 Strength and +5 Vitality.

Do you wish to devour this realm? Y/N.

But there was far more that he could do than simply consume a tiny realm’s potential, he realized, filled with a sense of awe and reverence he felt welling within his heart.

A creator’s blessing.

A blessing that would allow him to reshape an entire territory, tiny as Junk Town was, for the sake of the near thousand lives counting on Eric and his companions for survival itself.

And they had suffered no greater peril than the threat of being captured and butchered by enemies beyond count. Enemies that seemed to grow forever stronger.

For all that Eric sensed his closing of the gate and infusing this claimed realm with his will had stabilized this area, he realized it was just the start of what he needed to do.

Your status as a Disciple of Dominion with the blood of conquerors in his veins gives you access to 1 Major & 2 Minor boons with which you may enhance any territory you seize!

In that instant, he visualized Junk Town as being safely hidden away beyond far more than the defenses of a few winding tunnels. That it was, and always had been, squirreled away so deeply in the twisting mists of probability between overlapping realms that absolutely no one would be able to find the now masterfully reinforced city gates without being shown the way by a very select handful of people.

A town that had, through a miraculous series of fortuitous circumstances, found a crack in the far back of the cavern leading to a hidden treasure-trove of wealth, knowledge, and resources, including automatons eager to serve the ones who had stumbled upon that magnificent find.

You have enhanced Gilton Undercity Domain with Major Obfuscation! Major Obfuscation enhanced 200% by nature of territory (overlapping interdimensional tunnels.) No hostile party below Silver Tier will be able to find Junk Town unless specifically invited by you, or anyone you designate! - This counts as a Major Perk!

You have designated John Smith, Leatherworker Hobs, Mayor Stibbs, Your lover Sue (last name unknown) and Greenmage Lucy (last name unknown) as intuitively sensing where Junk Town is in relation to the Surface Realm at all times!

You have enhanced Gilton Undercity Domain with enhanced defensive fortifications! With the only entranceway surrounded by multiple tiers of fortifications recently built and manned by a series of automatons miraculously discovered just hours after you left, Junk Town is now as well defended as the Le Mont Saint Michel Abbey ever was, centuries ago! Even Bronze Tier opponents will think twice before daring the kill-zone of this town’s defenses! One might normally think this a waste of a priceless opportunity to shape your realm for added comfort and prosperity, but no one can say you aren’t thorough!

Bronze Tier Security counts as a Minor Boon!

Gilton Undercity Domain has stumbled upon an adjoining cave filled with Lost Ruins.

Ruins are benign. Ruins consist of aforementioned golems, ancient (inert) artifacts, and a greenhouse capable of feeding thousands of citizens (modified by attending Greenmage) in addition to bathing them in arcane light that perfectly mirrors a mild spring day!

Bronze Tier Prosperity counts as a Minor Boon!

And for just a heartbeat, Eric savored the sheer joy of creation, bringing hope, safety, and prosperity by dint of forcing his will upon the bedrock of fate, upon the clay of probability, as a tiny pocket realm was forged from nothing but the echoes of that which had come before.

Or perhaps, it had all been the delusion of a raging mind shredded under the greedy claws of mischance, tearing free twenty golden years of his life.

Either way, he managed to smile in sweetest satisfaction no matter the agony of his joints or the mad pounding of his heart, drifting off despite Morlekai’s frantic shouts and Alice’s far-off sobs.

Before waking up with a groan to the accusatory glares of his teammates, never having felt so shaken or awful as when he had first stumbled out of a pod.