Sneak Peek #28 (Post 3 of 3) (Patreon)

“Aditya? Hey Aditya.”

Lord Aditya made some noises as he started to stir.

Huh, why am I, HUH?

He sat up, waking up violently, finding that he had fallen asleep on the information book h had used, the overload of information and his lack of sleep had caused him to fall asleep. He peeled a scroll off of his face, looking at Evernight.

She tilted her head at him as he wiped his face, he’d got used to her presence and took a few moments to wake up properly.

“You have a bed you know,” Evernight said.

“I do? Huh,” Aditya shrugged, he’d been using his couch to sleep when he could.

The building of King’s Hill Outpost was a full-time job.

Over three quarters of the outposts that were allied with the outpost had a road connecting them to the outpost now.

Traders were coming from across the second realm as Yao Li from the Trader’s Guild had said there were a lot more traders than Aditya thought there would be. Their wares were items that would cause interest in the second realm. More powerful items such as the mana barrier formation that covered Vermire and King’s Hill Outpost weren’t dealt with publicly.

“I heard that the first army is out and patrolling the outposts and the linking roads, second army should be finished training soon as well,” Evernight said.

“Yes, the biggest problem has been the relocation, to make sure that there are no old influences in the occupied outposts we have kicked out a number of the supporting families, banning them from coming back to the beast Mountain Range for ten years. Then we have been shuiffling people in and out of the outposts so that the different factions and groups are broken up. It means that instead of helping with our money issue they’ve just been costing more,” Aditya sighed.

“Don’t worry about that,” Evernight said casually as Aditya felt the mana density in the room increase as he felt more alert and his body relaxing as his five mana gates opened and he started to draw in the surrounding mana hungrily.

He looked over to see Evernight tossing up a mana stone in her hand.

He had seen Mortal mana stones but this was clearer and the mana was denser.

“Is that an Earth Mana stone?” He asked, his voice catching in his throat.

“Yes, though this will be hard for you to use here.” Evernight passed him a storage ring.

He looked inside finding it filled with gems and jewels, from cut to uncut.

“We have a whole bunch of these from acquiring another piece of land, with your contacts it should be easy enough to turn this into liquid funds no?” Evernight smiled and put the mana stone on the desk as well.

He looked at it and then her.

“For you to cultivate with,” She said.

He couldn’t esitmate how much was in the ring but looking at the Earth mana stone his eyes went wide.

It was worth One Million Gold. Such an item was simply too extravagant.

“Don’t worry there are plenty more where that came from, literally could rain from the sky, though that would suck. So how are things going here?”

She dropped down into the chair opposite, she was wearing the emblem of King’s Hill Outpost but was wearing rough travelling clothes.

“We have expanded rapidly, there are thirty thousand people within King’s Hill, every day we have several dozen trading caravans moving to and from King’s Hill, trading at the outer outposts and beyond. A number of people have sent messages, looking to create alliances or threatening us. Well all of them are threatening us, they offer us an agreement, but they see we are facing difficulties or will in the future so they are looking to snap up our outpost for cheap. A number of crafters and healers have appeared from somewhere and are setting themselves up in King’s Hill, I’ve given them the assistance I can provide, some of them came with plans for crafting workshops and we are building those up now,” Aditya said.

Evernight smiled at the mention of the crafters and healers, knowing all to well where they came from.

“Good, it seems that you are developing well. Focus your efforts on King’s Hill, if others attack then the outer outposts can flee and pull back, small parties will find it easy to move through the beast Mountain Range, an army? Well they’ll piss off every animal around,” Evernight said.

“Are we going to be attacked?”

“Maybe?” Evernight shrugged.

“I wish you weren’t so cavailier about it all,” Aditya sighed as he felt his heartburn acting up.

“My employers are interested in controlling the Beast Mountain Range, nothing more, they want to do trade here and recruit capable and loyal people from those among the population. That is it. Now if something threatens the Beast Mountain Range, truly threatens it, there are a number of things that they can do. I’m not sure but just one team could probably destroy a country without the subterfuge they used to make the Zatan Confederation collapse.”

It was too clean and well timed to be anything but. It has been sometime but to destroy a country out in the open without exterior help. Are they more confident in their power or they just really don’t want to lose their investment here?

“Keep up the good work, reinforce the outer outposts but build up King’s Hill the greater benefits you have to the other powers and harder you are to fight, the less willing they will be to fight you.”

“What about this Adventurer’s Guild that have appeared?” Aditya asked.

“They’re a good group, there might be some issues with other groups being annoyed that they’re taking people from among their ranks but don’t worry they’ll help if you need.”

“I heard that they say they have places in higher realms. That Adventurer’s can go to higher realms through them?” Aditya asked.

“I’ve heard the same,” Evernight said in a way that made Aditya close his mouth, he had gained some trust but there were still things he didn’t know about his mysterious masters.

“They should be able to exert some greater scontrol over the mercenaries and other ighting groups that can be seen in the outposts. If people want to join their ranks and go to the higher realms then they will need to prove themselves.”

“That is if they survive, with the recent activities in the Beast Mountain Range, the beasts have increased in strength and numbers, the last couple of years they have been quiet and their numbers limited for some reason. Now they’re stronger than before.”

“Is it an issue for your traders?”

“No, it is an issue for the different road building crews we increased the number of fighters protecting them and we haven’t had many issues. Pan Kun is now using it as a training opportunity. We’re quickly getting some of the highest leveled guards out there. Though, many of the fighters are looking at thguards and looking at the adventurer’s association, looking between the choices of staying here for therest of their lives nd being under our command or heading to the higher realms and having greater freedom. I don’t know if having the Adventurer’s Guild will be a good or a bad thing in the end,” Aditay voiced his true concerns.

Evernight smiled and pulled out a piece of paper.

“This is from the leader of my people,” She put it on the table.

Aditya looked at it and then back up to Evernight unconciously asking her permission to open it.

She chuckled and waved for him to get on with it.

He opened the letter and read the contents.

His expression turned serious as he read through it all.

“So the leader of your people is interested in recruiting from the guard ranks, picking out those that they trust and have proven their loyalty and giving them complete training not just the training that they received before we took the outposts?” 

“That’s pretty much the way of things. They will be offered an opportunity to go to the higher realms, to learn more about crafting and more that they wouldn’t have access to before. This means that you can keep on pulling in more recruits and you will have a group of guards that if you come under attack will return to assist you and be much more powerful, possibly as strong as people in the fourth realm?”

We are losing some of our best guards if we do this, but there will be some that remain, they can train the new recruits coming in with this new soldier training. Their roots will be here, if we are under threat then we can get their help. It also binds us closely to this mysterious power and directly. 

“If we come under attack, what will our masters do?” Aditya asked.

“Depends really, every situation can have a different solution,” Evernight said.

“What if it is something that we can’t deal with, that we’ll be destroyed for?” Aditya pushed.

Evernight looked at Aditya, her playful smile fading as she looked up at the ceiling. 

“No one in the first three realms should be able to threaten you, the alchemist association have no interest. Those of the higher realms have so many resources that are better than what can be found in the first two realms that it wouldn’t make sense for them to come down here. Only a group that is too powerful or too large would make us act. King’s Hill and Vermire allow us a direct connection to the outside world, through you we have had fifteen thousand people join our ranks and you are sending more every day. You give us a point to recruit people into the healing houses and our adventurer Guild, a key point for our traders guild to sell their wares. You have created a shadow city effectively. A city that we can exert power through into the first realm. We have placed a lot into this endeavor. If something comes along and threatens the Beast Mountain Range, we can still disappear. We would take all of those that we could who were innocent or loyal and place them under our direcct protection. If the power learns of us though. Well, we can’t very well just hide. At that time you’d see the true power of my people.”

Aditya felt the weight in her gaze.

“Thank you,” Aditya said, feeling relieved. He didn’t want to seem like another outpost lord trying to save his own skin but everything he had was on the line. All of his people, all of his guards, all he had made. When he started it was to accrue power and spit in the eyes of others that had pushed him down or to the side because of his injuries. He’d become attached to the people around him and couldn’t insulate himself from them all. While King’s Hill was a large undertaking the reason that his people in Vermire hadn’t become a problem was because he had supported them for so long that now they supported him. A large portion of the people in King’s Hill were from Vermire.

“So, how are the numbers looking for the market? I’ve heard that you’ve been making a large profit and that the first auctions have gone off well, a number of people were talking about them on my travels. Some were calling it an unofficial meeting of the outpost lords as they created a bidding war among themselves,” Evernight smiled again.

“I wish that they wouldn’t make such a show in public, we have the private auctions as well for the items that we don’t’ want to put on the public market but they’re traders and fighters to the bone!”

Their conversation had a relaxed tone as Aditya reported on Vermire, King’s Hill and the rest of the Beast Mountain Range. 

***

Qin and Julilah were in the Vuzgal Library, it was packed with people supervised by the librarians that drifted around the building. People joked that if the Vuzgal defense force was defeated, all it would need was someone stepping into the library and raising their voice for the attacking force to be defeated.

The Librarians spent their time caring for the library, but in their spare time they traded insights into what they had learned. 

By themselves they were powerful combat experts, when they had learned of combat techniques they had created a whole section of how people could create new combat techniques and all of the techniques that they had created. 

Many of them were also part of Tanya’s new school of pure magic, like crafters they spent an iordinate amount of time, figuring out the combination of different attribute mana that a person combined together to create a spell.

Julilah jotted down a note on her pad of paper and sat back in her chair.

“That should work,” She muttered to herself.

Qin had her eyes screwed up, trying to mentally picture the formation that she was thinking of creating.

She was drawing out partial sketches, focusing on different parts.

Julilah made some more notes, looking at the gathered information and waited.

Qin finished up her sketches and looked at the different interlinking runes and circles that would create the formation.

“Uggh, too many linking damn circles, going to be a big power loss,” Qin grumbled.

“Qin, what if we made a power formation and then added formations to it?”

“Well formations already have that,” Qin said.

“With your component formations you can say have one formation that is a mana barrier and then another that adds in, buffing the people in the area of the mana barrier. With an attack formation you a can have a formation that summons a flame, you add in another formation and the flame becomes a fireball, then another and you can direct where the fireball attacks. Where does the power come from?”

“It comes from the first formation, right now the base formation can only have three other formations, that support the original formation or add another effect like buffing those people in its range, beyond that and the power is too much. Why?”

“So my formations are much smaller and I’m reaching a power ceiling with my current materials. I can change materials and then the power would increase but it would hit that ceiling again in the future. I am wondering if there is a way to boost the base formations. Formations aren’t that flexibile,” Julilah said.

“Yeah, basicaly a reusable spell scroll, power it up again and use it all over as long as its not damaged,” Qin nodded.

“Yeah, so I took another routes, amplification formations,” Julilah said, leaning forward, getting heated about the topic.

“Formations to amplify the spells cast inside them?” Qin nodded, she’d made a number of them herself. For the defense of Vuzgal and key supplies for the Alva Army all peak crafters that received the benefits of Alva were requested to make high tier supplies to support the military. She and Qin had made several amplifications formations, tied into the mana storing formations at Vuzgal and Alva.

“I had a look at that and reviewed our notes on the formation sockets. The power component of the formations are usually the first to burn out or deform until the formation can’t be used. They have to be inlaid perfectly and not cross any of the controlling circles or runes or they might diverge and turn the formation into scrap. Like the rifles and weaponry of the army, what if we were to plug in controlling formations into a power formation?” Julilah looked at Qin with expectant eyes.

“It should work,” Qin was looking at the desk not seeing it as she organized her throughts.

“So, yes having a formation to be the power source and using formation sockets to direct that power would work, still the effect of the formation would be limited by the formation socket,” Qin said.

“What if it was a power formation as the base and we linked in amplification formations?” Julilah’s breath was heated, staring at her friend.

Qin frowned, her eyes tracking left and right.

“I.. I don’t see a problem with it,” Qin looked to her friend. “With that kiund of formation, then our mages could use it, crafters could use it as well to have a greater control over their spells. Then if they plug in a formation socket then it turns from amplifying just their spells to another type of formation. Go from hurling meteors, plug in a healing formation socket. What if we could combine that with the armor of the Army? Wait where are you going?”

“Formations to make and theories to test out!”

“You! Wait up!” Qin yelled and ran after her friend.

A throat was cleared and the two of them saw a librarian frowning at them and looking at the books that they had left in the private room they had been working in.

The two girls looked at one another and meekly bowed their heads to the librarians and went to clean up the books and put them on the cart to be re-shelved.

The librarian smiled at them and walked on peacefully, mana seemed to flow around them, their control reached an incredibly high stage, through training, or cultivating their body and mana gates.

Qin and Julilah quickly shuffled out of the library making sure to not make too much noise. Once they were out of the library they broke out into a run, racing towards the formation workshops.

The two of them sped across the grounds, using their combat techniques that they had picked up that were mandatory classes for Alvans.