Dao 4 Chapter 1

Winter was in full swing in the village of Hearthway, but villagers walked between buildings without heavy winter coats.

And if that wasn’t odd enough, an observer could wait a while and see odd feats of strength, like a young girl picking up a basket of iron ingots like it was a basket of flowers.

Dar was proud of the way his village had grown.

It had been two months since the first snow and every villager had cultivated their first dao and become an immortal. Where most villages spent the winter trying to say warm and fed, halting the rest of their activities, Hearthway was able to push forward.

With stronger villagers and the benefits of dao, a little cold and snow wasn’t stopping them from building up their small area of land.

And thanks to Neko, they had a small army of goats that were keeping people fed and providing warm clothes when needed.

“Need a hand with that?” Dar reached around Bart and stuck his hand in the forge where Bart’s apprentice had dropped his tongs.

“Thank you, Boss.” The kid beamed up at him.

“No problem.” Dar brushed the heat off his arm and the tool with his dao before handing it to him.

“Keep a firm grip on your tongs, boy. There won’t always be someone like him to come and snatch them out of the fire.” Bart scolded the kid.

“Couldn’t I just learn the dao of heat, or get another set of tongs?” The kid had a glib tongue.

Bart shook his head. “Growing up with all of this is a luxury I never had. Maybe one day you’ll be able to, but for now, just keep a good hand on them and we’ll continue your lessons with beating the flat of the shovel blade out.” The old blacksmith gave Dar a dismissing wave as he went back to managing his apprentice.

Dar had taken Bart’s daughter from him, and now the blacksmith was finding himself with too much time on his hands. He was immortal like Dar, so that had become a significant amount of time. Enough for him to finally get an apprentice.

But Dar was different, he was a grand immortal; he was able to wield a grand dao capable of creating matter from mana. Bart was still a lesser immortal, made so by Dar.

Dar’s inner tree had produced plenty of dao fruit from the eddercaps, giving many of the villagers the dao of quiet or sticky. They were able to manipulate that property to existance on their bodies or things they were in direct contact with.

“Milord.” Amber, Bart’s daughter and Dar’s maid approached with a bow that made her red braid fall low enough to touch the snow. “Forgive me, but the next group to enter your inner world is waiting in front of the caves.”

Dar smiled at Bart and his apprentice before waving Amber to lead him. “Let’s go. We can’t keep them waiting, now can we?”

“They would happily wait for you, Milord. Everyone in the village understands just how vital you are and how important your time is.” Amber was the definition of respectful as she spoke.

“Yet there I was just watching the blacksmiths.” Dar grinned to himself.

“You were probably checking on their stock of iron and gauging their progress on several projects, amid other things.” Amber leveled a gaze at him. “Give yourself more credit, Milord. Besides, if you just want to stare at something and relax, I can assist you in a pleasurable moment of relaxation after you take care of the villagers.”

The way Amber bit her lip made it clear just exactly how she planned to perform those duties.

Dar was sorely tempted to take her up on the offer, but he had other responsibilities that needed to get done.

Despite the relative calm of Hearthway, it was only a passing period. Dar knew it was the calm before the storm.

In the winter, travel between cities was cut to a minimum. The roads would grow too deep with snow for carts to make much progress, and only their newly retrofitted ship was moving through the icy river now.

Dar had worked with Bart to reinforce the bow of a small merchant vessel with iron and strap more of Dar’s enchanted motors to the back of it so that it could plow through the frozen river.

For the people of Kindrake, seeing a boat travel the river in winter was a near miracle.

Dar’s city had made one trip up to the capital, also named Kindrake after the country, a few times to trade a few surpluses.

Hearthway seemed to have a never ending flow of Bison meat and hides.

And they were able to preserve the meat better than most. Blaire, who was now a diamond spirit, would pull salt from the earth in quantities that let them keep the meat.

Given how precious salt was, Blaire’s main chore every day was to pull more.

The village had several storage caves stuffed to the brim with salt before we decided to pack nearly a dozen barrels full of it for the ship headed to Kindrake.

Most of the residents of the village had never seen so much salt. It was a rare commodity, leading it to be a show of wealth.

Putting it on the ship had been like pulling teeth, but the village needed certain supplies if they were to continue growing.

Dar wanted a larger variety of fruit for his people. His little growing orchard in his inner world wasn’t large enough to provide for them yet.

And he wanted more materials for his blacksmiths. He had them hard at work with iron and copper making rough tools and working their way to weapons.

Dar knew that war was on the other side of the winter, but he hoped he could entice a weaponsmith from the capital to come and join his village. Given just a little bit of training, he knew his country trained smiths could become armor smiths and weapon smiths, preparing themselves for what was to come.

The trading team would hopefully come back with some of the things that Hearthway couldn’t produce itself. Somethings just didn’t grow here and while goat fur could be made into clothing, there were far more efficient animals to get cloth from.

“We are here.” Amber broke Dar from his inner thoughts.

A dozen villagers milled around the entrance to the mining caves and deeper inside, where Dar had crafted a manor amid the stone. “Milord.” Several bowed.

“Step up for a trip to the Dao Tree.” He had dropped ‘little’ from the tree’s name. It only seemed to cause confusion for the villagers once they were inside.

One by one they stepped up and Dar, drew them into his inner world where Cherry and others would be watching over those that cultivated under the tree. Cherry was also able to come and go freely from his inner world and would assist any of them in exiting.

Sometimes Dar felt like a tiny bus.

“Milord? Is there anything I can assist you with? Your thoughts seem distant.” Amber was watching him.

“Thinking about the group that went to Kindrake; they should be back soon.” Dar rubbed at his chin. “I’m going to go wait by the river.”

“We can have someone watch the river for you.” Amber offered, already looking ready to bolt away and grab somebody.

But Dar shook his head. “No. They’d have to run and get me. Besides, I want to be there when Sasha and Mika get back.”

Sasha was a former merchant and critical to the success of the expedition, and Mika was the only one truly skilled at running the enchanted motors.

Russ had managed to learn the smaller boat so that he and his dao companions could cross the river to hunt for bison whenever they wanted.

The demon and his ladies were proud to provide meat and hides for the village, and it wasn’t like they would over hunt the massive herd that had settled across the river from them for the winter.

Dar knew that Russ would be disappointed when the bison moved on after the winter when the snow thawed, but hopefully they’d have enough stored up by that point to last them a while.

Dar passed the ten foot tall walls made from his Dao of Lava. Drawing it up from the ground and pouring it into the shape had been a labor, but it was worth it to protect the city.

And it would likely not be enough for what was to come. Dar made a mental note that he should expand the wall soon, maybe make a second ring.

Bellhaven, one of the nearby cities, was a mess. Those that survived the winter would likely flee up river, looking for a safe haven.

Dar anticipated that his little village would see an influx of travelers, some of whom would stay if they could get along with the current citizens, but not all would.

Most of the city were demons or spirits, two of the three ancient races that populated the world.

And humans in Kindrake often treated like second class citizens. Demons and spirits were often manipulated when they entered a city, forced to swear on their dao and give away much of their power. It was a binding oath and used to enslave younger, less experienced demons and spirits.

Dar waved at Rex as he passed. Rex managed the guard and currently sat in one of the three towers Dar had created along the wall.

Rex gave Dar a sharp nod; his avian features and beak made him clearly a demon.

The snow deepened almost instantly after stepping outside the walls. Within the village, there were a number of enchanted stoves producing heat and melting the snow.

But the walls stopped any of that heat, and Dar had to push through nearly two feet of snow after he passed the giant wall.

“Stupid snow.” He grumbled under his breath before pushing out his dao of heat and melting a path before him.

It was a waste of his mana, but as a grand immortal, he had plenty. The slight outpour required to melt the snow wasn’t enough to matter.

The characters on his skin glowed a faint blue, an artifact of his growing cultivation. Lilith had enchanted him, and from his conversations with his dao companions, that was supposed to be impossible.

But Lilith had been an incredibly powerful demon. She had pulled his soul from his life in the future with the help of the spirit of death, wanting him to finish what he’d once started with her in a life he didn’t remember. He needed to remove the Mo from the land.

Lilith had been a celestial demon of knowledge and always thought I was the solution, and she believed Dar had a shiny soul. Considering the Dao Tree and what it had done to the two Mo it had interacted with, Dar figured she had seen something correctly.

Mo were devils. They were the third ancient race, and one of low intelligence with a never ending appetite. They were almost like locusts, but much bigger and far more deadly.

Unlike the normal devils they had met and fought, the Mo were magically connected to aspects of the world. Lilith had traveled the world, sealing the powerful devils away, but those seals were breaking.

Dar had managed to kill two powerful Mo so far, using his dao tree. It had absorbed the aspect that the Mo had controlled, and now Hearthway was using the dao tree to further everyone’s cultivation. Just the proximity of the tree oozed the dao of shadow and earth allowing for much faster breakthroughs for Dar, his dao companions and everyone else in the village.

There was the crunch of snow nearby and Dar stopped in his tracks; with his dao of heat, he wasn’t making that noise.

Dar didn’t move, nor did he look around.

Instead, he waited for whatever it was to come to him as he let his dao of hard flow through his body, making his skin as hard as iron.

It was a single creature from the sound as it circled behind Dar.

Dar waited until a staccato of a creatures lope told him it was attacking.

Then he spun, arm out to catch whatever it was.

A scrawny white wolf was midair, throwing itself at Dar with its jaws wide open.

Catching its jaws on his arm, Dar reached around to grab the loose scruff behind its neck and lift it off of him.

The wolf hadn’t even managed to scratch him. The poor thing looked malnourished and hungry. Given that it was hunting alone, Dar imagined it had been pushed out of or lost its pack.

“Poor wolf.” Dar patted the thing on the head before he pulled out a hunk of salted bison meat from his inner world.

It wasn’t a demon or any sort of monster, just a normal white wolf, if malnourished. To him and most of Hearthway, this wolf wasn’t even a threat.

The wolf snatched the bison meat from his hands and as soon as he put it down it scampered away, casting several glances over its shoulder to see if Dar was going to come after the bison meat.

When he didn’t, it slowed down and paused to eat, too hungry to get somewhere safer first.

“Don’t be shy. If you want more, I’ll be back this way later.” Dar crouched low and dropped another piece of meat for it to enjoy after he was gone.

Winter was boring, and Dar found himself considering getting a pet wolf. He could maybe train it. 

Winter had been so quiet. The heavy blanket of snow over the land seemed to grind the whole country to a halt, as everyone just tried to survive the winter.

Turning back to the direction of the Bell River, Dar melted his path through the snow once more.

The Bell River was a massive river, and it served as the main thoroughfare between the Capital Kindrake and the large city on the ocean, Bellhaven. They were two of the largest cities in the small country.

Although based on what he knew of Bellhaven’s struggles, he wasn’t sure if it would even be a city anymore.

After Dar had been caught up in an attempted political coup in the city, and subsequently killed several nobles, the city had flailed without leadership. And the prince sent down from Kindrake had only shown his age, or lack thereof, becoming a prisoner and another tool for the nobles behind the attempted coup.

The brat hadn’t shown an ounce of gratefulness when Dar slaughtered his captors, instead putting a bounty out on Dar’s Black Knight persona and preventing him from wearing the armor in public.

When the city fell to a nearby devil hive, Dar had passed through it with his women, finding blood flowing in the streets and devils hunting anyone who left their homes. The nobles and wizards were all gone, suspected to have fled from the city in the night.

Dar had no doubt the current winter had been tough for him, but he didn’t feel a responsibility to help. They’d rejected or not appreciated his help too many times. Dar was happy to focus on helping those in his city who needed him.

Dar looked back over the river. It was heavily coated in ice, refrozen from when the boat had last cut through it.

But he could hear a distant crunching noise that was getting closer, alerting him of the boat’s arrival before it appeared.

The boat was one they had taken from Bellhaven. With Bart’s help, Dar had made a sharp bow of iron and reinforced the hull for it to cut through the ice.

The boat made its way with three large enchanted motors humming off the back and giving it enough force to shred through the ice.

Sasha’s head came over the edge of the boat, spotting Dar on the shore. Her eyes twinkled as her face blossomed into a brilliant smile and she started waving. “Dar!” She cupped her hands around her mouth.

I mimicked her gesture. “Right here! I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss the spot, given everything is just white and snow covered.”

Sasha kept waving, beaming at Dar before she turned back to the others over her shoulder. There was shouting on the river boat as everyone prepared to stop.

The boat was much bigger than the one that Russ used to hunt Bison, some forty feet in length with a broad deck. It had plenty of room to tie down barrels and sacks of goods.

The boat came to a crunching halt as Mika turned off the enchanted motors and let the resistance of the ice slow the boat alongside the shore where Dar was waiting.

Sasha threw herself off the boat first, her ribbons shooting out from under her dress and catching threes at the edge to allow her to swing right down into his arms.

Dar caught her, grounding himself with the dao of heavy. “Glad to have you back.”

“Glad to be back.” Sasha kissed him, her soft body molding against his. Her skin was softer than the finest silk thanks to her dao of silk.

Sasha had raven black hair and bright blue eyes. Today she wore a wonderful blue silk dress, one that would have made the nobles of Bellhaven green with envy.

But she was able to make the finest silk dresses given her ability to control silk. It would literally pour itself over her body, stitching itself together when she wanted it.

And that meant that this dress hugged her generous curves before flaring at her waist. Dar had gotten used to the renaissance-like fashion of the area. He even liked it now.

Dar squeezed Sasha again before setting her down. “How about I help you unload the boat so that we can get back to the village quicker?”

Sasha grinned and bounced her eyebrows. “Don’t tell me things will be quick because you missed me?”

Snorting, Dar covered it with a cough as they had a small crew aboard the boat watching now. “I guarantee your welcome back will be anything but short, Sasha. I’ve missed you enough that I thoroughly want to reconnect with my dao companion.”

She kissed his cheek again. “Good. I look forward to it, but we have some things to take care of first. Come on, I have a few surprises for you.”

“All of them good, I hope?” He teased her.

Sasha winced. “Most of them.”

Dar’s face set into a frown. He didn’t love the sound of that. His playful mood evaporated as he put Sasha down and headed for the boat, wanting to get it unpacked so they could sit down and talk.

AN - Okay. So chapter 1 is pretty much me reminding myself and hopefully the rest of you were the story is at. It'll pick up. Also, I've decided my goal for this book is to focus back on production speed for a few reasons. My word count per book has been slipping and I need to correct that. Yet, Dao isn't really the place for me to throw a big word count effort. So, I'm going to try and put some of this effort into Dragon 6, which you won't see, and Dungeon Academy at some undetermined frequency.