Path of Dragons 13 - Chapter 82 - Incremental Growth

“I think I’ve come to a realization,” Elijah told Treebie.  For once, they were entirely alone.  No tree-worshippers.  No Jasai’i.  Just a Druid and his tree, the way it always had been.  “You have no way of knowing this, but people are expected to grow.  To change.  Not like you, either.  Your growth is literal.  With people, it’s usually psychological.”

He slowly circled the tree’s enormous trunk, tracing his fingers across Treebie’s crystal-bark hybrid exterior.  At times, he was forced to step over knotted roots, but for the most part, the ground was soft and loamy.  Insects buzzed from one nearby flower to another, while birdsong filled his ears.  Elijah even heard something like crickets chirping in the distance, while fireflies – somehow almost identical to the ones on Earth – danced through the air.

“But here’s what I’ve figured out, Treebie.  Growth isn’t really linear,” he said.  “We all think we just constantly move forward.  Either we’re better or worse than we were the day before.  That’s just not how it works, though.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ended up exactly where I started.  And even when I make progress, I end up backsliding and fighting the same battle over again. 

“That’s the point though,” he told the tree, as if he’d reached some grand philosophical conclusion.  “I think our lives are more cyclical than we want to admit.  It’s not a straight line, you know?  It’s more like a helix that sometimes loops back on itself.  Or something like that.

“Now, I know what you’re thinking, Treebie.  What about character arcs?  Well, those don’t really exist in real life.  Not like they do in the movies, all nice and clean and satisfying.  We’ve been conditioned to expect that because, well, that’s how stories are usually told.  It’s not realistic, though.  People are messy, man.  We are creatures of bad habits, and we don’t really like to change.  You’ll see that when you get older.”

As usual, Treebie didn’t offer a response.

Because he was a tree, which Elijah sometimes forgot.

It had been a few months since he’d let his frustrations over Benedict’s class choice get the better of him.  And in that time, he’d managed to regain control over his emotions, at least enough to recognize just how unfair he’d been with his assessment.  He’d also come to realize that he’d been making a lot of assumptions when it came to Benedict’s evolution. 

It was easy to believe that Dimensionalist was the key to everything, but in reality, none of them knew more than the class description chose to reveal.  There were no guides to consult.  No heritage passed down through the generations.  Like Elijah, Benedict was forced to forge his own path, and that came with a degree of uncertainty that none of them could hope to escape.

Since returning to Druhmor, Elijah had apologized to Benedict for his reaction.  Of course, Benedict claimed it was unnecessary, but he was just being polite.  Elijah knew he’d screwed up. 

In the intervening months, Elijah had begun to map out his next steps when it came to terraforming.  The next ring would be thousands of miles away, and it would straddle the line between land and sea.  That came with a host of logistical problems, but Elijah had found some comfort in working out the details.

Otherwise, he’d worked toward clearing out the interior of the latest ring.  Most of those monsters were vastly weakened, but that only meant that they were a little easier to deal with.  The fact was that sheer numbers meant that exterminating them would be the work of years.

Elijah remained committed to it, though only in spurts.  He didn’t want to lose himself in the slaughter.  Not again. 

Even so, he’d managed to gain another level, pushing him to two-seventy-four.  His relatively rapid leveling pace was just proof of how insane the requirements had been during the levels comprising the First Wall.  However, he knew that he’d be faced with something similar in the last five levels before three hundred and four hundred.  The Second and Third Wall, respectively.  And finally, the twenty-five levels before deification was known as the Great Wall. 

Elijah wasn’t looking forward to those, though being stuck at the edge of demi-godhood had prepared him well for it.

Whatever the case, those levels were a long way off, and he wouldn’t need to worry about them for years to come.  For now, he could only hope that he’d gain a new ability at level two-seventy-five, if only to break some of the calm monotony of his existence.

His ongoing efforts to terraform Gorveth had brought other events to his doorstep as well.  Or problems, he supposed, glancing back at M’yakein, the skyline of which loomed on the horizon.

The city had grown, both in breadth as well as population density.  Some of that was because, now that those citizens were safe, they’d experienced a bit of a baby boom.  However, that was not the biggest cause of the rise in population, because only a few weeks after his battle against the seemingly unkillable monster of the deep, Furik and his fleet had brought more refugees to the continent.

Elijah hadn’t spoken to the Sailor, but according to Zek, those people had come from Ithalon itself.  In the absence of the Synod, the city had fallen into chaos.  It had practically become a warzone, with various factions fighting amongst one another and forcing many people to flee.

Somehow – probably from Furik himself – they’d learned of M’yakein.  Either because they were desperate or hopeful, they’d braved the corrupted landscape and begged the Sailor to ferry them across the ocean.

Elijah knew that the only reason they’d survived was because his rings had attracted so many monsters.  Without that invariable pull, they would have remained in place to slaughter any travelers.

For the most part, they’d integrated into the city without issue or complaint.  But any time that many people gathered in one place, problems would occur.  Already, the city had nurtured a healthy criminal element that Elijah suspected would only grow stronger over time. 

And that wasn’t even considering the dissidents and complainers, who all thought they knew a better way to govern. 

Thankfully, Elijah didn’t need to deal with most of that.  So long as they respected Druhmor’s boundaries, he didn’t really care what they did.  The moment they violated Elijah’s line in the sand, things would get ugly, though.

Once Elijah had completed his inspection of Treebie’s base, he flew toward the canopy and planted himself on one of the branches.  Lying back, he could almost pretend he was back home. 

But the atmosphere just felt different. 

In context, the change Druhmor and its surroundings had undergone was absolutely miraculous.  Life had taken hold, and it would take something truly catastrophic to unseat it.  However, there was a subtle newness to it that separated it from somewhere like Earth.  It no longer felt artificial, but it still seemed temporary.  Like a chalk drawing compared to a sculpture.

One day, Treebie would grow old enough to give it that lived-in feel, but that would be a long time coming.

Time.

It seemed like that was the secret ingredient to all of his plans, and the process was measured in centuries and millennia.  The scale of it made Elijah feel incredibly small.  Like an ant trying to build a hill the size of a mountain. 

Elijah lay there for a long time before he finally pushed himself back to his feet and set off across the continent.  For a while, he flew aimlessly, inspecting the area for any monsters he might have missed.  By this point, they were quite rare, but every now and again, one would emerge from hiding.  And though the damage they could inflict was quite limited, Elijah still felt that it was better to deal with them as quickly as possible.

One thing he did wish was that building the continent up had granted him a locus like he enjoyed with his grove.  Knowing where everything was would be absolutely invaluable to keep it protected.

But that just wasn’t in the cards.

He was almost entirely disconnected from the Hartwood Grove, so the idea of creating a satellite grove on Gorveth was a non-starter. 

That occupied a couple of days, during which he killed a couple of monsters that had crawled out of the mountain caves.  Once his patrol was finished, he headed out to sea, only to have his journey interrupted by a rippling pulse that tore across the ocean.  At first, Elijah had no idea what had happened, but then, he recognized it for what it was.

Something was attacking the outer ring, and whatever it was, it was powerful enough to damage one of the trilithons. 

The next pulse – which felt like a metaphysical earthquake – helped Elijah zero in on the source, so after reorienting himself in that direction, he used Lightning Rush.  Before he knew it, he was cutting through the waves on his way to the origin of the pulse.

And to his surprise, he found a familiar foe waiting on him.

The giant tentacle monster he’d failed to kill had seemingly found its way to the outer ring to attack one of the trilithons.  Unexpected, given that creatures at its level tended to stay where they were, mostly because the ethera density was much more comfortable down there.  But it had obviously come for him, even if it had gotten distracted by the trilithon.

Hundreds of slimy tendrils wrapped around the stone monument as it attempted to rip the structure out of the ground.  The trilithon resisted, but it only took a single glance for Elijah to establish that that wouldn’t remain the case for much longer.

Recognizing the danger represented by the monster, Elijah attacked.

Only this time, he had a couple of advantages.  First, he had his full faculties at his disposal, which meant that his attack was far more controlled.  Second, the ring was still active, draining the monster’s power. 

Hopefully, it would be enough to tip the balance.

Elijah took on his dragon form, then cast four spells at once.  Doing so stretched his capabilities, but he could manage it with only a slight headache.  The first two spells – Blessing of the Grove and Wild Resurgence – would hopefully serve to keep him alive.  The second two would start the fight with a bang.

As he swam forward, moving like a crocodile, he let the spells compound until, just before he rammed the thing, he let them loose.  Lightning Domain and Eternal Plague rushed from his mouth, enveloping the monster in a school of tiny, biting minnows and a thick web of lightning.

The creature seized.

Elijah slammed into it, leading the way with his antlers.  He whipped his head back and forth, the sharp protuberances ripping through the creature’s rubbery flesh.  A cloud of blood and flesh filled the surrounding seas, while Elijah continued to pour ethera into Eternal Plague.

The monster didn’t take the attack lying down.  Instead, it slashed at him with hook-lined tentacles.  Elijah tore through them, rending flesh until he hit a cage of bone that should never have been there.  Not for something that moved like an octopus, at least. 

But he’d long established that the thing didn’t follow the biological laws he’d always taken for granted.  Anatomically, it didn’t need to make sense.  And it didn’t.  Nothing grew where it should have been, or in the numbers he would have expected.

The battle wore on, furious and frenzied.  Elijah didn’t let up.  And neither did the monster.  Perhaps their reasons were different, though there was a glimmer of understanding in both combatants. 

They both knew the stakes, even if the monster was only capable of the most basic thoughts.

But unlike their first encounter, Elijah had the advantage, and he was more than willing to use it to full effect.  To that end, Elijah used hit-and-run tactics, attacking and then slashing in once it resumed its assault on the trilithon. 

Sometimes, he allowed Eternal Plague to infect it.  Other times, he shifted into the comparatively less durable Shape of the Scourge and used Ethereal Sepsis and Spreading Blight.  Still other times, he shifted into the Shape of Spores and fought tentacle-to-tendril while peppering it with Nature’s Claim.

That was all just to set the stage, though.  The real damage came from Shape of Embers.  And when he finally unleashed Flames of Renewal, he made real headway.  Even as huge swaths of the sea evaporated under the resulting fire, the creature’s rubbery flesh melted. 

When Elijah’s body reformed from the ashes, he found the monster’s life force waning.  But it wasn’t dead yet.

He intended to change that.

So began a war of attrition that lasted more than three weeks, during which time Elijah rapidly cycled between his abilities.  The second Flames of Renewal came off cooldown, he used it.  Otherwise, he kept going with physical attacks, augmenting them with his spells when he could spare the ethera.

And like that, he slowly wore the monster down until, at last, he managed to finish it off.

He immediately shifted back into the Shape of the Sea, enjoying the comfort provided by Ocean Native as a pair of notifications flashed before his inner eye.  The first was somewhat expected.  He’d reached level two-seventy-five.

But the second was one he’d been waiting on for what felt like an eternity.  He’d finally satisfied the level requirement to evolve his next spell.